[Guest Paper] Kierkegaard’s Concept of Irony and his Critiques on Romantic Irony

Abstract: S？ren Kierkegaard’s doctoral dissertation, The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841) is not only a comprehensive analysis of the concept of irony but it also comprises his own characterization of irony. Kierkegaard both elaborates on Socratic irony by addressing interpretations of Xenophon, Plato and Aristophanes and looks into core principles of romantic irony by concentrating on German Romantics in it. This article first examines the key features of Kierkegaard’s irony and his critiques on romantic irony particularly through Friedrich Schlegel’s famous novel, Lucinde. Then, it discusses whether Schlegel’s romantic irony satisfies the necessary requirements of irony specified in The Concept of Irony. It also shows that in the light of Kierkegaard’s critiques on Schlegel’s irony, the traces of the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious spheres of existence which form the outline of Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy and the place of irony as a border territory between the aesthetic and the ethical spheres, depicted in his later works, can already be found in The Concept of Irony