Pragmatic Studies:

“And I think this has application to Nicolae and Tom’s proposal that it should be about social justice as well as my proposal concerning the import of Play. Basically, Rorty starts the book by pointing towards the historical conflict between private and public approaches towards philosophy and culture in general: the private being about self creation and the public being about social justice, both of which must use language games that are incommensurable. And his solution is to simply accept the incommensurability while looking at the various language games as tools designed for various tasks:”

“To say that Freud’s vocabulary gets at the truth about human nature, or Newton’s at the truth about the heavens, is not an explanation of anything. It is just an empty compliment - one traditionally paid to writers whose novel jargon we have found useful.” -Richard Rorty. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Kindle Locations 182-184). Kindle Edition.

And use value is what it is all about. As T.S. Eliot said of poetry:

“Mediocre poets imitate. Great poets steal.”

And if we think about what makes the great works we look at, read, or listen to important to us, it basically comes down to what we can use to further our own processes. It comes down to what we can use in either a positive way (what can make our process better (or a negative one: what we would choose to avoid to make our processes better. All other criteria are merely a means to that end: that of resonance and seduction through which Play works.

This is why it makes no sense to come on these boards and start flashing around words like “objectivity” or “rationality” or “the scientific method” like badges of authority (which are basically attempts to control the rules of the language game –think: Layotard (when one would be far better off just showing us the results of their methods and let the results speak for those methods. To not do so, as Rorty points out, is to act like language is somehow out in the world waiting for us to find the right way to say or write it. But as Spinoza would say: this is absurd. And it’s not just the boards we see this at work in, but professional scientists as well such as Hawking and de Gras Tyson who turn the whole thing into a pissing contest like a couple schoolyard punks when they argue that science will displace philosophy. The irony of it, though, is their failure to see the extent that the validation of Capitalism is propping up their hubris.

Once again, like the trolls flashing the badge of scientific and objective authority on these boards, they would have been far better off shutting their fucking mouths, showing their results, and letting their results speak for their methods. And if you think about it, what they’re basically engaging in is a form of censorship which, as has been pointed out, shows a lack of faith in one’s own belief system. And I would also add that it suggests that they have completely lost the sense of Play that got them where they are in the first place. And it is likely due to the fact that the success of their Play has gotten them far too immersed in the system that makes it pay. Somewhere along the line, it got too serious.

In this sense, Rorty and the Pragmatic method shows way more integrity, is willing to show rather than tell:

“Conforming to my own precepts, I am not going to offer arguments against the vocabulary I want to replace. Instead, I am going to try to make the vocabulary I favor look attractive by showing how it may be used to describe a variety of topics.”

Once again: the value of Play as a method, as well as resonance and seduction as a means; that which many of those of a scientific slant are in complete denial about.

“What is data is also contextual and based on values, such as whether data is skewed and what individual pieces of information should be included in overall data. Then facts may be inferred, so it is a long string of subjective assertions. We need data and we need facts, so the best thing is to acknowledge the subjectivity by which they are constructed, go ahead and do that, and quit assuming any points to reality or is representational.” –David McDivitt​

“Yes, David, and we also need truths to temporarily anchor us and give us something to work with until further facts and data force us to move on to further truths.” –me

This discourse was basically a bounce (or a couple of them (off of the distinction I made between facts, data, and truths: facts being the building blocks of data and data being the build blocks of truths which are always shifting according to incoming facts and data. Now I want to connect this with a quote I extracted from Rorty’s Essays on Heidegger and Others:

“To my mind, the persistence on the left of this notion of ‘radical critique’ is an unfortunate residue of the scientistic conception of philosophy. Neither the idea of penetrating to a reality behind the appearances, not that of theoretical of theoretical foundations for politics, coheres with the conception of language and inquiry which, as I have been arguing, is common to Heidegger and to Dewey. For both ideas presuppose that someday we shall penetrate to the true, natural, ahistorical matrix of all possible language and knowledge. Marx, for all his insistence on the priority of praxis, clung to both ideas, and they became dominant within Marxism after Lenin and Stalin turned Marxism into a state religion. But there is no reason why either should be adopted by those who are not obliged to to practice this religion.”

Now I want to re-emphasize a quote in David’s quote:

“What is data is also contextual and based on values, such as whether data is skewed and what individual pieces of information should be included in overall data.”

And further emphasize a point in Rorty’s:

“For both ideas presuppose that someday we shall penetrate to the true, natural, ahistorical matrix of all possible language and knowledge.”

Now I want to zero in on the term “ahistorical”.

The point I’m trying to get at here (in my bricolage/found poem kind of way (is that truths are always shifting according to the facts and data (both formal and informal (available to any given truth: that point of capture in a process of constant becoming. In other words: truths can never be truly “ahistorical”. They must, as my audio book on Dewey points out to me, be always conditional on the facts and data (the contingencies and variables (that a given point in history offer them. This is why, for instance, solutions that might have worked in the past can no longer work for us now: such as Adam Smith’s notion of Capitalism –as brilliant as it may have seemed at the time.

Rorty then goes on to say:

“The moral I wish to draw from the story I have been telling is that we should carry through on the rejection of metaphilosophical scienticism. That is, we should let the debate between those who see contemporary democratic societies as hopeless, and those who see them as our only hope, be conducted in terms of the actual problems now being faced by those societies. If I am right in thinking thinking that the difference between Heidegger’s and Dewey’s ways of rejecting scientism is political rather than methodological or metaphysical, then it would be well for us to debate political topics explicitly, rather than using Aesopian philosophical language. “

I fully agree with Rorty here. And it is why he is part of my holy triad. At the same time, I return to my main criticism of Rorty in that he talked a lot about how we should approach the discourse about social justice while never really addressing individual issues concerning social justice. On the other hand, it was like he was fighting the good fight on another front. What we have to put in mind here is that he was making his way through the academic system in opposition to the increasing influence of the analytic approach to philosophy (via the universities’ increasing dependence on corporate financing (and the consequent hierarchal notion of philosophy. It’s as if he got so caught up in the debate over the rules of the language game (basically distracted (that he never got to apply his rules in the very tangible ways he describes above.

d63 long time no hear.
Question : would you gather some kind of tie in with Haberman’s notion in this regard? Especially if you would be familiar with an embedded social consciousness in terms of a universal ethics?

There is a veiled reason for asking this, and it has to do with an intuitionism relating to early revelations into embedded ideas.

Thanks.

If you defer this question I will absolutely not hold you to it.

If you are talking about Habermas (which I suspect you are (he is an approach different than Rorty’s while being more similar to that of Zizek’s: he sees an ultimate truth that can be obtained to achieve ultimate social justice. And while I take the Other approach, I’m not totally unsympathetic with it. Knowing the frustration that comes from trying to negotiate with Capitalism as it is practiced today, I can see why some individuals would want to go to the extremes of radical change as compared to the revisionist approach I embrace.

Do you think our understanding (Rorty’s), of an eventual incompatibility between foundations of Capitalism and Democracy are regional to the extent, that limits of conflict have not been met in the United States; whereas Habermas, a Continental, would be more prone with the kind of impatience you are talking about?

And is not something missing here, the approach of a conservative religious approach to the Truth, whatever that might be; -as in the mainly Germanic-Lutheran tradition , there is a conflation between political principles and religious ones.

Does the eventual functional approach of a US based pragmatism not exhibit the kind of impatience that Europe should, because of the above, therefore the Absolute Universal Principles which inspire an anarchy, not universally useful in Rorty’s functionalism?

Can the above start as a guide in seeing a change in perception, as a universal or regionally dominating trend, in light of these dissimilarities -in a positive re-presentational sense in EU- and in a regional socially accepted modus operant in the US?

I don’t mean to overload this train of thought, but my reason for asking is multiform: the embededness which Polanyi thinks of as determinative toward Rorty’s sense of the more Kantian intuitive approach of Habermas seem irreconcilable, almost to the extent of the relative conflict between those camps who have a conflicting understanding of what delineates conscious and sub conscious material.

This is important, but seems insignificant from a utilitarian, pragmatic perspective.

What do you think?

A lot of stuff there, Jerkey. And I really appreciate your input. But my process has to work in a limited window -that is as concerns time. Let me put in what I have done today and look at this tomorrow. Once again, I really do appreciate your input. I’ll focus on it tomorrow.

"Earlier I said that theorists like Heidegger saw narrative as always a second best, a propaedeutic to a grasp of something deeper than the visible detail. Novelists like Orwell and Dickens are inclined to see theory as always second-best, never more than a reminder for a particular purpose, the purpose of telling a story better. I suggest that the history of social change in the modern West shows that the latter conception of the relation between narrative and theory is the more fruitful.

“To say that it is more fruitful is to say that, when you weigh the good and the bad the social novelists have done against the good and bad the social theorists have done, you find yourself wishing that there had been more novels and fewer theories. You wish that the leaders of successful revolutions had read fewer books which gave them general ideas and more books which gave them an ability to identify imaginatively with those whom they were to rule.” -from Rorty’s Essay’s on Heidegger and Others

This one is powerful in the complex way, for me, it winds its way through the subtle relationship between theory and the personal. To start, while I fully agree with Rorty’s lean towards narrative, and its efficacy as concerns social justice, I find, as I sink into middle age, that philosophy and theory has basically hijacked my aesthetic. The older I get, the harder I find it to go back to the arts. More and more, it’s getting like I have to force myself in the same way one might force themselves to eat spinach because it is good for them. This scares me because it reminds me of a point made in M. Merleau Ponty’s The Phenomenology of Perception in which he describes a case study in which the individual, having lost their sexuality, loses a lot more than sexuality: their ability to respond to beauty in general. Luckily, it hasn’t gone as far as it sounds as, right now, I am listening to Bon Iver and finding it essential to what I am writing right now.

That said, Rorty gives me every reason to force myself (or fake it until I make it as we’re told in 12 step groups (since, as he rightly points out, theory requires a kind of detachment that is counterproductive to social justice. Art, on the other hand, is useless without empathy or even sympathy. I would focus in on:

“You wish that the leaders of successful revolutions had read fewer books which gave them general ideas and more books which gave them an ability to identify imaginatively with those whom they were to rule."

And as he suggests without explicitly saying so, this is pretty much what happened with the communist experiment in Russia and China, and it is the same experiment at work with Milton Friedman’s Neo-Liberalism. Make no mistake about that. And make no mistake about the fact that America is about to engage in that experiment which has never been (nor ever can be (implemented through democratic means. Think Pinochet here: pure theory over the actual experiences of the subjects involved.

Thanks for that d63. I am particularly interested in the concept of embededness, not to be confused with embodiment.

This concept, although seems relatively harmless, declawed as it were, by such as the search for a kind of twilight sleep in philosophy, a sleep akin to the ‘relative objectivity’ of the required aesthetic distance in art appreciation, is not available to mainstreamers such as Friedman, et al.

However that said, such a stance if taken at face value, would seem to tilt the table toward an abstract representation, or the search for, more in tune with
the Continentals, rather than an anti-fundamentalist like Rorty. So you seem as irreducible as I think you are, and on this level, there appear no inroads to any grey areas.

Not withstanding, I am looking forward to any correspondence toward what appears some sort of normative solution, again only prima facie, and the shift enough to cause mutual misunderstanding and even conflict.

The particular players in today’s political arena perhaps, are overlooking subtleties of the kind, where one little oversight can cause large effected and even unintended consequences.

Again, I suggest a format of communication where stuff be left out or included, which in the opinion of the correspondent is insignificant, or relevant, respectively.

A pleasure jamming with you Jerkey. I’m sorry if I seem neglectful. My limited window tends to be hijacked by my discourses on Facebook as you will see in the next post. I really do hope to go deeper into our discourse here. But your responses tend to be more of an exception (in that I never expect anyone on here to engage with me (than the rule. I will try to fit this in.

"Earlier I said that theorists like Heidegger saw narrative as always a second best, a propaedeutic to a grasp of something deeper than the visible detail. Novelists like Orwell and Dickens are inclined to see theory as always second-best, never more than a reminder for a particular purpose, the purpose of telling a story better. I suggest that the history of social change in the modern West shows that the latter conception of the relation between narrative and theory is the more fruitful.

“To say that it is more fruitful is to say that, when you weigh the good and the bad the social novelists have done against the good and bad the social theorists have done, you find yourself wishing that there had been more novels and fewer theories. You wish that the leaders of successful revolutions had read fewer books which gave them general ideas and more books which gave them an ability to identify imaginatively with those whom they were to rule.” -from Rorty’s Essay’s on Heidegger and Others

“When you say theory, you mean a totalizing political system which is then implemented. What alternatives to some organizing principle, or theoretical framework are there as an antidote? It seems we are forced to choose one theory or another.” –Chris

“Not necessarily political, Chris. But it is in the political that theory becomes problematic -that is, as I am trying point out, in giving itself privilege over concrete answers to concrete problems. The very paradox you present seems to me to be what the the pragmatic approach is attempting to overcome.” -Me

” I see all theory as political in the final analysis! Also I think, without owning up to the inescapable necessity of ideology we induce the worst form of theory, the ‘given’ - or as you’ve put it, the concrete answer. Very non-pragmatic as this presupposes some real, solid politically disinterested neutral foundation that appears to do away with theory and lets in the common sense brigade - BUT it’s just another theory!” –Chris again

With all due respect Chris (you have made some insightful and challenging points (I would argue that you are neglecting the recognition that ideologies do nothing while people, on the other hand, do everything. Ideologies (as are often expressed through theories (tend to be expressions of our basic impulses and desires and therefore tend to follow human praxis. For instance, neither Communism nor Marx exterminated 6 million plus people; Stalin (a paranoid narcissist with a Christ complex (remind you of anyone? (did.

And I would point out, as Rorty did in the book I am quoting, that under Stalin’s regime there was always someone (a kind ascetic priest (appointed to interpret Marxist theory in the “correct way”. And that person was always the second most feared person in the Stalinist regime and may be the foundation of a phenomenon that Zizek correctly noted: that Hitler’s regime was relatively rational in that, unless you were a Jew or rocked the boat, you were reasonably safe, while under Stalin’s regime there was no way of knowing, regardless of what you did, if the men in dark suits might come knocking at your door.

This is not to say that theory is evil, but rather that it is a mixed package much as the pragmatic approach is. As you impressively point out:

“But the breakdown in social systems that have a classical polis, ie a control and command centre, networks, common legal overview etc, has given rise to de-centred neo-liberal capitalism which thrives on a certain anarchy that allows money to free flow according to market forces with no "god’ to adjudicate - or collect the taxes.”

I would compliment your point with mine concerning the sociopathic response to the nihilistic perspective in relation to the symbolic: that in which, having no other criteria of right action, turns to the criteria of power:

“I have power because I am right; therefore, I am right because I have power.”

And this, to me, is the underlying alibi of the abuses of Neo-liberalism. In this sense, your description seems perfectly accurate to me. At the same time, I would ask you to consider Deleuze and Guatarri’s point that Capitalism should act as a deterritorializing force, but always seems to return to territorializing ones or what I refer to as the tyranny of the functional. Neo-Liberal Capitalism is the wolf of perfect control (it can never be implemented through democratic means as examples like Pinochet show us (dressed in the sheep’s clothing of freedom. It does have fossilized ways of thinking that require that we break free of them via concrete solutions to concrete problems. Therefore, it makes sense to follow the D & G nomadic prescription of pushing Capitalism’s tendency towards deterritorialization further than it, itself, would want to go. Rorty’s pragmatism is just a less abrasive approach to it.

Revolution is not theory. It is a series of concrete acts.And in the process of revolution, it would make no sense for any of us to ask: what would Rorty or Plato or any other theorist do?

The following is a continuation of discourse between me and a respected jam-mate, Chris, on the relationship between and preference for the theoretical or the day to day pragmatic:

"As Habermas puts it [about Heidegger], “under the leveling gaze of the philosopher of Being even the extermination of the Jews seems merely an event seems merely an event equivalent to many others.” Heidegger specializes in rising above the need to calculate relative quantities of human happiness, in taking a larger view. For him, successful and unsuccessful adventures -Gandhi’s success and Dubcek’s failure, for example -are just surface perturburations, distractions from essence by accidents, hindrances to an understanding of what is REALLY going on.

“Heidegger’s refusal to take much interest in the Holocaust typifies the urge to look beneath or behind the narrative of the West for the ‘essence’ of the West, the urge which separates the philosophers from the novelists. Someone dominated by this urge will tell a story only as part of the process of clearing away appearance in order to reveal reality.” -from Rorty’s Essays on Heidegger and Others

And I apologize, as always, for my wordy (rhizomatic (bricolage, but I would also like to connect this to (and, in the process, pay tribute to (a point made by a jam-mate, Lewis and fold in a response:

“I almost agree that ideologies do nothing while people do. Was thinking about William of Occam this morning and his condemnation of over-complexity.”

I mainly fold this in to today’s rhizome, Lewis, because it parallel’s the issue at hand: the relationship between theory and the pragmatic and which is preferable. While I agree with your point as concerns Ockham’s razor, I would define it in terms of our always being caught in the push and pull between theoretical overreach (that which results from the radical purely for the sake of the radical (and theoretical stagnation: that which results from failing to think or inquire beyond our immediate intuitions. While I agree that in many cases the simpler solution to a problem is the better one, we have to be real careful about oversimplified perceptions of what the problem actually is.

That said, I want to make a couple of observations about Rorty’s quote. The first is about composition and style. The above quote, to me, is a good example of what makes Rorty as good a writer as he is a philosopher. He fulfills my criteria of resonance and seduction the most when he goes into these kind of satiric descriptions of other philosophers such as he does here with Heidegger. To me, it fits in with that image of the of the generous teacher (much like Jaspers (which he props up with a healthy sense of humor, but a sense of humor that flatters you since you would have had to do the footwork necessary in order to find it funny.

But on a more serious note, we can see here in Heidegger (as ascetic priest (how theory can go awry. As another Jam-mate, Steve Orsli points out:

“‘Theoria’–what is the essence of the original idea. It’s related to the word ‘theatre’ and the sense of looking at things ‘at a distance’ a visual, detached understanding. Western man looking down from above–the objective, ‘Gods-eye’ view.”

Here, we see my main difference with Chris in that while he rightly points to how the scattered, chaotic (rhizomatic even), approach to thought contributes to the tyranny of Neo-Liberalism:

“But the breakdown in social systems that have a classical polis, ie a control and command centre, networks, common legal overview etc, has given rise to de-centred neo-liberal capitalism which thrives on a certain anarchy that allows money to free flow according to market forces with no "god’ to adjudicate - or collect the taxes.”

:the God’s-eye view, propped up by corporate financing, is as implicit in it as the lack of theory might be.

I want to lay down some quotes from a I Love Philosophy Jam-mate, Jerky, and see what I can do with them:

“Do you think our understanding (Rorty’s), of an eventual incompatibility between foundations of Capitalism and Democracy are regional to the extent, that limits of conflict have not been met in the United States; whereas Habermas, a Continental, would be more prone with the kind of impatience you are talking about?

And is not something missing here, the approach of a conservative religious approach to the Truth, whatever that might be; -as in the mainly Germanic-Lutheran tradition , there is a conflation between political principles and religious ones.

Does the eventual functional approach of a US based pragmatism not exhibit the kind of impatience that Europe should, because of the above, therefore the Absolute Universal Principles which inspire an anarchy, not universally useful in Rorty’s functionalism?

Can the above start as a guide in seeing a change in perception, as a universal or regionally dominating trend, in light of these dissimilarities -in a positive re-presentational sense in EU- and in a regional socially accepted modus operant in the US?”

“I don’t mean to overload this train of thought, but my reason for asking is multiform: the embededness which Polanyi thinks of as determinative toward Rorty’s sense of the more Kantian intuitive approach of Habermas seem irreconcilable, almost to the extent of the relative conflict between those camps who have a conflicting understanding of what delineates conscious and sub conscious material.

This is important, but seems insignificant from a utilitarian, pragmatic perspective.

What do you think?”

Okay, Jerkey: the best I can do here is cherry-pick what I can respond to. I hope I don’t wander off topic.

“And is not something missing here, the approach of a conservative religious approach to the Truth, whatever that might be; -as in the mainly Germanic-Lutheran tradition , there is a conflation between political principles and religious ones.”

There is always a conflation, Jerkey. This is because people will always be people. And it is why we have to look at history in order to understand what we are doing now. In this sense, it would be useful to apply Saussure’s paradigmatic concept of language. As I like to joke (in reference to Weber’s book on protestant ethics and Capitalism:

It use to be: pray hard and follow these principles and you too may enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now it’s: work hard and follow these principles and you too may enter the kingdom of success.

In fact, if you look at it, Jerkey, there is nothing new about Capitalism. It comes down to the same old thing: the fact that there has always been a handful of people who thought they deserved more than everyone else, even if it came at the expense of everyone else. And if you think about it, the “market” that justifies the high pay of corporate CEOs, that god-like invisible hand, is not that different than the “divine right” that justified monarchs in older days.

And in both cases, as you rightly point out, we see a conflation (thanks for that word BTW) between the political and the religious.

“This chapter defines three terms: information, knowledge, competence, and their relationships to one another. Here is a list of the chapter’s main lessons:” -Lupia, Arthur. Uninformed: Why People Seem to Know So Little about Politics and What We Can Do about It (p. 25). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Now, had I approached this more logically, and methodically, I would have started this discourse with these terms as the model lies at the core of Lupia’s approach (definition attached). But I mainly bring it up because of the parallel and somewhat perfect compatibility with my own model of facts, data, and truths.

Facts (the almost equivalent of information) involves those things we can hardly deny. 1+1=2, for instance. Or say we are standing together in front of cat on a mat. We could safely say that it is a fact that there is a cat on a mat. Data (which holds a loose equivalence with knowledge) is an accumulation of facts put together to get a sense of how individual facts are acting together. A poll, for instance, is a collection of the individual facts of how people answered the pollsters. Several things are interesting here. First of all, data is always as interesting for the facts it leaves out as it is those it includes. This is a product of the finite nature of the human mind in the face of the infinite. And it was clearly demonstrated in the Dewey/Truman campaign in which pollsters did a phone survey that showed Dewey winning while leaving out the fact that most people who had the money to own a phone at the time generally voted republican. Secondly (and to make things more complicated), we have to recognize two kinds of data: formal and informal. While the formal is the domain of the scientifically trained, the informal is what we all engage in. We can see the informal at work in prejudices in that they consist of repeated experiences (facts in themselves) of a certain category of person that results in a general conclusion about the category as a whole. Finally, it is at the level of data that the parallel between my model and Lupia’s starts to loosen a little. In Lupia’s model, we can see how both facts and data can play a role in information while also playing a role in knowledge: that which is the cumulative effect of facts and data (both formal and informal). But that doesn’t make them incompatible.

But the parallel gets even looser at the level of truth (with a small “t”) which I define in terms of Rorty’s pragmatism: that which seems (via facts and data (both formal and informal)) sufficiently justified. At the same time, I would confidently parallel truth with Lupia’s competence in that competence (via information (is about what serves a given end much as pragmatism is about what works.

“Given this interpretation of how Derrida thinks he can do what Heidegger failed to do, how he hopes to move outside of the tradition instead of being mired within it as Heidegger was, I want to make two criticisms of his attempt. First, it is just not true that the sequence of texts which make up the canon of the ontotheological tradition has been imprisoned within a metaphorics which have remained unchanged since the Greeks. That sequence of texts, like that which makes up the history of astronomical treatises, or of the epic, or of political discourse, has been marked by the usual alternation between “revolutionary”, “literary”, “poetic” moments and normal, banal, constructive interludes. Speaking several languages and writing several texts at once is just what all important, revolutionary, original thinkers have done. Revolutionary physicists, politicians, and philosophers have always taken words and beaten into new shapes. They have thereby given their angry conservative opponents reason to charge them with introducing strange new senses of familiar expressions, frivolously punning, no longer playing by the rules, using rhetoric rather than logic, imagery rather than argument.” –from Rorty’s Essays on Heidegger and Others (pg. 98….

First of all, for those who might not have seen it, I would note the reference to Walter Kuhn in:

“That sequence of texts, like that which makes up the history of astronomical treatises, or of the epic, or of political discourse, has been marked by the usual alternation between “revolutionary”, “literary”, “poetic” moments and normal, banal, constructive interludes. Speaking several languages and writing several texts at once is just what all important, revolutionary, original thinkers have done.”

That said, I should provide a little context. It came out of a comparison of Derrida and Heidegger in terms of their shared sense that the history of philosophy had been stuck in the trap of the old Platonic hierarchy. Out of this came a common ambition: to create a new language that could break out of that rut. However, as Rorty points out, Derrida (being further down the line than Heidegger (was no more likely to pull it off than Heidegger. This is because Derrida was working under the same false assumption Heidegger was. As Rorty put it:

“First, it is just not true that the sequence of texts which make up the canon of the ontotheological tradition has been imprisoned within a metaphorics which have remained unchanged since the Greeks.”

That said, I would offer my own theory as to how this kind of thing happens. It comes down to Hermeneutics which is an unfolding process in which content becomes form via form. Ultimately, what this results in is reducing our cultural artifacts to simple cores and assumptions. I, for instance, have come to a core of chaos and order which is reflected in Kuhn’s distinction between normal and revolutionary science. And I would argue this has to do with us whittling our mental activities down to basic functions in our brains: those that result from evolutionary adaptations. Therefore, it stands to reason that people like Heidegger or Derrida might see our cultural history as just repeating the same old thing. But as Rorty said later:

“So it is not clear that we need a “new sort of writing.”

This is because, given the deeply buried nature of these basic motifs, there is no guarantee that a “new sort of writing” will truly break from that tradition. It’s always too personal to do so. Still, it can change things: make us see them in new ways. And as a culture, we are nowhere near the same as we were when we started.

“Insofar as a left becomes spectatorial and retrospective, it ceases to be a Left. I shall be claiming in these lectures that the American Left, once the old alliance between the intellectuals and the unions broke-down in the course of the Sixties, began to sink into an attitude like Henry Adams’. Leftists in the academy have permitted cultural politics to supplant real politics, and have collaborated with the Right in making cultural issues central to public debate… The academic Left has no projects to propose to America, no vision of a country to be achieved by building a consensus on the need for specific reforms.” –a quote from Rorty’s Achieving Our Country via Eduardo Mendieta’s intro to Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself: a collection of Rorty interviews….

Mendieta then goes on to say:

“For this reason, Rorty calls for a “moratorium” on theory. Rorty admonishes that the academic and cultural left “kick its philosophy habit.” Just as importantly, Rorty urges the left to abandon its apocalyptic self-loathing and to become emotionally engaged in the nation by feeling, at the very least, shame.”

I have other thoughts. But I have, in the process of writing out the quotes, noticed a connection between the issues taken with Rorty and those taken with Bernie Sanders in their northeastern provincial and bourgeoisie liberalism. Being something like that myself, I have noted that the main thing that cock-blocked Bernie was his tendency to assume that if he addressed the issue of neo-liberalism, the problems addressed by multi-culturalism would take care of themselves. And Rorty has been attacked on this very issue. This is not to say that either Rorty or Sanders are indifferent to the plight of minorities. I would argue that (as I would for myself since I am a lot like them (that they are perfectly sympathetic to the plights of the less fortunate.

But that’s not why I quoted this. What I mainly want to address here is that while I am perfectly sympathetic with Rorty’s recognition of the disconnect between theory and day to day practice, I’m not sure that is cause for demanding that those engaged in theory stop doing so. But then I’m not sure Rorty demanded that either –that is given his admiration for Derrida. I’m perfectly on board with his desire to take philosophy to the streets. But I don’t see that as justification to condemn those who prefer to work in their scholastic ivory towers. They are basically engaged in a form of Play. And the only problem occurs when they act like it is anything more than that: such as the only way to describe reality as is.

The thing is, it is going to take a lot of different people doing a lot of different things to fix this. And no one of us (no matter how clever our technologies (is going to do it alone. But when we do fix it, it will be a matter of a lot of different people engaged in different acts and doing so at the right time.

Always the tough and twisting path with you guys. And God (whatever it is (love you for it. Still, it faces me with a tough negotiation. So I’ll simplify things by going through it first quote to last and hope to get to John’s. The catch is that I’ll have focus on compression at the expense of fully explaining what I’m getting at. That said:

"Meaningful debates over policy - that is, politics, in the old sense of constructive collaboration - presumes a certain amount of agreement on basic values and commitments. That’s what the 60’s deprived us of. The presence or absence of that agreement, however it is accounted for, described, or regarded, is itself a sociological fact of tremendous importance.

The Atlantic ran an interesting article the other day.
theatlantic.com/…/04/brea … th/517785/" -John Cassein

It’s a little like a recent scandal in which an American poet, after trying to publish a poem, resorted to submitting it under a Chinese name and got it published and saw it go on to be published in the Best American poetry series. But as Kurt Anderson, of Studio 360 fame, pointed out: we’re trying to right past wrongs; so mistakes will be made. And I would argue, against Rorty, that the mistakes of the cultural left were just the products of dealing with a rigid status quo.

I agree with you, John. But here’s the problem: the republican platform (as it stands now dominated by the hard right (basically comes into the discourse from the perspective of immediate self interest. The problem for them is that political discourses, by their inherent nature, are about hashing out a plan that will work for everyone even if it doesn’t perfectly work for everyone. This is why the right has had to resort to the cheap tactics they do such as harping on the failures of the 60’s academic culture. They cannot make a core argument for their position; therefore, they have to eat at the edges.

"Go Mendieta and Rorty. Yes, I’ve begun to feel shame about how my tribe (the left) has been shaming the other tribes. And yes, as a result I’ve become more emotionally engaged with more citizens of my country. Along with kicking the philosophy habit, I wish my brothers and sisters from the left would kick the moralizing habit. I mean honestly, the tales spun by the left about evil in hearts of the right get positively gothic. If we could say instead, “If I was in their shoes, I’d be doing the same things” and really believe it about ourselves, then we’d be more apt to focus on what really matters politically: “What kind society do we want and how do we get it?” -TJ Crow

The thing to understand about the 60’s, is that it was the decade in which America first considered giving African Americans voting rights and women more rights than they had. Now you really have to consider what that says about the sensibility of most white male Americans before that point. So we can see why American universities felt they had to go to the ideological extremes they did. Granted, it was reactionary in nature, but given the situation of minorities and women at the time, it seems natural that academics would turn to the theoretical overreach that they did. And I consider this an oversight on Rorty’s part as concerns his distinction between the reformist left and the cultural left which he disdains. I’m not saying it was right. I’m just saying it was a perfectly natural response to the circumstances and status quo of the time.

That said, John Butler:

“I don’t think it is quite right to say that Rorty wanted a moratorium on “theory” or “philosophy” and leave it at that. I think Rorty wanted a moratorium on “Philosophy” and debates about “Truth” where the capitalization is designed, and used by Rorty, to signify the search for immutable answers, the Plato Kant tradition, as he called it. He also did want the Left to move beyond its focus on identity politics and move back to “lunch pail” politics, but where old theory needed updating for such an effort I don’t get the sense that he would oppose that.”

Actually, I agree with you here, John. I would argue that he was about a more holistic or, as described in the philosophy textbook The Art of Wondering, synoptic approach that blurs the lines between various disciplines and allows them to do what they do without any consideration of what categories they are working in.

That said, guys: thanks for the brain strain and headache. You bastards!!!

Hi d63

Rorty’ s suggestion is that , in post modern terms, there is no demonstrable sealing between identity politics and social theories, and the hermeunatic progression which needs nofurther elaboration.

But that’s just the point, there seems a counter positioning of
identifying the politics of subversion against the supposed
leakage therefore to an extent acquiring a need to deal them.

That is if identifying sources of leakage proves either impossible or, undesirable.

Wish this was facebook. Then I could give you a like. Always a pleasure, Jerkey. Thanks for participating. Look forward to further input. I’m not being sarcastic. I encourage you to keep doing so. If nothing else, you can explain your point here further as if I were a 7 year old.

Regardless of age, we can all learn something, g63.
Thanks for responding. However,I was implying for a response, rather then offering one.

It is equally a pleasure to occasionally involve in your work.