Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays
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8 For an informative account of this aspect of the period, as well as of the background to the present paper's topic in general, see Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1987.
9 See among the early Journal entries from 10 September 1836 to 1837.
10 See, for example, The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte (Kierkegaard's Writings VIII), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980, p.162 fn.
11 J. G. Hamann, Sämtliche Werke, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, ed. by J. Nadler, Vienna: Herder, 1949–57, II, p. 74.
12 Moses Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden oder Vorelesungen über das Daseyn Gottes, Berlin, 1785, rev. edn 1876. See Beiser, The Fate of Reason, pp. 72, 78, 94.
13 F. H. Jacobi, Werke, ed. by F. H. Jacobi and F. Köppen, Leipzig: Fleischer, 1812, IV/1, pp. 210–11, 223.
14 SKS 7, p. 227 (250).
15 Ibid., pp. 227–8 (250–1).
16 Ibid., p. 94 (95).
17 Ibid., p. 104 (107).
18 Ibid, p. 92 (93). G. E. Lessing, 'Über den Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft', Theologische Streitschriften, GW, 9, p. 82. The short piece (only eight pages) also includes the occurrence of the familiar Aristotelian expression, 'metabasis eis allo genos' (qualitative change) referred to by Climacus (SKS 7, p. 96 [98] ).
19 SKS 7, p. 95 (96).
20 Ibid., p. 94 (95).
21 G. E. Lessing, Axiomata, GW, 9:210, 211. Cf. Beiser, The Fate of Reason, p. 58. Lessing's remarks here are part of his dispute with H. M. Goeze (see Anti-Goeze, GW, 9, pp. 241–322), an orthodox Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, who had reacted against Lessing's publication (with commentary) of an attack on positive religion by H. S. Reimarus (Apologie oder Schützschrift für die vernunftige Veregrer Gottes). Lessing had received the manuscript, withheld by its author during his lifetime
because he feared the effect of its publication, from Reimarus's daughter, Elise (cf. SKS 7, p.101 [103], where Kierkegaard refers to her as Emilie).
22 Lessing, 'Über den Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft', 9, p. 85.
23 SKS 7, p. 97 (98).
24 Ibid., p. 97 (98).
25 Ibid., p. 97 (99).
26 Ibid., p. 99 (99) (emphasis removed).
27 Climacus also notes that, in referring to accidental historical truths, Lessing might be allowing there could also be historical truths that were not accidental, but assumes that 'accidental' is intended as a 'genus predicate' (ibid., p. 96 [98] ).
28 SKS 4, 1997, p. 136. Fear and Trembling, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985, p. 70 (references henceforth in parentheses).
29 I. Kant, 'Gedanken bei dem frühzeitigen Ableben des Herrn Friedrich von Funk', Werke, Akademie Text Ausgabe, ed. by W. Dilthey et al., Berlin: de Gruyter, 1979, II, pp. 37–44. See Beiser, The Fate of Reason, p. 333, n. 49.
30 SKS 7, p. 97 (99).
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., p.102 (105).
33 Ibid., p. 100 (102).
34 Ibid., p. 67 (65).
35 Ibid., p. 69 (68).
36 F. H. Jacobi, 'Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn' (LS), in Jacobis Spinoza Büchlein, ed. by Fritz Mauthner, Munich: Georg Müller Verlag, 1912, pp. 63–80. (SKS 7, p. 98 [100].)
37 LS, p. 69.
38 Ibid., p. 78.
39 Ibid., p. 79, quoted in SKS 7, pp. 99–100 in German (102).
40 LS, p. 80, quoted in SKS 7, p. 100 in German (102).
41 LS, p. 80, quoted in SKS 7, p. 100 in German (102).
42 SKS 7, p. 100 (103).
43 Ibid., p. 100 (102).
44 Ibid., p. 100 (103).
45 Ibid., p. 101 (103).
46 Ibid., p. 97 (99).
47 SKS 4, p. 105 (44).
48 Beiser, The Fate of Reason, p. 77.
49 Cf. SKS 7, p. 192 (210).
50 Ibid., p. 83 (83).
51 LS, p. 80.
52 SKS 7, p. 101 (104).
53 Beiser, The Fate of Reason, 44.
54 SKS 7, p. 72 (71).
55 SKS 4, p. 171 (107).
5 'Spirit' and the idea of the self as a reflexive relation
1 The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989. References in parentheses are to The Sickness unto Death (Kierkegaard's Writings XIX), trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
2 Quotations from Hegel are from Sämtliche Werke, ed. by H. Glockner, Stuttgart: Fromann, 1927–30; Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A. V. Miller, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977; Logic (pt. 1 of The Encyclopædia of the Philosophical Sciences [1830] ), trans.
by W. Wallace, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975 (abbreviated Enc.); and Philosophy of Right, trans. by T. M. Knox, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952.
3 See Martha C. Nussbaum, De motu animalium: Interpretive Essays, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978, pp. 159–60.
4 Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, 7 vols, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, vol. 6, 1978, p. 6794.
5 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941, p. 506.
6 The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by Reidar Thomte (Kierkegaard's Writings VIII), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980, pp. 83–4, 88–9.
7 See, for example, Søren Kierkegaards Papirer (Papirer), ed. by P. A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr and E. Torsting, 16 vols in 25 tomes, 2nd edn, ed. by N. Thulstrup, with an Index by N. J. Cappelørn, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968–78, XI 1 A 370, XI 2 A 88, XI 1 A 487. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 2, 1970, 2065; vol. 3, 1975, 2986; vol 4, 1975, p. 4350.
8 The Concept of Anxiety, p. 118.
9 Ibid., p. 119.
10 Fear and Trembling, trans. Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985, p. 57.
11 The Concept of Anxiety, p. 66.
12 Ibid., p. 88; cf. p. 85.
13 Papirer III A 5. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 2, 2274.
14 The Concept of Anxiety, p. 88.
15 Ibid., p. 85.
16 In 'Refuge and Religion', in George L. Stengren (ed.), Faith, Knowledge, Action: Essays to Niels Thulstrup, Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1984, pp. 43–53. See also Ch. 16 in the present volume.
17 Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 1, 1970, 844.
6 Basic despair
1 The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989, p. 43. The translation is as natural as the more traditional rendering: 'not willing to be one's self', and 'willing to be oneself'.
2 Ibid., pp. 72–3, 75.
3 Ibid., p. 56.
4 Ibid., p. 44.
5 Ibid., pp. 43, 44.
6 Michael Theunissen, 'Die Existenzdialektische Grundvoraussetzung der Verzweiflungs-analyse Kierkegaards', given at a conference on the later Kierkegaard in the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in October 1992. The paper is now published, as the first of two 'studies', in Michael Theunissen, Der Begriff Verzweiflung: Korrekturen an Kierkegaard, Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp, 1993. A modified version of my initial response ('Notes on Kierkegaard's Notion of Wanting in Despair to be Oneself' [unpublished] ) appeared as 'Basic Despair in The Sickness unto Death', Kierkegaardiana, 17, 1994, a slightly revised version of which appeared under the same title in Kierkegaard Studies/Yearbook 1996, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996. A predecessor of the present essay appeared in the same volume under the title 'Paradigmatic Despair and the Quest for a Kierkegaardian Anthropology'.
7 The Sickness unto Death, p. 44.
8 Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. by Theodore Kiesel. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1985, p. 317.
9 The Sickness unto Death, p. 47 (emphasis added).
10 Ibid., p. 80.
11 Ibid., p. 49 (translation modifie
d).
12 Ibid., p. 50.
13 Ibid. (translation modified).
14 Ibid., pp. 50–1.
15 Ibid., p. 49.
16 Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992, p. 516.
17 The Sickness unto Death, pp. 99, 100, 103.
18 Either/Or, p. 517.
19 Ibid., pp. 517, 520.
20 The Sickness unto Death, p. 49.
21 A Literary Review, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001, p. 97.
22 The Sickness unto Death, p. 50.
23 Ibid., p. 50.
24 Either/Or, p. 516: 'And by choosing God', the Jews could not 'choose God absolutely' so that 'it ceased to be the absolute and became sosmething finite'.
25 See The Sickness unto Death, p. 83: 'When immediacy despairs, it has not even enough self to wish or dream that it had become what it has not become.'
26 Ibid., p. 44.
27 St Thomas Aquinas, Truth, trans. (from the definitive Leonine text) by Robert W. Schmidt, S.J., vol. III, Questions XXI–XXIX, Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1954, p. 264. See Ch. 10 in the present volume
28 The notions of selfhood in Either/Or and The Sickness unto Death differ in that the former focuses on ethical disclosure and the latter on a self in 'a deeper sense' (The Sickness unto Death, p. 86) that contains an invisible link with God. See my 'Kierkegaard and the Variety of Despair', in Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 335–6.
7 A question of continuity
1 Søren Kierkegaards Papirer (Papirer), ed. by P. A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr and E. Torsting, 16 vols in 25 tomes, 2nd edn, ed. by N. Thulstrup, with an Index by N. J. Cappelørn, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968–78, X, 1 A 147. Søren Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1996, pp. 373–4. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, 7 vols, ed and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, vol. 6, 1978, 6361.
2 Papirer XI 1 A 164, XI 1 A 231, XI 1 A 445, XI 1 A 141. Papers and Journals: A Selection, pp. 586, 591–2, 606–7, 579–81. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 4, 1975, 4999, 5000, vol. 6, 6902, vol. 4, 4998.
3 In his journals Kierkegaard writes that the 'nerve' in all his activity as a writer is to be found in the fact that he was 'essentially religious' and 'religiously resolved' when he wrote Either/Or. Papirer X 1 A 266, IX A 175. Papers and Journals: A Selection, pp. 381–3, 319–20. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 6, p. 6388 (cf. 6209).
4 Papirer X 1 A 147. Papers and Journals: A Selection, pp. 373–4. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 6, 6361.
5 Papirer X 1 A 302. Excerpt in Papers and Journals: A Selection, pp. 385–6.
6 Papirer X 1 A 74. Papers and Journals: A Selection, pp. 358 and 359. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 6, 6325.
7 See, for example, Papirer X 1 A 78, X 1 A 117 and X 1 A 508. Papers and Journals: A Selection, pp. 359–61, 366 and 390. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 6, 6327.
8 Cf. Papirer X 1 A 510. Papers and Journals: A Selection, pp. 391–3. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 6, 6431.
9 Papirer IV B 24, p. 192. Papers and Journals: A Selection, pp. 167–8.
10 Kierkegaard, Synspunktet for min Forfatter-Virksomhed: En ligefrem Meddelelse, Rapport til historien, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1859, p. 11.
11 Ibid., p. 31.
12 Ibid., p. 32.
13 Ibid., p. 31.
14 Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992. References in parentheses are to Either/Or, vols 1 and 2 (Kierkegaard's Writings III and IV), trans. by Howard V.Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
15 Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (SKS), ed. by N. J. Cappelørn, J. Garff, J. Kondrup, A. McKinnon and F. H. Mortensen, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag for the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, 1997–, SKS 7, 2002, p. 233. Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Kierkegaard's Writings XII 1 and 2), trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992, vol. 1, p. 256. References to the latter are in parentheses.
16 Fear and Trembling, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985, p. 137.
17 SKS 7, p. 233 (1, 256).
18 Ibid., p. 248 (1, 273).
19 Ibid., p. 249 (1, 274).
20 Ibid., p 234 (1, 257–8).
21 SKS 6, 1999, p. 439. Stages on Life's Way (Kierkegaard's Writings XI), trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978, p. 477.
22 Papirer X 6 B 41. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 6, 6255.
23 Synspunktet, p. 12.
24 Papirer X 1 A 266. Papers and Journals: A Selection, p. 382. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 6, p. 6388.
25 Papirer IV A 234. Papers and Journals: A Selection, p. 165. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 5, 1978, 563.
26 Papirer XI 1 A 164. Papers and Journals: A Selection, p. 586. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 4, 1975, 4999.
27 Papirer X 1 A 139. Papers and Journals: A Selection, p. 372. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 6, p. 6357.
28 Papirer X, 4 A 663. Papers and Journals: A Selection, p. 552. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 6, 6823 (translation altered). The Hongs translate 'udviste' in 'Jeg udviste Ægteskabet som Eller' as 'eliminated'. But the secondary sense of 'indicate', 'point out' or 'mark out' is clearly appropriate.
29 Papirer XI 1 A 141. Papers and Journals: A Selection, pp. 579–81. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 4, 4998.
30 Fear and Trembling, p. 83.
31 Papirer XI 1 A 226. Papers and Journals: A Selection, pp. 590–1. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 4, 5000.
32 Georg Lukács, Soul and Form, trans. by Anna Bostock, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974. See Ch. 15 in this volume.
33 Papirer X 2 A 14. Papers and Journals: A Selection, p. 425. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 2, 1172.
34 Papirer X 2 A 622. Papers and Journals: A Selection, p. 487. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, vol. 5, 6604.