ABSTRACT
The Danish word Negation derives from the Latin negatio and the verb negare, which means to deny or contradict.1 While Kierkegaard uses the word in its ordinary sense to refer to the simple denial of an affirmative statement, he develops the substantive form, “the negative,” into a critically important concept in his philosophy. Although Kierkegaard inherits this concept from Hegel, he goes on to make it his own in a way that uniquely distinguishes and distances him from his great mentor and antagonist. The concept is developed progressively through a number of his key works, but most extensively in The Concept of Irony and perhaps most distinctively in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
