Cultural Politics & Religion - Richard Rorty (2002)

[@jameslovell5721]

Rorty was awesome.

[@Pleistoneax]

I have Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, a work which totally and irrepairably shifted my mental attitudes to much of contemporary philosophical education. I had some issues with the work at the time I was finally able to read and comprehend it, and those issues are on hot and explicit display here: the use of abstruse and flowery language to indicate something deep and profound, spoken, written or delivered rapidly and rushed in dismissive, hand-waving breathlessness. It's a style of language that indicates the speaker's own attitudes toward their thesis, at the expense of the capacity of a plurality of audience members to apprehend and understand his thesis themselves. This is a fantastic lecture, and I am happy it's posted on KZbin. This goes some way in making contemporary epistemology and philosophical linguistics more widely accessible to a broad, public audience. Nevertheless, if someone asks me, a grad student in philosophy, whether they should embark on the academic course of philosophy and whether they would find enjoyment in it, I would send the link to this video to them and tell them to beware. Abstruse language delivered in breathless and hand-waving dismissiveness as an attempt to identify deep and profound thoughts is the perpetual problem of philosophy. Until philosophers allow themselves to take their audience's capacity to comprehend their thesis more seriously than their own attitudes toward their own thesis, philosophy will remain - at best - a niche study for nerds and dweebs who care more about the appearance of intelligence than the development of intelligence itself, and - at worst - a laughing stock and brunt-end of jokes and censure shared by technical academics around the staff water cooler.

[@TK-fq5wg]

"The unfortunate lingering popularity of empiricism." Rorty @ 17:00. Love it. "Table thumping" is also great... gonna steal both of those. But the priority of the social seems to put one on team wittgenstein regarding the private langauge problem. "Meaning" must be tied to the social and so the social becomes the authority of a "meaning" which then becomes what is socially real. Circa @ 16:00 17:00.

[@lonelycubicle]

I THINK Rorty mispronounced ‘communicative’ when he said Habermas substituted for god, “… consensus under ideal communicative conditions”. If Rorty did use another word, please comment. Either way, was curious what Habermas had to say about god and found a source that said his views went through 3 phases. Extended quote follows: “In 1981 Habermas published his magnum opus, The Theory of Communicative Action , a strong endorsement of reason as the foundation of public life in a democracy. He retired from his professorship in 1993, but not from his role as an active advocate of Enlightenment rationality. It is debatable how far his more recent work still continues under a neo-Marxist theoretical umbrella. His views on religion have shifted considerably. Portier distinguishes three phases in Habermas’ treatment of religion.
In phase one, lasting up to the early 1980s, he still viewed religion as an “alienating reality”, a tool of domination for the powerful. In good Marxist tradition, he thought that religion would eventually disappear, as modern society comes to be based on “communicative rationality” and no longer needs the old irrational illusions. In phase two, roughly 1985-2000, this anti-religious animus is muted. Religion now is seen as unlikely to disappear, because many people (though presumably not Habermas) continue to need its consolations. The public sphere, however, must be exclusively dominated by rationality. Religion must be relegated to private life. One could say that in this phase, at least in the matter of religion, Habermas graduated from Marxism to the French ideal of laicite-the public life of the republic kept antiseptically clean of religious contamination. Phase three is more interesting. As of the late 1990s Habermas’ view of religion is more benign. Religion is now seen as having a useful public function, quite apart from its private consolations. The “colonization” of society by “turbo-capitalism” (nice term-I don’t know if Habermas coined it) has created a cultural crisis and has undermined the solidarity without which democratic rationality cannot function. We are now moving into a “post-secular society”, which can make good use of the “moral intuition” that religion still supplies. Following in the footsteps of Ernst Bloch and other neo-Marxist philo-Godders, Habermas also credits Biblical religion, Judaism and Christianity, for having driven out magical thinking (here there is an echo of Max Weber’s idea of “ the disenchantment of the world”), and for having laid the foundations of individual autonomy and rights.” It appears KZbin deletes my comments when include links, so following is the title of the source quoted above: The Book of Doctrines and Opinions: notes on Jewish theology and spirituality Peter Berger on Habermas' Religion Posted by Alan Brill

[@BrendaCreates]

Rorty was one of the first modern philosophers I read. I disagree on some things but he's a really great philosopher.

[@christopherwood9032]

What a gem. Two minutes in and I already intrigued. Such powerful questions that slip under the world’s rug.

[@Rymana]

Wow, went at Chalmers hard lol

[@lonelycubicle]

Can’t miss that, was a little surprised Rorty brought in resentment by mentioning the pleasant surroundings where Chalmers speaks, seemed unusual for Rorty.

[@adenjones1802]

primacy of the social is dumb. Questions of practicality reduce to ontology

[@JS-dt1tn]

Yep.

[@Catofminerva]

Ooo i read this article, so interesting to hear it in Rorty’s voice now

[@Catofminerva]

How to carve out our vocabularies wrt our social goals > ontology

[@VigiliusHaufniensis]

Gotta love Rorty!

[@ghamessmona]

❤❤❤❤

[@findbridge1790]

Without qualia [as a human capacity] how could there be painting, and the overwhelming tradition of western painting? this has to do with using words in a certain way? or social consensus? Bernini came by a "language game". and I am not talking about valuations -- I am talking about the ability to DO. we do not perceive colors just as they are [for our human eyes of course]? then how would the coloristic innovations of painters come about? and how would they be new? and yet perceived in the same way by all onlookers [not talking about valuations, interpretations, etc] for that matter, does not the physician perceive the purple marks on the skin as that [without reliance on words -- and there in fact are no words for peculiar shades etc.] they use their [trained] eyes. they do not use their words.

[@findbridge1790]

90s era sophist