Ethics of Ambiguity PDF

Ethics of Ambiguity and Irony: Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty
Author(s): Honglim Ryu

Source: Human Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1/2, Intertexts: Philosophy, Literature and the Human
Sciences in Korea (2001), pp. 5-28
Published by: Springer
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^M Human Studies 24: 5-28, 2001. 5
w\ ? 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Ethics of Ambiguity and Irony: Jacques Derrida and

Richard Rorty
HONGLIM RYU
Department of Political Science, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Abstract. This paper examines the relation or, more precisely, tension between postmodern
deconstruction and ethics by elaborating upon the ethico-political dimensions of de
constructionism. It embarks on a critical assessment of postmodern discourse on ethics in view
of its political implications by analyzing Jacques Derrida's and Richard Rorty's arguments
with an assumption that their positions represent a certain "logic" in the postmodern discourse
on ethics. Postmodern ethics is based on incredulity with regard to traditional metanarratives,
and it defines ethics in terms of sensitivity or responsibility to "otherness" and difference. Its
proponents believe that the negation of modern "metanarratives" opens a way to the Other
which has been marginalized and suppressed both in thought and in social practice. Derrida
and Rorty represent this position with their emphasis on the ethical nature of deconstruction
and the need to elaborate new languages for ethics. Despite postmodern appeal to ethics of
this sort, however, postmodern thinking shows its limits in dealing with most ethical-politi?
cal matters in the contemporary world. The postmodern approach to ethics, being restricted
within the perspective of the individual, does not provide any determinate framework for de?
ciding how to adjudicate conflicting ethical claims or how to link the unconditional affirma?
tion of emancipatory ideals, enlightened social criticism, and democratic accountability in
determinate political terms. In the main, this paper contends that philosophical deconstruction
and "responsibility to otherness" undermine each other in the public sphere.
Introduction
Recently Korean society has witnessed a surge of interest in postmodernism.

Amid increasing awareness of the malaise of rapid modernization and suspi?
cion toward the prevalent forms of radicalism, postmodernism draws an au?
dience seeking a new form of human emancipation and a new theoretical
ground for social criticism. Korean society has undergone a radical change in
almost every aspect of social life: economic growth, industrialization, urbani?
zation, political upheavals in the process of democratization, social disinte?
gration, cultural transformation, anomic crisis of social values, and so on.
Hence arises a situation in which tradition, modernity, and postmodernity are
intertwined to form a unique hybrid. In this uncertain situation, postmodern
appeal to deconstruction seems to provide a new way of diagnosing the present
and prescribing the future direction of Korean society.
6 HONGLIM RYU
Postmodernism, however, is a source of both hope and despair. And its am?
bivalent character can be exposed by elaborating the main themes and underly?
ing assumptions of its ethico-political discourse. This paper attempts to examine
the relation or, more precisely, tension between postmodern deconstruction and
ethics, and to assess critically of postmodern discourse on ethics in view of
its political implications. In elaborating upon the ethico-political dimension
of deconstructionism, the paper focuses on Jacques Derrida's and Richard
Rorty's arguments, assuming that their positions represent a certain "logic"
in the postmodern discourse on ethics.
"The postmodern turn" has been discussed in relation to a variety of theo?
retical and social phenomena in architecture, art, literature, philosophy, the
social sciences, and social movements.1 Consequentially, it is difficult to de?
lineate its multifaceted aspects and articulate its coherent themes. What is
referred to as "the postmodern problematic" (White, 1991) might provide a
background against which postmodern ethico-political concerns can be un?
derstood. Four interrelated phenomena constitute this problematic: first, the
increasingly suspicious response to foundationalist metanarratives of modern
scientific, technological, and political projects; second, the growing aware?
ness of new problems and dangers in rationalization; third, the explosion of
new informational technologies; and finally, the emergence of new social
movements. These phenomena constitute an uncertain mixture of challenges,
dilemmas, and opportunities that form a distinctive context for contemporary
ethico-political reflection. Ambiguity and uncertainty characterize the present
condition. The ambiguity of the term postmodernity and the postmodern em?
phasis on ambivalence, multiplicity, and paradox illuminate the fact that con?
temporary social reality itself can be characterized in those terms and cannot
be easily comprehended through familiar cognitive and social structures.
Nevertheless, we can identify certain basic "postmodern problematics"
underlying its ethical-political discourse. First, postmodern ethics is based on
incredulity regarding traditional metanarratives (humanism, moral progress,
historical teleology, philosophies of history, "metaphysics of presence," on?
tology, etc.). Postmodernism exemplifies a tendency towards the negation of
any positive formulation of ethical principles in the contemporary discourse
on ethics. Deconstructing traditional metanarratives, postmodernists invoke
both the Nietzschean and Heideggerian critique of the morality of humanism
and joyous affirmation of "freeplay." Second, postmodernism defines ethics
in terms of sensitivity or responsibility to "otherness" and difference. Its pro?
ponents believe that the negation of modern "metanarratives" opens a way to
the Other, which is ordinarily marginalized and suppressed both in thought
and in social practice. The assumption underlying this belief is that idea and
reality are inseparable: suppression in the realm of thought is inevitably linked
to violence in social reality. This is why postmodern thinkers, deconstructing
ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY AND IRONY 7
philosophy and social theory, identify themselves as advocates of new social

movements and the politics of difference. They suppose that deconstruction
of philosophies of identity leads to creation of new discourses ("abnormal
discourses" in Rorty's term) in which we can envision new forms of social
life and a sense of "new responsibility."
At issue here is the question of whether postmodern ethics can incorporate
emancipatory ideals in their Nietzschean and Heideggerian perspectives. While
postmodernists' criticism of modern philosophy and theory can be regarded
as a radical move in intellectual and academic circles, the very deconstruction
deprives them of categories for elaborating their "responsibility to otherness"
in public, i.e., in language for politics. Philosophical deconstruction and "re?
sponsibility to otherness" undermine each other in the public sphere. In order
to make "responsibility to otherness" comprehensible in public discussion, it
becomes crucial to make distinctions, for example, between the reactionary
and the progressive. Unless postmodern ethics provides criteria for distinguish?
ing between political positions, it cannot avoid the threat of another conserva?
tive ideology attempting to devalue emancipatory ideals under the disguise
of deconstruction (Habermas, 1981, 1987).
This criticism brings to the fore the underlying tension between the post?
modern sensibility to otherness as an ethical dimension of deconstruction and
its commitment to articulating the unsettled, free-floating, and undecidable
nature of texts with a playful double gesture. But for postmodern thinkers,
especially for Derrida, this does not posit a tension in its ordinary meaning;
rather, the latter is the condition for the former. Responsibility to otherness
cannot be attained, Derrida contends, without being sensitive to the suppressed
side of historical texts with an untraditional, therefore awkward and unfa?
miliar, gesture. Attempting to link deconstruction to ethical affirmation and
thereby to elaborate their positions, postmodern thinkers have both invented
new languages and attributed new meanings to existing terms. More impor?
tantly, they suggest that deconstruction itself as a textual practice should be
understood in ethical terms.
Despite postmodern justification of this sort, however, the limits of post?
modern thinking become apparent when it is applied to most contemporary
ethical-political matters. The postmodern approach to ethics does not provide
any determinate framework for deciding how to adjudicate conflicting ethi?
cal claims or how to link ethical unconditional affirmation of the emancipa?
tory ideals, enlightened social criticism, and democratic accountability in
determinate political terms. This argument constitutes the main thesis of this
paper. Starting from the postmodernist claim that the postmodern gesture inevi?
tably involves an ethical-political dimension, it focuses on an analysis of
the Derridean "ethical re-turn" (Kearney, 1993) and Rorty's pragmatist
postmodern advocacy of ironist liberalism.
8 HONGLIM RYU
Undecidability and Responsibility: Jacques Derrida's Double Gesture
Most postmodernists2 think that ethics is doomed. They question the possi?
bility of ethics because they conceive of it as a branch of philosophy which
inevitably involves logical categories, metaphysical assumptions, and onto
logical foundations - all concepts which postmodernists seek to deconstruct.
Recently, however, some commentators3 have tried to illuminate the ethical
dimension of deconstruction. They start with Derrida's assumption that an
ethical moment is essential to deconstructive reading and that ethics is the goal
or horizon of his work. The difference between Derrida's conception of eth?
ics and the traditional conception of ethics can be explicated through a read?
ing of Derrida's appropriation of Levinasian ethics. Given the difference, we
can find both negation and affirmation of the possibility of ethics in Derrida's
deconstruction. This double gesture is characteristic of his conception of eth?
ics.
When we focus on the subversive effect of deconstruction and the Ni
etzschean "joyous affirmation of the play of the world" (Derrida, 1978, p. 292),
it is understandable that Derrida's deconstructionism should be conceived as
a type of Nietzschean philosophical irrationalism which rejects the whole
legacy of post-Kantian Enlightened thought and all genre distinctions, espe?
cially those between philosophy and literature, reason and rhetoric, and lan?
guage in its constative and performative aspects. On the other hand, Derrida's
reading of Levinas in "Violence and Metaphysics" (1978, pp. 79?153) reveals
the influence of Levinas's conception of ethics on Derrida. This Levinasian
influence accounts for Derrida's characterization of deconstruction in ethical
?therefore, more or less positive?terms. Levinas opens the way for an ethi?
cal reading of deconstruction. The textual dialogue between Derrida and
Levinas makes clear that they try to define ethics or the ethical in terms of
respect or responsibility for alterity.
Levinas's work seeks to describe a primordial ethical experience. This
endeavor is distinct from the construction of a system or procedure for for?
mulating and testing the moral acceptability of certain maxims or judgments
relating to social action and duty. In this sense, Derrida (1978, p. Ill) refers
to Levinasian ethics as "an ethics of ethics." Levinas (1969, p. 43) himself
defines ethics as "the putting into question of my spontaneity by the presence
of the Other." What Levinas calls the Other (l'Autre), alterity (alt?rit?), or
exteriority (ext?riorit?), which cannot be reduced to the Same, plays an im?
portant role in Derrida's understanding of the ethical. For both Levinas and
Derrida, exteriority or the exterior (other) being is the condition of possibil?
ity of ethics and identity itself. But, according to them, the Western philosophi?
cal tradition from Parmenides to Heidegger has been "ontological" in nature,
and the ontological tradition consists of suppressing or reducing all forms of
otherness by transmuting their alterity into the Same.
The resistance of the Other to the Same, in this regard, is conceived as ethi?
cal. Levinas's distinction between "the Saying" and "the Said" (1981) makes
this point clear. The Saying is my exposure to the Other, a performative do?
ing, or an ethical performance which cannot be reduced to a constative de?
scription. The Saying is the non-thematizable ethical residue of language that
escapes comprehension, interrupts philosophy, and enacts the ethical move?
ment from the Same to the Other. By contrast, the Said is a statement, as?
sertion, or proposition, the truth or falsity of which can be philosophically
ascertained. Levinas's point is that traditional philosophy, caught in the realm
of the Said, cannot capture the structure of the ethical or ethical experience.
The ethical is the event of being in relation to an Other. But Levinas is also aware
of the fact that the ethical Saying can be violated. It can only be thematized in
the language of the ontological Said. Given this, the interruption of the onto?
logical Said by the ethical Saying means the deconstruction of the ontologi?
cal language of philosophy. In this way, Levinas articulates the primacy of the
ethical, that is, the primacy of the interhuman relationship as "an irreducible
structure upon which all the other structures rest" (1969, p. 79).
Derrida, in his deconstructive reading of Levinas, however, reveals that
Levinasian ethics still maintains the traces of totalizing ontologies and em?
piricism he seeks to overcome. Derrida's reading of Levinas exemplifies his
double meaning of ethics. Derrida (1982, p. 65) writes that a deconstructive
reading as an ethical gesture must operate with "Two texts, two hands, two
visions, two ways of listening (?coutes). Together at once and separately."
Derrida, on the one hand, accepts the Levinasian commitment to the primacy
of the ethical over the ontological. On the other, however, he is sympathetic
to Nietzschean and Heideggerian reservations about the use of the term "eth?
ics." Derrida's twofold approach to the ethical dimension of deconstruction
can also be found in the concept of the closure of metaphysics (Critchley, 1992,
pp. 59-106). Derrida (1978, p. 110) defines the problem of metaphysical clo?
sure as "the problem of the relations between belonging and the breakthrough."
Closure is the double refusal both of remaining within the limits of tradition
and of the possibility of transgressing those limits. Closure is the hinge that
facilitates the double movement between logocentrism, or a metaphysics of
presence, and its other.
What Derrida tries to show in this double treatment of ethics is the ambigu?
ous nature of the ethical or ethics. He is quite aware that Levinas's understand?
ing of ethics is articulated around an ambiguous, or double, movement between
the ontological Said and the ethical Saying. Both thinkers explicitly attempt
to displace ethics and rethink it by locating its condition of possibility in the
relation to the Other. They, however, retreat into ambiguity in their efforts to
render legible "the relation to the Other." Derrida conceives deconstruction
a double reading or interrogation of mainly philosophical texts?to be ethical
in nature. He assumes that double reading would reveal the ethical Saying at
10 HONGLIM RYU
work within the Said of the text. Also, he believes that the articulation of a
standpoint or a place of alterity and marginality in a given text brings to the fore
the question of ethics raised within deconstruction. For Derrida, "freeplay," or
undecidability, presupposes the unconditional affirmation which motivates
deconstruction. The unconditioned ethical conditions of possibility for the
interruption of logocentric textuality are to be conceived as "the opening of
another ethics" (see Derrida, 1988, p. 122).4
Derrida regards the illumination of the gap between logical concepts and
intention as part of an "ethical-political duty." Logocentric conceptuality cre?
ates an illusion of Enlightenment and transparency based on a belief in hu?
man reason. This illusion in turn entails suppression of the Other, which is
unarticulated and unthematizable by logocentric reason. For Derrida, ideas
and reality are inseparable. He assumes that suppression of the inarticulated
and the marginalized in logocentric understanding has an inescapable effect
on social reality, in the form of violence. The Other exists in both conceptuality
and reality. Conceptual marginalization of the Other, and violence in the so?
cial world, are coterminous. This is why Derrida conceives of his deconstruc?
tion of logocentric conceptuality as ethical-political.
With respect to the goal of deconstruction as a textual practice, in particu?
lar, Derrida (1976, pp. 161-162) writes that he wishes "to reach the point of
a certain exteriority in relation to the totality of the age of logocentrism." The
task is to open a reading that produces rather than protects,5 and to dismantle
the metaphysical and rhetorical structures which are at work in the texts (both
philosophical and socio-historical), not in order to reject or discard them, but
to reinscribe them in another way. The goal of deconstruction, in other words,
is to locate a point of otherness within logocentric conceptuality and then to
deconstruct this conceptuality from that position of alterity. In the same vein,
Derrida comments that "deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness, but
an openness towards the other" (Kearney, 1984, p. 124). Derrida argues that
the logocentric philosophical tradition has thought, appropriated, and mastered
its other through a reduction of plurality to unity and of alterity to sameness.6
Derridian deconstruction attempts to locate "a non-site, or a non-philosophi?
cal site, from which to question philosophy" (Kearney, 1984, p. 108). De
construction attempts to attain a point of exteriority, alterity, or marginality
that is irreducible to logocentric, philosophical conceptuality.
In response to some American critics who accuse him of setting up a kind
of "all or nothing" choice between pure realization, and complete freeplay,
Derrida contends that there is no completeness for freeplay. Derrida (1988, p.
116) writes:
this particular undecidable opens the field of decision or of decidability. It

calls for decision in the order of ethical-political responsibility. It is even
its necessary condition. A decision can only come into being in a space that
exceeds the calculable program that would destroy all responsibility by

transforming it into a programmable effect of determinate causes. There
can be no moral or political responsibility without this trial and this pas?
sage by way of the undecidable. Even if a decision seems to take only a
second and not to be proceeded by any deliberation, it is structured by this
experience and experiment of the undecidable.
According to Derrida, the structures of undecidability (hence of decisions and

of responsibilities) are possible only when there is a certain play, differ anee,
or non-identity. He claims that diff?rance is not indeterminacy. It renders
determinacy both possible and necessary. First of all, diff?rance is in itself
"nothing outside of different determinations." Consequently, "it never comes
to a full stop anywhere, absolutely, and is neither negativity nor nothingness
(as indeterminacy would be). Insofar as it is always determined, undecidability
is also not negative in itself (Derrida, 1988, p. 149).
This statement, therefore, leads to the argument that an unconditional cat?
egorical imperative or moment of affirmation is the source of the injunction
that produces deconstruction and is produced through deconstructive reading
(Critchley, 1992, p. 41). For Derrida, the ethical moment is the interruption
of the general context of conditioned hypothetical imperatives by an uncon?
ditional categorical imperative. This moment of unconditional appeal is re?
vealed in the link that connects deconstruction to the "yes," the moment of
unconditional affirmation.
Derrida claims that this unconditional imperative affirmation is possible
with the opening of context and that a context can never be absolutely deter?
mined. In this regard, deconstruction is "the effort to take this limitless con?
text into account" (Derrida, 1988, p. 136). This is why he always hesitates to
characterize unconditionality in Kantian terms, or in determinate ethical-politi?
cal terms. Derrida (1988, p. 153) thinks that "such characterizations seemed
essentially associated with philosophemes that themselves call for de?
constructive questions." Aware of these difficulties in articulating in a determi?
nate way the conditions of possibility for ethical interruption and unconditional
affirmation, Derrida seeks for another language and other thoughts which are
also supposed to generate new responsibilities.
Derrida's hesitance to speak of ethics and politics can be understood as a
rigorous and determinate hesitation if it is viewed from the standpoint of
undecidability. As Derrida (1988, p. 145) notes, what has always most inter?
ested him is the "strictest possible determination of the figures of play, of os?
cillation, of undecidability." What then does Derrida mean exactly when he
writes that "there can be no moral or political responsibility without this trial
and this passage by way of the undecidable?" Undecidability, according to
Derrida, is always a determinate oscillation between possibilities (for exam?
ple, of meaning, but also of acts). These possibilities are themselves highly
determined in strictly defined situations (for example, discursive, political,
12 HONGLIM RYU
ethical, etc.). With this assumption, Derrida claims that his analyses of un?
decidability concern just these pragmatic determinations and definitions, not
some vague "indeterminacy." Derrida uses undecidability rather than "inde?
terminacy" because he believes that deconstruction must be concerned with
the relational differences of textual force.
We cannot deny that in recent years questions of a political nature have been
one of the crucial axes in Derrida's writing. His writings on racism, apartheid,
nuclear criticism, law, the politics of friendship, the university, and de Man's
and Heidegger's political engagement, contain explicit political intent and
implications. The accusation that Derrida avoids discussions of ethical-political
responsibility and that deconstruction leads to either an amoral anarchism or
a de-politicized quietism does not seem to be valid. More relevant, therefore,
is the question of whether his understanding of the political moments of de?
cisions, actions, conflicts, and judgments contributes to a deeper understand?
ing of the political in the contemporary world. More specifically, relevant
criticism has to focus on whether or how deconstruction, involving such no?
tions as undecidability, diff?rance, and freeplay, allows Derrida to address and
account for political questions.
According to Derrida, deconstruction takes place in the form of a double
reading of texts. While this double reading is mainly concerned with philo?
sophical texts, the word text does not suspend reference "to history, to the
world, to reality, to being and especially not to the other" (Derrida, 1988, p.
37). For Derrida (1988, p. 136), text qua context means "the entire 'real-his
tory-of-the-world.'" What he calls "text" implies all structures or all possible
referents which are called "real," "economic," "historical," "socio-institu
tional." Derrida therefore assumes, "there is nothing outside the text" (Derrida,
1988, p. 148). In this respect, Derrida argues that deconstruction as what takes
place in reading texts involves an ethical affirmation and intervention in real
social practices.
The paradox, however, that haunts Derridian deconstructive discourse is
that the only language available to deconstruction is that of philosophy, or
logocentrism. This ambiguous situation of both belonging and not belonging
to what is to be deconstructed describes the problem of closure, that is, the
problem of a double reading which risks "ceaselessly falling back inside" what
it deconstructs (Derrida, 1976, p. 14).
Derrida claims that he is not endorsing a philosophical irrationalism or
unlimited relativism of interpretive discourse. He rejects the suggestion that
since the deconstructionist is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or unity
of meaning, he cannot demand of us that we read him with pertinence, preci?
sion, and rigor. A close reading of his writings, Derrida contends, would re?
veal that the value of truth is never contested or destroyed, but only reinscribed
in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. Derrida's endorsement of
the value of "enlightened" reason for informed rational critique can be found
in his essays on various practical topics. For example, in "The Principle of

Reason: the University in the Eyes of its Pupils" (1983), he deals with the
intimate relation between reason and a certain idea of the modern university
in light of the distinction between "pure" rational and "practical" technical
knowledge and interests.
In the face of the pervasive intrusion of technical or practical interests ("the
industrial model of the division of labor into the university," "concern for
utility") into the modern university, Derrida (1983, p. 17) argues that those
who are critical of the present situation "need not set themselves up in oppo?
sition to the principle of reason, nor need they give way to 'irrationalism'."
He thinks it necessary to awaken a new sense of responsibility in light of
universities' total subjection to technical, instrumental considerations. This
responsibility involves an interrogation of the essence of reason, which is not
reducible to technique or science. It calls for a type of thinking that goes be?
yond the separation of goal orientation and the principles of reason, beyond
the affinity of technology and metaphysics. Derrida sees deconstruction as
exemplifying this type of thinking, especially in that it guards against the
appropriation of thought by socio-economic political forces.
Furthermore, focusing on the rhetorical dimension of nuclear deterrent
strategy, Derrida claims that deconstruction is useful and pertinent as a strat?
egy to reveal the irrationalities of nuclear discourse. He (1984, p. 29) states
that "if there are wars and a nuclear threat, it is because 'deterrence' has nei?
ther 'original meaning' nor measure. Its 'logic' is the logic of derivation and
transgression, it is rhetorical-strategic escalation or it is nothing at all."
In his view, nuclear strategy involves a multiplicity of dissociated, hetero?
geneous competencies which are neither coherent nor total. It also involves
the extraordinary sophistication of its technologies, a sophistication which
coexists and cooperates in an essential way with "sophistry," "psycho-rheto?
ric, and the most crudely opinionated psychology." Derrida (1984, p. 24)
argues "we can therefore consider ourselves competent because the sophis?
tication of the nuclear strategy can never do without a sophistry of belief and
the rhetorical simulation of a text." For this very reason, the question of com?
petence, Derrida claims, is not to be decided on grounds of either technical
know-how or strategic expertise, because strategies of deterrence are not the
matters of applied expertise and rational calculation. Given the rhetorical
nature of nuclear politics, Derrida argues that the dividing line between doxa
and episteme starts to blur because "there is no longer any such thing as an
absolutely legitimizable competence for a phenomenon which is no longer
strictly techno-scientific but techno-militaro-politico-diplomatic through and
through, and which brings into play the doxa or incompetence even in its
calculations" (Derrida, 1984, p. 24).
According to Derrida, this sophistico-rhetorical dimension of diplomacy7
opens the possibility of "nuclear criticism" from a deconstructionist perspec
14 HONGLIM RYU
tive. Derrida (1984, p. 30) even contends that there is a homonym between
Kantian criticism and "nuclear criticism." Despite his ceaseless questioning
and problematization of the principle of reason, his double gesture or de
construction as a strategy for thinking within and against the "logic" of nuclear
deterrence cannot be easily identified with a strain of postmodern irrational?
ism.8 In a certain way, deconstruction can be employed as a means of sub?
verting any claims to legitimacy in order to show how dominant political
institutions or practices are based upon a set of undecidable or unjustifiable
assumptions.9 And Derrida's emphasis on diff?rance can direct our attention
toward the repressed, excluded history of the victim. The claim underlying
his project of deconstruction is that while the history of a logocentric meta?
physics of presence is given from the perspective of the victor, a respect for
the Other, as his conception of the ethical implies, can open a way to speak of
the history of the victimized and the marginalized.
Ironist Liberalism: Richard Rorty
In his work,10 Rorty is concerned with attacks on systematic analytical phi?

losophy and the various species of "professional philosophy" seen as a con?
tinuation of the traditional type of philosophy. On this basis, he proceeds to
defend pluralist "postmodernist bourgeois liberalism," privileging aesthetic
self-creation as an ethical ideal. Rorty's pragmatic appropriation of postmodern
arguments has close links with the development of an anti-foundationalist
account of philosophy. His critique of the dominantly Platonic-Cartesian
Kantian philosophical tradition accounts for his adoption of an "ironist lib?
eral" position which is radically nominalist and contextualist. Rorty praises
Derrida and adopts his "exposure" of logocentrism, phonocentrism, and meta?
physical presence when he is deconstructing the history of philosophy.11 But
Rorty interprets postmodernism in terms of a quest for private perfection. He
suggests that postmodernists need not be uncomfortable with their weak po?
litical commitment and vision. Strictly distinguishing the private realm from
the public, Rorty argues that postmodernists can be liberals if they do not project
the private search for autonomy onto politics. Aware of the postmodernist di?
lemma in combining deconstruction and responsibility to otherness, Rorty
proposes to give up elaborating "responsibility to otherness" in determinate
theoretical terms. Herein lies the importance of Rorty's position in relation to
Derrida. Rorty pushes Derrida's deconstruction to the limit and drops the
project of articulating "responsibility to otherness" in any determinate politi?
cal or philosophical terms. Rorty finds Derrida's hesitance unnecessary, ar?
guing that postmodernism should take "the pragmatic turn" to save itself from
becoming an ideology for creating "new men," which projects a private aes?
thetic ideal onto politics. For Rorty, the task of postmodernism is to deconstruct
all types of metanarratives and to make liberal positions "look attractive"

without recourse to theoretical justification. In this sense, Rorty's "pragmatic
postmodernism" is an attempt to combine deconstruction of philosophy, a
Nietzschean "light-minded aestheticism," and neo-pragmatic commitment to
liberalism.
In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty seeks to undermine a cer?
tain conception of the philosophical enterprise, an endeavor which is not tan?
tamount to trying to undermine philosophy itself. Rorty's distinction between
philosophy and Philosophy (with a capital P) in his introduction to Conse?
quences of Pragmatism makes this evident. According to Rorty, philosophy
(with a small p) is not problematic, in that it is the attempt to make sense of
our lives in the first place. But Philosophy, whether it be Platonic or Carte?
sian, denotes something specialized, dubious, and highly problematic. Phi?
losophy in this sense can mean "following Plato's and Kant's lead, asking
questions about the nature of certain normative notions (e.g., 'truth,' 'ration?
ality,' 'goodness') in the hope of better obeying such norms. The idea is to
believe more truths or do more good or be more rational by knowing more
about Truth or Goodness or Rationality" (Rorty, 1979, p. xv).
In his critical analysis of "mainstream" philosophy Rorty argues that it is
illegitimate to identify philosophy as the neutral, authoritative judge of the
validity of any knowledge-claims, or as "an all-encompassing discipline which
legitimizes or grounds the others" (Rorty, 1979, p. 6). This is because, Rorty
claims, philosophy's quest for epistemological grounds and universal crite?
ria by which all knowledge-claims made by science, morality, art, or religion
can be justified turns out to be an impossible task. A general theory of rep?
resentation has been Philosophy's central concern since the seventeenth
century. Descartes' notion of "the mind," Locke's notion of a "theory of
knowledge" based on an understanding of "mental process," Kant's notion
of philosophy as a tribunal of pure reason, the neo-Kantian notion of philoso?
phy as a foundational discipline which grounds all knowledge-claims, Rorty
contends, have all contributed to the consolidating of Philosophy as a substi?
tute for religion.
Relying upon the later work of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey, which
is described as "therapeutic rather than constructive, edifying rather than sys?
tematic, designed to make the reader question his own motives for philoso?
phizing rather than to supply him with a new philosophical program" (Rorty,
1979, pp. 5?6), Rorty argues that there is no all-encompassing discipline which
legitimizes or grounds all the other disciplines. Once the "permanent, neutral
framework" of representation or externalization for assessing truth-claims is
abandoned, truth is to be understood not as a function of correspondence but
as a function of context within which it secures its meaning in relation to other
statements.
16 HONGLIM RYU
Generalizing Thomas Kuhn's analysis of "normal" science, Rorty further

argues that the evaluation of truth-claims rests upon social agreement on the
rules of normal discourse. The rules of discourse are the historical and cul?
tural products of continued discourse, conversation, and social practice, rather
than depending on universal or transcendental criteria. There can be no ulti?
mate justification. With these assumptions, Rorty argues that the modern
Philosophy's quest for certainty and objectivity is rooted in the historically
evolved frameworks derived from Descartes, Locke, and Kant. And Wit?
tgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey, according to Rorty, have brought us into a
period of "revolutionary" philosophy (in the sense of Kuhn's "revolutionary"
science). With the emergence of this period, the epistemological project of
universal commensuration as a central concern of systematic philosophy is
seen as losing its validity. Rorty finds a multiplicity of disciplinary matrices
and vocabularies becoming "normalized" with a growing emphasis on their
incommensurability and historicity. Furthermore, Rorty's critique of analytic
philosophy as a successor to the Kantian epistemology-centered philosophy
reveals a self-deceptive illusion that philosophers have a mastery of "concep?
tual questions" that others lack.
As an alternative to epistemology-centered systematic Philosophy, accord?
ing to Rorty, "edifying" philosophy or conversation does not require any new
understanding of theory-construction or theory-confirmation. He (1979, p.
386) writes: "All that is necessary is the edifying invocation of the fact or pos?
sibility of abnormal discourses, undermining our reliance upon the knowledge
we have gained through normal discourses." Also, edifying philosophy is
hermeneutical "as discourse about as-yet-incommensurable discourses"
(Rorty, 1979, p. 343), a quality which departs from Cartesian dualism, Kantian
constructivism, and analytic philosophy's predilection toward a rigorous me?
thod. Rorty points to the tendency of normal epistemology-centered phi?
losophy to block the flow of conversation by presenting itself as the final
commensurating vocabulary for all possible rational discourses.
But Rorty's distinction between edifying and systematic discourses is sus?
ceptible to the objection that the history of Philosophy itself has been char?
acteristically dialogical, conversational, and open-ended. Rorty (1979, pp.
372-373) characterizes edifying philosophy "as the attempt to prevent con?
versation from degenerating into inquiry, into a research program," and em?
phasizes the cultural role of edifying philosophers, the purpose of which is
"to help us avoid the self-deception" and to put in doubt Philosophy's self
confidence regarding the idea of universal commensuration. He does not, how?
ever, pay attention to the possibility that in the cases of most philosophers he
deals with, for example, Locke and Kant, there exists an on-going conversa?
tion between edification and systematization. And this conversation has been
possible by their interests in not only epistemology, but practical and moral
philosophy.
For his polemical purposes, Rorty one-sidedly describes the history of

modern philosophy as centered on epistemology, while neglecting its practi?
cal or moral philosophical side. While Rorty stresses the ethical implication
of an "anti-Cartesian and anti-Kantian revolution," this idea appears uncon?
vincing when we become aware of the full range of the tradition and the rich?
ness of its historical meaning. Interpretation of the Enlightenment tradition,
in this regard, requires us to "take a position," an act which Rorty regards as
inappropriate for edifying philosophy. For Rorty, to take a position is to make
a claim to truth, which inevitably involves the problem of justification within
a normal framework. But in describing the tradition of Philosophy and mak?
ing salient its epistemology-centeredness, Rorty himself surreptitiously takes
a position with respect to the tradition and privileges the notions of incom?
mensurability and multiplicity of vocabularies and attitudes, which in turn
become the "normal" framework of discourse.
Rorty views his pragmatic rejection of Philosophy as basically ethical. He
(1979, p. 5) argues that "the more 'scientific' and 'rigorous' philosophy be?
came, the less it had to do with the rest of culture and the more absurd its tra?
ditional pretensions seemed." If this statement is not meant to call for another
revision of the philosophical framework, it certainly contains an ethical sig?
nificance: philosophers should find their role and place outside the traditional
philosophic self-conception as the arbiter armed with canons of inquiry and
criteria of truth and reality. This belief underlies Rorty's subsequent elabora?
tion of his political position.
Rorty's critique of "professional philosophy" provides him with a pragmatic
way of conceiving the problem of public justifiability. His advocacy of Dewey
and Rawls in "The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy" (1991a, pp. 175?
196) clarifies his position on the issue of justifiability and moral truth. In his
defense of Rawls from a "Deweyan historicist" perspective, Rorty intends to
show that liberal democracy, or "the institutions and culture of the surviving
democratic states," does not need any philosophical justification.
Rorty contrasts his Deweyean perspective with the Enlightenment ration?
alist (absolutist) project of justification on the one hand and the broadly-de?
fined communitarian theorists on the other. Rorty's defense of Rawls against
the communitarian claims, setting aside the question of the accuracy of his
interpretation, reveals his doubt about philosophical justification. Rorty's
argument is that Rawls, following Dewey, shows us how liberal democracy
can get along without philosophical presuppositions. Here, Rorty's understand?
ing of "justification" is rather simplistic. He identifies "philosophic founda?
tions," "philosophic back-up," and "philosophic grounding" with philosophic
justification, an assumption which amounts to deduction from indubitable
premises. Only in this narrow sense of justificatory process does liberal de?
mocracy need no justification or legitimation. If we adopt a more sophisticated
understanding of justification,12 however, Rorty's rejection of justification
18 HONGLIM RYU
makes his pragmatist defence of plural liberalism vulnerable to the charge of

"light-mindedness."
In response to this charge, Rorty (1991a, p. 193) points out a moral pur?
pose behind light-minded aestheticism toward traditional philosophical ques?
tions:
The encouragement of light-mindedness about traditional philosophical

topics serves the same purposes as does the encouragement of light
mindedness about traditional theological topics. Like the rise of large mar?
ket economies, the increase in literacy, the proliferation of artistic genres,
and the insouciant pluralism of contemporary culture, such philosophical
superficiality and light-mindedness helps along the disenchantment of the
world. It helps make the world's inhabitants more pragmatic, more toler?
ant, more liberal, more receptive to the appeal of instrumental rationality.
Moral commitment, Rorty argues, does not require taking seriously all mat?
ters that are, for moral reasons, taken seriously. On the contrary, it may re?
quire trying to josh people out of the habit of taking those topics so seriously.
Rorty thinks that there are serious reasons for doing so. More generally, he
recommends that we should not regard the aesthetic as the enemy of the moral.
He argues that in the recent history of liberal societies, the willingness to view
matters aesthetically-to be content to indulge in what Schiller called "play"
and to discard what Nietzsche called "the spirit of seriousness"-has been an
important vehicle of moral progress.
Rorty sees Derrida's work as confined to the private realm, to the ironist's
personal quest for perfection and autonomy, which has no public or political
significance. The core of Rorty's argument lies in the distinction between the
private and the public. In his "Moral Identity and Private Autonomy: The Case
of Foucault," Rorty writes about the tension between Foucault's mixed and
complicated motives, which is "characteristic of the Romantic intellectual who
is also a citizen of a democratic society" (Rorty, 1991b, p. 193). For such an
intellectual, Rorty holds, moral identity ? the sense of his relations to most
other human beings - does not exhaust his self-description. What is more im?
portant is his private search for autonomy, his rapport ? soi, his refusal to be
exhaustively describable in words which apply to anyone other than himself.
Rorty, juxtaposing moral identity and private autonomy, gives his qualified
endorsement of the Nietzschean and Heideggerian goal of self-overcoming
and self-invention as "a good model for an individual human being, but a very
bad model for a society" (Rorty, 1991b, p. 196).
Rorty, however, differentiates himself from anarchist tendency in any pro?
jection of the desire for private autonomy onto politics. He describes Foucault
as a liberal whose politics is the standard liberal's attempt to alleviate unnec?
essary suffering. Rorty also views Foucault as a liberal in that Foucault does
not urge human beings in general to be self-inventive or autonomous, and in
that he does not view politics as instrumental to the goal of self-perfection.

But Rorty is critical of Foucault's projection of his own search for autonomy
onto public space. Rorty's argument is that we should not try to find a societal
counterpart to the desire for autonomy because trying to do so leads to fanta?
sies about "creating a new kind of human being." This argument, in turn, re?
flects his assumption that "societies are not quasi-persons, they are (at their
liberal, social democratic best) compromises between persons. The point of a
liberal society is not to invent or create anything, but simply to make it as easy
as possible for people to achieve their wildly different private ends without
hurting each other" (Rorty, 1991b, p. 196). Rorty thus contends that the po?
litical discourse requires only a banal moral vocabulary, and that our public
dealings with our fellow citizens "are supposed to have the routine intelligi?
bility of the marketplace or the courtroom."
With respect to Rorty's anti-foundationalist, post-philosophical stance, it
is important to clarify that there is a hidden ahistorical essentialism in his
understanding of "philosophy" and "political practices."13 In essentialist terms,
Rorty narrowly conceives of philosophy as an attempt to seek a fixed and
ahistorical ideal. Also, when he speaks of "political practices" without seek?
ing to evaluate them, he assumes that we all know what these practices are.
Given the fact that political practices most often consist of conflicting and
incompatible claims and practices, and involve the problem of adjudicating
or evaluating them, Rorty's appeal to the "priority of liberal political prac?
tices" and his insistence upon the uselessness of standards or criteria for
grounding political practices become contradictory. If we engage ourselves
in a more concrete understanding of the actual world of political and cultural
practices, as Rorty recommends, we will be inevitably confronted with the
problem of grounding or justifying our political hopes and practices, the very
problem Rorty is so eager to avoid.
For example, Rorty speaks of extending the principle of tolerance and the
need for a standard for distinguishing the sort of individual conscience we
respect from the sort we condemn as "fanatical." Here he claims that "this can
only be something relatively 'local and ethnocentric' ?the tradition of a par?
ticular community, the consensus of a particular culture" (Rorty, 1991 a, p. 176).
But this position reveals its limits by being unable to rebut exclusionary forms
of ethnocentrism and articulate persuasive standards for distinguishing the
respectful from the "fanatical." Rorty's "argument," in this regard, is based
upon a rather simplistic identification of philosophic grounding with an ap?
peal to ahistorical fixed ideals, and upon an unconvincing demarcation be?
tween philosophy and politics, between the private and the public.
In a sense, Rorty's critique of professional philosophy opens the way for
discussion of important cultural and political issues neglected by professional
philosophers. But he does not offer any "arguments" to substantiate his posi?
tions on these issues. Instead, he tries to make the vocabulary he favors "look
20 HONGLIM RYU
attractive by showing how it may be used to describe a variety of topics"

(Rorty, 1989, p. 9). This vocabulary consists of "contingency," "edification,"
"the conversation of mankind," "irony," "kibitzing," "solidarity," and so on.
It is intended to replace argument and theory with "narratives." Rorty's nar?
ratives, in turn, are equivalent to practicing "interesting philosophy," which
is not an examination of the pros and cons of a thesis, but "a contest between
an entrenched vocabulary which has become a nuisance and a half-formed new
vocabulary which vaguely promises great things." And this kind of philoso?
phy, he continues, "does not work piece by piece, analyzing concept after
concept, or testing thesis after thesis. Rather it works holistically and prag?
matically" (Rorty, 1989, p. 9). The underlying assumption here is that the adop?
tion of a new vocabulary will subsequently change our ways of thinking and,
more importantly, of acting in the future.
Rorty's "half-formed new vocabulary" is used to redescribe the post
metaphysical liberal culture and its ethical and political hopes, which can be
characterized as the "liberal irony." Liberal ironists are, according to Rorty
(1989, p. xv), those who "drop the demand for a theory which unites the pub?
lic and private, and are content to treat the demands of self-creation and of
human solidarity as equally valid, yet forever incommensurable." Borrowing
his definition of "liberal" from Judith Shklar, Rorty describes liberals as "the
people who think that cruelty is the worst thing we do." And he uses the term
ironist to describe "the sort of person who faces up to the contingency of his
or her own most central beliefs and desires ? someone sufficiently historicist
and nominalist," who rejects any idea of ahistorical or transcendental ground?
ing.14 For Rorty, liberal ironists are people who hope that suffering will be
diminished and the humiliation of human beings by other human beings may
cease. And liberal ironists have no answer to the question "Why not be cruel?"
?no circular theoretical backup for the belief that cruelty is horrible?because
they are not "liberal metaphysicians" who believe it possible and necessary
to ground liberalism on rational foundations.
Rorty claims that the attempt to fuse, synthesize, and reconcile the pri?
vate and the public is not only a futile project, but unnecessary. He argues
that we should not be uncomfortable with the distinction, as each realm has
its own legitimacy and responsibilities. Rorty, in this distinction, makes both
factual and normative claims. His claim is that the sharp distinction between
"the domain of the liberal [which concerns public questions about human
suffering and pain] from the domain of the ironist [which concerns private
questions about self-creation] . . . makes it possible for a single person to
be both" (Rorty, 1989, p. 198). Rorty's liberal utopia is one in which ironism
is universal. In his utopia, human solidarity is not a fact to be recognized by
overcoming "prejudice," but a goal to be achieved by imagination or the im?
aginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers. Solidarity, in
Rorty's view, is not discovered by reflection, but created by increasing our
sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other unfa?
miliar people.15
In response to "irresponsible" attacks on liberal institutions and culture by
both radicals and neo-conservatives, Rorty emphasizes the need to make lib?
eralism "look attractive." His insistent negation of "grounding" leads to "the
claim that liberal culture needs an improved self-description rather than a set
of foundations" (Rorty, 1989, p. 52). Rorty admits that it was natural for lib?
eral political thought in the eighteenth century to try to find True and Rational
foundations in association with Enlightenment scientism, the most promis?
ing cultural development of the time. Rorty argues, however, that the "logical,"
"methodical," and "objective" tactic has become less useful and convincing.
In the contemporary situation, the basic assumptions and promises of the sci?
ences are to a great extent discredited by intellectuals in various fields. Hence
the need to redescribe liberalism in its institutional and cultural forms "as the
hope that culture as a whole can be 'poeticized' rather than as the Enlighten?
ment hope that it can be 'rationalized' or 'scienticized' . . . [And] an ideally
liberal polity would be one whose cultural hero is Bloom's 'strong poet' rather
than the warrior, the priest, the sage, or the truth-seeking, 'logical,' 'objec?
tive' scientist" (Rorty, 1989, p. 53).
Rorty argues that we cannot transcend history and institutions. The funda?
mental premise of his argument 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"
(Rorty, 1989, p. 189). His insistence on contingency and consequent opposi?
tion to ideas like "essence," "nature," and "foundation" lead to the claim that
what counts as being a decent human being is relative to historical circum?
stance, a matter of transient consensus about what attitudes are normal and
what practices are just or unjust. However, Rorty's pragmatic rejection of the
principle of reason or Rationality, invoking a consensus-view of truth, entails
significant problems with respect to the possibility of informed rational cri?
tique. His pragmatist position tends to ignore the extent to which reason, in
its cultural and institutional forms, has shaped almost every aspect of modern
experience and set the main terms for discourse on public and private issues.
Also Rorty fails to recognize that this modern experience can be understood
and explained only from a critical standpoint with which it becomes possible
to uphold the values of "enlightened" reason embedded in the exercise of social
criticism.
Conclusion
Postmodern thinkers consider it ethical to resist the temptation of defining the

ethical in terms of an idealized system of norms, rules, and laws. They assume
22 HONGLIM RYU
that there exists no theoretical justification for ethical commands, and that our
ethical decisions should be made without recourse to a positive articulation
of criteria. For instance, Lyotard's "pagan" ethics suggests that "we are in the
position of Aristotle's prudent individual, who makes judgments about the just
and the unjust without the least criterion" (Lyotard and Th?baud, 1985, p. 14).
Also, his defense of the radical incommensurability of "language-games"
implies that no a priori, categorical criteria exist to determine how to make
moral judgments.
This is the motif of "negative autonomy" in postmodernist thought (nega?
tive in the sense that it abandons the concept of a coherent agent) which un?
derlies its defense of difference, heterogeneity, marginality, and non-identity
against the coercive power of totalization and closure. In the same vein, for
postmodernists, ethics means remaining suspicious of the Utopian images
generated by self-generating society with its self-conscious commitment to
humanism. These hesitant, passive aspects of postmodern thinking, however,
undercut any notion of a deliberate and collective self-determination.
While it is rather difficult to discern any positive alternatives in the post?
modern discourse on ethics, postmodern thinkers seemingly advocate a radi?
cally individualist anarchy in which social interactions are based on "aesthetic"
considerations (Featherstone, 1992). Foucault, for example, has explicitly
adopted the Nietzschean advocacy of aesthetic self-creation as an ideal, in?
sisting that "we have to create ourselves as a work of art" (Foucault, 1984, p.
351). Given this idea, it is not surprising that postmodern ethics privileges art
and literature over any positive theoretical accounts of the ethical and the po?
litical, or at least blurs such a distinction in the spirit of a so-called "paraes
thetic" distrust of the very attempt to differentiate them (see Carroll, 1987).
But what is problematical is that in postmodern thinking, "the aesthetic" tends
to become identified with the ecstatic (Bataille), the unavowable (Blanchot),
the unpresentable, and the sublime (Lyotard). In this way, even the term "the
aesthetic" becomes reified.
A possibility remains for reading or reformulating postmodern decon?
struction as a Utopian ethics (see Cornell, 1992). If the intent of postmodern
deconstruction is to expose the limits or the excesses of any system (that is,
to demonstrate that there is always an Other to the system which cannot be
articulated positively), then an ethical aspiration exists behind that exposure
or demonstration. For postmodernists, however, the recognition of this limit
always remains in the realm of the undecidable, which is identified with that
of the ethical. Here, we can see another case of reification: the ethical becomes
the indeterminate. The very possibility of ethics is negated by assuming that
no positive socio-historical determinations are possible. Apolitical commit?
ment to the principle of tolerance and liberal political ideals seems hardly
compatible with a philosophical project of deconstruction. Emancipatory ide?
als themselves require us to specify the historical conditions for their realiza
tion, and this specification inevitably involves a certain form of categoriza?

tion and conceptual definition or stabilization.
The postmodern dilemma lies in the fact that postmodern thinkers cannot
provide any positive alternative in determinate political terms. They empha?
size the subversive nature of deconstruction. Deconstruction is conceived as
an opening to the Other, the marginalized, and "abnormal discourse." But the
premise underlying deconstructionism leaves little room for positive ethical
and political proposals. Postmodern doubts on theory undercut the possibil?
ity of developing such proposals. The postmodernist negation of a traditional
philosophy of Truth and Objectivity can be interpreted as a radical move in
the realm of the academy. But in the realm of public discourse and political
practice, postmodern discourse on undecidability, ambiguity, and irony leads
to the occlusion of intelligible public discourse.
Esoteric arguments cannot replace ethical discourse itself. In the contem?
porary world, ethics must address questions of public concern in a publicly
recognizable way. But postmodern notions of undecidability, the Other, text
qua context, diff?rance, and irony most often resist our comprehension. The
undecidable nature of language-use for the description of social reality does
not preclude all means of ethical discourse. The goal of ethical discourse as a
form of public discourse is to help us understand our concrete social reality
and envisage a positive plan for the future. From this standpoint, we can as?
sess the limits of a postmodern discourse on ethics.
Derrida contends that deconstruction is a process of subverting any claims
to legitimacy. Deconstruction is intended to show to what extent dominant
discourses, institutions, and practices rely upon a set of undecidable and un?
justifiable assumptions. Derrida also identifies the goal of deconstruction as
a search for openness to the Other from the standpoint of the victims in the
histories of both social reality and human thought. Due to his deconstructive
assumption of undecidability, however, Derrida cannot specify what has been
repressed and victimized in determinate terms. If he intends to defend de
construction as the affirmation of emancipatory ideals, he has to express his
position in determinate political terms. Derrida acknowledges that he had never
"succeeded in directly relating deconstruction to existing political codes and
programs." He attributes this failure to the fact that "the available codes
for taking a political stance are not at all adequate to the radicality of de
construction ... because all our political codes and terminologies still remain
fundamentally metaphysical, regardless of whether they originate from the
right or the left" (Kearney, 1984, pp. 119-120). As a result of this overall ne?
gation of political codes, Derrida deprives himself of any means of substan?
tiating his affirmation of emancipatory ideals.16
Derrida's one-sided emphasis on the undecidable nature of the political
leads him to avoid any positive determinate commitment and action based on
the concrete understanding of "the determinations of a given text." While he
24 HONGLIM RYU
claims that his greatest interest lies in the determinations of an undecidable

terrain, he cannot specify the determinations themselves because determinate
concepts and categories are not available within his deconstructive framework.
In this respect, Derrida's understanding of the political is fatally restricted
within the perspective of the individual,17 even though he rejects any notion
of the subject. An individual, in his imaginative narrative of a sense of "ethi?
cal-political responsibility" or moral sentiment, can endorse both the gesture
of undecidability, or of hesitation between "belonging and not-belonging," and
a Nietzschean "Yes," or an "unconditional affirmation." But in the realm of
the political, where public deliberation for rational decision-making, col?
lective bargaining and conflicts of interests matter, the double gesture of
undecidability and unconditional affirmation only leads to a negation of the
political itself. Rorty (1989, pp. 122-137), in this regard, finally has a point
in finding in Derrida's work a quest for ironical, private perfection which is
politically useless and even pernicious.
As an epigraph to his essay on Foucault, Derrida (1978, p. 31) cites Kier?
kegaard: "The instant of the decision is madness." This epigraph reflects the
dilemma facing a Derridian politics of deconstruction or undecidability. Once
the ground of one's political decisions is ultimately contingent, devoid of a
set of principles or procedures, the moment of political decision can be un?
masked as an instance of madness. But this picture of the political world, while
it would illuminate the hidden side or the negative or irrational aspects of
Western democracies, does have limits in accounting for the actual political
practices in modern democratic societies and in suggesting a positive vision
for moments of decision. This difficulty reflects an impasse of the political in
Derrida's position and the failure of deconstruction to offer a coherent account
of the passage from ethical double gesture to political practices of question?
ing and critique.
Another weakness of postmodern thinking is its lack of self-reflexivity,
which becomes evident in Rorty. Rorty assumes it possible to engage in cri?
tique or to stand outside normal discourse and react against it without invok?
ing the problem of justification or grounding. He thinks that once philosophers
abandon their self-confidence in objectivity and pretensions to universality,
honestly admitting the ethnocentric and culture-bound nature of their project,
they can engage themselves in the continuing "conversation of mankind." In
this conversation, Rorty (1979, p. 394) claims, "philosophers' moral concern
should be with continuing the conversation of the West, rather than with in?
sisting upon a place for the traditional problems of modern philosophy within
that conversation." For Rorty, the history of epistemology-centered philoso?
phy is an episode in the history of European culture. It is rooted in "the urge
to see social practices of justification as more than just such practices" (Rorty,
1979, p. 390).
If the traditional philosophic enterprise is, as Rorty analyzes it, historically

rooted and evolved, the anti-Cartesian and anti-Kantian perspective also has
to be understood as historically rooted and evolved. The problem Rorty (and
most postmodern thinkers) faces is that he cannot specify the criteria for criti?
cizing "foundational" philosophy. By definition, postmodern thinking cannot
validate itself by recourse to any transcendent criteria or ideals, and it must
assume that the ground of critique is historically rooted and evolved. But Rorty
does not specify the historical ground for the standpoint of his critique. He
only suggests that his pragmatic postmodernism is ethical in that it seeks ab?
normal discourses. But here he lacks self-reflexivity. If we assume that present
day normal discourse is postmodern in character, we need, following Rorty's
suggestion, to overcome its normality in order to open a way to a new abnor?
mal discourse.
Herein lies the dilemma of postmodern thinking. It cannot overcome and
deconstruct itself because it does not specify its own historical and social
background. Postmodernism's lack of self-reflexivity leads to a metaphysi?
cal postulation of undecidability, ambiguity, and irony. In Hegelian terms, an
abstract (non-self-reflexive) negation of abstraction begets another abstrac?
tion. It is their narrow conception of philosophy and theory that allows
postmodern thinkers to set for themselves a goal of deconstruction, not notic?
ing that realization of the goal requires them to specify their language in rela?
tion to social and political contexts.
Notes
1. For useful discussions of the postmodern turn and its multifaceted nature, see R. Boyne
and A. Rattansi (1990); D. Harvey (1989); E.A. Kaplan (1988); A. Ross (1988).
2. For example, H. Bloom, et al. (1979); R. Gasch? (1986); I. Harvey (1986).
3. For example, R. Bernasconi (1987); D. Cornell (1992); S. Critchley (1992); R. Kearney
(1993).
4. Derrida (1988, p. 152) discusses the link between the opening of context and ethical
"unconditional" affirmation: "This leads me to elaborate rapidly what I suggested above
concerning the question of context, of its nonclosure, if you prefer, of its irreducible
opening. I thus return to the question of apartheid. It is exemplary for the questions of
responsibility and for the ethical-political stakes that underlie this discussion. In the dif?
ferent texts I have written on (against) apartheid, I have on several occasions spoken of
'unconditional' affirmation or of 'unconditional' 'appeal'. This has also happened to me
in other 'contexts' and each time that I speak of the link between deconstruction and the
'yes'. Now the very least that can be said of unconditionality (a word that I use not be
accident to recall the character of the categorical imperative in its Kantian form) is that
it is independent of every determinate context, even of the determination of a context in
general... it intervenes in the determination of a context from its very inception, from
an injunction, a law, a responsibility that transcends this or that determination of a given
context. Following this, what remains is to articulate this unconditionality with the de?
terminate (Kant would say, hypothetical) conditions of this or that context; and this is
26 HONGLIM RYU
the moment of strategies, of rhetorics, of ethics, and of politics."

5. Derrida (1976, p. 158) contends that commentary "has always only protected, it has never
opened, a reading."
6. Rodolphe Gasch? (1986, p. 101) articulates this point by saying that "since Western
philosophy is in essence the attempt to domesticate Otherness, since what we understand
by thought is nothing but such a project, heterology, for both intrinsic and strategic rea?
sons, seems an adequate name for the investigation of the 'pre-suppositions' of Western
philosophy, of what is understood by thought and by what is called noesis noeseos, the
thinking of thought."
7. Derrida (1984, p. 26) writes: " 'diplomatic power' would not exist without the structure
of a text. . . . There is only text in the diplomatic moment, that is, sophistico-rhetoric of
diplomacy."
8. This line of reading Derrida is taken by Christopher Norris in Derrida (1987), espe?
cially Chapter 6, "Derrida and Kant: The Enlightenment Tradition." Norris differenti?
ates Derrida's project from the "facile misreading of deconstruction" prevalent among
literary critics, while cautiously avoiding any simple equivalence of method or aim be?
tween Derrida's deconstructive strategy and Habermas's project of rational reconstruc?
tion, and argues that the recent writing of Derrida shows distinct signs of convergence
with the project of a critical theorist like Habermas, in that "it seeks new grounds for the
exercise of enlightened critique through an idea of communicative competence while
allows for specific distortions in present day discourse, but which also hold out the pos?
sibility of grasping and transcending these irrational blocks" (Norris, 1987, p. 169).
9. For example, J. Derrida, "Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundation of Autonomy'," in
D. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld, D.G. Carlson (Eds.), Deconstruction and the Possibility of
Justice (1992, pp. 3-67); J. Derrida, "Racism's Last Word," Critical Inquiry, 12: (1985)
290-299.
10. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature ( 1979); Consequences of Pragmatism ( 1982); Con?
tingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989); Philosophical Papers, vol. 1: Objectivity, Rela?
tivism, and Truth (1991) and vol. 2: Essays on Heidegger and Others (1991).
11. Derrida (1978:277) writes: "The entire history of the concept of structure must be thought
of as series of substitutions of center for center, as a linked chain of determinations of
the center. . . . The history of metaphysics like the history of the West is the history of
those metaphors and metonymies."
12. For example, Rawl's understanding of reflective equilibrium and justification as "a matter
of mutual support of many consideration, of everything fitting together into one coher?
ent view" (Rawls, 1971, pp. 21, 579).
13. For a related critique of Rorty, see Richard Bernstein, "One Step Forward, Two Steps
Backward: Rorty on Liberal Democracy and Philosophy," The New Constellation (1992,
p. 241ff).
14. Rorty specifies three conditions for an "ironist" to fulfill and tries to show how his ironic
playfulness can be combined with passionate advocacy of liberal moral ideals in "Pri?
vate Irony and Liberal Hope" (1989, pp. 73-95).
15. Rorty (1989, p. xvi) writes: "this process of coming to see other human beings as 'one of
us' rather than as 'them' is a matter of detailed description of what unfamiliar people are
like and of redescription of what we ourselves are like. This is a task not for theory but
for genres such as ethnography, the journalist's report, the comic book, the docudrama,
and, especially, the novel.. . . That is why the novel, the movie, and the TV program have,
gradually but steadily, replaced the sermon and the treatise as the principal vehicles of
moral change and progress."
16. With respect to this problem, Thomas McCarthy ( 1991, p. 112) writes: "Drawing bounda?
ries and setting limits are often what is needed to achieve a common purpose. And while
it is necessary to interrogate and revise received notions of liberty, equality, justice,

rights, and the like, to disassemble them without reassembling would be to rob excluded,
marginalized, and oppressed groups of an important recourse. In short, undercutting the
appeal to reason, truth, and justice as presently 'coded', without offering alternatives,
may harbor not so much the 'promise' of a better world as the 'danger' of some 'mon?
strous mutation'."
17. This is evident in his "The Politics of Friendship," Journal of Philosophy 85: (1988) 632
645.
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Ethics of Ambiguity and Irony: Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty

Author(s): Honglim Ryu

Ethics of Ambiguity and Irony: Jacques Derrida and

Recently Korean society has witnessed a surge of interest in postmodernism.

philosophy and social theory, identify themselves as advocates of new social

Undecidability and Responsibility: Jacques Derrida's Double Gesture

this particular undecidable opens the field of decision or of decidability. It

exceeds the calculable program that would destroy all responsibility by

According to Derrida, the structures of undecidability (hence of decisions and

in his essays on various practical topics. For example, in "The Principle of

Ironist Liberalism: Richard Rorty

In his work,10 Rorty is concerned with attacks on systematic analytical phi?

all types of metanarratives and to make liberal positions "look attractive"

Generalizing Thomas Kuhn's analysis of "normal" science, Rorty further

For his polemical purposes, Rorty one-sidedly describes the history of

makes his pragmatist defence of plural liberalism vulnerable to the charge of

The encouragement of light-mindedness about traditional philosophical

that he does not view politics as instrumental to the goal of self-perfection.

attractive by showing how it may be used to describe a variety of topics"

Postmodern thinkers consider it ethical to resist the temptation of defining the

tion, and this specification inevitably involves a certain form of categoriza?

claims that his greatest interest lies in the determinations of an undecidable

If the traditional philosophic enterprise is, as Rorty analyzes it, historically

the moment of strategies, of rhetorics, of ethics, and of politics."

it is necessary to interrogate and revise received notions of liberty, equality, justice,

Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition ofPostmodernity. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

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