Abstract
Richard Rorty was a radical pragmatist philosopher in many aspects; particularly in his anti-metaphysical point of views. However, when it comes to religion he, for several decades, used to adopt an orthodox, metaphysical atheist standpoint. This chapter explains his 2003 transition from that intellectual idea to abandoning atheism as an untenable metaphysical position and replacing it with anti-clericalism which is a political standpoint and more defensible for an anti-essentialist and neo-pragmatist philosopher. I will also suggest that the mentioned transition implies that the Jeffersonian compromise defined and defended by him is also problematic. The Jeffersonian compromise, for Rorty of pre-2003, was an American version of a democratic compromise between believers of different faiths and also non-believers i.e. one trades dropping ‘reference to religious beliefs in the public square’ to ‘religious liberty’. The chapter argues that this trade does not seem to be coherent with his transition to a more pragmatic anti-clerical standpoint. Moreover it shows the necessity of a new compromise. At this juncture, Peter Sloterdijk’s neo-Nietzscheian approach to ‘religions as anthropotechnic systems’ becomes relevant. The author puts forward a synthesis of Rorty and Sloterdijk’s approaches and calls it ‘the primacy of training over truth’.
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- 1.
During his academic life Rorty (1931–2007) was in a constant process of negotiation with other philosophers and frequently revised his former intellectual positions following these encounters with his colleagues. This broad-mindedness and intellectual flexibility can be connected to his general pragmatist view-point. Pragmatism for Rorty had at least three meanings: firstly, anti-essentialism applied to ‘truth’, ‘morality’ and ‘knowledge’, secondly, the view that there is not any metaphysical difference between value and fact, and more relevant here, ‘the doctrine that there are no constraints on inquiry’ except ‘those retail constraints provided by the remarks of our fellow inquirers’ (Malachowski, 2002: pp. 83–4; cf. Rorty, 1982: pp. 162–5). Thus he was rejecting the age old correspondence theory of truth. For him ‘foundationalism’ in modern epistemology is closely related to that theory and he could not accept either of them (Malachowski, 1992: pp. 139–55; Guignon and Hiley, 1992: pp. 339–64). Rorty consequently believed that holding an idea as essentially and ‘objectively’ true is a form of ‘banging on the table’ (Rorty, 2015). One cannot possess a birds-eye neutral point of view to confirm that our mind images of reality are corresponding with it (hence objectivity). As a pragmatist, he also believed that there is not any significant difference in terms of consequences between these two statements: ‘it is true because it works’ and ‘it works because it is true’ (Van Niekerk, 2013: p. 302). So instead of asking about the truthfulness of a statement we should ask ‘whether there are new ways of describing and re-describing the world that better serve our variety of goals’ (Ryerson, 2006, p. 8). And as long as the conversation lasts we should hope for a new and more promising agreement and compromise. In this way, challenging one’s own standpoint was the indispensable part of his pragmatism, not merely a supplementary element (Malachowski, 2002, p. 67ff).
- 2.
Rorty used Thomas Jefferson as a symbol of the Enlightenment privatisation of religion because of a quotation from him that says: ‘it does me no injury for my neighbour to say that there are twenty Gods or no God’ (Rorty, 2008: p. 175). But it is noteworthy that many philosophers, intellectuals and specifically the Enlightenment figures said more or less the same thing; and those are the people that deserve to take the credit for the principle of tolerance. Rorty, nonetheless, preferred a politician to be the symbol of the doctrine. It seems that in this way he wanted to remain loyal to his main post-philosophical/post-truth pragmatism. That is to say, it does not matter who talked about this principle and formulated it philosophically but the politician who practiced that doctrine and brought it to life should be the main figure. So Jefferson is more relevant than, say, John Stuart Mill who for the first time used the term in its modern sense (Forst, 2012).
- 3.
Sloterdijk just like Rorty cannot be in more agreement with Nietzsche on his conception of truth. Nietzsche answering to the question of the quiddity of truth wrote:
A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which became poetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed, adorned, and after long usage seem to a nation fixed, canonic and binding […] to be truthful, that is, to use the usual metaphors. (Nietzsche, 1997: p. 92)
That is to say, for Nietzsche, the weak have made up those metaphors to survive (Mendieta, 2012a: p. 65) but with the eclipse of God any reference to ‘substantive truth’ will be problematic (Hatab, 2008: p. 11). In the same vein, Sloterdijk does not invite us to engage with any sort of comprehensive doctrine. Conversely, in his first influential project, Critique of Cynical Reason (1987) he preferred a kynical resistance of Diogenes against the Platonic idealism. Diogenes refused the language of the philosopher not by a better or more philosophical language but by living against it through showing ‘contempt for fame’, ridiculing the architecture and refusing to respect (Sloterdijk, 1987: p. 103). Socrates wished to begin a conversation with Diogenes because he was the dominant master of refutation through dialogue. This was Diogenes, though, that never fall into the trap. For Sloterdijk, Diogenes’s kynical materialism was the ‘dirty materialism’ in which animalities challenges the public square to overcome the idealist arrogance (Sloterdijk, 1987: p. 105).
- 4.
Sloterdijk’s original term is überhumanismus.
- 5.
We should recall that Sloterdijk believes that religions do not exist. What exist is only anthropotechnic systems.
- 6.
In response, Lafonte hesitates over the possibility of translation of the religious vocabulary into secular language. She convincingly argues that: ‘translation presupposes that it is possible to come to the same results by different epistemic means’ (Lafonte, 2013: p. 237 – ital. Original). Nonetheless this presupposition is very problematic. Moreover, if the translation is possible only in a few cases of overlapping between the secular and non-secular proposals, then the very process of translation becomes unnecessary.
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Hashemi, M. (2017). The Primacy of Training over Truth: From Rorty to Sloterdijk. In: Theism and Atheism in a Post-Secular Age. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54948-4_9
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