Questions:

For both Rorty and Habermas, solidarity and consensus are crucial elements in their efforts to sustain the liberal, emancipatory politics each associates with the Enlightenment.

This interest in liberal, emancipatory politics can be discerned in the various civil rights and liberation movements of the past thirty years. And, despite the rise of conservative politics in the U.S., it would appear that the interest in such emancipatory politics remains strong: witness the strength of the anti-censorship movement in the face of efforts to restrict the accessability of certain materials on the Internet.

But Rorty seeks to preserve liberal, emancipatory politics while jettisoning the Enlightenment foundations of those politics. Habermas, by contrast, argues that such emancipation politics of the Enlightenment can only be preserved if we also preserve something of their Enlightenment foundation - in his case, an Enlightenment philosophy reshaped in light of more recent, especially empirically-oriented studies (e.g., in psychology, sociology, etc.).

Given that liberal, emancipatory politics remain desirable, as both Habermas and Rorty argue - whose position seems more tenable? That is, which of these two positions seems more likely to succeed in praxis - in the real world of culture and politics - in preserving the emancipatory politics each espouses?