The Southern Journal ofPhilosophy (2001) Vol. XXXIX

A Pragmatist Critique of Richard Rorty's Hopeless Politics Robert B. Talisse Vanderbilt University Richard Rorty's most recent work in politics is focused on the project of inspiring "social hope" (Rorty 1999) and "national pride" (Rorty 1998a). This project, Rorty maintains, involves a decisive turn away from the aspirations of traditional political theory; rather than arguing for a normative theory of justice or legitimacy, Rorty proposes "inspiring stories" (Rorty 1998a, 3) that "[clear] philosophy out of the way in order to let the imagination play upon the possibilities of a utopian future" (Rorty 1999, 239). It is through inspiration, not argumentationthrough study of Walt Whitman and John Dewey (Rorty, 1998a, 11) not Immanuel Kant and Ronald Dworkin-that democratic citizens will come to see themselves as "part of a great human adventure" (Rorty 1999, 239). Indeed, it is difficult to not find Rorty's recent writings inspirational in their own right. Rorty's command of literature and poetry matches his philosophical erudition, and his prose leaves one in awe of Rorty's intellectual heroes and the country they sought to achieve. However, we ought not be carried away too quickly by beautiful portraits and moving sentiments. There is a philosophical story underlying Rorty's politics of hope and inspiration; I contend that this story, once exposed, suffers serious difficulties. Of course, Rorty did not always write inspirational political literature, many of his earlier articles present explicitly the philosophical motivations behind his recent appeals to social hope. This motivation may be called political antifoundationalism. In this essay, then, I shall extract and examine Rorty's political antifoundationalism; as this aspect of Rorty's political philosophy is most straightforwardly

Robert B. Talisse is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. His work focuses upon topics in American philosophy and contemporary political theory, with special emphasis on deliberatiuist conceptions of democracy. He is the author of On Dewey: The Reconstruction of Philosophy (2000) and several articles and reviews. His booklength examination of contemporary liberalism, The Liberal Dilemma, is nearing completion.

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presented in two characteristically provocative articles, "The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy" (Rorty 1988) and "Idealizations, Foundations, and Social Practices" (Rorty 1996), my analysis shall focus primarily on these essays. As my title suggests, I shall deploy a pragmatic critique of Rorty's views; in particular, I argue that Rorty's antifoundationalist politics is insufficient to address social realities and moreover unable to foster the kind of pragmatic social hope he seeks to inspire. Hence Rorty's political vision is quite literally hopeless. 1. Foundationalism and Antifoundationalism

Rorty promotes the view that democracy is best served by an "antifoundationalist" vocabulary and self-image. Rorty's notion of an antifoundationalist philosophy of democracy is best understood in contrast to his understanding of what it means to be a democratic foundationalist, so it is with these concepts that I begin. Believing that "political institutions are no better than their philosophical foundations" (Rorty 1988, 178), the political foundationalist seeks a philosophical proof of democracy. The foundationalist wants an argument that establishes the justice and superiority of democracy from self-evident or otherwise unavoidable premises. As these premises must be such as to win the assent of enemies of democracy, they must not beg the question in the democrat's favor and therefore must appeal to something beyond existing democratic practices.' That is, the case for democracy must begin from some fact or principle that is external to democracy; foundationalists typically appeal to supposed facts about "human nature," "rationality," or "morality" for the needed premises (Rorty 1996, 333). Foundationalists thus try to establish the justice of democracy by "driving" antidemocrats "against an argumentative wall" (Rorty 1989, 53) of unavoidable first principles. The foundationalist suspects that democracy is "enfeebled" unless it can be shown to follow from such principles (Rorty 1996, 385). The job of the foundationalist philosopher of democracy, therefore, is to refute antidemocrats by showing that the proposition 'democracy is the best form of government' (or some such proposition) follows from a set of principles that they implicitly accept. Rorty insists that the attempt to "ground" democracy is futile because it is couched in an obsolete and narve philosophical paradigm. According to Rorty, there is no way to beat [e.g.,] totalitarians in argument by appealing to shared common premises, and no point in pretending that [e.g.,] a common human nature makes the totalitarians unconsciously hold such premises. (Rorty 1987, 42)

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Rorty further charges that "attempts to ground a practice on something outside the practice will always be more or less disingenuous" (Rorty 1996, 333). The lesson we must learn from the failure of the Enlightenment is that "human beings are historical all the way through" (Rorty 1988, 176), that there are no external facts about human nature, rationality, or morality that supply a foundational premise. Accordingly, any proposed foundation for democracy will inevitably be "just a hypostatization of certain selected components" of existing democratic practice (Rorty 1996, 333-334). Rorty writes: To say that a certain course of conduct is more in accord with human nature or our moral sense, or more rational, than another is just a fancy way of commending one's own sense of what is most worth preserving in our present practices, of commending our own utopian vision of our community. (Rorty 1996, 334)

According to Rorty, we must abandon the foundationalist aspiration of a philosophical proof of democracy and embrace the thoroughgoing contingency of our language, our selves, and our society (Rorty 1989); we must give up the idea that democrats can and need to refute antidemocrats." On the antifoundationalist view, political philosophy is not the search for foundations, but simply a contest between different "idealizations" of existing social practices. An idealization of a social practice is a vision of "the utopian future of our community" that "suck[s] up and concentratels] intuitions about the importance of certain components of our practices" (Rorty 1996,333). Hence, Rorty describes the difference between John Rawls's left-leaning welfare liberalism and Robert Nozick's minimalist libertarianism as the "competition between the two men's idealizations" of "present practices in the liberal democracies." On Rorty's reading, the dispute between Rawls and Nozick comes to nothing more profound than this: "Rawls's principles remind us of what we do in our appellate courts, whereas Nozick's remind us of what we do in our marketplaces." The difference between the welfare state and the minimal state, then, is simply "a matter of playing certain of our practices against others" (Rorty 1996, 333). That is, there is really nothing like a philosophical dispute going on between Rawlsians and Nozickians; there is merely a contest among different prioritizations of our intuitions and practices. The antifoundationalist democratic philosopher offers a "circular justification" for his idealization; he "makes one feature of our culture look good by citing still another" and unabashedly compares our culture with others "by reference to our own standards" (Rorty 1989, 57). By promoting a particular idealization of his community, the antifoundationalist does not provide a foundation (albeit a relativist one) for the practices he

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idealizes; he is not supplying "philosophical backup" for those aspects of his community that he most admires. Rather, he is "putting politics first and tailoring a philosophy to suit" (Rorty 1988,178). Hence, the priority of democracy to philosophy. The antifoundationalist recognizes that a circular justification of an "idealization" of democracy is "the only sort of justification we are going to get" (Rorty 1989, 57). Rorty does not lament this, however. He insists that the purposes of liberal democracy are better served by the antifoundationalist strategy. Rorty claims that "The search for foundations of democracy" is a "distraction from debates between competing idealizations of current practices" (Rorty 1996, 335).

2. The Status of Rorty's Antifoundationalism Rorty's many critics have charged that his account is relativist, irrationalist, emotivist, ethnocentric, self-defeating, and nonprogressive." Rorty is not bothered by such criticisms; he insists that such labels will offend only those who are still practicing the kind of philosophy he has abandoned. For example, to the charge that his antifoundationalism is irrationalist and emotivist, Rorty responds that only those who accept an archaic moral psychology-namely, one that "distinguishes between reason and the passions"-could make such a charge (Rorty 1996, 334). Similarly, to the suggestion that his account is ethnocentric, Rorty responds that it is because "the philosophical tradition has accustomed us to the idea that anybody who is willing to listen to reason-to hear out all arguments-can be brought around to the truth" that one worries about "ethnocentrism" in political philosophy (Rorty 1988, 188). The recommendation is to reject this philosophical fantasy. One wonders whether it is possible to offer a criticism that Rorty will have to take seriously. One gets the sense that Rorty has established for himself an unassailable vantage point from which to offer his views, a tactical position from which any objection will be ruled out of order for being overly philosophical. Perhaps it is precisely this feature of Rorty's view that is most objectionable? One might pose an argument like the following: 1. According to Rorty, overly philosophical objections to a view are not grounds for abandoning or revising the view, since the presuppositions which make them "philosophical" objections have to be abandoned.

2. According to Rorty, any objection to Rorty's view is ipso facto overly philosophical. 614

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3. Therefore, Rorty's view fails the verifiability condition and is vacuous. Rorty's response to this obvious objection is easy to anticipate. Verifiability criteria go by the board once we accept Quine's holistic response to the second dogma of empiricism. Therefore, the above objection bites only if one persists in doing the kind of philosophy that Rorty thinks is no longer worth doing. The objection is defused and disposed of promptly. A different kind of argumentative strategy is required. Perhaps we must first attempt to understand the kind of case Rorty is making, the status of his claims. The discussion has indicated that Rorty is committed to a few central ideas: (a) One cannot achieve a proof of democracy of the sort the foundationalist wants. (b) Once the foundationalist project is abandoned, all that is left for political philosophy is the antifoundationalist enterprise of offering idealizations of current practices. (c) Democracy is best served by antifoundationalism. We begin by noting that it is unclear whether anyone today really thinks that a foundationalist proof of the kind Rorty describes is possible. Of course, Rorty will take this point to count as one more consideration that supports his own view. However, what Rorty has not explicitly shown is that the only alternative to Enlightenment dreams of a deductive science of politics is his brand of hopeful antifoundationalism. Why should we think that Rorty's disjunction between "foundations" and "idealizations" is exclusive? In other words, why should we accept (b)? Rorty's (b) is derived from the consideration that, "It is not clear how to argue for the claim that human beings ought to be liberals rather than fanatics without being driven back on a theory of human nature" (Rorty 1988, 190). Rorty insists that every foundationalist argument will necessarily require something like a theory of human nature for its "ground." Again, in order to serve the foundationalist's dialectical purposes, this theory must be external to and independent of any existing social practices; the "ground" must be ahistorical and metaphysical. The problem with being "driven back" upon a theory of human nature is that, "humanity no more has a nature ... independent of the accidents of history, than life has a nature independent of the accidents of biological evolution" (Rorty 1996, 334). There is ultimately no "argumentative wall" upon which to rely for a proof of democracy; any proposed wall will 615

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turn out to be "a painted backdrop, one more work of man, one more bit of cultural stage-setting" (Rorty 1989, 53). Reconstructing a bit, Rorty's position seems to run as follows: 1.

The attempt to get beyond idealizations to foundations will necessarily evoke some theory of human nature.

2.

A theory of "human nature" as something distinct from existing social conditions is incoherent because there is no "human nature" in this sense.

3.

As there is no point external to the contingencies of our society from which to launch a political philosophy, all political philosophy can be is the exercise of promoting various idealizations of current social practices.

4.

Therefore, there are only idealizations and no foundations.

The force of this line of reasoning derives entirely from premise 2. Why should one accept this premise? Once it is noted that Rorty's support for premise 2 is his reading of the philosophical implications of Darwin (Rorty 1996, 334), the argument collapses. Rorty's second premise rests upon a controversial theory about theories of human nature that is based upon a controversial reading of the philosophical implications of the theory of evolution. One might accuse Rorty of using his controversial reading of Darwin to provide the ground for his antifoundationalist political philosophy; that is, one might accuse Rorty of arguing:

1.

Darwin has shown us that life does not have a nature independent of "the accidents of biological evolution."

2.

"Human history is simply biological evolution continued by other means" (Rorty 1996, 334).

3.

Therefore, there is no human nature apart from "the accidents of history"; human nature is contingent.

4.

Therefore, any argument that appeals to some noncontingent sense of ''human nature" is incoherent.

5.

By definition, all foundationalist arguments appeal to a noncontingent sense of "human nature."

6.

Therefore, every foundationalist argument is incoherent and unacceptable.

Here, the crucial premise is the intermediary conclusion 3, which supposedly follows from premises 1 and 2. However,

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premise 2 involves a speculative, perhaps esoteric, extrapolation from Darwin. Rorty has therefore failed to "get along without philosophical presuppositions" (Rorty 1988, 179); his argument rests upon his own philosophical account of the metaphysical implications of the theory of evolution. Rorty will undoubtedly resist this reading of his position. He will deny that his antifoundationalist political philosophy rests upon a foundationalist argument from Darwinian biology. In anticipation of this kind of criticism, Rorty writes: I am not ... saying that the ... account of language and ... selfhood which I have sketched provide "philosophical foundations of democracy." For the notion of a "philosophical foundation" goes when the vocabulary of Enlightenment rationalism goes. (Rorty 1989, 44)

However, it is not enough for Rorty to simply announce that he has not employed a foundation. It is not enough for him to simply drop the vocabulary associated with foundationalism or "Enlightenment rationalism," for the issue is not simply terminological. To deflect the charge that he has simply placed the Enlightenment wine in Postmodern Ironist bottles, Rorty rather must show that his reading of Darwin does not function as a foundational premise in his argument against foundationalist accounts of democracy. That is, he must show that there is a way to run his argument without the implication from premises 1 and 2 to premise 3. He does not do this. Moreover, it will not do for Rorty to appeal to the language of the "political not metaphysical" Rawls, as he often does. Rorty cannot claim to be following Rawls's program of drawing "solely upon basic intuitive ideas that are embedded in the political institutions of a constitutional democratic regime" (Rawls 1999,390).4 The claim that "Human history is simply biological evolution continued by other means" (Rorty 1996, 334) is not a "basic intuitive idea" operative within our political culture. Rorty may elect to respond that he has not underhandedly inserted a philosophical foundation into his argument because he has not posed an argument at all; he may claim that the idea of an argument is yet another fabrication of the Enlightenment that must be jettisoned. Rorty may insist that he has not argued for any antifoundationalist conclusion but, rather, that he has simply tried to persuade us that, For purposes of social theory, we can put aside such topics as an ahistorical human nature, the nature of selfhood, the motive of moral behavior, and the meaning of human life. We treat these as irrelevant to politics as Jefferson thought questions about the Trinity and about transubstantiation. (Rorty 1988, 180)

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That is, Rorty may respond to my argument by simply changing the subject (Rorty 1989, 44); he might shift from philosophical arguments about the impossibility of escaping contingency to pragmatic talk about how he thinks we might improve politics. In this way, his antifoundationalism consists in nothing more than the attempt to "deflect attention from all questions other than 'what sort of compromise might we be able to freely agree upon?'" (Rorty 1998b, 120). Rorty's liberalism is thus not properly a liberal theory at all but rather a plea for doing politics without engaging what Bruce Ackerman has called "Big Questions" (Ackerman 1980, 361). An antifoundationalist politics is thus an antiphilosophical politics; accordingly, Rorty is not proposing a political philosophy but proffering liberal propaganda. He aims to promote and inspire liberal democracy among those already well-disposed to it rather than prove it to antidemocrats.

3. Antifoundationalism, Big Questions, and Open Questions Rorty's shift from an argument about inescapable contingency to pragmatic preaching will be a strictly tactical-that is, a purely dialectical maneuver designed to end the discussion with his views intact-unless it is accompanied by the recognition that the attitude of the antifoundationalist liberal towards Big Questions is itself contingent. To deny this is to claim that political antifoundationalism is what Rorty calls a metaphysically "final vocabulary," that is, a way of describing things that "puts all doubts to rest" (Rorty 1989, 74), what I shall call, with the appropriate nod to Ackerman, a Big Answer. But the antifoundationalist is someone who "has radical and continuing doubts" about his own vocabulary, his own way of describing things (Rorty 1989, 73). Antifoundationalists can take no vocabulary to be final, not even the vocabulary of antifoundationalist liberalism. As Rorty says, "we treat everything-our language, our conscience, our community-as a product of time and chance" (Rorty 1989, 22). Once the antifoundationalist acknowledges that everything is contingent, he must concede that his antifoundationalist liberalism is tentative; Big Questions regarding whether democracy can be given foundations, whether there is an ahistorical human nature, and whether reason has a structure remain open questions. The antifoundationalist cannot adopt the position that Rorty's champions of contingency-Kuhn, Davidson, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Sellars, Feyerabend-have found the Big Answers and thus have had the last word on questions of language, self, society, and science. He cannot rule out a priori that, for example, Aristotelian physics or Kantian Ethics or Millian philosophy of science is true in a philosophi-

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cally robust sense of that term, for his rejection of robust senses of "true" is yet another contingency. In other words, unless he is to appeal to a philosophical proof of antifoundationalism, he must admit that his positions about contingency, foundations, liberalism, and other Big Questions are not Big Answers and, thus, are not final. These considerations generate what I should like to think of as a pragmatist rejoinder to Rorty. Note that I did not claim that I have a "foundationalist" rejoinder; we pragmatists are willing to grant that it is unlikely that we shall be able to produce a deductive proof of democracy. So I grant (a) in the list of Rorty's commitments. What pragmatists such as myself do not grant is (b), and a fortiori we do not grant (c). In other words, Rorty's "foundationalism or antifoundationalism" is a false dichotomy, and I do not think that the purposes of democracy will be best served by an antifoundationalist vocabulary and self-image. I begin with the pragmatic rejoinder to (b) and take up (c) in the next section. We have seen that Rorty's political antifoundationalism must be thoroughly antifoundationalist-that is, it must view all commitments, including the commitment to antifoundationalism, as contingent rather than as Big Answers. A thoroughgoing, consistent antifoundationalist must therefore concede that his view is no more justified, reasonable, or coherent than any variety of foundationalism. This concession, in turn, leads the antifoundationalist to recognize that his own commitments are tentative, that antifoundationalism is not a Big Answer, that Big Questions are still open questions. We next note the historical point that it is the mark of an antidemocratic and oppressive regime to adopt and impose some set of Big Answers. That is, an antidemocratic regime is one that provides answers to Big Questions and treats these answers as final, settled, sacred, and unquestionable. Enforcing its Big Answers by means of the method of belief fixation that C. S. Peirce called "the method of authority" (Peirce 1877, 1314), antidemocratic regimes do not allow Big Questions to remain open questions. Under an antidemocratic regime, to open a Big Question-namely, to question a Big Answer-is to commit treason, heresy, blasphemy, or, in Newspeak, "thoughtcrime." A democratic regime, by contrast, allows Big Questions to remain open questions. This is not to say that democrats must "put aside" Big Questions or believe that they are "irrelevant to politics" (Rorty 1988, 180), for the question of whether we can and should do politics without Big Answers is itself a Big Question and, appropriately, a matter of Big Debate. Democracy does not place itself "prior" to Big Questions; rather, it attempts to get along in the absence of Big Answers and in the presence of Big Debate. A democratic regime acknowledges that

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Robert B. Talisse reasonable persons of good will are likely to disagree about Big Questions and tries to establish and maintain the conditions under which Big Debates can be reasonably, fairly, and peacefully conducted. It is this feature of democracy that generates our pragmatist rejection of Rorty's dichotomy between foundationalism and antifoundationalism; a fully pragmatist politics emphasizes the experimentalist nature of democratic praxis. Neither a "foundation" nor merely a contrivance, the processes of discussion, debate, and criticism provide a basis for democracy and also constitute the chief advantage of democracy over other forms of social association. It is precisely because a democratic regime can allow Big Debates-including the debates about whether democracy needs foundations-that democracy is better than the alternatives. However, to say that democracy permits Big Debates and tries to conduct politics in the absence of Big Answers is not to say that democracy ignores the Big Questions. On the contrary, a democratic regime acknowledges that it must answer some of the Big Questions in order to function. It must adopt some stance on Big Questions such as: When does human life begin? Do persons in permanent vegetative states have rights? Should polygamy be prohibited in Salt Lake City? Are existing principles of economic distribution just? Although a democracy must devise some answers to these Big Questions, it does not take its answers to be Big Answers, for as long as there are reasonable persons of good will who disagree, Big Questions must remain open questions. This is also not to say that a democracy must treat Big Questions as Big Mysteries, that is, unanswerable Big Questions. The account of democracy I am suggesting is comprehensively experimentalist. It concedes that someday we might discover some Big Answer that would require that we abandon our commitments to equality, liberty, and even democracy; a Platonic philosopher king may at some future point emerge to whom we should submit. An experimentalist democracy concedes that democracy itself is a working hypothesis-a best answer, not a Big Answer.

4. Pragmatism Versus Antifoundationalism My pragmatist vision of democracy thus relies upon a certain picture of what is distinctive about a democratic regime. Specifically, I have claimed that what is distinctive of democracy is its willingness to acknowledge the openness of Big Questions and to recognize the hypothetical nature of its answers to them. Rorty will no doubt resist the move from antifoundationalism to experimentalism for which I have argued. He will want to say that it is precisely the move from antifoundationalism to experimentalism that the liberal ironist should avoid. He will insist that his commitment to contingency

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implies nothing beyond itself, that the idea of a view having further "entailments" is just one more fiction of the kind of philosophy he no longer is doing. Again, it seems that Rorty's philosophy is no philosophy at all. How, then, should one respond to Rorty? The only recourse is to engage his claim (c), that is, that democracy is best served by an antifoundationalist vocabulary and self-image. I want not only to suggest that Rorty's view is insufficient to deal with certain political realities that threaten contemporary democracy but, also, that it is unable to inspire the kind of social hope that Rorty takes to be the principal objective of political theory. In this way, I want to show that Rorty's view fails on its own terms and that my own account does not. According to Rorty, to be an antifoundationalist is to understand philosophical debates about democracy as dialectical competitions between different idealizations of existing social practices. As was discussed earlier, Rorty thinks of the difference between Rawls and Nozick in these terms. We may agree with Rorty that the dispute between Rawls and Nozick really is just a dispute about how we should prioritize our existing practices. We could, with Rorty, borrow a term from Daniel Dennett and say that Nozick and Rawls proffer different "intuition pumps" (Rorty 1996, 333). However, Rorty's antifoundationalist picture of alternative idealizations makes sense only if we restrict our analyses to congenial disputes between professional academics such as Rawls and Nozick. The picture breaks down when we consider the more fundamental disputes that arise outside the academy. Consider, for example, Stalin's claim that his brutal regime is democratic "in a higher sense." Does it make sense to say that Stalinism is just another idealization of democracy? The obvious response, one that Rorty would endorse (Rorty 1998a, 57-58), is that Stalinist "democracy" is not democracy at all. However, it is unclear how Rorty can make the distinction between "real" democracy and tyranny disguised as democracy while remaining faithful to his antifoundationalism. Perhaps Rorty would like to treat Stalin as he would treat Nietzsche and Loyola. That is, perhaps he will avoid having to distinguish "real" democracy from tyranny by simply dismissing Stalin as "mad." Of course, on Rorty's view, to call Stalin "mad" is not to render a psychological diagnosis but simply to say that "there is no way to see [him] as [a] fellow [citizen] of our constitutional democracy"; Rorty thinks Stalin is "crazy" because "the limits of sanity are set by what we can take seriously." These limits are, of course, "determined by our upbringing, our historical situation" (Rorty 1988, 187-188). While consistent with his antifoundationalism, this "ethnocentric" (Rorty 1988, 188) strategy founders once we consider cases of fellow citizens who promote idealizations of

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our democracy which are similar to those proffered by Stalin, Hitler, or any of Rorty's other paradigmatic madmen. Members of white supremacist or other racist organizations certainly promote a certain vision of the "utopian future of our community" (Rorty 1996, 333), a particular image of what is best in our culture. We cannot treat racists as "mad" and maintain that "the limits of sanity" are set by the contingencies of community, for, in this case, the "madmen" are members of my community; the KKK is as much a part of my liberal inheritance as the ACLU and the AFL-CIO. Rorty must either introduce some ad hoc qualifications to the terms "ethnocentrism," "idealization," and "social practice," such that racists will necessarily not count as "one of us," or he will have to concede that the modern democratic state is home to persons who promote views that differ substantially from his own. He must acknowledge that when he writes sentences like, "For purposes of social theory, we can put aside such topics as an ahistorical human nature, the nature of selfbood, the motive of moral behavior, and the meaning of human life" (Rorty 1988, 180), the pronoun "we" actually refers to a very small sector of the democratic community. In fact, citizens of the United States very often think that Big Questions matter for politics, and many of our political commitments are determined by the answers we favor. Given these political realities, we simply cannot afford to treat philosophical disputes about politics in the way that Rorty recommends; there is much more at stake in some disputes than "idealizations." We must face the fact that, in the interests of the kind of open discussion that is requisite to self-government, a democratic regime allows an extremely wide variety of polit.ical organizations to operate. Some of these agencies aim to use democracy to undermine democracy. That is, some use the openness of democracy to propagate supposedly Big Answers that are not only false but are inimical to democracy. On Rorty's view we would have to treat these as alternative intuition pumps and hope for the best. Meanwhile, as Seyla Benhabib, among many others, notes, there is evidence that suggests that in recent years "even in the United States" neofascist organizations "have emerged on a scale unprecedented since the end of World War II" (Benhabib 1996, 3). Rorty is surely aware of these threats. However, his antifoundationalism leaves his political theory impotent to respond; he suggests that, when dealing with opponents of democracy, we "ask [them] to privatize their projects" (Rorty 1989, 197). And what shall we do when they refuse? We simply change the subject or cut the conversation short; Rorty recommends that we simply "refuse to argue" with them (Rorty 1988, 190). Against this strategy, Robert Dahl has raised the following consideration:

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A Pragmatist Critique of Richard Rarty's Hopeless Politics [Llet us imagine a country with democratic political institutions in which intellectual elites are in the main convinced that democracy cannot be justified on reasonable and plausible grounds. The prevailing view among them, let us suppose, is that no intellectually respectable reasons exist for believing that a democratic system is better than a nondemocratic alternative. As long as the political, social, and economic institutions of the country are performing adequately from the perspective of the general population, perhaps most people will simply ignore the querulous dissent of their intellectuals; and political leaders and influential opinion makers may in the main go along with the generally favorable popular view. But in time of serious crisis-and all countries go through time of serious crisis-those who try to defend democracy will find the going much harder, while those who promote nondemocratic alternatives will find it that much easier. (Dahl 1996, 338)

Lest this kind of reply appear overtly alarmist and exaggerated, we may consider the growing body of social scientific literature that tells the fascinating yet disturbing tale of increasing voter ignorance and nonparticipation, the breakdown of civic association, the loss of community, and the reduction of toleration to the "NIMBY" phenomenon." Hence we may cast Dahl's remarks in a slightly different light: Rorty's strategy of dismissing democracy's enemies rather than attempting to engage them is likely to strengthen the antidemocratic tendencies that are already operative within our society and, thus, might even help to precipitate the kind of crisis that Dahl describes. Here it is important to note that the antidemocratic forces operative within our society do propose philosophical arguments in favor of their views; they believe that they have good reasons to hold the positions they do. Similarly, politically disengaged and apathetic citizens are not simply "uninspired" but often believe that they are justified in ignoring politics; they typically maintain that political action and engagement are futile. A philosophy that is resolutely opposed to engaging antidemocrats and apathetic citizens on their own terms is unable to address these phenomena and consequently unable to work towards their amelioration. Although we may give up the Enlightenment aspiration of a deductive proof against various forms of antidemocracy, we can seek something more ambitious than Rorty's intuition pumping. The pragmatist theory I have sketched allows democrats to address the claims of antidemocrats by forcing the enemies of democracy into the arena of public debate. That is, we recognize that the views of racists and other antidemocrats are not mere idealizations. The racists believe that their racism follows from some Big Answer about human nature that they have adopted; they believe that their racist views are true in a philosophically

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robust sense. The pragmatist criticizes the antidemocrat's Big Answer by showing that it is most likely a false answer. Of course, this strategy of engaging enemies of democracy in open debate will not always result in reforming the antidemocrat, but it will result in a stronger democracy insofar as it helps to nurture and strengthen the processes of public discourse and critical discussion that are essential to democracy. 5. Conclusion: Democracy and Hope We may draw this discussion to a close by noting that Rorty's political antifoundationalism places liberal democracy on a philosophical par with tyranny. There is, Rorty insists, nothing one can say against tyranny that should count as a good reason for the tyrant to become a democrat. Rorty further contends that giving up the Enlightenment illusion that tyrants can somehow be refuted will improve existing democracies. Once political theorists give up the "distraction" (Rorty 1996, 133) of trying to develop foundations for democracy, they can take up their proper work of helping to inspire within democratic citizens the social hope requisite to "achieving" our country. Of course, the inspired fascination with democracy that Rorty seeks to cultivate is important; however, an essential component of hope is the confidence that what is hoped for is in some relevant way worth achieving and better than the other things that might develop. Yet Rorty's antifoundationalism does not allow one to maintain that democracy is in any relevant way better than, say, tyranny. Hence Rorty's "social hope" must be, as he says, "ironic"-we must hope to achieve that which we no longer can think is worth achieving, we must draw inspiration from that which we contend is essentially not inspiring. To put it mildly, this seems incoherent. If there is anything inspiring in the works of a Whitman and a Dewey (and I say there is), it is precisely the sense that the visions of democracy they present are in a non-ironic sense worth trying for and worth hoping to achieve. This can be maintained only if one can point to some aspect of democracy that relevantly distinguishes it from tyranny. The pragmatist view of democracy I sketched above identifies what I contend is a relevant distinction between a democratic polity and nondemocratic alternatives. The essence of democracy lies within the citizens' willingness to openly and critically engage questions of political justification, their openness to new possibilities, and their commitment to experimenting with alternative proposals. I contend that this is an appropriate source of hope, not only because the processes of open public deliberation can be inspiring, but because a society

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committed to continuing and continual experimental political discourse alone holds the promise of growing even better. The principle that our present activities must be informed by a careful analysis of their potentialities for improving the future is and always has been a staple of pragmatist thought. The conception of democracy as the political manifestation of this principle is the true gem of pragmatism and the source of a coherent and potent social hope.

Notes 1 Rorty identifies several such enemies; for example, Nietzsche, Loyola (Rorty 1988, 187), racists (Rorty 1996, 335), Nazis, and totalitarians (Rorty 1987, 42). 2 For Rorty, it is enough to say of critics of democracy such as Nietzsche and Loyola that they are "mad," "crazy" (Rorty 1988, 187); later he advises that democrats simply "refuse to argue" with them (Rorty 1988, 190). 3 See for example, Stout 1988, 230; West 1985; West 1989, 206; Bernstein 1987,541; Teichman; and McCarthy 1990. 4 For Rorty's gloss on this passage in Rawls, see Rorty 1988, 180. 5 See, for example, Putnam 1995; Putnam 2000; Elshtain 1995; Page 1996; Barber 1998; Iyengar 1991; Beem 1999; Sunstein 2001; and the essays collected in Elkin and Soltan, eds. 1999 and in Pharr and Putman, eds. 2000. "NIMBY" is the acronym for "not in my backyard"; the point is that whereas toleration used to be seen as a positive good, it is now understood as a necessary evil, and the prevailing view is that "experiments in living" are to be tolerated only for as long as they can be ignored.

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