[lit-ideas] Re: Transcendental and otherwise
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 16:41:18 +0900
On Jan 6, 2008 2:03 PM, Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Walter characterizes a passage John McCreery quoted from Rorty thus:
>
> "...Rorty's claim...is a transcendental claim: it attempts to identity the
> limits and possibilities of a specific kind of discourse."
>
> I'm not sure that Walter's characterization, on which he bases a dismissal
> of Rorty, is accurate. The quote from Rorty was:
>
> "...The controversy between those who see both our species and our society
> as a lucky accident, and those who find an immanent teleology in both, is
> too radical to permit of being judged from some neutral standpoint."
>
> That need not be a transcendental claim at all. Instead, it could just be
> a description of the disputes which arise between two roughly identifiable
> groups of people. My wife was a divorce mediator in Rockford, Illinois,
> where there is a large population of Swedes and another large population of
> Italians. She says that the most bitter divorces she saw were those in
> which a Swede had been married to an Italian. The Swede in his or her
> bitterly cold rage would contemptuously characterize the Italian as crazy,
> and the Italian, in his or her voluble rage, would contemptuously
> characterize the Swede as a soulless lump of ice. If one takes Rorty's
> "permit of being judged from some neutral standpoint" as meaning "being
> judged in a way the disputants might both accept", then the Swede and
> Italian divorces can be understood as controversies that are "too radical to
> permit of being judged from some neutral standpoint."
>
> My wife wasn't trying to say that no Italian/Swede divorce could ever work
> out. She wasn't setting limits or defining possibilities for such divorces,
> but rather trying to describe a rough class of human situations in a way
> that could be useful. Trying to help a divorcing Italian/Swede couple to
> understand one another might be largely futile; better, perhaps, to help
> them figure out the minimum they had to do together to get through their
> divorce.
>
> Similarly, I read Rorty, in this passage, as saying that as a practical
> matter, trying to find a neutral ground on which the Darwinists and
> fundamentalists might some day come to an understanding is probably a waste
> of time. Life's too short, I hear him saying; we should move on.
>
Precisely my reading, too. Thanks, Eric. I especially like the last
paragraph. Walter is not, I trust, a fundamentalist in the crude sense in
which the term refers to right-wing religious fanatics, who see all and only
what is written in their particular Book as true. But, as a practical
matter, I see very little likelihood of either of us persuading the other to
switch positions. In my case the reasons are suggested in my
autobiographical notes--Walter reminds me of my father, with whom I rarely
agreed on anything except the importance of family and the special joys of
lasting romance, fishing and horticulture. Walter insists that his position
is based on rational argument alone and, thus, untouched by the
contingencies of actual lives. So fine I say. Present the argument itself.
Spare us the rhetorical gestures that claim an argument exists while
concealing what, precisely, it is.
Ordinarily, I am, like the Scientist in Nietzche's tale of the two men
watching Salome perform the dance of the seven veils, content to be
tantalized as one veil after another is lifted. Walter's rhetorical habits
have turned me into the Metaphysician. Frustrated, I shout, "Take it all
off. Now!"
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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