[Wittrs] Re: Rorty's Sins
- From: "kirby_urner" <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:45:45 -0000
--- In WittrsAMR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
>
> (Kirby)
>
> ... I'm fine with Rorty when he is pushing Wittgensteinian
ideas. He does that a lot. I'm also keen on his approach to moral
philosophy (first person perspectives). Really, when Rorty is rather
nicely cut and shaved, one might consider him only to be an expositor
of Wittgenstein's ideas -- a diciple of sorts. It's just when he's
not rather nicely cut and shaved that he is, well, "odious."
>
That sounds OK, and a lot like me too.
One thing I appreciated about Rorty, as an undergrad, was his
willingness to take a big picture view of things. He'd zoom
way out. Like this 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance':
he had stuff to say about it, took the time to sample what was
popular in the culture, had some idea of where an undergrad's
head might be at. Then he'd tell the story his own way, but
at least we knew he had a working knowledge of the ambient
culture. He knew how to sync. A lot of "philosophers" live
in some amberized (time-frozen) tundra, probably canned in their
young adulthoods, never thawed nor aired since.
Another big influence was Walter Kaufmann, who was giving a lot
of overview lectures from having lived a long life, crowning it
at Princeton, with the clout to grab Jadwin, the physics hall, for
his lectures.
For the most part, WK was overtly skeptical that universities could
ever incubate / breed real philosophers. Perhaps these could only be
temporarily imported, per the Wittgenstein model?
I'm not recalling WK's specific institutional proposals, only that
he discouraged cloistering as a role model for philosophers. He
encouraged more activism ala Wittgenstein's profile.
Certainly Dr. Fuller was all over the place, with those three wrist
watches (for time zones) and those eleven PhDs (mas o meno), patents,
awards. Coxeter was more cloistered.
At the other end of the spectrum (for Dr. Kaufmann) were people like
Heidegger and Kant, whom he'd sometimes ridicule when given an
opportunity -- to the distress of some in our audience (WK was
"an asshole" according to many a whisperer -- well whaddya know).
You could set your watch by Kant's coming by the window each day,
on his morning constitutional. If a ship went down with all hands,
the great ethicist might weep, because his box of chocolates was on
that ship. I guess WK considered Kant like a Neo-Liberal or
something, whereas Heidegger was more like a Nazi shill? "Judge a
philosophy by the philosopher" was pretty much his dictum.
Not that he over-indulged in name-calling or anything, plus he'd done
a really decent amount of homework before venturing such opinions.
Again, Princeton is dedicated to giving undergrads a lot of overview,
so from my perspective, here was another great scholar doing his job
well, whether or not we ended up agreeing with every conclusion.
> The thing that set me off with Rorty is when he started claiming
Wittgenstein as the father to certain kinds of ill-formed tangents
that emerge in Rortarian thought. One is his desire
to abolish words talking about inner/outer (as being a false form of
expression). Another is his related confusion that "truth" was
a mistaken language construct (or something like that). The
difference between Wittgenstein and Rorty on these issues is
that Wittgenstein would never be prescribing how people should talk;
he would merely want the grammar and conditions of assertability
understood. For Wittgenstein, the idea of "truth" (as in, verified as
being outside the mind) wasn't a dogma -- at worst, it was just a
knot in certain kinds of games. For Wittgenstein, the model of logic,
truth and proof was a confusion ONLY IN PHILOSOPHY. And this is
because it was inferior to therapy and peace once the proper method
of philosophy was understood. More to the point, when "truth" meant
something informational, it was usually up to some other field to
obtain it, which should have had the effect of quieting the
philosophers (hence the peace). But the point is that telling an
INFORMATION FIELD that "truth" is a contrived way of speaking is
really transforming this idea into a dogma.
>
I'm not sure that "peace" in the sense of "always quiet" is always
the noble goal though. When the world is going to hell in a
hand basket or whatever it's doing, I think the mental picture of a
lot of cloistered philosophers "at peace" is eerie, more a scene
from some gothic horror flick.
The glass bead game is supposed to be about restoring balance or
something. Perhaps the Ivory Tower is too quick to side with Sauron
in wanting to marginalize itself to (suck up to) some higher power?
In the glory days of philosophy, she was at the pinnacle of the
quadrivium / trivium, right next to theology, quite confidant in
providing overview and perspective.
They both tumbled together eh? Or philosophy fell later, after
Hegel and Marx? Did the psychoanalytic crowd take over after that?
Did Nietzsche start what Wittgenstein completed: "the linguistic
turn" (coined by Rorty right?)? What does that mean? How shall we
tell the story going forward?
Seems now it's a humpty-dumpty mess, with over-coddled philosophers
clinging to these tired dusty toyz they call "logic" while the
rest of the world struggles with computer science, inheriting from
Leibniz, yet thrown to the wolves by these crypto-analytic types.
Seems a waste of talent.
If philosophers form a brain trust, then we need them to end wars,
not just sit in the bleachers clucking their tongues about the nature
of consciousness, spilling popcorn.
That being said, sounds like Rorty picked some lost cause to cheer
for: no distinction between inner and outer. A Zen Roshi might do
the same.
If they come to you for training, great. Some will want to sit at
your feet and be a "Rortarian" (fun pun, like a Rotary Club member).
Most will not and praise Allah for that (like, I have only the one
live-in student at the moment and that's keeping me plenty busy --
and it's not like I'm the only teacher in this picture, praise Allah
again).
> And if Rorty wants to be excessively post-modern here, that's his
business. I just don't like Wittgenstein ever being associated with a
certain kind of nonsense or dogma. I see so many people who half
understand fragments of Wittgensteinian thought and then proceed to
make such mischief out of their passions -- finally deciding to put
Wittgenstein's name on them.
>
There's a: "this is what Wittgenstein thought" mode (misusing his
cloak of a authority most likely) and then there's a "this is what
I'm doing with the Wittgenstein stuff and here's why" mode, which
latter is taking responsibility.
Like what Dr. Fuller does by relating Euler to Gibbs the way he
does. He says clearly this is nothing either of them ever thought of
doing, given their own preoccupations and time lines. He's not
dodging the fact that this is his own philosophical contribution
in 1054.00.
It's good to circle one's own work for accountability purposes.
Nothing in Wittgenstein suggests we should end this practice.
There's no excuse for palming off original thinking as that of some
greater authority. More honorable is claiming originality even where
many others have had the same thoughts.
It sounds to me that by your lights, Rorty sometimes attributed
his own views to LW instead of taking responsibility for them.
I've got a triangle going with Bucky, Coxeter and Wittgenstein:
not something any could have anticipated nor agreed to probably
(they were all contemporaries for awhile), and yet if it's doing
real work in the real world, ethical implications included, then hey,
lets debate the merits.
I'm happy to raise my hand as the host of this little party. Adding
myself to the picture creates six lines of inter-relationship, and I
find it fruitful to yak about them all.
> But if you just ignore these "weeds" in, or pluck them from, the
Rortarian garden, I suppose one would find it a pleasant sort of
space.
>
> Regards
>
A zen garden, yes.
Peace,
Kirby Urner
Affiliations:
isepp.org (board)
python.org (PSF member)
npym.org (afsc.org corp rep)
Domains:
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grunch.net
> Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
> Assistant Professor
> Wright State University
> Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
> SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
> Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html
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