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Irony As Ethical Argumentation in Kierkegaard
Irony As Ethical Argumentation in Kierkegaard
Ethical Argumentation In
Kierkegaard
1. Scope of the investigation
Irony is a type of stylistic argument that, because of the
great variety of its forms, is particularly resistant to
analysis. In this essay, therefore, I propose to focus the
discussion on the use of irony in:
1. ethical argumentation,
2. within rhetorical contexts,
3. especially as practiced and interpreted by philosophers, and
4. specifically by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. My reasons for
limiting the topic of stylistic irony are the following four.
2.1 Contradiction
The first and most obvious sign of any sort of irony is the presence of
contradiction, incongruity, or incompatibility. This feature can be defined in
various ways. In keeping with the deliberately Hegelian cast of the dissertation,
for example, Kierkegaard spells out the kind of incongruity in highly abstract
terms: because “the phenomenon is not the essence but the opposite of the
essence,” he says, the “words” are in conflict with the “meaning” (1989, p. 247).
The point, however, can be put much more plainly than that. Muecke, for
example, describes the incongruity involved as a “two storey phenomenon” (1969,
p. 19). At the lower level stands the situation as it appears, whereas at the upper
level stands the situation as it actually is. The person making the irony does not,
of course, have to say explicitly what the upper level is. Instead the ironist merely
hints at it and lets the reader or listener find it for oneself. Booth makes a similar
point to Muecke when he describes the direction in which the ironist wants to
draw the listener as “upward,” that is to say, toward a “superior” viewpoint
(1974, p. 38), which is “wiser, wittier, more compassionate, subtler, truer, more
moral,” and the like (p. 36). That is to say, the ironist invites the listener or reader
to reach a higher level than before.
From his 1981 essay on “ironical evaluations,” it is only a short step for Kaufer to
apply that notion in a way especially appropriate for ethical argumentation, and
that is what he, working with Neuwirth, does in an essay entitled “Foregrounding
Norms and Ironic Communication.” By the term “foregrounding” they understand
that the ironist highlights the norms a person has, not by emphasizing their
presence but rather by calling attention to their absence; “the ironist foregrounds
norms, intending to apply them, by pretending to violate them” (p. 30). They use
the term “norms” very broadly, to include any “personal standards, social norms,
social regularities, social standards, practices, rules, role standards, group
standards, and so on” (p. 31). As applied to the concept of irony, this means that
the apparent violation of the person’s norms shocks the reader or listener, and
the contradiction, or incongruity, draws much more attention than before to the
moral gap between a person’s norms and daily life.
2.2 Self-canceling
A second general feature of all irony is that some aspect of an ironical statement
has to indicate that it is not to be taken at face value. Following Kierkegaard’s
terminology (1989, p. 248), I shall call this feature of irony “self-canceling.” What
this term means is simply that the literal statement by the ironist “cancels” itself,
requiring the reader or listener to substitute some other statement, in most cases
the opposite, or even the contradiction, of what the ironist says. If there is no
such indication that the ironist’s statement does not mean what it says, then the
statement may be indistinguishable from a lie or even from mere babble.
But just how is this self-canceling supposed to work? The self-canceling cannot
simply be a matter of logical relationships among the terms used. In a 1987 essay,
“The Use of Irony in Argumentation,” a pair of informal logicians, Tindale and
Gough, help to demonstrate this point by comparing the logical patterns in an
ironical argument with that of its most plausible logical analogue, a reductio ad
absurdum argument. The similarity, they point out, is that in both cases the
argument “involves an absurd suggestion or claim.” But that’s it. In every other
respect the two kinds of argument are different. For Tindale and Gough, a
reductio is judged good or bad on the basis of “the nature of the relationship of
contradiction,” and it “involves a straight, literal reading”; whereas irony “relies
not on a straight literal meaning but on its tonal implications” (p. 11).
The contradiction functions in very different ways in the two cases. With everyday
cases of irony, for example, the falsity of the ironist’s statement is often blatant.
“Great shot!” the opposing fans jeer, as the ball goes far wide of the goal. If there
needed to be a line of reasoning for someone to decide whether the shot was
good, the force of the irony might be lost completely. With a reductio ad
absurdum, on the other hand, the line of reasoning is how one gets to the
contradiction; that is, reasoning conducts the “reduction” by which the
“absurdity” is uncovered.
For ironical argument rhetorical considerations, or what Tindale and Gough call
“tonal implications” (p. 11), are much more important than the logical
relationships of the terms used. In fact, for the word “tonal” to do the work that
they make it do here, the word has to include not just the tone of voice, but much,
much more, including every other rhetorical feature of what is spoken or written,
such as the character of the speaker and the emotional backdrop against which
the speaker delivers the message. As Quintilian notes, irony “is made evident to
the understanding either by the delivery, the character of the speaker, or the
nature of the subject” (Institutio oratoria, 8. 6. 54). The reductio is different in
this respect. To identify a reductio all one needs to understand is the words used
and how they apply to the world, but to do the same with a piece of ironical
argumentation requires attention to a statement’s full rhetorical situation.
In some respects even the expression “self-canceling” may be misleading, since
irony does not actually cancel itself. Nor does the ironist cancel it, except by
offering a few, often ambiguous clues. The canceling has to be done by the reader
or listener. This is an aspect of irony on which Booth is especially helpful. Booth
calls the work of the reader or listener the “reconstruction” of the ironical
message (1974, pp. 37-43).
3.1 Creativity
Creativity is the contribution of the ironist, the speaker or the writer. If irony
were merely a matter of contradictions that canceled themselves, it would require
no creativity, but that is not the case. Irony takes creativity, and at its best it calls
for artistry of the highest order. As Booth notes, irony has to be intentional (1974,
pp. 52-53). Of course, there is also a kind of irony – dramatic or tragic irony – that
arises out of events rather than from human artistry, but such irony is not
argumentation and thus not a matter of concern for this essay.
The Romantic ironists, such as Friedrich Schlegel, who pushed the limits of irony
furthest, also had a high ideal for the ironic artist. Life itself, they tended to think,
could become a work of art. Above all, the Romantic poets and philosophers
prized freedom – freedom, not only from old ways of using words but also from
conventional, middle class morality. And the way to achieve this freedom, they
maintained, was through irony, an irony not just in one’s poetry but in one’s life.
In his novel Lucinde (1971) Schlegel celebrated just this kind of artistic freedom,
and the work became a signature song for the whole movement of which he was a
part.
In the critique of Romantic irony within Kierkegaard’s dissertation, therefore,
irony’s creativity is characterized by what Kierkegaard calls “negative freedom,”
that is, freedom from conventional meanings. The ironist, Kierkegaard says, is
“free” by not meaning, literally, what he says, and thus he is not bound by his own
words. Kierkegaard puts it this way: since “what I said is not my meaning or the
opposite of my meaning, then I am free in relation to others and to myself” (1989,
pp. 247-48).
But is this true? Can a person really achieve such absolute freedom? If it is, it
would seem to be so just for a moment. When someone speaks ironically, the
words are not literally binding; but just as soon as the other person sees through
the irony the two will be mutually “bound” to the meaning they now share in
common. Thus the ironist may be at first only committed by the literal words, and
in that sense is “negatively free.” On the other hand, during that moment while
the ironist is negatively free there is of course no real communication taking place
either.
Evidently Kierkegaard highlights negative freedom here because his dissertation
has “Romantic irony” specifically in mind. The Romantic poets and philosophers
of the early nineteenth century prize such freedom highly, partly because, since
words make sense only within the context of social norms and conventions, verbal
freedom implies freedom from conventional bourgeois society too. Moreover, the
kind of “negative freedom” that this kind of irony promises has the advantage
over other kinds of irony that it does not have to be limited to the moment. Under
some circumstances it might last on and on. Romantic irony, as Kierkegaard
understands it, claims never to have to resolve itself into a mutual understanding
between the ironist and the other person, because, as soon as someone sees
through the initial irony, the ironist is right there ready to raise further irony,
over and over again, indefinitely. In this way the Romantic ironist could in
principle remain negatively free forever.
5. Conclusion
The concept of irony in Kierkegaard’s 1841 dissertation fits solidly within present
day argumentation theory, partly because it emerged in a period that was just
assimilating Romantic irony, and partly because of the influence it has had on the
history of the development of that concept. Even a brief examination of three
representative examples of his treatment of the concept after that dissertation
shows a far richer and more complex development of the concept than one could
have anticipated from the dissertation itself. Further treatment of the concept of
irony in these later works would, however, require more space than can be
allotted here, since the concept of irony is by this point in Kierkegaard’s
development deeply embedded, in various ways, in the particular problematic of
each of the works.
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