Richard Rorty

To give up on modernism, we shall have to start thinking about the similarities, rather than the differences, between where we are now, where we were before Auschwitz, and where we were before the French Revolution. We are still trying to think of ways to minimize injustice and maximize equality. We are still trying to create beauty—thought of, with Stendhal, as “the promise of happiness.” But in trying to create both ordinary human happiness and promises of new sorts of happiness, we are not engaged in a process of emancipation or enlightenment. For there is neither a true humanity to be emancipated nor a built-in natural light (called “reason” or “conscience”) by which such emancipation is made possible. Instead of taking our cue from Hegel, we should take it from Darwin and Mendel, and say that History or Humanity no more has an immanent teleology than does Life. The evolution of Western society has been, and will continue to be, as jerky, hit-or-miss, and unpredictable as was the evolution of the primates.