Kierkegaard in search of a barrier within the Maelström of modernity

Abstract

The Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) structured all of his works with the intention of barring the iminence of the crisis of meaning. Indeed, his dissertation, published in 1841 under the title of The concept of Irony with continual reference to Socrates, has as its ending a discussion on nihilism, a phenomenon which Kierkegaard seeks to bar through the recourse to a specific artifice. Nevertheless, I shall argue that such an artifice can be considered as, at the very least, contradictory, since it pressuposes three, if not four different conceptions of irony, that is, 1) irony as (socratic) subjectivity, 2) irony as (enlightened) critique, which, on its turn, is equated to 3) romantic irony and, 4) what Kierkegaard himself names controlled irony. Thus, using as a theoretical referential the work of German historian Reinhart Koselleck Critique and Crisis, I shall seek to demonstrate that behind such a conceptual confusion, the work The concept of Irony with continual reference to Socrates has as its main theme a vigourous comprehension of the fundamentally modern phenomenon of nihilism.