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KIERKEGAARD AND PHILOSOPHY
Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays makes seventeen of the most important papers on Kierkegaard available in one place for the first time. Their author, renowned Kierkegaard scholar Alastair Hannay, has substantially revised many of his earlier essays and prepared three new essays especially for this volume.
In the first part, Alastair Hannay concentrates on Kierkegaard's central philosophical writings, offering closely text-based accounts of the salient concepts Kierkegaard uses. The second part looks at other thinkers treatments of shared themes including Aquinas on despair. Wittgenstein on the Christian faith, and Lukàcs on subjectivity and shows their relevance to interpretations of Kierkegaard. The concluding chapter provides a reason Kierkegaard himself would give for disagreeing with those who claim his texts are infinitely interpretable. The collection is held together with a new introduction to each part, and a new preface explaining the justification behind this volume.
Written by the world's foremost Kierkegaard scholar and translator, Kierkegaard and Philosophy is an indispensable resource for all students of Kierkegaard's work.
Alastair Hannay is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Oslo. He has translated several of Kierkegaard's works, and was for many years the editor of the journal Inquiry. His publications include Mental Images: A Defence (1971), Kierkegaard (1982), Human Consciousness (1990) and Kierkegaard: A Biography (2001). He is co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard (1997).
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KIERKEGAARD AND PHILOSOPHY
Selected Essays
Alastair Hannay
LONDON AND NEW YORK
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First published 2003
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
© 2003 Alastair Hannay
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hannay, Alastair.
Kierkegaard and philosophy: Selected essays /Alastair Hannay
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Kierkegaard, SØren, 1813-1855. I. Title.
B4377 .H349 2003
198'.9--dc21
2002036627
ISBN 0-203-42319-4 Master e-book ISBN
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ISBN 0-415-28371-X (Print Edition)
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CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgements
PART I Philosophy
Introduction
1 Climacus among the philosophers
2 Philosophy of mind
3 Faith and probability
4 Having Lessing on one's side
5 'Spirit' and the idea of the self as a reflexive relation
6 Basic despair
7 A question of continuity
8 The 'what' in the 'how'
PART II Connections and confrontations
Introduction
9 Commitment and paradox
10 Humour and the irascible soul
11 Proximity as apartness
12 Levelling and Einebnung
13 Solitary souls and infinite help
14 Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark revisited
15 Two ways of coming back to reality: Kierkegaard and Lukács
16 Nietzsche/Kierkegaard: prospects for dialogue?
17 Decisively disconnected
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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PREFACE
Several aims can lie behind publishing a selection of one's own essays written over the years. Some are self-indulgent, like the pleasant but economically unjustifiable notion of seeing one's scattered and yellowing efforts crisply contained within two covers. Another aim, perhaps no less self-indulgent, is an audience wider than that available on first publication. Here, aside from most of the essays being in fact fairly recent and three entirely new, the very fact that might tempt one to envisage a whole new generation of potential readers might equally suggest that the discussions in question are out of date: namely that some are over twenty years old. As for that, my own sense of things is that, given the time it has taken to get Kierkegaard on the philosophical agenda, these older discussions are not only still topical but also daily becoming more so. Speaking for this is the circumstance that among the many possible approaches to Kierkegaard's writings some are unduly neglected. Although I should hesitate to say that my own approach is a case in point, it is certainly true that much of the discussion in accredited philosophical fora, both about Kierkegaard and around him, has lacked the backing of a close study of what Kierkegaard actually wrote. If there is a single principle underlying the present collection, it is that before writing Kierkegaard off as a philosopher, or extending to him the doubtful courtesy of placing him in the company of others, one should have both a close and an extensive look at the texts, preferably of course in their Danish original.
With only a few exceptions, as for instance the first chapter, the majority of the essays included here appeared in publications not widely accessible to a philosophical public. Two are from Festschriften and at least five from publications aimed exclusively at Kierkegaard specialists. Therefore it may not be merely a wishful expectation on my part that the present collection will reach a wider audience.
Most of the essays have been revised and given new titles. They are all offered as freshly published. The annotations for the separate chapters remain self-contained but are supplemented where desirable with new references to the original Danish text, wherever possible to the new critical edition, Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter. At the time of writing this has reached Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which is fortunate since, along with The Sickness unto Death, it is one of the two texts most frequently referred to. The translations in the references vary depending in some cases on which was used by the author discussed. As for the translations themselves, where available I have generally preferred my own renderings in the Penguin Classics series. Certain inconsistencies have been retained. Thus Judge William sometimes appears as Assessor Wilhelm or vice versa.
Alastair Hannay
Oslo 2002
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author acknowledges in accordance with the terms of the transfer of copyright agreements in question the following sources of materials rep
roduced in whole or in part in the chapters identified below, and where appropriate thanks the original publishers and editors for permission to use the material.
Chapter 1. 'Kierkegaard and What We Mean by "Philosophy"', International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 8, 1, 2000, 1–22.
Chapter 2. 'Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Mind', Contemporary Philosophy: A New Survey, 4, ed. G. Fløistad, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 157–83. Copyright © Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague, Boston and London.
Chapter 4. 'Having Lessing on One's Side', in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), International Kierkegaard Commentary, 12: Concluding Unscientific Postscript to 'Philosophical Fragments', Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997, pp. 205–26.
Chapter 5. ' "Spirit" and the Idea of the Self as a Reflexive Relation', in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), International Kierkegaard Commentary, 19:The Sickness unto Death, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987, pp. 23–38.
Chapter 7. 'The Judge in the Light of Kierkegaard's own Either/Or: Some Hermeneutical Crotchets', in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), International Kierkegaard Commentary: Either/Or Pt. 2, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996, pp. 183–205.
Chapter 8. 'The "What" and the "How" ', in D. F. Gustafson and B. L. Tapscott (eds), Body, Mind, and Method: Essays in Honor of Virgil C. Aldrich, Synthese Library 138, Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1979, pp. 17–36. Copyright © 1979 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Chapter 9. 'Commitment and Paradox', in I. C. Jarvie and Nathaniel Laor (eds), The Enterprise of Critical Rationalism: Essays for Joseph Agassi, vol. II, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 162, Dordrecht, Boston and Lancaster: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995, pp. 189–202. Copyright © 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Chapter 10. 'Kierkegaardian Despair and the Irascible Soul', Kierkegaard Studies: Yearbook 1997, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Hermann Deuser, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1997, pp. 51–68.
Chapter 11.'The Dialectic of Proximity and Apartness', in Arne Johan Vetlesen and Harald Jodalen (eds), Closeness: an Ethics, Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1996, pp. 167–84.
Chapter 12. 'Kierkegaard's Levellings and the Review', Kierkegaard Studies: Yearbook 1999, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Hermann Deuser, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1999, pp. 71–95.
Chapter 13. 'Solitary Souls and Infinite Help: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein', History of European Ideas, 12, 1, 1990, 41–52.
Chapter 14. 'Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark Revisited: Pörn on Kierkegaard and the Self', Inquiry 28, 2, 1985, 261–71.
Chapter 15. 'Two Ways of Coming Back to Reality: Kierkegaard and Lukács', History of European Ideas, 20, 1–3, 1995, 161–6.
Chapter 16. 'Nietzsche and Naturalism', The European Legacy, 2, 4, 1997, pp. 647–52. http://www.tandf.co.uk.
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Part I
PHILOSOPHY
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INTRODUCTION
The essays collected here were written over a period of more than twenty years. Their general focus is philosophical rather than literary or biographical, and the philosophy they represent falls naturally to someone with my fairly traditional leanings. The essays themselves form a logical sequel to my first effort in this area, a volume in a series entitled 'The Arguments of the Philosophers'.
Not everyone looks for philosophy in Kierkegaard, let alone arguments. And if they do look, especially if they are philosophers themselves and like me trained in the Anglo-American analytic tradition, they will be hard put to it to find either. Kierkegaard's many-faceted thought resists that tradition's linear format, just as his ways of writing seem often to be a deliberate travesty of normal academic communication and dispute. And since in a thinker of such psychological acuity, with such a huge literary talent, and such a fertile imagination, there is much more than philosophy to dwell upon and learn from in his writings, it isn't strange that these latter aspects have caught the imagination of literary theorists and thinkers of a less analytical bent. Yet there is room, in my view, for a sharp and sustained focus on the philosophical content of Kierkegaard's work. I am far from being alone in this engagement, but at a time when Kierkegaard's writings are being tapped by such a variety of styles and schools of thought that their philosophical content tends to be undervalued or overlooked, any occasion to speak up for it can help.
That said, all those old provisos spring once more to mind: Kierkegaard's own negative attitude to academic philosophy; his apparent unwillingness that those who do pick up the philosophy in the texts should actually read it as such, or take it too seriously; the many masks from which the philosophical language (or is it only an ironically transmitted jargon?) issues in varying doses and selections. Whatever we ourselves decide to do with the texts, we must at least ask whether Kierkegaard himself ever wanted to be counted a philosopher.
Not so long ago, while watching a French television current-affairs programme discussing Easter, sacrifice and Middle-East politics, a French philosopher citing some lines from Fear and Trembling referred to its author as le philosophe danois. Leaving aside the usual insouciance on the subject of pseudonymity, what intrigued me first was that the book Kierkegaard himself said he was most likely to
be remembered by should be considered still topical in a context as burning as this. But there was also the unqualified description of Kierkegaard as a colleague by someone in a land which, though notoriously permissive in its use of the term, generally fails to recognize Kierkegaard as a philosopher, unlike, for instance, Foucault, Derrida and Levinas. Not even the example of the heroes of the French Enlightenment, termed les philosophes in full awareness that they had few pretensions to be thus labelled, can be appealed to on Kierkegaard's behalf, so little has his thought in common with theirs.
What were Kierkegaard's own views on the matter? Well, he had considerable respect for philosophers. As a student he was even regarded by his teacher as a Hegelian. But he was even more taken by subversive thinkers, also of some literary bent, like Hamann, early on, and later Schopenhauer. Perhaps the Shakespearean epigraph provided for Philosophical Fragments, 'Better well hanged than ill wed', means that he would prefer to be trashed than that the fragments, or 'crumbs', as the better translation would have it, should fall into the hands of the wrong philosophers. Still, after reading the pseudonyms together with what journal entries say about philosophy and philosophers, it is hard to erase the thought that, asked if he'd like to be remembered as a philosopher at all, Kierkegaard's answer would be: 'Heaven forbid!'
That answer, however, as Kierkegaard would have been the first to appreciate, is radically ambiguous. Someone scandalized on philosophy's behalf might utter it at the very thought that a writer who tackles its problems in such a shamefully unprofessional way might be counted as a colleague. But equally it could be uttered by someone who thought there was something better to do than philosophy.
The reputation of philosophy is based on its status as a superior form of objective thinking. Kierkegaard voices no objection to objective thinking as such, so long as it does not claim to answer questions its terms of reference make it unfitted to pose. A scientific approach to knowledge of the external world would not be exposed to that charge, and if that is the sort of question that philosophy has come to regard as its speciality, so be it. But apart from the importance of distinguishing the kind of issues that a philosophy based on science concerns itself with from those that Kierkegaard's Climacus pseudonym says call for subjective thinking, the range of considerations relevant to an individual's commerce with a reality outside it is far more complex than those dealt with either in traditional philosophy or in those scientific projects that belong to a newly 'naturalized' philosophy. Besides reason it also requires something which, though evident enough in thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas, is not so often associated with philosophy, or if at all, then only indirectly, namely psychological insight. Kierkegaard's contributions in this area are often taken to outshine his services to philosophy.1 It
could also be otherwise: that these are contributions to a 'thickened' philosophy that takes fuller account of the ways in which we find ourselves in a world and of our ways of responding to these. Whether philosophy survives such a thickening is really no more than a variable matter of what practices we prefer to honour with its name.
Put roughly and not a little contentiously, the burden of Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the work mainly discussed in Part I, is to regenerate a notion of truth proper to moral and religious experience, showing that neither Hegelian philosophy nor any other kind of 'objective' approach can do justice to these. Yet the work says nothing about what topics might still be left to objective thinking once the traditional ones have been properly redistributed. Nor, on the other hand, does it say out loud that the regenerated notion is still a philosophical notion. Few would deny that it is the philosopher's job to think objectively, or that philosophy as practised today essentially employs a form of objective thinking. Most would agree that, barring the Sophists and Socrates, philosophy always has done. But now, in no small degree due to Kierkegaard himself, existentialism has become part of the philosophical tradition, and Kierkegaard's influence on Unamuno, Jaspers, Sartre, de Beauvoir and especially Heidegger is now part of the lore. The fact that Kierkegaard's writings are, as has been aptly said, 'highly charged with a realistic sense of life'2 can strongly dispose a generation of thinkers that has no difficulty in calling Heidegger, Sartre and Nietzsche philosophers also to think of Kierkegaard in that light.
To some, the fact that the concepts central to a realistic sense of life in Kierkegaard's writings are religious appears not only drastically to narrow their focus but, by the same token, also to marginalize them as a surviving cultural resource. Several contemporary commentators attempt to remove what they consider this impediment to treating Kierkegaard's writings seriously as philosophy – writings they otherwise respect for their exceptional insight.s How much better, they think, if this religious component or premise could simply be ignored. Yet others, drawing on that realistic sense of life expressed in Kierkegaard's writings, and with an interest in turning it to the advantage of what Hume called the 'science of Man', later developed into philosophical anthropology, would not ignore the religious component but rather place it just a little further along in the order of things. Because anthropology accounts for the full spectrum of human responsiveness, religious experience belongs there as much as any other, as much as, say, aesthetic experience or the different faces of morality, and science itself, not to say philosophy.
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