Markar Melkonian

Whatever common sense may be, it includes much else besides practically confirmed truisms. InCommon Sense: A Political History, Sophia Rosenfeld describes the backstories of modern common sense, locating its origins in debates among small groups of professors, publishers and pamphleteers in several cities on both sides of the Atlantic during the Age of Revolutions. From the eighteenth century on, champions and enemies of the rising ‘middling’ classes have brandished common sense as an ‘unspectacular instrument’ of non-coercive regulation, to promote or oppose the sovereignty of ‘the people’ by hitching their conflicting claims to an unassailable guarantor of truth. After taking a beating in the first decades of the twentieth century, common sense has been resuscitated and reconstituted, to sell all manner of goods and policies. As a description of the roles that common sense has played in the modern phenomenon of populism, Rosenfeld’s book casts doubt on Hannah Arendt’s claim that common sense is what true democracy creates. At the same time,Common Sense: A Political Historycorroborates and fills out Antonio Gramsci’s account of good sense and politics.

Much of what Richard Rorty has to say about the triumph of American liberalism is largely accepted and unquestioned by a wide variety of scholars. Yet there are inconsistencies in Rorty's work, and his defense of liberalism does not depend on familiar Enlightenment assumptions about reason, human nature, historical progress, and the like. So argues Markar Melkonian, who critically examines Rorty's brand of liberalism stripped of its Enlighenment rationales. Melkonian initially compares Rorty's social and political views with his alleged progenitor, John Dewey, showing that there are significant differences between the two, notably their respective conceptions of freedom and democracy and their accounts of how to harmonize personal freedom with public responsibility. Then Melkonian makes the case that the existing liberal democracies Rorty wants to defend bear little resemblance to Rorty's own liberal utopia, in which "the quest for autonomy is impeded as little as possible by social institutions." Melkonian asserts that at the end of the American century, Rorty's private role as ironist and his public role as apologist for existing liberal democracies are not so much incommensurable in principle as they are incompatible in fact.

A sympathetic reviewer has noted that the best a critic of Rorty can do is to compare his views invidiously to alternative views. Taking this advice to heart, I contrast Rorty's social and political views to Dewey's, and then to an alternative account which I elaborate. My standards of comparison are two liberal ideals than which, according to Rorty, none others are higher. These are: amelioration of suffering, and leaving people alone to pursue their own visions of personal perfection. ;In Chapter One, I point out that there are significant differences between Rorty and his alleged progenitor, Dewey, notably when it comes to their respective conceptions of how to harmonize personal freedom with public responsibility. Unlike Dewey, Rorty advocates abandoning the attempt to fuse the public realm of altruism and the private realm of sublimity by means of one all-encompassing theory. ;In Chapter Two, I argue that the existing liberal democracies Rorty is concerned to defend bear little resemblance to his democratic utopia, in which "the quest for autonomy is impeded as little as possible by social institutions." I introduce an alternative vocabulary, according to which political institutions, broadly conceived, traverse nearly the entire length and breadth of the private sphere in the north Atlantic democracies. ;In Chapter Three, I argue that existing liberal democracies fare little better with reference to Rorty's public ideal of ameliorating suffering than they did with reference to his private ideal of making room for self making. Then I suggest an alternative setup which I believe to be more promising for purposes of ameliorating suffering. ;In the final chapter, I argue that Rorty's private role as ironist and his public role as self-described apologist for bourgeois liberal democracy are not so much incommensurable as they are incompatible. The better he fulfills one role, I argue, the more seriously he compromises the other.