The following statement was written in Spring, 1996, in response to the death of Matt Eisenfeld, z"l, who had come to exemplify most shortcomings in my own life and has come to point towards directions of addressing and rectifying them. It could almost be called a "Manifesto," but for the somewhat hackneyed ring of the term. I still believe most of it.
Anti-irony is a principle of post-post-modern skepticism. Less pretensiously, that is to say that we grant (and I use the impetuous 'we' to try and include examples of anti-ironists whom I will discuss below) that the post-modern critique is irrevocably correct. Notions of self, of metaphysics, perhaps even of knowledge itself are all constructed fantasies, susceptible to the heightened Kantian criticisms of a Derrida (or, in some cases, a Foucault). I am prepared to grant as radical a statement of th is conundrum as one can construct -- perhaps even solipsism, if that perspective were not itself easy prey for an ironist's deconstruction. I am certainly prepared to grant that the concepts I hope to develop in what comes next are themselves riddled wit h verifiability problems, and perhaps open to power critiques such as Derrida himself has, on occasion, put forth.
The question is where one goes after the criticism. This has been a question I have asked myself in personal terms on a number of occasions. Most notably in my memory is the occasion of housism. Housism represented my own somewhat mystically tinged ef fort to uncover absurdities at the foundation of our ontological and epistemological essays at apprehension. Of course, housism carried with it its own rhetorical style as well (as does this manifesto, of course; appearance of non-rhetoric is the highest form of rhetoric itself). Thus the Housist Manifesto read amusingly, playfully. This was intentional. The housist attitude was one of play, of bemused befuddlement at the inconsistency of the concepts we use to rein in the infinite.
After housism, then what? A reconstruction was needed; barring total self-absorbtion in one's own deranged mental states, one had to go somewhere. Thus the post-housist question is a form of the above query: where one goes after the criticism. To be s ure, one can take several evasive strategies. One may perfunctorily "nod to Socrates" and say that, while we know nothing, we can (and, probably, should) act as though we do. One may simply bracket the entire "philosophical" discussion and treat it as e ither a hobby or an engaging academic pursuit, but nothing more. One may even take some sort of "leap of faith" towards an apparently coherent, though ungrounded, system of beliefs, values and concepts.
My approach at the time was to make a tentative, cautious return to concepts and values, with irony everpresent. (I offer this apology now, incidentally, if any of these personal decisions echo in the reader as self-important; I am trying merely to lay out the terrain, to trace a history in order to make sense of what comes now.) The theory took its shape in England, where I discovered in British wit some of the self- consciousness absent in my own American personality, much second- guessing, and, inde ed, the idea of 'wit' itself. Alexander Pope is brought to mind. So too Thomas Love Peacock, the satirist of the Romantic era. Peacock was perhaps most significant for me personally, because he satirized that which I had held most dear: English Romanti cism. Peacock did not dismiss Romanticism. On the contrary, he seemed enamored of its potential, and ridiculed it only in excess. But he certainly took a grain-of-salt attitude towards it, and towards any totalizing discourse. We humans are but apes i n clothes, Peacock seemed to be saying, I don't deny beauty, I just remain a little skeptical of the claims.
Peacock's humor tied in well, for me, with a Nietzschean recognition that ultimate "truth" is utterly unavailable, and we must be satisfied with conventional truths which get us through the day. So the response to the crititism was, roughly, irony. Ric hard Rorty enunciated the response most articulately, and was able to link his ironism with a liberal political theory (hence, "liberal ironism"), which seemed to address the real-world justice questions that arise for a potentially narcissistic, do- noth ing armchair skeptic. Rorty's playfulness is a kind playfulness, one which is able to enjoy the Thoreauvian richness of life, while remaining somewhat skeptical of any metaphysical or other claim to ultimacy.
Though it may seem as though Rorty's theory was intrinsically hostile to religion, I found this not to be the case. Religion as a mode of spiritualizing the world ("the art of learning to live in amazement"--Heschel) remained successful, even if its cos mological claims were rejected. Effectively, my Rortian pragmatism allowed for religion because religion worked. And, after all, presumed atheism is just as dubious as presumed theism. Agnostic religious practice was just as (un)justified as agnostic n on-religious practice, and came out ahead because it succeeded on pragmatist grounds.
Thus built on the shifting sands of total uncertainty and skepticism was a house on stilts. The residents of the house were well aware that the stilts had no ultimate ground; that it was just the way the quicksand was lying at the moment that kept the h ouse afloat and intact. This awareness led to irony. Irony in turn was more than a mere nod to Socrates. It conditioned certain acts, tempered any action taken on the basis of a universalizing claim (e.g. morality) with heavy skepticism. It demanded a rigorous self-doubt. And it yielded a somewhat cynical outlook towards the folly-ful towers of Babel we humans build.
We have now reached the present moment. There are other streams of value in my life: religion most notably, and sexuality as well. I maintained a commitment to the value of aesthetic experience, whether in poetry or visual art or music or even in a les s traditional medium such as work itself ("life well lived"). This Quality (Pirsig) could be accessed in many ways, yet I retained as a postulate its (relativistic) existence. It was intimately linked to Heschelian Amazement, to Rav Kook's beautiful fou rfold song, to the Housism and Zen shredding of the routine universe. It was close too to a Thoreavian engagement with the world, and capable of coexistence with Thoreau's "sucking the marrow out of life" as well. It worked.
Why, then, anti-irony? I have presented the ironist viewpoint in its most successful light. And it has sustained me, more or less, for several years. What now?
The troubles with irony seem to me mostly the person that irony can create. Irony as a response to postmodern criticism may yield a caring, pliable Rortian. But it also allows for laziness, slack, not getting things done. Irony does not make the Quali ty charge strong enough: this is its foundational problem. Irony might be sustainable were it not for the slippery slope into decadence, dilettance, the delicate, unconstructive wits of a Pope or Derrida. Indeed, irony cannot prevent and may encourage a strict Derridianism: a refusal to offer anything positive, a rigorous criticism. Again, I reiterate: Derrida's criticisms are taken arguendo to be correct. But I feel that one most go somewhere from here, in an almost Fichtean way (Fichte derived moral ity from the foundational will to act in the world, not only remain in onesself). Irony may get you out, if you feel like it, but that's all.
The personal unworthiness I have felt today, comparing my life, such as it is, with Matt's, seems traceable to the difference between my own attitude and Matt's intensity and drive. Intensity and drive are not new ideas. The question is whether one can muster the will to follow some sort of inner imperative.
If it were just a matter of being lazy, the response to the ironist would be simple: get off your ass. But the ironist has too good a reply: why? Again, a simple, unoriginal dialogue. But a pressing one. Why? The ironist knows that self- actualizati on is important, but so is being relaxed enough to enjoy life. Particularly if no one thing has any intrinsic value, which we must grant, there is no imperative to move. The ironist may even offer a counterattack, claiming that the 'active man' is internalizing a social norm drilled into him by rote, replicating the world of power and control in an internal system of superego supervision. You who are working so hard, a lazy ironist could say, are the most deluded of all. Yes some goals are important, but your drive is out of proportion to its ends.
In other words, there is good reason to be lazy. Not only is it affordable, but it's more defensible as well.
Again, we are at the present moment, the present discussion. So many responses to the lazy ironist position, but first one more note: the lazy ironist, I have suggested, is a slippery slope from the ironist. That is, one will inevitably end up being a lazy ironist if one starts out being an ironist. This "inevitability" is somewhat limited. It depends, I would say, on character. Some people are simply not lazy by nature, and there is no inherent reason for them to make the move down this slope. Oth ers have norms of work driven into them so thoroughly that it is more comfortable for them to actively pursue goals than not to do so. These people are not my concern, because I am not one of them. My problem -- among others, to be sure -- is that while I do possess some self-starting ability, and maybe even more than many other people, I do not possess enough to attain what I seem to want, on moments of reflection. I am emotionally unsatisfied with my lack of progress, yet no amount of New Years' Reso lutions is going to remedy what is an ideological problem: that the Active Man cannot win the argument with the lazy ironist. The lazy ironist's arguments are so strong that they defeat the resolutions to do more, to be more, by their coherence.
Briefly, two responses which may work, but which seem not to do so. First, a justice response to the lazy ironist: your theories are all well and good, but there is undeniable suffering in the world, and if you are not working to lessen it in some way, then even you agree you are not doing your duty. Of course, the lazy ironist may reply by being a conservative: that one's "duty" in this area is severely attenuated, that really to be a good person has very little with improving the lot of others. I se e this to be a very convincing rebuttal. But it is not mine. I just do not accept that we can all be greedy lawyers and good people at the same time, although acquisition of material wealth together with a warm and meaningful family life may yet win the contest over political altruism. Let us bracket the conservative response, because we can make another one, that it is impossible to measure the amount of justice-work one has to do. We know that such work must be balanced with some self-interested act ivity; no one would argue that we must all be Mother Teresas. (And even if we were, there is the danger that that too would become an egoistic activity.) The question is where that balancing takes place, and so long as some real social justice work is d one, the balancing is too subjective to pass judgment upon. Some may do more, others less; but the lesser-do-gooders may have other positive behaviors, such as being in love. So who is to judge. The lazy ironist agrees with the ends, but determining th e level of the means becomes hopelessly subjective.
A second attack on the lazy ironist is value-based: it's simply not true that a lazy life is as worthwhile as a non-lazy life. In fact, I will modify this argument and take it up below, but for now let me reject the pure form of this attack. The attack fails because laziness itself may yield qualitative rewards. While there are certainly some activities which categorically must be undertaken (anything deriving from the categorical imperative itself, for example!), not-doing activities is also good. Example: the 15-minute coffee break that Matt had in his library job. Matt would get out the seforim and learn during this period, and that is obviously admirable (if not outright amazing). But someone else goes outside and relaxes in the sun. This some one else is certainly enjoying more passive (yin) Quality than Matt's wrestling with the text, but who is really to say that the person who takes time off is not making as good as use of time as Matt is?
Indeed, simply letting the world happen has extremely respectable credentials. A Buddhist or Taoist would say that Matt is filling his mind with concepts, clouding up his perception of the world. If he would only just let the world in, he would gain at least as much wisdom. I think this critique, though at some point it may boil down to a fundamental theological difference between the Taoist and the Jew, is fairly successful. If we do not take a priori the valuational categories of Judaism, as the ir onist does not, the lazy ironist can easily make a Taoistic argument and win. So the value-based response to the lazy ironist seems to me also not to succeed.
Let me now state my positive theory. Even the pragmatist and the ironist recognize some (constructed) goods. Some may be categorical and ethical absolutes, others fungible utilitarian desiderata. But nearly everyone has some Good and/or goods. I cert ainly have both. The new point here, again, is an old one: Discipline is necessary to attain these goals as well. Discipline is not itself a good, under this theory. We are not trying to say that hard work and discipline are themselves intrinsically va luable -- even if they improve the character, they do so in ways which are susceptible to critique. But we are trying to say that some internal, constructed drive and determination, even if some interests are quashed, is a necessary thing to achieve even those goods which are ironically generated.
Example: I wish to actualize myself through an art form, let us say photography. As an ironist, I know that I have to keep my ego in check here -- there will be no sublime and the beautiful, just my taste and phallocentrism. I have to resist universali zing value claims on the part of my art product, because it is futile to make such claims. So I have some skepticism. THE PROBLEM IS THIS: that skepticism corrodes the discipline needed to create the art product itself. That skepticism, which is well f ounded, undermines a goal of self- actualization which had been consistent with an ironic point of view. There is no doubt that discipline is needed for the self- actualization. Developing film is tedious, and difficult to do if one does not have easy a ccess to the necessary equipment. Trying to market photos is demeaning and also difficult. And after all, what are we trying to do here -- enter the irony -- but express onesself. It looks like it might be worth it.
So in any goal that requires dedication, and most pursuits do, the ironist does not have available the tools to achieve them. On the contrary, she has the tools to easily undermine them. It is so easy to be a lazy ironist, and a lazy ironist will not b e likely to attain any of these decided-to-be-important goals. Pope degenerates into still worse decorative dilettantism. Nothing is produced. One thinks a lot and dallies.
By now ironism has undermined itself as well. The ironic response to the postmodern criticism, if you can remember from a few pages back, was to build the house on stilts on the quicksand of indeterminacy. It was a strategy of living. But now it has m ade it impossible to do anything productive in that house on stilts. Irony built up the house, but has nowhere to go. Even its own goals cannot be achieved.
It may seem trite and obvious to have recourse to some other response to the postmodern critique like "determination" or "hard work." But I have been trying to persuade you that it is not just a matter of a guy getting off his ass and doing something ve rsus a guy being a bum. The question is what apparatus we have for justifying doing one or the other. Obviously one can do either. The question is whether one is justified. Especially when making a decision requires much counterintuitive effort, this justification is essential.
In any case, if irony collapses the stilt house (or at least makes it worthless), we must return all the way back to the postmodern miasma to look for a new way to build the house. That is, unless some of the responses to irony listed above are ultimate ly successful, and I am saying that they are not, irony itself must be discarded. If irony collapses into cynicism, dilettante wit, and laziness -- Derrida, i.e. -- then irony must be ditched, because these characteristics are dislikable in themselves an d, more importantly, undermine irony's own goals.
Can we at last move to the positive portion of this manifesto? At last, I believe we can. Irony has at last left the building. And Matt remains. Somehow, what is needed is a post-postmodern strategy of building conceptual solidity on shifting ground that does not erode itself. There were three alternatives to irony given (much) earlier: perfunctory nodding to Socrates, bracketing the whole critique problem as "philosophical," and a leap of faith. The first two strategies seem baldly dishonest, and thus unacceptbale. The third response is utterly unjustified (which is what Kierkegaard liked about it), and more importantly, as I have written elsewhere ("Against Faith"), has its existential costs which are damaging to the human condition. Because I have dealt with them elsewhere, I will not reiterate the concerns here and simply reject the pure leap of faith on the grounds laid out in the other essay.
Anti-irony, then, is a self-aware projection of what faith would ordinarily leap towards, for the pragmatic purpose of gaining value in the face of incomprehensible Difference. Obviously, this needs some unpacking. Generally in a leap of faith one leap s towards a given world of priorities and ideas, courageously, though without justification. I am suggesting instead that one may make a change in character that is based not on a system but upon observable successes of others with that character. It ma y seem necessary to remind the reader of the context of this manifesto's genesis: I have come from a funeral of a friend. So I do not have to look far for my evidence.
First, let me elaborate on the function this model will serve. If we have evidence of a successful character (success defined on pragmatic grounds, which elude the postmodern critique; character in conventional Aristotelian-virtue terms), we will postul ate this character as a role model not in terms of the specific world-orientations of the character but as a placeholder for a code of success which we cannot crack. To be concrete, Matt's intensity and determination worked, on pragmatic grounds. He was able to achieve what I, as an ironist, could not. These achievements, I grant, are not universally valuable - - in fact, in the case of some of Matt's talmudic learning, I do not even share his sense of the end value. Of course, intensity and determina tion may be ironized, but we are rejecting irony as a necessary response to the postmodern critique. Instead, the picture is this: we are in the epistemological quicksand, but we sort of know where we would like to be (in the house on stilts). We build the house by holding on to an external vine (that is, a model of success that is not part of the skepticism of the quicksand, because we are not evaluating its claims) and working from there. That determination may be ironized is well and good, but that is not the house we are building here today.
Before moving on, now is a good time to look at the evidence itself. Many of Matt's goals and my own were the same, but he succeeded where I failed. Example: the Dead Poets Society in 1989-90. We both wanted it. I waited, checked to see if it might b e criticized -- and it was. It was pretensious, silly, an adolescent fantasy. No go. Matt went ahead and did it, based on drive and determination, with a character and spirit I did not have. Even if one can criticize Matt, it seems that he succeeded w here I did not. Another example: publishing articles. I hedge, and wait. Matt went ahead and did it. He saw the goal, and he did it. My hedging was probably more truthful to my own self- doubt. But his doing it, did it. Irony corroded. Determinati on succeeded. Both are consistent positions, but (ironically?) on pragmatist grounds, determination has taken the day.
Matt's ethical life was also more successful than my own. Though I have more wit than he had, and can make more clever remarks, his character of sincerity yielded more positive reactions among others and probably made him a more satisfied person, though I am not sure. Matt's spiritual life was also more successful. His drive and determination got him up at 6 in the morning to read Nahman of Bratzlav before davening. It got him in a dark room every day doing the candle meditations I do around once a m onth. I wanted the goals, but could not summon up the inner strength to do it, and -- the point of this manifesto - - had ample intellectual apparatus to undermine his activities.
The point of this manifesto is that it is not intellectually possible to undermine his activities, and that instead we must force a credo of -- if we use Matt as the role model -- determination and intensity in order to succeed. Other role models may al so be possible, of course, but I will continue to tie this idea to its concrete source. If this again seems like a trivial bumper sticker, let me reiterate my own arrogance here: I am attempting to generate an imperative for action, based (of all things) on postmodernism. It is not a matter of internalizing discipline. It is a matter of living true to pragmatism itself, being a real post-post modernist.
Let me now move to some of the consequences of anti-irony. First, there is a presumed favoritism of productive spurring-on to passivity. Everyone must rest. But while a balance of yin and yang is essential, the theory is that for lazy people like me, more yang must be encoded in norms than yin. There is no favoritism of actual ethics of yang over yin. Romanticism may be more "soft" than being a Marxist carpenter, but anti-irony is not about adopting a fascist-sounding work ethic. (Indeed, the Prote stant work ethic is itself implicated in anti-Semitism, as I have written elsewhere.) Even if determination & intensity remain our adopted norms, we do well to remember the source: someone who was a tremendous lover of walks in the woods, enjoyment of li fe. Matt himself seemed to sense the tension between this aestheticizing impulse and the "cold rationalism" of Talmudic Judaism. Perhaps though if we detach ourselves from the Talmudic ideal itself, some of these tensions lessen. In any case, one must expect in this sort of role-model pragmatism that the conflicts of the model will replicate themselves in the lives of the modelers.
A second consequence of anti-irony is a delimiting of play. Play remains important to an anti-ironist, but it is not his or her foundational, defining activity. There are some chosen goals which will be seen as prior to play, and some "seriousness" may result. Seriousness is anathema to the ironist. But if this is a pragmatist seriousness, tempered by pluralism and liberalism, it may serve to animate one towards goals without falling prey to totalizing power claims.
A third consequence of anti-irony is a backing away from rhetoric, flourish, and the delicacies of wit. Speaking plainly, directly, sincerely, non-cynically, non-circularly: these are to be valued. Real connection with another person, rather than a mor e rigorous understanding of one's own contingency, is to be valued. It is perhaps less "truthful" and less close to the quicksand of critique on which we are, still, standing. But it works towards the projected pragmatist model. And thus it serves the aims -- whatever they are -- of the pragmatist herself.
A fourth consequence of anti-irony may be a somewhat puritanical turn in terms of ethics and self-discipline. To really discipline onesself does require a certain amount of dedication to the actual goal being pursued; it's hard to work hard for somethin g you hate. So there may be some lessening of the projected goals. This seems fine; those goals about which one legitimately does not care deserve slacker treatment. But I would have to guard against deceiving myself that I don't care about something t hat does really matter. For those things that do really matter, there might well be required unpleasant strictness -- but that is what struggle is. This may even be the case for sexual ethics; if I really believe that there is a link to holiness, well, then more strictness may be required. Likewise, if there is ethical value in helping others, it seems less tenable to remain self-involved. I do not think anti-irony has much to say on the substance of any of these questions. I am trying to articulate it only as a way of attacking the answers once they have been (provisionally) given.
Fifth and lastly, I think anti-ironism when matched with the models of determination and intensity abhors waste. Waste of time, waste of life, waste of resources, waste of opportunity. Waste seems the enemy of intensity, the opposite of living richly a nd fully towards the chosen end. Waste of energy, waste of potential, waste of time (again); these are almost crimes given, as we all now can feel, the limitedness of our days.
Finally, some non-consequences. I do not believe anti-irony itself has consequences on religious belief or practice, much as irony did not. Anti-irony may indeed increase involvement or dedication, which would likely impact belief and practice, but if religion is not itself a valued goal, it does not seem like anti- irony will make it one. Of course, I personally feel that it (religion, spirituality, amazement) is a valued goal, perhaps the highest valued goal, so the question does not develop itself, but I do not believe anti-irony to contain any religious imperatives. More broadly, anti-irony contains few substantive imperatives at all; the issue is much more one of method, process, character. Character, after all, is not a set of substantive conc erns or goals; it is a way of going about one's life, of relating to persons and objects in that life.
Of course this makes it possible for anti-irony to turn into skinhead style fascism, a protestant work ethic of anti-Semites. But real anti-irony has to demand the autonomy and respect due all humans, indeed all life.
For this last reason, much of this manifesto may seem like a psychoanalytic exhortation to be more like a person you admire. But I have hoped that it is more a philosophical defense of doing so as against self-reflexive irony. Because rhetoric (widely defined) and character are at the heart of the issues here, there is little in the way of "tachlis." But process yields tachlis, as Matt himself showed. Character, dedication, intensity -- these are not tachlis, not conclusions, not results. These are ways of getting results. And they seem to work. Hence they are more valid than irony.
In conclusion, I wonder aloud whether it is too early to presume anything like a real statement of ideological orientation. Probably it is. There is real pain here, and I have only undertaken the writing of this document because I believe that it does Matt's memory honor for people to grapple with issues in a way that he would've done in his life. Tonight was dedicated as a night of learning. I have not done so by opening up a shas. But I do hope that I have done honor to part of the ideals of learn ing which made Matt's life so beautiful, admirable, and, mamash, a blessing for all of us.
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