Re: Rorty on socialism (fwd)

[xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

We have to clarify the intellectual tradition Rorty belongs before taking
at face value his conflation of Marxist rhetoric with Nazi rhetoric. It is
not my intention to go into details of his intellectual mainstreamism and
one-sided reductionism here. Indeed, as somebody hinted, it may be
legitimate to draw some conclusions between Derrida and Rorty if one
instead thinks about their critique of science, reason and rationality,
ie., the meta-narrative discourses of modernity and enlightenment.  On the
other hand, while the "key word" anti-foundantionalism charecterizes both
at a more abstract level, I do not think that they can be put in the same
camp because Rorty, broadly defined, belongs to the American pragmatic
tradition that dates back to Dewey, drawing upon the liberal-libertarian
debate between Rawls and Nozick. Rorty's post-modernism is definitive of a
specific brand of thinking that we call "new pragmatism" in the US (See
for this, John Gunnel,_The Descent of Political Theory: The Genealogy of
American Vocation, Chigago Press, 1993). This tradition resembles
many assumptions of the post-modernists (scientific knowledge is a
discourse rhetoric), yet it differs from French structuralism's attempt of
analyzing knowledge in terms of linguistic structures, utterances and
discourses (coming from Althusser and anthropologist Levi Strauss through
Foucault and Derrida).

Rorty's analysis of the methodological foundations of social sciences--
the philosphical question of how we, as scientists, make the world
knowable and comprehensible--potentially lies in what Rorty calls
"idealizations". Somewhat resembling Kuhn, yet without being phrased in
a paradigmatic language, Rorty defines idealizations as "high levels of
abstractions between competing visions of the utopian future of our
community" (Rorty, "Idealizations, Foundations, and Social Practices" in
_Democracy and Difference_, Seyla Benhabib ed., Princeton, 1996. p.333).
As Rorty continues, foundationalism is intrinsically linked to
idealizations because social scientists fundemantally aim to ground, and
build upon, their knowledges on certain a priori foundations, such as
human nature, rationality, or in more political economic terms such as
class. Rorty finds this philosophical foundantionalism politically
limiting, because, according to him, it rules out the possibility of moral
concerns and community. With that said, Rorty does not choose the straight
forward option of rejecting foundations altogether, but gives a
post-romantic (post-modern) "twist" of combining science with "emotivism"
and "intuitivism". In the below passage, you can see that, Rorty, drawing
upon Dewey, misidentifies a lot of philosophical issues in
enlightenment, and partially collapses science to religion or metaphysics
(because of his sympathy with Dewey), just as he conflates Marxian
rhetoric with Nazi rhetoric. In my view, his below comments are
both theoretically paradoxical and scientically suspect. They also reveal
his post-romantic moralism, much of which resemble the ideas
anti-modernist, reactionary, intellectuals of inter-war Germany like
heidhegger, carl schmit, etc.. Rorty defends his anti-foudantialism as
follows:

"Anti-foundantialism is identified with emotivism and irrationalism by
those who will accept a moral psychology that distinquishes between reason
and passions. But this psychology has been in trouble since Darwin,as has
the idea of human nature. Anti-foundationalist Darwinians like Dewey
differ from amoralist Darwinians like Nietzche in wanting to reconcile
moral intiutions with a naturalistic sense of ourselves as simply clever
animals. Dewey wanted to reconcile Christian ethics with Darwin and
Mendel, just as Kant had wanted to reconcile Christian ethics with a
morally indifferent, corpuscularian physical universe" (p.334).

While one can be a Darwinian without being a Nietzchean (what is implicit
in Rorty), one can not be, in principle, Darwinian and Christian or any
other religion (unless you are one of those creationist scientists)--the
two irreconciables Rorty try to reconcile in the name of moralism... Given
his moralism and religiosity, why should we take seriously Rorty's
comments on socialism...or his adulterated version of science.. I thought
we transcended religion in this forum..


merci,

Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx
Phd student
Political Science
SUNY/Albany
Albany/New York.



it was written:

>Rorty
>foundationalism limited >> Richard Rorty, "For a more banal politics".
>
>> Excerpted from the article:
>
>> "In the wake of the events of 1989 and 1991, it has become clear that
American
>> leftist intellectuals stand in need of a new political vocabulary.
Visitors from
>> postrevolutionary Eastern and Central Europe are going to stare at us
>< incredulously if we continue to use the word "socialism" when we
describe our
>> political goals. Indeed, given the suffering they have endured under
regimes
>< that called themselves Marxist, our Eastern European friends are likely
to
>> feel that Marxist rhetoric is no more respectable than Nazi rhetoric.
Just as
> >we would be justifiably suspicious of anyone who spoke of "Hitler's
excesses,"
> >so our colleagues in Czechoslovakia and Hungary will be outraged if we
continue
> >to speak, as many Western intellectuals still do, of "Stalin's
excesses."  We
>> will have to stop repeating Trotsky's claim that Stalin betrayed a
promising
>> revolution and begin to see Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin
>> as Vladimir Nabokov did:  as three ruthless gangsters, distinguishable
only by
>> their facial hair.