Abstract
In relation to the question of the art of living, this chapter articulates the opposite of Richard Rorty’s liberal ironist: the egotist. In the first section, I articulate what egotism is and who egotists are. My aim is to nominate the egotist as a useful counter-figure to the liberal ironist. In the second section, I talk about irony. I emphasize the radicalism and relevance of Rorty’s conception of irony with the help of recent literature. In the third section, I argue that the power of irony is crucial to fight egotism. I show how Rorty mobilizes irony by way of self-creation and solidarity to combat the problem of egotism. In the fourth section, I summarize my argument and suggest how an ironic life prevents nihilism.
I conducted research on this project as a Humility and Conviction in Public Life (HCPL) Visiting Residential Fellow at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute in 2017. This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
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Notes
- 1.
The Rorty Reader states that “Redemption from Egotism” originally appeared in Spanish and German before coming to print in English posthumously, and that for some time a draft of the work in English was available in Rorty’s Stanford webpage (https://web.stanford.edu/~mvr2j/rr/). I highlight a discrepancy here: while the title and the abstract of the article in Telos were in Spanish, the actual text was written in English. See Rorty (2001, 2003).
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Recommended Literature for Further Reading
Bacon, Michael. 2017. Rorty, irony, and the consequences of contingency for liberal society. Philosophy and Social Criticism. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453716688365. The article re-examines Rorty’s ironist and his conception of irony. It argues that irony can serve a positive social role in a liberal society.
Llanera, Tracy. 2016. Redeeming Rorty’s private-public distinction. Contemporary Pragmatism 13(3): 319–340. The article reconstructs Rorty’s private-public distinction in light of both the problem of egotism and the tensions between Rorty’s romantic and enlightenment tendencies. It argues that Rorty’s notions of irony (as self-creation) and solidarity share the quality of self-enlargement, which is designed to combat egotism.
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Llanera, T. (2023). Art of Living: Irony and Redemption from Egotism. In: Müller, M. (eds) Handbuch Richard Rorty. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16253-5_43
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