Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 22:49:49 -0700
Subject: [MSPRINKER-AT-ccmail.sunysb.edu: Re: BHA: Re: test]



Here is the second message from M. Sprinker:

------- Start of forwarded message -------
From: MSPRINKER-AT-ccmail.sunysb.edu
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 20:17:08 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: test
Message-Id: <01ISAVUS48DUDU7P5D-AT-ccmail.sunysb.edu>


               State University of New York at Stony Brook
                       Stony Brook, NY 11794-3355

                                            Michael Sprinker
                                            Professor of English & Comp Lit
                                            Comparative Studies
                                            516 632-9634
                                            12-Jan-1998 08:09pm EST
FROM:  MSPRINKER
TO:    Caroline New                         ( _owner-bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU )
 
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: test

Thanks to Caroline New for retrieving Colin's message from
the outer reaches of cyberspace into a form my system could
assimilate.

I have not read Ree's article, but it sounds as if it's missed
the point of RB's critique of Rorty.  RB/critical realism would
say, I guess, that redescriptions (Rorty's term for what pragmatists
are free to do) are not always optional, that things like
famine, etc. are not subject to just any old account.  One
can't sensibly redescribe famine as, say, the will of the gods.
Rorty would not so describe it, I'll bet, but he cannot, on
pain of self-contradiction disallow such a redescription, and
thus he is disabled from critically assessing any competing
claims about the nature of famine, and instituting appropriate
remedies on that basis.  Rorty has his values (those of what
he variously terms "bourgeois liberalism" or "North Atlantic
liberal democracy"), but he cannot justify or validate them;
they're just "his" (and others') values.  They're decent enough
values in most cases, but they lack any ethical or political
bite.  Give me Norman Geras, whatever difficulties one may have
with his more recent writings, any day.

Fraternally,

Michael Sprinker
------- End of forwarded message -------


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