A Pragmatist Account of Moral Prophecy

Moral prophets are agents who aim to transform the customs and practices of their community. They are critics of the social order whose calls for change are often met by skepticism, resentment, and hostility from those around them. This paper takes up the phenomenon of moral prophecy as a way of elucidating the relationships between three key features of a pragmatist ethics: fallibilism, hope, and sociality. I begin by discussing a problem that moral prophecy poses for pragmatists, wherein their commitment to evaluative fallibilism appears to conflict with the fact that moral prophecy requires resolve in the face of disagreement. I then look to the work of Richard Rorty and John Dewey to develop a pragmatist account of moral prophecy and argue that it can overcome this problem. Finally, I conclude with some thoughts about how a pragmatist account of moral prophecy presents a challenge to forms of evaluative realism.