Published by The University of Chicago Press, 1995,
paper, 1997
from Ch. 7: The Neopragmatic Acquiescence: Between Habermas and Rorty
....Pragmatism Versus Fragmatism
Peirce
distinguished his pragmatism from what he considered distortions of the
doctrine in James and others, by renaming it "pragmaticism," as a more
specialized doctrine. In order to avoid further confusion of Rorty
and Habermas's positions with that of the spirit of pragmatism, I shall
announce the birth of a new term, Fragmatism, which, like Peirce's
term, is not without its rhyme or reason. The term denotes in particular
the relativism of Rorty (and like-minded so-called neopragmatists), expressed
in his idealization of contingency and unquestioning belief in the incommensurability
of belief communities. Fragmatism is the reason why Rorty can see nothing
of value in Peirce's pragmatism except that he gave it its name, and fragmatism
is the more proper name for Rorty's own brand of "pluralism." In a broader
context fragmatism is a synonym for late twentieth-century "postmodernism,"
and therefore includes those poststructuralists, such as Jacques Derrida,
who react against the totalistic outlook of French structuralism with a
seemingly antithetical view of the continual "fissioning" and "creativity"
of arbitrary signs. This outlook continues the antinaturalistic, antipersonal,
and binary view of meaning characteristic of structuralism, but merely
swings the pendulum from a single, all-encompassing standard--the deep
code--to the opposite view that one standard is as good as any other.
Habermas's clear-headed critiques of this position--Rorty's as well as
poststructuralists--would seem to put him at odds with fragmatism.
Yet in Habermas's tendencies toward Kantian compartmentalization we see
what I will venture to call Transcendental Fragmatism.
Both
Habermas and Rorty, in their opposing ways, make language to be the basis
for public life, as well as the medium of science and human belief. Though
Rorty claims to be against the Enlightenment view of reason, he and Habermas
share the Enlightenment endorsement for the "disenchantment" of the world,
for the progressive unfettering of human institutions and habits of conduct
from overarching religious or metaphysical world views. Yet between
their common enthusiasm for modern disenchantment lies a vast difference
of opinion and even of temperament. Habermas seeks to overcome the tendencies
toward a subjectivist, consciousness-based outlook in modern social theory,
by building a truly intersubjective theory of "communicative action/rationality."
His aims are grand: to rescue the modern project of establishing universal
norms for rational conduct, and thereby to further the goal of emancipating
human societies from unreasonable practices and institutions.
Rorty's
postmodern fragmatism is quite different from Habermas's transcendental
fragmatism. Rorty is skeptical of tight divisions between forms of rationality,
or of distinct disciplinary boundaries, but he thinks that the disenchantment
of the world in the sense of a release from fixed foundational moorings
is part of the progressive development of any free society. "Disenchantment"
thus works in opposite directions to enable the rational foundations of
Habermas's ideal society to be established, and to make possible the destruction
of rational foundations in Rorty's ideal society. Rorty believes
that the very idea of a universal reason--the whole idea that there are
logically valid, universal norms--is the great fallacy of modern thought.
He repeatedly states that norms are made, not discovered, and therefore
would consign the very attempt to discover universal norms to the dungheap
of historical contingency. He believes further that human creativity
is revealed in original acts of private consciousness, which distinguish
the creative ones--the "poets" and "revolutionaries"--from socially binding
conventions and the hoi polloi.
Where
Habermas is earnest and heavy in temperament, Rorty is frequently casual
and light. Who could be further apart: Habermas, the arch defender of rationality,
Rorty, the carefree attacker of rationality? Yet between their opposed
positions are some common assumptions which perhaps help to explain why
they have held such a fascination for contemporary philosophers and social
theorists. Though both thinkers seek justice and freedom in their
theories of public life, their conceptualist premisses frustrate the conditions
for a flourishing contemporary culture and remain inadequate to meet the
needs for contemporary theory. In their overreliance on conventionalist
theories of language and meaning, I claim that one sees the desiccating
effects in the late twentieth-century of what William James termed "vicious
intellectualism." ........