Appeals to reason and knowledge have little effect in Rorty’s thought.
We have to concentrate on what works, he says, and his conclusion is that “the emergence of the human rights culture seems to owe nothing to increased moral knowledge, and everything to hearing sad and sentimental stories” (p.172).
Since there is probably no knowledge of the sort Plato imagined, i(the Forms, the good swirling our there in the ether) t’s useless to point at rationality as the thing we all have in common.(The Holocaust proves that we don't all have this rationality in common)
For everything turns on who counts as a fellow human being, as a rational agent in the only relevant sense – the sense in which rational agency is synonymous with membership in our moral community. (p.177)
We have to concentrate on what works, he says, and his conclusion is that “the emergence of the human rights culture seems to owe nothing to increased moral knowledge, and everything to hearing sad and sentimental stories” (p.172).
Since there is probably no knowledge of the sort Plato imagined, i(the Forms, the good swirling our there in the ether) t’s useless to point at rationality as the thing we all have in common.(The Holocaust proves that we don't all have this rationality in common)
For everything turns on who counts as a fellow human being, as a rational agent in the only relevant sense – the sense in which rational agency is synonymous with membership in our moral community. (p.177)
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