Hamlet, Kierkegaard, Kafka are ironists in the wake of Jesus. All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus' enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates.
Everything I tell you is a lie." -Vergere
Socrates ... did not write. It seems academically obvious that he perished because he did not publish!
Either I do not corrupt the young or, if I do, it is unwillingly.
Socrates isguilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing indeities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state.
Irony is the cultivation of the spirit and therefore follows next after immediacy; then comes the ethicist, then the humourist, then the religious person.
The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play