This little book has its origins in a lively public debate held at the Sorbonne in November 2002. The two participants give opposing answers to the central question posed in the title of the book. The late Richard Rorty, an American pragmatist, is known for his determined campaign against a realist conception of truth. Pascal Engel, an analytic philosopher—somewhat unusual given his French origins—has published a number of works defending the notion of truth and its utility.
Each of the debaters checked and made revisions to their portions of the text for this English version of their debate. The resulting short book contains a major statement by each of the participants and a follow-up discussion consisting of two responses by both Rorty and Engel. The contributions are uneven in length, with Rorty’s contributions being about half the length of Engel’s. Perhaps it is for this reason that the book also includes Rorty’s review of Engel’s 2002 book, entitled simply, Truth (McGill-Queen’s University Press). In his review, Rorty concurs with Engel that “most of the history of twentieth-century analytic philosophy is a sort of battlefield opposing various ‘realist’ and ‘anti-realist’ conceptions of truth” (66). This debate provides a good summary of the battlefield, with both writers making reference to the main players in this ongoing philosophical controversy.
In his main statement, Rorty describes his scepticism concerning analytic philosophy, resulting from his overall pragmatist, empiricist, and postmodern critique of the traditional questions of metaphysics and epistemology (37-38). Similarly, notions of truth and a reality beyond language must be discarded because they do not have any pragmatic value. Rorty doesn’t want to give the notions of truth and reality “ontological status” because “pragmatists do not employ this term” (32). The “realism” versus “anti-realism” debate “has no practical significance,” and therefore also has “no philosophical significance” (34). What’s the use of truth? None, according to Rorty.
Rorty compares his treatment of truth to the Enlightenment approach of detaching moral obligations from divine commands. The only question we must ask ourselves is: ‘was this change socially useful?’ For Rorty, the answer is obviously, yes. “The pragmatists think that it is time to stop believing that we have obligations either to God or to some God surrogate” (40). Rorty therefore objects to thinking of ourselves as having responsibilities towards “nonhuman entities such as truth or reality,” which for him are God surrogates (40). Instead, our responsibilities are exclusively towards other human beings, and so instead of talking about truth and reality, Rorty prefers to talk about explanations that might be of more value to future audiences (39-40).
Engel’s main statement in the debate comes first in the book, but I have reversed the order of my treatment because I want to let Rorty speak for himself. I will therefore not repeat Engel’s careful summary of Rorty’s position as outlined in his earlier writings. Engel begins by asking a series of very practical questions. “Why, if we no longer believe in truth, is there such a longing for it?” (1). He recalls taking courses from Michel Foucault in the 1970s, and hearing him explain truth as nothing more than “an instrument of power,” and “since all power was bad, truth could only be the expression of some malign intent” (2). But, Engel asks, why then did Foucault march in demonstrations under banners bearing the slogan “Truth and Justice”?
Engel articulates his own position in terms of a belief-assertion-truth triangle. “(a) To affirm something or to make an assertion by means of a statement, is to express one’s belief that the statement is true … (b) Truth is the aim or norm of assertion … (c) Truth is also the norm of belief” (14). Engel maintains that Rorty’s redescription of truth cannot do justice to this belief-assertion-truth triangle (16).
Engel goes on to ask five probing questions of Rorty, questions that he thinks Rorty cannot adequately answer. For example, Engel maintains that Rorty cannot explain our obligation to look for the truth (21). In a later response, Engel maintains that Rorty’s treatment of truth as merely an instrumental value will ultimately undermine any meaning that we still want to give to truth (30).
What is disappointing is that Rorty, in his responses, does little by way of responding to Engel’s searching questions. It will not do to simply reject Engel’s claim that a pragmatist approach to truth can’t do justice to the values of trust, truthfulness, and sincerity, for example (23, 43). Arguments are needed here. I also believe that Engel, in a later response, is right in claiming that Rorty has exaggerated the differences between his pragmatist approach, and a representationist, realist conception of truth (50). Rorty also fails to wrestle with the very pragmatic thrust of Engel’s critique of his position.
Rorty would do well to read more carefully the writings of William James, whom he quotes at one point (34). James, a fellow pragmatist, doesn’t dismiss the correspondence theory of truth, but instead tries to define the notion of correspondence in pragmatic terms. Nor does James discard the notion of truth. Indeed, he even gives us a definition of absolute truth as “that ideal vanishing-point towards which we imagine that all our temporary truths will some day converge.”Footnote 1
The answers we give to the question, What’s the Use of Truth? are important. Rorty rather dismissively describes this battlefield between realist and anti-realist conceptions of truth as having been “trampled into a quagmire” (66). Indeed, in his main statement in the debate, Rorty describes analytic philosophy as having “run out of gas” (31). I’m not so sure, and this fascinating debate surely proves my point.
