Richard Rorty, R.I.P.

Richard Rorty, one of the preeminent American philosophers of the 20th century, died on June 8 at the age of 75. Obituaries can be found here and here.

Rorty was among the faculty at Princeton with Donald Davidson and others when it was the unquestionably reigning philosophy department in the nation and was a principle figure in the Anglo-American analytic tradition especially as infused and influenced by American pragmatism. Rorty’s work and later career moved to what both critics and admirers might have called a “post-philosophical” perspective, a view influenced by Wittgenstein and others that there was, if you will, less there than meets the eye in philosophy as traditionally understood and practiced in the academy. However his philosophical views may have shifted over time, he remained committed to a progressive political perspective which nonetheless at least had the salubrious advantage of finding serious fault with the likes of Foucault.

Much as I like to criticize contemporary academic philosophy, to some extent for the same reasons Rorty found the field confused and wanting, I remain convinced that philosophers have shaped human society and even human thought, itself, more than anyone else throughout history. There are no emperors or generals whose influence compare to the influence, for better or worse, of Plato or Aristotle; and in more modern times I continue to find, however bastardized, misunderstood or unacknowledged, the works of Kant, Wittgenstein and a very few others continually influencing our “original” thinkers in virtually every other field of thought. Many contemporary scientists are scornful of philosophy, but philosophy gave birth to science and, my criticisms aside, it is far easier to find a philosophically naïve scientist than a scientifically naïve philosopher.

Few people will have ever heard of Richard Rorty. I didn’t know him but I did meet him once during his days at the University of Virginia. He struck me as someone who had followed Socrates’ admonition that the unexamined life is not worth living and was more than happy with the career and the life that advice led him to pursue. We should all be that fortunate.