Compassion without morality:

A Pedagogy for Liberal Solidarity in a Post-Modern World

Paul M. Zisman, Professor Emeritus
University of Mary Washington
Original 1995; Edited 2020

Background: Self-Referencing Criticism of the Enlightenment

The liberal ideals stemming from the Enlightenment are
founded on rationality and a de-divinized Christian metaphysics. The
notion of human dignity rests on the basis of moral agency, and this in
turn is possible because of the ability to reason. It is this line of
argument Kant used to propose a morality based on rationality:
...I must recognize myself, as an intelligence, as subject to the
law of the world of understanding, that is, to reason, which
contains this law in the idea of freedom, and therefore as subject
to the autonomy of the will; consequently I must regard the laws
of the world of understanding as imperatives for me, and the
actions which conform to them as duties." (Kant, 1949 [1785: p.
71).
With this Kant sows the seeds for replacing God as the authority for
moral behavior with rationality.
Yet we notice that Kant's "supreme principle of morality" is
similar to those injunctions of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Kant's
categorical imperative is an injunction to "do unto others as you would
have them do unto you" He states (p. 38): "Act as if the maxim of thy
.
action were to become by thy will a Universal Law of Nature " "Love
thy neighbor" becomes: "So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine
own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal,
never as a means only" (p. 45). Hence, while Christian maxims are
preserved, the effect of Kant's ethics is to make unnecessary a faith in
a power outside of one's reasoning ability. Philosophers superseding
Kant built on his opening attack on authoritarian premises, finding
dogmatism in Kant himself. Nietzsche claimed that even rationality
was not a sure basis for morality, since individuals acted in their own
self interest within a historical context (On the Genealogy of Morals).
Thus, Kant's tool of critical philosophy was used against him.
In a similar vein, Kant's metaphysics opened the door to
psychologisms, which were then used to attack any foundational basis
for epistemology, even Kant's own. Kant, in the preface to his master
work, The Critique of Pure Reason, declared to have launched a
Copernican revolution:
"Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must
conform to objects. Let us try, then, whether we may not make
better progress in the tasks of metaphysics if we assume that
objects must conform to our knowledge [bold added]. This at all
events accords better with the possibility which we are seeking,
namely of a knowledge of objects a priori, which would
1
determine something about them before they are given to us"
(Smith, 1965)
By taking this strategy, Kant claimed that he could identify
transcendental mental structures which frame the perceptional data.
Such structures would contain within them, for example, the
predisposition to find cause-effect relationships in perceptional
matter. These structures are what give the world its objectivity and
order.
Again, Kant's strategy to turn metaphysics inside out was taken
up by Nietzsche who declared first against Plato that appearances, not
forms, constitute the truly real. And even appearances are not what
they appear, that is, not objective, but are rather interpretations. He
scored Kant for positing transcendental structures out of air ((Beyond
Good and Evil. #11). Kant simply pushed back a notch the question of
how humans know without fully getting to the bottom of it. Nietzsche
claimed to have avoided this error by giving up on metaphysics and
replacing it with perspectivism, which asserts the inability to stand
outside conceptual schemes to judge their validity. With Nietzsche we
see a turn away from the modem Enlightenment philosophical
frameworks. As we shall see, Richard Rorty, a clear voice in the
current philosophical crisis, follows Nietzsche in his perspectivism
and contextualism.
Conditions for Affirming a Life Free from Cruelty
If the same critical metaphysics which brought the
Enlightenment era into history contains within it the seeds of its own
criticism and demise, what are we left with?. This is the theme taken
up by Rorty (1988 p. 56) who cites M. Horkheimer and Theodor W.

Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment as raising the issuers starkest

and most pessimistic form. The problem in these times is how to
proceed with the historical legacies of this new epoch. Rorty's essays
in Contingeny, Irony and Solidarity (1989) imply certain conditions.
The force of critical philosophy has made it unacceptable to frame a
.
philosophical position on any absolute or universal premise Rorty
calls such philosophers, like himself, who find themselves part of this
self-conscious legacy "ironists." Ironists can posit certain convictions
about self-perfection. But they do so recognizing the constructed
nature of their convictions and hence the irony of their situation. The
second condition is that "final vocabularies," Rorty's jargon for any
metaphysical or ultimate doctrine, should not be the basis for
formulating public debate and policy. Rorty's third condition explains
why he wishes to separate the public and private vocabularies: this
condition is that ironists should promote a liberal society. To allow
one person's final vocabulary to become the official vocabulary for a
liberal society contradicts the meaning of liberal, which is that
everyone, has the right to his or her own idiosyncrasies as long as he or
she do^not undermine the "liberal" contract of the society.
2
Rorty has a fine line to hoe between the ironist creative force
toward self-construction and the requirement of society to cohere in
its liberal form. He wants to do this within the legacy of Christianity
but without its dogma. Christianity bequeathed to the Enlightenment
era a value in human dignity (Rorty never uses the word "value" since
he follows Wittgenstein and his language-game description of society).
We demonstrated above how Kant de-divinized "the supreme moral
principle" from religion and re-framed it within a secular rationale.
Now Rorty will follow Nietzsche to divorce morality from even its
Kantian reliance on rationality .
A liberal ironist is required to hold that the words "human
dignity" require a prohibition against cruelty to others. Rorty goes
further to describe the root quality of cruelty as humiliation. It is
Rorty's task to create a convincing "vocabulary" that will retain the
ironist condition of protecting private idiosyncrasies yet at the same
time make the prohibition against humiliation a quality of society.
This task will have as its result the further preservation of the primary
Judeo-Christian value distilled a second time from its rational and
metaphysical underpinnings. In other words, how can we urge
ourselves and others to care about how we treat others without any
reference to a final vocabulary, i.e., transcendental premise, and within
the context of a self-oriented private interpretation of life (presumedly
based on our own self-perfection)?
Rorty's Non-Dogmatic Basis for Solidarity
We must discipline ourselves to feel and act toward each other
according to simple sentiments rather than according to either an
unexamined (authoritarian) moral code or an overwrought rational
explanation. Rorty's grounding for liberal human relations is succinct
(since he thankfully eschews philosophical elaborations):
"[The liberal ironist] thinks that recognition of a common
susceptibility to humiliation is the only social bond that is
needed...Her sense of human solidarity is based on a sense of
common danger, not on a common possession or a shared
power" (p. 91).
Such a recognition of each other's susceptibility to pain does not have
to be and should not be based on a shared belief system: no agreement
on a shared truth is necessary. At the bottom is the "sharing of a
common selfish hope, the hope that one's world...will not be
destroyed" (p. 92). So thus far in Rorty's plan we have a conception of
solidarity which does not bring people together to work for the
common good but rather serves as a kind of neighborhood crime
watch for the mutual protection of "a band of eccentrics" (p. 59).
Rorty goes on to say that some part of each individual's final

vocabulary—the explanations one gives oneself for why one does

something or wants to do something—must converge on the central
liberal social theme of "kindness, decency and dignity:"
3
For public purposes, it does not matter if everybody's final
vocabulary is different, as long as there is enough overlap so that
everybody has some words with which to express the desirability
of entering into other people's fantasies as well as into one's
own." (p. 93)
This concession to a common ground is Rorty's first hedge on his
strict ironist position.
His second hedge concerns how he construes the evocation of
solidarity in liberal society. The liberal words, human dignity, are
extracted from the Enlightenment which extracted them from
Christianity and evoke for Rorty the ability for "imaginative
identification" with an other. But Rorty is clear that he wishes not to
make this a deduction from any first principle. To worry about finding
the "reason to care about suffering" is unnecessary and unproductive.
Such discussions about reasons merely serve to draw more attention to
how a single individual explains things to himself, a private affair
protected by liberal society, than to expanding his ability at
"imaginative identification." Or in other terms, to engage in debates
about what is essentially human enhances the ability to debate but in
no way improves on the ability to feel someone else's pain (p. 93).
So we find that mutual protection only becomes meaningful and
vital to the individuals of a community if they have the acumen to
discern the suffering or the loss of dignity of a fellow community
member. Thus we have the crux of Rorty's position on solidarity.
Morality is irrelevant, the distinction between morality and prudence
is undercut, solidarity depends on "know-how:" "[The] task is to
increase our skill at recognizing and describing the different sorts of
little things around which individuals or communities center their
fantasies and their lives" p. 93. The job of the liberal ironist is to give
a voice to those in pain, since their suffering is expressed in
"prelinguistic" cries .
(p 94) Such a job falls to those who make
literature, not the kind made by the theorist, who usually is'too
bloated with philosophy to feel the pain of another, but to those whose
"imaginative identification" has been educated to notice and
presumedly care about
such suffering.
The term "imaginative identification" appears central to Rorty's
position. Yet it contains a contradiction. On the one side, imagination
is very private. On the other, identification is a joining of one
individual with another, and is thus publication of self. Rorty does not
attempt to resolve this contradiction. Perhaps he views it outside any
metaphysical vocabulary. But he does leave the door open for making
this the common ground in final vocabularies and therefore

metaphysical starter
LimitsMy of fascination RnrIy s'Nc ^ owith -F ^rd^ Rorty matsmcomes 'from h
how he faces up to, and so
cogently clarifies, a basic conflict in modernity, and how he so
surefootedly steps through the conflict. The struggle is between what
4
appears as two opposing vectors: freedom in one's private life, which
potentially drives people away from each other, and the "liberal hope”
to eliminate cruelty, which depends on a certain amount of solidarity.
Rorty's solution is to stick with the society we have and to make it
truer to its principles:
Indeed, my hunch is that Western social and political thought
may have had the last conceptual revolution it needs. J. S. Mill's
suggestion that governments devote themselves to optimizing
the balance between leaving people's private lives alone and
preventing suffering seems to me pretty much the last word. (p.
63)
More philosophy is not necessary at this junction to promote liberal
society, rather other forms of culture, free press, ethnographic
studies, and literature, will widen the public recognition of who is
suffering so that pragmatic remedies can be sought (p. 63).
The question still remains, nevertheless: why should people
want to affirm life without humiliation, and how is it possible that
individuals can actually identify with each other? Rorty answers the
first part in typical utilitarian fashion: each of us has a self-interest in
protecting the freedom of everyone in a society since we are part of
that society. In order to identify with others, an individual must have
a sense of "we-ness", which is the sphere of inclusion for other
individuals. Rorty wants this "we-ness" to be established nonessentially, that is, not in terms
of a common human nature, but rather
in the simple recognition that those who I take to be like myself and
who I would include in my sphere of "we-ness" will experience
suffering the same as I do. By banding together against actions which
humiliate members of our community we can better accomplish our
individual aims.
The second question Rorty feels, apparently, no need to address.
He knows identification is possible since it has been cultivated in the
last 300 years in Western democracies. The pedagogic aim should be
.
to enlarge the ability to identify and thereby enlarge the sense of "weness " But this ability is
strictly a set of learned skills that should be
cultivated. Since the skill already exists in some there is no need to
prove that identification is a possibility or to have an understanding of
why it is possible, we just should do it. For the teacher, however, this
is not enough. I want to know more about "imaginative identification."
I want to know how it occurs, what makes it possible and what
contingencies encourage it. And most significantly: if and how its
inherent contradiction between private imagination and the projection
of the self into an other, a type of publication, be reconciled? We have
to turn else where if we are to explore this territory of relationship.
Rorty simply does not wish to speak about it. Two alternatives to
Rorty are available to us. The first comes from psychoanalysis, which
some have called the theology of modernity. The second comes from
the Jewish theologian Martin Buber and will be the subject of a future
paper.
5
Overcoming the subject-object split: Psychoanalytic Object Relations
Theory
Whereas Rorty drops the whole attempt to find a way to
metaphysically bridge the subject-object dichotomy, finding past
failures proof of its futility, Cahoone (1988) energetically isolates the
virus of subjectivism infecting Western philosophy and urges
philosophers to pursue a non-subjectivist metaphysics suggested in
psychoanalytic metapsychology. Subjectivism is defined by Cahoone as
"the conviction that the distinction between subjectivity and nonsubjectivity is the most
Jiindamental distinction in an inquiry " (p. 19).
Dualism is always implied in subjectivism since it is always the
subjective consciousness which arbitrates (p. 20) and therefore to
which objects appear (if you are realist), or by which they are
constructed (if you are a constructionist ). On these grounds,
subjectivism is Cahoone's catch word for the varieties of
interpretations generated by this bedrock duality. Notice that Rorty
would disagree with the fruitfulness of penetrating this bedrock for
the sake of society (why generate more debate over a final vocabulary?)
and he therefore proceeds along his path by dropping the attempt at

reconciliation Similarly ^ the to Rorty public, Cahoone and private (who concerns , it might
(Rorty be added 1989, is p.grateful xiv-xv).
to Rorty for so astutely characterizing the modem condition of
philosophy in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature) has a great respect
for Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment. Cahoone's
rk is to try to

about removethe theself contradictions -ne^ ^ jsho lfiation ^ however ' of inherent

modern , that inphilosophy they the are subject only . If -object partially we surgically dualism
correct , we
can retain what is valuable in modem metaphysics, presumedly the
liberal ideals. What is more, if we can reformulate the relationship
between the self and other, then we can move the modem project
forward and avoid the dead end of the private philosophers-the nonliberal ironists— like
Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida .
It is instructive to compare how Cahoone and Rorty respond to
Dialectic of Enlightenment. Rorty praises Adorno and Horkheimer for
recognizing the self-contradiction in Enlightenment universalism. He
criticizes them for choosing the ironist position out of context of the
liberal ideals. Rorty does not reject the ironist position; he accepts it.
But he wants to combine it with liberalism. Cahoone rejects outright
the ironist position. His concern is that ironism will destroy
metaphysics and thus bring philosophy to a grinding halt. He agrees
that the Enlightenment contains self contradictions in its root
metaphysics. But this is no reason to reject all metaphysics. His
position is that we can keep liberal culture by grounding it on a
metaphysics which does not rest on subject-object dualism.
What makes Cahoone so original is how he uses psychoanalytic
explanations to clarify what the private philosophers have done to the
subject-object relationship. He then goes on to show how philosophy
can use metapsychology to reconcile this fundamental dualism. In this
way, Cahoone claims to outline a means of restoring existential
wo
6
integrity to both the subject and object while at the same time
showing how they are joined. The dead end reached by modern
philosophy is in the severest form of subjectivism, which Cahoone calls
"philosophical narcissism," after noting the similarities of the clinical
condition to the philosophical one. We will explore this line of
argument.
The pessimism of Adorno and Horkheimer rests on the
contradictions arising from philosophical narcissism. Philosophical
narcissism obtains when:
There can then be no rational, philosophical justification for
claiming either that the subject is anything other than this
phenomenal field or that the world, reality, or objectivity is
anything other than the same phenomenal field" (p. 75).
The lack of relationship between subject-object is also the malady of
the narcissistic personality. In Freudian terms, the libido, which in
the normal course of development will extend out toward external
objects, in narcissistic cases turns inward toward the self. Thus, the
self becomes the object of the seifs own longing. The libido cannot
fully expend itself on external objects because the self, having been
wounded and stunted in its development, diverts the erotic salve of
the id to itself as means of continuous reparation. Philosophies which
similarly collapse the subject into itself, or find it so empty of
existential energy that it merely mirrors phenomena, have a similar
self-preoccupation as the narcissistic personality.
But the metapsychological explanation of philosophical
narcissism also contains within it the suggestion for overcoming
dualism.
What is missing [in narcissistic philosophies] is a recognition
that a thing's existential integrity is not conceivable outside of a
context of internal relations to other things with existential
.
integrity Integrity requires a context of relations; otherwise, it
disintegrates into part-concepts, into ideal and fragmented or
phenomenal aspects, as in the oscillatory dialectics of
philosophical narcissism (p. 89).
Just as Rorty took both private concerns (ironist idiosyncratic
perspective) and the public ones (having to do with establishing a
more ideal liberal society) as equally valid even while recognizing their
contradictory or irreconcilable positions, Cahoone wishes to assume
the truth of both (1) things as independent entities and (2) things as
conditioned by the encounter with other things.
It is possible to maintain both propositions if things-inthemselves, the beings of which the world
is constituted, are
conceived to be pluralities that are constituted by their internal
relations to other entities, including ourselves, and yet
conceived as having existential integrity (p. 257).
The subject and its object are distinctive in their own self identity yet
their identity is not a monism, but is rather a collection. The parts
which constitute the identity are derived through the process of
exchange. In psychoanalytic object relations theory, exchanges are the
7
mental images with which we nourish each other's consciousness. No
subjectivity would be possible without "peopling" it with the images of
the external world. One might think that the exchange of objects
would upset the integrity of the self, but actually the self depends on
.
it to maintain its continuous self-identity In other words, we
repeatedly need affirmation of our own existence from others. In this
way we make irrelevant the crabbing of the narcissistic philosophers .
Yes, we recognize that our selves have no independent essence. But,
no, we do not say that therefore our selves cease to exist. They exist
as conditioned entities.
Summary and Implications for Educational Practice
To recapitulate, Rorty seeks a language that would avoid the
crisis in modem philosophy. He does this by using the ironist strategy
of distrusting any final or absolute grounding of a metaphysical
position. Yet he finds the ironist only able to survive in a liberal
vocabularies society needs ofwhich the.ironist The protects necessity . Public its members and

of a private liberal fromsociety concerns each ocounters ^ hare ^ ^balanced f^nal

i the
private in
Rorty's approach rather than resolved. It is a practical compromise:
existential and we can simply retain contexts work ourout beliefs while the cultivation inatthe

theinability same of ourselves time to formulate not destroying in our ^ own grand the singular

design social ^ '

context within which history as placed us.
To work out this position, Rorty stops short of the extreme
.
ironist position by making two hedges First, the possibility of liberal
society requires some overlap of each other's final vocabulary. While in
general Rorty establishes certain restrictions against a common
metaphysical scheme, he is forced to loosen this when it comes to
establishing a liberal social solidarity. And, second, in order to
promote the historical progression of liberal society, each individual
will need the capacity of imaginative identification for discerning
suffering in others. While Rorty in general finds it fruitless to try to
reconcile the dichotomy between private and public concerns, his
discussion of solidarity allowed the introduction of a contradictory
term, imaginative identification. In this term we find the same
subject-object problem as we can find in the private-public dichotomy.
Within the framework of Cahoone's argument, we can identify
Rorty's problems and find at least a strategy to address them. Cahoone
implies that Rorty's approach is needlessly self-limiting. Because of
the unduly strong influence of the ironist side of his approach, Rorty
actually perpetuates the duality inherent in subjectivism. Rorty
eventually flounders on the inherent contradictions of subject-object
dualism. Cahoone, in contrast, identifies this as the crux of the
modem crisis in philosophy and society. His solution is to search for a
metaphysics that does not retain the dualism and thus excises the
cancer curing the disease rather than burying the patient.
A non-subjectivist metaphysics is found in the metapsychological
theory of object relations. Imaginative identification can now be
8
understood as the interpenetration of images among people. Each
individual retains her status as an existential self yet can only maintain
herself as individual through participation in the incorporation and
projection of images derived from external objects. Cahoone finds an
example in this metapsychology of a non-subjectivist strategy. It is
non-subjectivist because both the singularity of the self is recognized
while at the same time its existence is dependent on external entities.
Thus, the top-level self maintains separateness and unity while the
bottom-level, or internal, pluralities of what make up the self require
connections with external others.
Returning to Rorty's language, we find the liberal ironist to be
one who describes herself as someone who is kind to others. This can
be done without resort to philosophy, simply as a condition of identity:
.
I am a person who is kind to others To lose this definition weakens
the individual's sense of a self-existing agent. In light of Cahoone's
appropriation of object-relations vocabulary, we educators have a
better grip on what needs to be done. Rorty's suggestion to utilize
literature in order to weave a narrative that captures our imagination is
understandable. Such "thick descriptions," as anthropologists term it,
confront us with someone fully subjectivized. The experience of the
other enters into our psychic world and becomes an incorporated
object. It becomes part of our fantasies, as Rorty wants it to be. As a
result, "we-ness" extends to this person, and perhaps to others similar
to him. Our self depends on its existence on such identifications and
so, if healthy, it identifies spontaneously. The liberal goal is to widen
its range of identifications.
The upshot for educational theory and practice is that
compassion does not flow from rational explanations or the inculcation
of a doctrine. It proceeds form the practice of community as an
emotional engagement. The fundamental quality to cultivate for the
expansion of liberal democracies is a compassion that does not find its
justification in some outside source, like god or a punishing authority
figure. It is nourished through psychological identification. An
individual expands her sense of community through opening up her
self to images of others and allowing these images to penetrate her
psyche. Myths, poetry and compelling stories encourage this process.
This differs from prevailing theories stemming from traditional
psychoanalysis and cognitive psychology. It contrasts with Bruno
Bettleheim's suggestion in The Use of Enchantment that fairy tales are
a psychic salve to the embattled ego which negotiates the competing
demands of the id and ego. Bettleheim is still operating within a
subjectivist framework. A non-subjectivist understanding is that
literature functions not to satisfy fantastical demands but to stimulate
them. Literature becomes a political device in liberal society: it can
be used to widen the sense of community. Thus the requirement of
"we-ness" encourages a different use of literature.
A non-subjectivist approach also contrasts with Kohlberg's stages
of moral development, since it rests on a Kantian base. Such an
approach joins the feminists who charge Kohlberg with relying on an

(
9
ethics of rationalism rather than on one based on emotional
involvement (see Gilligan 1982). While Kohlberg's stage theory has
the effect of shoring up a liberal morality for democracy, it harbors the
self-contradictory vectors which Adorno and Horkheimer uncovered
in the Enlightenment.
The object-relations approach coupled with Rorty’s ironist
liberalism would not necessarily mean the elimination of these more
rational approaches. Rorty would allow a vocabulary which supports
the liberal ideals, such as Rawls' reflective equilibrium (Rorty 1989, p.
196). What he objects to is an elaborate theory for rationalizing the
democratic ideals. These ideals are the automatic results of avoiding
cruelty and protecting individual final vocabularies, and thus a mode of
operation. But in order to have the desire and understanding to want
to uphold the democratic ideals, a foundation for social identification
is necessary. And this foundation might find its validity in the objectrelations approach to
overcoming the subject-object dualism.
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References
Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment,
trans. John Cummings. New York: Seabury, 1972.
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and
Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Knopf, 1976.
Cahoone, Lawrence. The Dilemma of Modernity: Philosophy, Culture
and Anti-Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press,
1988.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and
Women's Development. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard Press, 1982.
.
Kant, Immanuel Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of
Morals, trans. by T. K. Abbott. Indianapolis, IN.: Bobbs-Merrill,
1949 (1785)
. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman K.
Smith. New York: St. Martin's, 1965.
Nietzsche, Frederich. Beyond Good and Evil. In Basic Writings of
.
Nietzsche Edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann, New
York: Random House, 1966.
. On the Geneologv of Morals. In Basic
.
Writings of Nietzsche Edited and translated by Walter
Kaufmann, New York: Random House, 1966.
Rorty, Richard. Contingency. Irony and Solidarity. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1989.
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