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June 28, 2007

Pragmatist Hope

Casey Nelson Blake in Dissent:

Rorty has in recent years stepped back from his early atheist pronouncements, describing his current position as “anti-clerical,” and he has begun to explore, with increasing sympathy and insight, the social Christianity that his grandfather Walter Rauschenbusch championed a century ago. In an exchange with philosopher Gianni Vattimo, Rorty movingly evokes an ideal of holiness that Rauschenbusch might himself have offered, in roughly the same words. “My sense of the holy, insofar as I have one, is bound up with the hope that someday, any millennium now, my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law. In such a society, communication would be domination-free, class and caste would be unknown, hierarchy would be a matter of temporary pragmatic convenience, and power would be entirely at the disposal of the free agreement of a literate and well-educated electorate.” Rorty admits he has “no idea of how such a society could come about. It is, one might say, a mystery. This mystery, like that of the Incarnation, concerns the coming into existence of a love that is kind, patient, and endures all things.”

To which I—and everyone else indebted to Rorty for reminding us of this country’s most generous intellectual and political traditions—can only say, amen.

More here.

Posted by Abbas Raza at 04:03 PM | Permalink

Comments

Rorty, and Blake, might want to use the word "holy" in connection with the love-based society described in this quotation from Rorty. (An ideal which sounds quite attractive to me also, I must admit.) But I would hesitate to call it "religious," at least in the sense of "religious" that is commonly understood these days in this country.

That sense of "religious" describes the very opposite of Rorty's ideal: a world view based on rigid divinely revealed doctrines, held in a "damn all the evidence, full steam ahead" manner which is an absolute block to the kind of open, free inquiry Rorty championed. So I would prefer calling the Rortian utopia something other than "religious," if only for the sake of clarity.

But given that "religion" is so popular in this country (despite the moans about the "new atheism"), perhaps some lack of clarity might be preferable from a PR point of view.

Posted by: JonJ | Jun 28, 2007 10:23:13 PM

Rorty admits he has “no idea of how such a society could come about..."

An ideal, loving, equalitarian, fair, with agreement of all toward all. We need to work at this in order to preserve what we have, and to help bring about such a future - in a globalized world, most especially.

From Paulo Freire: "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," it is crucial that we begin to teach using dialogue. It is teachers (and women) who have the possibility to "touch" and "inspire" the future. We are currently in a moment when religion and politics are "looking backward" for truth, and, especially, control. A time of ideas, which we seem to diminish and argue only their politics.

How to "do" dialogue with the young, I take up in my teaching practice at the U. of Minnesota (pretty well, for many students), and in my "Teaching as Dialogue" - a book and an ongoing course.

Teaching as a dialogue is interesting, "tricky," and "dangerous" lest one use interaction to control, rather than encouraging students to pursue their own futures more than the persona which helped inspire them.

How to inspire students to be thoughtful, but always to be engaged in their worlds, wherever and however they are - in order to develop and maintain this picture of equality and democracy. Else, the power hungry and anti-anarchic will always be plotting.

More: we (always) need to be "envisioning" the/a future; to set out ideas which work in any particular futures. Inclusive - takes work and great strength and endurance, and hope. As well, we need always to be studying the present - to understand critically where we are, how we got here, how to move on.

How to remain engaged, thoughtful? Loving life and experience? These are some of the questions toward paths Rorty would have/should have praised...and done.

Posted by: Harvey Sarles | Jul 2, 2007 11:10:37 AM

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