Gene Edward Veith raises questions about a postmodernist who was, he says, at least honest about the implications of what he believed.

Richard Rorty, who died not long ago, was a major postmodernist philosopher who reasoned that since we can never know an objective truth, we must instead pursue pragmatism.

[Link: The agenda of some professors — Cranach: The Blog of Veith]

Those honest implications include (quoting here from Rorty):

You have to be educated in order to be . . . a participant in our conversation . . . So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours . . .

I don’t see anything herrschaftsfrei [domination free] about my handling of my fundamentalist students. Rather, I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft [domination] of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents . .

This raises questions of a familiar sort for postmodernism. If there is no objective truth, then

  • What constitutes being educated?
  • What constitutes being “fundamentalist”?
  • What makes Rorty’s doctrine superior to the “fundamentalists’” doctrines? What is the scale of measurement?
  • What is the (objective?) danger that these “frightening, vicious” parents pose?

And

Rorty’s language is totalitarian; it openly reeks of power and control. There is a microcosm here of what nations have learned. There are governments of laws, and governments of people. In governments of law, there is a standard to which all are accountable, including legislators, judges, and heads of government. Historically speaking, law was long seen as originating from a source higher than the state, so it was a real standard, not one that was infinitely plastic or malleable.

In governments of people (traditionally—and fairly accurately—called “governments of men”), on the other hand it is men (rarely women) who decide what is right and wrong. They can decide arbitrarily, they can exempt themselves from any decree they make, and they are under no obligation to apply their decisions with equity or justice.

There is no perfect example either of a government of laws or of men. They are at opposite ends of a continuum, and real nations stand somewhere between the extremes. Modern democracies are very clearly closer to the government-of-laws end, however, and historic and modern totalitarian states are much closer to the government-of-men side of the continuum.

Based on the excerpt Veith quoted, if it really reflected Rorty’s beliefs and actions, he acknowledged no law. There was only power, and in the classroom the power was his. It was a classic (though tiny) government of men. His classroom was a little totalitarian state.

Rorty says it was for his students’ own good. But has there ever been a dictator who did not describe himself as benefactor to the people? Has there ever been a people under dictatorship who agreed? What is it that kept an educated man like Rorty from hearing just how much he sounds like Castro, Mao, Stalin, Hitler … ?