ABSTRACT
The Dharma of radical contingency, when fully realized by those committed to ironism, disturbs the complacency of common-sense understandings of both 'self' and 'world'. The question remains as to the extent this implies a practicable basis for ethics or social engagement. As in Rorty's work, one important question arising from a post metaphysical Buddhist critique of language in light of irony and contingency is the place of language in shaping ethics and communities of social justice. Rorty's own reluctant conclusion is too firmly separate the 'private ironizing' that affirms contingency and self-overcoming from the commitment to social justice, or 'liberal hope' that must be built and sustained by other, literary means. Rorty's reasoning for this very American distinction between private edification and public commitment is rooted in an admirable wariness of any sort of Philosopher King. One way to draw this out is to return to the famous Zen maxim regarding the 'emptiness of emptiness'.
