Socratic Irony requires faith, however faint, that truth is worth uncovering, that dialogue can refine us, that ignorance exposed is a step towards wisdom. It is in a quiet way, optimistic. Even Socrates with all his feigned ignorance believed the soul could be improved by inquiry.
The modern cynical subject however has already lost that faith. He knows the game is rigged, the arguments are rehearsed, the participants are posturing.
Why bother uncovering truth when truth itself has become just another rhetorical prop? Thus sarcasm emerges, not as a fall from irony, but as its degenerate descendant.
Where Socratic irony says "let us peel away illusion," cynical reason signs, "everything is illusion so let me at least be entertaining while suffocating in it."
Sarcasm, then is irony that has given up on redemption. It keeps the form of intelligence (wit, inversion, distance) but abandons the purpose.
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