Carl J. Rasmussen: Editorial missed on Rorty's true legacy

The Capital Times:

Dear Editor: I write in response to your editorial for the weekend of June 16-17 about the philosopher Richard Rorty, who died recently. Rorty was clearly a major figure, but his legacy is perhaps less optimistic than you suggest. In 1982, Rorty wrote:

'When the secret police come, when the torturers violate the innocent, there is nothing to be said to them of the form, 'There is something within you which you are betraying. Though you embody the practices of a totalitarian society which will endure forever, there is something beyond those practices which condemns you.' There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves, no criterion that we have not created in the course of creating a practice, no standard of rationality that is not an appeal to such a criterion, no rigorous argumentation that is not obedience to our own conventions.' ('Consequences of Pragmatism')

Rorty's achievement was to advance his claims with unusual depth and clarity. That his claims are at best deeply problematic is suggested by the above quote. We can perhaps best honor the tradition in which Rorty wrote by demonstrating that there is more to us than obedience to our own conventions.

Carl J. Rasmussen, Madison