Is Richard Rorty a Man of Faith?

When I read again my article, entitled "Faith and Reason" dated February 15, 2017, I came to realize that Rorty must be a "man of faith."  Of course, his faith is entirely different from the faith of any religion.  I think, it's clear that the object of his faith is not someone who is Absolute but to something that promises some progress of humanity.  Rortian faith is synonymous with "social hope."  Yet I doubt if he identifies hope with faith -if faith is understood in religious terms.  In religious context, faith is a firm assent to a proposition like "God exists" even if it doesn't have any correspondence in reality (as atheists claim).  Maybe, Rortian hope is little less in degree of assertion to a proposition like "I hope a society would become better when Outcomes-based education will fully be implemented," since hope is anchored on something which may come or not, or may be realized or not.

As we recall, Rorty detests the traditional philosophical discipline in the West, which he identifies as Platonism.  Platonism claims that reality is out there -outside the knower and it can be known.  Human mind “mirrors” this external reality.  If this reality is fully captured by the human mind, then one can claim that he knows with certainty that part of reality.  Thus, if one claims he knows something as true, his claim will never become unfounded.  And if it is disputed, we can immediately resolve it by looking for its reference –the external reality.  For example, if Juan claims that “the board is white,” but Pedro disputes his claim saying, “it’s not white but black,” at the very least we can resolve the dispute by clearing up what both of them is referring to.  Under normal conditions like say, “they are looking at the same board under a broad daylight (normal condition),” and that both of them see that the board is really white, and not black; thus, the dispute is resolved.  In Platonism, reality becomes the foundation of true knowledge. 

The problem, however, is not that simple.  Reality is something like of a myth.  Wilfrid Sellars calls this elusive reality as the "myth of the given."  In the tradition of the West, reality is understood as something hidden in the facade of the ordinariness.  For example, you are looking at your house.  What you see is the facade, if you are standing in front of your house but what you don't see is what's inside the house.  In the knowing process, the facade is what you immediately see but what you don't immediately see is the what we consider as the reality.  In the language of Immanuel Kant, phenomenon (appearance) is what we can know and noumenon (reality) is something behind this phenomenon.  For Kant, this thing hidden behind the veil of the phenomenon cannot be known.  We can think of it, though.  From the very start of its conception, the concept of reality is already problematic.  Some ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle give us a conflicting account of this "reality."  Plato conceived of it (reality) as something "beyond" our material world.  Aristotle, on the other hand, conceived of it as something hidden in every individual thing as "substratum" standing unfazed by its accidents.  There are still a lot of philosophers in modern and contemporary periods talking of the same reality in different senses.  In defense, some philosophers retorted in saying that the very nature of reality is unfathomable by the human mind.  Rorty regards "reality" as a myth.  There is nothing which corresponds reality.  It's just so happened that many thinkers talked about it.  It's talked about and many so believed that it's real -it's out there waiting to be captured fully by human comprehension. 

Based on this analysis, we come to a conclusion that Rorty doesn't have any belief in "reality."  He rather has hope -may be used synonymously with belief, in "better language" formulated for the purpose of making progress of mankind.  Is there any reality of what he hopes mankind will become in the future?  I think, Rorty doubts -if not, denies that there's such.  There is no reality of a better humankind as hoped in our formulation of better language.  It becomes clear that Rorty's hope is a sort of hope of making a better language for progress of mankind.  

Is Rorty a Man of Faith?  I think, he's not -if faith is understood in religious terms.  He is a man of hope -a sort of hope on something that is to come but on something that is made by a better language.