5 - Liberalism

Summary

When it comes to political deliberation, philosophy is a good servant but a bad master.

(PSH: 232)

Privacy and solidarity

Rorty's way of coming to terms with the disturbing conflicts in his adolescent ambitions is to relinquish the thought that they have to be brought into harmony, and thus to give up on the idea of a single, self-redeeming vision. The liberal ironist can pursue surreptitious bliss and social justice with a clean intellectual bill of health. Neither of these sets of desires, or ‘interests’, is beholden to the other. Those ‘tensions’ that Rorty previously experienced as an uncomfortable, perhaps even unbearable, intellectual strain are replaced by the messier, but less head-spinning, grind of practical strife. There will never be enough time and resources for each one of us to both keep well topped up with our preferred, private delights and spend time putting the rest of the world right. However, deciding where to draw the line here is a pragmatic affair, not something to get into throes of theoretical agony about.

This practical ‘dividing line’ separates the private and public facets of the self. These are the two sides of an apparent dichotomy that is central to the main themes of Contingency, irony, and solidarity. The latter ‘division’ is a feature that many of Rorty's critics in analytic philosophy in particular – to whom almost any perceived ‘dichotomy’ is like a red rag to a bull – try to throw back in his face.