From the opening page Carey makes it clear that the truth of Kelly s account is integral to the notion of justice. It is interesting that Carey links the question of justice to truth. Post-modern philosophers, such as the American Richard Rorty, claim it is impossible to find truth outside our immediate context. Meaning is found, he claims, within the relational networks of a community. In Rorty s paradigm, the moral framework which guides how people behave within a community can only be asserted by the mutual agreement of that community.
Morality is relative to a certain time and a certain place.
It can not be imposed from outside, in the way that Christians would claim that the Bible s teaching can be applied. For Rorty, the question of truth is irrelevant. What matters is that a certain moral framework works for that community. However Carey s exploration of the Kelly story seems to bring into question the optimism thinkers like Rorty place in post-modern relative morality. Discrete communities co-exist in the same geographic space.