Richard Rorty’s "Final vocabulary"

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Richard Rorty's "Final vocabulary"

Leonid Mozhovyi

Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor, Professor the Department of Philosophy, History and Social-Humanitarian Disciplines, SHEI “Donbas State Pedagogical University” (Sloviansk, Ukraine)

VIKTORIIA SLABOUZ

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages, SHEI “Donbas State Pedagogical University” (Sloviansk, Ukraine)

ALEXANDER SHUBIN post-graduate student of the Department of Philosophy, History and Socio-Humanitarian Sciences, SHEI “Donbas State Pedagogical University” (Sloviansk, Ukraine)

Abstract

The article presents the authors ' attempt to comprehend the meaning of Richard Rorty 's “final vocabulary”. Rorty considers language primarily as a tool with which people discover a new spectrum of meanings and operate with already known meanings. Language is not a universal mediator between man and the world, subject and object, but simply a “flag”. The transition from one language form to another is essentially analogous to the situations of creating new tools that replace old ones. The creation of a new language is at the same time a process of creating a new picture of reality, re-describing oneself and the world with a different vocabulary. According to Rorty, the concept of “vocabulary” acts in the meaning of a certain integral sign- semantic continuum, in which a person or a separate social group is immersed and operates. Thus, the vocabulary outlines the circle of the familiar and habitual, widely used and remembered only in rare situations. The authors draw the readers' attention to the fact that to build something new, one needs to rely on a foundation consisting of old things, which are the most established, complete. The final vocabulary is the base for the projective vocabulary. But then, when the phase of the projective vocabulary is passed, a new final vocabulary appears. Thus, the final vocabulary is both the beginning and the end of the journey.

Keywords: being, final vocabulary, hermeneutics, language, neo-pragmatism, pragmatism, truth.

ЛЕОНІД МОЗГОВИЙ доктор філософських наук, професор, професор кафедри філософії, історії та соціально-гуманітарних дисциплін Донбаський державний педагогічний університет (м. Слов'янськ, Україна)

ВІКТОРІЯ СЛАБОУЗ кандидат філологічних наук, доцент, доцент кафедри іноземних мов, Донбаський державний педагогічний університет (м. Слов'янськ, Україна) richard rorty's ultimate dictionary

ОЛЕКСАНДР ШУБІН аспірант кафедри філософії, історії та соціально-гуманітарних наук, Донбаський державний педагогічний університет (м. Слов'янськ, Україна)

«КІНЦЕВИЙ СЛОВНИК» РІЧАРДА РОРТІ

Анотація. У статті представлена спроба авторів осягнути значення «кінцевого словника» Річарда Рорті. Рорті розглядає мову передусім як інструмент, за допомогою якого люди відкривають новий спектр значень і оперують вже відомими значеннями. Мова не є універсальним посередником між людиною і світом, суб'єктом і об'єктом, а просто «прапором». Перехід від однієї мовної форми до іншої по суті аналогічний ситуаціям створення нових засобів, які замінюють старі. Створення нової мови є водночас процесом створення нової картини дійсності, переописування себе та світу іншою лексикою. Поняття «словник/лексика», за Рорті, виступає у значенні певного цілісного знаково-семантичного континууму, в який занурена і діє окрема людина чи окрема соціальна група. Таким чином, словниковий запас окреслює коло знайомого і звичного, широко вживаного і запам'ятовуваного лише в рідкісних ситуаціях. Автори звертають увагу читачів на те, що для побудови чогось нового потрібно спиратися на фундамент, який складається зі старих речей, які є найбільш усталеними, завершеними. Остаточний словниковий запас є основою для проєктивного словника. Але потім, коли фаза проєктивної лексики пройдена, з'являється новий підсумковий словниковий запас. Таким чином, остаточний словниковий запас є і початком, і кінцем подорожі.

Ключові слова: буття, кінцевий словник, герменевтика, мова, неопрагматизм, прагматизм, істина.

ЛЕОНИД МОЗГОВОЙ

доктор философских наук, профессор, профессор кафедры философии, истории и социально-гуманитарных дисциплин Донбасский государственный педагогический университет (Славянск, Украина)

ВИКТОРИЯ СЛАБОУЗ

кандидат филологических наук, доцент, доцент кафедры иностранных языков Донбасский государственный педагогический университет (Славянск, Украина)

АЛЕКСАНДР ШУБИН

аспирант кафедры философии, истории и социально-гуманитарных наук, Донбасский государственный педагогический университет (г. Славянск, Украина)

«ОКОНЧАТЕЛЬНЫЙ СЛОВАРЬ» РИЧАРДА РОРТИ

Аннотация. В статье представлена попытка авторов осознать значение «конечного словаря» Ричарда Рорти. Рорти рассматривает язык, прежде всего, как инструмент, с помощью которого люди открывают новый спектр значений и оперируют уже известными значениями. Язык не является универсальным посредником между человеком и миром, субъектом и объектом, а просто «флагом». Переход от одной языковой формы к другой по существу аналогичен ситуациям создания новых средств, заменяющих старые. Создание нового языка одновременно является процессом создания новой картины действительности, переописания себя и мира другой лексикой. Понятие «словарь/лексика», согласно Рорти, выступает в значении определенного целостного знаково-семантического континуума, в который погружен и действует отдельный человек или отдельная социальная группа. Таким образом, словарный запас определяет круг знакомого и привычного, широко употребляемого и запоминаемого только в редких ситуациях. Авторы обращают внимание читателей на то, что для построения чего-то нового нужно опираться на фундамент, состоящий из старых вещей, наиболее устоявшихся, завершенных. Окончательный словарь является основой для объективного словаря. Но потом, когда фаза проективного словаря пройдена, появляется новый итоговый словарь. Таким образом, окончательный словарь есть и начало, и конец пути.

Ключевые слова: бытие, конечный словарь, герменевтика, язык, неопрагматизм, прагматизм, истина.

Introduction

“Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity” is the American philosopher Richard Rorty's book published in 1989 (Rorty, 1989). It is based on two sets of lectures he gave at University College, London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In contrast to his earlier work, “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature” (1979), Rorty mostly abandons attempts to explain his theories in analytical terms and instead creates an alternate conceptual schema to that of the “Platonists” he rejects. In this schema “truth” (as the term is used conventionally) is considered unintelligible and meaningless. In his work “Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity”, Rorty for the first time uses the word combination “final vocabulary”. Rorty proposes that each of us has a set of beliefs whose contingency we more or less ignore, which he dubs our “final vocabulary”. One of the strong poet's greatest fears, according to Rorty, is that he will discover that he has been operating within someone else's final vocabulary all along; that he has not “self-created”. It is his goal, therefore, to recontextualize the past that led to his historically contingent self, so that the past that defines him will be created by him, rather than creating him.

The purpose of the study is the authors' attempt to analyze and comprehend R. Rorty's phrase “final vocabulary”, to clear up the meaning of this phrase.

Statement of the main material

In his book “Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity”, Rorty makes a unique conclusion that the World does not say or tell/prompt people anything, and truth is a product of subjective-human searches that never have led to a mirror image of objective reality. The moment of objectivity in truth arises only in the process of verbalization, through which it becomes possible to ensure its general validity. What seems to us to be true is always expressed and fixed in language, which makes it possible for Rorty to interpret truth primarily as “a property of linguistic reality, sentences”. At the same time, language acts as a means of expressing the essential nature of a person or a mechanism for representing reality. A positive answer to the question “How adequately does our language reflect non-linguistic reality?” is possible only under the assumption of a single preestablished nature of the world and humanity, and as a result, it has a position on the existence of more or less privileged languages or some kind of universal superlanguage. Such assumptions become obviously groundless as soon as we try to describe in a uniform terminology various fragments of life, for example, consciousness and molecules, facts and values, common sense, and quantum physics. Developing the ideas of Wittgenstein and D. Davidson, Rorty considers language primarily as a tool with which people discover a new spectrum of meanings and operate with already known meanings. Language here is not a universal mediator between man and the world, subject and object, but simply a “flag”, “... which signals the acceptability of using a certain vocabulary when trying to cope with a certain kind of organisms”. By itself, regardless of human activity, it has no goals or internal sources of development. The transition from one language form to another is essentially analogous to the situations of creating new tools that replace old ones. The only difference is that by constructing a technical mechanism, the craftsman knows what he can get with its help. The creation of a new language is at the same time a process of creating a new picture of reality, re-describing oneself and the world with a different vocabulary. According to Rorty, the concept of “vocabulary” acts in the meaning of a certain integral sign-semantic continuum, in which a person or a separate social group is immersed and operates. Thus, the vocabulary outlines the circle of the familiar and habitual, widely used and remembered only in rare situations.

Metaphors play a special role in our vocabularies, which, according to the Davidson - Rorty interpretation, focus in themselves new unusual meanings and ideas. Occupying their specific space in a text or speech, metaphors are always extremely situational and practically irreducible to the usual layer of meanings. Being unexpected and untranslatable every time, it is metaphors, and not ordinary lexis, that constitute the basis for distinguishing one vocabulary from another. Over time, individual metaphors can become commonly used, which means a change in traditional linguistic and cultural forms. The genius of great personalities such as Galileo, Hegel, or Shakespeare lies in the fact that in their individual vocabularies and metaphors they were able to grasp new socially significant meanings prepared by the corresponding historical circumstances. However, the widespread popularization of their metaphors was by no means due to some rigid external factors or internal properties of consistency and validity.

According to Rorty, the development of culture and language appears as a process conditioned by the action of spontaneous cause-and-effect relationships, and not as a teleological deployment of the ideas of truth and progress. Modern society, in Rorty's opinion, creates an increasing number of people who accept the randomness of their existence. However, the central paradigm of European culture of the 20^th century in many ways, there is still an enlightenment hope for the realization of the ideals of truth, progress, and solidarity. In this case, the task of intellectual quests is often reduced to discovering the deep “philosophical foundations of democracy”, which can be seen either in the enlightened “natural law” or in the Kantian “moral law”. The belief in the existence of this kind of bases for Rorty is as much an illusion as the concept of “unitary human nature” or “universal laws of being”. The hope to discern a foundation where they are not and cannot be appears as another attempt to rationalize a spontaneous process, to identify goals where they never existed. After the event, it can be spoken about some special purpose of antiquity or Christianity, but the people who lived in those times did not in any way correlate themselves with those higher goals and foundations that were later attributed to them. Rorty sees the only kind of rationality in historical progress in its neutrality to vocabularies, in the principled admission of their free collision and competition. In fact, the very concept of the “rational” acts as a poorly adapted tool for describing the relationship between the old and the new since the new is by no means the result of ever more complete correspondence to any reason whatsoever but just a product of an accidental victory in the game of elemental forces.

Modern culture needs a new rediscovery of liberalism, within which words like “philosophical foundations”, “rationalism”, “relativism”, “moral law”, etc. will be considered only as rudiments of outdated vocabularies and beliefs. In the ideal liberal society that Rorty portrays, it will be allowed to call everything truth without bothering oneself and others with questions about the reliability and adequacy of what is being said. The very demand for truth will be replaced here by the slogan of freedom, the true assertion of which means the possibility of an honest clash of vocabularies and truths. From his point of view, various kinds of “-isms” that claimed the exclusive possession of truth should be abandoned for the sake of a variety of individual descriptions. The philosophy of the future is not so much theory as literature, and the purpose of today's intellectual creativity is to provide the idea that people need to redescribe liberalism as a hope, that culture as a whole can be poeticized more than an enlightenment hope, that it can be “rationalized” or “scientized”.

To carry out such a redescription, it is necessary to recognize the fundamental contingency and relativity of any idea, metaphor, or rule. The ability to condescend to oneself and others is no longer so much a feature of poets as of people whom Rorty calls “ironists”. An ironist is one who doubts the completeness of his vocabulary since he can appreciate the merits of other people's metaphors; he does not think of himself as knowing the truth or being able to know it. The ironic attitude is directed against the frightening seriousness of common sense, but not in the traditional Socratic sense. If Socrates was sarcastic over the opinion of the man in the street, while affirming ideal and eternal constructions, then Rorty's ironist is always a historian and nominalist. For him, there is nothing that is beyond the reach of time and experience. The main method of ironism is an attempt to collide different vocabularies for the sake of redescribing them and oneself. At the same time, one cannot expect any final conclusion from the ironist since his work is focused more on the play of metaphors and self-realization but not on the result that is acceptable to everyone. Rorty calls this kind of technique “dialectical” (in the meaning of Hegelian dialectics, which actually proclaimed the rejection of the attainment of truth for the sake of the process of creating a new reality) or “literary-critical”. Leading critics do not explain the actual content of books, do not arrange them in accordance with “literary merits”. On the contrary, they spend their time putting books in the content of other books, authors in the content of other authors. This placement is done in the same way that ordinary people introduce new friends or enemies into the circle of old friends or enemies. As a result of this procedure, people revise their ideas about the old and the new. At the same time, people are changing their moral identity by revising their final vocabulary.

What does Rorty mean under the “final vocabulary”? In the “interview” given to Mikhail Ryklin, Rorty defined the “final vocabulary” as follows, “The final vocabulary changes with people every year. (...) It is `final' in the sense that if you tell people that they cannot use certain words, they become confused because they cannot do without them” (Ryklin, 1996). By vocabulary, Rorty understands a discourse that claims some (greater or lesser) degree of integrity. “Vocabulary” is both a scientific theory and a way of thinking and acting.

Rorty's reflections on the “finiteness” of the vocabulary are in line with his discourses on philosophy. In “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature”, Rorty distinguishes between “systematic” and “pragmatic” philosophy. The representatives of the first philosophy strive to find objective truth and believe in the possibility of achieving it. They strive to build such a “final vocabulary”, which, once created, will remain unchanged. “Systematic philosophy is busy looking for universal, extrahistorical truths and foundations of knowledge; it proceeds from the assumption of the `commensuration' of alternative descriptions of reality and insists on the fundamental possibility of their `combination' (convergence) in the `final vocabulary'” (Dzhokhadze, 1996).

The representatives of the second direction, whose opinion is shared by Rorty, advocate a pragmatic attitude to the reflection of the world and recognize only the “vocabulary” that most adequately reflects the world at the moment and allows acting in it effectively, but does not pretend to be universal. As I. Dzhokhadze writes, “Pragmatism, in contrast to systematic philosophy, does not pursue the goal of `reflection', not passive-contemplative cognition of the world, but the practical assimilation and transformation of reality in accordance with the circumstances of a concrete historical situation, the needs of the subject included in it” (Dzhokhadze, 1996). Language becomes the main tool for cognition and transformation of reality. To solve a specific problem, a “final vocabulary” is created. The elimination of difficulties arising in mastering reality is carried out by changing the “vocabulary” - by adding new elements to it (“... by including new objects in the range of phenomena described in the vocabulary, i.e. by interpreting anomalous (emergent) aspects of experience in terms of an effectively functioning final language ... (Dzhokhadze, 1996)) or a new interpretation of the old, “redescription”.

The “final vocabulary”, the final, really “final”, is that which remains as the basis of any discourse, that which at the given moment is further indecomposable, without which action is impossible. A. S. Kolesnikov writes, “The final vocabulary is something that we cannot help but use, but we cannot test it for adequacy since there are no non-linguistic approaches to being. That is why the line between language and being is so thin” (Kolesnikov, 2001). The final vocabulary is very difficult to overcome, verify, or falsify. In many ways, the concept of “vocabulary” is similar to “language games”, which Wittgenstein defined as “a way of life”.

The impossibility of achieving objective truth is concretized in the impossibility of creating or finding a “meta-vocabulary” that would be common to all people. But if each person (each culture) has his/her/its own vocabulary, then how is understanding between them possible? Rorty says that full, unconditional “convergence”, the combination of these vocabularies is impossible, but some points of contact can still be found. For this, a person resorts to hermeneutics, which becomes a tool for combining meanings through combining vocabularies. For Rorty, hermeneutics no longer represents the achievement of a certain fixed meaning, it is a “conversation”, “routine conversation”, that is, the very possibility of pronouncing the world.

Philosophy (in the form of hermeneutics), therefore, is engaged in the creation of situational “final vocabularies” that would help people navigate the world, but would not pretend to be totality. In “Texts and Pieces”, Richard Rorty writes, “... philosophy also oscillates between a self-image built on the model of Kuhn's “normal science”, in which minor problems find their solution over time, and a self-image modeled after the model of Kuhn's “revolutionary science”, in which all old philosophical problems are discarded as pseudo-problems, and where philosophers are engaged in redescribing phenomena in terms of a new vocabulary” (Rirty, 1996). “I think it would be better if critics realized that philosophy is no longer suitable for producing “final results” ...” (Rirty, 1996). It turns out that, although Rorty views philosophy as a pragmatic phenomenon, in terms of achieving results, the pragmatism of philosophy is not like the pragmatism of positive science.

Conclusions

The final vocabulary attracts our research interest because it is an example of completed incompleteness. The final vocabulary has the potential for outgrowing itself. It turns out that the “final vocabulary” is actually not final at all, but “projective”, that is, open to the future. Despite its apparent stability, it is in a constant process of change, in the process of creation and recreation. This scheme applies not only to language but also to the field of knowledge, to culture. To build something new, one needs to rely on a foundation consisting of old things, which are the most established, complete. The final vocabulary is the base for the projective vocabulary. But then, when the phase of the projective vocabulary is passed, a new final vocabulary appears. Thus, the final vocabulary is both the beginning and the end of the journey.

REFERENCES

1. Dzhokhadze, I. (1996). Neopragmatizm Richarda Rorti i analiticheskaia filosofiia [Richard Rorty's neopragmatism and analytical philosophy]. Logos, 6(16), 94-118. [In Russian].

2. Kolesnikov, A. S. (2001). M. Khaidegger glazami R. Rorti [M. Heidegger through the eyes of R. Rorty]. Sovremennaia filosofiia kakfenomen kultury: issledovatelskie traditcii i novatcii: materialy nauchnoi konferentcii. Sankt- Peterburg: Sankt-Peterburgskoe filosofskoe obshchestvo. [In Russian].

3. Rorti, R. (1996). Teksty i kuski [Texts and Pieces].

I. Khestanova (Tr.). Logos, 8, 173-189. [In Russian].

4. Filosofiia bez osnovaniia. Beseda Mikhaila Ryklina s Richardom Rorti [Philosophy without foundation. Mikhail Ryklin's conversation with Richard Rorty]. (1996). Logos, 8, 132-154. [In Russian].

5. Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton. [in English].

6. Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge University Press. [in English]

СПИСОК ВИКОРИСТАНИХ ДЖЕРЕЛ

1. Джохадзе И. Неопрагматизм Ричарда Рорти

и аналитическая философия. Логос, 1999. № 6 (16). C. 94-118.

2. Колесников А. С. М. Хайдеггер глазами Р. Рорти. Современная философия как феномен культуры: исследовательские традиции и новации: материалы научной конференции. Санкт-Петербург: Санкт- Петербургское философское общество, 2001. 224 с.

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4. Философия без основания. Беседа Михаила Рыклина с Ричардом Рорти. Логос, 1996. № 8. С. 132-154.

5. Rorty R. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, 1979. 208 p.

6. Rorty R. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge University Press. 1989. 201 р.

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