Lordy, Lordy, Look Who's Reading Rorty

I've somehow been avoiding Richard Rorty for years, but finally picked some up the other week, and just started reading it. Our old next-door neighbour, Scott, is a huge fan, and was always trying to sell me on him. His wife, Andrea, painted a portrait of Rorty from the cover of the book I'm reading, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, for Scott's birthday one year.

Rorty was a "neopragmatist," "ironist," "postmetaphysicalist" American philosopher. He used interdisciplinary methods to try to reconcile the public and the private, while recognizing that they can never both be accounted for by one overarching philosophy. This recognition, he thought, would create a new kind of liberal culture. He seems to be fighting against a lot of my enemies, but also against a lot of my heroes, in an attempt to transcend the analytic/continental divide in twentieth-century philosophy. I can't tell yet whether I'll love him or hate him, but it's probably going to be one or the other. I'm sure it'll be fascinating, either way.