395 z RICHARD RORTY, EDUCATION, AND POLITICS Kenneth Wain Faculty of Education University of Malta INTRODUCTION Over the past years Richard Rorty’s political work has met with a largely unfriendly response from fellow philosophers and other writers and critics, to the extent that, quite recently, Richard Rernstein was led to declare that “the antago- nism, hostility, and polemical attacks that Rorty has generated during the past decade have increased dramatically.”’ Rorty himself provided a list of his political critics in one of his most recent books.2 Even more recently he felt compelled to sketch out his intellectual autobiography to show that ”even if my views about the relationship between philosophy and politics are odd, they are not adopted for frivolous reasons.”3The attention he has received in the educational literature has tended, in general, to be more sympathetic, though even here most writers have echoed some of his critics‘ misgivings about his politics. RenC Arcilla, for instance, one of his most consistent supporters, perceives Rorty’s writing as provilng new hope for education in the light of “the crisis in modernity.” Rorty’s work, Arcilla contends, creates the basis for an educational philosophy which would enable teachers “to turn the tide of epistemological despair into educational Its motifs, he claims, “articulate a strong programme for philosophy of educati~n.“~ Carol Nicholson praises Rorty for showing that Jean- FranGois Lyotard’s “anarchistic utopian vision of solitary students playing perfect information games is not the only way to develop the educational implications of postmodernism.”6 Rorty’s work, she contends, improves on Lyotard’s, ”in that it avoids the epistemological fallacy and it emphasizes the importance of educating students into a sense of c~mmunity.”~ She criticizes Rorty, however, for failing to make any recommendations about the development of new curricula and teaching methods; more significantly, for appearing “to endorse a rather narrow sense of community”; and for his “at best apolitical at worst neoconservative perspective.”8 1. Richard J. Bernstein, “Rorty’s Liberal Utopia,” zyxwvu Social Research 57, no. 1 (Spring 1990):34-35. 2. See footnote 28 in Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, in Philosophical Papers 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 15. 3. Richard Rorty, “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids,” Common Knowledge 1, no. 3 (1992):141. 4. Rene V. Arcilla, “Edification, Conversation, and Narrative: Rortyan Motifsfor Philosophy of Education,” Educational Theory 40, no. 1 (Winter 1990): 35. 5. Ibid., 38-39. 6. Carol Nicholson, “Postmodemism, Feminism and Education: the Need for Solidarity,” Educational Theory39, no. 3 (Summer 1989): 200. 7. Ibid., 201. 8. Ibid., 201, 202. EDUCATIONAL THEORY zyxwvu / Summer 1995 / Volume 45 / Number 3 zyx 0 1995 Board of Trustees / University of Illinois