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One Less Philosophical Manifesto*

Stéphane Madelrieux January 2021

If I were to choose a word to characterise Richard Rorty’s thought, I would not, or not immediately, point to the major philosophical terms that made him famous, such as “linguistic turn,” “pragmatism,” “anti-representationalism,” “irony,” “contingency,” or “solidarity.” I would propose a small word, an altogether modest word, which in my view best sums up his way of thinking: the word “without.” From his first great book, Rorty portrayed “persons without minds” in order to develop a “philosophy without mirrors” (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [henceforth, PMN], chs. 3, 8). When he began to associate him work with pragmatism, he defended a “pragmatism without method,” and even a science without method (See Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, ch. 4, and Consequences of Pragmatism, 191). When he articulated his own version of pragmatism in Philosophy and Social Hope (henceforth, PSH), he took care to slip this little word into each of his chapter titles. Rortian pragmatism is the conception of a “truth without correspondence to reality,” the image of “a world without substance or essence,” the armation of an “ethics without principles” (PSH, chs. 2-4). In all his work, and notoriously in his latest books on philosophy as cultural politics, he advocated that humanity should move towards a culture without absolutes: “no, there are no absolutes, but who needs them?”1

Sometimes Rorty gives the impression that in order to arrive at this new image of the world, of humanity and of oneself, all one has to do is simply to drop all the intellectual burdens inherited from the tradition, all the dualisms bequeathed by the Greeks, in short, to do without them, as if doing so alone would eect a kind of intellectual conversion and a move to something else. In reality the procedure denoted by the little word “without” is more active and must be constantly renewed, because these burdens are not so much external obstacles as temptations which constantly work on human thought and language. On the view pragmatism oers, “without” should be understood less as a preposition than as a verb. It is not enough that we turn away from a certain way of thinking, that we convert to a new image, that we extract ourselves from our tradition—because one does not get out of it so easily. It is rather a question of constantly subtracting, cutting o, excising. Hence the critical and therapeutic, rather than constructive and systematic, form that he claimed for his philosophy.

Richard Rorty is like the Carmelo Bene of philosophy. Gilles Deleuze said of this Italian playwright and filmmaker, that Bene had developed a critical theatre that “does not proceed by addition, but by subtraction, amputation” (Deleuze, CB, 88).2 When Bene returns to the great theatrical tradition, and especially when he adapts

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Shakespeare, he performs whole series of critical subtractions. In Bene’s version of Richard III, he suppresses most of the men of the nobility and clergy, retaining only Gloucester and a few female characters. He also devised a Romeo and Juliet without Romeo. And, as Deleuze reminds us, Bene calls his film about Hamlet “not one Hamlet more, but one Hamlet less” (Deleuze, CB, 87-88). Rorty’s iconoclastic redescriptions set up a Peirce without categories, a James without experience, a Dewey without method, and a Habermas without universal validity. Rorty cast himself as belonging to the continental tradition, but he rewrites the players on this scene to be a Hegel without the Spirit, a Nietzsche without the Superman or the Will to Power, a Heidegger without Being, a Derrida without Diérance and a historicism without History. He placed himself in the tradition of the linguistic turn, but wanted a Wittgenstein without Nonsense, a Quine without Empiricism, a Sellars without a Scientific Image of the World and an analytical philosophy without Analysis. To his critics, this amputation of what seemed essential, left nothing of importance. For a Dewey without experience or method appears like a Romeo and Juliet without Romeo and Juliet.

However, Rorty’s subtractions are not chosen at random: they are chosen precisely for their critical reach. In this, too, Rorty resembles Carmelo Bene: “What is subtracted,” as Deleuze tells us, “are the elements of Power, the elements that make up or represent a system of Power” (Deleuze, CB, 93)—such as the apparatus of the State (Monarchy and Church) in Richard III, or the power of the Family in Romeo and Juliet. In Rorty’s view, what needs to be removed is a system of Authority constituted by an age-old tradition of justifying social practices or discourses by appeal to a non-human, or even a supra-human, authority. Fate, God’s Will, the Natural Law, the Order of Things, Nature, Human Nature, Reason, the Laws of History, etc., are all oppressive moves that some humans deploy to legitimise the necessity of their privileged position vis-à-vis other human beings. Rorty sees this as a form of authoritarianism as it wants to provide a foundation for authority, a human-to-human social relation, on a relation to a non-human reality—one which incarnates a primary and absolute Authority, and thus escapes history, contingency, and vitally, also criticism. From this point of view, pragmatism for Rorty, consists first of all in “its refusal to believe in the existence of Truth, in the sense of something not made by human hands, something which has authority over human beings” (Achieving Our Country, 27).

But if pragmatism is to be understood as anti-authoritarianism, it is necessary to criticise and purge all the old remnants of Authority carried by the pragmatist tradition itself—as well as by the analytical and Continental traditions that converge with it. There is a need for a pragmatism without categories because human inquiries and practices must be freed from any a priori permanent formal matrix that would authoritatively organise their empirical content. There is a need for a pragmatism without experience because debates between human beings must be resolved without postulating a contact with a non-human reality that would provide the ultimate reasons for accepting or rejecting this or that position, as if there were a non-human tribunal for human aairs—what the empirical tradition precisely calls the tribunal of experience. There is a need for a pragmatism without method because democratic society must be dissuaded of the idea that if one

FdV20 - 2/6 F O R M A D E V I D A 2 0 applied the right, single, unique method to public problems, the scientific authority of such a method and its presumed political neutrality would guarantee the rationality of its conclusions against human passions. If Rorty is a philosopher of the “without,” it is because an anti-authoritarian pragmatism must first of all be a pragmatism without authoritarianism.

It is not enough to shave o Plato’s venerable beard. It is also necessary to shave o Peirce’s French fork-beard, whose moustache mediates between the two points, thus introducing the essential element of Thirdness that befits a man of reflection. James’s wildly vague beard, with its loose, transitional hairs running in all directions, must also be shaved. Finally, one must go as far as shaving Dewey’s wise and methodically trimmed moustache, with its handle of strand of Science and handle of Democracy in perfect continuity with each other (it should be noted, however, that, from Peirce to Dewey, the metaphysical hair had already shrunk considerably).3

“But what remains?,” Deleuze asked himself, when so much has been removed; and he replied: “Everything remains, but in a new light” (Deleuze, CB, 104). In the works of Carmelo Bene, the removal of part of the original piece is accompanied by a concomitant enhancement of aspects that had hitherto remained in the background, prevented from developing fully because of the stifling presence of the system of power. Thus, the removal of Romeo allows the play to revolve around Mercutio, a secondary character in the original play, who does not belong to either family and who dies early on (the role is played by Bene himself). And the subtractions in Richard III allow Gloucester to fully constitute himself as a transgressive character who goes to the limits of obscenity and chaos, disguising himself, deforming himself, falling over repeatedly, panting like an animal, rather than incarnating the King and representing the order of the power of the State (and Gloucester is all the more accepted and coveted by the relatives of those he has killed the more he moves away from the norm). We might, similarly, worry about what remains of philosophy if it is entirely absorbed by therapeutic activity. There is everything left, Rorty replies, but under a new description, a new metaphor. There remains the whole of humanity, but now seen as a living species among others, an accidental product of evolution, which strives to do its best in the absence of a Higher Power to guide it.4 There remains a community of sisters and brothers delivered from the authoritarian Father to whom obedience had to be paid, and who can now rely only on each other to carry out their plans. The hope of ever greater freedom and ever greater solidarity can finally develop all its practical eects.

Now this redescription is, as Deleuze says of Carmelo Bene, an “inseparably creative and critical” gesture (Deleuze, CB, 92). It is critical because it subtracts figures of authority; it is creative because this then makes room for the results of these subtractions to combine. The subtractions Rorty performs on other philosophers permits their merger into his great narrative of human freedom and solidarity. A James without Experience can then be added to a Wittgenstein without Nonsense; a Dewey without Method can now merge with a Heidegger without Being. The three traditions, pragmatist, analytical and continental—provided they be re-described as movements in the direction of abandoning all authority figures—can enter into

FdV20 - 3/6 F O R M A D E V I D A 2 0 conversation with each other and move together towards the utopia of a free and united humanity. Rorty’s early articles already sought to “fuse horizons” by bringing together, notoriously, Peirce and Wittgenstein.5

But the model is the cross-hybridisation of Sellars and Quine in the third chapter of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Each criticised one of the major underpinnings of philosophy’s claim to epistemic authority: Sellars the idea of a foundational empirical Given, as opposed to what is interpreted conceptually, Quine that of analytical or conceptual truths, as opposed to synthetic or empirical truths. But each seems unable to do without what the other has abandoned. Quine still believes in empiricism and Sellars still believes in conceptual analysis: “It is as if analytic philosophy could not be written without at least one of the two great Kantian distinctions,” writes Rorty (PMN, 171-172—my emphasis). Hence Rorty’s brilliant idea of using Quine to subtract what remains of authoritarianism in Sellars, and Sellars to subtract what remains of authoritarianism in Quine. The combination of these two subtractions then makes possible the full rehumanisation of knowledge, seen as a social practice rather than as a mirror of non-human nature.

This is how I understand the famous cohorts of proper names cited by Rorty, of the Nietzsche-Dewey-Wittgenstein-Davidson type. The hyphen “-” is not only the sign of an association, of a new community, borne by the same project; it is also a minus-sign, the minus sign of subtraction by which each thinker criticises the remnants of authoritarianism still present in all the others. Subtraction thus reveals the room for creation in Rorty’s work. But his constructive eort is not put into the elaboration of a system of theses to fill these spaces: it is entirely at the service of the constitution of a narrative, which recounts the progress of anti- authoritarianism in philosophy and culture. In this narrative, each character is judiciously amputated of the authoritarian pieces of his system to be better connected to the anti-authoritarian pieces of the others, and Rorty weaves with all these pieces and fragments the colourful and composite figure of the liberal ironist, the democrat of the future. Americans, as Deleuze reminded us about William James, have always had a predilection for patchwork.6

This great narrative must, however, not itself be authoritarian and this is the fourth and final point of connection with Carmelo Bene. His theatre, Deleuze explains, does not only criticise the system of power contained in the plays performed (kings, priests, families). It also criticises “the form of theatre” (Deleuze, CB, 93), as it is traditionally practised. This institution is also a system of power, its text exercising authority over what the actors must say, its director directing them, its dramatic illusion exerting its spell over the spectators (a power Brecht, a major inspiration for Bene, had already sought to challenge). If metaphilosophical considerations are so important to Rorty, it is because he immediately perceived that philosophy could not be an anti-authoritarian force if it did not also criticise itself qua institution—if it continued to see itself as the incarnation of authority vis-à-vis the rest of culture. Magister dixit. Critical subtractions should be performed not only on what philosophers say, but on philosophy itself as a social and historical practice. Philosophy must reject its magisterium, and Rorty actively seeks to reduce its majesty and pretensions: “philosophy” must be written in minuscule letters. The

FdV20 - 4/6 F O R M A D E V I D A 2 0 authority of philosophy traditionally came from the fact that it placed itself in a foundational position and claimed to be the discover of the principles of all other human productions, and of the criteria for distinguishing with certainty claims that are legitimate from those that are not. Rorty tirelessly tracked down all manifestations of this need to insert one human practice, Philosophy with capital P, as the ultimate judge of other human practices, past, present and even future, under the pretext that it would bring us into contact with principles and criteria that aim to escape the finitude and contingency of human lives. He imagined a philosophy without a univocal and necessary history, without a clear-cut line of demarcation from non-philosophy, without a privileged object to know, without a special cognitive faculty, without a quasi-scientific ideal, without eternal problems to solve, without a universal method, without a theory claiming to make known what things really are, without a decisive argument that could put an end to controversies, without a neutral criterion of evaluation, without a natural hierarchy of its sub-fields and above all without dogmatism towards other ways of doing philosophy. No contemporary philosopher has done so much to include as many people as possible in the philosophical conversation, beyond the lines that divide the profession—precisely because once philosophical authoritarianism is abandoned, philosophy is nothing more than a conversation. A conversation between human beings that can only progress by increasing its sensitivity to what kind of books matter to others. Here, Rorty and Bene dier greatly in temperament. Bene wanted to be alone on stage, favoured excessive and baroque performances, and wanted to lend a revolutionary force to art. Much of Rorty’s work, on the contrary, consists of reviews, dialogues, answers, tributes; his writing is full of humour but without grand drama; and he is deeply sceptical about the revolutionary possibilities of philosophy. To Rorty, there is considerable power in bringing about small steps towards a future dierent than the past. For Rorty was a modest philosopher, who constantly minimized his own importance, as if to defuse in advance any authoritative eect his words might have. More than Bene, Rorty was able to go to the limits of de-dramatization. Richard Rorty, the American freethinker, the minute philosopher.

1 See Rorty, R. “Intellectual Autobiography.” In The Philosophy of Richard Rorty. Randall E. Auxier and Lewis Edwin Hahn (eds.). 2010. Chicago et La Salle, IL: Open Court, 21. 2 Deleuze, G. “Un manifeste de moins.” In Bene, C. and Deleuze, G. 1979. Superpositions. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit (henceforth CB). For the English translation see Deleuze, G. “One Less Manifesto.” In Timothy Murray (ed.). 1997. Mimesis, Masochism and Mime: The Politics of Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought. Trans. Timothy Murray and E. dal Molin. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 239–58. 3 Deleuze had also imagined “a philosophically hairless Marx,” but that was in order to advance at the same time “a philosophically bearded Hegel,” as Marcel Duchamp’s Mona Lisa with a moustache (Deleuze, G. 1968. Diérence et repetition. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 4). He had similarly praised Nietzsche’s abundant whiskers, which formed as it were a mask concealing his face and his identity (Deleuze, G. 1965. Nietzsche. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 11). But Rorty would have replied that the death of the bearded Go had unfortunately provided Nietzsche

FdV20 - 5/6 F O R M A D E V I D A 2 0 with the occasion to grow his powerful superhuman whiskers. More generally, Deleuze conceives of the system of power in terms of a reduction of dierence to identity (the homogenisation of the singularity of human variations by bringing them into line with a majority standard), which leads him to criticize humanism itself as a new ideological apparatus of normalization, and to value certain transfiguring experiences of openness to non-human powers (in the footsteps of Nietzsche, Blanchot, and of what Foucault had called “the thought of the Outside”). On the criticism of certain metaphysical aspects of Deleuze’s Nietzschianism cf. Rorty, R. “Unsoundness in Perspective”. The Times Literary Supplement, 17 June 1983. 4 cf. Rorty, R. “Just One More Species Doing Its Best.” London Review of Books, 25 July 1991. 5 See “Intellectual Autobiography,” 3. 6 Deleuze, G. 1993. Critique et clinique. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 111.

* Translated by Pedro Ferrão and reviewed by Elin Danielsen Huckerby.

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