Philosopher Richard Rorty Dies at 75

Influential thinker blasted the existence of truth, espoused patriotism
By Dustin Lushing,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 11, 2007 6:21 AM CDT
Philosopher Richard Rorty Dies at 75
Philosopher Richard Rorty   (Stanford University)

Richard Rorty, a celebrated intellectual whose ponderous body of work spanned the gamuts of philosophy, politics, and literary theory, died of pancreatic cancer Friday, at 75. Rorty was known both as a resplendent thinker and as on old lion of the left. “At 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one’s life fighting social injustice,” he wrote.

Rorty's provocative 1979 tract Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature earned him a reputation as the enfant terrible of philosophy for its injunctions to tackle the problems of daily life instead of philosophizing abstractly. After a long academic career capped at Stanford, he passed peacefully in Palo Alto. (More Richard Rorty stories.)

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