Contemporary Pragmatism Editions Rodopi Vol. 8, No. I June 2011), 21-33 ©2011 Richard Rorty: A Pragmatist with a Romantic Soul Susana de Castro in ety of inl joritarianism, post-philosophical id political culture. Although Rorty disagrees with Romanticism’s indifference toward community, his revisionary pragmatism has a discernable romantic cast. We are now more able than Plato was to acknowledge our finitude to-admit that we shall never be in touch with something ereater than ourselves. We hope instead that human life here on earth will become richer asthe centuries go by because the language used by our remote “descendants Will have more resources tan ours dd, Our VocaDUATY irs as that of our primitive ancestors stands to ours Richard Rorty, “The Fite of Life™ fomanticism has for Rorty is ; others things, to the central intellectual role he attributes to literacy criticism in our time. I would like to invite the reader to join me on a small journey with two destinations: romanticism and revisionary pragmatism. In our outward journey we will travel from pragmatism to romanticism, and in our retum journey we will travel back from romanticism to revisionary pragmatism — actually, not exactly the same point of departure anymore. This philosophical journey has five station stops and a special return station, each one dealing with core terms of Rorty’s vocabulary. During the outward joumey, from pragmatism to romanticism, we will stop at these Rortyan term-stations: Post-philosophical culture, Anxiety of Influence, Contingency, and Anti-authoritarianism; and during our quick return journey, from romanticism ‘back’ to revisionary pragmatism, we will stop just once at Political Culture’s term-station before we arrive at our revisionary pragmatism destination, called Redescription. Two authors will also take part with us on this journey, Isaiah Berlin and Harold Bloom. They both contributed greatly to Rorty’s intellectual process of creating, a new philosophical vocabulary.22 SUSANA DE CASTRO T have two aims: first, to deliver a meaningful narrative about the origins of Rorty’s innovative philosophical vocabulary; and second, to show that in the retum from romanticism back to (revisionary) pragmatism the romantic sensibility is still strongly present in Rorty’s vocabulary, so that at the end of the joumey we will fearlessly affirm that he was a pragmatist with a romantic soul. 1. Outward Journey: From Pragmatism to Roman 1.1 First Stop: Post-Philosophical Culture According to Richard Rorty (2008b) most people today do not feel the need any longer for achieving redemptive truth. Today in our materialistic and utilitarian post-industrial societies most educated people do not feel that they need big, all- inclusive explanations or that they need to have an access to eternal truths in order to make sense of their lives and diminish their suffering. Such skepticism about being saved through eternal truths need not bring us to despair. The idea, central to the thought of Rorty, is relatively simple: without any external big theory, either theological or philosophical, or even political, to tell us what to do, each one of us, living in a situation of relative material fulfillment, has much more liberty to adopt new identities and vocabularies. We don’t feel compelled to fulfill the expectations per se that our parents have put upon us, or even the expectations generated by typical national or social class values ~ nonetheless most of us do not relegate them so easily, without conflict. When and how did this ehange in the culture pattern of Western societies ‘occur? When and how did wrch for redemptive truth was not important anymore? hich is the result of the transcription of the A. W. Mel mn this subject in March and April 1965, published by Henry ion in this extraordinary book is thai ‘born that replaced the dominant post-platonic ¢ age was characterized by the belief in the existence of a rational order inside everything in the world and it was epitomized by the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and the cighteenth-century. In this cultural atmosphere whi srtainty there emerged The Enlightenment represented for the soft sciences such as philosophy, politics, ethics, religion, and the arts what the scientific revolution of the sixteenth-century represented for the so-called hard sciences such as mathematics, physic, astronomy, and geometry:Richard Rorty: A Pragmatist with a Romantic Soul 23 But suddenly truth, in the sense given to it by either of the brane was Not as important anymore. Berlin says: Suddenly there is a violent eruption of emotion, enthusiasm. People become interested in Gothic buildings, in introspection. People become neurotic and melancholy; they begin to admire the unaccountable flight of spontaneous genius. (2001, 6) For those writers, poets, and philosophers in Germany, and afterwards in England, who were fed up with the excess of certainty and rational order that originated in France and propagated all over Europe, the notions of indi- viduality, creativity, strong character, and geniality of individuals represented a much stronger reason to c “discover would attack even the legitimacy of aspiring to such universality and neutrality due to our inevitable one-sided perspective. In many places in his work, Rort the history of philosophy. ing, however, is that ‘eloping pragmatism’ interpretation of truth and action and other hilosophical issues inherent to them, he kept ‘Forte erie sn the thesis that now: the jure of redemptive truth, In_this res for whom the philosopher could not be compared with that of Shakespeare: cognitive originality in the whole history of philosophy comparable to Shakespeare's” (1995, 9). jout denying the importance and o1 philosophy’s contribution to past culture, of any “There is no ough Rorty prefers to be called a pragmatist, his attitudes and his skepticism about any categorical answer are more typical of the romantic tellect 1.2 Second Stop: Contingency In her wonderful book Evil in Modern Thought (2003) Susan Neiman claims that modernity begins with Rousseau because he was the first to distinguish between natural and moral evil. Since nature has its own laws, the sins of24 SUSANA DE CASTRO humans cannot possibly provoke natural catastrophes. To imagine a possible relation between the two involves assigning to God the decision about the rightness or wrongness of our actions and eliminating our responsibility for them. Kant was an eager reader of Rousseau, as Neiman and ty doing this he jemselves from any kind of rel f cy, and, ‘was aware at the same time of the risks involved in adulthood. Its major risk was contingency. How to avoid the bad consequences of our acts if we cannot know the future in advance? We cannot foresee the consequences of our actions. Kant’s solution was to give intentionality the central role in human actions. It doesn’t matter if the consequences of your action are bad, so long your intention was to do the right thing. For Kant, we can surpass contingency by always following the same moral norms. By acting thusly we will not automatically avoid misfortunes since the causal chain of action involves unpredictable variables, but This natural morality is evidently also a consequence o} Pietism. For RIA" Exigttenment cream of progress through rational predictability 1 is unsustainable but futurity and hope as such are not. He saw as a sign of progress that in every succeeding intellectual generation there has been less Platonism and he attributes this to romantic utopians like Marx, Whitman, and Dewey, “who prophesied a human future which would be patterned neither ‘on the past nor on the eternal” (1999a, 138). And he saw thi ‘The prominence of the literary critic in the culture of the past two centuries is a natural consequence of the Romantic apotheosis of the creative artist: god requires contemplators of their splendor and glosses on their pronouncements. (Rorty, 1999b, 117) However confident he was about the central role of the literary critic after the Romantic revolution, Rorty noticed that literary critics are under threat of being contaminated with Philosophy, following Bloom’s skepticism, It is a mark of the degeneracy of literary study that one is considered an eccentric for holding that the literary is not dependent upon theRichard Rorty: A Pragmatist with a Romantic Soul 25 Philosophical, and that the aesthetic is irreducible to ideology or to metaphysics. (Bloom, 1995, 10) (Rorty quoting Bloom, in 1999a, 138). For him ‘the only way for hterary criticism to resist Philosophy 1s by domg what Bloor 1999a, 138). He agrees with Bloom’s description of m Ituralism’s intervention in literary criticism as the ‘school of resentment’ 1.3 Third Stop: Anxiety of Influence We may now be able to understand the controversial private/public distinetion in Rorty (2008a). The detachment of the private realm from that of the public is justified through the description of the QGGHGIEEEBD:ccording to which the interests and personality of each individual cannot be explained by universalistic forms as Plato would have it. We are all unique exemplars of our species; individuals have their own private world of unjustifiable idiosyncratic desires and values, We do not need to justify our idiosyncratic desires, or face a choice between them and unconditional truths like the old quarrel between Plato and the Poets would have us believe (On the other side, Rorty is not suggesting that philosophy should aim strictly at finding out which are the personal internal values and preferences of each one of us. There is indeed a public realm where we should try to find not unconditional ‘Truth or the Real but the population lazism has shown u me cannot s destructive ideas and values influence others. The pragmatist intellectual, however, like the26 SUSANA DE CASTRO ince Shelley’s day, there has been less Platonism in every succeeding generation, thanks to figure like Marx, Whitman, and Dewey — romantic utopians who prophesied a human future which would be patterned neither on the past nor on the eternal. (Rorty, 1999a, 158) In the preface to his book The Western Canon, Harold Bloom uses Walter Pater’s definition of Romanticism as ‘adding strangeness to beauty’ to rather than Romantics as such” (3). For view that there isn’t any kind of agonistic urge between authors which motivate them to try to surpass those past authors they most admire. This phenomenon of competition between ‘strong poets” characterizes what he or the fi elf to be ey all challenged “death” more than the rest of us and they could not accept the failure of creating nothing new. This picture of Darwin and Newton fighting against tradition and creating new vocabularies for transforming science because they want to escape from mediocrity reveals a much more romantic way of interpreting the history of science and of philosophy. 1.4 Fourth Stop: Anti-Authoritarianism Rorty occasionally discussed the anti-authoritarian character of pragmatism (for example, 2006, 1999c). For him, the pragmatist anti-representationalist account of belief signals its engagement with anti-authoritarianism (2006). Anti authoritarianism was also the tonic of Kant’s small essay “What i Enlightenment?” (1784). There he exhorts through the maxim “sapere aude!” that all human beings make use of their own intellectual capacities and avoid any kind of paternalistic relation. Relations of dependence upon different kinds of teachers usurp our rational capacities for decision-making, This is also a major theme of Rorty’s works, and also a signal of his romantic soul.Richard Rorty: A Pragmatist with a Romantic Soul 27 discussion with any “she has the better judgment” supposition: no king, no priest, no philosopher, no spiritual chief or politician, can avoid having his or her position confronted and doubted. We are all human beings with an equal capacity for understanding and evaluating cognitive requirements and limits of both 04 ific method, of the Enlightenment and 1g and logical order, and so on, the French Revolution, of rational thin! chiller, Schelling, and Fichte. As good disciples and_* taminated with the ‘anxiety of influence” fant, human autonomy and responsibility means that given a situation of moral conflict a human being is always ‘free’ to choose the rational universal norms and disdain personal feelings. on SED a autonomy and responsibility means that no matter what a human being chooses, she will remain faithful to her particular and sincere options, and will show how strong her character is, and how free she is, by facing all kinds of adversity. Of course, Kant “would have been horrified to perceive any such consequences of his perfectly orthodox, half-pietist, half-Stoical doctrine” (Berlin 2001, 83). For Fichte, another of Kant’s disciples, “at the mere mention of the name of freedom my heart opens and flowers, while at the word necessity it contracts painfully” (Berlin 2001, 88). For Kantians like Fichte, necessity represented the world of nature and its implacable effects on human bodies and life, But contrary to Kant, for him the ways of avoiding it were not through blind obedience to moral norms. Fichte developed a “kind of early pragmatism” by giving human perception of things and action central roles in his theory of freedom: ‘Things depend upon the way I treat them, what I need them for. Because I live in a certain way things appear to me in certain fashion: the world of a composer is different from the world of a butcher. (Berlin, 2001, 89) schelling, nature was not Fichte, nature was “unconscious developed a mystical vitalism, which together with (iGH@s/oeHiTeIOF Will)28 SUSANA DE CASTRO SPS enna gg Ra ME nee sosine) 2. Quick Return Journey: From Romanticism back to (Revisionary) Pragmatism. 2.1 One Stop: Political Culture Isaiah Berlin (2001, xv) argues against A. O. Lovejoy that although it is comprised of a variety of authors with often divergent lorf, and Amold. After the Germany was devastated and_her_people_w. their suffering, of the pietist influence in Germany was the creation of a very particular cultural atmosphere characterized by, among other things, “a very moving and very interesting but highly personal and violently emotional literature, hatred of the intellect, and above all, of course, violent hatred of France” (Berlin, 2001, 37). The wounds of national pride after the Thirty Years War were not at all healed. The flourishing in France of an optimistic Enlightenment belief according to which rationalism would put man in the path of progress, destroying ancient prejudices, superstition, ignorance. and cruelty, was a cause of profound disgust among Gen ci Movement — which, compared to the overwhelming presence of the Enlightenment, is unfairly downplayed in the official history of philosophy ~ but Revolution, which put down the hierarchical feudal world’s blind acceptance of monarehical author AEROS Sn iSMSSEUAS SORE “of dstnesiona node of thinking He es, he also doesn't seem to aztec will the neglect of rationality as such. In his philosophical writings Rorty tries to redescribe rationality as an enterprise of searching for consensus and for intersubjective agreement on particular issues through the exchange of reasons and conversation.” If one adopts this modest Protagorean redescription of what rationality is, then one would no longer need universal truths. Yet, on the other side, he admits that like the Romantic intellectual, the pragmatist also thinks that imagination should precede reason. This is so, first becauseRichard Rorty: A Pragmatist with a Romantic Soul 29 in nakes extensive TD ase or isan Berin's interpretation of Komantiism. The first important thing to notice is that Berlin, as Rorty observes, was the first to recognize that the Romantic Movement was not just a literary movement, a reaction to Classicism, . and perhaps pnmanly, omanticism Was 4 reaction against Berlin emphasizes that two goods can e Incompatible, although each one is for its holder completely justified. Romanticism can be viewed as a result of this recognition of an unavoidable incompatibility of goods. History and literature are replete with examples of such conflicts between goods, like that between Antigone and Creon, or between Danton and Robespierre, t. The recognition of the existence for Rorty the end of the rational gument.” and also the: assumption that there must be “the better a For a romantic intellectual, there is no reason for despair in face of the absence of “the better argument’. Instead of searching for the grandeur associated with the picture of compatible goods, the human being strengthens her humanity and defies her finitude by turning her back on external values and _ Searching inside of herself or novel and persona vals and ies hh hs Se or triving her position against all possible contrary positions, and such courage is a sign of her freedom. Displaying courage, integrity, and sincerity, the romantic hero reaches the most outstanding state a person can |] Late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Romanticism represented the turning point for the Western perception of truth and knowledge. In Berlin's words, “the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West that has occurred,” in Rorty’s words, in the substitution of profundity for grandeur. ‘Calm grandeur’ is the way' In cighteenth-century aesthetic theorist, refers to classicism’s “passionate nostalgic taste for classic art,” and its30 SUSANA DE CASTRO ideal forms. Although Rorty agrees with Berlin that Romanticism represented a huge shift in Western consciousness, as a pragmatist he is not convinced that that for javidson, there is no language if there is no communication. Therefore, artists or philosophers who cannot communicate with other intellectuals because the vocabularies they are using are too strange do not eseape from the urge of having another person, or persons, confirming the significance of their talks — in such cases this other person is not found among their contemporaries but only in future generations, 2.2 Back Station: Redescription The importance Rorty gives to language is crucial in order to understand his philosophical positions. We can notice here, however, a large gap between Rorty and the Romantics. For Romantic intellectuals, words would have the capacity to escape the frontiers of significance because they would also have hidden allegorical and symbolical meanings which are inaccessible through other words or explanations (Berlin 2001, 104-105). For Rorty, conversely, language is a creative medium we use to communicate and obtain what we want. For that reason he considers that progress is achieved when someone discovers through brand new vocabularies some ways to solve problems that the former generation of intellectuals could not solve, The intellectual is a problem-solver and by solving problems she generates new ones for the next generation, This is the reason why Habermas cannot accept Rorty’s radical interpretation of language and communication as just the result of interlocutors sharing the same final vocabulary (Rorty, 2007b, 77-79). For Rorty, there is no transcendental, universal normative criteria to judge the rightness or wrongness of the final vocabulary of a given community, because the final vocabulary one uses to judge the actions of agents from a different community is just as final a vocabulary as theirs; each final vocabulary is the product of the specific historical context of each community’s culture:Richard Rorty: A Pragmatist with a Romantic Soul 31 Nothing can serve as a criticism of a ve culture save an alternative culture — Drawing upon Thomas Kuhn’s accounts of scientific revolution, Rorty forged the concept of ‘redescription’ to explain this phenomenon of culture criticism: “nothing can serve as criticism of a final vocabulary save another such Vocabulary; there 1s no answer to a redescnption save a re-re-redescription” 2008a, 80) Beyond this, we can only hope that peo} and by doing this, they may become more like Rorty’s ironist about their final vocabulary by viewing it as just one of the many final vocabularies existing in the world. For Rorty, Berlin’s doctrine of incommensurable human values was a ‘polytheistic manifesto” (2007c, 30). A polytheist is someone who believes in such incommensurability and also that there are_no “non-human persons with ower to intervene in human affairs.” For a ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1am deeply grateful for Colin Koopman and his patient and careful assistance with English revisions and his great editorial advice NOTES L. In his interview with Derek Nystrom and Kent Puckett (2002), Rorty complains that he was misunderstood when eritics said that for him the private could not be public. He says that his intention was more ‘or others their happiness consists in their solitude. Most people could enjoy both realms without having to feel guilty about this, because “we don't have the moral responsibility to bring the two together" (62). 2. It is unavoidable (0 ask about the proper conditions for such free conversation to take place. Asymmetrical social roles such as the one between a poorly paid worker32 SUSANA DE CASTRO and a supervisor, or between a harassed women and her harasser, ean never be free and consensual. One side has more power than the other. Rorty was perfectly aware of this. Although many of his critics would prefer to call him a conservative liberal pragmatist, he was deeply committed to denouncing such asymmetrical relations, That is why in the first volume of his Philosophical Papers titled Objectivism, Relativism, and Truth he declares that democracy has priority over philosophy. REFERENCES, Berlin, Isaiah, 2001. The Roots of Romanticism, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Bloom, Harold. 1995. “Preface and Prelude, (New York: Riverhead Books). in The Western Canon by Harold Bloom Neiman, Susan, 2003, O Mal no Pensamento Moderno, trad, Fernanda Abreu, Rio de Janeiro: Dit Rorty, Richard. 1997. Objectivism, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers Volume 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, Rorty, Richard. 1999a, “The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature.” in Achieving Our Country by Richard Rorty (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Rorty, Richard, 1999p, “Movements and Campaigns,” in Achieving Our Country Richard Rorty (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), by Rorty, Richard. 1999¢. “Globalization, the Politics of Identity and Social Hope,” in Philosophy and Social Hope by Richard Rorty (London: Penguin Books) Rorty, Richard. 2006, “Pragmatism as Anti-authoritarianism,” in A Companion to Pragmatism, ed, John R. Shook and Joseph Margolis (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell), Rorty, Richard, 2007a, “The Fire of Life,” in Poerry (November). Rorty, Richard. 2007b. “Grandeur, Profundity, and Finitude,” in Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers Volume IV by Richard Rorty (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press). Rorty, Richard, 2007e. “Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism,” in Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers Volume IV by Richard Rorty (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press). Rorty, Richard. 2008a. Contingency. Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, Richard. 2008b. “Introduction: Pragmatism and Philosophy.” in Consequences of Pragmatism by Richard Rorty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).Richard Rorty: A Pragmatist with a Romantic Soul 33 Rorty, Richard, Derek Nystrom, and Kent Puckett. 2002. Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Susana de Castro Philosophy and Education Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Ay, Pasteut, 250 Urea 2295-900 Rio de Janeiro, RI Brazil