Double Visions: Autobiography and the Ends of Philosophy

Neil Gascoigne

doi:10.3390/h2030384

Abstract

In Contingency, irony and solidarity Rorty attempts to solve what Robert Pippin calls the ‘Modernity Problem’ by outlining a new self-understanding for the intellectuals of the ideal liberal society. The so-called liberal ironists of this post-philosophical milieu are no longer characterized by the quest for what Rorty describes as ‘a single vision’. This paper evaluates Rorty’s attempt to conceptualize the self-image of post-philosophical intellectuals in the light of two similar endeavors; namely, Nietzsche’s and the ancient Sceptics’. The preliminary conclusion is that although Rorty’s attempt fails, it points to an alternative way of interpreting the desire for a single vision; namely, as a form of autobiography. Drawing on Nietzsche, Nagel and Mill, the paper proceeds to argue that Rorty’s own autobiographical fragment exemplifies the way in which the narration of a failed attempt to find a ‘single vision’ can itself be seen as the achievement of such a vision.

Highlights

In Contingency, irony and solidarity Rorty attempts to solve what Robert Pippin calls the ‘Modernity Problem’ by outlining a new self-understanding for the intellectuals of the ideal liberal society
In a recent essay on Isaiah Berlin, Mark Lilla notes that the works of “important thinkers... seem to be held together by some centripetal psychological force, even if the author changed his mind about important matters”
In the introduction I indicated that this paper was motivated by a general question about where the rejection of a Philosophical quest for a single vision leaves the intellectual

Summary

No Single Vision

The account of Rorty’s intellectual progress ends with the publication of Contingency, Irony and Solidarity It constitutes the fullest expression of how a dominant conception of Philosophy’s task is exhausted in and through the recognition that the desire for a single vision is deceptive, and aims to give intellectuals a narrative of self-understanding that is free of such deception. It might be argued that Rorty’s relationship to philosophy is controlled by an all-too Nietzschean desire to evade the influence of Wittgenstein (the highest of his ‘higher men’), evidenced by his failure to take “the intellectual obligations of traditional philosophy” sufficiently seriously [37] Such an approach would include discussion of Cavell-inspired readings of Wittgenstein like Conant’s and those collected in [38]. For Conant’s criticism of Rorty see [39,40]

Irony between Scepticism and Ressentiment

Philosophy and Autobiography