The Readings: Contingency, irony, and solidarity... the helloing

The first text that I'm going to attempt to explore on this blog is Richard Rorty's Contingency, irony, and solidarity.

Rorty was an American Pragmatist who past away in 2007.  He had the reputation of being a disgustingly likeable fellow. Nevertheless, he managed to piss off most of the philosophical universe on a regular basis.

I was first introduced to Rorty's work while I was doing my undergraduate work at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2005-2006.  We had a Fulbright Professor visiting from Hungary named Alexander Kremer.  Kremer, I believe, is currently back in Hungary at the University of Szeged.  After a week and a half of frustration, I came to realize that he was a good teacher that I could learn a great deal from.  The early frustration was mostly due to an accent barrier between his Hungarian mouth and my American ears.   In his early lectures, he kept harping on about some uber-important concept called "bird-view".  I couldn't get the concept to match what he was describing.  Eventually, I figured out that he was saying "world-view", and not "bird-view".  Amazingly, everything started to click after that.

The book starts with an Introduction, and then is broken down into three parts.  The parts are labeled as Contigency, Ironism and Theory, and Cruelty and Solidarity.

My plan is to come back here tomorrow with my take on the Introduction.

As alluded to above, I've read this work before.  However, my understanding of philosophy has grown tremendously in the last decade.  I'm hope that I'll see everything in a new and better light.

Feel free to crack open your own copy of Contingency, irony, and solidarity.  Maybe Rorty and I can expand your bird-view.

Howdy!

Howdy!

I've decided to start tracking my philosophical endeavors.  Actually, I'm hoping that the tracking and public expression of such endeavors will focus me towards a more engaged philosophy.

In this blog, I hope to:

• discuss any projects that I'm planning or organizing
• capture conversations that I have with various friends, philosophers, and/or cohorts  
• analyse philosophical texts that I'm reading
• etc...

And, that's it.  This is a very vague notion which I hope will nudge me towards a more focused philosophy.

I apologize in advance for all spelling and grammatical errors.

I hope that this vague message finds you well.

Best,

Chris