Richard Rorty and the Problem of the Person

Abstract

In Richard Rorty's persuasive alternative to contemporary liberal theory he maintains that a contingent, rather than a universalist, liberalism can better engender human solidarity and that the ironic stance can better safeguard liberal freedom than any metaphysical buttress. In an internal critique I argue that irony is an aesthetic, rather than, as solidarity, a moral ideal. Moreover, Rorty's notion of agency is too voluntaristic to supply the necessary communitarian sentiments for solidarity to be achieved. Hence the twin ideals of irony and solidarity cannot both be situated in his decentered notion of selfhood.