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ironick.bsky.social
Contingently i-RON-ick
@ironick.bsky.social
160 followers 390 following 130 posts
I am an Ironist: http://wikiwand.com/en/Ironism
I am a Rorty stan.
I am an Entropy stan.
Blog: ironick.medium.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ironick
Mastodon: http://mastodon.online/@ironick17
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ironick.bsky.social
Happy "Hegel will fuck you up" Day to all who celebrate!

‘from the chalice of this realm of spirits
foams out to Him, His infinity.’
January 29, 2026 at 5:22 AM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The utility of imaginative feats, bound by no social norms, for the public discourse of later ages is undeniable. Had thinkers like Plato, Augustine, and Kant not aspired to sublimity, the rest of us would not possess the beautiful residues of these aspirations.
PasAA p.(xxxii)
#PublicVsPrivate
Since I initially broached this suggestion of the need to split the private from the public (in my Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity) I have been criticized for trying to put the two in watertight compartments. I have no wish to do that. The utility of imaginative feats, bound by no social norms, for the public discourse of later ages is undeniable. Had thinkers like Plato, Augustine, and Kant, and artists like Dante, El Greco, and Dostoevsky, not aspired to sublimity, the rest of us would not possess the beautiful residues of these aspirations. Our lives would be far less varied, and the forms of happiness for which we are able to strive would be much poorer. But this does not mean that we should arrange our public institutions to suit the quest for greatness or for sublimity.
January 28, 2026 at 3:04 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Philosophy should treat the quest for the unconditioned, the infinite, the transcendent and the sublime as a natural human tendency—one which Freud has helped us understand.
PasAA p.(xxxi)
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Sublimity
From the point of view taken in these lectures, the attempt to make sublimity central to reflection on the human future is as dangerous as making God, or Sin, or Truth central to such reflection. As I see it, philosophy should treat the quest for the unconditioned, the infinite, the transcendent and the sublime as a natural human tendency—one which Freud has helped us understand. We should see it, as Freud saw the sublimation of sexual desire, as a precondition for certain striking individual achievements. But we should not see it as relevant to our public, socio-political, cultural prospects.
January 25, 2026 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
We should see the quest for the sublime, as Freud saw the sublimation of sexual desire, as a precondition for certain striking individual achievements. But we should not see it as relevant to our public, socio-political, cultural prospects.
PasAA p.(xxxi)
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Sublimity
From the point of view taken in these lectures, the attempt to make sublimity central to reflection on the human future is as dangerous as making God, or Sin, or Truth central to such reflection. As I see it, philosophy should treat the quest for the unconditioned, the infinite, the transcendent and the sublime as a natural human tendency—one which Freud has helped us understand. We should see it, as Freud saw the sublimation of sexual desire, as a precondition for certain striking individual achievements. But we should not see it as relevant to our public, socio-political, cultural prospects.
January 26, 2026 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Contingently i-RON-ick
rortyquotes.bsky.social
I have been criticized for trying to put public and private in watertight compartments. I have no wish to do that.
PasAA p.(xxxii)
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#PublicVsPrivate
Since I initially broached this suggestion of the need to split the private from the public (in my Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity) I have been criticized for trying to put the two in watertight compartments. I have no wish to do that. The utility of imaginative feats, bound by no social norms, for the public discourse of later ages is undeniable. Had thinkers like Plato, Augustine, and Kant, and artists like Dante, El Greco, and Dostoevsky, not aspired to sublimity, the rest of us would not possess the beautiful residues of these aspirations. Our lives would be far less varied, and the forms of happiness for which we are able to strive would be much poorer. But this does not mean that we should arrange our public institutions to suit the quest for greatness or for sublimity.
January 27, 2026 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Contingently i-RON-ick
rortyquotes.bsky.social
Those who have achieved contentment with the conditioned will see the pursuit of truth as the pursuit of human happiness, rather than as the fulfillment of a desire which transcends mere happiness.
PasAA p.(xxx)
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Truth
For Nietzsche and Dewey, the idea that Reality has an intrinsic nature which common sense and science may never know—that our knowledge may be only of Appearance—is a relic of the idea that there is something non-human which has authority over us. The idea of a non-human authority and the quest for sublimity are both products of self-abasement. Pragmatism says that the conditioned is all there is: that human beings have nothing to know save their relations to each other and to other finite beings. To be satisfied with the conditioned, to give up the quest for the infinite, would be to rest content with beauty. Those who have achieved such contentment will see the pursuit of truth as the pursuit of human happiness, rather than as the fulfillment of a desire which transcends mere happiness.
January 23, 2026 at 3:03 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
To be satisfied with the conditioned, to give up the quest for the infinite, would be to rest content with beauty.
PasAA p.(xxx)
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Sublimity
For Nietzsche and Dewey, the idea that Reality has an intrinsic nature which common sense and science may never know—that our knowledge may be only of Appearance—is a relic of the idea that there is something non-human which has authority over us. The idea of a non-human authority and the quest for sublimity are both products of self-abasement. Pragmatism says that the conditioned is all there is: that human beings have nothing to know save their relations to each other and to other finite beings. To be satisfied with the conditioned, to give up the quest for the infinite, would be to rest content with beauty. Those who have achieved such contentment will see the pursuit of truth as the pursuit of human happiness, rather than as the fulfillment of a desire which transcends mere happiness.
January 22, 2026 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Contingently i-RON-ick
rortyquotes.bsky.social
Pragmatism says that the conditioned is all there is: that human beings have nothing to know save their relations to each other and to other finite beings.
PasAA p.(xxx)
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Sublimity
For Nietzsche and Dewey, the idea that Reality has an intrinsic nature which common sense and science may never know—that our knowledge may be only of Appearance—is a relic of the idea that there is something non-human which has authority over us. The idea of a non-human authority and the quest for sublimity are both products of self-abasement. Pragmatism says that the conditioned is all there is: that human beings have nothing to know save their relations to each other and to other finite beings. To be satisfied with the conditioned, to give up the quest for the infinite, would be to rest content with beauty. Those who have achieved such contentment will see the pursuit of truth as the pursuit of human happiness, rather than as the fulfillment of a desire which transcends mere happiness.
January 21, 2026 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Contingently i-RON-ick
rortyquotes.bsky.social
The fundamental premise of the book is that a belief can still regulate action, can still be thought worth dying for, among people who are quite aware that this belief is caused by nothing deeper than contingent historical circumstance.
CIS p.189
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Contingency
I have been urging in this book that we try not to want something which stands beyond history and institutions. The fundamental premise of the book is that a belief can still regulate action, can still be thought worth dying for, among people who are quite aware that this belief is caused by nothing deeper than contingent historical circumstance. My picture of a liberal utopia in Chapter 3 was a sketch of a society in which the charge of "relativism" has lost its force, one in which the notion of "something that stands behind history" has become unintelligible, but in which a sense of human solidarity remains intact. In Chapter 4, my sketch of the liberal ironist was of someone for whom this sense was a matter of imaginative identification with the details of others' lives, rather than a recognition of something antecedently shared. In Chapters 5 and 6, I tried to show how ironist theory can be privatized, and thus prevented from becoming a threat to political liberalism.
January 18, 2026 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The idea of a non-human authority and the quest for sublimity are both products of self-abasement.
Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism (PasAA) p.(xxx)
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Sublimity
For Nietzsche and Dewey, the idea that Reality has an intrinsic nature which common sense and science may never know—that our knowledge may be only of Appearance—is a relic of the idea that there is something non-human which has authority over us. The idea of a non-human authority and the quest for sublimity are both products of self-abasement. Pragmatism says that the conditioned is all there is: that human beings have nothing to know save their relations to each other and to other finite beings. To be satisfied with the conditioned, to give up the quest for the infinite, would be to rest content with beauty. Those who have achieved such contentment will see the pursuit of truth as the pursuit of human happiness, rather than as the fulfillment of a desire which transcends mere happiness.
January 20, 2026 at 3:02 PM
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davejorgenson.bsky.social
This 1943 U.S. Army film warned about fascism in America
January 19, 2026 at 3:08 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Although the idea of a central and universal human component called "reason," a faculty which is the source of our moral obligations, was very useful in creating modern democratic societies, it should be dispensed with in order to help bring about a liberal utopia.
CIS p.194
#Rorty
#Morality
One good example of a view which the "morality system" makes seem indecent is that sketched in Part 1 of this book: the view that although the idea of a central and universal human component called "reason," a faculty which is the source of our moral obligations, was very useful in creating modem democratic societies, it can now be dispensed with—and should be dispensed with, in order to help bring the liberal utopia of Chapter 3 into existence. I have been urging that the democracies are now in a position to throw away some of the ladders used in their own construction. Another central claim of this book, which will seem equally indecent to those who find the purity of morality attractive, is that our responsibilities to others constitute only the public side of our lives, a side which competes with our private affections and our private attempts at self-creation, and which has no automatic priority over such private motives.
January 19, 2026 at 4:43 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Getting somebody to deny a belief for no reason is a first step toward making her incapable of having a self because she becomes incapable of weaving a coherent web of belief and desire.
CIS p.178
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Selfhood
Let me now apply this point to O'Brien's making Winston believe, briefly, that two and two equals five. Notice first that, unlike "Rutherford conspired with the Eurasian General Staff," it is not something O'Brien himself believes. Nor does Winston himself believe it once he is broken and released. It is not, and could not be, Party doctrine. … The only point in making Winston believe that two and two equals five is to break him. Getting somebody to deny a belief for no reason is a first step toward making her incapable of having a self because she becomes incapable of weaving a coherent web of belief and desire. It makes her irrational, in a quite precise sense: She is unable to give a reason for her belief that fits together with her other beliefs. She becomes irrational not in the sense that she has lost contact with reality but in the sense that she can no longer rationalize—no longer justify herself to herself.
January 17, 2026 at 9:54 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Whenever philosophy has attempted to become an expert culture it has degenerated into scholasticism, into controversies which are of no interest to anyone outside the philosophical profession.
PCP p.125
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Philosophy
Contemplating this failure helps one realize that philosophy is what is left over after one has bracketed both common sense and all the various expert cultures. It was never supposed to be such a culture. Whenever it has attempted to become one it has degenerated into scholasticism, into controversies which are of no interest to anyone outside the philosophical profession. The idea that either literary criticism or philosophy should become an expert culture is a result of unfortunate attempts to squeeze these areas of culture into a university system tailored to the needs of lawyers, physicians, and natural scientists.
January 15, 2026 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Philosophy is what is left over after one has bracketed both common sense and all the various expert cultures.
PCP p.125
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Philosophy
Contemplating this failure helps one realize that philosophy is what is left over after one has bracketed both common sense and all the various expert cultures. It was never supposed to be such a culture. Whenever it has attempted to become one it has degenerated into scholasticism, into controversies which are of no interest to anyone outside the philosophical profession. The idea that either literary criticism or philosophy should become an expert culture is a result of unfortunate attempts to squeeze these areas of culture into a university system tailored to the needs of lawyers, physicians, and natural scientists.
January 14, 2026 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Contingently i-RON-ick
rortyquotes.bsky.social
After the scales are rubbed off a butterfly's wing, you have transparency, but not beauty—formal structure without sensuous content.
CIS p152
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Truth
The trouble with the essay is, once again, that Nabokov runs together literary with personal immortality. If only the former is at stake, then, indeed, Plato was wrong and Nabokov, Heidegger, and Derrida are right. If you want to be remembered by future generations, go in for poetry rather than for mathematics. If you want your books to be read rather than respectfully shrouded in tooled leather, you should try to produce tingles rather than truth. What we call common sense—the body of widely accepted truths—is, just as Heidegger and Nabokov thought, a collection of dead metaphors. Truths are the skeletons which remain after the capacity to arouse the senses—to cause tingles—has been rubbed off by familiarity and long usage. After the scales are rubbed off a butterfly's wing, you have transparency, but not beauty—formal structure without sensuous content.
January 13, 2026 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Truths are the skeletons which remain after the capacity to arouse the senses—to cause tingles—has been rubbed off by familiarity and long usage.
CIS p.152
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Truth
The trouble with the essay is, once again, that Nabokov runs together literary with personal immortality. If only the former is at stake, then, indeed, Plato was wrong and Nabokov, Heidegger, and Derrida are right. If you want to be remembered by future generations, go in for poetry rather than for mathematics. If you want your books to be read rather than respectfully shrouded in tooled leather, you should try to produce tingles rather than truth. What we call common sense—the body of widely accepted truths—is, just as Heidegger and Nabokov thought, a collection of dead metaphors. Truths are the skeletons which remain after the capacity to arouse the senses—to cause tingles—has been rubbed off by familiarity and long usage. After the scales are rubbed off a butterfly's wing, you have transparency, but not beauty—formal structure without sensuous content.
January 12, 2026 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Contingently i-RON-ick
rortyquotes.bsky.social
What we call common sense—the body of widely accepted truths—is, just as Heidegger and Nabokov thought, a collection of dead metaphors.
CIS p.152
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Metaphor
The trouble with the essay is, once again, that Nabokov runs together literary with personal immortality. If only the former is at stake, then, indeed, Plato was wrong and Nabokov, Heidegger, and Derrida are right. If you want to be remembered by future generations, go in for poetry rather than for mathematics. If you want your books to be read rather than respectfully shrouded in tooled leather, you should try to produce tingles rather than truth. What we call common sense—the body of widely accepted truths—is, just as Heidegger and Nabokov thought, a collection of dead metaphors. Truths are the skeletons which remain after the capacity to arouse the senses—to cause tingles—has been rubbed off by familiarity and long usage. After the scales are rubbed off a butterfly's wing, you have transparency, but not beauty—formal structure without sensuous content.
January 11, 2026 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Contingently i-RON-ick
rortyquotes.bsky.social
If you want your books to be read rather than respectfully shrouded in tooled leather, you should try to produce tingles rather than truth.
CIS p152
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Truth
The trouble with the essay is, once again, that Nabokov runs together literary with personal immortality. If only the former is at stake, then, indeed, Plato was wrong and Nabokov, Heidegger, and Derrida are right. If you want to be remembered by future generations, go in for poetry rather than for mathematics. If you want your books to be read rather than respectfully shrouded in tooled leather, you should try to produce tingles rather than truth. What we call common sense—the body of widely accepted truths—is, just as Heidegger and Nabokov thought, a collection of dead metaphors. Truths are the skeletons which remain after the capacity to arouse the senses—to cause tingles—has been rubbed off by familiarity and long usage. After the scales are rubbed off a butterfly's wing, you have transparency, but not beauty—formal structure without sensuous content.
January 10, 2026 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Contingently i-RON-ick
rortyquotes.bsky.social
If you want to be remembered by future generations, go in for poetry rather than for mathematics.
CIS p.151
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Poetry
The trouble with the essay is, once again, that Nabokov runs together literary with personal immortality. If only the former is at stake, then, indeed, Plato was wrong and Nabokov, Heidegger, and Derrida are right. If you want to be remembered by future generations, go in for poetry rather than for mathematics. If you want your books to be read rather than respectfully shrouded in tooled leather, you should try to produce tingles rather than truth. What we call common sense—the body of widely accepted truths—is, just as Heidegger and Nabokov thought, a collection of dead metaphors. Truths are the skeletons which remain after the capacity to arouse the senses—to cause tingles—has been rubbed off by familiarity and long usage. After the scales are rubbed off a butterfly's wing, you have transparency, but not beauty—formal structure without sensuous content.
January 9, 2026 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Contingently i-RON-ick
rortyquotes.bsky.social
Plato himself, though generally wrong about general ideas, survives as the first white magus. He is the enchanter who spun the first strands of that web of metaphor which Derrida calls the West's "white mythology."
CIS p.151
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Derrida
What we have learned since Plato is that general ideas are tools for practical purposes, purposes which are forgotten as time goes by, but that particular images survive. Nowadays we can do better in the way of moral ideals, social arrangements, and human beings than Homer imagined. As Nabokov puts it, "In the imaginary battle of [homo] americus versus [homo] homericus, the first wins humanity's prize." But Homer survives because his images survive. Boys who adopt Achilles' ethic ("always outdo the others") are just boring bullies, but certain Homeric epithets still make their quieter classmates tingle. … The question of retirement to a Sabine farm has gone stale, but we bow toward Horace whenever we describe a passage as purple. Plato himself, though generally wrong about general ideas, survives as the first white magus. He is the enchanter who spun the first strands of that web of metaphor which Derrida calls the West's "white mythology."
January 8, 2026 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The second of two distinctions categorizing the purposes of books divides books the category of books working out a new final vocabulary into those books aimed at working out a new private final vocabulary and those aimed at working out a new public final vocabulary.
CIS p.143
#Rorty
#Vocabulary
The second distinction divides this latter class into those books aimed at working out a new private final vocabulary and those aimed at working out a new public final vocabulary. The former is a vocabulary deployed to answer questions like ''What shall I be? "What can I become?" "What have I been?" The latter is a vocabulary deployed to answer the question "What sorts of things about what sorts of people do I need to notice?" The sort of person whom I called the "liberal ironist" in Chapter 4 needs both such vocabularies. For a few such people—Christians (and others) for whom the search for private perfection coincides with the project of living for others - the two sorts of questions come together. For most such, they do not.
January 7, 2026 at 3:01 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The first of two distinctions categorizing the purposes of books is that between the range of purposes presently statable within some familiar, widely used, final vocabulary and the purpose of working out a new final vocabulary.
CIS p.142
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Vocabulary
If we abandon this traditional picture, we shall stop asking questions like "Does this book aim at truth or at beauty? At promoting right conduct or at pleasure ?" and instead ask, "What purposes does this book serve?" Our first, broadest, classification of purpose will be built around two distinctions. The first is that between the range of purposes presently statable within some familiar, widely used, final vocabulary and the purpose of working out a new final vocabulary. Applying this distinction divides books up into those whose success can be judged on the basis of familiar criteria and those which cannot. The latter class contains only a tiny fraction of all books, but it also contains the most important ones—those which make the greatest differences in the long run.
January 6, 2026 at 3:00 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
The public-private distinction I have developed suggests that we distinguish books which help us become autonomous from books which help us become less cruel.
CIS p.141
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#PublicVsPrivate
The public-private distinction I developed throughout Part II suggests that we distinguish books which help us become autonomous from books which help us become less cruel. The first sort of book is relevant to ""blind impresses,"" to the idiosyncratic contingencies which produce idiosyncratic fantasies. These are the fantasies which those who attempt autonomy spend their lives reworking - hoping to trace that blind im­press home and so, in Nietzsche's phrase, become who they are. The second sort of book is relevant to our relations with others, to helping us notice the effects of our actions on other people. These are the books which are relevant to liberal hope, and to the question of how to reconcile private irony with such hope. The books which help us become less cruel can be roughly divided into (1) books which help us see the effects of social practices and institutions on others and (2) those which help us see the effects of our private idiosyncrasies on others.
January 5, 2026 at 3:00 PM
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rortyquotes.bsky.social
Only metaphysicians think that our present genres and criteria exhaust the realm of possibility. Ironists continue to expand that realm.
CIS p.135
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Metaphysics
As I have said already, there is nothing propositional to be taken away from the experience of reading it—any more than from the writings of the later Heidegger. So is it to be judged by "literary" rather than "philosophical" criteria? No, because, as in the cases of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Remembrance of Things Past, and Finnegans Wake, there are no antecedently available criteria of either sort. The more original a book or a kind of writing is, the more unprecedented, the less likely we are to have criteria in hand, and the less point there is in trying to assign it to a genre. We have to see whether we can find a use for it. If we can, then there will be time enough to stretch the borders of some genre or other far enough to slip it in, and to draw up criteria according to which it is a good kind of writing to have invented. Only metaphysicians think that our present genres and criteria exhaust the realm of possibility. Ironists continue to expand that realm.
January 4, 2026 at 3:00 PM