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{"id":17924,"date":"2016-02-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2746"},"modified":"2016-02-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T00:00:00","slug":"in-praise-of-irony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/02\/in-praise-of-irony\/","title":{"rendered":"In Praise of Irony"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Know thyself, someone said. Oh, right, answered the skeptic.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing ourselves \u2013 what we are like, how we came to be this way, how we might be, and too, how we should be \u2013 is extraordinarily difficult because we are such complex and confusing creatures,\u201d writes Terrence Martin in his meditations on Erasmus, Truth and Irony<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet we want to know. If \u201cnothing about human existence is simple\u201d and if \u201copposing claims can both be true enough, while neither is quite true when taken alone, even though the two together make for an unsettled combination\u201d \u2013 if these things are true, then \u201conly an especially agile strategy of reflection will suffice.\u201d Given the \u201cthin but crucial lines between honesty and deceit . . .the odd but treacherous fusion of aspiration and failure in the relations between people . . . [and] the curious but inescapably comical and tragic quality of the quest for happiness,\u201d we need \u201ca way of thinking that is \u201ccapacious and perceptive, flexible and maneuvering, and thoroughly ironic\u201d (3). <\/p>\n

We need both a \u201cview from afar\u201d that enables us to see ourselves from a strange angle, yet also an ability to grasp of the familiar, particular, and local. This double perspective won\u2019t work unless we also have a capacity \u201cto maneuver around from side to side, entertaining divergent perspectives\u201d and playfully turning things inside out and upside down (4).<\/p>\n

Enter Erasmus, stage left. <\/p>\n

For Martin, Erasmus is a model thinker, perhaps especially for our time. He cultivated a \u201cvery specific manner of thinking and writing.\u201d His \u201cis an especially perceptive, circumspect, and agile mind; one that naturally appreciates and savors the nuances and ironies inherent in complex issues; and, thus, one that habitually enters disputed territories with an even-handed and balanced manner\u201d (10).<\/p>\n

In Praise of Folly<\/em>, for instance, Erasmus lays out a typology of forms of folly \u2013 happy fools, erotic fools, baby fools and elderly fools. The \u201cspace of folly\u201d is indispensable: \u201cWhat party, what friendship, and indeed, what marriage could thrive, Folly asks., without the dear quirks, the slight illusions, the fortunate oversights, the harmless lapses of memory\u201d (15). Folly is not merely distraction. There are holy fools, fools for Christ, whose folly is full of spiritual seriousness. <\/p>\n

Throughout the book, Erasmus leaps back and forth between the wide-angle shot that captures an entire landscape and close-ups, from serious analysis to light whimsy to severe satire.<\/p>\n

Erasmus doesn\u2019t fit either philosophical or theological models, but, Martin says, his ironic mode \u201cretains the power to prod and prompt fruitful thinking about our lives\u201d (228), a power that he thinks is a necessary and often missing ingredient of our so-serious discourses.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"