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Title: The Irony of a Contingent Solidarity
Subtitle: Some Problems with Rorty
Author(s): VISKER, Rudi
Journal: Ethical Perspectives
Volume: 3    Issue: 2   Date: July 1996   
Pages: 91-100
DOI: 10.2143/EP.3.2.563039

Abstract :
According to Richard Rorty, irony and solidarity are attitudes which work against rather than promote one another. From Rorty's perspective, irony is an inappropriate response to the discovery of our contingency. It prevents us from developing the ethnocentric attitude which Rorty advocates on the grounds that it allows for a sense of solidrity that is not in conflict with the ideal of negative freedom. As I will briefly indicate in the body of this article, the problem with this proposal is that it leaves out of consideration a different type of irony which, instead of requiring external ethnocentric correction, could help us in correcting some of the biases in Rorty's self-avowed ethnocentrism.

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