Achieving Our Country : Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America [Paperback]

Richard Rorty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0674003128 | ISBN-13: 978-0674003125

Must the sins of America's past poison its hope for the future? Lately the American Left, withdrawing into the ivied halls of academe to rue the nation's shame, has answered yes in both word and deed. In Achieving Our Country, one of America's foremost philosophers challenges this lost generation of the Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers like Walt Whitman and John Dewey.

How have national pride and American patriotism come to seem an endorsement of atrocities--from slavery to the slaughter of Native Americans, from the rape of ancient forests to the Vietnam War? Achieving Our Country traces the sources of this debilitating mentality of shame in the Left, as well as the harm it does to its proponents and to the country. At the center of this history is the conflict between the Old Left and the New that arose during the Vietnam War era. Richard Rorty describes how the paradoxical victory of the antiwar movement, ushering in the Nixon years, encouraged a disillusioned generation of intellectuals to pursue "High Theory" at the expense of considering the place of ideas in our common life. In this turn to theory, Rorty sees a retreat from the secularism and pragmatism championed by Dewey and Whitman, and he decries the tendency of the heirs of the New Left to theorize about the United States from a distance instead of participating in the civic work of shaping our national future.

In the absence of a vibrant, active Left, the views of intellectuals on the American Right have come to dominate the public sphere. This galvanizing book, adapted from Rorty's Massey Lectures of 1997, takes the first step toward redressing the imbalance in American cultural life by rallying those on the Left to the civic engagement and inspiration needed for "achieving our country."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There are many shameful incidents in America's past: the institution of slavery, genocidal assaults on the indigenous peoples of this continent, the escalation of the Vietnam War, and so on. What should our response to such acts be? Should we regard the nation as irredeemably tainted by sin and spend our time cataloging its evils, or should we acknowledge its shortcomings and make a conscious effort to turn it into a better nation?

Philosopher Richard Rorty believes that there is hope for America, but that today's Left is not meeting the challenge. He contrasts the cultural, academic Left's focus on our heritage of shame (which, he admits, has to the extent that it makes hatred intolerable had the positive effect of making America a more civil society) with the politically engaged reformist Left of the early part of this century. "The distinction between the old strategy and the new is important," he writes. "The choice between them makes the difference between what Todd Gitlin calls common dreams and what Arthur Schlesinger calls disuniting Americans. To take pride in being black or gay is an entirely reasonable response to the sadistic humiliation to which one has been subjected. But insofar as this pride prevents someone from also taking pride in being an American citizen, from thinking of his or her country as capable of reform, or from being able to join with straights or whites in reformist initiatives, it is a political disaster."

Not everyone, to be sure, is going to agree with Rorty's ideas. But his approach to civic life, which is pragmatic in the tradition of John Dewey and visionary in the tradition of Walt Whitman, is bound to provoke increased discussion of what it is to be a citizen, and his call for a renewed awareness of the history of American reformist activism can only be applauded. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Rorty contrasts two views of America: those of the Old Left and of the New Left. The Old Left he associates with Walt Whitman's "American Dream" and John Dewey's idea of an ever-evolving secular society of varied, autonomous agents whose evils are remediable because they result from failures of imagination. The New Left he associates with spectators who damn America for such past "atrocities" as slavery, the massacre of Indians, and the Vietnam War. Rorty claims that the Old Left was stubbornly reformist, whereas the New Left collaborates with and thereby empowers the Right by supplanting real politics with cultural issues. He urges the New Left to understand that our national character has not been settled but is still being formed. The book contrasts the two Lefts clearly enough, but the rest of it is rather foggy with occasional flashes of light. For larger academic libraries only.ARobert Hoffman, York Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674003128
• ISBN-13: 978-0674003125
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #125,296 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Movements > Pragmatism
  • #44 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Radicalism

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A quick and provocative look at American leftism. September 19, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Some of the other reviewers of this book seem to have missed the point that this is the text of lectures, not a book length analysis of the policatical left in modern America. Rorty's intent, it seems to me, was to provoke thinking about leftist activity at the political level, not analyse leftist theory. As with other of his works, Rorty is openingly an advocate of a return of the influence of Dewey. I really recommend this book, especially to those who consider themselves on the political left and are wondering why the importance of social reform in America seems to have faded since Vietnam.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It's up to the Left to achieve our country May 16, 2003

By Daniel J. Hamlow HALL OF FAME

Format:Paperback

In Achieving Our Country, Richard Rorty details the roots to leftist thought, exploring the dawning of the modern era and the pragmatic approach, the glorification of the American ideal and American story as one that would continue onward and upward, and the role of the intellectual Left to be the agent of hope and progress as opposed to maintaining the status quo.

Unfortunately, events in the 1960's created a schism in the Left from which neither side have succeeded in counteracting a unified Right that sunk its claws into the haunches of America. It is up to the Left to coalesce once again into a unifying force to continue the American story and achieve the country.

The loss of American pride is another key element. Rorty derives this from two modern thinkers, Walt Whitman and John Dewey, whose beliefs sharply contrasted with that of the finite, absolute, divine-centered beliefs of the Victorian pre-modernists. Whitman passionately exalted the more humanistic approach to truth and self-discovery caused by the floodgates opened by Darwin's theory of evolution. As a result, the divine standard to which men held to was replaced by secular humanism and humanistic standards.

Both Dewey and Whitman saw "America" and "democracy" as synonymous with being "human." Dewey too placed "America" and "democracy" on a visionary scale. But where Whitman described the American way as "the last and greatest vision of the American potential," Dewey saw "democracy" and thus America's story as "a great word, whose history... remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted".

As a result, Rorty asserts that Dewey and Whitman would advocate American pride despite blacker moments in America's history such as the Vietnam War.... This was why the Left lost its effectiveness in carrying out its intellectual role--its spectatorial preoccupation with sin. According to Rorty, a Dewey-Whitman counter to this indulgence in self-disgust would be that "there are many things that should chasten and temper such pride, but that nothing a nation has done should make it impossible to regain self-respect."

Another group of thinkers Rorty drew upon was the "reformist Left," progressives who as champions of the downtrodden, strove to make political and social changes within a constitutional and democratic edifice. This reformist Left consists of two groups: the powerful, financially secure leftist elite launching top-down initiatives, (Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, the Wagner Act) and the second group, consisting of the financially insecure and disempowered "little man" and grass roots organizations (Marcus Garvey, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the Stonewall riots.) Rorty contends that the reinforcement of the bottom by the top was the glue holding the two groups until 1964, when the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the denial of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic Convention created a rift in the Left.

The solution, according to Rorty, is a unification of the Lefts, as the Cultural Left is "unable to engage in national politics... [or] deal with the consequences of globalization." That is something the pre-Sixties left is able to do, i.e. "piecemeal reform within the framework of a market economy." Rorty also wants to wean the Cultural Left from addictions such as theorizing, philosophizing, abstract systems, and self-disgust. In its place, he proposes activism, concrete solutions, a focus on people and pressing issues, and national pride, the latter two which the grass roots conservatives used to push the Right in power. The job of this Brand New Left, a union of the reformist Left, Cultural Left, and in support of the little man, is to create a new ideology and hence a new utopia that will engage and mobilize a hitherto disillusioned populace into political participation waiting for specific solutions. The Brand New Left will be an intelligentsia practicing pragmatism.

Proud as Dewey and Whitman are in their assertion of America, bowing to no other authority, not even God, I am disturbed by one application of their assertion. This statement corresponds with American unilateralism, the concept of the United States being above the auspices of the United Nations, whose vision is more inclusive and unbiased towards any one nation.

I also agree, that yes, it is beneficial to be aware of the darker moments of American history, and to learn not to make the same mistake and move forward to what one would hope to be a better tomorrow. But what is the line between proper awareness and a prosaic, token, and trendy "awareness month" or "awareness week"? Read more ›

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative and Inspiring Essays on Renewing "the Left" June 30, 1998

By [e-mail]

Format:Hardcover

In this collection, which includes his three Massey lectures delivered in 1997 and two related essays from 1995, Richard Rorty argues that the once vital "left," to which America is deeply indebted, has sadly rendered itself irrelevant. Rorty critiques members of the (post)modern left who, embittered by pervasive injustice, have eschewed meaningful campaigns for political change in favor of too-abstract theory, too-utopian "movements" and too-pessimistic contempt for those who would work "within the system" for necessary reform. The American Left, Rorty argues, has become "spectatorial" rather than "participatory," able to comment upon the nation's descent into oligarchy but stymied by view that our nation's sins are so ingrained as to place us beyond redemption.

Drawing on figures such as Walt Whitman, John Dewey, Abraham Lincoln, Irving Howe, Herbert Croly, and Harold Bloom, Rorty conjures an inspiring vision of a left that reconciles economic and cultural progressivism and becomes once again a participatry, progressive, and relevant force in American politics.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Pointers to increasing the relevance of the left February 9, 2002

By Aaron Weber

Format:Hardcover

As even the negative reviewers of this book point out, the intellectual left of the US has become stagnant, overly theoretical, and is stuck ruminating on the mistakes of the past (whether those are mistakes of the Left, like the willful ignorance of repression in the USSR, or mistakes of the right, like McCarthyism, hardly matters). Rorty argues, and I don't see many people disagreeing, that from the relevance and good works of the civil rights movement, the war on poverty, and voter registration campaigns, the left has retreated to the ivory towery, deconstructivist literary theory, and apathy towards the actual day-to-day lives of the world. His examples of his own personal conflicts growing up as a "red daiper baby" (see the review "Red Daiper Baby Still in the Dark") serve to illustrate this growing irrelevance, and he admits that issues like these, which he once championed, have grown stale.

Rorty's lectures in this book are aimed at finding a way out of the dead end of abstract theory and "cultural politics," and into an applied social justice campaign. Let's drop the whole "leftism is dead" and "theory of culture" prattle, and move on to doing things about people starving in our streets, he says.

Now, this is where the negative reviewers really begin to skewer him-- he suggests that the answer lies in pragmatism and a sort of 'secular religion.' I'm not convinced that he's correct, however, and I think that although he's right about the need to preserve our government as a secular one, I think that he really ignores the benefits of religion in civil society. Regardless of whether you agree with his prescription, however, his history of American leftism, and his analysis of its problems today, are insightful.