Abstract
In this essay I reflect on how Rorty’s ideas shaped my life experiences and choices over the last two decades. I am a social scientist by training not a philosopher. Yet Rorty’s writings had a profound impact on my ideas about meaning, freedom, and community. I explain how his ideas influenced my decision to leave academia to enter the world of politics in Iran. Imprisoned by the government for promoting human rights that Rorty supported, his philosophy of life failed me. I had to turn to other intellectual guardrails, in particular existential theology, to guide me out of the pit. But Rorty remains an interlocutor with whom I wrangle continuously about the meaning of private perfection and social justice in that vexed conversation in my head and heart.
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