THREE FORMS OF IRONY: VICE, PARADOX AND GNOSIS

Abstract

The following essay shows three modalities in the use of irony, as a figure of the speech, that accomplish different functions, negatives as well as positives. Our interest in particular will be as a non-direct way to obtain certain kind of knowledge that is far from the natural attitude of the speaker. In so this we work out a critical-historical interpretation of the texts, in where emerge three kinds of dissimulation that, from Socrates onwards, has a methodological function to introduce into a special knowledge.