Truth Was Not His Bag

Truth Was

Not His Bag he went to Stanford to luxuriate in semiretirement. He was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a Mac Arthur Foundation “genius” award. By the 1990s, Rorty was widely regarded as he regarded himself: as a sort of secular sage, dispensing exhortations on all manner of subjects, as readily on the op-ed page of major newspapers as between the covers of an academic book of philosophical essays. The tone was always soothing, the rhetoric impish, the message nihilistic but cheerful. It has turned out to be an unbeatable recipe for success, patronizing the reader with the thought that there is nothing that cannot be patronized.

About the Author

Roger Kimball

Mr. Kimball is publisher of Encounter Books, and co-editor and publisher of The New Criterion.

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Truth Was

Not His Bag he went to Stanford to luxuriate in semiretirement. He was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a Mac Arthur Foundation “genius” award. By the 1990s, Rorty was widely regarded as he regarded himself: as a sort of secular sage, dispensing exhortations on all manner of subjects, as readily on the op-ed page of major newspapers as between the covers of an academic book of philosophical essays. The tone was always soothing, the rhetoric impish, the message nihilistic but cheerful. It has turned out to be an unbeatable recipe for success, patronizing the reader with the thought that there is nothing that cannot be patronized.