File: CSP RR 6 8 11Richard Rorty as Peircean Pragmatist:An Ironic Portrait and Sincere Expressionof Philosophical FriendshipIntroductionWhat are the limits of redescription, the possibilities of renarration,1 regarding the relationship between Charles Peirce and Richard Rorty? Is rapprochement between these two philosophers, however qualified and circumscribed, even a remote possibility? Is a narrative in which Rorty is advancing Peirce’s impulses, rather than ridiculing or obstructing them, simply aneven more distant prospect? Indeed, is such an exercise in storytelling anything more than a truly fantastic flight of a narrative imagination beyond anything Rorty himself would proffer or endorse? The value of such an undertaking is far from evident, the obstacles too numerous and obvious to discount, let alone to ignore. Even so, are we simply stuck at an impasse, where advocacy of Peirce entails a rejection of Rorty or sympathy to Rorty demands antipathy toward Peirce? Are the hermeneutic and narrative games in which we are engaged best envisioned as zero sum games (cf. Smith 1983 [1981]) or might these activities be conceived in a more conciliatory, less polemical, spirit? Indeed, I have always been charmed by William Ernest Hocking’s confession regarding his stance toward John Dewey, made at the 1939 meeting of the APA2: “I seem to remember reading a paper [ten years ago] at that session [of the APA] at which I recounted the tragedy of thirty-two years occupied in refuting Dewey while Dewey remained unconscious of what had happened!” (LW 14, 411). But, then, Hocking rather playfully went on to reveal: “I have now a different and happier report to make. Not … that Dewey has changed, but that I have largely ceased to read him with polemical intent: I read him to enjoy him. In this I succeed far better, in fact I am almost completely successful” (ibid; emphasis added). What seems to be implicit in Hocking’s altered stance toward his philosophical rival is that such an engagement is not only enjoyable but also profitable: rather than teaching Dewey where he is in error, Hocking seems captivated by the prospect of learning from his interlocutor. Is it possible for at least some Peirceans to read Rorty without polemical intent, for the primary purpose of simply enjoying what he has to say, perhaps for the secondary one of learning where he is on to something? Such, at least, is the experiment undertaken in this essay. This essay is accordingly an essay (or 1 In “American Pragmatism: The Conflict of Narratives,” Richard J. Bernstein stresses: “We should be wary of anyone who claims that there are fixed criteria by which we can decide who is and who is not a pragmatist. Such boundary setting is not only unpragmatic, it is frequently used as a power play to legitimatize unexamined prejudices” (1995, 67). In this essay, I have tried to heed Bernstein’s advice. This practically means that my argumentative retelling of the pragmatic legacy – or, more precisely, the Peircean inheritance – will inevitably “be inconflict with other argumentative retellings” (ibid.) The ultimate justification for this is that it not only avoids blocking the road of inquiry but also opens new routes, ones leading (I hope) to more convivial settings and thereby civil exchanges. For an important renarration, though one not necessarily at odds with the main emphasis of my own playful retelling, see Bernstein’s “The Resurgence of Pragmatism” (1992). 2 The context was a symposium devoted to Dewey’s concepts of experience and nature at which Morris R. Cohen presented a paper entitled “Some Difficulties in Dewey’s Anthropocentric Naturalism” and Hocking one entitled simply “Dewey’s Concepts of Experience and Nature” (see the Appendix of LW 14 for a reprint of these essays). Dewey’s response bore the title “Nature in Experience” (LW 14, 141-54).1essai) in the etymological sense – nothing more (but nothing less) than a trial, an attempt to approach Rorty in a different manner than is now the custom among Peirceans. Pragmatist ought, even more than other philosophers, to be experimentalists. Hence, they ought to be open to trying to comport themselves differently, otherwise than tradition (however recent) prompts them to proceed. Novel possibilities ought not to be dismissed prematurely; unconventional alignments ought not to be rejected unreflectively. There is no more pragmatic adage than this: the proof of the pudding is in the eating – that is, it is not in the recipe. Abstract formulae can never take the place of concrete experience. So, too, formal definitions need ultimately to give way to pragmatic clarifications. And this Peircean point (indeed, what point could be more Peircean?) provides an important clue for how to redescribe and renarrate the relationship between Peirce and Rorty. But much needs to be said before we are in a position to explore (indeed, to exploit) this possibility. First of all, the implausibility of what I am proposing needs to be explicitly acknowledged. On an august occasion, moreover one in which he announced to his analytic brethren3 histhoroughgoing adherence to American pragmatism, Rorty proclaimed that Peirce did little more than give this movement its name.4 In response to this and other dismissals or disparagements ofPeirce, Peirceans and indeed other pragmatists have used a number of names to characterize Rorty’s pragmatism and, more generally, his project. If all Peirce did was to give pragmatism its name, it sometimes seems that all Peirceans can do is call Rorty names, virtually all of them unflattering. The identification of him as a “vulgar pragmatist” and the characterization of his project as an unedifying one are among the best examples of this pronounced tendency.5 For the most part, however, defenders and interpreters of pragmatism (paleo-pragmatism?) have constructed detailed refutations of what they apparently take to be a hostile takeover of this philosophical movement by Rorty. For the most part, he has blithely gone his way, ignoring these critiques. When he did respond to such critics, he tended to do so in a tempered, conscientious, thoughtful, and respectful manner.6 If anything, however, his responses to them left these critics even more exasperated than the formulations or texts prompting their efforts in the first place. He became famous for