Seeing philosophy as conversation with a number of fruitful avenues of discourse, Rorty seems to be caught in limbo, unwilling to follow through or commit himself to any particular line of discourse for fear of closing himself off to alternative discourses. Choosing to adopt this particular attitude he still has made a choice: he has made a commitment to non-commitment, or as Ortega puts it, “decided not to decide.” Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, trans. anonymously (...) (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1957), p. 48. Such a commitment or decision is in no way neutral, for it attempts to enforce, by moral requirement, Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. 394. a new vocabulary which views philosophy as conversation between speakers, with a whole range of obligations and implications included. Thus the Rortian alternative, like the alternatives he criticizes, plays the role “of the cultural overseer who knows everyone's common ground — the Platonic philosopherking who knows what everybody else is really doing whether they know it or not, because he knows about the ultimate context ... within which they are doing it.” Ibid., pp. 317–318. In fact, Rorty even refers to “conversation as the ultimate context” Ibid., p. 389. In assuming to know everyone's common ground, that every-one is participating in the conversation of humankind whether they realize it or not, Rorty seems to fall prey to a similar “self-deceptive ... absurdity of thinking that the vocabulary [he uses] ... has some privileged attachment to reality which makes it more than just a further set of descriptions.” Ibid., p. 361.One implication of such a position is that despite its holder's claims that he or she will at least attempt to incorporate abnormal discourses of all sorts, the conversationalist will not be able to consider seriously a number of types of discourse. If the edifying, hermeneutical philosopher were really “willing to pick up the jargon of the interlocutor rather than translating it into his own terms,” Ibid., p. 318. it would often be necessary to drop the notion of conversation as being a fundamental practice or moral obligation. Rorty is obviously unwilling to really pick up the jargon of the epistemologist and the meta-physician he criticizes, or of Nietzsche and Stirner, for each of these does not have contained within them, at least as a primary consideration, the continuing of the conversation of humankind. Because he imposes his vocabulary and descriptions on them - they are merely speakers in a conversation - he will see them as merely threads in a larger social fabric, he will be translating their “jargon” into his own, and thus will never be able to take their position seriously, never be prepared to adopt their position as his own. Being possessed by the notion of continuing the conversation, he is closing himself off to traditional epistemological and metaphysical projects, as well as to the perspectives of thinkers like Stirner and Nietzsche, despite his claim to be open to all of them. He can only consider them as topics of conversation as long as he remains committed to conversation, and thus never consider them as live options, or consider them as alternative life-projects to be pursued on their own terms. In insisting on the moral obligation of philosophers to continue the conversation of the West, he is insisting on the moral obligation of philosophers not to whole-heartedly adopt any of the alternatives which would tend to close off this conversation. Therefore, instead of decrying “the very notion of having a view, while avoiding having a view about having views,” Ibid., p. 371. Rorty has a rather clear view about having views: one should not hold any view whole-heartedly except the view that philosophy should be conversation, and this conversation should be the way to decide among views; that is, the way to decide among all views except the view that conversation should be the way to decide, which for Rorty is not open to discussion, but is a moral obligation. All perspectives are encouraged in the conversation, but the conversational morality has already prescribed that these views should not be whole-heartedly adopted by responsible individuals. Requiring that philosophy be conversation, Rorty closes off numerous possible life-styles, and almost all traditional philosophical projects: he merely saves the appearances of these alternatives. Morally required to continue the conversation, philosophy becomes just talk. Along the same lines, when Rorty claims that the normal and abnormal discourses “do not compete, but rather help each other out,” Ibid., p. 346. he assumes that the epistemological and metaphysical discourses will be helped by various abnormal discourses, and assumes thinkers like Nietzsche and Stirner will be helped by being made to see the significance of societies which have fallen together and are united by civility. Yet, in doing this, Rorty is not attempting to understand - either sympathetically or intellectually - what it would mean to help these projects on their own terms, and as such is not trying to understand and assimilate these alternatives as he claims he is. Rather, he is holding each of these alternatives up to his own ideal of an “open conversation,” and judging what it would mean to “help out” these alternatives only according to his own particular standards. In continually translating what others are offering into his own particular frame of reference, he does not appreciate these philosophical alternatives for their worth as individual activities which can contribute to life and/or society, but values them only for what they can contribute to his larger project, the conversation of humankind. However, if these alternatives were taken seriously, then they would surely be seen to compete with his view which advocates social criteria for adjudicating disputes, thereby denying many of the fundamental aspects of the above-mentioned alternative philosophical under-takings. It should be seen that contrary to what Rorty suggests, edification also “provides only some, among many, ways of describing ourselves,” Ibid., p. 361. and is only one type of human project among many others. In suggesting that we shift our focus “from the relation between human beings and the objects of their inquiry to the relation between alternative standards of justification, and from there to the actual changes in these standards which make up intellectual history,” Ibid., pp. 389–390. Rorty neither breaks free from traditional concerns, nor brings the focus of attention onto our own lives. As Bernstein notes, “there is a sense in which Rorty himself is obsessed. It is almost as if he can't quite ‘let go’ and accept the force of his own critique. It is as if Rorty himself has been more deeply touched by what he is attacking than he realizes.... He himself is obsessed with the obsessions of philosophers.” R.J. Bernstein, “Philosophy in the Conversation of Mankind,” pp. 767, 775.As a result of this, Richard Eldridge correctly notes that Rorty is unable to realize that “[c]riticism matters just insofar as it enables us fruitfully to develop our lives and our practices out of the past.” Richard Eldridge, “Philosophy and the Achievement of Community: Rorty, Cavell and Criticism,” Metaphilosophy 14, No. 2 (1983), p. 124. As an alternative to the Rortian attitude, I invite the reader to entertain a perspective which is not primarily concerned with identifying oneself in accordance with, or in opposition to, particular traditions, but rather with assimilating and utilizing all previous philosophical labors in order to achieve the greatest appreciation of one's own personal possibilities, and the fullest expression of one's own powers. (shrink)

This study elucidates and defends philosophical realism. The version I propose includes a realist understanding of the nature of reality, and a twofold realist view of truth. I hold that reality is cognition-independent. This means that the conceptual scheme of inquiry into a given subject matter does not constitute its nature. Using a different set of concepts to investigate a certain phenomenon will not change what it is. This is realism about reality: Reality is not contingent upon the concepts we (...) use in our attempts to understand it. ;I embrace, as well, a realist conception of truth, according to which, truth consists in agreement with reality. In addition, truth is not characterized as any sort of justification. What we say is true if, and only if, what we are talking about is as we claim it to be. Furthermore, the conditions under which a statement is true are not to be identified with the conditions which would make anyone justified in believing the statement: Truth conditions and justification conditions of statements are not identical. ;There are two major ways in which I defend realism. First, I specify exactly what the doctrine should be. This involves so characterizing realism that it is not committed to a number of undesirable theses; for example, foundationalism, physicalism, scientism, skepticism, and moral relativism. The realism I embrace allows for ontological and epistemological pluralism, according to which there are many kinds of things in the world, and many ways to describe them. Secondly, I respond to two of the most important recent attacks on realism, those of Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam. I examine their alternatives to realism, and find them lacking in merit. I formulate their strongest arguments against realism, and then respond on the realist's behalf. Realism emerges as a plausible, interrelated conception of the nature of knowledge, truth, and reality which stands up well against the attacks of its most prominent contemporary critics. (shrink)

Norman Bowie wrote an article on the moral obligations of multinational corporations in 1987. This paper is a response to Bowie, but more importantly, it is designed to articulate the force and substance of the pragmatist philosophy developed by Richard Rorty. In his article, Bowie suggested that moral universalism (which he endorses) is the only credible method of doing business ethics across cultures and that cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are not. Bowie, in a manner surprisingly common among contemporary (...) philosophers, lumps Rorty into a bad guy category without careful analysis of his philosophy and ascribes to him views which clearly do not fit. I attempt to provide both a more careful articulation of Rorty's views, and to use his pragmatism to illustrate an approach to business ethics which is more fruitful than Bowie's. This brand of philosophy follows the Enlightenment spirit of toleration and attempts to set aside questions of Truth, whether religious or philosophical, and have ethics centered around what James called that which is good in the way of belief. Rather than looking for metaphysical foundations or some type of external justification, ethicists perform their craft from within the cultural traditions, narratives and practices of their society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spirit and Politics: Some Thoughts on Margaret Watkins’s The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s “Essays”Andre C. Willis (bio)Margaret Watkins’s elegant text, The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays (2019),1 is marked by a Humean approach: it fosters philosophical consideration of both the faculties of the mind and the affective features of experience in ways that bear on practical, moral issues. Ever-attentive to the meaning of Hume’s various nuances and strategic ambiguities, (...) Watkins’s even-handed approach guides us into a broad swath of Hume’s ideas and marches us through a trajectory of secondary interlocutors. It also establishes Watkins as an integral part of Hume’s lineage, in the sense that she understands that thoughtful writing itself is an intellectual virtue. Her “unusual sensitivity, not to life’s daily vicissitudes but to beauties and deformities” (193)2 richly textures her overall argument that positions Hume’s Essays as a filter for his vision of “true philosophy:” that reflective turn towards nature and common life that openly challenges abstruse reasoning, fluently embraces historicism and perspectivalism, and deftly foregrounds the usefulness of ideas over their logical certainty.As much as Watkins reveals Hume’s vision for philosophy, she also extends it; for, among other things, her consideration of Hume’s unique endeavor in philosophical literature (ultimately collected under the title Essays, Moral, Political and Literary [1758]), makes an important twofold contribution to Hume studies. It brings greater attention to Hume’s notion of “public spirit,” a distinct mode of human excellence that combines “benevolence” with “greatness of mind.” And, it aestheticizes some practical dimensions of human life (noted in chapter titles, for example, “Working,” [End Page 143] “Thinking,” “Loving”) without losing track of their socio-political valences. I shall return to these two main points below. As an introductory gesture, I want to note that Watkins’s writing both nicely elaborates Hume’s philosophical vision and thoughtfully broadens his literary insights. It does “the job of putting the audience into a responsive relation with the work of art,” what literary critic R. P. Blackmur identified as “the job of intermediary.”3Generally speaking, Watkins’s mediation filters salient themes and terms from Hume’s corpus through a particularly close reading of the Essays. Cast through her richly stylized analysis, Hume’s foundational ideas of “sympathy,” “convention,” “impressions,” “association,” “imagination,” “artifice,” the “passions” (and more) find fresh interpretive air. An example of this in her first chapter tracks Hume’s use of both “artifice” and “convention” from the Treatise through the second Enquiry to the Essays. For Watkins, a through-line for Hume is that “governing” can be thought of as repeated actions that bridge institutional policy to individual character. To think about governing in this way is to open ourselves to new ways of conceiving potential overlaps between nature and artifice (say, in the instance of a moral virtue like courage [50]). To link categories in the Essays back to their antecedent texts along the lines that Watkins does is to situate them in the context of Hume’s larger thought-project and, indirectly, confirm connections between the individual essays. These conjoinings, for Watkins, suggest Hume’s Essays can be treated together, without either blending their disparate themes or diluting their individual subject matter.4This point stands in opposition to Hume’s own semi-admonishment (1741) that “The Reader must not look for any connexion among these Essays but must consider each of them as a Work apart.”5 Watkins’s response—indicative of the graciousness of her overall tone—is to warmly acknowledge Hume’s reproach and affirm the distinctiveness of each of the essays. She proclaims: “The Essays are not unified” (5). Her thinking about them separately, however, reveals a common practical thread in their form. Watkins characterizes this form as serving “to promote public benefit” (4). I think about this form as being philosophical in the way that Richard Rorty conceives of philosophy as cultural criticism. Watkins, however, wants to emphasize the public character of Hume’s philosophy. She writes: “Hume seeks to benefit the public in two ways. First, he tries to allay irrational attitudes that produce imprudent personal and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Minutes of the Annual General Meeting 2023Cornelis de Waal, Editor-in-Chief, Richard Kenneth Atkins, André De Tienne, Director and General Editor, and Elizabeth Cooke[as approved on January 17, 2024]The Annual General Meeting of the Charles S. Peirce Society was held in conjunction with the Eastern Division Meeting of the APA on January 5, 2023, at the Sheraton Le Centre, Montréal, Quebec. Rosa Maria Mayorga chaired the meeting and called (...) it to order at 12:38 p.m.1. Moment of SilenceThe annual meeting began with a moment of silence in memory of Peirce scholars who passed away in the last year.2. Approval of Minutes of the 2022 MeetingMinutes of the 2022 Annual General Meeting had been posted online. Copies were also distributed at the annual meeting. Rosa Maria Mayorga asked for a motion to approve the minutes. James Liszka so moved and Fabienne Forster seconded. The minutes were approved unanimously.3. Report from the Executive CommitteeRichard Kenneth Atkins submitted the following report.The Executive Committee Meeting was held virtually via email. All members of the Executive Committee were contacted and responded regarding the agenda and items.Agenda Items(A) Non-profit Status Update:On December 5, 2022, we received notification from the IRS that we have been legally approved as a public non-profit foundation.(B) Funding for Scholarship:Every year, we set aside a certain amount of funding for scholarship, usually 2/3rds of the year's income. This includes the $1,000 set aside for the Peirce Essay prize. Atkins reported that the income this past year was $6,597.06. 2/3rds of that is $4,400. Atkins requested that that amount of money be set aside for funding for scholarship, with which the committee unanimously agreed.(C) Next Year's AGM:Atkins proposed that we continue to hold our annual conference in conjunction with the E-APA in New York, NY, especially as this keeps us in line with the calendar year which is also our fiscal year as a nonprofit. The committee unanimously agreed. [End Page 118](D) Any Other Business:Cornelis de Waal suggested that we add to the agenda for the annual business meeting a moment of silence to commemorate Peirce scholars who passed this year. The Executive Committee unanimously agreed.4. Report from the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce SocietyCornelis de Waal submitted the following report on behalf of the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. Richard Kenneth Atkins read the report on his behalf.During the 2022 calendar year we produced four issues of the Transactions. We encountered some problems with the first issue, because the printer suffered a ransomware attack. This apparently wreaked havoc with their system and caused significant delay in the completion of the issue.Likely due to the (after) effects of the pandemic, quality submissions to the journal were down significantly, both in the Peirce segment and in the non-Peirce segment of the journal. In addition, there was a significant drop in book reviews. The latter led to the resignation of our long-term book review editor, Henrik Rydenfelt. For the last two months I have been taking over for him, and I'm first-hand experiencing some of the challenges, even including publishers simply not following through on requests for books. We did, though, publish a book symposium on James Liszka's Charles Peirce on Ethics, Esthetics and the Normative Sciences, and we have another book symposium forthcoming on Chris Voparil's Reconstructing Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Classical Pragmatists. Besides a number of excellent papers on Peirce, we published some very nice papers in American philosophy. The latter include an extensive portrait of Edwin Bissell Holt, a discussion of the use of the term pragmatism in 18th century Germany, the first English translation of two texts by Wilhelm Jerusalem, as well as work on George Santayana, Jonathan Edwards, and Emily Dickinson.With Henrik gone, the editorial team is now down to Robert Lane and me (hopefully briefly returning to the traditional Robin-Hare setup). I'll be attending the upcoming SAAP meeting in Denver, and Bob is planning to attend as well... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 369-396 [Access article in PDF] Worlds or Words Apart?The Consequences of Pragmatism for Literary Studies:An Interview with Richard Rorty Richard Rorty, with E. P. Ragg ER: I WANTED TO ASK YOU first about holism. Clearly holism doesn't just mean being interdisciplinary. Nor, as you argue in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, is it merely a question of antifoundationalist polemic. (...) Rather, you say it marks "a distrust of the whole epistemological enterprise." 1 Could you explain what you mean by that?RR: If you weren't some kind of foundationalist you wouldn't bother to get into epistemology. Epistemology only looks attractive if you think that there is a topic called knowledge whose nature can be studied. The idea is that once you have learned its nature, you might get more of it than you had before. Only someone who thinks that knowledge has foundations located in sense perception, or pure reason, or divine revelation, or something, would take the idea of studying knowledge, its nature and limits, seriously. I think of holism as just the view that people change their beliefs in such a way as to achieve coherence with their other beliefs, to bring their beliefs and desires into some sort of equilibrium—and that that is about all there is to be said about the quest for knowledge. There are no rules for which beliefs you sacrifice in order to accommodate other beliefs, or which desires you change to accommodate changed beliefs. Because there aren't any rules, there aren't any methods you can study in order to improve the way you achieve equilibrium. The whole idea of studying how belief is changed is pretty hopeless. It's just too holistic a process to be an appropriate topic of study. [End Page 369]ER: Holism is obviously a natural corollary of pragmatism because pragmatists urge bringing as many different useful vocabularies to discussion as we can. This reminds me of your definition of "literariness." In Contingency, irony, and solidarity you describe literary skill as the ability to effect "surprising gestalt switches by making smooth rapid transitions from one terminology to another." 2 Would it be fair to say, then, that thinking holistically is, to some degree, literary?RR: No, I don't think so. It would be more appropriate to say thinking holistically, in the sense of not being limited to a given context or disciplinary framework, is a matter of thinking imaginatively. Politicians and theologians and engineers think imaginatively just as much as literary people do. To call it literary would be unduly to privilege literature.ER: Would you say that, as a writer, your own work has been treated holistically: first in the sense that your texts are seen as a growing body of thought—that is, that there is a difference between the writer of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and the author of Contingency, irony, and solidarity—and, second, in the sense that people have thought holistically about your ideas, have brought them to bear on literature, philosophy, social science, the very demarcations you want to transcend?RR: I think that the stuff I do is more interesting to people outside of philosophy than those inside it. This is an example of the same phenomenon that led Kuhn to be much more read by people outside the hard sciences than by people within them. My stuff, like Kuhn's, debunks certain views that various earlier philosophers, especially the positivists, had tried to impose on the culture. My readers are people who are looking for a way out from the view they absorbed, without much liking it, when they were young. People inside of philosophy, however, often regard all this debunking as endangering the problems to the solution of which they have devoted their lives. They do not want the problems dissolved, because that would dissolve their solutions as well. So they welcome it less than do outsiders.ER: One of the markers of your... (shrink)

Form nor content: Rachel Cusk’s empty self In this article I discuss Richard Rorty’s ideal of narrative self-creation in relation to Rachel Cusk's trilogy Outline (2014), Transit (2016) and Kudos (2018). I will focus in particular on the tension between individual freedom and the weight of social relationships. I will show that we can discern a modest ideal of narrative self-creation in Cusk's trilogy that is not just linguistic in nature, but stresses the relational and intersubjective dimension of (...) self-creation. Moreover, Cusk's ideal is explicitly articulated from a female perspective. The emphasis is here on the fundamental interdependence and vulnerability of the self, and on the scaffolding yet also constraining influence of social relationships. (shrink)

My objective in this paper is to defend the possibility of epistemological justification against Richard Rorty’s pragmatic, “postphilosophical critique of traditional philosophy.” By epistemological justification I mean the establishment of reasons for holding beliefs extralinguistically true. My inclination is to understand truth and justification in a Davidsonian holistic coherentist way, as opposed to the traditional correspondist way. But for my present purpose the coherentist/correspondist issue is deferrable. I am, nonetheless, concerned with objective epistemic justification, as opposed to “subjective” (...) justification or warrantedness. I shall proceed by discussing justification and Rorty’s challenge to it, and then attribute to Rorty a conception of imagination which I think undermines that challenge. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that Richard Rorty’s claim that pragmatism is opposed to all varieties of metaphysics is fundamentally mistaken. After detailing pragmatist reasons for thinking Rorty’s proposal is justified, I argue that there are more compelling pragmatist reasons to think Rorty’s metaphilosophical interpretation of pragmatism is rather problematic: firstly, Rorty has a narrow understanding of ‘metaphysics’ and he does not take into account Peirce’s argument that it is impossible to eliminate (...) metaphysical concepts from ordinary language and our scientific practices; secondly, Rorty’s Sellarsian philosophical anthropology and his proto-Brandomian theory of the constitution of norms are in fact instances of metaphysical positions. I conclude the paper by claiming that given that pragmatism is in fact supportive of a specific variety of metaphysics, the relationship between idealism and pragmatism ought to be seen as involving more convergence rather than great contestation. (shrink)

Edward Abbey and Terry Tempest Williams, exemplars of the American nature writing tradition and representative examples of modern American environmentalist politics, replicate the foundationalist epistemological assumptions of mystics in the Christian tradition. I examine the work of Richard Rorty for the encouragement his pragmatism gives to environmentalists to move away from traditional metaphysical concerns and toward a politics accountable solely to democratic reason-giving practices. Such practices, which Rorty connects to the Enlightenment’s aim to emancipate thought from any (...) nonhuman form of epistemological authority, are more adept at meeting the challenge of environmental justice as well as more productive of the hope all environmentalists need in the work to stem climate change’s worst effects. I conclude by turning to Robert Brandom on the creative possibilities mystical experience opens to Abbey, Williams, and environ-mentalists like them, for which Rorty is unable to account. (shrink)

After noting Rorty’s rhetorical use of binary oppositions, which belies important continuities (and which is even reflected in the problem of radically opposing classical pragmatism to neopragmatism), I question the idea that progress in pragmatism must go through engagement with Rorty. I do so by arguing that Rorty failed to treat or outright rejected some important philosophical issues. I consequently challenge the famous model for pragmatist pluralism: the metaphor of a single hotel corridor opening to a plurality (...) of rooms with different people doing or believing different things. My paper also makes a case for the central importance of the aesthetic in Rorty’s philosophy despite his avowed rejection of aesthetics. (shrink)

Implicit in C. I. Lewis's conceptual pragmatism is an account of how our ideas undergo a process of social development. Lewis's account of that process resolves a problem with Josiah Royce's theory of ideas. Royce holds that there are both sensuous and symbolic ideas. It is, however, possible for someone to have only a sensuous idea of how middle C sounds and for another person to have only the symbolic idea that middle C is 261.63 Hz. In what sense, if (...) at all, can these two persons have the same idea, namely, the idea of middle C? On Lewis's account, while ideas in individual minds are typically constituted of both sensory correlates and pure concepts, ideas are also social products that individuals inherit through education and language acquisition. For two people to have the same idea is for them both to be heirs to the social development of the idea. (shrink)

I think … we ought to distinguish two sense of “deconstruction.” In one sense the word refers to the philosophical projects of Jacques Derrida. Taken this way, breaking down the distinction between philosophy and literature is essential to deconstruction. Derrida’s initiative in philosophy continues along a line laid down by Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. He rejects, however, Heidegger’s distinctions between “thinkers” and “poets” and between the few thinkers and the many scribblers. So Derrida rejects the sort of philosophical professionalism (...) which Nietzsche despised and which Heidegger recovered. This does indeed lead Derrida in the direction of “a general, undifferentiated textuality.” In his work, the philosophy-literature distinction is, at most, part of a ladder which we can let go of once we have climbed up it.In a second sense of “deconstruction,” however, the term refers to a method of reading texts. Neither this method, nor any other, should be attributed to Derrida—who shares Heidegger’s contempt for the very idea of method.2 But the method exists, and the passage I have quoted from Culler describes one of its essential features. Culler is quite right to say that deconstruction, in the second sense, needs a clear distinction between philosophy and literature. For the kind of reading which has come to be called “deconstructionist” requires two different straight persons: a macho professional philosopher who is insulted by the suggestion that he has submitted to a textual exigency, and a naive producer of literature whose jaw drops when she learns that her work has been supported by philosophical oppositions. The philosopher had thought of himself as speaking a sparse, pure, transparent language. The poetess shyly hoped that her unmediated woodnotes might please. Both reel back in horror when the deconstructionist reveals that each has been making use of complex idioms to which the other has contributed. Both go all to pieces at this news. A wild disorder overtakes their words. Their whimpers lend into interminable androgynous keening. Once again, deconstructionist intervention has produced a splendidly diffuse irresolution. Richard Rorty is Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Consequences of Pragmatism and is currently writing a book on Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

McCarthy thinks truth more important than I do. Specifically, he thinks that “ ‘truth’ … functions as an ‘idea of reason’ with respect to which we can criticize not only particular claims within our language but the very standards of truth we have inherited” . By contrast, I think that what enables us to make such criticism is concrete alternative suggestions—suggestions about how to redescribe what we are talking about. Some examples are Galileo’s suggestions about how to redescribe the Aristotelian (...) universe, Marx’s suggestions about how to redescribe the nineteenth century, Heidegger’s suggestions about how to redescribe the West as a whole, Dickens’s suggestions about how to redescribe chancery law, Rabelais’s suggestions about how to redescriibe monasteries, and Virginia Woolf’s suggestions about how to redescribe women writing.Such fresh descriptions, such new suggestions of things to say, sentences to consider, vocabularies to employ, are what do the work. All that the idea of truth does is to say, “Bethink yourself that you might be mistaken; remember that your beliefs may be justified by your other belies in the area, but that the whole kit and caboodle might be misguided, and in particular that you might be using the wrong words for your purpose.” But this admonition is empty and powerless without some concrete suggestion of an alternative set of beliefs, or of words. Moreover, if you have such a suggestion, you do not need the admonition. The only cash value of this regulative idea is to commend fallibilism, to remind us that lots of people have been as certain of, and as justified in believing, things that turned out to be false as we are certain of, and justified in holding, our present views. It is not, as McCarthy says, a “moment of unconditionality that opens us up to criticism from other points of view” . It is the particular attractions of those other points of view.Richard Rorty is University Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia. His most recent book is Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. (shrink)

This dissertation seeks to clarify the import of the transcendence problem in Heidegger and Derrida. The guiding suggestion of my interpretations of both thinkers is that following the development of this problem through their respective projects can help to demonstrate in each an underlying continuity in light of which their seemingly discrepant shifts in emphasis from early to late can be understood as moments of an ongoing hermeneutic task. ;My argument unfolds in four chapters and a brief conclusion. Chapter one (...) motivates the project in view of the contentious standing of the problem in continental philosophy as it is characterized in the competing narratives advanced by Richard Rorty, John Caputo, and Rodolphe Gasche. ;Chapters two and three trace the problem through Heidegger's Denkweg. While Being and Time might seem to be the obvious place to start, I argue that the character of the problem is difficult to see without recourse to both the context in which the problem first arises, and the future interpretations of the problem toward which Being and Time proceeds. Accordingly, I attend to the emergence of the problem in Heidegger's dissertation and early lectures, and then leap ahead to its more explicit appropriations in the writings of 1928 where the provisional standing of fundamental ontology becomes increasingly apparent. In view of its past and future trajectories, then, I return to Being and Time to exhibit therein what I take to be latent indications of Heidegger's later disposition toward transcendence. ;Chapter four situates Derrida in terms of his debts to and departures from Heidegger. I argue that Derrida's debts in fact compel his departures; since he concurs that the transcendence of predecessor discourses necessitates their destruction in the name of advancing their undeveloped possibilities, he must dismantle Heidegger to do justice to him. In applying this insight to Derrida's project, I maintain, the careful reader can find traces of his later injunctions to "absolute responsibility" in his early affirmations of "infinite play". ;I conclude with a few brief remarks as to how this investigation might contribute to a richer understanding of contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

Early in The Bounds of Sense, Strawson gives us the plot of the Critique in the form of six theses which Kant wishes to expound. I quote from this passage the two theses which are most clearly relevant to the Transcendental Deduction.

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Staten gets my intentions right when he suggests that I may simply have been saying that “the dream of philosophy is a rare but serious malady, now less common than it used to be, but currently threatening a new outbreak in the disguised form of deconstruction” . I had thought I was urging that the appropriation of Derrida in the Anglo-Saxon “Now let’s deconstruct literature” mode was a mistake and that there were some things in Derrida which had encouraged this (...) mistake—notably the Heideggerian suggestion that the “text of philosophy” was at the heart of our culture. State, however, finds me more cunning and ungenerous, harsher toward Derrida, than I had imagined myself to be. He may have a point, but is hard for me to tell. No author is much good at following “the rhetorical contours” of his own writing, since his beliefs about what he wanted to say keep leveling off the contours of what he actually wrote .The best I can do by way of reply to the charge that I was attempting to “ ‘encapsulate and circumvent’ ” Derrida is to take up a central ambiguity which Staten detects . He says that I flit back and forth between “two characterizations of the history of philosophy”: “a constantly changing, self-deconstructing enterprise which is therefore not characterizable in terms of any single system of metaphors,” and “a ‘metaphysical tradition’ which has dreamed the dream of a closed, total, and transparent vocabulary which would tell the whole truth and thing but the truth” . Richard Rorty is Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Consequences of Pragmatism , among other works, and is currently writing a book on Martin Heidegger. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Deconstruction and Circumvention” and “Philosophy without Principles”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: American Pragmatism: An Introduction by Albert R. Spencer. Polity Press, 2020. Reviewed by: Lee A. McBride III -/- American Pragmatism: An Introduction is a judicious and stimulating read, comprising an introduction and five numbered chapters. The introduction orients the book, offering various ways of conceiving American Philosophy and American pragmatism. Spencer explains that it is difficult to discern the national and cultural variables that make a philosophy an (...) American philosophy. Not all philosophers who practice philosophy in the United States claim the descriptor "American Philosophy." And, within the group that embraces the descriptor, some take American pragmatism to be, in essence, a theory of truth (or a method by which we can make our ideas clear); others take pragmatism to be a method of experience, a pluralistic approach to knowledge creation and social amelioration (2). It is a complicated picture, and Spencer affords ample care and attention to the disparate camps of pragmatism. Chapter 1: "Fallibilism and the Classical Pragmatists" is largely devoted to Charles S. Peirce and William James. Peirce and James, as fallibilists, are contrasted against Descartes and Hume, respectively. Peirce and James diverge in regard to style and their commitments to (scholastic) realism. Spencer discusses Josiah Royce briefly at the closing of the chapter, noting how Royce's work can serve as a foil for both Peircean and Jamesian pragmatisms. Chapter 2: "Meliorism and the Chicago Pragmatists" highlights the pragmatist philosophical contributions of Jane Addams and John Dewey. In this chapter, Spencer emphasizes sympathetic knowledge, cooperative intelligence, the pattern of experimental inquiry, and social amelioration. Spencer deserves kudos for introducing Addams's pragmatist contributions first, then explaining the ways in which her work in community-building and social amelioration influenced Dewey. Chapter 3: "Pluralism and the Harvard Pragmatists" highlights the work of a motley crew: George Santayana, W. E. B. Du Bois, Horace Kallen, and Alain Locke. This chapter draws attention to the pluralism one can detect in Santayana's detached cosmopolitanism, Du Bois's double consciousness, Kallen's cultural pluralism, and Locke's democratic pluralism. We are introduced to a Spaniard, two African American men, and a Jewish man, all of whom had spent time abroad. Each offers a critical perspective that falls outside the conventional view of the purported democratic culture of the United States. Chapter 4: "Verification and the Analytic Pragmatists" turns to the philosophers of the logico-linguistic turn, [End Page 108] featuring C. I. Lewis, W. V. O. Quine, and Richard Rorty. Here, we see a pronouncedly analytic approach to the analysis of propositions, inference, and semantic content—a heightened attention to shoring up defensible conceptions of truth and the real. The goal is to articulate a coherent conceptual pragmatic position that evades both scientistic reductionism and Fregean transcendental presuppositions, all the while offering a feasible conception of truth. Chapter 5: "Hope and the Contemporary Pragmatists" surveys how pragmatists have engaged with various traditions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to potentially bolster their positions and find hope. Spencer highlights three promising strands. The first strand is that of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas arose out of Frankfurt School critical theory but appropriated pragmatist insights from Peirce, Dewey, and Mead to formulate his conceptions of communicative action and communitive rationality (208). Habermas reconstructed the reductive dialectical materialism of the Frankfurt School, developing a sophisticated theory of democracy as public discourse. Spencer asserts that "ultimately Habermas is the best demonstration of pragmatism's potential when compared with critical theory during the Cold War" (208). Spencer also finds the work of Huw Price promising. Price, in an effort to defuse the tension between neopragmatism's antirealism and scientific realism, offers a tenable theory of truth: truth as a (postulated) practical norm, or "truth as a convenient fiction" (217). Truth, as a practical norm, gives normative structure and impetus to various forms of inquiry. And, to close this chapter on hope and contemporary pragmatism, Spencer delineates a third promising strand. He writes that "perhaps the most promising development among pragmatists results from their increasing engagement with American Indian philosophy and other philosophical traditions throughout the Americas" (219). American pragmatists, following Scott L. Pratt and Bruce Wilshire, are increasingly recognizing... (shrink)

456 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY or PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 of reflection about rhetorical practices that I suspect Aristotle was trying to elicit in his own time and that Garver is trying to elicit in his. DAVID J. DEPEW California State University, FuUerton Fran O'Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999. Pp. xvi + 3oo. Cloth, $8o.oo. The importance of doctrines found in the Latin translations of the late fifth-century Greek works of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite for (...) the formation of the theologi- cal and philosophical thought of Thomas Aquinas is obvious to anyone well-versed in the texts of Aquinas. However, it is by no means obvious how Aquinas read, under- stood, and transformed the Christian Neoplatonic theology of this apparent disciple of Proclus or Damascius so as to make it an integral part of his understanding of God and creation. O'Rourke rightly conceived his task as twofold: first, the texts of Dionysius must be properly understood; second, the interpretation and use of these by Aquinas can itself be assessed and appreciated in its own thirteenth-century con- text. In the first part of the book he examines the question of knowledge of God, with one chapter devoted to Dionysius and a second devoted to Aquinas's use of "Dionysian Elements" in discovering God. Part Two examines their teachings on the "Transcendence of Being and Good" in chapters 3 and 4. Part Three contains three chapters on the "Unity.. (shrink)

Problems of Rationality is divided into three parts. The first four essays defend the claim that judgments of value are objectively true. The next six expound what Davidson called "a unified theory of thought, meaning, and action". The last four discuss the problems that weakness of will and self-deception raise for Davidson's claim that ascription of intention and belief is possible only if we assume the agent's rationality. I shall discuss the three parts in sequence.

In “Incorrigibility as the Mark of the Mental,” Richard Rorty argues that although there is no characteristic that marks off everything that is mental, the contents of the stream of consciousness may be considered as that which is paradigmatically mental, and they are distinguished by the fact that sincere first-person reports about them are currently treated as incorrigible. He adds that “beliefs, desires, moods, emotions, intentions, etc.“ are also taken to be mental because reports about them are almost (...) incorrigible. (shrink)

Dr. Leaf's article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies has recalled our attention to the venerable problem of the Rhesus. I hasten to give my adhesion to his main contention that the play is a pièce d'occasion justifying or sanctifying the foundation of the city of Amphipolis. But, as he remarks, seeing that the oracle ordering the removal of the bones of Theseus from Skyros to Athens preceded the actual removal by some years, so this play may be intended to (...) prepare for the actual removal of the bones of Rhesus from Troy by Hagnon, and may be prior to it by several years. For this official theft—doubtless arranged beforehand—we have only the authority of Polyainos' Strategemata, but it is a story which seems likely in itself, and goes far to explain the previously obscure lament of the Muse at the end of the play. My object is to examine the play afresh and see whether anything prevents our believing that it was written and exhibited somewhere near 440 B.C., in which case of course it is almost certainly the work of Euripides and not far from his Cyclops in date. (shrink)

In this chapter I will bring together two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of Rorty’s intellectual biography: on the one hand its consistency, loyalty, and deference to what I call his “vision,” and on the other, the expansiveness, capaciousness, voraciousness, and encyclopedic thrust of that vision. I argue that in contrast to many canonical philosophers, Rorty did not undergo a turn, a “Kehre,” a shift, a revelation, a Damascus moment. Rather, when reading his epochal texts, and numerous essays, one gets (...) the impression of an Amazonian river widening its shores and drinking its tributaries, relentlessly moving forward following its own course. I thus argue that we think of Rorty, following Berlin’s famous allegory, as a foxy hedgehog, one that pursued one truth, while rummaging inquisitively along the plains and forests of Western culture. From Platonism to metaphilosophy, from metaphilosophy to post-philosophy, and from there to the project of a liberal utopia, which brings together what I called his Brechtian patriotism, with his honest, open, and sincere ethnocentrism, the Rortyan vision has been held steady by one thought: “There are only languages that serve some human purposes better than others. Human purposes and human languages change in tandem with each other” (Rorty 2010, p. 22). Another way of expressing this vision is to say that what makes humans a unique animal is that we can recreate ourselves by means of changing our vocabularies. (shrink)

This article deals with Donald Davidson�s concept of metaphor and Richard Rorty�s use of it for his version of political liberalism. Rorty assumes that metaphor is a linguistic element that is impossible to understand. Metaphor is an unintelligible �call� that, from within the private sphere, provokes in individuals the desire to create alternative forms of life. Once metaphor has become literal, it �and the new form of life that it entails� can form part of public life. Metaphor (...) is the guarantee of the constant renewal of political liberalism. As against Rorty, yet also relying on Davidson, I argue that both metaphor and literal meaning are comprehensible,... (Leer más) and must therefore be said to exist in a relationship of mutuality. This allows me to subject to a thorough re-elaboration Rorty�s strict internal division of the political along the lines of the public and the private. (shrink)

This paper’s aim is to provide a new interpretation of Martha C. Nussbaum’s and Richard Rorty’s views on the ethical role of literature. I pursue this aim in a threefold manner. First of all, I shortly discuss and provide a critique of previous comparisons by other authors. Afterwards, based on the presented critique of other comparisons, I present concise summaries of their respective views. Finally, I propose a double context for interpreting and assessing their views together. The main (...) claim of the paper is the following: despite several differences in their philosophical underpinnings, Nussbaum’s and Rorty’s views on literature can be interpreted together using the context of John Rawls and Jacques Rancière. This interpretation consists of showing how uncovering a shared Rawlsian characteristic of Nussbaum’s and Rorty’s views paves a way for explaining how literature actually does ethical work, using some concepts of Rancière. Such a contextual reading allows for both a more thorough understanding of their respective projects and assessing their shared shortcomings. (shrink)

Two rough, sharply contrasting, answers to the question "What Is Hermeneutics?" are that it is a method and that it is an attitude. Dilthey thought of it as "the method of the human sciences." Gadamer thinks of the hermeneutic attitude as the intellectual position one arrives at when one puts aside the idea of "method" and the cluster of other Cartesian and Kantian ideas within which it is embedded. If I understand Gadamer correctly, he is asking us to abandon the (...) notion of discourse proceeding within a pre-existing set of constraints, and instead open ourselves to the course of conversation. This abjuration of the Kantian notion that there is something called "a structure of rationality" which the philosopher discovers and within which we have a moral duty to remain seems to me to characterize the common lesson to be learned from Heidegger, from Wittgenstein, and from Dewey. So I want to use the term "hermeneutics" as the name for this attitude. Rather than developing Gadamer’s point further, however, I shall be arguing for the uselessness of the Diltheyan notion of a "method of the human sciences." More specifically, I shall be arguing against the attempts of Professors Dreyfus and Taylor to preserve the opposition between the natural and the human sciences and thus to give sense to the Diltheyan notion. (shrink)

This article explores Richard Rorty’s status in academic political theory in the decades after his conscious departure from disciplinary philosophy. Rorty found a receptive audience in this pluralistic field, and he became a point of orientation in a number of ongoing, research-agenda driving conversations, if often as an extreme example against which interlocutors could define themselves. In like fashion, Rorty refined his own self-conception as a patriotic liberal ironist in the course of his political theoretical engagements. (...) I offer a sketch of political theory’s landscape as a contrast to the reductivism and esotericism Rorty criticized in disciplinary philosophy, and survey his presence in the field over the years substantively, qualitatively, and quantitatively. (shrink)

This article provides a new interpretation of Richard Rorty’s notion of the private-public distinction. The first section of the article provides a short theoretical overview of the origins of the public-private distinction in Rorty’s political thought and clarifies the Rortian terminology. The main portion of the article is dedicated to the critique of Rorty’s private-public distinction, divided into two thematic sections: (i) the private-public distinction as undesirable and (ii) the private-public distinction as unattainable. I argue that (...) Rorty’s formulation provides plausible answers to the first kind of criticism, but not to the second. Finally, a reformulation of the private-public distinction will be suggested, which both mitigates the second line of criticism and better coheres with Rorty’s general theory. (shrink)

Richard Rorty does have something ‘to say to [Black Americans]’ and to their racially conscious nonblack allies in the sense that his understanding of liberalism, his prophecies about the future and his urgent appeals to the American Left all paint a picture of a white middle class fully prepared to make life increasingly miserable for Black Americans unless it is ‘protected from catastrophe’. Rorty hopes that this group will undergo a moral transformation that enables it to see (...) past its narrow group interests, but doubts that it will. He, nevertheless, prescribes a politics of hope and appeasement as a hedge against both despair and backsliding. In so doing, he fails to appreciate the availability and the suitability of an alternative ‘racial realist’ (and tragicomic) posture vis-à-vis American liberalism inspired by thinkers like Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and Derrick Bell. This alternative enables racially conscious Americans to respond to the intransigence of (certain) white Americans with cunning rather than by escaping into fantasies of a ‘dream country’ unmarked by the damage caused by racism and its long-lingering effects. I uncover and explore this alternative through Rorty’s warnings regarding the white middle class, a somewhat surprising consistency between Rorty’s brand of class politics and Bell’s understanding of ‘racial fortuity’, and, finally, through a development of Bell’s ‘racial realist’ posture combined with Baldwin’s ‘uses of the blues’ resulting in a ‘hard-eyed’ tragicomic sensibility sufficient to effectively pair continued struggle with creative consolation and resilience. (shrink)

A sympathetic reviewer has noted that the best a critic of Rorty can do is to compare his views invidiously to alternative views. Taking this advice to heart, I contrast Rorty's social and political views to Dewey's, and then to an alternative account which I elaborate. My standards of comparison are two liberal ideals than which, according to Rorty, none others are higher. These are: amelioration of suffering, and leaving people alone to pursue their own visions of (...) personal perfection. ;In Chapter One, I point out that there are significant differences between Rorty and his alleged progenitor, Dewey, notably when it comes to their respective conceptions of how to harmonize personal freedom with public responsibility. Unlike Dewey, Rorty advocates abandoning the attempt to fuse the public realm of altruism and the private realm of sublimity by means of one all-encompassing theory. ;In Chapter Two, I argue that the existing liberal democracies Rorty is concerned to defend bear little resemblance to his democratic utopia, in which "the quest for autonomy is impeded as little as possible by social institutions." I introduce an alternative vocabulary, according to which political institutions, broadly conceived, traverse nearly the entire length and breadth of the private sphere in the north Atlantic democracies. ;In Chapter Three, I argue that existing liberal democracies fare little better with reference to Rorty's public ideal of ameliorating suffering than they did with reference to his private ideal of making room for self making. Then I suggest an alternative setup which I believe to be more promising for purposes of ameliorating suffering. ;In the final chapter, I argue that Rorty's private role as ironist and his public role as self-described apologist for bourgeois liberal democracy are not so much incommensurable as they are incompatible. The better he fulfills one role, I argue, the more seriously he compromises the other. (shrink)

STANLEY CAVELL’s The Claim of Reason is two books in one. The first, was drafted some twenty years ago, whereas the second was written quite recently. Most of the first book is about epistemology, and this is the book with which I want to take issue. So I shall spend most of my space on it, saying only a little about the second. This is unfortunate, since I admire the second book even more than I disagree with the first. But (...) one always has more to say in disagreement than in agreement. (shrink)

This paper revisits some of the arguments in Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country, twenty years after the book first appeared. Not only are many of Rorty’s diagnoses and predictions eerily prescient in the wake of the rise of Donald Trump to the US presidency, but there is also perceptive political advice in Rorty’s book that I argue the contemporary American Left would do well to heed. While many post-election commentators have tended to read Achieving Our Country (...) as an admonishment of so-called “identity politics” in favor of an “old Left” politics of redistribution and economic justice, I argue that the main distinction on which the analysis in Achieving Our Country hangs is between what Rorty calls “real politics” and “cultural politics”, a conclusion that is confirmed, I argue, by examining the three concrete suggestions for the American Left that together form the core positive argument in Rorty’s book. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss logic from a naturalist point of view, characterizing it as those shared patterns of thought which are socially selected from among the various patterns of thought to which we are naturally inclined. Drawing on Evans-Pritchard's anthropology. I discuss a particular example of Zande thought. I argue that Evans-Pritchard's and Timm Triplett's analyses of this example make the mistake of applying Western logic to Zande beliefs and thus find a contradiction. I argue that from the naturalistic (...) point of view. Zande logic is different from Western logic and that there is no contradiction in Zande thought. (shrink)

In this paper the authors present a description and reflective analysis of an underdeveloped aspect of legal ethics education: judicial ethics. Part I provides an introduction to Canada's National Judicial Institute and its early attempts to design and deliver judicial ethics education programmes. Part II then suggests that in the last few years a second generation of judicial ethics education has emerged, generating a more systemic and contextually sophisticated pedagogical agenda. Finally, in Part III, the authors argue in favour of (...) even more challenging judicial ethics programmes that will enable judges to develop an enhanced ethical identity. (shrink)

This article attempts to compare the theories of life between Søren Kierkegaard and Feng Youlan. It will focus specifically on the identity of the self in Kierkegaard's “stages of life” and Feng's “realms of life” (rensheng jingjie 人生境界). Whereas Kierkegaard subscribes doctrinally to the Christian understanding of the self and claims that the highest stage of life is achievable only for the God-centered self, Feng draws his insights from the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions, which, by imposing human values onto (...) the universe, runs the danger of rendering the self the very center of the “great whole” (daquan 大全). Moving beyond a descriptive comparison, I will argue that the Kierkegaardian stage theory includes a critique of Feng's realm doctrine, the latter appearing to be overly idealistic, missing the dark side of the human essence so succinctly pointed out by former and, consequently, falls short of offering a more realistic description of the self. (shrink)

In this paper we compare Kierkegaard’s and Marx’s views on social reform. Then we argue that Kierkegaard’s own reasoning is consistent with the expression of neighbor-love through collective action, i.e. social reform. However, Kierkegaard’s approach to social reform would be vastly different than Marx’s. We end by reviewing several questions that Kierkegaardian social reformers would ask themselves. Our hope is that this exploration will provide helpful insights into how those who genuinely love their neighbors ought to seek the common good (...) through collective action. (shrink)

Richard Rorty has been taken to task for his apparent inability to defend democracy to the anti-democrat. Cheryl Misak, for example, in developing her own epistemic defense of democracy, argues that because he abjures truth, Rorty cannot provide any argument to show that democracy is superior to other political arrangements. In this paper, I agree with Misak that Rorty is unable to provide an argument, epistemic or otherwise, in defense of democracy, but show that this doesn’t (...) mean he, or someone who takes his insights seriously, needs to be silent about its shape or its promises. Instead, I follow Rorty’s lead and develop out of Fabienne Peter’s work an epistemology that, though it cannot be used to defend democracy, does comport well with it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Richard Rorty: Prophet and Poet of the New PragmatismRichard RumanaRichard Rorty: Prophet and Poet of the New Pragmatism, by David L. Hall; xii & 290 pp. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994, $49.50 cloth, $16.95 paper.David Hall has written a highly creative, original—and idiosyncratic—work on Rorty, with its idiosyncrasy another aspect that makes the book well worth reading. This does not mean that it is always (...) satisfying, however, and since Hall tries to find a blend of “exuberant praise and testy complaint” (p. 7), this review will adopt the same method.On the positive side, perhaps there is no better way to approach Rorty than by employing Rorty’s own method of reading philosophical and literary works: narrative recontextualization. Since Hall states, “Deductive and dialectical logics are irrelevant to (Rorty’s) thought” (p. 9), he had to find a means of avoiding the point/counterpoint strategy of direct argumentation so as to do justice to Rorty’s own conversational strategy of reading texts. Thus, Hall (compared, for example, to Konstantin Kolenda) is unique in his willingness “to follow Rorty through the looking glass” (a reference to Rorty’s discarding the traditional metaphor of the mind as a mirror) and to take seriously Rorty’s thinking as “beyond the philosophical pale” (p. 3). Hall makes a virtue of his strategy: “The best one can do is to judge the relative attractiveness of Rorty’s views by recourse to alternative visions” (p. 4). The breadth of Hall’s background in philosophy, both Eastern and Western, his fine ear for irony, and his acute sense of history make him an exemplary reader who can offer attractive alternate visions by which to examine Rorty’s own vision.The subtitle of the book (“Poet and Prophet of the New Pragmatism”) announces Hall’s underlying theme; he takes his cue from the pragmatic Deweyan aspect of Rorty’s work, with the phrase “new pragmatism” referring to Rorty’s reinterpretation of pragmatism along linguistic lines. Where the original emphasis of pragmatism was on ideas as habits through which experience could be guided for the satisfaction of desires in terms of either private or public goods, Rorty’s neopragmatism replaces ideas and experience with language and alternate vocabularies as the medium through which desires are fulfilled. With this emphasis on language comes Hall’s reading of Rorty as poet and prophet. The desire for self-creation is accomplished through poetry and literature. The desire for social tolerance is marked by Rorty’s commitment to a form of Utopian Democracy. Hall’s reading of Rorty is well grounded in the mutations of Pragmatism from Peirce to Davidson and from aesthetics to social theory.On the negative side, a number of Hall’s claims are open to objection, some of them are minor, some more substantive. Of the minor variety is a footnote for Chapter 2: “Rorty’s Ph.D. dissertation was on Whitehead and Aristotle”—whereas, in Rorty’s dissertation, The Concept of Potentiality (Yale, 1956), Whitehead appears only in the bibliography and is not mentioned in the text at all. [End Page 144]On more substantive issues, Hall’s contention in Chapter One, where he discusses Rorty’s historicism, is that Rorty is unable to free himself from the Kantian problematic of the autonomy of value; he remains, thus, an heir to the “aims of the Enlightenment” (p. 51). This seems to be a narrowly conceived interpretation. Admittedly, Rorty has recently said that he would now not define his thinking as “postmodern” since the term has become laden with excess baggage from other disciplines (although, he still accepts Lyotard’s definition, “distrust of metanarratives,” as pertinent to what he is doing). On the other hand, except for an acceptance of the secularization of the public realm, there seems to be little in his thinking that characterizes him as an “Enlightenment” figure, and Hall himself seems to concede this when he later refers to Rorty as a “Nihilist” (p. 170). Is it possible to be both a nihilist and committed to the Enlightenment? I find it even harder to follow Hall in his belief that Rorty’s nihilism “expresses itself directly in Rorty... (shrink)

In his seminal 1935 study of the internal senses in medieval2 thought, Harry Austryn Wolfson presented a detailed account of the development of the "classification and terminology" of the Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Latin traditions on sensory powers which he called, "post-sensationary faculties,"~ that is, powers which are posterior to the five external senses. In explaining the complex development of teachings on the internal senses from Aristotle's texts, Wolfson recounted the Aristotelian understanding of Galen who specifically locates the OHXVOTl'ttKOV or (...) cogitative faculty in the middle ventricle of the brain and John of Damascus whose equally Aristotelian account follows the Stagirite in attributing judgments of goodand bad as well as combination and separation of ideas to the omvoTl'ttKTJ 'lfUXTt or the cogitative soul and to ouxvma or cogitation.4 One of the many fruits of Wolfson's discussion was an explanation of the development of the Avicennian doctrine of estimation as arising"out of a desire to supplement a deficiency which seemed to exist in Aristotle's account of the actual motion of pursuit and avoidance which is observed in both man and animal. "5 With wahm used to describe instinctive behavior consequent upon non-rational animal imagination analogous to human reasoning or deliberation, Wolfson wrote, the Arabic fikr now was tobe associated with imagination and no longer was to be seen as simply the power of combining and separating ideas. "In the case of ouivotcx combined with imagination, it is the combination and separation of images, i.e., the construction out of images of things existent, new composite images of things nonexistent, or the breaking up of images of things existent into images of things nonexistent."6 From this moment on, and not without some foundation in Aristotle's own texts as indicated, fikr/ cogitatio and their related derivative terms are used to characterize human rational powers which are essentially activities involving the bodyand bodily instruments insofar as imagination is necessarily bodily. (shrink)

The metaphysics of early embryos is a hotly debated topic in contemporary bioethics and metaphysics. Many contemporary Aristotelians believe that a human being is present from the moment of conception. At the same time, certain findings in modern embryology about the formation of identical twins challenge this belief. It becomes much harder when these theories are taken into account to understand the continued identity over time of the embryo(s) given the twinning process. In this article, I will consider the philosophical (...) implications of two models of monozygotic twinning within an Aristotelian metaphysical schema one of which is the standard, or traditional, model. The other of which is a new model recently put forward by Herranz. For the sake of completeness, I will also consider the philosophical implications of chimeras for the Aristotelian position. I will explain how Aristotelians can understand the process of twinning while holding on to their belief that a human being is present from the moment of conception. Summary: I will argue that a human being is present from the moment of conception. I will argue for this on Aristotelian grounds, and I will then defend this claim from criticisms based on a number of findings in modern embryology. (shrink)