ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some of the theoretical failings of irony–failings that attest to possible dangers of an ironic politics. It deals with the leading theorist of irony in the nineteenth century, Friedrich Schlegel, who’s thought and examines in the hope of gaining some insight into the question of why irony went astray. In Hegel's terminology, the former has a "content" to its process and progress, for it "negates" in order to "determine"–it is a "determinate negation." The latter sees only "pure nothingness in its result"; it is at best conscious of its nothingness, and thus has as a "content" only a "determinate nothingness." The difference between irony and Hegelianism is that irony "teaches to actualize actuality," and it does so, according to Kierkegaard, by placing an emphasis upon the here, upon actuality. The foreword to that dissertation begins with a discussion of Socratic irony, and Karl Marx mentions in passing Friedrich Schlegel and his doctrine of irony.
