Rorty and Dewey on philosophy and democracy : toward a fruitful conversation

Abstract

In his first published essays of the early 1960s, Richard Rorty was preoccupied, not unlike William James, with " the spectacle of philosophers quarreling endlessly over the same issues. " He embarked upon a search for avenues of " fruitful conversation, " as he called it, that ultimately lead him to pragmatism. 1 This paper takes up the respective contributions of Rorty and John Dewey to the topic of philosophy and democracy in this spirit of fruitful conversation and has two primary aims. The first is to offer a reading of Rorty's work over the last decade of his life, particularly the essays collected in his final volume of philosophical papers, Philosophy as Cultural Politics, to support the claim that Rorty's embrace of the idea of philosophy as cultural politics marks an explicit affirmation of Deweyan ideas. The second is to examine the shared terrain, as well as the divergences, between these two thinkers that come into view as a result of this reading, with an eye to advancing pragmatism's contribution to democracy and the social and moral issues of our time. When it comes to Rorty's selective reading of Dewey, I believe that Rorty does neglect particular aspects of Dewey's philosophy and creatively re-interpret others. My claim here is that these instances are best seen less a matter of Rorty misreading Dewey than as his attempts to read him in a way that promotes a particular vision of democracy and social and political change – that is, to reconstruct Dewey's thought. Certainly Rorty can – and perhaps should – be challenged on these interpretive moves. Yet if Richard Bernstein is right that " All of [Dewey's] thinking – whether concerning education, experience, aesthetics, philosophy, politics, or inquiry – sprang from and led back to his reflections on democracy, " then I would submit that the most fruitful way for pragmatists to approach the differences between Rorty and Dewey is likewise in terms of their implications for democracy. 2 In the first section I offer an interpretation of the