In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 84-106 [Access article in PDF] Irony in the Platonic Dialogues Charles L. Griswold, Jr. I INTERPRETERS OF PLATO have arrived at a general consensus to the effect that there exists a problem of interpretation when we read Plato, and that the solution to the problem must in some way incorporate what has tendentiously been called the "literary" and the "philosophical" sides of (...) Plato's writing. The problem is created by the fact that Plato wrote in dialogue form, indeed a specific type of dialogue form. The solution must somehow combine into a coherent theory of the "meaning" of the dialogues, the ways in which these texts work (such as the use of imagery, metaphor, myth, allusion, irony, as well as argument). At the same time, there exists enormous disagreement about how one ought to move from these general observations to interpretation of a particular text. 1The problem of interpretation lies not merely in the fact that Plato wrote dialogues. That alone would not necessarily present any hermeneutical issues of unusual difficulty. Plato's distinctive use of the dialogue form creates the difficulties. The genre that we might call "the Platonic dialogue" is distinguished by several relevant characteristics.First, there is no character called "Plato" who speaks in any of the dialogues; indeed, "Plato" is mentioned twice in the entire corpus, once as being absent (Pho. 59b10), and once as being present (Apol. 38b6). Authorial anonymity is thus an important feature of the dialogues. 2 At least ab initio, we are not justified in identifying Plato with any one of his characters. Indeed, there are positive reasons why he cannot be identified even with Socrates, as I will discuss below. 3 Plato is absent from his own texts; no simple act of reading them will allow us to ascertain what his views are. 4 It does not follow that Plato's views are [End Page 84] entirely absent from the dialogues—say, in the form of some mysterious "esoteric teaching"—and that they cannot be elicited by a complex act of reading. Just how Plato's views are to be extracted has been, again, the subject of a very long debate. 5 I myself think that Plato's views can be so elicited. 6 But the fact of his anonymity as author means that "Plato's meaning" is not ascertainable in the way that, say, "Kant's meaning" may be ascertainable in the Critique of Pure Reason.A second feature of Plato's dialogues contributes to the interpretive puzzle. The dialogues are clearly fictional in character. They are not—they could not be—transcriptions of conversations which took place. Some dialogues could not have taken place even when the interlocutors were historical figures (for example, at the Phaedrus' ostensible dramatic date the real Phaedrus was not in Athens). Not only are many of the characters entirely fictional, there is clear evidence that even "Socrates" is very much a fictionalized version of the historical character. I am referring not just to the famous statement in the (possibly inauthentic) Second Letter, 7 but to the fact that the Socrates of Plato's dialogues is presented as being a super-human character. This is evident from Alcibiades' description of him in the Symposium as well as from a number of subtle fictions. For example, Plato has Socrates narrate the entirety of the Republic from memory, without a single moment of hesitation or (so far as the reader can tell) any lapse of memory. This fantastic feat is complemented by Socrates' equally fantastic stamina in conversation. The lengthy Protagoras, for example, is narrated in its entirety by Socrates immediately after the dialogue itself has occurred. Socrates never shows any fatigue of any sort. It is not just hyperbole to say that Plato's Socrates is heroic; he is carefully compared, in passages I cannot examine here, to both Achilles and Odysseus. Socrates' absolute calm and self-control before death also evidence his superhuman character. The relation between the historical Socrates and the Platonic Socrates is the source of much fruitful controversy. It suffices for... (shrink)

This volume addresses the relationship between irony and popular culture and the role of the consumer in determining and disseminating meaning. Arguing that in a cultural climate largely characterised by fractious communications and perilous linguistic exchanges, the very role of irony in popular culture needs to come under greater scrutiny, it focuses on the many uses, abuses, and misunderstandings of irony in contemporary popular culture, and explores the troubling political populism at the heart of many supposedly satirical (...) and (apparently) non-satirical texts. In an environment in which irony is frequently claimed as a defence for material and behaviour judged controversial, how do we, as a society entrenched in forms of popular culture and media, interpret work that is intended as satire but which reads as unironic? How do we accurately decode works of popular film, literature, television, music, and other cultural forms which sell themselves as bitingly ironic commentaries on current society, but which are also problematic celebrations of the very issues they purport to critique? And what happens when texts intended and received in one manner are themselves ironically recontextualised in another? Bringing together studies across a range of cultural texts including popular music, film and television, Isn't it Ironic? will appeal to scholars of the social sciences and humanities with interests in cultural studies, media studies, popular culture, literary studies and sociology. (shrink)

The present study consists of a cross-cultural analysis of the role of irony in the Blue Cliff Record. The analysis is structured in four chapters, one devoted to methodological concerns and three to equivalent types and functions of irony within the text, a pivotal literary work of the Chan Buddhist tradition. In relation to Chan studies, a discussion of irony is particularly important since the wide corpus of Chan literature includes a significant number and a consistent (...) variety of ironic features such as puns, wordplay, extravagant acts, and so forth. The idea of the present paper is that the ironic temperament of Chan is not a contingent circumstance, but a functional strategy purposely employed in textual compositions and oral communication with soteriological purposes. (shrink)

Behler discusses the current state of thought on modernity and postmodernity, detailing the intellectual problems to be faced and examining the positions of such central figures in the debate as Lyotard, Habermas, Rorty, and Derrida. He finds that beyond the "limits of communication," further discussion must be carried out through irony. The historical rise of the concept of modernity is examined through discussions of the querelle des anciens et des modernes as a break with classical tradition, and on the (...) theoretical writings of de Stael, the English romantics, and the great German romantics Schlegel, Hegel, and Nietzsche. The growth of the concept of irony from a formal rhetorical term to a mode of indirectness that comes to characterize thought and discourse generally is then examined from Plato and Socrates to Nietzsche, who avoided the term "irony" but used it in his cetnral concept of the mask. (shrink)

Since the wide corpus of Chan 禪 literature includes a significant number and a consistent variety of ironic features such as puns, wordplay, extravagant acts, and so forth, a clarification of the role and functions of irony is especially relevant to this framework. The idea of the present essay is that irony works in Chan Buddhism as a functional strategy purposely employed in textual compositions and oral communication. Analysing the Blue Cliff Record, one of the most influential (...) and significant texts in the history of East Asian Buddhism, I individuated three functions of irony that clarify its role in the wider context of Chan rhetoric. Specifically, these functions consist in performing a rhetoric of self-desecration, inducing amusement, and instilling doubt. Upon defining the notion of irony, the current essay expounds on these functions with reference to the text, then the role of irony in the Blue Cliff Record is finally identified as a hermeneutic device. (shrink)

Capricci are nonsense drawings that delineate an elusive but inevitable sense behind or, better, within the palpable nonsense of the elementary proposition of a drawing; they are capers on a tightrope stretched between the poles of pathos and the ridiculous. We shall succeed in not falling only if we step forward boldly and know not only what we are doing but also what we are up against in the making of a picture as well as in living in the world. (...) For the world, in its yawning impudence of death and the dance of blind eagerness, ambition, and noisy speechlessness, makes us look to art not, or not necessarily, to escape from the world but rather to learn how to take its measure. . . . There is a painting ["St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching"] joined to the Passion cycle in S. Polo which demonstrates as well as any paradox ever will how Giandomenico joined piety and irony in his religious art without curtailing the glory of either. He arrives, as it were, at a God-fearing irony. We see St. Vincent Ferrer preaching. He speaks so eloquently, so convincingly in praise of the divine truth, that light shines forth from him and angel's wings grow on his shoulders. Fascinated by the miracle but even more so by the saint's words, his audience sits spellbound at his feet; in the foreground, however, sits a youth, a fop perhaps, gorgeously dressed, with a singular smile on his face, his hand musingly poised to his cheek, who looks at us quizzically. He is the link between us and the miracle. "Can you believe it?" says the smile, and perhaps "I did not—and yes—how can you now not believe it, you need but look - as I did - for there it is!" It is, I think, the face of one who knows about the truth of the absurd and its inner logic. Credo quia absurdum: if it were not so, we could prove the existence of God by feeding data into a computer, and there would be many believers, whose faith, in turn, deserved but little credit. Needless to say, perhaps, the face that so speaks to us in laughter joined to wonder is a self-portrait.1 · 1. In S. Polo the painting of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching hangs opposite a matching picture of The Finding of the True Cross. There is a beautiful young woman on the right who looks at us beseechingly and with her right hand points at the cross. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo who looks out of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching cannot help but see this lady and be affected by her earnest gesture. For a reproduction of the painting, see Maruz, G. D. Tiepolo, plate 22. Philipp P. Fehl is a professor in the department of art and design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has edited Franciscus Junius: The Literature of Classical Art. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Turner's Classicism and the Problem of Periodization in the History of Art," appeared in the Autumn 1976 issue; the present essay was delivered in an earlier version at Stanford University in 1976 and is included in his collection of essays, Art and Mortality. His capricci, Birds with Titles, were exhibited in a one-man show at Kenyon College. (shrink)

Capricci are nonsense drawings that delineate an elusive but inevitable sense behind or, better, within the palpable nonsense of the elementary proposition of a drawing; they are capers on a tightrope stretched between the poles of pathos and the ridiculous. We shall succeed in not falling only if we step forward boldly and know not only what we are doing but also what we are up against in the making of a picture as well as in living in the world. (...) For the world, in its yawning impudence of death and the dance of blind eagerness, ambition, and noisy speechlessness, makes us look to art not, or not necessarily, to escape from the world but rather to learn how to take its measure.... There is a painting ["St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching"] joined to the Passion cycle in S. Polo which demonstrates as well as any paradox ever will how Giandomenico joined piety and irony in his religious art without curtailing the glory of either. He arrives, as it were, at a God-fearing irony. We see St. Vincent Ferrer preaching. He speaks so eloquently, so convincingly in praise of the divine truth, that light shines forth from him and angel's wings grow on his shoulders. Fascinated by the miracle but even more so by the saint's words, his audience sits spellbound at his feet; in the foreground, however, sits a youth, a fop perhaps, gorgeously dressed, with a singular smile on his face, his hand musingly poised to his cheek, who looks at us quizzically. He is the link between us and the miracle. "Can you believe it?" says the smile, and perhaps "I did not—and yes—how can you now not believe it, you need but look - as I did - for there it is!" It is, I think, the face of one who knows about the truth of the absurd and its inner logic. Credo quia absurdum: if it were not so, we could prove the existence of God by feeding data into a computer, and there would be many believers, whose faith, in turn, deserved but little credit. Needless to say, perhaps, the face that so speaks to us in laughter joined to wonder is a self-portrait.1 · 1. In S. Polo the painting of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching hangs opposite a matching picture of The Finding of the True Cross. There is a beautiful young woman on the right who looks at us beseechingly and with her right hand points at the cross. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo who looks out of St. Vincent Ferrer Preaching cannot help but see this lady and be affected by her earnest gesture. For a reproduction of the painting, see Maruz, G. D. Tiepolo, plate 22. Philipp P. Fehl is a professor in the department of art and design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has edited Franciscus Junius: The Literature of Classical Art. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Turner's Classicism and the Problem of Periodization in the History of Art," appeared in the Autumn 1976 issue; the present essay was delivered in an earlier version at Stanford University in 1976 and is included in his collection of essays, Art and Mortality. His capricci, Birds with Titles, were exhibited in a one-man show at Kenyon College. (shrink)

This book examines the history of the concept of irony from the first appearance of?eironeia? in Plato to the modern era. It isolates and discusses the basic features of irony and the variable features that determine the kind and in part the effect or quality. It distinguishes carefully between the two main types : instrumental irony (of which verbal irony is the most common form) and observable irony (which includes dramatic irony, irony of (...) events, general irony and other situational ironies). A distinction is also drawn between open and closed irony. (shrink)

Diese Arbeit wählt eine postmoderne Paradigmenanalyse als methodischen Ansatz. Der reflexive Gehalt von Middlemarch wird auf dem Weg theoretischer Pluralität und Differenz ermittelt. Die genuin philosophische Dekonstruktion macht die unauflösbare Spannung eines Textes deutlich, die sich als Widerspruch zwischen dynamischen (Hegel) und statischen Denkmodellen (Schopenhauer) paradigmatisch beschreiben läßt. Abgesichert durch zahlreiche textimmanente Befunde gelangt diese Begriffsklärung schließlich zu einer präzisen Erfassung der Eliotschen Ironie, Melancholie und Sympathie in Middlemarch. In Gestalt prägnanter philosophischer Bewußtseinsformen werden sie als ästhetische Vermittlung reflexiven Erzählens (...) interpretiert. (shrink)

Nature of irony -- Sarcasm -- Impersonal irony -- Self-disparaging irony -- Ingenu irony -- Irony of self-betrayal -- Irony of simple incongruity -- Dramatic irony -- General irony -- Romantic irony.

This study represents a comparison between two radical gestures of literary self-reflexivity: romantic irony and postmodernist metafiction. It examines the impact of early German romantic theory and its central concept of irony on German and English romantic narrative fiction and relates the same to postmodernist self-reflexive novels, including its British and American variants. A primary objective of this comparison is to account for the radical skepticism that postmodernist metafiction voices with respect to the paramount philosophical question of truth (...) and reality. The immanent tension between an absolute idealistic and a radically skeptic position which romantic irony articulates and enacts is conceived of as an important and instructive link to the understanding of postmodernism. (shrink)

Jules Brody argues that Aristotle's usage of hamartia in The Poetics is best understood in terms of its literal meaning, "missing the mark," rather than in the broader, familiar sense of "tragic flaw." Hamartia is a morally neutral non-normative term, derived from the verb hamartano, meaning "to miss the mark," "to fall short of an objective." And by extension: to reach one destination rather than the intended one; to make a mistake, not in the sense of a moral failure, but (...) in the nonjudgmental sense of taking one thing for another, taking something for its opposite. Hamartia may betoken an error of discernment due to ignorance, to the lack of an essential piece of information.1 Or, as S. H. Butcher would have it:... (shrink)

In A Case for Irony, Jonathan Lear aims to advance “a distinguished philosophical tradition that conceives of humanity as a task” by returning this tradition to the ironic figure at its origin — Socrates. But he is hampered by his reliance on well-worn philosophical examples. I suggest that Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter illustrates the mode of ironic experience that interests Lear, and helps us to think through his relation to Christine Korsgaard, arguably the greatest contemporary proponent of the (...) philosophical tradition at issue. Lear needs a central idea from Korsgaard’s model of practical thinking in order to characterise the phenomenology of ironic experience, but he also needs to jettison her idea that reasons for action come from an agent’s “practical identities” if he wants to follow through on his claim that irony is a form of radical and committed reflection. (shrink)

The novels of David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer are increasingly regarded as representing a new trend, an 'aesthetic sea change' in contemporary American fiction. 'Post-postmodernism' and 'New Sincerity' are just two of the labels that have been attached to this trend. But what do these labels mean? What characterizes and connects these novels? Dulk shows that the connection between these works lies in their shared philosophical dimension. On the one hand, they portray excessive self-reflection and endless (...) irony as the two main problems of contemporary Western life. On the other hand, the novels embody an attempt to overcome these problems: sincerity, reality-commitment and community are portrayed as the virtues needed to achieve a meaningful life. This shared philosophical dimension is analyzed by viewing the novels in light of the existentialist philosophies of Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Albert Camus. (shrink)

Om ironiens funktion i Søren Kierkegaards forfatterskab belyst ud fra Kierkegaards disputats om ironien.

Cool Characters tells the story of American political irony from World War II to the present: how irony came to seem politically subversive for American countercultural rebels; how mainstream culture allegedly co-opted countercultural irony; how irony became part of major critical theories of postmodernism; and how -- starting in the late 1980s -- innovative writers developed an idea of "postirony" with the hope of overcoming the political limitations of postmodern irony. To chart the shift from (...) irony to postirony, and show what relationship culture has to politics, the book offers intensive analyses of important American countercultural figures: the hipster, the punk, a figure the author calls "the believer," the coolhunter, and the occupier; and new interpretations of important works by Ralph Ellison, Thomas Pynchon, William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Michael Muhammad Knight, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, Alex Shakar, William Gibson, Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Lethem, and Rachel Kushner."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In this 1989 book Rorty argues that thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein have enabled societies to see themselves as historical contingencies, rather than as expressions of underlying, ahistorical human nature or as realizations of suprahistorical goals. This ironic perspective on the human condition is valuable on a private level, although it cannot advance the social or political goals of liberalism. In fact Rorty believes that it is literature not philosophy that can do this, by promoting a genuine (...) sense of human solidarity. A truly liberal culture, acutely aware of its own historical contingency, would fuse the private, individual freedom of the ironic, philosophical perspective with the public project of human solidarity as it is engendered through the insights and sensibilities of great writers. The book has a characteristically wide range of reference from philosophy through social theory to literary criticism. It confirms Rorty's status as a uniquely subtle theorist, whose writing will prove absorbing to academic and nonacademic readers alike. (shrink)

This volume provides readers with a broad overview of the different ways that irony emerges in human life, within interpersonal communication, instances of situational irony, literature and artistic creations. It emphasizes the importance of irony in ordinary thought, language, and communication.

The relations of comparison and contrast among the viewpoints of characters and between the viewpoints of authors and characters is one of the most important dimensions of meaning in literary texts.... It is for this reason that the analysis of irony, as a central tonal medium for registering differences in point of view, occupies a position of singular importance in the interpretation of literary meaning.Irony stings. Among friends it might be playful, its target joining in the fun. But (...) it is hard to see irony figuring into any how-to guide for making friends in the first place. Indeed, the word is absent from Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. More often irony is divisive, driving a wedge... (shrink)

Irony, one of the most basic, pervasive, and variegated of rhetorical tropes, is as fundamental to musical thought as it is to poetry, prose, and spoken language. In this wide-ranging study of musical irony, Michael Cherlin draws upon the rich history of irony as developed by rhetoricians, philosophers, literary scholars, poets, and novelists. With occasional reflections on film music and other contemporary works, the principal focus of the book is classical music, both instrumental and vocal, ranging from (...) Mozart to Mahler. The result is a surprising array of approaches toward the making and interpretation of irony in music. Including nearly ninety musical examples, the book is clearly structured and engagingly written. This interdisciplinary volume will appeal to those interested in the relationship between music and literature as well as to scholars of musical composition, technique, and style. (shrink)

The literature on irony processing mainly focused on contextual effect, leaving other factors untouched. The current study investigated how social status information affected the online comprehension of irony. As irony might be more damaging when a speaker uses it to a superordinate than the other way around, it is assumed that greater processing efforts would be observed in the former case. Using an eye-movement sentence reading paradigm, we recruited 36 native Mandarin speakers and examined the role (...) of social status information and literality in their irony interpretation. Our results showed ironic statements were more effortful to process than literal ones, reporting an early and consistent effect on the target regions. The social status effect followed the literality effect, with more difficulty in processing ironic statements that targeted the superordinate than the subordinate; such an effect of social status was missing with literal statements. Besides, an individual’s social skill appeared to affect the perception of status information in ironic statements, as the socially skillful readers needed more time than the socially unskillful to process irony targeting a subordinate in the second half of the experiment in the critical region. Our study suggests that irony processing might be further discussed in terms of the relative predictability of linguistic, social, and individual variabilities. (shrink)

Economics for Alfred Marshall, the last of the classical economists, is concerned with activities in the ordinary business of life. In that milieu, we find conflicts and chaotic behavior among people, firms, and countries, which make them conduct their affairs in different, and sometimes, ironic ways. Economic Ironies Throughout History explores, explains, predicts, and harnesses these ironies for economists and scholars alike. Szenberg and Ramrattan distill their core economic ironies from a vast history of philosophy and literature that applies (...) to economic thought. They include philosophical, psychological, literary and linguistic discussions and the personalities behind those ideas such as Socrates, Kierkegaard, Hume, Freud, Jung, Saussure, and Barthes. This book is ideal for economists as well as scholars across the business, social science, and humanities fields. (shrink)

In contemporary literary culture there is a widespread belief that ironies and paradoxes are closely akin. This is due to the importance that is given to the use of language in contemporary estimations of literature. Ironies and paradoxes seem to embody the sorts of a linguistic rebellion, innovation, deviation, and play, that have throughout this century become the dominant criteria of literary value. The association of irony with paradox, and of both with literature, is often ascribed to (...) the New Criticism, and more specifically to Cleanth Brooks. Brooks, however, used the two terms in a manner that was unconventional, even eccentric, and that differed significantly from their use in figurative theory. I therefore examine irony and paradox as verbal figures, noting their characteristic features and criteria, and, in particular, how they differ from one another. I argue that irony and paradox — as understood by Brooks — have important affinities with irony and paradox as figures, but that they must be regarded as quite distinct, both in figurative theory and in Brooks’ extended sense. (shrink)

Many of the seemingly bland assertions and bald statements of the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume contain more than the mind immediately perceives. Author John Valdimir Price contends that an understanding of Hume's writings cannot be separated from an understanding of his life. By examining the works of Hume, Price shows the way in which an ironic way of seeing events and an ironic mode of expression permeated Hume's life and writings. Price examines Hume's irony as it is exhibited in (...) letters to his friends and in his writings concerned with morality, people, philosophy, politics, history, and above all religion. Hume's opinions on life in general are stated in works ranging from the Treatise of Human Nature and the Essays, Moral and Political, through the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and the Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals, to the Dialogue and Four Dissertations of his maturity. Price feels that Hume's recognition of the ironic in life came about from his perception of the disproportion between human hopes and human accomplishments. The rhetorical consequences of applying reason to a duality in human nature creates the ironic mode. Hume conceived man's opposing tendencies as his willingness to commit himself orally to a concept, a dogma, an idea, or an ideology, and his unwillingness to involve himself in the logical and rhetorical implications of articulating those principles. Hume's use of the ironic mode in his writings provides him with a means of challenging certain dogmatic assumptions common to thought, particularly to traditional religious thought; it acts as a mask for his sceptical intentions, and it is an implied criticism of many ideas. In his political writing, Hume frequently implied that the question under argument was almost too ridiculous to deserve serious treatment. This tactic was effectively employed in the Account of Stewart, in which Hume came to the defense of a friend. In his most profitable venture, the History of England, Hume not only used irony to advantage, but developed a new approach to the writing of history—the use of narrative. He presented history as a series of more or less connected events, not as a series of "right" or "wrong" attitudes. The author believes that Hume's initial religious scepticism, combined with the predominant satiric-ironic mode in the literature of his time, led him to seek irony as a method of self expression. This scepticism, which permeated all of Hume's attitudes toward life, reached its most complete expression in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, which accepted reason as its guide, but also accepted experience as its master. (shrink)

Dieses Buch rekonstruiert die Geschichte des ironischen Geistes der Moderne. Dieser tritt erstmals auf mit der sprachtheoretischen Erfindung der Ironie in der Romantik und er verschwindet überall dort, wo die Annahme einer grundsätzlich sprachlich verfassten Wirklichkeit (so die ironie-affine These von Friedrich Schlegel bis Derrida und Deleuze) nicht mehr geteilt wird. Dazwischen liegt eine Unzahl an ironischen Phänomenen in ethischen (Hegel, Kierkegaard), poetologischen (von den Romantikern bis Musil) und politischen (Schmitt, Rorty) Diskursen. Es sind drei unterschiedliche und unvereinbare Operationsweisen (affirmativ, (...) neutral, subversiv) des einstigen rhetorischen Topos Ironie, die sich noch in den unterschiedlichsten historischen Kontexten und Phänomenen wiederfinden lassen. (shrink)

This article explores how Mortimer J. Adler's philosophy of history, as it developed from the 1930s through the 1950s, affected the construction of Encyclopedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World and the same set's Syntopicon. A thorough examination of Adler's influences (e.g. Arthur O. Lovejoy, Jacques Maritain, and Columbia University faculty) demonstrates that his philosophy of history derived from a coincidental confluence of developments in the fields of literature, history, and philosophy. Adler's processing of these trends reveals both (...) irony and paradox, and also explains some philosophical objections articulated by later foes of the great books idea. (shrink)

German literature played an important role in Kierkegaard's reading, and he often relates to German authors in his writings, especially to those of the period between 1770 and 1830. Against the background of German Romanticism, he deals with Romantic irony in the second part of The Concept of Irony. His harsh verdict on famous German writers like Friedrich Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck in his master's thesis is in some cases relativized by a more balanced appreciation in other (...) writings. Some German authors like Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Jean Paul served as stylistic models, while others like Gotthold Ephraim Lessing offered valuable inspirations for his thinking. One of the most frequently cited poets is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who appears in Kierkegaard's writings throughout all his working periods and is dealt with in a very comprehensive manner. (shrink)

Putnam’s style is rarely discussed in the secondary literature. In this paper I provide one approach to the kind of writing that philosophy becomes in Putnam’s hands. I focus on Putnam’s argumentative pluralism and, more specifically, the practical form that pluralism takes in Putnam’s commitment to the essay form. I argue that Putnam’s use of the essay form is a crucial expression of his pluralism. Looking at some ancestors of the Putnam essay, I pay attention to the specific hybrid (...) qualities of the philosophical paper. I make a connection between the live tensions at work within the essay form and Putnam’s vigorous resistance to dichotomies in philosophy. I suggest that Putnam’s philosophical resistance to such dichotomies can be understood as the practice of a certain kind of irony. My primary example is Putnam’s work on the fact/value dichotomy. I suggest that Putnam’s irony might present an alternative to the dominant conception of irony in contemporary American philosophy: that of Richard Rorty. (shrink)

This paper has two interconnected goals -- one defensive and fairly conservative, the other more novel and enterprising. The first goal is to defend a broadly Gricean approach to verbal irony from the post-Gricean criticisms which have emerged in the intervening literature --i.e., all things considered, verbal irony is best viewed as one among many species of particularized conversational implicature. The subsequent goal is to work toward developing a significantly original theory of verbal irony, within this (...) Gricean orientation, which aims to take into account and rectify some omissions in and shortcomings of Grice’s very brief published remarks on the topic. (shrink)

In relation to the question of the art of living, this chapter articulates the opposite of Richard Rorty’s liberal ironist: the egotist. In the first section, I articulate what egotism is and who egotists are. My aim is to nominate the egotist as a useful counter-figure to the liberal ironist. In the second section, I talk about irony. I emphasize the radicalism and relevance of Rorty’s conception of irony with the help of recent literature. In the third (...) section, I argue that the power of irony is crucial to fight egotism. I show how Rorty mobilizes irony by way of self-creation and solidarity to combat the problem of egotism. In the fourth section, I summarize my argument and suggest how an ironic life prevents nihilism. (shrink)

​This paper examines the life and work of the Novohispanic philosopher Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who used a great deal of irony to respond to what, we argue, were gender-based microaggressions in 17th century New Spain. The case of Sor Juana is particularly interesting not only because it suggests that microaggressions are not the product of our time, as has been suggested in the literature, but also because it reveals some of the advantages as well as (...) limitations of using irony when one is subject to microaggression. The case of Sor Juana also provides insights regarding the difficulties of using irony to address microaggressions that take place in the classroom. (shrink)

“To create fiction is, in fact, a way to abolish reality.”1The main title of this article departs from a statement made by Andrew Cross in the chapter he wrote for The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, “Neither Either nor Or: the Perils of Reflexive Irony,” which must surely suggest a tantalizing read for anyone familiar with the writings of Italo Svevo. In his chapter, Cross posits Søren Kierkegaard’s theorizing of irony as “not just a verbal strategy, but a way (...) of life.”2 It is, of course, commonly accepted that Kierkegaard’s writing is characterized by various forms of intentional and self-conscious verbal indirectness, some of which will be explored in this article. But beyond irony as a speech... (shrink)

Cover -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One: Writing against Theodicy: Secularization in Baudelaire's Poetry and Critical Essays -- Chapter Two: The Mourning of God and the Ironies of Secularization in Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris -- Chapter Three: Sublimation and Conversion in Zola and Huysmans -- Chapter Four: The Staging of Doubt: Zola and Huysmans on Lourdes -- Chapter Five: Religious and Secular Conversions: Transformations in Céline's Medical Perspective on Evil -- Conclusion -- (...) Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Book. (shrink)

Arguably, the modern missionary movement’s foundational text, the ‘Great Commission’ of Matthew 28:18–20 has been criticized for its use in legitimizing colonial oppression. Focusing on reception history in South Asian polycolonial contexts, this article uses ‘Saidian’ contrapuntal reading to explore whether and for whom the commission is ‘great’? William Carey used it as a proof-text in his ‘Enquiry’ for Christians to engage in foreign mission. RS Sugirtharajah brings a postcolonial critique to Carey, but Saugata Bhaduri appreciates the unintended de-colonizing consequences (...) of Carey’s vernacular literature. Jayachitra Lalitha questions why women were absent in Matthew 28:18–20 and why Dalit women still struggle. George Soares-Prabhu’s reading alongside a Buddhist text suggests more integral mission and liberation. Despite colonialism’s distorting affect, there is historical irony in Matthew 28’s influence in South India. Contrapuntal conversations helpfully focus on the well-being of overlooked groups and recover some of the resistance implicit in Matthew’s composition. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify the distinctive and the shared features of the three phenomena: irony, understatement, and litotes. These rhetorical figures have been defined as synonymous, distinct or overlapping in various accounts. This indicates an interrelation but also a need for clearer definitions. Here, each of these rhetorical figures is defined via two jointly necessary conditions. This approach sharpens the categories, enables clear-cut distinctions and helps to explain cases of overlap. German corpus data and examples (...) from the literature as a basis, allow differentiating between cases of understatement as a means of irony, and cases of litotes as a means of understatement. Beyond that, litotes and understatement allow for non-ironic uses. Interestingly, litotic irony is built on litotic understatement. This is due to the overt contrast necessary for both understatement and irony. (shrink)

Ironically, in adopting Neo-Platonism over Aristotelianism, Galileo made significant advances concerning the general problem of motion but in doing so bracketed the crucial issue of gravity.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 459-461 [Access article in PDF] The Heart of What Matters. The Role for Literature in Moral Philosophy,by Anthony Cunningham; x & 296 pp. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, $60.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. Despite Socrates's rejection of the written word as a source of insight in the Phaedrus, a number of theorists have in recent years sought to find a role for (...) literature in critical thought. Anthony Cunningham's The Heart of What Matters joins a list of works that includes Richard Rorty's Contingency, irony and solidarity, Richard Posner's Law and Literature, and Martha Nussbaum's Poetic Justice. Whereas a number of these previous books have sought to articulate a public role for literature, Cunningham is more concerned with private philosophical reflection, specifically with the ways in which literature might help us reflect upon Socrates's dual questions "How should I live?" and "What sort of person should I be?" (p. 9). It is, nevertheless, appropriate to mention Cunningham's work in conjunction with these other texts because The Heart of What Matters faces a number of similar problems arising from what it means to read literature with an eye towards generating critical thought.The first part of the book consists of three chapters in which Cunningham sets out his conception of ethics, the role of a convincing ethical theory, and his account of what it means to "read for life." This last chapter is, by his own admission "fairly sketchy and theoretical" (p. 69), but he attempts to compensate for this in the second part where he offers—as a means, perhaps, of "showing by doing"—detailed, philosophically motivated readings of literary works by three authors: Kazuo Ishiguro, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston. Like many of those who write about literature and ethics—including Wayne Booth and Martha Nussbaum—Cunningham's conception of ethics is "Aristotelian in spirit" (p. 5), as such it is no surprise to find that his "primary targets" in ethical theory are "Kant and Kantian ethics" (p. 4). Kant's theory of morality and indeed its various modern formulations—formulations Cunningham critques in some detail—are, he says, simply insufficient for capturing the nuances of our lived experience. Theories that focus on some underlying principle of morality are, he suggests, too abstract to help us answer Socrates's questions about the best way to live. By contrast, literature can, Cunningham argues, provide us with insight into the complexities of modern living. In a passage that is strongly reminiscent of Poetic Justice, Cunningham asserts that literature can "filter moral experience by heightening our attention to what should be morally salient and by directing us away from less crucial elements that can distract us from more important things" (p. 84). Similarly, in a passage that further echoes Nussbaum, Cunningham suggests that "literature can help us diagnose by taking us places that are difficult and even impossible to visit, much less understand in actual experience" (p. 85). Central to his overall argument is the suggestion, also common to Nussbaum and Rorty, that the [End Page 459] "right kind of novel" can "help us refine our moral vision by giving us a studied opportunity to practice seeing and appreciating diverse ethical lores" (pp. 84-85). It is, however, this suggestion that reading is some sort of moral exercise that proves problematic for almost all work on literature and philosophy.If literature is indeed a way for us to practice exercising our moral powers, then it is not clear why philosophers such as Cunningham, Nussbaum, and Rorty lavish so much attention on their own reading of texts. Reading about reading is not, I wish to suggest, the best way to exercise this moral capacity: it is rather like expecting to benefit from watching somebody else exercise. Instead of offering us a theory of reading which might allow us to engage in this exercise ourselves, Cunningham simply gives an account of his own experience. In this way, the subtitle of Cunningham's book, "The Role for Literature in... (shrink)

Though irony is a category familiar to rhetoric and literature, its philosophical forms are far less explored, and this is especially true with regards to its articulation in the work of Friedrich Schlegel. Schlegel’s engagement with irony is essential to the Romantic philosophical project, one that is fundamentally concerned with contradiction and posits itself as a challenge to and continuation of idealism. Through exploring his relation to the philosophies of Kant and Fichte, this essay demonstrates that Schlegel (...) can deploy irony as a method of taking up the philosophical paradigm of idealism without limiting himself to their systems. He can use Kant and Fichte against themselves, making sincere philosophical arguments through a brazen playfulness. Further, Schlegel’s concept of irony is shown to be a philosophical faculty that is concerned with the limits of philosophy in language. Irony is much more than a rhetorical device – it is a form that allows Schlegel to approach the limits of discursivity from within and so continually stage instances of philosophical contradiction, undermining systematicity. This centering of contradiction is one of Schlegel’s major contributions to the development of German philosophy, critical of those who precede him and spurning their presuppositions of univocal logic. The outworking of Schlegel’s philosophical concern with irony is unmistakably humorous, full of puns, jokes and witticisms, which nevertheless need to be taken seriously. This paper contends that irony is at the crux of Schlegel’s philosophical project, simultaneously the content and mode of his criticism, the source and justification of his humour, and one of Romanticism’s most significant conceptual developments. (shrink)

Background: Humor, both producing and appreciating, underpins positive social interactions acting as a facilitator of communication. There are clear links to wellbeing that go along with this form of social engagement. However, humor appears to be a seldom studied, cross-disciplinary area of investigation when applied to people with an intellectual disability, this review collates the current state of knowledge regarding the role of humor behavior in the social interactions of people with intellectual disabilities and their carers. Method: A systematic review (...) utilizing the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines was completed which aimed to explore the current state of knowledge and quality of empirical evidence relating to humor in people with intellectual disabilities. Following this, articles were grouped thematically and summarized. A comprehensive search of four electronic databases (1954–2017) and additional search strategies yielded 32 articles which met the final inclusion criteria. Results: Humor played a significant positive and negative role in the social interactions of people with intellectual disabilities. Research had investigated humor in the classroom and humor expression in different groups including those with autism, Down syndrome, Angelman syndrome, Williams syndrome and Rett syndrome. Few investigations directly studied humor appreciation and comprehension hence themes did not focus solely on humor production/appreciation. Humor comprehension was reportedly supported by gestures. Some groups with intellectual disabilities found non-literal humor (e.g. sarcasm, irony) more difficult to understand which may affect social relationships. Various types of humor were found to be appreciated. The role of humor in relationship development, social facilitation, creativity and stigma had all received some limited attention. Humor also played a role for carer groups in coping with and enjoying the caring role. Research varied in quality with few experimental studies and mainly quasi-experimental and well-conducted qualitative studies. Conclusions: This review revealed the importance of humor behavior in many aspects of the social lives of people with intellectual disabilities. Limited disparate research exists pertaining to humor in this group, suggesting the need for further robust research in this area, including more high quality primary research in the areas of humor production, appreciation, comprehension and stigma. (shrink)

Since the late 1980s, the affinity between irony and postmodernity has been addressed in several studies that apply semiotic approaches to cultural postmodernity generally and to postmodern literature specifically. The following article contributes to the branch of semiotics of postmodern literature by proposing the notion of bi-paradigmatic irony as a special postmodern sign. Whereas mono-paradigmatic irony establishes its ironic contrast within the same paradigm, in bi-paradigmatic irony, said and meant meanings belong to two different (...) paradigms. On the basis of two semiotic paradigmatic perspectives and three semiotic paradigmatic ideologies , six types of bi-paradigmatic irony are possible. Two of the six types of postmodern irony are applied to theoretical-literary texts by Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes as well as to literary texts by the Austrian writers Christoph Ransmayr and Hans Carl Artmann. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fear of Formalism: Kant, Twain, and Cultural Studies in American LiteratureElizabeth Maddock Dillon (bio)I begin with what we might call a bipolar disturbance in literary criticism. Caught between the materialism of cultural studies and the formalism of philosophy, literary criticism is construed, on the one hand, as useless—struck dumb by its lack of purpose in the face of real politics and real bodies—and, on the other hand, as singularly (...) efficacious, the only tool through which to reveal the essentially discursive character of all forms of culture, including bodies and politics. While this rhetorical model of criticism is regularly posited as politically bankrupt, as having no purchase on the facticity of the world, the model of materialist cultural criticism is just as regularly unmasked as, at base, rhetorically constructed and thus guilty of concealing its own formalist dimensions. 1 This “disturbance,” as I’ve described it, tends to be acted out as a debilitating dialectic: caught between formalism and materialism, literary criticism is left without any ground to stand on. Yet this peculiar bipolarity within literary criticism is intimately linked to the strange status of literature itself. Language becomes recognizably literary at the moment it assumes a rhetorical or formal dimension rather than serving as the invisible conduit of mimetic representation. 2 Whence, evidently, the allure of formalism for literary criticism: form would seem to be exactly what demarcates the literary from the nonliterary, what defines the exclusive territory of literature. Yet formalism, as has been widely and persuasively argued, tends to turn literature into precisely the kind of artifact that means little in relation to the world and tends to obscure the worldly relations that inform the text and its production. Indeed, in the field of Cultural Studies—a field whose defining gesture is political engagement—“formalist” is a term whose meaning often comes to approximate “apolitical.” “Formalist,” fashioned as opprobium, speaks chidingly of hermeticism or more acerbically of the insidious erasures enacted by universalism.In contemporary criticism, formalism has thus come to occupy an important antipodal position which encompasses far more than the New Critical practices of the 1940s and ‘50s. In emphasizing the formal, intrinsic qualities of the literary work, New [End Page 46] Critics closeted the text away from the world and from the possibility of social action: their agenda has thus been construed as politically quietist and inherently conservative. 3 Yet the term “formalism,” used as a charge of conservatism, has been applied more broadly to poststructuralist criticism as well. Paul Lauter, for instance, uses the term “formalist” to describe deconstruction as an avatar of New Criticism: both emphasize textual relations to the exclusion of extratextual considerations. Poststructuralism, Lauter and others have argued, continues an aestheticization of literature which turns literary criticism over to an elitist and ultimately irrelevant “priesthood.” ‘“Formalist,’” writes Lauter, “suggests that the whole enterprise of literary theorizing subsists behind dense academic walls, where de Man speaks only to Heidegger, and Heidegger speaks only to God” [138]. While Lauter bases his analogy between poststructuralism and New Criticism on the charge of hermeticism as well as a lack of historical engagement, the notion of “form” as it appears in poststructuralism is nonetheless significantly different than the “form” that animated New Critical endeavors. Where New Critical “form” concerns specifically literary structures—irony, metaphor, tension, unity—the poststructural referent for these rhetorical terms is often the “form” of language or subjectivity itself. Accordingly, the meaning of “form” (and, indeed, “formalism”) undergoes a marked shift from specific rhetorical articulations to larger theoretical claims about language and identity.This second, broader articulation of form has been critiqued less for hermeticism or quietism than for its implied universalism—that is, for fashioning subjects and discursive forces in uniform shapes without regard for political and historical specificity. Stuart Hall, for example, whilst defining the practice of Cultural Studies, warns against theories of the subject (in this case psychoanalysis) that tend toward universalism: “The manner in which this ‘subject’ of culture is conceptualized is of a trans-historical and ‘universal’ character: it addresses the subject-in-general, not an historically-determinate social subject, or socially determinate particular language” [Hall 70]. On this reading, formalist theories of poststructuralism... (shrink)

The International Kierkegaard Commentary-For the first time in English the world community of scholars systematically assembled and presented the results of recent research in the vast literature of Søren Kierkegaard. Based on the definitive English edition of Kierkegaard's works by Princeton University Press, this series of commentaries addresses all the published texts of the influential Danish philosopher and theologian. This is volume 2 in a series of commentaries based upon the definitive translations of Kierkegaard's writings published by Princeton University (...) Press, 1980ff. (shrink)