What does it mean to live “the good life”? This is the quintessential philosophic question. Pragmatism, as a distinctly American philosophy, seeks to provide a distinctly American answer. The late Richard Rorty played a major role in revitalized Pragmatism following the ‘linguistic turn’, becoming perhaps the primary voice of Neo-Pragmatism. Therefore, this essay will expound on the answers Rorty provides to the question: What does it mean to live ‘the good life’? How would Rorty have us understand “Goodness”? What makes a choice “Good”? Choosing is a act of responsibility, so how would Rorty have us understand Morality? For the Pragmatist, the “Good Life” is a life which is oriented, in the phrase forever enshrined in the American consciousness, “in the pursuit of happiness.” Like Utilitarianism, Pragmatism advocates that the Good Life is one maximum happiness. However, Pragmatism takes this hedonist thrust and tempers it with the egalitarian spirit; the Good Life is best realized individually and socially. It is a compromise between the happiness of the individual and the happiness of society. The thing which unites individual with all of humanity, part and whole, is Freedom. Responsibility, then, for the Pragmatist, is proactively engaged in the task of maximizing happiness for all, individually and socially, by increasing Freedom for both parties. This task is best understood as democratic activity. For the philosopher like Rorty, this pursuit takes on addition significance, for it requires the use of human imagination to employ its greatest adaption, language, to identify and describe future freedoms and improvements to democracy. Thus, the philosopher creates happiness for self and society, living and contributing to the Good Life.
According to Richard Rorty (1999), Pragmatism rejects the classical Western conceptualizations of the Good. Rather, Rorty affirms John Stuart Mill’s assertion that the “only plausible answer to the question: ‘What is intrinsically good?’ is ‘human happiness’” (p. 267). The Platonist view is considered “implausible” primarily because of the assertion of an intrinsic, or inherent, quality of being. With the assertion of a inherent quality of being, an essence, comes an assertion that true knowledge, or meaning, corresponds to inherent components of reality. These two tenets, historically known as Essentialism and Foundationalism, are, for Pragmatists like Rorty, sufficient evidence that the Platonic worldview is radical deficient. Platonism was useful for its time. Western civilization would not be what it is without it. However, it has lost its utility and is now “archaic”(p. 276). By the modern era Platonism was seen as unable to the questions it asked and instead produced what Dewey called a ‘whole brood and nest of dualisms’ (quoted on p. 52). These dualism include the definition of the moral. What is “the good”? Essentialism holds that “the good” is associated with a realm that is eternal. It was above and beyond nature. It considered the senses unreliable. They are not trustworthy. Appearances are deceiving. Yet, we experience some consistency; something holds reality, nature, together. Something makes it less than pure Chaos. So Essentialism holds that Nature is ultimately false, and that reality is held together by something that must be above and beyond, transcendent of nature. That something was considered the source of Goodness. Goodness then, is the quality of being fixed, of being unchanging. The Good is reliable and safe. It is that aspect of a being which demonstrates constancy across its web of relations. It is not subject to nature. Rather it is Object, and nature is subject to it. Consistency manifests in degrees in the objects of nature. Humans can perceive this quality, and can grasp it. Plato held that Reason was the component of a person most good, most able to access that which is object, this transcendent aspect of reality. Plato reasoned that there must exist ultimately a singular, pure, Absolute Object, something that is absolutely consistent. It could not be subject to nature. Rather it made nature subject to it. It ultimately was the source of power in the universe. Plato called this Absolute Object “Truth,” and according to Rorty, Christianity adopted this worldview(p. 155). When one possess “the Good”, one “knows” that which is steadfast, that which is “true.” One is “in touch with a reality that is outside itself”(p. xxii) With increased knowledge of the Good, one fears less and less the Chaos of nature. One has certainty, a sure foundation. Pragmatists deem this “quest for certainty” an “attempt to escape from the world”(Rorty p. 33).
Pragmatists reject this object versus subject distinction. They claim there is no aspect of a thing which is not relational. Rorty uses the number 17 as an example (P. 53). Try to think or talk about the number 17 apart from its relationships? Try to grasp the number 17 apart from its descriptions using mathematical shorthand, to other numbers? You can not. Any attempt to do so renders the number 17 utterly useless. It makes it something non-sensical. This is the Platonist goal: to grasp the non-sensical. But Pragmatists ask “Why?” What is the point of grasping the essence, the assuredness of the number 17 if one cannot actually use it in everyday life? What advantage does this certainty, does this knowledge, then have? The Pragmatist answers: None. There is no advantage. It “simply does not pay” to be an Platonist (p. 53) The Pragmatist interrupts this lack of advantage as a lack of distinction. There is no difference between knowing a thing with the aid of reason and knowing a thing with the aid of the senses, then there is nothing unique about Reason. It is not transcendent. Reason is really very natural. It is sensual. It’s more advanced, to be sure, than the sensory abilities of other life forms and therefore worthy of recognition. But it is not transcendent. It doesn’t gain humans access to some special world. Rather, it simply enables us to discern what works.
Denying the transcendent, Pragmatist hold that all the progress humans have experienced, all that is good in human activity, from the sense of solidarity with other humans, to language and scientific methodology, it not evidence that humans are aligning themselves with some Absolute law or pureness of being. Rather, the story of human progress is simply the story of the results of trial and error. We have tried new things, new ways of doing, of living, of interacting with nature, and some have worked and some have failed. But we have progressed. There has been, Rorty declares “experimental success: we have come up with a way of bring people into some degree of comity, and of increasing happiness”(p. 273). What works is what is Good. But this Good is not permanent. It is contextualized. What worked a thousand years ago may or may not necessarily work today. Absolute consistency does not exist. And attempts to find it are barking up the wrong tree. Rorty writes, “one must be convinced that the Platonic quest, the attempt to get behind appearances to the intrinsic nature of reality, is hopeless”(p. 49). The Pragmatist holds that Platonism has outlived its usefulness. There is nothing there that can help address the issues of modern humanity. Indeed, holding fast to something that worked millennia ago is dangerous. Pragmatists advocate that we consider the Platonic quest for certainty as a tired, old habit, as a discipline useful when humanity was young, but one no longer useful now that we have matured significantly. What is important is that trial and error not be impeded. In short, we must experience Freedom. Freedom is the capacity to experience, to try new things. Freedom is the fount of Goodness. Happiness is found in freedom.
On the surface, Pragmatism appears hedonistic. It sounds like it advocates that an individual should be independently doing whatever one likes to do. But Pragmatists take Freedom very seriously. For Freedom (and thus Goodness) are susceptible to change. They can be lost. Pragmatism holds that conflicting views are real. Individuals are often faced with competing claims. And the human task is to work through these claims. To be responsible is to address the choices we experience. Morality is not about identifying and then selecting the options which is steadfast and sure. Rather, Rorty would have us see “moral choice as always a matter of compromise between competing goods” (p. xxvii) The choice has to be worked through. Hence, individuals need a methodology, a way, a tool, to assist in the selection of what option provides optimum Freedom and Goodness. Because there is no Absolute Knowledge that reason can tap into, and because humans are finite beings, the individual alone is very likely to confuse Freedom and Goodness for himself or herself and Freedom and Goodness for all. Therefore, what is needed is a methodology that will benefit both the individual and society. For what may be Freeing and Good to one may not be to others. For Pragmatists, democratic interaction is the tool which (thus far) best sorts out, identifies, the Freedom and Goodness in the choices individuals make. What is Good, what is best, are choices that result in balancing the Freedom of individual with the Freedom of society. When both individual and society win, humanity wins. This is bring responsible. This is being moral. Individuals should identity new Freedoms, and then submit them to the democratic processes of society to verify their goodness for self and for society. Some Freedoms are limited in their scope and really only impact the individual. This is to say, they live and die with the individual. They are private Freedoms. Rorty’s orchid-collecting, for example. Other Freedoms are more universal though not indefinite or Absolute. These have some historic sustainability. The Right of Speech, for example. Such Freedoms, first experienced individually, get elevated to the societal level and then they trickle down onto all members. They become a public Freedom, a common good. Rorty advocates that we see “intellectual and moral progress as the growth of freedom, as leading to democracy rather than to Absolute Knowledge” (p. 49) Democracy is a proven tool for experiencing Freedom, for achieving the Good Life.
Rorty considers the ancient philosophical questions such as “What is Truth?” as rather pointless. He claims that if philosophers continue to pursue these questions they will basically paint themselves into an corner in which they will discover that they made philosophy a private enterprise. Pursing the answer to those questions may make a select handful of individuals happy, but really the answers have little to contribute to the common good. Rorty would rather have philosophers serve more like artists, who vocalize their imaginings, their new vistas of Freedom. Philosophers, as experts in the history of ideas, are well-positioned to talk about improvements to Democratic processes. For Rorty, this is the philosopher’s Moral imperative.
Rorty, Richard (1999). Philosophy and Social Hope. London:Penguin Books.
“The Good” in Neo-Pragmatist Thought: Freedom as a Moral Imperative
What does it mean to live “the good life”? This is the quintessential philosophic question. Pragmatism, as a distinctly American philosophy, seeks to provide a distinctly American answer. The late Richard Rorty played a major role in revitalized Pragmatism following the ‘linguistic turn’, becoming perhaps the primary voice of Neo-Pragmatism. Therefore, this essay will expound on the answers Rorty provides to the question: What does it mean to live ‘the good life’? How would Rorty have us understand “Goodness”? What makes a choice “Good”? Choosing is a act of responsibility, so how would Rorty have us understand Morality? For the Pragmatist, the “Good Life” is a life which is oriented, in the phrase forever enshrined in the American consciousness, “in the pursuit of happiness.” Like Utilitarianism, Pragmatism advocates that the Good Life is one maximum happiness. However, Pragmatism takes this hedonist thrust and tempers it with the egalitarian spirit; the Good Life is best realized individually and socially. It is a compromise between the happiness of the individual and the happiness of society. The thing which unites individual with all of humanity, part and whole, is Freedom. Responsibility, then, for the Pragmatist, is proactively engaged in the task of maximizing happiness for all, individually and socially, by increasing Freedom for both parties. This task is best understood as democratic activity. For the philosopher like Rorty, this pursuit takes on addition significance, for it requires the use of human imagination to employ its greatest adaption, language, to identify and describe future freedoms and improvements to democracy. Thus, the philosopher creates happiness for self and society, living and contributing to the Good Life.
According to Richard Rorty (1999), Pragmatism rejects the classical Western conceptualizations of the Good. Rather, Rorty affirms John Stuart Mill’s assertion that the “only plausible answer to the question: ‘What is intrinsically good?’ is ‘human happiness’” (p. 267). The Platonist view is considered “implausible” primarily because of the assertion of an intrinsic, or inherent, quality of being. With the assertion of a inherent quality of being, an essence, comes an assertion that true knowledge, or meaning, corresponds to inherent components of reality. These two tenets, historically known as Essentialism and Foundationalism, are, for Pragmatists like Rorty, sufficient evidence that the Platonic worldview is radical deficient. Platonism was useful for its time. Western civilization would not be what it is without it. However, it has lost its utility and is now “archaic”(p. 276). By the modern era Platonism was seen as unable to the questions it asked and instead produced what Dewey called a ‘whole brood and nest of dualisms’ (quoted on p. 52). These dualism include the definition of the moral. What is “the good”? Essentialism holds that “the good” is associated with a realm that is eternal. It was above and beyond nature. It considered the senses unreliable. They are not trustworthy. Appearances are deceiving. Yet, we experience some consistency; something holds reality, nature, together. Something makes it less than pure Chaos. So Essentialism holds that Nature is ultimately false, and that reality is held together by something that must be above and beyond, transcendent of nature. That something was considered the source of Goodness. Goodness then, is the quality of being fixed, of being unchanging. The Good is reliable and safe. It is that aspect of a being which demonstrates constancy across its web of relations. It is not subject to nature. Rather it is Object, and nature is subject to it. Consistency manifests in degrees in the objects of nature. Humans can perceive this quality, and can grasp it. Plato held that Reason was the component of a person most good, most able to access that which is object, this transcendent aspect of reality. Plato reasoned that there must exist ultimately a singular, pure, Absolute Object, something that is absolutely consistent. It could not be subject to nature. Rather it made nature subject to it. It ultimately was the source of power in the universe. Plato called this Absolute Object “Truth,” and according to Rorty, Christianity adopted this worldview(p. 155). When one possess “the Good”, one “knows” that which is steadfast, that which is “true.” One is “in touch with a reality that is outside itself”(p. xxii) With increased knowledge of the Good, one fears less and less the Chaos of nature. One has certainty, a sure foundation. Pragmatists deem this “quest for certainty” an “attempt to escape from the world”(Rorty p. 33).
Pragmatists reject this object versus subject distinction. They claim there is no aspect of a thing which is not relational. Rorty uses the number 17 as an example (P. 53). Try to think or talk about the number 17 apart from its relationships? Try to grasp the number 17 apart from its descriptions using mathematical shorthand, to other numbers? You can not. Any attempt to do so renders the number 17 utterly useless. It makes it something non-sensical. This is the Platonist goal: to grasp the non-sensical. But Pragmatists ask “Why?” What is the point of grasping the essence, the assuredness of the number 17 if one cannot actually use it in everyday life? What advantage does this certainty, does this knowledge, then have? The Pragmatist answers: None. There is no advantage. It “simply does not pay” to be an Platonist (p. 53) The Pragmatist interrupts this lack of advantage as a lack of distinction. There is no difference between knowing a thing with the aid of reason and knowing a thing with the aid of the senses, then there is nothing unique about Reason. It is not transcendent. Reason is really very natural. It is sensual. It’s more advanced, to be sure, than the sensory abilities of other life forms and therefore worthy of recognition. But it is not transcendent. It doesn’t gain humans access to some special world. Rather, it simply enables us to discern what works.
Denying the transcendent, Pragmatist hold that all the progress humans have experienced, all that is good in human activity, from the sense of solidarity with other humans, to language and scientific methodology, it not evidence that humans are aligning themselves with some Absolute law or pureness of being. Rather, the story of human progress is simply the story of the results of trial and error. We have tried new things, new ways of doing, of living, of interacting with nature, and some have worked and some have failed. But we have progressed. There has been, Rorty declares “experimental success: we have come up with a way of bring people into some degree of comity, and of increasing happiness”(p. 273). What works is what is Good. But this Good is not permanent. It is contextualized. What worked a thousand years ago may or may not necessarily work today. Absolute consistency does not exist. And attempts to find it are barking up the wrong tree. Rorty writes, “one must be convinced that the Platonic quest, the attempt to get behind appearances to the intrinsic nature of reality, is hopeless”(p. 49). The Pragmatist holds that Platonism has outlived its usefulness. There is nothing there that can help address the issues of modern humanity. Indeed, holding fast to something that worked millennia ago is dangerous. Pragmatists advocate that we consider the Platonic quest for certainty as a tired, old habit, as a discipline useful when humanity was young, but one no longer useful now that we have matured significantly. What is important is that trial and error not be impeded. In short, we must experience Freedom. Freedom is the capacity to experience, to try new things. Freedom is the fount of Goodness. Happiness is found in freedom.
On the surface, Pragmatism appears hedonistic. It sounds like it advocates that an individual should be independently doing whatever one likes to do. But Pragmatists take Freedom very seriously. For Freedom (and thus Goodness) are susceptible to change. They can be lost. Pragmatism holds that conflicting views are real. Individuals are often faced with competing claims. And the human task is to work through these claims. To be responsible is to address the choices we experience. Morality is not about identifying and then selecting the options which is steadfast and sure. Rather, Rorty would have us see “moral choice as always a matter of compromise between competing goods” (p. xxvii) The choice has to be worked through. Hence, individuals need a methodology, a way, a tool, to assist in the selection of what option provides optimum Freedom and Goodness. Because there is no Absolute Knowledge that reason can tap into, and because humans are finite beings, the individual alone is very likely to confuse Freedom and Goodness for himself or herself and Freedom and Goodness for all. Therefore, what is needed is a methodology that will benefit both the individual and society. For what may be Freeing and Good to one may not be to others. For Pragmatists, democratic interaction is the tool which (thus far) best sorts out, identifies, the Freedom and Goodness in the choices individuals make. What is Good, what is best, are choices that result in balancing the Freedom of individual with the Freedom of society. When both individual and society win, humanity wins. This is bring responsible. This is being moral. Individuals should identity new Freedoms, and then submit them to the democratic processes of society to verify their goodness for self and for society. Some Freedoms are limited in their scope and really only impact the individual. This is to say, they live and die with the individual. They are private Freedoms. Rorty’s orchid-collecting, for example. Other Freedoms are more universal though not indefinite or Absolute. These have some historic sustainability. The Right of Speech, for example. Such Freedoms, first experienced individually, get elevated to the societal level and then they trickle down onto all members. They become a public Freedom, a common good. Rorty advocates that we see “intellectual and moral progress as the growth of freedom, as leading to democracy rather than to Absolute Knowledge” (p. 49) Democracy is a proven tool for experiencing Freedom, for achieving the Good Life.
Rorty considers the ancient philosophical questions such as “What is Truth?” as rather pointless. He claims that if philosophers continue to pursue these questions they will basically paint themselves into an corner in which they will discover that they made philosophy a private enterprise. Pursing the answer to those questions may make a select handful of individuals happy, but really the answers have little to contribute to the common good. Rorty would rather have philosophers serve more like artists, who vocalize their imaginings, their new vistas of Freedom. Philosophers, as experts in the history of ideas, are well-positioned to talk about improvements to Democratic processes. For Rorty, this is the philosopher’s Moral imperative.
Rorty, Richard (1999). Philosophy and Social Hope. London:Penguin Books.
Photo: Freedom by VanessaO