
A Case for Irony
Jonathan Lear(Author)
Harvard University Press
Published on 24. October 2011
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-0-674-06145-3 (ISBN)
Description
In 2001, Vanity Fair declared that the Age of Irony was over. Joan Didion has lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama has become an "irony-free zone." Jonathan Lear in his 2006 book Radical Hope looked into America's heart to ask how might we dispose ourselves if we came to feel our way of life was coming to an end. Here, he mobilizes a squad of philosophers and a psychoanalyst to once again forge a radical way forward, by arguing that no genuinely human life is possible without irony. Becoming human should not be taken for granted, Lear writes. It is something we accomplish, something we get the hang of, and like Kierkegaard and Plato, Lear claims that irony is one of the essential tools we use to do this. For Lear and the participants in his Socratic dialogue, irony is not about being cool and detached like a player in a Woody Allen film. That, as Johannes Climacus, one of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authors, puts it, "is something only assistant professors assume." Instead, it is a renewed commitment to living seriously, to experiencing every disruption that shakes us out of our habitual ways of tuning out of life, with all its vicissitudes.
While many over the centuries have argued differently, Lear claims that our feelings and desires tend toward order, a structure that irony shakes us into seeing. Lear's exchanges with his interlocutors strengthen his claims, while his experiences as a practicing psychoanalyst bring an emotionally gripping dimension to what is at stake--the psychic costs and benefits of living with irony.
While many over the centuries have argued differently, Lear claims that our feelings and desires tend toward order, a structure that irony shakes us into seeing. Lear's exchanges with his interlocutors strengthen his claims, while his experiences as a practicing psychoanalyst bring an emotionally gripping dimension to what is at stake--the psychic costs and benefits of living with irony.
Reviews / Votes
Lear performs a valuable service. He shows us just how far the contemporary usage of irony diverges from an older, far more appealing meaning, according to which irony is a portal to self-knowledge. -- Andrew Stark Wall Street Journal 20111222 Lear's book provides intellectual pleasure of a very high order: its distinctions are careful, its prose lucid and elegant, and its examples suggestive and well chosen...You should read this book. -- Paul J. Griffiths Commonweal 20120309More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
US School Grade: College Graduate Student
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With printed dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 155 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-674-06145-3 (9780674061453)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Jonathan Lear
A Case for Irony
E-Book
10/2011
1st Edition
Harvard University Press
€53.99
Available for download
Person
Jonathan Lear is John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.