After rationalism : the moral and religious implications of Taylor's and Rorty's epistemological critiques

This paper examines and compares the different ways in which Charles Taylor and Richard Rorty critique the representationalism and foundationalism characteristic of modern epistemology (Chapter One), then considers how their critiques affect their respective understandings of morality (Chapter Two) and of the role of religious belief in modern secular societies (Chapter Three). Rorty's and Taylor's epistemological debate is presented as an example of the differences between, on the one hand, 'anti-ontological' or pragmatic post-foundational philosophies (such as Rorty's) and, on the other, 'weak ontological', contact realist alternatives (such as Taylor's). The paper concludes with a defense of Taylor's position over Rorty's, and, in doing so, makes a case for the rejection of strictly naturalist accounts of the moral and religious life in favor of a (weak ontological) picture of the human person as necessarily oriented in relation to transcendent goods of other trans-human realities