y which Rorty portrays as bringing together these camps is the "liberal ironist." The "liberal" element of this character is primarily his belief that "cruelty is the worst thing we do." This means that justice would be the reduction or elimination of such cruelty. The pursuit of truth by such a liberal ironist would be limited to circumstances of "time and chance," meaning that this character would not seek to find an essential "truth" about "human nature" and the "central beliefs and desires" of human beings beyond the specifics of the era and place in which he exists.
Rorty "creates" such a character, the liberal ironist, because it seems to him a simple waste of time to endlessly debate such concepts as "justice" in abstract terms which do not touch upon the basic element of injustice--cruelty.
Rorty's argument to this point seems eminently reasonable and attractive. The question becomes, however, How are we to bring about a more just society if we abandon the idea of a basic human nature and if we accept that self-creation and human solidarity are "f
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