<< i read some of rorty and felt like screaming.
JKS: Actually when I read Rorty I often find myself yelling at him.
YOU: do i think he is a
fool? not at all; i think he's a sinister fellow actually.
JKS: Grumpy, maybe. Wrongheaded, often. But sinister?
YOU: do i
think he is worth writing about? for sure, because he is looking for
a way out of the fukayama impasse.
JKS: News to me. I thought he accepted it. I've coupled then in print.
YOU: i was asking not for a character reference on rorty, but for
someone to explain to me the attraction of his theories. am i looking
for a debate? no. i was sincerely asking a question.
JKS: To whom? And which theories? But if one had to speak generally, one might say that he's a good and and accessible writer who talks about thinks trhat interest people in an witty and accessible way and doesn't write aacademic gobblydegook. From the point of view of someone trainbed by Rorty among others to write academic gooblydegook, this new turn (not so new now) in his prose leads to distressing carelessness.
YOU: i am baffled
that some people would regard rorty as anything more than a
(US/academic) supremacist. if there is more to him than this, i would
really like to know.
JKS: Well, he is taht, but he's also an important theorist and popularizer of the new pragmatism, a public thinker of a liberal variety who has triued to recreate himself asa sort of a latter day John Dewey, and he's a mediatorr between the analytical and continental styles of philosophy.
But if you don't like his stuff or don't see the point, don't read it.
--jks