Ethics, Contingency and Solidarity in The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears

In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity Richard Rorty makes a case for the solidarity of humanity, a case that discards metaphysics and theology as providing the ordered universe necessary for such solidarity to exist. Instead, Rorty posits the "liberal ironist:" a person both capable of recognizing the "contingency of his or her own most central beliefs and desires" and that "cruelty is the worst thing we do." With this subject position in mind, one can see how Pears novel uses three historical timeframes to interrogate the reader's conception of ethical and moral choice in relation to human suffering and the impossibility of quantifying ethical/moral outcomes. The result of this interrogation highlights the impossibility of ethical choice in a world where every " 'ethical' decision violates some law or other, and violates it precisely because it is 'ethical.'" For Rorty, liberal-irony does not involve a "right" answer to ethical questions, but rather an open contemplation of ethical choices that brings human solidarity through an open acknowledgment of human suffering. As a result, ethical contingency still manifests an imperative to seek ways to stop the suffering of other individuals, given limited resources and abilities.

Geoffrey Harpham has described ethics as a reflective space of competing claims and choices. Morality represents the active choice, or that choice which is left after all others have been discarded. In combination, Harpham and Rorty provide a frame through which Pears points out the inherent futility of reflective ethical space to humanity by exposing the contingency of ethics over time. This ethical contingency reinforces the ethical problems of Rorty's subject, reifying an ethical imperative on one hand while discarding it with the other. The liberal-ironist seeks to assuage human suffering, knowing always that their own actions carry the possibility of causing more of it. To create this paradox, Pears presents ethical choices with seemingly clear dichotomies, only to problematize these dichotomies with conflicting ethical and moral interests.