Richard Rorty

To those working for human rights because of belief in their substantive value, Richard Rorty’s non-cognitivist advocacy of the Western culture of human rights is an example of a confused vision that is tragically self-defeating. Rorty undermines the grounds for a commitment that can transcend feelings and endure threats. In addition, the natural consequence of developing the reflective intelligence of the young would lead in time to seeing their “teachers” of human rights as cultural colonizers attempting to rob them of (...) their identity. The argument here is that there is a more compelling vision of nature and human nature available that is not a version of materialism, eliminates having to confront materialism’s inherent difficulty with norms, and can make intelligible and support a more self-aware, inspiring human rights culture. The argument draws upon, qualifies, and extends reinforcing insights to be found in the works of McDowell and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This essay responds to four critical essays by Rosemary Kellison, Ebrahim Moosa, Joseph Winters, and Martin Kavka on the author’s recent book, Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society: From Enemy to Adversary (2018). Parts I and II work in tandem to further develop my accounts of strategic empathy and agonistic political friendship. I defend against criticisms that my argument for moral imagination obligates oppressed people to empathize with their oppressors. I argue, further, that healthy conflict can be motivated by a (...) kind of “secular” love. This enables my position to immanently criticize and mediate the claims that one must either love (agapically) one’s opponent in order to engage them in “healthy conflict,” on one hand, or that one must vanquish, exclude, or “cancel” one’s opponent, on the other. In Part III, I demonstrate how my account mediates the challenge of an alleged standing opposition between moral imagination and socio-theoretical critique. I defend a methodologically pragmatist account of immanent prophetic criticism, resistance, and conflict transformation. Finally, I respond to one critic’s vindication of a strong enemy/adversary opposition that takes up the case of white supremacist violence in the U.S. I argue that the time horizon for healthy conflict must be simultaneously immediate and also long-term, provided that such engagements remain socio-critically self-reflexive and seek to cultivate transformational responses. (shrink)

A review of a collection of essays one meta-philosophy by fifteen philosophers, including Rorty, Castañeda and Putnam. It is a stimulating collection, useful reading for those who want to go beyond the caricatures of today's philosophy in America, for those interested in the discussion on the origins of the split between continental philosophy and Anglo-American philosophy and for the philosopher who does not disdain a moment of "self-consciousness". The editors, both teaching at Tel-Aviv University, have proved able to manage this (...) small transoceanic enterprise with originality; it is a symptom, like those represented by many other books of Israeli philosophers published in recent years in German and much more in English, of the vitality and openness to the outside world of this small philosophical community. (shrink)

Political theology has multiple provenances. One less cited is the seventeenth century irenic dictum: “and we would all embrace a mutual unity in things necessary; in things non necessary liberty; in all things charity.” While aimed at ecumenical peace, this call for mutual unity implied a deliberative context that went beyond sectarian Christian concerns. Liberty and charity were as conducive to a comprehensive church as more modest laws of toleration. My claim is that this dictum’s themes are extemporized in recent (...) pragmatist thought. (shrink)

This article tracks how group egotists disavow their hate group identity. Group egotists are individuals born and raised in hate groups. The well-documented exit cases of Megan Phelps-Roper (Westboro Baptist Church) and Derek Black (White Nationalism) prove that hate group indoctrination can be undermined. A predominantly epistemic approach, which focuses on argument and conversational virtues, falls short in capturing the complexity of their apostasies. I turn to pragmatism for conceptual support. Using the work of Richard Rorty and William James, I (...) explain how redemptive relationships and alternative lifeworlds participate in weakening belief-systems, leading to the disavowal of the hate group. (shrink)

Does truth matter to ethics? Ethical truth is a highly vexed notion. In addition to a virtual chaos of views concerning right versus wrong courses of action in applied issues, philosophers have encountered perennial difficulties in the attempt to theoretically specify what ethical truth could be. Recent arguments emphasize "ethical imagination" over ethical truth. I argue that ethical imagination is an important notion, but that an understanding of ethical truth is crucial to its growth. It is, however, important to be (...) clear about what sort of truth we mean. I will argue that ethical truth is existential truth, and following Kierkegaard and others in the Existentialist tradition, I will argue that it has a subjective character. It will therefore be important to anticipate and answer worries about "mere subjectivity". (shrink)

The present paper argues that the Venezuelan-Chilean philosopher Andrés Bello constitutes an important but heretofore neglected prefiguration of Richard Rorty. I argue for this thesis by articulating first an Inter-American philosophical narrative (based on previous work by Alex Stehn and Carlos Sanchez) that enables me to highlight certain common characteristics in philosophical projects that flourished across the Americas. Having done this, I show that Rorty’s anti-representationalism and anti-foundationalism are prefigured in Bello’s most important philosophical treatise, Filosofía del Entendimiento, to the (...) extent that Bello recognizes the problems posed by the ocular metaphors that are systematically used by Early modern philosophers such as Descartes or Locke, and suggests their elimination and replacement by other metaphors. Finally, I conclude that, if my arguments are correct, the intellectual geography of neo-pragmatism needs to be expanded beyond traditional geographies such as Europe and the US. (shrink)

This article engages Richard Rorty’s controversial concept of ethnocentrism with the help of Randolf (Randy) S. David’s writings. The first section defines Rorty’s concept of ethnocentrism and responds to the general criticisms of relativism and divisiveness that have been made against it. The second section suggests a conceptual replacement for Rorty’s notion of a vicious ethnocentrism: egotism. Egotism is a kind of cultural ethnocentrism that is resistant to openness, creativity, and social transformation. Inspired by David’s work, the third and final (...) section suggests how the concepts of ethnocentrism and egotism might be of some use as conceptual tools for articulating contemporary social issues in the Philippines. (shrink)

Using the works of Richard Rorty and John Caputo, I want to suggest that we might be better off treating the traditional ethical theories of Kant, Mill, Aristotle and Hobbes as normative narratives rather than as justificatory schemes for moral decision making to be set up against one another. In a spirit akin to Husserl's ‘bracketing’ of metaphysics, when discussing ethical theories in business ethics, we can easily avoid metaphysics and use an approach that sees ethical theory as socially convincing (...) normative narratives – narratives that unify us with others insofar as they describe our phenomenological experiences in a way with which many of us mutually resonate. I will do this by attempting to show how John Caputo's thinking in Against Ethics and Rorty's postmodern pragmatism might be appropriated to some extent by us in business ethics. (shrink)

Democracy may indeed be an imperfect form of government, but all the others are far worse and this, surely, is a moment for recognizing the benefits which democracy brings, not a moment for drawing attention to its shortcomings. It is a moment for confirming our faith, not a moment for doubting it.” Published over ten years ago, Susan Mendus’ statement could stand as a mantra for our times with democracy diagnosed as being at risk almost as a matter of course (...) in our public domains over the last years. That is, despite its much touted benefits, the assumptions, concepts, and practices of democracy are currently depicted as being under threat from an array of terrorists, dictators, fundamentalists of various stripes, and even from the West’s own instituted reactions to the events of the past few years. On this basis at least it would seem that democracy has not lived up to its promise of being the “solution that other people will necessarily adopt when they cease to be ‘irrational.’” Given these points, perhaps it is advisable to follow Mendus’ advice and stop any examination of democracy that would further expose its frailties and shortcomings and simply affirm our faith in it. Of course, this is not what Mendus herself does. The above words are, after all, to be found at the beginning of an essay that goes on to consider yet another critique of democracy, that comprising the feminist challenge to the historical exclusion of women from democracy. (shrink)

Among Kierkegaard scholars, there is a great deal of concern regarding how to deal with Alasdair MacIntyre’s treatment of Kierkegaard in his seminal work After Virtue. In this essay, I attempt to defend MacIntyre’s claim that the choice articulated in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or is irrational through a close reading of an essay from a later work by Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way. In so doing, I argue that though MacIntyre’s interpretation of the position articulated in Either/Or is essentially correct, he is (...) mistaken to attribute that position, articulated by a pseudonym, to Kierkegaard. Instead, I argue that Kierkegaard should be seen as strategically employing that position to level a criticism against a certain rationalist tradition in ethics embodied by fi gures as diverse as Kant, Rousseau, and Diderot. (shrink)

This article presents a response to Richard Rorty's paper "Is Philosophy Relevant to Business Ethics?" The author questions Rorty's views on the depreciation of the role of philosophy in applied ethics, and outlines four reasons why philosophy retains its relevance. The author addresses the role of moral reasoning in the development of the moral imagination. The author also concludes that humans have the means necessary to make moral progress and are capable of moral reasoning, and need only to develop a (...) strong moral imagination. (shrink)

The paper is a critical examination of Rorty’s argument against foundationalism, on which depends his view of the social irrelevance of traditional philosophy. I try to demonstrate the incoherence and speciousness of his reasoning against foundationalism and in the process refute his view that traditional philosophy is a tool which can and should be cast off from the public, and even from the private, sphere of human life and that its universal concepts can therefore be circumvented. This demonstration is accomplished (...) in twocomplementary stages. First, I provide a general justification of my “argumentative” style in engaging Rorty’s position against his objection to this approach, while showing that what he calls his strategy of “re-description” is really nothing but a form of logical argumentation. Second, I attempt to show how, in order to substantiate his rejection of traditional philosophy’s claim of social relevance, Rorty’s “re-description” of the motivation underlying traditional philosophy is no different from the strategy of unmasking that he has called into question as an instance of a radical or foundationalist critique. I show that, despite his protestations to the contrary, “unmasking” is precisely what—at least on a number of occasions—Rorty quite inconsistently does in demonstrating that the claim of social relevance arises from a form of self-deception engaged in by the traditional philosopher. I further show that theanti-foundationalist stance that defines his characteristic manner of extricating himself from such self-reference problems is based on faulty reasoning and lands him in a deeper incoherence. Since his depoliticization of traditional philosophy depends on the cogency ofthis anti-foundationalist view, I conclude that this depoliticizing project fails. (shrink)

The appearance of several new works and a multivolume critical anthology devoted to Richard Rorty casts in bold relief the surprising lack of sympathetic interpretations his work has generated over the past few decades. After examining the complex nature of the critical reaction to Rorty, this essay reviews two new introductions to his thought that attempt to approach him in a spirit of hermeneutic charity. I argue that Rorty's somewhat neglected idea of treating philosophy as a Bildungsroman may shed some (...) light on the problem of how to read Rorty usefully. (shrink)

It is often claimed that liberalism is falsely and perniciously universalist. I take this charge seriously, exploring three positions: the communitarians’, Rorty’s, and that of “comprehensive” liberalism. After explaining why universalism is thought impossible, I examine the communitarian view that value is determined within communities and argue that it results in a form of relativism that is unacceptable. I next discuss Richard Rorty’s liberal acceptance of “conventionalism” and explain how, despite his rejection of universalism, Rorty remains a liberal. I then (...) present a defense of universalism, based in part on arguments that parallel Thomas Nagel’s arguments in defense of a “view from nowhere” and Jean Hampton’s objectivist arguments against Rawls’s moves to a “merely political” theory. That defense requires that we can distance ourselves from our ends to make moral judgments shorn of all partialities. (shrink)

The more tangible and prominent theme of the debate central to this book—relativism and the place of absolutes and transcendental conditions in the philosophical vocabulary—is tied to a deeper, though equally evident, concern with the relation between theory and practice. This is understandable. For if philosophy is to be more than merely reflective—if it is also to be practical—it must recognize the concrete historical and cultural conditions under which it operates. And this recognition makes the quest for eternal truths and (...) enduring values problematic. (shrink)

Let me begin by asking you to consider some thought experiments. Suppose that you are being pursued by the police and you go to your family home and ask them to hide you. You would expect that they would do so. It would be abnormal if they did not. Consider again the reverse situation. You know that one of your parents or one of your children is guilty of a sordid crime and nonetheless he or she asks for your protection, (...) asks to be hidden from police inquiries. Many of us would be willing to perjure ourselves in order to supply such a child or parent with a false alibi. But if an innocent person would then be wrongly convicted as a result of our perjury, most of us would be torn by a conflict between loyalty and justice.Such a conflict will be felt, however, only to the extent that we can identify with the innocent person whom we have harmed. If the person is a neighbour the conflict will probably be intense. If a stranger, especially of a different race or class or nation, it may be considerably weaker. There has to be some sense that the victim is one of us before we start being tormented by the questionof whether we did the right thing when we committed perjury. So it might be equally appropriate to describe us as torn between conflicting loyalties — loyalty to our family and loyalty to some group large enough to include the victim of our perjury, rather than torn between loyalty andjustice.Our loyalty to such larger groups will however weaken or perhaps vanish when things get really tough. Then people whom we once thought of as like ourselves will be excluded. Sharing food with impoverished people down the street is natural and right in normal times but perhaps not in a famine when doing so would amount to disloyalty to one’s own family. The tougher things get, the more ties of loyalty to those near at hand tighten and those to everyone else slacken. (shrink)

Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,, Cambridge University Press,, pp. 201+xvi ____________, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth,, Philosophical Papers Volume 1, Cambridge University Press,, pp. 226+x. ____________, Essays on Heidegger and Others,, Philosophical Papers Volume 2, Cambridge UniversityPress,, pp. 202+x. Alan R. Malachowski, ed., Reading Rorty,, Basil Blackwell,, pp. 384+xiv.