SOURCE: "Signposts along the Way That Reason Went," in London Review of Books, Vol. 6, No. 3, February 16, 1984, pp. 5-6.

An American philosopher, critic, and educator, Rorty is the most prominent contemporary advocate for the discipline known as pragmatism. In the following review of Margins of Philosophy, he examines the philosophical contexts relevant to Derrida's theories on language. While he argues that Derrida's position vis-à-vis the Western philosophical tendency to privilege reason over rhetoric is not original, he predicts that Derrida will be considered an important philosopher by future generations of scholars.

If you want to know what the common sense of the bookish will be like fifty years from now, read the philosophers currently being attacked as 'irrationalist'. Then discount the constructive part of what they are saying. Concentrate on the negative things, the criticisms they make of the tradition. That dismissal of the common sense of the...