Richard Rorty’s philosophy embodies the spirit of cosmopolitanism, pragmatism, liberalism, and a distinctively American sensibility. By self-consciously embracing these self-categorisations, Rorty contends that we announce to our audience, in an ironic manner, “where we are coming from, our contingent spatio-temporal affiliations".

By this he means that, when we resort to our self-categories, proclaiming, for instance, "As a Marxist, I believe thus and so," or "As an American," or "As a physicist," we simultaneously acknowledge our inescapable ethnocentrism. In effect, we declare, "This is my perspective on matters, and though I cannot help but consider it the finest perspective, I am unable to substantiate this claim in a non-question-begging fashion. I hold this belief solely due to the specific historical contingencies of my existence." Rorty posits that this encapsulates the essence of the "Liberal Ironist."

In his seminal work, "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity" (1989), Rorty introduces the character of the Liberal Ironist as one who is ideally situated to traverse the intricate landscape of contemporary society while upholding a commitment to both individual creativity and social solidarity. The liberal dimension of the liberal ironist is rooted in a dedication to political and social ideals such as justice, equality, individual rights, and tolerance, while also not neglecting social cooperation with peers in achieving a more just and inclusive society. The ironist aspect of the liberal ironist is characterised by a sense of contingency and scepticism about her own beliefs, values, and vocabulary. The ironist understands that her beliefs are contingent on historical and cultural circumstances, and are not grounded in objective, universal “truth”. She recognises that her values and perspectives could have been otherwise had she been born in a different time or place. She admits that her beliefs in liberalism are not metaphysically mandated and cannot be justified in a non-question begging way; yet, she is none the worse for that. This admittance only makes her stronger as adopting both irony and liberalism allows the liberal ironist to be flexible and adaptive, constantly reevaluating her own beliefs and adjusting her positions as needed.

Between self-invention and collective solidarity

This fits with Rorty’s general socio-philosophical view. Throughout his work, Rorty tries to balance, on the one hand, notions of collective solidarity and identifications that we adopt for purposes of moral deliberation—such as ‘American’ or ‘working class’—with notions of hope, self-creation, self-invention, imagination, ‘redescription’, reform and change, on the other hand. With respect to the latter, he describes his romantic intellectual goal as one where individuals, in their private capacities, never stagnate on a comfortable bed of dogma, always lunge forward for the very purpose of not being frozen or dead, of not being oppressed by anything that is static–whether it be institutions, moral, artistic, social or political principles or at any rate anything that is not a form of constant fluid transformation. This is what Nietzsche called "transvaluation"; the process in which all value claims as to be re-evaluable since all knowledge is mediated by a perspective and never from a God's eye point of view. 

Individuals in this private sphere, to him, move forward through intellectual, cultural and moral patricide, through hedging the old dogmas of their fathers, the old commonsensical platitudes and language games they are accustomed to play, and redescribing them in new vocabularies that better fit their own purposes, creating themselves afresh, endlessly aspiring towards some limitless summit, perpetually self-creating. Their reference point to this notion of ‘progress’ is not coming closer and closer to ‘how the world really is’ but to new descriptions that better fit their current goals and purposes.

What are these goals which they are heading to, what is this forward stream of collective-thrusting striving towards? Announcing pre-set goals, to Rorty, defeats the whole purpose. So he gives no specific answer because there is no pre-determined end state, no being comfortable with one's Final Vocabulary, that is, “a set of words which they [humans] employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives” and is "Final" because it cannot be further justified other than various lengths of circularity. To be sure, Rorty does mention some of his own private social hopes “for a global, cosmopolitan, democratic, egalitarian, classless, casteless society”, but this is merely interchanging a vague and open-ended answer with an equally vague and open-ended one. 

And yet, in the public sphere, the 'liberal ironist' figure stands unflinchingly in support of this final vocabulary—those thick concepts which constitute most of her final vocabulary such as liberalism, democracy, procedural justice etc. It is only when she is in a philosophical mood that she is in radical doubt about it, and ergo about her self-conception, her whole identity as a liberal, and acknowledges that it is neither closer to some idea about how reality really is—because reality has no intrinsic nature, no essence, as she acknowledges that we cannot escape language nor its historicity. Nor can it neutrally be defended or redeemed without recourse to circular reasoning, without admitting that there is no solid ground to stand on other than saying that it overlaps with a whole bunch of people in the group with which the liberal ironist "identifies for purposes of moral and political deliberation”. But the ironist is armoured with the most potent discursive weapon: redescription—she redescribes her culture and commitments to fit her goals.

Let me expand a bit more on this notion of collective identity and redescription. We don’t think in thoughts (i.e., in intentional mental states) first and then look for signs and symbols to map them on to; to think is to use signs and symbols. To have thoughts, we have to have meanings; we can’t have the belief that cats are mammals without having an understanding what the meanings of those signs are. Those signs and symbols are passed on to us by past and present sign and symbol-using humans, thereby linking us to a linguistic community. And though many signs and symbols will be the same across linguistic communities given that they will be produced by very similar causal pressures, some others will be more contingent and sensitive to the particular linguistic habits of the community, including of the people the community want its members to be like and those who it does not want its members to be like and wish that they distance themselves from. So when the activist asks the ‘transphobe’, for instance, to redescribe the way she refers to others as to refer to them with their preferred pronouns, the activist is not only asking the transphobe to speak differently out of courtesy, but—because our choice of language shapes us—the activist is implicitly asking her to literally alternate who she is and change her moral identity, her community loyalties, commitments and affections.

While the Ironist only wants to be like herself in a constant drama of self-emulation and she attempts to purge all influences of others on her self-image, the Liberal Ironist does not compromise the notion of solidarity and social responsibility to others and eschews cruelty and sadism. The liberal ironist recognises that the goal of self-invention and intellectual patricide is well and good when applied to herself in her private capacity allowing her to explore and express her unique identities, but when applied for society as a whole, it tends to lead to ‘Hitlerlike and Maolike fantasies about "creating a new kind of human being."’

According to Rorty, the goal of a liberal society is not to create or invent anything, but rather to make it as easy as possible for people to achieve their diverse private goals without causing harm to others. This process involves using a shared moral vocabulary that transcends individuals' private self-images and allows for a common ground in public discussions. Rorty warns against the idea of trying to create a "new kind of human being" or a society that goes beyond social democracy, as these ambitions can lead to totalitarian and destructive outcomes. He emphasises the importance of separating the public and private realms, and he sees the concept of "total revolution" or anarchism as misguided and potentially harmful.

In the public sphere, Rorty emphasises the importance of gradual reform, compromise, and focusing on reducing human suffering. He believes that the public sphere should be more grounded and pragmatic, recognizing the need for stability, predictability, and the accommodation of diverse interests in a pluralistic society. This approach doesn't preclude the influence of radical ideas from the private sphere; instead, it filters and refines them, allowing for the gradual incorporation of new ideas into public policy without destabilizing the society.

Rorty then describes the liberal ironist as an anti-anti-ethnocentrist: while not able to transcend her different speech communities, she is nevertheless in constant doubt about them and chooses the words, especially thick ones, that tie in and justify her self-narratives, and writ large, her moral community.

In Contingency, Irony and Solidarity Rorty writes: 

The ironist spends her time worrying about the possibility that she has been initiated into the wrong tribe, taught to play the wrong language game. She worries that the process of socialization which turned her into a human being by giving her a language may have given her the wrong language, and so turned her into the wrong kind of human being. (Rorty 1989: 75). Nothing can serve as a criticism of a person save another person, or of a culture save an alternative culture – for persons and cultures are, for us [ironists] incarnated vocabularies. (Rorty 1989: 80) 

A determinant mapping of the landscape of a future society is intentionally left up in the air so long as there is some form of Utopia she can imagine, some form of redescription of her Final Vocabulary. And this notion is of a Hope-defined Left strikes at the very heart of Rorty’s philosophical commitments; his historicism, neopragamtism, nominalism, fallibilism, liberalism, behaviourism, ironism, anti-foundationalism, anti-representationalism, and his staunch support for democracy a la Whitman, James, and Dewey who he considered himself to be a disciple of.