It's true, I disagree somewhat. The "Dewey reaction," if you will, has been going on since the 80s, as has a wider "classical pragmatist reaction." There has been a shift, however, in the focus. With Dewey, there has been an on-going attempt to correct the perceived inattention to Dewey's so-called metaphysics, or rather to the book Experience and Nature, by Deweyans (like McDermott, Sleeper, Edel), but--at least if one takes Richard Bernstein as paradigmatic--there was also a reaction against Rorty's political philosophy rooted in the idea that Rorty advocates some pernicious form of relativism, and this used to receive much more attention. In this, the wider classical reaction also accounts for Peirceans like Susan Haack who hate Rorty's guts.
Personally, I suspect that the reaction by old-schoolers like McDermott and Sleeper, keepers of the Deweyan flame during logical positivism's ascendency, acquired such occasional animus because Rorty suddenly became known as the guy who single-handedly resurrected interest in Dewey and pragmatism generally (which is, of course, a false impression that Rorty himself was never successful in dissuading his admirers and contemporary historiographers from repeating). And Peirceans like Haack were in particular reacting to a comment Rorty made in his American Philosophical Association Presidential Address, in front of the Anybody-Who's-Anybody crowd of professional philosophers, that for the purposes of sensing the resurgence of pragmatism, we needn't pay much attention to Peirce. I don't think Peirceans ever forgave him for that joke. What's going on right now, I think, is a more general shift in contemporary philosophy in reaction to the dominance of so-called linguistic philosophy, which sees people like not just Hildebrand on Dewey, but also James Conant (a student of Hilary Putnam) on the pragmatists and on Wittgenstein, part of a large movement of people reclaiming Wittgenstein. I know Hegel's been undergoing transformations at the hands of Terry Pinkard and Robert Pippin, and I would bet good money that Heidegger is also undergoing American transformation, and I it's pretty clear this trend is away from the fascination with language that marked the 20th century towards the resurgence of such bywords as experience (Dewey), common sense (Wittgenstein), and lifeworld (Heidegger) and of people self-identifying as metaphysicians. At any rate, I don't think all the differences between classical and neopragmatism are trivial, but some of them I do, and one of them is the supposed contrast between language and experience. If somebody asked me what the difference between classical and neopragmatism was, I would say that James and Dewey talked a lot about "experience" and Rorty and Putnam (and Bernstein, for that matter) talked a lot about "language." I think most of what they said is transposable from one idiom to the next (which is my "radical empiricism = psychological nominalism" formula), mainly because they were all interested in beating back the same sets of Platonic and Kantian problems, ones that had mainly become transposed unwittingly from "metaphysical philosophy" to "linguistic philosophy," though many at the time had hoped otherwise (for instance, the realism/idealism debate that raged at the end of the 19th century was pretty much the same debate as the I-think-still-raging realism/anti-realism debate). I would also add that, while return-to-the-classics pragmatist philosophers like to punch Rorty for being a relativist (who doesn't?), James and Dewey were both beaten to hell in their time for supposedly being relativists. I personally think that getting caught up in the issue is a waste of time and distracts from the really important stuff in James, Dewey and Rorty, which going back to Emerson helps to see. Matt > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:34:04 -0700 > Subject: Re: [MD] David Hildebrand's Dewey > > > No, Steve, that's not the one I was referring to but it's by the same author > and it's a good one too. > (http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Realism-Antirealism-Neopragmatists-Vanderbilt/dp/082651426X) > You'll find "Dewey" below, where Amazon displays the "also bought" books. > The anthologies (Classical American Pragmatism and Pragmatism and Classical > American Philosophy) displayed there are also quite good. Hildebrand uses > those anthologies in his course on Pragmatism, in fact, and so I own a copy > of them as well. Hildebrand's "Beyond Realism and Antirealism" is especially > good if you're interested in the differences between classical pragmatists > like himself and neo-pragmatists like Richard Rorty. As I understand it, > Pirsig, Hildebrand and myself are classical pragmatists. Pirsig calls himself > a pragmatist in Lila but doesn't say whether he's classical or neo. His > adoption of radical empiricism is what leads me to claim he's of the > classical variety. James thought of his pragmatism and his radical empiricism > as separate so that one need not accept both but contemporary philosophers, > like Pirsig, insist that they are two aspects of a whole. You're quite right > to point out that Rorty's disrespect for experience plays a crucial role. > Like other neo-pragmatists, he pretty much dismisses radical empiricism and > the contemporary classical pragmatists are a bit angry about that. Sandra > Rosenthal, for example, has been a guest lecturer twice and both times she > accused Rorty of being a relativist who has filtered out some very important > elements in his interpretation of Dewey. Sadly, there are lots of kids in > school right now who only know Rorty's brand of pragmatism and this is > considered to be something of a crisis among Dewey scholars. In my opinion, > Rorty's distortions grow out of his background. He's basically a reformed > positivist, a positivist who was reformed by the linguistic turn. Or, as I > like to put it, James, Dewey and Pirsig can all be considered philosophical > mystics while Rorty can't. I find his work to be almost entirely negative and > full of emptiness, maybe even nihilistic. I think the differences are not at > all trivial. Matt K would probably disagree with me about all that but most > of Rorty's classically minded critics agree that he's some kind of > relativist. This semester will be my last for course work and then I'll a > take about a year to write the thesis. I'll be taking an independent study > course on 19th century reactions to the Enlightenment and a class on Plato. > The independent study will allow me to look at the context in which James and > Dewey were thinking and the Plato class will allow me to get a better handle > on Pirsig's criticisms of dialectic. (I ordered a book called "Coffee with > Plato" because Pirsig wrote a forward or introduction for it.) For the last > year or so I've been studying religion and art, among other things. > Basically, if a class doesn't illuminate the MOQ I don't bother taking it. > It's all about Bob, you know? _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t1_allup_explore_012009 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
