ABSTRACT
This chapter is dedicated to the relationship between a framework and reality. The notion of a framework shapes the notion of reality and this has consequences for conservatives and liberals alike. Conservatives may either try to reject the modern world and its idea of human reality open to change or they can accept modernity and locate a harder notion of reality in contrast with what is revealed by modernity. I want here to emphasize a line that runs in Dostoyevsky and Wittgenstein and which is captured by the Nobel laureate and literary critic Czesław Miłosz. Liberals have much to learn too. I distinguish two sorts of lessons. On the one hand, the erosion of a hard sense of reality is tied to the opening of possibility for change and personal orientation in the world, a case made by Richard Rorty and which is partially defended by reverting to Foucault. On the other, against Rorty’s happy farewell to the world, we need to vindicate the reality of what we experience in order to claim its importance and political value. A kind of realism is required, and we may find here another lesson that derives from Wittgenstein (and from Diamond’s realistic spirit).
