Moore and Shusterman on Organic Wholes

Abstract

It is natural in periods of crisis in a paradigm to turn back to the founders in an effort to think carefully through the reasons for the founding of the movement. The origins of analytic philosophy can be found partly in G.E. Moore's objections to the idealism of the British Hegelians, e.g., Bradley and McTaggart. The debate between Moore and these idealists is particularly interesting when we consider recent comparisons that have been drawn by Rorty and others between 19th century idealism and 20th century textualism.' Richard Shusterman has recently reopened the debate by considering the opposing views of such continental philosophers as Derrida and Nehamas and analytic philosophers concerning the concept of organic unity.2 He has made the interesting observation that although Derrida has opposed organic unity as a principle of aesthetic value he is committed to a more radical form of organic unity that asserts the interconnectedness of everything in the world. Shusterman also attributes this more radical organicism to Nehamas and, through Nehamas's interpretation of Nietzsche, to Nietzsche. On this Nietzschean view, things have no characters independent of their interrelations with other things-and, directly or indirectly, everything is interrelated with everything else. Things are also relative to interpretations-different interpretations produce different things. On this view all properties are equally essential; thus the distinction between essence and accident dissolves.3 Shusterman believes that Moore's arguments against the radical or Hegelian conception of organic unity can also be directed against this Nietzschean position. Shusterman recognizes that these arguments are based on a concept of "stable part" which is open to deconstruction. In light of the disadvantages of deconstruction and analysis he turns to pragmatism as a mediation between the two. The pragmatist, along with the deconstructionist, sees things in the world as interpretations-but the pragmatist takes such interpretations to be so deeply entrenched in our actual thinking as to have the status of facts. The pragmatist also values the distinction between understanding and interpretation which is undercut by the deconstructionist. The pragmatist does not see the world either as all logical atoms or all integrated interrelations, but as "partly joined and partly disjoined. "4 In an earlier paper Shusterman used Moore's arguments concerning organic wholes to criticize some of Harold Osborne's views. More recently, however, he has, I think wisely, distanced himself from Moore's position. Although he still takes Moore's arguments to be powerful, he thinks that Moore did not sufficiently take into account the "temporal, vitalistic, developmental sense of organic unity" promoted by the romantics. 5 Shusterman suggests that what counts as a part may change with time; parts can be differently constituted by different interpretations .6 I am sympathetic to Shusterman's attempts to mediate the debate between analytic philosophy and deconstruction by way of a non-foundationalist pragmatism, and with his recognition of the force of the romantic position on organic wholes. In this paper I want to suggest how this new skepticism concerning Moore's position can be used to defend Osborne's organicism against Shusterman's earlier arguments. In short, I will show that we cannot prove that a part of a painting does not partake essentially in the emergent properties of the whole. Second, I will draw on Nietzsche's perspectivism to criticize