Richard Rorty RIP

Observed in the Times obituaries that philosopher and literary theorist Richard Rorty has passed away. Although someone confessedly interested in ideas on life I normally struggle through actual works (other than say Fontana series on thinkers, Betrand Russel's History of Western Philosophy) and swiftly end up falling into that somnolent land effected on a glum winter's day on the blue covered area of the old overheated British Library reading room. My mind can take endless facts, dates etc but theory after theory after theoretical framework in dense sentences sometimes is too much.

I was encouraged, however to read 'Contingency, Irony and Solidarity' a few years back and it did enliven me through its argument that literature is a surer way to revealing truth than any other art or science. Addressing the theme of human cruelty, how it arises from our rational facility to posit metaphysical questions and the ability for each of us to believe our own self-justificatory narratives, the work came alive when touching on the work of Orwell and Nabokov. Rorty urged that the acknowledgement of another's suffering is sometimes the greatest act of compassion we are capable of.

Building on the concepts of pragmatism set out by his hero, Dewey, he argued that instead of seeking ideas which correspond to some fundamental reality, we should settle for ones which help us carry out practical tasks and create a fairer and more democratic society.

Rorty noted that his initial hope of achieving a single vision of an historical truth by becoming a philosopher had ultimately proved to be “a self-deceptive atheist’s way out”.

Rorty did not regret becoming a philosopher though. It prevented him, he thought, from imagining that there was “a luminous synoptic vision” of the truth. His own vision of the truth, like Dewey’s, was of a community in which everyone thinks that it is human solidarity, rather than knowledge of something not really human, that mattered.

“There are no transcendent answers,” he insisted. “Each of us must reach our own conclusions about life, and try to respect the differences among us.”

Characteristically, Rorty took a close interest in conflict. He thought that when groups found themselves at odds with each other, philosophical discussion would usually not help in resolving their differences. It would never “convince bullies not to beat him up” or “capitalists to cede their power to a co-operative, egalitarian commonwealth”.

Groups had very different vocabularies, he suggested, and the best one could do was to show the other side how it looked from your point of view while at the same time imaginatively identifying with the other’s pain.

It was, then, the artist and the poet who could best elicit peace between groups by demonstrating that there was vulnerability to which all human beings can relate.

Hear hear. Or in Auden's words:

"What they call history
is nothing to vaunt of
being made as it is
by the criminal in us.
Goodness is timeless."