Allen, Barry. "Review of Neil Gross' RICHARD RORTY." NDPR (October 2008).

Gross, Neil. Richard Rorty: the Making of an American Philosopher, 1931-1982. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. This book is neither a biography nor a critical study of Rorty's ideas. It has very substantial biographical portions, but in intention it differs from either biography or philosophical study. The book is a contribution to the sociology of ideas, and proposes to "use Rorty's biography as a case study by means of which to push the sociology of ideas in new directions." Neil Gross is mainly interested in the early part of Rorty's career, the work that first drew him to the world's attention. The biography ends in 1982, with Rorty's departure from Princeton. . . . Gross wants us to think of his book as a contribution to a "new" sociology of ideas. The old sociology attempts to deduce the individual from the group, regarding a thinker's ideas as an unconscious expression of a prevailing structure, whether of economy, ideology, or libido.The new sociology of ideas, as I gather from Gross’s book, is a theory of the influences operating on intellectual choice, especially in the humanities. The leading contributions to this new sociology all make sociological studies of philosophy and philosophers -- Pierre Bourdieu in Homo Academicus and a book on Heidegger; Randall Collins in The Sociology of Philosophies, and now Gross’s book. The goal is a theory of the social factors that influence the ideas intellectuals take seriously and how they manage their careers. There is no expectation of uncovering general laws, but Gross believes there are "social mechanisms" to be found that probablize outcomes.For Bourdieu, ideas are strategic; preference for ideas is one way people distinguish and position themselves in an academic hierarchy. For Collins, access to high-status networks is the key intellectual resource and major determinate of why "great thinkers" think as they do. Gross' contribution is to assert the influence of intellectual self-concept, the quest for self-concept coherence. In other words philosophers sometimes argue as they do because of their beliefs about who they are and what they want to accomplish. They gravitate toward ideas that synthesize the stories they tell others about who they are and their theoretical expressions. On this account the causes for our taking seriously the ideas we do are not all behind our backs, as Bourdieu and Collins, like Marx and Freud, say. Individuals matter, consciousness matters, the self matters. Very reassuring, romantic, and American. The new sociology confirms the old ideology. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=14405.