From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Mar 12 2003 - 21:07:55 GMT
Hi Andy:
> I recently came across a quote from Rorty that Matt cited in his essay
> again reading Consequences of Pragmatism. The quote is:
>
> “This means that when the secret police come, when the torturers violate
> the innocent, there is nothing to be said to them of the form ‘There is
> something within you which you are betraying. Though you embody the
> practices of a totalitarian society which will endure forever, there is
> something beyond those practices which condemns you.’”
I recently came across the same quote from Rorty. But it went like this:
"There are no objective standards by which to evaluate or criticize social
and political practices. No matter what is done to the citizens of a
country, they can have no objective grounds on which to protest. Once
men could criticize political dictators. ‘There is something within you
which you are betraying. Though you embody the practices of a
totalitarian society which will endure forever, there is something beyond
those practices which condemns you.’ We can no longer say that. Now
we know that there is no knowledge, no values, no standards. Now we
must accept the fact that we have not once seen the Truth, and so will
not, intuitively, recognize it when we see it again. This means that when
the secret police come, when the torturers violate the innocent, there is
nothing to be said to them.”
Quite a different meaning from the one you began your post with.
Platt
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