Kierkegaard on Irony

Extract

Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Socrates, submitted at the University of Copenhagen in 1841 for the degree of Magister Artium, has at last appeared in English translation.1 Not before time. It is the last of his major works to reach the English speaking public, and certainly the one without which all the rest of Kierkegaard’s work is in danger of being misunderstood. It is interesting to note that 1841 is the year when Marx took his doctorate at Jena. Marx has been accorded every kind of critical attention, but Kierkegaard, discovered late, is still emerging into his full importance. Last summer Gallimard of Paris issued Kierkegaard vivant. Comprising papers read at a recent U.N.E.S.C.O. conference by such figures as Sartre, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel etc, it forms an eloquent proof that the thought of Kierkegaard is being revalued by those very thinkers who ‘discovered’ him thirty years ago. Collins, in publishing The Concept of Irony, adds one further work of ‘the living Kierkegaard’ to their previous excellent output in the field.

Lee Capel has rendered us great service in letting us have at last his polished and erudite translation. It has taken a long time, at least six years in the correcting. The difficulties of this work are famous. Now the work is available to anyone who, while interested in the enigmatic thought of Kierkegaard, has not a ready command of a fluent and punning Danish.

The Concept of Irony deserves to be well-known, hailed, read and enjoyed. Rarely can such a witty, good-humoured, mature, intelligent and ferociously yea-saying work have appeared as an academic dissertation.