Having stated his thesis that one must begin with Whitehead's diagnosis, Rorty quotes him as follows: «The difficulties of all schools of modern philosophy lie in the fact that having accepted the subjectivist principle, they continue to use
philosophical categories derived from another point of view» (PR 253; WEP 134; italics mine).
As earlier with regard to poetic discourse on the objective side of the idea of revelation, so too on the subjective side, the experience of testimony can only provide the horizon for a specifically religious and biblical experience of revelation, without our ever being able to
derive that experience from the purely
philosophical categories of truth as manifestation and reflection as testimony.