Like many philosophers, I moved from reading cheap Penguin editions of Plato to reading Rorty — primarily because Rorty was much easier than reading Heidegger. While I eventually came to disagree with his positions he was still a huge formative influence. I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing had I not read through Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.
More than anything, I think what I’ve taken away from Rorty is the idea that there is a moral dimension to doing philosophy. Philosophy isn’t like mathematics and the natural sciences. It isn’t just a value-neutral investigation into the basic underpinnings of reality. While we aim at truth, we philosophers must always remember than some truths are better than others, more valuable and more important than others. If we remember him for nothing else, that’s a legacy worth preserving and honoring.
1 response so far ↓
1 AV // Jun 12, 2007 at 1:47 pm
That’s sad news. I never really studied him deeply, but I understand he was one of the few philosophers with a foot in both the Analytic and Continental traditions.
I think as an undergrad I might have used some of his work on pragmatism–but only in a ham-fisted way.
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