Defending Rorty: The Kibitzer’s Kibitzer
Richard Rorty’s death has prompted well-deserved praise and appreciation for a public life well spent. There has been, however, little serious discussion of his political views. This is unfortunate, because politics is the radiating core of his philosophy. Rorty’s project replaces epistemology with politics and knowledge with warranted assertability which is achieved through political debate. More precisely, conversation–deliberative debate designed to achieve unforced inter-subjective agreement–is the goal of Rortyan politics. Similarly, deliberative conversation is the method for talking about politics and culture. By engaging in this multi-layered conversation, we may be able to agree about some critical features of social life. When we agree we achieve provisional closure of debate. When we disagree, the debate must continue until we achieve agreement. If agreement is improbable at the time, we can at least appreciate just what is at stake in our disagreement. Often underlying our disagreement are two incommensurable perspectives. When this occurs we must pause, but then return to “debate” through poetry–non-discursive suasion–which may help us to achieve agreement through edifying vocabularies that convert others to our point of view.
It’s not Rorty’s intention to try to refute the framework of truth, knowledge, reason, and reality, whatever that would be like. He doesn’t seek to demonstrate that this framework is self-contradictory, for example. On the contrary, he engages in kibitzing–a form of jocular coaching–about the usefulness of retaining this framework. Rorty urges us to imagine a new world where people were simply uninterested in philosophical justifications of the judgments that matter most to them. These new worlders are deadly serious about whether these judgments are true, but not about what is meant by “truth.” They seek true judgments, but not true judgments about the nature of truth. In this new world, the word “true” applies simply what other people let us get away with. It is the normative compliment awarded to the judgment that withstands criticism best. The nature of truth, knowledge, reason, and reality–these foundational justifiers–simply don’t turn new worlders on. In a similar fashion, the nature or existence of God leaves these new worlders cold. Instead, they are engaged in building a future dedicated to minimizing cruelty and suffering. They are always ready to argue whether a particular policy reduces cruelty and suffering. But they find it tedious to try to demonstrate why cruelty and suffering should be reduced in the first place. These new worlders have experienced cruelty and suffering themselves and just want them eliminated. Their experiences is all the proof necessary. For them, seeking a demonstration of whether cruelty and suffering should be eliminated is a fool’s errand. We have no guarantees or guarantors in trying to eliminate cruelty and suffering, just our own and others’ experiences, and a conviction that we can do better. Rorty suggests that these new worlders can be us.
Some critics insist that the above
story makes Rorty a relativist or worse, a nihilist. Maybe. But perhaps these critics can only envision the framework of either-or: either God and foundational justifiers or relativism and nihilism. These critics should explain why we need to retain this framework. Rorty wants to kibitz long enough for us to take seriously that there are other possibilities. We can seek the framework best suited to achieve our goals. We don’t need guarantees (nor guarantors) that this framework will work. We just continue its promotion by experiencing and acting upon the world through an edifying vocabulary to see if it does.
Most people in contemporary society retain deeply held moral convictions while rarely asking whether these convictions are grounded in God or foundational justifiers. Sure, if challenged, they might attempt to defend their entire system of convictions by appealing to God or the foundational justifiers, but for the lion’s share of their everyday lives, they never give them a thought. Yet, these same people disdain cruelty, refrain from mayhem, and would never contemplate killing their neighbors. Rorty’s point stripped down is simply that God and all the foundational justifiers aren’t necessary for human society to be populated by people who passionately seek to create better opportunities for human liberation, where what’s deemed “better” isn’t completely known in advance.
When a critic asks how can “better” have any significance without tying it to “God” and “truth” Rorty’s might reply as follows: Imagine reading in tomorrow’s newspaper “God is dead and there is no such thing as truth.” Suppose you were convinced by this report. What would you do? Go out and murder your neighbor? Probably not. Instead, you would trudge along as before. Why? Because cruelty and suffering have their own experiential (avoidance) hold over us. Try excising them from your personality and psychological reactions. In short, go forth into the world 
and see cruelty, and suffering; then imagine no God and no foundational justifiers. Do you think for a moment the horror you feel when confronting, cruelty, and suffering would dissipate? You might be inclined to reply that the intelligibility of this hypothetical depends on the existence of God and the foundational justifiers both of which serve as the basis of morality. Without their existence or at least their intelligibility the hypothetical has no force. Yet, that is precisely the problem. Where Rorty sees a world in which people work together to create a better future, his critics see God and rationality creating and guiding the entire operation. However, if one is authentically moral, if morality is integrated in one’s personality in an Aristotelian fashion, no further grounding is necessary. Relativism and nihilism are not implausible because some remarkable philosopher refuted them. Rather, they are implausible because the hard and soft wiring of human personality invariably rejects them. Natural and environmental factors together contribute to make most people sensitive to cruelty and suffering, though some people ignore the suffering of others by compartmentalizing their experience of it. More tragically, some notorious and infamous cases exist of sadists who enjoy cruelty and suffering. But as it now stands, God and the foundational justifiers have not successfully prevented these moral monsters; so why should Rorty’s proposal be held to a higher standard?
Rorty urges us to imagine a world where our passion for creating a better society does not depend on first rationally demonstrating that we possess a better way, just that it’s worth a try. Of course, in the “wrong” hands, danger might result. But in the “right” hands danger results now. For Rorty, we should continually strive to seek novel ways to cope with life’s vagaries. Imagine if talented undergraduate intellectuals spent less time trying to discover whether God
exists or what reason demands and redirected their efforts to figure out how to reduce homelessness, war, brutality, and as so forth. “Devote yourself to first-order problems, not second-order ones” is the pragmatist’s advice. Let’s abandon a framework which requires us to first seek permission from an external authority before we try to follow where commonsense and passion suggest it’s more profitable to go. This search for a better world here and now–a utopian and more liberated America if you will– prompts Rorty to reject the panoply of “authorities” standing in our way.
Summarizing, Rorty embraces conversation–a type of fancy kibitzing–designed to formulate provisional solutions to social problems, but it is a kibitzing that should never end. We’re ready to terminate kibitzing only if we’re ready to give up freedom. The first photograph of Rorty was taken by Suhrkamp Verlag.
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