Western philosophy, in the ambit of the vastly influential Richard Rorty, is now resorting to neo-pragmatist legitimations of itself. It need not matter because if no way of life can any longer be metaphysically foundational, you are no more able to justify your critique of the West than the West is able to justify itself. But this won't really do. American politicians still need to lard their speeches with high-toned allusions to the Almighty and his special regard for George W Bush, in ways that we more jaded Europeans find acutely embarrassing. Pragmatism, anti-foundationalism and the like are absurdly feeble ways to ratify your activities when you are seeking such an ambitious global role.
Culture is thus lamely ineffectual at exactly the point where it is most urgently needed.
The secularised West has been forced to use it as an ideological substitute for religion, and it simply refuses to be enlisted. And this is certainly alarming for our rulers, since no politics is effective in the long run unless it is rooted in culture, in the texture and flavour of everyday human lives. The universal and the particular, for so long pinned together by the aesthetic artefact or the Romantic symbol, have drifted gradually apart. And this is partly because one classical way of reconciling them, the nation-state, has entered into crisis. But that linkage, in a world which is simultaneously more global and more local than it used to be, is under increasing threat of being snapped.