“Irony is a qualification of subjectivity.”

—  Sören Kierkegaard

1840s, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Irony is a qualification of subjectivity." by Sören Kierkegaard?
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Sören Kierkegaard 309
Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism 1813–1855

Related quotes

David Baboulene photo

“Failure in any given subject is the first qualification towards becoming a teacher.”

David Baboulene (1960) UK author

Articles

“All things, in all their aspects, consist exclusively of 'souls', that is, of various kinds of subjects, or units of experiencing, with their qualifications, relations, and groupings, or communities.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

Source: Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (1941), P. 183.

T. E. Lawrence photo

“Merit is no qualification for freedom.”

T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935) British archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat

"Letter to the Editor" The Times (22 July 1920) http://www.telstudies.org/writings/letters/1919-20/200722_the_times.shtml
Context: Whether they are fit for independence or not remains to be tried. Merit is no qualification for freedom. Bulgars, Afghans, and Tahitans have it. Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour's occupying you is greater than the profit.

Edith Wharton photo

“The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Source: A Backward Glance

Thomas Mann photo

“Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5
Context: Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice and materialism.

Dante Alighieri photo

“When we understand this we see clearly that the subject round which the alternative senses play must be twofold. And we must therefore consider the subject of this work [the Divine Comedy] as literally understood, and then its subject as allegorically intended. The subject of the whole work, then, taken in the literal sense only is "the state of souls after death" without qualification, for the whole progress of the work hinges on it and about it. Whereas if the work be taken allegorically, the subject is "man as by good or ill deserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his choice, he becomes liable to rewarding or punishing justice."”
Hiis visis, manifestum est quod duplex oportet esse subiectum circa quod currant alterni sensus. Et ideo videndum est de subiecto huius operis, prout ad litteram accipitur; deinde de subiecto, prout allegorice sententiatur. Est ergo subiectum totius operis, litteraliter tantum accepti, status animarum post mortem simpliciter sumptus. Nam de illo et circa illum totius operis versatur processus. Si vero accipiatur opus allegorice, subiectum est homo, prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii libertatem iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius est.

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Italian poet

Letter to Can Grande (Epistle XIII, 23–25), as translated by Charles Singleton in his essay "Two Kinds of Allegory" published in Dante Studies 1 (Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 87.
Epistolae (Letters)

Christopher Hitchens photo

“An appreciation for irony.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: Hitch-22: A Memoir

Alexandra Kollontai photo

“Such is life's irony.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Frithjof Schuon photo

“The fact that spiritual realism, or faith, pertains to the intelligence of the heart and not to that of the mind, enables one to understand that in spirituality, the moral qualification takes precedence over the intellectual qualification, and by far.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2013, From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom, 71, 978-1-936597-32-1]
Spiritual life, Faith

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve photo

“Let us beware of irony when making judgements. Of all the dispositions of the mind, irony is the least intelligent.”

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic

Gardons-nous de l'ironie en jugeant. De toutes les dispositions de l'esprit, l'ironie est la moins intelligente.
Notebook entry, February 24, 1848, cited from Les cahiers de Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1876) p. 75; Christopher Prendergast The Classic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) p. 244.

Related topics