R YSZARD LEGUTKO
623
and pluralistic identities would it be possible to find a source of discrim–
ination?
Here we are once again confronted with the paradox: in a world
constructed so that there should be less and less intolerance, the obsession
with its danger increases. The postmodernists and the pluralists, as one
might suspect, have not called off their crusade for toleration, nor are they
willing to modify its maximalist ambitions. No less than their predeces–
sors, convinced of the imminence of the new era of ultimate toleration,
they perceive the danger that supposedly comes from those who do not
share their belief in weak identities and weak thought. It would, however,
never occur to them that those enemies of the new civilization - "neo–
fascisms" and "new archaisms," as G. B. Madison called them, still exist.
Fortunately the real world continues to frustrate, as it has so often in the
past, the expectations of enJightened minds. Obviously we do not know
what will be, if there is such a thing, the final outcome. Perhaps those en–
emies - absolutists, foundationalists, essentialists, traditionalists, monists -
will lose the battle and be heard from no longer. Perhaps they will be–
come a tiny minority in a world of universal rootlessness and ever in–
creasing diversity and perform the role of eccentrics, which the old lib–
erals thought would be perennially performed by anticonservatives.
Perhaps their importance will grow. Perhaps the postmodernists and the
pluralists tend to be somewhat hysterical about fanaticism precisely be–
cause they have never really believed that their ideal of openness and
centerlessness will materialize.
No matter what happens, one thing seems unquestionable. With the
continuing struggle for positive toleration in our ways of thinking, of
writing, of teaching, of transmitting knowledge, of using certain words
and avoiding others; with the continuing emphasis on disenchanted root–
lessness and diversity as the metaphysical (or rather anti -metaphysical)
safeguard of toleration; with the continuing suspicion and fear of partisan–
ship in philosophy and knowledge in general, it may very well be that the
world will indeed become more tolerant. At the same time, the things
that will be said or allowed
to
be said about the world will be less and less
interesting.
