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as the conversation between deconstruction and theology is now in full swing, engaging Rorty`s neo-

pragmatism would provide a distinctively American perspective on this wider discussion about the

significance of contemporary post/modernism. And, if this conversation with the more radical neo-

pragmatist vision of Rorty is even moderately successful, then the possibility of and prospects for an in-

depth encounter between the broader American pragmatist tradition and Christian theology would indeed

be secured.

The question, however, is whether or not anything constructive can come from a conversation

between theology and Rorty`s project, and if so, how so. This methodological issue is an important one

since Rorty argues in the tradition of James and Whitehead that religion is what human beings should do

in and with their solitariness. In distinguishing sharply between the public socio-political sphere of

human intercourse and the private religio-aesthetic sphere of individual and communal life, religious

ideas are thereby either prohibited from the public square, or admitted only if relatively innocuous

regarding public issues. Attempts to bring religious topics into public conversations are therefore seen by

Rorty to be conversation stoppers.

But is it the case that only religious and theological convictions end conversations? While not

denying that they often do, in Rorty`s case, the charge is seemingly ironic given his own stance against

method. Here, Rorty builds specifically on recent developments in philosophy of science--e.g., by Kuhn,

Toulmin, and Feyerabend--and in the turn to hermeneutics.

In both cases, the demise of

foundationalism means that there no longer exists an indubitable starting point for inquiry, and that

rigidly defined operational methods are better understood as social conventions rather than as the keys to

social or scientific advances. Progress in science and philosophy is understood in this new paradigm not

as constrained externally by either reality (vis-à-vis the sciences) or truth (vis-à-vis philosophy), but as

See Richard Rorty, Religion as Conversation-Stopper, in Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (New

York and London: Penguin Books, 1999), ch. 11.

See Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), Part

Three. Cf. also his Science as Solidarity and Pragmatism without Method, both in Objectivity, Relativism, and