Prof. John Lippett studied maths and philosophy at Manchester before pursuing postgraduate work in philosophy at Durham and Essex. He joined Hertfordshire in the early nineties, and was promoted to Reader in  2001 and Professor in 2008. In 2009, he was appointed Head of the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities Research Institute . Prof. George Pattison is Christ Church Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity . Research Interests: Nineteenth and twentieth century theology and philosophy of religion, especially Hegel, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Russian religious philosophy. Amongst many other of his publications is: Kierkegaard's Spiritual Writings (editor and translator, Harper 2010)

HUMOUR AND IRONY IN KIERKEGAARD'S THOUGHT BY JOHN LIPPITT

SØREN KIERKEGAARD (1844)

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b. 1813, d. 1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish "golden age" of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crosses the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction. Kierkegaard brought this potent mixture of discourses to bear as social critique and for the purpose of renewing Christian faith within Christendom. At the same time he made many original conceptual contributions to each of the disciplines he employed. He is known as the "father of existentialism", but at least as important are his critiques of Hegel and of the German romantics, his contributions to the development of modernism, his literary experimentation, his vivid re-presentation of biblical figures to bring out their modern relevance, his invention of key concepts which have been explored and redeployed by thinkers ever since, his interventions in contemporary Danish church politics, and his fervent attempts to analyse and revitalise Christian faith. Kierkegaard burned with the passion of a religious poet, was armed with extraordinary dialectical talent, and drew on vast resources of erudition.

Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard's Thought By John Lippitt
(Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000) pp. xii + 210, $65.00

A great review by George Pattison Faculty of Theology, University of Århus

It has become regrettably common - indeed, it is virtually the norm - for academic reviews to appear approximately two years after the publication of the book being reviewed. This has a serious and deleterious effect on scholarly exchange - not least because short-run scholarly books often go out of print soon after reviews have appeared. On the whole I have avoided contributing to this process but, in this case, I must plead guilty. It is, of course, the fault of the usual pressures: too much work, change of job, etc. Whatever the reasons and however good (or not) my excuses, it is now two years since the publication of John Lippitt's book and many readers of the Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter will already be familiar with its contents.

At the same time, a careful reader of the 'Acknowledgements' will see that I am named as an external reader for the original book proposal and am (correctly) described as having been 'enthusiastic' on its behalf. This combination of factors makes it inappropriate, in my view, for me simply to offer a normal review of Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard's Thought. Instead I shall concentrate mainly on looking at one or two issues that arise out of Lippitt's work but that go beyond it. This, incidentally, I take to be a virtue in a book such as this: that it does not simply provoke us to argue with it in its own terms but also to engage more deeply with the questions and issues that it addresses. Even a cursory acquaintance with Kierkegaard's work will suggest that these questions and issues are of central importance and - given the relatively little explicit or sustained attention given to the category of humour (in the event the more central of the two elements in Lippitt's title) in the secondary literature - that the relevance of Lippitt's book will therefore be of long-term interest to Kierkegaard scholars. Parenthetically, my guess is that it will be of similar long-term interest to philosophers interested in the question of humour, but I am less qualified to comment directly on their needs and expectations.

Nevertheless, for those who have not yet looked at it, a preliminary overview may be of use as background to such a development of themes and issues.

The title, it should be said, is potentially misleading. Signaling the topic as humour and irony in Kierkegaard's thought, Lippitt soon (pp. 3-5) makes it clear that he is by no means attempting an overall interpretation of Kierkegaard's view of or use of irony and humour. Rather, he is limiting himself almost entirely to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and to the persona of Johannes Climacus as being Kierkegaard's humorist par excellence. The impression is that this is not so much a result of Lippitt taking a strong view on the distinctiveness of the pseudonyms but rather of a pragmatic or tactical delimitation of the field. At that level there is undoubtedly enough material to work on, though I would argue that there remains a case - strengthened perhaps by the appearance of Lippitt's book - for a larger study of what the title promises, i. e., a study of humour in Kierkegaard as a whole. It would, for example, be interesting to set the more philosophical conception of humour as merely a 'confinium' of the religious (as it is said to be by Climacus) against the idea that appears already in the early journals that humour presupposes a radically Christian conception of the separation of things earthly and heavenly and to be a sphere in which 'all is made new' (JP 1711), even 'the joy that has overcome the world' (JP 1716). This invites the reflection that if humour is presented by Climacus as the incognito of the religious, then perhaps Climacus the humorist is himself the incognito of a Christian view of life that goes beyond what he is prepared to sign up to in his text. Whatever view may be taken on this, the question as to the overall strategic place both of Climacus's concept of humour and of Climacus himself in Kierkegaard's authorship as a whole is a question that has its own legitimacy, however important and correct the internal examination of the Climacian position (and its implications) may be.

Kierkegaard/Climacus is generally regarded as a proponent and practitioner of what is called the 'incongruity theory' of humour and the comic. In Climacus's own words 'where there is life there is contradiction, and wherever there is contradiction, the comic is present' (cit. P. 8). Lippitt partially endorses that, but also wants to qualify it. Most of Climacus's examples of humour are, he says, categorizable as cases of 'inappropriateness' in D. H. Monro's sense of 'the linking of disparates. the collision of different mental spheres .the obstruction into one context of what belongs in another' (cit. P. 9). However, this is only Climacus's starting-point. His distinctive contribution, in other words, is not as someone proposing the incongruity theory for our consideration but as someone who, starting from a sense for inappropriateness, goes on to exploit this in a number of different and interesting ways.

First up amongst these is the use of humour in his attack on Hegel. Indeed, his relentless satirizing of the self-delusions of Hegelianism is one of the most immediately striking and most memorable features of Climacus's magnum opus. As Lippitt sees it, such a humorous approach to a major and complex philosopher is not simply trivializing the task of philosophy. On the contrary, it does serious philosophical work. It is a form of indirect communication, for if we experience Hegelianism as susceptible to being laughed at in this way we are led to reflect on the legitimacy of the seriousness of Hegelians' claims about themselves. That we can laugh at some of the formulations of claims about 'absolute knowledge' is not irrelevant to our overall assessment of the concept of absolute knowledge itself. What would such a concept have to be if it were not to be laughable? Perhaps there's no such concept that wouldn't be laughable when seen from a standpoint that takes into account all we know of human beings' limitations and foibles.

But humour does more than show up the absurdities of philosophical hubris: it also serves what Lippitt believes is Climacus's more constructive long-term aim of encouraging us to thread the path of moral perfectionism. For humour contributes to the kind of transformative process that Jamie Ferreira has analysed in terms of gestalt-shifts and metaphors. The incongruity element of humour enables us to access previously closed domains of insight and experience. More than simply reflecting the transformative process it facilitates leaps into new existence-spheres. And more still: via Socrates and Swift we are led to see Climacian humour as positively contributing to the constitution of an ethical wisdom. Against Reinhold Neubuhr, humour is not simply something that is left behind in the ultimacy of the Holy, but belongs to the virtue of the religious and moral person. It is, Lippitt concludes (in what might be regarded as somewhat of an understatement - to the point of irony - after all that has gone before), 'an extremely valuable part of a truly ethical or religious life' (p. 174).

Let me, then, raise a couple of issues that are set in a play by Lippitt but by no means resolved within his suitably modest and self-imposed constraints.

The first has to do with the legitimacy of the comic. This could not but become an issue for Kierkegaard in the wake of his own vilification at the hands of The Corsair. Already in the Postscript (and thus before The Corsair's attack), however, Johannes Climacus was sensitive to the possibilities of a cruel abuse of humour. Following Lee Barrett (albeit critically), Lippitt notes four conditions that must be satisfied if the comic is to rank as legitimate. The first is that there must be something momentous in tension with what is trivial. The second is that it must be polemical or, as Lippitt redefines the point, 'that the satirist needs to have a position.' (p. 129) The third is that the comic contradiction must not be painful, i. e., cruel (as, Kierkegaard says, Holberg's humour often was). Finally, the humourist must offer 'a way out' of the contradiction.

The problem, as I see it, is not, however, with formulating such guidelines. The problem is in their actual application. Think of Nazi satires on Jews. Most of us would see these as simply persecutory. But from the Nazis' own point of view such satires might well seems to fit the criteria just outlined. There is, after all, clearly something momentous at stake - the purity of the race - juxtaposed with what are seen as the absurdities of Jewish appearance and behaviour. Nazi satirists were certainly polemical and had 'a position': they were not simply making fun of Jews for the sake of it. But when we come to the third criterion, surely there is no way of missing the cruelty of such satire? For us, maybe not. But then we are not anti-Semitic. If we were we would not regard Jews or other inferior races as having a right to common human compassion: we would not be being cruel, we would be responding appropriately to the threat of racial contamination. And, of course, the Nazi humourist has his 'way out' of the contradition. Analogous points could be made with regard to, e. g., Soviet satire against enemies of the people or all manner of racist and sexist jokes (which Lippitt does indeed discuss).

Perhaps a less horrible version of a similar point might be constructed with reference to the film Life is Beautiful, a comedy set in a concentration camp. Few films in recent times have quite so divided critical opinion quite so furiously. Many (including some survivors of the camps) saw the attempt to get a laugh out of situations in which millions died in conditions of utter horrendousness as virtually blasphemous. Others (also including some survivors of the camps) saw it as a sublime affirmation of human goodness in the face of all the dehumanizing forces epitomized by the 'Final Solution'. Yet, often, both sets of critics may have shared similar concerns about the legitimacy of the comic in general terms. The problem was the actual judgment on this particular work.

Now it may be that I am willfully glossing over subtleties in Barrett's and Lippitt's presentations of the guidelines for the legitimate use of the comic and probably my 'justification' of Nazi satire is stretching a point. Nevertheless, I believe it highlights the problem that the application of such guidelines presupposes some more fundamental decisions about what is or is not an appropriate object of humour. What is or is not 'momentous'? What is or is not an appropriate 'position' from which to launch humourous sallies? When does it all go too far and become merely cruel? What could constitute a way out in any given case? Take Kierkegaard himself: isn't it easy to imagine a point of view from which this excessively irritating man might just have been seen as 'asking for it' in relation to The Corsair? And, as regards his own use of humour, it is striking that the Scotsman Andrew Hamilton who visited Copenhagen in 1847 wanted very much to speak to him, but didn't dare - because he feared being made a fool of by Kierkegaard's sharp wit. The legitimacy of humour, in other words, may well depend on prior agreement about the nature of the context in which it is being deployed, i. e., the acceptance of common social, intellectual, etc. horizons. Can humour itself help decide whether these are legitimate?

The second question concerns humour as virtue. This, I should acknowledge, reflects a general unease I have about the current fashionability of virtue amongst philosophers. This unease probably reflects my own Protestant suspicion of anything that could savour of what used to be called 'works-righteousness' , i. e., taking our virtue or our goodness as a somehow non-negotiable element in the God-relationship. But it may also reflect a sense - isn't it an inescapable sense, after the twentieth century - that good people can do or can connive in wicked things? No amount of virtue can guarantee against our making the most horrendous moral mistakes. John Major and Douglas Hurd, for example (British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary in the early to mid-1990s), were probably about as decent politicians in terms of personal virtue as we are likely to get these days in public life - and yet they pursued a policy in Bosnia that effectively gave carte blanche to genocidal activities. Virtue, in brief, is not bankable but, to speak in Kierkegaardian terms, it can be 'safeguarded' only under the sign of 'repetition', that is, that it is nothing if it is not made effective in each new situation of moral demand. Everything comes down to getting it right in the specific constellation of circumstances that here and now confronts us.

Yet it seems natural to speak of a 'humorous person' and to see humour in this way as an attribute of persons. Clearly we all know some people who are more ready than others to see the humorous side of life and, on the whole, we feel in a pre-reflective way doubtless, that it's good that such people are as common as they are. Their humour contributes to the overall common good in a diffuse but real way. Isn't it therefore 'good' to cultivate humour in ourselves and, whether in ourselves or in others, to regard it as a virtue? Sure: what I have just said should not be taken as a would-be prohibition on the development of virtue (including humour), but simply as a critical comment concerning the value we place on it. Virtue is fine, but it doesn't get us very far. Being a humorist is all very well, but we cease to be one the moment we mistake the occasion for showing it - and what art is more situational, more occasion-specific, than the comic?

These last points have been, perhaps overly polemical - but, if Lippitt is right, it does not follow that they are ill-humoured. And that invites a final comment. Since Kant, the 'tone' of philosophy has from time to time been an issue of philosophy. Lippitt's book is 'about' humour, and although it is not a funny book it has a nice lightness of touch suitable to its topic - and one, I think, that could be emulated in philosophical discussions on very different subjects. I hope I've done something if I've managed to maintain that tone.

This book is available from Palgrave Macmillan's Publishing at www. palgrave. com/     Cost $65.00