Pragmatism, Perfectionism, and Feminism :: Feminist Feminism Pragmatism Essays

Pragmatism, Perfectionism, and FeminismABSTRACT I consider the revision of pragmatism by three leading neopragmatists Richard Rorty, Richard Bernstein, and Cornel westbound. I argue that their vision of pragmatism lacks a teleology, though a teleology is suggested by Bernsteins description of a pragmatic ethos. I appeal to Stanley Cavells notion of moral perfectionism to suggest a kind of teleology that is available to pragmatism. Finally, I find the weakness of pragmatism done without teleology well exemplified in the exchange between Rorty and Nancy Frazer at Rortys 1990 Tanner Lecture. Rortys paper, Pragmatism and Feminism, was meant to offer feminists some pragmatic strategies for improving their position. Frazers strong response finds Rortys suggestions only marginally helpful. I interpret her criticism of Rortys suggestions to be that they lack something like a teleology. To me, this suggests that pragmatism can learn from feminism. Pragmatism is revolutionary both in the sens e of being a philosophy that is critical, destabilizing, and progressive, as well as in the sense of being a philosophy that, in the turning philosophical tides, has come back. Pragmatism was eclipsed in the first half of the twentieth century by analytic philosophy, in its various forms, but in the last decade or so pragmatism has returned in entire force, and with an explicitly philosophical agenda. In this paper I will examine this new wave of philosophical pragmatism, sometimes referred to as neopragmatism, as it appears in the work of three of its leading proponents, Richard Rorty, Cornel West, and Richard Bernstein and specifically, how it compares to, contrasts with, and contributes to feminism, as illustrated in the exchange between Rorty and Nancy Fraser that occurred as part of Rortys 1990 Tanner Lecture. A difficulty that arises in talking closely pragmatism, new or old, is that pragmatism comes in so many forms. For Rorty, the most influential of the neopragmatists, pragmatism is primarily anti-philosophical. He defines its role in terms of negations it is anti-representational, anti-universalist, and anti-foundational. single of Rortys descriptions of what pragmatists do is, pragmatists keep trying to find ways of making antiphilosophical points in nonphilosophical language. (1) For Cornel West, pragmatism represents a kind of return to philosophy, a return, that is, from a senseless to a genuine philosophy. It is a return to a philosophy that, at last, addresses the loci of our real needs. In his impressive, The American Evasion of Philosophy A Genealogy of Pragmatism, West describes the return to pragmatism as follows