From: Kevin (kevin@xap.com)
Date: Tue Feb 11 2003 - 18:34:53 GMT
Erin asks:
Well I do have Rorty on my reading list and
do like a lot of what I hear about him.
But I am still lost about this call for action.
Can you give me examples of the actual action?
The whole public private split AND the call
to stop debating and take this out to the public sincerely confuses me.
Right now the call for action without any concrete examples of the
action being done by the callers are leaving me with the same
feeling of when I hear a Jehovah Witness knocking at
my door.
Kevin:
As I read him, I hear the call to be simply his determination to empower
people to stop looking for the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and
Everything _before_ they start working towards their vision of a better
society, particularly Intellectuals.
Why Intellectuals? Because they are too often guilty of endlessly
debating the finer points of metaphysics in search of the Ultimate
Foundation before they become actively engaged in performing good works.
It's the endless search for the Ultimate Context, the Final Secret that
will tell us how everything fits together so we know what do with
ourselves that keeps us from actually _doing_ something with ourselves.
Despite Platt's protestations, I see nothing in Rorty's call to action
to be an endorsement of Marxism. As I read it, he's saying if you share
Wilde's vision of Utopia, start building it. If you share Rawls' vision,
get to it. If you share Mill's vision....and so on.
In the essay in question (and a couple others I've read) he speaks
highly of Authenticity. The old notion of "Choose Thyself". To look at
all the options for human vision and pick one. His endorsement of a
Literary Culture is based on the fact that Intellectuals read books to
tell them what is possible for humans. Through Literature we see an
endless variety of human choices and we enjoy the luxury of passing
judgment and deciding with of those choices suits us as well. The
endless exploration of Literature (and other artistic endeavors) points
to the endless exploration of what we can do with ourselves. Our endless
search for Context, for Meaning, for Truth. Literature can now serve
this function in place of Religion or Philosophy.
Instead of expecting a Terminus to this Inquiry or Quest, we can simply
expect to discover endlessly new ways of coping. New choices. New
visions. New Truths.
In this regard, I think Rorty's theme (as laid out in the essay in
questions and others I've read--he obviously has mountains of work that
I've yet to read) is very similar to Pirsig's theme.
If I can be so bold as to quote myself from the Thread on Absolutism
(where Nazism came up again, interestingly enough):
Kevin said in that thread:
As I see it, the real power of Pirsig's ideas is to empower us as
fallible humans with incomplete data to stop being dominated by our
doubts and start choosing. Exploding the notions that we are somehow
distant from some Ultimate Reality and therefore incapable of Ultimate
Knowledge is one of the central themes of his project. He says (as you
are always wise to point out) that our immediate experience _IS_
reality. In fact, it's all the reality we need to make all of these
tough decisions. Not only can we feel comfortable that our immediate
experience is enough to choose what is Best, but we can rationally
justify such choices because reality itself is constituted of such
choices. Pirsig provides a means of learning to trust our choices in
spite of doubt.
Waiting for the absence of doubt is moral paralysis.
The absence of doubt is NOT the realization of Absolute Truth. It's
merely an exercise in delusion. To lack doubt is to refuse to accept
additional data. It's a closed system. It's incapable of change. It's
unresponsive to DQ. It's dead. To assume Absolute Truth from all
available data is folly at best and tyranny at worst.
Kevin now says:
I think it would be a mistake to ask Rorty for a list of 10 commandments
or for the recipe for Perfect Living. I suspect his answer would echo
Pirsig's--only you know the answer to that and no one needs to tell you.
So Platt might think Rorty shares Wilde's vision of a Socialist Utopia
(although I'm not convinced that he does share it). That doesn't mean
it's a prescription for the rest of us. Platt is interested in finding
the One Size Fits All Metaphysical Construct. Rorty isn't. I don't think
Pirsig is either. I know that I certainly am not.
-Kevin
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