Dear Diary Moment 1/27/2019:
“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, nor that of theoretical foundations for politics, coheres with the conception of language and inquiry which, 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 either should be adopted by those who are not obliged to practice this religion.” -from ‘Philosophy as Science, Metaphor, Politics’ in Rorty’s Essays on Heidegger and Others
I would start by isolating this particular section:
"To my mind, the persistence on the left of this notion of “radical critique” is an unfortunate residue of the scientistic conception of philosophy.”
While I’m not totally in agreement with Rorty’s use of the qualifier “unfortunate” (I may be a pragmatist at heart, but I’m just not that pragmatic), I agree with the main thesis: a lot of the obscurity (read: radical (we find in philosophy may well be the result of trying to compete with science: the guilt at not being able to create an i-phone which most people are more likely to draw to. And Rorty is right in pointing out that for all of Marx’s emphasis on changing things, he hardly helped himself by working in the ethereal realm of theory. This, I think, is why Marx has become obsolete in that a lot of less theoretical writers have done a real good job of describing the failures of Capitalism without even referring to Marx. In fact, it may well be that Marx didn’t so much become obsolete as he became superfluous to the cause. I can more easily get the information I need to be critical of Capitalism through much lighter reading such as Naomi Klein, Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, Barbara Ehrenreich, Ha-Joon Chang and, the book I am listening to lately: Anand Giridharadis’ Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World –all of which, BTW, I have come to know through audio books that don’t (beyond the in-depth anecdotal information they offer you (require a lot of in-depth reading.
And such is my pragmatic conundrum: why bother with high theory when I can more easily get the information I need without the pains I go through over such thinkers as Rorty and his other two companions in my holy triad: Deleuze and Žižek? And this question becomes even more pronounced under the threat to our democracy called Trump. And the only answer I can offer is that “radical theory” is a form of play: something engaged in for the same reason one might become a gamer. But it is a form of play with some perhaps serious consequences: that which could change sensibilities. Some of it may well trickle down into the day to day. But let’s not make the mistake, as Rorty is trying to point out (that is from the perspective of someone who has taken the time to understand such philosophical icons as Heidegger and Derrida), of taking it more seriously than it really warrants as concerns social and political policy.