Scan barcode
bittersweet_symphony's review against another edition
5.0
Twenty years later and this is just as prescient. A leftist writer critiquing the American Left, Rorty distinguishes between the Reformist Left, which was eclipsed in the 1960s, and the Cultural Left, which has taken over leftist discourse since the Vietnam War.
In short, there are those on the Left who believe America is irredeemable, born in sins that can never be overcome. And then there are those who acknowledge the list of things America should be ashamed of while calling attention to the highest ideals of America. Revolutionaries who want to burn "the system" to the ground have no concrete vision to look to. Alternatively, reformists might actually be best position to continue progress by asserting a specific type of national pride. Make note, this national pride isn't the militaristic chauvinism that is common on the Right, but rather the kind that empowers communities to stand up and become their best selves.
Achieving Our Country is not a point to be arrived at, but a process, in line with the patriotic visions of Walt Whitman and John Dewey. American has made great progress in the name of diminishing human suffering and combatting social injustices. Yet, America must continue its work on that front. According to Rorty, America must make social justice its "animating principle."
In his vision for a liberal democracy includes rejecting the correspondence theory of truth, and in its stead embracing a neo-pragmatist view of truth. We ought to shirk purity politics, dogmas, and creeds grounded in "Moral Law," "God's Will," or abstract reason. Instead, we ought to embrace the language and conceptions of truth that are best suited to address the problems we face in our particular historical moment.
Teaser: as many recent publications have highlighted, Rorty offers an incredibly prophetic warning about contemporary American politics, including the "rise of a strongman" (pages 85-90).
Some quotes that I found particularly enlightening:
“National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement. Too much national pride can produce bellicosity and imperialism, just as excessive self-respect can produce arrogance. But just as too little self-respect makes it difficult for a person to display moral courage, so insufficient national pride makes energetic and effective debate about national policy unlikely. Emotional involvement with one's country-feelings of intense shame or of glowing pride aroused by various parts of its history, and by various present-day national policies-is necessary if political deliberation is to be imaginative and productive. Such deliberation will probably not occur unless pride outweighs shame.”
“For Whitman and Dewey, a classless and casteless society—the sort of society which American leftists have spent the twentieth century trying to construct—is neither more natural nor more rational than the cruel societies of feudal Europe or of eighteenth-century Virginia. All that can be said in its defense is that it would produce less unnecessary suffering than any other, and that it is the best means to a certain end: the creation of a greater diversity of individuals-larger, fuller, more imaginative and daring individuals.”
“The heirs of the New Left of the Sixties have created, within the academy, a cultural Left. Many members of this Left specialize in what they call the 'politics of difference' or 'of identity' or 'of recognition.' This cultural Left thinks more about stigma than about money, more about deep and hidden psychosexual motivations than about shallow and evident greed.”
“Encouraging students to be what mocking neoconservatives call ‘politically correct’ has made our country a far better place. American leftist academics have a lot to be proud of. Their conservative critics, who have no remedies to propose either for American sadism or for American selfishness, have a great deal to be ashamed of.”
“The heirs of the New Left of the Sixties have created, within the academy, a cultural Left. Many members of this Left specialize in what they call the ‘politics of difference’ or ‘of identity’ or ‘of recognition.’ This cultural Left thinks more about stigma than about money, more about deep and hidden psychoxexual motivations than about shallow and evident greed.”
“It [the cultural Left] thinks the system, and not just the laws, must be changed. Reformism is not good enough. Because the very vocabulary of liberal politics is infected with dubious presuppositions which need to be exposed, the first task of the Left must be, just as Confucius said, the rectification of names. The concern to do what the Sixties called ‘naming the system’ takes precedence over reforming the laws.”
“The adoption of attitudes which the Right sneers at as ‘politically correct’ has made America a far more civilized society than it was thirty years ago. Except for a few Supreme Court decisions, there has been little change for the better in our country’s laws since the Sixties. But the change in the way we treat one another has been enormous.”
“For purposes of thinking about how to achieve our country, we do not need to worry about the correspondence theory of truth, the grounds of normativity, the impossibility of justice, or the infinite distance which separates us from the other. For those purposes, we can give both religion and philosophy a pass. We can just get on with trying to solve what Dewey called “the problems of men.”
“The current leftist habit of taking the long view and looking beyond nationhood to a global polity is as useless as was faith in Marx’s philosophy of history, for which it has become a substitute. Both are equally irrelevant to the question of how to prevent the reemergence of hereditary casts, or of how to prevent right-wing populists from taking advantage of resentment at that reemergence.”
“The Left will have to stop thinking up ever more abstract and abusive names for ‘the system’ and start trying to construct inspiring images of the country.”
“This strategy [referring to the reformed Left] gave rise to the ‘platoon’ movies, which showed Americans of various ethnic backgrounds fighting and dying side by side. By contrast, the contemporary cultural Left urges that America should not be a melting-pot, because we need to respect one another in our differences. This Left wants to preserve otherness rather than ignore it.”
“If the cultural Left insists on its present strategy—on asking us to respect one another in our differences rather than asking us to cease noticing those differences—it will have to find a new way of creating a sense of commonality at the level of national politics. For only a rhetoric of commonality can forge a winning majority in national elections.”
“One reason the cultural Left will have a hard time transforming itself into a political Left is that, like the Sixties Left, it still dreams of being rescued by an angelic power called ‘the people.’ In this sense, ‘the people’ is the name of a redemptive preturnatural force, a force whose demonic counterpart is named ‘power’ or ‘the system.’ The cultural Left inherited the slogan ‘Power to the people’ from the Sixties Left, whose members rarely asked about how the transference of power was supposed to work. This question still goes unasked . . . . The rhetoric of this Left remains revolutionary rather than reformist and pragmatic.”
“Whitman and Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams—dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society—in the place of knowledge of God’s Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science. Their party, the party of hope, made twentieth-century America more than just an economic and military gian. Without the American Left, we might still have been strong and brave, but nobody would have suggested that we were good. As long as we have a functioning political Left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman’s and Dewey’s dreams.”
In short, there are those on the Left who believe America is irredeemable, born in sins that can never be overcome. And then there are those who acknowledge the list of things America should be ashamed of while calling attention to the highest ideals of America. Revolutionaries who want to burn "the system" to the ground have no concrete vision to look to. Alternatively, reformists might actually be best position to continue progress by asserting a specific type of national pride. Make note, this national pride isn't the militaristic chauvinism that is common on the Right, but rather the kind that empowers communities to stand up and become their best selves.
Achieving Our Country is not a point to be arrived at, but a process, in line with the patriotic visions of Walt Whitman and John Dewey. American has made great progress in the name of diminishing human suffering and combatting social injustices. Yet, America must continue its work on that front. According to Rorty, America must make social justice its "animating principle."
In his vision for a liberal democracy includes rejecting the correspondence theory of truth, and in its stead embracing a neo-pragmatist view of truth. We ought to shirk purity politics, dogmas, and creeds grounded in "Moral Law," "God's Will," or abstract reason. Instead, we ought to embrace the language and conceptions of truth that are best suited to address the problems we face in our particular historical moment.
Teaser: as many recent publications have highlighted, Rorty offers an incredibly prophetic warning about contemporary American politics, including the "rise of a strongman" (pages 85-90).
Some quotes that I found particularly enlightening:
“National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement. Too much national pride can produce bellicosity and imperialism, just as excessive self-respect can produce arrogance. But just as too little self-respect makes it difficult for a person to display moral courage, so insufficient national pride makes energetic and effective debate about national policy unlikely. Emotional involvement with one's country-feelings of intense shame or of glowing pride aroused by various parts of its history, and by various present-day national policies-is necessary if political deliberation is to be imaginative and productive. Such deliberation will probably not occur unless pride outweighs shame.”
“For Whitman and Dewey, a classless and casteless society—the sort of society which American leftists have spent the twentieth century trying to construct—is neither more natural nor more rational than the cruel societies of feudal Europe or of eighteenth-century Virginia. All that can be said in its defense is that it would produce less unnecessary suffering than any other, and that it is the best means to a certain end: the creation of a greater diversity of individuals-larger, fuller, more imaginative and daring individuals.”
“The heirs of the New Left of the Sixties have created, within the academy, a cultural Left. Many members of this Left specialize in what they call the 'politics of difference' or 'of identity' or 'of recognition.' This cultural Left thinks more about stigma than about money, more about deep and hidden psychosexual motivations than about shallow and evident greed.”
“Encouraging students to be what mocking neoconservatives call ‘politically correct’ has made our country a far better place. American leftist academics have a lot to be proud of. Their conservative critics, who have no remedies to propose either for American sadism or for American selfishness, have a great deal to be ashamed of.”
“The heirs of the New Left of the Sixties have created, within the academy, a cultural Left. Many members of this Left specialize in what they call the ‘politics of difference’ or ‘of identity’ or ‘of recognition.’ This cultural Left thinks more about stigma than about money, more about deep and hidden psychoxexual motivations than about shallow and evident greed.”
“It [the cultural Left] thinks the system, and not just the laws, must be changed. Reformism is not good enough. Because the very vocabulary of liberal politics is infected with dubious presuppositions which need to be exposed, the first task of the Left must be, just as Confucius said, the rectification of names. The concern to do what the Sixties called ‘naming the system’ takes precedence over reforming the laws.”
“The adoption of attitudes which the Right sneers at as ‘politically correct’ has made America a far more civilized society than it was thirty years ago. Except for a few Supreme Court decisions, there has been little change for the better in our country’s laws since the Sixties. But the change in the way we treat one another has been enormous.”
“For purposes of thinking about how to achieve our country, we do not need to worry about the correspondence theory of truth, the grounds of normativity, the impossibility of justice, or the infinite distance which separates us from the other. For those purposes, we can give both religion and philosophy a pass. We can just get on with trying to solve what Dewey called “the problems of men.”
“The current leftist habit of taking the long view and looking beyond nationhood to a global polity is as useless as was faith in Marx’s philosophy of history, for which it has become a substitute. Both are equally irrelevant to the question of how to prevent the reemergence of hereditary casts, or of how to prevent right-wing populists from taking advantage of resentment at that reemergence.”
“The Left will have to stop thinking up ever more abstract and abusive names for ‘the system’ and start trying to construct inspiring images of the country.”
“This strategy [referring to the reformed Left] gave rise to the ‘platoon’ movies, which showed Americans of various ethnic backgrounds fighting and dying side by side. By contrast, the contemporary cultural Left urges that America should not be a melting-pot, because we need to respect one another in our differences. This Left wants to preserve otherness rather than ignore it.”
“If the cultural Left insists on its present strategy—on asking us to respect one another in our differences rather than asking us to cease noticing those differences—it will have to find a new way of creating a sense of commonality at the level of national politics. For only a rhetoric of commonality can forge a winning majority in national elections.”
“One reason the cultural Left will have a hard time transforming itself into a political Left is that, like the Sixties Left, it still dreams of being rescued by an angelic power called ‘the people.’ In this sense, ‘the people’ is the name of a redemptive preturnatural force, a force whose demonic counterpart is named ‘power’ or ‘the system.’ The cultural Left inherited the slogan ‘Power to the people’ from the Sixties Left, whose members rarely asked about how the transference of power was supposed to work. This question still goes unasked . . . . The rhetoric of this Left remains revolutionary rather than reformist and pragmatic.”
“Whitman and Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams—dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society—in the place of knowledge of God’s Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science. Their party, the party of hope, made twentieth-century America more than just an economic and military gian. Without the American Left, we might still have been strong and brave, but nobody would have suggested that we were good. As long as we have a functioning political Left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman’s and Dewey’s dreams.”
sterlinglacroix's review against another edition
1.0
Some really bizarre ideas in here promoting a modern version of national socialism. Last two essays were thought provoking and will revisit at some point.
nick_jenkins's review against another edition
4.0
My response to the idea that Rorty "predicted" Trump:
http://s-usih.org/2016/11/why-richard-rorty-was-not-a-prophet.html
http://s-usih.org/2016/11/why-richard-rorty-was-not-a-prophet.html
elim's review against another edition
3.0
Predicted our current situation, explains how we got here, and suggests how the Left can be more effective going forward.
jpwright87's review against another edition
3.0
A pretty fun little read, honestly. I have trouble believing Rorty's ideal society is something people would want, much less work for, but I like what seems to still be relevant criticisms of leftist hopelessness, or trying to "Lacan" the hell out of an issue until it becomes impossible to change that effort into real-world results.
"It is only those who still read for inspiration who are likely to be of much use in building a cooperative commonwealth.". I have felt the same way in my graduate studies, all the "what is it all for?" you get from specialized fields in academia.
"It is only those who still read for inspiration who are likely to be of much use in building a cooperative commonwealth.". I have felt the same way in my graduate studies, all the "what is it all for?" you get from specialized fields in academia.
jasonrcf's review against another edition
4.0
“The cultural Left has a vision of America in which the white patriarchs have stopped voting and have left all the voting to be done by members of previously victimized groups, people who have somehow come into possession of more foresight and imagination than the selfish suburbanites. These formerly oppressed and newly powerful people are expected to be as angelic as the straight white males were diabolical.
If I shared this expectation, I too would want to live under this new dispensation. Since I see no reason to share it, I think that the Left should get back into the business of piecemeal reform within the framework of a market economy. This was the business the American Left was in during the first two-thirds of the century. Someday, perhaps, cumulative piecemeal reforms will be found to have brought about revolutionary change.”
- Richard Rorty, 1998
If I shared this expectation, I too would want to live under this new dispensation. Since I see no reason to share it, I think that the Left should get back into the business of piecemeal reform within the framework of a market economy. This was the business the American Left was in during the first two-thirds of the century. Someday, perhaps, cumulative piecemeal reforms will be found to have brought about revolutionary change.”
- Richard Rorty, 1998
perrydimes's review against another edition
4.0
Offers a hopeful view of the leftist project in American politics, and gives a pragmatic case for why we should be genuinely proud of our achievements thus far. In the era of Bernie Sanders (who is not an anticapitalist, or a proper socialist, but social democrat), it's instructive to look back on where the so-called Old Left succeeded, and whether we can build on those successes in a similar way. There are some insightful bits of analysis here, including a paragraph which pretty much exactly predicts the election of Donald Trump decades in advance. Though he may have been the most precise, Rorty isn't the only author to predict such a development. The failures of neoliberal capitalism and globalization have been well-documented.
This book also gives a brief summary of the common story we tell ourselves about the history of the left. At the turn of the 20th century, there was a massive mobilization of union power which ultimately culminated in the New Deal and FDR's reign (Pullman strike, Eugene Debs, you know the story). When FDR actually got in office, of course, many felt he wasn't left enough (most famously Huey Long) but for the average American he is remembered as the closest to a socialist that an American president has ever been. Things started to change until the 60's when a schism occurred in the aftermath of the Vietnam war protests, mostly on common campuses. The so-called "New Left" often privileged cultural issues around identity, and criticized existing social structures built around sexuality, race, gender, etcetera. Eventually, as the story goes, the New Left drove out the Old Left, and the concern about economic issues evolved into one about cultural issues. I'm not sure if I agree entirely with this history -- though it is true that there has been much more of a leftward movement on cultural issues than economic ones specifically since the '80s -- but that's the story we tell ourselves.
Infighting among the left even today does often follow this script. Many progressives often accuse Bernie Sanders of focusing too much on class and neglecting race -- whereas the latter's supporters often accuse the former of playing "identity politics" and ceding ground to the populist right in the process. In reality, I think it is true that both of these types of issues deserve oxygen in a proper left movement, and ultimately agree with Rorty that we need to focus on left unity for pragmatic purposes. To the extent that he assigns blame to one of these two factions, though, I can't say I agree with him. Though Rorty himself couldn't have possibly commented on this since he died in 2007, if you ask me, the progressive shift amongst politicians and elites (since Clinton) on LGBT rights, feminism, and race issues is about equal parts cynicism and altruism. And furthermore (in my opinion), it was not the New Left (usually associated with academia, youth movements on college campuses, and grassroots activists) that drove out the Old Left, but rather the neoliberal consensus in the age of globalization.
But that's really the beauty of this book and why I like it so much -- Rorty is one of the rare writers who I can disagree with a lot but still find plenty of value in what he's saying. Is it strictly true that America is an as-yet unachieved project of liberty and democracy? Honestly, probably not. But this book makes a useful case for why it may be helpful to act as if that were true, at the very least for the purposes of material gains for the common American (a noble goal). This book makes the most succinct and convincing case for a reformist (as opposed to a radical) agenda that I've seen. I'll admit, I'm very sympathetic to this view, as I don't think the material conditions in America are amenable to anything close to a revolution, and again, ameliorating the lives of ordinary people is a noble goal.
I haven't read anything much by John Dewey, who is extensively cited as an inspiration and foundational to Rorty's view of the leftist project. I imagine doing so would make this book a lot more helpful.
This book also gives a brief summary of the common story we tell ourselves about the history of the left. At the turn of the 20th century, there was a massive mobilization of union power which ultimately culminated in the New Deal and FDR's reign (Pullman strike, Eugene Debs, you know the story). When FDR actually got in office, of course, many felt he wasn't left enough (most famously Huey Long) but for the average American he is remembered as the closest to a socialist that an American president has ever been. Things started to change until the 60's when a schism occurred in the aftermath of the Vietnam war protests, mostly on common campuses. The so-called "New Left" often privileged cultural issues around identity, and criticized existing social structures built around sexuality, race, gender, etcetera. Eventually, as the story goes, the New Left drove out the Old Left, and the concern about economic issues evolved into one about cultural issues. I'm not sure if I agree entirely with this history -- though it is true that there has been much more of a leftward movement on cultural issues than economic ones specifically since the '80s -- but that's the story we tell ourselves.
Infighting among the left even today does often follow this script. Many progressives often accuse Bernie Sanders of focusing too much on class and neglecting race -- whereas the latter's supporters often accuse the former of playing "identity politics" and ceding ground to the populist right in the process. In reality, I think it is true that both of these types of issues deserve oxygen in a proper left movement, and ultimately agree with Rorty that we need to focus on left unity for pragmatic purposes. To the extent that he assigns blame to one of these two factions, though, I can't say I agree with him. Though Rorty himself couldn't have possibly commented on this since he died in 2007, if you ask me, the progressive shift amongst politicians and elites (since Clinton) on LGBT rights, feminism, and race issues is about equal parts cynicism and altruism. And furthermore (in my opinion), it was not the New Left (usually associated with academia, youth movements on college campuses, and grassroots activists) that drove out the Old Left, but rather the neoliberal consensus in the age of globalization.
But that's really the beauty of this book and why I like it so much -- Rorty is one of the rare writers who I can disagree with a lot but still find plenty of value in what he's saying. Is it strictly true that America is an as-yet unachieved project of liberty and democracy? Honestly, probably not. But this book makes a useful case for why it may be helpful to act as if that were true, at the very least for the purposes of material gains for the common American (a noble goal). This book makes the most succinct and convincing case for a reformist (as opposed to a radical) agenda that I've seen. I'll admit, I'm very sympathetic to this view, as I don't think the material conditions in America are amenable to anything close to a revolution, and again, ameliorating the lives of ordinary people is a noble goal.
I haven't read anything much by John Dewey, who is extensively cited as an inspiration and foundational to Rorty's view of the leftist project. I imagine doing so would make this book a lot more helpful.
beepbeepbooks's review against another edition
3.0
curious but bold... echoes of this book continue to reverberate throughout our time, especially his prophetic thought based on Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, extremely chilling to think that that very phenomenon repeated itself (now as a farce) in actual political events.
Yet I find his arguments contradictory, on occasions. His wide generalizations toward a general Marxist academic, or a Foucauldian left open his arguments up to a lack of critical engagement. Certainly there are teleological elements within strands of Marxist thought, but to throw the baby out with the bathwater only removes some of the best critical traditions we have for studying capitalism, and for creating solidaristic networks. The idea that hope must remain in the nation seems to me another ideal religion, a civic worship that, at worst is repeated by Mark Lilla and his complete dismissal of identity politics.
His note in the back of the book against certain strands of literary studies also fails to reckon with the state of academia writ large, and the more difficult, structural institutions in the way of a richer, more varied humanities education. Why attack specific thinkers, when there are, more pragmatically, developments going on in schooling in America that affect the entire academic field?
There are sparks in Rorty's thought. The inspiration and hope he provides can hit hard and provide an impulse to act and return to the fight. But does he give us more than other thinkers? Is it worth the disparagement of other forms of thought to agree with Rorty? These are questions that still deserve attention, attention that is, as Rorty would prefer, hopeful as well as critical.
Yet I find his arguments contradictory, on occasions. His wide generalizations toward a general Marxist academic, or a Foucauldian left open his arguments up to a lack of critical engagement. Certainly there are teleological elements within strands of Marxist thought, but to throw the baby out with the bathwater only removes some of the best critical traditions we have for studying capitalism, and for creating solidaristic networks. The idea that hope must remain in the nation seems to me another ideal religion, a civic worship that, at worst is repeated by Mark Lilla and his complete dismissal of identity politics.
His note in the back of the book against certain strands of literary studies also fails to reckon with the state of academia writ large, and the more difficult, structural institutions in the way of a richer, more varied humanities education. Why attack specific thinkers, when there are, more pragmatically, developments going on in schooling in America that affect the entire academic field?
There are sparks in Rorty's thought. The inspiration and hope he provides can hit hard and provide an impulse to act and return to the fight. But does he give us more than other thinkers? Is it worth the disparagement of other forms of thought to agree with Rorty? These are questions that still deserve attention, attention that is, as Rorty would prefer, hopeful as well as critical.
gef's review against another edition
4.0
If for no other reason, you will want to read this book for its explanation and gloomy prediction— in 1998, 18 years before the event —of the sudden emergence of Trump in what we thought was a mature democracy:
It’s largely because (Rorty argues) the Left in the U.S. has become so pre-occupied with cultural issues (identity, sexism) and global rather than local issues that it has lost its historical connection to and advocacy for our own working class, giving little or no attention to (for example) trade union struggles, while the rich have continued skewing the system to make themselves richer. "At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, the postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis' novel It Can't Happen Here…"
Or like Bertolt Brecht's satire, "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui."
There's much more to Rorty's argument, well worth reading.
It’s largely because (Rorty argues) the Left in the U.S. has become so pre-occupied with cultural issues (identity, sexism) and global rather than local issues that it has lost its historical connection to and advocacy for our own working class, giving little or no attention to (for example) trade union struggles, while the rich have continued skewing the system to make themselves richer. "At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, the postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis' novel It Can't Happen Here…"
Or like Bertolt Brecht's satire, "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui."
There's much more to Rorty's argument, well worth reading.