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.Endowed with an easeof manner and literary grace, Rorty represented for in-numerable contemporaries a way of living successfully inthe contemporary world by not taking it, or oneself, sovery seriously.C.S.Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Manthat to see through everything is to see nothing, andRorty proposed that, for the liberal ironist, there is life,and indeed a reasonably satisfactory life, after nothing.Rorty s proposal is set forth most provocatively andin greatest detail in his 1989 book, Contingency, Irony, andSolidarity.Rorty agrees with MacIntyre s understandingof what the Enlightenment project was about, and, likeMacIntyre, he thinks it came to an end quite some timeago.As to what will succeed that project, he comes to127 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 128American Babylonconclusions that could hardly be more unlike MacIntyre s,especially with respect to religion.Liberal ironists, saysRorty, know that the Enlightenment project is dead, andwhat is most dead about it is the rationalist notion thatthere is reality out there that is intellectually apprehen-sible and that can provide certain knowledge about howthe world is and what we ought to do about it.Liberalironists know, Rorty writes, that there is no universallyvalid answer to moral questions such as, Why notbe cruel? Anybody who thinks that there are well-grounded theoretical answers to this sort of question, writes Rorty, is still, in his heart, a theologian or ametaphysician.He believes in an order beyond time andchange which both determines the point of human exis-tence and establishes a hierarchy of responsibilities. Not so with liberal ironists, who, Rorty recognizes,are in a distinct minority; or at least those who definethemselves as such are in a distinct minority.While theironic posture is pervasive in our culture, relatively fewhave thought through its full implications: The ironistintellectuals who do not believe that there is such anorder are far outnumbered.by people who believethat there must be one.Most non-intellectuals are stillcommitted either to some form of religious faith orto some form of Enlightenment rationalism. In Rorty sview, Enlightenment rationalism is not so much theenemy of religion as another form of religion; boththe religious and the rationalists are, as he says, theolo-gians or metaphysicians at heart, and there is hardly adime s worth of difference between them.Rorty sums up the intellectual succession in our civ-ilization s story to date by saying that once upon a time 128 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 129An Age of Ironypeople felt the need to worship something beyond thevisible world. God, for example.Beginning in the sev-enteenth century, we tried to substitute a love of truthfor a love of God, treating the world described by sci-ence as a quasi-divinity.That is the phase most com-monly associated with the Enlightenment project.Then,beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, cameRomanticism, in which we tried to replace a love forscientific truth with a love for ourselves, for a worship ofour own deep spiritual or poetic nature, treated as onemore quasi-divinity.Now, Rorty suggests, comes thetime to grow up, to really grow up.The liberal ironistwants to get to the point where we no longer worshipanything, where we treat nothing as a quasi-divinity,where we treat everything our language, our con-science, our community as a product of time andchance.To reach this point would be, in Freud s words,to treat chance as worthy of determining our fate. Set aside for the moment the occasions in whichRorty gets his political wind up and, as in Achieving OurCountry, portrays liberal democracy as a quasi-religion.Recall his words quoted earlier, Whitman and Deweygave us all the romance, and all the spiritual uplift weAmericans need to go about our public business. IfRorty is not ironic about the version of liberal democ-racy that he favors, it is because it is a way of orderingsociety that permits him and others of like mind to beironic about everything else.The quasi-religion of liber-alism makes possible the a-religious worship of nothing.Whether human beings are capable of worshippingnothing is very much open to doubt.Put differently, onemay ask whether worshipping nothing is not, in fact,129 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 130American Babylonworshipping nothing.Or, yet again, the worship of noth-ing may in fact be the worship of the self and of whatthe self does in the face of nothing.It seems quite possi-ble that Rorty is more in the Romantic mode than hesuspects.In reading Rorty, one is reminded of the wordsof the Curé de Torcy in Georges Bernanos Diary of aCountry Priest [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.Endowed with an easeof manner and literary grace, Rorty represented for in-numerable contemporaries a way of living successfully inthe contemporary world by not taking it, or oneself, sovery seriously.C.S.Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Manthat to see through everything is to see nothing, andRorty proposed that, for the liberal ironist, there is life,and indeed a reasonably satisfactory life, after nothing.Rorty s proposal is set forth most provocatively andin greatest detail in his 1989 book, Contingency, Irony, andSolidarity.Rorty agrees with MacIntyre s understandingof what the Enlightenment project was about, and, likeMacIntyre, he thinks it came to an end quite some timeago.As to what will succeed that project, he comes to127 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 128American Babylonconclusions that could hardly be more unlike MacIntyre s,especially with respect to religion.Liberal ironists, saysRorty, know that the Enlightenment project is dead, andwhat is most dead about it is the rationalist notion thatthere is reality out there that is intellectually apprehen-sible and that can provide certain knowledge about howthe world is and what we ought to do about it.Liberalironists know, Rorty writes, that there is no universallyvalid answer to moral questions such as, Why notbe cruel? Anybody who thinks that there are well-grounded theoretical answers to this sort of question, writes Rorty, is still, in his heart, a theologian or ametaphysician.He believes in an order beyond time andchange which both determines the point of human exis-tence and establishes a hierarchy of responsibilities. Not so with liberal ironists, who, Rorty recognizes,are in a distinct minority; or at least those who definethemselves as such are in a distinct minority.While theironic posture is pervasive in our culture, relatively fewhave thought through its full implications: The ironistintellectuals who do not believe that there is such anorder are far outnumbered.by people who believethat there must be one.Most non-intellectuals are stillcommitted either to some form of religious faith orto some form of Enlightenment rationalism. In Rorty sview, Enlightenment rationalism is not so much theenemy of religion as another form of religion; boththe religious and the rationalists are, as he says, theolo-gians or metaphysicians at heart, and there is hardly adime s worth of difference between them.Rorty sums up the intellectual succession in our civ-ilization s story to date by saying that once upon a time 128 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 129An Age of Ironypeople felt the need to worship something beyond thevisible world. God, for example.Beginning in the sev-enteenth century, we tried to substitute a love of truthfor a love of God, treating the world described by sci-ence as a quasi-divinity.That is the phase most com-monly associated with the Enlightenment project.Then,beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, cameRomanticism, in which we tried to replace a love forscientific truth with a love for ourselves, for a worship ofour own deep spiritual or poetic nature, treated as onemore quasi-divinity.Now, Rorty suggests, comes thetime to grow up, to really grow up.The liberal ironistwants to get to the point where we no longer worshipanything, where we treat nothing as a quasi-divinity,where we treat everything our language, our con-science, our community as a product of time andchance.To reach this point would be, in Freud s words,to treat chance as worthy of determining our fate. Set aside for the moment the occasions in whichRorty gets his political wind up and, as in Achieving OurCountry, portrays liberal democracy as a quasi-religion.Recall his words quoted earlier, Whitman and Deweygave us all the romance, and all the spiritual uplift weAmericans need to go about our public business. IfRorty is not ironic about the version of liberal democ-racy that he favors, it is because it is a way of orderingsociety that permits him and others of like mind to beironic about everything else.The quasi-religion of liber-alism makes possible the a-religious worship of nothing.Whether human beings are capable of worshippingnothing is very much open to doubt.Put differently, onemay ask whether worshipping nothing is not, in fact,129 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 130American Babylonworshipping nothing.Or, yet again, the worship of noth-ing may in fact be the worship of the self and of whatthe self does in the face of nothing.It seems quite possi-ble that Rorty is more in the Romantic mode than hesuspects.In reading Rorty, one is reminded of the wordsof the Curé de Torcy in Georges Bernanos Diary of aCountry Priest [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]