10.13135/2036-542X/7965
This article shows, firstly, why Rorty thinks that after the Kantian Enlightenment, which had fought for emancipation in the name of reason, we are now in need of a second Enlightenment that liberates us from rationality; it shows, secondly, the inner contradictions Rorty blunders into by (seemingly) detaching his critique of objectivity in his works after Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature from the subsequent necessary critique of subjectivity; it offers, thirdly, to explain these contradictions by reference to Rorty’s ties to the tradition of Romanticism, on which he greatly depends, albeit without adopting its major concepts, which are a dialogical theory of subjectivity, and ironic ways of writing. A second level of investigation addresses the question of Rorty’s rhetoric and how he thinks the emancipation from rationality should be accomplished, showing that his insistence on subjectivity and tradition serves his emancipatory program: Part of Rorty’s strategy is selling his emancipatory maxim as reform instead of as revolution against dualistic and representational concepts of rationality. Therewith, Rorty is insisting on dialog with supposedly incommensurable positions and he is doing so because he thinks—from a pragmatic and utilitarian perspective—that this approach is more likely to have success.
application/pdf
2036-542X
7965
1
it
Yvonne Hütter
Trópos
Emancipation from Rationality: 
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos
8
Monografica
2015-07-15
2023-07-30
2015-07-15
2023-07-30
111-131
1
Yvonne Hütter
2015/07/15
10.13135/2036-542X/7965
111
2036-542X
1
131
Emancipation from Rationality: 
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos/article/download/7965/6695
8
                                                              trópos • anno VIII • numero 1 • 2015 – ISBN 978-88-548-8594-3
                                                                 DOI 10.4399/97888548859437 – pag. 111-131 (giugno 2015)




                                           Emancipation from Rationality
                         Richard Rorty’s attempt to enlighten the Enlightenment
                                      from the spirit of Romantic Hermeneutics

                                                                                          Y H



    : This article shows, firstly, why Rorty thinks that after the Kantian En-
       lightenment, which had fought for emancipation in the name of reason, we are
       now in need of a second Enlightenment that liberates us from rationality; it
       shows, secondly, the inner contradictions Rorty blunders into by (seemingly)
       detaching his critique of objectivity in his works after Philosophy and the Mirror of
       Nature from the subsequent necessary critique of subjectivity; it offers, thirdly,
       to explain these contradictions by reference to Rorty’s ties to the tradition of
       Romanticism, on which he greatly depends, albeit without adopting its major
       concepts, which are a dialogical theory of subjectivity, and ironic ways of writing.
       A second level of investigation addresses the question of Rorty’s rhetoric and how
       he thinks the emancipation from rationality should be accomplished, showing
       that his insistence on subjectivity and tradition serves his emancipatory program:
       Part of Rorty’s strategy is selling his emancipatory maxim as reform instead of as
       revolution against dualistic and representational concepts of rationality. Therewith,
       Rorty is insisting on dialog with supposedly incommensurable positions and he
       is doing so because he thinks — from a pragmatic and utilitarian perspective —
       that this approach is more likely to have success.

    : Schlegel, Subjectivity, Irony, Rhetoric, Scientific and Political Communi-
       cation Strategy.

During his career, Rorty has told different stories in his attempt to identify
the major culprit of the dualistic schism in philosophy and the rise of ratio-
nality to power as well as where the antidote might come from. The version
I am offering here is just one of many. Along with Kant Rorty invoked Plato
and Descartes, amongst others, as subjectors; Rorty listed, as emancipa-
tors, Romanticism and non–reductive Empiricism . His reasoning, however,

     . What connects the two is processual infinitude together with self–impeachment. Rorty himself
connects the two calling one the empiricist’s “post–Darwin” version and the other the romantic
“post–Nietzsche” version (Rorty : ). William James, whom Rorty sees in the post–Darwin–tradition,
defines his own position as “radical empiricism”: Empiricism “because it is contented to regard its most
assured conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the course of
future experience; and I say ‘radical‘, because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis”
(James a: –). This translates to Romantic “irony” as will be seen further on.


                                                                                                                      
     Yvonne Hütter


summarized in the title of the following section, always follows a similar
path. The version presented here can, therefore, be seen as paradigmatic for
Rorty’s analysis as a whole, although the names and concepts may vary.


. Against Dichotomy!

Rorty has often been put in the romantic tradition and he himself em-
phasized the connection on more than one occasion . Over the last 
years research on Romanticism has underlined the continuity and radi-
calization of concepts of the Enlightenment in Romantic thought: Her-
bert Schnädelbach, for instance, speaks about “Aufklärung der Aufklärung”
(S : ) . It is widely believed that Romantics took the
lessons of Enlightenment to heart and turned its methods and concepts
against Enlightenment itself. Following this argumentation, the Enlight-
enment was not able to cut the connection to metaphysics: Rationality,
which came to liberate us, was just another mistress, under whose yoke
we had to serve, and “die Annahme, es bedürfe zum moralischen Handeln
notwendig einer universale Reichweite garantierenden Autorität [blieb]
[. . . ] unberührt” (D–R : ).
      Rorty, working with the vocabulary (concepts, methods, utopia) of the
Enlightenment, attacks Kant’s concept of rationality from two directions.
He first dissolves objectivity: there is no certainty for truth, not even in
the delimited form defined by Kant’s “Verstandeskategorien”; there is no
moral based on pure rationality (“reine praktische Vernunft”)! The linchpin
for both is Kant’s transcendental subject, which Rorty in Philosophy and the
Mirror of Nature also deconstructs.
      Rorty considers the distinction between body and mind to be a voluntary
one which is actually a Kantian invention serving a specific task. “[T]he
purportedly metaphysical ‘problem of consciousness’ is no more and no
less than the epistemological ‘problem of privileged access’” (R :
). We first assume an authority that is able to give us certainty regarding
truth–questions and then we use this authority to ‘prove’ our truth–claims.
What is propagated is rationality as an ability that replaces the lost God’s
eye point of view. The concept of ‘the more rational, the more likely to be
true’ is, therefore, a tautology as is, “[f]rom the antiessentialist’s point of
view, the Kantian lament [...] that something we define as being beyond
     . See e.g. F : M ; W ; Z , especially: –.
     . See also S .
     . In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Rorty states analytical philosophy is just another “Kan-
tianism“ that must be replaced by hermeneutics. However, he himself uses analytical methods to
show the contradictions in analytical philosophy (R : ).
                                                       Emancipation from Rationality      


our knowledge is, alas, beyond our knowledge” (R b: ). Rorty
very wisely writes “from the antiessentialist’s point of view” because from
Kant’s and from a dualistic point of view there is no tautology here, given
that A and B are distinct, “scheme and content” (Davidson). It is Rorty’s
assumption that you cannot distinguish rigorously between A and B that
creates the tautology.
    In Kant’s view, there is a difference between subject and object, between
the world itself and our reflections on it, as well as between the knowl-
edge of the world, the knowledge of our knowledge of the world, and the
knowledge of ourselves insofar as we are “reine Vernunftwesen”. Rorty
rejects all of these distinctions together with the correspondence theory
of truth. However, rejecting these distinctions does not mean to negate
our being in “touch with reality” and “that our language, like our bodies,
has been shaped by the environment we live in. Indeed, he or she [the an-
tirepresentationalist] insists on this point [. . . ]” (R : ). What Rorty
denies is the possibility of certainty regarding truth: “The trouble with
aiming at truth is that you would not know when you have reached it, even
if you had in fact reached it” (R c: ). Therefore, the (possibility of
certainty regarding the) difference between appearance and reality on the
ontological–representational–epistemological level falls. On the linguistical
level, we cannot, according to Rorty, divide our speaking about the world
from our being engaged with the world: language is a tool “to deal with the
environment” (Rorty : ). “There is no way to divide up this web of
causal connections so as to compare the relative amount of subjectivity and
of objectivity in a given belief. There is no way, as Wittgenstein has said, to
come between language and its object, to divide the giraffe in itself from
our ways of talking about giraffes” (Rorty : ). Beliefs (“truths”),
thus, are not “representations” but “habits of action” (R : ).
    William James, one of Rorty’s sources, stresses the psychological–em-
pirical level in our decision–making : “[. . . ] as a rule we disbelieve all facts
and theories for which we have no use“ (J b: ). Logicians, for
example, exclude everything for which they, “in their professional quality of
logicians, can find no use” (J b: ). Rorty formulates this to fit Kant:
having invented a discipline called “Fundamentalwissenschaft”, which he
anchors in the likewise invented transcendental subject and its rationality,
Kant has no use for anything that is not “rational” in his definition of the
word (Rorty : –). James distinguishes between “live” and “dead”
hypotheses that are “proposed to our belief ” (J b: ) — there is not

    . I owe this reference to James to Ursula Diewald–Rodriguez. I am also grateful for the
suggestions of two anonymous referees. Furthermore, this article would not have been possible
without the patient proof–reading of Rose Simpson and Jim Genaro.
      Yvonne Hütter


always “an electric connection” ( James b: ). Whether we are willing to
believe certain theses or not is not “intrinsic” to the hypotheses but depends
on the “relations to the individual thinker” (J b: ). “Evidently,
then, our non–intellectual nature does influence our convictions” (b:
). According to James, this starting situation should not be described as
pathological but “we must treat it as normal element in making up our
minds” (J b: ). Therefore, “reason [. . . ] is but one item in the
miracle” ( James a: –) and “Many of my professionally trained
confrères will smile at the irrationalism of this view” ( James a: ix–x).
Socialization determines what we are willing to accept as “rational” or
“true” and what we discredit as “irrational” and “false”: training creates
commensurability .
    For Rorty, in this case following the steps of Dewey, moral obligation
has no source other than tradition, habit, and custom (R c: ):
“morality is simply a new and controversial custom” (Rorty c: ).

      All that the categorical imperative does, Dewey said, is to command ‘the habit of
      asking how we should be willing to be treated in a similar case’. The attempt to do
      more, to get ‘ready–made rules available at a moment’s notice for settling any kind
      of moral difficulty’, seemed to Dewey to have been ‘born of timidity and nourished
      by love of authoritative prestige’ (R c: ).

    According to Dewey, Kant’s insistence on scientificity results from his want-
ing to be accepted in the scientific community. For Rorty, putting rationality
in radical opposition to passion is a fiction that supports Kant’s system. Rorty
sees no fundamental difference between “Vernunft” and “Neigung”, but, like
Annette Baier in the tradition of Hume, only gradual diversifications (R
c: ). “[M]oral progress [is] not a matter of an increase of rationality”
(R c: ) or of “rising above the sentimental to the rational” (R
c: ). Analogously to not knowing whether what you think is true really
is true, even if it is: “you cannot aim at ‘doing what is right’, because you will
never know whether you have hit the mark” (R c: ). For Rorty,
this is “simply a way of formulating the secularism of the Enlightenment — a
way of saying that human beings are on their own, and have no supernatural
light to guide them to the Truth” (R : ). Hence, moral choice
is “always a matter of compromise between competing goods, rather than
a choice between the absolute right and the absolute wrong” (R :
–). This does not open the door to chaos and nihilism because what
we are willing to see as “morally good” still depends on our group affiliation.
Thus, “it is best to think of moral progress as a matter of increasing sensitivity,
increasing responsiveness to the needs of a larger and larger variety of people

      . This is Fleck and Kuhn ante litteram, see also R : ;  and .
                                                             Emancipation from Rationality           


and things” (R c: ). The ethical maxim that is based on practice
not on truth is — Rorty follows Sellar’s argumentation here — to enlarge the
group of people we speak of as “we”. This guarantees group–cohesion and
mutual care (R c: , also ).
   After having dismissed objectivity, Rorty, in The Mirror of Nature, consis-
tently, deconstructs subjectivity by referring to the subject–conceptions of
Gadamer and Sartre. Subjectivity is as fictional as the concept of objectivity
that subjectivity was invented to support. As Donald Davidson puts it in
reference to C. I. Lewis, “Content and scheme [. . . ] come as a pair; we
can let them go together” (D : ). Davidson already sees the
aurora of that new morning:

    it seems to me that the most promising and interesting change that is occurring in
    philosophy today is that these dualisms are being questioned in new ways, or are
    being radically reworked. There is a good chance they will be abandoned, at least
    in their present form. What we are seeing is the emergence of a revised view of
    the relation of mind and the world (D : ).

    The two worldviews — Kant’s and Rorty’s, or in Rorty’s words: dual-
ists/rationalists/etc. vs. empiricists/pragmatists — are (almost) incommen-
surable. The first one (dualism) insists on two spheres, where one sphere
(subject, mind, scheme) investigates, recognizes, “mirrors”, and is able to
give a veracious representation of the other (object, body, content). The
second one (pragmatism) negates the whole basis for argumentation: there
is no clear distinction between the two spheres and there is no “proof ”
for “truth” other than group affiliation. However, the second — “new” or
“improved” or just “different” — paradigm must in some way be connected
to the first –“old”, “outdated”, “different” — paradigm.
    From Rorty’s point of view, both paradigms are purpose–built ways of
description. Therefore, whether you call the two approaches incommensu-
rable or not and whether you call the second paradigm “new”, “improved”
or just “different” also depends on what you want to do with these notions:
you can decide whether to sell your (Rorty’s) position as further develop-
ment and radicalization or as disruption. In the first case you need to stress
continuity and commensuration (offering, for example, a description using
words and concepts of the old paradigm). In the second you stress disconti-
nuity and incommensurability . When words do not represent “reality” but

     . As previously mentioned in my introduction, Rorty has several other names for this tradition,
for example platonists, foundationalists, essentialists, representationalists, etc., and for his own
tradition, e.g. antifoundationalists, antiessentialists, antirepresentationalists. He uses the names more
or less synonymously and chooses them according to which notion he particularly wants to stress.
     . Both are, in my opinion, linked in Kuhn’s notion of “revolution” (/) that explains
scientific revolution as growing within normal science but shifting its major paradigms by creating a
     Yvonne Hütter


serve to fit specific needs in social contexts, which word to choose is not
due to a logical necessity but due to a strategic and political decision. One
of the supposed problems with Rorty’s philosophy, as will be considered
shortly, is that he never clearly decided whether the emancipation he calls
for radicalizes or disrupts with Enlightenment’s philosophy. I will show that
he did not have to decide because deciding between the two is necessary
only from the dualist–paradigm’s point of view.
    Rorty is aware that his concept of the morally good as guaranteeing
happiness and freedom to the largest number is itself a product of the social
pressure of post–enlightenment western society — a society in which he
himself grew up — and that the social utopias of “strong poems” like the
New Testament and the Communist Manifesto shaped his ideals (R a).
He is also aware that liberalism and pragmatism are just one of many possi-
bilities to try to make sense of our existence (R : ). Why, then,
call for another emancipation and not just work within one of the afore-
mentioned groups (Christians, Marxists, Analytical Philosophy and so on)?
    “Dewey thought, as I do, that the vocabulary which centres around
these traditional [dualistic] distinctions has become an obstacle to our social
hopes” (R : ). According to Rorty, the social hopes planted in the
Enlightenment, cannot be realized if we simply shift hierarchies from the
outer (God–world/we) to the inner dominion. We have to give up thinking
in hierarchies/dichotomies altogether. Just as Foucault does in his twin
essays What is Enlightenment, Rorty splits up the critical movement of the
Enlightenment. The never ending emancipatory project–character of the
Enlightenment must be preserved. Its perversions — in Foucault’s view the
substantialisation of knowledge in an instrument of power, in Rorty’s view,
the installation of a new God called Ratio or Truth and the related dualistic
schism — must be ruled out . Both Rorty and Foucault see salvation in the

new one. You can see this in the fact that Kuhn calls “revolution” also “paradigm shift” — notwith-
standing the fact that Kuhn insists on the “incommensurability” of old and new paradigms. The
language you choose depends on the propaganda you intend to use in support of your position. Mara
Beller, for instance, showed that the final acceptance of Quantum Mechanics within the scientific
community was largely due to Bohr’s rhetorical manoeuvers, making connections or describing the
new position in the old newtonian and relativistic paradigms so that the new (in Heisenberg’s first
version from : incommensurable) theory could start its way to success (including concepts like
“space–time” in Heisenberg’s  version; B ). “[P]resent[ing] changing views as a natural
elaboration of the previous position, rather than as a major change or an about–face“ increases
“persuasiveness and credibility” (B : ). This is not to say the new paradigm cannot be
completely game–changing — as is the case for certain interpretations of Quantum Mechanics and
for Rorty’s version of Pragmatism.
     . Rorty takes this concept from Harold Bloom, and means by “strong poets” not only literary
authors but, and I think above all, philosophers as well as scientists.
    . The main of many differences between Foucault and Rorty is the fact that Foucault insists on
“rupture“. From Rorty’s point of view, as I will state in my conclusion, this is shortsighted. Michael
                                                             Emancipation from Rationality           


“ethos” of the aesthete: Foucault in the dandyism of Baudelaire, Rorty in
the attitude of the romantic poet.


. Poetry – the persistence of the dualistic worldview?

For Rorty there is no appearance–reality–dichotomy, no dichotomy be-
tween ratio and passion, and, therefore, also no speaking about truth be-
cause “truth” is an unintelligible word in a non–dichotomic worldview
(R : ). Alternatively, we can speak of truth but only when “truth”
means “what is good for us to believe“ (R : ). It is not the word
“truth” itself that has to be silenced because “truth”, if granted its contin-
gency and constructiveness, can, actually, be a powerful tool for liberals as
well. What has to be silenced is the realism in dichotomies and our belief
that we have a privileged position of access to these substantialized “truths”.
We have to fight the notions of “true” that are opposed to “false”, not the
ways of using the word “true” meaning beneficial for our social hopes
(R : ) . Rorty does not mean to replace “objectivity” with “sub-
jectivity” nor to replace “found” (truth) with “made” (socially constructed)
as these substitutions would still remain inside the dualistic worldview and
its vocabulary (R : ). “Our opponents like to suggest that to
abandon that vocabulary is to abandon rationality [. . . ]” (R : )
and call pragmatists “irrationalists” but “these charges presuppose precisely
the distinctions we reject” (R : ). Pragmatists, Rorty suggests,
should call themselves “anti–dualists” (R : ): “We hope to replace
the reality–appearance distinction with the distinction between the more
useful and the less useful” (R : –).
    Rorty, therefore, calls for the implementation of a new vocabulary with-
Hampe summarizes regarding Foucault: “In Konzeptionen, die, wie die Nietzsches, Heideggers
oder Foucaults, davon ausgehen, dass es eindeutige Brüche und Schranken in der Geistesentwick-
lung gibt, dass ein bestimmter Gedanke nicht wiederkehren kann, weil er ‘überwunden’ wurde,
erscheint in der Regel das eigene Denken nicht als das Transformationsprodukt seiner Geschichte,
sondern als überlegene Entlarvung vergangener Bewusstlosigkeiten, denen die eigene historische
Kontingenz dunkel geblieben war. Doch woher kann eine Philosophie, die Geschichte nicht mehr
als Annäherung oder Verwirklichung des menschlichen oder eines anderen Wesens ansieht, ihre
Fortschrittsgewissheit nehmen? Wie kann ein alles genealogisierendes Denken den Selbstanwen-
dungstest bestehen und sich selbst als etwas anderes als die kontingente, aber stetige Steigerung des
Historismus betrachten?“ (H : ).
     . Rorty argues analogously for the use of the word “rational”: “In our culture, the notions
of science’, ‘rationality’, ‘objectivity’, and ‘truth’ are bound up with one another. [. . . ] We tend
to identify seeking ‘objective truth’ with ‘using reason’. [. . . ] So we tend to use ‘methodological’,
‘rational’, ‘scientific’, and ‘objective’ as synonyms” (R : ). “Another meaning for ‘rational’
is, in fact, available. In this sense, the word means something like ‘sane’ rather than ‘methodological’.
It names a set of moral virtues: tolerance, respect for the opinion of those around one, willingness
to listen, reliance on persuasion rather than force” (R : ).
   Yvonne Hütter


out representational functions. But how should this substitution of vocabu-
lary be accomplished? Furthermore, how can the tension needed to prevent
new substantialisations be maintained, preventing that liberalism itself be-
comes the new patron?
    Rorty’s answer is well known: The Romantic’s postulate of the world
as a poem should guide us. This is not because the Romantic’s vision is
“true”, but because their vision better reflects our epistemic, social, and
linguistic boundaries and, more importantly, their vision is more useful
to our social hopes. Romantic irony must help us avoid essentialisations
to keep the never–ending emancipatory movement going (R a:
, ). Epistemic “Polytheism”, the creation of ever new metaphors,
and solidarity — this is Rorty’s utopia (R b, also a, )!
But can we really all be poets and ironists all day long? Rorty’s view has
often been accused of being elitist and not applicable to the public sphere,
because, while the ironist’s position might keep the epistemic search and
the problematization of selfhood going, why and how should irony and
poetry guarantee social cohesion and solidarity?
    Rorty himself understood the problem of how to link romantic irony and
social cohesion and has offered different solutions over his career. Nancy
Fraser has identified three ways in which Rorty refers to Romanticism
in the years up to , all of which are, as she correctly states, “cartoon-
ish” (F : ): . In a first period, Rorty parallelizes Romanticism
and Pragmatism — both understood here as philosophical and political ap-
proaches — as “natural partners”. The strong poet and the “utopian reform
politician are simply two slightly different variants of the same species”
(F : ). Both are trying to re–write our cultural code: the re-
former owes his/her tools of social–engineering to metaphors provided by
strong poets. There is no difference, therefore, between the moral and the
aesthetic sphere. . Rorty emphasizes the “dark side” of Romanticism as
being elitist and cruel, hence, the exact contrary of the pragmatist’s social
engagement. . In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity Rorty combines the ways
of argumentation presented in  and  and assigns the Romantic and what he
now calls the Liberal (Pragmatist) specific places: “Irony” has to be used in
the private sphere, whereas in the public sphere the dominant force should
be “liberalism”. Rorty defines the latter as the prevention of cruelty, which
can also be based on “truths”, as long as it is (privately) taken into account
that these “truths” are constructed. The main instruments by which these
constructed “truths” have to be implemented are television, mass media,
and literature, all of which show us the pain and suffering of others and
provoke our compassion.
    Fraser thinks, and many agree, that this split between private and public,
and between irony and consensus is not tenable, as will be seen shortly. I
                                                              Emancipation from Rationality           


think Fraser’s version should be refined: the split, as others have pointed
out (M ), should not be understood as implemented and concrete,
but rather as two parts that are in tension. I think that Contingency, Irony, and
Solidarity (Fraser’s step ) is Rorty’s attempt to formulate his paradigm in the
language of the other (dualist) one. In doing so, he gets caught up in a seem-
ingly confused use of language and dichotomies, which also appear in his
later works. The contradictions center around the following interconnected
issues: Rorty’s insistence on subjectivity (hence dichotomy), his ambivalent
connection to and fight against tradition (see e.g. H : –; M-
 ), and his presentational style that “remains well within the stylistic
conventions of contemporary analytic philosophy” (S : ).

    Ramberg is right in stating that Rorty refers to Gadamer at the end of
Mirror of Nature but, oddly, makes no reference to him in Contingency, Irony,
and Solidarity (R : ) . It really is astonishing to see how flat the
hermeneutics and the hermeneutical subject is in Contingency, Irony, and Soli-
darity when compared to Rorty’s complex constructions in Mirror of Nature,
which evoke Gadamer’s “wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein” and Sartre’s
“être en–soi/pour–soi”. Although Rorty problematizes the contingency of
language, selfhood and liberal community in his first chapter, he then insists
on poetry and irony for the private sphere (Rorty’s second chapter) — mean-
ing romantic self–creation and epistemological endless search — whereas the
public sphere has to be trained in being good liberals (third chapter). The
hermeneutical concept used for the public sphere is a much simplified version
of the schleiermacherian “Einfühlung”, although Rorty does not drop the
name: the reader should empathize with the novel’s figures, become “familiar
with strange families as the Karamasows” (R : ), feel compassion,
and thereby be trained in commensuration and, linked to this, in solidarity.

     . Like myself, Ramberg thinks that “Rorty’s pragmatic conception of the mental still remains
hampered by dichotomizing presuppositions” but for Ramberg “these give rise to the worry [. . . ]
that Rorty affords us no escape form arbitrary individualism” (R : ). Ramberg wants to
“escape” subjective subjectivity by emphasizing “embodied aspects of subjectivity”, “accepting the idea
of the propositional as a matter of inter–subjective engagement but including in their conception of
agency and subjectivity the capacities that make such engagement possible and provides it with much
of its purpose and direction” (R : ) to have possibilities to counter the arbitrariness of
Rorty’s final vocabulary, which seems “without ability to supply norms with authority“ (Ramberg :
). In my reading of Rorty, “no authority” is exactly what Rorty is aiming for, and his persistence on
words and concepts like “subjectivity” has no analytical cause but serves, as will be seen subsequently,
his political goal.
     . This is the task literature had to fulfill in the Enlightenment — but not in the “good” emancipa-
tory and ever–proceeding enlightenment but the “bad” one with moral and epistemic truth. Much
cutting sarcasm has been voiced on this account and, as Leypoldt summarizes, the “specter of neo-
conservatism” has been “invoked” (L : ). Rorty insisted on the educational character
of literature in the public sphere until his death, adding in one of his last texts — the autobiographical
“The fire of life” — yet another purpose of poetry: “comfort”! (R b: ).
     Yvonne Hütter


S/he shall see the “we” in the other, guaranteeing therewith social cohesion.
Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics, in their trivialized version, are, notoriously,
a methodology that aims to produce “right” and “wrong” interpretations,
where both, the reader and interpreter, are thought of as more or less stable
identities, although shaped by their time and social context .
    Like in the public sphere, subjectivity is also re–established in the private
sphere. The cause is that when Rorty speaks of Romanticism he primarily
means Nietzsche, whom he admires for his audacious vision of the world
as our creation (e.g. R b: , also ) — something which Rorty
needs — and whom he simultaneously despises for his antidemocratic atti-
tudes (R b). “Emerson, like his disciple Nietzsche”, Rorty states,
“was not a philosopher of democracy but of private self–creation [. . . ]. His
America was not so much a community of fellow citiziens as a clearing
in which Godlike heroes could act out self–written dramas” (R a:
). Fraser showed very clearly how Rorty’s separation of private and pub-
lic sphere ends up being a “single–I” vs. a “single–we”: the “public” has
to be trained in commensuration and therefore become a “monological
single–we” — everyone is chanting the same identical solidarity song. The
“private–I” — thought of as in no direct connection with the “public” and
therefore also “monological” — has to create the social–paradigm in which
the public has to be trained. Rorty’s approach, according to Fraser, ends up
being a genius–self–sufficient–single–I vs. the dummy–public–single–We.
Fraser asks, where this single–I and her/his ingeniousness should come
from: Is s/he not, as part of the public–group, also subjected to the ma-
nipulation by mass–media and shaped by her/his context? Furthermore,
contradicts the call to implement a new paradigm not Rorty’s call for plu-
ralism? Fraser states that the distinction between private and public is not
tenable. She asks for a “dialogical subject” and the fall of the distinction
between the private and public sphere (F ). Rorty, too, saw the
problem. The question is: why did he insist on the distinction?


. Dialogical subjects and “Unverständlichkeit” (incomprehensibility):
   Why not?

As previously stated, what bothers Rorty in Nietzsche and Emerson is the
problem of singularity vs. plurality, of private vs. public sphere. Leypoldt is

    . For a more complex analysis of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics see e.g. F ; Frank, for
reasons I will explain further on, feels the jamesian “electric connection” with the schleiermacherian
approach precisely because in the end there are subjects and individuality in Schleiermacher (whereas
these do not appear in Frank’s Gadamer), wherefore the very simplified version above might suffice.
For Frank also see footnote .
                                                              Emancipation from Rationality           


right when he defends Rorty from Shusterman’s attacks (which are similar
to Fraser’s): “it is hard to see why Rorty would have to be told [. . . ] that
firm public–private distinctions are ‘untenable because the private self and
the language it builds upon in self–creation are always already socially
constituted and structured by a common field’” (L : , cit.
S : ). It is true that after Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
Rorty continuously speaks about “flexibility in selfhood” (for example,
R c: ), emphasizing the fall of the appearance–reality–dichotomy
and that language is a social construction which also creates our selfhood,
but it is also right that when using the “strong metaphor” “Romanticism”
he neglects to stress sufficiently that the Romantic creator of worlds is
her/himself a creation. This omission led to many of the criticisms of his
philosophy.
    It seems Rorty secularized truth–claims (objectivity) but not subjectivity.
Two phrases from after  (Fraser analyses up to this point) demonstrate
how Rorty refers to Romanticism — a tradition in which he sees himself:
“Romantic art [. . . ] is a paradigmatic project of individual self–development”
(R b: ). “Just as the Enlightenment had capitalized and deified
Reason, so Shelley and other Romantics capitalized and deified Imagination”
(R a: ). I am no expert on Shelley, so I cannot make premises on
this account. The “other Romantics” certainly had different — and for Rorty’s
purposes more fertile — conceptions, tying together reason and imagination
in the case of knowledge, and linking self and other in the case of subjectivity,
hence this fulfilled what Rorty called for: the end of dichotomies! Referring
to these concepts would, on an analytical level, have saved Rorty a lot of
trouble and avoided producing the sort of contradictions Fraser points out.
However, pragmatically, this would have weakened his position and impact
in the scientific and public field, as my arguments will show.

    The early German romanticist Friedrich Schlegel is a anti–foundationalist
in the rortyan sense of “no dichotomies”, but where Rorty stoped, Schlegel
followed through to the end: He insisted on the dissolution of subjectivity
and adopted a way of writing that is not contradictory to his philosophi-
cal approach. Analogies in Schlegel and Rorty have been noticed when it
comes to irony . I do not wish to repeat here what the work of others
already shows, but merely indicate that in Schlegel’s concepts of investi-
gation and creation, “romantische Ironie” and “progressive Universalpoe-
sie”, there are parallels to Rorty’s concept of irony and world–making. Jure
Zovko, furthermore, stresses in his seminal monograph on Schlegel the im-

   . For a description of Schlegel as “anti–foundationalist” see e.g. L : –; S .
   . See e.g. F ; M ; W ; Z .
     Yvonne Hütter


portance of not–understanding and incomprehensibility (“Nicht–Verstehen”
and “Unverständlichkeit”) in Schlegel’s hermeneutic. Not–understanding is
not the counter–part to understanding, nor is the process of understanding
a dialectic oscillation between understanding and not–understanding, but
not–understanding is an integral part of every understanding (Z ).
This is also due to Schlegel’s dialogical concept of subjectivity. In Schlegel
there is no genius–“single–I” which creates the world out of him/herself,
as in Rorty’s Nietzsche , but the process of world–creation (“progressive
Universalpoesie”) — which “embraces everything poetic, from the greatest
system of art which, in turn, includes many systems, down to the sigh, the
kiss” (S : ) — is continuous, never ending, and comprises
the artist her/himself. The “I” is dialogical from the start, or, more aptly put,
there is no start: the process of creation is “always becoming and [. . . ] can
never be completed”  (S : ).
    As there “is” no origin, the tension at the center of Schlegel’s subject will
never be solved in some sort of a mystical or dialectical union. “[D]as ro-
mantische Streben nach Einheit zwischen Subjekt und Objekt bleibt reines
Sehnen, das in Traum, Fragment und Ironie zum Ausdruck kommt, das
jedoch diesseits der dialektischen Totalität bleibt und daher keine konkrete
Einheit zwischen Subjekt und Objekt, Sein und Denken herstellen kann”
(Z : ). What is normally perceived as lack of romantic thought is,
actually, its major force and demonstrates its logical coherency. The only
affirmative part, if one could call it that, is the “Sehnen” itself — the longing
and tension. There is no dialectic because there is no discontinuity between
“I” and “you”/”world”. You cannot make splits although, in our dualistic
way of speaking, you have two. This perfectly illustrates the point of Mirror
of Nature: the subject arises together with the will to explain. In Roman-
tic theory “the subject is no longer a ground that precedes and underlies
judgements“ (C : ). “Subjectivity” is a fictional tool that
we use when we want to “explain”. There is no single “I” investigating
world and others (that would be the dualistic approach) but a continuous
and forever proceeding dialogue without completely distinct speakers. “In
short, they [Hardenberg and Schlegel] adhere to a notion of subjectivity
that accepts the impossibility of overcoming its inherent fissures and rifts
while simultaneously accepting the ideal of a unified self as an ethical imperative”
(S–S : ) .

    . Rorty could have also stressed other parts in Nietzsche, to whom, for example, S
() attributes a concept of “subjectivity” that is aware of its own creation (in analogy to Schlegel).
    . “umfaßt alles, was nur poetisch ist, vom größten wieder mehre Systeme in sich enthaltenden
Systeme der Kunst, bis zu dem Seufzer, dem Kuß [...]“ (S KFSA II, , ).
    . “ewig nur werden[d], nie vollendet” (S KFSA II, , ).
   . See also S : ; L .
                                                              Emancipation from Rationality           


    Taking account of the fictionality — meaning the constructive part — of
every knowledge does not mean to give up the epistemological search as a
whole. Schlegel tries to avoid the contradictions, which he and Rorty point
out in Kant, by his tools “Wechselerweis” and “Wechselkonzept”, which
take account of the self–referentiability of every act of knowledge–making
(see e.g. S KFSA XVIII, ). Rorty also insists that dichotomies are
still a useful and necessary tool of inquiry but that we should be aware that
they are nothing more than this (R : ). Schlegel famously states:
“It is equally deadly for a mind to have a system or to have none. Therefore
it will have to decide to combine both” (Schlegel : ). Schlegel
still assumes an Absolute (the “Infinite”, das “Unendliche”) but — like
subjectivity — it is a “fiction” although an “absolutely necessary one”: “[Das
Unendliche] ist Erdichtung. Aber eine schlechthin nothwendige Erdichtung”
(engl.: S–S : ; S KFSA XII, ). Philosophy needs
the concept of an Absolute to keep the knowledge–machinery going, but
you cannot divide the concept from the consciousness that is thinking this
concept . In Schlegel, as Jochen Schulte–Sasse puts it, “Knowledge is a
function of the subject’s relation to posited objects” (S–S :
). Therefore, “Knowledge is ultimately grounded in ethics and aesthetics”
(S–S : ).
    In Schlegel, socially/historically/aesthetically created subjects create the
social/historical/aesthetic sphere. This leads back to the first step in Rorty’s
appropriation of Romanticism, as described by Fraser, except for the fact that
Rorty does not stress the subject–theory (enough) making it thereby possible
for Fraser to demand a “dialogical subject”. Hegel, and many others following
him, did not see or were not willing to accept this point in Schlegel. “With his
(mis)reading of Romantic notion of imagination, Hegel might very well have
inaugurated the ninetheenth–century misconceptions of Romanticism. [. . . ]
In fact, nothing is more rigorously assailed by the Romantics [. . . ] than the
very desire for consonance [of subject and object] [. . . ] that Hegel reads into
[them]” (S–S : f) . Put in a rortyan way of description: Hegel
    . “Es ist gleich tödlich für den Geist, ein System zu haben, und keins zu haben. Er wird sich
also wohl entschließen müssen, beides zu verbinden“ (S KFSA II, , ).
    . „Wir müssen also das Unendliche schlechthin setzen. Wenn wir nun aber das Unendliche
setzen, und dadurch alles aufheben, was ihm entgegengesetzt ist, so bleibt uns doch immer noch
etwas, nämlich das Abstrahierende, oder das Setzende. Es bleibt also außer dem Unendlichen noch ein
Bewußtseyn des Unendlichen. So ist das Bewußtseyn gleichsam ein Phänomen bey dem Unendlichen“
(S KFSA XII; ). „Das Unendliche hat Realität für das Bewußtseyn. Das Unendliche kann man
nur schlechthin setzen. Das einzige Objekt des Bewußtseyns is das Unendliche, und das einzige Prädikat des
Unendlichen ist Bewußtseyn. | Die beyden Elemente machen eine geschlossene Sphäre, in deren Mitte
Realität liegt. Zwischen den beyden Extremen Bewußtseyn und dem Unendlichen muß Synthesis gedacht
werden. Durch Abstrakzion gelangen wir nur zu ihnen, und die Tendenz der Abstrakzion ist synthetisch“
(S KFSA XII, ).
    . Schulte–Sasse makes reference to Hegel’s reading of Schelling here, but one easily could
      Yvonne Hütter


and his followers became imprisoned in the dichotomical use of language,
not seeing that the use of dualistic language itself produces the dichotomy
they claim to discover in Romantic thought. In Schlegel there are no parts
which seek reconciliation. Schlegel eliminates dichotomies collocating the self
in his/her environment without clear distinction between Natur and Geist, or
he uses dichotomies only marked as created categories taking thereby account
of the self–reference of every epistemological act.
    Not falling captive to the dichotomical–affirmative–representational lan-
guage, and taking account of all the self–referentialities and necessary ironical
moves, means writing in an almost incomprehensible way. In the last issue
of the review Athenäum — this publication was discontinued because it only
created irritation and was not “understood” — Schlegel famously published
a sort of manifesto called “Über Unverständlichkeit” (On Incomprehensibil-
ity) wherein he claims that “the salvation of families and nations rests upon
[incomprehensibility]” (S : ). In this performative piece you
cannot, at any point, distinguish what is serious and what is ironic , but the
Jenaer Frühromantiker clearly had political interests, calling for an “ästhetis-
che Revolution”. The goal of this revolution was the implementation of a
new (or other) worldview and — connected with that — a new use of lan-
guage. The Romantics pursued their goal exactly by using this new way of
speaking. Besides being declared fools (incomprehensible, “irrational”) and
asocial, they did not have a large impact. Selling your idea is a pivotal part of
science/philosophy/literature/politics if you are interested in success, and
to succeed you have to speak the language of the main discourse which is
dualism. Otherwise — as the case of the Early German Romantics shows —

substitute Schelling with Schlegel: Hegel attacks Schlegel poignantly and Schlegel reacts likewise calling
Hegel a “nachgeäfften Fichte” (Schlegel KFSA VIII, ) whose dialectical thinking operates “[im] leeren
Raum des abstrakten Denkens” (Schlegel KFSA X, ); see Zovko : –. Hegel’s misinterpretation
is propagated still today: see for example Frank . You see Frank’s problems with this point also in
his own philosophy where he still insists on some inner tower of strength although he also insists on the
“gesellschaftliche Konstruiertheit des Sujekts” (Frank : ) and the fact that describablity itself creates
the described categories: “Intersubjektivität ist eine notwendige Bedingung für die Individuation von
Subjekten, aber sie kann nur aus einem Bewusstsein vollzogen werden, das jeder Spiegelung in anderen
Subjekten voran mit sich bekannt war“ (Frank : f). “Ich leugne nicht eine zum Selbstbewusstsein
hinführende [. . . ] Entwicklung des Geistes, sofern sie [. . . ] diskontinuierlich gedeutet wird, so dass
der Irreduzibilitätsanspruch der Subjektivität mit seiner Erklärlichkeit aus einer Genese zusammen
bestehen kann“ (Frank : ).
    . “das Heil der Familien und der Nationen beruhet auf ihr [der Unverständlichkeit]” (S
KFSA II, ).
    . Precisely this not being able to decide between seriousness and rhetorical irony is what Schlegel
calls “romantische Ironie”. In rortyan terms this translates to a non–representational, pluralistic way of
investigation and writing.
    . Although the socio–historical context around  and the year  is quite different, I do
believe that there is a common ground when it comes to group behavior, on which I am concentrating
here. Choosing to focus on group affiliation and rhetoric means asking a “rortyan” (as far as I reconstruct
                                                          Emancipation from Rationality        


all you can hope for is to disturb the social order for a moment, and nothing
more.

    For Rorty disturbing definitely is not enough, neither philosophically nor
politically. A possible reason for Rorty’s — from an analytical point of view
most unfortunate — insistence on two spheres (private vs. public), his lack
of sufficiently problematizing subjectivity, and for his not adopting ironic
style might be that from a pragmatist’s point of view it is not useful to do so.
Neither investigating subjectivity further nor writing in a non–dualistical
way would serve Rorty’s goals: these are securing happiness for the greatest
number by reducing cruelty.
    In Rorty’s version of Pragmatism there is no path leading from philos-
ophy (understood as analytical investigation) to politics but there is from
politics (understood very widely as “social interaction”) to philosophy be-
cause what we want influences what we see, and what we want is shaped by
our social and historical bonds (see the first chapter of this article and e.g.
R : ) . Therefore, in a dualist way of putting it, practice (politics)
always comes first, although a clear distinction between practice and the-
ory (as between ideology and philosophy) is impossible. In a non–dualist
way of description, there is no difference between philosophy and politics:
the theory we prefer depends on which social language–context we were
trained in, and, at the same time, society and language are shaped by our
philosophical ideas (or, to use Rorty’s words, by “strong poets”). To ask
which one came first means seeing Rorty with dualist eyes. The question
has no sense in a non–dualist world where “origin” is not a category with
authority. Rorty thought that philosophy and politics (as well as the private
and public sphere) are an inseparable bundle which is — to use Schlegel’s
words — “always becoming”, although, when selling his approach — by
translating it into “dualism” — Rorty insisted on the supremacy of politics,
subjectivity, and non–ironic ways of writing.
    Regarding subjectivity I would state: emancipation from dualistic ratio-
nality in Rorty always means emancipation from objectivity and subjectivity.
Once we dismiss objectivity there is no need to insist on the instance which

Rorty) question and seeing the problem under a rortyan perspective.
    . Giacomo Marramao — whose “ontology of the contingent” has several points of contact with
Rorty — sees here one of the great differences between his own and Rorty’s position: For Marramao
philosophy and politics are essentially tied together as both stem from the polis and everyday
language (M : ). In my opinion, the difference is one of perspective: Marramao asks a
genealogical–archeological question whereas Rorty, in my view, does not ask for origins but rather
how we should from an utilitarian and projecting perspective imagine our future: What sort of story
is useful for our social hopes? These social hopes are themselves rooted in history and Marramao
is right in underlining the seeming contradiction in Rorty’s both historical and ahistorical claim
(M : ). I will show further on how I think Rorty avoided the contradiction.
     Yvonne Hütter


was invented to produce objectivity and this instance is the (Kantian tran-
scendental) subject. While Rorty wrote extensively against objectivity he
did little to address its counterpart — which is subjectivity — after Mirror of
Nature, and, on the contrary, insisted on “strong poets” by making refer-
ence to a simplified version of Romanticism which he seemingly deprived
of its major tools which are the dialogical subject and non–representational
writing. The maxime “Against dichotomies!” is, in the dualistic dominated
world Rorty lives in, a two–fronted war: you have to be against objectivity
and subjectivity at the same time, and, although what dissolves objectiv-
ity also dissolves subjectivity, Rorty chose to concentrate on objectivity
— and to not sell it as “war” but as “dialogue”. That might also have to
do with the fact that Rorty needed/wanted to preserve a certain account
of self–dominion and decision–making, which stands in no contradiction
to the dialogical subject — as can be seen from the concept of “agency”
used in social sciences — but Rorty might have chosen to shortcut these
discussions. It is not opportunistic to insist on the dissolution of subjectivity
when you can do so many useful things with it. What is “true” for “truth”
— not the “true” whose counterpart is “useless”, but only the “true” whose
counterpart is “false” has to be ruled out — is “true” for “subjectivity”: as
long as we are aware that it is a creation, we can use it for agency–purposes.
Speaking of “subjectivity” is a habit of action that can be preserved as it
does not obstruct Rorty’s social hopes.
    Concerning style and tradition I would state: Rorty was very familiar with
the work of Derrida and other poststructuralists, so it is implausible to assume
that a skilled philosopher like Rorty did not see the problem regarding irony
and style, as has been claimed. Personal reasons might have had their weight
but commensurability and comprehensibility may be other causes. Staten,
addressing the difference between Rorty and Derrida, summarizes:

    . However, if one reads closely, every text contains at least one or two lines addressing the
problem. Those stressing the contradiction in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity normally make no
reference to chapter one (contingency) but explicate only chapters two to three (irony, and solidarity;
F ; H ).
    . “The concept of agency has commonly been associated with notions of freedom, free will,
action, creativity, originality and the very possibility of change through the actions of free agents.
However, we need to differentiate between a metaphysical or ‘mystical’ notion of free agency in
which agents are self–constituting (i.e. bring themselves into being out of nothingness) and a concept
of agency as socially produced and enabled by differentially distributed social resources, giving rise
to various degrees of the ability to act in specific spaces. [. . . ] In sum, agency is determined. It
is the socially constructed capacity to act and nobody is free in the sense of undetermined [. . . ].
Nevertheless, agency is a culturally intelligible way of understanding ourselves, and we clearly have
the existential experience of facing and making choices” (B : f ). Agency, put very
pragmatically, means “making a difference” (B : ).
    . One accusation is vanity — Derrida’s program was just too similar to Rorty’s approach to get
his approval, as Staten maintains ().
                                                           Emancipation from Rationality          


   So at this point we have two characterizations of the history of philosophy. () It is a
   constantly changing, self–deconstructing enterprise which is therefore not charac-
   terizable in terms of any single system of metaphors. This view is unambiguously
   Rorty’s. () It is a “metaphysical tradition” which has dreamed the dream of a
   closed, total, and transparent vocabulary which would tell the whole truth and
   nothing but the truth. This view is Derrida’s and, ambiguously, Rorty’s. If () is
   true, then there is nothing to be sidestepped. If () is true, and there is a unity of
   structure to this dream, then there is something to be sidestepped, and it is also
   plausible that, guided by our understanding of this structure, we could find a system
   of metaphors undergirding the tradition that has dreamed it (S : ).


    Staten’s summary, regarding Rorty, seems correct to me and it is exactly
Rorty’s affiliation to both lines that produces seeming contradictions which,
in my opinion, can be integrated: Rorty is not a philosopher who stresses
rupture, and politically, as is known, he always opted for reform instead
of revolution (for instance, R a). He also did so in philosophy:
his emancipation from rationality (comprising objectivity and subjectiv-
ity) is, in his way of selling it, more a reform than a revolution. From a
merely analytical point of view at our point of history, irony would be the
“right” answer: Rorty’s non–dualistic approach is incommensurable with
the previous one and calling it “revolution” and not using dualistic language
anymore seems correct — and this is Staten’s “”. Rorty’s approach “No
dichotomies!” would change the whole game: What would a society look
like in which everybody is always aware that s/he is just using language
and not making any truth or power–claims? Maybe that really is utopia. In
any case, in Rorty’s view, the implementation of this non–representational
language is very unlikely to happen soon — especially when we point to
incommensurability — and Rorty’s pragmatic answer is that private ironists
should become public liberals, meaning pluralists whose major interest is to
prevent cruelty. This political level of liberalism (pluralism) can and must be
thrown back to the philosophical level by seeing the philosophical ground
as just another agorà where paradigms shift: self–impeachment (irony) also
has to be assumed for Rorty’s own approach, and that is Staten’s “”.
    From a pragmatic point of view, your position has more success if you
try to establish the “electric connection” in people’s heads instead of only
disturbing them. Disturbing can cause some people to reflect but the foun-
dationalist–antifoundationalist–fight itself shows how impossible change is
when you stress incommensurability. Fraser is right in saying that this is
manipulation, and Rorty overtly opted for this calling in mass–media and
making his much derided assertions about empathy and literature, but it is a
sort of manipulation that does not outsource dominion or responsibility to

   . Although, as said, a clear distinction between philosophy and politics is impossible for Rorty.
    Yvonne Hütter


anyone other than yourself and a sort of manipulation that has to contem-
plate the possibility of self–impeachment (Staten’s “”). Asking who this self
is and where the power for decision–making comes from is the wrong ques-
tion. For Rorty, asking about origin and empowerment is a question that
arises together with the dualistic worldview. Don’t ask where agency comes
from, use it! This does not mean there are no tools against (dualist) ex-
tremists, as preventing cruelty and fighting non–secularized/non–pluralist
theories has to be pursued with all necessary severity (Staten’s “”). But we
cannot fight this fight by making dualist truth–claims (Statens “”).
    This is clearly a Western–world approach, as it bears the stamp of and
is only possible in a post–enlightenment–society where power (on paper)
has already been given to the largest number, but Rorty was aware of this
(see e.g. R a). Grassroots movements and participatory democracy
are the radicalization of the Enlightenment as Rorty describes it, and to
some it might seem more tempting to sell this as “revolution” and “rupture”
rather than as “reform” and “progress”. From a pragmatic point of view
this means choosing the campaign you think will be more successful. Rorty
decided to insist on the dialogue with the dominant discourse.


Bibliography

B, C., , Cultural Studies. Theory and Practice, London, Sage Publicatons.
B, M., , The Rhetoric of Antirealism and the Copenhagen Spirit, in «Philoso-
   phy of Science», , n. , pp. –.
C, C., , Irony, London, New York, Routledge.
D, D., , The Myth of the Subjective, in D, D., , Subjective,
  Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. –.
D–R, U., , Moral, in S, T., P, A. (eds.), ,
   Religion und Säkularisierung; Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, Stuttgart, Metzler,
   pp. –.
F, M., , “Unendliche Annäherung” – Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühro-
   mantik, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp.
———, , The Universality Claim in Hermeneutics, in Z, S. (ed.), Weakening
 Philosophy, Essays in Honor of Gianni Vattimo, Montreal et al., McGill–Queen’s
 University Press, pp. –.
———, , Ansichten der Subjektivität, Berlin, Suhrkamp.
F, B., , Ironie als philosophische Denkform und Methode — Schlegel,
   Kierkegaard, Rorty, in L, H., M, G. (eds.) , Menschsein. On Being Hu-
   man, Frankfurt am Main, pp. –.
                                                   Emancipation from Rationality   


F, N., , Solidarity or Singularity? Richard Rorty between Romanticism and
   Technocracy, in M, A. (ed.), , Reading Rorty, Critical Responses
   to Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (and Beyond), Oxford, Basil Blackwell,
   –.
H, M., , Erkenntnis und Praxis, Zur Philosophie des Pragmatismus, Frank-
  furt am Main, Suhrkamp.
K, T., /, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Chicago, Chicago Uni-
  versity Press.
J, W., a, Preface, in J, W., , The Will to believe. And other Essays in
   Popular Philosophy, New York, Longmans Green and Co., pp. –.
———, b, The Will to believe, in J, W., , The Will to believe. And other
 Essays in Popular Philosophy, New York, Longmans Green and Co., pp. –.
L, E., , Comprehending Romantic Incomprehensibility. A Systems–Theo-
  retical Perspective on Early German Romanticism, in «Modern Language Notes»,
  , pp. –.
L, G., , Uses of Metaphor: Richard Rorty’s Literary Criticism and the Po-
   etics of World–Making, in «New Literary History», , n. , pp. –.
M, G., , Which ontology after metaphysics? Conversations with Gianni
  Vattimo and Richard Rorty, in Z, S. (ed.), Weakening Philosophy, Essays
  in Honor of Gianni Vattimo, Montreal et al., McGill–Queen’s University Press,
  pp. –.
M, M., , Private Romantik, öffentlicher Pragmatismus?: Richard Rortys trans-
  formative Neubeschreibung des Liberalismus, Bielefeld, Transcript.
R, B., , Turning to Hermeneutics: On Pragmatism’s Struggle with Subjec-
  tivity, in B, M., H, E. (eds.), , Pragmatische Hermeneutik.
  Beiträge zu Richard Rortys Kulturpolitik. Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine
  Kunstwissenschaft, Sonderheft , Berlin, Felix Meiner, pp. –.
R, R., , Philosophhy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton, Princeton Univer-
  sity Press.
———, , Solidarity or Objectivity?, in R, R., , Objectivity, Relativism,
 and Truth, Philosophical Papers, vol. , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
 pp. –.
———, , Science as Solidarity, in R, R., , Objectivity, Relativism, and
 Truth, Philosophical Papers, vol. , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
 pp. –.
———, , Contingency, irony, and solidarity, Cambridge, Cambridge University
 Press.
———, , Introduction: Antirepresentationalism, ethnocentrism, and liberalism, in
 R, R., , Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Philosophical Papers, vol. ,
 Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. –.
    Yvonne Hütter


———, a, Truth without Correspondence to Reality, in R, R., , Philoso-
 phy and social hope, London, Penguin, pp. –.
———, b, A World without Substances or Essences, in R, R., , Philosophy
 and social hope, London, Penguin, pp. –.
———, c, Ethics without Principles, in R, R., , Philosophy and social
 hope, London, Penguin, pp. –.
———, , Introduction: Relativism: Finding and Making, in R, R., , Phi-
 losophy and social hope, London, Penguin, pp. –.
———, a, Das Kommunistische Manifest  Jahre danach: Gescheiterte Prophezeiun-
 gen, glorreiche Hoffnungen, German translation by R. Kaiser, Frankfurt am Main,
 Suhrkamp.
———, b, Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism, in V, C., B, R.
 (eds.), , The Rorty Reader, Oxford, Wiley–Blackwell, pp. –.
———, a, Pragmatism and Romanticism, in R, R., , Philosophy as Cul-
 tural Politics, Philosophical Papers, vol. , Cambridge, Cambridge University
 Press, pp. –.
———, b, The Fire of Life, in V, C., B, R. (eds.), , The Rorty
 Reader, Oxford, Wiley–Blackwell, pp. –.
S, F., –, Kritische Friedrich Schlegel Ausgabe (KFSA), ed. Behler, E., Anstett,
   J.–J., Eichner, H., Paderborn, Schöningh.
———, , Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, translation by E. Behler
 and R. Struc, Pennsylvania State University Press.
———, , Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and the Fragments, translated by P. Firchow,
 Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
S, H., , Vernunft und Geschichte, Vorträge und Abhandlungen , Frank-
   furt am Main, Suhrkamp.
S–S, J., , General Introduction, Romanticism’s Paradoxical Articulation
   of Desire, in S–S, J., et al. (eds.), , Theory as Practice, A Critical
   Anthology of Early German Romantic Writings, University of Minnesota Press,
   pp. –.
S, R., , Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, London,
   Blackwell. .
S, A., , Friedrich Schlegel, in «The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy»,
   Winter  Edition, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
   win/entries/schlegel/.
S, H., , Rorty’s Circumvention of Derrida, in «Critical Inquiry», , n. ,
   pp. –.
S, L., , Die Auseinandersetzung der Romantiker mit der Aufklärung, in
   Schanze, H. (ed.), , Romantik–Handbuch, Stuttgart, Kröner, pp. –.
                                                   Emancipation from Rationality    


S, J., , Subjektivität und Ästhetik, Gegendiskurse zur Metaphysik des
   Subjekts im ästhetischen Denken bei Schlegel, Nietzsche und de Man, Bielefeld, Tran-
   script.
W, L., , Ironie, Philosophie und Politik, Richard Rortys ‘postmoderne’ Geiste-
  shaltung und zwei, drei andere damit noch verwandte, in B, T., B,
  A., N, T. (eds.), , Die Ironie der Politik, Über die Konstruktion politis-
  cher Wirklichkeiten, Frankfurt am Main, Campus, pp. –.
Z, P., , Theorie des Subjekts, Tübingen, Francke.
Z, H., , Ästhetische Aufklärung: Zur Revision der Romantik in volks-
   kundlicher Absicht, Würzburg, Königshausen und Neumann.
Z, J., , Verstehen und Nichtverstehen bei Friedrich Schlegel, Zur Entstehung
  und Bedeutung seiner hermeneutischen Kritik, Stuttgart, Frommann–Holzboog.
———, , Friedrich Schlegel als Philosoph, Paderborn, Schöningh.
