Contingency, irony, and solidarity Contingency,rencYrlfooY, andsolidarity RICHARD RORTY U niaersityProfessor of Hamanities, Uniaersityof Virginia ry,,,*-_qCaUBRTDGE WP uNrvERsrrY PREss Published by the PressSyndicarc of dre University of Cambridge The Pitt Building Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP 40 Vest 20th Suect, New York, NY 10011-4211,USA l0 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia @ Cambridgc University Press1989 First published 1989 Reprinted 1989 (thrice), 1990, l99l (cwice), 1992, 1993, 1994, r995 Printed in the United Sratesof America Library of Congess Catdoging-in-Publication Daa is available British Library Cataloging in Publication applied for ISBN0-521 -3538r -5 hardback ISBN0-52 I -1678l -6 paperback In memory of six liberals: my parentsand grandparents The agdlasrer lRabelais's word for those who do not laughJ, the non- thought of received ideas, and kitsch are one and the same, the three- headed enemy of the art born as the echo of God's laughter, the art that created the fascinating imaginative realm where no one owns the truth and everyone has the right to be understood. That imaginative realm of tolerance was born with modern Europe, it is the very image of Europe- of at least our dream of Europe, a dream many times betrayed but nonetheless strong enough to unite us all in the fraternity that stretches far beyond the little European continent. But we know that the wodd where the individual is respected (the imaginative world of the novel, and the real one of Europe) is fragile and perishable. if European culture seems under threat today, if the threat from within and without hangs over what is most precious about it - its respect for the individual, for his original thought, and for his right to an inviolable private life - then, I believe, that precious essenceof the European spirit is being held safe as in a treasure chest inside the history of the novel, the wisdom of the novel. Milan Kundera, The Art of the Noael Contents Preface page xi Introdaction xiii Part I: Contingency r The contingency of language 3 2 The contingency of selfhood 23 3 The contingency of a liberal community 44 Part II: Ironism and Theory 4 Private irony and liberal hope 73 5 Self-creation and affiliation: Proust, Nietzsche, and Heidegger g6 From ironist theory to private allusions: Derrida T22 Part III: Cruelty and Solidarity 7 The barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov on cruelty r4r 8 The last intellectual in Europe: Orwell on cruelty t6g g Solidarity r89 Index of names r99 tx Preface This book is based on rwo sets of lectures: three Northcliffe Lectures given at University College, London, in Februaty of ry86 and four Clark Irctures given at Trinity College, Cambridge, in February of ry81. Slightly revised versions of the Northcliffe Lectures were published in the London Reoiewof Booksin the spring of 1986. They have been further revised to form the first three chapters of this book. A shortened version of Chaptet 7, on Nabokov, was delivered as a Belitt Lecture at Ben- nington College and published by that college as a Bennington Chap- book on Literature. The other chapters have not been published previ- ously. Parts of this book skate on prefty thin ice - the passagesin which I offer controversial interpretations of authors whom I discuss only brief- ly. This is particularly true of my treatment of Proust and of Hegel - authors about whom I hope someday to write more fully. But in other parts of the book the ice is a bit thicker. The footnotes in those parts cite my previous writings on various figures (e.g., Davidson, Dennett, Rawls, Freud, Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas), writings which, I hope, back up some of the controversial things I say about them in this book. Most of the items cited will be reprinted in two volumes of my collected papers (provisionally entitled Objectioity, Trutb, and Relatiaism and Essayson Heideggerand Others) to be published by Cambridge Uni- versity Press. I am very grateful to Kad Miller, Lord Northcliffe Professor of English Literature in University College and Editor of the London Reoieutof Books, for his invitation to lecture at University College, as well as for encour- agement and advice. I am equally grateful to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, both for their invitation to give the Clark Lectures and for generous hospitdity during my visit to Cambridge. I owe a great deal to the three institutions which granted me the leisure to compose these lectures: theJohn D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Cen- ter for Advanced Study of the University of Virginia, and the Wissen- schaftskolleg zu Bedin. The MacArthur Fellowship which I held from r98r to r986 made it easy for me to branch out into new areasof reading xl PREFA C E and writing. The Director of the Center for Advanced Study, Dexter I7hitehead, let rne affange my teaching in such a way as to maximize the oppoftunities provided by the MacArthur Fellowship. The patient and helpful staff of the rJ?'issenschaftskolleg,surely the most supportive en- vironment for scholars ever created, made my stay there in r986-1987 both productive and pleasant. As I revised and added to the two sets of lectures, gradually shaping this book, I received acute and helpful comments from friends who kindly took the time to read all or pan of a growing pile of manuscript. Jeffrey Stout, David Bromwich, and Barry Allen saved me from many blunders and made a lot of useful srrggestions.Konstantin Kolenda sug- gested a crucial fearrangement of topics. Chades Guignon, David Hiley, and Michael Levenson provided helpful bits of last-minute advice. I thank them all. I am grateful also to Eusebia Estes, Lyell Asher, and Meredith Garmon for secretarial and editorial assistance,and to Nancy Landau for careful copy-editing. Jeremy Mynott and Terence Moore, of Cambridge University Press, were constantly helpful and encouragrng. xll Introduction The attempt to fuse the public and the private lies behind both Plato's attempt to answer the question "rVhy is it in one's interest to be just?" and Christianity's claim that perfect self-realization can be attained through service to others. Such metaphysical or theological attempts to unite a striving for perfection with a sense of community require us to acknowledge a common human nature. They ask us to believe that what is most important to each of us is what we have in common with others - that the springs of private fulfillment and of human solidarity are the same. Skeptics like Nietzsche have urged that metaphysics and theology are transparent attempts to make altruism look more reasonable than it is. Yet such skeptics typically have their own theories of human nature. They, too, claim that there is something common to all human beings - for example, the will to power, or libidinal impulses. Their point is that at the "deepest" level of the self there is zo senseof human solidarity, that this sense is a "mere" artifact of human socialization. So such skeptics become antisocial. They turn their backs on the very idea of a communi- ty larger than a tiny circle of initiates. Ever since Hegel, however, historicist thinkers have tried to get be- yond this familiar standoff. They have denied that there is such a thing as "human nature" or the "deepest level of the self." Their strategy has been to insist that socialization, and thus historical circumstance, goes all the way down - that there is nothing "beneath" socialization or prior to history which is definatory of the human. Such writers tell us that the question "\U?'hatis it to be a human being?" should be replaced by ques- tions like "\$fhat is it to inhabit a rich twentieth-century democratic society?" and "How can an inhabitant of such a society be more than the enactor of a role in a previously written script?" This historicist turn has helped free us, gradually but steadily, from theology and metaphysics - from the temptadon to look for an escape from time and chance. It has helped us substitute Freedom for Truth as the goal of thinking and of social progress. But even after this substitution takes place, the'old ten- sion between the private and the public remains. Historicists in whom the desire for selGcreation, for private autonomy, dominates (e.9., Heidegger and Foucault) still tend to see socialization as Nietzsche did - xl1l INTRODUCTION as antithetical to something deep within us. Historicists in whom the desire for amore just and free human community dominates (e.g., Dew- ey and Habermas) are still inclined to see the desire for privatJperfec- tion as infected with "irrationalism" and "aestheticism." This book tries to do iustice to both groups of historicist writers. I urge that we not rry to choose between them but, rather, give them equal weight and then use them for different purposes. Authors like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Proust, Heidegger, and Nabokov are useful as exemplars, as illustrations of what private perfection - a self-created, a,.rtonomous, human life - can be like. Authors such as Man<, Mill, Dewey, Habermas, and Rawls are fellow citizens rather than exemplars. They are engagedin a shared, socid effort - the effort to make our institutions and practices more just and less cruel. I7e shall only think of these two kinds of writers as opposedif we think that a more comprehensive philosophical outlook would let us hold self-creation and justice, private perfection and human solidarity, in a single vision. There is no way in which philosophy, or any other theoretical disci- pline, will ever let us do that. The closest we will come to ioining these two quests is to see the aim of a just and free society as letting its citizens be as privatistic, "irrationalist," and aestheticist as they please so long as they do it on their own time - causing no harm to others and using no resources needed by those less advantaged.