Value Added Philosophy

(this post was written by Kyle on October 25, 2005, and it concerns & & )

{ 1 }

In his book, , Richard Rorty proposes three major theses that, he suggests, will change the direction of contemporary philosophy.

His first thesis is that modern philosophy (since Kant1) has understood itself as epistemology, as a discipline devoted to “the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge.”2 Unfortunately, writes Rorty, this discipline depends on philosophers forgetting that two important metaphors:

  • mind as a blank slate that receives impressions from the outside world;
  • consciousness as the Mind’s Eye that can observe these impressions;

are exactly that — they are metaphors. They are not accurate descriptions of what is, and to build a science around them (even a science of philosophy) is to ignore the linguistic nature of epistemology’s foundations.

Because epistemology proceeds from accepting a metaphor as a statement of realistic fact, Rorty’s second thesis is that philosophers should abandon it for hermeneutics, not because the latter can fill the space left empty by the abandonment of the former, but because, when the former is abandoned, all that is left is conversation3, to which hermeneutics is uniquely suited. Hermeneutics, as Rorty understands it, is the method of the “informed dilettante, the polypragmatic, Socratic intermediary between various discourses.”4 The hermeneutic philosopher is the philosopher who tries “to make sense of what is going on.”5

The notion of something making sense needs to be understood as separate from something being true. Something that makes sense does so only within a particular matrix: to make something sensible is to determine its place within a specific structure of understanding, to place it within a grid of discourse where it can be understood by those people who share that discourse. That this particular thing must also be true does not follow.

Where the epistemological philosopher thought of himself as a qualified judge between competing knowledge claims, the hermeneutical philosopher thinks of herself as a qualified mediator between incommensurable vocabularies:

Hermeneutics sees the relation between various discourses as those strands in a possible conversation, a conversation which presupposes no disciplinary matrix which unites the speakers, but where the hope of agreement is never lost so long as the conversation lasts. This hope is not a hope for the discovery of antecedently existing common ground, but simply hope for agreement, or, at least, exciting and fruitful disagreement.6

Rorty is suggesting that, in a postcolonial world where many have come to accept the relativity theory of truth, hermeneutics provides philosophers with the best chance to make meaningful contributions to the global society.

If the role of the philosopher is as hermeneutical mediator, then one has to wonder in what way this role is best performed; if hermeneutics is what philosophers should do, then one must ask how to do it. Rorty’s third thesis tries to give direction. Hermeneutics is best performed, he writes, if the philosopher strives to attain some semblance of edification:

Since ‘education’ sounds a bit too flat, and Bildung a bit too foreign, I shall use ‘edification’ to stand for this project of finding new, better, more interesting, more fruitful ways of speaking [in order] to take us out of our old selves by the power of strangeness, to aid us in becoming new beings.7

Rorty tells us that this is the philosophical performance of “Goethe, Kierkegaard, Santayana, William James, Dewey, the later Wittgenstein, the later Heidegger”8 and Derrida.9 In Rorty’s story of the ascendancy of epistemology to the throne of philosophy, these philosophers find themselves cast as the antagonists. They “are reactive and offer satires, parodies, and aphorisms…[They] destroy [the uncritical acceptance of philosophical systems] for the sake of their own generation.”10 If one wants to perform edifying philosophy, then, one must be careful not to offer totalizing systems of one’s own.

Unfortunately, directions of what not to do are not exactly the same thing as directions of what to do, and it is this last kind of direction that Rorty, due to the nature of his hermeneutical project, is unable to offer. If we think of the hermeneutical philosopher as a mediator between two interested parties, we must never forget that this role precludes her from participating as an interested party herself (that is, with an interest other than “continuing the conversation”11). The best that Rorty can do in way of explaining how one goes about performing edifying philosophy is to point to the works of those philosophers that he has previously categorized, specifically, Heidegger and Wittgenstein:

One reason they manage…[to decry the very notion of having a view, while avoiding having a view about having views]…is that they do not think that when we say something we must necessarily be expressing a view about a subject. We might just be saying something—participating in a conversation rather than contributing to an inquiry.12

Rorty’s argument, in short, is that the goals of the epistemological project should be abandoned because they can only be reached if we forget the project’s foundation is based on metaphor, and that their abandonment leaves us with nothing other than conversation between incommensurable discourses. This setting of confusion allows hermeneutics, which is unique in its ability to mediate this conversation, to perform as the heroic philosophy, the single philosophical project that consciously embarks upon the never-ending quest for edification.

{ 2 }

That time moves and that it is always only now that we (can) have any knowledge of (it), that the grand theories of truth are no longer accepted as true, that relationships have lessened at the same time as they have increased, that life has become both real and virtual, that image alone has been knowingly and wrongly accepted as reality, that the media makes the world more immediate than ever before at the same time as it decreases presence and inflates the present, that rationality is being shaken by the force of reason alone, that our culturally caused confusion is the natural state of our humanity, and that we still have a future — such is my experience today.

It is from standing within such an experience that I feel the truth of the first part of Rorty’s argument. To say, as I have, that “The proposition that the epistemological project is bound to fail is a no-brainer,” is to say that my conscious mind does not even consider, under my mind’s own force, the truth-claim of its alternative. The reality of never-having-complete-certainty is the only reality I am even close to certain about. What is more important, however, is that it is only in defense of this Weltanshauung that I find myself compelled to fight — that is, I can only argue with a genuine voice if I am arguing against the Offensive Nature of Fundamentalism (where offensive nature of fundamentalism is the metaphorical anthroporphization of a specific meme).

While an investigation of this compulsion is outside of the scope of this paper, I suspect that a list of the prime suspects behind it would read like a who’s who of my reading history. I also suspect that this list of my reading history would resemble a partial list of Rorty’s reading history; which is to say, we are both liberal Americans whose sense of liberalness expands beyond the realm of “mere politics.” It is this due to this shared sense of liberalness that allows us to feel the truth of a necessarily uncertain world. Because we are compatriots, in this sense, I sympathize with the attack Rorty has made upon epistemology. He seems compelled by the same forces that would compel me (the force and strategy of his attack lies in the aphorism, “The best defense is a strong offense”). However, it does not follow from the fact that I sympathize with Rorty that I must approve of his method or agree with his conclusion.

Because, in truth, I do not.

–What is Rorty’s method then, and why do you disagree with it?

Rorty’s method is what I have been calling an attack on epistemology. He sees this attack as following in the tradition of those writers whom he calls edifying philosophers. His classifying concepts of these philosophers are that they are reactive and destructive, with the target of their wrath being models designed by systematic philosophers. Rorty equates this latter group with philosophers who yearn for a totalizing form for philosophy.13 He positions himself in the camp of the edifying philosophers and he recognizes the polemical movement that must be made prior to such an entrenchment.14 In short, he sees the systematic philosopher as an Other whose invasive maneuvers must be repelled. His method, then, is the method of battle.15

The interesting thing is that Rorty is fighting for the need to stop fighting, as if accepting a paradox between what he wants and how he achieves it is a legitimate compromise for him to make.16 The compromise amounts to this: Rorty would rather perform as the Other than accept the presence of the Other; in other words, it is okay to be Other as long as Rorty is the one being the Other.

I cannot agree with any of that. Even if I accepted systematic philosophers as Other, I cannot accept the need to eradicate their presence within my field of view. Contrary to what Rorty asserts, the move to react against and be destructive toward systematic philosophy is not essential to the concept of edifying philosophy that he is trying to promote. In fact, I would suggest that Rorty’s acceptance of the presence of these strategies within his concept of edification does greater harm to his project than the presence of the systematic philosophers. Rorty writes that he will use “‘edification’ to stand for this project of finding…better…ways of speaking…[in order] to aid us in becoming new beings.” I cannot agree that the concept envisioned by “better ways of speaking” includes the presence of a confrontational, destructive strategy. The “new beings” who would speak this way would not be “better” than the current beings we have now if they still suffer under the illusion that destructive confrontation is a “better strategy” than creative conversation.17

Which brings us to his conclusion, specifically, that the role of philosopher is to serve as a mediator between incommensurable vocabularies, which would mean that the process in which she would engage is best theorized under the concept of hermeneutics (that theory would, of course, be a meta-philosophy). This would relegate the philosopher to the status of a translation machine, where the input of vocabulary Y is output as vocabulary Z. Ideally, then, the presence of the philosopher within the conversation has a value of zero.18 But if Rorty’s ideal philosopher has a value of zero, how is she supposed to add her voice to the global project of edifying discourse, if not as the voice, then at least as a voice? It seems that Rorty is okay with the presence of philosophers, as long as they don’t say anything.

Again, I cannot agree with him. While I think that philosophers can function as mediators, I think it is silly to consider their ideal value in the conversation as zero. If nothing else, professional philosophers are well read individuals [in a quantitative (if not qualitative) sense].19 To throw away, or to blatantly purge, the voices of these educated individuals is to abandon some of the finest minds on the planet. Such a move would be suicide for the project for edification. It is as if we ask to be taught, but refuse to consider our teachers as valuable, as if we thought education meant the pure transmission of data. One does not have to be an evolutionary theorist to recognize the stagnant system that describes, and it is impossible for Rorty’s concept of edification to contain a program that results in stagnancy.

In lieu of the hermeneutic program that Rorty proposes as the proper process of edifying philosophy, I suggest that his concept of edification inspires the creation of a program that offers philosophers a more valuable role in the conversation of the world.

This program still serves under the name of edifying philosophy, but where Rorty saw reaction and destruction, I see deconstruction and creation. Without the posterior act of creation, deconstruction is little more than a method of reading. Without the prior act of deconstruction, creation is only slightly less pretentious than religion. Both of these claims are highly controversial, so please allow me to explain.

I understand deconstruction as analogous to the method used by the doctor who studies life by studying corpses. This analogy is motivated by the Derridean equation that life/death is as speech/writing. Deconstruction is the process used by the reader of a text in order to follow the text’s implications. The deconstructive reader de-constructs the text as carefully as (if not more carefully than) the writer who constructed it. Where the destructive reader uses a wrecking ball, the deconstructive reader uses tweezers. The only thing the destructive reader and the deconstructive reader have in common is the result: a pile of parts with no whole in site. Rorty and other destructive philosophers consider their job complete when they see this pile, but I suggest that this is where the challenge is laid at the philosopher’s feet.

Before I explain how I think the philosopher can best pick up that challenge, let me explain why without the prior act of deconstruction, creation is only slightly less pretentious than religion.

Paul Ricoeur has argued that the philosophical gesture is the creation of a space that allows a person who belongs to history to distance herself enough from history to signify her own lived experience.20 The person who would create this space and then fill it with nothing that belongs to history performs the same move as the religion that would create this space and then fill it with the timeless essence of God. They both fill the space with nothing that is immanent, so neither actively contributes to the historic conversation of the world.

I suggest that this space is best used by the edifying philosopher to create something new from the most valuable parts she has found in the de-construction of her philosophy.21 The edifying philosopher should not merely translate the story of the world so that all of us are on the same page, but rather, she should help us take up the story for ourselves. She should contribute to the writing of history, not merely as our amanuensis, but as a full partner in our creative action. The goal is not, as Rorty says, to continue the conversation. The goal is to help write a climax with enough force to explode us into the next chapter of being.

Footnotes

  1. Richard Rorty, , NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 132. ♠
  2. Rorty, 140. ♠
  3. If epistemology is our last effort to hook our concepts onto the world (which it may not be), then its abandonment implies an abandonment of the quest for Objectivity; and if we abandon Objectivity, then all we have left is what X says about Y, and whether we agree; in other words, all that is left is a complicated version of he said, she said.♠
  4. Rorty, 317. ♠
  5. Rorty, 320. ♠
  6. Rorty, 318. ♠
  7. Rorty, 360. ♠
  8. Rorty, 367. ♠
  9. Rorty, 365. ♠
  10. Rorty, 369. ♠
  11. The reader must not unconsciously include any evaluative “just” or “merely” before the phrase “continuing the conversation.” Regardless of its position in relation to Reality, edification is no less challenging a project than epistemology. ♠
  12. Rorty, 371. ♠
  13. “A ‘mainstream’ Western philosopher says: Now that such-and-such a line of inquiry has had such stunning success, let us reshape all inquiry, and all of culture, on its model…,” Rorty, 367 [my emphasis]. ♠
  14. Rorty, 364-365. ♠
  15. See George Lakoff’s for an investigation of the common “argument as battle” metaphor. ♠
  16. It seems Rorty takes his acceptance of this paradox from seeing himself as falling within the tradition of Plato — simply put, he believes that a philosopher must argue (p. 370); I disagree only in the way he equates “argue” with “battle,” which I suggest is contrary to his notion of edification. ♠
  17. Rorty could say here that he is not the “new being” he envisions, and so he should not be judged by the same standards. This might be true, but if he accepts that edification is analogous to education, as he does, regardless of how “flat” education may be (p. 360), then I would suggest he consider the notion that the best teacher is the one who teaches through example. Then again, in the 26 years between the publication of this book and now, Rorty has left philosophy for Comparative Literature, which could mean that he has already had this entire discussion with himself. ♠
  18. Of course, this is unattainable ideal. ♠
  19. “Perhaps…one’s self-identification as a philosopher will be purely in terms of the books one reads and discusses, rather than in terms of what problems one wishes to solve,” Rorty, 394. ♠
  20. “The critical moment can be integrated with the relation of belonging only if distanciation is consubstantial with belonging. Phenomenology shows that this is possible when it elevates to a philosophical decision the virtual act of instituting the ‘empty space’ that enables a subject to signify his lived experience and his belonging to a historical tradition,” Paul Ricoeur, “ Phenomenology and Hermeneutics,” From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans. John B. Thompson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 41. ♠
  21. I give ownership of the parts to the deconstructive philosopher and not to the “original architect” of the “original philosophy.” It is my contention that the de-construction (as object) is no less valuable (as process) than the construction; the theory behind this problematic contention (and construction) goes way beyond the scope of this paper, however. ♠