Does it make sense to speak of utopias? And if so, does Rorty's version of utopia strike us as an ideal that might be of use as we seek to build a more just and peaceful society and world? Is it possible to come to see ‘strange people’ as ‘fellow sufferers’ without coming to terms with the reasons that we often now fail to do so – i.e., because we often perceive that strangeness as a threat, and do not consider their capacity to suffer as one that trumps their capacity to contend against us in cultural and power politics and other contests for recognition and resources? Does the same ‘imaginative ability’ to build a more equitable society conflict with something fundamental to our psychologies – perhaps something primal – with which we must come to terms as we seek to increase justice and continue to lay the foundations for a truly cosmopolitan world community?

Rorty and Fukuyama on Liberalism

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama wrote an interesting and much-discussed and debated article in the National Interest. The article was titled ‘The End of History?’. Fukuyama's main thesis was that Western liberalism would not be superseded as a political formation, since it speaks to and best balances the needs of individual and communal values and aspirations.