Jul 11, 2011 08:42 PM
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Richard Rorty is flamboyance. He breathes, walks, but most importantly talks flamboyantly. And it’s a rather restrained kind of flamboyance. Such is the impenetrable charm of Rorty. You can imagine my sorrow when I heard of his death back in 2007. If there was ever a living embodiment of a charm caster of words to which I could close closely relate to, it was Rorty. So, in honour of his illustrious career, I look back to review the text of one of my favourite addresses ever made. Rorty’s dream is vivid; his tryst with destiny undeniable and his struggle for lebensraum is what makes The Communitarian Impulseone of the best speeches that I have come across recently, if not of all time.
Delivered at Colorado College on 5th February, 1999, The Communitarian Impulsemakes for a riveting read that really churns the grey brain cells; tugs at them ever so slightly, but never too tightly. The text is short and fast paced (I believe a link to the complete text of the speech is legally available on the internet). I analysed it as part of our university curriculum and I must say, it has been quite memorable. Rorty plays with your heart and mind alike, with a surprisingly short amount of text on paper.
Rorty plays with the socially constructed division of the West/non-West. In a radical move, he sweeps in an affirmation to claim that the non-West may have a lot of justified complaints to make about the West, but it does owe a lot to Western ingenuity. The West is good at coming up with devices for lessoning human suffering. He divides these devices into two types – First, anesthetics and other drugs (medicinal or recreational) and Second, sociopolitical institutions such as free elections, a free press, free trade unions, a free judiciary, free colleges and universities etc. In a rather utopian predicament, his assessment is that these devices are used to prevent the strong from having their way with the weak, and, thereby, to prevent the weak from suffering as much as they would have otherwise.
He paints a vivid picture of Westerners reaching for their checkbooks and sending money to organizations. And here on in, the mind games begin. Suppose you do not believe what Rorty has set out? Suppose the cynic in you refuses to be satisfied by a vision of utopia. Fair enough, it can happen. For Rorty, the motives for action are meaningless, unless they accomplish their goal. If people indulge in philanthropy, as a way to improve self and public image, then so be it. What is the end result? For good or bad, selfish or unselfish, the communitarian impulse between humans gets stronger. The need to help out your fellow being is most important; whether you do it to promote how ‘good’ you are or out of genuine compassion is immaterial.
And this is so because Rorty believes that the alternatives are far worse. The alternative, where checks stopped being written, not for lack of money, but because Westerners had ceased to care is more horrific to deal with. Suppose the Western world started wondering why such checks were ever written and started wondering why the money was not used to diminish suffering closer to home?
This is the worst fate Rorty can imagine for the West: for the West to become a place in which the idealistic youth of each rising generation no longer dream of a global utopia, a world in which the sick and injured always have painkillers ready at hand and in which the downtrodden always have ready access to the newspapers, the courts and the ballot box. A West without idealism is not a place that Rorty wishes to be associated with. It is almost a pessimistic paradox: the reality that there will never be perfect utopia and the constant imbalance between people (rich/poor. Social status, class, education etc) actually brings the world together and spurs humanity towards philanthropy and lending a helping hand to their fellow being. If perfect utopia was indeed achieved; a world where there was no inequality or war, such a world would be useless and one in which Rorty believes no one reallywants to live in, but that doesn’t stop people from aspiring of such an existence. This aspiration, however, should never become reality, because it would signal the end of the communitarian impulse, and consequently, humanity.
Is such an attitude adopted by the West ethnocentric? Perhaps not. Rorty claims that the idea of the intrinsic dignity of a culture is as useless as that of the intrinsic dignity of a human being (a radical proposition, and a controversial one, to say the least). He clarifies, stating that ‘intrinsic’ is a word which signifies the user’s refusal to debate further the issue of whether human happiness would be increased by getting rid of that culture or that person (for example, was the culture of Nazism, truly beneficial and needed to be preserved or would you agree that it was acceptable to get rid of it to increase human happiness?)
Rorty’s address sits on a precarious level in the quarrel between liberal individualism and communitarianism which can be seen as a tempest in a philosophical teapot. You don’t have to believe what Rorty implies. All he manages to do is play with your mind: he plays you like a puppet, much like the Devil’s advocate. The Communitarian Impulseis a must read for everyone, regardless of their preference in books. It’s short, sharp, precise, confronting and will test your stance on moral and ethical standpoints.
Rorty’s dream of a global utopia is Martin Luther King’s dream, revisited!
