18
These two sets of questions correspond respectively to the public and private
realms and undergird his understanding of liberalism more generally as defined by dual
priorities: diminishing the causes and effects of pain and cruelty, and providing a space
for the individual pursuits of self-creation and self-perfection – in other words, social
justice and individual self-realization. The problem with this picture is that Rorty never
questions the idea that the activities in these two realms are inherently opposed and that
keeping them separate will facilitate rather than hamper the pursuit of justice. Let us turn
now to Rorty’s arguments more specifically.
43
Rorty’s central argument rests on the inherent incompatibility between "self-
creation" and "justice" that demands a sharp partition to preserve the integrity of both.
This view holds that "the vocabulary of self-creation is necessarily private, unshared,
unsuited to argument," while the vocabulary of justice is "necessarily public and shared, a
medium for argumentative exchange" (CIS xiv). At certain points in his thought, the
terms of this line of argument shift slightly, where the opposition becomes one of "private
perfection" versus "human solidarity," particularly in his most recent work where the
latter is virtually equated with justice.
44
In either case, the proposed remedy is the same:
we must ask self-creative individuals "to privatize their projects, their attempts at
sublimity – to view them as irrelevant to politics and therefore compatible with the sense
of human solidarity which the development of democratic institutions has facilitated"
(CIS, 197). Individual creative energies are granted the space to flourish within the
liberal polity, but with the caveat that they remain within the boundaries of this
nonpolitical realm.
Convention