From Raymond Geuss’s very nice little elegy on Richard Rorty, quoting Aeneid 1.277-278:

“His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono / imperium sine fine dedi”…that’s what they all think (in their prime), the “rerum domini et gentes togatae.”

1/ From Don Share’s post at Harriet, the Poetry Foundation’s blog, referring to an article by Richard Rorty that appears in the new issue of Poetry:

Rorty knew he was dying from pancreatic cancer at the time he was working on the piece. When asked by his son whether the reading or writing of philosophy gave him any comfort, he said, surprisingly… no: “neither the philosophy I had written nor that which I had read seemed to have any particular bearing on my situation.” “Hasn’t anything you’ve read been of any use?” his son persisted. “Yes,” Rorty reports blurting out, “poetry.” He explained:

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