Soren Kierkegaard

effect its own disappearance without leaving a trace is illustrated with refer-
ence to “that old witch” who decided “to devour everything and then to
devour herself as well,” so that she ended by devouring “her own stomach.”
Kierkegaard was thus painfully aware of the tension between the subject
matter and the exposition, but he ingeniously chose to transform the prob-
lem of irony into an ironic point: In his dissertation he not onlyexplicates
irony, he alsoreplicatesit. And he does this, he explains, to head off what
was apparently a common error: “Thus in modern times there has been
plenty of talk about irony and about the ironic conception of actuality; but
this conception has rarely manifested itself ironically.” And irony was to do
this—manifest itself ironically, that is—in Kierkegaard. But unfortunately,
when it comes to irony, it is not so far from manifestation to sheer mania.
At any rate, that was what the members of the sober-minded evaluating
committee thought.
Thus F. C. Sibbern, the dean of the faculty, to whom Kierkegaard had
personally presented his dissertation on June 3, remarked in the circular
letter that he forwarded along with the dissertation when he sent it to J. N.
Madvig, professor of classics, that there was something in the dissertation
that in his opinion belonged to a “lower sort of genre,” and he compared
Kierkegaard to the German writer and aesthetician Jean Paul, who, ac-
cording to Sibbern, also had a “peculiar and characteristic manner of
marching, walking, and slouching.” Sibbern further wished that the title of
the dissertation be changed to the following: “Socrates as an Ironist, With
Contributions to the Development of the Concept of Irony in General,
Particularly with Reference to the Most Recent Times.” Sibbern enter-
tained no doubts, however, that the dissertation ought to be accepted for
defense; true, it was a quite long, but it could be read relatively quickly
because “the language flows easily” and furthermore, “the handwriting is
very legible.” The legibility of the handwriting can presumably be attrib-
uted to the fact that Kierkegaard had had a fair copy of the dissertation made
by C. L. Simonsen, who shortly thereafter emigrated to Norway, where he
bragged a bit about his part in the enterprise.
Madvig, who now received the dissertation for inspection, was also satis-
fied with its contents, in which he discovered “intellectual liveliness and
fresh thought,” but he, too, believed that as a composition it was marked
by a “certain free and easy carelessness,” and that “the development of con-
cepts lacks scholarly order, form, and firm focus.” Worst of all, however,
was that “the exposition suffers from a self-satisfied pursuit of the piquant
and the witty, which not infrequently lapses into the outright vulgar and
tasteless.” Madvig briefly considered whether the acceptance of the disserta-
tion ought to be made conditional on “the removal of these excrescences,”