Irony Mastered and Unmastered

Notes written in the margin of John Lippitt’s Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard’s Thought:

Irony: to say the opposite of what you mean (Quintillian)? To oppose the inner to the outer (Kierkegaard)? The danger of irony is that one it can run away with you. You have to know what your position is – you have to be sure what it is you mean; only then you can ironise responsibly. You must have made an – inward – resolution. Thus Socrates, according to Plato’s Symposium, says the following ‘most ironically’:

Dear Alcibiades, it looks as though you are not stupid, if what you say about me is true and there really is in me some power which could made you a better man: you must be seeing something inconceivably beautiful in me, enormously superior to your good looks. If this is what you see and you want to exchange beauty for beauty, you mean to take a huge advantage of me: you are trying to get true beauty in exchange for seeming beauty – ‘gold for brass’.

Vlastos comments Socrates’s indirect message is as follows: ‘You must be stupid if you think I’m falling for a deal like that, in which you gain far more (edification from the man you take to be the wisest in Athens) than I do (the fleeting pleasures of sex).’ Lippitt comments in turn: ‘A vital part of Vlastos’s point here is that there is no will to mislead or deceive here at all on Socrates’ part. Rather, Alcibiades (and the reader along with him) has been left on his own to ‘put two and two together’ by himself. (141).

Kierkegaard:

Particularly in our age, irony must be commended. In our age, scientific scholarship has come into possession of such prodigious achievements that there must be something wrong somewhere; knowledge not only about the secrets of the human race but even about the secrets of God is offered for sale at such a bargain price today that it all looks very dubious. In our joy over the achievement in our age, we have forgotten than an achievement is worthless if it is not made one’s own. (Concept of Irony, 327)

One has to make it one’s own – once again, a kind of autonomy is at issue. Still, is there an experience of unmastered irony – the joy of losing one’s autonomy, of abandoning any claim to seriousness or responsibility? How to construct a bridge from this to the irresponsibility of literary or poetic speech? I’m too tired to do it tonight (what a copout) …