Between philosophy and literature: Richard Rorty and Henry James, critics of historical, social and existential lived time

From the philosophical and literary viewpoints, it can be said that both Richard Rorty (New York, 1931 - California, 2007) and Henry James (New York, 1843 - London, 1916) were two American philosophers whose ideas and hypotheses brought about an important shift in Western thought. Richard Rorty was an American pragmatic thinker who questioned philosophers in general; his desire was to inquire about the ineffable matters that are beyond temporality. Consequently, it is possible to notice some major shifts in his thinking when he demystifies the language of philosophy and begins to consider it as an average language, relating it to literature. Rorty takes writers such as Marcel Proust, Walt Whitman and Henry James, among others, as models. On the other hand, Henry James, the American author and critic of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was one of the greatest figures of English literature. James became well known for his novels and stories based on themes of consciousness and on the detailed description of the inner life of his characters. He is also considered one of the early precursors of the interior monologue. As a result of this literary foray, called "Jamesian experiment", Henry James started to be regarded as one of the most important writers of contemporary narrative. James was in charge of developing different literary techniques that characterized the novel of the twentieth century: the interior monologue, the inclusion of a self-conscious narrator and the use of the point of view technique. We think it is relevant and interesting to put forward a comparative relationship between these two American literary and philosophical writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who were critical of the historical-social and existential time in which they lived.