Rorty QOTD

On the eve of Richard McKay Rorty's 94th birthday*, announcing @rortyquotes: dedicated to tweeting a fresh #Rorty banger each and every day of the year—starting tomorrow! * And the day, 79 years ago, that Rorty went off to the University of Chicago's Hutchins College.

I do not much care whether democratic politics are an expression of something deep, or whether they express nothing better than some hopes which popped from nowhere into the brains of a few remarkable people and which, for unknown reasons, became popular. PasAA p.67 #Politics

I see the development of the social conventions in which Habermas and I both rejoice as a lucky accident. PasAA p.67 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Politics

Unlike Habermas, I do not think that disciplines like philosophy, linguistics, and developmental psychology can do much for democratic politics. PasAA p.67 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Politics

Pragmatists like me can’t figure out how to tell whether we are understanding a justification as just a “justification for us” or as a “justification, period.” PasAA p.65 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Truth

Putnam, Apel, and Habermas all take over from Peirce an idea which I reject: the idea of convergence upon the One Truth. PasAA p.54 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Truth

We pragmatists use “truth” to remind ourselves that people in different circumstances—people facing future audiences—may not be able to justify the belief which we have triumphantly justified to all the audiences we have encountered. PasAA p.52 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Truth

We pragmatists, who think that beliefs are habits of action rather than attempts to correspond to reality, see the cautionary use of the word “true” as flagging a special sort of danger. PasAA p.52 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Truth

It is no more necessary to have a philosophical theory about the nature of truth, or the meaning of the word “true,” than it is to have one about the nature of danger, or the meaning of the word “danger.” PasAA p.52 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Truth

The moral to be drawn, I think, is that the idea of communal self-creation—of realizing a dream which has no justification in unconditional claims to universal validity—is neutral between Hitler and Jefferson. PasAA p.50 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Antifoundationalism

We shall never know for sure whether a given belief is true, but we can be sure that nobody is able to summon up any residual objections to it, that everybody agrees that it ought to be held. PasAA p.48 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Truth

For those who are willing to use the term “religious faith” to cover both a religion of obedient submission to non-human power and a religion of love between human beings, James’ and Dewey’s project of reconciliation may have some attractions. PasAA p.46 #Rorty #Religion

For Dewey and James, there was no goal called Truth to be aimed at; the only goal was the ever-receding goal of still greater human happiness. PasAA p.46 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Truth

Dewey and James wanted to substitute the contrast between a less useful set of beliefs and a more useful set for the contrast between ignorance and knowledge. PasAA p.46 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Truth

Every evil, Dewey thought, is a name for a lesser good—a good considered and rejected in the process of deliberation. PasAA p.46 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Religion

For Dewey, in contrast to Kierkegaard, there is no such thing as sin, no such thing as radical evil. PasAA p.46 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Religion

If a humanistic version of Christianity seems strange, that may be because it leaves no room for the doctrine which was closest to Kierkegaard’s heart: the doctrine of sin. PasAA p.46 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Religion

For Dewey, Kierkegaard’s Wholly Other is demonic rather than divine, and the worship of the Wholly Other is idolatry, a betrayal of everything which Christ stood for. PasAA p.46 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Religion

The good thing about the Christian doctrine that love is the only law, Dewey is saying, is not that it has been proclaimed from above, but that it works—works according to utilitarian criteria. PasAA p.45 #Religion #Rorty #Love

Insofar as Christians see their duty of obedience to God as including more than the duty to serve their fellow human beings, they are worshipping a god of power rather than a god of love. PasAA p.45 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Religion

If one does see the claim that love is the only law as central to Christianity, then it is plausible to describe the historical development of Christianity in terms of the gradual substitution of love for power as the essential attribute of God. PasAA p.44 #Rorty #Religion