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assures us that much of our concern is unnecessary, for "we should
not regret our inability to perform a feat which no one has any idea
how
to
perform." Yet a significant element of our intuitive defense of
foundationalism is noble, for we daily find ourselves defending sci–
ence and reason against their enemies. Rorty understands that "the
ideals of the Enlightenment not only are our most precious cultural
heritage but are in danger of disappearing as totalitarian states
swallow up more and more of humanity."
Is it possible to defend reason and extend it without reifying it
into foundationalism? Is it possible to think of intellectual life as a
conversation without succumbing to a barbaric relativism? Rorty
believes it is, if we have a somewhat conservative, "Whiggish" sense
of hermeneutics and the "given" nature of the world:
The question is not whether human knowledge in fact has foun–
dations, "but whether it makes sense to suggest it does .. . . [Re–
jecting foundationalism
1
is merely to say that nothing counts as
justification unless by reference to what we already accept, and
that there is no way to get outside our beliefs and our language so
as to find some test other than coherence.
We can only engage in the conversation with reference to what
preceded us, but that is not the end:
The fact that hermeneutics inevitably takes some norm for
granted makes it, so far forth, "Whiggish." But insofar as it pro–
ceeds nonreductively and in the hope of picking up a new angle
on things, it can transcend its own Whiggishness .
The importance, indeed the inevitability, of taking "the given"
for granted in the beginning of a conversation can mean little more
than working out from a tradition of discourse, even if Rorty does
not use the word. That a consideration of tradition and our interac–
tion with it is the next step in his argument becomes more apparent
when he discusses education in hermeneutics:
.. . we can afford [philosophy
1
only after having passed through
stages of implicit, and then explicit and self-conscious, conform–
ity to the norms of the discourses going on around us . . .. educa–
tion - even of the revolutionary or prophet - needs to begin with
acculturation and conformity merely to provide a cautionary
