This article makes both a more general and a more specific argument, and while the latter relies upon the former, the inverse does not apply. The more general argument proposes that empirical disciplines such as sociology are better suited to the production of ethical knowledge than more characteristically abstract and legalistic disciplines such as philosophy and theology. The more specific argument, which is made through a critique of Bauman’s Levinasian articulation of ethics, proposes what it calls ‘pragmatic humanism’ as a (...) viable alternative model for sociological ethics to follow. This model rejects the abstract notion of some innate and universally distributed moral impulse, and instead turns to acknowledgement of the precariousness of life as a strategic resource in the construction, rather than revelation, of ethical solidarity. (shrink)

This article uses differing interpretations of a thread of narrative taken from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as a springboard to exploring the connection between philosophical truth and political liberalism. It argues that while no positive connection exists between realist truth and political liberalism, minimal negative connections do exist between Rorty’s humanistic account of truth and a basic commitment to democratic and liberal frameworks. It sees these minimal connections as limiting in their failure to provide a politics that moves beyond an exclusive (...) concern with liberty and democracy to more substantive political issues of equality and justice. However, it also sees them as reassuring in showing how acceptance of Rorty’s humanistic account of truth in no way necessitates adopting his own ethnocentric political stance. (shrink)

The paper outlines a critique and reconstruction of Richard Rorty’s version of pragmatism. While sympathetic to many elements in Rorty’s philosophy, his recent creation of a dichotomy between state-level (read credible) and global-level (read utopian) politics is criticised. Patterns of governance in the global polity simply do not match. Decision-making prowes s within institutional and agent networks transcends exclusively state-centric cartographies and proffers the need to theorise global politics in a non-dichotomised, multi-level fashion. This is not to dispense with pragmatism. (...) Rather, it is to extend it. By drawing on Rorty’s concept of sentimental education, a global pragmatic praxis is elaborated via a narrative of the Tobin Tax and its place in a burgeoning global civil society. In this way, Rorty’s oft-repeated claim that “we should start from where we are” is applied to the plurality of ‘we-groups’ and their multiple activities within an emerging global polity. (shrink)