This text was originally presented as the annual faculty lecture at the University of Washington in November 1986 and, upon invitation from the University of Washington Press, expanded to its present format. In spite of considerable additions to the lecture, however, the original line of thought and argumentation has been maintained. These additions are all of an illustrative, exemplifying nature and seek to develop particular points more fully than was possible within the limited scope of the lecture.
As is customary in the faculty lectures at the University of Washington, topics of one’s own research serve as the occasion for formulating issues of a broader interest. In this particular case, I tried to explore the question of our own position in history, the status of our modernity, and our relation to the tradition, through that figure of speech and writing which has received the name of irony. Irony, of course, is not to be taken in any restricted literary meaning, but in that broad mode of saying it otherwise, of circumlocution, configuration, and indirect communication characteristic of today’s humanistic and scientific discourses. This investigation quite naturally led to the names and themes discussed in this text, all of which I would like to link more closely with our contemporary concerns.
Whenever they were available I have used English translations for quotations from foreign sources, but have always checked the text against the original. When no appropriate translation was available, I have provided one myself.
ERNST BEHLER
Seattle, March 1989