I learned on Sunday of Richard Rorty’s death via The Valve earlier this week, and haven’t really had time to reflect on it. Admittedly, I haven’t read anything by him — only references to him in a few journal articles, but from what I’ve read about him, I think I would like to read his work.
The New York Times has an obituary here.
Jürgen Habermas writes a reflection on Rorty’s life here. Habermas writes:
One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title ‘Wild Orchids and Trotsky.’ In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west New Jersey, and breathed in the stunning odour of the orchids. Around the same time he discovered a fascinating book at the home of his leftist parents, defending Leon Trotsky against Stalin. This was the origin of the vision that the young Rorty took with him to college: philosophy is there to reconcile the celestial beauty of orchids with Trotsky’s dream of justice on earth. Nothing is sacred to Rorty the ironist. Asked at the end of his life about the “holy”, the strict atheist answered with words reminiscent of the young Hegel: “My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.”
And Joseph Orosco has posted a video of one of Rorty’s talks here.
His “Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity” appeared regularly in our core “Perspectives on Rhetoric” course at UTA, so if you’re looking for a place to start, that’s not a bad one. Other of his work is more famous, I suppose, but I always thought CIS was worth the read…
cgb
It is a sad day. He was well regarded.