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Philosophers
Profession

Is it significant that great modern philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein were all unmarried? Is there an incompatibilty between major philosophical standing and the state of matrimony? Once a guy has savored the consolations of philosophy, does the idea of a wife leave him cold?

When Kant was asked why he never married, he said that when he had the inclination, he lacked the means, and when he acquired the means, he no longer had the inclination.
Philosophers

Richard Rorty is dead and I think philosophy is poorer for it. But I have found during my undergraduate philosophy studies that most Anglo-American academics are largely hostile towards most of what he has written. Perhaps some one or more members panel can confirm this widespread hostility and articulate the more common reasons behind it.

Richard Rorty had a long career during which his viewsevolved. He influenced a wide range of philosophers grappling with some of thekey directions philosophy was going in the second half of the 20 th century. A student of Wilfrid Sellars, in some of his early work in theepistemology and in the philosophy of mind, Rorty helped articulate the attackon foundationalism in epistemology, and on the idea that mental states areprivate and incorrigible. (See, for example, “Incorrigibility as a Mark of theMental”, Journal of Philosophy , v67,n12, 1970) He influenced the next generation of epistemologists andphilosophers of language, including Michael Williams ( Groundless Belief and UnnaturalDoubts ) and Robert Brandom ( Making itExplicit ). Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is,in my view, an important work with an historical focus. While sweeping andperhaps somewhat grandiose, Rorty attempts to attack traditional epistemologyby taking it very seriously. There are analyses of key...