Michael Bacon

The politics of truth: A critique of Peircean deliberative democracy

Recent discussion in democratic theory has seen a revival of interest in pragmatism. Drawing on the work of C. S. Peirce, Cheryl Misak and Robert Talisse have argued that a form of deliberative democracy is justified as the means for citizens to assure themselves of the truth of their beliefs. In this article, I suggest that the Peircean account of deliberative democracy is conceived too narrowly. It takes its force from seeing citizens as intellectual inquirers, something that I argue is both problematic in itself and relies on a controversial understanding of truth and inquiry. The article goes on to propose reasons for favouring a Deweyan rather than a Peircean account of democracy, one in which deliberation is seen not simply as a matter of arriving at the truth, but as part of a broader view of human flourishing.

Rorty and pragmatic social criticism

For pragmatists, the inability to stand outside of the contingencies of human practice does not impede social criticism. However, several pragmatists have argued that Richard Rorty’s position unnecessarily and undesirably circumscribes the scope of social criticism, allowing for nothing more than an appeal to current practices, with no way to challenge or revise them. This article argues against this understanding, showing that on Rorty’s account, social criticism is an interpretive activity in which critics draw on elements within current practices, focusing attention on the ways in which a society’s practices fail to live up to its self-image. In so doing, Rorty’s position is shown to allow for everything that his fellow pragmatists think important, but take him to be denying.

John Dewey and the Democratic Role of Higher Education in England

Education policy in England has been criticized for an overemphasis on narrow performance targets and the adoption of private sector principles. Universities and colleges have increasingly been viewed in terms of their value for the U.K. economy. This article argues that there are sound ethical (philosophical), political, and pedagogical reasons for a more rounded approach. To reassert a broader vision of education we require an ethical base, which we argue is provided by political philosophy in the writings of John Dewey. For Dewey, education must be viewed in the context of its role in democratic society. The article identifies basic principles that relate to Deweys belief in democratic education and develops general indicators to test these principles. These indicators are then used to evaluate higher education and political science education in England.

Contemporary Pragmatist Political Theory: Aims and Practices

Among traditions of political theory, pragmatism has experienced an especially tumultuous history. Lauded by some for the advantages they see in its robustly non-metaphysical approach to political thinking, it has more often suffered under the accusation that it entails a naive form of instrumentalism which yields only a complacent understanding of politics. And yet as a voice within nineteenth-, twentiethand twenty-first-century AngloAmerican social and political thinking, it persists and continues to make new contributions. Recent years have seen a surge of interest in pragmatism and its relation to the central questions in political theory. It is to the task of illustrating and examining the diversity of trends of this discussion that this special issue is turned. The return to pragmatism in political theory has confounded the critical consensus that emerged out of the 1990s. The dominant view there had pushed aside pragmatists as apologists for the status quo, whose work (often paradigmatically taken to be Richard Rorty’s) was understood to amount to a ‘politics of acquiescence’ (Festenstein, 2003; MacGilvray, 2000). The current interest rejects this characterisation by explicitly politicising pragmatism. Multiple in its aims and approaches, this ‘third wave’ as it has been dubbed (Koopman, 2009), turns to pragmatism as a resource for thinking critically about politics in the contemporary world. Unlike previous discussions of pragmatism which have often limited themselves to examining the fidelity of a given interpretation of Peirce, James or Dewey (the so-called ‘classical pragmatists’), this revival is turned outwards to wider debates and other traditions within political theory. This focus constitutes an important opportunity to examine and assess how pragmatism can contribute to a variety of ongoing discussions. The potential significance of pragmatism for political theory is multiple and complex. This owes both to the difficulty in systematising a tradition as diverse as pragmatism, and to the number of different trends central to contemporary political thought. Pragmatism’s overarching relevance is its reconstruction of the task of providing critical and normative guidance within liberal democracies. Much current political thought is animated by the

Rorty, irony and the consequences of contingency for liberal society

This article examines Richard Rorty’s much criticized figure of the ironist, and the role that it plays in liberal society. It argues that, against Rorty’s own presentation, irony might have positive social consequences. It does so by examining Rorty’s description of the ironist, arguing that it contains different ideas which emerge at different points in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. It takes up William Curtis’ claim that irony is a civic virtue, one closely associated with liberal ideas such as tolerance and pluralism. Curtis is insightful in identifying this aspect of irony, but I argue that it might also play a further role. The ironist is concerned with self-creation, something which Rorty takes to be a private activity, but I argue that the selves ironists create might potentially benefit liberal society, with the ironist’s redescriptions calling into question received wisdom and alerting us to unnoticed forms of cruelty.

Beyond Metaphysics Gianni Vattimo and the meaning of hermeneutics for political theory

This article examines Gianni Vattimo’s contribution to the recent ontological turn in political theory. Drawing on Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimo offers a ‘philosophy of history’ in which strong metaphysical claims are presented as gradually being weakened, but in which the irrationalism he thinks characteristic of many anti-foundationalist theorists is also avoided. This philosophy is said to provide for new understandings of ethical and political life which have the acceptance of pluralism as their aim. The article argues that Vattimo’s attempt to identify a position beyond metaphysics on the one hand and relativism on the other is unsuccessful, and that he ought to join in with the thoroughgoing anti-foundationalism that marks the work of writers such as Rorty and Derrida. It suggests further that awareness of our historical situation need not weaken the confidence with which our beliefs are held, and does not support any particular political programme.

Liberal universalism: on Brian Barry and Richard Rorty

At first sight it would seem difficult to find two philosophers as different as Brian Barry and Richard Rorty. It is widely held that the former is one of the most forceful proponents of liberal universalism, whereas the latter is typically viewed as the quintessential relativist. In this essay, different usages of the term univeralism are considered, and it is argued that Rortys position is much closer to that of Barry than is generally supposed. Indeed, the article concludes by suggesting that it is Rorty who offers the less question-begging philosophical account of political liberalism.