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Klappentext "Vanity Fair" has declared the Age of Irony over. Joan Didion has lamented that Obama's United States is an "irony-free zone." Here Jonathan Lear argues that irony is one of the tools we use to live seriously, to get the hang of becoming human. It forces us to experience disruptions in our habitual ways of tuning out of life, but comes with a cost. Vanity Fair has declared the Age of Irony over. Joan Didion has lamented that Obama's United States is an "irony-free zone." Here Jonathan Lear argues that irony is one of the tools we use to live seriously, to get the hang of becoming human. It forces us to experience disruptions in our habitual ways of tuning out of life, but comes with a cost.
List of contents
Contents Preface Part One: The Lectures 1. To Become Human Does Not Come That Easily 2. Ironic Soul Part Two: Commentary 3. Self-Constitution and Irony 4. Irony, Reflection, and Psychic Unity 5. Psychoanalysis and the Limits of Reflection 6. The Immanence of Irony and the Efficacy of Fantasy 7. Thoughts about Irony and Identity 8. Flight from Irony 9. On the Observing Ego and the Experiencing Ego 10. Observing Ego and Social Voice Notes Commentators Index
Report
Before we can claim to live a truly examined life, says Jonathan Lear, we need to pass the test of ironic self-scrutiny at something approaching the level set by Socrates and Kierkegaard. Following the contours of the subtle case for radical irony Lear makes turns out to be an intellectual adventure in its own right.
-- J. M. Coetzee
Jonathan Lear's re-reading of the significance of irony for getting the hang of a genuinely human existence is an unheimlich maneuver that brings religion and psychoanalysis into productive conversation with philosophy, and induces characteristically sharp and creative responses from his interlocutors: an exemplary instance of the virtues of the Tanner Lectures format.
-- Stephen Mulhall, University of Oxford
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
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
