From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Feb 10 2003 - 03:25:49 GMT
Hi DMB, Andy, All:
RORTY:
"I read Dewey as saying that discarding these dualisms will bring us
together by enabling us to realize that social cooperation and social
hope are where our humanity begins and ends."
DMB:
> How does the traditional philosophical
> distinction stand in the way of our social hopes? What are these social
> hopes?
Good question. What is Rorty's "social hope?" Fortunately, we don't
have to look far to find the answer:
RORTY:
"The best rebuttal to this suggestion is Oscar Wilde's "The soul of man
under socialism". The message of that essay parallels those of Mill's
On Liberty and of Rawls' A Theory of Justice. It is that the only point of
getting rid of the priests and the kings, of setting up democratic
governments, of taking from each according to her abilities and giving to
each according to her needs, and of thereby creating the Good Global
Society, is to make it possible for people to lead the sort of lives they
prefer, as long as their doing so does not diminish the opportunities of
other humans to do the same thing." (The Decline of Redemptive Truth
and the Rise of Literary Culture)
KARL MARX
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
OSCAR WILDE
"Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by
converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-
operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a
thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well being of each
member of the community. (the soul of man under socialism)
COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
"In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your
property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend."
PH
It's obvious where Rorty's "social hope" lies.
PIRSIG:
"What makes the free-enterprise system superior is that the socialists,
reasoning intelligently and objectively, have inadvertently closed the
door to Dynamic Quality in the buying and selling of things. They closed
it because the metaphysical structure of their objectivity never told them
Dynamic Quality exists." (17)
PH:
Will leftist intellectuals like Rorty ever learn? If not from Pirsig, at least
from the millions of slaughtered dissidents rotting in unmarked graves in
Eastern Europe, Russia, Cambodia, Cuba, China, Vietnam and North
Korea?
Platt
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