Irony has a suspicious moral reputation, especially in popular media and internet culture. Jonathan Lear (2011) introduces a proposal which challenges this suspicion and identifies irony as a means to achieve human excellence. For Lear, irony is a disruptive uncanniness which arises from a gap between aspiration and actualisation in our practical identity. According to Lear, such a disruptive experience of ironic uncanniness reorients us toward excellence, because it passionately propels us to really live up to that practical identity. However, Lear’s understanding of irony is idiosyncratic and his proposal overlooks that disruption often results from value incompatibility between different practical identities. The disruption which follows from value incompatibility does not inherently reorient us toward excellence. The point is exactly that achieving excellence in one practical identity is sometimes incompatible with excellence in the other. Pace Lear, I do not identify this disruptive experience as a central example of irony. Instead, I consider irony a virtuous coping strategy for such disruption, because it introduces the necessary distance from our moral imperfection to sustain practical deliberation and maintain good mental health. Such virtuous irony negotiates a golden mean between too little disruption (complete insensitivity toward one’s imperfection) and too much disruption (a complete breakdown of practical deliberation and mental health). I argue that ironic media in popular culture provide a rich source of such virtuous irony, which I demonstrate through analysis of satirical examples.

中文翻译：

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讽刺、破坏和道德不完美

讽刺具有可疑的道德声誉，尤其是在流行媒体和互联网文化中。乔纳森·李尔 (Jonathan Lear) (2011) 提出了一项提案，挑战了这种怀疑，并将讽刺视为实现人类卓越的一种手段。对于李尔来说，讽刺是一种破坏性的不可思议，它源于我们实际身份中的愿望和实现之间的差距。根据李尔的说法，这种具有讽刺意味的不可思议的破坏性体验将我们重新定位到卓越，因为它热情地推动我们真正实现这种实际身份。然而，李尔对反讽的理解是特殊的，他的提议忽略了破坏往往是由于不同实践身份之间的价值不兼容造成的。价值不相容所带来的破坏并不会固有地将我们重新定位到卓越。关键在于，在一个实际身份中实现卓越有时与在另一个方面的卓越不相容。Pace Lear，我不认为这种破坏性的经历是讽刺的中心例子。相反，我认为讽刺是应对这种破坏的一种良性策略，因为它引入了与我们的道德缺陷之间的必要距离，以维持实际的深思熟虑并保持良好的心理健康。这种善意的讽刺在过少破坏（对自己的不完美完全不敏感）和过多破坏（实际深思熟虑和心理健康的彻底崩溃）之间达成了黄金平衡。我认为流行文化中的讽刺媒体提供了这种良性讽刺的丰富来源，我通过对讽刺例子的分析来证明这一点。