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The Concept of Irony: With Continual Reference to Socrates/Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures
A work that "not only treats of irony but is irony," wrote a contemporary reviewer of "The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates." Presented here with Kierkegaard's notes of the celebrated Berlin lectures on "positive philosophy" by F.W.J. Schelling, the book is a seedbed of Kierkegaard's subsequent work, both stylistically and thematically. Part One concentrates on Socrates, the master ironist, as interpreted by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes, with a word on Hegel and Hegelian categories. Part Two is a more synoptic discussion of the concept of irony in Kierkegaard's categories, with examples from other philosophers and with particular attention given to A. W. Schlegel's novel "Lucinde" as an epitome of romantic irony.
"The Concept of Irony" and the "Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures" belong to the momentous year 1841, which included not only the completion of Kierkegaard's university work and his sojourn in Berlin, but also the end of his engagement to Regine Olsen and the initial writing of "Either/Or."
"The Concept of Irony" and the "Notes of Schelling's Berlin Lectures" belong to the momentous year 1841, which included not only the completion of Kierkegaard's university work and his sojourn in Berlin, but also the end of his engagement to Regine Olsen and the initial writing of "Either/Or."
664 pages, Paperback
First published September 29, 1841
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About the author
Søren Kierkegaard
1,104 books6,241 followersSøren Aabye Kierkegaard was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard strongly criticised both the Hegelianism of his time and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Church of Denmark. Much of his work deals with religious themes such as faith in God, the institution of the Christian Church, Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. His early work was written under various pseudonyms who present their own distinctive viewpoints in a complex dialogue.
Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of his works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted". Scholars have interpreted Kierkegaard variously as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, and individualist.
Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, he is an influential figure in contemporary thought.
Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of his works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted". Scholars have interpreted Kierkegaard variously as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, and individualist.
Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, he is an influential figure in contemporary thought.
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August 12, 2017
This work is in some ways a necessity to any who are serious about reading and thinking through the works of Kierkegaard. For it is the clavis to all his later writings, containing the nascent themes and ideas that would later ripen throughout Kierkegaard’s life, finally coming to fruition in his pseudonymous works. All of the seeds for Kierkegaard’s thought and writings can be found here, still in kernel form, planted in the soil of what he terms irony.
When Kierkegaard acknowledged his authorship late in his short life he did not include this work as a part of said authorship, as part of his calling. The Concept of Irony is preparatory for his life’s work. It opens up and reveals the way for all that would come after – all that had to be lived and suffered, not just thought, in order to gestate through the passion of existence into the infinity of thought. The principle that ties these diverse elements, these multifarious threads, together is that of irony – the expressive element at the heart of all of Kierkegaard’s writings and at the heart of his life.
But what is this irony to which Kierkegaard devotes his thesis, which obviously holds much importance to the man for it influenced all of his later writings as well? Before addressing this question, we must make a slight detour, a side note, and address the Schelling lecture notes that are appended to this volume. They are grafted on here not because they have any particular relation to the dissertation, but simply because they fall chronologically into the same frame as the former work. These lecture notes that Kierkegaard took will not be addressed in this review beyond this point; they are of interest to Schelling scholars and those interested in German Idealism, but they offer little to the understanding of Kierkegaard’s thought. Kierkegaard wrote of how he was initially enthusiastic about the lectures and their topic, but his interest quickly waned, and the notes that are provided in this volume are not even complete, due to the fact that Kierkegaard quit his attendance of the lectures before their conclusion. To the problem of irony then.
Part of the problem or the difficulty of pinning down and defining irony is that it is rooted in the negative; its roots are uprooted, nomadic, and transitory. It is a moving, mobile principle which refuses to come to rest and be cemented into any one presentation. Irony evades presence – its speech is always a multiple speech, hesitant to settle on any one side. It finds its place in the between-space, the nowhere of the atopoi. Irony is in this sense anterior to any decision, any formulation and cemented formation of the self through positing definition. Perhaps it could be said that irony opens up the abyss of origin, through a creative-destruction, opening onto the possibility that undergirds and undermines the actual, the positive.
Of course, one cannot enter into the text of Kierkegaard without addressing Hegel. Though Kierkegaard ever strove against Hegel and his System, his thought and language is inundated by and immersed in the Hegelian. The way out is always through. Here, so early on in his life, Kierkegaard was yet to break away from the shadow of Hegel (a fact that he later bemoans in his journal regarding this early work). However, as with many of the great topics of Kierkegaard’s work, the seeds for the break can be found fertile herein as well. For through irony Kierkegaard views the possibility of turning away from the universal, the general, the concept, towards the individual and freedom.
The title of this work is slippery, for the concept of irony is no concept at all – making its place in the non-place, outside the Absolute as anterior to and always yet-to-come, it not only founds the spiritual dialectic, but also clears the space for an-other way – a movement outside of any dialectic. But we are getting ahead of ourselves – let us return to Hegel.
In a sense, Kierkegaard founds his understanding of irony upon Hegel’s definition of it as infinite negativity. In his lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel describes irony as a voidal element that vacuously empties out the actual, the objective, by way of the subject as absolute. Kierkegaard takes this idea of irony as mediating moment and deflects or detours it outside of the dialectic – outside of the realm of the useful, of action and utility. Having no purpose besides itself, irony acts, without acting (outside of actuality), as the expression of individuating freedom. This freedom, the unbinding through the negative that also works to upbuild outside the objective, is enacted through questioning. Irony is infinite negativity – endless questioning, setting all to wander in the open space of the question. It does not say what it means – this is the nature of irony – its statements state nothing, posit nothing (even saying that irony is infinite negativity says nothing about it – it presents it as an absence, posits it as a vacuous void), but rather cause all to fall into question, to be negated (insofar as it is positive, known, answered). And it is within this negativity, this void of not-yet, that one may seek to discern the origin which is an absence – the absence of origin; the empty space which opens possibility. Rendering everything questionable through its infinite negativity, destroying the stable sense of the positive, all is cast back into the awaiting abyss, where it demands to be thought – the creative thought which does not posit another answer, but seeks to maintain the opening of the question in all its questionability, and thus to enliven the differential possibilities of existence.
The infinite negativity of irony opens up thought through the question, but there are different ways that one may ask the question; different modes of questioning; differing paths upon which one may embark upon the incitation of the quest. Kierkegaard notes two such ways if questioning. The first is the speculative manner, that of Hegel, which asks the question in order to attain the answer, the fullness, which it already presupposes and pre-posits in the questioning – a teleological questioning which is hardly a questioning at all, the question being only a means to the sought answer. The other mode of questioning that Kierkegaard notes is what he considers the ironic mode of questioning, which “sucks out the apparent content by means of the question” (36), leaving an emptiness, overfull with possibility. Such an ironic questioning demands a response that is no answer (no content, no contentment), but only leads deeper into the abyss by way of further questioning. Such a questioning opens onto the infinite, inciting the exigency of an errant thought. Possibility is held open rather than being closed off and enclosed within an actuality – through this questioning, difference is granted play. Thus, through its destructive negativity, does this questioning revolve into a creative play, an infinite motion outside the dialectical path (the infinite negation shatters the teleological-dialectical current into a multiplicity of alternate moments of flourishing or becoming, through the impulsive impetus of the question).
Irony, for Kierkegaard, is not just another rung on the dialectical ladder of Spirit – its infinite negativity cannot be negated and thus translated into a higher positing. In a manner of speaking, irony is a position that is no position; it is a deposition, displacing the authority of the subject by attesting to its absence, revealing an absence in the place of all presence. As Kierkegaard writes, irony “continually cancels itself: it is a nothing that devours everything, and a something one can never grab hold of, something that is and is not at the same time” (131). Irony speaks silence, rupturing and revealing the obscure absence at the origin of all presence. It is incomprehensible, slipping outside of any objectification or attempt at conceptualizing it and placing it within the System. Irony moves outside the System, founding it while also subversively laying the trap that unweaves it and causes it to crumble in upon itself. As we shall see, irony is at the heart of the singular individual, yet denies all subjectivity and selfhood – it posits the existent in Being while at the same time denying it and compelling it to wander outside of Being; a writing that is also an erasure, a double writing. As the abyssal absence of origin, the impossible absence from whence all possibility springs, irony enacts the freedom of beginning, unhindered by actuality. As creative freedom, irony could be called poetic – in its infinitely attempted beginnings at the impossible speech of the silent, the singular, different from every generality, residing nowhere yet ever impinging upon us with its urgent demand for response. Such a creativity shatters and fragments Truth and its unity – rupturing the illusion in attempts at bearing the multiplicity of “truths” which reside at a distance from any center. This creative freedom of irony, as stated before, is free because it exists for none but itself – an expression of freedom, for freedom alone. The infinite negativity of the question is taken up ever and again, each time beginning anew, in order to open up the space to engage in differentiation, to inundate the self with otherness, diluting and dissolving it in attempts at nearing its depths, its origin – the impossible possibility that the infinite negativity implies; the death that haunts the self and allows for its further iterations, opening its differential possibilities.
Having set forth a general, though non-general and non-generalizable, definition of irony, let us follow Kierkegaard as he descends into its heart, its questioning, by pursuing the elusive figure who perhaps best expresses the relations of irony and questioning to endless beginning, non-knowledge, and divinity – let us trail Kierkegaard as he seeks the trace of irony through Socrates, the figure who haunts the entirety of this work, even when it is not continually referring to him (or the absent place or space of which his fabled name covers the trace).
Socrates is perhaps the (negative-) ideal figure of irony – he continually disappears, everything we think we know about him crumbles when set into question, revealing the negative, the absence at the heart of his existence. Socrates’ existence was in question – questioning, and thus disappearing, he was. (Did not Russell, however much in jest, not suggest that perhaps Socrates never existed in reality – that his reality is a nothing, an unreal, or perhaps better, a surreality?)
As noted earlier, the beginnings of Kierkegaard’s lifelong work at and for individuality, the passionate sufferings of expressing the individual life in the wake of the universal and the all-encompassing generality of the System, finds its grounds in the negative figure, the haunting shadow, the vociferous silence that is Socrates. For as Kierkegaard notes on page 167, as Hegel himself said (in a very un-Hegelian utterance), “with Socrates it is not so much a matter of speculation as of individual life”; it is not the general or the conceptual that is the issue, but the singular existence which ruptures history, leaving a blank, a hole, a grand question in the place of rupture, the wound, which has fascinated ever since. Socrates’ position was not one – his existence resided in the motion of the question, the infinite beginning anew, again, again, once more though differently. He is nothing in the universal sense – he embodies the present-absence of the singular existence, of the individual, standing out, exiled in existence outside of the grasping comprehension of the concept in its binary and dialectical structures. The ironic questioning of Socrates destroys all knowledge through the divine wind which blows away the empty fragments of knowledge, inciting dissolution in all structures through the process of erosion – this wind or winding, labyrinthian questioning aiming towards what is for knowledge simply nothing, outside all of its all-encompassing and totalizing bounds – that is to say, the singular. Socrates embodies, however spectrally, the singular individual. He is the enigma that fascinates history, for he ever eludes its grasp. Kierkegaard seeks this impossibility – the singular, individual life, through tracing the shadow of Socrates through its silence by way of irony. For irony, in its infinitely negative manner, is a saying that attempts to tempt forth the unspeakable. This unspeakable passion of the individual life is the beginning and end of Kierkegaard’s thought, of his entire project as a life. Socrates haunts all of Kierkegaard’s writings, remaining a symbol of the inciting element of thought. But why Socrates? Why not some other thinker or questioner – for Socrates was not the first to think or question, even in the manner which is considered “philosophical”. This is true, but there is something incessantly incipient, ever beginning anew, that opens up and arises with Socrates. Irony, says Kierkegaard, is the key to this infinite incipiency – it opens up the impossibility that enshrouds Socrates’ life. For the irony of Socrates’ life is that we know nothing about it, really, and yet it is contained within the vacuity of his irony – in his questioning. His existence is in question, then, as the negative movement of the question – it is this nothing. Socrates was and ever remains “the nothing from which the beginning must nevertheless begin” (198), as Kierkegaard points out, ever again. The existence of Socrates, this nothing, has already gone before us, yet it is also ever yet to come – the untimely existence of Socrates shatters history, as does that of every truly singular individual.
Early on in this work, Kierkegaard writes that with Socrates it is not what he says that is of import as much as it is “this empty space, this nothing, [which] hides that which is most important” (19). This hiding is of course not a simple reservation, but is an obscured revelation – the questioning is what matters over what is questioned, for it clears the space of actuality. It is not the content of Socrates’ speech that is important as much as it is how it is spoken – questioningly and ironically. The quality surpasses the quantity, opening the depths of this singular existence. Thankfully this is the case, for we do not possess any of Socrates’ actual words (Socrates was not a writer; he was in many ways a grand eraser, which of course does not entirely efface what has been written, but always leaves a trace, some indentations or shavings, perhaps a line here or there, upon the page). All that we have of Socrates are expressions which attempt to capture the elusive style and questioning of the man. Kierkegaard runs through the three figures of Socrates that have been constructed and passed down to us, noting how it would be a fallacious folly to assume that any one of the three, or even a combination of the trio of expressions (which would be inherently contradictory, given the variances between the three representations), expresses the “truth” of Socrates as a life – as a singular and individual existence. Xenophon falls shortest in his portrayal of Socrates because he cannot get beyond the actuality that Socrates negates. He glimpses only the deceptive surface of Socrates, locating him in the empirical and the useful, making Socrates highly understandable, relatable, and even at times ascribing to him a positive doctrine. Kierkegaard views this as reducing Socrates to absurdity, failing to alight upon Socrates at all – Xenophon erects a fiction in the place of the rapturous absence of Socrates. According to Kierkegaard, Xenophon “eliminat[es] all that was dangerous in Socrates” (19), stripping him of his revolutionary freedom founded in the abyss that is opened by the question. For Xenophon’s Socrates is a man of answers and of traditional Greek morality – hardly the disruptive and dangerous revolutionary whose negative revolt cast him headlong into death. Plato does a better job of handling the slippery question, according to Kierkegaard, but his failing comes from his dialectical nature. For Plato goes beyond Socrates, negating his negations in order to work through Socrates towards his own thought. Abandoning Socrates in his infinite negativity, Plato progresses onward and upward to the Ideal. But this negation of negative negates Socrates – the positive, though ideal, figure that remains beneath the name of Socrates is purely Plato. And, finally, there is Aristophanes, whom Kierkegaard, perhaps surprisingly, believes comes closest to expressing the negativity of Socrates. The comedic presentation of Socrates brushes all thought aside, focussing purely on the irony of his existence. Aristophanes presents Socrates ironically, as an ironic figure – and while he fails to comprehend Socrates as a thinker and questioner, he manages to present, ironically, the ironic side of Socrates – the element that cannot be said or represented in its singularity; the negativity that negates even its own presentation.
So much for the historical representations of Socrates that we possess. But how are we to attempt to delve any further, to approach the singular existence of Socrates that is so lithe and subtle? Kierkegaard attempts this motion by engaging the irony that Socrates employed, by bringing it into question, in attempts at opening the voidal abyss and to perhaps tempt Socrates out from its absent heart wherein he abides. One of the first things that one alights upon as they follow Socrates in his questioning is that he never pursued it alone. Socrates’ questioning was always undertaken dialogically, with the other, in the between-space of the two. The abyss of possibilities that opened up through his questioning was not for Socrates alone – it always involved the other as well. Socrates’ art of questioning is directed away from himself, towards the other. This can be viewed in opposition to the Sophists answering of questions at all costs (and always at a cost), which attests to the greedy possession of knowledge. Answers tend, through knowledge, towards the static unity of the One, the self-centric central self; the emptiness of the absolute abstraction. As Kierkegaard figures it, the Sophists speak, but they do not converse (33). Socrates, in his questioning, is always engaged in a conversation with the other, which is open and opening onto the infinity that the other’s difference entails. Questioning tends towards the other, as it is enacted through the passive action of listening, which takes up the demand of silence through response (which differs radically from the answer).
By engaging in this listening-response, questioning lurches from out of the destruction of the infinitely negative, towards its creative element – the infinite possibility that it engenders. This infinite creativity, boundless creation – could this not be called the divine? We will hazard such a dangerous, symbolic signification – symbolic, for that which moves beneath this name is the unnameable: this appellation seeks to designate the insignificant source of all signification; the silence that allows speech; the overfull emptiness which grants the space of revelation and disclosure. It is this divinity, this call to prolific creation from out of ruinous destruction – the demand to live – that compels Socrates to question. For it is his daimonion that sets him out on his divine mission, his questioning quest. And this daimonion, Kierkegaard notes, denotes something that is “above definition, is unutterable and indescribable, since it allows no vocalization” (158). The divine, which exceeds the limits of signification and representation, finding its place in the absence of sig
When Kierkegaard acknowledged his authorship late in his short life he did not include this work as a part of said authorship, as part of his calling. The Concept of Irony is preparatory for his life’s work. It opens up and reveals the way for all that would come after – all that had to be lived and suffered, not just thought, in order to gestate through the passion of existence into the infinity of thought. The principle that ties these diverse elements, these multifarious threads, together is that of irony – the expressive element at the heart of all of Kierkegaard’s writings and at the heart of his life.
But what is this irony to which Kierkegaard devotes his thesis, which obviously holds much importance to the man for it influenced all of his later writings as well? Before addressing this question, we must make a slight detour, a side note, and address the Schelling lecture notes that are appended to this volume. They are grafted on here not because they have any particular relation to the dissertation, but simply because they fall chronologically into the same frame as the former work. These lecture notes that Kierkegaard took will not be addressed in this review beyond this point; they are of interest to Schelling scholars and those interested in German Idealism, but they offer little to the understanding of Kierkegaard’s thought. Kierkegaard wrote of how he was initially enthusiastic about the lectures and their topic, but his interest quickly waned, and the notes that are provided in this volume are not even complete, due to the fact that Kierkegaard quit his attendance of the lectures before their conclusion. To the problem of irony then.
Part of the problem or the difficulty of pinning down and defining irony is that it is rooted in the negative; its roots are uprooted, nomadic, and transitory. It is a moving, mobile principle which refuses to come to rest and be cemented into any one presentation. Irony evades presence – its speech is always a multiple speech, hesitant to settle on any one side. It finds its place in the between-space, the nowhere of the atopoi. Irony is in this sense anterior to any decision, any formulation and cemented formation of the self through positing definition. Perhaps it could be said that irony opens up the abyss of origin, through a creative-destruction, opening onto the possibility that undergirds and undermines the actual, the positive.
Of course, one cannot enter into the text of Kierkegaard without addressing Hegel. Though Kierkegaard ever strove against Hegel and his System, his thought and language is inundated by and immersed in the Hegelian. The way out is always through. Here, so early on in his life, Kierkegaard was yet to break away from the shadow of Hegel (a fact that he later bemoans in his journal regarding this early work). However, as with many of the great topics of Kierkegaard’s work, the seeds for the break can be found fertile herein as well. For through irony Kierkegaard views the possibility of turning away from the universal, the general, the concept, towards the individual and freedom.
The title of this work is slippery, for the concept of irony is no concept at all – making its place in the non-place, outside the Absolute as anterior to and always yet-to-come, it not only founds the spiritual dialectic, but also clears the space for an-other way – a movement outside of any dialectic. But we are getting ahead of ourselves – let us return to Hegel.
In a sense, Kierkegaard founds his understanding of irony upon Hegel’s definition of it as infinite negativity. In his lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel describes irony as a voidal element that vacuously empties out the actual, the objective, by way of the subject as absolute. Kierkegaard takes this idea of irony as mediating moment and deflects or detours it outside of the dialectic – outside of the realm of the useful, of action and utility. Having no purpose besides itself, irony acts, without acting (outside of actuality), as the expression of individuating freedom. This freedom, the unbinding through the negative that also works to upbuild outside the objective, is enacted through questioning. Irony is infinite negativity – endless questioning, setting all to wander in the open space of the question. It does not say what it means – this is the nature of irony – its statements state nothing, posit nothing (even saying that irony is infinite negativity says nothing about it – it presents it as an absence, posits it as a vacuous void), but rather cause all to fall into question, to be negated (insofar as it is positive, known, answered). And it is within this negativity, this void of not-yet, that one may seek to discern the origin which is an absence – the absence of origin; the empty space which opens possibility. Rendering everything questionable through its infinite negativity, destroying the stable sense of the positive, all is cast back into the awaiting abyss, where it demands to be thought – the creative thought which does not posit another answer, but seeks to maintain the opening of the question in all its questionability, and thus to enliven the differential possibilities of existence.
The infinite negativity of irony opens up thought through the question, but there are different ways that one may ask the question; different modes of questioning; differing paths upon which one may embark upon the incitation of the quest. Kierkegaard notes two such ways if questioning. The first is the speculative manner, that of Hegel, which asks the question in order to attain the answer, the fullness, which it already presupposes and pre-posits in the questioning – a teleological questioning which is hardly a questioning at all, the question being only a means to the sought answer. The other mode of questioning that Kierkegaard notes is what he considers the ironic mode of questioning, which “sucks out the apparent content by means of the question” (36), leaving an emptiness, overfull with possibility. Such an ironic questioning demands a response that is no answer (no content, no contentment), but only leads deeper into the abyss by way of further questioning. Such a questioning opens onto the infinite, inciting the exigency of an errant thought. Possibility is held open rather than being closed off and enclosed within an actuality – through this questioning, difference is granted play. Thus, through its destructive negativity, does this questioning revolve into a creative play, an infinite motion outside the dialectical path (the infinite negation shatters the teleological-dialectical current into a multiplicity of alternate moments of flourishing or becoming, through the impulsive impetus of the question).
Irony, for Kierkegaard, is not just another rung on the dialectical ladder of Spirit – its infinite negativity cannot be negated and thus translated into a higher positing. In a manner of speaking, irony is a position that is no position; it is a deposition, displacing the authority of the subject by attesting to its absence, revealing an absence in the place of all presence. As Kierkegaard writes, irony “continually cancels itself: it is a nothing that devours everything, and a something one can never grab hold of, something that is and is not at the same time” (131). Irony speaks silence, rupturing and revealing the obscure absence at the origin of all presence. It is incomprehensible, slipping outside of any objectification or attempt at conceptualizing it and placing it within the System. Irony moves outside the System, founding it while also subversively laying the trap that unweaves it and causes it to crumble in upon itself. As we shall see, irony is at the heart of the singular individual, yet denies all subjectivity and selfhood – it posits the existent in Being while at the same time denying it and compelling it to wander outside of Being; a writing that is also an erasure, a double writing. As the abyssal absence of origin, the impossible absence from whence all possibility springs, irony enacts the freedom of beginning, unhindered by actuality. As creative freedom, irony could be called poetic – in its infinitely attempted beginnings at the impossible speech of the silent, the singular, different from every generality, residing nowhere yet ever impinging upon us with its urgent demand for response. Such a creativity shatters and fragments Truth and its unity – rupturing the illusion in attempts at bearing the multiplicity of “truths” which reside at a distance from any center. This creative freedom of irony, as stated before, is free because it exists for none but itself – an expression of freedom, for freedom alone. The infinite negativity of the question is taken up ever and again, each time beginning anew, in order to open up the space to engage in differentiation, to inundate the self with otherness, diluting and dissolving it in attempts at nearing its depths, its origin – the impossible possibility that the infinite negativity implies; the death that haunts the self and allows for its further iterations, opening its differential possibilities.
Having set forth a general, though non-general and non-generalizable, definition of irony, let us follow Kierkegaard as he descends into its heart, its questioning, by pursuing the elusive figure who perhaps best expresses the relations of irony and questioning to endless beginning, non-knowledge, and divinity – let us trail Kierkegaard as he seeks the trace of irony through Socrates, the figure who haunts the entirety of this work, even when it is not continually referring to him (or the absent place or space of which his fabled name covers the trace).
Socrates is perhaps the (negative-) ideal figure of irony – he continually disappears, everything we think we know about him crumbles when set into question, revealing the negative, the absence at the heart of his existence. Socrates’ existence was in question – questioning, and thus disappearing, he was. (Did not Russell, however much in jest, not suggest that perhaps Socrates never existed in reality – that his reality is a nothing, an unreal, or perhaps better, a surreality?)
As noted earlier, the beginnings of Kierkegaard’s lifelong work at and for individuality, the passionate sufferings of expressing the individual life in the wake of the universal and the all-encompassing generality of the System, finds its grounds in the negative figure, the haunting shadow, the vociferous silence that is Socrates. For as Kierkegaard notes on page 167, as Hegel himself said (in a very un-Hegelian utterance), “with Socrates it is not so much a matter of speculation as of individual life”; it is not the general or the conceptual that is the issue, but the singular existence which ruptures history, leaving a blank, a hole, a grand question in the place of rupture, the wound, which has fascinated ever since. Socrates’ position was not one – his existence resided in the motion of the question, the infinite beginning anew, again, again, once more though differently. He is nothing in the universal sense – he embodies the present-absence of the singular existence, of the individual, standing out, exiled in existence outside of the grasping comprehension of the concept in its binary and dialectical structures. The ironic questioning of Socrates destroys all knowledge through the divine wind which blows away the empty fragments of knowledge, inciting dissolution in all structures through the process of erosion – this wind or winding, labyrinthian questioning aiming towards what is for knowledge simply nothing, outside all of its all-encompassing and totalizing bounds – that is to say, the singular. Socrates embodies, however spectrally, the singular individual. He is the enigma that fascinates history, for he ever eludes its grasp. Kierkegaard seeks this impossibility – the singular, individual life, through tracing the shadow of Socrates through its silence by way of irony. For irony, in its infinitely negative manner, is a saying that attempts to tempt forth the unspeakable. This unspeakable passion of the individual life is the beginning and end of Kierkegaard’s thought, of his entire project as a life. Socrates haunts all of Kierkegaard’s writings, remaining a symbol of the inciting element of thought. But why Socrates? Why not some other thinker or questioner – for Socrates was not the first to think or question, even in the manner which is considered “philosophical”. This is true, but there is something incessantly incipient, ever beginning anew, that opens up and arises with Socrates. Irony, says Kierkegaard, is the key to this infinite incipiency – it opens up the impossibility that enshrouds Socrates’ life. For the irony of Socrates’ life is that we know nothing about it, really, and yet it is contained within the vacuity of his irony – in his questioning. His existence is in question, then, as the negative movement of the question – it is this nothing. Socrates was and ever remains “the nothing from which the beginning must nevertheless begin” (198), as Kierkegaard points out, ever again. The existence of Socrates, this nothing, has already gone before us, yet it is also ever yet to come – the untimely existence of Socrates shatters history, as does that of every truly singular individual.
Early on in this work, Kierkegaard writes that with Socrates it is not what he says that is of import as much as it is “this empty space, this nothing, [which] hides that which is most important” (19). This hiding is of course not a simple reservation, but is an obscured revelation – the questioning is what matters over what is questioned, for it clears the space of actuality. It is not the content of Socrates’ speech that is important as much as it is how it is spoken – questioningly and ironically. The quality surpasses the quantity, opening the depths of this singular existence. Thankfully this is the case, for we do not possess any of Socrates’ actual words (Socrates was not a writer; he was in many ways a grand eraser, which of course does not entirely efface what has been written, but always leaves a trace, some indentations or shavings, perhaps a line here or there, upon the page). All that we have of Socrates are expressions which attempt to capture the elusive style and questioning of the man. Kierkegaard runs through the three figures of Socrates that have been constructed and passed down to us, noting how it would be a fallacious folly to assume that any one of the three, or even a combination of the trio of expressions (which would be inherently contradictory, given the variances between the three representations), expresses the “truth” of Socrates as a life – as a singular and individual existence. Xenophon falls shortest in his portrayal of Socrates because he cannot get beyond the actuality that Socrates negates. He glimpses only the deceptive surface of Socrates, locating him in the empirical and the useful, making Socrates highly understandable, relatable, and even at times ascribing to him a positive doctrine. Kierkegaard views this as reducing Socrates to absurdity, failing to alight upon Socrates at all – Xenophon erects a fiction in the place of the rapturous absence of Socrates. According to Kierkegaard, Xenophon “eliminat[es] all that was dangerous in Socrates” (19), stripping him of his revolutionary freedom founded in the abyss that is opened by the question. For Xenophon’s Socrates is a man of answers and of traditional Greek morality – hardly the disruptive and dangerous revolutionary whose negative revolt cast him headlong into death. Plato does a better job of handling the slippery question, according to Kierkegaard, but his failing comes from his dialectical nature. For Plato goes beyond Socrates, negating his negations in order to work through Socrates towards his own thought. Abandoning Socrates in his infinite negativity, Plato progresses onward and upward to the Ideal. But this negation of negative negates Socrates – the positive, though ideal, figure that remains beneath the name of Socrates is purely Plato. And, finally, there is Aristophanes, whom Kierkegaard, perhaps surprisingly, believes comes closest to expressing the negativity of Socrates. The comedic presentation of Socrates brushes all thought aside, focussing purely on the irony of his existence. Aristophanes presents Socrates ironically, as an ironic figure – and while he fails to comprehend Socrates as a thinker and questioner, he manages to present, ironically, the ironic side of Socrates – the element that cannot be said or represented in its singularity; the negativity that negates even its own presentation.
So much for the historical representations of Socrates that we possess. But how are we to attempt to delve any further, to approach the singular existence of Socrates that is so lithe and subtle? Kierkegaard attempts this motion by engaging the irony that Socrates employed, by bringing it into question, in attempts at opening the voidal abyss and to perhaps tempt Socrates out from its absent heart wherein he abides. One of the first things that one alights upon as they follow Socrates in his questioning is that he never pursued it alone. Socrates’ questioning was always undertaken dialogically, with the other, in the between-space of the two. The abyss of possibilities that opened up through his questioning was not for Socrates alone – it always involved the other as well. Socrates’ art of questioning is directed away from himself, towards the other. This can be viewed in opposition to the Sophists answering of questions at all costs (and always at a cost), which attests to the greedy possession of knowledge. Answers tend, through knowledge, towards the static unity of the One, the self-centric central self; the emptiness of the absolute abstraction. As Kierkegaard figures it, the Sophists speak, but they do not converse (33). Socrates, in his questioning, is always engaged in a conversation with the other, which is open and opening onto the infinity that the other’s difference entails. Questioning tends towards the other, as it is enacted through the passive action of listening, which takes up the demand of silence through response (which differs radically from the answer).
By engaging in this listening-response, questioning lurches from out of the destruction of the infinitely negative, towards its creative element – the infinite possibility that it engenders. This infinite creativity, boundless creation – could this not be called the divine? We will hazard such a dangerous, symbolic signification – symbolic, for that which moves beneath this name is the unnameable: this appellation seeks to designate the insignificant source of all signification; the silence that allows speech; the overfull emptiness which grants the space of revelation and disclosure. It is this divinity, this call to prolific creation from out of ruinous destruction – the demand to live – that compels Socrates to question. For it is his daimonion that sets him out on his divine mission, his questioning quest. And this daimonion, Kierkegaard notes, denotes something that is “above definition, is unutterable and indescribable, since it allows no vocalization” (158). The divine, which exceeds the limits of signification and representation, finding its place in the absence of sig
May 22, 2012
In a way, all of Kierkegaard's writings are somewhat esoteric. Kierkegaard often uses words, phrases, and concepts that most everyone either need to look up or skip over and hope that they aren't important to understanding the flow of thought. Even in works that are fairly easy to follow and understand like Works of Love or Purity of Heart, where the "skip over" technique often works, Kierkegaard can leap over the head of his readers without a moment's notice. Part of the issue is that SK is just very learned, part of it is the decrease in reading ability of the average reader since the mid-1800's (which is both a critique of contemporary times, as well as a compliment because not just the most educated are reading nowadays), and mostly because SK is just very demanding of his readers, on purpose. Usually this latter reason is why I and others would characterize Kierkegaard as enjoyable to read: he is demanding of his readers because of his piercing and very personally challenging insights and arguments, pushing and asking of his readers to dig deep inside themselves to then understand and transform their inner being. With all of that said, what usually redeems Kierkegaard for most readers is not present here.
We should first note that SK's notes on the Schelling lectures are not related to The Concept of Irony, so I'll deal with them separately. Why The Concept of Irony is not nearly as accessible to most readers as SK's other works are is readily apparent in his intended audience: Irony is SK's dissertation, distributed to the public but meant for his professors who were judging whether or not he would pass with the title of magister (the equivalent of doctor for those in the philosophy department at that time). Additionally, though Irony is not the first thing that SK published, it is one of his first publications and the first of considerable length. What you end up with is a Kierkegaard that is almost unrecognizable from his other writings that are much more popular. While there are aspects of the writing style that many would recognize, particularly SK's flowery verbosity, his conversational stance with his reader, his perserverance to follow through a thought in its entirety, and his great attention to Socrates, much of Irony has a scholarly focus that is off-putting when compared to something like The Concept of Anxiety, which theoretically has the same purpose. In Irony Kierkegaard is far more of an analyst of other writers, and their writings and ideas, than anywhere else; not for the sake of proving his own point necessarily but for the sake of analyzing. Essentially, then, the main disappointment in the style of writing that is evident in Irony is that we see much less of Kierkegaard and his creative mind, and much more of other historical thinkers.
Perhaps because SK wrote Irony as his dissertation, we find another disappointing factor when we compare it to Anxiety: rather than elucidating the concept of irony with the express intention of helping to transform one's understanding of life, and one's own life, as he does in Anxiety, Kierkegaard here elucidates the concept of irony smiply for the sake of. The perceptive reader will find that there is plenty in the concept of irony that can inform life, especially in Part II, but one must be perceptive. So we miss what is usually most prevalent in Kierkegaard: a focus on life being lived, and all that is thereby pertinent and pressing. Instead we learn a whole lot, indeed, about the concept of irony as such throughout the history of philosophy and SK's personal contributions to the concept.
Part I focuses entirely on how Socrates is an (perhaps the) embodiment of irony. Here Kierkegaard works wonders in interpreting Socrates through Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes. It is perhaps not the best scholarly work, but it is easy to see SK's brilliance at work. Anyone at all familiar with one or more of those three writers, too, will particularly appreciate this part. Part II traces irony through the history of philosophical endeavor, defining irony more carefully. Again, while all of this is quite exquisite in its own way, and any reader should finish with a much deeper understanding of Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, and other thinkers like Fichte, Descartes, Schlegel, and Hegel especially, there is nothing special about SK's treatment of irony in a scholarly sense nor in the typical Kierkegaardian sense of being a biting and challenging insight into life.
This review in some way reflects the book itself in that it can often seem like irony is discussed without yet being fully defined. I, personally, hesitate to define irony in any way because SK spends 300 pages doing so. I paraphrase SK and Hegel only because the review would seem useless without doing so: irony, in short, is a negation of something, in the finite; a negation of all things in the infinite. By that definition we should see why SK, if we are otherwise familiar with him, cared to write on irony: irony, by this definition, deals with what is and how it is, and how it is what it is. To some extent these concepts form the backbone of Kierkegaardian thought; likewise they also form the backbone of living life.
It is a strange day when I rate anything by Kierkegaard less than a 4, but alas it has happened. I do think Irony would have been a much better read if SK simply had a different audience. As it is, though, this book, while it contains a lot that is great and SK's handling of irony is insightful, is simply too much. You might learn how to read Greek, German, and Latin; you might learn a book-full of rarely heard of allusions; and you will certainly become acquainted with Hegel and some difficult philosophical concepts and jargon. But even for a scholarly work, hardly any of those things are necessary to the extent that they are present in Irony. At the same time, I do recommend this book to anyone at all interested in learning more about Kierkegaard's intellectual background.
As for the notes on Schelling's lectures on revelation, they, too, should mostly be read only by people interested in learning about Kierkegaard's intellectual background. The Schelling lectures cover some of the same concepts as Irony does, mainly what is, how it is, and how we know that and what it is, but they are most significant in that they form a major event in SK's life. Like Hegel, Schelling was a big name at the time that SK was coming into intellectual maturity, and SK attended the lectures near the beginning of his career. Attending the lectures went a long to inspiring some of SK's later work and to SK's development as a unique intellect. The notes are also well-kept, for the sake of anyone interested in Schelling himself, though I doubt anyone in this day and age cares about Schelling.
Because of the nature of the notes, though, they are hard reading. They are notes, after all, and notes of more esoteric concepts to boot. Don't read the notes unless you are interested in Kierkegaard's person, rather than merely reading his work to feel better about yourself (which is a strange concept to begin with, though prevalent in the people that I meet... Kierkegaard should be everyone's worst nightmare because he challenges us to see how we are living not at all the way we should be, and even not at all the way that we think we are).
We should first note that SK's notes on the Schelling lectures are not related to The Concept of Irony, so I'll deal with them separately. Why The Concept of Irony is not nearly as accessible to most readers as SK's other works are is readily apparent in his intended audience: Irony is SK's dissertation, distributed to the public but meant for his professors who were judging whether or not he would pass with the title of magister (the equivalent of doctor for those in the philosophy department at that time). Additionally, though Irony is not the first thing that SK published, it is one of his first publications and the first of considerable length. What you end up with is a Kierkegaard that is almost unrecognizable from his other writings that are much more popular. While there are aspects of the writing style that many would recognize, particularly SK's flowery verbosity, his conversational stance with his reader, his perserverance to follow through a thought in its entirety, and his great attention to Socrates, much of Irony has a scholarly focus that is off-putting when compared to something like The Concept of Anxiety, which theoretically has the same purpose. In Irony Kierkegaard is far more of an analyst of other writers, and their writings and ideas, than anywhere else; not for the sake of proving his own point necessarily but for the sake of analyzing. Essentially, then, the main disappointment in the style of writing that is evident in Irony is that we see much less of Kierkegaard and his creative mind, and much more of other historical thinkers.
Perhaps because SK wrote Irony as his dissertation, we find another disappointing factor when we compare it to Anxiety: rather than elucidating the concept of irony with the express intention of helping to transform one's understanding of life, and one's own life, as he does in Anxiety, Kierkegaard here elucidates the concept of irony smiply for the sake of. The perceptive reader will find that there is plenty in the concept of irony that can inform life, especially in Part II, but one must be perceptive. So we miss what is usually most prevalent in Kierkegaard: a focus on life being lived, and all that is thereby pertinent and pressing. Instead we learn a whole lot, indeed, about the concept of irony as such throughout the history of philosophy and SK's personal contributions to the concept.
Part I focuses entirely on how Socrates is an (perhaps the) embodiment of irony. Here Kierkegaard works wonders in interpreting Socrates through Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes. It is perhaps not the best scholarly work, but it is easy to see SK's brilliance at work. Anyone at all familiar with one or more of those three writers, too, will particularly appreciate this part. Part II traces irony through the history of philosophical endeavor, defining irony more carefully. Again, while all of this is quite exquisite in its own way, and any reader should finish with a much deeper understanding of Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, and other thinkers like Fichte, Descartes, Schlegel, and Hegel especially, there is nothing special about SK's treatment of irony in a scholarly sense nor in the typical Kierkegaardian sense of being a biting and challenging insight into life.
This review in some way reflects the book itself in that it can often seem like irony is discussed without yet being fully defined. I, personally, hesitate to define irony in any way because SK spends 300 pages doing so. I paraphrase SK and Hegel only because the review would seem useless without doing so: irony, in short, is a negation of something, in the finite; a negation of all things in the infinite. By that definition we should see why SK, if we are otherwise familiar with him, cared to write on irony: irony, by this definition, deals with what is and how it is, and how it is what it is. To some extent these concepts form the backbone of Kierkegaardian thought; likewise they also form the backbone of living life.
It is a strange day when I rate anything by Kierkegaard less than a 4, but alas it has happened. I do think Irony would have been a much better read if SK simply had a different audience. As it is, though, this book, while it contains a lot that is great and SK's handling of irony is insightful, is simply too much. You might learn how to read Greek, German, and Latin; you might learn a book-full of rarely heard of allusions; and you will certainly become acquainted with Hegel and some difficult philosophical concepts and jargon. But even for a scholarly work, hardly any of those things are necessary to the extent that they are present in Irony. At the same time, I do recommend this book to anyone at all interested in learning more about Kierkegaard's intellectual background.
As for the notes on Schelling's lectures on revelation, they, too, should mostly be read only by people interested in learning about Kierkegaard's intellectual background. The Schelling lectures cover some of the same concepts as Irony does, mainly what is, how it is, and how we know that and what it is, but they are most significant in that they form a major event in SK's life. Like Hegel, Schelling was a big name at the time that SK was coming into intellectual maturity, and SK attended the lectures near the beginning of his career. Attending the lectures went a long to inspiring some of SK's later work and to SK's development as a unique intellect. The notes are also well-kept, for the sake of anyone interested in Schelling himself, though I doubt anyone in this day and age cares about Schelling.
Because of the nature of the notes, though, they are hard reading. They are notes, after all, and notes of more esoteric concepts to boot. Don't read the notes unless you are interested in Kierkegaard's person, rather than merely reading his work to feel better about yourself (which is a strange concept to begin with, though prevalent in the people that I meet... Kierkegaard should be everyone's worst nightmare because he challenges us to see how we are living not at all the way we should be, and even not at all the way that we think we are).
January 5, 2022
Luchtig, leeg, en volatiel, maar toch relatief beheerst.
January 29, 2023
What is philosophy anyway?
Thinking does nothing but drive a person crazy and prevents a person from fulfilling their daily tasks and responsibilities. Philosophy, which is the epistemological way of thinking, is also an empty human business. What if you know, what if you don't know? It is not at all absurd to say that knowledge that does not turn into surplus value and the thought action performed without getting anywhere are corrupt human actions. It is a matter of philosophy that man, the only living being in the universe and among known living beings who can think, exaggerates this feature. It is also a bit of an excuse; it is carried out in order to escape from its own traditions, customs, religious and customary truths...
What is it, sir, he will create. He was going to do it by thinking. Since when has creating been a human job? Can one be happy by questioning? Do not question. He should put the brain aside and live if necessary. Look! Look! Even the greatest thinker, Socrates, was executed because he went astray. There is no end to thinking. That's why this business will come back and hurt you again. Don't think any more. Accept whatever is told to you as it is. It's not like that's what happened. Even our ancestors said this; think about it, because you are a shit job. It's like this, you can't change it. If you have come to this part with patience, let me tell you that the meanings opposite to what I have written make up the content of the book. Irony is more of a progressive and creative thinking tactic than a way of thinking. Kierkegaard also focuses on this tactic, explaining irony with the analysis of Socrates, who was the first thinker to apply it. The phenomenon of irony paves the way for new ideas to find the mind that is superior to reason by asking questions that lead the other person(s) to think and discuss by approaching the information as if he/she knows it, even though he/she does not know it. Kierkegaard also explained this practice very well in his own style, in an academic language from place to place. Anyway, back to the subject, I will say that I am not surprised that a shallow name like Kierkegaard wrote such a funny work. There is no need for you to read this book at all. Instead of wasting time with a book, you can keep your head down and mind your business. As you know, Silivri is much colder these days when we are having snow, winter, apocalypse. Don't be the Second Socrates either.
Thinking does nothing but drive a person crazy and prevents a person from fulfilling their daily tasks and responsibilities. Philosophy, which is the epistemological way of thinking, is also an empty human business. What if you know, what if you don't know? It is not at all absurd to say that knowledge that does not turn into surplus value and the thought action performed without getting anywhere are corrupt human actions. It is a matter of philosophy that man, the only living being in the universe and among known living beings who can think, exaggerates this feature. It is also a bit of an excuse; it is carried out in order to escape from its own traditions, customs, religious and customary truths...
What is it, sir, he will create. He was going to do it by thinking. Since when has creating been a human job? Can one be happy by questioning? Do not question. He should put the brain aside and live if necessary. Look! Look! Even the greatest thinker, Socrates, was executed because he went astray. There is no end to thinking. That's why this business will come back and hurt you again. Don't think any more. Accept whatever is told to you as it is. It's not like that's what happened. Even our ancestors said this; think about it, because you are a shit job. It's like this, you can't change it. If you have come to this part with patience, let me tell you that the meanings opposite to what I have written make up the content of the book. Irony is more of a progressive and creative thinking tactic than a way of thinking. Kierkegaard also focuses on this tactic, explaining irony with the analysis of Socrates, who was the first thinker to apply it. The phenomenon of irony paves the way for new ideas to find the mind that is superior to reason by asking questions that lead the other person(s) to think and discuss by approaching the information as if he/she knows it, even though he/she does not know it. Kierkegaard also explained this practice very well in his own style, in an academic language from place to place. Anyway, back to the subject, I will say that I am not surprised that a shallow name like Kierkegaard wrote such a funny work. There is no need for you to read this book at all. Instead of wasting time with a book, you can keep your head down and mind your business. As you know, Silivri is much colder these days when we are having snow, winter, apocalypse. Don't be the Second Socrates either.
February 28, 2016
The first half of this book is the terminal degree granting paper that Kierkegaard presented to the University of Copenhagen faculty of philosophy, and the second half is the lecture notes of a bored Kierkegaard as he sat through a class (with Engels and Bakunin also in attendance) on the philosophy of revelation given by Schelling at the University of Berlin. Rather than try to describe this book's merits and offer a bit of criticism, I will mostly just offer up some good quotations. However, it must be said that the irony of this book is that you will not walk away with a better understanding of irony after having read it. If you understand irony at all, and know something of Kierkegaard's life, this statement at the conclusion of his dissertation will be understood as a prime example of the concept:
"For example, when scientific scholarship teaches that actuality has absolute validity, then the point is truly to acquire that validity, and one cannot deny that it would be most ridiculous if someone who in his youth learned and perhaps even taught others that actuality has absolute meaning grew old and died without actuality's ever having had any other validity than his proclaiming in and out of season the wisdom that actuality has validity." p.328
"Every philosophy that begins with a presupposition naturally ends with the same presupposition, and just as Socrates' philosophy began with the presupposition that he knew nothing, so it ended with the presupposition that human beings know nothing at all; Platonic philosophy began in the immediate unity of thought and being and stayed there. The direction that manifested itself in idealism as reflection upon reflection manifested itself in Socrates' questioning. To ask questions--that is, the abstract relation between the subjective and the objective--ultimately became the primary issue for him." p.37
"Does the mythical belong to Socrates? I believe that I dare answer for myself and my readers: It does not belong to Socrates. But if it is kept in mind, something that antiquity does indeed bear out, that it was from a productive life as a poet that Socrates called the twenty-something Plato back to abstract self-knowledge--then it certainly is quite natural that the poetic element in his active passivity and passive activity was bound to manifest itself in contrast to the famished Socratic dialectic and that it was bound to appear most strongly and most isolated in the writing that was either contemporary with Socrates or at least closest to him." p.105
"If we now add to this the polemic consciousness into which Socrates absorbed his whole relation to his contemporaries, the infinite albeit negative freedom in which he lightly and freely breathed, under the vast horizon intimated by the idea as boundary, the security provided for him by the daimonian against being perplexed by all the happenings in life, then Socrates' position once again manifest itself as irony." p.167
"Now, essence is surely the negation of appearance, but it is not the absolute negation, since thereby essence itself would actually have disappeared. But to a certain degree, this is irony; it negates the phenomenal, not in order to posit by means of this negation, but negates the phenomenal altogether. It runs back instead of going out; it is not in the phenomenon but seeks to deceive with the phenomenon; the phenomenon exists not to disclose the essence but to conceal it." p.212
"The form in which subjectivity now manifests itself in Socrates is the daimonian, but since Hegel himself correctly points out that the daimonian is still not conscience, one sees how subjectivity in Socrates vibrates between the finite subjectivity and the infinite, since in conscience the finite subject makes itself infinite." p.224
"Admittedly the tragic hero does not fear death, but still he knows it as a pain, as a hard and harsh course, and to that extent it has validity if he is condemned to die; but Socrates knows nothing at all, and thus it is an irony over the state that it condemns him to death and believes that it has inflected punishment upon him." p.271
"If we ask what poetry is, we may say in general that it is victory over the world; it is through a negation of the imperfect actuality that poetry opens up a higher actuality, expands and transfigures the imperfect into the perfect and thereby assuages the deep pain that wants to make everything dark." p. 297
"Shakespeare has frequently been eulogized as the grand master of irony, and there can be no doubt that there is justification for that. But by no means does Shakespeare allow the substantive worth to evaporate into an ever more fugitive sublimate, and as for the occasional culmination of his lyrics in madness, there is an extraordinary degree of objectivity in this madness. When Shakespeare is related ironically to what he writes, it is precisely in order to let the objective dominate." p.324
"It takes courage not to surrender to the shrewd or sympathetic counsel of despair that allows a person to erase himself from the number of the living; but this does not necessarily mean that every sausage peddler, fed and fattened on self-confidence, has more courage than the person who succumbed to despair. It takes courage when sorrow would delude one, when it would reduce all joy to sadness, all longing to privation, every hope to recollection--it takes courage to will to be happy; but this does not necessarily mean that every full-grown adult infant with his sweet, sentimental smile, his joy-intoxicated eyes, has more courage than the person who yielded to grief and forgot to smile. So it is also with irony. Even though one must warn against irony as against a seducer, so must one also commend it as a guide." p.327
"For example, when scientific scholarship teaches that actuality has absolute validity, then the point is truly to acquire that validity, and one cannot deny that it would be most ridiculous if someone who in his youth learned and perhaps even taught others that actuality has absolute meaning grew old and died without actuality's ever having had any other validity than his proclaiming in and out of season the wisdom that actuality has validity." p.328
"Every philosophy that begins with a presupposition naturally ends with the same presupposition, and just as Socrates' philosophy began with the presupposition that he knew nothing, so it ended with the presupposition that human beings know nothing at all; Platonic philosophy began in the immediate unity of thought and being and stayed there. The direction that manifested itself in idealism as reflection upon reflection manifested itself in Socrates' questioning. To ask questions--that is, the abstract relation between the subjective and the objective--ultimately became the primary issue for him." p.37
"Does the mythical belong to Socrates? I believe that I dare answer for myself and my readers: It does not belong to Socrates. But if it is kept in mind, something that antiquity does indeed bear out, that it was from a productive life as a poet that Socrates called the twenty-something Plato back to abstract self-knowledge--then it certainly is quite natural that the poetic element in his active passivity and passive activity was bound to manifest itself in contrast to the famished Socratic dialectic and that it was bound to appear most strongly and most isolated in the writing that was either contemporary with Socrates or at least closest to him." p.105
"If we now add to this the polemic consciousness into which Socrates absorbed his whole relation to his contemporaries, the infinite albeit negative freedom in which he lightly and freely breathed, under the vast horizon intimated by the idea as boundary, the security provided for him by the daimonian against being perplexed by all the happenings in life, then Socrates' position once again manifest itself as irony." p.167
"Now, essence is surely the negation of appearance, but it is not the absolute negation, since thereby essence itself would actually have disappeared. But to a certain degree, this is irony; it negates the phenomenal, not in order to posit by means of this negation, but negates the phenomenal altogether. It runs back instead of going out; it is not in the phenomenon but seeks to deceive with the phenomenon; the phenomenon exists not to disclose the essence but to conceal it." p.212
"The form in which subjectivity now manifests itself in Socrates is the daimonian, but since Hegel himself correctly points out that the daimonian is still not conscience, one sees how subjectivity in Socrates vibrates between the finite subjectivity and the infinite, since in conscience the finite subject makes itself infinite." p.224
"Admittedly the tragic hero does not fear death, but still he knows it as a pain, as a hard and harsh course, and to that extent it has validity if he is condemned to die; but Socrates knows nothing at all, and thus it is an irony over the state that it condemns him to death and believes that it has inflected punishment upon him." p.271
"If we ask what poetry is, we may say in general that it is victory over the world; it is through a negation of the imperfect actuality that poetry opens up a higher actuality, expands and transfigures the imperfect into the perfect and thereby assuages the deep pain that wants to make everything dark." p. 297
"Shakespeare has frequently been eulogized as the grand master of irony, and there can be no doubt that there is justification for that. But by no means does Shakespeare allow the substantive worth to evaporate into an ever more fugitive sublimate, and as for the occasional culmination of his lyrics in madness, there is an extraordinary degree of objectivity in this madness. When Shakespeare is related ironically to what he writes, it is precisely in order to let the objective dominate." p.324
"It takes courage not to surrender to the shrewd or sympathetic counsel of despair that allows a person to erase himself from the number of the living; but this does not necessarily mean that every sausage peddler, fed and fattened on self-confidence, has more courage than the person who succumbed to despair. It takes courage when sorrow would delude one, when it would reduce all joy to sadness, all longing to privation, every hope to recollection--it takes courage to will to be happy; but this does not necessarily mean that every full-grown adult infant with his sweet, sentimental smile, his joy-intoxicated eyes, has more courage than the person who yielded to grief and forgot to smile. So it is also with irony. Even though one must warn against irony as against a seducer, so must one also commend it as a guide." p.327
January 9, 2021
In 1841, the Danish religious author Soren Kierkegaard completed and submitted his thesis, The Concept of Irony, in fulfillment of the Masters of Arts in Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. Although Kierkegaard would later go on to regard Irony with a critical eye, decrying the work as the product of such a one who was overtly influenced by “Hegel and whatever was modern, without the maturity to really comprehend greatness” (JP IV 4281), I daresay that the dissertation is still required reading for anyone who is serious about Kierkegaard and his thought, especially if one desires to gain a deeper understanding with regard to the importance that he put upon indirect communication.
As a philosophical work, Irony can be broken up into two main sections. In the first section, Kierkegaard examines how Socrates is represented across the works of Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes, and concludes that Aristophanes’ view of Socrates was most true and just in relation to the essence of Socratic irony (152). And in the second, Kierkegaard proceeds to conduct a more expansive study of the concept of irony that includes ruminations on the world-historical validity of Socrates as well as diagnoses of how irony has changed in a substantive way following the work of modern German Idealist thinkers such as Kant and Fichte. In the modern period, with particular attention to the works of Schlegel, Tieck, and Solger, Kierkegaard enters into a cultural critique on how irony has taken on a new character in the Romantic period as unbridled, exaggerated subjectivity. Unlike irony in the classical sense, the new modern irony “was not an element of the given actuality that must be negated and superseded by a new element, but it was all of historical actuality that it negated in order to make room for a self-created actuality” (275). In its modern form, it is in a state of perpetual nothing, simultaneously “finished with everything” and arrogating for itself “absolute power to do everything” (275).
On a whole, I would say that Irony stands as one of my favorite works of Kierkegaard’s thus far. Apart from the particularly salient points that Kierkegaard raises about modernity through the cipher of Romantic irony, I found myself fascinated by Socratic irony (“the infinite absolute negativity”) as a dialectical category (261).
On the one level, it is pure negativity that “only negates”: there is no positive element to be found in it whatsoever or, more clearly, it is positive only in terms of its negativity (261). On another level, it is “infinite” because it is not aimed towards any particular aspect of actuality but negates actuality “in its totality as such” (261, 271). And on the last level, it is “absolute” in that it is negating only in the name of a higher mode of negativity and “establishes nothing” whatsoever (in contradistinction to the speculative method favored by thinkers such as Plato and Hegel) (261). The point is to draw out a relentlessly critical mode of appraising actuality that is simultaneously constructive in its negativity. And, for Kierkegaard, this is not a purely academic affair, but one that a scientific and scholarly age, drunk on its successes, desperately needs (327). Kierkegaard positions Socratic irony not as “the truth” but “the way” (327). As the infinite absolute negativity, irony strips away all these different achievements from the individual and leads him towards a deeper maturation of his consciousness of himself as an individual, and thereby to personally appropriate these kinds of achievements for himself (328). Irony, then, is not merely or even chiefly a negation of actuality, but leads the individual to become present in it to a higher degree (329).
It is no wonder, then, that a contemporary reviewer of Irony describes the work as one that “not only treats of irony but is irony.” I left not just with a deeper understanding of Socratic irony and how it might feature as a crucial aspect of Kierkegaard’s philosophical method; it also led me to think more seriously about the existential uses of indirect communication in my life and how it can be harnessed as a means to become who I am (a concrete, living individual who is fully aware of his existence in actuality).
As a philosophical work, Irony can be broken up into two main sections. In the first section, Kierkegaard examines how Socrates is represented across the works of Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes, and concludes that Aristophanes’ view of Socrates was most true and just in relation to the essence of Socratic irony (152). And in the second, Kierkegaard proceeds to conduct a more expansive study of the concept of irony that includes ruminations on the world-historical validity of Socrates as well as diagnoses of how irony has changed in a substantive way following the work of modern German Idealist thinkers such as Kant and Fichte. In the modern period, with particular attention to the works of Schlegel, Tieck, and Solger, Kierkegaard enters into a cultural critique on how irony has taken on a new character in the Romantic period as unbridled, exaggerated subjectivity. Unlike irony in the classical sense, the new modern irony “was not an element of the given actuality that must be negated and superseded by a new element, but it was all of historical actuality that it negated in order to make room for a self-created actuality” (275). In its modern form, it is in a state of perpetual nothing, simultaneously “finished with everything” and arrogating for itself “absolute power to do everything” (275).
On a whole, I would say that Irony stands as one of my favorite works of Kierkegaard’s thus far. Apart from the particularly salient points that Kierkegaard raises about modernity through the cipher of Romantic irony, I found myself fascinated by Socratic irony (“the infinite absolute negativity”) as a dialectical category (261).
On the one level, it is pure negativity that “only negates”: there is no positive element to be found in it whatsoever or, more clearly, it is positive only in terms of its negativity (261). On another level, it is “infinite” because it is not aimed towards any particular aspect of actuality but negates actuality “in its totality as such” (261, 271). And on the last level, it is “absolute” in that it is negating only in the name of a higher mode of negativity and “establishes nothing” whatsoever (in contradistinction to the speculative method favored by thinkers such as Plato and Hegel) (261). The point is to draw out a relentlessly critical mode of appraising actuality that is simultaneously constructive in its negativity. And, for Kierkegaard, this is not a purely academic affair, but one that a scientific and scholarly age, drunk on its successes, desperately needs (327). Kierkegaard positions Socratic irony not as “the truth” but “the way” (327). As the infinite absolute negativity, irony strips away all these different achievements from the individual and leads him towards a deeper maturation of his consciousness of himself as an individual, and thereby to personally appropriate these kinds of achievements for himself (328). Irony, then, is not merely or even chiefly a negation of actuality, but leads the individual to become present in it to a higher degree (329).
It is no wonder, then, that a contemporary reviewer of Irony describes the work as one that “not only treats of irony but is irony.” I left not just with a deeper understanding of Socratic irony and how it might feature as a crucial aspect of Kierkegaard’s philosophical method; it also led me to think more seriously about the existential uses of indirect communication in my life and how it can be harnessed as a means to become who I am (a concrete, living individual who is fully aware of his existence in actuality).
January 16, 2013
Irony as the way to free the subject from being polluted or determined by anything outside of it.
July 19, 2018
Kierkegaard seemed to be trying his hand at Socratic scholarship in his dissertation. He proposes among other things that the true determinant for distinguishing the voice of Plato from that of Socrates is in the irony with which Socrates (as a literary character) presents himself. This manuscript examines the difference in the two accounts of Socrates that emerge from Xenophon and Plato. The author finds that Xenophon's account lacks humour, but that the Socrates it portrays is essentially a benign character. On the other hand, Plato's early Socrates is an acerbic character who simultaneously claims thorough-going ignorance and unique qualifications to critically interrogate all of Athen's self-proclaimed repositories of knowledge. The irony is in the fact that Socrates claims he is uniquely qualified for this task because of his ignorance. Although this is an interesting suggestion, it is not historically valid. At best, it can be regarded as a literary heuristic for classifying the early and middle works of Plato. Despite the inappropriateness of aesthetic tests for deciding historical truth, Kierkegaard attempts to give his arguments all the rigour of scientific research – resulting in a cavalcade of citations, footnotes, and sources throughout the work. Because of this, the writing is stilted and Kierkegaard seems overburdened by the tasks of meticulously building up his case from simple to more advanced propositions and giving a rigorous grounding to obsolete Hegelian concepts of "negativity", infinity, and infinite negativity. Kierkegaard in his later work seems self-conscious of this and he basically lampoons the "up building discourse" from after this failed attempt.
From the side of ahistorical philosophy (conceptual analysis), this text does raise important questions about the need for earnestness versus irony in serious dialogue and in life.
From the side of ahistorical philosophy (conceptual analysis), this text does raise important questions about the need for earnestness versus irony in serious dialogue and in life.
February 1, 2024
(Excuse the sincerity-maxxing)
About a year ago, I read that Wittgenstein had once called Kierkegaard the greatest of the 19th-century philosophers. I started Fear and Trembling almost immediately and almost entirely for that reason, but I stopped about halfway through after struggling with it and reading some other essays on Kierkegaard and his body of work. Eventually, I figured it'd be best to start from the beginning.
This book has by far the most rewarding exegesis of Socrates and the Socratic problem I've ever come across (so far), even if it's hard to tell exactly when to take Kierkegaard seriously and just how seriously to take him. (From what I've read elsewhere, this seems characteristic of Kierkegaard and fundamental to his project as a whole.) I was also very surprised at how often he stands on Hegel's shoulders, but maybe this shouldn't be that surprising either, as Kierkegaard seems to do this only so he can eventually separate himself from Hegel in some fundamental way.
Kierkegaard is a fantastic writer and very funny too, but half of his jokes can only be translated into English as a plain unambiguous sentence with a paragraph-long footnote describing some ambiguity inherent to one word in the original Danish; for better or worse, I probably spent as much time buried in footnotes as I did in the actual text.
I found this book kind of amazing overall, but I honestly have no idea whether I can recommend it to anyone. If you're Socrates-curious, or you don't mind self-indulgent and ironically detached anti-philosophers, or you enjoy trying to parse countless brief biblical/theological references (and figuring out how seriously to take them) — if this is you, then it's right up your alley. Good luck.
About a year ago, I read that Wittgenstein had once called Kierkegaard the greatest of the 19th-century philosophers. I started Fear and Trembling almost immediately and almost entirely for that reason, but I stopped about halfway through after struggling with it and reading some other essays on Kierkegaard and his body of work. Eventually, I figured it'd be best to start from the beginning.
This book has by far the most rewarding exegesis of Socrates and the Socratic problem I've ever come across (so far), even if it's hard to tell exactly when to take Kierkegaard seriously and just how seriously to take him. (From what I've read elsewhere, this seems characteristic of Kierkegaard and fundamental to his project as a whole.) I was also very surprised at how often he stands on Hegel's shoulders, but maybe this shouldn't be that surprising either, as Kierkegaard seems to do this only so he can eventually separate himself from Hegel in some fundamental way.
Kierkegaard is a fantastic writer and very funny too, but half of his jokes can only be translated into English as a plain unambiguous sentence with a paragraph-long footnote describing some ambiguity inherent to one word in the original Danish; for better or worse, I probably spent as much time buried in footnotes as I did in the actual text.
I found this book kind of amazing overall, but I honestly have no idea whether I can recommend it to anyone. If you're Socrates-curious, or you don't mind self-indulgent and ironically detached anti-philosophers, or you enjoy trying to parse countless brief biblical/theological references (and figuring out how seriously to take them) — if this is you, then it's right up your alley. Good luck.
May 16, 2021
Definitely a struggle to get through, but interesting. Also has some glimpses of some themes that would appear in later works, which was fun to see.
The second part was pretty clear in its explanation, but in a way the first part was more fun, exploring irony through a historical look at Socrates. Hard to summarize, but in a sense the ironic appears with the negative, with the quiet or silent, with nothingness, etc. The ironic philosopher, like Socrates, tears down the posited philosophies and casts doubt on everything, and then never rebuilds a "positive philosophy" after that. Towards the end of the book things get very Kierkegaardian indeed - the ironic life becomes strongly correlated to an individual who has just renounced the world (as Socrates does when he chooses death) - a strong anticipation of the knight of infinite resignation to the world.
The notes on the Shelling lectures are pretty dense and a headache to get through. But it was interesting to see some discussion here of the difference between positive and negative philosophy, which has some overlap with what Kierkegaard writes.
The second part was pretty clear in its explanation, but in a way the first part was more fun, exploring irony through a historical look at Socrates. Hard to summarize, but in a sense the ironic appears with the negative, with the quiet or silent, with nothingness, etc. The ironic philosopher, like Socrates, tears down the posited philosophies and casts doubt on everything, and then never rebuilds a "positive philosophy" after that. Towards the end of the book things get very Kierkegaardian indeed - the ironic life becomes strongly correlated to an individual who has just renounced the world (as Socrates does when he chooses death) - a strong anticipation of the knight of infinite resignation to the world.
The notes on the Shelling lectures are pretty dense and a headache to get through. But it was interesting to see some discussion here of the difference between positive and negative philosophy, which has some overlap with what Kierkegaard writes.
April 11, 2024
An excellent treatment of Socrates within the works of Plato, with some reference to Aeschylus (Xenophanes' dialogues are left out because they portray a quite different Socrates). This is Kierkegaard's thesis where he tries to tease out the concept of irony in ancient philosophy, particularly how Socrates, proclaiming ignorance of everything, demonstrates he knows more than any scholar in his ignorance by demonstrating their lack of foundation in any idea. An addition to the thesis, valuable to Christian thinkers, is Kierkegaard's comparison of Socrates to Jesus in how they confound their interlocutors. The difference is that while Socrates proclaims ignorance, Christ truly knows all things and can show that his opponents are truly lacking in knowledge.
Included in the book are Kierkegaard's notes from F.W.J. Schelling's philosophical lectures when Kierkegaard studied in Berlin. These are the late Schelling which means they feature Schelling's interpretations on Hegel's dialectical philosophy. Kierkegaard's notes are some of the most coherent writings of Schelling's philosophy that I have read.
Included in the book are Kierkegaard's notes from F.W.J. Schelling's philosophical lectures when Kierkegaard studied in Berlin. These are the late Schelling which means they feature Schelling's interpretations on Hegel's dialectical philosophy. Kierkegaard's notes are some of the most coherent writings of Schelling's philosophy that I have read.
March 6, 2020
This is not something that I would choose to read as light reading. I read it for a class on Kierkegaard that I took. It was pretty hard to get through at times, but since I do have a pretty solid background in Socrates, that made parts of it easier to skim over. I also had just come off a class on Existentialism so that helped. I think that I am going to take a break on philosophy for a while, I like knowing that I am who I think I am.
February 21, 2019
A lot of him poking fun at his professors. On the jovial side.
March 24, 2013
A hard book to read without familiarity of the 18th-19th century German philosophical tradition (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Solger, etc...), especially when discerning the jargon of the school in Kierkegaard's work (negativity, morality, ethical, spirit, infinity/finitude; all of these terms probably mean something more narrow and precise than one unfamiliar with writing of this period might assume).
If you are interested, Kierkegaard takes on a critique of the German Romantic school using a specific reading of Socrates as an ironic figure. Kierkegaard elucidates different conceptions of irony as negativity, either towards an end or as absolute in its negativity and thus, allowing the individual to float freely from the concrete.
This is a good work to think through themes that Kierkegaard fleshes out more fully on later works (desire and the rigidity of the ethical in Either/or; the limits of language, and the concept of infinite resignation in Fear and Trembling; despair in Sickness Unto Death; several other themes that escape me at the moment).
This is also a good work to read if you're disillusioned with ivory tower academia, or with the sentimental gorging of liberal arts. Per usual, Kierkegaard employs hilarious sarcasm in attacking the fruitless endeavors of self-subsisting academic departments. I actually laughed aloud several times; Kierkegaard really hits the spot sometimes!
If you are interested, Kierkegaard takes on a critique of the German Romantic school using a specific reading of Socrates as an ironic figure. Kierkegaard elucidates different conceptions of irony as negativity, either towards an end or as absolute in its negativity and thus, allowing the individual to float freely from the concrete.
This is a good work to think through themes that Kierkegaard fleshes out more fully on later works (desire and the rigidity of the ethical in Either/or; the limits of language, and the concept of infinite resignation in Fear and Trembling; despair in Sickness Unto Death; several other themes that escape me at the moment).
This is also a good work to read if you're disillusioned with ivory tower academia, or with the sentimental gorging of liberal arts. Per usual, Kierkegaard employs hilarious sarcasm in attacking the fruitless endeavors of self-subsisting academic departments. I actually laughed aloud several times; Kierkegaard really hits the spot sometimes!
November 12, 2013
A very amusing book to read, kierkegaard first treats socrates as the ultimate ironist he reflects on the role of socratic irony in history and in the subsequent emerge of later philosophical trends in greek history socrates was a product of his time as hegel regarded him, yet he would criticize most of hegel's ideas on socrates celebrating the negative aspect of socrates role in history of philosophy, later he would treat german romanticists and their defiance to all sorts of objectivity in a way that almost negates the essence of morality he treated german ironists and critiqued the fallacies of romanticists whom embraced such irony to advocate their ideas and declare their notion of living poetically, when in their search to emancipate the individual from the norms of society and to criticize bourgeoise morality they actually compromise ethics and end up negating it.
Then later he introduces his notion of what he calls controlled irony which would be directed to flaws of the society but would not totaly jeopradize norms and ethics of society, an irony that would not compromise the whole ethical and social sttucture but would rather treat its flaws though this part of the work is treated in the most ironic manner.
kierkegaard shows the power of negativity in his work he celebrates this power and develops an idea that speaks to our own modern world.
Then later he introduces his notion of what he calls controlled irony which would be directed to flaws of the society but would not totaly jeopradize norms and ethics of society, an irony that would not compromise the whole ethical and social sttucture but would rather treat its flaws though this part of the work is treated in the most ironic manner.
kierkegaard shows the power of negativity in his work he celebrates this power and develops an idea that speaks to our own modern world.
November 13, 2014
When I first came across the writings of this melancholy Dane I was struck by the complexity of his thought. I enjoyed reading him to be sure, but I believed that Kierkegaard lacked a unifying principle through which to interpret the body of his work. That was until I finally read The Concept of Irony. This book should be the starting point for all who wish to understand what motivated SK and who desire a grid by which to interpret his other writings. This is my Kierkegaardian missing link- and yet it was before my eyes from the very beginning. It would also be helpful to have a good grasp of Socrates and his use of irony, his concept of his daimonion, the trial of Socrates, as well as his relationship to the sophists as this will give further insight into Kierkegaard and the task he believed to be before him. Actually... start with Plato to get a sound understanding of Socrates first, and then read this book to understand Kierkegaard.
December 8, 2008
Kierkegaard compares Socrates and Christ, with Irony as a main point of distinction.
October 30, 2009
A difficult, inscrutable, maddening, and intensely rewarding book. They don't call him Kierkegaard fer nuthin'!
July 6, 2019
Exceedingly complex and hard to grasp.
October 20, 2014
Sócrates pelo olhar detalhista e extremamente inteligente de Kierkegaard. Sua ótica nos traz uma nova percepção de Sócrates. Recomendo.
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