RORTY - INTRODUCTION ( POINTERS ) mad in his book PMN (Philosophy and Mirror of Nature ) wants to undermine the Confidence philosophers have in their subject as an autonomous discipline with its own subject matter and its own methodology for dealing with it. He says that philosophers credit themselves with dealing with perennial and eternal Problems which arise as soon as one starts to reflect. : These problems are classified into two types : one concerning the difference between human beings and other beings; and the other concerning legitimizing our claims to knowledge. The former is reduced to questions of mind-body relations and the latter translates into questions concerning the “foundations” of knowledge Thus Philosophy as a discipline tries to project itself as an attempt to debunk/deflate knowledge claims made by the sciences, morality, religion and art. It claims to do so on the basis of its “special understanding” of the nature of knowledge and nature of mind, For this reason Philosophy has been portrayed as “foundational” to the rest of the += culture because culture is an “assemblage of knowledge claims” that is adjudicated " by Philosophy - study of man as a knower, of the mental - processes, the activity of representation - are what makes knowledge possible. Knowledge constituted “accurate representation” of whatever lied outside the mind. Philosophy’s main concern was thus projected as providing a general theory of “representation” that involved an understanding of the “mental processes”. In other words the mind and mental processes became central to the notion of theory of knowledge or epistemology. @ scanned with OKEN Scannerand Kant had been responsible Descartes portrayed the mind mainly Descartes, Locke lace within the mind ntal process. ” taking p reason. 17th century philosophers, for such a notion of knowledge as a me! as a separate entity: Locke talked about “ processes and Kant interpreted philosophy as a tribunal of pure unding knowledge vie the notion of philosophy as a foundational discipline gro claims became prominent and constituted its definition. To be cont. @ scanned with OKEN Scannero pu Apaynouy TU oo Ate, ans RORTY INTRODUCTION ( POINTERS ) Such a notion of Philosophy was consolidated in the writ but it was also objected to. There were protests against this conception of knowledge as it led to the view of “grounding” the culture subsequently. But these") Protests went unheard. Philosophy became an area of culture “where one touched bottom” and so for the intellectual “philosophy became... a substitute for religion”. -« This claim was further reaffirmed by Russell and Husser! at the beginning of the nineteenth century when they made every possible attempt to keep philosophy “scientific” and “rigorous”. Thereafter during the course of the nineteenth century, » a new form of culture had arisen - the culture of the man of letters when 7 | intellectuals wrote poems and novels and political treatises and also criticised other * people’s poems, novels and treatises. But by the twentieth century the scientists had become much more remote from the intellectuals. The result was that the more “scientific” and “rigorous” philosophy became , the less it had to do with the rest of the culture and its traditional pretensions became more absurd. Against this background Rorty analyses the contribution of Wittgenstein, Heidrgger and Dewey whom he considers as the three most important philosophers of our century. There are two phases each to these philosophers. In their early phase they tried to make philosophy “foundational” that was essentially Kantian in nature. However in their later work they broke free of the kantian conception of philosophy as foundational. Rorty considers their later work as “therapeutic” rather than “constructive” which was the Kantian approach; “edifying rather than designed to make the reader question his own motives for systematic, 1 rather than to supply him with a new philosophical program”. philosophisin; All these three philosophers abandon the notion of knowledge as ‘accurate representation”which was made possible by special “mental processes They “set je" the notion of philosophy as “foundational"and also the notion of “the mind” ne a special subject of study, that was common to Descartes, Locke and Kant, @ scanned with OKEN Scanner s of the neo-kantians “.Rorty is very categorical in stating that these philosophers did not “argue against” but only” set aside” the kantian approach to philosophy. Their attitude was “like the attitude of the seventeenth century philosophers toward eet problematic”. They asserted the possibility of a post Kantian culture, which is without an “all-encompassing discipline which ...grounds the others...” “revolutionary These philosophers were thus trying to usher in a period of id not include philosophy” by offering a new panorama of human activities which di the features that were dominating during the Kantan era, To be contd.... @ scanned with OKEN ScannerR ORTY INTRODUCTION (POINTERS) Through this book - develapnieans eeiden ny Rorty has tried to make a survey of some recent ipl ly in Analytic Philosophy. His focus is on the anti-cartesian eee lution that analytic philosophy claims to bring out. His aim in is primarily to undermine the reader’s confidence, e in“ ind” . in “the mind” as something about which one should have a “philosophical” view; in “knowledge” as something about which there ought to be a “theory” and which should have a “foundation”; © In“philosophy” as it has been conceived by kant. He has tried to bring out the dialectic within analytic philosophy in the context of philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology and philosophy of science and wants to add some more steps in this direction to criticize the notion of analytic philosophy and philosophy as such. philosophy is one more varidt of Kantian guistic rather than mental. He holds that the emphasis on language, does not essentially change the Cartesian - Kantian problematic, and does not really give philosophy a new self-image. In other words he tries to argue that analytic philosophy is also committed to “construction of a permanent, neutral framework for inquiry and for all culture”, > Serubfre Frente ‘According to him “Analytic ilosophy, that considers representation as lin He maintains that itis the notion of human activity (comprising of inquiry, search for knowledge that takes place within such a framework) that links contemporary analytic philosophy to the traditions of Descartes, Locke and Kant. He points out that to have a framework of inquiry is to have a priori constraint in inquiry. ‘According to him both analytic philosophy and the cartesian-kantian tradition try er hand Wittgenstein, Heidegger and dewey are to_escape_ history. On the oth essentially historicists. They unanimously agree that investigations of the te] Sever @ scanned with OKEN Scanner‘or morality or language or society are attempts to foundations of knowledge : social practice and self- image. eternalize a certain language game, Rorty’s approach is also a historicist approach. He divides the book into three parts to put the notions of mind, knowledge and philosophy in a historical perspective. Part 1, is concemed with Philosophy of mind, where he tries to show that the intuitions” that lie behind Cartesian dualism have a historical origin. In part Il, he discusses epistemology and the various attempts made by Philosophers to frame a “successor subject” to epistemology. He argues that the in the 17th century and is particularly rs to the attacks made notion of “epistemology” has its genesi connected with Descartes notion of mind. Here he also ret by Sellars and Quine on “givenness” and “necessity” respectively as crucial steps to undermine the possibility of “theory of knowledge. Their holistic and pragmatic approach brings them close to Wittgenstein, a position he supports because he claims that if such a line of thought is extended it would let us see the truth as “what it is better for us to believe” rather than as “the accurate representation of reality”. He maintains that the notion of knowledge as accurate representa is optional in the sense that there is scope to replace it by a more pragmatic conception which eliminates the Greek contrast between contemplation and action or between representing the world and coping with it. In part III he takes up the idea of philosophy more explicitly. He holds that the traditional distinction between the “search for objective knowledge” and other less privileged areas of human activities is the distinction between “normal” and “abnormal” discourse. A i ies apreed-t criteria for reaching agreement is rse which embodies agreed-upon criteria Any discau which lack such criteria are considered as not considered as abnormal discourse. rmal discourse whereas those in “rati and “objectivity” in terms of “rationality” and “objectivity” 1m zi the attempt to explain “ral " tems of aban a n is a self deceptive effort to eternalise the normal discourse 0) accurate representati @ scanned with OKEN Scannerof the day. According to him, si ig to him, since th ‘ . by this attempt, Se the Greek time philosophy has been dominated He develops the contrast betw. ; how “abnormal” importance to edit t ‘een “systematic” and “edifying” Philosophy can be related to “normal” fying philosophy which he claims would as a whole to break free from the cartesian and Kantian voc philosophy to show philosophy. He gives help readers or society abularies. : Finally he explains the significance of the title of his book ie. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. The mirror here represents the traditional notion ofa great mind that contains various representations, Some of them are accurate and some are not and all are capable of being studied by pure, non-empirical methods. It is such a picture of mind that has dominated traditional philosophy, according to Rorty. Such a notion of mind as mirror led to the formation of parallel notions of accuracy of representations which brought Descartes and Kant together- they developed strategies for more accurate representations by “inspecting, repairing and polishing the mirror”. Because of these strategies philosophy was sometimes said to be occupied with “conceptual analysis” moving on to “phenomenological analysis” or as dealing with “explication of meaning” or even “logic of our language”etc. All these strategies were mocked by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. Rorty points out that Wittgenstein’s attempts to deconstruct the captivating picture of philosophy needs to be supplemented by a historical awareness of the source of the mirror-imagery. In this context he greatly acknowledges Heidegger’s contribution but holds that even the latter fails to provide us with the historical phenomenon of the mirror-imagery within a social perspective. He favours Dewey’s vision in this context of an ideal society where culture is no longer dominated by the ideal of “objective cognition” but by that of aesthetic enhancement. Thus it is by a criticism of the mirror- imagery that he makes an attempt to “break the crust of philosophical convention”. @ scanned with OKEN ScannerRorty says that since the tim © of Kant it became difficult to imagine temology. The notion of commensurability was advocated So strongly by him that any activity that was not concerned with knowledge - be it theory of knowledge, or a method of acquiring knowledge, was not even considered as a philosophical activity. Rorty owes this difficulty to the classic notion of man- as the discoverer of essences, that was commonly shared by the Platonists, Kantians and the Positivists. According to this notion, the chief task of man was to mirror the universe accurately in his “Glossy Philosophy without =ssence” i.e. the mind such that one master vocabulary could be attained in order to make all discourses commensurable. Rorty aims to set aside this classic picture of man first before setting aside the epistemologically centered philosophy. For this he uses Hermeneutics which, he clarifies, is not a method. He refers to Gadamer’s Truth and Method where the latter declares that hermeneutics is not a method for “attaining truth” and that he is rather interested in exploring the consequences of the “hermencutic phenomenon” that was ignored by the epistemological tradition. Gadamer explains hermeneutics as an attempt to understand what human sciences are and what connects them with the “totality of our experience of the world”. His book is thus an attempt to redescribe man by placing the classic picture of man within a larger picture thus keeping the standard philosophical practices at a distance. In the previous lecture on Sprit and Nature we had discussed how the romantic notion of man as a self-creative being was confused with Descartes and Kant’s conception of man. Rorty credits Gadamer for separating off the self creative notion of man from the other two and also for reconciling the naturalistic conception of man with the existential claim that redescribing ourselves is the most important exercise that we can do. Such a reconciliation is above and beyond re i Z @ scanned with OKEN ScannerHe therefore substitutes the word knowledge with cay, ation and insists that the latter should be the goal of; cribe ourselves when we read mos. metaphysical dualism. (bildung) or self-forma thinking, He claims that we remake or red talk more and write more. Such activities enable us to say new and interesting things about ourselves in a non metaphysical sense. Hence the sentences: which true of us on account of these activities are more important than the ones become that become true of us when we drink more or carn more. Thus Rorty tries to show that from an educational as opposed to the epistemological or technological point of view, the way things are said is more important than the possession of truths. To be contd... @ scanned with OKEN ScannerTEXTS OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY (Richard Rorty ) Philosophy without Mirrors Hermeneutics and Edification We saw that according to Rorty redescription of man involves more of reading, talking and writing because these activities enable us to say new and interesting things about ourselves in a non-metaphysical sense and this is how we remake ourselves. This is what he means by self formation which he claims is possible only through education rather than in possessing truths in the metaphysical sense as was done in epistemologically centered philosophy. (pgs 357-359) However instead of education he prefers to use the word “edification” to represent the “project” of finding new, better and interesting ways of speaking. He explains that edification involves both- a hermeneutic activity as well as its inverse. The hermeneutic activity in edification consists in making connections between our present culture and some historical culture or between our discipline and some other discipline that appears to pursue incommensurable goals or an incommensurable vocabulary. On the other hand the inverse of hermeneutic consist in poetic activities of inventing new words and new disciplines and then reinterpreting or translating the prevailing familiar surroundings in the unfamiliar terms of new inventions. He points out that both these activities are essentially edifying because they do not follow the procedures of a “normal” discourse. tion in this sense is abnormal as it tends to take us out of our old practices s in becoming new beings. s to be an opposition or a conflict between the desire for yr truth. Gadamer expresses this conflict as one between. @ scanned with OKEN Scannern is one of the many ways of getting edified. He gives due credit to Heideg . ; » asserting the point that quest for objective truth is among the many projects of human beings. In this context Gadamer also appre: tes Sartre for explaining ‘ vividly that the attempt to gain objective knowledge is an attempt to avoid one’s responsibility to remake or rede ibe oneself. In other words for Sartre, to run after objective knowledge amounts to self-deception. Thus it follows that Heidegger, Sartre and Gadamer strongly express objective knowle “some, among many ways of describing ourselves the process of edification.(pgs 360-361) > as only , which can create hindrance in To be cont.... @ scanned with OKEN Scanner(Richard Rorty ) Philosophy without Mirrors Hermeneutics and Edification Tt has been explained that : E Heidegger, Sartre ahd Gadamer offer a differ interpretation of “objectivity”. ot ‘ They commonly agree that an objective inquiry or a Search for objective truth is one among the so iy projects which human bei Participate in. Thus according to the existentialist view “objectivity” is to be se as conformity with the norms of justification of the day that we find around rather than conformity with something foundational in which the various practices of justification are grounded (epistemological approach which forms the notion of philosophical foundation, ultimate justification and a privileged vocabulary) nt es n It is thus observed that in the existentialist interpretation there is no reference to the notion of foundation or essence as such. This brings them closer to the naturalists who also believe in abandoning the idea of essence to which Rorty also agrees. He explains that the utility of the existentialist view of human beings as not having an essence makes us free from the practice of “accurate representation” and “allows us to see the descriptions of ourselves at par with various alternative descriptions offered by the poets , novelists....and mystics”. It thus presents us with a repertoire of self-descriptions at our disposal. He in fact generalizes that if one considers himself knowledgeable on the basis of merely the results obtained from the normal science of the day, then he is not to be counted as educated. Rorty maintains that by “Bildung”(for which Rorty uses the term edification), Gadamer means something that has no goals outside itself. It refers to the humanist tradition in education that he initiated in order to give sense to relativity of descriptive vocabularies arising in particular periods, traditions and so on which natural sciences cannot do. Given this sense of relativity, the very notion of ‘essence and accurate representations of essences loose significance. The main purpose of Gadamer was to “prevent education from being reduced to instruction @ scanned with OKEN Scannerin normal inquiry”. Basically he wanted to prevent the practice of viewing abnormal inquiry as a suspicious activity. Thus it follows that the existentialists aim at placing objectivity, rationality and normal inquiry within the larger picture of our “need” to be ducated or edified, (pgs 361-363) To be continued.. @ scanned with OKEN ScannerTE XTS OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY (Richard Rorty PI hilosophy without Mirror Hermeneuties and Edification It ‘ali ae thus follows that the existentialists are largely concerned with edification uiney, Consider objectivity, rationality and even normal inquiry as a part of this Project of edification or educat i tion. The positivists however counter this attempt of the existentialists in terms of a distinction between | : learning facts (objectivity, rationality etc) and acquiring values (to be edified) i.e. fact — value distinction, Gadamer, Heiddeger and Sartre respond that the charge of fact-value distinction as leveled by the positivists, is an attempt to blur the possibility of an alternative description alongside the normal inquiry. It is explained that Gadamer’s effort to do away with the classic picture of man, as the discoverer of essences is also to tule out this fact-value distinction and to stress _ that “discovering of fact” is one among many of the projects of edification. Following Gadamer, Rorty claims that the epistemological way of doing Philosophy (normal science) fails to provide any common ground between Science and edification or between the “rational” and the “irrational”. In the absence of any commonality between the two approaches, he maintains that the best practice is to be hermeneutical about the opposition. This means to try to understand the connection between the opposition and the remaining culture i.e. to see the other from their perspective. The notion of truth embodied in the notion of “objectivity” thus looses importance and is viewed as a component of education. Distinction between Systematic and Edifying Philosophy. According to Rorty, in order to be educated we must find out about other types of descriptions of the world that are offered by oo culture. For eg. he says that learning the results of normal science is a description that is offered since Kant came into the picture. This implies that to be educated one must be acquainted with the results of the normal science of the day. In other words, idea of being ‘educated must be linked to the normal practice of a particular culture or era. He @ scanned with OKEN ScannerSE ” for this practice and maintains that education o, fe tries to point out that since the t the so called normal it is always hermeneutics is uses the word “acculturation edification must begin with acculturation. HI revolutionary or abnormal is a reaction agains’ “parasitic” upon the normal discourses. From this perspectives parasitic upon epistemology and edification upon the culture of the day. He explains that it is madness to attempt abnormal discourse de novo as i display SOM caecctons! thersiore,, be, insists, that to be revolutionary (eg. existentialist), one has to make a conscious departure from the prevailing norm. It is in this context that he generalizes a contrast between philosophers pyhose work is essentially constructive and those whose work is essentially reactive. He attempts to develop a contrast between epistemologically centered Philosophy and the sort of philosophy which makes a conscious departure from the pretensions of the former. The former is “systematic” philosophy and the latter ‘edifying” philosophy. (pgs 363-366) ® scanned with OKEN Scanner To be cont.TE: XTS OF WESTERN Py OPHY (Richard Rorty ) P hilosophy without Mirror Hermeneutics and Edification , It was discussed in the last class how Rorty develops a contrast between 'ystematic philosophy and edifying philosophy in order to show that the latter is the Outcome of a conscious departure from the former out of suspicion about the Pretensions of epistemology. In order to explain the contrast he first tries to show how a reflective culture is constituted of both mainstream and peripheral philosophy. He refers to western philosophical tradition to indicate the mainstream philosophy which primarily focused on one paradigm of human activity namely, “knowing” or possessing of justified true beliefs. Further, he expresses that within this mainstream philosophy attempts were made by philosophers to refashion inquiries on the model of the new cognitive feats brought about by Galilean mechanics or mathematical logic etc. which led to philosophical revolutions. So a mainstream philosopher was one who would hold on to a line of inquiry that was successful and would reshape further inquiries on its model. Peripheral philosophers, on the other hand were found at the periphery or boundary of the mainstream tradition. These were figures like Goethe, laterWittgenstein, later Heidegger etc, who distrusted the notion of the ‘essence of man as the knower of essences and were always doubtful about the progress of mainstream philosophy. These philosophers and writers maintained on other hand that the “justified true belief” reflected nothing more than ity to the norms of the day. the mainstream philosophers as “systematic” and the as “edifying” philosophers who are skeptical about the entire These are pragmatic philosophers according to him, of man which is concemed with a search for @ scanned with OKEN Scannerthat n the two, Rorty points out i arguments while a tn bn ms i if yi i ers are . promemgs t te their work loses significance once ariel they are reacting against is over. They are thus intentionally peripheral , —— Great systematic philosophers following the great scientists claim to bui : for eternity whereas great edifying philosophers destroy for the sake of their own generation. ; . Systematic philosophers primarily focus on putting their subject on the secure path of science whereas edifying philosophers like poets are open to the sense of wonder, i.e. wonder that there is something new under the sun which is not about accurate representation. While generalizing the contrast betwee! nN w Having done this he goes on to explain the paradox which is involved in the notion of edifying philosophy. In this context he goes back to Plato who defined a philosopher by opposition to a poet. So for Plato a philosopher is one who could give reasons and argue for himself thus justifying his stand. It is for this reason that the mainstream systematic philosophers called Nietzsche and Heidegger as “not really philosophers”. Rorty says that this ploy was used by the normal philosophers against the revolutionary ones in order to suggest that the latter is proposing an incommensurable discourse. But he claims that when it is used against edifying philosophers it has a rather bad effect because the latter being philosophers are equally involved in offering arguments to introduce a new set of terms without adhering to the notion of accurate representation of essences. They thus violate not only the rules of normal philosophy but also a kind of meta rule. Rorty claims that the edifying philosophers are abnormal only at the meta-level. They refuse to present themselves as having found any objective truth. Instead they present themselves as doing something different from and more important than offering accurate representations of essences. Thus as opposed to pretentious revolutionary who share many of the views of their predecessors, the edifying deny the notion of having a view at all. They want to do away with from our vocabulary and aim at dropping the notion of sentences and thoughts. They want to see sentences ather than the world. @ scanned with OKEN ScannerRorty maintains that the conversational partners and not concern. He holds that the consists in attempting to edifying philosophers ought to be seen as a8 one holding views on subjects of common “love of wisdom” in the case of edifying philosophy Prevent conversation degenerating into inquiry or a research program. He asserts that edifying philosophers can never end philosophy but prevent it from “attaining the secure path of science”.(370-372) @ scanned with OKEN ScannerSOF WES (Richard Rorty ) “ Philosophy withotit Mirror 'HILOSOPHY IN THE CONVERSATION OF MANKIND TERN PHILOSOPHY i Bae at if knowing is seen more as a right to believe than as having _ ion of essence then conversation easily appears to be the ultimate Context within which knowledge could be understood. Because, in a conversation the focus is not fixed on a relation between man and his object of inguiry but it shifts onto the relation between alternative standards of justification. The changes in these standard collectively make up intellectual history of a period episode He refers to the history of epistemology centered philosophy a in the history of European culture which originated from the Greeks and spread into many non philosophical disciplines, all of which were proposed substitutes for epistemology. Therefore he claims that such an episode cannot be identified with a textbook sequence of great philosophers like Descartes, Russell and Husserl of entially foundationalists. They also “modern philosophy” only, all of whom are had an urge to go beyond their discourses and are reflected in the contemporary in issues in philosophy. Therefore Rorty says that the contemporary issu philosophy are like events in a certain stage of conversation which itself unaware of these issues. initiated by Plato has no’ didn’t know anything. In other words he tries to argue that one can continue with Plato’s conversation without necessarily discussing the topics he wanted to discuss. Thus he insists that philosophy is not to be treated merely as a field of professional inquiry, but it should be treated as a voice in a conversation. On Rorty’s analysis the image that philosophy has acquired is a result of many historical accidents or the many ways in which He explains for instance how the conversation once w been enlarged by topics about which Plato himself Plato’s conversation has turned. conversational interest of philosophy as a subject or an individual philosopher has and will always vary in unpredictalil ways depending ee contin; encies ranging from what happens in physics to what happens in pals Pecearucnily the notions of “philosophical significance” or “purely He continues that the @ scanned with OKEN ScannerPhilosophical quest.» _.. away just as Ree ae gained prominence around kant’s time will fade 17° century, faded awa a ' attempt to create “purely scientific questions” in the Sense that epistemolo; i the wake of new disciplines. Similarly the post-kantian namely that only a ee is aefletion of a professional philosopher's self ~ image, This would drop Kans orn Knows something about knowing will also collapse. participants from Pa 8 overriding voice from the conversation that involves method” or “phil other fields too. As a result the notions of a “philosophical that philoso, i losophical tool” ete will loose significance and with that the idea ane a rs have a special kind of knowledge about knowledge will become ir Es is would amount to a rejection of the very practice of “mirror- imagery”. However Rorty is categorical in maintaining that this rejection would not translate into rejection of philosophy as a profession. At the most people will loose faith in mirror-imagery that created a plethora of problems within a historical Period but philosophy departments would continue as long as universities would continue. He therefore concludes by saying that the moral concern of philosophers should be to continue the conversation of the West and not to prioritize the traditional problems of modern philosophy within that conversation. @ scanned with OKEN Scanner