Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper I consider Richard Rorty that a politics of sentiment which places our ability to imaginatively identify with others as "one of us" should be at the center of the pursuit of social justice. Such ideas about sentiment and sympathy derive from mid-18th century thinkers like Hume, Rousseau, and Adam Smith. I argue that a politics rooted in our capacity for sympathetic identification, though not without certain merits, ultimately fails to provide the crucial impetus for action. The cultivation of fellow-feeling as a political program continually runs the risk of becoming a blueprint for imagining ourselves in the place of others and sharing their feelings of pain in lieu of actually doing something about it. Hume's conception of sympathy, achieved through an operation of the imagination, proves too partial to those close at hand to meet the requirements of Rorty's sense of a "larger loyalty," and the reflective process Hume proposed to "correct" this bias and to give sympathy a universal relevance can only be achieved at the cost of dulling its capacity to move us to action. Moreover, Hume, like Rousseau and Smith, fully understood that sympathy was not enough; at crucial moments they fall back on an appeal to "nature," often quite explicitly, to pick up the slack. Rather than sympathetic imagining, or putting ourselves in the place of another, I argue the ability to grant full reality to another's suffering is the operative element in acting on behalf of others. Given Rorty's anti-realism, however, the notion of "reality" as such has at best an uncertain status in his thought, raising serious doubts about the efficacy of his approach. Secondly, I underscore Rorty's neglect of the pragmatist idea that any species of concern for others must be linked to "habits of action."

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The idea of America as an ongoing project, a work in progress whose greatness remains to be achieved, has been a recurrent way of thinking about the American experiment. Drawing on a lineage that runs from Emerson and Whitman to James Baldwin, Richard Rorty has placed this ideal of collective self-transformation at the center of his pragmatist project. Fostering the "Emersonian combination of self-reliance and patriotism found in James and Dewey" will enable us, in a phrase he borrows from Baldwin, to "achieve our country" and realize the enduring promise of America's highest ideals. In this paper I examine Rorty's conception of "Emersonian self-creation on a communal scale" and the key issues it raises for political theorists, including how to balance the tension that makes democratic collective self-renewal possible between a diversity of individual perspectives and a strong communal bond, the question of the degree of connectedness of the social critic, how a democracy should best deal with a past about which it cannot be proud, and the relation of self-criticism to social criticism. I argue that the sentiment that binds Whitman to his country, like Baldwin, is love, not, pace Rorty, pride. Only the mode of a lover's chastisement enables us to criticize America's failures while remaining committed to the project of achieving a better future, and to avoid simply accepting or rejecting "America."

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: One of democracy's greatest justifications, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, lies in its encouragement of individuality. Yet, as Whitman well knew, the functioning of democratic politics may neither enlist nor require the individual's highest energies, but threaten to crush individuality through the force of the "en masse" instead. This underscores a fundamental tension between the pursuit of justice and the development of individual character inherent in the idea of democratic self-realization: if democratic politics does not require fully developed selves, does a fully realized existence require participation in public life? In this paper I consider the way out of this democratic problematic offered by the pragmatist liberalism of Richard Rorty. Maximal self-development can be combined with an acute concern for social justice, he argues, if individuals divide themselves into "private self-creators" and "public liberals," being in alternate moments "Nietzsche and J.S. Mill." Taking cues from Mill, Rorty claims that the highest goal of liberal societies should be to "optimize the balance between leaving people's private lives alone and preventing suffering." Instituting a public-private divide along these lines will not only enrich liberal individuality, he argues, creating the space necessary for Nietzschean projects of becoming what one is, but at the same time galvanize the public's resolve to diminish suffering by insulating the quest for social justice from the self-regarding pursuit of developing one�s character. Yet rather than suggesting we "leave people's private lives alone," Mill viewed inner self-reform as crucial to the reform of society and institutions. While Mill offers a public defense of the private, where self-cultivation is understood as a means of strengthening the democratic public, Rorty defends his sharply delineated realms as a way of isolating individual creative energies from public life and the quest for justice. Freely-chosen individual ends are predicated upon seeing the world in one's own way; if these ends are absent from public life, for Mill there is no justice to be pursued. What Mill accomplishes is to bridge public and private by connecting ethics, or the development of one's character, with the public pursuit of justice. Or, to put it another way, he allies what might be called the "ethics of the self" with the "politics of the other." Drawing on a line of argument intimated by Mill and given full expression in the thought of John Dewey, I argue that the quest for social justice requires more than self-interest or an altruistic concern for others if it is to remain more than a hollow invocation of ideals. I defend a conception of perfectionist liberalism, understood as a demand to reform our society and institutions spurred by individual self-realization, that connects rather than divorces the ethics of the self from the politics of the other.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Like both Nietzsche and Freud, Rorty attempts to enter into an existing debate on his own terms; rather than arguing with Plato and Locke about metaphysics, Rorty insists that the entire discipline is now outdated. For Rorty, �the vocabulary of Enlightenment rationalism, although it was essential to the beginnings of liberal democracy, has become an impediment to the preservation and progress of democratic societies.� While this claim is an engaging one, it is also troubling for a great many human rights theorists. Perry, for example, argues that the only intelligible understanding of the idea of human rights is a religious one and that the Nietzschean undermining of religion has serious repercussions for any defense of human rights. He takes clear aim at the nonchalance with which Rorty �has recommended that we simply stop trying to defend the idea of human rights.�� Doing as Rorty recommends, Perry (and others) argue, could open the door to any number of illiberal possibilities. That said, it might also provide for a secular understanding of the idea of human rights. It is to a discussion of these two possibilities that we now turn, beginning � in the first section � with a detailed look at the Rortyan ideal of liberal irony and the question of whether this sort of irony is a desirable, or even psychologically possible, character trait. The second section brings the disagreement between Rorty and those he refers to as metaphysicians into sharper focus by examining the figure of the illiberal ironist, who is armed with the same tools as his liberal counterpart but reaches the opposite conclusion about human suffering. Finally, the paper will consider the place of sympathy and solidarity in what I take to be Rorty�s answer to his detractors. I will argue throughout that Rorty has not been entirely successful in abandoning metaphysical claims, as he relies on the foundational idea that sympathy and solidarity are natural and universal characteristics of humanity; in doing so, however, Rorty has succeeded in providing an answer to Michael Perry�s assertion that �the idea of human rights is�ineliminably religious� by providing a compelling secular foundation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Patriotism, with its emphasis on boundaries and a passionate attachment to a particular place as well as its seemingly inevitable association with jingoism, bigotry and war, has often been seen as anathema to universalistic moral theories including liberalism. However, political thinkers have long recognized that patriotism can be useful because it can provide social cohesion in our fragmented societies. This has given rise to several recent attempts to rehabilitate or articulate a new understanding of patriotism which avoids the moral pitfalls of traditional patriotism while still allowing it to serve as a source of social cohesion. These “liberal patriotisms” generally proceed by altering the object of the patriot’s attachment from a particular political entity to some sort of universal value. This paper explores Richard Rorty's work "Achieving Our Country" as an example of a these recent attempts at rehabilitating patriotism and their pitfalls.