Journal of the History of Philosophy

What is the Legacy of Instrumentalism? Rorty's Interpretation of Dewey JAMES GOUINLOCK THE INHERITANCE FROM JOHN DEWEY has been diverse, and the course of history will likely produce a number of different philosophies claiming direct lineage from his ideas. Such developments will testify to the fecundity of his thought. My intent in this paper is not to speculate about such possibilities, however, but to correct serious misunderstandings of Dewey by Richard Rorty. Rorty continues to call himself a pragmatist and, more specifically, a Deweyan.' Insofar as he succeeds in appropriating Dewey's legacy, he will reject what was surely dearest to Dewey himself. A number of scholars have already written incisively on various aspects of Rorty's soi-disant pragmatism. They include Brodsky, Edel, Sleeper, Campbell, Alexander, and Boisvert. 2 Sleeper, Campbell, and Alexander have been espeAn earlier version of this paper, entitled "Pragmatism Reconsidered," was the Roy Wood Sellars Lecture at Bucknell University, April 18, 1983. That paper was subsequently studied and criticized by Edward H. Madden and H. Standish Thayer, both of whose comments were extremely helpful. I want to thank Bucknell University, especially the Department of Philosophy, for extending me the honor of giving the Sellars Lecture; I also want to thank them for their great courtesy and good company during my visit there. I am greatly indebted to Madden and Thayer for their generosity and advice. Finally, I wish to express my apologies to my hosts at Bucknell for letting this paper sit too long on the shelf. ' The most recent instance with which I am familiar is his discussion of Allan Bloom's The Closingof theAmerican Mind in "That Old-Time Philosophy," The New Repubhc, 4 April 1988, 2833 - ' See Gary Brodsky, "Rorty's Interpretation of Pragmatism," Transactions of the Charles S. PeirceSociety[hereafter TPS] 17 (x982): 31a-38; James Campbell, "Rorty's Use of Dewey," The SouthernJournal of Phdosophy 22 (1984): 175-87; Ralph Sleeper, "Rorty's Pragmatism: Afloat in Neurath's Boat, But Why Adrift?" TPS 21 (1985): 9-2o and The Necessityof Pragmatism:John Dewey'sConception of Philosophy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), passim; Abraham Edel, "A Missing Dimension in Rorty's Use of Pragmatism," TPS 21 (1985): ~1-37; [25 l] 252 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:2 APRIL 199o cially concerned with the moral implications of Rorty's treatment of Dewey, and it is this theme that particularly interests me. My point will be to address issues to which they advert but do not examine in detail. I do not build upon their respective arguments, but start from the beginning. Accordingly, I offer just the barest statement of the views of each. Rorty, as we know, has distinguished the "good" from the "bad," or "backsliding ," Dewey.s The good Dewey is antirealist, antimethod, and antimetaphysics , among other things. His principal metaphysical work, Experience and Nature, is an epiphany of the "bad" Dewey, and it were better that Logic: The Theory of Inquiry had never been written at all.4 Sleeper attacks these claims frontally, arguing that the Logic, more than any other work, culminates Dewey's philosophy; and the Logic is predicated on the naturalistic metaphysics of Experience and Nature. Sleeper articulates and defends what he calls Dewey's "transactional realism," and he stresses that the great end and function of this realism is to support "the theory of intelligent behavior.''5 In my judgment, Sleeper is correct in this, but he stops short of telling us much about just what this theory of intelligent behavior is. Much in the same vein, Campbell urges that Rorty neglects Dewey's uppermost concern and guiding aim as a philosopher: the commitment to a methodic social reconstruction.6 In other words, Rorty fails to recognize the central importance to Dewey of working out a view of the organically inseparable relation of theory and practice. The gravamen of Alexander's polemic is much the same.7 It is not part of their respective discussions, however, to contend with Rorty specifically in respect to the role of scientific thinking in moral conduct. For his part, Rorty is not unaware of Dewey's moral commitments, but they are pronounced to...