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Edu 6424 #7 richard rorty on

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Rorty argues that while liberalism prides itself on expanding tolerance and sympathy for diversity, becoming too open-minded risks undermining one's own values. He proposes liberal democracies divide moral labor between "connoisseurs of diversity" who advocate for marginalized groups, and "guardians of universality" who ensure equal treatment. Further, Rorty believes liberal ideals may be culturally specific but can still promote human cooperation across differences if societies focus on practical cooperation over shared moral principles.

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Richard Rorty On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
Empathy vs. Self-doubt We would rather die than be ethnocentric, but ethnocentrism is precisely the conviction that one would rather die than share certain beliefs. We then find ourselves wondering whether our own bourgeois liberalism is not just one more example of cultural bias. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 203 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
If we continue this line of thought too long we become what are sometimes called wet liberals. We begin to lose any capacity for moral indignation, any capacity to feel contempt. Our sense of selfhood dissolves. Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 203
We become so open-minded that our brains have fallen out. This collapse of moral self-confidence, [is] what Geertz calls the desperate tolerance of UNESCO cosmopolitanism. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 203 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
liberal culture windows and sympathies Our bourgeois liberal cultureis a culture which prides itself on constantly adding on more windows, constantly enlarging its sympathies. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 204 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
The heroes it apotheosizes include those who have enlarged its capacity for sympathy and tolerance. Among the enemies it diabolizes are the people who attempt to diminish this capacity, the vicious ethnocentrists. Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
The social function of connoisseurs of diversity Anthropologists, and Geertzs other connoisseurs of diversity, are the people who are expected and empowered to extend the range of societys imagination, thereby opening the doors of procedural justice to people on whom they had been closed. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 206 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
moral tasks a division of labours the moral tasks of a liberal democracy are divided between the agents of love and the agents of justice. In other words, such a democracy employs and empowers both connoisseurs of diversity and guardians of universality . -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 206 (emphasis mine) Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations The former [the connoisseurs of diversity] insist that there are people out there whom society has failed to notice. They make these candidates for admission visibleThe latter, the guardians of universality, make sure that once these people are admitted as citizens, once they have been shepherded into the light by the connoisseurs of diversity, they are treated just like all the rest of us. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 206 Alex Colville, To Prince Edward Island , 1965 National Gallery of Canada
anti-anti-ethnocentrism It [anti-anti-ethnocentrism urges liberals to take with full seriousness the fact that the ideals of procedural justice and human equality are parochial, recent, eccentric cultural developments, and then to recognize that this does not mean they are any the less worth fighting for. It urges that ideals may be local and culture-bound, and nevertheless be the best hope of the species. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, pp. 207-8 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
anti-anti-ethnocentrism continued The formulation of general moral principles has been less useful to the development of liberal institutions than has the gradual expansion of the imagination of those in power, their gradual willingness to use the term we to include more and more different sorts of people -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, pp. 207-8 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
postmodernist liberalism All we should do is point out the practical advantages of liberal institutions in allowing individuals and cultures to get along together without intruding on each others privacy, without meddling with each others conceptions of the goodWe can urge the construction of a world order whose model is a bazaar surrounded by lots and lots of exclusive private clubs.we can dissociate liberty and equality from fraternity. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, pp. 209-10 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
the Enlightenment should not have yearned for a world polity whose citizens share common aspirations and a common cultureWe will aim at nothing stronger than a commitment to Rawlsian procedural justice a moral commitment when made by members of some clubs (e.g., ours) but a matter of expediency when made by members of others. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 210 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
The ultimate political synthesis of love and justice may thus turn out to be an intricately-textured collage of private narcissism and public pragmatism. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p.210 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations

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Edu 6424 #7 richard rorty on

  • 1. Richard Rorty On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
  • 2. Empathy vs. Self-doubt We would rather die than be ethnocentric, but ethnocentrism is precisely the conviction that one would rather die than share certain beliefs. We then find ourselves wondering whether our own bourgeois liberalism is not just one more example of cultural bias. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 203 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
  • 3. If we continue this line of thought too long we become what are sometimes called wet liberals. We begin to lose any capacity for moral indignation, any capacity to feel contempt. Our sense of selfhood dissolves. Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 203
  • 4. We become so open-minded that our brains have fallen out. This collapse of moral self-confidence, [is] what Geertz calls the desperate tolerance of UNESCO cosmopolitanism. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 203 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
  • 5. liberal culture windows and sympathies Our bourgeois liberal cultureis a culture which prides itself on constantly adding on more windows, constantly enlarging its sympathies. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 204 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
  • 6. The heroes it apotheosizes include those who have enlarged its capacity for sympathy and tolerance. Among the enemies it diabolizes are the people who attempt to diminish this capacity, the vicious ethnocentrists. Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
  • 7. The social function of connoisseurs of diversity Anthropologists, and Geertzs other connoisseurs of diversity, are the people who are expected and empowered to extend the range of societys imagination, thereby opening the doors of procedural justice to people on whom they had been closed. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 206 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
  • 8. moral tasks a division of labours the moral tasks of a liberal democracy are divided between the agents of love and the agents of justice. In other words, such a democracy employs and empowers both connoisseurs of diversity and guardians of universality . -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 206 (emphasis mine) Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
  • 9. Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations The former [the connoisseurs of diversity] insist that there are people out there whom society has failed to notice. They make these candidates for admission visibleThe latter, the guardians of universality, make sure that once these people are admitted as citizens, once they have been shepherded into the light by the connoisseurs of diversity, they are treated just like all the rest of us. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 206 Alex Colville, To Prince Edward Island , 1965 National Gallery of Canada
  • 10. anti-anti-ethnocentrism It [anti-anti-ethnocentrism urges liberals to take with full seriousness the fact that the ideals of procedural justice and human equality are parochial, recent, eccentric cultural developments, and then to recognize that this does not mean they are any the less worth fighting for. It urges that ideals may be local and culture-bound, and nevertheless be the best hope of the species. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, pp. 207-8 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
  • 11. anti-anti-ethnocentrism continued The formulation of general moral principles has been less useful to the development of liberal institutions than has the gradual expansion of the imagination of those in power, their gradual willingness to use the term we to include more and more different sorts of people -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, pp. 207-8 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
  • 12. postmodernist liberalism All we should do is point out the practical advantages of liberal institutions in allowing individuals and cultures to get along together without intruding on each others privacy, without meddling with each others conceptions of the goodWe can urge the construction of a world order whose model is a bazaar surrounded by lots and lots of exclusive private clubs.we can dissociate liberty and equality from fraternity. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, pp. 209-10 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
  • 13. the Enlightenment should not have yearned for a world polity whose citizens share common aspirations and a common cultureWe will aim at nothing stronger than a commitment to Rawlsian procedural justice a moral commitment when made by members of some clubs (e.g., ours) but a matter of expediency when made by members of others. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p. 210 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
  • 14. The ultimate political synthesis of love and justice may thus turn out to be an intricately-textured collage of private narcissism and public pragmatism. -Richard Rorty, On ethnocentrism: A reply to Clifford Geertz, p.210 Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations