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Richard Rorty - Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism
Richard Rorty - Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism
Richard Rorty - Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism
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POSTMODERNIST
OF INTELLECTUALS
BOURGEOIS
583
LIBERALISM*
oftheintelOMPLAINTS aboutthesocialirresponsibility
0022-362X/83/8010/0583$00.70
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OF INTELLECTUALS
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or churchesor movementsare, on this view, shining historicalexamples not because they reflectrays emanating from a higher
source, but because of contrast-effects-comparisons
with other,
worse communities.Persons have dignitynot as an interiorlumiIt is a cornescence,but because theyshare in such contrast-effects.
ollary of this view that the moral justificationof the institutions
and practices of one's group-e.g., of the contemporarybourgeoisie-is mostlya matterof historicalnarratives(including scenarios about what is likelyto happen in certainfuturecontingencies), ratherthan of philosophical metanarratives.The principal
backup for historiographyis not philosophy but the arts, which
serveto develop and modifya group's self-imageby, forexample,
apotheosizing its heroes, diabolizing its enemies, mounting dialogues among its members,and refocusingits attention.
A furthercorollaryis thatthemorality/prudence
distinctionnow
appears as a distinctionbetweenappeals to two parts of the network that is the self-parts separated by blurryand constantly
shiftingboundaries. One part consists of those beliefsand desires
and emotions which overlap with those of most othermembersof
some community with which, for purposes of deliberation,she
identifiesherself,and which contrastwith those of most members
of other communities with which hers contrastsitself.A person
appeals to moralityratherthan prudencewhen she appeals to this
overlapping, shared part of herself,those beliefsand desires and
emotions which permit her to say "WE do not do this sort of
thing." Moralityis, as WilfridSellars has said, a matterof "we-intentions."Most moral dilemmasare thusreflectionsof thefactthat
mostof us identifywitha numberof different
communitiesand are
equally reluctant to marginalize ourselves in relation to any of
them. This diversityof identificationsincreases with education,
just as the numberof communitieswith which a person may identifyincreaseswith civilization.
Intra-societaltensions,of the sort which Dworkin rightlysays
mark our pluralistic society,are rarelyresolvedby appeals to general principles of the sort Dworkin thinks necessary.More frequently theyare resolvedby appeals to what he calls "convention
and anecdote." The political discourse of the democracies,at its
best,is the exchange of what Wittgensteincalled "remindersfora
particular purpose"-anecdotes about the past effectsof various
practicesand predictionsof what will happen if,or unless,some of
these are altered. The moral deliberations of the postmodernist
bourgeois liberal consists largely in this same sort of discourse,
avoiding theformulationof generalprinciplesexceptwherethesit-
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RICHARD RORTY