Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays

by Alastair Hannay

  6 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, VII 1 B 135. Søren Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996, p. 251 (references henceforth in parentheses).

  7 SV3 14, p. 78 (75).

  8 Ibid., p. 80 (78).

  9 SV3 15, 1963, p. 110. S. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989, p. 85 (references henceforth in parentheses).

  10 Ibid., p. 111 (86).

  11 Ibid.

  12 Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics, trans. by T. K. Abbott, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1946, p. 24.

  13 SV3 12, p. 26. Kierkegaard, Kjerlighedens Gjerninger (Works of Love). The essentials of Kierkegaard's account of love are anticipated in the Nicomachean Ethics VIII, iii. 2, where Aristotle observes that 'in a friendship based on utility or on pleasure men love their friend for their own good or their own pleasure, and not as being the person loved, but as useful or agreeable'. Such friendships are 'based on an accident, since the friend is not loved for being what he is, but as affording some benefit or pleasure as the case may be' (Aristotle, XIX: The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by H. Rackham, London: W. Heinemann/Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968, p. 459).

  14 Kant, Fundamental Principles, p. 18.

  15 Just as Aristotle says that when the 'motive of the friendship has passed away, the friendship itself is dissolved, having existed merely as a means to that end'. Nicomachean Ethics, VII, iii. 3. Cf. William Shakespeare's 'Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds' (Sonnet CXVI).

  16 There is a fuller discussion in my Kierkegaard, The Arguments of the Philosophers, ed. by Ted Honderich, London and New York: Routledge, 1982; rev. edn, 1991 (new edn, 1999), Ch. 7.

  17 See M. Jamie Ferreira's brief but timely, 'Kierkegaardian Imagination and the Feminine', Kierkegaardiana, 16, 1993, pp. 79–91.

  18 See note 2 above.

  19 Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, v. 5. His reason for this is that friendship, as a reciprocal form of liking, involves 'deliberate choice', and deliberate choice in his view must spring from a fixed disposition. I am grateful to Marianne McDonald for bringing this to my attention.

  20 Ibid., VIII, iii. 6.

  21 Ibid.

  22 See Tracy Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975, pp. 192–202, and Keith Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche contra Rousseau, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 214–15.

  23 Cf. Nietzsche's claim in his unpublished essay on 'Homer's Weltkampf' from 1872 that natural talent must develop through struggle.

  24 Cf. Nietzsche's unpublished essay from 1871 on 'The Greek State'.

  25 SV3 15, p. 110 (84).

  12 Levelling and Einebnung

  1 Samlede Værker ed. by A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg and H. O. Lange, 5th rev. edn of 3rd edn, 20 vols, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962 (SV3), vol. 14, p. 77. A Literary Review, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001, pp. 74–5 (references henceforth in parentheses).

  2 John Rawls's 'veil of ignorance' is a notional device for bringing about a levelling of this kind. If you do not know what your own interests are, your choice of procedures for the distribution of insufficient goods will better express the interests of the reference group you profess to speak for than if your judgements are affected by your knowledge of your own prospects.

  3 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 1, 1997, p. 137. The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (Kierkegaard's Writings II), trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989, p. 79.

  4 Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992, p. 509.

  5 Climacus says in the Postscript, that irony is 'the making [Dannelse] of spirit' (SKS 7, 2002, p. 457; Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1941, p. 450 [references henceforth in parentheses] ). Roughly speaking, levelling the qualitative distinctions that confront a person in a state of what Kierkegaard calls immediacy leaves them in a position to grasp another set of qualitative distinctions, namely those that correspond, in the first instance, to the values embodied in an ethical way of life. For irony, as the Postscript also tells us, 'is the boundary between the aesthetic and the ethical' (SKS 7, p. 455 [448] ).

  6 See Ch. 1 in the present volume.

  7 SV3 14, pp. 88–9 (86–7).

  8 This impression may simply be due to the fact that, as on the surface an intellectual work, the Postscript appeals to 'thought' and leaves all the hard work to be done after it has served its deconstructive purpose.

  9 Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena (HCT), trans. by Theodore Kisiel, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1985, p. 247.

  10 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 628. Søren Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, p. 407 (abbreviated) (references, where available, henceforth in parentheses). 'Cause' and 'personality' are opposed also in a later journal entry, already quoted (ch.1, p.23) where Kierkgaard says:

  The reason why Concluding Postscript is made to appear comical is precisely that it is serious – and people think they can better the cause by taking separate theses and translating them into pieces of dogma, the whole thing no doubt ending in a new confusion where I myself am treated as a cause, everything being translated into the objective, so that what is new is that here we have a new doctrine, and not that here we have personality.

  (Papirer X 2 A 130 [436] )

  11 HCT, p. 244 (my italic, original italic removed).

  12 Ibid., p. 426.

  13 Ibid., p. 291; cf. note 43 below.

  14 See Ch. 11 in the present volume.

  15 To eliminate any doubt on this score see HCT, p. 245 in which the Abstand in Abständigkeit is explicitly said to be the apartness we are concerned with in our concern with how we differ from one another.

  16 See SV3 14, pp. 58–9 (55).

  17 The term is also introduced in The Sickness unto Death but in a slightly different context (see SV3 15, p. 110 [The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989, p. 85] [references hereafter in parentheses] ).

  18 SKS 7, pp. 330–1 (324).

  19 Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. by T. M. Knox, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952, para. 36, p. 38.

  20 HCT, p. 248.

  21 SV3 14, p. 86 (84).

  22 Ibid., p. 92 (90).

  23 Ibid., p. 61 (58).

  24 Ibid. For Kierkgaard's early views on life and form, see Alastair Hannay, Kierkgaard: A Biography, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, ch.1.

  25 Ibid., p. 58 (55).

  26 Ibid.

  27 Papirer VII 1 B 135 (251). The passage was deleted from the final draft of the Review. Cf. the parallel comment from The Concept of Dread (trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 89), that 'fate' is an 'anticipation of providence' (SKS 4, 1997, p. 402).

  28 Jenaer Realphilosophie, II: Die Vorlesungen von 1805/6, ed. J. Hoffmeister, republished as Jenaer Realphilosophie, Hamburg, 1967, p. 270, cf. p. 267. I am not assuming that Kierkegaard had access to the text in question.

  29 As I did in Ch. 8 of my Kierkegaard, The Arguments of the Philosophers, ed. by Ted Honderich, London and New York: Routledge, 1982; rev. edn, 1991 (new edn, 1999).

  30 Papirer VII 1 B 4
3.

  31 SV3 14, p. 77 (74).

  32 See ibid., p. 87 (84).

  33 Ibid., pp. 86–7 (84–5).

  34 HCT, pp. 246–7.

  35 Ibid., p. 246.

  36 See SV3 14, p. 99 (97).

  37 Ibid., p. 80 (77–8).

  38 Papirer X 1 A 107 (365) (translation amended, original emphasis).

  39 SV3 14, p. 73 (70).

  40 SV3 15, p. 111 (86: '[T]his self, naked and abstract, in contrast to the fully clothed self of immediacy, is the first form of the infinite self, and the progressive impulse in the entire process through which a self infinitely takes possession of its actual self along with its difficulties and advantages.')

  41 See HCT, p. 246.

  42 SV3 14, p. 73 (70).

  43 Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell, London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978, p. 197.

  44 SV3 14, p. 79 (76).

  45 Ibid., p. 78 (75).

  46 SV3 15, pp. 122–3 (99: '[B]y means of the infinite form, the negative self, he wants to undertake to refashion the whole thing in order to get out of it a self such as he wants, produced by means of the infinite form of the negative self … he does not want to don his own self, does not want to see his task in his given self, he wants, by virtue of being the infinite form, to construct it himself').

  47 SV3 14, p. 98 (97: 'de skulle enten fortabes i den abstrakte Uendelighedes Svimmel, eller frelses uendeligt i Religieusitetens Væsentlighed').

  48 Hubert L. Dreyfus and Jane Rubin, 'Kierkegaard on the Nihilism of the Present Age: The Case of Commitment as Addiction', Synthese, 98, 1, January 1994, p. 7.

  13 Solitary souls and infinite help

  1 'Die christliche Religion ist nur für den, der unendliche Hilfe braucht, also nur für den, der unendliche Not fühlt … Der christliche Glaube – so meine ich – ist die Zuflucht in dieser höchsten Not.' Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, trans. by P. Winch, Oxford: Blackwell, 1980; rev. edn (text revised by Alois Pichler), 1998, pp. 52e and 53e.

  2 'Der ganze Erdball kann nicht in grösserer Not sein als eine Seele. …Grössere Not kann nicht empfunden werden, als von Einem Menschen. Den wenn sich ein Mensch

  verloren fühlt, so ist das die höchste Not.' Ibid., pp. 52 and 53, Parrallel German English text.

  3 See, for example, ibid., pp. 35–8, 54 and 61.

  4 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, X2 A 459 (1850), p. 326. Søren Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996, p. 471.

  5 The quotation is from Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand (Samlede Værker ed. by A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg and H. O. Lange, 5th rev. edn of 3rd edn, 20 vols, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962 [SV3], vol. 11), p. 60 (Edifying Discourses in Various Spirits [more reliably translated 'Edifying Discourses in a Different Tenor'] from 'A Discourse for an Occasion', translated as Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession, by Douglas Steere (with an introductory essay), New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper and Brothers, 2nd edn, 1958 [emphasis added], and as Purify Your Hearts, by A. S. Aldworth and W. S. Ferrie, London: The C. W. Daniel Co. Ltd, 1937, p. 78).

  6 SV3 12, p. 34.

  7 Ibid., p.37.

  8 SV3 15, p. 74. The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989, pp. 44–5 (references henceforth in parentheses).

  9 'Menschen sind in dem Masse religiös, als sie sich nicht so sehr unvollkommen, als krank glauben. … Jeder halbwegs anständige Mensche glaubt sich höchst unvollkommen, aber der religiöse glaubt sich elend.' Culture and Value, p. 51.

  10 SV3 15, p. 168 (151).

  11 See ibid., p. 84 (55). '[G]ood fortune is not a specification of spirit'. Cf. 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, pp. 392ff. (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941, pp. 386ff. [references henceforth in parentheses] ). According to Postscript's pseudonymous author, Johannes Climacus, the immediate individual sees misfortune and fortune as accidents. If he cannot be rid of misfortune, he despairs because he has no way of coming to terms with it. Climacus says that immediacy 'expires' (udaander) in misfortune, while in suffering the religious individual 'begins to breathe' (at aande) (SKS 7, p. 397 [390] ). The Danish for 'spirit' is Aand.

  12 SKS 7, pp. 392ff. and 396 (386ff. and 390).

  13 Ibid., pp. 508–9 (497).

  14 See my 'Refuge and Religion', in George L. Stengren (ed.), Faith, Knowledge, and Action, Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1984, pp. 43–53.

  15 The oddity of the idea of 'believing at will' was first pointed out in Bernard Williams's 'Deciding to Believe', in Williams, Problems of the Self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. See, for example, p. 149.

  16 G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Philosophische Bibliothek Bd. 114, ed. by G. Lasson. Leipzig: Verlag der Dürr'schen Buchhandlung, 1907, p. 17. A. V. Miller (Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford: Clarendon, 1977, p. 14) translates '[Das Geistliche ist] das sich Verhaltende und Bestimmte, das Anderssein und Fürsichsein' as '[The spiritual] is that which relates itself to itself and is determinate, it is other-being and being-for-self'.

  The reflexive form 'relates itself to itself', as in some current translation of The Sickness unto Death, can mislead, and the more straightforward forms 'relates to itself' and 'is self-related' are to be preferred. Hegel too describes the self as self-relating, and indeed, literally translated, the passage would be rendered '[T]he

  spiritual is the self-relating-to-itself sameness and simplicity' (p. 15); but the first 'self' has a merely a grammatical function due to the reflexive form taken by the German 'beziehende' ('referring').

  17 The self is 'das in sich Zurückgekehrte' (Phänomenologie, p. 15). In Miller's translation: 'And the self is like that immediacy and simplicity of the beginning because it is the result, that which has returned into itself …' (p. 12).

  18 SV3 15, pp. 91 and 100 (44–5).

  19 SKS3, 1997, pp. 206–7. Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992, p. 517.

  20 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes, New York: Philosophical Library, 1956, p. 615.

  21 SKS 7, p. 517 (505) (translation altered).

  22 Ibid., p. 520 (507) (translation altered).

  23 Williams, 'Deciding to Believe', p. 149.

  24 'Glauben heisst, sich einer Autorität unterwerfen. Hat man sich ihr unterworfen, so kann man sie nun nicht, ohne sich gegen sie aufzulehnen, wieder in Frage ziehen und auf's neue glaubwürdig finden,'. Culture and Value, p. 52.

  25 SKS 7, p. 445 (438–9) (translation altered).

  14 Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark revisited

  1 Ingmar Pörn, 'Kierkegaard and the Study of the Self', Inquiry, 27, 2–3, 1984, pp. 199–205. Unprefixed references in the text are to this article.