Private+Irony+and+Liberal+Hope


 * =Title= || "Private Irony, Liberal Hope" 1989 ||
 * =Author= || Richard Rorty ||
 * =Date= ||  ||
 * =Summary By= || Tatiana ||
 * =Summary= || * **Central idea:** Everyone inherits a set of words that we use to describe/ justify our existence and interactions with others as well as the world in which we live. this is defined as "final vocabulary". According to Rorty, this is final in the sense that "their user has no noncircular argumentative recourse" should someone cast doubt on the worth or validity of the word used (469).


 * In relation to this "final vocabulary" there are what he calls ironists and those who employ common sense.
 * **Ironists** have continuing doubt about the final vocab they are using,because of exposure to other vocabs which have impressed them; realize the argument phrased in their present vocab does not resolve those doubts; is not convinced that their final vocab represents reality better than any other (469).
 * Those who are **commonsensical** describe everything around them using the final vocabulary they've inherited and "judge the belief, actions, and lives of those who employ alternative final vocabularies" (470). (I get the impression Rorty believes this to be "bad", even though common sense, in a non philosophical sense employs the same assumptions but is generally thought to be "good").
 * =Discussion points= || * What does this say about the nature of human nature?
 * The nature of human nature is to preserve its existence (through socialization)(472) and defend against usurpers (472).
 * preserve existence- "I cannot imagine a culture which socialized its youth in such a way as to make them continually dubious about their own process of socialization"(472)
 * Defend against usurpers- (A universalist ethics seems incompatible with ironism, simply because its hard to imagine stating such an ethic without some doctrine about the nature of man. Such an appeal to real essence is the antithesis to ironism" (472).
 * Defend against usurpers- (A universalist ethics seems incompatible with ironism, simply because its hard to imagine stating such an ethic without some doctrine about the nature of man. Such an appeal to real essence is the antithesis to ironism" (472).


 * Is there agency? NO
 * Considering that societies are bound together by "common vocabularies and common hopes", it seems that socialization into accepting a common "final vocab" is central to its successful cohesion and survival. Though Rorty seems to beleive that those who are commonsensical stunt the development of new or alternative vocabs, it seems that these people serve an important function. What's interesting is that I view academics as those who are supposed to be ironists, but that has created its own "final vocabulary, with the "common sense" camp to vehemently defend it.


 * Can there be equality?
 * If we are to be ironists, then there is equality in the sense that we find no inherent superior value in our own "final vocabulary" over the others we encounter. However, I get the impression that there are far more people who subscribe to his definition of common sense, and in that way there is no equality (of final vocab) because inherent in our relation to new knowledge is the assumption that our vocab is the best, without question. In fact, he presents ironists as "enlightened" in some sense. However, it can also be said that the ability to push back from the vocabulary we are socialized to accept and defend, represents an inequality in ability.


 * Arguably, many of us begin our academic careers as ironists. At what point to we become members of the "common sense camp"?Better stated, at what point do we stop questioning the vocabulary we've inherited?
 * Do we give power to those whose vocabulary we adopt?
 * According to the article, you cannot be "someone who believes cruelty is the worst we can do and have no metaphysical beliefs as to what all humans have in common"(471). Do you buy Rorty's assertion that it is impossible to be a liberal ironist? Are there alternative definitions of liberalism that would make these ideas compatible? ||

= = = = = = = = = = = =

= = = = = = = =

= =