Rorty - An ethics for today finding common ground between philosophy and religion

Table of Contents

JEFFREY W. ROBBINS

Richard Rorty is famous, maybe even infamous, for his philosophical nonchalance. With his death in 2007 at the age of seventy-five, newspapers across the United States and around the world eulogized him as one of the most influential contemporary philosophers while also detailing the casual way in which he dismissed millennia of philosophical heritage.

One thing that philosophy was neither good for nor good atand indeed, the thing that Rorty spent almost the entirety of the latter half of his career cautioning againstwas being the arbiter of truth. With the groundbreaking publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Rorty rejected not only all correspondence theories of truth but also the great swath of modern epistemology and philosophy of mind that was preoccupied with knowledge and representation. As the contemporary philosopher most credited with pushing the American tradition of pragmatism towards postmodernism, Rorty was less concerned with the truth or verifiability of a proposition than its use value. The philosopher has no exclusive access to the truth and no more clarity of understanding of the truth than the artist, scientist, politician, or shopkeeper. Thus, when asked what the mission or task of the philosopher should be, Rorty answered, We are not here to provide principles or foundations or deep theoretical diagnoses, or a synoptic vision. What sets the philosopher apart is simply a certain familiarity with a certain intellectual tradition, as chemists have a certain familiarity with what happens when you mix various substances together. He continued, We are not the people to come to if you want confirmation that the things you love with all your heart are central to the structure of the universe, or that your sense of moral responsibility is rational and objective rather than just a result of how you were brought up.

What should be discerned here is that Rortys philosophical approach to the question of truth is part and parcel with his ethics. Just as he rejected all correspondence theories of truth, he also made clear his belief that there are no universally valid answers to moral questions. Rortys approach here can be described as an ethics of decency and a politics of solidarity. Too often those scrambling for some universally binding ethical maxim or some objective criterion for settling decisions of right and wrong end up stumbling over themselves by their overreach, turning what should be an effort at moral suasion into either a form of coercion or obscurantism. The main trouble, Rorty cautioned the philosopher, is that you might succeed, and your success might let you imagine that you have something more to rely on than the tolerance and decency of your fellow human beings. So when it comes to the question of Why not be cruel? Rorty advised the following:

Despite their significant differences, the structure of the argument from both the theologian and the metaphysician is the same. In the case of the theologian, the argument for the good rests in a special claim to religious authority that comes by way of revealed sacred truth to which some within our religious and culturally pluralistic society subscribe and others do not. In the case of the metaphysician, moral goods derive from first truths through an almost mechanical logic, which, like the theologians, is always and necessarily limited in its appeal because of the fundamental inability to provide any rational basis for holding certain first truths over others. In his argument against the theologian and the metaphysician, Rorty employed the technique of narrative redescription and did not so much refute their claims to special authority or insight as posit a future of human solidarity based on moral autonomy and psychological maturity. While once upon a time humanity might have needed something to worship beyond the visible world (and whether that something is literally God or, later, scientific truth makes little difference in Rortys mind), now it is time to grow up.

By replacing the philosophical search for universally binding answers to moral questions with an appreciation for contingency, Rorty staked his hope for humanity on the prospect that we might get to the point where we no longer worship anything, where we treat nothing as a quasi-divinity, where we treat everythingour language, our conscience, our communityas a product of time and chance. To reach this point, would be, in Freuds words, to treat chance as worthy of determining our fate. So whether it is the theologian, metaphysician, or scientist, wherever and in whatever one places ones faith, know that it is only a matter of personal preference. Or as Rorty puts, Neither reason nor experience can do much to help us decide whether to agree with Benedict XVI, or with Santayana, James, Mill, Dewey, and Habermas. There is no neutral court of appeals that will help us decide these two accounts of the human situation, both of which have inspired many acts of moral heroism. While some philosophers, scientists, and commentators (e.g., the crop of new atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens) might revel in the discrediting of religious beliefs, they themselves have erected a double or surrogate for God on the basis of a philosophical foundationalism that Rorty deems out of step with a postmodern sensibility wherein radical contingency goes all the way down, making it impossible to ever touch bottom, to get at truth once and for all.

While it is one thing to recognize and embrace chance in determining ones individual fate, when it comes to our common life or our politics, the attendant risks are seen by many as too dire. But here, too, Rorty was consistent. His opposition to correspondence theories of truth and moral universalism extended to his opposition to what might be termed salvational or redemptive politics. As he states:

Though a strong advocate for liberal democracy, which he claimed as the greatest achievement of our species, there are no guarantees when it comes to the common good. Separating himself from many on the political left, Rorty was quick to point out the many achievements in actualizing the egalitarian ideals of democracy. At the same time, he did not want people to make the mistake of thinking that good philosophy necessarily leads to good politics. On the contrary, Philosophy and politics are not that tightly linked. There will always be room for a lot of philosophical disagreement between people who share the same politics, and for diametrically opposed political views among philosophers of the same school. He went further: