Oh, that's sad.

It is a loss.

On a lighter note, Nicolas Sarkozy drunk (warning: French language): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4u3449L5VI

Link?

You'll have to take my word.

Alright -- sad news ...

That is sad news. I read most of what he wrote in college, and enjoyed it a lot. Haven't looked back at it in years, though. I should.

Wolfster, is this for values of "dead" that include "has accepted an honorary degree from Harvard" or what? None of the vast number of tubes which forward packets of information to my computer can provide any evidence of the actual, corporeal "death" of RR.

These things often don't get officially announced for a few days, especially on the weekend. I'm sure obits will be flowing by Monday.

See http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=519207

The June 6 article "Gates, Summers To Receive Honorary Degrees" incorrectly stated that philosopher Richard M. Rorty would receive an honorary degree from the University. In fact, Rorty was unable to travel to Cambridge to accept the award and will not receive a degree, according to a Harvard spokesman.

I'm unable to travel to Cambridge too. Does that mean I'm dead?

Oh shut up. It's sad news; you don't really doubt it, do you?

Wikipedia has not yet been updated.

Ok, minneapolitan, the intertubes (which are bigger than the interweb, mind) have delivered to me reasonable evidence of the actual corporeal death of RR, in the form of an email from the department chair. What is the actual point of this recalcitrance? Do you think I'm pulling your leg?

At a lecture a month or so ago, Hilary Putnam mentioned that RR was very very sick, and probably wouldn't remain for long. So.

An elaborate ruse. The only question is, for what ill-gotten gain?

I think the actual point is that we're all supposed to be impressed that somebody has a friend in Minsk, who has a friend in Pinsk, whose friend in Omsk has friend in Tomsk whose friend in Yakmolinsk passed on to him the early news of Rorty's death, because he's one of the elect.

What the fuck is wrong is with you, minneapolitan?

Happy now?

Minor T/J: Sending letters to people's place of work/institutions calling them white supremacists is not cool. That is all.

SEK: Yeesh. Although it's a little hard to tell from the way you've formatted it, the guy sounds like he should be signing his letters "PS, I am not a crank."

This is very sad. I just re-read Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity last month, and it reminded me how much I liked Rorty. Shit.

20: I copied it directly from the letter itself. I can only hope its crankiness shines through.

In minneapolitan's defense, I had a similar initial reaction, thinking this was some weird joke I didn't get, after not being able to find a news story confirming Rorty's passing. Very sad news.

i've never much liked his work, but i do have to acknowledge that a remark of his inspired my handle.

he was an odd guy in person; somewhat taciturn and bearish. not scintillating as e.g. parfitt or cavell. watching him engage with others in debate was a let-down; he was unforthcoming, not light-footed.

a colleague of mine who knew him more closely than i did told me that his diagnosis was that rr was emotionally predisposed to avoid personal confrontation. on paper, he was an avid controversialist; in person, he didn't really enjoy mixing it up. he found no competitive relish in the give and take, which for some philosophers is their highest joy.

some philosophers are better viva voce; some do their best work on paper. the essayist addison was a notoriously poor talker, who defended himself by saying "I have but nine-pence in ready money, but I can draw for a thousand pounds."

i think that rr was like that.

in any case, rip.

I express the following sentiment of irritation: it is common knowledge that Rorty and w-lfs-n share an institutional affiliation. We have ample reason to think that w-lfs-n has the good sense not to make a joke of this sort, which would be in exceedingly poor taste. Putting two and two together, I see overwhelming warrant for thinking that this is what it appears to be, namely, an obituary for a famous and influential intellectual-- one that now has a distasteful comment thread attached to it.

25: I'm already drafting a letter to everyone in his department, as well as everyone else at his university.

25--

i don't know minneapolitan, but i think his skepticism was not ill-grounded, nor distastefully expressed. i didn't share it, but then i got here late enough to see the doubt laid to rest.

look--if you had wanted unfogged to be a decorous web-site in which no comment thread was distasteful, you would have done a lot of things differently a long time ago.

read over the last few hundred threads, and you will find that nothing is out of bounds--no topic, no matter how sordid, offensive, or distasteful, is treated as anything but more fodder for bad jokes.

that's the climate you guys have worked hard to create. i can hardly see why you are clutching your pearls about it now.

KB, I feel the force of that complaint, but in this case...feh, I don't want to get into a big thing. Maybe I'm just being cranky. But it seems like a straighforward obit from a guy sorta in Rorty's department ought not spark "how do you know?" and "you're just showing off!" Could be I'm being a pill. Duly noted, and I'm out of here.

thanks, FL

i'm not saying we shouldn't inform sek's administration about it, though. in fact, i think we should complain to sek's supervisor, and minneapolitan's, and w-lfs-n's too, just for good luck.

hey sek--i read the story at your site. oy, what a headache for you. but could i ask--would you try to reformat that whole thing so it is clearer what is "ghost"'s contribution and what is yours? i found it very hard to tell who was saying what.

I guess that it would be even more distasteful to ask whether St. Rorty is going to be parted out into relics for relativist houses of worship.

Done. (Here's a direct link just to his letter.)

31--

thanks, sek. wow, that whole long thing. and it didn't make much more sense this time i read it, either.

It really makes little sense. I'm a little worried someone will fall for his gambit and assume I'm the one who wrote the racist obituary, but what can you do? When you engage in a civil, honest debate with dishonest idiots, you take your chances.

I have to admit that I had to double check who Rorty is but right, that guy. And cancer, acc. to Wikipedia. Sad.

And it was pancreatic cancer, which also killed Derrida. I'm not being flip, just noticing the coincidence.

In Minneapolitan's defense (we are known to each other off the tubes) we were both looking at stuff about Rorty and saying that he was only seventy-six and therefore perhaps this was all a misunderstanding, especially since Minneapolitan couldn't find an obituary and Rorty is pretty damn notable. I don't think churlishness was intended. And I suspect Minneapolitan didn't know the w-lfs-n/Rorty department thing.

But jeez, I just picked up the Solidarity one a couple weeks ago. People seriously need to stop this dying thing.

Pancreatic cancer is awful. I've never heard of Richard Rorty before but it seems like he accomplished everything a philosopher can, with very few enemies and many proteges. Good for the world.

I would also note, in defense of the confusion on the thread, that there are people reading this site who don't know that w-lfs-n and Rorty worked in the same department. Like me.

Rorty's primary affiliation was with comparative literature, actually, not philosophy, though he had a courtesy appointment there.

And SEK, that whole stupid letter thing is, er, stupid. I hope it doesn't stir up any trouble for you.

Rorty's work was a tremendous influence on me. I'm very sad to hear of his death.

that's the climate you guys have worked hard to create. i can hardly see why you are clutching your pearls about it now.

You're a stupid shit, kid bitzer. Most other people seem to understand the norms here; nothing but your nearly complete inability to judge the tone of this place can explain your statement or your consistently clanging comments.

that's not as witty as your usual, ogged.

On the advice of a confidant, I am going to refuse to rise to take this particular bait.

It doesn't count as virtuous if you announce it, minnie.

42: that would certainly explain the odd failure to capitalize correctly.

eh, i capitalize correctly in my day job. why give it away for free.

Someone could have embedded the Stanford Richard Rorty entry in the post, although Wikipedia, which has a link to Stanford and other links might have been even better. Someone who doesn't use comma splices.

SEK, I almost commented on the thread at your place, but wasn't sure you needed your name added to the vast subterranean Poindexter-managed database of my connections being built in Langley.

But Langley is easily tricked by your telling him that here? We're more fucked than I knew. Otherwise, this thread is truly bizarre (a number of people behave in ways which I find odd given my past experience with them), and I've never read any Rorty, but: my condolences to those bereaved.

37:

For Rorty's accomplishments, while I can't speak to the number of his protegés, you can put him down for many friends and many enemies.

Give the man his due -- he worked hard to earn them both. I'm sad to see him go.

For me it's shocking and demoralizing--I feel like a disproportionate number of people whose work I admire, people who I thought still had years in them, have died in the past eighteen months or so. (Edward Said (although everyone knew he was pretty sick), Derrida, Octavia Butler--just to name the most famous three). With Rorty--I'd always pictured him as this very vigorous guy who would be around forever. (I don't know why; that's just how I thought of him).

Seriously, when Minneapolitan and I were talking about this, because I didn't know that Ben was at the same school I thought it was a mistake, just some random internet rumor.

(I didn't read the post, though; the post is pretty obviously serious.)

It makes me realize how many people I've grown up reading are, well, old. I've grown up reading them and all, and I'm not as young as I was, and I find myself very aware that there will one day be the horrible news that there will be no more Samuel Delaney novels, or no more Doris Lessing novels, or no more acerbic comments from Immanuel Wallerstein.

That's sad. I didn't read a whole lot of his stuff, but I liked Contingency, Irony, Solidarity a lot, especially the article called "The Barber of Kasbeam", about Lolita.

My first supervisor for my Master's thesis had been a student of Rorty's and he always spoke well of him.

51: It's almost as if one's past is disappearing. There are fewer and fewer people around who remember what you remember and can talk about it absent that feeling of unreality to the conversation that always exists when talking to someone who didn't live the events.

That's why old folk read obits to each other.

I honestly thought that Doris Lessing was dead. I think there's a little mental clock in my head, so that if I don't hear someone's name actively mentioned as alive for more than ten years, I start to assume they are dead.

It makes me realize how many people I've grown up reading are, well, old.

What's worse is when all your doctors are younger than you. What's worse than that is being one of those old ladies who finds that disturbing.

54: I thought Sandy Koufax died like 25 years ago. Not that he cares, of course.

55: What's nice is the gentile dementia that prevents little old ladies from recognizing they're little old ladies.

er.. "gentle". All that talk about blondes, I guess.

But not the Jewish little old ladies.

So is someone mailing your superiors letters in which they claim you are a white supremacist defamatory in a legal sense? Libel or slander or something?

60: Even if it was, it would be a civil matter, thus requiring SEK to hire a lawyer. It sucks, but as I reflect upon it, I'm glad that libel and slander aren't criminal offenses.

One of the weirder posts on Rorty.

What's so weird about that?

I had imagined that GR and RR were a few more degrees of separation apart.

If anti-foundationalism led to Glen Reynolds, I'm now a foundationalist I guess.

Insty's dad was all progressive and decent, right? I thought I remembered something like that.

Kotsko sent me this link to Habermas's obit of Rorty.

After three or four paragraphs of sarcastic analysis came the unexpected sentence: " Alas, I have come down with the same disease that killed Derrida." As if to attenuate the reader's shock, he added in jest that his daughter felt this kind of cancer must come from "reading too much Heidegger."