Etnocentrismo e liberalismo no neopragmatismo de Rorty

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between the notions of ethnocentrism and liberalism from the perspective of the neopragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. In this sense, we show that this tenuous political philosophy, centered on these notions, emphasizes the connectivity between conversational practices and the moral, political and social issues shared by different cultures. In Rorty's philosophy, his thin notion of ethnocentrism acts as an articulating element between his anti-representationalist perspective of knowledge and his version of political liberalism. From the naturalist criticism that makes transcendental explanations of reality unfeasible Rorty draws the historicist consequences necessary for his proposition that there are no limits, except those of conversational character, for the apprehension and description of knowledge. In this ethnocentric proposal in which there is nothing transcendent in relation to cultural, contingent and historical practices, everything is considered to be dependent on the provisional intersubjective consensus, in terms of the vocabulary and politics of a given community and time.