Rory and anti foundationalism

Purpose of the Lecture:
- Introduce the ideas of ethics and politics that lack foundational certainty.
- Discuss foundational concepts of postmodernism.
- Explore contemporary debates around post-foundational human rights and woke politics.
- Identify a common denominator in the discussions: relativism, tribalism, positionality, and subjectivism.
- Encourage engagement in intellectual debate through readings from a recent book, focusing on contemporary political debates (final workshop).

Key Focus: Rorty’s perspectives on human rights within a postmodern condition.
Rorty’s Argument: Provides an accessible entry point into philosophical issues related to human rights.

Basic Argument Structure:
- Identify Rorty's objections to the modernist conception of truth.
- Discuss alternative ideas Rorty proposes instead of traditional notions of truth or knowledge.
- Analyze the failures and dangers associated with traditional approaches to knowledge, emphasizing antifoundationalism.

Rorty's Human Rights Theory:
- Explore the premise of trusting a postmodern approach to human rights theory.
- Examine the strengths and weaknesses inherent in this theory.
- Discuss the future prospects for ethics and solidarity in a human rights culture during the postmodern era.

Philosophy’s Role: Rorty asserts that:
- "Philosophy is not part of the solution; it is part of the problem."
- Rorty critiques foundational philosophy, particularly modernist/enlightenment philosophies that pursue an objective "what is out there."
- He aligns his ideas with the arts (e.g., romantic poetry, works of novelists like Nabokov, German idealism).
- Posits that good philosophy should be seen as a creative enterprise rather than a search for universal truths.

Contingency of Truth:
- Truth is constructed from language, which is a product of human groups and their vocabularies.
- Therefore, truth is inherently contingent on human creation.
- Rorty argues that those seeking non-contingent truths are bound to fail, since knowledge evolves over time.
De-divinizing the World:
- Rorty’s goal includes effectively loosening divine and fixed conceptions of truth.

Cultural Impediments:
- Philosophy's focus on epistemology and universal truth can stagnate cultural creativity, similar to Nietzsche's idea of a "slave revolt."
- Rejected philosophy often stems from pragmatism, asserting it has failed to yield results.
- Philosophy often creates and entrenches false divisions between groups (e.g., human versus pseudohuman distinctions).

Postmodernists, including Rorty, argue:
- "Intellectual and moral progress becomes a history of increasingly useful metaphors rather than an understanding of how things really are."
- The postmodern intellectual hero is the Ironist — an individual who refrains from taking their final vocabulary too seriously in order to avoid parochialism.

Moral vocabularies arise within communities and lack non-historical justification.
Rorty positions our community as liberal, viewing it as seeking consensus through Rawlsian principles.

Rorty envisions a fusion of irony and liberalism to foster a postmodern human rights agenda.
Praises liberalism (referencing Shklar) for accommodating pluralism.
Encourages examination of our human rights culture and the implications of adopting an ironic perspective toward it.

Proposes abandoning modernist philosophical pursuits while maintaining liberal democratic institutions in a more dynamic moral vocabulary management approach.

Postmodern Ethics Exploration:
- Address Rorty’s understanding of postmodern ethics.
- Focus on the Liberal Ironist, the Strong Poet, and the acknowledgment of the contingency of moral principles while confidently asserting them.
- Investigate his human rights theory and the motivations for supporting liberal human rights (reference to Nietzsche).

A liberal (per J. Shklar) is someone who considers cruelty the most severe moral failure.
An Ironist recognizes that central beliefs are contingent. The liberal Ironist commits to reducing human suffering caused by other humans (CIS xv).

Queries arise regarding whether recognizing life’s contingency can undermine liberal values.
Challenges stem from the lack of grounds to assert cruelty as the utmost moral concern, reflecting on the seriousness of anti-foundationalism.

Rorty’s straightforward answer relates to cultural resilience:
- If the cultural impact of religious faith's decline did not harm society (still predominantly secular), why should the loss of metaphysical foundations have a similar effect?
- This suggests philosophy's role may not be as critical as presumed.

Citizens are empowered to become Ironists (or common sense pragmatists) who:
- Avoid obsessive doubt regarding shared hopes instead of metaphysical underpinnings.
- Establish a new type of solidarity and expand the concept of community to include a broader group.

Rorty (via Rabossi) asserts modern human rights culture is actionable for Ironists:
- Philosophical abandonment of discrimination leads to enhanced protection of human rights, thus preventing cruelty.
- Advocates for sharing poignant and heartfelt stories that support and sustain human rights culture.

Limitations of Irony:
- Irony does not dictate what constitutes cruelty or affirm its negativity; this perspective is influenced by parochial views.
- Rorty dismisses the quest for universal relationships regarding cruelty as a modernist concern.
A notable concern arises as even Rorty perceives irony's incompatibility with public moral spheres, hinting at the potential for moral schizophrenia.

Cultural Context:
- Living within a post-Holocaust human rights culture necessitates a focus on moral obligations: redirect from asking why to considering why we should care about others.
- Encourages analysis beyond philosophical underpinnings to ordinary cases of moral behavior in society.

Recognizes cruelty as a parochial notion, questioning the effectiveness of personal stories in initiating change within oppressive frameworks.
Probes ethical implications of engagement with parochial views surrounding whom to recognize as part of moral obligations, especially in polarized contexts (e.g., confronting the victims of specific oppressors).