Motherhood in Ferrante's The Lost Daughter: A Case Study of Irony as Extraordinary Reflection

In A Case for Irony, Jonathan Lear aims to advance "a distinguished philosophical tradition that conceives of humanity as a task." I suggest that Elena Ferrante's The Lost Daughter illustrates the mode of ironic experience that interests Lear, and helps us assess his relation to a key contemporary proponent of this tradition—Christine Korsgaard. I explain why Lear's account of the phenomenology of ironic experience relies on Korsgaard's conception of practical thinking, but argue that he must reject her idea that reasons for action come from "practical identities" in order to make good on his conception of irony as radical reflection.