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Irony, in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what, on the surface, appears to be the case with what is actually or expected to be the case. Originally a
rhetorical device In rhetoric, a rhetorical device, persuasive device, or stylistic device is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading them towards considering a topic from a perspective, ...
and
literary technique A narrative technique (also, in fiction, a fictional device) is any of several storytelling methods the creator of a narrative, story uses, thus effectively relaying information to the audience or making the story more complete, complex, or engag ...
, in modern times irony has also come to assume a
metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of h ...
significance with implications for the correct human attitude towards life. The concept originated in
ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...
, where it described a dramatic character who pretended to be less intelligent than he actually was in order to outwit boastful opponents. Over time, ''irony'' evolved from denoting a form of deception to, more liberally, describing the deliberate use of language to mean the opposite of what it says for a rhetorical effect intended to be recognized by the audience. Due to its double-sided nature, irony is a powerful tool for social bonding among those who share an understanding. For the same reason, it is also a source of division, sorting people into insiders and outsiders depending upon whether they are able to see the irony. In the nineteenth-century, philosophers began to expand the rhetorical concept of irony into a broader philosophical conception of the human condition itself. For instance,
Friedrich Schlegel Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814: von) Schlegel ( ; ; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German literary critic, philosopher, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figures of Jena Roma ...
saw irony as an expression of always striving toward truth and meaning without ever being able to fully grasp them.
Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , ; ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danes, Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical tex ...
maintained that ironic awareness of our limitations and uncertainties is necessary to create a space for authentic human existence and
ethical Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied e ...
choice.


Etymology

''Irony'' comes from the Greek ''eironeia'' and dates back to the 5th century BCE. This term itself was coined in reference to a stock-character from
Old Comedy Old Comedy is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians.Mastromarco (1994) p.12 The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with their daring pol ...
(such as that of
Aristophanes Aristophanes (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Ancient Greek comedy, comic playwright from Classical Athens, Athens. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete today. The majority of his surviving play ...
) known as the ''
eiron In the theatre of ancient Greece, the ''eirōn'' (, “dissembler”) was one of various stock characters in comedy.Carlson (1993, 23) and Janko (1987, 45, 170). The usually succeeded by bringing down his braggart opponent (the "boaster") by un ...
'', who dissimulates and affects less intelligence than he has—and so ultimately triumphs over his opposite, the ''
alazon ''Alazṓn'' () is one of three stock characters in comedy of the theatre of ancient Greece. He is the opponent of the '' eirôn''. The ''alazṓn'' is an impostor that sees himself as greater than he actually is. The ''senex iratus'' (the ang ...
'', a vain-glorious braggart. Although initially synonymous with lying, in
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
's dialogues ''eironeia'' came to acquire a new sense of "an intended simulation which the audience or hearer was meant to recognise". More simply put, it came to acquire the general definition, "the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect". Until the
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
, the Latin ''ironia'' was considered a part of rhetoric, usually a species of
allegory As a List of narrative techniques, literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a wikt:narrative, narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political signi ...
, along the lines established by
Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...
and
Quintilian Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (; 35 – 100 AD) was a Roman educator and rhetorician born in Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing. In English translation, he is usually referred to as Quin ...
near the beginning of the 1st century CE.''Irony'' entered the English language as a
figure of speech A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from straightforward language use or Denotation, literal meaning to produce a rhetorical or intensified effect (emotionally, aesthetically, intellectually, et ...
in the 16th century with a meaning similar to the French ''ironie'', itself derived from the Latin. Around the end of the 18th century, ''irony'' takes on another sense, primarily credited to
Friedrich Schlegel Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814: von) Schlegel ( ; ; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German literary critic, philosopher, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figures of Jena Roma ...
and other participants in what came to be known as early German Romanticism. They advance a concept of irony that is not a mere "artistic playfulness", but a "conscious form of literary creation", typically involving the "consistent alternation of affirmation and negation". No longer just a rhetorical device, on their conception, it refers to an entire metaphysical stance on the world.


The problem of definition

It is commonplace to begin a study of irony with the acknowledgement that the term quite simply eludes any single definition. Philosopher Richard J. Bernstein opens his ''Ironic Life'' with the observation that a survey of the literature on irony leaves the reader with the "''dominant'' impression" that the authors are simply "talking about different subjects". In popular culture, the 1996 song "Ironic" by
Alanis Morissette Alanis Nadine Morissette ( ; born June 1, 1974) is a Canadian and American singer, songwriter, musician, and actress. Known for her emotive mezzo-soprano voice and confessional songwriting, she became a cultural phenomenon during the mid 199 ...
is sometimes cited as evidence that the word no longer has any specific meaning. In the 1906 ''
The King's English ''The King's English'' is a book on English usage and grammar. It was written by the brothers Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler and published in 1906; it thus predates by twenty years '' Modern English Usage'', which was written by ...
, ''
Henry Watson Fowler Henry Watson Fowler (10 March 1858 – 26 December 1933) was an English schoolmaster, Lexicography, lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language. He is notable for both ''A Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' and his wor ...
writes, "any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same." A consequence of this, he observes, is that an analysis of irony requires the concept of a ''double audience'' "consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & shall not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more & of the outsiders' incomprehension". From this basic feature, literary theorist Douglas C. Muecke identifies three characteristics of verbal irony: # Irony depends on a double-layered or two-story phenomenon for success: "At the lower level is the situation either as it appears to the victim of irony (where there is a victim) or as it is deceptively presented by the ironist." The upper level is the situation as it appears to the reader or the ironist. # The ironist exploits a contradiction, incongruity, or incompatibility between the two levels. # Irony plays upon the innocence of a character or victim: "Either a victim is confidently unaware of the very possibility of there being an upper level or point of view that invalidates his own, or an ironist pretends not to be aware of it". According to
Wayne Booth Wayne Clayson Booth (February 22, 1921, in American Fork, Utah – October 10, 2005, in Chicago, Illinois) was an American literary critic and rhetorician. He was the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in English Langua ...
, this uneven double-character of irony makes it a rhetorically complex phenomenon. Admired by some and feared by others, it has the power to tighten social bonds, but also to exacerbate divisions.


Types of irony

How best to organize irony into distinct types is almost as controversial as how best to define it. There have been many proposals, generally relying on the same cluster of types; still, there is little agreement as to how to organize the types and what if any hierarchical arrangements might exist. Nevertheless, academic reference volumes standardly include at least all four of ''verbal irony'', ''dramatic irony'', ''cosmic irony'', and ''Romantic irony'' as major types. The latter three types are sometimes contrasted with verbal irony as forms of situational irony, that is, irony in which there is no ironist; so, instead of "''he is being ironical''" one would instead say "''it is ironical that''". is "a statement in which the meaning that a speaker employs is sharply different from the meaning that is ostensibly expressed". Moreover, it is produced ''intentionally'' by the speaker, rather than being a literary construct, for instance, or the result of forces outside of their control.
Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson ( – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
gives as an example the sentence, " Bolingbroke was a holy man" (he was anything but). Verbal irony is sometimes also considered to encompass various other literary devices such as
hyperbole Hyperbole (; adj. hyperbolic ) is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. In rhetoric, it is also sometimes known as auxesis (literally 'growth'). In poetry and oratory, it emphasizes, evokes strong feelings, and cre ...
and its opposite,
litotes In rhetoric, litotes (, ), also known classically as antenantiosis or moderatour, is a figures of speech, figure of speech and form of irony in which understatement is used to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, o ...
, conscious naïveté, and others. provides the audience with information of which characters are unaware, thereby placing the audience in a position of advantage to recognize their words and actions as counter-productive or opposed to what their situation actually requires. Three stages may be distinguished — installation, exploitation, and resolution (often also called preparation, suspension, and resolution) — producing dramatic conflict in what one character relies or appears to rely upon, the ''contrary'' of which is known by observers (especially the audience, sometimes to other characters within the drama) to be true. is a specific type of dramatic irony. , sometimes also called the , presents agents as always ultimately thwarted by forces beyond human control. It is strongly associated with the works of
Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...
. This form of irony is also given metaphysical significance in the work of
Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , ; ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danes, Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical tex ...
, among other philosophers. is closely related to cosmic irony, and sometimes the two terms are treated interchangeably. Romantic irony is distinct, however, in that it is the author who assumes the role of the cosmic force. The narrator in ''
Tristram Shandy Tristram may refer to: Literature * the title character of ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'', a novel by Laurence Sterne * the title character of '' Tristram of Lyonesse'', an epic poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne *"Tristr ...
'' is one early example. The term is closely associated with
Friedrich Schlegel Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814: von) Schlegel ( ; ; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German literary critic, philosopher, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figures of Jena Roma ...
and the early German Romantics, and in their hands it assumed a metaphysical significance similar to cosmic irony in the hands of Kierkegaard. It was also of central importance to the literary theory advanced by
New Criticism New Criticism was a Formalism (literature), formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of l ...
in mid-20th century.


Another typology

Building upon the double-level structure of irony, self-described "ironologist" D. C. Muecke proposes another, complementary way in which we may typify, and so better understand, ironic phenomena. What he proposes is a dual distinction between and among three ''grades'' and four ''modes'' of ironic utterance.


Three grades of irony

Grades of irony are distinguished "according to the degree to which the real meaning is concealed". Muecke names them ''overt'', ''covert'', and ''private'': *In , the true meaning is clearly apparent to both parties, and the only thing that makes the utterance ironic is the "blatancy" of the "contradiction or incongruity". Those instances of sarcasm that may be classified as ironic are overt. Muecke notes that this form of irony has a short half-life; what is obvious to everyone quickly loses its rhetorical effect with repetition. * is "intended not to be seen but detected". The ironist feigns ignorance to achieve the intended effect, and so there is a real danger that it simply goes by unnoticed. This means that a comparatively larger rhetorical context is in play. This may involve, for instance, assumptions about prior knowledge, the ability of someone to detect an incongruity between what is being said and the manner in which it is said, or the perspicuity of the audience in spotting an internal contradiction in the content of the message. * is not intended to be perceived at all. It is entirely for the internal satisfaction of the ironist. Muecke cites as an example Mr. Bennet from ''
Pride and Prejudice ''Pride and Prejudice'' is the second published novel (but third to be written) by English author Jane Austen, written when she was age 20-21, and later published in 1813. A novel of manners, it follows the character development of Elizabe ...
'', who "enjoys seeing his wife or Mr Collins take his remarks at face value; that is to say, he enjoys the irony of their being impervious to irony".


Four modes of irony

Muecke's typology of modes are distinguished "according to the kind of relationship between the ironist and the irony". He calls these ''impersonal irony'', ''self-disparaging irony'', ''ingénue irony'', and ''dramatized irony'': * is distinguished by deadpan blankness of the ironist, a sort of affected graveness or poker-face. It is associated with 'dry humor' quite generally, but also encompasses more specific ironic postures such as 'pretend agreement with the ironic victim', 'false ignorance', 'understatement', 'overstatement', and many other familiar forms of ironic utterance. * is distinguished by the introduction of the personality of the ironist, often with a somewhat performative dimension. This, however, is intended to be transparent, and is done in the service of directing irony against another object. For instance, when
Socrates Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...
laments his misfortune of having a poor memory, the object of his irony is the overly long speech made by the fictionalized Protagoras in Plato's dialogue; his memory, we are to understand, is perfectly fine. * is distinguished by an assumed ignorance that is intended to be convincing. The canonical example is '' The Emperor's New Clothes''. Another example is the Fool in ''
King Lear ''The Tragedy of King Lear'', often shortened to ''King Lear'', is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is loosely based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his ...
''. Muecke writes, "the effectiveness of this kind of irony comes from its economy of means: mere common sense or even simple innocence or ignorance may suffice" to break through the targeted hypocrisy or foolishness of received ideas. * is the simple presentation of ironic situations for the enjoyment of an audience. The ironist remains out of sight. The novels of
Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert ( , ; ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realis ...
are among the many literary examples of this technique. Muecke notes an increase in this type of irony beginning in the latter half of the eighteenth century when, he says, "irony began to be attended to for its intrinsic interest and delight". In any of these four modes, irony may be used to emphasize a point, to satirically undermine a position, or to heuristically lead one's audience to a deeper understanding.


The rhetorical dimension

To consider irony from a rhetorical perspective means to consider it as an act of communication. In ''A Rhetoric of Irony'', Wayne C. Booth seeks to answer the question of "how we manage to share ironies and why we so often do not". Because irony involves expressing something in a way contrary to literal meaning, it always involves a kind of "translation" on the part of the audience. Booth identifies three principal kinds of agreement upon which the successful translation of irony depends: common mastery of language, shared cultural values, and (for artistic ironies) a common experience of genre. A consequence of this element of in-group membership is that there is more at stake in whether one grasps an ironic utterance than there is in whether one grasps an utterance presented straight. As he puts it, the use of irony is
An aggressively intellectual exercise that fuses fact and value, requiring us to construct alternative hierarchies and choose among them; tdemands that we look down on other men's follies or sins; floods us with emotion-charged value judgments which claim to be backed by the mind; accuses other men not only of wrong beliefs but of being wrong at their very foundations and blind to what these foundations imply
This is why, when we misunderstand an intended ironic utterance, we often feel more embarrassed about our failure to recognize the incongruity than we typically do when we simply misunderstand a statement of fact. When one's deepest beliefs are at issue, so too, often, is one's pride. Nevertheless, even as it excludes its victims, irony also has the power to build and strengthen the community of those who do understand and appreciate.


Relation to sarcasm

Humor psychologist Rod A. Martin distinguishes the basic definition of ''irony'' ("the literal meaning is opposite to the intended") from ''
sarcasm Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflectio ...
'', which is an "aggressive humor that pokes fun". Similarly, psychology researchers Christopher J. Lee and Albert N. Katz find that ridicule is an important aspect of sarcasm, but not of verbal irony in general. This narrower connotation of disparagement associated with sarcasm is further supported by its etymology: where ''eiron'' refers to a dissembler, the verb ''sarkazein'' means "to tear flesh ike a dog. In spite of these differences, linguist
Geoffrey Nunberg Geoffrey Nunberg (June 1, 1945– August 11, 2020) was an American lexical semantician and author. In 2001, he received the Linguistics, Language, and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistic Society of America for his contributions to Nati ...
observes ''sarcasm'' replacing the "linguistic terrain" formerly held by verbal irony as early as 2000. In everyday usage, the term ''irony'' is sometimes more narrowly reserved for situational irony.


General irony, or "irony as a way of life"

Typically ''irony'' is used, as described above, with respect to some specific act or situation. In more philosophical contexts, however, the term is sometimes assigned a more general significance, in which it is used to describe an entire way of life or a universal truth about the human situation. Even Booth, whose interest is expressly rhetorical, notes that the word "irony" tends to attach to "a type of character — Aristophanes' foxy ''eirons'', Plato's disconcerting Socrates — rather than to any one device". In these contexts, what is expressed rhetorically by cosmic irony is ascribed existential or metaphysical significance. As Muecke puts it, such irony is that of "life itself or any general aspect of life seen as fundamentally and inescapably an ironic state of affairs. No longer is it a case of isolated victims .... we are all victims of impossible situations". This usage has its origins primarily in the work of
Friedrich Schlegel Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814: von) Schlegel ( ; ; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German literary critic, philosopher, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figures of Jena Roma ...
and other early 19th-century German Romantics and in
Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , ; ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danes, Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical tex ...
's analysis of
Socrates Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...
in '' The Concept of Irony''.


Friedrich Schlegel

Friedrich Schlegel was at the forefront of the intellectual movement that has come to be known as ''Frühromantik'', or early German Romanticism, situated narrowly between 1797 and 1801. For Schlegel, the "romantic imperative" (a rejoinder to
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...
's "
categorical imperative The categorical imperative () is the central philosophical concept in the deontological Kantian ethics, moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Introduced in Kant's 1785 ''Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'', it is a way of evaluating motivati ...
") is to break down the distinction between art and life with the creation of a "new mythology" for the modern age. In particular, Schlegel was responding to what he took to be the failure of the foundationalist enterprise, exemplified for him by the philosophy of
Johann Gottlieb Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte (; ; 19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814) was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Ka ...
. Irony is a response to the apparent epistemic uncertainties of anti-foundationalism. In the words of scholar Frederick C. Beiser, Schlegel presents irony as consisting in "the recognition that, even though we cannot attain truth, we still must forever strive toward it, because only then do we approach it." His model is Socrates, who " knew that he knew nothing", yet never ceased in his pursuit of truth and virtue. According to Schlegel, instead of resting upon a single foundation, "the individual parts of a successful synthesis formation support and negate each other reciprocally". Although Schlegel frequently does describe the Romantic project with a literary vocabulary, his use of the term "poetry" (''Poesie'') is non-standard. Instead, he goes back to the broader sense of the original Greek ''poiētikós'', which refers to any kind of making. As Beiser puts it, "Schlegel intentionally explodes the narrow literary meaning of ''Poesie'' by explicitly identifying the poetic with the ''creative power'' in human beings, and indeed with the ''productive principle'' in nature itself." Poetry in the restricted literary sense is its highest form, but in no way its only form. According to Schlegel, irony captures the human situation of always striving towards, but never completely possessing, what is infinite or true.


G. W. F. Hegel's interpretation

This presentation of Schlegel's account of irony is at odds with many 20th-century interpretations, which, neglecting the larger historical context, have been predominately
postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...
. These readings overstate the irrational dimension of early Romantic thought at the expense of its rational commitments—precisely the dilemma irony is introduced to resolve. Already in Schlegel's own day,
G. W. F. Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...
was unfavorably contrasting Romantic irony with that of Socrates. On Hegel's reading, Socratic irony partially anticipates his own
dialectical Dialectic (; ), also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. Dialectic resembles debate, but the c ...
approach to philosophy. Romantic irony, by contrast, Hegel alleges to be fundamentally trivializing and opposed to all seriousness about what is of substantial interest. According to Rüdiger Bubner, however, Hegel's "misunderstanding" of Schlegel's concept of irony is "total" in its denunciation of a figure actually intended to preserve "our openness to a systematic philosophy". Yet, it is Hegel's interpretation that would be taken up and amplified by Kierkegaard, who further extends the critique to Socrates himself.


Søren Kierkegaard

Thesis VIII of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's dissertation, '' The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates'', states that "irony as infinite and absolute negativity is the lightest and the weakest form of subjectivity". Although this terminology is Hegelian in origin, Kierkegaard employs it with a somewhat different meaning. Richard J. Bernstein elaborates:
It is ''infinite'' because it is directed not against this or that particular existing entity, but against the entire given actuality at a certain time. It is thoroughly ''negative'' because it is incapable of offering any positive alternative. Nothing positive emerges out of this negativity. And it is ''absolute'' because Socrates refuses to cheat.
In this way, contrary to traditional accounts, Kierkegaard portrays Socrates as ignorant. According to Kierkegaard, Socrates is the embodiment of an ironic negativity that dismantles others' illusory knowledge without offering any positive replacement. Almost all of Kierkegaard's post-dissertation publications were written under a variety of pseudonyms. Scholar K. Brian Söderquist argues that these fictive authors should be viewed as explorations of the existential challenges posed by such an ironic, poetic self-consciousness. Their awareness of their own unlimited powers of self-interpretation prevents them from fully committing to any single self-narrative, and this leaves them trapped in an entirely negative mode of uncertainty. Nevertheless, seemingly against this, Thesis XV of the dissertation states that "Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony". Bernstein writes that the emphasis here must be on . Irony is not itself an authentic mode of life, but it is a precondition for attaining such a life. Although pure irony is self-destructive, it generates a space in which it becomes possible to reengage with the world in a genuine mode of . For Kierkegaard himself, this took the form of religious inwardness. What is crucial, however, is just to in some way move beyond the purely (or merely) ironic. Irony is what creates the space in which we can learn and meaningfully choose how to live a life worthy (''vita digna'') of being called human.


Postmodernism

Postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...
irony rejects the possibility of an authoritative viewpoint such as could discern true meaning behind contradictory appearances. Instead, it operates within a framework where all positions are understood as contextual and contingent. This, however, produces a contradiction: the postmodern theorist who declares the end of all master-narratives, just by making such a declaration, claims an authoritative stance. Rather than resolving this contradiction, postmodern irony embraces it as fundamental to the human condition of speech and meaning-making, in which every act of communication adopts a position necessarily of a limited and constructed nature. For instance, the neopragmatist philosopher
Richard Rorty Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher, historian of ideas, and public intellectual. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, Rorty's academic career included appointments as the Stu ...
advances a concept of irony centered on the "liberal ironist", whom he contrasts with "the metaphysician". The ironist, according to this theory, is someone who maintains radical doubts about their own "final vocabulary" (the fundamental concepts used to justify their beliefs and actions), recognizes that rational argument cannot resolve these doubts, and doesn't believe their vocabulary is closer to ultimate reality than others. This postmodern position is a consequence of acknowledging the historical contingency and plurality of vocabularies, where no neutral standards exist for choosing definitively between different ways of describing the world. On this theory, irony functions as both a philosophical method and way of life that disrupts entrenched vocabularies through redescription, metaphors, and narratives rather than traditional argument.


See also

* Accismus * Apophasis *
Auto-antonym A contronym or contranym is a word with two Opposite (semantics), opposite word sense, meanings. For example, the word ''wikt:original, original'' can mean "authentic, traditional", or "novel, never done before". This feature is also called enanti ...
*
Hypocrisy Hypocrisy is the practice of feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not. The word "hypocrisy" entered the English language ''c.'' 1200 with the meaning "the sin of pretending to virtue or goodness". Today, "hypocrisy" ofte ...
* Ironism * Irony punctuation *
Meta-communication Meta-communication is a secondary communication (including indirect cues) about how a piece of information is meant to be interpreted. It is based on the idea that the same message accompanied by different meta-communication can mean something ent ...
*
Oxymoron An oxymoron (plurals: oxymorons and oxymora) is a figure of speech that Juxtaposition, juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is a self-contradiction (disambiguation), self-contradiction. As a rhetorical de ...
*
Paradox A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true or apparently true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictor ...
*
Post-irony Post-irony (from Latin 'after' and Ancient Greek ' 'dissimulation, feigned ignorance') is a term used to denote a state in which earnest and ironic intents become muddled. It may less commonly refer to its converse: a return from irony to earnest ...


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{Authority control Comedy Narrative techniques Humour Rhetorical techniques Theme Tropes by type