Pragmatists are still rather heady—unprepared,
perhaps even bewildered—by the news that pragmatism has begun a new career.
They were plainly caught off guard by its revival in the closing decades of the
last century, triggered largely by the import of Richard Rorty’s having
identified himself as a postmodernist pragmatist and by his running dispute with
Hilary Putnam, who willingly marked himself as a more orthodox proponent of a
pragmatism more indebted to James and Dewey than to Peirce, but in any case
strongly opposed to Rorty’s deconstructive tendencies. The doctrinal
allegiances hardly matter now. What matters is the recovery of the daring of the
classic beginnings of pragmatism centered—as Rorty and Putnam have emphasized—on
the stubbornly problematic nature of the standard questions of meaning and truth
in the context of a viable life, and the sense that life itself is a flux, not a
chaos.
Pragmatism had run its course in the
40s, seemed to have come close to the end of its string. Rorty’s declaration
signaled a loss of confidence in the zeal of analytic philosophy itself—a
distinct sense of a profound misreading of its own powers. Putnam countered but
was caught short with too much of the baggage of the old hegemony and not enough
of a viable compromise to show the way to a fresh beginning. His Carus Lectures,
for instance, ended in an intolerable “internal realism” and his strongest
statement, in Reason, Truth and History, seemed to rest on an untenable
Grenzbegriff, which Rorty saw at once would never stand. Each treated the other
as implicitly committed to an untenable relativism, where relativism might have
appeared more reasonable than the extreme views each espoused. In any case, now,
in the first decade of the new century, pragmatism has taken fire throughout the
Eurocentric world (and beyond), with a willingness to morph into new forms
hospitable to the local philosophical histories of the societies thus contacted
that had no developed allegiance to the special loyalties of a parochial
American world.
I have myself felt in a most
personal way the enthusiasm of the resurgence of pragmatism in the Slavic world,
which champions a level of intellectual liberation of a rather thrilling sort.
Better than naïve, I would say, fresh with a kind of hope the Americans might
themselves wish to warm their minds by. At the moment, the conferences that are
springing up like wild flowers in Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Spain,
Finland, Germany, Italy, Britain, Brazil—to name a few of the livelier sites—mingle
a nostalgia for the classic authors and a need to hybridize the recovering
culture in a way that is almost deliberately experimental. The work that’s
emerging shows every sign of bringing into play a run of new forms of discipline
that could hardly have been generated from America alone and is clearly prepared
to abandon the partisan loyalties of the past. Which is all to the good, since
the energies of late American pragmatism spanning, say, the interval from the
fifties to the seventies and eighties was distinctly out of touch with the
strongest currents of Eurocentric philosophy.
I think the lesson must be a general
one. The philosophical energies of the Western world have been feeding on
recycled nourishment for a long time now. They’ve honed their talents in a
technically impressive way, but they’ve lacked a new vision for a long time.
Evidently the new breed wanted cannot be produced by brute will alone. It must
be fostered with some quiet care. It’s not a gift to be passed on; it’s a
hybrid possibility. The clue I recommend is a political one. We cannot produce
the convincing strains that are needed without enlisting the best powers of the
new soil. The Americans are fond of invoking the democratic model. (Some of the
papers in the present collection make this perfectly clear.) But even democracy
will take diverse forms in diverse soils (as American foreign policy has yet to
learn). The new energies are unlikely to come from pragmatism’s original soil,
except as American philosophers may have learned to absorb the dawning visions
of pragmatism’s new hosts. Dewey and James and Peirce would have found the
stubborn fixities of post-classic pragmatism more than a little strange. How
could their own daring be transformed into a canon? From the side of the
custodians of the American doctrine, you must enlist the alien traditions you
never knew before. There’s the innovation behind the present collection. Not
merely a movable feast of Americans performing in new cities, but a mingling of
the homegrown and its adventurous possibilities abroad.
Pragmatism was never a finished
doctrine. It couldn’t have been. But it hardly engaged its natural opponents
during its first hegemony. And so it dwindled into near-oblivion. The trouble is,
nearly every large movement that dominated Western philosophy in the last
century has lost its vigor and now finds no replacement on the horizon. So
pragmatism’s revival is a second chance, unearned perhaps but possibly more
promising than the failed fixities of its rivals. That is what I suppose the new
enthusiasm signifies: a conceptual flexibility that avoids the scientisms of the
analysts and the anti-naturalisms of the continentals, and through it all
remains committed to the most generous vision of humanity it can conceive. It
gains ground from the exhausted assurances of its opponents, and we ourselves
are witnesses to its brief reprieve. But what the philosophical world will make
of it has still to be spelled out by its newest adherents. It will have to find
a common thread that can negate the one-sided transient victories of all the
recent movements that are all but defeated now—including the remembered forays
of its own insufficient past.
I find it impossible to keep myself
from speculating—in the briefest of ways—about the central themes of
pragmatism’s evolving second (or third) future. I think it will have to
recover a deeper mastery of the meaning of the innovations that span the work of
Kant and Hegel, which together usher in the whole of “modern” modern
philosophy. For one thing, all that is meant by the trifurcation of pragmatist,
analytic, and continental inquiries is historically grounded in the same sources,
which make them legible to themselves and one another and still inspires the
best work that attends to the questions of truth, meaning, and knowledge that
motivated the original work of the early pragmatists and the main themes of
Western philosophy to this day. The analytic/pragmatist discussion has pretty
well come to a stalemate—not quite to the extreme skepticism Rorty tendered as
the successor form of pragmatism itself, but certainly something quite close to
it that needs to be addressed head on. For a second, according to my own
preferences, pragmatism joining with whatever movements in whatever creative
union we may devise, will have to explore the neglected conceptual resources of
historicity and evolution (linking, say, Hegel and Darwin), perhaps inventively
enough to restore a sense of the fruitfulness of epistemology’s importance.
I think the touchstones of
pragmatism’s past may fairly be said to include the following issues: the flux
of the world; the early forms of the pragmatic theory of meaning; fallibilism
and the finite/infinite continuum of science and inquiry; the human being as
itself a sign (perhaps the principal sign) of and in a thoroughly semiotized or
semiotically transformed natural world; and the explication of the endlessly
evolving complexities of the democratic vision of human possibility in accord
with the doctrines just mentioned. Success enough in the near future must, I
think, count on the isolation and engagement of the strongest currents of
congenial thought in all the movements that pragmatism might hope to co-opt or
penetrate or be penetrated by.
As I see the matter, the single most
inclusive undertaking that might bring all of this together in a pointedly
productive way would feature the analysis of the cultural world and the
relationship between physical nature and human culture. It’s a startling fact
that the analysis of the cultural world has been remarkably neglected in both
analytic and pragmatist philosophies, even where the materials and issues of
that world are favored in our inquiries. Continental philosophy, hermeneutics in
particular, has never failed to acknowledge its primacy. If pragmatism could
reach a sustainable, mutually enriching exchange with hermeneutically-minded
philosophies, whether hermeneutic in the classic sense or neo-Kantian or
phenomenological (as, in a close comparison between Peirce and Cassirer), it
would greatly strengthen philosophy’s sense of the validity of pragmatism’s
reprieve. These are of course terribly abbreviated suggestions. But they do
begin to mark what we should be thinking of in considering how to redeem
pragmatism’s new opportunity. You may disagree and I would certainly support
your right. But then what I offer is at least a target of opportunity of the
right sort.
Joseph Margolis
PREFACE
The Central European Pragmatist
Forum (CEPF) was founded in 2000 as a mechanism with which to bring together
American and European specialists in American philosophy. The value of doing so
was and continues to be based on two observations. The first is that over the
past several decades there has been sustained, occasionally growing, interest on
the part of European scholars in the history of American philosophy in general
and American pragmatism in particular. It is in the interest of the scholarship
undertaken by European specialists that they be as conversant as possible with
the work being done in the US itself, and there is no better way to do that than
to have the opportunity to meet and talk with American specialists in the field.
The second observation is that though in general it seldom happens, it is in the
interest of American specialists in American philosophy (or history, or
literature, or culture...) to be familiar with how their subject matter is
understood abroad. It is therefore as valuable for American scholars to meet and
speak with their European counterparts as it is for Europeans to become familiar
with the Americans.
With all of this in mind it was
decided that the CEPF would host a conference every two years that would be an
attempt to create something of an international community of scholars of
American philosophy. The first Pragmatist Forum was held in Stara Lesna,
Slovakia in 2000, the second in Krakow, Poland in 2002, the third in Potsdam,
Germany in 2004, and the fourth in Szeged, Hungary in 2006. The meetings are all
small by design, with fifteen American and 15 European scholars. It lasts for a
week, all participants give presentations, and all presentations are plenary
sessions. In other words, the conferences are occasions for leading specialists
in the field to listen to one another and to discuss issues germane to the field.
The fifth Pragmatist Forum was held in Brno, Czech Republic, in May 2008.
The organizers and participants in
the CEPF have been fortunate to be able to publish selections from each of the
CEPF conferences. The current volume consists of selected papers from the Fourth
Central European Pragmatist Forum that took place in Szeged, Hungary in May-June,
2006, hosted by the University of Szeged. The theme of the Szeged meeting was
Self and Society, and the papers that comprise the volume address issues that in
some way deal with the theme, some more directly than others.
The editors have organized the
conference papers in five sections: I . Self and History; II . Self and Society;
III . Self and Politics; IV . Self and Neopragmatism; V . Interview with Richard
Rorty. Each section consists of papers that elaborate various dimensions of the
topics.
The papers in Section I, Self and
History, focus on the traditional pragmatist approach to the self. Ramon
Rodriguez Aguilera argues that today we have a special need for a confluence of
personal identity and our socio-cultural situation. He assumes that the
interdependence of self and society is getting stronger and stronger in a
globalizing world. According to his view, "an appropriate and well orientated
Self does require some social commitments for a desirable, peaceful life,
embracing at present (potentially) the whole human community; the life and death
of others cannot be completely indifferent to one.s meaning of life, when we all
share a world in common." Aguilera points out that C. S. Peirce.s philosophy can
provide the framework for such an approach today. Peirce convincingly argued
that individual persons are constituted through their identification with a
community. In addition, "in our current historical moment the emergence of such
a cultural or social community, first conceived by Peirce as a semiotic
community, is a major task." "Interdependence" is also central notion for James
Campbell. He is concerned above all with William James.s social understanding of
the self. In analyzing James.s views in The Principles of Psychology, Campbell
shows us how James distinguished the "I" and the "me," and then he explains the
constituents of the "me": "the material Self," "the social Self," and "the
spiritual Self." We have as many different but connected selves within us as we
have relations to our material and spiritual features and to other human beings
and communities. In showing "me" in situations of self-evaluation and the
conflicting aspects of "I" and "me," Campbell persuades us that
American Pragmatism offers us an
understanding of the human self that is both embodied and social. The human
individual has emerged through a complex process of problem-solving that was
carried on by ancestors of an increasingly social nature. James.s volume, The
Principles of Psychology, helps us to understand this evolutionary process. He
helps us, in particular, to understand how our sense of self . of self-identity,
of self-worth, and of self-improvement . is tied up with our life in community.
In his descriptive psychology, much more than in his ethical and political
thought, James presents an understanding of the self as a social being.
Richard E. Hart compares John
Steinbeck.s and John Dewey.s views about the relationship between individual and
community. He stresses the point that the interconnectedness of these two poles
is inevitably important for both American "Johns." However, for both "Steinbeck
and Dewey the various relations between individual and community have to be
characterized in terms that are both fluid and dynamic. Neither adheres to a
firm, unbending manner of explaining the nature of the relations and
interactions." There are differences regarding consistency of their views, but
essentially they had the same standpoint in this respect. It is also among their
similarities that both Steinbeck and Dewey were influenced by evolutionary
science and the fundamental concept of ecology. "Both American .Johns. it turns
out have a great deal to tell us about the nature of individual and community
relations." Don Morse returns to John Dewey.s original intention that our
pragmatist task is not to "practicalize" intelligence but to intellectualize
practice. Such an interdependence and interconnectedness is beyond question in
Dewey.s philosophy. Pragmatism provides detailed theoretical arguments for
recognizing that society helps to shape the self, but this is not the real
question according to Morse. "Yet when the theoretical arguments are all laid
out, and when all is said and done, the more pressing issue is a concrete one .
what types of selves are shaped by what types of societies? How can we use this
knowledge of social self-definition to improve the kinds of selves we become?"
Dewey has shown us in Human Nature and Conduct and Individualism Old and New,
where he wrote about the "lost individual," that an inadequately democratic
society can shape only lost individuals, and such individuals in turn reinforce
such a society. Morse argues that
as a concrete instance of this
fact, one can say that American society shapes the self into a lost self. This
is the exact situation that pragmatism must work against, preventing the
social misshaping of individuals as happens to Americans today. American
individuals, lost, detached from any stable social framework, are at the mercy
of external forces. They are confused and bewildered, open to suggestion,
unable to form a self-directing public. It is a dire situation. There is a
lesson here, I suspect, for pragmatism. It must resist becoming the new
scholasticism. Rich in theory, it must nonetheless remain true to its
practical roots. Pragmatism must use its theoretical insights to illuminate
concrete problems.
The papers in Section II on Self and
Society concentrate explicitly on the very rich relationships between the two.
Michael Eldridge expresses his concern that pragmatic values would not provide
one with sufficient leverage to oppose such moral evils as slavery in the United
States prior to the Civil War or the Nazi holocaust. One needs objective values
to counter conventional moral practice. Dewey and Mackie.s rejections of fixed
ends and objective prescriptions are unacceptable forms of social relativism.
Dewey the pragmatist was unconventional in his ethical thinking. That a
historicist can adopt unconventional ethical norms should not be unthinkable,
but apparently it is for some. They can only conceive of ethical norms as given
or found. They cannot regard one.s (or their predecessor.s) constructions as
being action-guiding when the action required is unconventional. Yet in this
paper Eldridge offers examples in Dewey.s and Mackie.s thought that the
conventionalist critic would not regard as either a fixed end or an objective
prescription. Dewey thought, for example, that it was a significant implication
of the scientific approach for our common practice that it showed us how to be a
self-correcting society. By adopting an experimental, collaborative approach to
deliberation we would be able to modify our dysfunctional practices. To accuse
him of being convention-bound is to reject Dewey.s "life-long effort" to "make
our present beliefs, attitudes, and institutions more intelligent than they
would be otherwise." We can as individuals and a society self-correct. Eldridge
holds that we are not bound to the way things are at any given time.
Larry Hickman analyzes the
interesting similarities between Bruno Latour.s and John Dewey.s understanding
of the social. Given the fact that "pragmatism" is a very loose term that has
many meanings, Hickman says that Dewey was a pragmatist in the limited sense of
the theory of meaning that he shared with Peirce and James. However, his
functionalism, geneticism, instrumentalism, and experimentalism all had to come
into play if his pragmatism were to be applicable within the spheres that he
wished it to be. Having registered that caveat, Hickman proceeds with a
suggestion that the work of Latour advances the work of Dewey in interesting and
admirable ways. He shows that Dewey.s account is remarkably similar:
There is no fixed society or
social structure, and there is no atomic individual. Individuals form publics
and are in turn informed as a part of Latour.s .cascade of transformations..
An individual may be (and probably is) a member of many overlapping publics,
some of which may even be working at cross-purposes. Publics come and go. They
come into existence as required, they are transformed as a consequence of
changing conditions, including interactions with other publics, and they pass
out of existence when the conditions that called them into being are no longer
present.
In short, "both Dewey and Latour
reject the essentialism that is often apparent in traditional accounts of the
social. Both emphasize the functional-instrumentalist nature of social entities."
According to Hickman, both are deeply pragmatist in the mentioned narrow sense
of "pragmatism."
Carlos Mougan.s paper aims to show
how Mead.s philosophical anthropology and Dewey.s political philosophy provide
the basis for an understanding of social cooperation as a civic virtue and as a
normative model for democracy. After his thorough analysis he emphasizes the
point that cooperation can become a civic virtue only if it gains a moral
content. Social cooperation acquires ethical meaning when it serves central
values of democracy such as freedom and equality. K. A. Wallace is interested in
the view of the self, inspired by Buchlerian metaphysics, as a self-process
having both a gross or total self-process dimension and a cumulative,
cross-sectional dimension of the self-process, what she calls the imminent self.
This view allows for a conceptualization of the self as constituted by its
history, as having spatio-temporal spread and as constituted by plural relations.
It has resources to account for the identity of a relationally constituted self
and of a self over, or rather through, time, and for conceptualizing the notion
that it is a whole self that is present at any time and that has a unity of
relations with its earlier and subsequent temporal dimensions. If the idea of a
relationally constituted self that is its history is to be taken seriously as an
ontology of the self, Wallace says, then the self cannot be thought of in static
terms, or in merely physical, that is bodily or biological, or psychological
terms.
In her paper on the Russian writer
Maxim Gorky.s novel Mother, the founding novel of Socialist Realist literature,
Lyubov Bugaeva argues that there is an influence on Gorky that has hitherto been
unnoticed. While in the US in 1906 Gorky met and corresponded with William James,
and spent a good deal of time with John Dewey. Bugaeva.s analysis of Mother
demonstrates the degree to which Gorky was influenced by ideas, especially of
the self, education and social change, drawn from James and Dewey, as well as
from the Fabian Socialists John and Prestonia Martin
Section III, Self and Politics, is
devoted to a variety of political values, institutions and problems. Thomas C.
Hilde concentrates on the institutional dimension of global governance. Global
institutions, from treaties to sets of norms and methodological axioms, are
built upon an outmoded conception of the self and its epistemology. This older
conception posits a rational, self-interested benefit-maximizing individual. The
influence of this conception is broad. One major influence is found in the
assumptions regarding global agreement (or disagreement) on pressing collective
action issues. In international agreements, for example, much of the analytical
and procedural work assumes that state and individual actors reflect the old
conception of the self. The analytical focus is thus largely placed on the
problem of why a state or other entity would agree to limit its own self-seeking
when interacting with other states and international entities. In other words,
compliance with agreements in tension with assumed motivations to cheat becomes
the focus problem. In a speculative mood, the paper suggests that a fuller
account of a descriptively richer and more ambiguous self - the "traveling
self" - as well as what Hilde calls "epistemic cosmopolitanism"
could provide a more complex and more contemporary understanding of normatively
evolving international institutions.
Armen Marsoobian wants to understand
genocide as thoroughly as possible on the basis of Dewey.s and Mead.s pragmatism.
Starting with the recent controversies in the historical debate about the
Armenian genocide he raises several intellectually challenging philosophical and
historiographical problems. Taking Dewey.s relational notion of the self as a
point of departure, he analyzes the phenomenon of genocide from the points of
view of its concept, public declarations, circumstances, perpetrators and
victims. Marsoobian points out how good history trumps bad philosophy, and how
good philosophy can aid history. He puts his ultimate point this way: "In
conclusion, what I have sketched above about the nature of genocidal intentions
and the suffering of genocide victims is only by way of a beginning in my
attempt to understand the concept of genocide. For it is only through such an
understanding that the evil of genocides past can be repaired and of genocides
future be prevented."
John Ryder concentrates on the
possible implications of American pragmatism and naturalism for foreign policy.
He is asking the question what a reasonably thoughtful and consistent pragmatist
would do if in a position to make foreign policy. Two of Ryder.s presumptions
are, citing Dewey, that "philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a
device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method,
cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men," and citing
Timothy Garton Ash, that "it is a great mistake, made by many Europeans, to
assume that America.s moralistic rhetoric of freedom is merely a cloak for
self-interest...Americans were Wilsonian long before Wilson." Ryder provides an
extremely wide and thorough philosophical, historical and political overview of
the problem.s background, he analyzes Dewey.s concept of democracy in relation
to other theories of democracy, and shows us the methods and possibilities of a
pragmatist foreign policy. It is clear for him that "because of its commitment
to a deep and thorough form of democracy, a pragmatist foreign policy will not
be easy to implement, especially in the US in the current political environment.
Many things would no doubt have to change before it would become possible.
Nonetheless, there are many reasons to think that pragmatism has a good deal to
bring to foreign policy, and that a nation would be well served by a foreign
policy conceived on pragmatist principles."
Emil Visnovsky is interested in a
pragmatist approach to the relations between self and society via social norms
and normativity. After a general description of the social role of norms,
Vi..ovsky examines Mead.s and Dewey.s concepts of norm. Having recognized the
lack of a special pragmatist theory of norms and normativity, he tries to create
a propedeutic of a detailed pragmatist theory of normative community and
participatory democracy with the help of F. L. Will and Beth Singer.
Gert-Rudiger Wegmarshaus. paper analyses two distinct concepts of the political
self and their significance for contemporary, modern democracies: the
liberal-individualistic concept of the political self and the
republican-communitarian self. Tracing the emergence of the liberal self in the
Europe of early modern times, the text addresses the shortcomings of the liberal
understanding of politics and society, among which is a considerable split
between the political elite and the people, resulting in a low involvement in
politics from the side of the ordinary citizen. Turning to the
republican-communitarian political self, the paper demonstrates the significance
of a more participatory understanding of politics, inviting citizens to take
care for the "res publica," to show commitment to the commonwealth, and to
develop forms of political inclusiveness. The comparison of both concepts of the
political self reveals strengths and weakness alike: John Rawls. understanding
of the liberal self stresses individual rights along with justice based on the
equality of opportunity, an approach that is well suited for the plurality of
modern society. Nonetheless, the republican-communitarian understanding of the
political self highlights how citizens are at the same time socially embedded,
thus inviting political responsiveness. In a liberal society the freedom of the
individual is unconditional; but individual liberty should be complemented by
civic mindedness and it should be sustained by a political participation that
benefits the individual self and the community.
Section IV, Self and Neopragmatism,
focuses on the self from the point of view of Richard Shusterman and Richard
Rorty. Dorota Koczanowicz points out that the problem of personal identity in
contemporary culture has been widely discussed in philosophy and elsewhere in
the humanities. This discussion has provoked a change in thinking about human
beings and about their place in society. The question Koczanowicz wants to be
answered is whether it is possible to have a harmonious society of autonomous
individuals. In her opinion a new understanding of the self as an existence that
grows in time without any premises, or a priori known substantial features, has
enabled philosophers, humanists, and social scientists to use the category of "narration"
in their work. Narration as well as life is a time structure that flows from
beginning to end with some hope of fulfillment. From this perspective, science
does not hope to find an objective, true reality independent of language and
mind. To understand is rather to put experiences and events into an adequate
narration. Koczanowicz shows us that in Rorty.s and Shusterman.s reception of "the
aesthetics of experience" we can notice the influence of pragmatist ethical
theory. For both philosophers, pragmatism is an important point of reference,
but it is far more obvious in Shusterman.s version than in Rorty.s. "It is clear,"
she says,
that one of the founders of
pragmatism, John Dewey, worked out the non-foundational idea of ethics,
placing an emphasis on individual responsibility. Thus, when Rorty and
Shusterman refer to pragmatism, they concentrate on only one of its aspects.
In its Jamesian form, pragmatism stresses the role of self-realization and
individualism; but other versions of pragmatism emphasize the important role
played by community and social bonds. These two tendencies exist in pragmatism,
and this is one cause of the inner tensions in this theory. The best example
of this is Mead.s division of "me" (social part of personality) and "I" (creative
part of personality). We can say that Rorty as well as Shusterman derive their
ideas from pragmatism, but each of them explores only one thread.
We go from one extreme to other, and
in this way the question asked by the ancient Greeks about the possibility of
harmony between a person and society remains alive.
Alexander Kremer is interested in
Richard Rorty.s philosophy. It is well known that Rorty, a promising analytic
philosopher, changed his mind in the early 1970s and became a neo-pragmatist
thinker who knew well not only the American but also the European philosophical
traditions. By describing some of his main philosophical views (truth, language,
relative separation of public-private, etc), Kremer first provides the framework
of Rorty.s interpretation of selfhood, and second he shows how Rorty understands
the contingency of the self, the self as the "Center of Narrative Gravity." It
is also clear for him that this narrative identity of the self is "nicely
integrated with the rest of Dennett.s system and thus a fortiori with Davidson.s
system."
In his article Miklos Nyir.
reconstructs several aspects of Rorty.s postmodern version of liberalism, and
intends to show how far his philosophical, neopragmatist views are motivated by
these political assumptions. Examining Rorty.s national utopia reveals that he
advocates a morally reformed democracy achievable by the restoration of social
hope and fraternity. Global egalitarian utopia, however, requires a cosmopolitan,
global alternative to the ethnocentricity of such fraternal feelings, namely,
solidarity. The explication of the possibility and conditions of global
solidarity within the circumstances of pure historicity and contingency points
to the central role of imagination (rather than that of reason) as the capacity
for recognizing the only common feature of human beings beyond their linguistic
individualization, that is, suffering. One of the enumerated consequences drawn
from such argumentation is that Rorty.s famous private-public distinction is
necessitated precisely by the issue of suffering, the basis of solidarity. In
his attempt to situate Rorty.s imaginative liberalism, Nyir. highlights its
opposition to the representationalist and rationalist features of the
Enlightenment, being a project of completing the Enlightenment.s de-divinization
process, of securing responsible human self-reliance. In his paper Radim .ip
points out the weaker aspects of Richard Rorty's great philosophical ideas.
According to .ip, the weakness is a consequence of the postanalytic tradition
derived from Sellars and Davidson that handles experience as something opaque
and unimportant. The tradition overly stresses language and discourse. In this
respect, Rorty is not the heretic he has been taken to be. He continued in the
broader tradition established by analytic philosophy as well as by phenomenology
and hermeneutics. At the end of his text, .ip attempts to show that this
limitation influences in a negative way the conception of the interrelation
between self and society. He also argues that this tradition cannot adequately
explain where an innovation might come from, that is if we are really determined
by the language of society.
Section V is devoted to an interview
with Richard Rorty. This final part is a special contribution from Alexander
Kremer who took the interview with Rorty on December 20, 2005. This was perhaps
Rorty.s last interview, or in any case one of the last interviews, before his
unfortunate death on June 8, 2007.
