the diVerent orientations and vocabularies that deWne post-structuralist and
liberal political theory are not completely irreconcilable. While comprehen-
sive convergence is unlikely, they are in some respects complementary rather
than opposed approaches to liberal political institutions and governance.
Moreover, there are encouraging signs of progress towards consensus,
where ‘‘progress’’ must be understood in the sense that we appear to approach
an ever receding horizon, and ‘‘consensus’’ in the Rawlsian sense of suYcient
overlapping points of agreement to maintain an uneasy equilibrium between
disparate world-views.
The outlines of such consensus may be discerned,Wrst, in relation to the
egalitarian and democratic presuppositions of post-structuralist critical strat-
egies; and secondly, in relation to the non-metaphysical and historical con-
ception of liberalism that weWnd in the late Rawls. Rorty appeals to these
same features of political liberalism in defense of his own liberal pragmatism.
For this reason, although he is skeptical about the value of much post-
structuralist criticism, his work provides a convenient focus for the lines of
convergence between these apparently divergent approaches. 2
1 Irony and Contingency
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
Rorty’s ironism with regard to the vocabulary of liberal democratic politics
provides aWrst kind of convergence with post-structuralism. Unlike meta-
physicians who believe that there are real essences and an intrinsic nature of
things which it is the task of philosophy to discover, ironists are nominalists
who believe that nothing has an intrinsic nature or real essence. They are
also historicists who believe that all our descriptions of events and states of
aVairs are couched in the terms of particular vocabularies that are subject to
change (Rorty 1989 ,73V). As such, an ironist is aware of the contingency of
2 I am not suggesting that Rorty provides an adequate defence of his own liberal commitments,
only that he oVers reason to think that liberalism is not incompatible with the historical and
contextual approach of the post-structuralists considered here. For critical assessments of Rorty’s
liberalism, see among others Jo Burrows ( 1990 ), Matthew Festenstein ( 1997 ), Festenstein and
Thompson ( 2001 ), Richard J. Bernstein ( 2003 ), and Jean Beth Elshtain ( 2003 ).
128 paul patton