Richard Rorty was one of the most talked-about thinkers in America. Every professional philosopher in the English-speaking world

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问题     Richard Rorty was one of the most talked-about thinkers in America. Every professional philosopher in the English-speaking world had to study his masterpiece, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, published in 1979.【F1】But the reason why he was a superstar is that it was not only philosophers who read him; students and teachers in many other branches of the humanities fellunder his spell as well. This wide appeal was partly due to his approachable style and breadth of learning. It also helped that he attacked philosophy as a self-important pretender with no monopoly on deep truths.
    In fact, for Rorty there weren’t really any deep truths at all. He saw himself as a pragmatist in the American tradition of William James and (especially) John Dewey.【F2】He says that beliefs should be.judged by their usefulness, and not by any supposed correspondence with an ultimate reality that hides behind the landscape of everyday life.This sort of pragmatism reduces philosophy to just one form of enlightening conversation among many.
    Rorty began studies at the University of Chicago at the age of 15. He was married, divorced and remarried. There were rows with departmental colleagues. He wrote a lot and died of cancer.【F3】If Neil Gross, who is an American sociologist, had set out to write a traditional biography of Rorty, he would not have had a gripping tale to tell.Instead he has used Rorty as a case study in the sociological analysis of academe.
    Why did he do it?【F4】Unfortunately for anyone who is not a professional sociologist, Mr.Gross is more interested in distinguishing subtly different ways of answering this question than he is in the question itself.And his writing seems almost designed to make pedestrian generalizations sound as if they are insights:【F5】 "As thinkers move across the life course and are affiliated with different institutions, they may pick up from some of them the same elements that they integrate into their self-concept narratives."Almost by accident, Mr.Gross does shed some light on Rorty’s development. He shows that his estrangement from his colleagues at Princeton was a natural evolution from his early studies in Chicago and graduate work at Yale. Those who agree with Rorty’s critique of philosophy will be tempted to conclude from this volume that sociology is even worse.
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答案但是,之所以说他是超级巨星,是因为不只是那些拜读过他的著作的哲学家,人文学许多其他学科的老师和学生也为他的魅力所折服。

解析 表语从句一般采用分译法,可将本句前半句分离出来,译为“之所以”;强调语气可以用“正是,就是”翻译出来。
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