Table Of ContentRomanticism and Pragmatism
Also by Ulf Schulenberg:
AMERICANIZATION- GLOBALIZATION- EDUCATION
(ed. with Gerhard Bach and Sabine Broeck)
LOVERS AND KNOWERS: MOMENTS OF THE AMERICAN CULTURAL LEFT
ZWISCHEN REALISMUS UND AVANTGARDE: DREI PARADIGMEN FÜR DIE
APORIEN DES ENTWEDER- O DER
Romanticism and
Pragmatism
Richard Rorty and the Idea of
a Poeticized Culture
Ulf Schulenberg
Visiting Chair of American Studies, University of Siegen, Germany
© 2015 Ulf Schulenberg
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-47418-6
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Schulenberg, Ulf, 1966-
Romanticism and pragmatism : Richard Rorty and the idea of a poeticized culture /
Ulf Schulenberg, visiting chair of American Studies, University of Siegen, Germany.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Rorty, Richard—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Pragmatism in literature.
3. Romanticism. 4. American literature—History and criticism. I. Title.
B945.R524S36 2015
191—dc23 2014036780
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Part I P ragmatism and the Idea of a Literary
or Poeticized Culture 17
1 F.C.S. Schiller: Pragmatism, Humanism, and Postmetaphysics 19
2 Richard Rorty’s Notion of a Poeticized Culture 31
3 Roland Barthes, Marcel Proust, and the “désir d’écrire” 42
Part II F rom Finding to Making: Pragmatism
and Romanticism 63
4 Books, Rocks, and Sentimental Education:
Self- Culture and the Desire for the Really Real
in Henry David Thoreau 65
5 “Strangle the singers who will not sing you loud and strong”:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and the Idea of
a Literary Culture 80
6 Poets, Partial Stories, and the Earth of Things: William James
between Romanticism and Worldliness 93
7 John Dewey’s Antifoundationalist Story of Progress 106
8 “Toolmakers rather than discoverers”: Richard Rorty’s Reading
of Romanticism 120
Part III Ethics, the Novel, and the P rivate–Public Distinction 135
9 Resuscitating Ethical Criticism: Martha Nussbaum and
the Moral Significance of the Novel 139
10 John Dewey and the Moral Imagination 145
11 “Redemption from Egotism”: Richard Rorty,
the Private– Public Distinction, and the Novel 154
12 “ Soucie- t oi de t oi- même”: Michel Foucault
and Etho- P oetics 169
Part IV Pragmatism, Race, and Cosmopolitanism 175
13 “The myth- m en are going”: Richard Wright, Communism,
and Cosmopolitan Humanism 179
v
vi Contents
14 “Where the people can sing, the poet can live”:
James Baldwin, Pragmatism, and Cosmopolitan Humanism 196
Part V Conclusion 209
Notes 219
Bibliography 237
Index 246
Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of some chapters have been published elsewhere, but have
here been substantially rewritten. I wish to thank the publishers and editors
for their permission to reprint these texts. An earlier version of Chapter 3
appeared in New Literary History Vol. 38, No. 2 (Spring 2007): 3 71– 87;
Copyright © 2007 New Literary History, The University of Virginia; pub-
lisher: Johns Hopkins University Press. An earlier version of Chapter 4 was
published in Amerikastudien/American Studies Vol. 51, No. 2 (2006): 1 67– 91;
publisher: Winter Verlag, Heidelberg. Chapter 5 was originally published in
Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Vol. 31, No. 1 (2006): 3 9– 61; pub-
lisher: Günter Narr Verlag, Tübingen. An earlier version of Chapter 6 was
published in Susanne Rohr and Miriam Strube (eds.), Revisiting Pragmatism:
William James in the New Millennium, Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 2012, 1 03– 22.
Portions of Chapters 2 and 8 were originally published in “‘Becoming
the poets of our own lives’: Pragmatism and Romanticism,” Arbeiten aus
Anglistik und Amerikanistik Vol. 34, No. 2 (2009): 293– 314; publisher: Günter
Narr Verlag, Tübingen.
I would like to express my gratitude to Benjamin Doyle, commissioning
editor at Palgrave Macmillan, for his belief in this project. Furthermore,
I want to thank an anonymous reader for Palgrave Macmillan for a careful
and nuanced reading of my manuscript and for numerous helpful sugges-
tions. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the following people whose comments
and suggestions undoubtedly strengthened my argument: Jason Ambroise,
Coco Dupont, Asha Kadushin, Richard Nate, and Geneviève Sollers.
vii
Introduction
A reader in the woods – solitary and introspective. A reader and listener
as writer in the woods – losing himself in the ecstasy of writing, the play
between surface and depth, and at the same time calling attention to our
distance from words. It has been repeatedly pointed out that the writer/
reader in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854) is difficult to characterize.
Does he think, or hope, that we will believe him? Does he intend his writ-
ing to have consequences in the realm of nonwriting; that is, the busy and
increasingly complex world of practice (in which there is hardly a place any
more for the hermit- like figure of Walden)? Moreover, the question arises
as to whether this writer in the woods, this careful and nuanced reader of
nature, desires or at least pretends to reveal the truth to us. It goes without
saying that one cannot grasp Transcendentalism as idealism without paying
attention to the constant interplay of idealism and materialism. Yet, one
might ask whether Transcendentalism as idealism always and necessarily
goes hand in hand with a metaphysical or foundationalist notion of truth.
Concerning Walden, one of the most fascinating aspects is undoubtedly
that on the one hand, Thoreau in a transcendentalist manner seeks to
underscore the importance of multiperspectivism and a kind of multiplistic
thinking. This also pluralizes the notion of truth, of course. On the other
hand, Thoreau often seems somewhat dissatisfied with this pluralization
of truth and with the idea that different points of view produce different
truths. There are many passages in Walden indicating that the author needs
something firmer, more reliable and tangible. This may be the primary rea-
son for the fact that the word “foundation” plays such a crucial role in this
text (especially on the last few pages). Thoreau often leaves the impression
that he strove to penetrate through the surface to the really real. In other
words, the metaphysical gesture that at least partly governs his text tries to
make one realize that truth can be found only if one penetrates through
the surface to the depth, and that, moreover, truth needs solid foundations.
By contrast, Ralph Waldo Emerson – and this is one of the main reasons
why he has often been considered a precursor of pragmatism – shows that
1
2 Romanticism and Pragmatism
truth is not waiting to be found “out there,” as something ahistorical and
transcultural; it is made by us language users. Regarding Emerson’s proto-
pragmatism, Cornel West’s The American Evasion of Philosophy (1989) and
Richard Poirier’s The Renewal of Literature (1987) are particularly valuable.
One might advance the argument that one of Emerson’s primary concerns
is the dialectical tension, the play, between poetry and philosophy. His is
a nonteleological and nonsystematic way of speaking, which sometimes
seems almost antimetaphysical and which illustrates a strong desire to make
it new. Furthermore, not only does he abhor the idea of a system of thought,
he also appreciates contingency, experiment, inconsistency, change, and
transition. As far as his new understanding of philosophy is concerned, West
contends: “[Emerson] evades modern philosophy; that is, he ingeniously
and skillfully refuses: (1) its quest for certainty and its hope for professional,
i.e., scientific, respectability; (2) its search for foundations” (1989: 36). On
the Emersonians’ attitude toward truth, Poirier writes: “Emersonians like to
be at odds with those whom William James calls ‘intellectualists,’ people
who prefer to think of truth as something already waiting to be discovered,
something with a capital letter, not followed, as in Frost, by a question mark.
Intellectualists associate truth with depth, with some richness to be found
there […]” (1987: 175).
One could complicate these suggestions by differentiating between, for
instance, Emerson’s “Circles” and “The Poet.” The former essay nicely illus-
trates Emerson’s rejection of the “quest for certainty” (to use John Dewey’s
term). Moreover, his radical rejection of the past and his emphasis on the
importance of newness and transition are central to this piece. The endless
seeker, leaving behind the burden of the past and that of traditional epis-
temology, presents himself as someone who desires to unsettle all things,
someone who casts aside traditional knowledge and longs for new directions
and new goals. In “The Poet,” by contrast, the notion of truth and of dis-
covering the true essence of things still plays a certain role. Emerson seems
to hold that only the poet is capable of penetrating the veil of appearances
to the real Truth or essence of things. Only the poet, in other words, can
represent the really real. According to Emerson, the poet “stands one step
nearer to things,” and he “ re- attaches things to nature and the Whole –
re- attaching even artificial things and violation of nature, to nature, by a
deeper insight” (1844: 252, 250– 5 1).
Let us go back in time and tell a different story of the poet’s role. According
to this story, the tales of the poets are truly dangerous. Incapable of reach-
ing the truth and not governed by reason, they are satisfied with describing
a world of appearances. The poet’s art is aimed at man’s irrational nature,
his passions and affections, and thus it does not strive to contribute to the
forming of his character. It is, of course, Plato’s Republic that paints this
rather dark scenario. The beginning of Western literary criticism underscores
the urgency of the idea that one must not allow “the honeyed muse” (Plato
