Five years without Rorty

...and I feel fine.

"There has not been another American philosopher since John Dewey who managed to transform so many philosophical problems and attract so many readers as Richard Rorty (1931-2007).

When he passed away five years ago philosophers (Jürgen Habermas, Martha Nussbaum and Gianni Vattimo) and newspapers (The Guardian, Tehran Times, and Le Monde) from around the world praised him as one of the most influential thinkers of the second part of the twentieth century.

Although Rorty was a committed academic who taught in a number of distinguished universities and was awarded several institutional prizes, he always remained an independent thinker capable of critiquing not only these establishments but also his own nation when necessary. When he heard the news about the Twin Towers, his first concern was that George W Bush and the Republican Party would use this "the way Hitler used the Reichstag fire" to "keep us in a state of perpetual war from now on - under the guise of the War on Terrorism"...

Five years without Rorty - Opinion - Al Jazeera English