https://pixabay.com/vectors/charlie-chaplin-caricature-carlitos-4218018/ When we think about irony, what comes to mind is often something like Socratic or dramatic irony. The first describes instances in which a speaker feigns ignorance in order to draw out another person’s claims and expose their inconsistencies, while the second refers to situations in which events unfold in a way that sharply diverges from what agents intend or expect. Examples of both abound in cinema and pop culture, and they tend to be easily recognizable. But what if irony doesn’t merely consist in manipulating words or situations? What if it implicates our very perspective on the world? This is at least what Hegel seems to be suggesting in his (admittedly brief) criticism of “irony” in the “Morality” section of the Principles of the Philosophy of Right. We’ll be elaborating on that criticism in this article, but not in abstracto, as Hegel would have it. Rather, to frame our discussion, we turn to no less than the cradle of philosophical inquiry itself: Reddit, circa 2023. In one particular thread, a Reddit user laments …