Reading Rorty's opus can leave one a bit breathless: so many topics, so many ideas, so many thinkers and bodies of thought clashing and dancing throughout his pages. Modernity is a complex, dynamic beast, and thus any attempt to “hold one's time in thought,” as Hegel put it, must also be complex and dynamic. Hopefully, I've captured some of Rorty's complexity and dynamism in this work.

My strategy has been to focus on the practical upshot of Rorty's wide-ranging intellectual project, which only makes sense, given Rorty's commitment to pragmatism. This upshot is the necessity of the liberal virtues, especially the virtue of irony, for the success of liberal culture and politics. It's not that institutions, procedures, and principles are less important than the cultivation of liberal virtue. But the emphasis on ethical character, the creation of the liberal minds and imaginations that democratic citizenship demands, is currently being minimized by most contemporary liberal theory. Rorty's visions of modernity and liberal utopia show that this is a mistake. They encourage us to pragmatically see

The pluralism of any society has limits because incompatible practices cannot by definition coexist; you cannot have a liberal society that contains practicing Nazis. Pluralism in an ideal liberal society will be restricted to the infinite ways of life that are compatible with the possession of the liberal virtues. It is liberal society's imperative to ensure that its citizens develop the virtues on which it depends. Informal socialization and habituation no doubt play a large role in this process: citizens learn these virtues by living in liberal culture, breathing its air, and absorbing its habits, language, and way of looking at the world, which constitutes the liberal ethos. Formal liberal education, however, must also play an important role in the cultivation of the liberal virtues. By “liberal education,” I mean broadly an education in the “liberal arts,” which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as: “Academic disciplines, such as languages, literature, history, philosophy, mathematics, and science, that provide information of general cultural concern.”Footnote ⁴

Given the importance of liberal education to the cultivation of the liberal virtues, however, it is curious that Rorty never seriously engages with philosophy of education. Although he counts himself as a fairly loyal Deweyan, interest in educational policy and theory is something he doesn't share with the master. Suffice to say that Rorty has an uncontroversial, if traditional, understanding of liberal education. That is to say, he broadly approves of the liberal arts curriculum as it is taught at our best liberal arts colleges. Other than to express his worry that some Humanities departments tend to teach too much radical political theory at the expense of more worthwhile traditional materials, Rorty hasn't bothered weighing in on the fierce debates over what curricular balance should be struck between the teaching of traditional works (mostly authored by DWEM's: “Dead White European Males”) and works favored by the New Left that feature the perspectives of historically marginalized groups. As is clear from his emphasis on “sentimental education” that exposes us to multiple perspectives, he supports the teaching of both categories of works and wouldn't dream of excluding either. He recognizes that there are trade-offs to be made, but he never offers an opinion on the composition of the ideal canon. Unlike some of the more staunch traditionalists, he never indicates that he thinks that our basic ideal has gotten out of whack. Rather, our contemporary conception of liberal education, if implemented efficaciously and universally, will produce a citizenry that is “commonsensically historicist and nominalist,” and will best be able to advance liberal civilization.

In his one article that prominently addresses education, Rorty is concerned to emphasize against the Left and Right that we should take a pragmatic approach to it. While the Right emphasizes teaching the traditional communal “truths,” and the Left emphasizes teaching Socratic critique of such “truths” in the name of liberation, Rorty splits the difference: he argues that early education is primarily socialization while late secondary and college education are about individualization.Footnote ⁵ In other words, children must be socialized into the dominant, traditional vocabulary of their society before they can be taught to creatively and productively critique it as they create their own identities and become involved as citizens in the public quest for justice. Beyond this, Rorty would no doubt agree with Bruce A. Kimball's sentiment that liberal education is not static, and that we must adapt it to social change in ways that can be coherently understood and justified by the “metarationale of pragmatism”: we make liberal education suit our societal needs.Footnote ⁶ Kimball argues that the contemporary emphases on things like multiculturalism, community and citizenship, and educational assessment all grow out of a recognition that liberal education should produce people who are autonomous, civil, and competent problem-solvers in the context of modern, pluralistic, democratic society.

The reason why Rorty doesn't theorize education or engage more in debates about it, despite it being central to his liberal utopia, is that he doesn't feel he has much to add. Liberal education, like liberal political thought, has had the last conceptual revolution that it needs. We need to keep doing what we're doing, do it better and more expansively, and incrementally improve the curriculum and the means of delivering it. For Rorty, the idea that all citizens should ideally receive a comprehensive liberal education doesn't need much justification in light of a bona fide commitment to liberalism. Nevertheless, we know that it's much more controversial than this, and not just because of how much money it would cost. The ideal of universal, comprehensive liberal education comes under prominent assault from at least two quarters: (1) from the pluralists who argue that such an education is morally problematic because it doesn't accommodate ways of life that reject it and the virtues it inculcates; and (2) the “realists” who argue that it isn't necessary and, moreover, won't be effective.

Pluralist critics of liberalism seek to protect nonliberal communities from the “corrupting”and “homogenizing” influence of a liberal education. Even more interesting, however, are the pluralists who identify as liberals, yet who nevertheless argue against requiring all citizens to receive some high, ideal threshold of liberal education (and what that threshold is I will not specify here, but it is certainly higher than what we currently achieving in the U.S.). The debate among liberals over this issue is captured by the question: “Are you for Yoder or against Yoder?” One's answer is a shibboleth among liberal theorists; it not only identifies one's stance on the role of the liberal state in citizen education, but also how one conceives of the relationship between liberalism and ethical pluralism. The question refers, of course, to the 1972 Supreme Court opinion, Wisconsin v. Yoder, which held that Amish families could terminate their children's formal schooling after the eighth grade in contravention of state law, which mandated schooling until age sixteen.Footnote ⁷ The Court reasoned that statute violated the Amish families’ First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion because it failed to respect their “fundamental belief that salvation requires life in a church community separate and apart from the world and worldly influence.”Footnote ⁸ Members of the Old Order Amish community no doubt had little idea that their hard fought legal victory would cause political theorists to spill gallons of ink in subsequent decades. Nevertheless, the case has become a touchstone not only in the debate over the state's role in education but also over the very meaning of liberalism itself. This is because “education is not simply one more public policy issue (like health care or environmentalism) to which to apply liberal principles. Rather, education lies at the heart of the liberal project; it is upon the realization of liberal educational goals that the success of liberalism itself depends.”Footnote ⁹

Although Rorty never indicated in print which side of the Yoder case he supports, on my reading of him as a virtue liberal, he would join those who disagree with its holding. Of course, as a pragmatist, he would be against forcibly dragging Amish children into the liberal schoolhouse, which likely wouldn't be effective, if the goal is to move the Amish toward the liberal virtues. But Rorty knows where he stands: nonliberal groups should not, as a general rule, be allowed to opt out of comprehensive liberal education. Rorty and his fellow virtue liberals are thus at odds with liberal pluralists, like William Galston, who support the Yoder decision.

Though Galston's book, Liberal Purposes, initially seemed to place him in the virtue liberal camp, more recent work finds him rejecting versions of liberalism that robustly impact nonliberal pluralism, especially because they require the virtue of “liberal autonomy” and the Millian critical reflection that comes with it. Galston writes, “My objection to all these views is more or less the same: properly understood, liberalism is about the protection of diversity, not the valorization of choice.”Footnote ¹⁰ He formulates an outline of what he calls the “Diversity State” that properly accommodates pluralism. A primary aim of the Diversity State is to, in the name of toleration, allow groups that do not value liberal autonomy to preserve their nonliberal ways of life. Public education in the Diversity State, then, will be “non-autonomy-based,” and not “prescribe curricula or pedagogic practices that require or strongly invite students to become skeptical or critical of their own ways of life.”Footnote ¹¹ Galston understands his theory to support Yoder.

Life in liberal society, however, requires people to be able to critically reflect upon their beliefs and practices to ensure their justification within the context of the evolving terms of liberal justice. Indeed, Galston admits: “The liberal state has a legitimate and compelling interest in ensuring that the convictions, competencies, and virtues required for liberal citizenship are widely shared.”Footnote ¹² He also argues that individuals must have secure, meaningful “exit rights” which allow them to leave the particular way of life they are leading:

Galston, however, is doing a 180 here, because all of the above sounds a lot like liberal autonomy. Education that ensures that citizens have the “convictions, competencies, and virtues required for liberal citizenship” and “meaningful exit rights,” which supposes “awareness” of other life options and the capacity to scrutinize and choose among them, sounds fairly comprehensive. It is not obvious, to say the least, that Galston's theory does support the Yoder decision after all. Do the Amish children meet all of Galston's requirements, given the way their environment, education, and socialization are controlled? After all, as Macedo points out, the Amish are not good liberal citizens in certain respects: “Amish society is patriarchal – women are regarded as unequal helpers of men – and Amish children are not prepared for being critically reflective citizens.”Footnote ¹⁴ Indeed, we might conclude from Galston's account that they need even more liberal education than mainstream American citizens in order to counteract the parts of their socialization that militate against the capacities that Galston believes they should possess. In any case, we see here in Galston's article the same sort of indeterminacy that we find in political liberalism and modus vivendi liberalism. Galston pledges his allegiance both to a deep pluralism that contains nonliberal doctrines, and to liberal values that are incompatible with those doctrines; Galston gives with one hand what he takes back with the other, and all in the span of an 18-page article. Instead of emphasizing the toleration of pluralism, he should, to paraphrase Rorty, take care of cultivating the liberal virtues, and let pluralism take care of itself.

Like the pluralists, the realists also underestimate what a commitment to liberal citizenship ethically requires. The realist camp, unlike the pluralist camp, is not comprised mainly of political theorists, and is more engaged in the policy debates. Unlike the pluralists, they generally support basic liberal education for all citizens; they just don't think we need nearly as much as the virtue liberals believe. The realists thus take a stand, for example, against the educational ideal of affording all American citizens a four-year liberal arts degree. This group includes conservatives, like Charles Murray, who believes that only a fraction of the population has the intellectual talent and potential to truly benefit from a liberal arts degree. Murray argues that a real, successful college-level education (not the dumbed-down one that so many universities offer) requires an I.Q. of about 115, which means that only 15–25% of the population should be aspiring to get one.Footnote ¹⁵ We should quit encouraging so many students to waste both time and money pursuing four-year degrees and instead send them to vocational schools that will give them the career skills that they and our society will need.

The realist camp also includes libertarians, like Pay-Pal founder, Peter Thiel, who also worry that college-level liberal arts education isn't a productive use of time, not only for people of average intelligence but even for many of the high I.Q. He has created the Thiel Fellowship, which gives money to promising young entrepreneurs to forgo college and start up businesses. Thus, while neither conservatives like Murray nor libertarians like Thiel are hostile to liberal education as such or for some, they deny that there is a high threshold of liberal education that is necessary for good liberal citizenship. They are blind to the crucial role that such education plays in cultivating of the liberal virtues in the citizenry. They are thus pitted against virtue liberals like Rorty, who insist that the threshold liberal education for good citizenship is high – likely beyond even a very effective high school education for most people – because liberal citizenship, and the development of its requisite virtues, is demanding. It is thus an ominous sign when William Deresiewicz notes in a 2014 review of Ivory Tower, a documentary film on the state of American higher education:

These are forces that must be resisted by liberals, and Rorty's work, with its endorsement of virtue liberalism, gives us a powerful narrative with which to do this.

I began this work with an anecdote about a discussion that I had at a Political Science conference that braced me in my conviction that Rorty's pragmatist vision of liberal modernity is currently the best on offer. I will end with another anecdote about an exchange that did this as well. I was recently at a talk given by a Catholic theologian who opined that the Lockean-Millian liberal tradition is ethically “boring,” especially in comparison to the Christian's erotic quest for a relationship with the divine. My jaw dropped at this (though it shouldn't have; of course this was his position). During Q&A, my hand shot up and I stammered, “A Millian life of free, creative individuality based on liberal, humanistic education ‘boring’?” He quickly emphasized that he had a deep appreciation for the security and freedom, especially religious freedom, that liberal society affords. But, finally, he insisted, liberal ethics simply isn't up to much; secular humanist romance cannot compete with the promise of love from an all-powerful deity. Once again, a clash of temperaments.

It is Rorty's world-historical bet that the theologian's view is wrong, though he knows he cannot falsify the premises of the theologian or metaphysician. The pragmatic virtue liberal can only continue to spin his narrative in the hopes of sparking the attraction of an ever-greater number of minds. When the battle heats up between Rorty's vision and the vision offered by another rhetorically well-armed rival, like the aforementioned theologian (or Aquinas, for that matter), Rorty reaches for his poetic champions, like Whitman or Emerson, or more recently, Dorothy Allison, who impressed Rorty with her description of her “atheist's religion of literature.” Rorty is particularly inspired by a passage where Allison writes:

Although one might initially be surprised that Rorty doesn't recoil from the suggestion that we need something “greater than ourselves,” Rorty interprets Allison's conflation of these “greater things,” and her exhortation to heroically stretch our imaginations and creatively demand more from this life, to capture the spirit of liberal modernity. There's certainly no indication in this passage of submission to or reliance on a nonhuman power greater than ourselves. It thus represents what Bernstein calls Rorty's “deep humanism,” his hope, in Whitman's words, “To build a grander future.”