Man and Worm 25: 69-78, 1992.

9 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Rorty's hermeneutics and the problem of relativism

A.T. NUYEN
Department of Philosophy, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland, 4072,
Australia

Seeing himself as a defender of reason, and wishing to complete the project

of Enlightenment, Jiirgen Habermas has mounted an attack on those who, in
his view, wish to circumscribe the force of reason, notably Adorno and
Gadamer in Germany and the French post-structuralists ("from Bataille via
Foucault to Derrida"). 1 Recently, the debate has involved Richard Rorty. In
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 2 Rorty argues for a modified version
of Gadamer's hermeneutics. Rorty believes that the post-structuralist
position on reason, particularly that of Jean-Francois Lyotard's, is too
radical (i.e., too nihilistic) while Habermas's position is too "Platonistic"
(i.e., too rationalistic). With a Gadamerean hermeneutics, Rorty believes
that he can "split the difference between Lyotard and Habermas...'3 The
aim of this paper is to locate Rorty in the group under attack by Habermas,
and then to focus on the Habermas-Rorty debate. Specifically, I wish to
argue that (1) Rorty's position is much closer to post-structuralism than he
thinks; (2) consequently, it is (a) not as close to Gadamer's hermeneutics as
he thinks and (b) more susceptible than the latter to the charge of relativism;
(3) Rorty's response to the charge of relativism leaves his position vul-
nerable, ironically, to the charge of conservatism; and (4) if Rorty wants to
steer a safe path between "the Scylla of Platonism and the Charybdis of
vulgar relativism ''4 then it will be hermeneutics, the position he wants to
stay close to but does not, that will help him do so.
Toward the end of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty suggests
that his pragmatism is a kind of hermeneutics, or rather that Gadamer is
saying much the same thing as he is. He takes hermeneutics to be against
epistemology, or "an expression of the hope that the cultural space left by
the demise of epistemology will not be filled" (p. 315). Indeed, he believes
that hermeneutics is the only alternative once we have abandoned the
epistemological project, "what we get when we are no longer epistemologi-
cal" (p. 325). For Rorty, this conclusion follows once we abandon the idea
of truth as correspondence to "real" nature reflected in the mirror of the
70

mind. For to abandon the notion of the mind as the mirror of nature is also
to abandon the epistemological project of polishing the mirror so as to
reflect nature more "truly". What is left is the notion of truth as a matter of
agreement reached in the course of conversation. The latter, for Rorty, is the
hermeneutical message. Instead of the epistemological project, what we
need is a process that yields agreements. Once we have agreements, we can
allow truth to drop out of the picture: from the "hermeneutical point of view
... the acquisition of truth dwindles in importance" (p. 365). It matters little
whether agreements amount to knowledge: "The word knowledge would
not seem worth fighting over" (p. 356).
Gadamer would agree with Rorty that a crucial aspect of hermeneutics is
the search for agreements in conversation. However, Gadamer would object
strongly to the characterisation of his hermeneutics as replacing the epis-
temological project of seeking truth and knowledge. Contrary to Rorty's
interpretation, truth does not dwindle in importance from Gadamer's
hermeneutical point of view. On the contrary, hermeneutics is for Gadamer
"a discipline that guarantees truth. ''5 The whole of Truth and Method shows
that Gadamer certainly believes that the word "knowledge" is certainly
worth fighting for. One of its tasks, if not the main task, is to argue that the
natural sciences, with their scientific method, do not have a monopoly over
knowledge. Truth and Method combats what might be called the scientistic
attitude that associates truth with method, particularly scientific method. 6 It
is true that hermeneutics seeks agreements in conversation, but not just any
agreements; rather, it seeks those agreements that amount to understanding,
agreements that point to truth and can be properly called knowledge.
The difference between Gadamer's hermeneutics and Rorty's can be
seen more clearly in the nature of Rorty's agreements. We have seen that
Gadamer's hermeneutics seeks agreements that amount to understanding. If
such agreements are reached in conversation then Gadamer has in mind a
particular kind of conversation. Indeed, he has in mind the Socratic kind of
conversation in which participants move ever closer to truth. 7 Whatever
Rorty's conversation aims at, it is no longer a conversation about meaning
and truth. According to Thomas McCarthy, Rorty has in mind the kind of
conversation that a "literary intellectual" would engage in, one "who reads
and writes for the purpose of playing off vocabularies against one another,
trying to see how they all hang together, and attempting to invent new
ones. ''8 This may be somewhat of an exaggeration. However, in his reply to
McCarthy, 9 Rorty confirms that we have no need to converse about
meaning, truth and rationality, which will take care of themselves so long as
"we stick to freedom" (p. 634). The notion of freedom in tum does not need
much talking about either as "'contemporary liberal society" (of North
America) has what it takes to guarantee freedom. Thus, Rorty writes in
 71

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity: "I think that contemporary liberal

society already contains the institutions for its own improvement . . . .
Indeed, my hunch is that Western social and political thought may have had
the last conceptual revolution it needs. ''10 I shall discuss later the conser-
vatism in this position. For now, it is clear that Rorty does not have in mind
a conversation on conceptual matters of meaning and truth, and that his
hermeneutics is not as close to Gadamer's as he thinks it is.
If we examine Rorty's notion of Bildung, it will be clear that his position
is more post-structuralist than hermeneutic (in the Gadamerean sense). In
contrast to method, Gadamer's hermeneutic way to truth is structured by the
four "humanistic" concepts of Bildung, sensus communis, judgment and
taste. For reasons that are not clear, Rorty picks Bildung from this list, turns
it into something like personal education, and calls it edification ("since
'education' sounds a bit too flat and Bildung a bit too foreign" - p. 360).
However, what he goes on to say about edification makes it quite unlike
Gadamer's Bildung. For Rorty, the process of edification calls for "the
'poetic' activity of thinking up ... new aims, new words, or new dis-
ciplines," for an edifying discourse that is "abnormal" (p. 360). In explicat-
ing edification further, Rorty contrasts the "edifying philosopher" to the
"systematic philosopher":

Great systematic philosophers are constructive and offer arguments.

Great edifying philosophers are reactive and offer satires, parodies,
aphorisms... They are intentionally peripheral. Great systematic
philosophers, like great scientists, build for etemity. Great edifying
philosophers destroy for the sake of their own generation. Systematic
philosophers want to put their subject on the secure path of a science.
Edifying philosophers want to keep space open for the sense of wonder
which poets can sometimes cause... (pp. 369-370).

We saw earlier that Rorty's hermeneutics differs from Gadamer's in that his
aims at agreements for their own sake while Gadamer's is concemed with
understanding meaning and truth. Given Rorty's characterisation of
edification, his hermeneutics differs further from Gadamer's in so far as it
offers a different way toward agreements. Furthermore, what Rorty has said
about edification makes his position very much like a post-structuralist one.
The "poetic activity" that Rorty is calling for has been the hallmark of post-
structuralism. Thus, metaphors, allusions and other devices of the poetic
language have been employed by post-stmcturalists. Lyotard has urged us
to emulate literary figures such as Proust and Joyce in putting into play the
"whole range of available narrative and even stylistic operators... ''11
Parallel to Rorty's urge that we should think up "new disciplines" is
Lyotard's call for a proliferation of petits rdcits as a means of freeing
ourselves from the clutches of a few fixed "metanarratives." Rorty's
72

emphasis on the "abnormal" and the "peripheral" is also a well-known post-

structuralist theme frequently encountered in the works of post-struc-
turalists "from Bataille via Foucanlt to Derrida." Finally, in offering
"satires, parodies, aphorisms" instead of serious arguments, Rorty's
edifying philosophers are just working out another post-structuralist theme,
i.e., the celebration of the Dionysian elements as a reaction to the serious-
ness of Platonic rationalism. Clearly then, with edification as the crucial
element in its structure, Rorty's hermeneutics is much closer to post-
structuralism than it is to Gadamer's position. As such, he cannot be
"splitting the difference between Lyotard and Habermas."
Indeed, it can be argued that Rorty is even further away from Habermas
than Lyotard (or any other post-structuralist) is. It is true that post-struc-
turalists are fond of rhetorical devices. However, there is a cognitive
purpose in the employment of such devices. I have argued elsewhere that
post-structuralists believe that the unadorned, Platonic, language, the
language of reason, is incapable of capturing the uniqueness of an object, or
event, incapable of revealing the genuine differences that define genuine
particularity. 12 There are inevitable remainders that cannot be captured in
rationalistic concepts, and the role of rhetoricaldevices is mainly to give us
a glimpse of otherness, to cope with altarity. Thus, Lyotard points out that
we need "new presentations," or new narrative and stylistic operators, "not
in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the un-
presentable. ''13 For Rorty, by contrast, the purpose is precisely enjoyment,
not cognition. Indeed, one can go so far as to argue that Rorty is more
negative than the post-structuralists by contrasting Rorty's "destruction for
one's own generation" with deconstruction: the latter aims at much more
than one's own generation; it prepares the ground for a new way of think-
ing, a new mode of understanding.
Since truth has dwindled in importance from Rorty's point of view, and
agreements are to be had for their own sake, Rorty's position is much more
susceptible to the charge of relativism than Gadamer's hermeneutics, more
so than even post-structuralism. We cannot ask from Rorty for any basis
upon which an agreement may be reached. The only constraining notion is
freedom, and on this crucial notion, Rorty believes, as we saw above, that
we already have an agreement. It seems to be a consequence of Rorty's
position that, as long as people on the whole are left free, we may reach any
agreement we please: we may agree to continue to destroy wilderness areas,
or the ozone layer, we may agree with those who claim that the holocaust
never occurred, and so on. Likewise, we may think up any new idea, any
new word, any new discipline, so long as we enjoy them. There is no need
to be guided by the concern for truth and knowledge. For truth has
dwindled in importance and the word "knowledge" is not worth fighting
 73

over. The absence of constraints, guides and bases means that Rorty has not
reduced the difference between the post-structuralists and Habermas; if
anything, he has widened it. At least, this is the way Habermas himself
perceives Rorty's position. In his reply, Habermas puts the difference down
to the fact that he wants to "maintain precisely the distinctions that Rorty
wants to retract: between valid and socially accepted views, between good
arguments and those which are merely successful with a certain audience at
a certain time. ''14 For Habermas, Rorty is courting with relativism - not
vulgar relativism perhaps, but relativism nonetheless.
Before examining Habermas's argument, we need to be clear about what
Rorty calls "vulgar relativism" and why he believes that his hermeneutics
cannot be equated with it. Relativism in general emphasizes the
incompatibility of different forms of life and different values and belief
systems. What Rorty calls "vulgar relativism" can be characterized as the
view that incompatible opinions can be nonetheless all correct, and thus
they should all be tolerated, if not accepted. From the practical point of
view, vulgar relativism calls for coping with differences or learning to live
with pluralism, not resolving the differences as there is no basis for any
resolution. Since Rorty stresses the need to reach agreements, he can claim
that his position goes beyond vulgar relativism. The question is whether
Rorty has managed to avoid relativism altogether, or only the vulgar form.
To answer this question we need to recall the discussion of the nature of
Rorty's agreements above. We have seen that by "agreement" Rorty does
not mean something we reach with the help of valid arguments: edifying
philosophers do not offer arguments. To the extent that an agreement has
some validity, its validity has a local effect only, i.e., it is valid for the
parties to the agreement; it is valid "for us" where "us" designates those
who agree. Now, this is uncontroversialty relativism. However, this does
not trouble Rorty. There is no evidence to show that he is anxious to defend
himself against the charge of relativism of this kind. The trouble is that, for
Habermas, this kind of relativism is untenable.
Habermas's argument is this. The plurality of forms of life, values and
belief systems does not show that they are inherently incompatible. Indeed,
to say that they are different is already to say that they have something in
common: a vantage point from which they are judged to be different as well
as a recognition of the need to resolve the difference. In Habermas's own
words, "(c)onvictions can contradict one another only when those who are
concerned with problems define them in a similar way, believe them to be
in need of resolution and want to decide issues on the basis of good
reasons" (pp. 230-231). What Rorty fails to recognize is that to come to an
agreement is already to recognize the need to resolve conflicts and to
"decide issues on the basis of good reasons." As we saw earlier, Rorty, as
74

an edifying philosopher rather than a systematic one, has no need for

arguments. Agreements about what is true, what is just, etc. are sufficient
for him. However, Habermas's argument is that Rorty cannot even describe
something as an agreement without putting himself in the position of a
party to the agreement and thus recognizing the need to resolve different
validity claims "on the basis of good reasons." To raise a validity claim is,
in turn, to say "This is so generally and not just for me or for us." It is to
point "beyond the provincial agreements of the specific local context"
(p. 231). In other words, it is to employ an argument the validity of which is
recognized beyond the "specific local context," to presuppose "a moment of
unconditionedness" (ibid.). Thus, Rorty cannot "consistently replace the
implicitly normative conception of 'valid arguments' with the descriptive
concept of 'arguments held to be true by us at this time'" (ibid.). In thinking
that he can, Rorty "commits an objectivistic fallacy."
For my purpose, I see the force of Habermas's argument in this way. If
Habermas is right in saying that Rorty's relativism is untenable, the only
relativism Rorty can have is vulgar relativism. I believe that Habermas is
right to some extent. It would appear that the phenomenology of agreement
supports Habermas's argument. To say that we have come to an agreement
just is to say that somehow our differences have been resolved. Either I
have come to acknowledge the validity in your point of view, or you in
mine, or we have both "sublated" our previous positions and moved on to a
new common ground. By whatever route, we have relied upon what we take
to be valid arguments. If we simply "bury our differences," we have not got
an agreement. We may come to agree to bury our differences, but that will
be an agreement based on some argument, e.g., that our differences cannot
be resolved for now and that we will both be better off if we set them aside.
Thus, it seems reasonable to suggest that the notion of agreement presup-
poses the notion of a valid argument. The latter, in turn, presupposes a
"moment of unconditionedness." However, the question is how
"unconditioned" this moment has to be.
Does the "moment of unconditionedness" have to be absolutely
unconditioned? If it has to be then Habermas is demanding an Archimedean
point, a God's-eye point of view. This is the kind of Platonism that Rorty
rejects, quite rightly as we shall see. There is some indication in Haber-
mas's earlier work, Erkenntniss und lnteresse, that he has in mind at the
very least a universal standpoint which grounds the validity of arguments.
In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty, with some justice, equates
Habermas's attempt to locate this universal standpoint with an attempt to
"create a new sort of transcendental standpoint" (p. 379). However, in later
works, particularly Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas speaks of
the "ideal speech situation" as a regulative idea rather than a transcendental
 75

one. While the rejection of transcendentalism goes some way toward

meeting Rorty's objection, the notion of an "ideal speech situation" still
sounds too "absolute," and Rorty would still be right to reject it. To see
why, let us examine the recent exchange between Rorty and Habermas's
defender in America, Thomas McCarthy.
Echoing Habermas, McCarthy argues that what we need is a "moment of
unconditionality that opens us up to criticism from other points of view
(...), that keeps us from being locked into what we happen to agree on at
any particular time and place..."15 Rorty rejects this claim: "It is not, as
McCarthy says, a 'moment of unconditionality that opens us up to criticism
from other points of view.' It is the particular attractions of those other
points of view. ''16 However, one may ask how we come to be aware of
other points of view, let alone their attractiveness, if we are not prepared to
"uncondition" ourselves and to look beyond the local context. It seems that
McCarthy's point has to be taken. Surely, he is right in claiming that to see
the attractiveness of another point of view one has to place oneself outside
one's own viewpoint, at least temporarily, i.e., to place oneself in a
"moment of unconditionality." The trouble is that it is not clear what kind
of unconditionality McCarthy has in mind. When, in the rejoinder to
Rorty's reply, he says that "the issue between us does not concern ultimate
foundations, timeless truths, incorrigible intuitions, or anything of the sort,"
17 he appears to be saying that no absolute unconditionality is needed. Yet,
he goes on:

So the real disagreement must concern how far this context-transcen-

dence reaches. Rorty's position seems to be: as far as the borders of a
language and no further. [Rorty would actually say: "the borders of a
language game".] Habermas's and Hilary Putnam's view is: there are no
such impassible borders; truth claims can be contested indefinitely and
from an indefinite diversity of points of view, precisely because they
claim unconditioned validity (p. 646).

Now, if there are no limits to how far context-transcendence reaches, we

have to assume that it can reach the "ultimate foundation," the "timeless
truth," or "absolute unconditionality." This will be an unreasonable position
to hold. While it is true that we need to place ourselves outside our own
context to be effectively critical of our viewpoint, it need not be denied that
the required "moment of unconditionality" is itself contextual, i.e., em-
bedded in a larger context. We do not need the absolute "moment of
unconditionality," one that transcends all contexts. Furthermore, the idea of
such point of view is unintelligible, and Rorty is right in rejecting that kind
of transcendentalism. To see that spending all my time on my work is
selfish, I only need to adopt a point of view within a larger context such as
that of the whole family; to see that spending all my time on myself and my
76

family is still selfish, I need to adopt a point of view within a wider still
context such as that of the community; and so on. Whether I am
"absolutely" or "ultimately" selfish is a judgment that only God can make.
Thus, we can accept the regulative force of a moment of unconditionality
and reject the idea of absolute unconditionality. Rorty should not reject the
former, without which criticism is most unlikely, and McCarthy (and
Habermas) should not demand the latter.
We have seen that the trouble with Rorty is that he does reject uncon-
ditionality. In so doing, he faces the charge of relativism. Worse still, if
Habermas's analysis of agreement is right, Rorty is stuck with vulgar
relativism. Aware of the problem he is facing, Rorty attempts to build into
his hermeneutical model a critical force by tuming the notion of "freedom"
into a "regulative" idea. As long as people are free to speak their minds, we
will be exposed to new ideas many of which will force us to be critical of
our own. However, "freedom" is both too weak and too strong as a critical
force. Too weak because the proliferation of ideas by itself does not provide
the critical force Rorty wants. Indeed, freedom and the plethora of ideas
seem to be the right mixture for relativistic pluralism. In saying, against
McCarthy and Habermas, that "'(i) dealizing elements' do nothing to help
me sort out the nut cases from the people to whom it pays to listen"
(p. 635), Rorty clearly recognizes the need to sort out the "nut cases" from
those with worthwhile ideas. However, if "idealizing elements" do
"nothing" to help us, "freedom" will do even less. McCarthy and Habermas
would be right in saying that what does help us is the presumption of valid
arguments, of having good reasons (although, as I have argued, they would
be wrong in thinking that only idealisation is based on this presumption).
On the other hand, the idea of freedom is too strong a critical force in so far
as it is itself beyond criticism. Rorty believes ("or at least hope(s)") that
"our culture is gradually coming to be structured around the idea of
freedom [as] leaving people alone to dream and think and live as they
please, so long as they do not hurt other people..." (ibid.) Is this the only
idea of freedom? Is this the right one for us? Does the fact, if it is a fact,
that our culture has come to accept it makes it fight for us? As pointed out
above, Rorty does not believe that there is much to talk about: we already
have an agreement on what it should be. If McCarthy is right in his observa-
tion that "the history of liberalism, in practice and in theory, has taught us
that there is more to the idea of freedom than merely negative liberties"
then, 18 there is an urgent need to give "good reasons" for supporting one
conception of freedom over others. To think that we already have one
which does not need talking about, one that provides the critical, or at least
regulative, force is to succumb to conservatism.
Exposure to new ideas is necessary but not sufficient for self-cfiticism.
 77

We also have to be prepared to step outside our own context, to transcend

our conditioning factors, and to evaluate our position from a different
standpoint, i.e. to adopt a "moment of unconditionedness (Habermas) or
unconditionality (McCarthy)" as well as to bring "valid arguments" and
"good reasons" to bear on the matter. It is this latter step that ensures that
any position we reach can claim to have validity beyond a local context, not
the "validity-for-us" variety. I have argued, inter alia, that Gadamer's
hermeneutics incorporates this necessary step to deliver claims that are not
relativistic, i.e., truth claims. What potentially differentiates Gadamer from
Habermas is that Gadamer rejects the idea of absolute unconditionality:
there is a need to step outside the local context but it is also necessary to
remain within some context (within the "effective history"); indeed, it is
impossible to transcend all contexts. What in fact differentiates Gadamer
from Habermas is Gadamer's rejection of any rigid conception of uncon-
ditionality, such as Habermas's "ideal speech situation." For Gadamer, the
hermeneutical task does not converge toward any fixed point, toward a
terminus ad quem. This is not to say that our understanding of meaning and
truth is inevitably incomplete and relative: it is to say that meaning and
truth do not have a fixed nature. The flexibility of hermeneutics is not to
compensate for our limited cognitive capacity with respect to our fixed
target: it is rather designed to track down a moving target. Hermeneutic
understanding is not relativistic in so far as it employs "valid arguments"
and "good reasons" in aiming at a target, at meaning and truth. As such,
Rorty will have a better chance of sailing past the Charybdis of relativism
by staying close to Gadamer's hermeneutics, a "discipline that guarantees
truth" as Gadamer has claimed. While this may not be an iron-clad
guarantee as many critics, unreasonably, demand, it has as good a chance as
anything to deliver truth. By contrast, Rorty's hermeneutics gives no such
guarantee, not so much because it is incapable to as because it is designed
to give us something else other than truth, namely enjoyment and edifica-
tion.

Notes

1. Jtirgen Habermas, "Modernity Versus Postmodernity," New German Critique,

No. 22(1981):3-14 at p. 13.
2. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979).
3. Richard Rorty, "Habermas and Lyotard on Post-Modernity," Praxis Interna-
tional 4(1984):32--44 at p. 42.
4. Richard Rorty, "Hermeneutics, General Studies, and Teaching," Selected
Papers from the Synergos Seminars 2(1982):6.
5. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans, and ed. Garrett Barden and
78

John Cumming (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), p. 447.

6. For details see my "Truth, Method and Objectivity: Husserl and Gadamer on
Scientific Method," Philosophy of the Social Sciences 20(1990):437-452.
7. For details see Robert Sullivan, Political Hermeneutics: The Early Thinking of
Hans-Georg Gadamer (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1989).
8. Thomas McCarthy, "Private Irony and Public Decency: Richard Rorty's New
Pragmatism," Critical lnquiry 16(1990):355-370 at p. 364.
9. Richard Rorty, "Truth and Freedom: A Reply to Thomas McCarthy," Critical
Inquiry 16(1990):633-643.
10. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), p. 63.
11. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report On Knowledge,
trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 80.
12. See my "The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmoaernist Discourse,"
Philosophy and Rhetoric, forthcoming.
13. Lyotard, op. cit., p. 81.
14. JiJrgen Habermas, "Questions and Counter-Questions," Praxis International
4(1984):229-249 at p. 231.
15. McCarthy, op cit., p. 370. It is interesting to note the rest of the quotation:
"...that opens us up to the alternative possibilities lodged in otherness and
difference that have been so effectively evoked by post-structuralist thinkers."
McCarthy seems to be saying that post-structuralists are closer to Habermas
than Rorty is, in so far as they posit something close to a "context-transcen-
dent," "regulative," standpoint.
16. Richard Rorty, op. cit., p. 635.
17. Thomas McCarthy, "Ironist Theory as a Vocation: A Response to Rorty's
Reply," Critical Inquiry 16(1990):644 655 at pp. 644~645.
18. Ibid., p. 651.