From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 06 2004 - 01:00:21 GMT
Anthony said:
Moreover, there are problems with Rorty’s definition of a liberal as avoiding being cruel as the worst thing that one can do. He just asserts this in CON as a given truth without argument. Sorry, that’s just not acceptable. For instance, I actually think it’s a good thing if politicians and religious fundamentalists suffer at the hands of comedians like Bill Hicks and Rory Bremner. Not only does it make me feel better, such cruelty might actually assist in changing public consciousness for the better.
Matt:
That's always the problem with definitions isn't it? They are given.
However, in the preface to CIS Rorty says "For liberal ironists, there is no answer to the question "Why not be cruel?" -- no noncircular theoretical backup for the belief that cruelty is horrible." (CIS, xv) If you aren't asking for theoretical backup for his definition, if you aren't asking him to argue for it, then I think you are simply being uncharitable in your reading. If you don't care about the humiliation of strangers and you still would like to consider yourself a liberal, then by all means, dispute
Rorty's characterization of liberalness, though that simply means we are talking past each other, having two different conversations. If, however, you do care about the humiliation of strangers, than that's all the agreement Rorty needs. I agree that Michael Moore and Al Franken's comedy is both funny and instructive, good pushes in the right direction. However, I question anybody's dedication to a more cruelty free society who didn't cringe a little and feel the
tiniest bit sorry for Charlton Heston at the end of Bowling for Columbine. He deserved it, but shouldn't we also at the same time desire a world in which we don't have to do that to people?
Anthony said:
Furthermore, in CON (p.52), Rorty states that “A liberal society is one which is content to call ‘true’ whatever the upshot of such (free and open) encounters turns out to be” is also problematic. Firstly, the ideal of free and open encounters is never found in real life.
Matt:
Again, you aren't being charatible, though in this case you jog in Best and Kellner to be equally uncharitable. It is simply false to say with Best and Kellner that for Rorty "there is no such thing as class or systematically enforced exclusion and oppression." (PT, 288) As Rorty says flippantly, "the danger to liberty is the bosses, oligarchies, corporations, what not." (ABAO, 66) Rorty's essay "Back to Class Politics" (in PSH) is all about how we need to start focusing on class issues again, despite the
great successes we've had focusing on cultural politics. Rorty is offering a utopic vision in his encouragment of free and equal encounters, not an up-to-date analysis of the present. Best and Kellner's problem is that Rorty refuses to "theorize structural causation." (PT, 288) He refuses because he doesn't see the point once we can see the structural causation. To theorize it is to attempt to say something general about strucures, but this doesn't really seem possib
le past a few truisms like Foucault's.
No, Rorty, along with Foucault and Nietzsche, would agree with Stanley Fish that "There's no such thing as free speech." (TNS, 102-119) But beyond this therapeutic theoretical point, Rorty does want to retain the idea of a free and open encounter. After you realize with Foucault that all of our words and actions are bound up in a web of power relations, it is pointless to despair. Simply ubiquitizing power doesn't mean much for our practices except to help us realize that everything we do and say carries
weight, except as Fish says, on "a Hyde Park corner or a call-in talk show where people get to sound off for the sheer fun of it." (TNS, 106) Foucault's problem was that he despaired our situation, he longed for what Bernard Yack has called a "total revolution" of our soul and practices. Rorty's ideal of a welfare state in which liberty and equality are maximized is one where "You're just going to have to settle for lots and lots of Foucauldian webs of power, about as
weblike and powerful as they always were, only run by the good guys instead of the bad guys." (ABAO, 34)
The relevant ideal of a free and open encounter is one where we rely on persuasion and not force. How can we tell if we are relying on persuasion and not force? Rorty says that the only way is to flesh it out "in terms of examples rather than principles--it is to be more like the Athenian market-place than the council-chamber of the Great King, more like the twentieth century than the twelfth, more like the Prussian Academy in 1925 than in 1935." (CP, 173) Liberal institutions are what give flesh to the
liberal ideas' bones "for these institutions give concreteness and detail to the idea of 'unforced agreement.'" "On this view, to say that truth will win in such an encounter is not to make a metaphysical claim about the connection between human reason and the nature of things. It is merely to say that the best way to find out what to believe is to listen to as many suggestions and arguments as you can." (ORT, 39) The difference between persuasion and force is the diffe
rence between causes and reasons. "Within a language game, within a set of agreements about what is possible and important, we can usefully distinguish reasons for belief from causes for belief which are not reasons. We do this by starting with such obvious differences as that between Socratic dialogue and hypnotic suggestion. We then try to firm up the distinction by dealing with messier cases: brainwashing, media hype, and what Marxists call 'false consciousness.' There is, to be sure, no neat way to draw
a line between persuasion and force, and therefore no neat way to draw a line between a cause of changed belief which was also a reason and one that was a 'mere' cause. But the distinction is no fuzzier than most." (CIS 48)
Anthony said:
One of Rorty’s conclusions is that O’Brien is one of the last liberal ironists in the world of 1984.
Matt:
Might want to take a look at the book again. O'Brien is an ironist, sure, but he sure ain't no liberal.
I find it hard to understand why you didn't like Rorty's reading of 1984 or how that chapter goes a long way in explaining your feelings about Rorty or myself. I don't know, you seem to simply take afront that Rorty would take a message from 1984 that you don't. I have no idea why you would feel the need to point out that "it is apparent that 1984 was written at the beginning of the cold war era (of 1946 to 1990) while CON was written towards the end." I have no idea how most of what you said about Rorty and
Orwell is at all relevant to what Rorty said about Orwell.
Anthony said:
It seems that the moment you leave a Quality based way of thinking (where something is decided as good and bad in the here and now), static moral imperatives such as Kant’s categorical imperative or Rorty’s definition of liberalism become problematic as they can’t take accommodate all the possibilities that might appear in a Dynamic reality.
Matt:
As I commented to Ian recently, it is best not to take anything pragmatists say as principles, but rather as rules of thumb. Overall, cruelty is the worst thing we do. Is the cruelty done to Charlton Heston at the hands of Michael Moore as cruel as that which he subjected to the families in Columbine, Colorado when he showed up mere days later for an NRA rally after the fateful high school shootings? No, that's why it is permissible and instructive, though still cruel. A rule of thumb is always gauged
against particularities. "Cruelty is the worst thing we do" is a piece of our liberal final vocabulary. If it were lost, we would no longer identify those people as "one of us." If you are suggesting that someday a Dynamic reality will come about in which cruelty is the best thing we can do, then I agree with Sartre: "At that moment, fascism will be the truth of man, and so much the worse for us." Not "us" as some ahistorical essence of humanity, but us liberals, us Ame
ricans, us free democratics citizens. I pity those who should have to live through that "Dynamic" change.
Anthony said:
Unfortunately, I think that despite attending the same philosophy department as Pirsig (and even having, at least, two of the same lecturers: Carnap and Richard McKeon), Rorty hasn’t disassociated himself far enough from traditional philosophy whether it’s from the Anglo-American tradition or the other main foundation of his work, post-modernism. This is clearly seen in his interview with “Philosophy Now” where he admits to being sympathetic to both traditions and his linguistic flavoured comment in footnote 15
in CON, p.153:
“I would argue that if you can’t use language, you can’t be conscious of inner images.”
To put it in his words, Rorty is still too much of a metaphysician and not enough of an ironist.
Matt:
You assume that Sellarsian psychological nominalism and Foucaultian social constructionism has something to do with being a metaphysician, but pragmatists don't see this as the case. Rorty is simply saying that to think is to use a language. Now, what I find metaphysical is the mystic idea that language is something we can get behind, that language distorts our perception of reality. By Rortyan lights, this is to erect an appearance/reality distinction and I have no idea why I shouldn't view it as such.
That Rorty may be too infected with the disease that he is trying to cure is possible. It was true of Dewey and Heidegger. The philosophy that Rorty engages in is what he calls "ironist theory" in CIS. It is the type of fun poked at serious philosophers by those who were almost caught in their trap, people who were once seduced by the siren calls of Plato and Kant. I am one of those, too. I think Pirsig is also, and I think he is a prime candidate for having come down with the disease. Pirsig may not be
sympathetic with any tradition of philosophy, but I think that is do mainly to willfulness, rather than actual exposition.
Anthony said:
Pirsig’s use of cosmological evolution and the Mahayana idea of “nothingness” (in the MOQ) is an original philosophical option that Rorty overlooked in reconciling the art-science dichotomy of C.P. Snow.
Matt:
This is one of those points where I go, "You expect somebody to pick an option that they were ignorant of?" We can slap the same accusation back at Pirsig's apparent ignorance of Nietzsche or Heidegger, or at least his refusal to acknowledge their influence if he did read them. You can only overlook something if you'd looked at it once, which I don't think Rorty really had. And if you want a connection drawn between Rorty and Nagarjuna, see Alan Malachowski's introductory book Richard Rorty.
You can be sore at Rorty for not having ever read much Eastern philosophy, but I see that as pretty unproductive and not very fair. In fact, I'm not at all sure that Rorty _hasn't_ read much Eastern philosophy. Rorty, however, has long deined himself only worthy enough to write about things he knows something about, things he's studied for years. He's careful like that, rather than simply reading a foreign text and weighing in on it. If you want further thoughts by Rorty on the subject, take a look at the
correspondence between him and Anindita Niyogi Balslev in Cultural Otherness.
To finish, I must say that it has been a pleasure to engage in this discussion. Unlike the base, heavy-handed, clumsy, open and frank hostilities leveled by many of the MD's interlocuters, it is always pleasant to engage in the sly, witty, overtheorized, and thinly veiled hostilities of high academia. Its a breath of fresh air and a style I've sorely missed.
Matt
Citations:
ABAO -- Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies
CIS -- Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
CP -- Consequences of Pragmatism
DTP -- Deconstruction: Theory and Practice
EHO -- Essays on Heidegger and Others
ORT -- Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
PSH -- Philosophy and Social Hope
PT -- Postmodern Theory
TNS -- There's No Such Thing As Free Speech
Interview -- "A Talent for Bricolage" found at http://www.princeton.edu/~jknobe/rorty.html
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