d) Hegelian analysis of irony

The context of Hegel’s critique is markedly different: it adopts an aesthetic perspective rather than an axiological one; it targets Fichtean idealism rather than the subjectivism of values; and it labels this phenomenon not as nihilism but as a form of 'irony'. Yet this apparent divergence cannot obscure the fundamental parallels that bring Hegel’s analysis closer to our concerns.

Hegel presents Fichtean idealism as a doctrine in which everything, including value, is conceived as a creation of the subject: Nothing is treated in and for itself and as valuable in itself, but only as produced by the subjectivity of the ego ¹.

If the self is the creator of all things, it also possesses the power to destroy them: There [is nothing] that would not first have to be laid down by the ego, and that therefore could not equally well be destroyed by it. Consequently everything genuinely and independently real becomes only a show, not true and genuine on its own account or through itself, but a mere appearance due to the ego in whose power and caprice and at whose free disposal it remains ².

This doctrine has two fundamental consequences.

First, things lose what Hegel terms their 'gravity'—that is, they become mere appearances and no longer possess any real substance: nothing holds importance, and nothing is taken seriously: In that case I am not really in earnest either with this content or, generally, with its expression and actualization. For genuine earnestness enters only by means of a substantial interest, something of intrinsic worth like truth, ethical life, etc.,-by means of a content which counts as such for me as essential ³.
Although Hegel uses different terminology ('idealism' causing things to lose their 'gravity'), the underlying concept aligns with ours: 'subjectivism' as a form of 'nihilism' that deprives things of their 'value'.

Conversely, the subject—or Ego—acquires boundless power: But in that case the ego can remain lord and master of everything, and in no sphere of morals, law, things human and divine, profane and sacred, is there anything that would not first have to be laid down by the ego, and that therefore could not equally well be destroyed by it ⁴.

Consequently, all the value (or 'gravity') that the Ego withdraws from the world is conferred upon itself: This virtuosity of an ironical artistic life apprehends itself as a divine creative genius for which anything and everything is only an unsubstantial creature, to which the creator, knowing himself to be disengaged and free from everything, is not bound, because he is just as able to destroy it as to create it. In that case, he who has reached this standpoint of divine genius looks down from his high rank on all other men, for they are pronounced dull and limited, inasmuch as law, morals, etc., still count for them as fixed, essential, and obligatory ⁵.

Idealism, therefore, emerges as the ultimate expression of human pride: [It is] the general meaning of the divine irony of genius, as this concentration of the ego into itself, for which all bonds are snapped and which can live only in the bliss of self-enjoyment ⁶.

In other words, Hegel seems to endorse an idea that aligns with our own: creative subjectivism (or idealism) begins as nihilism—hence Hegel’s definition of irony as the self-destruction of the noble, great, and excellent ⁷—and culminates in anthropocentrism or egocentrism, depending on whether we regard the creator of values as the individual 'I' or humanity as a whole.

This idea, which Hegel applied to an aesthetic problem, is the one I intend to defend from an axiological perspective.

1. Lectures on Aesthetics, Introduction, 7, 3
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.