West had the potential to be smart; look as the collection which includes some of his early theoretical papers, Keeping Faith, and you can see he learned something once. By 89-90 he got rich, famous, and trite. Another tragedy of "pragmatism".
Kenneth Mostern Department of English University of Tennessee
"Talent is perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage."
Theodor Adorno
-----Original Message----- From: James Farmelant [SMTP:farmelantj at juno.com] Sent: Monday, May 25, 1998 9:40 PM To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Cc: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Cornel West (was Re: more Rorty)
I was wondering if anybody was willing to expand the Rorty thread to include West (now elevated to the rank of University Professor at Harvard). West was a student of Rorty and if one takes a look at his book *The American Evasion of Philosophy* it shows. Unlike Rorty he is not anti-Marxist but he embraces a neo-pragmatism quite similar to Rorty's. Like Rorty he traces American pragmatism back to the thought of Emerson and considering the influence that Sidney Hook had on Rorty in his youth it is interesting to note that West draws upon Hook's early work *Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx* in elaborating his own synthesis of neo-pragmatism with a Gramscian Marxism and liberation theology.
Jim Farmelant
On Mon, 25 May 1998 14:13:55 -0400 (EDT) "Frances Bolton (PHI)"
<fbolton at chuma.cas.usf.edu> writes:
>
>
>On Mon, 25 May 1998, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> Frances Bolton (PHI) wrote:
>> >Umm...He's taken seriously, but strongly disliked, by philosophers,
>but
>> >not for stuff like this.
>>
>> Why then?
>>
>The philosopher's index CD rom shows that there is in fact a small
>philosophical cottage industry devoted to criticizing Rorty's work.
>Off
>the top of my head, I can think of one thing I've read in support of
>Rorty
>(Kolenda's _Rorty's Pragmatic Humanism_) alhough there's got to be
>more.
>Perhaps John St. Clair will know of other positive pieces on Rorty.
>
>Rorty is taken seriously because he has done a pretty systematic
>slamming
>of what philosophy is supposed to be about. He's said that
>epistemology is
>stupid, universal claims are useless, and that philosophy itself, in
>the
>wake of the Analytic tradition, is nothing more than an empty shell of
>what it used to be. He thinks that philosophy should inspire as well
>as
>cut through fuzzy thinking. If you make it to the last chapter of R.'s
>book, you'll be able to read that for yorself. He also suggests that
>the
>"inspirational" work once thought to be philosophical is actually more
>successfully done by novels and "muckraking journalists." He also
>remarks
>that philosophers are not even useful as ethicists. Ethics should be
>done
>by those who have read about lots and lots of ethical dilemmas. So, he
>thinks literary theorists make better ethicists.
>
>Rorty is one of the most well-known philosophers in the country, along
>with West, Nussbaum, and Walzer (or is he poli sci?). Nussbaum takes
>philosophy seriously and works within the discipline, West doesn't
>really
>do much within philosophy, but doesn't say anything about it either
>way.
>Ditto Walzer, who I don't even think is a philosopher. Rorty is
>well-known, and an egomaniac (his picture is on the front cover of two
>of
>his books.) He's a big famous philosopher standing outside a
>philosophy
>dept. (professor of the humanities at UVA) pointing into philosophy
>depts.
>and loudly proclaiming that there are a bunch of bozos inside. I kind
>of
>like him when he starts going off on philosophy departments.
>
>No wonder the philosophers all hate him. Actually, Richard Bernstein
>(New
>School) likes him, but I think that's only because they went to
>college
>together.
>
>Frances
>
>
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