We live in paradoxical times. Over the last two generations, college students, especially at top-ranking universities, have been educated to believe that there is no transcendence. Human beings are a bundle of instincts, they’re told, or software in meat hardware, or some other reductive explanation. And yet utopian progressive goals are championed with great conviction and unstinting ardor. It’s hard to square the circle. On the one hand the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities teach an implicit (and sometimes explicit) nihilism; on the other hand, activists tout revolutionary idealism. All truth is “socially constructed,” but the postmodern mind somehow knows that the rainbow flag represents the best and noblest aspirations, not just for our society, but for the entire world.
Richard Rorty was a clear-minded and articulate spokesman for this strange combination of idealism and nihilism. In a 1994 essay, “A World Without Substances or Essences,” he observed that a great deal of twentieth-century philosophy converged on theories of knowledge that were “anti-metaphysical” and “anti-foundational.” On his account, there are no enduring anchors. We must use our minds to navigate the world without universals, without unchanging touchstones. [...]
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