Pub Date : 2021-08-11DOI: 10.1515/kierke-2021-0015
Jon Stewart
Abstract The present article argues that the philosopher Frederik Christian Sibbern played a fairly substantive role in the development of what has come to be known as Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel. Specifically, Sibbern had already worked out some of the key elements of Kierkegaard’s critique that culminates in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. This is demonstrated by means of an analysis of two works by Sibbern which are important for his critical discussion of Hegel’s philosophy: Remarks and Investigations Primarily Concerning Hegel’s Philosophy from 1838, and On the Concept, Nature and Essence of Philosophy: A Presentation of Philosophy’s Propaedeutic from 1843.
{"title":"Sibbern’s Anticipations of Kierkegaard’s Polemic against the Hegelians: The Critique of Abstraction","authors":"Jon Stewart","doi":"10.1515/kierke-2021-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2021-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The present article argues that the philosopher Frederik Christian Sibbern played a fairly substantive role in the development of what has come to be known as Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel. Specifically, Sibbern had already worked out some of the key elements of Kierkegaard’s critique that culminates in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. This is demonstrated by means of an analysis of two works by Sibbern which are important for his critical discussion of Hegel’s philosophy: Remarks and Investigations Primarily Concerning Hegel’s Philosophy from 1838, and On the Concept, Nature and Essence of Philosophy: A Presentation of Philosophy’s Propaedeutic from 1843.","PeriodicalId":53174,"journal":{"name":"Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74809627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-11DOI: 10.1515/kierke-2021-0020
A. Hannay
Abstract A distrust of focus on subjectivity and the individual provoked by his meeting with Sartrean existentialism led György Lukács to turn his early but qualified admiration of Søren Kierkegaard into an accusation of fostering a bourgeois culture of the kind Kierkegaard is usually thought to have opposed. Not every Marxian thinker has been equally wary of subjectivity, but all have found in Kierkegaard a crucial absence of concern for human exploitation within a context of natural scarcity. However, a more measured reading suggests a case for resolving the need to choose between Lukács’s insistence on “spirit” as a collective notion and Kierkegaard’s as cultivation of a trans-historically oriented, self-stabilizing social will.
{"title":"Lukács and Kierkegaard: Decadence or Despair","authors":"A. Hannay","doi":"10.1515/kierke-2021-0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2021-0020","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A distrust of focus on subjectivity and the individual provoked by his meeting with Sartrean existentialism led György Lukács to turn his early but qualified admiration of Søren Kierkegaard into an accusation of fostering a bourgeois culture of the kind Kierkegaard is usually thought to have opposed. Not every Marxian thinker has been equally wary of subjectivity, but all have found in Kierkegaard a crucial absence of concern for human exploitation within a context of natural scarcity. However, a more measured reading suggests a case for resolving the need to choose between Lukács’s insistence on “spirit” as a collective notion and Kierkegaard’s as cultivation of a trans-historically oriented, self-stabilizing social will.","PeriodicalId":53174,"journal":{"name":"Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86931949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-11DOI: 10.1515/kierke-2021-0007
Lee C. Barrett
Abstract Kierkegaard’s texts suggest countervailing construals of the respective roles of divine and human agency in an individual’s pursuit of blessedness. Kierkegaard paradoxically suggests that the individual must depend entirely on grace for the birth and development of faith, and at the same time actively cultivate faithful dispositions and passions. But Kierkegaard did not espouse Calvinistic divine determinism, or Pelagian autonomous human agency, or the Arminian cooperation of the two. For Kierkegaard, the ostensible paradox of grace and free will is not a cognitive conundrum but is rather a challenge to integrate faith as a gift and faith as a task.
{"title":"Human Striving and Absolute Reliance upon God: A Kierkegaardian Paradox","authors":"Lee C. Barrett","doi":"10.1515/kierke-2021-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2021-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Kierkegaard’s texts suggest countervailing construals of the respective roles of divine and human agency in an individual’s pursuit of blessedness. Kierkegaard paradoxically suggests that the individual must depend entirely on grace for the birth and development of faith, and at the same time actively cultivate faithful dispositions and passions. But Kierkegaard did not espouse Calvinistic divine determinism, or Pelagian autonomous human agency, or the Arminian cooperation of the two. For Kierkegaard, the ostensible paradox of grace and free will is not a cognitive conundrum but is rather a challenge to integrate faith as a gift and faith as a task.","PeriodicalId":53174,"journal":{"name":"Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84380136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-18DOI: 10.1515/kierke-2020-0004
Aaron J. Goldman
Abstract This article interrogates the concepts of faith, the ethical, and tragedy in Fear and Trembling by examining Johannes De Silentio’s allusions to heroic characters. I argue that these heroes are emblematic of faith or tragedy through their orientation to a promise in their respective mythic narratives. Abraham’s faith in the covenant with God commits him to the reconcilability of virtue and the good life, while the tragic heroes’ commitments to the ethical reveal their inability to transcend the (tragic) presumption that virtue and the good life are ultimately incommensurable. I conclude by sketching a politics corresponding to De Silentio’s conception of tragedy.
{"title":"On Fear and Trembling’s Motif of the Promise: Faith, Ethics and the Politics of Tragedy","authors":"Aaron J. Goldman","doi":"10.1515/kierke-2020-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2020-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article interrogates the concepts of faith, the ethical, and tragedy in Fear and Trembling by examining Johannes De Silentio’s allusions to heroic characters. I argue that these heroes are emblematic of faith or tragedy through their orientation to a promise in their respective mythic narratives. Abraham’s faith in the covenant with God commits him to the reconcilability of virtue and the good life, while the tragic heroes’ commitments to the ethical reveal their inability to transcend the (tragic) presumption that virtue and the good life are ultimately incommensurable. I conclude by sketching a politics corresponding to De Silentio’s conception of tragedy.","PeriodicalId":53174,"journal":{"name":"Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74907368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-18DOI: 10.1515/kierke-2020-0014
Paulo Henrique Lopes
Abstract The essay emphasizes the unsolvable tension between activity and passivity implied in Kierkegaard’s reduplication as an author of authors. To characterize the different approaches to pseudonymity, I will use the term Halvbefaren [the inexperienced seaman] to refer to a reading that appeals only to Kierkegaard’s or to the pseudonyms’ authority over the authorship, and Helbefaren [the experienced seaman] to refer to another interpretation that recognizes that unsolvable tension between them. Recurring to the sailing metaphor implicit in these terms that appear in Climacus’ Postscript, I defend the thesis that the pseudonyms open the authorship from within, overcoming Kierkegaard as a usual author, as the only captain of the entire authorship. The mutiny performed by the pseudonyms cannot be resolved by simply transferring the authority to the pseudonyms themselves, and it creates a subjective space in the authorship so it becomes a matter of the experience of the reader.
{"title":"The Mutiny of the Pseudonyms in the Kierkegaardian Authorship","authors":"Paulo Henrique Lopes","doi":"10.1515/kierke-2020-0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2020-0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The essay emphasizes the unsolvable tension between activity and passivity implied in Kierkegaard’s reduplication as an author of authors. To characterize the different approaches to pseudonymity, I will use the term Halvbefaren [the inexperienced seaman] to refer to a reading that appeals only to Kierkegaard’s or to the pseudonyms’ authority over the authorship, and Helbefaren [the experienced seaman] to refer to another interpretation that recognizes that unsolvable tension between them. Recurring to the sailing metaphor implicit in these terms that appear in Climacus’ Postscript, I defend the thesis that the pseudonyms open the authorship from within, overcoming Kierkegaard as a usual author, as the only captain of the entire authorship. The mutiny performed by the pseudonyms cannot be resolved by simply transferring the authority to the pseudonyms themselves, and it creates a subjective space in the authorship so it becomes a matter of the experience of the reader.","PeriodicalId":53174,"journal":{"name":"Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76596499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-18DOI: 10.1515/kierke-2020-0002
Viktoras Bachmetjevas
Abstract Although there is a broad agreement among Kierkegaard’s scholars that Assessor Wilhelm is an ethical thinker, the agreement on what kind of ethics his standpoint represents has been much harder to come by. The suggestions range from Schiller to Aristotle and from Kant to Hegel. The article contends that the apparent lack of a coherent ethical theory on Assessor Wilhelm’s part is in fact part of a deliberate ethical strategy. Based on Vigilius Haufniensis’ distinction between first and second ethics, it is argued that Assessor Wilhelm occupies a space in between, in which he attempts to create a dynamic for A in the direction of the so-called second ethics, and this by mainly using ironic means.
{"title":"Between the Two Ethics: Why Assessor Wilhelm is not a Judge","authors":"Viktoras Bachmetjevas","doi":"10.1515/kierke-2020-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2020-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Although there is a broad agreement among Kierkegaard’s scholars that Assessor Wilhelm is an ethical thinker, the agreement on what kind of ethics his standpoint represents has been much harder to come by. The suggestions range from Schiller to Aristotle and from Kant to Hegel. The article contends that the apparent lack of a coherent ethical theory on Assessor Wilhelm’s part is in fact part of a deliberate ethical strategy. Based on Vigilius Haufniensis’ distinction between first and second ethics, it is argued that Assessor Wilhelm occupies a space in between, in which he attempts to create a dynamic for A in the direction of the so-called second ethics, and this by mainly using ironic means.","PeriodicalId":53174,"journal":{"name":"Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84000435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-18DOI: 10.1515/kierke-2020-0008
Nassim Bravo
Abstract This article offers a detailed and compact account of what might be called Kierkegaard’s Faust project, that is, the collection of notes, bibliographies and reflections on the mythical German necromancer that the young Kierkegaard registered in his various journals and notebooks from the years 1835 – 1837. As is well known, the young writer presumably intended to pen a book or essay about the universal idea represented by Faust. Additionally, I discuss Kierkegaard’s project within the context of the 1830s, the reception of the Faustian myth among his Danish contemporaries such as J.L. Heiberg and H.L. Martensen, and the enthusiasm for Goethe that seized Copenhagen during those years.
{"title":"The Faust Project in Kierkegaard’s Early Journals","authors":"Nassim Bravo","doi":"10.1515/kierke-2020-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2020-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article offers a detailed and compact account of what might be called Kierkegaard’s Faust project, that is, the collection of notes, bibliographies and reflections on the mythical German necromancer that the young Kierkegaard registered in his various journals and notebooks from the years 1835 – 1837. As is well known, the young writer presumably intended to pen a book or essay about the universal idea represented by Faust. Additionally, I discuss Kierkegaard’s project within the context of the 1830s, the reception of the Faustian myth among his Danish contemporaries such as J.L. Heiberg and H.L. Martensen, and the enthusiasm for Goethe that seized Copenhagen during those years.","PeriodicalId":53174,"journal":{"name":"Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89728720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-18DOI: 10.1515/kierke-2020-0009
E. Li
Abstract This article explores Kierkegaard’s largely overlooked 1838 paper “Telegraph Messages from a Mousvoyant to a Clairvoyant concerning the Relation between Xnty and Philosophy,” and argues that it can be read as a polemic against the speculative unity of philosophy and Christianity and speculative thought’s epistemological optimism, especially targeting the Danish speculative theologian Hans Lassen Martensen. It will be suggested that the “Telegraph Messages” offer a corrective to this view by separating Christianity and philosophy and underlining the ambiguity of human existence and the paradoxicality of the religious sphere, thus foreshadowing key themes in Kierkegaard’s mature pseudonymous authorship.
{"title":"Of Clairvoyants and Mousvoyants: Kierkegaard’s Polemic against Speculative Philosophy in the “Telegraph Messages”","authors":"E. Li","doi":"10.1515/kierke-2020-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2020-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explores Kierkegaard’s largely overlooked 1838 paper “Telegraph Messages from a Mousvoyant to a Clairvoyant concerning the Relation between Xnty and Philosophy,” and argues that it can be read as a polemic against the speculative unity of philosophy and Christianity and speculative thought’s epistemological optimism, especially targeting the Danish speculative theologian Hans Lassen Martensen. It will be suggested that the “Telegraph Messages” offer a corrective to this view by separating Christianity and philosophy and underlining the ambiguity of human existence and the paradoxicality of the religious sphere, thus foreshadowing key themes in Kierkegaard’s mature pseudonymous authorship.","PeriodicalId":53174,"journal":{"name":"Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76362630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-18DOI: 10.1515/kierke-2020-0006
Kateřina Kolínská
Abstract The article provides a reconstruction of Kierkegaardʼs conception of self-knowledge, mainly in the light of The Concept of Irony, The Sickness unto Death, Philosophical Fragments and selected upbuilding discourses. The concept of self-knowledge, which in Kierkegaard goes beyond mere epistemology, is shown in its duality, as a process which is for Kierkegaard both substantial and relational: to know oneself is for Kierkegaard both an ethical claim upon man and a religious act whose accomplishment is dependent on Godʼs intervention. The article next discusses how self-knowledge involves a relationship to and “knowledge” of God. Finally, it is shown that self-knowledge presupposes not only that one believes himself or herself to be known by God, but also by his or her fellow human beings: self-knowledge requires engagement in the lived world and with others.
{"title":"Know Yourself in the Mirror of the Word: Kierkegaard on Self-Knowledge","authors":"Kateřina Kolínská","doi":"10.1515/kierke-2020-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/kierke-2020-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article provides a reconstruction of Kierkegaardʼs conception of self-knowledge, mainly in the light of The Concept of Irony, The Sickness unto Death, Philosophical Fragments and selected upbuilding discourses. The concept of self-knowledge, which in Kierkegaard goes beyond mere epistemology, is shown in its duality, as a process which is for Kierkegaard both substantial and relational: to know oneself is for Kierkegaard both an ethical claim upon man and a religious act whose accomplishment is dependent on Godʼs intervention. The article next discusses how self-knowledge involves a relationship to and “knowledge” of God. Finally, it is shown that self-knowledge presupposes not only that one believes himself or herself to be known by God, but also by his or her fellow human beings: self-knowledge requires engagement in the lived world and with others.","PeriodicalId":53174,"journal":{"name":"Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81725785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}