Rorty,religion and the public–private distinction

A brief introduction to the problem

The actions and words of both George Bush and Osama bin Laden had at least this in common: they pushed questions about the role of religion in the public square to the forefront. Questions such as ‘Is it desirable that political actions be motivated by religious faith?’ reveal a concern over whether any justification for religion’s presence in the public square can be found. Most debates thus focus on whether religion can intrude into the public square. I want to suggest, however, that the very way of framing the question reveals hidden prejudices, prejudices that prefigure the shape of the debate. That is to say, when we ask whether religion is allowed into the public square, there are two tacit assumptions being made: first, that religion is an inherently ‘private’ practice; second, that there is a foundational and uni-directional relation between religion (as a private belief) and actions in the public square. In other words, our fears concerning the degree to which religion should (or should not) impact the public square deny the very possibility of a reciprocal relation between the two. All ensuing arguments, then, focus on whether or not there is justification for allowing a ‘private’ religion into the public square. ¹ But might there be another way of framing this debate? In order to suggest that indeed there is, this article explores the way in which these two assumptions undergird Richard Rorty’s rejection of the role of religion in the public square. In analysing Rorty’s skepticism regarding religion’s public role, my aim is to assess the inadequacies and limitations of such assumptions and to suggest another way of framing the issue.

Let me begin by clarifying that ‘public square’ will refer to dialogically persuasive or argumentative interactions with explicitly political intentions, e.g. changing laws. Writing a letter to an editor, addressing a town meeting, making a political speech, engaging in a political debate, protesting, etc., are all examples of actions in the public square. In these instances, the term ‘public square’ emphasizes persuasion via shared reasons and is a species of the broader terms ‘public’/’public sphere’, which refer to that which is not private. According to Rorty’s usage, ‘private’ refers to that which is taken to pertain solely to the individual, requiring no justification – it is the realm of arationality we could say. For Rorty, then, there are some beliefs that do not need justifying to others, these are private beliefs, and religion is one such private belief. ² My argument aims not to abolish all distinctions between the public square and private existence but to question the practical desirability and theoretical tenability of importing Rorty’s general public–private distinction into debates about the role of religion in the public square. As such, in what follows, I offer an alternative way of conceiving of the ‘private’.

My criticism of the ubiquity of Rorty’s public–private distinction will avert the standard critiques of the distinction, which fail ultimately to disentangle themselves from metaphysical assumptions about the role and power of theory. That is, thinkers like Nancy Fraser and Jürgen Habermas insist that we cannot avoid ideology (and thus cruelty) in the public realm without some private (i.e. theoretical) critique of public practices. ³ Both against Rorty’s call for a separation between public and private and against metaphysical calls to invigorate a foundationally justificatory relation between the two, I will argue that the relation between public and private should be retained as ‘dialectical’. Now, by ‘dialectic’ I do not mean what Rorty means when he defines the term as ‘literary theory’. ⁴ Rather, I want to construe dialectic as dialogical and reciprocal, taking place on both an intra- and an inter-personal level. On an intra-personal level, this would mean that both our private and public selves would interact with and critique each other. This means neither keeping the two selves separate nor privileging one over the other. (From the perspective of critique, this would be akin to refusing a theory–practice dualism.) On an inter-personal level, the private practice Rorty endorses of reading more and more texts would be expanded to include an engagement with living, fleshly beings in the public square. Such a dialectical construal avoids foundationalism, while at the same time it opens up space for critical (though not necessarily formally theoretical) challenges to one’s beliefs. What I hope to do, by an analysis of Rorty’s rejection of religious beliefs in the public square, then, is to show the way in which private beliefs and public discourse can richly inform and instruct each other in a reciprocal and non-foundational manner. I will suggest that a more nuanced understanding of the nature of private beliefs encourages us to rethink the very way in which the debate about the role of religion in contemporary life is framed. Finally, in addition to finding Rorty’s claim about a public–private split conceptually problematic, I will also question its pragmatic desirability for the ends Rorty himself esteems, namely, making us less cruel. Again, my aim is not to do away with the distinction between public and private altogether, thus reducing one to the other, but to argue that Rorty’s discussion of the role of religion in the public square is based on a false dichotomy about the general nature of the public–private realms, namely, that we must either affirm the foundational role of private beliefs for our public practices or insist on keeping the two realms entirely separate. ⁵

Rorty’s wariness of the public role for religion has been, at one point or another, based on one or more of the following beliefs. (1) Religion, given its tendency to refuse argumentative justification for itself, is a ‘conversation-stopper’. ⁶ (2) The private purposes of the self are ultimately irrelevant to one’s public actions. ⁷ (3) Public practices of religion tend to be based on an Enlightenment attempt to ground the political self and its public engagements in a metaphysical (i.e. universal and essential) conception of humanity. ⁸ (4) Religion in its ecclesiastically organized form is dangerous. ⁹ After rehearsing each of these points and noting how his thinking about the role of religion in the public square has changed over the years, the final part of the article suggests what a pragmatically fruitful interchange between public and private in general may look like. My claim is that by clarifying exactly how his view of the role of religion in the public square has changed, we are in a better position to assess the problems underlying his more general public–private distinction.

1 Religion, given its tendency to refuse argumentative justification for itself, is a ‘conversation-stopper’

In 1994, Rorty wrote: ‘The main reason that religion needs to be privatized is that, in political discussion with those outside the relevant religious community, it is a conversation-stopper.’ ¹⁰ Eight years later he voiced the same: ‘The epistemic arena is a public space, a space from which religion can and should retreat’. ¹¹ However, one year later in a 2003 paper he modified these earlier claims by admitting that both religious and non-religious people, when asked to defend their ultimate beliefs, must resort to acknowledging that at some point there is no ultimate justification for them. ¹² Amending his earlier position he wrote:

Requiring that we think through and try to articulate, as far as is possible, the reasons for any of our beliefs seems a fair request. If the public, epistemic realm is not upheld by foundations certifiable by all, then religious as well as non-religious belief must submit itself to the continuous game of giving and taking reasons. While individuals are free to refer to texts (e.g. the Bible or J. S. Mill) to defend and explain their positions, proof-texting of all sorts (whether from the Bible or J. S. Mill) that denies the legitimacy of an ongoing interpretive conversation must be avoided. Appeals to ultimate foundations (e.g. the merely assumed authority of certain texts) thwart conversation and rationality is not served where conversation comes to an end. But while Rorty came to acknowledge that it is neither illegal nor philosophically improper to cite religious texts as evidence of one’s beliefs so long as one is willing to keep the conversation going, ¹⁴ it is not clear just what he takes the requirements of a good conversation to be. In the final part of this article I will return to his revised consideration and maintain that, while it was the right move to make, it suffers from (1) a lack of clarity regarding just what a good conversation is, and (2) a conceptual confusion regarding his public–private distinction. Getting clear about the former will require a revision of the latter, which remains (given his own changes) the heart of the matter.

2 The private purposes of the self are ultimately irrelevant to one’s public actions

In his 1989 book, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Rorty devotes a number of essays to persuading us that appeals to things either below human society (i.e. foundations) or above it (e.g. God) are at best misguided and at worst dangerous. The downward gesture of Habermas and the upward gesture of the Pope, for instance, both have in common a misguided assumption that human solidarity requires a justification other than itself. The general nature of the foundational relation between private metaphysics and political action that ensues from such a commitment is described by Rorty in the following quotation: ‘Metaphysicians like Plato and Marx thought they could show that once philosophical theory had led us from appearance to reality we would be in a better position to be useful to our fellow human beings’. ¹⁵ More specifically, he laments how

Universalized appeals to rationality, which provide the foundation for political action, should be replaced by ‘redescription’, which admits nothing but its own contingency. Rorty describes the attitude of the liberal ironist towards redescription:

A related way Rorty has defined his public–private division is in terms of taking ‘public’ to refer to that which concerns the space of reason-giving and -taking – i.e. it is an epistemic realm – and that the private is the place where no reasons need to be offered. But we must heed Rorty’s qualification:

While I find the epistemic/non-epistemic split a helpful one, below I question its sufficiency for accounting for the public–private split. For, it is not a foregone conclusion that whatever I (or my culture) deem private is indeed none of anyone else’s business. Simply saying something is a matter of my private/personal consideration does not make it so. While I would not assert that everything ‘personal is political’, I do think that decisions regarding just what of the personal is political must be the subject of debate. It seems as if Rorty is too quick to endorse the private realm as a place completely devoid of rational justification and/or critique. I will come back to this point below but first let us take a closer look at how his more general public–private split has shaped his discourse about the nature of religious belief.

3 Public practices of religion have tended to be based on an Enlightenment attempt to ground the political self and its public engagements in a metaphysical (universal and essentialist) conception of humanity

Let me reiterate that I agree with Rorty’s claim that private beliefs ultimately need have no foundational power over public actions and that I agree with his general push to replace metaphysics with redescription. Neither philosophy nor religion is needed to strengthen or justify one’s political actions. However, I contend that Rorty extends this claim too far by tending to equate (in his earlier writings at least) any and all forms of argumentation with metaphysical justification. This move can be seen most clearly in his writings on the role of religion in the public square. For example, Rorty takes Jefferson’s line that ‘it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god’ ¹⁹ as calling for the ‘privatization’ of religious belief. ²⁰ Charles Guignon and David Hiley provide an apt summary of Rorty’s position when they comment that

This ‘framework of tolerance’ is what Rorty refers to as the ‘Jeffersonian compromise that the Enlightenment reached with the religious. This compromise consists in privatizing religion – keeping it out of … “the public square”, making it seem bad taste to bring religion into discussion of public policy’. ²² In other words, Rorty maintains that we do not need religion to provide any sort of foundation for society. Religious agreement is not needed to serve as the glue for keeping society together any more than philosophical argument is. In fact, given its divisiveness religion is better left to the private realm, where it can serve one’s personal growth agenda.

However, I see Rorty doing more than advocating for a Jeffersonian compromise that ‘trades privatization [of religion] for a guarantee of religious liberty’. ²³ For, when we read these sorts of comments in light of his advocacy for keeping public and private separate, we can discern that he is primarily arguing against traditional philosophy’s urge to rationally ground morality and/or political activity (what I will discuss below as ‘foundationalist justification’). Again, while I do not want to dispute this point, what I do question is the way in which his explicit rejection of the move to ground political involvement in a metaphysics that is oriented to the private realm gets mapped onto his denial of a public role for religion.

Applying his ideas about the unproductive nature of grounding politics in universal reason and/or human nature to his more explicit (and later) discussions about the role of religion in the public square we could say that Rorty’s reasoning here proceeds along the following lines: the ‘justification’ for religion in the public square is grounded in a metaphysical theory of human nature, we do not want such dogmatic metaphysics in the public square (since at best they are simply unnecessary and at worst they are dangerous), therefore religion should be kept out. While it is debatable and a subject for another article as to whether religion requires metaphysics in order to be publicly active, ²⁴ here I want to focus on a problematic assumption that underlies his statement, namely, that the only way to conceive of the relation between our private and public commitments is in terms of the former providing foundationalist justification for the latter. That is to say, I am arguing that (the early) Rorty projects the foundational and uni-directional relation between metaphysics and politics onto the debate about the role of religion in the public square. ²⁵ He is thus relying on an analogy between metaphysical projects that assert themselves as foundational for social/political order (e.g. those of Plato or Habermas), on the one hand, and religion, on the other. Since ecclesiastical religion is, for Rorty, illustrative of all that is wrong with metaphysics, it makes sense for him to apply his public–private distinction to concerns about the public role of religion. Or does it? Is it really the case that once we do away with metaphysics, there will be no reason to keep the two spheres together? Does denying a metaphysically justificatory relationship between our private self and public self entail keeping the two realms separate? Since, as I remarked above, Rorty has toned down his call for keeping religion out of the public square, what I want to focus on next is the way in which Rorty has amended his initial position by clarifying that there are two sorts of religion: (1) the appropriate and useful sort that does not appeal to the transcendent to wield authority over the masses, and (2) the inappropriate and detrimental sort that does exactly that. Whether this clarification ultimately helps solve his problem is yet another question, one that will be addressed in turn.

4 Religion in its ecclesiastically organized form is dangerous

This fourth assumption serves to clarify and refine the first of the assumptions discussed above and expresses a key tenet of Rorty’s ‘pragmatic philosophy of religion’, ²⁶ namely, that all religious belief and practice must be restrained by the utilitarian rubric of maximizing human happiness. ²⁷ That all religion must be judged according to whether it maximizes happiness leads him to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate religion in a way that will be shown to rest no longer on the public–private divide as he originally conceived of it. For, the new object of Rorty’s criticism is any type of belief – whether religious or not – that asserts itself as foundationalist. For example, Rorty draws the following analogy between the religiously and the non-religiously minded. Parish-oriented religion is to ecclesiastically fundamentalist religion as anti-clerical non-believers are to fundamentalist atheists. That is to say, just as priests at the local level may draw on religious texts to inspire individuals to happier and more meaningful lives, so anti-clerical non-believers (like Rorty) may draw on poetry and literature to do the same. Rorty lauds such efforts so long as they aim only to enhance self-creation as autonomous beings. For, both acknowledge the non-foundational starting point of their beliefs, and avoid the exclusivism and power-driven institutionalism of both religious and non-religious fundamentalism. Rorty draws a contrast between romantic, non-dogmatic forms of religion (and humanism) and ecclesiastical organizations (as well as some academic/scientific/political organizations) that thwart democratic values by relying on ideology to control the masses and amass wealth. His Marxist-inspired suspicion comes full circle with his expressed hope that a parish-oriented religion will prevail once there is ‘less need for religion as a device for diminishing social unrest, and less temptation to hope for pie in the sky’. ²⁸ Thus while in his earlier writings Rorty tended to emphasize the romantic and ironic elements of religion, he also lauds the social gospel message of his great-grandfather Walter Rauschenbusch and endorses the message of Jesus so long as it confines itself to ameliorating human suffering in the here-and-now and avoids pretensions to knowledge-based prophecy. ²⁹ Thus it behoves us to ask: if religion has a legitimate role to play at the parish level, what now becomes of his former tendency to problematize religion in terms of the public–private distinction?

Before assessing (as I do in the following section) his division of religious belief into the good sort (parochial and inspirational) and the bad sort (ecclesiastical and dogmatic), I want to take a closer look at Rorty’s dubiousness about whether religion-as-an-institution can contribute (or has contributed) to the pragmatic ideal of the maximization of human happiness. In other words, does he even have a good defense of his claim that ecclesiastical religion, on the whole, detracts from, rather than adds to, human happiness? Rorty concludes that ‘history suggests to us that such [ecclesiastical] organizations will always, on balance, do more harm than good’. ³⁰ But this assumption produces both qualitative and quantitative questions regarding what exactly he means by ‘more harm than good’. In other words, how are we to assess his evaluation of the ‘empirical matters’ – which he admits may ultimately serve as the crux of his difference with others regarding the social effects of ecclesiastical organizations? ³¹

First, a qualitative concern can be raised regarding to whose history he is referring. For, if Rorty does not want to be an essentialist about history, affirming history as a ‘given’, then he must specify whose history he is talking about, which will mean specifying just what counts as ‘harm’. ³² Doing so, however, will not pacify those who do not buy his version of history, and thus will lead to, at best, a demand for further justification of his provocative claim and, at worst, an interminable ‘clash of histories’ debate. In either event, in order to sustain his claim, more empirical work needs to be done to defend the claim about the perniciousness of the Church as well as the separation he proposes between parish and institution. At the same time, such an evaluation must demonstrate that it is possible to get rid of the institution that gave us the parish without undermining the latter.

But, second, a concern may also be raised as to whether it is possible to quantify such effects. Given Rorty’s only partial embrace of utilitarianism, ³³ it is unlikely that he really wants to endorse a position that requires such quantification. For, how can we assess in an intellectually responsible way whether the total amount of ‘good’ effected by a Ghandi, a Martin Luther King Jr, a Dorothy Day, etc., is insufficient to justify the total amount of ‘harm’ brought about by (to use Rorty’s examples) those like Jerry Falwell and Joseph Ratzinger? Rather, it seems that to be consistent, Rorty must acknowledge that whether or not one believes that King’s religious commitments (not to mention those of innumerable lesser-known Christians) are enough to validate the role of religion in public depends upon one’s starting point. That is to say, the inability of avoiding a non-question-begging stance here means acknowledging that whether one places one’s faith in either a transcendent being or in human beings to effect goodwill likely determines whether one sees religion as ultimately contributing to human happiness or not. In any event, more work needs to be done in specifying whether his reading of history can indeed rely on anything other than ad hominems (or ad deums). ³⁴

Let me now return to the main thread of my argument. Rorty seems left not only with a split between appropriate and inappropriate religion but also within appropriate religion itself: the ‘romantic’ or ‘ironic’ religion and the socially efficacious religion. If it is not accurate to say that Rorty himself reduces religion solely to romance, then is he not admitting a public (albeit not dogmatic) role for religion? To answer that he would so far as the ‘social gospel’ preached would vary little from Marxism, is to reframe the contours of the debate about the public–private split as applied to religion. In other words, not all religion must be kept out of the public sphere, only ‘bad’ religion, which, as we have been told, is metaphysical, is dogmatic and aims at amassing power for institutions. If this is the case, then what become of his public–private distinction as applied to religion?

Revisiting the public–private divide

In other words, if we are going to allow religion a valid role in both public and private spheres, as Rorty’s later writings seem to suggest, then what becomes of his efforts to hold on to a general distinction between public and private, specifically in terms of epistemic versus non-epistemic? Thus I now turn to ask: once the specter of metaphysics has been exorcized is there any basis upon which to advocate for a general public–private split?

Facilitating an answer requires rethinking the very nature of the private realm, the sphere Rorty has relegated to irony. I want to rephrase the terms of the dilemma and nuance the talk about public versus private in terms of the latter being divided up into ‘idiosyncratic’ and ‘comprehensive’ beliefs, a distinction that recalls the one Rorty makes between epistemic and non-epistemic. However, whereas Rorty takes the epistemic versus non-epistemic distinction to define the public versus private one, I want to speak of private beliefs as being divided up into idiosyncratic and comprehensive ones, thus complicating his neat dualism. The result will be twofold. First, I will offer a critique of his assumption that the private realm is one marked solely by the non-epistemic. Second, I will suggest a more productive way to understand the relation between the public and private that changes the tone of the debate about religion. (I will leave out of the picture any analysis of what might constitute a purely public belief.)

I will distinguish between two different kinds of private beliefs in the following way. First, there is the type of private belief akin to Rorty’s early penchant for orchids or his later passion for birding. I will refer to these as ‘idiosyncratic private beliefs’, given the fact that they (on the whole) emerge from one’s personal (and ‘purely subjective’) tastes, preferences, likes, etc. That there is no requirement that his passion for orchids necessarily must be borne out in terms of his public practices seems non-controversial. However, this is not to say that any possible connection is ruled out. For example, someone concerned with the cultivation of wild orchids in their natural habitat may become, as a result of this private passion, an avid environmentalist who opposes suburban sprawl. What Rorty is really trying to get at by divorcing the private from the public, though, is twofold. First, there is no need to justify one’s private beliefs according to their social usefulness: i.e. I can be free to love orchids without this passion having any social efficacy. I do not have to justify my private pleasures to myself or to anyone else, for that matter: hence Rorty’s claim that this realm is the realm of arationality. Second, if and when political action does result, it may come in any variety of positions across the spectrum: i.e. love for orchids does not make one politically conservative or liberal, etc. But, once again, is to claim that there is no necessary, predictable, and/or desirable public effect resulting from one’s privately held beliefs the same as arguing that one’s ‘privately’ held views cannot or should not have a role to play in the public square? ³⁵

That Rorty has conflated his anti-foundationalism with a call for a complete divorce between the two realms can be seen when we explore whether one’s obsession with orchids is on par with another type of private beliefs, namely, religious ones. In other words, in what sense are all religious beliefs primarily and fundamentally private? Answering this question requires denoting a second type of private belief, what I will call ‘comprehensive private beliefs’. Comprehensive private beliefs may indeed speak to an individual’s ‘private’ concerns (e.g. giving one’s life meaning or hope, structuring one’s view of reality, etc.), but they are meaningless apart from their specific socio-historical contexts. They can be likened to a ‘worldview’, which not only comprises one’s basic, private beliefs that give sense and meaning to one’s life but also extends beyond one’s idiosyncratic preferences. In other words, a worldview emerges from a shared tradition and attempts to orient an individual to contemporary public problems, needs and issues. To the extent to which a worldview gives meaning and direction to an individual life it can be considered private. But given its emergence out of a people’s history and its concern with the social, it is not only ‘private’ as Rorty construes it – where ‘private’ means only what needs no justification and remains purely individual. ³⁶ To identify oneself as Catholic, for example, does not mean one can believe anything one wants to – at least not without providing a cogent argument to others. To the extent to which one’s belief draws on historically conceived resources for dealing with such problems it indeed depends upon a degree of justification that differentiates it from idiosyncratic romance. Yet to say as much is not to summon foundationalist defenses. For, there are other ways of giving meaning to one’s comprehensive private belief than foundationally justificatory ones. Thus, some forms of religion, along with naturalism, liberalism, atheism, may be construed as ‘comprehensive private beliefs’.

When we put things this way, we can see that Rorty conflates the fact that religion indeed has private relevance to individuals (what we might call its romantic or mystical tendencies) with its being an exclusively private and thus individualistic affair lacking any public relevance – something he later acknowledged. In other words, being idiosyncratic and unjustifiable is not all there is to private beliefs. When we see that private idiosyncratic beliefs differ from private comprehensive beliefs, we can see that contingency falls across a spectrum: some beliefs are more contingent than others. Thus it is not fair to categorize all religious beliefs as idiosyncratic (though this is not to deny that some may be) as Rorty does when he writes: ‘The increasing privatization of religion during the last 200 years has created a climate of opinion in which people have the same right to idiosyncratic forms of religious devotion as they do to write poems or paint pictures that nobody else can make any sense out of ’. ³⁷ But does it follow that the purely individualistic pursuit of writing trite, sentimental love poetry in the privacy of one's own room is on par with attempting to grasp the contemporary social relevance of a sacramental and historical faith? In other words, a private belief may be an idiosyncratic one (although not necessarily) or it may have social and/or public ramifications (although there is no necessity here either). Is not to insist on such a stark distinction between public and private beliefs simply to reestablish yet another version of the fact–value/spirit–nature/objective–subjective dualism Rorty is so committed to defeating? ³⁸ He has often been accused of preserving a typology of ‘natural kinds’ when it suits his arguments. ³⁹ Here I want to levy the same charge: can we so neatly distinguish between the purely private realm, on one hand, and the purely public realm, on the other, with no blurring between them? In advocating for a more porous boundary between public and private, we are able to make room for reasoning occurring between the two that is not foundationalist in nature, and that, in fact, may look a lot more like the ‘persuasion’ Rorty speaks of in other contexts. ⁴⁰

So if the religious believer is now allowed to enter into the public square with her or his beliefs in hand, geared up for persuasion rather than argumentation, what remains of Rorty’s private ironist–public liberal dualism? That is to say, to what extent can we still endorse the aims of the ironist who ‘wants to be able to sum up his life in his own terms. The perfect life will be one which closes in the assurance that the last of his final vocabularies, at least, really was wholly his’? ⁴¹ Is the ironist’s dream that his or her final vocabulary will be wholly his or hers really an apt model for all forms of private belief? Does not this ideal indeed trivialize those forms of religions that cannot be understood apart from their historical and social roots – thus taking us well beyond Jefferson’s intent? ⁴²

I contend that it is the conflation of these two types of private beliefs – idiosyncratic and comprehensive – that prevents him from acknowledging any positive, non-foundational, dialectical interaction between the ironist and the liberal. In other words, I am worried about the normative and practical implications of the following statement: ‘my “poeticized” culture is one which has given up the attempt to unite one’s private ways of dealing with one’s finitude and one’s sense of obligation to other human beings’. ⁴³ Rorty’s strength lies in his ability to challenge the presumptuousness of many of our beliefs about the way ‘reality’ works. My fear is that by helping us rid ourselves of our holier-than-thou attitude born of metaphysics, he has also gotten rid of any productive interaction between our private and public selves. I am advocating for a redescription that does not require a complete separation between our private final vocabulary aimed at self-edification and our public final vocabulary aimed at societal edification. My point – more hermeneutical than ironical – is that once we recognize that not all private beliefs are created equal, and that some (for better or worse) are inseparable from our public urges to persuade, should we not be encouraged to bring them more explicitly into the public square in order to expose them to argument and have them refined, rejected, altered, etc.? That is to say, while Rorty is correct in advocating that we give up the search for a unified account of private interests, such as his love for orchids, with public concerns for social justice, this should not mean sequestering off all one’s private beliefs from public argument. That there is a non-foundational way of conceiving of the relation between public and private invites us to ask questions not only along the lines of ‘Is the private allowed into the public?’ but also ‘Is the public allowed into the private?’ If the public and private are not as neatly distinguishable as Rorty suggests, would it not behove us to expose the connection via public dialogue rather than try to keep them separate since designating the private as the realm of the non-justifiable indeed protects it from critical reflection? No matter what our political persuasion, do we really want to lump together, for example, calls to justify one’s belief that ‘a fetus is a human being created by God’ with calls to justify one’s passion for French pastries? Furthermore, if we take the former claim as more socially menacing, then would we not want to advocate for a public discussion, whose effect may be to ameliorate religious extremism?

In other words, acknowledging the possible integrity between the two spheres can open up the potential for critique between them: not as a uni-directional foundationalist critique of the public consequences of my privately held beliefs (what some critics of Rorty’s public–private split advocate), ⁴⁴ but as a dialectical interaction that yields a publicly sustained criticism of private beliefs. Accordingly, and against most critiques of his public–private split, the danger of Rorty’s position is not that it forsakes a foundational grounding of public action in terms of one’s private beliefs (which are traditionally taken to be universal in nature, thus providing the justification for such a theoretically based critique), but that it stymies any sort of public engagement, i.e. reasoned exchange, with one’s private beliefs. Rorty’s position, in the end, seems to sponsor rather than rebuke responses of the ilk, ‘But that’s just my private belief’. Yet is not a reply of this sort simply an upgrade from the fundamentalist’s (whether of a religious or an atheistic stripe) conversation-stopping proof-texting to the ironist’s more sophisticated quip? Socrates notwithstanding, it seems ironists are not always model conversationalists.

Another way of putting the challenge is to say that while there is much to be said for Rorty’s attempt to describe religious belief in terms of ‘romance’, defined as ‘the ability to experience overpowering hope, or faith, or love (or sometimes, rage)’, ⁴⁵ one may question the desirability – particularly in the wake of recent public expressions of religious rage – of his continuing remarks that ‘what is distinctive about this state is that it carries us beyond argument’. ⁴⁶ If the private is not so easily or neatly divorced from the public then can we really be comforted by advocating the private as a realm in which justification and argument hold no sway?

Some may interject at this point that it is not really the case that Rorty would allow us to hold any old belief in private. For example, the role he concedes to literature – as that which (at least potentially) makes us more sensitive to our own cruelty that we may inflict on others – leads one to think that one’s private views do have social repercussions. ⁴⁷ That is to say, a private reading of literature may affect who we are in public by making us less cruel. While I would concede that Rorty is not suggesting that the ironist forgo self-criticism, what he does seem to insist upon is that such criticism should come only from the ‘private’ realm of literature, which trades in ‘persuasion’, as opposed to foundationalist argumentation and justification that proceed from an institution. Since I have argued elsewhere for the dangers of this false dichotomy in that it leaves no room for non-foundationalist justification, I will not address this point here. ⁴⁸ Rather, the problem as it pertains to this present argument is the way in which Rorty conflates ‘non-justificatory’ with ‘private’. Furthermore, why must the only voices he encourages his ironist to heed be those of a text, thus keeping the whole ‘dialogue’ not just in the ‘private’ (i.e. idiosyncratic) realm but on an individual level? ⁴⁹ For, if we open up the dialogue to the aurality and orality of a public (and thus a directly inter-personal) encounter, I think that this is even more likely to aid us in overcoming our cruelty. Why? Because I think that where cruelty towards persons is at stake, then a live dialogue that allows us to encounter a person more fully in the whole of her or his being, is more likely to help us stand up and take note of our own penchant for cruelty. It seems as if a living exchange with other persons is of more help in bringing us out of our own smug and self-deceptive ways. It is odd, then, that while Rorty in many places calls for just this non-argumentative sort of interaction, ⁵⁰ his writing on religion would seem to exclude this possibility. I am arguing that endorsing the private realm as an ‘argument-free zone’ is as dangerous for society as a whole as it is for individuals.

Rorty’s position not only does a disservice to the notion of a socio-historical faith, but it also lends itself to fostering religious extremism. For, it would seem that if we encourage public dialogue to include private beliefs such as religion, then we can also be hopeful about the possibility of change and critique on a ‘private’ level. We will not achieve a universal and comprehensive critique – but why should this be desired once we have rejected a foundationalist conception of reason? If we were all a little more aware of our prejudices and of how we cannot help but argue from them then perhaps public debate would be much improved. For, we would avoid attempts (at best) to dissemble our formative beliefs and (at worst) to relieve them of the need for some degree of justification. Given, then, both the opaque and the unpredictable nature of many of our privately held beliefs, would not this call for increased suspicion and criticism of them? Which position is ultimately more dangerous, one that seeks to sequester privately held beliefs or one that asks us to consider not merely abstract justifications for such beliefs (citing Bible verses, for example) but practical justifications for beliefs that may impinge upon the welfare of others?

I have first tried to show that there is a problematic assumption lying behind Rorty’s advocacy of the public–private split, namely, that the only way of conceiving of the relation between these two spheres is uni-directional and foundational in nature. That this need not be the case leads to my second point, namely, that to promote a dialectical exchange between private beliefs and public reason leads to a more pragmatically efficacious way of avoiding cruelty. For, when we take a closer look at the nature of religious belief, it would seem as if keeping the lines of communication open between public and private would ultimately do more to help us ‘amend our lives’ and ‘love our neighbor’ than drawing the curtains between them. While I do not want to deny that encouraging public dialogues to include religion may prove challenging, we should not allow this concern to blind us to the danger of refusing to have our private beliefs challenged by public reason. In other words, the similarities of the religious zeal of Bush and Bin Laden notwithstanding, it would behove us to ask: is it not desirable that the voices in the public square be brought to bear on our ‘private’ (e.g. religious) beliefs?