could you explain further? he's not a philosopher, but a litcritter, right? i'd say it's best to read fish out of the pragmatist tradition anyway. what he says reminds me of what Richard Bernstein, in _The New Constellation_, calls engaged fallibilistic pluralism. bernstein also wrote a pretty good book on the topic, _Beyond Objectivism and Relativism_. He 'smuch better than Rorty, that's for sure
Engaged Fallibilistic Pluralism:
1. requires responsibility for taking our fallibility seriously. we must be committed to our reasoned argument, but willing to listen to others. and we must be willing to listen without denying the otherness of those others.
2. respecting and listening to others would require that we avoid relentlessly translating what they say into our own all too familiar vocabularies
3. it would demand that we don't condemn their voices as too obscure or trivial
4. embracing the fact that there is no firm foundational ground to stand on. there are no safe, rationalized procedures to fall back on in order to adjudicate disagreements.
5. any appeal to a community of scholars is an ethical appeal, a normative ideal.
6. the 'we' of that community is an *achievement* and there is no need for dialogical engagement that requires or demands agreement. we might need to recognize that understanding doesn't preclude disagreement
7. the assumption, then, is that we all have something to contribute and, as such, our duty is to try to understand the other's position in the strongest possible way, rather than searching out their weaknesses, the gaps and fissures in their reasoned positions.