|
 Philosopher
of the Month
April
2002 - Richard Rorty
Simon
Eassom
Richard
Rorty - philosophical hero to some and enemy of philosophy to others.
Richard Bernstein has noted that Rorty-bashing has become something
of a philosophical sport. Love him or loathe him, you cannot ignore
him. There is no doubt that Rorty is one the most influential, controversial,
prolific, and widely read philosophers in the world. Unlike many
of his contemporaries, and following the example of his own heroes
William James and John Dewey, he is a public philosopher writing
for a broad audience on a vast range of topics related to social
justice and democracy.
Rorty
sets out his stall in two early texts, Philosophy and the Mirror
of Nature (1979) and Consequences of Pragmatism (1982).
Rorty is a pragmatist. That is, he believes that language cannot
claim accurately to represent reality as some sort of 'mirror of
nature'. Instead, the best we can hope for is that knowledge provides
us with the means to cope effectively with the 'real' world. There
is no truth 'out there' to be discovered. For example, the word
'gene' does not necessarily correspond to some sort of real thing.
What matters most is whether or not thinking in terms of genes helps
us to cope with the particular environment in which gene-talk has
an effect. The resultant collapsing of the assumed 'facts' of hard
science into the softer discourse of the humanities and the arts
means that there is no guaranteed way of getting beyond language
and seeing the world as it 'really' is. All attempts at 'worldmaking'
are cursed by an inescapable ethnocentrism.
Rorty's
work shows the clear influence of contemporary philosophers such
as Nelson Goodman, W. V. O. Quine, Hilary Putnam, and Jacques Derrida.
His social philosophy follows from James and Dewey as already mentioned.
His strong and sometimes idiosyncratic readings of the work of great
philosophical figures such as Hegel and Heidegger have drawn criti
cism, but there is no denying that Rorty is the complete, rounded
thinker whose work in the collected Philosophical Papers
shows an enormous grasp of the entirety of Western philosophy.
It
is in the area of political philosophy that Rorty has made his name.
Building on the anti-foundationalist and anti-representationist
stance defended in Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature, he deals directly with the significance of the abandonment
of the enlightenment quest for knowledge of all things (including
knowledge of how we ought to live). In his later and most accessible
work, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), Rorty considers
the consequences of this inevitable ethnocentrism and the tendency
towards 'solidarity' with like-minded world-makers. The recognition
that all claims to truth and knowledge of reality are contingent
upon our spatial and temporal position in the world leads us to
speak of what we believe with a strong sense of irony. The committed
ironist accepts that the language of any other community could be
just as real or true as our own. If this hint at relativism sounds
alarm bells at the threat of might is right, then Rorty prescribes
what he sees as the only social construction robust enough to avoid
the threat of enthnocentric impasse: political liberalism.
Part
of the problem, as Rorty sees it, is the repeated attempt to fuse
the private domain of self-realisation, fulfilment, and perfectionism
with the public domain of morality and justice. The ideal liberal
society limits its concerns to the balancing of freedom, wealth,
and peace whilst allowing its members the scope and opportunity
to pursue their own ideas of how they ought to live. Any attempt
at a fusion of the private and public tends in fact to privilege
the public over the private and either redefine the private in terms
of the public - and generally suppress many private practices -
or make public the private practice of the strong or the majority.
Rorty
denies the possibility that humanity could one day be united by
a common realisation of the truth of how we ought to live. Indeed,
he accepts that the best we can possibly hope for is a consensus
amongst a very large percentage of the population. What matters
most is that there is a 'them' opposed to 'us' and that we are open
to the possibility of changing our historical, contingent language-game
to expand it to include others. Liberalism is the only political
philosophy, to Rorty's mind, that allows alternative language-games
to co-exist side-by-side and thus keep open the possibility of us
hearing the 'unfamiliar noises' of others and incorporating them
into our world view. Inevitably then, he has drawn the wrath of
neo-Marxists in particular from whose ranks come the strongest critics
of his political philosophy. However, Rorty has continually rebutted
and refuted his 'enemies' and, in public debate, he is a formidable
opponent, well worth handing over real money to see and hear.
Suggested
Reading
Philosophy and Social Hope, Richard Rorty (Penguin)
Richard Rorty: Prophet and Poet of the New Pragmatism, David
Hall (SUNY Press)
Rorty and Pragmatism, Herman J Saatkamp Jr, (Vanderbilt University
Press)
A
new philosopher of the month will be featured late-May 2002
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