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proposed above. Can we, however, choose between either Rorty`s neo-pragmatism or its theological

rendition? Should or must we? If we answer yes to any of these questions, how do we decide?

Certainly on Rorty`s account, there is no possibility of providing definitive argument for or

against either proposal.

Each will need to be weighed on the merits of their overall plausibility by us

(whether it be the liberals in Rorty`s camp or the theologians in mine), according to our best lights.

Since there is no neutral ahistorical framework within which to adjudicate between these differing

narratives, we can only proceed from our own ethnocentric commitments. Here, the conversation could

terminate if further dialogue were deemed either impossible or without value. In fact, even to attempt to

adjudicate the issues risks shutting down the conversation since criteria for assessment would need to be

invoked, and such are potentially oppressive mechanisms which sin against the pragmatist--specifically,

Peircean--dictum: Do not block the path of inquiry.

But is this actually the case? What if I were to draw upon pragmatist resources to arbitrate

between Rorty`s atheistic neo-pragmatism and my proposed pragmatic theism? Would it violate the terms

of the discussion or Rorty`s neo-pragmatism to assess its theological fruits by invoking its own

pragmatist criteriology? I should think not. In any case, the validity of a pragmatist theological proposal

E.g., On my view, the only thing that can displace an intellectual world is another intellectual world a

new alternative, rather than an argument against an old alternative. The idea that there is some neutral ground on
which to mount an argument against something as big as logocentrism` strikes me as one more logocentric
hallucination (Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others, 121).

Rorty writes (in chronological order): On the pragmatist account, a criterion (what follows from the

axioms, what the needle points to, what the statute says) is a criterion because some particular social practice needs
to block the road of inquiry, halt the regress of interpretations, in order to get something done (Consequences of
Pragmatism, xli); and, ...attempts to erect rules or criteria` turn into attempts to hypostatize and eternalize some
past or present practice, thereby making it more difficult for that practice to be reformed or gradually replaced with a
different practice, and, we should think of rationality not as the application of criteria (as in a tribunal) but as the
achievement of consensus (as in a town meeting, or a bazaar), to be achieved precisely through civilized democratic
processes, without referees (Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, 217 and 220); finally, Reading Kuhn led me...to
think that instead of mapping culture on to a epistemico-ontological hierarchy topped by the logical, objective and
scientific, and bottoming out in the rhetorical, subjective and unscientific, we should instead map culture on to a
sociological spectrum ranging from the chaotic left, where criteria are constantly changing, to the smug right, where
they are, at least for the moment, fixed (Philosophy and Social Hope, 180). While I grant with Rorty that we are all
historically situated--i.e., without access to context-independent criteria and norms--I disagree that this means all of
our criteria or norms are unreliable or that they are context-bound. Here, of course, I am presuming, against Rorty,
that truth is not only whatever our communities of discourse will enable us to get away with. I return to this point in
the last section.