Mimesis and the Mirror of Nature

The possible general Philosophical significance of Mimesis is well-expressed by Rorty's characterization of Philosophy's long and deeply-ingrained tradition of aiming to serve as a 'mirror of nature'. Perhaps the best proof of the accuracy of Rorty's characterization is that the advocates of this tradition themselves affirm that verisimilitude of representation to 'the things themselves' is the cardinal principle of their projects. Even Skepticism's denial of the possibility of achieving such verisimilitude is an implicit acceptance of the Mimetic role of Philosophy. The novelty of Kantianism is to suggest that we construct our experiential world, a thesis that is perhaps best developed by, ironically, Bergson, who is hardly a neo-Kantian. He fleshes out the implicit Constructivism of Kantianism, by conceiving of the empirical world that each of us inhabits, as the product of a structuring, in accordance with our capacities for acting upon it. Such a model complements the Pragmatist principle that Truth is efficacy of action, e. g. the Truth of the proposition 'The chair exists' is determined by the success of one's effort to sit in it. Now, while Rorty withholds any Historical evaluation of the surpassing of Mimetic Philosophy, Evolvementalism regards it as the maturation from naive receptivity, to Individual Idionomy.