As promised, and just a little over a year and a half late.
Richard Rorty's four-page introduction to Contingency, irony, and solidarity does exactly what an introduction is meant to do: it prepares the reader for the work ahead. This might seem a weak compliment, but I've read more than one book whose author failed to grasp that concept. Rorty's introduction tells the reader what the philosophical problem that he sees is, defines some key terms, and presents a solution.
The problem: Society has been long bogged down by failed attempts to come up with a theory that will unify the ideas of "private perfection" with those of us being "fellow citizens". "Private perfection" uses a vocab of "self-creation" which is "private, unshared, and unsuitable to argument". On the other hand, justice is the vocabulary of the citizen. Justice's vocab is "public and shared, a medium for argumentative exchange".
The solution: Rorty desires the creation of a *liberal ironist utopia. The utopia would not be built on a theory that would bring justice and self-creation together. Instead, a narrative must be created which will realize the equal necessity of these mutually-exclusive human desires and their vocabularies.
* Rorty uses Judith Shklar's understanding of "liberal". For Shklar, liberals are people who believe that cruelty is the worst thing that humans do. So, there's nothing left-wing about Rorty's utopia. American Republics would fit under Rorty's liberal umbrella with Democrats.
Like most present-day philosophers, Rorty writes in a simple style that is easy to read. He doesn't try to win over the reader by impressing him or her with his poetic style. He does use his fair share of jargon, but he always does his best to define it for you.
Intro completed. I'm getting ready to start on Part I: Contingency. Given current trends, I'll be posted a thread about it in roughly two years.
Peace.
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