Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition (Princeton Classics)

by Richard Rorty

Intellectually, he was restless by nature, and showed several of the qualities he praised in his heroes: the ability to change the subject when the talk grew trite and conventional, to circumvent a useless procedure when it barred the way to a discovery, and to redescribe real and ideal objects, but never with a view to stopping the conversation. He made his points characteristically with “Homeric lists,” as he once called them, but the names were not always so miscellaneous as those above. More often, they were drawn from the broad but recognizable family of Hegel, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Derrida, Davidson. The quip or the explosive epigram might be his provisional means, but the history of philosophy was the constant shorthand medium for the riffs in which he worked out his larger preoccupations. Rorty’s argument with philosophy was a lover’s quarrel after all, and the pleasure he took in his capability as a lecturer on philosophy and literature—quite the equal of his gift as a writer—was in some part a performer’s pleasure, a little abashed at itself, as befitted the rueful pride of a prodigy who had worked half his life to cure himself of pride. The voice was definite, soft-spoken, with unconscious pauses where it had nothing to add, leaving room for others to come in. As much as his honesty and intelligence, those who learned from him will miss his curiosity, his power of surprise at finding anything new and rare.

December 9, 2020. Page 431.