[lit-ideas] Re: On linguistic and genetic uncertainty
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- Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 12:45:26 +0200
On 22 Jun 2014, at 19:14, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
> The agreement Rorty seeks on the justifiability of his ethnocentrism must be
> intended as agreement by a universal audience. ... Rorty's espousal of
> ethnocentrism displays performative self-contradiction, for what it
> explicitly says is contradicted by what it shows in the saying (and *must*
> show in the saying for the saying to say what it's saying). Any position that
> cannot be expressed without contradicting itself, performatively or
> logically, is not a rational position to maintain ...
Did Rorty seek a universal audience, or was he merely wishing to convince
believers in (what I will, I hope unproblematically, call) the Enlightenment
Project that their faith is not grounded in rational argument, but merely
intellectual 'hand-waving' which in the end says nothing more than 'that's the
way we do things around here'?
If Rorty imagined that he accomplished this by rational argument, then he was
indeed guilty of the contradiction which Walter points out above. By his own
account, he should only have been able to indulge in that same 'intellectual
handwaving'. And that begs the question.
Will Kymlicka, in his "Liberalism and Communitarianism", argues that Rorty's
position was dogmatic. Rorty was not predicting that we will be unable to find
universal, rational grounds and means of persuasion for our moral positions, he
was claiming from the outset that he knew 'in advance of the arguments' that
such 'universal' rational grounds and means of persuasion will only be
compelling to particular historical communities. In Kymlicka's words, "Rorty
... simply presuppose[s] ... that Kantian liberal theories won't work. ...
Rorty has decided he doesn't even have to examine the theories - and that is
just dogmatism."
Chris Bruce
Kiel, Germany
Will Kymlicka, "Liberalism and Communitarianism", in the Canadian Journal of
Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 181-204; reprinted in several
philosophical collections, including Andrew Bailey, ed., FIRST PHILOSOPHY:
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS AND READINGS IN PHILOSOPHY, Broadview Press (Peterborough,
Canada), 2004; Vol 1: VALUES AND SOCIETY, pp. 324-338.
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