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Philosophy and Social Hope

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Rorty is one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries not because he offers a new theory or new system, but precisely because he is so good at warning us about getting addicted to theories and systems. For this he is hated by many philosophers, despised by many in the literati, scorned by metaphysicians and clerics (as a nihilist or relativist), and reviled by philosophical purists who believe he gleefully misreads the works of their heroes and masters.

But like acid on the dross of idiotic or, to be more charitable, useless ideas which have led many a thinker into the deep and twisted woods of high theory, never to be seen again, Rorty pours out his neo-pragmatist criticisms on the various "isms" that claim to be more in touch with the "real world" than their competitors. What is left after the acid bath is a stark realization that there is little that we have to build a better world than our strenuously forged concessions, compromises, agreements, collaborations, and conversations about what in fact having a better world means. This antifoundational view leaves wholly unsatisfied people who believe that something more concrete is needed to build the world into something more salutary and livable than it was yesterday. Rorty tells the reader that there is nothing more concrete than he or she, that the need for rationalist foundations is a diversion from the true font of social hope and freedom. In this, he surpasses even John Dewey in democratic credentials, although such a claim is seen as heresy in many philosophical circles. Unlike Dewey, Rorty offers no decision procedure for democratic practice. He bids us only to go and be democrats (his preference), or come up with your own good reasons for going in another direction. He will not clobber you with arguments proving the link between democracy and human nature. He will ask you to consider the advantages of his own preferences, and try to convince you to give them a shot.

While Rorty does overstate his case, it isn't by very much, for in his view we must shake off the idea that we need more (or will get more) to resolve issues such as cloning, capital punishment, abortion or hyper-nationalism than consensus. Ultimately, every attempt to lay a philosophical foundation, to provide a rationalist bedrock for our choices and conduct, fails. Even the notion of "inalienable rights" is a fiction, but a good one that we embrace because of its use, because of how it organizes the societies that believe in it. Each foundation can be picked to pieces by other arguments and other social imperatives, or other changes in what the culture believes is relevant to itself. Democracy isn't better than Islamic or Christian fundamentalism; it is only better if a certain kind of freedom is more relevant than paradise in the next life. Rorty argues in this volume and elsewhere that we must get over philosophy and theory and instead roll up our sleeves and get to work in public debate, meaningful social criticism, and engagement with the world that is. The best a philosopher can hope to do is help along conversations big and small about issues big and small, bringing no particular expertise to the process save for the value of a good education and the intellectual virtues honed during play with arguments and ideas.

For those who find Rorty's message unsettling, all I can say is that they should take up Philosophy and Social Hope, allow the unsettling to take place, enjoy the ride where enjoyment is possible, and then put the book aside. They may return to it years hence, to challenge it, to find new points of agreement, to throw it across the room as an attack on their souls and the Gods of their fathers and of their countries. But, like so many important thinkers, Rorty cannot be ignored -- whether you like him or not.

Richard Rorty has been enlivening the American intellectual scene for two decades now. His prose is fluid, clear, and graceful. This is perhaps his first collection of essays aimed at the average educated reader (as opposed to his fellow philosophers). It opens with a wry mini-autobiography, followed by three linked essays where Rorty, once again, makes his case for American pragmatism. There is also a fine discussion of Thomas Kuhn and a provocative piece about Heidegger's Nazism. The essay on Religion As Conversation-stopper is also first-rate. Unfortunately, Penguin has issued this book on cheap paper and the print font is minuscule-- America'a most interesting philosopher deserves better!

This book serves as an excellent introduction to Pragmatism (or at least Rorty's interpretation.) Pragmatism is pretty radical--it challenges basic philosophic assumptions such as the Greek search for truth, as well as the Cartesian self. Consider this quote, which is quintessential Rorty from his essay "Ethics Without Principles": "Just as the pragmatists see scientific progress not as the gradual attenuation of a veil of appearance which hides the intrinsic nature of reality from us, but as the increasing ability to respond to the concerns of ever larger groups of people--in particular, the people who carryout ever more acute observations and perform ever more refined experiments--so they see moral progress as a matter of being able to respond to the needs of ever more inclusive groups of people (...) Pragmatists do not think of scientific, or any other inquiry, as aimed at truth, but rather at better justificatory ability--better to deal with doubts about what we are saying, either by shoring up what we have previously said or by deciding to say something different. The trouble with aiming at truth is that you would not know when you had reached it, even if you had in fact reached it. But you can aim at ever more justification, the assuagement of ever more doubt. Analogously, you cannot aim at 'doing what is right', because you will never know whether you have hit the mark. Long after you are dead, better informed and more sophisticated people may judge your action to have been a tragic mistake, just as they may judge your scientific beliefs as intelligible only by reference to an obsolete paradigm. But you can aim at ever more sensitivity to pain, and ever greater satisfaction of ever more various needs. Pragmatists think that the idea of something nonhuman luring us human beings on should be replaced with the idea of getting more and more human beings into our community--of taking the needs and interests and views of more and more diverse human beings into account. Justificatory ability is its own reward. There is no need to worry about whether we will also be rewarded with a sort of immaterial medal labelled 'Truth' or 'Moral Goodness.'"

Once upon a time, philosophy was not a "science." It was conversation with fellow town members about the best way to govern the town, whether the town should plant corn or rice, what punishment is necessary for a certain crime. This conversation unfortunately found itself getting on within an ever smaller group of people--specialists--who told the town what the best way to govern was, what crop the town should plant, and how they should punish criminals. This is the current state of philosophy.

Rorty, in his usual straight-forward, witty, sarcastic tone, deflates, again and again, the pomposity of those who feel as if they are in some annointed position to tell us how to be (for lack of a better word for it). Rorty allows for a choice--options that allow for growth, both in a self-narrative way and within the framework of the national narrative, which Rorty feels must be revitalized if our nation is to be more safe, kind, hopeful, and truly democratized.

The cogency of his arguments and the conviction of his beliefs remind the reader that some philosphers (Rorty and many of the his "heroes") do have visions that are not intended solely for those with Phd's in philosophy, but are for everyone to share. A first-rate, concise, entry into one of the most original thinkers of our time.

I started this book with very high expectations, which may be part of why I was disappointed. I thought that I would be convinced by his arguments about the nature of knowledge and morality, since I think social constructionism has some value and don't like metaphysics. Ultimately, Rorty didn't convince me that we could do away with metaphysics, which was a disappointment.

Chapters 2 and 3 are hard reading if you're not familiar with the following authors, because Rorty does a lot of detailed comparisons between their ideas: Plato, John Dewey, Immanuel Kant, Walt Whitman, Martin Heidegger, Emerson, James, Nietzsche, Donald Davidson, Witgenstein, and Willard van Orman Quine. I'd heard of all of them but Davidson, and had some vague sense of what they did, but was overwhelmed by these chapters because I couldn't keep up. The good news is that if you get past these chapters, the rest of the book is easy.

Politically, I think that Rorty attacks the right problems, but he doesn't defend centralized democratic socialism from critiques by people like Hayek and Popper, who argue that such planning is always authoritarian. He just asserts that it will work.

Overall, I think it's a decent read, but I wouldn't recommend it for people that haven't taken a class that covers most of the philosophers I've mentioned above or done some reading on them on their own. Rorty's arguments are important, but I don't think they're as convincing as they could be.

This book is yet another good addition to the available texts by Rorty. As he says of debates on the matters he discusses, "I suspect that all either side can do is to restate its case over and over again, in context after context." This he has done, and done well, and it's badly needed.

But, as far as I can tell, it remains flawed. No, I don't want to accuse Rorty of some shameful circularity, much less of the inanely conceived offense of "relativism." Rather, I believe that in misdecribing the relationship between philosophy and politics he understates the importance of what he is doing and provides readers wrongly with every reason to ignore it.

"Most of what I have written in the last decade consists of attempts to tie in my social hopes - hopes for a global, cosmopolitan, democratic, egalitarian, classless, casteless society - with my antagonism towards Platonism." Thus does Rorty begin the Preface to this book, though like all of his books this one devotes much effort to minimizing any possible connection between Rorty's two fields of interest. By the time we get to page 18, he denounces "the idea that you can evaluate a writer's philosophical views by reference to their political utility."

This comes after he has criticized the philosophy he opposes as wasting human energy that could serve better purposes, and after he has defined truth in pragmatist terms as what it is useful to believe.

Rorty is correct, of course, that a Platonist or a pragmatist can be a democrat or a facsist. But, when he says on page 18 that he finds "the orthodox" to be "philosophically wrong as well as politically dangerous," I think he is mistaken if he believes this to be a coincidence. He is wrong to separate these two characteristics in the case of many Americans today. I think he does so simply because the two things have appeared separately in other people.

Call it "contingent" or "historical" or any other number of bad words, but I think it remains the case that much of what is ugliest in American politics is connected in the minds of its proponents with much of what is most metaphysical and morally weak in the world today. People fail to look beyond their narrow groups, declare certain sexual habits improper, decree that "the market" not be interfered with or that the races not mingle, and that dollars constitute protected speech - and they do so, many of them, metaphysically. Homosexuality, they say, is evil because God said so. Of course the two can be separated. Atheists can condemn homosexuality and Platonists can - like many of the characters of the Dialogues - accept it. But the two ideas go together in many minds right now, and removing either one weakens the other. If you turn a Christian gaybasher into a pragmatist, you make him less likely to bash gays (and to accept the valuable teachings of Christianity as opposed to its theism). If you turn a Christian gaybasher into an acceptor of gays, you make him more able to question his theism. This is why Rorty is much more important than he lets on.

Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, though excellent, is dense, and assumes a lot of knowledge of Western philosophical traditions. This book, by contrast, is pretty straightforward, and has excellent prose. Rorty argues once again for social constructionism, which, contrary to what rabid critics say about it, is neither nihilistic nor relativistic. Rorty is persuasive and straightforward, and does an excellent job of suggesting ties between the philosophy which he advocates and the politics of "social hope" which he stands for.

By dividing this apologia for social constructionism into several short chapters (most of them originally published as stand-alone essays), Rorty provides responses to many objections which have been made to his previous work. Some of these essays are pretty useless for most readers (e.g., an essay on Derrida's Specters of Marx), but most are models of simple and well-formed expository writing.

To those already acquainted with the writing and thought of Richard M Rorty the contents of "Philosophy and Social Hope" will offer few surprises - and yet I would still recommend that such people should get a copy of this book! It is Rorty's endless ability to repeat his thoughts in new and (always) interesting ways which is one of his greatest attractions. I first got into Rorty via the postmodernism debate and, having read much of his work since then, I have become much enamoured of his pragmatic (Pragmatic) approach which fuzzes up distinctions beloved of Platonic/Kantian types and which longs to be "better/hopeful" rather than "right".

Although Rorty writes here for a generalised audience (and its not always obvious from his writing whether the work is "academic" or not), he does write as if his readers know what he is talking about. Thus, readers who come equipped with a Deweyan, Davidsonian, Jamesian vocabulary are more likely to be able to appropriate what he is saying more easily. I suspect any adherents of realist philosophy who stumble across this book will not get past the introduction and will go away angry and scandalised that such thought be allowed to exist, much less be promoted and read.

I found the opening three sections (autobiographical, pragmatic theoretical and pragmatic applicative) by far the most interesting and enjoyable here - together with a stimulating "afterword" on "Pragmatism, Pluralism and Postmodernism" - which is itself a good place to start reading this book. Being a non-American, I was less enthusiastic about reading Rorty's thoughts and hopes for that country. However, much of what he says is broadly aplicative to my own country and the reader is always free to look behind the scenes of Rorty's argument and, once more, gaze upon what motivates his arguments. In closing, I would argue that Rorty is the most significant figure writing on culture in general and philosophy in particular at the moment. This collection of his works over the last decade is an accessible and stimulating way to appropriate that work. Mucho recommendo!

Rorty is enormously influential today and deservedly so. His work is an intellectual treat not to be missed, even if you think you disagree with him. If you are curious about Rorty's ideas and have some taste for philosophy, this is the book to read first. Having read all of his book length works and compilations of papers as they have appeared, I can recommend this as giving the best overview and summary. In particular the first several chapters are the best available summary of his current thinking, and a very stimulating encapsulation even for those who have been immersed for some time in this man's work and the reemergence of pragmatism. If you start with this book and read no more than this, you will have a good summary of his ideas. If you find it interesting and want more, you can begin reading his other works and have this as a touchstone of his current views.

To my chagrin, I admit that this is the first book by Rorty that I have read. I will now read much more by him. The ethics of pragmatism, at least as he enunciates it in the introduction and several chapters of this book, is very interesting, if not fully compelling (at least to a transcendental phenomenologist such as myself). And I have found his book a very readable addition to standard selections from Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Mill, and de Beauvoir in my General Ethics courses.

Rorty's pragmatism really is a unique ethical stance--one rooted in historical contexts and necessarily limited by human finitude. It recognizes no absolutes, and instead it takes concrete, intersubjective structures and institutions as a real hope for shared ethical behavior. In this way, Rorty's optimism is one shared by Mill toward the end of his famous pamphlet on utilitarianism.

As of now, though, I remain unconvinced by Rorty's argument, and I would claim that the anti-foundationalist Rorty relies on intersubjectivity in the same, foundational ways as more transcendental versions of ethics (see Husserl's description of transcendental intersubjectivity or even Kant's discussion of the kingdom of ends).

I will use this book again, and I will read more of his works.