"Rorty broke from his parent’s conscientious Leninism (they denounced Stalin’s Russia) after he matriculated as a precocious fifteen-year-old at the University of Chicago and immediately fell under the tutelage of Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins. They taught him that the only way to refute both a Nazi and a Stalinist was to defend democracy as 'something eternal, absolute, and good.'”
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It had somehow escaped my notice until now that the late Rorty had studied with Mortimer.
-Mark Brawner
Thursday, July 12, 2007
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How can something like Democracy be eternal? It was invented in the ancient world, rejected and vilified for millenia, then resurrected in the modern world. Or are we talking about Platonic Forms here - the Democracy in God's eye?
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