Rorty and Beyond

The key organizing theme of Rorty and Beyond, edited by Randall Auxier, Eli Kramer, and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, is—as the title suggests—to consider what pragmatism and philosophy are and could be in a post-Rorty world. As Auxier puts it in his preface to the volume of 19 papers (including the introduction), “no one can deny that the world we now write in is one in which Rorty defined what pragmatism would be, and what it has become. To write beyond Rorty is to address a world whose idea of pragmatism was formed by his work” (x). And, in his introduction to the volume, Eli Kramer suggests that Rorty is best seen as a “transitional philosophical figure,” one who “heralded and inspired a shift in philosophy from one paradigm to another,” but whose own position is “no longer useful or very threatening” (2). My general aim in this review is to consider whether and how well the volume as a whole succeeds at plotting and navigating the contours of a philosophical landscape shaped by Rorty's work and influence.After a preface by one of the editors (Auxier) and an introduction by another (Kramer), the volume is divided into six parts, each with two to four chapters. Aside from the section headings provided by the editors, it is not readily apparent what brings together the chapters in each of the six parts. I offer my own suggestions here, in hopes that it proves helpful for a reader considering this volume for their own research or teaching purposes, before turning to some of the noteworthy chapters.“Part 1: Take Care of the Future and the Past Will Take Care of Itself” brings together three chapters, each of which, in its own way, considers the tools Rorty uses and thus makes available for thinking about our futures, namely, provocation (Sartwell, chapter 1, which I explore in greater detail below); dystopian narratives that, when “pervaded by a sense of contingency of the events they describe” (39) help us see and respond to the consequences of our actions (Małecki, chapter 2); and edification, which can be paired with theology, against Rorty's secularist intentions, to make room for “the unexpected, the unforeseen, and the strange” (Madzia, chapter 3, 55).Each of the three chapters in “Part 2: Method and Madness” points to a piece of the puzzle that the authors think is missing in Rorty's work, such as persuasion, which is the sociopolitical dimension of redescription (Skowroński, chapter 4); a pragmatic philosophy of social science, which is the baby Rorty throws out with the bathwater of the correspondence theory of truth and knowledge and the representational theory of mind (Hogan, chapter 5); and truth, Rorty's abandonment of which impedes our attempts to achieve dialogue and peace (Kilanowski, chapter 6).In “Part 3: Democracy and Its Discontents,” four contributors consider the relative fecundity or barrenness of Rorty's political thought, from his failure to develop a conception of concrete social action (Kegley, chapter 7), to his tendency to speak about other cultures “as likely to be inferior in serious ways and as not really worth treating as possible sources of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom” (Ryder, chapter 8; 120); from the poverty of his story of American liberal democracy (Stikkers, chapter 9, which I explore further below), to the fact that he misses something that Dewey does not, namely, that solidarity can and should lead to the reconstruction of individualism (Bell, chapter 10).The two chapters that comprise “Part 4: Nature, Knowing, and Naturalisms” engage Rorty's naturalism, including one chapter that aims to formulate a philosophical naturalism that includes notions the author admits Rorty likely would be uncomfortable with: life-world, common sense, and human nature (Gronda, chapter 11), and another that contends that Rorty's criticism of “neo-Carnapian” cognitive science can be productively reoriented as a criticism against what the author calls “evolutionary-something-ists,” that is, evolutionary anthropologists, psychologists, linguists, and sociobiologists (Niestrój, chapter 12; 170).“Part 5: Representations and Other Mirrors” includes three chapters that explore Rorty's engagement with the analytic tradition, broadly conceived, including his apparent reliance on the subject-object split, in spite of his laudable writing style (Radim Šíp, chapter 13); the construction of a typology that connects Rorty's division between mental and causal vocabularies to his division between abnormal and normal discourse in order to show that persuasion's primary role relates to incommensurable mental vocabularies (Nyírő, chapter 14); and Rorty's mistaken bifurcation between edifying and systematic philosophy, a bifurcation the author argues is unnecessary when we see philosophy itself as a moment in the process of natural evolution (Stovall, chapter 15).Three chapters comprise “Part 6: Logic, Truth, and Progress,” the final section of the volume. One provides a Rortyan approach to teaching formal logic (Beisecker, chapter 16, explored in further detail below). Another defends Rorty's claim that appeals to “the truth” make no practical difference to belief but also goes further to suggest that “encountered realities make all the practical difference” (Shook, chapter 17; 267). The final chapter of the volume contends that there needs to be an alternative to Rortyan irony, which gives way “to the self-undermining consequences of an unwarranted degree of moral self-doubt” (Auxier, chapter 18; 278).The chapters noted above—chapter 1 in Part 1, chapter 9 in Part 3, and chapter 16 in Part 6—are each worth a few extra words. The opening chapter, “Bad Boy of Philosophy” by Crispin Sartwell—one of Rorty's supervisees—is a piece that builds upon some of his earlier writings about Rorty. Sartwell suggests that Rorty was a provocateur who aimed to achieve—and was very successful in his attempts to achieve—the reactions he received from fellow philosophers, those who were “turning red in the face, gesticulating wildly, pouring out vituperation so quickly that they were choking on their words” (20). Indeed, Sartwell suggests, Rorty was not just a provocateur; he was nearly a stand-up comedian: “many twentieth-century philosophers held for one reason or another, or in one way or another, that philosophy was misguided, impossible, or over. I'm not sure anyone else put forward this view in a stand-up routine” (25). Sartwell's piece provides valuable insight into Rorty as a person and as a philosopher, and the choice to have this chapter open the volume is itself provocative; it casts a long shadow over the rest of the volume by prompting one to ask whether (at least some of) the chapters that follow take Rorty too seriously.Though most of the chapters in part 3 rehearse criticisms familiar to an engaged scholar of Rorty's work, chapter 9—“We Liberal, Ironic Hypocrites: Situating Rorty in the History of American Democratic Thought”—provides a novel approach to evaluating Rorty's work, in part because it takes Rorty's method seriously and responds to it on its own terms; Stikkers offers “an alternative story of liberal democracy, especially in the American context, a story which includes Rorty's own telling of it” (130). Stikkers's counter-narrative, one that begins “from the perspectives of Africana peoples” (131), aims to show that Rorty is working from an impoverished story of American liberal democracy, one that fails to recognize “the myriad of contestations within it” (134) and cannot “sustain commitment to and even willingness to die for democratic ideals” (138). This counter-narrative presents an important challenge to scholars interested in Rorty's conception of liberal democracy in the American context, one that hopefully will be met by future scholarship on the topic.Finally, David Beisecker's contribution, in chapter 16, is a pleasantly surprising contribution, in that it demonstrates a serious effort to bring Rorty's insights to practice, and in an unexpected context: teaching formal logic. “Logic Beyond the Looking Glass” imagines and describes what a pragmatist logic that doesn't drive us to any metaphysical or epistemological commitments might look like. The proffered alternative is “pleasantly Rortyan, in that it dispenses with ‘vertical’ world-language connections in favor of ‘horizontal’ language-language relationships” (240). I can't say with anything resembling certainty whether this is an approach that will or will not catch on, but it does open up new routes along which Rorty scholarship would benefit from travelling.Overall, this volume is uneven in terms of how well it meets its own stated aims. Some chapters give Rorty's work and influence a central role, whereas others take the opportunity instead to prop up one of his interlocutors. Some chapters seem to get Rorty (largely) right, whereas others are less concerned with getting Rorty right or examining Rorty's work or influence at any length. Very few chapters engage with the rapidly growing secondary literature on Rorty, and most are quite short, some coming in at less than ten pages, which leaves the reader wondering what valuable insights might have been provided had contributors been afforded more space.The chapters also tackle very different aspects of Rorty's thought. This demonstrates the breadth of Rorty's own work as well as his influence, and it is a credit to the editors to bring together thinkers with such diverse interests. However, it means a reader is unlikely to find the entire volume useful for their own purposes, whatever they may be. Though there are undoubtedly valuable contributions to Rorty scholarship in these pages, given the rapidly growing secondary literature noted above, it is possible this volume will be overshadowed by other recent and forthcoming volumes that more carefully and thoroughly engage Rorty's work and influence

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