User:Patrick Welsh/irony

Muecke's typology
Building upon the double-level structure of irony, Muecke proposes we first distinguish three grades: overt, covert, and private. He defines these "according to the degree to which the real meaning is concealed". The second part of his analysis proposes typology of four modes "according to the kind of relationship between the ironist and the irony". These he calls impersonal irony, self-disparaging irony, ingénu irony, and dramatized irony.

The three grades of irony
In overt irony the true meaning is clearly apparent to both parties, and the only thing that makes it ironic is the "blatancy" of the "contradiction or incongruity". Those instances of sarcasm that may be classified as ironic are overt. Muecke notes that this form of irony has a short half-life; what is obvious to everyone quickly loses its effect with repetition.

Covert irony is "intended not to be seen but detected". The ironist feigns ignorance to achieve the intended effect, and so there is a real danger that it simply goes by unnoticed. This means that a comparatively larger rhetorical context in play. This may involve, for instance, assumptions about prior knowledge, the ability of someone to detect an incongruity between what is being said and the manner in which it is said, or the perspicuity of the audience in spotting an internal contradiction in the content of the message.

Private irony is not intended to be perceived at all. It is entirely for the private satisfaction of the ironist. Muecke cites as an example Mr. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, who "enjoys seeing his wife or Mr Collins take his remarks at face value; that is to say, he enjoys the irony of their being impervious to irony".

The four modes of irony
Impersonal irony

Self-disparaging irony

Ingény irony

Dramatized irony

Muecke's typology
Building upon the double-level structure of irony, Muecke proposes we first distinguish three grades: overt, covert, and private. He defines these "according to the degree to which the real meaning is concealed". The second part of his analysis proposes typology of four modes "according to the kind of relationship between the ironist and the irony". These he calls impersonal irony, self-disparaging irony, ingénu irony, and dramatized irony.

The three grades of irony
In overt irony the true meaning is clearly apparent to both parties, and the only thing that makes it ironic is the "blatancy" of the "contradiction or incongruity". Those instances of sarcasm that may be classified as ironic are overt. Muecke notes that this form of irony has a short half-life; what is obvious to everyone quickly loses its effect with repetition.

Covert irony is "intended not to be seen but detected". The ironist feigns ignorance to achieve the intended effect, and so there is a real danger that it simply goes by unnoticed. This means that a comparatively larger rhetorical context in play. This may involve, for instance, assumptions about prior knowledge, the ability of someone to detect an incongruity between what is being said and the manner in which it is said, or the perspicuity of the audience in spotting an internal contradiction in the content of the message.

Private irony is not intended to be perceived at all. It is entirely for the private satisfaction of the ironist. Muecke cites as an example Mr. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, who "enjoys seeing his wife or Mr Collins take his remarks at face value; that is to say, he enjoys the irony of their being impervious to irony".

The four modes of irony
Impersonal irony

Self-disparaging irony

Ingény irony

Dramatized irony

Etymology
The term phenomenology derives from the Greek φαινόμενον, phainómenon ("that which appears") and λόγος, lógos ("study"). It entered the English language around the turn of the 18th century and first appeared in direct connection to Husserl's philosophy in a 1907 article in The Philosophical Review.

In philosophy, "phenomenology" refers to the tradition inaugurated by Edmund Husserl at the beginning of the 20th century. The term, however, had been used in different senses in other philosophy texts since the 18th century. These include Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), and Carl Stumpf (1848–1936), among others.

It was, however, the usage of Franz Brentano (and, as he later acknowledged, Ernst Mach) that would prove definitive for Husserl. From Brentano, Husserl took the conviction that philosophy must commit itself to description of what is "given in direct 'self-evidence'." Central to Brentano's phenomenological project was his theory of intentionality, which he developed from Aristotle's On the Soul. According to this theory, which Husserl took to heart, every intentional act is implicitly accompanied by a secondary, pre-reflective awareness of the act as my own.

Unused draft material
Dasein as an inseparable subject/object, cannot be separated from its objective "historicality". On the one hand, Dasein is "stretched along" between birth and death, and thrown into its world; into its possibilities which Dasein is charged with assuming. On the other hand, Dasein's access to this world and these possibilities is always via a history and a tradition—this is the question of "world historicality".

Das Man
As implied in the analysis of both attunement and discourse, Dasein is "always already" or a priori a social being. Or in Heidegger's technical language, Dasein is "Dasein-with" (Mitsein), which he presents as equally primordial with "being-one's self" (Selbstsein).

Heidegger's term for this existential feature of Dasein is das Man, which is a German pronoun, Mann, that Heidegger turns into a noun. In English it is usually translated as either "the They" or "the One" for, as Heidegger puts it, "By 'others' we do not mean everyone else but me.... They are rather those from whom for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself—those among whom one is too". Quite frequently the term is just left in the German.

Part of Heidegger's aim here, according to philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, is show that, contrary to Husserl, individuals do generate an intersubjective world from their separate activities; rather, "these activities presuppose the disclosure of one shared world." This is one way in which Heidegger breaks from the Cartesian tradition of beginning from the perspective of individual subjectivity.

Dreyfus argues that the chapter on das Man is "the most confused" in Being and Time and so is often misinterpreted. The problem, he says, is that Heidegger's presentation conflates two opposing influences. The first is Dilthey's account of the role public and historical contexts have in the production of significance. The second is Kierkegaard's insistence that truth is never to be found in the crowd.

The Diltheyian dimension of Heidegger's analysis positions das Man is ontologically existential in the same way as understanding, affectedness, and discourse. This dimension of Heidegger's analysis can be captured by the notion of a socio-historical "background" that makes possible the significance of entities and activities. Philosopher Charles Taylor expands upon the term: "It is that of which I am not simply unaware... but at the same time I cannot be said to be explicitly or focally aware of it, because that status is already occupied by what it is making intelligible.

Background non-representationally informs and enables our engaged agency in the world, but we can never make it fully explicit to ourselves.

The Kierkegaardian influence on Heidegger's analysis introduces a more existentialist dimension to Being and Time. (Existentialism is a broad philosophical movement largely defined by Jean Paul Sartre and is not to be confused with Heidegger's technical analysis of the specific existential features of Dasein.) Its central notion is authenticity, which emerges as a problem from the necessary "publicness" built into the existential role of das Man. In his own words:

"In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the 'they' is unfolded. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they take pleasure; we read, see and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the 'great mass' as they shrink back; we find 'shocking' what they find shocking. The 'they', which is nothing definite, and which we all are, through not as the sum, prescribes the kind of being of everydayness."

This "dictatorship of das Man" threatens to undermine Heidegger's entire project of uncovering the meaning of being. He responds to this challenge with his account of authenticity.

Authenticity