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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 15 May 2017

Taken: 15 May 2017

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Excerpt •
Contingency, Irony & Solidarity •
Author •
Richard Rorty •

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Final vocabulary

Final vocabulary
All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives. These are the words in which we formulate praise our friends and contempt for our enemies, our long-term projects, our deepest self-doubts and our highest hopes. They are the words in which we tell, sometimes prospectively and sometimes retrospectively, the story of our lives. I shall call these words a person's "Final Vocabulary"


It is "final" in the sense that it doubt is cast on the worth of these words, their user has no noncircular argument recourse. Those words are as far as we can go with language; beyond them there is only helpless passivity or a resort to force. A small part of the final vocabulary is made up of thin, flexible, and ubiquitous terms such as "true," "good," "right," and "beautiful." The larger part contains thicker, more rigid and more parochial terms, for example, "Christ," "England," "professional standards," "decency," "kindness," "the Revolution," "the Church," "progressive," "rigorous," "creative." The more parochial terms do most of the work. ~ Page 73
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives. These are the words in which we formulate praise our friends and contempt for our enemies, our long-term projects, our deepest self-doubts and our highest hopes. They are the words in which we tell, sometimes prospectively and sometimes retrospectively, the story of our lives. I shall call these words a person's "Final Vocabulary"

It is "final" in the sense that it doubt is cast on the worth of these words, their user has no noncircular argument recourse. Those words are as far as we can go with language; beyond them there is only helpless passivity or a resort to force. A small part of the final vocabulary is made up of thin, flexible, and ubiquitous terms such as "true," "good," "right," and "beautiful." The larger part contains thicker, more rigid and more parochial terms, for example, "Christ," "England," "professional standards," "decency," "kindness," "the Revolution," "the Church," "progressive," "rigorous," "creative." The more parochial terms do most of the work. ~ Page 73
7 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Rorty’s ironism is based in his view of language. All language users, he claims, have become habituated into using certain words in order to construct stories that make sense out of their experiences. These vocabularies vary according to the cultures and subcultures that the individual belongs to, but ultimately they are all rooted in what Rorty calls the “final vocabulary.” A final vocabulary is a set of words, different for different groups, that grounds a a language. It provides the user with a final line of justification beyond which no speech is possible. “It is ‘final in the sense that if doubt is cast on the worth of these words, their user has no noncircular recourse. Those words are as far as he can go with language. Beyond them is only helpless passivity or a resort to force,” Because there is no reasoned justification beyond a final vocabulary, and because different groups work with different final vocabularies, when two language users from different linguistic cultures come into conflict, reason eventually breaks down and argument becomes important. The only means of persuasion, short of force of violence, that is possible is this eventuality is to rehabituate one or the other or both of the individuals into using a different vocabulary. ~Page 82 "Laughing at Nothing" Author - John Marmysz
4 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
LAUGHING AT NOTHING
4 years ago.

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