The New York Times opens a review of Richard John Neuhaus's book "American Babylon" with a reference to the possibility of cloning Neanderthal man, which the Parr Center blog discussed earlier here.
But the book review is less about cloning Neanderthal man and more about religion and the public sphere or the philosophical foundations of democracy.
The fulcrum of “American Babylon” is, in effect, a simulated debate between Neuhaus and the American philosopher Richard Rorty (who died in 2007). Rorty argues precisely that we do just make up morality, and that there is no way to privilege one citizen’s first principles over any others.
Rorty holds that, as with Oakland, Calif., there is no there “out there.” The smartest people are therefore “ironists.” The ironist believes that we know nothing except our own vocabularies, that “nothing has an intrinsic nature, a real essence,” that concepts like “just” and “rational” are simply “the language games of one’s time.” An ironist may worry “that she has been . . . taught the wrong language game,” but “she cannot give a criterion of wrongness.” The cultural assumptions we share with Plato and Kant are less likely to be “a tip-off to the way the world is” than just a “mark of the discourse of people inhabiting a certain chunk of space-time.” Schools of philosophy or science are just different vocabularies. When an ironist works on developing her vocabulary, she is constructing her self, not getting in closer touch with some underlying reality — for if there is one, it isn’t knowable.
If you find the book review interesting, come back here and post a comment.
Photo of Richard John Neuhaus (Alex Wong/Getty Images for “Meet the Press”) culled from the New York Times
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