2 - Philosophy as Spectatorship and Participation

Summary

Noteworthy as Rorty’s only extensive engagement with existentialism, “Philosophy as Spectatorship and Participation” reveals the influence the movement had on his thought, which hitherto only could be conjectured from the existentialist themes and references scattered throughout his other writings. Its account of philosophy’s conflicted ideals of detachment and engagement is both of general metaphilosophical value and of particular relevance now, when philosophy is chided , on the one hand, for failing to contribute sufficiently to struggles for social justice and, on the other hand, for daring to contribute to them in the first place. In the first part, Rorty suggests the philosopher is torn between two duties: being a participant and and an adventurer, risking mind and soul, and being a dry and detached kibitzer who insists on objectivity, rigor, and critical analysis. The former is a duty to the philosopher’s own humanity, while the latter, one to society. In the second part, Rorty shows existentialism as the first attempt in the history of philosophy to abandon the goal of detachment while retaining the goal of participation, highlighting existentialism’s “refusal to seek for security through the quest for objectivity.”