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How To Think

Recovering From Rorty

Dale DeBakcsy recalls his personal journey from Positivist to Pragmatist and back again.

“Aristotle was a learned, encyclopedic, first-rate nerd. With no imagination.”

Richard Rorty (1931-2007)

It was September of 1998, and I was a dewy-eyed sophomore who had bluffed his way into Richard Rorty’s seminar on William James and Friedrich Nietzsche. I had taken philosophy courses before, but never from anybody engaged in determining the future of philosophy, and certainly never from anybody who would have dared to so casually and personally dismiss one of the foundational figures of Western Civilization.

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