Ironic Life E-Book

Richard J. Bernstein

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 346

Beschreibung

"Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony" so wrote Kierkegaard. While we commonly think of irony as a figure of speech where someone says one thing and means the opposite, the concept of irony has long played a more fundamental role in the tradition of philosophy, a role that goes back to Socrates D the originator and exemplar of the urbane ironic life. But what precisely is Socratic irony and what relevance, if any, does it have for us today? Bernstein begins his inquiry with a critical examination of the work of two contemporary philosophers for whom irony is vital: Jonathan Lear and Richard Rorty. Despite their sharp differences, Bernstein argues that they complement one other, each exploring different aspects of ironic life. In the background of Lear's and Rorty's accounts stand the two great ironists: Socrates and Kierkegaard. Focusing on the competing interpretations of Socratic irony by Gregory Vlastos and Alexander Nehamas, Bernstein shows how they further develop our understanding of irony as a form of life and as an art of living. Bernstein also develops a distinctive interpretation of Kierkegaard's famous claim that a life that may be called human begins with irony. Bernstein weaves together the insights of these thinkers to show how each contributes to a richer understanding of ironic life. He also argues that the emphasis on irony helps to restore the balance between two different philosophical traditions philosophy as a theoretical discipline concerned with getting things right and philosophy as a practical discipline that shapes how we ought to live our lives.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title page

Copyright page

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Jonathan Lear and Richard Rorty on Irony

Lear's Case for Irony

Rorty on Irony, Contingency, and Liberalism

Some Questions Concerning Lear and Rorty

Notes

Chapter 2: What is Socratic Irony?

Gregory Vlastos: Socratic Irony as Complex Irony

Alexander Nehamas: Socratic Irony as Silence

Vlastos and Nehamas: Productive Tensions

Notes

Chapter 3: Søren Kierkegaard: Irony and Ethical Passion

Irony as Infinite Absolute Negativity

Moving Beyond “Pure Irony”

Notes

Chapter 4: Irony, Philosophy, and Living a Human Life

The Art of Living

Why Irony Matters

Notes

References

Name Index

Subject Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Start Reading

CHAPTER 1

Name Index

Subject Index

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Copyright page

Copyright © Richard J. Bernstein 2016

The right of Richard J. Bernstein to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2016 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0572-2

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0573-9(pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bernstein, Richard J., author.

Title: Ironic life / Richard J. Bernstein.

Description: Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015037540| ISBN 9781509505722 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781509505739 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Irony.

Classification: LCC BH301.I7 B47 2016 | DDC 128–dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037540

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Acknowledgments

I want to thank my research assistant, Caecilie Varslev-Pedersen, for her meticulous assistance in preparing this book and checking the accuracy of my quotations. I also want to thank Jean van Altena. She is a superb copy editor with an exquisite sense of detail and style. And finally I want to acknowledge John Thompson, the editor of Polity, for his constant enthusiastic encouragement.

Introduction

“And by now ‘irony' has been used for pretty much everything”: so declares Jonathan Lear in his book A Case for Irony (Lear 2011: 180, n. 12). From a very different perspective, Paul de Man, in his influential article “The Concept of Irony,” begins by saying that “it seems to be impossible to get hold of a definition” of irony (de Man 1996: 164). “Ironically” (we may be tempted to say), given the title of his essay, de Man informs us that irony is not a concept; consequently, it is impossible to give a stable definition of irony. Why are there these doubts about irony? If we dip into the voluminous literature that addresses irony in philosophy, rhetoric, literary theory, and cultural studies, we confront what appears to be a bottomless abyss of different, conflicting, even contradictory meanings and uses of irony.

Of course, there have been bold attempts to bring some order to this apparent chaos and to provide overviews of the different meanings, contexts, and historical uses of irony. These surveys can be useful in getting a sense of the vast terrain of “ironology.” Consider such standards works as D. C. Muecke's The Compass of Irony, Cleanth Brooks' The Well Wrought Urn, Wayne C. Booth's A Rhetoric of Irony, Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, or a more recent overview, Kevin Newmark's Irony on Occasion: From Schlegel and Kierkegaard to Derrida and de Man. These studies are useful for specific purposes. But, except for some occasional points of overlap, one's dominant impression is that these authors are talking about different subjects. Their senses of what is relevant in trying to get a grip on irony differ radically. Some authors distinguish among different types of irony such as verbal, dramatic, tragic, comic, and rhetorical irony. Some insist that there are sharp differences between irony and humor. But here again, there doesn't seem to be any agreement about such classifications – or whether they obscure more than they illuminate.

Our perplexity about irony is increased when we consider it from still another perspective. Our word “irony” (and its equivalent in many European languages) is derived from the Latin ironia, an expression that plays a prominent role in Roman thinkers such as Cicero and Quintilian. The Latin word ironia is the standard translation of the Greek word eirōneia. (Later we will consider the problematic relation of ironia and eirōneia.) Quintilian, in early Roman times, provides a definition of ironia that has enjoyed a remarkable stability through the ages. He defines irony as that figure of speech or trope in which something contrary to what is said is to be understood. This formula has persisted. If you consult any contemporary dictionary, Quintilian's definition (or something very much like it) is listed as a standard meaning of “irony.” Furthermore, whatever difficulties there may be in defining “irony,” it is a word that we use all the time in everyday life – and, frequently, there isn't much difficulty in grasping how the word is being used. So we are confronted with the perplexity that – although “irony” appears to have a relatively stable use – when we examine the literature in different disciplines that deals with theoretical attempts to characterize irony and its varieties, we are faced with a chaotic babel of voices clamoring for our attention. Irony, as Lear writes, does seem to be used “for pretty much everything,” and yet, at the same time, there appears to be some stability to the everyday meanings and uses of “irony.” Of course, it is frequently difficult to decide whether a speech act or figure of speech in a written text is (or isn't) ironic. Some of the fiercest debates in the humanistic disciplines concern what is “truly” ironic and what is “really” intended to be ironic. This problem becomes exacerbated when we are dealing with written texts.

These preliminary remarks are intended to set the context for my own discussion of irony. A great variety of approaches to irony are viable. I admire those who have the intellectual courage and audacity to present an overview of the different approaches to irony and to explore the long history of the discussions of irony. But sometimes, something else is needed. Rather than trying to cover the territory or do justice to different approaches, it is desirable to probe in depth one vein, one line of inquiry. That is what I am doing in this study. I am acutely aware that, in doing so, I am ignoring historical periods, problematic issues, and even thinkers whom others take to be the heart of the matter. Before explaining the line of inquiry that I pursue, I want to contrast it with a different approach to the topic.

In the twentieth century, the dominant approaches to irony have been taken from the perspective of literary studies and rhetoric. When Wayne Booth published A Rhetoric of Irony in 1974, many literary intellectuals (especially in the United States) considered it to be the standard work on irony. Booth was writing in the shadow of the movement known as New Criticism, where irony was presumed to be the key concept for understanding what is distinctive about literary texts, especially poetry. In retrospect, it is hard to resist the conclusion that the term became so inflated that it was virtually empty. Cleanth Brooks, one of the leading proponents of New Criticism, tells us in his famous book, The Well Wrought Urn, that “irony” is “the most general term we have for the kind of qualification which the various elements in a context receive from the context” (Brooks 1947: 191).

Wayne Booth recognized that when irony is characterized in such a vague way, it really isn't useful. One of Booth's primary aims is to characterize irony in such a manner that it is useful for practical literary criticism. And he offers many concrete examples to show how we can identify irony in literary texts. Booth, although aware of theoretical discussions of irony, is not really concerned with pursuing theoretical and philosophical discussions of irony. It is against this background that one can appreciate the explosive significance of Paul de Man's famous 1977 lecture on the concept of irony (transcribed, edited, and published in his 1996 collection of essays, Aesthetic Ideology).

Booth's approach to irony is eminently sensible: he starts out from a question in practical criticism, doesn't get involved in definitions or in the theory of tropes. He starts from a very reasonable question, namely: is it ironic? How do I know that the text with which I am confronted is going to be ironic or is not going to be ironic? It's very important to know that: lots of discussions turn around this and one always feels terrible when one has read a text and one is told later on that it's ironic. It is a very genuine question – whatever you have to do, it would indeed be very helpful and very desirable to know: by what markers, by what devices, by what indications or signals in the text we can decide that a text is ironic or is not.

(de Man 1996: 165)

We might think that de Man is praising this “eminently sensible” approach, but he then drops a bombshell. He continues: “This supposes, of course, that such a thing can be decided, that the decision we make in saying that a text is ironic can be made, and that there are textual elements which allow you to make that decision, independently of the problems of intention which might be hidden or might not be apparent” (de Man 1996: 165–6). Booth knows that we can always ask whether a text is “really” ironic and that this can open us to an infinite regress (as Kierkegaard well understood). He indicates (in a revealing footnote) that there is a philosophical problem here, but he wants to avoid it. He says:

The spirit of irony, if there is such a thing, cannot in itself answer such questions: Pursued to the end, an ironic temper can dissolve everything, in an infinite chain of solvents. It is not irony but the desire to understand irony that brings such a chain to a stop. And that is why a rhetoric of irony is required if we are not to be caught, as many men of our time have claimed to be caught, in an infinite regress of negations. And that is why I devote the following chapters to ‘learning where to stop'.

(Booth 1974: 59, n. 14)

De Man comments that this desire to understand irony, to stop and control irony, is “sensible” and “reasonable.” But he goes on to argue that this is just what cannot be done. In this context, de Man refers to Friedrich Schlegel's main theoretical text on irony, “Über die Unverständlichkeit,” which de Man translates as “On Incomprehensibility” or “On the Impossibility of Understanding.” He writes:

If indeed irony is tied with the impossibility of understanding, then Wayne Booth's project of understanding irony is doomed from the start because, if irony is of understanding, no understanding of irony will ever be able to control irony and to stop it, as he proposes to do, and if this is indeed the case that what is at stake in irony is the possibility of understanding, the possibility of reading, the readability of texts, the possibility of deciding on a meaning or on a multiple set of meanings or on a controlled polysemy of meanings, then we can see that irony would indeed be very dangerous. There would be in irony something very threatening, against which interpreters of literature, who have a stake in the understandability of literature, would want to put themselves on their guard – very legitimate to want, as Booth wants to stop, to stabilize, to control the trope.

(de Man 1996: 166–7)

The chasm between Booth's and de Man's approach to irony is indicated by what each of them says about Schlegel. Booth writes: “But, fellow romantics, do not push irony too far, or you will pass from the joyful laughter of Tristram Shandy into Teutonic gloom. Read Schlegel” (Booth 1974: 212). In response, de Man writes: “[I]f you are interested in the problem and the theory of irony you have to take it in the German tradition. That's where the problem is worked out. You have to take it in Friedrich Schlegel (much more than August Wilhelm Schlegel), and also in Tieck, Novalis, Solger, Adam Müller, Kleist, Jean Paul, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and all the way up to Nietzsche.…But Friedrich Schlegel is the most important, where the problem really gets worked out.” (de Man 1996: 167).

I do not intend to pursue de Man's “arguments” or to evaluate his striking controversial claims. De Man is, in effect, critiquing the entire approach to irony that had been characteristic of American literary critics. We might say that – if the expression had not become a cliché – that de Man was calling for a radical “paradigm shift” in dealing with irony. Everything seems to change: the problems one needs to address; how one approaches the topic of irony; the distinctions that one introduces; and the key texts and figures that one needs to confront. De Man thinks that Booth might have realized that his project was doomed from the start if – instead of pushing it aside – he had dealt with the treatment of irony in the German tradition, beginning with the German Romantics. Most of de Man's analysis focuses on Friedrich Schlegel, Fichte, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Benjamin. These are figures who Anglo-American literary critics had almost completely ignored. Although de Man indicates his doubts about trying to define “irony,” he does finally offer a definition: “[I]rony is the permanent parabasis of the allegory of tropes. (That's the definition that I promised you – I also told you you would not be much more advanced when you got it, but there it is: irony is the permanent parabasis of the allegory of tropes.)” (de Man 1996: 179). I suspect that literary critics such as Booth and Brooks might not only find such a definition unintelligible and incomprehensible, but might scratch their heads and ask: What does this have to do with irony?

I have presented this brief sketch – this fragment – of the radical changes in approaches to irony from Brooks (New Criticism) to Booth to de Man for several reasons. First, it shows how much serious disagreement there is about irony, even if we limit ourselves to a very brief segment of the history of literary criticism and theory. This disagreement is not limited to different approaches to similar topics and problems. Rather, it isn't even clear that the signifier “irony” designates a commonly shared subject matter. Second, it does suggest a legitimate and potentially helpful way of discussing irony. One might want to investigate more carefully what the New Critics wrote about irony and try to evaluate what contribution (if any) they make to our understanding aspects of irony. Instead of claiming that Wayne Booth's project is “doomed from the start,” one might try to explicate what he contributes to our understanding of “stable irony.” Or if one finds de Man's critical analysis persuasive, then one might want to explore the history and the controversies generated by the German Romantics and the debates that preoccupied many nineteenth-century thinkers, including Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche – debates that have continued into the twentieth century with Benjamin, Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze (among others). This is the approach represented by Kevin Newmark's recent book, Irony on Occasion: From Schlegel and Kierkegaard to Derrida and de Man, and by Claire Colebrook's short introduction, Irony. Regardless of what one thinks of Paul de Man's understanding of the problem and theory of irony, he is certainly right in calling attention to the lively debates about the meaning and significance of irony by European thinkers during the nineteenth century. Many literary critics today, who have been influenced by what is called “post-modern theory” – or simply just “theory” – might expect a book on irony to deal primarily with this tradition. But as I have already indicated, this is not what I intend to do. So the third reason for my sketch of contemporary literary debates is to contrast it with my own project – and to explain why I am pursuing it.

Let me begin with an uncontroversial observation. Despite the lively and heated debates provoked by the German Romantics among contemporary literary theorists and rhetoricians, Anglo-American philosophers have not been – for the most part – concerned with irony. There is barely any interest in the topic. Indeed, there is a prevailing prejudice that the study of irony does not really belong to “serious” philosophy. Leave it to literary types! This seems strange, because virtually everyone who discusses irony, beginning with Cicero and Quintilian, takes Socrates to be the paradigmatic ironist. All too frequently, contemporary Anglophone philosophers acknowledge this and then pass on to what they take to be “serious” problems. Two significant exceptions are Richard Rorty and Jonathan Lear. Both are mavericks (I mean this as a compliment). Both are well versed in the characteristic approaches of contemporary analytic and linguistic philosophy. But both have much broader intellectual interests. Lear was trained in ancient philosophy; he is a practicing psychoanalyst, a champion of Freud, and has wide humanistic interests. Rorty was also trained in the history of philosophy, and for a time was considered to be a leading “analytic” philosopher. His interests and writings span the full range of humanistic disciplines and literature. He is at home in both Anglo-American and Continental philosophy, and has been a leading advocate of overcoming the analytic/continental divide. At a crucial stage in their philosophical careers, both of these philosophers turned to the issue of irony. Neither is particularly interested in the history of this vexed topic or with the debates taking place among the literary critics and theorists mentioned above. Neither is particularly concerned with the traditional definition of irony – saying the contrary of what one means – or with the popular view that the ironist is someone who is detached and avoids commitment. Although they sharply disagree on many philosophical issues, each approaches irony in a novel (even idiosyncratic) manner. Kierkegaard, in a famous statement, declares: “Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony” (Kierkegaard 1989: 6). I will be returning to this pithy declaration several times throughout my book. But I cite it here because both Rorty's and Lear's views on irony can be understood as different interpretations of Kierkegaard's remark that “a life that may be called human begins with irony.” Lear explicitly acknowledges the importance of Kierkegaard, and he thinks that what he is doing is elucidating an older understanding of irony that has been lost sight of in modern and contemporary discussions of irony. Rorty doesn't make any such claims about recovering what irony really means. On the contrary – as we shall see – he deliberately stipulates a new definition of irony in order to introduce the figure of the “liberal ironist.” But what interests me is that, for all their differences, both of these philosophers believe that living ironically (practicing irony) is a key to answering the question that Socrates raises in Plato's Republic, a question that echoes through the ages: How should one live?

I begin my study with a presentation of Lear's understanding of ironic experience, the capacity for irony, and ironic existence. He makes some very bold and provocative claims about irony. He claims that it is constitutive of the concepts by which we understand ourselves that they are subject to ironic disruption. Furthermore, it is constitutive of human excellence that we develop a capacity for ironically disrupting what such excellence consists in. Human flourishing requires cultivating a capacity for erotic ironic uncanniness. Lear thinks of himself as recovering an older sense of irony that takes us back to Socrates. Contemporary thinkers, he claims, have a thin, superficial, and distorted understanding of irony. For Lear, Richard Rorty typifies this superficial approach to irony. I think that Lear is seriously mistaken about Rorty. Much of what Lear claims to be distinctive about irony is applicable to Rorty. I offer an interpretation of irony in Rorty's life and work that complements Lear's reflections on irony. Rorty shares Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's belief that attempts to provide rational justifications for our most basic convictions – what Rorty calls our “final vocabularies” – are doomed to failure. The belief that there are ahistorical rational justifications for our “final vocabularies” is an illusion that can be exorcised only by ironic therapy. After elucidating Lear's and Rorty's conceptions of irony, I evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their respective views. There are serious problems with both of their views. Despite my critical reservations, I do think that Lear and Rorty make different, but important, contributions to a fuller understanding of the philosophical significance of irony in living a human life.

Earlier, when I indicated the general lack of interest in irony among Anglophone philosophers, I did not mention the one area in which there has been a great deal of discussion of irony. The scholarly study of ancient Greek philosophy has flourished (and continues to flourish). Anyone dealing with Socrates and Plato must confront the thorny issue of what precisely is Socratic (and Platonic) irony. Two outstanding contemporary scholars of classical philosophy who examine the meaning of Socratic irony are Gregory Vlastos and Alexander Nehamas. Although they sharply disagree, they both claim that a proper understanding of Socratic irony is fundamental for a more general philosophical clarification of irony. The issues that Vlastos and Nehamas raise about Socratic irony are directly relevant to the concerns of Lear and Rorty.

But before we can even examine Socratic irony, there are preliminary problems that need to be addressed. Who is (was) Socrates? We know that a real historical person called “Socrates” lived and died in Athens. There are a few minimal facts about the historical Socrates that are well established, such as the year of his death. But because Socrates never wrote anything, we do not have any direct evidence of what he thought and believed. All we have are reports of what he presumably said (mostly written after his death). Are these sources sufficient to reconstruct the historical Socrates? Which sources and reports can we take as reliable? These questions have been debated throughout the centuries and have never been completely resolved.

There is also a closely related issue. Socrates, of course, is the major character in Plato's dialogues. Is the Socrates portrayed in the Platonic dialogues an accurate representation of the historical Socrates? If so, which dialogues represent the historical Socrates? We will see that Vlastos and Nehamas represent two extreme views about the “Socratic problem.” Vlastos thinks that it is, in principle, solvable – and indeed he proposes a solution. He claims that we have solid evidence whereby to reconstruct what the historical Socrates was like. He also argues that the Socrates portrayed in the “early” Platonic dialogues is a reliable portrait of the historical Socrates. Nehamas doesn't think that we will ever know what the historical Socrates was really like. Furthermore, he claims that the Socrates portrayed in the Platonic dialogues (even the so-called “early dialogues”) is a “literary character” created by Plato. Plato's Socrates is a literary fiction.

Even if we bracket the Socratic problem and focus our attention on Plato's Socrates in the “early” dialogues, we still want to know what precisely Socratic irony is. Vlastos's answer is similar to that of Cicero and Quintilian. He calls Socratic irony “complex irony.” Complex irony is the type of irony in which what is said both is and isn't what is meant. The surface content of what is said is meant to be true in one sense, but false in another sense. In his analysis of Socratic irony, Vlastos makes a fascinating claim. Although Socrates never theorized irony – that is, he never asked the question “What is F?” about irony as he does about justice, piety, virtue, etc. – Socrates actually created something radically new, he created a new form of life. Socrates incarnated in his life an irony that was free from any taint of intentional deceit. Socrates' personality is the basis for the Roman definition of irony – a definition that has persisted until the present day.

Nehamas disagrees with almost everything Vlastos says about Socratic irony. I have already indicated that Nehamas thinks that the Socrates of the “early” Platonic dialogues is a literary character created by Plato. He argues that Vlastos's understanding of “complex irony” is completely inadequate to capture what is distinctive about Socratic irony. Nehamas, drawing on a suggestion by Kierkegaard, characterizes Socratic irony as Socratic silence. Initially this seems outrageous, because Socrates is so voluble. But what Nehamas (and Kierkegaard) want to emphasize is the opacity of the literary character created by Plato. We can never pin down what precisely Socrates knows and doesn't know, what he believes and doesn't believe, what he is doing and not doing. And yet we, Socrates' successors, beginning with Plato himself, feel compelled to interpret, reinterpret, describe, and redescribe Socrates' ironic life. Nehamas claims that Socrates (the literary character created by Plato) is the origin of the tradition of philosophy as the art of living. This is a tradition that emphasizes the practical role of philosophy in guiding us as to how to live our lives. For all their differences, I argue that there is more in common between Vlastos and Nehamas than seems apparent initially. Nehamas's reflections on Socratic irony can be understood as developing Vlastos's tantalizing claim that Socrates created a new and unimagined form of life which he realized in himself – one for which there was no historical precedent. I show how Vlastos and Nehamas contribute new insights into what constitutes living an ironic life.

In the background of four contemporary philosophers (Lear, Rorty, Vlastos, and Nehamas) is the ghost of Kierkegaard. Lear, as I have indicated, is the most explicit in his acknowledgment of the importance of Kierkegaard for his approach to irony. His discussion of irony takes off from a single sentence from Kierkegaard's journal: “To become human does not come that easily.” In a different way, Nehamas's interpretation of Socratic irony is also inspired by Kierkegaard. He takes off from what seems like Kierkegaard's paradoxical claim that the distinctive feature of Socrates is his silence. Although Rorty does not base his understanding of irony on Kierkegaard, it is clear that he takes Kierkegaard to be an exemplar of the ironist. We will also see that Rorty makes a sharp distinction (as does Vlastos) between Socrates the ironist as portrayed in the early Platonic dialogues and Socrates the mouthpiece for Plato's philosophy in the middle and later dialogues. Vlastos acknowledges Kierkegaard's “genius,” but he thinks that Kierkegaard's treatment of Socratic irony is “hopelessly perplexed” (Vlastos 1991: 43, n. 81). (I will argue that Vlastos misunderstands Kierkegaard.)

But what, precisely, is Kierkegaard's understanding of irony? Raising the question in this manner is already misleading. Kierkegaard uses all sorts of techniques to mask his “true beliefs” (whatever they may be), including the use of pseudonymous authors – and even writing books in which pseudonymous authors comment on other pseudonymous authors invented by Kierkegaard. He ends his famous Concluding Unscientific Postscript (authored by Johannes Climacus) with a “A First and Last Explanation” signed by S. Kierkegaard, in which he pleads with his readers not to ascribe the views expressed by his pseudonymous authors to him (Kierkegaard) but only to the “authors” of these books. So perhaps it is better to speak about an understanding of irony that emerges from Kierkegaard's writings (including those of his pseudonymous authors), rather than speak about Kierkegaard's understanding of irony.

Kierkegaard completed and defended his dissertation, The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates, in 1841. The dissertation consists of two parts. The first part, entitled “The Position of Socrates Viewed as Irony,” treats the interpretations of Socrates by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes (as well as by some of Kierkegaard's contemporaries). Part Two, “The Concept of Irony,” contains a very sharp critique of Romantic irony. Throughout, Kierkegaard is at once strongly influenced by, and fiercely battling with, Hegel's understanding of Socratic irony. Despite Kierkegaard's use of the Hegelian phrase “infinite absolute negativity” to characterize Socratic irony, I show how Kierkegaard radically swerves away from Hegel. But The Concept of Irony ends with a very unsatisfactory conclusion. Kierkegaard tells us that Socrates has nothing positive to offer; he is the incarnation of infinite absolute negativity. His approach to Socrates seems so one-sided that it is difficult see how one can ever get beyond the nihilistic consequences of irony. I argue that, although Kierkegaard wants to make an extremely important point about how ironic questioning is necessary to become a “single individual,” he came to realize that the discussion of Socratic irony in his dissertation was one-sided in the extreme. Indeed, Johannes Climacus explicitly says this in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. I then show that Climacus (and Kierkegaard) modify this view of irony to highlight the moment of ethical passion. This moment becomes extremely important in order to distinguish between the type of irony that is the beginning of becoming a self as a “single individual” and the type of irony that culminates in self-destruction. Kierkegaard's multifaceted reflections on irony enrich what we have learned from Lear, Rorty, Vlastos, and Nehamas about why a life that may be called human begins with irony. In the final chapter of my book, I integrate the insights of these thinkers and the several strands of my argument to show what we have learned about ironic life. Focusing on these four contemporary thinkers (Lear, Rorty, Vlastos, and Nehamas) and the two great ironists Kierkegaard and Socrates enables me to explore one aspect of irony in depth. I believe, however, that the issues I raise about ironic life open new approaches to the study of irony in Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze.

There is also a larger horizon for my analysis. Nehamas introduces a distinction between two different types of philosophical approach – two different traditions – that can be traced back to the Greeks. He calls these theoretical and practical philosophy. By “theoretical” (in his very broad sense) Nehamas wants to call attention to that tradition in philosophy in which the primary issue is to understand, “to get things right,” to advance claims that one seeks to justify with the best possible reasons – whether these claims be about the nature of reality or the nature of knowledge, ethics, or politics. Whatever the scope of theoretical philosophy, “[w]hat philosophers study make no more claim to affecting their personal lives than the work of physicists, mathematicians, or economists is expected to affect theirs” (Nehamas 1998: 1). When evaluating the theoretical claims of philosophers (even when they are about such practical issues as ethics and politics), we want to know whether the theses advanced are correct, and we seek to evaluate the reasons offered in support of the theses advanced. Evaluating theoretical philosophical claims has nothing to do with evaluating how these philosophers live their lives.

But there is another tradition in philosophy – that was also especially prominent in the Hellenistic period whereby philosophers were primarily concerned with the art of living. In this tradition, everything – including one's theoretical reflections – is oriented to shaping how we live our lives. It is the practice of living that is all-important. Academic philosophy today is dominated by a theoretical orientation, so much so that many academic philosophers are not even aware of the philosophical tradition as the art of living. To the extent that they are aware of it, they view the art of living with deep suspicion. They tend, as Nehamas notes, to think of contemporaries who identify themselves with philosophy as the art of living “at best as ‘poets' or literary figures, at worst as charlatans writing for precocious teenagers or, what for many amounts to the same thing, for professors of literature” (Nehamas 1998: 4). For academic philosophers working in the theoretical tradition, philosophy as the art of living sounds like those all too popular “self-help” manuals that are found on philosophy shelves in many bookstores. Throughout my inquiry, I will be concerned with the tensions between the theoretical approach to philosophy and philosophy as the art of living. I do not want to denigrate the importance of theoretical philosophy. But I hope to restore a sense of balance between these competing philosophical traditions.

Virtually all philosophers today acknowledge Socrates as an exemplar of a person who thoroughly integrated his philosophical questioning with the way in which he lived his life. And Socrates has always been the primary exemplar of the ironist. My inquiry is intended to help recover the spirit of ironic life that Socrates concretely embodies.

Chapter 1Jonathan Lear and Richard Rorty on Irony

In the opening chapter of The Compass of Irony, entitled “Ironology,” D. C. Muecke declares: “Getting to grips with irony seems to have something in common with gathering the mist; there is plenty to take hold of if only one could. To attempt a taxonomy of a phenomenon so nebulous that it disappears as one approaches is an even more desperate adventure” (Muecke 1969: 3). I am not sure that “nebulous mist” is the right metaphor, because even a superficial acquaintance with the history and the baffling (almost chaotic) variety of what has been described as irony might lead one to the despairing conclusion that almost anything can been labeled “irony.” The volumes and articles dealing with irony would fill several libraries. There doesn't even seem to be any consensus about classifying the varieties or types of irony. Nevertheless, there are identifiable strands that run through (some of the) discussions of irony. Perhaps the most common one is that irony is a rhetorical figure of speech. Gregory Vlastos succinctly describes this strand.

“Irony,” says Quintilian, is that figure of speech or trope “in which something contrary to what is said is to be understood” (contrarium ei quod dicitur intelligendum est). His formula has stood the test of time. It passes intact in Dr Johnson's dictionary (“mode of speech in which the meaning is contrary to the words” [1755]), and survives virtually intact in ours: “Irony is the use of words to express something other than, and especially the opposite of, [their] literal meaning” (Webster's). (Vlastos 1991: 21)

If we think of irony in this way, then it is a trope that anyone can – and frequently does – use. But there isn't anything intrinsically philosophical about this use. We find it in all sorts of oral and written discourse. So we might think that describing and analyzing the variety of types of irony is primarily a subject for rhetoricians, literary theorists, or lexicographers. Recently, several philosophers have sought to recover the concept of irony, because they think it tells us something philosophically important about what it means to live a human life. They do not think of irony exclusively as a figure of speech, but as something far weightier. Although their approaches are strikingly different and they sharply disagree with each other, a common thread runs through their analyses. Irony consists of “the art of living”; it is about how we might live worthy human lives. Jonathan Lear, Richard Rorty, Gregory Vlastos, and Alexander Nehamas think it is an important task for philosophy to explicate and illuminate the meaning of irony. When we do so, we learn something fundamental about living a human life and about philosophy itself. I want to explore what each of these thinkers is telling us about irony and what I take to be the strengths and weaknesses of their respective views. In the background of their thinking stand the two great ironists in the history of philosophy, Socrates and Søren Kierkegaard. I begin by discussing Lear's and Rorty's understandings of irony (Chapter 1). Then I consider the meaning of Socratic irony, focusing on two contemporary interpretations, by Gregory Vlastos and Alexander Nehamas (Chapter 2). I take up Kierkegaard's (and his pseudonymous authors') understanding of irony as well as Socratic irony (Chapter 3). Finally, I will explore what lessons we can draw from these varying philosophical understandings of irony as they pertain to the art of living (Chapter 4).

Lear's Case for Irony

Jonathan Lear lays out his views on irony in A Case for Irony, based on his Tanner Lectures.1 Lear seeks to break through “routine understandings of irony” and “routine understandings of ourselves” and “to make clear what irony is and why it matters” (Lear 2011: p. ix). From the outset he acknowledges that his sources of inspiration are Kierkegaard and Plato (more specifically, Plato's portrayal of Socrates). For these thinkers show us that irony is fundamental to understanding the human condition. Lear tells us that Kierkegaard “has everywhere been my teacher. Socrates was his teacher. But what Kierkegaard learned from Socrates is itself a source of confusion” (Lear 2011: p. x). Lear's distinctive approach to irony takes as a point of departure a single sentence from Kierkegaard's journal, written on December 3, 1854: “To become human…does not come that easily.”2 The full entry from which this sentence is quoted reads:

In what did Socrates' irony really lie? In expressions and turns of speech, etc.? No, such trivialities, even his virtuosity in talking ironically, such things do not make a Socrates. No, his whole existence is and was irony; whereas the entire contemporary population of farm hands and business men and so on, all those thousands, were perfectly sure of being human and knowing what it means to be a human being, Socrates was beneath them (ironically) and occupied himself with the problem – what does it mean to be a human being? He thereby expressed that actually the Trieben