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Chapter 2
lrony
In
Religious Belief and Religious Biography
In Concluding Unscientific Postscript ta Philosophical Fragments' Kierkegaard's
pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus addresses the concept of irony.
His treatment
of
irony reveals important links and subtle differences with
the way in which Kierkegaard treated irony in the dissertation. For
example, irony, in the Postscript, is described
as
a cotifinium between two
existence spheres.
"There are three existence-spheres: the esthetic, the ethical, the religious.
To
these
three there is a respectively corresponding confinium [border territory]: irony is the
confinium between the esthetic and the ethical;
humor is
the confinium between the
ethical and the religious.,,2
It is clear that this treatment
of
irony
as
a border territory between the
esthetic and the ethical is importantly similar and yet different from
Kierkegaard's earlier treatment of irony. First, Climacus maintains the
earlier emphasis
upon
irony
as more
than a rhetorical flourish or a brief
attitude. Second, he elaborates on the connection between irony and
individuation that is first addressed in the dissertation. Iron y is a
move ment away from immediacy and toward the ethical and the religious.
However, what is missing is the central concem
of
the dissertation
discussion
of
the subject, the concem with ironic philosophy and its
implications for a way
of
life marked by individuality and historicity.
A good way to unpack
what
Climacus has in mind in such a
description is to see what
he
means by the esthetic, or the immediate, and
the ethical. Andre w Cross describes Kierkegaard's concept
of
immediacy
in this
way:
Soren Kierkegaard,
Concluding Unscientific Postscript,
ed and trans. Howard V Hong
and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard's Writings, 12/1 (princeton University Press, 1992).
2 Ibid., 501-502.
[
1ro' Y in Religions Beliefand Religions i o g r a p ~
31
"For
Climacus, the immediat
y
person
is
o ne :vho has
n?t
become
s u f ~ c i e n t l y
detached from his given existence and his gtven purswts for the notlon of
responsibility for his mannerof existence even to arise for him.,,3
According to Cross, the immediate person is identified by C l i m a c ~ s . with
the esthete. An immediate person may have the charactenstlc of
unreflectively foIlowing the given
of
his or her life situation or may be
overly reflective
but
still immediate. As Cross describes this seco nd
alternative:
"He
gives himself over so much to the
a c t i ~ t y
reflectïJ:g that never, as the
current phrase goes, 'gets a life.' Occupymg himself r e ~ e c ~ v e fantasy, he
never puts any ofhis reflections into practice; he prefers to live v1canously, through
fantasizing about the lives of others."
Though the reflective esthete lives a life
of
fantasy such a
p e ~ s o ~ ,
like
unreflective person, "takes certain given conditions as
d e t e r r r u n a t l ~ e
of his
life
[and]
he ultimately forsakes responsibility for whether
t h ~ t l i ~
goes
weil
or
poorly."5 The reflective esethete may be closer the
t ~ r u c ,
an d
hence the ethical, than the purely immediate person but lives a life that S
still marked by immediacy.
Irony arises through self reflection. t marks the turning away from
immediacy and toward the ethical. Hence the ironist's emptiness.
SUC?
a
person has turned away from immediacy but has not
et
made
t h ~ e t h i c ~
self choice. As in the disser tation Climacus makes 1t clear
that
tony S
more
than a rhetorical flourish.
''Irony is an existence-qualification, and t h u ~ n o ~ g is. more ludicrous than
regarding it as a style of speaking or an author s countlng ~ s e ~ f lucky to express
himself ironicaily once in a while. The person wh o has. s s ~ n t l a l . 1 r ~ n y
~ a s 1t
ail d ~ y
long and is
not
bound to any style, because he has the m ~ t e l ~ him. Irony S
the cultivation of the spirit and therefore follows next after lffimediacy; then cornes
the ethicist, then the humorist, then the religious person.,,6
Or
as
Cross describes Climacus' ironist:
"[I]t should be clear why Climacus sees irony as a border zone ~ e ~ e e n immediacy
(which includes the aesthetic) and the ethical. Between the
pos1t;t0n
of the p.erson
who takes his given immediate nature as b ~ t e data for t he p u r ~ w t of a meanmgEul
life (and as determining what would constltute a ~ e a n m g f u ~ life) and the person
who takes his immediate nature as an object
of chOlce;
there
S
the pers
on
who has
3 Andrew Cross ''The Perils of Reflexive Irony," in The
Cambridge Companion
to
Kierkegaard,.eds. l ~ s t i a r Hannay and Gordon D. Marion (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press,
1998), 142.
4 Ibid., 143.
5 Ibid., 145.
6
Soren Kierkegaard, Conclnding Unscientific Postscript, 503 504.
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