Marjorie Grene

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200503/?read=interview_grene

I don't know a lot about Marjorie Grene. I have her historical portraits of Descartes, Aristotle, and the existentialists on my shelves and they've always showed some fascination for me. I'm not sure why, possibly because, for whatever reason, I identify her as a maverick philosopher. Nobody's a Grenean, but she is very well respected. Well, I found the above interview and it is absolutely hilarious. I die for academic gossip, and this just exudes the kind of thing I crave. Her personality is absolutely scintillating. The funniest part of the interview (other than her calling E. O. Wilson "that awful E. O. Wilson"), and why I found it, is this:

BLVR: That reminds me, I forgot to ask about Richard Rorty. You’re friends with him, though you don’t agree with his philosophy?

MG: We are friends, but you can’t agree with his philosophy. It doesn’t exist! He’s a wit! He should’ve lived in the eighteenth century. He just makes clever remarks that don’t mean anything. The thing about Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is based on a total misinterpretation of Kant. It’s totally wrong about Kant, and I’m sort of a Kant person.

I love it. And I'm not entirely sure Rorty would disagree. My favorite clever remark of Rorty's was apparently at a Hegel conference some years back, discussing the Phenomenology of Spirit and Hegel's later thought and Rorty said something like, "Well, after writing the Phenomenology of Spirit, what could Hegel possibly do for an encore?"