ABSTRACT
The first romanticist who worked out a theory of irony was Friedrich Schlegel. The attempt to put this theory into practice, after the fashion of Tieck's plays, seemed and seemed rightly even to later representatives of the movement to be extravagant. One cannot repeat too often that what the romanticist always sees at the centre is either the mere rationalist or else the philistine; and he therefore inclines to measure his own distinction by his remoteness from any possible centre. The irony of Socrates, to take the most important example of Greek irony, is not of the centrifugal character. Socrates professes ignorance, and this profession seems very ironical, for it turns out that his ignorance is more enlightened, that is, more central than other men's swelling conceit of knowledge. One of the most delicate of tasks is to determine whether a paradox occupies a position more or less central than the convention to which it is opposed.
