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 solidarity 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