As an antidote to Fish, I strongly recommend Martha Nussbaum's essay,  
"Sophistry About Conventions", reprinted in her *Love's Knowledge*  
(Oxford, 1990, pp.220-229). In an endnote to the paper, she characterizes  
it as a commentary on a "pervasive tendency" in literary theory (which is  
also a tendency in *some* uses made of rhetoric and postmodernism in  
economics), to wit: "..the tendency to respond to the putative collapse  
of unqualified metaphysical realism (the view that we have truth only  
when we have a completely unmediated and non-interpretative access to the  
structure of reality as it is in itself) by espousing some form of  
radical subjectivism, relativism or skepticism--for example, Fish's  
position here, according to which statements cannot be assessed as to  
their rational justifiability but only as to the power of their maker." 
 
The Nussbaum paper is a comment on a paper by Fish called  
"Anti-Professionalsm", whose thesis Nussbaum summarizes: "Fish argues  
that the only criterion of truth we have for judgements made in a given  
profession is the prevailing (currently dominant) view of things among  
pracricing members of the profession. 'Prevailing' is explicitly denied  
all normative epistemological content: it is a descriptive term having to  
do with such things as power, prestige and income. According to Fish,  
there is, in any case, no significant distinction to be made between  
persuasion and manipulation, or even violence." (228) 
 
Interestingly enough, as an example of a rational anti-professionalism  
that does not rely on a foundationalist, naively realist epistemology,  
Nussbaum cites the encounter betweenJohn Rawls and the economics 
profession: 
"Rawls' ability to offer a justification of the principles of justice  
against the utilitarian economist does not depend on his being well  
trained in economics (although he is so, and although *in practice* his  
ability to convince actual economists is certainly helped by this). It  
depends on his caring about human matters that are common ground between  
him and the profession, and caring about coherence and rational 
persuasion." 
 
Kevin Quinn 
[log in to unmask] 
 
On Tue, 2 Jan 1996, E. Roy Weintraub wrote: 
 
> Ron Stanfield writes: 
> "I study cultural and intellectual history in an attempt to reveal the 
sources  
> of the distempers we suffer daily. I seek to propose and to advocate, so 
to  
> help in my small way invigorate the democratic and liberal (free) process 
of  
> making a living and living in an orderly and sound society." 
>  
> This topic is the subject of The Clarendon Lectures (1993) delivered by  
> Stanley Fish at Oxford, just published as "Professional Correctness:  
> Literary Studies and Political Change" by Oxford University Press. 
>  
> To give the flavor of the argument, Fish wrote: (pp.74-75) "...to  
> think that by exposing the leaks in a system you fatally wound it,  
> is to engage in a strange kind of deconstructive Platonism -- strange  
> is because Platonism is what deconstruction pushes against -- in  
> which the surface features of life are declared illusory in relation  
> to a deep underlying truth or non-truth. It is in the surfaces,  
> however, that we live and move and have our being (it is surfaces all  
> the way down) and no philosophical demonstration of their  
> ephemerality will loosen their hold ...[T]rying to figure out what a  
> poem means will be quite a different activity from trying to figure  
> out which interpretation of a poem will contribute to the war effort  
> or to the toppling of patriarchy." 
>  
> Or (p.106): "[R]eflection is either (a) an activity within a practice  
> and therefore finally not distanced from that practice's normative  
> assumptions or (b) an activity grounded in its own normative  
> asumptions and therefore one whose operations will reveal more about  
> itself than about any practice viewed through its lens." 
>  
> To which I gloss: If you write history, write it well for whatever  
> reasons you choose, and we will or not be persuaded to its argument by  
> your skill and craft as an historian; but as historians,  do not expect  
> us to THEREBY attend to your politics. 
>  
> E. Roy Weintraub, Professor of Economics 
> Duke University, Box 90097 
> Durham, North Carolina 27708-0097 
>  
> Phone and voicemail: (919) 660-1838  
> Fax: (919) 684-8974 
> E-mail: [log in to unmask] 
> Web Site: http://www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html 
>