Thread by @ironick

What a serendipitous event: I just (re)stumbled across Richard Rorty's favorite William James passage (and no, it's not "truth is a compliment..."):
«The difference between the two views of morality that I have been discussing in these remarks is well illustrated by the contrast

https://twitter.com/Jeffrey_Howard_/status/1480531662396137478

between the pope’s dismissive reference to “the ego and its desires,” and my favorite passage in the writings of the American philosopher William James. James wrote as follows: “Every de facto claim creates insofar forth an obligation. Take any demand however slight which any

creature, however weak, may make. Ought it not for its own sole sake to be satisfied? If not, prove why not. The only possible kind of proof you could adduce would be the exhibition of another creature who should make a demand that went the other way.”»

Rorty later refers to

these two views of morality as relativism and fundamentalism. And then in the kind of deeply moving passage that makes me love Rorty, he dignifies BOTH views:
«As relativists like myself see the matter, the struggle between relativism and fundamentalism is between two great

products of the human imagination. It is not a contest between a view that corresponds to reality and one that does not. It is between two visionary poems. One offers a vision of vertical ascent toward something greater than the merely human; the other offers a vision of

horizontal progress toward a planetwide cooperative commonwealth.»

Moral systems are visionary poems--what ultimately justifies them is their beauty in the eyes of their beholders.