This will likely be of interest to exactly none of you, but one of my great philosophical heroes died yesterday. The first paper I ever presented at a professional philosophy conference was on Rorty. I can't improve on what Chris Hayes says:
Rorty had an uncanny ability to stare into the post-modern abyss, in which nothing is grounded in the divine or universal, and yet somehow, some way, find a kind of practical empathy that could serve as a beacon in the face of nihilism, authoritarianism and cruelty.
He will be greatly, greatly missed.
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Steven T Posted 3:59 pm
09 Jun 2007
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David Roberts Posted 4:05 pm
09 Jun 2007
grist.org
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caniscandida Posted 5:16 pm
09 Jun 2007
Simon Blackburn, in "The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy," writes s.v. Rorty, Richard (1931- ):
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He is widely known as an analytic philosopher who has turned against what he regards as the traditional categories of concern in that tradition -- truth, knowledge, objectivity -- and substituted a free-wheeling postmodernist version of pragmatism, linked with writers such as Heidegger and Gadamer, in which these topics are banished. Having risen above such concerns the liberal intellectual maintains an ironic and detached attitude even to his or her fundamental convictions; intellectual life becomes a kind of dilettante conversation, and critics find unsettling the political quietism or conservatism this suggests.
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Blackburn's mask of objectivity slips ever so slightly with "free-wheeling," but much more obviously with "dilettante."
It is regrettable that in our stage of civilization, scholarly and intellectual discourse is so relentlessly assessed by criteria of value based in political engagement. But so far as that goes, it is interesting that Rorty can be attacked from both the right and the left. I cannot imagine that Pope Benedict XVI often favorably recommends Rorty's books, even if he might find some things to praise in the "neanderthal agenda" of a Rorty fan.
The Penguin Reference "Dictionary of Philosophy" allows major living philosophers to write their own articles -- an eyebrow-raising decision, but very valuable in a way. Rorty wrote a two-column entry, nearly a full page, toward the end of which he says:
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Although frequently accused of raving irrationalism and unconscionable frivolity by the political right, and of insufficient radicalism, as well as premature anti-communism, by the political left, I think of myself as sharing John Dewey's political attitudes and hopes, as well as his pragmatism.
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And Dewey was perhaps the most influential of all American philosophers. It is unknown if Rorty appreciated Dewey also for this sort of thing, from the end of the article on Dewey in the Penguin DoP, by Alan Ryan:
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Dewey was eager to reassure his readers that they were not adrift in a cold and alien world, and that the comforts of poetry, religion and art were not private consolations, but as reputable in their own way as science and mathematics themselves.
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Well done!, say I. Anyway, it is worth noting that Rorty was Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and then Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Phila Posted 8:56 am
11 Jun 2007
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caniscandida Posted 9:15 pm
11 Jun 2007
But I think we "dirty hippies" were (lazily?; dirtily?) recovering ancient, even pre-historic, manners of thought, which presume the existence of "the divine or universal," without feeling obliged to prove it.
The "post-modern abyss" is another kind of intellectual construct entirely. If the late Richard Rorty was able to discover in it a foundation for humanist ethics, including such virtues as empathy, well, good for him. But I do not see it.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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