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RICHARD RORTY AND
THE POSTMODERN REJECTION OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH


DEAN GEURAS, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, SOUTHWEST TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY



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Dean Geuras received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of
Colorado at Boulder teaches in the Department of Philosophy at Southwest Texas
State University.



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How should Christians respond to postmodernism? Is it a profound threat that we
must refute else it undermine the Christian perspective? Or is it a benign
alternative to the more explicitly atheistic philosophies that have dominated
twentieth-century thought? I answer that it is not benign, but that, even if
Christians make no attempt to refute it, it will destroy itself, and possibly
its antireligious philosophical predecessors such as Sartrian existentialism,
logical positivism, and Wittgensteinianism. This self-destruction will occur
despite the efforts of Richard Rorty, postmodernism’s most gifted defender, who
may ultimately do more to destroy the movement that to defend it. However, I do
not suggest philosophical passivity. There is much that both Christians and non
Christians can learn and apply from the dead-ended emptiness of postmodernism.

My paper is divided into three parts. The first is a general description of
postmodernism and Rorty’s support for it. In the second section, I make some
critical remarks about Rorty’s analyses of truth and objective reality, insofar
as they express postmodern elements. I suggest that the problems that I find in
Rorty’s position derive from his unwitting adoption of the very Cartesian
modernism that he professes to reject. In my final section, I discuss what
inferences we, as Christian scholars, can draw from what I take to be Rorty’s
failures. In this section I maintain, that we ought to base our scholarship upon
suppositions consistent with our Christianity but that they ought not to be
singularly Christian or even singularly theistic. The suppositions to which I
refer are precisely those that postmodernists reject: that there is objective
truth, objective moral value, and an intelligible universe.


I.

I will not try to provide a complete definition of postmodernism. It appears to
be so open a theory that not even its advocates can agree upon how to define it.
Instead, I will concentrate on one aspect of it that is of special interest to
philosophers and is central to the entire postmodernist movement. This aspect is
stated most clearly by Stanley Grenz in A Primer on Postmodernism:

> [Postmodernism] affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we
> envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate . . .
> There is no absolute truth: rather truth is relative to the community in which
> we participate.{1}

We, as Christians, might now ask, "Why is this so bad?" Postmodernism allows us
our own truth, so we Christians can acknowledge it against the atheistic and
agnostic concepts of truth so prevalent in among scholars today. Does not
postmodernism promise to preserve our intellectual freedom that was threatened
by more antagonistic movements such as logical positivism, behaviorism, Marxism,
and atheistic existentialism? But the answer to the question is negative.
Postmodernism, in an evident inconsistency, rejects some beliefs. It absolutely
denies the existence of a source of truth, morality, and intelligibility
distinct from man. That is to say it denies a Christian, Judaic or Islamic God.
There is also a more general reason for Christians to be wary of postmodernism.
Historically, the Christian intellectual tradition has, despite some noteworthy
exceptions, expressed confidence that the universe, under the guidance of a
supreme being, is intelligible. However, since the Renaissance, that confidence
in the world’s intelligibility has gradually eroded in Western intellectual
history. Postmodernism, in its denial of an absolute truth or of any ultimate
intelligible structure to reality, continues that erosion.

Richard Rorty is often cited as the most prominent philosophical defender of
postmodernism. Although he appears to prefer the description, "pragmatist" to
"postmodernist," he defends the basic postmodernist position as I have described
it. He insists that there is no "skyhook" which takes us out of our subjective
conditions to reveal a reality existing independently of our own minds or of
other human minds.{2} He agrees with Hillary Putnam that there is no "God’s eye
standpoint" that reveals reality in itself.{3} Each person interprets reality in
accordance with his own subjective condition. But Rorty does not argue for an
individualistic free-for-all notion of truth. He emphasizes the social influence
upon the individual and his beliefs. Truth, or what for Rorty substitutes for
it, is an intersubjective agreement among the members of a community.{4} That
intersubjective agreement permits the members of the community to speak a common
language and establish a commonly accepted reality. The end of inquiry, for
Rorty, is not the discovery or even the approximation of absolute truth but the
formulation of beliefs that further the solidarity of the community, or "to
reduce objectivity to solidarity."{5} He argues that once the notion of
objective truth is abandoned, one must choose between a self-defeating
relativism and ethnocentrism, neither of which can be justified in a manner that
is not circular. He responds that one "should grasp the ethnocentric horn of the
dilemma" and "privilege our own group."{6} As far as any new beliefs that we are
to consider, they must at least roughly cohere with those already held by the
community, or, as Rorty puts the point, "We want to be able . . . to justify
ourselves to our earlier selves. This preference is not built into us by human
nature. It is just the way we live now."{7}

Rorty is unclear concerning the nature of a community. It may include not only a
group of existing people but also historical or fictional characters. He is
somewhat more explicit concerning his own community however. He speaks of "the
community of the liberal intellectuals of the secular modern West,"{8} The ideal
of that community is the promotion of unforced general agreement among its
members with tolerance of disagreement. The solidarity of such a community would
lie in both the liberal beliefs that its members generally hold in common and in
its tolerant attitude.


II.

Rorty gives few examples of how we should go about establishing this solidarity.
One could imagine some though. For us westerners, belief in a caste system is
out of the question and belief in equality is essential. Solidarity with our
society demands a breaking down of all attitudes and beliefs that lead us to
treat one person as more intrinsically valuable than another. Consequently, we
can at least entertain the ethical systems of Kant and Rawls, and we must
support laws ensuring that no one is prevented from voting or in any other way
participating in our society as an equal.

But even when we argue for such admirable values, Rorty says that we cannot do
so because those values are absolutely correct. Nor must we argue for them on
logical grounds. To do so would be to admit objective value and truth. We must
argue for them only because they increase solidarity in our community.{9} This
means of arguing for a belief becomes especially troublesome when one considers
the many different communities in one complex society such as ours. Liberals,
conservatives, Christians, Muslims, capitalists, Marxists, etc. live together
and, on many issues, have divergent "webs of beliefs."{10} How are we to
converse on such issues if our aim is solidarity of each community rather than
agreement based upon reasons aiming at objective truth? Does our community
include all of these different beliefs or is a community defined by its beliefs?

I must admit that, on some issues our society behaves in a Rortian manner.
Consider, for example, the issue of global warming. One’s position on this issue
appears to depend more upon whether one belongs to a liberal or conservative
community rather than upon whether the earth’s temperature is rising because of
pollution. So also with other issues, such as whether Anita Hill or Paula Jones
was guilty of harassment or whether marijuana is medically useful. Rorty would,
it appears, welcome the tendency in these cases to ignore the truth or falsity
of what is under discussion in favor of deciding what best unifies one’s own.
However, in these cases, the replacement of objectivity with solidarity is
almost universally recognized as illegitimate and inconsistent with any
reasonable or generally accepted notion of truth. Rorty’s aim at solidarity as
the end of inquiry may as well function as an analysis of falsity, or of how we
ought not to settle upon a belief.

This substitution of solidarity for truth can lead to strange results. Suppose,
for example, that a patient is suffering from a potentially fatal disease that
is fully curable by antibiotics. In his society, such illnesses are thought to
be best treated by a witch doctor’s incantations and potions. A doctor, from
without that society, encourages him to seek conventional medical treatment, but
to do so would be inconsistent with the patient’s society. Would Rorty truly
argue that there is no objective truth to this issue? Would he argue that we
favor with the conventional treatment only because we have solidarity with a
different community? The issue is not which society to form solidarity with but
how to prevent the reality of the patient’s death.

Rorty does not claim that all societies are equal, so he might argue that since
the physicians society is better, he ought to be listened to. But what makes one
society better than another? Rorty has an answer to that question, but it does
not help him in this case. For Rorty, a society is better only if it approaches
his ideal more nearly. That ideal is the condition under which there is maximal
voluntary agreement together with some tolerated disagreement.{11} There is
nothing in the case to suggest that the physicians society meets this ideal any
more than the patient’s.

When such cases are brought to the attention of postmodernists, they commonly
respond by complaining that the case is bizarre. I respond that the case is not
bizarre, but fairly common. People often resist traditional medicine because of
religious or philosophical belies. The case is only rendered bizarre if one
accepts Rorty’s replacement of objective truth with solidarity. If Rorty’s
position is to be credible, it must apply to all cases, including the
aforementioned one.

But if one has little stomach for such cases, one can find still other evidences
that Rortian postmodernism is, ironically, inconsistent with the very western
liberal community in which Rorty professes to belong. Let us take, for example,
a very well established practice in most western legal systems: the protection
of a jury from prejudicial influence of the society as a whole. Jurors,
especially in well publicized cases, are purposely barred from communicating
with their communities specifically to avoid Rortian justice. If the aim of
inquiry in the legal system were solidarity with the community, jurors would be
encouraged to allow the society at large to influence them. The aim of the
generally accepted practice is to discover truth rather than to attain
solidarity. Rorty may object that, while the application of the rules governing
jury behavior may superficially conflict with community solidarity, the judicial
practice of handling juries in this way has been agreed to by the community and
thus expresses a solidarity in principle. However, the reason for this agreement
is not to establish solidarity but to devise rules that best enable us to
uncover the truth.

It may be objected that the law is a special case and should not be considered
representative of truth in general. However, the same problem arises in broader
areas as well. Consider, for example, the question that we as Christians are
often asked: Why do you believe in God? This is precisely the kind of general
issue that the postmodernist, Rortian concept of truth is supposed to enlighten.
Suppose that we answer in an honest and Rortian manner: I believe in God because
my community shares that belief as a source of solidarity. That answer will and
should evoke the response, "That is not a good reason to believe. You should
have a better one." The Rortian answer would not only bring a negative response
from those outside of the Christian community but also from members of that
community, themselves. Furthermore, the person giving the answer should hardly
be satisfied with it. His recognition of it would more likely reconsider his
belief than strengthen it.

Rorty is left in uncomfortable position. When one offers the best possible
Rortian reasons for a belief, they discredit it rather than support it. Knowing
this, the committed Rortian would disguise his reasons for believing in
something or recommending it by giving more convincing but disingenuous reasons.
Thus the Rortian is reduced to a fundamental dishonesty. He can only render his
beliefs credible to the community if he hides his ultimate reasons.

But if the Rortian insists that my examples are too carefully chosen and are not
representative of truth or reality as they are best understood, I must ask,
"Where are they understood in a Rortian, postmodernist manner?" Daily, we are
concerned with matters truth and reality. I, for example, am concerned about
whether my airplane will leave on time for my return home from this conference,
how my students are will do on their next exams, what the score in the baseball
playoff game is, etc. I may also be curious about facts that have no significant
bearing on my material condition or emotional state: How old are the Rocky
Mountains? How did Pluto become part of the solar system? Were there Irish monks
in North America before the Vikings? Rorty’s analysis applies not even remotely
to any of these issues about which I have expressed an interest. All are
concerned with what is true and real, but none have anything to do with
community solidarity. Rorty’s analysis is so restricted in its application that,
even if it is correct, it has no connection with truth in any ordinary sense but
only in some very limited theoretical sense. This is ironic since Rorty insists
that his analysis is pragmatic. It is doubly ironic when he claims to follow
Wittgenstein, who warned against analyzing concepts divorced from their
occurrence in ordinary language.

One might reply that my examples were ill chosen because they do not belong in
the area of beliefs that Rorty intends to be decided by community solidarity.
Konstantin Kolenda attempts to support Rorty on this issue in Rorty’s Humanistic
Pragmatism.{12} He argues that the simple truths to which I refer in my examples
are of a different sort from the more controversial and perhaps more general
ones that Rorty declares to be functions of solidarity. These
"commonsense-factual beliefs" are "unquestioned by participants in a given
linguistic community."{13} That is to say, they are not controversial because
everyone agrees with them. But I believe that those statements are
philosophically important. They invite the question, "Why does everyone agree
with them?" If the answer is that they are obviously true, it suggests that
there is an objective truth, and it applies to an overwhelming number of
statements. If they are true only because, for some unknown reason, people
decide to call them true, then they are not of a separate order at all and are
subject to the same process of inquiry that Rorty applies to the more
philosophically grand statements: They are, as I supposed when initially
discussing them, allegedly matters expressing and promoting solidarity.

It seems that when statements are clear counterexamples to his theory that
solidarity determines whatever passes for truth, Rorty or his supporters merely
try to dismiss the statements as irrelevant to his main point. He places them in
a different "safe" category of noncontroversial truth, drawing a clear line
between the philosophical and the controversial. So long as he does this, he has
an escape hatch to avoid counterexamples. This enables Rorty also to evade the
possibility of refutation. If an issue is controversial, its controversial
nature ensures that no one is in possession of objective facts to decide it.
Rorty can then say with confidence that it is not decided factually but by
considerations of solidarity with one community or another. But if an issue is
clearly decided, its noncontroversial nature makes it "nonphilosophical"; he can
simply put it in the "safe" category, and the issue becomes off-limits.

But beyond the evident question-begging is another problem for Rorty. These
allegedly noncontroversial statements are subject to the same arguments against
objective truth as the philosophical ones. His arguments do not show that there
are two kinds of truth but one. All truths for Rorty are equally lacking in
objectivity.

The nearest to an explanation of why we should set apart our "noncontroversial"
"nonphilosophical" beliefs is that they are unreflective behaviors as opposed to
more contemplative broad perspectives. For example, upon learning how long the
bus ride from Denver to Boulder is, prospective commuters between those cities
act in a manner different in which they otherwise would have. But this account
does not apply to all cases. When I learn how old the Rocky mountains are or how
Pluto became part of the solar system, I doubt that my behavior will change at
all, unless one considers my answering of questions by saying, "The Rocky
mountains are X years old" to be behavior. But even if behavior is construed so
broadly, we are left with the question of what causes the behavior. If Rorty
answers with reference to a world existing independently of human beings, he
contradicts his basic claim that we cannot speak or refer to such a world. If he
reverts back to the influence of the community, then he is forced back to the
prior, enigmatic opinion, that even these noncontroversial issues are decided by
community solidarity.

How is Rorty led to these strange and esoteric conclusions about truth and
reality? Among Rorty’s writings, I find three prevalent and recurring forms of
argument, the first of which is an he oft-quoted linguistic argument in
Contingency, Law, and Solidarity:

> To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no
> sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages,
> and that human languages are human creations.

Truth cannot be out there— cannot exist independently of the mind — because
sentences cannot so exist, or be out there.{14}

And then, somewhat paradoxically,

> The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only
> descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own --unaided
> by the describing activities of a human being — cannot.{15}

Rorty’s argument, as so stated, is at least as old as the pre-Socratic Sophists
and, confuses an allegedly necessary condition with a sufficient condition. The
argument may be put this way: "True" is a modifier that describes only
sentences, so where there is no sentence there is not truth. But even if we
grant that only sentences can be true, it does not follow that a sentence alone
is sufficient for truth. "Happy" can only describe a sentient being, but the
mere existence of the sentient being does not entail that he is happy. The
supposition that only sentences can be true does not remove the need for some
other nonlinguistic condition to render the sentence true.

Nor is it even clear that the existence of a sentence is necessary for truth. I
will borrow from Aristotle and Berkeley to develop this point. Consider the
description "green," when applied to a scarf. "Green" is a word and therefore
can only make sense in a linguistic context. We may then ask when the linguistic
expression, "My scarf is green" is true. In a technical sense, the scarf is not
green when it is in the closet with the light turned off and with no one
observing it. We may, however, say that it is potentially green, because if
anyone were to

observe it, it would appear green. In common discourse, we say that it is green,
dropping the "potentially," for evident linguistic reasons. Now let us consider
the more complex sentence, "The sentence, "My scarf is green is true." " In a
technical sense, the sentence cannot be true if it is not uttered, written, or
at least thought about, because it would not exist in order to be true. However,
if all of the external conditions obtain, i.e., I have a green scarf, we may say
that the sentence "The sentence, "My scarf is green is true" is true in a
potential sense because if someone were to utter it, it would be true. But as
before, we could easily drop the "potentially" as linguistically unnecessary.

The point may be broadened to cover the truth of events that existed before
language or independently of language. If no language existed when dinosaurs
did, we could still say that the statement "Dinosaurs exist" would still have
been true, in the potential sense, at the time of dinosaurs because if a
language like ours had existed, the statement, "Dinosaurs exist" would have been
true. The same general argument would show that the statement would be true, in
the same potential sense, even if beings capable of language never existed. The
existence of actual utterances is necessary for truth only in the technical
sense in which my scarf can be green only when someone is looking at it.

There is a second discernable argument that appears, explicitly or implicitly in
several of Rorty’s writings. I summarize the argument, as best I can render it
in the following form:

1. All human inquiry, thought and belief occurs in language. [In Konstantin
Kolenda’s words, "all phenomena are relative to the language in which the are
described."]{16}

2. All language is entirely culturally determined.

Conclusion: There is no objective human inquiry thought or belief.

Both of the premises are questionable, though the first has widespread support
among Wittgensteinians and other linguistic philosophers. The second, though,
upon close examination, renders the argument circular. To say that all language
is entirely culturally determined is to assume that it is in no way determined
by external reality. But that is precisely the issue in question.

Rorty has a third, perhaps more powerful argument, He challenges those who
believe in an objective reality to establish knowledge of it. He points out that
there is always a gap between our sense experience and the reality that is
purported to exist. He argues that Descartes was unable to bridge that gap by
means of reason any more than Hume could bridge it by experience.{17} Rorty also
points out that we cannot escape our linguistic heritage when we examine our
world. We see the world through a conceptual framework imposed by language, so
even if other skeptical doubts are put to rest, our knowledge of an alleged
external reality is obscured linguistically. Furthermore, using Wittgenstein’s
observation that language cannot describe its own limits, Rorty argues that we
cannot, in language, describe a reality beyond language.{18} Like Descartes, he
points out that there is always a gap between our impressions of reality and
reality itself. For this reason, I call this Rorty’s anti-Cartesian argument. He
implicitly asks in several ways, some involving perception and some involving
language, how we can refute skepticism. Because we cannot, he argues, we must
reject the traditional concept of reality.{19} David Hiley thus refers to Rorty
as a Pyrrhonist, or thoroughgoing skeptic.{20}

I will not presume to refute skepticism. Philosophers have been trying to do so
for centuries, and I doubt that I will succeed. However, I ask, "Why need we
refute skepticism?" In my seemingly flippant response, I express the suggestion
that Rorty is a Cartesian in spite of himself. To clarify this point, let me
express my understanding of the central effect of Descartes upon philosophic
history.{21}

In his Meditations, Descartes gives birth to modern philosophy by asking what he
can know with certainty.{22} In doing so, he reordered the questions that the
outstanding philosophers that preceded him had asked. Plato, Aristotle,
Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and others of the philosophical tradition asked
first, "What is real?" then "How do I know reality?" and finally, "How can I be
certain of what I know?" By asking "What is real?" before asking "How do I know
reality?" one suggests that there may be a reality about which we can have
beliefs, opinions and knowledge, but about which we may be, at least in part,
ignorant. By asking "How do I know reality?" before "How can I be certain of
what I know?" one suggests that we can know things even if we are not absolutely
certain of them. Ordering the questions in that manner permits us to suppose
that there is a knowable though not fully understood reality that we can discuss
even without the benefit of certainty. But Descartes put the third question
first and considered it identical to the second. Although he thought that he had
answered both sufficiently, later philosophers, especially empiricists, thought
that he had failed. But, if the questions are ordered as Descartes ordered them,
the failure to attain certainty, and thus the failure to answer the first of his
questions, nullifies all claims to knowledge. In turn, the inability to assert
knowledge claims precludes discussion of the once primary but now tertiary issue
of what constitutes the real. Descartes’ quest for certainty has thus given us a
fixation with doubt and skepticism.

It is in this important sense that I consider Rorty modern rather than "post"
modern and a Cartesian rather than an anti-Cartesian. He is led to his so-called
postmodernism by adopting the context of Descartes, the father of modern
philosophy.{23} David Hall, among others appears to agree with the
characterization of Rorty as modern rather than postmodern, citing Rorty’s own
more recent attempts to distinguish himself from the postmodern movement, though
perhaps for reasons different from mine.{24}


III.

How, then, should we, as Christians, respond to Rorty and this postmodernism? I
answer that we should not bother responding. Postmodernism is irrational and
will fall of its own weight. It is the latest in a list of modern — not post
modern — movements that have short life spans. Logical positivism, logical
atomism, and sense-datum theory are glaring examples of virtually dead theories
that were once considered the final answer. Today, we witness the continuing
decline of existentialism, phenomenology, Wittgensteinianism, and behaviorism.
All of these are unable to sustain themselves upon close scrutiny. All have
roots in the Cartesian insistence that we cannot know what we cannot prove.
Postmodernism is only the latest variation on the old theme.

But while I am not concerned about Rorty and postmodernism, I think that we
ought to be very concerned about that old theme. In placing our questions in
Cartesian order, I believe that we are doomed to such dead-end philosophies. I
suggest that we, as Christian scholars, return the questions to their original
order. We must answer, first, the question "What is real?", then "How do I know
reality?", and only then, "How can I be certain of what I know?" In ordering the
questions in this way, we acknowledge that there is a reality that we do not and
perhaps cannot know but that we can believe in, argue for, and, if necessary,
assume. Then we can ask the more limited question, "How do I know reality?", but
distinguish it, as G. E. Moore did, from any quest for Cartesian certainty.{25}
That quest, so central to the understanding of modern thought, should be reduced
to the level of an interesting and perhaps informative philosophical exercise.

But what should we, as Christian scholars, say about this ultimate reality that
may be beyond both knowledge and certainty? Here I think that we should be very
careful and resist our first inclinations. We should not, I believe, begin, in
our scholarly life, with an overly Christian or even essentially theistic
supposition. If we take, as our starting point, the belief in a Trinitarian,
personal God, we may become Rortian postmodernist, in practice if not in theory.
We are free as human beings to make such a belief the starting point of our
lives, but as scholars, if we become Christian-only scholars rather than
scholars who are Christians, we speak only to ourselves and replace the quest
for truth with Christian solidarity. I do not object to our ever engaging in
peculiarly Christian scholarship, but I do not believe that it should be the
only kind or even necessarily the central kind of scholarship for all Christian
scholars. I therefore warn against an extreme interpretation of Dr. Plantinga’s
essay, "Advice to Christian Philosophers." Although Dr. Plantinga makes clear
that philosophers should not isolate themselves from the philosophical
community, one of his statements, in particular, if taken out of context, could
suggest the postmodernism-in-practice that I fear:

> What they [Christian philosophers] should have said to the positivists is:
> "Your criterion is mistaken: for such statements as 'God loves us' and 'God
> created the heavens and the earth' are clearly meaningful; so if they aren't
> verifiable in your sense, then it is false that all and only statements
> verifiable in that sense are meaningful." What was needed here was less
> accommodation to current fashion and more Christian self-confidence: Christian
> theism is true; if Christian theism is true, then the verifiability criterion
> is false; so the verifiability criterion is false.{26}

I would take issue with the quoted passage if it is taken, as I assume Dr.
Plantinga did not intend it, as an absolute rejection of non-Christian views
simply because they are inconsistent with Christianity. I prefer to interpret
the quotation in a manner more compatible with my own view. Under this
interpretation, one would argue against the positivist on the basis of good
counterexamples.

Yet we are still in an apparent dilemma. What must we suppose concerning this
unprovable reality in order to remain Christian scholars but not merely
instruments of solidarity in the Christian community? I suggest that our
scholarly belief concerning reality beyond proof is the exact opposite of that
of the postmodernist. I suggest that as scholars and Christians we begin with
the belief that there is absolute truth and that the universe is intelligible.
This belief is consistent with the Christian perspective but also with that of
many other religious and philosophical traditions. From this foundation, we can
develop our own specific theories and beliefs, but we will at least be
addressing an intellectual community wider than our own. This will give us two
important advantages: It will enable us to influence a greater number of
scholars, and it will open us to welcome criticism that can only benefit our
work.

However, we still cannot choose a perspective merely because it suits us, even
if it is compatible with views other than our own. The broader scope of the
belief does not preclude its choice as arbitrary. We must answer the questions,
"Why suppose that there is absolute truth and that the world is intelligible?
What reasons can one give to support that belief, other than that it coincides
with what you and your community wish to believe?"

We cannot prove the truth of this belief, and we ought not to try. I have
already placed it in the category of truths that we cannot establish with
certainty. However, that is not to say that we cannot give good reasons for it.
Here, Rorty and postmodernism come to us as friends disguised as enemies. They
are our reason. Rorty has done a remarkable job of demonstrating the logical
consequences of rejecting our assumption. The impartial observer is faced with
the choice between an intelligible world that makes sense and postmodernist
nonsense. There is little hope of escaping to another modernist, postmodernist,
or post-postmodernist movement, for it, too, will be equally empty if it rejects
our assumptions. David Hume showed, as well as any philosopher can, that when
one makes no assumptions, all conclusions are empty. If one does not assume
objective truth and an intelligible world, one will find only doubt and
meaninglessness. If such are the alternatives that follow from rejecting our
assumptions, we need no apology for our choice and can claim it to be reasonable
rather than arbitrary. If the choice is made clear, the community of reasonable
human beings will solidly agree with us, not because they see solidarity in our
position but because they see truth in it.


ENDNOTES

{1} Grenz, S. J., A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids: Cambridge University
Press, 1995), p. 8.

{2} Rorty, Richard, "Introduction," Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 13.

{3} Rorty, "Introduction,", p. 14.

{4} Rorty, Richard, "Solidarity or Objectivity," Objectivity, Relativism, and
Truth, p21.

{5} Rorty, "Solidarity or Objectivity," p. 22.

{6} Rorty, "Solidarity or Objectivity," p. 29.

{7} Rorty, "Solidarity or Objectivity," p. 29.

{8} Rorty, "Solidarity or Objectivity," p 29.

{9} Rorty, "Solidarity or Objectivity," p33.

{10} Rorty, Richard, "Inquiry as Recontextualization: An Anti-dualist Account of
Interpretation," Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, p. 93.

{11} Rorty, Richard, "Science as solidarity," Objectivity, Relativism, and
Truth, p. 38-39.

{12} Kolenda, K. Rorty’s Humanistic Pragmatism (Tampa: University of South
Florida Press, 1990).

{13} Kolenda, p. 9.

{14} Rorty, Richard, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), p. 5.

{15} Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p5.

{16} Kolenda, p 9.

{17} Rorty, Richaard, "Priority of Democracy to Philosophy." Objectivity,
Relativism, and Truth, p. 189.

{18} Rorty, Richard, "Is natural science a natural kind?" Objectivity,
Relativism, and Truth, p. 59.

{19} Rorty, Richard, "Introduction," Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, p. 13;
"Solidarity or Objectivity," Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, p. 22-23.

{20} Hiley, David R., Philosophy in Question:Essays on a Pyrrhonic Theme,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 153.

{21} See also Sire, James W., The Universe Next Door: a Basic World View Catalog
(Downers Grove, Ill. : InterVarsity Press, 1988) p. 176-177.

{22} Descartes, Rene, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1979.

{23}. Sire, 173-177.

{24} Hall, D. L., Richard Rorty : Prophet and Poet of the New Pragmatism (Albany
: State University of New York Press, 1994).

{25} Moore, G. E., "A Defense of Common Sense," Contemporary British Philosophy,
ed. J. H. Muirhead (London:Macmillan, 1925), pp. 192-223.

{26} Plantinga, Alvin, "Advice to Christian Philosophers," Faith and Philosophy
I, 3 (July 1984) p. 258.