Analysis Of Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony, And Solidarity

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CIS Paper

The book “Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity” by Richard Rorty is about how the entire world is based on conversation. Rorty adumbrated that the world would not exist without language. Based on the first three chapters, “The Contingency of Language”, “The Contingency of Selfhood”, and “The Contingency of Community” they each discuss ideas about the way people function in the world. The five main ideas consist of: Knowing the Truth, Individual Existence, The Narcissistic Origin of Compassion, Imagination, and How the World Would Not Function Properly Without Language.
The first idea is “Knowing the Truth.” In the text it states “There would be nothing more to do, and thus no possible loss to be feared. Extinction would not matter, for one would have become identical with the truth, and truth, on this traditional view, is imperishable.” Based on my understanding, I believe this means that knowing the truth would not make a difference in one’s life and that whatever happened, happened. As long as one is on the right path, there is nothing to fear. One of the ways people operate in the world is based on wanting to know the truth. Everyone wants the truth and will drive themselves insane until they …show more content…

Language allows us to communicate with other human beings and without it the world would be doomed. We would not be able to understand anything or have the abilities to cooperate with each other. Although language is made up by humans and not the world, we choose to believe otherwise. Everyday we go on with our lives thinking that the world created everything, but that is not true because something or someone had to create the world as the world was not just there. Language is essential to the world just as water is essential to people. For example, those who are deaf and communicate with sign-language sometimes struggle because not everyone knows how use

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