SOURCE: Zimmermann, Ulf. Review of Selbstbewußstein und Ironie: Frankfurter Vorlesungen, by Martin Walser. World Literature Today 56, no. 2 (spring 1982): 332-33.

In the following review, Zimmermann highlights the political significance of Selbstbewußstein und Ironie: Frankfurter Vorlesungen, affirming Walser's contention that the prevailing modern notion of irony perverts Socrates's original definition of the concept.

At the fulcrum of these five lectures [Selbstbewußstein und Ironie: Frankfurter Vorlesungen] is Martin Walser's contention that the prevailing conception of irony, as epitomized in Thomas Mann, is a perversion of the original Socratic irony, for which Friedrich Schlegel is responsible. That perversion, as Walser has it, has thwarted the basic twofold thrust of irony—to negate existing conditions and to engender individual consciousness—which is the whole Socratic purpose. Instead of this, Schlegelian irony merely elevates the individual self above these conditions, leaving them unquestioned and as they are. What we have here...