There are many different forms of irony – dramatic, cosmic, Morissette, e.g. – but in my view, the essence of philosophical irony is to say one thing while showing something else, for the purpose that is the purpose of all philosophy: the pursuit of wisdom.
For example, were I to say something like: ‘Having children is bad because they cost a lot of money.’
On the face of it, what is said here is literally true: children do cost a lot of money. But what is shown here goes against what is said, because someone with an ear for tone might recognise the point being made: some reasons are too shallow to deserve serious consideration.
In this instance, the method works by setting up a kind of contradiction in tone: the value of children held alongside the value of money. Doing that makes us feel uneasy, because it’s obvious that the value of children, or what it means to have children, is not something that can (or should) be measured in monetary terms. Or is there a price at which you would sell your children?
Another example: ‘Having children is bad because you don’t get to do what you enjoy, such as play sport or go out partying.’
Again, there is a tonal discordance here. Anyone who really believes this, or says ‘I regret having children because I miss partying’, shows themselves to be…what would we say? Selfish? Perhaps ‘an unreliable source of good judgement on this matter’? The value of children, or what it means to have children, is not something that can (or should) be measured in hedonistic terms either.
But in that case, is this so different from the person who says that having children is great because they are so much fun?
Philosophical irony is a way of making a point that is resistant to being made in orthodox ways.
(What is shown here? That there are ‘orthodox ways’ and that these ways can sometimes miss the point entirely. Consider the connotations of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘resistance’. Where do you place yourself?)
Traditionally, it comes from Socrates, who by all accounts did it so much and so often that people struggled to pin down exactly what he really thought. I’ve written elsewhere why he (probably) did this. In my view it is because he was seriously committed to, in his own words (if we take Plato’s word for it in the Apology), ‘[persuading] each of you to concern yourself less about what you have than about what you are, so that you may make yourself as good and as reasonable as possible.’
‘I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to make your first and chief concern not for your bodies nor for your possessions, but for the highest welfare of your souls, proclaiming as I go “Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and the State”.’
Socrates in Plato’s Apology
This is the ‘great service’ to which Socrates feels himself to have been divinely appointed: it is a kind of calling.
But how best to do this? Were it simply a matter of teaching, then that would be straightforward: teach it, by any means. Give lectures, write books and articles, establish schools. Nowadays: YouTube, TikTok, etc. Do whatever you can to convey the information.
Only there is a problem with this: it doesn’t seem to work. Teaching people about wisdom and goodness does not necessarily make them wise and good, even though they might know everything there is to know about it. Why is this?
Who knows? We shrug and get on with our lives.
(Do you feel a pull? To set up an important question only to walk away from it.)
But I think you might find a clue if you do away with any pretence of technical expertise and reflect on it ordinarily. What is your reaction if someone passes judgement on you and tells you off for lacking virtue? If someone comes to you and says: ‘You are wrong.’ ‘What you are doing is wrong.’ ‘You shouldn’t do this, or that, or the other.’
Would you get defensive? I suspect you might. I would. It’s only natural.
When people get defensive they argue back, often stupidly and to no further purpose than to prove themselves right (even when they are clearly wrong). People dig in and only get more entrenched. No one wins by playing this game.
Recognising this, the ironic philosopher presents their arguments in a way that bypasses our natural defences. They get their reader to work for and against themselves, understanding that, as a rule, people like to think that they are right: the aim is to let them think just that.
Done right, the reader will not know where the writer stands: this ambiguity forces the reader to think it through and in this they must decide where they stand. Done right, it’s as if you’ve done nothing at all, because the reader thinks they’ve come to their own conclusions. Let them think they’ve seen what you haven’t.
This is the only way that wisdom can be taught: to enable people to discover it for themselves. For this purpose, questions are better than answers.
You can try to achieve this by giving answers, or by setting out clear lines of reasoning, and that has become the dominant form of philosophy in the English-speaking world. We call it ‘academic’. That method has its own virtues, but I have come to believe that it falls short in most cases. The only people for whom it seems to be useful to write in that way are those who already know the substance of what is being written. This encourages a petty intellectualism, turned in on itself, trapped in an ever tightening spiral, moving round and round and deeper down but always with the illusion of moving forward.
There are reasons why Socrates did not do any of the things that most ‘philosophers’ do nowadays: he did not claim any specialist knowledge or expertise, he did not give lectures, he did not write books, he did not establish a school. I understand his reasons and have come to take them seriously. When I returned to try to write academically, I found I couldn’t. Instead I did something else and, naturally, took Socrates’ irony as my starting point.
I said: ‘I’d rather say clever things in a way that makes them seem stupid than stupid things in a way that makes them seem clever.’
Unfortunately Socrates is not a very good example to follow if you choose to write, since he didn’t write. Fortunately Plato is better: he gives us a wealth of techniques and methods, ranging from simple jokes (Euthydemus) and myths (Republic) to complete works of layered irony, so deeply layered that it is difficult to get to the bottom of it (Phaedrus).
Consider, if it is possible to put in simple terms (although I suspect it isn’t), what is done in the Phaedrus. (To make it clearer I’ll add a silly ‘irony count’ along the way, totting-up where something is shown without saying or said while showing something else, which I will put as numbers in parentheses.)
As far as I can tell, in the Phaedrus, Socrates (the character) talks about love and rhetoric and philosophical writing, and says things he doesn’t believe, in order to show up (by imitative bad example) a way of doing philosophy that he doesn’t think is right (1), for the purpose of guiding us towards a better way (2), and this leads us to focus our attention on goodness and virtue (3); and Plato (the writer) does this in a way that shows without saying, through the use of allegory and allusion and symbolism and structure (4), which establishes a parallel between what his characters are saying and doing and what he, the writer, is doing (5), which has the effect of revealing the meaning beneath the superficial content of his characters’ discussion, and also the purpose of Plato’s writing such a dialogue (6), and also the meaning and purpose of philosophical writing as such (7); and this, in the end, seems to be Plato’s point, buried beneath so many layers of irony, that he is, in writing the dialogue, like his character in the dialogue, showing a better way (8), one that leads us to focus our attention on goodness and virtue (9).
In this end point, the form and the content of the work circles back and harmonises with itself in such a masterful way that it is like a magic trick that, even though you know how it works and can see how it’s done, still manages to surprise you.
The effect is life-changing. Like all philosophical understanding, it changes the way you see things. I would like to say that anyone who writes philosophically, and who reads the Phaedrus and appreciates it, will find themselves unable to write like an academic again.
I would like to say that, but I won’t, because it clearly isn’t true. I remain baffled by the unremarkable flatness of academic writing on Plato. Like the pettiness of academic Nietzscheans, squabbling over their citations, it is a contradiction in thought-and-life or life-and-art. It makes you want to ask: ‘From all that you’ve studied, have you learned nothing?’
Plato is a masterful magician but, for all his subtle complexity, I think his purposes remain quite simple.
Once I started trying to follow Plato’s example and emulate it, in my clumsy childish way, I came to see that this ironic form, and the reasons for choosing it, reveals the purpose for all of this, which is to bring your attention to focus on what matters.
And in that is revealed the simple purpose for all of philosophy, in all its forms, whether written or spoken or performed or private: the pursuit of wisdom. We fix our attention on the object of our pursuit, recognising its tremendous value, and we do whatever we can to encourage others to see what we see.
Although really we are trying to get others to see what’s already right before their eyes; what they already know but have forgotten. And this is where philosophical irony can be so effective. To inspire a desire to offer correction: to give a string of bad reasons, or good reasons that lead to the wrong conclusion; to provoke with absurdity or hyperbole; to establish contradiction and antinomy; pathos, if you can manage it without coming across as overly sentimental, or bathos if you can’t. Those with ears to hear will say ‘they’ve missed the point’. And that’s the point, because in this they’ve turned their attention to what matters.
I’ll conclude by returning to my opening example. If I said to someone, who had children primarily because of the enjoyment that they get from having children, that I thought there might be something a bit wrong with that, they would undoubtedly get defensive and argue their point. (And rightly so, because who am I to make such a silly judgement?) But if I get them to agree with me that there is something a bit wrong about the idea of someone who seriously regrets having children because of their lost opportunities for enjoyment, and we agree to that measure of what matters – that your personal enjoyment means nothing in comparison to the welfare of your child – then they might come to see things differently.
If we think it reasonable to have children primarily for our own enjoyment, then we ought to think it reasonable to regret having them when they are acting like little shits. But that doesn’t seem to me to be an ideal attitude to parenting. It sounds rather ‘conditional’.
If I had to formulate it as a kind of thesis then I would say that I think we have children for their sake, not for ours. And focusing on this thesis brings my attention back to what really matters: my duty to do what is best for my child.
That is philosophy as therapy. That is how we use reason to encourage ourselves to live in ways that we would, on reflection, choose, and avoid living in ways that we would come to regret.
At the end of the day, what anyone else thinks about this is none of my business. But it helps me to clarify my own thinking, to write in this way, and if it offers any kind of reflection for others, to remind them of something they already know, then that’s fine and good.
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