Richard Rorty (1931–2007)

A refreshingly clear--and at many times humorous--philosophical statement! I like his framing of philosophy, and all intellectual inquiry actually, as acts of imagination, since any effort to try to understand the world implies thinking of something new, or at least possibly new. I also appreciate the call to stop obsessing about what is "Real" and to focus on what "is" and how to increase our understanding of what "is" and our collective well being.

Rorty hinges pretty much everything on show more language, and while I agree that language is an important/defining part of being human, I disagree that there is no complex communication without language. I'm guessing he never had children or spent time with young infants, or ever had a close relationship with a pet. To my mind, the extent of our ability to community without language only serves to underscore his point about the ultimate impact of language. show less

Typically, I try to not write a review without reading the entire book, but in this case, I couldn’t get past the second essay. So take this review for what it’s worth. But also keep in mind that the reader does not need to get very far into the essays to see exactly the type of philosopher they’re dealing with.

To encounter an anti-philosophical attitude in a scientist has come to seem normal and expected; to find this in a philosopher is more surprising, and somewhat disturbing.

Even show more among philosophers, it is one thing to say that metaphysics is useless in our understanding of the natural world, and that it has been supplanted by science (this is not correct, but we won’t get into that here), but it is quite another to make the claim that philosophy is trivial in terms of ethics and politics. Whereas it may be true that contemporary political debate is very un-philosophical, this is simply a statement of the way things are, not the way things ought to be (and who would argue that modern political discourse is ideal right now?). Political discussion would be better off if people were more skilled at articulating the first principles from which they hold views, rather than simply adopting wholesale the views of their chosen tribe.

Which makes it all the more disturbing to see Rorty write about the “irrelevance of philosophy to democracy.” This couldn’t be more off-base. The idea of equality, for example, can only be defended on philosophical grounds. There are no experiments that can be run, or historical cases to examine, that will tell you the ideal distribution of resources in any given society. Various redistribution schemes can be proposed and defended, and if you lean more progressive in this area, you have to make the case for why inequality, at its current levels, is a bad thing to begin with. This is necessarily a philosophical stance.

Inequality is not an empirical question; if not enough people feel that equality is important, philosophically, then calls for redistribution can be rejected out of hand. The same applies to democracy itself; if the idea of democracy is not defended, on philosophical grounds, authoritarianism can creep back in, as we’ve seen happen throughout the world. If anything, what we most need is a renewed philosophical defense of democracy, making Rorty’s essays worse than irrelevant.

Also consider this statement from Rorty:

“...it helps to remember the point I made at the outset: that when the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century broke out, the quarrel between religion and philosophy had an importance it now lacks.”

Is it even worthy of elaboration to point out why this is a ridiculous statement, given the rise of the powerful and well-funded religious right? The battle of reason against superstition is perennial, and takes place squarely on philosophical grounds.

The essays get harder to read as you go. In speaking about “leftist intellectuals,” Rorty writes that “they are annoyed and distrurbed by the writings of antifoundationalist philosophers like myself who argue that there is no such thing as ‘human reason.’”

It’s been said that Rorty is often mischaracterized as a relativist, but with statements like that, he has no one to blame but himself. Like any other run-of-the-mill relativist, he seems totally unaware of the fact that he’s arguing, using REASON, that there is no such thing as human reason. If this type of writing is your thing, then by all means purchase the book, but I, for one, have no patience for it.

On a final note, Rorty is overly praised here for “predicting” the presidency of Donald Trump, but he was hardly the only thinker to see that globalization and rampant inequality could create a class of disaffected individuals who would be susceptible to the incoherent ramblings of a demagogue. show less

These three lectures provide Rorty with the chance to give us an overview of his thoughts on the role of philosophy, both academic and in the “real world,” and the binds that tie philosophy and poetry together. It adds up to a non-traditional but very positive view of philosophy, the same view that got Rorty equal amounts of praise and derision during his career.

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty had separated himself from the traditional view of philosophy (and science as show more well) as determining ultimate truths and ultimate values. The reaction from traditional philosophers was remarkably strident, especially given that that view had been in doubt, really, from Hume forward. Even the language and logic bound philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century were skeptical if not disdainful of metaphysical claims about ultimate realities.

Here Rorty strategically assigns that hyper traditional view to Platonism. Certainly Plato’s theory of forms epitomizes that metaphysically hardline distinction between appearance and reality (or as Rorty calls it “the really real”).

On the other side, Rorty identifies a tradition of its own, one that he aligns with poetry rather than Plato. That counter-tradition includes, in keeping with Rorty’s influences in American philosophy, Emerson and the later pragmatists, especially William James, as well as other, primarily continental thinkers.

Emerson’s essay, Circles, provides a poignant image to distinguish the two traditions. As theories and interpretations grow, circle upon circles, away from (in Emerson’s original formulation) the eye of the observer, according to the Platonic tradition, those circles of theory and interpretation approach a limit — ultimate reality, the “really real.” In Emerson’s, the pragmatists’, and the thinking of others contributing to the counter-tradition, the circles just grow one upon the other, with, in Emerson’s words, “no inclosing wall.” No “really real” bounds the imagination and poetic creativity of theorists and interpreters. History is an ever-expanding, unlimited series of these circles.

The link between philosophy and poetry here is the act of imagination, or the act of creativity. Philosophy, like poetry, is an activity of the creative imagination, not dry description. It is the role of philosophy to enable imagination to invent new and ever expanding ways of talking about, reasoning about, thinking about, and understanding. Even the object we feel necessary at the end of those verbs needs to be left off — there is no “world” that we talk about, reason about, and think about that isn’t itself part of each of those ways of talking, reasoning, and thinking.

In fact, if there is a candidate object for those verbs, it is not the “world” — it is ourselves, the human experience, without an object of its own to limit and enclose it. In a Nietzschean spirit, an infinity of ways of experiencing.

Hegel stands at a a crossroads between the Platonic tradition and the counter-tradition. I have always thought of Hegel and his predecessor Kant as answering the same question: how is it that the world is intelligible to us? Kant’s answer was transcendental idealism. Hegel’s was historicity — the historical path of knowledge’s conceptualization and realization captured in the Phenomenology of Spirit.

But what Rorty makes clear is that when Hegel asks how the world is intelligible to us, “world” is itself subject to the movement of historicity, that in making the “world” intelligible, what the “world” is must change, as must “intelligibility.” So whereas Kant actually answers the question with a solution, Hegel tells a story, in Rorty’s phrase. A story of the history of “world” and “intelligible.”

But if Rorty is right, where does that leave us?

Doesn’t this make nothing true and nothing right or wrong? A nihilistic razing of all that is true, right, and beautiful? This was the brunt of the reaction of traditional philosophers to Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

Well it does if you hang on to the “truly True”, “the goodly Good”, and the “beautifully Beautiful” that Rorty is urging us to reject. What we have after that rejection is what he refers to as “social practices” — I suppose this should really be “sociohistorical practices”. We do after all have ways of determining what is a good reason for saying or doing something, we do have ways of judging right and wrong. (I’ll leave beauty out, as maybe a more complicated story). And those practices (I think Rorty may actually underemphasize) are compelling for us although both historically contingent and historically volatile — this refers to what Heidegger called “thrownness.” They are us, because after all, we are ourselves sociohistorial, and we cannot be other than those sociohistorical practices.

The corollary threat of nihilism is that “anything goes”, that is, that lacking the “really Real”, etc., anything can count as real by virtue of our proclaiming that it is real. But . . . sociohistorical practices. No, proclaiming that the earth is flat will not make the earth flat. We have sociohistorical practices, we ARE sociohistorical practices, that preclude things that count as irrational, unjustified, etc.

If we are so apparently bound by sociohistorical practices, how does historical change happen? Historical change happens when sociohistorical practices change, when imagination, as Rorty calls it, throws a wrench into the practices, and the resulting change takes hold and has the richness to evolve new, sustainable sociohistorical practices (or maybe modified ones, to be less grandiose).

That is the positive role of philosophy as poetry.

One additional element is critical to Rorty’s view of philosophy’s place. And that’s that it does in fact have a role in the “real world” beyond the analytical and descriptive. That poetic activity is, for him, a pragmatic one — one that serves, if we do it well, not just to change human experience but to improve it, where “improvement” is of course to be itself judged in sociohistorical terms. That’s the pragmatic core of Rorty’s thinking.

I’ll stop with a couple of questions, not necessarily objections, just questions to think about.

- Why do our sociohistorical practices have the hold that they have on us? Why can’t we just decide to re-imagine ourselves, as if it were simply a matter of free choice? Why do we take our practices so seriously? We can say, and I think this is at least partly right, that the “socio” part of the “sociohistorical” is powerful — I can’t alone decide to re-imagine who or what we are. A solo practice lacks social engagement. It remains more of a fantasy than a reality, maybe not a “practice” at all. But even such a move, a revision or a rejection or a rethinking of our practices, is an uphill battle in itself, regardless of social acceptance. Those practices ARE us, not just things we participate in. I do think this is something that Heidegger had a bead on with his notion of “thrownness” — that is, that we always find ourselves already in such practices and cannot exist otherwise. We cannot just toss ourselves into limbo.

- What bounds sociohistorical practices? On one hand, history itself and current practices are resistant to change. But there’s another consideration — not just anything works. We cannot re-imagine ourselves in just any old way. We can’t for example re-imagine ourselves as omnipotent gods (try though some of us might). It doesn’t work. How do we characterize that kind of bounding without recalling the “really real” into the picture? show less

It is always entertaining for me to read philosophy. People with immense knowledge of history, linguistics and philosophy, go after each other over the tiniest perceived faults in their logic, their opinions or even their choice of single words. They can argue about anything and everything. It is the only discipline I know where everyone is busy attacking everyone else’s work, while solving no problems at all.

Into this scenario stepped Richard Rorty (1931-2007), who gave a series of show more lectures in the 1990s that are only now being published in English, the language in which they were delivered. (They have been available in Spanish translation, the location of the lecture series, for years.) The book is called Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism, a weighty project if ever there was one. Rorty was in his prime, and the lectures fling ideas (and criticisms) with seeming total abandon. But it’s not abandon; it is the comfort of coming to this point after a lifetime of research, thought, revisions, battles and the realization that he had mastered the art. It’s a most positive experience to read.

Rorty’s niche was Pragmatism. Pragmatism (the philosophy) says that life and the universe are all there is: that human beings have nothing to know save their relations to each other and to other finite beings. Specifically, that they owe nothing to any non-human authoritarian (ie. God) but that they owe everything to their fellow humans with whom they live and communicate. This is a refreshing departure from the complex, difficult and often impossible to implement philosophies of the great names of the discipline.

Rorty called himself the therapeutic philosopher. He made it comfortable to understand philosophy. He refined this philosophy over a lifetime, and defended it against all comers. By the time of these lectures, he was totally confident, relaxed and in control. There is even mild humor and self-deprecation, not things you see much of in Aristotle or Plato, Heidegger or Nietzsche. He quotes his critics often, as if to say he has nothing to fear from them. And he doesn’t usually even bother to refute their criticisms. Rather, he takes the high road.

There are lecture/chapters on religion, language, philosophy, and morality, among others. He (and everyone in the business) call what they criticize “language-games”. It’s the most common accusation I see. The use of a specific word can be the cause of a whole new paper to be written and published. The different usages of the same word throughout the world and throughout history can be the cause of endless criticism and consternation. What the Ancient Greeks tossed around still matters to 21st century philosophers. Semantics is crucial to philosophy.

But then, Rorty brings out Charles S. Peirce for his side. Peirce’s most important meme was that language is not so much semantics as semiotics – signs. It is something that grabbed the attention of both philosophers and Noam Chomsky, wearing his linguistics hat. But while Rorty admits to being a fan, he also acknowledged that Peirce was no authority and no proof of anything. He never followed through, never dug down, never built a body of work, or even kept an organized notebook. He was a bit of a madman, or at very least eccentric. He worked alone, without the daily interaction of his peers or students that makes philosophy as vibrant as it is. He sat and thought about the world, and wrote down his thoughts. And that was the end of his effort. A lot of his writing has yet to make any sense to academics. But it sure seems profound. He is credited with founding Pragmatism.

Peirce (1839-1914) is actually buried about a quarter of a mile from my office in Milford, PA, and his gigantic home, now a National Parks Service office building, is just two miles in the other direction. He lived out in the countryside, living off a huge inheritance, writing out ideas without developing them into coherent theses. He was the Thomas Jefferson of philosophy; you can find a Peirce quote to fit almost any situation or opinion in philosophy, even if contradictory. Just like Jefferson. He relied totally on his name to circulate it with authority. Just like Jefferson. Rorty seems to recognize this, but cites him everywhere anyway.

The book is full of challenges, and not just from Rorty, but from his critics too. Having thought through the logic of religions, he concludes “There is no way in which the religious person can claim a right to believe as part of an overall right to privacy.”

He takes on the hoary subject of morality with ease. Christians believe there can be no morality without God. But Rorty shows that morality is simply born of large numbers. When there was just the family, it wasn’t an issue. When it was a village, things could get complicated, so rules started to appear. Long before Christianity popped into existence. In his wonderfully simple terms, Rorty said that morality and law began when controversy arose. Period.

He compares the Platonic idea that Truth and God are one, to a social, moral and ethical framework /gospel, that would have been accepted in polytheistic societies like Ancient Rome. Truth and God also have to reconcile with Aristotle, Newton and Darwin who found truth lay way beyond the knowledge of the church.

Professor Rorty’s views on religion did not sit well with Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals, of course. But as his skin thickened to the attacks, he came to this conclusion: “You have to be educated in order to be a citizen of our society, a participant in our conversation, someone with whom we can envision merging our horizons. So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours.” Wow is about the only word that fits here.

So what did Rorty believe? “My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.”

And finally: “I don’t think our practice of justifying our beliefs needs justification.”

The business of attacking religion is a standard ploy in philosophy. It is a fat target, with lots of hypocrisy to munch on. Yet it never ceases to amaze me that it always seems to be Christianity that is the whipping boy. I would love to have read Rorty’s attack on Hinduism and Buddhism and Islam for comparison. But western philosophy doesn’t seem to want to wander beyond western religion. This, to me, weakens Rorty’s case. But that is a quibble in this wide-ranging book.

What keeps coming through is Pragmatism’s appeal to the lowest common denominator: “At this level of abstraction, concepts like truth, rationality and maturity are up for grabs,” he says. He wants to take philosophy out of the ivory tower and apply it. His criticism of standard philosophical arguments bites hard: “How can you convince people that they are presupposing what they do not believe?”

Pragmatism encompasses pan-relationism. This boils down to anything has a sense if you give it one. It is another generous concept, in direct conflict with all kinds of philosophers for whom meaning is sacred, critical and often unapproachable. For Rorty, meaning can be found or made. Infinitely refreshing and accessible.

Pragmatism sloughs off a lot of what other philosophers argue over. They say it doesn’t matter. They put things in perspective. For example, they have no quarrel with Heidegger’s “bad moral character” as it doesn’t count against his philosophical achievements. Pragmatists attempt to get rid of the contrast between reality and appearance, Rorty said.

Once the reader gets to the lectures, it is smooth sailing. Unfortunately, there are two prefaces totaling nearly 40 pages that not only don’t reflect the warmth and breezy style Rorty wrote into his speeches, but they add nothing worth remembering at all. There is also an epilogue, which describes the lecture series that Rorty participated in, as well as some details about the lectures themselves. Eduardo Mendieta wrote it, as well as all the footnotes, where, incredibly to me, he noted every single change from the Spanish version of the lectures. Every word, translated to mean something slightly different, or cut altogether. Philosophers have issues.

David Wineberg show less