104 QA A Community and its Paradoxes: Richard Rorty’s ‘Liberal Utopia’ Anti-foundationalism has so far produced a variety of intellectual ‘and cultural effects, ut few of them have referred to the terrain of politics. It is one of the merits of Richard Rorty's work to have attempted, vigorously and persuasively, to establish such a connection. In his book, Contingency Irony and Solidarity (Cam- bridge University Press 1989), he has presented an excellent picture ofthe intellectual transformation of the West duting the last two centuries and, on the bass of it has drawn the main lines ofa social and political arrangement that he has called a ‘liberal utopia’. Ie isnot that Rorty tries to present his (post) philosophical approach as theoretical eounding or his politcal Proposal an atempr (which Rorty rejects) that would simply ‘reoceupy” with an antifoundationalis discourse the terrain of the los foundation. Its rather that anc-foundationalism, together with a plurality of other narratives and cultural interventions, thas created the intellectual climate in which certain social and political arrangements are thinkable. In this essay Iwill ry to show that, though I certainly agree ‘with most of Romty’s philosophical arguments and position, his notion of tliberal utopia’ presents a series of shortcomings which can only be superseded ifthe liberal featares of Rorty's utopia ate reinscribed in the wider framework of what we have called ‘radical democracy’!EMANEIPATION(S) 1 ‘Let us summarize, in the frst place, the main points of Rorty’s argument. Ae the beginning of the book he asserts his primary thesis in the following terms: ‘this book testo show ow thins look if we drop the demand for a theory which unifies the public nd private, and are content to teat the demands of selt-creation and of buman solidarity as equally "ald, ye forever incommensrable. fe sketches a igure whom I call the literal ions’ I bore my definition of “liberal” From Judith Shklar, who says that liberaare the people who think that erly is the wore thing we do. Tue ronieto name the sort of person who faces upto the contingency of his or her own most cenel beliefs and detires~ someone sufficiently historiciet and nominalist to have Shandoned the idea that shore eentral beliefs and desires refer Back te something beyond the reach of tie and chance. Liberal roniste are people who include smong these ungroundabledesies their own hop that suffering will e diminished, ha the humuliaon of human eras by cleric bang ty ca? ‘The mili in which these objectives a postmetaphysical cular “The specifically political argument about the contingency of the community is preceded by two chapters on ‘the contingency ‘of language’ and ‘the contingency of selfhood” which constitute its background, Rorey points out that ewo hundred years ago two main changes took place in the intellectual life of Europe: the increasing teaization that ceuth is fabricated rather than found - which made possible the uropian polities of reshaping social relations ~ and the Romantic revolution which led to 3 vision of art as self-creation rather than as imitation of reality ‘These changes joined forces and progressively acquired cultural hegemony. German idealism was a fist attempt at drawing the intelleewal consequences ofthis transformation, but ultimately failed asa result of confusing the idea that nothing hasan internal nature to be represented with the very different one tha the spatio-temporal world is a product of the human mind. What {actualy ies behind these dim intuitions of the Romantic period is the increasing realization that there is no intrinsic nature of the real but that the real will look differene depending on the languages with which ie is described, and that there is not a rmeta-language or neutral language which will allow us to decide able is that of a 106 LM we ts yc ns between competing first-order languages, Philosophical argument does not proceed through an internal deconstruction ofa thesis presented in a certain vocabulary but rather through the presentation of « competing vocabulary Inscresing philosophy is acy an examination of the pros ad cons of thesis, Usually it implicy or explicitly, a contest between an fenenched vocabulary which has become a nuance and ahaltormed ‘new voeabolary which vagely promises pest ding.” {At this point, Rory, faithful to his method, simply drops the old conception of language and embarks upon a new operation of tedescription through Donald Davidson’ philosophy of language, with its rejection ofthe idea that language constitutes a medium of either representation or expression, and its similarity with the ‘Wirggensteinian conception of alternative vocabularies 3x alter- native tools. Mary Hesse's ‘metaphoric redescriptions'and Harold Bloom's strong poet are also quated in this connection. After having showa the contingency of language, Rorty gives selfhood a turn. Here the main heroes are Nietzche and (espec- {all Freud. For Nietzch i is only the poet who fully perceives the contingency of self ‘Western raiton thinks ofa human life a tramph jst i 20 farasitbreals ou ofthe world of ime, appearance and idiosyncratic ‘opinion ino another world ~the world of enduring truth, Nietache, by contac, thinks the important houndary to erot not the one separating tne fom atemporl rath bo rather dhe one which divides the old from the news He thinks « human life riumphane jar in 0 far asi escapes inherited descriptions of the contingencies of ts existence and finds new descriptions. This is the diference between ‘the will to rath and the wil to seltovereoming. Iti the diference bberween thinking ofredemprion 2 making contact with something larger and more endring than oneself and redemption as Nietche describes i "reteaing all "twas" ino “hus [wile it But it is Freud who represents the most important step forward inthe process of de-divinization of the self. He showed the way in which all the features of our conscience can be traced back 0 the contingency of our upbringing: He de-universlizes the moral sense, making a idioryneratc athe posts inventions. He thu let ur sce the moral consciousness a Historically conditioned, product as much of time and chance a of political or aesthetic conicousness” 107EMANCIATION() Inspite of their many points in common, Freud is more useful, according to Rorty, than Nietzche, hecause the former shows that the conformist bourgeois is only dll onthe surface, before the psychoanalytic exploration, while the latter relegates ‘the ‘vast majority of humanity to the status of dying animals. Finally we reach the coatingency of the community, which should be deale with in more detail because it concerns the main topic of this essay. Rorty finds an inital difficulty here: he is attached to both liberal democracy and anti-foundationalism, bur the vocabulary in which the former was initially presented is that of Enlightenment rationalism. The thesis that he tries to defend in the following two chapters is that, although this vocabulary was essential to liberal democracy in its inital stages, today it has become an impediment to its Further progress and consolidation. This involves him in an effort to reformulate the democratic ideal in a non-rationalist and non-aniversalst way Rorty stats by clearing out of his way the possible charges of relativism and irrationalism. He quotes Schumpeter as saying, “Torealize the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly, is what distinguishes a civilized man from 1 barbarian; and he includes Isaiah Berlin's comment on this passage, “To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need: bu to allow it co determine one's Practice is a symptom of an equally deep, and more dangerous, ‘moral nd political immauiy’.’Teis these assertions that Michael Sandel is brought into the picture to oppose: ‘lf one's convictions are only relatively valid, why stand for them unflinchingly?”™ ‘Ths, the relativism debate is opened in ts classical terms. Rorty steps into this debate by trying to make a non-issue of relativism. He starts by discarding two notions of absolute validity: that ‘hich identifies as absoluely valid with what is valid to everyone and anyone ~ because inthis case, there would be no interesting Statement which would he absolutely valid; and that which identifies it with those statements which can be justified to all those who are ot corupted — because this presupposes a division ‘of human nature (ivine/animal) which i ultimately incompatible with liberalism. The only alternative i as a consequence, 0 restrict the opposition between rational and irrational form of persuasion o the confines of a language game, where itis posible to distinguish reasons of belief from causes for belief which are not rational. This, however, leaves open the question about the 108 rationality of the shifs of vocabularies and, a there is no neutral round upon which to decide between them, it looks as if all Important shift in paradigms, metaphorics or vocabularies would have causes but not reasons. Bur this would imply hat all great intellectual movements such as Christianity, Galilean science or the Enlightenment should be considered to have irational origins ‘Thisis the poine at which Rorty concludes thar the usefulness of a description in terms of the opposition rational/trational vanishes. Davidson ~ whom Rorty quotes at this point ~ notes that once the notion of rationality has been restricted ro internal coherence, ifthe use ofthe term is not also restricted, we will find ourselves calling “rational many things we appreciate (the decision to repress a certain desire, for instance, will appear ieratonal from the point of view ofthe desire itself) If Davidson and Hesse are right, metaphors are causes and not reasons for changes in beliefs bur this does not make them “irrational; iis the very notion of ieationality that has co be questioned. The consequence is thatthe question of validity is essentially open and conversational. Only a society in which a system of taboos and a rigid delimitation ofthe order of subjects has been imposed and accepced by everybody will escape the conversational naure of validity; but this is precisely the kind of society which is strictly incompatible with liberalism: Ieiscenral to the idea of liberal society that, with respect 9 words ss oppored to deeds, persion at opposed to force, anything goes. This open mindedness should nor be fosteced Because, as Seiprare teaches, Trath is geatand wllprval, ot because, as Mion sugges, ‘Tath will lwaye win in fee and open encoumer, I should be fectered forts own sake A Liberal society is one which i conten 0 call ‘re” whatever the upshot of such encounters turns out tobe: ‘Thais why a liberal society is badly served by an attempt supply {erwith philosophical foundation. Fr te aempr ro sappy sich foundations preapposes 4 natural order of topics and arguments ‘whic is prior to, and oversdes the results of, encounters between ‘ld and new vocabularies” ‘This question of the relationship between foundationalism (ationalism) and liberalism is treated by Rorty through a convincing critique of Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialetic of Enlightenment. He accepts their vision that the forces pat into movement by the Enlightenment have undermined the Enlightenment’s own convictions, but he does not accept their 109