Page 11

representationalist theory of knowledge. This leads, second, to pragmatism as non-dualistic, especially

with regard to the lexicon handed down by the Philosophical tradition. If no valid distinctions can be

drawn between reality itself and language (or linguistic schemes, or the categories), neither can

meaningful distinctions exist between phenomena and noumena; between for-itself and for-us; between is

and ought; between facts and values; between objects and subjects; between ontology and epistemology;

between the transcendent and the empirical, etc.; except, of course, conventional distinctions for

purposes of edifying conversation. The web of interrelatedness in which we find ourselves is suggestive

here of a holist view of reality and of human understanding of it. Here, we come to Rorty`s coherentism

and rejection of the correspondence view of truth. Rather than getting at the truth or at reality is it is,

pragmatism as anti-dualism is best understood as an attempt to serve transitory purposes and solve

transitory problems.

Finally, pragmatism`s non-foundationalism emphasizes the radical contingency of

all starting points.

Rorty is especially concerned with undermining both transcendentalist apriori and

empiricist aposteriori approaches as giving indubitable and certain epistemic results. As a pragmatist,

however, he denies that either skepticism or relativism ensues since these assume both the

epistemological representationalism which Rorty denies and a neutral ground from which to discern the

relativity of all linguistic and conceptual schemes which Rorty rejects as unavailable.

Rather, as he

repeatedly emphasizes, the cash value of beliefs lie in the habits of successful action they inculcate.

From this, a neo-pragmatist theology would read Rorty`s non-essentialism as emphasizing the

Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope, xxii. But it is also important to note Rorty does not deny the

correspondence theory totally. He notes only the triviality of its level of applicability--e.g., the cat is on the mat--
pointing out its incapacity to provide justification for large-scale, metaphysical, worldview, and theological theories:
At this level of abstraction, concepts like truth, rationality, and maturity are up for grabs. The only thing that
matters is which way of reshaping them will, in the long run, make them more useful for democratic politics.
Concepts are, as Wittgenstein taught us, uses of words. Philosophers have long wanted to understand concepts, but
the [Marxist] point is to change them so as to make them serve our purposes better (Rorty, Universality and
Truth, in Brandom, ed., Rorty and His Critics, 1-30, quote from 25).

Argued in detail in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and in Part I of Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and

Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

See Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism, 166-69, and Hilary Putnam and the Relativist Menace, in

Truth and Progress, 51. Cf. also his claim that, [A] belief can still regulate action, can still be taught worth dying
for, among people who are quite aware that this belief is caused by nothing deeper than contingent historical
circumstance, is the fundamental premise of his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (quote from 189).