Kristin Myers

Pg. 847-853

Richard Rorty

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

Lynn Baker

Rorty discusses Baker’s view of good prophet’s:

• 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 because
they 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 to

listen 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
• Rorty’s 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,
You’ll 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 and

stylish 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
 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.