Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order: Political Philosophy and the Claims of Faith

10. Richard Rorty’s Secular Gods and Unphilosophic Philosophers

Richard Rorty’s Secular Gods and Unphilosophic Philosophers Luigi Bradizza In his later years, Richard Rorty softened his stance toward religion. He came to accept that religious believers could be important allies in pursuit of his political project of community, love, individual flourishing, and the diminution of cruelty. However, Rorty’s subordination of religious belief to his politics comes at the cost of genuine religiosity. Religious defenders of Rorty such as G. Elijah Dann are wrong to believe that Rorty’s philosophy is friendly to religion. Scholars such as Alvin Plantinga have more correctly argued that Rorty’s philosophy does not sufficiently allow for more traditional Christianity.1 For Rorty, what remains of religion is religiously inspired sentiment in the service of secular liberal ideals.2 But how secular is this project? Daniela Sorea has suggested that Rorty puts man in the place of God. By contrast, J. Wesley Robbins claims that Rorty does not “think[ . . . ] that humans are little Gods” because for Rorty, humans are not “originators of meaning and truth.”3 Sorea has the stronger claim, but it requires an elaboration she does not offer. God is understood by believers to be the creator of man. Rorty’s secular idealism is, ironically, religious insofar as it replaces God with man as the re-creator of man in ideal form. In a further irony, this godlike man must be severely limited if he is to be endlessly creative. The traditional God is understood to have created 10 204 Lu igi Br adiz z a man as rational and capable of grasping the objective moral truth of the world. By contrast, for Rorty’s godlike man, political philosophy and endless creativity are mutually exclusive. Rorty on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics Rorty is an anti-representationalist; he believes that no one can have direct, objective knowledge of objects in the world. This limitation on our understanding is a consequence of our use of language to describe the world. Language cannot reflect, represent, or mirror the world as it actually exists.4 Rorty’s anti-representationalism leads him to deny any “metaphysical” truths, including God’s existence. He is therefore an atheist.5 Rorty argues that modern philosophy delegitimized religion and advanced atheism.6 As pleased as he is with this outcome, Rorty also rejects modern philosophy. He is of the view that both religion and modern philosophy have been attractive for the same fundamental reason: they promise redemption, that is, they offer a unified, true, objective, and final view of the whole and our place in it.7 One promises this redemption through faith, the other by means of rational access to objective truth. Rorty would replace both religion and representational philosophy with his own redemption-free anti-representational philosophy. Rorty originally expressed his rejection of religious faith in quite strong terms. He argued for a thoroughly secular public life, with religion kept strictly private.8 He was scornful toward Stephen L. Carter’s wish that faith be permitted some public expression.9 Believing himself to be picking up where Thomas Jefferson left off, Rorty argued for a complete separation of church and state.10 As he put it, “A suitably privatized form of religious belief might dictate neither one’s scientific beliefs nor anybody’s moral choices save one’s own.”11 Rorty blamed religion for a host of historical injustices and condemned it for its continuing involvement in American political life. He objected to the political marginalization of atheists in America by religious believers.12 He strongly objected to politically oriented religious pressure groups and their influence on the Republican Party.13 And he especially condemned religious believers for their objections to what he saw as the purely private and harmless sexual practices of homosexuals.14 By confining religion to the strictly private realm, Rorty would advance his political project: the attainment of a liberal society. On his understanding, a liberal is one who thinks “that cruelty is the worst thing we do.” As an anti-representationalist, Rorty cannot give a rational and objectively valid justification for his liberalism.15 He openly acknowledges that his political stance—and indeed all of human life—is contingent. One’s moral and political views are dependent on historical, social, and linguistic factors that do not allow for an objective defense. He therefore describes Richard Rorty’s Secular Gods and Unphilosophic Philosophers 205 himself as a liberal ironist, that is, as...