here's my parody of Richard Rorty. I hope it's good for a laugh or two. Justin liked it!
kelley: Richard, you engage in the the performative contradiction of relativism. relativism is parasitic on objectivism--there is no escape.
rorty: puhLEEEEEASE. sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. the charge of relativism doesn't bother me because i don't buy it in the first place. your problem, kelley, is that you're a closet objectivist and i'm not. nyeh, nyeh.
kelley: i am not! prove it!
rorty: see what i mean.
kelley: oh, come on. stop playing games.
rorty: what's wrong with games kelley? see, you think there is something beside language games, you objectivist you.
kelley: no, i'm not an objectivist. i am simply arguing that even your sophisticated relativism requires the existence of objectivism, even if only by incessantly redescribing your interlocutors as objectivist, you require the existence of objectivism in order to argue for the superiority of your approach.
rorty: you got it. right on kiddo. redescription, that's where it's at babe. see, this is the deal: in order to get out of the aporia of modernity we have to stop using the language of modernity. just say no to Objectivity, to Truth, to Universalism. It's all in our language man, if we stop using the language, then we'll stop being enlightenment modernists and things will be all better.
kelley: but isn't this universalizing. isn't there a 'we' buried in there? isn't there a 'should' lurking in there too?
rorty: so? of course there is, i'm only human and this is what humans do...
kelley: but...
rorty: see, you're doing it.
kelley: what do you mean?
rorty: you're going to argue for a position when, ultimately, all you have to base your position on is your steadfast belief that this is the way it is and this is what you believe and this is where you are going to stand.
kelley: that's ethnocentric. what if i believe that coldly calculating cruelty is a good thing?
rorty: then you are wrong. and no, i don't have any argument whatsoever to ensure that i'm more right than you are. but, at least i have given up on the vocabulary of the enlightenment and don't insist on such as you do. i can outflank you each and every time because i can show you how your vocabulary and your objections rest on bad enlightenment thinking.
kelley: oh now come on, aren't you being a little cocky here.
rorty: sure am. wanna make something of it?
don't bother.
there is nothing you can do to persuade me that coldly calculating cruelty is good. i simply believe that it's wrong and yes i know that this is an entirely historically contingent claim. i stand here. this is where i am. you can join me if you'd like. or not. socialization goes all the way down, sweetheart, and i can't get outside of it to embrace your good society because i'm a liberal.
kelley: now rick, buddy, aren't you advocating a philosophical anthropology of human nature here. humans are ethnocentric, steadfast in their beliefs because they are socialized all the way down, and yet! they continually weave and reweave themselves out of the experiences they find around them, and so forth? isn't this a form of universalism in its own right, isn't it a claim made despite your attack on previous form of philosophical anthropology? moreover, i think you slide back and forth between arguing that you can rationally and foundationally justify your claims and arguing that all we can give are historically contingent reasons and that's all we need to give, we need nothing more. now this latter position i can abide by, but stop sliding over to foundationalism in your haste and passion to insist that you're right. you are, indeed, saying that we can make better and worse judgments, distinctions, arguments.
rorty: yes, that's right kiddo.
kelley: well exactly how do you make these judgments, what criteria do you use?
rorty: oh i can spell them out for you, but ultimately you can only agree to them if they feel right to you and if you find them attractive. when you find that some beliefs are attractive and right, then you, like me, will find them worth fighting for and dying for, even if you know that there are only contingent, accidental reasons for why you believe in them. an irony, tis true.
kelley: so why are we having this convo at all rick?
rorty: because once you recognize this you've embraced fallibilism then you will recognize that your beliefs are contingent, ultimately. even tho you hold them dear, you will nevertheless be open to persuasion. and because you recognize this in yourself, you will see it, or at least expect it, in me. so we will set about trying to rationally persuade one another. the irony is that you and i both know that there is no way to show that rational persuasion is different from other kinds of persuasion. this is why we're ironic liberal humanists and we must be so in a liberal utopia.
kelley: isn't that a universalist claim?
rorty: tut tut, you're doing it again.
kelley: what about power rick? you're a big hotshot philosopher, so i'm bound to find it difficult to argue with you. you have more status and power than i have.
rorty: i'd say that's your problem, then. besides, you've been arguing with me all along.
kelley: i don't think this is a good enough response, this is just an evasion....
rorty: see, you're arguing with me, so why are you worrying about power? see, this is what i mean. we're humans and so we believe firmly in the strength of our convictions, even if we ironically recognize how fragile they are. so the heart of liberalism is that it rests on this sort of public debate in which we are open to rational persuasion precisely because we're liberal ironists who don't believe in anything behind history.
kelley: but rick, why bother? why bother if you keep saying there are no criteria by which to judge better and worse arguments? why bother if all we can do is dig in and hold fast to our contingent convictions? and what seems really terrifying is this: i don't see how you can possibly hold that anything can be made to look good [or bad] by redescription. you can then make the holocaust look good by redescribing it as such. how can we protect ourselves against such a world.
rorty: we can't