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Reconstructing Pragmatism
Reconstructing
Pragmatism
Richard Rorty and the Classical
Pragmatists
C H R I S VO PA R I L
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
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Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2022
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You must not circulate this work in any other form

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Voparil, Christopher J., 1969–author.
Title: Reconstructing pragmatism : Richard Rorty and
the classical pragmatists /Chris Voparil.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021024181 (print) | LCCN 2021024182 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197605721 | ISBN 9780197605738 | ISBN 9780197605752 |
ISBN 9780197605745 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Rorty, Richard. | Pragmatism.
Classification: LCC B 945 . R524 V67 2022 (print) | LCC B 945 . R524 (ebook) |
DDC 144/.3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021024181
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021024182
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197605721.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
For Mariana—
Gracias por tu paciencia y amor
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction: Learning from Rorty’s Reconstructed

Pragmatism 1
1. Rorty and Peirce: Pragmatism, Realism, and the

Practice of Inquiry 43
2. Rorty and James: The Ethics and Epistemology of

Belief 94
3. Rorty and Dewey: Pragmatist Philosophy as Cultural

Criticism 140
4. Rorty and Royce: The Cultural Politics of Community,

Loyalty, and Difference 181
5. Rorty and Addams: Pragmatist Social Ethics and

Undemocratic Relations 226
Conclusion: Post-Rortyan Pragmatism 259
Notes 285
References 337
Index 363
Acknowledgments
This project has been a long time in the making and has incurred
incalculable debts with each passing year. My understanding of
classical pragmatism, fallible and incomplete as it is, owes much
to the fine work of many scholars of the pragmatist tradition, as
evidenced throughout this book’s references. In a way, this book
took as long as it did because to carry it out I had to grow into the
thinker capable of completing it. This may suggest a journey of self-
edification, but such growth is really about listening to and learning
from others, whether in print or in person, and getting to the point
where one can see what they see. I feel deep gratitude for the many
learned interlocutors I have had the good fortune to know. Their
generosity of wisdom and patience with my persistent queries ex-
emplify the pragmatist philosophical spirit at its best.
There was a time when writing on Rorty wasn’t especially
embraced in many philosophical, or even pragmatist venues. What
is more, the body of scholarship on Rorty, until relatively recently,
was not particularly helpful for thinking about his relation to clas-
sical pragmatism. Not only did nearly all of it pass negative, some-
times downright dismissive, judgment on what Rorty had to say
about the classical figures, there was virtually no overlap between
those who studied the classical pragmatists and those who had sub-
stantive interest in Rorty. The state of affairs has improved since
I embarked upon this project. But it was quite an obstacle at the
outset. The book in your hands (or on your screen) has its flaws
and shortcomings, among them, no doubt, a tendency to overem-
phasize sites of positive connection between Rorty and the clas-
sical pragmatists considered here and to undersell some of the
x Acknowledgments
disagreements. Future scholars of pragmatism, I trust, will chart

course corrections in my interpretations. My hope is that there is
value in their having some initial signposts.
I am grateful for the philosophical communities where much of
this work was first presented. These contexts provided opportunities
to receive feedback, but also to build relationships and, in some
cases, deep friendships. These groups include the Society for the
Advancement of American Philosophy, the Central European
Pragmatist Forum, the European Pragmatism Association, the
Southeast Roundtable on Philosophy of the Americas, and the
Richard Rorty Society, as well as various other pragmatist research
groups in South America and Europe that I have been fortunate to
attend. I also thank, for their immense learning and insightful dis-
cussion, the participants in the “Peirce, James, and the Origins of
Pragmatism” summer workshop at Emory University in 2012, led
by John Stuhr and Vincent Colapietro.
I want to acknowledge, in particular, illuminating conversations
and exchanges with Douglas Anderson, Richard Bernstein, Rosa
Calcaterra, James Campbell, Vincent Colapietro, Harvey Cormier,
William Curtis, Susana de Castro, Ramón Del Castillo, Susan
Dieleman, Roberta Dreon, the late Michael Eldridge, Marilyn
Fischer, Jim Garrison, Neil Gascoigne, the late William Gavin,
Judith Green, Richard Hart, David Henderson, Larry Hickman,
David Hildebrand, Brendan Hogan, Marianne Janack, Mark
Johnson, Jacquelyn Kegley, Colin Koopman, Alexander Kremer,
David Macarthur, Giovanni Maddalena, Stéphane Madelrieux,
Wojciech Małecki, the late John McDermott, Eduardo Mendieta,
Carlos Mougan, Gregory Pappas, Federico Penelas, Scott Pratt,
Bjørn Ramberg, Michael Raposa, David Rondel, Henrik Rydenfelt,
John Ryder, Mark Sanders, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Richard
Shusterman, Kenneth Stikkers, John Stuhr, Dwayne Tunstall, Emil
Višňovský, and Judy Whipps. Three anonymous reviewers were
enormously helpful in improving the manuscript. Lucy Randall’s
insights and support were invaluable throughout the overlong
Acknowledgments xi
process of gestation. Special thanks are due to several who took time
to read and comment on parts of the manuscript: William Curtis,
Neil Gascoigne, Colin Koopman, and Scott Pratt. For his unending
encouragement and exemplary mentorship, to Dick Bernstein, my
former teacher and Rorty’s lifelong friend, I owe a debt of grati-
tude beyond words. It was in his year-long seminar on pragmatism
circa 1995 that unbeknownst to me the seeds for this book were
planted and that I first met Rorty, when we showed up to class one
day and found him sitting in the front of the room. There no doubt
were others whom I have failed to recall. The shortcomings of this
work remain despite their best efforts, without which this book and
my own grasp of the pragmatic tradition would be immeasurably
inferior.
Finally, I thank my supportive parents, parents-in-law, family,
and friends, especially my wife, Mariana, and sons, Aidan and
Devin, for putting up with my reclusive ways and giving me the
space and loving support to see the project to fruition.
Early, briefer versions of Chapters 2 and 3 appeared as:
“James and Rorty on Irony, Moral Commitment, and the Ethics

of Belief.” William James Studies, 12, no. 2 (2016): 1–27.
“Pragmatist Philosophy and Enlarging Human Freedom: Rorty’s
Deweyan Pragmatism.” In Richard Rorty: From Pragmatist
Philosophy to Cultural Politics, ed. Alexander Gröschner, Colin
Koopman, and Mike Sandbothe. New York: Bloomsbury,
2013, pp. 107–126.
I gratefully acknowledge their permission to reprint parts of these

essays.
Abbreviations
Citations to Charles Sanders Peirce’s writings will be keyed to the

8-volume Collected Papers (Harvard University Press, 1958–1966).
Parenthetical citations will follow the standard formula, according
to which (CP 1:123) denotes page 123 of volume 1 of Peirce’s
Collected Papers.
Citations to John Dewey’s writings will be keyed to the 37-
volume The Collected Works of John Dewey (Southern Illinois
University Press, 1969–1991). The Collected Works is organized
into three chronological periods, The Early Works, The Middle
Works, and The Later Works. Parenthetical citations will follow the
standard formula, according to which (EW 4:30) denotes page 30 of
volume 4 of The Early Works and (MW 6:100) designates page 100
of volume 6 of The Middle Works.
Citations to Richard Rorty’s major works will use the following
abbreviations:
AOC Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century

America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998)
CIS Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1989)
CP Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays 1972–1980
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982)
EHO Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
LT The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method, ed.
Richard Rorty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967)
OPP On Philosophy and Philosophers: Unpublished Papers,
1960–2000, ed. W.P. Małecki and Chris Voparil
xiv Abbreviations
ORT Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1

PCP Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 4
PMN Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1979)
PSH Philosophy and Social Hope (New York: Penguin Books, 1999)
RR The Rorty Reader, ed. Christopher J. Voparil and Richard
J. Bernstein (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
RRP Richard Rorty Papers. MS-C017. Special Collections and
Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Citations
to RRP include Box#, Folder#
TP Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 3
Introduction
Learning from Rorty’s Reconstructed Pragmatism
The contemporary resurgence of philosophical pragmatism faces a

critical impasse. On the one hand, creative energies abound. A new
generation of scholars and practitioners of American philosophy
who were drawn to the tradition’s classical figures by the leading
voice of the pragmatist revival, Richard Rorty, is supplanting an
older one that viewed him as an unhelpful interloper who did as
much to distort as to revive. On the other hand, divisions and in-
ternecine quarrels continually thwart and fragment these new
energies. Devotees of American philosophy often seem content to
incite antipathy among and between “classico,” “paleo,” “neo,” and
“new” pragmatisms, and to self-isolate through factions and exclu-
sionary identifications with single thinkers.1
Paradoxically, Rorty’s work, and the massive body of secondary
literature around it, are at the center of both dynamics: resurgence
and fragmentation. His intellectual creativity, lively prose, bridge-
building across traditions and disciplines, and immense interna-
tional renown continue to be a font of creative and critical energy.
The cross-disciplinary influence and global reach of Rorty’s thought
have interjected pragmatism into conversations not only in phi-
losophy but in fields as diverse as political theory, sociology, legal
studies, international relations, feminist studies, literary theory,
business ethics, and the philosophy of education. International in-
terest in the pragmatic tradition is at an all-time high and actively
ascendant.
Reconstructing Pragmatism. Chris Voparil, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197605721.003.0001
2 Reconstructing Pragmatism
The success of Rorty’s championing of pragmatism nevertheless

remains double-edged. Back in 1982 Garry Brodsky predicted that
Rorty’s writings “should initiate a new stage of creative and schol-
arly work on pragmatism and the several pragmatists” (1982, 333).
Rorty indeed proved influential in initiating a period of renewed
interest in pragmatism and widened its relevance, though much of
his reception was outside philosophy, as the preceding list suggests.
Among those already doing scholarly work on pragmatism,
Brodsky’s prognostication missed the mark. Rorty’s overtures were
not received constructively, to put it mildly. Quite the contrary; for
years, if you came to pragmatism through the classical thinkers and
the scholarship on them, you were taught to be reflexively critical
of Rorty.2 Nearly four decades later, for all his international renown
and role in pragmatism’s resurgence, when it comes to the classical
pragmatists we might say that Rorty’s work has blocked the road of
inquiry. His polemical claims and selective interpretations spurred
the community to draw sharp lines of demarcation that distinguish
“classical” or “paleo” pragmatism3 from its “neo” and “new” off-
spring to protect both classical and new pragmatisms alike from
Rorty’s alleged distorted readings. Compounding matters, those
who discovered pragmatism because of Rorty often lacked a strong
motive to delve deeply into the classical figures. As a result, the
landscape features separate camps, with little bridge-building and
fruitful dialogue, and many missed opportunities for growth.
To put it another way, contemporary pragmatism as a whole
has yet to learn from Rorty, in the sense of fully engaging his
challenges and thinking through their implications for their own
commitments and preoccupations. This is not to say that Rorty
hasn’t been read and written about. If Rorty indeed was, for a time,
“the most talked-about philosopher” (Gottlieb 1991), much of what
was said was not particularly positive. Rorty’s iconoclastic, stinging-
gadfly assaults on long-cherished notions of traditional philos-
ophy earned him enemies far and wide.4 Pragmatist philosophers
in particular found his embrace of language over experience, his
Introduction 3
apparent dismissal of pragmatist methodology (Seigfried 1996, 5),5

and his blatant disregard for truth and objectivity (Misak 2007),
strikingly offensive.6 Deweyan pragmatists, above all, found Rorty’s
freewheeling interpretations to transmit sufficient distortion and
misunderstanding as to threaten the integrity of the pragmatic tra-
dition as a whole.7
The specter of Rorty functions as a negative, fixed pole against
which philosophers and intellectuals of all stripes position them-
selves. Virtually all pragmatists on the contemporary scene, whether
classical or “new,” Deweyan, Jamesian, or Peircean, use Rorty as a
foil to justify their positions, including Richard Bernstein, Robert
Brandom, Susan Haack, Larry Hickman, Joseph Margolis, John
McDermott, Cheryl Misak, Richard Posner, Huw Price, Hilary
Putnam, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Richard Shusterman, John
Stuhr, Robert Talisse, and Cornel West, among many others. While
these contrasts and divisions may have heuristic value within lim-
ited contexts, when reified into opposing camps, they become
one-dimensional and obstruct further advancement. The need to
defend the classical figures and discredit Rorty, while showing signs
of abating as of late, has sidetracked contemporary pragmatists
from the development of shared projects which realize Dewey’s aim
of making philosophy “a resource in dealing with the problems that
are urgent in contemporary life” rather than “ruminating on its own
cud” (LW 17:85). This diagnosis is not new. Others, like Douglas
Anderson, have lamented the “scholasticizing of the American tra-
dition in which folks tend to associate with one thinker and then
focus on what makes that thinker different from—and perhaps
‘better’ than—the others,” culminating in “schools of Peirceans,
Jamesians, and Deweyans who overlook or downplay the very real
and important agreements among the pragmatists” (2009, 495).
Alas, little progress has been made in alleviating it.
Contributing to this state of affairs are two limitations in the ex-
isting secondary literature that result in having virtually nowhere
to turn for constructive scholarly treatments of Rorty’s relation to
classical pragmatism. One is the overwhelmingly negative, critical

tenor that characterizes most work on Rorty’s relation to classical
pragmatism by scholars of American philosophy. Despite glimpses,
in the time since Rorty’s death in 2007, of a less hostile, more ecu-
menical approach, the idea that there exists an unbridgeable divide
separating classical from neopragmatism remains entrenched.8
One is hard-pressed to find accounts written in the last four decades
on any of the classical pragmatists, or by any “new” pragmatists (see
Misak 2007), that does not use a caricature of Rorty as a wedge.9
Reams of dismissive critical interpretation which obscure more
than elucidate and seemingly obligatory passing swipes which re-
inforce shallow readings have made the figure and oeuvre of Rorty
more caricatured than understood. This dismissive orientation
toward Rorty, insofar as it has preempted learning from him, has
become an obstacle to the future development of the pragmatic
tradition.
The second limitation is the dearth of discussion of the classical
pragmatists’ influence on Rorty’s intellectual positions in even the
best Rorty-friendly treatments.10 Some treat in brief compass the
“big three” of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John
Dewey, but nothing at all regarding other classical pragmatists,
like Josiah Royce and Jane Addams.11 Among the very good ac-
counts we find comparative examination of the relation of Rorty’s
project to the classical pragmatists (again, only the big three),
but independently of the question of their direct intellectual in-
fluence on Rorty.12 Robert Westbrook (2005), Richard Bernstein
(2010), and Michael Bacon (2012b) offer enlightening expositions
of the ideas and arguments of both classical and contemporary
pragmatists, highlighting important continuities between them.
Colin Koopman (2009) and David Rondel (2018) refreshingly
draw from both classical pragmatist and Rortyan perspectives
to capture their best and most timely collective insights. None of
these fine works gives us an internal account of the relation be-
tween classical and Rortyan pragmatism. In sum, Rorty not only
Introduction 5
still awaits a (full) definitive intellectual biography;13 there exists

no in-depth scholarly treatment of his relation to the classical fig-
ures of pragmatism.
Reconstructing Pragmatism seeks finally to overcome pre-
vailing caricatures of Rorty and dominant assumptions about
his neglect or misunderstanding of the classical pragmatists. It
might be thought of as a prolegomenon to the future development
of pragmatism that does a lot of road-clearing work, sweeping
away misconceptions and caricatures that block inquiry, but also
intimating productive avenues for the tradition’s collective self-
criticism and renewal. The book’s basic claim is that the path for-
ward runs through, rather than around or against, Rorty. The value
of this direct approach is twofold: first, Rorty offers both critical
challenges and affirmations, largely untapped, for articulating
classical pragmatism’s ongoing relevance; and second, reading the
classical pragmatists in nonpolemical dialogue with Rorty reveals
limitations of received images of the classical pragmatists that pre-
dominate in current debates, opening up exciting potential for new,
fresher modes of understanding. The chapters that follow endeavor
to understand Rorty’s relation to the classical figures of American
pragmatism, specifically Charles Sanders Peirce, William James,
John Dewey, Josiah Royce, and Jane Addams. The best metaphor
for characterizing this relation, I argue, is “reconstruction.” Viewing
Rorty’s relation to pragmatism’s classical forebears through the lens
of reconstruction directs us to confront the motivations and aims
of the larger project guiding his critical engagement with their
perspectives.14 Interpreting Rorty’s philosophical positions in iso-
lation from these broader intentions has impoverished our under-
standing, making his stances appear shallow and ill-conceived, and
deprived us of the creative impulse to growth that his work, at its
best, sought to inspire. Rorty’s relevance for the ongoing vitality of
pragmatism stems from his commitment to what Philip Kitcher has
described in James and Dewey as the effort “to focus philosophy on
issues that matter to people” (2012, xii).
Before proceeding, let me address the question begged here: Why

not simply go around Rorty? Why is this such a problem? After all,
among contemporary pragmatists we have the fine work of leading
thinkers like Robert Brandom (e.g., 2011) and Huw Price (2011;
2013), who not only eschew Rorty-bashing but acknowledge their
intellectual debts to him even as they judge his perspective critically
and move past it. Others, like Susan Haack (1993a; 1998), Cheryl
Misak (2000), and, to some extent, Kitcher (2012) and Scott Aikin
and Robert Talisse (2017), define their positions against Rorty’s and
say little more about him, seemingly no worse for the omission.
This latter group falls into a slightly different category to the ex-
tent that they more explicitly seek to update or refresh the thought
of classical pragmatist figures, especially Peirce and Dewey, in a
way not on the agenda for Brandom or Price. Nevertheless, I want
to suggest that our understanding of pragmatism as a whole, our
grasp of Rorty’s thought, and even the stances of these contempo-
rary pragmatists themselves, are enriched by taking Rorty more se-
riously. That is, each time Rorty’s work is caricatured rather than
learned from, contemporary pragmatism remains not as strong
or critically self-aware as it could be. Opportunities for further in-
quiry are closed and no one learns anything new.
To be clear, I am not advocating uncritical acceptance of Rorty’s
pragmatism. Take the example of Price’s recent work (e.g., 2011;
2013). Fundamental differences abound between them on a
number of substantive philosophical issues (see Rorty and Price
2010). Nonetheless, the development of Price’s own nuanced
thinking around representationalism owes much to his sus-
tained engagement with Rorty. Moreover, Price illuminates im-
plicit tensions in Rorty’s own account that Rorty, arguably, could
or should have accepted without violating his own commitments,
potentially resulting in new insights. I seek to call attention to the
missed opportunities and what is lost by dismissing him as con-
fused, incoherent, or a pragmatist infidel. For another case, let us
look at Kitcher, a more germane example given our interests here
Introduction 7
in classical pragmatism.15 Kitcher aligns himself with Rorty over

neopragmatists like Putnam and Brandom, who, in Kitcher’s view,
domesticate the reconstructive impulses of the classical pragmatists
to make them safe for the conventional practice of philosophy. By
contrast, Kitcher acknowledges, “Rorty reads the pragmatists, as
I do, in a more radical way” (2012, xiv). Indeed, Kitcher recognizes
that “One of the great merits of Richard Rorty’s reading of the clas-
sical American pragmatists, particularly James and Dewey, lies in
his recognition of their desire for a completely different approach
to philosophy” (2012, 192–93). Kitcher even holds that Rorty’s “cri-
tique of philosophy-as-usual is as necessary today as it was in the
1970s or the 1920s.” However, he immediately adds: “I differ from
him only in seeing the possibility of renewal where he envisaged a
burial.” With this reductive characterization—Rorty’s thought isn’t
engaged beyond broad brushstrokes and nothing after the 1980s is
even cited—he unfortunately moves past Rorty rather quickly with
a mere “So I side with Dewey” (2012, 21). It is taken as axiomatic
that Rorty has nothing to offer Kitcher’s own reconstructive efforts
and that contemporary reconstructions like Kitcher’s demand an
either/or choice between Rorty’s and Dewey’s pragmatisms. And
this dismissal is one of the more sympathetic instances. Kitcher is
by no means hostile to Rorty and generously acknowledges his per-
sonal debt to him.
It should be said that Rorty often was his own worst enemy in in-
viting caricatured interpretations. He seemed to take mischievous
pleasure in pushing the buttons of philosophers with offhanded
dismissals of long- cherished commitments and maverick
pronouncements of seemingly unwise and unnuanced nature. At
times, Rorty did utter claims that seemed only to distort. In these
cases, the visceral reactions they sparked often derailed productive
inquiry. We easily could catalog a short list of insouciant assertions
that were responsible for the lion’s share of anti-Rorty ire.16 As we
shall see in the first chapter, there is no better example than his
needless despoiling of Peirce’s contribution to pragmatism in his
1979 APA Presidential Address. Based on that remark, one would

not guess that he had learned from leading Peirce scholars, devoted
considerable study to his writings, and published his earliest ar-
ticles on Peirce’s Categories. We must, then, distinguish the rhet-
oric of what Santiago Rey (2017) dubbed “Rorty the outrageous”
from the substantive positions developed in his more thoughtful,
reasoned mode. Perhaps, as Rey argues, the bold and outlandish
statements served an intentional purpose in the performative di-
mension of Rorty’s breaking the crust of philosophical conven-
tion and shouldn’t be cast aside as unreasoned or discounted as
carelessly excessive. At the same time, as Bernstein has observed,
Rorty underestimated the “double-edged” nature of his rhetoric,
how his attempts to break the crust of philosophical convention
both gave ammunition to critics and, ironically, hardened the
very commitments he sought to transform (2014, 13). One of our
tasks in this book is to reconstruct the full scope of his sustained
arguments and longstanding commitments to provide the schol-
arly elaboration that Rorty himself not only was disinclined to pro-
vide but often, wittingly or unwittingly, obscured. Learning from
Rorty sometimes requires reconstructing his radical rhetoric to
factor in what Bernstein calls “the more ‘reasonable’ ” Rorty (2014,
12). As a result, we will traffic not only in Rorty’s reconstructions
but my own.
To be a little more specific, the book seeks to elucidate Rorty’s
reconstructions of the thought of the classical pragmatists and to
gather the insights and implications within these reconstructions
that bear on the ongoing development of the pragmatic tradition.
Broadly speaking, there are multiple aims at work throughout these
pages. The first is straightforward scholarly recovery that seeks to in-
troduce little-known historical and textual backgrounds to illumi-
nate Rorty’s relation to the classical pragmatists as well as to clarify
his own positions. The second aim is to highlight points where
constructive dialogue is possible between Rorty’s commitments
and objectives and those of the classical figures, as a corrective to
Introduction 9
the many polemical readings that exist. The third is to offer in-
sight into the precise nature of Rorty’s reconstructive efforts—
that is, the why of his selective readings and partial endorsements
of their views. Accomplishing this requires appreciating the least
understood aspect of Rorty’s philosophy—namely, the intention-
ality and normative orientation driving his reconstructions: what
I refer to as Rorty’s “pragmatic maxim,” a notion elaborated in the
next section. The fourth aim looks to the future of pragmatism after
Rorty and involves sweeping away the entrenched caricatures to
alter the terms on which Rorty’s relation to classical pragmatism
is evaluated, toward the goal of better marshalling the positive re-
sources for internal collective self-criticism and development of the
tradition.
Because Rorty’s relation to each of the five classical pragmatists
who receive a chapter is different, the relative weights of the four
aims—scholarly recovery, constructive dialogue, understanding
Rorty’s reconstructions, and advancing pragmatism’s future—
shift in each case. For example, in Chapter 1 on Peirce, the aim
of scholarly recovery predominates, as Rorty’s early work on the
founding pragmatist is likely the least familiar to most readers. In
the case of James in the second chapter, there is less emphasis on
the second aim of transcending polemics because there has been
so much less ink devoted to contesting Rorty’s reading of James
than his reading of Dewey. As the figure who shares the most with
Rorty in basic orientation, Rorty’s critical reconstruction of James
is less radical and controversial. As a result, constructive dialogue
dominates in the chapter. In Chapter 3, less attention to the first
aim is needed, given the amount of scholarly attention Rorty’s re-
lation to Dewey already has received in the secondary literature,
and the second and third aims take center stage. Chapters 4 and 5
diverge somewhat from the three that precede them based on the
nature of Rorty’s relation to Royce and Addams, respectively. In
the chapter on Rorty and Royce, the third aim fades, since Rorty
wrote so little on Royce. Nevertheless, a bit of scholarly recovery
is necessary to make sense of the prominence of Rorty’s appeal to

“loyalty” in his famous essay, “Justice as a Larger Loyalty,” which
contains no allusions to the author of The Philosophy of Loyalty.
The treatments of both Royce and Addams emphasize unexpected
lines of constructive dialogue that generate critical resources for
pragmatism’s contemporary relevance. The chapter on Addams
contains little of the first and third aims, given the dearth of direct
philosophical influence of Addams on Rorty. However, the second
and fourth aims generate valuable insights toward the development
of pragmatist social ethics that emerge from juxtaposing their sur-
prisingly consonant commitments. An emphasis throughout the
chapters is highlighting commonalities and shared projects where a
deeper engagement with Rortyan resources should be of interest to
pragmatists of all types, including Peircean and Deweyan.
Rorty’s Pragmatic Maxim: Putting

Democracy First
In this book, I read Rorty as reconstructing the ideas of the clas-

sical pragmatists, integrating contemporary philosophical insights
their work came too early to absorb and foregrounding emphases
that align with his own aims. These basic aims are Deweyan in na-
ture: deepening democracy and using philosophy as a vehicle for
social change. On my reading, Rorty’s work falls within rather
than outside existing broad-brush characterizations of the prag-
matic tradition. For example, Bernstein (2010) emphasizes the
deep rejection of Cartesianism and the spectator theory of know-
ledge. Scott Pratt identifies four commitments as “a common core
of classical pragmatism”: interaction, pluralism, community, and
growth (2002, 20). Talisse and Aikin point to the shared “aspiration
of devising a philosophy that is at once naturalist and humanist”
(2011, 4). Attention to the classical pragmatists’ anti-Kantianism—
one of Rorty’s most persistent themes— including Peirce, in
Introduction 11
particular, has emerged to suggest more commonality than previ-

ously recognized.17 I hope to give the currents of Rorty’s pragma-
tism that cohere with these common commitments the exposition
they have long lacked.18
The metaphor of reconstruction resonates with an active prag-
matic attitude alive to the transitional character of human life and
oriented to improve rather than unconditionally accept existing
forms. This is a key point. As Kitcher has explained,
Those who disparage pragmatism, as well as some admirers of

the movement, are all too eager to suppose that James and Dewey
wanted to offer general theories of Truth and Meaning, Mind and
Reality, and thus to ignore explicit pronouncements about “the
whole function of philosophy,” about the need for “reconstruc-
tion in philosophy,” and about the centrality to philosophy of “the
general theory of education.” (2012, 193)
Indeed, perhaps no one is more associated with the notion of re-

construction than Dewey. In his Reconstruction in Philosophy, he
envisioned, as an alternative to the “vain metaphysics and idle epis-
temology” that seeks refuge in the fixed and certain, an engaged
practice of philosophy that works to ameliorate “the stresses and
strains in the community life” from which it emerged (1982, 151,
256).19 Reconstruction also is apt for illuminating the classical
pragmatists’ relations to each other.20
But does this emphasis on reconstruction overstate or mis-
represent the driving force behind Rorty’s work? After all, one
of the most entrenched views among pragmatists is the con-
trary one that “Rorty seeks to deconstruct philosophy; Dewey
sought to reconstruct it” (Westbrook 1991, 540). No less astute
reader of Rorty than Bernstein has postulated that Rorty often
“protests too much.” Rorty’s personal and intellectual journey
cannot be disassociated from a deep sense of disillusionment re-
garding philosophy’s promise—the “God that failed” syndrome, as
Bernstein diagnoses it—that contributed to an obsessive pattern of

blanket critiques of representationalism, traditional epistemology,
and foundationalism in repeated fashion for decades. For many
other philosophers, like Bernstein himself, who never harbored
such grand hopes for Philosophy, with a capital “p,” Rorty’s un-
ending desire for philosophical therapy to free us from such
ailments seemed of limited utility and understandably grew tired.
For Bernstein, more explicit attempts to reconstruct philosophy, in
a Deweyan spirit, and more fully developed details on how to at-
tain his ideals, would have been much more helpful from Rorty
than his continual harping on the sins of Philosophy (Bernstein
2010, 214–15).
There is a lot to support this perspective. No doubt it has
resonated with countless others besides Bernstein. My own sense
is simply that it is partial and doesn’t tell the whole story of Rorty’s
pragmatism.21 For it undervalues the positive examples Rorty left
us of how to practice philosophy differently, in a more human-
istic, socially and politically aware, and communally grounded,
way. A crucial dimension largely unaddressed by Rorty’s critics is
the extent to which, from his earliest essays, one of his persistent
messages to philosophers was that philosophers, like all humans,
have agency and make choices for which they must take responsi-
bility.22 The philosophies we affirm and philosophical problems we
take up are not imposed upon us by The Way Things Are or even
the ineluctable pull of philosophy’s timeless questions. Rather, they
are expressions of intellectual choice colored by temperaments
and ethical orientations that are better recognized as such than left
unacknowledged.
We encounter here the twin pillars guiding Rorty’s reconstruc-
tion, the normative orientation that motivates his selective ap-
propriation of the ideas and positions of the classical pragmatists,
as well as the ethico-political core of his pragmatism. Without
this crucial normativity his philosophical positions appear in-
coherent, irrational, and even irresponsible. Rorty’s project of
Introduction 13
reconstruction in philosophy is grounded in two fundamental

commitments: the need to recognize agency and choice, and the
importance of foregrounding the implications of our ideas and
perspectives for democratic life. If we were permitted a single slogan
to characterize the whole of Rorty’s philosophical project, it is hard
to top “the priority of democracy to philosophy.” (A close second
may be its slightly more precise cousin, “take care of freedom and
truth will take care of itself.”) First stated in a 1984 essay by this title,
Rorty not only was explicit in this prioritization but never wavered.
But what, really, does it mean to prioritize democracy over philos-
ophy? In an interview, Rorty explained it this way:
Dewey is saying: suppose you’re a pragmatist about truth—that

is, you think that truth is what works. The obvious question, then,
is whom does it work for? . . . You then ask political questions
about whom you want it to work for, whom you want to run
things, whom you want to do good to—questions that come prior
to philosophical questions. Then let democratic politics be what
sets the goals of philosophy, rather than philosophy setting the
goals of politics. (qtd. in Mendieta 2006, 48)
To the extent they regard human knowers as necessarily

constrained by The Way Things Are and seek Objectivity and Truth
as goals, many philosophers have found Rorty’s unwillingness to
separate the real from the human and the philosophical from the
ethnocentric most confounding. For this reason, perhaps, readers
comfortable on the contested and contingent terrain of political
theory often have been Rorty’s more sympathetic interpreters.23
The idea of “putting politics first and tailoring a philosophy to
suit” (ORT 178) makes intuitive sense to those inclined to view
all theories as interested interventions that emerge in response to
conflicts in specific contexts and seek to enact transformation.24
For many philosophers, by contrast, it falls outside how they have
been trained to think about philosophical matters.
I have written elsewhere about the parallels between

Rorty’s understanding of philosophical disagreement in his
early metaphilosophical writings and the moral and political
commitments that become more pronounced in his work of the
1980s and beyond. His background metaphilosophical orienta-
tion remains largely the same, even as his explicit concerns shift
from the problems of philosophers to moral and political issues
(see Voparil 2011). Yet if this background orientation is under-
stood solely as a set of decontextualized philosophical stances
to be evaluated on grounds of logical validity alone, we not only
miss his Romantic and humanistic commitments, Rorty’s philo-
sophical positions appear frivolous and untenable, becoming easy
targets for critics. Nowhere did Rorty articulate this ethico-political
orientation more poignantly than in his 1979 APA Presidential
Address. Once we give up the idea that “objects will constrain us
to believe the truth about them, if only they are approached with
an unclouded mental eye, or a rigorous method, or a perspicuous
language,” we come face to face with our intellectual agency and
the ineluctability of choice—the choice between accepting contin-
gency and the responsibilities that come with owning our agency
and commitments, or evading it and subjugating ourselves to some
nonhuman authority to unburden ourselves of this agency and,
along with it, our freedom and autonomy and the fragility of our
condition as fallible, all-too-human knowers:
To accept the contingency of starting-points is to accept our in-

heritance from, and our conversation with, our fellow-humans
as our only source of guidance. To attempt to evade this contin-
gency is to hope to become a properly-programmed machine. . . .
In the end, the pragmatists tell us, what matters is our loyalty to
other human beings clinging together against the dark, not our
hope of getting things right. James, in arguing against realists
and idealists that “the trail of the human serpent is over all,” was
reminding us that our glory is in our participation in fallible and
Introduction 15
transitory human projects, not in our obedience to permanent

nonhuman constraints. (CP 166)
In this passage we see how the humanism of James and F.C.S.

Schiller provides the overarching ethical and epistemological
frame against which philosophical commitments from the Plato
to Descartes to Kant lineage are judged. We also see the implicit
invocation of Royce’s notion of loyalty, which we will examine in
Chapter 4. Realism and representationalism, as vestiges of earlier
stages in a narrative of human progress, threaten rather than foster
this democratic humanism.25 Since compromising the latter is un-
thinkable for Rorty, it is the traditional philosophical commitments
to the necessarily True and Real that must give. For this reason he
holds that both the institutions and culture of liberal democracy
would be “better served” by an alternative vocabulary of moral and
political reflection than one structured around notions of truth, ra-
tionality, and moral obligation (CIS 44).
These commitments ultimately translate into the idea of
antiauthoritarianism (see Rorty 1999).26 What we have here is the
normativity guiding Rorty’s larger philosophico-political project as
well as his reconstructions of the classical pragmatists. It culminates
in what we might call Rorty’s pragmatic maxim: Philosophers
“should ask themselves whether taking one side rather than an-
other will make any difference to social hopes, programs of ac-
tion, prophecies of a better future. If it will not, it may not be worth
doing. If it will, they should spell out what that difference amounts
to” (PCP x).27 For Rorty, choice between competing philosophical
vocabularies comes down to “a question of efficiency” regarding
“how best to bring about the utopia sketched by the Enlightenment.”
His infamous rejections of traditional views of truth, representa-
tionalism, objectivity, and so forth are a matter of “causal efficacy”
for achieving the moral and political ends of democracy, nothing
else (TP 172). He was quite explicit about this, suggesting that we
“modulate philosophical debate from a methodologico-ontological
key into an ethico-political key” to make clearer what is at stake

(ORT 110). As he explained it, “I urge that we look at relatively spe-
cialized and technical debates between contemporary philosophers
in light of our hopes for cultural change. Philosophers should
choose sides in those debates with an eye to the possibility of
changing the course of the conversation” (PCP x).
More often than not, critics of Rorty have resisted these efforts
to recontextualize perennial philosophical disputes in this way.28
At times perhaps they simply have been unable to make sense of
them. As Rey has observed, Rorty’s redescriptions “only appear
attractive to someone who has felt the full force of Rorty’s cri-
tique, someone who has been unsettled by his vision of a post-
metaphysical culture that can no longer appeal to the transcendent
to anchor its hopes” (2017, 318). Moreover, Rorty’s application of
his pragmatic maxim often led him to positions that better realize
his antiauthoritarianism and aspiration to put democracy first,
but at the expense of philosophical coherence. To take a notorious
example, Rorty’s antiauthoritarian zeal to cut off appeals to non-
human authority to which we owe allegiance, whether Truth or ob-
jective reality, compelled him to conceive knowledge in terms of
nothing more than other human beings—“what our peers will, ce-
teris paribus, let us get away with saying” (PMN 176)—and seem-
ingly to reduce philosophical inquiry to mere conversation and
truth to mere agreement, to the horror of Peircean pragmatists like
Haack (e.g., 1998), among many others. While more conducive
to democratic politics, this stance did not hold up to philosoph-
ical criticism, in the terms it was expressed, as Rorty himself later
recognized. As we shall see in Chapter 1, the three-cornered view
Rorty initially embraced via Peirce and later expressed through
Donald Davidson is rather close to the “characteristic semiotic
triad of persons, words, world” that Haack herself proselytizes
(2013, 96). Evaluating Rorty’s positions as abstract philosophical
commitments, as most do, severed from his ethical and political
project of prioritizing democracy over philosophy, not only has
Introduction 17
contributed to misconstruals, it blunts the force of his challenges to

pragmatists. Our collective understanding of Rorty’s project and its
challenges to us has suffered as a result.
The book’s main thesis is that getting beyond the Rortyan im-
passe demands taking Rorty seriously as an integral part of the
pragmatist tradition and coming to terms with his efforts to recon-
struct it. This project requires more than an accurate accounting of
what his positions are relative to Peirce, James, and Dewey; such
accounts, even when hermeneutically charitable, do nothing to
problematize the internal divides and “scholasticizing” of prag-
matism on the contemporary scene that separate Peirceans from
Jamesians and Deweyans, or classical from neopragmatism.
Explicating the epistemic and moral normativity guiding his
reconstructions promises to shed new light on Rorty’s relation to
the classical pragmatists. If nothing else, my hope is to diminish
automatic, knee-jerk assumptions that take Rorty to be obviously
outside such general characterizations of pragmatism as “a way
of thinking about abstract and concrete problems that oriented
[its practitioners] to historical analysis and away from inherited
dogmas” (Kloppenberg 1996, 106), and preoccupied with “how
to reconstruct philosophy in a manner that was compatible with a
fallibilistic orientation and an appreciation of the radical plurality
of experience” (Bernstein 1992, 837). Put another way, I seek to
problematize the unquestioned partitioning inherent in viewing
Rorty’s pragmatism as “little more than a ground-clearing phi-
losophy,” in contradistinction to the classical figures’ stress on “a
constructive dimension embedded in its commitment to effective,
cooperative communities of inquiry” (Westbrook 2005, 16).
Chapter Overview
As noted earlier, this book considers Rorty’s thought in juxtaposi-

tion to five thinkers associated with classical pragmatism: Peirce,
James, Dewey, Royce, and Addams. The precise nature of their rela-
tion to Rorty’s pragmatism differs in each case. Inclusion of the so-
called big three—Peirce, James, and Dewey—was a straightforward
decision given their centrality to the origin and early development
of the tradition. Rorty wrote considerably about each of the three
and was directly influenced by their ideas. However, each case is sui
generis. The time Rorty devoted to Peirce peaked in graduate school
and is evident only in his earliest, least-familiar essays. Indeed, those
who know Rorty from Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity and later
should be forgiven for thinking that Rorty never discussed Peirce
substantively at all. Yet we shall see that while Rorty’s early Peircean
commitments later fade from view, there are important residues
that prove crucial for a full appreciation of Rorty’s mature philos-
ophy, including valuable correctives for common misconstruals of
his views around things like Secondness and mind-independent
reality. While Rorty studied and taught James’s writings consist-
ently from early in his career, he didn’t write about James in a di-
rect and sustained way until relatively late. In overall temperament
and chief commitments, Rorty perhaps shared more with James
than with any other pragmatist.29 Rorty’s most explicit and familiar
connection to classical pragmatism is of course via Dewey. There
exists an extensive body of secondary literature challenging Rorty’s
adoption of the Deweyan mantle, which we will address. The depth
and significance of the influence of Dewey on Rorty are inspira-
tional and aspirational, as well as substantive, and the differences,
when inquired into, most instructive. Even where Rorty diverged
from Dewey he often did so for what he took to be good Deweyan
reasons, many of which have yet to be appreciated fully.
The inclusion of Royce and Addams requires a bit more expla-
nation. Royce’s philosophical idealism, religiosity, and “absolute”
pragmatism seem antithetical to Rorty’s secularism and valoriza-
tion of contingency. Rorty wrote next to nothing about Addams.
Why include these two marginal figures of classical pragmatism,
especially when they play little role within prevailing analytic
Introduction 19
pragmatisms like that of Brandom and Price? Here as well each one
is its own case. The aim of scholarly recovery is central to the Royce
chapter as we seek to understand the lack of reference to Royce in
Rorty’s published writings, especially around his notion of justice
as a larger loyalty, a puzzle that we make some strides in solving.
But the bigger motivation for their inclusion comes from the aim of
marshalling the resources of the pragmatic tradition for its future
development and, in particular, its ability to address the problems
of our day. Both Royce and Addams—especially Addams—sought
ways to practice their ideas and to follow the implications of their
philosophical orientations for democratic life in ways surprisingly
consonant with Rorty’s own pragmatic maxim. Addams’s status as
a philosopher in her own right has been unduly neglected, though
there are positive signs that this recognition is growing.30 There is a
lot that contemporary pragmatists can still learn from a critical dia-
logue between the ideas of Royce and Addams and Rorty’s.
The first chapter begins, fittingly, not only with Rorty’s earliest
writings but the origins of pragmatism in Charles Sanders Peirce.
Its aim is to present a fuller, more accurate picture of Rorty’s early
appreciation for and indebtedness to Peirce. The most obvious ob-
stacle we face in this recovery is Rorty’s own infamous categorical
dismissal of Peirce’s importance—that is, the infamous claim, in his
1979 APA Presidential Address, that Peirce’s “contribution to prag-
matism was merely to have given it a name, and to have stimulated
James” (CP 161). The second obstacle is that Rorty’s most in-depth
engagements with Peirce and with issues pertaining to pragmatism
and realism date to his least-known early writings.31 Add to this
the fact that these early philosophical positions appear to directly
counter Rorty’s more well-known mature views, particularly when
it comes to realism, and the uphill climb my argument faces comes
into view. Nevertheless, these early writings on Peirce illuminate
Rorty’s philosophical project writ large and in fact are essential
to understanding his relation to the classical pragmatists and to
appreciating the full scope of his philosophy. Beyond our grasp of
Rorty, I believe the stances in this early work have implications for
current debates and for the future of pragmatism after Rorty, as
I shall suggest in the Conclusion chapter.
Briefly stated, the fundamental insight Rorty derives from Peirce
is the primacy of practice in philosophical discourse.32 Rorty’s em-
brace of pragmatism in his early work—primarily via Peirce but
with several key invocations of Dewey—equates pragmatism with
translating metaphilosophical problems to a practical context
and then draws out the consequences of this shift. In Chapter 1,
I focus primarily on the realism Rorty endorses in this early work.
Getting a handle on his commitments around realism not only
gives us a better grasp of stances that have proved the most trou-
bling to critics, it alleviates an enduring point of contention be-
tween his work and the classical figures. Specifically, I make the
case that Rorty was by his own lights, at least for a time, a Peircean
realist. Further, I argue that the distinctive version of realism the
early Rorty labels “Peircean” is a useful notion for understanding
Rorty’s mature positions, though in his later work he abandons the
Peircean vocabulary for a Davidsonian one. Before explicating this
realism, I establish how Rorty’s early reading of Peirce’s end of in-
quiry and normative theory of self-controlled conduct enables
him to grasp the dependence of epistemology on ethics and to see
philosophical discourse as a rule-governed realm that necessitates
choice of vocabulary and hence responsibility. Here we see the
metaphilosophical stance that develops into the first pillar of
Rorty’s reconstruction focused on agency and choice. Three phases
of Rorty’s relation to Peirce can be distinguished: 1) key early ap-
preciation and engagement from his graduate studies until the
1970s; 2) a middle-period blanket rejection of Peirce as having
contributed anything to pragmatism other than the name; and 3) a
later view of Peirce as prophet of the linguistic turn. Understanding
Rorty’s early interest in and surprising affinities with Peirce sheds
light on important continuities between their philosophies that
prevailing views of each obscure. In key moments, Rorty turns out
Introduction 21
to be more of a realist, as traditionally understood, and Peirce less

of one—at least in terms of correspondence—than we might ex-
pect. The “ethically-centered epistemology” aimed at the growth
of knowledge Rorty sees in Peirce contrasts sharply with the view
dominant among contemporary Peirceans, like Misak and Talisse,
preoccupied above all with justification.
Unlike all the ink spilled contesting Rorty’s claim to a Deweyan
heritage, which we will examine in the third chapter, scholars
of William James have been largely silent on Rorty’s reading
of James, beyond a few pregnant claims, by Richard Bernstein,
Harvey Cormier, and others, that James is the pragmatist Rorty
most resembled. Fewer than ten essays exist on Rorty and James,
only a handful of which are constructive; there are no sustained
treatments of Rorty’s indebtedness to James or of the commonalities
in their philosophical projects. Chapter 2 aims to fill this gap by
establishing their like-minded approach to the interrelation of
ethics, epistemology, and meliorism. The pluralistic, “unfinished”
universe heralded by James, and the contingent, linguistically-
mediated landscape open to endless redescription embraced by
Rorty, both evoke a conception of knowledge in which humans are
active participants in the construction of what is right and true.
Like James, Rorty can be read as a philosopher of agency,
preoccupied with how we move from the old to the new, and
from where we derive normative resources to guide us in these
transitions to new beliefs when we leave our existing principles
or procedures behind. Both reject an ethics that appeals to fixed
principles, yet nonetheless combine their fallibilism and plu-
ralism with an account of commitment and responsibility that
manifests in a more acute attentiveness to what James called the
“cries of the wounded” and the obligations that the claims of con-
crete others place on us. Drawing on James’s brief but important
appearances in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, I highlight the
combination of epistemic modesty and willingness to listen and
learn from others with an account of ethical responsiveness as a
signal contribution of their pragmatisms. This approach generates

insights into Rortyan irony, which I claim is best read as an ethical
form of antiauthoritarian fallibilism, and elucidates the resources
James and Rorty offer for what recent scholars, like Miranda
Fricker (2007) and José Medina (2017), have called epistemic injus-
tice.33 The normative resources of Rorty’s reconstructive project are
on full display in this juxtaposition with James, as well as in Rorty’s
reading of James. Because of how much they share, commonalities
rather than divergences predominate in this chapter. Nevertheless,
Rorty’s reconstruction of James identifies a tension between “The
Will to Believe” and Pragmatism, on the one hand, and Radical
Empiricism and Varieties of Religious Experience, on the other, in
that James’s famous defense of the right to believe in the absence of
evidence does not go far enough in its antiauthoritarian impulse.
Chapter 3 shows how both Rorty and John Dewey were com-
mitted to a conception of philosophy as an instrument of social
change which aims, in Sidney Hook’s phrase, at “enlarging human
freedom.” Elsewhere I surveyed the four decades–long cottage in-
dustry of documenting Rorty’s alleged distortions of Dewey and
concluded that the one-sided preoccupation with the question of
Rorty’s fidelity to the Deweyan heritage had the effect of blunting,
or eschewing altogether, the fundamental challenges posed by
Rorty’s attempt at reconstruction (see Voparil 2014a). The claim
I advance here is that Rorty’s reinterpretations are best seen as
attempts to read Dewey in a way that promotes a particular vi-
sion of democracy and social change, rather than as misreadings.
In short, Rorty radicalizes Dewey’s own reconstruction of phi-
losophy, using Deweyan critiques against Dewey himself. Like
Dewey, Rorty aimed to promote ethical, social, and political
change by reconceiving our understanding of philosophy and its
role in the culture. When Rorty objects to particular elements in
Dewey’s work, like the project of constructive metaphysics in
Experience and Nature, it is because he believes they get in the way
of reconstructing philosophy as an instrument of social change.
Introduction 23
I support this interpretation through a reading of Rorty’s work

over the last decade of his life, particularly the essays collected in
Philosophy as Cultural Politics, that suggests Rorty’s embrace of the
idea of philosophy as cultural politics brings him closer to Deweyan
ideas about the role of philosophy than his earlier stances. I then ex-
amine the shared territory that comes into view as a result of this
reading to offer the kind of fruitful engagement with their points
of divergence that we still largely lack, including their attention to
marginalized groups. Three additional shared elements emerge: an
attention to the cultural context in which intellectual inquiry is
embedded; an engagement with the pressing social, moral, polit-
ical, and cultural issues of the day; and a foregrounding of the soci-
opolitical character of philosophical work, in the sense exemplified
in Reconstruction in Philosophy. Rorty’s effort to reconstruct what
he took to be the limitations in Dewey’s conception of philosophy
as an instrument of social change deserves to be considered on its
own merits, not simply dismissed as an alleged misunderstanding
of Dewey. By reading Dewey as giving us an account of inquiry and
warrant under conditions of normal discourse and Rorty as fo-
cused on abnormal contexts where belief correction proceeds via
unwarranted assertions and nonlogical changes in belief, I suggest
how pragmatists can learn from them both.
Despite the evident lack of pragmatist family resemblance be-
tween the “absolute pragmatism” of Josiah Royce and Rorty’s
antifoundationalism, historicism, and contingentism, Chapter 4
identifies a shared project of particular importance to the ongoing
relevance of pragmatism: the philosophical imperative, in Rorty’s
parlance, of intervening in cultural politics. In this chapter I ad-
vance three key claims: first, that Royce’s work, roughly from The
Philosophy of Loyalty to The Hope of the Great Community, can
be productively viewed as a series of philosophical interventions
in cultural politics; second, that while evidence of Rorty’s engage-
ment with Royce’s thought is scant, drawing on thinly veiled tex-
tual allusions and material in the Richard Rorty Papers archive,
I establish it nonetheless exists and was more influential on Rorty

than currently appreciated; and, third, that reading Rorty and
Royce within the same frame generates helpful insights about the
transformative moral resources available to pragmatists—namely,
the power of affective ties and ethical commitments exemplified
in the notion of loyalty. What results is an approach to questions
of justice through the lens of community, involving conceptions
of interpretation, loyalty, and atonement, that illuminates those
who have used Roycean resources in their justice work, including
Horace Kallen, Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King, Jr., and
Cornel West. Philosophically, they each grasped that truth, know-
ledge, and reality cannot be understood in isolation from the
communal relations that constitute us. We see that Rorty’s critical
reconstruction of Royce stems from his worry that Royce’s appeal
to the Absolute risks generating sociopolitical complacency and a
loss of human agency. After outlining where their projects align in
promoting an intensification of community, I identify a limitation
that both thinkers face when it comes to learning from outsiders
within, drawing on others in the pragmatist orbit, including
Randolph Bourne and W.E.B. Du Bois, to suggest remedies. The
stance toward which both Royce and Rorty seemed to be moving,
but never fully arrive, was discerned by Du Bois, in his insight that
his status as a devalued other makes him “singularly clairvoyant.” If
indeed we understand truth and reality from within the horizon of
our community, the perspective of that community’s marginalized
and excluded others is necessary for gaining knowledge oriented to
the cultural politics of social change.
Because lines of direct philosophical influence of Jane Addams
on Rorty and philosophical appropriations by him of her work don’t
exist, Chapter 5 begins with intellectual biography to trace their
common early awareness of social injustice. Only in the last few
decades has Addams’s rightful place in the pragmatist pantheon,
not merely as an activist and reformer but a social philosopher,
been secured. On the few occasions in recent scholarship when
Rorty is mentioned in the context of Addams, it typically is to mark
Introduction 25
the distance between them. With one notable exception by a sociol-

ogist (see Schneiderhan 2013), there are no extended treatments of
these two thinkers in tandem. Yet despite Rorty’s oeuvre containing
in total scarcely a paragraph of commentary on Addams and her
work, he valorized her as a member of the “reformist left” exalted
in Achieving Our Country. Interestingly, the Social Gospel tradition
of Rorty’s grandfather, Walter Rauschenbusch, is a shared influence
on both the Settlement Movement and Rorty’s own development.
I argue that Addams and Rorty secularize the ethical dimension
of the tradition, deriving from it the importance of community
responses to the needs of the poor and immigrants. Interpreting
them in this light illuminates their distinctive contribution to prag-
matist ethics: They merge epistemic and ethical priorities to unite
sympathetic understanding with the cultivation of social ethical
responsibility and orient their ethical projects explicitly toward re-
sponsiveness to marginalized or excluded others. My chief claims
are: first, that Rorty can be read as extending Addams’s project of
creating a democratic moral community; and second, that a con-
structive dialogue between Rorty and Addams reveals key points
of complementarity that, when taken together, generate a more
robust conception of democratic social ethics than Addams’s
alone. Reading Rorty alongside Addams elucidates the ethical
commitments behind or alongside his more familiar epistemo-
logical critiques in previously unappreciated ways. For instance,
Rorty’s understanding of the social practice of justification can be
understood as a philosophical defense of Addams’s idea of a “social
test,” wherein “what our peers will, ceteris paribus, let us get away
with saying” functions in a similar way as Addams’s notion of “con-
tact with social experience” as a corrective of opinion. The social
dimension that comes into focus by reading Rorty with Addams
depicts a facet of Rorty’s ethics not captured in Chapter 2’s engage-
ment of Rorty and James.
In the Conclusion I gather the insights from the preceding
chapters and revisit influential lines of criticism of Rorty in
their light. To offer a brief precis: the first chapter’s elucidation
of Rorty’s Peircean roots reveals Rorty’s apparent rejections of

truth, objectivity, and the mind-independence of reality to have
been overstated, concealing his more nuanced reconstructions of
these notions. Chapter 2’s account of Rorty’s alternative concep-
tion of ethical normativity via James offers a basis for more ro-
bust Rortyan responses to the criticisms of Habermas and Misak
that his pragmatism lacks adequate motives for expanding our
community and for answering the Nazi. The reading of Rorty’s
relation to Dewey in the third chapter suggests that Rorty’s dis-
avowal of method is less broad than often thought and offers
resources for grappling with tensions within Dewey’s work.
Juxtaposing Dewey and Rorty enables pragmatists to account
for the improvement of belief under conditions of both normal
and abnormal discourse. Chapter 4 ultimately finds limitations
in both Rorty and Royce, particularly from the vantages of Du
Bois and Bourne. Nevertheless, their shared effort to use philo-
sophical ideas for bringing about social change and expansion of
provincial loyalties toward an inclusive global moral community
must not be overshadowed by their philosophical differences.
The unexpected alignments of Addams and Rorty which are the
subject of Chapter 5 yield not only synergies in their ethical and
epistemic projects but important complementary and mutually
corrective insights into how to practice pragmatist meliorism.
Addams’s notion of a “social test” of belief blunts critiques of
Rorty’s picture of social justification, and Rorty helps us see the
limits of social experience without an attendant expansion of the
moral space of deliberation through nonlogical means. Lastly,
I sketch the broad contours of a post-Rortyan pragmatism free
of partisan allegiances and self-protective impulses, animated by
creative energies resulting from working through and beyond his
challenges to pragmatists to better realize the aims of moral and
epistemic growth toward more just and inclusive communities.
* * *
Introduction 27
In the remainder of this introduction, I address several issues

that help orient us toward the nature and scope of Rorty’s project
of reconstruction: his role in prevailing narratives of continuity,
eclipse, and revival in the pragmatic tradition’s odyssey; the per-
sistent partition between experiential and linguistic pragmatisms;
and pragmatism’s relation to humanism, where I briefly treat sev-
eral other figures of classical pragmatism who are not examined
here, but also promise avenues of productive dialogue with Rorty’s
thought.
Rorty and Pragmatism’s Resurgence
As the thinker most associated with pragmatism’s contemporary

resurgence, Rorty looms large in virtually all narratives that seek to
explain the twists and turns of its twentieth-century journey. The
most dominant of these, dubbed the “eclipse narrative,” holds that
after being ascendant since the last decades of the nineteenth cen-
tury, pragmatism was pushed from the philosophical scene around
the Second World War by the rise of the more technical approach
to philosophy associated with logical positivism and analytic phi-
losophy, which was characterized by decontextualized logical rigor.
Appearing by comparison muddled and lacking the mathematical
proof-like clarity of argumentation prized by these new traditions,
on this narrative pragmatism suffers enough near-fatal blows to
endure only on life support until the 1979 appearance of Rorty’s
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, which heralded Dewey as
one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century,
alongside Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, and sparked
a revival of the tradition that subsequently blossomed across the
humanities and the globe.34
The ironic wrinkle in this story is the seemingly contradic-
tory dual role Rorty occupies as both chief spokesperson for the
linguistic turn in analytic philosophy that hastened the eclipse
of pragmatism and architect of a renewed vision of pragmatism’s

timeliness and importance. It should not be overlooked that the
eclipse narrative represents events as they were felt in certain quar-
ters.35 For a time, Rorty clearly played the part of villain and con-
venient scapegoat for both sides. By now this story rightly has lost
much of its influence; it surely obscures more than it reveals. By
the early 1990s, Bernstein already discerned the limits of the domi-
nant narrative as overshadowing “the continuity and persistence of
the pragmatic legacy” that endured even while allegedly in eclipse
(1992, 817).36 Yet this message of continuity gained little currency
until Rorty’s passing in 2007 and the shift in his reception that
followed.
For a time, Bernstein’s 1992 claims about continuity were
drowned out by the din of that decade’s struggles— between
modernists and postmodernists, foundationalists and
antifoundationalists, and analytic and continental traditions. By
the mid-1990s what we might call narratives of fragmentation
came into fashion among pragmatism’s scholars. Little written by
pragmatists or about pragmatism failed to delineate not just clas-
sical from contemporary versions but to resist drawing lines of
demarcation across the growing pragmatist community: classical
versus neopragmatism, experiential versus linguistic pragmatism,
and modernist versus postmodernist pragmatism, to name only
a few. The widely-read account of historian James Kloppenberg
(1996), to take one example, entrenched not only these divides but
one between, on the one hand, Bernstein and Hilary Putnam, and,
on the other, Rorty, Stanley Fish, and Richard Poirier. Before long,
“new” pragmatists distinguished themselves from neopragmatists
(i.e., Rorty), and “paleopragmatism” and “primapragmatism” were
spawned.37 It took the realignment of pragmatism’s tectonic plates
initiated by Rorty’s departure from the scene to alter the geography
of contemporary pragmatism’s divided map.38 A factor in this shift
no doubt has been the recent generation of pragmatists, worldwide,
who have come to the tradition via Rorty’s work, free of the scars
Introduction 29
and trauma borne by those who lived through the apparent eclipse
and the Rorty-led revival.
Fully appreciating Rorty’s reconstruction of classical pragma-
tism entails recognizing the importance of Willard Van Orman
Quine, Wilfrid Sellars, and Donald Davidson in the story of the
tradition’s development. To be sure, Rorty’s own insights regarding
this continuity have not gone wholly unnoticed.39 However, the ex-
tent to which his insights both undermine the eclipse narrative and
suggest novel lines of inquiry for pragmatists of all allegiances has
not been widely grasped. It is instructive to recall that the opening
line of Rorty’s first published article was: “Pragmatism is getting
respectable again” (1961a, 197). Even if this remark may have
been more prophecy than fact at the time, it was not totally un-
founded. To understand what could have prompted Rorty to make
such a statement during the time of pragmatism’s alleged retreat,
we have to appreciate something omitted by the dominant eclipse
narrative: what John Murphy called “Quine’s revival of pragma-
tism in 1951” (1990, 95). Murphy usefully highlights how Quine’s
“Two Dogmas of Empiricism” had “tolled the death knell for log-
ical positivism” (Murphy 1990, 82). Like most, Murphy’s narra-
tive dates pragmatism’s “moribund” state to the 1930s and 1940s.
Unlike most, he characterizes the 1950s and 1960s as dominated by
Quine’s version of pragmatism (1990, 82).40
Pegging Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature as the source of the
pragmatist revival unhelpfully pulls a curtain across the important
midcentury philosophical drama in the decades that preceded it.
For his part, Rorty himself advanced a narrative not of eclipse but
of continuity. Indeed, the historical account offered in Mirror, as
he explained a few years later, is of “a gradual ‘pragmaticization’
of the original tenets of logical positivism” (CP xviii). The re-
sult of this pragmaticization, he suggests, was that with Quine,
the later Wittgenstein, Sellars, and Davidson, analytic philosophy
“transcends and cancels itself ” (CP xviii). The most noteworthy
invocation of pragmatism in Mirror indeed is Rorty’s surprising
inclusion of Dewey among the three most important philosophers

of the twentieth century. While Dewey’s name appears often in
the book, his relevance to Rorty’s argument consists largely in
representing broad philosophical currents which carried him and
others— Wittgenstein and Heidegger, on one end, and Quine,
Sellars, and Davidson, on the other—in a particular direction more
than in anything distinctive to Dewey. These currents, which Rorty
sought to affirm, include, among others: the critique of the spectator
theory of knowledge, the general sweep of anti-Cartesianism and
anti-Kantianism, an embrace of holism and naturalism, and a genre
of “edifying” rather than “systematic” philosophy. Pragmatism as
such is not especially conspicuous in the book. Rorty labels his po-
sition with the awkward phrase, “epistemological behaviorism,”
adding parenthetically, “(which might be simply called ‘pragma-
tism’, were this term not a bit overladen),” and attributes it to not
just Dewey but Wittgenstein, Quine, and Sellars (PMN 176).41
We have here, then, not a narrative of eclipse, but on the con-
trary, a story of pragmatism, through precise targeting of funda-
mental assumptions, slowly chipping away at logical positivism’s
foundations until it collapses, with pragmatism in the role of van-
quisher rather than vanquished—all of this a decade or two before
Mirror. How are we to make sense of this alternative narrative,
which rests on the claim that a revival of pragmatism already was
initiated by Quine in 1951? Here too we must recognize conti-
nuity, starting with the influence of Dewey on Quine that the clas-
sical versus neopragmatism divide masks. Quine’s “Two Dogmas
of Empiricism” appeared in January 1951, eighteen months before
Dewey’s death. As a graduate student, Quine had heard Dewey
deliver the first William James Lectures at Harvard in 1931, later
published as Art as Experience (Quine 1969, 26).42 The opening
paragraph of “Two Dogmas” makes clear that Quine understands
the consequence of his critique as “a shift towards pragmatism,” in-
cluding his own stance, which he describes as “a more thorough
pragmatism” than that of Rudolf Carnap and C.I. Lewis (1980, 20,
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Mefistófeles, apareciendo a la puerta
¡Salid al punto,
o nos perdemos! ¡Miedos mujeriles,
dudas, ayes; y mientras, mis caballos
piafando están, y el alba ya sonríe!
Margarita
¿Qué funesta visión surgió del suelo?

¡Es él! ¡Es él! ¡Es él! ¿Qué buscas, dime,
en el santo lugar? ¡A mí me buscas!
Fausto
¡Has de vivir!
Margarita
¡Mi espíritu recibe,

Eterno Juez!
Mefistófeles, a Fausto
Os dejo en la estacada,
si al punto no venís.
Margarita
Esta infelice
es tuya, ¡oh Padre! ¡Sálvala! Y vosotros,
ángeles, celestiales adalides,
vuestras divinas huestes desplegando
en mi redor, guardadme y conducidme.
¡Enrique! Horror me das.
Mefistófeles
¡Está juzgada!
Voz de arriba
¡Salvada!
Mefistófeles, a Fausto
¡Tú, conmigo!
(Desaparece con Fausto.)
Voz interior, que se va apagando
¡Enrique! ¡Enrique!
BREVE RESEÑA
DE LA SEGUNDA PARTE DE LA TRAGEDIA

BREVE RESEÑA
DE LA SEGUNDA PARTE DE LA TRAGEDIA
ACTO PRIMERO
Goethe dividió en actos la segunda parte de su
tragedia, lo cual no hizo en la primera, quizás por
entender que la rápida sucesión de sus acontecimientos y
episodios no consentía estos intervalos y descansos,
admitidos por casi todos los escritores dramáticos.
En el primer acto de la segunda parte nos presenta a
Fausto adormecido, mientras una falange de Espíritus
aéreos disipa en su corazón los amargos recuerdos y
remordimientos que lo encadenan a la vida real por la
mísera muerte de la infeliz Margarita. Fausto despierta y
parece otro hombre: el hirviente deseo que lo agitó está
desvanecido o, cuando menos, amortiguado por
pensamientos más suaves y tranquilos, y por un
conocimiento más profundo y más severamente filosófico,
de las fuerzas vivas de la Naturaleza, hacia las cuales
parece que el protagonista del drama quiera dirigir su
espíritu investigador. Acompañado de Mefistófeles, llega a
la corte del Emperador, de la cual nos ofrece Goethe
ingeniosa y animadísima pintura. Los apuros de la
hacienda, la anarquía de la administración, el descontento
del pueblo, inducen al Emperador a recibir bien a los dos
misteriosos extranjeros, con mayor motivo porque uno y
otro se dan a conocer por varias señales como seres de
sobrenatural poder. Acepta gozoso su ayuda para la
busca de tesoros ocultos en las entrañas de la tierra, y
ordena que se solemnice el alegre Carnaval, demorando
para el día de Ceniza aquella pesquisa de las suspiradas
riquezas.
La fiesta del Carnaval en la corte del Emperador ofrece
ocasión a Goethe para desplegar su lozana fantasía, y
dar, con símbolos y alegorías mitológicas, ancho campo y
rienda suelta al espíritu satírico que informa casi todo el
poema. Comienza el espectáculo con un coro de lindas y
amables floristas, al que responden en poético lenguaje
las mismas flores con que van adornadas. Pero
interrumpe su alegría la aparición de pescadores,
cazadores, leñadores, parásitos y poetas, que con su
incesante alboroto perturban la fiesta. Entonces el heraldo
que la preside evoca la mitología clásica, y al punto se
presentan en escena las tres Gracias, Aglaya, Hegémone
y Eufrósine, y tras estas las tres Parcas, Átropos, Cloto y
Láquesis, y las tres terribles Furias, Alecto, Megera y
Tisífone.
Nuevas figuras intervienen para animar el júbilo
carnavalesco. En una espléndida carroza aparece
sentada una divinidad poderosísima: es la Victoria. Junto
a ella están el Temor, inquieto y tembloroso; la alegre y
festiva Esperanza; la Prudencia, de ojo avizor. Zoilo-
Tersites, extravagante amalgama de dos personajes de la
antigua Grecia, quiere mover cuestión a la diosa Victoria;
pero el heraldo lo arroja airadamente, y al retirarse fugitivo
se convierte en víbora y en murciélago.
Llega otra carroza; va guiada por un gentil mancebo,
que se llama a sí mismo el genio de la Prodigalidad y de
la Poesía. Aquella carroza es el trono de Pluto, el dios de
la Riqueza, hacia quien todos se vuelven admirados, y
recogen ansiosos los donativos con que los obsequia.
Pero, molestado por las exigencias y la murmuración de la
turbamulta, promueve Pluto un vasto incendio, que
aparece lejano, mientras el gran dios Pan, con las Ninfas,
los Faunos, los Sátiros, los Gnomos y los Gigantes que le
acompañan, toma parte en la mascarada. El incendio
prende en el palacio imperial. Huye en tumulto el pueblo
aterrorizado, y el dios Pluto atrae nieblas y nubarrones,
que desprenden un aguacero muy a tiempo para apagar
el fuego y dar fin a la estrambótica y divertidísima farsa.
Fausto y Mefistófeles no estuvieron ociosos mientras
tanto. Encontraron los tesoros que habían prometido al
Emperador, y con tan feliz hallazgo se pagaron las
deudas, se llenaron las arcas del Tesoro, y volvió a reinar
la tranquilidad en el esquilmado imperio. En esta extraña
escena, Goethe quiso simbolizar el invento del papel-
moneda. La fantasmagoría concluye con el reparto de
dádivas que hace el Emperador a sus súbditos.
Sigue la admirable escena de las Madres. Entre las
varias interpretaciones que los comentaristas del Fausto
dan a estas Madres, parece la más aceptable
considerarlas como las fuerzas elementales de la
Naturaleza, como el principio oculto de las cosas creadas
o por crear. Para comprender esta escena, hay que fijarse
en la pintura que el mismo Goethe hace de las Madres;
parece que el misterio y la incertidumbre de que las ha
rodeado, ayudan a la profunda impresión que el tremendo
episodio debe producir.
El hecho es que, por intercesión de las Madres, puede
el afortunado Fausto evocar y dar vida a los dos tipos de
la belleza clásica, Paris y Helena, y traerlos como
personas vivientes a presencia de la corte, y hacerles
representar el memorable drama amoroso, al que la
poesía griega erigió un monumento inmortal. Pero Fausto,
impaciente y ya enamorado de la helénica beldad, no
recuerda que su evocación es un nuevo fantasma de
apariencia vana, y queriendo estrechar entre sus brazos
la ideal figura, rompe el encanto, y todo concluye entre
sombras y vapores, que se desvanecen.
ACTO SEGUNDO
En este acto, más que en los otros, el autor se
aproxima a la primera parte de la tragedia. Destruido el
encanto de la suave aparición de Helena y Paris por la
fogosa imprudencia de Fausto, Mefistófeles no encuentra
mejor partido que conducir a su enamorado señor al
antiguo aposento, donde comenzó el poema y fue
estipulado el diabólico contrato de compra-venta del alma
del Doctor. Mefistófeles reconoce aquel lugar; le complace
ver nuevamente en el mismo sitio todos los objetos del
melancólico gabinete de estudio, y para que nada se le
esconda, encuentra seca en el filo de la pluma la gota de
sangre que sirvió para la firma de aquella acta infernal. Un
coro de insectos, que de improviso sale del viejo ropón de
Fausto, que Mefistófeles por capricho ha descolgado de la
percha, festeja el inesperado regreso del docto maestro.
Recibe otra vez el infernal personaje a aquel inexperto
estudiante, que fue a visitarle en la primera parte del
poema, y obtuvo de él tales consejos, que se enamoró
locamente de una filosofía falaz, y se convirtió en erudito
vulgar, lleno de sofismas y paradojas. Esta segunda
escena entre Mefistófeles y el Bacalaureus rivaliza con la
primera por su gracia cómica y su finísima sátira; y su
efecto aún es mayor porque el lector la enlaza con aquella
y saborea mejor sus donaires. Bien se comprende que el
autor quiso poner en solfa los sistemas filosóficos que en
su época señoreaban la Alemania; y enemigo, como era,
de todas las filosofías nebulosas y de las teorías
falsamente innovadoras, las combatió con el arma del
ridículo.
Sin salir del domicilio de Fausto, entramos en el
laboratorio de Wagner, donde el antiguo pedante, eunuco
de la ciencia, quiere remedar a Prometeo y a Pigmalión,
creando de nuevo al hombre con las extravagantes
mezcolanzas de la alquimia. Suda y trasuda años y más
años en la magna empresa; y no la llevaría a cabo, si no
recibiera a tiempo la ayuda de Mefistófeles, que se burla
de él. Del ardiente hornillo donde hierve la mágica
redoma, ve surgir, por fin, el esperado fruto, una criatura,
que no es humana todavía, pero aspira a serlo; no es el
hombre, pero es Homúnculus, singular creación, en la
cual el poeta amalgama un concepto filosófico y literario, y
una idea soberanamente satírica. Homúnculus,
Mefistófeles y Fausto, como tres peregrinos, van en busca
de la belleza helénica, es decir, del clasicismo verdadero y
propio, con lo cual pretendía sin duda Goethe enlazar la
poesía nueva con la antigua, como si una y otra fuesen
partes de un mismo todo, destellos de una misma luz,
para lo cual aprovechaba el poeta esta figura del
Homúnculus, como anillo dialéctico entre las dos poesías,
entre las dos literaturas, entre los dos mundos. Wagner
queda solo y desconsolado en el solitario laboratorio,
porque es el hombre que no siente el fecundo palpitar de
la vida nueva, la cual se desprende del espectáculo y del
ejemplo de la belleza helénica.
Resulta, pues, que el héroe del drama, su protagonista
activo, es Fausto, despierto ya del terrible sopor en que
cayó cuando quiso abrazar el fantasma de Helena.
Homúnculus y Mefistófeles tienen también su papel, su
actividad propia; pero subordinada a la acción y a la
finalidad de Fausto; y aun cuando se muevan y se agiten,
serán siempre, en el drama fantástico de la Noche clásica,
personajes secundarios, colocados allí para iluminar
mejor el carácter del actor principal, y para que aparezca
más claro el concepto profundo del autor.
El romanticismo, con todos sus tétricos resplandores,
fue delineado admirablemente por Goethe en la Noche de
Santa Valpurgis (primera parte de la tragedia). En la
Noche clásica, el poeta hace gala de todo el clasicismo de
la antigüedad, y con audaces vuelos nos presenta
renacidas las amables creaciones de la mitología y de la
poesía griega. La gallarda creación de Goethe se une al
drama por un hilo sutil, el amor a la hermosa Helena, que
llena el corazón de Fausto; y súbitamente vemos a los
tres aéreos viajeros, Mefistófeles, Homúnculus y Fausto,
que descienden a los campos de Farsalia, los dos
primeros en busca de las deidades y de la belleza
antigua, y el último ansioso de encontrar a la hermosa
fugitiva.
Mefistófeles se siente algún tanto embarazado, y
comprende que no podrá dominar aquel mundo, para él
desconocido. Pasa como de incógnito entre las Esfinges,
que se burlan de él, y aunque asombrado por el canto
dulcísimo de las Sirenas, su corazón de diablo no se
conmueve, y el delicioso espectáculo que por todas partes
se le presenta no le inspira más que aburrimiento y enojo.
Mientras tanto, Fausto, persuadido por las Esfinges,
busca al centauro Quirón, para que le dé nuevas de
Helena. Lo encuentra cuando va a pasar a la orilla
opuesta del Peneo; monta sobre sus lomos, y el buen
centauro, apiadado de la amorosa herida de su audaz
jinete, lo conduce ante la hija de Esculapio para que lo
cure.
Fausto se oculta en las entrañas de la tierra; esta
tiembla, agitada por un terremoto, y la fecunda revolución
de la Naturaleza forma una nueva y gigantesca montaña,
que se puebla en seguida de Grifos, Pigmeos, Dáctilos,
Imsios, hormigas y grullas, singular multitud, evocada por
la poderosa imaginación del poeta, extraña mezcla de lo
antiguo y lo moderno, que se rechaza y entrechoca al
principio y después parece que armónicamente se una,
como para simbolizar el consorcio del clasicismo y el
romanticismo. Tampoco a Mefistófeles le van mal las
cosas, porque tropezando con las Fórcides, las antiguas
Gorgonias, las atrae con el irresistible reclamo de la
adulación y logra trasfundir su ser en una de ellas. Al
llegar a este punto, la escena cambia súbitamente, y entre
las rocas del Mar Egeo, vuelven las seductoras Sirenas a
gobernar la noche tenebrosa de los encantamientos.
Aparecen Nereidas y Tritones; en el mar y sus riberas
suenan extraños cantos; llegan Nereo y Proteo, y
Homúnculus, espíritu elemental del fuego, despide rayos
de luz fosforescentes; pero, apenas se aproxima el
brillante carro de nácar donde se asienta la hermosa
Galatea, se inflama con todo el ardor que dentro de sí
alimentaba, y va a diluirse en las purpúreas aguas del
mar. Así termina la admirable noche en que se celebran
las nupcias de los elementos, por la poética fusión de la
belleza y del amor.
ACTO TERCERO
El acto tercero de la segunda parte de la tragedia es
una de las más espléndidas creaciones del ingenio de
Goethe; es la prueba mejor de su vasta cultura literaria y
del exquisito gusto que lo elevó sobre los demás poetas
alemanes en todo lo que sea pureza, elegancia y
exactitud de la forma. El episodio de Helena, comenzado
ya en las escenas precedentes, y envuelto hasta ahora en
el nebuloso trascendentalismo que flota ligeramente sobre
todo el poema dramático, brilla en este acto con límpida
luz, y se desenvuelve como parte esencialísima de la
composición.
Terminada la Noche clásica de Santa Valpurgis, el
autor toma de nuevo el hilo del drama, anudándolo a las
fantasías de aquella noche, de tal manera, que no
aparece claro dónde termina el ensueño y dónde prosigue
la tragedia, ni por qué, con atrevidísimo vuelo a través de
los siglos, el poeta nos lleva otra vez a Esparta y nos
introduce en el palacio de Menelao. Bien podemos decir
que Goethe en esta escena es un continuador de
Homero, y con él compite por la precisión y el esplendor
de las imágenes, por la suprema belleza del estilo, y por
el sabor completamente helénico, que no desentona de
los diversos estilos que se entrelazan y armónicamente se
confunden en otros pasajes de la obra.
Helena regresa a la mansión conyugal después de las
afortunadas vicisitudes de aquella terrible guerra; pero un
presentimiento misterioso, una inquietud incesante la
molesta y no la engaña. La aguarda a la puerta de la casa
una horrorosa fórcide y le impide la entrada a ella y a sus
doncellas con violentas amenazas, anunciándole la
venganza terrible del engañado esposo. Para librarse de
ella, Helena se dispone a buscar un nuevo Paris que la
defienda; y con ello el autor se propuso, además de
satisfacer el insaciable deseo de Fausto, maniático
perseguidor de la belleza antigua, dar también una
pincelada satírica a la pintura de las mujeres del temple
de Helena.
Despliéganse otra vez todas las pompas y la riqueza
de la nueva poesía. El terror de la muerte augurada por la
fórcide a Helena y al coro atemorizado, les mueve a
buscar refugio en el castillo encantado de Fausto, castillo
enriquecido con todas las magnificencias que una fantasía
inflamada como la de Goethe, era capaz de imaginar. Las
licenciosas servidoras de Helena, encantadas por el
seductor espectáculo, olvidan los peligros corridos, y a la
vista de los mancebos gallardos que preparan el trono
real, piensan en nuevos placeres. El enamorado Fausto
se presenta rodeado de todos los esplendores y las galas
de que pudiera alardear el señor más poderoso de la
Edad Media. Pone a los pies de la reina todos sus
homenajes, y se le ofrece amante fervoroso, obediente
siervo y vasallo leal. En vano el incauto Menelao trata de
renovar la sangrienta contienda por la cual fue Troya
destruida; las falanges sobrenaturales que acatan las
órdenes de Fausto, desbaratan súbitamente el ejército
enemigo. Nada se opone a los amorosos transportes del
nuevo Paris; y la gentil pareja, sumida en los dulces
misterios del amor, goza una vida de sin igual deleite.
El poeta finge que de las nupcias de Helena y Fausto
nace Euforión, simbolismo de la poesía moderna. Es
muchacho e inexperto aún; pero animoso, procaz y
turbulento. Sus padres temen por él a cada paso, dudosos
de que sus juveniles fuerzas le sostengan en los atrevidos
vuelos a que se aventura. Las amonestaciones del padre,
las tiernas súplicas de la madre, no lo detienen, y
lanzándose al espacio desconocido, resplandece con una
luz que parece inmortal; pero pronto se pierde y se disipa,
como un cometa desvanecido en el cielo. Un canto
fúnebre del coro es la afectuosa y triste elegía a la
memoria del joven prematuramente perdido, en quien
Goethe parece haber querido representar la noble figura
de lord Byron.
Muerto Euforión, la dolorida Helena abraza por última
vez a Fausto y se desvanece también. Sus vestiduras,
transformadas en nieblas, envuelven a Fausto y lo
remontan a la serena región del espacio. Destruido así el
hechizo, la vieja fórcide se quita la máscara: era
Mefistófeles.
ACTO CUARTO
En el acto cuarto, el autor nos lleva otra vez a los
Estados del Emperador. El recuerdo de lo que ha visto ha
promovido en Fausto nuevos e inusitados pensamientos,
y con ellos anda preocupado, cuando Mefistófeles, que
vuelve más solícito que nunca al servicio de su
compañero, le anuncia que el Emperador pasa grandes
apuros porque su reino es presa de la anarquía más
espantosa. Las ciudades se han enguerrado unas contra
otras; los señores feudales luchan también entre sí; los
plebeyos se sublevan contra los nobles; hasta los obispos
cuestionan con el cabildo o con las parroquias. Fausto se
apiada del Emperador, y Mefistófeles vuelve a
comprometerse a salvarlo, apelando otra vez a los
encantamientos y las hechicerías.
Hétenos ya en el campo de batalla, donde el poder
diabólico de Mefistófeles ha congregado a los Espíritus
para combatir a favor del Emperador. Ya las tropas que
habían permanecido fieles cedían y se retiraban ante el
empuje del enemigo; ya el Antiemperador miraba próximo
el triunfo; pero las formidables legiones del infierno,
evocadas por Mefistófeles, cambian el éxito de la guerra y
dan el triunfo al legítimo soberano. Vuelven a la
obediencia los vasallos, restablécese la paz en las
provincias alteradas, y el príncipe, aconsejado por el
arzobispo, se arrepiente de haber aceptado la ayuda de
las fuerzas infernales, y tranquiliza su conciencia con el
donativo de extensos territorios a favor de la Iglesia.
ACTO QUINTO
La unidad de tiempo no es, en verdad, la regla que más
haya seguido Goethe en su admirable tragedia. El quinto
acto de la segunda parte, en el cual se resume todo el
concepto de la obra, nos presenta el cuadro de Fausto
envejecido. ¿Por qué vicisitudes ha pasado desde que
obtuvo del Emperador, en pago de su salvación, vastos
dominios? ¿Cómo el inquieto e insaciable Doctor procuró
satisfacer el ardiente deseo que lo empuja siempre en
busca de tentadoras novedades? Han pasado muchos
años en el intervalo del cuarto al quinto acto.
Encontramos a Fausto señor poderoso de tierras y
lugares, domador audaz de las enemigas fuerzas de la
Naturaleza, ocupado en robar a la playa del mar las
estériles landas para que las fecunde la mano del hombre
y sean fuente de bienestar y prosperidad. Parece, pues,
que haya encontrado por fin un objeto digno de la preclara
inteligencia que Dios le concedió; pero el amarguísimo
recuerdo de su vida, llena de errores, de culpas y de
crímenes, lo martiriza y no le deja momento de reposo.
Está convencido de que la inteligencia humana no puede
traspasar los límites que se le pusieron, y reconoce que la
actividad del espíritu tiene en el mundo campo bastante
extenso, sin empeñarse en la vana averiguación de los
misterios de la Naturaleza. Pero ha comprado demasiado
caro el conocimiento de esta gran verdad, para que pueda
vivir tranquilo y sereno. Recibe con indiferencia y con
fruncida frente las mercaderías que de lejanas tierras le
traen sus buques para aumentar su riqueza y poderío; no
le entusiasma el espectáculo de los bosques, de los
prados, de las aldeas, que por obra suya surgen de
aquellas dunas infructíferas, que azotaban poco antes las
marinas olas; y fijando continuamente la mirada en la
pobre cabaña y la modesta alameda de tilos, que no le
pertenecen, desea poseerlos como el objeto más
precioso, y no descansa hasta que las llamas destruyen
aquel asilo de paz. En el incendio mueren los míseros
habitantes de aquel tugurio, y este es el último crimen del
formidable señor. Cuatro viejas, fantasmas pavorosos, se
aproximan en las altas horas de la noche al castillo de
Fausto: son el Hambre, la Deuda, la Miseria y la Zozobra.
No pueden entrar las tres primeras en aquel alcázar; pero
penetra la última, y no dejará a Fausto hasta el sepulcro.
Esta escena, por la sobriedad de sus terribles tintas,
rivaliza con las más hermosas de Shakespeare, y anuncia
la catástrofe de la tragedia. El anciano magnate queda
ciego, y percibe en el fondo del alma una luz nueva, que
le ilumina la mente; un último esfuerzo de la voluntad le
impulsa para apresurar la realización del propósito que
hace muchos años perseguía, y complaciéndose en la
esperanza de vivir en un Estado libre entre hombres
libres, cumple el voto de su alma, y pide al fugaz
momento que se detenga. Esta es su última palabra:
Fausto muere; su alma inmortal, arrebatada por los
ángeles a las abiertas fauces del infierno, sube ansiosa al
cielo, donde le aguarda entre coros paradisíacos el alma
hermosa de Margarita.
La escena de la ascensión de Fausto parece que el

autor la haya ideado para borrar las tristes impresiones
que se reciben en el transcurso de la tragedia.
Mefistófeles ha desaparecido para siempre, arrojado por
los ángeles en la extraña lucha que sigue a la muerte del
viejo Doctor, y con Mefistófeles desaparece también la
sarcástica ironía, en que está impregnado todo el libro.
Estamos en otro ambiente, en el que suenan armonías
dulcísimas e himnos celestiales, a los que se une la
conmovedora plegaria de Margarita intercediendo por el
alma de su amado. El amor, que fue burlado en el mundo,
obtiene de este modo el premio en el cielo, y resplandece
en torno de él una poesía verdaderamente sublime.

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Reconstructing Pragmatism: Richard

Rorty and the Classical Pragmatists

Pragmatism and Idealism: Rorty and Hegel on

Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism 1st ed.

Pragmatism and Organization Studies Philippe Lorino

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Reconstructing Schopenhauer’s Ethics: Hope, Compassion,

Criminal Investigation: A Method for Reconstructing the

Articulating the Moral Community: Toward a Constructive

The Allure of Empire Chris Suh

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Introduction: Learning from Rorty’s Reconstructed

1. Rorty and Peirce: Pragmatism, Realism, and the

2. Rorty and James: The Ethics and Epistemology of

3. Rorty and Dewey: Pragmatist Philosophy as Cultural

4. Rorty and Royce: The Cultural Politics of Community,

5. Rorty and Addams: Pragmatist Social Ethics and

disagreements. Future scholars of pragmatism, I trust, will chart

“James and Rorty on Irony, Moral Commitment, and the Ethics

I gratefully acknowledge their permission to reprint parts of these

Citations to Charles Sanders Peirce’s writings will be keyed to the

AOC Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-​Century

ORT Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1

The contemporary resurgence of philosophical pragmatism faces a

The success of Rorty’s championing of pragmatism nevertheless

apparent dismissal of pragmatist methodology (Seigfried 1996, 5),5

classical pragmatism. One is the overwhelmingly negative, critical

still awaits a (full) definitive intellectual biography;13 there exists

Before proceeding, let me address the question begged here: Why

in classical pragmatism.15 Kitcher aligns himself with Rorty over

1979 APA Presidential Address. Based on that remark, one would

is necessary to make sense of the prominence of Rorty’s appeal to

Rorty’s Pragmatic Maxim: Putting

In this book, I read Rorty as reconstructing the ideas of the clas-

particular, has emerged to suggest more commonality than previ-

Those who disparage pragmatism, as well as some admirers of

Indeed, perhaps no one is more associated with the notion of re-

Bernstein diagnoses it—​that contributed to an obsessive pattern of

reconstruction in philosophy is grounded in two fundamental

Dewey is saying: suppose you’re a pragmatist about truth—​that

To the extent they regard human knowers as necessarily

I have written elsewhere about the parallels between

To accept the contingency of starting-​points is to accept our in-

transitory human projects, not in our obedience to permanent

In this passage we see how the humanism of James and F.C.S.

key into an ethico-​political key” to make clearer what is at stake

contributed to misconstruals, it blunts the force of his challenges to

As noted earlier, this book considers Rorty’s thought in juxtaposi-

to be more of a realist, as traditionally understood, and Peirce less

signal contribution of their pragmatisms. This approach generates

I support this interpretation through a reading of Rorty’s work

I establish it nonetheless exists and was more influential on Rorty

the distance between them. With one notable exception by a sociol-

of Rorty’s Peircean roots reveals Rorty’s apparent rejections of

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Introduction: Learning from Rorty’s Reconstructed

1. Rorty and Peirce: Pragmatism, Realism, and the

2. Rorty and James: The Ethics and Epistemology of

3. Rorty and Dewey: Pragmatist Philosophy as Cultural

4. Rorty and Royce: The Cultural Politics of Community,

5. Rorty and Addams: Pragmatist Social Ethics and

AOC Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century

Bernstein diagnoses it—that contributed to an obsessive pattern of

Dewey is saying: suppose you’re a pragmatist about truth—that

To accept the contingency of starting-points is to accept our in-

key into an ethico-political key” to make clearer what is at stake