I have to say, it's been forty years since I read any Rorty and I thought he was making a valiant effort to dig down into Western truth claims, but it seemed even then that he realized he was coming up empty.

My favorite go to book on getting a sense of the basis of Western civilization is Gilbert Murray's; Five Stages of Greek Religion. It's far more anthropological, than esthetic, but consequently more clear in laying out the problems;

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30250/30250-h/30250-h.htm

Personally I grew up on a farm, raising domestic animals, mostly race horses and dairy cattle, so I've been somewhat of an outsider to the cultural framing. I had too much personal experience with the relational, contextual reality and understand it more in terms of balance and tension, than obsessive truth claims.