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How Rorty Becomes an Apologist for Inequality
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How Rorty Becomes an Apologist for InequalityIn this final section, I wish to take issue with Rorty’s explicit and moralizing trust in the elites, the ruling class, those who, for reasons of historical advantage, currently control the productive and ideological apparatus of society. Essentially, Rorty argues that the only way to alleviate the poverty, inequality, and oppression that exists today is to appeal to the sentimentalism of the powerful. This makes little sense given the reality that the powerful have every reason to perpetuate the very arrangements responsible for those evils. First, Rorty sees no alternative to the present material arrangements in society. Like so many other privileged academics, Rorty has accepted that capitalism, the exploitation of labor, and the technologization of nature are the “final” and only possible state of affairs in the world. I am troubled not only by Rorty’s lack of revolutionary vision, but also by his ignorance of history in this regard. For there is no reason to think that capitalism will always be the dominant economic system, any more than someone living under feudalism should have thought that feudalism would always be around, or any more than a slave-owner should have thought that slavery would always be the basis of the economy. The “End of History” thesis advanced by conservatives like Francis Fukayama is understandable, but Rorty, who claims to understand both philosophy and history, should know better. Second, Rorty discourages attempts to criticize the systemic nature of those arrangements. I have already discussed this. By discouraging utopian thinking, systemic criticism, and revolutionary action, Rorty is stacking the deck in favor of a perpetual status quo. Finally, Rorty believes that “feeling” and “sentiment” are harbingers of social justice. He believes that the reason we have Brown v. Board of Education is that the elites on the Supreme Court were, primarily, emotionally moved by the arguments of then-lawyer for the plaintiffs, Thurgood Marshall. He believes that the 19th Amendment to the Constitution resulted from the hearts of powerful men somehow melting for the good of women. The problem with those beliefs, aside from their historical shakiness, is that huge protests, acts of civil disobedience, and the urgency of structural revolutions had as much, if not more to do, with the positive changes that followed these periods of unrest, as did any acts of rhetorical persuasion on the part of the activists. It is not that people, even powerful people, cannot change their minds, cannot repent of their previous evils. It is that there are sociological, historical, and power-based explanations for all of these transformations that Rorty is forced to ignore because those factors assume too many “metaphysical” structures. Based on Rorty’s pragmatic appeal to sentimentality as an agent of social justice, we ended slavery because we turned the hearts of the slaveowners. In fact, we had to kill many of them. Based on Rorty’s view, Hitler was just a twisted, unsentimental leader, and the Jews and Gypsies he killed just didn’t do a good enough job persuading the Nazis not to kill them. I guess they should have been liberal ironists—then the Holocaust never would have happened… Conclusion I am not arguing that there is no place for reforms, or that utopianism is always right, or that violent revolution is always justified. Certain factors of social life make incrementalism desirable in some circumstances. Nor am I claiming that human beings are always capable of providing the kind of systemic, comprehensive social criticism that brought slavery to an end, or democracy to birth. These movements were largely incremental to begin with. They became comprehensive and revolutionary, however, when it was made obvious to their agents that small changes were ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. The problem with Rorty’s abandonment of revolutionary thought is that many people are increasingly finding that the present injustices in society are a lot like the injustices of slavery and tyranny. The question for intellectuals, I suppose, is: What do we tell those people? If we are like Richard Rorty, we tell them that there is nothing they can do but hurt inside and try to solve some of the effects of these injustices in public life. A glance at the results of such a strategy today yields tremendous dissatisfaction. Protesters against the WTO, the Gulf War, and other large-scale systematic phenomena were met with ridicule and rage. These protesters were not (as some have accused them) trying to “change the world.” They were demanding democratic dialogue over these issues. They were answered with dismissive rhetoric, an increased level of secrecy in public policymaking, and tear gas. Ironically, more people became “revolutionaries” than became incrementalist liberals as a result of those encounters. The problem with Rorty’s abandonment of systemic thinking is that he doesn’t really abandon it. At most, he hides it behind an artificial and dangerous public-private dichotomy, in the confines of which he fails to admit that his own values are just as “metaphysical” as those which he attacks. Advocates in contemporary debates have made much of Rorty’s pragmatism, arguing, often with citations from Rorty, that we ought to do what we can, rather than re-think notions of what we can and cannot do. My arguments in this essay have fallen directly on the other side: While it is true that we ought to do what we can to solve immediate problems and relieve immediate and local suffering, I believe there has never been a more important time to reevaluate our systems, and be proud, defiant utopians. BIBLIOGRAPHYFarrell, Frank B. SUBJECTIVITY, REALISM, AND POSTMODERNISM: THE RECOVERY OF THE WORLD (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Malachowski, Alan R. READING RORTY: CRITICAL RESPONSES TO PHILOSOPHY AND THE MIRROR OF NATURE (Cambridge: B. Blackwell, 1990). Melkonian, Markar. RICHARD RORTY’S POLITICS: LIBERALISM AT THE END OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 1999). Mounce, H.O. THE TWO PRAGMATISMS: FROM PEIRCE TO RORTY (London: Routledge, 1997). Nielsen, Kai. “Taking Rorty seriously.” DIALOGUE, Summer 1999, pp. 503-18. Palumbo-Liu, David. “Awful patriotism: Richard Rorty and the politics of knowing.” DIACRITICS, Spring 1999, pp. 37-56. Peerenboom, Randall. “The limits of irony: Rorty and the China challenge.” PHILOSOPHY EAST AND WEST, January 2000, pp. 56-91. Peerenboom, Randall. “Beyond apologia: respecting legitimate differences of opinion while not toadying to dictators--a reply to Richard Rorty.” PHILOSOPHY EAST AND WEST, January 2000, pp. 92-6. Rorty, Richard. ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY: LEFTIST THOUGHT IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICA (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998). Rorty, Richard. CONSEQUENCES OF PRAGMATISM (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). Rorty, Richard. PHILOSOPHY AND THE MIRROR OF NATURE (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979). Rorty, Richard. PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Rorty, Richard. CONTINGENCY, IRONY, AND SOLIDARITY (Cambridg: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Steinoff, Uwe. “Truth vs. Rorty.” THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, July 1997, pp. 358-60. 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