ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines both Kierkegaard's and Richard Rorty's understanding of ironic philosophy and its relation to an ironic life. He takes as his point of departure the insight that both Kierkegaard and Rorty saw in irony much more than a simple rhetorical tool. Instead, irony can be conceived as a philosophical position that involves a rejection of any final truths or absolutes. But more than this, it can also transcend philosophy and be a life practice. Gregory L. Reece's Irony and Religious Belief is an analysis of irony in Kierkegaard and the American philosopher Rorty. This work was a Ph.D. dissertation in Religious Studies at the Claremont Graduate University in California. The work is critical of both the early Kierkegaard's concept of irony as necessarily ending in infinite, absolute negativity, and Rorty's concept as leading to doubts and lack of stability.
