Identity and Cruelty in Richard Rorty’s Liberal Utopia

The author investigates Richard Rorty’s claim that a person is whoever or whatever they say that they are, because in a humane and liberal society cruelty and pain would be far less than in his own time. Rorty’s theories of truth are bracketed to address this claim head-on: is a society where we accept people’s assertions about their identity at face value actually a kinder and more compassionate society? How has this assertion held up over the last several decades since Rorty wrote Contingency, Solidarity, and Irony, and does he sufficiently address his own shortcomings in Achieving Our Country? The author concludes in the negative, adding that the cruelty that Rorty critiques in his last book is not mere accident but is integral to the notion of self-constructed identities. Critiques concerning the concepts of contingency, postmodernity, narrative meaning, and linguistic constructionism, are likewise bracketed in this paper, with the overall intention being to judge Rorty only within the context of his own sources, including Nietzsche, Dewey, James, and Lyotard. The author shows that Rorty fails to adequately deal with the literature on contingency that he cites as evidence for his own views. Rorty’s project fails because of the internal contradictions between his stated goals of reducing cruelty and his aesthetic preferences for self-constructed identities. The author illustrates that self-constructed identity exacerbates abusive behaviours and mental illness rather than reducing pain and cruelty in society.

Benjamin L. Mabry received his Bachelor of Arts from University of New Orleans, and his Masters and Doctorate from Louisiana State University in Political Science. Dr. Mabry

taught at Louisiana Christian University and at Georgia Gwinnett College, before coming to

Lincoln Memorial University where he is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Paul V.

Hamilton School of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

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