The Importance of Words

Abstract

My purpose is to present a way of understanding the Rortyan thesis about the liberal duties of liberal ironists in order to vindicate the private/public distinction defended in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. To do this, I will clarify (a) the scope of Rortyan ironism, (b) its articulation with the particular version of liberalism that he defends, and (c) some distinctions between private and public uses of redescriptional resources that are usually attributed to the ironic aesthete and not to the social reformer. The analysis will involve providing an interpretation in nonepistemic terms of the key notion of “final vocabulary”, which is crucial in the Rortyan characterization of ironism. I will attend to what is usually unnoticed: the fact that Rorty uses the expression “final vocabulary” instead of the expression “set of basic beliefs” to characterize the experiential attitude of the ironist. Starting from addressing the Rortyan appeal to final vocabularies as sets of words, I will show the fertility of using Harry Frankfurt’s characterization of the notion of “importance” to understand both the figure of the ironist concerned with her self-creation and that of the liberal worried about not humiliating others.