A Case for Irony (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values);

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.