Rorty, Richard M. 1931-2007 (R. Rorty, Richard Rorty, Richard McKay Rorty)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born October 4, 1931, in New York, NY; died of complications from pancreatic cancer, June 8, 2007, in Palo Alto, CA. Philosopher, educator, and author. Rorty's goal, in nearly twenty books and dozens of scholarly and popular articles, was to pluck philosophy from the rarified atmosphere of analytical theory and anchor it to the solid ground of practical application. For twenty years or more he taught analytical philosophy at Princeton University, but Rorty was drawn inexorably toward the American pragmatists, such as William James and John Dewey. As early as 1967, in The Linguistic Turn, he seemed to question the value of analytical philosophy as a tool for daily living. In 1979 he published Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, in which he eschewed analytical contemplation in favor of an evolving dialogue on what is important in life. He wrote that truth is not objective and eternal, but subjective and dependent on the world around us. He wanted philosophy to be treated as a tool that could help people navigate their daily lives. Rorty's work provoked great consternation—even anger—among his learned colleagues, but his creative thinking also earned the scholar one of the first "genius grants" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1981. Not long afterward, he left Princeton for a more wide-ranging role at the University of Virginia, where he served as the Kenan Professor of Humanities until 1998. He then became a professor of comparative literature at Stanford University. Rorty was raised by communist parents in New York City; he himself was described as a lifelong liberal, but he was outspokenly critical of both poles of the American political scene. In Achieving Our Country (1998), Rorty lamented the deterioration of the Democratic party from the position of strength that it occupied well into the 1960s into an ineffectual shadow of itself, resting on its laurels. He was even more vociferous in his castigation of the Republicans, whom he saw as cruel militarists, even alluding to some of their practices and polemics as exercises in sadism. Throughout his life, though, he remained a patriot. In Philosophy and Social Hope (2000), he expressed his optimism in the power of democracy to endure. Rorty rarely discussed his personal life in his own writings; one exception is a long essay titled "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids," which was published originally in 1992 and reprinted in Philosophy and Social Hope. Orchids were his hobby; the philosopher enjoyed collecting wild orchids, describing them as "socially useless" but beautiful beyond compare. Rorty's last book, Philosophy as Cultural Politics, was published the year he died.