ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about the book, Socratismo e cristianismo em Kierkegaard: o escândalo e a loucura (Socratism and Christianity in Kierkegaard: Offense and Foolishness) first published in 2001 by Annablume in São Paulo, Brazil, and it is this monograph that granted the author the academic title of bachelor in philosophy. In the book, de Paula goes through the three quite different sketches of Socrates drawn in The Concept of Irony: those of Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes, and tries to devise a fourth one, namely, Kierkegaard's own portrait of Socrates. De Paula addresses the question of the relation between the single individual and the absolute, and presents de silentio's reckoning of Abraham in Fear and Trembling as standing higher and above the universal. He had the courage of faith not to say a word to anyone, trusting that God would be merciful. De Paula manages to establish a relation between Socratic irony and Kierkegaard's own conception and understanding of it.
