Alterman and Rorty (was "Re: Some of what Alterman said)

Frances Bolton (PHI) fbolton at chuma.cas.usf.edu
Sun May 24 09:13:03 PDT 1998


On Sat, 23 May 1998, Carrol Cox quotes Alterman:
>
> From *Nation* May 25, p. 10, Eric Alterman, "Making One and One Equal Two"
>
> We live in paradoxical times. America has no left, but it also has
> two lefts. The reformist/social democratic left is almost exclusively
> economic in emphasis. It views itself as part of a tradition that
> stretches back to Eugene Debs and John Dewey. Its idea of a secular saint
> is the late Irving Howe; its poet laureate is Walt Whitman.

Now I quote from Richard Rorty's new book, _Achieving Our Country_

Whitman and Dewey were among the prophets of the civic religion. they offered a new account of what America was, in the hope of mobilizing Americans as political agents.... (15) a Whitman enthusiasist, Eugene V. Debs... (52) Howe's ability, in his later decades, to retain both critical consciousness and political conscience, while not attempting to fuse the two into something larger than either, showed his admirers how to forgo such purity and such a pattern.(116)

The two are virtually indistinguishable. Is this just standard liberal doctrine?

Yours, Frances



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