[7.2.] “Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism” (1999).

 

Our final reading by Rorty, and our final reading of the semester, is an article that appeared in the journal Revue Internationale de Philosophie in 1999, in which Rorty compares pragmatism to anti-authoritarianism.

 

[7.2.1.] Anti-Authoritarianism.

 

Within politics and government, authoritarianism is a

 

principle of [unthinking] submission to authority, as opposed to individual freedom of thought and action. In government, authoritarianism denotes any political system that concentrates power in the hands of a leader or a small elite that is not constitutionally responsible to the body of the people. Authoritarian leaders often exercise power arbitrarily and without regard to existing bodies of law, and they usually cannot be replaced by citizens choosing freely among various competitors in elections. The freedom to create opposition political parties or other alternative political groupings with which to compete for power with the ruling group is either limited or nonexistent in authoritarian regimes.[1]

 

Anti-authoritarianism is opposition to this sort of system of government.

 

Rorty uses the notions of authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism in broader ways, so that they are not specifically about systems of human government, but about human beings being subject to the authority of something beyond themselves. So, he defines “authoritarianism” as follows:

 

authoritarianism (Rorty’s df.): “the idea that human beings must humble themselves before something non-human, whether the Will of God or the Intrinsic Nature of Reality.” (658)

·         Accordingly, as Rorty defines anti-authoritarianism, it is the rejection of this idea, and Rorty views pragmatism as a form of anti-authoritarianism.

·         In particular, Rorty views James and Dewey as having accepted (what he calls) anti-representationalism (having a belief is not a matter of having a representation of the world in one’s mind, and having a true belief is not a matter of having an accurate representation), and he takes anti-representationalism to be a variety of anti-authoritarianism.

 

Rorty begins the article by drawing an analogy between pragmatism’s rejection of Truth (note the upper-case “T”) and the Enlightenment’s rejection of religious morality:

 

·         The Enlightenment[2] rejected (a) the idea that morality is correspondence with the will of God and (b) the idea of sin. Analogously…

·         Pragmatism (especially Dewey) rejects (a) representationalism (about belief in general and about true belief in particular) and (b) the idea of falsehood as failure to represent Reality accurately. [Note the uppercase “R” in “Reality.”]

 

He views each of these developments as an instance of anti-authoritarianism.

 

 

[7.2.2.] Secular Religion: Morality without God.

 

Clearly, Rorty admires both types of anti-authoritarianism and is committed to atheism.

 

But he draws on Dewey’s social and political philosophy to formulate a view that is itself somewhat religious, albeit thoroughly secular.

 

It is captured in the following statement: “the point of a human life is free cooperation with fellow humans.” (658)

·         “[W]hole-hearted pursuit of the democratic ideal requires us to set aside any authority save that of a consensus of our fellow humans.” (658)

·         We have a “duty to seek unforced agreement with other human beings about what beliefs will sustain and facilitate projects of social cooperation.” (658) [This sounds weirdly circular... we have a duty to cooperate to reach agreement about, i.e., to arrive at shared beliefs about, which beliefs will help us cooperate!]

 

In rejecting the idea of Sin, Rorty is not rejecting morality itself. He intimates that it is legitimate “to be appalled by the way human beings treat each other, and by [our] capacity for vicious actions.” (658)

 

But such feelings don’t amount to a feeling of Sin. To have a feeling of Sin,

 

[y]ou have to believe that there is a Being before whom we should humble ourselves. This Being issues commands which, even if they seem arbitrary and unlikely to increase human happiness, must be obeyed. When trying to acquire a sense of Sin, it helps a lot if you can manage to think of a specific sexual or dietary practice as forbidden, even though it does not seem to be doing anybody any harm. It also helps to anguish about whether you are calling the divine Being by the

name he or she prefers. (658-59)

 

(Rorty will soon have more to say about what I have called his secular religion, when he explains Dewey’s attempt to reconcile science and religion.)

 

 

[7.2.3.] Pragmatism: truth without “Correspondence to Reality.”

 

Rorty denies that there is “Truth” (note the upper-case initial “T”), in the sense of sentences that represent “Reality as it is in itself” (note the upper-case initial “R”).

 

But to deny that there is Truth (correspondence with Reality), we do not have to stop “adjust[ing] [our] behavior to the environment: to come in when it rains, or to shun bears.” (659) We can reject Truth and Reality while still believing in rain and bears and seeking to avoid both of them.

 

What we can’t believe is that there is a Reality that “looms behind such things—something august [‘marked by majestic dignity or grandeur’[3]] and remote.” (659)

 

We can believe that Elizabeth I died in 1603 and that she did not die in 1623. We can even say things like “it is true that Elizabeth I died in 1603” and “it is false that she died in 1623.”

 

But what we should not say is that a true sentence is true because it “accurately represents the way Reality is in itself” and that a false sentence is false because it fails to do this. (660)

 

In the same way, we should recognize that we should not be cruel. And this is a lot clearer than the claim that there is a God who commands us not to be cruel. Just as we can have morality without God, we can have true sentences without correspondence to (upper-case “R”) Reality.

 

 

 

Stopping point for Friday November 18. For next time, finish reading Rorty’s “Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism” (667-72).