The Rorty-Dworkin Debate

Ronald Dworkin and Richard Rorty are sometimes thought to be diametrically opposed philosophers, particularly in their approach to foundational questions in moral thought. Dworkin is a champion of truth and objectivity in morality. Rorty, by contrast, is a great pragmatist who subscribed to a defated vision of truth and unambiguously renounced objectivity, in favor of what he called “solidarity”.1 If their stated -isms and alliances were not evidence enough of discord, they also criticized one another in print, particularly on these foundational, or metaethical, questions. The point of this chapter is to show that things are not what they seem: Rorty and Dworkin largely agree on metaethics. The difference between them is largely a difference in emphasis. The layout of the chapter is as follows. In Section 1, I explain in further detail why Rorty and Dworkin are thought to disagree. I outline their commitments and summarize their direct criticisms of one another with respect to metaethics. In Section 2, I begin the rapprochement. I note that several scholars have identifed something “pragmatist” in Dworkin’s thought, particularly in his legal thought. This work, then, shows that he might be closer to Rorty than frst appearances suggest. Nevertheless, that work, taken as a whole, suffers from a few limitations. What pragmatism means for those various theorists is either too vague or too various to be helpful. Also, even when some of this work clearly explains a sense in which Dworkin is a legal pragmatist, it fails to explain how pragmatism also fgures in Dworkin’s moral philosophy. A further limitation is that this secondary literature confuses how specifcally Rortyan Dworkin’s moral thought turns out to be. That last limitation – not recognizing the specifcally Rortyan elements of Dworkin’s moral thought – this is examined and corrected in Section 3. In the fnal substantive part of the chapter, Section 4, I try to diagnose this faux fght between Rorty and Dworkin. I argue that the difference is largely a matter of emphasis. Dworkin stresses his continuity with traditional moral realism, while registering some complaints. Rorty castigates realism before admitting that he can assent to the basic structure of such a view. If this is a case of “six of one, and a half-dozen of the other”, one might be led to think any further comparison of what these thinkers say