The category of the otherness in Richard Rorty’s philosophy: the principles and mechanisms of the differentiation

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The category of the otherness in Richard Rorty's philosophy: the principles and mechanisms of the differentiation

Kseniia Meita

This paper is an attempt to analyze Richard Rorty S interpretation of the category of the Otherness in the context of the global project of liberal utopia - the society of the future, based on non-violence. The evolution of the understanding of the notion of the Otherness is reviewed in the context of the concepts of American pragmatist and French post-structuralist social anthropological practices, where the reasons for the alienation of particular individuals are explained on the mythological and linguistic background, and the people are solidarized shaping up the generalized other. The Other to a particular culture connects in him/ herself the functions of the scapegoat and the messiah at the same time. In Rortian approach, a variety of reasons for an individual 's marginalization on class, religion, gender, and behavioral basis is analyzed. Moreover, the method of sentimental education is promoted in developing the children 's emotional intelligence and raising the generations on the values of total inclusivity and empathy apart from general erudition, with the help offiction reading. The Kantian moral imperative is criticized for the mechanical and legalist character. So, the moral principles based on a fellowship are offered instead. This fellowship should be based rather on the personal identity with a particular nation, class, or gender than on the birthright. The advantages and drawbacks of radical pluralism, the understanding of relative values of all ways of life, and its difference from postmodern cultural relativism are also reviewed. The result of the study reveals the secondary role of the people 's differences in their consolidation in Richard Rorty 's liberal utopia if they have in common the basic principle of intolerance to violence, whether it is direct physical violence or the passive-aggressive abuse in humiliation.

Keywords: liberal utopia, generalized other, radical pluralism, sensitivity, sentimental education, intolerance to violence, empathy.

Мейта К.Ю.

Категорія іншості у філософії Ричарда Рорті: принципи та механізми диференціації

Ця стаття є спробою проаналізувати інтерпретацію Ричардом Рорті категоріїІншості в контексті глобального проєкту ліберальної утопії - суспільства майбутнього, базованого на відсутності насилля. Еволюцію розуміння поняття Іншості розглянуто в контексті соціально-антропологічних практик американського прагматизму та французького постструктуралізму, де причини відчуження певних індивідів пояснено на міфологічній і лінгвістичній основі, а люди солідаризуються, утворюючи генералізованого іншого. Інший у певній культурі суміщає в собі функції цаба-відбувайла та месії водночас. У підході Рорті проаналізовано різні причини маргіналізації індивіда на класовій, релігійній, гендер- ній і поведінковій основі. Розглянуто метод сентиментальної освіти у розвитку в дитини емоційного інтелекту та емпатії, опріч загальної ерудиції, за допомогою ознайомлення з художньої літературою. Кантівський моральний імператив піддано критиці за механістичний і легалістський характер. Замість цього запропоновано моральні принципи, основані на братерстві. Це братерство має базуватися радше на персональній ідентифікації з певною нацією, класом або гендером, ніж на праві народження. Також розглянуто переваги й недоліки радикального плюралізму (розуміння відносної цінності всіх способів життя) та його відмінність від постмодерного культурного релятивізму. Результат дослідження оприявнює вторинну роль у відмінностях між людьми для їхньої консолідації у ліберальній утопії Ричарда Рорті, якщо спільним між ними є базовий принцип нетерпимості до насилля, хоч би яким воно було - чи прямим фізичним, чи пасивно-агресивним аб'юзом у насмішках.

Ключові слова: ліберальна утопія, генералізований інший, радикальний плюралізм, чутливість, сентиментальна освіта, нетерпимість до жорстокості, емпатія.

Introduction

richard rorty category otherness

The motivation behind this work is to analyze the representation of the category of Otherness in Richard Rorty's philosophy. Although the approaches of the American pragmatists had been analyzed on the examples of John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, and Rortian theories, their approaches were reviewed only from the perspective of the language philosophy, while the practical social philosophical points remain unexplored, although the researches on this subject exist internationally. An approach of Rorty was also interpreted only in the context of the contingency of the language constructs existing.

The researchers, dedicated to the Rortian notion of the Otherness, are mainly focused on the factors of the individual's inclusion and the reliability of consolidation on the basis of solidarity, similarity, and empathy. For instance, Timothy Mosteller in the work Relativism in Contemporary American Phi

losophy (2006), emphasizes the cultural politics of Richard Rorty, the crucial factor of which is not nationality, but common sense, which includes the possibility for the polyethnic society, where the ability of productive dialogue and creation of the mutual values will be possible. However, John Sneep in his thesis Bergsonian Metaphysical Undercurrents in Rorty's Liberal Gradualism (2013), stresses the closed nature of Richard Rorty's liberal utopia, which is concentrated on the existence of the ironist in a community, constructed on the common language, habits, and basic principles for survival and well-being. The question of whether a mature society is able to social progress without any metaphysical ideas remains open.

In spite of all the research mentioned, the basic mechanisms of the citizens' consolidation in Richard Rorty's liberal utopia remain unclear because of only the negative bases of cooperation. Moreover, the reasons and the mechanisms of construction of the Otherness, especially for the alienation of the Absolute Other, the individual, who is considered to be excluded from the social convention because of the different values, are not clearly explained. That is why the actuality of my research is determined by the political-philosophical need.

The innovative character of my article is demonstrated in the attempt to cover the criteria Richard Rorty uses to determine the Otherness compared to the principles of its demarcation in the approaches of G. H. Mead, M. Foucault, and R. Girard. The strategies to interpret and to accept the Other if it is possible, or to protect humanity from the threats of the Absolute Other, such as the terrorist actions - research perspective, at the end of the essay.

The basic innovations of the article are explained with the following points:

- The practical philosophical reasons to understand the otherness in Richard Rorty's approach;

- The attempt to compare the approach of Richard Rorty with the strategies of the interpretation of the otherness in the context of the world philosophy of the 20th century (surnames);

- The definition of the reasons for the alienation of the Other in Richard Rorty's philosophy: - may be not innovative

- The understanding of the reasons for the Other's alienation in the social context in Richard Rorty's philosophy:

- Covering and explaining the motivation for humans' empathy in Richard Rorty's conception and the points of the critique of the concept of sentimental education as the mechanism of the development of empathy in a human on the institutional level:

- The understanding of the dialogue between the cultures via the notion of radical pluralism in Rorty's approach. Methodology and Results

The research is based on the historical-comparative method, since different approaches from a variety of philosophical traditions of continental and analytical philosophy, such as neopragmatism, behaviorism, and post-structuralism, were analyzed. The concept of the Otherness by Richard Rorty was compared with the strategies of the interpretation of the Otherness in George Herbert Mead's, Rene Girard's, and Michel Foucault's social philosophical theories. The brief descriptions of these approaches were given in detail, necessary to understand the interpretation of the problem of the Otherness in different cultures. Those details were given in the context of the 20-century approaches to the phenomenological and social-philosophical understanding of

the Otherness. The development of a particular tradition of American pragmatism was interpreted in a diachronic way, in the historical dynamics, which gives the ability to state the historical methodology. The other method is hermeneutical since the sources were analyzed from the parts to the whole, in the context of the entire bibliography of Richard Rorty. Although the main accent was made on a later work of a thinker, Philosophy and Social Hope (1999), which is a collection of his essays, dedicated to social and political problems, his earlier theses on a liberal utopia and ethnocentrism from the works Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989) and Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991) were also taken into account. The statements of the authorities were critically interpreted and debated, which coincides with the method of a rational reconstruction that means a perception of the philosophers not as indisputable parts of the canon, but as equal opponents. As Richard Rorty states in the main essay describing this approach, The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres, the historian of philosophy should concentrate on the modeling of the imaginary dialogues between the thinkers of different epochs so that to find the same ground in their opinions. “We need to imagine Aristotle studying Galileo or Quine and changing his mind, Aquinas reading Newton or Hume and changing his, etc. We need to think that, in philosophy as in science, the mighty mistaken dead look down from heaven at our recent successes, and are happy to find that their mistakes have been corrected” (Rorty, Schneewind, & Skinner, 1984, p. 51). The history of ideas is the other approach that was used, since the genealogy of Richard Rorty's ideas, connected with global solidarity, was reviewed. So, the relevance of the perception of the category of Otherness in Richard Rorty's philosophy was evaluated in a historical context of the analytical tradition with the help of the comparative methodology.

The main result of this research should be in the understanding of the appropriate mechanisms of dealing with the Otherness, its adequate perception in a liberal society, and the social integration of the marginalized individuals according to American neopragmatism generally and Richard Rorty's theory especially. It will be possible to achieve the finding out the principles of intersubjective consolidation of the individuals in American social philosophy. The mechanisms for overcoming the Absolute Other with the civilized mechanisms of social isolation will also be reviewed. Additionally, the motivation for the alienation and victimization of the individuals in continental and analytical traditions is being analyzed.

The Criteria for the Individual's Social Integration and Alienation in a World Contemporary Philosophy

The notion of the Otherness in the 20th century had gained a new significance because of the necessity to understand the reasons for the individuals' alienation in the time of technical progress and to analyze the causes of the two world wars. In this case, special importance gains the necessity to follow the mechanism of the division of the Our and the Other, which is rooted in the tribal times and gains a new development in the neoliberal epoch, when the human is evaluated as a mechanism for productive labor.

The problem of the Otherness has always been a significant point in analytical philosophy in an aspect of the research of the factors of solidarity. George Herbert Mead in a work Mind, Self, and Society (1934), discovers the roots of the formation of a generalized other - an organized unity, the members of which share the same emotional attitudes to particular symbols (language) and the same responses toward the particular values (principles). This way, the same mental context is being shaped among the society members. A philosopher compares a social process in this unity with the organized game - the temporal situation, where the actions of the individuals are directly related to each other. ``And only through the taking by individuals of the attitude or attitudes of the generalized other toward themselves is the existence of a universe of discourse, as that system of common or social meanings which thinking presupposes at its context, rendered possible'' (Mead, 1972, p.156). Like society in general, in the organized game teamwork is vital since the individualsshould cooperate with each other, and be ready to act according to the strict roles since all their actions call the particular responses, which are agreed upon beforehand. However, John Sneep, commenting on Mead's theory, remarks on the difference between the non-verbal signs of different creatures. For instance, the major difference between society-preserving habits of the people and animals is in the non-flexibility of the people's habits, which shows their creativity compared to the usual instinctive strategies of animals and insects. The self as consciousness is shaped there when the two conditions in a community are taken into action: 1. the organization of particular attitudes in society toward the person, 2. an organization of the generalized other as a unified community. In this unified institutional form, the only possibility for changes is constantly to review the community standards via a public conversation through the interaction of the individuals.

In a lecture series The Birth of Biopolitics, read by Michel Foucault at the Collиge de France in 1978-79, a philosopher stresses the individual's social integration as homo economicus - the person, able for rational thinking and ready to react to the changes in the surrounding world. In neoliberal countries (the USA, France, and Germany), the reproduction of the human capital is centered on the idea of the necessity to perceive the human sources as machines, whose bodies are indivisible from their skills. ``So that we should think of the machine constituted by the worker's ability, the machine constituted by, if you like, ability and worker individually bound together, as being remunerated over a period of time by a series of wages'' (Foucault, 2008, p. 225).

To become valuable in a labor market, an individual should achieve a range of cultural stimuli from his/her birth time - good genes, appropriate education, enough communication with the parents, their high cultural background, well- quality medical services, and mobility. Care about a child performs a role of a long-term investment, which will be later evaluated with the size of the individual's salary.

This way, the investment in the human capital is realized by the projection of the market laws on social relationships even in such private spheres, as child- or marriage- planning. Generally, under neoliberal economics, based on the principle of economical positivism, all social actions are evaluated in terms of cost and profit.

Construction of the particular image of an adequate citizen is also shown in the penitentiary system, where society performs a role of a consumer of a particular type of appropriate behavior. ``You can see that at this point society appears as the consumer of conforming behavior, that is to say, according to the neo-liberal theory of consumption, society appears as the producer of conforming behavior with which it is satisfied in return for a certain investment'' (Foucault, 2008, p. 256). In this case, the major law principles are constructed according to a legalist solution, which allows defining homo pena- lis(a criminal) as simply an individual, who had broken the law, already formulated. However, such an operational definition ignores the psychological and anthropological aspects of the crime and the individual's motivation for committing it. According to Michel Foucault, the difference between an approach to illegal actions in different times of modernity is that while in the XVIII century the criminals were perceived as the marginal, whose behavior was predicted to be radically corrected, in the second half of the XX century, the difference between a homo penalis and an ordinary individual is annihilated, since all the people are the equal subjects of decision-making, and their solutions are determined not only by the moral but by the economic factors. That is why, to reduce the number of crimes, it is reasonable to reduce the supply and demand for them. This strategy can be illustrated with the market-based measures in the fight against drug trafficking, which would become more effective if its prohibition for the addicts is changed on the increase of their price so that a lower amount of newer people would become addicted. All in all, a modern economy requires not a general normalization, but optimization of the diversity system, with the maximal inclusion of the individuals having a variety of minority practices.

A work by Rene Girard Violence and the Sacred (1988) is dedicated to the analysis of the reasons for the alienation of the Absolute Other (scapegoat) in the mythological society. The ritual sacrifice there performs the cathartic function of violence sublimation to prevent it in a real community. ``The dead divinity becomes the source not only of sacred rites but also of matrimonial regulations and proscriptions of every kind; in short, of all those cultural forms that give the man his unique humanity'' (Girard, 2005, p. 98). A cycle of violence is schematically described as the social or cultural crisis, followed by the crime and a sacrifice of the victim in the act of collective murder or exile from the community, which restores social order.

Inclusion of all the society members in the acts of collective violence aimed to punish a symbolic victim promotes their cooperation with a unified purpose. It is important that a ritual differs from a single murder in the aspect of individualization.

While murder is single, spontaneous, and irrational, a sacrifice is circular, controlled, and usually involves a particular time, date, and amount of people involved in a ceremony. A symbolic victim connects in him/herself the traits of a polluted object, the incarnation of the impurity, guilty in all the social ills, and the All-Powerful, who had gained a right to rule the world in the severe sufferings. ``It is important to cultivate the future victim's supposed potential for evil, to transform him into the monster of iniquity...” (Girard, 2005, p. 112).

An example of an intentional mastering of all the violence can be observed in the incest rites among the African monarchs, which imitate the tribal cosmogonic mythology.

Becoming the incarnation of violence, the carrier of it achieves the potential to transform aggression into cultural values. Moreover, the authority of the absolute ruler spreads to the warriors of his army with the status of a scapegoat performing the missionary function.

Being a synthesis of the binary oppositions, order, and chaos, a symbolic victim connects the two polar sides of a primordial experience.

To sum up, the problem of the otherness in 20-century Western philosophy is connected with the necessity to have the strict frames of the ordinary society, integrated with the generalized norms and rules.

The reasons for the exclusion of the Absolute Other there is the absence of common sense, the individual's way of life differences from the ordinary norms, and the necessity to find the guilty in a social crisis.

The Factors of the Definition of the Otherness in Richard Rorty's Philosophy

In Richard Rorty's philosophy, a phenomenon of the Otherness is based on the project of a liberal utopia - a universal transnational Western-centered unity of the future. The significant factor of a group membership there is the inadmissibility of violence (as a physical form of indignity) and humiliation (as a verbal one, such as hate speech). So, a sharing of the mutual position towards violence is a crucial factor for human solidarity in a future community. According to Rorty, there are many factors of the individual's alienation nowadays, including both their identities and ways of life.

An important factor of intersubjective solidarity is that a human is the only creature, vulnerable not only to the physical but to the verbal assaults, since they may serve for the ruination of his/her world overlook and self-identity. ``When we praise this development, we pragmatists drop the revolutionary rhetoric of emancipation and unmasking in favor of a reformist rhetoric about increased tolerance and decreased suffering'' (Rorty, 1991 , p. 213). The deprivation of the individual's identity because of the hegemonic privatization of a semantic monopoly by the rich dominant classes is one of the issues discussed by John Sneep in the essay, dedicated to a comparison of the ideal society from the perspective of Richard Rorty and Henry Bergson. Giving the example of the novel Bleak House (1863) by Charles Dickens, he covers the problem of the deprivation of the poor individual from his own vocabulary through the absence of education and the restriction of the other cultural benefits accessible to the rich people. One of its characters, a worker Jo, was condemned for a miserable existence from his own birthday because of class determinism and the absence of social mobility. He was the Other from the first time. ``Jo is dogged and stoic throughout his ordeal; he does not even know how to properly complain or say that he deserves better, for his “betters” command the language he must use to describe himself, so he is only able to see himself as they see him, which is just to say that he can't really see himself at all...'' (Sneep, 2013, p. 21). Contrary to Kantian legalism, based on moral obligations, explained only with the metaphysical argumentation, Rorty puts fraternity and unselfishness at the center of the people's cooperation. Solidarity becomes some kind of a secular faith for a contemporary community. A philosopher thinks that in a future liberal utopia, the controversy between theists and atheists will be solved because of common ground between the Gospels and the Manifesto, demonstrated in the example of the trade union movement. This activism may be paralleled to fraternal agape. Religion in the egalitarian utopia will be the private choice, although it is being debated by some thinkers, such as W. Clifford, who make accent on intellectual responsibility, which includes the shared language games and ways of thinking among the members of the same groups that make their behavior more predictable. ``.Although your emotions are your own business, your beliefs are everybody's business'' (Rorty, 1999, p. 153). At the same time, Richard Rorty, referring to John Stuart Mill, stresses to our attention that for people, being affiliated with the same projects, the effectiveness in the same activity is not connected to a religion, as a type of personal pursuit of happiness. So, an individual of the other belief should not be isolated from a community. Contrary to the moral imperatives, a pragmatic morality is more flexible and inclusive, since we may solidarize with all the individuals in pain, helping them to overcome their sufferings. Because of it, all the historicist approaches are criticized for their unrealistic and subjective methodology and the preference of the goal rationality to a communicative one. The notion of solidarity is prioritized over objectivity, because harmonious intersubjective communication, in Rorty's opinion, is more significant than an ephemeral ideal of truth. ``In a world in which hunger is common, it does not come naturally to take food from one's children's mouths in order to feed a hungry stranger and her children. But if the stranger and her children are on your doorstep, you may well feel obliged to do just that'' (Rorty, 1999, p. 79). In this situation, the main purpose of future moral and scientific progress is to increase the people's sensitivity - response to the sufferings of a wide variety of humans.

The problem with solidarity is in the necessity to create ways of cooperation for individuals on the mutually shared values and in the protection of them from the Absolute Others, the representatives of the cultures with traditions, incompatible with the global democratic ones. That is why, a category of ethnocentrism has been reinterpreted by the philosopher, gaining a positive semantic, as a self-understanding of a particular community, willing to verify an inner experience before its acceptance. It is necessary to protect a Western liberal culture from the terroristic and totalitarian impacts. This approach, according to Rorty, may help to preserve the main traits of a liberal tradition, even if in the future, the radical destructive ideologies will be widespread. Whereas Jean-Francois Liotard and Theodor Adorno criticize Rortian ethnocentrism, comparing it with the Nazi dictatorship because of the unwillingness of the future representatives of the liberal utopia to accept the Absolute Others, a philosopher in the work Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991), stresses on a cardinal difference between his methodology and the fascists' repressions because of the freedom of speech for the Absolute Others for them to be able to prove their positions verbally, and an ability for a sentimental educational work with the people having the inappropriate views, instead of the artificial homogenization of the social and ethnical groups with the physical tortures. ``There is a difference between a Nazi who says ``We are good because we are the particular group we are'' and the reformist liberal who says ``We are good because, by persuasion rather than force, we shall eventually convince everybody else what we are'' (Rorty, 1991 , p. 214). The concept of sentimental education is the education of the people, beginning from preschool with the development of not only general scientific knowledge but also their ability to empathize with each other and to feel the pain of everyone in need. In the work Rorty's Effective Affinities: The New Pragmatism and Postmodern Thought (1996), Marek Kwiek analysis the deep roots of the concept of sentimental education via a comparison between the approaches of Plato and Rorty. Plato views the person only as a rational creature, and so the only motive of the people's cooperation and helping each other is rational egoism - the search for the benefit of oneself, which was later actualized in utilitarianism. Because Rortian position is anti-es- sentialist, he protects the thesis about the absence of innate human nature, fixed from the person's date of birth. This notion helps Rorty to understand the individual's character as not a constant phenomenon that can be changed and has no repressive center, dictated by metaphysical principles. During the colloquium On Time, Rorty stresses the abstract character of the notion of human rights in a paradigm of common humanity. Instead, Rorty offers a deeper self-identification with the victims of historical grief, based on Hegel's feelings Instead, Rorty offers a deeper self-identification with victims of historical grief, is based on Hegel's feeling of `the supreme idea of depth' the people are in touch with during a catastrophe (Philosophie Heute). However, this approach is shown to be controversial, since empathy is not always connected with the ability to provide effective help and to define which assistance would be really efficient for people in need. This point of criticism is highlighted in the work The Politics of Human by Anne Phillips, in the article, dedicated to the comparison of the approaches to the empathy of Richard Rorty and Hanna Arendt. The major aspect of this criticism is that although sentimental education raises global solidarity, it ignores the voices of the marginal communities about their real needs, creating the illusion and comforting reassurance for the people, who help the individuals in need. `'When the strong come to see the weak as sufficiently `like themselves' to enlist their sympathies, they may well act to improve conditions: donate to charities, the campaign against slavery, vote for parties that promise to increase the budget for foreign aid. Nothing, however, necessarily propels them to analyze the circumstances that produced the inequality and brought about that `weakness' (Phillips, 2015, p. 56). From this point, the sentimental education is viewed rather as an attempt of the rescuers to see the common humanity in the victims of the aggression rather than the real call for action and social transformations. At the same time, Darren Garside criticizes Rorty's sentimental education from the perspective of age psychology. According to him, Richard Rorty is extremely focused on the child's age for learning the abstract notion of empathy in the context of socialization, while, in the contemporary postmodern society, the individual's development is more flexible, and people of different ages can understand the global issues.

Communication between the representatives of different communities should be compared with the differences in the epochs of development of the one civilization since it enables the problem-solution on the basis of the overcoming of a hermeneutic conflict if we identify the people of the other cultures as the potential subjects of dialogue. According to a holistic point of view, the only difference between the nations in a global sense is an overlooked barrier, which can be overcome with the help of global sentimental education. “Distinctions between cultures, theories, or discourses are just ways of dividing up the corpus of sentences so far asserted into clusters'' (Rorty, 1991, p. 218). The sharing of language games (we can view the reference to Wittgenstein's theory) would help the people of different cultures to gain a common understanding.

A category of patriotism is interpreted by a thinker as a manifestation of `'the revival of long-repressed hatreds embedded in ethnic, religious, and national identities'' (Rorty, 1999, p. 229). He explains this feeling as the individuals' national consolidation, in this case, performs a function of the restoration of historical fairness and the overcoming of a tyrannous past. However, the difference between a modern understanding of a concept of a civil nation overcomes the speculative national categorization of the basis of blood, because a dramatic experience of Nazi dictatorship and American colonialism of the African Americans should be taken into account as dramatic historical lessons. ``That is the desire to which the Revd Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr appealed, and he is somebody every American can be proud of. It is just as appropriate for white Americans to take pride in Dr. King and in his limited) success as for black Americans to take pride in Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Dewey and their limited) successes'' (Rorty, 1999, p. 253). So, the shared national identity is demonstrated rather in the common belief in the successful future of your country and efforts for its prosperity, than in ethnicity. Such understanding of the nation is rooted in the concept of the political (civil) nation, where the identity of a person is measured rather with her self-identification than by the biological right of blood.

In a collection of the essays Philosophy and Social Hope (1999), Richard Rorty evaluates the perspectives of the globalization project from the economical point of view, stressing that adequate class relationships are even more significant than cultural ones. A class difference may become a basis for noticeable social isolation. The low-class individuals become marginalized and alienated because of the absence of material and time sources for emotional inclusion in love affairs. ``Every top-down liberal initiative, from the abolition of slavery through the extension of the franchise to the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, has been driven by the hope that someday we shall no longer need to distinguish us gentlefolk from those others, the people who live like animals'' (Rorty, 1999, p. 225). Unequal distribution, according to Rorty's predictions, may result in the breaking up of the American society into conflicting hereditary economic classes, where the fate of members of poor families would be to perform all the dirty work and collide with the snobbery and neglect in society even more, than nowadays. Since an international project of globalization is usually criticized for the risk of hegemony and dictatorship of the colonizing nation-states, ruled by a global overclass, it would be a reasonable solution to create a global polity - a competent organ, responsible for intersubjective social decisions all over the world, under the competence of which are the solutions on the punishment for those states of individuals, who threaten the general consensus. According to Richard Rorty, the social order should be conducted rather with the help of top-down techno-bureaucratic initiatives (for instance, birth control), than in a revolutionary way, the drawbacks of which were clearly demonstrated in the 20th century. In this case, a philosopher interprets the politics of identity as a logical continuation of John Stuart Mill's egalitarian utopia, modified with the widening of the quantity of the groups, to which attention is paid, because of the modern scientific progress in the fields, directly connected with the human experience. ``Since we invented cultural anthropology, we have become more aware of humiliations caused by colonialist arrogance. Since Freud, we have become better able to take homosexuality in our stride, and more willing to see homosexuals as an oppressed minority rather than a corrupting and subversive influence on society'' (Rorty, 1999, p. 235). Despite the accusations of the globalized liberal project in artificial homogenization, Rorty thinks that its main communicative intention is in pluralism, which aims to maximize the opportunities for a wide variety of social groups, connected with the common social consensus and communicative rationality. Such consensus is possible with the help of pragmatist rationalism, a belief not in the empty metaphysical essences, but rather in the social changes to improve life on the intersubjective level.

A transition from domination of a coherent theory to a pragmatist one had demonstrated a necessity for radical pluralism as the approval of the relative value of all sorts of lives and ways for happiness. In the Platonic times of domination of truth entity narrative, there was a clear hierarchical division of different ways of life in the order of their animality. ``Women were said to have less of this ingredient than men, barbarians than Greeks, slaves than free men, true believers than heathens, blacks than whites, and so on'' (Rorty, 1999, p. 266). Contrary, in a pragmatist society, all types of individual projects' realization are natural and harmonious. Rorty thinks that the progress with a demarginalization of the animal species had begun in the 19th century, with the release of Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). The humans gradually began not to consider a comparison with the animals offensive, since their mechanical and instinctive reactions have many in common. However, their advantage over the other species is visible, since, with the help of the language, their ways to find joy are much more different. At the same time, radical pluralism should be differentiated from postmodern cultural relativism, since the last one includes the ignorance of destructiveness of the cultures, which cannot be part of the communal agreement, since they include the violation of basic human rights. A drawback of postmodernism, according to Rorty, lies in the mindless eclectic connection of incompatible values. ``The difference between pluralism and cultural relativism is the difference between pragmatically justified tolerance and mindless irresponsibility'' (Rorty, 1999, p. 276). Although diversity and all the basic freedoms should be respected, pluralism has nothing in common with the gratification of the destructive extremist movements.

All in all, the view on the problem of the Otherness in Richard Rorty's philosophy is based on the solidarity and social integration of the individuals, who share the intolerance to violence as a basic value. However, the ways of life and modes to get happiness, to which the national, gender, and class identification refer, are the private affairs of every person, so he/she cannot be alienated from a community for that reason.

Conclusion

This article has identified the main aspects of the interpretation of the category of Otherness in Richard Rorty's philosophy, including the individual's alienation on the basis of class, nationality, gender, religion, and other identifications, and his/her way of life. In the Rortian approach, the person is viewed as the potential member of a liberal utopia, so his/ her inclusion directly correlates with the ability to share its basic principles of omitting and overcoming violence on the physical and verbal levels. Also, the reasons of the Other's alienation, such as the violent acts or intentions, were taken into attention.

The problem of the Otherness in 20th-century Western philosophy, on the examples of American pragmatism and French post-structuralism, is analyzed in the context of the intersubjective necessity to unify in the generalized communities, taking the approach of Mead into attention. The criteria for the such association are based on being the parts of identical language games and sharing the same attitudes to particular symbols and cultural values. Also, after the analysis of the concepts of Michel Foucault and Rene Girard, the evidence can be made that the alienation of the Other is connected with the individual's difference from the ordinary people and blaming someone in the social crisis, which is rooted in the symbolic necessity to break the cycle of violence.

In Richard Rorty's philosophy, the attempts for artificial homogenization of the individuals are changed with the necessity for social integration of the marginalized people with the help of sentimental education, economical global distribution, and global polity to control socially significant intersubjective decisions. The strategy of sentimental education involves the Bildung strategy, according to which the people are taught not only the formal, but also the emotional intellect, and attempt to be empa- thetic to other people. Sentimental education is made possible rather with literature masterpieces than with formal theoretical works. In a liberal utopia, a metaphysical world picture is changed by pragmatic rationalism, which involves a belief in the social changes rather than abstract entities, so that a radical pluralism with a deconstruction of a norm becomes possible. So, a citizen of a liberal utopia can choose from all the ways of life and identities possible, if it does not negatively affect his/her ability for empathy and intolerance to violence.

All in all, the interpretation of the category of Otherness in Richard Rorty's approach covers the problems connected with the social integration of marginalized individuals and the main principles of the people's integration into a community. This research opens up further perspectives for the analysis of the Otherness in modern Western philosophy in a wider problem of the reliability of the social integration factors in the future communities and the reasons for the alienation of their particular members.

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