On the poisoning of sceptical thought by Romanticism

Abstract: Still today, the effectiveness of the Romanticists´ ideas of irony fundamentally characterises our judgement on rhetorical means for the support of argument and validity assessment; as this understanding is absolutely inappropriate and philosophically unreasonable, we may metaphorically speak of poisoning of philosophical thinking. There is an urgent need to work against it. This is an attempt to do so, by emphasizing the significance of toying and of solving riddles for philosophising, both in Kant and quite generally.

Each according to which logical or methodological foundations are valid, sceptical irony plays a role or not for philosophy. But no matter the situation: philosophical (sceptical) irony cannot be separated from what we understand to be the “seriousness” of a statement; after all philosophy is no clowning. Only if a philosophical statement is taken “seriously” it will work at all, only then the game behind it will be successful: the performative putting-into-question of certainties, for the purpose of thought learning itself in the course of thinking.

Historical overview

As early as by the end of the 18^th century, such as in texts by FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL, philosophical-literary approaches develop which start out from the aesthetics of the genius and herald Romanticism. There was a goodbye to the striving for conceptual clarity and to the claim to a strictly logical-argumentative way of working – as it seems, without regret; what comes to the fore is dealing with the belles lettres in the widest sense, sometimes also inspired by a profound knowledge of ancient literature.

From this urge and this time there comes what we call `Romantic irony´. As basically it exclusively refers to poetry and prose, to drama and narration, to lyricism, after all it should have no influence at all on philosophical works – unfortunately, however, it did have, and more than just a bit. Of course, this is due to particularly SCHLEGEL not precisely distinguishing philosophy from the belle lettres; he speaks of `universal poetry´ and in this sense imagines authors not as methodically proceeding “workers” on a concept or thought but as intuitive geniuses inspired by spontaneous inspiration and suggestions.

All this fascinated already the contemporaries, and certainly this fascination was supported by the fact that one was meeting among wider circles, in Berlin or in Jena, and that sometimes one was even living together. These circles of Romanticists had much appeal with the society of their time, with remarkable repercussions in the history of ideas. Among others, I would like to claim, this is due to their patching together of reckless novels and to the fact that their infatuated way of living out friendship sometimes went beyond the boundaries of eroticism and free love. Journals were founded where one could carelessly write this or that and could spread it among the people – and all in all this way one was able to make much more noise than the scholars and philosophers of the just recent past had been able (and probably willing) to do.

Conceptually, however, one indeed started out from the preceding authors, from KANT, FICHTE, or SCHILLER, and from concepts such as subjectivity, objectivity, transcendental philosophy.

Of the wealth of aspects to be found with the thought of the Romanticists and without always being able to discuss in detail the different approaches and ways of thought of the various authors, in the following we are going to exclusively discuss irony.

In Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, the entry on “irony” was written by Ernst Behler, a Schlegel researcher.[1] This fact may be considered paradigmatic for, from the year 1800 to our days, almost all dealing with irony (unless somebody exclusively analyses Plato´s philosophy) starts out precisely from there: from the ideas of the Romanticists, to which HEGEL´s sometimes strident criticism, KIERKEGAARD´s existentialism and other works connect rather seamlessly. The 19^th century, we may state, slaved away on an `irony debate´ which was concluded by NIETZSCHE;[2] later questions and approaches always started out from there: from SCHLEGEL or indeed from his antipode HEGEL.

From my point of view, the kind of irony under discussion here is an element of sceptical philosophical thought, and that is as a means of establishing a certain additional level or layer of reflection and questioning. Certainly this means may be called a rhetorical means. In our days, unfortunately such an attribution is connected to a certain degree of devaluation, because rhetoric is no longer connected to deep, systematic intentions and, as a consequence, we have lost any awareness that “sceptical irony” is a means of asking methodological questions to a text, thus making it not boring but exciting, witty, stimulating.

In the course of the modern history of ideas that what I thus call “sceptical irony” made the following career: at first it is separated from strict, conceptually working philosophy – this starts out from the Romanticists and culminates with HEGEL´s aversion against irony. As a consequence, and throughout the entire 19^th century, irony is defined as “pretence”, negation of the truth or: of identity; in short: as negativity in its purest sense.[3] At the same time it is mystified and thus condemned to a degree of flabbiness which no longer allows for sufficiently determining it conceptually. Furthermore, increasingly it belongs to the realm of literature and hardly to that of philosophy anymore. The fact that a large number of philosophers of that century were oriented, quite in the fundamental sense, at the exact sciences, such as mathematics and some natural sciences, obviously did not improve the status of irony. And then the grounding of phenomenology in radical Cartesian doubt is the final blow, as a result of which it lapsed into a coma.

For, Cartesian sceptical thought does indeed not celebrate strategies of sceptical thought but attempts, but is by way of eliminating the radical doubt keen to achieve a foundation for the greatest possible certainty: keeping ideas in the suspense, analysing them from different angles or different views, while continuously putting oneself and others into question when it comes both to the foundations and the results of thinking, to its claims to validity or to the possibilities of basing it on arguments – this is not DESCARTES´ cause, and also not the cause of those referring to him when it comes to their principles.

This late history of a certain degree of decline fits well to ancient devaluations of sceptical irony, such as in THEOPHRASTUS. THEOPHRASTUS defines the “ironist” – with a dullness similar to HEGEL, but even more self-righteously – as the wolf in sheep´s clothing, as a cunning, clever fox, as a “beguiler” who is capable of disguise but not of honesty or truthfulness.

On the other hand, before the Romanticists and after THEOPHRASTUS of course there existed sceptical texts making use of irony, and these did not come from authors who would equate the methodical function of irony and its methods-reflective significance for the ideas they are connected to with “delusion” or “pretence”. Usually these authors were oriented at SOCRATES resp. PLATO, and I would like to count all texts laid out in a subtle, self-reflective, witty and at least ambiguous if not multi-layered and prudent way among this line of tradition, no matter from which century they come. Examples? Names to be pointed out to are, among others, Seneca, Abaelard, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Melanchthon, Montaigne, Hobbes, Gassendi, Bayle, Pope, Hume, Rousseau, Diderot and, most of all, of course Shaftesbury. In this context, also this is crucial: their authors make no attempts to explain the ironic passages to the readers; it is presumed that they will notice the irony, after all.

Due to the contradiction of pretence and truth, of fraud and honesty, resulting from the above sketched theorisation from HEGEL to NIETZSCHE, in the 19^th century once more the very powerful idea was propagated that both were irreconcilable: a morally based separation of these two attitudes which, against this background, could no longer be considered the two sides of one coin – instead it was claimed that they were separated by an abyss. ARISTOTLE had been the first one to do so.[4] Thus, even in the 19^th century – or rather: since the 19^th century – irony and truth, or to have in a stylistically better way: irony and seriousness, were presented as contradicting each other. The unbridgeable chasm between them was transferred back to the past. Also to KANT. Obviously KANT had to be counted as a champion of absolute truth and honesty, due to his strictly principles-based moral philosophy; and as irony and seriousness/truth were mutually excluding, one concluded: it is unthinkable that irony/sceptical irony could be identified in KANT.

Playing the instrument or talking about the instrument?

Well, I would like to say: just on the contrary: in my eyes, KANT, PLATO as well as a number of authors of the Renaissance and the Early Modern Age are those philosophers really mastering true sceptical irony, which becomes obvious from the fact that they never (had to) poeticise or theorise about it but simply knew how to play the instrument.

Poeticising[5] and theorising about irony, as it was so typical for the 19^th century, is both stylistically and by its approach absolutely humourless and disturbingly boring. Irony is put onto the workbench of grandiose terms such as identity and negativity, subjectivity and objectivity and analysed to death, as is at least my impression. On the other hand, again being somewhat `Romanticism-inspired´, it is provided with an aura of mystic sanctity and understood as belonging to the divine entirety of a concordia oppositorum – which after all, due to the fact that not concrete situations or texts including contributions by irony are analysed but one wanted to discuss irony “as such” in a metaphysical-theosophical sense, as an abstractum, is not better either.

Philosophical hermeneutics of the 20^th century, although (or rather: because??) being based on SCHLEGEL (or also SCHLEIERMACHER), did not understand irony by its reflective functionality and thus did not preserve but lose it.[6]

What is meant by “reflective functionality”? Well, irony should be considered the most radical enablement for “comprehending” by way of thought: an idea, a topic, a claim, a theory are taken out of the usual one-dimensioned immediacy of common ways of presentation and placed into a prism of horizons, ways of understanding or hypothetical considerations of possible knowledge, and part of this prism are always also the ideas and the disputants themselves. Sceptical irony happens at several levels (of course, this was also seen by its theoreticians), however it is not only the level of the texts and that of the author, who always him/herself becomes an element of the texts, regardless of how, but there are more, and in a manner of  speaking “levels” is not really an adequate term: in his dissertation thesis Die romantische und die dialektische Ironie Ferdinand Wagner speaks of a developing `atmosphere´ (1), of an `original dialectic´ movement of thought when ironic statements contradict the readers´ or listeners´ expectations, when language and meaning move back and forth between concealment and revelation.

I would like to supersede the 19^th century analyses on irony (within the narrow dichotomous boundaries of identity/negation or seriousness/fun) by suggesting that philosophical, sceptical irony, when it comes to its reflective functionality, is best analysed against the background of the movements of a game. What is this supposed to mean? Generally speaking, in the course of a ball or chess game or in the course of several musical instruments playing together there develops a typical kind of liveliness which depends on the different starting points (of the players, of their number, of the rules, and of other coincidental framework conditions). All such games or ways of playing have in common that those participating explicitly or implicitly make agreements for the time of playing and can then, within the protected scope of these agreements, immediately decide/know if a certain event is congruent with the normative world of this space of playing or not, and that they also know how to proceed in case of incongruence.

Applied to philosophical irony: at first a subject, a topic is required – everything else depends crucially on this, and that is why it is not at all fruitful to try and analyse `irony as such´ by way of categories. Now, due to the interplay of several possible ways of understanding (there is no need for the representatives to be physically or personally present), there develops a give-and-take of considerations concerning this subject – in the sense of Plato´s dialectics. However, the fact that most of this is of a dialogic nature not at all justifies calling them – following Aristotle – “non-scientific”.[7]

On the contrary: by way of the results achieved in the course of a way of proceeding which is logically correct from end to end, another procedure of the dialectic kind may be started any time, that is to say if one is of the opinion that certain presuppositions, that is those working conditions which must be methodically assumed for any procedure, might be assailable or should be discussed. This may be troublesome, sometimes even annoying, indeed it may be that this way one or the other processes will not be successfully finished in due time – but at no time this can be called “non-scientific”.

Now, if we have a look at the subjects of philosophy, over the centuries by far most of them have triggered controversial considerations and ways of dealing with them. In so far, philosophical subjects as such are always in a context of horizons, approaches and possible ways of understanding them – this context has above been called a prism. If now we know about the details of the ways of dealing of the philosophical tradition and know about the sometimes pompous claims of their representatives, as if they, and exclusively they, had found the only redemptive solution to a question, already by relating several of these solutions to each other one gets kind of an idea of scientific, philosophical work – notwithstanding each particular approach – is a highly complex enterprise and can probably indeed not be done by reducing and focusing on one particular approach, one particular method.

If now the context within which one places such theories was an ironic one, then the question is: can this irony be recognized at all? And may we leave philosophy to those knowing how to play the instrument without constantly theorising about it? For, perhaps his comes along with the danger that, in case ways of presentation are not understood, also contents are misunderstood. Well now: sceptical philosophising, no matter how big the shares of irritation and riddles may be, definitely achieves preliminary or partial results, and by help of these at the latest one can retrospectively learn something about the stylistic means which have been applied in the course of the consideration.

It is thus not true what Hegel writes when attempting, from his point of view of dialectic philosophy, to disparage any kind of irony, most of all the Socratic kind, for example when saying that irony `takes nothing seriously anymore, it is serious about things, yet at the same time it destroys seriousness again, and it is capable of turning everything into sham. All higher or divine truth dissolves into nothingness (vulgarity), all seriousness is just a joke at the same time.´[8]

KIERKEGAARD´s approach at his dissertation thesis (1841) is closely connected to HEGEL.[9] He classifies the concept of philosophical irony it deals with according to categories which here cannot be referred to, he distinguishes irony from its functionality in the context of the philosophical method and makes it into kinds of consciousness, which for him are phenomena, he speaks of a `second potentiality of subjectivity, a subjectivity of subjectivity, like the reflection on the reflection´.[10] Quite concretely he points out that at first the concept of irony must be clarified, please: `In the period after Fichte, when the concept of irony was made particularly significant, it is frequently mentioned, frequently hinted at, frequently assumed. However, when we look for a clear development, this is to no avail. Solger laments that A. W. v. Schlegel in his lectures on dramatic art, where a sufficient explanation is most likely to be expected, irony is mentioned only in passing, at one single passage. Hegel laments that Solger had made the same experience and that Tieck had not fared better. And as all of them lament this, why shouldn´t I? I lament the fact that Hegel made the opposite experience. […]´. Hegel, he says, `indeed said more than just a few things about irony´, on the other hand, he goes on, `in a different sense it was not much, for everywhere he says is about the same.´[11] Hegel, he states, `speaks always disparagingly of irony, in his eyes irony is something despicable´; his reproach of the Schlegel brothers, he says, `which often is somewhat harsh and schoolmasterly´, in a certain way obscured his view and `was harmful for his understanding of a concept. In most cases one is not presented with any real explanation – instead Friedrich Schlegel is always reprimanded.´ Hegel had `certainly been very beneficial´, because of the seriousness of his philosophical claim,[12] however, by `one-sidedly turning against post-Fichtian irony he overlooked the truth of irony´ and `was unfair towards irony (…), by equating irony with post-Fichtian irony´.[13]

As also Kierkegaard links irony to “subjectivity” and as it opposes truth- and objectivity-oriented “seriousness”, it is at first described in terms of psychology: irony, it says, mystifies things, `to make others reveal themselves´, the ironist is said to try `to set those around him on the wrong track concerning himself´;[14] `for him´ reality loses `validity, he hovers freely above it´.[15] On the other hand, says Kierkegaard, it is also true `that there is some truth with irony´ (ibid.), and this can only be grasped if irony is analysed as a point of view, if it is considered by its `claimed totality´.[16] The latter is `called infinite absolute negativity´ (ibid.) In Kierkegaard, a Socratic (or Platonic, each according to point of view) kind of irony is summarised this way: `Socrates, when saying that he knew nothing, was nevertheless knowing, as he had knowledge of his unknowingness, although on the other hand this kind of knowledge was no knowledge of “something”/meaning that it did not have any positive content, and insofar his unknowingness was thus ironic […] Had his knowledge been a knowledge of “something”, his unknowingness would have been just a conversation technique. Now, however, his irony is complete in itself. Insofar, thus Socrates´s unknowingness is a kind of seriousness yet no seriousness at the same time, and it is there where Socrates must be pinned down. Knowing of his unknowingness is the beginning of becoming knowledgeable; if, however, one does not know anything else, it is just a beginning. It is this kind of knowledge which is ironically maintained by Socrates.´[17]

In a way, Kierkegaard does justice to the methodical functionality of irony there where he speaks of “controlled irony”. This kind of irony, he says, `establishes bounds, makes finite, limits, thus granting truth, reality, content, it chastens and punishes, thus providing attitude and inner cohesion.´[18] `Irony as a controlled aspect reveals its truth precisely by teaching how to realise reality, precisely by appropriately emphasising reality´.[19] On the whole, the problem with these metaphysically-speculative exaltations of 19^th century statements on irony `as such´ is, also and especially in Kierkegaard, that the referentiality of the ironic method to concrete topics is not appreciated, indeed not even recognized as being relevant.

Philosophising is playing

In the sense of liberating oneself from conditions of dependence, of immaturity, as Kant has it, and thus in the sense of Enlightening each individual human, a philosophy making humans richer in thought and helping them with recognizing the world, with living humanely and responsibly and with interacting in a dignified way cannot be a kind of philosophy which, patronisingly, provides each poor devil with that kind of wisdom of which previously he/she did not have much knowledge, and afterwards not much more, but at least teaches him/her how to respect it. No – in the sense of Enlightenment (and in the sense of Plato), every poor devil must be an active part of learning processes, and this will only happen if the method is adjusted.

My opinion is: Kant´s overall work is a continuous sequence of `matches´ which, although certainly not in every detail but in the long run, was planned right from the beginning and is through-composed, we might as well say: which is staged like a play. Kant is the director who, for the benefit of the readers, stages the purposeful ambiguity of certain passages, so that they are not only theoretically presented with understanding thought (by its possibility) but are supposed to performatively think it through (by its actuality) and, in the course of thinking, may experience themselves as thinking.

Kant combines this dialectic method with a strictly analytical or deductive method, thus presenting an inclusive kind of philosophy, indeed also in this sense. A system which is in no need any more, methodically seen, to decide either for Plato or for Aristotle. The Plato-inspired aspect of Kant´s method becomes obvious only when the reader starts understanding his texts by their wider context and takes sceptical, rhetorical strategies of irritating, mystifying, ironising into consideration. As, however, already in view of Plato´s philosophy it is and has been quite known that `Socrates, by his conversations and particularly by his irony, among others pursued the intention of supporting the thinking for themselves of others´,[20] as Kant throughout his work frequently explicitly says that this is exactly what he is out for: supporting thinking for oneself, the close relation of these two methodical approaches is definitely tangible.

Philosophy is always also about achieving safe knowledge, thus about being able to distinguish correct from false knowledge, to overcome sham knowledge, to invent or assess justifications. Clearly, also techniques of irony aim at precisely this. They are used for the purpose of unmasking false knowledge, after all. For, unlike sometimes mockery, sceptical irony not being used for making fun, after all hiding facts and circumstances by stating the opposite is supposed, after certain rounds of thinking, after weighing the pros and cons, to show a way out of the labyrinth, to a solution which comes along with an increase of clarity, knowledge, skills.

Generally speaking, we have been accompanied by such learning processes throughout our ordinary lives since we were children. Certainly, in such contexts they are not of any conceptual-philosophical quality but are meant for preventing us from touching the hotplate a second time, for teaching us how to distinguish up from down, mine from yours, so that we are capable of naming the world and developing more practical knowledge. The good thing with such processes is that, as far as they happen in a healthy way, nobody is left alone with them but that we may find reassurance from somebody knowing more than we do and does not withhold this knowledge from us but shares it. This happens in dialogic situations in the widest sense, and for us these are the more interesting and great the less the more experienced person makes us immediately feel this asymmetry.

One has the impression to identify such an, at least alleged, equal footing with the methods in Plato and Kant. For, after all, the use of rhetoric strategies such as irony or proposing conundrums already assumes the listeners or readers to be provided with a certain capability. They are encouraged to extend and enlarge it, however without a teacher´s authoritarian finger-wagging but while dealing with each other on somewhat equal footage. We may thus say: author and reader are playing the same game, they are in a room they have entered while being at least somewhat informed about the agreements necessary for the game and where for a time they are dealing with each other.

It is interesting now, in terms of the history of ideas, that such playful ideas of what philosophy is and can do quite obviously provokes immediate defensive reactions: after Plato there appears Aristotle, after Kant it is Fichte, Schelling, the Romanticists, Hegel, Schopenhauer and others.

In my opinion, this is due to the difficulties coming along with the question about the philosophical creation of systems. That for example the Romanticists considered sceptical ways of proceeding, such as in Plato´s dialogues or in the works by DIDEROT, GASSENDI or KANT, that they just considered subjective philosophical statements but no philosophical systems, can be read in SCHLEGEL: `Plato had no system but just a philosophy, a man´s philosophy is the history, the becoming, the progressing of his mind, the gradual development and formation of his thoughts´.[21] PLATO, he says, `never completed his thought, and by way of conversations he attempted to artificially present this continuously striving of his mind for perfect knowledge and insight into the supreme, this eternal becoming, creating and developing.´[22]

Indeed Kant himself very extendedly elaborates philosophy´s claim to a system, but: quite obviously, already in his lifetime and even more among those authors working in the century after him one was of the opinion that he did not deliver. When it comes to system, a philosopher´s goal is indeed to get to work on a topic, to analyse it, to complete the investigation. In the best case this means being able to present a theory which is grounded in the best possible way. However, this getting-things-done is only one aspect of the context, if an important one. For, philosophically seen, on the other hand on the backside of the idea of getting-things-done there lurks a danger, and this means if it comes along with the idea of strictly closing a case. For, more than other sciences philosophy is about frequently sharpening the awareness that it must be constantly assessed in how far subject and method are appropriately related to each other, if concepts have been correctly determined, how methodical decisions must be judged on, if there are new or better horizons under which one might come to different appreciations of the assumptions and preconditions of the method etc. This becomes particularly obvious with Plato´s dialogues. On this Rüdiger Bubner states: `Dialectic is at the same time the method and awareness of its correct application.´[23] `The dialogue is an independent method of recognizing the truth on the way towards step by step clarifying valid opinions by way of reaching back to the contributions by all those participating. The reflective flexibility of the conversation partners is no obstacle but the driving force of progress´.[24]  

Thus, what is better for philosophy: playing or working out a system? Or do we at first have to ask if this is a good and reasonable question at all?

Johan Huizinga, in his famous cultural-historical work, also analyses philosophical playing and explains in detail its dark, negative side, that is the sophistic toying with truths and certainties just for the sake of themselves or for the benefit of the sophist him/herself: `in the midst of the circle we attempt to circumscribe by the term play there stands the figure of the Greek sophist. The sophist is the somewhat deranged continuer of the central figure of archaic cultural life, […]. Being addicted with presenting a performance, and being addicted with beating a rival in open combat, these two great driving forces of the social game, are visibly displayed by the function of the sophist´.[25] `If we consider the typical product of the sophist, sophism, under the technical aspect, as a way of expression, at once it betrays all its […] connections with the game […]. Sophism is close to the riddle. It is a fencer´s trick. […] among the Greeks, games involving intellect, in the course of which one tried to fool somebody else by help of pitfall questions, were much common with conversation.´[26] `Pitfall conclusions are based on the condition that tacitly the realm of logical validity is limited to a scope of which one assumes that the opponent will stay within, without interposing any “on the other hand” which might spoil the game´ (ibid.). This is revealed even by Plato´s Socrates, such as in the Euthydemos dialogue: this way, it says, one will never learn anything `about the nature of the things themselves but only about how to fool the people by way of nitpicks´.[27] `To point out for all times to the fundamental flaw of the sophists, their lack of logic and ethics, Plato had not rejected this light way of the informal dialogue. For, also for him philosophy was a noble game, notwithstanding all its deepness. And if not only Plato but even Aristotle considered the fallacies and plays of words of the sophist worth such a serious fight, this was because even their own philosophical thought had not yet disentangled itself from the sphere of the game. Does philosophy ever do so at all?´[28]

Apart from sophistries, on the dark side of philosophical playing there is also a kind of polemic connected to biased thought:

`Science, including philosophy, is polemic by nature, and by its nature the polemic cannot be separated from the agonal. In those periods of time when great, new things appear, in most cases the agonal factor moves much to the fore. This happens e. g. in the 17^th century, when the burgeoning natural sciences conquer their territory while at the same time challenging the authority of antiquity and the faith. Again and again everybody joins camps or parties. One is a Cartesian or one opposes the system, one champions the “anciens” or the “modernes”, one even is, far beyond scholarly circles, for or against Newton, for or against the ellipticity of the Earth, for or against vaccination etc. The 18^th century, with its lively intellectual movement, which was still prevented from a chaotic too-much by the limitation of its means, had to become the age of the fiercest pen wars. […] these pen wars (were) a crucial element of this […] playful nature which nobody would like to deny for the 18^th century and for which we are sometimes envious´.[29]

Thus, what Huizinga has in mind when thinking of philosophical playing in the course of the history of our culture is most of all fencing. Such fencing bouts, in view of questions of reason-giving, are also discussed by Kant,[30] and quite doubtlessly they have always and still in our days been characterising philosophical debates. Now Kant criticizes the sceptics´ radically sceptical way of applying this method,[31] but he praises its usefulness for Enlightenment. For, if the purpose of irritating methods is the extension of knowledge, the sceptical method is useful: `etwas als ungewiß zu behandeln und auf die höchste Ungewißheit zu bringen, in der Hoffnung, der Wahrheit auf diesem Wege auf die Spur zu kommen […] ist also eigentlich eine bloße Suspension des Urtheilens. Sie ist dem kritischen Verfahren sehr nützlich, worunter diejenige Methode des Philosophirens zu verstehen ist, nach welcher man die Quellen seiner Behauptungen oder Einwürfe untersucht, und die Gründe, worauf dieselben beruhen; eine Methode, welche Hoffnung giebt, zur Gewißheit zu gelangen´.[32] Even as early as in the First Critique Kant distinguishes a well understood skeptic method from skepticism; the former, he says, is a `Grundsatz einer kunstmäßigen und scientifischen Unwissenheit, welcher die Grundlagen aller Erkenntniß untergräbt, um, wo möglich, überall keine Zuverlässigkeit und Sicherheit derselben übrig zu lassen. Denn die sceptische Methode geht auf Gewißheit dadurch, daß sie in einem solchen, auf beiden Seiten redlichgemeinten und mit Verstande geführten Streite, den Punct des Mißverständnisses zu entdecken sucht, um, wie weise Gesetzgeber thun, aus der Verlegenheit der Richter bey Rechtshändeln für sich selbst Belehrung, von dem Mangelhaften und nicht genau Bestimmten in ihren Gesetzen, zu ziehen. [...] /Diese sceptische Methode ist aber nur der Transscendentalphilosophie allein wesentlich eigen, und kann allenfalls in jedem anderen Felde der Untersuchungen, nur in diesem nicht, entbehrt werden.´[33]

As already explained, the 19th century loses any understanding of this aspect of clarifying philosophical thought which proves Kant a genuinely transcendental philosopher. Certainly more factors crucially contributed to this development than could be considered here. Also Huizinga states: `The 19<sup>th</sup> century had lost any feeling for the game qualities of the preceding century and had not noticed the seriousness which had also been hidden among these.´[34] `The 19^th century is dominated by seriousness. It seems as if the 19^th century leaves little space for the function of the game for the cultural process. […] Europe puts on work clothes. Sociality, striving for education and scientific judgement became predominant for the cultural process.[35]´

In my opinion, beyond conflict one may come closer to sceptical irony and its significance for philosophical playing if, such as Helmut Plessner, one generally underlines the constitutive meaning of the riddle and of solving riddles for philosophy: `With philosophical issues it is not possible to keep things open, to a limited degree, in the sense of a guarantee to provide answers by reducing things to only a few possibilities, perhaps just one alternative, which is the way in which any kind of true science works. But this is no weak spot but a strong point and the true style of philosophizing, which is of older origins than the scientific problem and comes from a way of asking questions which these days we use only playfully, that is it comes from the riddle. […] One […] sticks to the difference between problem ad riddle, even more so as the problem of its seriousness confronts the riddle as a question in the context of game […]. Problem is younger than riddle. Philosophy is in between these two kinds of question. Both in India and in Greece its origins show close relations to the riddle.´[36] `Holding a Platonic dialogue as well as its depth´ belong to the tradition of playful riddles which originally were also connected to myth, and also `in later times the Greeks always had an awareness of a certain connection between the playful riddle and the origins of philosophy. Clearchus, one of Aristotle´s disciples, in his treatise on proverbs, presented a theory of the riddle and confirms that once it had been a subject of philosophy […] Accordingly, aporias were a popular parlour game among the Greeks – and still in Aristotle the aporia has not fallen into oblivion. Zenon´s aporias or paradoxes are famous. […] To that same agonal sphere there belong two forms which are crucial for eristic and dialectics: the dilemma, the question which can only be answered to the disadvantage of the person giving the answer, and the problema´.[37]

Concludingly, with Helmuth Plessner it shall be emphasized what in my opinion may help deciphering the way in which Kant composed his work as a whole: `Riddle is a question calling for an answer. Unsolvable riddles are no riddles at all. There must be somebody who knows the solution. […] The purpose of mystification is […] not the solution but solving as such. What counts is not the secret but the assessment of the equality of the guessing person, his worth: being admitted, being set free.´[38] Quite fundamentally, the thus addressed freedom of thought finds expression, among others, by both authors and readers expressing doubts and putting into question, and both brings us nearer to philosophy the more impressively the more it supports doubt in one´s own ideas and putting into question one´s own person. If such a culture is established, sceptical thought becoming obvious this way – in contrast to dogmatic thought – may help with realising actual Enlightenment and the peaceful coexistence of the most different opinions and ideas in the world.

Translation: Mirko Wittwar