"You Will Be like God": Richard Rorty and Mark C. Taylor on the Theological Significance of Human Language Use

Abstract

Richard Rorty's residual theology can be stated in one sentence: the innovative power of human linguistic behavior, in causal interaction with the environment, is all that is left of God. Rorty believes that the principal engine of cultural and personal change is the occurrence of differences in linguistic behavior and the new vocabularies that are formed when some of these differences get incorporated into current linguistic practices. He thinks that we would be better off if we were to learn to be more selfreliant than our predecessors by depending on the innovative capacity of our own linguistic behavior for improvement of our social and personal lot rather than looking for salvation to come to us from higher powers. This neopragmatist theology has definite links with classical pragmatism. Rorty's account of cultural change through linguistic innovation parallels almost exactly William James's Darwinian reflections on the respective roles of mental innovation and the environment in social evolution. And his judgment that we should pin our hopes for salvation on the transformative power of human language use rather than on higher powers parallels John Dewey's application of the word God to human intelligence, in interaction with the larger environment, rather than to any extrahuman powers.' It is not my intention to defend Rorty's theology. While I am sympathetic to it, I am not at all sure that I agree with it entirely. I want rather to defend his version of neopragmatism, and by extension the classical pragmatism of James and Dewey, against the seemingly plausible charge that they all are forms of humanistic atheism. This charge has been brought