Richard Rorty, R.I.P.

This guy really lit my mind on fire in graduate school but also later when I felt uninspired by so much of the pedogogical dribble that I was being forced to read in Ed. School. He made the idea of hope something more forceful, powerful and redeeming than the mamby-pamby notion that we often know it as. He was a public intellectual as well as an academic and managed to write in such a way that, simply stated, captured large philosophical truths that many writers jabbered on about in a language as abstruse as elephant skin.

Thank you for all that you gave us, Richard Rorty!

If you're interested in his thought or life, here's his obituary.