Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity - Part II: Ironism and Theory

Part II: Ironism and Theory

4) Private irony and liberal hope

Rorty introduces a term that he believes effectively describes the status of a person holding the "axioms" set out in the first three chapters. This person is an ironist. An ironist is someone who fulfills three conditions:

(1) She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that arguments phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts; (3) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.

— Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p.73

5) Self-creation and affiliation: Proust, Nietzsche, and Heidegger

Rorty views Proust, Nietzsche, and Heidegger each as different types of ironists. In Remembrance of Things Past, Proust near-perfectly exemplifies ironism by continually and constantly recontextualizing and redefining the characters he meets along the way, thus preventing any particular final vocabulary from becoming especially salient. Nietzsche is an ironist because he believes all truths to be contingent, but he tends to slip back into metaphysics, especially when discussing his superman. Heidegger is an ironist because he has mostly rejected metaphysics, but his discussion of elementary words forces him to propose a generality that cannot be considered contingent or ironistic.

6) From ironist theory to private allusions: Derrida

For Rorty, Derrida most perfectly typifies the ironist. In his The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, especially, Derrida free-associates about theorizers instead of theories, thus preventing him from discussing metaphysics at all. This keeps Derrida contingent, and maintains Derrida's ability to recreate his past so that his past does not create him. Derrida is, therefore, autonomous and self-creating, two properties which Rorty considers most valuable to a private ironist. While Derrida does not discuss philosophies per se, he responds, reacts, and is primarily concerned with philosophy. Because he is contained in this philosophical tradition, he is still a philosopher, even if he does not philosophize.