What I Don’t Love About Rorty

 

Brandom’s favorite philosopher is Hegel, and in this area the most salient difference between Kant and Hegel is that Hegel does not think philosophy can rise above the social practices of its time and judge their desirability by reference to something that is not itself an alternative social practice. For Hegel as for Brandom, there are no norms which are not the norms of some social practice. So when asked “are these desirable norms?” or “is this a good social practice?” all either can do is ask “by reference to what encompassing social practice are we supposed to judge desirability?” or, more usefully, “by comparison to the norms of what alternative social practice?”…Cultural politics can create a society that will find inter-racial marriages repulsive, and cultural politics of a different sort can create one that finds such marriage unobjectionable.

– Richard Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers IV (2007), p. 23, 13-14

The above quote is, to my mind, an excellent example of what Christians believe is the poverty of relativism.

Taking Rorty’s example, Christians believe that there is a difference between the society that treats inter-racial marriage as repulsive,  and the society that treats it as unobjectionable, and perhaps beautiful. Furthermore, Christians think that such norms, such recommendations, can be argued for in a more forceful way than saying: ‘this is what works for us.’ To be fair, Rorty’s works are filled with intelligent, fascinating and persuasive replies to just this objection.

But when I ask myself which picture I am more drawn to, which picture I hope more and more people are drawn to, and which picture describes a world I would want to live in, Rorty’s picture begins to look actually repulsive.

The issue of morality and cultural difference is a complex and fragile one; it raises questions and anxieties that aren’t easily answered and relieved through deploying a simple theory. But I find Rorty’s answer of giving up on objectivity and universalizability really disheartening.

Richard Dawkins is so 1827

One could easily arrive at the view that a widespread, nearly universal indifference toward the doctrines of faith formerly regarded as essential has entered into the general religiousness of the public.

– G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827)

What bugs me most about the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Whats-His-Face etc.) is their self-image. They present themselves as rebels. Christopher Whats-His-Face tells us how he has petrol and nails for breakfast, and their general stance is that they are saying something which is incredibly naughty, new and brave. I think Hegel, writing in 1827, would be confused as to why someone like Dawkins and Whats-His-Face get so much press for peddling such an old idea, and maybe amused at the irony of self-styled cutting-edge mavericks peddling an idea which was yesterdays news in 1827.