Richard Rorty dead at 75

Philosopher Richard Rorty has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 75.

New York times obituary here.

Here's an interesting interview of Rorty by Josh Knobe. Knobe was a philosophy student when he did the interview and he later when on to become a philosophy professor.

Comments

[Doyle Saylor]

Interesting interview with Rorty. I've not read much of his work. Derrida seems to matter to him in a way which makes me want to gag myself with a spoon. Rorty calls that demonizing meaning some sort of cultural tendency to react strongly to either of them.

One can't comment on an interview in which he's not going into depth. His part of the conversation sounds like someone who could be a good teacher, though I don't see things his way.

[Brock]

If Rorty's self-portrait in the interview was accurate, it would seem his heart never really was in philosophy. He went into philosophy for the same reason that so many people I know went to law school: "Lack of any better ideas."

Little wonder then that he ended up as an outsider to the discipline. The other whose philosophical outlook he claims in the interview to share, Davidson and Putnam, never came to the conclusion "philosophy isn't worth doing."

[Doyle Saylor]

Brock writes;
Little wonder then that he ended up as an outsider to the discipline.

Doyle,
Philosophy is not so neat as you make it out to be in the sense of a discipline. Ugh Nietsche, what discipline? Karl Marx a philosopher entertwined with economis so much you can't pry them apart. People drop into the work from all angles and from a high tree limb too.