I think irony may be the ability to transpose first and third person perspectives, so we can experience our first person tragic situation as a third person comic one, or, less commonly, to enter a third person comedy and experience it as first person tragic. But it might be that irony is established on the transpositionability of perspectives, so that comedy, tragedy and irony all come into existence simultaneously as a trinity.

If this is true, irony can be seen as the cornerstone of Christian theology, the origin of the Cartesian split and the necessary condition of pluralism.