Voltairean irony

Voltaire (in pink) dining at Sans-Souci with Frédéric II (center)

Nothing defines Voltaire's style better than irony. But what exactly is irony, and is it only a matter of style ? To define what characterizes both the writing and the strategy of the Dictionnaire philosophique as ironic, we'll refer to the various traditions from which it draws.

Three hermeneutic models of irony : rhetoric, philosophy and psychoanalysis

The dissimulation (rhetoric of irony)

First of all, there is a rhetorical tradition of irony : Quintilian devotes a long development to it in Book IX of the Institution oratory, which will serve as the basis for the definition in Dumarsais's Traité des tropes, itself taken up and discussed by Beauzée in the article Ironie in the Encyclopédie. In this tradition, the Greek εἰρωνεία, translated into Latin as dissimulatio, appears essentially as an enunciative mask : the point of irony is to signify the opposite of what is said.

For example, at the end of the article Luxe, Voltaire describes the sartorial innovations that appeared at the Parlement de Paris :

" It was much worse when shirts and slippers were invented. We know with what fury the old councillors, who had never worn them, cried out against the young magistrates who gave in to this fatal luxury. " (P. 278.)

Evidently the invention of shirts and slippers¹ is no worse than that of cutting one's nails and hair², and it's hard to see how it constitutes a fatal luxury. The irony here consists in feigning to adopt the ridiculous point of view of the " old advisors ", in concealing Voltaire's apology for luxury beneath this impartable reprobation. Voltaire says the opposite of what he intends to mean, and it is in this contradiction that irony lies.

But this definition and rhetorical practice of irony, which demonstrates the virtuosity of its author, is itself based on a philosophical tradition of which it seems to constitute, in a way, no more than a technical reduction. Greek irony, Socratic irony, manifests itself only very secondarily as a concealment of the statement. It characterizes Socrates' posture, as he withdraws from the definition of concepts, about which he naively questions his interlocutors. The philosopher's falsely naive questioning is thus opposed to rhetorical dissimulation.

Falsely naive questioning (Socratic irony)

For example, at the end of the article God, the old man Dondindac, a simple man practicing the natural religion of the Scythians, thus questions the subtle Logomachos, who has come to assail him with Byzantine theology :

" Allow me in turn to ask you a question. I once saw one of your temples : why do you paint God with a big beard ? " (P. 166.)

If there is dissimulation here, it is not by mechanically reversing the statement that we arrive at meaning. Dondindac is really asking Logomachos this question, a question whose meaning is not revealed by a simple manipulation of the statement. If the question is ironic, it's because it's falsely naive : Logomachos has interrupted the prayer of the Scythians, whom he began by calling idolaters :

.

" What are you doing here, idolater ?" said Logomachos to him. - I'm not an idolater," said Dondindac. - You must be an idolater," said Logomachos, "because you're an idolater. /// Scythe, and you're not Greek. " (P. 163.)

Accused of idolatry because he doesn't practice revealed religion and doesn't know grace, Dondindac questions Logomachos about the representations of God he's seen in Christian churches. If Christians paint God " with a great beard ", God has for them a characteristic human physiognomy ; aren't these paintings, which contravene the second of the Ten Commandments (" Thou shalt not make images "), evidence of Christian idolatry ? The question is anything but naïve, especially when asked in a Byzantine apanage, a few centuries before the iconoclastic quarrel broke out. Here, a fundamental theological contradiction of Christianity  is pointed out: irony destabilizes belief, and the simple, concrete question calls into question the categories of discourse and thought that seemed most indisputable, such as here the opposition between Christianity and paganism, between monotheism and idolatry.

.

Ironic aggression (Freud and Lacan)

Irony, then, is not simply a game of wit : it engages in combat and, to do so, must strike blows at the opponent. There is an aggressive dimension to irony, which Freud identified in a book that is not directly about irony, but about a closely related linguistic phenomenon that proceeds from irony, Le Mot d'esprit et sa relation à l'inconscient (1905). This book was itself the subject of a commentary by Lacan in the Seminar V on The Formations of the Unconscious (1957-1958). Lacan introduces the notion of " pas-de-sens " and, with it, the graph of desire as a model of the articulation between signifier and signified in an economy that is not so much that of language as of desire. Although neither Freud nor Lacan mention Voltaire at any point in their analyses, the coincidence of the phenomena they describe and Voltaire's practice of irony emerges forcefully, as in this example from the article Christianisme (p. 127), which will be taken up again in the article Martyre (p. 280). It concerns the martyrdom of Saint Romain, reported by the Benedictine Dom Ruinart.

" This young Roman had obtained his pardon from Diocletian in Antioch. However, he says the judge Asclepiades condemned him to be burned. Some Jews present at this spectacle mocked the young Saint Romanus, and reproached the Christians that their God made them burn, he who had delivered Sidrac, Misac and Abdenago from the furnace  that immediately there arose, in the most serene weather, a storm which extinguished the fire  that then the judge ordered that they cut off the tongue of the young Romanus ; that the emperor's first physician, being present, unofficially acted as executioner, and cut out his tongue at the root  that immediately the young man, who had previously been a stammerer, spoke with great freedom  that the emperor was astonished that anyone could speak so well without a tongue  that the physician, in order to repeat this experiment, immediately cut out the tongue of a passer-by, who died suddenly. " (P. 127.)

There is no concealment or questioning in the account of this unlikely martyrdom. Yet the irony is obvious, and can be detected in the tone in which such a text should be read. Voltaire points out a succession of contradictions : if Diocletian had pardoned the young Roman, he couldn't have condemned him to be burned  if the weather was perfectly clear (" in the most serene weather "), a storm couldn't have broken out  if a storm did break out, it's hard to see how this would have obliged the judge to order Romain to have his tongue cut out we don't see what Diocletian's physician was doing there at the time (" the emperor's first physician, standing there "), nor why he substituted himself for the executioner (" unofficially performed the function of executioner "). But, of course, the nail in the coffin comes at the end: how did the young, tongue-tied stammerer come to speak volubly, and in Latin, the language of the emperor? /// of the emperor, even though the action takes place in Greek-speaking Antioch. What gratuitous tyrannical cruelty Diocletian would have ordered to repeat the operation on a passer-by is hard to see, and the only logical consequence of the whole story is the last one, that the latter " died suddenly ".

The ironic effect is produced by the cascade of absurd consequences against which the logical evidence of the fall, the passer-by's sudden death, contrasts violently.Voltaire proposed several variants of this story, including the one in the Martyre article, where the absurd consequences differ, but the effect is identical: here, the detail of the statement is irrelevant; what makes sense is the logical absurdity of the statement, which breaks and shatters the chain of signifiers. Every miracle is nonsense : such is the Voltairean message, which manifests itself as " meaning in nonsense³ ", i.e. as expression, as ironic signification from the absurd horror of a depreciated referent, the concrete absurdity of the hagiographic narrative pointing to, figuring another, abstract, ideological absurdity, that of the very idea of martyrdom.

Sense is thus established by a return effect on what was first stated as an absurdity : the first absurdity (the absurd horror of reality) then appears as figuration, as parodic stylization of a second absurdity (the fanaticism that Christian doctrine bears, implies), and it is this dimension of figuration (martyrdom for Christianity), which emerges with the awareness of the shift from the concrete to the abstract, that retrospectively produces meaning.

This retrospection is only possible thanks to the blockage produced by the logical absurdity of discourse. Absurdity blocks, knots the sequence of signifiers and establishes a brutal face-off between the hagiographic discourse, undermined, disseminated by Voltaire in fragmented propositions, in narrative crumbs, and the real seized in all its horror, of this monstrously barbaric succession of the stake, of the tongue cut out, first once, then a second.

This barbarity constitutes the meeting point of hagiographic discourse and Voltairian signifying intention, both of which mobilize it as figuration, a contradictory figuration of Christian meaning and nonsense. The ironic reversal of hagiography consists in deconstructing the (mystical, divine) meaning of martyrdom in order to support Voltaire's demonstration, his fight against the infamous, his denunciation of Christian imposture. The barbaric image is thus positioned between the instituted discourse it illustrates and dismantles, and the virtuality of a counter-discourse, for which it provides the argument. Paradoxically, it thus articulates the two antagonistic ideological positions.

These two severed tongues, moreover, not only represent the barbarity of a martyr ; they are exemplary as the brutal image of a severed discourse, and as the reversal of this barbaric cessation of the signifier into a new, ironic volubility. Ironic figuration is thus self-reflexive.

.

Irony pushes the image towards nonsense : not only is it absurd to speak with one's tongue cut out, but it's an absurd principle of government to cut out the tongue of a random passer-by in order to make comparisons : Voltaire thus shifts the nonsense from material, concrete absurdity to political, abstract absurdity.

Through this displacement, which constitutes the spring of ironic figuration, the hagiographic discourse is retrospectively deconstructed : it's not the miracle itself that annihilates it, but its senseless corollary, this second language cut, if you will, gratuitously. The Voltairian conclusion (itself ironic) can then build on this deconstruction:

.

" Eusebius, from whom the Benedictine Ruinart drew this tale, must have respected enough the true miracles worked in the Old and in the /// New Testament [...] so as not to associate them with such suspect stories."

The " true miracles " opposed to the " suspicious stories " appear to re-establish the Christian institution of discourse, but in fact cast doubt and suspicion on it. The principle of displacement that governs irony (from the concrete to the abstract, from the revolting to the reasonable, from transgression to institution) seems to guarantee a return to the norm, but in fact contaminates the norm it re-establishes : it was normal for the passer-by to die, but it's worrying that any passer-by could have his tongue cut out in this way ; the biblical account seems more trustworthy than the miracles peddled by Ruinart and Eusebius, but the absurdity of the latter casts doubt on the veracity of this one.

This contamination, which spawns a meaning that runs counter to the unfolding of the signifier, constitutes what Lacan calls the " pas-de-sens ", playing on the meaning of the pas : what irony triggers is both a jamming of discourse (a blockage forcing a return to the past, because it doesn't make sense) and the spawning of a counter-discourse (a step is taken towards another, subversive meaning, which is only sketched out) ⁴.

The pas-de-sens is not in itself ironic : but the deconstructive work, the ironic dissemination of the discourse of the Other (i.e., in the article Christianity, of the discourse of the Christian institution), constitutes the necessary prerequisite for the pas-de-sens. In this work, Freud identifies a principle of economy at the service of what he calls the " tendency "that is, the aggressive, denigrating intention of the message⁵, reversed by irony into a light, pleasant formulation⁶. This economy of means achieved for thought by the witz (i.e., more generally than just the witticism analyzed by Freud, the whole range of ironic accentuation phenomena in discourse) constitutes the great Freudian discovery : the principle of the ironic economy is in fact the same as that of the dream  it consists in performing the double operation of condensation and displacement on the serious discourse that constitutes the background, content, intention and tendency of the message, in other words, in bringing into play what Freud has previously identified as the grammar of the unconscious. Condensation collects the message in the charge of a point, a line  displacement is effected by means of figuration, i.e. metaphor from which irony operates its contamination.

.

The prelude to the pas-de-sens, the preparation of the witticism by means of the progressive ironic accentuation of the discourse, the path towards the blocking of the signifier, are indications that Voltairean speech must first pass through the downstream, through recourse to the Other it targets, to that Christian institution that holds the codes, the values, by which a discourse can be authenticated. Voltaire gives different figures to this Other of discourse: it's the theologian, the scholar, it's biblical texts, historical archives, the whole corpus through which Voltairean speech must pass to be authenticated as discourse⁷. The signifier calls, demands this authentication, but at the same time intends to turn it around, to unleash a revolt against it. It's a question of noting an institutional deficiency, a logical flaw, an absurdity, and then making up for this deficiency on the Other's side, on the subject's side, even on Voltaire's side. The return of the signifier to the message brings meaning out of nonsense, and changes the status of the subject, i.e. of Voltairean speech, which becomes discourse. The subject acquires what Lacan calls " the dimension of the Name-of-the-Father⁸ " and the process of /// is what he calls "the paternal metaphor " : metaphor is the figuration used in the process of witticism and, more generally, in the ironic accentuation of discourse. And this metaphor is called paternal because what it designates is the symbolic institution, the law of the Father, whose failure it points to. The symbolic institution is not, however, explicitly, frontally and directly targeted; the attack passes through the circuit of authentication by the Other, then of revolt: the signifier thus contradictorily contains the institutional discourse and the revolt against this discourse, the expression of the symbolic deficiency and, making up for this deficiency, the metaphor of the mot d'esprit. The subject producing the ironic reversal of discourse then takes on the symbolic dimension whose deficiency he has observed in the Other : he takes on the " Nom-du-Père ".

In other words, irony is an escamotage of the Father : it summons him, overthrows him, then supplements him by means of the metaphor it produces. We saw this process at work in Voltaire's relationship with the Jews⁹, then in his way of conjuring up tolerance, captured in a fundamentally unstable, spectral bipolarity, between the haunting of fanaticism and the invocation of " revolution in the minds "¹⁰.

The ironic conjuration : the Christianity article

Rhetoric, philosophy and psychoanalysis offer us three possible approaches to irony, three models of analysis. Rhetorical analysis defines irony as dissimulation : " one must hear the opposite of what is said ", writes Quintilian ; irony " expresses one meaning and implies another ".

Socratic practice defines irony as interrogation. In Book I of the Republic, Thrasymachus reacts violently to Socrates' approaching work (357a) :" there it is, the feigned ignorance [irony] usual to Socrates' questions, ἡ εἰωθυῖα εἰρωνεία Σωκράτους. [...] I had predicted that you would not consent to answer, but that you would feign ignorance [that you would ironize], εἰρωνεύσοιο, and that you would do anything rather than answer the questions you would be asked ". Socrates doesn't answer, doesn't develop a discourse coming from him, doesn't take responsibility for such a discourse. Instead, he asks his usual idiotic questions, ἡ εἰωθυῖα εἰρωνεία, i.e., he goes through the instance of the Other, through these ready-made, conventional discourses, through the δόξα conveyed by his interlocutor in order to turn this around and bring out the truth.

The third, psychoanalytical approach defines irony as a path, a spawning towards the pas-de-sens, i.e. as an accentuation of the absurdity of the real, which overturns instituted discourse, undermines it, and substitutes the jouissance of the spirit for the demand of discourse. This substitution involves ironic figuration, a figuration that psychoanalysis identifies with the paternal metaphor.

It would not be effective to dissociate in the analysis these three dimensions of irony - dissimulation, interrogation and figuration - which simultaneously contribute to the phenomenon. Instead, we will examine how they respectively intervene in a long article such as Christianity.

The ironic double bind

The subject Voltaire tackles in the article Christianisme is both central and undermined. There was no question of expressing too openly, directly, his aversion, his revolt against the Christian institution, for such talk leads to the stake ; but impossible, reciprocally, not to express this revolt, which constitutes the mainspring, the fundamental issue of the Dictionnaire philosophique. Voltaire places himself in a situation that compels him to articulate a discourse that he has no choice but to accept. /// impossible to enunciate : this situation of double constraint¹¹ can only be understood and analyzed by reference to the Other of Voltairian discourse, i.e. precisely to the Christian institution : not only the Church, but the beliefs, values, and above all the history it conveys into society as a substitute for the real.

From the outset, the article Christianisme presents itself as a response to a request formulated by this Other :

" Several scholars have marked their surprise at finding in the historian Josephus no trace of Jesus Christ ; for all true scholars agree today that the small passage where it is mentioned in his History is interpolated. " (P. 108.)

The surprise is ironic : it carries the falsely naive questioning of Socratic irony. The introduction is not : it cannot be read as an introduction, as a first speech. Voltaire propels us in medias res, into the heart of a demand that cannot be satisfied. One (the Other) asks scholars to scientifically establish the historical reality of Jesus Christ, because this historical reality must form the basis of a history of Christianity. This implicit demand is echoed in the article's subtitle, " Recherches historiques sur le christianisme " : the article responds to this demand for research, and responds in a doubly negative way. There is only one " small passage " in Flavius Josephus' History of the Jews where Christ is mentioned, and this passage is obviously a late and clumsy addition to the original text, a " pious fraud " forged by some Christian copyist to accredit a historical testimony after the fact¹².

Voltaire, however, states the facts in reverse : he first posits the surprise of several scholars and then only drops in an incise, like incidental evidence, what motivates this surprise : the mention of Christ in Josephus is interpolated. We now grasp what constitutes the expected discourse, which a true Dictionary would deliver, in the article Christianity : the historian Josephus mentions Jesus Christ in his History of the Jews in book xviii and book xx, in such and such a passage, and this testimony by a contemporary historian constitutes irrefutable proof of the historical truth of the facts reported in the Gospels.

How is the double constraint expressed here ? If Voltaire refutes Josephus' passage as interpolated, Josephus goes beyond the scope of the article : Josephus did not speak of Christ ; ad rem non pertinet. The refutation provokes withdrawal ; it does not constitute a response to the request  no discourse is constituted¹³.

Joseph's father, failing the father of the Church : the paternal metaphor

It's for this reason that Voltaire responds in reverse, shifting the emphasis of his speech not to the interpolation, ultimately kicked to the curb, but to the scholars' surprise : the Voltairian discourse engages not with Josephus' text, but with the lack in the text, and more precisely with surprise at this defect, this absence. And what absence are we talking about? Christ, that is, not the son of God, but the father of Christianity, the founder of the Christian church¹⁴. The discourse, or more precisely the irony of Voltairean discourse, is established on this surprise in relation to the paternal defect, the lack of the Father in the text.

To the father of Christianity, Voltaire then substitutes a father of junk, of fiction, the father of his deficient historian :

" Flavian Josephus's father must, however, have been one of /// these witnesses to all of Jesus' miracles"

Joseph and his father constitute the meeting point between instituted discourse, the discourse of the Other that authenticates the Christian institution, and Voltairian discourse, the rebellious discourse that refutes its legitimacy and denounces its imposture.

Irony is the response to the double constraint imposed by the demand underlying the article. Through Josephus, she provides the historical presence requested ; but she also provides proof of Christ's historical absence. The ironic discourse introduces the guarantor, the father figure, but in the negative form of an acknowledged absence. The discourse is constituted by the father's name, as a supplement to this absence :

" he says not a word either of the life or death of Jesus ; and this historian who conceals none of Herod's cruelties speaks not of the massacre of all the children, ordered by him, in consequence of the news to him, that he had been born a king of the Jews. " (P. 109.)

Gospel history is unfolded, but on a reversed front : not only is it denied, but the hierarchy of events is reversed, so that it is not the birth of Jesus, but the Massacre of the Innocents that is placed in the foreground : if " the Greek calendar counts fourteen thousand children slaughtered on this occasion¹⁵ " (p. 109), this horror is absurd since the one who should be the son of a privileged witness remains mute¹⁶ and does not exploit a cruelty of Herod worse than all the others he denounces.

Voices of irony : the conjuration of scholars

The ironic discourse thus constitutes itself, as it were, in two voices to respond to the double constraint whose demand it seeks to satisfy : it unfolds the " historical research on Christianity ", and it reverses this research by relying on the paternal metaphor : absence of the original symbolic principle (the historicity of Christ, the founder of the Christian institution), itself turned inside out into the horrifying principle of history, with the Massacre of the Innocents.

This doubling of the voice is made possible by the convocation, the conjuration of " savants ", who come to inhabit the space of the article and even structure its unfolding :

" Several scholars marked their surprise at... " (p. 108)
" Savants never cease to testify their surprise at seeing... " (p. 109)
" The same scholars still find some difficulties... " (ibid.)
" There is no point, they say... " (p. 110)
" The scholars have also greatly agonized over the difference... " (ibid.)
" They still form difficulties about what... " (ibid.)

Then the scholars are reduced to a more vague instance, to an indefinite " on " : " Il paraît que... " (p. 111)  " on connut " (p. 112) ; " on a quelque peine à expliquer " (p. 115) ; " on a condamné Lactance et d'autres Pères pour avoir supposé " (p. 117) ; " On reprocha aussi "... etc.

The point of the " on " is to confuse in the same instance Christian falsifiers of history (" on fabriqua cinquante évangiles ", p. 119 ; " on supposa encore des lettres de la Vierge "), and the debunking historian (" On peut douter de ce que Zosime rapporte à ce sujet ", p. 128  " On voit par cet exemple combien les évêques... ", p. 129).

This scholarly voice, which distances itself from instituted discourse, but in relation to which Voltaire himself places himself in the background and in a way clears his name, /// also appears in the article Moses :

" In vain many scholars have believed that the Pentateuch cannot have been written by Moses. They say that...... " (p. 303)
" Some contradicts add that... " (p. 304)
" Others more bold have made the following questions " (ibid.)
" These are pretty much the objections that scholars make to those who think that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch. But they are answered that... " (p. 307)

Voltaire notes " that there has been a revolution in the minds¹⁷ " and echoes it. The article introduces this critical and reproving murmur as a counterpoint to the established discourse. It draws on these discordant voices to deploy its irony. The ironic opening is provided by this detached voice, which is neither the discourse of the Other, nor yet fully assumed like Voltairian discourse. It's a conjuration that takes shape in the text, a reprobation that crystallizes, a revolt that's begun.

Submission to God : irony by antiphrase

Faced with this discordant, detached voice of the scholars that destroys the instituted discourse of the Church, Voltaire periodically recalls the symbolic interdict that frames the demand of the Other and sets the double constraint to which the article is subjected :

" God did not want these divine things to have been written by profane hands " (P. 109.)

It is in a sentence of this type that we can most easily rhetorically break down the ironic dissimulatio. Here, Voltaire parodically and caricaturally states his opponents' point of view as his own. Obviously, for Voltaire, no text has been or can be written by other than profane hands  God is not a person who expresses wills  finally, there are no " divine things ", distinct from other events, that would escape the common laws of history, testimony and the archive. So this sentence, which concludes the first development of the article, is properly an antiphrase.

The instituted voice expressed here contrasts violently with that of the scholars who mark their surprise and find difficulties. The ludicrous fullness of divine will contrasts with the no less ludicrous emptiness of historical testimony. The ironic accentuation here is at its height, but cannot be dissociated from the entire device that has prepared it from the article's entry : indeed, we have seen that this entry constitutes a shifted and even reversed response to the implicit demand implied by the title and subject.

This type of irony by antiphrase sets the double constraint : historical research into Christianity must establish the " divine things ", i.e. God's will. God's will is that " these divine things " cannot be established in a profane way, i.e. through historical research. The article is caught in this circle and produces irony by relying on this contradictory requirement (this double constraint), which is recalled several times :

" but all doubts and objections of this kind vanish, as soon as we consider the infinite difference that must be between divinely inspired books, and the books of men¹⁸. God wanted to shroud his birth, life and death in a cloud as respectable as it was obscure. His ways are in every way different from ours."

The more Voltaire asserts that doubts and objections vanish, the more they take on consistency. Irony by antiphrase proceeds from conjuration. Conjuring the specter of anti-Christian revolt from fading away, it gives consistency to that specter : the verb /// " s'évanouissent ", then the metaphor of the cloud that envelops Christ, imaginatively introduce the world of specters.

.

A few paragraphs later, we witness the same reiterated conjuration :

" But all these criticisms by scholars are confounded by faith, which becomes all the purer for it. The purpose of this article is solely to follow the historical thread, and to give a precise idea of the facts on which no one disputes. " (Pp. 110-111.)

Irony again manifests itself as dissimulatio rhetoric. Obviously, scholarly criticism is not confused by anything at all, and the purpose of the Christianity article is not simply to follow a historical thread that in any case only makes sense from the critical perspective of scholars. Nevertheless  the antiphrase is once again formulated in the form of a conjuration. Faith confounds critics  it conjures them up, it annihilates them as if chasing spectres. Between the discourse of faith and the discourse of the learned, Voltaire's words present themselves as a median and retreating path. Faced with the allegory of Faith confounding Criticism, Voltaire claims to follow a more modest path, a simple historical thread¹⁹. He contrasts facts (which are rather dismantlings of facts) with discourses, i.e. outbursts of reality (contradictions, aburdities, horrors) with outbursts of voices (vain arguments).

Chasing devils : double constraint and double conjuration

Strictly speaking, Voltaire's discourse can be said to unfold as a discourse assumed by Voltaire at this point in the article, from which Voltaire will no longer mention either scholars or God's will. The irony subsides for a while, but reappears again some ten pages later, in a different guise, when Voltaire discusses what distinguished Christians from other sects in the Roman Empire:

Voltairien's discourse can be said to be the discourse assumed by Voltaire at this point, from which Voltaire no longer mentions either scholars or the will of God.

" What most distinguished Christians, and what has lasted until our recent times, was the power to cast out devils with the sign of the cross. " (P. 123.)

Here it's Voltaire's false naiveté that produces the irony : feigning the scrupulous honesty of an imbecile compiler, Voltaire quotes Origen and then Tertullian to back up a twaddle. Not only does the reader not expect Voltaire to accredit Christians with the power to cast out devils with the sign of the cross, but this kind of belief, which discredits Christianity, could only be evoked in derision, by one of its opponents.The incise is particularly murderous : this power of Christians " has lasted until our recent times "  it has therefore ceased recently  it was therefore believed in, it was therefore claimed to be verified again not long ago : the most ridiculous superstitions still feed Christianity.

.

The passage to Tertullian allows Voltaire to force the line, to accentuate the glaring discordance of the falsely naive statement :

" Tertullian goes further, and, from the depths of Africa where he was, he says, in his Apologetics, in chapter xxiii  "If your gods do not confess that they are devils at the presence of a true Christian, we are willing that you shed the blood of this Christian." Is there a clearer demonstration ? " (P. 123.)

The ironic questioning isn't so much naive as scathing, revealing behind the absurd, zany statement Voltairian indignation at the fanatical barbarism of the Church Fathers, who send their terrorist cultists gratuitously to the rack. Strictly speaking, irony doesn't turn established discourse (Origen's, Tertullian's, the Church historians') into Voltairean discourse. Voltairean discourse exists only spectrally, in the ironic tremor of enunciation: it is an empty form that contains its opposite. Irony is nourished by barbarism /// of the real, it's the Christian horror that has to be represented, in an article Christianity where such representation is not appropriate, is forbidden. Between the signifier borne by the symbolic institution and the real that rebels against it, the discord is accentuated, creating and stretching the semiotic arc of Voltairean irony: the signified (the historical thread of discourse) thins, disappears. All that's left is the signifier (the word, Tertullian's delirious, fanatical vaticination) and the real (the Christians' race to the torture). The disappearance of the signified interface creates the pas-de-sens, triggers the semiotic arc.

Or the signifier, in its absurd horror, what does it image, failing to signify ? Christians have the power of conjuration  they cast out spectres (devils). And they do this by invoking, conjuring up Jesus. The conjuration is double  it summons the dead Father of the Church and it repels " the devils ", " your gods ", " the demons ", finally " the souls of the dead " : the paternal spectre is not far away.

The double bind of irony is thus superimposed on the double movement of conjuration and the logic of the supplement that installs, in the reversal of the signifying chain, the paternal metaphor. From the power of Christians to conjure spectres, Voltaire shifts to the power of Jews, from which we must understand, implicitly, that that of Christians proceeds :

" Indeed, Jesus Christ sent his apostles to cast out demons. The Jews in his day also had the gift of casting them out. " (P. 123.)

Or the first thing Voltaire tells us about Jesus, in this article, is that he was a Jew :" First, Jesus was born under the Mosaic law, he was circumcised according to this law, he fulfilled all its precepts, he celebrated all its feasts " (p. 111). The power to cast out demons comes from the Jews  power over spectres comes from the fathers of the Christians, and it is these fathers who, in him, are ridiculed and mocked. Irony dethrones the father, metaphorizing him in his bon mot.

From irony to wit : the article Judea

Irony and wit : the position of Enlightenment grammarians

The rhetorical definition of irony was the subject, at the time of the Encyclopédie, of a controversy between Beauzée, editor of the article Ironie, and Dumarsais, who had devoted a development to irony in the treatise Des tropes ou des différents sens²⁰.

" Quintilian distinguishes two especies of irony, one a trope, & the other a figure of thought. It is a trope, according to him, when the opposition of what one says to what one pretends to say, consists only in a word or two²¹ [...]. It is a figure of thought, when from one end to the other the discourse states precisely the opposite of what one thinks²² [...]. The difference Quintilian makes between these two species is the same as that between allegory and metaphor²³ [...].
. Isn't there some inconsistency here ? If the two ironies are to each other like metaphor & allegory, Quintilian must have²⁴ also regarded the first two especes as tropes, since he treated the last two in the same way. M. du Marsais, more consequent, considered the ironie only as a trope, for the reason that the words used in this figure are not taken, he says, in the literal sense: but has not this grammarian misunderstood himself? [...] it seems to me that in irony it is essential that /// each word be taken in its proper meaning  otherwise the ironie would no longer be an ironie, a mocquerie, a plaisanterie, illusio, as Quintilian says, literally translating the Greek noun εἰρωνεία. [...] It is the whole proposition  it is the thought which must not be taken for what it appears to be ; in a word, it is in the thought that the figure is. " (Beauzée, article Ironie in the Encyclopédie, tome VIII, published in 1766.)

Beyond its technical aspect, this controversy over the status of irony in the interplay between enunciation and utterance shows that it is impossible to dissociate irony from wit, and in any case that this dissociation, to which Quintilian tends, is rejected by all French grammarians of the Enlightenment, whether irony in general is seen as a trope, and more precisely as a kind of metaphor, like Dumarsais who insists on the manipulation of words, or whether on the contrary it is envisaged as a figure of thought, as Beauzée does by insisting on the general atmosphere of mockery, of joking that envelops the ironic proposition.

The legitimacy of the Freudian model of analysis

Because the eighteenth century practiced irony and mot d'esprit with the awareness of a unique and indissociable practice, we felt it legitimate to use Freudian and Lacanian analyses of witz to account for Voltairian irony, even if these analyses never deal with irony as such. We were reinforced in this by the unconcerted convergence of the psychoanalytic analysis of the witz and the rhetorical and philosophical traditions of irony : what Freud designates as " figuration ", Lacan as " paternal metaphor " converges with the kinship, spotted as early as Quintilian, between irony and metaphor, between irony and allegory. On the other hand, the falsely naïve questioning of the Socratic philosopher converges with the dimension of demand, spotted by Lacan as a prerequisite to the mot d'esprit, analyzed not as a primary discourse, but as a response to a double constraint which is precisely that in which the Platonic maieutic is inscribed, summoned to speak the truth, and placed in the impossibility of doing so.

We are, however, initially bewildered by the examples Freud gives of the witz, and their apparent remoteness from our French practice of the mind. The spirit relies on the most intimate mechanisms of language  untranslatable, it cannot technically manifest itself in the same way when we move from German, where the mechanics of compound words allow for inexhaustible play, to French, which is repugnant to such play. From this perspective, Beauzée's reaction in the article Ironie appeals to us as a reaction motivated by the very spirit of Enlightenment French, where the figure of thought takes precedence over the trope, where the substitutive mechanics are performed mentally rather than translated into a distortion of words.

Le famillionnaire

We propose to examine, from the point that closes the Judée article, whether a comparable mechanic is implemented by Voltaire and whether, although materially invisible, it proceeds from a logic similar to that of the famous " Famillionnaire " reported by Heine and analyzed by Freud²⁵.

If the histrionic Hirsch Hyacinth portrayed by Heine claims to have been treated by Rothschild " quite as his equal, in a quite famillionaire  manner", it's clear that the effect of the witticism is linked to " a mixed training, stemming from the blending of the two components "familiar" and "millionaire" ". But it's not the verbal mechanics per se that produce the effect of the witticism  it's, according to Freud, the thought that led to it, and whose expression this mechanics saves. This thought is as follows  Rothschild treated me in an entirely familiar way, or in /// In any case, at least, with all the familiarity a millionaire might be capable of towards a poor histrion like me, Hirsch Hyacinthe. This mocking and subversive restriction disappears in the final formulation, but a trace of it remains in the mixed formation of the famillionaire.

The article Judea

What is the article Judea  about now? The whole article is stretched between the symbolic representation of the promised land, carried by the biblical text, and the arid destitution of real Judea, for which Voltaire multiplies comparisons. Between " the promised land ", the " fertile shores of the Euphrates and the Nile ", the " land of honey and milk²⁶ " and " the stony country ", " les montagnes pelées ", " le rebut de la nature ", " ce détestable pays ", between the symbolic and the real, Voltaire reveals the discord, the gap that prepares the semiotic arc, realized here in the final stroke :

" Adieu, mes chers Juifs ; je suis fâché que terre promise soit terre perdue. "

The line echoes a phrase that prepares it :

" Promising and keeping are two, my poor Jews. "

" mes chers Juifs " ironically repeats " mes pauvres Juifs ", which first formulated the address in the form of sarcasm. " Pauvres " is turned back into " chers " : this is the ironic reversal.

" Promise and hold are two " should similarly be paralleled with " let promised land be lost land ", which contains the same idea, but, in the form of the statement, reverses " hold " into " lost ".

More globally, " promising and keeping are two " on the other hand cynically turns a well-known and more comforting adage : thing promised, thing due²⁷. " Promising and keeping are two " therefore means that, contrary to the adage, something promised is not something due. The sarcasm overturns the instituted discourse for the first time, before itself being overturned by the final line, which in a way synthesizes the adage and its cynical denial.

" Chose promise chose due ", transposed in the case of Judea, naturally becomes " terre promise, terre due ", to which the Jews firmly cling with all their hope. But " promising and keeping are two " : the line breaks, shatters, reverses this hope by adding to " due " a prefix that cancels out its symbolic efficacy. This added " per- " alone concentrates the stroke.

thing	promise	thing		due
	promise	and hold	are	two
land	promise	land	per-	-due

 

It's a matter of saying that " promising and keeping are two ", i.e. they constitute a pair, and at the same time they don't constitute this pair, since one no longer goes without the other. The word pair constitutes a compromise formation between the adage and its negation, between instituted discourse and its /// monstrous refutation. " Per- " thus satisfies the double constraint with which all ironic discourse is confronted.

But we shouldn't confine ourselves here to the formal mechanism that presides over this condensation and verbal economy. Basically, the lost land points to the absence of the fatherly God who promised Israel to the Jews. And this father, who disappears in meaning, reappears in form, as the Nom-du-Père, as the " per- " of perdue.

The stroke is a matter of unconscious intention and, through the caricatured figure it creates of the Father, whom it reduces to a phantom of signifier, it simultaneously satisfies the demand of the symbolic institution and rejects this demand, turning it against itself, substituting for it the metaphor of a desire, this desire for a promised land which, summoned up, walked through the circuit of the signifier throughout the article Judea, vanishes in the stroke at the end.

" Promised land, lost land " is not just a cruel line : it's a formula that condenses many things, both " thing promised, thing due ", the implicit demand, and " promising and keeping are two ", the insolent response to that demand. The pleasure we derive from the line, not without sadism, is intimately linked to this condensation, by which the per- de perdue, the final word, picks up all the previous elements of the discourse, the pair of " promettre et tenir sont deux " and the Father of the promise, the God of Abraham. This promising father, implied by the biblical reference but totally evacuated from the text of the article, manifests itself in the music of the language, and in a way returns musically at the moment when the feature crystallizes : the alliteration is indeed evident from " terre pr- " to " terre per- ". The " per " of terre perdue echoes the promised land in the statement of its disappearance. It makes the signifier of the promise resonate at the moment when it vanishes : the alliteration perpetuates the promised land like an echo, a haunting, a spectre  this spectre of the Father on which Voltaire bases his irony and never ceases to retell his deep, haunting disappointment.

.

Notes

What does the trait d'esprit  do here? It indicates nothing more than the very dimension of the not as such, strictly speaking. It's the step, if I may say so, in its form. It's the step emptied of any kind of need. This is what, in the witticism, can nevertheless manifest what in me is latent in my desire, and it's something that can find an echo in the Other, but not necessarily. In the witticism, the important thing is that the dimension of the pas-de-sens is taken up again, authenticated.

This is what displacement corresponds to. " (Jacques Lacan, Seminar V. Les Formations de l'inconscient, 1957-1958, chap. 5, " Le peu-de-sens et le pas-de-sens ", Seuil, 1998, pp. 98-99.)

Freud in fact insists on the fundamental implication of the " third person " in the mot d'esprit : " Everything whose aim is to obtain a gain in pleasure is calculated, in the mot d'esprit, in terms of the third person, as if, in the first person, insurmountable obstacles stood in the way of such a gain in pleasure. One has, in this way, the complete impression that this third person is indispensable to the accomplishment of the process of the mot d'esprit. " (Freud, Le Mort d'esprit..., op. cit., B, V, p. 282.)

But with the Other, Lacan deepens the Freudian analysis : where Freud insists on this need that drives us to tell others about our own witticisms, which we ourselves cannot laugh at, Lacan introduces the Other, who is not so much the interlocutor /// and, through him, the social institution challenged and targeted by the mot d'esprit. This notion is particularly relevant when it comes to Voltaire : to whom are the articles in the Dictionnaire  addressed? To the reader, of course (Freud's third person), whose complicity and approval they seek ; but they do so by targeting, by challenging through him the religious institutions, dogmas and superstitions in which the reader is inscribed : this is the Lacanian Other.

Or this dimension beyond is none other than that of the Law, of the symbolic institution, that is, what makes the difference between what Freud simply named the " third person " and what Lacan designates as " the Other ". "The Other also has beyond him this Other capable of giving foundation to the law. It is a dimension which, of course, is also of the order of the signifier, and which is embodied in people who will support this authority. [...] What is essential is that the subject, from whatever side, has acquired the dimension of the Nom-du-Père. " (Lacan, Séminaire V, op. cit., VIII, 2, p. 155.)

.

With these two simultaneous messages, Lacan returns, as it were, to the rhetorical definition of irony, all but ignored by Freud. On the double bind, see Gregory Bateson, " Towards a /// therapy of schizophrenia ", Palo Alto, 1956, reprinted in Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, San Francisco, Chandler Pub. Co. 1972 (repr. University of Chicago Press, 1999), French trans. Vers une écologie de l'esprit, 2 vols. 1977-1980, Seuil.

There are, however, two other mentions of Christ in Josephus, notably cited by the Journal helvétique in 1766 in its comments on Voltaire's Christianisme article. This one, for example: " Hanne the younger, who had received the sovereign pontificate, was of impetuous and supremely audacious temperament; he belonged to the party of the Sadducees, who in their judgments are very harsh among all the Jews, as we have already shown. With such a character, Hanne felt the time was right, given that Festus was dead and Albinus was still traveling. He summoned the Sanhedrin judges and brought before them the brother of Jesus called the Christ - his name was James - along with others. He accused them of having transgressed the Law and handed them over to be beheaded " (Flavius Josephus, History of the Jews, xx, 197-203.

Today, the question of authenticity or interpolation is still controversial. For example, according to Earl Doherty (Jesus Puzzle : Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ ?, 2005), the passage in italics is said to be interpolated from Matthew I, 16. But the interpolation thesis continues to be refuted by some writers close to the Vatican (Vittorio Messori, Hypothèses sur Jésus, Mame, 1995, p. 202 ; Vittorio Messori published a series of interviews with Cardinal Ratzinger, future Benedict XVI, in 1985).

Voltaire devoted two chapters (45 and 46) in vitriol to Flavius Josephus in the Philosophie de l'histoire (1765). He refers to Josephus among the Romans " as a wretched defector who told them ridiculous fables " and invited them to " discern the absurd fables of Josephus, and the sublime truths which Holy Scripture announces to us " ; " this absurd tale of the novelist Josephus was not, it seems to me, to be copied by Rollin ". But there is no mention of Christ in these chapters. (See Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs, ed. R. Pomeau, Garnier, t. 1, pp. 160-165.)

" A famous Lutheran from Germany (it was, I think, Melanchton) found it very hard to digest that Jesus had said to Simon Barjone, Cepha or Cephas  "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my assembly, my Church." He could not conceive that God would have used such a pun, such an extraordinary point, and that the power of the pope was founded on a quolibet. " (P. 327.)

.

By opposing his irony to the instituted allegory, Voltaire thus in a way defeats himself, and in another way satisfies the demand whose framework he has set by the discourse he has summoned. Irony, then, is not a kind of allegory, but rather an allegorical conjuration that both summons and repudiates it. Voltaire thus responds to the double constraint he has imposed on himself.

///