Nicholas H. Smith

Rorty on Religion and Hope

The article considers how Richard Rortys writings on religion dovetail with his views on the philosophical significance of hope. It begins with a reconstruction of the central features of Rortys philosophy of religion, including its critique of theism and its attempt to rehabilitate religion within a pragmatist philosophical framework. It then presents some criticisms of Rortys proposal. It is argued first that Rortys “redescription” of the fulfilment of the religious impulse is so radical that it is hard to see what remains of its specifically religious content. This casts doubt on Rortys claim to have made pragmatism and religion compatible. The article then offers an analysis of Rortys key notion of “unjustifiable hope”. Different senses of unjustifiable hope are distinguished, in the course of which a tension between the “romantic” and “utilitarian” aspects of Rortys pragmatist philosophy of religion comes into view.

Hope and Critical Theory

Abstract In the first part of the paper I consider the relative neglect of hope in the tradition of critical theory. I attribute this neglect to a low estimation of the cognitive, aesthetic, and moral value of hope, and to the strong—but, argue, contingent—association that holds between hope and religion. I then distinguish three strategies for thinking about the justification of social hope; one which appeals to a notion of unfulfilled or frustrated natural human capacities, another which invokes a providential order, and a third which questions the very appropriateness of justification, turning instead to a notion of ungroundable hope. Different senses of ungroundable hope are distinguished and by way of conclusion I briefly consider their relevance for the project of critique today.

Work as a sphere of norms, paradoxes, and ideologies of recognition

One of the key functions of social theory is to provide a ‘framework’ for undertaking empirical social research (Taylor 1967). It does this by equipping the researcher with a vocabulary for describing social phenomena, together with a related set of assumptions about how to go about explaining them. Amongst these assumptions will be views about the fundamental goals and purposes that human beings strive to realize through their actions. These goals and purposes might be consciously and deliberately aimed at by individuals or groups, or they might operate behind their backs, as it were, through some sub- or supra-personal mechanism: the reproductive strategy of a gene, the striving for satisfaction of an instinct, a system’s tendency towards equilibrium, and so forth. To give an example, research into the rise of teenage pregnancies will typically be ‘framed’ by a set of assumptions about the salient motivations capable of explaining the behaviour, such as conformity to increasingly sexualized self-images, or the perception of economic benefit. To give another example, researchers investigating changing levels and types of incarceration typically have to rely on assumptions about the overarching purposes served by these practices — such as the exercise of power over life, or the maximization of utility under conditions of heightened risk — and to that extent are dependent on a theoretical framework.

Taylor on solidarity

After characterizing Taylor’s general approach to the problems of solidarity, we distinguish and reconstruct three contexts of solidarity in which this approach is developed: the civic, the socio-economic, and the moral. We argue that Taylor’s distinctive move in each of these contexts of solidarity is to claim that the relationship at stake poses normatively justified demands, which are motivationally demanding, but insufficiently motivating on their own. On Taylor’s conception, we need some understanding of extra motivational sources which explain why people do (or would) live up to the exacting demands. Taylor accepts that our self-understanding as members of either particular communities or humanity at large has some motivational power, but he suspects that in many cases the memberships are too thin to resonate deeply and enduringly within us. In Taylor’s view, a realistic picture of what moves people to solidarity has to account for the extra motivation, when it happens. We propose an alternative view in which morality, democracy and socio-economic cooperation can be seen as separate spheres or relations which are normatively justified, motivationally demanding, but also sufficiently motivating on their own.

Three Normative Models of Work

One of the distinctive features of the post-Hegelian tradition of social philosophy is the connection it forges between normative criticism and historical understanding. This chapter discusses the normative models of work which are frameworks for normative criticism in this post-Hegelian sense. According to the first model, the instrumental model, the core norms of work are those of means-ends rationality. The second model, the expressive model, takes the core norms of work to be internal to working activity. According to the third model, the recognition model, the core norms of work concern with the norms that relate to individual achievement or contribution through work or the conditions that must in place for individuals to participate in the exchange of services by which market societies reproduce themselves. The appropriateness of a normative model of work depends in part on its responsiveness to the dominant social pathologies and malaises of work. Keywords:contemporary malaise; expressive model; instrumental model; normative models; post-Hegelian tradition; recognition model

Critique hope, power: Challenges of contemporary critical theory

In one of the final texts written before his death, an essay devoted to Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment?,” Michel Foucault defined the ethos of modernity as a “permanent critique of ourselves.” By this Foucault meant a critical social ontology, an attitude of critical experimentation with the established limits of knowledge and social practice. Such a model of critique, Foucault argued, must be understood as an ethos, a “historico-practical test of the limits we may go beyond, and thus as work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings.”1 The later Foucault’s qualified affiliation with the critical Enlightenment tradition can be fruitfully compared with the model of philosophical and social critique developed within the critical theory tradition. According to the latter tradition, a critical theory of society not only diagnoses the pathologies of modernity, reflecting upon the experiences of injustice motivating various social movements, but also attempts to offer a positive alternative to prevailing forms of

Review essay : Reason after meaning: Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995)

At first sight, Taylor’s latest book is disappointing. All but one of the articles collected in it have been published before, most quite accessibly. As Taylor himself acknowledges, the book has no obvious thematic unity. And unlike the introduction to Taylor’s previous two volumes of philosophical papers, there is nothing new, or particularly revealing, in the preface.l The very title of the book seems to reflect a lack of purpose. But these impressions are deceptive. On closer inspection, we see that the book is structured by a tightly knit agenda, one in which the form and function of philosophical reasoning itself

Arendt’s anti-humanism of labour

The aim of this article is to situate Arendt’s account of labour as a critical response to humanisms of labour, or put otherwise, to situate it as an anti-humanism of labour. It compares Arendt’s account of labour with that of the most prominent humanist theorist of labour at the time of the composition of The Human Condition: Georges Friedmann. Arendt’s and Friedmann’s accounts of labour are compared specifically with respect to the range of capacities, social relations, and possibilities of fulfilment at stake in the activity of labour. The comparison provides a previously unexplored context for understanding Arendt’s account of labour and her distinction between labour and work. The relevance of Arendt’s and Friedmann’s theories of labour for the contemporary debate about the meaning of work in an age of automation is also briefly discussed.

New Philosophies of Labour

This volume addresses the long-standing neglect of the category of labour in critical social theory and it presents a powerful case for a new paradigm based on the anthropological significance of work and its role in shaping social bonds.