I interpret the supremacy of the agent point of view as the priority of the hope of inventing new ways of being human over the need for stability, security, and order. PasAA p.143 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Openness

The apotheosis of the future, this willingness to substitute imagination for certainty and curiosity for pride, breaks down the Greek distinction between contemplation and action. PasAA p.142 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Openness

The difference between the Greek conception of human nature and the Deweyan conception is the difference between closure and openness—between the security of the unchanging and the romance of throwing oneself into the process of unpredictable change. PasAA p.142 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Openness

Imagination is what Newton and Christ, Freud and Marx, had in common—the ability to redescribe the familiar in unfamiliar terms. PasAA p.142 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Imagination

Imagination is the cutting edge of cultural evolution, the power which—given peace and prosperity—constantly operates so as to make the human future richer than the human past. PasAA p.142 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Imagination

We can see both intellectual and moral progress not as a matter of getting closer to the True or the Good or the Right, but as an increase in imaginative power. PasAA p.142 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Imagination

We recommend dropping the distinction between two separately functioning sources of beliefs and desires—reason vs sentiment. PasAA p.141 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Sentiment

This picture of moral progress makes us resist Kant’s suggestion that morality is a matter of reason. We pragmatists are more sympathetic to Hume’s suggestion that it is a matter of sentiment. PasAA p.141 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Sentiment

Convinced that there is no subtle human essence which philosophy might grasp, we do not try to replace superficiality with depth, nor to rise above the particular in order to grasp the universal. PasAA p.141 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Antiessentialism

We pragmatists think of moral progress as more like sewing together a very large, elaborate, polychrome quilt, than like getting a clearer vision of something true and deep. PasAA p.141 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Antiessentialism

Pragmatists suggest that we simply give up the philosophical search for commonality. PasAA p.141 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Antiessentialism

There are many languages, and most of them are exclusionist. The language of human rights is no more or less characteristic of our species than languages which insist on racial or religious purity. PasAA p.141 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Vocabulary

Instead of debating the ontological status of human rights we should debate the question of whether communities which encourage tolerance of harmless deviance should be preferred to those communities whose social cohesion depends on conformity. PasAA p.140 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Upayas

There is no way to pass judgment on particular language-games without passing judgment on the societies as wholes. PaaAA p.140 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Upayas

To debate the utility of the set of social constructs we call “human rights” is to debate the question of whether the language-games played by inclusivist societies are better than those played by exclusivist societies. PasAA p.140 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Upayas

Once we give up the idea that the point of discourse is to represent reality accurately, we shall have no interest in distinguishing social constructs from other things. We shall confine ourselves to debating the utility of alternative social constructs. PasAA p.139 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Upayas

Claims which have the form “To say such-and-such is to say so-and-so” are practical recommendations about what to talk about, suggestions about the terms in which controversy on moral questions is best conducted. PasAA p.139 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Upayas

Pragmatists do not intend claims which have the form “To say such-and-such is to say so-and-so” as claims about what is really going on—claims that what appeared to be a fact is actually a value, or what appeared to be a cognition is actually an emotion. PasAA p.139 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Upayas

Once you drop the distinction between reason and passion, you will no longer discriminate against a good idea because of its dubious origins. You will classify ideas according to their relative utility rather than by their sources. PasAA p.138 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Fruitfulness

The pragmatist can cheerfully agree with Nietzsche that the idea of human brotherhood would only have occurred to the weak. But for pragmatists this fact no more counts against the idea than Socrates’s ugliness counts against his account of the nature of love. PasAA p.138 #Pragmatism #Fruitfulness

Whereas metaphysicians reply to Nietzsche by asserting that there is a “rational basis” for belief in God or in human rights, pragmatists reply by saying that there is nothing wrong with contrivances. PasAA p.138 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Upayas

Such notions (eg “inalienable human rights”, “obedience to the will of God”) are not reasons for action so much as announcements that one has thought the issue through and come to a decision. PaaAA p.137 #Pragmatism #Rorty #HumanRIghts

None of these notions (eg “inalienable human rights”, “obedience to the will of God”) should be analyzed, for they are all ways of saying “Here I stand: I can do no other.” PaaAA p.137 #Pragmatism #Rorty #HumanRIghts

Talk of the will of God or of the rights of man, like talk of the “the honor of the family” or of “the fatherland in danger” are not suitable targets of philosophical analysis and criticism. PaaAA p.137 #Pragmatism #Rorty #HumanRIghts

From a pragmatist point of view, the notion of “inalienable human rights” is no better and no worse a slogan than that of “obedience to the will of God.” PaaAA p.137 #Pragmatism #Rorty #HumanRIghts

You cannot aim at moral perfection, but you can aim at taking more people’s needs into account than you did previously. PasAA p.137 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Morality

You cannot aim at being at the end of inquiry, in either physics or ethics. That would be like aiming at being at the end of biological evolution—at being not merely the latest heir of all the ages but the being in which the ages were destined to culminate. PasAA p.137 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Evolution

Pragmatists substitute the idea of a maximally warm, sensitive, and sympathetic human being for the Kantian idea of a Good Will. PasAA p.137 #Pragmatism #Rorty #Morality

Pragmatists substitute the idea of a maximally efficient explanation of a maximally wide range of data for that of the theory which cuts reality at the joints. PasAA p.137 #Pragmatism #Rorty

The switch from metaphors of vertical distance to metaphors of horizontal extent ties in with the pragmatists’ insistence on replacing traditional distinctions of kind with distinctions in degree of complexity. PasAA p.136 #Pragmatism #Rorty