Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies
The Continental Origins of Postmodernism

Week 13: December 6-12

Michal Fram-Cohen Comments on
Shawn Klein's Review of Richard Rorty's
"Solidarity or Objectivity?" and "The Contingency of Language"

To: TOC Cyberseminar <cybersem@objectivistcenter.org>

Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 1999 9:31 AM

Subject: Cybermseminar: M F-C comment on SK Rorty Review

[From: Michal Fram-Cohen]

COMMENT ON RORTY'S "THE CONTINGENCY OF LANGUAGE"


I do not have much to add to Shawn Klein's fine essay. As a linguist by
training, I would like to elaborate more on the issue of language.

After Foucault and Derrida, reading Richard Rorty is encouraging. Rorty's
presents his views in a lucid, coherent manner, which makes it easier to
tackle his errors. It is as if he realized that Postmodernism had reached
bottom with Foucault and Derrida so the only way to go was up. It may also
be a testament to the relative benevolence of an American philosopher when
compared to his European counterparts. Rorty's community, of which
(according to his views) he is but an inter-dependent member, is the
academic world of the University of Virginia and Princeton. Nevertheless,
his language can be intelligible to any nonacademic intelligent reader.
Unlike Derrida, Rorty does not use a secret code. He uses terms like
"language" and "contingency" consistently, without any play of shifting
their meaning. This relative honesty makes it possible to focus on his
arguments rather than on deciphering his meaning.

Rorty's arguments are simple: There is an objective world out there, but
alas, it does not include any language. Language is a human invention that
keeps changing over time, and as such, it can only be contingent. However,
language describes the world out there, so it imposes on the world a certain
world-view. All changes in world-view along history can be traced back to a
change in language. Rorty includes in his definition of language any
vocabulary, literary, scientific or political. Thus, when he refers to a
change of vocabulary, he does not refer to the shift from Old English to
Middle English to Modern English, but rather to the shift from Aristotelian
Science to Newtonian Science, from Classicism to Romanticism and from
Capitalism to Socialism. Unlike Derrida, Rorty has no qualms about the realm
of historical events, but his mind shuts off the origin of these events: CON
CEPTUAL changes. All he can say is that "the notions of criteria and choice
(including that of 'arbitrary' choice) are no longer in point when it comes
to changes from one language game to another. Europe gradually lost the
habit of using certain words and gradually acquired the habit of using
others." (6) The change from one vocabulary to another just happens. It is
an irreducible, axiomatic event. This view of events without agents rings
similar to Foucault's view of networks of power that spring into existence
without agents to construct them. Rorty accepts Derrida's notion of
language as no more than a word-game, but he delimits shifts of meaning to
gradual, historical changes, thus allowing for the possibility of consistent
meaning within a certain historical period.

Rorty makes a distinction between individual sentences and entire languages.
He concedes that sentences can pertain to facts and can have direct
correlation to the world out there: "the Giants wan the game" or "the butler
did it" are such sentences. However, an entire language represents a
certain world-view that cannot correlate directly to the world out there.
Rorty brings up the vocabulary of ancient Athenian politics versus
Jefferson's as alternative language games, each equally valid and equally
contingent. But is it so? The Athenian Constitution and the American
Constitution both allowed for slavery, but only the American Constitution
was amended to outlaw slavery. Is slavery contingent, or is there an
objective human nature, which can be observed in the world out there, which
is inconsistent with slavery? As someone who dedicated CIS to the memory of
six liberals, Rorty should be uneasy with the notion that the Civil War was
no more than a shift from one contingent pro-slavery vocabulary into another
contingent anti-slavery vocabulary.

Rorty consistently eliminates the conceptual level in all human discoveries,
inventions and artistic creations, which are the motive behind all the
historical changes he observes. It is odd that he talks about the men whose
conceptual achievements brought about the historical changes he writes
about, without acknowledging their achievements. He writes about
"Aristotelian," "Galilean," "Newtonian" and "Jeffersonian" vocabularies, not
discoveries or inventions. For Rorty, such men are merely those "whose
novel jargon we have found useful."(8) He effectively eliminates the
conceptual genius of these men, and the very existence of a conceptual
faculty in human beings, substituting words for concepts and language for
philosophy. Here it is from the horse's mouth:

"For it is essential to my view that we have no pre-linguistic
consciousness to which language needs to be adequate, no deep sense of how
things are which it is the duty of philosophers to spell out in language."
(21)

The "pre-linguistic" consciousness is the conceptual faculty. Rorty
exhibits the attitude of a materialist when he denies the existence of
concepts. He aptly writes that the differences between Neanderthal man and
Homo Sapiens should be studied by neurology and evolutionary biology.


As Shawn Klein observed in his essay, Rorty and Objectivism reject the same
view of concepts as intrinsic. Rorty, however, regards this view as the
only possible one, and thus sets up a straw man, which he easily demolishes.
Once he is left without concepts, Rorty (and any man) can only turn to other
people to tell him how to live. This is where Solidarity wins over
Objectivity. Shawn is right to point out that Rorty would probably regard
Objectivists as no different from other people: they simply belong to a
community that uses the words "concepts" and "objectivity" extensively.
Their vocabulary is Randian, because they found it useful. Hopefully, Rorty
will not be able to object when the Randian vocabulary takes over as people
gradually begin to use it instead of the Postmodernist vocabulary.

[Michal Fram-Cohen]


*************************************************
Fall 1999 Cyberseminar in Objectivist Studies

All Cyberseminar posts are working papers with copyright
reserved to the author. They may not be published or adapted
without permission, but may be circulated for purposes of
scholarly discussion.

*************************************************