John Holbo’s brilliant post explains exactly why I always found Rorty puzzling.
His reformist reach exceeds his justificatory good conscience. He really thinks he’s right, but doesn’t think he can give his opponents rational grounds that they are compelled to accept. The one point he’s got is that, if the sort of change he wants comes, it will come as a sort of ‘conversion’ to a new way of thinking (cultural shift, call it what you will). This is true, but – again – not exactly a reason to convert. But what else can he say? Rorty ends up more or less boxed into a narrow hortatory row: not even straight preaching to the unconverted. Instead, preaching the meta-possibility of conversion to the unconverted.
Which seems to me to be a way of saying that Rorty was a dismally bad pragmatist. If he really cared about reducing cruelty, he would have availed himself of the most muscular and effective modes of persuasion — i.e., empirical argument about and vivid demonstration of what actually reduces suffering – rather than “preaching the meta-possibility of conversion to the unconverted.” Rorty seems to have knee-capped himself with his undermotivated epistemic convictions, which is indeed ironic, since those very convictions say he shouldn’t take them seriously. But he does; he evidently takes them more seriously than his professed moral aims. I was amused reading Achieving Our Country when Rorty says, quite explicitly, there is no fact of the matter about the past, and now I am going to try to convince you of a story about our history that I think it would be good for us all to believe! If you thought it was so important for people to believe it, why would you start out by telling them that you yourself don’t, actually? Here’s one completely conjectural suspicion: Rorty was in love with the idea of social democratic justice, but did not think that he had any warrant for the belief that it actually would make people better off. A child of committed communists, he saw that passionately loved moral ideals can be completely disastrous. But he believed what he believed, damn it. Knowing it might be false, and even harmful, he was ironic about it. And he effectively reduced suffering by arguing for his political ideals in such a painfully narcissistic and completely ineffectual fashion that they never actually affected the world. For this, he deserves our thanks.
By way of contrast, if Lant Pritchett succeeds in even slightly opening up wealthy labor markets to workers who lost the passport lottery, he will have done more to end needless cruelty than a million Rortys. But then, Lant Pritchett believes that the effectiveness of his favored means to that end of reducing suffering is a fact of the external world. And it is. That’s powerful.
“And he effectively reduced suffering by arguing for his political ideals in such a painfully narcissistic and completely ineffectual fashion that they never actually affected the world. For this, he deserves our thanks.”
Awesome!
“And he effectively reduced suffering by arguing for his political ideals in such a painfully narcissistic and completely ineffectual fashion that they never actually affected the world. For this, he deserves our thanks.”
Awesome!
By way of contrast, if Lant Pritchett succeeds in even slightly opening up wealthy labor markets to workers who lost the passport lottery, he will have done more to end needless cruelty than a million Rortys. But then, Lant Pritchett believes that the effectiveness of his favored means to that end of reducing suffering is a fact of the external world. And it is. That’s powerful.
And simpleminded, grounded in nauseating piety and a shared if arbitrary sense of fellow feeling – like most “powerful” messages. That’s how narrative works and probably why Rorty wasn’t so good at it himself.
By way of contrast, if Lant Pritchett succeeds in even slightly opening up wealthy labor markets to workers who lost the passport lottery, he will have done more to end needless cruelty than a million Rortys. But then, Lant Pritchett believes that the effectiveness of his favored means to that end of reducing suffering is a fact of the external world. And it is. That’s powerful.
And simpleminded, grounded in nauseating piety and a shared if arbitrary sense of fellow feeling – like most “powerful” messages. That’s how narrative works and probably why Rorty wasn’t so good at it himself.
So you don’t think Pritchett’s plan would help end suffering? Or you do, and this bothers you?
So you don’t think Pritchett’s plan would help end suffering? Or you do, and this bothers you?
Hardly an exhaustive set of choices. Another possible alternative: that an involuntary collective like a nation can’t have a moral interest in promoting the wellbeing of nonmembers. But I propose that simply for illustrative purposes. Your first alternative is interesting in that it establishes whether I can be placed within your hortatory narrative, to use Rorty’s approach.
Hardly an exhaustive set of choices. Another possible alternative: that an involuntary collective like a nation can’t have a moral interest in promoting the wellbeing of nonmembers. But I propose that simply for illustrative purposes. Your first alternative is interesting in that it establishes whether I can be placed within your hortatory narrative, to use Rorty’s approach.
If it is inconvenient for you to answer my question, I understand.
If it is inconvenient for you to answer my question, I understand.
“And he effectively reduced suffering by arguing for his political ideals in such a painfully narcissistic and completely ineffectual fashion that they never actually affected the world”
That sounds like a plausible claim, given the arguments themselves. But it does make you wonder why 1,500 Iranians attended his lecture in Tehran.
“And he effectively reduced suffering by arguing for his political ideals in such a painfully narcissistic and completely ineffectual fashion that they never actually affected the world”
That sounds like a plausible claim, given the arguments themselves. But it does make you wonder why 1,500 Iranians attended his lecture in Tehran.
The question waa badly phrased, since I indicated that I objected to the psturing of the rhetoric rather than the sentiment itself, although it would be fair to observe that it is more common to object to posturing when you don’t agree with the sentiment.
In specific terms, the level and type of “suffering” alleviated doesn’t particularly stir my sympathy, and I haven’t a clue whether the complicated end result of the program would be a net positive over time even in those terms. You don’t have to be hostile to the prnciple of chest-thumping appeal to end up annoyed by the thumping. Simply being unmoved by it will almost guarantee that result.
The question waa badly phrased, since I indicated that I objected to the psturing of the rhetoric rather than the sentiment itself, although it would be fair to observe that it is more common to object to posturing when you don’t agree with the sentiment.
In specific terms, the level and type of “suffering” alleviated doesn’t particularly stir my sympathy, and I haven’t a clue whether the complicated end result of the program would be a net positive over time even in those terms. You don’t have to be hostile to the prnciple of chest-thumping appeal to end up annoyed by the thumping. Simply being unmoved by it will almost guarantee that result.
maybe you should make a decision