[b]Richard Rorty
A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well is the chief instrument of cultural change.[/b]
That and the stuff Marx suggested.
The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.
Let’s just say this: Some descriptions more than others.
All human relations untouched by love take place in the dark.
That is until love reconfigures into hate.
The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.
Much to the dismay of some more than others.
You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It’s like aspirin. You can’t use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.
Then the next thing you know you’re an ironist.
The most important advance that the West has yet made is to develop a secularist moral tradition.
Not counting the objectivists of course.