From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Mon Sep 22 2003 - 22:04:08 BST
Patrick,
Patrick said:
By the way (and this is a general note to others), instead of trying to comprehend bookwriters, isn't it more fun and a bigger challenge to try and formulate what you think yourself of certain things? Of course you can use the books as a tool (dirty word according to some) or heuristic perhaps, but only to find out where exactly the bookwriters stepped their feet and then showing it to others can be a waiste of time, I think. The best way to form a solid opinion about an author is: just read a book of his and maybe let the suggestions of other people guide you. I think Rorty (what I know about him) deserves a fair chance.
Matt:
I know what you're saying, and I agree, but I'd like to apologize for myself for a moment. I'm a fan for trying to think things through yourself, but I would argue that people like myself and Rorty, who are incorrigible name-droppers, already do think things through themselves. The difference between an intellectual historian and a philosopher is that the philosopher doesn't care what the intellectuals before him meant, he uses them for his own purpose.
Here's an anecdote: I was in a class last semester and we were required to write little single page responses to our reading material or to the class in general. It was designed just so that we would have to think a little bit. Well, it was towards the beginning of the semester and the professor wasn't well acquainted with us yet. One week we read this thing on education and economic and social class. I wrote this little throw-away piece with a bunch of names: Habermas, Rawls, Rorty, Fish, Foucault. Ya' know, just stacked it. (What can I say, I was bored.) I get the paper back and, after a few comments in the body of the paper, at the end she wrote, "Now, what do you think?" I was like, "What? Shouldn't it be obvious? Do people normally, when asked for their opinion, tell you somebody else's opinion _if they don't agree with it_?" The professor never put a comment like that on my papers after that because she got used to the style in which I present arguments.
And that's really the point. I didn't pick up my style wholesale from Rorty (I dropped a lot of names before, too), but I have been greatly influenced by his style and it fits pretty snug on me. But that's all it is, really: style. As far as I can tell, philosophically, politically, and pedagogically there is zero difference between Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty. The major difference between the two is one of writing style: Rorty is well read in philosophy, Fish not as much (don't get me wrong, Fish is very well read; but Rorty does it for a living), Rorty drops a lot of names, Fish not as much. What this does is make it appear as though Fish is making very novel arguments and Rorty is not. I think they are both making some novel arguments. I think Fish's lack of name-dropping makes it appear that this is the first time these arguments are being made (which, he admits, isn't the case though he reached many of his positions through a route that did not take him throug
h his predecessors) and Rorty's excessive name-dropping makes it appear that he is simply recapitulating other people. This isn't the case. Rorty does many novel things with other writers, it is simply obfuscated by his style. (Incidently, I think this is the case with Pirsig, too. Some of his arguments aren't novel and some of them are. But because he doesn't keep footnotes or drop all that many names, its hard to tell if you aren't well read in philosophy.)
So, I think in my case I do talk a lot about Rorty, but I think I'm doing novel things with him. I'm not quite sure what they are, but ;-)
No, I can think of one thing. Rorty doesn't talk at all, to my knowledge, of mysticism. I recently said that mystics are exactly like poets. That's something that Rorty doesn't himself say, but I doubt he would be opposed to it given the spirit of his letter.
Matt
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