The Concept of Irony

A dissertation on Socrates, written in Danish by royal permission, that treats irony as a whole way of standing toward life.

by Søren Kierkegaard701 passages held

Danish, the original language

Original title: Om Begrebet Ironi
First published: 1841(aged 28)
Original language: Danish

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Overview

A Copenhagen dissertation in 1841 was still expected to be written in Latin. Søren Kierkegaard petitioned in June to submit his in Danish, and at the end of July King Christian VIII signed the permission. His subject was Socrates, who wrote nothing and survives only in the accounts of others: the admiring Xenophon, the philosophising Plato, and Aristophanes, who mocked him on the comic stage in The Clouds. Kierkegaard gives the comedian's portrait unusual weight and argues that the historical Socrates was an ironist through and through, a man who questioned Athenians out of their certainties and deliberately left no doctrine in their place. In the second half he follows that attitude into his own century, to the Romantic writers around Friedrich Schlegel, whose irony, he found, had become a pose that kept every commitment at arm's length. On Socrates he leaned heavily on Hegel; on the Romantics he agreed with him. The examiners passed it with complaints. J. N. Madvig, the Latin professor, found it disorderly and too pleased with its own wit, and a Greek scholar objected to its sarcasm. The public defence on 29 September lasted about seven hours, and J. L. Heiberg, the city's leading critic, was among those who argued with him from the floor. Kierkegaard paid 182 rigsdaler to print it, a single newspaper review followed in 1842, and the German translation his supervisor kept urging never came. In 1854 his master's degree was converted into a doctorate.

Key concepts

What does Kierkegaard mean by irony, if not a figure of speech?

A standpoint rather than a trope: a way of standing toward life in which a person negates what is taken for granted without putting anything positive in its place. Saying the opposite of what one means is only the surface. In this dissertation irony is what Socrates did to Athens, and what the Romantics did, with far less justification, to everything.

Why does the dissertation give so much weight to Aristophanes' The Clouds?

Because Socrates wrote nothing, and each surviving witness shows a different man: Xenophon an admirable moralist, Plato a philosopher, Aristophanes a figure of fun on the comic stage. Kierkegaard takes the comedy seriously because it catches what the admirers smooth over, a questioner whose work was to empty positions rather than fill them — which is the ironist he argues Socrates really was.

Who are the Romantic ironists the second half attacks?

German writers of Kierkegaard's own century around Friedrich Schlegel, who made irony a programme for art and for life. On his reading their irony had hardened into a pose: it held every commitment at arm's length and treated reality itself as material to play with. Against them he sides with Hegel, whose verdict on the Romantics he shares.

How Hegelian is this early book?

More than readers of his later polemics expect. On Socrates Kierkegaard leans heavily on Hegel's account, and on the Romantics he agrees with Hegel's verdict outright. The later books, above all the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, would turn hard against Hegel's system, so this dissertation shows him arguing inside the vocabulary he would afterwards fight.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Ironist Who Left No Doctrine

Did Socrates hand the Athenians he questioned a truth, or take their certainties away and leave the place empty? The answer decides whether irony is a technique or a whole way of standing toward life.

Socrates wrote nothing, so he has to be pieced together from Xenophon's admiration, Plato's philosophising and the mockery Aristophanes put on the comic stage in The Clouds — and Kierkegaard gives the comedian unusual weight. His conclusion is that the historical Socrates was an ironist through and through: his questioning dissolved what Athenians took for knowledge and deliberately put no doctrine in its place. That emptiness is not a gap in the record but the achievement itself. Irony, read this way, is not a figure of speech but a standpoint, and one a person can live inside.

irony
socrates
negation
negativity
socratic method
ignorance
dialectic
plato
sophistry
comedy
historical interpretation
knowledge
dialogue

Enter a dialogue

When Irony Becomes a Pose

What becomes of the Socratic refusal when writers take it up as a style and keep every commitment at arm's length? Kierkegaard asks whether an irony that serves nothing is still freedom, or only its imitation.

The second half follows irony into Kierkegaard's own century, to the Romantic writers around Friedrich Schlegel. Socrates turned irony on the certainties of his city; they turned it into a posture, a way of holding every role, every promise and finally reality itself at a distance, so that the ironist is never bound by anything. On this point Kierkegaard agreed with Hegel's verdict on the Romantics. What the dissertation leaves open is the question his later books would press: what a person does with the freedom irony opens, once the ground has been cleared.

romanticism
subjectivity
freedom
aesthetics
reality
hegel
abstraction
interpretation

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 701
distinct concepts: 687
by passages held, corpus-wide: #98

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “irony” and “subjectivity”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 26 pairings. 82 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
irony	subjectivity	42
irony	socrates	36
irony	negation	25
plato	socrates	21
dialectic	irony	18
interpretation	irony	16
dialectic	plato	14
socrates	subjectivity	13
irony	sophistry	11
negation	subjectivity	11
irony	plato	10
dialectic	socrates	9
dialectic	negation	7
interpretation	socrates	7
socrates	sophistry	7
dialectic	sophistry	6
negation	socrates	6
sophistry	subjectivity	6
dialectic	subjectivity	3
plato	subjectivity	3
dialectic	interpretation	2
interpretation	plato	2
interpretation	subjectivity	2
interpretation	negation	1
interpretation	sophistry	1
negation	plato	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1841 The Concept of Irony (Om Begrebet Ironi) you are here DA
1843 Either/Or (Enten – Eller)
The first of the pseudonymous books: an invented editor presenting two invented authors, whose argument Stages on Life's Way would reopen two years later.
DA
1843 Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven)
Twin of Repetition, published the same October day: both books take up a man who must give up what he loves, one through Abraham and Isaac, the other through an engagement broken off.
DA
1843 Repetition (Gjentagelsen)
A short fiction, subtitled a venture in experimenting psychology: one man's account of a journey back to Berlin, and another man's letters about a love he has fled.
DA
1844 Philosophical Fragments (Philosophiske Smuler)
Johannes Climacus signs his first book here and returns in the far longer Postscript; in its author's lifetime this short thought experiment was little read outside Denmark.
DA
1844 The Concept of Anxiety (Begrebet Angest)
Philosophical Fragments had appeared four days earlier under another pseudonym; this is its companion, and it takes a point of church doctrine, inherited sin, and treats it as a problem in psychology.
DA
1845 Stages on Life's Way (Stadier paa Livets Vei)
Characters from Either/Or and Repetition return here, and the argument moves past the ethical into the religious.
DA
1846 Concluding Unscientific Postscript to "Philosophical Fragments" (Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift)
He meant it to close his authorship and later called it the authorship's turning point; after it, the openly religious writing takes over.
DA
1846 Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review (En literair Anmeldelse)
After the Postscript's farewell, the first book he published was, in form, a review of a contemporary novel, and he signed it with his own name.
DA
1847 Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand)
Begun in the spring of 1846, while the satirical weekly The Corsair was still caricaturing him, it opens the run of signed religious books that fills the years after the Postscript.
DA
1847 Works of Love (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger)
Two series of deliberations, a form he set apart from the discourse because it is meant to unsettle a reader rather than console one, published six months after the Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits.
DA
1848 Christian Discourses (Christelige Taler)
The first book of 1848, the year he later called the richest of his authorship and the year he wrote The Sickness unto Death.
DA
1849 The Sickness unto Death (Sygdommen til Døden)
The first of two books signed by Anti-Climacus, with Practice in Christianity following in 1850; Kierkegaard later ranked the pair among the most important things he wrote.
DA
1849 Two Ethical-Religious Essays (Tvende ethisk-religieuse Smaa-Afhandlinger)
A slim pamphlet, the only book under the initials H.H., salvaged from a planned cycle of ethical-religious essays that he gave up in the spring of 1849.
DA
1850 Practice in Christianity (Indøvelse i Christendom)
Kierkegaard judged it the truest of all his books; with The Sickness unto Death it makes up the pair signed by Anti-Climacus.
DA
1851 For Self-Examination (Til Selvprøvelse, Samtiden anbefalet)
The last new title he published before three years of public silence, and the book whose planned second series became Judge for Yourselves!
DA
1855 The Moment (Øieblikket Nr. 1–10)
The open, signed form of the criticism that Practice in Christianity had made under a pseudonym, carried in a periodical of his own through the last months of his life.
DA
1876 Judge for Yourselves! (Dømmer selv! Til Selvprøvelse Samtiden anbefalet)
Of the books on this shelf, the only one he finished and then chose not to publish; it stands between the signed discourses of 1851 and the open attack on the church of 1854–55.
DA

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