Rorty and Beyond 9780739195093, 0739195093

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Rorty and Beyond

Rorty and Beyond Edited by Randall Auxier, Eli Kramer, and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN: 978-0-7391-9508-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-0-7391-9509-3 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Preface ix Randall Auxier Introduction: Richard Rorty as a Transitional Genre Eli Kramer Part I: Take Care of the Future and the Past Will Take Care of Itself 1 “Bad Boy of Philosophy”: Richard Rorty, Provocateur Crispin Sartwell

1 17 19

2 “Nine Chances out of Ten That Things Will Go to Hell”: Rorty on Orwell, Silko, and Narratives of the Dark Future Wojciech Małecki

29

3 Only a God Can Save Us: Richard Rorty’s Philosophy of Social Hope beyond Secularism Roman Madzia

43

Part II: Method and Madness

59

4 Naturalistic Axiology and Normativity in Rorty Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński

61

5 The Tenuous Harmony of Imagination, Vision, and Critique Brendan Hogan

77

6 Abandoning Truth Is Not a Solution: A Discussion with Richard Rorty Marcin Kilanowski v

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Contents

Part III: Democracy and its Discontents

105

7 —Not Neopragmatism but Critical Pragmatism: There Are Times When the Private Must Become Public Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley

107

8 The Problem of Ethnocentrism: An Attempt to Save Rorty’s Pragmatism from Itself John Ryder

119

9 We Liberal, Ironic Hypocrites: Situating Rorty in the History of American Democratic Thought Kenneth W. Stikkers

129

10 Solidarity, Imagination, and Richard Rorty’s Unfulfilled Democratic Possibilities: A Deweyan Reconstruction Justin Bell

141

Part IV: Nature, Knowing, and Naturalisms

153

11 Vocabularies and the Lifeworld: A Criticism of Rorty’s Naturalism 155 Roberto Gronda 12 The Solomonic Strategy—the Brain as Hardware, Culture as Software: Rereading Rorty’s Criticism of Cognitive Science Maja Niestrój

169

Part V: Representations and Other Mirrors

179

13 Why We Should Move from Rorty to “Rortwey” Radim Šíp

181

14 Reconsidering Rorty’s Theory of Vocabularies: On the Role and Scope of Persuasion in a Post-representationalist Culture Miklós Nyírő

197

15 The Lamp of Reason and the Mirror of Nature Preston Stovall

215

Part VI: Logic, Truth, and Progress

235

16 Logic beyond the Looking Glass David Beisecker

237

17 Reality is More Practical Than Truth: Rorty on Truth versus Justification 253 John Shook

Contents

18 Ironic Wrong-doing and the Arc of the Universe Randall Auxier

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Index 285 About the Editors

295

About the Contributors

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Preface

The present volume is not the proceedings of a conference. A good number of the contributions here (something approaching half) were written after the conference I will describe and written specifically for this volume and its central themes, which will be well described by Eli Kramer in his introduction. But the idea did begin with a conference and with what we learned from it. I wish to recount and document that idea and how it has developed. The long-running series of meetings on American and European Values at Opole University (in southwestern Poland), organized by Chris Skowronski, has been a tremendously valuable contribution to the opening of dialogue between American philosophy and European interest in it. Our dialogue has been based on common as well as contrasting values. Hundreds of scholars from the United States and all across Europe have used this opportunity to come to an understanding of one another. We learn and are often surprised by how much we have in common, but also by the unanticipated differences. Along the way, Chris asked me what we could do together that would further the goals of his series. At that time, I was entering the final stages of editing The Philosophy of Richard Rorty as the thirty-second volume of the Library of Living Philosophers. Rorty had passed away only the year before and I said to Chris that I didn’t think we should do a conference on Rorty—heaven knows he has been discussed. Instead, I suggested that we should do a conference on how Rorty changed academic and public philosophy and what future it has suggested or opened for those of us who inherit his efforts, for better and for worse. Chris was enthusiastic about this idea. For various reasons, it was 2013 before we could actually schedule such a conference. The conferences on American and European are complex to organize. While they receive some subsidy from Opole University (importantly providing space for ix

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meetings), the invited scholars have to provide their own travel, hotel, and other expenses. A tremendous amount of advance notice and a fair amount of persuasion go into convincing people to approach their universities and other sources of assistance to make the expensive journey from the United States and elsewhere in Europe. Chris has been extraordinarily successful in gathering high-level scholars from all parts of Europe, while saving room for important young voices. As the co-host from the United States, it was my job to select and recruit the North Americans. Due to the previous success of the conferences and their excellent reputation, I had no problem getting the commitment of some of the best scholars in the area, all of whom had in common an intimate familiarity with Rorty’s thought and an understanding that the time has come to build upon what he achieved in transforming academic philosophy, while discarding the mere controversy and the numerous nonviable suggestions he made. I think everyone who attended the conference will agree that the exchanges were outstanding and that much was learned by all thirty who came to the week-long event. We did not all agree on what Rorty achieved, but I think we all saw that the ground had been cleared for something different. Nearly all of us were, I think, appreciative of the clearing. The chapters in this volume which were taken from that conference have been reworked around this idea of something beyond, of taking stock of the opportunity and working in some further direction. One might call it “post-pragmatism.” That name would not be accepted by all contributors here, and mainly because some will not allow that Rorty was a pragmatist, let alone the one who fulfilled the prospects of pragmatism. Yet, no one can deny that the world we now write in is one in which Rorty defined what pragmatism would be, and what it has become. To write beyond Rorty is to address a world whose idea of pragmatism was formed by his work. To write in opposition or in welcome to that context still involves addressing one’s self to it. This, I think, is what we do in this volume. The chapters written after that conference, including my own, have been formed around this idea of a post-pragmatic “beyond.” They have been woven and edited into a continuous inquiry into the future: now that Rorty has done what he could, what should we do next? The issue of what hope there may be for philosophy within academia and beyond dominates this volume. We live in a time of massive transition in higher education and in the way that information within a culture is transmitted to the following generations. Uncertainty about the role of the older organs of transmission—our complex universities, public or private, that interact with a massive publishing industry and a huge commercial, governmental, and industrial superstructure to provide highly skilled labor and high-level research. This familiar combination of activities, the pretensions of which Rorty attacked without mercy, is coming to an end. In a way, the conceits of the philosophy departments have been the very symbol of the outlook that cannot be further believed or sustained. The vacuous academic privilege that masked itself in a persona of science has been exposed as a dying descendent of the scholastic charade that Descartes took down. In fact, Rorty might fairly be called the Descartes of the modern age, who taught us about the Cartesian project what Descartes taught us

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about scholasticism. The scholasticism of the scientistic era has genuinely collapsed into a heap of no-longer-believable claims to objective rationality. As with Augustine and Aquinas before him, Descartes deserved a better destiny than the one he received at the hands of history. But history is cruel. Now we have Rorty, and his 500 years to come. It is not easy to see what will take the place of the old order, although some early trends are prevailing. What seems clear is that the world of privileged academic researchers and teachers is coming to an end, or indeed, is really already over. The world Rorty knew and the institutions and disciplines he attacked and eventually dominated in so many ways are no longer viable as models of cultural transmission. It will not be necessary to topple the towers of academic pretension in another decade, since academic privilege soon will not exist on a broad enough scale to support the old professionalizing societies and organizations that grew up early in the twentieth century and became massive centers of power by the end of it. Philosophy, as a professionalized discipline, is leading the way into that oblivion. It is a world well lost. Many of us who are living through this transition are anxious for the humanities and for humanistic learning. We worry, like Rorty, that a world that does not support this kind of inquiry, institutionally and formally, will be a lot more dangerous, and aesthetically impoverished, than a world that holds humanistic learning and study in high esteem. We all understand that change is inevitable and that the esteem enjoyed by the humanities during the golden century of the Western universities was something exceptional in human history, found only during a few other places and times in human history. It was an unsustainable and increasingly irrelevant party. We also understand that, for the most part and historically speaking, humanistic learning usually comes at the cost of poverty, obscurity, even persecution to those who seek it. It has rarely been a party. We need only survey human history to know that such learning survives and even thrives, sometimes, during difficult times. Yet, we are anxious. We want hope and a future for inquiry, for edifying discourse, for teaching. We humanistic post-pragmatists are nervous about being “on our own,” so to speak. Will anyone listen to us? Will anyone feed us? It is hard not to remember Confucius and his starving band of humanists as we ponder the future. Thus, our volume is not entitled upon the basis of a desire to get beyond Rorty, but in recognition of a fact: we already are beyond Rorty and his world, and we have no choice but to confront it. We have no time to quibble. But we must think from the situation we are in, and that situation takes more of its form and presuppositions from Rorty’s impact than most would care to acknowledge. We would like to thank the contributors for their patience and cooperation in seeing this project to its conclusion. The publisher has been very patient as well and we hope that we have returned that forbearance with a volume they can be proud about—we certainly are pleased with the high quality of the work our colleagues have contributed to this project. Randall E. Auxier Warsaw, 2019

Introduction Richard Rorty as a Transitional Genre Eli Kramer

THE LEGACY OF RICHARD RORTY Could a pragmatist just as easily be a Nazi as a progressive? Is academic philosophy more or less useless in shaping world issues and history? Do we necessarily need a very narrow psychological nominalism in order to avoid the mistakes of the past? The late Richard Rorty’s answers to these questions made a generation of philosophers fume. What type of influence Rorty will have on future generations of philosophers is unclear. At least at present, I no longer see the type of vitriolic reaction that, but a generation before, typified popular responses to Rorty. By the time he published Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity in 1989, his longtime friend and fellow pragmatist Richard Bernstein concluded, “[e]verybody was attacking Rorty, and he seemed to delight in all the attention he was receiving” (Bernstein 2008, 19). A few years after Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity had been published, Rorty said of himself in a similar (though ironic) vein, “[i]f there is anything to the idea that the best intellectual position is one which is attacked with equal vigor from the political right and the political left, then I am in good shape” (Rorty 1999b [1992], 3). His positions were not for mere vanity’s sake. Such critiques always stung Rorty (see Rorty 1999b [1992], 5), and anyone who has paid close attention to his work can see a committed humanism running through it. In Bernstein’s eyes it is important to, “[r]ecall that he concluded Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature by affirming that ‘the only point on which I would insist is that philosophers’ moral concern should be with continuing the conversation of the West’ (MN 394). Even Rorty’s severest critics would admit that no other philosopher of the last half-century has provoked as much lively conversation as Dick Rorty” (Bernstein 2008, 25). But what does it mean for philosophy when he can no longer provoke the lively conversation of Western thought? In large part, Rorty no longer seems to provoke 1

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the types of responses he did during his lifetime. Maybe newer generations of philosophers have essentially accepted Rortyan doctrine. I thus begin with the usual critiques foisted on my generation of scholars. Maybe we are just cynical (in the pejorative sense) post-post-somethings, who-do-not-have-enough-something to fight the narrow, isolated, and edifying role for philosophy that Rorty articulates. That seems like a fairly reasonable conclusion. It plays into my deepest uncertainty about whether we as young scholars are philosophical cowards. Several years ago, I was talking to a colleague about this situation. He hadn’t read much Rorty, and when he was skeptical of his influence, I discussed the way in which he changed academic culture and fought off, or at least warned of the imminent doom of, the type of narrow reductionist philosophy that was prevalent at the time. I convinced him this far, but beyond that he gave a Rortyan shrug to Rortyan nominalism and my interpretation of why Rorty defended that position. This gave me a much-needed insight. Rorty was the “transitional genre,” not philosophy as he once proclaimed (2007b, 89–104). In the rest of this chapter I will argue that for the next generation of philosophers, Rorty will be a transitional philosophical figure who will no longer be a specter in their imagination. Rorty is a transitional figure who shifted philosophy from the often reductionist, abstract, and anti-culturally engaged, post-linguistic turn philosophy of the middle to late twentieth-century anglophone world, to the present more pluralistic, socially minded, and as yet not historically understood period. He heralded and instigated a shift in philosophy from one paradigm to another, but his own narrow position, once the shift happened, became no longer useful or very threatening. In this light, Rorty’s theories about philosophy being a transitional genre are self-consuming descriptions of his own role in philosophy. By understanding why Rorty is no longer a threat to my academic generation, I uncover something about where we are, where we are headed, and if we want to head in that direction.

THE HERALD AND INSTIGATOR OF A PARADIGMATIC TRANSITION There already is a large body of scholarship on what was happening in pragmatism, philosophy, the humanities, and the university, in general, to have caused the particular sort of milieu in which Rorty lived and worked.1 I point to two contextual threads that are small facets of this scholarship, and that help us understand what I mean by calling Rorty a transitional figure, and why such a figure is both inextricably a herald and an instigator of change. The first thread is the inevitable decline of the “Golden Age” in higher education that Louis Menand traces in The Marketplace of Ideas (Menand 2010, 59–92). “The Golden Age” was a period roughly from 1945 to 1975 when the American university system was rapidly expanding due to the baby boom, the strong US economy, the GI Bill, the Cold War, and other factors.2 Menand describes how leaders like James Conant (then president of Harvard) and Vannevar Bush (the former vice president

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and dean of MIT, and then current director of the OSRD) strategically placed the university as a Cold War ally to the US government. Bush, in fact, “organized the publication of a report, Science—The Endless Frontier, which became the standard argument for government subvention of basic science in peacetime, and which launched the collaboration between American universities and the national government” (Menand 2010, 66). This focus on science began to pervade academic language. The language, although couched in a supposed anti-ideological attitude was a response in part to the new system of funding: “The other critical Golden Age development, the adoption of a self-consciously scientific model of research, also reflected the anti-ideological temper of postwar American thought . . . to some extent, as the historian Thomas Bender has suggested, it was a response to all that federal money that began pouring into universities after the war” (Menand 2010, 74). As we shall see, building off of the American Philosophical Association’s work in the previous generation,3 academic philosophy enthusiastically adopted the paradigmatic language of a disinterested and methodologically superior scientism. In philosophy’s case, this was less tied to funding4 and more closely related to a fear-based response to the blacklisting of philosophy professors, a continued push for disciplinary coherence, and enthusiasm for the philosophy of the recently immigrated figures in the Vienna Circle. It is this very movement toward Vienna Circle style scientism (logical positivism) that would ameliorate the challenges of how to respond to McCarthyism and the challenge of how to further formalize the discipline. A university system built on rapid US economic success, dramatic demographic and population changes, successful relationships with US government defense and espionage agencies, a social representation of being the center of human intellectual capital against the communist threat, and a paradigmatic scientism was a combination that could not endure. The war in Vietnam exposed almost every weakness in the system that Conant and his generation of educational leaders had constructed, from the dangers inherent in the university’s financial dependence on the state to the way its social role was figured in national security policy to the degree of factitiousness in the value-neutral standard of research in fields outside the natural sciences. (The War did also lead to skepticism about the neutrality of academic science, though this criticism was political as well as philosophical.) (Menand 2010, 77)

There were other problems that made the contingent paradigm of the Cold War university further doomed to a short life. Rigorous scientism allowed for a very artificial disciplinarity. The idea that humanity could completely isolate some fields of inquiry from all others was, in part, meant to help legitimate the professorship and give them existential and economic security. However, it was only so long before disinterested scholars begin to question why those supposed boundaries were in place, and if they really did all they claimed. These were not attacks from the outside. Rather scholars like Rorty were questioning from within the academy the reification of a paradigm that was already in trouble.

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Given these circumstances, many departments since the 1970s have largely changed their disciplinary structures.5 The consistently most conservative field in terms of scholarship, diversity, and disciplinarity was and is philosophy.6 Among transitional figures in the US humanities revolution, like Paul de Man, Hayden White, and Clifford Geertz (Menand 2010, 82), Rorty was the one that faced perhaps the most recalcitrance from within his discipline.7 Rorty thus had a very special role. Why philosophy lagged as the rest of the humanities moved forward is the result of some very particular historical circumstances that were unique to professionalized academic philosophy at this period. This brings me to my second thread: The blacklisting of philosophy professors, the linguistic turn in philosophy, and what Randall Auxier calls “the decline of evolutionary naturalism in later pragmatism” (Auxier 1995). John McCumber, in his seminal work on philosophy at mid-century, Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era, discusses the way in which McCarthyism pushed philosophy in certain directions, and also left certain marked absences. Despite the great deal of talk about academic freedom in the United States, championed by organizations such as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and putatively supported by the American Philosophy Association: There is, in fact, a good deal of evidence that American philosophy in the 1940s and 1950s confronted a political movement that threatened its future in important ways. The record suggests that philosophers did not exactly win their battle against that movement, which is usually called McCarthyism. And there is also evidence suggesting that American philosophy largely remains, even today, what Joe McCarthy’s academic henchmen would have wanted it to be. (McCumber 2001, xvii)

McCumber makes the case that philosophy was one of the most blacklisted departments in the university. There are complicated reasons for this, but roughly put, the McCarthy gang’s anti-intellectual attitudes made philosophy a prime target. In their view, Communism/Marxism was a philosophical doctrine (the wrong one), and the United States already had perfected the proper nonideological, philosophical approach. Philosophy was filled with people who had beliefs that could cause problems. These academic pogroms would limit who and what could be said. Given the incoherent and anti-intellectual nature of many of the attacks, it was all the more challenging to figure out how to not get blacklisted. The linguistic turn under the leadership of logical positivism offered a legitimate out. The origins of what would be later known as the “linguistic turn in philosophy” can be found in “the revolution in and fascination with symbolic logic initiated by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica (1913)—and reinforced by the breakthroughs of Leopold Lowenheim, Thoralf Skolem, Alonzo Church, and Kurt Goedel” (West 1989, 183). In particular, Russell led a revolution that concluded in the reduction of classical, logical negation, the implementation of very narrow constraints on the subject-predicate formation, and the formation of a computational logic.

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As Cornel West correctly points out, there was an even more important reason for the linguistic turn in mid-twentieth-century America: “Austrian and German émigrés, in flight from the Nazis, brought to the American philosophical scene a project of rigor, purity, precision, and seriousness—logical positivism” (West 1989, 183). Without going into detail about the theoretical nuances of these views, their lasting influence on philosophy “was to turn away from historical consciousness and social reflection and toward logic and physics. Its chief aim was the analysis and clarification of meaning; its goal, to unify the sciences by providing an account of their operation while acknowledging the crucial role of logic and mathematics” (West 1989, 183). This project was just what philosophy at mid-century was looking for and therefore philosophers largely embraced logical positivism without too many questions. “One reason that American philosophers were so oddly uncritical of logical positivism, I take it, was that it gave them something they needed . . . [T]hanks to no less than Raymond B. Allen, they had an answer, for they had been told what, in the climate of the times, they needed to avoid: anything unscientific or subjective” (McCumber 2001, 45). In other words, anything that could be considered heterodox to the values of the American Empire was considered dangerous. Logical positivism offered a promising project that would keep philosophy out of trouble by making a clear demarcation between facts and values, and by sticking to the “fact” side of this dichotomy, and away from anything “value” laden, like politics and ethics. Thus, early analytic philosophy’s fascination with rigorous math and scientism offered by logical positivism, and later refinements, was not formed by the Cold War university, but naturally flourished within it. Philosophy saw itself as a rigorous science with a systematic project that fit perfectly into a paradigm set on putative disinterested, rigorous, and anti-ideological, intellectual capital. This destroyed the delicately created, and refined, “evolutionary naturalism” of early and middle American pragmatism. Randall Auxier convincingly argues that middle pragmatism under Dewey and Mead refined a version of naturalism that did not reduce everything to a historical/cultural matrix nor a purely mechanistic one. Instead of understanding nature and the world as completely socially constructed through individual cultural histories, or through unbending laws, “Dewey and Mead both developed methodologies that move freely between these two matrices, allowing them to mutually illuminate one another. These are more like poles than independent fields of inquiry” (Auxier 1995, 186). This was a naturalistic perspective that observed the deeper ontological implications and commitments of evolutionary theory. To take evolutionary theory seriously means committing to inquiry in a world where process, by its very nature, makes all of our actions fallibilistic and where our scientific and mathematical tools help us predict certain events, but do not sit outside of the ever-changing landscape of the moving target that is existence. It is not that it is all a question of solipsistic culture and history. Early and middle pragmatism took time, chance, change, relation, genuine novelty, and personal growth, as fundamental parts of the order of the universe. There is enough consistency for regularity, some mechanism, and a little law, but not enough for eternal and dead

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dogmatic legislation. Mechanism itself is taken up because it helps us better predict and explain the predicament of existence in which persons find themselves, but it too is subject to the decay and death of immanency in the flux. The decline of evolutionary naturalism is very complex. But given the previous thread, it is clear that the Cold War university’s enthusiasm for hyper-disciplinarity would help cleave, or at least further cleave, evolutionary naturalism into separate fields of inquiry. The social sciences were responsible for culture, the so-called “hard sciences” for mechanistic nature. The analytic movement that developed out of logical positivism kept its enthusiasm for math and science, and thus focused on mechanistic naturalism (if that). Those who would carry the pragmatic banner in this era had to adopt and master the game of the narrow discipline with its disinterested logical projects, in order to defend against radical reductionism. Auxier makes explicit the transitional figures responsible for this paradigmatic shift in pragmatism. C.I. Lewis and Quine are the important transitional figures. . . . For both of these later pragmatists, along with other post-Deweyan logicians and philosophers of science, a finite number of rules are employed in order to gain a strictly formal understanding of what we mean when we make a claim or series of claims that involve subjects and predicates, and their relations. Aside from Dewey’s now neglected logic, our most influential accounts of logic in this century are not probabilistic, although many philosophers still believe, in an amazing act of self-deceptive anachronism, that deduction provides the cognitive ground of all probabilistic thinking. (Auxier 1995, 191)

Later analytic pragmatists could not structurally prevent (whether or not they deluded themselves into believing they could) a holistic, evolutionary naturalism from sliding into either mechanism, or later, in Rorty’s case, cultural solipsism. For Rorty, Dewey was essential in making the formation of his cultural/historical pragmatism possible: “Dewey’s ‘naturalized version of Hegelian historicism’ was broad enough to subsume and coalesce Quine’s holism, Goodman’s pluralism, and Sellars’s anti-foundationalism in a creative (though tension-ridden) perspective. In short, Dewey enabled Rorty to both better articulate his literary voice and elaborate his post-philosophical perspective” (West 1989, 197). It is not that Rorty does not see a role for philosophy of science, nor would he necessarily disagree with a more processfocused and robust evolutionary naturalism (though at points he certainly did),8 but rather, given his position and history within the academy, such a robust philosophy was simply not in the cards for him. Both his heritage and his own projects failed to make this kind of naturalism a live option. In order to flesh out why Rorty comes to this “postphilosophical stance,” I turn to the decline of the reductionist analytic philosophy of this period. Just like the Golden Age university, this was a doomed project, though for different reasons. Raymond Boisvert wrote a subtle and provoking critique of Rorty that points to what was, above all else, going to doom the reductionist analytic period.9 He asks us to imagine a real event that he considers as our Symposium. Like Plato’s dialogue, this

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discussion reveals a vision of the philosopher, though no longer as a lover. In fact, this symposium leaves us without an image of our vocation. It is: in a hotel ballroom during the twentieth century’s final World Congress of Philosophy. This was a “symposium” in the contemporary sense of the word. Replacing Callias as questioner was a reporter from the New York Times. She asked a predictable, innocuous question: “What have we learned from philosophy in the twentieth century?” One by one luminaries like Willard van Orman Quine and Donald Davidson uttered something. But that something seemed most unsatisfying. Quine’s response “I should have thought up an answer to that one. . . . I’m going to have to pass” sort of set the tone. A Wall Street Journal commentator, dismayed by the responses, suggested that the “most concise and least misleading answer to the question—“What have we learned from philosophy in the twentieth century?”—might be: nothing. (Boisvert 2010, 1)

The greatest problem with much of professionalized philosophy in this period was not with the validity of their arguments, but rather with what difference those arguments would make if they were right. If the answer to this is “might be nothing,” then once you do not have paradigmatic authority, and when people begin questioning whether or not the emperor really has clothes, you probably should have a better answer than “I should have thought up an answer to that one.” The reductionist analytic philosophy of this period did give itself a rigorous project, and yes, it helped philosophy define itself as a discipline, but by doing so it left itself useless to nearly everyone, including the post–Cold War university. The anomaly that made such a project seem practical and helpful died. As Menand argues: “Within the history of higher education, the Cold War university was the anomaly, and what are criticized as deviations and diffusions in the present system are largely reactions against that earlier dispensation” (Menand 2010, 91). Most of academic philosophy situated itself in this anomaly and is not sure what to do now that it is past. When it came to teaching students skills for life and citizenship, there was a scramble to find some purpose for philosophy.10 This is exactly why Rorty saw philosophy as doomed to being a transitional genre: It had created its professional discipline on a model of university that no longer existed, and the new one needed people who at the very least might, “read books in order to enlarge their sense of what is possible and important—either for themselves as individuals or for their society” (Rorty 1999a [1989], 127). Although the post-linguistic turn period in philosophy continued after the Golden Age university declined, by the time Rorty wrote his famous introduction to The Linguistic Turn in 1967, he already suspected that the once promising theories that held it up were systematically disintegrating from within: Is the linguistic turn doomed to suffer the same fate as previous “revolutions in philosophy”? The relatively pessimistic conclusions reached in the preceding sections entail that linguistic philosophers’ attempts to turn philosophy into a “strict science” must fail. How far does this pessimism carry? If linguistic philosophy cannot be a strict science, if it has a merely critical, essentially dialectical, function, then what of the future? Suppose

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Eli Kramer that all the traditional problems are in the fullness of time, dissolved—in the sense that no one is able to think of any formulation of these questions which are immune to the sort of criticisms made by linguistic philosophers. Does that mean that philosophy will come to an end—that philosophers will have worked themselves out of a job? Is a “postphilosophical” culture really conceivable? (As quoted in: West 1989, 195–196)

Rorty in many ways devoted his career to answering these questions. He came to the conclusion that this “scientific” project was doomed to fail, and that it would indeed force itself out of a job not because it created a “unified theory of the sciences,” nor from achieving a “unified theory of perfect analytic, dialectical criticisms” of the irresponsible uses of language, nor from attacks by “relativists,” but because it was no longer useful. Philosophy was dooming itself to a post-academic philosophical age. Rorty’s classical philosophical education, coupled with his later rigorous analytic training, gave him the powerful tools necessary to criticize the discipline from within. This is not to say that Rorty was taken seriously within the discipline. Later, “[w]hen Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity was published in 1989, many philosophers thought that Rorty had simply given up on philosophy. In analytic circles it became fashionable to dismiss Rorty—one no longer needed to take him seriously” (Bernstein 2008, 19). He did however have some leverage to call the old paradigm out into debate and advocate a broader philosophical tradition. Rorty created enough uproar to weaken whatever preeminent edge a reductionist analytic philosophy hoped to have. For example, his work Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, “became the most widely discussed philosophy book of the second half of the twentieth century, not only by philosophers but by nonphilosophers in the humanistic disciplines and the social sciences; it has now been translated into more than twenty languages” (Bernstein 2008, 17–18). Such political and cultural clout made Rorty easy to dismiss theoretically, but hard to ignore practically. He had the perfect skill set to bring reductionist analytic philosophy out into the practical light, where it would be harder and harder for it to defend itself. This is what I meant by describing Rorty as both a herald and instigator of a paradigmatic transition in philosophy. He saw a system whose previous alliances with a Cold War era university, while it was in the midst of decline itself, as not only systematically becoming impossible to defend, but as dangerously impractical to the new world in which philosophy found itself. He intentionally became a hyperbolic town crier to drag reductionist analytic philosophy into the agora that it had for so long wanted to keep its distance from. This very call, combined with a very special skill set developed in later pragmatism to combat it, forced analytic philosophy to face their fellow citizens, at least within the academy. By doing so, Rorty did not “ruin analytic philosophy” but made it account for itself in the academic agora where it became one voice among many. Like Quine and C. I. Lewis before him, Rorty paid a price for this commitment to a project (albeit very narrow and academic) of criticizing the reductionism of his time. The cost was an inability to maintain a nuanced evolutionary naturalism.

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Whether it was a conscious or unconscious choice is a superfluous question. What is important is that in order to answer his contemporaries, he had to resort to a set of moves that resulted in limiting him to a rather thin process philosophy. Given that analytic philosophy is now in the agora, though still with a very dominant voice, Rorty’s tool set appears more and more awkward. It is the transitional tool set of a transitional figure, one that makes his philosophical project self-consuming, and one that leaves him at the door of the new world he created, but not beyond it.

REINTERPRETING RORTY’S PHILOSOPHY AS SELF-CONSUMING By saying that Rorty’s work is self-consuming, I am not proposing that he had some subtle conscious or unconscious understanding that he was talking about his own role, rather than philosophy itself. Pragmatists conceive of beliefs from their habits of action, not from their isolated intent. Thus, the habits of his philosophy are what are at stake here and can’t be divorced from his thought (whether he would have admitted it or not). I want to point out that in a number of his later essays there is a tension. This tension was between the knowledge that his own project was going to be circumscribed by later generations, and yet that he was never convinced that more robust philosophical projects were possible or would ever be useful. His philosophy reveals how his own thought was going to usher in a future where his own settled opinions would be surpassed. In a sense, Rorty created this tension himself to acknowledge his current beliefs but openly undo them for a future generation. This process has already been well carried out. To understand Rorty’s arguments about philosophy’s transitional role, I explore several of his essays in Philosophy as Cultural Politics,11 in particular, the essays in the section entitled “Philosophy’s Place in Culture” (Rorty 2007a–c, 71–119). This anthology is made up of Rorty’s later and more refined thoughts on the role of philosophy and intellectual history. In the first two chapters, “Grandeur, Profundity, and Finitude,” and “Philosophy as a Transitional Genre,” he articulated pragmatism in the tradition of romanticism. Both let go of the grand vision of philosophy as making things “hang together.” However, pragmatism, according to Rorty, “differs from romanticism in taking seriously the collision of the good with good while remaining dubious about total dedication and passionate commitment” (Rorty 2007a, 81). Rorty’s pragmatism retained much of romanticism but gave up its sense of profundity and replaced it with a sense of finitude. For those with such finitude, “intellectual and moral progress is achieved by making claims that seem absurd to one generation into the common sense of the later generations. The role of intellectuals is to effect this change by explaining how the new ideas might, if tried out, solve or dissolve, problems created by the old ones” (Rorty 2007a, 85). Philosophy is a transitional genre in the sense that sometimes philosophy has helped people make such shifts from one paradigm to another. It is also a transitional genre in the sense that if philosophy cannot become meaningful to

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the problems presently facing the world, it will be left behind. Thus, Rorty’s efforts fit his own vision of pragmatism and philosophy in general. His work was a process of being able to herald and instigate the decline of reductionist analytic philosophy, while simultaneously acknowledging that all efforts, even his, are ameliorative and finite. These essays culminate in “Pragmatism and Romanticism” (Rorty 2007c, 105– 119), an essay he returned to near the end of his life (see Rorty 2007d). Rorty’s understanding of romanticism not only affected his descriptions of pragmatism, but also came to frame the very way he understood social thought and history. In this essay, he used one of his favorite neologisms from Harold Bloom’s Anxiety and Influence, the “strong poet.”12 By strong poet, Rorty means someone whose imagination irrevocably changes our final vocabularies. For Rorty, in order to be a strong poet, as opposed to being merely fantastical or crazy, “one must both do something new and be lucky enough to have that novelty adopted by one’s fellows—incorporated into their ways of doing things” (Rorty 2007c, 107). In his model, Darwin, Newton, Plato, Shakespeare, Emerson, and Nabokov (the classical white, dead canon) are all exemplary strong poets. They have affected the way in which we engage and make sense of the world. The last paragraph of the essay, more than anywhere else in the book, articulates Rorty’s project: If pragmatism is of any importance—if there is any difference between pragmatism and Platonism that might eventually make a difference to practice—it is not because it got something right that Platonism got wrong. It is because accepting a pragmatist outlook would change the cultural ambience for the better. It would complete the process of secularization by letting us think of the desire for non-linguistic access to the real as hopeless as that for redemption through a beatific vision. (Rorty 2007c, 119)

This paragraph illuminates the transition Rorty wanted to make, one that has a strong flair for the cultural/historical orientation, without a concomitant commitment to the postulated (or warrantedly assertable) evolutionary, process metaphysics that could help guide and contextualize the transition.13 I have no doubt that if Rorty were with us today, he could make one of his very famous short, enervating, two or three-page replies that would drain my claim to a “better” position in philosophy. After all, in Rorty’s view, is this essay really doing any significant philosophical enrichment for cultural life? Save for hopefully untangling my own, and a few other peoples’, views on Rorty, I would be hard put to come up with any meaningful response in the form of an argument. One of Rorty’s great performative techniques was to cast doubt on professional philosophers, such as me, in our efforts to unseat his position. It takes only a few pages to point out the irony of this endeavor; it just proved his point about the dead conversations of the academy. To side-step my own tendency to fall in this trap, I want to note that it does not matter whether Rorty should have had a more robust philosophy. In fact, I’m not sure that would have been the right philosophical tool set for his project of bringing reductionist analytic philosophy back into the agora. The fact that

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evolutionary naturalism is an important commitment in classical pragmatism that he as a historicist couldn’t quite manage hints at the tension Rorty himself stresses in his work. Historical figures are finite, fallible, and will always be circumscribed by those in the future. Rorty firmly plants his pragmatism in the tradition of Emerson’s essay “Circles,” and Shelley’s and Coleridge’s sense “that men should walk as prophecies of the next age” (Rorty 2007c, 109). Rorty certainly had a position. At the same time, he was aware that his work to bring about a transition to pragmatism, toward work as a living community instead of abstract, epistemologically centered projects, was itself a project that philosophers would move beyond in the future. This is not to say we are done with analytic philosophy, nor that it is not a useful approach with many non-reductionist philosophers, nor that it still doesn’t hold sway in the majority of departments. It is rather that it no longer has the hegemony it once had (nor does traditional continental work for that matter), and other voices are getting louder.14 Rorty’s tools have become cruder in this environment. He moved us into a new period, one that is still full of reductionism, but of different sorts, and one that faces real threats to the university and faces very real challenges defending democracy. Rorty has not equipped us to respond. He is now a historical figure who might bother some of our colleagues slightly, but who doesn’t cause an uproar these days, because the problems that are faced by the present generation have moved beyond his life, work, and gifts as a philosopher.15

THE NEW AGORA—WHAT A PHILOSOPHER SHOULD DO IN THE NEW CITY This inquiry was initiated by a generation’s reaction to Rorty, to which he is a given piece of history. Like any exploration of a genuine problem, this inquiry has helped clarify what is at stake while providing more questions than answers. Rorty could not enter the gates of the new city he helped the next generation create. His own self-consuming philosophy made sure that he acknowledged and respected the new world that would move our thinking beyond him. But those of us who entered the new city are no clearer about where we are headed. Are we supposed to find the university in this city? Or should we rather go to the courts? Maybe like Diogenes of Sinope we are supposed to go to the agora, and live and act in contested public space, or like Plato and Aristotle, found philosophical communities at the geographical and metaphorical edge of the city in order to inform it at a distance. Maybe with Pyrrho of Elis, all we can do is sit and observe the new challenges and politics that plague this city in which we will never have much influence, then bracket our philosophical pathology so we can live a quiet life attending to the good in the present. We are left with a new version of a metaphor James offers in The Will to Believe (James 1912 [1896]). Instead of being forced to decide which road we should take in a blizzard (or choosing to stay still which is itself a decision and act), we are in the middle of a foreign city we do not understand. We want to commit to something, and at the same time we are aware of the tragic permanence all our decisions have in

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the ever-moving onslaught of time. Although Rorty might not provide answers that are satisfying to our current predicament, there are however some lessons we have learned from him as a transitional figure that might inform our decisions. First, we need not commit ourselves to Rorty’s thin process pragmatism. His projects and challenges came in response to a different context. Instead of creating a static, self-consuming philosophy, we can seek a robust evolutionary naturalism that implicitly creates theories and practices that acknowledge process. We will not need to create a self-consuming philosophy because our commitment to the postulated metaphysics of evolutionary naturalism will allow our philosophies to presuppose time, evolution, chance, change, relation, genuine novelty, and personal growth, as vital parts of our way of life, and thus will be constantly adaptive by nature. Second, in order to commit ourselves to any philosophical project that makes a difference, we may have to make sacrifices we may or may not be aware of. Just like C. I. Lewis, Quine, and Rorty, we may commit ourselves to certain limiting moves in order to make progress toward our larger goals. This leads to the third lesson. It is quite possible that in order to move beyond Rorty, we may in fact give up something important. It is possible to view my effort here as pointing exactly to what I don’t want. That is, that Rorty is no longer a threat to new generations of philosophers because we in fact have carried forward his approach to philosophy, maybe not in theory, but in lived attitude and practice. This is a very real luring possibility. Be that as it may, I choose to conceive the situation differently because it affords a significant practical difference. If I see Rorty’s transitional philosophy as simply a necessary step to opening up the possibility for more robust philosophy, then a new generation has a chance to pay respect and deference to Rorty, while moving beyond him to a more effective and enriching future for philosophy’s service to our lived experience. As humanistic intellectuals, we have something to contribute to make the world better. I hope that one day I could say “I’m a philosopher, I’m here to help,” and it might not be considered quite so absurd. West, in a lecture entitled “Decentring Europe,” asks what I believe will be of tremendous importance to my generation of philosophers (whether we like it or not): “What kind of role and function can the humanistic intellectual have in advanced capitalist society, given his or her placement within the academic’s life of the professional managerial class of this particular society” (West 1993, 121)? He puts this in context of the overwhelming support for a technical intelligentsia, at the expense of humanistic intellectuals who seem antiquated.16 Today, this description seems true, except that philosophers (as well as many other humanistic scholars) are steadily falling out of the managerial class and into poverty, all in an ever more dangerous political environment, as we all face impending ecological crises. This question is all the more important in the academy today. Spending cuts across the board, a focus on quantitative assessments, a continued identity crisis in the humanities, an overall sense of a lost vision for liberal education, a US student debt bubble ready to burst (with global ramifications), social justice and equity challenges, the growth of far-right campus movements and speakers, and the

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territorialization of a particularly narrow version of academic capitalism have made many intellectual theorists feel impotent and feel as if the university is already in ruins. These challenges have thrust us into an epochal moment in the university’s modern history, one that requires not just a defense of higher education and learning, but a new long-term vision that dissolves and moves beyond the current debate. We do not have the luxury anymore to not act. Rorty may be right, and maybe professional philosophers and humanistic intellectuals might not have much to contribute. But in the face of a city in crisis what is there to do but take a Jamesian leap of faith? Furthermore, to not act is committing to a world Rorty himself would surely dislike. We might not want to sleep on the street with Diogenes, but it’s time to go back to our work in the agora.

NOTES 1. For a helpful introduction to what was happening in the academy during Rorty’s lifetime see: (Menand 2010, 59–92). For a helpful analysis of what was happening in philosophy during this period see: (McCumber 2001). For a helpful analysis of what was happening in pragmatism see: (West 1989, 182–210); and: (Auxier 1995). 2. Menand goes over in detail these factors that lead to this explosive growth in the US higher education system: (Menand 2010, 63–73). 3. For more on the development of the scientistic orientation of the American Philosophical Association and of professional philosophy in general, see: (Auxier 2013a, 309–350 [chapter 10]). 4. Though philosophy did receive its fair share of such funding. The National Defense foundation used to be a leading funding source for philosophers. For more see: (McCumber 2001, 17). 5. Menand notes that some disciplines such as comparative literature, actually developed a heightened disciplinarity (Menand 2010, 87). One has to keep in mind that this was done in a more pluralistic academic setting. 6. For a still relevant analysis of the current situation and some helpful statistics, see: (Schuessler 2013). 7. Thomas Kuhn also should be mentioned, yet unlike some of the other scholars listed, his position between science and the philosophy of science forced him to come face to face with the most intractable parts of philosophy. 8. In a more recent (albeit post-humus) response to Hillary Putnam’s critique of him in Putnam’s Library of Living Philosophers Volume, he ends up retreating from many of his previous extreme nominalist positions, especially his reductionistic version of instrumental truth. In line with Robert Brandom’s neo-Hegelian stance, he still argues for a primarily historical/ cultural pragmatism. For more, see: (Rorty 2015). 9. Boisvert is critical of Rorty; given his rhetorical skills and his philosophical goals he could have been a “Socratic Pimp” or philosophical intermediary, that could have made a significant difference in the cultural politics of his day. Instead his critique of philosophy limited him to the academy. He could have been so much more than he allowed himself to be. While I prefer Boisvert’s “Socratic Pimp” to the limited philosophy Rorty gave us, I wonder, given Rorty’s historical situation, and given the types of tools were necessary to attack the

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reductionism of his day, if it would have been possible to be such a humanistic intermediary. Given the present historical situation, I want a “Socratic Pimp,” but I’m not sure if that person could have lived through McCarthyism and the reductionist analytic period and gained respect within it, nor if she would have helped its demise as well as Rorty did. 10. I do not have space here to go into why I think this led philosophers to advocate for symbolic logic courses, critical thinking courses, bio-, neuro-, and applied ethics courses, as their contribution to society and education, and why this largely failed to convince administrators and the public. I certainly agree with McCumber that philosophy has been stuck in a ditch that it needs to get out of in order to survive. I plan to explore this problem further in forthcoming work. 11. A collection of Richard Rorty essays written mostly between 1996 and 2006. 12. For a better understanding of Harold Bloom’s original theory, see: The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Bloom 1973). 13. Being militantly anti-metaphysical leads to the same sort of problems that being militantly atheistic does; as Heidegger thought of Nietzsche, “you end up inverting Plato.” In good Jamesian fashion, I’m convinced that refusing to take a position, is also a position. To refuse metaphysics is to have an uninteresting and unhelpful metaphysical position. Such thinkers refuse to acknowledge that they are just as situated as everyone else, and that situated existence includes having a relation to the ultimate; giving the ultimate a negative is still an alive, if dull, relation in our experience. Instead of dulling our lives, why not make a broader “cosmic view” an open minded, ever-developing, contemplative, contextualizing, lifeaffirming and enriching exercise? This is what I mean by “postulated (or warrantedly assertible) evolutionary, process metaphysics.” This metaphysics is an adjusting picture that helps us contextualize and find peace in our human predicament, one that may change given our time and place within existence. This includes the distinct possibility that at a future date the universe will be predictable enough for a Peircean stable order to appear, or that Rorty might be right, though just how likely those positions are remains to be seen. 14. To get a sense some of the tensions in professional philosophy, see: (Schuessler 2013). The fact that this kind of situation is even under discussion shows how much has changed in philosophy, and how much work still needs to be done. 15. Near the end of his career, Rorty became very concerned with the survival of democracy. For further analysis, see: (Auxier 2013b). 16. The privileging of STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields in education being a primary example of this attitude.

REFERENCES Auxier, Randall. 1995. “The Decline of Evolutionary Naturalism in Later Pragmatism.” In Pragmatism: From Progressivism to Postmodernism. Edited by David DePew and Robert Hollinger, 180–207. New York: Praeger Books. ———. 2013a. Time, Will, and Purpose: Living Ideas from the Philosophy of Josiah Royce. Chicago: Open Court. ———. 2013b. “The Death and Resurrection of Democratic Institutions.” Empirical Magazine, 19–26. ———, Douglas R. Anderson, and Lewis E. Hahn. 2016. The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam. Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXXIV. Chicago: Open Court.

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Bernstein, Richard. 2008. “Richard Rorty’s Deep Humanism.” New Literary History 39, no. 1: 13–27. Bloom, Harold. 1973. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Boisvert, Raymond. 2010. “Richard Rorty: Philosopher of the Common Man, Almost.” In The Philosophy of Richard Rorty. Edited by Randall E. Auxier and Lewis E. Hahn, 551–570. Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXXII. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. James, William. 1912 [1896]. “The Will to Believe.” In The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1–31. London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green Company. McCumber, John. 2001 Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Menand, Louis. 2010. The Marketplace of Ideas. New York: W.W. Norton. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999a [1989]. “The Humanistic Intellectual: Eleven Thesis.” In Philosophy and Social Hope, 127–130. ———. 1999b [1992]. “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids.” In Philosophy and Social Hope, 3–20. New York: Penguin Books. ———. 2007a. “Grandeur, Profundity, and Finitude.” In Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers Volume 4, 73–88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007b. “Philosophy as a Transitional Genre.” In Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers Volume 4, 89–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007c. “Pragmatism and Romanticism.” In Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers Volume 4, 105–119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007d. “The Fire of Life.” Editorial. Poetry Magazine. http:​//www​.poet​ryfou​ndati​ on.or​g/poe​tryma​gazin​e/art​icle/​18018​5. ———. 2010. “Intellectual Autobiography.” In The Philosophy of Richard Rorty. Edited by Randall E. Auxier and Lewis E. Hahn, 1–24. Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXXII. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. ———. 2016. “Putnam, Pragmatism, and Parmenides.” In The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam. Library of Living Philosophers. Vol. 34. Edited by Randall E. Auxier, Douglas R. Anderson, and Lewis E. Hahn, 863–881. LaSalle: Open Court, 2015. Schuessler, Jennifer. 2013. “A Star Philosopher Falls, and a Debate Over Sexism Is Set Off.” The New York Times. West, Cornel. 1989. The American Evasion of Philosophy. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. ———. 1993. “Decentring Europe.” In Prophetic Thought in Postmodern Times, 119–142. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.

I TAKE CARE OF THE FUTURE AND THE PAST WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF

1 “Bad Boy of Philosophy” Richard Rorty, Provocateur Crispin Sartwell

The principal scholarly society that focuses on American pragmatism is known as the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. The members of this society, in the 1990s, by and large regarded Richard Rorty as Satan incarnate. Nevertheless, possibly because he was the world’s most famous pragmatist, or possibly because they wanted to work on him as the LAPD worked on Rodney King, SAAP invited Rorty to keynote their annual meeting in (I think) 1995 or 1996. I can’t remember Rorty’s topic, exactly; it may have been a basic statement of his interpretation of the pragmatist tradition. The professors around me in that full auditorium were, as he spoke, shaking their heads, muttering, glaring, snickering, etc. When he was done there was an avalanche of hostile questioning. Eminent intellectual figures had their hands up like second-grade smarty-pantses, practically jumping out of their bodies to be recognized. I particularly remember the approach of Thelma Lavine, famous for the PBS series Socrates to Sartre, who I believe was operating with a walker and an oxygen tank by then. She seemed imbued with new life. She attacked. She yelled. She waved her arms. When he replied, she attacked some more. She didn’t want anyone else to get the floor. A lot of people seemed to feel that way. This was the chance finally to demonstrate that Richard Rorty was wrong to his face: it was a confrontation that many of these people had been seeking and rehearsing for years. The attacks poured out like a deluge; the replies took the form of sly grins and quick, casual phrases. John McDermott showed again at some length that he had Dewey wrong. Rorty shrugged. At the banquet afterward, Rorty just sat quietly at his table, eating; I guess people hesitated to launch an attack in that context. I said to him: “That must have been hard.” He gave that shrug (the paradigmatic Rorty gesture) and cracked the delightful half smile that made you unsure whether he really meant what he said or was just having you on. “Happens all the time. They seem to enjoy it.” Actually, I don’t 19

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think they enjoyed it at all. But he did. If we think of philosophy as agonistic (which admittedly is not the only approach), being attacked and reviled and despised— more or less by everybody—is a mark of overwhelming success. And if it is, then Rorty was as successful as any philosopher of his generation. Dick Rorty was my teacher and dissertation supervisor. Let me say that, in most respects, I disagree now, as I did in 1987, with his philosophy. What I agree with is his persona. Rorty was an amazingly effective provocateur. He drove philosophy professors crazy—often something like literally crazy: I have seen people, and not only at that conference, turning red in the face, gesticulating wildly, pouring out vituperation so quickly that they were choking on their words. I would like to propose that he wanted to achieve such effects, and that in responding in the way they did, the people who regarded Rorty as the essence of the pernicious were responding as he wanted them to respond, or collaborating with him. I have to say that I myself have tried to cause such a response for decades, with little success. So among other things, Rorty’s outstanding technique of provocation is an object of my curiosity and envy. Let me try to describe some of the factors that made his provocations so effective. Some of them, I think, were almost a matter of good fortune or woolly zeitgeists; Rorty came about at a moment ripe for inducing a crisis in analytic philosophy, which—perhaps because of its success in dominating the British and American academies—seemed to be becoming ever more narrow, schematic, and disconnected from various other aspects of culture, such as the arts. Indeed, not to put too fine a point on it, analytic philosophers had been trying to short-circuit even the possibility of a Rorty for decades: continental or pluralist or classical pragmatist students and professors were not admitted into the institution, or, if they were admitted (perhaps developing such interests later), they were marginalized or purged. But Rorty was installed firmly at Princeton. He was personally acquainted with many of the central figures in analytic philosophy. He had mastered their discourse, at least on certain topics. In the period represented by Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, he connected his thought with this discourse masterfully, and then attacked it in many respects. Indeed, in many ways Rorty’s critique of the tradition, of the sorts of positions he termed at different times “foundationalism,” “representationalism,” “the metaphysics of presence,” “logocentrism,” etc., coincided with some of the best analytic philosophy of that period, such as the work of Quine and Davidson, whom Rorty also made use of. So, provisionally, many analytic philosophers might have been sympathetic to at least some of the views he espoused. But then Rorty interrupted this discourse over and over again, radically, in a variety of dimensions. He brought Heidegger and Dewey into the discussion. He tried to undermine both anti-realism and realism: he held that the whole problematic should collapse, and that, say, realism and relativism had to stand or fall together. And even though his linguistic constructionism was connected to many developments in analytic philosophy, such as the work of Wittgenstein, by 1980 one also heard in it the beat of post-structuralism, deconstruction, hermeneutics: developments which many analytic philosophers regarded

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as meaningless and demented. Indeed, I first read him in a literary theory class taught by Stanley Fish; Rorty was already in 1982 a hissing and a byword in the pure-analytic philosophy department at Johns Hopkins, where I started my graduate work. So, one factor was that Rorty’s interpretation and use of analytic philosophers connected them to these developments, which was experienced as an accusation. But I think that what really drove people properly mad was Rorty’s insouciance or casualness: in every dimension of his writings at least until the 1990s, but particularly with regard to his interpretation of his own favorite figures. Rorty annexed major thinkers almost willy-nilly to his approach. He would just casually characterize the positions of Davidson, Heidegger, Dewey, Sellars, Wittgenstein, or Derrida in a sentence or two, and when he did, they always basically just said what Rorty wanted them to say. Now let’s say you’d just spent decades developing an interpretation of one of these figures. Well then, Rorty’s reading would appear vividly to be superficial or just false. Not only that, but though you’d been working on Dewey since 1960, almost no one knew your name. But Richard Rorty, for an academic philosopher, was a celebrity, and he was the most famous “pragmatist” and “Deweyan” in the world. So that world would basically be getting its Dewey from a completely irresponsible source. Also, he got the MacArthur, the profile in the New York Times Magazine, and so on. Your own work on Dewey or Heidegger was obviously more careful, more accurate, and so on. And what did you get? There is a certain sort of philosophy professor whose basic posture might be termed “reverence.” One reveres Heidegger or Dewey very deeply, which is why one dedicates a big chunk of life to interpreting him. Rorty really had very little or no reverence even for the figures he centralized. For him, the detailed accurate reconstruction of Dewey’s philosophy was a matter of indifference. But he did want to see what he could use of some ideas and sentences from Dewey to accomplish. Really, getting Dewey right was the least of his concerns. In the 1980s, many of the grad students around Rorty were somewhat flummoxed by his enthusiasm for Derrida. Asked about this, his response was that he loved Derrida because Derrida’s work was hilariously funny. “I can’t read him without laughing out loud!” That is an unusual and irreverent way to pick out heroes in academic philosophy. This is not to say that I’ve yet really gotten the jokes in Derrida. I myself find reverence distasteful, as being a form of self-subordination to another. And it leads, I believe, to many philosophical distortions. People have performed bizarre conniptions, or have sunk into contradiction or gobbledygook, just to make Plato or Dewey or Hegel come out right or at least not clearly wrong, almost no matter what. It has many times gotten to the point with Plato, for example, in which professors who lionize him assert that what he meant was the opposite of what he said, particularly with regard to the totalitarian vision articulated in The Republic. Since Plato was a beautiful soul and the founder of philosophy (more or less), he could not possibly have said what, looking at the page, he did definitely say. Good luck on this approach, but I wouldn’t particularly think that working through Plato to make him not make mistakes or assert fearsome falsehoods is a task worthy of a

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philosopher. Now on the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be much point in just kind of propping the corpse of Dewey up on stage and using it as a marionette to give your own views. You’ve got to have some sincerity in trying to understand what he meant and not only what you can say he meant or what you can make him say. If not, just stop attributing the ideas to him. Rorty did really run into this problem, I believe, and if I could give one metaattack on the authorship, it would be this: Rorty compulsively attributed his own views to other people, as though he needed authorization to say anything. He habitually lined up lists of names like that was an argument, and even kept sort of asserting that his own philosophy was the future, because he’d just narrated the history of modern philosophy to culminate in it. See, he said, we labored all this Cartesianism, “logocentrism,” “metaphysics of presence,” and so forth. But, the most eminent philosophers of the twentieth century were all in agreement that our experience was linguistic all the way down (and on all Rorty’s other basic teachings): Are you really going to argue at once against the whole flow of intellectual history, or stand athwart it? Athwart Dewey, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Quine, Davidson, Sellars, and so on, all of whom said the same thing? (Well, sure, now that you mention it. Why not?). This approach is everywhere in Rorty’s authorship, but I will give one example from Achieving Our Country: Dewey abandoned the idea that one can say how things really are, as opposed to how they might best be described in order to meet some particular human need. In this respect he is in agreement with Nietzsche, and with such critics of “the metaphysics of presence” as Derrida and Heidegger. For all these philosophers, objectivity is a matter of intersubjective consensus among human beings, not of accurate representation of something nonhuman. Insofar as human beings do not share the same needs, they may disagree about what is objectively the case. But the resolution of such disagreement cannot be an appeal to the way reality, apart from any human need, really is. The resolution can only be political: one must use democratic institutions and procedures to conciliate these various needs, and thereby widen the range of consensus about how things are. (Rorty 1999, 34–35)

So, you might think for a minute about whether Nietzsche, for example, or Heidegger, thought that “objectivity is a matter of intersubjective consensus among human beings.” You have got to be kidding, and if one regarded Nietzsche or Heidegger with reverence, one would regard that as blasphemy. In fact, you’d be liable to have that response to sentence after sentence in Rorty’s oeuvre. On the other hand, I wonder what some of these folks who have devoted their lives to interpreting Heidegger or Dewey or whomever really think turns on getting those figures right. If we actually figured out what Dewey really meant, what would change? Honestly, nothing but journal articles and university press books that no one reads. In my opinion, getting Wittgenstein right is very not the same as figuring out what the right philosophy is. Getting Wittgenstein right would nevertheless be admirable. But accuracy to the intention of the author is not the only possible thing

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one might want to achieve with regard to Dewey or Wittgenstein. You might want to play with some of their texts and ideas, or use them to set out in some direction. Dewey is dead as a doornail, and basically, I say, use him however you like. On the other hand, I also think it’s legitimate to point out that Rorty’s use is not really in keeping with Dewey’s philosophy. But that is only one question. Another might be: Did using Dewey that way help you get someplace new or interesting, or did it clarify something important? So, one way we might look at Rorty’s activity is that he was using all these figures pragmatically: by his own account it can’t be a matter of getting Dewey right, but of using Dewey profitably. Still, I wish Rorty had not had that tic; he was articulating his own philosophy; there was no real reason to keep attributing it to other people or grasping for authorities. But one thing his hermeneutical technique did do was enrage a whole bunch of philosophy professors, because he got the favorite figure wrong, but also because the whole thing looked amazingly casual and irresponsible by scholarly standards. On the other hand, this had no actual bad effects in the real world in my opinion, because academic philosophy is—as far as anything can be—action without consequence. I am grateful for that fact: it is liberating. We might as well say whatever we want to say. Another dimension of provocation was directly political. Rorty called his political position “bourgeois liberalism,” which turned out to be the most outrageous possible approach. You would think that being a fascist or a Republican is what would really get professors’ goat, especially since all professors are liberals and left of that into socialism. But humanities professors don’t even basically respond to conservatives, for example; they just don’t count them as human. For Rorty to call his position “bourgeois liberalism” was to anger people for their agreement with him, and one thing it definitely expressed: Richard Rorty was hostile to Karl Marx. Astoundingly, that is a provocative position in the academy still. I always think that people are going to be provoked by a position opposite their own, particularly if you can make it compelling. So, for example, I actually take myself to have proven—insofar as something like this admits of proof—that the political state is morally illegitimate. Well, I’ve been proving it for years and it is perfectly safe to ignore me. But what Rorty did was quite a bit subtler, and obviously far more effective. So, he’d just flatly say what his position was. It was your position too, more or less: he also defined his position as “socialism.” But then he would simplify the whole thing into a flat principle: “reduce suffering,” for example. And then he would frankly aver that he couldn’t demonstrate that principle from scratch or even really give any reasons for it, and didn’t think he needed to: it was a principle that emerged historically, that had no conceptual underpinnings outside of particular practices or cultures or political situations. It was the sort of thing that people with upbringings like his own tended to think was important, and that’s all there was really to be said. Rorty was a fan of democracy, human rights, and socialist economy. He was an anti-sexist and anti-racist and anti-homophobe. And yet he just sat up there and said that these were pretty much arbitrary preferences, certainly not things you could establish from the ground up like some Rawls or Habermas. Democracy, equality,

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and so on were cultural artifacts, he said, and so was he, Richard Rorty, and so he believed this stuff. He figured you probably did too. Now first of all of course, for Rorty, no position on anything could be justified outside of or across particular cultures, languages, historical moments, and so on. He admitted this happily about all his own positions. One mechanical move that people will make against Rorty’s “relativism” is that it is self-contradictory. How about the claim that no claim is valid except within a certain language-game? Is that valid across language games? What about your own theory about theories!? I tried this a couple of times on him. He just smiled in a bit of a bored way and said yup, that too: the idea that no claim is valid across languages is valid only within a particular language. This seemed to many leftists, for example, a betrayal, and even Derrida wanted to exempt “justice” from that kind of double relativization or inverse deconstruction. People who agreed more or less entirely with Rorty’s politics, in fact, could not tolerate the contingent status he gave even to the principles to which he was committed. One thing about this “no foundations” move: people read it as very non-serious. They read all of Rorty that way, and he continuously invited this view. He just helped himself to a few ideas, didn’t bother to try to establish them systematically, and then kept going. The whole procedure was designed to seem even more cavalier than it was. Rorty was in fact very serious about his politics: very seriously committed. But he’d just toss political (and philosophical) ideas out flippantly. Not only was there no argument, he asserted that there were no good arguments. Also, if you ever saw him doing that, you saw that he did it with a little smile and sparkle, as though this was all just good fun. So say you were absolutely grim and intensely serious about your politics: it mattered to you more than life and death. Then the fact that Rorty was giving you a leftism without foundations, and doing it in a series of casually dismissive snippets, would be a much more terrible problem than it would have been if he really disagreed with you. He seemed to be saying that your own politics couldn’t really be established and might consist of more or less arbitrary or culture-bound prejudices. My anarchism just makes people roll their eyes or walk away. Rorty’s bourgeois liberalism made them homicidal. For many philosophers, including myself, the hardest stuff to swallow in Rorty was the material on truth. His definition of “objectivity” in terms of consensus gives the flavor, as does the famous formulation “Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with saying.” You’d think you could dispose of that with a dozen quick counterexamples in which people’s contemporaries not only let them get away with saying false things, but also rewarded them with infinite riches or abased themselves before them for doing so. I think it would be more plausible to define truth as what your contemporaries torture you to death for saying. But I can also do Rorty’s response: well, saying things like that is what your contemporaries let you get away with saying now. Or: to say that, for example, Galileo was right despite repression by his contemporaries is just to say that our contemporaries won’t let us get away with denying it. Right, and this is one of the problems with being an excellent professional philosopher: you can probably wriggle out of anything.

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At any rate, if you regarded “truth is whatever’s polling well this week” (that’s my paraphrase) as a rival to the correspondence theory, the coherence theory, Tarskian recursive theories, and so on, you would be very confused. If it were a rival theory, it would be the very worst theory ever articulated. That, surely, was not Rorty’s intention. What he was saying was that we need to stop focusing on truth as a big abstract something-or-other and focus on social practices or language games in which truth plays a role. What “truth” means is the role it plays in such contexts. It was a plea to stop trying to generate general theories of truth, or it was an argument that no such theory is needed or useful. Many philosophers have made points along these lines, and there is some sense in saying that, in this, Rorty’s treatment is indeed continuous with classical pragmatism in some respects, or that this could be one way of reading even the classical pragmatist theory of truth. Or one might read F. P. Ramsey or later Wittgenstein or deflationary theories of truth that way; Rorty certainly did. On the other hand, I think if you presented Dewey or Wittgenstein straight up with “truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with saying,” they certainly would not acknowledge that as a statement of their own views. But again, even if it is terrible as a theory of truth, it is masterful as a provocation. It frames itself as a definition of truth, but it can’t be. It crystallizes big chunks of Rorty’s philosophy in an extremely (and misleadingly) straightforward, catchy way. It’s like an apple sitting on Richard Rorty’s head. In its way, it ridicules the whole idea of philosophy; it’s a parody of philosophy, or a hilarious theory of truth. It’s insult comedy, we might say. So, people were angered by how bad it seemed as a definition. But what really angered them was the way it indicated that Rorty thought philosophy as a whole as ridiculous, and ridiculous in an amusing way. Many twentieth-century philosophers held for one reason or another, or in one way or another, that philosophy was misguided, impossible, or over. I’m not sure anyone else put forward this view in a stand-up routine. For Rorty, the whole idea of philosophy was kind of comical, and that would be hard to swallow even for philosophy professors who survived all the other attacks. If you were a philosophy professor, Rorty was not only saying that you were wrong, he was saying that you were hilarious. The more serious you were about truth or whatever it might be, the funnier you were. Once he reached the point of eminence at which he was hard to ignore, that made a lot of philosophy professors extremely irritated. The humongousness of Richard Rorty (I heard him referred to recently as “the most famous American philosopher of the twentieth century”) was an endless cycle in which his enemies connived. So, you hated him because he got Heidegger wrong, or you hated him because he thought justice was just a language game like anything else. Now, if one of your students or some guy at the department party took those positions, you’d try to correct him, but really you’d just roll your eyes. But Richard Rorty was a well-known philosopher, and he was obviously horribly wrong (and dangerous, though how and to whom is obscure). So he must be refuted! To accomplish that, you wrote an article and published it in a journal, or devoted part of your book to making Richard Rorty an emblem of everything wrong in the world

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or the academy. You destroyed his positions decisively, showed the performative self-contradiction or the mistaken interpretations. Now everyone would see the terrible charlatan for what he was. But Rorty himself just shrugged and went right on in the same vein. And your efforts had this effect: they centralized Rorty. They treated him as emblematic of the era, and soon, since everyone did that, he was emblematic of the era. Your refutation hadn’t made Rorty or his ilk, if any, see anything, and really it only impressed those who already agreed with you. But it had made Rorty slightly more famous. Get dozens of profs on it and the accumulated attacks made him very eminent indeed. Soon his presence and all the attacks became unavoidable, began to be a central feature of the philosophical discourse of the period; he was everywhere. This of course made the task of destroying him even more urgent, so you redoubled your efforts. Eventually it became possible to call him “the most famous American philosopher of the twentieth century.” It wasn’t his admirers who accomplished that; it was his opponents. In their obsession and their rage, they’d made their enemy ever more gigantic. Rorty was like a mythological beast: every time you chopped off his head, he grew two more. Or he was like a sci-fi movie creature, feeding off the energy of the weapons you were launching at him in hopes of blowing him up. Rorty’s enemies were his co-conspirators. Also, as the anecdote I started with indicates, he enjoyed the whole thing immensely. Richard Rorty was a very smart and amazingly erudite person. His response to his critics was extremely well-worked-out. He didn’t lose the arguments in any crushing way. But he had succeeded already before he even responded. The question of what makes something a classic of philosophy is complex, but it is not merely a matter of being better than everything else. And it’s definitely not a matter of being righter than anything else. For example, I think it is really too bad that the whole damn thing starts with Plato. Seriously, have you gotten a gander at the metaphysics? Or the politics? Or the aesthetics? It might have been better to start with someone who held the negation of all of Plato’s positions. Or at least, I think that would have been a more plausible place to begin. But how are you going to avoid Plato now? You’re not, because no one has for a couple of thousand years. Everyone read him; everyone who attacked him—or Descartes, for example— needed him, started with him. He’s a classic, if nothing else, because he’s a classic, and it’s too late to do anything about it now, unfortunately. The Kantian Copernican turn was a disaster, but there’s no possibility of erasing it now, and attacking it only emphasizes its importance, etc. I think in some ways any one thinker’s promotion to classic status is arbitrary; no one is as better than everyone else as these figures are conceived as being. But you can’t read everything, and you need to get the story down to some manageable or teachable sequence. Appointing a couple of figures from each era helps you do that. And once they have received this promotion, there is no going back, because after the promotion everyone is reading them. People who hate the era or the thinker are spending careers on the attack, or articulating systems explicitly intended as rivals. You are, in short, canonized, and it’s not necessarily a matter of sheer quality. There

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are all kinds of contingent factors: maybe the right person just paid attention at the right time in the right venue. Soon someone else did. Soon you’re unavoidable. One factor is one’s usefulness in emblematizing an era, for better or worse. Somehow people read Rorty or heard about him and concluded that this was what was wrong with the world today. And Rorty, I might remark, became emblematic extremely intentionally. He narrated the whole history of philosophy to culminate in his linguistic pragmatism or whatever we call it. He assembled his pantheon of twentieth-century geniuses who, he said, all said what he said. He purported to mount the wave of intellectual history and to ride it like a surfer. There were really few or even no arguments in Rorty, but there was a narrative of where we were going, and on it, we were going where he already was. But I’m not sure there was some cosmic sense of the zeitgeist; I think he became ever more emblematic because previous people treated him as emblematic. Pretty soon you’re in the Rortyan era. Rorty’s treatment of truth could be connected to what came to be called “postmodernism” as a whole. Now, you could try to read Derrida and figure out whether he believed in truth and goodness and suchlike; after you read him, you still didn’t know. But Rorty just flatly embodied an epoch that a lot of well-educated people thought was in terrible decadence and decline, a world without facts or values. In the minds of people who might roughly be described as being on the right, he was connected to pop art, or violence in the media, or gangsta rap, or sexual advertising, or the postmodern novel in which there were no stable characters or recognizable plot, just wordplay. As usual, the world in the 1980s was going to hell in a handbasket, and all that was good and beautiful and true was being soiled or destroyed by barbarians. Rorty was a good place to vent various sorts of discomfort with the direction of the world as a whole, or a sense of decline. I actually think a lot of people regarded him as the herald of the End. After Rorty, Denzel Washington or Tom Cruise would stride alone through a smoking post-apocalyptic wasteland. Well, sadly, we survived again and muddled through. And, you know, the Antichrist turned out to be just a nice and painfully shy guy who liked watching birds and pissing philosophers off. To give the Rorty phenomenon a slightly wider cultural frame, and finish him off once and for all so to speak, his fame coincided with the particular ideological configuration of the Reagan/Thatcher years and the “culture wars,” as well as the rise of contemporary celebrity culture. Columnists and even many professors thought that fending off postmodernism, particularly in literature and literary criticism, was a matter of cultural survival. Allan Bloom was at large, urging a return to Strauss and Plato. Professors E. D. Hirsch and William Bennett spearheaded traditionalist forces. In your piece for the New Yorker, say, you could call postmodernism by the names of “Foucault,” “Derrida,” “de Man,” but then you would have to quote them or try to tell your readers what they were up to, which in fact you didn’t know how to do. But if you called postmodernism by names like “Richard Rorty” or “Stanley Fish,” you at least stood some chance. These were serious intellectuals who also wrote comprehensible sentences of English. This is certainly what angered many people about Rorty: they were opposed to and very hostile toward “the postmodern era” with its alleged trashing of truth and

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quality and decency. This is quite the case with many academics, for example, in literature departments, who also do have leftist politics: they have a sort of leftist politics that is incompatible with the sort of leftist politics of the postmodernists but, more, they got tenure and became the repositories of the tradition. Rorty means relativism, or anything is true, or anything is as good as anything else, or there are no objective standards, or science is bullshit, etc. He held none of these positions, or none of them quite as boldly as that, anyway. But to be misread serves him quite right, and for a while at least he has been and will remain an emblem of an era, and a good victim. However, I warn you, as you attack him again, that fortunate philosophers can grow stronger and yet stronger and stronger still in death. There does seem to be a friendlier tone emerging, and Dick Rorty is receding— quicker than most I think—into intellectual history. It doesn’t seem like the primary threat to the world today is a ravening horde of post-structuralists or language-game theorists; I suppose I think the postmodern era is over, and perhaps “the culture wars” too, more or less, though of course nothing is ever really over. But perhaps the passing of Rorty and Rorty’s era will allow a more nuanced, less partisan, less polemical, and more historical strand of interpretation to emerge around his work.

REFERENCE Rorty, Richard. 1999. Achieving Our Country. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

2 “Nine Chances out of Ten That Things Will Go to Hell” Rorty on Orwell, Silko, and Narratives of the Dark Future Wojciech Małecki

INTRODUCTION Given his penchant for loudly celebrating the notions of “hope” and “utopia,” Richard Rorty might be perceived as a complacent optimist, as somebody who believes that his imagined liberal paradise is simply bound to arrive one fine day, not very far from now. Yet, in fact (a fact insufficiently recognized in literature on Rorty), he often expresses an awareness that something may go wrong, or even a fear that it is very likely to happen, and he carefully studies other authors’ bleak visions of the future or creates his own himself. As Richard Bernstein observes, in Rorty’s later writings, particularly those concerning the direction in which America is heading, one may even sense a certain pessimism (Bernstein 2008, 21; cf. Rorty 1991, 178–179).1 This chapter aims at covering exactly this aspect of Rorty’s thought, focusing on the narratives of the dark future which he analyzes and in one prominent case constructs, in his works, with significant attention given to their literary aspects. The reason I will be concerned here with narratives is that in talking about the future, Rorty preferred to tell stories (or refer to them) instead of delivering predictive arguments. To understand this predilection, it would be useful to recall the following words of Rorty’s: The appropriate intellectual background to political deliberation is historical narrative rather than philosophical or quasi-philosophical theory. More specifically it is the kind of historical narrative which segues into a utopian scenario about how we can get from 29

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Wojciech Małecki the present to a better future. Social and political philosophy usually has been, and always ought to be, parasitic on such narratives . . . [Hobbes, Locke, Marx, Dewey, and Rawls] all . . . formulated their taxonomies of social phenomena, and designed the conceptual tools they used to criticize existing institutions, by reference to a story about what had happened and what we might reasonably hope could happen in the future. (Rorty 1999, 231–232)

These remarks, moreover, shed some light on why Rorty thinks “science-fiction,” a term which, for him, just as for Darko Suvin and Fredric Jameson, embraces all sorts of literary utopias and dystopias,2 “to have become the most . . . imaginative and most fruitful genre of long-term political deliberation” (Rorty 2001, 222), and why in his writings on politics he devotes attention to novels such as George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I will come back to these later, as I should like to begin with Rorty’s own narrative of the future. It is a short text devoted to sociopolitical developments in the 21st century America, published first in The New York Times Magazine as “Fraternity Reigns,” and then in his Philosophy and Social Hope as “Looking Backwards from the Year 2096” (Rorty 1998).

LOOKING BACKWARD, LOOKING FORWARD The latter of the two aforementioned titles is, of course, an allusion to the title of Edward Bellamy’s famous socialist utopia Looking Backward: 2000–1887, which “had achieved an impact on social thought that has often been ranked as second only to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital  ” (Alkon 1994, 107). Aside from situating Rorty’s piece in a certain political tradition, this reference is also a nice exemplification of the intertextuality of Rorty’s titles, of which other good instances are, say, his “Pragmatist’s Progress” and “Tales of Two Disciplines” (see Rorty 1998). It also gives me the opportunity to stress that Rorty’s discourse, at least from the Mirror of Nature book on, has significant literary aspects and as such cannot be properly understood when read in a manner that suits only the content of philosophical journals, at least of an analytic persuasion. As far as the literariness of Rorty’s “Looking Backwards” in particular is concerned, even though he himself describes the text simply as an “essay,” we would have to classify it as, strictly speaking, a work of social fiction, and a very specific one to boot.3 For in genological terms, it also constitutes an example of what is sometimes called “formal mimetics” (see Głowiński 1977). It imitates, that is, the shape of a handbook entry, having been “written in the form of an excerpt from the article on ‘Fraternity’ in the seventh edition of A Companion to American Thought, published in 2095, and edited by Cynthia Rodriguez, SJ and Youzheng Patel” (Rorty 1998, 243).4 As for the content of this fictional article, Rodriguez and Patel make it clear from the very beginning that they are writing from the perspective of the period that has come after what they call “the Dark Years (2014–2044),” during which democracy in the United States was in decline (Rorty 1998, 243). But before we learn anything

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more substantial about this American apocalypse, the authors situate it in a sweeping, yet relatively briefly told, narrative that stretches back to the very moment of the inception of the American nation. There is no need here to recall all the details of their account as it will be sufficient for the purpose of this chapter to attend only to that part of the story which depicts a few decades that directly preceded the time of the social apocalypse (roughly put, the second half of the twentieth century) along with the factors that brought it about. Unsurprisingly, in their assessment of the post-Vietnam-America the authors of the article are not very far from Rorty’s own assessment known from his other works. First of all, they point out, just as Rorty did in Achieving Our Country, that since the late sixties progressive politics became centered on cultural matters, particularly the empowerment of the underprivileged groups such as women, gays, or African-Americans. And even though this led to considerable moral progress (whose milestones were “Brown v. Board of Education and Romer v. Evans”), at the same time the economic issues (such as “wage slavery”) gradually slipped from the left’s attention, which made them unable to monitor the dangers of social stratification based on wealth. As if that was not enough, the left expressed its views through the vocabulary of rights instead of “fraternity,” which latter terminology, as Rodriguez and Patel argue, would have been preferable in that case. And it would have been preferable because in the second half of the twentieth century, talk of rights was strategically unfit for debating economic inequalities, for, in that period, the dominant opinion, at least in America, held that while one can indeed have a right to things such as “voting” or “education,” “the right to a decent wage” or financial security must be either a joke or a dangerous socialist chimera (Rorty 1998, 243–244). In any event, at some point the left discarded class politics altogether, concentrating on identity politics instead. This proved especially unfortunate when the Nixonian-Reaganite era brought severe tax cuts and, consequently, sharpened the contrast between a rather small group of well-off professionals and the masses barely making ends meet. This not only meant “stopping in its tracks the fairly steady progress toward a fully fledged welfare state that had been under way since the New Deal” (Rorty 1998, 247), but also thwarted the achievements of anti-racist struggle, which had been won with so much effort not long before. “White suburbanites” began to look with a mixture of scorn and anxiety at black, “virtually unemployable,” citizens of the ghettos (Rorty 1998, 247), while the latter grew more and more frustrated and convinced that America was definitely not their country. Unfortunately, as Rodriguez and Patel report: Our nation’s leaders, in the last decade of the old [i.e., 20th] century and the first of the new, seemed never to have thought that it might be dangerous to make automatic weapons freely and cheaply available to desperate men and women—people without hope—living next to the centers of transportation and communication. Those weapons burst into the streets in 2014, in the revolution that, leaving the cities in ruins and dislocating American economic life, plunged the country in the Second Great Depression. The insurgency in the ghettos, coming at time when all but the wealthiest Americans felt desperately insecure, led to the collapse of trust in government. The collapse of the

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Wojciech Małecki economy produced a war of all against all, as gasoline and food became harder and harder to buy, and as even suburbanites began to brandish guns at their neighbors. As the generals never stopped saying throughout the Dark Years, the military saved the country from utter chaos. (Rorty 1998, 248)5

We do not learn much from the article about “the military dictatorship” that lasted until 2044. What we do learn, however, is that it was abolished by a party bearing the name of “Democratic Vistas” (another nod on Rorty’s part in the direction of a literary work, in this case Walt Whitman) which embraced both “trade unions and churches,” and which managed to retain “control of Congress by successfully convincing the voters that its opponents constitute ‘the parties of selfishness’” (Rorty 1998, 249). The America that emerged afterward reminds one in several respects of Rorty’s liberal utopia as it is portrayed in his other works. Namely, it is a country in which communal life is organized around the notion of fraternity (an equivalent of Rorty’s “solidarity”), and in which the primary source of moral instruction is not philosophical ethics, but “scripture and literature” (Rorty 1998, 248)6— since fraternity is universally conceived of as a matter of sentiments (“an inclination of the heart, one that produces a sense of shame at having much when others have little”), and not of rational argumentation. “Political discourse,” moreover, is devoid of overly theoretical divagations about principles, and reduced to finding practical measures that would “prevent the re-emergence of hereditary castes—either racial or economic” (Rorty 1998, 249). Importantly, Rorty’s vision of the America of 2096 is not entirely bucolic, since there is an economic price the country will have to pay for awakening too late to the advantages of the Western European model of the welfare state: Compared with the Americans of 100 years ago, we are citizens of an isolationist, unambitious, middle-grade nation. Our products are only now becoming competitive again in international markets, and Democratic Vistas politicians continue to urge that our consistently low productivity is a small price to pay for union control of the workplace and worker ownership of the majority of firms. We continue to lag behind the European Community, which was able to withstand the pressures of a globalized labor market by having a fully fledged welfare state already in place, and which (except for Austria and Great Britain) was able to resist the temptation to impoverish the most vulnerable to keep its suburbanites affluent. (Rorty 1998, 250)

Now a word is in order on the function this narrative serves in Rorty’s political practice. To begin with, “Looking Backward from the Year 2096” illustrates his aforementioned thesis that social fiction is a form of “long-term political deliberation.” After all, the factors that Rodriguez and Patel present as having led to the decline of democracy in America are basically the same aspects of contemporary political life that Rorty himself finds worrisome and tries to draw his compatriots’ attention to in his articles and books. And we must also be aware here of the fact that in giving his political anxieties, which he elsewhere calls “the specter that haunts contemporary North Atlantic liberals” (Rorty 1991, 187), the form of a fictional

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narrative here, he is primarily trying to make his case more compelling. The point is that we always understand ourselves and our times in the context of a narrative where the period we live in at the moment is interwoven in a story which includes our past and reaches forward to the future. This naturally implies that our grasp of our times will depend upon how we recall our past and envisage things to come. In fact, these three temporal perspectives are inextricably interrelated and any change made in one of them will induce an alteration in the remaining two. This is exactly what Rorty is trying to achieve: to transform his compatriots’ understanding of their present by confronting them with a certain suggestive dark vision of the future they do not (or are reluctant to) imagine, and with a past they fail to recall.

SILKO, OR SELF-DISGUST As we have seen, even though Rorty, in his “Looking Backwards from the Year 2096,” finds good use for envisioning the rather gloomy events in the future history of United States, he nevertheless gives the story a relatively happy ending, something which, let me add, is consistent with his overall faith in America’s social potential. He would not see any point in limiting himself to merely criticizing the current tendencies in American politics and to the dark prophecies of imminent doom. This is demonstrated, for instance, by his remarks, presented in Achieving Our Country, on novels such as Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, which Rorty judges as overly pessimistic, resigned, and breeding cynicism rather than a healthy, that is, critical, patriotism (Rorty 1998, 4–8).7 Due to limited space I will limit myself to discussing Rorty’s interpretation of Silko’s novel, and for the very same reason I will have to abstain from assessing whether, in his reading, he is doing justice to her intricate, dense and voluminous book, whose palimpsestic and protean character is reflected, for instance, by the fact that the novel has been characterized both as intertribal metanarrative and as an instance of environmental literature (see, for example, Roppolo 2007). Let me note instead that he focuses particularly on its ethnic import and underlines the thread of reclaiming North America for its native inhabitants as well as the fact that the novel portrays Western civilization as—to borrow words from Janet St. Claire—“founded on the primacy of the individual and subsequent objectification of anything outside the ego; on the acquisition of private property by those powerful enough to seize and amass it,” and on the exploitation of “people of color” (St. Claire 1999, 207). It is important here to understand that Rorty has nothing against the empowerment of ethnic and racial minorities, and, in fact, he can be seen as an advocate of this case. Recall, for example, that the surnames of the authors of the article on fraternity, who are at the same time positive protagonists in Rorty’s text, are Patel and Rodriguez, some of the most popular Indian and Latino names, respectively. Recall, too, that when one looks at Rorty’s own pronouncements on America, with which his texts are regularly sprinkled, one cannot fail to observe that they often chastise the country for some of the same things Silko criticizes. For instance, Rorty

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insists on the need for “remembering that we [i.e., white Americans] expanded our boundaries by massacring the tribes which blocked our way, that we broke the word we had pledged in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and that we caused the death of a million Vietnamese out of sheer macho arrogance” (Rorty 1998, 32). He also does not hesitate to draw a parallel between the “Crusaders,” who justified their bloody conquests with the help of “the distinction between humans and infidel dogs,” and Thomas Jefferson, the founding father who “had convinced himself that the consciousness of blacks, like that of animals, ‘participates more of sensation than of reflection,’” and thus “was able to own slaves and think it evident that all men were endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights” (Rorty 1998, 167). On the other hand, Rorty very often objects to various ways in which the case for the emancipation of ethnic and racial minorities is handled by leftist intellectuals, and some of those ways he detects and criticizes in Almanac of the Dead. To begin with, he sees the book as pervaded by a certain Heideggerian-Foucauldian bias according to which, as a product of Western modernity, American culture is, in its essence, permeated by a spirit of ruthless domination. This judgment nota bene has been vigorously protested by Timothy Parrish, who argues that what in fact motivates the critical dynamic of Almanac is the history of the oppression of Native Americans rather than the ideas of some European philosophers (see Rorty 1998, 125). Parrish’s reaction, however, is exaggerated to the extent that instead of trying to cast a shadow of doubt on Silko’s intellectual independence, Rorty here merely wants to stress a certain similarity between her approach and those of Heidegger and Foucault. All three of them believe that there is such a thing as the essence of the West in general and that there is something deeply wrong with it. Thus, Heidegger dramatizes the whole history of the West as a process of forgetting about Being—a certain “downward escalator” (Rorty 1991, 28), at one of whose ends towers the figure of Plato, while at the other spreads “the wasteland” of modernity, “the age of the world picture” (Heidegger 1968, 29, 1977, 115). This age is defined by its callous, self-destructive logic of technological and economical conquest by proliferating nuclear warheads and muffling “the song of the earth” at the same time (see Rorty 1991, 40, 26, 175). Heidegger had no doubts that the maladies of modernity cannot be remedied by any of its products, especially by its political ideologies, and it is probably this conviction that led him to utter his infamous gnome “only a god can save us” (Rorty 1993, 107). While not so much concerned with the forgetfulness of Being and not prone to laying his hopes on a god, Foucault, was, at least on Rorty’s reading, as harsh a critic of modernity as was Heidegger, subverting its self-congratulatory narrative of “progress” by portraying modernity’s development instead as a gradual implementation of Bentham’s idea of the Panopticon, as an ever wider and deeper spreading of the regimes of control and normalization (see, for example, Foucault 1979). “No shackles have been broken in the past two hundred years: the harsh old chains have merely been replaced with slightly more comfortable ones” (Rorty 1998, 7). This judgment, as far as Rorty sees it, makes of Foucault an exceptionally ungrateful child of modernity, and the point here is not merely that Foucault was oblivious to the fact

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that modernity had indeed broken many chains, but in addition, had it not done so, Foucault would not have been able to pursue his own quest for ethical self-styling; he could not have become “the knight of autonomy” that he was (Rorty 1991, 194).8 Foucault’s ungratefulness is only exacerbated by his treating the West in the same way as Heidegger and Silko do: as a homogenous entity with some fixed essence of which all the different stages of Western history are inevitable consequences, modernity being the most deplorable of them (Rorty 1998, 7–8). The problem here is that if we believe that the whole Western culture necessarily follows a certain condemnable logic, not only can we not find anything worth saving in it, which to Rorty is an absurd consequence in itself, but we (that is, those who have been exposed to the West’s corrosive influence, including Silko herself) cannot even imagine what the world would look like without it, and a fortiori deprive ourselves of the capacity for projecting utopias. The reason is that, according to the belief we are concerned with here, the logic of modernity so integrally structures our thoughts that it permeates even those which are meant to escape it, and therefore, as Foucault put it (in a phrase reminiscent of Adorno): “to imagine another system is to extend our participation in the present system” (Foucault 1977, 230). Given the above, it comes as no surprise that Silko’s indictments are not balanced by, nor even juxtaposed with, an appreciation of anything positive in America and its history, something which, in Rorty’s view, not only flies in the face of facts (What about such undeniable achievements of American society as Brown v. Board of Education and Romer v. Evans?), but, more importantly, renders all her social criticism vain—assuming, of course, that we see the aim of such criticism as effecting positive changes in our current social setting and not just in being critical for its own sake (see Rorty 1998, 5–8). Consider the following analogy. We can all agree that selfcriticism is a conditio sine qua non of personal development, and if this conviction needs any philosophical support, we can find it, for instance, in Socrates’s interpretation of the Delphic injunction to “know thyself,” where knowing oneself basically meant criticizing one’s own claims to knowledge and virtue and was supposed to lead to an enlightening awareness of one’s cognitive and ethical limitations. Yet, as the pragmatist philosopher Richard Shusterman reminds us, besides Γνώθι σεαυτόν there was another, lesser known, inscription on the walls of the temple in Delphi, which complemented the former and said, in an appropriately laconic fashion: “Nothing too much” (see Shusterman 2009, 33). Indeed, if self-criticism is not balanced by “self-respect,” by an appreciation of something positive in ourselves (even if it be merely our capacity for self-criticism or for knowing that we do not know), then instead of developing into better individuals, we have a fine chance of becoming bitter ones, of descending into fruitless and fatalistic rumination (Rorty 1998, 3). The same account applies to nations, Rorty argues. Each needs its own gadflies and accusers. Each needs to be reminded of the atrocities it has committed. But if a swarm of gadflies overshadows anything and everything in a nation’s history that its members can be proud of, then this situation naturally leads to self-disgust (Rorty 1998, 3–4). And that is precisely how Rorty describes Almanac—which is after all a book written by an American on America—as a novel of “self-disgust” (Rorty 1998,

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6). While these undeniably are harsh words, we may grant Rorty that they do find confirmation in Silko’s portrayal of the United States, which practically boils down to a hypertrophic gallery of monstrosities; monstrosities which, in turn, function partly as justification for the violent end of America and partly as indicators that the apocalypse is drawing near. There are, to begin with, “corrupt,” racist “judges” (Romero 2002, 631; and cf. for example, Silko 1992, 461), the Congress that does “nothing for the poor” (Silko 1992, 630), the American government that is either unwilling to acknowledge and alleviate the plight of the indigenous peoples or is indeed positively intent on contributing to it, for instance, by locating uranium mines in “National Sacrifice Zones,” which happen “to coincide with the boundaries of Indian reservations” (Reed 2009, 39; cf. Chang 2005). Then there is the culture of death permeating the media and the whole spectrum of art, of which clinical cases are, as Bridget O’Meara points out, “the ‘snuff films’ that” one of the protagonists “so enjoys,” and the necrophilitic and sadistic “talk shows” in which another participates (for example, O’Meara 2000, 67). These definitely add yet another semantic layer to what Rorty means by the self-disgust that Silko’s Almanac indulges in, and the following passages should clarify what that layer is: Films of the late abortions were far more popular than those of early embryo stages. The forceps appeared as a giant dragon head opening and closing in search of a morsel. By the tiny light of the microcamera, the uterine interior resembled a vast ballroom that has been draped all around in glossy-red silks and velvets of burgundy and lilac. The best operators got it all in one piece by finding the skull and crushing it. Beaufrey had viewed hundreds of hours of film searching for atypical or pathological abortions because the collectors who bought films of abortions and surgeries preferred blood and mess. There was a steady, lucrative demand for films of sex-change operations, though most interest has been in males becoming females. For videotapes of sodomy rapes and strangulations, teenage “actors” from a local male-escort service had “acted” the victims’ roles. (Silko 1992, 102)

This hunger for death is met in the United States by the proliferation of all sorts of “mass murderers,” who, as is eagerly noted in the novel, “were always white men with educations and good jobs, even families” (Silko 1992, 211–212). And since we have arrived at the subject of criminality, one also cannot overlook how a salient part in the book is played by detailed depictions of merciless mechanisms of drug and gun trafficking, and of how these mechanisms penetrate different strata of American society (see, for example, Silko 1992, 177–179, 185–187, 196–199, 458–459). Yet even those business enterprises depicted in the novel that are formally legal, at least on their surface, can leave no positive impression on the reader. The entrepreneurs of America are mainly busy exploiting the poor (“literally draining blood” from them); if they do not happen to devastate the natural environment at the moment (for instance by draining all the water from a given area), and, as Rebecca Tillet observes, they are helped in both cases by scientists (Tillet 2005, 157; cf. Brigham

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2004). Science not only assists others in the business of systematic exploitation and obliteration, but itself pursues it on a plethora of levels, with its list of crimes including, among others, the stealing from Laguna people—either ordered or actually performed by “a ring of anthropologists”—of the stone figures of their ancestors (“the little grandparents”), not to mention devising weapons of mass destruction (Silko 1992, 31–32; cf. Tillet 2005, 157). This, then, is contemporary America, but its history is not a bucolic picture either. It reduces to a trajectory of oppression stretching from the founding acts of stealing the Native Americans’ land (see Silko 1992, 133, cf. 702), through the systematically orchestrated genocide of their tribes (on which, notably, many white fortunes were built. See Silko 1992, 80, 214, 742) and the institution of slavery (see Silko 1992, 315, 406, 414–419), to less overt, yet still effective, forms of oppression such as forcing Native American children to attend boarding schools and therefore separating those children from their environment, natural and cultural alike (see Silko 1992, 27, 87–88, 95, 121). Needless to say, all these acts were designed and/or committed by white people, which brings us to the fact that in Almanac, Silko conceives of the United States mainly as the invention and estate of “the white man,” and that the apocalypse she prophesies spells the reclaiming of their land by native tribes and the erasure of all present borders (of all borders, to be exact, since “draw[ing] lines” is “the behavior of Europeans”9) along with sociopolitical institutions contained therein. In a word, it is the end of the United States. Indeed, of “all things European” (Silko 1992, 14). Those who share Silko’s views, bridles Rorty, “begin to think of themselves as a saving remnant—as the happy few who have the insight to see through nationalistic rhetoric to the ghastly reality of contemporary America. But this insight does not move them to formulate a legislative program, to join a political movement, or to share in a national hope” (Rorty 1998, 7–8).

ORWELL, OR THE GOOD PESSIMISM Rorty’s take on Silko’s Almanac should give us another hint as to why he concluded his own dark political fiction of America’s future in a consoling tone. Yet someone may ask here: If it is really the case that he discards those narratives of the future that do not leave open any brighter perspective, then why does Rorty so appreciate Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which has, after all, been spoken of as an emanation of its author’s “quasi-mystical pessimism” (see Deutscher 1971, 37)? In solving this apparent contradiction we receive fortunate help from Rorty himself, who approaches head-on “the accusations of ‘masochistic despair’ and ‘cynical hopelessness’” leveled against the book (Rorty 1989, 175). To begin with, he divides Orwell’s book into two parts, each of which he praises for a different thing. According to Rorty, the value of the first part (roughly first two-thirds of the work) lies in the fact that it makes us aware that the basic political vocabulary of the West (whose key

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elements are terms like “capitalism” and “socialism”) had become obsolete and useless already by the time Orwell wrote the book, and yet no substitute was available back then (not to mention the fact that no such substitute has so far emerged since then). Seen from this perspective, Orwell, in his dystopian narrative, is not so much indulging in masochistic despair as exercising healthy realism, and henceforth all the aforementioned “accusations . . . will fall flat unless somebody comes up with new scenarios” and political vocabularies (Rorty 1989, 175). The second part of the book, which Rorty labels “proscriptive,” in contrast to the first, descriptive part, serves a different purpose. By providing a detailed picture of the domain of Big Brother, particularly of his functionaries such as O’Brien, it illuminates that it is not impossible that the same developments which had made human equality technically possible might make endless slavery possible . . . that nothing in the nature of truth, or man, or history [is] going to block that scenario, any more than it was going to underwrite the scenario which liberals had been using between the wars. He [Orwell] convinced us that all the intellectual and poetic gifts which had made Greek philosophy, modern science, and Romantic poetry possible might someday find employment in the Ministry of Truth. (Rorty 1989, 175–176)

The frequent use of the word “possible” in this excerpt, as well as in the whole chapter of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity from which it comes, points us to another feature which makes the pessimism of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four palatable for Rorty, and at the same time distinguishes it from the “self-disgust” of Silko’s Almanac of the Dead. While Silko presents her imagined apocalyptic future as something that must necessarily happen, Orwell satisfies himself with pointing out that it “may just happen” (due to factors “as contingent, as a comet, or a virus”) that the year 1984 will look a certain really bad way (Rorty 1989, 185, 183). Importantly, by succeeding in making this “possibility” look “plausible,” not only does Orwell alert his readers to a future danger (at the same time not precluding that it may be avoided), but also enables them to adopt a historicist view of their past (Rorty 1989, 176). After all, if the best “intellectual gifts” (Rorty 1989, 187) of human beings can be reconciled with the totalitarian world whose emblem is “the boot stamping on a human face—forever” (Orwell 2003 [1949], 277), and in which “torture” serves as the highest form of art the intelligentsia “enjoy[s]” (Rorty 1989, 187), it means that they do not necessarily entail the culture of human rights of which the West is so proud. Rather, one should treat that culture as a product of “a lot of small contingent facts” (Rorty 1989, 188); to use Rorty’s own metaphor, it is a fragile “cherry blossom which we are” (Rorty 1991, 37), and not something that simply must have emerged due to the internal logic of Western nature and bound to have a bright future. In fact, as he puts it in an interview, referring to two philosophies he is close to, “neither Dewey nor weak thought imply that history is on our side, or that there is any necessary force that’s going to cause a good outcome. On the contrary, there are nine chances out of ten that things will go to hell” (Rorty 2005, 41).

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CONCLUSION For Rorty, then, narratives of the dark future are only useful when they are pervaded by a sense of contingency of the events they describe. Because if they are not—if, for instance, they engage in teleology in the manner of Silko—they are likely, if taken seriously, to engender a disheartening resignation in their audience. And what they are particularly useful for, due to the uniquely long-term perspective they put forward with a vividness no other genre of writing allows, is to help us foresee and take seriously the negative consequences of some of our present decisions, actions, and ideas. Brave New World, for instance, is, for Rorty, “still the best introduction to political philosophy—shows us what sort of human future would be produced by a naturalism untempered by historicist Romance, and by a politics aimed merely at alleviating mammalian pain” (Rorty 2000b, 189). This is why, says Rorty, this 1932 book makes so enormous a “difference . . . to our students” that we are “tempted . . . to tell students in our courses in moral and political theory who have not read it to do so before the next class” (Rorty 2001a, 222). While it is uncertain whether eighty years from now the same will be said of Rorty’s narratives and of his philosophy as a whole (in all modesty, the man himself seemed to doubt that), I am sure his thoughts on how to spin dark stories are definitely worth considering today, when, as a consequence of all sorts of crises, from the environmental to the financial one, doom and gloom seems to have become our favorite sport.

NOTES 1. Note that the present chapter was written and submitted for publication in this volume in 2015, and obviously could not take into consideration the relevant literature that appeared later, including Bernstein’s 2019 essay “The Dark Years.” 2. See Suvin 1979, 61; cf. Jameson 2005, xiv. Note that this view is not universally endorsed by scholars in the field and has even come under serious criticism. In his insightful article “Modernity as a Project and as Self-Criticism,” Gregory Paschalidis goes as far as to argue that “it is, rather, science fiction that seems to be the novelistic subgenre of postEnlightenment utopian thought” (Paschalidis 2000, 44). 3. Note that Daniel S. Malachuk classifies Rorty’s text as a “jeremiad” (Malachuk 2000, 112). 4. It is also worth noting that this book has a non-fictional counterpart. See Fox and Kloppenberg 1995. 5. As Malachuk observes, “This scenario is described in Michael Lind’s book, The Next American Nation, which Rorty reviewed favorably in 1996” (Malachuk 2000, 112). 6. To the potential objection that Rorty is a well-known atheist, or anticlerical, and thus there can be no place for religion in his liberal utopia, let me respond that in his later writings, Rorty changed his earlier, quite negative, views on religion. Briefly put, he granted religion a place in the public sphere under the condition that it supports social solidarity. See Rorty 2003; cf. Małecki 2011b. Significantly, the only specific form of religion that is mentioned in “Looking Backward from the Year 2096” (aside from the fact that we know Cynthia

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Rodriguez to be a Jesuit) is Walter Rauschenbusch’s social gospel movement. Note that Rorty was Rauschenbusch’s grandson (see Gross 2008, 16). On Rorty and Rauschenbusch see also Blake. 7. See, however, Rorty’s “Hope and Future” (Rorty 2002), where he expresses his admiration for Stephenson as a novelist, and presents a more sympathetic reading of the Snow Crash, the novel he describes as “a reasonably plausible extrapolation from current trends” (Rorty 2002, 152). 8. For a critique of Rorty’s interpretation of Foucault’s views on modernity, see Koopman 2010. For a comprehensive account of Rorty’s interpretation of Foucault’s work in general, see Małecki 2011a. 9. Silko made this remark in an interview given to Ellen L. Arnold (Arnold 1998, 172; Cf. Silko 1992, 216).

REFERENCES Adamson, Joni. 2001. American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism: The Middle Place. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Alkon, Paul K. 1994. Science Fiction Before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology. New York: Twayne. Arnold, Ellen L. 2000. “Introduction.” In Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko. Edited by Ellen L. Arnold. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Bellamy, Edward. 2007. Looking Backward, 2000–1887. Edited by Matthew Beaumont. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bernstein, Richard J. 2008. “Richard Rorty’s Deep Humanism.” New Literary History 39: 13–27. ———. 2019. “The Dark Years.” Pragmatism Today. Special Issue on Rorty and American Politics, ed. by Wojciech Małecki and John Giordano.10 (1): 9–15. Blake, Casey Nelson. 2000. “Private Life and Public Commitment: From Walter Rauschenbusch to Richard Rorty.” In A Pragmatist’s Progress? Richard Rorty and American Intellectual History. Edited by John Pettegrew. Lanham, MD.: Rowman & Littlefield. Brigham, Ann. 2004. “Productions of Geographic Scale and Capitalist-Colonialist Enterprise in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 50: 303–331. Chang, Yueh-chen. 2005. “Between Apocalyptic Violence and Cosmpolitan Spirit(s): Waging Justice War in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.” NTU Humanitas Taiwanica 63: 271–295. Deutscher, Isaac. 1971. “1984—The Mysticism of Cruelty.” In Twentieth Century Interpretations of 1984: A Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by Samuel Hynes. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Foucault, Michel. 1977. “Revolutionary Action: ‘Until Now’.” In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Edited by Donald F. Bouchard, 218–233. Translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books. Głowiński, Michał. 1977. “On the First-Person Novel.” Translated by Rochelle Stone. New Literary History 9, no. 1: 103–114.

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Gross, Neil. 2008. Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1968. What Is Called Thinking? Translated by J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1993. ‘“Only a God Can Save Us.” Der Spiegel’s Interview with Martin Heidegger.” Translated by Maria P. Alter and John D. Caputo. In The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader. Edited by Richard Wolin, 91–116. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jameson, Fredric. 2005. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso. Koopman, Colin. 2010. “Revising Foucault: The History and Critique of Modernity.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 36: 545–565. Malachuk, Daniel S. 2000. “‘Loyal to a Dream Country’: Republicanism and the Pragmatism of William James and Richard Rorty.” Journal of American Studies 34: 89–113. Małecki, Wojciech. 2009. “Ascetic Priests and O’Briens: Sadism and Masochism in Rorty’s Writings.” Angelaki: The Journal of Theoretical Humanities 14, no. 3: 101–115. ———. 2011a. “‘If Happiness Is Not the Aim of Politics, then What Is?’ Rorty versus Foucault.” Foucault Studies 11: 106–125. ———. 2011b. “‘The Unforced Flowers of Life?’: Rorty on Religion and Literature.” In Identity and Social Transformation: Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume Five. Edited by John Ryder and Radim Šíp, 229–240. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. Mogen, David. 2005. “Native American Visions of Apocalypse: Prophecy and Protest in the Fiction of Leslie Marmon Silko and Gerald Vizenor.” In American Mythologies: Essays on Contemporary Culture. Edited by William Blazek and Michael K. Glenday, 157–167. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. O’Meara, Bridget. 2000. “The Ecological Politics of Leslie Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.” Wicazo Sa Review 15, no. 2: 63–73. Orwell, George. 2003 [1949]. Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel. New York: Plume. Paschalidis, Gregory. 2000. “Modernity as a Project and as Self-Criticism.” In Science Fiction, Critical Frontiers. Edited by Karen Sayer and John Moore, 35–47. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Reed, T.V. 2009. “Toxic Colonialism, Environmental Justice, and Native Resistance in Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.” MELUS 34, no. 2: 25–42. Romero, Channette. 2002. “Envisioning a ‘Network of Tribal Coalitions: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.” American Indian Quarterly 26, no. 4: 623–640. Roppolo, Kimberly. 2007. “Vision, Voice, and Intertribal Metanarrative: The American Indian Visual-Rhetorical Tradition and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.” The American Indian Quarterly 31, no. 4: 534–558. Rorty, Richard. 1981. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991. Essays on Heidegger and Others. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Philosophy and Social Hope. London: Penguin. ———. 2000a. “Is ‘Cultural Recognition’ a Useful Concept for Leftist Politics?” Critical Horizons 1, no. 1: 7–20.

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———. 2000b. “Response to Brandom.” In Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert B. Brandom, 183–190. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ———. 2001. “Response to Matthew Festenstein.” In Richard Rorty: Critical Dialogues. Edited by Matthew Festenstein and Simon, 219–222. Thompson. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2002. “Hope and the Future.” Peace Review 14, no. 12: 149–155. ———. 2003. “Religion in the Public Square.” Journal of Religious Ethics 31, no. 1: 141–149. ———. 2005. Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself. Interviews with Richard Rorty. Edited by Eduardo Mendieta. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2006. “Pragmatism as Anti-authoritarianism.” In Companion to Pragmatism. Edited by John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis, 257–266. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ———. 2007. Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers Volume 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shusterman, Richard. 2009. “Self-Knowledge and Its Discontents.” Philosophy of Education Archive, 25–37. Silko, Leslie Marmon. 1992. Almanac of the Dead: A Novel. Third Edition. New York: Penguin Books. ———. 1998. “Listening to the Spirits: An Interview with Leslie Marmon Silko.” Interview by Ellen Arnold. Studies in American Indian Literature 10, no. 3: 1–33. St. Clair, Janet. 1999. “Cannibal Queers: The Problematics of Metaphor in Almanac of the Dead.” In Leslie Marmon Silko: A Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by Louise K. Barnett and James L. Thorson, 207–221. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Suvin, Darko. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science-Fiction. New Haven: Yale University Press. Tillett, Rebecca. 2005. “Reality Consumed by Realty: The Ecological Costs of ‘Development’ in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.” European Journal of American Culture 24, no. 2: 153–169.

3 Only a God Can Save Us Richard Rorty’s Philosophy of Social Hope beyond Secularism Roman Madzia

INTRODUCTION To anyone who has ever studied Rorty, there must be something at least suspicious in seeing a sentence (not to say a chapter title) that includes his name and the word “God” but does not contain a negative. Yet, in the following chapter, I am going to take up the daring project of proposing how it is possible to talk about God and religion after Rorty. More specifically, I will try to show that even though Rorty was right in his critique of philosophy, understood as epistemology, he was, perhaps, a little too hasty in contending that religion and religious discourse represent a danger to democracy as well as to overall human social progress. In the first part, I will focus on the common characteristics of both philosophy and Christian religion that were subjected to insightful criticism by Rorty over the decades. Subsequently, I will analyze certain features of Christianity that Rorty finds most troublesome. Second, I will show how we can rethink Christianity in a way which is in accordance with Rorty’s vision of philosophy and society. Moreover, I will outline how Christianity can reinforce certain elements of Rorty’s thought to which he was not always faithful in his writings. Along with writers like Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty made the intellectual public of the late twentieth century, perhaps more unambiguously than anyone before, face the disconcerting reality of the end of the modern age. What is peculiar to Rorty’s work is that he applied the Lyotardian incredulity to the grand récits of the Enlightenment along with the big story of Philosophy itself. He was the one who, in the realm of analytic philosophy, most loudly stated that philosophy, the emperor of sciences—as we knew it for centuries—is naked. It is especially due to this move that Rorty, once a promising 43

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representative of the analytic mainstream, became its unwanted child. From Rorty’s viewpoint, if we intend to remain intelectually honest and take seriously the work of Heidegger, later Wittgenstein and the pragmatists (especially Dewey), the Kantian picture of philosophy as epistemology or as a critique of knowledge, playing the role of some kind of “intellectual police sent into the world to supervise and regulate the workings of reason” (Caputo 2006a, 29) in various areas of the human life, is no longer tenable. Metaphorically speaking, most of Rorty’s work is dedicated to answering the question of what it takes for a culture such as ours to cease writing its most sacred words (reason, knowledge, moral duty, law, etc.), so to speak, “with capital letters.” To date, most of the commentaries and interpretations of Rorty’s work have attempted to advance constructively and/or analyze this unprecedented project of intellectual transition from multifarious points of view. In what follows, I would like to focus on questions which, thus far, have not been paid sufficient attention: (1) Is atheism a necessary upshot of Rorty’s philosophy?; (2) Is religion possible after Rorty, and if at all, by what means?; (3) Is there anything religion (Christianity) can offer to reinforce Rorty’s philosophy?

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION—A COMMON FATE? If we look at the development of Western thinking, it is difficult not to notice that philosophical and religious thought go pretty much hand in hand. Both of these disciplines deal with questions of the nature of reality, morality, our origins and destiny. In other words, each in its own right tries to provide answers to what Paul Tillich called the issues of “ultimate concern” (Tillich 1959, 57). The common paths of philosophical and religious thought began to diverge at the start of the Enlightenment when philosophy, understood as pure and presupositionless reflection of the Real, seized the intellectual throne in the West claiming the role of the “Ultimate Judge” over the various spheres of culture, with regard to deciding which of them touches the ultimate nature of things. Especially in the nineteenth century, religion had to deal with a series of shocks brought about by the work of the “three masters of suspicion” who described religion either as a false antidote to the misery of poverty (Karl Marx), a psychological illusion (Sigmund Freud), or as an expression of resentment against the power of the strong (Friedrich Nietzsche). These great atheistic critiques of religion ought to be seen as moves within the Kantian conceptual landscape in which it is Reason, or rational (philosophical) criticism of the various parts of the culture, that should be regarded as the ultimate measure of what is real and, hence, eventually also worth dedicating one’s life to. Rorty holds that modern philosophy inherited the religious attitude in that “it was the area of culture where one touched bottom, where one found the vocabulary and the convictions which permitted one to explain and justify one’s activity . . . and thus to discover the significance of one’s life” (Rorty 1979, 4). In the concluding chapter of the Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty, referring to Sartre’s existentialism, equates such an attitude with

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inauthentic mode of human existence, in which we try to find the meaning of our existence in something outside ourselves and our community, in something that is imposed on us from above (Rorty 1979, 375–377). What counts in the attitude of the modern individual, counts also, according to Rorty, for modern society as a whole: “The idea that it [culture] ought to have foundations was a result of Enlightenment scientism, which was in turn a survival of the religious need to have human projects underwritten by a nonhuman authority” (Rorty 1989, 52). Philosophy and religion are not, in Rorty’s view, that much different. Sometimes, he even goes as far as to accuse post-Cartesian epistemology as well as the scientific “quest for certainty” of simply being secularized versions of religion.1 Rorty was (along with Nietzsche, Dewey, and Heidegger) one of the very few philosophers to have recognized that the modern project of presupositionless epistemology and rational critique of religion (Kant), in fact, turns out to be another instance of the age-old search for the “metaphysical comfort” provided by religion in the past. Yet, if we try to get back to the critical theory of religion (Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, Geertz, etc.), we will notice here an interesting ambiguity which, for that matter, also seeps through to Rorty’s own work. In the texts of the aforementioned great atheists, religion is reproached for constructing illusory prospects of an afterlife which prevent men from addressing the real causes of their miseries and which eventually diverts their attention from today’s problems and injustices toward an eternity which will never come. On top of that, this sort of false certainty is, eventually, likely to lead either to some sort of implicit religious narcissism (including disdain or indifference to nonbelievers) or, worse yet, to violence when believers try to impose their views on others. On the other hand, even the most brilliant critics of religion never denied that religiosity brings into our experience elements which, by themselves, are positive and conducive to human well-being, such as hope (see Smith 2005, 76). I propose to read Rorty’s philosophy as unfolding along these lines. In other words, we can view his work as offering us two possible outlooks on religion: (1) Even though Rorty neither shares nor admires the vulgar atheistic materialism of the New Atheists (Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris), he can be described as a straightforward atheist whose philosophy can, and in fact should, be seen as a merciless and systematic critique of the most fundamental presuppositions of religion (especially Christianity); and (2) although ideas defended by Rorty do indeed undermine our conventional notions of religion, they do not undermine religion as such. As I would like to argue, these ideas enable us to redescribe some of the most crucial religious notions in a way which, in fact, can make religion more authentic and conducive to nurturing democratic cultural politics. Rorty’s philosophy can be first and foremost described as a strict anti-Platonism. Like Dewey, Rorty simply does not believe that the human practice of uttering specific kinds of sentences (namely, those ascribable with truth values) is any closer to reality than any other practice humans do in order to cope with their environment. The only measure of the adequacy of a given practice is whether or not it serves our goal-specific purposes: “If ideas, meanings, conceptions, notions, theories, systems

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are instrumental to an active reorganization of the given environment, to a removal of some specific trouble and perplexity, then the test of their validity and value lies in accomplishing this work. If they succeed in their office, they are reliable, sound, valid, good, true” (Dewey 1920, 156). According to Rorty, a pragmatist can make no sense of the question about which vocabulary is closer to reality, simply because she doesn’t know what could possibly count as an answer: “It is impossible to step outside our skins—the traditions, linguistic and other, within which we do our thinking and self-criticism—and compare ourselves with something absolute” (Rorty 1982, xix). Platonism, according to Rorty, is not a characteristic of philosophy exclusively, but of the entire Western culture in which various practices and discursive coalitions try to legitimize their existence by claiming to be in contact with the way things really are: “We are the heirs of this objectivist tradition, which centers around the assumption that we must step outside our community long enough to examine it in the light of something which transcends it, namely, that which it has in common with every other actual and possible human community” (Rorty 1991, 22). The objectivist claims of the post-Platonist metaphysics, which have been unreflectively adopted by crucial branches of our culture (science, law, politics, etc.), are, for Rorty, an instance of the will to power which leans toward hegemonizing the public discourse and must, therefore, be opposed: Scientific realism and religious fundamentalism are products of the same urge. The attempt to convince people that they have a duty to develop what Bernard Williams calls an “absolute conception of reality” is, from a Tillichian or Jamesian point of view, of a piece with the attempt to live “for God only,” and to insist that others do so also. Both scientific realism and religious fundamentalism are private projects which have got out of hand. They are attempts to make one’s own private way of giving meaning to one’s own life—a way which romanticizes one’s relation to something starkly and magnificently nonhuman, something Ultimately True and Real—obligatory for the general public. (Rorty 1999, 157)

If we relate Rorty’s stringent opposition against Platonism to religion, and, more specifically Christianity, it is not difficult to diagnose which feature of Christianity is, for him, especially unacceptable. Similar to other more or less cognitively exclusivist discourses, it is the Christian agenda of finding justification in the epistemological realm, which is allegedly situated beyond language, culture, and history, in the domain of the Absolute (Revelation, authority of the church) that Rorty finds suspicious. Following the inferentialism of his former student, Robert Brandom, Rorty holds that we can only justify our propositions by other propositions,2 not by reference to language-independent reality, whatever that might mean: “To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations. Truth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there” (Rorty 1989, 5). Moreover, taken from the Rortyan viewpoint, Christianity indicates multiple

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characteristics of metaphysical Platonism, be it the dualism of the mundane life and the afterlife, the sacred and the secular, or the dualism between “real knowledge” and mere opinion. The essentialist conceptual background of traditional religious discourses led him, at one point, to call religion a “conversation-stopper.”3 As soon as one of the participants of the public debate starts referring to authorities that lack either (1) propositional structure (mystical experience, insight into the nature of reality, etc.), or (2) the public consensus when it comes to their overall validity, the discussion is in danger and faces a serious threat of ceasing altogether: “One good way to end a conversation—or to start an argument—is to tell a group of well-educated professionals that you hold a political position (preferably a controversial one, such as being against abortion or pornography) because it is required by our understanding of God’s will.” Shortly after, Rorty laconically adds that such an announcement “is far more likely to end a conversation than to start an argument” (Rorty 1999, 171). In other words, a vital condition for starting or advancing a democratic discussion is, according to Rorty, that all its participants must be willing to make their rhetorical moves within a shared space of reasons. Should a particular discussant refer to an instance of the supernatural, the discussion ceases not because she is wrong or does not describe reality in the right way but simply because her partner does not know what the next rhetorical move should be in order to remain within the confines of liberal-democratic discourse. Thus, as we can see, with respect to religion, Rorty is primarily opposed to its strong, metaphysical variant, which he calls simply “theism” (Rorty 2005). To be fair, in accordance with his own notion of “romantic polytheism” (Rorty 1999, 267), it should be stressed that he has nothing in particular against “theism” as such, as long as it remains a private narrative project and does not try to penetrate the public sphere following the discursive rules of liberal democracy.4 Coming from the United States, Rorty was deeply troubled by numerous attempts of various religious groups to usurp, piece by piece, certain domains of the public sphere. Even though in his earlier writings he had identified himself with atheism, recognizing the metaphysical-ladenness of such a term, in his later work Rorty tended to underscore the political and social dimension of his position calling himself a “religiously unmusical anti-clericalist” (Rorty 2005, 29–42). As I stated above, Rorty’s philosophy should be viewed as an attempt to bring about an unprecedented intellectual transformation of Western metaphysical culture. To this end, science, law, and politics (among others) need to quit trying to legitimize their existence by invoking various forms of certainty. In his 2005 Turin public lecture, entitled Ethics for Today, Rorty calls the religious quest for certainty “fundamentalism” (Rorty 2011, 11). In this talk, Rorty reacted to some of the statements presented by Joseph Ratzinger at a Conclave opening homily, shortly before Ratzinger was elected the new Pope. In his homily, Ratzinger expressed his concerns about the current intellectual climate in the West which is, on the one hand, characterized by “the dictate of relativism,” giving preference exclusively to one’s subjective desires, and, on the other, by defaming devoted Christians and referring to them as

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“fundamentalists.” Rorty, who himself had been labelled various names throughout his career, is fully aware of the downright innacuracies that such an oversimplifying discourse yields. At the same time, he realized that it would be preposterous to call Ratzinger, one of the most accomplished theologians of our day, a fundamentalist. It is, however, likewise preposterous, Rorty argues, to define relativism as a doctrine holding that every moral statement is as good as any other. No serious thinker, says Rorty, has ever tried to defend such a position (see Rorty 1982, 166–167). In contrast to Ratzinger’s somewhat coarse-grained distinction, Rorty defines fundamentalism as the “view that ideals are valid only when grounded in reality,” and relativists, in turn, as those “who believe that we would be better off without such notions as unconditional moral obligations grounded in the structure of human existence” (Rorty 2011, 11). In Rorty’s opinion, Ratzinger’s axiological position is, to a great extent, reflective of the basic dilemma of our culture—namely, the question of how to provide a justification for our moral judgments and beliefs. Can we ground them in God? In natural law? Or science? Or is it the case that morality is, at the end of the day, completely arbitrary and everything is, therefore, permitted? Rorty was convinced that this way of posing the question presents us with a false dilemma and, consequently, also prevents us from adressing the issue of values and the validity of moral judgments in any reasonable way. The fact that we cannot make sense of the notion of an absolutely independent moral criterion, by reference to which all moral judgments could be assessed, does not yet mean that any particular moral judgment is as good as any other. Values, according to his view, can be stratified into more and less desirable ones, based on the answers we give to the question about to what extent the various values are conducive to enlarging the amount of human happiness. We have no other moral obligations except helping one another satisfy our desires, thus achieving the greatest possible amount of happiness (see, for example, Rorty 1999, 154). Rorty was, therefore, a utilitarian. Rorty also agreed with Santayana in that he regarded moral ideals as a product of human imagination: “Santayana’s claim that imagination is a good enough source of for the ideal led him to say that religion and poetry are identical in essence. . . . He used the word ‘religion’ in an equally large sense to include political idealism, aspirations to make the life of a community radically different, radically better than it had been before” (Rorty 2011, 9). Therefore, from the Rortyan perspective, it is not important whether the crucial concepts of this or that discourse refer to something “out there,” but whether or not they are “culturally desirable” (Smith 2005, 80), which is to say, to what extent they contribute to the overall moral and social progress.

POSTMODERNISM, IRONY, RELIGION If, as I was trying to argue above, philosophy and religion share much the same fate and content, Rorty was probably too quick to maintain that our culture would be

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better-off without religion altogether (See, for example, Rorty 1998, 32, 95). In fact, if his philosophy is an attempt to reconstruct philosophy into some sort of cultural politics, why shouldn’t we try to do the same thing to religion?5 If Rorty, along with Heidegger, Derrida, and others, wants to rid philosophy of onto-theology, why does he want to preserve philosophy (in some form) but not religion? I’m convinced that given the kinship between philosophy and religion, if we follow Rorty’s line of critique of philosophy and apply it to religion, then we can end up with a transformed notion of religion which is beneficial for Rorty’s own intellectual project. The aspect of philosophy that Rorty wanted to do away with is “onto-theology,” in our context: the presupposition that our theories and other intellectual constructions have an “Ultimate Referent” (whatever that might be). If philosophy can get rid of this claim, it can be tranformed into cultural politics which can play an important role in nurturing democratic societies. At the same time, Rorty seems to have neglected the question of what would happen if we do the same to religion. It is, after all, the understanding of philosophy and religion in terms of onto-theology that makes philosophy a bunch of “unanswerable questions” and theology a bunch of “unquestionable answers” (Caputo 2006a, 8). As Rorty had been pointing out throughout his career, in the work of thinkers like Nietzsche, Dewey, and Wittgenstein, the strong metaphysical notions of Truth, God, and Morality were unmasked as expressions of “the will to power,” practices of legitimization of the existing social order, or linguistic confusions. Should we, however, stay on the level of this sort of unmasking, which William James, in his Varieties of Religious Experience, aptly called the “nothing but” arguments (James 2010 [1902], 12), we would still be in danger of adopting the modern (and, hence, metaphysically laden) attitude of overcoming which tends to replace one exclusive description of reality with another. As John D. Caputo argues, exactly this kind of failure was commited by the “masters of suspicion” themselves: What the contemporary post-Nitzschean lovers of God, religion, and religious faith took away from Nietzsche was that psychoanalysis (Freud), the unyielding laws of dialectical materialism (Marx), and to will to power itself (Nietzsche) are also perspectives, also constructions, or fictions of grammar. They are also just so many contingent ways of construing the world under contingent circumstances that eventually outlive their usefulness when circumstances change. (Caputo 2001, 59)

Rorty would, undoubtedly, agree with such a statement. All these great products of human intellect are, in fact, private existential and poetic projects, none of which is closer to reality than any other and none of which offers us, to paraphrase Stanley Cavell, a possibility that one among many descriptions of us will eventually tell us who we are (see Cavell 1979, 398). Instead of the Carnapian logic of “overcoming” (Überwindung), Rorty wants to adopt the Heideggerian attitude of Verwindung, that is, “getting over,” or leaving aside, the metaphysical tradition and the problems it generates, partly by recognizing the fact of our inescapable belonging to it. The metaphysical tradition is, in the first place, something we have to accept in order

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that we may grow out of it. As Gianni Vattimo notes, this sort of acceptance takes up the form of “piety” ( pietas) which acknowledges our rootedness in the tradition, although we currently inhabit only its ruins (Vattimo 1988, 175–176). Verwindung and piety are both outcomes of the tradition that has reached its limits, collapsed under its own gravity, and which leaves us facing the nihilistic situation in which “there is nothing left of Being as such” (Vattimo 1988, 20). The nihilistic culture “after the death of God” is a world without foundations, a world in which there are no facts, just interpretations. Following Nietzsche, both Vattimo and Rorty agree that the current nihilistic situation of our culture is the outcome of the process of the “weakening of Being,” that is, a series of negations of strong metaphysics that has the potential of transforming the self-understanding of philosophy from its obsession with metaphysics and truth to a strictly interpretative exercise which enables us to re-imagine and re-define ourselves and our society in new ways. In that respect, the current nihilistic cultural situation, in which we have found ourselves and which Rorty has called “irony,” is positive in nature. If, as Vattimo argues, “all forms of authoritarianism are founded on some premises of a metaphysical nature” (Vattimo 2007, 37), then the ironist, or nihilistic, rejection (or, better put, the “leaving aside”) of strong metaphysics, at the same time, provides good philosophical reasons in favor of a more liberal, tolerant and democratic society. Since nobody has a privileged claim to the truth, then the only way to find it is in dialogue. Neither Rorty’s ironism nor Vattimo’s nihilism tries to break with the modern period altogether. Rather, they ought to be seen as belonging with a more enlightened Enlightenment, as a critique of critique, no longer taken in by the dream of finding out how the world really is. We can agree with Jeffrey W. Robbins in saying: “Now that we live in a postmetaphysical age in which there are no absolute truths, only interpretations, the category of belief can again be taken seriously as constitutive of our lived traditions” (Robbins 2007, 17). Once the world has become a Nietzschean fable, an undecidable plurality of world versions, ultimately leading to the erosion of the concept of objective reality, the concept of an authentic belief may re-emerge. “Undecidability is the place in which faith takes place, the night in which faith is conceived, for night is its element. Undecidability is the reason that faith is faith and not Knowledge, and the way that faith can be true without Knowledge” (Caputo 2001, 128). The death of the God of metaphysics, as it turns out, does not undermine religion as such but reenables us to mature and take it seriously again. What the death of the God of the Western metaphysical tradition has shown us is that authentic religious belief does not consist in knowledge (i.e., a series of propositions) or incontestable proofs of God’s existence but, on the contrary, authentic belief can only grow out of taking the evidence for atheism with all due seriousness, acknowledging the fact of the disenchantment of the world, ending up with the numbing facticity of the absence of God, and subsequently deciding to go beyond it by means of hope alone. Hope, along with love and faith, forms the three central concepts of the Christian tradition. In Rorty’s work, interestingly, these exact terms are housed under the

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notion of “romance,” which he defines as: “The kind of religious faith which seems to me to lie behind the attractions of both utilitarianism and pragmatism . . . a faith in the possibility of future moral humans, a faith which is hard to distinguish from love for, and hope for, the human community” (Rorty 1999, 160). Just like Dewey in A Common Faith, if Rorty finds an appropriate use for the term “religion,” it lies in the event of connecting oneself with something bigger, something that transcends one’s individual interests for the sake of the common good of many. The word “religion” itself, etymologically comes from the Latin term re-ligare, which means “to bind” or “to reconnect.” In the post-metaphysical age, thinkers like Richard Kearney (2012) want to revive the initial meaning of religion in the sense of believing-again, releasing the other in ourselves and re-connecting with what Wiliam James called “the more,” whatever that might be (see Kearney 2010, 171).

NEOPRAGMATIST RELIGION REDESCRIBED: GOD AS A DEED AND EVENT For Rorty, true religiosity by no means refers to the egotistic “human, all too human” escapism of many Christian denominations but to an authentic, deeply felt hope for the moral and social progress of mankind. Reading Christianity through post-metaphysical lenses, however, we may notice that this sort of attitude forms the central point of the Gospels. As a matter of fact, especially for Vattimo, renouncing metaphysics in favor of charity and solidarity is represented on the background of the two most central events of the gospel: (1) the incarnation, and (2) the crucifixion of Christ. To make the first point, Vattimo develops (or perhaps radicalizes) St. Paul’s concept of kénōsis (self-emptying or abasement of God) which initially referred to the event in which God, in the person of Christ, surrendered his power in the act of incarnation. According to Vattimo, the unique legacy of this story lies in the fact that, through incarnation, God fully identified himself with a man—the absolute became individual, the eternal became historical, the sacred became profane, and the strong became weak. The act of the abasement of God is, in Vattimo’s reading, “the starting point of the modern dissolution of metaphysics” (Vattimo 2001, 109), in that precisely at this point God revealed himself not as an overwhelming supernatural power but as the weak human being represented in the person of a Galilean Jew, who wanted to transform the Jewish community by preaching unconditional charity and compassion, later to be sentenced to death in the most cruel method of execution used in the Roman Empire of that time. The act of crucifixion can be read as a moment in which God identified himself with the opressed, the persecuted, and the unjustly killed: “The power of God is not pagan violence, brute power, or vulgar magic; it is the power of powerlessness, the power of the call, the power of protest that rises up from innocent suffering and calls out against it, the power that says no to unjust suffering, and finally, the power to suffer with (sym-pathos) innocent suffering, which perhaps is the central Christian symbol” (Caputo 2006b, 43, with original emphasis). What thinkers like Vattimo or Caputo suggest is that if we do

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not want to cross out a major part of our culture, history, and tradition, after the end of metaphysics, the events of incarnation and crucifiction must be read not as a complete dissolution of the notion of God but need to be thought over as a transcription of this concept into time and history. Rorty has repeatedly claimed that the worst thing one can do to others is cruelty or indifference to cruelty (See, for example, Rorty 1989, 141–189). On the other hand, for Rorty, it is sympathy and the recognition of the stranger; it is the act of allowing those to speak who have been silenced that counts as the most valuable act of humanity: In my utopia, human solidarity would be seen not as a fact to be recognized by clearing away “prejudice” or burrowing down to previously hidden depths but, rather, as a goal to be achieved. It is to be achieved not by inquiry but by imagination, the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers. Solidarity is not discovered by reflection but created. It is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people. (Rorty 1989, xvi)

According to Kearney, all great religions begin with an act of welcoming a stranger (see, Kearney 2012). In Christian scriptures, this motive can be found in the story of Abraham and Sarah welcoming three strangers in their tent, who, after the supper, reveal themselves as angels of God. In the New Testament the act of solidarity with a stranger is depicted as the highest act of righteousness and one of the decisive criteria in the Last Judgment: “Take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in” (Mt 25:34–35, NIV). In the post-metaphysical reading of Christianity, God doesn’t appear as a supernatural Being, as something that we can have, categorize, define, and control, but rather as something “to come”: a call to break with our old selves, as an opportunity which unlocks the horizons of possible reimagination and reconstruction of ourselves, our communities, and practices. According to Caputo, “God doesn’t exist, God insists” (Caputo 2013); it is a promise that may never come into actuality if we do not actively respond with acts of justice to the cruelty happening all around us. The concord between Rorty’s ethical views and the ethical views of the representatives of weak theology contrasts quite sharply with Rorty’s desire for a “de-divinized” society in which all trace of religion is removed. We can definitely agree with G. Elijah Dann’s contention that this position of Rorty’s arguably is inconsistent with “what he has said elsewhere about the edifying philosopher having an ‘openness to strangeness which initially tempted us to begin thinking’” (Dann 2006, 48). Dann argues that just as philosophy can be pared down to an intellectual, social, and moral engagement, exactly the same can be done with religion, albeit within the framework of religious belief. In this sense, Dann introduces a concept of edifying theology which he (needless to say, on the background of a well-known Rortyan paralell) contrasts with “systematic theology.” In contrast to systematic theologians, edifying religious

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thinkers want to leave behind the questions such as what God really is or how to get beyond interpretation and get down to the facts when reading Scriptures. Similar to the tradition of Columbia naturalism, the weak theologians do not care about the ontological status of God because, from their perspective, the significant question is not whether anything is real or not but in what sense God and other theological matters are real.6 Edifying theologians agree with Rorty when he says that pragmatist theists “believe that God is as real as sense impressions, tables, quarks and human rights. But, they add, stories about our relations to God do not necessarily run athwart the stories of our relations to these other things” (Rorty 1999, 156). Edifying theology is not interested in constructing logically indestructible proofs of God’s existence because such theologians are convinced that instead of asking whether God exists, we should ask what transformative role the concept of God can play in human experience. Likewise this edifying theology is not concerned with the question of finding a method of intepreting the Scriptures in a way which will eventually lead us to unchallengeable knowledge of God’s will. It takes the categories of salvation and revelation as historical events in which what we call God gradually transforms itself from transcendence into immanence, from a supernatural being into a human being. Just like Rorty’s edifying philosophy, edifying theology values solidarity over objectivity, empathy over argument, and hope over certainty. Edifying theology sees not only secularization but also deconstruction as Christianity’s allies, not enemies. Shouldn’t the very activity of Jesus be seen as an instance of deconstruction par excellence? Jesus of Nazareth, in his teachings, never used fancy syllogisms and truth tables to prove his point. Instead, in the name of charity and solidarity, he told stories and constantly turned totalizing doctrines of the Pharisees, and the militancy of Rome in alliance with the temple authorities, against themselves. This is why edifying theologians see as their foremost social task criticizing fundamentalist and reactionary religious teachings and nurturing deep democracy. For them, “the pluralistic, tolerant, and non-authoritarian democratic societies in the West are the translation into real political structures of the Christian doctrine of the neighbor love” (Caputo 2007b, 76). Precisely because of its autodeconstructibility which enables the last to become the first and the first to become the last, is democracy, for edifying theologians, the most worthwhile social endeavor. Democracy “proceeds from the idea that we have always to do with contingent structures, revisable unities of meaning that are essentially deconstructible” (Caputo 2007c, 121). At the same time, edifying theology is, and in fact must be, ethnocentric. It admits that we can never get outside our skins and assess our own or other cultures unless we take a perspective that is always “distorted” by our own values. Although it cannot provide any ultimate arguments for this contention, edifying theology holds that the Christian tradition of charity, solidarity, and the three cardinal virtues of faith, hope, and love, represents the best social values mankind has come up with, so far. They admit that Christianity is a “historically inherited and irreducible ‘form of life’ that has been handed down to us by the tradition” (Caputo 2007c, 156). Being a language game rooted in specific forms of behavior, Christianity and its central concepts do not acquire content by virtue of referring to reality but they

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become meaningful within concrete practices of the religious communities where the concepts are deployed. Edifying theology, Caputo further says, gives articulation to what is happening within this form of life and the theology tries “to line it[self] up with what happens in other forms of life” (Caputo 2006a, 53). This is why edifying theology, being partly a political stance, problematizes Rorty’s strict division between the public and the private. Edifying theology supports the claim that religious beliefs are private projects in the first place. At the same time, it tries to come up with such a vocabulary as may enable believers to translate their views on social issues into a language of liberal democracy with virtually no loss of meaning. It believes that social injustice and acts of cruelty must be adressed immediately, as there is no point in referring to something like the Last Judgment in the public discourse. It takes seriously Jesus’s words in Luke 17:21 stating that “the kingdom of God is in your midst” (NIV) and believes that the only task that matters here and now is protecting the vulnerable and innocent by intelligent cooperation in the public sphere, here and now. The religious truth, in the edifying approach, is a truth without knowledge; it is the truth of a “deed” (πράγμα), rather than truth of propositions. It is something that happens in our lives and history and calls us to take responsibility without any certainty. Therefore it often times takes up the form of a wager; it is a risky business that requires a lot of courage since we can never be sure what the outcome of our actions will be. This kind of truth encourages us to step into the unknown and the uncertain with nothing more than a hope that the good is yet to come. Caputo, similar to Derrida, calls the “to come” an Event, something that is unfolding and given shape in what is happening, but also what we did not see coming. An “event” is something that enables us to break with our past, and open up to the future, to the “to come.” It often takes up the form of what Derrida called the “impossible”— of forgiving the (seemingly) unforgivable, turning the other cheek or welcoming a stranger. For Caputo, the “event” is another name for God, for a promise that has been handed down to us by the tradition and that is never fully actualized at any historical instance and yet, still is worth nurturing and striving for. Heidegger probably meant something like that when, in his famous 1976 Spiegel interview, he said that “only a god can save us. The only possibility available to us is that by thinking and poetizing we prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god” (Heidegger 1976 [1966], 209). By always keeping things a little unsteady and open, it is the task of both edifying philosophers and theologians to constantly enable and encourage the public for the coming of the “event” which is a promise to make things new and better—in politics, art, science, and community life. They both intend to “keep space open for the sense of wonder which poets can sometimes cause—wonder that there is something new under the sun, something which is not an accurate representation of what was already there, something which . . . cannot be explained and can barely be described” (Rorty 1979, 370). However, edifying theologians also agree when Heidegger says that “according to our human experience and history, everything essential and of

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great magnitude has arisen only out of the fact that man had a home and was rooted in a tradition” (Heidegger 1976 [1966], 209). This is why edifying thinkers do not agree with Rorty’s vision of a “de-divinized” society, because, in the West, that would mean loosening the ground under our feet. Josiah Royce repeatedly wrote that communities not only preserve tradition and pass on memories but also maintain hope. For a community, to preserve a memory means constantly to make itself conscious of where it stands and how it got there. To maintain hope, on the other hand, means to open up the community’s perspective for “the promise,” the unexpected, the unforeseen, and the strange. If there is any role for public intellectuals in the foreseeable future, it resides, also for Rorty, in being the nurturers of both memory and hope. Caputo once wrote that religion “is for lovers, for men and women of passion . . . who hope like mad in something . . . that surpasses understanding” (Caputo 2001, 2). Religion is the hope for the impossible, it is the insistence that our values, as well as ourselves, can be radically transformed, made new and better, in spite of “evidence” that speaks otherwise. It is the insistence itself that “carries us beyond argument, beyond presently used language . . . beyond the imagination of the present age of the world” (Rorty 1999, 161). In his work, Rorty always encouraged his audience to read texts and authors against themselves. With respect to religion, this strategy seems more than appropriate since it enables us to reinforce Rorty precisely by getting beyond him.

NOTES 1. See, for example, (Rorty 1982, 43) where he identifies his own position with that expressed by Dewey in his Quest for Certainty. See also: (Rorty 1991, 21, 60). 2. A pragmatist criticism of such an approach is in: (Šíp 2009) in the Czech language also (Šíp 2008), and also in this volume in the section on Rorty and the Inferentialists. 3. The notion of religion as a conversation-stopper comes from Stephen L. Carter’s book The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion (Carter 1993). Rorty elaborates on this concept for instance in: (Rorty 1999, 168–174). 4. Rorty was ready to admit that (as a university professor and, therefore a representative of the public sphere) he himself always did his best to confront the beliefs of “theists” in the classroom: “When we American college teachers encounter religious fundamentalists, we do not consider the possibility of reformulating our own practices of justification so as to give more weight to the authority of the Christian scriptures. Instead, we do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization” (Rorty 2002a, 22). 5. Attempts of this sort are to be found, after all, in Rorty’s own family. Walter Rauschenbusch, his maternal grandfather, was one of the leaders of the Social Gospel movement at the turn of the twentieth century, which invoked Christian themes to rally people around the cause of progressive social reform. For a detailed description of this aspect of Rorty’s life, see: (Gross 2008, 16, 63–83). 6. For an excellent study of this aspect of Columbia naturalism in connection with religion, see (Ryder 2013, 119–140).

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REFERENCES Caputo, John D. 1997. Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2001. On Religion. New York: Routledge. ———. 2006a. Philosophy and Theology. Nashville: Abingdon Press. ———. 2006b. The Weakness of God. A Theology of the Event. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2007a. What Would Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. ———. 2007b. “Spectral Hermeneutics: On the Weakness of God and the Theology of the Event.” In After the Death of God. Edited by Jeffrey W. Robbins, 47–88. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2007c. “On the Power of the Powerless: Dialogue with John Caputo.” In After the Death of God. Edited by Jeffrey W. Robbins, 114–162. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2013. The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cavell, Stanley. 1979. The Claim of Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dann, G. Elijah. 2006. After Rorty: The Possibilities for Ethics and Religious Belief. New York: Continuum. Dewey, John. 1920. Reconstruction in Philosophy. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Gross, Neil. 2008. Richart Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1976 [1966]. “Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten.” Der Spiegel: 193–219. James, William. 2010 [1902]. Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Classic Books International. Kearney, Richard. 2010. Anatheism: Returning to God After God. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2012. “After Atheism: New Perspectives on God and Religion, Part 1.” Interview by Paul Kennedy. Ideas with Paul Kennedy. CBS Radio. Podcast audio. April 30, 2012. http:​//www​.cbc.​ca/id​eas/e​pisod​es/20​12/04​/30/a​fter-​athei​sm-ne​w-per​spect​ives-​on-go​d-and​ -reli​gion-​part-​1/. Madzia, Roman. 2012. “Povznášející teologie: rortyánské úvahy o filozofii náboženství.” Filosofický časopis 60, no. 6: 833–848. Robbins, Jeffrey W. 2007. “Introduction: After the Death of God.” In After the Death of God. Edited by Jeffrey W. Robbins, 1–26. New York: Columbia University Press. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1982. Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. Achieving of Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1999. Philosophy and Social Hope. New York: Penguin Books.

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———. 2002a. “Universality and Truth.” In Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert Brandom, 1–30. London: Blackwell. ———. 2002b. “Response to Michael Williams.” In Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert Brandom, 213–219. London: Blackwell. ———. 2011. Ethics for Today: Finding Common Ground Between Philosophy and Religion. Edited by Jeffrey W. Robbins. New York: Columbia University Press. ———, and Gianni Vittimo. 2005. The Future of Religion. New York: Columbia University Press. Ryder, John. 2013. Things in Heaven and Earth: An Essay in Philosophical Naturalism. New York: Fordham University Press. Smith, Nicolas H. 2005. “Rorty on Religion and Hope.” Inquiry 48, no. 1: 76–98. Šíp, Radim. 2008. Richard Rorty: Pragmatismus mezi jazykem a zkušeností. Brno: Paido. ———. 2009. “A Koala’s Face, a Pig Slaughter, and Rorty’s Conception of Self and of Society.” In Self and Society. Edited by Alexander Kremer and John Ryder, 213–225. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 213–225. Tillich, Paul. 1959. Theology of Culture. Edited by Robert C. Kimball. New York: Oxford University Press. Vattimo, Gianni. 1988. The End of Modernity. Baltimore: Polity Press. ———. 2002. After Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2007. “Toward a Nonreligious Christianity.” In After the Death of God. Edited by Jeffrey W. Robbins, 27–46. New York: Columbia University Press.

II METHOD AND MADNESS

4 Naturalistic Axiology and Normativity in Rorty Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński

INTRODUCTION The present chapter is not an examination of Richard Rorty’s philosophy, if we understand by this a systematic and methodological investigation into what the author really wanted to say. Nor do I intend to study the historic context of his views, nor to what extent his version of neopragmatism is or is not compatible with John Dewey’s and William James’s, nor to what extent Rorty’s view depends on idealism, be it metaphysical or linguistic. Instead, I propose a sympathetic polemic defending of some of his axiological views—as I see them, reading mainly his later writings. I assume a partly external, or non-Rortyan, platform for this analysis. I use the phrases “Rorty’s axiological views” or “Rorty’s reflection” so as to be stimulating or to be applicable to the philosophy of values—or, more loosely, in just any deliberation about values—since he did not provide us with a theory of values or a system of axiology. Yet, I think we can find in his writings basic answers to and numerous suggestions about the issues that concern all who are interested in philosophy of values. This is the reason why his thought is taken seriously here. I will start by proposing a taxonomy of values (i.e., naturalistic, theocentric, axiocentric), and to some extent I refer to what I previously set forth elsewhere (see Skowroński 2003, 2007). Later I will deal with the question of whether persuasion concerning the redescribed social relations, instead of argumentation by means of scientific procedures, more adequately explains the functioning of our valuations, at least in some contexts. At this point, I evoke Rorty, when, for example, he writes about the hopelessness felt by young blacks in American cities. He says: “Do we say that these people must be helped because they are our fellow human beings? We

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may, but it is much more persuasive, morally as well as politically, to describe them as our fellow Americans—to insist that it is outrageous that an American should live without hope” (Rorty 1989, 191). I do not endorse Rorty’s understanding of the role of “the Great Books” within cultural politics, or his view on literary culture; instead, I propose—as a framework for the present discussion—literary philosophy, as I explain elsewhere, also in a Rortyan context (see Skowroński 2013). By commenting on “the Great Books” I do not mean to imply that I want to see this idea as a wholly closed one. On other occasions we may well talk about “the great films” and “the great TV performances” as having a similar role in our evaluations, and this also in accordance with Rorty’s claim that “the novel, the movie, and the TV program have, gradually but steadily, replaced the sermon and the treatise as the principal vehicles of moral change and progress” (Rorty 1989, xvi). Hence, without assuming a fully Rortyan position, I appreciate his role in stimulating discussion of the contemporary philosophy of values—“philosophy,” I must add, understood more broadly than a set of theories within a specific camp, whether analytical, continental, pragmatist or some other, especially as regards the role of what Rorty calls, “redescriptions.” I argue, however, that redescriptions alone, without persuasion of cultural policy, can become impotent and left without a role in social practice. I would be happy to see redescription and persuasion become more closely interconnected. One more explanation should be provided at the outset (since I will not develop this problem further on). Regarding the assumptions we make about linking values (and the valuable) with normativity, I will just mention two different (idealistic and naturalistic) sources of inspiration for me on this matter. The first is neo-Kantian, though I do not want to suggest that I assume a neo-Kantian position myself. But, for example, Hugo Münsterberg, who worked at Harvard’s Philosophy Department during its golden years (with William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, and George Herbert Palmer), in one of his books (dedicated to Royce, by the way) claimed: “We are not forced to act in accordance with a value, but we ought to act according to it. The value is thus an obligation” (Münstenberg 1909, 51). The same view was claimed, famously, by other Baden School members, Heinrich Rickert in the first instance. The other source is Leszek Kołakowski who, in “Looking for the Barbarians. The Illusions of Cultural Universalism,” writes about the impossibility of “abandoning of judgment” and the impossibility of assuming of a neutral position from which we can provide a hierarchy of values and normative claims that are based on this hierarchy of values. He says that “what we call the spirit of research is a cultural attitude, one peculiar to Western civilization and its hierarchy of values. We may proclaim and defend the ideals of tolerance and criticism, but we may not claim that these are neutral ideals, free from normative assumptions.” Kołakowski continues: “Whether I boast of belonging to a civilization that is absolutely superior, or, on the contrary, extol the noble savage, or whether, finally, I say all cultures are equal, I am adopting an attitude and making a judgment, and I cannot avoid doing so. This does not mean that it makes no difference whether I adopt one position

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rather than another; it means that by adopting one I reject or condemn others” (Kołakowski 1997, 19–20). I link these two sources of values-norms in my interpretation of Rorty, despite his declared anti-foundationalism, anti-realism, and anti-representationalism. If Rorty sees, for example, “conversation” or “dialogue” between “us” and “them” as a duty or an obligation for us to perform, there must be, I think, some valuable state of things—for example, a reduction of the suffering of living beings around us or a sufferfree community—whose realization (or an attempt at realization) is an axiological basis for a norm such as “let’s dialogue.” Here, I want to believe that “the normative” is vindicated by “the valuable,” rather than by “the customary,” by “the habitual,” or by being merely imposed by some political power. To put the same point in a more general way, I agree with John Ryder that “the pragmatist turn does not require, as Rorty wanted it to, a rejection of the more traditional philosophical enterprise of making sense of nature and knowledge” (Ryder 2013, 19).

A GENERAL TAXONOMY OF VALUES AND NORMS By the terms naturalistic axiology or a naturalistic philosophy of values, I understand a set of philosophical attitudes toward values and such theories of values as claim that values, as well as the processes of evaluation and the setting of norms, come from natural laws and/or are based upon natural sources. Thus, human beings—as individuals and as members of social groups—along with their neurobiological equipment belong to such sources. Such a stance is justified by an ontological assumption that nature is the predominant, if not the only, dynamic factor that we must take into account while thinking about values, valuations, and norms. In Dewey’s formulation: “We are directed to observe whether energy is put forth to call into existence or to maintain in existence certain conditions. . . . The direction the energy is observed to take, as toward and away from, enables grounded discrimination to be made between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ valuations” (Dewey 1939, 14–15). Naturalistic axiology does not necessarily exclude other values and norms, even some usually seen as non-naturalistic, and such may be the case with a non-reductive and pluralist versions of naturalism. These versions of naturalism claim that values and norms come from natural sources, but this does not mean that these values operate according to the rules that are found in nature. In the same way, imagination is a natural effusion of the human brain, yet it (imagination) does not work according to some set of natural laws; it has its own, still natural, character—differently applied in aesthetics and the arts, for example, as in moral action—and its functions are not reducible to some natural rules to be discovered by scientists. Nor does this view mean that natural values and norms (or values and norms understood naturalistically) are the only values that can be dealt with, or that any non-naturalistic values exist or subsist in some way. Hence, the non-reductive and pluralist naturalist can say that the sources of values, evaluations, and setting norms do not have to come from God or the Universal Mind or Absolute Reason—as the theocentric approaches

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would have it—but this does not have to necessarily mean that God (or Mind or Reason) does not exist or subsist; nor does it imply that any theological axiology is possible. Rather, it means—and I follow George Santayana with this point—that the possible divine sources are either (1) powerless in the process of setting values and norms for all of us to follow (along with punishments for not following these values and norms), or (2) they are unrecognizable. Regarding (1), to use Santayana’s words: “That matter is capable of eliciting feeling and thought follows necessarily from the principle that matter is the only substance, power, or agency in the universe: and this, not that matter is the only reality, is the first principle of materialism” (Santayana 1951, 509). If we take a look at this issue by via negativa, we can say that naturalism, in the proposed version here, excludes supernatural powers, divine in the first instance, as decisive (and not as existent or subsistent) and as necessary for us all, both religious and nonreligious, in thinking about what is valuable and what not. Regarding (2)—or which in theory is something different but practically is the same—we humans are unable, accurately and unanimously, to recognize these sources by more reliable procedures than those we use in natural sciences and/or in our philosophies. Therefore, no special holy texts, such as the Bible or the Koran, and no priests should be especially trusted as regards their announcements pertaining to the genuine fund or funds of instructions about what values of divine origin should be cultivated in the practice of public life, though it may be possible within the aesthetic life and one’s private life, to defer to these authorities if one so wishes. The sources of valuable actions also do not come from values themselves—as the axiocentric approach would have it—either as a part of the cosmic scheme, as the Pythagorean, Platonic, and neo-Platonic tradition(s) claimed for the Absolute values: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. The case is similar for the Stoic values that provide “dignity” (as opposed to those values which are just “precious”), the phenomenologists’ (e.g., Roman Ingarden) “metaphysical qualities,” G. E. Moore’s idea of “goodness” as a nonnatural property, as well as those who hold that values are part of an a priori and objective moral order, which means (as the Baden School of neo-Kantians, Rickert, Münsterberg, and Windelband claim) that values are normative and oblige without having a real existence. This axiocentric sentiment was tersely articulated by Royce, where he claims to belong to “the wide realm of Post-Kantian Idealism” (Royce 1885, ix); namely, the cause “does not get its value merely from your being pleased with it. You believe, on the contrary, that you love it just because of its own value, which it has by itself, even if you die. That is just why one may be ready to die for his cause” (Royce 1995, 11).

RORTY’S NATURALISM, ANTHROPOCENTRISM, AND ETHNOCENTRISM If we stay at this very general level of taxonomy, we can see that Rorty’s approach to values should definitely be included among the naturalistic approaches, not with

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the theocentric or axiocentric types. For example, he does not think that the Biblical sense of “moral purity” is valuable or that the condemnation of same-sex marriages is normative at all. In “Religion in the Public Square: A Reconsideration,” he calls such views “homophobic” and admits: “I cannot help feeling that, though the law should not forbid someone from citing such texts in support of a political position, custom should forbid it. Citing such passages should be deemed not just in bad taste, but as heartlessly cruel, as reckless persecution, as incitement to violence” (Rorty 2003, 143). Nor would Rorty take on the axiocentric approach. Not only did he say: “I do not have much use for notions like ‘objective value’ and ‘objective truth’” (Rorty 1999, 5), but also, following Dewey—who labeled “the belief in a priori values as ideals and standards” a “foolish quest” (Dewey 1939, 57–58)—but he also called such a stance “endearing and ludicrous” (Rorty 2007, 97). Additionally, he provides us, in “Kant vs. Dewey,” with the following comment on Kant and his philosophical (and axiological) heritage: “Kant is a transitional figure—somebody who helped us get away from the idea that morality is a matter of divine command, but who unfortunately retained the idea that morality is a matter of unconditional obligations.” He adds that it would be a good idea to follow Elizabeth Anscombe’s suggestion “that if you do not believe in God, you would do well to drop notions like ‘law’ and ‘obligation’ from your vocabulary you use when deciding what to do” (Rorty 2007, 187). Sticking merely to axiological naturalism is a helpful limitation for the purpose of the present discussion, yet it would be, in any case, too general and too vague to define the character of values, valuations, and norms. The scope of these terms must be narrowed down, and focusing upon anthropocentrism is one of the ways to do it, at this stage of deliberation. Naturalism does not have to equal anthropocentrism, nor does anthropocentrism have to be naturalistic. Christian anthropology (with the idea of Man created as Imago Dei) is anthropocentric, yet it is not naturalistic, at least in the conviction of its defenders. Santayana was a naturalist (though he preferred the term “materialism”), but he was not an anthropocentrist. Dewey was anthropocentric, as, for example, Morris Raphael Cohen claimed (see Eldridge 2004, 57), and in Dewey’s Theory of Valuation, he clearly states that the problem of values and valuation refers to “human activities and human relations,” to “the behavioral relations of persons to one another,” and that values have a “social or interpersonal” character. He adds that “valuations are constant phenomena of human behavior, personal and associated, and are capable of rectification and development by use of the resources provided by knowledge of physical relations” (Dewey 1939, 3, 11, 12, 57). I stress the notion of anthropocentrism because it will be instrumental in explaining the normative dimension of the naturalistic world of values, and Rorty’s works clearly manifest this viewpoint. We treat humans, here, as the pivotal agents and articulators of the values, the valuables, and the norms. Since we hold that there is no “real axiological reality” or mind-independent realm of objective values and norms to be discovered, as Rorty claims, it must be the human agents who are responsible for recognizing, describing, shaping, arranging, and rearranging it, and this is the main characteristic of his naturalistic anthropocentrism. Since values and norms are

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not any sort of direct or indirect transcripts of real things and factual states of affairs, they must come from natural predispositions of human agents. Since values, norms, and their typologies, do not exist or subsist in a nonlinguistic sphere, prior to some human description of them, their formulation must depend upon the way they are articulated by these human agents. Who, more specifically, are these agents? And according to what criteria do these people talk about values and norms, according to Rorty? Naturalistic anthropocentrism as such cannot provide us with any more specific answer to this question. In order to deal with this question, I will narrow down the present discussion even more, and go to Rorty’s term “ethnocentrism,” which, again, will make it possible for us to be even more specific as to how to understand values and normativity. I say “narrow down” because I take it for granted that the term “ethnocentrism” is a further specification of the term “anthropocentrism,” referring to given human groups that decide about values and norms in different ways than other human groups, yet still these are groups of human individuals. Since there are plenty of cultural and philosophical systems, concepts, and traditions saying what is valuable and what is not, and yet, no bird’s-eye-view description is possible, we are doomed to listen to what particular groups have to say on the issues. We can have, Rorty says, no objective knowledge about the world save “descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification which a given society—ours—uses in one or another area of inquiry” (Rorty 1991, 23). For example, as regards the moral obligation of “dialoging” or “conversing,” we read the following: “the conversation which it is our moral duty to continue is merely our project, the European intellectual’s form of life” (Rorty 1982, 172). However, is it the whole group—Western intelligentsia in this case—or its representative members that articulate the main axiological (and other) ideas? What if, as it usually is the case, a given group has many, sometimes incompatible, messages articulated in different forms, in divergent formulations, and by members of sundry subcultures or subgroups? For example, what if some should want to claim that the moral obligation of Western culture (defined in one way or another) is to fight against Muslims rather than having a dialogue with them? Or, what if the main way of looking at the Western heritage is the cultivation of the past rather than seeking new, better solutions? We cannot, I think, pick up a description of a given social group. What criteria (Ethnic? Cultural? Moral?) should be taken to identify such groups? We cannot be sure if all the members of the designated group will evaluate our own ideas in the same way. Rather, when it is claimed that some hierarchy of values is accepted and practiced by a given group, we have to suspect that the description comes from somebody (a politician or a group of them, scientists, philosophers, artists, priests, activists, etc.) who has a biased conviction (rooted in his/ her/their tradition and cultural milieu) as to who has the right to propose the more or less adequate insight of this group and its worthy aims. The representatives of various social groups are responsible for shaping the world of values and norms, and they do so not by reaching cognitively the sphere of objectivity, but rather by arranging social life. Hence, the character of values and norms is not objective, as the classic thinkers would have claimed, the Platonists in

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the first instance. Nor are they subjective, dependent merely upon the convictions of separate individuals, as some existentialists would have it. According to Rorty (and also Dewey and George Herbert Mead), values and norms are intersubjective. Axiological intersubjectivity means that the main features of the “axiological reality” come from individuals living social lives; their rationality equals “the search for intersubjective agreement” (Rorty 2007, 189), not necessarily reaching the objective level of cognition. Moral principles, he says, “emerge from our encounters with our surroundings in the same way that hypotheses about planetary motion, codes of etiquette, epic poems, and all our other pattern of linguistic behavior emerge. Like these other emergents, they are good insofar as they lead to good consequences, not because they stand in some special relation either to the universe or to the human mind” (Rorty 2007, 192). Again, however, this is not enough for our purpose and we must be more specific. Before, I propose an answer on the role of cultural politics, I want to evoke two exemplary groups, scientists and literary philosophers, in order to show that it is not only a problem as to which group has a pretention to be representative of a given group, and to have better knowledge of values and norms, but, more importantly at this point, that each has alternative modes of describing and redescribing the world of values and norms. Of course, there is not a single scientific procedure that is used by those whom we call scientists, nor is there any one single way of narrating adopted by those I call literary philosophers; hence, the main point of this present collation is merely to show the discrepancy between argumentation and redescription. The latter suits better for the aims of cultural politics, to which I will turn later.

SCIENTISTS’ ARGUMENTATION AND LITERARY PHILOSOPHERS’ REDESCRIPTIONS There exist many possible methodological divergences within the field of naturalistic axiology, and I am not talking (although this is a part of the issue too) about different philosophical schools (and particular authors) that have contributed to the discussion about values and norms in the twentieth century. What I mean to bring out here is the controversy as to what is or should be the starting point, what methods should be used, and who is predisposed to be the group of experts in discussions of value. Dewey saw science as the most promising procedure (or set of procedures) for dealing with values; Justus Buchler saw science as just one among numerous ways, along with art and philosophy, of describing and assessing the world in the process of what he called “query.” Friedrich Nietzsche’s revolutionary idea of the “revaluation of all values” was expressed through the form of something we can call “literary philosophy” rather than science. Also Santayana has frequently been seen as a literary philosopher, as have the Transcendentalists, especially Emerson and Thoreau. From my side, I would like briefly to juxtapose the literary philosophy (I mean the naturalistically oriented literary philosophy) to the current habits of scientific

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discourse and its argumentation. By no means do I favor a bifurcation model (either science or art) though; and I want to present the reasons why Rorty saw literature (along the idea of cultural politics, promoting “the Great Books”) as efficient and important tools in the process of setting values and norms. This juxtaposition, however, is not the same as suggesting that there are no other theoretical options possible, for example, science (scientists) versus ethics (ethicists), or that one of the other contrasts might be better than the other, or that one of them should be ousted by the other. Instead, my plan allows that we may look at values, valuations, and norms from various perspectives in philosophy and in the humanities: the literary and the scientific may be seen as two out of many others available to us, and the sensible balance to be kept between them is always an issue worthy of discussion. In this contrast, I will not repeat the reasons why I stick to the term “literary philosophy” rather than Rorty’s other phrases, such as “literary culture,” and the differences among them (see Skowroński 2013). I will just briefly indicate, in this place, that a literary philosopher’s attitude toward values seems ampler and more flexible, though less systematic than that of a scientific philosopher’s. The former’s possible indifference to methodological rigor and strict procedures does not have to be something definitely detrimental. Simultaneously, this approach does not renounce its persuasive possibilities, and it may seek to enhance them, in accordance with Santayana’s protagonist in The Last Puritan, who says; “Do I demand that everybody should agree with me?” “Less loudly, I admit, than most philosophers. Yet when you profess to be describing a fact, you can’t help antagonising those who take a different view of it, or are blind altogether to that sort of object. In this novel, on the contrary, the argument is dramatised, the views become human persuasions, and the presentation is all the truer for not professing to be true.” (Santayana 1994, 572)

A literary philosopher can be more skeptical about the adequacy of the relation between what we call “natural sciences” on the one hand, and, on the other, what we call “natural laws,” and “natural sources,” as well as about how we know what exactly these natural laws and sources are. Our skepticism may be exercised, for example, when we infer from (some of) the assumptions of (some of) natural sciences what the natural laws and sources are. In such a situation we may face a sort of vicious circle: the scientists refer to natural laws and sources, and what these natural laws and sources are will be decided by the natural scientists, and there is hardly anyone else, except other natural scientists, to judge whether the former are right and/or precise. Often natural scientists would have reservations about the idea that some external control (a social practice, in the first instance, but also many sociopolitical factors) would be helpful in deciding, for example, which sciences (strict? humanities? theology?), and at what stage of their developments they came to count as knowledge (were or were not the Greeks or St. Thomas Aquinas wiser than us on many things?), and the practices of which scientists (Western? secular? physicists? humanists?) are to

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be most trusted as regards what norms we should follow and what is valuable. Some literary philosophers can claim, then, that a philosophy that uses scientific arguments about such issues is not to be given greater authority, partially due to its highly ambitious aims, namely, to reach, some day, a systematic insight into the generic traits of human and nonhuman existence. On the other hand, literature, being a kind of art, and literary philosophy, being less definite in its cognitive pretensions, serve to reduce such ambitious assumptions in favor of providing us, more democratically, with multiple perspectives. Literary philosophers can go on claiming that, for example, such a natural science as biology can reliably explain to us why we have to feed our bodies to survive; however, it does not explain to us—nor can any natural science, as such—whether the normative and/or the valuable in the practice of ethical, social, and political life should be, say, hedonism or asceticism, religion (which one?) or secularism, tolerance or persecuting minorities, etc., in order to thrive and/or live better. Yet, literary philosophies can suggest better ways to live, and cultural politics (which is always, at least indirectly, involved in philosophy) can persuade many of us to practice the recommended ways. To put the same in a different way; literary philosophers, at least some of them, do not think that we can demonstrate scientifically the advantage of, say, democracy and democratic values/norms over other systems of, say, theocracy and theocratic values and norms, or aristocracy, because scientific procedures either do not embrace the axiological ground upon which these systems are based or they (scientific procedures) are inefficient, partially due to their technical language, in telling a greater audience why democracy is better than other forms of sociopolitical order. On the other hand, philosophical reflections, especially the ones encapsulated in great books of literary philosophy, can focus on just this kind of question, because such philosophies deal with values as the basic sense of life. They do it by appealing to imagination and the sensitivities of the reader rather than to the truth about some facts (though, of course, this does not endorse a complete ignorance or neglect of the logic of argumentation). This result means that literary philosophers are freer to use different discourses for the description of the problems that call forth our values and norms, whereas scientific philosophers are much more limited, being obliged to use a strict and unambiguous language according to a definite methodological rigor. As a consequence, we have two kinds of methodological attitudes: argumentation and redescription, and Rorty assumes that the latter is more suitable. In the formulation of Christopher Voparil: “An amalgam of a Wittgensteinian sense of language as a tool and a Kuhnian understanding of the power of conceptual revolutions, redescription emerges as an alternative to a representationalist view of language. Because it posits a different relation of words to the world—not that of an accurately reflective ‘mirror’ but a transformative ‘lever’—redescription is for Rorty a tool for change” (Voparil 2013, 139–140). As I already mentioned, Dewey had hopes as to the scientific approach to the methods that deal with values and valuation. For example, he hoped that the

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propositions “which now form the substantial content of physics, of chemistry, and, to a growing extent, of biology, provide the very means by which the change which is required can be introduced into beliefs and ideas purporting to deal with human and social phenomena” (Dewey 1939, 62). Rorty, did not have such hopes. For example, in his “Intellectual Autobiography,” he shares with us his reflections on his former dream of following the scientific way of dealing with diverse standpoints: In my earlier, dreamier, years, I still hoped that such projects of reconciliation would culminate in what Peirce called “the opinion that is fated to be agreed to by all who investigate.” But after a time I became convinced that the idea of such a destined terminus—the idea that rational inquirers must necessarily converge to a common opinion— was just one more attempt to escape from time into eternity. That is why so much of what I have written has been dismissive of notions such as “the love of truth,” “universal validity,” and “getting things right.” (Rorty 2010, 3)

This kind of split, along with its consequences, is important enough to justify, in the present context, the difference between pragmatism and neopragmatism. In my view, these differences are serious enough to see these two, that is, Dewey and Rorty, as articulators of two, to some extent, incompatible projects—though, in other contexts, for example, their approach to the role of democracy, they seem to speak with one voice. Since it is not the topic of the present chapter, I would like just briefly to justify this view on the split between pragmatism (Dewey) and neopragmatism (Rorty) by saying that Dewey’s philosophy of values, as presented in Theory of Valuation, has realistic, empirical, descriptive, and scientific claims, whereas Rorty’s philosophy of valuation, as presented, for example, in Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, among other writings, is anti-realist, discursive, literary, cultural, political, relativistic, moral, and conversational (dialogical). Hence, if Dewey states that “valuations exist in fact and are capable of empirical observation so that proposition about them are empirically verifiable” (Dewey 1939, 58), Rorty responds that an “account of the value of cooperative human enquiry has only an ethical base, not an epistemological or metaphysical one” (Rorty 1991, 24). Both being acknowledged naturalists, they differ as regards realism; Dewey’s realism—observing the fact-value divide, and wondering whether an appropriate theory of valuation can “be put upon facts” (Dewey 1939, 1)—clashes with Rorty’s anti-realism, according to which we deal with “the actual good and the possible better” (Rorty 1991, 23). Finally, when Dewey suggests that “empirical investigation” is needed to solve such axiological problems as ends-values relationship (see Dewey 1939, 33), Rorty would point to conversation and dialogue between opposing parties and persuasion as a way to provide arguments leading to making a difference. Dewey and scientific naturalists would see argumentation as a “natural” or obvious means of the justification of their assumptions and their goal. For Rorty, seeking persuasion while we are engaged in dialogue would be a preferable option, and one of the crucial parts of such persuasion would be cultural politics or “the attempt to create a change in the intellectual world” (Rorty 2010, 23).

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POLEMICS WITH RORTY: NORMATIVITY IN LIGHT OF CULTURAL POLICY OF THE “GREAT BOOKS” Since neither scientists nor philosophers, not to mention priests, preachers, and politicians, or any particular collection of experts, can be of any special or superior service in finding a better explanation of the role of values and norms, do we have any other likely candidates—having access to specially valuable procedures to provide us with the most reliable arguments—whom we should listen to more than to others? Rorty would probably say, “Definitely Philosophers are not such people: they do not have any ‘special’ tools for recognition as to how the world should look, nor do they have any ‘special’ moral predispositions to teach others as to how those others should behave.” However, the literary philosophers, or “Great Poets” (along with their “Great Books”) may be such people, thanks to their humanistic sensitivity, their democratic approach, their vivid imaginations, and their accessible messages written in novels. Much of his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity appreciatively pays attention to “books which help us become less cruel” (Rorty 1989, 141), and, for example, he points to Vladimir Nabokov and George Orwell as those authors who warn us “against temptations to be cruel” (Rorty 1989, 144). In my interpretation, however, a follower of Rorty, in fact, could say (and perhaps Rorty himself may have admitted this) that the best candidates for the moral teachers of humanity are cultural policy makers, and this includes literary philosophers (or “Great Poets”)—especially those within powerful cultural institutions—who are able to persuade others of their visions (e.g., their liberal utopias) by means of such works as literary philosophy (and also movies, the arts, and other kinds of creative activity) that “visibly circulate” in the socially influential media, be it mass, cultural, or political. Hence, to refer to the names already mentioned (Nabokov, Orwell), they had already been recognized, within the cultural institutions of the democratic and liberal West, as important representative figures (“Great Poets”) having significant messages in their novels (“Great Books”), especially in the context of opposing the twentieth-century forms of totalitarianism: Nazism and Communism. Rorty’s focus on what he calls “cultural politics” or “cultural policy” is something oriented toward social practice, though, I would argue, whether he put adequate stress upon the sociopolitical factors that support a given cultural policy that make it possible to expand its influence and significance can be questioned. Jacquelyn Kegley rightly emphasizes in her writing that Rorty underestimates the role of society and its influence upon the ironist engaged “in her self-creation as an atomistic individual” (Kegley 2010, 115), and she claims that the meaning and significance of any ironist depends upon how much future generations will want to look at this ironist. In my view, this point is also of concern in the context of the present discussion; namely, while Rorty says that the “methodological tool” is redescription for literary philosophers, I would argue that redescription is precious, yet definitely not enough for any given value contained therein to become a socially and politically important idea. Cultural policy must support, promote, and persuade us of it. Persuasion, especially

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institutionalized persuasion, is necessary effectively to influence the audience and attract them to given aims, visions, values, and norms, and this is the reason why I, let me repeat, in my polemics with Rorty, would be happy to see redescription (something more theoretical and private) and persuasion (much more practical and public) as interconnected. Rorty seems, partially at least, to proclaim this idea anyway. He averred that we encounter university campus philosophers who have a limited power of disseminating their ideas and hardly any power to convince or persuade the audience at large. His sense of the practical impotence of classic philosophy in this respect can well be illustrated by his view on the contemporary meaning of Kant’s ethics and Kant’s language for writing about ethics: “This language game is one that you have to know how to play in order to get a PhD in moral philosophy. But a lot of people who spend their lives making hard moral decisions get along nicely in blithe ignorance of its existence” (Rorty 2007, 188). Rorty would agree, I think, that the masses of people are not to the same degree in “blithe ignorance” of those “Great Books” (also “Great Movies,” “Great TV Shows,” etc.) that circulate within the mechanisms of cultural politics. Cultural politics can help a great deal in justifying a given philosophical position but this must be cultural politics as something that can be instrumental to advocating “democratic, progressive, pluralist community” (Rorty 2007, 13). As I already mentioned, Rorty says that philosophy is not a special discipline, having a better or more profound or more genuine insight into axiological reality. I say that philosophy or literary philosophy can be special, yet, in order to be treated seriously it needs legitimization by social institutions and cultural politics, and this legitimization can often—as pragmatists propose so often—be called “social practice.” I agree with Rorty that philosophy, literary or not, is unable to provide us such legitimization; even the most elaborate philosophy, yet without a visible circulation within “social practice” cannot be the source of normativity and socially valuable change. Hence, in my rereading of Rorty I would go even further than the linguistic and redescriptive dimension to include the sociopolitical dimension of redescriptions. Normativity has much to do with what persuades people—which is especially effective and powerful when sociopolitically institutionalized. As an example, I refer to Rorty’s words, already mentioned, about poor black American youth: “Do we say that these people must be helped because they are our fellow human beings? We may, but it is much more persuasive, morally as well as politically, to describe them as our fellow Americans—to insist that it is outrageous that an American should live without hope” (Rorty 1989, 191). In my view, we deal here not only with a redescription but also with a suggestion about a practical action—namely, to persuade some American institutions to include these American as ours. To illustrate my point even better, I would like to paraphrase this quote into the following, this time about, say, Rwandan or Syrian youth, in order to see if it makes a similar impression: “Do we say that these people must be helped because they are our fellow human beings? We may, but it is much more persuasive, morally as well as politically, to describe them as our fellow Rwandans/Syrians—to insist

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that it is outrageous that any Rwandans/Syrians should live without hope.” I suspect, the answer to be heard among many people to this may be: “who cares?” and “why Rwandans/  Syrians?” “Why not limit our care to ourselves?” My claim is, and I suspect Rorty’s too, that the best way to do something with people living in much poorer condition than, say, American blacks, is to redescribe the former’s situation in such a way, that the powerful institutions (states, international organizations, NGO, mass media, authority figures, etc.) would feel some solidarity between them and us. Feeling solidarity with others who suffer can be done not just by a redescription but also by making an effort to ensure that this very redescription would circulate within the powerful institutions (e.g., the global mass media in this case) and reach a greater audience. This is something literary philosophers, perhaps much more than scientists, can do. This is all the more effective as stronger institutions—education systems, mass media—deal with “the Great Books” and the messages that the literary philosophers want to send to an audience.

INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION: “UNFORCED AGREEMENT” OR FORMS OF HIDDEN COMPULSION? Another way of looking at the same issue is to answer the question of whether we deal, in social practice, especially in the transcultural, multi-discursive, and global arena with, as he frequently describe it, “persuasion” and “unforced agreement” (Rorty 1991, 37), or rather, do we deal with more or less hidden and obscured forms of power, compulsion, dictation, imposition, and domination (although not violence!)? Rorty indicates the former, while I, in my present interpretation, indicate the latter. Thus, even I evoke the questions about whether such a persuasion (or rather a set of persuasions) leads to cultural imperialism. Or perhaps it is a cultural imperialism of some mass media? Or is that a cultural imperialism of such sociopolitical phenomena as Americanization, globalization, commercialization, and many others? Does it mean that we deal with a modification and continuation of the sophists’ idea of the ethics of the stronger? Do the socially prevailing values and norms result, among other things, from the persuasive power of the centers of cultural policy? Does it mean that the power of the arguments provided by clashing philosophies and ideologies (e.g., democratic vs. theocratic; nationalistic vs. cosmopolitan; past-oriented vs. future-oriented, etc.) is similar, and what decides about their social acceptance is the strength of cultural policy that promotes one of them? Rorty’s reference to his thought as “neo-sophist” (Rorty 2007, 77) would suggest this overall view. This neo-sophistic version of relativism might be formulated as, for example, descriptive relativism. In a formulation by Lawrence Cahoone, Rorty’s descriptive relativism is the view according to which “the truth (or falsity) of a belief (or set of beliefs) is dependent on the relation of the belief(s) to some discourse (whatever else it is dependent on). Truth (or falsity) of belief(s) holds only with respect to, or in relation to some discourse, and need not hold with respect to other discourses”

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(Cahoone 1991, 239). In my interpretation, those who have a more efficient means of persuasion would have more chances to win the struggle for a more reliable description and redescription among those offering alternative descriptions. This is the reason why cultural politics has so much philosophical and axiological significance. To sum up briefly, let me refer to a view I have articulated elsewhere; namely, I would not accuse Rorty of cultural imperialism or descriptive relativism when he refers to the realization of basic human values (I should add, “and nonhuman”), by means of which human (and nonhuman) organisms can thrive, grow, and develop. However, if we want to extend our discussion to the particular ways in which human happiness, freedom, and sense of life should be provided, then we should respect ethnic and cultural traditions and treat them with understanding and care (see Skowroński 2009, 151–152, 163). Rorty’s important contribution to the philosophy of values, among many other things, is to suggest the omnipresence and the significance of the cultural battlefields on which sundry descriptions and redescriptions are constantly used in the hope of making given values and norms, our values and norms, better and more suitable for the realization of needs and dreams.

REFERENCES Cahoone, Lawrence. 1991. “Relativism and Metaphysics: On Justus Buchler and Richard Rorty.” In Nature’s Perspectives: Prospects for Ordinal Metaphysics. Edited by Armen Marsoobian, Kathleen Wallace, and Robert S. Corrington, 235–252. Albany, NY: SUNY. Dewey, John. 1939. Theory of Valuation. International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Eldridge, Michael. 2004. “Naturalism.” In: The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy. Edited by Armen T. Marsoobian and John Ryder, 52–71. Malden, UK: Blackwell. Kegley, Jacquelyn. 2010. “False Dichotomies and Missed Metaphors: Genuine Individuals Need Genuine Communities.” In The Philosophy of Richard Rorty. Edited by Randall E.Auxier and Lewis Edwin Hahn, 107–135. The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. XXXII. Chicago: Open Court. Kołakowski, Leszek. 1997 [1990]. Modernity on Endless Trial. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Münsterberg, Hugo. 1909. The Eternal Values. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Rorty, Richard. 1982. Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Philosophy and Social Hope. New York: Penguin. ———. 2003. “Religion in the Public Square: A Reconsideration.” Journal of Religious Ethics, 31, no. 1: 141–149. ———. 2007. Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers Volume 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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———. 2010. “Intellectual Autobiography.” In The Philosophy of Richard Rorty. Edited by Randall Auxier and Lewis Edwin Hahn, 3–24. The Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXXII. Chicago: Open Court. Royce, Josiah. 1885. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. Boston: Houghton. ———. 1995 [1908]. Philosophy of Loyalty. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Ryder, John. 2013. The Things in Heaven and Earth: An Essay in Pragmatic Naturalism. New York: Fordham University Press. Santayana, George. 1951. “Apologia Pro Mente Sua.” In The Philosophy of George Santayana. Edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 496–605. The Library of Living Philosophers. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1994 [1935]. The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel. Critical Edition. Edited by Herman J. Saatkamp. Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press. Skowroński, Krzysztof Piotr. 2003. “Axiocentrism in Santayana and Elzenberg,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 39, no. 2: 259–274. ———. 2007. “American Heritage as a Source of Values.” In Santayana and America: Values, Liberties, Responsibility, 75–98. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. ———. 2009. “Richard Rorty’s Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Cultural Imperialism.” In Values and Powers: Re-reading the Philosophical Tradition of American Pragmatism, 151–163. New York and Amsterdam: Rodopi. ———. 2013. “Aesthetic Persuasion and Political Compulsion: Literary Philosophy in Light of Richard Rorty’s Ideas of Democratic Liberalism and Cultural Politics.” In Persuasion and Compulsion in Democracy. Edited by Jacquelyn Ann. K. Kegley and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, 205–230. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, and Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books. Voparil, Christopher, J. 2013. “Pragmatist Philosophy and Persuasive Discourse: Dewey and Rorty on the Role of Non-Logical Changes in Belief.” In Persuasion and Compulsion in Democracy. Edited by Jacquelyn Ann. K. Kegley and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, 133–151. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books.

5 The Tenuous Harmony of Imagination, Vision, and Critique Brendan Hogan

The pragmatic version of the “primacy of practical reason” thesis is arguably the single most important pillar of the reconstruction of philosophy encouraged and undertaken by pragmatism. This philosophical innovation began over century before the “practical turn” much discussed in the social sciences and philosophy in the past two decades.1 Its consequences are most explicitly worked out in the cast that John Dewey gives to this primacy. The landscape of traditional fields of perennial philosophy undergo such a dramatic transformation as to the status of its branches, the character of the questions asked and results sought, and the way by which philosophy and philosophers are to conduct this practice that, for many, pragmatism does not now, and did not ever, count as philosophy at all. Of course, while there are not thirteen versions of this “primacy of practical reason thesis” among the classical pragmatists, there are great disparities as to the consequences for philosophy that this thesis entails in the corpus of writings contentiously grouped together under the “pragmatist” umbrella.2 The thesis stated is roughly this: thinking is a situated, context-specific action triggered by interruptions in the habit structures of agent-patients that are themselves constitutive members of any problematic situation, and it is ordered toward achieving ends that are revisable. Tying all thought to such a practical context as a problematic situation in a particular environment also establishes the projective, goal-directed character of thought in its initial manifestation. It is not to deny that musement, speculation, and wonder can be activities in which thinking takes place and that can react back into our purposive intellectual problem solving. This reconstruction of the intellectual activity of the species came to serve an entirely different understanding of “epistemology,” one that escaped the dualisms and dichotomies of traditional theories of knowledge and inaugurated “experimentalism.” Rather than discovering various a priori structures of our minds, necessary structures of this or 77

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any possible world, or an unrevisable architecture in the logic of our language, the goal of reflection is to transform a problematic situation into a resolved unity that re-establishes equilibrium to a lived context. Returning to Dewey, for a moment, philosophy then becomes a species of this situated inquiry, taking for its province problems that emerge with the grounds for our judgments in intellectual activity. He took great pains to articulate the reconstructed version of his understanding of philosophy once the turn to the primacy of practical reason is completed, most famously perhaps, referring to philosophy as the “criticism of criticisms.”3 Richard Rorty, however, blends the primacy of practical reason thesis together with a variety of other insights gathered together from pragmatists and non-pragmatists alike. He yokes this melange to his own version of a concomitant pragmatic consequence of the thesis: dispensing with the “correspondence” theory of truth and knowledge. If indeed, as pragmatists further argue, the meaning of a concept is the possible practical effects we can conceive this concept having, then there is nothing like an Aristotelian apprehension of an object’s ahistorical, necessary, formal, and essential properties, for example, the knowledge of which constitutes an identity between thought and the essence of the object perceived. There is no correspondence between either the Aristotelian idea, or phantasm, and the “whatness” that informs the matter of a substance, as famously laid out in De Anima (Aristotle 1981). Rorty’s retelling of the tradition, most rigorously in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature but evident throughout his work, proceeds through the centuries of philosophy, denying knowledge to be an adequatio between word and object, name and named, proposition and state of affairs, and so on. Knowledge on the pragmatic model, and following from the primacy of practical reason thesis, is not backward looking, or “eulogistic” in Dewey’s sense. Rorty extends this reconstruction vis-à-vis an encompassing idea that language does not work this way. Its purpose is not, to use another favorite phrase of Rorty’s, to “carve nature at the joints.” In Rorty’s words, and this is one of his great refrains throughout his work, dropping the correspondence theory of truth should not be limited merely to discarding a candidate for our epistemological allegiance, in favor of another. Rather, for Rorty, to truly accept the consequences of the failure of this model is to recognize that one should drop all feeling of faithfulness, or a sentimental loyalty, to something nonhuman that it is the purpose of our intellectual energy and our linguistic statements to strive to represent, mirror, or distill into a vocabulary at our disposal. For Rorty, the primacy of practical reason translates into the fact that “all there is to be faithful to are other humans” who play the same linguistic game as we do. Crucially and to Rorty’s credit, in giving and asking for reasons for our ideals, for those ways in which we hope to resolve any problematic situation in a particular way, we are also able to name or create problems where none existed before. This becomes crucial for supporting the depth at which he argues we should register the contingency of our practices. The depth of this contingency, rather than condemning us to a relativism that is inescapable once the concept of necessity is dissolved, releases us, one might say emancipates us, to create a future unrestrained by any particular vocabulary, discipline, or way of life that prescribes problem definition in a fixed manner.

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In addition to dispensing with the correspondence theory of truth and knowledge, Rorty’s other, and connected, whipping boy is the representational theory of mind introduced to overcome the fatal objections to Aristotelian models of mind introduced most famously by Descartes. According to Rorty, Descartes’s move to a theory of mind that grounds itself, checking all representational content against the criteria of clarity and distinctness as delivered by the dictates and light of reason, (and ultimately in the Meditations, the innate idea of perfection) keeps alive this nonhuman criterion inside the Cartesian mental theater. For Rorty, however, shifting from a correspondence to a coherence epistemology is just one more attempt to rescue the formal feature of the correspondence theories that reach for a nonhuman ground to which our claims can appeal, and also fails. In one of his later works to which I shall return, “Pragmatism and Romanticism,” he invokes Emerson to make this point: [there] is no enclosing the “real.” There is nothing outside language to which language attempts to become adequate. Every human achievement is simply a launching pad for a greater achievement. We shall never find descriptions so perfect that imaginative redescription will become pointless. (Rorty 2007a, 115)

I rehearse some of Rorty’s main targets of attack because I believe they serve to illuminate his overall meta-philosophical strategy and its development. It is my contention that the mistakes he focuses on in the philosophical tradition are real ones, and that he is right to align himself with William James and John Dewey as allies in overcoming these mistakes through dissolving the false problems these epistemological solutions are supposed to address. However, it is also my contention that Rorty’s enemies become hypostatized and loom so large as to reappear in his sites when they are actually not present. He thus slights, in a totalizing way, the elements of correspondence and representational talk that end up undermining his vision of “utopia in the global good society” (Rorty 2007a, 102–103), to use yet another locution of his. That is, in his anti-representational fervor and perhaps to own up to the consequences of his critique of epistemology, he eliminates resources that need not be eliminated once reconstructed in pragmatic fashion. Specifically, I will turn to his increasingly frequent and robust claims concerning imagination before moving on to what I consider to be a conflation of natural and social science, as keys to evaluating the consequences of his pragmatic vision for the prospects of critique with a practical aim. My main question, in brief, is, “Can the literary culture he calls for sustain the kinds of democratic problem-solving communities must engage in?”

IMAGINATION In Rorty’s last volume of collected essays, Philosophy as Cultural Politics, he makes several robust claims for imagination that I take as the touchstones for my critical comments. I list several summarily here to get the robustness of his claims:

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(1) Imagination is the source of language: At the heart of both philosophy’s ancient quarrel with poetry and the more recent quarrel between the scientific and the literary cultures is the fear of both philosophers and scientists that the imagination may indeed go all the way down. This fear is entirely justified, for the imagination is the source of language, and thought is impossible without language.4 (Rorty 2007b, 106–107)

(2) Imagination is the source of morality: Paraphrasing Santayana approvingly “The only source of moral ideals is the human imagination.” (Rorty, Vattimo, Robins, and Dann 2005)

(3) Imagination is the source of philosophy: If Hegel had been able to stop thinking that he had given us redemptive truth, and had claimed instead to have given us something better than redemptive truth—namely a way of holding all the previous products of the human imagination together in a single vision—he would have been the first philosopher to admit that a better cultural product than philosophy had come on the market. (Rorty 2007a, 97)

As Rorty states time and again philosophy is just one more product of human imagination. These claims follow upon and are largely consistent with arguments Rorty made from his earliest days. Specifically, Rorty was quite up front about the haphazard ways in which vocabularies change, reducing scientific inquiry to recontextualization, resting selfhood upon contingent historical grounds and upon the sheer power of redescription itself. These earlier arguments pinned most of their cogency, however, on Rorty’s particular account of the linguistic phenomenon of metaphor. Metaphor is his key, in these earlier writings, to introducing novelty and conceptual change into human practices, without committing him to a strong rationalist, a priori, or robust story entailing particular normative constraints. Metaphor is a particularly instructive vehicle for Rorty’s earlier rhetorical strategy as it is firmly circumscribed within the “linguistic turn.” At the same time, according to Rorty, metaphor is able to detonate the walls of any logical space within which our beliefs have been constructed, maintained, and held together. Rather to think of metaphor as “source of beliefs, and thus a motive or reweaving our networks of beliefs and desires, is to think of language, logical space, and the realm of possibility, as open-ended. It is to abandon the idea that the aim of thought is the attainment of a God’s-eye view. The philosophical tradition downgraded metaphor because recognizing metaphor as a . . . source of truth would have endangered the conception of philosophy as a process culminating in vision, theoria . . . . A metaphor is, so to speak, a voice from outside logical space, rather than an empirical filling-up of a portion of that space, or a logical philosophical clarification of the structure of that space. It is a call to change one’s language and one’s life, rather than a proposal about how to systematize either.” (Emphasis mine: Rorty 1991a, 18)

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Thus, the role of metaphor fits neatly together with his overall deconstruction of “mind” and “mentalese” as a central philosophical topic of inquiry. One of Rorty’s tropes is to draw seeming disparate and philosophically opposed arguments, like those of Husserl and Russell, or Dewey and Heidegger, into such close proximity. In this, he methodologically reduplicates the structure of metaphor in bringing similarity between things where none existed. “Mentalese” is a specific vocabulary and offshoot of the philosophy of mind made up of those words that owed their existence to more fundamental mistakes, themselves rooted in metaphors structured by a faulty notion of the human position in nature. Mentalese, he continually demonstrated, betrayed itself to be constituted by language that proffered pictures of how the human mind, in its contents, structure, or products, put human beings into touch with some nonhuman, fixed, timeless reality. It was, according to Rorty, dependent for its force on presuppositions that when pressed, dissolved into mere suggestions whose origin lay precisely in the power of still other metaphors. Contrary to Dewey though, Rorty wanted to dispense with mind talk altogether deriding the failed efforts of Dewey to maintain something from this metaphor in Experience and Nature’s use of the tortured compound “Body-mind” (see chapter 7: Dewey 1929). Of course, for Rorty, there is no special story to tell either about the process of metaphor creation or what the “essence” of metaphor is, in any way that would be instructive for stepping outside of the linguistic circle we inhabit. To ask what is the nature of metaphor is, for Rorty, to ask “what is the nature of surprise”: For only if one has already put irregular and unpredictable uses of language within the reach of notions like “mastery of the language,” will one think of reactions to metaphors as dictated by rules, or conventions, or the program of an interpreting machine. Only then will one think “How do metaphors work?” a better question than “What is the nature of the unexpected?” or “How do surprises work?” (Rorty 1990, 166)

My main purpose here is not to reassess Rorty’s arguments concerning metaphor. It is rather to note that as his writings culminated in the first decade of the twentyfirst century Rorty became less concerned with qualifying creativity in the technical vocabulary of the linguistic turn so stringently, exhibiting as he did his allergy for the vocabulary of mind and mental powers. Specifically, he turned to “imagination” as his rhetorical device of choice, embedding it in a variety of discussions of romanticism, justice as a larger loyalty, democratic vistas, prophecy, hope, and exhortations to aim for the utopia of the “global good society” mentioned above. He also crucially employs it as the touchstone of his call for a new, literary culture.

SOCIAL SCIENCE Alongside philosophy’s vices of correspondence and representationalism, Rorty evokes a romantic platitude when he suggests that imagination is prior to reason.

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Reason, however, is no less subject to hypostatization by the tradition as are correspondence and representationalism. What draws a unifying thread through all pragmatists is that each offers a different account of reason than the tradition, and specifically the relationship between reason in its theoretical and its practical employments. It is true that Rorty subjects other philosophical positions on reason, claiming to be a universal, transcendent, or transcendental court of appeal, to eviscerating attacks from the 1980s on. However, it is in Rorty’s opposition between imagination and reason that we have one of the sources of what I would like to call, evoking one of Rorty’s heroes and Dewey’s great influence, Hegel, an abstract negation of inquiry in its social modality. To refer to the “social” modality of inquiry is not to suggest that there is a pragmatic modality of inquiry that is not socially based and conducted. Rather, following Dewey’s distinction in Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, social inquiry takes the frustrated interests of members of communities with regard to realizing these interests as the domain of inquiry, as the tissue of the problematic situation to be dealt with.5 It is also hugely dependent upon the very power of imagination that Rorty champions. However, these usages are located pragmatically in different situations that call upon social inquirers to engage their imaginative power in different ways, regardless of the particular philosophy of social science one is influenced by, be it naturalist/positivist, hermeneutical, or critical-theoretical, to name the major choices on offer. Because Rorty, rightly, singled out transcendent or transcendental appeals to reason in such a way, often referring to its structure as providing a “permanent, neutral, matrix of inquiry” (Rorty 1991a, 18), he sloughs off important questions about social inquiry. He mentions in brief the earlier Dewey’s work with the social sciences as “morally” focused. But because Rorty falls prey to his dissolutive impulse, he does not disentangle the rich alternatives to the inflated notion of reason developed throughout the philosophical tradition, and thus misses the subtle caveats that pragmatism offers with respect to practices of social inquiry.6 Specifically, a great deal of work has been done in the scholarship on classical pragmatist thinkers to show the endogenous relationship of imagination to reasoning in scientific matters especially highlighted by Peirce, and in the realm of what has traditionally been termed “practical reason” by Dewey, and that this is one of the great logical innovations of the pragmatist account of rationality.

CONCLUSION In the late masterwork, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, Dewey puts philosophical payment to a variety of pictures he painted in The Public and Its Problems and elsewhere with respect to the role of the social sciences in a democracy. However, as in the general pattern of inquiry in chapter 6 of the Logic, the function, or what Rorty finally calls the power of the imagination in his late work, saturates all of the stages of social inquiry, only now with respect to human beings engaged in practical problem solving.

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Rorty’s discussion of social science and more specifically, philosophy of social science, is undifferentiated. He once again invites what Robert Westbrook referred to as his “imaginary playmates” out to kibbutz, thereby missing some of the nuances in the models he discusses. It is also sorely lacking in registering the practical differences between various social sciences, all too often conflating the hopes of social scientists with natural scientists for objectivity, control, and prediction. This is especially disconcerting, considering that he also called for a disunity of science, letting a thousand redescriptions bloom, contra E. O. Wilson (see Wilson 1998). For this according to Rorty, there is good reason. In denying the possibility of the essences of human nature, and concomitantly any object or subject of the discipline of philosophical anthropology, he undercuts any ontological distinction between social and natural objects. This has the consequence of lumping together social and natural scientific inquiry in a way that does not, in my opinion, jibe with any of his calls for conversation, eliminating sadism and suffering, or any other practical goal of social inquiry. I believe Rorty is too quick to conflate “meanings, fossils and fellows” to grasp the specific relationship and practical consequences between democracy, social science, and imagination. If you can’t figure out the relation between a person, the noises he makes, and other persons, then you won’t know much about him. But one could equally well say that fossils wouldn’t be fossils, would be merely rocks, if we couldn’t grasp their relations to lots of other fossils. Fossils are constituted as fossils by a web of relationships to other fossils and to the speech of the paleontologists who describe such relationships. If you can’t grasp some of these relationships, the fossil will remain to you, a mere rock. Anything is for purposes of being inquired into, “constituted by a web of meanings.” (Rorty 1982, 201)

Introducing Dewey’s theory of social inquiry helps to highlight some missed opportunities for paths that Rorty’s neopragmatism could have taken. Specifically, Rorty’s opposition of imagination and reason downplay the vast repertoire of functions requisite in practices of social inquiry that complicate this distinction he relies upon so forcefully, attempting to move us from a religious to a philosophical and finally a literary culture. A third, more viable, and more pragmatic tradition that he does not discuss in “Method, Social Science, and Social Hope” is critical social science, or critical theory. In fact, in his critique of the hermeneutic alternative quoted above Rorty, he states that such people as Charles Taylor “make the mistaken assumption that somebody’s own vocabulary is always the best vocabulary for understanding what he is doing, that his own explanation of what’s going on is the one we want. This mistake seems to me a special case of the confused notion that science tries to learn the vocabulary that the universe uses to explain itself to itself” (Rorty 1982, 200). But this to me begs the question of Rorty’s own work as to why he did not then move in the direction of critical social science and its rich discussion of interests, false consciousness (small “f,” small “c”) and capacities requisite for drawing out ways in which practical problem solving is frustrated by those who are in a condition

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where they conceive of a particular belief, attitude, and social action as beneficial to their flourishing, when in fact it is not, and empowers those who are harming them. But Rorty shies away from discussing this option as available for a social scientific program, instead closing this discussion with questionably using Foucault as his representative critical theorist, comparing him with Dewey, and concluding that the difference between the two is their respective vision of what we may hope for. This is due, I believe to an undifferentiated reading of the aims and practices of social scientific inquiry, so averse is Rorty to a secret representationalist dream of getting in touch with the nonhuman that social scientists necessarily harbor. Hence, I think that the emancipatory aims of Rorty’s championing of literary culture fueled by the imagination falls short; he ought to include a pragmatic philosophy of social science that recognizes the important imaginative practices of a pluralist model of social inquiry that lives up to the intellectual demands of resolving human problems causing human suffering. Rorty’s obsession with, or fixation upon, the demolition of the correspondence theories of truth and the representationalist theory of mind ironically does not leave any room for the type of muddling through that he champions as the tenor of democratic practices, of the social realization of the primacy of practical reason, and their relation to the social sciences requires tempered commitments to representational relations that fund social action. There is no need for the specter of a permanent, neutral matrix of inquiry, or a hypostatized version of mind, or correspondence to malevolently haunt this social practice of problem solving.

NOTES 1. The relationship of pragmatic thought to this practical turn is still an open question. For some relevant considerations in understanding this relationship, see: (Buch and Schatzki 2018). 2. This of course refers to Arthur Lovejoy’s “The Thirteen Pragmatisms” collected in: (Lovejoy 1963). 3. This phrase is taken from Dewey’s Experience and Nature, but Dewey is consistent in formulating an entirely different understanding of philosophical practice throughout his career. 4. Rorty goes on immediately following this claim: “Revulsion against this claim has caused philosophers to become obsessed by the need to achieve an access to reality unmediated by, and prior to, the use of language. So before we can rid ourselves of ontology we are going to have to get rid of the hope for such nonlinguistic access. This will entail getting rid of the idea of the human mind as divided into a good part that puts us in touch with the really real and a bad part that engages in self-stimulation and auto-suggestion” (Rorty 2007b, 107). 5. See: “Social Inquiry,” the penultimate chapter of: (Dewey 1938). 6. It is not my purpose here to make a detailed case as to the way in which Rorty’s flattening of inquiry into “science” hamstrings him in offering a rich account of social science, although I believe that this is an accurate conclusion.

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REFERENCES Aristotle. 1981. De Anima. Translated by Hippocrates Apostle. Grinnell, IA: Peripatetic Press. Buch, Anders, and Theodore Schatzki, eds. Questions of Practice in Philosophy and Social Theory. New York: Routledge, 2018. Dewey, John. 1929. Experience and Nature. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. ———. 1938. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Lovejoy, Arthur. 1963. “The Thirteen Pragmatisms.” The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 5, no. 1 (Jan. 2, 1908), pp. 5–12 (8 pages). Rorty, Richard. 1982. “Social Method and Social Hope.” In Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1991a. “Philosophy as Science, as Metaphor, and as Politics.” In Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Volume 2, 9–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991b. “Unfamiliar Noises: Hesse and Davidson on Metaphor.” In Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1, 162–172. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. “Against Unity.” Woodrow Wilson Quarterly 22, no. 1. 28–38. ———. 2007a. “Philosophy as a Transitional Genre.” In Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers Volumes 4, 89–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007b. “Pragmatism and Romanticism.” In Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers Volume 4, 105–119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———, Gianni Vattimo, Jeffrey Robins, and G. Elijah Dann. 2005. An Ethics for Today: Finding Common Ground Between Philosophy and Religion. New York: Columbia University Press. Wilson, E.O. 1998. “Resuming the Enlightenment Quest.” Woodrow Wilson Quarterly 22, no. 1. 16–27.

6 Abandoning Truth Is Not a Solution A Discussion with Richard Rorty Marcin Kilanowski

INTRODUCTION—GRAND IDEOLOGIES As the category of truth was (and still is) deeply embedded in social processes, one of them being the dissemination of beliefs, Richard Rorty, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century and often considered as a postmodernist, suggests that we should abandon this concept altogether. Prima facie, it is difficult to disagree with him when we consider the history of the twentieth century—a century of grand ideologies. The grand ideologies of the twentieth century aimed to make the world perfect and all individuals happy, or at least those worthy enough to achieve the state of felicity. Those ideologies provided descriptions of historical processes and, on that basis, pointed in which direction history, out of necessity, would unfold. Their particular persuasiveness was based on the way they depicted difficult-to-describe sociopolitical and economic processes as a whole. Their strength rested upon constantly addressing individuals, fellow citizens, and upon shaping their way of thinking. Their “success” (as ideologies) was based not only on defining a clear goal, but also on this goal being accepted by all the members of a society as their own. Building a new, better world was made possible due to the involvement of each individual. We can say that the leaders and strategists of these ideological trends realized, in a perfect way, the categorical imperative of Kant. They aimed at convincing individuals that they are not merely the means of achieving a given goal, but that they are the goals themselves. Of course, today our judgment concerning what happened in the past will differ from that of communists and fascists. Today, we would undoubtedly deem all despotic, authoritarian systems, in which an infallible, omniscient leader wished to make us realize our desires and to take care of our interests, were de facto the total enslavement of individuals. Human beings were humiliated in the name of 87

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realizing a given goal, former rights were negated, and human dignity became something owned only by those belonging to the privileged group. People were treated as objects, merely as the means of realizing a given goal. But such an evaluation is ours alone, and a retrospective one at that. Perhaps it was shared by others when their individual, weak voices were suppressed by roaring megaphones and the accompanying applause of the mob. At a particular moment, the overwhelming majority believed—indeed, were convinced—that this is “human being,” both the means and the goal, and that the maxim guiding their actions should become a universal law.1

RORTY AGAINST TRUTH In light of the above, we could say that at a particular moment of history we can be provided with different possible accounts of a situation, and the success of one of them is a result of its dissemination. If that is the case, it seems that it is of little importance whether we believe that there is some truth that we have discovered, or we are convinced that our propositions are only a manifestation of historically changeable beliefs—whether we will refer to the category of “truth” spelled with a capital “T” or lower case letter, whether it will be an absolute Truth or an accidental, temporary, local truth. The important issue is not whether things are “actually” this way and not another. It will not be of much significance whether, in order to achieve a given goal, the adherents of an ideology refer to a lie, repeated a thousand times so that it becomes “truth,” or to an objective truth, if it can be discovered at all.2 What marks a particular belief, and the actions accompanying it, as “right” would be their being useful for achieving a given goal and the general acceptance of the course set. History teaches us, according to such a view, that anything may become a truth when the appropriate effort and energy are devoted to its promotion and when using the weakness of those we wish to convince. We can succeed when the party to be convinced ceases to ask questions and offer counterarguments. What counts is the overwhelming and captivating power of some content—both literally and metaphorically. Being aware of the present methods of manipulation, we can say that it does not matter what things “actually” are; what does matter is that certain contents are considered, in the age of grand ideologies, to reflect the only right truth. Even so, we should be aware, as Richard Rorty claims, that they are really historically and culturally determined. In short, searching for one universal truth about the world and human beings does not matter, Rorty insists: we will not accomplish anything worth achieving in this way. This is why he suggests that we should relinquish any reliance on the “Platonic” idea of something common to us all, something uniting us with others, and that we should cease the search for both universal justifications and truths.3 Rorty therefore writes that those such as Nietzsche or Heidegger should privatize their projects, their pursuit of the sublime, consider them as irrelevant to politics, and as such reconciled with the sense of human solidarity supported by the development of democratic institutions. This “amounts to the request that they

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resolve an impending dilemma by subordinating sublimity to the desire to avoid cruelty and pain” (Rorty 1989, 197).4 Rorty goes one step further and claims that if we relinquish our reliance on the category of truth, we would eliminate the problem connected with the emergence of fanaticism, fundamentalism, or totalitarianism, for which, according to Rorty, the presence of truth is both the starting point for imposing opinions upon others and contributes to our utilization of violence. Rorty’s fear, which he backs up with examples from history, is that talk of something that unites us may serve those who will claim that there is one true model of living, of collective cooperation, and that only one form of social and political organization is right for us all. If there is a truth about human beings, about relations with others, then in accordance with the traditional way of thinking, we should act on it, and any opposing action, such as freethinking, should not occur. Each and every human being, they may insist, should act according to fixed overt standards, and those who disobey should be directed onto the right path. As Rorty suggests, the idea of one absolute or universal truth should be replaced with a series of minor truths, local justifications, relativized in certain circumstances. According to his perspective, we can call true any stance that has been commonly created and accepted, and the search for objectivity is nothing but the pursuit of an intersubjective understanding. And, as Rorty claims, such a belief “goes hand in hand with the thesis that no language is more adequate to reality than any other language” (Rorty 1997, 22). Thus one can, for instance, become a doctor and help others not because of the supposed universal humanity uniting us, but because one’s father was a doctor as well, and people were grateful to him and respected him. One could also be a Russian soldier in occupied Poland and, despite the curfew, help to bring a doctor to a woman about to give birth, because somewhere in Siberia, he had left his own wife who was also about to give birth.5 The justifications of these actions may be private, local, and still so significant that they will even affect the attitudes of others. Rorty therefore argues that we are left with our acknowledgment that we are rooted in a particular tradition, community, culture, historical time, or particular way of thinking. And the awareness of locality shapes our belief that our truth does not need to embrace everything, that it is, just as we are, a result of the time, place, and social beliefs that are held (Rorty 1991b, 30; see also: Rorty 2008, 17). In such circumstances we should rely on “sentimentality” and “sentimental education” instead of on one single truth. Such an education should not be based on ingraining moral truths or assigning moral obligations, which have nothing to do with love, friendship, trust, or social solidarity, but with developing our sensitivity to the situations of other people (Rorty 1993, 122). Rorty claims that when we no longer rely on the category of truth, we have no choice but to acknowledge the contingency of choice, history, and situation. We will be closer to realizing that our judgments, whatever they are, are not the only ones. Thus, according to Rorty, we will not try to force others to change their point of view and adopt our own, for ours will be just one of many possible points of view. We will understand that our societies “are not quasi-persons, they are (at their liberal, social democratic best) compromises between persons” (Rorty 1991c,

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196).6 A period of dialog and the sharing of opinions will take place. Violence will end, for what divided us—a belief that we are in the possession of the best and only true vision of the world that must be accepted by others—will be rejected as a fantasy, as an expression of longing for the feeling of safety and security that used to be present in the period of our childhood, as Isaiah Berlin says (Berlin 1991 [1958], 33).

IS RORTY RIGHT? At this point, it is worth asking whether an awareness of locality actually eliminates tensions. Would doing away with the category of “Truth,” in the name of which many fought and died, guarantee peace? Should we fear universal truths and justifications? We will consider these issues by using an example: What difference does it make that we acknowledge private property (property law, inheritance law, commercial law—all of them are based on the category of property) as the foundation of our civilization as a result of the historical, contingent, or cultural evolution of communities and state institutions? We can just as easily claim that a social structure based on property is the only right and “True” social structure. In both cases, property defenders will fight with equal fierceness when someone else decides to seize their property or to initiate changes due to which private property will cease to exist tomorrow. Conflict will arise regardless of whether we consider private property to be the basis for all social relations as being a local truth or a Universal Truth. The parties in question will fight equally fiercely for both the former and the latter. In short, conflict will ensue regardless of the awareness of the accidental character of what is being fought for. Accordingly, considerations about whether we are faced with one, and only one, all-embracing Truth, or with minor, local truths are of little practical importance; it is also not justified in either case to resign from or to avoid just one of these alternatives. It seems, then, that Goodwin, Proudhon, and/or Chief Seattle, and not Rorty, were closer to identifying the main problem of Western civilization, a problem that constantly generates conflicts. Violence will appear where there are those who own things and those who wish to deprive them of their possessions (see Lamb 2009, Proudhon 2008 [1840], Kaiser 1987). We can look for justifications, referring to truth, God, or historical necessity, or to the fact that the majority suffers from hunger. In order to end the strife, it is enough just to reach in the right direction. Such references are aimed at strengthening one’s position and proving that the path taken is the right one. But it does not matter whether we refer to truth or God or the destiny of history if we make practical consequences our main consideration. Instead of shouting, “it is the absolute truth that we are privileged, and we have the right to all the existing resources,” one may cry, “we are hungry, and we want to satisfy our hunger with what you own.” The effect will be the same whenever there are too many of those desperate, shouting people. In such situations there will come a time for resorting to violence.

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It is worth recalling that all the revolutions and wars of recent centuries were fought to a great extent as a result of the dissemination of propaganda; the theory of class struggle, for instance, or of a chosen people that were applied to historical circumstances constituted major support for the claim that a war was justified. Nonetheless, they were fought in terms of practical goals and this continues to be the case. We can say, therefore, that theories and ideas are crucial for realizing practical projects, but it is important to be aware, in contrast to Rorty’s way of thinking, of the fact that it is of no importance whether the makers and justifiers of war refer to one absolute or local truth, or whether they do not refer to any truth at all. In short, seeking moral or historical or religious support in referring to the category of truth does not determine who we are; thus, there is no need to do away with it as the reason for given actions. Regardless of whether we refer to metaphysical truth or to the truth of a particular culture (a local truth), we can use either of them to achieve the same goals. The same kind of truth may also help in justifying the efforts to achieve completely different goals.7 This can be illustrated using the example of the belief that it is an objective truth that God exists and we are sinful. When approaching human beings as erring and sinful, we may reach the conclusion that mistakes should be forgiven and neighbors should be loved, not hurt, especially when we are not blameless ourselves. But we can also say that since people err and are sinful, they should be punished, and sins should be called out and defeated, even by burning someone at the stake. And this is how it was in the past: violence directed at others was justified by referring to the truth. But these were just categories at the service of men who endowed them with meaning via their particular usage. Yet another example is the social division we could affect by grouping people into the lethargic and the energetic. Applying this distinction, we could prove that this is their objective nature, or that it is culture that has shaped our way of thinking in such a way that we perceive some as energetic and others as lethargic. However, the fact that we recognize those who are energetic as being more useful for a society, and automatically as more valuable and more important, will actually be a particular use of this belief, whether we see the belief as metaphysical or as shaped within our culture. Such an attitude can appear whenever we believe in one thing rather than another. However, whether it refers to some natural or cultural premises, the same division into the lethargic and the energetic may form the basis for considering the differences between people as something that should be accepted.

USAGE AND INTEREST The belief that there is some truth or something else which is common to us all does not need to lead to the determination of one true and universal path to be followed. Such a claim about one right form of conduct is nothing but a particular usage of this belief. We can well imagine that what is common to us all is the proof that everyone has what we have, for example, that we are human beings with inherent dignity, and that we should therefore respect each other. We can claim that each

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and every human being has the right to individual development to the extent they deem appropriate, and no one has the right to “mold” any of them according to a vision contrary to their own, even if they act in unexpected ways, for their right to individual development is more important. With respect to the above, we can say that beliefs, including the metaphysical views that Rorty fears so much, do not as such determine a particular attitude or a set of such that influence actions just by virtue of holding them. A given attitude results from the use of such a metaphysical belief. The use is, on the other hand, determined by the interest guiding a particular person.8 Therefore, when talking about our actions, it can be claimed that it does not matter whether our vision of the world is founded on objective or culturally constructed premises, or whether it describes the actual state of affairs, or whether it results from a commonly accepted social construct which has been recognized as valid in the course of the process of its dissemination.9 To make this clear, let us focus on another example. Let us imagine that a country believes that in the distant past, a particular territory used to lie within its borders. On this basis, the country then advances a claim that this is how things should still be. Of course, the country that is currently in possession of the territory is not enthusiastic about returning it, and war breaks out. If, however, the first country declared that indeed, historically, the territory did belong to it, but it no longer wants this territory, there would be no claim for regaining the territory and there would be no war with the neighboring state. The claim itself will change together with a change in the interest that is the basis for using a belief. It is not necessary to change a belief in order to change a claim. Present attitudes may stem from the belief that all historical events should not influence the way in which we create the common space for communication for different nations. We can claim that after a bloody history lesson we arrived at the conclusion that it is not these ideas of state, nation, ethnic state, race, territory, etc., that are the most important, but it is the people who used to be pushed into particular frames of interpretation—the frames of usage. In other words, behind any metaphysical beliefs about something internally common to all of us stands the recognition that because we are all the same, only one attitude is appropriate, or perhaps we are all the same, but our individual choices may be different. Here lies the particular interest of those who prefer one explanation over the other. The one who wishes to subjugate everyone else, who wishes to organize the surrounding world according to his or her plan, is also guided by a particular interest. Of course, those who wish to accept the diversity of attitudes adopted by those like us will defend their interests too, to give people the right to individual development. With such an approach, one can wonder whether the constructivist perspective is actually the more convenient one; one can believe that it is, after all, more susceptible to change. In the case of the metaphysical belief that there are the chosen and the damned, the better and the worse, that there are the privileged and the untouchable,10 not much can be done. This is simply the way things are for metaphysical

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belief. But in the case of social constructs, on the other hand, it can be claimed that this is not necessarily the way things need to be, that it is enough to change our perspective and we will no longer distinguish one from the other, and the problem will disappear. Thus, recognizing the cultural foundations of our way of perceiving the world seems more convenient, for they can be changed when we need to do so. But this account of convenience is just an appearance. For a constructivist who acknowledges the cultural character of our beliefs about objectivity or universalism, it should be clear that those are not so susceptible to change as we would wish them to be, especially when a problem is identified from a particular perspective. It will be difficult to change our way of cultural description once we become, over years, accustomed to perceiving people in a given way. Of course, we can change our cultural convictions, our descriptions, or our language with time; but the problem of use and the particular interests underlying them will remain. As I said above, cultural conviction as such is not what determines our choices, whether social or political. Even if we do away with one opinion, another will always appear. If the mechanism of usage and interest remains the same, a change in opinions will not matter and whether we call somebody “Gypsies” or “Roma,” for example, will not prevent us from excluding them socially, humiliating them, or being violent in reference to them.11 For further clarification, it is worth adding here that, together with a change in the beliefs of the parties participating in a discussion, their claims may change as well; but they do not necessarily need to. This will depend on the interest they are guided by, which will surely influence any particular use of a belief. Knowing all this, to maintain that we should alter our beliefs in order to change our claims is to introduce unnecessary and misleading simplification, and, at the same time, to return to the place we have been before. An exchange of beliefs as such will not give us much if it is not followed by a change in their use. We will replace them with other ones, behind which particular interests will be hidden, and, quite often, the very same interests. The same can be said about the category of truth. It does not mean much itself unless it is used for forming an attitude. The fact that one can distinguish the Aryan race from other races, for example, means nothing until somebody states that the Aryan race is better than other races, for they deem particular traits as more desirable than others, and so Aryans should be the only race to rule. To sum up, it can be said that by failing to recognize the role of the interest hiding behind a particular use of a belief, we may get the impression that these are the beliefs (for instance, that truth is absolute, or local, or that there is no truth at all) that are responsible for our claims, and therefore we may hold that a change of a particular belief can result in a change of claims. Finally, it is worth repeating that we should not seek to rescue humankind from rejecting the category of truth or universality, as Rorty does. The project of abandoning deliberations about truth does not give us much, and it does not in the least lead to the emergence of dialog and peace, as Rorty would wish. In the name of “Asian values,” for example, there are many who might kill in the same way as those who kill in the name of universal ones.12

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DIALOG Although it is impossible to agree with Rorty that simply refraining from using the category of truth can change our conduct, it is acceptable to agree that dialog and discussion provide us with the opportunity to initiate changes regarding the attitudes adopted. Here, Rorty’s intuition to advocate dialog seems right. Such dialog will undoubtedly be favorable as long as it facilitates getting to know one another and allows for arriving at a harmonious way of using particular beliefs. We can imagine a situation in which conflicting claims between parties may be settled due to our dialog. Discussion might end the dispute and no one has to suffer. All this will, of course, depend on which way of using a given belief prevails, and on what interests the parties have agreed. When we encourage someone to use violence against a third party and not against each other, the conflict and violence which Rorty wished so much to avoid will appear between the disputant and the new victim.13 Such dialog, the role of which was to prevent violence and suffering, merely shifts them elsewhere. Of course, in such circumstances, we can say that the opportunity for communication was not used in the right way. But what does “using something in the right way” actually mean? Rorty would say that the way is right as long as it is in accordance with our cultural and social hierarchy of values, which attains its justification from within our local community. For liberals, Rorty would add, it is important for the hierarchy of values to be directed toward the protection of individual, private spheres and the establishment of such a public sphere within which the former will be able to seek agreement and consensus (see Rorty 1989, 197).14 However, such an explanation would not be really useful; it remains open as to which values of our local community guide us, whether they are actually what we take them for, and especially, what it means to believe that we should protect individual private spheres and support the establishment of a public sphere focused on the search for consensus.15 We face the very same obstacles when facing members of other communities or cultures.16 Without reference to our culture or historical roots, we may add to Rorty’s claim that the “right way to use dialog” is one that does not exclude, does not deem anybody to be worse, as inhuman or subhuman. One may observe a certain historical tendency in human behavior: if one deems someone else or some group to be worse, then one is close to using this belief in order to exclude the worse, treat those persons in an unkind way, or use violence against them. It is worth adding that for Rorty dialog concerns the public sphere and is undertaken in public language (Rorty 1989, 100). He argues that we should use two separate languages: private and public, if we do not want any more violence and exclusion. We should also ask whether we are willing to agree with Rorty and assume that a sharp division into the private and the public is indeed possible. Is the fact that while acting we should think of others and should take into consideration their final vocabularies not an encouragement for us to consider the arrangements from the public sphere while shaping our private vocabulary? Moreover, does it not mean that, at the same time, we are not able to make a clear distinction between what is

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private and what is public? Indeed, it is hard to imagine ourselves being able to use a final vocabulary including both a private and a public sphere, but acting only in accordance with one of them (Brandom 2000, 179). It is difficult to imagine ourselves hating enemies on the one hand, and acting so as not to humiliate them and not to make them suffer on the other.17 Finally, it is hard to imagine someone who is a nationalist using a private vocabulary full of expressions of hostility toward foreigners, their beliefs, their culture, and their religion while praising liberal freedoms for everyone in their public vocabulary. In short, it is difficult to envisage a situation in which, on the one hand, we describe ourselves and others in our private vocabularies—and these descriptions would have nothing to do with someone’s present or prospective suffering—and, on the other hand, we consider causing suffering the worst thing we can do. Unfortunately, the doubts that arise from the discussion of the sharp division into the private sphere and the public sphere are not clarified in Rorty’s works. While reading them, we encounter fragments that point to the relations between private and public vocabularies. They indicate how the private part of the final vocabulary affects the public one, and vice versa, and how the public context influences the shaping of private vocabulary (Rorty 1989, 41, 96; also, Rorty 1996, 40; Rorty 1992, 593; and Rorty 1991a, 80). Rorty’s reasoning relies on the potential to distinguish between two independent portions of our final vocabulary, and on separating the private sphere from the public one. Such a distinction seems difficult to maintain, as the public sphere is subject to constant changes due to the activities of individuals, which transcend their private spheres.18 It is also difficult to separate the private from the public, because of the fact that the former, to a great extent, constitutes the latter. What can be done, however, is to point to the relations between the two. Even if we assumed that within our vocabulary it is possible to distinguish the portions of it that are more private and more public, any change that would occur within any of them would be a consequence of their affecting each other. The conclusion to the above is as follows: it is impossible to separate the private sphere from the public if, at the same time, dialog and freedom of speech are to be maintained. The interactions between them are necessary for social harmony and individual growth. In other words, this is not the way to defend both the private and the public sphere against threats.19 What is crucial in the course of dialog are also different interests. Unfortunately, Rorty does not mention this, therefore we should add that when advocating dialog, it is worth believing that in the best possible scenarios the disputing parties will debate long enough and will explain to each other all the controversial issues, and that they will also discuss the interests guiding their actions and influencing their claims. Perhaps they will agree on the interests they should be guided by.20 But what is to be done when a disputant does not feel that he or she uses a particular belief under the influence of the interest which shapes his/her claim and attitude? He or she will still think that the attitudes and actions are the way they are because they result from a particular belief (based on absolute truth, universal approbation, or cultural view). Such a person will still justify actions by holding particular beliefs, at the same time feeling absolved from responsibility for these actions. The problem will be

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significant. As long as we are not aware of the fact that it is interests and beliefs that guide us, we will not be able to accept responsibility for our actions and it will be impossible to open responsible dialog. Instead of becoming a method for reflecting upon problems based on asking questions and actually listening to the answers, to different opinions and plans, dialog will still occur occasionally, at best eliminating conflict for some time, but it will not resolve the basic problem, which is our lack of understanding regarding our role in taking action (which depends on our interests and claims) and not taking responsibility for those actions. We can say that dialog is possible, or preferably, “undisturbed,” as Jürgen Habermas would put it (Habermas 1981), if we consciously suspend our claims and interests and if we acknowledge the freedom and equality of all the parties. The problem does not rest in our beliefs, impeding friendly discussion, but in the claims which affect their use. The claims exist regardless of our beliefs and whatever category of truth we may apply. But is it possible to relinquish those claims? Now, we can imagine that we temporarily suspend our belief that something is either white or black, but it is far more difficult to imagine that we might manage to suspend our claims for a longer period of time and that we enter into a dialog when we want to gain something from the other party, and when the other party incessantly refuses. The situation may become very difficult. Of course, the party wishing to induce the other to adopt their vision or take a particular action will not always resort to coercion when refused. There are issues, however, with respect to which the other party’s negative attitude can result in the use of most drastic means, as it is sometimes the case in international relations, for example.21 As we can see, an additional difficulty occurs due to our inability to suspend our claims in such a way that it results in the discussion being centered upon telling each other about the world we live and act in. We cannot relinquish our interests in such a way that they do not generate claims. We can try to suspend them, but this will be possible only until we are required to take a decision of some kind. In some circumstances we can postpone that decision for a long time, but sooner or later there comes a point at which we have to choose between the particular uses of a belief, for example, concerning the purity of the nation. Sometimes, decisions must be made very quickly, since what is at stake is exclusion from a privileged group, and it is important whether to accept the division introduced or to oppose it.22 Usually there is ample time for reflection and discussion, but this time is not used. When a problem arises, instead of making the decision individually, one transfers it onto others or some beliefs one holds.23 Those others, often with great eagerness, are content and accept the role of deciding; they use the lack of awareness in their decision-making, which “proves” that there is no other way to act, for this is the nature of our beliefs.24 As we can see, dialog does not exhaust what should be achieved. Dialog is a means of achieving particular goals. Dialog as such cannot be the goal whose achievement discourages people from fighting, from using violence. We can sigh, “if only that were possible.” Disputes about ethnic minorities, foreigners and refugees go hand in hand with the presence of these groups in the countries where they appear. Despite this process being an ongoing one, not everyone seems satisfied with the presence of

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such groups and thus we learn about the ensuing tragedies, aggressive attacks, and violence. Dialog, that is, free and undisturbed communication, is undoubtedly a value, but we need to specify in the name of what it is to occur. It may concern the ways we describe the world to each other, or perhaps it can be aimed at defending a belief, but it is in our interests to see it exercised. For some, what is crucial is the belief that the human being is of value, and this belief is accompanied with it being used in a particular way: on the basis of the belief, they are against using violence toward any other human being.25 Although both the particular belief and its use are rooted deeply within all of us (and it does not matter whether recognizing human beings are of value is a universal or a local truth), we should be ready to discuss them and want to justify such beliefs and to extend our knowledge about the topic through meeting other people, by getting to know them. We should also be ready for both the belief and its use to change to some extent due to dialog. It might transpire that in our desire not to hurt or harm we actually unconsciously make someone suffer (see Kennedy 2004). And perhaps regardless of whether someone is right, or whether some are more talented than others, whether some do have greater opportunities for succeeding in realizing particular tasks and others do not, etc., we can still convince our disputant that such matters are not a basis for deeming some worse and others better, rewarding the latter with the right to become the masters of life and death with respect to all the rest. We know this admission does not come easily, and there may be many voices in a discussion, as many as there are attitudes of reluctance to enter into a dialog in the first place. It is important to realize that such obstacles exist in order not to state too optimistically (as Rorty does) that dialog can “liberate” us.26

CONCLUSION In the search for a conclusion, it is worth asking the question: Are metaphysicians dangerous? Should we fear them as Rorty does? In order to answer these questions, a few words of clarification are required. Along with adopting a certain vision of the world, an attitude of some sort is created with time. This attitude is closely connected with the actions we take. These actions, however, are not a direct consequence of the adoption of a given vision of the world, but are a consequence of its use, the use of the particular beliefs which comprise this vision. Thus, beliefs evoke specific practical consequences, although not due to the fact of our holding these beliefs, but rather this is due to the fact of our using them. Particular visions of the world, a belief, an opinion, may all be affected by different usages, depending on the interests of those who hold them. These beliefs, opinions, and visions are not automatically responsible for the conclusions drawn from them concerning the actions that should be taken, attitudes adopted, etc., but it is the one who arrives at given conclusions, the one who adopts given attitudes that is responsible. Now, the two questions posed above can be answered. A metaphysician is dangerous as long as he or she adopts an attitude unfavorable for others and uses his or her beliefs in order to deprive them

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of “freedom” (in this unusual sense), to impose his or her point of view on them by means of violence. But a constructivist or Rorty’s ironist may be just as dangerous. As we know, Rorty’s ironist appears in his texts as in opposition to the metaphysician, seeking a single, unchanging universal truth. The ironist is aware of the accidental character of his/her beliefs, as well as their historical and cultural roots. When describing such a person, Rorty claims that it is necessary to be aware of the “accidentality” of our opinions and he claims to be doubtful about the beliefs and judgments held (adopting the attitude of the ironist) (see, for instance: Rorty 1989, 80). He also claims that it is only when we are uncertain about these beliefs and judgments, when we think that it may be our opponent who is right (and the opponent thinks that we may be right), that none of the parties will resort to violence in order to impose a position on the other. However, Rorty is incorrect since, as I explained above, it is not our beliefs, our opinions, or our certainty or uncertainty that determines whether we use violence. Violence may be inflicted even when we are uncertain, and regardless of whether the aim it supposedly serves is worthy of our engagement. Violence may also be inflicted when one is certain of one’s attitude, position, and view of reality, treating it as an exemplification or embodiment of this certainty. In short, it is not necessary to live in uncertainty or to accept it in order to refrain from violence, or to use it. We can also be certain of our position while either using violence or refraining from it. For there is nothing wrong in being certain, as long as our certainty or uncertainty is accompanied by a readiness to meet the other, learn about and verify other opinions and their use, as this is what our attitude should be. At the same time, we should always be ready to extend our knowledge, to wish to learn, never abandoning this endeavor. In terms of changing Rorty’s perspective, and going beyond it, we can say that our actions do not depend on our beliefs about objective and universal reality, and they do not depend on our beliefs about its culturally constituted character, but on the way these beliefs are used. For no belief obliges us to act in a given way. It is therefore not beliefs that are wrong, but the way they are used. Accordingly, we should not fight a belief, but certain attitudes that are aimed at the appropriation of the private sphere of others or at disrupting the common communication space created between us within the public sphere. We should act to change those uses of shared (and unshared) beliefs that lead to violence and, regardless of the vision of the world we have, aim to make both the creation of space for freedom and the equal treatment of other people an important aspect of our actions. In short, there is no direct transition from beliefs to actions. The former does not determine the latter. There is no justification for Rorty’s worries that truth or universal values lead to fundamentalist attitudes and, consequently, to wars. We can promote the rejection of the notion of truth (as disgraced for some) in the field of sociopolitical action, as Rorty does, but such a rejection gives us nothing valuable, since the beliefs that we share are not of much political importance. We should realize that what is important are our attitudes, that they are the result of our treatment of the beliefs we hold, the way in which we use them, as well as the interests that we are guided by. We should pay attention to the fact that it is not the categories

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or beliefs that are responsible for the course of events, but our lack of awareness as to the process of choosing attitudes and actions, over which we have an influence. What counts is how we use our beliefs. There is no reason to fear references to truth. Ultimately, what counts is the interest in whose name it will be used. Let us return to the supposed success that the ideologies of the twentieth century enjoyed for some time. It has been said that this success was achieved due to “promoting” (imposing!) content disseminated in the course of this operation. The success was based on making individuals realize that the battle is fought for them, that they are of the highest value, for the sake of which favorable circumstances for their development should be created. Undoubtedly, it must have been difficult at that time to judge whether the methods applied in order to achieve that goal were right, or whether the goal itself is right. It was believed to be so, although some doubts did arise as well. We share the same doubts today. It is difficult to state what goals and what means used in order to achieve those goals are right. Everywhere someone is trying to present goals and to offer particular methods of action. Accordingly, we ask ourselves the same question again: What does it mean today to act in accordance with a maxim that would become a “universal law”? How can we determine which of the rules and methods of action on offer are worth our attention, and which are not? History teaches us that they are often presented with the conviction that the motivation for implementing them is for the sake of the individual. But are they actually for anyone’s sake? When trying to answer such questions, we can agree with Rorty that what we may rely on is dialog. It is dialog, despite all the problems it involves, that allows, to some extent, us to get to know each other and to aim to create a situation in which the ubiquitous violence and suffering from coercion can be reduced. It is dialog that can provide us with the opportunities for extending the community, where we refer to a “we” via including in it all those “the others” that used to be excluded from it. It is a genuine challenge to form such communities—societies that will deem this dialog to be a necessary element in resolving conflicts under the conditions mentioned above.

NOTES 1. Referring to Kant in such a context may seem out of place. Usually, while considering the sociopolitical transformations of the twentieth century, there is a tendency to refer to Hegel, Marx, and Sorel. But there is a presupposed universal “ought” in all the ideologies that proceed from these philosophies. In this regard, one might as well speak of Kant as of any later philosopher. Due to this, reference to the philosophy of Kant as the source of the rise of authoritarianism is often present in the work of Isaiah Berlin, see, for example, (Berlin 1991 [1958], 32). 2. The reference here is to the words often attributed to Joseph Goebbels: “Repeat a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth,” or “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Goebbels did refer to the “Big Lie” idea, but no reliable evidence has been found for these attributions, first associated with Goebbels by the US House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1946. See: (United States 1946, 19).

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3. It is worth adding that Rorty takes “Platonism and Greek thought generally to say, the set of candidates for truth is already here, and all the reasons which might be given for and against their truth are also already here; all that remains is to argue the matter out.... If one holds the Greek view, then it is reasonable to define truth in terms of idealized rational acceptability in the manner of Habermas, Peirce, and Putnam. But that definition will be useless once one starts thinking of languages and truth-candidates as constantly in the process of change” (Rorty 1996, 50–51). He also writes: “It is not that there is anything wrong with reason, truth, and knowledge. All that is wrong is the Platonic attempt to put them in the center of culture, in the center of our sense of what is to be a human being” (Rorty 1996, 27–28). On that issue see also (Rorty 2015, 875). 4. For a contrasting view, please see: (Engel 2007). 5. This example is a personal one. The Polish woman about to give birth was actually my grandmother. 6. According to Rorty, freedom is also a compromise. This freedom seems necessary to achieve the aim of liberal societies. This aim is not “to invent or create anything, but simply to make it as easy as possible for people to achieve their wildly different private ends without hurting each other” (Rorty 1991c, 196). 7. The influence of theory on practice is not questioned here. If we create a theory of racial and cultural differences, it will undoubtedly influence the way we perceive the world. However, the way we treat others will not result from a particular theory, but rather how it is used. If, according to our theory, we consider somebody “backward,” for example, it is not obvious that we will automatically wish to subjugate or change him or her. We can just as well accept or tolerate or leave that person alone. 8. Interest is something different from belief and is affected by emotions, needs, socialization, habits, and so on. 9. It seems certain that as long as we share some opinions that take part in shaping our vision of the world, this vision becomes our reality: it determines our scope of thinking and acting. Still, we should be aware of the fact that subjective beliefs often become objective when they are believed to be such by the majority. 10. Reference to the people in India belonging to a group of very low social status— untouchables—deprived of some rights and discriminated on by the rest of the society. For more on the issue, please see: (Deliege 2001). 11. It did not change much in the long term to call the untouchables in India by the name Harijan (“People of God”)—a change that was initiated by Mahatma Gandhi. For the origins of the term, please see Srivastava (1997): 15. 12. Invoking “Asian values” often occurred to justify a particular code of conduct exercised by authoritarian regimes in Asia, which referred to the belief in the existence within Asia of a unique set of values that reflected their specific regional culture, see (Osiatyński 2009). 13. This is, in some sense, the case with international corporations which abide by international standards concerning human rights in Europe or in the United States; however, when they conduct business in third world countries, they use the lack of internal legal regulations as a license to ignore and violate those same rights. They agree, in an active or passive way, on coercion with respect to the citizens, or even on whole political regimes, which enable the corporations’ investments to increase in value. Moreover, using such violence is often possible due to the presence of corporations and the role they play in financial and technological support for the existing regimes. For more on this issue, please see: (Deva 2012). 14. Rorty believes in a particular set of values that were crucial for the Enlightenment. For example, Rorty ascribes a special significance to suffering. In light of that we can ask: Does he not uncover a common denominator for us all, a thing characteristic of a liberal

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metaphysician, when he points to the susceptibility to experience humiliation and pain that we all share? Such a common denominator is to serve the metaphysician to describe his own self and to describe his relations with others, for both private and public purposes. Answering this question, one could come up with an interpretation according to which Rorty does indeed introduce a certain common denominator for all human beings. This is why some philosophers like Bernard Williams go further and tend to see Rorty as a universalist of some sort. However, what is more convincing is the comprehensive vision of liberal modernity presented by William Curtis, which features a virtue-based conception of the liberal democracy of Richard Rorty (see Curtis 2015). 15. Does it mean the sort of protection of the private sphere as in the Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 133 S.Ct. 1659 (Kiobel v. Roycal Dutch Petroleum Co. 2013), in which the Supreme Court of the United States rejected the claim concerning the violation of human rights by international corporations in Nigeria? Does this mean searching for consensus in the public sphere (based on the values of our democratic community), which would be based on believing that our understanding of these values does not allow for determining whether they were violated in another state? 16. It may be the case that we relate to them to a greater extent than to our own neighbors. 17. On criticism of Rorty’s anti-foundationalism being compatible with his prohibition on cruelty, please see: (Guignon and Hiley 2003, 139–150). 18. This is the point often made in commentaries on the philosophy of Richard Rorty. Please see: (Auxier and Hahn 2010). 19. For more on the critique of the private language-public language distinction, please see: (Kilanowski 2013, 106–112). More on the subject of language and communication in Rorty’s philosophy can be found in: (Pable 2015). 20. It is worth adding that those that believe in such a scenario include Habermas, although he is criticized by Putnam. The latter considers continuation of the discussion until everyone is in agreement as a utopian idea, because in the real world an agreement of this sort never happens, even when the discussion is long enough. For more on this, please see: (Kilanowski 2015, 831). 21. In a way, Rorty is aware of that and he says that when dialog fails there is nothing left but to use force. Rorty writes: “Those words are as far as he [its user] can go with language; beyond them there is only helpless passivity or a resort to force” (Rorty 1989, 73). Rorty is not the only one who believes in the liberal values of openness, tolerance, and dialog, but sees the use of force as a means of dealing with conflict. Such a way of reasoning can also be found in the work of Isaiah Berlin. For more, please see: (Berlin 1997, 30). 22. That was the case with Sophie Scholl, who said before her execution: “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action” (Gebel 1946/1983)? Please also see: (Hanser 2012). 23. This process was very well described by Ortega y Gasset and Erich Fromm, among many others. Please see: (Ortega y Gasset 1994, Fromm 1994). 24. Such a path of reasoning is often advocated by those who wish to defend a particular status quo. They are not only the leaders of regimes with subordinate state apparatuses, but quite often are also professional groups who follow the ideology of legalism. Please see: (Shklar 1986). 25. It is widely believed that not everything may be treated as the object of discussion and transformation, as is the case with ius cogens. It is worth remaining open to holding dialog on whether we understand correctly the particular issues relevant to the protection of those ius cogens (who a human being is, what his or her needs are, whether these needs are recognized,

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whether the actions taken with respect to them are right), for it is these particular issues that determine whether those we wish to protect will actually be protected. In other words, we can say that in our opinion, we should not make soap and mattresses of human beings. Please see: Zofia Nalkowska, Medallions (Nalkowska 2000). We will not change such a belief either. It is worthwhile, however, to enter into dialog, for we may have seen too little, and in the course of a discussion we may realize that we deprive human beings of their dignity when we agree, for instance, on using their corpses for artistic activity (see Exhibition “The Human Body”); or, perhaps, we can see this same dehumanization when corporations make human beings “guinea pigs” by feeding them genetically modified organisms. 26. For more on the issue of dialog in Rorty’s philosophy, please see: (Kilanowski 2017, 64–66; also, Gross 2008).

REFERENCES Auxier Randall, and Lewish Hahn, Eds. 2010. Philosophy of Richard Rorty. Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXXII. Chicago: Open Court. Berlin, Isaiah. 1991 [1958]. “Two Concepts of Liberty.” In The Liberty Reader. Edited by David Miller, 33–57. Oxford University Press, Oxford. ———. 1997. The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Brandom, Robert. 2000. “Vocabularies of Pragmatism: Synthesizing Naturalism and Historicism.” In Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert Brandom, 156–182. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Curtis, William M. 2015. Defending Rorty: Pragmatism and Liberal Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deliege, Robert. 2001. The Untouchables of India. Translated by Nora Scott. Oxford: Berg. Deva, Surya. 2012. Regulating Corporate Human Rights Violations: Humanizing Business. New York: Routledge. Fromm, Eric. 1994. Escape from Freedom. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Gebel, Else. 1946/1983. “Letter from Else Gebel [to Robert Scholl].” In The White Rose. Munich, 1942–1943. Edited by Inge Scholl. Second Edition. Translated by Arthur R. Shultz, 138–147. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Gross, Neil. 2008. Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Guignon, Charles, and Davild R. Hiley. 2003. Richard Rorty. Contemporary Philosophy in Focus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. Theory of Communicative Action. Translated by Thomas McCarthy, Boston: Beacon Press. Hanser, Richard. 2012. A Noble Treason: The Story of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Revolt Against Hitler. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Kaiser, Rudolf. 1987. “A Fifth Gospel: Almost Chief Seattle’s Speech(es): American Origin and European Reception.” In Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays. Edited by Christian F. Feest, 505–526. Aachen: Heredot im Rader Verlag. Kennedy, David. 2004. The Dark Sides of Virtue, Reassessing International Humanitarianism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kilanowski, Marcin. 2013. Ku wolności jako odpowiedzialności. Dewey, Rorty, Habermas o nowej jakości w demokracji. Toruń: Wydawnictwo UMK.

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———. 2015. “Towards a Responsible and Rational Ethical Discussion—A Critique of Putnam’s Pragmatic Approach.” In Philosophy of Hilary Putnam. Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXXIV. Edited by Randall E. Auxier, Douglas R. Anderson, and Lewis Edwin Hahn, 827–862. Chicago: Open Court. ———. 2017. “What Kind of Politics Do We Need? Toward Freedom as Responsibility in Habermas’s and Rorty’s Visions of Democracy.” Kultura i Edukacja—Culture and Education 116, no. 2: 50–68. Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 133 S. Ct. 1659 (2013). Lamb, Robert. 2009. “For and Against Ownership: William Godwin’s Theory of Property.” The Review of Politics 71, no. 2: 275–302. Nalkowska, Zofia. 2000. Medallions. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Ortega y Gasset, José. 1994. The Revolt of the Masses. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Osiatyński, Wiktor. 2009. Human Rights and Their Limits. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pablé, Adrian. 2015. “Integrating Rorty and (Social) Constructivism: A View from Harrisian Semiology.” Social Epistemology 29, no. 1: 95–117. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. 2008 [1840]. What Is Property? An Inquiry Into the Principle of Right and of Government. London: Forgotten Books. Richard, Rorty R. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991a. “Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens.” In Essays n Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Volume 2, 66–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991b. “Solidarity or Objectivity?” In Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———.1991c. “Moral Identity and Private Autonomy: The Case of Foucault.” In Essays on Heidegger and Others, 193–198. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1992. “A Pragmatist View of Rationality and Cultural Difference.” Philosophy East and West, 42, no. 4: 581–596. ———. 1993. “Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality.” In On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993. Edited by Stephan Shute and Susan Hurley, 111–134. New York: Basic Books. ———. 1996. Debating the State of Philosophy: Habermas, Rorty and Kolakowski. Edited by Jozef Niźnik and John T. Sanders. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. ———. 1997. “Is it Desirable to Love Truth?” In Truth, Politics and ‘Post-Modernism.’ Spinoza Lectures, 11–33. Assen: Van Gorcum ———. 2008. An Ethics for Today. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2015. “Putnam, Pragmatism and Parmenides.” In Philosophy of Hilary Putnam. Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXXIV. Edited by Randall E. Auxier, Douglas R. Anderson, and Lewis Edwin Hahn, 863–881. Chicago: Open Court. ——— and Pascal Engel. 2007. What’s the Use of Truth? Translated by William McCuaig. New York: Columbia University Press. Shklar, Judith N. 1986. Legalism: Law, Morals and Political Trials. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Srivastava, B. N. 1997. Manual Scavenging in India: A Disgrace to the Country. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company. United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities. 1946. Publications Relating to Various Aspects of Communism. Washington: 15(1).

III DEMOCRACY AND ITS DISCONTENTS

7 —Not Neopragmatism but Critical Pragmatism There Are Times When the Private Must Become Public Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley

Richard Rorty, through adroit criticism of the dominant epistemological paradigm of much of contemporary philosophy, has opened the door to a re-envisioning of the democratic task as well as to the need for both self and community critique and reform. Rorty argued for self-creation and community re-envisioning through the vehicle of new vocabularies. On the side of community, Rorty argued for “solidarity,” for a shared collective identity and an extension to a larger loyalty, extending the sense of “we” to those previously thought of as “they,” the marginalized of our community. His goal was to expand our understanding of the forms of humiliation we can inflict on our fellows, to recognize our shared ability to suffer and feel pain and to seek to overcome this suffering and cruelty. The emphasis in terms of the self was on creativity, freedom, and uniqueness, creating self through new vocabularies and thus giving “style to one’s character” (Rorty 1989, 35–36). Whatever our criticisms of Rorty’s work we must acknowledge his contribution in moving philosophy forward out of its isolated box and out of its overemphasis on epistemology as the central concern of philosophy. Pragmatists like James, Dewey, and Royce sought goals similar to those pursued by Rorty. Each emphasized the need for self-creation, self-plan, and self-narrative. All three sought an expansion of the “we.” James argued for overcoming our blindness about other people and for enriching our experience and understanding of the world by allowing a pluralism of perspectives and self-definitions. Dewey and Royce argued for democracy as a way of life, a life of community and expanded loyalty. However, these thinkers part company with Rorty on a number of points. First, they did not see philosophy as morphing into literature or literary criticism or disappearing into 107

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the cultural landscape but as active critical reflection on human life and as engaged in serious critique of social conditions and problem. Philosophy needed to be public and engaged. Second, they believed self-creation to be both an individual and a communal project, seeking enrichment of communities and individuals in communities. Third, they focused on “lived experience,” and sought to overcome the inadequacy of the experiential base on which social and political decisions are made. Like Rorty, they wanted to expand the understanding of persons’ suffering and humiliation, but, unlike him, they believed these voices and stories could not merely be private or literary but must be brought from the private sphere into the public sphere, the realm of communal, social, and political decision-making. Pragmatism for them necessarily involves a critique of various forms of injustice. Not only did they fully understand the need for self-reform, attitude changes and behavior, but, even more importantly, they argued that institutional change was also necessary for achieving any sense of justice. Though many of the classical pragmatists are assessed today as somewhat weak in their social activism, the themes of a critical pragmatism were central to their thought and have been brought forth in contemporary times by those philosophers concerned with racial, ethnic, and gender injustice. In what follows, I will argue that Rorty’s program for social and cultural change fails and for the following reasons: his insistence on the public/private dichotomy, his insistence on ironic liberalism, centered in a thin version of self-creation, wholly contingent, wholly constructed, utterly historicist, nominalist “through and through” to “all the way down”; his neglect of the crucial role of experience in classical pragmatism; and his tendency to fall into false dichotomies such as the publicprivate, foundationalism or ironic liberalism, philosophy, or literature. Finally, I briefly argue for a critical pragmatism, partially based on feminism and standpoint theory, that engages in social action and the fighting of injustice, humiliation, and cruelty.

PHILOSOPHY AS ENGAGED AND PUBLIC AND SCIENCE AS IMPORTANT TO PHILOSOPHY Rorty sought to deliver philosophy from a dominating paradigm that he believed was both bankrupt and self-deceptive. It was a paradigm centered in epistemological questions, seeking a certain foundation for human knowledge, and conceiving of a radical gap between mind and reality, emphasizing universal reason and puzzle solving within philosophical games. He sought to affirm the radical historicity of all human knowledge seeking as well as the radical contingency of all visions whether they are individual or social. Philosophers, argued Rorty, have succumbed to a false “mirror imagery.” Epistemic justification is social and those who think that philosophy-as-epistemology captures the essence of philosophy are quite wrong—for, in fact, philosophy has no essence. This assertion, however, in my judgment poses a false dilemma—either philosophy as epistemology or philosophy without essence. Classical pragmatists, especially

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Pierce and Royce, had already presented strong critiques of the Cartesian self and of the search for epistemic foundations. Both argued that epistemic justification is social; both saw science as the ideal community, engaged in seeking knowledge in a fallible, probabilistic manner, working with the social hope that communal confirmation moved one closer to understanding the experiential world in which human beings lived. Dewey believed that understanding the natural and social world in which we live was necessary to effective problem solving of the quandaries of individual and social life and to engaging in practical social reform and thus the scientific method played a crucial role in his philosophy. Rorty, on the other hand, views science as “in the business of controlling and predicting things, and as largely useless for philosophical purposes” (Rorty 1995, 32). And, yet, he also speaks of good science as “a model of rationality,” having established institutions conducive to democratic exchange of views. The discussion of science and its role in philosophy, in my judgment, highlights the way in which Rorty dichotomizes and “throws the baby out with the bath water.” In his concern to dismiss the notions of “objectivity” and “truth” and especially the view that science keeps humanity in touch with something beyond itself, he wants to set aside any role for science in human problem solving, in keeping humans in touch with the naturalistic and human contexts of their lives. He fails to see that he agrees with Royce, Peirce, and Dewey that science as a practice gives us a model for community building, for intersubjective problem solving and for the democratic way of life. This is captured in his own assertion: “My rejection of traditional notions of rationality can be summed up by saying that the only sense in which science is exemplary is that it is a model of human solidarity” (Rorty 1991c, 30). Ironically, Rorty, the ironist, fails to see the importance of community building as essential to both self-creation and fulfillment and to the continued vitality of democracy, which as a practice and a way of life, must, as Dewey asserted, always be “in the making.” It is undeniable that Rorty’s devastating critique of the traditional philosophical paradigm has opened the eyes of many to the possibility of breaking new philosophical ground, stimulating new ways of thinking, and the hope of more productive results. Rorty has also done much to revive interest in pragmatism, and, indeed, he seems to envision pragmatism as the “natural successor” to analytic philosophy, noting that “one may say of pragmatism what Novalis said of Romanticism, that it is ‘the apotheosis of the future’” (Rorty 1999, 27). However, Rorty primarily views pragmatism’s contribution in terms of a negative clearing way of philosophical/intellectual baggage. Referring to the three themes in his Philosophy of Social Hope he writes: “Each of the three essays, therefore, has a title of the form “without,” where the first blank is filled by something we want to keep and second something which James and Dewey enabled us, if not exactly to throw it away, at least to understand in a radically un-Platonic way” (Rorty 1999, xiii). The three blanks would be filled by “Truth/Correspondence to Reality,” “World/ Substances or Essence,” and “Ethical Principles.” Again the classical pragmatists, especially Dewey and Royce, did critique philosophy for subordinating the practical problems of contemporary life to an “alleged problem of knowledge.” However,

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contrary to Rorty’s assertion of philosophy’s non-essence and non-role in human life, Dewey and Royce, as well as James, saw philosophy as engaged in a more active role—namely, to take on vexing issues of contemporary life. Dewey spoke of philosophy as a search for wisdom, but clearly distinguished wisdom from knowledge in “being the application of what is known to intelligent conduct of the affairs of human life” (as quoted in: Campbell 2006, 289). Rorty is often interpreted as spelling the end of philosophy or at least arguing for a move toward literature as more effective in dealing with issues of cruelty. Philosophy, argues Rorty, has no self-justifying properties, but needs to compete with other cultural endeavors on more or less equal terms. What commends a practice is practical usefulness and metaphoric attractiveness. And for addressing the most important social issue, namely, the reduction of cruelty, literature in two forms has the edge over anything philosophical. There are those kinds of books that understand and portray the effects of cruelty on a “social scale,” that address such topics as “slavery, poverty, and prejudice,” and thus help us develop our “social conscience.” Rorty cites three examples: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Sister Carrie, and Les Miserableś (Rorty 1989, 141). A second kind of book grasps the subtleties of special kinds of cruelty, ways in which particular sorts of people are cruel to other particular sorts of people, such as portrayed in Anna Karenina (Rorty 1989, 141). One can hardly deny the value of literature in accomplishing these sorts of things, but Rorty ignores an important aspect of diminishing cruelty, humiliation, and injustice, namely concrete social action. Attitudinal change is only one part of the reduction of the many forms of discrimination, cruelty, and injustice. Changing the attitude of persons toward other races, ethnic groups, women, and sexual orientation groups does not address the ways in which these attitudes and the accompanying forms of discrimination have been institutionalized throughout our United States and world culture. Cruelty and humiliation occur daily by acts of discrimination and denigration in institutions such as law, education, medicine, corporations, and within the political system itself. The law has participated in denial of recognition to various groups—African American, Native American, Asian American, HispanicAmerican, women, and gays, whether it be citizenship, voting rights, property rights, or equal opportunities in education. Medicine and our political system perpetrated tremendous humiliation on African American men in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments while medicine still humiliates by ignoring the special needs and experiences of women, children, and different ethnic and racial groups (Mahowald 1993, 2000, 2006). Rorty seems deeply responsive to Dewey’s conviction that human agency can always make a difference in bringing about a more human and just society. Rorty clearly castigates leftist politics for failing to ameliorate human misery and developing legislation and policies to lessen the gap between the rich and the poor. But again, Rorty seems very good at negative criticism—but, says Bernstein, “Rorty doesn’t provide us with the foggiest notion of how to limit greed and lessen the gap between rich and poor” (Bernstein 2003, 135).

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Rorty does not envision philosophy as playing any active role in seeking to identify and strengthen those human practices that seem to help people lead liberating lives free of cruelty and humiliation. Though he claims that the goal of his liberalism is to eliminate cruelty and humiliation, his emphasis is more on individuality than solidarity, more on private self-creation than social action. However, Rorty’s tendency to fall into false dichotomies comes to fore, as he argues that the public and private spheres of human lives must be kept separate, not in the usual sense of that demarcation—namely, to determine which aspects of our lives we do and don’t have to answer for publicly—but rather in terms of human demands and of human vocabularies. He asserts that we need to be “content to treat the demands of self-creation and of human solidarity as equally valid, yet forever incommensurable” (Rorty 1989, xv). In the demand ledger, we keep the demands of people to achieve their private ends, their pursuit of endless self-creation clearly separate from demands for social fulfillment, justice, and freedom from cruelty and humiliation. As for vocabularies, we keep those developed in pursuit of personal fulfillment, selfcreation, and self-realization completely distinct from those developed for deliberation about social goods and social and political arrangements. Is such separation possible and are these incommensurate? Rorty appears at times naive about the impact of culture on setting the parameters of individual’s self-creation as well as on their vocabulary. James, Dewey, and Royce were well aware of the many ways in which capitalistic, materialistic culture of their time was impacting on self-concepts and on notions of solidarity. James, for example, worried that the fierce competition for pecuniary gain was becoming the sole measure of the individual’s ambition and quality of character; poverty was seen as the worst and most deplorable condition and money and leisure in life usually bred fear of losing property, and the desire for more goods and indulgence in various pleasures and entertainment (James 1977, 861–868). Both Dewey and Royce expressed deep concerns for the ways in which media and capitalism were eroding any sense of a thoughtful public voice in America, creating either many “publics,” many competing interests, or a mob mentality of following blindly those with “fascinating enterprises,” whose claim to be acting in the public interest were mere disguises of acting in blatant self-interest (Royce 1908, Dewey 1927). Today MacIntyre worries about the ignoble and sordid types of character produced by liberal, capitalist, and contemporary politics (Macintyre 1999). Rorty seems to believe that MacIntyre’s displeasure is aesthetic, namely, a personal dislike. And he writes: the dominance of a “bland, calculating, petty, and unheroic people may be a reasonable price to pay for political freedom” (Rorty 1991d, 190). One needs to ask: “What exactly is ‘political freedom’ in Rorty’s view?” Rorty advocates for a “liberal society” which he defines as follows: “an ideal liberal society is one which has no purpose except freedom, no goal except a willingness to see how encounters go and to abide by the outcome” (Rorty 1989, 61). This understanding of liberal society, in my judgment, has many problems. Will the so-called bland, calculating, self-interested, non-reflective persons described by Dewey, Royce, and

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MacIntyre be prone to be moved by persuasion or willing to allow encounters to move forward or be interested in developing new linguistic and other practices? Why would persons focused on individual, idiosyncratic self-creation be concerned to engage in dialogue or be moved to ease the humiliation and suffering of others? Rorty relies heavily on what he believes to be a Freudian conception of self, namely, one that eschews the rationalistic notion of self of Kant or the Enlightenment and sees instead the heavy role of emotions such as pity, compassion, rage, and jealously arising out of contingent incidents of childhood. Freud, says Rorty, urges us to break free of our past and to see that an account of “unconscious fantasy” shows us how every “human life can be seen as a poem.” Putting aside the fact that some of us question Rorty’s interpretation of Freud, two central questions arise: (1) Does breaking free of the past break the communal ground of individuality, a ground that can be both positive and negative, material for both positive and negative self-creation, and undeniably a part of individual self-creation? (2) Does the heavy emphasis on past and the unconscious provide individuals with the vocabulary to rationalize and justify any morally abhorrent act they may wish to commit by referring to childhood incidents and assuming a role of victimhood, that is, describing themselves as a victim of their upbringing and circumstances? On the second question, we find an interesting dilemma for Rorty. If one’s private self-creation is negative such as a Marquis de Sade or a rationalization such as the victim excuse, Rorty seems to provide a puzzling and maybe contradictory answer. Negative self-creations and rationalizations are fine as long as they only affect private and personal matters of self-creation, but if the individual should act out in a morally reprehensible way, infringing on the freedom of others or causing others pain and humiliation, Rorty argues that the liberal institutions of society would move to neutralize the threat to their common vocabulary of social hope and the common goal of human solidarity. Rorty does not adequately address the mechanism for this neutralization but even more puzzling it seems to open the door for public interference in the private domain, for society determining whose private self-creation is acceptable and whose is not. What then happens to the so-called single-focused emphasis on freedom, individual and political? Rorty seems to assume the liberal ironist engaging in self-creation and creation of vocabularies and redescriptions concerning their private desires and ends will also possess a public, moral, and liberal identity which includes the ability to use a common liberal vocabulary and which involves a “public morality,” a morality free of religion, science, metaphysics, and psychology. This morality, says Rorty, “instructs us to tell the truth, avoid violence, eschew sex with near relations, keep our promises and abide by the ‘Golden Rule’” (Rorty 1991b, 153). Recent writings in critical race theory and the work of feminists, I believe, argue that Rorty’s attempt to have a private vocabulary and a public one is doomed to failure. Thus, for example, Charles Mills argues that the political and social culture of the United States is dominated by a white supremacist paradigm he calls the “Herrenvok Ethic.” This ethic’s central principle is that all persons should be treated equally, but there are sub-persons and non-persons. These sub-persons are women, children, and

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white immigrants who are incapable of rationality and self-legislation. Non-persons are non-white persons and they should be categorized as savages. Mills asserts that this paradigm is evident in many social and political actions as well as in the morality and social actions of many individuals. This creates particular types of people in US society and it has nothing to do with religion, metaphysics, or science, though these institutions have been used to justify this paradigm. These individuals are not the bland, petty types Rorty identifies with MacIntyre’s complaints about the molding of individuals by contemporary culture. The individuals who hold this ethic as a crucial part of their own identities and self-creations engage in actions individually and collectively that humiliate and inflict cruelty on many individuals in our society (Mills 1998). Sarah Hoaglund argues for another paradigm that humiliates and harms women, a paradigm she calls heterosexism, which posits a male self-image as that or either the protector, or predator of women. There is a virginal image of women, a definite notion of “femininity” and if a woman violates these norms, she is seen as in the wrong, as a “bitch” or a “whore.” And the ultimate humiliation of a woman, namely, rape, is seen as either what “she” deserved or as a violation of one’s property. Women, argues Hoaglund, are seen as breeders of male heirs; to be dominated and overseen. Hoaglund would argue that this paradigm develops a particular kind of individual in our culture and though some may break free of this in their own self-creation as males, many do not. Further the paradigm is institutionalized in law, religion, and the polity, as well as in the institutions of work and the home (Hoaglund 1994). Given these arguments, can Rorty’s desire to separate the activities and vocabularies of the public and private really work? Add to this the notion of “internalized racism” or “internalized discrimination.” This is the phenomenon wherein a person who has been denigrated by these public paradigms internalizes the devaluation of their self-worth. Thus, we see cases of African American women “bleaching” the skin of their children to make them “whiter” in appearance and Asian-women seeking cosmetic surgery to eliminate their so-called Oriental eye shapes. Self-narrative cannot be so easily separated from communal narrative; the impact is powerful. It is evidently the case, then, that public and private cannot so easily be disengaged. Further, K. Anthony Appiah, in his discussion of identity and self-creation speaks of a badge of color, he calls this a racial label and says that it has both social and psychological effects and that they shape the way people conceive of themselves. He writes: “In particular, the labels can operate to shape what I want to call ‘identification’; the process through which an individual intentionally shapes her projects— including her plans for her own life and her conception of the good—by reference to available label” (Appiah 1998, 78). Appiah adapts the view of Ian Hacking called “dynamic nominalism,” which argues that “numerous kinds of human beings and human acts come into being hand in hand with our invention of the categories labeling them” (Hacking 1992, 87). Appiah says, unlike Sartre’s example of the Parisian garcon de café, the constitution of racial identity is “generally theoretically committed: we expect people of a certain race to behave in a certain way not simply because they are conforming to the script for that identity, performing the role,

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but because they have certain antecedent properties that consequences of the label’s properly applying to them” (Appiah 1998, 79). And Appiah is clear that identification in this sense is not voluntary. He says, “Where my ascriptive identity is one on which almost all my fellow citizens agree, I am likely to have little sense of choice about whether the identity is mine” (Appiah 1998, 80). Appiah does say that “I can choose how central my identification with it will be—choose, that is, how much I will organize my life around that identity” (Appiah 1998, 80). Thus, suppose I am labeled “gay” or “Jewish,” I may choose not to take up a gay or a Jewish identity, but unfortunately this will “require concealing facts about myself” (Appiah 1998, 80). Rorty, in fact, addresses the question of identity and ascription in an essay on “Feminism and Pragmatism” (Rorty 1991a, 231–258: Rorty 1998, 202–227), where he discusses an essay by Catherine MacKinnon about the ascension of two women to the Supreme Court of Minnesota in which she discusses what this means for women and their traditional role in culture. What, she asks, “will women as women have to say” on various legal issues. She continues: “I’m evoking for women a role that we have yet to make, in the name of a voice that, unsilenced, might say something that has never been heard” (MacKinnon 1987, 77). Rorty reinterprets MacKinnon’s words: “In my terms, MacKinnon is saying that unless women fit into the logical space prepared by them by current linguistic and other practices, the law does not know how to deal with them” (Rorty 1998, 203). Rorty goes on to argue that the only language available for women is the language of the oppressor and “most oppressors have had the wit to teach the oppressed a language in which the oppressed will sound crazy” (Rorty 1998, 203). How do we change this kind of humiliation for women and others? Rorty argues that we change emotional reactions by new language or creative misuses of language (Rorty 1998, 204). Certainly, this is one route to decreasing humiliation and cruelty, but only one. Rorty again ignores the huge impact of the social on the personal, of institutional discrimination of promoting humiliation and cruelty. The question of developing a new language for women arose in MacKinnon’s example by a move to crack open the institution of law to allow new voices to be heard and recognized, and new laws to be passed that might be less humiliating and cruel to others. Self-identity and creation are a major focus for Rorty. He offers voracious argument against any essentialist notion of self or against any notion that what makes a self special is to have a connection with something eternal. His hero in this regard is Nietzsche who exalts the “strong poet” and who emphasizes a view of self-knowledge as self-creation. Rorty interprets the process of coming to know oneself as one of confronting one’s contingency and as “a process of inventing a new language for describing oneself,” and, in Freud’s terms, seeing the “self as poem.” Royce’s view of the self also interpreted self-creation and self-knowing in terms of “narrative.” He writes: In brief, “my idea of myself is an interpretation of my past—linked also with an interpretation of my hopes and intentions as to my future” (Royce 1913, 2:42). Rorty fails to understand, unlike Dewey, Royce and other classical American pragmatists that individual fulfillment arises out of and is dependent on communal life. Royce, for example, argues that self-consciousness arises out of a social contrast

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between self and non-self, that “nobody amongst us men comes to self-consciousness, except under the persistent influence of his fellows” (Royce 1900, 2:261). Royce’s self is thoroughly socially grounded and embedded, as well as naturally embedded, but it is also self-created, capable of being original and unique. He argues for a strong individuality when he writes: I, the individual, am what I am by virtue of the fact that my intention, my meaning, my task, my desire, my hope, my life, stand in contrast to those of any other individual. If I am any reality, whatever, then I am doing something that nobody else can do, and meaning something that nobody else can mean. . . . The uniqueness of my meaning is the one essential fact about me. (Royce 1900, 2:276)

Royce also stressed that genuine individuality and genuine community developed in an interactive process. A genuine community is one that supports and facilitates individual creativity, development, and fulfillment. However, genuine communities need to be created and this is not easy work. Both Dewey and Royce saw the task of building genuine communities as crucial to democracy and a task that was both individual and public in nature, and philosophical and social. This is why they saw philosophy as active critical reflection on living and as engaged in serious critique of social conditions and problems. Philosophy must be engaged in critical assessment of social practices, operating paradigms, and institutional and internalized racisms and denigrations because otherwise there will not be a decrease of cruelty and humiliation or creative and original self-creations.

NOT NEO- OR NEGATIVE PRAGMATISM, BUT ACTIVE, CRITICAL, CULTURAL PRAGMATISM Rorty’s public-private distinction as well as his versions of liberalism and pragmatism are wrongly conceived and cannot succeed because he has postulated too thin a version of self-creation, and of solidarity, and certainly, also of the body politic. Rorty debunks essentialist, solid versions of the self as tied to the pretensions of “foundationalism.” His version of self-creation sees it as “wholly contingent, wholly constructed, utterly constructed, utterly historical, nominalist ‘through and through’ or ‘all the way down’” (Elshtain 2003, 141). This is a very thin version of self because it requires discarding as core to our identity that which it traditionally contained, namely, for example, race, religion, and custom. However, as we have seen in our discussions of the Herenvolk and heterosexual paradigms and in Appiah’s discussion of racial ascriptions and identification, this is unrealistic. Elhstain states the issue even more plainly when she writes: “People don’t and, I would argue, cannot think of themselves as ‘thoroughly contingent’ because when they think of themselves they see concrete fears, pains, hopes, and joys embodied in concrete others—say a grandchild—and it is impossible for them to construe that grandchild, or to tell the story of the coming into being of that grandchild, in the way that Rorty says we must” (Elshtain 2003, 143). Whether we want to be realists or not, we do live in a

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very concrete, natural world that impinges on our identities and actions and on any attempt we might make to be self-creative. Even if we stay in Rorty’s realm of vocabularies, this admonition to radical contingency and nominalism does not work. For example, how can I avoid using the language games that I inherit? “What can it mean to use a ‘new language’ in a world in which language is already before me, through me?” (Elshtain 2003, 144). How do I avoid the ascriptions that Appiah argues are given to us by society? And, can we really just stay in the realm of vocabularies when our goal is social hope. What is needed is not merely a change in vocabularies, nor a neopragmatism focused primarily on a critique of the old philosophical epistemological, platonic paradigm. The focus should be on a critical pragmatism—namely, one that moves “democracy” and freedom forward by exposing and critiquing the economic and social dimensions of democracy and by exposing the failures of the American system of democracy to live up to its ideals. The gift of the ballot was given to the black, male population, and later others but little attention was given to the fact that blacks, women, Latinos, Asians, and other groups—even children—live among us in social ostracism, in institutional conditions that keep them in the status of sub-persons and in varying degrees of humiliation, suffering, and non-identity. What is needed is an extensive application of “standpoint theory,” namely, the notion that one’s experiences, especially those structured by one’s social and material position, limit one’s perspective on issues. Further, as Nancy Hartstock argues, “The vision of the ruling class structures the material relations in which all parties are forced to participate” (Hartstock 1985, 232). In contrast, due to their struggles to achieve a full life, the standpoint of the oppressed is an “engaged vision,” “exposing the actual relations among human beings while pointing beyond the present to the possibility of a liberated future” (Harstock 1985, 232). Mary Mahowald has used this tool to change attitudes, perspectives, and institutional structures to benefit women and children in health care, thus actually reducing humiliation and cruelty in that institution (Mahowald 1993, 2000, 2006). And as a broader vision, pragmatism needs to engage, as Dewey and others envisioned, in solving human life problems and critiquing the institutions, the paradigms, the prejudices, and the ascriptions of contemporary society. This, I believe, will do more for reducing humiliation and cruelty in the word as well as assisting persons to develop authentic self-identity than Rorty’s emphasis on “new vocabularies.”

REFERENCES Appiah, K. Anthony. 1996. “Synthesis for Racial Identities.” In Color Consciousness. Edited by K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bernstein, Richard. 2003. “Rorty’s Inspirational Liberalism.” In Richard Rorty. Edited by Charles B. Guigon and David Hiley, 124–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Campbell, James. 2006. A Thoughtful Profession: The Early Years of the American Philosophical Association. Chicago: Open Court.

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Dewey, John. 1927. The Public and Its Problems. New York: Holt. Elhstain, Jean Bethke. 2003. “Don’t Be Cruel.” In Richard Rorty. Edited by Charles B. Guigon and David Hiley, 139–157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hacking, Ian. 1986. “Making Up People.” In Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought. Edited by Thomas Heller, Morton Sousa and David Wellbery, 222–236. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hoaglund, Sarah. 1994 “Lesbian Ethics.” In Philosophy of Woman: An Anthology of Classic to Current Concepts. Edited by Mary B. Mahowald. Third Edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. James, William. 1977. “What Makes a Life Significant.” In The Writing of Williams James: A Comprehensive Edition. Edited by John J. McDermott, 861–868. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2009 [1899]. On A Certain Blindness in Human Beings. New York: Penguin Books. Mahowald, Mary B. 1993. Women and Children in Health Care. New York: Oxford University Press. ———, editor. 1994. Philosophy of Woman: An Anthology of Classic to Current Concepts. Third Edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. ———. 1997. “What Classical American Philosophers Missed: Jane Addams, Critical Pragmatism and Cultural Feminism.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 31: 39–54. ———. 2000. Genes, Women, Equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ———. 2006. Bioethics and Women: Across the Life Span. New York: Oxford University Press. Mackinnon, Catherine. 1987. “On Exceptionality: Woman as Woman in Law.” In Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law, 70–77. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mills, Charles. 1998. “The Idea of a Herrenvolk Ethic.” In Blackness Visible: Essays on Race and Philosophy, 97–118. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991a. “Feminism and Pragmatism.” Michigan Quarterly Review 30, no. 2: 231–258. ———. 1991b. “Freud and Moral Reflection.” In Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Volume 2, 143–163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991c. “Science as Solidarity.” In Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1, 35–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991d. “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy.” In Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Volume 1, 175–196. ———. 1995. “Reply to Hartshorne.” In Rorty and Pragmatism: The Philosopher Responds to His Critics. Edited by Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. The Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy, 29–36. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. ———. 1998. “Feminism and Pragmatism.” In Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers Volume 3, 202–227. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Philosophy and Social Hope. London: Penguin Books. Royce, Josiah. 1899–1900. The World and the Individual. 2 Volumes. New York: Macmillan and Company. ———. 1913. The Problem of Christianity. 2 Volumes. New York: Macmillan and Company. ———. 1908. Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems. New York: Macmillan.

8 The Problem of Ethnocentrism An Attempt to Save Rorty’s Pragmatism from Itself John Ryder

I would like to begin by providing a bit of context for this chapter. This is not an effort in either Rorty bashing or Rorty praising. Whether Rorty was a saint or a sinner, a prophet or an apostate, may or may not have been an interesting question at one time, but it is not anymore. In fact, for those of us who have been around long enough and have witnessed or been party to those discussions and debates now run the risk of letting them impede a careful consideration of Rorty’s ideas and their legacy. In a sense I would like to ask us to push Rorty further away from us in time, if we can, and consider the merits of his ideas without caring anymore about whether we need to criticize him or support him. I did not know Rorty, though I would imagine that this is an approach to his ideas that he would appreciate our taking, and it is probably the least we can do for someone who, whatever else we may think, has invigorated or reinvigorated a kind of philosophical activity that we all value and practice. I begin with these remarks because I am about to say some unpleasant things about some of Rorty’s ideas, and I would not want the reader to react by feeling the need to defend Rorty against attack. I do not wish to attack him or his ideas. On the contrary, the spirit in which I pursue these ideas is one of loyal opposition, in a sense. I do not mean to criticize Rorty’s pragmatism, nor his general conception of philosophy as cultural criticism and edification. In fact, I want to see if we can use philosophy understood his way to correct what I take to be a serious flaw in his own thinking. That flaw has to do with an ethnocentrism that he seems to want to endorse but which I think is unacceptable on numerous grounds, including those implicit in his own pragmatism.

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THE PROBLEM Let us begin by stating the general problem, and then we can back up and consider its details. Rorty thinks that the traditional attempt to provide rational foundation and justification for our social and political ideas, something that was typically done through metaphysical and epistemological constructs of one sort or another, is misguided and in fact impossible. In light of this, we should abandon such attempts to offer rational support and justification for our social and political commitments. In the end, thoughtful, reflective people, which is to say good philosophers and many others, largely think what we do because of the contexts in which we find ourselves. Those of us from North America, for example, are likely to be liberal democrats who support republican government because we know, understand, and live, we might say, on the inside of these traditions. Others, for example, many people from the former socialist Europe, may also find themselves most comfortable as liberal democrats of some sort because that is the set of ideas and traditions most readily available as an alternative to what many people think was a failed attempt at socialism. In the end, in other words, we hold the social and political commitments we do, in general anyway, because that is who we are. How, then, do we interact with others? Rorty had a rather expansive view of “we,” and his liberal democracy was open to all comers, we might say. In this respect he was not a nationalist in any standard sense. But how do we deal with those who do not want to become part of “us?” If we think what we think in the end because it is who we are, then others also think what they think because that is who they are. Rorty speaks about other cultures, those unlike our liberal democracies, as likely to be inferior in serious ways and as not really worth treating as possible sources of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. That is the ethnocentrism to which his anti-foundationalism and his conception of philosophy as cultural criticism seem to propel him. The inadequacy of this ethnocentrism, and its relation to the rest of Rorty’s philosophical structure, is the problem we will discuss. In what follows I would like to clarify the problem, argue for the unacceptability of Rorty’s ethnocentrism, and try to redirect his basic philosophical tools toward a different and more acceptable understanding of democratic behavior, toward a preferable conception of the relative value of cultures and traditions, and toward a way we might interact with one another more fruitfully.

RORTY’S ETHNOCENTRISM I will assume that the reasons for Rorty’s rejection of the traditional effort to underpin social and political ideas with rational inquiry are well known and understood, and there is no need to go into the details. Rorty’s liberal democracy is also well known, I am sure, though for the sake of clarity it may help to articulate it here. One of the essays in which Rorty worked out the idea of and support for his ethnocentrism is

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“The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy.” In this essay he gives a fairly elaborate argument for a Deweyan reading of Rawls that supports what Rorty takes to be the basically pragmatist idea that liberal democracy’s justification is in its results, not in any rational, antecedent conceptions of human nature or society. The analogy he draws is to the then revolutionary conception of Thomas Jefferson and others of the American Enlightenment that liberal values and republicanism do not require a religious foundation. Rorty argues analogously that liberal values and republicanism, and democracy in general, do not require a philosophical foundation. No theory of human nature or of the nature of society or the polity is necessary because liberal values, republicanism, and democracy have whatever justification they can accrue through the consequences of living through them, and that is enough. In fact, it is all that is possible. Rorty is well aware that this is a basically ethnocentric view. He says, for example, But if we swing to the pragmatist side . . . we shall still need something to distinguish the sort of individual conscience we respect from the sort we condemn as “fanatical.” This can only be something relatively local and ethnocentric—the tradition of a particular community, the consensus of a particular culture. According to this view, what counts as rational or fanatical is relative to the group to which we think it necessary to justify ourselves—to the body of shared belief that determines the reference of the word “we.” (Rorty 2010, 240)

Rorty’s strategy in this essay is to argue for the “priority of democracy over philosophy” by using a pragmatist reading of Rawls in response to various forms of communitarianism that, at that point anyway, were arguing for the need for a different philosophical grounding for contemporary society than the one that had been inherited from the Enlightenment. Rorty’s alternative, of course, is that both the Enlightenment and communitarianism get it wrong, not because they have the wrong rational ideas of human nature and the nature of society but because they think some such idea is necessary. In making his case Rorty addresses not so much alternative societies for contrast but alternative philosophical positions, and the two figures he chooses to contrast with liberal democrats are Ignatius Loyola and Nietzsche: We heirs of the Enlightenment think of enemies of liberal democracy like Nietzsche or Loyola as, to use Rawls’s word, “mad.” We do so because there is no way to see them as fellow citizens of our constitutional democracy, people whose life plans might, given ingenuity and good will, be fitted in with those of other citizens. They are not crazy because they have mistaken the ahistorical nature of human beings. They are crazy because the limits of sanity are set by what we can take seriously. This, in turn, is determined by our upbringing, our historical situation. (Rorty 2010, 251)

In the very next sentence Rorty makes it clear that he is well aware of how this may sound: “If this short way of dealing with Nietzsche and Loyola seems shockingly ethnocentric, it is because the philosophical tradition has accustomed us to the idea

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that anybody who is willing to listen to reason—to hear out all the arguments—can be brought around to the truth” (Rorty 2010, 251). But of course, this is precisely the assumption about human nature that he wishes to abandon. There is no good reason, he thinks, to believe that there is a “rational core” in people that will, if only exercised properly, arrive at the truth of any matter. There is no reason to think that people’s natures can be so described, and therefore we have no choice but to regard thinkers like Nietzsche and Loyola as radically, irredeemably, other. And because our sense of “we,” and therefore of “other” as well, is determined by our own historical circumstances, we are fully justified in regarding the radical and irredeemably other as having no place in our society. Now, let us look at what happens when the other is not an uncongenial set of ideas, such as a liberal democrat may find on reading Nietzsche or Loyola, but whole cultures and societies. Rorty speaks to this question in an interview that Alexander Kremer took with him some years ago. In that interview Kremer asks Rorty about the possibility that “as our world becomes smaller and smaller, we are perhaps forced by these tendencies (secularization, globalization and other economic and political tendencies, etc.) to know, to learn much more about other cultures!” Kremer had in mind largely China and traditional Islamic societies, and in response to his query, Rorty responded “But they are trapped in stages of history that the West has surpassed. They are only beginning to liberate women; they are only beginning to acquire the concept of citizenship, etc. We cannot help thinking of them as backward. We cannot take seriously the suggestion that their culture is on a par with our own.” He goes on to say that he is certainly not opposed to “dialogue” among very different cultures, but realistically he suspects that in the end such dialogue results in little more than tired platitudes because, as he says, he really does not think that there is anything we liberal democrats can learn from, say, traditional Islamic societies or from contemporary China. When asked by Kremer whether there aren’t any potentially “positive features in Far Eastern religions and philosophies” that may help us reach a better mutual understanding, Rorty’s response is “what is positive about poverty” (Kremer 2009, 234–235)?1 This is the ethnocentrism that concerns us here, and it is an approach to social life that seems to me to be entirely unacceptable. We may leave aside for the moment the question of the general philosophical ideas behind it, that is, that there is no reason to think that some rationally discernible truth about people and society may serve as a foundation for our liberal democracy. Let us simply consider for the moment whether it is a good idea for us to accept the view that our liberal democracy is superior either to more traditional societies such as some of those in the Middle East, or to contemporary authoritarian and politically illiberal China; and whether it is a good idea for us to think that the philosophical, religious, and general cultural traditions of such societies have nothing of importance to offer us from which we might learn something. The first point we need to make is to distinguish the question of relative value from the question whether any of us would like to live in such societies. It is entirely plausible for me to say, for example, that given my historical background in modern,

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Western, liberal, secular society, it would be impossible for me to live like a devout Muslim in a traditional Islamic society, yet at the same time hold that there is a great deal of value in a traditional Muslim society and way of life, and that I can benefit immensely from a closer association and greater familiarity with it. So, the question whether any of us in the West would choose to live such a life is quite different from whether such a life has intrinsic value and whether it can teach us something of importance. Without belaboring the point, I would like to say that from a purely practical point of view it is likely to be disastrous for us if we accept and act on Rorty’s ethnocentrism. For one thing, if we think it appropriate for us to endorse such an ethnocentrism, then we can only expect that others will do so as well. Let us consider Iran to illustrate the situation. There is currently, and there is likely to continue to be, a great deal of tension between the United States, Israel, and much of the EU on the one side and the Islamic Republic of Iran on the other. The ethnocentrism we find in Rorty presumably would enable us to regard Iranian society as retrograde and in no meaningful ways a source of possible learning or edification on our part. Presumably, though, we can expect average Iranians to be equally critical of the West, though for different reasons. They may, for example, say that the West represents degraded and degrading values, habits, and practices, and that there is nothing important that a devout Shiite Iranian can learn from the West. If both sides of this divide take that view, then it is exceedingly unlikely that we will be able to reach a resolution of the current tensions because we will be unlikely to feel inclined to take the other seriously enough to talk. And furthermore, with this ethnocentric contempt we would have for one another, it is relatively unlikely that we will understand one another enough to talk meaningfully even if somebody wants to. For reasons like these, we are from a purely pragmatic point of view far better-off if we start with the assumption that cultures have traditions, values, commitments, principles, and ideas that have whatever usefulness has enabled them to survive and prosper, and whatever general value they have that inclines those who live in them to value them. And we are far better-off if we begin with the assumption that with respect to people who are committed to their own societies and traditions, however much they differ from our liberal democracies and however odd or alien such people may seem from a distance, they are not irredeemably other. In other words, we are far better-off accepting not Rorty’s ethnocentrism but the assumption that whatever our differences, there are points of contact that are in our mutual interest to foster.

PRAGMATIST LIBERAL DEMOCRACY As it turns out, the assumption that it is worthwhile to pursue points of contact and shared interests with those beyond the borders of one’s own community or culture is at the heart of John Dewey’s understanding of democracy. His most fruitful account of the concept of democracy is in chapter 7 of Democracy and Education. In that chapter he points out that any social group, and he uses the term very broadly there

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to mean any set of people with some traits that provide an integrity or identity, possess two relevant characteristics: the members of the community share some interest or set of interests, and they engage in some amount of interaction with others beyond the boundaries of their own group. “From these two traits,” he says, “we derive our standard” of democracy. Thus, we have in the literature a basic definition of a democratic society that turns out to be broadly applicable and conceptually quite powerful (Dewey 1980).2 If we think through a situation like the problem the European Union and United States are having with Iran with this pragmatist conception of democracy in mind, we will see that its results are likely to be rather different from Rorty’s ethnocentrism. If we join the two parts of Dewey’s definition, we get a picture of groups or communities in each of which people pursue their individual and common interests, and for which the pursuit of common interests with those beyond their borders is normal behavior and to be expected. This means that at the center of the definition of democracy is the expectation to pursue common interests across borders and boundaries, and here we mean borders and boundaries of all kinds—national, racial, ethnic, class, gender, religious, etc. Dewey refers to a society that meets at least this minimal description as the “democratic ideal,” and I would add that if we are to take democracy in Dewey’s sense seriously, which I think we would be wise to do, then it is not only an ideal but also, to use an expression Dewey as far as I know does not use, a democratic responsibility. That is to say that it becomes our responsibility as democratic individuals to pursue the interests we share with those beyond our own borders. This is relatively easy to do with communities and societies with which the common interests are obvious and plentiful. It becomes rather more difficult with communities and societies where the differences loom large. In the case of Iran, the differences are considerable. However, if we are to resolve the differences with Iran in ways that are largely peaceful and actually helpful to people, then we would be far better served to act on the basis of democratic responsibility than on the basis of ethnocentrism. Clearly some sort of arrangement with Iran that will diffuse the prevailing tensions is more likely to be achieved if we make an effort to pursue those interests that all the actors—the European Union, the United States, Israel, and Iran—share. And there are many. A war would be a disaster for all concerned; nuclear proliferation, indeed nuclear weapons, whether in Iran, Israel, Russia or the United States, has always been and remains potentially catastrophic; nuclear saber rattling is as dangerous for Iran and Israel as it is for the rest of the region, indeed the world; the material, economic, and moral cost of sanctions, for both sides, is taxing; and geopolitically, this struggle invariably brings in other prominent powers—Russia, China, and India chief among them—that complicate the picture a good deal and increase the threat and danger levels. We are already seeing some of the consequences of this very dangerous game, and the suffering those consequences entail, in the current situation in Syria. It is relatively easy to identify the common interests that these parties have, and there are many good reasons for Iran, its allies, and its adversaries to put their collective heads together and pursue those common interests. At a theoretical level, and in the

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context of a pragmatist, Deweyan conception of democracy, it is the democratic responsibility to do so. Rorty’s ethnocentrism, where we simply cast the other as not to be taken seriously because of the broad extent of our differences, is not an adequate alternative.3 Of course, there are other dimensions of this general issue, and they are not to be taken lightly. One of the reasons Rorty’s approach has a certain appeal is that on first glance it is attractive to be able to say that there are certain individual and social commitments that are not negotiable. On the whole, the arc of the range of liberty and equality has tended in liberal democracies, especially over the past sixty years or so, to bend in the direction of greater inclusiveness. For modern liberal democracies there is no going back on that expansion, and we not surprisingly take very seriously the developing commitments to gender, ethnic, racial, sexual, religious, and other forms of equality and the individual and communal liberty associated with those commitments. It would be inconceivable that, for example, liberal democracies would return to racial segregation, or to the more overt forms of gender discrimination, and remain liberal democracies. Because of the strength of those characteristics of our societies, we tend to look at other cultures in which things have developed differently, and with an unseemly sense of superiority keep them at a distance, or lecture them about how they should behave, or, if we are feeling especially belligerent, invade them. But it is important to understand several things: (1) we can be tolerant and respectful of cultures that embody traits that we reject without having to give up our own commitments; (2) it is false and exceedingly arrogant to assume that others really want to be like us, or to live our lives; (3) establishing an unbridgeable gap between ourselves and others is almost never going to produce a desirable outcome for anyone. The point is that even in those cases where differences between us and another community, society, or culture concern matters about which we are passionate and committed, there remains room for the pursuit of common interests. Moreover, in those same cases it is far more likely that we will be able to have a beneficial influence on others, and perhaps they on us, by interacting on the basis of mutual respect and recognition of the interests we have in common. In fact, one would be justified in claiming that in general what we are identifying as a Deweyan democratic responsibility is a far more useful tool than any sort of ethnocentrism, and certainly more useful than Rorty’s variety.

THE PRIORITY OF DEMOCRACY TO US The basic point I would like to make is that the alternative to Rorty’s ethnocentrism, at least as a way of interacting with others, is itself a fully pragmatist position. The roots of that ethnocentrism, however, lie in Rorty’s rejection of the possibility of rational foundations, hence the priority of democracy to philosophy. We can draw this to a close by looking briefly at the relation between Rorty’s commitment in this regard and the basis on which we have developed democratic responsibility.

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When I read Rorty’s discussion of democracy and philosophy when it first appeared in 1988, I was not convinced that philosophy could or should be rejected as wholesale as he wanted to do.4 I am still not convinced, but for the sake of argument let us grant Rorty his point, which minimally stated is that to justify our form of social and political life we need no rationally derived theory of human nature or social relations or anything else. We need simply ideas and social structures that work and that we can support; we need a society and politics that is our own. Whatever other value traditional metaphysics and epistemology may have, and they have many, I think we can grant Rorty his point about social and political structures. What about the democratic ideal and democratic responsibility that it implies? They do not need an underlying theory either. They could have one, and in fact some of us are inclined to give them one through pragmatic, naturalist philosophical treatment (Ryder 2013). But they can be articulated and defended on more purely practical grounds, which is to say in terms of their consequences. There is a pragmatic argument that can support our social and political commitments without any of the kind of appeal that Rorty wanted to avoid. It is possible, in other words, to have Rorty’s anti-foundationalism without his ethnocentrism, and thus we can save Rorty from himself. In a sense what we have done here is to take our cue from Rorty and to push his analysis one step further. He points out that Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues’ great achievement, or anyway one of their many achievements, was to separate politics from religion such that Enlightenment civic virtues and republican government would stand on their own merits without religious underpinning. Rorty wanted to extend Jefferson’s and his colleagues’ achievement to the disassociation of civic virtues, republicanism, and liberal democracy from their traditional philosophical underpinnings. I would like to push that same analysis one step further and disassociate civic virtues, republicanism, and liberal democracy from the commitments of any one community. By doing so we maintain a healthy pragmatism, we avoid the detrimental ethnocentrism we find in Rorty, we enrich our understanding of democracy and its responsibilities, and we develop a conception of communication beyond borders that is respectful, reasonably likely to succeed in particular cases, and suitable to a world in which it is simply no longer possible to dismiss other cultures as having nothing useful to teach us.

NOTES 1. Also see my work: John Ryder, “Richard Rorty, Contemporary Philosophy, and the Problem of Ethnocentrism” (Ryder 2011). The latter is part of a larger group of papers devoted to Rorty’s relation to cultural criticism. See: (Bernstein, Voparil, Kegley, and Ryder 2011). 2. See especially chapter 7, “The Democratic Conception in Education.” 3. As this is being written, the United States, Russia, and Syria have agreed to a process to eliminate the Syrian government’s stockpile of chemical weapons. In recent days Iran and

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the United States have also agreed to return to talks in an effort to overcome their differences. Whether either of these will succeed remains to be seen. In both cases, however, we have examples of international behavior consistent with what we here identify as our democratic responsibility. And this behavior is far more likely on the assumption and pursuit of common interests than it is on the Rortyan ethnocentric assumption of the radical otherness of the other. 4. As it happens, I wrote the review for the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society of the book in which Rorty’s essay first appeared. See: (Ryder 1989).

REFERENCES Bernstein, Richard J., Christopher J. Voparil, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, and John Ryder. 2011. “Richard Rorty and Cultural Criticism.” International Journal of Cultural Research 1, no. 2: 128–136. Dewey, John. 1980. The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899–1924: Democracy and Education, 1916. Volume 9. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Kremer, Alexander. 2009. “Interview with Richard Rorty.” In Self and Society. Central European Pragmatist Forum Volume 4. Edited by Alexander Kremer and John Ryder, 234–235. Value Inquiry Book Series. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press. ———., and John Ryder, eds. 2009. Self and Society. Central European Pragmatist Forum Volume 4. Edited by Alexander Kremer and John Ryder, 234–235. Value Inquiry Book Series. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press. Peterson, Merril D., and Robert C. Vaughan, eds. 1988. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, Richard. 2010. “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy.” In The Rorty Reader. Edited by Christopher J. Voparil and Richard J. Bernstein, 239–258. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Ryder, John. 1989. “Review of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society XXV, no. 2: 221–227. ———. 2011. “Richard Rorty, Contemporary Philosophy, and the Problem of Ethnocentrism.” International Journal of Cultural Research 1, no. 2: 134–136. [The latter is part of a larger group of papers by ibid., 128–136]. ———. 2013. The Things in Heaven and Earth: An Essay in Pragmatic Naturalism. New York: Fordham University Press. Voparil, Christopher J., and Richard J. Bernstein, eds. 2010. The Rorty Reader. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

9 We Liberal, Ironic Hypocrites Situating Rorty in the History of American Democratic Thought Kenneth W. Stikkers

Richard Rorty’s debates with contemporary communitarians, such as Robert Bellah, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, and Charles Taylor, and critical theorists, including Jürgen Habermas, bear a striking resemblance to the early Frankfurt School’s engagement with the historicists—Hegelian and Marxist—who were so strong in 1920s Germany. Rorty embraced “historicism” (Rorty 1981, 9–10) and claimed that for its critics, such as those just mentioned, “liberal institutions and culture either should not or cannot survive the collapse of the philosophical justification that the Enlightenment provided for them” (Rorty 1988, 259). Indeed, the Frankfurt School began largely as a response to historicism, and like present-day critical theorists, early members of that school, such as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (both of whom Rorty mentions), feared for the future of democratic institutions and culture. Critical theorists worry that, as Rorty put it, “no society [not just a liberal, democratic one] that sets aside the idea of ahistorical moral truth . . . can survive” (Rorty 1988, 259). Max Scheler, though, the most celebrated member of the Frankfurt School at its founding, but whom Rorty nowhere mentions, rejected the assertion by the historicists already of his day that historicism is the antithesis of metaphysical foundationalism. He called it “bad cryptic metaphysics,” adding, “historicism has made history into a ‘thing-in-itself.’ And what else does this mean but that it attributes to historical reality, and to its cognition, a metaphysical meaning and sense” (Scheler 1980, 153–154). Historicism for Scheler, therefore, by putting forward an ahistorical notion of history, was but one more metaphysical foundationalism added to the lot—and a very bad one at that. Equally misguided, though, Scheler thought, were those efforts to counter historicism with some competing ahistorical, metaphysical absolutism. Scheler was a 129

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pioneer of the sociology of knowledge, an early form of what is now commonly termed “social constructivism,” and he developed it out of his extensive engagement with American pragmatism. Indeed, Scheler’s Erkenntnis und Arbeit (Cognition and Work) was published as a companion volume to his groundbreaking Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge. It was the first monograph on pragmatism in German and served as an important reference work for those in the Frankfurt School for decades afterward (Joas 1993, 81, 106; Stikkers 2009, 67–83). Ironically, though, sociology of knowledge later became identified as a type of historicism, especially as Karl Mannheim and his followers developed of it. Scheler, however, had put forward his sociology of knowledge as a strategy for countering historicism, not with some alternative metaphysical foundation, but by historicizing historicism itself, that is, by offering a thoroughgoing genealogical account of it and thereby revealing that it in turn rested upon nothing other than historical contingency (Scheler 1980, 153). In such a manner Scheler aimed to open up a space for genuine cross-cultural dialogue that privileged no one starting point, not even that of one’s own cultural history: awareness of historical contingency provides no excuse for parochialism, as it does for Rorty, but rather creates the possibility for transcendence and critique. So although American pragmatism profoundly influenced both Scheler and Rorty and deepened both thinkers’ historical sensibilities, it helped lead Scheler away from the sort of historicist reductionism and cultural relativism into which it led Rorty. Michael Barber thus rightfully calls Scheler “the guardian of dialogue.” By contrast Rorty was the guardian of edifying conversation, for dialogue seeks shared meanings, while Rorty held no hope for transcending one’s own history or even that there is significant overlap across cultural divides. Barber similarly contrasts Scheler’s sociology of knowledge to Rorty’s historicism, concluding that the former offers greater possibilities for effective solidarity than the latter (Barber 1993, 171–174). The mistake, Scheler claimed, was in identifying the transcendental with the a priori, an ahistorical view from nowhere. A transcendental perspective, that is, one that moves beyond one’s own historically situated point of view, is not to be secured in advance of dialogue, as the condition for the possibility of inquiry, but is rather a desirable outcome of inquiry: what is to be sought is a view from every “where,” that is, meanings that take account of and harmonize as many perspectives as possible, the views of as many “we’s” as possible. In a manner similar to the one in which Scheler engaged the historicists of his day, then, I wish to challenge Rorty’s defense of liberal democracy not on the basis of any sort of philosophical principles or foundations, for Rorty boldly asserted that liberal democracy needs no philosophical foundations or justification but rests solely upon the contingency of its own history, and thus, he told us, we ought to meet every discussion appealing to philosophical principles, as he did, with a shrug. Rather, I offer an alternative story of liberal democracy, especially in the American context, a story which includes Rorty’s own telling of it. Michel Foucault, too, offered an alternative story of Western liberalism, which Rorty found to be the most interesting aspect of Foucault’s work (Rorty 1989, 63): liberalism offers diminished coercive power over

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bodies, what Foucault termed “the deployment of alliance,” and places less external limits on bodies, but substitutes for that form of political control “the deployment of sexuality,” forms of bio-power that penetrate bodies in order to manage their desires. Rorty accepted Foucault’s analysis but judged the trade-off of the one form of power for the other to be a net gain. My aim in telling an alternative story of the history of liberalism is to situate Rorty’s views on liberal democracy specifically in the history of American democratic thought, taking clues from Rorty’s own placement of himself in the tradition of Jeffersonian democracy. In the process I take issue with Rorty’s defense of liberal democracy, not on philosophical grounds but by offering a counter-narrative, that is, by telling the story of liberal democracy differently than did Rorty, largely from the perspectives of Africana peoples, and along the way I allude to several ironies within that history and within Rorty’s account of it. Rorty placed himself in the tradition of Jeffersonian democracy, claiming, “Thomas Jefferson set the tone for American liberal politics when he said, ‘it does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty Gods or no God’” (Rorty 1988, 257). With the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty, Jefferson radically severed politics from any theological foundations. Rorty then saw himself, with Rawls, whom he quoted frequently and favorably in this regard, as having severed politics from all philosophical foundations and justifications as well: Jefferson saw that democracy requires no religious beliefs, but neither does it require, according to Rorty and Rawls, any necessary philosophical foundations, nor are any philosophical beliefs necessary for democratic citizenship. Moreover, contra the communitarians, democratic culture and institutions require no account of the moral subject: sufficient is the “we” that has been historically constituted out of the Enlightenment (Rorty 1988, 260). First, some comments regarding Rorty’s self-identification with the liberal tradition generally. “Liberalism” broadly conceived simply meant historically the claim to liberty as a primary human value, and it took shape in opposition to “conservatism” through Edmund Burke’s criticisms of the American and French Revolutions and debates with their defenders, most notably Thomas Paine and Robespierre, respectively. The central issue was the relationship of liberty to virtue. Conservatives, such as Burke, claimed liberty to be a privilege needing to be earned through virtue: only virtuous persons deserve to be free. Liberals, by contrast, claimed liberty to be the foundation for virtue: only free persons can be virtuous. In this regard both made a sharp distinction, found already in Augustine, between “liberty” and “license”: the latter was a matter of doing whatever one wanted, without moral consideration or constraint, whereas the former referred to one’s capacity to act virtuously and to do moral good. Although he uses the language of “growth” rather than “virtue,” Dewey seemed to fit this understanding of the liberal tradition better than Rorty. Dewey wrote, “Liberalism is committed to . . . the liberation of individuals so that realization of their capacities [growth?] may be the law of their life. It is committed to the use of freed intelligence as the method of directing change” (Dewey 2008 [1935], 41). Such an articulation of liberalism for Rorty was still too metaphysical.

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As his main argument on behalf of conservatism, Burke claimed that doctrine to represent adherence to norms of custom and tradition derived from historical, experimental testing, rather than from untested, ahistorical philosophical principles, as it is the case with such Enlightenment thinkers as Kant. In Peircean terms, liberalism, for Burke, exemplifies “the a priori method”—the tendency “to think as one is inclined to think,” to follow lofty sounding ideals, fads, and fancies, without regard for “real” empirical consequences—and it is conservatism that represents experimental science. Custom and tradition are not mere superstition and dogma, as the Enlightenment made them out to be, but the time-tested principles whereby a society has come to adjust itself to “the pattern of nature,” and “our political system [thereby] is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world” (Burke 2003 [1790], 29). We are to question and improve upon tradition, of course, but only cautiously and slowly: never is there any radical self-liberation through transcendental reason from the tutelage of custom and the past, as Kant suggests. By Burke’s account, then, Dewey and Rorty appear in this regard, ironically, as conservatives, not as liberals. Moreover, liberal philosophy, which began with the premise that one can, through the power of universal reason, escape one’s history, ends up asserting, ironically, in one of its leading defenders, namely Rorty, that we are hopelessly incarcerated in our provincial history: “we liberals” cannot help but be Eurocentric. Who else’s projects might we pursue but those stemming from European history? Now let me offer some remarks regarding Rorty’s placement of himself more specifically in the tradition of American liberal democracy. I am first concerned when Rorty claimed immediately after his quotation of Jefferson, “His [Jefferson’s] example helped make respectable the idea that politics can be separated from beliefs about matters of ultimate importance”: did Rorty forget that Jefferson authored not only the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty but also another important document in the history of liberalism, which chillingly concludes, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor”? Rorty claimed that it is just as possible for an ironic liberal, that is, a liberal who realizes that his or her convictions rest upon no metaphysical foundation but solely on the contingency of history, to be as committed to a cause, such that he or she would be willing to die for it, as someone who feels supported by God or some other metaphysical foundation or Truth (Rorty 1989, 46). Rorty’s assertion is an empirical one that begs challenge, but also, we might ask, in what possible way is the above pledge one of a person who has separated politics from “matters of ultimate importance?” What made Jefferson, for Rorty, the herald of American liberal politics was his establishment of the doctrine of religious toleration. That doctrine, however, predates the Enlightenment and was established 150 years prior to the Virginia document with Roger Williams’s founding of Rhode Island, home to both the first Catholic church and the first Jewish synagogue in the British colonies. Williams

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also called for the end of the practice of coercing Native Americans to undergo baptism. Williams, not Enlightenment thinkers such as Jefferson, established in America not only the doctrine of tolerance but also the separation of Church and State, although not because he feared that private religious beliefs might unduly influence public matters, as liberals fear today, but because he feared that politics might corrupt religion: the use of political power in matters of conscience only produces hypocrites. Civil power is to be restricted to the maintenance of social peace and tranquility, and for that purpose alone magistrates are justified in using coercion, the power of the sword. Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke and Jefferson did not create but merely gave secular expression to the notion of tolerance. So Rorty’s story of liberalism is misleading in affirming the commonly held, false dichotomy between pre-Enlightenment religious intolerance and Enlightenment tolerance. Indeed, much that Rorty associated with liberal democracy traces to Reformist theology rather than to the Enlightenment: in the above and numerous other instances, Enlightenment thinkers appear merely to have given secular, philosophical articulations to Reformist notions. For example, New England town hall democracy, which Dewey experienced first-hand and so admired, stemmed much more from Congregationalism and Luther’s notion that “every man is his own priest,” than from Enlightenment philosophy, as Dewey well understood: it took Enlightenment deists, such as Jefferson, to translate the former into the latter. Indeed, what is the pragmatic difference between saying with Luther and Williams that every person is his or her own priest and saying with Nietzsche and Rorty that there are no priests? Between saying that there is one God Almighty, a single Absolute Truth, to which all persons have direct, equal access through conscience, and saying that there is no God or Absolute Truth? Throughout the eighteenth century, New England Puritans were at odds with Enlightenment thinkers, concentrated largely in Virginia. The two camps, though, were able to put aside their differences to fight the revolution, although for different reasons. Many Puritans fought to protect New England’s special covenant with God, not to protect any presumed “unalienable rights”: George III threatened both that covenant and those rights. After the revolution, however, tensions between the two camps resurfaced, and they continue in American politics to this day. For some, and by contrast to those Enlightenment thinkers whom Rorty featured when telling his story of America, America was to be a theocracy, not a democracy, “one nation under God,” a “city upon a hill” and a model to the world of “Christian charity,” as described by John Winthrop: political authority, for them, came from God, not from “We the people,” and tolerance was to be, at best, limited. Something of a truce between religious and Enlightenment understandings of American democracy was achieved through the emergence of “Evangelical Republicanism” in the early nineteenth century. Adherents of this doctrine, such as George Bancroft, fully embraced the old English proverb, “Vox populi, vox Dei,” “The voice of the people is the voice of God.” As Bancroft expressed it,

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The Spirit of God breathes through the combined intelligence of the people. Truth is not to be ascertained by the impulses of an individual; it emerges from the contradictions of personal opinions. . . . Thus the opinion which we respect is, indeed, not the opinion of one or of a few, but the sagacity of the many. (Bancroft 1993 [1835], 240)

This notion that Truth, the voice of God, emerges from seemingly discordant human voices, found artistic expression in the music of Charles Ives (see his Notes before a Piano Forte), and Catharine Beecher proclaimed, “The principles of democracy, then, are identical with the principles of Christianity” (Beecher 1993 [1841], 245). Democracy and theocracy are thus reconciled, and liberals and Christians could now proclaim loudly together, “We the people” and “We Americans,” although each would understand something quite different by those phrases. Evangelical republicanism overlapped with the rise of Jacksonian democracy. For Jefferson, human reason, which enables citizens to participate intelligently in democratic politics, requires cultivation, and hence democracy requires universal education. Jefferson thus considered his founding of the University of Virginia, the first public institution of higher learning in America, as his greatest achievement. For Jacksonian democrats, by contrast, ordinary, untutored “common sense,” informed for some by Scripture and conscience, is sufficient for democratic citizenry. In this regard Rorty fits more into the tradition of Jacksonian than Jeffersonian democracy: for him, as for the Jacksonian democrats, democratic citizenry has no philosophical, intellectual prerequisites. On the one hand, Jacksonian democrats did much to strike down class barriers to democratic participation by ending property requirements for voting. On the other hand though, many of them, including Andrew Jackson himself, led the campaign to exterminate indigenous peoples and were among the strongest supporters of slavery. The significance of this point will become clearer later. What I have attempted so far is to take Rorty at his word when he professed to be following both Dewey and Rawls in claiming that liberal democracy needs no philosophical justification but only “philosophical articulation” of—Rorty quoting Rawls—“our history and the traditions embedded in our public life.” Rather than providing philosophical principles for liberal democracy, we need to elucidate and elaborate upon the story of its history and broaden its metaphors (Rorty 1989, 44). Rorty assumed that through such articulation this tradition would grow in vigor and strength and that this “we,” which is one of its products, would similarly grow in confidence and conviction. Such elaboration, I have suggested, though, works against Rorty by revealing the extent to which he essentialized liberal democracy by grossly simplifying its history, ignoring the myriad of contestations within it, such as those to which I have alluded. What even my all-too-brief telling of that history reveals is that this tradition, whose genealogy Rorty everywhere described as flowing so univocally out of the Enlightenment, is at every turn at odds with itself—problematized—and deeply entwined with the histories of counter-Enlightenment traditions and trends, sometimes allying and at other times ferociously at odds with them. Who, then, is this facile “we liberals” of whom he spoke seemingly so unequivocally?

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Was Williams a “liberal?” Was Bancroft or Beecher? I have suggested that, in elaborating the story of liberalism, that “we” increasingly blurs, becomes diluted, and as it does it becomes more and more difficult to claim with Rorty that it is sufficient to sustain the institutions and culture of liberal democracy, without some antecedent philosophical principles. Telling liberalism’s history in an expanded and more nuanced way, as Rorty encouraged and as I have attempted to do here, weakens rather than strengthens our sense of that “we.” More seriously, though, what are “we liberals” to make of the hypocrisy that, too, is so seemingly part of the history of liberalism? Could Rorty even speak of hypocrisy, since that term connotes a contradiction between one’s professed principles and one’s actions and Rorty claims that liberalism stands without any necessary principles? What line, if any, are we to draw between irony and hypocrisy? Indeed, Dewey opened Liberalism and Social Action by acknowledging that liberalism had fallen into disfavor in large measure due to its hypocrisy: liberals had become known as people who espoused the slogans of freedom for their own private purposes and gain but rarely acted publicly to make liberty universal. Such was why liberalism, for Dewey, needed reconstruction and radicalization. Indeed, hypocrisy plagued American liberalism from its very beginnings: the author of the Declaration of Independence and many others who loudly proclaimed “Give me liberty or give me death” were also slaveholders and prepared to die protecting their human property, and many participated in the extermination of Native Americans. Those advocating “We the People” systematically excluded the vast majority of the population from that “we”: women, African and Native Americans, and those without property. The irony/hypocrisy (which word are we to use?) of Western liberalism is perhaps best revealed in the history of Haiti and its own revolution. In 1779, prior to that revolution, 800 mulatto and free black Haitians, many having been trained in the French army, answered Count D’Estaing’s call for volunteers to join French forces already fighting with the American revolutionaries. The Haitians believed that American independence would contribute to the liberatory efforts of all oppressed people, including their own in Haiti, and naively imagined that their efforts and sacrifices would be remembered and repaid when their own revolution came. The Haitian Fontages Legion, under the command of Viscount de Fontages, partook in the Battle of Savannah and in an ill-advised and ill-conceived assault on the British fortification there, in conjunction with American and French troops and fleets, as well as Polish troops under the command of Count Pulaski, who suffered multiple, severe injuries. The assault failed miserably, and the British counterattacked, threatening to annihilate the combined armies. The free Haitians rose to the occasion, though, and met the attacking British troops head-on, fiercely, brilliantly, and at great loss, allowing the remainder of the southern revolutionary forces to retreat safely: by all accounts the Legion acted with extraordinary valor and skill. According to the official report, prepared in Paris, “This legion saved the army at Savannah by bravely covering its retreat” (As quoted in: Steward 1899, 12), and it likely saved the revolution altogether. The heroics of the Legion, along with the eventual success of the American Revolution, greatly inspired other American liberators, such as Simon Bolivar,

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and prompted Haitians to begin planning their own liberation. Indeed, those who fought at Savannah became some of the most important leaders of the Haitian Revolution—mulattos Commandant Villarte and André Rigaud, its leading mulatto general, and black freedmen M. Lambert and Henri Christophe, independent Haiti’s second leader and first elected president of the Northern Republic of Haiti. The Haitian fighters imagined that the liberal principles that inspired the French Revolution would lead France to renounce its colonialist practices. Much like southern slaveholders who fought in the American Revolution, Haitian planters appealed to those principles in arguing for Haiti’s independence but then pledged themselves (in their own words) “To die rather than share equal political rights with a bastard race” (As quoted in: Holly 2001 [1857], 265). In 1794, after much hesitation and under intense pressure from the Haitian revolutionaries, France did abolish slavery, and two years later former slave and leader of the slave uprising, Toussaint L’Overture, effectively ruled Haiti. Napoleon, however, was determined to restore the profitable slave system to Haiti, and he was incensed by the very thought of defeat by a band of mulattos and black slaves, sending his very best troops and the largest expedition that had ever sailed from France, under the command of his brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc, to crush the revolt. “All the niggers, when they see an army, will lay down their arms,” Leclerc confidently boasted. “They will be only too happy that we pardon them” (As quoted in: James 1989, 274). L’Ouverture countered, writing to the Commander of the Western revolutionary army, General Dessalines, who would later become the first leader of free Haiti: We have no other resource than destruction and flames. Bear in mind that the soil bathed with our sweat [and blood] must not furnish our enemies with the smallest aliment. Tear up the roads with shot; throw corpses and horses into all the fountains [and wells]; burn and annihilate everything, in order that those who have come to reduce us to slavery may have before their eyes the image of that hell which they so deserve. (L’Overture 2008 [1802], 76)

So, the Haitians burned their cities, their fields, and their forests and poisoned their own water sources: not a grain of wheat, not a piece of wood or a single nail, not a drop of water was to be left for the French to use in their efforts to oppress. In my judgment, the Haitian Revolution was the most noble of all revolutions ever fought, the only successful revolution in human history of a slave population: never, to my knowledge, did a people pay so high a price for their liberty, and by comparison the American and French Revolutions were cake walks. The Haitians imagined, too, wrongly again, that the United States would surely come to their aid and repay its debt. Not only did the United States fail to lift a finger to assist the Haitians in their own revolution and to repay its enormous debt, but it, with the author of its own Declaration of Independence as its president, placed an embargo upon and did all that it could to undermine the new republic, for fear that its success would inspire slave rebellions at home, which it indeed did, including a major one in Jefferson’s own Virginia. Moreover and ever since, the United States,

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along with other Western colonial powers, has punished Haiti for its independent spirit and refusal to cooperate with global corporate interests, colonialism’s newer form. Repeatedly the United States has militarily intervened in and occupied Haiti, even overthrowing duly elected democratic leaders, as recently as 2004. The history of Haiti thus provides some of the strongest evidence that the two great children of the Enlightenment, of which Rorty, too, claims to be an offspring, the United States and France, never, in the main, really believed their own liberal rhetoric. How then are we to describe this history? How does it fit into Rorty’s story of liberalism? Is it hypocrisy? Or, is it merely “ironic,” because, after all, moral principles are, according to Rorty, irrelevant to liberalism? Let us turn to another great American ironist, whom some have also claimed as an Enlightenment “liberal,” Frederick Douglass (e.g., Lawson 2009, Martin 1984, Moses 1978, Myers 2008, Sundstrom 2012). Like most African American leaders of the time, Douglass concluded that white Americans, for the most part, had never really believed the principles of universal liberty by which they had proclaimed their own revolution and that it was senseless to quote America’s own liberal, revolutionary rhetoric in protest against slavery and racial injustice, senseless to appeal to philosophical principles: “Moral considerations have long since been exhausted. . . . It is in vain to reason. . . . One might as well hunt bears with ethics and political economy for weapons” (Douglass 1999b [1859], 375). In his famous Fourth of July address, Douglass proclaimed, What, then, is to be argued? . . . The time for . . . argument is passed. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

Like Rorty, although for very different reasons, Douglass abandoned philosophical argument in favor of “irony,” but he offered a very different understanding of “irony” than Rorty: it is for Douglass the exposure of hypocrisy. Indeed, Douglass continued, What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere

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bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. (Douglass 1999a [1852], 196–197)

To paraphrase Douglass’s question, then, what to the African or Native American is Rorty’s vaunted liberal tradition? The answer is the same: “a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.” It has not been, as Rorty tells it, a tradition of “institutions and customs, which were designed to diminish cruelty, make possible government by the consent of the governed, and permit as much domination-free communication as possible to take place” (Rorty 1989, 68) but rather a linguistic tradition, a language game, that conceals just the opposite. In response to charges of hypocrisy it is common for one to plead that the principles that one has violated remain sound and that, therefore, we should not forsake them because one has neglected, abused, or violated them: rather than abandon transgressed professed principles, one ought to redouble one’s efforts to be more faithful to them. Rorty, however, could not make such appeals because, for him, there are no principles underlying liberalism, separable and to be recovered from its history: liberalism is nothing other than its history, and so if that history is judged corrupt, so must it be judged corrupt. Of course, as Rorty suggested, conflicting stories are not mutually exclusive, and so the story of liberalism includes both the one that Rorty tells and the ones that I have suggested, coming especially from those who have felt marginalized in its more common tellings. The aim here, then, is not to assert the “true” story of liberalism over against Rorty’s “false” one. Rather, the claim is that, as the various stories of liberalism are told and considered, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe with Rorty that the history of liberalism, with all its ironies and without appeal to any underlying principles, is sufficient to sustain commitment to and even willingness to die for democratic ideals. Let us conclude, then, by raising the same question regarding Rorty’s “we liberals” that Thomas Paine, the least hypocritical and hence the least ironic of America’s revolutionary liberals, raised in his biting condemnation of George Washington, whom he had praised earlier in his dedication to Part One of The Rights of Man but later denounced as a hypocrite, when, he believed, Washington had left him to rot in a French prison: “The world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any” to begin with (Paine 1987 [1795], 502). Such is the question needing to be addressed to “we liberals.” According to Douglass and by Rorty’s own admission in his story of liberalism, it would seem that “we liberals” never really had any principles to begin with—now, how ironic is that!

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REFERENCES Bancroft, George. 1993 [1835]. “The Office of the People in Art, Government, and Religion.” In The American Intellectual Tradition. Volume I, 1630–1865. Second Edition. Edited by David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, 220–28. New York: Oxford University Press. Barber, Michael. 1993. Guardian of Dialogue Max Scheler’s Phenomenology, Sociology of Knowledge, and Philosophy of Love. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. Beecher, Catharine. 1993 [1841]. “A Treatise on Domestic Economy.” In The American Intellectual Tradition. Volume I, 1630–1865. Second Edition. Edited by David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, 230–44. New York: Oxford University Press. Burke, Edmund. 2003 [1790]. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Rethinking the Western Tradition. Edited by Frank M. Turner. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Dewey, John. 2008 [1935]. “Liberalism and Social Action.” In The Later Works of John Dewey, 19125–1953:1935–1937, Essays, Reviews, Trotsky Inquiry, Miscellany, and Liberalism and Social Action. Volume 11. Collected Worked of John Dewey. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston, 1–66. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Douglass, Frederick. 1999a [1852]. “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.” In Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings. Edited by Philip Foner, 188–206. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books. ———. 1999b [1859]. “Capt. John Brown Not Insane.” In Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings. Edited by Philip Foner, 374–376. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books. Holly, J. Theodore. 2001 [1857]. “A Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro for SelfGovernment and Civilized Progress.” In Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African American Protest Literature, 1790–1860. Edited by Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, and Phillip Lapsansky, 263–279. New York: Routledge. James, C.L.R. 1989. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Second Revised Edition. New York: Vintage Books. Joas, Hans. 1993. Pragmatism and Social Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lawson, Bill E. 2009. “Douglass Among the Romantics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass. Edited by Maurice E. Lee, 118–131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. L’Ouverture, Toussaint. 2008 [1802] “Letter to Dessalines.” In The Haitian Revolution. Edited by Nick Nesbitt, 75–76. London: Verso. Martin, Waldo E. 1984. The Mind of Frederick Douglass. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Moses, Wilson Jeremiah. 1978. The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925. Hamden, CT: Archon Books. Myers, Peter C. 2008. Frederick Douglass: Race and the Rebirth of American Liberalism. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Paine, Thomas. 1987 [1795]. “Letter to George Washington.” In The Thomas Paine Reader. Edited by Michael Foot and Isaac Kramnick, 490–502. London: Penguin Books. Rorty, Richard. 1981. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1988. “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy.” In The Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. Edited by Merrill Peterson and Robert Vaughn, 257–282. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Scheler, Max. 1980. Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge. Translated by Manfred S. Frings. Edited by Kenneth W. Stikkers. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Steward, T.G. 1899. How the Black St. Domingo Legion Saved the Patriot Army in the Siege of Savannah, 1779. Washington, DC: American Negro Academy. Stikkers, Kenneth W. 2009. “Dialogue between Pragmatism and Constructivism in Historical Perspective.” In John Dewey between Pragmatism and Constructivism. Edited by Larry A. Hickman, Stefan Neubert, and Kersten Reich, 67–83. New York: Fordham University Press. Sundstrom, Ronald. 2012. “Frederick Douglass.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Fall 2012 Edition. http:​//pla​to.st​anfor​d.edu​/arch​ives/​fall2​012/ e​ntrie​s/fre​deric​k-dou​glass​/.

10 Solidarity, Imagination, and Richard Rorty’s Unfulfilled Democratic Possibilities A Deweyan Reconstruction Justin Bell

Both Richard Rorty and John Dewey consistently advocated for versions of liberal democracy which decrease the suffering of those who are politically marginalized and advocated for political changes that meliorate the real social problems that lead to human suffering. Rorty calls, in Achieving Our Country, for a direct involvement in the alleviation of suffering and the active work of achieving a liberal democracy— one ought not be a “detached cosmopolitan spectator” (Rorty 1998, 106) but rather involved in actual meliorative activity. Dewey similarly exemplified activity in the world in many of his activities. If we are to move beyond Rorty—indeed beyond our current political state of affairs—we would do well to investigate practical manners in which to organize our social conduct. It is my argument that Rorty’s solidarity has potential positive consequences which he does not see—consequences that are more transformative than Rorty allows. To the end of showing these possibilities, I will employ John Dewey’s philosophy of moral imagination and his project of reconstruction of the individual to show that solidarity is potentially reconstructive of individualism in such a way that Rorty’s philosophy does not otherwise suggest. John Dewey’s ideal of democracy as a social ethic requires communal reconstruction of individualism—and that project is often accused of impracticality. Dewey argues this in many places, but most obviously and explicitly in The Public and Its Problems, which is a defense of democracy as a way to bring publics together into inquisitive communities that meliorate lived problems (LW 2:325–326).1 The accusation of impossibility is a serious problem for a pragmatic theory. If something is not possible to do, then it is absurd to request that we do it. Be that as it may, Dewey’s end-in-view is the reconstruction of contemporary individuals who are 141

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communitarian.2 I use the term “communitarian” to point to the fact that individuals are developed by communities with unique cultures and experiences and then all inquiry is partly constituted by the cultural matrix of inquiry (LW 12:48–50). This community-centered demand runs into a severe roadblock when individuals in contemporary society, enamored by negative liberties and laissez-faire personhood, understand themselves as atomic or wholly autonomous. Simply put, to Dewey’s suggestion that individuals reconstruct themselves into selves that participate in deeply democratic interactions, plenty of hearty individualists object. We pragmatists ought not be surprised by these objections—reconstruction of the individual is a difficult task. More broadly speaking, my problem is that reconstruction of individualism around a deeply democratic ideal is not immediately available to the sorts of individuals that fervently hold to forms of individuality expressed in contemporary society. Many of us have the tendency to hold onto our own misplaced individuality despite empirical evidence provided by the classical pragmatists and the contemporary cognitive sciences that show individualism, as we practice it, is no a priori given.3 To the reformer, the hearty individualist can claim: “I don’t want to!” Thus, Dewey’s democratic suggestions which call for individuals to reconstruct themselves through radical community interactions seems impractical. This seems the case because there is no clear method or process for bringing about the problematic situations for change. My suggestion is that we can reconstruct an important part of Richard Rorty’s thought—his idea of solidarity—to bring about the conditions that allow for empathetic projection, a part of moral imagination, to problematize radical individualism and set up conditions for deep democracy. Dewey argues that democracy is not any particular political form and is instead a basic ideal of social existence. Thus, human beings are democratic insofar as they inquire together, develop co-extensively, and share experience in situations that are mutually transformative. Intelligence becomes a means by which we navigate problems and potentially develop into communities of intimate fellows. Many find this ideal of democratic individuals cooperatively inquiring objectionable because in practical smash-mouth political action there are winners and losers. In social activities, there are those who participate, those who do not, and those that are on the outside of power structures. Educating each other and developing together might appear to be an admirable goal, but doing so seems impractical as many do not want to participate in a deep democracy that demands reconstruction of the self. Requesting reconstruction amounts to the request that the self be put aside all together. However, I will consistently hold that reconstruction of the self is not the destruction of the self. I borrow the concept “deep democracy” from Judith Green. In her work of the same name, she claims: Democracy [is] an ideal [that] has its place as a quality within the experience of community life itself, rather than as just one among various alternative, equally defensible structural forms within which community life might be organized. . . . [B]ecause formally

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democratic institutional structures do not fully satisfy this originary desire [for social cohesion and progressive policy], the conception of democracy that grounds them must not be adequate; a fuller expression of its practical meaning is needed, and must eventually emerge. The alternative[s] . . . are the frustration of this desire and the increasingly unsatisfying redirection of community life in response to some other desire, most probably the will to power of the few. (Green 1999, 57)

However, this does not imply that we must start from nowhere or from a form of relativism. Pragmatism opposes the idea that we should act publicly from a value-neutral form of individual relativism—or that it is possible to do so at all. Value-neutrality requires its own absolutism—often through the assumption of rationalism, which both Dewey and Rorty reject. Value-neutral liberalism itself becomes a form of absolutism. Thus it is not compatible with Deweyan democracy. Citing Alain Locke,4 as someone who holds a similarly deep conception of democracy as Dewey, Green holds that the reconstruction of our value system—including the assumption of value-neutrality—is necessary for establishing a truly democratic society. Trust and relation become the hallmarks of interaction—not the assumption of rationality or of some other norm. Alain Locke’s theory of pluralism and “intellectual” democracy is one that calls, like Dewey’s, for a reconstruction of individualism. Locke’s pluralist theory takes root from James’s pluralism, radical empiricism, and psychology and argues that democracy without reconstruction of pluralistic individuals is itself another guise of absolutism. Green, citing Locke, does not mince words: Given the perpetual incomplete effectiveness of imperial strategies of cultural domination because of the return influence of the dominated on the dominators, as well as the capacity of the excluded to destroy the peace for all, rival absolutisms must be abandoned in favor of a negotiated, cross-cultural process of progressive understanding, trust-building, and trust-based democratic collaboration in areas of mutual benefit. (Green 1999, 46)

Such deeply democratic reconstruction can bring about the fruits of true peace in a society. The peace of true democracy prevents not only absolutism that leads to individuals being dominated but also tyranny of the majority. However, achieving this sort of goal requires a reconstruction of individuality and thus how we go about relating to the world. Before I continue, I believe that a note on individualism is required. The form of individualism that is dominant today is best articulated by thinkers like Descartes, Locke, and Kant. This form of individuality is the dominate form of individualism in the West today. While the philosophic nuts-and-bolts of this form of individuation are not necessarily known widely by those who practice the form in day-to-day life, the idea that individuals are atomic, autonomous, rights-holders, and the a priori form of personality is common and predominate. Even in the oft-abused “nurture” corner of the popular “nature-versus-nurture” debate, I believe there is still an idea that a core individualism precedes the various characteristics that are learned through “nurture.” In other words, I do not think that the metaphysics of individualism is

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seriously under question in this debate—that individuals develop through a historical process—rather that this debate tends to focus only on the characteristics that are attached to an individual. This is not significantly different than the Cartesian Ego when we look at the practical outcome of isolation of the individual from a society instead of integration in and of a society. On this atomic view, characteristics that are attached to this already formed personhood are incidental to, not constitutive of, individuality. Pragmatism explicitly rejects the idea that individuals come readymade or have an essentially Cartesian Ego. Simply put, the modern individual looks for rational advantage, believes him or her self to be atomic and originary, and views him or her self as a substance of some sort. The result of this form of individuality is many of the various formal versions of liberalism and libertarianism which predominate our political lives. Before continuing, I believe it is important to emphasize what I mean by reconstruction of individuality. I do not mean an eclipse of or end of individuality into some form of naïve collectivism or science fiction inspired hive-mind. Instead, I refer to the form of reconstruction that John Dewey calls for in Individualism: Old and New. In this work Dewey calls for a reconstruction of how individuals conceive of themselves as in order to better deal with the economic, political, and scientific realities of life as it is lived now. For example, the conception of individuals that John Locke presents in his Second Treatise had out lived its need given the social changes of industrialization (and by extension globalization and the development of personal computers and telecommunication). Autonomy of a rights-holding, substantial individual was a very practical belief to hold given the social changes of previous ages. To establish some autonomy in the face of the social changes of the Enlightenment was of tremendous practical importance. However, these told forms of understanding what an individual is do not help us now. In contemporary life, we are faced with different problems and thus must act differently. Consensus-based decision-making is an end-in-view of activity that remains an ideal. It would be unrealistic to suggest that a shift to consensus could be achievable on a large scale—and suggesting this would be utopian and not melioristic. Instead, let us follow both Dewey and Rorty and focus on those actions that are close to us. When we act we do so with our fellows and in close quarters. For Deweyan democracy, this is far more important that we act in our every-day actions in a democratic manner. That is to say that our inquiry about how to live is melioristic, open to criticism of our fellows, and open to educating each other. This is what Deweyan democracy means—not necessarily the establishment of top-down rules, laws, and policies. Democracy is something we do, not a system we participate in. Thus, if we redevelop our democratic interactions around consensus, we best do so in individual activity, where we can empathize, interact, and personally develop relationships. Only later, and with careful intelligent inquiry, can we start to refine and redevelop larger institutions. Any so-called “democracy” that individuals of the old promethean sort can participate in is one that emphasizes individualism and, in the end, force. We typically call this idea “the tyranny of the majority.” Here, I am concerned with the

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fifty-percent-plus-one mentality of “democracy.” Given the adversarial nature of many “democratic” decisions, such thinking is common. It is the promethean self, when engaged in “democracy,” that conceives of this as a legitimate decision-making process. If there is a controversial subject, we have an election. Whichever candidate, bill, or resolution receives a mere majority of the votes wins and the remainder of those—despite the possible legitimacy of their opinions—are neglected. Notably, there is no mandate for the opposition to fall into agreement with the chosen policy—in fact doing so would signal weakness of “character” and “resolve.” What should be pointed out here is that conceiving of decision-making in this manner involves an inherent forceful coercion of the minority. While our political structure, in order to function, often must act this way as a matter of expediency, there is no epistemological justification to hold that the majority’s opinion is true. We philosophy teachers typically admonish our students for making appeals to the masses. However, at the end of the day, “democracy” of a radically individualized sort is an appeal to force over the minority. There is no consensus required or developed. Allowances for minority rights might soften the harshness of the majority, but this idea is a species of the same problem—individuals who do not change are protected by legal contrivance. Consensus is, again, not the goal. For the discussion here I would like to suggest a spectrum. The aforementioned notion of the promethean individual participating in a contrived and forceful “democracy” is one pole. The other pole of the spectrum is the ideal of consensusbuilding in social action and reconstruction in individuality—or Deweyan democracy. The Deweyan ideal of democracy is a functional goal for activity that is not yet actualized and remains an ideal. Dewey often employs the example of how decisions are made in close quarters, such as in a family, to show that group inquiry develops group decisions that are not coercive because the decision is made through a form of consensus. Consensus is a form of inquiry in a group where there is a decision that results from the interaction of all inquirers. Compare this with Peirce’s theory of truth, a cornerstone of pragmatism. Peirce claims that truth is what all possible inquirers would believe after all possible inquiry. This fundamental statement of what truth is for the pragmatists is one of consensus as an ideal goal of activity— not one of force from a majority. While it is an idealized end-in-view, it requires agreement. Consensus is a form of group inquiry wherein agreement is developed and force is not required. When a group agrees by consensus, it does so without a minority that must fall in line. Instead of force, there is communal redevelopment of ideas that leads to group action and agreement that deeply informs habits and beliefs. Rorty’s work in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is especially appropriate for my problem because, while Rorty is a professed pragmatist, he cannot work himself out of the blackhole of individuality. It is my contention that Rorty’s ironic individual is functionally the same as the more atomic and promethean model. He does claim that due to doubt about final vocabularies, “the ironist . . . is a nominalist and a historicist. She thinks nothing has an intrinsic nature, a real essence” (Rorty 1989a, 74). However, this individual is one that is isolated by her realization of the contingency of her own skepticism of a final vocabulary. It is my contention that this ironist is

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no different, when we apply the pragmatic maxim to the results of activity, then the modern promethean individual. Pragmatism rejects that a difference can exist when there is merely a theoretical difference and no actual difference in the consequences of activity. Furthermore, Rorty suggests that there should be a strict public/private distinction as the ironist should maintain her private irony concerning final vocabularies but also, if she hates cruelty and suffering, should maintain public liberalism. Richard Shusterman notes: Rorty wants to protect our cherished negative liberties from philosophical tyranny. No philosopher . . . should be able to prescribe how individuals must live their own private lives, beyond what is necessary for letting others live theirs. . . . Even to insist that self-perfection requires active participation in public democratic process is, for Rorty, to violate democracy by imposing on our negative liberty a special ideal of private selffulfillment. (Shusterman 1994, 401)

Thus, we have a case of individualism that remains atomic insofar as it splits from the community as a source of and arbiter of a final vocabulary. This individualism is atomic—at least artificially—due to this need for a public/private distinction. Although Rorty’s individual does not have the metaphysical baggage of a Cartesian, Lockean, or Kantian individual, it does have the same isolating character in practice. Furthermore, given that a widespread sense of isolation and groundlessness is common in contemporary Western society, Rorty’s version of ironic individualism might be more helpful as a starting place for the reconstruction I will be suggesting. Rorty ends with a thought that cannot escape the individuality of the ironist who understands herself to have dismissed the universality of any vocabulary, only able to rest on her own ethnocentrism. Recall that for Rorty, the use of “ethnocentrism” is a descriptive term that points out that there is no non-individual point of view to make universal judgments from. This leaves moral judgments grounded only in the moral experience available to the individual. At least for Rorty, “ethnocentrism” is not a pejorative. Rorty finds himself in the position of the ironist because he realizes that whatever final vocabulary he settles on, there are other possibilities, and no manner to settle which vocabulary is correct. This alone boarders on skepticism—but one that is not foreign to our contemporaneous way of thinking about ourselves in a society wherein many different ways of thinking, or vocabularies, are held as universal and all vocabularies require some tenuous or questionable commitments that do not have the power of universal agreement, reason, or a priori certainty. Thus, Rorty suggests that compassionate liberals act in solidarity with others who suffer to make a world less cruel. Rorty will not go beyond solidarity in this highly individualistic mode—so my movement beyond is an explicit appropriation of Rorty’s work. I believe that solidarity is the first step to problematizing the troubles of the individualist who believes himself to be atomic. If there are, in fact, parts of inquiry like empathetic projection, I believe this problematic will develop and require resolution in activity. This will result in the reconstruction of individuality. Rorty is not above criticism either as an interpreter of Dewey or as a presenter of an ideal to which we ought to strive. Green, to give one example, points out that

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Rorty’s ethnic solidarity cannot achieve the end of deep democracy because Rorty’s claim that there are no common meanings that can unify human beings beyond ethnocentrism fails. Rorty’s ironism is insufficient to knit us together into the kind of active community of fellow interpreters and Aristotelian “friends of the mind” that can give one another valuable feedback grounded in both caring and common cause, and that lift up whichever one of us is depressed and in danger of despair when too many of those all-too-common blows have hit especially hard. Thus, Rorty’s “ethnic solidarity” around a purely negative conception of the democratic ideal is naïve, elitist, unrealistic, and existentially too shallow to support human growth and a sense of life-sustaining, community-enhancing purpose in our global millennial times. (Green 1999, 151)

I agree fully with Green that Rorty’s ideal is problematic and that the form of solidarity he suggests is, if taken as the end of development of a community, utterly impoverished. However, I believe if we understand Rorty to have identified a method that potentially rejuvenates individualism in an empathic mode then real interpersonal and intercultural development might occur. Thus, I believe that we can appropriate Rorty meaningfully. When an act is done in solidarity it is done, Rorty suggests, because we sympathize with those who are suffering. Because liberals are those that hate suffering, they are moved to act in solidarity—putting aside their own interests to act in the interests of others. Rorty writes: Solidarity is not thought of as recognition of a core self, the human essence, in all human beings. Rather, it is thought of as the ability to see more and more traditional differences . . . as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain—the ability to think of people wildly different from ourselves as including in the range of “us.” (Rorty 1989a, 192)

Importantly for Rorty, no foundation other than the immediate desire to respect that humiliation and pain are bad is required for us to act in the interests of others and to put aside our own self-interest. Furthermore, Rorty does not demand that we change everything radically. His politics, like Dewey’s, demands melioration of identifiable problems. In “Movements and Campaigns,” Rorty argues that we should move away from doing politics in the style of movements, where all members fight toward one common goal, but rather understand politics as an endless series of campaigns, wherein alliances are formed around specific issues. Doing this will eliminate the quasi-religious following of movements and replace it with practical problem solving (Rorty 1998, 121–122). Rorty suggests this because he is skeptical of the foundationalism that underscores utopian political philosophies and the fanaticism that could ensue from people intent on bringing their vision about. My goal in this analysis is to establish solidarity of individuals that will eventually break down the assumed atomic nature of individuality to allow for development of individualism into a form that is more conducive to deep democracy. This requires more than scholars showing that modern atomic individualism is mistaken; instead, we must

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develop widespread cultural habits. Dewey’s new individualism, called for in Individualism: Old and New, requires this sort of search and redeployment. In fact, social development is the means by which we reinforce ourselves. We co-develop with the world as a means to achieve growth of ordered richness.5 A model of individualism which takes itself as a fundamental whole or a fundamental substance will not transform itself with others. We can see this problem clearly when we consider the depth of NIMBY6 problems, the idea that education is only gaining information (instead of personal transformation), or that promethean individuals of any background are somehow capable universally of overcoming the tragedies of a history of discrimination and social/political neglect. Here the liberal ironist must remain silent—but the Deweyan pragmatist does not. The problem we are up against, if we are to take Dewey’s call to democratize our individual activities and interactions seriously, is that we have so thoroughly taken up the old atomic individualism as the only model of human activity—especially in political discourse—that there are few other tools available aside from the intentional focus on the solidarity of individuals. The problem of contemporary individuality is that it has forgotten that individualism is not a solitary, atomic, promethean state that is original to human beings but rather the accomplishment of a culture, of intercultural connections, and an embodiment of a history. Individuals who take themselves as atomic tend to be forgetful of the fact that they are culturally informed beings. This forgetfulness tends to erase backgrounds and in many cases leaves one unconnected even to the culture that did in fact inform that individuality. It is no mistake that there is a widespread contemporary forgetfulness or neglect of classic works of literature, art, and philosophy. There is no background context for the individual who confusedly or forgetfully takes herself to be original. Instead, there is only a numbed retreat into one’s own world—and a conceptual blockade against reconstruction of what is taken to be substantial, original, and unchanging. An individual in this state is incapable of full self-realization because he has ignored or forgotten his background and has moved beyond quiet desperation to desperation dependent on cognitive dissonance. Solidarity is treated the most briefly of the three themes in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Rorty argues that solidarity is how private ironists—who keep their final vocabularies to themselves in a private realm—can interact socially to prevent cruelty. Thus, the ironist who realizes the contingency of her final vocabulary can act with others to prevent cruelty. Solidarity, on Rorty’s account, maintains the private/ public distinction and retains the idea that individuals can continue to be atomic while still achieving social goals something like the ones that Dewey and many other progressives sought (Rorty 1989a, 198.) Yet, acting like Rorty suggests is a possibility for individuals of the limited sort I have been describing. This is because solidarity is available as a mode of action that does not force one to convert, find foundations, or change anything about themselves immediately. Rorty contrasts solidarity with objectivity, arguing that the former idea allows for nonideological and non-realist conceptions of group life. Furthermore, solidarity prevents parochialism (Rorty 1989b, 168). Instead, solidarity allows us to extend

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“intersubjective agreement” as far as possible, “to extend the reference of ‘us’ as far as we can” (Rorty 1989b, 169). These are admirable goals. Rorty runs afoul on the very next page of “Solidarity or Objectivity?” when he denies that solidarity can lead to any positive theory and denies that pragmatism has a theory of truth (Rorty 1989b, 170). On this, as I will show, I disagree vehemently. However, solidarity plays an important functional role in Rorty’s ideal society. Rorty writes that solidarity only calls for people to act to help those that suffer but that there is nothing shared between ironists (Rorty 1999, 14). What Rorty misses is that interaction involves imagination and therefore reconstruction. While there might be no universals at work in this reconstruction and no fundamental metaphysical foundation, what people actually share in activity becomes deep once imagination engages in empathy and co-development of habits begins. Rorty is correct that objectivism is not required but mistaken that solidarity ends at solidarity. Rorty’s mistake is to miss that in acting in solidarity, we are engaged in a deeply emotional and deeply imaginative process of empathetic projection. Mark Johnson relies on his work in cognitive science to argue that empathetic projection is a part of imagination which plays a role in how we actually go about making moral judgments. Empathetic projection is “an imaginative rationality through which we can participate empathetically in another’s experience” (Johnson 1993, 200). It is important to note that Johnson sees empathy as a part of an imaginative rationality that reflects the actual way we inquire and does not hold on to empathy as “an artifact of an erroneous traditional separation of reasons, imagination, and feeling” (Johnson 1993, 201). Steven Fesmire, following both Johnson and Dewey, holds that empathetic projection is a necessary part of moral inquiry. He holds that empathetic projection, a term I will be using to signify Dewey’s use of the term “sympathy” as it pertains to moral imagination, is a part of inquiry that takes “the attitudes of others” and “stirs us beyond our numbness so we pause to sort through others’ aspirations, interest, and worries as our own” (Fesmire 2003, 65). Because inquiry is fundamentally reconstructive of the individual as the individual develops new warranted assertions and habits from inquiry, the pragmatist concludes that solidarity requires empathetic projection and is emotionally and personally reconstructive. Activity wherein we intentionally and willingly act to prevent a harm or humiliation requires that we engage imaginatively and inquire. This engagement takes our activity—our bodies—and places us into a situation wherein we have to adjust and interact in problematic situations. Because any campaign or social act is itself social, it takes an individual and places her into a problematic situation where she will listen, speak, act, and develop new habits. Change of this sort is experimental and requires actual social engagement—requirements Dewey places on how reconstruction of the individual actually does occur (Albrecht 2012, 246). This is exactly the sort of education and reconstruction that is required in order to discover and develop a new individualism based upon the reality of the situation of contemporary life. Thomas Alexander defines imagination as “a creative exploration of structures inherited from past experience which thereby allow[s] the future [to be experienced] as a horizon of possible actions” (Alexander 1993, 371). Alexander holds that Rorty

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limits empathy to detecting when others are hurt, but does little more (Alexander 1993, 381). However, note that Rorty’s emphasis on conversation and avoidance of humiliation is a goal that many individualists would agree to do. I grant Rorty this but, with Alexander, I reject that empathy is limited only to detecting cruelty as it is constitutive of moral deliberation. If activity between individuals engages empathetic projection, then there is an occasion for deeply meaningful extension of the environment and potential transformation of the individual. Alexander is right to identify the limitations of imagination on the Rortyan account. Solidarity, as it is activity, must be reconstructive of inquiry and habit forming due to the powerful influence of empathetic projection on inquiry. In moving toward his view of ethnocentrism from relativism, Rorty gives up the fight and does not push toward personal reconstruction—doing such is a bit silly for the ironist. But, empathetic projection, enables reconstruction of individuals who are engaged in imaginative activity. Imagination’s extension of the environment enables individualistic actors to develop together through the very fact that they are together. Rorty will not take this step. What Rorty misses is that our empathetic projections in concert are reconstructive and enable new shared communal practices. Ideally, communities develop together in such a way that the communitarian ideals of Dewey are achieved through imagination not domination. Empathy takes on the role of the strong poet insofar that the imagination expands the environment and shows possibilities of growth latent in the situation. This process is communal as empathy requires companionship. It is creative as possibilities in interaction are different than those in individual activity. Relationships and interpersonal developments expand the range of possibility. Finally, it is habit forming. Empathizing develops particular habits which have real influence on future thought and activity. Furthermore, these habits can become cultural if widely practiced. Because solidarity requires the individual to place herself with others and act with them, it is fundamentally an opening to empathetic projection in inquiry. At first, this inquiry is based upon avoiding cruelty but as solidarity develops, habits are developed that have future consequences for inquiry. In appropriated Rortyan language, new vocabularies would develop not because of a strong poet but because of reconstructive interaction. This breaks apart the public/private distinction which solidarity was suggested as a palliative for. Thus, Rorty’s concept of solidarity—one that is designed for the promethean individual that holds onto his own radical contingency as his own—ends up not really fitting Rorty’s individualism at all. Rorty, unwittingly, allows us to have a path toward consensus-based social decision-making and individual reconstruction. This is exactly the sort of entry-point for those of us that are hearty individualists by habit seeking for future deeply democratic interaction. We do not require foundations—which both Dewey and Rorty rightly reject. Instead we have a method to uncover and develop novel ways of living if we only take the first step. Thus Dewey’s communitarian demand is not impractical. We can, with Rorty recognize cruelty and act to prevent it. What Rorty misses is that that activity requires that creatures like human beings change and develop. This breaks individualism and educates us together.

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A further pragmatic upshot is that solidarity would be a way to begin discussions of why one might act for someone else’s benefit as a way to increase personal development along with fighting against absolutist power structures. Taking solidarity as a methodology seriously has both positive pedagogical and political consequences. Insofar as students will recognize and develop better manners to empathize and grow in social situations results in a deep education of democratic character. Further, insofar as citizens acting in this way confront actual cruelties, violations of human dignity, and oppressive social practices, realistic melioration becomes possible. I can join others in protest. I can help students to see the suffering of others. I can act even when I do not see my self-interest as the motivating principle. I admit that a call for solidarity itself is no easy sell—but it has more persuasive power and structure than the simple commandment of “go out and reconstruct thy self.”

NOTES 1. All citations to the work of John Dewey follow scholarly conventions and thus are made to the standard print edition, and published as The Early Works (EW), The Middle Works (MW), and The Later Works (LW). In citations, the series designation will be followed by volume and page number (where appropriate). Thus, “LW 10:135” refers to Art as Experience which is volume 10 of The Later Works, page 135. 2. Although there is some controversy over the use of the term “communitarian” to describe Dewey’s social and political views, Dewey’s view is at least partially communitarian as he rejects individualism in any a priori form and holds that custom, environment, and history have a constitutive role in both the development of the individual and (given his thoroughgoing Darwinianism) of the species. See chapter 7: “Toward a Pragmatic Communitarianism” in Jennifer Welchman’s Dewey’s Ethical Thought (Welchman 1995, 182–218). 3. I am thinking especially here of Dewey’s work in reconstructing individualism in “Toward a New Individualism” in Individualism Old and New (LW 5:77–89) and “Renascent Liberalism” in Liberalism and Social Action (LW 11:41–67). Also helpful in my thought on this matter is George Herbert Mead’s “The Genesis of the Self and Social Control” and Steven Fesmire’s work in a chapter entitled “Pragmatism’s Reconstruction of Reason” (Fesmire 2003, 38–52). 4. For an essay by Alain Locke on these matters, see “Cultural Pluralism” (Locke 2002). 5. I, with many others, identify Dewey’s pluralistic ethics as one that is centered on the growth of ordered richness. Although the ethical end of life is articulated by this broad concept, ethical norms remain pluralistic because of the inherent metaphysical character of precariousness. See especially Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct (MW 14), Ethics (with James Hayden Tufts) (LW 9). I rely heavily on the theory of growth as ordered richness in the work of Michael Eldridge’s Transforming Experience: John Dewey’s Cultural Instrumentalism (Eldridge 1998, 97–108), and of James Gouinlock’s theory of consummatory moral experience in John Dewey’s Philosophy of Value (Gouinlock 1972, 161–205). I have written on this matter in Justin Bell, “John Dewey’s Basis for Moral Philosophy: Growth of Ordered Richness and Eudaimonia” (Bell 2011, 235–243). 6. An incredibly useful acronym for “Not In My Back Yard.” This points to the phenomenon where people want socially useful infrastructure but then refuse to have it built near their property or dwellings.

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REFERENCES Albrecht, James M. 2012. Reconstructing Individualism: A Pragmatic Tradition from Emerson to Ellison. New York: Fordham University Press. Alexander, Thomas M. 1993. “John Dewey and the Moral Imagination: Beyond Putnam and Rorty toward a Postmodern Ethics.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 29, no. 3: 369–400. Bell, Justin. 2011. “John Dewey’s Basis for Moral Philosophy: Growth of Ordered Richness and Eudaimonia.” Southwest Philosophy Review 27, no. 1: pp. 235–243. Dewey, John. 1969–1991. The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1952. 37 Volumes. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Eldridge, Michael. 1998. Transforming Experience: John Dewey’s Cultural Instrumentalism. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Fesmire, Steven. 2003. John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gouinlock, James. 1972. John Dewey’s Philosophy of Value. New York: Humanities Press. Green, Judith. 1999. Deep Democracy: Community, Diversity, and Transformation. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Johnson, Mark. 1993. Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Locke, Alain L. 2002. “Cultural Pluralism.” In American Philosophies. Edited by Leonard Harris, Scott L. Pratt, and Anne S. Waters, 433–445. Oxford: Blackwell. Mead, George Herbert. 1964. “The Genesis of the Self and Social Control.” In Selected Writings. Edited by Andrew J. Reck, 267–293. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rorty, Richard. 1989a. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1989b. “Solidarity or Objectivity?” In Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation. Edited by Michael Krausz. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. ———. 1998. Achieving our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1999. Philosophy and Social Hope. London: Penguin Press. Shusterman, Richard. 1994. “Pragmatism and Liberalism between Dewey and Rorty.” Political Theory 22, no. 4: 391–413. Welchman Jennifer. 1995. Dewey’s Ethical Thought. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

IV NATURE, KNOWING, AND NATURALISMS

11 Vocabularies and the Lifeworld A Criticism of Rorty’s Naturalism Roberto Gronda

In this chapter I will try to develop some of the ideas that lie at the basis of Rorty’s naturalism, and I will take the liberty of treating Rorty’s philosophical arguments and ideas as a springboard to reach conclusions different from those that Rorty wanted to reach. In particular, I will move from what Rorty says in his response to Bjorn Ramberg concerning the privileged status of the vocabulary of normativity in order to argue for the importance of keeping the language of normativity separate from the language of intentionality. The thesis that the vocabulary of normativity is more fundamental than that of intentionality leads directly to the issue of identifying what is the nature of that vocabulary, and in which practice it is actually instantiated. My suggestion is that the normative vocabulary should be identified with what it is usually called common sense, that is, the set of habitual and institutionalized practices taken for granted in every “community of minds.” According to this reading, common sense is nothing but a more comfortable and less emphatic way of saying “human nature.” The statement of the identity of human nature and common sense is philosophically interesting since it helps counteract a tendency toward intellectualism that strikes me as a possible undesired side effect of the linguistic turn. There is a sense in which one is entitled to say that it is not correct to question the “givenness” of certain forms or “representation”: we cannot choose how things appear to us because their mode of manifestation is dependent both on their constitution—what Rorty calls “causal pressure”—and on our biological endowment. I will therefore argue that the community of minds is grounded at its deepest level on the community of common sense, that is, on the fact that we human beings are animals who share a common stock of needs, impulses, and habits. There is no necessary connection between that conclusion and an alleged unmodifiability of human nature: the recourse to the notion of human nature is not a move available only to those who want to restore a metaphysical language which paves the way for a 155

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metaphysical view of reality, as Rorty seems to believe. Rather the contrary, it seems to me that the notion of human nature is deeply intertwined with Price’s idea of subject naturalism, a philosophical project that Rorty endorses in his article “Naturalism and Quietism.” Through the confrontation with Rorty’s philosophy I hope to succeed in sketching a sound philosophy of praxis revolving around the concepts of practice, normativity, and nature.

THE NATURE OF NORMATIVITY In his article “Post-Ontological Philosophy of Mind: Rorty versus Davidson,” Ramberg remarks that Rorty’s concerns about Davidson’s thesis that the irreducibility of the language of intentionality to the language of scientific explanation are misplaced, and that Rorty should be less worried about the normativity that Davidson acknowledges as the distinctive character of the language of intentionality—what Ramberg calls the “vocabulary of agency.” With this expression Ramberg refers to the vocabulary in which it is possible to make propositional-attitude ascriptions, and the idea that he wants to convey through it is that the capacity of recognizing something as a linguistic utterance rather than as a series of noises is strictly related to the possibility of describing something as an action, that is, a kind of activity that is purposive and has conditions of appropriateness (Ramberg 2000, 353). But this entails, Ramberg continues, that the possibility of describing patterns of action in purely descriptive terms—a possibility that our language makes available to us—depends on the fact that “it is possible for others to see us as in general conforming to the norms that the predicates of agency embody” (Ramberg 2000, 362). This is another way of formulating the same thought that is at the basis of Wittgenstein’s argument against private language: the idea that normativity cannot be explained away by being reduced to something simpler (private language, descriptive vocabulary, and so on). Consequently, the adoption of a normative stance is more fundamental than the adoption of any descriptive stance since for a description to be true it is necessary that it can be false, and truth and falsity are possible only on the basis of a preexisting norm. As Rorty efficaciously explains, “[b]ecause norms are not regularities, you can only get right when you get wrong” (Rorty 2000a, 375). This thesis can be called the inescapability of the normative. In his response, Rorty not only accepts many of the conclusions drawn by Ramberg in his “Post-Ontological Philosophy of Mind,” but also emphasizes a point which is not fully developed in that article, and which is of particular interest for our present concerns. Trying to clarify the philosophical value and significance of the distinction between the descriptive and the normative, Rorty states that the key to understanding the inescapability of the normative is to keep the latter separate from the intentional. The fundamental insight that Rorty wants to articulate is the following: we can use an intentional vocabulary to describe and explain the behavior of a very complex mechanism, but we are not for that reason bound to treat that mechanism as a person, as a member of our community. Consequently, the two

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vocabularies should be kept clearly distinct. Surely, there is a “considerable overlap between the beings we talk about using the intentional vocabulary and the beings whom we talk to using the normative vocabulary” (Rorty 2000a, 372). Rorty is not interested in denying this fact; he simply wants to stress that the vocabulary which is privileged because of its inescapability is the vocabulary of normativity (Rorty 2000a, 373). This entails that the intentional vocabulary is no more basic than the non-intentional vocabulary, and that both rely on the normative vocabulary. I will come back to this later. Before that, I would like to discuss in some detail the nature of normativity. According to Rorty—who follows closely Davidson on this point—normativity and objectivity originate from the process of triangulation. “The inescapability of norms,” Rorty says, “is the inescapability, for both describers and agents, of triangulating” (Rorty 2000a, 373–374). And then he adds, critically referring to his previous writings in which he questioned the importance of normativity: “It was a mistake to locate the norms at one corner of the triangle—where my peers are—rather than seeing them as, so to speak, hovering over the whole process of triangulation” (Rorty 2000a, 376). In “Three Varieties of Knowledge” Davidson clearly explains why triangulation is necessary to have an empirical or propositional content. “What seems basic is this,” Davidson writes, “an observer (or teacher) finds (or instills) a regularity in the verbal behavior of the informant (or learner) which he can correlate with events and objects in the environment” (Davidson 2001b, 212). It is only when the triangulation is completed that a common cause is determined, and then thought and speech acquire a content. Human beings are therefore continuously engaged in processes of triangulation through which they succeed in understanding their world and each other’s. This understanding is strictly related to Davidson’s well-known thesis, formulated in “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs,” that “there is no such thing as a language, not if language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed” (Davidson 2005, 107). The idea that the success of an act of interpretation depends on an alleged mastery of a set of fixed rules and conventions is a philosophical myth that one should get rid of. What makes the process of interpretation successful is the fruitful interplay between the prior theory and the passing theory, and more precisely the “ability to converge on a passing theory from time to time” (Davidson 2005, 106).1 The insistence on the centrality of the passing theory for the possibility of a successful interpretation is a point on which Rorty agrees with Davidson (Rorty 2000b, 75). This is far from surprising since Rorty has always protested against the primacy that philosophy has traditionally claimed for the idea of method. But what is important to note here is that the realization of the pivotal role played by the passing theory in the process of interpretation and constitution of objectivity, and the consequent abandonment of the idea of rules and conventions directing and controlling our (linguistic) behavior, is particularly relevant for our purposes because it opens the door to the recognition of the primacy of context—or, in more pragmatist terms, of the concrete practices which ground the processes of interpretation and triangulation. In his analysis of these processes, however, Davidson does not thematize the fact that the two interpreters who undertake the effort to understand each other and their

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environment have first to “understand”—and here “understand” should be taken in a very minimal sense, which will be clarified in the final section—that they are looking at the very same object in the very same way. It is very likely that a strong realistic commitment is at work here: the idea that no legitimate doubt can be raised about the existence of the external world once it has been shown that our general picture of the world cannot be mistaken (Davidson 2001b, 214). Ramberg’s statement that “[w]e are made the believers we are by the communicative interactions constituted by complex patterns of causal interaction with others in a shared world” (Ramberg 2000, 362) seems to corroborate this reading. The fact of sharing the same world seems sufficient to account for the capacity of human beings to reach a preliminary, nonlinguistic agreement on the specific context in which the processes of triangulation and interpretation take place (and become possible). However, such argumentative strategy does not seem sound, and—which is more important—seems to be in partial contrast to Rorty’s approach. To go straight to the point, the confusion between existence and (the possibility of) meaning is one that Rorty never tires to expose and clear up. So, for instance, in “A World without Substances or Essences,” he highlights that the charge of idealism that has been leveled at the antiessentialists—those who do not believe that things have a real essence, but do hold that the meaning of a thing is a matter of relations constructed by language users—relies on a confusion between the question “How do we pick out objects?” and “Do objects antedate being picked out by us?” In reality, Rorty states, “[t]he antiessentialist has no doubt that there were trees and stars long before there were statements about trees and stars. But the fact of antecedent existence is of no use in giving sense to the question, ‘What are trees and stars apart from their relations to other things—apart from our statements about them?’” (Rorty 1999a, 58). Rorty’s argument is interesting because it provides an important insight into how to deal with the issue of “understanding.” Rorty remarks that the fact that the existence of the world is to be taken for granted “is of no use” in explaining how it is possible for two agents to share a common horizon of “meaning.” The mere existence of the world does not warrant the possibility of an agreement between the two participants; rather it would exclude in principle the very possibility of a significant disagreement. But this means that the recourse to a strong form of realism is not sufficient to account for the possibility of triangulation and interpretation. We need something different. We owe to Dewey the best description of the “something different” which makes communication possible. In his Logic: The Theory of Inquiry Dewey discusses an incident reported by Ogden and Richards in The Meaning of Meaning. A visitor in a savage tribe wanted on one occasion “the word for Table. There were five or six boys standing around, and tapping the table with my forefinger I asked ‘What is this?’ One boy said it was dodela, another that it was an etanda, a third stated that it was bokali, a fourth that it was elamba, and the fifth said it was meza.” After congratulating himself on the richness of the vocabulary of the language the visitor found later “that

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one boy had thought he wanted the word for tapping; another understood we were seeking the word for the material of which the table was made; another had the idea that we required the word for hardness; another thought we wished the name for that which covered the table; and the last . . . gave us the word meza, table.” (Dewey 2008c [1938], 59)

The moral that Dewey draws from this story—and I think it is an insight worth preserving—is that a word which is abstracted from the concrete practice in which it actually plays a role is completely meaningless. If the hearer does not know whether the speaker refers to the color of the object or to its shape, he cannot triangulate and give a content to that assertion. Consequently, there is no constitution of mutual understanding and objectivity. In more Davidsonian terms, it is true that the ability of triangulating lies at the basis of the fact that thought and speech have content: communication grounds the semantic properties of language and thought. But the linguistic agreement—the agreement in and through language—is not primitive. Rather the contrary, it is the most refined outgrowth of a series of precedent “agreements”: the existential agreement—the fact that the two agents live in the same world; the biological agreement—the fact that the two agents share the same biological endowment, as a consequence of which they are presented with objects similar enough to be treated as substantially identical for a certain purpose; and, finally, the purposive agreement—the fact that the two agents can “understand” that they are engaged in the same activity (hunting, building a house, and so on). Evidently, the three levels are mutually related. The kind of relation that holds among them is open to philosophical discussion: I am inclined to think of the higher levels as an actualization of the potentialities of the lower levels, so as to avoid the twin menaces of reductionism and idealism as well as the difficulties concerning the relation between experience and language. The issue is too complex to be adequately dealt with here. For present purposes it is enough to say that the three levels articulate the way in which human beings are part of nature. In his account, Dewey insists on the highest level, that of purposive agreement, because he wants to highlight the plurality of practices in which human beings can participate and share. Since language is a tool—as Rorty explicitly acknowledges in the first chapter of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity—it can be used for different purposes: a stone can be used to build a house, to block a door, to kill an animal, and so on. The nature of things cannot be defined apart from and independently of the context of their applications: usability is the “formal essence” of things. Rorty is perfectly right in arguing for a strong form of anti-essentialism. But one should not forget that the concrete practices in which human beings are engaged are the actualization of general potentialities of nature, whose generality consists in the fact that they are indeterminate enough to support different patterns of activity. Seen from this perspective, then, biological agreement is the hinge upon which the possibility of a plurality of practices turns. We will come back to this point in the final section of the chapter when the significance of this thesis will be discussed with the aim to formulating a kind of philosophical naturalism more substantive than that which Rorty has in mind. The

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next two sections will be devoted to analyzing how this idea can help us to better understand the processes of triangulation and interpretation.

NORMATIVITY IS NOT INTENTIONALITY: RECOGNITION AS THE BACKBONE OF NORMATIVITY It has been stated above that the emphasis that Dewey puts on the notion of encompassing situation helps us to better understand Rorty’s (and Davidson’s) rather generic insistence on the idea of context. But we owe to Dewey another important insight that may be of use in clarifying an aspect of Rorty’s argument that seems to me not completely clear—the distinction between intentionality and normativity. If I understand his argument correctly, in his response to Ramberg, Rorty says something like this: I have always charged Davidson for maintaining the irreducibility of the mental to the physical. For a long time I held that normativity is not a good candidate to account for the difference existing between the two vocabularies. In that spirit once I wrote that “I would rejoin that there is nothing especially normative about my effort to translate, since all I am doing is trying to find a pattern of resemblances between my linguistic behavior and the native’s [. . .]. I cannot see that this attempt differs in kind from my attempts to find, for example, resemblances between the structure and behavior of an unfamiliar insect and those of familiar insects” (Rorty 1999b, 583–584). At that time I was persuaded that the vocabulary of normativity could be traced back to a simpler, descriptive vocabulary in which the normative element that is present in every interpretation can be satisfactorily reformulated—that is, without any loss of explicative power—as the lack of significant deviation from the behavior of other agents. Thanks to Ramberg I have eventually realized that my previous criticism was wrong. This because “[w]e cannot stop prescribing, and just describe, because the describing counts as describing only if rule-governed, only if conducted by people who talk about each other in the vocabulary of agency” (Rorty 2000a, 373). So, I am now persuaded that the vocabulary of intentionality—the vocabulary in which it is possible to provide empirical descriptions of behavior as complex as that of human beings—is just one of the possible ways (vocabularies are tools!) to deal with natural events, and that any reductionist program is misguided insofar as it ends up in denying its own conditions of possibility. Provided that this is what Rorty really intends to say in his response to Ramberg, I think that his argument is correct. Not only the distinction between normativity and intentionality seems to me philosophically sound, but I also believe that it is more in conformity with the spirit of Davidson’s program than the traditional distinction between intentional and non-intentional vocabularies. Following Davidson, Ramberg distinguishes between “the vocabulary of intentional ascription and vocabularies which do not rely on intentional predicates” (Ramberg 2000, 358–359), thus assuming that the vocabulary of agency coincides with the vocabulary of intentional ascription. If I am right, Rorty takes a different and more promising route. The

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novelty of his approach revolves around the idea that the language of normativity is inescapable. I take this as meaning that every scientific vocabulary is parasitic—in a sense that has to be defined—upon the normative vocabulary. I think that what Rorty has in mind is something like the following: we should reject the proposal of treating non-intentional vocabularies and intentional vocabulary as belonging to two different levels of abstraction and complexity, the latter being more fundamental than the former. Both are tools that enable us to select an aspect of reality as relevant, and to offer a description of its structural properties. The adoption of an intentional stance enables us to provide an empirical, verifiable description and explanation of the behavior of extremely complex systems—human beings, animals, robots, and whatever we decide to treat in this way. The adoption of a non-intentional stance towards natural events enables us to successfully explain the behavior of those entities whose intelligibility does not require the assumption of intentionality. Here the circularity is not vicious; it reflects the way in which human beings have constructed that particular kind of intelligibility that is pursued in the natural sciences.2 Now, since the normative vocabulary is the tool that makes the formulation of the rules governing agency possible, it has to be broad enough to encompass the world in which agency takes place. There is nothing mythical in such statement: what is meant by it is that a vocabulary in which it is possible to formulate the norms of our (linguistic) agency is a vocabulary in which it is possible to speak of the objects which cause the sentences to be held true. This is what the holism of the normative—and not of the mental or intentional, as Davidson thinks (Davidson 2001a, 124)— amounts to. The vocabulary of normativity is a vocabulary rich enough to express the idea that the basis of knowledge “is a community of minds, that is, a plurality of creatures engaged in the project of describing their world and interpreting each other’s description of it” (Ramberg 2000, 362; quoted by Rorty in: Rorty 2000, 373). If my reading is correct, then, the normative vocabulary cannot be identified with any scientific or refined language that human beings have constructed to cope with the world. Consequently, it cannot be the task of philosophy to provide such vocabulary because philosophy relies on it just as any other scientific discipline does. It has to be something more basic, more fundamental, and far less problematic. A vocabulary in which our acts of reciprocal recognition (Anerkennung) and constitution of objectivity succeed is to be as simple as the simplest practices in which human beings are engaged.3 It is at this point that Dewey can supply us with an important insight concerning the nature and function of the normative vocabulary. What I have in mind is Dewey’s concept of primary experience as formulated in the first revised chapter of Experience and Nature (1925). In those tormented and much-discussed pages Dewey highlights the distinction between primary and secondary (or reflective) experience (Dewey 2008a [1925], 15–16). Secondary experience is the name that Dewey gives to that particular kind of approach to natural events which leads to the construction of extremely refined tools which enhance our understanding of (some aspect of) them. Primary experience is the life-world, the world of everyday life. The point that Dewey wants to highlight is that the two worlds—the world of sciences (including

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psychology) and the life-world—are “epistemologically” and “ontologically” different, the difference between the two being due to the fact that they carry out different functions in human experience. Primary experience is the “place” in which we first encounter reality, and the only “place” which is accessible to everybody. Or, better stated, if there is a “level of reality” which is accessible to everybody this is the lifeworld. Secondary experience as reflective experience originates from, and returns to, that ground-level of meaning and objectivity. As Dewey points out, “The subjectmatter of primary experience sets the problems and furnishes the first data of the reflection which constructs the secondary objects,” while “the test and verification of the latter is secured only by return to things of crude or macroscopic experience— the sun, earth, plants and animals of common, everyday life” (Dewey 2008a [1925], 15). From this point of view, the inescapability of the normative turns out to be the inescapability from the horizon of our life-world—that is, from the simplest and most basic activities that human beings can undertake.

THE DISCOVERY OF COMMON SENSE It is likely that the latter remarks will be read by many Rortyan scholars as a provocation. As is well known, no Deweyan concept is more difficult to accept for Rorty than the notion of experience. Now that we have realized that we can say in terms of language what Dewey tries to say in terms of experience, Rorty argues, we should be ready to stop speaking of experience since the latter commits us to a bad philosophical project. So, to suggest that Dewey’s notion of experience can shed light on Rorty’s rather obscure notion of normative vocabulary will be perceived by many as an attempt to clarify the obscure with the obscurer. I do not want to enter into the much-debated issue of the validity of Rorty’s criticism of Dewey’s “theory” of experience here, even though I think that Rorty is right at least on a single point—that Dewey’s concept of experience is far from clear, and that one should be very careful in recommending a return to experience as a way to counteract the linguistification of pragmatism. I think, however, that the idea that lies at the basis of Dewey’s concept of primary experience is worth preserving, and that it can be formulated so as to be acceptable even from Rorty’s point of view. Let’s start from the beginning. The idea at the basis of Dewey’s concept of experience is the pragmatist view that the nature of an object depends on the attitudes we adopt toward it: different practices give birth to different objects because different practices actualize different potentialities of the object to the detriment of others which are left unexploited. As has been noticed above, this is the view that Rorty labels anti-essentialism. The agreement between Rorty and Dewey is therefore not impossible at this level—it is rather unproblematic indeed. Is there a real disagreement between them with respect to primary experience? Now, according to my reading, primary experience is the name Dewey gives to the set of practices that structure our life-world—“the sun, earth, plants and animals of common, everyday life.” Since experience is one of the most slippery terms in Western philosophy—to the extent

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that Dewey eventually decides to drop it at the end of his life, even though not for the reasons that Rorty indicates—I propose to refer to the objects we experience of in primary experience as common sense objects, and to name the set of practices that make those objects possible “common sense.” The choice is not arbitrary: such terminological change, indeed, is in conformity with the way in which Dewey uses these expressions in The Quest for Certainty. However, I will try to reduce the complexity of Dewey’s concept of primary experience so as to render it a more manageable explanatory tool: to achieve this goal, I will trace back this notion—certainly in a more radical way than Dewey actually does—to its biological conditions. Consequently, Dewey’s views on primary experience should be translated as follows: human beings have a natural endowment that determines—in some sense of this word—the types of practices in which they are necessarily engaged (searching for food, searching for company, and so on) as well as the kinds of objects that they will encounter in the world. There is nothing metaphysical in the notion of necessity introduced here. It is a biological necessity, a basic fact of our life: the fact that without food human beings die, the fact that necessarily—for adaptive reasons—we see things in a three-dimensional space, and so on. The various cultures can decide and have actually decided—but here the term “decide” is misleading because it opens the door to intellectualism—how to specify those generalities. The history of human civilization is the history of the process of refinement and broadening of the potentialities of human nature: our vocabulary of common sense, the vocabulary that we men of the twenty-first century use to speak of as our life-world, is the outcome of choices made thousand years ago, and is continuously modified in transmission from generation to generation. Now, is the notion of common sense so formulated acceptable to Rorty? And, more specifically, is it useful to enhance our capacity to explain the possibility of successful triangulation? I will answer the second question first, and I will address the first one in the final section of the chapter. In that context I will try to relate the acceptance of a “theory” of common sense of the kind here described to the definition of a different form of naturalism. So, starting with the issue of the possibility of successful triangulation, take the case of radical interpretation, that is, interpretation from scratch. It has been argued that it is not possible for two agents who do not speak the same language and cannot have recourse to bilingual speakers or dictionaries to succeed in understanding each other if the only point they have in common is that of living in the same world. As Dewey has convincingly shown, tapping the table with the forefinger does not provide enough evidence to support interpretation. This does not mean that we need more evidence—two acts of tapping the table with the forefinger are not more revealing than one—but rather that we need something different: we need to “understand” the practice in which that act acquires its proper meaning. We can understand what a word means only if we can “understand” the practice in which it is used, and the function that it plays in it. The vocabulary of common sense provides precisely this kind of “understanding.” And since it is now clear that what makes “understanding” possible is the

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normative vocabulary of common sense, we can eventually speak of understanding rather than of “understanding” with regard to the capacity human beings have to grasp the meaning of the practices in which they are engaged. In doing so, we avoid the risk of relapsing into the myth of the given. Indeed, the understanding of the encompassing practice is a linguistic practice, a practice grounded in our ability to use a particular linguistic tool. We can understand the utterances of a speaker of a completely unknown language because our normative vocabulary—the vocabulary of common sense—provides us with the tools to understand the practice which he undertakes and in which he invites us to participate. More clearly stated, the vocabulary of common sense supplies us with the concepts necessary to set that linguistic behavior in the context of a shared practice. It is because we have the concepts of hunger, fear, playing a game, searching for attention, in our vocabulary that we can give a consistent and unified sense to a series of acts that the speaker does (whether consciously or unconsciously), and use these acts as signs to identify the practice in which the word or sentence is uttered. Such understanding can be reached only on the basis of the assumption that the practice in which the speaker is engaged is substantially identical to the (corresponding) practice to which we have access through our vocabulary of common sense. Processes of triangulation are successful only because we have the capacity to bracket the more refined aspects of our practices and grasp their essential core—an act of abstraction that is always open to us because we cannot bracket the fact that we are part of nature. This is strictly related to the idea of compositionality: we have a better chance to understand each other if we start from interpreting the words used in the simplest and most basic practices. When seen from this perspective, therefore, the principle of common sense turns out to be a material enhancement of the principle of charity, an enhancement which guides and supports the process of triangulation. While the principle of charity—coherence plus correspondence—can only provide a “negative contribution” to interpretation, its role being that of “guiding the interpreter toward discarding possible interpretations which would systematically make the interpretee wrong or incoherent to her own lights,” triangulation is “the recognition that similarities observed in each other’s linguistic behaviour find their common cause in the same portion of the external environment shared by the agents” (Hosni 2009, 42). The principle of common sense tells the interpreter which portion of the external environment shared with the “interpretee” is relevant for the present purposes. So, we can conclude that human beings can triangulate because they recognize (anerkennen) each other as constrained by the same natural necessities. These are the necessities imposed on us by our human nature.

THE NATURALISM OF HUMAN NATURE Now, coming back to the question left open, is the notion of common sense so formulated acceptable for Rorty? Well, I think that his first answer would be “No.” It is sufficient to draw attention to the essays collected in the first part of Objectivity,

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Relativism and Truth to be convinced of this fact. But does he provide a sound argument against the theoretical viability of grounding philosophical naturalism on the notions of common sense and human nature? Rorty’s rejection of the very idea of human nature—and of common sense insofar as it is conceived in strict continuity with human nature (On this point, see Rorty 1999a)—is strictly related to his fear that the recourse to the concept of human nature could pave the way for the recovery of some kind of metaphysical strategy aiming to define once and for all what human beings are and should do. It is a moral concern which ultimately leads Rorty to reject a notion that he sees tainted with dogmatism and conservatism: the concern is the sense of the importance of defending the use of creative imagination in moral and political issues. Rorty is not alone in pointing out the risks inherent in the philosophical use of the concepts of human nature and common sense. He is right in insisting on the fact that those notions have been traditionally used to support regressive political and moral views. He is also right in highlighting that, from an epistemological perspective, the idea that there is a way in which things really are—the idea that is usually conveyed through the notion of nature (and, a fortiori, of human nature)—has been seriously undermined by the linguistic and pragmatist turn and, more precisely, by Davidson’s attack on the distinction between scheme and content. However, the concept of human nature, as well as that of common sense, is not necessarily committed to the idea of eternity and metaphysical immutability. And this is an aspect of the question that Rorty overlooks. One of the distinctive traits of the nature of human beings, indeed, is their capacity to create an infinity of practices instantiated in different forms of life, and then to modify these practices according to, and in response to, the “causal pressures” of the world. Dewey’s fundamental concept of transactions amounts, in the last analysis, to this: it functions as a conceptual reminder of the fact that the nature of human beings consists in inhabiting the world and creating practices that enable them to cope with the environment. Obviously, such an act of creation cannot be made once and for all: every practice transforms and complicates the environment in a way that excludes in principle the possibility of dealing with new phenomena in terms of the practices already at hand. Even common sense—which is by far the layer of any form of life most resilient to change, being the set of practices devoted to the satisfaction of the most immediate (“natural”) needs—is constantly changing as a consequence of the continuous penetration of technology into everyday life.4 Human beings therefore are technological beings whose nature is the history that they can and have actually brought about. This does not mean, however, that the act of creation of practices is free from the constraints imposed on human beings by their biological nature, as well as from the constraints set by the external world. To argue differently would be a mere exercise of intellectual provocation: the very existence of a technology is a sign of the difficulties that human beings have to face in order to come to terms with the stubbornness of nature. As has been already said above, one possible way of conceiving the relation between nature and culture/history—a way that seems to me particularly promising—is that of seeing culture/history as the

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actualization of the potentialities of nature. According to this view, human nature does not consist in a set of fixed properties, but rather in a set of potentialities that are fixed if and only if technology does not succeed in dramatically altering our biological endowment. These potentialities constitute the subject matter of a contemporary philosophical anthropology—that is, a philosophical account of human nature that has assimilated and incorporated the results of the linguistic and pragmatist turn—which is an essential part of a naturalistic philosophy of praxis. A naturalistic philosophy of praxis is a general standpoint grounded on the twofold assumption that the ultimate horizon of every possible meaning is a practice, and that every possible practice is the actualization of some potentialities of human nature—and, consequently, of nature in general, since human beings are part of nature. In his “Naturalism as Quietism,” Rorty adopts the distinction introduced by Price between subject naturalism and object naturalism. According to Price, object naturalism is the view that “all there is is the world studied by science” and that “all genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge” (Price 2011, 185). Subject naturalism is the view that “philosophy needs to begin with what science tells us about ourselves,” that is, that we are “natural creatures” (Price 2011, 186). Even though it would be easy to take subject naturalism as a mere corollary of object naturalism, Price states that the contrary is true: it is subject naturalism which comes first since object naturalism depends on “validation from a subject naturalist perspective” (Price 2011, 186). Rorty expresses this very point by saying that we do not need an image of the world (object naturalism), but rather a “synoptic narrative of how we came to talk as we do” (Rorty 2007, 150). I hope to have shown in this chapter that this goal cannot be achieved without including in our philosophical vocabulary the notions of life-world, common sense, and human nature.

NOTES 1. It is important to note that the process of interpretation is at the very same time a process of the constitution of objectivity since “the boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way in the world generally” (Davidson 2005, 107) has been definitely erased. 2. In doing so, Rorty achieves two major goals. First of all, he dispels the fascinating power of scientific realism. Being a vocabulary, natural sciences cannot provide the means to question the validity and legitimacy of the normative vocabulary. The reductionist instance characteristic of bald naturalism therefore falls into a performative self-contradiction. Secondly, he succeeds in avoiding the malicious identification of psychology—the science of the mental—with the mental itself, and therefore with the normative. Here the distinction is not clear-cut since the language that we use to speak of the mental is partially coincident with the language used by psychology, but there is yet a minimal sense in which that distinction is worth preserving. It is clear, indeed, that the refined products of psychology cannot be equated to what we call, in everyday language, mental events or mental phenomena. If we do not pay due attention to such a difference, we cannot understand much of the history of psychology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The sensation that is the subject matter of psychological research is not the sensation of which we speak in everyday life. This is the cash-value of

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Rorty’s statement that there is a “considerable overlap between the beings we talk about using the intentional vocabulary and the beings whom we talk to using the normative vocabulary” (Rorty 2000a, 372). 3. For the use of the notion of recognition, see the following passage by Rorty: “I think Ramberg is right, and very acute, in his diagnosis of the impasse between myself and Davidson on the topic of indeterminacy of translation. Ramberg is suggesting that I should have read Davidson as telling us something Hegelian rather than something Brentanian: something about Anerkennung. Davidson, he rightly says, has understood better than I that recognizing some beings as fellow-obeyers of norms, acknowledging them as members of a community, is as much a requirement for using a language as is the ability to deploy a descriptive vocabulary. The recognition establishes, so to speak, a community of tool-users. The various descriptive vocabularies this community wields are the tools in its kit. No toolkit, no community—if we did not describe we would have no criticisms to offer of one another’s descriptions. But no community, no toolkit—if we did not criticize each other’s descriptions, they would not be descriptions” (Rorty 2000, 373). 4. This is far from being an exclusive aspect of our modern condition, as one may be tempted to say; it is rather a fundamental feature of human nature as such. The development and progressive refinement of language is the best evidence for this statement. Contemporary anthropology has shown that the very distinction between things and persons—which we treat as somehow definitory of our common sense and life-world, to the extent that the resistance against bald forms of naturalism is precisely a resistance against every attempt to deny that distinction—is a technological device that took thousands of years to be shaped in the form which we use now.

REFERENCES Davidson, Donald. 2001a. “The Emergence of Thought.” In Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Edited by D. Davidson, 123–134. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2001b. “Three Varieties of Knowledge.” In Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Edited by D. Davidson, 205–220. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2005. “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs.” In Truth, Language, and History. Edited by D. Davidson, 89–107. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dewey, John. 2008a. The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953: 1925, Experience and Nature. Volume 1. Collected Works of John Dewey. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. ———. 2008b. The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953: 1929, The Quest for Certainty. Volume 4. Collected Works of John Dewey. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. ———. 2008c. The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953: 1938, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Volume 12. Collected Works of John Dewey. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Hosni, Hykel. 2009. “Interpretation, Coordination and Conformity.” In Games: Unifying Logic, Language, and Philosophy. Edited by Ondrej Majer, Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, and Tero Tulenheimo, 37–55. Berlin: Springer Publishing Company. Ogden, Charles K., and Ivor A. Richards. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. New York: Hartcourt, Brace & World.

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Price, Huw. 2011. “Naturalism without Representationalism.” In Naturalism without Mirrors. Edited by H. Price, 184–199. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ramberg, Bjørn. 2000. “Post-ontological Philosophy of Mind: Rorty versus Davidson.” In Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert Brandom, 351–370. Oxford: Blackwell. Rorty, Richard. 1999a. “A World without Substances and Essences.” In Philosophy and Social Hope. Edited by R. Rorty, 47–71. London: Penguin Books. ———. 1999b. “McDowell, Davidson, and Spontaneity.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58, no. 2: 389–394. ———. 2000a. “Response to Bjørn Ramberg.” In Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert Brandom, 370–377. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2000b. “Response to Donald Davidson.” In Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert Brandom, 74–80. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2007. “Naturalism and Quietism.” In Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers. Edited by R. Rorty, Volume 4, 147–159. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12 The Solomonic Strategy—the Brain as Hardware, Culture as Software Rereading Rorty’s Criticism of Cognitive Science Maja Niestrój

INTRODUCTION Richard Rorty surely belongs to an elite circle of the most influential American pragmatists. He is widely known because of his astute diagnosis of cultural ills as well as his positive vision of how it could be. It is also meaningful that Rorty is the one who started an intensive dialogue between long-standing philosophical tradition and contemporary reflection concerning society and civilization with its diverse novel phenomena. Despite the fact that one can hardly call him a philosopher of science, Rorty’s inquisitive attitude as a great rhetorician allowed him passionately to engage in leading discussions and to contribute to a general way of thinking about the sciences. In his analysis, Rorty combines European perspectives and values with the non-dogmatic way of thinking distinctive of American pragmatism. He is aware of the great legacy of analytic philosophers from the old continent, thinkers who tried to demarcate the exact border between science and pseudo-science. However, Rorty is not a part of this tradition, which likely led to his discussing such issues with levity and eloquence, juggling accounts and formulating his own insights in the field. A great illustration of Rorty’s rhetorical skills, as well as an example of mediation between methodological reflection and science itself, is displayed in the voice he uses in the discussion about Vincent Descombes—summarized in the chapter, “The Brain as Hardware, Culture as Software” (Rorty 2004).1 This chapter is commonly known as a criticism of cognitive science, but it seems to be only half-true, if not a complete misinterpretation of the author’s intentions. Rorty uses cognitive science simply to trigger an investigation and in order to oppose the two contrasting 169

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philosophical attitudes—“linguistic idealists” and “meaning realists”—in the context of the development of contemporary science.2 Despite this, Rorty’s criticism of cognitive science remains the center of interest for the following analysis. His chapter will be reconsidered and updated based upon current trends in empirical research and theoretical reflection. I will argue that Rorty’s essay can be reread as an argumentative review of a big part of present evolutionary anthropology, evolutionary psychology and linguistics, and of the many variations of sociobiology as well. First, I will briefly reconstruct Rorty’s train of thought from “The Brain as Hardware” revealing the dispute between the protagonists of two philosophical accounts, introduced by the philosopher as “Neo-Carnapians” and “Neo-Wittgenstenians.” Moreover, I will stress Rorty’s views, encapsulating the proposed Solomonic strategy. Second, I will critically engage with Rorty’s views on three levels: (1) his understanding of cognitive science; (2) the assumption that the Chomskians (and Chomsky himself) can be identified as Neo-Carnapians and as the representatives of the “unified science” movement; (3) the identification of the Chomskians with the cognitivists and the role of linguists in the context of the broader debate. Finally, since Rorty’s argumentation can be seen as still very relevant today, I will conclude with remarks about the criticism of cognitive science and suggest that the group he addresses with his critique could be reconsidered and revised. I will adapt the criticism from “The Brain as Hardware” to current research and theoretical reflection with close care and from the perspective of the methodology of science. All previously mentioned aspects outline the framework for a highly interesting discussion about contemporary theories developed by “evolutionary something-ists”—the term which I use provocatively, with intentional frivolousness, to label the authors of many hypotheses about the origins and growth of language.

TWO SIDES OF THE DISPUTE: “NEO-CARNAPIANS” AND “NEO-WITTGENSTENIANS” Before declaring his own views and philosophical sympathy regarding the accounts appearing in his paper, Rorty discusses the arguments between (as he calls them) “Neo-Carnapians” and “Neo-Wittgenstenians.” Cognitive science is not the main issue here, but it is used as a suitable example of how the philosophical accounts differ from one another. As Rorty writes: “The differences between these two kinds of philosophers are best grasped, nowadays, by contrasting their attitudes toward cognitive science” (Rorty 2004, 219). Furthermore, Rorty’s train of thought is deeply rooted in the tradition of disputing the mind-body problem and the ontological status of meaning, supplying the readers with all necessary details to appreciate the various standpoints in question. It is not necessary to elaborate exhaustively upon these philosophical problems here; it seems sufficient to summarize the two accounts introduced by Rorty, allowing for some simplifications. According to Rorty, Neo-Carnapians represent the movement of “unified science,” as heirs of Descartes’s tradition of the para-mechanical hypothesis, with their

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spiritual father embodied in Rudolf Carnap and with Chomsky as the main protagonist today. Neo-Carnapians hold that the mind and language can be understood and studied without taking into account their link to social skills. They assume that brain states are representations of mental states and that cognitive science enables “recognition of the mechanical interactions between nerve cells behind the exercise of social skills” (Rorty 2004, 220); the account is widely known as representationalism. NeoCarnapians use the arguments, such as the principle of compositionality and its consequences—that is, the productivity of natural language—to support their attitude as “meaning realists.” In other words, they stipulate that there are approachable facts about meaning and that they can be the objects of the inquiry. Neo-Wittgensteinians, to Rorty, are skeptical about the Cartesian idea of some underlying mechanism, which could be investigated using the methods of natural science and which would eventually explain the work of the mind. In their opinion, only when one is familiar with the use of its corresponding linguistic expression does the particular concept become clear. Therefore, they represent “linguistic idealism.” This view is attributed among others to philosophers such as Brandom, Davidson, and Descombes, but also Rorty himself, Putnam, Kuhn, and Derrida. In this heated discussion, one side places high hopes in cognitive science as the tool for finding answers about human nature, while the other side claims the opposite, not recognizing the contribution of cognitive science to human knowledge. Rorty shares the views of the latter, which is no surprise considering his previous works and sympathies. His solution for the dispute is, what he calls, the Solomonic strategy. He introduces the analogy to hardware and software, splitting the concept of mind into two: (1) the brain, in which structure and microstructure with their functions can be discovered, and (2) the culture, seen as an “ensemble of topics about which we have doubt that chimpanzee have any views” (Rorty 2004, 233). The former can be investigated using the standard methods of natural science, while the latter requires other tools and methods consistent with the Wittgensteinians’ point of view. Of course, the question immediately arises, “but which methods should be actually used in the second case?” As a digression, we may ask whether, for example, evolutionary game theory would be the right tool to explain the meaningfulness of language expressions and support the theory of language evolution in the Wittgensteinians’ sense. To return to the Solomonic idea, it is worth mentioning that Rorty seems to be perfectly aware that his solution is not an elegant one. The name is taken from the Biblical story in which two women claimed the same child and Solomon proposed cutting the child in half and giving a half to each. Solomon knew that the real mother would sooner give up the child than see it die. Rorty writes: “The Solomonic strategy of cutting the mind in two and giving a half to each claimant may seem too quick and dirty a way of dealing with the debates currently raging in philosophy of the mind and language” (Rorty 2004, 230). But despite this awareness, he missed the point that Solomonic rhetoric can be actually a losing strategy for NeoWittgensteinians, since the Neo-Carnapians are those who would certainly not let the child be cut in two.

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DISCUSSION WITH RORTY: THREE ALLEGATIONS Let us now turn to the controversy surrounding the argumentation from “The Brain as Hardware.” In order to achieve a higher grad of clarity, we can formulate and discuss the following allegations toward Rorty’s claims: (1) understanding cognitive science in the narrow sense as the discipline fully represented by Chomsky and the scientific activity performed by him and “his fellows”; (2) identifying Carnapian “unified science” with Chomsky’s conception of such unity; and (3) the lack of recognition for the positive outputs produced by cognitive scientists and linguists that comes from overlooking the diversity of these disciplines and the differences among their branches and sub-disciplines. Characterizing cognitive science remains an open problem, because it is neither specified by a clear methodology nor by a homogeneous group of researchers working on it. According to Francisco Varela, after at least forty years of success in areas such as information, communication, knowledge, robotics and working with data, cognitive techniques and theory still belong to a temporally defined research field rather than an established science (Varela 1990, 25). The commonly listed disciplines, which will from now on be referred to more appropriately as the cognitive sciences (plural), are as follows: artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive psychology, and epistemology. Hence, Rorty’s claim that the cognitive sciences are just a way of putting the philosophy on a scientific path seems to be either an intentional provocation or just a misinterpretation—in addition to shrinking the multiple disciplines into one that is mainly developed by a single researcher, namely Chomsky (not to deny his valuable contribution to the cognitive sciences). Taking the wider perspective, philosophy—in the guise of epistemology—is invited to engage in interdisciplinary cooperation with other disciplines, and so are the philosophers. Rorty holds that the future of the cognitive sciences is still uncertain, and it is possible that they will collapse under their own weight, being a utopian project with no practical application. He shares the views of the Wittgensteinians, who “criticize the Chomskian in the same terms as Bacon criticized late scholasticism . . . all their beautiful theories and subtle arguments cannot be brought to bear on practice. They are building mechanism in the air” (Rorty 2004, 223). However, the examples of how the cognitive sciences may contribute to our knowledge and improve our lives can be multiplied, for example, through cognitive-friendly architectural solutions, the more efficient proceedings in robots in our every-day reality, and the like. Of course, not all developed projects are thought of as applicable into daily practice, but it is similar in the case of other disciplines, where a huge part of reflection and activity belong to an indispensable theoretical background. Returning to the previous point, Rorty implicitly assumed a very narrow definition of the cognitive sciences, which led to false conclusions and a partly unjustified critique or, at most, just provokes the standard question about the methodology and aims of the research done by cognitivists. To defend Rorty’s account it may be said in the first place that his primary intention was to debate the two philosophical accounts and not to characterize a

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given science. Second, the criticism of cognitive sciences was largely inspired by Descombes’s reflection elaborated in The Mind’s Provisions: A Critique of Cognitivism (Descombes 2001). Despite this, because terminology always limits the discourse, a more adequate usage of the given labels could be required. The second allegation is baptizing the Chomskian as the “Neo-Carnapian.” The idea about the unity of science introduced by Chomsky has its source in his reflections about language and the question of how linguistics should be carried out. His concept is based upon the belief that the most efficient way of analyzing human language (as well as other studies and phenomena) is through the methodology of natural science. With his strong inclination to natural science, Chomsky sees people as natural objects, language as a part of nature and the linguistic as naturally dependent on and linked to human biology, so his choice of methodology seems to be obvious. He also shares the view that to every mental state there is a corresponding physical or chemical state of the body, and the latter is connected with the former through scientific laws. All of this reveals Chomsky’s physicalist world picture, but it should be said that it is not identical to the sophisticated version of physicalism popularized by Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath. The thesis of physicalism formulated in the Vienna Circle is as follows: “to every psychological sentence, say S1, there is a corresponding physical sentence, say S2, so that S1 and S2 are equipollent on account of certain valid laws” (Carnap 1935, 95). This formulation, referring to sentences instead of psychical or physical states, belongs to the formal mode of speech (following the Carnapian distinction of the formal and material mode) and has purely linguistic character. The mode of speech is crucial here, because the reference to sentences, or alternatively to terms, allows one to avoid metaphysical interpolations and so-called “pseudo-questions.” The thesis of the unity of science in the neo-positivists’ version is closely connected to this kind of physicalism. Since every sentence can be translated into the physical language, this language can be seen as a universal language of science. For Carnap, this is a logical consequence: The existence of one language-system in which every scientific term is contained, however, implies that all these terms are of logically related kinds, and there cannot be a fundamental division between the terms of the different branches of science. (Carnap 1935, 97)

Chomsky, by contrast, understands the unity of science through the concept that all objects studied by different sciences are actually natural objects. Hence, he claims that the methodology of natural science should be the obligatory one for all disciplines. Carnap only performs the formal analysis of the language of science, which leads him to conclusions about logical relations between all terms and the existence of one universal language of science. He postulates the unity of science as well, but his thesis has no signs of an inclination to metaphysics. This brief comparison shows that it is impossible to reduce the two accounts presented here to one “unity of science” doctrine. Moreover, since Rorty mainly

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discusses the views of Chomsky and “his fellows” in his paper, the question of why he links them with European tradition of the Vienna Circle and calls them “NeoCarnapians” instead of “Chomskians” remains unanswered. The third and last allegation is actually a consequence of the first. In “The Brain as Hardware,” Rorty identifies cognitive scientists with “Chomsky and his fellows” and as the adversaries of Wittgenstein’s thought. He is ignoring the fact that the cognitive sciences are actually multidisciplinary, covering a wide array of topics on cognition. Moreover, the engaged researchers have different backgrounds and fields of specialization, not to mention their own philosophical inclinations, all of which are factors that influence their eventual positions. There is no homogeneous category of views that are or can be shared by all cognitivists. The rhetoric of this allegation can be expanded by the point made by Descombes as part of a reply to Rorty’s paper: I would like to suggest that there is actually a third option besides linguistics understood as a branch of cognitive psycho-linguistics and linguistics dismissed as a frivolous “theory of everything.” The third option allows linguists to make scientific claims about the various languages spoken in the world without having to pose as brain-scientists doing some kind of abstract neurology. (Descombes 2004, 273–274)

This argument reveals another generalization, this time involving the understanding of linguistics, and more concretely, taking the paradigm of generative linguistics as commonly and widely accepted. At the same time, we are able to address at least two more paradigms and their frameworks, mainly the functional and cognitive. What is especially interesting is that the cognitive linguists see themselves as the real heirs of Wittgenstein, analyzing the notions of language games and family resemblances.

A REVISION OF WHOM RORTY ADDRESSES I have been arguing that the way Rorty introduces cognitive science in his paper is at least incomplete. As discussed, its multidisciplinary character is shown solely through the prism of Chomsky’s framework and with the inappropriate label of “Neo-Carnapians.” Consequently, one must ask whether the criticism formulated by Rorty can be maintained. In my opinion, the answer is affirmative, but it is necessary to reconsider whom the critique actually addresses. While rereading “The Brain as Hardware” in the context of trends so characteristic of current “scientific” inquiries and blooming (popular) science, I would point out that some of the present addressees are actually “evolutionary something-ists,” especially evolutionary anthropologists, psychologists and sociobiologists. Rorty mentions explicitly three names: Chomsky, Pinker, and Wilson; people who are as controversial as they are influential today as well. To be exact, the object of my critique is not the theory of evolution, its explications, and applications in many different sub-disciplines, but the methodological

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approach shared by many, who represent the tendency to perform a straightforward search for an explanation and acceptance of some views, without supplying the necessary justification for them. Chomsky’s results have mainly been frameworks and hypotheses, with non-removable elements of speculation. Even if they refer to the specific methodological notions of explanatory power or the inference to the best explanation, they can hardly be recognized as scientific discoveries or taken as contributions to scientific knowledge. It is otherwise in the case of his followers and authors involved in the great discussion about the origins of human language. Many of them, like Steven Pinker, David Wilson, Robin Dunbar, or Richard Dawkins, publish popular scientific books in which they disguise some pseudoscientific results as actual discoveries. The weakness of these theories is disclosed in the situations of competition between them. Despite references to much empirical research, it is not possible to evaluate the theories or point out the criteria according to which one could be considered better than the others. Why not propose a new, highly likely theory, which would explain even more? As Rorty writes: It is one thing to say that Chomskian linguistic and the other academic specialties that bill themselves as parts of “cognitive science” are respectable disciplines—arenas in which very bright people engage in spirited debates with one another. It is another thing to say that these disciplines have contributed to our knowledge. (Rorty 2004, 222)

Of course, as we know from Karl Popper’s critique, all our scientific knowledge has a hypothetical character, but it means we also need to go back to the discussion of the falsification of scientific hypotheses, or—what could be even more fruitful in this case—back to the considerations of the characteristics of progressive research programs (using the notional apparatus introduced by Imre Lakatos). Theories proposed by “evolutionary something-ists” are only partly falsifiable, and supporting them by more and more confirming empirical data does not change this fact. The research programs developed by these theorists only accumulate the already known facts, and do not deliver any predictions about new facts or about those being contradicted in rival programs. To go back to the close analysis, Rorty, inspired by other Neo-Wittgensteinians such as Davidson and Brandom, formulates the following objections (originally ascribed to all cognitivists): (1) argumentation depends on the assumption that “the absence of certain phenomena (e.g., behavior) is as good an explanandum as its presence” (Rorty 2004, 221); (2) chosen empirical results are used to support very complex and obscure theories, which is methodologically unjustified; (3) the problems are addressed with inadequate tools and from the wrong perspective—the standpoint of natural science is too widely extrapolated; it “is simply the habit of looking for micro-mechanisms behind macroscopic behavior” (Rorty 2004, 221–222); (4) postulating the existence of some mechanisms or functions which no empirical result can disconfirm (e.g., Chomsky’s postulate about a fixed, biologically determined function that maps evidence available into acquired knowledge); (5) their results

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and theories cannot be brought into life through practice—paraphrasing Rorty, they built the mechanisms out of thin air. These charges can be formulated at any time as being swiped from Chomsky’s concept of the language acquisition device, Dunbar’s evolutionary theory of gossip, Wilson’s contributions concerning the origins of religion, or Pinker’s discovery of the language as a natural instinct, as well as at many, many others. It makes Rorty’s criticism quite current and adequate, especially after slightly revising his original addressees and labels. In many cases, methodological mistakes appear in the debate about how language evolves without regard to the distinctness of a particular theory. As an example of the first mentioned mistake, namely, treating events and phenomena which were not observed (kinds of non-events and non-phenomena) as support for the proposed explanatory reasoning, Rorty recalls Chomsky’s claim that the fact that children do not apply some ungrammatical structure when starting to speak, means that there is the innate structure of the language faculty (Rorty 2004, 221; Chomsky 2000, 56). Accordingly, a more general version of this strategy is found in Pinker’s writings. His idea of giving a functional explanation for the complexity of some traits is based on the assumption that when we cannot provide other reasons for it, then the complexity itself is a target of the selective process (Pinker 2010). That makes Pinker’s use of natural selection similar to the concept of intelligent-design used by others. Moreover, it leads to wrong-headed intellectual investments, like in the cognitive niche hypothesis, which uses a concealed form of group selection, and that, in turn, is seen as outdated in broader evolutionary discussions by decades (cf. Smith and Price 1973; Alexander 2008). The second problem signaled by Rorty is with understanding the references to empirical studies as a hallmark of science and “being scientific.” The ability of theory to accumulate empirical results is something desirable, but it is not the main criterion of its usefulness, which is more about the predictive and heuristic power of the theory. Actually, this allegation is a version of the old dilemma from the philosophy of science, mainly, a problem of inductive reasoning. It can be explicated in the question—how can a general conclusion or even a scientific law be delivered from a finite number of observations and provided as a result? Examples of theories being “supported” or “proven” by facts can be multiplied. In the case of theories formulated by our “evolutionary somethings-ists,” these are references to studies that consider ape behavior or facts concerning the evolution of human beings. A concrete illustration is the discovery that the evolution of hominids was sixteen times faster than the evolutionary pace of other primates (Lahn and Ebenstein 2009), which was used as the sufficient and valid argument for the uniqueness of human evolution. The wrong perspective can be understood not only as the extrapolation of the methodology of natural science (especially given that, in addition to general requirements, each discipline has its own, specific methodology) but also as trying to solve new problems using the framework of old paradigms. So one controversy comes with using linguistic analysis to explain more than linguistic problems, and another issue comes from referring to the theory of systems or cybernetic thinking to explain the origins of language. Even if we are oriented on searching for an explanation,

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this explanation has to be consistent with the paradigm in which current science is developed, or at least it must include the existing knowledge if the proposed theory aspires to attain the status of more general unification. The problem of inflated explanatory power is based on one more trick, mainly stipulating the existence of a mechanism that cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed. So actually, instead of supporting the answers for more detailed questions about expected empirical results, such a practice just introduces non-testable elements to the theory. One version of this problem is giving interpretations of results that also cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed. As examples consider the cases in which the cause and the results are not clear, the interpretation may hide the uncertainty—and so culture is seen, perhaps, in one instance as a cause and in another as the result of some discontinuity in the evolution of human language, seen perhaps as either a by-product of brain development or the other way around. The last allegation is the result of all I mentioned above. The speculative character and the cumulative (for empirical facts) approach instead of being explanatory for predicting some empirical, testable consequences, leads instead to theories with no impact on the practical dimension of the application of science. And such views are not only about technological development but also, as Rorty pointed out, concern progress in “soft” disciplines like psychotherapy or learning strategies. As a concrete case study, one may consider the Dunbar hypothesis of the evolution of language, elaborated in his book from 1996 with the significant title: Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Dunbar 1998). Referring to his studies and results delivered from neuroscience to paleoanthropology, Dunbar claims that language evolves in response to our need for gossip, and it was a way of staying in touch with family and friends. A more current case comes from the 2007 book by Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (Pinker 2008), where the author solves the mystery of human nature by examining how we use words. What is significant is that Pinker’s reflection is fully based on the unsupported assertion that language simultaneously fulfills two functions—it conveys a message to a recipient and is a part of negotiations of the social relationship between communicating parties. Both theories—Dunbar’s and Pinker’s—are examples of methodological mistakes discussed above, against which Rorty openly declares himself.

CONCLUSION Rorty’s view of science differs slightly in “the Brain as Hardware” from the views presented in his other writings. He presents himself more often as a supporter of the methodology of science in the sense of “keeping conversation going” rather than as somebody who wants to set some limits and trace mistakes or misuses. “The Brain as Hardware” is however a notable example of how European philosophical traditions can be linked with the approach of American pragmatism. Even if Rorty sees science as being an evolving process, he is still sensible to the requirements of its methodology. Moreover, he shows that methodology and philosophy of science should not be

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isolated from each other but engaged in a more general discussion about rationality and knowledge. No less interesting is the fact that Rorty’s critique can be reread as a very current one. It is hard to avoid the impression that the philosopher does us all a service by analyzing Chomskians’ claims and approaches and setting forth some sensible limits to a scientific inquiry. The rhetoric proposed by Rorty challenges our way of thinking about an evolutionary approach in psychology, biology, linguistics, and of course the cognitive sciences or—even more widely—about (sometimes pseudo-) science nowadays.

NOTES 1. Articles devoted to problematic ideas in the Descombes’s book The Mind’s Provisions: A Critique of Cognitivism were published in Inquiry 47, no. 3 (June 2004). The discussion included (besides Richard Rorty) Charles Taylor, Robert Brandom, John Haugeland, and Vincent Descombes himself. 2. These are the names Rorty uses, taken from Jerry Fodor (Fodor 2000).

REFERENCES Alexander, Denis. 2008. Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? Grand Rapids, MI: Monarch Books. Carnap, Rudolf. 1935. Philosophy and Logical Syntax. Three Lectures at the University of London, 1934. K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd. Chomsky, Noam. 2000. New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Descombes, Vincent. 2001. The Mind’s Provisions: A Critique of Cognitivism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2004. “Replies.” Inquiry 47 (3): 267–288. Dunbar, RIM. 1998. Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fodor, Jerry. 2000. “A Science of Tuesdays.” London Review of Books 22, no. 14: 21–22. Lahn, Bruce T., and Lanny Ebenstein. 2009. “Let’s Celebrate Human Genetic Diversity.” Nature 461, no. 7265. Pinker, Steven. 2008. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. London: Penguin. ———. 2010. “The Cognitive Niche: Coevolution of Intelligence, Sociality, and Language.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http:​//www​.pnas​.org/​conte​nt/ea​rly/2​010/ 0​5/04/​09146​30107​ Rorty, Richard. 2004. “The Brain as Hardware, Culture as Software.” Inquiry 47, no. 3: 219–235. Smith, J. Maynard, and G. R. Price. 1973. “The Logic of Animal Conflict.” Nature 246, no. 5427. Varela, Francisco J. 1990. Kogni​tions​wisse​nscha​ft-Ko​gniti​onste​chnik​: eine Skizze aktueller Perspektiven (Cognitive Science: A Cartography of Current Ideas). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

V REPRESENTATIONS AND OTHER MIRRORS

13 Why We Should Move from Rorty to “Rortwey” Radim Šíp

WORDS OF THANKS AND ADMIRATION After seven years of hard work, I had finished a monograph on Rorty (Šíp 2008) and started to be tired of him. That feeling revealed to me new horizons, so I found and reread Dewey.1 I was struck by how different Dewey is from Rorty’s Dewey and I grasped that “the good Dewey” has no meaning without “the bad Dewey” (“the good/bad Dewey” is, of course, one of Rorty’s fabled tropes). However, this encounter moved me too far in the opposite direction and I completely forgot how important Rorty was for me. The conference on Rorty’s work in Opole in 2013 that formed the basis of this book also opened my eyes. Following presentations and discussions with my colleagues, I realized there was to the many papers of my colleagues, I have realized that there is something complex working through my unconsciousness that psychoanalysis could certainly specify more profoundly than I could. The process is finished, I hope. The Freudians may say that I have killed my intellectual father to be able to appreciate Rorty again. In the following text, readers may find a slight vestige of my complex, alongside a critique of Rorty that I still find to be right. If there was something that limited Rorty’s work, it was his stress on language and, with it, on consciousness. This fact led him to the camp of inferentialists and diverted him from more promising thinking, such as we can find, for example, in the works of the second generation of cognitive scientists.2 It is not by accident that Dewey’s visions are in accord with the results of the experiments of the scientists just mentioned as there is a deep link between the original vision and the result. He believed that under the surface of consciousness and language there is a huge area of interactions (or transactions) between the organism and its surroundings that are primordial and that create the phenomenological structure of all live creatures. According to Dewey, this area is a source of élan 181

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vital (Bergson’s, not Dewey’s wording) or what is vital and living, in language and consciousness. This is the area that inferentialists, such as Rorty, permanently miss.3 Yet, this criticism must be an expression of respect, because after Rorty, no serious philosopher could write texts or deliver lectures in the boring, would-be “precise” style, which was typical for second-rate analytical philosophers. He showed us that precision of thought does not have to exclude refined figurations, allusions to fiction, finding parallels in novels or applying the trope of “misreading” to habitually known authors, in order to free us from decrepit stories about the “true” philosophy. No philosophy survives without conforming to the fact that the search for truth is just our North Star that guides, from the great distance, our never-ending wandering in the right direction. Rorty knew that and found the courage to behave according to this ancient wisdom in the time of the “new rigorism” (see below). He was one of only a few who did so and succeeded. He gave us a key for our own intellectual life, he gave us “the Example.”

BEYOND THE SELF-NARRATIVE Those who have seen the film Of Beauty and Consolation: Part 23—Richard Rorty (Rorty 2012) probably feel the same thing as those who have read Rorty’s “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids” (Rorty 2010, 500–510), or Gross’s intellectual biography Richard Rorty. The Making of an American Philosopher (Gross 2008). Rorty was a “child of his time” as well as of his specific family. He was a shy boy who loved solitude and reading books, who wrote a letter to the Dalai Lama at an early age, who—When he was older—collected beautiful and rare kinds of orchids and who loved to observe the magnificence of birds, a boy who was bullied in the playground, probably for his “bookish” dispositions. In contrast, there is also the boy who was brought up in a leftist, socially engaged family of journalists. His parents knew John Dewey, (who according to a family story dandled Richard on his lap) as his parents met regularly with him, Sidney Hook and many labor union exponents at that time. Acquaintance with the fight for social justice taught him that humans have to help change the social landscape of their country. All of these facts led Rorty to write about his life as being lived in two completely different worlds. It is said that this collision urged him to think that he must link these two worlds together in one vision. According to Rorty, it was this undeveloped idea that brought him to philosophy. However, he later realized that the two worlds need not (or must not?) be tied together. He realized that he could remain the snobbish shy bookworm and also the publicly engaged intellectual. With this solution, he felt that he acquired philosophical, professional, and personal maturity (see Rorty 2010, 500–510, esp. 510). I am, however, afraid that this is not quite true. It is a kind of a personal myth that helps humans accept the character and conditions of their lives. But like any myth, it is a very important part of Rorty’s life. As an explanation of his thought, it is

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too simple and even confusing. We need to go beneath the self-narrative that Rorty produced so as to be able to understand Rorty better.

CAUGHT IN TWO WAVES In this section, I will discuss the influence of the changes in the American academia that were under way during Dewey’s and Rorty’s lifetimes. Gross’s book (2008, 283–300), along with books and texts by other authors, will be our compass in this enterprise. Let me start with the depiction of the American university system from the late 1890s to the late 1970s, depicted by authors such as Gross, Schorske, Vesey, Winterer, Brint, and others (see Gross 2008, 285–290). In the 1920s, university professors were still led by ideas of “nineteenth-century intellectualism” that identified the social role of academics “with educators of future leaders of the whole society” and “embraced the role of the man of letters” (Vesey, as quoted in: Gross 2008, 286). At that time, there was little room for the idea of academics as experts in a field (Vesey, as quoted in: Gross 2008, 286). This view changed radically in the 1950s when American universities underwent a process which Carl Schorske called “a rise of the new rigorism” (Schorske 1997, 295). New research institutions with their stress on expertise, and methodological and technical competences, became the model for the whole academic sphere. This approach to education and research was grounded in the assumption that there were universal features in the natural and social world that can be uncovered at the end of methodologically well-executed inquiries (see Gross 2008, 287). Richard Bernstein related this theme to philosophy: [It] was a time of great confidence among professional philosophers. It was felt by the growing analytic community that “we” philosophers had “finally” discovered the conceptual tools and techniques to make progress in solving or dissolving philosophical problems. . . . Of course, there were pockets of resistance. . . . But philosophers who had not taken the analytic “linguistic turn” were clearly on the defensive. (Bernstein 1992, 330–331)

Nevertheless, there was some continuity between the late 1890s and the 1950s. There were, in fact, two waves of the professionalization of the American university system. The first one took place up until the 1930s when the structure of American universities was stabilized and most of the professional associations established; the second came during the 1950s when universities were transformed into places employing experts and expert knowledge. We can find contingent connections between both; however, these connections were not set by historical necessity, but by events during and after World War II (see Gross 2008, 289). Dewey’s stance in relation to these waves was exceptional. On the one hand, he was a distinguished man of letters during his whole life and thus played an important

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role in the cultural milieu of American society. On the other hand, he was an outstanding progressive figure who wholeheartedly supported the professionalization of academia. Nonetheless, he viewed critically the slow emergence of the rigorism whose first shy steps started to be apparent during the 1930s. We can see the trend in his works from that time, especially in his Logic (1938) or Theory of Valuation (1939). Moreover, his and Bentley’s book Knowing and the Known (1949) provided readers with ammunition against this new rigorism. Notably its first—Bentley’s— chapter, “Vagueness in Logic,” is one of the most powerful criticisms because there it was shown how inconsistent and loose are the fathers of rigorism (Carnap, Lewis, Cohen and Nagel, Quine, Morris, Russell, and Tarski) in their terminology and systems (see Dewey LW16: 8–45).4 Unfortunately for us and for American philosophy, there were, in that time, only a few people who read this book and still fewer of them who took it seriously. A new alteration in the landscape of the academia came during the 1970s due to three factors (1) social movements of the late 1960s that affected the academia; (2) the decrease of job opportunities in universities in the mid-1970s; and (3) an alternative to rigorism that started to be institutionalized in literature departments, influenced by French poststructuralist and postmodernist theories.5 We are going to pay attention to the third one only, since it is extremely important in Rorty’s case. During that time, various forms of anti-foundationalism were characterized by a kind of intellectual playfulness. This feature is central for Rorty’s concept of irony because this playfulness “was recognized as the most appropriate stance for those who realize that their own views and positions do not derive from some transcendental vantage point” (Gross 2008, 298–299). Rorty went through the second and the third waves. If we study Rorty’s reincarnation from the historian of philosophy to the analytic philosopher and from the analyst to the “postmodern” or more precisely “post-analytic” thinker, we can note that the waves left noticeable vestiges in his thinking (see Gross 2008, 284). Under the influence of philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Quine, Sellars, and Davidson, Rorty gave up his eliminative materialism. Under the influence of Dewey and Heidegger, he strengthened his sense of historicism and renewed his McKeonian transcendentally critical position to philosophical systems that had been characteristic for him during his studies at Chicago and at Yale. However, he kept a bad analytic habit of seeing everything through language. This habit is the important and serious residuum of the rigorism that is projected into all of his themes after 1980. This vestige blocked Rorty’s anti-foundationalism and anti-essentialism in the middle of their respective roads. As we will see in the following discussion, this vestige—in spite of all his efforts to contextualize and naturalize cognition—maintained the modern idea that objects are ontologically separate from their environment. The second crucial vestige, that of the 1970s phase, can be found in Rorty’s emphasis on free intellectual play with theories, enabled by irony. Romantic irony, which was the source of inspiration for Rorty’s concept of ironic criticism and selfcriticism, is a good strategy for challenging authority; however, it offers little help when we need to present a working social or political theory. This is clearly apparent

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when we analyze in detail Rorty’s concept of the split between the public and the private spheres. On the surface, Rorty’s work is bewitching because of its consistent oscillation between stress on language and stress on irony—irony and language need and support each other. Also, it is precariously fascinating since the postmodern emphasis on freedom and re/contextualization impresses those who are tired of the rules of rigorism. However, when we want to use Rorty’s theories in a way other than as a means of liberation from rigorism, we have no tool at our disposal that can cross the barriers raised by early modern presuppositions. These successful acts of liberation are thus just temporary pauses as we await the next version of rigorism. Available space does not allow me to support my claim that these two “vestiges” are closely related due to their common origin in the same early modern “metaphysics of separated objects,” although I have argued for this elsewhere (see Šíp 2011; Šíp 2012). On the other hand, this early modern metaphysics is much more apparent in Rorty’s social and political thought, since it was based on the traditional liberalistic vision of separated, atomistic individuals and only then supplemented by communitarian elements. This hybrid of liberal and communitarian views created Rorty’s inconsistent idea of “ethnocentrism with opened windows.” The inconsistency lies precisely in Rorty’s traditional concept of the public sphere as a compound of individuals (the liberalism part) that also has its history, and thus its peculiarities (the communitarianism part). By contrast, Dewey’s concept of the constitution of the public provides us with an entirely new understanding of making a self and of making a society, something very different from what liberalism or the communitarians or the critical theorists could offer us (see Frega 2010). Thus, I will show that Rorty’s anti-foundationalism and anti-representationalism did only half of the required job, while repeating the same figures of thinking that molded the essentialist and representationalist approach.

OVERLY BOOKISH In the same manner, in which his “mature position” divided his bookish and shy world from the public, politically active one, Rorty also divided and thus dissolved experience. He was led by the post-analytic suspicion about “such a dark term like experience.” He expressed it at length in his “Dewey’s Metaphysics” (Rorty 2010, 71–83). He wrote in this piece that to propose “a non-dualistic account of experience, of the sort Dewey himself proposed, was to return to [Kantian] die Sache selbst” (Rorty 2010, 78). He saw Dewey’s long-term effort to establish “experimental metaphysics” as abandoning the position that analytic philosophy gained thanks to its “linguistic turn” and as regressing to the old bad metaphysics of theorizing about something that precedes all human activity (the metaphysics of Truth or of Reason or of Nature or of the Ding an Sich). He blamed Dewey for mixing what was rightly differentiated and separated by the analytic and the therapeutic approaches to philosophy—Hegelian sociological narrative about the development of society on the

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one side and empirical findings of natural sciences on the other. The first is directed by the Sellarsian process of asking and giving reasons and the second by finding causal successions. To blend one with another means, according to Rorty, a return to the bad Lockean way of assimilating “all mental states with raw feels” (Rorty 2010, 79–80). If we get on this path, Rorty argued, we will end up in Humean skepticism and save ourselves only by another version of Kantian transcendentalism. Therefore, he ended his criticism of Dewey’s metaphysics by the following: What Kant had called “the constitution of the empirical world by synthesis of intuitions under concepts,” Dewey wanted to call “interactions in which both extra-organic things and organisms partake.” . . . He wanted phrases like “transactions with the environment” and “adaptation to conditions” to be simultaneously naturalistic and transcendental. . . . So he blew up notions like “transactions” and “situation” until they sounded as mysterious as “prime matter” or “thing-in-itself.” (Rorty 2010, 81)

Here Rorty apparently performed his version of Bloomian “creative misreading.” Nonetheless, his treatment of Dewey’s ideas is too playful and loose to equal the significance that a clear reading of Dewey can provide us. Rorty completely avoids the fact that Dewey’s concepts of “situation” and “metaphysics” and “transaction” are experimental, and that is why, rather than implying a return to Kant, they have a different role to play.6 There is another important component that Rorty overlooked. We can indeed find a “transcendental” level of Dewey’s thought. However, it is not Kantian “practical reason”—that is, a kind of European intellectual abstraction projected back into praxis when we need to link “pure reason” with the real life of human beings. Rather, it is the transcendence of real activities and behaviors in a situation. Our ideas lag behind and do not fully encompass what we are actually doing in a situation and thus, our activities transcend those ideas. Our provisional concepts of ourselves and of an environment are temporally transcended by the activity in a situation that is naturally made by parts of us as well as of our environment. During this process, we create provisional, practical judgments to help to determine the situation and hence determine what more should be done to settle the situation or to reach a state of equilibrium (see Dewey MW8: 20–23). Our previous action alone can be a source of finding meanings and only the outcomes of action can be meaningfully “true” or “false.” The level of actions and behaviors is both the starting point and the end of inquiry and of cognition. It is not a language, it is not some theory—both are just tools of action. If we take into account this level of Dewey’s thinking, the mystery of Kantian die Sache Selbst in Dewey’s texts after 1895 will disappear. The meanings of words and concepts are not rooted in our linguistic behavior, but in a much deeper activity which fluctuates between an organism and its environment.7 Language is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg where consciousness and symbolic communication play a prominent role. Nevertheless, most actions, behaviors, adaptations, and so forth are run without any conscious thought. If we stay with the position of “a field linguist” (see Rorty 2010, 158–164)—that is, for Rorty,

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the model of the “right” kind of pragmatist stance, purified from the “metaphysical blurs” of the classical pragmatists—we will circumscribe ourselves within the limits of consciousness, conscious communication, and conscious decisions. Thus for Rorty, all that exceeds consciousness (that means all that could not be explicated in language) is effectively not part of us, and is rather something which stands against us. Thus, Rorty repeated, whether he meant to or not, the figure of thinking characteristic of the early modern philosophers. They had seen subject and object of cognition as the two realms that stood against each other, and the subject’s constitution had, in their view, created cognition from information that comes from “out there.” Let us consider the following passage from Rorty: To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth. . . . Truth cannot be out there. . . . The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. (Rorty 1989, 5)

Above we stated that for a full-fledged pragmatist, only outcomes of action can be true or false, not mere sentences or descriptions. Again, this is the trace of the analytic malady that infected Rorty in the time of rigorism. However, what is more important here is that when we stress language and its explicable and utterable meanings, we are introducing the ontological border between “I” who can speak and communicate, and the silent world. Thus, we are again renewing either/or thinking. The only thing that was different in the post-analytic tradition is the fact that the constitution of knowledge about “the out there” is not bound to the subject, but is enacted in linguistic communication. Thus, either “inside” means communication in language and/or “out there” means wherever there is silence, opposition and hostility. In Rorty’s picture, silence, opposition and hostility start to play an important role. It is striking to me that so few readers notice or reflect upon this fact about Rorty’s view. In his 1989 book, Rorty wrote: [O]ur relation to the world, to brute power and to naked pain, is not the sort of relation we have to persons. Faced with the nonhuman, the nonlinguistic, we no longer have an ability to overcome contingency and pain by appropriation and transformation, but only the ability to recognize contingency and pain. (Rorty 1989, 40)

This passage is crucial indeed. For Rorty, if there is no language, humans can only “recognize contingency and pain,” but not act. Satisfactory action is, for him, closely connected with language games. Rorty overlooked the obvious fact that many people recognize the pain or the brute power of the world, but they still can live and act. They can refuse the pain or turn the pain aside or find ways to endure it or find the ultimate way to remove the pain—that is, to commit suicide, which is hardly a language game. All possibilities are—for better and worse—active ways to resolve the pain situation. But of course, many of them can be carried out without language. At this point, we could bring this criticism to its point by stating that Rorty was an

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incurably bookish and language-centered person. However, we should not stop there because this aspect of Rorty’s stance was projected into other parts of his work and also infected them.

INFERENTIALISTS VERSUS DEWEY: ON PERCEPTION AND COGNITION In his magnum opus, Rorty cited Sellars’s sentence: “all awareness of sort, resemblances, facts, etc., in short all awareness of abstract entities—indeed, all awareness even of particulars—is a linguistic affair” (Sellars 1963, 160; As quoted in: Rorty 1980, 182). The chapter where this sentence was quoted is devoted to Sellars’s criticism of the given that Rorty utilized for his own purposes.8 Empiricists of all kinds believe that we meet with the bases of knowledge in our experience. Bertrand Russell, who introduced this idea to a wide audience in the twentieth century, thought of theses bases as cognitive atoms and sometimes called them “cognitive primitives.” After him, many of the twentieth-century empiricists and realists believed that the “atoms” could stand as foundations of our cognition. They thought that these foundations provide us with direct feelings which convey cognitive content directly to our brain/mind. Sellars, and then Rorty, show rightly that the idea of “the given” in such an empiricism is constructed upon the false, old concept of human cognition as immediate seeing or immediate experiencing that gives us unchallengeable cognitive content. However, Rorty and Sellars “solved” the problem wrongly, expressing their belief that there is nothing immediate which is given to us in our experience. Moreover, they identify experience with just linguistic experience (“all awareness of sort, resemblances, facts . . . is a linguistic affair”). This move enabled Rorty to “linguistify” experience completely. From that time, everything which exceeded language, Rorty and other post-analytics excluded as “suspiciously dark,” because such experience, for them, is incommunicable in human language. Actually, however, we are immersed in many affairs that cannot be fully expressed in language. This fact encouraged post-analytic philosophers (Rorty as well as Davidson and others) to set up constructions that are too complicated and counterintuitive. For example, metaphors, for some of them, just have no meaning. Rorty said: [W]e need to see the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical in the way Davidson sees it: not as a distinction between two sorts of meaning, nor as a distinction between two sorts of interpretation, but as a distinction between familiar and unfamiliar uses of noises and marks. (Rorty 1989, 17)

Within this view metaphor, malapropism, and neologism are apparently outside of our contemporary system of language and its web of meaning. Since post-analytic philosophers excluded nonlinguistic experience and threw it away, there is no region or source from which hybrid and nonlinguistic affairs, such as the non-cognitive uses of metaphor or of neologism, could take their meaning. Therefore, these uses must

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not have a proper meaning. Metaphors as well as neologisms have to become just “unfamiliar uses of noises and marks.” This begs the question: Why should we let out the noises or inscribe the marks, if there were no motivation provided by their meanings? In a similarly strange way, Davidson and Rorty dealt with the problem of unconsciousness. Unconscious acts or states are, for them, just a display of disconnection between causes and reasons for behavior in the web of beliefs and desires (see Davidson 1982; Rorty 2010, 262–263). Paradoxes of this construction are visible when we turn to its ultimate consequences. If there were a chance to connect both parts, to base all causes on reasons, we would be conscious of everything. Apart from the fact that, from the evolutionary point of view, it would be too great an expenditure of energy, this hypothetical situation reveals how Davidson’s and Rorty’s opinions lay deeply rooted in language-centered thinking. To be able to base all causes on reasons means to convert all causes into beliefs, because beliefs are the unchallengeable expression of reasons. This would imply that all causes could be in principle transformable into language. This view, in fact, leads to the conclusion that to be rational means to be able to use language in the proper way. In other words, in the DavidsonRortyan picture, rationality and the proper use of language are one and the same. We can avoid these counterintuitive constructions if we depart from the way Sellars and Rorty went halfway through them. Together with them we are criticizing the idea of the cognitive content that we are supposedly given in immediacy. However, after the critique, we should follow Dewey’s solution. Dewey admitted that there is immediacy in our experience and that the immediacy is our starting point in the process of cognition. On the other hand, he asserted that in the immediacy, there are no small cognitive atoms conveyed into our mind during the process of sense perception (and thus providing us with the basics of true data). There are no “cognitive primitives” such as Bertrand Russell had supposed. Criticizing Russell’s theory as well as the idealistic theories, Dewey showed that all these theories rest on the fallacy that confuses “logical primitives” with “cognitive” or “psychological primitives”: Note that these simple data or elements are not original, psychologically or historically; they are logical primitives—that is, irreducible for purposes of inference. They are simply the most unambiguous and best defined objects of perception which can be secured to serve as signs. They are experimentally determined, with great art, precisely because the naturally given, the customary, objects in perception have been ambiguous or confused terms in inference. . . . Stated in current phraseology, “sensations” (i.e., qualities present to sense) are not the elements out of which perceptions are composed, constituted or constructed; they are the finest, most carefully discriminated objects of perception. We do not first perceive a single, thoroughly defined shade, a tint and hue of red; its perception is the last refinement of observation. Such things are the limits of perception, but they are final, not initial, limits. (Dewey MW8, 58)

The sentence “they are logical primitives—that is, irreducible for purposes of inference” expresses the idea that we design the “primitives” for the sake of our next

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inference(s). We infer in order to determine the situation in which we appear to be acting, and then, by the help of inferences, we construct subsequent behavior. Stating the same thing a little differently, we try to find warranted beliefs that help us know how to act satisfactorily in relation to the respective situation. As we can see, the actual aim here is not to find a true proposition, but to act satisfactorily. This is exactly the moment when inferentialists like Sellars, Brandom, or Rorty start to differ from Dewey. They wrote passages where they often seem to say that the most valuable thing is when a group of people, persuaded by our “giving reasons,” confirm the truthfulness of our thoughts or acts. In doing this, inferentialists put language in the first place because “giving reasons that can be accepted by other people” means using language “in the proper way.” The inferentialists occasionally admit that this is not the only thing in the game. Nonetheless, their criticism of classical pragmatism, directly or indirectly, says that it is the only game in town. We can easily recognize this tendency in Rorty’s criticism presented above. There he rebuked Dewey for his proneness to finding in psychology the bridge that links “facts” with “reasons.” This is, for Rorty, a sign of an unfortunate return to Kantian die Sache Selbst or to the myth of the given. As we have just seen, nothing is further from Dewey’s view than this idea. On the contrary, the real problem dwells in the fact that post-analytic philosophers and inferentialists are still rooted in the traditional concept of inquiry. According to Dewey, we form perceptual material, but we do it not in order to “copy” the true contours of the world (as realists want), not to make “world for us” (as transcendental idealists think we do), but in order to make the inferences that help us act better than we did before, that is, to solve a problem or settle a situation. The confirmation and acknowledgment of our fellows that comes after our giving reasons for our deeds are still important, but it is derivative and secondary. In the process of cognition, there is a deeper source for the confirmation and acknowledgement.These are our practical considerations, needs, and goals we need or want to achieve. And these considerations, needs, and goals are linguistic only in the secondary sense of the word. During the process, we use reasons to mold sensations and “facts” (as higher constructions of sensations) from perceptual material. There is no strict distinction between facts and reasons in Dewey’s vision because they are two different phases in one process of inquiry! Sensations and facts are just signals we create to help us to form judgments about practice. Note, however, that these signals or signs are completely embodied and their “linguistification,” and thus insertion into a language system, is a kind of second-order, derived manipulation (see Madzia 2013b and 2013c). The practical judgment then leads us to form the notion of a prospective action, with the goal of acting properly to address a situation. Rorty held, against Dewey, that the latter had wanted to “cross the line between physiology and sociology—between causal processes and self-conscious beliefs and inferences” (Rorty 2010, 79). Now we can finally state with some confidence that Rorty was wrong because physiologists as well as sociologists do, and have to do, the same thing Dewey described: they form facts experimentally that help us to behave more properly than before. Neither in physiology nor in sociology, can we differentiate causal processes from self-conscious beliefs and inferences because, both play a part in molding our judgments of practice.

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THE READY-TO-HAND AS THE CONTINUITY OF SITUATIONS Rorty’s obsession with language was apparent in all of his work and it distorted many passages that could have been very inspiring for us if he had not succumbed to this analytic malady. For example, his understanding of Heidegger emphasized the dark side of Heidegger—Heidegger’s stress on language that led him to the dangerous metaphors of “Call of Being” and the hearing of it. Here is a passage from Rorty’s essay “Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Reification of Language”: I interpret the pragmatism of the first Division of Being and Time—the insistence on the priority of the ready-to-hand, the Zuhanden, over the present-to-hand, the Vorhanden, and on the inseparability of Dasein from its projects and its language—as a first attempt to find a nonlogocentric, nonontotheological way of thinking of things. (Rorty 1991, 58)

Rorty simplified Heidegger’s Being and Time because the Heideggerian idea of “ready-to-hand” could not be easily identified with projects and even less with language. The reason is that “ready-to-hand” is an expression that tries to accentuate a functional, penetrating organism (human being) and its environment, that together create a specific phenomenological situation in which organism and environment discernibly blend into each other. This blended state enables humans (and probably higher animal species also) to assign meanings to the world and to themselves, and thus somehow understand both. This is what Heidegger named Dasein. Rorty never fully understood the nonlinguistic aspects of Dasein’s meaning-making structures. Projects and language are bound to the meanings of symbolic communication and thus to consciousness. These are regions in which we can easily differentiate ourselves from other humans and our surroundings, and that is the reason why we are prone to think in substances—that is, in ways that urge us to see separated objects everywhere. That is precisely what Heidegger wanted to overcome when he created the neologisms “ready-to-hand” and “present-to-hand” and privileged the first over the second one. If we identify Dasein with projects and language, we will return from the functionalist metaphysics (we can call it “ecological” or “nondualist” or “non-separated” or otherwise) back to the old metaphysics of separated objects and, in fact, to the old metaphysics of essentialism in post-analytic disguise. If we do this, we will again revive the idea that the “human being” is significantly detached from its environment. This will further lead us to picture the phenomenological nature of human life not just as one of the functions of human cognition, but as ontologically separated from causal knowledge. And again, such a picture will return us to the naïve idea that we can divide human cognition into completely different types of knowledge—the type of Hegelian “sociological” game in which we are only giving reasons to our fellows while in the empirical sciences (biological, physiological, physical, chemical, etc.); we are only finding causal successions.

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In his book Neither Brain, Nor Ghost, W. Teed Rockwell turns our attention to similarities and differences between Dewey and Heidegger: It was Dewey, not Heidegger, who first said that problems of modern epistemology arise from assuming that one can have Dasein without Being-in-the-world, although he said it in less technical language by saying that it is impossible to have experience without the body that interacts with an environment. Because Dewey did not have Heidegger’s suspicion of metaphysics, he was willing to draw a metaphysical conclusion from this phenomenological fact. Reality, Dewey claimed, was fundamentally continuity, and most philosophical problems arise from artificially dividing this continuity into absolute dualism. (Rockwell 2005, 180)

Rockwell’s reference to metaphysics is important here. We can see more easily now that we cannot avoid all metaphysics. If we refuse metaphysics altogether we will just overlook the fact that we are choosing another type of metaphysics. When Rorty did this, he unconsciously returned to the older—the early modern—metaphysics of separated object (as we coined it above). Really, it is the same view, just in post-analytic disguise. What, then, is metaphysics for us? What was metaphysics for Dewey? It is not what Aristotle and others thought that it was—philosophia prima—that is, knowledge that precedes any specialized knowledge of the world. It is rather a more general and experimental attempt to understand how people live in the world and how they gain knowledge there. The view is also fallibilist. Any single part of a general understanding can be thrown away or substituted for another when we realize that we are wrong in this or that respect. For example, when biologists, neurophysiologists, and neuropsychologists during the last decades of the twentieth century started to realize what physicists realized in its first half—that every existence, from an atom to a human society, is much more a platform of energies than substances with their essences—we had to abandon the old comfortable picture of the world which is compounded from separated objects. We have to take seriously the evolutionary paradigm and through it, we have to rethink every part of our world. Thus, there is no prima in philosophy, just the level of activity (behavior, knowing, action, etc.) that temporally transcends our theory and shows us where we are wrong. We should understand experimental metaphysics as a shifting tool that helps us make our world and life the most comprehensible. However, we cannot throw away the older understanding altogether. If we do, we will just choose unconsciously metaphysics of a different kind. In case of Rorty, he chose the inept and implicit metaphysics of post-analytical inferentialism. Rockwell’s book—along with other things—supports with evidence the claim that Dewey’s approach is the one that can best explain the many outcomes of today’s scientific research. Moreover, he is the one who helps us understand them in the most appropriate ways. This is because Dewey’s metaphysics offers us a completely different understanding of human life, human cognition, and the human place in the contemporary world, the understanding which is most appropriate to the state of contemporary knowledge.9

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RORTWEY Nevertheless, there are important points for which we should think of Rorty as the best source. One of them is his creativity, with his sense of language and its tropes, and his brilliant style. If we compare his “Dewey’s Metaphysics” with, for example, Dewey’s “The Logic of Judgments of Practice” we are able to see a big difference. While we must struggle through Dewey’s text and agonize over his ideas, Rorty’s text is clear and fluent, with a strange and powerfully easy architecture of thought that can help us transcend the borders, often too narrow, of our thoughts. Rorty grew up in a family of journalists where pen and paper, books and stylized talks were everyday commonplace. He learned to write. Dewey’s father was a tradesman and his mother mother a devout Calvinist. He did not learn the art of writing. If there could have been a new Frankenstein, name him “Rortwey,” we would have at our disposal excellently expressed (Rorty’s part), deep thinking that could reorient and reconstruct our fatigued and bewildered minds (Dewey’s part). Unfortunately, it cannot be. That is why we should read both giants of American philosophy together, and from Dewey, we should learn pervasive and transformative thinking, and from Rorty, the art of style, and from both, the nobility of the heart.

NOTES 1. Crucial for my understanding of Dewey was the fact I spent spring 2012 as a fellow researcher at the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University, in Carbondale, IL, USA, supported by the grant from the Fulbright Foundation (n. August 21, 2011). I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to thank the Fulbright Foundation for the support and my friends and colleagues—especially Larry Hickman, James Downhour and others from the Center—for their kind professional and personal help. 2. For the difference between the first and the second generation of cognitive scientists, see: (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 71–74). 3. For similarities between Dewey’s and the second generation of cognitive scientists’ work, see: (Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Johnson 2007); for similarities in Dewey’s, Heidegger’s, and the second generation of cognitive scientists’ work see: (Rockwell 2005); and for the phenomenological aspects in the second generation’s work see: (Thompson 2007). I encountered many sources about the work of the second generation cognitive scientists and the phenomenological biologists in the inspiring texts of Roman Madzia (also a contributor to this volume), especially in his work on Mead’s philosophy (Madzia 2013a, 2013b, and 2013c). I would like to add that his PhD dissertation is the best text on Mead in the Czech language and it bears comparison with the best ones on the same topic in other languages (see Madzia 2013d). 4. Hereinafter The Collected Works of John Dewey (Dewey 1992 [1967–1991) will be cited as MW = Middle Works, and LW = Later Works, followed by volume number and page number(s). 5. Gross mentions five reasons (see Gross 2008, 295–300), but for our argument it is enough to mention three of them and focus just on the third one.

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6. Dewey’s Kantian as well as Hegelian period was definitely over after his intensive cooperation with Mead in Chicago (see Madzia 2013b). We can track down the break with those philosophers in Dewey’s texts from 1895. The first of them is probably the series of his lectures Logic of Ethics (see Dewey 1998, esp. 40–44). When Rorty tried to connect Dewey’s work from 1880s with Experience and Nature (1925), as he did in his “Dewey’s Metaphysics,” he believed he could do so because he either did not know Dewey’s work properly or he disliked Dewey’s anti-linguistic approach to such a degree that he consciously ignored the “inaccuracy.” Many scholars have responded to Rorty’s errors in this essay. 7. For a detailed argument supporting this idea, see, for example, (Johnson 2007, esp. 111–206). 8. It is kind of ironic that Sellars’s essay “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” that we will contrast with Dewey’s “The Logic of Judgments of Practice,” is structurally very similar to Dewey’s essay. In both we can find the criticism of the empiricist metaphysics of the given, as well as the genealogical analysis of the rise of this metaphysics. There are only two differences. Dewey wrote the text forty-one years before Sellars wrote his. The second (and extremely important) divergence is that Dewey did not make whole experience linguistic to such degree as Sellars, Brandom, and Rorty did. On the other hand, I have to admit that there we can make out a difference between Sellars’s stance on the one side and Rorty’s and Brandom’s on the other. After Preston Stovall’s paper was presented at the Rorty conference in Opole (also included in this volume), where he differentiated between the Sellarsian picturing and the Rortyan mirroring, I started to wonder whether my reading of Sellars is not guided too much by Rorty’s optics. 9. It is worth noting a whole subchapter on Dewey in Rockwell’s book where the author introduces Dewey as one of the first representatives of the philosophical and psychological school of functionalism, that can also be considered the first manifestation of contemporary dynamic systems theory (see Rockwell 2005, 177–183).

REFERENCES Bernstein, Richard. 1992. The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/ Postmodernity. Cambridge: MIT Press. Davidson, Donald. 1982. “Paradoxes of Irrationality.” In Philosophical Essays on Freud. Edited by James Hopkin and Richard Wollheim, 289–305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dewey, John. 1992 [1967–1991]. The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Charlottesville: InteLex Corporation. ———. 1998. “Logic of Ethics.” In Principles of Instrumental Logic. Edited by Donald F. Koch, 31–100. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Frega, Roberto. 2010. “What Pragmatism Means by Public Reason.” Etica & Politica/Ethics & Politics 12, no. 1: 28–51. Gross, Neil. 2008. Richard Rorty: The Making of the American Philosopher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Johnson, Mark. 2007. The Meaning of the Body. Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.

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Madzia, Roman. 2013a. “Constructive Realism: In Defense of the Objective Reality of Perspectives.” In Human Affairs: Postdisciplinary Humanities & Social Sciences Quarterly 23, no. 4: forthcoming. ———. 2013b. “Chicago Pragmatism and the Extended Mind Theory: Mead and Dewey on the Nature of Cognition.” In European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 5, no. 1: 193–211. ———. 2013c. “Mead and Self-Embodiment: Imitation, Simulation and the Problem of Taking the Attitude of the Other.” In Potentiale einer pragmatischen Sozialtheorie. Beiträge anlässlich des 150. Geburtstags von George H. Mead. Edited by Frany Ofner and Frithjov Nungesser. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, forthcoming. ———. 2013d. “Konstrukce světa v jednání: mysl, inteligence a racionalita ve filozofii George H. Meada [Construction of the World in Action: Mind, Intelligence, and Rationality in the Philsophy of George H. Mead].” PhD Dissertation. Masarykova universita. https​://is​.muni​ .cz/a​uth/t​h/260​102/f​f _d/D​izert​ace.p​df. Rockwell, W. Teed. 2005. Neither Brain, Nor Ghost. A Nondualist Alternative to the Mind Brain Identity Theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Rorty, Richard. 1980. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991. Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers Volume 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2010. The Rorty Reader. Edited by Chris J. Voparil and Richard J. Bernstein. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2012. “Part 23—Richard Rorty.” Interview. Of Beauty and Consolation, Dutch TV—VPRO. Video, 1:07. http:​//www​.yout​ube.c​om/wa​tch?v​=bTSd​yxKyH​rU. Schorske, Carl Emil. 1997. “The New Rigorism in the Human Sciences: 1940–1960.” Daedalus 126: 289–309. Sellars, Wilfrid. 1963. Science, Perception, and Reality. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Šíp, Radim. 2008. Richard Rorty: Pragmatismus mezi jazykem zkušeností [Richard Rorty: Pragmatism between Language and Experience]. Brno: Paido. ———. 2011. “Rorty a pragmatistické pojetí problému veřejné versus soukromé” [“Rorty and Pragmatist Concept of the Problem of the Public and Private Split”]. Filozofia 66, no. 10: 981–991. ———. 2012. “Rortyho Zrcadlo konečně v českém střihu” [“Rorty’s Mirror in the Czech Jacket at Last”]. Filosofický časopis 60, no. 6: 849–867. Thompson, E. 2007. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology and the Science of Mind. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University.

14 Reconsidering Rorty’s Theory of Vocabularies On the Role and Scope of Persuasion in a Post-representationalist Culture1 Miklós Nyírő

INTRODUCTION According to Rorty’s self-characterization he is “a hedgehog who . . . really only has one idea: the need to get beyond representationalism, and thus into an intellectual world in which human beings are responsible only to each other” (Rorty 2006, 1). His “master idea,” anti-representationalism, demands—roughly—that we should stop attributing authority to the nonhuman Reality, and that we should stop bearing responsibility for the accuracy of our representations of that Reality. For representationalism—with its conceptual implications, such as the notion of a Reality having some intrinsic nature to which knowledge is supposed to correspond in order to grasp Truth in the sense of objective knowledge—there are at least two major drawbacks. The first is that ascribing authority to what is nonhuman may hinder the fostering of extant human purposes—it sets limits to what human beings can actually conceive to do, what “realistic” purposes and possibilities they might project. And the second is that representationalism tends to rank our various linguistic practices according to the accuracy of their representations, and thereby leads us to neglect the role such strategies may indeed play in changing our purposes. Accordingly, among the three major lines of argumentation Rorty developed against representationalism (For a concise presentation of them, see Rorty 2000c, 185), one finds that they lead to “evil consequences,” namely, to “attempts to divide culture into the good fact-finding parts and the less good non-fact-finding parts, the ‘objective knowledge’ part and the other part” (Rorty 2000c, 185), resulting in a view of culture in which a central role is ascribed to the sciences, while the rest of culture is pushed to the periphery. 197

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As opposing that result, Rorty’s anti-representationalist view of culture rests on the claim that our linguistic practices are not more or less accurate representations of our world, but rather, merely different descriptive strategies to cope with our environment—linguistic tools, namely, vocabularies, used for different purposes we choose. One of Rorty’s major conceptual tools for supporting his version of antirepresentationalism is his particular manner of distinguishing between the orders of causation and of justification. As he claims, “If we have causal relations . . . holding between the World and the Self [as a language user], as well as relations of justification (‘being a reason for’) internal to the Self’s network of beliefs and desires [and by extension, internal to the network of a community of language users], we do not need any further relations to explain how the Self gets in touch with World, and conversely” (Rorty 1991c, 120). Such a distinction is based on the observation that causation is a relation void of norms, whereas our various linguistic descriptions of causal relations are in every case norm governed. This leads to the view that our linguistic practices stand solely in a causal relation to their environment—in the sense, roughly, that beliefs are like abbreviations for a (practically almost never reproducible) long line of causal relations—and conversely, that those causal relations have no normative bearings on our linguistic practices, whatsoever—“only a belief can justify another belief.” Accordingly, our vocabularies should be regarded as tools, and that makes room, on Rorty’s account, for a discursive pluralism regarding both the purposes and assessments of vocabularies—he in fact claims that they should be treated “evenhandedly” (Rorty 1991c, 113, 116). According to the argument of one critic, however, Rorty has been compelled to acknowledge certain shortcomings in his way of projecting anti-representationalism, more specifically, in the conclusions he drew from his causation-justification distinction (For more, see Ramberg 2000). Namely, Ramberg’s Davidsonian critique of Rorty defends the distinctiveness of the so-called vocabulary of the mental (as opposed to the various causal-explanatory vocabularies), a distinctiveness which contradicts Rorty’s stance. The curious thing about this critique is that—while Rorty felt compelled to agree with it, which is a very rare case, to be sure—nowhere in his subsequent writings did he develop in more detail any of its possible implications. In what follows, my overall thesis is that Ramberg’s critique—which turns Rorty against Rorty, and points beyond him in behalf of Rorty’s own initiatives, so to speak—is a highly consequential one. Therefore, and in order to explore a dimension opened up by Rorty, yet, one that points beyond his views, I will try to develop questions addressing two major issues. One of them pertains to the vision Rorty promotes about culture as a whole—captured in his notion of “literary culture”—and the second pertains to the role and scope of persuasion within a post-representationalist culture. In developing these questions, my central point is that the acknowledgment of the distinctiveness of mental vocabulary has to have far reaching implications regarding both issues. As to the view of culture, the privileged status of the mental vocabulary implies the need of revising Rorty’s “new unity of science” (For more, see Warnke 1987), I claim. In turn, my second claim is that in such a revised view of a post-representationalist culture, one must ascribe a scope to

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persuasion which is wider than the one Rorty maintains. Rorty of course recognizes the practical limits of argumentation and the role of persuasion in cultural progress (think of “redescription” as the chief means, in his eyes, of doing philosophy), and therefore he makes a strong case for the role of persuasion in philosophy and beyond—he is in fact one of the most prominent recent advocates of rhetoric. However, what I will try to show is that in spite of his own contrary hopes, his version of anti-representationalism restricts, or at least comes short of highlighting, the scope to be attributed to persuasion in a post-ontological, post-representationalist culture. I do that by offering an analysis of the differences between the circularity of argumentation and that of persuasion, and by relating the results to the classification of discourses developed by Rorty, namely, relating to the normal and abnormal forms of discourse conducted in either the mental or the causal vocabularies, and in turn, in the humanities or the sciences. I hope to show that the humanities, when compared to the sciences of nature, stand in a closer continuity with the mental vocabulary of our ordinary languages, and also that persuasion can be associated more with descriptions in terms of the mental vocabulary than with those in terms of any of the causal-physical ones. Assuming the acknowledgment of the distinctiveness of mental vocabulary, these results should prove both that the humanities must be recognized as privileged compared to the sciences, and also that a more fundamental role must be attributed to persuasion in culture than it would have without such an acknowledgment. The structure of my chapter is the following. Ramberg’s criticism of Rorty stands in the center of my argument—everything I try to develop later on rests on his Davidsonian defense of the privileged status of mental vocabulary. In order to highlight the merits of this post-ontological critique, however, first I briefly dwell on a widely practiced type of criticism leveled against Rorty (the second section). There I pinpoint a basic assumption behind the whole of his anti-representationalist agenda (according to which large-scale cultural progress can be achieved by abandoning inherited vocabularies), and I argue that it is in virtue of this assumption that his thought is immune from all kinds of ontologically and epistemologically motivated critiques (the ones reluctant to accept it). The chief merit of Ramberg’s critique— which I reconstruct in the third part—is that he takes Rorty seriously on that point. In order to clarify the background of those shortcomings in Rorty’s approach which Ramberg points out, in the following section I reconsider Rorty’s causation-justification distinction. Finally, in the last part of my chapter, I develop those arguments, which I have just sketched, about the prospects for the role and scope of persuasion in a post-representationalist culture.

WHY IS RORTY’S MASTER IDEA IMMUNE FROM A CERTAIN TYPE OF CRITICISM? Rorty’s version of anti-representationalism has been a target of innumerable critiques. In order to see why Rorty cannot (for the most part) agree with them, let us

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look at a couple of short examples. One may wonder, for example, whether or not Rorty’s causation-justification distinction incorporates a metaphysical claim—the claim that our relation to Reality is purely and exclusively causal because mindindependent Reality is itself an order of causation. However, to the consideration that this distinction implies a dilemma, namely, that either “the causal structure of the world is independent of us, hence a feature of the world in itself” or “causal relations are somehow imposed on the world by us” (Backmann et al. 2005, 68–69). Rorty replies: “The choice between these two alternatives is one that we need not bother to make, since nothing can possibly turn on which alternative is chosen. Nobody would do anything different if they took one view rather than the other” (Rorty 2005b, 137). Again, when Rorty’s critics try to distinguish between a strong and a weak sense of naturalism—to the effect that strong naturalism acknowledges only an observer perspective (as it is exemplified in Rortyan behaviorism) and excludes the participant (mental or intentional) perspective, whereas weak naturalism includes the participant perspective of our ordinary life experience as well—and on that ground they regard Rorty’s “non-reductive physicalism” as a naturalism in the strong sense, and therefore accuse it of being reductive (Karakuş and Vieth 2005, esp. 84–88), Rorty’s plain and straightforward response is the following: I agree with [the authors] that the term “epistemological behaviorism” is vague and misleading, and I now regret that I ever used either it or the term “physicalism” as a name for a position that I wished to hold. In my more resent writings, I have been urging that there is no need to have any view about what “really” exists—no need to have an ontology. . . . So I have stopped calling myself a “naturalist.” (Rorty 2005a, 139)

Now, it is not some kind of arrogance or lack of argument on Rorty’s side, which makes him reply in such a dismissive manner. Rather, he is following a basic idea of his that permeates his whole life-work, from beginning to end—one that is well known and easily “understood,” yet, hard to take to heart. This idea has for the first time been developed by Rorty as a response to the traditional mind-body problem, in his so-called “eliminative materialism” (Rorty 1970). There his claim is that certain objects—in this case, the mind—are objects that “exist” insofar as a certain vocabulary is being used. For, if the mind is something which is defined by how we know about it—namely, by “perfect accessibility,” as Descartes claims it to be the case—then the mind is an entity insofar as a special kind of language game—one that ascribes authority to first person singular predicates—is being acknowledged. As Brandom puts it, “Having minds . . . is a function of speaking a kind of vocabulary that incorporates a certain sort of epistemic authority structure” (Brandom 2000, 157–158). Thus, certain objects talked about owe their linguistically conceived “existence” to the functioning of certain vocabularies. An extended version of the same idea appears already on the very first page of the Preface to Rorty’s Mirror of Nature, where he says in general that “a ‘philosophical problem’ [is] a product of the unconscious adoption of assumptions built

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into the vocabulary in which the problem was stated—assumptions which were to be questioned before the problem itself was taken seriously” (Rorty 1979, xi). The same idea surfaces again—in a more explicit form—in the Contingency book, where Rorty describes intellectual history as the history of metaphors—metaphors whereby inherited problems are dissolved rather than solved (Rorty 1989, 16–22). A more recent formulation of it is the following: “at many points in the history of philosophy, science, and politics, . . . progress has been made by abandoning the terms in which an apparently irresolvable debate was being conducted” (My emphasis: Rorty 2005b, 137).2 There can be no doubt that it is the very same idea that eventually broadens into Rorty’s notion of “philosophy as cultural politics” (which is the title of his posthumously published collected papers [Rorty 2007a]). Rorty’s anti-representationalist program rests on such an assumption: just as “‘consciousness’ is an artifact of Cartesian philosophy in the same way that God is an artifact of early cosmology” (Rorty 2007b, 14), most of our traditional philosophical concepts, such as mind-independent Reality having an intrinsic nature, Truth, correspondence, objectivity, etc., are for Rorty artifacts of a representationalist paradigm of philosophical inquiry—artifacts simply to be abandoned. To that extent, the ontologically epistemologically motivated critiques of Rorty’s endeavor simply miss the point. For what he promotes is precisely a post-ontological, post-epistemological culture—and a pragmatism without ontology.

RAMBERG’S DAVIDSONIAN CRITIQUE OF RORTY It is at this point where Bjørn Ramberg’s insistence on the philosophical significance of developing a “post-ontological philosophy of mind” (Ramberg 2000) comes to play an important role. For his criticism of Rorty comes from the other direction, so to speak, when he demands that an investigation into the features of different vocabularies be considered as a proper subject matter of post-ontological pragmatic philosophy, and by the same token, that one should not conceive the genre of philosophy as identifiable with, and thereby being restricted to—as Rorty tends to do—a metaphysically, ontologically, or epistemologically motivated inquiry. The merit of Ramberg’s reassessment of Davidson’s certain views, and of his critique of Rorty based on that, lies in the fact that he meanwhile fully acknowledges Rorty’s metaphor of vocabularies-as-tools, and he shows just on what points, and also, why, Rorty comes short of the implications of his own initiatives. Namely, Rorty has criticized Davidson for attributing philosophical significance to the concept of truth, that is, for regarding a “theory for a natural language as a truth-theory for that language rather than simply as a way of predicting regularities in the behavior of speakers of that language,” and again, for ascribing special philosophical importance to the distinction between the mental and the physical, that is to say, for claiming that “the intentional stance is special, in a way that the biological stance, the chemical stance, etc., are not” (Rorty 2000a, 370). The point of Rorty’s criticism is that a commitment to ontology as a way for ranking our

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different vocabularies should be abandoned—which is welcomed by the pragmatist Ramberg—and it is precisely this point which Rorty wants to support with the introduction of his causation-justification distinction. But from the requirement of leaving ontology alone Rorty proceeds to go so far as to claim that “a given event can be described equally well in physiological and psychological, nonintentional and intentional, terms” (Rorty 1991c, 114), that “our causal relations with the world are the same when described in physicalist as in mentalistic terms” (Rorty 2005a, 140), and that an anti-representationalist account such as the “Davidsonian philosophy of mind and language enables us to treat both physics and poetry evenhandedly” (Rorty 1991c, 113). For—Rorty argues—“if you drop the idea that some of our sentences are distinguished by such correspondence [to reality], it seems natural to say, as Dewey did, that all our idioms are tools for coping with the world. This means— he claims—that there can be no philosophical interest in reducing one idiom to another” (Rorty 2000d, quoted by Ramberg 2000, 354). As opposed to that, Davidson sticks to the observation that the switch from the vocabulary of the mental to that of any of the natural sciences represents a certain change in subject, whereas the switch between the vocabularies of any two special sciences does not. As he explains: “We would not be changing the subject if we were to drop the concept of elasticity in favor of a specification of the microstructure of the materials in the airplane wing that cause it to return to its original shape when exposed to certain forces. Mental concepts and explanations are not like this” (Davidson 2001b, 216). If so, then the two sets of vocabularies, that of the mental and of the special sciences, must be distinct. But on Davidson’s account—as Ramberg points it out—it is neither causality, nor normativity, and not even the holism of the mentalist vocabulary, nor its irreducibility, that allow us to draw a sharp line between the vocabularies of the various natural sciences and that of the mental. It is rather the distinctive manner in which norms function and give shape to that vocabulary, “and specifically . . . the way that those norms are supported and held in place by a community of interpreters, [by] a plurality of creatures engaged in the project of describing their world and interpreting each other’s description of it” (My emphasis: Ramberg 2000, 358), on which the distinctiveness and privileged status of the vocabulary of mental depends. Now, this description of Ramberg’s is a restating of Davidson’s notion of triangulation, according to which the basic interpersonal situation is “one that involves two or more creatures simultaneously in interaction with each other and with the world they share” (Davidson 2001a, 128). Within the frames of such a triangulation, norms and standards of describing our environment as physical can be achieved— Davidson maintains—through agreement with others. But the norms and standards governing a mentalist vocabulary, the ones which could be used to interpret the thoughts of one another, cannot be achieved through such an agreement with others, for that—as he says—“sends us back to the very process of interpretation on which all agreement depends” (Davidson 2001b, 218). Accordingly, the normativity invoked in the descriptions we use for the purposes of prediction and explanation is different in kind from the normativity invoked in the vocabulary of the mental—and

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we, in fact, do not use the latter vocabulary for the sole purpose of predicting and controlling manipulable objects. One of Davidson’s points, then, is that each and every description is dependent on norms which govern the procedure of presenting something as a kind of thing and not as some other kind, and that those norms are being achieved in the process of triangulation between language users and their environment. But the very process of such a linguistic triangulation becomes possible only on the ground of some other kind of normative demands—those expressed in Davidson’s “principle of charity”— demands that organisms should meet beforehand in order to become language users at all. It is the demand that one engages at all in linguistic triangulation, in the process of the agents’ mutual describing of their shared environment and also one another’s descriptions of it, which also entails that one recognizes other beings as observers of norms. Thus, the primary normativity inherent in any language use forms a “takenfor-granted background of purposive—and hence normatively describable—behavior” (Ramberg 2000, 362), a more or less tacit normative background at work in the vocabulary of the mental, one that is inescapable—and therefore not a matter of subjective choice, as Ramberg emphasizes it—for language users. But on Davidson’s account such an engagement in linguistic triangulation immediately implies another normative element, too, namely, the contrast between truth and error. In Ramberg’s rendering of it, it is the possibility of recognizing error— error in the sense of our descriptions’ inappropriateness with regard to purpose— that accounts for our ability to venture other descriptions. And since this ability of ours is at the same time an “ability to reprogram our causal dispositions, [whereby] we affect how we engage with the world, and thus also the world” (Ramberg 2000, 363), it is for that reason that the appropriateness or inappropriateness, the truth or error of our utterances are first rate concerns for us. To that extent, our interest in using the vocabulary of the mental exceeds the interest in mere prediction and control, and includes—as Ramberg puts it—“our revealing the kinds of traits that allow us to recognize ourselves in what we are talking about, and to bring to bear all those complicated considerations that we gesture at with the moral notion of a person” (Ramberg 2000, 366). In other words, the usage of a mentalist vocabulary—together with the notions of truth and error implied by it—matters to us, above all, because we regard ourselves as persons, as moral agents, who deserve to be recognized as such and not merely as predictable organisms.

RECONSIDERING RORTY’S CAUSATION-JUSTIFICATION DISTINCTION The above sketched summary obviously cannot convey the detailed argument developed by Ramberg in his article. For our purposes it is enough to note here, however, that Rorty has been convinced by it and felt compelled to acknowledge certain difficulties regarding some of his former views—difficulties mainly issuing from his causation-justification distinction. He explicitly acknowledged, namely,

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that the distinctiveness of the mental vocabulary had to be maintained even in the frames of a post-ontological pragmatism, and also that he had to give up both, his slogan “that the notion of ‘getting things right’ must be abandoned,” and the view according to which “‘true of’ and ‘refers to’ are not word-world relations” (Rorty 2000a, 375). But curiously enough, nowhere in his writings—neither in his response to Ramberg nor in his subsequent publications—has Rorty discussed in more detail the consequences which may follow from such a concession. One way of charting the mentioned difficulties is to juxtapose Rorty’s causationjustification distinction to Davidson’s metaphor of triangulation. On Davidson’s view norms are “hovering over the whole process of triangulation” (as Rorty himself puts it: Rorty 2000a, 376), whereas in Rorty’s distinction norms are “exclusively intravocabulary” (as Brandom observes: Brandom 2000b, 160). This means that Rorty’s distinction cuts through triangulation by a line which relegates causation and normativity into two opposite sides of that line. He cuts out the corner of the nonlinguistic world from the causally and linguistically mediated triangular interaction, sets intersubjective communication against the world, and regards the relation between the world and the agents as a purely causal, vocabulary-indifferent one. This is what Habermas epitomized as a program urging that “‘being in touch with reality’ has to be translated into ‘being in touch with a human community’” (quoted by Rorty 2000b, 56). But vocabularies are not reality-indifferent tools. As Ramberg rightly observes, we do have a capacity to recognize error (error in the pragmatic sense of our descriptions’ inappropriateness with regard to purpose), and therefore we do have a way to recognize the resistance of our environment to certain descriptions of it. Such a resistance is a kind of “normative” feedback—like an invitation to venture redescription—a feedback we need to incorporate into our linguistic strategies in order to be successful. Thus, we can agree with Rorty when he says that “I see nonhuman things as resisting us, but not as responding to us—getting in our way, but not providing information about themselves to us” (Rorty 2005c, 145). Yet, it does not follow that the causal relations between language users and their environment would be entirely normless. Moreover, although the only word-world relation Rorty formerly acknowledged was that of causation—and that in the sole sense that the world affects us causally to adopt certain beliefs—as opposed to the exclusiveness of the latter one should acknowledge our capacity for affecting the world causally, and also the fact that by appropriating new linguistic practices we are able to change the manner in which we causally interact with the world. Hence, again, from Rorty’s observation just quoted it does not follow that the causal relations between language users and their environment would be entirely indifferent to which of the vocabularies they use. These considerations prompt us to more closely clarify the Rortyan split between causation and justification. To begin with, two observations are apposite here. First, the concept of causation excludes, by definition, every sense of normativity—the relation between cause and effect is void of norms. To that extent, it makes good sense to regard the order of normless causation and that of norm-governed

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justification as separate. Second, one has to differentiate between causation as a feature of the relation between language users and the rest of the world, and causation as an explanatory means of certain vocabularies used for describing our environment as physical. As to the latter case, justification in terms of any of the causal-explanatory vocabularies is no less norm-governed than that in terms of a mental vocabulary, simply because each and every linguistic practice is norm-governed (although in differing senses with regard to the kinds of norms functioning in them, as we have seen). In the former case, where the relation between language users and their environment is conceived as being causal, one must make a further distinction. For a pure causal relation can only be attributed to that between the body of language users and their environment, but not to the relation between language users as such and their environment, because as language users they cannot have any other access to their environment than norm-governed ones. (I would add that the claim according to which our body stands in a causal relationship with the world should not be understood as a metaphysical one—as claiming that the world in itself consists of causal relations—but rather, it is to be taken in a pragmatic sense: it is practically wise to believe that our environment, say, a car, is able to crash us, causally.) Here we arrive at the crucial point. For it is the question of the relation of language users as such to their environment which proves to be the most problematic one, when read in the light of Rorty’s causation-justification distinction. It is so because the Rortyan split implies, or at least gives the impression, that—since causal relations are normless, whereas justificatory processes are norm-governed—causation and justification exclude one another. In other words, that split may easily lead us to think that just because causation is void of norms, norm-governed justification must be void of causation. But that impression is false. For one of the things the Davidsonian notion of linguistic triangulation rightly suggests is that no linguistic exchange is to be conceived as being entirely detached from causal interactions with the nonlinguistic environment. The basic interpersonal situation according to Davidson is one—as quoted above—“that involves two or more creatures simultaneously in interaction with each other and with the world they share.” And even if in certain cases the justificatory process is remote to and has no immediate bearing on the environment, causal interactions with the world remain part and parcel of that process. (To be sure, Davidson does not make it clear how exactly normative and causal relations interact with one another. Yet, his formula does acknowledge—rightly, on a pragmatic stance—such an interaction.) Accordingly, and sometimes probably in spite of Rorty’s rhetoric— one should not read Rorty’s causation-justification distinction as saying that the linguistically mediated process of justification is a purely linguistic, purely intravocabulary (pace Brandom), purely normative matter.3 Rather, it is to be read as saying that the only manner in which the world is able to affect us is to exert non-normative, causal effects on us, whereas beliefs can be justified only in a norm-governed process always already comprehending causal relations to the world as well. When taken in a strict sense, then, the distinction between causation and justification is an unhappy one. Taken in a loose sense, it is a pregnant distinction—one that supports the desired

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dismissal of a commitment to ontology—but at the same time a misleading one, for it suggests that justification is remote from causation, that the different linguistic practices are on a par with one another, and especially insofar as it obscures the task of inquiring into the features of different vocabularies.

PROSPECTS ON THE ROLE AND SCOPE OF PERSUASION IN A POST-REPRESENTATIONALIST CULTURE In what follows, I will try to draw some conclusions from our results. They pertain to two major issues. The first is Rorty’s vision about culture as a whole, which may be questioned if one acknowledges, unlike Rorty (previously), the distinctiveness of mental vocabulary. The second issue is the case Rorty makes for persuasion, for at stake is that a revised view on culture may affect our esteem of the role and scope of persuasion. According to Rorty’s pragmatist version of anti-representationalism, the differences between vocabularies are not to be accounted for in terms of accuracy in representing reality, but rather, they are due to the differences between the purposes those vocabularies are good for. No one would argue that certain vocabularies are better than others in predicting occurrences within our environment, whereas certain other vocabularies are better than others for the purpose, say, of writing witty verse. However, the difficulty arises when Rorty sticks to his further claim that “these purposes are . . . on a par,” and therefore the various vocabularies should be treated “evenhandedly” (Rorty 1991c, 116, 113). It is this view that leads him to the notion of “a culture without a center” (Rorty 1993)4 a notion based on the conviction that, first, commitment to ontology has to be dismissed—and this is what the causationjustification distinction is supposed to implement—and second, if we drop the commitment to ontology as a way for ranking our different linguistic practices, no measure for ranking remains. As opposed to that, there are good reasons for saying—as we have seen—that the vocabulary of the mental is a distinctive, privileged one. It is such neither for the reason that the causal-explanatory vocabularies would be reducible to it (for they are obviously not), nor because this distinctiveness would be due to some alleged ontological priority of the mental over against the physical (for all ontological claims are being dismissed). Rather, the vocabulary of the mental is distinctive because it is the one in which the primary form of linguistic triangulation takes place—without it no language use whatsoever could be thought of—it is governed by a basic and tacit kind of normativity which is inescapable for languages users and functions prior to the development of any of the other norms governing other kinds of vocabularies, and above all, because that kind of normativity entails the capacity to recognize others as persons—the ability of ascribing rights and responsibilities, that is, agency, to other organisms—a recognition which is a primary good for us, for our perception of who we, as moral agents, are.

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There is a rank, then, between our various vocabularies—a post-ontological one, to be sure—a rank pertaining to the purposes our vocabularies may serve, and this fact must be reflected in the view one entertains about culture. But Rorty, in his effort to foster the overcoming of the traditional ontological and epistemological “obsession” of our culture, tries to do away with inherited distinctions between different branches of knowledge claims—he tries to introduce what Warnke has coined as “Rorty’s new unity of science” (Warnke 1987, 141–146). Such a “new unity” has of course nothing to do with the positivist notion of unitary science according to which the methodological sciences are the exemplary ones for all other areas of knowledge. Rather, the underlying idea behind Rorty’s notion is thoroughly pragmatic. It is not a difference regarding method, and not even one regarding differences in subject matter, which separates the sciences of nature from the sciences of man in his eyes. The “distinction between ‘the logic of the scientific method’ . . . and the various historical factors that influence theory-choice at a given stage of inquiry . . . is just the distinction that . . . has come to seem more and more dubious,” he writes (Rorty 1991d, 65). And the notion that the subject matter of the human and the natural sciences would differ in kind, that “the universe is made up of two kinds of things,” is no less untenable: it is a “bad old metaphysical notion” according to him (Rorty 1979, 351). For on Rorty’s pragmatic account any science—be it that of nature, or of man—and in fact any discourse—be it scientific, poetic, or religious, and so on—can be both: (i) normal and commensurable, founded by an epistemology, whenever a paradigm is firmly in place, or (ii) abnormal and incommensurable, dealt with in a hermeneutics, whenever it has no settled norms of inquiry (Compare with: Rorty 1979, 316–321). In other words, all the various kinds of knowledge and discourse can be redescribed in terms of familiarity: the sufficiency or insufficiency of our familiar vocabularies in facing and coping successfully with diverse phenomena. Rorty here obviously generalizes Kuhn’s notion of incommensurability, and makes the impression that the difference between the sciences of nature and the sciences of man is basically exhausted by their contingent features: by the fact that we happen to be in the happy situation that the narratives of the West developed about nature are much more commensurable than the narratives historically developed about man. That much is claimed in the Mirror: “(at least in the West) . . . physics gives us a good background against which to tell our stories of historical change. [But the] acceptance of this genre of [physical] world-story . . . is not a choice which could obtain . . . metaphysical guarantees” (Rorty 1979, 344–345).5 Rorty is right in dismissing “metaphysical guarantees,” I would suggest, just as much as he is right in combating the scientistic view that the sciences of nature must have a privileged status in culture, in urging an anti-representationalist paradigm shift, in aligning philosophy with literature rather than modeling it on the muster of science, in invoking metaphor and persuasion rather than literal meaning and dry logical argumentation as a means for moral and political progress, and in many other of his efforts supporting “a new enlightenment.” But the obvious conclusion to be drawn from Ramberg’s critique is that Rorty is wrong when he thinks “of the entire culture, from physics to poetry, as a single, continuous, seamless activity . . .

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doing much the same sort of problem-solving across the whole spectrum” (Rorty 1991d, 76), and when he wishes for a time when “the term ‘science,’ and thus the oppositions between the humanities, the arts, and the sciences, might gradually fade away” (Rorty 1991e, 44). For in drawing that conclusion, he regards our various descriptions of the world, our disciplines, vocabularies, linguistic practices, as being on a par with one another. As opposed to that, what Ramberg’s critique suggests, to repeat it, is that there is a clear difference, and more importantly, a rank, between the purposes of causalexplanatory vocabularies and the vocabulary of the mental. But such a critique implies, furthermore, that there must be a clear difference in rank between the humanities and the sciences as well. For compared to the latter the humanities are different not only in the sense that the they are concerned with ends rather than means, as opposed to the sciences’ ability to predict and enable control of the world to some extent. Rather, they are also different in the sense that the humanities, when compared to the sciences of nature, stand in a closer continuity with the mental vocabulary of ordinary languages—they are conducted on that vocabulary, they cultivate it in a disciplined manner, and they do have, unlike the sciences, a direct and morally politically significant impact on our everyday public and private usage of language. For these reasons, they must be regarded as deserving a privileged status, especially so in the post-representationalist culture envisioned by Rorty. What we need is an elaborate vision of culture in which such a privilege of the humanities is recognized. In the remainder of this chapter I would like to address another aspect of Ramberg’s criticism, one that touches upon a central issue of Rorty’s thought that we mentioned in the introduction: on the role and scope of persuasion in culture. For the historicist Rorty, who dismisses the notion of a permanent, neutral framework of inquiry and refuses any notion of rationality involving universal validity, argumentation is unsurpassably circular. It is appropriate and might be successful in a normal, commensurable discourse, but it is useless in an abnormal, incommensurable one where there are no settled norms governing the discursive exchange. One way to express this “practical problem about the limitations of argument,” as Rorty calls it, is to say that “we cannot justify our beliefs . . . to everybody, but only to those whose beliefs overlap ours to some appropriate extent” (Rorty 1991f, 31, n. 13). However, if argumentation may have only a limited role, persuasion comes to the fore as a means of justification. Rorty in fact makes extensive use of persuasion—especially in his political writings, but also in his interpretations of the work of other philosophers and in his numerous attempts at narrating the history of philosophy. But he also makes a strong case for the decisive role of persuasion (both in philosophy and beyond) by introducing a terminological apparatus or conceptual “infrastructure” in support of it. Just to name a few: since Rorty wants to attribute absolute contingency to our linguistic practices in order to make room for a cultural paradigm shift and moralpolitical progress,4 he conceives them neither as representations of the world, nor as something made true by the world. This aspect of his anti-representationalism

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is supported by his emphasis laid on anti-essentialism and on an unsurpassable context-dependency, according to which “there is no way to divide things up into those which are what they are independent of context and those which are contextdependent” (Rorty 1991a, 98). The world has no intrinsic nature to be gotten right, at least not for us. As Rorty’s discussed causation-justification distinction suggests, reality by itself cannot justify our beliefs, and our justified beliefs can be such only in a particular web of other beliefs. Hence, not only any argumentation, but also every justificatory process is a circular matter: “nothing counts as justification unless by reference to what we already accept, . . . there is no way to get outside our beliefs and our language so as to find some test other than coherence” (Rorty 1979, 178). For the purpose of giving expression to such an overall involvement in our historicity, Rorty takes over Derrida’s term of ethnocentrism, whereby he refers to “an inescapable condition—roughly synonymous with ‘human finitude’” (Rorty 1991b, 15), a condition manifest—among others—in the fact that humans are raised and socialized in some particular traditions. Rorty’s notorious notion of irony, again, is but an expression of the acknowledgment of such a contingency of our beliefs. But if all of our validity claims are circular and historically contingent, justification may have no other measure than that of unforced intersubjective agreement, which is a matter of both, argumentation and persuasion.6 Now, these two basic modes of justification, namely argumentation and persuasion, logic and rhetoric, are equally circular on Rorty’s account. In the case of argumentation, however, the circularity refers to some norms governing the process, whereas in the case of rhetorical persuasion the circularity refers to some “good.” Or one may say, conversely, that justification in general has to do with the “good.” But then the “good” in argumentation is exhausted by the observance of norms, norms which had already been accepted. As opposed to that, the “good” in persuasion, about which one wants to persuade the other, is something that has not been previously accepted by the other. Strictly speaking, the “good” of persuasion is never a norm. Yet, it is precisely such a “good” that may become, when recognized and observed, an accepted norm. Rorty calls that “good” around which justification revolves “purpose.” And in the case of persuasion he observes: “what excites and convinces is a function of the needs and purposes of those who are being excited and convinced” (Rorty 1999, 144). Thus, the success of the art of persuasion depends on the outcome of a conflict between purposes—purposes previously envisaged by the listeners and those offered to them by the speaker (or author). Already familiar purposes will be indifferent to the listeners: they either have already accepted them or have already refused to accept them. In either case, the listener will not be likely to change her mind. Only new purposes are able to capture the attention, or better, the imagination of the audience, to provoke the pondering which may eventually lead to a change of its purposes. But according to Rorty’s powerful thesis not only the objects talked about and the concepts referring to them are vocabulary-dependent, but also—and above all—the purposes one may have. Only new and original linguistic practices offer new purposes. For a “new vocabulary makes possible, for the first time, a formulation of its

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own purpose. It is a tool for doing something which could not have been envisaged prior to the development of a particular set of descriptions, those which it itself helps to provide” (Rorty 1989, 13). It is for that reason that Rorty assigns a central role to “redescription” in his overall philosophy, what is more, he demands that it be elevated to the status of “method” in practicing “good philosophy.” The method, more specifically, “is to redescribe lots and lots of things in new ways, until you have created a pattern of linguistic behavior which will tempt the rising generation to adopt it, thereby causing them to look for appropriate new forms of nonlinguistic behavior, for example, the adoption of new scientific equipment or new social institutions” (Rorty 1989, 9). Redescription is a vehicle for change, in fact, it is the chief means of persuasion. Furthermore, Rorty’s “method” of redescription is closely related to that basic idea of his which we discussed earlier as the one permeating his whole life-work, to the idea that “change of vocabulary . . . brings with it a change in the objects talked about,” as Brandom summarizes the point (Brandom 2000, 158). For redescription does not try to solve inherited problems by arguments which are developed in the very vocabulary those problems were posed—which is an unfruitful effort, insofar as problems (at least in the field of philosophy and the like) are not so much realitydependent, but rather, vocabulary-dependent, as Rorty’s thesis claims. Rather, redescription tries to dissolve those problems precisely by reformulating them, and thereby to get beyond not only those problems, but beyond the vocabulary generating them, to a new one. Redescription, as the chief means of persuasion, is at the same time the main philosophical tool for large-scale cultural progress. But more specifically what can be said about the scope of persuasion in culture as a whole, beyond philosophy and closely related areas? Persuasion—as we have seen—has to do with so-called abnormal discourses. On Rorty’s account, the usage of both types of vocabularies, the causal and the mental, can be either normal or abnormal. By the same token, both the natural sciences and the humanities can be conducted in both, normal and abnormal forms. Therefore, it seems that persuasion can play an equal role in both branches of knowledge. Yet, we have good reasons to think that persuasion can be associated more with descriptions in terms of the mental vocabulary than with those in terms of any of the causal-physical ones. The first is that—as Rorty said—“physics gives us a good background against which to tell our stories of historical change” (Rorty 1979, 345). If the narratives given about nature are much more commensurable (at least in the West) than the narratives historically developed about man, and since persuasion has its primary role in abnormal discourse, then it has the most to do with the humanities. Our second reason for holding that persuasion has more to do with mental vocabulary than with causal ones is the following. We have seen that mental vocabulary is privileged, when compared to causal vocabularies, and among the reasons is that the usage of the latter ones always presupposes the functioning of the former. Now, the mental vocabulary is at the same time a “vocabulary of agency” (Ramberg 2000), for it implies that the parties participating in the linguistic exchange recognize one another as persons. The question is, whether or not any form, normal or abnormal,

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of the usage of a causal vocabulary can be regarded as a “vocabulary of agency.” One may note that the usage of a causal vocabulary, even in its normal form, also presupposes that one recognizes the other as an agent who is able to observe the norms governing their shared vocabulary. But it does so only to that extent. From that we may infer that normal discourse as such, no matter in which types of the vocabularies it is conducted, recognizes agency only in a restricted sense. As opposed to that, the usage of any of the vocabularies, when conducted in abnormal form, seems to recognize the agency of others in its full capacity of choosing between norms. Our claim here is, then, that the mere observance of norms is a restricted function of agency, as opposed to its function as pondering on and choosing between them. But further, strictly speaking not even the abnormal usage of any of the causal vocabularies can be regarded as a “vocabulary of agency,” for—as we recall Davidson’s claim—switch from any of the causal vocabularies to any other of them does not involve a “switch in subject,” whereas a switch from any of the causal vocabularies to the vocabulary of mental, or vice versa, does. Since the “switch in subject” implies that one is able to switch between basic types of norms, but it is not required in switching from one causal vocabulary to another, then, not even an abnormal discourse conducted between different causal vocabularies involves such a switch between basic types of norms. From these we conclude that persuasion, which has to do with abnormal discourse and especially with choosing between different “goods” or purposes, has a primary role when the discourse is conducted between incommensurable mental vocabularies, and a lesser role between a mental and any of the causal vocabularies. In turn, persuasion does not have a role in any normal discourses, and it has a restricted role in abnormal discourses between causal vocabularies. Both of our enumerated reasons suggest that the acknowledgment of the distinctiveness of mental vocabulary makes room for a more fundamental role of persuasion in culture than what it would have without such an acknowledgment. In that sense, Ramberg’s critique of Rorty makes Rorty’s good case for persuasion even stronger.

NOTES 1. The described study was carried out as part of the EFOP-3.6.1-16-2016-00011 “Younger and Renewing University—Innovative Knowledge City—institutional development of the University of Miskolc aiming at intelligent specialization” project implemented in the framework of the Szechenyi 2020 program. The realization of this project is supported by the European Union, co-financed by the European Social Fund. 2. It is on such a reading that one is driven to judge Rorty’s position as a kind of linguistic idealism, as in fact many of his interpreters claimed it to be. To be sure, such a reading is suggested by Rorty’s distinction itself. For even if he explicitly maintains that “the world is out there, . . . it is not our creation” (Rorty 1989, 5), the question whether the justificatory process is to be understood as a purely intersubjective matter without reference to reality, or as a triangulation-like one, remains. Furthermore, if justification does include reference to reality, it is not clear, in what manner? But as we noted, Davidson does not seem to give a clear account about the manner in which causation and norms interact in linguistic triangulation, either.

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3. This idiom appears as the title of a German edition of several of Rorty’s shorter pieces. 4. For a more detailed account of Rorty’s view on the difference between the humanities and the sciences see my paper, “Incommensurability and Culture: Rorty’s Account of the Sciences of Nature and of Man” (Nyiro 2014). 5. For more on Rorty’s chief goals see my paper “Rorty on Politics, Identity and Transformation” (Nyiro 2011). 6. This of course is a brief sketch mentioning only a few of Rorty’s conceptual devices. One could eventually list almost the whole fabric of his philosophy and show just in what sense its items support his case made for persuasion.

REFERENCES Backmann, Marius, Andreas Berg-Hildebrand, Marie Kaiser, Michael Pohl, Raja Rosenhagen, Christian Suhm, and Robert Velten. 2005. “Pragmatism, Realism, and Science: From Argument to Propaganda.” In Richard Rorty: His Philosophy under Discussion. Edited by Andreas Vieth, 65–78. Frankfurt, Lancaster (LA): Ontos Verlag. Brandom, Robert B. 2000. “Vocabularies of Pragmatism: Synthesizing Naturalism and Historicism.” In. Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert Brandom, 156–182. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Davidson, Donald. 2001a. “The Emergence of Thought.” In Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, 123–134. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2001b. “Three Varieties of Knowledge.” In Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, 205–220. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Karakuş, Attila, and Andreas Vieth. 2005. “Is Rorty’s Non-Reductive Naturalism Reductive?” In Richard Rorty: His Philosophy Under Discussion. Edited by Andreas Vieth, 79–96. Frankfurt, Lancaster, England: Ontos Verlag. Nyírő, Miklós. 2011. “Rorty on Politics, Identity and Transformation.” In Identity and Social Transformation. Edited by John Ryder and Radim Sip, 219–228. Albany, NY: Rodopi Press. ———. 2014. “Incommensurability and Culture: Rorty’s Account of the Sciences of Nature and of Man.” In Society and Culture: Theory and Practice. Edited by John Ryder and Carlos Mougan. Albany, NY: Rodopi Press. Ramberg, Bjørn. 2000. “Post-ontological Philosophy of Mind: Rorty versus Davidson.” Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert B. Brandom, 351–370. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Rorty, Richard. 1970. “In Defense of Eliminative Materialism.” The Review of Metaphysics 24: 112–121. ———. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991a. “Inquiry as Recontextualization: An Anti-dualist Account of Interpretation.” In Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers. Volume 1, 93–110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991b. “Introduction: Antirepresentationalism, Ethnocentrism, and Liberalism.” In Objectivity, Relativism and Truth: Philosophical Papers. Volume 1, 1–17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991c. “Non-Reductive Physicalism.” In Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, 113– 125. Philosophical Papers I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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———. 1991d. “Pragmatism Without Method.” In Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Philosophical Papers, Volume 1, 63–77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991e. “Science as Solidarity.” In Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, 35–45. Philosophical Papers Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991f. “Solidarity or Objectivity?” In Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Philosophical. Papers Volume 1, 21–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1993. Eine Kultur hne Zentrum. Vier philosophische Essays. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam. ———. 2000a. “Response to Bjørn Ramberg.” In Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert B. Brandom, 370–377. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ———. 2000b. “Response to Jürgen Habermas.” In Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert B. Brandom, 56–64. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ———. 2000c. “Response to Robert Brandom.” In Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert B. Brandom, 183–190. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ———. 2005a. “Response to ‘Is Rorty’s Non-Reductive Naturalism Reductive?’” In Richard Rorty: His Philosophy under Discussion. Edited by Andreas Veith, 139–141. Frankfurt, and Lancaster, UK: Ontos Verlag. ———. 2005b. “Response to ‘Pragmatism, Realism, and Science.’” In Richard Rorty: His Philosophy under Discussion. Edited by Andreas Vieth, 136–139. Frankfurt, Lancaster, UK.: Ontos Verlag, 2005. ———. 2005c. “Response to ‘The World Regained.’” In Richard Rorty: His Philosophy under Discussion. Edited by Andreas Veith. Frankfurt and Lancaster, UK: Ontos Verlag. ———. 2006. “The Decline of Redemptive Truth and the Rise of a Literary Culture.” http:​ //oli​ncent​er.uc​hicag​o.edu​/pdf/​rorty​.pdf.​ ———. 2007a. Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers Volume 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007b. “Cultural Politics and the Question of the Existence of God.” In Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers Volume 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3–26. Vieth, Andreas, editor. 2005. Richard Rorty: his Philosophy under Discussion. Frankfurt and Lancaster, UK: Ontos Verlag. Warnke, Georgia. 1987. Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason. Oxford: Polity Press and Basil Blackwell.

15 The Lamp of Reason and the Mirror of Nature Preston Stovall  1

At the close of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Rorty 1979) Richard Rorty lays out a contrast between what he calls “systematic” and “edifying” philosophical methodologies. Whereas the systematic philosopher aims to speak for the ages, the edifying philosopher addresses herself to the issues of her day, often by way of shattering conventional idols (Rorty 1989, 368–370). The book itself, as a critique of the mirroring metaphor Rorty identifies in modern and contemporary epistemology, is meant to be an exercise in edification. Rorty encourages us to give up the effort to discern putative mind/world relations of representation, and instead take up the task of constructing new modes of understanding ourselves and the world. He likens the edifying philosopher to the poet, for whom “there is something new under the sun, something which is not an accurate representation of what was already there, something which (at least for the moment) cannot be explained and can barely be understood” (Rorty 1979, 370). But there are many routes through systematic philosophy, and one might question the bifurcation Rorty proposes. Might there not be a mode of systematic philosophical inquiry, understood as the effort to construct a theory of knowledge that was meant to be passed on to future generations, and yet which was edifying in the sense that it called for iconoclasm and the cultivation of new modes of discourse? Why suppose that those who “build for eternity” cannot also be those who “destroy for the sake of their own generation” (Rorty 1979, 369)? The aim of this chapter is to defend a conception of philosophy as both systematic and edifying in the relevant senses. In Part I, I lay the groundwork for the view by responding to Rorty’s argument that Wilfrid Sellars’s account of picturing involves an illicit “mind as mirror of the world” metaphor. There I show that Sellars’s theory of picturing was not meant to undergird a language-independent theory of meaning of the sort Rorty targets, but was instead meant to function within a particular language as a warrant for assessing truth-evaluable claims across radically different 215

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conceptual schemes. Part II returns to the contrast between systematic and edifying philosophical projects by sketching some of the philosophical anthropology that motivates Sellars’s understanding of picturing as a dimension of epistemic warrant. This anthropology is descended from a philosophical endeavor with roots in nineteenth-century European and American philosophy. The view we are left with is one that urges our continued participation in this systematic philosophical project, but with the understanding that in doing so we are in the business of creating new ways of thinking about ourselves as part of the natural world. In this way I underwrite the contention, broached at the end of the last paragraph, that a philosophical outlook can be at once both edifying and systematic in the relevant senses.

PART I: PICTURING AND THE MIRROR OF NATURE Rorty construes commitment to the mirror motif as commitment to the supposition that there is a relation between mind and world such that, if we could specify it, we could once and for all establish whether thought (or a language) represents the world accurately. Rorty characterizes this as the demand “for some transcendental standpoint outside our present set of representations from which we can inspect the relations between those representations and their object,” and writes, “this is the demand which Berkeley told us we could not meet, which Kant met only by calling the world ‘appearance,’ and which the image of the Mirror of Nature makes us think we ought to be able to meet” (Rorty 1979, 293). While Rorty praises Sellars’s holistic understanding of meaning as proof against the suggestion that we might secure an eternal epistemic metalanguage, a tool for critiquing all discourse (Rorty 1979, 170–171), Sellars’s theory of picturing is nevertheless, Rorty believes, an effort in the direction of mirroring (Rorty 1979, 295–299). In the next few pages I show that this characterization of Sellarsian picturing is not supported by a close reading of Sellars. First, some background. Sellars conceived of picturing as a relation between linguistic episodes (or mental events more generally) and the physical environment that could in principle be specified by an isomorphic function between these two domains of spatio-temporal objects. If we were in possession of this function, we could (in cases when the picturing was accurate) in principle read information about the mind off of the world, and information about the world off of the mind. For example, if the picture is accurate an utterance of the sentence “the cup is on the table” will tell you a fact about the world. Two things are important to note here. First, until very late in his career Sellars restricted his consideration of mental events to linguistic utterances, often to the point of making it seem as though, on his view, anything that could not speak could not think. Papers like “Mental Events” (Sellars 2007d [1981]) and “The Lever of Archimedes” (Sellars 2007f [1981]), both published in 1981, show that by this point in his career Sellars has a more magnanimous conception of the mental. I am inclined to think this conception was there from the beginning, with the early supposition that language use is the sine

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qua non of thought adopted as a means of clearing a conceptual space within which to work up a coherent view, afterward to be extended (along with a commentary) in the direction of nonlinguistic thought and the rudiments of agency. Whether or not this was Sellars’s considered view, early in his career he concluded that linguistic categories offered a tolerably precise set of resources for constructing, by analogy, a theory of mental events more generally (see, e.g., Sellars 2003 [1956], §50; at the end of that section Sellars refers us to two papers from the early 1950s). Second, it is evident that Sellars nevertheless thought of central nervous system episodes as the proper domain for the mental side of picturing’s isomorphism (cf. the last section of Sellars 2007a [1960], a paper devoted to an extended discussion of picturing). I will follow Sellars and begin by thinking of mental events on analogy with linguistic events. But in Part II I will suggest that the move from the manifest to the scientific image of the person in the world requires more careful attention to underlying neural processes. It is crucial for Sellars that both (1) linguistic episodes are only intelligible, qua linguistic, when they are understood within a normative categorical frame employing concepts like commitment and warrant, and (2) linguistic episodes qua objects of empirical inquiry are capable of being described without the use of any such vocabulary. It is this second mode of understanding that is at work in talk of picturing. Rorty charges that this bit of theorizing “is not useful in explaining how language is learned or understood” (Rorty 1979, 295), and after discussing Sellars’s (and his student Jay Rosenberg’s) treatment of picturing Rorty writes that on this view “mentality and intentionality are irrelevant to understanding how the Mirror mirrors. The crucial sort of representing—the one which helps us say how and why we are superior to our ancestors—is one which takes place not relative to a scheme of conventions, not relative to intentions” (Rorty 1979, 297). Rorty then deploys an argument given by Putnam: any language in which such a relation was characterized would be itself susceptible to whatever concerns mirroring was supposed to solve; the problem of mirroring iterates up the metalinguistic hierarchy: “Putnam is saying that the attempt to get a set of nonintentional relationships (such as those offered by a causal theory of reference or by a Sellarsian notion of ‘more adequate picturing’) is always vitiated by the fact that those relationships are simply further parts of the theory of the world of the present day” (Rorty 1979, 298). Now while it is true that Sellars’s theory of picturing is supposed to be a characterization of mentality/world relations that does not make use of mental state or normative vocabulary, it does not follow that “mentality and intentionality are irrelevant to understanding how the Mirror mirrors.” Rather, the social practices involved in grooming a person’s linguistic dispositions, and so establishing whatever determinate picturing relations there happen to be between her and the world, are practices shot through with intentionality and normativity, as Sellars recognized and spent much of his career considering. In any community in which people communicate via conventional signs, the pictures the speakers of that language deploy picture as they do only because of the practices of education that govern linguistic education. And those practices are as “fraught with ought,” to adopt Sellars’s phrase, as Rorty could

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want. In Part II I will examine the philosophical anthropology lying behind Sellarsian picturing in more detail. For now the point can be put with an analogy of the sort Sellars was fond of. The fact that there might be an account of a game of chess that exclusively employed descriptive vocabulary about the positions of variously shaped pieces of wood at different times does not entail that this vocabulary could, even in principle, suffice as an explanation of what it is to play a game of chess, or of how there came to be chess players. Still less would it suffice as a vocabulary for the game’s instructions. But it does not follow that such a descriptive vocabulary would be useless in explaining a chess game or teaching someone how to play. The core of Rorty’s critique is drawn from his use of Putnam, and so to assess that critique we need to determine whether Sellars’s account of picturing is subject to refutation via Putnam’s observation that every effort to capture such a relation will always proceed from within a given discourse. Rorty’s point of contact for his reading of Sellars on this issue is a passage in the middle of Science and Metaphysics. In that passage Sellars writes: Although the concepts of “ideal truth” and “what really exists” are defined in terms of a Peircean conceptual structure they do not require that there ever be a Peirceish community. Peirce himself fell into difficulty because, by not taking into account the dimension of “picturing,” he had no Archimedean point outside the series of actual and possible beliefs in terms of which to define the ideal or limit to which members of this series might approximate. (Sellars 1992 [1967], 142; this passage is quoted in: Rorty, 296–297)

On the face of it this may look as though Sellars is suggesting that with picturing we reach an “Archimedean point outside the series of actual and possible beliefs.” But on closer examination Sellars should be understood as rejecting the need for an Archimedean point that arises, he claims, when we do not have a notion of picturing at our disposal; he is not endorsing picturing as a means to achieve it. In the chapter of Science and Metaphysics from which this passage is taken (chapter 5), Sellars is developing an alternative to Peirce’s view of truth as “that which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate” (Peirce 1992 [1878], 139). Sellars thinks that because Peirce left it incomprehensible how the language at the end of inquiry might relate to ours, and because he defined truth in terms of the end of inquiry, he left the notion of truth in our language incomprehensible. In contrast to this millennial understanding of truth, Sellars wants to provide a detailed account showing that we can, even now, understand ourselves to be (in principle capable of) uttering truths that would be recognized as such by those who come after us. Toward this end, Sellars set for himself the task of explaining how truth could be assessed across radical changes in conceptual schemes, and picturing is supposed to help here (notice that this is not Davidson’s sense of “conceptual scheme”—for the point is precisely to permit translation between schemes). Picturing is deployed as a mechanism for determining whether a claim made in one conceptual scheme is true in terms of another scheme, even though those schemes embody different views of the world—crucially, however, this determination is always made from within a

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particular language. When two utterances fall into a common “propositional family,” as determined by the later community’s assessment of the ways the utterances picture the world, and when the later utterance is recognized as true in the later language, then the earlier utterance will be recognized as true by the speakers of that later language as well (Sellars is clear that the assessment of truth is always relative to the language in which the propositional families and their members are individuated: Sellars 1992 [1967], 132). With this account we are supposed to see that an ancient Egyptian utterance (in their language) of “the sun rises in the east” was true by our lights when uttered by them, even though the ancient Egyptians had a very different view of the sun and its activities.2 Though every case of demarcating the propositional families of different languages will proceed from within a given language, so that we are always on the hook that we might have made some mistake that a future generation will need to correct, it is nevertheless coherent that we are, even now, mostly right about lots of things. While for Peirce truth is not in hand until we reach the end of inquiry, Sellarsian truth offers the prospect that we are even now uttering truths that those at the (hypothetical) end of inquiry will recognize as truths. In criticizing Peirce as he does Sellars is not declaring that with a proper theory of picturing we would finally reach the Archimedean point from which to once and for all assess the representational bona fides of a language. He is instead declaring that with an understanding of picturing as a dimension of mental activity we no longer need that point in order to underwrite the possibility that we are speaking end-of-inquiry truths right now. Because of this, Putnam’s argument (that any language purporting to grasp hold of the mind/world connection will itself be subject to whatever suspicion raised the initial worry about whether a language was successfully representing the world) does not stand as a refutation of Sellarsian picturing. For it was never Sellars’s contention that the language in which the picturing relation is specified is supposed to itself be somehow “outside” a community’s conceptual scheme or the revisions of those who come later.3 This leaves open just what the role of picturing is in a Sellarsian theory of knowledge. In the remainder of Part I, I will argue that one role played by picturing is as a warrant for recognizing someone as a perceptual knower. As I think the view articulated here is basically Sellars’s view, I will not belabor the exegetical details.4 In Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind Sellars writes that “in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says” (Sellars 2003 [1956], section 36; quoted in: Rorty 1979, 141).5 On this view of knowledge ascription, to say that someone knows something is not to be understood, in the first instance, as a description of them. Rather, knowledge ascription is to be understood as conferring a sort of social recognition on someone, thereby permitting (if there is uptake) that their mental states may be relied on by others in the community. Most forms of social recognition are, in many of their particulars, distinct from factual considerations about the individuals that are accorded those recognitions. That an individual in our society is able to enter into contractual arrangements upon turning eighteen, thereafter subject

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to the rights and responsibilities that these arrangements bring with them, is not to be understood as some matter-of-factual change that happens to them on their eighteenth birthday. Instead, this is a change that occurs because of the person’s standing in society. And so to say that someone at eighteen years of age is now entitled to own a car is not to describe some ontological shift they have undergone; it is instead to express a recognition that we now will afford them. Similarly, to call someone a knower, by Sellars’s lights, is to recognize them in a certain way—in particular, it is to recognize them as in principle capable of participating with us in a conversation where what anyone says has rational force on everyone else. A knower is one whose claims constrain our own, and for whom our own claims are constraints. Given that picturing is supposed to be an isomorphic relation between two real-world domains, our question now becomes: how might an isomorphic relation between a knower and her environment bear on when we are warranted in recognizing her as a knower? The first thing to note is that although calling someone a knower may be more like recognizing than describing them, it would be too quick to cut the socio-recognitive interpretation of knowledge ascription free from descriptive commitments entirely. Facts about a person’s relations to the world often bear on whether recognition as a knower is warranted. Comparison with more straightforwardly social statuses can once again illuminate the point. It is not for nothing that we place the age of legal consent at eighteen rather than at five or thirty-five. Even if to say of someone that their signature now enables them to own a car is to give expression to a form of recognition rather than to make a claim about an ontological change they have undergone, it is just as certain that facts about what is generally true of eighteen-year-olds bear on why that recognition is warranted at roughly that age. By the linguistic criterion of mental state ascription, being a knower is being a converser, one who can linguistically communicate with us. Because of this, attributing a claim of knowledge to someone involves undertaking a commitment to the claim that the putative knower would be able to reason publicly about the content of that ascription if called on to do so. This feature of knowledge ascription is reflected in the conditions under which an ascription is retracted. For if S cannot tell us anything about what follows from and is ruled out by p, then S cannot be said to know that p.6 Simply uttering p does not suffice to warrant that the utterer knows that p. When knowledge is construed as a matter of standing in a space of reasons, the capacity to engage with an interlocutor in a conversation about the content of the claim is a necessary condition on warranting an ascription that the speaker knows what she is talking about (notice that this may not be a sufficient condition, and at any rate some hedging on “capacity” would be needed to account for cases of, for example, sleep and paralysis). A putative knower who cannot articulate her knowledge is not entitled to that recognition, just as a wedding without informed consent is no wedding at all. Here we have the materials for the mental side of an isomorphism in the real order. The utterance counts as knowledge only if it is situated within a space of inference, and its situation in that space is given by the linguistic dispositions of the putative knower.7 The utterer is warranted recognition as a knower in virtue of the

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fact that the utterer’s dispositions are such as to make her capable of articulating the content of what was uttered should the need arise. These dispositions are powers in the causal order, elements of the real. If this dispositional structure, or some subset of it, could be mapped into a domain of objects, properties, processes, states of affairs, or whatever one’s favored ontology, such that we were in possession of a function that permitted our using the dispositions and the ontology in order to read the terrain of the world and the contents of an utterer’s mind off of one another, then we would have a defense of picturing, as an isomorphic relation between elements in the real order, from within a normative frame on knowledge ascription. An inferential understanding of the content of a knowledge ascription will not simply as such invoke picturing relations, however. For all terms stand in inferential relations, and if we identify a disposition to reason with the picturing of objects then Platonism is straightaway upon us. But our logic should not settle whether a substantive metaphysical commitment like Platonism is true. It is only when we are independently committed to there being referents for the terms of a discourse that the use of those terms will count as picturing. As the home language game of picturing is with world-directed thought, it is to the warranting conditions for ascriptions of perceptual knowledge that we must turn. The inferential space that a perceptual knower must navigate is a space of nouns and verbs, adjectives, and adverbs; units of identity and the features that identify them. Sellars’s philosophical commitments led him to nominalism and a process ontology, but bracketing semantic and metaphysical concerns I will speak of singular terms and predicates with a corresponding ontology of objects and powers or properties (the points made here could be translated into other semantic and ontological paradigms).8 The objects and powers we purport to know interact in ways that elicit different responses from other objects, and via this interaction we are afforded determinate contents of knowing. This being so, the capacities to reason that justify ascriptions of perceptual knowledge are capacities that include the use of singular terms and predicates in ways that reliably co-vary with the causal interactions among the objects and properties that the use of those terms purport to describe. Embodied in particular in our facility with subjunctive conditionals, this capacity to reason about the space of implication surrounding a given descriptive claim, and thereby to reason about the space of possibility surrounding the objects and powers referred to in that claim, is a capacity that admits of degrees—a participant need not be flawless in her performance, but if she cannot at least tolerably play the game we simply will not be able to understand her as knowing what she seems to be talking about.9 Understanding that some pile of rock is salt or sugar, or that some liquid is pure water, involves grasp of such subjunctive conditionals as: if either the salt or the sugar were to be immersed in pure water it would dissolve, but the resulting salt solution would conduct electricity while the sugar solution would not. Even if she does not voice these subjunctives, she must be such that were some of these conditions realized she would judge differently so as to represent that change. In perceptual knowledge, then, the linguistic structure characterized by the use of singular terms and predicates is one whose elements must reliably co-vary with

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the structure characterized by objects and their powers if the knower is to count as a knower at all. Generalizing out of the object/power restriction, with this we have a bijective function capable of characterizing an isomorphism in the real order between mental events, conceived as linguistic episodes, and the world. This is an isomorphism whose domain is linguistic dispositions and whose co-domain is some suitable ontology. And the function that specifies the mapping between these two domains is whatever language we use to translate the actualizations of these linguistic dispositions—in the simplest case that function is simply the language used by the putative knower. We read the actualizations of these dispositions as pictures of the world precisely because we understand the language being spoken (notice our assessment is internal to a given language). If to be a knower of the world is to be a reasoner about the world, and to be a reasoner about the world is to be disposed to judge differently were various conditions realized, then to know the world is to picture it in Sellars’s sense. In the material mode, Sellarsian picturing is a condition on the possibility of perceptual knowledge. It may be that there is, for any perceptual discourse at any stage of inquiry, a one-to-one mapping from mental events to some (supposed) ontology; but this isomorphism is not something that we imagine to be the same at every stage of the discourse, fixed once and for all. Instead, that mapping is constantly undergoing revision as we undertake first-order empirical inquiry. Linguistic and ontological commitments are constantly being reworked, and so the function that relates them is perpetually changing. But because at every stage such a bijection is a condition on the possibility of perceptual knowledge, and because of the way we revise our view on the basis of rational inquiry, we can see ourselves and our shared history, despite the inevitability of revision, as one community in conversation. Picturing is not meant to get us “beyond” or “outside” our current discourse; it’s meant as a theoretical postulate to be used from within a discourse so as to help develop it by helping us understand just who we are and what we do.

PART II: ANALOGY AND THE LAMP OF REASON The possibility of linguistic revision broached at the end of Part I raises the prospect that linguistic dispositions are in fact an imperfect expression of a more primitive form of cognitive responsiveness to the world, embodied in the central nervous system, that is more properly the domain of the mental side of picturing’s isomorphism.10 And with a transition to a theory of mind in the scientific image our conventional linguistic categories and common-sense ontology, while offering a first pass at a framework for thinking about how the mind relates to the world, may need to be revised over the course of the inquiry. This revision is, in practice, the construction of a new language more adequate to what we come to believe about ourselves and our place in the world. The move to self-consciously reshape the contour of linguistic habit by searching for new ways to talk about ourselves bears some resemblance to the sort of thing that

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Rorty discusses as edification. But Rorty famously opposes edifying with systematic philosophy, at points simply equating edifying philosophy with an aim to “prevent conversation from degenerating into inquiry, into a research program” (Rorty 1979, 372; cf. 367–368). We can give Rorty the term if he’d like, and perhaps he would prefer to see what follows as an instance of systematic revolutionary philosophy without being edifying (cf. Rorty 1979, 369–370). The more interesting question is whether Rorty’s positive characterization of edifying philosophy makes it, as such, a practice incompatible with systematic philosophy. Rorty introduces edification as follows: Since “education” sounds a bit too flat, and Bildung a bit too foreign, I shall use “edification” to stand for this project of finding new, better, more interesting, more fruitful ways of speaking. The attempt to edify (ourselves or others) may consist in the hermeneutic activity of making connections between our own culture and some exotic culture or historical period, or between our own discipline and another discipline which seems to pursue incommensurable aims in an incommensurable vocabulary. But it may instead consist in the “poetic” activity of thinking up such new aims, new words, or new disciplines, followed by, so to speak, the inverse of hermeneutics: the attempt to reinterpret our own familiar surroundings in the unfamiliar terms of our new inventions. (Rort 1979, 360)

The role Rorty gives to edification can be made compatible with a systematic philosophical methodology. For it is possible to see oneself as engaged in a project that is at once an expression of the need to get beyond the deficiencies of current modes of thought by critiquing current practice and suggesting alternatives, and yet which aims to make a contribution to the ongoing construction of an adequate epistemology, a theory of humanity’s place in the world as agents and knowers. As a way of thinking about such a construction I will use the resources of analogical reasoning, and begin by contrasting analogical reasoning with the process of picturing discussed in Part I.11 In an analogical inference one adopts the explanatory resources of one domain (commonly called the analogical “source” or “base”) in order to draw inferences about and so potentially explain the activities of the elements of another domain (the analogical “target”).12 One identifies elements of the source domain that stand in structural relations that are similar to relations among elements of the target domain, and uses an antecedent grasp of the source relations to model features of the target domain. Thus, the model of the solar system might be used to construct a model of the atom.13 Elements of the source domain, hallmarks that are salient in our understanding of the relations governing the operations of the source domain, are paired with elements (hallmarks) of the target domain, but the mapping is not primarily aimed at finding attributes (monadic properties) that are had by the hallmarks of the source domain and shared by attributes of the hallmarks of the target domain. Instead, it is characteristic of analogical inference that the mapping from source to target is governed by an interest in preserving structural relations between elements of the source domain, finding analogous relations among the elements of the target domain, and then projecting inferences from the source domain

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into the target domain.14 Thus, one does not need to find properties of the sun and the planets (e.g., mass and composition) that are had also by neuclei and electrons in order to specify an analogy between the solar system and the atom; instead, it is the gravitational relations between the sun and the planets that guide an analogous understanding of the relational structure of the atom. After identifying hallmarks in the source domain whose operations are governed by relations structurally analogous to the relations governing corresponding hallmarks in the target domain, we transpose the categories of the analogical source into the domain of the analogical target, develop a commentary specifying how to apply the transposition (including where the analogy breaks down—Bartha’s “negative analogies”), and endeavor to read information off of that latter domain with the resources imposed by the transposition. In doing so we reorganize our comprehension of the target domain—the categorial schemata of the source domain, complete with commentary, provide new modes of reasoning about the elements of the target domain. If the analogy is a good one, the use of the categories of the analogical source for understanding the analogical target will bring to light salient features of the target domain that went unnoticed, or will allow us to compress a complex set of data into a more manageable load (as in the use of the categories of intentional agency for interpreting organic activity). In some cases, one goes on to abstract from the structural relations that are shared between source and target domain, constructing a more general account of the processes that are in common between both domains (cf. Burstein 1988, 180; Gentner and Colhoun 2010, 42; and Gentner and Smith 2012, 133). The generalizing of a relational structure common to both domains can be thought of as a movement from a four-term or proportional analogy: A : B :: C : D

to what Auxier (Auxier 1992) calls a “three-term” analogy, where the terms A and C, used to characterize features of B and D relevant to the analogy, are themselves understood in terms of some more general process or operation. So the proportional analogy neurophysiological processes : human thought :: binary computation : computer processing

would, if tenable, impel us to consider whether and in what sense neurophysiological processing and the binary computation of computers might be understood in terms of the operation of some structure of relations general enough to be able to work across both the brain and a computer. Were some more general account available, we would then have a “three-term” analogy in the sense that human thought would be analogous to computer processing in virtue of the fact that both are governed by this more general set of structural relations operative both on the side of neurophysiology and in computer hardware (as it happens, of course, it seems that this proportional analogy does not underwrite an abstraction to the corresponding three-term analogy,

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as the neurophysiology of the brain is too dissimilar to binary computation; thus the move to parallel distributive processing or connectionist networks as a new analogical source for thinking about cognition). Analogical inference differs from the functional application employed in constructing a model of picturing in at least two respects. In the first place, picturing is concerned with an isomorphism that preserves both the attributes of the individuals and the relations between them, whereas analogical inference is less concerned with the former and instead focuses on the latter. Second, whereas the function that governs the mapping between the domain and co-domain of a picturing relation is a function between two domains whose elements are already identified and individuated, with an analogical inference we use the categorial resources of a domain we understand so as to interpret a co-domain for which we do not have an adequate understanding. In the functional application that specifies a picturing relation a mirror metaphor is apt: there one sets up an isomorphism mapping elements of one domain onto the other, pairing properties as well as relations, with the domain and co-domain fixed once and for all (in the context of that isomorphism). Inference by analogy, by contrast, is a dynamic process whereby a conception of the analogical target undergoes development by extending a partial use of the analogical source’s categories into a new context. The metaphor here is not that of mirroring an antecedently illuminated surface, but of illuminating an uncharted territory. With analogical inference our effort is not one of polishing the mirror of nature but of using the lamp of reason to help us get a better view of our surroundings. Analogical reasoning was already in play in the discussion of picturing in Part I, as we there supposed that the categories of linguistic theorizing could be used as a source from which to construct a theory of mental events more generally. The use of one theory as a model on the basis of which to construct another was a common theme in Sellars’s effort to understand persons as part of the natural world. At the core of Sellars’s account is the thought that our dispositional capacities for linguistic utterances, as causal responses to the environment, provide a way of naturalistically grounding our norm-laden capacities for rational agency and cognition. Sellars focused on three types of linguistic disposition: language-entry moves give voice to a perceptual response to the environment (lo, smoke); language-language moves give voice to some bit of reasoning (where there is smoke, there is fire); and languageexit moves give voice to our behavioral proclivities (I shall leave now). These linguistic dispositions were supposed to be the overt public expression of capacities for perceptual takings, the drawing of inferences, and the formation of volitions. The relations among these three sorts of capacities are, of course, analogous to the relations among the three moments of the nervous system—sensation draws in environmental information, the central nervous system processes that information, and this processing results in motor response. It was Sellars’s belief that by being raised in a linguistic community our evolved neural dispositions were capable of being more than merely causal responses to the world: by coming to speak a language our dispositional responsiveness to the environment became a responsiveness to reasons as well. Nevertheless, the actualization of these dispositional capacities, even in their

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conceptually articulate form, were not actions in the sense in which, for example, choosing to look into the corner, to spend an afternoon pondering a logic problem, or to act on a volition are properly actions: “It is the pattern-governed activities of perception, inference, and volition, themselves essentially non-actions, which underlie and make possible the domain of actions, linguistic and non-linguistic” (Sellars 2007c [1974], 88). While working on this material Sellars developed a theory of rule-following and linguistic training meant to make intelligible how natural creatures such as ourselves could become capable of the norm-laden reason-mongering we engage in (the core texts are Sellars 1950, 2007e [1954], chapters 6 and 7 of 1992 [1967], 2007b [1969], and Sellars 2007c [1974]). Central to his account is the distinction between rules of action, conformity to which requires that the things they govern be capable of framing a conception of the rule in question so as to act from a recognition of the propriety of the action the rule enjoins, and rules of criticism, conformity to which is a matter of habituated patterns among nonagentive states and behaviors. While the child is at first merely subject to rules of criticism others enforce on her by shaping her dispositions without the child herself reacting as she does on the basis of her conception of those rules or their propriety, she becomes a full-fledged member of the community when she is able to frame her own rules of action so as to enforce the rules of criticism that govern her (and others) in the community (cf. Sellars 2007c [1974], 86). By grounding rational thought and agency in evolved and educated nonagentive dispositional activities, Sellars hoped to help explain the place of persons in nature: The fact that the uniformities (positive and negative) involved in [the] language-entry, intralinguistic and language-departure transitions of a language are governed by specific ought-to-be statements in its meta-linguistic stratum, and these in turn by ought-to-bes and ought-to-dos concerning explanatory coherence, constitutes the Janus-faced character of languagings as belonging to both the causal order and the order of reasons. This way of looking at conceptual activity transposes into more manageable terms traditional problems concerning the place of intentionality in nature. (Sellars 1996 [1974], 11)

I have been presuming that we reason analogically when one domain is supposed to be understood and the other in need of elucidation. But inference by analogy can also proceed by comparing two domains against each other where neither domain is intelligible entirely on its own (Kurtz, Miao, and Gentner 2001; Gentner 2010).15 In such a case the categories of each domain are employed in structuring an understanding of the other. Kurtz, Miao, and Gentner call this process “mutual alignment” and characterize it as follows: In mutual alignment the learner is simultaneously presented with two analogous situations that act symmetrically in the mapping process: Both can serve as sources and recipients of information. Under these conditions, comparison between two partially understood situations can lead to noticing parallel structure and developing a deeper understanding of both situations. (Kurtz, Miao, and Gentner 2001, 419)

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Additionally, it is possible to take multiple domains as sources for an account of a single target domain (cf. Bartha 2010, ff. 141), or to take one domain as an analogical source and construct a theory of multiple targets (as the evaluative modes of judgment at work in explaining agency are often used in explaining the activities of organisms, institutions, and the behavior of artifacts). Together, these additional degrees of freedom open up the possibility for analogical reasoning to proceed by reciprocally transposing a multitude of categories across different domains (complete with a commentary), none of which are wholly understood on their own and so all of which stand to gain by the transposition. With this expanded conception of analogical inference we can begin to think about ways in which our understanding of both the natural and the socio-linguistic processes that shape our dispositional capacities might be informed by one another. The evolution of such things as we are has been, in large part, an evolution of ever more complex capacities to sense, think, and act. Here we have a set of hallmarks standing out in the domain of evolutionary neurophysiology as points for orienting our understanding of the human being qua natural thing. The relations among these hallmarks are governed by processes of natural selection in the species and habituation over the course of individual lives. But when one turns to the socio-historical changes of the cultures within which we have come to say “we” to one another, one finds all manner of hallmarks by which to characterize those changes. Those that perhaps most starkly stand out for a transposition of the neural activities of sensing, thinking, and acting into the frame of historical change are the notions of beauty, truth, and goodness. By analogy with the processes of natural selection and habituation that shape the relations among and development of sensory, central, and motor neural behavior, perhaps there are similar processes of socio-historical change that shape the relations among and development of our concepts of beauty, truth, and goodness. The idea here is that just as human evolution can be understood as (in part) the development of ever more complex capacities to sense, think, and act, so might human history be conceived (in part) by analogy as the development of ever more subtle conceptions of beauty, truth, and goodness. This is an instance of a proportional analogy, and it can be represented as follows: evolution : sensation, cognition, behavior :: history : beauty, truth, and goodness

Evolution (a natural process) is to the development of sensory, central, and motor nervous complexity as history (a social process) is to the development of the notions of beauty, truth, and goodness. This proportional analogy leaves the relationship between the evolutionary and historical processes governing the development of these respective domains unaddressed. For this reason, those who advocate a stage of generalization or abstraction in analogical reasoning might encourage us to investigate whether a more general account of these processes could be provided, one on which the evolutionary and historical dimensions of development could be seen as two aspects of a more basic process.

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Of course, the historical development of our concern with the notions of beauty, truth, and goodness does not ex ante lay claim to structuring our understanding of the history of our cultures in the way that the evolution of sensory, central, and motor neural activity structures our understanding of the evolution of human beings—that is part of the commentary we would need to work up. Toward the development of that commentary, we might adopt Peirce’s conception of philosophy as the study of the normative sciences of aesthetics, logic, and ethics. For as normative sciences these disciplines are concerned with proper sensation or immediate affective response (aesthetics), proper inference or cognition (logic), and proper volition or behavior (ethics). This being so, these disciplines seem particularly suited for inquiry into beauty, truth, and goodness as a socio-historical expression of our evolving dispositions to sense, think, and act. We would then be faced with a proportional analogy of the following form:16 evolution : sensation, cognition, behavior :: history : beauty, truth, and goodness :: reason : aesthetics, logic, ethics

In order to arrive at the corresponding generalization we would need to show that the natural processes of evolution, the social processes of history, and the rational processes of philosophical inquiry can be profitably interpreted as three specifications of one more general theory of being and becoming. We now have three domains each divided into three subdomains whose hallmarks stand in intradomain relations to one another that are potentially structurally analogous to the intradomain relations of the corresponding hallmarks of the other domains. If there were profit to be had in reasoning analogically here, using features of the relational structures of each domain to understand the others, we might flesh out our understanding of ourselves as creatures capable of raising such questions as, “what can I know?,” “what ought I do?,” and “what may I hope?” We would do so by thinking about the capacities lying behind these questions as capacities whose actualizations are the result of processes whose operations are the natural, sociohistorical, and rational aspects of a more general set of laws or tendencies.17 This in turn might offer new answers to these and other questions, and so new ways of using such capacities. Suppose we take the temporal frames of evolution among species and education among social individuals as alternating foci for plotting this development. We still require both a rich enough pedagogy and a sufficient grasp of the features of evolution that have, in fact, shaped our modes of activity. But I propose that we can just barely make out a view on which the practice of education, in whatever form it manifests itself, is a practice of cultivating philosophy in Peirce’s sense, where philosophy is the birth into self-conscious development of a set of capacities that have been naturally evolving for eons, and which, by its nature as the pedagogical practice it is, results in the emergence of individual persons as rational agents. I believe such a view deserves to be seen as both systematic and edifying. And by tracing its intellectual roots in the service of its further articulation it suggests one way of “going beyond” Richard Rorty.

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For while the Kantian and Hegelian dimensions of this view will be evident, there is another historical strand to this work that seems less well known. Though Sellars does not do much to note this inheritance, it is clear that his account of languagetransitions and habituated neural dispositions is a descendant of classical American pragmatist interests centering on the reflex arc as a guide to understanding human agency and cognition (For more on this inheritance see Stovall 2016). Classical views on this topic are held by Dewey (1981 [1896]), James (James 1956 [1897]), and Peirce, who like Sellars, thinks that the capacity for framing self-directed conceptions about how one’s habits ought to be organized is what grounds the transition from rule conformer to rule follower (1998a [1905], 347; 1955b [1906], 278, 284, 286; and 1955a [1905], 296). These interests flourished in the late nineteenth century against the background of a protracted engagement in American higher education with European influences. Peirce, James, and Dewey were, like Sellars, convinced that Darwinian modes of explanation would provide new ways of understanding socio-historical change and personal development. This was a project occupying American philosophers throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth (see Kramer’s essay in this volume for an examination of the decline of this project in the twentieth century). The first half of the nineteenth century had sown the seeds for it in the various multi-volume texts on political science, individual psychology, morality, and the sentiments written for upper level university courses of that time, an interest fed by French, German, and Scottish Enlightenment influence on American conceptions of political economy and civic duty. There was at this time a cottage industry for such textbooks in the United States, and the multi-semester courses that taught them were seen as the capstone to a university education. With the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species these works were reorganized on principles drawn from the new biology, and the second half of the nineteenth century saw a proliferation of such treatises. In correspondence Darwin himself asked Chauncey Wright, the “Cambridge Socrates” and a leading mind in the Metaphysical Club at Harvard, to apply his (Darwin’s) views to the questions of mental life. The result was Wright’s “The Evolution of SelfConsciousness,” published in The North American Review in 1873 (Schneider 1963, 304; see chapters 30–33 of that book for an overview of this period of American philosophical history). Immersed as they were in this intellectual climate, Peirce, James, and Dewey each in their own way took up these Darwinian resources and began to frame systematic views about persons that included a central role for evolved and educated dispositions across the nervous system. Sadly, the thought that a philosophical study of the mind, the moral sentiments, and civic duty would be the capstone of an education, still alive in the time of James and Dewey, has faded from practice. But the effort to rethink the natural character of rational thought and agency through a Darwinian frame lived on in the work of Critical Realism and New Realism at the start of the twentieth century. With the exception of Wilfrid Sellars’s efforts this, too, seems to have passed out of American philosophical interest by the middle of the last century. Those who have been influenced by Sellars often employ resources that

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descend from this tradition, but in most cases these resources remain only in vestigial form. No longer playing the role they once did, they are instead worked up under different auspices. While connections between Sellars’s work and the German idealists are drawn to the fore by people like Brandom and McDowell, it may be that philosophers working in this area have something to gain by turning to American intellectuals of the nineteenth century as well. Chauncey Wright’s argument that the origin of self-consciousness could be naturalistically explained by showing how primitive faculties would acquire new functions in a social setting sounds like nothing so much as the technique of “algorithmic elaboration” by which Brandom, in Between Saying and Doing, shows that certain practical capacities suffice to introduce vocabularies that have an expressive power strictly richer than any vocabulary used in those practices. By these lights, one way to go beyond Rorty would be to reclaim a view of philosophical history as philosophical development, understood as both systematic and edifying.

NOTES 1. I would like to thank the participants of the Conference on American and European Values IX, the faculty and students of the philosophy department of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Robert Brandom and John McDowell for discussion concerning the material presented in this chapter. 2. This issue is actually more complex, and Sellars does not tell us how to specify propositional family resemblances. It may be that in the details we would decide that the ancient Egyptian cosmos is too unlike our own for their utterance and ours to fall into the same family. For we might think that the worldview encoded in a claim that would be translated into our language literally as, say, “Ra is reborn as a scarab from the waters of the underworld” was too dissimilar to our own to constitute anything like a picture of the sun rising in the east. I suspect that a consideration of the place of the two utterances in their respective subjunctive spaces might go some way toward enabling us to see them as sharing a common picture, and perhaps an attention to the subjunctive profile of an ordinary descriptive claim could be used as a mechanism for classifying such claims according to their propositional families. 3. Rorty could at this point respond that the very notion of an “end of inquiry” ought to be rejected, so that insofar as Sellars thinks such a notion is intelligible his theory of truth ought to be dismissed on that basis. This move remains open to Rorty, but my point here has been to show that Sellars’s account of picturing does not fall victim to the mirroring critique that, as a matter of fact, Rorty deploys against him. And at any rate Sellars does not need an “end of inquiry” to get his account of picturing off the ground; all that is needed is a recognition of radically different conceptual schemes and the possibility of assessing truth across those schemes in virtue of shared picturing relations—talk of an “end of inquiry” sets up an extreme case of this assessment, and provides a nice contrast with Peirce’s view, but it is not essential to Sellars’s account. My thanks to Robert Brandom for raising the possibility of this Rortyean rejoinder. 4. I avoid textual exegesis for reasons of economy as well. Sellars’s discussion of picturing is one of the most difficult dimensions of his philosophy, and it makes a showing throughout

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the corpus—from the Tractarian papers of the 1950s, through the interest in rule-following and nominalism during the 1960s, the material on sensation and perception in the 1970s, and into the process ontology and attention to nonlinguistic cognition in the early 1980s. In addition, there are voluminous discussions of picturing in the literature descended from Sellars: Jay Rosenberg in effect wrote two books on the subject, Jim O’Shea and Bill DeVries each devote extended discussions to picturing in their respective books on Sellars, and there are over a dozen other papers on Sellarsian picturing in various publications, along with an extended essay by Jeff Sicha circulating in manuscript form. This material would need to be addressed if exegetical concerns were more to the fore, and doing so would quickly derail the line of thought I aim to lay down. 5. Rorty discusses this passage approvingly in the following pages. One way of reading the remainder of Part I is as an argument that Rorty himself is committed to a Sellarsian conception of picturing. 6. By the recognitive theory of knowledge ascription, the modal in “cannot be said to know” here is in the first instance normative, a claim that recognition in such cases is not warranted. Thus, the activity of reasoning gains its metaphysical significance as that activity which is constitutive of thought in virtue of the fact that reasoning is a condition on warranting recognition. This is to say that commitment to a material claim about what a knower is finds its ground in formal claims about when we are entitled to apply the term “knower.” 7. There is a tacit appeal here to a guiding theme of Sellars (Sellars 1991 [1962]). In a paper devoted to picturing he said: “espousal of principles is reflected in uniformities of performance” (Sellars 1991 [1962], 216). 8. Johanna Seibt (Seibt 1990) offers an articulation and defense of Sellars’s nominalism and process ontology. 9. The idea that counterfactual reasoning is a condition on the grasp of ordinary descriptive content is put forth and defended in various ways by Peirce (1998a [1905]), Sellars (Sellars 1958) and Brandom (Brandom 2008, Chapters 4–5). 10. In composing Part II of this chapter I have benefited from a conversation with Randy Auxier, and from consultation with his doctoral dissertation: (Auxier 1992). 11. Analogical inference became a growing topic of interest in the second half of the twentieth century, first in the philosophy of science and then in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Work by Mary Hesse (Hesse 1953, 1966, and 1974) and Paul Bartha (Bartha 2010) provide points of entry for the former. The anthologies of Helman (Helman 1988) and Gentner, Holyoak, and Kokinov (Gentner, Holyoak, and Kokinov 2001) offer overviews with regard to the latter. Bartha (Bartha 2010) aims to address some of the normative dimensions of analogical inference that are not emphasized in the cognitive science literature on analogical reasoning, where the focus is more commonly on modeling, for example, child learning. My own inroad to analogical inference comes out of Hegel’s Science of Logic, where inference by analogy is associated with the syllogistic figure that Peirce describes as hypothesis and later assimilates to abduction. For a critical discussion of this assimilation of analogy to abduction, see my: (Stovall 2014) and (Stovall 2015). 12. For a discussion of the stages of analogical reasoning in cognitive science literature, see: (Burstein 1988, 179–180); (Thagard 1988, 107ff.); (Gentner and Colhoun 2010); and (Gentner and Smith 2012, 131–134). For Hesse’s account see: (Hesse 1966, 57–100). Bartha’s analysis is given in: (Bartha 2010, chapter 4). 13. Though Bartha (Bartha 2010, fn. 4), notes that while this analogy is commonly invoked, it does not seem to have played a role in Ernest Rutherford’s development of his model of the atom.

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14. The view that analogical inference is interested in preserving structural relations between elements, rather than the attributes of individual elements, is defended by Gentner (Gentner 1983), and has since become a standard feature of accounts of analogical reasoning. 15. In contrast to the approach that Gentner adopted in her (Gentner 1983), on which the source analog is already understood and the target analog interpreted thereby, in her (Gentner 2010, 755–756) she says that an approach where neither analog is independently well interpreted is a more realistic account of how young children in fact learn. 16. As it relates three domains rather than two, this is no longer a “four-term” analogy properly so-called. For this reason, “proportional analogy” is a more apt term. 17. This is a way of saying that Kant’s fourth question, “what is a human being?,” is indeed the most fundamental, as he notes in the Jäsche Logic (Kant 1992, 538; 9:25 in the Academy pagination).

REFERENCES Auxier, Randall. 1992. “Signs and Symbols: An Analogical Theory of Metaphysical Language.” PhD diss., Emory University. Bartha, Paul. 2010. By Parallel Reasoning: The Construction and Evaluation of Analogical Arguments. New York: Oxford University Press. Brandom, Robert. 2008. Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism. New York: Oxford University Press. Burstein, Mark H. 1988. “Combining Analogies in Mental Models.” In Analogical Reasoning: Perspectives of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, and Philosophy. Edited by David H. Helman, 179–203. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. DeVries, Willem A. 2005. Wilfrid Sellars. Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Dewey, John. 1981 [1896]. “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology.” In The Philosophy of John Dewey: Two Volumes in One. Edited by John J. McDermott, 136–148. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gentner, Dedre. 1983. “Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy.” Cognitive Science 7: 155–170. ———. 2010. “Bootstrapping the Mind: Analogical Processes and Symbol Systems.” Cognitive Science 34: 752–775. Gentner, Dedre and Julie Colhoun. 2010. “Analogical Processes in Human Thinking and Learning.” In Towards a Theory of Thinking, On Thinking: Vol. 2. Volume edited by B. Glatzeder, V. Goel, and A. von Müller, 35–48. Series Edited by A. von Müller and E. Pöppel. New York: Springer Science. Gentner, Dedre, Keith J. Holyoak and Boicho N. Kokinov, eds. 2001. The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Gentner, Dedre and L. Smith. 2012. “Analogical Reasoning.” In Encyclopedia of Human Behavior. Second Edition. Edited by V.S. Ramachandran, 130–136. Oxford: Elsevier. Helman, David H, ed. 1988. Analogical Reasoning: Perspectives of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, and Philosophy. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Hesse, Mary. 1952. “Operational Definition and Analogy in Physical Theories.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2, no. 8: 281–294. ———. 1964. “Analogy and Confirmation Theory.” Philosophy of Science 31, no. 4: 319–327. ———. 1966. Models and Analogies in Science. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

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———. 1974. The Structure of Inference. Berkeley: University of California Press. James, William. 1956 [1897]. “The Reflex Action and Theism.” In The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 111–114. New York: Dover Publications. Kant, Immanuel. 1992. Lectures on Logic. Translated and edited by J. Michael Young. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kurtz, Kenneth J., Chun-Hui Miao, and Dedre Gentner. 2001. “Leaning by Analogical Bootstrapping.” The Journal of the Learning Sciences 10, no. 4: 417–446. Menon, Ramesh. 2003. The Ramayana. New York: North Point Press. O’Shea, James R. 2007. Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn. Malden: Polity Press. Peirce, Charles Sanders.1955a [1905]. “Critical Common-Sensism.” In Philosophical Writings of Peirce. Edited by Justus Buchler, 290–301. New York: Dover Publications. ———. 1955b [1906]. “Pragmatism in Retrospect: A Last Formulation.” In Philosophical Writings of Peirce. Edited by Justus Buchler, 269–289. New York: Dover Publications. ———. 1992 [1878]. “How to Make our Ideas Clear.” In The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Volume 1 (1867–1893). Edited by Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel, 124–141. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1998a [1905]. “Issues of Pragmaticism.” in The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Volume 2 (1893–1913). Edited by the Peirce Edition Project, 346–359. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1998b [1903]. “The Three Normative Sciences.” In The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Volume 2 (1893–1913). Edited by the Peirce Edition Project, 196–207. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rosenberg, Jay F. 1974. Linguistic Representation. Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company. ———. 1980. One World and Our Knowledge of It. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing co. Schneider, Herbert W. 1963. A History of American Philosophy. 2nd Edition. New York: Columbia University Press. Seibt, Johanna. 1990. Properties as Processes: A Synoptic Study of Wilfrid Sellars’ Nominalism. Reseda: Ridgeview Publishing. Sellars, Wilfrid. 1950. “Language, Rules, and Behavior”. In John Dewey: Philosopher of Science and Freedom. Edited by Sidney Hook, 289–315. New York: The Dial Press. ———. 1958. “Counterfactuals, Dispositions, and the Causal Modalities.” In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Volume II: Concepts, Theories, and the Mind-Body Problem. Edited by Herbert Feigl, Michael Scriven, and Grover Maxwell, 225–308. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1991 [1962]. “Truth and ‘Correspondence.’” In Science, Perception, and Reality, 197–224. Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Company. ———. 1992 [1967]. Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes. Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Company. ———. 1996 [1974]. Naturalism and Ontology: The John Dewey Lectures for 1974. Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Company. ———. 2003 [1956]. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 2007a [1960]. “Being and Being Known.” In In the Space of Reasons: Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars. Edited by Kevin Scharp and Robert Brandom, 209–228. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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———. 2007b [1969]. “Language as Thought and as Communication.” In In the Space of Reasons Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars. Edited by Kevin Scharp and Robert Brandom, 57–80. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 2007c [1974]. “Meaning as Functional Classification: A Perspective on the Relation of Syntax to Semantics.” In In the Space of Reasons Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars. Edited by Kevin Scharp and Robert Brandom, 81–100. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 2007d [1981]. “Mental Events.” In In the Space of Reasons Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars. Edited by Kevin Scharp and Robert Brandom, 282–300. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 2007e [1954]. “Some Reflections on Language Games.” In In the Space of Reasons: Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars. Edited by Kevin Scharp and Robert Brandom, 28–56. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 2007f [1981]. “The Lever of Archimedes.” In In the Space of Reasons Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars. Edited by Kevin Scharp and Robert Brandom, 229–257. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Stovall, Preston. 2014. “Abductive Inference, Autonomy, and the Faith of Abraham.” In Interpreting Abraham. Edited by Bradley Beach. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. ———. 2015. “Inference by Analogy and the Progress of Knowledge: From Reflection to Determination in Judgements of Natural Purpose.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23, no. 4: 681–709. ———. 2016. “Nature, Purpose, and Norm: A Program in American Philosophy.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2, no. 4: 617–636. Thagard, Paul. 1988. “Dimensions of Analogy.” In Analogical Reasoning: Perspectives of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, and Philosophy. Edited by David H. Helman, 105–124. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

VI LOGIC, TRUTH, AND PROGRESS

16 Logic beyond the Looking Glass David Beisecker

Richard Rorty reserved some of his most eloquent rhetorical flourishes for his repudiation of the Enlightenment idea of mind as mirroring nature. For Rorty, such a disavowal not only requires us to give up the aspiration of making lasting sense of a distinction between appearance and reality, it also forces us to jettison the representationalist notions that the mirror metaphor carries within its train: truth, reference, representation, objectivity, realism, the whole idea of a privileged vocabulary in which to write the “book of the world,” and so on. To the extent that it continues to wed itself to such bankrupt conceits by insisting that the goal of inquiry is to come up with an accurate representation of a mind-independent reality, Rorty predicts the Western philosophical tradition will remain stagnant at best—a lifeless husk or relic, devoid of former vigor and glory—and downright stultifying at worst—a barrier to genuine human solidarity and social progress. Philosophy could be resuscitated, but only if it divorces itself from the most acute and virulent source of this grave threat of intellectual stagnation and stultification: the so-called “analytic” philosophy that sprang up in the twentieth century as part of the linguistic turn. Such fighting words were meant to shock philosophers trained in that same analytic tradition (as indeed Rorty himself was) out of a complacent smugness that somehow they are the chief stewards of logic, good reason, and the search for truth. Thus Rorty was all too often received by those in the tradition as the betrayer who must be stopped, lest Gorgias triumphs over Socrates and philosophy gives way to literary criticism. Of particular concern is the fate of logic, that staple of philosophical education since Aristotle, if Rorty got to have his way. In Philosophy and Social Hope, Rorty sarcastically characterized logic as little “more than a stylistic elegance to analytic philosophers’ prose” (Rorty 1999, 173). Such a statement suggests that Rorty thought that it could be discarded altogether. We should be concerned about 237

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this. Are Rorty’s pleas for a recovery in philosophy at the same time a recommendation that we turn our backs on salutary advances in our understanding of formal logic, without which (as I often find myself having to remind skeptical, administrative trolls!) the incredible revolution in computer science and informatics is wellnigh inconceivable? Certainly none of Rorty’s particular heroes—namely Dewey, Quine, and Sellars—would have taken kindly to any suggestion that we bomb logic back to the Dark Ages (or even the benighted times before Frege and Peirce). This might go some distance in explaining the sentiment, especially among analytically ensconced followers of those very same heroes (e.g., Putnam, Price, and Brandom), that Rorty succumbed to his own over-blown rhetoric, which led him much too precipitously to encourage us to throw babies out with bath water. In 1918, Frege famously characterized the business of logic as that of discovering the “laws of truth.” The first sentence of David Bostock’s very fine text, Intermediate Logic, attests that this is still the received understanding: The most fundamental notion in classical logic is that of truth. Philosophers, of course, have long debated the question, “what is truth?,” but that is a debate which, for the purposes of the present book, we must leave to one side. Let us assume that we know what truth is. (Bostock 1997, 3)

Indeed, virtually every current text on the subject spells out the fundamental logical concepts—those of entailment, semantic interpretation, and so on—in terms of some primitive, yet substantial, understanding of truth. We are instructed, and in turn instruct our students, that the function of a formal interpretation is to assign truth values to sentences, and that the validity of an argument scheme is determined by whether we may assign true values to premises while maintaining the falsity of a conclusion. Echoing Peirce, we are told that the goodness of inference-rules is to be understood in terms of their capacity to preserve truth as we traverse from premises to conclusion, and as we’ve all heard countless times, a set of sentences entails or implies another just in case there is no interpretation in which everything in the former set is true and everything in the latter is false. What other natural notion of entailment could there be? Thus the fundamental opposition of truth and falsity might appear to be embedded in formal logic at its very core. Such a conception invites an understanding of logic as a technical handmaiden for epistemology. Truth and the understanding thereof, it might seem, is so interwoven into the fabric of logic that without it, the subject would unravel and lose its integrity and reason for being. But what if we follow Rorty and hold that truth at best is only an empty honorific and deny that the aim of inquiry is to attain an accurate—or true—image or representation of reality? Shorn of representationalist crutches or credentials, logic might well begin to look like a mere formal exercise: a rather ugly algebraic interplay between Boolean 1’s and 0’s that we might choose to play for curiosity’s sake, but nevertheless a game that is dispensable, and even pernicious, if we read too much into those fundamental 1’s and 0’s. If so, then why should we care about logic and its instruction at all?

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I do fancy myself to be a Rortyan in good faith, albeit one filtered through a certain lens. At the same time I also wish to embrace the study of logic. In order to prevent those commitments from colliding, I am confronted with the challenge of liberating logic from the mirror of nature by ridding it of looking-glass concepts. I need to transpose it into an appropriately non-representationalist, pragmatist key, and to sever its links to the search for truth. Fortunately, such a reorientation is well underway, especially with Brandom’s expressivist unpacking of logical vocabulary. However, Brandom’s formal presentation of his inferentialist alternative is remarkably non-user-friendly, and likely accessible only to those already well-versed with traditional presentations centered upon truth (see, in particular: Brandom 2008, chapter 5). This raises the concern that the analytic pragmatist’s achievements are but a hollow victory. For I suspect that it would be disappointing for a good “analytical Rortyan” (if you permit me that phrase) to discover that the concepts of truth and reference are inescapable fictions which must be invoked in order for us to appreciate the insights of an appropriately pragmatist logic. Indeed, if we let “good Popperian methodology” be our guide, we would test the pragmatist’s anti-representationalist stance to its limit and try to refrain from invoking truth and reference even as ladders eventually to be discarded. And I would further contend that success in this endeavor would best be measured by our ability to teach logic with as little mention as possible of truth, reference, and other representationalist word-world connections. (Actually, you could mention truth all you’d like; you just couldn’t use it! “Truth” just shouldn’t be one of your words.) In Truth and Progress, Rorty called for the “end of Philosophy 101,” or at least for a major reworking of the hidebound syllabi we use to induct would-be-philosophers into the discipline (Rorty 1998, 46–47). We do a disservice, to our students and to the wider philosophical milieu alike, if we teach the same old courses largely oriented around the outdated epistemological ideals of the Enlightenment. Doing so only serves to reinforce the suspicion that there is no progress to be made in philosophy, a suspicion that threatens our very livelihoods when held by the troglodytes who control university purse strings. I am going to suggest in this paper that what Rorty says about Philosophy 101 applies equally (if not even more so) to our introductions to symbolic logic. It might be thought that while there could be changes in pedagogical styles and approaches, the contents of our basic symbolic logic courses are as stable as that of basic math classes: algebra, calculus I, and the like. I would actually like to disabuse you of that idea, and to use Rorty as a springboard into a discussion about how we might go about reimagining the content of our introductions to formal logic in a manner that better illustrates pragmatist ideals. So the task I set for myself is one that Brandom shows little inclination to pursue, though it’s one that I think aligns well with the abiding and admirable pedagogical concerns of the great Lewis Carroll: that of elaborating how one might best go about teaching logic to students beyond the looking glass. Although I suspect this exercise might strike some as perverse (perhaps even as goofy as writing a giant tome on mind, language, and epistemology without using the word “experience!”), I believe the challenge of teaching a substantial logic course without invoking looking-glass

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concepts can be met, and this in turn provides a strong vindication for the viability of a Rortyan, pragmatist paradise. By substantial, I mean a presentation of logic that (1) offers a semantics for logical compounds, which is able to fund a robust sense of logical entailment, and then (2) presents a formal proof system, which can be shown to be both sound and complete with respect to that notion of entailment. The approach that I will recommend in what follows is the product of my own such reimaginings, much of which I have already inflicted upon my own logic students, if only to dislodge them from the Fregean prejudice that truth, not entailment, has to be the lifeblood of logic. As I go about describing this approach, I encourage followers to keep score on the various Rortyan themes and lessons that it illustrates and embodies. Logic courses typically begin on the side of propositional semantics, and our little adventure beyond the looking glass shall be no different. In traditional treatments of propositional logic, an interpretation consists of direct and independent assignments of truth values to atomic propositions, from which one can determine the truth values of logical compounds. Semantic entailment is then understood in terms of alethic modality—in terms of what sentences can or cannot be true together. This thought reinforces the illusion that logic itself is aligned with metaphysics and epistemology. However, one can equally think of semantic entailment in deontic terms of what one may or may not jointly affirm and deny. One (set of) sentences entails another just in case one may not affirm (all of) the former while denying (all of) the latter. When entailment is understood in this more pragmatic fashion, we can see that the function of a semantic interpretation is really that of specifying these intralinguistic proprieties. Accordingly, the semantic approach that I prefer to adopt centers around relationships of material incompatibility between sentences. In incompatibility semantics, an interpretation consists in the specification of an incompatibility frame, which serves to tell us directly which sentences may be affirmed or denied together. At root, an incompatibility frame is a structure that lists which sets of sentences are to be understood as internally incompatible (subject, usually, to a constraint called “persistence”).1 The idea is that if a set appears in the incompatibility frame, then one is precluded from affirming (or being jointly committed to) all the members of that set.2 Observe in particular, that this notion of interpretation is pleasantly Rortyan, in that it dispenses with “vertical” world-language connections in favor of “horizontal” language-language relationships. The notion of incompatibility between sentences is our semantic primitive, which we do not in turn try to explain in terms of truth or any other word-world relationships. Specifically, we do not say that a set of sentences is incompatible because they may not all be true together. Consequently, incompatibility semantics is equipped to handle sentences involving concepts which have turned out to have little or no worldly connections at all, such as claims about mathematical entities or even better, discarded scientific concepts like phlogiston and black bile. From the incompatibilities specified in an incompatibility frame, one may discern the sets of sets of sentences to which any given sentence (or set) is incompatible. We

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can in turn take such an incompatibility set to be that sentence’s meaning, content, or semantic value. Thus, as we seek to enrich a language through the addition of compound sentences formed by various sentential operators, the task of specifying those sentential compounds’ semantic values will be that of showing how we may systematically compute their incompatibility sets from the original incompatibility frame (through, for instance, familiar set-theoretic operations). For example, the set of sentences that are incompatible with the negation of a sentence may be understood as the intersection of the incompatibility sets of all the items in that sentence’s incompatibility set. We call such a negation the original sentence’s minimal incompatible. Similarly, the disjunction of two propositions φ and ψ may be defined as the intersection of the sets of sentences incompatible with each individually. Thus, anything incompatible with each of the disjuncts will also be incompatible with the disjunction. Finally, the set of sentences incompatible with the conjunction of two propositions φ and ψ may be understood to be those incompatible with the set {φ, ψ}.3 Incompatibility semantics can also fund a kind of incompatibility entailment: one sentence or set of sentences incompatibility entails another just in case everything incompatible with the latter is also incompatible with the former.4 Notice, then, that with our incompatibility definition of negation, it turns out that anything in the incompatibility set of a negation of a sentence will also belong in the incompatibility set of anything incompatible to the negated sentence. So ~φ is a sentence that is incompatibility entailed by any sentence incompatible with φ. Similarly, we can easily verify that any disjunction will be incompatibility entailed by either of its disjuncts, and that any conjunction will incompatibility entail both of its conjuncts.5 Indeed, it turns out that this notion of incompatibility entailment accords fully with the notion of entailment that trades affirmation in for truth and denial in for falsity.6 For the moment, that’s all we need to know about incompatibility semantics. Note in particular that I haven’t had to delve into anything like truth-functions, truth tables, or any of that none-such. The burden of explaining those “esoteric” notions falls in the province of traditional semantics. So while the incompatibility approach might seem a little alien to those of us who learned logic in the traditional fashion, I submit that it is no harder to present to the uninitiated than truth-functional semantics, which has its own stock of explanatory burdens (not the least of which is to make sense of the material conditional). One of the messages I’d like folk to take away from this chapter is that logic is not eternal or frozen in time, and that its teaching involves making a lot of contingent choices. Our first choice concerned how we wish to understand the semantics for a formalized language. The second is that of choosing an appropriately illustrative formal proof system for that semantics. Even though different systems of proof might be demonstrably equivalent to one another, it’s nevertheless worth observing that they still can turn out to privilege different logical concepts, which can in turn render salient distinct semantic notions. For much of the twentieth century, for example, formal logic was oriented around axiomatic approaches that model their understanding of formal proof upon that in mathematics. In an axiom system, propositions are shown to be “logically true” by demonstrating that they are theorems—that they

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could be derived from patently true or self-evident axioms through truth-preserving rules of inference. Such approaches thus privilege the logical notion of a theorem, which in turn reinforces a semantics oriented around the notion of logical truth. Argument schemes are then taken to be valid if (and only if) complex (material) conditionals corresponding to such validity can be shown to be theorems, and so logically true. Brandom (Brandom 2008) subjects us to an axiomatic presentation of incompatibility semantics. However, since axiomatic treatments privilege the notion of logical truth, they are not best suited for our specific purposes. More recently, such treatments have given way to deductive approaches oriented more directly around the notion of formal entailment, rather than that of logical truth. With naturaldeduction systems of proof, conclusions are derived directly from premises without having to route demonstrations of validity through theorems. I think most would agree that these approaches are more user-friendly than the earlier, axiomatic ones. Hence the “naturalness” of natural deduction. Moreover, the focus of natural deduction pleasantly shifts away from theoremhood and logical truth to the more clearly intra-linguistic notions of inference and entailment. However, rather than directly showing us that we may not affirm premises while denying a conclusion, natural deductions show us instead that the affirmation of premises somehow obliges us to affirm a conclusion. For that reason, I think that another class of systems is actually a better fit for incompatibility semantics—namely, proof systems that are oriented instead around the notion of contradiction on the syntactic side and inconsistency on the semantic side. Though they haven’t been as popular as axiomatic or naturaldeduction approaches, approaches that focus instead on what may not be affirmed together have a long and distinguished history. For instance, Quine’s Methods of Logic (1950) adopts this orientation. His “main method” attempted to root out contradictions or absurdities in simultaneously holding premises true and conclusions false. Such approaches, called “resolution logics,” basically turn axiom systems on their head by privileging the notion of logical falsity rather than that of logical truth. A sentence is logically false if it resolves itself to an absurdity, and from that notion, Quine showed how we can easily recover notions of theoremhood and logical truth as sentences whose negations so resolve to absurdity. Today, resolution logics such as Quine’s seem charmingly quaint. However, such systems are allied with, and indeed helped give rise to, so-called “tableau” systems of logic. These are the highly visual “tree systems” one often finds in logic texts immediately following the presentation of truth tables (hence “tableau”). “Truth” trees have usually been presented as an especially efficient means of navigating truth tables with the aim of spotting potential inconsistencies and counterexamples. Hence one of the early pioneers of the approach, E. W. Beth (1962), called the method “semantic” tableau. In his two-sided method, Beth had us work out the truth-functional consequences of holding premises true alongside the consequences of holding a conclusion false. Soon after that Richard Jeffreys’s Formal Logic: Its Scope and Limits (1967) collapsed Beth’s two sides into one. There Jeffreys followed a suggestion of Raymond Smullyan’s to treat the falsity of a conclusion as equivalent to the truth

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of its negation. Hence, the one-sided proof trees one more frequently encounters in texts are sometimes called “Smullyan trees.” The overall point is that like resolution logics, tree systems focus more upon consistency and inconsistency than upon entailment. Thus for one-sided Smullyan trees, a fully closed “tree proof” amounts to the demonstration that a certain set of sentences are inconsistent. Other “hybrid” or “signed” systems tag the formulas on the various branches of a tree with a sign (such as T or F, or + or −), corresponding to whether they are to be conceived of as true or as false, or alternately, affirmed or denied. For my part, I prefer we be silent on the specific understanding of such tags, and so I happen to prefer two-sided trees, which revert a bit back to Beth’s original system by placing formulas on different sides of tree paths, with the understanding that a contradiction is revealed (and so a branch closed) whenever one and the same formula appears on both sides of a path.7 While tree systems mostly developed in the mid-to-latter twentieth century, I cannot resist pointing out that tree methods of proof actually go as far back as Lewis Carroll, who in 1894 devised such a method to solve extended, multilateral sorites puzzles. The story of Carroll’s “method of trees” (which is what he called it) is a tale worthy of its own telling. Originally slated to be published as part of Volume II of his Symbolic Logic, Carroll’s articulation of the method was at the galley stage at the time of his death in 1896. Since most of the material in Carroll’s Oxford office was subsequently tossed out with the rubbish, only a couple copies of these galleyproofs survived. These had been circulated to Carroll’s confidants for correction, but fortunately not returned. Thus Carroll’s method of trees was lost until 1977, when William Bartlett III reconstructed and brought to light the remains of the second volume of Carroll’s Symbolic Logic. In the meantime, of course, Hintikka, Beth and his followers had independently developed tree methods with features similar to those that Carroll devised earlier.8 Though the method of trees typically occupies chapters in introductory logic texts supposedly devoted to semantics, tree proofs themselves are purely syntactic structures. Indeed, the computer programming language Prolog is modeled on such structures, and calculations in Prolog are remarkably similar to Carroll’s method. As such, trees can be viewed as formal proof systems in their own right, which have distinct pedagogical advantages over their alternatives. For one thing, tree proofs are much more straightforward to construct, because their rules of decomposition make them much less open-ended than their axiomatic or natural-deduction counterparts.9 But that’s not all. Perhaps the chief advantage of tree systems is that it is relatively easy to show how counterexamples or counter-models can be constructed from “failed” tree proofs with branches that cannot be closed. Due to that feature, the relevant completeness meta-theorems required in order to demonstrate the logical adequacy of the system are relatively easy to prove. Conceived simply as tools for navigating truth tables, placement of a formula on the branch of a one-sided tree is typically thought of as corresponding to that formula’s assumed truth, while placement on one side or the other of a two-sided tree corresponds, depending on the side, either to its truth or to its falsity. Thus one might think that the tree approach is especially wed to truth-functional semantics,

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which would explain its typical placement in introductory logic texts. However, while that was the understanding of the method’s pioneers, we do not need to give these tree diagrams, especially the two-sided ones, that particular interpretation.10 For our purposes, it is instructive to give tree diagrams a more Rortyan, pragmatic interpretation. Instead of thinking of the sides of paths as standing for truth and falsity, we can equally think of them as standing for either the pragmatic attitudes of affirming or denying some claim, or as the deontic statuses of being committed to some claim or being precluded from such commitment. The left-hand rules then represent the consequences one should acknowledge of affirming some claim, while the right-hand rules represent the consequences that should be acknowledged by denying some claim. Branch closure then represents the untenable position of both affirming and denying one and the same claim at once. Such an understanding of tableau methods accords very nicely with a deep semantic insight Peirce had regarding the contents of our concepts. Specifically, in several of his later, post-1900 formulations of the pragmatic maxim (those in which he breaks from James), Peirce tells us that a concept’s meaning is captured not only by tracing out the implications of affirming claims involving that concept, but also by attending to the implications of denying such claims. Here’s perhaps the best-known passage in which Peirce unpacks the pragmatist maxim in terms of both affirmation and denial: Endeavoring, as a man of that type naturally would, to formulate what he so approved, he [Peirce is referring to himself in the third person] framed the theory that a conception, that is, the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing on the conduct of life; so that, since obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have direct bearing on the conduct, if one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. (Peirce 1905)

Thus I think it fair to call this a “Peircean” or “pragmatist” understanding of tableau. One cannot help but wonder what might have been, if only Peirce had been as aware of Carroll’s attempts to visualize proof as Carroll had been aware of Peirce’s diagrammatic methods. For Peirce’s own diagrammatic proof system never put this semantic insight into full application. His “method of existential graphs” (the obsession with which Rorty says he found maddening) consisted only of sheets of assertion, from which conclusions were to be read off, as they are in Venn diagrams. Unlike tree proofs, existential graphs lack a ready means of illustrating incompatibilities. Two-sided tree proofs nicely rectify this oversight, by adding to a sheet tallying the consequences of our assertions another sheet, which keeps tabs on what formulas we must concomitantly deny. One can well think of them as displaying the “scorecard” of an individual’s commitments in what Brandom calls “the game of giving and asking for reasons.” But I digress. Let’s now return to incompatibility semantics, with an eye toward determining how well its intricacies are illustrated by two-sided tree proofs

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characterized “pragmatically.” The soundness of the method with respect to the notion of entailment supported by incompatibility semantics is rather easily demonstrated. For if there is an interpretation or incompatibility frame that allows for the simultaneous affirmation of all the premises and also the denial of a conclusion, one can straightforwardly show that as we apply the rules of development to a two-sided tree that begins with those premises on the left and that conclusion on the right, that same incompatibility frame will allow for the simultaneous affirmation of all the formulas along the left of some path of that tree alongside the denial of all the formulas on the right of that very same path. Since a path closes only when the same formula appears both on the left and the right, and since one may not affirm and deny one and the same formula, we know then that such a path will never close, and so we’ll never have a tree proof of that conclusion from those premises. The demonstration is entirely similar to more traditional demonstrations of soundness. We proceed to show how applying the various rules of development to consistent paths will inevitably yield at least one path that is also consistent (and so non-closing). For instance, since a conjunction incompatibility entails each of its conjuncts, anything that would stand in the way of placing a conjunct along a consistent path containing a conjunction on the left would have already disrupted the consistency of having that conjunction on the left. And since the incompatibility set of a disjunct is the intersection of the incompatibility sets of both of its disjuncts, we know that nothing on that path would stand in the way of both of the disjuncts, and so we can rest assured that we may add one or the other to that path without loss of consistency. We can use similar considerations to show that applying the right-hand rules for disjunction and conjunction to consistent paths, as well the rules for negation, will also preserve consistency.11 As for completeness, I noted earlier that the comparative advantage of tableau over other proof systems is that one can easily recover from “failed” proof trees interpretations that are counterexamples to given argument forms. Basically, one uses branches that do not close to construct such counterexamples. Pleasantly, this feature of trees carries over to the incompatibility understanding of the sentential connectives. This might at first seem surprising since the construction of an incompatibility frame is a comparatively complicated exercise, which requires us to pay attention to material, inferential relationships between atomic sentences rather than simply assign them independent truth values. However, we can also understand trees as displaying relevant material incompatibility relationships between sentential (and perhaps subsentential) contents, and so one can look to the atomic sentences along a non-closing path of a “failed” proof tree to generate the minimal constraints of an incompatibility frame for it to count as a relevant counterexample. Here we simply require that the set of every atomic formula on the left of an arbitrary non-closing path falls outside the set of incompatible formulas specified in an incompatibility frame, while we stipulate that that set is incompatible with each and every atomic formula that appears on the right.12 One can then show by induction on an incompatibility frame obeying these minimal constraints, that the affirmation of the set of atomics on the left (which by stipulation is a coherent set of

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commitments) will incompatibility entail all of the formulas on the left (including the premises at the root), and at the same time will preclude one from affirming any of the formulas on the right. Thus, one can show that on such an incompatibility frame, one may coherently affirm all of the premises of some sequent or argument form, and also be precluded from affirming its conclusion.13 The upshot of all this is that switching from classical truth-functional semantics to a setting oriented around incompatibility forces no great change in the way we think of how our familiar logical compounds operate in formal reasoning. However, the beauty of switching to an incompatibility setting is that it allows us to exercise much greater imagination for tweaking and extending our stock of logical operations in what Rorty might have thought as “free intellectual play.” For instance, consider conditionals. You might have noticed that I never bothered to give a direct incompatibility definition of the material conditional (nor did I try to justify the traditional tree decomposition rules for conditionals). That was deliberate, for the possibly vacuous truth conditions of the material conditional make it a remarkably poor analogue to “if . . . then” statements in natural language. Just think of the dances we have to perform, in order to get our students to accept that vacuous conditionals all ought to be regarded as true. The motivation for the material conditional largely stems from the desire to include some form of expression of implicature within one’s logical repertoire coupled with the constraint that sentential operations ought to be truth-functional. Fortunately, incompatibility semantics can free us from that latter constraint, and with it the “tyranny” of material implication. Just as the material conditional is used to unpack truth-functional implication, we can concoct a modally robust or “strict” conditional that directly tracks incompatibility entailment. Namely, we can stipulate that “φ implies ψ” (or φ ⇒ ψ) just in case φ incompatibility entails ψ (φ |= ψ). Such a conditional pleasantly differs from the ordinary material conditional in that it avoids the various awkwardness and infelicity of having to affirm it whenever we deny its antecedent or affirm its consequent. Note as well, that unlike C. I. Lewis’s definition of the strict conditional as [NEC] (P → Q), this conditional is defined directly without invoking any prior notion of necessity and material implication. Indeed, by “reversing” Lewis’s definition of strict implication, one can actually use such a conditional in turn to define notions of necessity and possibility: [Nec] P can be defined as (~P⇒P), while [POS] P can be understood as ~(~~P⇒~P), or ~[NEC]~P. Such modal operators will behave like the ordinary strong and weak modal operators in S5.14 Thus, we can see how modal notions can be discerned from an incompatibility frame, without having to invoke the metaphysically extravagant notion of a structure of possible worlds connected one to another by an accessibility relation.15 In addition to providing us with the resources to articulate conditionals and modals to better meet our discursive needs, shifting to an incompatibility setting also affords us a novel strategy for freeing ourselves from metaphysical prejudices imposed on us by classical logic. Take, for instance, the law of excluded middle. Notoriously, this law drove Aristotle to metaphysical determinism. In addition to claims about future sea engagements, there are plenty of ordinary contexts that can

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reasonably lead one to deny both some claim and its negation: vagueness, presupposition failure, claims involving empty names or predicates, paradoxical claims, claims that use vocabulary that threatens to issue unwanted or run-about inference tickets, and so on. If such talk isn’t simply dismissed out of hand as irredeemably defective, it is then usually supposed that to deny both a claim and its negation is tantamount to embracing at least one truth value beyond (or between) that of the standard true and false. But in an incompatibility setting, we aren’t working with anything like truth values, and we needn’t be bothered if the vocabulary we introduce isn’t understood as operating on such things. Rather than introducing a new kind of semantic value, the strategy becomes that of introducing novel types of claims or contents (or better yet, invent some novel content-forming operator), which in effect says of some target claim that it has some feature that prevents one from affirming either it or its negation. From the incompatibility perspective, the game then is simply to specify the rules for generating or calculating the new claims’ incompatibility sets: the sets of sentences with which such a claim would be incompatible. Now there is nothing in principle mysterious about stipulating of some newly invented claim that it be regarded as incompatible with both some target claim and its negation. The trick is to readjust our semantics and logic so as to accommodate the assertibility of such a claim. Doing so requires some tweaking of our earlier definitions (especially that of negation), as well as rethinking of some of our tableau rules. However, there is nothing in the incompatibility setting itself—certainly no grand metaphysical principle—which militates against the imaginative invention of such kinds of claims.16 In this way, thinking of claims in a logical setting that isn’t oriented around truth allows us to overcome metaphysical blinkers in a way that I think is quite congenial to Rorty’s version of pragmatism. It enables us to regain control over our own concepts. This pragmatism is perhaps best encapsulated by his insistence that rather than being obsessed with “truth-makers” or describing how things “really are,” philosophers should be in the game of developing and domesticating new ways of speaking to meet and to transform human, discursive needs. As Rorty emphasizes in the introduction to Truth and Progress, it’s all about solving problems rather than attaining and delimiting truth. When we invent new vocabulary to meet those needs, we don’t need to identify any metaphysical extravagances to which that vocabulary answers, or to specify what that discourse is “really about.” Instead, we demystify and domesticate our words by describing the proprieties for deploying them and integrating them with the rest of our linguistic practices. The ideal is to enlarge our imagination rather than to get things right. Throughout his work, one finds Rorty advocating a thoroughly naturalistic, yet resolutely non-reductive understanding of linguistic transformation whereby expressively richer forms of discourse grow organically out of less sophisticated forms of linguistic practice, and conceptual analysis takes the form of a rationally reconstructed genealogy rather than a hopeless quest for necessary and sufficient conditions. Variously attributing this form of understanding to Darwin and to Dewey, Rorty speaks approvingly of telling “the story of how we got from Neanderthal

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grunts and nudges to German philosophical treatises” (Rorty 1998, 40) or reconstructing the “story of how we got from the apes to the Enlightenment” (Rorty 1999, 75). In these passages, Rorty is clearly alluding to a famous passage (which he himself quotes at the end of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature) found at the very end of Sellars’s Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. There Sellars tells us that his own aim has been one of narrating a tale (or myth) of “Man himself in the middle of his journey from the grunts and groans of the cave to the subtle and polydimensional discourse of the drawing room, the laboratory, and the study, the language of Henry and William James, of Einstein and of the philosophers who, in their efforts to break out of discourse to an Arche beyond discourse, have provided the most curious dimension of all” (Sellars 1956, sec. 63). This Sellarsian thread has been picked up most systematically and enthusiastically by those analytic philosophers pursuing the broadly expressivist agenda of shrinking the scope of discourse with a purely descriptive or representational function, while at the same time explaining how such non-descriptive discourse can nevertheless play a role in our apparently assertional language games.17 Huw Price’s “global expressivism” (Price 2011) represents an extreme version of this trend, according to which the range of purely descriptive discourse shrinks down to virtually nothing. One imagines Rorty would applaud the world being lost in such a fashion, though there is a worry that if we lose ordinary descriptive vocabulary altogether, then we might lose the scaffolding of basic declaratives, upon which expressive extensions of our language can be constructed. Brandom’s more modest project (Brandom 1994) is thus that of showing how social creatures such as ourselves could bootstrap their way from implicit mastery of relatively primitive and straightforward declarative practices to mastery of more complex games of assertion involving vocabulary whose bare descriptive import has heretofore seemed mysterious. In addition to logical vocabulary, modal language, and the language of intentional attribution, Brandom includes the language of truth and representation itself, thus making representational facility a hard-won practical achievement, and not (as the empiricists saw it) a passive starting point for philosophical analysis. Rorty of course was no great friend of such vocabulary (it being some of the curious philosophical patois Sellars spoke of in the passage quoted above). Nevertheless, Rorty further serves to remind us that this—indeed our—story is by no means complete. There always remains hope that new “Jonesian” geniuses can pop onto the scene and teach us how to elaborate our ways of speaking along progressively new dimensions, which carry us even further away from our current laboratories, studies, and conference rooms . . . and perhaps even through the looking glass to a world unencumbered by the epistemological anxieties so characteristic of enlightenment philosophy. Now the thing I find so fascinating in these Rorty-inspired meta-philosophical ramblings is how well they can be illustrated in a symbolic logic course, even at a relatively introductory level. After all, formal logic courses are naturally organized around successive expressive elaborations of a basic language. Moreover, the virtues I’ve been espousing for an incompatibility approach to logic are at the same time largely Rortyan ideals; indeed, Rorty’s polemics against truth and representation

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were a major inspiration for my search for an alternative presentation of logic that doesn’t feature truth as a logical ideal. It should be clear then that we can swallow Rortyan messages and lessons without descending into the rabbit hole of literary theory (just imagine proposing the course I’ve described to the English department!). On the other hand, I would generally refrain from inflicting these themes upon my Philosophy 101 students, for fear that that would drive the poor kids away running and screaming (thereby drawing unwelcome attention from administrative trolls). So I stand by the claim that Rorty’s call for pedagogical reform applies at least as much to logic as it does to Philosophy 101. By transposing formal logic into a pragmatist key, we can see it once again as a source of fruitful and imaginative extensions to our current ways of thinking and talking. Logic is the means by which we tame our concepts and through which future “galactic geniuses” may introduce new concepts to expand and transform the projects we can imagine pursuing. So rather than being left behind as a stagnant and stultifying relic of the Western philosophical tradition, formal logic can be reimagined to be an evolving and progressive force for human development. Just as we should be wary of our 101 syllabi becoming yellow and brittle with age, so too then should we be concerned to wipe the metaphysical and epistemological hoar off of our notes for basic logic. A failure to do so will only inhibit our philosophical progeny from shattering forever the mirror of nature and living in a post-Rortyan pragmatist paradise.

NOTES 1. The persistence constraint requires that for any set of sentences appearing in an incompatible frame, all supersets of that set must also appear in the frame. Basically, this constraint tells us that one may not repair an incompatible set of claims by adding more claims to it. Instead, one must retract (or subtract some sentence or sentences from that set in order to restore compatibility. 2. We can also give informal specifications of incompatibility frames. Consider, for instance, the frame in which (1) A, B, C, and D are each pairwise incompatible with one another; (2) F, G, and H are also pairwise incompatible with one another; (3) P, Q and R are an incompatible triad, as is R, S, and T (4) M is self-incompatible, (5) X is incompatible with every sentence listed so far, and finally (6) also includes the proposition Q. 3. At this point, you should ask yourself why it would not do to define the incompatibility set of a conjunction simply as the union of the incompatibility sets of its propositional components. To help focus your mind here, consider an incompatible triad of sentences that is pairwise compatible, such as P, Q, and R above, or “This berry is red.,” “This berry is ripe.” and “This berry is a blackberry.” There is actually an important lesson here. The fact that the semantic value of a disjunction cannot simply be computed from the semantic values of its component disjuncts, but rather must look to wider features of the incompatibility frame, tells us that the semantics here is holistic, rather than atomistic. 4. Formally, Φ |= Ψ just in case {X: X U Ψ ϵ INC} is a subset of {X: X U Φ ϵ INC}. For degenerate cases, Δ |= simply means that Δ is already part of the incompatibility frame, and so is self-incompatible, while |= φ means that φ is compatible with anything that isn’t self-incompatible.

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5. Specifically, this notion of incompatibility entailment will support the basic structural rules of entailment (assumptions, thinning, and cut), and in conjunction with our definitions of the connectives, will also support the following “basic” rules for negation, conjunction and disjunction: NEG: Г|=φ just in case Г, ~φ |= . DISJ: Г, (φ v ψ) |= just in case Г, ψ|= . CONJ: Г |= (φ & ψ) just in case Г |= φ and Г|= . (Demonstrating this last principle is trickier than the others, since it requires one to invoke the cut principle.) 6. Roughly, here’s how: First, suppose that Г incompatibility entails φ. That means that anything incompatible with φ must also be incompatible with Г. But that means that any grounds for ruling out or denying φ would equally be sufficient for ruling out or denying Г. So one could not coherently affirm everything in Г while denying φ. Going the other direction, let’s suppose, contrapositively, that Г does not incompatibility entail φ. That means there must be something incompatible with φ that is not incompatible with Г. And so one can coherently affirm whatever that might be alongside Г, and thereby preclude oneself from (or deny) φ. Thus, Г could not entail φ when entailment is understood in terms of affirmation and denial (or commitment and preclusion). 7. I’ve gotten much of this history of tree systems from Anellis (1990). Another major pioneer or precursor of the tree system is Hintikka’s method of model sets (1955). I’m not sure who first pioneered the two-sided trees I prefer. I learned them from Michael Perloff while still a graduate student in Pittsburgh. 8. Carroll’s method had us hypothesize a possible object with a set of attributes and nonattributes determined by the sorites’ “retinends” (or end-points). Carroll then systematically applied the various premises of the sorites to determine what further attributes and non-attributes such an object would have to have. Occasionally, such determinations require us to branch the tree and consider various alternate combinations of attributes and non-attributes. The ultimate aim is to close off branches, either by deducing that the hypothesized object would have to possess both an attribute and its negation or by showing that such a combination is explicitly ruled out by a premise. Accordingly, Carroll’s system has two negations built into it, one (signified by a single apostrophe ‘) representing the non-possession of an attribute, the other (signified by a 0) representing the non-existence of a certain class of object. In the end, the full closure of a tree signified that we may conclude the non-existence of a certain type of object (and write down a 0). 9. For this reason, one can readily use two-sided tree proofs to construct “cut-free” proofs in the sequent calculus (i.e., proofs that avoid using the “cut” principle). The fact that every logical entailment is amenable to a cut-free proof is an important result for the project of automating proof construction. 10. For instance, if we think of tree proofs as heuristic guides for the strategic construction of analogous natural-deduction proofs, formulas that appear on the left of branches can be thought of as formulas that are either premises or assumptions or are the products of the topdown application of elimination rules, while formulas that appear on the right are the result of the progressive articulation of new goal formulas through the application of bottom-up introduction rules. Closed branches then represent either the attainment of a goal formula or a goal falsum for indirect proof. 11. Here, I understand a consistent path to be one in which there is an interpretation in which every formula on the left of the path is true and every formula on the right is false. For the curious, I maintain the relevant demonstration on my course website for advanced logic: http:​//fac​ulty.​unlv.​edu/b​eisec​ker/C​ourse​s/PHI​L%204​22/Ta​bleau​%20fo​r%20I​ncomp​ atibi​lity%​20Sem​antic​s.pdf​.

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12. Such incompatibility might be a result of taking that atomic formula on the right to be pairwise incompatible with any single atomic on the left. The persistence constraint on incompatibility frames will take care of the rest. 13. These results basically fall out of the fact that our incompatibility definitions of the relevant connectives obey what I earlier called “basic laws” of such connectives. A sketch of the relevant inductive proof can also be found at: http:​//fac​ulty.​unlv.​edu/b​eisec​ker/C​ourse​s/ PHI​L%204​22/Ta​bleau​%20fo​r%20I​ncomp​atibi​lity%​20Sem​antic​s.pdf​. 14. These notions of possibility and necessity turn out to be equivalent to those that Brandom (Brandom 2008) defines directly out of an incompatibility frame, without first defining a strict conditional. 15. Gocke, et al. (Gocke et al. 2008) shows how we can also discern from an incompatibility frame a weaker modal pair that obeys the B-schema. It remains to be seen whether we can define other modal notions (and corresponding conditionals) that satisfy other well-known modal schema, such as S4, T, and D. It’s early going yet, and these are ripe times for budding logicians to exercise their creativity. 16. See, for example, Beisecker (2016). Similarly, dialetheists maintain that in some circumstances, one may affirm both some claim and its negation. Such a move would require what strikes me as a much more drastic reconceptualization of the negation operator than what I just envisioned a paragraph above. But that just might be a lack of imagination on my part. The overall point is that the incompatibility setting allows for this very sort of playfulness and experimentation, which I take to be quite Rortyan in spirit. 17. For more discussion of this Sellarsian meta-philosophical theme, see: (Beisecker 2013), for which this could well be regarded as a companion piece.

REFERENCES Anellis, Irving H. 1990. “From Semantic Tableaux to Smullyan Trees: A History of the Development of the Falsifiability Tree Method.” Modern Logic 1, no. 1: 36–69. Beisecker, David. 2013. “From the Grunts and Groans of the Cave…” Southwest Philosophy Review 29, no. 1: 1–11. Beisecker, David. 2016. “Incompatibility and the Logic of Rejected Concepts.” Southwest Philosophical Studies 39. Beth, Evert Willem. 1962. Formal Methods: An Introduction to Symbolic Logic and to the Study of Effective Operations in Arithmetic and Logic. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Bostock, David. 1997. Intermediate Logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brandom, Robert. 1994. Making It Explicit. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2008. Between Saying and Doing: Towards and Analytic Pragmatism. Locke Lectures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carroll, Lewis. 1977. Symbolic Logic. Edited by William Warren Bartlett III. New York: Clarkson N. Potter. Frege, Gottlob. 1956 [1918]. “The Thought.” Translated by P. T. Geach. Mind 65, no. 259: 289–311. Gocke, Benedict Paul, Martin Pleitz, and Hanno von Wulfen. 2008. “How to Kripke Brandom’s Notion of Necessity.” In Robert Brandom: Analytic Pragmatist. Edited by Bernd Prien and David P Schweikard, 135–161. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. Jeffrey, Richard. 1967. Formal Logic: Its Scope and Limits. New York: McGraw-Hill

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Peirce, Charles Saunders. 1905. “What Pragmatism is.” The Monist, 15, no. 2: 481–499. Price, Huw. 2011. Naturalism Without Mirrors. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Quine, Willard van Orman. 1950. Methods of Logic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rorty, Richard. 1972. “The World Well Lost.” The Journal of Philosophy 69, no. 19: 649–665. ———. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1998. Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers Volume 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Philosophy and Social Hope. London: Penguin Books. Sellars, Wilfrid. 1956. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

17 Reality is More Practical Than Truth Rorty on Truth versus Justification John Shook

Rorty notoriously denied that there is any practical difference that truth can make to the reasonableness of our beliefs. We should assent to well-justified beliefs. We should pursue better-justified beliefs through expanded inquiries. Beyond that, we cannot, and practically speaking, do not, pursue truth. What we call “truths” are just our better-justified beliefs, or our aspirations for the best-justified beliefs. Apart from our efforts at developing and improving justifications, and refining our methods for reaching reasonable justifications, the concept of truth has no epistemic role to play and no practical difference to make. Rorty’s views on truth and justification can appear to be counterintuitive. Priming familiar intuitions about the real “truth” of beliefs in order to sketch counterexamples has occupied many of Rorty’s critics. Upon closer examination, a typical counterexample fails to support a sound argument for the independent practicality of truth apart from the context of justification. Implications of Rorty’s position on the question of realism are outlined in the concluding section. Rorty’s further views about justification, such as relativizing justification to linguistic communities, are not defended here.

IS TRUTH A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH? This passage concisely states Rorty’s views on this non-practicality for truth: Trying to do the right thing will lead us to do just the same things we would do when we try to justify our actions to ourselves and others. We do not have any way to establish the truth of a belief or the rightness of an action except by reference to the justifications we offer for thinking what we think or doing what we do. The philosophical distinction 253

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between justification and truth seems not to have practical consequences. This is why pragmatists think it is not worth pondering. (Rorty 2007, 44–55)

Uwe Steinhoff represents the typical dissent from Rorty’s stance on truth. He thinks that there is a large practical difference between truth and justification. He illustrates his position in this way: For example, in the following situation A there are some facts which would normally indicate that the water in the pool in front of me is mixed with an absolutely lethal poison. However, there is considerable counter-evidence which outweighs the more worrying indications. In other words, all things considered, my belief that the water is not poisoned is justified. I scoop up some water, thirstily open my mouth—and at this moment my companion says “Well, your belief that the water is not poisoned may be justified, but perhaps it is not true.” (Steinhoff 1997, 358)

Steinhoff contrasts situation A with Situation B: There is again a pool in front of me. This time there are no indications that the water is poisoned. But there are indications that it tastes bad. However, the counter-evidence outweighs these indications. All things considered, my belief that the water does not taste bad is justified. Again I am at the point of drinking it when my companion says, “Well, your belief that the water does not taste bad may be justified, but perhaps it is not true.” (Steinhoff 1997, 359)

Steinhoff additionally stipulates that “the belief in situation A is as well justified as the one in situation B. And both beliefs are equally strong” (Steinhoff 1997, 359). He draws the conclusion that one would be more reasonable to drink the water in situation B than situation A. Why? Because there might be poison in A’s pool of water, and it is unreasonable to choose a course of action possibly leading toward one’s unnecessary death. Since “the truth” matters so much here—a life depends on it!—there appears to be plenty of practicality to truth. No one in that position should drink the water, we are led to think. The truth appears to make a practical difference to evaluating choices to drink from that pool of water, a difference not captured by the way that a belief that “the water is not poisoned” happens to be justified in A. We should not be misled by appearances—“the truth” does not really make a practical difference. Realities make all the practical difference to the outcomes of such situations. The way that truth is inserted into each of Steinhoff’s situations at the end is the place to begin. His situations begin with truths, but they are components to justifications for belief. Why might there be poison in the water? Because “there are some facts” indicating poison in the water. These realities are apparent enough to someone in situation A. Accessible truths in evidence are not what Steinhoff is talking about when he says that “the truth” makes a practical difference. The important truth for Steinhoff is about a reality obscured from our view, hinted at by the companion at the end. Perhaps “the water is poisoned” is really true, even if believing that it is

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not poisoned can be justified now. Rorty can agree; he also distinguishes justification and truth, but “truth” at most indicates “even more justified.” When the truth about that water is someday known after more testing, then we can tell ourselves, “The water was (or was not) poisoned all along.” Verified realities are what we really want, and practically need. Steinhoff resists Rorty’s position, insistent about realities beyond the range of justification that are able to determine our fate. The starker contrast must therefore be drawn between evident realities and unknown realities. Rorty denies that unknown realities, and whatever may be true about them, have any practical role for justifying beliefs or evaluating their reasonableness. As we form, test, and assent to beliefs, we can’t know what can’t be known, even if we wish that we did. Only what is accessible in a situation could be used for considering and justifying a belief. Enlarging the scope of accessible realities is always smart; holding justification accountable to unknowable realities is not. All the same, Steinhoff depicts the companion as reasonable and wise. Let’s continue the story. Suppose “the drinker” decides to drink the water anyways. We can pass judgment on this drinker’s choice, without any observations from “the companion.” Perhaps the companion wouldn’t drink that water. However, a belief that “the water is poisoned” is not justified for the companion, since Steinhoff stipulates that the same facts are sufficiently appreciated by both the drinker and the companion. Does the companion use better reasoning methods? Steinhoff does not say that the companion is a better reasoner. The companion cannot be in possession of a better justification for “the water is probably poisoned” either, since that places the practical difference on justification but not on truth, just as Rorty expects. If it must be “the truth” that makes the practical difference, that companion cannot know more about the water than the drinker. Indeed, the companion must agree with the drinker that the water is probably not poisoned, by the same facts and reasoning. For all we know from Steinhoff’s description of situation A, the companion might drink that water, too. Of course, we are instead led to think that the companion is somehow smarter for hesitating. Nevertheless, only a more cautious disposition, and not a better justification, could stop the companion from drinking that water too. The dispositions and habits of one’s character make large practical differences to one’s choices, but that is not at issue between Rorty and Steinhoff. In sum, the presence and the utterance of the companion makes no practical difference to assessing the reasonableness or unreasonableness of the drinker. And yet the companion is always there, dutifully mentioning what might be true. How does the companion lend plausibility to Steinhoff’s argument? Steinhoff needs the companion to speak of truth, not because the companion has more information or intelligence, but rather because that “might not be true” dictum primes our intuition that the probability of poison is higher than just what the facts are indicating. That hunch of ours, as spectators on the scene, lends urgency to the companion’s laconic dictum about the “truth.” “Don’t drink the water, you fool!” is what we want to shout before it is too late. Not only is the risk of death obviously higher in situation A than in B, but we are led to imagine that the actual risk in A is higher than the level estimated by the drinker. “I wouldn’t drink that water,” we say

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to ourselves. What is wrong with that foolish drinker? Now, Steinhoff doesn’t really want us to fault just the drinker’s rashness. The argumentative point of situation A is that “the truth” is the key difference, making the drinker’s action so unreasonable. The companion is an argumentative trick, an intuition pump, to prime our sense that certain realities are unreasonably ignored. The real truth is out there to potentially kill the drinker, we imagine. If only that drinker would pause to consider the realities, and not just the evident facts or the belief’s justification! It seems obvious to Steinhoff that the truth can falsify the drinker’s belief to render it unreasonable, over and above all registerings and weighings of the facts. Steinhoff is effectively telling us that unless and until a person has gone beyond considering all relevant facts and attaining a balanced justification for a belief, by additionally thinking about what is true, that person is not reasonable enough. If you are going to even think about drinking potentially poisoned water, you had better know what you are doing. The drinker can’t know what the water really is, in Steinhoff’s scenarios, because known beliefs must really be true, and not just thought to be true. “Sure, you think the water isn’t poisoned, but for all that, it might really be poisoned.” Doesn’t that sound like a reasonable thing for that companion to utter at just the right moment? Once that intuition pump starts working, we judge that the drinker is not a knower, and hence unreasonable. What made such a practical difference? Only truth itself, concludes Steinhoff.

TRUTHS AND REALITIES Rorty is not refuted by scenarios like Steinhoff’s situations. No intuition pumps are needed to explain Rorty’s view that truth by itself cannot make a practical difference, and “the truth” cannot account for the unreasonable drinking in situation A. Closer scrutiny into the companion’s dictum about truth shows why. What does “your belief might not be true” practically do for the drinker? Since the drinker is already aware of the available poison-indicating facts, the drinker has already considered that the water might be poisoned. No additional information about evidential facts comes from the companion, in the given situations. If the companion had instead said, “Your belief may be justified but you overlooked some evident facts about poison,” or “Your belief may be justified but you should try an additional test for poison,” then that advice would constitute useful information. No one should presume that all potential evidence has been completely appreciated, or that every sort of performable inquiry has been attempted and conducted perfectly. Perhaps a whole community of inquirers could approach those ideal standards for some empirical matters, but no single individual will. Steinhoff’s situations assign no such role for the companion, since that would alter the justificatory factors, instead of isolating attention on “the truth.” Aside from prejudicing our intuitions, there is no epistemic role for the companion, so the companion can be set aside. What is left about situation A to consider? The role of the drinker is crucial.

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Focusing on the drinker’s decision, in light of all available facts, a choice to drink the water is obviously risky and foolish, and that is a fair verdict with which the drinker would likely agree. People sometimes make unreasonable choices in the face of evident facts, expecting that other evident facts reduce the probability of disaster. If I decide to ride my motorcycle without wearing a helmet, my companion can tell me, “Well, your belief that this motorcycle ride won’t end in a crash may be justified, but perhaps it is not true.” What is my reply? “Thanks for the warning,” would be a civil response. Uncivil responses might also come to mind. Unless my companion knows something that I don’t—a rainstorm is approaching, or my motorcycle needs repairs, and so forth—then my decision is made in light of available information. Let’s all agree that my decision is unreasonable. What role has “the truth” played? The evident facts are playing the crucial roles, not “the truth.” What makes my helmetless motorcycle ride so unreasonable are obvious facts about motorcycle stability, skull fragility, and helmet safety, which I already understand. Returning to Steinhoff’s two situations, “the truth” has played no practical role at all. Whatever the companion may say along the lines of “perhaps that belief is not true” cannot be relevant to our verdict upon the drinker’s foolishness in situation A. We would make the same assessment if no companion was present. Yet we are spectators here, too. We can also say to ourselves, “That drinker’s justified belief that the water is not poisoned might not be true.” We can say this because we are told about evident facts in situation A indicating the possible poisoning of the water. Have we found a practical role for the truth? No. The thought that “the water is possibly poisoned” has already occurred to the drinker, who adequately appreciates the available facts, according to Steinhoff’s portrayal. If we disagree with the drinker’s choice to drink that water, that difference cannot be because the drinker has failed to appreciate something about the situation that we have noticed. Like that droll companion, we have no informative comments to make to the drinker, either. We could make a different sort of practical difference in situation A, by pulling the drinker away from that water, or scolding the drinker for taking an unnecessary risk. But those interventions are not about “the truth,” but instead about our different appetite for the risk. The drinker is unreasonable, we can all agree. We feel bound to sternly interject a dire warning in situation A. What would our intervention really be about, if not truth? The drinker’s rash temperament, not ignorance or irrationality, is responsible for that unreasonable decision. Ignoring “the truth” is not. Justifying the belief that the water is probably not poisoned is based on weighing all evident facts, not on the “truth” of that belief. There is nothing to learn about the possible truth in this situation except for acquiring more facts or weighing them more rationally (if that is possible). But those useful procedures adjust the level of justification, so they cannot help Steinhoff isolate truth as the practical difference-maker. That is why the companion is not depicted as more knowledgeable about the water, more skilled at empirical inquiry, or more capable with probability inferences. Anyone would suffice, actually. If someone knows more about the water in situation A, then that makes a practical difference. Yet that practical difference is due to the way that

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someone has a better fact-based justification. Again, “the truth” in itself is irrelevant to anyone’s evaluation of the reasonableness of drinking water. Maybe no one else in the world would take a drink too—but that caution has to do with risk-aversion, not truth. Rorty points out that an appeal to the truth can have a cautionary meaning, when used as a reminder that a belief is justified only relative to available evidence, and better inquiry in other contexts could alter a belief’s justification (Rorty 1991, 128; See, also: Rorty 2007, 41). For pragmatism, this meaning to “truth” is simply an appreciation of fallibilism and opportunities for learning. This “cautionary” use of truth by itself adds no evidentiary information within an ongoing situation, which is what Rorty claims. The other two meanings for truth noted by Rorty—the “endorsing” use of “That’s true” (to express agreement with another’s belief), and the “disquotational” use in sentences of the form “S” is true if and only if S—do not convey evidentiary information either. If there is more evidence to consider in a situation, that potentially alters the justification to a belief formed in that situation. The role of the companion’s dictum about truth in Steinhoff’s situations is not cautionary in Rorty’s sense. Yet Steinhoff does not say what sort of precaution the companion is trying to provide. Again, the drinker already appreciates how the balanced justification toward the belief that the water is not poisoned is based on available facts. Would the drinker prefer that additional relevant facts could be discerned here? Presumably so, and Steinhoff does not depict the drinker as uninterested in learning more, since that depiction would shift attention away from truth and toward the drinker. The generic way that empirical beliefs are fallible and justifications are revisable is not what the companion is trying to point out. If neither the companion, nor we readers, have anything informative to contribute about this specific situation A, attention must turn to the drinker. Perhaps the companion knows more about the drinker than we do. Yet we could guess—what sort of person would take a drink of that water under such conditions? As Steinhoff stipulates, the drinker won’t die of thirst that day. Drinking that water is optional, not urgent. After considering the facts, the unreasonableness of the drinker’s poor choice has to be mainly about personal motivations and dispositions to take that risk, and not about “the truth,” whatever that might turn out to be. Telling someone that their belief may be wrong can be a roundabout way of asking someone to rethink an unwise action before it is too late. A paternalistic use of phrases such as “You might be wrong about that” is not among Rorty’s meanings for truth, since he was not trying to distinguish illocutionary meanings associated with “truth.” Whatever Steinhoff’s companion was trying to express with “perhaps it is not true,” that comment is not an observation exposing a practical difference between the truth of a belief and the justification behind it.

KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH Rorty, like James and Dewey before him, did not reject common sense realism about the world around us. What appears phenomenally does not exhaust all reality, and

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intelligence not only learns this well, but relies on it. Realities are doing far more than just what we are able to notice and appreciate. Detecting and tracking how realities do what they do is essential for assembling justifications for beliefs based on evidence. Where does any “truth” beyond those realities make a difference to those endeavors? Pragmatists deny the common philosophical view that a belief’s justification is ultimately explained by its truth. Good reasons account for justified beliefs. Good reasons for beliefs about the world should be related to realities rather than unrealities. Good reasons are surely practical, since practicalities, one would suppose, involve realities rather than unrealities. Pragmatism affirms this supposition more consistently and coherently than rival philosophies exaggerating truth’s role in justification and reasonableness. All can at least agree that the real presence of factual evidence, in order to help justify a belief, should be connected in some way to the reality that the belief is about. Present realities serve as indications of other realities inaccessible at present. The factual truths in evidence, essential to Steinhoff’s stage-setting for his drinking situations, are the practical realities that matter to justification. Accessible realities, related to farther realities while relevant to present situations, are intermediate practicalities worth pondering during the process of justification. Pragmatism takes its stand here, seeing no further role for “truth” in the abstract. Labeling accessible realities as “truths” is unnecessary unless we simply want to endorse their salience, and calling them “facts” only points to their intermediary roles within inquiries. Suspicious of “the truth” in the abstract, pragmatism stands apart from philosophies inserting “the truth” among knowledge’s criteria. Pragmatism prioritizes practical know-how aiming at competency in our dealings with the world. Propositional knowledge is grounded in that practical arena of conduct; pragmatism cannot fully define knowledge apart from that context. Epistemology, and theories of knowledge generally, are not good company for pragmatism. Knowledge taken in isolation from inquiries and situated endeavors can take vicarious forms, depending on presumed contexts. An indubitable certainty of a belief attached to phenomenal perceptions or feelings can strike one as a kind of immediate knowing. Asking about truth in that context would be pointless, where certainty suffices. In other contexts where pursuing justification seems inappropriate, where one’s belief simply gets things right without needing reasons, such a belief seems to many people like another kind of knowing. Knowledge is just true belief, for those contexts. So long as differing contexts are distinguished, multiple ordinary meanings for “knowledge” do not trouble pragmatism. Pragmatism accommodates all sorts of evident matters commonly labeled as “facts” or “truths” in that endorsing sense acknowledged by Rorty. Most empirical matters beyond the undeniable and unimpeachable do call for explicit reasons supporting beliefs, so justifications are apt if not obligatory. Pragmatism denies that “the truth” of the belief should be a criterion for knowledge in those contexts. That simplifies matters dramatically for pragmatism, as Rorty’s stance shows. Theories of knowledge about knowledge as justified true belief get lost in mazes of Gettier problems and intractable externalist versus internalist debates (see, for example, Borges, Almeida, and Klein 2017). If a “theory” of empirical knowledge

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must be extracted from pragmatism, knowing requires well-justified belief. Reasonable justifications connect accessible matters with inaccessible matters, so knowing is both internal and external in a way (although pragmatism denies the reality of anything subjective by ontological dualism’s standards). For pragmatism, propositions called “true” are simply what have been learned and known. On pragmatism’s view of the purpose for justification, “truth” as the goal of all inquiry could be nothing more than “ideally justified” knowledge. However, imagining how that goal can be reached is futile, so it remains a formulaic notion at best, for gesturing at empirical science’s self-correcting strivings. Peirce treated truth as what would be known through ideal inquiry: “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth” (Peirce 1992 [1878], 139). But this idealization characterizes scientific inquiry at most, and not ordinary meanings of “true.” Putnam allows “truth” to range over broader territory: “We speak as if there were such things as epistemically ideal conditions and we call a statement ‘true’ if it would be justified under such conditions” (Putnam 1981, 55). As for Rorty, he had no use for idealized truth conditions under any circumstances, especially if that sort of truth dictates reality (Misak 2013). Since truth as idealized inquiry is not Rorty’s idea, we shall return to the main question, the impracticality of “the truth.” Pragmatism expects intelligence to discover how there are better and worse ways of justifying beliefs, without any guiding light from something called “the truth.” Rival philosophies preoccupied with “the truth” insist that a good justification for a belief has to somehow involve that belief’s truth.

IS KNOWLEDGE ABOUT FORTUNE OR FATE? Rorty’s position on justification versus truth is defensible: appealing to “the truth” makes no practical difference to the reasonableness of beliefs, beyond the support supplied by justification. Truth, over and above accessible facts, seems irrelevant to justified beliefs. That broad dismissal should be scrutinized further. Could the truth of a belief help explain why that belief can be justified? Good justifications should be conducive to arriving at true beliefs, more so than to false beliefs. If so, then the truth could still make an indirect practical difference for justification, beyond practicalities considered during inquiries. On the other hand, perhaps it is impractical to justify beliefs, and truth can explain why. If so, then the truth practically replaces justification, rendering inquiry irrelevant. If the latter stance seems unreasonable, as it should, then justifications remain important because they lead to more truths than not. These opposed views can agree that there is a practical difference between truth and justification: the first expects better justifications to usually justify true beliefs, while the second view expects true beliefs to usually be better than justified beliefs. Consider this issue from the perspective of a character that we shall call Fortuna. Fortuna thinks that the difference between knowledge and lucky belief is not truth,

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for both knowledge and lucky belief can get things right. Justification is what makes the difference, for Fortuna. However, justification seems impractical to Fortuna. Fortuna explains, “I’d rather have lucky belief than knowledge, because lucky belief is more practical. When I have lucky belief, I do not have to expend the time and effort for justification. Lucky belief is more efficient. Getting things really right is always more practical: having truth is easier than getting both truth and justification. Besides, justification never guarantees truth. If justification ensures truth, then knowledge would simply be justified belief, but that is silly. The best justification may fail to reach truth, so the idea of truth is irreplaceable. It is better to have truth itself. Not only is truth quite different from justification, it is truth that I practically want, far more than justification. From moment to moment, wasting time on justifications is not only inefficient, but often harmful.” From Fortuna’s perspective, Rorty is wrong about truth and justification. Rorty thinks that the difference between justification and truth is merely philosophical, without practical consequences. For Fortuna, it is far more practical to have truth than justification. The other stance on the difference between truth and justification can be voiced by a second character, called Fatum. Fatum begins by agreeing with Fortuna that a belief can be true without justification, but ends by finding that justification is more practical than truth. Fatum describes this perspective: “A belief about how things are can be asserted with a proposition as a fact, which may or may not be among the real facts. If it is one of the real facts, the asserted belief is true; otherwise that belief is false. Reality dictates the true and the false. Whether a belief is true or false has nothing to do with whether a belief is justified or justifiable. That is why an unjustified belief may be true, since reality determines a belief’s truth, not justification. Justification is a mental way to appreciate that a belief is true, but justification never contributes to making a belief true. If mental processes make beliefs true, then minds control reality and error would be rare, but that irrational notion is highly impractical. Reality is independent of what all minds happen to think, and so is truth. Justification never guarantees truth. It is highly practical to understand that any justification may yield a belief that fails to be true. Throughout life, proceeding as if most or all beliefs are true is generally inefficient, and inevitably dangerous.” Fortuna and Fatum think that keeping truth and justification conceptually distinct has important practical consequences. They cannot agree on much else. Fortuna seems careless about avoiding false beliefs, while Fatum makes noticing false beliefs a top priority. Someone who thinks like Fortuna is living mostly in the moment, where time is scarce and indecision tends to make problems worse. Fortuna’s fast thinking focuses on meeting hard realities in the here and now. Fatum regards Fortuna with suspicion. Even if Fortuna’s intuitive style permits some efficiency in the short run, real harms will be experienced eventually, especially in unfamiliar situations. Fortuna has no method for anticipating when and where a reliance on luck won’t be intelligent. Fatum would advise Fortuna that slowing down to form justified beliefs is more practical over the long run than just hoping for true belief. For Fatum, beliefs having justifications are more likely to be true than beliefs

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arising any other way.1 Fatum concludes that having justifications is more practical than just having true beliefs. Fortuna sees little wisdom in Fatum’s advice. According to Fatum, each belief is already true or false, regardless of justification. If a justification cannot make a belief more true, then what use is justification? Justifications can easily make beliefs seem like they are more likely to be true, but justifications cannot really make beliefs more likely to be true. Fortuna is not impressed by the way that justifications only increase one’s degree of confidence, since hard realities do not change just because one feels more confident. From Fortuna’s perspective, thinking of a justification for a belief is a pointless exercise. No one thinks about justifying a belief already thought to be false, so one only thinks about justifications for beliefs already thought to be true. Justifications cannot make false beliefs into true beliefs, or true beliefs into false beliefs, just as Fatum says, so one is left with the same beliefs thought to be true, and those are the beliefs for action. Fortuna always acts on beliefs taken for true, and does not waste effort by acting on beliefs taken for true with justifications. Of course, any belief taken for true may turn out to be false in reality, Fortuna reminds Fatum, but adding justifications cannot increase or decrease the probability of having more true beliefs in the long run. Fortuna concludes that having truth is always more practical than having justification.

TRUTH VERSUS JUSTIFICATION? Which is more practical, truth or justification? Perhaps an equivocation is dividing them on this issue. Fatum asserts that “justification never contributes to making a belief true.” Fortuna agrees, and adds, that “justification never contributes to making a true belief.” But Fatum never meant to say that. If justification cannot guide the formation of true beliefs, there is no point to any justification. Fortuna is equivocating on the word “making.” Those two statements are not equivalent: something real “makes” a belief true, while something mental “makes” a true belief. Still, Fortuna would uphold both statements. Fortuna sees how all beliefs have a mental origin—letting “mental” cover all psychological processes, conscious, and subconscious, able to contribute to a belief. “Something mental makes a true belief” is automatically correct, since something mental makes every belief. What is so special about a mental process labeled as “justification”? Mental justification is unconnected with truth or true belief in advance, Fortuna reminds Fatum, since facts do not make beliefs until factual truth is evident, when justification is no longer needed. All the same, Fatum maintains that mental justification should contribute to affirming true beliefs, and justification should contribute more to true beliefs than false beliefs. That expectation sounds like wishful thinking to Fortuna. “I seem to leave true belief to chance,” Fortuna says to Fatum, “but so do you, since you cannot say which justifications will point out more true beliefs than false beliefs.” Fortuna adds, “You can only tell which justifications have led to more true beliefs so far, but reality is independent from all justification, so

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any justification may lead to more false beliefs in the future too.” Taking a chance on a belief taken for true is no worse than taking a chance on a justification taken for truthful, from Fortuna’s viewpoint. In fact, the first option is usually smarter, since the second option wastes effort on justifications in situations where indecision can be deadly. Fortuna and Fatum still agree that there is a practical difference between truth and justification. For Fortuna, forgetting about truth and only thinking about justified beliefs would be disastrous, since it is the true beliefs (not the justified beliefs) which mean that one has survived to live another day. For example, picture Fortuna and Fatum walking through a forest where tigers roam. An odd sound is heard. When Fortuna has the sudden idea “that is a tiger lurking in the underbrush,” that belief is taken for true and Fortuna turns to flee. Fatum has the same thought too. While believing “there is a tiger” just as strongly as Fortuna, Fatum tells Fortuna, “Our belief that there is a tiger may be false.” Fortuna realizes this, but ignores the cautionary advice. Suppose that the belief “there is a tiger there” is actually true—Fortuna ignores Fatum and runs away while Fatum looks closer to find out whether the belief is justifiable, and the tiger pounces on Fatum instead of Fortuna. Or, suppose that the belief “there is a tiger there” is actually false—Fatum wastes ten minutes of effort poking around in the underbrush, while Fortuna gets ten minutes of running exercise. Fortuna’s options of “running/running” is better than Fatum’s options of “dying/searching,” and therefore justification is less practical than truth. Fatum can think of a way to deny that conclusion. Justifiable beliefs are more likely to be true, for Fatum. In the true belief scenario, Fortuna’s belief arose from a fast-mental process, a process that was justified—since justification leads to more truths than not. In the false belief scenario, Fortuna’s belief arose from a fast-mental process that was not justified, since the belief was false. In the first scenario, a justified belief was quite practical (since running was necessary), and in the second scenario, an unjustified belief was impractical (since running was unnecessary). Fatum judges that justified belief is at least as practical as truth, if not more so. As for Fatum, in the true belief scenario, the searching yielded a justified belief since that tiger proved to be real, while that searching in the false belief scenario yielded a justified true belief, “No tiger is there in the underbrush,” which Fortuna did not learn. Searching is more practical for Fatum since searching consistently leads to justified and true beliefs, more frequently than Fortuna’s chancy ways. Fatum concludes that justified belief is at least as practical as truth, and usually more practical. Although telling Fortuna that “the belief that there is a tiger may be false” was a cautionary expression by Fatum, it was clearly more than that for Fatum, by stating the practical difference between a mere true belief and a justified true belief. Fortuna has some questions for Fatum about these scenarios. “I only had one belief, that there is a tiger, from a single mental process. I did not have a justified process, and an unjustified process, forming my belief. I couldn’t appreciate whether my belief was true or false, since I was running away, but I couldn’t tell if my process was justified or unjustified either? It is often hard for someone to tell if a belief is true, but it should be easier to see if one has formed a justification or not. I do

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not usually check for justification, but you do. Perhaps I am too hasty. But are you unable to tell whether your deliberate mental processes are justifications or not?” Fortuna has trapped Fatum with these questions. Fatum thinks that one should first form justified beliefs, and then assent to those beliefs in the expectation that justified beliefs are more likely to be true. How can one assent to the right belief, if one cannot tell whether that belief is justified while forming that belief? Fatum cannot endorse this perplexity. Fatum should admit that having justification or not must be no mystery to a thinker when assenting to a belief. It cannot be the case that a careful thinker like Fatum is always left unsure whether a belief has any justification. To be sure, even Fatum could never be sure that a belief is highly justified, since everyone has cognitive limitations and biases, but the difference between better and worse justifications should be appreciable by typical thinkers.

REALITY AND FALLIBILITY Fatum must retract his assessment of Fortuna’s belief: “There is a tiger there.” Retroactive evaluations of justification can be helpful, but they must serve situational assessments of justification while beliefs are formed and affirmed. Only situational assessments of justifiability, conducted by the believer, are ultimately informative for the believer. Situational assessments can and should include reliable retroactive evaluations—if others can tell that my method for believing is usually unjustified in light of facts, then I should assess beliefs differently—but ultimately my justifications are my assessments, even if I conform to more intelligent methods. Justifications are situational and transparent to the believer considering them. Other hidden or inscrutable contributions to belief-formation are labeled as something other than “justification,” such as instinct, compulsion, rationalization, and so on. Fortuna’s intuitive approach to belief-assent is inadequately justified, Fatum thinks, so Fatum’s understanding of better justifications must be situationally accessible to Fatum, if not to Fortuna. Otherwise, anything Fatum says about Fortuna’s mental processes are non-informative, irrelevant, and lack practicality. Let’s review the tiger situation again. When Fortuna has the sudden idea “that is a tiger lurking in the underbrush,” that belief is taken for true and Fortuna turns to flee. Fatum has the same belief too, but tells Fortuna, “Our belief that there is a tiger may be false.” Fatum’s thought about their belief is just a thought, so far. It does not show that Fortuna’s belief is false, or even unjustified, and it has no bearing on whether Fatum’s belief that “there is a tiger lurking in the underbrush” is true or false, or justified or not. Fatum is not more reasonable or practical for having had this thought; it does not amount to actionable information. Fortuna already realizes that this belief may be false and is fleeing anyways. Fatum thinks the belief is true (to believe proposition P is to take P for true) and looks closer to discover the real tiger. For Fatum, believing “it is true that there is a tiger” and “I do not know that there is a tiger” are compatible thoughts, since knowing the tiger must await the discovery of the real tiger. What is this difference between believing that P is true and knowing

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P? Fatum expects that difference to be justification. Fatum has been forced to admit that justification for a belief cannot simply depend on that belief’s truth, prior to knowledge. Before seeking out the tiger, Fatum thinks, “My belief that there is a tiger is not yet justified, but when I discover the tiger, my belief will be justified.” If Fatum admits, “My belief is not justified yet,” then how can Fatum judge Fortuna’s belief to be unjustified? Fatum cannot make that assessment yet. As Fortuna turns to flee, all Fatum can say is “Your belief that there is a tiger might not be justified.” But this is no news to Fortuna, either. Fortuna already realizes how this belief may be false, and may be unjustified, while turning to flee. Fatum has no practical information to convey to Fortuna at that moment. Fortuna would be right to reply, “Your thought that there may be no tiger, and there may be no justification for that belief either, make no practical difference to me.” When can a belief be justified, according to Fatum? Fatum has taken the position that only justified beliefs should become beliefs, and that beliefs become justified when known. These two ideas are incompatible. If one can hold a belief to be true before knowing it, then one holds a belief to be true before it is justified, but then one should not believe it at all, according to Fatum. Surely it is possible to believe things as true before knowing them to be true, and it is possible to justify a belief before knowing that is true. Otherwise, one must believe P, justify P, verify P, and know P, all simultaneously in the same moment. There might be some kinds of beliefs that occur in this manner (certain perceptual beliefs, or mathematical conclusions, perhaps). Fatum does not suppose that most beliefs are like that, and surely not that “there is a tiger lurking in the underbrush.” Fatum must shift to a different position: justified beliefs should become beliefs, and the justification of P is a process occurring before believing P to be true, and before knowing P to be true. Unlike the truth of a belief, which depends for Fatum on the factual reality that the belief is about, whether a particular belief is justified cannot simply depend on that factual reality. Beliefs should be related to, and dependent on, realities—all can agree on the practicalities to such relationships. However, making justification depend solely on independent reality is impractical. The point to forming justified beliefs is that they must be formed while somewhat ignorant of the actual truth. We seek to justify beliefs before knowing their truth; if one already knows a true belief, no justification is sought. Explaining how one knew a true belief is not “justifying” it—perhaps “rationalizing” (or “confabulating”) aptly labels what one offers in order to retrospectively account for rightly believing. Of course, if one cannot know without prior justification anyways (if knowledge is never just true belief), then we must form justifications for beliefs while not knowing their truth. Either way, ignorance of the real truth is a precondition for a process of justifying a belief, and having luckily true belief counts as being ignorant (as Fortuna gladly admits). This revised position allows Fatum to hold that (1) reality makes a belief true or not (the “real truth” condition), while (2) justifying a belief requires a process involving more than the real truth (the “prior justification” condition). What is needed for the process of justifying a belief does not have to include the reality that the belief is about. This revised position entails two additional points: (3) while

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justifying a belief, one cannot yet know whether it is true (the “ignorance” condition), and (4) while holding a justified belief, one can think that it may be false (the “fallibility” condition). Call these the “Four Fatum” conditions. The last condition allows one to think, “I believe P is true and P may be false,” showing how believing P need not be a psychological state of stubborn certainty. This fallibility condition is not about drawing a philosophical contrast between all empirical facts and some “actual reality” in general so that any learning might yet be wrong. Brandishing a metaphysically ultimate reality that may stay unknowable yields philosophical skepticism, not common sense fallibilism, and that extreme skepticism is dismissed by pragmatism (see Rorty 2000, 57–58; and on Rorty’s ability to sustain the distinction, see Williams 2003). Fortuna can agree to the Four Fatum conditions. They still fail to motivate Fortuna to refrain from fleeing upon believing that there is a tiger in the underbrush. Fatum’s warnings that “there may not be a real tiger” and “believing there is a tiger is not yet justified” do not motivate Fortuna, either. Such thoughts are not practical, for Fortuna. Fortuna is practical about quickly leaving the scene. Fatum’s method of searching for the tiger seems to be the least practical option, since it exposes Fatum to the risk of death. It is far more practical, it appears to Fortuna, to try to avoid terrible outcomes. Fortuna still sees a big practical difference between truth and justification. Since Fortuna had realized that a tiger may truly lurk, that made running away so practical, while Fatum’s search for justification was impractical by comparison. Fortuna had said from the start that luckily true belief is, in general, more practical than always trying to be justified. If Fortuna had said to Fatum, “There may truly be a tiger there” before fleeing, Fatum could have realized the impracticality to searching for a tiger and hence the impracticality to having a justified belief in this situation. Perhaps Fatum cannot grasp the practical difference between truth and justification, Fortuna wonders. Fatum’s dictums are irrelevant and impractical, and Fatum’s focus on justifying beliefs can be very impractical. Fortuna does not make a good case for Fatum’s impracticalities. Fortuna has a low toleration for risk, and that temperament is the actual basis for Fortuna’s opinion that Fatum’s interest in justifications is so impractical. Telling Fatum that “there may truly be a tiger there” is not really about the truth but only about Fortuna. Fatum’s emphasis on justification is not impractical just because timid hearts cannot deal with much risk. And Fatum need not be obsessed with completing inquiries about all matters. After all, Fatum now has a revised position which does not require discerning the truth for acquiring a justified belief; thanks to the “prior justification” criterion, justifying a belief requires a process involving more than the real truth. Processes leading to more true beliefs than false beliefs are able to better connect accessible facts with whatever the beliefs are about. Tracking connections among facts toward a potential tiger should make even an intrepid inquirer like Fatum halt at some point, before a tiger manifests itself. At the point where Fatum finds it reasonable to halt this inquiry, the belief “there is a tiger there” has become fairly well justified. Fatum’s inquiry is quite practical for reaching a well-justified belief, before a tiger’s reality becomes obvious.

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OBJECTIVES OF INQUIRY Neither Fortuna nor Fatum can make a good case that the other’s course of action is unreasonable. Temperament is their biggest difference, and through that lens each one can only perceive the other as foolish. However, from a broader standpoint, Fortuna’s flightiness is less practical in the long run than Fatum’s inquisitiveness. Although Fortuna usually stays very safe, few new facts about the world are learned, and the advantages of tracking connections among things are missed. Fortuna imagines that truth is what makes the positive practical difference to smart decisions, but the truth is doing no such thing; Fortuna’s sensitivity to familiar signs of danger and proclivity for hasty risk-aversion are the decisive factors. Fortuna’s vast ignorance about the world’s ways means that Fortuna has relatively few true beliefs, even fewer justifications for them, and hardly any confirmations that they are indeed true. Overall, having beliefs that happen to be true no longer sounds so beneficial for Fortuna’s course of life. Fatum misses few opportunities to inquire into connections among interesting matters. Fatum’s initial view that the truth accounts for the justification of beliefs had to be abandoned. Inquiries into evident and accessible facts account for justifying (or failing to justify) one’s beliefs. Fatum came to understand how good justifications must be pursued, and can be acquired, in the absence of truth. All those justifications, even those that never reached their objectives, are useful discoveries. They allow Fatum to reasonably halt inquiries around the point where prudence dictates greater caution. Because Fatum is acquainted with a large variety of facts about connections between evident and not-yet-evident matters, avoiding genuine dangers is much easier. Under surprising conditions when there is little time for inquiry, Fatum could resort to imitating Fortuna’s hasty timidity. Most conditions permit extensive or even exhaustive inquiry so that many more facts can be exposed and explored. Rorty thinks that a difference between justification and truth is merely philosophical, without practical consequences. Fortuna and Fatum initially disagree with Rorty, in divergent ways. At the start of our dialogue with Fortuna and Fatum, Fortuna held that it is more practical to have true beliefs than justified beliefs, while Fatum held that it is more practical to have justifications for true beliefs. Both turned out to be mistaken. What Fortuna acts upon are alarming beliefs however they happen to arise, and regardless of whether they are true or ever understood to be true. The truth of beliefs makes no practical difference to Fortuna’s activities. Encountered realities make all the practical difference, of course—reality is more practical than truth. As for Fatum, what Fatum acts upon is a curiosity about how evident facts are connected with less evident matters, and an interest in finding out whether beliefs can become well justified or not. The truth of beliefs makes no practical difference to Fatum’s activities, either. The truths actually making a practical difference to beliefs sooner or later come within the scope of inquiries into potential justification. Encountered realities make all the practical difference, once again. Fatum still thinks that only reality can ultimately make a belief true or not. That view is not mistaken

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if interpreted properly. All the realities for inquiry, from initial evident facts through connected matters brought into evidence, through to an encounter with the belief’s object, contribute to understanding a belief’s truth or falsity. Realities unconnected with those objectives of justifications make no difference, to either appreciating a belief’s truth or benefiting from learning about the world. Truth adds nothing to justification, and reality is more practical than truth. If Fatum grants all that while still insisting that some reality quite apart from inquiries determines a belief’s truth no matter how justification works out, what can be said? Two further points might suffice to defend Rorty’s view on justification and truth, reducing the role of truth to impotency. First, it is not unreasonable to foresee how properly conducted inquiries into somewhat familiar matters can typically culminate in determinations of truths (fallibly, as always). Some inquiries are halted by environing circumstances or depleted materials, but long experience with successful inquiries encourages confidence that more inquiries into related matters will result in truth determinations. (For example, a chemist expects that a sample of liquid has a low, neutral, or high pH value.) In those contexts of inquiry, the envisioned truth is taken to be out there, yet our projections are due entirely to prior inquiries. The object of belief is simply the culminating objective of justification, and “the truth” adds nothing. Second, inquiries into unfamiliar matters, where investigatory tools cannot be trusted and environing circumstances go well beyond our control, forbid us from high hopes that any truth can be approached and determined. What the object of belief is actually like can only be sheer speculation, since we cannot clearly characterize the objective of justification. (For example, an astrobiologist suspects that hints of an unusual molecule on a distant world may be a sign of alien life.) In that sort of context, “there is life on that other world” is too vague to have a truth value, since the meaning for the term “life” cannot be preset too strictly and what counts as a sign for alien life is presently indeterminate. The object of belief is as inchoate as the process of justification, and there is nothing for “the truth” to attach to. These two points explain why our capacity to envision how a belief has a definite object allowing reality to determine its truth has to be proportional to our capacity to plan and conduct an inquiry into such a thing. Where there is envisioned truth, there is a projected objective of inquiry; where there is no projected inquiry, there is no truth. Pragmatism affirms this correlation with the tenet that a belief’s object is, for all practical purposes, the objective of inquiry. Truth is accordingly just the culmination, envisioned or at least projected, of our inquiries.

CONCLUSION Truth entirely outside of inquiry can be abandoned by philosophy. Where does that leave reality? Realities remain where they always have been. The empirical world is always with us, and we are within it. Eliminating any independent and practical role for “the truth” has nothing to do with eliminating the real world around us.2 Philosophies endorsing a metaphysical correspondence or identity between truth and reality accuse pragmatism of denigrating or dismissing reality. Deprived of

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independent reality, pragmatism reduces the world to only whatever shows up for us, according to these rationalistic philosophies. Pragmatism disputes that accusation of anti-realism or phenomenalism. What can become evident through inquiry is surely real, and becomes evident because things are so thoroughly interconnected that each novel phenomenon is a robust reality leading on to more things awaiting our acquaintance. Because realities are endlessly conducive to more realities, inventive inquiries will never exhaust the opportunities for more learning and enlarged activity. Reality is endlessly more practical than truth.

NOTES 1. William Alston typifies a realist view of truth and is aligned with this view of justification: “It is part of what is meant by ‘being justified in believing that p’ that one has satisfied conditions that guarantee a significant likelihood that the belief is true” (Alston 1997, 241). 2. See Gary Gutting’s defense of Rorty’s compatibility with this common sense realism in: (Gutting 2003, 41–60). As Gutting notes, Charles Taylor defends that empirical realism despite disagreeing with Rorty on other matters in: (Taylor 1990).

REFERENCES Alston, William. 1997. A Realist Conception of Truth. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Borges, Rodrigo, Claudio de Almeida, Peter D. Klein, eds. 2017. Explaining Knowledge: New Essays on the Gettier Problem. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gutting, Gary. 2003. “Rorty’s Critique of Epistemology.” In Richard Rorty. Edited by Charles Guignon and David Hiley, 41–60. Contemporary Philosophy in Focus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Misak, Cheryl. 2013. “Rorty, Pragmatism, and Analytic Philosophy.” Humanities 2: 369–383. Peirce, Charles S. 1992 [1878]. “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” In The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Volume 1 (1867–1893). Edited by Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel, 124–141. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Putnam, Hilary. 1981. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, Richard. 1991. “Pragmatism, Davidson and Truth.” In Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, 126–150. Philosophical Papers Volume 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2000. “Response to Jürgen Habermas.” In Rorty and His Critics. Edited by Robert B. Brandom, 56–64. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ———. 2007. “Main Statement by Richard Rorty.” In What’s the Use of Truth? Authored by Richard Rorty and Pascal Engel, 31–46. Translated by William McCunig. New York: Columbia University Press. Steinhoff, Uwe. 1997. “Truth vs. Rorty.” Philosophical Quarterly 47: 358–361. Taylor, Charles. 2003. “Rorty in the Epistemological Tradition.” In Richard Rorty. Edited by Charles Guignon and David Hiley, 257–278. Contemporary Philosophy in Focus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Michael. 2003. “Rorty on Knowledge and Truth.” In Richard Rorty. Edited by Charles Guignon and David Hiley, 61–80. Contemporary Philosophy in Focus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

18 Ironic Wrong-doing and the Arc of the Universe Randall Auxier

THE ARC Martin Luther King, Jr., said in several ways at several times that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”1The line is a familiar one in our culture. Barack Obama used this quote often, attributing it to King, which, in spite of criticism, is correct. It is Theodore Parker’s idea, but King’s formulation. Parker (1810–1860) was an abolitionist, a Unitarian minister, and a transcendentalist thinker in Emerson’s orbit. What he said is this: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see, I am sure it bends toward justice” (Parker 1855 [1852], 84–85). Parker’s qualifications of the claim make it a statement of personal conviction, moderated by appropriate epistemic humility, but offering two methods of inquiry—the calculation based on sight, which he says he cannot do, and the revelations of conscience. King’s epigram, on the other hand, is more like an ontological claim in the Kantian vein. King varied the epigram sometimes. He said it in the formulation above in a speech before the AFL-CIO in 1961, but on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in 1965, he omitted the word “moral,” making it in effect a claim closer to the natural law tradition—that justice is a natural tendency or even a telos under which all natural processes labor. I do not say that was King’s intention, but it is what he said. Sometimes King said “I believe it bends toward justice,” transforming the claim into an epistemic one qualified by a propositional attitude. The philosophical meaning of this idea, then, like any other, can be radically transformed by slight variations, vaulting us from one philosophical domain into the next, but clearly it is at least a geometrical analogy, in any formulation, since regardless of whether it is divined or discerned (by someone other than Parker I 271

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suppose), whether natural or moral, we are looking for an arc. We might also say that the geometry actually provides some warrant for the claim, or we might even say it provides a literal description of natural processes, but even so, it remains an analogy in form. And as a geometrical analogy, some analysis is possible, even if conclusive deductive or inductive demonstrations are unlikely to be forthcoming. I chose the epigram precisely because I want to try to cut across the standard debates in professional philosophy, while also trying to collect valuable insights from all of the major camps—the consequentialists, the deontologists, the virtue ethicists, and even the natural law tradition. Especially in Parker’s version, the geometrical analogy holds together in one thought the idea that there is an objective moral order, but without reducing the natural world to that order, or subjugating the moral order to natural laws or processes. And Parker is appropriately modest about our human efforts to discern the objective moral order, perhaps too modest. Others are decidedly immodest about claiming moral knowledge for themselves or their religious teachers or political heroes, and it is our collective suspicion of them that sets the recent Rortyan limit on our willingness to trust anyone’s final vocabulary. Here, for example, is Woodrow Wilson making Parker’s point without the self-deprecating disclaimer: You can never tell your direction except by long measurements. You cannot establish a line by two posts; you have got to have three at least to know whether you are straight with anything, and the longer your line, the more certain your measurement. There is only one way to determine how the future of the United States is going to be projected, and that is by looking back and seeing which way the lines ran which led up to the present moment of power and opportunity. There is no doubt about that. There is no question what the roll of honor in America is. The roll of honor consists of the names of men who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty. There is no one else upon the roster; there is no one else whose name we care to remember when we measure things upon a national scale . . . we shall be certain what the lines of the future are, because we shall know we are steering by the lines of the past. (Wilson 1957, 257)

I do not think Wilson could be taken seriously today, which may be the refutation of his claim here. And Wilson is not as eloquent or circumspect as Parker, but both are sanguine about the idea of a moral geometry, and they agree that a long view, in historical perspective, is required. But Wilson’s standard of measurement is external to his conscience (at least in this passage), while Parker’s is confined in an intuition or to the call of private conscience. My question is: Is there an external standard for moral geometry? Parker allows that there is, but claims not to be able to discern it. Wilson claims there is and that he can see it. I think that history has tended to vindicate the moral vision of both—the abolitionist and the defender of a league of nations—although neither survived to see the world in which his central moral tenets became common sense. Most important for my purposes is the idea that the search for justice is to be carried out not in private conscience, but in and as a human community. We declare our moral vision in public, in the crucial cases, and the standard of our collective

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moral achievements could be, and I believe is, external to our individual abilities to get a view of that arc by the instrument of conscience. I want to claim, as against almost every current moral philosophy, that the tendency or direction of the development in which we participate is not only objective, but also both discernible and inexorable. In short, this is a claim about the consequences of wrong-doing—and of doing right—that insists upon taking a long view for its degree of warrant. In doing so, I want to reconstruct the idea of irony and to make it do some genuine (pragmatic) work in moral philosophy. Rorty was right to bring this idea back into a central place in our thinking about moral philosophy. But he was wrong to leave us with nothing more than a capacity for doubting our own final vocabularies. One weakness, I think, in the way that contemporary moral philosophy is done is that there is an entrenched habit of ignoring questions about the overall development of the human race in favor of a kind of discourse that can be applied only to individuals, living beings in the present who must choose one action over another, to determine whether they are or are not responsible, individually, for their acts of wrong-doing. The assumption that we can sort out moral principles by testing our intuitions, appealing to thought experiments and abstract arguments, depends upon a certain historical myopia—rarely is it admitted that such reasoning assumes that the solution to, say, a trolley example, if binding, objective, and valid, would need to be equally applicable in the Roman Empire as it will be after the American Empire is itself ancient history. I am annoyed by the way contemporary moral philosophy ignores time and circumstance. If it is admitted that historical development is relevant to forming a moral judgment, our philosophical discourse about moral values is so greatly altered by the new question—the pattern and meaning of history—that we can no longer carry on our conversation as we had before. So the question of development is conveniently ignored, on a mass scale, and lost is our best hope of getting a decent philosophical account (i.e., an objective account) of collective responsibility and moral obligation. Yet, I would point out that the major contributors of the frameworks for our present moral philosophies were all concerned with this larger question of community moral development over long periods of time, and all of them offered answers to such questions as collective responsibility and community moral obligation. From Plato and Aristotle, through Augustine, Aquinas, Hume, Kant, Bentham, Mill, and Dewey—even up to Rorty, MacIntyre, and Rawls—we find that our major moral philosophers do confront the question of “the long run.” I do not think I am going out on a limb to suggest that today’s philosophers are responsible for developing accounts of moral obligation that insist upon answers to questions of the “long run.” My plea here is that we take seriously for a few minutes that the idea that discerning the arc of the moral universe is an indispensable aspect of moral philosophy, and that a broader concern with the possibility of human progress in moral development cannot be cast aside if we want to be responsible in our moral thinking. I have been thinking about the consequences of wrong-doing, in a broad and humanistic sense, and I was led to consider, from my own philosophical viewpoint, which might be called, epistemically, an idealistic version of pragmatism, or

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metaphysically a process personalism, or methodologically an analogical realism, how I might handle the question of “consequences,” and how to pin down what is meant by “wrong doing.” As a sort of moral realist (however unrecognizable I may be to most who label themselves so), I am looking for an objective, external standard by which to justify moral claims, but unlike most moral realists, I want an argument that is sensitive to the possibility that the moral situation evolves, an argument that is sensitive to historical and cultural context, and an argument that does not commit me to any foundationalist epistemology or narrow method. I do not want to rely at all on conscience or any private or subjective evidence for discerning the arc of the universe. I do not discount the crucial role of conscience in human moral life, but as a source of philosophical evidence, it is problematic at best, although conscience does derive in part from objective social experience, the supplementation of that source from private or even divine sources leaves conscience partly inscrutable. If one can frame a decisive philosophical argument without appealing to such ambiguous sources of evidence, everyone is better-off. I am not as bold as Wilson. I think the distinction between natural and cosmic evolution, on one side, and moral evolution on the other, is probably too complex for any of us to understand at this point in history, by any method of measuring we currently possess. Analogical reasoning is probably our best hope. The reason we ever argue by analogy is not because it yields optimal knowledge. It doesn’t. Rather, we argue this way when the topics are complex because analogy offers the best method we have of getting some positive knowledge without over-estimating the scope and application of what we know. When we reason by analogy, we are always reminded that the disanalogies form the starting place and context of whatever positive relations are discovered. Analogy, properly pursued as a method of inquiry, can be a method of discovery as well as a method of analysis—it cuts across the analytic-synthetic distinction, and the a posteriori-a priori distinction. Properly understood, analogical reasoning moves from difference to similarity. There is some necessity discoverable in analogical relations, some conclusions to which we are compelled by the form of the argument, but analogical relations are always held at a distance, never collapsible into identities because of their origins in different base terms (the initial disanalogy that leads us to notice and value the positive analogies).2 Is the moral universe exactly the same as the natural universe? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. In some ways, they seem different—at least they seem to have both similarities and differences in the ways they unfold. Both seem to conform to time’s arrow, for example. Yet history is not quite the same as biological growth or the progression or succession of geological change. It is better to treat history, growth, and change as different from the outset, and to seek analogies as qualified by that recognition. If our common sense recognition of fundamental difference and important conditional similarity is not a good reason to argue analogically, I don’t know what would be a good reason, but the difficulty of thinking about both the similarities and differences, without favoring one over the other, not only suggests the efficacy of analogical thinking, it also indicates the likely pitfalls of any other kind of reasoning. The arc of the moral universe is a geometrical analogy, broadly

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speaking, but in Parker’s version, he makes it clear that actually calculus (rather than geometry) is his empirical model for a moral thinking (albeit one he cannot carry out). One of the first things that strikes me about this claim is that Bentham had the same idea: an empirical moral calculus. I want to run that arc analogy through a different conception of consequences, however, a pragmatic conception.

CONSEQUENCES OF PRAGMATISM I confess that I aim to retrieve a good deal of what has been lost in pragmatism due to Rorty’s pre-eminence, especially in pragmatic social and political thought. I am not complaining about Rorty’s success, since pragmatism wouldn’t even be in the conversation without him, but if I had the power to do so, I would gladly set the renewed pragmatic school of thought on a different path. I will attempt to rework the Rortyan concept of irony in the next section, but for now, let us look in summary fashion at “consequences.” Peirce’s pragmatic maxim deals with consequences, but rarely is the true complexity of the maxim acknowledged. Here is an approach to it you haven’t heard before. Let us begin with the maxim: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the objects of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (Peirce 1986, 266)

The economy of these two sentences is impressive; anyone can afford the time to read them, but only the few have the leisure to ponder their meanings. Let me summarize what these sentences might mean, operationally, bypassing the issue of what they actually do mean, which only a lifetime of study would likely reveal. Here are eleven steps to using Peirce’s pragmatic maxim, in approximately the order you would use them: (1) When you think, remember you are thinking about some object. (2) Ask yourself: “How do I conceive of the object I’m thinking about, that is, what are its characteristics and limits?” (3) It turns out the object you are thinking about, under the conception you have of it, has practical effects on the world (whether you like it or not), so now just think of those practical effects. (4) Remember the practical effects. Make a list if you need to. (5) Now try conceiving of your object in a different way; that is, start with the “same object” (as far as you can tell), but think about it differently, in two separate acts of thought, using two different concepts, your first concept (with its practical effects) and then a second concept. (6) Now list the practical effects of the second concept. (7) Take stock of (all) the practical consequences that follow from thinking about it first one way, then the other by comparing only the practical effects.

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(8) If there is no difference in practical effects, you’re really thinking of the same object, so far as your concepts are concerned, and your thinking itself is not making any difference. (9) If there is a difference in practical effects, you’re really thinking of two different objects, at least potentially, because your thinking is making a difference, at least at the level of conceptualization. (10) The differences are only discernible on the basis of different likely practical effects (on the world) of thinking about the object, conceptually, one way rather than another. (11) The relevant practical consequences are a summation of the differences. Where there are no differences there are no consequences that can be understood conceptually. I will not enumerate the steps as I quickly apply this version of consequences to the moral and natural universe, but if you examine my summary below, you will be able to find each move. As you can see, I have rendered the pragmatic maxim analogically, the analogates being the two different ways of conceiving a postulated object, which is serving as a base term. Then I sorted out the similarities and held on to the disanalogies, asking how the disanalogies in conception (different practical effects on the world) imply (or don’t imply) differing objects.3 I can discover by this method how my thinking about objects differently can have genuinely different practical effects on the world. Only the practical effects knowable by such analogical thinking are “consequences” in the morally relevant sense, and the variation in practical effects determined or discovered by our way of conceiving them constitutes the field of meaningful choices we actually have. But the knowability of consequences does not imply that they were, are, or will be known, only that they can be known. We don’t need to know why this is the case, only that it is the case—and it is. We do not have much choice about what the object really is, in its totality (including its whole past, its unrevealed future, and whatever present existence it may carry that is beyond our power to take account of in experience), but we do have some measure of control over how we conceive of the object. The ground of that modicum of control is in the object itself, rather than wholly of our own making, since variant practical effects have been the measure of more than one conception in us, and we have been able to see the “same” object differently in light of those effects, as conceived. But how did we alter our conception of the object, so as to attain this result—that is, a set of “consequences,” as I define the term? There are many ways to alter the conception of an object, but skipping ahead in the story, I will report that the two major formal differences in our “process of conceiving,” that yield fruitfully different conceptions of variant practical effects, can be described variously as our making either deductions or inductions about those objects, or we could say (and this would be more accurate), our subsuming the object under a more generic or universal category, as opposed to generalizing from the particular object toward generic or universal categories, to which we presume it may belong. There is more to be said about this distinction, but that is beyond my present scope.

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The fastest and most fruitful way to alter your conception of an object is, therefore, to reverse the direction of your reasoning. But sometimes the reversal doesn’t matter—we get no difference in the practical effects, and in such a case, we may assume that the object we are dealing with is the “same object” inductively and deductively. This sort of discovery indicates to us that we are very likely in the presence of a natural kind. Whether I subsume the shiny yellow stuff before me under the molecular definition of gold on the periodic chart, or generalize properly from the sample through the various categories to which it may belong, makes no difference in its practical effects in practical action. Gold is gold. But the reversal of our thinking very often does have variant practical effects on objects in the moral universe. For example, generalizing from one case of death by capital punishment, drawing from it a maxim, and applying that rule in the direction of every similar case is very different from beginning with a universal concept of “death by capital punishment” and asking whether individual instances do or do not fall under it. The latter treats death by capital punishment as if it were a natural kind, and is an investigation of the definition of the concept, while the former cannot proceed without positing a practical norm for generalizing. This is not just death, but a kind of death we take to have a moral meaning. Successful generalization depends on a norm drawn from the moral universe, regardless of what we believe the moral universe is. For example, a subsumption might ask whether the death of Socrates or Jesus falls under the category of capital punishment, while a generalizing approach might ask what maxims we can draw from those cases of death to learn something about our (not fully determinate) conception of capital punishment. We have here a difference, then, in the practical effects of our conceiving the object one way rather than another, subsumption as against generalization under the governance of a norm. And what is forced upon us by the analogy is that capital punishment, to the extent that it falls under the category of deaths, is a natural occurrence in our natural world, just like any other event, and is further qualified by certain objective social and historical circumstances, and can be well described as such by a determinate judgment, but these descriptions will bear profound disanalogies to the way we conceive of the same event as something we can generalize from to form expectations about what will in fact happen in the future. For example, deaths by capital punishment are not necessarily rendered easier to predict in the future by our having generalized properly from a particular instance, so whatever knowledge comes from such generalization is different from categorical assertions, but not wholly different. When we generalize properly from particular instances, we do know something as a result, whether we generalize in the moral or the natural domain—in either case we can get the maxim wrong and fail to know what is knowable, or we can get it right and learn something about the moral or natural universe—and about the bend in the arc of either universe or both. The question of consequences here, then is both a question of how we think about things and what our natural and moral world do and do not render knowable. If I have presented the analogy rightly, the issue of whether “good” is or is not a natural kind is now irrelevant, as is the entire is-ought problem. The argument is compact,

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I realize, but I just demonstrated analogically that there is an arc to the moral universe, and that consequences depend both upon what actually happens and how we think about it. For now, take my word, I met the analogical burden of proof (which admittedly isn’t a very high bar).

IRONIC WRONG-DOING Rorty famously depicts irony as the ability to be circumspect toward our own “final vocabularies,” that preferred collection of morally charged marks and noises that make our private and individual lives meaningful to us. Ironism is the commitment to take fallibilism personally, to live out the norm fallibilism implies. I do not find ironism, so defined, to be either elevating of the human race or even privately workable. It is not a virtue. Try as I might, the older I get, the more congealed my final vocabulary becomes and the more I am inclined to trust it. To adopt such an ironism early in life might be feasible, but to maintain it as one’s experience accrues, assuming one has gotten the benefit of that experience, is to deny the very continuity of that same experience and all the accumulated value it points to. In short, to be a Rortyan ironist in one’s moral maturity means denying the value and even the reality of the arc of the moral universe, and to do so just as the whole damn thing is beginning to come clear (whether in one’s vision or one’s conscience, or both). It is not wise or pragmatic to require those whose moral vision and knowledge are coming into their fullness to doubt themselves so as to guard against the possibility of their making moral mistakes. To do so robs a community of its most fit moral guides. Theodore Parker, Woodrow Wilson, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mother Theresa were not Rortyan ironists, and even if they made some mistakes, we would not want them to be. The pragmatic reconstruction of irony is, however, a needful thing, not so much because of Rorty’s milk-toast idea; rather, reconstruction is required because sometimes we do things that are morally wrong without knowing it, without actually achieving a good epistemic position to learn why our actions are wrong and why their consequences are so terrible. We try earnestly to project our moral understanding into the future and to trace the arc, but, like Parker, our vision is weak. And no amount of suspicion about our own final vocabularies will prevent us from wrongdoing in situations when the facts of the natural and moral universe require us to act as if we do see the arc of the universe, whether by a calculation, or by divination from conscience. Thus, sometimes doubting your own final vocabulary is actually wrong, even when you might have the arc wrong (i.e., have failed to think well enough about it), but especially when you have it right. I have thought for a long time that pragmatism needs an alternative to Rortyan irony that preserves the key insight he had while not giving way to the self-undermining consequences of an unwarranted degree of moral self-doubt. Like many people, I have been impressed with the work of Andrew Bacevich, especially his 2008 book The Limits of Power (Bacevich 2008). The timeliness of his

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critique, when the Iraq war was going so badly, was of great value to the nation’s thinking, then and, I would argue, perhaps more so now, when the “Bush Doctrine” has been employed by two subsequent presidents, and the U.S. military is using violence as an instrument of foreign policy with no pretense of Congressional oversight. I am not certain I agree with his analysis, but Bacevich makes good use of some of the characteristic theses of Reinhold Niebuhr, and reading Bacevich led me back to Niebuhr, particularly to two books, The Irony of American History, and The Self and the Dramas of History. Here I found a number of ideas worth considering. Niebuhr creates an interesting framework for understanding history, and in this case, the history of wrong-doing and its consequences. Bacevich’s book employs a Niebuhrian philosophy of history to trace, pragmatically and externally, the threads of consequence in the last half of the twentieth century and up through the war in Iraq. His ideas about wrong-doing have little in common with any of the standard philosophical theories about wrong-doing and consequences—this is not deontology, consequentialism, utilitarianism, or virtue ethics, although it shares some common concerns with all of them. It is a kind of pragmatism that is closer to the views of Peirce and Royce than to those of Rorty and Dewey—which is to say that this type of analysis is probably closer to classical conservatism than to classical liberalism. It is communitarian and progressive, but not social democratic, contractarian, or individualist. For my purposes, so long as at least one act in the history of the universe was, is, or will be objectively wrong, my argument holds. I do not here wish to argue about the necessary or sufficient conditions for an act’s being wrong. The reason I say this is that, with Peirce, I wish to remove all references to intuition, introspection, and the idea that we have any power of thought without signs, and to hold to external standards of judging. In short, I am following the restrictions on philosophical methodology advocated by Peirce in his famous essays of 1868 in the original Journal of Speculative Philosophy (Peirce 1992 [1868], 11–55). I do not here assert that Peirce was correct to limit philosophy in these ways, but I will say that I hold the habits of the last twenty years to be sub-philosophical which allow professional philosophers to compare and contrast moral theories according to how well they justify our “intuitions.”4 This practice, euphemistically called “conceptual analysis,” does not facilitate progress in our moral thinking, as I have indicated earlier. So long as at least one act has ever been, is now, or ever will be (and note that I avoid here the modal statement) objectively wrong, I think my case can be adapted to any criteria whereby the act was accounted objectively wrong, and so will be consistent with virtue ethics, utilitarianism, natural law, and deontology, to the extent these approaches favor moral realism. I also do not intend to offer any view about what is phenomenologically describable as wrong, however objective the phenomenology may be. Those are interesting questions, of course, but I don’t think they affect what I have to say. The way to insure that our reasoning about wrong-doing is free of introspection, intuition, or any claims about unmediated moral sense, is to use the example of

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wrong-doing that can be foreseen but does not discover its own wrongness, due to historical or other epistemic limitations. Niebuhr’s conception of irony perfectly fills this requirement. He divides history into those episodes that inspire “pathos” in us and those that do not. Pathos occurs when historical distance enables us to see bad consequences that were unforeseen by the actors who were obliged to decide what to do under difficult epistemic conditions. Having done all they could to discern or divine the arc of the moral universe, many actors on the stage of history have been obliged to act in full understanding that they did not adequately grasp the portent and meaning of their actions, while others act with an erroneous conception of variant practical effects. We experience pathos as a function of the common sense that enables us to place ourselves in their position—it is a kind of analogizing. The category of pathos, in Niebuhr, heals the split between natural and moral evil. The reason is that it doesn’t matter whether the looming and unforeseen disaster is an earthquake or a military coup, the epistemic condition of ignorance moves us to pity anyway, and it is the presence of this pity that triggers the further analysis. Without pathos of this kind, our interest in history is bereft of any likelihood of acting upon present inquirers as a moral teacher. Pathos alone, however, “neither deserves admiration nor warrants contrition” (Niebuhr 1952, 166). Alone, pathos is an aesthetic value that merely attracts our interest to the prospect of a moral lesson. Instances of unforeseeable (as distinct from unforeseen) natural events may inspire pathos, but all they teach is epistemic humility. But pathos can take two further forms: there is both tragedy and irony. Niebuhr says: “The tragic element in a human situation is constituted of conscious choices of evil for the sake of good. If men and nations do evil in a good cause, they cover themselves with guilt in order to fulfill some high responsibility. . . . Tragedy elicits admiration as well as pity, because it combines nobility with guilt” (Niebuhr 1952, viii–ix). Tragedy in history requires conscious resolve by those who choose the evil for the sake of the good. When such actors have rightly judged their own actions, have well discerned or divined the arc of the moral universe, we admire them as well as pity them. We view the act as naturally achievable and morally necessary. An exemplar of this combined admiration and pity might be the case of John Brown, but his is an extreme case, of course. Still, irony is a more subtle idea. Niebuhr says that “irony consists of apparently fortuitous incongruities in life which are discovered, upon closer examination, to be not merely fortuitous.” He continues: Incongruity as such is merely comic. It elicits laughter. This element of comedy is never completely eliminated from irony. But irony is something more than comedy. A comic situation is proved to be an ironic one if a hidden relation is discovered in the incongruity. If a virtue becomes a vice though some hidden defect in the virtue; if strength becomes weakness because of the vanity to which strength may prompt the mighty man or nation; if security is transmuted into insecurity because too much reliance is placed upon it; if wisdom becomes folly because it does not know its own limits. (Niebuhr 1952, viii)

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An ironic situation is unstable because those who act within it are not conscious of the relation that is twisting or turning their choices to unforeseen consequences, and yet the relation is discoverable within their epistemic contexts. Should the relation be discovered by the actor or community of actors, the entire situation is irrevocably changed. For my purposes, we now need only add to this Niebuhr’s conclusion that “an ironic situation differs from a pathetic one by the fact that a person involved in it bears some responsibility for it. It is distinguished from a tragic one by the fact that the responsibility is not due to a conscious choice but to an unconscious weakness” (166). To pursue resolutely and consciously an evil course of action for the sake of something deemed good, while undermining either the achievement of the very good one seeks or by tainting its goodness needlessly by the means whereby it is achieved is ironic wrong-doing. Truly tragic acts are not wrong, they just aren’t good. But ironic acts, inaccurately believed to be tragic by those who do them, are wrong. Dick Cheney’s advocacy of torture for the sake of national security suggests itself as an example. I do not need a fine-grained analysis of this conception of irony here, so long as all are willing to grant that at least one instance of such irony, as distinct from tragedy or plain pathos, has actually occurred in human history. Even one occurrence of ironic wrong-doing, so defined, establishes the existence of an objective, discoverable (but for a time undiscovered) relation, a relation morally relevant to wrong-doing and its consequences, that does not depend (for its power to determine wrongness of an act) upon anyone’s knowledge or judgment of its wrongness.

JUSTICE The one conditioning factor in my description of ironic wrong-doing is that the act must be discoverable as wrong by the actor or the community of actors. Yet, the ironic act is objectively wrong regardless of whether anyone knows it or believes it, and its wrongness is evinced in the instability of the moral situation. In short, the act of ironic wrong-doing should be discernible to our vision or at least divinable by conscience, in light of its incongruity with the arc of the universe. How could we demonstrate that any such wrong is discoverable? The pragmatic maxim is, of course, the answer to that question. Applied properly to any situation, discoverable differences in practical effects, if they rest upon the way we are conceiving of the object of our thought, should (and will) show themselves in light of a varied conception, and the fastest course to that varied conception will be to reverse the direction of one’s thinking. To give an example, if Cheney were to be required to administer the torture, to suffer it, or witness its being used on a member of his family or a friend, to provide him with a concrete particular in his experience, and then if he had to posit the maxim which would be employed as a norm for the generalization of the practice, I believe he would discover rather quickly the variant practical effects in the actual

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world due to the difference between such generalization and the categorical way in which he habitually thinks about instances of torture as subsumable under the category of tragic evils we must enact for the sake of the good of security. He might even realize that torture could well undermine security or make it not worth having. I am saying that I believe the pragmatic maxim makes all ironic wrong-doing discoverable to the wrong-doers, because the consequences (the sum of possible practical effects) all belong to a universe that makes even moral knowledge possible, on an analogical basis. Niebuhr’s concepts of pathos, tragedy, and irony offer three pragmatic fence posts describing not a Wilsonian line in historical time, but an arc of the sort Parker claimed he couldn’t see, which might or might not be limited by the patterns of history, and might transcend historical structure, for all we know. The question of justice is, of course, a further concern. I will not attempt here to frame an associated account of justice, but I will say that it would appeal to ideally situated moral knowers in the infinitely distant future, and the opinions they would be determined to share. Niebuhr recommends contrition as a strategy for handling the proximate future, since genuine contrition is the proper response to the discovery of one’s own ironic wrong-doing. Contrition is more likely to bring mercy than justice, but if we sincerely contemplate the high likelihood that we all carry around habits of thinking that make us vulnerable to being responsible for some daily degree of ironic wrong-doing, we may realize that we would prefer instruction in how to obtain mercy over some account of how to get justice.

NOTES 1. To offer one of countless examples, see: (King 1986 [1957], 252). 2. Another effect of this approach is to historicize knowledge appropriately. I take Collingwood’s philosophy of history to exemplify this objective but analogical method. Beginning with the limitation on the historical knower that he cannot step out of his own time, Collingwood still believes objective historical knowledge is available. As he says, “Historical knowledge is the re-enactment of a past thought incapsulated in a context of present thoughts which, by contradicting it [the present context], confine it [the past thought/historical knowledge] to a plane different from theirs [the people of the past and their context]” (Collingwood 1939, 113). The incapsulation (which is a technical term for Collingwood) prevents identification and maintains analogical distance. 3. A fuller account of the formal workings of analogy and its metaphysical and epistemological underpinnings is in my dissertation, “Signs and Symbols: An Analogical Theory of Metaphysical Language” (Auxier 1992). 4. There are many thousands of examples of this kind of philosophizing, but an especially egregious instance is the methodology of Frances Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities and Permissible Harm (Kamm 2006). In his keynote address to the Mid-South Philosophy Conference in 2010, Alastair Norcross dismembers Kamm’s arguments and calls for an external standard of judging, representing the views not only of many consequentialists, but of all sane moral philosophers, I think.

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REFERENCES Auxier, Randall. 1992. “Signs and Symbols: An Analogical Theory of Metaphysical Language.” PhD diss., Emory University. Bacevich, Andrew J. 2008. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Collingwood, R.G. 1939. Autobiography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kamm, Frances. 2006. Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities and Permissible Harm. New York: Oxford University Press. King Jr., Martin Luther. 1986 [1957]. ““Where Do We Go from Here?” In A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by James Melvin Washington, 245–252. New York: HarperCollins. Peirce, C. S. 1986. The Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. Volume 3: 1872–1878. Edited by Christian J.W. Koesel, Max H. Fisch, Lynn A. Ziegler, Nathan Houser, and Don D. Roberts. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ———. 1992 [1868]. “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities.” In The Essential Peirce. Volume 1. Edited by Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel, 28–55. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ———. 1992 [1868]. “Questions Concerning Certain Capacities Claimed for Man.” In The Essential Peirce. Volume 1. Edited by Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel, 11–27. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1952. The Irony of American History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Parker, Theodore. 1855 [1852]. “Of Justice and Conscience.” In Sermons of Religion. Second Edition, 66–101. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Wilson, Woodrow. 1970 [1916]. “Gridiron Address, Washington DC, February 26, 1916.” In The Politics of Woodrow Wilson. Edited by August Hecksher. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries.

Index

absolutism, 129, 143 academy, 3, 6, 8–10, 12, 13n1, 23, 26, 183, 184, 232n17 Adorno, Theodor, 35, 129, 159 aesthetics, 26, 63, 228 AFL-CIO, 271 Africana (African), 131, 135, 137, 138 Alexander, Thomas, 149, 150 Allen, Raymond B., 5 amelioration (ameliorative). See melioration America, 5, 29, 30–33, 35–37, 111, 120, 133, 134, 138, 272 American Association of University Professors, 4 American Philosophy Association, 4 Americans, x, 31, 32, 34, 37, 62, 72, 133–35, 137 analytic philosophy (analytic philosophers), 6–11, 20, 21, 43, 109, 169, 185, 188, 190, 237, 248 anarchism, 24 animals (animal), 34, 155, 159, 161, 162, 191 Anscombe, Elizabeth, 65 anthropocentrism, 64–66 anthropology, 65, 83, 166, 167n4, 170, 216, 218 anti-essentialism, 159, 162, 184, 209 anti-foundationalism, 6, 63, 101n17, 120, 126, 184, 185 anti-Platonism, 45

anti-realism, 20, 63, 70, 269 anti-representationalism, 63, 185, 197–99, 206, 208 Appiah, Anthony K., 113, 114, 116 Aquinas, xi, 68, 273. See also Thomas, St. Aristotle, 11, 78, 192, 237, 246, 273 art, 27, 36, 38, 54, 67–69, 148, 151, 189, 193, 209 atheism (atheists), 39, 44, 45, 47, 50 Augustine, St., xi, 131, 273 Auxier, Randall, 3, 4–6, 14n15, 101n18, 102, 224, 231, 282n2 Axiology, 61, 63, 64, 67 Bacevich, Andrew, 278, 279 Bacon, Francis, 172 Baden School, 62, 64 Bancroft, George, 133–35 Barber, Michael, 130 Bartha, Paul, 224, 227, 231nn11–13 Bartlett, William, 243 beauty, 182, 195, 227, 228 Beecher, Catharine, 134, 135 behaviorism, 200 Bellah, Robert, 129 Bellamy, Edward, 30 Bender, Thomas, 3 Bennett, William, 27 Bentham, Jeremy, 34, 273, 275 Bentley, Arthur, 184 Bergson, Henri, 182

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Index

Berkeley, George, 216 Berlin, Isaiah, 90, 99n1, 101n21 Bernstein, Richard, 1, 8, 29, 39n11, 110, 126n1, 183 Beth, E. W., 242, 243 Bible, 64 biology (biological), 69, 70, 155, 159, 163, 165, 166, 173, 178, 191, 213, 229, 274 Bloom, Allan, 27 Bloom, Harold, 14n13 Boisvert, Raymond, 6, 7, 13n9 Bolivar, Simon, 135 Bostock, David, 238, 251 Brandom, Robert, 46, 95, 171, 175, 178n1, 190, 194n8, 200, 204, 205, 210, 230, 231n9, 238, 239, 242, 244, 248, 251n14 Brown, John, 280 Buchler, Justus, 67 Burke, Edmund, 131, 132 Bush, Vannevar, 2, 3 Cahoone, Lawrence, 73, 74 capitalism, 13, 38, 111 capital punishment, 277 Caputo, John, 44, 49, 50–55 Carnap, Rudolf, 171, 173, 184 Carroll, Lewis, 239, 243, 244, 250n8 Cartesian. See Descartes catholic, 132 causality, 202 causation-justification distinction, 203, 204, 206 Cavell, Stanley, 49 Cheney, Dick, 281 Chicago, 184, 194 children, 37, 110, 112, 113, 116, 137, 176, 232n15 China, 122, 124 Chomsky, Noam, 170–76 Christian (Christianity), 5, 43–47, 50–54, 55nn4, 65, 133, 134 Christophe, Henri, 136 church, 46, 132, 133 Church, Alonzo, 4 civilization, 33, 62, 90, 163, 169 Claire, Janet St., 33

cognition, 67, 129, 130, 174, 184, 186–92, 225, 227–29, 231 cognitive science (cognitive scientist), 3, 12, 142, 149, 164, 169–75, 178, 181, 193n2, 231n11 Cohen, Morris R., 65, 184 Cold War, 2, 3, 5–8 Coleridge, Samuel T., 11 colonialism, 137 common-sense, 222 communication, 31, 84, 92, 97, 98, 101n19, 126, 138, 158, 159, 172, 186, 187, 191, 204 communism (communist), 3, 4, 71, 87 communitarianism (communitarian), 121, 129, 131, 142, 150, 151n2, 185, 279 Conant, James, 2, 3 congregationalism, 133 consciousness (conscious), 5, 9, 34, 55, 83, 114–16, 181, 182, 186, 187, 190, 191, 201, 228–30, 262, 280, 281 consequentialism, 279 constructivism (constructivist), 92, 93, 98, 130 contingency, 1, 8, 38, 39, 71, 78, 89, 108, 114, 116, 130, 132, 145, 148, 150, 159, 187, 201, 208, 209 Critical Realism, 229 cruelty (cruel), xi, 51, 52, 54, 65, 71, 89, 101n17, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113–16, 137, 138, 146, 148, 150 Cruise, Tom, 27 cultural politics (cultural policy), 9, 13n9, 45, 49, 62, 67–74, 79, 201 Dalai Lama, 182 Dann, Elijah G., 52, 80 Darwin, Charles, 10, 229, 247 Davidson, Donald, 7, 20–22, 156–61, 165–67, 171, 175, 184, 188, 189, 198, 199, 201–5, 211, 218 Dawkins, Richard, 45, 175 death, 6, 24, 28, 34, 36, 50, 51, 97, 101n22, 135, 243, 253–55, 266, 277 Declaration of Independence, 135, 136 deconstruction, 20, 24, 53, 81 de Fontages, Viscount, 135

Index de Man, Paul, 4, 27 Dennett, Daniel, 45 deontology, 279 Derrida, Jacques, 21, 22, 24, 27, 43, 49, 54, 171, 209 Descartes, René, x, xi, 26, 79, 143, 170, 200 description, 12, 49, 55n5, 66, 69, 74, 93, 124, 156, 158, 161, 202, 203, 219, 255, 272, 281 Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 136 D’Estaing, Count, 135 determinism, 246 Dewey, John, 5, 6, 19–23, 25, 30, 38, 44–46, 49, 51, 55n1, 65, 67, 69, 70, 77–79, 81, 82, 84, 107, 109–11, 114–16, 124, 131–35, 141–46, 148–50, 151n1, 158–63, 181, 182, 184–86, 188–90, 192, 193, 194nn6–9, 202, 229, 238, 247, 258, 273, 279 dialog, 25, 90, 93–97, 99, 101n21, 102n25 dignity, 64, 88, 91, 102, 151 Diogenes of Sinope, 11, 13 discourse, xi, 20, 26, 30, 32, 43, 46–48, 54, 68, 73, 148, 173, 199, 207, 210, 211, 215, 216, 218, 221, 222, 247, 248, 273 Douglass, Frederick, 137–40 Dunbar, Robin, 175–77, 178 economy, 2, 23, 32, 137, 139, 229, 230n4, 275 edification, 119, 123, 215, 223 education, x, 2, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14nn10, 16, 31, 89, 110, 123, 126n2, 134, 148, 149, 151, 183, 217, 223, 228, 229, 237 Einstein, Albert, 248 Elhstain, Jean B., 115 Emerson, Ralph W., 10, 11, 67, 79, 271 empiricism, 143, 188, 194n8, 219, 248 Enlightenment, 39n2, 43, 44, 112, 121, 126, 129, 131–35, 137, 144, 207, 229, 237, 239, 248 epistemic, 108, 109, 200, 216, 253, 256, 260, 271, 278, 280, 281

287

epistemology, 43–45, 77, 79, 107, 108, 126, 172, 192, 207, 215, 223, 238–40, 259, 274 essence, 20, 34, 35, 48, 78, 81, 108–10, 145, 147, 158, 159 essentialism, 191 ethics, 5, 14n10, 32, 47, 68, 72, 73, 137, 151n5, 194n6, 228, 279, 282n4 ethnocentrism, 64, 66, 119–26, 146, 147, 150, 185, 209 EU. See European Union Europe, ix, x, 12, 100n13, 120 European Union, 124, 211n1 evil, 197, 280–82 evolution, 12, 90, 171, 174, 176, 177, 183, 227–29, 274 existentialism, 44 faith. See religion fallibilism (fallibilist), 192, 258, 266, 278 fanaticism, 89, 147 fascist, 23 feminism (feminists), 108, 112, 114 Fesmire, Steven, 149, 151n3 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 45 Fish, Stanley, 21, 27 Foucault, Michel, 27, 34, 35, 40n8, 43, 84, 130, 131 foundationalism, 20, 108, 115, 129, 147 France, 136, 137 Frankfurt School, 129, 130 fraternity. See solidarity freedom, 4, 74, 95, 96, 98, 100n6, 107, 111, 112, 116, 135, 185, 227 Frege, Gottlob, 238, 240 French Revolution, 131, 136 Freud, Sigmund, 44, 45, 49, 112, 114, 181 fundamentalism, 46–48, 89 Galileo, 24 Gandhi, Mahatma, 100n11, 278 Geertz, Clifford, 4, 45 gender, 108, 124, 125 Gentner, Dedre, 12, 15, 224, 226, 231nn11, 232nn14 George III, 133 Germany, 129

288

Index

Gettier problem, 259 globalization, 73, 122, 144 God, 34, 43, 46, 48–55, 63–65, 90, 91, 131, 134, 137, 201 Goedel, Kurt, 4 Goodman, Nelson, 6 Goodwin, William, 90 Gorgias, 237 graphs, 244 Green, Judith, 142, 144, 146, 147 Gross, Neil, 40n6, 183, 184, 193n5 Habermas, Jürgen, 23, 96, 100n3, 101n20, 129, 204 habit, 77, 150, 175, 184, 222, 273 Haiti, 135–37 happiness, 48, 74 Harris, Sam, 45 Hartstock, Nancy, 116 Harvard, 2, 62, 229 hedonism, 69 Hegel, G. W. F., 21, 80, 82, 99n1 Hegelian (neo-hegelian), 6, 13n8, 129, 167n3, 185, 191, 194n6, 229 Heidegger, Martin, 14n13, 20–22, 25, 34, 35, 44, 45, 49, 54, 55, 81, 88, 184, 191, 192 hermeneutics, 20, 207, 223 Hintikka, Jaakko, 243, 250n7 Hirsch, E.D., 27 historicism (historicist), 6, 11, 38, 39, 108, 129, 130, 145, 184, 208 history of philosophy, 27, 201, 208 Hitchens, Christopher, 45 Hoaglund, Sarah, 113 holism, 6, 161, 202 Hook, Sidney, 182, 219 Horkheimer, Max, 129 humanism, 1 humanities, xi, 2, 4, 12, 23, 68, 199, 208, 210, 212n3 humanity, 3, 52, 71, 89, 109 human nature, 83, 121, 122, 151n5, 155, 156, 163, 164–66, 167n4, 171, 177 human rights, 23, 38, 53, 100n13, 101n15 Hume, David, 186, 273

Husserl, Edmund, 81 Huxley, Aldous, 30 idealism (idealist), 48, 61, 64, 158, 159, 170, 171, 230 identity, 12, 31, 78, 107, 112–15, 124, 155, 212n5, 221, 268 ideology, 88, 101n24 imagination, 2, 10, 48, 52, 55, 63, 69, 79–84, 141, 142, 149, 150, 165, 209, 246, 247, 251n16 incarnation, 51, 52 India, 12, 100nn10 individualism, 3, 15nn2, 141, 144, 146–50 inferentialism (inferentialist), 46, 55n1, 181, 182, 188, 190, 191, 239 information, x, 148, 172, 187, 204, 216, 224–26, 255–59, 264, 265 Ingarden, Roman, 64 intentionality (intentional), 8, 27, 148, 149, 156, 157, 160, 161, 167n2, 170, 172, 200–2, 224, 248 Iran, 123, 124, 126n3 Iraq, 248, 279 ironism, 50, 147, 278 ironist, 50, 71, 98, 109, 137, 145–48, 150, 278 irony, 1, 8, 10, 38, 48, 50, 135, 137, 145, 146, 184, 185, 209, 273, 275, 278–82 Islam (Islamic), 122, 123 Israel, 123, 124 Ives, Charles, 134 Jackson, Andrew, 134 James, William, 11, 13, 14n13, 46, 49, 51, 61, 62, 79, 107, 109–11, 136, 143, 229, 244, 248, 258 Jameson, Fredric, 30, 39n2 Jefferson, Thomas, 121, 126, 131–34 Jeffreys, Richard, 242 Jesus, 53, 277 Jewish, 51, 114, 132 Johns Hopkins University, 21 Johnson, Mark, 3, 149, 193n2, 194n7 justice, 12, 24, 25

Index Kant, Immanuel, 45, 65, 87, 99n1, 112, 132, 143, 186, 216, 232n17, 273 Kantian, 26, 44, 146, 185, 186, 190, 194n6, 229, 271 Kearney, Richard, 51, 52 Kegley, Jacquelyn, 71, 126n1 King, Martin L., 271, 278, 282n1 Kołakowski, Leszek, 62 Koran, 64 Kramer, Eli, ix Kremer, Alexander, 122 Kuhn, Thomas, 13n7, 171, 207 Kurtz, Kenneth, 226 Lakatos, Imre, 175 Lambert, M., 136 language game, 24, 25, 28, 53, 72, 116, 138, 174, 187, 200, 221, 248 Lavine, Thelma, 19 Leclerc, Charles, 136 Lewis, C.I., 6, 7, 12, 184, 239, 243, 246 liberalism, 23, 24, 108, 111, 115, 130–33, 135, 137, 138, 143, 144, 146, 151n3, 185, 279 libertarianism, 144 liberty, 125, 131, 132, 135–37, 146, 155 linguistic turn, 2, 4, 5, 7, 80, 81, 155, 183, 185, 237 literature (literary), 6, 11, 12, 13n5, 21, 27–30, 32, 33, 39, 62, 67–73, 79–81, 83, 84, 107, 108, 110, 124, 148, 184, 198, 207, 231n4, 237, 249 Locke, Alain, 143, 151n4 Locke, John, 30, 133, 143, 144 logocentrism, 20, 22 L’Overture, Toussaint, 136 Lowenheim, Leopold, 4 Loyola, Ignatius, 121, 122 Luther, Martin, 133 Lyotard, Jean-François, 43 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 111, 112, 129, 273 MacKinnon, Catherine, 114 Mahowald, Mary, 110, 116 Mannheim, Karl, 130

289

Marx, Karl, 23, 30, 44, 45, 49, 99n1 Marxism, 4 materialism, 45, 49, 64, 65, 184, 200 mathematics (math), 5, 6, 14n16, 239, 241 McCarthy, Joe, 4 McCarthyism, 3, 4, 14n9 McCumber, John, 4, 5, 13n1 McDermott, John, 19 McDowell, John, 230 Mead, George H., 5, 67, 193n3, 194n6 medicine, 110 melioration (meliorative), 141, 147, 151 Menand, Louis, 2–5, 7, 13n1 metaphor, 11, 38, 80, 81, 188, 201, 204, 207, 215, 225, 237 Metaphysical Club, 229 metaphysics (metaphysical), 8, 10, 12, 14n13, 20, 22, 26, 45–47, 49–52, 61, 64, 70, 74, 91, 92, 112, 113, 120, 126, 129–32, 143, 146, 149, 151n5, 155, 173, 185, 186, 191–93, 194n6, 240 method, 3, 8, 51, 53, 83, 96, 109, 131, 132, 142, 147, 150, 156, 157, 163, 165, 173, 187, 192, 200, 201, 205, 207, 210, 221, 229, 231n6, 242–47, 249, 250n7, 261, 264, 266, 268, 274, 276, 282n2 methodology, 151, 170, 172, 173, 176, 177, 223, 239, 279, 282n4 Miao, Chun-Hui, 226 Middle East, 122 Mill, John S., 273 Mills, Charles, 112, 113 mind-body, 170, 200 Moore, G. E., 64 morality, 44, 48, 49, 65, 80, 112, 113, 229 moral judgment, 48, 146, 149, 273 moral universe, 271, 273, 274, 277, 278, 280 Morris, Raphael C., 65, 184 Münsterberg, Hugo, 62, 64 muslim, 66, 123 Nabokov, Vladimir, 10, 71 Nagel, Ernest, 184 Napoleon, Bonaparte, 136

290

Index

narrative, 27, 29–34, 38, 47, 107, 113, 114, 131, 166, 182, 183, 185 Native Americans, 34, 37, 133, 135 naturalism, 4–6, 8, 11, 12, 39, 53, 55n6, 63–65, 74, 155, 156, 159, 163–66, 167n4, 200 natural law, 48, 63, 68, 271, 272, 279 Nazism (Nazi), 1, 71 neo-Kantian, 62, 64 neo-Platonic, 64 neopragmatism (neopragmatist), 51, 61, 70, 83, 116 Neurath, Otto, 173 New England, 133 New Realism, 229 Newton, Isaac, 10 New Yorker, 27 New York Times, 7, 21, 30 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 279, 280, 282 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 14n13, 22, 44, 45, 49, 50, 88, 114, 121, 122, 133 nihilism, 50 nominalism (nominalist), 1, 2, 8, 13n8, 108, 113, 115, 116, 145, 221, 231n4 norm, 63, 143, 156, 198, 209, 277, 278, 281 normativity (normative), 11, 61–66, 69, 71, 72, 80, 155–57, 160–62, 164, 167n2, 198, 200–6, 217, 221, 228, 231n6 novalis, 109 Obama, Barack, 271 objectivity (objective), xi, 22, 24, 28, 50, 53, 64–67, 70, 83, 88, 89, 91–93, 98, 100n9, 109, 148, 149, 157, 159, 161, 162, 164, 166, 167, 197, 201, 237, 268, 272–74, 277, 279, 281, 282n2 obligation, 48, 62, 63, 65, 66, 89, 273 O’Meara, Bridget, 36 ontology (ontological), 5, 8, 53, 63, 83, 84n4, 156, 170, 187, 199–202, 204, 206, 207, 220–22, 231n4, 260, 271 Opole, ix, 181, 194n8 Orwell, George, 30, 37, 38, 71

Paine, Thomas, 131, 138 Paris, 135 Parker, Theodore, 271, 272, 275, 278, 282 Parrish, Timothy, 34 Paul, St., 51 peace, 14, 90, 93, 133, 143 pedagogy (pedagogical), 151, 228, 239, 243, 249 Peirce, Charles S., 10, 70, 82, 100n3, 109, 127, 145, 218, 219, 228–30, 231n9, 238, 244, 260, 275, 279 perception, 188, 189, 206, 226, 231n4 personalism, 274 persuasion, x, 30, 61, 62, 70–74, 112, 198, 199, 206–11, 212n6 phenomenalism, 269 phenomenology, 279 physicalism, 173, 200 physics, 2, 70, 202, 207, 210 physiology, 190 Pinker, Steven, 174–77 Plato, 6, 10, 11, 14, 21, 26, 27, 34, 273 Platonic, 64, 88, 100n3, 109, 116 Platonism, 10, 45–47, 221 pluralism, 6, 107, 143, 151n4, 198 poet, 10, 54, 71, 114, 150, 215 poetic, 38, 49, 207, 223 poetry, 14n12, 38, 48, 80, 202, 207 Popper, Karl, 175, 239 positivism, 3–6 post-analytic philosophy, 188, 190 postmodernism (postmodernist, postmodern), 14, 27, 48, 87, 184 post-structuralism (post-structuralist), 20, 28 power, xi, 44, 46, 49, 51, 63, 64, 69, 72, 73, 80–82, 88, 130–33, 142, 143, 146, 151, 160, 166n2, 175–77, 187, 222, 230, 272, 275, 276, 278, 279, 281 practice, 10, 12, 32, 43, 45, 62, 64, 68, 69, 71–73, 77, 84, 100n7, 109, 119, 133, 142, 146, 155, 156, 159, 163–66, 172, 176, 177, 190, 193, 194n8, 205, 222, 223, 228, 229, 247, 279, 281 pragmatic maxim (pragmatist maxim), 146, 244, 275, 276, 281, 282 Price, Huw, 8, 32, 111, 136

Index Princeton, 20 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 90 psychology, 112, 122n2, 143, 162, 170, 172, 178, 190, 229 public sphere, 39n6, 47, 54, 55n4, 94, 95, 98, 101n15, 108, 185 Pułaski, Kazimierz (Casimir), 135 Puritans, 133 Putnam, Hilary, 13n8, 100n3, 101n20, 171, 217–19, 238, 260 Pyrrho of Elis, 11 Quine, van Orman W., 6–8, 12, 20, 22, 184, 238, 242 race, 92, 93, 112, 113, 115, 136, 273, 278 racial, 32–34, 100, 108, 110, 113, 115, 124, 125 racism, 113, 115 Ramberg, Bjørn, 155, 156, 158, 160, 161, 167n3, 189, 199, 201–4, 210 Ramsey, F. P., 25 rationalism (rationality), xi, 67, 82, 109, 113, 143, 149, 178, 189, 208 Ratzinger, Joseph, 47, 48 Rawls, John, 23, 30, 121, 131, 134, 273 Reagan, Ronald, 27 realism (realist), 20, 38, 46, 70, 148, 158, 166n2, 229, 237, 253, 258, 269n2, 274, 279 recognition, xi, 52, 71, 92, 110, 125, 147, 157, 160, 161, 164, 167n3, 171, 172, 206, 219, 220, 226, 230n3, 231n6, 274 redescription, 62, 67, 69, 71–74, 79, 80, 83, 112, 199, 204, 210 reductionism, 6, 8, 11, 14n9, 130, 159 relativism, 20, 24, 28, 47, 48, 70, 73, 74, 78, 130, 143, 150, 165 religion (religious, religiosity), 39n6, 43–55, 64, 65, 69, 83, 91, 95, 112, 113, 115, 121, 122, 124–26, 131–33, 137, 176, 193, 207, 272 representationalism (representionalist), 20, 69, 81, 82, 84, 171, 185, 197, 201, 202, 237, 239 republicanism (republican), 23, 120, 121, 126, 133, 134

291

rhetoric, 13n9, 37, 47, 80, 81, 137, 169, 171, 174, 178, 199, 205, 209, 237, 238 Rhode Island, 132 Rickert, Heinrich, 62, 64 Rigaud, André, 136 Robbins, Jeffrey W., 50 Robespierre, Maximilien, 131 Rockwell, Teed W., 192, 193n3, 194n9 romanticism, 9, 10, 79, 81, 109 Rosenberg, Jay, 217, 231n4 Royce, Josiah, 55, 62, 64, 107, 109–11, 114, 115 Russell, Bertrand, 4, 81, 184, 188, 189 Russia, 89, 124, 126n3 SAAP. See Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Sade, Marquis de, 112 same-sex marriages, 65 Sandel, Michael, 129 Santayana, George, 48, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 80 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 19, 44, 113 Savannah, 135, 136 Scheler, Max, 129, 130 Schorske, Carl E., 183 scientism, 3, 5, 45 scriptures. See bible Seattle, Chief, 90 secularism (secularization, secular), 10, 47, 53, 55n4, 68, 69, 122, 123, 133 Sellars, Wilfrid, 6, 21, 22, 184, 186, 188–90, 194n8, 215–22, 225, 226, 229, 230, 231nn4–9, 238, 248 semantics (semantic), 36, 159, 221, 238, 240–47, 249n3 Shakespeare, William, 10 Shelley, Percy B., 11 Shusterman, Richard, 35, 146 Silko, Leslie M., 29, 33–39, 40n9 skepticism, 3, 68, 145, 146, 186, 266 Skolem, Thoralf, 4 slavery, 31, 37, 38, 110, 134, 136, 137 Smullyan, Raymond, 242, 243 socialism (socialist), 23, 30, 31, 38, 120

292

Index

society, 7, 12, 14n10, 19, 35, 36, 43, 45, 50, 52, 55, 66, 71, 79, 81, 87, 91, 100n10, 110, 112, 116, 121–26, 127n4, 129, 132, 142–44, 146, 149, 169, 183– 85, 192, 219, 220 Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP), 19 sociology, 130, 190 Socrates, 19, 35, 229, 237, 277 solidarity, 1, 8, 32, 38, 39n6, 51–53, 71, 73, 88, 89, 107, 109, 111, 112, 115, 130, 141–43, 145–51, 159, 237 solipsism, 6 sophist (sophists), 73 Steinhoff, Uwe, 254–59 Stephenson, Neal, 33, 40n7 stoic, 64 Strauss, Leo, 27 structuralism, 20 suffering, 23, 51, 63, 83, 84, 94, 95, 99, 100n14, 107, 108, 112, 116, 124, 141, 146, 147, 151 Suvin, Darko, 30, 39n2 Syria, 124, 126n3 Tarski, Alfred, 25, 184 Taylor, Charles, 83, 129, 178n1, 269n2 technology, 14n16, 165, 166 Thatcher, Margaret, 27 theism, 47 theocracy (theocratic), 69, 73, 133, 134 theology (theologian), 48, 49, 52–54, 68, 133 Theresa, Mother, 278 Thomas, St., 68 Thoreau, Henry, 67 Tillet, Rebecca, 36, 37 Tillich, Paul, 44 tolerance, 62, 69, 101n21, 133 totalitarianism (totalitarian), 21, 38, 71, 89 tragedy (tragic), 11, 280–82 transcendental, 82, 130, 132, 184, 186, 190, 216 transcendentalist, 67, 271 triangulation, 157, 158, 160, 163, 164, 202–6, 211n2

United States of America, ix, x, 4, 30, 33, 36, 37, 47, 99n2, 100n13, 101n15, 110, 112, 123, 124, 126n3, 136–38, 272 universalism, 62, 93 universe, 5, 14n13, 64, 67, 83, 207, 271, 273, 274, 276–82 University of Virginia, 134 US, 99n2 USA, 193n1 utilitarianism (utilitarian), 48, 51, 279 Utopia, 6, 29, 30, 32, 35, 39nn2, 52, 71, 79, 81, 101n20, 144, 147, 172 value, 3, 5, 37, 46, 62, 64, 65, 67, 70, 71, 97, 99, 100n13, 110, 119, 120, 122, 123, 126, 131, 143, 156, 166n2, 241, 247, 249n3, 268, 274, 278–80 Varela, Francisco, 172 Vattimo, Gianni, 50, 51, 80 Vesey, Godfrey, 183 Vienna Circle, 3, 173, 174 Vietnam, 3, 31, 34 violence, 27, 45, 51, 65, 73, 89–91, 94, 96–99, 100n13, 112, 279 Virginia, 131–34, 136 Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty, 131, 132 virtue ethics, 279 Voparil, Christopher, 69, 126n1 Wall Street Journal, 7 Washington, Denzel, 27 Washington, George, 138 West (Western), xi, 1, 4–6, 8, 32–35, 37, 38, 44, 46, 47, 50, 53, 55, 62, 66, 68, 71, 90, 122, 123, 130, 135–37, 143, 146, 162, 207, 210, 237, 249 West, Cornel, 5, 12, 13n1 White, Hayden, 4 Whitehead, Alfred N., 4 Whitman, Walt, 32 Williams, Bernard, 46, 101n14 Williams, Roger, 132, 133, 135 Wilson, David, 174, 175 Wilson, E. O., 83 Wilson, Woodrow, 272, 274, 278

Index Windelband, Wilhelm, 64 Winterer, Caroline, 183 Winthrop, John, 133 wisdom, 110, 120, 182, 262, 280 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 20–23, 25, 44, 49, 156, 174, 184, 191

women, 31, 55, 110, 112–14, 116, 122, 135, 171 World War Two, 183 Wright, Chauncey, 229 Yale, 184

293

About the Editors

Randall Auxier is professor of philosophy and communication studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and a regular visiting professor in the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw. His books include Time, Will, and Purpose (2013), and Metaphysical Grafitti (2017). He edited eight volumes of the Library of Living Philosophers and was co-founder and chief editor of The Pluralist. He is currently deputy chief editor of Eidos: A Journal of the Philosophy of Culture and co-editor of the SUNY Series in American Philosophical and Cultural Thought. In 2016 he co-founded the American Institute of Philosophical and Cultural Thought in Murphysboro, Illinois. Eli Kramer is director of research, for the research project, “The History, Philosophy, Politics, and Practice of the Liberal Arts,” funded by The New American Baccalaureate, and hosted as an Affiliated Research Project of the Department of Philosophy of Culture, Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. His work traverses philosophy as a way of life and metaphilosophy, philosophy of culture, American and European idealism, classical American philosophy, and process philosophy. He is working with Michael Chase and Matthew Sharpe on a new philosophy as a way of life key texts and studies book series, as well as series of related, funded research, conference, and translation projects. He is currently working on a three-volume work entitled The Modes of Philosophy. This project seeks to revitalize the most culturally enriching meta-orientational modes of philosophical praxis. His work has already appeared in journals such as Eidos: A Journal for Philosophy of Culture, Syndicate Philosophy, the Philosophy of Education Yearbook, and the Journal of School and Society. Alongside Aaron Stoller, he is the co-editor of the collection Contemporary Philosophical Proposals for the University: Toward a Philosophy of Higher Education (2018). 295

296

About the Editors

Krzysztof (Chris) Piotr Skowroński, PhD, teaches contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, cultural anthropology, Polish philosophy, and American philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, Opole University, Poland. He co-founded Berlin Practical Philosophy International Forum e.V. He co-organized thirteen editions of American and European Values international conference series. His authored books are Values, Valuations, and Axiological Norms in Richard Rorty’s Neopragmatism (2015); Beyond Aesthetics and Politics: Philosophical and Axiological Studies on the Avant-garde, Pragmatism, and Postmodernism (2013); Values and Powers. Re-reading the Philosophical Tradition of American Pragmatism, (2009); and Santayana and America. Values, Liberties, Responsibility (2007). He edited John Lachs’s Practical Philosophy (2018) and Practicing Philosophy as Experiencing Life (2015). He has co-edited numerous books on American philosophy.

About the Contributors

Randall Auxier is professor of philosophy and communication studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and a regular visiting professor in the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw. His books include Time, Will, and Purpose (2013), and Metaphysical Grafitti (2017). He edited eight volumes of the Library of Living Philosophers and was co-founder and chief editor of The Pluralist. He is currently deputy chief editor of Eidos: A Journal of the Philosophy of Culture and co-editor of the SUNY Series in American Philosophical and Cultural Thought. In 2016 he co-founded the American Institute of Philosophical and Cultural Thought in Murphysboro, Illinois. David Beisecker is associate professor and former chair of the Department of philosophy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he has taught since 1998. His published work spans the philosophy of mind and language, pragmatism and neopragmatism, and philosophical logic. Recently, he has been working on the relationship between Peirce’s understanding of pragmatism and his diagrammatic logic. While on sabbatical during the 2018–2019 academic year, he spent time as a resident fellow of the American Institute of Philosophical and Cultural Thought in Murphysboro, IL, and as an NEH summer scholar in Durham, NH. Justin Bell is associate professor of philosophy and the director of the Honors Program at the University of Houston, Victoria. His research focuses on ethical inquiry in the American Pragmatist tradition—especially on moral imagination. He edits the Southwest Philosophical Studies. Roberto Gronda is lecturer in philosophy of science at the University of Pisa. He is currently working on pragmatist philosophy of science, with particular attention 297

298

About the Contributors

to the notion of scientific practice, and on the philosophy of expertise. He authored several articles on Dewey and, currently, he is completing a book on Dewey’s philosophy of science. Brendan Hogan is clinical associate professor in Global Liberal Studies at New York University and spent the 2018–2019 as research fellow at Ecole des Haute Etudes en Sciences Sociale (EHESS). His research is focused on questions in the philosophy of social science, political philosophy, and pragmatism more broadly speaking. His current project involves drawing out the consequences of pragmatism for understanding the relationship between social science and democracy. In particular, he has focused on the model of rationality and action in various schools of economics. His publications have appeared in the Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Human Studies, Contemporary P ­ ragmatism, and elsewhere. Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley is a CSU outstanding professor of philosophy and Wang Family awardee for outstanding teaching, research, and service. She is author of Josiah Royce in Focus (2008) and Genuine Individuals and Genuine Communities: A Roycean Public Philosophy (1997). She is a recipient of the Herbert Schnieder Award for outstanding contributions to American Philosophy. She serves as President of the Josiah Royce Foundation; Chair of the Board for the Royce Critical Edition, and immediate past President of the Josiah Royce Society. She has published numerous articles on the philosophy of Josiah Royce as well as articles on C. I. Lewis, George Santayana, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewy. Additional publications include Genetic Technology issues and Kant’s Political Philosophy. Marcin Kilanowski, LLM (Harvard), is professor at the Faculty of Law of Nicolaus Copernicus University. He is also a graduate of philosophy and law at Nicolaus Copernicus University and Harvard Law School. During and after his studies, he conducted research at the Free University of Berlin, Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, University of Oxford, Harvard University, and Science-Po in Paris. His research focuses on the development of democracy, civil society, the rule of law, and the protection of human rights by rethinking and redefining their philosophical basis. He is the author of numerous books (among those: Toward Freedom as Responsibility, Dewey, Rorty, Habermas on New Quality in Democracy by SUNY Press 2019) and scientific articles published in Poland and abroad. Eli Kramer is director of research, for the research project, “The History, Philosophy, Politics, and Practice of the Liberal Arts,” funded by The New American Baccalaureate, and hosted as an Affiliated Research Project of the Department of Philosophy of Culture, Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. His work traverses philosophy as a way of life and metaphilosophy, philosophy of culture, American and European idealism, classical American philosophy, and process philosophy. He is working with

About the Contributors

299

Michael Chase and Matthew Sharpe on a new philosophy as a way of life key texts and studies book series, as well as series of related, funded research, conference, and translation projects. He is currently working on a three-volume work entitled The Modes of Philosophy. This project seeks to revitalize the most culturally enriching metaorientational modes of philosophical praxis. His work has already appeared in journals such as Eidos: A Journal for Philosophy of Culture, Syndicate Philosophy, the Philosophy of Education Yearbook, and the Journal of School and Society. Alongside Aaron Stoller, he is the co-editor of the edited collection, Contemporary Philosophical Proposals for the University: Toward a Philosophy of Higher Education (2018). Roman Madzia is an independent scholar. In his research, he has focused primarily on philosophy of mind and language, occasionally, he has published and presented also on themes such as sociology and philosophy of religion. He wrote a doctoral thesis on G. H. Mead, J. William Fulbright and is a Wilhelm von Humboldt Alumnus. Wojciech Małecki is assistant professor of literary theory at the University of Wrocław, Poland. His research interests include American pragmatism, the environmental humanities, aesthetics, and narrative psychology. Wojciech is the author of Embodying Pragmatism (2010; Chinese edition 2019), co-author of Human Minds and Animal Stories: How Narratives Make Us Care About Other Species (2019), and the editor of Practicing Pragmatist Aesthetics (2014). He has also contributed to journals such as The Oxford Literary Review, Foucault Studies, Angelaki, Contemporary Pragmatism, and Poetics, and sits on the editorial board of the journal Pragmatism Today. Wojciech is a founding member and officer of the Richard Rorty Society. Maja Niestrój is chair of the Berlin Practical Philosophy International Forum e.V, and lectures at Viadrina University, Frankfurt Oder, Germany. Her field of specialization is philosophy of language (especially metaphors), as well as practical philosophy in education and coaching. Miklós Nyírő, PhD, studied philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York, and earned a PhD in philosophy at ELTE, Budapest. He is associate professor of the Institute of Philosophy, University of Miskolc, Hungary. He is a former research fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences-ELTE—Hermeneutics Research Group. He is the author of Hans-Georg Gadamer and the Hermeneutics of Language (2006); Art, Truth, Event. Positioning Pragmatic Naturalism and Philosophical Hermeneutics (2017); Mediality, Event-ontology, Practice (2019). The volumes he has edited include HansGeorg Gadamer—a 20th Century Humanist (2009); Philosophy under the Shadow of Globalization: Richard Rorty (2010); Philosophy as De(con)struction: Heidegger and Derrida (2012); Hermeneutics and Democracy (2017). He is the Hungarian co-translator of Rorty’s Philosophy and Social Hope.

300

About the Contributors

John Ryder is provost and professor emeritus at the American University of Malta. He is the author of Interpreting America: Russian and Soviet Studies of American Thought (1999), The Things in Heaven and Earth: An Essay In Pragmatic Naturalism (2013), and the forthcoming Knowledge, Art, and Power: An Outline of a Theory of Experience (2020). He is the editor of American Philosophic Naturalism in the Twentieth Century (1994) and co-editor of The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy (2004). He is also the co-founder of the Central European Pragmatist Forum. Crispin Sartwell is associate professor of philosophy at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. His books include Six Names of Beauty (2004), Political Aesthetics (2010), and Entanglements: A System of Philosophy (2017). His essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Times Higher Education. He lives in a nineteenth-century-one-room schoolhouse near Gettysburg. John Shook, PhD, is a philosopher at Bowie State University in Maryland, and also teaches for the online “Science and the Public” EdM at the University at Buffalo, New York. Among his books are The Future of Naturalism (co-edited, 2009), The God Debates (authored, 2010), The Essential William James (edited, 2011), Neuroscience, Neurophilosophy, and Pragmatism: Brains at Work with the World (co-edited, 2014), American Philosophy and the Brain: Pragmatist Neurophilosophy, Old and New (co-edited, 2014), Dewey’s Social Philosophy: Democracy as Education (authored, 2014), the Oxford Handbook of Secularism (co-edited, 2017), and Systematic Atheology (authored, 2018). Radim Šíp, PhD, teaches at Masaryk University. He is interested in topics related to education, post/nationalism, and pragmatist epistemology. He is the author or co-author of the books: Richard Rorty: Pragmatism between Language and Experience (2008, in Czech), Pragmatism and Deconstruction in Anglo-American Philosophy (2010, in Czech) and editor of the monograph Identity and Social Transformation (together with J. Ryder, 2011). In 2012, Fulbright Foundation supported his grant John Dewey: Pragmatism, Democracy, and Education. He completed a research fellowship at the Center of Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University. In 2019, his Why Schools Fail: Cognitive Landscapes and Nationalism, based on Dewey’s and Foucault’s epistemology, has been just printed (2019, in Czech). Krzysztof (Chris) Piotr Skowroński, PhD, teaches contemporary philosophy, rhetoric and persuasion, and multiculturalism at University of Opole, Poland. He co-founded Berlin Practical Philosophy International Forum e.V. He co-organized thirteen editions of the American and European Values international conference series. He authored the books: Values, Valuations, and Axiological Norms in Richard Rorty’s Neopragmatism (2015); Beyond Aesthetics and Politics: Philosophical and

About the Contributors

301

Axiological Studies on the Avant-garde, Pragmatism, and Postmodernism (2013); Values and Powers. Re-reading the Philosophical Tradition of American Pragmatism, (2009); and Santayana and America. Values, Liberties, Responsibility (2007). He edited John Lachs’ Practical Philosophy (2018), and Practicing Philosophy as Experiencing Life (2015). He is also a blogger and online teacher. Kenneth W. Stikkers is professor of philosophy and Africana studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Previously he was a professor of Philosophy at Seattle University and president of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, and he has been a visiting professor at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, Mexico, the University of Warsaw, the National University of Ireland Maynooth, and Ca’Foscari University, Venice, Italy. He edited the English translation of Max Scheler’s Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge and has authored more than 70 articles and chapters, including numerous ones on Scheler. His most recent books are Utopian Visions, Past, Present, and Future: Rethinking the Ethical Foundations of Economy (in Spanish) and the co-edited anthology Philosophy in the Time of Economic Crisis: Pragmatism and Economy. Preston Stovall is a post-doctoral researcher in philosophy for a project on inferentialism and collective intentionality at the University of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic. He received his BA from Montana State University, his MA from Texas A&M University, and his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. He works in metaphysics and the philosophy of language, informed by the work of the German idealists and the American pragmatists.