Introduction

Even to the most sceptical mind, there is little doubt that over the past thirty years Western society has, incrementally, witnessed advances to understanding how (in)justice is articulated in culture. Some of these injustices have been brought from darkness into the light, and as a consequence spoken, challenged, debated, argued, and changed. This has, in turn, led to progress over issues of tolerance (not as a "putting up with" but, rather, as open acceptance for difference) and appreciation for diversity. Caution, without a doubt, must nevertheless be exercised in this evaluation. With every move forward on issues of human rights and dignity there has been resistance to advancement in social change.

There are many levels on which this tension is exhibited. Focussing on the university one may select from numerous disciplines and perspectives where the theoretical work that gives way to social change is performed, debated, resisted, and exerted. This change is often a forced change-transition which is eventually made public, dramatically exposed through the proliferation of the, so-called, culture wars.

The purpose of this paper is to focus attention on how this tension is exhibited in the context of contemporary philosophy, particularly in metaethics. I address this topic by examining traditional philosophy's metaethical approach to issues of social change and the challenge to this approach brought about by the philosopher Richard Rorty 2. In the first part of this paper, I will present the moral realist's approach to ethics. In part two, I will present Rorty's re-description of philosophy which, in part three, I will use as a framework which, I suggest, might be useful deployed in a search for ethics in the post-Philosophical sense. Here I will discuss why this latter view of philosophy, specifically in regard to doing ethics, has greater possibility for successfully bringing about social change.

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I

The moral realist argues that "the realm of moral values and norms is wider than our knowledge of it and that their validity is not dependent on individual attitudes or social contracts." 4 The ethical, so the story goes, cannot be reduced merely to the values, beliefs, or attitudes of the moral agent. As one theorist puts it:

While there are different versions of moral realism (a red flag to the cautious) ranging from Kant 6, to Scheler 7, to the classical intuitionists 8,

This way of setting up the problem begs the question from the very beginning. 11 Why believe, as a starting assumption, that moral standards are somehow beyond the decision making process of the moral agent? Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, what does it really mean to assert that there exists a moral reality somehow distinct from human agency? That the ethically true could exist without anyone knowing it? 12 Moreover, if such a realm (this way of speaking naturally conjures up Platonism) is something we are to somehow come in contact with to be moral, why does moral realism give way to different versions and different norms? 13 My hunch at this point is that in the end the moral realist will ultimately fall back on ad hominem - accusations that one's opponent in the discussion over ethics cannot agree because he or she has some sort of cognitive, psychological, or spiritual (or a little of each) malfunction which impedes seeing moral truth. 14

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II

The systematic philosopher typically takes the success gained in one area of inquiry and attempts to apply this success to all other areas of culture. With proper epistemological understanding, so the story goes, where there was once superstition and convention there will be objectivity and rationality:

In contrast to this mainstream, or systematic view of philosophy, there is a peripheral view of philosophy. Those philosophers on the borders of traditional philosophy are described by Rorty as edifying philosophers. The edifying philosopher has a general distrust for taking a methodology that has granted success in one discipline and applying it, as a template, to another discipline. Rorty comments further that:

Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger are archetypical of the edifying philosopher of the twentieth-century. These three philosophers in particular "hammer away at the holistic point that words take their meanings from other words rather than by virtue of their representative character, and the corollary that vocabularies acquire their privileges from [those] who use them rather than from their transparency to the real." 19 Herein lies the philosophical difference between systematic philosophers and edifying philosophers. The former attempt to represent their beliefs while the latter try to understand language within a holistic scheme.

Edifying philosophers drop the idea of robust representation. 20 The implications for moral realism are clear. Edifying philosophers contend that sentences are connected, not to the world, but to other sentences. "They do not accept the Cartesian-Kantian picture presupposed by the idea of 'our minds' or 'our language' as an 'inside' which can be contrasted to something (perhaps something very different) 'outside'." 21 As a result of this view of philosophy and language, edifying philosophers, like Wittgenstein and Heidegger 22, do not wish to be thought of as philosophers as having views about how things are. 23 They do not conceive their philosophical assignment as having to represent the world, in some deep sense, accurately, or as it is "in itself". By problematizing traditional or systematic philosophy, especially the philosophical fixation to represent reality, the picture of the philosopher as cultural overseer falls apart. "To drop the notion of the philosopher as knowing something about knowing which nobody else knows so well would be to drop the notion that [the voice of the philosopher] always has an overriding claim on the attention of the other participants in the conversation." 24

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III

Insofar as truth is concerned, Rorty admits his debt to Donald Davidson who convinced him that "nobody should even try to specify the nature of truth." Rorty goes on to note that "Davidson has helped me realize that the very absoluteness of truth is a good reason for thinking 'true' indefinable and for thinking that no theory of the nature of truth is possible. It is only the relative about which there is anything to say." 25 Bereft, then, of the traditional definitions of truth as correspondence and objectivity, how are we to proceed in doing ethics based upon on the post-Philosophical account?

As an antirepresentationalist Rorty desires to reduce issues of representation and objectivity to solidarity. If one does speak of objectivity it should not be an objectivity that attempts to move outside one's own society to glimpse "the intrinsic nature of moral reality." Objectivity should, rather, be understood as the attempt to extend an intersubjective agreement as far as possible: the desire "to extend the reference of 'us' as far as we can." 26 Those who do this are pragmatists. "Within the philosophical community, they are best known as holists." 27 Rejecting both metaphysics and epistemology, pragmatists view truth in William James' sense of "what is good for us to believe." 28 Rorty juxtapositions this image of truth against the definition of truth as the "accurate representation of reality." 29 Solidarity is the goal for the pragmatist. Instead of being preoccupied with the traditional concepts of objectivity and representation, attention is turned toward the needs of democratic society. This is Dewey's view of a society - one that is democratic, progressive, and pluralist. 30 The society endeavours to work toward intersubjective agreement and novelty. Rorty goes on to explain:

But without a certain epistemological foundation, or some appeal to objective truth, should we not be filled with dread? - the dread that gives way to what Bernstein describes as "Cartesian anxiety" - "the dread of madness and chaos where nothing is fixed, where we can neither touch bottom nor support ourselves on the surface." 32 Here is the anxiety that unless we have The Truth we will have nothing to defend ourselves with when 'the Nazis come marching in'(an image commonly invoked).

But does this account of the philosophical task pave the way to relativism33 of the kinds one hears from students in an introduction to philosophy undergraduate course - typically articulated as "you have your truth, and I have mine". By removing truth and objectivity from our language, is totalitarianism around the corner? Without a robust definition of truth how does one ultimately refute, for example, the Nazi?

Posing the questions in this manner, Rorty contends, begs further theoretical questions. Having abandoned the language of the realist, the pragmatist cannot be forced to supply answers presupposed from within the realist's framework. Rorty, in fact, puts a twist on this inquiry by saying that pragmatists do not try to argue against the realists' answers, but against their questions. "Unless one were worried about the really real, unless one had already bought in on Plato's claim that degrees of certainty, or of centrality to our belief systems, were correlated with different relations to reality" 34 one would be hard pressed to make sense of these questions. Moreover, while the pragmatist will not speak of refuting Nazi's or fascists with the truth, it is deceptive to think that people of this sort need only be convinced of the truth to change their ways or that somehow the truth is needed to protect the society from their ideas. 35 It should be pointed out, as well, that history shows those who are utterly convinced that they have the "truth"êê to be those most likely to perpetrate crimes against humanity. As Paul Ricoeur has stated:

Rien ne prête plus à l'imposture que l'idée de totalité . On a trop vite dit: elle est ici, elle est là ; elle est Esprit, elle est Nature, elle est Histoire; la violence n'est pas loin; d'abord la violence sur les faits et bientôt la violence sur les hommes, si par surcroit le philosophe de la totalité ‚ a pouvoir sur les hommes. 36

Rorty contends that notions like "unforced agreement" and "free and open encounter" should not only replace disputes as the above, but also more convoluted and controversial notions such as "the will of God," "the moral law," "what our beliefs are trying to represent accurately," and "what makes our beliefs true." 37 Once this substitution is made the difference between a society that praises tolerance, open dialogue, and the free-exchange of ideas obtains its own justification. Admittedly, neither fascists nor fundamentalists may be convinced easily of the errors of their ways. But this is similarly the case with the pragmatist's account and on the realist's account of truth. 38

In conclusion, Rorty notes that "[m]oral progress is a matter of wider and wider sympathy. It is not a matter of rising above the sentimental to the ration al. Nor is it a matter of appealing from lower and corrupt local courts to a higher court which administers an ahistorical, non-local, transcultural moral law . . . [Y]ou cannot aim at moral perfection, but you can aim at taking more people's needs into account than you did previously." 39

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Conclusion

The moral realist has claimed that there is a difference between our beliefs about right and wrong, what can be considered just or unjust, racist or sexist, and what is in reality, right and wrong, just and unjust. We must, according to the realist's account, show how our beliefs and opinions correspond with, or in some manner mirror, moral reality.

Rorty, by contrast, argues that instead of trying to provide a metaphysical foundation for our sense of community we should "substitute a 'merely' ethical foundation for our sense of community . . . or, better, that we think of our sense of community as having no foundation except shared hope and the trust created by such sharing . . . ." 40 Rorty is one in a long line of philosophers who wants to unmask the pretension behind traditional philosophy that gives way to the moral realist's claim that only by reflecting on "moral reality" will our ethical beliefs be dependable. Historically, when this argument is made by the philosopher, theologian, or scientist, the rights of women, homosexuals, people of colour, the infirm, the Other are brushed aside in favour of "human nature", "God's design", "God's Will" or, in short, "The Truth". As Rorty has insightfully noted:

Bibliography

Notes

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