Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity - Google Book Search - The Diigo Meta page

• 24 Mar 08
  

  Levy Rivers

  In his view, an ideally liberal polity would be one whose culture hero the "strong poet" rather than the warrior, the priest, the sage, or the truth-seeking, logical, objective scientist. He would drop the idea of foundations. He would regard the justification of liberal society simply as a matter of historical comparison with other attempts.

  contingency conversation rorty strong-poet

  • This ironic perspective on the human condition is valuable but it cannot advance Liberalism's social and political goals. In fact, Rorty believes that it is literature and not philosophy that can do this, by promoting a genuine sense of human solidarity. Specifically, it is novelists such as Orwell and Nabokov who succeed in awakening us to the cruelty of particular social practices and individual attitudes. Thus, a truly liberal culture would fuse the private, individual freedom of the ironic, philosophical perspective with the public project of human solidarity as it is engendered through the insights and sensibilities of great writers. Rorty uses a wide range of references--from philosophy to social theory to literary criticism--to elucidate his beliefs.

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