From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Fri Oct 11 2002 - 23:48:25 BST
David,
Actually, I was going to add this to the end of my e-mail (before I forgot):
"I just got lucky. I agree with his philosophy and politics ;-)"
Maybe that's why it seemed so strange. I mentioned it because the
distinction between a person's political preferences and his philosophical
preferences is important for Rorty. Its part of his insistence that the
public and private spheres should be kept seperate, or rather, we shouldn't
feel the need to try and hold reality and justice in the same vision.
As I heard it, Rorty is more attacked by both sides of the political
spectrum, then held up as a guide by either side (at least in academic
circles). Usually the closest "conservatism" gets to Rorty is when
liberals like Jonathon Culler and Richard Bernstein call him a
crypto-conservative or apologist for the status quo. Conservatives
generally don't like, what they call, his "irrationalism".
As it happens, while some may describe this as more evidence of Rorty being
"inauthentic" (if they would style him as a conservative), I see the
co-opting of any philosophy by any political side as more evidence that
philosophy and politics do not necessarily go together.
Matt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 10:37:56 GMT