1ro'!

Y in Religions Belief and Religions Biograp~

31

"For Climacus, the immediaty person is o.ne :vho has n?t become suf~ciently
detached from his given existence and his gtven purswts for the notlon of
responsibility for his manner of existence even to arise for him.,,3

According to Cross, the immediate person is identified by Climac~s. with

the esthete. An immediate person may have the charactenstlc of
unreflectively foIlowing the given of his or her life situation or may be
overly reflective but still immediate. As Cross describes this second
alternative:

Chapter 2

lrony In Religious Belief and Religious Biography

"He gives himself over so much to the acti~ty o~ reflectJ:g that h~ never, as the
current phrase goes, 'gets a life.' ... Occupymg himself Wl~ re~ec~ve fantasy, he
never puts any ofhis reflections into practice; he prefers to live v1canously, through
fantasizing about the lives of others."

In Concluding Unscientific Postscript ta Philosophical Fragments' Kierkegaard's

pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus addresses the concept of irony.
His treatment of irony reveals important links and subtle differences with
the way in which Kierkegaard treated irony in the dissertation. For
example, irony, in the Postscript, is described as a cotifinium between two
existence spheres.

Though the reflective esthete lives a life of fantasy such a pe~so~, like ~e
unreflective person, "takes certain given conditions as deterrrunatl~e of his
life [and] he ultimately forsakes responsibility for whether th~t li~e goes
weil or poorly."5 The reflective esethete may be closer t~ the !t~ruc, an.d
hence the ethical, than the purely immediate person but lives a life that 1S
still marked by immediacy.
Irony arises through self reflection. It marks the turning away from
immediacy and toward the ethical. Hence the ironist's emptiness. SUC? a
person has turned away from immediacy but has not !et made th~ ethic~
self choice. As in the dissertation Climacus makes 1t clear that !tony 1S
more than a rhetorical flourish.

"There are three existence-spheres: the esthetic, the ethical, the religious. To these
three there is a respectively corresponding confinium [border territory]: irony is the
confinium between the esthetic and the ethical; humor is the confinium between the
ethical and the religious.,,2

It is clear that this treatment of irony as a border territory between the

esthetic and the ethical is importantly similar and yet different from
Kierkegaard's earlier treatment of irony. First, Climacus maintains the
earlier emphasis upon irony as more than a rhetorical flourish or a brief
attitude. Second, he elaborates on the connection between irony and
individuation that is first addressed in the dissertation. Irony is a
movement away from immediacy and toward the ethical and the religious.
However, what is missing is the central concem of the dissertation
discussion of the subject, the concem with ironic philosophy and its
implications for a way of life marked by individuality and historicity.
A good way to unpack what Climacus has in mind in such a
description is to see what he means by the esthetic, or the immediate, and
the ethical. Andrew Cross describes Kierkegaard's concept of immediacy
in this way:

''Irony is an existence-qualification, and thu~ no~g is. more ludicrous than

regarding it as a style of speaking or an author s countlng ~se~f lucky to. express
himself ironicaily once in a while. The person who has. ess~ntlal.1r~ny ~as 1t ail d~y
long and is not bound to any style, because he has the m~te Wl~ him. Irony 1S
the cultivation of the spirit and therefore follows next after lffimediacy; then cornes
the ethicist, then the humorist, then the religious person.,,6

Or as Cross describes Climacus' ironist:

"[I]t should be clear why Climacus sees irony as a border zone ~e~een immediacy
(which includes the aesthetic) and the ethical. Between the pos1t;t0n of the p.erson
who takes his given immediate nature as b~te data for t.he pur~wt of a meanmgEul
life (and as determining what would constltute a ~eanmgfu~ life) and the person
who takes his immediate nature as an object of chOlce; there 1S the pers on who has
3 Andrew Cross ''The Perils of Reflexive Irony," in The Cambridge Companion to
Kierkegaard,.eds. Al~stiar Hannay and Gordon D. Marion (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 142.
4 Ibid., 143.
5 Ibid., 145.
6 Soren Kierkegaard, Conclnding Unscientific Postscript, 503-504.

1 Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard's Writings, 12/1 (princeton University Press, 1992).
2 Ibid., 501-502.