The Ironist and the Romantic: Reading Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell (Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy)

work is interesting and worthwhile enough, so far as it goes, but perhaps in the final analysis not really worth the effort. In the assessment of Stephen Mulhall, author of the most comprehensive Cavell monograph to date, '[The philosopher's] work divides its audience . . . into those who have experienced conversion and those who see only the enthusiasm of a cult. ' 2 No doubt the contrasting receptions of Cavell and Rorty are at least partly accounted for by the availability and marketability of their respective oeuvres. While in his later writings Rorty embraces more and more the persona of the public intellectual, one who is self-consciously rousing and relevant and recognitive of a politically engaged and plural readership, it is arguable that Cavell's own problematizations of voice and audience have culminated in a body of work particularly difficult to contextualize, to categorize or even to assimilate. Heading up a dramatic intellectual resurgence from the early 1980s and onwards, Rorty is most usually identified with his own particular brand of neopragmatism. In a battery of journal articles and visiting lectures (later published as Consequences of Pragmatism and the four volumes of his Philosophical Papers), Rorty challenged the prevailing philosophical picture denigrating America's native and once-dominant intellectual tradition as despairingly folksy and outmoded. In an intellectual climate dominated by the post-structuralist innovations of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, Rorty made a plea for pragmatism as at once patriotic and prescient, finding in the writings of William James and John Dewey a thoroughgoing anti-foundationalism still opening to the spirited hopefulness of Western democracy. In the words of the intellectual historian, Robert Westbrook, 'Rorty once again put pragmatism on the American intellectual map as a forceful and independent presence. ' 3 Like Hilary Putnam, his long-time neo-pragmatist contemporary and critic, Rorty developed an intimidatingly substantial body of work retrospectively credited with the rescue of pragmatism from intellectual decline. Consonant with these neo-pragmatist recoveries, he is probably best known for his radical take on questions of knowledge. There is no objective reality, Rorty would say, a reality somehow separate from our subjective picture of the world. There is no capitalized Truth, existing somehow over or above our human constructions. Updating the legacy of classical pragmatism, Rorty worked to sideline epistemology and metaphysics and to privilege in their place hermeneutic playfulness and linguistic self-creation. More interested in setting ideas to work than worrying too much about their metaphysical grounding, he attracted widespread criticism for perceived emotivism, instrumentalism, relativism and 'redescribe' . By presenting, in place of the hackneyed and the unoriginal, vocabularies fresh and innovative, they aimed not exactly to argue but more precisely to persuade. Cavell initially trained as a composer at the Juilliard School and found his way to philosophy under the lightning-bolt influence of J. L. Austin and his mid-1950s' series of seminars at Harvard. In understanding the centrality of 'the ordinary' to Cavell's work, the significance of Austin cannot be overestimated. Austin was primarily concerned with specific words in specific contexts, with what people actually do or say in this or that situation. In the panorama of ordinary language, he posited a sure source for the distinctions and connections long established by the human community -a sure source, moreover, from which this human community might grapple with the specificities of philosophy. Inspired in similar ways by the painstaking work of the later Wittgenstein, Cavell's philosophical criticism developed Austin's preference for the specific, highlighting 'the ordinary' as the nexus of everyday certainties and practices that make up our lives with language and with each other. 5 Tending to find expression in the philosopher's more poetic prose, the ordinary operates in Cavell's work more accurately as a promise of redemption, something we cannot take for granted but must continuously quest after. His is a guiding intuition that definitions too strict or too final will overly strain or pressure and so the ordinary will slip tragically from our grasp. 6 The ordinary I would counter that Cavell's romanticism has a critical and a communal edge, that just as much as Rortyan irony, Cavellian romanticism effectively works as a mode of scrutiny. For Cavell, the romantic self always holds open the potential to be representative, and if the writings of this same self seem overly spiralling or self-conscious, this is at least partly justifiable by this self 's desire not to overcome but to preserve subjective struggle. The romanticist wager posits the articulation of one's personal experience as fully exemplary for the articulation of others. This is just to say that the democratic self potentially founds the democratic community, an ideal fully captured in Cavell's perfectionist promise. Romanticism thus allows for precision, for specificity, for very practical recommendations in life and in learning. In Rorty's irony and Cavell's romanticism, there is a shared stress on the linguistic, a shared drive to redeem or to redescribe language because of its perceived enslavement to our institutions or to our culture. While for Rorty, 'the poet is the maker of new words, the shaper of new languages' (CIS, 20), for Cavell, words have lost their place and it is the task of a romanticized philosophy to find a home for them. Thus, Rorty's call for the necessity of redescription might productively be aligned with Cavell's stress on the need to reinhabit and redeem our shared philosophical vocabulary. Cavell and Rorty both point to the centrality of the literary in any philosophical endeavour. Both advocate a vision of philosophy as a stimulus for human and communal change, a catalyst for intellectual transformation. A shared emphasis on the virtue and necessity of the creative, of the power and scope of the human imagination, is a further point of correspondence between the two. Such overlap alerts us already to the potential difficulties in thinking of irony and romanticism as polar or even as dialectical opposites. At least part of the difficulty here is that both Cavell and Rorty understand irony (and romanticism) in such different ways. Rorty's irony recommends self-creation and selffashioning. Always recognizing her own self as a product of contingency and social construction, Rorty's ironist is liberated into redescription and recreation. For her, there is no essential self, no essential language or community, and the freedom to improvise is nothing short of intoxicating. Cavell's irony, on the other hand, involves not self-creation but self-negation. Correlated with a false or debased perfectionism, 'irony' in his readings of the Hollywood film melodramas refers to potentially false or misleading descriptions of the self. Demonstrating invariably the dominion of men over women, irony in the Cavellian corpus most usually signifies the failure of one Hollywood spouse to listen to another or the human failure in general to adequately acknowledge or respond. Expressions Rorty, always in philosophy and in general culture 'let a hundred flowers bloom' (CP, 219)? Is it best to advocate playful irony or serious romanticism? And from where if anywhere can we begin to adjudicate? With particular focus on two contemporary champions of cultural critical discourse -of philosophy as properly philosophical only when edifying and transformative -the following chapters press these issues and more. "At the time of his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was widely acclaimed as one of the world's most influential contemporary thinkers. Stanley Cavell, who has been a leading intellectual figure from the 1960s to the present, has been just as philosophically influential as Rorty though perhaps not as politically divisive. Both philosophers have developed from analytic to post-analytical thought, both move between philosophy, literature and cultural politics, and both re-establish American philosophical traditions in a new and nuanced key. The Ironist and the Romantic: Reading Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell finds the sound of Rorty's cheerful pragmatism strikingly at odds with the anxious romanticism of Cavell. Beginning from this tonal discord, and moving through comprehensive comparative analysis on the topics of scepticism, American philosophy, literature, writing style and politics, this book presents the work of its central figures in a novel and mutually illuminating perspective. Áine Mahon's unique and original comparative reading will be of interest not only to those working on Rorty and Cavell but to anyone concerned with the current state of American philosophy."--Bloomsbury Publishing. At the time of his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was widely acclaimed as one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers. Stanley Cavell, who has been a leading intellectual figure for six decades, has been just as philosophically influential as Rorty, though perhaps not as politically divisive. Both philosophers have developed from analytic to post-analytical thought, both move between philosophy, literature and cultural politics, and both resurrect American intellectual traditions in a new key. The Ironist and the Romantic: Reading Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell finds the sound of Rorty’s cheerful pragmatism strikingly at odds with the anxious romanticism of Cavell. Through comprehensive comparative analysis of their philosophical inheritance, procedure, thematic and writing style, the work of these two philosophers is presented in a novel and mutually illuminating perspective. Áine Kelly’s unique and original comparative reading will be of interest to all those working on Rorty and Cavell and anyone concerned with the current state of American philosophy. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction 1 Return of the Invisible Tomato Scepticism and modern philosophy Cavell and scepticism Rorty and scepticism Cavell and Rorty on scepticism Cavell and Rorty on Wittgenstein 2 What’s the Use of Calling Cavell a Pragmatist? Rorty and pragmatism/Cavell and transcendentalism Contestations: Of pragmatism and Emerson The idea of America 3 The Turn to Literature Rorty’s literary culture Cavell’s literary philosophy Cavell, Rorty and post-structuralist literary theory 4 Stylists of the Philosophical Cavell’s style Rorty’s style An American Style of Philosophy 5 The Personal and the Political Cavell and morality Rorty and morality Cavell and moral perfectionism Rorty and politics Rorty and Cavell on morality and politics Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index