This is where Rorty got his tit in a ringer. This is from the chapter "Feminism and Pragmatism" (appropriate use of metaphor by moi, no?) in Truth and Progress:
On a Deweyan view...the enslavement of one human tribe or race by another or of human females by human males, is not an intrinsic evil.
*wince*
See, there is an absence of morality in Rorty, an amorality, that is startling amidst all the refreshment. He explains (and digs the hole deeper),
The latter is a rejected good, rejected on the basis of the greater good that feminism is presently making imaginable. The claim that this good is greater is like the claim that mammals are preferable to reptiles, or Aryans to Jews; it is an ethnocentric claim made from the point of view of a given cluster of genes or memes. There is no larger entity which stands behind that cluster and makes its claim true (or makes some contradictory claim true).
Enslavement is merely a "rejected good"! Not wrong, period, in fact a "good" (!) that is rejected! Further, "the claim" that feminism is a "greater good" than female enslavement is just "ethnocentric" bullshit made from a given point of view. There is "no larger entity," that is no God, no Morality, that makes freedom "greater" than enslavement!
I certainly read most if not all of Truth and Progress, and I read "Feminism and Pragmatism" carefully and more than once for it is heavily underlined (in different colored ink, too) and margin-noted by moi. So: Eighteen pages after the above excerpt is this (accompanied by two big "?" in the margin, "But see p. 320" (black ink) "See p. 4, 86" (pencil) and "This is a mixing of 2 different concepts! Truth (empirical) and goodness (normative). Slavery is,"(red ink, at the bottom;didn't finish the thought))))).
It was, of course, true in earlier times that women should not have been oppressed, just as it was true before Newton said so that gravitational attraction accounted for the movements of the planets. But, despite what Scripture says, truth will not necessarily prevail.42
42 Pragmatists need not deny that true sentences are always true (as I have, unfortunately, suggested in the past that they might...Stout (Ethics after Babel, chap. 11) rightly rebukes me for these suggestions and says that pragmatists should agree with everybody else that "Slavery is absolutely wrong" has always been true--even in periods when this sentence would have sounded to crazy to everybody concerned, even slaves (who hoped that their fellow tribespeople would return in force and enslave their present masters). All that pragmatists need is the claim that this sentence is not made true by something other than the beliefs we would use to support it--and, in particular, not by something like the Nature of Human Beings.
(emphasis in original, pp 225-6)
I don't know how Rorty reconciles what he writes at top with what he writes immediately above. "On a Deweyian view" but not a Rortian view? I don't think so. On the "mixing" of truth and goodness? But he uses "true" in the first as well as the second. I don't know if this gets him out of the problem but in both passages he asserts, in effect, "Fine! It's true, but there's still no God that makes it true!" No "Nature of Human Beings" either. See, he desperately wants to avoid "mirroring." Human beings are not made in God's image, there is no extra-human source, no meta-morality that makes our actions "true" or "good." Then what makes "Slavery is absolutely wrong" true? He doesn't have a satisfactory answer to that, in my opinion.
You see in this footnote though Rorty's generous-heartedness, his openness to criticism. He admits Stout "rightly rebuked me".
On a Deweyan view...the enslavement of one human tribe or race by another or of human females by human males, is not an intrinsic evil.
*wince*
See, there is an absence of morality in Rorty, an amorality, that is startling amidst all the refreshment. He explains (and digs the hole deeper),
The latter is a rejected good, rejected on the basis of the greater good that feminism is presently making imaginable. The claim that this good is greater is like the claim that mammals are preferable to reptiles, or Aryans to Jews; it is an ethnocentric claim made from the point of view of a given cluster of genes or memes. There is no larger entity which stands behind that cluster and makes its claim true (or makes some contradictory claim true).
Enslavement is merely a "rejected good"! Not wrong, period, in fact a "good" (!) that is rejected! Further, "the claim" that feminism is a "greater good" than female enslavement is just "ethnocentric" bullshit made from a given point of view. There is "no larger entity," that is no God, no Morality, that makes freedom "greater" than enslavement!
I certainly read most if not all of Truth and Progress, and I read "Feminism and Pragmatism" carefully and more than once for it is heavily underlined (in different colored ink, too) and margin-noted by moi. So: Eighteen pages after the above excerpt is this (accompanied by two big "?" in the margin, "But see p. 320" (black ink) "See p. 4, 86" (pencil) and "This is a mixing of 2 different concepts! Truth (empirical) and goodness (normative). Slavery is,"(red ink, at the bottom;didn't finish the thought))))).
It was, of course, true in earlier times that women should not have been oppressed, just as it was true before Newton said so that gravitational attraction accounted for the movements of the planets. But, despite what Scripture says, truth will not necessarily prevail.42
42 Pragmatists need not deny that true sentences are always true (as I have, unfortunately, suggested in the past that they might...Stout (Ethics after Babel, chap. 11) rightly rebukes me for these suggestions and says that pragmatists should agree with everybody else that "Slavery is absolutely wrong" has always been true--even in periods when this sentence would have sounded to crazy to everybody concerned, even slaves (who hoped that their fellow tribespeople would return in force and enslave their present masters). All that pragmatists need is the claim that this sentence is not made true by something other than the beliefs we would use to support it--and, in particular, not by something like the Nature of Human Beings.
(emphasis in original, pp 225-6)
I don't know how Rorty reconciles what he writes at top with what he writes immediately above. "On a Deweyian view" but not a Rortian view? I don't think so. On the "mixing" of truth and goodness? But he uses "true" in the first as well as the second. I don't know if this gets him out of the problem but in both passages he asserts, in effect, "Fine! It's true, but there's still no God that makes it true!" No "Nature of Human Beings" either. See, he desperately wants to avoid "mirroring." Human beings are not made in God's image, there is no extra-human source, no meta-morality that makes our actions "true" or "good." Then what makes "Slavery is absolutely wrong" true? He doesn't have a satisfactory answer to that, in my opinion.
You see in this footnote though Rorty's generous-heartedness, his openness to criticism. He admits Stout "rightly rebuked me".
