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July 9, 2003
An interesting paper on the humanities by Richard Rorty, the gadfly philosopher.
In the spirit of Rorty I will lightly redescribe Rorty's argument as I spell it out. I do so because I do not agree with his claim that the mission of the humanities is a private one; that it is one of reading lots of books to make me a better person.
This is a watered interpretation of 'aesthetic education' or Bildung or "cultivation," which sought to make aesthetic autonomy purposive by stressing the indirect relationship to moral self-determination. As a good ironist Rorty holds the high culture of liberalism as centering around literature (plays, poems and novels)> Rorty's 'becoming a better person through reading novels' gives us a literary and individual reading of aesthetic education and moral development that is divorced from the public sphere. It is a private project that happens in the home.
Rorty begins by saying that:
"...the real social function of the humanistic intellectuals is to instill doubts in the students about the students’ own self-images, and about the society to which they belong."
Critique---stirring things up---is the tougher word for this "instilling doubts." It is a better word because it can be more easily connected to democracy.
However, Rorty says that "when it comes to the rhetoric of public support for higher education, we do not talk much about this social function" of stirring things up. "Somewhere deep down, everybody—even the average taxpayer—knows that that is one of the things colleges and universities are for. But nobody can afford to make this fully explicit and public."
So what happens? Well humanities intellectuals adopt the Straussian strategy of talking a different language for public consumption. Their public rhetoric talks in terms 'of “objective criteria of excellence,” “fundamental moral and spiritual values,” “the enduring questions posed by the human condition,” and so on.' No one really believes this rhetoric anymore, given the lived reality of the politicization and commercialization of the humanities.
The tension between this public rhetoric and the critical stirring the kids up through critique leaves the the humanistic intellectuals vulnerable to heresy-hunters. Rorty says:
'In the current flap about the humanities, however, the heresy-hunters have a more vulnerable target than usual. This target is what Allan Bloom calls “the Nietzscheanized left."' (the postmodern left in Australia)
Rorty then adds that in the US:
"This over-philosophized and self-obsessed left is the mirror image of the over-philosophized and self-obsessed Straussians on the right. The contempt of both groups for contemporary American society is so great that both have rendered themselves impotent when it comes to national, state, or local politics. This means that they get to spend all their energy on academic politics.The two groups are currently staging a sham battle about how to construct reading lists."
But not to worry. Things will pan out. The idea says Rorty:
"...is to keep the humanities changing fast enough so that they remain indefinable and unmanageable. All we need to keep them changing that fast is good old-fashioned academic freedom. Given freedom to shrug off the heresy-hunters and their cries of “politicization!,” as well as freedom for each new batch of assistant professors to despise and repudiate the departmental Old Guard to whom they owe their jobs, the humanities will continue to be in good shape."
Of course Rorty, as a celebrity humanities intellectual, forgets to mention the unemployed PhD's, the casualization of the workforce; the lack of research money; the collapse of the humanities labor market. All the things that Invisible Adjunct talks about. And it makes no mention of the decline of the humanities because they are seen to be worthless in wealth creation, unless they reinvent themselves as creative industries.
Maybe humanities intellectuals should speak openly:---we are about stirring up the kids to make a better kind of life. What is wrong with speaking plainly. We are not going to get the research grants anyhow. Poverty and unemployment is our future.
What Rorty offers us is an postmodern, ironist literary culture premised on both an aestheticized ethics of personal self-enrichment and self-creation in the private sphere; and a liberal political morality as procedural justice and the desire to avoid giving pain to others. Liberalism enables each individual to pursue his or her private vision of perfection in peace. So the goal, value and aim of a liberal society is to let its citizens be as privatistic and aestheticist as they please, so long as they do it on their own time--causing no harm to others.
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