Piercey Robert: The Uses of the Past from Heidegger to Rorty: Doing Philosophy Historically

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ancestors, and, especially, the Church”

as Robert Pippin has put it. Or we

could see Descartes as embodying yet another picture – for example, Rorty’s

“representational” picture, according to which the mind is a mirror whose

job it is to represent reality accurately. Descartes is associated with all of

these pictures, and with a great many others as well. Is one of these pictures

the right one to apply to Descartes? Do all apply equally? Are some better

than others? Matters are complicated further by the complex relations that

hold among pictures. The picture called “modernity,” for example, pre-

sumably contains the Cartesian picture, since Cartesian philosophers are

modern philosophers as well. The modern picture, in turn, overlaps sig-

nificantly with Rorty’s representational picture, without being entirely

contained by it – many modern philosophers, though not all, are represen-

tationalists, and many representationalists, though not all, are also moderns.

In short, the complex relations among pictures seem to make them difficult

to apply, and perhaps of little value in making sense of past thought.

What should we say about this objection? It is clear that the relations

among philosophical pictures are often complicated and messy. But it is not

clear that this messiness is a problem. A great many other notions stand in

equally complex relations, but are perfectly intelligible, and are often

invaluable in making sense of the world. Consider the example of goals.

Goals are related to one another in a range of complex and messy ways.

Some goals contain other goals, such as when the goal of finishing one’s

education contains the goal of writing a final exam. Some goals overlap with

other goals, as when I read a novel both because it is required by my studies

and because I enjoy it. It can be difficult to identify which goal a given

action is intended to achieve: there may be several obvious possibilities, or

none. Yet it would be absurd to suggest that these complexities make the

notion of a goal unintelligible, or that they reduce its value in making sense

of the world. A similar example is the notion of a movement or tradition in

literature and the arts. It is clear that one and the same figure can belong to

several movements at once. Kafka is both an expressionist and a modernist.

Stravinsky is both a neoclassicist and an atonalist. It is obviously not a

problem that artistic movements are related in these complex and messy

ways. On the contrary, the labels associated with these movements are

valuable precisely because they help us see complexity – that is, because

Robert Pippin, Modernity as a Philosophical Problem (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991), 4.

For an interesting discussion of the complex relations among goals, and of the implications of this fact

for practical philosophy, see Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986),

340–345.

More on pictures 29

prove more successful than others. But there is no way to know in advance

which ones will succeed. It would be foolish to rule out the possibility of

right and wrong answers in the study of philosophical pictures. But if we

find such answers, we should expect to find them a posteriori. The only way

to find them is to look.

One question remains. What is the difference between pictures and

theories? It is often easy enough to recognize examples of each when we

see them. We have little difficulty, for example, distinguishing the work of

Descartes or Malebranche from the Cartesian picture that their work

embodies. But what is the basis for such distinctions? Something I have

repeatedly mentioned is that pictures are more general than theories.

Theories are specific and detailed formulations of pictures; pictures are

more flexible and more abstract than the pictures that instantiate them.

But generality is not the only difference. After all, some theories are more

general than others, and it may well be possible for a theory to be so general

that it starts to resemble a picture. So what else distinguishes them? Another

difference, as we have seen, is that pictures and theories are different sorts of

things. A theory is a set of propositions, or a collection of answers to certain

philosophical questions. A picture, by contrast, is a disposition: a tendency

to approach philosophical questions in characteristic ways. It is not the

answer to any specific question, but an injunction to seek answers of a

certain kind. Finally, an important difference between theories and pictures

is that they perform different functions. We form theories in order to state

what is the case. But as I will argue in Chapter 2, we advance claims about

pictures in order to achieve a different goal. That goal is to bring about a

change in our audience, and more specifically, a change in our audience’s

way of seeing the philosophers of the past. But that is a matter for the next

chapter.

30 Doing philosophy historically

chapter 2

The role of narrative

In the last chapter, I gave a general account of what is involved in doing

philosophy historically. In this chapter, I want to make the account more

detailed. The goal of this chapter is to shed further light on how one does

philosophy historically: how one goes about assessing a picture by tracing its

development over time. The concept of narrative will play an important role

here. I argue that doing philosophy historically involves constructing a

distinctive kind of narrative about past thought, narratives that help us to

see a position or a figure as an instance of a picture. Thus one of the goals of

this chapter is to clarify the role that narrative plays in this enterprise, and to

explain how it is able to play this role. The notion of “seeing as,” also central

to my account, will need to be clarified as well.

Once this has been done, I will turn to a number of further questions

about what is involved in doing philosophy historically. I will ask whether

the narratives we construct in this enterprise should be considered to be

arguments; whether the construction of these narratives is a rational pur-

suit; and whether it is a pursuit that aims at truth. I will answer all three

questions in the affirmative, but I will qualify these answers in important

ways.

rorty, narrative, and “seeing as”

How does one go about doing philosophy historically? I propose to answer

this question by looking at a simple example: Richard Rorty’s Philosophy

and the Mirror of Nature. Rorty’s book is clearly an attempt to do phi-

losophy historically. It tries to show that a widely accepted picture is deeply

problematic, and it does so by engaging with the historical figures who have

accepted this picture. Examining Rorty’s project might help us to see this

project’s essential features – those features that make it an attempt to do

philosophy historically, as opposed to a contribution to “pure” philosophy

or the history of philosophy. With any luck, we will be able to transfer what

we have learned to other cases, and see the distinguishing features of Rorty’s

project in other attempts to do philosophy historically.

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature begins with a familiar description of

how philosophers see themselves. It points out that most philosophers see

their discipline as concerned with “perennial, eternal problems – problems

which arise as soon as one reflects … [Philosophy] sees itself as the attempt

to underwrite or debunk claims to knowledge made by science, morality,

art, or religion.”

It sees itself as concerned with the foundations of knowl-

edge, or with the question of whether science, morality, and other spheres

can legitimate their claims to know. This is not the only possible way of

viewing philosophy. In fact, as Rorty tells us elsewhere in the book, it is not

his preferred way.

But although this view is “optional,”

it still holds the

vast majority of philosophers under its sway. The reason is not that the

philosophers in question share any particular theory. Philosophers of every

conceivable theoretical stripe, philosophers with little else in common, all

agree in seeing their discipline as foundational. Instead, the reason is the

unquestioned acceptance of a certain “picture,”

a very general conception

of what the mind is. Rorty continues:

Philosophy can be foundational in respect to the rest of culture because culture is

the assemblage of claims to knowledge, and it finds these foundations in the study

of man-as-knower, of the “mental processes” or the “activity of representation”

which makes knowledge possible. To know is to represent accurately what is

outside the mind; so to understand the possibility and nature of knowledge is to

understand the way in which the mind is able to construct such representations.

Philosophy’s central concern is to be a general theory of representation, a theory

which will divide culture up into the areas which represent reality well, those which

represent it less well, and those which do not represent it at all (despite their

pretense of doing so).

For obvious reasons, I have called this picture the “representational” one.

Rorty claims that it has been accepted by a wide range of philosophers, past

and present: Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Locke, Husserl and Russell.

But Rorty finds this picture deeply problematic. His goal in Philosophy

and the Mirror of Nature is to “undermine the reader’s confidence in ‘the

Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 3.

Rorty explains that he prefers to see philosophy as “therapeutic” rather than foundational – that is, as

based on the conviction that “a ‘philosophical problem’ was a product of the unquestioned adoption of

assumptions built into the vocabulary in which the problem was stated – assumptions which were to

be questioned before the problem itself was taken seriously.” See Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of

Nature, xiii.

Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 11.

Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 12.

Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 3.

32 The role of narrative

mind’ as something about which one should have a ‘philosophical’ view, in

‘knowledge’ as something about which there ought to be a ‘theory’ and

which has ‘foundations,’ and in ‘philosophy’ as it has been conceived since

Kant.”

Rorty describes this project as “therapeutic rather than construc-

tive,”

since its goal is not to advance a new theory of mind, but to help rid

us of the desire for such theories. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

proceeds to administer its therapy by drawing on history. It engages

critically with a variety of philosophers who have both accepted and shaped

the representational picture: Plato, Descartes, Locke, and Kant. But its goal

is not to contribute to Plato or Descartes scholarship, at least not as

“scholarship” is understood by most historians of philosophy. Rorty’s goal

is to make a larger philosophical point by means of an engagement with

history. It is to undermine our confidence in an entire philosophical picture –

not just Locke’s version of the representational picture, but all versions of it.

Rorty engages with the work of individual thinkers, but he draws a con-

clusion that goes beyond them.

What is Rorty doing here? Clearly, he is making a philosophical point.

He wants to convince us that a certain conception of the mind is problem-

atic and needs to be rethought or abandoned. But Rorty makes this point by

drawing on history. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature undermines the

representational picture by engaging critically with its most famous repre-

sentatives, and showing that their versions of this picture are incoherent, or

based on faulty assumptions, or something of the sort. Indeed, Rorty

suggests that he must proceed in this way – that the attempt to rid ourselves

of the representational picture, or any dubious picture, must trace that

picture’s history.

But how does Rorty use history to make a larger point?

There seem to be four distinct parts to his procedure. First, Rorty selects the

historical figures with whom he wishes to engage: Locke, Kant, and a

number of others. Next, he tries to get us to see these figures as proponents

of the representational picture. It is not obvious that Locke and Kant

are representationalists; it is not obvious that we should understand

these figures in terms of the idea that the mind is a mirror. Rorty’s view is

a controversial one, and he goes to a great deal of trouble to convince us that

his approach to Locke and Kant is appropriate. This involves tracing

little-noticed lines of influence among these thinkers, pointing out striking

Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 7.

Consider, for example, Rorty ’s claim that the project of “deconstructing” pictures – which he claims is

best exemplified by the later Wittgenstein –“needs to be supplemented by historical awareness.” It is

not enough to decide that the mind is not a mirror and leave it at that. We must also have an

“awareness of the source of all this mirror-imagery.” See Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 12.

Rorty, narrative, and “seeing as” 33

similarities in their use of certain concepts, and so on. Third, Rorty engages

critically with these figures. He not only claims that they embody the

representational picture; he argues that their versions of this picture face

insuperable difficulties. He tries to show, for example, that Locke’s reliance

on the representational picture leads to a confusion between the justifica-

tion of beliefs and the explanation of how they were acquired.

Similarly, he

argues, Kant’s acceptance of this picture causes him to confound synthesis

and predication.

Finally, having pointed out problems with specific

versions of the picture, Rorty uses them as justification to draw a conclusion

about the entire picture. He claims that any attempt to see the mind as a

mirror that represents reality is misguided. It is not just that there are

isolated difficulties with these figures. Their entire conception of the

mind is a non-starter.

It seems likely that any attempt to do philosophy historically will involve

these four tasks. One must select a number of historical figures with whom

one wishes to engage. One must argue for a certain way of viewing these

figures, and convince one’s audience to see them as representatives of a

certain picture, not just isolated thinkers. One must engage critically with

these figures, in order to demonstrate something about their version of the

picture in question – for example, that Locke’s reliance on the representa-

tional picture leads to a confused epistemology, or that Husserl’s

Cartesianism makes it difficult for him to account for social phenomena.

Finally, on the basis of these engagements with particular figures, one draws

a conclusion about the picture as a whole. It may be the modest conclusion

that the picture is strong at some things but weak at others. It may be the

stronger conclusion that the picture under consideration is so problematic

that it should be abandoned. But some general conclusion about the picture

is called for. If we merely examined individual philosophers and their views,

we might make important contributions to the history of philosophy. But

we would not be doing philosophy historically, since we would not be

making a larger philosophical point. Similarly, if we merely assessed a

certain conception of reality without tracing how it has evolved over time,

we might learn an important philosophical lesson, but we would not be

doing so by engaging with history. Again, we would not be doing phi-

losophy historically. For a project to be both philosophical and historical, it

must involve each of the above tasks.

Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 139–148.

Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 148–155.

34 The role of narrative

Of course, matters are not as neat as this scheme suggests. It is obviously

not the case that doing philosophy historically involves following four easily

identified steps. Typically, all four of the tasks I have described are done at

once, and it may not be easy to tell which parts of a work contribute to one

task rather thananother. This is clearly the case with Philosophy and the Mirror

of Nature, which alternates between its historical studies and its larger

philosophical agenda, and which draws critical conclusions about the repre-

sentational picture before beginning any of the other tasks I have outlined.

The point is just that when we do philosophy historically, a number of

distinct tasks are involved. We may not proceed in a way that makes the

differences among these tasks clear, but they can be distinguished all the same.

But there seems to be a problem with this account. When we do

philosophy historically, we draw conclusions that are general. We do not

just assess the views and arguments of individual thinkers. Rather, we try to

learn something about the broader philosophical pictures that these

thinkers articulate. The problem is that the evidence offered in support of

such a conclusion is inevitably particular. We may want to demonstrate

something about the representational picture as a whole, but the way we do

this is by examining particular representatives of it, such as Locke and Kant.

How can these particular bits of evidence justify a general conclusion? How

can we conclude that the representational picture as such is misguided, just

because there are problems with Locke’s and Kant’s versions of it?

Whenever we do philosophy historically, we draw conclusions that seem

to outstrip the evidence available. What gives us the right to draw con-

clusions of this sort?

One possibility is that the conclusions are justified by induction. Perhaps

we defend a general conclusion about a picture by examining as many

different representatives of the picture as we can, and showing that each of

these cases supports our conclusion. That Locke’s version of the representa-

tional picture is problematic does not show that the picture as a whole is.

But if the versions advanced by Plato, Descartes, and Kant face similar

problems, then the general conclusion seems more justified. The more

examples we can find, the more justified our conclusion will be. Perhaps,

then, the way to defend a sweeping conclusion about a picture is by

accumulating cases. Perhaps we make inductive generalizations while

doing philosophy historically, and perhaps this enterprise has the same

strengths and weaknesses of any sort of induction.

There are two problems with this view. The first is that if induction is to

be reliable, it requires large and diverse samples. In order for us to conclude

through induction that every S is P, we must have a large number of S’sto

Rorty, narrative, and “seeing as” 35

examine. The fewer we have, the less trustworthy our generalizations will

be. But when we study the philosophers of the past, we rarely, if ever, have

enough cases to justify our conclusions inductively. Consider Philosophy

and the Mirror of Nature. How many representationalists would Rorty have

to study to show inductively that there are insuperable difficulties with the

representational picture as a whole? Ten? Fifty? Even fifty cases are not a lot

where induction is concerned. Yet a book that studied fifty philosophers

responsibly might take a lifetime to write, and be too unwieldy for all but a

handful of readers. In short, there are too many practical constraints for

induction to be useful here.

Second, and more importantly, although we do connect general con-

clusions with particular bits of evidence when we do philosophy historically,

the relation between the two is different than in induction. With induction,

the relation between general conclusions and particular bits of evidence

is external:

the evidence exists independently of the conclusions that it

confirms or disconfirms. When I say “All emeralds are green,” it is clear

which facts would support or refute my claim. I look for green emeralds,

and the more of them I find, the more confident I am in my generalization. I

know which things are green emeralds and which are not. The only

question is whether I have found enough of them to support my conclusion.

When we do philosophy historically, however, matters are different. We

cannot assess our general conclusions by counting up cases, because it is

typically far from clear whether something should count as a case or not.

When Rorty says that the representational picture is flawed, he is not asking

us to count up all the representationalists who run into difficulties and see

whether the numbers bear him out. It is not yet clear whether there are any

representationalists – that is, it is not yet clear that this is an appropriate way

to understand the philosophers of the past. Rorty’s statement is not a

generalization about the history of thought. It is an admonition to view

the history of thought in a certain way. We cannot evaluate this statement

by counting up the number of representationalists who run into difficulties,

I am using the term “external” in the sense Alasdair MacIntyre has in mind when he speaks of

“external representation.” External representation is “the relationship which holds between a passport

photograph and its subject: one can inspect the two items independently and inquire as to the degree

of resemblance between them.” Internal representation, by contrast, is such that “it is by means of the

representation that we learn to see what is represented.” Rembrandt’s paintings, for example, are

internal representations of light in that they teach us to see light differently. See Alasdair MacIntyre,

“Contexts of Interpretation: Reflections on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method.” Boston

University Journal 24:1 (1976), 43–44. By extension, we might say that Philosophy and the Mirror of

Nature offers an internal representation of philosophers such as Locke and Kant. Its aim is not to

resemble them in the manner of a passport photograph, but to help us see them in a new way.

36 The role of narrative