Note: in the following, which will go on for several weeks, I will be focused on Rorty and his book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. It will start with James Tartaglia’s Routledge Guide to the book and finish with the book itself. The main thing to note here is that this study, like every study before it, and every study that follows, is merely an experiment that others can choose or not choose to participate in. I merely lay out a reading list that I I am going to follow, pursue it at about 20 pages a day, go to the bar and pick some random point earlier in the text which I can take a more focused approach to and take notes and decide what my 500 words will be on it, and finish by posting them here as I drink a 40 ounce and a shooter of jager. And I realize it seems kind of weird and anal. But this approach has worked for me so far –regardless of what my detractors may say about me.
Anyway:
Going back to Rorty, especially after my studies of Deleuze, I can’t help but feel like a poetry reader going back to Alan Ginsberg’s Howl, or an intellectual going back to Joseph Campbell. They were both important to my process in that they were easily accessible while increasing my appetite for their respective disciplines. The problem is that once you’ve gotten to something a little deeper and more subtle, it feels, in foresight and anticipation, a little uncomfortable going back to where you were in the hope that it will take you further in your process. It feels like repeating what you already know, word by word, as compared to stretching yourself. As Deleuze points out in the intro to Difference and Repetition: we write at the edge of what we know.
And it is in reference to Deleuze that I have my main reservations in that Rorty strikes me as having gotten to the same point Deleuze did a far more accessible way: such as their common desire to undermine representation. The main difference is that while Rorty sought more practical justifications, Deleuze worked towards the very core of human experience.
Still, there are overlaps. As Tartaglia writes:
“This could have far-reaching consequences. For example, it would remove any reason for thinking that ‘quarks and human rights differ in “ontological status”’ (Rorty 1998:8), that the former are more real than the latter.” -Tartaglia, James (2007-08-14). Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Rorty and the Mirror of Nature (Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks) Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
Now how far is this from the univocity of Being? And given Rorty’s emphasis on discourse over any claims to the Truth, doesn’t it get some support from Deleuze and Guattarri’s claim, in A Thousand Plateaus, that a book does not reflect the world, but forms a rhizome with it? Couldn’t we say the same thing about language in general?
Hopefully, this study will give me more to write about than I am anticipating.
Added note for the Deleuze board: clearly I’m wandering from a focus on Deleuze. And I don’t want to post things that are off topic. So there will be gaps in my posts here. Still, if I come across points that are relevant to Deleuze, they will show up from time to time. Just explaining ahead of time.