From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 10 2004 - 22:11:06 GMT
David,
David said:
By what certainty do you say our metaphors are made rather than found? I agree with you due to my particular metaphysics. But what are your post-metaphysical reasons for holding this view? And what strange things these metaphors are. Can we find them in the sand. Are you sure that we do not need some rather mysterious capacities to produce them? That is to say that metaphysical category: DQ.
Matt:
Your posed question is exactly why Rorty suggests that, along with other troublesome distinctions, we even drop the distinction between making and finding. Typically what ironists (a.k.a. antimetaphysicians) over the course of history do is make increasing fun of the distinctions that metaphysicians use. However, the next generation's ironists call last year's ironists metaphysicians because the tools those ironists use become themselves reified. Look at what happened to Hegel. The thematic is in particularly sharp relief when you look at the Nietzsche-Heidegger-Derrida sequence, each one calling the one before a Platonist. Rorty basically accuses Derrida of the same thing, in the end. And I think each one is basically right. What I think comes out of this sequence is the sense that what makes you susceptible to metaphysizing is a spirit of seriousness. Nietzsche was too serious in making fun of the religionists, Heidegger too serious in making fun of the metaphysici
ans, and Derrida ends up being too serious in making fun of the philosophers, which is the end very ironic because Derrida is the one that pointed us to the air of seriousness around philosophy.
So what happens when you take something too seriously? You start to think "it" is more important than everything else, which tends to lead to systemization, reification, and metaphysics. If you don't take "it" seriously, then you let "it" do "its" job in the context in which "it" was born and drop "it" when "it" ceases to be useful. For instance, the contrast between making and finding. Its only useful, under certain circumstances, against metaphysicians. If you start making fun of a metaphysician with it and another ironist starts making fun of you, the proper ironic response is to throw up your hands, say, "Yeah, you caught me!" and laugh right along with her. This, however, is not what most ironists in the past have done. They end up taking their tools too seriously and risk turning their ironizing into metaphysizing. When not making direct fun of them, however, you can safely ignore their lapses in behavior and call them ironist playmates, fun pals who enjoy a go
od joke as much as anybody.
So, a good question at this point would be, "Is Rorty serious? Does he fall into the same trap as pretty much every other ironist in history has, up to and including this generation's archironist, Derrida?" I don't think he does because Rorty doesn't take _philosophy_ seriously, he takes politics seriously. The ironists before him all became trapped because they kept moving the seriousness a further step back, outironizing all those previous, but leaving themselves open to the next generation's ironists. Rorty takes the next radical step and says that this process will never stop. His great move is to take seriousness out of the realm of philosophy entirely. Remain playful in philosophy. Discard philosophical tools when they outlive themselves. Rorty's tools are just as discardable as anybody else's. (This has some interesting effects on intellectual life, but I won't pursue that here.) Rorty, however, says that the one thing we should take seriously is other peopl
e's pain. And the place in which we can help relieve some of the pain that our environment causes and we cause each other is politics. This move and a fuller explanation of how Rorty sees it as working (the relationship, for instance, between irony, which is painful to those you are making fun of, and politics) is what Rorty sketches in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.
Matt
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