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possibly mean to believe that "right answers" had been attained or
why one would expect those dissatisfied by the purported answers to
obey them .
One possible response to those who share Robertson's lament
comes from that tradition of modern philosophy drawn especially
from the later Wittgenstein (a much more respectable source than
Nietzsche). From this perspective the search for certainty , for
undeniable truth, or possibly even for "authoritative interpreters," is
itself the main symptom of our collective disorder. Philosophers as
different as John Searle, Richard Rorty, and Hilary Putnam have
joined in recommending that we simply give up the search in favor
of some other conception of philosophy .
Thus Searle, in the course of a review of "deconstructionist"
literary theory, argues that much of that theory is motivated by what
is a continuing concern about the possibility of establishing founda–
tions for "unquestionably valid" statements. Deconstructionists set
up a binary opposition between absolute certainty on one side and
chaos (or the "infinite play of signifiers") on the other . "Derrida cor–
rectly sees," says Searle, "that there aren't any such foundations, but
he then makes the mistake that marks him as a classical metaphysi–
cian ." That mistake, says Searle "was not the belief that there were
metaphysical foundations [for ethics or knowledge
1,
but rather the
belief that somehow or other such foundations were necessary, the
belief that unless there are foundations something is lost or threat–
ened or undermined or put into question."
Searle flatly denies this. The failure to establish a transcenden–
tal grounding for our beliefs "doesn't threaten science, language, or
common sense in the least . . .. The only 'foundation,' for example ,
that language has or needs is that people are biologically, psycho–
logically, and socially constituted so that they succeed in using it to
state truths, to give and obey orders, to express their feelings and at–
titudes, to thank, apologize, warn, congratulate, etc ." And presum–
ably, this series could be extended to include "issue judicial opinions"
as well.
This philosophical stance is reflected in the recent book
Con–
stitutional Fate
(Oxford University Press, 1982) by Philip Bobbitt, my
colleague at the University of Texas Law School. He draws explic–
itly on Wittgenstein to criticize those constitutional theorists who
seek an underlying foundation for judicial review. Instead, he treats
