Tommaso Manzon (KCL) - 2016-17 Students
manzon.tommaso@gmail.com

To Become Oneself: Irony, Philosophy, and Spirituality with reference to Lear, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche

My research project aims to give an account of the topic of irony across the thought of S. Kierkegaard and F. Nietzsche. In order to do so, I shall develop my analysis on the ground of Jonthan Lear’s work on irony, with particular reference to his “A Case for Irony”. I will argue that the practice of irony in both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche can be read in connection to what Pierre Hadot called “spiritual exercise”. Accordingly, all three authors I consider will be interpreted as heirs to a tradition of philosophy as spiritual practice which begins with Socrates, the paradigmatic ironist.