[analytic] Rorty in Iran

[Randall Helzerman]

Here's the picture of the day:

http://www.iranian.com/PhotoDay/2006/August/ganji.html

Its of Richard Rorty visiting with Akbar Ganji who spent 6 years
in an Iranian prison for some hetrodox philosophical ideas.

Man, its great to be able to do what we do here
w/o risking our necks...

Apparently, Rorty is a big inspiration to the liberal
intellectuals in Iran--any Iranians on the list
who can tell us what happened on Rorty's
recent trip there? I've found a lot of links to
blog entries, but the links all seem dead...

-Randy

[Eray Ozkural]

On 1/25/07, Randall Helzerman <rahe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Here's the picture of the day:
>
> http://www.iranian.com/PhotoDay/2006/August/ganji.html
>
> Its of Richard Rorty visiting with Akbar Ganji who spent 6 years
> in an Iranian prison for some hetrodox philosophical ideas.
>
> Man, its great to be able to do what we do here
> w/o risking our necks...

Hmmm. Only for now do you and I have that limited
freedom. I don't believe that you actually have such
freedoms in any place in the world.

Start seriously talking about how the government must be
destroyed and you will be treated like a terrorist. Why
don't you give it a shot?

> Apparently, Rorty is a big inspiration to the liberal
> intellectuals in Iran--any Iranians on the list
> who can tell us what happened on Rorty's
> recent trip there? I've found a lot of links to
> blog entries, but the links all seem dead...

I'm not an Iranian, but what I do know is that
Iran sucks. They have an "Islamic Democracy"
and they are trying to export some of their
"intellectual" goods to Turkey, by supporting
fundamentalist Islamists around here with their
greasy money. Would happily kill them all here
and in Iran. And my support goes to those
oppressed by the Iran government. Stupid mofos.

--
Eray Ozkural, PhD candidate. Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara
http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo Malfunct: http://myspace.com/malfunct
ai-philosophy: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ai-philosophy

[Rob de Villiers]

Eray,

Concerning:

> Hmmm. Only for now do you and I have that limited
> freedom.

Quite so.

> I don't believe that you actually have such
> freedoms in any place in the world.

You have just contradicted yourself in the space of
two sentences. We have them for now, sure. But that
does not mean we do not _actually_ have them. Do
you seek some transcendental, metaphysical, eternal
guarantee of you freedoms? Only then will you actually
_have_ them. Tell me about this _actually_ having
such freedoms.

> Start seriously talking about how the government must be
> destroyed and you will be treated like a terrorist.

And quite rightly so. If the government has any legitimacy
at all. Which government _must_ be destroyed and why?

> Why don't you give it a shot?

I and some of my family have. Well to a VERY limited extent.
And I did find that I was treated, to a _very limited extent_, as
a terrorist.

> > Apparently, Rorty is a big inspiration to the liberal
> > intellectuals in Iran--any Iranians on the list
> > who can tell us what happened on Rorty's
> > recent trip there? I've found a lot of links to
> > blog entries, but the links all seem dead...
>
> I'm not an Iranian, but what I do know is that
> Iran sucks. They have an "Islamic Democracy"
> and they are trying to export some of their
> "intellectual" goods to Turkey, by supporting
> fundamentalist Islamists around here with their
> greasy money. Would happily kill them all here
> and in Iran. And my support goes to those
> oppressed by the Iran government. Stupid mofos.

Quite so. But I very much doubt that Mr Rorty has much
to offer them, or anyone else, really. Or maybe he is sorting
himself out. What do you think?

Regards,

Rob.

[Randall Helzerman]

> Start seriously talking about how the government must be
> destroyed and you will be treated like a terrorist. Why
> don't you give it a shot?

I collected signatures to put an anarchist on the ballot in
Indiana in 1992. Nobody treated me like a terrorist, it
was more like "look at the talking monkey."

-Randy

[Randall Helzerman]

> Quite so. But I very much doubt that Mr Rorty has much
> to offer them, or anyone else, really.

dude, if they are willing to risk going to
jail to free him, they must be seeing something
in him you are not.

-Randy

[Randall Helzerman]

Sorry, I meant "if they are willing to go to jail
to _read_ him, they must be seeing something
in him you are not". A freudian typo :)

I realize, this is a kind of "there's no atheists in
foxholes" kind of argument, but the stakes there
are kind of high, so we might do well to be
charitable and try to understand why they find
philosopher's useful.

Here's some correspondance between rorty and
Ramin Jahanbegloo (just see the wikipedia article
on Jahanbegloo to see what the stakes are)

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=3&debateId=115&articleId=2067

[Rob de Villiers]

Randy

> > Quite so. But I very much doubt that Mr Rorty has much
> > to offer them, or anyone else, really.

> dude, if they are willing to risk going to

> jail to free [I presume you meant see him?] him,

> they must be seeing something
> in him you are not.

No, why? That does not follow. At the very most
it might give us pause to wonder what they see in
Rorty. In the end of the day we still have to make
our own judgements about him. I am very fond of
Rorty - reading him prompted me to return to
philosophy after some years of neglect of the
subject.

Rob.