Nice essay. I once saw Richard Rorty hold forth at a panel at the American Political Science Association annual meeting. It was a sort of dog and pony show. There was a graduate student in the audience who hung on his every word, guffawing at every joke. Someone in the audience asked a perfectly good question, to which Rorty responded with a witty ad hominem of the sort “anyone who wonders about that is a fool.” The graduate student was howling. This performance would (or should) be unacceptable by normal academic standards, inasmuch as derision does not take the place of thought. But unfortunately, there was nothing self-contradictory about Rorty’s behavior (and that of his acolyte): he wasn’t playing the truth-seeking game, so he didn’t have to abide by its rules. Still more unfortunate, Rorty has spawned many imitators, although none are quite so successful as he was in getting money and honor from institutions that continue to regard themselves as searching for the light of truth.