 The romantic use of irony was sharply criticized, most famously by Hegel, as free floating form of subjectivity. But not only does this criticism fail to do justice to the romantic insistence that irony itself is a form of self-constraint, but also to the imperative: “Don’t exaggerate self-restriction” (F. Schlegel, CF: #37). This demand to constrain and regulate self-restriction itself is of equal importance to the demand to practice irony. Rather than a free floating form of subjectivity, then, romantic irony is a constrained, and normatively governed form of life, meant to expose the limits of reason and facilitate a life of humility (cf. Rush 2006: 187). Romantic irony is a commitment to the form of life that is governed by the acknowledgement of finitude; a “transcendentally-Socratic” life of humility.