[MD] Rorty and Mysticism

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Dave,

Dave said:
I disagree with the suggestion that I need a more "sensitive" 
understanding before I should be allowed to dislike Richard Rorty. I'd 
certainly be open to any specific corrections, but I don't think you've 
ever articulated any such thing, none that I find intelligible anyway.

Matt:
Well, certainly we can dislike whomever for whatever, but I guess I 
just wish a more sensitive understanding of Rorty's position than 
you've given in writing before disliking him on the stage of 
philosophical disagreement.  I specifically mean the understanding 
you've articulated in your essay in the moq.org Essay Forum, which 
is the most extended critical treatment you've given him (that I'm 
aware of).  At the time it was written, you cordially sent me a copy.  
And at that time, I made a few marginal comments in Word in the 
academic style of constructive pressure for greater excellence.  
Rather than aggressively pursue a counter-attack, which has only 
ever been your mode of conversation, I tried to highlight, as a 
dialogic partner, the pieces I thought were the weaker parts of your 
argument and what questions or considerations might make those 
pieces better.

As an example, when you announced that the essay of Rorty's that 
you would be investigating as a foil for James was "Text and Lumps," 
I wrote:

"This is a strange choice (though I understand selections of 
convenience) and I would suggest that 'Texts and Lumps' doesn’t give 
a very subtle summation of Rorty’s thoughts about truth, nor give you 
a really good backdrop with which to attack him on this score.  In 
ORT, 'Solidarity or Objectivity?' and the introduction to the book 
provide better, more nuanced summaries that might give you better 
meat to digest, something that looks less flimsy to fight against."

"Specific corrections" don't help, Dave, because we seem to have 
very different understandings of when we are saying something 
"correct" about Rorty: I have on many occasions over these many 
years tried a direct approach of "correcting" elements of your 
understanding of Rorty that just seem false, but you always spin 
away by explaining why you aren't.  C'est la vie, but that only 
leaves me with the ability to suggest other things of Rorty you might 
read yourself in the hopes that they might help you better articulate 
your dislike.  Because as it stands, in my (apparently unintelligible) 
estimation, your dislike is based on a less-than-good understanding.

Here are two more examples from your paper.  During your 
conclusion, you say two things I commented upon.  Your penultimate 
paragraph begins:

"As I read it, Rorty’s central thesis in 'Texts and Lumps' is predicated 
on the existence of an epistemic gap between us and reality. The 
Radical Empiricism of James and Pirsig, by contrast is like Dewey’s 
empiricism. 'No transcendental gaps are posited; we are of nature, 
live with nature' (Hildebrand 2003, 60). This has the magical effect 
of making some of the most serious problems of traditional 
epistemology disappear. It doesn’t give answers to old riddles. It 
simply dissolves the questions. 'This obviates the need to argue for 
"access" to reality by insisting that this access is something we find 
we already possess' (Hildebrand 2003, 154). Hildebrand was referring 
to Dewey in both of these statements but my contention is that it 
applies equally well to our radical empiricists. They are not saying that 
they’ve found a way to cross the gap between subjective experience 
and the objective world. Nor are they saying that it is an impossible 
gap. They’re saying there is no gap."

I commented:

"I think you need to do more work in explicating why you think Rorty 
has this predication and is not in the business of dissolving, especially 
given that Rorty describes his whole attitude to the philosophical 
establishement (i.e. Platonism, SOM) as one of dissolving, making the 
old problems disappear rather than giving new answers.  For the only 
reason why it looks as if the gap is impossible, I would suggest, is 
because of the stance taken up periodically by all of these 
philosophers when they are criticizing the tradition: parasitical 
criticism.  They take the terms their enemy uses and attempt to show 
how they lead nowhere.  This doesn’t lead you out of the fly-bottle, 
but it often is useful in convincing your traditional opponents what 
problems they have to surmount—and how hard that will be."

The middle of your final paragraph reads:

"I think the whole idea of truth as agreement among one’s cultural 
peers is a dangerous view. Mentioning Nazis at this point is likely to 
give the impression that I’m a little too desperate for drama, but 
fascism is ethnocentrism gone wild. At best, truth by agreement 
would all but eliminate the marginal cranks, the hopeless dreamers 
and others who disagree with their cultural peers. In my opinion, the 
finest examples of humanity come from these ranks and any version 
of truth that excludes them has to be wrong. Those are the people 
most worth telling stories about, after all."

I commented:

"I would suggest reading Rorty’s 'The Priority of Democracy to 
Philosophy,' 'Solidarity or Objectivity?' (both found in ORT) and/or the 
first part of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity for some fleshing out of 
how Rorty handles such objections.  Because, as it stands, it is patently 
false to say that Rorty doesn’t exalt the breaker of cultural coherence 
given his talk about the 'strong poet' (in which he would include 
everyone from Socrates, Milton, Newton, and Mill)."

And--I might add--we now have irrefutable evidence that Rorty 
includes the mystic in his understanding of "strong poet" (though I 
have long suggested it).

So, not only is it a specific correction to say that you are wrong to 
imply that Rorty doesn't agree with you that "the hopeless dreamers" 
are among the "finest examples of humanity," but further, it is an 
additionally specific correction to say that you are wrong in 
suggesting that I have never offered "specific corrections," for if I'm 
not mistaken, I sent these comments sometime around March 2007.  
(And if I somehow mistakenly never sent it, I'd be glad to now.)

Why is it so hard for us to converse, Dave?  Is it all my fault?

Matt

p.s.  For those who want another sampling of the cordial attitude I've 
tried to maintain in my public attitude to Dave, see my ode to him:
http://pirsigaffliction.blogspot.com/2006/10/dewey-pirsig-rorty-or-how-i-convinced.html
I beginning to think it may as well have to a Grecian urn, or just some 
jar on a hill.

p.p.s.  Dave said, "Well, I don't know why you're hanging all this 
Platonic baggage on radical empiricism."  To which I say, "I'll stop 
when you stop implying it."  How is it implied, one might ask?  By 
using the rhetoric of "pure experience" and "direct experience."  As far 
as I can tell, if one really thought radical empiricism isn't hanging onto 
Platonic baggage, one would find it much easier to agree with me on 
the limited points I make about the rhetorical composition of 
conceptual positions (and not think, in one of Dave's funnier moments of 
deliberate misrepresentation for a laugh, that I was trying to 
"understand Pirsig's mysticism in terms of what the Pope thinks").