The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.

He also emphasized the reasons why the interpretation of culture as conversation(Bernstein:1971) constitutes the crucial concept of a "postphilosophical" culture determined to abandon representationalist accounts of traditional epistemology incorporating American pragmatist naturalism that considers the natural sciences as an advance towards liberalism. Against this approach Rorty advocated for a novel form of American pragmatism sometimes called neopragmatism in which scientific and philosophical methods form merely a set of contingent "vocabularies" which people abandon or adopt over time according to social conventions and usefulness.