Taking Other Human Beings Seriously: Rorty's Ethics of Choice and Responsibility

Abstract

In final chapter of Philosophy and Mirror of Nature Rorty worried - presciently we might now add - that edifying philosopher sympathetically depicted in those pages will be treated as a relativist, or who lacks moral senousness, for failing to recognize the attainment of truth as a matter of necessity.''1 The thought he leaves us with in closing sentence of that book reaffirms tliis wony: the only point on winch I would insist is that philosophers' moral concern should be with continuing of West, rather than with insisting upon a place for traditional problems of modem philosophy within that conversation (PMN 394). A decade and a half later Rorty responded to wony more directly, offering a conception of moral senousness fitting for pragmatists who seek to replace objectivity-as-accuraterepresentation with objectivity-as-intersubjectivity and abjure realist senousness: other human beings (TP 83).This essay aims to give an account of underlying moral concerns animating Rorty's thought, of which tliis notion of moral senousness is an expression. These concerns, which are present from Ins earliest published work to lus last volume of essays, center on a conception of ethical responsibility, both toward others and for our choices and commitments as philosophers. To make taking other human beings seriously highest priority of democratic mquiiy is to situate social practice of justification in a sociopolitical context that subordinates nonnative, in Sellarsian and Brandomian sense, to moral in order to introduce into game of giving and asking for reasons a conception of ethical responsibility. Bringing these neglected moral concerns into view sheds new light on seemingly problematic stances Rorty adopted with regard to truth as goal of inquiry, warranted assertibility and constraints on inquiry, availability of entena of judgment, possibility of rational critique, and society lets us say. Indeed, a common thread of Rorty criticism, whether from analytic philosophers, Deweyan pragmatists, or 'new pragmatists', is fundamental inadequacy and even inesponsibility of lus positions on these topics. The charge that he lacked seriousness also is one Rorty himself confessed hurt most (PSH 5). While to a certain extent my account is meant to serve as a corrective, my aim is less to defend Roily from criticism than to show how introducing tlus largely neglected concern with taking other human beings seriously alters received picture and adds coherence to his stance.In all commentary sparked by Mirror and subsequent writings, little attention has been paid to fundamental moral concerns that animate Rorty's work.' In his post -Mirror writings this dimension emerges more explicitly in lus effort to modulate philosophical debate from a methodologico-ontological into an etluco-political key (ORT 110). Yet it is present even in Ins earliest published essays on metaphilosophy where Rorty already was calling attention to questions that are a matter of moral choice and cannot be decided by theoretical reflection or philosophical argumentation. On interpretation I shall offer idea of philosophy as a form of cultural politics in Roily's later work is his most explicit attempt to call attention to moral and political space within which choice occurs, and to locate philosophers, and their commitments to what count as problems, in tlus space.4 Tins interpretation extends BjOm Ramberg's insight that Rorty's attempt to take philosophical questions as questions of cultural politics is best understood as a project of directly confronting ourselves and our practices in ethical and political terms.5 What Ramberg grasps in context of Rorty's use of Davidson is that understanding Rorty's position entails need to reverse direction of support between his moral and philosophical commitments. …