Comparing Irony In King Lear And Nietzsche's

As discussed in the introduction, the goal of the first chapter was to discuss Lear's account of irony and of the human condition in order to set the stage for my engagement with Nietzsche’s and Kierkegaard’s thought. Furthermore, I argued that there are specific limits in Lear’s discussion of irony, insofar as he understands this as able to tell us when we fail our moral ideals, but not whether or not our ideals are "good for us" - or, to use his vocabulary, whether or not they are good representations of what it is to be fully human. Crucially, both Lear and Nietzsche see in irony and genealogy something that causes uncannyness/Unheimlichkeit.4 In both cases, they make something familiar to turn unfamiliar and uncomfortable – the difference being that Nietzsche's technique reaches where Lear's cannot. Recovering an example from A Case for Irony, Lear asks through irony “how could I be a good teacher?”, while Nietzsche through genealogy would ask “why should I be a teacher? Is it a good thing to embrace the values that undergird this profession?” or, "how am I sure that the way we conceive this profession is the best available?" As legitimate as Lear's question is, we cannot avoid to ask Nietzsche's.

As Robert C. Solomon's writes, Nietzsche's philosophy aims to foster '[…] self-examination and self-"undergoing", to "know thyself", to cultivate the virtues and, ultimately, to "become who you are."'5 Hence, as we undergo self-examination and the de-familiarization of our values through genealogy, we become able to become who we are by transforming them and developing new and better way of living. In this respect, as I argued at length in the first chapter, following Pierre Hadot I believe that Lear, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard all belong to the tradition of practicing philosophy as a way of