Only a God Can Save Us: Richard Rorty's Philosophy of Social Hope Beyond Secularism
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| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | This paper undertakes the project of presenting Rorty's philosophy from an unusual perspective of philosophy of religion and tries to answer the question: "Is atheism a necessary result of Rorty's rejection of Western metaphysics?" As his friend and, at the same time, relentless philosophical critic Jürgen Habermas stated in Rorty's obituary, Rorty was a straightforward atheist (or an "anti-clericalist", as Rorty put it in his mature work) who argued against the metaphysical commitments of Christianity as well as against any involvement of religion in the public life of the community. As the paper argues, however, Rorty's philosophical work enables us to re-think and re-imagine the concepts of Christianity, God and faith in general in such a way, that they not only fully accord with rejection of strong metaphysics, but eventually also reinforce Rorty's project of edifying philosophy which serves the idea of human social progress. The paper's main motto "Only a God can save us" comes, needless to say, from a famous, post-humously published Heidegger's Spiegel interview in which he meditates on the role of thinking in the age after the death of God of the Aristotelian metaphysical tradition. In the paper, Rorty's philosophy is presented as an opportunity which unlocks the horizons of possible re-imagination and reconstruction of the notion of God in the post-metaphysical age; in the age which values solidarity over objectivity, empathy over argument, and hope over certainty. |
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