Socratic_Irony

Socratic Irony In his work, The Concept of Irony, S'ren Kierkegaard discusses Socratic irony. This irony, which sees its beginning in Socrates’ claim to complete ignorance, is present throughout Plato’s dialogues. Socrates then uses this irony to bring his interlocutors to a state in which all content has been emptied from their minds—a state that is altogether negative. This negative aspect, in turn, can be seen as an expression of Socrates’ vanity. However, this vanity was commonly misjudged as greatness and even piety, at times. It will be discussed here how Socrates’ reputation of greatness was earned strictly through this vanity. Through his dialectic, it appeared as if Socrates was always in search for an eternal and objective truth. He always began by claiming ignorance, while his interlocutor claimed to possess knowledge. Socrates would proceed by questioning the other, in a rational manner, in order to try to come to some sort of final truth. However, the truth arrived at was always the same one—that the other was wrong—and the other would wind up in a state in which he realised he knew nothing; this state is also known as aporia. Kierkegaard describes this process of emptying one of all one’s purported knowledge socrates, negative, vanity, socrates’, irony, truth, possessed, kierkegaard, state, positive, made, life, knowledge, ignorance, simply, sees, revenge, order, one’s, one, necessary, ironic, impossible, however, entire, daimon, content, always, actually, wisest, way, thus, through, suffer, socratic, seen