Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
http://aas.sagepub.com
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
Additional services and information for Administration & Society can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://aas.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://aas.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations http://aas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/38/3/389
Hugh Millers argument that philosopher Richard Rorty offers a pragmatic upgrade for
public administration does not work. However, the critics, in defending old pragmatism
against new, miss some useful insights. Rorty basically helps us to grasp the hubris of
claiming epistemic trump and to beware the quest for certainty in the service of the powerful. For instance, how would pragmatic ideas compare with more conventional theoretical expectations rationalizing the recent combination of federal intelligence agencies into
a new Homeland Security Agency? Rorty describes and celebrates the critical irony of selfperfection as a resource best nurtured in private while insisting that public expectations
be shaped by practical alternatives sensitive to compromise and consensus. We theorists
should not be distracted by philosophical debate but focus instead on inventing and comparing practical organizational alternatives that meet public needs without sacrificing
individual freedom.
Keywords:
389
Downloaded from http://aas.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 13, 2009
390
I encountered the debate about old and new pragmatism in this journal
taking an electronic sabbatical journey across disciplinary boundaries.
In most of my travels I have dutifully played my role as a visiting tourist
and student, absorbing the ambiance of debates while struggling to grasp
unfamiliar vocabulary. But as a student of pragmatic ideas in urban planning (a not-too-distant disciplinary relation), I found I wanted to offer
some commentary (Hoch, 1984a, 1984b, 1990, 1994, 2002). I open with
some interpretive remarks from an outsider who shares an interest and
enthusiasm about the value of pragmatic thinking for disciplines such as
public administration.
I take Millers (2004) argument as my point of departure. Miller
makes three claims: Public administrators currently subscribe to the
tenets of an old pragmatism; philosopher Richard Rortys pragmatism
offers an attractive replacement; and this new pragmatism will improve
public administration. The first and last claims require empirical support
and Miller provides none. Miller and readers such as me know that practitioners adopt rationales and judge effectiveness all the time. But what
systematic evidence that compares the impact of different styles of practice and evaluation do we possess? Snider (2000) has researched the first
claim and finds little evidence that the public administration field adopted the old pragmatism. Shields (2003) agrees as well, trying hard to persuade her colleagues to give classical pragmatism a try.
I recast Shieldss work, illustrating some insights I think Rorty has to
offer. I then argue that Rorty can help answer some questions that old pragmatists did not. Rorty has little to say that public administrators or planners
can put to practical use, but I think he does help us understand why we
should replace metaphysical belief with social hope. This is enough for me.
I believe those of us interested in pragmatism need to put our ideas to use
analyzing and reforming professional practice, expanding our community
of inquiry to share what we learn across disciplinary divides.
CLASSIC PRAGMATISM AND NEW
Patricia Shields reminds us of the tale of blind men standing around an
elephant, describing what they feel and, from each standpoint, proclaiming
what the entire elephant must be.1 According to Shields (2003), John
Dewey would have the blind men round the elephant discuss their observations with one another and empirically test their respective beliefs,
whereas Rorty would have the blind men participate in a kind of linguistic
focus group. Shields, I think, misinterprets Rorty through Millers account.
Downloaded from http://aas.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 13, 2009
391
Rorty does not believe that the experience of each blind man has anything
to do with the truthfulness (i.e., accuracy) of their judgments. As Shields
notes, experiences stimulate inquiry and communication. She imagines the
blind men sharing a method of inquiry that enables them to act on the world
more objectively. Rorty does not reject the merits of scientific method but
the philosophical claim that science can get things right. He insists that
human belief already ties us to the world. The language users that we are
makes it impossible for us to miss the truth of things.
For, a believer who is (unlike a child or psychotic) a fully fledged member
of her community will always be able to produce justification for most of
her beliefsjustification which meets the demands of that community.
There is, however, no reason to think that the beliefs she is best able to
justify are those which are most likely to be true, nor that those she is least
able to justify are those which are most likely to be false. The fact that
most beliefs are justified is, like the fact that most beliefs are true, merely on more consequence of the holistic character of belief-ascription.
We cannot, no matter how hard we try, continue to hold a belief which we
have tried, and conspicuously failed, to weave together with our other
beliefs into a justificatory web. (Rorty, 1999, p. 37)
John Dewey, William James, and Charles Peirce teach us that the pursuit of an external truth is a power trip defended by those interested in
sustaining their beliefs as eternal and absolute. The pragmatists shift
inquiry away from questions about truth to focus instead on the justification of beliefs tied to joint inquiry. Rorty (1999) puts it this way:
So the relation between our truth claims and the rest of the world is causal
rather than representational. It causes us to hold beliefs, and we continue
to hold the beliefs which prove to be reliable guides to getting what we
want. (p. 33)
392
393
394
answer but that the new pragmatism might. First, we form beliefs to get
what we want, but where do the wants come from? How does pragmatism account for our purposes? Second, how do we account for the social
fact that our wants and beliefs may lead us to act nonpragmatically, either
heroically or stupidly as the case may be? How can a pragmatist explain
why we humans choose to die for a belief? I think Rorty answers each of
the questions Menand poses, and his answers provide, I think, more useful targets for debate than the abstract and exclusively philosophical critique of epistemology.
395
396
delicate, absorbing spectacle of mental pain which Winston would eventually provide (p. 179). Rorty uses Orwells OBrien to make the point
that belief in human nature or theories of truth cannot save us from a contingent future that leaves no room for freedom. Rorty (1998) understands
the risk of clever forms of subjection and would have us struggle politically against such indoctrination and subordination. Orwells tale awakens
in us liberal social hopes worth dying for. In public administration and
planning, we theorists raise doubts about the schemes undertaken by practitioners to remedy social problems and serve the public good. Rorty does
not tell us how to improve our inquiry but reminds us what we might lose
if we sacrifice freedom for a more encompassing rational order that
promises to deliver us from uncertainty and ambiguity.
CONCLUSION
Rorty writes to provoke a reconsideration of how we take for granted
beliefs about truth and knowledge. He tells us not to read him as a systematic philosopher, someone like Dewey, but as a kind of cultural critic
offering descriptions of familiar relationships that challenge conventional philosophical belief about truth and representation. Rorty does not
expect to win arguments about the nature of reality but to change the conversation in both a more poetic and a practical direction. Instead of seeking foundations for scientific judgment tied to the quest for certainty, we
need to learn to appreciate the variety of cultural work people create and
how to improve the quality of practical judgments that reduce human suffering. Rorty, like Dewey, recognizes that the validity about poetry or policy does not flow from the command of more inclusive propositions
about human nature or matter but the consequences they evoke. We need
to pay attention to consequencesthe quality of the edification that poetry delivers or the quality that family planning policy offers a particular
clientele. In such cases we cannot escape the contingency of human judgment in specific cultural contexts.3
What does this mean for disciplinary theorists interested in pragmatism?
We should focus less on the questions about the creation of ideals and more
on fostering administrative schemes or urban plans that reduce human suffering while offering new domains for private self-perfection. The focus
shifts from epistemological arguments about the rational quality of competing arguments to practical arguments that offer alternative ways to
improve solidarity and encourage individual experimentation (Hoch,
1984a, 1984b). I think the essay by Jim Garrison (2000) comes closest to
Downloaded from http://aas.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 13, 2009
397
NOTES
1. I offer a different response to the blind men and the elephant (Hoch, 2002).
2. Rorty emphasizes language not for therapeutic or disciplinary reasons but to show
how our linguistic practice already ties our beliefs to the world in ways that work. He does
not reject the efficacy of human experience as a practical resource for judgment but the
concept of experience as a special conduit or bridge linking the self to reality. Rorty sees
us as cultural animals whose language makes our experience human in just the sort of ways
that the detectives consider as they form hypotheses about the motivation of a murder.
3. Recognizing contingency does not mean accepting or yielding to arbitrary or unfair
circumstances. We may not know beyond a shadow of a doubt what the future holds, but this
does not mean we cannot know what it means to successfully resist or reform destructive
conditions.
REFERENCES
Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. New York: H. Holt.
Forester, J. (1989). Planning in the face of power. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Downloaded from http://aas.sagepub.com by kimbao bao on April 13, 2009
398