Fucking hell - Richard Rorty's dead
- Thread starter purves grundy
- Start date
I can completely see why some people don't rate Rorty but many read him badly or don't read him at all. As Phil says, he's neither a postmodernist nor (meaningfully) a relativist. He's also not obscure in the slightest. Only someone who has never actually read him could say that. He gets attacked by the analytic philosophy establishment for not writing with enough sophistication ffs.phildwyer said:
Jonti
what the dormouse said
I'd've thought it a duty of a philosopher to try to transcend his circumstances -- for his thought to have slightly more depth than self-interest.nosos said:Yes! His ethnocentrism is an explicit doctrine with roots fairly deep in his philosophy. Do you think he ought to pretend he is not a comfortably tenured academic in a western liberal democracy?
But, hey!
Jonti
what the dormouse said
Oh, thanks for the sneery roll-eyes. Beats discussing ideas, for sure!nosos said:Rorty himself explicitly agrees if you actually bothered to find out anything about his work. He actually wrote a book largely on this subject.
But why not address this point (from another poster)
How can you discuss his ideas? You've never even read him and you have very little idea what he thinks!Jonti said:
There must be some criteria to judge "Truth" other than simply saying that it is what particular cultures find it useful to determine as being 'true', musn't there?
Why must there be some other criteria? Is it necessary for our ethical lives? Or is it necessary for philosophical discourse about ethics? There's a very important distinction between the two which lies at the heart of quietism such as Rorty's. He's not attacking the integrity of our first-order ethical discourse, he's simply saying that there's nothing particularly interesting or useful philosophers can add on a second-order level. Certain forceful ideas (utilitarianism for instance) can, through the political activities of their advocates, have a cultural force: they lead to a widespread redescription of a certain area of life such as to serve to substitute, say, the greatest good for the greatest number for God's moral law. However, argues the quietist, the main body of philosophical ethics doesn't effect the day-to-day ethical practice of even the most ardent ethical theorists (apart from, that is, when they're sitting in their arm chair theorising). Nor, crucially, should it. Likewise, ethical discourse never meets some antecedently existing moral truth. The terms in which the questions are posed dictate the kind of answers that are sought after and, some claim, are 'found'. Rorty's advocating philosophy as cultural politics: the recognition of philosophy's potential to have a transformative effect on discourse (not as it takes place among philosophers but as it takes place in society). He's not advocating that we stop being ethical beings or trying to lead ethical lives. He's simply saying we should stop asking pointless metaphysical questions about the philosophical foundations of either pursuit.
gorski
customised free radical
Oh, well, anyone dying is "bad" enough and we're sad, for sure, as he's one of our bros, a fellow thinking man [agreeing with him or not is another matter - but a bro Human Being working on his spirit, as it were...] - but dying as such is necessary... at some point...
at least for now... 
Anyhow, we've lived through Bloch, Lukacs, Marcuse, Fromm, Lefebvre, Petrović, Grlić etc. etc. etc. leaving us... Habermas, Kangrga and many others might leave any day now... But new really good, creative and inspiring ones will come...
Utilitarianism: utility as the criterion is a huge problem if one is to try to defend Human Rights, for instance. How can one: if some can be justifiably sacrificed on the altar of the "utility" of a given community, i.e. the greater good of many v. some...??? Naughty, if you think about it for a little while...
Jonti, m8: it's not about "black and/or white" and nothing else is there. There is but you have to broaden your horizons, it seems to me... Reading philosophy as if it's a scientific discipline or Maths is not very productive, I'd say...
Oh, and pllllleeeeaaase don't start me on the arrogance and power games of the Western Academia.... Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some French pomos might have accurately described it but do we have to just shrug our shoulders at it?
One of my MA tutors here [London, at one of the major UK Unis] once openly stated, in front of the whole year, something in the line of "Anglo-American analytical tradition is far superior to anything else" and hence we weren't allowed anything else into the literature or into the essays or anything of the sort... I blew my top off, if that's the correct expression, and asked him back "Just how intellectually and professionally lazy and arrogant is that?!?" You could cut the tension in the room - a student is just sooooo not supposed to ask the "wrong kind of questions" and "even try to dig into an authority" with powers to make or break you... But in the UK, from my many discussions of the issues with many people, from the UK and abroad, people who have the direct experience of different systems, we are educating a lot of bureaucrats, by and large, for the benefit of the "utility", read the "industry", more than anything else...
at least for now... Anyhow, we've lived through Bloch, Lukacs, Marcuse, Fromm, Lefebvre, Petrović, Grlić etc. etc. etc. leaving us... Habermas, Kangrga and many others might leave any day now...
But new really good, creative and inspiring ones will come...Utilitarianism: utility as the criterion is a huge problem if one is to try to defend Human Rights, for instance. How can one: if some can be justifiably sacrificed on the altar of the "utility" of a given community, i.e. the greater good of many v. some...??? Naughty, if you think about it for a little while...
Jonti, m8: it's not about "black and/or white" and nothing else is there. There is but you have to broaden your horizons, it seems to me... Reading philosophy as if it's a scientific discipline or Maths is not very productive, I'd say...
Oh, and pllllleeeeaaase don't start me on the arrogance and power games of the Western Academia.... Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Some French pomos might have accurately described it but do we have to just shrug our shoulders at it?
One of my MA tutors here [London, at one of the major UK Unis] once openly stated, in front of the whole year, something in the line of "Anglo-American analytical tradition is far superior to anything else" and hence we weren't allowed anything else into the literature or into the essays or anything of the sort... I blew my top off, if that's the correct expression, and asked him back "Just how intellectually and professionally lazy and arrogant is that?!?"
You could cut the tension in the room - a student is just sooooo not supposed to ask the "wrong kind of questions" and "even try to dig into an authority" with powers to make or break you... But in the UK, from my many discussions of the issues with many people, from the UK and abroad, people who have the direct experience of different systems, we are educating a lot of bureaucrats, by and large, for the benefit of the "utility", read the "industry", more than anything else...
Jonti
what the dormouse said
Here's an interesting criticism of Rorty from a left perspective.
What I find fascinating about this kind of approach is that it accepts empiricism -- but only in an arbitrarily restricted sense. Instead of the whole world being our "Scripture" we are to look only at, say, the Koran; or the Bible; or in Rorty's case, only the opinions of his fellow "liberal" elitists.
nosos said:
That won't stop Jonti, you watch. Anyway, if you're going to be an antifoundationalist, neopragmatism is probably the least stupid school to follow. At least it has assimilated the linguistic insights of poststructuralism into old-fashioned empiricism and utilitarianism. As a Hegelian Marxist, of course, I call a plague on all their houses.
Jonti said:
Bullshit. Actually, worse than bullshit: the precise reverse of the truth. Of all professional philosophers, Rorty was the least "elitist," and in fact spent his entire career denying that philosophers have any kind of superior insight, and insisting that philosophy should begin listening to the opinions of non-philosophers. But then Jonti has always preferred regurgitating cliches to actually reading the works of those he attacks.
gorski said:One of my MA tutors here [London, at one of the major UK Unis] once openly stated, in front of the whole year, something in the line of "Anglo-American analytical tradition is far superior to anything else" and hence we weren't allowed anything else into the literature or into the essays or anything of the sort... I blew my top off, if that's the correct expression, and asked him back "Just how intellectually and professionally lazy and arrogant is that?!?"
Good for you. As you know, Anglo-American philosphy is not what the rest of the world calls "philosophy" at all. I very much doubt whether your tutor has read any continental philosophy, and if he has, he won't have understood it. There *are* some real philosophers in British universities though--you might want to change your tutor.
revol68
what, fucking what?
i loved Rorty's argument against racism, it went something like, black people are american too, as americans they should be treated equally, apparently arguing that black people should be treated equally regardless of nationality wasn't pratical enough in the twats eyes. Of course every argument he ever made folds back on itself and collapses.
I'm glad the pricks dead.
I'm glad the pricks dead.
Similar threads
