Rorty and Morality
Near the end of the introduction to The Consequences of Pragmatism, Richard Rorty makes a claim that many critics have taken as a sort of final confirmation of pragmatism's moral paralysis:
"Suppose that Socrates was wrong, that we have not once seen the Truth, and so will not, intuitively, recognize it when we see it again. This means that when the secret police come, when the torturers violate the innocent, there is nothing to be said to them of the form 'There is something within you which you are betraying. though you embody the practices of a totalitarian society which will endure forever, there is something beyond those practices which condemns you'."
Alister McGrath calls this approach a kind of "lazy pragmatism", and indeed, in Rorty's own words, recognizing our own philosophical impotence in the face of the secret police is "hard to live with." It seems to me, however, that such "philosophical impotence" (i.e., our lack of ability to appeal to absolute, transcendental standards to condemn a would-be executioner) is hardly peculiar to Rorty's approach. To see why, turn the tables for a moment and suppose, pace Rorty, that Socrates was right. Suppose further that a secret police officer comes to your door. Now what? In the first place, it seems obvious that whatever you say will likely be unconvincing. He's probably too vicious, or too "loyal" to the Führer, or just uninterested. Of course, you may claim to the secret policeman that "truth is on my side" or that there is "something beyond these practices which condemns you," just as easily as you may claim that the unicorn living under your bed will come haunt him at night. But this evades the central point: will our claim keep us safe? Will it cause the officer to drop his head in shame and resign his post?
My point, then, is that it is not at all clear that the belief in the privileged status of human beings--in a realm of transcendental values--will, in practice, shield us from the viciousness of the secret policeman at our door any better than Rorty's rejection of such principles. And, in this sense, both Rortian"relativism" and Englightenment absolutism are equally implicated. Neither gives us the moral resources we need to do what we want to do.
The question, then, is this: which alternative does a better job? On the one hand, is it true that our appeal to transcendental values (including the specially privileged status of human beings) will make our condemnation of the officer any more effective? Or, conversely, can we "get on better" without any such appeal? Rorty hedges his bets on the latter.
"Suppose that Socrates was wrong, that we have not once seen the Truth, and so will not, intuitively, recognize it when we see it again. This means that when the secret police come, when the torturers violate the innocent, there is nothing to be said to them of the form 'There is something within you which you are betraying. though you embody the practices of a totalitarian society which will endure forever, there is something beyond those practices which condemns you'."
Alister McGrath calls this approach a kind of "lazy pragmatism", and indeed, in Rorty's own words, recognizing our own philosophical impotence in the face of the secret police is "hard to live with." It seems to me, however, that such "philosophical impotence" (i.e., our lack of ability to appeal to absolute, transcendental standards to condemn a would-be executioner) is hardly peculiar to Rorty's approach. To see why, turn the tables for a moment and suppose, pace Rorty, that Socrates was right. Suppose further that a secret police officer comes to your door. Now what? In the first place, it seems obvious that whatever you say will likely be unconvincing. He's probably too vicious, or too "loyal" to the Führer, or just uninterested. Of course, you may claim to the secret policeman that "truth is on my side" or that there is "something beyond these practices which condemns you," just as easily as you may claim that the unicorn living under your bed will come haunt him at night. But this evades the central point: will our claim keep us safe? Will it cause the officer to drop his head in shame and resign his post?
My point, then, is that it is not at all clear that the belief in the privileged status of human beings--in a realm of transcendental values--will, in practice, shield us from the viciousness of the secret policeman at our door any better than Rorty's rejection of such principles. And, in this sense, both Rortian"relativism" and Englightenment absolutism are equally implicated. Neither gives us the moral resources we need to do what we want to do.
The question, then, is this: which alternative does a better job? On the one hand, is it true that our appeal to transcendental values (including the specially privileged status of human beings) will make our condemnation of the officer any more effective? Or, conversely, can we "get on better" without any such appeal? Rorty hedges his bets on the latter.
posted by Adam at 11:26 AM
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