Re-thinking Rorty´s Ethical-Political Pragmatism from Perspectivism and Language Games

Abstract

Rorty holds that it is possible to defend a liberal democratic policy without having to substantiate it according to universal criteria linked to corresponding notions of truth, instead, he affirms that this democratic policy can be founded on a notion of truth narrowly linked to justification. Following this idea one would expect Rorty to take a position committed to pluralism understood in a strong sense, where different positions are justified and validated in relation to specific existential conditions, however, this does not happen. As we will demonstrate, Rorty´s proposal, although it is partly inspired by Nietzsche´s perspectivism, as well as the ethical-political reading of plurality based on Wittgenstein´s proposal of language games, it goes no further than a contextualized pretence which is not based on a real posture of pluralism. In this article we maintain that the Rortian position, far from being pluralist, tends toward ethno-centrism and even domination through persuasion.