The Personal is Not (Always) Political
Richard Rorty and Antigone
I’ve just written 100 tweets on Richard Rorty.
Whether you read the centweetery or not, one of the questions Rorty raises is that of the relationship between private and public life. He argues that the axis on which I should seek to cultivate a strong and healthy sense of selfhood is incommensurate with the axis on which I should seek to make the world a better place or fulfill a sense of social responsibility. Private life is for self-making while public life is for social negotiation.
Do you agree that private and public life are fundamentally conflictual? And if they are, how do you/ should you divide your time and attention between them? Is there such a thing as being apolitical on the weekend? Or, conversely, being political only one day a week?
Sophocles’s Antigone raises this question as a matter of conflict between piety and politics, the gods vs. the state. What things play the role of piety in your own conflict with the political?
What is Called Thinking? is a practice of asking a daily question on the belief that self-reflection brings awe, joy, and enrichment to one’s life. Consider becoming a paying subscriber to support this project and access subscriber-only content.
You can read my weekly Torah commentary here.