Moreover, whether I may have been too prolix at times, ... let me be judged modestly and without any demands, but I will not be judged by boys.”25 “And if something should be found, particularly in the first part of the dissertation, that one is generally not accustomed to come across in scholarly writings, the reader must forgive my jocundity, just as I, in order to lighten the burden, sometimes sing at my work.”26 In the work itself, he concedes that “the form of the whole treatise . . . departs somewhat from the now widespread and in so many ways meritorious scholarly method.”27

Sibbern, as dean of the philosophical faculty, was the first reader and approved the dissertation, although he advised a pruning of the style, a change of title to make Socrates even more central, and the addition of Latin theses. The other faculty readers agreed essentially with Sibbern. Brønsted, however, added that “it is the faculty’s business only to render acknowledgment of insight and knowledge but by no means to bring about better taste in those who, according to their own insight and knowledge, ought to have better taste.”28 H. L. Martensen, in a very brief note, also voted for acceptance, although he, too, was critical of the style.29

On October 20, 1841, the Magister Artium diploma was issued. It should be noted that the Magister degree in the faculty of philosophy corresponded to the Ph.D. in the other faculties of the University of Copenhagen. This is reflected in the announcement of Søren Kierkegaards Doktordisputats in the newspaper Berlingske Tidende, September 29, 1841. In 1854, the Magister degree with dissertation was abolished, and those with such a degree were declared to be doctors of philosophy. This change is indicated, for example, in the announcement of the death of “Dr. Søren Kierkegaard”30 and in polemical pieces such as Nicolai Holten’s Polemiske Smuler eller en Smule Polemik mod Dr. Søren Kierkegaard.31

Inasmuch as there is no record of the sale of the published dissertation, no inference about public interest in the work can be drawn, although there may have been a correlation between sales of the book and the large audience at the public colloquy. The number printed is also unknown, but it was customary to print dissertations in a much smaller number than 525 copies, the size of most other Kierkegaard editions. Printed at the cost of 182 rix-dollars, 4 marks, 8 shillings for the entire printing, paperbound copies were sold for 9 marks or 1½ rix-dollars (c. $7.50 at the 1973 level), with 25 percent going to the bookseller. No information on sales of the volume is available; a sale of 163 copies would have covered printing costs. The Latin theses required by the faculty were included in copies distributed within the university. They were not included in copies sold to the public. Such copies had a title page with a Greek quotation from Plato’s Republic, whereas the university copies had a title page with a phrase about submission for the Magister degree and a space for writing the time of an eventual public colloquy.

The reception of Irony by reviewers during Kierkegaard’s lifetime was scanty and supercilious—only two Danish reviews in fourteen years. The first review appeared in The Corsair on October 22, 1841.32 The review was anonymous and ironically excessive in praise. Meïr Goldschmidt, the editor, was not satisfied with the review because it concentrated on the language and not on the substance of Irony, and therefore he added a postscript to the review.33 The second review34 was by Dr. Andreas Frederik Beck, who had spoken at the public defense of the dissertation. After eleven columns of summary, Beck praised the treatment of Xenophon and the absence of cramped scholastic terminology but in closing censured what he termed an attempted brilliance of wit and the use of allusions and references that were unclear to most readers, including the reviewer.35 Another review36 appeared in December 1855, about a month after Kierkegaard’s death, as part of an article on Hegelianism in Denmark. Given that theme, the reviewer said, “Hegelianism ends with Kierkegaard, and nevertheless he never did entirely renounce Hegel.”37 The review also stated that the work “not only treats of irony but is irony.”38

Kierkegaard’s own estimate of The Concept of Irony is scarcely more rapturous than the reception it received at the time. Among the very few journal entries on Irony is a repentant word about what he had written concerning Socrates:

A Passage in My Dissertation

Influenced as I was by Hegel and whatever was modern, without the maturity really to comprehend greatness, I could not resist pointing out somewhere in my dissertation that it was a defect on the part of Socrates to disregard the whole and only consider numerically the individuals.

What a Hegelian fool I was! It is precisely this that powerfully demonstrates what a great ethicist Socrates was.39

The two other critical references to Irony in the Papirer are in the same vein regarding the relation to Hegel:

That the state in a Christian sense is supposed to be what Hegel taught—namely, that it has moral significance, that true virtue can appear only in the state (something I also childishly babbled after him in my dissertation),40 that the goal of the state is to improve men—is obviously nonsense.

The state is of the evil rather than of the good, a necessary evil, in a certain sense a useful, expedient evil, rather than a good.

The state is human egotism on a large scale and in great dimensions—so far off was Plato when he said that in order to become aware of the virtues we should study them in the state.41

The state is human egotism in great dimensions, very expediently and cunningly composed so that the egotisms of individuals intersect each other correctively. To this extent the state is no doubt a safeguard against egotism by manifesting a higher egotism that copes with all the individual egotisms so that these must egotistically understand that egotistically it is the most prudent thing to live in the state.