The characterization up to this point is consistent with, and apparently modeled upon, J. G. Fichte’s theory of the self. But Anti-Climacus takes issue with one central element of that account when he claims that, in relating to itself, the self must at the same time relate to a power that posited it. What Fichte meant by the claim that the self must view itself as absolutely self-positing is controversial, but he seems to have meant at least that it must see itself as self-determining (projecting its own ends and determining itself by action on them) and as self-legislating (being the source not only of its actual ends but of the norms that govern their adoption). It has appeared to many readers of the early Wissenschaftslehre that Fichte also thought of the self as ontologically sui generis, and that he explained the apparent facticity of agency by appeal to the unconscious character of the empirical self’s origin in the absolute I. In denying that the self is self-positing, Anti-Climacus surely means to reject the third claim. But equally important for the project in The Sickness unto Death is his rejection of the second. The self is not the source of the laws that govern it, and so in reflecting on its own activity, it must orient itself towards (or away from) a standard that has its source in a power outside of it. This relation can take a number of forms, including any number of construals of the nature of that power (and including even the denial that there is any such power).
The analysis of despair in the first half of The Sickness unto Death is a catalogue of ways to fail to achieve an adequate conception of one’s own selfhood. Despair has one unconscious form (not recognizing that one is a self to begin with) and two conscious forms: not wanting (or willing) to be oneself, and wanting (or willing) to be oneself.36 These correspond to three ways of misconstruing one’s agency: failing to see oneself as an agent to begin with (unconscious despair); failing to take responsibility for oneself and one’s actions (aesthetic despair); or aspiring to take total control of oneself and to be not only self-directing, but also self-legislating (ethical despair).37 These do not exhaust the options (as they might appear to); it is possible to be a self free of despair.38
Something like this account of agency is presupposed in The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard’s most sustained meditation on the phenomenology of freedom. The premise of that work is that the possibility of a basic plurality of outcomes (good and evil) must correspond to something in the phenomenology of agency, and that something (whatever it is) must be what makes a choice of sin a psychological possibility. This is the role Kierkegaard proposes for anxiety.39 These two moral psychological works present a positive picture of the human agent corresponding to the characterizations of the aesthetic, ethical, and immanent-religious standpoints as somehow inadequate to the situation of existing subjectivity.
This description of the situation and perspective of human agency was what drew twentieth century phenomenologists like the early Heidegger and Sartre to Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works, and echoes of his accounts of anxiety and of subjectivity more generally are clearly discernible in Being and Time and Being and Nothingness. Kierkegaard’s influence in Anglo-American philosophy, by contrast, has come primarily through philosophers of religion, for whom Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the posthumously published On Authority and Revelation, and above all Fear and Trembling have been most significant.40 More recently, scholars have begun to focus on works Kierkegaard published under his own name; Works of Love (1847) in particular has received much recent attention.41 Finally, Kierkegaard’s method, his use of pseudonymity and of what he called “indirect communication,” has drawn the sustained interest of both philosophers and literary theorists.42
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1 Especially important was his early reception by K. Jaspers and M. Heidegger, and, later, by J.-P. Sartre.
2 Apart from ancient sources (especially Plato) and some Danish thinkers (P. M. Møller, H. L. Martensen, J. L. Heiberg, F. C. Sibbern), Kierkegaard’s main influences (and opponents) were I. Kant, J. G. Hamann, the German idealists (J. G. Fichte, F. W. J. Schelling, G. W. F. Hegel), the late idealists (I. H. Fichte, C. Weisse and their circle), L. Feuerbach, F. Schlegel, and F. D. E. Schleiermacher.
3 S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, II: 155; 1997–, 3: 168. The Judge argues (at S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, II: 149; 1997–, 3:161) that A’s refusal to direct his life is itself a way of directing his life. Cf. also S. Kierkegaard 1901–06, II: 215; 1997–, 3: 228–229.
4 A himself embraces fatalism at several points in the first volume, and himself connects this fatalism to his psychological malaise. “My soul has lost possibility.” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, I: 25; 1997–, 2: 50) “It is not merely in isolated moments that I, as Spinoza says, view everything aeterno modo, but I am continually aeterno modo.” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, I: 23; 1997–, 2: 48) Cf. S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, I: 6; 1997–, 2: 30. His maxim—not to begin anything, not to will (S. Kierkegaard 1901–06, I: 23; 1997–, 2: 48)—follows from his fatalism. The result is that he finds time senseless (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, I: 13–14; 1997–, 2: 38), existence tedious (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, I: 9; 1997–, 2: 33), and nothing meaningful (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, I: 15; 1997–, 2: 40).
5 I argue for this reading of the Judge’s criticism in M. Kosch 2006a. For similar interpretations see, for example, M. Taylor 1975; H. Fujino 1994. Other interpretations have been offered. Some take the fundamental weakness of the aesthetic standpoint to be the vulnerability to failure of aesthetic projects themselves (a vulnerability ethical projects are thought not to share). See, for example, W. Greve 1990; P. Lübcke 1991. Others take the fundamental weakness of the aesthetic standpoint to lie in its inability to support some aspects of a meaningful and fulfilled human life (such as a stable self-conception and stable interpersonal relationships). See, for example, A. Rudd 1993; P. Mehl 1995.
6 See H. Fujino 1994. The Judge sorts “speculative philosophy” (i.e. the philosophy of German idealism) together with the aesthetic standpoint as a view (though not a “life-view” in the full sense) that does not leave room for agency. Cf., for example, S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, II: 155; 1997–, 3: 167.
7 In M. Kosch 2006c, 2006 I argue that J. G. Fichte was the primary historical model for the ethical standpoint described in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works. J. Disse 2000 and H. Fahrenbach 1968 also present the Judge’s as a basically Kantian/Fichtean view of ethics.
8 He argues that the individual becomes an ethical individual by becoming “transparent to himself” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, II: 231; S. Kierkegaard 1997, 3: 246) and becomes transparent to himself by taking choice seriously. “As soon as a person can be brought to stand at the crossroads in such a way that there is no way out for him except to choose, he will choose the right thing” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, II: 152; S. Kierkegaard 1997, 3: 164). Cf. S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, II: 192, 234; 1997–, 3: 205, 249.
9 In fact, accounting for imputable moral evil is a problem for both Kant and Fichte, and the Judge explicitly denies its possibility. I discuss Kant’s problem with accounting for moral evil in M. Kosch 2006b ch. 2. I discuss the reasons for Fichte’s denial of radical evil in M. Kosch 2006c. For the Judge’s denial, see S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, II: 157, 159; 1997–, 3: 170, 171.
10 Anti-Climacus characterizes the common feature of the ethical views that are his target as their lack of “the courage to declare that a person knowingly does wrong, knows what is right and does the wrong” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 205; 1997–, 11: 96). “If sin is being ignorant of what is right and therefore doing wrong, then sin does not exist.” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 200; 1997–, 11: 90)
11 Vigilius Haufniensis describes a “first ethics” (by which he means a non-Christian, philosophical ethics) for which “the possibility of sin never occurs” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, IV: 295; 1997–, 4: 330) or which includes sin “only insofar as upon this concept it is shipwrecked” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, IV: 289; 1997–, 4: 324). I argue for this way of reading those and related passages in M. Kosch 2006b, 160–74.
12 I argue for this reading of Kierkegaard’s criticism of the ethical standpoint in M. Kosch 2006b 155–78. Other accounts have been offered, most of which appeal not to the internal inconsistency of the ethical standpoint but to its incompleteness or inadequacy to some aspect of human experience. Some take its shortcoming to be the absence of individualized duties (see e.g. R. Adams 1987). Some take it to lie in an alleged inability of finite individuals to satisfy ethical standards without either divine assistance or the possibility of divine forgiveness (see e.g. A. Hannay 1982; J. Whittaker 1988; H. Fahrenbach 1968).
13 S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 178–81; 1997–, 11: 181–4.
14 Although Hegel’s account of religion fulfills the metaphysical and epistemic constraints of Kierkegaard’s description, it wholly lacks the element of existential pathos and emphasis on self-negation as an ethical project that are prominent in Postscript’s discussion of religiousness A.
15 Cf., for example, S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VII: 498–9; 1997–, 7: 519–20. The early Fichte had distinguished dogmatism from the critical philosophy by saying that critical philosophy is “immanent” because it “posits everything within the self,” while dogmatism is “transcendent” because it “goes on beyond the self” (J. G. Fichte 1971, I: 120). It is this distinction Kierkegaard has in mind in describing both the “first ethics” in The Concept of Anxiety and the Socratic view in Fragments (in which “self-knowledge is god-knowledge” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, IV: 181; 1997–, 4: 220)) as “immanent” views.
16 Religiousness A is based on the idea that “the individual is capable of doing nothing himself but is nothing before God…and self-annihilation is the essential form for the relationship with God” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VII: 401; 1997–, 7: 418). “The upbuilding element in the sphere of Religiousness A is that of immanence, is the annihilation in which the individual sets himself aside in order to find God, since it is the individual himself who is the hindrance.” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VII: 489; 1997–, 7: 509)
17 “Religiousness A makes existence as strenuous as possible (outside the sphere of the paradoxically-religious); yet it does not base the relation to an eternal happiness on one’s existing but has the relation to an eternal happiness as the basis for the transformation of existence. The ‘how’ of the individual’s existence is the result of the relation to the eternal, not the converse, and that is why infinitely more comes out than was put in” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VII: 500; 1997–, 7: 522). Religiousness A “is oriented toward the purely human in such a way that it must be assumed that every human being, viewed essentially, participates in this etern
al happiness and finally becomes eternally happy” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, VII: 507; 1997–, 7:529).
18 The close relation between these two standpoints is visible already in Either/Or II, in which the Judge presents a sermon by a pastor of his acquaintance on the topic “the upbuilding that lies in the thought that before God we are always in the wrong,” saying of it that “In this sermon he has grasped what I have said and what I would have liked to have said to you; he has expressed it better than I am able to” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, II: 304; 1997–, 3: 318).
19 Christianity differs from the ethical view in allowing for willful defiance: “In this transition Christianity begins; by taking this path, it shows that sin is rooted in willing and arrives at the concept of defiance” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, XI: 204; 1997–, 11: 94). It differs from religiousness A in that it does not equate finitude with necessary guilt: “Christianity has never assented to giving each particular individual the privilege of starting from the beginning in an external sense. Each individual begins in an historical nexus, and the consequences of nature still hold true. The difference is that Christianity teaches him to lift himself above this ‘more,’ and judges the one who does not to be unwilling.” (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, IV: 342; 1997–, 4: 376–77)
20 Kierkegaard’s disagreement with Kant and Hegel on the relation of priority of reason and revelation is spelled out most forcefully in Fear and Trembling’s Problemata (S. Kierkegaard 1901–6, III: 104ff.; 1997–, 4: 148ff.).
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