The Concept Of Irony

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 International Kierkegaard Commentary-For the first time in English the world community of scholars systematically assembled and presented the results of recent research in the vast literature of Søren Kierkegaard. Based on the definitive English edition of Kierkegaard's works by Princeton University Press, this series of commentaries addresses all the published texts of the influential Danish philosopher and theologian. This is volume 2 in a series of commentaries based upon the definitive translations of Kierkegaard's writings published by Princeton University Press, 1980ff.

What is it about irony - as an object of serious philosophical reflection and a literary technique of considerable elasticity - that makes it an occasion for endless critical debate? This book responds to that question by focusing on several key moments in German romanticism and its afterlife in twentieth-century French thought and writing. Rather than provide a history of irony, it examines particular occasions of ironic disruption, thus offering an alternative model for conceiving of historical occurrences and their potential for acquiring meaning.

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.

In 2001, Vanity Fair declared that the Age of Irony was over. Joan Didion has lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama has become an "irony-free zone." Jonathan Lear in his 2006 book Radical Hope looked into AmericaÕs heart to ask how might we dispose ourselves if we came to feel our way of life was coming to an end. Here, he mobilizes a squad of philosophers and a psychoanalyst to once again forge a radical way forward, by arguing that no genuinely human life is possible without irony. Becoming human should not be taken for granted, Lear writes. It is something we accomplish, something we get the hang of, and like Kierkegaard and Plato, Lear claims that irony is one of the essential tools we use to do this. For Lear and the participants in his Socratic dialogue, irony is not about being cool and detached like a player in a Woody Allen film. That, as Johannes Climacus, one of KierkegaardÕs pseudonymous authors, puts it, Òis something only assistant professors assume.Ó Instead, it is a renewed commitment to living seriously, to experiencing every disruption that shakes us out of our habitual ways of tuning out of life, with all its vicissitudes. While many over the centuries have argued differently, Lear claims that our feelings and desires tend toward order, a structure that irony shakes us into seeing. LearÕs exchanges with his interlocutors strengthen his claims, while his experiences as a practicing psychoanalyst bring an emotionally gripping dimension to what is at stakeÑthe psychic costs and benefits of living with irony.