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Kristin Myers

Pg. 847-853

Richard Rorty

What Can You Expect From Anti-Foundationalist Philosophers?: A Reply toLynn Baker

Rorty discusses Bakers view of good prophets:

The Good Prophet:

o The good kind of prophet thinks of herself as just someone who has a

better idea, on an epistemological par with the people who claim to

have a new gimmick for some mundane activity (i.e. retreading tires)

o The good prophets paint pictures of what brighter futures would look

like and how to attain it

o This kind of prophet does not think that her views have any legitimacy

or authority

The worse type of prophet thinks of herself as a messenger from got or some

other truth, reason, history, etc.

o Thinks of themselves as representative of something that is more than

another voice in the conversation.

o They claim that people will like the change they are proposing becausethey have authority

Baker claims there is a contradiction in saying that pragmatism is something

comparatively small and unimportant and saying that prophets might profit

from thinking of themselves in pragmatist terms

o Rorty disagrees he claims that the request is frequently made for

authoritative reassurance and sometimes prophets need philosophical

advice

o Rorty claims that people have increasingly become more willing tolisten to novel prophecies, more imaginative since the churches were

disestablished

o While Baker claims that there is no case to the fact the recognition of a

contingency makes the prophet more effective- Rorty argues that while

it is not conclusive it is something

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Rortys critics claims that he is suggesting that people in the United States

and other rich democracies are capable of Habermasian undistorted

communication

o Rorty states it seems to be enough for prophets today to say Try it,

Youll like it

He thinks that truth and power are linked and that pragmatist philosophers

were the first to make clear why they will always be linked

o 1) which statements count as truth-candidates, as reasonable matter

for discussion is determined by the vocabulary of moral and political

deliberation currently being used

o 2) this vocabulary is in use because in the past some people won

power struggles over other people

Rorty does not think that we need a lot of deep political thought. He views it

to be a sign of despair and failing imagination

Foundationalists think that the better self already exists deep down within us

where truth operates without interference from power

Anti-foundationalists think that this type of self is created by pretending that

it is already there

Joan C. Williams

Rorty, Radicalism, Romanticism: The Politics of the Gaze

Nietzsche argued that once God was dead morality came tumbling after,

leaving only the raw exercise of power. This is an example of the

implausibility of nonfoundationalism

Derrida had a desire to shock the bourgeois by exploring in a shocking andstylish way the free play left over after the death of metaphysics

The aestheticist celebration of found freedom is very threatening if it signals

the freedom to torture innocents

o To make nonfoundationalism plausible in ethics Rorty is much more

promising in bringing back pragmatism

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o Aestheticists focus on what s gone once god is dead while pragmatists

focus on what is left

o Aestheticists aim to shock pragmatists aim to reassure

o Pragmatists argue that we can function without absolutes and in fact

we always have and that words were tools

In Pragmatist ethics objective moral certainties are undesirable and

unnecessary

Why is the Torture of Innocents Wrong?

o The wittgensteinian strategy provides that it is wrong because of the

grammar of the sentence

If someone is innocent then they should not be punished

Pragmatists should object to the notion of moral absolutes not because we

want people free to torture or enslave but because using language of

absolutes lets us evade the fact that our moral choices fall on the continuum

on which we set limits far short of our power to intervene.

o This notion of self-responsible freedom is a key theme in pragmatic

thought.