Contingency and universality in the Habermas-Rorty debate

Abstract

In this article the debate between Habermas and Rorty on the issue of relativism is discussed critically. Developments in Rorty’s position are pointed out, for example his current acceptance of the epithet “relativist” as opposed to his earlier rejection of this self-description in view of his denial that a pragmatist such as himself has any, even a relativist, epistemology. Attention is also paid to Rorty’s current denial of the relevance of the idea of “metaphors of making rather than finding” for this debate, against his earlier espousal of this distinction. His main effort is to create a vocabulary that might transcend the obsolete distinctions of “Platonism” such as truth-falsity, rational-irrational and subjective-objective. On the other hand, there is Habermas’s unmasking of the undeniable and unavoidable performative contradiction in Rorty’s work, as well as his argument that Rorty fails to   develop a new vocabulary, but rather succumbs to the well-known Social Darwiniansm of the nineteenth century. The author shows why Habermas emerges from this debate much better than Rorty.