BOOKS:
Richard Rorty, Liberal Absolutist

By Damon Linker

Damon Linker on Philosophy and Social Hope by Richard Rorty

When aristotle asserted that "man is a political animal," he meant many things. But above all he wished to draw our attention to the fact that man alone possesses the capacity to (in his words) perceive "good and evil, the just and unjust, and other similar qualities." And indeed, human history seems to support Aristotle in his suggestion that certain moral categories are coeval with political — that is, human — life. What we mean by such terms as good and evil, just and unjust might change considerably from time to time and place to place, but their use is unavoidable. Even Hitler justified his policies in terms of their goodness and justice. And this forces us to confront a further dimension of Aristotle’s insight: Each of the competing appeals to goodness and justice that arise within political life claims to reflect the truth of the moral order of things. We testify to our intuitive awareness of this fact when we feel it in our bones that Hitler’s policies were simply evil, regardless of how he might have tried to justify them. In such cases, we do not mean that his policies merely violated "our" standards. Rather, we mean that those policies failed to correspond to or reflect goodness and justice as they exist in themselves, independent of human thought and action. For this reason, philosophers throughout the history of the West have considered it to be obvious that politics is an activity that is inseparable from the question of truth in moral matters.

That is, until Richard Rorty. In a series of books beginning with Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Rorty has attained an astonishing degree of notoriety for a philosophy professor by consistently opposing what he calls "Platonism," or the view that our ideas about the world correspond to some fundamental reality that exists independently of those ideas. As he writes in Philosophy and Social Hope — his most accessible collection of essays to date — "we have to give up on the idea that there are unconditional, transcultural moral obligations rooted in an unchanging, ahistorical human nature." Rejecting virtually the entire tradition of Western philosophy as little more than a series of dogmatic attempts to reach an imaginary timeless truth, Rorty wonders "why philosophers . . . [are] still arguing inconclusively, tramping round and round the same dialectical circles" when they could choose, like himself, to become "pragmatists" instead. According to Rorty’s idiosyncratic version of the pragmatism of William James and John Dewey, the problems that have motivated the philosophical tradition were "made" by individuals like Plato and Aristotle rather than "found" in the human condition as such. And since they were "made," they can also be "unmade" simply by coming to employ "a different vocabulary than that which the philosophical tradition has used."

In making philosophical arguments against the supposed dogmatism of the philosophical tradition, Rorty is by no means alone. A distinguished line of European thinkers from Nietzsche and Heidegger to Foucault and Derrida have pursued similar projects. What sets Rorty apart from his predecessors is his politics. Whereas most of those who have espoused kindred ideas have tended either to be virulently antiliberal and antidemocratic in political orientation (like Nietzsche and Heidegger) or to practice a strangely antipolitical form of radical cultural politics (like Foucault, Derrida, and their many "postmodern" admirers in the American academy today), Rorty is emphatically a man of the liberal left. And it is very clear — in Philosophy and Social Hope as much as it was in 1998’s Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thoughts in Twentieth-Century America — that he thinks his anti-Platonic pragmatism is compatible with and even provides a theoretical counterpart to his politics.

Now it is certainly tempting to dismiss Rorty’s project of transforming the greatest representatives of European nihilism into liberal Democrats. And indeed, Rorty has been accused of many things over the years — from relativism and irresponsibility to opportunism and complacency — by critics on the right and far left, as he recounts in the charming autobiographical essay with which he opens his latest book. But we would be mistaken to ignore Rorty and his political position. For his work is arguably of great importance, and not merely because he is very smart and writes clever, self-deprecating essays that are widely read. Rorty’s work is worthy of attention primarily because it is so much a product of its time — our time — a time in which the liberalism of earlier generations has been subject to severe and sustained criticism on empirical, moral, religious, and even aesthetic grounds. To employ the common sense moral categories introduced above, considerable efforts have been made to show that what liberalism claims to be good and just is, in fact, neither. Given this situation, there would seem to be two options for liberals: Either they could seek to defend themselves against the charges brought against them or they could abandon liberal ideology in favor of some version of conservatism or radicalism.

Rorty’s work is noteworthy precisely because it refuses either of these alternatives. Instead, Rorty sets out on a "third way" that is unique to the history of liberal thought. That is, he espouses a form of liberalism that steadfastly refuses to defend its own goodness and justice, and which even seeks to draw strength from this refusal. Freely admitting that "I do not know how to give anything like a conclusive argument for the view [I hold]," and denying that there can be anything like a "legitimizing principle lurking behind" our actions and beliefs, Rorty nevertheless continues to hold to his left-liberal views, clinging to them as if he possessed such an argument or principle. And in doing so, Rorty presents us with the specter of liberalism as a closed ideology beyond the reach of rational criticism. Whether this shows that, in Rorty’s hands, liberalism has entered its death throes or has, paradoxically, experienced an unanticipated rebirth of vigor is an open question.

In many ways, Rorty’s political views are as banal as they come — nothing other than unreconstructed McGovernism. As he writes, "what matters" for a pragmatist like himself is "devising ways of diminishing human suffering and increasing human equality, increasing the ability of all children to start life with an equal chance of happiness." In case we fail to see the public policy implications of these goals, Rorty gives us a remarkable essay entitled "Looking Backwards from the Year 2096" in which he imagines what kind of future awaits America in the twenty-first century. As a piece of left-liberal agitprop in the guise of utopian science fiction, the brief essay would have been enough to make even Gene Roddenberry blush. It seems that, a century from now, the United States will have finally learned that "the first duty of the state is to prevent gross economic and social inequality," as opposed to insuring "only" that individuals enjoy "equal protection of the law." As a consequence of this development, workers will enjoy a minimum wage of approximately $12 an hour in 1996 dollars, "talk of fraternity and unselfishness" will have replaced "talk of rights," and citizens will be plagued by an overwhelming sense of "shame at having much when others have little." Whereas the government today feels the need to inculcate a sense of "personal responsibility" in individuals, by 2096 the state will have left behind such outmoded ideals and come, instead, to encourage fellow-feeling and the ability of individuals to sympathize with the plight of others. To be sure, this future America will be an "isolationist, unambitious, and middle-grade nation," but the country will have thereby acquired "humility" and a healthy "sense of fragility, of susceptibility to the vicissitudes of time and chance."

Thus Rorty’s liberal fantasy ends with America luxuriating in its mediocrity. Perhaps not since Herbert Marcuse’s least level-headed moments has a writer of the left expressed his hopes so purely and with so little self-consciousness. Sure, conservatives have always suspected that it is such visions that keep liberals warm during the long, cold nights of their exile from political power. But it’s been a long time since an author has dared to wear his bleeding heart on his sleeve in mixed company with such palpable pride.

And yet, what makes Rorty’s political views so surprising is not their unabashed sentimentality or the fact that, published years after a Democratic president announced that the "era of big government is over," they are an anachronistic echo of a bygone age. Rather, what’s astonishing about Rorty’s political positions is that he offers no defense of them whatsoever — and that this principled refusal to appeal to principle actually emboldens him to advocate the subversion of all views of goodness and justice that compete with the liberal cause. In this, he resembles Peter Singer, the controversial Princeton University "ethicist" whose absolutist utilitarianism leads him to run roughshod over common sense moral opinions and intuitions by condoning infanticide at the same time that he defends animal rights. In Rorty’s case, all non-liberal views must be rejected if they do not contribute to realizing "greater human happiness" for the species as a whole. And since "the benefits of modern astronomy and space travel" clearly outweigh those of, say, Christian fundamentalism, we must learn to "slough off" the latter as useless "baggage" that will only slow down the march of progress.

If this sounds intolerant, that’s because it is. The doctrine of tolerance advocated by classical liberals like Locke and Montesquieu, Madison and Jefferson was devised in order to ensure that individuals who held to divergent notions of goodness and justice could live together in peace despite their differences. Tolerance does not require that those individuals share identical goals in life. In fact, it presupposes the opposite; one allows people to adhere to their views despite one’s belief that those views are wrong. Hence, in a tolerant society, the only thing on which various individuals and groups have to agree is that peace and stability are preferable to civil war and tyranny, and thus that none of our disagreements about the truth of our competing views of goodness and justice warrant the persecution or forcible conversion of one another.

But Rorty is not a classical liberal. He is, instead, a "philosophical pluralist." And a philosophical pluralist differs from an advocate of tolerance in at least one crucial respect: The pluralist denies that, strictly speaking, any of the competing views of goodness and justice that prevail in a free society is true. This is how Rorty tries to get around the charge that his dismissal of Christian fundamentalism is intolerant — by denying that truth is at stake between a pious believer and a scientist. As he writes in a representative sentence, "the argument between us and our medieval ancestors should not be about which of us has got the universe right." Instead, we should simply ask which of the two views is a more "useful tool" for bringing about greater happiness in the world. Once we do so, we will clearly see that the modern scientific worldview is more worthy of our devotion than, for example, the pre-modern notion of a "great chain of being," and thus that we need not try to "reconcile one’s regular attendance at Mass with one’s work as an evolutionary biologist." For each practice and cluster of beliefs merely arises from different "areas of culture and serves different purposes," and each of those purposes simply requires that we employ "different tools."

To be sure, for most of us it matters deeply whether man was created in the image of God or evolved from lifelessness over the course of billions of years. But Rorty claims it doesn’t matter to him and he makes it very clear that in his liberal utopia it wouldn’t matter to anyone else either. In Rorty’s ideal world, no one would ever face an intractable problem that inspires deep reflection or confront a contradiction that cries out for resolution. Beliefs would be tried on and taken off like so many articles of clothing in a wardrobe of moral, religious, and scientific perspectives, the truth of any one of which is a matter of unconcern.

Does this make Rorty a relativist, as so many of his critics have claimed? On the contrary. As anyone reading his new book will note, Rorty’s work is filled with statements that reveal that his stated indifference with regard to the truth is based on a set of barely submerged convictions about the truth of any number of issues. For instance, Rorty is a self-described atheist for whom religion is at best an annoying "conversation-stopper" and at worst a "dangerous" obstacle to the attainment of the goal of universal happiness and fraternity — a goal, by the way, that he considers to be "worth dying for." That is, at least at some points in his book. At others, his project is described as a "worthy" one for no other reason than that "we have nothing better to do with our lives." But one gets the feeling that he is being more honest with himself and readers when he writes in the book’s final sentence, "utopian social hope . . . is still the noblest imaginative creation of which we have record."

Is there a God who exists independently of human longings for immortality? Is a goal like the one Rorty articulates really worth dying for? Do we indeed have nothing better to do with our lives than pursue Rorty’s project? Is the conception of utopian social hope that Rorty articulates in his writings truly noble? However we may choose to answer these questions — each one of which forces us to ponder the truth about the order of things that prevails in the world around us — there can be no doubt that Rorty has answered them and that it is only in the light of these answers that he has developed the characteristic stance of indifference that some mistake for relativism. Far from being a genuine relativist, Rorty is actually a liberal absolutist. And that is why his conservative critics are right to sense that his ideas are a considerable threat. For whereas the toleration of classical liberalism leaves competing views of justice and goodness largely intact, Rorty’s pragmatic liberalism — like the "neutrality" pursued with such partisan zeal by the aclu — actively seeks to remake those views in its own image of the good, the just, and the true.

Refusing to admit that his views about politics, like everyone else’s, are meant to be an accurate description of the world as it is in itself, Rorty studiously avoids having to face and respond to criticism of those views. Instead, he merely "changes the conversation," to employ his preferred turn of phrase. In this, his manner of argument resembles the Marxist appeal to "false consciousness," according to which all views that seem to disprove the validity of Marx’s predictions are summarily dismissed as examples of exactly the forms of thinking that will be overthrown in the imminent revolution. But there is an important difference between Marx and Rorty. Because Marxism was meant to be an accurate description of the world, it was, unlike Rorty’s views, ultimately vulnerable to being refuted by reality, as it eventually was by the late 1980s. Rorty’s "pragmatism," on the other hand, makes no claim to truth and is thus in a very real sense irrefutable. What remains to be seen is whether today’s liberals will be tempted by Rorty’s promise of invincibility — if, confronted with increasing evidence that their beliefs do not accurately represent reality, they will be willing to purchase the survival of their liberalism at the cost of becoming inmates in the prison of their ideas.