Richard Rorty
Norm Jenson responds to my blogged outline of the class I’m doing at MIT. He recommendsd an article by Richard Rorty, “The Decline of Redemptive Truth and the Rise of a Literary Culture.” Rorty is one of the few practicing philosophers who makes me wish that I had actually kept reading philosophy during The Great Forgetting (= the 17 years since I left academics). Rorty’s pragmatism is itself highly pragmatic and not lost in theories of pragmatism. He revels in how he has dodged the 16-ton weight that philosophy has shouldered for millennia. His thought is actually frolicsome. For example, on his home page you’ll find a link to “Redemption from Egotism” where he writes:
The emergence of the novel has contributed to a growing conviction among the intellectuals that when we think about the effects of our actions on other human beings we can simply ignore a lot of questions that our ancestors traditionally thought relevant. These include Euthyphro’s question about whether our actions are pleasing to the gods, Plato’s question about whether they are dictated by a clear vision of the Good, and Kant’s question about whether their maxims can be universalized. Instead, a decision about what to do should be determined by as rich and full a knowledge of other people as possible—in particular, knowledge of their own descriptions of their actions and of themselves. Our actions can be justified only when we are able to see how these actions look from the points of view of all those affected by them.
Seen in this light, what novels do for us is to let us know how people quite unlike ourselves think of themselves, how they contrive to put actions that appall us in a good light, how they give their lives meaning. The problem of how to live our own lives then becomes a problem of how to balance our needs against theirs, and their self-descriptions against ours. To have a more educated, developed and sophisticated moral outlook is to be able to grasp more of these needs, and to understand more of these self-descriptions.
Damn, that’s good. And, placed in the context of thousands of years of philosophy aimed at deducing morality from principles or calculating it based on totally pleasures and pains, it’s radical. (It also says clearly what I’ve been struggling to say aboutsympathy-based morality.)
From Vergil Iliescu comes a link to a BBC lectures on trust and digital identity. For example, Tom Bailey writes a philosophical history of trust (Glaucon, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hume) that’s clear and engaging, and works itself around (in its philosophical way) to saying that the traditional pessimists think trust is irrational because they have forgotten that first and foremost humans are social. I’m not satisfied with Bailey’s resolving sociality into individuals taking responsibility for the parts they play in our lives, but the article remains highly readable and readworthy.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
David,
That quotation from “Redemption from Egotism” indeed greatly illuminated your ideas on sympathy-based morality–something I’ve had a difficult time getting my intellectual arms fully around. Of course, I bolted from Philosophy 101 after two days and never looked back!
I’m headed over to Rorty’s home page right now.
The Great Forgetting? .. it was you who introduced Richard Rorty’s writings to me by recommending I read his 1999 book “Philosophy and Social Hope”. Mine was more of a Great Ignorance – all 51 years of it! I had not read any philospher’s works directly until I got this book. Since then I have been avidly reading as much of Rorty as I have been able to find. An excellent book published in 2001 (Blackwell Publishers) called “Richard Rorty – Critical Dialogues” by Matthew Festenstein and Simon Thompson contains some excellent essays by his critics, each of which is followed by a response from Rorty. I found this a great way to understand his views better. The last chapter is a final essay, not in response to anyone, but pertinent to your thesis about sympathy based morality, called ‘Justice as a Larger Loyalty’. The penultimate paragraph says:
“If we Westerners could get rid of the notion of universal moral obligations created by membership in the species, and substitute the idea of building a community of trust between ourselves and others, we might be in a better position to persuade non-Westerners of the advantages of joining that community.” This is an idea I really like. The Web provides another very powerful way of doing this.
BTW, Rorty makes some interesting comments on the current situation regarding “War on Terrorism” in the article
“Fighting Terrorism with Democracy” in a Nation article online: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021021&s=rorty
Great recommendations, Vergil. Thanks.
Your mention of moveon.org must have skewed my cognitive schema, because when I reached for my favorite Habermas I hit on the wrong shelf and came up with /the right book/. This is nearly non sequitor (does your comment box take HTML? [yes!]): On Humane Governance; toward a new global politics … Richard Falk acted as raporteur for a huge project by the World Order Models Project and his language is peculiar by that fact; not disengaged or detached in any sort of pseudo-objectivity, yet sober and forthright. IMHO the work is paradigmatic of discourse.
BTW, our minister of foreign affairs just announced a public dialogue of foreign policy … methinks he sees nothing but slippery slopes ahead of him!
Ben, boy does Richard Falk’s names come echoing across the Great Forgetting! I used to teach peace studies within a philosophy dept but I haven’t read anything by him since then. Thanks for the poke.
Are Richard Falk’s books really worth reading?
RICHARD RORTY THE ANTI-philosopher and CHARLATAN
As Rene Descartes points out, philosophy is about ‘clear, distinct ideas’—what the ANTI-philosopher Richard Rorty promotes, instead, is weird, goofy/ ambivalent thinking which is the enemy of consistency .
According to relativism –which is what Rorty promotes–evils like genocide, destroying beautiful old buildings to make way for strip malls for vapid, superficial yuppies, incest, rape, child prostitution is *not* absolutely wrong but merely “wrong to many” or “wrong to us but not for them” . What Rorty promotes is the squishy, pansy ideology of being “conflicted” . It is the sell-out mentality that Rorty promotes! It is that weird “conflicted” sell out mentality that is the pervasive sensibility of the MTV Generation. The early episodes of that evil propaganda series on MTV titled the Real World .
The Truth about truth, however, is that Truth is NOT and NEVER has been relative to mere opinion. The Truth about Truth is Rorty is full of baloney! As Plato rightly points out Truth is higher than mere opinion . Truth is transcendent. As is Beauty .(If somebody claims that a Wallmart building or a Target is more beautiful or as beautiful Chartes Cathedral they are either smoking something, being insipid, being perverse or all three )!
Furthermore, NOT every statement about matters of Value such as ethics and esthetics is mere opinion. There are foundational truths. The word ‘paradox’ incidentally is a misnomer.There are NO genuine paradoxes. What looks at first glance like paradozes at first glance aren’t really cases of two or more mutually exclusives statements all being true in the same sense. Often they involve statements that look self-referential but on careful examination aren’t. The relativist interpretation of Godel’s “proof” is HYPE !. That would take time to explain. It is also hype that is being promoted when people *claim* that light is a particle and a wave at the exact same time. It isn’t at the exact same time both .
There is a bizarre notion popularized by the relativists that is weirdly popularthese days –even in Academic circles which claims a person is somehow supposedly “arrogant” or guilty of so-called “hubris” when the person is one-sided and thus when that when a person maintains that what they beiieve on some topic is totally right and claims to the contrary are totally wrong. That is a misconception . Just because somebody maintains that the belief they hold on some topic is totally right and beliefs to the contrary are totally wrong does NOT mean they are “arrogant” nor guilty of any so-called hubris. If a person beliefs that they hold are superior, that does NOT necessarily mean that the person believes that their personal self is superior. Such a person who is one sided may believe themselves to be a *mere instrument* for the beliefs and NOT hold themselves to be in any way superior . Believing a belief one supports to be superior is NOT the same as believing ones personal self superior.
Thus, the relativists are completely murky and wrongheaded to claim that people who are one-sided and refuse to sell out beliefs are somehow “arrogant” .
There is also a weird, yet popular , misconception put forth by relativists that claims that it is somehow un-compassionate to verbally condemn some belief or “point of view” someone else supports. That claim of the relativist is also based on false thinking. Condemning an opinion that someone holds is NOT necessarily the same as condemning the person who holds it. Judging an opinion (especially a wrong opinion) that someone else supports is NOT necessarily the same as ultimately judging the person who supports it. Beliefs, goals, ideas, concepts,principles and other intangibles are NOT part of the person who supports them . Ultimately there is NO yours or mine to intangibles. Minds are like unto mirrors, they do NOT except in an extrinsic sense, construct any of these intangibles. They merely with varying degrees of accuracy–depending on how good the methods of thinking the persons use –and how thoroughly they apply them–merely *reflect* those intangibles –that are prexistent. There is NO “yours” nor “mine” to it ultimately .Beware of the ownership fallacy when it comes to intangibles.
Consistency is, indeed , an epistemic virtue. Flexibility is the hobgoblin of small minds.
Contrary to popular opinion, there are NOT two or more sides to every issue.
Contrary to popular opinion, so-called shades of grey are NO substitute for accuracy and truth . (After all, though some thoughts & actions may be worse than others there is NO thought nor action that can be both good and bad at the same time in the same way. Hence, when it comes to morals and esthetics, and normative inquiry of any sort there are NO shades of grey )
The mind that REFUSES to split hairs is a lazy mind.
The us versus them approach is a good thing (provided it doesn’t deteriorate into agressive violence and censorship) .
Equivocation in discourse is *always* wrong . We should always be hyper vigilant against equivocation in discourse.
Relativism promotes equivocation in discourse. It often promotes a lazy and bizarre way of thinking called lateral thinking which is worse than not thinking at all.
Beware of the murky ideology of sell-outs that is relativism (or anti-foundationalism) as it is often called .
POSTSCRIPT
Fixing a typo .
In the essay shown above, I apparently left out part of a sentence . The sentence regarding MTV’s evil Reality should read as follows, ‘ The early episodes of that evil propaganda series titled: the Real World, was rife with that ambivalent sell-out thinking that is relativism .
RICHARD RORTY THE ANTI-philosopher
(AN ADDENTUM)
A number of people in the same ideological crowd as Richard Rorty –the relativists (also known as anti-foundationalists) have lit so many fires of misconception that a person who cares about truth often almost feels exhausted with the task of stepping them all out. That is especially the case given that relativists have infiltrated much of the academic community and have even written textbooks. (The grossly NON-accurate textbooks of arch- relativist Bruce Aune are a case in point !)
One of the biggest misconceptions the relativists have often treated AS IF it were some sort of “trump card” is the SO-CALLED Godel “Proof” presented by mathematician Kurt Godel . The fact that Kurt Godel was –at least in some respects–apparently a brilliant mathematician adds to the staying power of the relativist hype associated with the so-called Godel “proof” . According to some interpreters of Godel ‘s “Proof”, Godel’s so-called “proof” claims that if a mathematical system is consistent in terms of its axioms , it cannot —so these people CLAIM– be complete .
One of the stipulations that is seldom mentioned, however, is that the claim of Godel ONLY applies in mathematical systems that are known in mathematics as ‘strong’ systems . It does NOT apply to what are called weak mathematical systems . Presburger’s Arithmatic, to give an example, is a system of math that features axioms that deal with addition . It is a system that can demonstrate itself to be BOTH complete AND consistent from within its own system !
There are other systems apparently that can demonstrate themselves to be complete and consistent from within . According to the encyclopedia Wikipedia (I hope I spelled that right) Euclidean Geometry is another system that can demonstrate itself both complete and consistent .
And there is apparently a higher order proof that discredits the relativist claims surrounding the so-called Godel’s Proof. It is callled Gentzen’s Proof which uses a higher order mathematical language (what some might call a meta-mathematical system) . Apparently , according to a number of historians of math , Gerhard Gentzen was able to demonstrate by means of a mathematical proceedure called transfinite induction that mathematics IS INDEED (in the main) quite certain to be consistent after all .
Yet the relativists have used the hype concerning the formulations of Kurt Godel and claimed that it somehow prooves mathematics relative. It does NOT !