ABSTRACT
The previous chapter discussed the rise of the religious question in three of the principal leaders of the pragmatic renascence, Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell and Hilary Putnam. Their collective theological turn is having another remarkable effect: the return of God-talk to Anglo-American philosophy. Only a few years ago, Giles Gunn attributed the lack of interest in religion to Richard Rorty. Now Rorty himself is making religion a respectable philosophical topic again, linking it to his neopragmatist worldview:
Although the revival of pragmatism is a generation old, as discussed at the beginning of this book, the religious turn in neopragmatist philosophy is still in its infancy. Therefore, the issue is less that these three thinkers betray their lack of theological depth, e.g. in Rorty’s simplistic appeal to private faith, than the fact that they find it necessary to speak of God at all.
