What Can We Hope For?

April 18, 2022
In this thought-provoking essay collection, philosopher Rorty (1931–2007) weighs in on the relationship between politics and philosophy, the “practical superiority of democracy to any other imaginable system,” right-wing campaigns to discredit leftist academics, racial injustice, and other matters. Throughout, Rorty, whose 1998 book Achieving Our Country predicted the rise of a “strongman” president supported by white, working-class voters disillusioned with globalization and “the political establishment,” stresses the importance of reducing economic inequality to ensure the proper functioning of democracy and calls for his fellow intellectuals to offer concrete solutions rather than “detached critiques or self-serving rationalizations of the status quo.” In “Looking Backwards from the Year 2096,” Rorty imagines that a “breakdown of democratic institutions” lasting from 2014 to 2044 ended when a “coalition of trade unions and churches” toppled the country’s military dictatorship, in part by shifting the focus of political discourse from protecting individual “rights” to fostering “fraternity.” Elsewhere, Rorty discusses how waging the Cold War “subtly and silently corrupted our country from within,” advocates for liberals to move away from “identity politics” and toward consensus building, and scrutinizes how “elitist disdain” has widened the gap between America’s intelligentsia and middle class. Fiercely argued yet thoroughly empathetic, these political musings are littered with valuable insights and astute analysis.

Starred review from January 15, 2022
Uncollected essays by one of America's preeminent political philosophers. If anyone deserves the mantle "America's Orwell," it's Rorty (1931-2007), who combined political activism and sharp observation with a fierce intellectual independence that allowed him to criticize both left-wing and right-wing ambitions. He also had a dependably Orwellian lack of faith that his fellow humans would rise up to defend democratic institutions if it involved sacrificing self-interest. Indeed, as Rorty writes about one notorious apologist for authoritarianism, "People like [Rush] Limbaugh will persuade more and more white males who cannot find a foothold in the middle class that the improvements in the situation of college-educated women, blacks, and gays have been made at their expense." That proved to be just so, and those resentments, which he considers elsewhere, enabled the rise of the person whom he saw in outline if not in name, the would-be fascist strongman who would undo America's institutions--which, Rorty wrote in 2004, "have become pretty fragile"--and attempt to install himself as president for life regardless of election outcomes. The author didn't hold out much hope for democracy when he was alive, and surely he wouldn't now. He ponders how future historians will interpret an American democracy that lasted barely 200 years, "like the age of the Antonines," replaced by a "corrupt plutocracy." Of particular relevance are Rorty's repeated observations on the effects of economic inequality, in the U.S. and worldwide, which he predicted would lead to resource wars and political instability. He also lands a strong point by noting that because Republicans are reluctant to discuss wealth inequality, they favor igniting skirmishes in a long-fought culture war. Disconcertingly, he adds, "What is more surprising is that the left should let itself be so distracted from its longtime concern with economic redistribution," suckered into battling those wars instead of keeping its eye on the prize. Exemplary political writing by a renowned maverick.

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