Ironiczność – warunek transcendentalny tożsamości

This article attempts to examine whether irony would make a good condition for defining identity. It presents two approaches to understanding irony, both of which are rooted in romanticism. The article intends to show that irony helps constitute identity only when it is understood as a distance towards possible identifications. However, irony understood as independence from the world makes defining identity impossible. To support this thesis, the article contrasts Schlegel’s and Kierkegaard’s understanding of irony and its influence on subjectivity, and it also presents some contemporary followers of Schlegel and Kierkegaard by focusing on the thoughts of Richard Rorty and Robert Piłat. Stressing the objection which arises when irony is seen as absolute freedom, the article highlights the role of possibilities (to save the notion of ‘identity’ despite rejecting the illusion of complete self – knowledge), one which results from the conception of irony presented by Kierkegaard and Piłat. According to them, irony, without the right to exclusivity, is what makes identity possible.