Amélie Rorty

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Amélie Oksenberg Rorty

Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (May 20, 1932 – September 18, 2020)

Spinoza[4]
and

Career

Rorty received her B.A. from the

Harvard School of Medicine.[8][10][11] Rorty was the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships over the course of her career: Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Studies (1968-1969), King's College, Cambridge (1971-1973), Institute for Advanced Study (1980-1981), John Simon Guggenheim (1990-1991), Woodrow Wilson Center (1994-1995), and the National Humanities Center (2007-2008).[8]

Work

Rorty primarily worked on problems in moral psychology and moral education. She was especially interested in the many distinctive –-and often conflicting—functions of morality as a social practice, as it sets prohibitions, projects ideals, defines duties, and characterizes virtues. Exploring the dark side of some of the virtues—for example, courage as bravado, integrity as moral narcissism, ambivalent love—she analyzed the advantages of resistance to the obligations of morality, including the benefits of self-deception, the lures of moral weakness, the wisdom of ambivalence, and hidden rationales for allegedly irrational emotions. She approached many of these issues historically (through Aristotle, Spinoza, Hume and Freud) and anthropologically (projecting a study of exiles, immigrants, and refugees who perforce absorb a new set of 'moral' values.) Her final project was an unfinished book provisionally titled On the Other Hand: The Ethics of Ambivalence.

Rorty is the author of more than 120 scholarly articles. She wrote or edited more than a dozen scholarly books of original essays. A monograph, Mind in Action: Essays in Philosophy of Mind, was published by Beacon Press in 1988 (paperback edition 1991). She also edited and contributed to Explaining Emotions (U. California Press, 1980), Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (1980, U.California Press), and co-edited Essays on Aristotle's De Anima (Oxford, 1992) with Martha Nussbaum. She initiated and served as general editor of Modern Studies in Philosophy (Doubleday-Anchor) and of Major Thinkers (University of California Press). Other notable books she edited include The Many Faces of Evil (Routledge, 2001), The Identities of Persons (1976, U. California Press) and The Many Faces of Philosophy (Oxford, 2000).

Personal life

Amélie Oksenberg, daughter of Polish Jews Klara and Israel Oksenberg, was born in Belgium and emigrated with her parents to Virginia, where she was raised on a farm.[12] She enrolled at a young age at the University of Chicago, and went on to pursue a doctorate at Yale, where she married Richard Rorty, a fellow graduate student and philosopher.[13] They had a son, Jay, and divorced in 1972.[14] She wrote about her upbringing in "Dependency, Individuality and Work"[15] and in "A Philosophic Travelogue," The Dewey Lecture, American Philosophical Association, Proceedings and Addresses, vol. 88, 2014.

Additional awards and fellowships

  • 1971–1973, Fellow, King's College, Cambridge
  • 1984–1985, Visiting Honorary Research Associate, Philosophy, Harvard University
  • 1980–1981, Member, Institute for Advanced Study
  • 1990–1991, John Simon Guggenheim Fellow
  • 1994–1995, Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow
  • 2001–2002, Distinguished Woman Philosopher of the Year, Society for Women in Philosophy
  • 2007–2008, Fellow, National Humanities Center

References

  1. ^ Weinberg, Justin (September 21, 2020). "Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (1932-2020)". Daily Nous.
  2. .
  3. ^ Weller, Cass (June 17, 2003). "Review of Martha C. Nussbaum and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Essays on Aristotle's De Anima". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Archived from the original on August 11, 2011. Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  4. ]
  5. .
  6. ^ McCloskey, Deirdre (2003). "Why Economists Should Not Be Ashamed of Being the Philosophers of Prudence". Eastern Economic Journal. 4. 28. Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  7. ^ a b Leiter, Brian. "Amelie Rorty to be Visiting Professor at Tufts for 2013-15". Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog. Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  8. ^ a b c d "Personal Homepage". March 7, 2008. Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  9. ^ "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  10. ^ "Faculty Page". Boston University. Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  11. ^ "Rorty publishes on ambivalence, education, and other topics". Department of Global Health and Public Medicine. March 31, 2010. Archived from the original on July 7, 2010. Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  12. ^ "American Philosophy excluding Pragmatism". John Gach Books. Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  13. ^ "Guide to the Richard Rorty Papers MS.C.017". UC Irvine, Critical Theory Archive, Online Archive of California. MS.C.017.
  14. ^ Sanford, John (June 11, 2007). "Richard M. Rorty, distinguished public intellectual, dead at 75". Stanford Report. Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  15. .

External links