Volume 4 of Alan Malachowski’s Richard Rorty
completes the Sage Masters of Modern Thought collection of classic and recent
essays on the influential and controversial American pragmatist philosopher
Richard Rorty. As with the other volumes, Volume 4 offers a form of
retrospective of essays on Rorty, offering a spectrum of interpretation from
1983 until 2000.  It finishes the
discussion of the significance of Rorty for questions of culture already begun
at the end of Volume 3. The main sections of the book consist of a series of 10
essays concerning the interpretation of Rorty and a group of seven essays
entitled "Conversations." A very useful bibliography of Rorty’s
publications completes the set. In general, the authors are sympathetic to the
so-called ‘end of philosophy’. Their criticisms are designed to identify
internal problems in Rorty’s readings of significant historical philosophers
that undermine the possibility of hermeneutic and postmodern reflection.

In keeping with the critical spirit
of the previous volumes, the final book identifies a number of key themes that
have emerged in Rorty criticism. Above all the essays in the section entitled
"interpretations" focus on Rorty’s readings of other philosophers,
ranging from Hegel, Heidegger and Gadamer to Wittgenstein and Davidson. Or
rather, the essays focus on his misreading of historical figures and raise
crucial questions about the adequacy of creative misreading, both for the
coherence of Rorty’s own work as well as for his reading of the tradition of
philosophy. Now, like Heidegger Rorty has often been criticized for
manipulatively and selectively reading past philosophers to suit his own
purposes. The idea here is that he is sometimes accused of displaying a
deliberate disregard for arguments as historical and contemporary philosophers
sought to present them, and a preference for mining these thinkers for discrete
ideas and problems. For Rorty, there is no point to trying to get some other
writer’s work ‘right’, because there is no fact of the matter as to the
significance of any work.  Its
significance is to be found in its capacity to shape and alter the practice of
some linguistic community in a direction heretofore undreamed of. In reading
contemporaries and historical philosophers, Rorty selects from them various
tropes, ideas, and motifs which serve some pragmatic function. 

The question is, is such creative
misreading unobjectionable. A number of the authors in this section are
variously uneasy about this.  John
Caputo and Alice Creary, among others, criticize Rorty for misreading the past
may miss, a point which may mistake the importance of the rejection of
authorial intention.  But perhaps this
disregard is not so innocuous as it might seem given that it can and does
license the deliberate disinterest in and disregard for the views of
contemporary and historical interlocutors in favor of a more narcissistic
pursuit of one’s own projects. Likewise Simon Critchley and William Connolly
raise the concern that creative misreadings might encourage us to miss exciting
interpretative possibilities in the work of other people because of the
excessive focus on our own current interests. 
In effect, by only reading works in terms of our own interests, perhaps
we limit our chance to learn from other thinkers.

A second major theme circles the
question as to the utility of Rortyan pragmatism. In a fascinating paper on
legal interpretation Michel Rosenfeld suggests that Rortyan pragmatism is
unavoidably parasitic on more fundamental norms of one kind or another. The
consequence of this, in Rosenfeld’s view, is that it cannot help a judge to
decide on divisive issues where there is no social consensus about the norms
that govern the case. In cases such as abortion and capital punishment, a
refusal to invoke fundamental norms to help decide the case leaves the judge in
an impossible interpretative position precisely because of the denial that
there is any fact of the matter or any criteria that might help the judge to
decide. Now if Rortyan pragmatism provides no resources to actually help us to
decide in such cases, then how useful is it really? Does it not leave us to
just ‘muddle through’ such cases ad hoc?  Similarly Richard Bernstein asks what kind of discourse could
possibly be appropriate once the universal element is questioned that is
requisite for the exercise of practical wisdom and judgment

Finally a number of authors launch
a strong challenge in defense of classical metaphysics. Susan Haack and Sabina
Lovibond challenge the view that we can do without either universalist language
or truth. Working in more political context, 
Lovibond disputes Rorty’s claim that feminism can do without claims to
being right about oppression, arguing that the assertion of the rightness of
one’s claims about past oppressions is indispensable if we are to dismantle
long-standing structures of oppression and replace them with non-oppressive
Socio-political arrangements. Perhaps the best and most telling criticism
articulated in the entire volume is developed by Haack.  She inquires whether the pursuit of truth
presupposes a certain kind of fallibilism not coherently describable on a
purely conversational model of the type advocated by Rorty.  She maintains that the debates about the double-helical
structure of DNA were only possible given a commitment on the part of
geneticists that the goal of genetic research was to understand the real
structure of DNA. The discovery of the structure of DNA could not have been
achieved merely through the development of suggestive and fascinating dialogues
between dilettante inquirers. In Haack’s view, objective truth is the
indispensable goal of inquiry without which science simply will not develop.
According to Haack, science requires the ancient Aristotelian saw of being able
to say of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not. To think
science can be done in any other way is to fail to understand the drive that
motivates scientists to do their work. 

            The volume
is not intended to provide the last word on Richard Rorty’s corpus, but it does
provide an excellent overall indication of its strengths and weaknesses. It is
an excellent companion to use while reading Rorty, as well as a fascinating and
independent series of reflections on history, law, and culture in its own
right.

©
2003 Richard Matthews

Link:

·      
See the review
by Alan Sussman of Volume 1of this set of books.

·      
See the review
by Richard Matthews of Volume 3of this set of books.

Richard Matthews, Ph.D., Memorial University of Newfoundland

Categories: Philosophical