ALTHOUGH hailed as a sign of a thaw in the cold war between Anglo-American and continental philosophy, Richard Rorty's beguiling appropriation of the thought of Heidegger in his recent writings has produced no small measure of confusion. How seriously, one wonders, has Rorty moved towards Heidegger? Or contrariwise, just how close does Heidegger come to saying the sorts of things Rorty does? Is Rorty just trying to shock the Anglo-American community by invoking the name of Heidegger? Is he being intentionally (...) outrageous in order to draw attention to what he takes to be the more sober part of his argument? Is there only a grain of truth to this assimilation of Heidegger, while the real positions of the two thinkers are vastly different? (shrink)