Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, written in 1989, is based on Richard Rorty’s lectures that were addressed in two sets at Trinity College, Cambridge and University College, London. He affirms that social consciousness brought on by a sense of liberal community and human solidarity emanates from literature rather than philosophy.
Unlike his previous work Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) which is analytical and technical in nature, Rorty offers a more continental approach in its philosophy. In the approach, the idea of truths is contingent and their reliance on human expression in language and vocabulary. Drawing from concepts in literary works of Vladimir Nabokov and George Orwell, he handles the concept of cruelty and human solidarity and how their prose identifies the watershed.
The book delves deeper into the three elements and unpacks philosophical ideas such as liberal hope, private irony, solidarity, and cruelty. The Philadelphia Inquirer reviewed the book as “...bristles with big and unsettling ideas...No brief summary of this book can begin to convey its freshness, scope, and immense erudition...Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity will induce intellectual tingles in the philosopher and layman alike. It is going to be read for a long time.”
