Читать книгу The Craft of Innovative Theology. Argument and Process онлайн
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A dictionary definition of irony describes it as the expression of meaning, in language which normally signifies the opposite. This is not simply to experience a bit of bad luck like “rain on your wedding day” or a “free ride when you’re already there,”27 but rather a conscious act of saying while at the same time unsaying, a position which undermines itself in the process of its expression. It is to deliberately steer a path between two contrary positions: affirmation and negation – but irony is much closer to negation since in saying anything at all we implicitly affirm the existence and significance of what we are talking about. To speak ironically, then, is to layer the unsaying part on to what we are saying, to add simultaneous negation to our positive affirmation.
Kierkegaard spent quite a lot of time considering irony and the absurd. In Repetition he shows that Job gets everything back by virtue of the absurd, and in Fear and Trembling he argues that Abraham’s reprieve from having to sacrifice Isaac is also due to the absurd. Faced with a religion such as this, what attitude could we take other than irony? Indeed Kierkegaard goes further and argues that all human life must be understood through the ironic. He claimed that: