HUMAN AFFAIRS 19, 60–67, 2009 DOI: 10.2478/v10023-009-0021-0 RORTY ON POLITICS, CULTURE, AND PHILOSOPHY: A DEFENCE OF HIS ROMANTICISM MIKLÓS NYÍRŐ Abstract: Rorty’s historicist romanticism is a peculiar and oft criticized feature of his neopragmatism. I attempt to show that it should be regarded not so much as a more or less exceptionable philosophical approach, but rather, as a practice in ‘cultural politics’—which is his ultimate definition for philosophy— prompted by his acute political concerns and his views on the nature of moral progress. Keywords: Crisis of contemporary liberal democracies; romanticism; historicism; cultural politics. “[…] everything depends on keeping our fragile sense of American fraternity intact.” Richard Rorty, “Looking Backwards from the Year 2096,” (1999, 251) Introduction Many of the critiques levelled against Rorty are due to his departure from certain aspects of Dewey’s thought. Perhaps the two main differences between Dewey’s and Rorty’s conceptions of democracy are that Rorty rejects—what Putnam reconstructs (1992, 180-82) as—the “epistemic justification” of democracy in Dewey, on the one hand, and he also rejects Dewey’s idea of a “creative democracy” (Dewey 1981), on the other. While Dewey’s conception incorporates a notion of positive freedom, emphasizing the individual’s contribution and immediate participation rather than institutions and representation, Rorty’s emphasis falls on the latter and, accordingly, on a notion of negative freedom. This difference is largely due, as I would maintain, to Rorty’s strong appeal to a kind of romanticism—a romanticism centering on imagination “as the ability to change social practices by proposing advantageous new uses of marks and noises” (Rorty 2007a, 107-8). In this paper I will mainly focus on that appeal, and especially on the possible motives behind it. I will qualify Rorty’s romanticism as a ‘historicist’ one in order to emphasize its basic trait which differentiates it from the traditional, rather universalist notions of romanticism. Many, among them Richard Bernstein (2008, 24), think that Rorty’s romanticism is due to his confessed early disillusionment with philosophy (Rorty 1999, 9-11). As opposed to this view, my central goal is to demonstrate why Rorty’s historicist, romantic pragmatism might be reasonably regarded as timely indeed, especially with regard to its move beyond a merely naturalistic and instrumental version of pragmatism. Since his romanticism—as I see it—is a 60 powerful response to a crisis diagnosed by Rorty concerning contemporary liberal democracies and, above all, America, and more specifically, it is prompted by his views on the nature of moral progress, in the second part I address these themes. In the third part I sketch certain aspects of his notion of a “literary culture”, and I do that because Rorty invests his hopes regarding how to overcome the aforementioned crisis chiefly in the emergence of such a postphilosophical culture. Finally, in part four I consider the role Rorty assigns to philosophy in such an envisioned context. Crisis of America, Crisis of Contemporary Liberal Democracies Rorty depicts at least four levels of crises discernible in contemporary liberal democracies, more specifically, regarding America. These concern leftist politics, America’s national identity, democracies under the pressures of globalization, and finally, the self-image of contemporary liberal democracies. Rorty persistently criticizes contemporary American leftism, and openly speaks about an ‘Eclipse of the Reformist Left’. In various narrations he sketches the genealogy of the so called ‘cultural’ Left, within which he distinguishes between two predominant trends. The first one stands for a version of ‘postmodernism’ which sees “modern liberal society as fatally flawed” and “insists that nothing will change unless there is some sort of total revolution” (Rorty 1999, 17-8). Such a ‘radicalism’ aims at subverting the established order, and fosters a disdain for America, thereby making reformist politics suspect in theory and impossible in practice. The second trend, the followers of which specialize in a politics of identity (or difference, or recognition), attempts to make a difference in people’s lives and as such fits altogether into a reformist liberal project. However, insofar as “this cultural Left thinks more about stigma than money, more about deep and hidden psychosexual motivations than about shallow and evident greed” (Rorty 1998a, 77), its predominant political orientation represents a turn away from class-struggle, and for that reason it is minoritarian by definition. Moreover, this orientation also plays a decisive role in the breakup of the traditional alliance between the academics and the labour movement. As to both trends, Rorty is convinced that they have fundamentally misguided political initiatives, insofar as both represent a move into non-majoritarian politics. According to him, the very emergence of the cultural Left is an expression of the fact that “frustration has taken the place of hope” (Rorty 1999, 232). Such a frustration is also expressed in a widespread decline of national pride. In Rorty’s eyes, as opposed to the relativist impact inherent in multiculturalism, America does have a national identity. It consists above all in the fact that, from the very beginning of its formation, America has embodied the promise of a possible construction of a classless society. This promise does not contradict, but rather, goes hand in hand with this nation’s inclusivism, that is, with a traditional American pluralism as “the attempt to make America […] a community of communities” (ibid., 252). However, Rorty calls attention to a social and political decline that has taken place during the more recent decades. One of the symptoms of such a decline is that in spite of economic growth the chasm between the rich and the poor has deepened. In that regard Rorty speaks of the danger of ’Brazilianization’ (ibid., 231), the menace of the emergence of an overclass coupled with the steady immiseration of everybody else. Meanwhile, moral progress during that period was confined mostly to improvements in the situation of racially, ethnically or sexually identified groups, but not in that of the economically oppressed. Rorty’s main concern is that “America, the country that was to have witnessed a new birth of freedom, will gradually 61 be divided by class differences of a sort that would have been utterly inconceivable to Jefferson or to Lincoln” (ibid., 259). Several further events—such as the protests against the Vietnam War with their anti-American charge, and again, the Watergate scandal which led to the masses thinking of the bureaucrats as the enemy, etc.—also contributed to the fact that the traditional American fraternal ideals, as well as patriotism, have become more and more unfashionable. The basic momentum is a widespread loss of faith in America—in liberal democracy, with its promise of the construction of a classless society. For Rorty, the fact of such a “moral decline” is evident (ibid., 257). He also emphasizes that insofar as America is giving up its role of being the vanguard of a global egalitarian utopia, it is about to lose both its world-historical significance and “its soul” (ibid., 234). Moreover, under the pressures of globalization the aforementioned aspects of crisis are only becoming more and more menacing. “[T]he central fact of globalization—as Rorty writes—is that the economic situation of the citizens of a nation state has passed beyond the control of the laws of that state” (ibid., 233). National laws of any country cannot control either the global pool of capital or the labour market, anymore. Among the consequences is that “no nation’s economy is sufficiently self-contained to permit long-term social planning by a national government” (ibid., 258), and each nation’s economy is passing out of the control of its government and its voters. Another, even more threatening aspect of globalization is that “[w]e now have a global overclass which makes all the major economic decisions […] in entire independence of the legislatures, and a fortiori of the will of the voters, of any given country” (ibid., 233). This foreshadows the emergence of hereditary castes, of these utter enemies of democratic constitution. To that extent, the tendencies inherent in globalization not only threaten the social project of Enlightenment, but are pregnant with the menace of turning it into its very opposite. Rorty regards the enumerated crises as being fundamentally moral in nature. The moral decline of America—and, by extension, that of the contemporary liberal democracies—can be conceptualized as a relapse from an egalitarian notion of democracy (referring to the social ideal of equality of opportunity) to that of a constitutional one (referring to the system of a freely elected, representative government). The main difference between these two notions is that while egalitarianism presupposes constitutionalism, the latter does not incorporate the former’s need for moral progress toward a widespread utopian vision of democracy in the egalitarian sense (Rorty 2007b, 2). Now, it is one of Rorty’s central convictions that the loss of social hope expressed in such a relapse is mainly due to our current political ideas and vocabularies governing our public practices. These vocabularies might be satisfactory for sustaining constitutionalism, but they are no longer suitable for sustaining egalitarianism. This point is confirmed—at least partially—by the fact that neither of the two so far available scenarios leading up to an egalitarian utopia seems to be feasible today. The Marxist version, demanding a proletarian revolution and the abolition of private entrepreneurship, has failed. The non-Marxist, nonviolent one, which was based on the hope that a measure of economic prosperity could bring about successive political reforms and eventually a kind of welfare state which ensured equality of opportunities, proved to be illusory, too. For economic growth is in itself not a guarantee of egalitarian politics. As Rorty (1989, 181-82) repeatedly points out, at the present we cannot tell ourselves a story about how to get from the actual situation to a future of human dignity, freedom and peace. It is precisely for this reason that Rorty explicitly makes an effort to try “to reformulate the hopes of liberal society”, and he does so “in a nonrationalist and nonuniversalist way” (ibid., 44). 62 A possible reawakening of egalitarian hopes demands both that the society undergo moral progress toward embracing the social ideal of equality, and that political institutions of that society also mirror this ideal, embodying more and more of the social sentiments of fraternity and solidarity. Accordingly, a shift must occur in the politicians’ convictions regarding the general estimation of the relation between the economic and the moral orders, and also the main task of the political bodies. They must move beyond that legal impartiality which makes room for socially unjust and morally unacceptable inequalities. From an egalitarian view, “the first duty of the state [should be, indeed,] to prevent gross economic and social inequality,” as opposed to the present situation wherein “the government’s only moral duty [is] to ensure ‘equal protection of the laws’” (Rorty 1999, 246). Since social justice is not simply a legal matter, but rather—and above all—, should be a practical requirement feeding on social feelings of fraternity and solidarity, a radical change must occur within our overall political practices and ultimately in our public vocabulary. At the present, our political vocabulary—originating in the rationalism of the Enlightenment—centres primarily on the notion of rights. That notion certainly played a decisive role during the establishment and development of constitutional democracies. However, since it does not promote the aforementioned, desirable social sentiments, it is no longer sufficient enough to steer events toward liberal goals, and thus, to keep alive the egalitarian hopes. Moreover, a further point underlines even more the need for exceeding—although, obviously not entirely leaving behind—our current rights-talk and predominantly rationalistic public vocabulary. If one understands morality as Rorty does, namely, “neither as a matter of applying the moral law nor as the acquisition of virtues but as fellow feelings, the ability to sympathize with the plight of others” (ibid., 249), then everything turns on the question of how such an ability might be brought about. Now, Rorty’s crucial point is—and I can only agree with him—that moral insight “is not, like mathematics, a product of rational reflection. It is instead a matter of imagining a better future, and observing the results of attempts to bring that future into existence” (2007b, 8). Insofar as moral progress might be a result of extending the bounds of our imagination, Rorty’s historicist romanticism—where romanticism is “a thesis about the nature of human progress” with “imagination [as] the chief instrument of the good” (Rorty 2007a, 108)—should be regarded as an approach introduced for the purpose of ‘trying to reformulate the hopes of liberal society’. For “liberal societies depend on a sense of solidarity with and sympathy for one’s fellow human beings”, as Bernstein also claims (2003, 132), and the need for moral progress toward elevating those feelings may justify Rorty’s nonrationalistic and nonuniversalist approach. Literary Culture Rorty announced the possible emergence of a nonrationalistic, post-philosophical culture— which is just as desirable according to him as a post-religious culture—in his Introduction to the volume he edited on The Linguistic Turn. Later on, he came to invest all of his liberal hopes—hopes that the liberal tradition of tolerance, individual freedom and demand for social equality will prevail—in a so conceived “new dawn”, a dawn regarded by him as introducing “not just a new stage in the history of philosophy, but a new self-image for humanity” (Rorty 2000a, 1). Namely, Rorty agrees with Horkheimer and Adorno that—as he puts it—“the forces unleashed by the Enlightenment have undermined the Enlightenment’s own convictions” (Rorty 63 1989, 56), due to the destructive power of skepticism built into its rationalism. Although Rorty shares this premise, he does not share their well-known conclusion. Rather, he points to the need for a “utopian vision of a culture which [is] able to incorporate […] the dissolvant character of rationality” (ibid., 57). It is the rise of such a ‘literary culture’—which began to emerge when Hegel introduced historicism into first philosophy—that according to him might promise an imaginative and possibly moral awakening. The literary culture Rorty envisages is a radically historicist and nominalist one. The historicism he advocates stands in sharp opposition to metaphysics—metaphysics conceived as the discipline which aims at capturing a final, single matrix of what is real behind all appearances (a ‘metaphysics of presence’ in the Heideggerian sense). The project of metaphysics embodies a hope for what Rorty labels as ‘redemptive truth’, the prospect that a set of true beliefs could give an answer to our persistent and pressing practical questions such as ‘what to do with ourselves?’. While that prospect presupposes that “history does not really matter” (Rorty 2007b, 6), historicism acknowledges and takes into account, also in the political respect, what is yet to emerge, that is, the unpredictable new. As I see it, Rorty’s romanticised version of pragmatism aims precisely at dealing with this historicist dimension. Namely, the Rortyan sense of historicism also implies that, with regard to politics, neither the framework presented by naturalism in itself nor that of a rather instrumental pragmatism can suffice. For purposes, individual or communal, come in two flavours. They are either known antecendently (like the natural ones prompted by our biological or physiological needs) or are yet to emerge (like the moral ones cropping up culturally). Restricting ourselves to a horizon of already known purposes, to the horizon of a naturalist perspective, is as undesirable as it can be. “Brave New World […] shows us what sort of human future would be produced by a naturalism untempered by historicist Romance,” writes Rorty (2000d, 189). In turn, mere instrumentalism is also doomed to failure where the goals may appear no sooner than the means for achieving them. Now, this latter is the case—as e. g. Davidson, Rorty, and Brandom have shown—with language. One’s “new vocabulary makes possible, for the first time, a formulation of its own purpose. It is a tool for doing something which could not have been envisaged prior to the development of a particular set of descriptions, those which it itself helps to provide” (Rorty 1989, 13). It is Rorty’s historicist focus on the unforeseeably new, together with the parallel notion of the unique capacity of language to produce entirely new ‘logical spaces’, that also explains why Rorty puts so much emphasis on nominalism. For nominalism follows from the historicist view—and it does so prior to its philosophical underpinning (namely, anti-representationalism)—that the future is determined by nothing else than our linguistic imagination. Rortyan historicism implies that neither philosophy, nor natural science, nor instrumental problem-solving have anything to do with questions of ‘purposes yet to emerge’, and therefore, with questions of political guidance or individual redemption. They tell us nothing about what purposes to have. Individual redemption—that is, an answer to such a question—can be achieved through imagination, by entering into “non-cognitive relations … [with] other human beings, relations mediated by human artefacts such as books and buildings [etc., which] provide a sense of alternative ways of being human” (Rorty 2007, 93). For this reason, literature—as the best means for that kind of improving ourselves—stands forth in Rorty’s eyes as the primary vehicle for improving our moral imagination. In turn, in a high culture where moral inquiry becomes predominant, philosophy becomes marginalized, since it cannot help us choose among the various forms of life. 64 The Role of Philosophy For most of his life, Rorty has been troubled by the metaphilosophical question of “what, if anything, philosophy is good for” (Rorty 1999, 11). Early in his career—on the pages of his aforementioned Introduction from 1967—he came to reject philosophy’s foundational role by arguing that any attempt at founding a method without tacit reference to some of the conclusions to be reached by that very method is inevitably circular. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature he reinforced this point by saying that “nothing counts as justification unless by reference to what we already accept, and […] there is no way to get outside our beliefs and our language so as to find some test other than coherence” (1980, 178). Rorty’s so conceived historicism led him to accept Hegel’s definition of philosophy as ‘its time, held in thought’. He interprets this to mean that “human social practices in general […] are the product of concrete historical situations, and […] they have to be judged by reference to the needs created by those situations” (2007b, 6). Philosophy, from this view, should be content to regard itself as ancillary to historiography—it is to be studied in the context of its social situation. This historicist stance has many consequences, among them the primacy of practice over and against theory, the fact that no philosophical foundation can possibly be given to any practice, the breakdown of all kinds of universalism, a limited and revised relevance of rationality, etc. Now, many aspects of Rorty’s views concerning the relation between philosophy and politics seem to suggest that his politically relevant reflections are mainly extended applications of his previously arrived at philosophical ideas. Compare the following to the above enumerated consequences of his historicism: Rorty emphasises the priority of democracy over philosophy, denies that philosophy could offer a defence for democracy in terms of conclusive arguments, refuses to make use of any kind of universalism in his liberal utopia, limits the role of argumentation to the normal discourse of the public sphere, etc. Nevertheless, what I would like to suggest is that the relation between philosophy and politics in Rorty’s case is rather the opposite. Although from his historicism it does not necessarily follow—he maintains—that thenceforth politics should be regarded as the centre of philosophy, and he consistently refuses the notion that one could presume inferential relations between philosophical standpoints and political convictions, in fact, Rorty also acknowledges that one’s political leanings might predispose a person to favour certain philosophical notions. For example—as he says—“if your devotion [to democracy] is wholehearted, then you will welcome the utilitarian and pragmatist claim that we have no will to truth distinct from the will to happiness” (2007a, 34). There is a plausible inference from democratic convictions to philosophical notions promoting anti-authoritarianism. Indeed, it seems very much to be the case that it is Rorty’s wholehearted devotion to democracy—a devotion which made him claim that the most fundamental intellectual question is that of democracy versus totalitarianism (Rorty 1991, 29)—which destined his way of doing philosophy to the role of building up a conceptual ‘infrastructure’ for a possible revival of liberal democracy. For his philosophy is best approachable as an attempt to work out the conceptual prerequisites of defending what he takes to be the socio-political demands of the day. These demands consist in his eyes primarily in sustaining social hope and egalitarianism. When Rorty enumerates his motives for his pragmatic turn, he mentions the followings: “to exalt solidarity over objectivity, to doubt that there is such a thing as ‘desire for truth’ distinct from desire for justification, and to hold that, in Habermas’s words, “‘being in touch with reality’ has to be translated into ‘being in touch with a human community’” (Rorty 2000b, 56). That kind of large-scale ‘translation’—Rorty would say: redescription—sums up most of 65 Rorty’s philosophical efforts, efforts which primarily aim at doing away with the traditional realist intuition and the corresponding mentalism with its imagery of representation and mirror of nature. Accordingly, Rorty himself summarizes his overall philosophical intentions in the following manner: “I am a hedgehog who […] really only has one idea: the need to get beyond representationalism, and thus into an intellectual world in which human beings are responsible only to each other” (2000a, 1). Bernstein (2008, 21-2) also takes the need to emphasize human self-reliance to be the “dominant theme” in Rorty’s work, and in that regard he talks about Rorty’s “deep humanism”. More specifically, in the Mirror Rorty came to assign to philosophy the role of an edifying, hermeneutical practice as opposed to its traditionally systematic and epistemological vocation. As for their difference, Rorty claims that “[e]pistemology views the participants [of discussion] as united in […] a universitas—a group united by mutual interests in achieving a common end. Hermeneutics views them as united in […] a societas—persons whose paths […] have fallen together, united by civility rather than by a common goal, much less by a common ground” (1980, 318). Hermeneutical philosophy so conceived has an important, although ‘civilian’—and thus, political—relevance. For a pluralist democracy is supposed to be ‘a community of communities’, a societas of a plurality of universitas, wherein neither a ‘common ground’ nor even a mutual interest in arriving at a consensus can be taken for granted. In such a context, a hermeneutical, conversational philosophy might play a socio-political role as the public practice of initiating and furthering conversation between more or less incommensurable views. Since the aim of such a practice consists not so much in achieving consensus, but rather, in sustaining the very process of conversation, it might further cohesion and help to avoid non-linguistic conflicts. This is an utterly political role, although it is primarily confined to serve peaceful coexistence within a pluralist society. It is later on that Rorty gives explicit voice to his more ambitious and less neutral claim that “what philosophers might do for democratic politics [is that they] get to work substituting hope for knowledge, substituting the idea that the ability to be citizens of a full-fledged democracy which is yet to come, rather than the ability to grasp truth, is what is important about being human. This is […] a matter of […] redescribing humanity and history in terms which makes democracy seem desirable” (Rorty 2000c, 3). Accordingly, in his posthumously published volume Rorty explicitly comes to regard philosophy as a practice in ‘cultural politics’. It consists in giving arguments, pro and contra, concerning linguistic practices (such as the usage of certain words, or whole topics of discussion) with the aim of promoting socio-political goals via an attempted change in a community’s linguistic practice (Rorty 2007a, 3). As opposed to his earlier view, then, Rorty finally admits the fact that a kind of politics constitutes the centre and essence of his philosophy, indeed. This is a politics of traditions and norms, which is “the site of generational revolt, and thus the growing point of culture” (ibid., 21). Hence, Rorty’s appeal to a historicist romanticism should be regarded as just such a cultural-political campaign, and it will not make much sense to those who understand philosophy in any other terms. References Bernstein, R. Rorty’s Inspirational Liberalism. In Ch. Guignon, D.R. Hiley (Eds.). Richard Rorty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 124-138, 2003. Bernstein, R. Richard Rorty’s Deep Humanism. New Literary History 39, No. 1, Winter, 13-27, 2008. Dewey, J. The Later Works. Vol. 14 (1939-41). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981. Putnam, H Renewing Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. 66 Rorty, R. (Ed.). The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Rorty, R. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Oxford (UK) – Cambridge (USA): Blackwell, 1980. Rorty, R. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Rorty, R. Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Rorty, R. Achieving Our Country. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1998a. Rorty, R., Nystrom, D., Puckett, K. Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 1998b. Rorty, R. Philosophy and Social Hope. London – New York: Penguin Books, 1999. Rorty, R. The Decline of Redemptive Truth and the Rise of a Literary Culture. http://olincenter. uchicago.edu/pdf/rorty.pdf 2000a. Rorty, R. Response to Jürgen Habermas. In R. Brandom (Ed.). Rorty and his Critics. Oxford: Blackwell, 56-64, 2000b. Rorty, R. Universality and Truth. In R. Brandom (Ed.). Rorty and his Critics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1-30, 2000c. Rorty, R. Response to Robert Brandom. In R. Brandom (Ed.). Rorty and his Critics. Oxford: Blackwell, 183-190, 2000d. Rorty, R. Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers IV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007a. Rorty, R. Democracy and Philosophy. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-11-rorty-en.html 2007b. Institute of Philosophy, University of Miskolc, Wesselényi u. 40, 1075 Budapest, Hungary Tel.: 36-20-543-1505 nyiro.miklos@chello.hu 67 

DEWEY AND RORTY ON DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION* Miklos Nyiro In this paper I’ll try to compare, even to contrast in some important respects, but also to adjust to one another the views of John Dewey and Richard Rorty on two interrelated topics, namely, democracy and education. Since Rorty has often been criticized for a kind of betrayal of the heritage of Dewey’s radical liberalism, it is advisable, first, to investigate to some extent the specifics of the notion of democracy Rorty may have entertained. Therefore, I begin with a short attempt at reconstructing what appears to be Rorty’s non/Deweyan, although latent, concept of democracy (1). One of the central features of Dewey’s views on democracy is the emphasis he has put on the model value of the experimental sciences for the publics. In the second section I concentrate on a recurring type of criticism leveled against that stance of his, and also Dewey’s possible answer to such a charge, namely, the one stressing the fact that a risk of the so called „tyranny of the ignorant” is inherent in his approach (2). Rorty’s main criticism over against Dewey arrives from a different angle, however. In the third section I try to demarcate one of the important points where Rorty decisively departs from some of the basic views of Dewey. I do so by briefly reconstructing Rorty’s philosophical objections against Dewey’s metaphysical project, and by summarizing his own starting point and some of the consequences of it for his alternative view of large scale community (3). Finally, I attempt to show that the main differences between Dewey’s and Rorty’s ideas on education are due to a large extent – in accordance with their enumerated views – to the differing role they ascribe to cooperation in community life (4). As an introductory note, first of all I’d like to emphasize the fact, however, that beyond all the differences one may find between Dewey’s and Rorty’s respective convictions and suggestions, there is a fundamental kinship between their intellectual outlook, a kinship due to their exceptional commitment and devotion to democracy, to progress in democratic institutions, as well as to the democratization of society. Both of these pragmatist philosophers are equally concerned with individuality and social freedom, and they are to a large extent in agreement, also, concerning the final goals of philosophical reflection and the ultimate role such a reflection might play regarding culture as a whole. With that in mind, and hoping to contribute to a possible exchange of ideas derived from the works of these two champions of democratic thought, rather than trying to show some alleged superiority of one of them at the expense of the other, now I turn to my topic. In his article titled „Democracy without Illusions? Rorty and Posner on Liberal Democracy,” the young Hungarian scholar György Pápay examines the following question: How eligible is it to criticize Rorty – as it had often been done1 – by saying that „he himself became a defender of social status quo, and thereby proved to betray the heritage of radical liberalism, above all that of John Dewey”?2 In answering that question, Pápay proceeds by showing that there are two important features of Dewey’s notion of democracy which are not shared by Rorty. The first of them is what Putnam regards as an „epistemic justification” of democracy.3 Such a justification would ultimately reside in the claim that it is democracy that can guarantee the most the appropriate conditions of „intelligently conducted inquiry”, the kind of inquiry desirable according to Dewey not only within the sciences but also in solving social problems. The second feature is Dewey’s vision of a „creative democracy”. Just as Dewey emphasizes cooperation in scientific inquiry and rejects all individualistic models of acquiring knowledge, he also stresses cooperation in political matters. Accordingly, his creative democracy demands as much participation of the citizens in political matters as possible, and therefore it regards democracy as a way of life – as opposed to the merely negative freedom warranted by democratic institutions. Rorty, in turn, is skeptical whenever form of „rationality” is being privileged and an attempt is made to show that democratic praxis and politics embody – or at least it is desirable that it embody – just that kind of rationality. Then again, it is quite obvious that Rorty emphasizes the sort of 1 negative freedom John Stuart Mill had advocated, and that he regards the institutional guarantees of democracy as of primary importance, without exhorting an extensive participation of citizens in public matters. The contrast between Dewey and Rorty regarding these two issues seems to be fairly clear, and the main question is whether one can find plausible reasons for Rorty’s obvious departure from these aspects of Dewey’s notion of democracy. One of the obstacles in answering this question is the fact that Rorty’s views on democracy are generally not elaborated systematically – it is characteristic of him, indeed, that he refers to „liberal democracy” mostly in broad terms. However, as Pápay attempts to show, there is a conception of democracy – namely, that of the practicing judge and jurisprudent professor Richard Posner4 – that seems to challenge to a considerable extent the views of Dewey, that conception is in accord – at least in some important respects – with Rorty’s pertaining views. It is not my intention here to present Posner’s approach extensively. Few points will suffice. Posner differentiates between Concept I and Concept II democracy, which more or less correspond to a deliberative and a competitive notion of democracy, respectively (and I will refer to the two concepts by using the latter names). Deliberative notions of democracy – such as Dewey’s, Hannah Arendt’s republicanism, and other, contemporary theories of it – tend to have a rather normative aspect. They characteristically prefer political participation on the citizens part as opposed to, or at least besides, their representation, and accordingly build upon more or less well/informed citizens who are also willing to get directly involved in public issues. Therefore, as Posner claims, they ascribe moral rights – such as that of participating on equal terms in governmental work – corresponding moral requirements (if not duties or responsibilities) to the citizens. Moreover, deliberative conceptions tend to favor the kind of discussion that is consensus/oriented and is pursued with public interest in view. For Posner, such conceptions are inspired rather theoretically, being regulated by some kind of a vision. As opposed to them, the so called competitive model of democracy tries to take extant social praxises as its starting/point. It is a rather practically/oriented notion also in the sense that it takes into account and builds upon individual, selfish, often utterly a/political, interests, instead of proceeding from a requirement to recognize interests of the narrower or broader community, or society itself. In general, this approach is skeptical toward the demand of consensus, takes into account the limits of discussion, and thinks of democracy – accordingly – as being fundamentally pervaded by conflicts. On this account, it is not adequate to regard the system of representation as a field where social conflicts are to be resolved by means of discussion aiming at consensus, but rather, it should be seen as a procedural system which operates on the principle of trial and error Such a competitive view – as opposed to the deliberative one – demands much less of political activity on the part of the voters, and devotes much more attention to the institutional dimensions of democracy. As a whole, the competitive model is much less idealistic, less normative, less illusion/laden, and more accepting than the deliberative ones, whereas the latter typically tend to display a certain impatience toward existing conditions and practices. As I see the matter, Pápay is justified in claiming that Rorty’s views „on several points advocate, or even explicitly presuppose a pragmatic notion of democracy in a Posnerian sense.”5 Rorty’s emphasis on the public/private distinction, on the incommensurability of so called „final vocabularies”, and again, the fact that instead of stressing consensus he takes into account the unavoidable conflicts among group/interests, and that he urges proceeding from extant political practices and institutions over against normative social theories, etc. – all these seem to testify to that claim. From this perspective, then, it is advisable to acknowledge the fact that Rorty’s departure from important notions in Dewey’s vision of democracy might be due to a deliberate commitment of his to an of conception of democracy. It is also important to note, however, that this account corresponds only – as Pápay is well aware of it – to the „more pragmatic, less illusion/laden side” of Rorty, at the expense of the „more romantic, utopian” Rorty who exaggerates hope in democracy into a kind of civil religion.6 !" # $ % 2 In his paper titled „Representative Democracy, Participatory Democracy, and the Trajectory of Social Transformation” Larry Hickman calls attention to the fact that controversies pertaining to the question of deliberative versus so called competitive democracy are not at all something new, and that Dewey himself was also engaged in a debate, one with Walter Lipmann during the 1920’s, where the case at issue was the more or less same topic, namely, the question of representative democracy versus participatory democracy. One of the highly important upshots of Hickman’s reconstruction is that Dewey „had […] argued for [a dynamic] balance or reciprocity between participatory and representative dimensions of democracy that anticipated some of the basic concepts of what contemporary political theorists now term »deliberative democracy«. But […] Dewey went well beyond most contemporary treatments of deliberative democracy in ways that anticipated some of the thinking behind some of the more radical experiments in participatory democracy […].”7 As Hickman points out, Dewey argued for the indispensability of the experimental potential of exercises within both the participatory the representative dimensions of democracy, precisely in order to secure the desirable, continual renewal and mutual adjustment of these two dimensions. Dewey’s idea of democracy is comprehensive. It goes far beyond mere „political democracy”, and includes „a democracy of rights”, „social democracy”, and also „economic democracy”, where „the first theme lays out the basis for representative democracy – Hickman emphasizes –, but the remaining three themes lay out the conditions under which participatory democracy can be engendered and fostered.”8 To that extent, these ideals also embody an implicit critique of corporate capitalism, as well as an „implicit formula of redress” (Hickman). As far as I see, Rorty is no less explicit on the need to conceive democracy in such a broad, Deweyan terms. Instead of explicitly referring here to the pertaining aspects of his work, I’d like only to mention that in one of his last talks he has differentiated between „two distinct meanings” of the word „democracy”, namely, between what he calls „constitutionalism,” and in turn, „egalitarianism”, corresponding more or less to Dewey’s first and the other three aspects of democracy. „In its narrower, minimalist meaning [the term ’democracy’] refers to a system of government in which power is in the hands of freely elected officials. I shall call democracy in this sense ’constitutionalism’ – Rorty writes. In its wider sense, it refers to a social ideal, that of equality of opportunity. In this second sense, a democracy is a society in which all children have the same chances in life, and in which nobody suffers from being born poor, or being the descendant of slaves, or being female, or being homosexual. I shall call democracy in this sense ’egalitarianism’.”9 To my mind, then, no one who is concerned in democratization can find anything objectionable in these that is, in the emphasis laid on the need to go beyond the merely political democracy of constitutionalism, and the need to extend those ideals to the spheres of rights, economy, and society as a whole in the spirit of egalitarianism. And for that reason, the question of difference between these two thinkers concerning the issue of democracy is not so much that of ends, but – perhaps – of means. As opposed to most of the contemporary proponents of deliberative democracy, Dewey thought – using the words of Larry Hickman – that „deliberation must go beyond conversation and debate to include matters that are at basis technoscientific.”10 Since he was committed above all to experimental methods in the sciences, and he thought that „the methodological successes of the sciences […] in large measure depend on dynamic reciprocity between participation and representation” (Hickman), therefore, this reciprocal relation within the communities of scientific inquiry served for him as a model for informing other democratic practices, eventually most part of the public sphere. Cornel West, in his said that to the changes taking place in Dewey’s time – such as population shifts, the rise of industrial capitalism and increasing immigration, etc. – he basically responded by stressing three points: the need of radical journalism; association with WASP efforts to amalgamate the immigrants; and urging reform and leadership in teaching and education.11 3 In Hickman’s account, the first and third of these points appear also as the most important means on the ground of which one is to reject the key argument in Lipmann’s advocacy of an elitist version of representative democracy – the claim that „the intelligence and skills of citizens were insufficient (or unnecessary) to provide the basis for the choices that would determine the shape of community life and the activities of various publics, including the state” (Hickman). Dewey’s extended experimentalism, his call for improved education and radical journalism, are supposed to reinforce one another. West’s criticism of Dewey includes – among others – the charge that his ideal of democracy is that of the small homogeneous community, not the new, urban, heterogeneous society of the U.S.12 Hickman addresses the same issue when he takes into account a possible criticism of the model value of experimental sciences for the publics, the criticism according to which scientific communities are relatively narrow, having more or less well defined interests and norms, which is not the case in politics. The problem he deals with, however, is that extensive participation in the public fields runs the risk of „the tyranny of the ignorant” (Phillip Kitcher), the risk that significant questions may be undervalued, as well as „methods that threaten to terminate deliberation” may gain importance. In reconstructing Dewey’s possible answer to that matter, Hickman refers to two arguments. First, to a „preclusionary one” that basically limits the scope of participation in deliberative democracies, and it does so on the ground that there are norms of deliberation – which arise out of democratic practices and remain revisable if necessary. The second, „inclusionary argument” resides in Dewey’s philosophy of education. Before we turn to the problem of education, however, we must ponder – I’d like to suggest – whether the problem of the model value of small homogeneous communities, such as the scientific ones, is or is not exhausted by that of „the tyranny of the ignorant”, that is to say, whether or not there are obstacles to the creation of a well operating and as much participatory as representative public sphere other than ignorance or lack of willingness within one and the same community. & ' () % * + In (1927) Dewey spoke about „the great community” and took into account as such obstacles to its creation mainly the followings: popular cultural diversions, bureaucratization of politics, geographical mobility, and cultural lag in ideals and communication. This is a point where – as I see it – Rorty decisively the general perspective of Dewey. For his very starting point – as it is first displayed in his ! " without mentioning critically his intellectual hero, Dewey – is the distinction between what he calls commensuration and conversation, i.e. commensurable and non/ commensurable, „normal” and „abnormal” discourses. This distinction corresponds in philosophy to the epistemological and hermeneutical discourses according to Rorty, where „epistemology proceeds on the assumption that all contributions to a given discourse are commensurable, [whereas] hermeneutics is largely a struggle against this assumption.”13 The point is that these two types of discoursing correspond to , one concerned with inquiry, and the other concerned with something which is more elementary, and pragmatically or existentially prior to the otherwise desirable democratic interest in inquiry, that is, with peaceful coexistence. „Epistemology views the participants of discussion as united in […] an # a group united by mutual interests [and norms, one should add – M. Ny.] in achieving a common end – Rorty writes. Hermeneutics views them as united in […] a # persons whose paths through life have fallen together, , much less by a common ground.”14 From this perspective, the greatness of Dewey’s „great community” resides not so much in an ideal of a cooperative community of inquiring citizens, but rather in a kind of pluralist democracy which is „a community of communities”: a of a plurality of wherein neither a „common ground” nor even a mutual interest in arriving at a consensus can be taken for granted. And this means that the two philosophers, Dewey and Rorty address of the problems, where these levels do not at all exclude one another, but rather, the second one emerges beyond, or on the top of the first, and in that sense presupposes includes it. Regarding the relation between epistemology and hermeneutics Rorty writes, indeed, that „it seems clear that 4 .”15 Accordingly – and put in a rather simplistic way –, all that Dewey said regarding democracy could remain intact and valid within the frames of Rorty’s neopragmatism, as far as more or less homogenous communities are concerned. As to the coexistence of heterogeneous communities, however, the hermeneutically inspired pragmatism of Rorty should come into play. What I’d like to suggest, then, is that Rorty’s approach does not deny or exclude of the practically important aspects of Dewey’s philosophy. Although Dewey doesn’t seem to, because for historical reasons he could not, take into account plurality in the sense that is central to Rorty’s post/ Kuhnian and post/Heideggerian work, namely, radical incommensurability, Rorty never criticizes him on that ground. In the articles devoted explicitly to Dewey, the only really important critique is – as I have shown it elsewhere16 – what Rorty levels against Dewey’s constructive attempt to give a kind of metaphysics of experience and nature. The reason for critique is that Dewey’s project, in its attempt to give non/dualistic accounts of phenomena by finding „continuities between lower and higher processes”17 – very reminiscent, by the way, of his early panpsychism –, tries to dissolve both spirit and nature that merges them in the one and perpetual process of „evolving,” a way that acknowledges differences only in degree. As opposed to such an approach, in the ! Rorty devotes a chapter to the Spirit/Nature distinction, and says: „Nature is whatever is so routine and familiar and manageable that we trust our own language implicitly. Spirit is whatever is so unfamiliar and unmanageable that we begin to wonder […] our vocabulary, and not just our assertions.”18 Clearly, at stake is something that is of For the difference between Dewey and Rorty on this point is the difference between emphasizing , due to intelligent reconstruction of our practices, and emphasizing the possibility of of personality as a whole, of becoming an other person, via redescribing ourselves and creating or choosing a new „final vocabulary” and thereby a new self. „The notion that the empirical self could be turned over to the sciences of nature, but that the transcendental self, which constitutes the phenomenal world and (perhaps) functions as a moral agent, could not, has indeed done as much as anything else to make the spirit/nature distinction meaningful”19 – a distinction Rorty finds it important to adhere to (although to a pragmatic reformulation of that metaphysical distinction), precisely for its moral impact. For the Deweyan notions of evolving and growth, fundamental as they are in his thought, suggest only continual alteration, rather than a possible, overall, qualitative change.20 , * - Now, there can be no doubt that both Dewey and Rorty assign to education a decisive role in democracy. As we saw it, Dewey’s answer to the problem of „the tyranny of the ignorant” is twofold: direct preclusion indirect inclusion via education. Rorty agrees with both. He writes: „There are credentials for admission to our democratic society […]. You have to be in order to be a citizen of our society, a participant in our conversation […].”21 There are some important differences, however, regarding the way they conceive the role of education, respectively. In his Dewey – in his own words – „connects the growth of democracy with the development of the experimental method in the sciences, evolutionary ideas in the biological sciences, and the industrial reorganization, and points out the change in […] education indicated by these developments.”22 From these achievements he extracts the notions central to his educational – and democratic – philosophy, namely, experimentalism, growth, and reconstruction. He says, for example: „Since growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself.”23 „The idea of education advanced […] is formally summed up in the idea of continuous reconstruction of experience […].”24 „The result of the educative process is capacity for further education.”25 Or elsewhere: „What Humanism means to me is an expansion, not a contraction, of human life, an $ in which nature and the science of nature are made the willing servants of human good.”26 5 Compared to Dewey’s perhaps somewhat one/sided emphasis on the continuity of organic interaction, and growth in the sense of intelligent reconstruction of experience – the importance of which is nowhere called into doubt by Rorty, of course –, in his educational writings Rorty puts forward the difference between two tasks of education which do not stand in such a continuity, but rather, mostly clash with one another, namely, socialization and individualization. It should be realized – he warns –, that „education is not a continuous process from age 5 to age 22. […] the word ’education’ covers two entirely distinct, and equally necessary, processes – socialization and individualization. [It is but a] trap of thinking that a single set of ideas will work for both high school and college education.”27 Although Dewey was obviously well aware of these aspects of education, the very fact that he described the process and the end of education growth, formation of habits, perpetual reconstruction, etc., seems already to imply that it is the aspect of socialization, rather than that of individualization – in the radical sense, as Rorty has it in view –, that concerned him more. The following words of Rorty on the theme of edification are especially telling if we read them with Dewey’s notion of education in mind: „I shall use »edification « to stand for [the] project of finding new, … more fruitful ways of speaking. The attempt to edify […] may consist in the hermeneutic activity of between our own culture […] or discipline and another [culture or] discipline which seems to pursue incommensurable aims in an incommensurable vocabulary. But it may instead consist in the »poetic« activity of such new aims, new words, or new disciplines […]. In either case, the activity is […] # % & ' For edifying discourse is to be abnormal, to take us out of our old selves by the power of strangeness, to aid us in becoming new beings.”28 Exercise in edifying, abnormal discourse is less cooperative and more individualistic, yet, it can serve equally well both making connections between people holding incommensurable views, and coming up with something incommensurably new. „Hermeneutics is not »another way of knowing« … . It is better seen as of (') * – Rorty stresses.29 In turn, it is poetic activity in a broad sense which introduces whatever is originally new. * Thus, when we compare Dewey’s and Rorty’s overall approach, it is not the ends – as we said already –, but not even the means that differ significantly. It is rather the emphasis that shifts considerably. This shift is displayed in their case for example in that from accent laid on reconstruction of experience to that laid on redescription of practices; from accent laid on intelligence, and education in experimentalism to that laid on imagination, and education in humanities; from accent laid on the technoscientific aspect of deliberation to that laid on the issue of moral progress. And such a shift is prompted – in my view – not so much by the need of the growth of democracy, but above all by the need to secure peaceful coexistence, and thereby the very survival of democracy itself, in the midst of the plurality of individuals and communities holding more or less incommensurable views. NOTES * This work was supported by the MTA/TKI, the OTKA / project No. K 76865 /, and was carried out as part of the TÁMOP/4.2.2/B/10/1/2010/0008 project in the framework of the New Hungarian Development Plan. The realization of this project is supported by the European Union, co/financed by the European Social Fund. 1. György Pápay, „Democracy without Illusions? Rorty and Posner on Liberal Democracy”. In. Miklós Nyírı ed., + ,,. - . / . 0 [ 1 2 , 0 ] Budapest, L’Harmattan, 2010, pp. 94/109. 2. Pápay refers to the following two articles written by important critics of Rorty: Richard Bernstein, „One Steps Forward, Two Steps Backward. Richard Rorty on Liberal Democracy and Philosophy.” 15. 6 (1987) p. 540.; Thomas McCarthy, „Ironist Theory as a Vocation. A Response to Rorty’s Reply.” 3 4 16. (1990) p. 655. 3. See Hilary Putnam, „A Reconsideration of Deweyan Democracy.” In. his . Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1992. 4. See Richard Posner, 5 Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2003. 5. György Pápay, ibid. p. 104. 6. Ibid. p. 109. 7. Larry A. Hickman, „Representative Democracy, Participatory Democracy, and the Trajectory of Social Transformation” [henceforth: „RDPD”]. In. John Ryder and Radim Sip eds., 1 Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume Five, Amsterdam / New York, NY, Rodopi Press, 2011, p. 174. 8. Larry A. Hickman, „RDPD”, p. 175. 9. Richard Rorty, „Democracy and philosophy ” In. 6 76 $ 34 (May) 2007. 10. Larry A. Hickman, „RDPD”, p. 176. 11. Cornel West, : 2 Wisconsin, 1989, pp. 80/ 85. 12. Ibid. pp. 101/2. 13. Richard Rorty, ! " Oxford (UK) / Cambridge (USA), Blackwell, 1980 (henceforth: !") pp. 315/16. 14. Ibid. p. 318. [Emphasis added – M. Ny.] 15. Richard Rorty, !" p. 346. [Emphasis added – M. Ny.] 16. Miklós Nyírı, „Rorty, Dewey, and the Issue of Metaphysics.” Summer 2010, http://www.pragmatismtoday.eu/summer2010 17. Richard Rorty, „Dewey Between Hegel and Darwin.” In. Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. ed., 7 8 3 Nashville/London, Vanderbilt University Press, 1995, p. 4. 18. Richard Rorty, !" pp. 352/3. 19. Ibid. p. 343. 20. On this difference, explicitly drawn also by Gadamer in contrasting the Kantian notion of culture with the Humboldtian and more generally humanist notion of 9 see Gadamer’s chapter on 9 in his ! 21. Richard Rorty, „Universality and Truth,” in. Robert B. Brandom ed., 3 Oxford, Blackwell, 2000, p. 22. [Italics are in the original – M. Ny.] 22. John Dewey, Preface. ! : ;<==>;=?@ A = Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press, p. 3. 23. Ibid. p. 59. 24. Ibid. p. 86. 25. Ibid. p. 74. 26. John Dewey, „What Humanism Means to Me,” first published in ? (June 1930): 9/12. Dewey: Page lw.5.266, 3 : B ;<<?>;=CD The Electronic Edition. 27. Richard Rorty, 1 8 London/New York, Penguin Books, 1999, p. 117. 28. Richard Rorty, !" p. 360. Emphases are mine – M. Ny. 29. Ibid. p. 356. 7