” … think of his (brilliant) critique of decision theory in “Beyond the Fact/Value Distinction”

This remark will be lost and buried in the wake of more recent topics, but I’ll make it anyway.

Thanks for the reference, Kolnai.

I’d never read the article, although it was apparently published in August of ’82, and is now available on JSTOR.

I have to say that Putnam formulates his criticisms of an incoherent if ego stoking values nihilism, whether of the Scientistic or Ironist variety, with an admirable simplicity and lucidity.

His remarks concerning Rorty’s seeming obliviousness to the problematic nature of his own conception of what it means to say a society or a people have a “culture”, had me laughing out loud; as it was just what had crossed my mind an instant before I threw the book “Contingency, Irony …” across the room in annoyance. (That is to obviously say: what are the Ironist’s rules of identification or recognition; what is the required distribution of the predicated “culture” if it – a cultural attribution understood as conditioning or deciding of some values question – is to be taken seriously?)

Luck you, indeed.

See, that’s what I heard – that Putnam was a Maoist – but my recollection of the context, of whether it was a 60’s thing or whether (ludicrously) he still considers himself some kind of Maoist, I just couldn’t recall any of that.

Ah, what can we do? Red diaper babies (Rorty, IIRC, was one as well) have it rough, having the communism thing bound up with the parental love thing (and in Putnam’s case probably the Reform Judaism thing as well – a nice trifecta).

Still, Putnam’s leftism only barely ever creeps into his writing – I think of his (brilliant) critique of decision theory in “Beyond the Fact/Value Distinction” and his section on how to think the
“[Soulless]” premise in “The Threefold Cord” – and even then it’s usually in some context where you wind up agreeing with him, or at least agreeing that he has a point.

Anyway – a true intellectual titan of our times, that Putnam. I don’t think Rorty comes close to approaching his level. Rorty, at best, was good. Putnam is great. Even not having been a student of his, he has taught me as much as any teacher has.

Story about Rorty.

When I was an undergrad I drove up with some fellow philosophy majors to see him speak at the University of Florida. It was a surprisingly small audience, maybe 30-40 people, with Rorty standing up at the front.

He stood there, stiff as a board, and just straight up read something he’d written, in an extremely snooze-inducing monotone. It was one of the dullest speeches I’d ever heard – basically, “Hear Rorty read Rorty.”

Anyway, after the speech a friend of mine asked him a question about how he would square his dismissal of metaphysics starting with Plato with is pragmatism, which was just a metaphysical conventionalism going back to Protagoras, if not further.

Rorty’s response? “I don’t see any value in talking about Plato.” (or words to that effect – I’m paraphrasing from memory).

Silence.

End of response.

For the record, I can’t stand the Rortyan Style. Everything he writes just makes my skin crawl. Rarely have I had such a visceral negative reaction to a thinker – not Marx, not Merleau-Ponty or Sartre in their execrable apologias for Red Terror, not Schmitt in Full Nazi mode…

I can’t really explain it – it’s like disgust. I just find him to be insufferably smug and, frankly, annoying.

Putnam, by contrast, is a lefty (not sure if he’s a commie or not, though his dad was, I think), but I just love his work. I’ll just say it: I adore Putnam.

What, in fact, is the decisive difference between them, though? I’d just say that it seems to me Putnam, despite his avowals to the contrary, always works within and around the metaphysical tradition, and so at least has some respect for it, or perhaps one could say, is ambivalent about it. Rorty just sort of stuck his tongue out and made a fart noise.

Freddie got around. A wonder he had time for philosophizing.

Countess Vera von Lehndorff aka Veruschka!

You know, you couldn’t make better stuff up.

I see, I say, you pay.