Comments on: Richard Rorty’s legacy of hope

By: Robert Silvey

Robert Silvey — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:12:08 +0000

Well said, Jim. It’s contentless rhetoric, because as you say they care only about ruling, not about entering into a socially difficult exchange of ideas that might even lead to good governance. Rorty is wonderful on this point: his faith in healing discourse, while strong, is hedged about with the appropriate caveats for lies and stupidity.

By: Jim Booth

Jim Booth — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:51:06 +0000

“But language, according to Rorty, is not reality; it can have only a contingent, socially mediated relationship to what is really happening. Language is rather an adaptive tool that we use to cope with our natural and social environment in order to achieve a desired end.”

This is interesting, Robert – perhaps it is the clearest indicator of the bankruptcy of ideas that plagues the Bush administration that it is so unable (or unwilling) to adapt its language to evolving environments. They can only “rule” – they can’t govern – and their words betray this inability every day….

By: Elaine

Elaine — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:44:07 +0000

“There are no handles upon a language
Whereby men take hold of it
And mark it with signs for its remembrance.
It is a river, this language,
Once in a thousand years
Breaking a new course
Changing its way to the ocean.
It is mountain effluvia
Moving to valleys
And from nation to nation
Crossing borders and mixing.
Languages die like rivers.
Words wrapped round your tongue today
And broken to shape of thought
Between your teeth and lips speaking
Now and today
Shall be faded hieroglyphics
Ten thousand years from now.
Sing-and singing-remember
Your song dies and changes
And is not here to-morrow
Any more than the wind
Blowing ten thousand years ago.”

Currently my favourite poem and it immediately sprang to mind on reading this article.

I shall be reading again later as there is much to digest in your writing.

By: Sam Smith

Sam Smith — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:04:24 +0000

openDemocracy has reposted a 2004 exchange between Rorty and Iranian scholar Ramin Jahanbegloo on the "American Dream." It's an instructive read as we continue to ponder the Iraq quagmire and our increasing sabre-rattling toward Iran....