Some philosophies age well. They seem to reveal something fundamental about human nature and the experience of reality, and thus escape the eroding effect of time. They do not lose their attraction in translation but remain susceptible of speaking to different cultures, across linguistic and cultural borders.

Other philosophies are so specific to a certain time or mindset, that, once the circumstances characterizing that time haft changed, the philosophies lose their grip on reality. These philosophies suddenly appear outdated and develop an aftertaste that can only be appreciated with a certain distance or irony. The irony is proportionate to the degree of self-confidence displayed by the respective philosophers.

Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo discussed the future of religion and Christianity from a pragmatist point of view, and published their conversation, alongside introductory essays, under the title The Future of Religion (2004). Their take on religion, their degree of assertiveness, their disregard for the mentality shift that characterizes the twenty-first century, and, more generally, the questionable nature of the situation–two elderly Western men discussing a topic with which they have no direct personal familiarity, in a condescending and overbearing tone–make this conversation an example of the problems and, ultimately, of the volatileness of pragmatism.

Pragmatism is a philosophical standpoint that opposes the concept of objectivity and questions its legitimacy as a referent for language and thought. Its basic assumptions are that there is no objective state of being, and that the perennial philosophical quest to discover such being is groundless. Instead of analyzing being, pragmatists think that we should analyze the linguistic and conceptual framework in which theories about being are constructed. We should aim to clarify that framework, so as to avoid falling back into constructions of objectivity. By achieving that clarification, pragmatists hope that humanity can find a common ground for rational dialogue and interaction, and that people understand the conditions of their thinking and of their experience of the world, instead of dreaming of some absolute reality beyond thought and experience.

One of the historical presuppositions of this view is that the classical approach to being and objectivity—i.e., the approach of metaphysics—has been overcome. Pragmatists assume the twentieth-century philosophy has delivered a final blow to premodern, metaphysical thought, and that there is no need to address that thought again. We cannot go back anymore, after Heidegger and other philosophers have shown that metaphysics and its main consequence, onto-theology, are errors, to thinking that Plato’s realm of forms really exists, or that the Neoplatonic conception of the divine intellect refers to anything out there, in the world. The 2500 years of the history of metaphysics in the West came to an end in the twentieth century.

The overcoming of metaphysics does not only affect, according to Rorty, philosophy. Its consequences become most palpable in religion, because religion depends on the idea of a supreme being that simultaneously exists, and constitutes the ground of existence–the key idea of onto-theology. This is true in particular for Christianity. The history of Christian theology has inextricable connections with metaphysics. Onto-theology was consciously and fully assumed in scholastic metaphysics. The conception of esse as actus purus and, at the same time, primum ens, represents the purest example of what Heidegger would see as the oblivion of true being. Hence, if metaphysics has been overcome, Christianity must also change.

In their essays and conversations, Rorty and Vattimo proclaim, ex cathedra, how their philosophy, pragmatism, should redefine Christianity and guide its quest for a new identity. The overcoming of metaphysics is an irreversible fact; Christianity, say the vanguards of pragmatism, must be transformed; metaphysical statements will never be possible again. Rorty writes: “To save religion from onto-theology, you need to regard the desire for universal intersubjective agreement as just one human need among many others, and one that does not automatically trump all other needs.”

This statement may serve as a starting point to understand how pragmatism has departed from the intellectual reality of contemporary times and what kind of problematic assumptions it requires to conceal that departure.

To make his pragmatist view about religion work, Rorty presupposes that there is a “desire for universal intersubjective agreement.” He does not present this presupposition as a presupposition. As a North American philosopher, he cannot doubt that there is such desire, and that the whole world would agree to accept the North American model of a democratic state of free, rational individuals, as the starting point for any conversation about reality. He does not see any problem in the assumptions that the rationality of the human subject acts as a guiding principle of his or her constitution, that there is a shared desire for “intersubjective agreement,” and that “needs” present a hierarchical order that may be subjected to rational choices.

If the twenty-first century shows anything, it is that these assumptions are the products of the ideology of liberal democracy.

The twenty-first century makes the human being appear, not as a rational, but as an empty subject. Humans can choose between rational discourse and particularistic, appetitive impulses, and most often, they decide against rationality. Rationality is one of many choices, and it would be an distressing demonstration of naiveté to think that the irrational appeal to the object of an alleged “onto-theology” can be subverted by the acknowledgement of rationality as a higher or more sustainable driving force in the human mind.

There is, most evidently, no desire for intersubjective agreement on which any project for a shared space of discourse could base itself. How many times have such projects been proclaimed, and how many times have they ended with decapitations and orgies of destruction. If such projects have revealed anything, it is that intersubjective agreements are figments of objectivity to an even higher degree than metaphysical references to the absolute. Such agreements are not based on objective conditions to which any rational subject could agree. They are constructions of stratified, ideological axioms deliberately imposed by one subject or one culture. They conceal essentialist assumptions about humanity in an even more problematic way than religions. Their presumption of rationality is a projection of underlying structures of power and dominance.

One can suspect that Rorty was all too aware of this presumption. But one of the pragmatists’ usual defense strategies is to accuse their opponents of the covert assumptions that they themselves make. And so it is not surprising to see Rorty argue, in his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, that the metaphysicians’ big questions–“What is it to be human?”–are the real cause for the subliminal exercise of power and dominance.

Rorty does not accept that objection because he sees himself in the role of the “ironist,” i.e. the ideal version of a liberal, ideologically uncommitted thinker. Here again, one can suppose that Rorty is aware that throughout history, it was British and American liberalism–the idea that everybody is free and capable of accomplishing anything that they like–that destroyed many nations and cultures. But instead of accepting that objection, he simply diverts it and to attributes it to his opponent, which is metaphysics and religion. Rorty died before it became evident that it is not metaphysics and religion that causes wars and makes intersubjectivity impossible, but precisely the constraint of accepting the liberal paradigm that Rorty pushes. It is the “ironist” who starts civilizational conflicts, and not the metaphysician.

But far from acknowledging the problems of the pragmatist reasoning, the late Rorty goes on to proclaim: “Religion may resume its role without masks and dogmatism, may once again take its place in the modern world alongside science and politics, without aspiring anymore to the absolute.” One must realize the irony of this statement. Rorty, the self-proclaimed anticlerical pragmatist, who is not particularly well-acquainted with cultures outside the Western horizon, prescribes that every religion in the world should instantly let go of its aspirations to the absolute and lay down the mask of dogmatism. At a time when dogmatisms and absolutisms started flourishing around the globe, when civilizational dynamics became more complex, and when it became clear that the Western colonialist project is possibly the most destructive of all ideological programs, Rorty thought that pragmatist post-metaphysicism was going to shape the new era of religion.

One could think that reality has taught pragmatists to be more careful and humble about affirming the universality of the pragmatist, American liberal paradigm as an antidote against metaphysical essentialism. However, it seems that pragmatism has difficulties to incorporate historical reality. Reading Hegel in 2019, Robert Brandom echoes Rorty’s standpoint and affirms that God is not, “an objective, independent being, but a product of its own thought and practice.” God “is not a God in the form of a distinct thing that causally creates human beings, but the religious community that believers create by their recognitive identification with it and with each other.”

Brandom here present himself as the contrary of what a lucid ironist should be. Instead of acknowledging that the reality of belief systems and practices in today’s world contradict the pragmatist idea that God is not a “distinct thing,” and that these practices definitely do not point to the recognition, behind God’s objectivity, of a collective creation of the believers’ minds, he simply pretends that reality doesn’t matter. Pragmatism is true by itself and independently of reality. Here, one could raise the question whether Brandom’s departure from the reality of religion in the world actually confirms Rorty’s ideal of the ironist, who remains free from ideological commitments, or whether it rather shows that this ideal actually leads to a self-contradiction: The ironist turns out to be, not an impartial but lucid observer and interlocutor, but something like an ideological hermit, who prefers to insist on the truth of lofty conceptual constructions rather than accepting the reality of the world.

Pragmatism is an example of a failed philosophical project because it covertly conveys the political and ideological commitments of a certain time, while failing to address or to give any kind of positive account of those commitments. All pragmatism can do is to claim that the time of metaphysics and objectivity is over, that the time of intersubjectivity has arrived, and that the whole world must accept its arrival. By doing so, pragmatism pushes the political, self-affirming agenda of liberal democracy, while disregarding the historical consequences of that agenda.

The twenty-first century is deeply, and perhaps fanatically religious. Rorty–and Brandom–could have read its signs and accepted that the pragmatist dream of post-metaphysical, rational religion is a creation of the Western mind. But they didn’t. Now, their philosophy appears to have lost much of its attraction–and ironically, what this philosophy has criticized as a construction of the past is back on track again.