6.12.2007
Richard Rorty, R.I.P.
Richard Rorty has been my favorite philosopher for a while now, probably dating back to when I first read Achieving Our Country when it came out in the late ‘90s. At the time I was finding myself increasingly frustrated and unhappy with the postmodernist/cultural studies/academic leftist thought that I’d been really enamored of as an undergraduate. In that book Rorty showed me that you could criticize that strain of thought, and the sort of political paralysis it seemed to have led to on the left, without abandoning the postmodernist insights (truth as socially constructed, distrust of “metanarratives”) that I think do have real value. Rorty’s commitment to a pragmatic, reformist liberalism has been a real inspiration to me and, as I think most of my posts here show, my political views. I’d highly recommend that book to anyone here; I’d love to get a discussion of it going and would happily loan my copy out to any of the LA crew if they’re interested…more practically, there’s this essay online, which is a pretty good summation of his later political thinking, touches directly on a lot of the discussions we’ve been having here recently and, as with everything he wrote, is a model of clear, unpretentious prose. I'd love to hear your comments on it...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
It was reading Rorty, ironically, that got me interested in pursuing graduate work in philosophy. He helped me realize that there is real value in studying and participating in various academic/intellectual traditions. At one point I was fairly enamored of him too, but I have gradually come around to thinking that, while I share many of his political sympathies, his philosophy is all wrong. Shedding Rorty has been an important part of my own intellectual development (god, that sounds pretentious), though, so I certainly owe something to him.
My list of gripes about Rorty is very long; I'll spare everyone it for now. I'll try to find a useful way of incorporating some of them into comments on the article you linked to, TN, at a later point.
And am I the only person here who is not a crazy relativist/subjectivist/social constructivist about everything?
I am curious to hear more of A's thoughts on Rorty. I generally have liked what I've read of his although I haven't read a lot outside of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. I find that Rorty makes an excellent argument for an "anti-foundationalist" position and he has definitely played a role in making me a "crazy relativist/subjectivist/ social constructivist." I haven't read as much of Rorty's recent work on politics but I'll see if I can get something from the library.
I've raised some questions about Rorty's opposition to religion in other posts so I won't get into that here.
My other main critique of Rorty's work is his lack of attention to class and power. In most of my previous posts I have attempted to describe political difference in terms of conflict over values. This is only part of the story. Political difference is also based on a conflict over resources (generally I see the two as insepparable). Over the past thirty years, under a global regime of neoliberalism, public property has been increasingly privatized and consolidated in the hands of a few. Put simply, the material interests of one group are directly opposed to another. From what I've read of Rorty's political writing he does not give adequate attention to these materially based differences. If one advocates democracy (using Rorty's notion of democracy as egalitarianism) then redistribution of wealth is necessary. This requires more than the feelings of empathy for the poor and suffering that are frequently associated with the left. It is necessary to recognize that the poor have been systematically exploited for the benefit of the rich and to make efforts to change the laws and institutions that support that exploitation.
Rorty writes: "The rightists accuse the leftists of being sentimental fools – bleeding-heart liberals – who do not understand the need to keep government small so that individual freedom can flourish. The leftists accuse the rightists of heartlessness – of being unable or unwilling to imagine themselves in the situation of a parent who cannot make enough money to clothe his daughter as well as her schoolmates are clothed."
This seems to be a relatively accurate description of political discourse in the US, but it ignores exploitation and conflicts over the control over resources. In doing so it simplies political difference into the categories of "right" and "left" that don't accurately describe the economic relationships that promote inequality.
My answer to the question of "what is politics?" always comes back to some sort of balance between activities aimed at shifting values (for example art, religion, and philosophy) and changes in policy that impacts class relations (or stratification defined in other terms). Rorty's anti-foundationalist critique certainly creates a space for pursuing both projects, but I'm often left with the feeling that he is simply advocating the status quo.
Dm--Read Achieving Our Country or the last two sections of Philosophy and Social Hope. Rorty's been a big advocate of a return to class based politics by liberals and the Democratic party for a long time. He was no radical, but did believe that the distribution of resources is THE big issue facing the world today. I've also got an interesting interview he gave talking about this stuff on my computer somewhere I could post or put up a link to, but nothing tonight...I seem to have come down with some sort of stomach flu or food poisoning and have been puking every thirty minutes or so since I got home. Lots of fun.
I had a chance to read the sections of Philosophy and Social Hope the Tigrenoche recommends, and to be honest I was a little disapointed. As I've said elsewhere I've appreciated Rorty's critique of a correspondence theory of truth for some time, and I think pragmatism is definitely interesting. However, I don't see him saying much here that is very useful.
It's not that I disagree too strongly with him on any particular point, it's more that I don't always see exactly what his point is. In the final essay on post modernism and cultural relativism he seeks to distinguish pragmatism from relativism by arguing that a pragmatist will not question the value of reason. He argues that this allows pragmatists to critique the Nazis while cultural relativists have little grounds for doing so. I'm not sure if you can argue, as Rorty does, that the Nazis were irrational unless you assume a fixed set of desired ends, which would seem to be based in something like a correspondence theory of truth. If the goal is to exterminate Jews and many others, than it would seem that the Nazis were behaving very rationally. I do think that pragmatists and cultural relativists can take positions but I don't think they necessarily need to invoke rationality to do so.
In general I see Rorty continuing to praise Dewey and pragmatism without addressing the really interesting questions of how a pragmatist negotiates multiple forms of happiness. On one hand he claims that philosophy isn't necessary for politics and on the other hand he relentlessly promotes pragmatism in conjunction with essays on class politics. Perhaps the problem is that he is trying to negotiate too many academic debates. In his case he wants to separate himself from identity politics and still maintain his pragmatist position on truth. It is a difficult position to be in and this may have prevented him from more clearly articulating his ideas about what pragmatism can offer.
I found his essay on Marx and Derrida to be a bit annoying as well. Rorty claims that rather than philosophy, political struggles need narratives that explain history and provide a way of moving forward. I agree but I think Marx does this. Or at least numerous neomarxists writing on globalization, neoliberalism, and empire have done so. Rather than dismiss Marx because his predictions of a socialist utopia have not come to fruition, I think Rorty would do well to read the folks who have used Marx's analyses of capitalism to come up with narratives far more compelling and detailed than his "Looking Backwards from the Year 2096" and "Back to Class Politics." In the latter, I think Rorty is correct to draw attention to class but does himself a disservice by not embedding his argument in the context of changes in capitalist practices that have occurred over the last 30 years. Again I think the underlying problem is that Rorty is a philosopher who wants to reject philosophy, but hasn't quite figured out how to deal with that contradiction.
I also found Rorty to be inconsistent on religion and the public/private distinction. At times he seems to advocate linkages between poetry and policy and a vague notion of polytheism. At other times he advances a position on religion and politics very similar to what Tigrenoche has staked out in previous posts.
So a few questions:
A: You've mentioned that you've thought a good deal about Rorty. I'd like to hear about this.
TN: What exactly would a pragmatist politics look like, or is pragmatism relevant for politics?
How do you see Rorty resolving the problems of engaging in politics while simultaneously maintaining a generally deconstructivist approach to truth?
Responding to DM's last comment, second paragraph: I think that when Rorty invokes reason and rationality here, it’s more in the sense of being “reasonable” rather than the usually ahistoric/universal Reason of western philosophy. He’s stating that pragmatists are willing to engage in open, empirically grounded debate about the merits of a particular way of ordering society and to advocate for what they see as the best way of doing things. A consistent cultural relativist when confronted by the Nazis (or Taliban oppression of women, dancehall artists advocating killing gays, etc), on the other hand, can do nothing but throw up his hands and say “that’s their culture, that’s how they do things…who am I to judge?” Rorty doesn’t believe that you can appeal to human nature, Truth or Reason to argue against the Nazis, but you can appeal to other societies, real or imagined, and point out why you believe they’re better, generally based on how well they provide for the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. Any ideology that involves killing loads of people isn’t going to have a very strong claim in that regard. Obviously one can imagine the unapologetic Nazi stating that the goal is to control all of Europe and killing off all the “degenerates” is a rational part of achieving that goal, but that sort of behavior hasn’t been considered reasonable in most of the world for quite a while (even the Nazis didn’t explicitly say what they were doing with all the Jews, Poles and others they were rounding up and shipping off to the concentration camps), which isn’t the same as saying that there’s political will to stop it when it does occur in Cambodia, Rwanda or whatever.
Responding to the third paragraph:I think that the tension here is that Rorty sees pragmatism as more of an anti-philosophy, a means of making philosophical problems go away, much the way that Wittgenstein saw his later writings, rather than a philosophical doctrine as such. You can accept that or not, but that’s what I think he saw himself as doing. As to “the really interesting question of how a pragmatist negotiates multiple forms of happiness” what’s the problem really? You try to persuade, you negotiate, you compromise; pragmatism is really synonymous with democratic politics. I cover this angle a little more further down.
As to your paragraph on Rorty's reading of Marx: I don’t really know what’s up with neo-Marxism—you should post something on who you think has “used Marx's analyses of capitalism to come up with narratives far more compelling and detailed” than Rorty’s; I’d be really interested in that. In general, though, I find myself wondering what one really gets from claiming any sort of allegiance to Marxism these days. Marx’s predictions failed; communism was a disaster; what’s left from Marx is a description of how capitalism screws over the poor and working class, but you don’t need to be a Marxist to see that. There’s lots of good debates (including, I think, some pretty compelling narratives) and policy proposals from the progressive left out there on how to ameliorate these effects; meanwhile Western Europe has done a pretty good job of reaping the benefits of capitalism while minimizing the downsides through government regulation, and by doing so has created societies that while not perfect provide some good models for what’s possible.
And in response to the two questions at the end you had for me: First question--pragmatist politics would look pretty much like the progressive left politics that already exists, the sort of politics represented by magazines like the Nation or American Prospect, websites like DailyKos, environmentalist activist groups, unions, etc. It’s not concerned with rigid ideologies or philosophical principles, looks to empiricism and research to evaluate what works or doesn’t and makes appeals to American history (the New Deal, the Constitution) or the experiences of other societies (the social welfare policies of western Europe) to argue its values and policies, rather than the Bible.
On the second question, I’m actually not sure what the “problem” you mention is…I don’t see why thinking that “truth” is something largely socially constructed and always open to revision, rather than something “out there” waiting to be discovered (or set in stone by a book written 2000 years ago) would inhibit you’re ability to practice politics or necessarily change much of how you’d engage in politics. As mentioned above, a pragmatist like Rorty isn’t going to appeal to God or Truth to argue his political views, he’s going to appeal to past experience of what has or hasn’t worked, the knowledge and experience of experts and imagined better futures. If you think about it, that’s pretty much what politics in the US, especially on the left, consists of. A lot of folks on the right do make appeals to God’s Truth as they see it, but the fact that lots of people disagree quite strongly with their interpretation just proves that believing in a capital-T truth doesn’t solve the problem of having to do politics--having to persuade and negotiate to get your views enacted.
I started to reply to this several times, but could never figure out which direction to go. I'm in the middle of moving and a bunch of other stuff right now, so don't have time to respond to the recent comments. But just to throw in, here's one reply to Rorty's article I wrote awhile ago. It's pretty grumpy, but Rorty makes me grumpy:
Man, you know, I've read this Rorty article several times now, and it frustrates the hell out of me. It's typical Rorty; he gives hardly any reasons for his claims; he's just preaching to the choir. You can't, of course, expect a detailed argument in a publication obviously made for general readership, but still, if you don't already agree with him you're left wondering why he thinks what he does.
He's probably right that it would be more beneficial to study history than the intellectual tradition of the enlightenment for those in non-secularized countries. He is also right that when people, either on the right or left, justify their political convictions they do not typically refer to their religious beliefs or philosophical convictions.
But I don't see why he thinks anything else he says follows from these facts. How it follows that philosophy (or religion!) is irrelevant to politics is lost on me. It's like saying that physics is irrelevant to billiards because it's not necessarily useful for billiards players to read physics journals. Perhaps Rorty is just being a little sloppy, and sometimes when he says "philosophy" he really means "(moral) foundationalism"; fine, but even then as far as I can tell his only argument against moral foundationalism is that there are no universally agreed upon moral foundations. This is a great reason for thinking we can't, realistically, appeal to such foundations to justify a government; it's a terrible reason for drawing the metaphysical conclusion that morality does not have a foundationalist structure.
In general, I just feel like there's deep intellectual dishonesty on Rorty's part; time after time he paints his opponents in such broad strokes that they come across as ridiculous cartoons. He gives an incredibly uncharitable reading of Kant in this piece, implying that Kant's project should be considered a failure because Kant himself would be surprised at the uses to which it has been put (maybe... so what? What's wrong with finding a theorem surprising?), and because his principles aren't "self-evident" in the sense that anyone who examines them agrees to them immediately (Kant _surely_ didn't think his principles were self-evident in this sense; he spent a great amount of effort and ink explaining his moral philosophy). His utter dismissiveness of academic philosophy is hard to understand, given that he borrowed many of his favorite tricks from the tradition: From Peirce and James to Kuhn to Rawls to Davidson. And to top it all off his whole way of thinking is based on a non-trivial, non-commonsensical, heavily debated and subsequently generally rejected, substantial metaphysical/philosophical thesis about truth. Who's the one guilty of relying on philosophy to make political points here? I'm pretty sure that Rorty is rare in appealing to a theory of truth to support his political strategy. If Rorty were a true pragmatist he perhaps should have shut up about pragmatism, as bandying it about very likely isn't a politically pragmatic thing to do. (It's hard for me not to steam about the pragmatic theory of truth... Is the pragmatic theory of truth true? What if it's more useful to believe that it is false? Similar objections can be leveled at social constructivism. Most people who hold these weird theories of truth, I think, should really be skeptics instead, and I think that a sort of pragmatism regarding how you should behave is reasonable if you are a skeptic. Rorty just should have said "nobody really knows what is true in these cases of morality and politics, and so I suggest we just move forward in a way that reflects this uncertainty. There is no knowledge, just opinion, and the best one can do is make one's own opinions look as attractive as possible." I personally have some sympathy for this "pragmatic" approach to politics. Even if you are not a skeptic, this might be a reasonable approach.)
TN:
I think that the notion of “happiness” that pragmatism depends on could use further investigation. Being happy is really not a simple thing. Contrary to Rorty’s position, it’s quite possible for people living in a society that enforces a high degree of conformity to be happier than those living in a society that promotes free choice.
But I don’t want to dwell on happiness here, instead I want to talk more about class and Marx. I think Rorty’s pragmatism could really benefit from a close reading of Marx, or at least the neomarxists that have applied his ideas in a variety of interesting ways. For a good example of a neomarxist narrative that explains why inequality has increased in the past 30 years and suggests some solutions to this problem (solutions that do not involve communist revolution) see David Harvey’s recent books on imperialism and neoliberalism - both are written for a relatively wide audience.
One of the fundamental concepts that Marx developed is class. Rorty talks about a return to class politics. For Marx, class does not simply describe a group of people but a relationship. A class relationship is one in which one group essentially lives at the expense of another. In other words the interests of those involved in that relationship are necessarily opposed. A democracy in which the no individual has a stronger voice in politics than another is not in the interests of the few who are living off the labor of the many. In reading Rorty on class I get no sense of conflict. He seems to argue that simply teaching students about the history of worker’s movements is enough. This is certainly a fine thing to do, but if one’s goal is to eliminate inequality than I think a far more pragmatic step in this direction would be to teach Marx. Reading Marx clarifies how one nation gets rich at the expense of another. It reveals that compromise is difficult and perhaps unlikely. For example, neomarxists like Walter Rodney and Andre Gunder Frank argued in the 1970’s that poverty in the third world was partially a result of capitalism. Historically nations like Europe and the US have depended on extracting resources and labor from the 3rd world. Achieving democracy will involve struggle and many people in power probably will not be happy about it.
Another pragmatic argument for reading and teaching Marx is largely speculative, but I would suspect that the nations of Europe that Rorty holds up as examples of relative equality, prosperity, and democracy most likely study far more Marx than we do in the states. Certainly countries like France have a long tradition of leftist political parties with policies that are at least partially based in the teachings of Marx. The influence of these parties is essential in maintaining the high quality of life that one often finds in Europe.
TN writes: “pragmatist politics would look pretty much like the progressive left politics that already exists, the sort of politics represented by magazines like the Nation or American Prospect, websites like DailyKos, environmentalist activist groups, unions, etc. It’s not concerned with rigid ideologies or philosophical principles, looks to empiricism and research to evaluate what works or doesn’t and makes appeals to American history (the New Deal, the Constitution) or the experiences of other societies (the social welfare policies of western Europe) to argue its values and policies, rather than the Bible.”
I’d like to explore this further. While the progressive left certainly does not rely on the bible it isn’t always clear to me that they are doing the things you mention that would bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number that is the goal of pragmatism. Maybe we could take this up in another post, but in a brief reading of DailyKos, which I take to be the most influential liberal blog, I don’t see a lot of discussion of policy. I read an article on John Edwards in the NY Times a while back that suggested that his policies were actually not significantly different than Clinton’s and instead he is attempting a sort of aesthetic appeal – defining himself as pro-working class in order to appeal to particular values that are commonly held by the left. I think it would be interesting to look closely at the different Dem candidates and evaluate their proposed policies in terms of a criteria that we can all agree on, like promoting economic equality. I haven’t found similar discussions elsewhere and I wonder if the mainstream left is really interested in these topics.
A:
I think we share a similar dislike for Rorty’s attacks on philosophy when he is so clearly a philosopher who has little interest in taking a non-philosophical perspective. As I argue above, it would far more politically pragmatic for Rorty to engage with Marx and other social theorists than to continually talk about truth and Dewey. That said, I think that Rorty is a good philosopher and although I haven’t read it in a while I remember finding his earlier writings on truth to be very convincing.
I am interested in your statement:
“… as far as I can tell his only argument against moral foundationalism is that there are no universally agreed upon moral foundations. This is a great reason for thinking we can't, realistically, appeal to such foundations to justify a government; it's a terrible reason for drawing the metaphysical conclusion that morality does not have a foundationalist structure.”
What do you mean my “moral foundationalism?” My understanding or Rorty is that he is arguing not simply that people don’t agree on moral foundations, but that if morality did have a foundationalist structure it could not be known and there is no reason why we would want to know it in the first place. Do you think moral foundations can be known? What value do you see in searching for them (it seems that you agree with Rorty that they are not useful for politics)?
Responding to DM's last comment: What are some of Harvey’s proposals? I doubt I’ll be buying any of his books anytime soon (money’s tight), so could you summarize what he’d like to see happen? Incidentally, I figured you’d mention Harvey, so did start skimming Spaces of Hope, the one book of his I do have the other day. Not too far in yet, so nothing to say, but it did remind me that he talks a bit there about the problems with poverty, racism, deindustrialization and the like befalling Baltimore and those just happen to be some of the main themes running through the Wire, which is probably the greatest TV show of all time, certainly the best TV drama. I really can’t recommend this show highly enough…For direct relevancy to this topic you could start on season 2, set largely in the Stevedores union on the Baltimore docks, but you’ll really want to know the backstory on everyone, especially of the drug folks, so really oughta just start at the beginning.
Moving on...responding to the third paragraph of your last comment: I don’t think you’re being fair to Rorty above, but rather than get into that…When I say that I’m not really sure what one gets by claiming any allegiance to Marxist thought what I mean is that, to me, what’s unique about Marx is the idea that Capitalism, as the economic principal for organizing society has to be eliminated and some other form of economy put in its place, and that this would happen via revolutionary upheaval led by the working class. I believe you’ve stated before to me (certainly you say so above in regards to Harvey) that revolution is off the table. No one really argues for that anymore. Do the neo-Marxists you like advocate eliminating capitalism? If so, how should the economy be organized instead? I’ve yet to hear that second question convincingly answered, especially since describing how we get there from here would be an essential part of the answer. Without those two ideas, you’re basically left with the rather obvious observation that different sectors of society and different nations have competing interests, and the rich exploit the poor both within and between nations. I can think of plenty of other places one can see this point made besides in Marx. Which leaves you where most progressives are: Wondering how government policy can be used to counteract the negative effects of capitalism (and racism, sexism and homophobia, etc. as well) and how to build the coalitions and elect the leaders that will get those policies enacted. This is why I’d really like to hear about any specific proposals that Harvey or any of these other neo-Marxists are making. Are they really advocating something dramatically different than what the progressive community advocates? Are they advocating policies that have a realistic chance of getting enacted anywhere?
On the fourth para: No argument with your point about Europe having much stronger (and radical) leftist traditions than the US, and this playing a big part in their much better social welfare policies. Part of the problem we have in the US is that the way our government is set up it leaves little role for third parties except as spoilers, and the numerous checks, balances and power sharing mechanisms that the Constitution established mean that change is very slow and difficult to enact. We’ve got a conservative government by design. If we could start from scratch with a parliamentary system instead I’d be all for it. Of course, another big reason that Europe has been able to develop the generous social welfare programs that they have is that, at least until very recently, they were much more homogeneous societies than America. In America it’s always been too easy for opponents of redistributive social welfare policy to play the race card and claim that it’ll just transfer your hard-earned dollars to “those” people. I’m not sure how to overcome this in America, and it’ll be interesting to see if Europe is able to hold onto their welfare states as more immigrants come in and the chance to denounce those policies on racist/xenophobic grounds grows (though it’s much harder to get rid of a popular social welfare program already in place than to create a new one, so they’ll probably do alright).
And finally...: A couple of points about DailyKos and the other liberal blogs: Most are written daily and provide a running commentary on the political events of the last couple days, as such, there is a lot of focus (and more written) on politics than policy. That’s not to say that policy debate is absent, it just isn’t the only thing discussed. I know what policies are generally supported by the left blogosphere, I know that promoting economic equality is one of the two or three most important goals of the progressive community, because I’ve been reading several of them daily for years now. Some blogs that focus more on policy than DailyKos are the American Prospect’s TAPPED blog, as well as Ezra Klein’s (lots on health care policy) and Matt Yglesias’ (good on foreign policy), though again, just glancing at them once won’t tell you that much; follow them for awhile, or go reading through the archives.
Which brings me to this: Where the hell do you get the idea that the mainstream left isn’t really interested in economic inequality? I suppose it depends somewhat on how you’re defining “the mainstream left” but using the definition I gave, you’re telling me the Nation isn’t a magazine that’s concerned with and covers income inequality? That this isn’t a huge concern of the trade unions? Just searching a couple of the blogs I read, “Income Inequality” turns up around 700 posts on DailyKos; around 200 on TAPPED (the second post that comes up discusses the different poverty reduction programs of the Dem candidates, even!); the Washington Monthly blog by a guy named Kevin Drum, which is usually considered about the most moderate, middle of the road of the big lefty sites, has some 67 posts on income inequality, and well over 50 on unions (I quit counting) and I know from having read most of them over the years that he’s always supported unions and increased unionization. I could mention across-the-board support for universal health care, the calling and letter-writing campaigns that DailyKos organized against the Bankruptcy bill a while back and more.
Looking at the left blogosphere on the whole, basic goals/values (universal health care, decreased income inequality) and the fact that the Democrats will support these goals/values most of the time while the Republicans won’t, is taken as a given, so the focus does shift a lot to getting “more and better Democrats” elected, rather than policy details. Even Hillary Clinton, the least progressive of the top tier Dem candidates, would be a huge improvement on these issues over the Rep candidates. As to whether Edward’s policies are significantly more progressive than Hillary’s, or it’s “just” aesthetics, you can assume that Edwards is being a phony (the mainstream media narrative of him—he’s a rich guy with expensive haircuts arguing for the working class, so an obvious fake), or you can believe that he’s talking up these issues as much as he is because that’s what he cares about and where his priorities now and if he were president would be. The positions he takes as a politician trying to actually win a national office probably won’t be as dramatic as an academic leftist who still reads Marx would like, but I don’t see a reason to doubt his sincerity in wanting to fight poverty and inequality. The fact that he makes them the centerpiece of his campaign, while Hillary doesn’t, is one of the reasons he’s the preferable candidate from a progressive viewpoint.
TN: I'm in the process of moving and all my books are packed so I can't really summarize Harvey, but like most neomarxist types he offers far more in the way of critique than solutions. He does however put forth a pretty clear plan for escaping from the current pattern of using imperialism to deal with problems of economic stagnation. If I remember right it is nothing too radical and generally involves greater controls over trade and support for international worker's rights, while not resorting to protectionism. I'll come back to this in a couple weeks. In the meantime you might check your local public library, both of Harvey's recent books were released by mainstream presses and I imagine LA has an extensive interlibrary loan program.
The question of what a neomarxist perspective can offer in terms of policy is interesting. I think it is best answered by examining actual policies and this is why I suggested that we discuss the anti-poverty programs offered by the various democrat candidates. Maybe you could post a link to the discussions you mentioned. I don't doubt that Edwards is sincere about poverty (although making lots of cash working for a hedge fund certainly provides grounds for accusations of hypocrisy), but I wonder if his proposed policies really do differ significantly from Hillary Clinton and the others. It is obvious that it is important for the left to portray themselves as anti-poverty and pro-union, but I think it's just as obvious that there policies don't always match their rhetoric - Bill Clinton's passage of NAFTA is a great example. Anyway, post that link to the dem proposals and we'll see if policy matches up with the rhetoric. At the very least it would help me determine which candidate I support.
One small point on neomarxist critiques of capitalism. One of the more interesting critiques I've come across recently argues that economies are not capitalist. Particular exchanges are capitalist. Within the US you have tons of exchanges that are non-capitalist (gift giving, theft, self-employment, cooperatives, etc.). Rather than work for a revolution our goal should be to promote non-capitalist interactions. I'd be happy to discuss this more if you're interested.
As much as I do like him, I'm getting a little tired of spending so much time defending Rorty, but when I read this: "In reading Rorty on class I get no sense of conflict. He seems to argue that simply teaching students about the history of worker’s movements is enough." it just didn't sound right...you mean the Rorty that says: "...the history of the labor unions, in Britain, America and everywhere else in the world, is a blood-drenched history of violent struggle...the labor movement owed its successes to repeated and deliberate criminal acts--acts that we now think of as heroic civil disobedience, but which were brutally punished." or "...we should remember that the early history of labor unions in America, as in the rest of the world, is a history of the skulls of strikers being broken by truncheons, decade after decade...those truncheons have recently reappeared." or "...the last 100 years of our country's history has witnessed a brutal struggle between the corporations and the workers...this struggle is still going on, and the corportations are winning." That's just a couple lines out of the very short essay Back to Class Politics that I assume you're referring at least in part to. Now since that essay is dedicated solely to the need to teach the history of the labor struggle to our nation's children, and is very obviously NOT some manifesto for ending inequality IN GENERAL, complaining that it doesn't do more than that is pretty unfair.
Anyways, I've got to get to bed, but I'm still looking forward to hearing more on what sorts of specific policy type ideas or goals the neo-Marxists are advocating. I found a couple book reviews and interviews with David Harvey on line, and he seems like a decent guy, but I really wasn't seeing him saying anything vis a vis concrete goals or ideas that's any different from what I get from the left blogosphere.
Responses to a couple of DM's last comments:
“…like most neomarxist types he offers far more in the way of critique than solutions.” I thought the point of Marxism was trying to change the world, not just understand it...
“If I remember right it is nothing too radical and generally involves greater controls over trade and support for international worker's rights, while not resorting to protectionism.” Which would make Harvey’s position identical to the vast majority of the progressive community and…John Edwards.
“I don't doubt that Edwards is sincere about poverty (although making lots of cash working for a hedge fund certainly provides grounds for accusations of hypocrisy)” Why? This makes absolutely no sense, though of course that hasn’t stopped Fox news and the rest of the right wing media from making this accusation and spreading it far and wide. Should Edwards take a vow of poverty and give away all his money before he’s allowed to care about poverty? The only thing that saying someone who’s made a lot of money can’t talk about poverty does is guarantee that poverty can never be an issue in American politics. No one who’s reached the level of experience and public recognition required to run a credible campaign is going to still be pulling down a middle class income. Of course the fact that Mitt Romney and Rudy Guiliani are fabulously wealthy doesn’t matter—they don’t care about the poor, don’t talk about poverty as an issue, and thus are immune from charges of hypocrisy. I actually think that the narrative Edwards has put forward—“I came from modest means but have been very lucky to grow up in a country where I had the opportunity to better myself. Unfortunately, not everyone has that opportunity, so we need to fix the structural problems that keep others from having the same success I’ve had.”--is a really effective one.
DM:
In reply to your questions:
"Moral foundationalism" is Rorty's term, and I was trying my best to use it in the way he used it in the article, although he's not as clear as I'd like about what he thinks it is. I guess I assumed that it has to do with the structure of moral justification: That you can determine whether a particular act is right or wrong by somehow "deriving" it from some foundational facts about right or wrong. Different foundationalists have different views about what these foundational facts are. Rorty seems to have a particularly strong version of foundationalism in mind, where the foundational facts are such that nobody could doubt them if they thought about it just a little bit, and furthermore that if you knew these foundational facts you would actually be _motivated_ by them--somehow through knowing that X is right, you would want to do X. Not all people who I assume Rorty would have called "foundationalists" take this strong view, so it irks me a bit when Rorty treats the strong version as if it were the only one philosophers take, and downplays philosophy because he thinks this one philosophical thesis is wrong.
As to your question, do I think moral foundations can be known? I don't know. I think it's possible. It's a difficult question, which is why I think that anyone who appeals to supposedly indubitable facts about morality, _or_ supposed facts about the non-existence of morality, or the relativity of morality to individuals/cultures/whatever, in favor of some political agenda is overestimating his or her arguments for these views. Appealing to the metaphysical view of anti-foundationalism in politics seems just as ill-advised to me as appealing to the Word of God in politics.
So, I agree with Rorty that we should not appeal to metaphysical foundations--_as_ metaphysical foundations--in politics. There are more fruitful ways of reaching political agreement than metaphysical arguments. Rorty thinks this because he has certain metaphysical views, e.g. about truth and morality (he argues both ways, note: He also sometimes draws his metaphysical conclusions from the fact that metaphysical arguments aren't effective in politics). I think this simply because in my experience it has tended to be true.
First in response to TN's most recent comments. Your quotes from Rorty do clearly demonstrate that he is aware of a conflict between classes. However, my intent in my previous comment was to draw attention to the importance of Marx for understanding why this conflict exists. Rather than dismiss Marx as Rorty suggests, I believe Marx, or at least those who have been influenced by his thinking, provide valuable insights into how class interests are necessarily opposed within capitalism. As I said before, teaching about battles between workers and owners is a step in the right direction, but there is no reason not to teach Marxist theory as well. I'll try to demonstrate the pragmatic value of a Marxist perspective for achieving economic equality in relation to the policies proposed by John Edwards in another post.
A: That all sounds pretty reasonable to me. I suppose the question of "can moral foundations be known" begs the question of what it means to know something. It is this epistemological question regarding truth that I take to be Rorty's larger project. If I understand correctly he is arguing for a pragmatic theory of truth over a correspondence theory (and he seems to believe that most notions of truth rely on some level of correspondence - it seems that this lumping of many theories into the category of correspondence is one of your disagreements, but I think he does actually address thinkers like Quine and others). The weird thing is that while he clearly thinks that pragmatism is important he also argues that deconstructing a correspondence theory of truth is not necessarily important for politics. Anyway, I'm not sure how much more I have to say on the topic. At the end of your post it sounds like you are more or less agreeing with Rorty. If that's the case then what are your thoughts on pragmatism as a general means of evaluating different policies?
Post a Comment