Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

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Summary: There's nothing wrong with pragmatism....
Review: American intellectuals who are politically liberal face a problem. They are the happy inheritors of a tradition built around Judeo-Christian values (such as concern for the poor) and Enlightenment social institutions (representative democracy, free market economy, etc.) but, having read their Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud, they can no longer give credence to the metaphysical notions (God's Will and Universal Reason) which have historically grounded our admirable social practices. In this book Richard Rorty, like John Dewey before him, argues that the ONLY justification a political institution or social policy requires is that it WORKS. Look not to lofty origins, but to concrete results. Of course, American intellectuals who are politically liberal tend to value programs whose results promote human growth, personal liberty, and social solidarity. But their enthusiasm for such goods will be tinged with irony, since they realize that there's nothing universal about these preferences (had Socrates, Jesus, and Jefferson died in their cradles our list of desirable ends might look very different-- Rorty calls this contingency). This book concludes with the suggestion that in a liberal utopia the bourgeois distinction between the public and the private would be a strong one, thus freeing individuals to pursue their own private perfection, a project Rorty feels is sometimes threatened from extremists on the Left and on the Right. This is a wonderful book, but potential readers who are ignorant of 20th century intellectual history will probably find the opening chapters pretty rough going.

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Summary: A good resource for use and abuse.
Review: An amiable work that skillfully countervails the pretentious self-importance that pervades the chic pseudo-disciplines of "culural studies," "deconstructionism," and whatever other shallow fare that is served up these days under the auspices of "post-modernism." However, readers of a genuinely philosophical temper may recoil at Rorty's glaringly tendentious engagement with the likes of Heidegger, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Beneath the generally helpful suggestions concerning the self-image of non-theistic liberal intellectuals is a lot of fluff which passes for self-evident profundity among those lacking the severity appropriate to philosophers.

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Summary: Contingency, Irony and Solidarity
Review: Contingency, Irony and Solidarity is great book if you are in neopragmatism, linguistic relativity or other neo-something. But if you think more in depth you will see that Rorty's basic statement that new vocabulary that replace old vocabulary is still recognized as entity "vocabulary". Without broader idea that language "Is" that vocabulary changing concept wouldn't be possible. Rorty is definitively interesting philosopher as philosopher which clearly shows 20th century spirit, but to be one's final station is as dangerous as to hold Nietzsche as definitive philosopher.

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Summary: Pragmatism = moral subjectivism.
Review: G.K. Chesterton once said that man's most pragmatic need is to be something more than a pragmatist. Without a "more than" pragmatic end, no one can truly be pragmatic. Quite obviously, pragmatism doesn't "work" because it isn't practical.

Rorty wants us to move out of a post-metaphysical age and stop talking about "truth" just as "we" stopped talking about God. Rorty goes no further than this, leaving the implications of a Godless universe unexplored. He ultimately wants us to adopt his form of moral subjectivism--what works "for you"--that reduces truth to "what works," losing a distinctive and independent meaning in the process

Pragmatism: Not for me.

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Summary: Too complex
Review: I like books, but this book was too complex. I read lots and lots of books, but Rorty's arguments are too confusing. Subjects on literature and politics and history are too hard to be put in the same book. I believe books like this are written for the elites who like books that are too complex for others who enjoy books on a normal basis like I.

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Summary: Get your arse back on the "Metaphysical" horse!
Review: I was charmed and seduced for a while by this book and by the P.Modern writers I dabbled in after reading it. But then I read Marcuse. Rorty doesn't like Marcuse because he dares to theorise on a true return to the "Enlightenment Project" as Rorty refers to it rather than an "Ironic Continginest" return to that project which is basically: we've been tossed off the metaphysical horse too many times to bother trying to get back up on it again so lets just stay on the ground and keep our speculations limited to ourselves--never again uttering the word 'social' for fear of commiting the dreaded PM sin of logocentrism--like a bunch of scardy-cats, and poke fun at anyone with enough overies to try to ride again.

I'm totaly put off by Bloom's "Strong Poet" and "anxiety of influence" which Rorty--who adores anyone who thinks like him [pragmaticly] whether that person does or not [Donald davidson, Arthur Danto in "The American Philosopher"]--embraces to advance his stay-at-home agenda. Let me tell you that the person who comes up with the next big social idea isn't going to have frittered away their time worrying about whether they are original or not. The world needs fewer 'geniuses' and 'strong poets' and more men and women outside the acadamies who are willing to roll up their sleeves and think.

Okay, Mr. Rorty, what if there IS a way to pacify nature (inner and outer) in a way that allows everyone the option of living a comfortable middle class life like you and I are living? Shouldn't some of us out here still hold onto that hope and continue the critique of this society and ponder a cure for all? Does thinking for the whole crew always mean some horrible Hitlarian, Maoean, Stalinian, Bushian end? How come the people trying to cure cancer don't have to footnote everything they say with, "But this is just for those individuals who WANT to be cured of cancer; we're not suggesting EVERYONE has to take this pill"? I'll say for myself that if someone comes up with a truely decent idea for getting everyone on an equel footing and off the absurdy cruel and unequel footing society is now on, I'll volenteer for the team. Because, seriously, look around and tell me what I've got to lose?

And don't forget, you were the one who later called to our attention Derrida's getting at least within smelling distance of "Marxbisquet's" [a meta-narratavistic horse if there ever was one!] stable["Spectors of Marx"] after he reading Fukuama's book ["The End of History"].

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Summary: Rorty has so much to offer
Review: Identity politics is all the rage in philosophy and literary criticism these days, so you can count on the academic world to ignore a great thinker like Richard Rorty.

Rorty was trained in analytic philosopher, so he has a capacity for logical reasoning that we haven't seen since Willard Quine. Rorty's prose is always very readable, very entertaining, and very chatty. Unlike postmodern thinkers, who mask very simple ideas behind impenetrable writing, Rorty speaks in very clear terms about incredibly complicated and brilliant ideas. You'll understand Rorty's ideas as you read them, with the help of his wonderful analogies ("Culture develops like a coral reef") but you'll find that when you call up a friend to tell her that you've just read the best philosophy book you've ever read, you'll find yourself unable to rehearse Rorty's arguments. They're often that complex. If they're hard to repeat, imagine what a thinker it takes to come up with them in the first place.

CONTINGENCY - Rorty brilliantly agrees with postmodern critics that identities, communities, and languages are all "contingent." In other words, there is nothing essential or inherent about the ways in which we identify ourselves. Instead, individuals and their communities are arbitrarily constructed in ways that bear no relation to any grand truth written in the stars.

IRONY - Irony, as in ironism, as in "liberal ironism" (I'll get to that in a moment) involves recognizing contingency. It involves living in communities, using language, and identifying ourselves with the understanding that the truth claims that we make on a day-to-day basis are not True in any metaphysical sense, but are simply acceptable habits of speech. When philosopher-historian Michel Foucault introduced this theme explicitly in THE ORDER OF THINGS, the liberal community freaked out, and the liberal community is pretty freaked out that one of its own - Rorty - could agree with Foucault that truth is always local, contingent, and relative. But folks, it's OK! Really! That's where the "liberal" part comes in:

SOLIDARITY - Rorty defines liberals to be people who think that cruelty is the worst thing we do (he's quoting someone... I don't remember who). The object of human activity should be to eradicate cruelty, to continue to offer our kindness to as many people (and whatever else - animals, perhaps?) as possible such that all humans display a hospitality that crosses racial lines. Recognizing the contingency of nationality, race, religion, gender, etc., we can reach out to each other in the service of Rorty's liberal goal. This is called liberal ironism.

Rorty dives into postmodernity and comes out sounding like Ralph Nader. Martin Heidegger declared that the demise of metaphysical Truth means philosophy is over. Not so. Rorty has shown us that philosophy can persist after the death of God (see Nietzsche).

This is the most well-written, brilliantly conceived, and persuasive text I've ever read. Its only close rival is PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL HOPE, also by Rorty.

Also includes great essays on Nabokov and Orwell.

Great for anyone interested in philosophy, politics, literature... or just smart people. Wow, what a good book!

Rating:
Summary: A pleasure to read
Review: In this book, Rorty presents one of the most informative and understandable formulations of several concepts that often are not presented so clearly, such as historicism, pragmatism, and a non-correspondence theory of language. However, it might be that Rorty makes these ideas so accessable because he fails to explain why exactly we should accept these concepts. Although Rorty's idea of a "libeal utopia" is attractive, he never demonstrates why we should all be "sufficiently historicist and nominalist" in order for such a society to exist, and furthmore makes a perhaps unacceptable assumption that the private can be distinguished from the public. After all, "strong poets" traditionally havent been the nicest people. Although Rorty provides interesting interpretations of writers such as Freud, Derrida, Nietzsche and Heidegger, he is unfortunately terribly inconsistent in his respective treatments of these writers. For example, while critisizing Nietzsche and Heidegger for falling back into the old metaphysical need to "theorize" via the will to power and Being, he claims that Freud has allowed for us to see ourselves a "historical contingencies", never mentioning the fact that just as Nietzsche worshipped power and Heidegger worshipped Being, Freud worshipped Oedipus. Overall, an informative, extremely readable work with a lot of interesting ideas despite the inconsistencies in Rorty's thought.

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Summary: Rorty's Greatest Postmodern Book
Review: In _Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity_, Rorty explores the end of objective realism due to linguistic faults in our language. I find Rorty's claims insightful and stimulating in this book, which is what we except from such a writer. In the book, Rorty examines the issue of our personal contingencies, and how the ideas that we have based on those contingencies should immediately placed under suspicion.

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Summary: What's Wrong With Pragmatism...
Review: It's certainly worth reading, but as a computer-oriented person, I still come back to forms, existence, and negation. Rorty still seems to think we can climb out of the Age of Enlightenment by abandoning the means by which we got there and then proceed to create this "classless" society, which derives from his notion of universal solidarity.

The arguments for contingency and irony seem to be a set up for solidarity in a makeshift humanitarian algebra. However, to me this universal idea of solidarity just doesn't jibe with his contingency and irony arguments. It's just an abstract and universal/utopian populism.

Yes, we are all pretty much stuck in our own point-of-view, but the contingencies themselves are evolving, such that universal solidarity is only as strong as the agreement/contingency that creates it; and that is tenuous at best. For example, one person's cruelty is another's useful discipline, without which society might fail to evolve; that is, all convicts see themselves as innocent, all prosecuters as protectors of a free people, etc.

Rorty also deals with general concepts, but doesn't want to get into an Aristotleian exegesis because it isn't useful. But putting it through those paces reveals it for what it is: a liar's paradox.

Reason still has a strong foundation, but its weaknesses need to be examined, as the practice is still "useful." Russell, Whitehead, and Godel have covered this in mathematics as Church and Turing have in computer science, and Heisenburg did in Physics. In the end, it devolves into an irrational justification for socialism, and since that has been, in part, responsible for 70 million deaths this century I think it's "useful" to rethink these ideas very carefully as the practice betrays the notion of solidarity...unless we want to engage in the mutually assured destruction policies of the '60s and find our universal solidarity in the death and extinction of humanity.