Richard Rorty’s Contingency: Tools, Selves, and Communities

Ryder explores how language, self, and community are contingent creations—not eternal truths—using Rorty’s (via Wittgenstein) language as toolkit analogy.

Step 86: Rorty’s Contingency

Step 86: Rorty’s Contingency – Tools, Selves, and Communities

This is the first of a three-part series diving into Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989).

This episode tackles contingency—a radical idea that shakes the foundations of how we see language, ourselves, and our communities. Rorty argues these aren’t grounded in eternal truths but are contingent—products of historical chance, like tools we craft and reshape.

I’ll be honest: I find Rorty’s ideas thrilling but sometimes overly reductive. We’ll unpack that later. For now, grab your mental toolbox, and let’s explore how Rorty sees language, self, and society as contingent creations.

Step 86: Rorty’s Contingency

Step 1: The Contingency of Language – Crafting Our Tools

Rorty’s big claim in Chapter 1 of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is that truth isn’t “out there” to be found—it’s made by humans through language. Forget the old idea that language mirrors reality, like a jigsaw puzzle piecing together God’s truth. Rorty, channeling Wittgenstein, sees language as a toolkit. As he writes, “The world does not speak. Only we do” (p. 6). Our words don’t fit a pre-existing lock; we build truths with them, like carpenters hammering out a new reality.

Take the French Revolution, which Rorty highlights: it showed “the whole vocabulary of social relations… could be replaced almost overnight” (p. 3). This sparked utopian dreams, proving language can reshape society. But here’s the punch: truths depend on our vocabularies. Rorty says, “Truth cannot be out there… because sentences cannot so exist… The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not” (p. 5). No sentences, no truth—just tools we wield.

Rorty leans on Donald Davidson to ditch the idea of language as a medium between self and reality. Davidson’s “passing theories” concept is key: when communicating, we guess what others mean, converging on shared understanding without a fixed language structure. Imagine parachuting into an alien culture, as Rorty describes: you’d fumble with their grunts and gestures, building a “passing theory” to connect (p. 14). Language isn’t a lens; it’s a hammer we swing to build consensus.

Even metaphors, Rorty argues, are just unfamiliar tools. In Chapter 1, he cites Davidson: a metaphor isn’t a special meaning but “a way of producing effects” (p. 18), like a grimace or a photo. When metaphors catch on, they become “dead,” turning into literal tools, like “the heart is a pump” once was revolutionary. Progress, Rorty insists, is “a history of increasingly useful metaphors” (p. 20), not getting closer to reality.

Key Takeaway: Language is a contingent toolkit we craft, not a mirror of truth. As Rorty puts it, “Languages are made rather than found, and… truth is a property of linguistic entities, of sentences” (p. 7). We build truths, and progress means forging better tools.

Step 86: Rorty’s Contingency

Step 2: The Contingency of Selfhood – Building Ourselves

If language is a contingent toolkit, what about the self? In Chapter 2, Rorty argues the self isn’t a fixed core but a creation of our vocabularies. Forget the idea of a “deep” essence, like an operating system running our beliefs. Rorty, drawing on Freud, sees us as “networks of beliefs and desires” (p. 25), shaped by chance and language. He writes, “The self is not something we find but something we make” (p. 26).

Think of self-creation as redescribing your “blind impress”—the unique quirks chance gave you. Rorty borrows this from poet Philip Larkin, meaning the idiosyncratic traits that make you you. Poets and intellectuals, like Proust or Nietzsche, use language to craft new selves. Rorty praises Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, where Marcel weaves memories into a self that “could not have existed” without his metaphors (p. 99). It’s like sculpting with words.

What separates genius from fantasy? Rorty’s answer is blunt: “It’s about whether an idiosyncrasy happens to catch on” (p. 37). Freud’s vocabulary of the unconscious didn’t uncover truth but offered tools for self-description that stuck, letting us redescribe “sin” as psychological conflict (p. 27). The goal isn’t one “right” self but a repertoire of redescriptions. Rorty says, “There is no intrinsic human nature waiting to be discovered” (p. 25)—just stories we tell to become who we are.

Key Takeaway: The self is a contingent construction, built with language tools. As Rorty notes, “We make [the self] through the process of redescription” (p. 26). Our identity is a work in progress, shaped by the vocabularies we wield.

Step 86: Rorty’s Contingency

Step 3: The Contingency of a Liberal Community – Building Together

Now, let’s scale up to communities. In Chapter 3, Rorty argues liberal societies—those valuing freedom and equality—aren’t built on universal truths like human nature or reason. They’re contingent, historical accidents. He writes, “The liberal community… is not the discovery of a truth about human nature but the creation of a particular kind of social arrangement” (p. 45). Like language and self, communities are crafted with tools.

Rorty rejects the idea that values like freedom and justice fit together like a puzzle, quoting Isaiah Berlin: “The optimistic view… that all good things must be compatible… is not self-evidently true” (p. 46). Liberalism is an experiment, not a blueprint. Its strength lies in recognizing its own contingency while staying committed to reducing cruelty—Judith Shklar’s definition of liberalism as believing “cruelty is the worst thing we do” (p. 74).

Solidarity, Rorty argues, isn’t about a shared human essence. It’s “imaginative identification” with others’ pain (p. 192). Novels, like Dickens’s Bleak House or Wright’s Black Boy, do this better than philosophy, showing “the details about kinds of suffering” (p. 94). Rorty warns that redescription can humiliate when it dismisses others’ identities, but liberals should use it to expand “us” to include “them,” making tribe or race less important than shared vulnerability.

The catch? Rorty splits private and public realms. Private self-creation—crafting your unique self—doesn’t need to align with public goals like reducing cruelty. But he admits liberals struggle with questions like “Why not be cruel?” without circular answers (p. 87). His solution: focus on freedom, and “truth and goodness will take care of themselves” (p. 84). I’m skeptical—freedom can clash, as Berlin’s negative and positive liberty shows.

Key Takeaway: Liberal communities are contingent creations, not universal truths. Rorty says, “Solidarity is not discovered by reflection but created” (p. 94), through narratives that expand our sense of “us” while balancing private self-creation with public hope.

Step 86: Rorty’s Contingency

Conclusion

Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity challenges us to see language, self, and community as toolkits we build, not truths we find. As he writes, “Anything could be made to look good or bad… by being redescribed” (p. 7). Language crafts truths, selves are sculpted through redescription, and liberal societies thrive by imagining shared suffering, not chasing universal foundations. This view empowers us to create anew—new words, new identities, new solidarities—while staying vigilant against cruelty. But it risks oversimplifying: can freedom alone ensure goodness?

Join us next time for Irony, where we’ll explore Rorty’s liberal ironist. Until then, keep tinkering with your toolbox.