On a Man Who Died from Reading Too Much Heidegger, or Richard Rorty as a Reader

Abstract

He was born, worked, and died. So goes Martin Heidegger's famous biographical remark on Aristotle,1 and while tlus formula is in principle applicable to Richard Rorty too, in lus case it as well say, He was born, and died. This is how important reading was to Roity, on both a personal, and a scholarly level. This essay will deal primarily with latter, but would like to begin with former, taking as my stalling point Rorty's Intellectual Autobiography, published in volume of Library of Living Philosophers dedicated to work. As its cautious readers should remember quite well, that narrative opens with words, I have spent my life rummaging through libraries,' liminal position of which certainly gives them a ring of defining statement.That statement was by no means an exaggeration on Rorty's part. Indeed, we have all sorts of evidence to confirm that existence from a veiy early age onward was that of a dedicated bookworm obsessively consmned gargantuan quantities of books of fantastically different kinds. ' To get a sense of how early have started, consider that, as Neil Gross stresses, [wjhen was six, Roity himself wrote a play. Its topic was the coronation of Edward, Punce of Wales and staged it in front of his parents's friends, an audience that might well have included none other than famous poet Allen Tate.4 True, given Roity's parents were,5 one expect their son to have rather bookish hobbies. But tlus still does not diminish one's sense of astonishment upon learning that twelve year old Richard had already been acquainted with Leon Trotsky's History of Russian Revolution (or parts thereof), botanical literature on wild orchids, and Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis6 Or that at time when some kids enthuse about their pair of rollerblades, Rorty did so with lus, as himself put it, first pair of philosophers - Plato and Nietzsche - and spent lus days pondering how could aclueve a fusion of two. 'This life among texts seems to have continued until Rorty's veiy last days, or at least tlus is suggested by lus 2007 essay entitled The Fire of Life. There confessed that, having been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer, found consolation neither in philosophy, nor, God forbid, religion, but m poetiy, and stated that wished he had spent somewhat more of [lus] life with verse.8 In tins context, it will perhaps not be inappropriate to mention that tiled to defuse dreadfulness of lus illness with a joke that was also book-related, and which actually borrowed from daughter. Referring to fact that just a few years earlier Jacques had died from same type of cancer. Roily quipped, in a personal letter to Habennas, that illness must [have] come from 'reading too much Heidegger.'9 If making such jokes, and expressing such regrets, on one's deathbed is not ultimate proof of being a complete, hopeless, and dedicated bookwonn, then it is hard to imagine what is.Given that, as is clear from above, Rorty saw lus life, and death for that matter, through prism of books, it should come as no surprise that looked at other thinkers in same way. serves as a good reference point again, for not only did Rorty feel a certain kinship with latter as far their favorite authors were concerned, also recognized in him a fellow passionate reader - i.e. somebody who began devouring books as soon as [he] learned to read, somebody whose li[fe] w[as] saved by books.10 Tlus is expressed nowhere more clearly than in Rorty's contribution to symposium on Deconstmction and Pragmatism that took place in Pans in 1993, where Rorty compared invidiously to Michel Foucault by saying: Denida intensely admires great authors stand behind texts glosses; has no doubts about or their authorship . …