Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty, Reviewed by Susan Scherwitz

Abstract

Introduction:  Irony has been a bewitching feature of historical philosophical interest.  Since the sarcasm of Socrates the ironic note has charmed our philosophical lives.  Richard Rorty in his book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity has provided a new linguistic turn and has brought irony into the contemporary context of twentieth-century democratic liberal society.  Abandoning older philosophical foundations of Truth in the search for Truth, Rorty has brought us into the Nietzschian perspective of a "mobile army of metaphors" (p. 17).  The metaphor which the Rortian turn provides us with is that of the "liberal ironist."  There is irony because we live in contemporary democratic society with a demand for what Berlin calls "standing with unflinching convictions" while recognizing the very contingency of the standpoint from which we address the world (p. 46).  We are liberal in our irony because we share Judith Shklars' sense "that liberals are the people who think cruelty is the worst thing we can do" (p. xi).