Metaphysics, Universal Irony, and Richard Rorty’s “We Ironists”
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20249204 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Timo Airaksinen (0000-0001-8850-418X, University of Helsinki, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 106 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/h10040106 |
| OpenAlex | W3201242705 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 34 |
Richard Rorty speaks of “we ironists” who use irony as the primary tool in their scholarly work and life. We cannot approach irony in terms of truth, simply because, due to its ironies, the context no longer is metaphysical. This is Rorty’s challenge. Rorty’s promise focuses on top English Departments: they are hegemonic, they rule over the humanities, philosophy, and some social sciences using their superior method of ironizing dialectic. I refer to Hegel, Gerald Doherty’s “pornographic” writings, and Gore Vidal’s non-academic critique of academic literary criticism. My conclusion is that extensive use of irony is costly; an ironist must regulate her relevant ideas and speech acts—Hegel makes this clear. Irony is essentially confusing and contestable. Why would we want to use irony in a way that trumps metaphysics? Metaphysics, as defined by Rorty, is a problematic field, but irony can hardly replace it. At the same time, I admit that universal irony is possible, that is, everything can be seen in ironic light, or ironized. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and criticize Rorty’s idea of irony by using his own methodology, that is, ironic redescription. We can see the shallowness of his approach to irony by contextualizing it. This also dictates the style of the essay
Art · Criticism · Dialectic · Epistemology · Hegelianism · Irony · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphysics · Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity · History · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education
Colonialism/Postcolonialism
Pessimism
Cynicism
On the relation of irony, understatement, and litotes
Irony is critical
Verbal irony in the wild
Taking Rorty’s Irony Seriously
Moral Outrage Porn
Introduction
Law as literature
Rorty, irony and the consequences of contingency for liberal society
Adorno, Heidegger and Postmodernity
Why not say it directly? The social functions of irony
The Architecture of the Imagination
The Lewd, the Rude and the Nasty
Ovid's Canace
Ethics and Irony
The discourse of American civil society
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2024 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |