Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism

Author(s): Richard Rorty
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 80, No. 10, Part 1: Eightieth Annual Meeting of the
American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Oct., 1983), pp. 583-589
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
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THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

POSTMODERNIST

OF INTELLECTUALS

BOURGEOIS

583

LIBERALISM*

oftheintelOMPLAINTS aboutthesocialirresponsibility

lectuals typically concern the intellectual's tendency to

marginalize herself,to move out fromone communityby
interioridentificationof herselfwith some othercommunity-for
example, anothercountryor historicalperiod,an invisiblecollege,
or some alienated subgroup within the larger community.Such
marginalizationis, however,common to intellectualsand to miners. In the early days of the United Mine Workersits members
rightlyput no faithin the surroundinglegal and political institutions and were loyal only to each other. In this respect theyresembled the literaryand artisticavant-gardebetweenthe wars.
It is not clear thatthosewho thus marginalizethemselvescan be
criticizedfor social irresponsibility.One cannot be irresponsible
toward a communityof which one does not thinkof oneselfas a
member.Otherwiserunawayslaves and tunnelersunder the Berlin
Wall would be irresponsible.If such criticismwere to make sense
there would have to be a supercommunityone had to identify
with-humanity as such. Then one could appeal to the needs of
that communitywhen breaking with one's familyor tribeor nation, and such groups could appeal to the same thing when criticizing the irresponsibilityof those who break away. Some people
believe that thereis such a community.These are the people who
think thereare such things as intrinsichuman dignity,intrinsic
human rights,and an ahistoricaldistinctionbetweenthe demands
of moralityand those of prudence. Call these people "Kantians."
They are opposed by people who say that "humanity"is a biological ratherthan a moral notion, thatthereis no human dignitythat
is not derivativefromthedignityof some specificcommunity,and
no appeal beyond the relativemeritsof various actual or proposed
communitiesto impartial criteriawhich will help us weigh those
merits.Call thesepeople "Hegelians." Much of contemporarysocial philosophy in the English-speakingworld is a three-cornered
debate between Kantians (like John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin)
distinctionas a
who want to keep an ahistoricalmorality-prudence
buttressforthe institutionsand practicesof thesurvivingdemocracies, those (like the post-Marxistphilosophical leftin Europe, Ro* To be presentedin an APA symposiumon The Social Responsibilityof Intellectuals, December28, 1983. Virginia Held will be co-symposiast,and Alasdair MacIntyrewill comment;see this JOUIRNAL, this issue, 572-582 and 590/1,respectively.

0022-362X/83/8010/0583$00.70

1983 The Journalof Philosophy,Inc.

584

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

berto Unger, and Alasdair MacIntyre)who want to abandon these

institutionsboth because theypresuppose a discreditedphilosophy
and for other, more concrete, reasons, and those (like Michael
Oakeshott and John Dewey) who want to preservethe institutions
while abandoning theirtraditionalKantian backup. These last two
positions take over Hegel's criticismof Kant's conceptionof moral
agency,while eithernaturalizingor junking the restof Hegel.
If the Hegelians are right,then thereare no ahistorical criteria
fordeciding when it is or is not a responsibleact to deserta community,any more than fordeciding when to change loversor professions. The Hegelians see nothing to be responsible to except
personsand actual or possible historicalcommunities;so theyview
the Kantians' use of 'social responsibility'as misleading. For that
use suggestsnot the genuine contrastbetween,forexample, Antigone's loyalties to Thebes and to her brother,or Alcibiades' loyalties to Athensand to Persia, but an illusorycontrastbetweenloyalty to a person or a historical community and to something
"higher" than either.It suggeststhat thereis a point of view that
abstractsfromany historicalcommunityand adjudicates therights
of communitiesvis-a-visthose of individuals.
Kantians tend to accuse of social irresponsibilitythose who
doubt that thereis such a point of view. So when Michael Walzer
says that"A given societyis just if its substantivelifeis lived in ...
a way faithful to the shared understandingsof the members,"
Dworkin calls this view "relativism." "Justice," Dworkin retorts,
"cannot be leftto conventionand anecdote." Such Kantian complaints can be defendedusing the Hegelian's own tactics,by noting
that the veryAmerican societywhich Walzer wishes to commend
and to reformis one whose self-imageis bound up with the Kantian vocabularyof "inalienable rights"and "the dignityof man."
Hegelian defendersof liberal institutionsare in the position of defending,on the basis of solidarityalone, a societywhich has traditionallyasked to be based on somethingmore than meresolidarity.
Kantian criticismof the traditionthat runs fromHegel through
Marx and Nietzsche,a traditionwhich insistson thinkingof morality as the interestof a historicallyconditionedcommunityrather
than "the common interestof humanity,"ofteninsiststhatsuch a
philosophical outlook is-if one values liberal practicesand institutions-irresponsible.Such criticismrestson a predictionthatsuch
practicesand institutionswill not survivethe removalof the traditional Kantian buttresses,buttresseswhich include an account of
"rationality"and "morality"as transculturaland ahistorical.
I shall call the Hegelian attemptto defendthe institutionsand

THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

OF INTELLECTUALS

585

practices of the rich North Atlantic democracies without using

such buttresses"postmodernistbourgeois liberalism." I call it
"bourgeois" to emphasize that most of the people I am talking
about would have no quarrel with the Marxistclaim that a lot of
those institutionsand practicesare possible and justifiableonly in
certain historical,and especially economic, conditions. I want to
contrastbourgeoisliberalism,theattemptto fulfillthehopes of the
NorthAtlanticbourgeoisie,withphilosophical liberalism,a collection of Kantian principles thought to justifyus in having those
hopes. Hegelians thinkthattheseprinciplesare usefulforsummarizing thesehopes, but not forjustifyingthem(a view Rawls himself vergesupon in his Dewey Lectures).I use 'postmodernist'in a
sense given to this termby Jean-FrangoisLyotard,who says that
narthepostmodernattitudeis thatof "distrustof metanarratives,"
rativeswhich describeor predicttheactivitiesof such entitiesas the
noumenal selfor theAbsoluteSpiritor theProletariat.These metanarrativesare storieswhich purportto justifyloyaltyto, or breaks
with, certain contemporarycommunities,but which are neither
historical narrativesabout what these or othercommunitieshave
done in the past nor scenarios about what theymight do in the
future.
"Postmodernistbourgeois liberalism" sounds oxymoronic.This
reasons,the mais partlybecause, forlocal and perhaps transitory
jorityof those who thinkof themselvesas beyondmetaphysicsand
metanarrativesalso thinkof themselvesas having opted out of the
bourgeoisie. But partlyit is because it is hard to disentanglebourgeois liberal institutionsfromthevocabularythattheseinstitutions
voinheritedfromtheEnlightenment-e.g., theeighteenth-century
cabulary of natural rights,which judges, and constitutionallawyerssuch as Dworkin,must use ex officiis.This vocabularyis built
around a distinctionbetweenmoralityand prudence.In what follows I want to show how this vocabulary,and in particular this
to suit the needs of us postmoddistinction,mightbe reinterpreted
ernistbourgeois liberals. I hope therebyto suggesthow such liberals might convince our society that loyalty to itselfis morality
enough, and that such loyalty no longer needs an ahistorical
backup. I thinktheyshould tryto clear themselvesof chargesof irresponsibilityby convincingour societythatit need be responsible
only to its own traditions,and not to the moral law as well.
is to thinkof themoral
The crucial move in thisreinterpretation
of Rawls's original
not
one
as
self,the embodimentof rationality,
fromher talents
her
who
can
self
distinguish
choosers, somebody
and interestsand views about thegood, but as a networkof beliefs,

586

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

desires,and emotionswith nothingbehind it-no substratebehind

the attributes.For purposes of moral and political deliberationand
conversation,a person just is that network,as forpurposes of ballisticsshe is a point-mass,or forpurposes of chemistrya linkage of
molecules. She is a networkthat is constantlyreweavingitselfin
the usual Quinean manner-that is to say, not by referenceto general criteria(e.g., "rules of meaning" or "moral principles") but in
the hit-or-missway in which cells readjust themselvesto meet the
pressuresof the environment.On a Quinean view, rational behavior is just adaptive behavior of a sort which roughlyparallels the
behavior,in similar circumstances,of the othermembersof some
relevantcommunity.Irrationality,in both physicsand ethics,is a
matterof behavior that leads one to abandon, or be strippedof,
membership in some such community. For some purposes this
adaptive behavior is aptlydescribedas "learning" or "computing"
or "redistributionof electricalcharges in neural tissue," and for
othersas "deliberation" or "choice." None of thesevocabulariesis
privilegedover against another.
What plays therole of "human dignity"on thisview of the self?
The answer is well expressedby Michael Sandel, who says thatwe
cannot regardourselvesas Kantian subjects "capable of constituting meaning on our own," as Rawlsian choosers,
whosemoral
... withoutgreatcostto thoseloyaltiesand convictions
forceconsistspartlyin thefactthatlivingbythemis inseparable
from
ourselvesas theparticular
peoplewe are-as members
understanding
ofthisfamilyor community
ofthishisornationorpeople,as bearers
tory,as sons and daughtersof thatrevolution,as citizensof this
republic.'
I would argue that the moral forceof such loyaltiesand convictions consists wholly in this fact,and that nothing else has any
moral force.There is no "ground" forsuch loyaltiesand convictions save the factthat the beliefsand desiresand emotionswhich
buttressthemoverlap those of lots of othermembersof the group
with which we identifyforpurposes of moral or political deliberations, and the furtherfactthat theseare distinctivefeaturesof that
group, featureswhich it uses to constructits self-imagethrough
contrastswith othergroups. This means thatthenaturalizedHegelian analogue of "intrinsic human dignity" is the comparative
dignityof a group with which a person identifiesherself.Nations
'Liberalism and the Limits of Justice(New York: Cambridge,1982), p. 179. Sandel's remarkablebook argues masterfullythat Rawls cannot naturalize Kant and
still retainthe meta-ethicalauthorityof Kantian "practical reason."

THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

OF INTELLECTUALS

587

or churchesor movementsare, on this view, shining historicalexamples not because they reflectrays emanating from a higher
source, but because of contrast-effects-comparisons
with other,
worse communities.Persons have dignitynot as an interiorlumiIt is a cornescence,but because theyshare in such contrast-effects.
ollary of this view that the moral justificationof the institutions
and practices of one's group-e.g., of the contemporarybourgeoisie-is mostlya matterof historicalnarratives(including scenarios about what is likelyto happen in certainfuturecontingencies), ratherthan of philosophical metanarratives.The principal
backup for historiographyis not philosophy but the arts, which
serveto develop and modifya group's self-imageby, forexample,
apotheosizing its heroes, diabolizing its enemies, mounting dialogues among its members,and refocusingits attention.
A furthercorollaryis thatthemorality/prudence
distinctionnow
appears as a distinctionbetweenappeals to two parts of the network that is the self-parts separated by blurryand constantly
shiftingboundaries. One part consists of those beliefsand desires
and emotions which overlap with those of most othermembersof
some community with which, for purposes of deliberation,she
identifiesherself,and which contrastwith those of most members
of other communities with which hers contrastsitself.A person
appeals to moralityratherthan prudencewhen she appeals to this
overlapping, shared part of herself,those beliefsand desires and
emotions which permit her to say "WE do not do this sort of
thing." Moralityis, as WilfridSellars has said, a matterof "we-intentions."Most moral dilemmasare thusreflectionsof thefactthat
mostof us identifywitha numberof different
communitiesand are
equally reluctant to marginalize ourselves in relation to any of
them. This diversityof identificationsincreases with education,
just as the numberof communitieswith which a person may identifyincreaseswith civilization.
Intra-societaltensions,of the sort which Dworkin rightlysays
mark our pluralistic society,are rarelyresolvedby appeals to general principles of the sort Dworkin thinks necessary.More frequently theyare resolvedby appeals to what he calls "convention
and anecdote." The political discourse of the democracies,at its
best,is the exchange of what Wittgensteincalled "remindersfora
particular purpose"-anecdotes about the past effectsof various
practicesand predictionsof what will happen if,or unless,some of
these are altered. The moral deliberations of the postmodernist
bourgeois liberal consists largely in this same sort of discourse,
avoiding theformulationof generalprinciplesexceptwherethesit-

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uation may require this particular tactic-as when one writesa

constitution,or rules foryoungchildrento memorize.It is usefulto
rememberthat this view of moral and political deliberationwas a
commonplace among American intellectuals in the days when
Dewey-a post-modernistbeforehis time-was thereigningAmerican philosopher,days when "legal realism" was thoughtof as desirable pragmatismratherthan unprincipledsubjectivism.
It is also useful to reflecton why this toleranceforanecdote was
replaced by a reattachmentto principles.Part of theexplanation, I
think, is that most American intellectuals in Dewey's day still
thoughttheircountrywas a shininghistoricalexample. They identifiedwith it easily. The largestsingle reason fortheirloss of identificationwas theVietnamWar. The War caused some intellectuals
to marginalizethemselvesentirely.Othersattemptedto rehabilitate
Kantian notions in orderto say, with Chomsky,that the War not
merelybetrayedAmerica's hopes and interestsand self-image,but
was immoral,one which we had had no rightto engage in in the
firstplace.
Dewey would have thoughtsuch attemptsat furtherself-castigation pointless. They may have serveda useful catharticpurpose,
but theirlong-runeffecthas been to separatethe intellectualsfrom
the moral consensus of the nation ratherthan to alter thatconsensus. Further,Dewey's naturalized Hegelianism has more overlap
with the belief-systems
of the communitieswe rich North American bourgeois need to talk with than does a naturalizedKantianism. So a reversionto the Deweyan outlook mightleave us in a betterposition to carryon whateverconversationbetweennationsmay
still be possible, as well as leaving Americanintellectualsin a betterposition to conversewith theirfellowcitizens.
I shall end by takingup two objections to what I have been saying. The firstobjection is thaton my view a child found wandering in the woods, the remnantof a slaughterednation whose temples have been razed and whose books have been burned,has no
share in human dignity.This is indeed a consequence, but it does
not follow thatshe may be treatedlike an animal. For it is part of
the tradition of our community that the human strangerfrom
whom all dignity has been stripped is to be taken in, to be reclothed with dignity.This Jewish and Christian element in our
traditionis gratefullyinvoked by free-loadingatheistslike myself,
who would like to let differences
like thatbetweenthe Kantian and
the Hegelian remain "merely philosophical." The existence of
human rights,in the sense in which it is at issue in thismeta-ethical debate, has as much or as little relevance to our treatmentof

THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

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589

such a child as the question of the existenceof God. I thinkboth

have equally littlerelevance.
The second objection is that what I have been calling "postmodernism" is betternamed "relativism," and that relativismis
self-refuting.
Relativismcertainlyis self-refuting,
but thereis a differencebetween saying that everycommunityis as good as every
other and saying that we have to work out fromthe networkswe
are, fromthe communitieswith which we presentlyidentify.Postmodernismis no morerelativisticthan Hilary Putnam's suggestion
thatwe stop tryingfora "God's-eye view" and realize that"We can
only hope to produce a morerational conceptionof rationalityor a
betterconception of moralityif we operate fromwithin our tradition."2 The view that everytraditionis as rational or as moral as
everyothercould be held only by a god, someone who had no need
to use (but only to mention)the terms'rational' or 'moral,' because
she had no need to inquire or deliberate.Such a being would have
escaped from historyand conversation into contemplation and
metanarrative.To accuse postmodernismof relativismis to tryto
put a metanarrativein thepostmodernist'smouth. One will do this
if one identifies"holding a philosophical position" with having a
metanarrativeavailable. If we insiston such a definitionof "philosophy," then post-modernismis post-philosophical. But it would
be betterto change the definition.3
Universityof Virginia

RICHARD RORTY

2Reason, Truthand History(New York: Cambridge,1981),p. 216.

'I discuss such redefinitionin the Introductionto Consequences of Pragmatism
(Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1982), and the issue of relativism in
"Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity,"forthcomingin Praxis International
and in "Solidarite ou ObjectivitO?"forthcomingin Critique.