Comments on: In Memorium

By: Burnt

Burnt — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 16:01:49 +0000

Boycott DUKE. Who wants to attend a University that fired Rick Roderick and which cares little about the effect on the student body and their experience meant nothing compared to his effect on their own reputations. They did not serve humanity; they fed off it. They fed off him. AND PLEASE ALSO BOYCOTT ALL THINGS AMAZON BECAUSE AMAZON ALSO IS A GIANT TICK FEEDING OFF OF US ALL AND SIMULTANEOUSLY DESTROYING THE REMAINING WILDLIFE HABITAT.

By: Adam Berkowicz

Adam Berkowicz — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 19:00:40 +0000

Rick Roderick continues to (pleasantly) haunt me; the questions he raised those 30+ years ago in many ways remain largely unanswered. Hell, they have increasingly become unasked.

By: Vito Di Bona

Vito Di Bona — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 02:07:33 +0000

My father, Joe Di Bona, and Rick were colleagues at Duke. I remember him as a nice guy and knew little about his professional life beyond his friendship with my father. My first car was Rick’s red 1970 VW bug that he sold me for better $200 and $300, all I had at the time.

By: Ben McConaghy

Ben McConaghy — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 13:51:00 +0000

Thanks for writing this Max. I ‘discovered ‘ your father’s lectures on Youtube, and they have been a great source of inspiration to me, helping me on my own philosophical journey, especially as regards our crying need for meaningful social struggle. Rick’s struggle is the struggle of the everyman against the flight of reason. We need people to use their critical faculties in a robust way to stave off disaster. He was also something of a poet in my mind at least. There’s music is those lectures. I live in the UK and just today, whilst holidaying in South Wales, I found and bought an old copy of his ‘Habermas and the Foundations of Critical Theory’, which I found in a pile of books in an art centre in Fishguard. I felt like a delighted kid as I clutched it, making my way back to the car. Thanks Rick. Thanks Max.

By: Ben McConaghy

Ben McConaghy — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 13:51:00 +0000

By: David Shelton

David Shelton — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 12:01:11 +0000

I find myself coming back to Ricks lectures. His way of teaching draws me in and I am always laughing.

By: Matt Abruzzo

Matt Abruzzo — Sun, 04 Jun 2023 15:17:31 +0000

Rick has opened my mind to so many topics. He was an incredibly intelligent, funny, and more than anything a man who overflowed with love for life and kind for others. I know he is resting peacefully on the other side.

By: Scott Harrison

Scott Harrison — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 22:02:07 +0000

I discovered Rick’s lectures recently.
What an incredible teacher.
Your words here were deeply moving and insightful. Thank you. The background and your own insights are most valuable to me.

By: sharon rideout

sharon rideout — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 19:35:23 +0000

I was the won who called rick to tell him mickey had passed sharon rideout was rick buried at the foot of his mothers grave?

By: Brian Downey

Brian Downey — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 15:29:19 +0000

I’m so grateful for Rick and his life’s work! Thank you, for sharing this!

Best,
Brian

By: David Kamnitzer

David Kamnitzer — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 14:53:59 +0000

Thank you for sharing all this.

Do you know why your father was denied tenure?

By: anto desouza

anto desouza — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 07:01:29 +0000

Bonjour ,

Je vois votre site web rickroderick.org et c’est impressionnant. Je me demande si des options publicitaires telles que la publication d’invités, le contenu publicitaire sont disponibles sur votre site ?

Quel est le prix si nous voulons faire de la publicité sur votre site ?

Remarque : l’article ne doit pas être une marque comme sponsorisé ou faire de la publicité ou comme ça et nous ne pouvons payer que par paypal.

À votre santé
anto desouza

By: Jo Blow

Jo Blow — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 05:06:20 +0000

Throughout history the great beings are tormented by the system that despises them. I just stumbled on Roderick’s lectures and was blown away by his delivery. Rarely can I be both entertained and enlightened. While technology may be destroying us it is also allowing us a way out.

By: John Morariu

John Morariu — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 19:13:29 +0000

professor Roderick was a brilliant, generous pedagogue and it turns out a prophet!

By: Tore

Tore — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 22:53:37 +0000

Is Roderick’s book, “Bury Me Not” for sale anywhere?

By: Bonnie A Roe

Bonnie A Roe — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 23:20:00 +0000

Max Roderick please contact me regarding old pictures I have from your grandmother Elwynne. Tuscola, Tx.

By: Evonn Gibbs

Evonn Gibbs — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 15:18:10 +0000

Hello Max: I found your dad’s lecture after a search online for Marcuse on youtube, in order to find out for myself what that philosopher actually meant. I was blown away by the lecture. It had (and this in my opinion is a huge compliment) all the panache, sophistication, sincerity and deep knowledge of the many Jordan B. Peterson lectures I’ve watched online. I think they would have been friends. Anyhow, it was so comforting to find the real story on Marcuse, but also delivered by a delightful, entertaining intellectual. As I navigate the political cesspool of 2021 I am opening my mind and reading and listening to all different thinkers. The rational and sustainable attitudes, approaches and dare I say “truths” come from a whole spectrum, not one narrow view of how the world should be. There are good ideas on both sides of the capitalist/socialist coin, and within many facets of the spiritual/consciousness/myth philosophies. Why on earth do thinking people talk as if there is actually an “Us” that has to be against “Them”? Dr. Roderick’s lecture on Marcuse helped me stay centered in the actual center and I will be watching as many of his lectures as I can find. Thank you for this website and I plan to read the biographical story he wrote. Take care, Max.

By: Max Roderick

Max Roderick — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 21:42:29 +0000

In reply to Robert Strickland.

To clarify, there was some commentary about it in another draft of this, but I decided it was probably in poor taste and cut it out. I think the director came in with some definite ideas about what Rick’s story would be, but they didn’t really line up to the reality, or even what could pass as the reality in the confines of a documentary.

He decided to make a film about the ninth symphony instead, called “Following the Ninth,” so I guess check that out if you want, but basically I don’t expect he’d have any interest in actually completing a documentary on Rick.

By: Ana Carolina

Ana Carolina — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 20:17:19 +0000

Thank you, Max. It is very gentle sharing these extremely important material. I will watch each one of them. It will help me on my research.

By: Robert Young

Robert Young — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 01:04:21 +0000

Hi Max – thank you for this.
As I’ve watched and listened to your fathers talks, artists including Terrance Mallick (Badlands),
David Foster Wallace (the German TV interview and Kenyon College speach) and even Theodore Kazinski (manifesto-not the bombs) came to my mind.
I have gotten lot from your Dad’s talks. I’m sure glad the talks are out there on the web for people to watch.
Your stories about your Dad’s early life are fascinating at least to me having grown up in a rural mid-western town. They give his ideas a context.
Thanks again.

By: John Edge

John Edge — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 18:21:44 +0000

Thanks for posting this Max. Like many others I became a fan of your father's work long after he had passed away. I am so pleased to see this site set up to keep his legacy together. One YouTube channel I watch is "Zero Books" produced by a publisher of political groups - the left, Marxism, critical theory et al. They have an standard opening clip at the start of many of their videos, with quotations from a number of speakers. One of those audio clips is taken from one of Rick's lectures - and it is great to see it there. The quote is from lecture four of the Nietzsche series (item 204 on this site). http://rickroderick.org/204-nietzsche-the-death-of-god-1991/ â€œThe Death of Godâ€ is about the drying up of a horizon of meaning, and of a whole form of human life. And about Nietzscheâ€s both fear and exhilaration at what might come next. We still to a large extent live in the interregnum between worlds, if you will, or between paradigms. Not many people in the history of the world have faced that, lived in periods like that.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 23:39:02 +0000

So grateful for finding this article and Rick’s lectures. I just discovered them and have been captivated. It’s brought me a mixture of joy and sadness but the great comfort of not being alone. It feels a little inappropriate to say having just read an account of his passing but watching Rick’s lectures has really made me feel more alive. Thank you so much Max for sharing something so personal. All the very best to you.

By: koen

koen — Sun, 27 Sep 2020 00:02:20 +0000

He was a good man. I’m sure of it. And so are you, Max.

By: Marsha Draman

Marsha Draman — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 17:52:56 +0000

Thank you Max. Rick often said “I just want to live long enough to see Max graduate.”. He love you so very much

By: Craig Bartlett

Craig Bartlett — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 08:46:35 +0000

Thank you so much for sharing this, Max. You have shared elements of your father’s life which both shed further light on what influenced him and also further the mystery of who Rick Roderick was and is. He was a philosopher and not just a student philosophy.

I and many others will always be grateful.

By: ctrlshift

ctrlshift — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 04:31:18 +0000

Thanks for posting this Max. It was worth the wait.