Customer Reviews

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

American intellectuals who are politically liberal face a problem. They are the happy inheritors of a tradition built around Judeo-Christian values (such as concern for the poor) and Enlightenment social institutions (representative democracy, free market economy, etc.) but, having read their Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud, they can no longer give credence to the metaphysical notions (God's Will and Universal Reason) which have historically grounded our admirable social practices. In this book Richard Rorty, like John Dewey before him, argues that the ONLY justification a political institution or social policy requires is that it WORKS. Look not to lofty origins, but to concrete results. Of course, American intellectuals who are politically liberal tend to value programs whose results promote human growth, personal liberty, and social solidarity. But their enthusiasm for such goods will be tinged with irony, since they realize that there's nothing universal about these preferences (had Socrates, Jesus, and Jefferson died in their cradles our list of desirable ends might look very different-- Rorty calls this contingency). This book concludes with the suggestion that in a liberal utopia the bourgeois distinction between the public and the private would be a strong one, thus freeing individuals to pursue their own private perfection, a project Rorty feels is sometimes threatened from extremists on the Left and on the Right. This is a wonderful book, but potential readers who are ignorant of 20th century intellectual history will probably find the opening chapters pretty rough going.

I've noticed a trend that various reviewers on philosophy books use this cyberspace as an opportunity to display their understanding and mastery over the work in question. This is, in ways, an interesting and useful phenomenon, but it can also be misleading. This is especially the case for thinkers like Richard Rorty, whose work is often read with the prejudice of traditional, less radical philosophical thought. I am in no way asserting that there is one true way of interpreting this text (a suggestion Rorty himself would abhor). I merely recommend that if you have an interest in contemporary analytic and continental philosophy, or even an interest in literary criticism, you should purchase this very stimulating book. It is stimulating because, like Kant and the other metaphysicians Rorty will challenge, he offers a vocabulary and set of terminology unique (at least in organization and inter-relation) to this work. To master Rorty's somewhat idiosyncratic use of words like "vocabulary" or "irony" or "metaphysics" one has to place oneself in a bit of a hermeneutic circle. Only then will one acquire and master this particularly useful, fecund philosophical language. Many of the reviews here seem written from outside that language, which is discouraging. This is an active read so don't be afraid to get more than your toes wet. This is an important book and is very useful for understanding the desire for autonomy as well as for solidarity. I hope Rorty's poignant writing will be as useful in your life as it has been in mine.

Rorty's book is an articulate and very clearly written attempt to deal with one major modern philosophical question, namely:

"If nothing (or everything) is true (or real), what grounds are there for developing a system of values?"

Rorty starts by summarising the problems of modern philosophy (relativism rules, or "nothing is true"). He then moves into a discussion of how-- in the absence of God, or of concrete proof of the value and meaning of scientific research-- values might be articulated. Rorty's answer (which he takes to some extent from Sartre) is that it is literature (and the arts in general) which allow us to imagine the human context of ideas. Through this imagining we can create the title's "solidarity" with others against ideas (or governments) which are cruel.

Rorty's book is forceful, well-written and clear. Anybody without a philosophy background can get his ideas. There are a few gaps. Rorty, of the blank-slate ("nurture") school of human nature, ignores much evidence from neuroscience, anthropology and other disciplines which basically says that, no, there ARE inherent human universals. We aren't jsu tcreated by culture, and we cannto simpy adopt ANY set of social ideas and build a society around them. It would be interesting to see Rorty argue ethics with, say, Steven Pinker. Rorty also takes relativism one step too far. As Allan Bloom put it, he makes the mistake of turning epistemological relativism into MORAL relativism (in human language, that means he starts with "we don't know anything for sure" and uses that to argue "there is no way to have moral standards").

Those interested in this book would also enjoy the following--

Charles Taylor's THE SOURCES OF THE SELF. A history of how Westerners came to see themselves (in philosophical and political terms). Opens with a fascinating indirect rebuttal to Rorty. Taylor writes beautifully for an educated but non-specialist audience.

Steven Pinker's HOW THE MIND WORKS. The first half is the computational theory of mind; the second looks at gene-based human universals and makes a fascinating counterpoint to Rorty.

Probably the best thing about "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity" is that it is written so well. Like Rorty's other books it has a way of making philosophy less arcane than it otherwise appears. Other raters here have outlined his project better than I can and illustrate how Rorty builds upon his ideas in the book "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature." I only want to add the observations that, (1) it is no surprise Rorty feels he has to address religion's influence in this book, and that (2) philosophical objection to Rorty appears quasi-religious in nature. Philosophical critics of both books who are consumed with the nagging perception that physical facts of reality seem indeed to hold up well to the correspondence theory of truth are steeped in a Western religious world view.

That world view and its implications for Rorty's concept of solidarity carries critical import for understanding his project. For many of his critics that world view seems to be validated by epistemology. As some have pointed out, we do the math and the rockets fly. So some correspondence is working, apparently. In the realm of ethics, the same relationship of language to reality has apparent truth as well. In assigning verbal names to these correspondences, we superimpose a chimerical essence we call "Truth," if Rorty is right. But that "Truth" we assign has no real correspondence to what is out there in the world, in his argument. This "Truth" constitutes an unverifiable relationship because we do not know how reliable the "mirror" is, our cognitive door to perception, and this reliability is the crux of philosophical disagreement with Rorty and Dewey and other pragmatists.

It is the old debate about the relationship between fact and truth on a new level, with Nietzsche's "mobile army of metaphors" winning if you assert there can be no "truth" without words, without language, and there is therefore no "Truth." Rorty is saying the resulting epistemological uncertainty is never going away even though there is no doubt about the practical efficacy of science and phenomenology.

I disagree with critics who think he is espousing moral relativism. Epistemological uncertainty about ethics does not translate into moral relativism. Rorty, like Dewey before him, is saying moral values have to be ultimately pragmatic because there is no epistemological absoluteness about them as there is none about physical facts, even when the rockets work properly. It is a meta-ethical claim, not a claim about the truths of morality. So the assertion that Rorty's concept of solidarity amounts to espousing moral relativism makes no sense. Some critics want to label him "dangerous" in the same way Russell called Dewey's pragmatism "dangerous." Dangerousness does not make them wrong.

Regarding this dangerousness, Rorty does not think theorizing about what level or lack of epistemological surety underlies moral values changes our interaction with them, at least not in a morally or politically detrimental way. He's saying epistemology is never going to get us to certainty, so there is no point trying to mold the polis on the assumption we do know. What works is not only good enough but also it's all that we have.

So pragmatists like Dewey and Rorty are "dangerous" in the same way Nietzsche was dangerously misunderstood by ignorant Nazis. Some are inclined to exclaim "this cannot be" because they want absolute ontological certainty, the moral clarity of solidarity not being strong enough for us. That impulse arises from a psychological approach produced by a world view (the "mirror" at work) grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition (as Genesis says "and God saw all that he made") and Plato's "forms" as the ultimate "True" reality ("seeing" the Truth of forms when emerging from the Republic's metaphorical cave). At its core Plato's theory is as religious as Genesis. These two traditions represent the bedrock of Western epistemological and scientific thinking.

Not everyone thinks that way though, which is why I think Rorty was on to something when he left philosophy. In the East people do not use ocular metaphors as a first resort, for instance, and they have no trouble with the idea that fact is somehow ontologically independent of truth. The Taoist roots of Zen existentialism may be more "scientific" in the pragmatist's perspective (to continue with the habit of ocular metaphors) because those ideas stress bare awareness without reflection as apprehending what we call "Truth," not seeing it and naming it so. The ultimate exact relationship between fact and truth, as Rorty suggests, is likely ineffable, but that doesn't mean we do not know facts of reality exist. That is an idea with which the Taoists, most famously Lao-tzu or Chuang-tzu, would readily agree. Rorty is sure enough about the facts of cruelty to write what he does, but that doesn't mean he or anyone else possesses moral certainty---to me "moral certainty" sounds like a dangerous quasi-religious idea. I think I'd rather have a pragmatist at the helm of the polis than someone who thinks he has recevied the holy Truth.

This is a very useful book.

To equate Rorty's pragmatism with subjectism is to fall precisely into the trap that Rorty saves us from, and to completely miss the point of this book.

"We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that the truth is out there. To say the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations."

And again later...
"... the fact that Newton's vocabulary lets us predict the world more easily than Aristotle's does not mean that the world speaks Newtonian. The world does not speak. Only we do."

Go read this book!

This book has influenced my reading and life for many years. Rorty defines what he believes the liberal individual can justifiably stake as his or her claims in the world. I found his views refreshing, light-handed, and extremely useful. I followed many of his sources, including a complete reading of Nabokov's works, and the amazing book, The Body in Pain, by Elizabeth Scary. Some I could tackle, others like Derrida's The Postcard, were over my head, but were still influential. I currently serve on a Board of Trustees and I find myself returning to this book to help frame my thoughts on political governance and on self-governance in a challenging environment. It is a deep well for those who wish to think carefully about how we can and should live now, given all the thought and experience that humankind has accumulated.

Most books on philosophy, like most technical books, are narrowly focused on very specific problems. It's rare to find a philosopher who really takes a broad view and tries to explain the state of philosophy, and how philosophy relates to other disciplines, in a single, very readable book. That's just what Rorty has done in Contingency, irony and solidarity. Many will have had philosophy courses in college which generally lead to more confusion than enlightenment. Most remain mired in religious or scientific thinking and haven't thought about the kind of perspective that is compatible with the realities of the modern world. If you want to get out of Plato's cave and see the world as it probably really is, read Rorty.

Rorty does not beat around the bush with his influences. In the past, he has drawn heavily upon Sellars, Quine, Wittgenstein and Dewey. But, I believe, has also done an excellent job of taking neo-pragmatists like Putnam, Davidson and Williams (who have been less than accommodating to Rorty's views) to perhaps their necessary conclusions in the revolution of the analytic epistemological tradition - the turfing of explanatory and "correspondance" theories of truth. But what is most interesting in "Contingency, Irony and Solidarity", is Rorty's attempt to move through such diverse thinkers as the previous mentioned neo-pragmatists, Habermas, Foucault, Derrida and Nietzsche. This helps to illustrate Rorty's views (as a self-declared left wing liberal) on possible social reform and politics.

For Rorty historical contingency always undermines any claim to Truth. The fact that scientific explanations have played such an important role in Western culture has less to do with their explaining or corresponding to some "Real World" which is "out there", than with its usefulness in allowing us to make sense of our own cultural experiences and world descriptions. But without such Truth claims to justify various rights, theories and social change, Rorty must find some new rationale for such changes and finds it (not uncontroversionally) in Irony. For Rorty, once one accepts the contingency of all Truth-so-called, the new visionary is the Ironic poet, whose unique way of describing experience through metaphor will impress upon and refine cultural vocabularies and (however contingent) may be assimilated by the broader linguistic community to further social solidarity. This doesn't sound like a convincing formula for radical social reform. And I would say that it is not.

Rorty draws upon the familiar public/private dichotomy in explaining that philosophers like Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida and even Habermas. Rorty enjoys what he calls the "later Derrida", the Derrida who writes books like The Postcard and Glas, who in Rorty's eyes is a great private ironist, playing around with philosophy's story. Rorty, I think, gets Derrida wrong. There is no inherent "break" in Derrida's project, books like Glas and The Postcard, I believe, are a continued illustration of Derrida's views on language meaning and contextualization (See Limited Inc and other works). Although Derrida toys, to some extent, with personal questions, his project is very political, intending to alter our way of speaking and writing to exert less textual "violence" - that explains the "urgent tone" that Rorty finds so perplexing in Derrida's early work. Rorty also ultimately disarms Foucault by placing him in the "ironist" private realm. Here, Foucault's expose` of the insidious effects of modern liberal institutions on the individual are reduced to mere metaphors - an ironic private language with no public utility.

Perhaps the ultimate irony here, of which Rorty is unaware, is that in this age of continued racial injustice and division, gender inequality and disrespect for minority rights, once again we have a White bourgeois male, arguing that the tools for change like the Civil Rights movement are mislead and without basis, that one cannot speak of "true equality" outside of unique use, and that social change is ultimately in the hands of those who can contribute new voices and ways of speaking to western culture. For in the end, was it not women and minorities who were always excluded from voicing their opinions? And would not Nietzsche see Rorty and his sublime optimism and confidence in the Western liberal tradition as a decadent par excellence?

To be frank, I don't feel Rorty contributes anything new as far a language, politics and philosophy goes. That being said however I think frames and articulates issues of contemporary thought better than anyone I've ever read.

In discussing areas that can get dense and abstract very quickly, Rorty frames the discussion clearly and concisely. Since reading this book I always try and fall back on his approach to the human language, both theoretically and pragmatically (if you'll excuse the pun).

In _Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity_, Rorty explores the end of objective realism due to linguistic faults in our language. I find Rorty's claims insightful and stimulating in this book, which is what we except from such a writer. In the book, Rorty examines the issue of our personal contingencies, and how the ideas that we have based on those contingencies should immediately placed under suspicion.