One of Kierkegaard's explicit aims in On the Concept of Irony is to give an account of Socrates' role in world-history, and readers have often noted that his project is consistent with what one might expect in a Hegelian speculative study. Curiously, though, Kierkegaard labels his method " contemplative" rather than "speculative" and argues that his method differs from speculation even though it also aims to sketch the movements of world-history. Contemplation, he says, allows him to look at the hidden interior life of human subjects in a way that speculation cannot. This article argues that even though Kierkegaard exaggerates some of the differences, his contemplative method is best viewed as an attempt to get at aspects of particular existence that resist systematic articulation and that it thus anticipates Kierkegaard's later treatment of the tense relationship of speculation to subjective interiority.