Tools of Wonder

A central argument of Philosophy and Social Hope is that we must learn to do without many concepts that have previously structured philosophical inquiry. In making this case, Rorty regularly replaces or redefines philosophical terms with a reference to the future. Truth, for example, has no meaning except as an orientation of inquiry to a possible future. He makes a similar move regarding wonder, which Aristotle says is the beginning of philosophy. He argues that pragmatists transfer the wonder and mystery that Greek and Abrahamic traditions found in the nonhuman world to the human future (51-52). This paper critically analyzes this displacement of wonder. These religious and philosophical traditions offer, in Rorty's terms, "tools" of wonder at the nonhuman world. As the world and its multispecies communities are increasingly remade the image and (short-term) interests of humans, the cultivation of our tools of wonder may be crucial in the effort to learn to live as parts of earth's multispecies communities -- and in the effort to build hopes for a future other than one marked by human technological domination.