Kierkegaard's Existential Approach 9783110493016, 9783110478662

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Kierkegaard’s Existential Approach

Kierkegaard Studies

Edited on the behalf of Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre by Heiko Schulz, Jon Stewart and Karl Verstrynge in cooperation with Peter Šajda

Monograph Series 35 Edited by Karl Verstrynge

Kierkegaard’s Existential Approach

Edited by Arne Grøn, René Rosfort and K. Brian Söderquist

Kierkegaard Studies Edited on behalf of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre by Heiko Schulz, Jon Stewart and Karl Verstrynge in cooperation with Peter Šajda Monograph Series Volume 35 Edited by Karl Verstrynge

ISBN 978-3-11-047866-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-049301-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-049101-2 ISSN 1434-2952 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents Foreword

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Acknowledgements

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Reception Mélissa Fox-Muraton Philosophy of Existence in France in the 1930s

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Gerhard Thonhauser “Thinker without Category” Kierkegaard in Heidegger’s Thinking of the 1930s

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Johan Taels Existential Hermeneutics Kierkegaard and Gadamer on Practical Knowledge (Phronesis)

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Concepts Arne Grøn The Concept of Existence

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Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen Thinking of Existence 91 Clare Carlisle How to be a Human Being in the World: Kierkegaard’s Question of Existence

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Daniel Conway Disclosing Despair: The Role of the Pseudonyms in Kierkegaard’s Existential Approach 131 Noreen Khawaja Father Kierkegaard

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Table of Contents

Bernhard Obsieger Anxiety as the Origin of Freedom and Responsibility René Rosfort Concrete Infinity Imagination and the Question of Reality

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Issues Vilhjálmur Árnason The Danger of Losing Oneself Habermas’s Species Ethics in Light of Kierkegaards’s Existential Analysis 217 Jonathan Wood What Was I Thinking? Korsgaard, Crowell, and Kierkegaard on the Phenomenology of Ethically 239 Informed, Unreflective Action Patrick Stokes Kierkegaard’s Dual Individual: Reconciling Selfhood in the Existentialist and Analytic Traditions 261 List of Contributors Index

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Foreword Kierkegaard’s texts are and remain texts for reflection. They provide their reader a unique possibility to ask fundamental questions about what it means to be human. These are questions that connect people across social, cultural, and religious divides. Thus, the importance of Kierkegaard’s thinking is not just a matter of applying it thematically, but it also requires the reader to take his or her own context into account while thinking with Kierkegaard. This is most apparent when the study of Kierkegaard’s texts is allowed to challenge or support other ways of asking existential questions. These include not only philosophical and theological approaches to existence, but also aesthetic approaches as well as those of the human, social, and natural sciences. The Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre (SKC) at the University of Copenhagen was established as a Centre of Excellence in January 1994 with a five year grant from the Danish National Research Foundation. The aim of SKC was originally described as an ellipse, consisting of interdisciplinary interpretations of Kierkegaard’s thought on the one hand, and, on the other, philological research with the objective of establishing a new critical and annotated edition of Kierkegaard’s authorship under the title Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (SKS). The final version of the digital edition of SKS was launched in 2007. Work on the 55 volumes of SKS was completed in 2012 with the last volume published in 2013, the bicentennial year of Kierkegaard’s birth. This critical and annotated edition of Kierkegaard’s works, which includes his published works as well as his journals, notebooks, and papers, makes the complexity of Kierkegaard’s authorship apparent and allows for new perspectives on his thought. A new textual foundation is not merely a privilege, but also carries with it an obligation to put this new foundation to use. The task of SKC is therefore to use the new edition to reformulate basic categories and problem areas in Kierkegaard studies and to discuss their current importance. Recent years have seen a renewed interest not only in existentialism, but also in existential questions, as well as key figures in existential thinking. This is perhaps not a coincidence. The intellectual debate is today dominated by a quest for scientific and pragmatic answers to what it means to be human. Reflective disciplines like theology, philosophy, and literary studies are experiencing a growing pressure to deliver workable solutions to societal and personal problems. The contemporary emphasis on science and pragmatism resembles—and can be seen as a return to—the fervent scientific enthusiasm that followed in the wake of the twentieth century, and the interest in existential thinking that made its entry on the intellectual scene after World War I was a critical reaction

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to this quest for unambiguous solutions to human problems. Although existential thinking comes in various forms, all these forms share a skepticism toward substantial definitions of what it means to be human, and they all draw on a concept of human existence that Kierkegaard was one of the first to articulate and investigate. The contemporary interest in existential thinking can arguably be seen as a similar critical reaction to the prevalent scientific and pragmatic approaches to human existence. Kierkegaard played a major role in shaping the heyday of existentialism and existential thinking from the 1920s to the beginning of 1960s, and he is still considered to be one of the founding fathers of existential thinking. Despite this honorary title, systematic investigations of Kierkegaard’s existential approach remain sparse. SKC has therefore dedicated three of its annual conferences to reconsidering Kierkegaard’s existential approach and its importance for the contemporary interest in existential thinking. The first conference was held in Copenhagen in 2015 under the title “SKC Annual Conference 2015: Reconsidering Kierkegaard’s Existential Approach,” and most of the contributions in this anthology were first presented at this conference.¹ The SKC Annual Conferences 2016 and 2017 will continue to investigate aspects of Kierkegaard’s existential approach. The 13 chapters of this anthology deal with various aspects of Kierkegaard’s existential approach. Its reception is examined in the works of influential philosophers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Habermas, as well as in lesser known philosophers from the interwar period, such as Jean Wahl, Lev Shestov, Rachel Bespaloff, and Benjamin Fondane. Other chapters reconsider central existential concepts, such as “anxiety,” “existence,” “imagination,” and “despair.” Finally, there are chapters that deal with Kierkegaard’s relevance for central issues in contemporary philosophy, including “naturalism,” “self-constitution,” and “bioethics.” We hope that the various attempts to reconsider Kierkegaard’s existential approach offered in this book will encourage the reader to return to Kierkegaard’s texts with new questions that, in her or his own reading of the texts, can beget further questions. This open community of shared questions is a critical aspect of our individual readings of Kierkegaard’s work and thought. Arne Grøn and René Rosfort

 The anthology is not equivalent to a volume of conference proceedings. Apart from the fact that some of the essays were not presented at the conference, each contribution has first been significantly reworked and subsequently revised after two double-blind reviews.

Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank Daniel Benedikt Smith for his careful copyediting of the entire manuscript, and Karl Verstrynge, Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen and Claudia Welz for their help in the editorial process.We would also like to thank the peer reviewers whose careful comments and suggestions have improved the academic quality of the individual chapters. Finally, we would like to thank editorial director Albrecht Döhnert at de Gruyter Verlag, and the general editors of KSMS, Jon Stewart, Heiko Schulz, and Karl Verstrynge, for accepting this anthology into the series.

Reception

Mélissa Fox-Muraton

Philosophy of Existence in France in the 1930s Abstract: Among the first to seriously introduce Kierkegaard’s philosophy to the French reading public in the 1930s, Wahl, Bespaloff, Shestov, and Fondane were also engaged in the debate about philosophy of existence. Critical of the existentialist philosophy developed in the 1940s beginning with Sartre, as well as of the existential philosophies promoted throughout Germany and France in the 1930s by Heidegger, Jaspers, and Marcel, Bespaloff, Fondane, Shestov, and Wahl nevertheless all claim to remain faithful to “their” philosophy of existence, inspired by Kierkegaard. This essay will sketch out their understanding of what philosophy of existence is, through their positions and critiques of their contemporaries and successors.

While philosophy of existence was already a topic of vivid debate in the 1930s and at the beginning of the 1940s in intellectual circles in France, “existentialism” only became popularized in post-war France with Jean-Paul Sartre’s inaugural conference L’existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism is a Humanism) in 1945. Nevertheless, an earlier, if lesser known, wave of existential philosophy marked the French intellectual milieu in the 1930s. Promoted essentially by Jewish thinkers such as Jean Wahl, Rachel Bespaloff, Benjamin Fondane and Lev Shestov,¹ the existential philosophy of interwar France is generally seen as a mere precursor of the existentialist movement. However, these thinkers were highly critical of the new “existentialism,” not only because it transformed the philosophy of existence into an “-ism,” but more fundamentally on the philosophical grounds that it failed to properly take into account the notion of subjectivity, reducing it to mere subjectivism. In so doing, existentialism not only moves away from Kierkegaard’s more rigorous philosophical constructions of subjectivity, but also becomes unable to respond  We include Shestov among the French intellectuals, because, despite the fact that Shestov was a Russian immigrant, his work on Kierkegaard was done while he was living in Paris and came out in French translation (1936) before being published in Russian. In limiting our study to Shestov, Fondane, Wahl, and Bespaloff, we make no claim to examine all of the trends in existential philosophy developed in the 1930s. These authors can be brought together as representatives of a common movement because they were all among the first to seriously introduce Kierkegaard’s philosophy in France and simultaneously to question existential philosophy during the 1930s. DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-001

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to the ethical and political questions with which existentialist philosophers sought to engage. Bespaloff, notably, remarks that “existentialism can only succeed in establishing an aggressive solidarity in a hostile or tamed world.”² Despite these critiques, she claims to remain faithful, until her death in 1949, to the philosophy of existence articulated in the 1930s. This affirmation invites a serious consideration as to what constitutes the “philosophy of existence” as it was understood by these thinkers, and as distinct from later “existentialism” or from other philosophies of existence developed in France and Germany in the interwar period. Examining the works of Wahl, Bespaloff, Fondane, and Shestov, we will seek to define existential philosophy within the French-Jewish context of the 1930s. We will show how these thinkers—among the first to seriously introduce Kierkegaard’s works in France—draw on Kierkegaard’s philosophy in the elaboration of their own philosophical context. In many ways these early readers of Kierkegaard in France were closer to Kierkegaard’s own understanding of existential philosophy than were their followers—thus, a renewal of interest in these early French works on Kierkegaard could provide a fruitful means of reconsidering Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy.

I Defining Philosophy of Existence In a 1946 article “La vogue de l’existentialisme,” Jean Wahl ironically offers a few simple “rules for distinguishing between existentialism and what it is not.” As he writes: If you say: man is, in his world, a world limited by death and felt in anxiety, there is a comprehension of himself as essentially concerned (soucieux), curved toward his solitude, in the horizon of temporality, then you connect with Heidegger’s existentialism. If you say: man, as opposed to things in themselves, is for himself, always in movement and vainly striving toward a union between the in-itself and the for-itself, then you have Sartre’s existentialism. If you say: I am a thinking substance, as Descartes said, or: the real things are ideas, as Plato said; or: the “I” accompanies all of our representations, according to Kant’s expressions, then you are not an existentialist.³

According to these “rules,” Wahl, Bespaloff, Shestov, and Fondane were not existentialists—Wahl moreover begins his history of existentialism remarking that

 Rachel Bespaloff, “Lettres à Boris de Schlœzer (I),” in Conférence, ed. by Olivier Salazar-Ferrer, no. 16, 2003, p. 450. (All translations from French sources are the author’s.)  Jean Wahl, “La vogue de l’existentialisme,” Poésie, pensée, perception, Paris: Calmann-Lévy 1948, p. 177.

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when asked whether he were an existentialist, he could only reply: no.⁴ At the same time, Wahl, Fondane, Bespaloff, and Shestov all saw in this “new mode of philosophizing”⁵ something essential to the quest for a philosophical method capable of providing meaningful responses to the lived questions with which we are confronted, a philosophy in which “‘to be or not to be’ has once again become the question,”⁶ and they all identified with a philosophy of existence⁷ which took its roots in Kierkegaard’s writings. They were of course not the only thinkers to turn to Kierkegaard and to philosophy of existence in France in the 1930s. Recent translations into French of some of Kierkegaard’s works, the introduction of Heidegger’s and Jaspers’ thought into the French intellectual milieu, and the general crisis of the interwar period had made Kierkegaard into an extremely popular figure in the 1930s. As Hannah Arendt wrote in 1932: “Kierkegaard speaks with a contemporary voice; he speaks for an entire generation,” a generation “which brought about a willingness to tear down outmoded intellectual structures.”⁸ While this is certainly true for Wahl, Bespaloff, Fondane, and Shestov, their readings of Kierkegaard differ both from that of their German and French contemporaries, and from the appropriation of Kierkegaard by the existentialist trends that would be developed in France in the 1940s.

A Philosophical Reception of Kierkegaard in France in the 1930s Though not exactly the first to introduce Kierkegaard’s works to the French reading public, the writings of Bespaloff, Wahl, Shestov, and Fondane nevertheless constitute a philosophical introduction to the Dane’s thought, and offer some of the first and most influential early philosophical analyses of his works. Indeed, the two most influential sources of Kierkegaard interpretation in France

 Jean Wahl, Esquisse pour une histoire de “l’existentialisme,” Paris: L’Arche 2001 [1949], p. 9.  Wahl, “La vogue de l’existentialisme,” p. 178.  Ibid., p. 176.  Although some attempts were made, beginning in the 1930s, to distinguish between “philosophy of existence,” as philosophy which studies existence, and “existential philosophy,” which refers more to the philosophical method than to the object of study, this distinction is far from being systematic or followed through by any of the thinkers that mention it. For the purposes of this essay, we will use the terms philosophy of existence and existential philosophy synonymously, referring both to method and object of study.  Hannah Arendt, “Søren Kierkegaard,” Essays in Understanding: 1930 – 1945, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company 1994, pp. 44– 45. Originally published in Frankfurter Zeitung, no. 75 – 76, 29 January 1932.

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in the 1930s were Wahl’s Études kierkegaardiennes, first published in 1938, and Shestov’s Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle: vox clamantis in deserto, published in French in 1936. These book-length studies of Kierkegaard include a number of previously published articles and conferences, rewritten into these longer texts. This is most notable for Shestov in a 1935 article, “Job ou Hegel? A propos de la philosophie existentielle de Kierkegaard,”⁹ and a 1936 text, “Kierkegaard et Dostoïevski. Les voix qui clament dans le désert.”¹⁰ Jean Wahl had actively been publishing on Kierkegaard since 1930,¹¹ when he wrote a review of the French translation of the Seducer’s Diary,¹² the first translation of Kierkegaard’s works to appear in French in 1929.¹³ Rachel Bespaloff, early on a disciple of Shestov and beginning in the late 1930s a good friend of Wahl’s, only published two short studies on Kierkegaard’s works, “Notes sur la Répétition de Kierkegaard” in 1934, and “En marge de ‘Crainte et tremblement’ de Kierkegaard,” in 1935,¹⁴ yet these nevertheless constitute some of the first critical analyses of the Dane’s philosophy, and had a profound impact on Kierkegaard’s reception in France. And Benjamin Fondane, though he only turned to Kierkegaard’s philosophy under Shestov’s influence, dedicated three chapters of La conscience malheureuse, his only book-length philosophical writing, published in 1936, to Kierkegaard.¹⁵ Though their readings of Kierkegaard were in many ways radically divergent —indeed, Shestov perceived his own work on Kierkegaard as a necessary correction to what he perceived to be the overly scholarly, intellectualized interpreta-

 La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 240, May 1935, pp. 755 – 762.  Les Cahiers du Sud, no. 181, March 1936, pp. 170 – 200.  Vincent Delecroix has republished a collective volume of Wahl’s articles on Kierkegaard, which gives a chronological and clear presentation of the evolution of Wahl’s engagement with the Dane. See Jean Wahl, Kierkegaard. L’Un devant l’Autre, ed. by Vincent Delecroix, Paris: Hachette 1998.  Jean Wahl, “Journal du séducteur, par S. Kierkegaard,” La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 204, September 1930.  Søren Kierkegaard, Le Journal du séducteur, trans. by Jean-Jacques Gateau, Paris: Stock, Delamain et Boutelleau 1929.  “Notes sur la Répétition de Kierkegaard,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger, vol. 117, nos. 5 – 6, 1934, pp. 335 – 363; “En marge de ‘Crainte et tremblement’ de Kierkegaard,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger, vol. 119, nos. 1– 2, 1935, pp. 43 – 72. These two articles were reprinted in her 1938 book, Cheminements et carrefours. Julien Green, André Malraux, Gabriel Marcel, Kierkegaard, Chestov devant Nietzsche, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin 1938.  Benjamin Fondane, La conscience malheureuse, Paris: Editions Denoël 1936. See the following chapters: “Martin Heidegger. Sur les routes de Kierkegaard et Dostoïevski,” “Søren Kierkegaard et la catégorie du secret,” and “Chestov, Kierkegaard et le serpent.”

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tions offered by Wahl¹⁶—they can nevertheless all be seen as working in a similar vein. These thinkers all attempt to situate Kierkegaard through a philosophical reading, and thus oppose another trend of Kierkegaard reception predominant in France beginning in the late 1920s: the Protestant reception. These readers, such as Denis de Rougemont, see Kierkegaard not as a philosopher but as a guide for Protestant faith. As Rougemont writes, Kierkegaard should be seen first and foremost as a figure who “draws himself up, on the threshold of the era, as the most tremendous living accusation against our collective cowardice, our spiritual compromises, our transitory and agitated passions.”¹⁷ Refusing to adopt a theological perspective, Wahl, Shestov, Bespaloff, and Fondane all insist on the philosophical import of Kierkegaard’s writings. Yet at the same time, they are all reluctant to go along with the more strictly philosophical trends of existential philosophy developed in Germany in the 1930s, notably Heidegger’s approach, but also Karl Jaspers’, which they deem too theoretical to get at the problem of singular existence. In their desire to situate Kierkegaard beyond theological considerations and beyond the systematic approaches of their German contemporaries, Wahl, Bespaloff, Shestov, and Fondane develop what may be considered to be a specific trend in existential philosophy, identifiable perhaps more through its oppositions than through any one particular methodological or theoretic approach. And despite the fact that their works would largely contribute to the understanding that later existentialists would have of Kierkegaard and existential philosophy, their approach to philosophy of existence is quite distinct from these later movements as well, insofar as they see their works as directly indebted to Kierkegaard’s philosophy, with which they profoundly identify. As Bespaloff writes, for example: “What is regrettable, for example, is that I can no longer pull myself away from Kierkegaard: here I am entangled in a second study. It is a true fascination…It is perhaps a certain cowardice on my part to seek refuge in this way in Kierkegaard, but no one is closer to me, at the moment, nor more necessary.”¹⁸ For Bespaloff, as for her contemporaries, Kierkegaard was a real life companion; whereas for the existentialists of the 1940s, Kierkegaard’s herit-

 As Shestov remarked to Fondane: “I am happy that the Cahiers du Sud are willing to publish my conference on Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky…Some things have to be said, so that Wahl’s ‘interpretation’ does not get through. Perhaps I’m wrong, but it offends me” (Benjamin Fondane, Rencontres avec Léon Chestov, ed. by Nathalie Baranoff and Michel Carassou, Paris: Plasma 1982, p. 83).  Denis de Rougemont, “Sören Kierkegaard,” Jean-Jacques, February 1938, p. 3.  Rachel Bespaloff, “Lettres à Daniel Halévy (I: 1932– 1937),” Conférence, no. 19, 2004, pp. 579 – 580.

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age would be restricted to a mere number of popular themes, such as anxiety, despair, and the absurd. Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, admitted to Benny Lévy in a 1980 interview that he had never really understood or had a feel for Kierkegaard, and that his early writings on despair were just a “joke” (blague). When Benny Lévy remarks that Sartre “really does not like Kierkegaard,” Sartre responds: “Yes, but I underwent his influence nonetheless. They were words [despair, Angst] that seemed to me to have a reality for others. Thus, I wanted to take them into account in my philosophy.”¹⁹ Gabriel Marcel made a similar admission in his contribution to the 1964 conference held in Kierkegaard’s honor, Kierkegaard vivant, where he notes that although he is “considered to be one of the representatives of the philosophy of existence and that this is considered, in the end rightly, to derive from Kierkegaard’s thought,” Marcel himself deems that with regard to his own though, Kierkegaard’s influence was “practically inexistent.”²⁰ Though Kierkegaard’s name would resonate throughout the existentialist movement in France in the 1940s, it is clear that in many ways existentialism transformed Kierkegaard and the existential questions his works bring up into mere catch-phrases or popular slogans. For Wahl, Bespaloff, Fondane, and Shestov, Kierkegaard’s existential questions were, to the contrary, extremely personal and inescapable.

B Defining Existential Philosophy What then is existential philosophy for Wahl, Bespaloff, Shestov, and Fondane? For all of these thinkers, existential philosophy was both a new mode of inquiry —perhaps the only method capable of getting a grasp on the meaning of existence—and, fundamentally, a problematic notion. The problem with existential philosophy, according to Wahl, is perhaps one to which existential philosophy, or at least existentialism, cannot offer a response: “we are dealing here with questions that cannot, properly speaking, be subjects of discourse, but which must be left to solitary meditation.”²¹ And he further argues that: “Acquaintance with existentialism and even its existence, don’t these risk destroying the very existence that it wants first and foremost to preserve? Such is the dilemma of existentialism. We perhaps have to choose between existentialism (or at least some  Jean-Paul Sartre and Benny Lévy, L’espoir maintenant: Les entretiens de 1980, Lagrasse: Éditions Verdier 1991, p. 19 (our emphasis).  Gabriel Marcel, “Kierkegaard et ma pensée,” in Kierkegaard vivant, Paris: Gallimard 1966, p. 64.  Wahl, Esquisse pour une histoire de “l’existentialisme,” p. 11.

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of its forms) and existence.”²² Though Wahl’s readings of Kierkegaard and existential philosophy in general have often been seen as influenced by Heidegger and the German tradition, it is important to note that Wahl’s writings on existential philosophy, as well as his poetic works, seek to demarcate themselves from this tradition. Indeed, his examinations of contemporary interpretations of existential philosophy (from Heidegger and Jaspers to Sartre and Marcel), testify to the “impasses”²³ to which these interpretations lead in their search to describe existence, and argue in favor of a return to Kierkegaard, to the question of the individual (l’individu, l’unique) as a response to “the dangers of history” brought about in twentieth century Europe.²⁴ In Existence humaine et transcendance, Wahl offers up his own reflections, in dialogue with both poets and philosophers. Despite many references to Heidegger and Jaspers, it is evident here that Wahl critiques their philosophies (along at times with Kierkegaard’s), and sees them as incapable of attaining the real mystery of existence. As Wahl writes: I am always forced to remain at a certain distance from my existence. This is the human condition. It is said that human existence is essentially questioning of existence. In reality, the person questioned remains silent or disguises himself when he questions himself. I therefore do not believe that human existence can consist in questioning itself; to the contrary, rather, questioning would likely make [existence] fall away.²⁵

If existence cannot really be thought or systematized, if all questioning bears the risk of making existence fall away, rather than bringing it forward, Wahl suggests further that philosophical questioning of existence fails insofar as it fails to seize upon the “acts…through which the existing being destroys and constructs himself.”²⁶ The mystery of these acts is perceived, Wahl argues “through feeling [sentiment] more than through reason.”²⁷ Philosophy of existence is thus, for Wahl, a philosophy based upon the dialectical movement between “the reality of perception [and] the moment of ecstasy and of mystery, of transcendence.”²⁸ And this notion of transcendence, Wahl claims, is precisely what “existentialist” philoso-

 Wahl, “La vogue de l’existentialisme,” p. 178  Wahl, Esquisse pour une histoire de “l’existentialisme,” p. 58.  Jean Wahl, “Discours de cloture,” in La conscience juive. Données et débats: Textes des trois premiers Colloques d’intellectuels juifs de langue française organisés par la section française du Congrès juif mondial, ed. by Eliane Amado-Valensi and Jean Halperin, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1963, p. 225.  Jean Wahl, Existence humaine et transcendance, Paris: Editions de la Baconnière 1944, p. 32.  Ibid.  Ibid., p. 23.  Ibid., p. 17.

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phers have overlooked in giving too much weight to the examination of the “contents of existence” or to the subjective “I.”²⁹ As Wahl remarks: “Concrete existence is always existence before a work, through an action or in front of another being. An existence is a relation with something other than oneself.”³⁰ Though openly critical of Wahl’s scholarly approach to Kierkegaard and existential philosophy,³¹ which he sees as a refusal to take a stand, Benjamin Fondane’s analysis of the philosophy of existence offers many points of convergence with that presented by Wahl. Fondane’s approach is certainly much more polemical that Wahl’s. For Fondane, philosophy begins with resistance³²; as he writes: “true philosophy (contrary to the perennis philosophia) is not the domain of the ‘I know’; true philosophy begins where the ‘I know’ has come to a stop; where one must fight against the ‘I know’ and that, be the price what it may, and even if the price be the ‘martyrdom of reason.’”³³ Wahl certainly did not agree with Fondane’s and Shestov’s extreme irrationalism, yet we may note that Wahl, too, adhered to the idea that knowledge and reason cannot lead to an adequate perception of existence and existential situations. In addition, in his last philosophical text, Le Lundi existentiel et le dimanche de l’histoire, Fondane offers some critiques of contemporary existential philosophy, or existentialism, found in Jaspers, Heidegger, and Marcel, among others, which are quite close to Wahl’s. Whereas the wave of contemporary existential philosophy seeks to acquire knowledge about existence,³⁴ Fondane suggests that Kierkegaard’s (and by extension his own and Shestov’s) philosophical approach centers around questioning the existing being’s possibilities for and relations to knowledge, and the ability to reject the determinism to which knowledge’s pretention to universality and necessity subject us. And Fondane suggests that philosophy will in the future be forced to choose between these two radically different positions: “do we really want to know what knowledge thinks of the existing being (l’existant), or rather, for once, what the existing being thinks of knowledge? Is it existence, as has always been the case, or is it at last knowledge that is to be called into question?”³⁵  Ibid., p. 28.  Ibid., p. 29.  See: Benjamin Fondane, “Etudes kierkegaardiennes par Jean Wahl,” Cahiers du Sud, no. 18, 1939, pp. 169 – 171.  Note that Wahl also defines existence with regard to resistance. See Wahl, Existence humaine et transcendance, p. 26.  Fondane, Rencontres avec Léon Chestov, p. 249.  Benjamin Fondane, “Le Lundi existentiel ou le dimanche de l’histoire,” in Le lundi existentiel, Monaco: Editions du Rocher 1990, pp. 11– 68 (First published in 1945 in: Jean Grenier, L’existence, Paris: Gallimard 1945, pp. 25 – 53).  Ibid., p. 23.

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Fondane criticizes contemporary philosophy of existence for transforming man, in Sartre’s terms, into a “useless passion,”³⁶ and suggests that a return to Kierkegaard, to an existential philosophy of exception, rather than an existential philosophy for the masses, is necessary. Only such a philosophy, he claims, can take into account “the voice of the existing being that cries out that it is impossible for him to live if his questions are not taken seriously.”³⁷ For Fondane, this situation is perhaps not the common lot of man, but is rather an exceptional situation, that nonetheless each of us might come to encounter. And only such a philosophy can help us to arrive at a truth which is not “a truth which is, once and for all, but a truth open to change, to making, to unmaking, perhaps to boredom.”³⁸ Fondane’s understanding of existential philosophy is reminiscent of Shestov’s, for whom existential philosophy, and more particularly Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy, is an approach “that brings man not ‘understanding,’ but life.”³⁹ For Shestov, the need for a new source of philosophy stems from the separation which positive philosophy and sciences lead down to, separation from ourselves and from the world which we can no longer understand as a totality and to which we can no longer relate. And in Athens and Jerusalem, Shestov expresses this in language reminiscent of that used by Wahl in his reflexions on poetry and metaphysics: As our positive knowledge is extended, we stray farther and farther from the mysteries of life. As the mechanisms of our thought are perfected, it becomes more and more difficult to get back to the sources of being. Knowledge weighs heavily on us and paralyses us, and complete thought makes us into obsequious beings, deprived of will and who only search for, only see, only appreciate the “order” in life, the laws and norms established by this order.⁴⁰

Rachel Bespaloff poses the question much more radically, suggesting that existential philosophy is inseparable from specific lived experiences, and more generally from specific historic contexts. Existential philosophy seeks to respond to a particular question: “when we are confronted with the unbearable, pursued to

 Ibid., p. 31. Cf. Jean-Paul Sartre, L’être et le néant, Paris: Gallimard 1998 [1943], p. 662.  Ibid., p. 46.  Ibid., p. 55.  Léon Chestov, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle: Vox clamantis in deserto, trans. by Tatiana Rageot and Boris de Schlœzer, Paris, Vrin 2006 [1936], p. 25.  Léon Chestov, Athènes et Jérusalem: Un essai de philosophie religieuse, trans. by Boris de Schlœzer, ed. by Ramona Fotiade, Paris: Le Bruit du Temps 2011, p. 511. First published in French in 1938 by Vrin.

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the death beyond human forces, does the primitive cry of weakness and fear that escapes us inadvertently have any relation whatsoever to the true?”⁴¹ And as she wrote in the last text before her death, this question is not without relation to the historical, political and social contexts within which the individual finds himself; the need for a new mode of philosophizing can only be understood with regard to a world in which our traditional understanding of our place and telos is no longer valid: To bless life without ignoring the atrocity, that can be done, and Montaigne did it. To bless life in cattle wagons bound for murder factories is another matter. The wise man does not get into these wagons, or if he is thrown in, he does not take his wisdom with him. He has lost even the possibility to resort to suicide…In an era where, from one day to the next, millions of men have become or could become “superfluous,” where man himself appears to be a “useless passion,” this question is justified.⁴²

II Position(s) and Critique(s) A topic of vivid debate during the 1930s and 1940s, one of the central problems relating to the definition of philosophy of existence turned around the question as to whether the expression really referred to any philosophical trend at all. The difficulties inherent in the notion of existential philosophy were clear for Wahl, Shestov, Bespaloff, and Fondane, and yet all of these intellectuals nevertheless remained faithful to the idea of philosophy of existence and to the quest for a new philosophical method capable of responding to the situation of modern man. It is in this respect that, despite their various stances, Fondane, Wahl, Bespaloff, and Shestov all adopt a similar perspective on existential philosophy. As Fondane notes, the novelty of existential philosophy is not that it takes existence as its object—all philosophy is really about existence, or at least, no philosophy has ever ignored existence. Yet the difference between existential philosophy and traditional philosophy, Fondane remarks, is not that existential philosophy examines existence or existing beings, but that it brings to the fore the existing being’s “rights.”⁴³ This is what, in Fondane’s terms, the first generation of existential philosophers— Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche—all had in common; their philosophies, for Fondane, seek to “shed light on that which is unconditioned, historic, and

 Rachel Bespaloff, Cheminements et carrefours, Paris, Vrin 2004 [1938], p. 203.  Rachel Bespaloff, “L’instant et la liberté chez Montaigne,” in Deucalion, no. 3, 1950, pp. 93 – 94.  Fondane, Le lundi existentiel, p. 24.

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thereby not valid for all.”⁴⁴ Yet Fondane is highly critical of the “second existential generation,”⁴⁵ among whom he sites Gabriel Marcel, Martin Heidegger, and Karl Jaspers, who seem to have left behind everything their predecessors had brought out “except the term ‘existence,’”⁴⁶ and transformed existence into merely another object of objective study.⁴⁷ Bespaloff makes a similar remark: “How can one associate a coherent line of speech to that cry indefinitely reverberating in the night: ‘I exist’? To achieve that, existential phenomenology, under the responsibility of Gabriel Marcel, Heidegger, and Jaspers, made an insidious manoeuvre which put them back on firm grounding: the existing being fades away and gives way to Existence.”⁴⁸ In the effort to give an account of existence, the error of twentieth century existentialists is to have forgotten the existing individual, and along with it, perhaps Kierkegaard’s most important lesson: that “a system of existence [Tilværelsens System] cannot be given.”⁴⁹ Though apparently very divergent, the disagreements we find amongst Wahl, Bespaloff, Fondane, and Shestov may reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of one another’s projects rather than a real divide as to the role of existential philosophy. This is particularly apparent in the critiques that they give of the philosophy of existence or existentialism promoted by their contemporaries. Among these critiques, perhaps the most fundamental is that twentieth century existential philosophy gives too much credit to subjectivity, at the risk of falling into subjectivism, and neglects the other essential aspect of Kierkegaard’s writings: the notion of transcendence. This is particularly clear in Wahl’s analyses of Kierkegaard, which always insist on the double theme of subjectivity and transcendence in the Dane’s philosophy.⁵⁰ This affirmation might seem more surprising with regard to Shestov or Fondane, whom Wahl himself seems to have regarded as falling into the pitfalls of subjectivism in their demand to give ear to the vox clamantis in deserto. However, an attentive reading of Fondane’s and Shestov’s writings demonstrates that their invectives against the demands of reason are not so much a turn toward subjectivism as they are an appeal to another source of reason—that of the Scriptures—and thus an appeal to transcendence. If man must cry out his revolt against the evidence of reason, his cries are a search for a relation to an Other in whom his subjectivity is grounded. As Fondane wrote in

      

Ibid., p. 21. Ibid. Ibid. It goes beyond the scope of this essay to examine whether these critiques are valid. Bespaloff, Cheminements, p. 81. SKS 7, 105 / CUP1, 109. See for example Wahl, Kierkegaard. L’Un devant l’Autre, pp. 66 – 67.

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1939 in his reflexions on “man before history”: “what is not in the structures of man is true humility; not that which consists in educating one’s will and becoming in control of oneself, but that which consists in recognizing that one has no power, that one is very insignificant (bien peu de choses), so insignificant that one can be afraid, tremble, shout and cry for help without shame.”⁵¹ Embedded within the appeal to transcendence resides a critique of contemporary existential philosophy’s attempts to reconcile itself with moral and political philosophy, most popularly formulated by Sartre in the idea that “existentialism is a humanism.” What is wrong with a philosophy that gives too much credence to subjectivity, to the individual’s ability to choose and construct himself, is that it is really, in Bespaloff’s terms, a “hollow subjectivity” quite different from the “magical interiority (intimité)” that “invited transcendence,” which we find in Kierkegaard’s writings.⁵² A subjectivity alienated from transcendence, Bespaloff argues “is much less the foundation of a new humanism than the omen of a new conformism.”⁵³ And she further remarks that, incapable of establishing a “veritable communion between beings,” it can at best lead to “aggressive solidarity.”⁵⁴ As Bespaloff notes, the Kierkegaardian approach to subjectivity, despite the claim that truth is interiority, is in no way an appeal to self-legislation or to the isolated subject capable of creating his own values and determining himself on his own. The Sartrean or Heideggerian understanding of man as radically isolated in the world, separated from all others, is seen by Bespaloff as a dangerous perspective that is incapable of providing any solid grounding upon which intersubjectivity could be constructed. Fondane makes a similar claim, in an analysis not of Sartre’s existentialism, but rather of the horrors of history: he sees the failings of the modern world as a result of the credence awarded to the principle of moral autonomy, to the idea that man legislates both for himself and for others.⁵⁵ In light of the barbarities of the modern situation, Fondane argues, it makes no sense to turn to reason in order to repair the damage, for it is erroneous to view the situation itself as irrational. And it is not to reason that we can turn to re-establish our lost humanity, but only to the spiritual, Fondane maintains: “The atrocious clamor of the world and my own anxiety require not only a better future, but also that the

 Benjamin Fondane, “L’homme devant l’histoire ou le bruit et la fureur,” in Le Lundi existentiel et le dimanche de l’histoire suivi de La Philosophie vivante, Monaco, Éditions du Rocher 1990, pp. 144– 145. (Originally published in Cahiers du Sud, no. 18, 1939, pp. 441– 454.)  Bespaloff, “Lettres à Boris de Schlœzer (I),” p. 450.  Ibid.  Ibid.  Fondane, “L’homme devant l’histoire,” p. 138.

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past be put right, not only that suffering be justified, but also wiped away, erased —and not only healed, but as having never been. It is impossible for History, for Reason, to make it so that what was had not been.”⁵⁶ Faced with wrongs which it is not within the realm of human reason to forgive or forget, only a return to the spiritual can offer the grounding necessary to reconstruct a better world. Or as Shestov articulated the question, what Kierkegaard learned from Job was that: “man thinks poorly if he accepts that which he was given, as dreadful as it may be, as something definitive, irreparable, forever irrevocable.”⁵⁷ Though Shestov’s approach to existential philosophy seems to be highly centered upon the individual’s despair, he nevertheless suggests that philosophy is a way of re-establishing a form of communion between human beings. If philosophy is about asking questions (Shestov returns to Kant’s three fundamental questions: what can I know, what ought I do, what may I hope for?), we may find no answers through our philosophical quest, but “the very fact of asking questions initially and forever binds men together.”⁵⁸ The distinction between existential philosophy and speculative philosophy is one of orientation; speculative philosophy, Shestov claims, is the domain of obedience (parere), whereas existential philosophy puts to the fore man’s (and God’s) ability to create and organize his world (jubere).⁵⁹ “Even if we must obey, Shestov will also say, it is not indifferent whether we obey necessity ‘which cannot be persuaded,’ or God, who may be persuaded. Even if we must obey, if obedience is an eternal truth, it is not indifferent to be constrained thereto by necessity or to be brought thereto by a firsthand source, by God.”⁶⁰ The difference is fundamental, since the manner of obedience is also the acceptance of life itself: “It is not life that we sacrifice to the categories of thought, it is thought that, now, is restored to its rightful place, within the categories of life.”⁶¹ How can existential philosophy restore thought to its rightful place within the categories of life? Wahl, Bespaloff, Fondane, and Shestov all see existential philosophy as an appeal to something beyond reason, beyond the fragmented nature of our experience and our knowledge, beyond philosophical systems which no longer relate to our lives. This is not to say that reason has no role to play, but rather that reason should not be seen as the sole source of truth. No single perspective, be it scientific or philosophical, can in their view give us an understanding of what

     

Ibid., p. 147. Chestov, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, p. 111. Chestov, Athènes et Jérusalem, p. 166. Ibid., p. 86 ff. Benjamin Fondane, La conscience malheureuse (new edition), Paris: Verdier 2013, p. 261. Ibid.

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human existence is. Following Kierkegaard, all of these thinkers distinguish between subjective and objective truth, between the realm of logical necessity and that of ethical freedom, and posit that there is a necessary gap between these domains which can never be completely eradicated. It is this gap between the objective and subjective, between the logical and the ethical, between freedom and necessity, which it is the role of existential philosophy, in their view, to bring forward. Neither an ontological examination nor a phenomenological method, neither an appeal to authentic individual self-legislation nor merely a rebellion against the absurd determinism of the human condition, their understanding of philosophy of existence is first and foremost an appeal to lived experience. For Wahl, Bespaloff, Fondane, and Shestov, existential philosophy is an attempt to return to experience, in Wahl’s words: “not that [experience] which made Sartre nauseous…but the same perhaps that, otherwise interpreted, can open up the path toward the object, toward other subjects and toward…ourselves.”⁶² It is here that Kierkegaard, as a “poet-thinker”⁶³ who refuses any systematic approach to existence, offers a new mode of philosophizing. And poetry may well be the manner through which existential philosophy can find its most convincing expression; as Wahl writes: “Poetry makes us seize upon the most subjective according to its most universal aspect.”⁶⁴ Rachel Bespaloff also views poetry as the universalization of the subjective, evoking the poetry of the Bible and the Iliad, which “is anterior to the divorce between nature and existence. Here, the Whole is not a collection of broken pieces more or less well patched together by reason, but the active principle of reciprocal penetration of all the elements it is comprised of…The eternal cecity of history is opposed to the creative lucidity of the poet.”⁶⁵ Poetry is necessary, according to Bespaloff, as a response to the isolation and suffering of the human condition. Existential philosophy’s role is thus to open up the dimensions of experience by offering a means of re-establishing transcendence: “There is no solution to the problem of transcendence outside of the living work (l’œuvre vivante),” writes Bespaloff.⁶⁶

 Wahl, Poésie, pensée, perception, p. 9.  Ibid., p. 8.  Ibid., p. 89.  Rachel Bespaloff, De l’Iliade, ed. by Monique Jutrin (new edition), Paris: Éditions Allia 2004, pp. 17– 18.  Ibid., p. 17.

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III Requirements Although Wahl, Bespaloff, Fondane, and Shestov refuse any systematic approach to existence, there are nevertheless some common aspects with regard to the methods of existential philosophy that these four thinkers share. First, they understand existential philosophy as situational, and posit that it cannot be dissociated from the specific contexts in which it is articulated. This is not to say that it is devoid of content, but rather that the who, why, and how of philosophizing are the beginning and end points of the philosophical undertaking. In this they clearly follow Kierkegaard’s lead, and though they do not, like Kierkegaard, use their own life experiences as material for their philosophical writings, they do recognize that the situational nature of existential philosophy calls for a new mode of philosophical writing in which the speech act itself plays a central role. Though not devoid of method, philosophical writing cannot be systematic or purely scholarly; it requires a new approach to dialectics, one that is pluralistic and dialogical. Philosophical writing becomes a dialogical/dialectical act, as the particular styles of Wahl, Bespaloff, Fondane, and Shestov all demonstrate—an act in which the writer positions himself within and against a number of other voices. Second, they agree on the fact that the mode of philosophical writing has as its aim to bring to light the nature of experience, rather than to offer theories or intellectual constructs. The concrete particular aspects of existence must however also appeal something universal (but not unified or unique) in the human condition. Thus, if the appeal to a situated philosophical discourse is obviously an appeal to subjectivity or subjective truth, and to the voice of the existing individual, these thinkers all maintain that the role of existential philosophy is not to examine pure subjectivity. Subjectivity can only be understood with regard to the notion of transcendence; in their appeals to Kierkegaard, they insist upon this double theme, and note that the subject only exists as subject with regard to an Other beyond himself. Their critiques of contemporary philosophy, as Wahl formulates it, are that contemporary philosophy has “brought to light the subjective in its most subjective form, and the objective in its most objective,” but has generally failed to establish a link between the two.⁶⁷ The role of existential philosophy, for Bespaloff, Wahl, Shestov, and Fondane, is to show the relation, or the tension, between the subjective and the objective, the two omnipresent though not always reconcilable aspects of lived human existence.

 Wahl, Existence humaine et transcendance, p. 14.

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Third, though they all appeal to the double theme of subjectivity and transcendence in Kierkegaard’s writings, they are all also critical readers of Kierkegaard. Most notably, they are wary of the theological orientation of Kierkegaard’s understanding of God and man’s relation to God, which is one, in Wahl’s words, of “the soul alone before God alone.”⁶⁸ Despite their appeal to transcendence or to the spiritual, Bespaloff, Wahl, Fondane, and Shestov are unwilling to go along with Kierkegaard’s theological positions. Wahl, notably, seeks to secularize Kierkegaard’s thought, and asks whether we must share in Kierkegaard’s beliefs in order to experience the “feeling of paradox.”⁶⁹ He suggests that transcendence is not necessarily the transcendence of the isolated individual before an isolated God, but is rather an experience that can be linked to nature and reality. Bespaloff, Shestov, and Fondane, who all evoke the problem of God’s absence, articulate the notion of transcendence in relation to a community of human others. As Jewish readers of Kierkegaard, Shestov, Fondane, Bespaloff and Wahl cannot follow Kierkegaard all the way. Yet rather than see in their critiques misreadings or failed attempts to analyze Kierkegaard’s thought, it is important to note that their works offer a new understanding of the role of existential philosophy. As Fondane writes, what Kierkegaard’s works bring to the forefront is essentially “the absolute right of the individual to place ‘his drama’ at the center of the philosophical problem, even if this entails shattering it to pieces.”⁷⁰ For these Jewish intellectuals in the 1930s, their “drama” was not Kierkegaard’s own. While Kierkegaard took it to be his task to “clear up people’s concepts, to instruct them…to rouse them up with the gadfly sting”⁷¹ in a world in which being a Christian was a simple matter of course, the events of the twentieth century may have called for a different response. As Bespaloff wrote in 1934, the political situation in Europe required action: “We must act, and hence, contrary to appearances, we must give up choosing…And it is appalling. This is why I seek refuge in Kierkegaard, who never resigned himself to anything.”⁷² For Bespaloff, Fondane, Wahl, and Shestov, philosophy of existence is understood, then, as a particular response to a particular problem, which is not to say a singular problem. The need for existential philosophy arises out of the experience of despair, distress,⁷³ rupture, or fracture (fêlure)⁷⁴ with regard to self and world.

      

Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 45. Fondane, La conscience malheureuse, p. 248. SKS 13, 149 / M, 107. Bespaloff, “Lettres à Daniel Halévy (I),” p. 586. Ibid., p. 97. Ibid., p. 22.

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Shestov, Wahl, Fondane, and Bespaloff all believe that modern scientific reasoning and methods increase this fracture, rather than eliminate it. Thus, the philosophy of existence does not replace other modes of scientific or philosophical questioning with regard to knowledge. And it is not necessary for all individuals at all times. As Fondane suggests, existential philosophy makes no sense for men “immersed in the ordinary conditions of life where, for each question, there is a readymade response.”⁷⁵ And he suggests that the need for a philosophy of existence is a response to specific historical situations: “so long as we remain in the realm of measurable things, of illnesses to which we have a remedy, of wars we know we can win…so long as nothing essential has been irremediably lost—we are in the domain of the possible…of positive philosophy.”⁷⁶ Traditional philosophy can offer the answers to most of our questions, and as such existential philosophy is a philosophy of exception, not a general philosophy. Among the many critiques given of existential philosophy beginning in the 1940s, perhaps the most prevalent is the claim that existential philosophy presents itself as something novel, whereas in reality it brings around no new ideas or concepts. As Hannah Arendt wrote in 1946: “if the revolutionary élan of these writers is not broken by success…the time may come when it will be necessary to point out ‘seriously’ those aspect of their philosophy which indicate that they are still dangerously involved in old concepts.”⁷⁷ For Wahl, Bespaloff, Shestov, and Fondane, it was clear from the onset, however, that if the existential method was a new path for philosophy, it was not a path to new ideas or concepts, it brought about no new knowledge, and its themes and motifs were as old as the human condition itself. For Fondane, Bespaloff, Shestov, and Wahl, existential philosophy is not the quest for knowledge, even knowledge about existence, but rather a quest for being or becoming, an opening up of the paths through which the singular existing individual can express himself. Though they may stray far from Kierkegaard’s positions, they recognize in Kierkegaard’s writings the importance of the irreducibility of the singular individual to any generality or generalization. As such, they take from Kierkegaard the idea that existential philosophy is a philosophy of exception. However, contrary to Jaspers’ or Camus’ claim, they believe that existential philosophy does not leave us empty-handed—rather, it is the attempts to systemize existence that transform man into a useless passion or a disincarnate Dasein. Fondane, Bespaloff, Wahl, and Shestov all see existential philosophy as first and foremost a philosophy turned toward the attempt to bring together the

 Fondane, Le Lundi existentiel, p. 66.  Ibid., p. 63.  Hannah Arendt, “French Existentialism,” The Nation, 23 February 1946, p. 228.

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categories of life and thought, and only upon this condition can it open up to new sources of truth, the ethical or ethical-religious dimension, which is what they finally inherit from Kierkegaard. For these authors, existential philosophy is not a quest for knowledge about what we are as human beings, but rather a method through which we might remain attentive to the fundamental, though fleeting, sense of disquiet which gives us the force to resist all forms of resignation or despair. It is a philosophical quest that seeks to free itself from all the constraints which prevent us from earnestly examining ourselves, and more importantly, from examining our responsibility. Existential philosophy’s aim is thus to free us from all of the “pragmatic rules, a calculus of considerations”⁷⁸ which make it easy for us to turn away from our true moral requirements. In the concluding discourse of Either/Or, Kierkegaard (or rather, a pastor from Jutland), asks whether it can really be a comforting thought to say to oneself: “One does what one can.”⁷⁹ Is one never confronted with the disquieting question: “whether it was not possible that you could do more?”⁸⁰ If “it happened once that the human condition was essentially different from what it otherwise always is, what assurance is there that it cannot be repeated, what assurance that that was not the true and what ordinarily occurs is the untrue?”⁸¹ These questions, which open up the path to the ethico-religious, invite us to understand the highest requirements that we ought to place upon ourselves, a demand never to succumb to our own certitudes, however convincing these may be. Existential philosophy is thus not a questioning of what we know, but rather of what we owe (to ourselves, to others, to God). As Kierkegaard writes in the Christian Discourses, asking what is duty: “There ought not to be discussion about immortality, whether there is an immortality, but about what my immortality requires of me, about my enormous responsibility in my being immortal.”⁸² While Bespaloff, Wahl, Shestov, and Fondane may not all have shared Kierkegaard’s belief in immortality, they do agree with the idea that the existential question is not one of what existence is, whether existence is something definable, but is rather the question: what does the fact that I am an existing, thinking being require of me? Only the courage to look life in the eyes in fear and trembling can, in their view, allow us to ask this question and to seek an answer. As a philosophy of exception, it is true that existential philosophy, in the view of Bespaloff, Fondane, Wahl, and Shestov, finds no single response from     

SKS SKS SKS SKS SKS

8, 67 / TA, 70. 3, 325 / EO2, 345. 3, 324 / EO2, 345. 3, 323 / EO2, 343. 10, 214 / CD, 205 (our emphasis).

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which we can take an example; yet while Heidegger, Sartre, Jaspers, and many others offer an existential philosophy incapable of fully attaining the ethical, their understanding of existential philosophy requires us to begin with the ethical, to begin with ourselves, in fine, to begin. Only by accepting such a beginning can we hope to find our own answers. And Kierkegaard, near the end of his life, does find an answer. To the question asked in The Moment, “what do I want,” he replies: nothing other than “human honesty” (Redelighed).⁸³ This response is echoed in Bespaloff’s own reply: “the most rare and most authentic courage: equity, a difficult correctness of the heart and mind (une difficile justesse du cœur et de l’esprit).”⁸⁴ This quest for earnestness, honesty, or correctness contains nothing inherently new. Yet, as Kierkegaard taught us, the essentially human is something that each of us has to learn for himself, the point at which each of us must begin: Whatever one generation learns from another, no generation learns the essentially human from a previous one. In this respect, each generation begins primitively, has no task other than what each previous generation had, nor does it advance further. The essentially human is passion, in which one generation perfectly understands another and understands itself. For example, no generation has learned to love from another, no generation is able to begin at any other point than at the beginning.⁸⁵

 SKS 14, 179 / M, 46.  Bespaloff, “Lettres à Daniel Halévy (I),” p. 576.  SKS 4, 208 / FT, 121.

Gerhard Thonhauser

“Thinker without Category” Kierkegaard in Heidegger’s Thinking of the 1930s Abstract: In contrast to the focus on Being and Time in traditional accounts of the Kierkegaard-Heidegger relationship, new sources reveal that Heidegger referred to Kierkegaard much more frequently during the 1930s. In the note “My Relation to Kierkegaard” Heidegger’s presents his own account of this relationship. Discussing Heidegger’s account, my essay focuses on Kierkegaard’s role in Heidegger’s history of being: First, I highlight two reasons why Heidegger considers Kierkegaard a Hegelian. Second, I show that it was not the turn to Nietzsche that caused Heidegger to move away from Kierkegaard but a later transformation of his view that excluded Kierkegaard from that history. Finally, I provide an account of Heidegger’s understanding of Kierkegaard and especially his take on Kierkegaard’s Christianity.

I Introduction Heidegger’s adoption of Kierkegaard’s ideas constitutes a major basis for his reception within existential thinking. Thus, an appropriate account of Heidegger’s reading of Kierkegaard is crucial for our understanding of Kierkegaard’s relation to existentialism. In this essay, I will offer an interpretation of Heidegger’s understanding of Kierkegaard after the so-called “turn,” focusing especially on the 1930s and early 1940s. I want to start by discussing two assumptions about Heidegger’s relation to Kierkegaard, assumptions that have been taken for granted, but which turn out to be misleading. I consider them particularly hindering for an adequate understanding of Heidegger’s reception of Kierkegaard. According to the first, Heidegger failed to sufficiently address Kierkegaard’s influence on his thought: “More than a half century after the publication of Being and Time, the extent of Heidegger’s debt to the writings of Kierkegaard still remains obscure. Heidegger says little in his published work regarding the matter, and preliminary indications are that the unpublished material in Marbach will shed no light on the subject.”¹ Magurshak’s assessment has been proven

 Dan Magurshak, “Despair and Everydayness: Kierkegaard’s Corrective Contribution to HeidegDOI 10.1515/9783110493016-002

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wrong. The ongoing publication of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe has revealed much more material than this tenacious narrative wants us to believe. Against the common perception, it must be emphasized that there are numerous passages in which Heidegger talks about Kierkegaard. This allows us to reconstruct their relationship in detail. The second more implicit assumption is the focus on the early Heidegger with Being and Time at the center. As it turns out, Heidegger’s time in Marburg (1923 – 1928), where he composed Being and Time, is the period in which he refers to Kierkegaard least frequently. As a consequence, the role of Heidegger’s major work for understanding his reading of Kierkegaard needs to be put into perspective. In this essay, I will focus on showing the relevance of the 1930s for understanding Heidegger’s reading of Kierkegaard.² New sources from the 1930s and early 1940s reveal that this is the period in which Heidegger mentioned Kierkegaard most frequently. Moreover, a number of texts from this period provide us with keys for a unified account of Heidegger’s understanding of Kierkegaard. The two most important texts are the lectures from summer term 1941 on Schelling’s “Freedom Essay” (Freiheitsschrift), and the note “My Relation to Kierkegaard” in the infamous Black Notebooks. The lectures open with a sixty-page discussion of the terms “ground” and “existence,” in which Kierkegaard is the main point of reference.³ In the note “My Relation to Kierkegaard,” likely also from the first half of 1941, Heidegger presents his own account of his relationship to Kierkegaard.⁴ These extended discussions provide the context that enables us to interpret other, more enigmatic statements about Kierkegaard. ger’s Notion of Fallen Everydayness,” in The Sickness Unto Death, ed. by Robert L Perkins, Macon: Mercer UP 1987 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 19), p. 209.  Another important period are the early Freiburg lectures (1919 – 1923). In this essay, I restrict myself to the later Heidegger. For an overview of all periods of Heidegger’s reception of Kierkegaard see Gerhard Thonhauser, “Martin Heidegger Reads Søren Kierkegaard—or What Did He Actually Read?” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2016, pp. 281– 304. This overview as well as the present essay are based on source work which is fully documented in German in my book on the Heidegger-Kierkegaard relationship. Gerhard Thonhauser, Ein rätselhaftes Zeichen. Zum Verhältnis von Martin Heidegger und Søren Kierkegaard, Berlin, New York: Walter De Gruyter 2016 (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, vol. 33).  GA 49, 19 – 75. All references are to the Heidegger Gesamtausgabe. Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vols. 1– 102, Frankfurt: Klostermann 1975 ff. I will use the abbriviation GA followed by the volume. In cases where I quote from an English translation, I add a reference to the relevant edition. Not all volumes have been translated. For instance, the lecture course on Schelling’s “Freedom Essay” and the Black Notebooks are not yet available in English. I will explicitly state when relying on my own translation.  GA 96, 215 – 216.

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Many passages from the 1930s are about Heidegger’s own interpretation of Being and Time. In this context, the name “Kierkegaard” is often used as a label for a certain anthropological and/or existential reading of Being and Time. Opposition against such a reading of his earlier work is a major theme in Heidegger’s later work. In this essay, I will leave this topic aside, since it is easy to see that Heidegger’s references to Kierkegaard in this context are less about the Dane and more about his own path of thought.⁵ Instead, I focus on Kierkegaard’s role in Heidegger’s so-called history of being, and examine what Heidegger considers Kierkegaard’s genuine contribution to Western thought. In the next section, I begin with a reconstruction of Heidegger’s perspective on Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. It is a common theme throughout Heidegger’s work to claim that Kierkegaard remained a Hegelian, even though he substantially misunderstood Hegel. The third section offers an interpretation of Heidegger’s view on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. In contrast to his assessment of the Kierkegaard-Hegel relationship, which reveals continuities in Heidegger’s interpretation of Kierkegaard, his perspective on Nietzsche allows us to point out transformations in his reading of the Danish thinker. Against the background of these two sections, section four will directly address Heidegger’s interpretation of Kierkegaard. I will shed new light on several passages, like the statement in “Nietzsche’s Word ‘God is Dead’” about Kierkegaard being a “religious writer,”⁶ and group them into a coherent account of Heidegger’s understanding of Kierkegaard. To fully develop this account, the fifth section offers an interpretation of Heidegger’s note “My relation to Kierkegaard.” This will be the basis for the discussion of Heidegger’s view on Kierkegaard’s Christianity in the final section.

II Kierkegaard and Hegel Heidegger’s view of Kierkegaard’s relationship to Hegel is a major aspect of his understanding of Kierkegaard. Heidegger’s perspective remained the same throughout his intellectual development: From a philosophical point of view, Kierkegaard is a Hegelian. Kierkegaard himself, however, did not notice this dependency. For that reason, his criticism of Hegel is mistaken, as he failed to see  The first volume of the Black Notebooks is exemplary for Heidegger’s hostility against an anthropological and/or existential reading of Being and Time, which Heidegger associates with the name “Kierkegaard” (GA 94, 32– 33 and 74– 76).  GA 5, 249 / Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track, trans. by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes, Cambridge UP 2002, p. 186.

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or misunderstood the crucial metaphysical issue that manifests itself in Hegel’s philosophy. In short, Heidegger considered Kierkegaard a Hegelian that deeply misunderstood Hegel, which is why his criticism of Hegel, from a philosophical perspective, is hollow and pointless. Heidegger mentions two reasons for considering Kierkegaard a Hegelian: His engagement with the history of philosophy through a Hegelian lens; and his reliance on an understanding of subjectivity developed by German Idealism. In what follows, I will discuss both arguments in more detail. We find the first argument as early as in Heidegger’s lecture course from summer term 1923: The pertinacity of dialectic, which draws its motivation from a very definite source, is documented most clearly in Kierkegaard. In the properly philosophical aspect of his thought, he did not break free from Hegel. His later turn to Trendelenburg is only added documentation for how little radical he was in philosophy. He did not realize that Trendelenburg saw Aristotle through the lens of Hegel. His reading the Paradox into the New Testament and things Christian was simply negative Hegelianism.⁷

Heidegger points to the fact that Kierkegaard’s criticism of Hegel follows Trendelenburg’s critique of Hegelian logic. In the Postscript we can see that this is indeed the case. On the first page of chapter III of section II of Part Two, “Actual Subjectivity, Ethical Subjectivits; the Subjective Thinker,” for instance,⁸ there is a footnote referring to Trendelenburg: “That Hegel in his Logic nevertheless continually allows an idea to come into play that is only all too informed about concretion and about the next thing that the professor, despite the necessary transition, needs every time in order to go further, is of course a mistake, which Trendelenburg has superbly pointed out.”⁹ Trendelenburg resorts to Aristotle as the main resource for his critique of Hegel. This is taken up in the Postscript. The aim of the aforementioned chapter is to show, with the help of the category of movement, why Hegel’s abstract thinking is incapable of grasping existence. “Existence without motion is unthinkable, and motion is unthinkable sub specie aeterni…Existence, like motion, is a very difficult matter to handle. If I think it, I

 GA 63, 41– 42 / Martin Heidegger, Ontology – The Hermeneutics of Facticity, trans. by John van Buren, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana UP 1999, p. 33.  In the first German Collected Works of Kierkegaard (SGW1), this chapter has a special position. The Postscript gets divided in two volumes. The first segment appears in volume 6 together with Philosophical Fragments, the remaining parts in volume 7. This chapter is the beginning of the segment published in volume 7. Two decades later, in his lecture course on Schelling’s “Freedom Essay” (Freiheitsschrift), Heidegger calls the Postscript Kierkegaard’s “main work” and cites a passage from that chapter to explain Kierkegaard’s notion of existence (GA 49, 19).  SKS 7, 274 / CUP1, 301.

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cancel it, and then I do not think it.”¹⁰ While Hegel tries to cancel this difficulty, Greek philosophy takes it up in its thought: Because Greek philosophy was not absentminded, motion was a perpetual topic for its dialectical efforts. The Greek philosopher was an existing person, and he did not forget this… He was aware that he was a thinking being, but he was also aware that it was existence as medium that perpetually prevented him from thinking in continuity because it continually placed him in a process of becoming. Consequently, in order to be able truly to think, he did away with himself. Modern philosophy smiles superiorly at such childishness, just as if every modern thinker, as surely as he knows that thinking and being are one, did not also know that it is not worth the trouble to be what he thinks.¹¹

To sum up, Kierkegaard looks back to Aristotle through the mediation of Trendelenburg in order to develop his criticism of Hegelian philosophy. From Heidegger’s point of view, this is based on a misunderstanding. Kierkegaard does not notice that Trendelenburg’s recourse to Aristotle is already based on Hegelian premises. For that reason, Kierkegaard does not get a real understanding of Greek philosophy. Instead, he remains on Hegelian grounds. Therefore, his criticism does not get him away from Hegel, but rather remains “negative Hegelianism.” The second reason Heidegger thinks that Kierkegaard remains a Hegelian is because he considers his notion of existence to be based on an understanding of subjectivity developed by German Idealism. He expresses this clearly in the lecture course on Schelling: “Kierkegaard thinks about the human being as ‘subjectivity,’ which German Idealism developed conceptually.”¹² An extended treatment can be found in the lecture course on German Idealism from summer term 1929. Heidegger explains that Kierkegaard’s striving for a Christian anthropology does not change the fact that the premises of his thought are based on German Idealism. Kierkegaard simply replaced the idealistic subject with the Christian notion of the human being. In doing so, he never got beyond the antitheses of reality and ideality, substantiality and subjectivity. He did not even take the problem to the same height as in German Idealism.¹³ In the lecture course What is Called Thinking? from 1952, Heidegger summarizes both aspects: “By way of Hegelian metaphysics, Kierkegaard remains everywhere philosophically entangled, on the one hand in a dogmatic Aristotelianism that is completely on a par with medieval scholasticism, and on the other in the

   

SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 308 – 309. SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 309. GA 49, 75 (my translation). GA 28, 205, 263, and 311.

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subjectivity of German Idealism.”¹⁴ It is telling that even Heidegger’s last statement on Kierkegaard is on this topic. In 1958 he writes: “Marx and Kierkegaard are the greatest of Hegelians.”¹⁵ This discussion of Heidegger’s view on Kierkegaard’s relationship to Hegel sheds light on the well-know passage from Being and Time: “In the nineteenth century S. Kierkegaard explicitly grasped and thought through the problem of existence as existentiell in a penetrating way. But the existential problematic is so foreign to him that in an ontological regard he is completely under the influence of Hegel and his view of ancient philosophy.”¹⁶ The passage restates Heidegger’s point of view that Kierkegaard did not break through to the decisive philosophical problems because he remained too entangled with Hegelianism. However, Heidegger not only claims that Kierkegaard remained dependent upon Hegel, he also thinks that his criticism of Hegel is, philosophically speaking, inadequate and unwarranted. This becomes particularly clear in his lecture course on Schelling: Heidegger questions why Kierkegaard attacks Hegel for thinking abstractly and failing to grasp existence. Heidegger claims that anyone with knowledge of Hegel’s philosophy will recognize that one of its main aims is to avoid thinking abstractly and to encourage thinking concretely. In which sense is it then that Kierkegaard can accuse Hegel of thinking abstractly. Heidegger explains it the following way: While Hegel and Kierkegaard both dismiss abstract thinking, they do so on the basis of different understandings of abstract. For Hegel, thinking abstractly means thinking one-sidedly, that is, thinking only in one direction of consciousness without considering the entire determination of a thing. For Kierkegaard, by contrast, abstract thinking is remote thinking, a thinking that is detached from existence which reigns in a metaphysical realm. It is thinking without taking the thinking being up into its thought.¹⁷ So, why does Kierkegaard accuse Hegel of thinking in abstractions? Heidegger summarizes two main reasons for Kierkegaard’s attack: First, Hegel disregards the thinking individual and wants the absolute to exist on its own. Second, he wants to mediate the contradictions, especially the contradiction that is decisive for Christians, the incarnation of Christ, which, from Kierkegaard’s point of view, needs to be acknowledged as the paradox. Heidegger sees things different-

 GA 8, 216 / Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, trans. by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray, New York: Harper & Row 1968, p. 213.  GA 9, 432– 433 / Martin Heidegger, “Hegel and the Greeks,” in: Pathmarks, trans. by William McNeill, Cambridge UP 1998, p. 327.  GA 2, 313 / Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by Joan Stambaugh, Albany: SUNY Press 1996, p. 217.  GA 49, 22– 23.

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ly from Kierkegaard: He considers these tendencies to be necessary features of metaphysical thinking that has reached its most complete form in Hegel.¹⁸ As a consequence, Heidegger summarizes the relationship of Kierkegaard and Hegel in the following way: “The opposition between Kierkegaard and Hegel is in fact the opposition between a faithful Christian in the Kierkegaardian sense and the absolute metaphysics of German Idealism, which, for its part, was convinced that it lifted up the truth of Christianity to the absolute truth of absolute knowledge.”¹⁹ In Heidegger’s interpretation, a mutual misunderstanding between Kierkegaard and German Idealism cannot be avoided because it is based on a mutual inability to grasp the internal reasoning of the opposite position. Kierkegaard’s Christian must necessarily oppose the metaphysics of German Idealism because he has no part in it; it is all abstract thinking from Kierkegaard’s perspective. On the other hand, German Idealism is committed to the self-image of guiding Christianity toward its absolute truth; therefore, it cannot grasp Kierkegaard’s objection from the perspective of the single individual; such an objection must appear to it to be an abstraction in the idealistic sense, a one-sidedness.

III Kierkegaard and Nietzsche Whereas Heidegger’s assessment of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel remained the same throughout his authorship, his view on the relation of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche saw several transformations. The topic first drew Heidegger’s attention in the beginning of the 1930s around the time Heidegger began to be interested in Nietzsche. The common point of view in the secondary literature is that around 1929 Nietzsche replaced Kierkegaard as Heidegger’s point of reference and that this substitution was at least partly responsible for a number of shifts in his thinking: a transformed understanding of historicality, which moved towards the history of being; a modified relation to Christianity, which no longer is viewed as a resource for Heidegger’s thought but rather as the target of sharp criticism; and finally, Heidegger’s orientation towards National Socialism.²⁰

 GA 49, 24– 25.  GA 49, 25 (my translation).  See Helmuth Vetter, “Heideggers Annäherung an Nietzsche bis 1930,” Synthesis philosophica, vol. 13, 1998, pp. 373 – 385. Marion Heinz, “Volk und Führer. Untersuchungen zu Heideggers Seminar Über Wesen und Begriff von Natur, Geschichte und Staat (1933/34),” in Heidegger und der Na-

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In this section, I want to show that matters are more complicated. It was not the turn to Nietzsche that caused Heidegger to move away from Kierkegaard. To the contrary, the beginning of the 1930s was a period in which Heidegger frequently mentions both thinkers together, emphasizing their similarities and highlighting both of them as important signposts for future philosophy. Instead, it was a later transformation of his view of the history of being that resulted in the elevation of Nietzsche as the completion (Vollendung) of metaphysics and the exclusion of Kierkegaard from its history. A passage from a seminar in winter term 1934– 35 contains one of the clearest statements of Heidegger’s view in the first half of the 1930s. At this time, Heidegger saw Hegel as the completion of occidental philosophy, synthesizing Greek and Christian thought into one system.²¹ That means that until Hegel, there is philosophy. “Everything that comes after Hegel is not philosophy anymore. Not even Kierkegaard or Nietzsche. Those two are no philosophers but rather human beings without category who only later times will grasp.”²² The previous year Heidegger explains in his lecture course: “Looking backward, Hegel means completion; looking forward, he means the starting point for Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.”²³ Heidegger locates Kierkegaard and Nietzsche outside philosophy. In them, a new way of thinking manifested itself, a way of thinking beyond existing categories like philosophy. This way cannot yet be grasped, and remains a sign for a future to come.²⁴ Note that these passages are from the period of Heidegger’s collaboration with National Socialism. In summer term 1933, Heidegger took over as Rector of the University of Freiburg. The lecture course that semester is among those in which Kierkegaard is referred to most frequently.²⁵ The lectures from winter term 1934– 35 on Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right has a peculiar status in Heidegger’s authorship, as these are the only texts in which Heidegger engages with a classical work from the domain of political philosophy.²⁶ Over the span

tionalsozialismus II. Interpretationen, ed. by Alfred Denker and Holger Zaborowski, Freiburg: Alber 2010 (Heidegger-Jahrbuch, Band 5), pp. 55 – 75.  GA 86, 549 – 550.  GA 86, 550 (my translation).  GA 36, 37, 15 / Martin Heidegger, Being and Truth, trans. by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2010, p. 10.  GA 32, 19.  There are the same number of references in summer term 1921 and 1923. These lecture courses are only behind the course on Schelling from summer term 1941. Thonhauser, Ein rätselhaftes Zeichen, pp. 147– 153.  Peter Trawny, “Heidegger und das Politische. Zum ‘Rechtsphilosophie’-Seminar,” Heidegger Studies, vol. 28, 2012, pp. 47– 66.

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of these four semesters, we can retrace Heidegger’s struggle to develop an understanding of politics in line with his thought and compatible with National Socialism’s accession to power. The correlation of Heidegger’s affirmative references to Kierkegaard and his enthusiasm for National Socialism in the first half of the 1930s raises questions: Was this a mere coincidence of two simultaneous but independent developments? Or is there an intrinsic relation between these two tendencies? I cannot follow up on this matter here as it would require not only a careful consideration of Heidegger’s entanglement with National Socialism,²⁷ but also an investigation of Kierkegaard’s role for National Socialist ideology.²⁸ Heidegger’s public entanglement with National Socialism was only a brief episode. He soon realized that his political project was doomed to failure and withdrew from the domain of political thought and action. We can already trace this shift in the fall of 1934, when Heidegger, parallel to the seminar on the Elements of the Philosophy of Right, gave his first lecture course on Hölderlin.²⁹ From this point on, Kierkegaard is mentioned less frequently, while Hölderlin’s importance for Heidegger grows. A modified reading of Nietzsche makes him the main subject of Heidegger’s lecture courses between 1936 and 1941. Thus, it appears more plausible that Heidegger’s turn to Hölderlin and the modification of his interpretation of Nietzsche in the middle of the 1930s provided the context for Heidegger’s decreasing interest in Kierkegaard. Regarding Heidegger’s relation to Kierkegaard, we can summarize with the observation that the first half of the 1930s is characterized by a tendency to embrace the Dane alongside Nietzsche. That changed around 1935 together with a transformation of Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche, whose “The Will to Power” is henceforth considered the completion of metaphysics. As a consequence, Heidegger includes Nietzsche in his history of being as the final step in the oblivion of being (Seinsvergessenheit), whereas Kierkegaard continues to be excluded from Heidegger’s idiosyncratic history of Western thought. In Contributions to Philosophy he states: “What lies between Hegel and Nietzsche has many shapes but is nowhere within the metaphysical in any originary sense—not even Kierke-

 Heidegger’s relation to National Socialism is a topic of constant debate and has been researched from numerous perspectives. As a brief overview, I recommend Dieter Thomä, “Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus. In der Dunkelkammer der Seinsgeschichte,” in HeideggerHandbuch: Leben Werk Wirkung, ed. by Dieter Thomä, 2nd ed., Stuttgart: Metzler 2013, pp. 108 – 134.  To my knowledge, there has not been much research on this matter. There is one old paper by Wilfried Greve, “Kierkegaard im Dritten Reich,” Skandinavistik, vol. 15, 1985, pp. 29 – 49.  The lecture course had the title Hölderlin’s Hymns “Germania” and “The Rhine” (GA 39).

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gaard.”³⁰ The first time Heidegger clearly explains his new point of view is in summer term 1936: Nietzsche’s attitude toward system is fundamentally different from that of Kierkegaard who is usually mentioned here together with Nietzsche…All of this is said, by the way, in order to show by implication that the combination of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, which has now become customary, is justified in many ways, but is fundamentally untrue philosophically and is misleading.³¹

Through this shift, Nietzsche gains an importance for Heidegger that Kierkegaard never had. Against this background, we can interpret several passages in which Heidegger talks about Kierkegaard’s relationship to philosophy. In later parts of the lecture course on Schelling, Heidegger explains, in the context of his elaboration on Nietzsche’s critique of systematic philosophy, that “Kierkegaard should not be mentioned here, because he does not belong to the history of philosophy and his fight against the system has a different meaning.”³² This is also the context of the first half of Heidegger’s statement in “Nietzsche’s Word ‘God is Dead’”: It has become the customary practice (though not less problematic for being customary) to juxtapose Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, but this juxtaposition fails to recognize the essence of Nietzsche’s thinking; it therefore fails to see that Nietzsche as a metaphysical thinker preserves a proximity to Aristotle. Although he cites Aristotle more often, Kierkegaard is essentially distant from him.³³

To sum up, Heidegger sees Kierkegaard as being outside the history of metaphysics insofar as he does not follow the metaphysical question. Therefore, his struggle against Hegel’s system does not have philosophical significance, but has another meaning. I will investigate in the following section what Heidegger means when writing about the “other meaning” of Kierkegaard’s criticism of Hegel’s system. Concluding this section, I will point out that there is also another tendency in Heidegger’s texts from this time that indicates that Kierkegaard nevertheless is part of the oblivion of being (Seinsvergessenheit). This is related to Kierkegaard’s dependence on the notion of subjectivity from German Idealism. Heidegger inter-

 GA 65, 233 / Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1999, p. 164.  GA 42, 42– 43 / Martin Heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. by Joan Stambaugh, Athens: Ohio University Press 1985, p. 24.  GA 49, 110 (my translation).  GA 5, 249 / Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track, p. 186.

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prets the focus on the single individual in its existence, as we can find it in Kierkegaard, as a manifestation of a misguided philosophy of the subject that has been established in modern philosophy: the understanding of the subject as creator and maker. Heidegger expresses this thought in the second volume on Nietzsche: Taken with an apparent historical indifference, the existentielle is not necessarily to be understood in a Christian way as with Kierkegaard, but with every respect to putting man to work as an effector of what is real. The echo which existential elements have found in the last decades is grounded in the essence of the reality which as will to power has made man into an instrument of making (production, effecting). This essence of Being can remain veiled in spite of Nietzsche, and even for Nietzsche himself. Hence the existentielle admits of manifold interpretations. Its echo and predominance and the historically impossible pairing of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are grounded in the fact that the existentielle is merely the intensification of the role of anthropology within metaphysics in its completion.³⁴

A passage from the Black Notebooks expresses the view that Kierkegaard’s notion of the self qua modern subject places him in the occidental history of the oblivion of being: “The ‘interest’ that Kierkegaard, e. g., shows for ‘existence,’ which is the subjectivity of the human being, is the highest oblivion of being.”³⁵ Though these passages state Kierkegaard’s involvement in the oblivion of being through his dependence on the modern notion of subjectivity in its highest form found in German Idealism, matters become more complicated when we consider other passages. There Heidegger explains that the aim of Kierkegaard’s focus on the single individual has a different meaning; it does not aim at the self-empowerment of the subject, but at becoming a Christian. We can trace this ambiguity throughout the later Heidegger’s interpretation of Kierkegaard. On the one hand, he emphasizes Kierkegaard’s twofold dependence on Hegel and German Idealism; this corresponds with his assessment of Kierkegaard’s thought as based on the modern notion of the subject and thereby involved in the oblivion of being. On the other hand, Heidegger claims that Kierkegaard does neither belong to philosophy nor theology, but needs to be considered outside these traditions, in a category not yet found, because his project has a meaning distinct from what is known in these disciplines. If Kierkegaard’s “fight against the system has a different meaning,”³⁶ which can only be under-

 GA 6.2, 437 / Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, trans. by Joan Stambaugh, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1973, p. 73.  GA 97, 268 (my translation).  GA 49, 110.

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stood based on his genuine project, then we are confronted with the question: What is Kierkegaard’s genuine project? What is the aim of his authorship?

IV Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kierkegaard Even though the majority of Heidegger’s statements about Kierkegaard are of a disparaging, dismissive, or repudiative nature, we should not overlook the fact that there are also several passages that point in another direction. In some of these, he grants Kierkegaard a special status; in others he cautions against misinterpretations of Kierkegaard’s work and the threat of misconceiving the aspects of his thought worthy of closer examination. Admittedly, many of these other passages are of an ambiguous nature as well. Often they are supplements to longer statements, which focus primarily on excluding Kierkegaard from the history of philosophy or establishing a border between Kierkegaard and Heidegger’s own project. However, it would be a misconception of Heidegger’s interpretation of Kierkegaard if one were to ignore Heidegger’s appraisal. In the lecture course from summer term 1929, we find the following statement. “We cannot speak about the deeper significance of Kierkegaard here. His true significance is something that one cannot talk about or write books about and that is concealed most of all from the littérateur.”³⁷ The ambiguity in this passage is due to its historical context. It is first of all a rejection of the so-called “Kierkegaard-renaissance,”³⁸ which culminated around that time. Heidegger was critical of what he derogatorily called “Kierkegaard-literature.”³⁹ Nevertheless, it should not go unnoticed that Heidegger speaks of Kierkegaard’s “true significance.” In another lecture, Heidegger explains: His purpose is not ours, but differs in principle, something which does not prevent us from learning from him, but obliges us to learn what he has to offer. But Kierkegaard never pushed onward into the dimension of this problematic, because it was not at all important for him, and his work as an author had a completely different basic purpose, that also required different ways and means.⁴⁰

 GA 28, 311 (my translation).  Walter Ruttenbeck, Sören Kierkegaard. Der christliche Denker und sein Werk, Berlin and Frankfurt/Oder: Trowitzsch & Sohn 1929, p. 290.  Heidegger regularly uses the term “littérateur” (Literat) to express his disapproval.  GA 26, 246 / Martin Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, trans. by Michael Heim, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1984, pp. 190 – 191.

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This is a paradigmatic example of the conjunction of pejorative and affirmative elements. It contains three tendencies in condensed form. First, Heidegger stresses the essentially different aims of his and Kierkegaard’s projects. Second, these different aims do not only imply the independence of Heidegger’s work, but also the relevance of adequately understanding Kierkegaard’s project. Finally, understanding his project obliges one to learn from him what he is able to give. Heidegger’s perhaps most surprising statement about Kierkegaard is the following: What we here designate as “moment of vision” is what was really comprehended for the first time in philosophy by Kierkegaard—a comprehending with which the possibility of a completely new epoch of philosophy has begun for the first time since antiquity. I say this is a possibility; for today when Kierkegaard has besome fashionable, for whatever reasons, we have reached the stage where the literature about Kierkegaard, and everything connected with it, has ensured in all kinds of ways that this decisive point of Kierkegaard’s philosophy has not been comprehended.⁴¹

While he usually aims at demarcating his thought in relation to Kierkegaard’s, here he indicates that Kierkegaard has not only prefigured an important concept, but also that he was the first to grasp it, thereby opening the possibility of a new epoch in philosophy. Heidegger, however, appears to stress “possibility,” suggesting that Kierkegaard did not embrace the possibility himself, but that it remains a task to be taken up, or rather a task that has been taken up in Being and Time. A similar ambiguity can be found in later writings as well. In the manuscript to Über den Anfang from 1941, Heidegger laments, as he often does, the misinterpretation of Being and Time as an existential anthropology closely connected with Kierkegaard. The surprising message comes at the end: “Above all, this confusion has now also caused the historical essence of Kierkegaard to remain concealed. This essence only becomes knowable if the apprehension avoids applying schemes and paragons from theology or from philosophers. In comparison, the ‘harm’ of the misinterpretation of ‘Being and Time’ is minor.”⁴² In this passage we see that Heidegger thinks that a sharp demarcation between him and Kierkegaard not only serves the uniqueness of his thought, but also contributes to an adequate understanding of Kierkegaard’s project.

 GA 29/30, 225 / Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1995, p. 150.  GA 70, 194 (my translation).

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This is the context for the second half of the passage from “Nietzsche’s Word ‘God is Dead,’” where Heidegger states that: “Kierkegaard is not a thinker but a religious writer, and not just one religious writer among others but the only one who accords with the destiny of his age. His greatness lies in this fact—unless talking in this way is already a misunderstanding.”⁴³ In the secondary literature, the focus has been on the term “religious writer.” Some were even upset that Heidegger could deprecate Kierkegaard in such a way.⁴⁴ First of all, it can be pointed out that “religious writer” is basically just a rendering of Kierkegaard’s self-description in The Point of View of My Work as an Author. ⁴⁵ But even if this were not the case, it is not clear why Heidegger’s statement should be read as a devaluation of Kierkegaard. In the lecture course on Schelling from around the same time, Heidegger explains: “Kierkegaard is a ‘religious thinker,’ which is not a theologian and not a ‘Christian philosopher’ (Unbegriff); Kierkegaard is more theological than a Christian theologian and more unphilosophical than a metaphysical thinker could ever be…he must remain standing on his own; neither theology nor philosophy can rank him in their history.”⁴⁶ Read in context, it is clear that “religious thinker” is surely not a pejorative statement, and there is no indication that “religious writer” should be either. It appears to me that Heidegger uses “religious thinker” and “religious writer” more or less interchangeably as a category for labeling Kierkegaard’s thinking. During this period philosophy (as well as theology) had negative connotations for Heidegger. They were expressions of the metaphysical tradition that needed to be overcome. Heidegger did not consider his own endeavor to be philosophy any longer, instead calling it thinking, sometimes with the attributions “mindful” or “preparatory.” Thus, if Heidegger calls Kierkegaard a “thinker” or “writer” (he does not use littérateur (Literat), which would be a pejorative label), he is in fact singling him out from the history of metaphysics. Heidegger, however, does not simply say “thinker,” but “religious thinker.” This points to the fact that he does not consider Kierkegaard to be a thinker

 GA 5, 249 / Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track, p. 186.  See for example Caputo: “One wonders how Heidegger can possibly have taken Kierkegaard to be only a ‘religious writer’ with no ontological concern,” John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics. Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project, Bloomington: Indiana UP 1987, p. 16.  “The content, then, of this little book is: what I in truth am as an author, that I am and was a religious author, that my whole authorship pertains to Christianity, to the issue: becoming a Christian, with direct and indirect polemical aim at that enormous illusion, Christendom, or the illusion that in such a country all are Christians of sorts” (SKS 16, 11 / PV, 23).  GA 49, 19 (my translation).

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in the domain of thought, who, according to Heidegger, is bound up with the essential course of history alongside the poet. Instead Kierkegaard is a religious thinker or writer, placing him in his own sphere. A passage from the latest volume of the Black Notebooks explicitly contains this specification: “But Kierkegaard is a—probably unfaithful—Christian writer, who cannot be contained in any category, because he himself is the first to develop the category suitable for him.”⁴⁷ In general, I do not think that an argument about whether “religious writer” is an appropriate way of addressing Kierkegaard’s authorship is very fruitful. Instead, I consider it more interesting to follow Heidegger’s hint at Kierkegaard’s “greatness.” What did Heidegger have in mind when writing that Kierkegaard was “the only one who accords with the destiny of his age”? The answer to this question is decisive for an adequate understanding of Heidegger’s interpretation of Kierkegaard. What is Kierkegaard’s greatness? What makes him accord with the destiny of his age, and thereby stand out among his contemporaries?

V “My Relation to Kierkegaard” Until recently it was very difficult if not impossible to answer this question, because there were simply no passages available in which Heidegger expressed his take on this matter. The recently published Black Notebooks offer the resources for a breakthrough. In the note “My Relation to Kierkegaard,” Heidegger talks about Kierkegaard in a fashion that enables us to combine the various, often cryptic, hints, which are scattered throughout Heidegger’s massive oeuvre, into a fairly coherent account of his interpretation of Kierkegaard. The following summary aims at giving an account of Heidegger’s interpretation of Kierkegaard in its multifaceted unity. I will show that the note fits nicely with what Heidegger said on other occasions. It thus allows us to see his numerous remarks in their coherence. Heidegger begins with the question about why Kierkegaard is featured in Being and Time. As many have noticed, Heidegger appears to adopt several of Kierkegaard’s concepts and to talk about existence in a Kierkegaardian sense. Heidegger replies that this is the case because in Kierkegaard we find an attempt to understand selfhood in an essential way. This is what Heidegger identifies as the source of Kierkegaard’s “greatness”: He is the one who grasped the issue of

 GA 97, 133 (my translation).

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selfhood in a decisive fashion. For that reason, Heidegger was able to build on him in Being and Time. Kierkegaard did so, however, within the framework of occidental metaphysic, more specifically on the basis of the modern notion of subjectivity in its highest form, the form found in German Idealism. We have already seen that this is the main reason why Heidegger claims that Kierkegaard remained a Hegelian. However, if German Idealism in the form of the Hegelian system is the stage of philosophy in Kierkegaard’s time, we cannot simply regard his dependence as a devaluation of his thought. To the contrary, his dependence on German Idealism is what makes Kierkegaard accord with the destiny of his age. Kierkegaard’s dependence on Hegel implies that he embraces the essential framework of his time and takes it as the point of departure for pursuing his own project. If these are the main lines of Heidegger’s interpretation of Kierkegaard, it leads us again to the question: What is Kierkegaard’s project? What is the purpose of his authorship? Heidegger is clear about defining the project unifying his own oeuvre. According to him, thinking—his thinking—has one purpose and one purpose only: the question of being. Against this background, he repeatedly insists on the uniqueness of his project, setting it apart from all previous thinkers, including Kierkegaard. This explains why Heidegger claims that the existential problem is foreign to Kierkegaard. According to his self-interpretaton, the existential analysis of Dasein needs to be understood solely as a preparation for the investigation into the meaning of being, and Kierkegaard does not take part in this project. What separates my “My Relation to Kierkegaard” from all other statements about Kierkegaard is that it is the only instance in which Heidegger explicitly states what he considers the purpose of Kierkegaard’s authorship to be, rather than repeating some enigmatic formula. Heidegger’s answer is as brief as it can get: Kierkegaard aims at “Christian salvation.” In Heidegger’s view, this is the purpose, the one project, that unifies Kierkegaard’s authorship. “Christian salvation” in the Kierkegaardian sense cannot be subsumed within metaphysics, because it is directed at the single individual in his or her singularity. Heidegger does not explicitly say so, but it appears to me that this is the background for his statement. Kierkegaard drops out of the history of philosophy and theology because a metaphysical perspective dominates these disciplines, which aim at universality, not singularity. This is what sets Kierkegaard apart from German Idealism: German Idealism wanted to bring Christianity to its metaphysical completion, which is why the perspective of the single individual was considers a (one-sided) element in the system. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, broke with the metaphysical striving for universality, and was thus free to seek the single individual in his or her singularity.

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To sum up Heidegger’s point of view: It is Kierkegaard’s unique Christianity (the orientation towards the salvation of the single individual, which he sought on the basis of the modern notion of subjectivity while breaking with the main metaphysical premise), which distinguishes him not only from Heidegger’s project, but also from the metaphysical tradition of philosophy and theology.

VI Kierkegaard’s Christianity If we follow Heidegger’s interpretation of Kierkegaard, it leads us to the task of reexamining Kierkegaard’s Christianity. The reception of Heidegger’s work has often been the reason for doubting the genuine Christianity of Kierkegaard’s thought. This was already discussed shortly after the publication of Being and Time, namely in connection with the question of Heidegger’s relation to protestant theology. The main line of thought was roughly the following: If Being and Time is a secularization, ontologization, and probably also radicalization of Kierkegaard’s Christian philosophy of existence, this seems to proove either that Christianity can be reduced to universal ontology or that Kierkegaard was not a true Christian.⁴⁸ As we have already seen, Heidegger was a sharp critic of this line of thought. He considered it to be based on an unjustified comparison of his thought with Kierkegaard’s, which not only leads to a misinterpretation of his work, but also hindered an adequate understanding of Kierkegaard’s authorship. This is the deeper reason for Heidegger’s rejection of the “Kierkegaard literature.” If we avoid such a conflation of Kierkegaard and Heidegger, it leaves us searching for Kierkegaard’s genuine project, a search that ultimately leads us to address his Christianity. Clarifying Kierkegaard’s Christianity on the last few pages of this essay is an impossible task. Instead, I will do what I have been doing throughout this essay: I will attempt to present a comprehensible account of Heidegger’s take on the matter. Thus, this is the final question I will address in this essay: What is Heidegger’s relation to Kierkegaard’s Christianity? Heidegger hardly ever talked about Kierkegaard’s Christianity in his published writings. Instead, he mostly resorted to enigmatic hints. One possible explanation is that he followed his conviction that Kierkegaard’s “true significance is

 Franz Josef Brecht, “Die Kierkegaardforschung im letzten Jahrfünft,” Literarische Berichte aus dem Gebiete der Philosophie, vol. 25, 1931, p. 20.

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something that one cannot talk about or write books about,”⁴⁹ and thus remained silent concerning the matter. The one exception from Heidegger’s silence is his lecture on Schelling. In the context of an elaboration on Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, Heidegger claims that Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel works “only at the cost of renouncing philosophy altogether and existing solely as a believer.” Therefore, “the biggest misunderstanding regarding Kierkegaard…is utilizing him for a ‘Christian philosophy.’”⁵⁰ This statement corresponds with the image of Kierkegaard from “My Relation to Kierkegaard.” Heidegger emphasizes that Kierkegaard’s project aims at the single individual in his or her singularity. Here he draws our attention to the price that Kierkegaard had to pay in order to follow this project. But this is only half of the story. Heidegger continues: Kierkegaard, however, did not exist as an unknown faithful Christian, carrying out his daily work and pursuing his occupation—he does not even have an occupation and does not want one—he rather exists as a writer; he thinks and writes and communicates and intervenes in the disputes of the day; the thought of his age becomes powerful within him, and he thereby completes a unique journey of self-examination within the 19th century. He becomes someone who cannot be ignored, regardless of whether one is a follower, an enemy or indifferent toward him.⁵¹

Heidegger complicates this image of Kierkegaard by adding another dimension. He opens up a new perpective, showing us how one can talk about Kierkegaard as a Christian writer in a pronounced sense. Heidegger points out the following set of circumstances: Kierkegaard did not choose a life as an anonymous, faithful Christian; instead he decided to become a writer. He thus engaged with the thought of his time, Hegelianism. This explains why Hegel’s philosophy became powerful in him, clarifying in which sense Heidegger talks about Kierkegaard’s dependence on Hegel. On the other hand, Kierkegaard remained a faithful Christian. This explains why Heidegger grants him a unique position. Through his choice to become a writer while remaining a faithful Christian, Kierkegaard became a religious thinker who accords with the destiny of his age. As such a unique figure, Kierkegaard cannot be ignored. If we look at letters and other sources, Heidegger’s interest in Kierkegaard’s Christianity can be traced throughout his authorship. In 1970, Heidegger explains on the occasion of the republication of his 1927 lecture “Phenomenology and

 GA 28, 311 (my translation).  GA 49, 25 (my translation).  GA 49, 26 (my translation).

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Theology”: “This little book might perhaps be able to occasion repeated reflection on the extent to which the Christianness of Christianity [Christlichkeit des Christentums] and its theology merit questioning; but also on the extent to which philosophy, in particular that presented here, merits questioning.”⁵² Even though Kierkegaard is not explicitly mentioned here, his distinction between Christendom and Christianity appears to be in the background.⁵³ A letter to Löwith from autumn 1920 shows that Heidegger was already reflecting on Kierkegaard’s role as a Christian thinker in these early years. It can also serve as another step in our search for an understanding of Heidegger’s complex relationship to Kierkegaard.⁵⁴ I will highlight just a few aspects of this very rich letter. First, it is crucial for Heidegger that a critique of Kierkegaard must advance on theological grounds. Second, Heidegger expresses his criticism of a psychological reading of Kierkegaard, which he sees exemplified in Jaspers. Finally, Heidegger explains what he considers the worst way of reading Kierkegaard: as a Kierkegaardian. Instead, Heidegger suggests that one should appropriate Kierkegaard’s thought, not by adopting his point of view, but via a critique from one’s unique hermeneutical situation. Learning from Kierkegaard implies that we do not stop with or go back to him, but proceed with our own struggle with existence. In the Black Notebooks from 1946 – 1948 we find a passage that contains a similar message.⁵⁵ In a certain sense, Heidegger appears to suggest that he

 GA 9, 45 / Heidegger, Pathmarks, p. 39.  A letter from 1945 provides further evidence that Heidegger was indeed refering to Kierkegaard (GA 16, 416). It is interesting that Heidegger does not follow Schrempf’s translation of “Christendom” with “Christentum” and “Christenhed” with “Christlichkeit.” Instead, he translates “Christenhed” as “Christentum” and “Christendom” as “Christlichkeit.” Heidegger’s rendering is closer to the way these terms are ordinarily used in German than to Schrempf’s translation.  This is the decisive passage: “Even Kierkegaard can only be theologically unhinged (as I understand theology and will develop in the winter semester)…What is of importance in Kierkegaard must be appropriated anew, but in a strict critique that grows out of our own situation. Blind appropriation is the greatest seduction…Not everyone who talks of ‘existence’ has to be a Kierkegaardian. My approaches have already been misinterpreted in this way. But I at least want something else…” (Theodore Kisiel and Thomas Sheehan (eds.), Becoming Heidegger. On the Trail of His Early Occasional Writings, 1910 – 1927, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 2007, pp. 97– 98). In the first sentence Heidegger refers to his lecture course Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion from winter term 1920 – 1921.  This is the entire passage: “To be a corrective, and only in this sphere; not in the sphere of faith, Christianity, or church; and not esthetically, ethically, religiously, and thus not metaphysically – but only in thinking. Thinking is precisely what Kierkegaard, without correction or mindfulness, initially swallowed whole, so to speak, from his age, in order to fulfil his mission as a corrective; and to make us, or at least those of us who pay attention, aware of the corrective [das

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should have selected Kierkegaard as his role model. Simultaneously, he makes it very clear that the suggested way of following Kierkegaard requires that he refrain from borrowing from him. Indeed, it requires that he not even work in the same realm as Kierkegaard. Heidegger’s envisaged discipleship, if one wants to talk about it in this way, consists neither in building on Kierkegaard’s understanding of existence, nor in assuming his faith. Heidegger’s appropriation is solely a matter of “methodology”: what he wants to learn from Kierkegaard is, in an enigmatic expression, “das Korrektivische.”⁵⁶ Being a corrective is what Heidegger sees as the specific role Kierkegaard played for Christianity within 19th century Christendom. Heidegger wants to “methodologically” adopt this function and assume a similar role for thought within the philosophy of his age. In contrast to the earlier period exemplified in the letter to Löwith, the later Heidegger does not see a role for Christianity in this endeavor. On the contrary, he states that his idiosyncratic reappropriation of Kierkegaard requires him to eliminate the Christian project from his path, the path of mindful thinking preparing for the second beginning.

VII Conclusion Referring mostly to the Black Notebooks and other remote sources, I have developed a coherent account of Heidegger’s understanding of Kierkegaard. My interpretation suggests that Heidegger understood Kierkegaard as a Christian writer who accords with the destiny of his age, serving as its corrective. On the one hand, I submit that this is a major step forward when compared with most of the existing literature on the Kierkegaard-Heidegger relationship. If my interpretation of Heidegger’s understanding of Kierkegaard is correct, then he does Kierkegaard much less injustice than most commentators make us believe. My interpretation suggests rather that Heidegger’s view of Kierkegaard is not particularly inventive. On the other hand, I should probably issue a warning: we should be careful when drawing conclusions from what I have presented. Most importantly, I have restricted myself to presenting Heidegger’s perspective. As a consequence,

Korrektivische]. However, to be a corrective in thinking has its own difficulty, because everyone thinks and considers himself a thinker – and for millennia metaphysics has confirmed him in this belief. To be a corrective in thinking, and even more so for those who have made thinking their profession and thus are particularly stubborn, is the most difficult thing” (GA 97, 245, my translation).  It is difficult to translate this expression. It might be rendered as “the way of being a corrective.”

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this essay is probably less about giving the answers, and more about helping us ask the right questions. To point out just a few: Is Heidegger’s understanding of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, which allows him to speak of Kierkegaard as being in accordance with the destiny of his age, convincing? Are Heidegger’s various statements about Kierkegaard and Nietzsche helpful for understanding their relationship and their positions in the history of 19th century thought? What should we make of Heidegger’s depiction of Kierkegaard as a Christian writer? What does it mean that Kierkegaard served as a corrective to his age? Does it make sense to draw an analogy between Kierkegaard’s function for Christian life and Heidegger’s contribution to the history of philosophy?⁵⁷ The systematic work still lies ahead of us.

 I thank an anonymous reviewer for pushing me on this point.

Johan Taels

Existential Hermeneutics Kierkegaard and Gadamer on Practical Knowledge (Phronesis) Abstract: Both Kierkegaard’s existential thought and Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics found an inexhaustible source of inspiration in the practical ethics of the philosophers of Greek antiquity. In this essay, I focus on Gadamer’s interpretation of Aristotle’s ethics, particularly his notion of practical knowledge (phronesis). I intend to demonstrate first and foremost that there is a striking parallel to be discerned between Gadamer’s reading of Aristotle, which clearly takes an existential-hermeneutic perspective, and some of the central premises underlying Kierkegaard’s thought. Second, I will argue that the characterization of Kierkegaard’s thought as existential-hermeneutical most adequately captures its specificities and lasting relevance. Rather, the claim to truth at that time, under the influence of a new reception of Kierkegaard in Germany, called itself “existential.” Existentialism dealt with a truth which was supposed to be demonstrated not so much in terms of universally held propositions or knowledge as rather in the immediacy of one’s own experience and in the absolute unsubstitutability of one’s own existence.¹

On the face of it, the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900 – 2002) has little in common with Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy; on the contrary, the purpose, style and content of the authors’ respective oeuvres would appear to be quite different. Kierkegaard produced a sizeable body of work in relatively little time and in a highly personal, varied and often polemic style. Like a ‘Socrates of Christendom,’ he intended his pseudonymous works and Upbuilding Discourses to inspire his contemporaries to live truly ethical—religious lives. Gadamer’s style, on the other hand, is rather academic and conducive to further dialogue. Over a period of seven decades, he wrote numerous philosophical treatises on historical and topical matters, which he connected or contrasted in subtle hermeneutic analyses.

 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Reflections on my Philosophical Journey,” in The Philosophy of HansGeorg Gadamer, ed. by Lewis Edwin Hahn, Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court 1997 (The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. XXIV), p. 6. DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-003

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However, on closer scrutiny, there is a kinship to be discerned between the conceptions underlying the work of the two thinkers. Both draw inspiration from the philosophers of Greek Antiquity—particularly Socrates, Plato and Aristotle— and this predilection clearly stamps its mark on their own body of thought. Their assertion that each “objectifying thought” (Kierkegaard) or each “scientific knowledge” (Gadamer) presupposes an existential or hermeneutic background, or that any true understanding implies a self-understanding, echoes the Greek notion that theoretical knowledge (“knowledge for the sake of knowledge”) is never entirely detached from practical ethical knowledge (“knowledge for the sake of praxis”).² This “Greek inspiration” largely explains the two thinkers’ critique of respectively the abstract-speculative systems (Kierkegaard) and tendencies towards scientism and positivism (Gadamer) in the modern era. Much as Kierkegaard argues that strictly speculative systems ignore concrete existential reality, so Gadamer maintains that the scientific method cannot yield hermeneutic truth. Both object to the idea that the abstract-objective thinker or the scientist is an impartial observer unaffected by the existential or hermeneutical situation in which he stands.³ In sum, in opposition to the universalist claims of modern forms of rationality, they propose a broader existential or phenomenological-hermeneutic kind of understanding that cannot be deduced from strictly logical arguments or scientific methods, and that is receptive to concrete experiences of sense, thus tying in with the ancient Greek notion of practical ethical knowledge. Obviously, this does not mean to say that there are no significant differences between the philosophies of the two thinkers. Gadamer’s hermeneutics is essentially philosophical-interpretative rather than existential in nature. Most of his texts deal with differences and similarities between historical and contemporary interpretations of art, literature, science, language, history, and philosophical, legal and theological truth etc. However, in his treatises on ethics as practical knowledge, his hermeneutic analyses clearly have an existential quality, which also tends to come to the fore in his discussion of other philosophical disciplines and topics. As we will argue later in this contribution, this is due in part to the influence of Kierkegaard’s existential thought. Conversely, Kierkegaard’s existential thought is no philosophical hermeneutics like Gadamer’s. Kierkegaard believed that the meaning of esthetical, ethical and religious values and practices must inevitably come to light and be understood in the  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI.2, 1139a.  Lawrence K. Schmidt, “Critique: The Heart of Philosophical Hermeneutics,” in Consequences of Hermeneutics. Fifty Years after Gadamer’s ‘Truth and Method’, ed. by Jeff Malpas and Santiago Zabala, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press 2010, p. 202.

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here and now, in the concrete existential situation in which they take place. However, in an entirely philosophical hermeneutics, one might easily detach aesthetic and ethical religious values and practices from the existential situations to which they pertain, and mould them into generalizable reflective concepts. And yet Kierkegaard’s existential thought, too, undeniably possesses a hermeneutic quality. Both in his pseudonymous works and in his Upbuilding Discourses, existential interpretations of concrete situations and values are foregrounded, for the purpose of confronting the reader and prompting them to take a stand. I would therefore like to characterize the style which Kierkegaard applies in many variations throughout his oeuvre as “existential-hermeneutic.” It is hermeneutic because it concerns an interpretation and understanding of life in its concrete manifestations arising in the individual self. And it is an existential hermeneutics because it has to do with an understanding that is not merely reflective, but also entails a personal recognition and appropriation of an existential value or sense. The purpose of this contribution is twofold. First I intend to draw attention to a striking kinship between Kierkegaard’s and Gadamer’s thought, insofar as Gadamer’s analysis of Aristotle’s notion of practical knowledge is concerned. I believe closer analysis of Gadamer’s interpretation of Aristotle’s phronesis can shed light on the most central premises underlying Kierkegaard’s thought. Second, I argue that the characterization of Kierkegaard’s thought as “existential– hermeneutic,” rather than just “existential,” sheds further light on the particularities of his philosophy and on its lasting relevance. My argument is composed of three parts: first, a brief overview of Gadamer’s hermeneutic concept of truth; second, a comparison between Gadamer’s interpretation of “practical knowledge” (phronesis) in Aristotle and Kierkegaard’s conception of existential truth; and finally, some reflections on the enduring relevance of Kierkegaard’s existential-hermeneutic thought.

I Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Hermeneutic Concept of Truth Hans-Georg Gadamer was a particularly erudite thinker. He was well versed in both the history of philosophy and contemporary philosophy. In developing his own philosophical hermeneutics, he was especially inspired by the classical Greeks, as well as by Hegel, Jaspers and Heidegger. Gadamer was initially a student of Heidegger’s and was deeply influenced by the latter’s phenomenological and hermeneutic insights. With time, however, he developed his own thought, characterized among other things by his close interest in ethical and social-po-

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litical themes. It was through Jaspers that Gadamer became acquainted with the work of Kierkegaard,⁴ who would influence him on a number of crucial points, some of which I will discuss in due course. In his magnum opus Truth and Method, published in 1960, Gadamer argues for a notion of a hermeneutical understanding that is operative in human existence and is irreducible to the objective methodology of the natural sciences. “Understanding” no longer means one sort of human thinking among others that can be methodologically disciplined, thus constituting a scientific procedure, but it makes up “the background of human existence.”⁵ In what follows, I outline briefly the most crucial characteristics of this hermeneutic concept of understanding. Gadamer describes hermeneutic understanding (verstehen) as “an experience of truth,” and here he uses explicitly the term “Erfahrung,” because of its connotation of lived experience. In general, he says, we can speak of the experience of truth when an encounter with a thing, for example a work of art, becomes an experience that changes the person who experiences it.⁶ At first glance, this concept of an “experience of truth” would appear to contradict the notion that human understanding is always historically determined and always given in pre-understanding. Hence, Gadamer sees these prejudgments not as an impediment to an “experience of truth,” but rather as a condition for it. This is made clear by the model of textual understanding, which he considers to be the paradigm for our experience of the world in general. For instance, an interpreter always stands before a given text with a prior understanding of it, and it is precisely between this prior understanding and the impact of the operative matter at issue in the text that understanding takes place.⁷ In this context, Gadamer also refers to “a fusion of horizons.” In line with the dispute with historicism, which demands an interpreter should disregard his or her own horizon, he argues that there are not two separate horizons, but one

 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Philosophische Begegnungen. Karl Jaspers,” in Hermeneutik im Rückblick, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1995, in Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1– 10, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1985 – 1995, vol. 10, pp. 392– 400.  Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode. Ergänzungen. Register, 2nd ed., Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1993 [1986], in Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, p. 30. Besides the quotes from Truth and Method, all quotes from Gadamer’s works are translated into English by the author.  Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 7th ed., Tübingen: Mohr 2010 [1960], p. 108 (Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1 / Truth and Method, 2nd revised ed., trans. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, London: Continuum 2006, p. 103).  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. 273 – 274 / Truth and Method, pp. 271– 272.

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larger horizon against which human life originates and is handed down.⁸ In other words: prejudgements presuppose a willingness on the part of the interpreter to enter into a dialogue with the text, the work of art or an interlocutor, and, in so doing, to arrive at a fusion of horizons. To understand a work of literature “does not mean primarily to reason one’s way back into the past, but to have a present involvement in what is said. It is not really a relationship between persons, between the reader and the author (who is perhaps unknown), but about sharing in what the text shares with us.”⁹ Gadamer connects this concept of a fusion of horizons with the notion that each form of understanding necessarily entails an application. The modern hermeneutic process traditionally involved just understanding and interpretation. Following Heidegger, Gadamer adds to this a third element: “application.” He criticizes the Romantic thinkers (such as Schleiermacher) for having banished this pre-modern notion from their hermeneutics.¹⁰ The quest for insight is never impartial, he argues, but is always related to the concerns of a specific individual quest. Hence one is always applying understanding to one’s self, and because of this understanding “always involves an inner speaking” and “is ultimately self-understanding.”¹¹ The notions of fusion of horizon and application lead to another crucial notion that Gadamer uses to characterize the act of hermeneutic understanding and which he borrowed explicitly from Kierkegaard, namely the notion of “contemporaneity.” As is well known, Kierkegaard developed this concept in his Philosophical Fragments and Practice in Christianity,¹² in arguing that there is no mediation between the contemporary believer and God becoming human that can be given by reason or historical evidence. In Gadamer’s words: For Kierkegaard, “contemporaneity” does not mean “existing at the same time.” Rather, it names the task that confronts the believer: to bring together two moments that are not concurrent, namely one’s own present and the redeeming act of Christ, and yet so totally to mediate them that the latter is experienced and taken seriously as present (and not as something in a distant past).¹³

 Chris Lawn and Niall Keane, The Gadamer Dictionary, London / New York: Continuum 2011, p. 152.  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 395 / Truth and Method, p. 393.  Cf. Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 313 / Truth and Method, pp. 306 – 307.  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 166 and p. 265 / Truth and Method, p. 153 and p. 251.  Cf. SKS 4, 267– 271 / PF, 66 – 71 and SKS 12, 50 – 68 / PC, 36 – 56.  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 132 / Truth and Method, p. 124.

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Gadamer considers this notion to be typical of every form of hermeneutic understanding. Any dialogue, be it with a text, another person or a tradition, presupposes that one can become contemporaneous with it, let its past speak to our present.¹⁴ As I have previously pointed out, the fact that Gadamer developed his thought against the backdrop of Heidegger’s hermeneutic philosophy, does not mean that he followed Heidegger blindly. In his interpretation of the classical Greeks and in linking his insights to current issues and contemporary philosophers and theologians, he fully succeeded in finding his own voice. Moreover, there is at least one crucial point at which his hermeneutics diverges quite noticeably from Heidegger’s: while Heidegger’s hermeneutics ties in with a fundamental ontology, Gadamer’s has an expressly ethical dimension. I give two striking examples: firstly, in an essay on “Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity. Subject and Person” from 1975, Gadamer highlights his unease with Heidegger’s analysis of the other in his fundamental ontology: I was trying…in opposition to Heidegger, to show how the understanding of the Other possesses a fundamental significance…In the end, I thought the very strengthening of the Other against myself would, for the first time, allow me to open up the real possibility of understanding. To allow the Other to be valid against Oneself–and from there to let all my hermeneutic works slowly develop–is not only to recognize in principle the limitation of one’s own framework, but is also to allow one to go beyond one’s own possibilities, precisely in a dialogical, communicative, hermeneutic process.¹⁵

What Gadamer seeks in his opposition to Heidegger is the possibility of transcending one’s enclosed self-understanding through the other as a dialogical partner. He was convinced that Kierkegaard was aware of this possibility: “In the twentieth century, with the translation of his works in German, Kierkegaard began to have great influence in Europe. It was here in Heidelberg (but also in many other places in Germany) that thinking began to contrast the experience of a thou and of the word that unites an I and a thou with neo-Kantian idealism.”¹⁶ Secondly, in contrast to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, which ties in more closely with the Aristotelian ideal of theoretical knowledge, Gadamer emphasizes the importance of practical knowledge or Aristotelian phronesis, as is apparent from both his texts on Aristotle and his many articles on ethics and social-political philosophy. Here, again, Kierkegaard’s influence is clear to see: “What is practical philosophy? How can theory and reflection be directed to

 Cf. Lawn and Keane, The Gadamer Dictionary, p. 22.  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 10, p. 97 / The Gadamer Dictionary, p. 68.  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, pp. 210 – 211.

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the realm of praxis, since the latter cannot tolerate any distancing, but on the contrary requires commitment? This issue touched me from early on through Kierkegaard’s existential pathos. Then I oriented myself with the help of the practical philosophy of Aristotle.”¹⁷ It should be apparent from this brief outline that there is a degree of kinship between Gadamer’s hermeneutic and Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy: the process of truth as a living experience, Gadamer’s notions of “fusion of horizons,” “application,” “contemporaneity,” and of understanding ultimately being self-understanding, will all sound quite familiar to readers of Kierkegaard. However, the kinship becomes more apparent when, proceeding from his hermeneutic standpoint, Gadamer asks what the singularity of practical knowledge consists in and, in this context, refers first and foremost to Aristotle’s phronesis.

II The Singularity of Practical Knowledge (Phronesis) In 1923, Heidegger presented at Freiburg a number of seminars on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. One of the topics he discussed was the concept of practical knowledge or phronesis, from Nicomachean Ethics, especially Book 6, §5. Gadamer was struck by this seminar and it is beyond dispute that Aristotle’s perspective on the nature of practical knowledge played an very important role in the development of his philosophical hermeneutics.¹⁸ The fact that he produced a translation and a commentary on the 6th book of Nicomachean Ethics as late as 1998, some 75 years after his first acquaintance with Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, speaks volumes in this respect.¹⁹ In what follows, I examine the most crucial aspects of Gadamer’s views on the significance of practical knowledge under three thematic headings.²⁰ In the

 Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, p. 22.  Donatella di Cesare, Gadamer. Ein philosophisches Porträt, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2009, pp. 9 – 10, 140 – 145.  Aristoteles, Nicomachische Ethik VI, ed. and trans. by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 1998 (Klostermann Texte Philosophie).  I rely mainly on two texts that deal specifically with this topic: 1) “Die hermeneutische Aktualität des Aristoteles” [“The hermeneutic relevance of Aristotle,”] a chapter from Truth and Method, where it occupies a central place in a literal as well as a figurative sense. Cf. Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. 317– 329 / Truth and Method, pp. 310 – 321, and 2) “Über die Möglichkeit einer philosophischen Ethik” [“On the Possibility of a Philosophical Ethics”] from 1963, which deals with the philosophical ethics of Kant and Aristotle (Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Über die

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discussion of each of these themes, I attempt to highlight the parallels between Gadamer’s hermeneutic interpretation and Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy.

A The Problematic Nature of Modern Philosophical Ethics What is the relevance of philosophical ethics to concrete moral action? How can the generality of a philosophical insight be useful in making a choice in a concrete situation? To Gadamer, this is a hermeneutic question par excellence: “how is it possible to apply a universal insight to a specific case?” Gadamer considers this very hermeneutic problem to be one of the most central questions in Kierkegaard: In fact, it does appear that there is an inescapable difficulty in the idea of moral philosophy itself. It was first brought to our awareness in Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel and of the Christian Church. Kierkegaard showed that all “knowing at a distance” is insufficient for the fundamental moral and religious situation of humankind. Just as the meaning of the Christian revelation is to be experienced and accepted as “contemporaneous,” so also ethical choice is no matter of theoretical knowledge, but rather the brightness, sharpness, and pressure of conscience. All knowing at a distance threatens to veil or to weaken the demand that is implicit in the situation of moral choice…In this context philosophical ethics does indeed seem to be in an insoluble dilemma. The reflexive generality…entangles it in the questionableness of law-based ethics. How can it do justice to the concreteness with which conscience, sensitivity to equity, and loving reconciliation are answerable to the situation? It is not the priest and the Levite but the Samaritan who accepts and fulfils the requirement of love deriving from the situation.²¹

Gadamer is convinced that the dilemma to which Kierkegaard refers is, in the first instance, a problem of the modern age. In antiquity, he writes, “it was obvious that the philosophical pragmatics which, since Aristotle, has been called “ethics” was itself a “practical” knowledge.”²² What’s more, it belonged to the ancient concept of knowledge generally, so that the transition to praxis is inherent in it: “knowledge (Wissenschaft) is not an aggregate of anonymous truths, but a human comportment.”²³ Even “theoria” does not stand in absolute opposition to praxis, but is itself the highest praxis, one of the highest modes of

Möglichkeit einer philosophischen Ethik (1963),” in Neuere Philosophie II. Probleme – Gestalten, Tübingen: Mohr 1987, pp. 175 – 188 (Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4 / English translation: Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, trans. by Joel Weinsheimer, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1999, pp. 18 – 36).  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, p. 177 / Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, pp. 20 – 21.  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, p. 175 / Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, p. 18.  Ibid.

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human being. This is in sharp contrast to the modern age. With the emergence of the methods of the natural sciences, and ensuing scientific discoveries and practical applications, the notion of theory assumed a new meaning. “Theory now means an explanation of the multiplicity of appearances, enabling them to be mastered. Understood as a tool, it ceases being a properly human action, and in contrast to such, it claims to be more than a relative truth.”²⁴ Gadamer states that Aristotle was fully aware of the (hermeneutic) problem regarding the relationship between universal insights and their practical applications. Aristotle, he says, was concerned with “the right estimation of the role that reason has to play in moral action.”²⁵ With regard to his teacher Plato, he “restores the balance by showing that the basis of moral knowledge in man is striving (“orexis”), and its development into a fixed demeanor (“hexis”).”²⁶ The very name “ethics” indicates that Aristotle bases “arête” on practice and “ethos.” Gadamer’s reservations about the abstract nature of modern philosophical ethics should be seen as part of his broader cultural criticism. It is precisely because the modern age, particularly from the latter decades of the 18th century onwards, has granted a quasi-monopoly to strict scientific methods and certainties that he sees it as his task to re-examine the specific features of hermeneutic, practical knowledge. And to do this, he relies primarily on the ancient Greeks. While Kierkegaard’s cultural criticism of the modern age is broader and more radical than Gadamer’s, they do bear some resemblances. I briefly sketch a number of the key points from the former’s critique of modernity, as he described them in his unfinished and posthumously published manuscript The Dialectic of Ethical and Ethical-religious Communication from 1847.²⁷ This year represented a crucial period in his oeuvre: after the publication of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and his traumatic experience with The Corsair in 1846, he felt the need to account for his own authorship and began to prepare his autobiographies. Kierkegaard’s text begins with the “observation” that the modern age is fundamentally dishonest. This dishonesty is rooted in the fact that modern man, through his own fault, is caught in “a bewilderment of self-deception in and about himself.”²⁸ This self-deception, Kierkegaard argues, is due to the lack of naiveté in the modern age, or to be more precise, to the fact that this age can no longer be naïve. After all, contrary to what modern man is inclined to believe, naiveté is not the opposite of maturity; it is an essential condition for a healthy     

Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, p. 176 / Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, p. 19. Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 317 / Truth and Method, p. 310. Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 317 / Truth and Method, p. 310 – 311. SKS 27, 387– 434, Papir 364– 371 / JP 1, 648 – 657, pp. 267– 308. SKS 27, 415, Papir 369 / JP 1, 654, p. 290.

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and honest human existence: “every human being ought to be naïve.–Naiveté rescues from illusions of the imagination, but also from the shallowness of acquired knowledge.”²⁹ The fact that it is precisely this condition that is lacking in the modern human condition points towards an even deeper want: a want of “primitivity,” in the sense of authenticity [oprindelighed]: “every single individual should still have his primitive impression of existence—in order to be a human being. And as it is with every human being, so also with every thinker —in order to be a thinker.”³⁰ The latter is precisely what is missing. Obviously the modern age is one in which self-consciousness is central. Yet Kierkegaard argues that this modern self-consciousness is far from ethical. The dishonesty and self-deception of the modern man consists precisely in the fact that he does not allow a concrete ethical self-consciousness or even flees it: “That the distinction between art and science has been forgotten. Everything has become science and scholarship, and art is understood only esthetically as fine art. But there is a whole aspect of art which science and scholarship have taken possession of— or wish to take possession of—this is the ethical.”³¹ Like Gadamer, Kierkegaard also refers to Antiquity as a counterexample of the “modern flight into abstraction”: “…that science and scholarship have become fantastic (pure knowledge) and in addition always learned—that what it means to be a human being has been forgotten. The Greeks—how humanly they remembered this.”³²

B The Relation between Philosophical Ethics and Moral Knowledge I turn again to Gadamer’s analysis of Aristotle’s ethics, in which he poses the following questions: what kind of practical knowledge is Aristotle concerned with? And how can philosophical ethics be helpful for moral knowledge (phronesis)? Let us consider some crucial quotes: What interest us here is precisely that he [Aristotle] is concerned with reason and with knowledge, not detached from a being that is becoming, but determined by it and determinative of it…If man always encounters the good in the form of the particular practical situation in which he finds himself, the task of moral knowledge is to determine what the concrete situation asks of him–or, to put it another way, the person acting must view the concrete situation in light of what is asked of him in general. But–negatively put–this

   

SKS SKS SKS SKS

27, 399 / JP 1, 650:3, p. 277. 27, 417, Papir 369 / JP 1, 654, p. 292. 27, 390 / JP 1, 649:5, p. 268. 27, 390 / JP 1, 649:3, p. 268.

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means that knowledge that cannot be applied to the concrete situation remains meaningless and even risks obscuring what the situation calls for.³³

Gadamer’s reading of Aristotle’s ethics approximates here to Kierkegaard’s own interpretation of the Greek classics—particularly Socrates—as well as to the train of thought of his pseudonymous authors. I refer first and foremost to Climacus’s description of the existential thinker in the Postscript. As a being whose existence is finite, he must ask himself time and again what a given concrete relationship or circumstance conveys to him, what it demands of him. Consequently, he progresses very slowly in his striving to attain the truth, so that he never arrives at the theoretical vistas of the objective thinker.³⁴ Gadamer’s hermeneutics and Kierkegaard’s existential thought have similar starting points: how are thinking and universal meanings connected to particular relationships and situations? How can a moral or religious value (or meaning, or rule) present itself in my relationship to a situation? Or, conversely, how can my relationship to a concrete situation be the vivid expression and embodiment of a universal value? This state of affairs, which represents the nature of moral reflection, not only makes philosophical ethics a methodologically difficult problem, but also gives the problem of method a moral relevance…As we see, the problem of method is entirely determined by the object–a general Aristotelian principle…For moral knowledge, as Aristotle describes it, is clearly not objective knowledge–i. e., the knower is not standing over against a situation that he merely observes; he is directly confronted with what he sees. It is something that he has to do.³⁵

This passage again expresses an essential aspect of Gadamer’s hermeneutics: the modern natural sciences, so he argues, have hijacked the notion of “method.” Their methods force worldly phenomena into a particular format; they determine which aspects of worldly phenomena may and may not come to light. Gadamer, by contrast, endeavors to place in the foreground the original experiences and insights that are the domain of the Humanities. The latter are invariably also “moral sciences,” as the scholar or researcher must ask how phenomena present themselves to us and how we relate to them. As regards Kierkegaard, the second part of the passage (from “For moral knowledge” onwards) could very well be read as a summary of his conception

 Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 317 / Truth and Method, p. 310.  SKS 7, 80 ff. / CUP1, 80 ff.  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 318 / Truth and Method, p. 311.

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of “existential knowledge.” I refer again to the Postscript in which Climacus describes in detail the distinction between the objective (scientific or speculative) thinker and the subjective, existential thinker.³⁶ After all, the objective thinker is interested in the truth being investigated, but not in the relation between that truth and his own existence. On the contrary: in order to discover the truth, he assumes, it is necessary to reject one’s own subjectivity and take a general, impersonal standpoint. However, the consequence of this is that the “being” he imagines is not the “being” of concrete existence, but merely “the abstract rendition or the abstract prototype of what being in concreto is as empirical being.”³⁷ The subjective thinker, on the other hand, who is essentially interested in his “self,” must direct his reflection primarily towards his own existence: “Here it is not forgotten, even for a single moment, that the subject is existing, and that existing is a becoming, and that truth as the identity of thought and being is therefore a chimera of abstraction and truly only a longing of creation.”³⁸ In summary: the objective thinker sees truth as an object of knowledge and enquiry outside of himself; the subjective thinker, on the other hand, enquires into how he himself relates to that truth. Aristotle emphasizes that it is impossible for ethics to achieve the extreme exactitude of mathematics…What needs to be done is simply to make an outline and by means of this sketch give some help to moral consciousness. But how such help can be possible is already a moral problem. For obviously it is characteristic of the moral phenomenon that the person acting must himself know and decide, and he cannot let anything take this responsibility from him. Thus it is essential that philosophical ethics have the right approach, so that it does not usurp the place of moral consciousness and yet does not seek a purely theoretical and “historical” knowledge either but, by outlining phenomena, helps moral consciousness to attain clarity concerning itself.³⁹

Thus we discover yet more common ground between Gadamer’s hermeneutic interpretation of Aristotle’s ethics and Kierkegaard’s existential thought. Philosophical ethics should not “usurp the place of moral consciousness,” but must help the latter attain clarity with regard to itself. Insofar as the oeuvre of Kierkegaard is concerned, this characterization appears to be quite evident: both his pseudonymous works and his Upbuilding Discourses are intended from beginning to end to induce clarity in the reader regarding their own relationship vis-à-vis what is written. “Especially in the communication of ethical

   

SKS 7, 173 ff. / CUP1, 189 ff. SKS 7, 174 / CUP1, 190. SKS 7, 180 / CUP1, 196. Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 318 / Truth and Method, p. 311.

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truth and partially in the communication of ethical-religious truth, the indirect method is the most rigorous form,” Kierkegaard explains.⁴⁰ This indirect, maieutic method holds a mirror up to the reader: in the encounter with the standpoints and insights presented, the reader shows how he/she relates to their truth (or lack thereof). Or, as the aphorism of Lichtenberg puts it, at the beginning of “In vino veritas,” the first section of Stages on Life’s Way: “Such works are mirrors: when an ape looks in, no apostle can look out.”⁴¹ In her excellent study Stealing a Gift: Kierkegaard’s Pseudonyms and the Bible, J. Pons makes the pertinent remark that in his pseudonymous works, Kierkegaard often uses the method of indirect communication in a hermeneutical appropriation of the bible. Kierkegaard’s aim, she argues, is not to impose certain biblical truths or beliefs, but to expose them. In this way his existential hermeneutics “suggests that it is possible to relate to God only through becoming contemporary with God’s word by internalizing it in a spiritual movement.”⁴² It is for this reason, she contends, that every distinction made between Kierkegaard’s philosophy and religious or theological works ultimately proves unsustainable. Gadamer summarizes Aristotle’s ethics very neatly as follows: “Aristotle… placed the conditionedness of human life at the centre and singled out concretizing the universal, by applying it to the given situation, as the central task of philosophical ethics and moral conduct alike.”⁴³ Elsewhere, he speaks even more succinctly of “Aristotle’s…universal formula for concretization,”⁴⁴ a description I believe characterizes Kierkegaard’s existential thought perfectly.

C The Distinction between Moral and Technical Knowledge Aristotle distinguishes another type of practical knowledge besides moral knowledge, namely techne. “This is the skill, the knowledge of the craftsman who

 SKS 27, 429; Papir 371 / JP 1, 656, p. 302.  SKS 6, 16 / SLW, 16.  J. Pons, Stealing a Gift. Kierkegaard’s Pseudonyms and the Bible, New York: Fordham University Press 2004, resp. p. xv and p. xi. Pons is one of the few authors who assigns a central role to Kierkegaard’s existential hermeneutics. In her ‘Introduction’ she rightly notes: “Although Kierkegaard’s’ philosophical vision was one of the chief inspirations for the ‘existential hermeneutics’ that largely contributed to the formation of hermeneutics as a discipline in the 20th century (Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, and Martin Heidegger, all deeply influenced by Kierkegaard, inspired the originator of hermeneutics in its present-day form, Hans-Georg Gadamer), there is no comprehensive study of hermeneutic theory and practice in Kierkegaard’s own writings” (p. xi).  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, p. 187 / Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, p. 34.  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, p. 184 / Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, p. 30.

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knows how to make some specific thing.”⁴⁵ The similarity between the two types of knowledge is clear: “their purpose is to determine and guide action. Consequently, they must include the application of knowledge to the particular task.”⁴⁶ However, it is their differences that cast most light on the specific and relevant characteristics of moral knowledge. Let us consider the following extracts: “[Moral knowledge] is distinct from the knowledge that guides the making of something. Aristotle captures this difference in a bold and unique way when he calls this kind of knowledge self-knowledge i. e. knowledge for oneself…We see that moral knowledge, however, always requires…[a] kind of self-deliberation.”⁴⁷ In the 6th Book of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes phronesis or moral knowledge in different ways, including as “knowledge for oneself,” “deliberation with oneself,” and “a way of being moral,” adding various other modifications.⁴⁸ This richness in nuance is necessary, because phronesis must adapt time and time again to changing specific situations. I would imagine that no-one who is familiar with Kierkegaard’s works needs convincing that the rich variety in descriptions and names Kierkegaard uses for “ethical or religious reflection or consciousness” is a match even for Aristotle. To name just a few examples: “the reflection of inwardness,” “reduplication,” “double reflection,” “the existing subjective thinker,” “the duplexity of thought-existence,” and so on. This array of expressions for distinguishing between diverse forms of ethical (self‐)consciousness is, of course, closely related to his Socratic conviction that moral knowledge can be nothing other than self-knowledge: “The ethical presupposes that every person knows what the ethical is, and why? Because the ethical demands that every man shall realize it at every moment, but then he surely has to know it. The ethical does not begin with ignorance which is to be changed to knowledge but begins with a knowledge and demands a realization.”⁴⁹ According to Gadamer, the same presupposition was shared by Aristotle: “We learn a techne and can also forget it. But we do not learn moral knowledge, nor can we forget it. We do not stand over against it, as if it were something that we can acquire or not, as we can choose to acquire an objective skill, a techne. Rather, we are always already in the situation of having to act.”⁵⁰ “We are always already in the situation of having to act.” To Kier-

 Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 320 / Truth and Method, p. 313.  Ibid.  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 320 / Truth and Method, p. 318.  Quoted in Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, pp. 328 – 329 / Truth and Method, pp. 319 – 321.  SKS 27, 394, Papir 365:7 / JP 1, 649:10.  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 322 / Truth and Method, p. 315.

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kegaard this means that the ethical can only be expressed in a communication of capability and oughtness-capability, and can never be transformed in a communication of knowledge.⁵¹ In a Journal entry from 1850, he formulates the same idea as follows: “Virtue cannot be taught; that is, it is not a doctrine, it is a being-able, an exercising, an existing, an existential transformation.”⁵² This also explains why, from the outset, Kierkegaard attributed a central significance to notions referring to “application” in the truest of senses, including such notions as choice, decision, commitment, and so on. The same idea is expressed in his reference to Horace’s saying de te fabula narratur (“Whatever you may read, the story is told about you”).⁵³ Moral knowledge is really knowledge of a special kind. In a curious way it embraces both means and end, and hence differs from technical knowledge. That is why it is pointless to distinguish here between knowledge and experience, as can be done in the case of a techne. For moral knowledge contains a kind of experience in itself, and in fact we shall see that this is perhaps the fundamental form of experience (Erfahrung), compared with which all other experience represents an alienation, not to say a denaturing.⁵⁴

“Moral knowledge is perhaps the most fundamental form of experience.” Gadamer arguably goes quite far in his reading of Aristotle. I certainly think he comes quite close here to Kierkegaard’s existential thought. In Kierkegaard’s view, as we all know, it is first the ethical relationship that makes the individual a “self.” For, in contrast to the aesthetic, whose life is determined by random circumstances, the ethicist relates to the other, to his ancestors, to society, to his own time, and to God, and through these relationships he at once relates in self-accountability to himself. Moral action is not right by reason of the fact that what is thereby brought into existence is right; rather, its rightness lies primarily in ourselves, in the “how” of our conduct, in the manner in which the person who “is right” does it (the spoudaios anèr). It is also true, on the other hand, that in our moral conduct, which depends so much more on our being than on our explicit consciousness (eidos), we ourselves are drawn forth as well— as we are (and not as we know ourselves).⁵⁵

Once again, Gadamer’s description of Aristotle’s “moral action” comes very close to Kierkegaard’s conception. Ethically and religiously spoken the existing think    

SKS 27, 409, Papir 368:4 / JP 1, 653:8 – 9. SKS 23, 186, NB17:33 / JP 1, 1060. SKS 18, 236, JJ:306 / KJN 2, 217. Cf. Horatius, Satiren I, 1, 69 – 70. Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 328 / Truth and Method, p. 319. Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, p. 188 / Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, p. 31.

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er is preoccupied not with the “what” or the content of truth, but with how he himself relates to that truth. In other words “the how is the what”; the manner in which someone relates to the truth determines whether he relates or not to the truth or untruth. When the Good Samaritan or any other biblical figure is taken as an example, this happens not because of his / her deep understanding of the divine law of charity, but because of his / her actual charity. It should be noted here that the conscious nature of the ethical or ethical-religious self-relation is obviously more radical in Kierkegaard than it is in Aristotle. In Gadamer’s words: Aristotle’s concept of ethos is primarily focused “on the conditionedness of our moral being, on the dependence of the individual decision on the practical and social determinants of the time, and less on the unconditionality that pertains to the ethical phenomenon.”⁵⁶ This is explained in part by the teleological worldview that forms the backdrop to Aristotle’s philosophical thought. To him, the teleological nature of human life and the polis, like that of the entire cosmos, is more or less self-evident. Hence the crux of his philosophical ethics lies “in the mediation between logos and ethos, between the subjectivity of knowing and the substance of being.”⁵⁷ Kierkegaard’s thought, on the other hand, emerged at a time when a modern, scientifically inspired perspective on the world had—particularly since the Enlightenment—been radically calling into question metaphysical and teleological interpretations of reality. He remarks in several of his works that the self-evidence of substantial concepts and explanations in the course of the modern era was gradually transmuted into abstract-reflective terms (such as the “requirements of the era,” “the public,” “the masses.”)⁵⁸ This implies that, in trying to attain a meaningful existence, no individual can rely directly or unequivocally on the “ethos” of the community or the “substance of being.” Traditions or persons may be able to provide maieutic assistance, but decisive existential steps and choices must be taken willingly and affirmatively by the individual him or herself.⁵⁹ In sum: more than ever before must each “single individual” bear full responsibility for the fulfilment of a meaningful existence. At this point, I would like to return one final time to Gadamer’s interpretation of Aristotle’s notion of “moral knowledge”: This is precisely the meaning of the doctrine of the “mean” that Aristotle develops: that all conceptual definitions of traditional virtues possess at best a schematic or typical correct-

   

Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, p. 186 / Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, p. 28. Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, p. 187 / Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, p. 29. See for example: SKS 8, 66 – 104 / TA, 68 – 110. Cf. SKS 8, 101– 104 / TA, 106 – 109.

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ness…This means, however, that…which we consider right, which we affirm or reject, follows from our general ideas about what is good and right. It achieves its real determinacy, nevertheless, only from the concrete reality of the case. This is not a case of applying a universal rule. Just the opposite: it is the real thing we are concerned with, and for this the generic forms of the virtues and the structure of the “mean” that Aristotle points out in them offer only a vague schema. Thus it is phronesis—the virtue enabling one to hit upon the mean and achieve the concretization—which shows that something can be done (prakton agathon), not some faculty special to philosophers.⁶⁰

Once again, I think, we can observe a striking similarity between Gadamer’s hermeneutic interpretation of Aristotle and Kierkegaard’s existential thought. The status of “all conceptual definitions of traditional virtues (for example the ideal of bravery) possess at best a schematic or typical correctness,” writes Gadamer. Elsewhere he characterizes these definitions as “guiding images” or “guiding principles” [Leitbilder]. These remain vague and abstract so long as they have not received a “real determinacy” in the concrete reality of the case. In a similar context, Kierkegaard frequently uses the terms “ideality” and “reality.” Thus the ethical ideality—for example the striving for truth, justice etc.—always remains abstract so long as one does not strive in ethical passion and commitment to realize this ideal here and now. Or, in hermeneutic terms, so long as one does not succeed in applying this ideal. In my closing discussion of Kierkegaard’s existential hermeneutic thought below, I will return to this in more detail.

III The Enduring Relevance of Kierkegaard’s Existential-Hermeneutic Thought Kierkegaard left behind an exceptionally rich oeuvre, characterized by a striking diversity in terms of themes and styles.⁶¹ Yet, I think that, behind this multifaceted thought, there lies a high degree of unity, the unity of a more or less coherent set of existential-hermeneutic premises which, in my opinion, largely guided his thought, and through which all further themes and arguments assumed their actual meaning. I will briefly re-iterate some of the basic premises in his thought and argue why I believe these continue to be relevant today.

 Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, p. 187 / Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, p. 30.  This is also evident in the abundance of secondary works that have appeared in the last two decades on a variety of themes from his oeuvre. His status in the secondary literature increasingly resembles that of Nietzsche: he has become an interlocutor for a wide range of philosophical and theological debates.

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Kierkegaard’s oeuvre may be described as an exceptionally astute quest for the sense of human existence, not in an abstract-theoretical sense, but in a concrete existential sense. The most central of questions in his oeuvre is: “What does it mean to be a human being?” In answering this question, he applies a “universal formula for concretization”—to use the terms in which Gadamer characterizes Aristotle’s thought. He considers, for example, the most diverse aspects of human life (its growth and prime, but also its despair and looming demise) as well as the human faculties (imagination, reflection, consciousness, passion, will, etc.). And in so doing, he employs the most diverse of stylistic means. This concretization is necessary, for the more one develops truthfully as a human, the more concretely one comes to incorporate the existential sense of one’s existence. And the more concrete existence becomes, the more versatile and subtle any attempt to describe it must inevitably be. Of course, Kierkegaard’s analyses are not intended to usurp the place of moral or religious consciousness, but rather to induce clarity in the reader regarding their own relationship vis-à-vis what is written. As I previously explained, Gadamer writes that Aristotle searches time and again for “guiding principles” of moral knowledge. In a similar way, Kierkegaard in his quest for the sense of human existence searches throughout his oeuvre for existential (ethical-religious) patterns or schemes. At the end of “A first and last explanation” in his Postscript, Kierkegaard includes the following comment on his pseudonymous authors: …their importance…unconditionally does not consist in making any new proposal, some unheard-of discovery, or in founding a new party and wanting to go further, but precisely in the opposite, in wanting to have no importance, in wanting, at a remove that is the distance of double-reflection, once again to read through solo, if possible in a more inward way, the original text of individual human existence-relationships, the old familiar text handed down from the fathers.⁶²

A journal entry, also from 1846, reads as follows: “My service to literature is always to have presented the decisive definitions of the entire territory of existence with a dialectical acuity and a primitivity not attainted in any literature, as far as I know…”⁶³And in an entry from 1847 he expresses the same thought even more ambitiously: If I achieve nothing else, I nonetheless hope to leave behind a highly accurate and experientially based depiction of the nature of existence…With my schema a young person could see in advance, with great accuracy, just as on a price list: If you venture this far,

 SKS 7, 572– 573 / CUP1, 629 – 630.  SKS 20, 37, NB:34a / KJN 4, 35.

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then the conditions will be such and such: this much to win, and this much to lose; and if you venture that far, these are the conditions, etc.⁶⁴

I will give a basic example of such an existential scheme or pattern. A first crucial certainty in Kierkegaard’s quest for existential meaning in Either/Or, at the beginning of his pseudonymous works, is that such a meaning can only be found (or to be more precise: that it only reveals itself) in an unconditional ethical choice.⁶⁵ Only in this choice does my relationship to myself (that is to say: my relationship to my corporeality, my history, my flaws and shortcomings, my capabilities and talents), as well as my relationship to the proximate and unfamiliar other, become truly meaningful and concrete. In Gadamer’s terms, one could say that Kierkegaard’s conception of the ethical choice refers to “the fundamental form of experience (Erfahrung), compared with which all other experience represents an alienation.”⁶⁶ For that matter, I think this fundamental form of experience is Kierkegaard’s existential-ethical version of Heidegger’s subsequent concept of truth as an event. The ethical choice, therefore, is the necessary condition for the further development of the self towards an ethical-religious or Christian attitude, an existential-dialectic development that Kierkegaard describes in great detail in both his pseudonymous works and his Upbuilding Discourses. Kierkegaard drew inspiration from numerous historical sources, including from classical antiquity, the Church Fathers, the reformers, and modern thinkers. But despite this historical interpretation and his great historical interest, he remained vehemently opposed to an exclusively historicizing approach to human existence, as such a narrow perspective creates the illusion that every generation stands before an entirely new assignment, and that the task to be human is essentially changeable. Kierkegaard on the contrary emphasizes that, in the process of becoming a self, there are universal patterns to be discerned of existential relations and behaviors that make the “self” either wither away or grow beyond itself; that lead to either self-destruction or authentic becoming a self. He also stresses that the personal appropriation of those existential patterns is an assignment that is potentially attainable for all, but must be rediscovered and appropriated by every individual and culture. Consequently, the most fundamental concepts and core notions of his thought, including those of “self-knowledge,” “absolute choice,” “the single individual,” “double-reflection,” “reduplication,” “inwardness,” “earnestness,” “infinite passion,” “contemporaneity” etc. are not historical in nature. They all presuppose an

 SKS 20, 148 – 149, NB2:20 / KJN 4, 146.  SKS 3, 155 ff. / EO2, 155 ff.  Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, p. 328 / Truth and Method, p. 319.

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existential-ethical and ethical-religious structure of being human which is “for all time,” as it were. For this reason, the singularity of Kierkegaard’s thought and oeuvre is captured more accurately and adequately by the characterization “existential-hermeneutic” than by the broader, more commonly used term “existential.” The assignment that he set himself did not consist in developing a new philosophy alongside abstract philosophical and theological ideas, whereby the emphasis shifts to concrete and existential values. His purpose was rather to demonstrate that all philosophical and theological convictions only assume their full meaning if they build on the original, ethical insight that true understanding inevitably presupposes a self-understanding. In other words, true understanding requires that “we learn by teaching,”⁶⁷ that we, as speakers, are at once our own audience. Kierkegaard and his pseudonymous authors express a similar thought by asserting that they, like Socrates, “always say the same about the same.”⁶⁸ “With regard to truth as inwardness in existence,” so asserts Johannes Climacus in his Postscript, “the law is: the same, and yet changed, and yet the same. Therefore the fanciers of Tivoli value eternity so little, since it is the nature of eternity to be always the same, and soberness of spirit is recognizable by its knowing that change in the external is diversion, but change in the same is inwardness.”⁶⁹ In a diary entry from 1850, Kierkegaard expresses this central notion in his thought and authorship as follows: “The difference in life is not ‘what’ is said, but ‘how.’ With respect to ‘what,’ the same thing has been said before, perhaps many times before—so that the old saying, ‘There is nothing new under the sun,’ holds true, this old saying that nonetheless always remains new. But how it is said: this is what is new.”⁷⁰ Kierkegaard’s authentic thinker reflects on what everyone knows or should know, namely on human ideality. He realizes, moreover, that this ideality remains entirely abstract so long as man does not become aware of it as a personal appeal, so long as he does not transform this universal human potential into a personal mission. Or, so to speak, so long as he does not apply this ideality to his personal life. In fact, this idea is very classical. Kierkegaard’s existential-hermeneutic thought is an attempt to rehabilitate it for the modern eras.

   

SKS 27, 411, Papir 368:8 / JP 1, 653:20. Plato, Gorgias 490e. SKS 7, 261 / CUP1, 286. SKS 23, 91, NB15:128 / KJN 7, 90.

Concepts

Arne Grøn

The Concept of Existence Abstract: Reconsidering Kierkegaard’s existential approach demands that we ask ourselves: what kind of thinking is existential thinking? The present essay discusses the very operation of conceptualizing existence as human existence, that is, the intertwinement of the difficulty of existence and the difficulty of thinking (existence). It defines the concept of existence with three features: to be in becoming, to be oneself—in becoming, and, finally, to exist is to appear as oneself, to stand forward. It argues for a double move: understanding the concept of existence through the question of the human condition, and clarifying the conceptuality of this concept in terms of formal indication.

I Reconsidering In Concluding Unscientific Postscript Kierkegaard seeks to conceptualize existence as specifically human existence. “Thinking” human existence has, in various forms, been an important endeavor in twentieth century philosophy. Although perceived as a way of reflecting upon modernity, existential philosophy —and existentialism in particular— nonetheless seemed out of tune as early as the 1960s. This might not just be a matter of the changing times but might also show an inner difficulty in existential thinking. The endeavor to think the “weight” of human existence can easily turn the pathos of existence into a rhetoric about existence. That which is said to be existential thinking, then, fails as thinking: it does not reflect upon the problems inherent in such key notions such as authenticity and self-choice. Instead, it resorts to a jargon of authenticity and choosing oneself. This failure in itself is an argument for reconsidering what it means to think existence as human existence. What kind of thinking is existential thinking? In what sense is it existential? This twofold question leads us back to the concept of existence. However, if existence cannot be thought but makes us think, what is the conceptuality of this concept? In this essay, we take a road in search of an answer to the following difficulty: we only understand what existence means, as human existence, through “the difficulty of existence” (as it is called in Kierkegaard’s Postscript).¹ This has to do with the difficulty of “thinking exis-

 SKS 7, 275 / CUP1, 302. DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-004

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tence,” which is not “added to” human existence but concerns its human character. I suggest making yet another move in order to understand the concept of existence through the question of the human condition: how should we understand this condition if we are ourselves take part in it? This leads to a further suggestion: if existence is at play in the concepts by which we try to understand our existence, we can only give a formal indication of what existence means. We know what it means in and by existing—and yet we can forget what it means.

II Existence, Death, Oblivion Human existence has the peculiar feature that something may be so important to us that it concerns our existence. It is of “existential” importance. What does that mean? Would it be an answer to say that it concerns the character of our existence? Such an answer leads us back to the concept of existence. What is it in human existence that makes it possible for us to ask the question about the character of our existence? The very operation in Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript— bringing human existence “to concept”—is difficult. Conceptualizing existence requires us to “think” existence but, in a critical sense, existence cannot be thought. In thinking, while thinking, we exist. We lack the distance to turn existence into an object of thought. Yet, we do not simply exist. First, existence is marked by the possibility of death breaking into existence. This is not one possibility among others belonging to existence but defines existence as this existence between birth and death. As Kierkegaard notes, death is both certain and uncertain. The in-certainty of death turns existence itself into possibility for us while existing.² Does that give us the distance needed to ask what it means to exist? If it does, thinking the earnest thought of death is only possible in being turned back to existence: what does it mean to exist in the face of death? However, there is a second possibility that in fact seems to belong to human existence, namely, the possibility of being able to forget what it means to exist— thereby forgetting to ask this question. This is the underlying motif in Kierkegaard’s Postscript. In fact, it is implied in what Johannes Climacus, the pseudonymous author of the Postscript, describes as his “main thought”: “My main thought was that, because of the copiousness of knowledge, people in our day

 SKS 7, 153 – 158 / CUP1, 165 – 170.

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have forgotten what it means to exist, and what inwardness is.”³ Our oblivion of existence comes to mark our own existence. It affects the character of the life we live. This is not something that happens to us as a sort of destiny. It does come to us, but in and through what we do (to) ourselves. Giving an account of what it means to forget leads us into the question of subjectivity. In what sense is forgetting active—something we do—and in what sense is it passive—something that happens to us? Accounting for the possibility of forgetting is complicated because activity and passivity seem intertwined in ways that concern us as subjects seeking to lead the lives we live. Subjectivity is not to be accounted for without existence and vice versa. Thus, in contrast to Heidegger’s oblivion of being,⁴ Kierkegaard’s oblivion of existence opens the question of human subjectivity. In fact, it leads us back to the issue of “thinking” existence. Could we argue that forgetting is already a way of thinking? If what we have forgotten concerns us in our very existence, it should have made us think. The second motif of oblivion of existence concerns us in our subjectivity. We are able to forget what it means to exist. When we realize that this is our possibility, we can seek to think what this means. Formulating for ourselves the thought of forgetting, we acquire a distance to the fact of existing—a distance in which we can ask what this fact means, as a fact which we, in a critical sense, cannot go beyond. Although we cannot go beyond it, we should think something by the very fact of existing. Existence should make us think. We are the ones—existing. Forgetting what it means to exist, then, is a form of thoughtlessness and, as such, a form of indifference. It is thinking “without thinking,” or existing “without existing.” When this strange negative possibility is brought into the picture, we may come to think differently. Although we cannot “think existence,” we may seek to give an account of the concept of existence. Existential thinking, then, is a counter-move. We can ask ourselves what it means to exist—precisely as something which we can forget. Maybe this negative approach makes it possible for us to give a positive, yet formal, indication of the concept of existence.

 SKS 7, 227 / CUP1, 249.  Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen: Niemeyer 1971, p. 2: “Die genannte Frage [nach dem Sein] ist heute in Vergessenheit gekommen.” / Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, Oxford: Blackwell 1996, p. 21: “This question has today been forgotten.”

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III Existence, Becoming, Thinking Let us take our point of departure in Climacus formulating the difficulty of thinking existence in the opening quote above. What is thinking? We can speak of a movement of thought. This suggests that in thinking we move ourselves. We do so, however, because, in thinking, we are set in motion. Something makes us think. Thinking is not something which we must first produce ourselves. Thinking is an undertaking, yet we only undertake to think by the fact that we already find ourselves in thinking. We are thinking already by existing. What then does the beginning of the quote mean: “Existence, like motion, is a very difficult matter to handle”⁵? In what sense is existence motion? Climacus answers that existence means to be in becoming (“i Vorden”). But to be in becoming cannot just be explained by giving various examples of becoming.⁶ Rather, it concerns the character of human existence. It is how we are situated: we “are” in becoming. “Becoming” then is not to be understood from a fixed point of departure where we can delimit what is changing. This would presuppose a more basic notion of “in becoming,” indicated by the phrase: to be in becoming. “In becoming” we are on our way, not toward a specific undertaking, but toward ourselves, not as a sort of telos, but as the ones seeking to come to ourselves in becoming. This notion of “in becoming” is fundamental insofar as it indicates the condition of being human, namely, that we cannot view our existence from a point outside existence, as if this existence were concluded. We can only “view” existence in existing. We are “in the middle” of existence, between birth and death. We do not have an existence that makes “seeing from eternity” our point of view. In this sense of existence, “becoming” is beyond the classic divide between substance and becoming. “In becoming” has to do with the character of existence. Looking for a way to define existence we might again be struck by Climacus’ remark: “Existence, like motion…” What attracts us might be the alternative: substance or becoming. We may argue that existence is not something fixed or stable, not substance, but motion. But again, why then does Climacus’ sentence read: “like” motion? Existence is not just motion but to be in motion, and this we are ourselves. This is not just a feature added to “in becoming,” as if we were ourselves “added on” to existence. On the contrary, we are ourselves “in becoming.”

 SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 308  SKS 7, 73 – 92, 174– 181, 278 – 281, 363 – 383, 412, 531 / CUP1, 72– 93, 189 – 199, 306 – 309, 399 – 421, 454, 583.

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We have, then, the following two defining features of existence as human existence: First, to exist is to be in becoming, in the middle of life, on one’s way; second, it is to be oneself in becoming, that is: relating to oneself as the one becoming. Existence is not just motion but like motion in that we are ourselves in becoming.

IV Existence, Subjectivity, Thinking For some decades it has been fashionable to criticize the idea of the so-called “stable subject.” Such a critique does not help us understand what subjectivity means but, rather, hinders us in asking the very question. If subjectivity is understood as movement, it is movement as subjectivity. If the subject is set in motion, it is so as a subject. This does not mean that we first have a subject which is then set in motion. Rather, the task is to give an account of what it means to be a self in motion, relating to oneself in being moved. The opening of Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death offers a processual definition of selfhood. To be a self is to relate to oneself. Again, this is not to say that selfhood is movement but that it is a self in becoming. The processual “relating to oneself” implies that there is one who relates to oneself. Existing takes a subject in the sense of the one who exists. She exists as a subject: standing out from herself, as herself. That is implied in relating to herself. She relates to herself in what she is doing in response to what happens to her. As a self relating to herself, she has a history in which she begins having already begun. She is herself in becoming. It is easy to be fascinated by movement, but if we seek to take ourselves in terms of movement, how do we understand ourselves? Can we account for ourselves as the ones taking ourselves in this way, as the ones to whom our existences are motion? If we see ourselves as beings that are changing, we probably take this in terms of possibilities we have. We do not let ourselves be dissolved into what happens to us but, rather, seek to maintain ourselves to the point of pretending that we define, or construct, ourselves through what happens to us. The idea of a narrative identity can function as a construction of identity this way. But if we are ourselves changed this should concern us as the ones changing. We are ourselves the ones to relate to ourselves undergoing or suffering the changes that may change us. We are not simply changed but we are the ones being changed, that is, the ones who must live this change. We do something to ourselves in being changed. If existence means to be in becoming, what about thinking? It is a movement too. We are moved in thinking, we come to think, something makes us think. Yet,

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in thinking we think. For example, being under the impression of what happens to us, we may seek to withdraw ourselves; we may offer resistance, not accepting that we are defined by the circumstances we appear to be subjected to. Thus, in thinking, we may pause or even stop. Something may bring us to a halt and make us think, but that depends on us stopping and thinking. This brief outline may indicate what it means to think while existing. Although existence cannot be thought, thinking belongs to human existence. “Just as existence has joined thinking and existing, inasmuch as an existing person is a thinking person,” Climacus observes,⁷ leaving to the reader to answer the implicit question: how does thinking take part in human existence? In order to find an answer we should go back to the twofold definition of existence just given above: existing, we are ourselves in becoming. Being subjected to change, how do we maintain ourselves? Preserving ourselves requires us to stop and think. In what we do in order to maintain ourselves there is thinking in this sense of pausing or even breaking off. Existence “has joined thinking and existing,” Climacus says. How is thinking of existential importance? Of course, if it is about so-called existential issues, it has the appearance of being existential, but this does not concern thinking as an existential movement in itself. The existential significance of thinking has to do with the question of what it means to exist: to be oneself in becoming. How is this intertwined with the question of what it means to think? Thinking is itself a movement and yet it is not absorbed into movement. On the contrary, thinking in its existential import is about not being consumed by what we are undergoing in the movements we are subjected to, but it is about being able to stop, reflect, and resist. It concerns the one thinking, that is, it concerns what it is to be a subject. However, there seems to be more implied in the formula: “If I think it [existence], I cancel it, and then I do not think it.”⁸ Why do I cancel existence when thinking it? I do not stop existing when thinking. What, then, is the point? Kierkegaard lets Climacus make an extraordinary claim: The difficulty is “the difficulty of thinking the eternal in a process of becoming [at tænke det Evige i Vorden].”⁹ The eternal is no more an object of thought than existence is. Rather, it concerns the one thinking; it asks what it is to think existence as oneself in becoming. In existing, do we truly do so?

 SKS 7, 286 / CUP1, 314.  SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 308 – 309.  SKS 7, 280 / CUP1, 308.

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Climacus indicates that truly to exist is truly difficult: “But truly to exist, that is, to permeate one’s existence with consciousness, simultaneously to be eternal, far beyond it as it were, and nevertheless present in it and nevertheless in a process of becoming—that is truly difficult.”¹⁰ What is important for now is the tension indicated: “simultaneously to be eternal, far beyond it [one’s existence] as it were, and nevertheless present in it and nevertheless in a process of becoming.” This is simultaneously a tension in existing and thinking. It has to do with the extraordinary claim of thinking the eternal in a process of becoming which Climacus even formulates as the claim that thinking is eternal: “But since [Forsaavidt] all thinking is eternal, the difficulty is for the existing person.”¹¹ Obviously, thinking is thinking “in time.” While thinking we exist. How then is there something eternal to thinking? Let me propose that we link temporality and subjectivity that is implied in thinking. How do we exist in thinking? Where are we when we think?¹² The person thinking what it is to be in becoming is herself in becoming. This existential fact is not part of, or an element in, the process of becoming, but it is what makes it what it is: becoming as being in becoming. The person thinking the movement cannot reduce herself to the movement. If she does, she does something to herself: she lets herself be led by what leads her. She becomes someone who just follows, but this—the just following—is still something she herself does. Thus, in order to understand the existential we need to take the temporality and subjectivity of thinking into account. Climacus does not explicate his point. It remains an indication. The notion that there is something eternal to thinking seems at first to run counter to the insight Climacus insists on, namely, that in thinking we are not moved to a position of sub specie aeterni. What, then, is the point? If I think existence, I cancel it. Why? Is it because there is something eternal to thinking, and that, in thinking, I am somewhere far beyond existence? I am moved to a position in which I can see this existence as if from somewhere else, beyond, but precisely because it is mine, I am the one to live it. Still, what is “the eternal” in thinking? The argument I have outlined suggests that it concerns the existential character of thinking. What the difficulty of “thinking existence” brings into view is the difficulty of existence, which is to be carried in existing. In existing, the character of our existence is itself at play. There is an

 Ibid.  SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 308.  Cf. Hannah Arendt’s question in Part One, Section Four of her The Life of the Mind, San Diego: Harcourt 1978, pp. 197– 216.

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infinite possibility accompanying us in existing: that of losing oneself, of not preserving oneself, in the life one leads. Thinking itself is tense. In thinking we are far beyond and yet in the middle of existence. This tension to be carried in thinking reflects the tension that we exist between two features that define human existence: being oneself in becoming. How is this existential tension reflected in thinking? In a critical sense, human existence itself is at stake in thinking despite the fact that thinking is at distance from existing. In thinking, it is as if we are outside existing. This gives us the possibility of resisting—but also of forgetting the fact that we ourselves exist. Does the possibility of our failure in thinking show the existential importance of thinking?

V Abstraction—Distraction—Making a Show of It I have emphasized the existential import of thinking, which is to some extent contrary to the movement in the Postscript. The negative possibilities of thinking are in the foreground of the Postscript: abstraction and distraction, which culminate in forgetting to ever ask what it means to exist and in thoughtless thinking. However, the negative possibilities of thinking do not just fall on the other side of existential thinking but, rather, concern the question of what it is to think. In order to see this, let us first try to establish the link between the positive and the negative possibility of thinking. We think under the impression of what comes to us in being in the world. We are ourselves beings in becoming. Thinking is the possibility of not just letting ourselves be absorbed in being moved, but of stopping and reclaiming ourselves as the ones thinking. This requires us to put up resistance and that again demands that we abstract. Thinking as abstraction, however, might turn into the distraction that is thematized in the Postscript, which culminates in the figure of the abstract and absent-minded (distrait) thinker. The need to abstract may turn into a power of abstraction that occupies us to the point that we become absent-minded. Becoming absent-minded is something that happens to us. Yet it concerns us in what we do. We distract ourselves and let ourselves be distracted. What we let ourselves be distracted from is the fact that we are the ones thinking. Failure to think on our own is existential. We fail as we are the ones thinking, thereby letting ourselves be captured by distraction. Being the one who has failed indicates the existential import, or even character, of thinking. Thinking is something we ourselves do—not something that “thinking” does to us. Yet, abstraction is a power that may capture us, as Kierkegaard points out

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in A Literary Review, published shortly after the Postscript. It is a social power that we ourselves lend power to, coming under its spell ourselves. It is a human, all human, power, enabling us to become inhuman. The existential import of thinking, then, has to do with the possibility that we will fail in thinking. It is a failure to think ourselves, that is, a failure to take into account that we are the ones thinking. Thinking is an activity in which we are—or at least should be—“by” ourselves. But there is a danger “from within,” as it were, namely, that thinking changes character. Here we come back to the negative possibility noted in the foreground of the Postscript. Thus, Climacus notes, thinking has become “something secondhand [noget Tillært].”¹³ Precisely because thinking should make us begin on our own, we can even make a show of it: “What, if anything, does it mean to think in such a way that one always merely makes a show of it because everything that is said is absolutely revoked?”¹⁴ In thinking there is a claim that we are thinking. This makes it possible for us to pretend to be thinking. We can make the movements of thinking as if it were something to be performed. In the negative a strong notion of thinking is indicated here: thinking that does not make a show of thinking. Thinking in this emphatic sense is to think against one’s own possibility of pretending, of being thoughtless in thinking.

VI Situated in Existence No less than Heidegger’s Being and Time, Kierkegaard’s Postscript is a countermove to oblivion. It is also a book on existence and time, which opens the question of the existential and the ethical. The oblivion of existence takes place in thinking as abstraction and distraction, which makes us absent-minded in existing. We come to exist in distraction as we become absent-minded to the life we live. What is it that we ignore? A first answer is: the difficulty of existence. In the language of abstraction, that which is the difficulty of existence and of the existing person never actually appears; even less is the difficulty explained. Precisely because abstract thinking is sub specie aeterni, it disregards the concrete, the temporal, the becoming of existence, and the difficult situation of the existing person because of his being composed of the eternal and the temporal situated in existence.¹⁵

 SKS 7, 280 / CUP1, 308.  SKS 7, 286 / CUP1, 314.  SKS 7, 274 / CUP1, 301.

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A human being, as a synthesis of the eternal and the temporal, is “situated in existence” (bestedt i Existents). This is “the difficulty of existence.” Thinking as abstraction seems to be able to disregard time and see things sub specie aeterni. But thinking is temporal in a radical sense: “whether it will be manifest when everything is settled in eternity that the most insignificant circumstance was absolutely important—I do not decide. I can truthfully say that time does not allow me to do that—simply because I am in time.”¹⁶ To be “in time” goes to the core of our existence. “In time” means to be situated in existence. We are ourselves in time, even when we think. In thinking, time comes between. ¹⁷ It does so even in our relating to ourselves. The definition in the opening of The Sickness unto Death of the self as self-relation relating to itself can be read as indicating the temporality of selfhood. We are to begin, but we only begin having already begun. To be situated “in existence” is to be “in time”—even when we are not in time but too late. Let us briefly look at the following key passage in the Postscript: In existence, the individual is a concretion, time is concrete, and even while the individual deliberates he is ethically responsible for the use of time. Existence is not an abstract rush job but a striving and an unremitting “in the meantime.” Even at the moment the task is assigned, something is already wasted, because there is an “in the meantime” and the beginning is not promptly made. This is how it goes backward: the task is given to the individual in existence, and just as he wants to plunge in straightway (which can be done only in abstracto and on paper, because the garb of the abstracter, the big spender’s trousers, is very different from the existing person’s straitjacket of existence), and wants to begin, another beginning is discovered to be necessary, the beginning of the enormous detour that is dying to immediacy. And just as the beginning is about to be made here, it is discovered that, since meanwhile time has been passing, a bad beginning has been made and that the beginning must be made by becoming guilty, and from that moment the total guilt, which is decisive, practices usury with new guilt.¹⁸

This passage is about the character of existence. We are situated “in existence.” Existence requires us to step forward, in deciding and choosing, but we only do so situated. Being “in time” we have already begun. Something is already wasted, as Climacus puts it. We exist in possibilities, but this means that we have already wasted some time in which we could have acted. Time is not only about possibilities coming to us, but also about possibilities that are gone, which makes it possible for us to see that we have failed to respond. However, the

 SKS 7, 374 / CUP1, 411.  SKS 7, 286 / CUP1, 314.  SKS 7, 478 / CUP1, 526.

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phrase “dying to immediacy” does not capture what it means to come to understand that we are “in time.” We cannot interpret ourselves by invoking immediacy, not even immediacy lost. As The Concept of Anxiety observes, what is lost is innocence, not immediacy. The movement “backward” to existence is radical in a twofold sense, joining existing and thinking. Although we can, in thinking, abstract from time and move, as it were, beyond existence, we do so while existing. This is not just an obvious fact to be noted and then left behind but, rather, a matter of what it means to think. As the ones thinking, it is demanded of us that we give an account of ourselves. The demand of autonomy is existential. In thinking, we ourselves are to begin—as the ones already situated in existence, having already begun. Giving an account of oneself is to take oneself—as the one existing— into account. Let us call this the second sense of the movement “backward” to existence. What about the first? The first sense is indicated by the remark made by Climacus in the Postscript that the backdoor to eternity is closed. The movement “backward” to existence turns the movement of transcendence around. It shows existence to be the horizon for the movement beyond existence “as it were.” In the movement “beyond” time, we are “in time.” This opens up into the second sense, namely, to the demand that we give an account of ourselves. Situated in existence we are to situate ourselves in existence, but it is difficult to take ourselves into account as the ones thinking while existing. However, this difficulty only intensifies the demand that we give an account of ourselves. Our point of departure was the observation that existence “is a very difficult matter to handle.” Climacus also took this to be a difficulty in thinking: “If I think it, I cancel it, and then I do not think it. It would seem correct to say that there is something that cannot be thought—namely, existing. But again there is the difficulty that existence puts it together in this way: the one who is thinking is existing.”¹⁹ Existing and thinking are joined in the fact that we, in thinking, are “situated in existence.” This means that we discover that we are beings that are what we are in thinking, beings that can abstract from existence to the point of situating ourselves in a point of view outside of existence, as it were. Existence is difficult to handle in thinking but the difficulty in thinking becomes one in existing. We are not first called to join existing and thinking. As Climacus notes, existence does that—i. e., it joins existing and thinking—before we do. That is implied in our being situated in existence.

 SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 309.

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Existential thinking concerns the “joining” of existing and thinking. Up to this point, I have focused on the difficulty of existential thinking in terms of structure: giving an account of what it means that existence joins thinking and existence. But the difficulty itself is existential—it is a matter of what we do in thinking. What does it mean that we exist while thinking? There is something existential to thinking, also when it takes the form of abstraction and distraction. In thinking, we do something to ourselves, without being compelled to notice it, namely, that we situate ourselves. Thus, in abstracting from time we may place ourselves in position as if sub specie aeterni were our position. We abstract from our being human, situated in existence. The existential import of thinking begins here, in the negative. Being situated in existence means that we, in thinking, do something that we have to live with in existing. We situate ourselves. Abstraction may come into the life we are to live. Even if thinking takes the form of avoiding the task of existing in time, it takes place in this life. The avoidance itself testifies to the difficulty and the task, but that does not change the fact that it is avoidance. The existential is not first and foremost to be found in an existential act of decision or choice. It is rather that which gives weight to such an act in the first place. The existential in this more basic sense concerns our “being situated in existence,” and this comes to the fore in the question: what we do in and by what we do. Thus, thinking is a doing in the sense that we situate ourselves in the world. We do something to ourselves as the ones thinking. We exist while thinking. What does “exist” mean here? It is more than being oneself in becoming (the twofold definition given above). Do we encounter a deeper, third sense of existence here? How does this come into view? “Existence without motion is unthinkable,” Climacus states.²⁰ This may be rephrased as: Existence cannot be thought without existence. From here we could move to the notion of formal indication, but let us first further clarify the character of the existential. Even when we move beyond our existence, we are situated in existence. We move beyond—as it were. The movement beyond existence in thinking bears witness to this very existence. This is the existence we think by. Existing and thinking are intertwined—in existing and in thinking. In thinking we can stop and pause, resist and respond for ourselves, even while existing, being ourselves in becoming. But in thinking, we can also encounter ourselves as situated in existence. We exist while thinking. At first sight, thinking is the move beyond time and existence, in abstraction, but in this very move we carry our-

 SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 308.

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selves along, whether we want to or not. That is, in thinking we then appear ourselves. Do we have a view here of what it means to exist while thinking?

VII To Exist—and to Exist The concept of existence seems to carry its own impossibility. As Climacus has it: “Existence, like motion, is a very difficult matter to handle. If I think it, I cancel it, and then I do not think it.” As it appears, existence cannot be thought, and yet existence itself joins thinking and existing. The difficulty of “thinking existence” concerns existence itself. This nevertheless opens the possibility of defining existence by focusing on what makes the definition difficult. Thus, as we have seen, Climacus conceptualizes human existence by accentuating two features: existence means to be in becoming and to be oneself. To be oneself in becoming is a tense structure. At first sight, the definition seems to confirm the divide between existence and thinking. While existence is movement, thinking is abstraction. If I try to think existence as movement, I stop and do not take part in the movement. Yet, thinking is a kind of movement too, and existence is like motion, that is: it is not just motion. Therefore, Climacus takes walking as a metaphor for existing: Existing is like walking. When everything is and is at rest, it deceptively looks as if everything is equally important, that is, if I can attain a view of it that is equally quiet. As soon as motion commences, however, and I am along in the motion, then the walking itself is a continual differentiating. But this comparison cannot state the absolute differentiating, because walking is only a finite motion.²¹

Existence is “like” walking, as it is “like” motion. What is it more than motion or walking? The quote suggests that it is the significance of the fact that “I am along in the motion” (in Danish: “og jeg [sættes] med i Bevægelsen”). If walking is only a finite motion, what is, then, an infinite? The infinite is indicated by the tense structure of existence: to be oneself in becoming. The one existing is not reduced to the movement of becoming. This comes to the fore in thinking as pausing, resisting, and responding. Thus, thinking is not just abstraction from movement but is itself a movement: collecting oneself, relating to oneself as the one in becoming. As such, thinking concerns the tense structure of existing. But the infinite movement is a matter of thinking only as a matter of existing. If thinking is collecting oneself, if it refuses to let oneself be reduced to time and the move-

 SKS 7, 375 / CUP1, 413.

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ment one is subjected to, if it instead asks what this movement means to oneself, it is nonetheless still a movement in time. How then should we understand thinking as movement? This answer would likewise answer another question: what does it mean that we exist while thinking? Thinking is not only a movement we make but also a movement of coming to appear—as the one thinking. We may turn it into a movement we make. If we do, thinking becomes something we perform. We may even make a show of it. But such negative possibilities testify to the existential import of thinking. In thinking we ourselves can begin. In coming to appear, we can collect ourselves and step forward as the one thinking. Does this bring forth what we have been looking for: a third way of defining existing, which is more fundamental in the sense that it makes it possible to better understand the twofold definition we have given so far: to be oneself in becoming? The twofold definition leaves open the question: how are we ourselves in becoming? If we accentuate both—to be in becoming and to be oneself—we may reach the answer: to be oneself in becoming is to appear as oneself. We then have the answer to the following question too: what does “exist” mean when claiming that we exist while thinking or even in thinking? To exist is to appear in the sense that one’s self appears. In fact, we do not have three features of existence but, rather, the unfolding of one complex, tense structure that opens the question of the existential. Existence means to be in becoming, and to be in becoming as oneself, and that means: to come to appear as oneself. In the decisive sense, then, i. e., in terms of the existential, existing means: to appear as oneself, to step forward, to stand out. If being human is defined as being a self, relating to oneself, the way in which it is a self is to be in becoming oneself, and that is to exist in the sense of stepping forward. There is a subject in this “stepping forward.” It is to be determined in determining oneself. If existence means to be in becoming, how should we account for this being? To “be” in becoming is to “exist,” and to exist means to be oneself in becoming in the sense of coming to appear as oneself. This is not something that just happens to us, it depends on what we do ourselves. We ourselves come to appear in stepping forward in what we do. To exist in the decisive, existential sense is to stand or to step forward in the world, into which we are born, and to stand out from the world in which we are. Or to put it in more Kierkegaardian terms: it is to exist situated in existence. How is this sense of existing existential? If we define existing as standing or stepping forward, it appears as something we do, and yet existing is not a specific act but rather something we do in what we are doing. Even more, it may be an underlying suffering in what we do. Still, existing as standing or stepping for-

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ward concerns us. We are the ones to exist. In existing, we face an open question, a task, that of becoming manifest in what we do. Again, to become manifest is not a doing in the sense of a specific act but concerns us in our doings. Do we ourselves become manifest in what we do? Of course we do—or do we? In question here is the existential. On the one hand, the existential is existence as condition, articulated in the formula: we are situated in existence. We cannot move beyond existence—in thinking we can, “as if we could,” we move beyond existence, having existence as a condition or horizon. In thinking, we exist. On the other hand, the existential means appearing, stepping forward. In thinking we stand out from the world but do so in the world. The formula is then expressed as follows: we exist (in the sense of standing out, standing forth), situated in existence. We “are” situated—we exist situated. If the decisive sense of existing is to appear as oneself, to stand forth as oneself, there is a difference in existing, indicated by the phrase: truly to exist. The difference opens up to a decision in existing. As quoted above: “But truly to exist, that is, to permeate one’s existence with consciousness, simultaneously to be eternal, far beyond it as it were, and nevertheless present in it and nevertheless in a process of becoming—that is truly difficult.”²² Truly to exist is truly difficult. Yet, the quote may indeed be misleading. It suggests that to permeate one’s existence with consciousness is something we can do, as a separate act, as it were. It has the look of a decision to be taken. But permeating one’s existence with consciousness can only be done in existing, questioning the character of one’s existence: do I truly exist? As noted above, the weight then lies on the tension indicated: “simultaneously to be eternal, far beyond it [one’s existence] as it were, and nevertheless present in it and nevertheless in a process of becoming.” The tension is existential. It has to do with the question about what it means to exist in the sense of standing forward as oneself. Remarkably, this again concerns thinking, or the existential significance of thinking: to exist as we think. “Existing in relation to thinking is not something that follows by itself any more than it is thoughtlessness.”²³ Truly to exist is not a separate act we can perform and then take ourselves into view, thinking: now we truly exist. It is not something we can perform—any more than thinking is. Or, to be more precise, we can in fact perform thinking, even make a show of it. Maybe we can make a show of existence too? In the last quote, Climacus brought into view the possibility of thoughtlessness—that is, the possibility of forgetting to ask what it means to exist. It is the

 SKS 7, 280 / CUP1, 308.  SKS 7, 231 / CUP1, 254– 255.

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possibility that the fact of existing does not force us to think. This suggests that to exist in the emphatic sense of “truly” existing should be understood by way of the possibility of not doing so. Climacus makes a figure out of this possibility, in particular the figure of the abstract thinker, who is so absent-minded that he does not see that his “own existence contradicts his thinking.”²⁴ The way Climacus then figures human existence operates with the possibility that one’s own existence is not contradicted by one’s existence. This is the possibility of reduplication. But can we imagine that our existence would not contradict our thinking? Or rather, can we understand ourselves in this possibility? Climacus accentuates the fact that existing in the eminent sense is a task by stating: “To think is one thing and to exist in what has been thought is something else.”²⁵ Is this “something else” our own possibility (in Heidegger’s sense)? To exist in what we think—is that something we can do? To permeate one’s existence with consciousness requires thinking. To exist in what has been thought is not to apply thinking to existence. Rather, it requires that we understand in existence, that is, that we understand what it means to be situated in existence. Thus, the relation of thinking and existing is complicated—in thinking and existing. This concerns what it means to exist in the sense of appearing as oneself, standing or stepping forth, standing out (as) oneself. This is to unfold what it means to be oneself in becoming. In thinking, we are ourselves in becoming. It is a matter of beginning, of thinking on our own; said differently, the fact that we exist in thinking should make us think. In what sense is existing in the eminent sense—truly existing—a possibility we have? It is not a possibility that can be realized in a distinct act, as a task to be solved. Even if we were to say that it is a continuing task that we must solve in existing, we probably fail to capture how radical the possibility is. It requires that we understand ourselves situated in existence. “Situated in existence” indicates the existential as an inescapable condition that accompanies the existential as the “act” of appearing or standing out as oneself. This is the act we can perform in all acts. As such, it can only be thematized in calling ourselves into question as the ones acting. Ironically, the radical character of existing in the eminent sense is to be seen in the constant possibility of failing by making “truly to exist” into something we perform. This is the danger inherent in existential thinking, namely, the danger that we will turn the pathos of existence—the burden of carrying the weight of existing—into a rhetoric of existing. In that case, truly existing then becomes

 SKS 7, 276 / CUP1, 304.  SKS 7, 231 / CUP1, 254.

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“truly existing,” that is, a performance of the movements or gestures by which we define what it is to exist in the eminent sense. The danger is present in Climacus’ Postscript, for example, when he operates with alternative versions of the figures we might encounter: the abstract, absentminded thinker on the one hand, and the subjective thinker on the other, the latter defined by the act of reduplication. Or when he defines the joining of thinking and existence by way of different media: Just as existence has joined thinking and existing, inasmuch as an existing person is a thinking person, so are there two media: the medium of abstraction and the medium of actuality. But pure thinking is yet a third medium, very recently invented. It begins, it is said, after the most exhaustive abstraction. Pure thinking is—what shall I say—piously or thoughtlessly unaware of the relation that abstraction still continually has to that from which it abstracts.²⁶

Speaking of the “medium” of actuality is misleading. It may lead us into thinking that we face an alternative between actuality and distraction, with pure thinking as the third option against which we can define ourselves. Pure thinking, however, affects the very act of existing: to appear as oneself. It is radical not in the sense of a third “medium” but as a possibility accompanying us in thinking and existing, the possibility of being thoughtlessly unaware of the fact that we exist while thinking. In thinking we do something to ourselves: we situate ourselves. To be thoughtless does not take much—avoiding the possibility of being thoughtless does.

VIII Existence—the Human Condition To exist is to appear (as) oneself, to step forward. It is to begin, and that requires us to think on our own. In thinking we—should—come to appear as ourselves. But how do we begin in thinking? Being under the impression of our own reflection we may come to think that we begin by making ourselves think. This impression is not unfounded, because thinking is an activity in which we are present to ourselves. Yet thinking for ourselves does not imply that we think by ourselves. Rather something makes us think. We come to think not least by encountering difficulties, but we do so in thinking. Existential thinking deals with existence preceding thinking. Remarkably, however, existence precedes thinking in thinking. What sets us in motion—mak-

 SKS 7, 286 / CUP1, 314.

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ing us think—is existence, but how can existence be thought? The difficulty of “thinking” existence does not leave thinking and existing on two sides of an alternative we face. Rather, it has to do with the difficulty of existing, which Climacus brings into focus. My suggestion is that existential thinking concerns the human condition to which thinking itself belongs. We exist in thinking. Although existential thinking has the look of reflecting the experiences of modernity, it reassumes classic philosophical motifs, first and foremost by asking what it means to think while existing. Philosophically, thinking begins with questions in which thinking itself is in question. Even when it is established, thinking in this emphatic sense is still a matter of beginning anew, with the questions in which it originates.²⁷ Human existence is such a question. More than that, it is not one question among others. Rather, it is the primary example of a question that turns thinking itself into a question—precisely as that which cannot be thought. Existence cannot be thought inasmuch as we exist while thinking. Existence makes us think. If, however, thinking should lead to insight, what kind of insight is thinking that concerns human existence? Is it insight into the questions defining human existence? Thinking in this emphatic sense may appear as an answer to the question it harbors. However, thinking in which an insight originates may lose its original motif. It may turn into repetition in which thinking is just performed again. This is a form of forgetting. Although thinking is an activity in which we are present to ourselves, there is also inertia in thinking. This even seems to be a feature of thinking that makes it human. It is part of the human condition making us face the task of beginning anew. We encounter the question of what it means to exist in a remarkable form of temporality: existence as a matter of thinking in the deep sense that the very fact of existing should make us think; in thinking we exist but realizing this should change our ways of thinking. We encounter this intertwinement of thinking and existing in the form that we should have changed our ways of thinking. Existential thinking, then, is not a special sort of thinking dealing with “existential” issues. Rather, it concerns the human condition, including the fact that thinking is part of our being human. This leads us to the notion of the existential as both the condition, situated in existence, and the existential as the task to exist in the sense of appearing as oneself. Situated in existence we ourselves are to step forward. That is, existential thinking concerns what it means to exist, taking into account that existing makes—or should make—us think. Exis-

 It is in this sense Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology is existential; see the introduction to his Phenomenology of Perception, trans. by Donald L. Landes, London: Routledge 2012, pp. 1– 65.

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tential thinking is a second reflection in that it seeks to clarify the existential character of thinking. As such it is still performative in that it must also show what it is about. In Kierkegaard’s Postscript this is done by letting existential thinking be a counter-move to oblivion. However, as such it also reflects on the human condition: what it is to be human so as to be able to forget to ask what it means to exist. Seeking to understand the concept of existence through the question of the human condition, however, implies reconsidering this question. What does it mean that the human condition is existential? The condition is given to us as human but not in the sense that it is the condition on which we then exist, as if to be human were to enact or perform what it is to be human. Rather, the human condition presents us with radical possibilities of becoming inhuman— in the Postscript primarily in the form of forgetting what it is to be human. If we forget to ask ourselves this question, we change. The human condition means that we are situated in existing as human beings. In existing we are ourselves part of the condition. This does not mean that we can change the condition as we can change our environment. Being a part of the human condition we cannot change the question of what it means to be human. To exist in the full sense means to appear as oneself, to stand out as being oneself in becoming. It is something that we ourselves do—although it is not a specific act but rather the act in everything we do. To exist separates or isolates the individual as the one who exists. It singularizes each and every one of us and, by that radical move which we can never catch up with, it unites us as human beings. This move is indicated in the Postscript when Climacus links the existential to the ethical. The ethical singularizes and yet it is the breath that makes it possible for us to relate to each other. We share the condition of being separated in existing. What it is to exist as a human being can only be understood alone— in existing. How, then, is it possible to communicate with each other about what it is to be what we are? This is the difficulty of existential thinking in the double sense: what makes existential thinking difficult and what it addresses. The focal point of the difficulty is the concept of existence. What is the conceptuality of this concept? If existential thinking points to existence as the human condition, how does this “pointing” function? My suggestion is to look for the answer in reconsidering the notion of formal indication.²⁸ A formal indication depends on the one ad To the notion of formal indication, see especially Heidegger, Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. by Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 2004; see also, Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Being and Time, Berkeley: University of California Press 1993.

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dressed: only she understands what is in view by “filling out,” as it were, what can only be indicated. The notion of formal indication can be developed by bringing the questions implied in Kierkegaard’s indirect communication into a philosophical account of the human condition. The concept of existence is a formal indication in an extra or intensified sense inasmuch as the concepts we use in order to understand what it is to exist are formally indicative. Here, understanding requires us to understand for ourselves, to “fill out,” as it were, what can only be indicated. In understanding what existence means, we should be able to walk on our own. We only understand what it means to exist in existing. Existence separates us as the ones who exist—and as the ones having to understand what this means. But the formal indication only offers an outline to be filled out by presenting us with the task of understanding. We share the condition of being situated in existence, and we can understand that precisely by encountering the difficulty of thinking what it means to exist. Furthermore, we also gain resources to understand by experiencing failures to understand, and even by facing possibilities of forgetting, not to mention our capacity to pretend that we speak the language of human existence.

Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen

Thinking of Existence Abstract: This essay aims to outline in what ways Kierkegaard’s thinking of existence not only brings into view a concept of existence, but, more fundamentally, enables one to locate an opening to questioning anew the relation of thinking and existence. This thinking of existence does not seek to dissolve existence into knowledge but aims at intensifying the question of a thinking grounded not in the conclusion made in “an external relation between a knower and a non-knower” of which non-knowledge is the negative determination of knowledge, but rather of a thinking grounded in existence. Du warfst dich hoch, aber jeder geworfene Stein muss— fallen! ¹

The theme of existence pervading Kierkegaard’s thought is surely not a theme unique to him. When venturing to address the question of existence in Kierkegaard one must therefore also address the fact that one is standing in the midst of a tradition of thinking existence. However, there is something adamant about Kierkegaard’s thinking embedded in the field of interest for existence because it does not designate “existence” as though it were merely one concept among others but for itself in its very experience. This is so because to take an interest in the thinking of existence entails a space in which we who are thinking of existence are ourselves always already situated, and in terms of which our own existence have already come into view. Hence, from the very beginning any interest in thinking existence appears to be caught within the existence that precedes it. This situation of precedence or inheritance belongs to the thinking of existence, and should therefore be taken into consideration. In what follows, then, one should bear in mind that it is not so much a question of giving an introduction to Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existence, as it is to suggest certain pertinent features of this thinking of existence. Surely Kierkegaard is a thinker who is very attentive to the question of existence. Still, what needs to be developed is how, for Kierkegaard, this question is essentially linked to the question of thinking. As Kierkegaard studies make abundantly clear, Kierkegaard’s criticism of speculative or abstract thought in  Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, in Kritische Studienausgabe, vols. 1– 15, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin: de Gruyter 1967– 1977, vol. 4, p. 198. DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-005

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favor of the so-called concrete thinking of existence has, in the broad sense of existential thinking, been perceived as his main contribution to the question of existence.² At this early point, let me note that the aim of this essay is not to outline a general theory of Kierkegaard’s existential thinking. Instead, I shall discuss Kierkegaard’s approach to the question of thinking of existence by following a key sentence from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript: “…an existing being is a thinking being…,”³ not because the Postscript offers some privileged theoretical scheme for a thinking of existence, but because it addresses the conditions that enable us to question it in the first place. On this view, Johannes Climacus’ key sentence implies not only an interest in the question of existence per se, but above all an attunement towards its relation to thinking. This opens up significant questions. If we were to respond to these, we would have to give a full account of Climacus’ critical approach to the question of existence and thinking, and then examine their relationship. Yet, at some point the question must also be posed about whether or not Climacus (or Kierkegaard) might be tempted by a certain relegation of thinking to a derivative position with respect to a pre-thinkable originariness of existence; that is to say, to an existence to which one is always already arriving since it cannot be prepared for in thought. Thus, even if thinking belongs to the movement of existence, there seems to remain something in existence that escapes thinking. Indeed, the thinking of what in existence escapes thought requires a more detailed account than the one I am able to provide within the limited space of this essay: I shall therefore merely outline the contours of a thinking of existence which, in its withdrawal from the demand and expectations of transferring existence to knowledge, nevertheless remains thinking.

I The Great Confusion In a revealing remark on the so-called “speculatively significant nineteenth century,” Climacus ponders whether “a great confusion is not brought about” when “the scientific approach is transferred directly to existence.”⁴ Although there is a

 Pattison, for example, argues that “the limitations of speculative thought with regard to thinking existence are adduced, serving as a foil to the more positive approach now being ventured” (George Pattison, The Philosophy of Kierkegaard, London: Routledge 2005, p. 39).  SKS 7, 286 / CUP1, 314.  SKS 7, 314 / CUP1, 288. Let it be said at once that many of the questions at issue here could also be developed based on other texts. To give one example without going into further details,

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lot more to be said about this remark, the focus of this section will be to consider what is meant by the term confusion. In what will come to be seen as a characteristic shift from a “scientific attitude” to a concrete thinking of existence, Climacus regards this confusion as significant to the question of the relation between existence and thinking. At stake in this appearance of confusion is not, argues Climacus, the superficial sense of confusion according to which the scientific attitude simply mistakes two things, such as when someone confuses “the anecdotal differences between Peter and Paul.”⁵ To avoid an accumulation of confusing anecdotes, Climacus instead prepares the ground for an experiment concerning “what it is to live,” and since others cannot provide the experimenter with this experience: “I must experience that by myself, and therefore I must understand myself, not the reverse.”⁶ In this regard a certain priority of the question of what it means “to understand oneself in existence”⁷ comes into view. Indeed, one could argue that to understand oneself in existence consists in understanding one’s existence as given in the form of a meaning by which understanding becomes a kind of hermeneutical designation of existence. However, Climacus’ remarks on understanding oneself in existence go in another direction of hermeneutics, I think, insofar as he who understands himself in existence only comes to understand that there is nothing to understand. Nothing indeed, in the sense that the meaning of existence is not to be understood as some achievable goal of understanding—as if the meaning of existence could be taken into possession without the existing person already being dispossessed by this person’s very own existence. In this respect, the approach of Climacus encourages us to bring a concrete situation into view, that is, to have a closer look at how we encounter our situated existence in thinking. At the same time, however, Climacus cautions against focusing exclusively on extracted experiences of life as if these were capable of

the introduction to the Concept of Anxiety also takes up the question of confusion in terms of the limits of science. Thus, Vigilius Haufniensis says that scientific deliberation risks forgetting “where it properly belongs…it forgets itself and becomes something else [bliver en anden], and thereby acquires the dubious perfectibility of being able to become anything and everything” (SKS 4, 317 / CA, 9).  SKS 7, 519 / CUP1, 470. See also SKS 7, 389 / CUP1, 318.  SKS 7, 136 / CUP1, 146 – 147.  SKS 7, 322 / CUP1, 352.

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unlocking the meaning of existence in general. Hence, we must avoid internalizing the misunderstandings of others by “paying sharp attention to”⁸ ourselves. For Climacus, the confusion in question has to do with a misunderstanding emerging in the attempt to understand “an actual human being,” which partly concerns a distinctive way of language, since it “is very easy to confuse everything in a confusion of language.”⁹ This linguistic confusion occurs in the thoughtless transference of definitions from one region to another whereby the discourse of an “actual human being” is mistaken for a discourse of a “pure human being.” However, as Climacus stresses, “pure humankind”¹⁰ does not exist at all. For Climacus, the pure humankind represents the idea of the human being. But, what is the human being? Can we think of this “purity” non-empirically, that is, through a designation according to which the human being is defined in general? Perhaps, but then we lose existence, since: “Only humanity in general exists in this way [i. e., as a pure idea-existence], that is, does not exist.”¹¹ In fact, it is precisely in the attempt to extricate the essence of human existence as such from an existing being that Climacus sees the effort of thinking the pure human being drawing to an end, an end which in turn designates a chance to launch another thinking of human existence. What this other thinking of the actual human being calls for is a kind of thinking which speculative thought in its very essence rejects, namely, a thinking of “the singular [det Enkelte],”¹² insofar as only “a single existing human being”¹³ can be actual. As I read it, Climacus’ radical thinking of existence is not so much a matter of pulling at the roots of thinking as it is a matter of giving thinking another chance. Only when thinking is stripped of its received models, presuppositions, and significations can the openness of existence be disclosed to thinking. Thus, Climacus’ critical account of pure thought is not only a question of considering what has already been thought but, more significantly, of considering the condition that a pure thought is always thought by an actual existing being. On the

 SKS 7, 136 / CUP1, 146. Yet such “attention” does not preclude others as such, since the ethos, that is, the abode of the existing one, is the situatedness of an existing being which, because of its openness, always already pays attention to the other as well. Regarding the “ethos of attention,” see Bernhard Waldenfels, Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 2004, p. 275.  SKS 7, 244 / CUP1, 269.  SKS 7, 291 / CUP1, 343.  SKS 7, 301 / CUP1, 330.  SKS 7, 274 / CUP1, 301, translation modified.  SKS 7, 301 / CUP1, 330, translation modified.

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one hand, then, the idea of a pure thought is characterized by a sterilizing movement toward essence in the attempted purification of its own existence. On the other hand, however, the very idea of purity turns out to be inexorably attached to its condition of being thought. A most remarkable feature of the logic of a pure thought of existence is therefore the paradoxical way in which the character of existence as thought already indicates that pure thought is itself conditioned by something that is not pure thought. Accordingly, the purity of thought does not exist without already referring to a thought of this purity. Moreover, as an addition to the denotation of the pure thought this pure thought refers to its own taking place before an existing being here and now. This claim can be illustrated by Climacus’ observation that it is a “misunderstanding to confuse the discussion by asking about existence in relation to it or about actuality in the sense of existence.”¹⁴ As a step toward a thinking of existence, Climacus discerns the possible determination of a “single existing human being” construed in light of an investigation of what it means to exist as an actual human being. Initially, the concept of the human being implied in such an investigation is empirical. However, it is not sufficient to determine “the actual human being” within the terms of some empiricism because existence is not something that can be fixed by dint of a number of general categories. On this view, the peculiar category of existence appears precisely as what cannot be given in general.¹⁵ Were we nevertheless to probe how such existence might be determined preliminarily, one could venture to say that existence is a kind of fact,¹⁶ provided that the fact of existence is not mistaken for anything empirical by virtue of which an account of existence as belonging to the numerical could be given.¹⁷

 SKS 7, 301 / CUP1, 330.  Even though a category does not fit actuality, as Grøn suggests, that does not mean that it cannot, in some sense at least, refine our sense of actuality. See Arne Grøn, Subjektivitet og negativitet, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1997, p. 45. Additionally, we might say that it is because the category is unfitting that actuality, singularity, and existence cannot be transferred to an ordinary use of language. Thus, in Sickness unto Death it is said that “singularity,” i. e., the determination of the actual existing human being, is a “speculatively disregarded and scorned category” (SKS 11, 231 / SUD, 120).  The expression fact is a rendition of the function that the concept of guilt plays for Climacus —namely to expose the singular existing being to its “singularity.” Cf. SKS 7, 480 – 481 / CUP1, 529.  Cf. Jean-Luc Nancy, Être singulier pluriel, Paris: Galilée 1996, p. 52. Vergote translates the Danish term “den Enkelte” to “le singulier.” Here singularity implies a singularization of which the determination “the singular” exposes the difference of one single existing being to other singularities. See Henri-Bernard Vergote, Sens et répétition, vols. 1– 2, Orante: Cerf 1982, vol. 2, p. 542n.

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Were this the case, we would have to translate the Danish term “det Enkelte” with the “particular” since the particularization presupposes a unity of that of which it is a part, whereby one particularity differs from another only in terms of a numerical difference. However, existence is neither a property nor a possession belonging to human beings in general. Instead, as a fact existence is the ground (factum rationis)¹⁸ of the existing human being, as well as the ground for the fact of the existing human being (in the double sense of the genitive), which taken together conveys a resistance to the quantitative determination belonging to the conceptual apparatus of empiricism. To return to Climacus’ inaugural question of confusion, we can now say that the great confusion, as opposed to a mere superficial confusion, is a “fundamental confusion” allowing for the mistake of a “contemplation of standpoints for existing, so that if someone knows about the standpoints he therefore is existing.”¹⁹ The mistake of confusion is fundamental insofar as it is a confusion both in and of the ground, by which any exchange of viewpoints about existence appears to founder. Thus, the sign of confusion becomes all the more an occasion for addressing the question of thinking of existence. The primary difficulty of thinking of existence lies not so much in producing a knowledge of existence or in knowing which significance existence has to “science,” but rather in showing how the one who thinks this concept of existence is himself an existing being. The concept of existence is in effect—or rather, in its intended effect—subsumed under a discourse of existence, and yet, this discourse sets itself apart from the very act of knowing. As should be clear, what Climacus points to is not only a rigorous thinking of existence but, more significantly, a rigorous rethinking of thinking. Let us therefore take a closer look at how the discourse of existence works in the Postscript, in order to see on what grounds such rethinking takes place. If we situate Climacus’ discourse of existence in the aftermath of nineteenth century “modern philosophy,”²⁰ which is hardly a preposterous assumption, some confusion between the substantial determinations of existence and thinking occurs. This confusion takes on two meanings at least, of which I shall come to the second in the next section. The first, and perhaps most distinct, meaning of confusion in the Postscript is that every time we ask about existence in view of the “scientific attitude” we are misled. At the time, when Climacus begins to write, “science” is still primarily considered as a philosophical branch—whatever philosophy means at his

 Cf. Jean-Luc Nancy, L’expérience de la liberté, Paris: Galilée 1988, p. 37.  SKS 7, 269 / CUP1, 295.  SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 309. Cf. SKS 7, 289 / CUP1, 318.

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time. Therefore, it is also in the name of philosophy, or bluntly, “the philosophy” whose very goal is to render an account of or to give a reason for existence by producing directional guidelines for our knowledge or “science” of existence, that the confusion befalls us. Having established this much about the first meaning of confusion, let us turn to the reason why the confusion that becomes a sign for the deception or misdirection inherent to the guidance of philosophy also constitutes a movement of thought that seeks to ascend from a lower level of thought to a higher level.

II Ascensional Thinking It is against a certain ascending movement of thinking that Climacus turns in the Postscript, not only because it constitutes a problem for our concept of existence but, even more so, because it is an indication of Climacus’ hesitation towards a general thinking, that is, towards the assumption “that thinking is the highest, that thinking subsumes everything under itself,”²¹ and also the assumption that existence is subsumable into the overarching conceptuality of thought: In existence this abstract-scientific definition of what it is to be a human being is something that might be higher than being an individual existing human being, but perhaps also lower; in any case, in existence there are only individual human beings. As far as existence goes, therefore, it will not do to resolve the differentiation in the direction of thinking, for the progressive method does not correspond to existing qua human being. In existence, it is a matter of all moments being present at once…In existence the supremacy of thinking becomes confusing.²²

Our primary concern here is to analyze Climacus’ consideration of thinking both in its ascending and in its descending directionalities. Hence, my approach is twofold. On the one hand, I shall be asking about the foundations of the prevalent way of thinking about existence, and how these have begun to vacillate. On the other hand, I shall suggest that such vacillation serves Climacus to aptly reopen the questioning of the relation between existence and thinking. Beginning with the first then, the vacillating foundations are not only a result of thinking insufficiently about existence, let alone of not thinking high enough. Rather, the problem is that something of existence cannot be thought through

 SKS 7, 276 / CUP1, 303.  SKS 7, 317 / CUP1, 290 – 291.

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“because this must indeed be done by thinking”²³ thereby stealing thinking away from itself. As Climacus sums up: “The only an sich that cannot be thought is existing, with which thinking has nothing at all to do…If existing cannot be thought, and the existing person is thinking nevertheless, what does this mean?”²⁴ This questioning of the relation between thinking and existence should allow us to pause for a moment in order to recognize that what is at stake here is an attempt to think a thought of existence that would not be of existence. Indeed, a thinking according to which existence would be reducible to this or that proposition or knowledge of existence. The problem of existence is that we are incapable of thinking it otherwise than through this genitive of existence. Could one perhaps interpret the genitive in the “thinking of existence” as an appositive genitive, indicating that thinking is existing—or, more precisely, that the thinker who is thinking of existence exists? However, if the thinking of existence reveals a distance between thought and existence, a distance essential to think through, are we not then invited to steal away thinking from the ground of existence? Would this invitation suggest a thinking pure of all existence, or, and this amounts to the same, an existence pure of all thought? As a subtext for these questions, let us now turn to the second fold of our approach to consider how Climacus reopens the questioning of the relation between existence and thinking. Whilst the fact of existence is what cannot be thought in itself, it nevertheless does not cease to concern us. To be sure, instead of regarding Climacus’ questioning of existence and thinking as exhibiting merely a rhetorical admission of a modesty of thought, we shall take up another possibility of understanding such modesty. In Climacus’ view, what happens to thought when it tries to think the sense of existence is that it is “broken off.”²⁵ Put differently, through the interruption of thought, insofar as it is a matter of conceptualizing something, thinking conceives itself in a revocation or withdrawal of its object, the object here being to exist. Thus, thinking comes to conceive of itself in terms of what has been called back or renounced from it, but in this very renouncement thinking is confronted with what is left to think when there is nothing more to think. Contrary to the speculative philosopher who “shifts his clothes and then goes on and on speculating, forgetting the most important thing, to exist”²⁶ the thought of existence is not merely carried out by rejecting some specific thought in order to substitute it for another. Rather, the thinking of existence be   

SKS SKS SKS SKS

7, 299 – 300 / CUP1, 328. 7, 300 / CUP1, 328 – 329, my emphasis. 7, 299 – 300 / CUP1, 328. 7, 188 / CUP1, 174.

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comes a demand to think through what it means that thought is stripped of its object without anything thereby becoming revealed in its place. In other words, “to exist with the help of the guidance of pure thinking,”²⁷ as Climacus says, is to try to reveal something hidden about existence, as if pure thought could penetrate into some secret purity of existence. The attempt to explain existence within the limits of pure thought rests on an idea that existence can be stripped down to its naked truth. Yet, as Climacus argues, “to idolize this pure thinking as the highest shows that the thinker has never existed qua human being.”²⁸ This decisive moment in the Postscript cannot be given the attention it deserves in this context. Suffice it to say, then, that the main problem with pure thought is that it is based on a philosophical (or “scientific”) interpretation of existence as such and, hence, almost paradoxically, takes leave of the existent in pursuit of an “eternal thought”²⁹ of existence. However, as Climacus develops his thinking, this pursuit is shown to be futile since one cannot take oneself “speculatively out of existence back into eternity.”³⁰ Thus, a remarkable movement takes place when Climacus speaks of existence inasmuch as he takes leave of the concept of existence in order not to take leave of existence. Keeping in mind the various ways in which Climacus speaks of eternity, what I would like to consider here is what he calls “the eternity of abstraction.”³¹ According to this abstraction, time appears to be gathered under the view of eternity (sub specie æterni) whereby time becomes timeless. Thus, if existence only comes into view with respect to such timeless time “eternity” might be gained, but it is gained solely by “disregarding existence.”³² Therefore, disregarding time leads

 SKS 7, 283 / CUP1, 310. The motif of a thinking disrobed of its object without hiding anything is unfolded by Maurice Blanchot, L’Attente l’oubli, Paris: Gallimard 1962, p. 82.  SKS 7, 277 / CUP1, 304.  SKS 7, 54 / CUP1, 50.  SKS 7, 190 / CUP1, 208. In a defense for “Socrates’ infinite merit,” which is “precisely that of being an existing thinker, not a speculative thinker who forgets what it means to exist,” Climacus considers what it means to convey philosophical theses concerning existence. For Climacus, the admirable about Socrates’ attitude to philosophical theses is that he “continually parts with it because he wants to exist.” Cf. SKS 7, 188 / CUP1, 205, 206n.  SKS 7, 284 / CUP1, 305. Climacus also bespeaks “the eternal, essential truth” (SKS 7, 188 / CUP1, 209) yet not in a way of speaking of eternity per se. If the eternal truth somehow relates to the existing being, argues Climacus, it is in terms of the paradox, i. e., in terms of the eternal truth coming into being in time. By means of which the relation between the eternal and the time (at which the existing being exists) must be thought together insofar as they are held together, yet apart, in a moment—in the blink of an eye.  SKS 7, 284 / CUP1, 313.

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to a disregarding of existence, which is precisely the endeavor of pure thought: to ascend beyond the time of existence. As Climacus notes, the ambition of pure thought is to be “published…without the author’s name…without a date, without a preface, without notes, without didactic self-contradiction, without confusing explanation of what could only explain itself.”³³ On this understanding, the question concerning existence is not only existential; it is also philosophical insofar as philosophy traditionally has searched for eternal truths, even if, as a quote from Either/Or confirms, such a search must be conducted in time: “The time in which the philosopher lives is not absolute time; it is itself a moment.”³⁴ One would have to ask if this exposure of the philosophical thrust of the nineteenth century, which itself turns out to be a type of philosopheme in the Postscript, is due not to some pious decision to return to a philosophia perennis but rather to call attention to the question that imposes on us today.³⁵ Climacus’ hesitation does not simply concern the attempt to view existence under the speculum of eternity, it also concerns the particular characteristic of our age, which attempts to contemplate eternity sub specie saeculi, that is, from a theocentric point of view in terms of which the “world-historical nineteenth century”³⁶ is inaugurated. Behind the idea of gaining the eternity of abstraction we see again the other exigency of abstract thought, namely that it wants “to be the highest for a human being.”³⁷ For Climacus, the very idea behind the “high-altitude thinking”³⁸ manifests itself in and through world history:

 SKS 7, 304 / CUP1, 332– 333.  SKS 3, 169 / EO2, 173. Kierkegaard continues: “To that extent, then, philosophy is in the right, and it would be regarded as an incidental error on the part of the philosophy of our age to confuse our time with absolute time” (SKS 3, 169 / EO2, 173). Thus, what is peculiar about the philosophy of our age, is that while the nineteenth century positions itself as an absolute time through which the history of the world is viewed within a world-history, world-history itself, as Marx insisted, “has not always existed: history as world-history [is] a result” (Karl Marx, Einleitung zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke, Berlin: Dietz 1961, vol. 13, p. 639, my translation). Cf. SKS 7, 80 – 81 / CUP1, 80 – 81.  Cf. Emmanuel Lévinas, Entre nous, Paris: Grasset et Fasquelle 1991, p. 14.  SKS 7, 131– 132 / CUP1, 141. In Kierkegaard’s authorship our age is a leitmotif through and through estimating the height of an abundant lust for knowledge, which Nietzsche turns into the principle of sub specie saeculi. Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, in Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 1, p. 149.  SKS 7, 279 / CUP1, 307. Cf. SKS 7, 274 / CUP1, 301.  I borrow this expression “la pensée en survol” from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, Paris: Gallimard 1964, pp. 29, 123.

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In science there is an ascent from the lower to the higher and thinking becomes the highest; in the understanding of world history there is an ascent from the lower to the higher…and thinking, as the highest, coming last. That thinking is the highest is a view that wins support everywhere; science turns increasingly away from primitive impressions of existence; there is nothing to live through, nothing to experience. Everything is finished, and the task of speculation is now to compartmentalize, classify, put the terms of thought methodically in order…Scientifically, it may well look as if thinking were the highest, world-historically too, as though the earlier stages have been left behind.³⁹

Nevertheless, Climacus maintains that his own thinking does not fly as high in that it assumes a perspective that is neither eternal nor theocentric. Rather, it belongs solely to “a poor existing human being” who must be “content with existing.”⁴⁰ At any rate, this modesty of thinking is not something that Climacus bemoans insofar as it carries the existing being over to the saying or the communication of existence. Even if we cannot go further into the matter of existence communication here, we can by underlining its communicative necessity, at least observe that the theme of existence cannot be dissociated from the question of (indirect) communication. This necessity may be seen in that the question of what it means “to exist,” is not so much about dissolving it into a concept of existence, as it is about reduplicating oneself as an existing being in existence. In this way reduplication marks the crucial moment of existence in which the existing being, on the one hand, is prevented from becoming its own principle of sufficient reason— but, on the other hand, recognizes the secret of existence-communication, namely: “That this knowledge cannot be stated directly, because the essential in this knowledge is the appropriation itself, means that it remains a secret for everyone.”⁴¹ In short, the secrecy of appropriation concerns everyone in that each and every one is singled out as a single existing being. Therefore, it becomes pertinent to ask whether communication essentially is to share what cannot be shared.⁴² Now let us circle back to the problem with the “scientific attitude” whose very attempt to conceptualize existence is precisely what gives rise to confusion,

 SKS 7, 314– 315 / CUP1, 288 – 289.  SKS 7, 194 / CUP1, 212.  SKS 7, 79 / CUP1, 79.  To share a secret as “to share we know not what” is an idea of sharing that Derrida has suggested in his reading of Johannes de Silentio’s version of the story of Abraham. Derrida argues that what we share with Abraham is what cannot be shared with others, that is, a secrecy of sharing of which nothing can be determined, because the secret is about nothing. See Jacques Derrida, Donner la mort, Paris: Galilée 1994, p. 112.

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inasmuch as such conceptuality only has to do with an abstract definition of existence purified or cleansed of anything existential. Indeed, a definition in terms of which thinking thoughtlessly or one-sidedly tries to abstract or separate itself from the fact that the “existing thinker himself exists.”⁴³ Not surprisingly, the transference of existence affirmed by the “scientific attitude” comes across resistance from Climacus in that it signals an inversion of the logical order by placing thought before existing. In Climacus’ view, such inversion amounts to performing a hysteron-proteron inference because the one who thinks the concept of existence, must already exist: Insofar as a thinking being is thinking about existence, it must already be an existing being, and therefore its presentation of existence has to “render”⁴⁴ this presupposed fact of existence. Thus we see that, for Climacus, the thinking of existence becomes an issue of the praxis of thinking too, in that it assumes a responsibility for and to, in Nancy’s words, the “ethos of both thought and thinker.”⁴⁵ How such thinking of existence would already be affected by the praxis is, of course, a further question. Suffice it here to say that what is at stake for the existing being is that, since existence is not merely a property of a thinking being, in thinking about its existence, the very act of thinking of existence leaves both thought and thinker at play. As indicated, what is meant by rendition, representation, or, as Climacus sometimes calls it, existence-communication thus has to do with the fact that a discourse of existence is, at the same time, a communication of existence seeing that the existing being exposes itself in saying something about existence. And it is precisely toward this duplicity of thinking of existence that “speculative science” is blind. In fact, “science” forgets this duplicity in order to detain itself in a particular region of thought. In order to retain a distance to this “scientific” way of thinking of existence, Climacus argues that it is this distance that invites us to think in the first place. Before we can pursue this distance, however, we need to address the second meaning of confusion. As far as Climacus’ text is concerned, confusion designates not only a disorder in the logical sequence that could be put back into order in and through a higher and more adequate knowledge of existence. Whilst confusion often designates a condition that we seek to overcome, we learn from Aristotle that confusion (ταραχή) is also a mood which characterizes a fear (φόβος), that is, a mood

 SKS 7, 90 / CUP1, 91.  Ibid.  Jean-Luc Nancy, Le sens du monde, Paris: Galilée 1993, p. 38. See also, Jean-Luc Nancy, La pensée dérobée, Paris: Galilée 2001, pp. 88 – 90.

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in which something has befallen one thereby making one prone to flight.⁴⁶ This fear, if one dares to assume, emerges precisely because of the forgetting of the fact that the one who thinks existence is itself an existing being.⁴⁷ Thus, the confusion conceals a sort of revocation or withdrawal of the existing one that takes place in that the existing being seeks to transform existence into an object for abstract thought. For this reason confusion is not only a condition that we seek to overcome, but a sign of the withdrawal of existence in confrontation with the concept of existence proposed by abstract thought. Yet this confusion also entails that the transference of existence to “science” is not a movement we can simply reject or turn against because we are already turned by it as soon as we turn towards existence as an object of thought. If we turn with this in mind to Climacus’ description of “the language of abstraction,”⁴⁸ we see how the abstract-scientific or philosophical thought of existence also goes under the name of the “speculative point of view.”⁴⁹ As the term suggests, the optical redoubling renders visible a certain form of seeing that, significant differences notwithstanding, attempts to maintain a unity of thought. Without engaging in a detailed discussion of Climacus’ critical account of speculative thought, which to some extent appears to be construed as a caricature of “Hegelian philosophy,”⁵⁰ let me merely emphasize a key problem with speculation—namely, that it pretends to proceed without presupposition. In other words, Climacus suggests that in advancing without presupposition, this form of thinking forgets that “no existing human being has ever been or can be, a phantom.”⁵¹ Such thought assumes that existence is a product of speculation, which is then transferred from the perspective of the existing human being to something “superhuman.”⁵² In this respect, one finds in speculative thought a kind of hubris, which is ascribed to the thinking of the highest—or, simply sovereign thought. This is to say, that the supremacy of thought, which seeks to go higher than height, represents an exorbitant exercise of power by which the thought of the existence of human beings is placed above or beyond existing human beings.

 Cf. Aristotle, Ars Rhetorica, 1382a21.  Cf. SKS 7, 308, 324 / CUP1, 337, 354.  SKS 7, 274 / CUP1, 301.  SKS 7, 54– 55 / CUP1, 50 – 51.  SKS 7, 277 / CUP1, 304. Yet, even if Hegel presupposes the absolute, it is precisely in order to ruin all presuppositions. Cf. Jean-Luc Nancy, Hegel. L’inquiétude du negative, Paris: Hachette 1997, pp. 14 ff.  SKS 7, 173 / CUP1, 189.  SKS 7, 73 / CUP1, 73.

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Hence, when it is asserted that the “scientific” attitude speculatively-fantastically seeks to grasp existence through a correspondingly abstract-speculative concept, this asserting relates to the transference implied in the transformation of the existing being into a phantom. Such transformation reveals, according to Climacus, a deception which speculative thought manages to maintain by producing a phantasm instead of an existing being. As a phantom, the existing being no longer exists but is instead turned into “the abstract rendition or the abstract prototype of”⁵³ what an existing being is. Yet, by this movement of transforming the existing being into an image of fantasy, that is, into a phantom, the existing being who is advancing the transformation is itself deceived by the exposure to the phantasm of existence. For this reason, deception becomes selfperpetuating since not only does the imitated or the phantom represent a view of an existing being, as though the existing being were identical to its thought-existence, the phantasm also represents a view of the existing being that covers up a forgetting of existence. As forgotten, moreover, the existing being distances itself from “the remarkable quality that an existing being exists whether he wants to or not.”⁵⁴ As previously indicated, there seems to belong to Climacus’ discourse of existence a standing resistance in existence to existence. This resistance comes into view with Climacus’ critical account of the attempt to ground existence on quantitative-empirical claims (“a fitting quantum satis”). However, without ascribing existence to an order of the transcendental, Climacus detaches every ground from existence insofar as existence, in a more Kantian vocabulary, is that which cannot be presented as an object within the conditions of possible experience without already disclosing that which is unconditional within experience itself. Existence is, to amplify this Kantian line of thought, that which cannot be constructed (“sich nicht konstruieren läßt”).⁵⁵ As inconstructible, existence is the

 SKS 7, 174 / CUP1, 190. Cf. Aristotle, De anima, 431b12– 19. In Greek, the word ἀφαίρεσις can refer to both “to remove” and “to upheave form,” whereby the removal of existence from the existing being designates that the existing being is transformed into a phantasm. The phantom which, for Climacus, is a result of the pure thought of existence, means that the existing being disappears into “the indefinite” and fantastically becomes something “no existing human being has ever been or can be” (SKS 7, 288 / CUP1, 189).  SKS 7, 116 / CUP1, 120.  See Kant’s work on the analogy of experience in, Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in Werkausgabe, vols. 1– 12, ed. by Wilhelm Weischedel, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1974, vol. 3, pp. B220 – 222/A178 – 179. Even though Kant himself does not employ the term, these pages from the first critique seem to point in the direction of existence as inconstructible. With respect to the conversion of quantity into quality, constituting the limit of construction in terms of which the constructed is determined, there is a very subtle analysis by Nancy, which has much in com-

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quality that withdraws from the structure of experience. If “speculative science” cannot escape the relation to existence, a quality must therefore be incorporated into that existence which, despite the attempt of speculation to subsume existence under its overarching “science,” makes existence the inescapable that escapes such subsuming. Even if “science” examines existence in all possible directions, it nevertheless neglects what is fundamental about the question of existence, because the question of what existence is must be a question of how it becomes a question for someone who already exists. In this way, “science” seems to ignore or forget that the question to which it pretends to give an answer cannot be answered scientifically: in this sense “science” takes itself to be a response to that which preconditions thought but cannot be thought as such. Certainly, there is a great deal to be said about Climacus’ main thought, namely, that “because of the copiousness of knowledge, people in our day have forgotten what it means to exist.”⁵⁶ However, in this context we shall focus on a single decisive indication that forgetting can neither be understood as a derived state, nor as a privative phenomenon, following some preceding positive consciousness. Rather, the forgetfulness of which Climacus writes concerns a complicated movement of forgetting existence. In order to endure oneself in existence, an existing being would require a minimum of forgetfulness not only of existence but also of thinking; that is to say, the kind of thought that disregards that the thinker who questions existence himself exists. In his critical examination of existence, Climacus undertakes to show how speculative thought runs aground on the decisive “existential questions.”⁵⁷ And, certainly, this foundering becomes the pivotal point of departure for the whole of Climacus’ thinking the relation between thinking and existence. Hence, the forgetting of

mon with what has been said here. See Jean-Luc Nancy, La création du monde ou la mondialisation, Paris: Galilée 2002, pp. 70 – 71, 95.  SKS 7, 336 / CUP1, 249. Grøn describes this thought in a negative and double sense: “People are not simply in a state of not knowing what it means to exist. Rather, they are ignorant due to what they take themselves to know.” Thus, if “we exist in such a way that we forget what this means, we do not simply come to live a different form of life. We come to live a life we do not understand” (Arne Grøn, “Phenomenology of Despair—Phenomenology of Spirit,” in Kierkegaard im Kontext des deutschen Idealismus, ed. by Axel Hutter and Anders Moe Rasmussen, Berlin: de Gruyter 2014, p. 242). Because the human being is not merely a being plus some knowledge that renders it superior, existence is marked as something negative through phenomena such as despair, anxiety, death, and nothingness. Our relation to nothingness does not disclose an understanding about how to “live” but rather discloses our inability “to exist” inasmuch as ek-sistence exposes the human being as held out into this nothing and thus also exposes it to anxiety.  SKS 7, 275 / CUP1, 302.

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the thinking being as the existing being presents a duplicitous forgetting: It is the forgetting of the existing being itself and it is a forgetting of the fact that the one who understands existence does so only in terms of this forgetting of oneself as existing.

III The Weight of Existence— The Gravity of Thinking If we take note of the terms of Climacus’ proposal in the Postscript, we see that existence-problems always concern an existing being and that speculating upon them in general does not guarantee that one comes to understand what is at stake in the question of existence. In order to understand Climacus’ thinking of existence, we need to recognize the sense of existence as a problem. However, a risk seems inherent in conceiving existence as a problem because the one who claims that existence is patently problematic can also shield itself behind the very posing of this problem.⁵⁸ Indeed, the problem of existence becomes something more than a mere uncertainty or irresolution pertaining to the question of existence. As is indicated by its Greek origin (πρόβλημα), another meaning of the word problem designates a shield behind which one can protect or even hide oneself. Consequently, a problem can also become something one can throw forward and away from oneself as a project or a task to be carried through—or as a question to be answered someday by someone—but behind which one also appears to be shielded from what Climacus calls “a primitive impression of existence.”⁵⁹ Yet, as already noted, the point is that the existing being cannot take itself out of existence even in posing it as a problem, just as it cannot take itself out of time and “back” into eternity, because the experience by which we are already moved grants us the way in (thinking of) existence. The idea of stepping outside or beyond experience would itself need to be cleansed of experience and, in Climacus’ view, therefore on par with approaching death. The aporia remains, however, insofar as the living existing being cannot proceed close enough to even catch a glimpse of the necessarily inexperienced experience called death through experience without comically becoming a victim of its own experiment—indeed, without forgetting the very condition for such thought-experi-

 Cf. SKS 7, 322, 329 – 330 / CUP1, 352, 361– 362.  SKS 7, 314 / CUP1, 344.

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ment: that he is existing.⁶⁰ As long as an existing being is “situated [bestedt] in existence”⁶¹ it remains “stuck [stikkende] in the experience”⁶²; and for this reason, argues Climacus, the “existing being is [situated] in the experimented.”⁶³ It is in terms of such situatedness that a problem of existence announces itself behind which an existing being cannot shield itself, but which rather exposes the existing one to the fact that it concerns no one else than oneself. To think about existence-problems, Climacus says, “is not to think about them at all, is to forget the point that one indeed is oneself an existing being.”⁶⁴ Conveying its existence into a problem on which we can all agree, each existing one is put at risk in that existence appears to be deprived of its weight and gravity. Climacus writes: “to make everything easier in every way, there remains only one possible danger, namely, the danger that the easiness would become so great that it would become all too easy.”⁶⁵ Against this background, Climacus sees it as his demanding “task: to make difficulties everywhere.”⁶⁶ Thus, the effort not to make existence any lighter or easier becomes the very task of thinking in order to give back to existence the weight and rigor of its question. In order to carry out such thinking, the demanding call of the question of existence must be recalled in all its gravity. In this sense, thinking of existence is the very movement of the praxis that concerns the sense of existence. Since in thinking about existence, the existing one runs the risk of getting lost in some concept of existence. Yet, in getting lost one does not cease to stumble upon the difficulty of the sense of existence which is always already in play in existing. When understood as such, it becomes obvious how the philosophical question of existence is inseparable from the ethical, which I have sought to indicate by emphasizing the thinking of existence. What matters, then, is that the granting of weight entails the necessity of questioning anew the thinking of existence in the direction of a concrete thinking

 Kant accentuates this problem of experience seeing that “no human being can experience his own death (for to constitute an experience requires life).” This is also why we cannot simply rid ourselves of images of afterlife and think of ourselves as non-existing, since the “thought I am not simply cannot exist; because if I am not then I cannot be conscious that I am not” (Immanuel Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, in Werke in zehn Bänden, vol. 10, p. B67/ A75 / Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. by Robert B. Louden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 59 – 60).  SKS 7, 195 / CUP1, 212– 213.  SKS 7, 156 / CUP1, 168.  SKS 7, 195 / CUP1, 213.  SKS 7, 321 / CUP1, 351.  SKS 7, 172 / CUP1, 186.  SKS 7, 172 / CUP1, 187.

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which challenges abstract thought. Seeing that the question of abstract thought is itself already an abstract question in that it doubles itself, the question of abstraction must be asked within a concrete context from the outset. Thus, the question of abstract thought remains concrete even if, or rather because, it is defined by being essentially without relation to the context in which it is settled.⁶⁷ “What is concrete thinking?” Climacus asks over against the misconceptions of abstract thought, and responds: “It is thinking where there is a thinker and a specific something (in the sense of singularity [Enkelt]) that is being thought, where existence gives the existing thinker thought, time, and space.”⁶⁸ The concrete thinking differs from abstract thought primarily by not ignoring the existent thinker. Accordingly, a concrete thinking of existence comes into view in a twofold movement. On the one hand, existence is sensed to be there where an existing being is situated. On the other hand, however, the sensing of being there of this existing being calls into question the very apodicticity of the former.⁶⁹ More precisely, the concrete signifies the actual concern of thinking, namely, that thinking of existence each time uniquely opens up to “a continuity”⁷⁰ holding together the motion of existence without itself being in existence. In this way the existing being, whose thinking is inevitably exposed to existence, is brought to the experience of being situated both in and as what is experienced. Thus, the existence-determination of singularity comes to the fore insofar as this single existing being exists in a way different from every other existing being. However, rather than leaving thinking behind for the sake of existence, Climacus brings into the open the question of whether thinking is existence. In Climacus’ view, to think of existence appears not to lay claim to a certain register of thought as if only a part of thinking were concerned with existence. Rather, without existence, thinking remains thoughtless. Nonetheless, even though thinking in one way or another is existence, thinking is neither an answer to the question of existence nor a solution to the problem of existence. For this reason, Climacus

 Cf. Andrew Benjamin, Towards a Relational Ontology, Albany: SUNY Press 2015, pp. 6 – 34.  SKS 7, 303 / CUP1, 332, translation modified.  Cf. Nancy, Le sens du monde, p. 23 n. 1. Crossing the frozen waste of abstraction in order to arrive at a concrete thinking, Adorno follows the path of Benjamin, arguing that in contemporary philosophy “concretion would mostly be obtained on the sly” (Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1966, p. 7). Kierkegaard is one of the first to realize this arrival of a concrete thinking.  SKS 7, 284 / CUP1, 312.

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designates existence as a difficulty on the condition of which the seemingly redundant relation of “existence and of the existing person”⁷¹ must be thought. In this way, one can underline the significance of the difficulty of existence by providing some weight to thinking rather than allowing it the lightness that, for Climacus, characterizes abstract thought. If we take into consideration the concretion of existence in thinking, we must inquire about the realm of concrete thinking which, according to Climacus, neither comes to present a program nor a narrative of existence, on the basis of which we can deduce, rediscover, or explain the existing being. Instead, while arguing that thinking is existence, we must still hold these two moments—thinking and existence—apart, because “existence itself [is] in the questioner, who does indeed exist.”⁷² Now, instead of letting the sense of existence be presupposed, Climacus appears to let existence block the way to sense, as it were, and in doing so to some extent to render it impossible to throw existence before oneself as a problem. However, the incapability of projecting existence as a problem behind which one would be able to hide, does not imply that existence loses its problematic sense. On the contrary, existence remains a problem for an existing being in that the existing being remains exposed to its existence, and thereby becomes deprived of the possibility of substituting the problem for a solution. In a certain sense, then, there are no existence-problems. Not because a solution has been given to the existing being in advance but because the existing being cannot project its existence without already existing, that is, without already being the one whom the existential concern concerns.⁷³ When every single one exists by standing out from one another we do not relate to existence in the same way we relate to an object in front of us. In fact, existence does not stand out from anything inasmuch as there is no-thing or no being before the existence of an existing being. By being concerned with existence, even if existence presents a problem in one way or another, we

 SKS 7, 274 / CUP1, 301. Cf. SKS 7, 277 / CUP1, 304. The difficulty becomes a kind of aporia, which is no longer a problem but rather an impasse belonging to the existing one. For a discussion of the difference between aporia and problem, see Jacques Derrida, Apories, Paris: Galilée 1996, pp. 30 – 33.  SKS 7, 176 / CUP1, 192.  For Nancy, to think this concern, to let oneself be led towards concrete thinking, is the hardest thought to think; see Jean-Luc Nancy, Une pensée finie, Paris: Galilée 1990, p. 223. To be sure, Nancy is not referring directly to Kierkegaard, but as I hope to have shown throughout these pages, Kierkegaard is not at all irrelevant to Nancy’s work. On the contrary, Kierkegaard is considered to be a thinker who intensifies the extreme limit of thinking existence. See, for example, Nancy, La pensée dérobée, pp. 29 – 33.

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come to experience how each of us, one by one, is a single existing being because each of us is exposed to our own existence. It is with this singularity, finally, that we come to understand Climacus’ suggestion that existence has to be thought concretely. Moreover, if existence concerns anyone, seeing that each and every one uniquely relates to his or her existence, then the supposed autonomy inherent in taking an interest in one’s own existence becomes problematic: “For the existing person, existing is for him his highest interest, and his interestedness in existing is his actuality. What actuality is cannot be rendered in the language of abstraction. Actuality is an inter-esse.”⁷⁴ If existence is the highest interest for thinking, then, what Climacus suggests is that the most difficult thought to think—existence—is not to be thought on the basis of a speculative-abstract metaphysics that attempts to posit itself as the highest for thinking. On the contrary, the most difficult thought to think needs to be thought concretely. In Climacus’ view, one should not demand or expect too much from a thinking that thinks existence in the proximity of the existing being whose very existence is at stake in thinking itself. Rather, the weight of existence, which bestows gravity on thinking, weighs on the existing being who is thinking of existence by pushing it toward that which concerns it. In other words, the gravity of thinking of existence is the very fact of existence. If existence is a stake of interest, it is because of the concern for the way in which the existing being is, acts, or simply, exists from whence the existential question is put at risk. Yet, the fact that existence is at stake implies that what concerns an existing being is not an accomplished possession of existence, as if existence were a result or a skill with which the discourse of existence could be concluded. What, or more precisely, who is at stake in thinking belongs to existence as long as an existing being exists. That something is at stake for an existing being thus means that the very thing at stake affects the existing being. Thus, it is not about interpreting existence so as to give existence one more meaning, but about coming into its meaning, yet without transforming it into anything else. To think of existence is a thinking that, in the course of its being-thought, becomes indiscernible from its very act. Therefore, each time a thinking of existence takes place, something of existence that has not yet been thought will come after an already there of existence as well as an already there of thinking, which can never be anticipated while the existing one for whom “there is indeed a meanwhile”⁷⁵ exists in its coming to be an existing being. In short, whilst “time is concrete,” it takes time for an existing being to

 SKS 7, 286 / CUP1, 314.  SKS 7, 439 / CUP1, 484– 485.

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be thought not as an abstraction but as a “striving and unremitting ‘in the meantime,’”⁷⁶ which is to say to be thought as existence. As we have attempted to show, Climacus, rather than confusing the discourse of existence any further by introducing a speculative terminology, indicates how attention is a mode in which the existing being, by paying close attention to itself, precisely coincides with an attention to existence, and thus to experiencing itself as an existing being. When attention to what it means to exist coincides with an attention to existence, something happens with the existing being who comes to understand itself in existence—namely, that one discovers oneself as that which in itself is outside itself by being stretched out between existence-ends: the existing one discovers itself as an inter-esse of existence.

 SKS 7, 478 / CUP1, 526.

Clare Carlisle

How to be a Human Being in the World: Kierkegaard’s Question of Existence Abstract: Kierkegaard inaugurated the existentialist tradition when he created the concept of repetition, in response to an existential question: How can a human being be true under conditions of finitude and change? Here, truth is conceived in terms of the authenticity of a human life. But for Kierkegaard authenticity is inseparable from the irony that became integral to his own philosophy. This Kierkegaardian irony is significantly illuminated by Jonathan Lear’s recent book A Case for Irony, but in conflating Socratic and Kierkegaardian irony Lear overlooks the distinctively Christian character of Kierkegaard’s irony. This is clarified by close readings of Fear and Trembling and Practice in Christianity.

Constantin Constantius, the pseudonym-narrator of Kierkegaard’s Repetition (1843), suggests that Platonic recollection should be replaced by a new category: repetition. He explains that “repetition and recollection are the same movement, except in opposite directions.”¹ They are the same movement insofar as both are inward acts, motions of the soul, that seek truth. As the soul recollects, it moves from the finite, changing, visible world to the eternal forms or ideas that sustain and explain this world. This is a movement in the direction of ideality: in The Concept of Irony Kierkegaard writes that “Socrates ferried the individual from reality over to ideality.”² Repetition moves in the opposite direction, from ideality to existence. In repetition, an ideal or a possibility is actualised, brought into existence.³ This “existentialises” Aristotle’s concept of kinesis to think philosophically the movements of decision and commitment that bring human freedom out

 SKS 4, 9 / R, 131.  SKS 1, 255 / CI, 255.  This is just one aspect of Kierkegaardian repetition: it has a broader philosophical significance, and it also has a profound theological significance. See Clare Carlisle, “Repetition and Recurrence: Putting Metaphysics in Motion,” in The Edinburgh Critical History of Philosophy: the 19th Century, ed. by A. Stone, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2011, pp. 294– 313; Clare Carlisle, “Kierkegaard and Heidegger,” in The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard ed. by George Pattison and John Lippitt, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2103, pp. 421– 439. DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-006

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into the world.⁴ In proposing this new concept of repetition to replace Platonic recollection, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym inaugurates the existentialist tradition. Gilles Deleuze described philosophy as “the creation of concepts.”⁵ Kierkegaard created the concept of repetition in response to an existential question: How can a human being be true under conditions of finitude and change? In this question we find now-familiar themes of existentialism: the emphasis on human finitude; the critique of Platonic idealism (though I think that Plato’s philosophy has been mischaracterised as an attempt to escape from the human world of temporality, becoming, and circumstance); perhaps most importantly, the idea that truth is something lived. Living truthfully means being true—to oneself, to another person, to God: here, truth is conceived as fidelity to oneself or another, or an idea or event. This existential truth concerns the authenticity of a human life. How can a human being be true under conditions of finitude and change? became the question that would animate existential philosophy through the 20th century, and into the 21st. Only a few years ago Alain Badiou proposed an account of subjective truth as “fidelity to the event” that is a direct (if rather dim) echo of Kierkegaardian repetition. But Kierkegaard himself lived this question. It preoccupied him when he broke off his engagement to Regine. In Repetition we see a young fiancé struggling to understand how he can remain true to his promise to marry after he has changed, “become another person.”⁶ This is a question about fidelity both to the person he loves and to his own self—and it seems that whatever he does, he is untrue. If he breaks off the engagement, he is untrue to his former self who sincerely made the promise. If he goes through with the marriage, he is untrue to the present self who has changed his mind. This question of existence has the flavour of romantic heroism, which carried through to most later existentialisms. Although it may arise in circumstances involving other people, at heart it concerns the individual’s struggle for authenticity and personal integrity. Kierkegaard eventually made his decision about his engagement to Regine, and this very capacity to decide—and to see the need for renewal (or repetition) of such moments of decision throughout life—suggests a solution to the problem of being true while in a process of becoming. This emphasis on decision, commitment, resoluteness, has been Kierkegaard’s main leg See Carlisle, “Repetition: The Possibility of Motion,” British Journal of Philosophy, vol. 13, no. 3, 2005, pp. 521– 541.  See Gilles Deleuze, What Is Philosophy?, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, New York: Columbia University Press 1994.  SKS 4, 69 / R, 201.

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acy for later existentialist authors. It defines the heroic—or quasi-heroic—existentialism of Sartre and the early Heidegger, which is often read back into Kierkegaard through the lens of these 20th-century thinkers. However, this question of fidelity and truth to self was not the defining question of Kierkegaard’s authorship, nor of his life. Authenticity is, for Kierkegaard, more complex than this, for it is inseparable from the distinctively Socratic form of irony that became integral to his own philosophy. Although the engagement crisis provoked the heroic-existential question of truthfulness and temporality, this crisis was really about the deeper question of Kierkegaard’s way of being in the world. Marriage was not only a private commitment but a worldly, public act; being a husband was a social role, what Christine Korsgaard calls a “practical identity” in which are embedded conceptions of virtue or ethical value.⁷ Equally, ending the engagement not only broke Regine’s heart, but jeopardised her social status—it was a public humiliation. And once the engagement crisis was resolved, Kierkegaard continued to confront the question of how to be a human being in the world. It was this question that animated his thinking and writing from the end of his student years (in the dissertation on the concept of irony) through the early pseudonymous books and the later “second literature” with its focus on the imitation of Christ, to the last polemical writings against the Danish Church. Often the question took a more specific form: What does it mean to be a Christian in Christendom?

I Irony and Authenticity The question how to be a human being in the world? is an ironic existential question. Despite Heidegger’s emphasis on being-in-the-world, despite the politicallyengaged character of Sartre’s philosophy, I doubt that these later existentialists really grasped the deep and radical force of this Kierkegaardian question. Like the question of how to be true while in a process of becoming, it is a question about authenticity. But this question has an ironic structure, which we don’t find in the heroic-existentialist question of fidelity. With a little knowledge of the history of philosophy, we can understand clearly enough the question of how to be true while in a process of becoming: we see the issue right there, in the apparent tension between truth and becoming. But what is the question How can we be human beings in the world? asking about? What does this ques-

 See Christine Korsgaard, Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009, pp. 18 – 25.

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tion mean? Surely we are all already human beings, and we cannot help but be in the world? Likewise, what does it mean to ask how to be a Christian in Christendom? Surely everyone in Christendom is a Christian, and therefore knows what it means to be one? We need to clarify what irony consists in here. Kierkegaard draws from Socrates a distinctively existential concept of irony. In his graduate dissertation Kierkegaard contrasts Socratic irony with Romantic irony. While Romantic irony is essentially aesthetic, expressing detachment from existence, Socratic irony is ethical-religious, passionate, carried out in a spirit of earnestness. Far from suspending commitment, it actually expresses a commitment to truthfulness, to the philosophic quest for what is of the highest value. Kierkegaard suggests in this early work that all irony is “infinite negativity,” but he argues that while Romantic irony negates “all actuality,”⁸ Socratic irony negated “not actuality in general [but] the given actuality at a particular time, the substantial actuality as it was in Greece, and what his irony was demanding was the actuality of subjectivity, of ideality.”⁹ Socrates puts his irony in the service of a neglected actuality, uses irony to demand a certain kind of actuality—a word that is closely connected to existence, for Kierkegaard. While Romantic irony tends to cynicism and nihilism, Socrates undermined Athenian culture for the sake of, indeed out of devotion to, “a higher something” that had yet to emerge.¹⁰ In a journal entry written in 1854, near the end of his life, Kierkegaard returns to the subject of Socratic irony, re-emphasising its peculiarly existential character, and coming close to articulating his own ironic question, how to be a human being in the world? Reflecting on the task of finding Christianity within Christendom, Kierkegaard writes that “my entire existence is really the deepest irony.” And he allies himself with Socrates on precisely this issue: [Socrates’] whole existence is and was irony…whereas the entire population…were perfectly sure of being human and knowing what it means to be a human being, Socrates was beneath them and (ironically) occupied himself with the question—what does it mean to be a human being?…Socrates doubted that one is a human being by birth; to become human or to learn what it means to be human does not come that easily.¹¹

Kierkegaard’s version of the ironic question about how to be human is distinctively Christian in its recognition that being human must involve taking up a certain relationship to the world. While Plato’s philosophy, as Kierkegaard reads it,  SKS 1, 276, 289 / CI, 261, 276.  SKS 1, 283 / CI, 271.  SKS 1, 276 / CI, 261.  SKS 26, 363, NB35:2 / JP 1, 767

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involves a “polemic against the world,” the Christian scriptures envisaged a divine truth embodied in human form. This truth reveals itself by “inhabiting finitude”: becoming flesh and living among us in the world.¹² But Kierkegaard inherited a Christian tradition deeply ambivalent towards this world. Its positive emphasis on embodied life found expression in Luther’s earthy sensualism and his reforms allowing priests to marry, as well as in the Church’s faith in material sacraments—bread and wine, body and blood—as transmitters of divine grace. Alongside this persisted a more Platonic strand, entrenched in Christian theology by Augustine, who combined it with New Testament ideas of sin to emphasise the fallenness of the world as well as the fundamental goodness of God’s creation. As Kierkegaard perceives, this ambivalence is not just theoretical but existential. Christians have to live within this world—and within these bodies —infused with conflicting interpretations. So in posing his ironic question of existence—How to be a human being in the world?—Kierkegaard develops an existentialism that is both thoroughly Christian and thoroughly Socratic. But the Socratic no less than the Christian element is eliminated from the influential 20th-century existentialisms of Heidegger and Sartre. This double elimination diminishes the depth and complexity and power of Kierkegaard’s interpretation of human existence and its authenticity. The distinctive character of this Socratic-Kierkegaardian irony has been discussed by Jonathan Lear, one of a number of North American commentators who situate Kierkegaard not within continental existentialism, but in the virtue ethics tradition. In his book A Case for Irony (2011), Lear shows that the structure of “ironic questions” such as: “In all of Christendom, is there a Christian?” reveal a distinction between determinate ethical life, which Lear calls “pretence,” and an “aspiration” or ideal that is rooted in that life yet oriented beyond it.¹³ When Kierkegaard asks whether there are any Christians in Christendom, “Christendom” refers to the “pretence,” which Lear defines as a claim to identity, a claim to be something. This claim is given specific shape and content by the available and recognizable ways of being Christian. According to Lear: The possibility of irony arises when a gap opens up between pretense as it is made available in a social practice and an aspiration or ideal which, on the one hand, is embedded in the pretense—indeed, what expresses what the pretense is all about—but which, on the

 In 1840, while working on The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard wrote in his journal that “The meaning of the historical is not that it is to be annulled, but that the individual is to be free within it and happy in it… The divine inhabits the finite and finds its way in it” (SKS 27, 233, Papir 264: 1 / JP, 127– 128).  Jonathan Lear, A Case for Irony, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2011, pp. 12 ff.

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other hand, seems to transcend the life and social practice in which that pretense is made. The pretense seems at once to capture and miss the aspiration.¹⁴

Although Lear emphasises that this term “pretence” is non-pejorative, it is difficult to rid it of the idea of deliberately faking it, or knowingly performing a role— what Sartre called “bad faith.” But irony is not concerned with the distinction between being sincere and merely pretending, going through the motions. This is an evaluative judgment that already belongs to Christendom. Similarly, irony is not concerned with the difference between being reflective and unreflective: again, this difference is already contained within Christendom, which includes opportunities for introspection, critique of doctrines and practices, debate, proposals for reform, and so on.¹⁵ Irony is far more radical than this kind of reflective activity. Bridging the gap between pretence and aspiration is not a matter of either reflection or reform, for these activities already belong to the pretence. Like Plato’s myth of the cave, irony calls into question a totality, reveals the limitedness of a whole world. This is why irony is profoundly disruptive and subversive. If one of Socrates’s students took at face value his question about what it means to be human, he might respond by pointing to someone in the marketplace and saying “look, there is a human being.” Likewise, if a 19th-century Danish person were asked if she knew any Christians, she might point to someone taking communion in Church on a Sunday and say “look, there is a Christian.” But existential irony involves calling into question our presumption to know what it means to be a human being—or, within a Christian culture, what it means to be a Christian. Asking whether there are any Christians in Christendom suggests that there is something about being a Christian that is not captured by any of the available, recognisable, graspable ways of living out this identity in the world. This means that the question of whether one is oneself a Christian cannot be settled by pointing to any determinate feature of Christian life: for example, being baptized, believing certain doctrines, attending church or pietist meetings, praying every morning, entering a monastery, being a bishop, and so on. Lear emphasises the “disruptive” effects of irony. The experience of irony provokes not reflection or reform, but “disruption of my practical identity as a

 Ibid., p. 11.  Ibid., pp. 5 – 12.

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Christian, disruption of my practical knowledge of how to live as a Christian.”¹⁶ And this disruption may be profoundly disorientating: When the [ironic] question reaches its target, it shows our standard activities of reflection to be ways of avoiding what (we now realize) the ideal calls us to. It is as though an abyss opens between our previous understanding and our dawning sense of an ideal to which we take ourselves already to be committed…[The experience of irony] disrupts my world. For part of what it is to inhabit a world is to be able to locate familiar things in familiar places. Encountering strange things per se need not be world-disrupting, but coming to experience what has been familiar as utterly unfamiliar is a sign that one no longer knows one’s way about.¹⁷

Lear shows how this is dramatized in the Symposium, where Alcibiades describes Socrates standing motionless all through the night, “thinking about some problem or other.” Socrates cannot move, suggests Lear, because he “does not know what his next step should be.”¹⁸ This account of ironic disruption illuminates Kierkegaard’s communicative strategy. Kierkegaard brings his characters—and also, he hopes, his readers— to a point where they find themselves confused, disoriented, unable to move, unable to make sense of their world. For example, Fear and Trembling invokes the familiar story of Abraham, recognisable by everyone within 19th-century Christian culture as instantiating the values of religious faith which that culture takes itself to uphold, and uses this story to accentuate the strange, scandalous and incomprehensible aspects of faith. Likewise, Practice in Christianity uses the familiar ideal of imitating Christ to disrupt conventional interpretations of the Christian life. This ideal was a recognizable feature of pietist Lutheranism, and yet Kierkegaard problematizes precisely these characteristics of familiarity and recognisability, insisting that “one cannot know anything at all about Christ,” for Christ is incognito, a paradox, a “sign of contradiction” that provokes “offence.”¹⁹ The Symposium’s metaphor of paralysis is repeated in both Fear and Trembling and Practice in Christianity, as in several other Kierkegaardian texts. Johannes de Silentio talks about observing and then practicing the “movements of faith,” but he confesses that when he thinks about Abraham he is “shattered” and “paralysed.” In Practice in Christianity the imagined “follower” is drawn to the Christ who says “Come to me,” yet is “halted” by the “offence” of the incarnation. Disruption and disorientation are dramatized in the structure and the

   

Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 34. SKS 12, 24 / PC, 25.

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rhythms of these texts: their starts and stops and repetitions. Just as Socrates does not know what his next step should be, so Kierkegaard’s readers are brought to a point where they do not know what it means to imitate Abraham or to follow Christ. For Lear, part of the accomplishment of “ironic existence” is “not being perfectly sure” of what it means to be the person one claims to be, or takes oneself to be. This yields a conception of authenticity that involves a deep and irresolvable uncertainty about how to live out one’s aspiration or ethical ideal within the world. But this uncertainty finds expression not in giving up on the ideal nor in withdrawing from the world, but, on the contrary, in a certain form of commitment. The task, it seems, is to live the ironic question: to be in the world while keeping alive its questionableness. This “ironic existence” does not reject its given pretense, but inhabits this in such a way as to express an aspiration beyond it. This combines sincere practical commitment to a determinate way of life with the commitment to keep calling its authenticity into question. Lear explains that the person who accomplishes this “has allowed in her life the possibility that the ideal [to which she aspires] may open up in ways that transcend the received understandings of what the ideal consists in.”²⁰ He discusses how this irony might be applied to different “practical identities”—for example, being a Christian, or a teacher, or a student. Lear’s account of irony illuminates the structure of Kierkegaard’s philosophical thinking, and clarifies his conception of authenticity in a profound way. However, Lear’s analysis has some limitations with respect to Kierkegaard. Most significantly, in conflating Socratic and Kierkegaardian irony Lear misses the theological or spiritual dimension of Kierkegaard’s existential questioning. He does not take seriously Kierkegaard’s insistence on the fundamental differences between the Christian and Socratic models of the human situation, set out most explicitly in Philosophical Fragments. For Lear, irony is a human project. Irony both complicates and enriches ethical life, and “getting the hang of” ironic existence is a difficult but attainable task for ordinary human beings. He treats being a Christian as one practical identity among others, the same in structure (though of course not in content) as being a teacher or a doctor or a husband: equally difficult but equally possible to achieve. Having drawn on Platonic and Kierkegaardian texts to explicate his account of ironic existence, Lear argues that psychoanalysis is an effective technique for “getting the hang of it.”

 Jonathan Lear, “The Force of Irony,” in The Force of Argument: Essays in Honor of Timothy Smiley, ed. by Jonathan Lear and Alex Oliver, London: Routledge 2010, pp. 153– 154.

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This account of irony remains within what Kierkegaard called the ethical sphere. It offers a particularly sophisticated way of engaging with the issues of “practical identity,” of becoming oneself within the world, which preoccupy Judge William in the second part of Either/Or. In other words, Lear—like Sartre —turns Kierkegaardian existentialism into a humanism. This is not a weakness of Lear’s own position, because his primary concern is not to interpret Kierkegaard but to develop an account of virtue ethics that is richer and more existentially powerful than other contemporary ethical positions. And he accomplishes this admirably. But this is not where Kierkegaard’s existentialism is going. Lear’s choice of the word “aspiration” to capture the pretence-transcending movement illustrates the difference between his humanist irony and the distinctively Kierkegaardian form of irony. Lear uses this term “aspiration” to stand for a broadly Platonic notion of eros: a fundamental animating desire for a good that is connected to ordinary experience, yet not reducible to it. For Kierkegaard, of course, the human being’s eros is for God. But this eros is not simply a desire but a need for God. It comes from an obscure consciousness of absolute dependence on God as the ground of one’s being. For Kierkegaard, the question of how to be a human being in the world—the basic question of authenticity—is always concerned with this relationship to God. To ask how to be a human being in the world is to ask how to live out one’s infinite need for an infinite God within the determinate parameters of finite existence. Kierkegaard’s anthropology is essentially Christian in making a certain conception of sinfulness central to the human condition. For Kierkegaard, sin manifests itself as deep ambivalence about our need for God. This ambivalence is an important difference between Socratic and Kierkegaardian eros, which Lear again overlooks. On Lear’s account, irony disrupts pretense, renders it questionable, in the name of an aspiration which is itself unambiguously normative. This seems to be true of Socratic irony, where the value of ideals such as justice or courage is not itself in doubt. Kierkegaard, by contrast, calls into question both the “pretense” and the “aspiration” of Christian faith. If his texts achieve their aim, his reader will be left wondering simultaneously whether she is a Christian, how she might become one, and whether she really wants to do so. This important difference between Socratic and Kierkegaardian irony shows up in Kierkegaard’s tendency to problematize the exemplars on whom Christian aspirations are concentrated. His pseudonyms display ambivalence toward these exemplars, which seeks to mirror and thus make visible the reader’s own ambivalence about following them. “While Abraham arouses my admiration, he appals me as well,” writes Johannes de Silentio. In Practice in Christianity Anti-Climacus accentuates the offensive aspects of Christ’s life, echoing Johannes Climacus’s description of reason’s recoil from Christ in Philosophical Fragments,

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and also Kierkegaard’s ambivalent response to Christ in the 1847 Gospel of Sufferings. In this latter text Kierkegaard suggests that while Christ “possesses the blessing” he was “like a curse for everyone who came near him, like an affliction for those few who loved him, so that he had to wrench them out into the most terrible decisions, so that for his mother he had to be the sword that pierced her heart, for the disciples a crucified love.”²¹ In highlighting this ambiguity of aspiration, Kierkegaard is encouraging his readers (among whom he includes himself) to become more aware of their own sinfulness. He puts consciousness of sin right at the heart of the good life, for it is this self-knowledge that enables us to recognize the task of becoming a Christian as a task. Furthermore, consciousness of sin involves the recognition that this task cannot even be undertaken—not even wholeheartedly desired, let alone accomplished—without divine assistance. While the Socratic teacher induces the student to discover a truth that already lies within him, the Christian teacher—i. e. Christ—provides, in the form of the gift of faith, the condition for receiving the truth.²² To emphasise this irreducibly theological dimension of Kierkegaard’s position is not to place it upon a dogmatic foundation, grounding it in a specific doctrine, church, or tradition. On the contrary: what is absolutely crucial in the effort to live out the need for God—and this is why irony is so important—is that “God,” and thus the relationship to God, cannot be captured by anything finite. As Kierkegaard saw so clearly, the religious life cannot be circumscribed by any concept or set of propositions, any text, any image, any institution, any religion. “Christendom” can never be more than the totality of human efforts to determine what is indeterminate, to objectify what is endlessly elusive, to finitize what is infinite. Having said this, ironic existence is not about leaving Christendom behind— and Lear’s emphasis on this point certainly illuminates our reading of Kierkegaard. The gap between Christendom and the indeterminate, elusive, authentic Christian ideal—what Kierkegaard calls “the task of becoming a Christian”—is at once immanent to Christendom, and irreducible to it. We can picture it like this: Christendom is populated by Christians, who carry out the complex and diverse pretence of Christian life; and yet inside every one of these inhabitants is an inwardness, the spiritual dimension of existence in which the God-relationship is lived, and which animates the pretence. The gap or space between pretence and aspiration, between being and becoming a Christian, is within each existing individual. Thus Christendom is full of these gaps, at least potentially. But

 SKS 11, 236 / SUD, 254.  Ibid.

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when inwardnesses are closed up, narrowed down, squeezed out, obscured, then there is only pretence with no inner life to animate it, and no possibility for irony. This is the situation that Kierkegaard diagnosed within his own milieu. Therefore he saw his own task as opening up, enlarging and deepening the inwardness of each existing individual, to awaken within Christendom the possibility of irony, and with it the possibility of the God-relationship. For Kierkegaard, this existential possibility is intimately connected to his theological interpretation of human inwardness as an empty space: a lack, a need, a nothingness. In his 1844 discourse “To Need God is a Human Being’s Highest Perfection” he writes that “Just as knowing oneself in one’s own nothingness is the condition for knowing God, so knowing God is the condition for the sanctification of a human being by God’s assistance and according to his intention.”²³ Several years later Kierkegaard develops this point in a journal entry: “If I were to define Christian perfection, I would not say that it is a perfection of striving, but that it is precisely the profound acknowledgment of the imperfection of one’s striving, and therefore precisely a deeper and deeper consciousness of the need for grace, not in relation to one thing or another, but of the infinite need for infinite grace.”²⁴ Not one thing or another, but the infinite need for infinite grace thus Kierkegaard accentuates the open-ended, absolutely indeterminate and indefinable character of the God-relationship. And yet this relationship has to be lived in a finite, determinate world. There is nowhere else for a human being to be.

II The Imitation of Christ Over the course of his authorship Kierkegaard gave different responses to the ironic question of how to be a human being in the world. This usually encompassed the more specific ironic question of how to be a Christian within Christendom. For the remainder of this essay I will discuss the response which focuses on the ideal of imitating Christ. Kierkegaard’s distinctive interpretation of this ideal grapples with the problem of how to live it authentically—that is to say, with the distinctively theological irony outlined above.

 SKS 5, 105 / EUD, 325.  SKS 24, 190, NB22:159 / KJN 8, 188.

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In his works from the later 1840s Kierkegaard makes imitation of Christ the guiding ideal of the religious life.²⁵ “Truly to be a Christian means to be Christ’s imitator,” writes Anti-Climacus in Practice in Christianity. ²⁶ This ideal was embedded within the specific cultural context of Danish pietism. The pietists had brought into Lutheran spirituality devotional texts from the pre-reformation tradition, notably Thomas a Kempis’ De Interpretatione Christi. Kierkegaard owned a 1702 Latin edition of this work, but also a Danish edition, Thomas à Kempis om Christi Efterfølgelse, published in Copenhagen in 1848.²⁷ His journals of 1849 contain numerous references to Thomas à Kempis, so he probably bought and read the Danish edition soon after it came out.²⁸ Moreover, Kierkegaard owned two copies of Johann Arndt’s 1685 True Christianity: a 1777 edition in German and an 1829 edition in Danish. This founding text of pietism emphasises the ideal of imitating Christ. Arndt presents Christ as both example (Vorbild) and saviour (Heiland), arguing that while Christ is the “example, mirror, and rule for our life,” imitating him is made possible “only by the merits of Christ.”²⁹ Pietism was Kierkegaard’s intellectual and spiritual heritage, and the imitation of Christ was an established feature of his particular neighbourhood of Christendom. Within this culture, the ethical ideal of imitatio Christi was expressed in two distinct interpretations of pietism, which represent two different ways of responding to the question How to be a human being in the world? Kierkegaard criticised both of these alternatives. On the one hand, he scorned the worldly kind of Christianity exemplified by the Halle pietists, who were influential in the Danish establishment—the monarchy, church, state administration. Kierkegaard associated their worldliness with the concept of Sittlichkeit, custom See Louis Dupré, Kierkegaard as Theologian: The Dialectic of Christian Existence, London: Sheen and Ward 1963, pp. 145 – 181. Reidar Thomte, Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Religion, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1969, pp. 177– 180.  SKS 12, 101, 232/ PC, 106, 254.  Jens Albrecht Leonhard Holm, Om Christi Efterfølgelse, Copenhagen: C. G. Iversen 1848. The first Danish edition was published by A. G. Rudelbach in 1826, and a second by Holm and Rudelbach in 1844.  All of Kierkegaard’s references to Thomas à Kempis are from 1849: see SKS 21, 369, NB10:205; SKS 22, 57, NB11:101; SKS 22, 152, NB12:11; SKS 22, 246, NB12:172; SKS 22, 288, NB13:24; SKS 22, 308, NB13:53; SKS 22, 343, NB14:4; SKS 22, 406, NB14:104 / KJN 5, 380; KJN 6, 53 – 54, 150, 248, 290, 310, 347, 411. See also Christopher Barnett, Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness, London: Routledge 2011, pp. 76 – 80; Joel Rasmussen, “Thomas a Kempis: Devotio Moderna and Kierkegaard’s Critique of Bourgeois-Philistinism,” in Kierkegaard and the Patristic and Medieval Traditions ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2008 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception, and Resources, vol. 4), pp. 289 – 298.  Johann Arndt, True Christianity, trans. by Peter C. Erb, New York: Paulist Press 1979, pp. 39 – 45.

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ary ethical life, prominent in Hegel’s account of the Christian life.³⁰ He consistently contrasts true Christianity with “Christendom”: the institutional, culturally-embedded religion exemplified in his own time, he argues, by the Danish State Church. In Practice in Christianity, for example, Anti-Climacus writes that “Christendom has abolished Christianity without really knowing it itself.”³¹ He also claims, more precisely, that Christendom has abolished “the difference between the admirer and the imitator [of Christ].”³² While the admirer may be an inert, passive spectator whose admiration does not involve any action or existential change, imitation means to act, to move, to follow. Kierkegaard thought that when Christianity is absorbed into Sittlichkeit, into culture, it becomes secular in spirit if not in name.³³ If the relationship to God is equated with participation in the established social order, and is nothing more than this, then it easily becomes dispensable: duty to God, for example, is just another way of describing ethical duties to other people, and really makes no difference to these human duties.³⁴ On the other hand, Kierkegaard also criticised an unworldly (or other-worldly) interpretation of the imitation of Christ. This was instantiated by the socially radical, anti-establishment pietism of the Moravians, who sought to realise Christian ideals in separatist communities semi-independent of the state, set apart from mainstream culture. Kierkegaard’s father came from Jutland, a Moravian region; he attended Moravian meetings in Copenhagen, and took his sons Peter and Søren to these meetings.³⁵ While he is straightforwardly polemical against worldly Christianity, Kierkegaard is more ambivalent towards this other-worldly form of pietism. In 1850 he wrote in his journal that “pietism is the one and only consequence of Christianity,” and qualifies this by emphasising that he means Moravian pietism. This is pietism “properly understood, not simply in the sense of abstaining from dancing and such externals, no, in the sense of witnessing for the truth and suffering for it, together with the understanding that suffering in this world belongs to being a Christian, and that a shrewd and  For an excellent discussion of this concept, see Alan Patten, Hegel’s Idea of Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002, intro.  SKS 12, 34 / PC, 36.  SKS 12, 230 / PC, 252– 253.  See Clare Carlisle, On Habit, London: Routledge 2014, pp. 121– 130.  See SKS 4, 160 – 171 / FT, 68 – 81.  Kierkegaard stopped attending these meetings after his father’s death, but his Pietist heritage is evident in his commitment to the idea of edification, and to the genre of edifying literature that he continually returned to throughout his authorship. The Moravian influence in particular finds expression in his increasingly scathing polemic against the Christian establishment and all “secularising” forces.

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secular conformity with this world is unchristian.”³⁶ Similarly, in Practice in Christianity Anti-Climacus notes with approval that pietism’s emphasis on inwardness collides with the “established order”—“a collision that happens again and again in Christendom,” the “Pharisees and scribes” being the first representatives of the establishment.³⁷ However, Kierkegaard questions Moravian separatism, which he describes, as early as 1838, as “Protestantism’s version of monasticism, since they hope to manifest the Christian life in its purity by abstraction from the greater worldly life.”³⁸ We find a powerful critique of this way of being in the world in Fear and Trembling’s analysis of resignation as a “monastic movement” that, while admirable, falls short of faith. Later, in his 1851 text Judge For Yourself! Kierkegaard writes that it is “strange” and “an error” that for medieval Christians asceticism and monasticism were “in themselves… supposed to be imitation [of Christ].” But he also argues here that “the Middle Ages conceived of Christianity along the lines of action, life, existence-transformation,” and that, “however great its errors were, its conception of Christianity has [this] decisive advantage over that of our time.”³⁹ While both forms of Pietism offered visible, recognisable ways of being a Christian, Kierkegaard’s alternative to this neither/nor of worldly versus unworldly Christianity emphasises the invisibility and unrecognizability of faith. We see this, of course, in Fear and Trembling’s portrait of the knight of faith, disguised as an ordinary man, even as a bourgeois philistine—“he looks just like a tax collector”—who “takes pleasure in everything.” This person lives an apparently normal life that is animated by an extraordinary inward movement: He goes about his work. He takes a holiday on Sundays. He goes to church…If one did not know him, it would be impossible to distinguish him from the rest of the crowd…And yet, yet this person has made and at every moment is making the movement of infinity…And yet, yet the whole earthly figure he presents is a new creation by virtue of the absurd… He constantly makes the movement of infinity, but he does it with such precision and proficiency that he constantly gets finitude out of it and at no second does one suspect anything else.⁴⁰

 SKS 23, 486, NB20:175 / KJN 7, 494. See Barnett, Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness, p. 90.  SKS 12, 82 / PC, p. 86.  SKS 18, 348, KK:4 / KJN 2, 318. “[Kierkegaard] both rejected and embraced Pietist responses to the secular, declining a separatist model of holiness in favor of the theme of imitatio Christi” (Barnett, Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness, p. 111).  SKS 16, 238–239 / JFY, 192. See also SKS 7, 359 / CUP1, 414.  SKS 4, 134– 135 / FT, pp. 39 – 41, translation modified.

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The knight of faith has mastered ironic existence: he “expresses the sublime in the pedestrian,” “turns the leap of life into a walk.” Kierkegaard develops this trope of unrecognizability in later texts. In the Postscript Johannes Climacus insists that religious existence must be practiced in “hidden inwardness”: externally, the religious person should look just like everyone else.⁴¹ He contrasts this “incognito” faith with monasticism, which tries to express the inwardness of faith through a purification of outward existence.⁴² In Two Ages Kierkegaard emphasises “equality before God,” which is a Moravian ideal, but rejects the “recognisable” instantiation of this ideal in separatist communities. The religious person should, he argues, be like a “secret agent” moving through society.⁴³ In Practice in Christianity Kierkegaard brings this interpretation of Christian life to the ideal of imitating Christ, at once appropriating and subverting his pietist heritage. Here Anti-Climacus emphasises that Christ’s own being is characterized by invisibility: Christ is in disguise, “incognito”⁴⁴; he has “absolute unrecognizability,” “the most profound incognito or the most impenetrable unrecognizability that is possible.”⁴⁵ This seems to problematize the very concept of exemplariness that grounds the imitatio Christi ethic—for how can we imitate an exemplar who can’t be recognised? But Kierkegaard’s point is that imitating Christ involves imitating precisely this invisibility as the form that the Godrelationship must take in the world. Like the knight of faith imagined by Johannes de Silentio, the follower of Christ depicted in Practice in Christianity is distinguished by his peculiar (and unfathomable) combination of worldly enjoyment and unrecognizability: Each individual in quiet inwardness before God is to humble himself under what it means in the strictest sense to be a Christian, is to confess honestly before God where he is so that he still might worthily accept the grace that is offered to every imperfect person—that is, to everyone. And then nothing further; then, as for the rest, let him do his work and rejoice in

 SKS 7, 434– 436, 440 – 441 / CUP1, 499 – 501, 506 – 507.  SKS 7, 355 / CUP1, 409.  SKS 8, 84, 101 / TA, 88, 107.  See SKS 12, 119 ff / PC, 127 ff. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus links the concept of incognito with both humor and irony (understand as an “existence-qualification” rather than as a mode of speech: see SKS 7, 437– 440 / CUP, 503 – 506). On the concept of “incognito” in Kierkegaard’s writings, see Martijn Boven’s brief article “Incognito,” in Kierkegaard’s Concepts, Tome III, Envy to Incognito, ed. by Steve M. Emmanuel, William McDonald and Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2014 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception, and Resources, vol. 15), pp. 231– 236.  SKS 12, 119 – 123 / PC, 127– 131.

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it, love his wife and rejoice in her, joyfully bring up his children, love his fellow beings, rejoice in life.⁴⁶

Like the mission of a secret agent, the Christian’s hidden, inward faith is fully engaged with finite, concrete, practical existence—though not necessarily in the way an onlooker might suppose. In Kierkegaard’s own life, as in his later works, this theme of unrecognizability came increasingly into tension with his emphasis on conspicuous suffering as the mark of Christian authenticity. This martyrdom was, of course, another aspect of the imitatio Christi ideal. Kierkegaard always had a tendency to put himself at odds with the world, to set himself apart in a rather attention-seeking way, and this seems to have become more pronounced after Practice in Christianity, although it is already apparent in that text. Like his emphasis on ironic inwardness, however, this growing sense of martyrdom should be understood as an alternative to both the unworldly spirituality of resignation and to establishment Christianity. He argued that, for Jesus, becoming a monk or a hermit would have been a relief; that Jesus did not remain in the world “to become a councillor of justice, a member of a knightly order, an honorary member of this or that society, but in order to suffer.”⁴⁷ More and more, the emphasis on inwardness and unrecognizability that characterises Kierkegaard’s account of faith through the 1840s is augmented by a contrary emphasis on the visible elements of faith: conspicuous suffering as well as works of love. These two interpretations of the imitatio Christi ideal (incognito faith and conspicuous suffering) produce a friction within Kierkegaard’s theology. This friction has a practical correlate, which resembles the contradiction that Johannes de Silentio, meditating on the story of Abraham, finds at the heart of the life of faith. Perhaps each needs to provide a corrective to the other. To the quietist tendencies of incognito faith, Kierkegaaard opposes a more activist model of martyrdom. At the same time, the irony of incognito Efterfølgelse, and in particular irony’s constitutive uncertainty and open-endedness, is an important check on the self-righteousness and dogmatism that the activist account can incline towards. We must of course remember that—as Jonathan Lear’s account of irony makes clear—the existential irony in question here is not opposed to serious commitment but is, on the contrary, the deepest expression of earnestness. The open-ended or erotic character of this irony is not to be confused with frivolity. Indeed, it is the endlessly questing spirit of irony that constitutes its se-

 SKS 12, 64 / PC, 67.  SKS 21, 157, NB8:29 / KJN 5, 164.

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riousness. When applied to the imitatio Christi ideal, this suggests that the ironic follower is one who commits to following Christ without knowing where this will take him, and thus without knowing in advance how becoming a follower of Christ will shape his life, what form it will take out in the world. This makes Christ a Vorbild, or “pattern”, of a peculiar kind. Moreover, both the quietist and activist approaches can be qualified, or tempered, by the emphasis on grace that remains foundational to Kierkegaard’s account of the Christian life. As the reference to grace in the passage above reminds us, Christ is not only a model to be imitated, but the bearer of grace. Indeed, he is both of these things simultaneously. And so, for Anti-Climacus, the relation to Christ has a double aspect, involves a double movement. The first part of this movement is the ironic mode of following Christ, while the second part concerns our receptivity to grace. These two parts are not, in practice, separable from one another: grace animates our virtue, and it is part of our virtue to do whatever we can to become more receptive to grace. This account echoes Arndt’s interpretation of the imitatio Christi theme in True Christianity, for Arndt emphasises the double role of Christ as Vorbild and Heiland. In presenting Christ as simultaneously our “prototype” (Forbillede) and our “Saviour and Redeemer,” Anti-Climacus accentuates the paradox of this figure who is at once infinitely demanding and infinitely lenient. His Christ requires the follower to strive ceaselessly to realise the ideal of imitation, and gives rest from the labour of this striving in the offer of unconditional grace to all who fall short of this ideal—as all human beings inevitably will.⁴⁸ For Kierkegaard, then, the task of imitating Christ involves both following the example of his incognito God-relationship, and responding to Christ’s offer of “rest” by surrendering to his grace. According to Kierkegaard, sin puts us in need of a redeemer, not just a teacher or an exemplar. This need marks the key difference between Socratic philosophy and Christian life, which manifests as a significant difference between Socratic and Kierkegaardian irony. For Kierkegaard, it is only in receiving the gift of Christ that authentic existence becomes a human possibility. This conception of authenticity is very different from that developed in the heroic-existentialisms of the early Heidegger and Sartre. Kierkegaardian authenticity means being true to oneself as dependent on God, being true to one’s own need of God—in other words, living the doctrine of creation. The theological problem with unworldly Christianity—as we see so clearly

 SKS 12, 1– 2, 170 – 171 / PC, 9 – 10, 183 – 184. See SKS 16, 254 / JFY, 209: “[Christ] as the prototype required imitation, yet by his reconciliation expels, if possible, all anxiety from a person’s soul.”

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in Kierkegaard’s account in Fear and Trembling of how resignation falls short of faith—is that it refuses the doctrine of creation: it cannot accept the whole of life as a divine gift. But defining the Christian ideal in the way Kierkegaard does in these texts does not make the task of receiving the gift any less questionable, any easier to determine. When we ask what it means to accept this gift, and how to go about doing it, we only repeat his question of existence: how to be a human being in the world…?

Daniel Conway

Disclosing Despair: The Role of the Pseudonyms in Kierkegaard’s Existential Approach Abstract: Kierkegaard’s efforts to develop a uniquely existential approach to philosophy were furthered by his experimental use of the literary device of pseudonymous authorship. The existential import of his pseudonyms is twofold: they not only diagnose the spiritual malaise that afflicts their readers, but also manifest this distress, unwittingly, in their various efforts to address the crisis at hand. In the case of Fear and Trembling, we are invited to witness the pseudonymous author and narrator, Johannes de Silentio, in his despair, as he fails to escape the crisis he presumes to address. To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself—this is the formula for all despair. —Anti-Climacus, The Sickness Unto Death ¹ The analysis of melancholia now shows that the ego can kill itself only if, owing to the return of the object-cathexis, it can treat itself as an object—if it is able to direct against itself the hostility which relates to an object and which represents the ego’s original reaction to objects in the external world. —Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”²

I Kierkegaard and His Pseudonyms Scholars generally agree that Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous writings are emblematic of his attempt to reach his target audience via indirect modes of communication.*³

 SKS 11, 135 / SUD, 20.  Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 1– 24, London: The Hogarth Press 1956 – 1974, vol. 14 (On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, trans. by James Strachey), p. 252. * I wish to thank Tom Miles, Jon Stewart, and two anonymous referees for their instructive comments on earlier versions of this essay.  See, for example, Louis Mackey, Points of View: Readings of Kierkegaard, Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University Press 1986, pp. 171– 182; Roger Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia 1993, pp. 4– 12, 140 – 148, 161– 164, 254– 263; DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-007

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His goal in adopting this approach is to goad his readers into pursuing lives of greater inwardness and intensity, precisely so that they might begin or resume the painful, solitary task of self-examination. In doing so, of course, he aspires to follow in the venerable footsteps of Socrates, who was similarly concerned to provoke his interlocutors, to disabuse them of their flawed assumptions, and to rouse them from their self-imposed languor. Like Socrates, Kierkegaard envisions for himself a distinctly maieutic role in the lives of his readers, aiming to assist them as they painfully give birth to themselves as authentic individuals.⁴ Kierkegaard proceeds in this endeavor, moreover, as an existentialist, which means that he displays and sustains a keen attunement to the vagaries of human existence. As such, he is less concerned to construct a sturdy theory or philosophical system than to intervene decisively, in real time, so that he might disrupt the day-to-day existence of his actual readers and contemporaries. As his rhetorical and stylistic adventures confirm, he aims to discourage his readers from reducing themselves to quantifiable bundles of desires, predictable patterns of behavior, or utilitarian preference functions. He is particularly alert to the ways in which his readers attempt to renounce, discount, or curtail their own freedom. He thus insists on treating his readers as if they were ever free to reclaim and reorganize their lives, even if they would prefer not to think of themselves in that way. Put somewhat colloquially, he is determined not to give up on his readers, even (or especially) if they have given up on themselves. But how is this eminently worthwhile task furthered by his pseudonymous authorship? What does Kierkegaard gain by placing himself backstage while a pseudonymous author directs the narrative? Here, too, the comparison with Socrates is instructive. Like Socrates, Kierkegaard addresses a pandemic cultural malaise that is both pervasive and yet largely unrecognized by his contemporaries. Content with the material advantages afforded them in the newly diminished ethical sphere of existence, they accustom themselves to the security of a (supposedly) religious existence in which no extraordinary demands are likely to be made of them. For the most part, Kierkegaard acknowledges, they do not notice or lament the dissipation of passion from their lives.

Michael Strawser, Both/And: Reading Kierkegaard from Irony to Edification, New York: Fordham University Press 1997, pp. 89 – 99; and Edward F. Mooney, “Pseudonyms and ‘Style,’” in The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard, ed. by John Lippitt and George Pattison, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013; pp. 18 – 25.  I am indebted here to K. Brian Soderquist, The Isolated Self: Truth and Untruth in Søren Kierkegaard’s On the Concept of Irony, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, 2007, pp. 64– 74; and Jon Stewart, Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony, and the Crisis of Modernity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 19 – 21.

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Undaunted, Kierkegaard developed a critical approach that would reveal to his readers the spiritual distress they unknowingly suffered. Training the focus of his inquiry on the margins of their seemingly placid ethical existence, he probed their beliefs and practices for points of potential stress or strain. He was particularly effective in exposing (and satirizing) the hypocrisy of those modern Christians who presumed to speak religiously while living, at best, ethically. Indeed, he was convinced that they—some of them, at least—might be persuaded to attest to a diffuse, uncanny experience of malaise, even if they were not yet prepared to identify this experience as symptomatic of despair. In order to further this critical approach, Kierkegaard occasionally employed pseudonyms who find themselves at the mercy of their own investigations. Although they are free to direct the narratives of the books to which they are attached, they do not control the larger drama unfolding around them. While disclosing (and occasionally ridiculing) the spiritual failings of their contemporaries, to be sure, they may sound very much like Kierkegaard himself. When their respective “life-views” collide with various paradoxical forms and structures, however, they respond very differently. On such occasions, the pseudonyms unwittingly manifest variant expressions of the spiritual distress they presume to address. In doing so, I wish to suggest, they motivate a more comprehensive—and distinctly existential—diagnosis of the crisis that grips late modern European culture.⁵ In the case of Fear and Trembling, I offer, Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author is doubly disclosive of despair.⁶ On the one hand, Johannes de Silentio astutely diagnoses the quiet despair of his dispassionate contemporaries, whom he attempts to alert to the spiritual crisis that afflicts them. Not unlike Socrates, Johannes resorts to ridicule and satire in his efforts to rouse his contemporaries from the languor of their dispassionate existence.⁷ On the other hand, Johannes also (and unwittingly) manifests his own despair, which he has not previously

 I develop this interpretation in greater detail in Daniel Conway, “The Happiness of ‘Slight Superiority’: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on Resentment,” Konturen, vol. 8, 2015, pp. 132– 166; and Daniel Conway, “Kierkegaard’s Confrontation With European Modernity,” in A Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by Jon Stewart, Malden, MA, Oxford, and Chichester: Wiley Blackwell 2015, pp. 399 – 412.  My psychological profile of Johannes de Silentio is indebted to Mackey, Points of View, pp. 45 – 48; Edward F. Mooney, Knights of Faith and Resignation: Reading Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, Albany: SUNY Press 1991, pp. 13 – 17, pp. 25 – 31, pp. 63 – 69; and Joakim Garff, “Johannes de Silentio: Rhetorician of Silence,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1996, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1996, pp. 186 – 210, pp. 195 – 199.  Here I follow Soderquist, The Isolated Self, pp. 68 – 74; and Stewart, Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 18 – 21.

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acknowledged, and which mitigates (or negates) his claim to superiority vis-à-vis his contemporaries. In summary, two points bear noting: First of all, it is essential to Kierkegaard’s experiment with indirect communication that his readers witness the failure of the pseudonymous authors as they attempt to distinguish themselves decisively (or existentially) from their contemporaries. Second, it is important to Kierkegaard that his readers behold the pseudonyms in the throes of their distress, as they finally confront their share in the crisis they have diagnosed (and ridiculed) in others.

II Mourning Abraham When Johannes de Silentio breaks his silence, he speaks of an age in which formerly formidable ideas may be had at “a bargain price.”⁸ Although he is humorous and self-effacing in his brief Preface, he proceeds to describe an age in crisis, an age perilously unchained from its former center of moral and religious authority. He lists the telltale symptoms of this crisis, focusing in particular on the dissipation of passion and the fantasy of “going further” than faith, and he proposes a controversial diagnosis: The age in question, “our age,” no longer fears and trembles before the figure of Father Abraham, whose prodigious faith led him to offer his “best” to his God. Although we continue to honor Abraham as the Father of Faith, we do so without feeling, as if we were simply going through the motions. As a result of this diagnosis, Johannes opens his “Exordium” in a posture of mourning. In particular, he mourns the loss of an ethical sphere in which an attunement to the trial of Abraham may be understood to contribute an ongoing infusion of passion and vitality. By openly mourning this loss, Johannes wishes to establish a causal connection between the dispassionate malaise that grips “our age” and the demotion of Abraham to a largely ceremonial status. His target audience thus comprises all those who are not yet willing to capitulate to the ultra-modern, blithely progressive secularism that he lampoons in his contemporaries. His hope is that he will be joined in mourning by those readers who share his alarm at the dissipation of passion from their lives. Although Johannes is not a man of faith, he proposes to offer his readers something new and revealing about the trial of Abraham. In particular, he proposes to illuminate, ostensibly for the first time, the distinctly human elements of

 SKS 4, 101 / FT, 5.

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Abraham’s trial. According to Johannes, Abraham must have experienced “distress and anxiety” as he traveled to Moriah, which is why Johannes trains his focus not on the familiar scene of binding and intended sacrifice, but on the excruciatingly painful three-day journey to Moriah.⁹ If Johannes can communicate to his readers the “distress and anxiety” endured by Abraham on the journey to Moriah, he may be able to motivate the retrieval of Abraham from the largely ceremonial status to which he has been relegated. That Abraham suffered humanly is the envisioned key to this project of retrieval. Abraham was great, Johannes avers, not simply because he offered his “best” to his God, but also because he suffered deeply in the process of doing so. Somehow, that is, Abraham was both faithful and distressed as he journeyed to Moriah, both resolute and anxious in his anticipation of the commanded sacrifice. Johannes’ attention to the distinctly human suffering of Abraham is thus meant to convey his own unique contribution to the proper tribute that Father Abraham deserves but has not yet received. Apparently, that is, the various encomia that have been composed and delivered to date have been inadequate in this important respect. Despite being disingenuously coy about his own poetic gifts, Johannes evidently fancies himself the poet of Abraham’s humanity, of his neglected “distress and anxiety.” To be sure, the promised insight into the humanity of Abraham might produce a welcome burst of passion and vitality, which could contribute in turn to a revivification of the ethical sphere. It may be the case, moreover, that Johannes, owing perhaps to his oft-avowed lack of faith, may be uniquely positioned to deliver this particular insight. As he assures us, “it is against [his] very being to speak inhumanly about greatness, to…let it be great but devoid of the emergence of the humanness without which it ceases to be great…”¹⁰ As we shall see, however, the promised insight into the humanity of Abraham is also a pretext, for it allows Johannes to remain indefinitely faithless and to capitalize on his faithless condition. As Johannes often points out, he does not share in the faith of Abraham and can never do so. When imagining himself speaking in praise of Abraham, for example, he accounts for the novelty of his approach by anticipating the success of his efforts to assure his excited auditors of his faithlessness, which, he is confident, will disabuse them of the belief that they may reach expectantly for his “coattails.”¹¹  SKS 4, 157 / FT, 65.  SKS 4, 156 / FT, 64.  “By no means do I have faith,” he will tell his imagined audience (SKS 4, 128 / FT, 32). See Daniel Conway, “Recognition and Its Discontents: Johannes de Silentio and the Preacher,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2013, pp. 25 – 48, pp. 29 – 32.

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Although he does not say so explicitly, Johannes proceeds as if the value of his insight into Abraham’s neglected humanity were contingent upon his own continued faithlessness. He thus presents himself as resigned to his faithless condition and as determined to make the best of it.¹² Apparently, that is, the unstated price of our admission to the human dimension of Abraham’s trial is our willingness to affirm our guide, Johannes, in his condition of permanent faithlessness. Johannes thus proceeds as if his readers will be so moved by his words in praise of Abraham that they will not think to inquire after the motivation for his repeated disavowals of faith. Were they to do so, of course, they might come to understand that Johannes is in despair and that his supposed gesture of resignation is in fact an expression of defiance. According to Freud’s influential distinction, mourning designates a healthy procedure for working through one’s grief, while melancholia involves a pathological attachment to the process of grieving.¹³ Whereas mourning generally and naturally leads to what Freud called “liberation” and “high spirits,” melancholia leads to disaffection, disengagement, and, in extreme cases, suicide.¹⁴ As Hans Leowald explains,¹⁵ mourning allows us to convert our departed loved ones from ghosts into ancestors, while melancholia obliges the departed to remain enduringly ghostly. As ancestors, the dearly departed may serve the living as ethical guides, sages, and repositories of the accumulated wisdom of a people, nation, tribe, or family. As ghosts, the departed continue to make demands upon the attention (and grief) of the living, thereby preventing a haunted people, nation, tribe, or family from moving on from its loss. (Borrowing the original title of Ibsen’s famous play, we might describe the ghostly departed as Gengangere, those who walk again among us.) The incessant haunting of these ghosts plunges a people, nation, tribe, or family into a kind of living death, wherein grief becomes a permanent feature of its existence.¹⁶ As diagnosed by Freud, that is, melancho-

 Thomas P. Miles, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on the Best Way of Life: A New Method of Ethics, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2013, p. 139.  Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” pp. 252– 253.  Ibid.  Hans Loewald, Papers on Psychoanalysis, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1980.  I am indebted here to Jonathan Lear, A Case for Irony, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2011. As Lear notes: “From a psychoanalytic perspective, if the anger at the dead parent is to be transformed it must be worked through in the here-and-now. This is decidedly not a process of making theoretical constructions based on empirical observations and inference. It bears more resemblance to the painful but ultimately liberating activity of mourning” (p. 69).

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lia would appear to qualify as what Kierkegaard (via Anti-Climacus) identifies as a sickness unto death. ¹⁷ Drawing on Freud’s analysis and Leowald’s friendly amendment, we might say that Johannes wishes to alert his readers to the enduringly ghostly presence of Abraham in their lives. Contrary to popular belief, Abraham has not been properly mourned, which means that he has not yet been welcomed and installed as a proper ancestor. While relegated to the ceremonial role he currently plays, Abraham remains persistently unavailable to us as an ethical guide, religious exemplar, sage, or hero. His faith no longer causes (most of) us to fear and tremble, and his standing as a divine favorite strikes us as archaic and unappealing. We continue to honor him as the Father of Faith, but this designation rings increasingly hollow. Despite our various protestations, in other words, Abraham continues to haunt our ethical existence, which is why the recommendation of an imaginative return to Mt. Moriah proves so harrowing.¹⁸ Indeed, part of the difficulty that Johannes encounters in preparing the tribute he has promised to deliver is that Abraham remains an elusively ghostly presence in our lives: restless, homeless, haunting, and unmourned. If Abraham is to become a proper ancestor (or, in Johannes’ terms, a proper hero), he must be given his due. In particular, Johannes believes, Abraham is owed a fitting tribute or encomium, which Johannes both is and is not keen to deliver. As we shall see, in fact, his ambivalence toward Abraham foreshadows his expression of despair. To be sure, Kierkegaard and Johannes both notice that their readers and contemporaries are anything but melancholic with respect to Abraham. The loss of Father Abraham, whether in fact or in prospect, ought to have plunged them into melancholia; but it has not yet done so. As described by Johannes, they are generally pleasant (if dull), optimistic, confident, capable, reasonable, and so on. In other words, they give every impression of having survived the loss they have incurred and having flourished in its aftermath. If they have grieved at all, their grief no longer marks the busy bustle of their lives. As Johannes sneeringly notes, they typically lay summary claim to faith and vow to go further, which, of course, Abraham never managed (or aspired or thought) to do.¹⁹ In “going further,” that is, they present themselves as having moved on from Abraham.

 SKS 11, 123 – 125 / SUD, 7– 9. See also Sven Hroar Klempe, Kierkegaard and the Rise of Modern Psychology, New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers 2014, pp. 59 – 65.  See Daniel Conway, “‘Seeing’ is Believing: Narrative Visualization in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling,” Journal of Textual Reasoning, vol. 2, no. 1, 2003, pp. 1– 6 (http://jtr.lib.virginia.edu/ volume2/conway.html) (14/10/2015).  SKS 4, 119 / FT, 23.

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In truth, however, they suffer from what Kierkegaard elsewhere identifies as unconscious (or inauthentic) despair.²⁰ The telltale cluster of symptoms, on which Johannes regularly comments, is their persistent lack of passion, spirit, vitality, and intensity. Missing from their lives is any hint of what Freud called the experience of “liberation” and the “high spirits” that one typically enjoys upon completing the process of mourning. Disconnected from their spirituality, they are unaware of what the loss of Abraham would or does mean for them. As such, they are in no position to make an informed decision with respect to the dilemma that Johannes repeatedly proposes for their consideration.²¹ As we shall see, the mere fact that they consider this dilemma, as opposed to rejecting it outright, is disconcerting in its own right. As Johannes regularly points out, though not in so many words, he alone is appropriately melancholic with respect to Abraham, for he alone appreciates the magnitude of the loss we late moderns stand to incur.²² As we know, moreover, Johannes goes so far as to advertise his melancholic attunement as emblematic of his superiority vis-à-vis his contemporaries. Although he does not have faith, he is better off in his melancholia than those among his contemporaries who believe they have gone further than faith. Unlike them, he feels the potential loss of Abraham and does not feign indifference. Here Kierkegaard adds a further wrinkle, which remains hidden from the view of his unsuspecting pseudonym: In recommending Abraham to his readers, Johannes is unaware of his own share in the spiritual distress he presumes to address. Although he has correctly diagnosed the illness of “our age,” and of European modernity more generally, he has mistakenly exempted himself from the diagnosis. More precisely, he has misdiagnosed his own melancholia, interpreting it as a (welcome) sign of the comparative advantage he believes he enjoys over his contemporaries. As a result, he fails to elect for himself the prescription he recommends to others: In the end, he too fails to mourn Abraham. Like his contemporaries, he defers the actual mourning of Abraham in favor of more pressing matters. As we know, he fully intends to speak in praise of Abraham,

 SKS 11, 142– 143 / SUD, 26 – 27. See also Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard and Philosophy, London: Routledge 2003, pp. 76 – 81.  See Clare Carlisle, “Johannes de silentio’s Dilemma,” in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: A Critical Guide, ed. by Daniel Conway, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2015, pp. 44– 60, 44– 48.  In truth, he is not entirely alone. He shares this melancholic attunement with a few others, including the pilgrim who imaginatively revisits the foot of Mr. Moriah and the sleepless congregant who is agitated by the feckless preacher. See Conway, “Recognition and Its Discontents,” pp. 27– 31.

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thereby commencing the labor of mourning, but not until he has taken the full measure of Abraham’s “distress and anxiety.” On his understanding of this division of labor, his unique contribution to a proper tribute must precede the process of mourning. Kierkegaard thus knows that Johannes will never speak meaningfully in praise of Abraham, precisely because he never will succeed in locating and disclosing the latter’s “distress and anxiety.” He will not succeed, moreover, because he has projected his own troubled interiority onto Abraham. (Once he realizes as much, as we shall see, he steers Problema III toward its inelegant and all-too-hasty conclusion.) His melancholia may be preferable to the inauthentic despair of his contemporaries, but it is no substitute for the painful labor of mourning. In Kierkegaard’s preferred diagnostic parlance, Johannes too is in despair (and, as it turns out, defiantly so).

III A Pseudonym in Distress As he begins Problema III, Johannes is concerned to determine if Abraham was ethically justified in concealing his aims from Sarah, Eliezer, and Isaac. Frustrated by the inflexible, categorical pronouncements of the ethical universal,²³ he seeks to isolate (or assert) an ethically justifiable exception to the general imperative to disclose oneself in and through the ethical universal.²⁴ Following an exhilarating detour through the aesthetic-ethical confinium, Johannes once again revisits the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, presumably in order to foreclose, once and for all, the “tempting” possibility that Abraham may have been a tragic hero. Convinced that the Father of Faith deserves a loftier designation and status, Johannes returns to the task of constructing a hybrid model of hero to which he might fit the speechless Abraham. His particular concern in doing so is to explain how Abraham, who supposedly could not speak, nevertheless responded to Isaac’s question (at Gen, 22:7) with his famous promise of divine providence (at Gen, 22:8). If Abraham could not speak, then how are

 See Gordon Marino, Kierkegaard in the Present Age, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 2001, pp. 90 – 93.  SKS 4, 172 / FT, 82. See David S. Stern, “The Bind of Responsibility: Kierkegaard, Derrida, and the Akedah of Isaac,” Philosophy Today, vol. 47, 2003, pp. 33 – 43, 34– 40; and Conway, “Particularity and Ethical Attunement: Situating Problema III,” in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: A Critical Guide, ed. Daniel Conway, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2015, pp. 205 – 228, 207– 211.

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we to understand the pivotal exchange between him and Isaac, at the conclusion of which “the two of them went on together”?²⁵ The particular challenge that Johannes faces here is of his own making. As he stipulated earlier in Fear and Trembling, “Abraham cannot speak.”²⁶ He did so, as we recall, in support of his attempt to read into the story of Abraham’s journey to Mt. Moriah the “distress and anxiety” that Abraham supposedly experienced but did not report. In order to account for Abraham’s silence, Johannes ingeniously surmised there that Abraham was bound by his religiosity not to disclose his interiority to human others. According to Johannes, Abraham was unable to share with Sarah, Eliezer, and Isaac the content of his religious experience, i. e., the motivation for his willingness to sacrifice Isaac.²⁷ (Hence the titular concern in Problema III with the possibility that Abraham was ethically justified in failing to disclose himself.) Although one can imagine what Abraham might have said to Isaac “in the decisive moment,” one cannot do so without “wishing him out of the paradox,”²⁸ which Johannes is determined not to do. In light of his insistence on Abraham’s religiously enforced silence, Johannes now must explain—or, to be more precise, explain away—Abraham’s “final words.” Inasmuch as these “final words” are recorded at Gen, 22:8 for all to contemplate, his aim here is to demonstrate that these “final words” were uttered but not received by their intended recipient. If Abraham in fact spoke to Isaac, as most readers of Gen, 22 would be inclined to conclude, Johannes would have no choice but to concede the likelihood that the story of the Akedah makes no reference to Abraham’s experience of “distress and anxiety” simply because there was no such experience to report. In that event, however, Johannes would have nothing of substance to contribute to the proper tribute that Abraham supposedly deserves to receive, and he would have no excuse to defer any longer the prescribed mourning of Abraham. In order to preserve Abraham’s place within the “paradox,” Johannes insists that these “final words” were not understood as such by Isaac, their intended recipient. (Had Isaac understood these “final words” as they were uttered to him, Johannes would be obliged to concede that Abraham did speak after all, i. e., that he was not consigned to silence by the “paradox” in which his religios-

 See Marc Bregman, “Aqedah: Midrash as Visualization,” Journal of Textual Reasoning, vol. 2, no. 1, 2003 (http://jtr.lib.virginia.edu/volume2/bregman.html) (15/19/2015); and Conway, “‘Seeing’ is Believing,” pp. 1– 10.  As Johannes asserts, the “distress and anxiety in the paradox were due in particular to the silence [of Abraham]” (SKS 4, 205 / FT, 118).  SKS 4, 202 / FT, 114.  SKS 4, 206 / FT, 118.

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ity maintained him.) As Johannes proceeds to claim, in fact, Abraham’s “final words” amounted to gibberish, for they were uttered in and as irony. ²⁹ Owing to this ingenious interpretation, his defense of Abraham’s promise is now complete. As it turns out, Abraham did not speak to Isaac, for Isaac did not understand the strange sounds uttered by his father and recorded at Gen, 22:8.³⁰ On the strength of this defense of Abraham’s “final words,” Johannes is apparently entitled to conclude that Abraham was (or may have been) ethically justified in concealing his aims from Isaac, as per the titular question of Problema III. First of all, his silence (or “silence”) was enjoined by his religiosity and thus carried a divine warrant. Second, he did not mislead Isaac so much as he said nothing at all. Third, it is possible that his seemingly evasive promise of divine providence served to advance an ethical agenda that remains unknown to us.³¹ (As Johannes indicates, a proper “teleological suspension of the ethical” will have the effect of steering the ethical sphere into closer alignment with its telos in the religious sphere.) In short, Johannes now may continue as planned with his efforts to construct the hybrid model of hero that will accommodate the “distress and anxiety” that Abraham experienced but could not report. Oddly enough, however, Johannes does not draw, much less celebrate, this conclusion, which he has labored so creatively to deliver. Rather than resume his quest for the humanity of Abraham, Johannes steers Problema III toward its hastily arranged conclusion. Clearly, something has gone awry. Here I wish to mark two decisive moments in the devolution of the narrative of Problema III, each of which corresponds to a destabilizing blow to the status and authority of Johannes de Silentio. First, Johannes apparently realizes that the anxiety and distress he had hoped to find in Abraham are, and have been all along, his alone.³² This means that the Abraham whom he has been so keen to understand and defend, the Abraham whose religiously enforced silence is the cause or source of his “distress,” is largely a projection of Johannes’ own

 SKS 4, 206 / FT, 118 – 119. See also Soderquist, The Isolated Self, pp. 214– 18; Stewart, Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 128 31; and Daniel Conway, “Going No Further: Toward an Interpretation of Problema III.” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2014, pp. 29 – 52, 42– 46.  See Stephen Mulhall, Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001, pp. 359 – 364; and Lippitt, Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling, pp. 194– 202.  Here I follow Mooney, Knights of Faith and Resignation, pp. 127– 132; and Jeffrey Hanson: “‘He speaks in tongues’: Hearing the Truth of Abraham’s Words of Faith,” in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: A Critical Guide, ed. by Daniel Conway, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2015, pp. 229 – 246.  See Lippitt, “Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling,” p. 132.

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troubled interiority.³³ What he now understands, apparently, is that his quest for the humanity of Abraham has been little more than a pretext for his own quest for self-understanding. As such, of course, he has been successful, if disquietingly so. He is now in a position to know himself better than ever before, and we now see him, just as Kierkegaard wished, in the depths of his despair. Second, Johannes apparently realizes that he has been temporizing all along. As we know, he has vowed to initiate a proper mourning of Abraham, but only on the condition that Abraham first receives a fitting tribute, which, according to Johannes, would account for the “distress and anxiety” he suffered on the journey to Moriah. Having become aware that no such account is needed, however, Johannes is now free, if he wishes, to offer his tribute and commence the prescribed labor of mourning. But of course he does no such thing. One may suspect, in fact, that he never intended to mourn Abraham. Indeed, he may have hoped all along to obviate the difficult labor of mourning by delivering a tribute that would rally his readers to Abraham and the passionate religiosity he represents. In any event, Johannes refuses to avail himself of this opportunity to “go further,” opting instead to conclude his ill-fated investigation. Here we would do well to revisit Freud’s analysis of melancholia, which he regarded, or so I have proposed, as a kind of sickness unto death. As we have seen, Freud characterizes melancholia not only in terms of an unyielding attachment to one’s grief, but also in terms of a severely diminished sense of one’s self (or ego).³⁴ At this juncture in the narrative of Problema III, both characterizations fit Johannes: He has grown accustomed to his grief, and he now regards himself as unworthy of the task of delivering a proper tribute to Abraham. If Johannes is profoundly melancholic, in other words, he may feel that he has no choice but to bring his investigation to an abrupt and artless conclusion. What I wish to suggest, in short, is that Johannes has suffered two staggering blows to his understanding of himself as the author and narrator of Fear and Trembling. Suddenly exposed and discredited, unguarded in his loneliness, Johannes retreats into a defensive posture of self-reliance. As we shall see, however, the self on which he relies remains woefully misaligned. As Anti-Climacus would say, Johannes is now “in despair to will to be [himself].”³⁵

 See Conway, “Recognition and Its Discontents,” pp. 28 – 31.  Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” pp. 252– 253.  SKS 11, 181 / SUD, 67. See also Arne Grøn, “Self-Givenness and Self-Understanding: Kierkegaard and the Question of Phenomenology,” in Kierkegaard as Phenomenologist: An Experiment, ed. Jeffrey Hanson, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2010, pp. 79 – 97; Miles, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on the Best Way of Life, pp. 121– 125; and Klempe, Kierkegaard and the Rise of Modern Psychology, pp. 156 – 163.

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IV Courage and Despair As if to announce the end of his quest, and with no prompting from his readers, Johannes launches the following confession: “I, for my part, perhaps can understand Abraham, but I also realize that I do not have the courage [Mod] to speak in this way, no more than I have the courage [Mod] to act as Abraham did; but by no means do I therefore say that the act is of little importance, since, on the contrary, it is the one and only marvel [Vidunderlige].”³⁶ This confession of cowardice resembles his earlier one in several respects: It is seemingly unbidden; it appears suddenly, as if in response to a silent provocation or unstated expectation; it emphatically and categorically distinguishes Johannes from Abraham, as if someone were at risk of confusion on this point; and it turns on a disavowal of courage that Johannes treats as both constitutive of his being and utterly intractable. While it may be the case that Johannes can understand Abraham after all— and here we take note of his unsinkable sense of pride and self-satisfaction—this achievement is mitigated, he now insists, by his lack of courage.³⁷ He takes pains here to disabuse his readers of any heroic impressions they may have formed of him. In particular, he is determined to clarify that he can neither speak nor act as Abraham did. Why he would feel the need to confirm this comparative deficiency is by no means obvious. No one has requested any such clarification, and nothing about his most recent arguments would be likely to prompt his readers to confuse him with Abraham.³⁸ Here we might speculate that this confession is meant, in part, to reassure him of his very real limitations. In any event, his confession has the very real effect of bringing Problema III to an abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion. In light of what has transpired, we might be inclined to commend Johannes for his candor in what must be a difficult moment of disorienting self-realization.³⁹ If he can guide us no further in our quest for the humanity of Abraham, we should be grateful for this disclosure, especially if we wish to continue our quest without him. At the same time, however, we would do well to beware of  SKS 4, 207 / FT, 119 – 120.  My attention to Johannes’ various avowals and disavowals of courage is indebted to Claire Carlisle, Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: A Reader’s Guide, London: Continuum 2010, pp. 104– 112; and Carlisle, “Johannes de silentio’s Dilemma,” pp. 55 – 60. See also Conway, “Going No Further,” pp. 48 – 51.  See Mackey, Points of View, pp. 48 – 50; Garff, “Johannes de Silentio: Rhetorician of Silence,” pp. 195 – 199; and Conway, “Recognition and Its Discontents,” pp. 27– 33.  I am grateful to Clare Carlisle for pressing me on this point.

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overstating the extent or the intensity of the candor he displays at this crucial juncture. The problem here is not that his candor is unworthy of admiration, but that his admiration of his candor now occupies the center of his narrative. What we discover here, in fact, is that Johannes is enamored of his lack of courage, precisely because it is his. In this moment of supposed candor, Johannes silently renews his attachment to the misaligned self from which it issues. As I have suggested, this is precisely what Kierkegaard wishes for his readers to behold: Johannes in his lived, real-time despair. Borrowing from Kierkegaard’s A Literary Review, we might say that Johannes continues to speak here “with authority,”⁴⁰ which means that he continues to pledge allegiance to the self in which this authority is supposedly grounded, even as he acknowledges his limitations. (Even as he confesses his cowardice, as we have seen, he refers with justifiable pride to the partial understanding he has acquired of Abraham.) To speak and act “without authority,” as the “unrecognizable one” is said to do in A Literary Review,⁴¹ would be possible only for those who, unlike Johannes, have driven their despair to its final, self-consuming conclusion, at which point they bravely forfeit any and all claims to agency, choice, fate, and will. As Johannes appears at the close of Problema III (and again in the Epilogue to Fear and Trembling), speaking with the authority that accrues to him as the pseudonymous author and narrator, he is not only recognizable to us, but also recognizable in the stubborn defiance of his despair. His defiance manifests itself most noticeably in the confidence with which he asserts his proprietary claim to his lack of courage. As we have seen, Johannes presents his crisis of courage not as an index of the unfinished business that awaits his attention, but as evidence of an unalterable fact of his being. Indeed, while it may be the case that he currently lacks the courage needed to continue, this lack need not be construed as an enduring, much less a permanent, feature of his existence. As Johannes knows very well, many a hero has faltered or quailed momentarily, only to gather himself for the continuation of his quest. It would not be outrageous, after all, to propose that genuine courage asserts itself only in response to an unsettling moment of weakness or cowardice. Like the knights and heroes he claims to admire, Johannes might have treated his crisis of courage as an opportunity to revisit his pledge and, perhaps, to renew his commitment to his quest. Like Abraham, perhaps, he might have welcomed his own trial as an opportunity to burnish (and display) his faith, which, according

 SKS 8, 103 / LR, 109.  SKS 8, 103 / LR, 109. See also George Pattison, Kierkegaard, Religion and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002, pp. 222– 244.

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to Johannes, was precisely what made Abraham great. In short, the irony here is that nothing is more human than to suffer a crisis of courage. Yet Johannes refuses to explore the possibility that this crisis is precisely the source of the kinship he feels between Abraham and himself. As Johannes assures us, however, he is no Abraham. In particular, he lacks the courage to speak and act as Abraham did. While this may very well be true of him, the fact of the matter is that he consents to his cowardice and seizes upon it as a defining characteristic. He thus objectifies his existence, thereby insisting that he is free neither to address nor outgrow his cowardice. (In this respect, claiming to lack courage is sophistically preferable to claiming to be excluded from faith.) In truth, that is, Johannes welcomes his crisis of courage, especially inasmuch as it provides him with the good reason he needs to suspend his quest for the humanity of Abraham. In doing so, Johannes takes his place among his contemporaries, whom he has subjected to ridicule throughout his narration of Fear and Trembling. Despite his repeated attempts to elevate himself above them, and to confirm his supposed superiority, he now partakes of their defining despair. Like them, he lacks the passion, will, and faith to go any further. Like them, more importantly, he lacks the passion, will, and faith to attempt to go any further. Apparently content with his achievement of a partial understanding of Abraham, he declares himself to be inert and unfree. Despite diagnosing the despair of others as a condition chosen or contracted by them, he treats his own despair as involuntary and non-negotiable. Having (once again) confessed his cowardice, Johannes proceeds to undo his efforts to deliver a fitting tribute to Abraham. As it turns out, there is no need at all for the encomium that Johannes had boldly ventured to compose. Of course, this also means that Johannes will neither speak in praise of Abraham—save for the perfunctory banalities and clichés that follow his confession—nor initiate the prescribed mourning of Abraham. Pivoting abruptly from the Book of Genesis to the New Testament, Johannes reveals that his campaign to speak in praise of Abraham was misguided from the outset. Whereas the “contemporary age” and the successor generation may judge a tragic hero to be great and admirable, no one may credibly offer a similar assessment of Abraham, precisely because “there was no one who could understand [him].”⁴² As Johannes now realizes, however, Abraham has never had any need for mortal recognition or consolation, much less the unique tribute Johannes had planned to deliver. Returning to the theme that launched his “Eulogy on Abra-

 SKS 4, 207 / FT, 120.

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ham,”⁴³ Johannes suddenly praises Abraham as a knight of love. Reprising his original insight,⁴⁴ he explains here that “anyone who loves God needs no tears, no admiration.”⁴⁵ Inasmuch as Abraham “remained true to his love,” any suffering he might have endured would have been “forgotten” by everyone except for his God, who “sees in secret and recognizes distress and counts the tears and forgets nothing.”⁴⁶ According to Johannes, that is, only God would know (and remember) if Abraham had suffered the “distress and anxiety” that Johannes had been determined to find in him. Insulated from all such indignities by his love for his God, Abraham forgot his suffering “so completely…that there would not be a trace of [it] left if God himself did not remember it.” ⁴⁷ Although he does not acknowledge it explicitly, Johannes thus identifies his project in Fear and Trembling as misbegotten, born of a mistake that he now presents as obvious to him. If Abraham suffered at all, he did not suffer as mere mortals typically suffer, and he did not suffer as Johannes now suffers. Had Johannes resolved from the outset to praise Abraham as a knight of love, he might have spared himself and his readers the multiple false starts, unhelpful allegories, and lengthy (if colorful) digressions that make up the bulk of Fear and Trembling. At the same time, however, he treats Abraham’s love as an achievement that requires no further tribute, and certainly none from him. On this topic, apparently, the wise and comforting words of the Gospels will suffice.

V Defiance and Resignation Where does this conclusion leave Johannes? Unlike Abraham, he cannot forget his suffering, unless he also forgets—and thereby forswears—the self that endures this suffering. Rather than disavow the relationship of identification that he originally posited between Abraham and himself, he retains the structure of the proposed relationship, while doubling down on the special, particular na-

 SKS 4, 113 / FT, 16.  As Johannes remarked, “No one who was great in the world will be forgotten, but everyone was great in his own way, and everyone in proportion to the greatness of that which he loved. He who…loved God became greatest of all” (SKS 4, 113 / FT, 16).  SKS 4, 207 / FT, 120. I am indebted here to Grøn, “Self-Givenness and Self-Understanding,” pp. 91– 92.  SKS 4, 207 / FT, 120. See Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. by David Wills, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1995, pp. 80 – 81.  SKS 4, 202 / FT, 114.

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ture of the suffering that he (and, now, he alone) is obliged to endure. Without it, who would he be? In attesting to his crisis of courage, Johannes both diagnoses and misdiagnoses his despair. While it is true that he currently lacks the courage to go further, it is not true that he knows his crisis to be either permanent or immutable. That he wishes it to be so, even at the expense of his spiritual well being, is indicative of the despair that Anti-Climacus associates with defiance: “[T]his is the case precisely because in despair he wills to be himself…Here the despair is conscious of itself as an act; it does not come from the outside as a suffering under the pressure of externalities but comes directly from the self. Therefore defiance, compared with despair over one’s weakness, is indeed a new qualification.”⁴⁸ The crisis of courage to which Johannes attests may be both real and debilitating, but it is his crisis to address, and he would sooner succumb to this “sickness unto death” than surrender the prerogative of his otherwise impotent will. Here he stands, defiant like Luther, seemingly unable to do otherwise. Were we to borrow an additional diagnostic insight from Anti-Climacus, we might speculate that Johannes in his defiance is at risk of crossing over into the demonic, which is a condition in which one reflexively identifies one’s best prospects with one’s misaligned, misery-bound self, thereby shunning the only available remedy for one’s despair.⁴⁹ Perhaps the best evidence of his proximity to the demonic is his stubborn insistence on his immunity to faith, which is a condition that he expressly denies to all other mortals. What Anti-Climacus would diagnose in Johannes as his defiance is understood by Johannes as quasi-heroic resignation. ⁵⁰ As we have seen throughout Fear and Trembling, Johannes presents himself as (heroically) resigned to his faithless condition, which, he endeavors to show, uniquely qualifies him to tell the story of Abraham and to inject into this story the distinctly human elements that previous renditions failed to deliver. He “admires” those who have faith, which is why he feels compelled to speak in praise of Abraham, but he has no faith of his own, and, he insists, he cannot make the corresponding move-

 SKS 11, 181 / SUD, 67. See also Mackey, Points of View, pp. 148 – 153; Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard and Philosophy, pp. 84– 88; Grøn, “Self-Givenness and Self-Understanding,” pp. 89 – 91; and Klempe, Kierkegaard and the Rise of Modern Psychology, pp. 53 – 59.  SKS 11, 185 – 187 / SUD, 72– 74. See also Miles, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on the Best Way of Life, pp. 127– 131.  Here I follow Miles, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on the Best Way of Life, pp. 136 – 139. I am also grateful to Miles for his generous correspondence on this topic.

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ment of faith.⁵¹ He thus tends to present himself as if he were related to his lot as the tragic hero, e. g., Agamemnon, is related to his fate. Much as Agamemnon resigned himself to the loss of his daughter, Iphigenia, so Johannes presents himself as having resigned himself to his faithlessness. As he explained while conjuring the knight of faith, for example, “But this movement [viz., of faith] I cannot make. As soon as I want to begin, everything reverses itself, and I take refuge in the pain of resignation.”⁵² And much as Agamemnon is said to have taken solace in the support afforded him by the ethical universal, so Johannes in his supposed resignation may take pride in the potential contribution of his words of praise to the rejuvenation of the depleted ethical sphere. Whatever his motivation for doing so, however, Johannes clearly prefers to present himself as a creature of quasi-heroic resignation, who, rather than strive for a faith he never can have, makes the best of his faithless lot in life. Although Johannes proceeds as if he has resigned himself to a faithless existence, pretending thereby to a heroic status, in fact he has done no such thing. Whereas Agamemnon infinitely resigned himself to the loss of his beloved daughter, Johannes has suffered no actual loss or bereavement. Nothing has been taken away from him, and no prospect has been independently foreclosed. While it may be true that he is not (yet) a man of faith, this condition is neither pre-ordained nor immutable. Unlike Eliezer, who was commanded by Abraham to remain behind with the beasts of burden (Gen, 22:5), Johannes halts of his own volition at the foot of Mt. Moriah. He does so, moreover, not out of respect for Abraham and Isaac, but out of his abiding fear of faith, which he has impressively translated, first, into a non-negotiable fact of his existence; and, second, into his signature virtue.⁵³ Although he pretends to be tragically excluded from the circle of faith, the exclusion he references throughout Fear and Trembling is entirely self-imposed. As such, his supposed movement of “resignation” is anything but “infinite,” subject as it is to revision or retraction at any moment.⁵⁴ Even if Agamemnon changed his mind after the fact, Iphigenia was permanently removed from his life, never to return or be returned. But if Johannes were to change his mind, his receptivity to faith—and with it the possibility of a faithful existence— would immediately be returned to him. This is the case, as we have seen, because Johannes is responsible for his current condition of faithlessness. While it lies be SKS 4, 143, 145 / FT, 50, 51.  SKS 4, 143 – 144 / FT, 50, my emphasis.  See Conway, “‘Seeing’ is Believing,” pp. 4– 11  As Johannes remarks, “Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it…” (SKS 4, 159 / FT, 67).

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yond his power to grant himself faith, it lies within his power to open himself to the possibility of faith. Far from imposing an existential limit on his capacity to will, the faithlessness Johannes cites in himself is willed, the product not of resignation but of defiance. The irony for Kierkegaard in this display of defiance is that it actually places Johannes in the vicinity of the “eternal,” which, despite his cowardly retreat to the perceived safety of the Gospels, has left its mark on him.⁵⁵ Unlike his contemporaries, he is fully aware of the despair that has gripped him. His problem lies in the certitude of his vain belief in his capacity to rid himself of his despair. As Anti-Climacus explains this condition: “If the despairing person is aware of his despair, as he thinks he is, and…now with all his power seeks to break the despair by himself and by himself alone—he is still in despair and with all his presumed effort only works himself all the deeper into deeper despair.”⁵⁶ In his defiance, as we have seen, Johannes in fact claims his despair as his own, i. e., as definitive of the misaligned self that he will not relinquish. As such, Johannes stands in tantalizing proximity to the redemption that may be secured, according to Anti-Climacus, through the cultivation of radical despair. In a passage that calls to mind the defiance of Johannes at the close of Problema III, Anti-Climacus explains: But just because it is despair through the aid of the eternal, in a certain sense [defiance] is very close to the truth; and just because it lies very close to the truth, it is infinitely far away. The despair that is the thoroughfare to faith comes also through the aid of the eternal; through the aid of the eternal, the self has the courage to lose itself in order to win itself. Here, however, it is unwilling to begin with losing itself but wills to be itself.⁵⁷

Were he to travel this thoroughfare, shedding his misaligned self along the way, Johannes might enter and enjoy an existence from which despair has been “completely rooted out.”⁵⁸ Finally free of the ill effects of its “misrelation” to itself, his self might “rest transparently in the power that established it.”⁵⁹ In that event, or

 SKS 11, 181 / SUD, 67.  SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 14.  SKS 11, 181 / SUD, 67, my emphasis. See also Mackey, Points of View, pp. 154– 159; Hannay, Kierkegaard and Philosophy, pp. 78 – 85; Grøn, “Self-Givenness and Self-Understanding,” pp. 91– 92; and Miles, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on the Best Way of Life, pp. 133 – 139.  SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 14. The “thoroughfare” in question apparently leads to, or merges with, the “narrow road of faith” that Johannes mentions at the close of Problema I. See SKS 4, 159 / FT, 67.  SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 14.

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so Anti-Climacus suggests, Johannes finally might accept the faith that he repeatedly insists cannot be his.⁶⁰ The problem, of course, is that Johannes does not yet want the faith that he pretends he cannot have. What he wants, whether he knows it or not, is to continue to assert some measure of control over his fate, even if the fate in question is ineluctably grim. Although he is aware that he will need courage to go any further, he apparently is unaware that the courage he lacks is in fact the courage to “lose” himself, as Anti-Climacus puts it in the passage extracted above. So although he correctly identifies himself as a coward, as lacking in the courage that would lead to faith and secure his redemption, he misidentifies the site and seat of his cowardice. In particular, he clings like a coward to the misaligned self that he is not yet sufficiently courageous to renounce. As we know, moreover, the problem with despair is precisely that Johannes may continue indefinitely to have it both ways: At this moment, and perhaps for the foreseeable future, he both is and is not a coward.

VI Conclusion By virtue of his retreat into the familiar, welcoming space of the Gospels,⁶¹ Johannes also signals his intention to seek refuge in the ethical sphere. This may strike Kierkegaard’s readers as a strange turn of events, for Johannes has been consistently critical of the ethical sphere in its current incarnation. Whether he realizes it or not, in fact, Johannes now takes his place alongside the very neighbors and contemporaries whose existence he has ridiculed as dispassionate, dispirited, and one-dimensional.⁶² In doing so, as we might expect, he enters into the same bargain with himself that he consistently has faulted his contemporaries for making. Rather than discover in the ethical sphere a temptation to go further, to probe and perhaps exceed its conventional bounds, he settles for the familiarity and stability of the status quo, desultory though it may be. In itself, of course, there is nothing objectionable in returning, as he does, to the ethical sphere and the reassuring words of the Gospels. For certain audiences, the comfort the Gospels provide is a chief attraction of the teachings they convey. The irony in the particular case of  I am indebted here to Mackey, Points of View, pp. 154– 159; and Miles, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on the Best Way of Life, p. 139.  See Derrida, The Gift of Death, pp. 80 – 81.  See Ronald Green, Kant and Kierkegaard on Time and Eternity, Macon GA: Mercer University Press 2011, pp. 152– 155.

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Johannes de Silentio derives from his oft-repeated avowals to deny himself all such comforts, to revisit Mt. Moriah in the brave company of Abraham and Isaac, and, thereby, to gain a confirming glimpse of the “distress and anxiety” that Abraham supposedly experienced along the way. In returning to the sheltering environs of the ethical sphere, Johannes unwittingly discloses the allure of its current condition of disrepair.⁶³ For those in despair who wish not to risk an intensification of their despair, the ethical sphere presents an intriguing alternative. One is not cured or relieved therein of one’s despair, but one may expect to avail oneself of the quiet misery of the company assembled there.⁶⁴ In the ethical sphere as it is configured in late modernity, that is, one may expect to manage one’s despair, to live with its effects, and to derive a modicum of bourgeois satisfaction. If nothing else, one may expect to be distracted from one’s despair by the various entertainments and diversions on offer there. Life will not be grand, passionate, or excitingly meaningful, but it will be tolerable and occasionally pleasant. For anyone who is prepared to surrender his attachments to his misaligned self, despite the obvious limits of the efforts it has sponsored thus far, the ethical sphere offers a viable compromise. One may recover there and gather oneself for a momentous “leap” into faith,⁶⁵ or one may spend the remainder of one’s days in quiet despair. Owing to his not-so-quiet despair, of course, Johannes is not likely to enjoy his ethical existence to the extent that his contemporaries apparently do.⁶⁶ Unlike them, he knows that he is settling for a life of despair, and his avowed cowardice eventually may rankle him. Unlike his contemporaries, that is, he knows that he is complicit in the fate he shares with them. Indeed, his awareness of his role in prolonging his despair eventually may prompt him to shed his defiance and renounce the misaligned self from which it emanates. He is simultaneously nearer than they to salvation and further removed from its prospect.⁶⁷

    

Derrida, The Gift of Death, p. 81. See also Conway, “Going No Further,” pp. 50 – 52. Marino, Kierkegaard in the Present Age, pp. 95 – 97. SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 14. I am indebted here to Miles, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on the Best Way of Life, pp. 138 – 139. SKS 11, 181 / SUD, 67.

Noreen Khawaja

Father Kierkegaard Abstract: Kierkegaard has long been known as the “father of existentialism.” This essay argues that there are three novel ideas within Kierkegaard’s authorship that bear out this reputation. First, by radicalizing nineteenth-century notions of alienation, Kierkegaard sketches existence as fundamentally factical or “thrown.” Second, he develops a model of penitential choice that forms the background of existentialist accounts of “decision” as redemptive, a way of “becoming oneself.” Third, Kierkegaard’s notion of “becoming a Christian” shifts theological ideas of conversion onto the terrain of personal identity, re-imagining Christian devotion as an ontological language in which every “doing” is a way of “being.”

Kierkegaard is the father of existentialism. This is a sentence most readers of modern thought are likely to have encountered. But in what does this paternity rest? What does it mean when we say that Kierkegaard is the father of existentialism, when we assert that the ideas and problems of his work paved a way for the existential philosophers and writers of the twentieth century? The question becomes especially difficult when we take into account the religious narrative often in play in Kierkegaardian genealogies of existential thought. The Danish boy raised in the strict Pietistic faith of his Jutlandish merchant father, the boy who would grow to dedicate a massive missionary oeuvre so as to introduce “Christianity” into Christendom—Kierkegaard, in one way or another, becomes the father of an intellectual tradition spanning continents, languages, centuries, and synonymous with an image of “man” alone in a Godless universe. Given such difficulties, one reasonable way to think about the question of Kierkegaard’s influence on existentialism has been to follow the thread of common themes and concepts. Though he had long been suspicious about the referential value of the terms Existentialismus and Existenzphilosophie, Heidegger often did something like this, linking Kierkegaard into a history of those who had begun to use the term “existence” in a sense different from how it had been used in scholastic and early modern philosophy.¹ Others have followed common motifs such as anxiety, boredom, absurdity, death, freedom, resolve, despair.

 Martin Heidegger, Die Metaphysik des deutschen Idealismus, ed. by Günter Seubold, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 1991, pp. 17– 32. DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-008

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In this essay I will describe three conceptual moves that Kierkegaard made, which would prove essential to the development of existential thought. By “moves” I do not simply refer to arguments Kierkegaard made or concepts he coined that impacted the works of later existentialists. My aim here is to describe his work and his contribution to this tradition at a more fundamental level. I would like to highlight three ways in which Kierkegaard worked creatively with philosophical and religious ideas of his time that opened up new theoretical possibilities, all of which were essential to the formation and development of the existential tradition. The first is his anticipation of existential notions of facticity via a radicalized account of alienation. The second move is the original and rather mysterious equation Kierkegaard draws between the act of choice and the act of repentance, which reappears in even the most formalist accounts of existential authenticity. Finally, I consider how Kierkegaard’s idea of penitential choice helps anchor the reformulation of Pietistic conversion in identitarian terms, thereby opening up a way to think of the self as the object of a redemptive spiritual labor.

I From Alienation to Facticity Facticity is an idea basic to most existential thinking, although the word itself comes from Heidegger’s early phenomenological work.² What facticity indicates at the general level is the fact that a human being encounters her own existence, in each case, as a “thrown project,” as underway and engaged in a relational world of others, tasks, and possibilities. Facticity describes the radically entangled character of self and world, an entanglement which is given in such a way that it runs ahead of any attempt we may make to lay hold of ourselves. In Sartre’s writings, the factical character of existence is explored through a series of vivid metaphors. Most closely related to Kierkegaard’s formulation, as we will see, is Sartre’s idea of existence as an underivable excess—“that being is superfluous (de trop)—that is, that consciousness absolutely can not derive being from anything, either from another being, or from a possibility, or from a necessary law.”³ Facticity also forms a core element within Camus’ vision of the absurd. There, facticity appears as that fundamental tension, the basic refusal of existence to yield its reasons combined with our basic inability to take “no”  For a sketch of what Heidegger understands by the term “Faktizität,” see Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen: Niemeyer 1967, p. 56.  Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes, New York: Washington Square Press 1984, p. xvi.

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for an answer.⁴ The acknowledgment of a basic tear or resistant element at the heart of human life is not new. Under different guises—civilization, tradition, finitude, sin—various thinkers and epochs have assigned responsibility for this resistance, accounting for that which stands between human beings and their true reality either in external or internal objectivist terms. An individual’s existence, from this perspective, is structured by something excessive or transcendent. Peculiar to the existentialists, however, is the fact that recognition of this uncanny “fact” unfolds within an affirmative philosophy. What distinguishes many existential approaches to this idea, in other words, is that the rupture or resistance at the heart of human experience does not indicate something negative, to be overcome. Rather, existentialists tend to affirm this limit as a positive and general feature of existence itself. Facticity not only names finitude but also revalues it, claiming it as the proper context for an affirmative philosophy of life. There are a number of features of Kierkegaard’s authorship that could contribute to a genealogy of existentialist notions of facticity. At the top of the list we might think of Kierkegaard’s strategy as an author itself. Insofar as he was ever in search of a form of communication that could at the same time accommodate a radically subjective notion of truth, Kierkegaard’s authorship itself may constitute a kind of implicit admission of facticity. Alternatively, we might consider the well-known passage in Repetition in which one of Kierkegaard’s characters comes very close to a definition of facticity. Writing to his trusted confidant, the protagonist of Kierkegaard’s story describes the unresolvable tension between his will and his appearance within the world. This tension is so profound, and his existence is so unwilled, that it appears to him as though it were the product of a kind of primordial deception: “What does it mean to say: the world?…Who tricked me into this whole thing and leaves me standing here? Who am I? How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it, why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrown into the ranks as if I had been bought from a seller of souls? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality?”⁵ The alienation described here exhibits roughly the same structure that Hegel identified through the metaphor of “unhappiness”: an inwardly disrupted consciousness that discovers itself caught up with otherness, caught in a world that is not interested in the individual’s own

 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. by Justin O’Brien, New York: Vintage 1991, pp. 51 ff.  SKS 4, 68 / R, 200, translation modified. David Kangas’ monograph on Kierkegaard first spotted the urgency of the problem of the beginning for Kierkegaard, and makes a strong case for seeing this issue within the context of Kierkegaard’s complex reception of German Idealism. See Kangas, Kierkegaard’s Instant: On Beginnings, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2007.

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desire.⁶ From this standpoint, all of the “givens” of existence—including the fact of existing itself—appear as arbitrary and accidental in relation to the will of the individual. What I want to pursue here is how, by emphasizing and radicalizing such accounts of alienated consciousness, Kierkegaard’s work sketches, without quite naming, the idea of facticity that will play a key role in later existential thought. Distinctive of Kierkegaard’s work is both the extent to which he regards the subject to be alienated, out of joint with herself, as well as the fact that in Kierkegaard’s hands, alienation begins to acquire an affirmative reputation for itself. This is a somewhat counterintuitive doublet: Kierkegaard’s account of alienation is both more radical and more positive. But it is just this radicalization that would permit later existentialists to undertake an ontological revaluation of conventionally negative moral conditions such as fallenness and guilt—if human existence is self-alienated at its core, if alienation is proper to consciousness and not to be “overcome” or the sign of something gone awry, the step to an affirmative philosophy of alienation is a rather short one. One of the most striking examples of Kierkegaard’s radicalization of alienation is found in the first few sections of The Sickness unto Death. The opening passages of The Sickness unto Death characterize human consciousness as a collision between inexhaustible desire and limited resources (or, in Kierkegaard’s hyperbolical shorthand, “the infinite and the finite”).⁷ The tension between these two conditions is a feature of immediacy—what every human being is without trying and what none can avoid. Once reflection—the active, self-relating synthetic capacity of human consciousness—takes hold of this tension, we might expect some resolution or shift to occur. A dialectic of appropriation such as we find in Hegel’s phenomenology (and indeed in many other of Kierkegaard’s writings) might stipulate that the arbitrary givens of existence acquire a deeper spiritual meaning once the given character of a particular experience is recognized by the individual as something in which she is personally at stake, once she resolves freely on the self that such givenness generates.⁸ But the problem with such attempts to appropriate the given, for Anti-Climacus, is that no matter how resolutely, how single-mindedly one pursues this course of spiritual labor, one can never fully catch up with existence. The human self is derived, and continually encounters itself as derived.  See G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1977, pp. 119 – 139.  SKS 11, 129 / SUD, 13.  For Hegel this deeper meaning is arrived at not through resolution but, initially, through the identification of self-consciousness with reason. See Phenomenology, pp. 137 ff.

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In other words, in Kierkegaard’s psychology, alienation describes consciousness at its deepest, most self-reflective layer. And if inwardness or the self is defined as reflection, what Kierkegaard calls inwardness is actually “pure” mediacy —the further “in” one seems to go, the more mediated one’s world becomes. There is a parallel here with the image Sartre sketches of the mind, soon after his discovery of Husserlian intentionality: If, impossible though it may be, you could enter “into” a consciousness, you would be seized by a whirlwind and thrown back outside, in the thick of the dust, near the tree, for consciousness has no “inside.”⁹ Though it is stated on the first page of Kierkegaard’s book, the fact that the self is “derived” is not something the self actually discovers until it has passed through the experience of despair. This discovery is made from within the attempt to assume givenness through the work of self-conscious appropriation. This attempt is destined to failure, and leads inexorably to despair. The more and more “itself” a given self becomes, the more it “becomes increasingly obvious that it is a hypothetical self. The self is its own master, absolutely its own master, and precisely this is the despair.”¹⁰ This is so because if one looks more closely, one will find that “this absolute ruler is a king without a country, actually ruling over nothing; his position, his sovereignty, is subordinate to the dialectic that rebellion is legitimate at any moment.” The same passage in Sickness continues: “In despair the self wants to enjoy the total satisfaction of making itself into itself, of developing itself, of being itself.”¹¹ “And yet”—“in the very moment when it seems that the self is closest to having the building completed, it can arbitrarily dissolve the whole thing into nothing.”¹² Despair results from the inevitable failure of consciousness’ attempt to treat the givenness of existence as the occasion of an active, chosen expression of will. Though the failure of this attempt is inevitable, for Kierkegaard, there is nothing immediate or natural about it. “However much the despairing person speaks of his despair as a misfortune,” we are reminded, despair is not an affliction but a “responsibility,” which the self must shoulder “at every moment of its existence.”¹³ In this sense despair is distinct from suffering because unlike suffering, despair “comes from within as an act.”¹⁴ There are some types of sickness,

 Jean-Paul Sartre, “Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology,” trans. by Joseph P. Fell, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, no. 2, 1970, pp. 4– 5.  SKS 11, 183 / SUD, 69.  SKS 11, 183 / SUD, 69.  SKS 11, 183 / SUD, 69 – 70.  SKS 11, 132 / SUD, 16.  SKS 11, 165 / SUD, 51, my emphasis.

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the author admits, that one is responsible for first contracting, but whose subsequent course unfold as a matter of necessity from that first fateful act. But despair is different: “Every actual moment of despair is traceable to possibility; every moment he is in despair he is bringing it upon himself. It is always in the present tense.”¹⁵ So even here, in this “sickness” which expresses the will’s inability to serve as its own master, consciousness and responsibility are essential. I take this to be a crucial point: when the will fails to achieve its goal, it does not get to rest “transparently in the power that established it” by ceasing its labor.¹⁶ It can only find its way to this “rest”—through continued activity, by continuing to shoulder conscious responsibility for itself, however doomed this work may be. Only in this way will the individual come to face what is truly singular about the experience of despair, that which explains its sobriquet as “the sickness unto death”: despair will never, ever kill you. “Literally speaking, there is not the slightest possibility that anyone will die from this sickness or that it will end in physical death. On the contrary, the torment of despair is precisely this inability to die.”¹⁷ This is the meaning of the word “unto” in the work’s title—“to be sick unto death is to be unable to die…the dying of despair continually converts itself into a living.”¹⁸ This is arguably the most radical formula of alienation within of Kierkegaard’s authorship. In fact, I think it breaks with the paradigm of alienation that emerges from a dialectical form of phenomenology such as Hegel’s insofar as it twists the work of overcoming back toward an acknowledgement of alienation as transcendental. This more radical form of alienation appears when the self-appropriation fails, i. e., when the self fails to become itself—and yet it still hangs on to life. Radical alienation is what is implied when even the self’s failure to consume itself, its “impotent self-consuming,” is “intensified” to yield “a new form of self-consuming, in which despair is once again unable to do what it wants to do, to consume itself.”¹⁹ We might break this condition down in another way. Because despair is 1) simply the other side of the individual’s inalienable freedom, his inalienable responsibility for his own existence, and 2) always in the “present tense,” the individual will come in turn to despair over his despair as well. He will despair of the impotence of his despair, “that he cannot consume himself, cannot get rid of     

SKS SKS SKS SKS SKS

11, 132 / SUD, 17. 11, 130 / SUD, 14. 11, 133 / SUD, 17– 18. 11, 134 / SUD, 18. 11, 134 / SUD, 18.

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himself, cannot reduce himself to nothing.”²⁰ All the individual’s work of resolute self-appropriation has been leading to this discovery: the encounter with that which cannot be appropriated and cannot be thrown away. At the core of the spiritual labor of despair the most radical form of alienation appears as the encounter with that which is itself inalienable. There are strong parallels here with the “radically indexical” forms of first-person awareness many have explored in relation to the phenomenological and existential traditions of the twentieth century.²¹ There may also be a strong case to be made for a connection with the most Pietistic elements of Kantian philosophy, and particularly with his formulation of the idea of radical evil.²² Common to both cases is a philosophy that finds a way to get interested in the sheer fact of existence, to turn the thatness of existence itself into a substantive clue. Unlike in the Kantian picture, however, it is not through reason but through experience that despair does its key philosophical work. The Sickness unto Death has claimed alienation as its topic from its very opening lines: “The human self is such a derived, established relation, a relation that relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another.”²³ But the full meaning of this claim is revealed only in this later exposition of how the “venture wholly to become oneself”²⁴ ultimately fails. The failure of this venture actually achieves something essential. In revealing that which can be neither appropriated nor avoided, despair yields an experiential knowledge of radical alienation within first-person awareness. And again, it is not that the individual, failing in her attempt to develop a fully self-owned existence, discovers that “other” power in some direct or magical way. The failure is revealing because the failure itself is impotent. So far from destroying existence, the failure just reveals another layer of givenness yet to be appropriated. We could call this discovery that of an inalienable alienness at the heart of existence or, less paradoxically, an inexhaustible alienness. We could call it the factical element of existence. The Sickness unto Death calls this inexhaustible ali-

 SKS 11, 134 / SUD, 18 – 19.  Steven Crowell, Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013, pp. 179 ff. Crowell also notes a potential comparison with Kierkegaardian “inwardness” but this remark seems more like a way of distancing Heidegger from Cartesian subjectivity than a substantive claim.  See especially Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans. and ed. by Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, esp. Part One.  SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 13 – 14.  SKS 11, 117 / SUD, 5, my emphasis.

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enation “the eternal.” When Kierkegaard writes that “to despair is a qualification of spirit and relates to the eternal in man,” we might begin to imagine the eternal as an indestructible soul, a metaphysical substrate somewhere “inside” us to which we might have recourse. We might imagine something like that, that is, were the passage not to continue in the following way: “He cannot rid himself of the eternal…He cannot throw it away once and for all…at any moment that he does not have it, he must have thrown or is throwing it away—but it comes again, that is, every moment he is in despair he is bringing his despair upon himself…A person cannot rid himself of the relation to himself.”²⁵ Eternity, in other words, is defined in existential terms—as the character of that which can neither be fully appropriated nor given away. Despair’s goal is to will to become oneself in transparency. But the self is not and does not have access to a transcendent perspective—either within or without—that might provide access to its being as a whole. There is no “Archimedean point” from which securely to view existence, to use a more Kierkegaardian metaphor. Every self-conscious gesture that attempts to take stock of existence is itself a new act of consciousness of which to take stock. What Kierkegaard calls the “eternal” dimension of the self should be grasped as its inalienable relationality: the self which is at every instant—“i ethvert Øieblik”—invested in the existence in which it finds itself. To be derived, as we have seen, is not to have been derived once and for all; it is to continue to be so in each moment. While the language of the “eternal” aspects of the self might at first seem to indicate Kierkegaard’s distance from the resolutely temporal outlook of later existentialists, it is in fact precisely by “eternalizing” alienation that Kierkegaard’s thinking comes closest to an outline of what those philosophers of finitude will call “facticity.” While a full study of Kierkegaard’s notion of eternity is out of the reach of this essay, we must note the quite regular isomorphism he draws between what is “eternal” and what is “at each instant” the case. Kierkegaard’s reliance on the qualifier of “at each instant” as a gloss for “eternity” should, quite to the contrary of distancing him from later existential thought, suggest a strong parallel to the way the phrase “in each case” [je] functions within Heidegger’s thought as a sign of the factical character of a particular existential description.²⁶ In The Concept of Anxiety, for

 SKS 11, 133 / SUD, 17.  See, for example, the discussion of Jemeinigkeit (the “in each case mineness” of existence). See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 43. A Sartrean parallel with this view can be seen in his repeated insistence on the presentness of freedom, the fact that authenticity can never be undertaken “once and for good.” See Jean-Paul Sartre, War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War 1939 – 40, trans. by Quintin Hoare, London: Verso 1999, p. 219.

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example, faith is described as bestowing an “eternal youth” precisely insofar as it depends on continuous renewal: The one thing truly capable of disarming the sophistry of repentance is faith, courage to believe that the state of sin is itself a new sin…[Faith] does not thereby annihilate anxiety, but remains eternally young [by] constantly developing itself out of anxiety’s glimpse of death [Angestens Dødsøieblik]. Only faith is capable of doing this, for only in faith is the synthesis eternally and at each instant [hvert Øieblik] possible.²⁷

II The Equation between Repentance and Choice Considering this language of “at each instant”—that alienation is at each instant operative, and that faith, at least in the above passage, is at each instant possible —points us to a crucial element of Kierkegaard’s thinking: the time of human experience is grasped as a time structured by decision. If despair is always in “the present tense,” so too must be the resolution which transforms it. The resolution is not an achievement made once and for all, but the contract which opens up the future through an inexhaustible debt. It “invites” the individual to fight. ²⁸ The resolution is “the beginning of the vigilance.”²⁹ The act of choice, or resolution, is a quintessential topic of existential thought. We might draw a number of parallels between the way in which the discussions of choice in the ethical part of Either/Or relate to Sartre’s account of “choosing oneself” or to Heidegger’s notion of “resoluteness.” Common to all of these works is a way of thinking about choice as an intrinsically self-forming act. To choose between “this” and “that” is not only to choose between “this” and “that,” but also to hold oneself responsible for choosing, to respond to facticity. Choice is figured as the gesture by which an individual appropriates or makes “her own” the given reality by which she is determined. The young man of Repetition finds himself in love with a girl, but this love, which happens to him, throws him into a profound state of disarray, one from which he can only emerge by “repeating” the love at the level of passionate, aware commitment. The one who treats death as the end that befalls all human beings, as a necessary feature of the “human condition,” and thus an accidental feature of my condition in particular, faces a similar critique: “even if the

 SKS 4, 419, my translation. The Hong translation is misleading in this passage, but cf. Walter Lowrie’s translation of The Concept of Dread, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1968, p. 104.  SKS 5, 423 / TD, 47– 48.  SKS 5, 438 / TD, 65.

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contemplation of death uses pictures of horror to describe death and terrifies a sick imagination, it is still only a jest if he merely contemplates death and not himself in death, if he thinks of it as the human condition but not as his own.”³⁰ Death itself is a brute fact of existence. But Kierkegaard’s discourse is about turning attention away from death as brute fact to “the earnest thought of death,”³¹ which is a “certain uncertainty”³² that “inspects every moment [seer efter hvert Øieblik].”³³ Death means that time is scarce, “but with the thought of death the earnest person is able to create a scarcity so that the year and the day receive infinite worth.”³⁴ Choice in this way is somewhat creative—it does not create reality in the way that I can create a sentence or God is to have created the earth, but it does create a complicity on the part of the subject, transforming an alien situation into one for which I might take responsibility. It is often observed that there is a kind of “redemptive” function to such existentialist accounts of choice. At the root of such thinking, I will argue, is one of Kierkegaard’s most important and most mysterious moves: the equation between repentance and choice. It is worth noting that choice [Valg] and resolution [Beslutning] are not merely favored by Kierkegaard at the voluntaristic margins of his religious project, helping to steer the lost sheep back toward the fold until the dogmatic categories take over. They have been fused into the core description of religious existence itself. The first place to see this is in the extended discussion of choice in the second part of Either/Or, where “to choose oneself” [at vælge sig selv] is given the peculiar synonym of “to repent oneself” [at angre sig selv]. To understand the connection between choice and repentance we must recall that what Wilhelm means by choice is not primarily that one choose the particular features of one’s personality and circumstance, but—in his words—that one chooses oneself “absolutely” and in one’s “eternal validity.” “The power of despair,” Wilhelm muses, “will consume everything until he finds himself in his eternal validity.”³⁵ To choose oneself absolutely is to choose that inexhaustible alienation that despair has revealed; “he has truly chosen” only when he has chosen “what despair chooses: himself in his eternal validity.”³⁶

      

SKS SKS SKS SKS SKS SKS SKS

5. 444 / TD, 73. 5. 444 / TD, 73. 5, 462– 463 / TD, 95, slightly paraphrased. 5, 468 / TD, 100. 5, 453 / TD, 84, my emphasis. 3, 201 / EO2, 209. 3, 204 / EO2, 213.

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We find here an analogue of what The Sickness unto Death described as “the eternal self.” There, “eternal” described that which was inalienable about the self. And what is inalienable, paradoxically, is the self’s very alienation. This alienation was demonstrated by the fact that every gesture of self-appropriation is haunted by radical givenness, that the self is never fully itself but only continually to-be-appropriated. For Wilhelm, just as we see here, the “eternal validity” of the self is defined as the self seen in respect of what it cannot undo about itself: freedom.³⁷ And here, too, this freedom is something the self develops only by relating to the more fundamental powers on which this self depends: When “the passion of freedom” is aroused in an individual, “he chooses himself and struggles for this possession as for his salvation, and it is his salvation. He can give up nothing of all this, not the most painful, not the hardest, and yet the expression for this struggle, for this acquiring—is repentance. He repents himself back into himself, back into the family, back into the race, until he finds himself in God.”³⁸ The self always has a history, a determinacy which is not its own making, but even this history, this determination from without, must be assumed by the individual in her choice. This debt, this ineradicable determinacy is the meaning of guilt: Only when I choose myself as guilty do I absolutely choose myself, if I am at all to choose myself absolutely in such a way that it is not identical with creating myself. And even though it was the father’s guilt that was passed on to the son by inheritance, he repents of this, too, for only in this way can he choose himself, choose himself absolutely. And if his tears would almost wipe out everything for him, he continues to repent, for only in this way does he choose himself. His self is, so to speak, outside him, and it has to be acquired, and repentance is his love for it, because he chooses it absolutely from the hand of the eternal God.³⁹

Most discussions of the idea of choice in Kierkegaard’s writings focus on the ethical status of choice, leaving aside the way in which choice functions as a part of Kierkegaard’s religious project (and thus marginalizing the way in which choice is described as penitential). I take part of this marginalization to reflect concerns

 SKS 3, 205 / EO2, 214. Though it requires an interpretation of the meaning of the word “evil” as the Judge uses it, he speaks about the equation between repentance and absolute choice in precisely these terms of the inalienably alien: “Repentance specifically expresses that evil essentially belongs to me and at the same time that it does not essentially belong to me. If the evil in me did not essentially belong to me, I could not choose it; but if there were something in me that I could not choose absolutely, then I would not be choosing myself absolutely at all, then I myself would not be the absolute but only a product” (SKS 3, 215 / EO2, 224).  SKS 3, 207 / EO2, 216.  SKS 3, 208 / EO2, 216 – 217.

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about voluntaristic tendencies in Kierkegaard’s theology.⁴⁰ Such theological concerns may become less pressing when we notice, for example, that the equation between choice and repentance is found throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship. We have the fact that repetition [Gjentagelsen], another of Kierkegaard’s synonyms for appropriative choice is supposed to find its truest expression in the religious gesture of “atonement.”⁴¹ The idea of repentance also shows up in the second part of The Sickness unto Death, somewhat mysteriously: “Every unrepented [uangret] sin is a new sin and every moment that it remains unrepented is also a new sin.”⁴² But it is here that the explicit equation from Either/Or can help us to understand what is going on: once despair over oneself has been defined as sin, willing to be oneself through choice comes to serve as a gloss for repentance. Returning to the well-known example of the helmsman from Either/Or may help to tease out some of the implications of this equation. To recall the illustration in outline—Wilhelm compares the existential choice faced (or not faced) by his friend the author of A to the captain of a ship: “Imagine a captain of a ship the moment a shift of direction must be made; then he may be able to say: I can do this or that. But if he is not a mediocre captain he will also be aware that during all this the ship is ploughing ahead.” Rephrasing this nautical metaphor in psychological terms, Wilhelm continues: “Already prior to one’s choosing, the personality is interested in the choice, and if one puts off the choice, the personality or the obscure forces within it unconsciously chooses.”⁴³ If accepting responsibility for the ship’s course—“choosing to choose”—is considered an act of repentance, what is implied in the choice is an admission that one is at every instant capable of choosing. It is not an act of penance, surely, that the captain chooses to go northeast as opposed to east. But in choosing the captain also is accepting that he is in the position to choose, which is to accept that in every moment that the choice is not being made he is neglecting to choose. If the captain, in deciding, not only decides to travel in the northeastern direction but

 See esp. Edward Mooney, On Søren Kierkegaard: Dialogue, Polemics, Lost Intimacy, and Time, Aldershot, England: Ashgate 2007, pp. 119 – 120; Jamie Ferreira, “Faith and the Kierkegaardian Leap,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by Alastiar Hannay and Gordon Daniel Marino, Cambrigde, Cambridge University Press 1998, pp. 207– 234; and Steven Emmanuel, Kierkegaard and the Concept of Revelation, Albany, NY: SUNY Press 1996, ch. 5. (Many of these discussions are responses to Macintyre’s reading of Kierkegaard, which views his notion of choice retrospectively through Sartrean models.)  See the drafts of Repetition excerpted into the Hong edition: pp. 312, 320, 324.  SKS 11, 217 / SUD, 105. See also SKS 11, 174 / SUD, 59.  SKS 3, 161 / EO2, 164; second emphasis mine.

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also to accept his ability to choose, he has “chosen himself in freedom.” And this sort of choice is always penitential, because in asserting one’s freedom one acknowledges that choice is at every moment possible, which means that before the choice one was responsible for not having chosen. “If he forgets to take into account the velocity—there eventually comes a moment where it is no longer a matter of an Either/Or, not because he has chosen, but because he has refrained from it,” which is just as much as saying, “because others have chosen for him.”⁴⁴ Velocity is here the metaphorical analogue of history. There is no “blank” moment in which one can keep oneself from determinacy, from already “ploughing ahead.” Choice can be equated with repentance only because in choosing absolutely, in choosing to choose, the helmsman accepts history as his own personal responsibility. Unlike the religious psychologist behind The Sickness unto Death, the ethicist of Either/Or does not have much to say on the subject of sin. He speaks of God and faith and presents himself as an advocate of Christianity, but he is most interested in the problem of cultivating a rich and upright personality.⁴⁵ Here the individual’s main task is that of “becoming himself.” He achieves this task when he “possesses himself in his entire concretion…as an individual who has these capacities, these passions, these inclinations, these habits.” This individual “possesses himself as a task that has been assigned him,” but one which “became his by his own choosing.”⁴⁶ But in creating an equation between the appropriative act of choosing oneself and the penitential act of taking responsibility for a history that one did not create, the ethicist has also forged the outline of a devotional logic that will take its place at the heart of Kierkegaard’s most religious authorship. Without the same religious commitments (and in many cases within the context of a sharp critique of Christianity) existential thinkers from Heidegger to Beauvoir would draw on the penitential resonance of choice, transforming deci-

 SKS 3 161 / EO2, 154. There is a strongly Stoic resonance to these analogies between the helmsman and the self. See Seneca, Moral and Political Essays, ed. by John M. Cooper and J.F. Procopé, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995, pp. 44, 136, 226; and Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. by Maxwell Staniforth, London: Penguin 1964, pp. 58, 114, 175, 179, 187.  Or, as he puts it negatively, of avoiding an “atrophy of personality” (SKS 3, 160 / EO2, 163).  SKS 3, 250 / EO2, 262. Kierkegaard uses three propriative verbs more or less interchangeably throughout EO2: “eier sig selv,” “har sig selv,” and “besidder sig selv.” Here the verb is “har” (“has”). See also: “[The self-chosen individual] does not become someone other than he was before, but he becomes himself…Just as an heir, even if he were heir to the treasures of the whole world, does not possess [eier] them before he has come of age, so the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself…The greatness is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and every human being can be this if he so wills it” (SKS 3, 173 / EO2, 177).

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sion and resolve into the spiritual basis of “authentic” existence. Consider the opening description of Eigentlichkeit (“authenticity”) in Being and Time: Existence is in each case my possibility; I do not only “have” existence in the manner of a property [eigenschaftlich], as something already present and independent from me. And since existence essentially is in each case my possibility, I can choose myself in my being, acquire myself, and I can lose myself, in the sense of never, or only “apparently” acquiring it. A human being can only have lost itself or have not yet acquired itself insofar as it is fundamentally possible for it to be authentic [eigentliches], that is, insofar as it is capable of being appropriated by itself [sich zueigen ist].⁴⁷

Here choice is the cornerstone of authenticity, and to “choose oneself” is both to acquire oneself and to not lose oneself. We are so familiar with such language, from Heidegger’s work as well as from the many other existential philosophers and psychologists who adopted such terms, that it may be difficult to remember that this connection is not an intuitive one. Why should choice be the locus of a redemptive philosophy? Why should we see, or how did we come to see decision as a gesture capable of restoring something lost? Heidegger, like Kierkegaard, will come to say that what is “restored” through authenticity is not a form of wholeness or integrity, but a relation on the part of the self to its proper lack (which is also to say: its proper excess).⁴⁸ I “win” myself, Heidegger will insist, only by confronting that which is “ownmost” but can never be appropriated— that which is non-relational, but “which cannot be outpaced.”⁴⁹ Camus’ figure of Sisyphus can be seen as another example of twentieth-century philosophy drawing on the penitential dimension of choice. Sisyphus is imagined as a tragic hero, for Camus, only to the extent that he responds to the call of the absurd by sustaining that absurdity, using his fractured and finite will by “keeping the absurd alive.”⁵⁰ There are important differences among all of these views. Nonetheless, it is possible to observe a simple point: Kierkegaard’s curious equation establishes a penitential reputation for choice, which anticipates later existential attempts to deploy resolve and decision within the frame of an atheistic spiritual exercise.

 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 42.  For a fuller discussion of the relation between Heidegger’s notion of authenticity and Kierkegaardian choice, see my The Religion of Existence: Asceticism in Philosophy from Kierkegaard to Sartre, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2016, chapter 3.  This is the possibility that Heidegger refers to as “death.” See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 251.  Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 54.

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III Conversion and Identity This point about atheism brings us straight to third aspect of Kierkegaard’s existentialist legacy under discussion here. It had been easier to separate Kierkegaard’s perceived religion from existentialism’s perceived irreligion when markedly existential ideas such as “choice” appear to be marginal to Kierkegaard’s religious thought. Yet to the extent that we appreciate Kierkegaard’s idea of choice as penitential—that is, as part of his religious thought—we come upon a problem. For Kierkegaard, “choosing” is a moment of religious life and the cornerstone of a Christian critique of Christendom. But for thinkers like Heidegger and Jaspers and Sartre, one does not choose to become Christian but to become oneself. On the one hand, it is clear that Kierkegaard’s twentieth-century readers saw more philosophical potential in the idea of decision than he himself saw fit to do. On the other hand, it would be hasty to consider that it was only in later existentialism that choice became formulated through the lens of personal identity. Kierkegaard repeatedly described the aim of his own work as clarifying what it means to “become a Christian.” Yet in this final section, I will argue that this phrase has some counterintuitive consequences. Looking a bit more closely at this famous phrase, I suggest, will help to bring later existentialist connections between choice, identity, and atheistic redemption into a new focus. To begin, consider Kierkegaard’s famous phrase in ordinary conversation. If I say that I am becoming a Christian or that so and so is aiming to become a Christian, we tend to understand this as meaning something quite simple and straightforward. We tend to understand, by this description, that I am converting to Christianity, or that so and so is aiming to convert. Of course we ordinarily understand conversion to denote a movement between religious traditions, or from a lack of religious affiliation to participation in a particular religious community or identity. Clearly this is not what Kierkegaard meant by “becoming a Christian,” in that he consistently imagined his audience as domestic rather than foreign, as the self-identified Christians within Christendom itself. We would do well to recall a different way of understanding the notion of conversion, however. Within the Pietistic theology that Kierkegaard had been so exposed to as a young man, conversion was a prominent and fundamental trope, referring to the conscious intensification of one’s commitment, an intensification at the heart of an ongoing, struggling Christian faith and not only at its chronological beginning.⁵¹ In what follows, we will take this parallel seriously, and consider  For a masterful study of the influence of Pietism in Kierkegaard’s milieu see Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden-Age Denmark, Bloomington, IL: Indiana University Press

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Kierkegaard’s phrase “becoming a Christian” as a reformulation of the theological trope of conversion common to many reform and revival movements within Protestantism. Finally, I will suggest that once we see the range and extent of Kierkegaard’s work on this front, far from distancing him from later atheistic existentialists, it will actually help us to discern more about the spiritual stakes of existental theories of the self that we otherwise might have tried to do. Kierkegaard’s replacement of “conversion” with “becoming a Christian” has a simple but dramatic outcome: conversion becomes a matter of identity. While retaining all the subjective and conscious elements characteristic of the Pietistic emphasis on conversion, “becoming a Christian” distances conversion from the idea of a discrete experience.⁵² To see the way in which this translation works more closely we should consider one of the discourses published in Kierkegaard’s 1848 collection under the title: “Now are we nearer our salvation… than when we became believers.” The short discourse is, I would like to argue, Kierkegaard’s psychological reboot of a type of Pietist sermon in the radicalized terms of a crisis of Christian identity. The title and theme for the discourse come from Romans 13:11, a passage in which Paul urges his audience “to wake from sleep” since “salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.”⁵³ Ignoring the apocalyptic element for which this line has often been remembered, Kierkegaard turns the “now” of Paul’s exhortation into the occasion for a Protestant examination of conscience. He opens the essay with a bang: “Great God, where are we!” The point of this exclamation is to dramatize the fact that today, “in Christendom,” where “so 1990, pp. 28 – 44, 120 – 130, 214– 220. Christopher Barnett (Kierkegaard, Pietism, and Holiness, London: Routledge 2011) clarifies a number of issues regarding the sectarian differences between Halle and Moravian Pietism on Kierkegaard’s father and his upbringing. Pattison gives a very interesting analysis of Kierkegaard’s possible “conversion experience” (following Joakim Garff’s suggestion in Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 127– 128), that brings together many of Pietisic and mystical sources that were important to Kierkegaard. See Pattison, Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses: Philosophy, Theology, Literature, London: Routledge 2002, pp. 56 – 63 for more on this discussion.  Scholars of Pietism have been eager to point to the ways in which the idea of singular, sensuous “experiences” of conversion were less crucial to the leading Pietist theologians than many have believed. This was nonetheless a common impression of Pietism spread among many followers as well as critics. See, e. g., F. Ernest Stoeffler, German Pietism in the Eighteenth Century, Leiden: Brill 1973.  What the Danish edition as with Luther’s and many English translations render as “became believers” [bleve Troende] is an aorist of the verb “to believe,” ἐπιστεύσαμεν. This translation— turning a verbal form “came to believe” into a nominal one “became believers”—surely would have contributed to Kierkegaard’s ability to use this passage as a point of departure for a Pietistic discourse on the subject of “becoming a Christian.”

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many Christians are born every year, so many are baptized, so many confirmed,” a preacher who repeats Paul’s words creates at the same time a deep ambiguity: “Is he to talk about our salvation being nearer than when we believed, but leave it entirely vague who these ‘we’ are,” Kierkegaard asks, “whether it is they who lived a hundred or several hundred years ago?”⁵⁴ He then repeats the question, and not for the last time—Where are we? As the discourse continues this interrogation intensifies and begins to change shape. Next, “Where are we?” becomes “When did you become a believer?” and then at last turns into the question Kierkegaard is really asking: “Have you become a believer?”⁵⁵ Without needing to know the “hour and the minute,” what this question demands, in Kierkegaard’s own terms, is that one is “essentially conscious that [one has] experienced this decision to become a believer.”⁵⁶ The question seemingly about external facts, in other words, becomes in a few short pages the instrument for a penetrating examination of the conscience. Paul’s line enjoins the believer to wakefulness through the promise of imminent salvation. Kierkegaard grasps the fact that Paul’s promise of salvation offers the listener a “blessed comfort.” What Kierkegaard does is to take the promise of comfort and turn it into a test.⁵⁷ At the end of the discourse he makes a formal gesture toward the difference between the words of “the Apostle,” as Kierkegaard refers to him,” and his own exhortation, recognizing that while the focus here has been cast entirely on “our own activity,” the line itself stresses the fact that “our salvation is from God.”⁵⁸ Kierkegaard explains this difference by referring to an order of priority: “It might well be necessary to talk about this —if only it always were clear where we are. But in order to become aware of this we must first know whether we have become believers.”⁵⁹ Between the believer and the comfort of immanent salvation, in other words, Kierkegaard inserts an identity crisis. His discursive interrogation of the reader does not ask whether he or she has experienced conversion, whether he or she has undergone the central religious experience of Protestant piety—he does not ask the question that some were asking toward the end of the 19th century, about whether modern Christians can have conversions as intense and dramatic as those of the earliest followers. He asks whether the individual has “become a

 SKS 10, 222 / CD (Lowrie), 214, Lowrie’s translation. See Søren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1939, p. 221.  SKS 10, 226 / CD (Lowrie), 218.  SKS 10, 225 / CD (Lowrie), 217.  “Test yourself, then, with the help of this saying” (SKS 10, 228 / CD (Lowrie), 220).  SKS 10, 228 / CD (Lowrie), 227.  SKS 10, 229 / CD (Lowrie), 227.

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believer.” Kierkegaard closes with a seemingly consoling remark about the possibility that the crisis may yield comfort once we establish the fact of having become believers. But here too he plays the ironist. For the entire discourse is predicated on the idea that the one who thinks of himself as a believer is the one who is vulnerable. Just a few paragraphs earlier, Kierkegaard has dropped a not so subtle clue into his soteriology: “Salvation is correlative to danger.”⁶⁰ If this is so, the only comfort a person can have is that he has not thus far submitted to comfort. Because if salvation being nearer depends on one knowing “where” one is, and at the same time if salvation depends on one being in danger, on denying the certainty of “having decided” and treating the saying as a “test,” there is no occasion on which salvation will be nearer. The exigency of the “now” undermines the very notion of spiritual progress, on which the comfort depends. Kierkegaard’s discourse is premised on the expectation that his contemporaries will have consistently weak and uncertain responses to the questions he is posing. And if he is right—if asking “Where are we?” “When did I decide to become a believer?” and “Have I consciously experienced the decision to become a believer?” is enough to generate a crisis in the religious consciousness of his reader—then the exam also reveals a deep theological problem: What does it actually mean to “decide” to become a believer? What is a “conscious experience” of the decision to believe? Kierkegaard has inserted, between the Pietistic self-examination and the Pauline reassurance, an infinite loop held open by the problem of “becoming”—becoming, that is, the very thing that one was “baptized,” “instructed,” and “confirmed” to be.⁶¹ By approaching the problem of religious conversion as the problem of continually “becoming a Christian,” Kierkegaard turns personal identity into both the language and the prize of piety. Another way to put this claim is that he built, out of the conceptual materials of Christian piety, a normative framework for thinking about identity and subjective reality more generally. Kierkegaard’s construction builds a “theological self,” not only in the sense that it places individual self-becoming at the center of Christian religious life, but also in the sense that it formulates the identity crisis as a religious problem, opening the way for an existential psychology charged with redemptive resonance—a psychology that treats the self as duty and as gift, as task and as acquired possession, earned through the spiritual labor of choice.

 SKS 10, 228 / CD (Lowrie), 227.  SKS 10, 226 / CD (Lowrie), 224– 225.

Bernhard Obsieger

Anxiety as the Origin of Freedom and Responsibility Abstract: This essay addresses the role of anxiety in human existence as a free and responsible self. Drawing on the works of Brentano, Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, and Sartre, I point out how the phenomenological tradition rediscovered the importance of anxiety as a special kind of affective intentionality. From this perspective, I compare Kierkegaard’s conception of anxiety with the phenomenological analyses offered by Heidegger and Sartre. Finally, I argue that Kierkegaard’s approach to anxiety can throw light on the origin of the enigmatic human condition that Sartre later characterizes with his famous phrase that we are condemned to freedom.

I Affective and Practical Intentionality Phenomenology was introduced by Husserl as an investigation of the intentional relation between consciousness and its objects. It is well known that it was Husserl’s teacher, Franz Brentano, who first called attention to this unique relation as an essential feature of consciousness. Both Brentano and the early Husserl understood all intentional experience to be based on a form of theoretical consciousness, namely, on representation. Nevertheless, alongside two fundamental classes of theoretical consciousness—representation and judgment—Brentano had also recognized the sphere of emotion and volition as a third fundamental class of intentional experience.¹ He assigned emotion and volition to one and the same class of experience because they are characterized by a practical positiontaking toward the value of an object. Therefore, they can be understood as the receptive and active modes of the same kind of position-taking. What is more, emotion and volition can be considered opposite poles or contrary components of a continuity of mixed experiences. On the one hand, emotional experiences always involve a relation to volition, namely an attraction or repulsion; on the other hand, primordially volitional experiences such as striving and desire

 Cf. Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, vols. 1– 3, Hamburg: Meiner 1924 [1873], vol. 2, pp. 33 ff. and Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, Hamburg: Meiner, 1955 [1889], pp. 17– 18. DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-009

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also involve an affective or emotional element.² This inseparability, and the identical form of the intentional relation toward their objects—which appear as attractive or repulsive, good or bad—manifest the common nature of emotion and volition, according to Brentano. In virtue of this common nature, Brentano classifies them as phenomena of love or hatred (or of pleasure and displeasure).³ However, this kind of intentionality was regarded by both Brentano and Husserl as a derivative one, since affective and voluntary position-taking toward the value of an object seems to presuppose that the object is represented, as expressed by the scholastic principle nil volitum quin praecognitum (nothing is desired unless it first be known). In order to like or dislike, desire or fear something, we must first know it. Brentano and Husserl considered emotion and volition to be secondary forms of intentionality because they do not seem to establish an intentional relation to an object but rather presuppose this relation. In other words, it seems that they do not provide an experiential access to objects but consist only in relating in a certain manner to objects that we already know.⁴ It was with Max Scheler that emotions and volitions were no longer regarded as secondary forms of intentionality without a disclosing function. Scheler argued convincingly that they must rather be regarded as disclosing a distinct realm of properties, namely, that of values. According to Scheler, emotion is a primary form of experience on the same level as perception. It is the source of our acquaintance with values as the practical qualities of an object in a similar manner as perception is the source of our acquaintance with its sensory qualities. Although the practical qualities can only be experienced together with the other qualities, it is also true that perception or representation is only possible as embedded in the horizon of our practical existence. We experience objects in a primarily practical manner, and their sensory properties are always imbued with practical meaning. The perceptual world is shaped by its relation to practice; our perception is in itself part of our embodied existence in the world and is thus related to action and volition. Emotive and volitional intentionality discloses the practical dimension of the world that is foun-

 One can consider the intentionality of emotions a particular form of affective intentionality, distinguishing emotions from other forms of affectivity (e. g., bodily feelings such as hunger) that also can be intentional. However, the intentionality of emotions can be regarded as the most prominent form of affective intentionality, and I will apply the term “affective intentionality” here primarily to emotions.  Cf. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, vol. 2, pp. 28, 35, 65 – 67, and Vom Ursprung Sittlicher Erkenntnis, p. 18.  Cf. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, vol. 1, p. 112, vol. 2, p. 127, and Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, vol. 2 (part 1), The Hague: Nijhoff, 1984 [1901], V. § 43, pp. 514– 515.

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dational for all embodied perceptual experience. This kind of intentionality is not limited to a disclosure of objects and their properties; it also opens a horizon of universal possibilities that is independent of particular objects. Unlike perceptual experience, practical intentionality is not primarily directed toward that which is happening at present but rather toward the future, anticipating the events of the perceptual world. It can thus be said that practical intentionality precedes perceptual experience and makes it possible, insofar as perception is necessarily the fulfilment or disappointment of expectations. For these reasons, phenomenologists like Scheler and Heidegger—and even Husserl already around 1912—claimed that the theoretical forms of experience are only possible within the horizon of the practical attitude and thus on the basis of the emotional and volitional forms of intentionality.⁵ The ultimate objects of emotion and volition are not things or objective states of affairs but practical possibilities, that is, possibilities of our existence in a social and natural world. The peculiar difference between positivity and negativity that characterizes the practical sphere bears an analogy with the difference between affirmative and negative judgment. This positive or negative value corresponds to a practical possibility as a possible reality. Accordingly, it is the realization of a practical possibility to which we take a positive or negative practical stance, welcoming or rejecting this realization and endowing it with a higher or lower positive or negative value. The same holds true for possibilities that are already realized: we still relate to them as possibilities, since it is only as a possibility that a reality can be the object of practical position-taking, even if the position is taken in a retrospective manner, such as in regret or satisfaction. There are two different kinds of possibilities: on the one hand, those that are intended as our possibilities—in the sense that their realization is supposed to depend upon us—and, on the other hand, those that are not in our power but depend primarily upon external circumstances. Something that we fear or wish is certainly a possibility of our existence, but it is not our own possibility insofar as its realization is not assumed to be in our power. In contrast, something that we strive for or something that we regret is intended as a possibility whose realization depends upon us. The same distinction also holds true for possibilities that are already realized. For instance, we can only feel regret within the realm of our own possibilities, whereas we can only feel angry about something for which we hold someone else responsible. This distinction can even be ap See Max Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die Materiale Wertethik, Halle: Niemeyer 1921 [1913 and 1916], pp. 133 – 134, and Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen: Niemeyer 1993 [1927], §15, pp. 66 ff. See also Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, vols. 1– 3 (Husserliana III-V), vol. 2, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1952, pp. 183, 189 – 190, 214.

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plied to the emergence of our possibilities themselves. In part we are responsible for projecting and opening our possibilities, but in part these possibilities also depend upon circumstance. To a certain extent, all our practical possibilities must be created by our imagination and through our actions, but they are also conditioned by what happens to us.

II Phenomenology and Kierkegaardian Philosophy of Existence Insofar as emotional and volitional experience consists in taking a practical stance toward our own possibilities, it concerns our relation to our own being as a being that has to be suffered and decided by us. In other words, it concerns the way in which we live our lives. Our existence is characterized by an intentional relation to itself. This self-relational mode of existence can be called selfhood and consists primarily in a practical relation in which one takes care of one’s life. We own our lives in the sense that each person decides the course of her life and also in the sense that nobody else can enjoy and suffer it in her place.⁶ Human existence is thus of a primarily practical nature, and emotional and volitional intentionality is not first and foremost a mode in which we are aware of certain objects and their properties but rather a mode of existence and a mode of relating to our existence. From an existential point of view, it seems crucial to understand intentionality as embedded within the general context of life. Intentionality is rooted in a mode of being in which phenomenality and practical existence coincide or at least are inseparable. Precisely for this reason, the self-awareness that accompanies our practical being is not a neutral form of self-knowledge but is itself a mode of existence and position-taking. It is therefore not sufficient to describe and analyze our immediate awareness of our being, but this awareness requires an interpretation. We do not experience our being in an impartial manner but as guided by practical interests and by a certain understanding and self-interpretation that must not be uncritically accepted by the philosopher.⁷

 Cf. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, § 9, pp. 41 ff.  This is why Heidegger adds his “hermeneutical” method to Husserl’s method of descriptive analysis. Heidegger’s method of interpretation seeks to critically scrutinize the self-understanding implied in our experience. The need for such a method is related to the fact that the phenomenological self-manifestation of our existence is not only a revelation but also a concealment. This concealment is in turn a form of implicit revelation that can be made explicit by an inter-

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This is how phenomenology as the investigation of intentionality turned into a form of existential philosophy, that is, into an analysis of human existence understood in all its concreteness. One can say that Kierkegaard’s route is exactly the opposite. He takes the problem of human existence as his point of departure and this leads him to an analysis of emotional and practical intentionality. Whereas phenomenologists approach existence from the point of view of intentionality, Kierkegaard approaches intentionality from the point of view of existence.⁸ We can thus expect that phenomenology will offer some enrichment to Kierkegaard’s understanding of the intentional dimension of existence and, on the other hand, that Kierkegaard may offer a richer understanding of the existential dimension of intentionality. Kierkegaard’s analysis of anxiety undoubtedly played a pivotal role in the existential turn of phenomenology, and it was taken up and further developed by both Heidegger and Sartre. Their contribution mainly consists of analyzing anxiety as a fundamental kind of intentional experience, thereby revealing the uniqueness of some features that Kierkegaard had already pointed out and used within the— seemingly very peculiar—context in which he considered anxiety.

III Anxiety as a Revelation of Nothingness, Being, and Death Anxiety is a unique kind of affective intentionality insofar as it lacks precisely that which normally characterizes experience as intentional, namely, that it relates to something as its object. As Kierkegaard points out, anxiety “is altogether different from fear and similar concepts that refer to something definite.”⁹ Nevertheless, anxiety does not lack the relational and disclosing character of intentionality and even is a privileged form of phenomenality and manifestation. Anxiety is not an affective

pretation that uses phenomenological analysis in order to question the self-interpretation implied in our experience. The aim of such a hermeneutical phenomenology is to bring out the self-deception that is contained in our experience and that is not accessible to a “naive” description of its intentionality. Such an approach is only conceivable once the focus of phenomenology shifts from the structure of intentionality or manifestation to the structure of human existence.  I refrain from Heidegger’s narrow use of the notion of intentionality that consists in reserving this term for object-consciousness and opposing it to other—arguably more fundamental—dimensions of awareness or phenomenality. I do this precisely in order to bring out the difference between the structure of anxiety and the usual structure of intentional experience.  SKS 4, 348 / CA 42.

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intentional relation to any object whatsoever but, rather, to nothing.¹⁰ This relation to “nothing” is not simply an absence of a relation but a positive mode of intentional directedness, although precisely a directedness toward “nothing.” It is not by an external consideration that we see that anxiety lacks an object. Rather, anxiety itself is an experience of this absence of an object. This is why Kierkegaard characterizes “the relation of anxiety to its object” as a relation “to something that is nothing.”¹¹ That which is dreaded in anxiety is intended as being “nothing”; the very meaning of anxiety is that it is directed toward nothing, and this “nothing” is thus the intentional correlate of anxiety. What is more, the “nothing” to which anxiety relates is not only signified, but it is somehow experienced as present. After all, anxiety is a kind of affective intentionality and thus of intuitive givenness. “Nothing” is not merely present in anxiety as a meaning but as experienced in the manner of an emotion, that is, nothingness is not only intended or understood in anxiety, but it is felt. Anxiety is in itself not only characterized as an objectless consciousness or as an intentional presence of the meaning “nothing” but as the emotional experience of the absence of everything. This absence is not a void but a negativity or nullity that corresponds to the mode in which all being is intended in anxiety, in such a way that the whole of being is experienced as not being that of which we are afraid. Anxiety is thus a feeling that is directed toward the world as a totality, showing it as dreadful without this dreadfulness belonging to any object in particular. In anxiety we are directed toward the entire world as not being that which we dread. However, this negative relation of anxiety toward the totality of being is a mode of intentional givenness of being as a totality, since that which is the intentional correlate of anxiety is precisely the totality of being, although it is experienced as absent. Remembering that emotions correspond to practical possibilities of our existence, we can thus say that in anxiety we experience the absence of all being as our own practical possibility. The absence of all things is indeed a real possibility of our existence and is precisely the possibility of death. Anxiety’s negativity can thus be understood as the negative value of this radical possibility of our existence that consists in the annihilation of every possibility.¹² The negativity of anxiety as an emotion corresponds to the negative value of the possibility of our annihilation. Anxiety is an emotional experience that discloses the negativity of nothingness as the dreadful possibility of death.

 Cf. SKS 4, 347– 348 / CA 41– 43.  SKS 4, 348 / CA 43.  In a similar manner, Heidegger characterizes death as the possibility of the impossibility of our existence. Cf. Sein und Zeit, pp. 262 and 306.

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This kind of disclosure first seems to be lacking any positive content. Yet we already pointed out that the manifestation of nothingness is at the same time a (negative) mode in which we are aware of the totality of being. According to Heidegger, this mode of manifestation is foundational for the possibility of our understanding of the world as the realm of all things. Being can only be intentionally present as a totality when contrasted with nothingness, and it is therefore precisely the opposition to nothingness that constitutes the all-encompassing unity of being that we call the world. The universality of being is only conceivable as a finite or determinate universality in opposition to non-being, that is, to nothingness, and as escaping from the universal realm of non-being. Since every totality is defined by its limits, the totality of being is only understandable if we understand it as limited by nothingness. If we speak of all there is, we say implicitly that there is nothing else and that apart from this totality there is nothing.¹³ On the one hand, nothingness can only manifest itself in relation to the totality of being, but on the other hand this totality can manifest itself only as the other side of nothingness and presupposes the latter. This is why, paradoxically, the original mode of manifestation of the world as the totality of being is precisely the manifestation of nothingness, and the original mode of this manifestation is none other than anxiety.¹⁴ The same holds true for our universal notion of being. The general notion of “something”—even if its generality is restricted— is only understandable as opposed to “nothing.” We only understand being in general in its opposition to nothingness. This is why Heidegger sees in anxiety the condition of our practical and theoretical understanding of being.¹⁵ If nothingness is understandable and knowable for us—whatever Parmenides might say —it is only thanks to the possibility of experiencing nothingness in anxiety. It is not the case that nothingness or ontological negativity is just a result of negation, but on the contrary the understanding of negation presupposes the understanding of nothingness or negativity. Negation is neither the only nor the original mode of a relation to non-being and nothingness. It presupposes that non-being is knowable and understandable for us.¹⁶ Non-being or negativity is first and foremost given in the manner of a practical possibility to which we relate in a practical and emotional manner, for example, by feeling disappointed. Nothingness and non-being not only manifest themselves in the form of nonexistence or negative states of affairs but also in  See Martin Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik?, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 1969 [1929], pp. 26, 41. See also Jean-Paul Sartre, L′être et le néant, Paris: Gallimard 1943, p. 52.  See Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik?, pp. 31– 33.  Ibid., p. 35.  Ibid., pp. 36 – 37.

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connection with existence. This happens when something that exists is experienced as something that should not be. In all forms of practical negativity, non-being manifests itself independently of the existence of the negative object in question and even is part of the manifestation of its very existence. Moreover, the whole sphere of practical negativity presupposes a relation to non-being as a possibility that can possess positive or negative value. The relation to non-being is also present in our practical position-taking toward negative states of affairs. If that which is not the case or does not exist is nevertheless there for us, this is because the non-existence of something is a practical reality insofar as it is the realization of a practical possibility. Negative states of affairs are somehow present in the world despite their non-existence because, from a practical point of view, they have a being as possibilities that are endowed with value. This means that nothingness and non-existence have a mode of being insofar as they are practical possibilities. All particular negativity is rooted in the universal negativity of nothingness that makes possible our relation to being in general and to our own existence. Anxiety can therefore be considered foundational for the human condition. The manifestation of the world and of our own being is rooted in the disclosure of nothingness that is the work of anxiety.¹⁷

IV Anxiety as the Revelation of Freedom The revelation of nothingness and mortality, however, is only a secondary function of anxiety and is only the negative side of what anxiety positively reveals. It is not entirely true that anxiety is simply directed toward nothing at all or away from everything or toward the possibility of death. We should not forget that anxiety is, after all, a negative emotion, and that this negativity corresponds to a concrete situation. If we feel anxious, there must be something we feel anxious about. The dread that we feel in anxiety is clearly relational and must be related to something, even though this something cannot be considered an intentional object. It cannot be directly nothingness or death that we dread; they only constitute the background for our dread and are not that which we are immediately afraid of. The same holds true for the general dimension of dreadfulness that we experience in anxiety as belonging to the world and to our being in general. Anxiety certainly relates to our being-exposed to death and to the dimension of the dreadful, but we do not simply dread death or negativity in the way in

 Ibid., p. 35.

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which we fear negative worldly events. Rather, anxiety relates to the dreadful and to death as our own practical possibilities, that is, as to possibilities that we can bring about ourselves. Whether we will avoid them or not depends at least partly upon us, and it is precisely this responsibility for our existence that anxiety reveals as a danger. Unlike any objective threat, our ability to bring about that which we want to avoid is a danger from which we cannot escape. It is tied to the impossibility of escaping from death and from our vulnerable embodied existence as mortals. Even though anxiety relates intentionally to this general human condition, anxiety’s lack of an object should not be confounded with its indetermination. On the contrary, apart from being directed toward our existence in general, anxiety can also crystallize and become more concrete, referring to a specific situation and a particular possibility. This is something that the fascination with nothingness can easily cause us to neglect, and it has frequently led phenomenologists to the misunderstanding that the difference between fear and anxiety is that fear is directed at something particular, whereas anxiety is characterized by its indetermination. Kierkegaard, who first pointed out the objectlessness of anxiety and its structural difference from fear, acknowledged nevertheless that anxiety can bear a concrete reference to a given situation or possibility.¹⁸ What gives rise to anxiety is not simply our condition as mortals who must take care of our own existence, but the acuteness in which this condition presents itself to us in a given situation. This also explains why some situations are more likely than others to provoke anxiety. It is certainly not a situation or a possibility as such about which we are anxious but, rather, the necessity of facing this situation and thus our responsibility for what will happen. In anxiety we experience ourselves as the owners of our existence and its possibilities, that is, we experience our freedom. ¹⁹ We must decide freely about our existence by choosing between different possibilities or, first and foremost, by conceiving and projecting—or even creating and inventing—these possibilities. This freedom is not pri Kierkegaard not only points out how the “nothing” of which we are afraid in anxiety can be more or less concrete (e. g. before and after the prohibition), he also distinguishes a variety of directions that anxiety can take, such as anxiety about the good or anxiety about the evil. See Arne Grøn, Begrebet angst hos Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1993, chapter 1, pp. 13 ff. My understanding of Kierkegaard’s analysis of anxiety is deeply indebted to this book.  Jean-Paul Sartre reasserts Kierkegaard’s thesis that anxiety is primarily a revelation of freedom. He adds, however, that this does not exclude anxiety as also being a revelation of nothingness, but that both theses imply each other. See Sartre, L′être et le néant, p. 64. Heidegger himself recognizes the relation between anxiety and freedom (and selfhood), although he only claims that anxiety is a condition of freedom by being a revelation of nothingness. Cf. Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik, p. 35.

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marily experienced in a positive manner as an opportunity or a chance, but is experienced as a burden, namely, as entailing an inescapable responsibility. What will happen depends upon us, and anxiety manifests our freedom as dangerous. It shows us that we are capable of causing damage and destruction to others and ourselves, that is, it shows us our freedom to do evil, without which there would be nothing to choose because we would always automatically do the best we can. However, the possibility of deliberately choosing something that we believe to be evil or bad is only the most principled mode in which we can do what we would like to avoid. There are many less extreme ways in which we are a threat to ourselves that are not voluntary decisions but for which we are nevertheless at least partly responsible. For example, any kind of failure or mistake is only possible because to some extent we do not act as we would have wanted to act, and we do this freely and are held responsible for it.

V The Ambiguity of Anxiety and the Division of the Self It may sound paradoxical that we are afraid of the possibility that we will do something that we believe to be bad and that we do not want to do. However, our willingness and ability to avoid something is no guarantee that we will really avoid it, and what anxiety reveals to us is precisely the fact that our fate depends upon ourselves. The negative attitude that we adopt toward a possibility does not necessarily prevent us from realizing that possibility, and this is precisely what terrifies us in anxiety. Moreover, in the case of death the negative possibility that we strive to avoid is ultimately inevitable. But how is it to be understood that we are able to do something without wanting to do it? Why can we be afraid that we will realize a possibility against which we take position in our very anxiety? The answer given by Kierkegaard is that anxiety itself is not only that which makes us aware of the threat of wrongdoing but also that which seduces us to wrongdoing and thereby makes it possible. For instance, states like nervousness and the obscure inclination to do something that we expressly want to avoid are modes of anxiety in which we secretly cherish the possibility of acting against our will. Anxiety not only reveals a fundamental division within the self but is that which is responsible for this division. We not only experience the division within the self through anxiety, but anxiety is the mode in which the self exists as divided. This becomes clearer if we turn to another intentional characteristic of anxiety, namely, its ambiguity. Up to this point, we have only been considering anxi-

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ety as a negative form of emotional position-taking, but this has been an oversimplification. Anxiety is not exclusively a negative emotion but is profoundly ambivalent, and its two sides are inseparable from each other and refer to each other. On the one hand, it can be dread only to the extent to which it is at the same time desire; on the other hand, this very desire is that which makes us experience it as dreadful. Kierkegaard expresses anxiety’s paradoxical ambiguity by the following formula: “Anxiety is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy.”²⁰ The dreadful as such is only dreaded insofar as it is also experienced as attracting us, and it is precisely this attraction that we dread. This double movement of attraction and repulsion is the dizziness that Kierkegaard ascribes to anxiety.²¹ In the most normal case, anxiety can be considered to be a primordially negative experience, but there are many different proportional modes of anxiety, and it is even possible that the positive element is stronger. In such cases we are used to talking of a “sweet” anxiety that is primordially a form of joyful expectation. Here we can see that anxiety and freedom also make it possible to act in the right manner. Without anxiety and our exposure to guilt and failure it would neither be possible to carry out just and successful actions, nor to feel the joy and satisfaction that accompany their accomplishment. Every positive achievement is only possible against the background of the possibility of failure. However, it is primarily this possibility that we face in anxiety. Precisely because anxiety relates intentionally to a possibility that we consider negative, although it does so in an ambivalent manner, anxiety in itself must be considered a negative emotion, even though its negativity is necessary for a variety of positive experiences in which we feel joy or satisfaction about overcoming or resisting our anxiety. The last aspect of anxiety that I want to address here is its relation to temporality. As mentioned, anxiety is an emotion that is directed toward the future. It is thereby intrinsically connected to expectation and possibility. Both mortality and freedom, which are the two sides of the human condition that it manifests, are essentially related to the future. But there is more to it. The division of the self that is revealed by anxiety also has a temporal side, because it is a division between the present self and the past and future selves. This division entails that we cannot decide now in an irrevocable manner what we will do in the future because we are always free to decide anew if we want to reconsider the decisions that we made in the past. The present self is somehow isolated and separated from its past and its future; it is always a “new” self that must decide about

 SKS 4, 348 / CA, 42.  SKS 4, 365 / CA, 61.

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its immediate actions and is free to break with whatever we decided in the past, at a time when our actual present still belonged to the future. This autonomy of the present self is felt with special acuteness whenever we face a decisive situation. The outcome of a situation cannot be decided beforehand. We cannot act in the place of our future self although we can prepare ourselves for it. Inversely, we cannot recover the opportunities that we missed in our preparation once the situation is there. Thus, on the one hand, the isolation of the present motivates anxiety about the impossibility of anticipating in a definitive manner what we will do in the decisive situation; and, on the other hand, it motivates the anxiety about the necessity to decide that situation when it is present. The irrevocability and uniqueness of the present is the temporal side of freedom and is that which provokes anxiety or is reflected by anxiety. Freedom would not be dangerous if our actions were not irrevocable; and there would be no room for anxiety without the temporal division that separates us beforehand from the decisive moment and separates us in that moment from the past and the future. The isolation of the decisive moment is part of the structure and practical significance of our existence as it is disclosed in anxiety. The temporal division of the self contributes to a large degree to the dangerous nature of freedom. This is the reason why there can be no guarantee that a decision that we make will be our last word, for what will happen will always depend on the self of the crucial moment. (Of course, in a certain sense, any moment is a unique decisive moment, since we decide in it about the contribution that this moment will make to our life.) The unpredictability of the situation in which we must decide our fate deepens the rupture between the decisive moment as future and as present. In anxiety we experience (as future or as present) the temporal isolation of the free self in the crucial situations in which we must act and which always can be different than we expected. The temporal division of the self gives rise to the possibility (and reality) of discontinuity in our being and to the fact that coherence or continuity is a task for us. Anxiety confronts us with our ability to choose the wrong possibilities and with our being-exposed to the danger of an irrevocable momentary choice. It thereby shows our freedom as the necessity of taking care of our existences.²² Anxiety reveals the terrible responsibility we have for our irrevocable actions; we

 Kierkegaard’s concept of freedom is certainly different from Sartre’s insofar as the former endows freedom with a historical existence. According to Kierkegaard, freedom is not a free will in the traditional sense of a liberum arbitrium, that is, an ability to choose at each moment anew between right and wrong. Rather, it is always an “entangled” freedom that has its point of departure in its own history that it continues and to which it relates in every new decision. Cf. SKS 4, 413 – 415 / CA, 111– 113.

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must always face the danger of guilt and error in a unique present that can never be brought back. However, the temporal division of the self corresponds to only one side of another and more fundamental division of the self, namely, the division between our permanent self and our temporal self. The latter is the self insofar as it is different from one moment to another and always only exists as the self of the passing moment. The permanent self and the temporal self are not two different selves but rather are two inseparable sides or aspects of the self that are only possible as forming a unity. Kierkegaard refers to this division by speaking of the self as a synthesis of temporality and eternity. The self is a unity (or synthesis) of identity and difference; it remains always the same by being always different from one moment to another. Difference and identity are not external to the mode of being of the self, as in the case of a substance that remains the same from one moment to another. The identity of the self does not consist in its remaining unchanged. Rather, the self is by nature a continuously different self that is nevertheless identically one and the same. The difference of the self is inseparable from its identity; the self is identical as always being different, and it is in each moment different as always being identical. Despite the inseparability of the two terms of this synthesis, there is always a tension between understanding ourselves primarily as different from one time to another or as identical. Both kinds of understanding are equally possible. In a certain way, we really are our temporal selves that successively live different episodes of our lives one by one, as divided selves that are always different. Although the temporal self is only possible insofar as it is also identical and endures from one moment to another, this identity can be ascribed to the temporal self as such. The permanent present of its identity is also a flowing present that is always different, in the way that the identical being of the self coincides with its temporal being. Therefore, the self can understand its temporal being from the point of view of its supra-temporal identity, but it can also understand its supra-temporal identity from the point of view of its temporal division and multiplicity. In the latter case, we understand our identity as relative to our ever-changing temporal existence and as an identity with respect to this existence. This means that we live our lives understanding our identical selves primarily as the selves of the ever-changing present, always separated from the rest of our existence. On the contrary, if we live our lives primarily as identical or “eternal” selves, we consider the temporal isolation of each present moment to be inessential for one’s existence, putting the emphasis on one’s permanent

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identity, which encompasses and unifies all the successive episodes of one’s life.²³ The danger of guilt and failure concerns the self as identical, not as always different. However, the danger of mere failure only concerns the identical self insofar as it is also temporal, that is, as the identical self of a temporal life. Even the most disastrous mistake can only lead to permanent damage insofar as it affects the course of a life, but it cannot change the identical self as such. Our failures as well as our successes will always remain part of our history, but they will not be part of our personalities. At every moment we must somehow suffer the consequences of our mistakes, in the same way as we can enjoy the positive consequences of what we have achieved. There is certainly a difference between our own mistakes and the unfortunate events that simply happen to us. It is true that something that is our own fault or to our own merit belongs in a much deeper way to our own being than good or bad luck. Nevertheless, it only belongs to the temporal or historical self as the “subject” of the different episodes of its life and does not characterize the being of the self as such. (In other words, it concerns what the self does but not what or who the self is.) Something similar holds true for the acquisition of abilities or knowledge, which indeed modify the permanent being of the self but only in the way of a possession of abilities and powers. Such a possession concerns what we can do or understand but not who we are. This is different in the case of guilt.²⁴ The fact that we are guilty of something does not in itself have consequences for our situation in life and does not necessarily restrict our possibilities. Apart from all contingent consequences (such as legal punishment), it has intrinsic consequences of an entirely different kind that concern a different level of our existence, that of our permanent or “eternal” identity: Whoever learns to know his guilt only from the finite is lost in the finite, and finitely the question whether a man is guilty cannot be determined except in an external, juridical, and most imperfect sense. Therefore, if an individuality who is educated only by finitude does not get a verdict from the police or a verdict by public opinion to the effect that he is guilty, he becomes of all men the most pitiful, a model of virtue who is a little better than most people but not quite so good as the parson.²⁵

 Heidegger characterizes this mode of living one’s life—without relating it to the difference between temporality and eternity—as living it from the point of view of the simultaneity of the future, the present, and the past. Cf. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 329, 350, and (in contrast) 424– 426.  In the same way as Kierkegaard, I consider guilt here from a first-person perspective as a state that characterizes the mode of being of a self or a person.  Cf. SKS 4, 459 – 460 / CA, 161.

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Guilt becomes part of the self’s permanent identity and is not only part of it as the self of this or that time of its life, like an ability that can be acquired and lost again. In other words, guilt is not a state that is localized within our lifetime but subsists independently of life’s temporal course. Nothing that happens in the manner of natural change can make guilt disappear; we cannot lose guilt like we can lose our bodily powers or our memory. Guilt in the moral sense is not merely the fact that one has done something bad at this or that time but is a permanent state of the person. Being guilty that this or that happened is an abiding condition that arises from doing something bad, in a similar way as an obligation is the abiding result of a momentary promise and is different from the promise itself. Paradoxically, insofar as freedom is inseparable from temporality, the “eternal” being of the self therefore depends upon temporal existence. This is how we can spell out Kierkegaard’s thesis that the self is a synthesis of temporality and eternity,²⁶ which means that it is always exposed to the tension between its temporal and its eternal existence, being at once both temporal and eternal. Doubtlessly, this is the most radical form in which the self experiences itself as divided and as having to choose freely which of its dimensions it will favor, thereby choosing its own mode of existence. The possibility of guilt is the abyss into which we look when anxiety makes us aware of our freedom, that is, of our mode of being that consists in being a self and thus in having to choose our own being.

VI The Paradox of the Human Condition Anxiety reveals to us mortality, freedom, and selfhood as the human condition, and especially the negative side of this condition, our inescapable responsibility as an exposure to guilt. This responsibility, which is spelled out in the different aspects of our existence that are disclosed by anxiety, contains in itself a remarkable paradox: it unifies freedom with necessity by being a “condemnation to freedom,” as Sartre famously put it.²⁷ In light of the danger to which we are exposed by freedom and responsibility, it seems strange that the freedom to choose between good and evil should not arise out of a free choice and that the very responsibility for our decisions should not be something for which we are responsible. It does not seem reasonable that we are forced into freedom without wanting to expose ourselves to the

 About Kierkegaard’s conception of the human being as a synthesis, cf. Arne Grøn, Begrebet angst hos Søren Kierkegaard, pp. 19 – 23.  Cf. Sartre, L′être et le néant, p. 541.

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danger of guilt and that we are held responsible for what we do without ever having accepted this responsibility. Is it really possible that our freedom and our responsibility are externally imposed upon us, even if this imposition takes place with our coming into existence and is not something that ever happens to us? The very nature of responsibility seems to require a previous free acceptance not only of any particular responsibility but also of our responsibility as such. It seems absurd, therefore, to be held responsible for our wrongdoing and to be continuously exposed to the possibility of becoming guilty if we have never chosen to expose ourselves to it. How can there be an external origin of responsibility, one for which we are not responsible? According to Heidegger and Sartre, however, it is impossible to ask for an origin of the human condition as it is revealed by anxiety; our mode of existence must be considered to be an ultimate facticity. Looking for an origin of responsibility in a free choice seems to be the same as looking for an origin of freedom itself; and of course there cannot be a free choice of freedom that would not already presuppose freedom. Evidently, if a free choice is by nature a responsible choice, responsibility itself cannot have its origin in such a choice. The question, though, is whether freedom and selfhood necessarily exist in the state in which we find them in our present condition. Might there not be a more primitive state from which our responsibility has emerged? It is true that in such a state we must already be capable of a free choice and must already be responsible for its consequences. But might not this choice itself be that by which we make ourselves responsible for its consequences? Might there not be a primary choice of responsibility that is entirely different from any subsequent particular responsible choice, which also makes us responsible for the consequences? The problem would be thus to understand the primitive state of the human being out of which responsibility as the human condition could emerge. This is precisely the central question of Kierkegaard’s work The Concept of Anxiety. We see, then, that the question through which Kierkegaard approaches anxiety is indeed crucial for understanding anxiety as integral to the human condition. It is not merely a particular case of anxiety that he addresses in his analysis of anxiety’s role in the origin of sin. Rather, his question concerns the very nature of anxiety and its role in the foundation of the human condition.

VII Kierkegaard’s Analysis of the Origin of Sin Kierkegaard wants to understand the possibility of the first sin as it is described in the Bible, namely, as the origin of sin and the knowledge of good and evil. Insofar as the origin of sin is at the same time the origin of moral responsibility

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and of the possibility of freely choosing between good and evil, Kierkegaard’s question concerns precisely the enigmatic origin of the human condition. Kierkegaard characterizes his approach as psychological in the sense that he discusses the problem of original sin from a first-person perspective, trying to understand it “from within.” The origin of sin as an act of freedom can only be understood from the point of view of the sinner.²⁸ Another reason for the central methodological role of the first-person perspective is the fact that Kierkegaard does not consider original sin primarily as a unique event that took place once for all time but as an event that repeats itself in the life of each person.²⁹ In order to clarify the origin of sin in Adam’s and every later individual’s life, Kierkegaard offers a descriptive reconstruction of the mental process that leads up to the first emergence of sin. To this end he uses the biblical tale as a model, but he nevertheless maintains the universal validity of his reconstruction insofar as the process is essentially the same for every subsequent individual. If the first sin is essentially the same for Adam and for every later individual, there is indeed a state prior to moral responsibility, namely, the state of innocence. This state is characterized by the ignorance of good and evil and thus by the lack of moral responsibility. For the innocent, there is no free choice between right and wrong but only a choice that corresponds to preferences and inclinations. Hence, Kierkegaard’s question is how sin can come into being out of innocence, given that moral wrongdoing presupposes the knowledge of good and evil. This question does not seek an explanation for sin as if it arose out of a necessity or as if it could be reduced to something else. On the contrary, Kierkegaard insists that sin is an ultimate fact. This fact cannot be explained but also does not need an explanation insofar as it is something with which we are directly acquainted: “How sin came into the world, each man can solely understand by himself. If he would learn it from another, he would eo ipso misunderstand it. The only science that can help a little is psychology, yet it admits that it explains nothing, and also that it cannot and will not explain more.”³⁰ Paradoxically, sin is inexplicable and at the same time familiar to everyone. The limit of our understanding is the point of departure from which sin is possible, and it is this possibility that Kierkegaard’s psychology seeks to clarify.³¹ The origin of sin can be traced back to the point of the leap into sin, although this leap itself is a brute fact—or rather a brute deed—that cannot be understood any further, and the positive side of this inexplicability is precisely that sin ultimately arises out of free   

SKS SKS SKS SKS

4, 4, 4, 4,

355 – 356 / CA, 50 – 51. 339, 342 / CA, 33, 35. 356 / CA, 51. 329 / CA, 21– 22.

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dom and to this extent does not have any origin other than itself: “Sin came into the world by a sin.”³² The only way in which we can speak of an origin of sin is thus by clarifying its point of departure and the conditions under which it becomes possible and—from a psychological point of view—even highly probable.³³ Kierkegaard identifies the state of innocence with the state of childhood.³⁴ This state is paradisiacal insofar as, in principle, every desire can be fulfilled, and our wishful thinking can only be limited in a contingent manner by the circumstances. In this phase of our life that is driven by desire and fear, we depend upon others—normally those who are responsible for our existence—who take care of us and assume responsibility for satisfying our desires and protecting us against possible danger. When growing up, the child assumes more and more the responsibility for its own existence. However, the moment the child can take care of itself, a new and previously unknown domain of proscriptions is introduced that is not conditioned by the child’s own interests or the interests of others but is presented to it as a set of absolute prohibitions, namely, moral prohibitions that concern actions that are bad in themselves. The actions in question are not bad because they expose the child to danger and punishment, but they expose it to danger and punishment because they are bad. The child, however, understands this punishment as paternal punishment, that is, as a harm that is externally imposed upon it; the child does not understand it as an intrinsic consequence of its own deed. This is why the peculiar character of sin—the badness that distinguishes it from all other actions—can only be communicated indirectly. That which indicates the peculiar meaning of sin is the unconditioned form of the prohibition. Sin is not prohibited because it brings about damage; it is itself the damage and is a damage of a previously unknown kind. The gravity of the consequences of sin is indicated by the particularly severe external punishment that is announced. In the case of Adam and Eve, the external punishment coincides with the intrinsic punishment: the physical expulsion from paradise is just the external side of the expulsion from the condition of innocence as paradisiacal existence. Kierkegaard interprets the biblical tale as the paradigmatic case of the first sin in general. The consequences of this sin are twofold and have a desirable and a dreadful side. On the one hand, the forbidden fruit promises Adam and Eve unknown pleasure and—as its “nutritious” effect—also a new kind of knowledge that will raise them to a new and higher mode of being. On the other hand, trying this fruit will be an offence to God

 SKS 4, 338 / CA, 32.  SKS 4, 329 / CA, 22.  SKS 4, 348 / CA, 42.

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and will bring about the punishment that he has pronounced and that will put an end to their joyful and easy mode of existence. From then on, they will be exposed to death, and although they are ignorant of what this means, they know that it is something terrible.³⁵ This is the situation that precedes the leap into sin. Although this leap as such cannot be explained any further, between innocence and the leap there must still be something that makes the leap possible, namely, a state in which sin can present itself as a tempting possibility. Since Adam and Eve experience the possibility of the prohibited sin primarily as negative and know that it entails severe punishment, why should they feel tempted to commit that sin? This is the question that Kierkegaard wants to answer through his analysis of anxiety. In the first place, anxiety is the mode in which the unknown sin presents itself to Adam and Eve as a possibility. The negative and indeterminate possibility of the first sin corresponds to the negative and indeterminate nature of anxiety. As we have seen, anxiety can be related to indeterminate or more concrete situations and possibilities but is always an intentional relation to the unknown as such. In its completely indeterminate mode, anxiety belongs to the state of innocence even before the prohibition.³⁶ Once the prohibition is pronounced, anxiety becomes more concrete: it is now directed toward a particular possibility with which they are still unfamiliar but which they know, though in an indirect manner. We pointed out that the possibility of sin presents itself as ambiguous insofar as the new condition to be reached through it appears at the same time as repulsive and attractive. This ambiguity is experienced through the ambiguity of anxiety. The state of being tempted is precisely the ambiguous feeling of being divided between repulsion and attraction, and it is precisely this ambiguity that characterizes anxiety.³⁷ In this manner, anxiety is in itself an experience of temptation. It is a dread that is at the same time desire, and it is a dread and a desire that relate to each other. As we saw, Kierkegaard points out that one of anxiety’s characteristic ambiguities consists in being a mixture of passivity and activity. Insofar as anxiety requires an active contribution and can only exist as long as we give ourselves over to it, sin only can tempt us insofar as we tempt ourselves by nourishing our anxiety. This is why Kierkegaard argues that Adam and Eve are not externally exposed to temptation but tempt themselves.³⁸

   

SKS 4, 350 / CA, 45. Cf. SKS 4, 348, 350 / CA, 42, 44. Cf. SKS 4, 348 / CA, 42. Cf. SKS 4, 353, 365 – 366 / CA, 48, 61.

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Anxiety is the state in which freedom exists as the possibility of free choice. Freedom is not different from anxiety but exists and is experienced in the state of anxiety. Kierkegaard expresses this with the following somewhat enigmatic formula: “Anxiety is freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility.”³⁹ Freedom is a real possibility in the moment in which the possibility of sin becomes concrete, and anxiety is the mode of existence (or the actuality) of this possibility. Referring to the existence of freedom at the stage after the Fall, Kierkegaard speaks (with positive connotations) of anxiety as “freedom’s possibility.”⁴⁰ At the stage before the prohibition, however, anxiety is the mode in which the possibility of freedom exists as a possibility. Sin is still not actually possible but is possible only as a possibility, and this possibility of the possibility of freedom is in turn a reality that is none other than anxiety. Being the state that makes possible the emergence of freedom and the mode in which freedom exists as a potentiality, anxiety can be considered the origin of freedom. Anxiety is more than a mere condition of freedom, although it cannot be considered its cause. According to Kierkegaard, freedom can have no origin other than itself: “Freedom is infinite and arises out of nothing.”⁴¹ However, its potentiality as such is real and the mode of existence of this potentiality is precisely anxiety. It is also anxiety that comes closest to being something like the causal origin of sin: “But this abiding something out of which sin constantly arises, not by necessity…but by freedom—this abiding something, sin’s real possibility, is a subject of interest for psychology…Psychology can bring out the point where it seems as if sin were there, but the next thing, that sin is there, is qualitatively different from the first.”⁴² “Anxiety is the psychological state that precedes sin. It approaches sin as closely as possible, as anxiously as possible, but without explaining sin, which breaks forth only in the qualitative leap.”⁴³ Anxiety is the mode of existence of freedom and of its possibility. Freedom is not different from selfhood and is not a property of the self but is the mode in which the self exists. This is why Kierkegaard does not make a distinction between the self and freedom, in the same way as he also refuses to distinguish in other cases between the self and the modalities in which it exists.⁴⁴ Freedom

 SKS 4, 348 / CA, 42. The original wording is: “Angest er Frihedens Virkelighed som Mulighed for Muligheden.”  SKS 4, 454 / CA, 155. In Danish: “Angesten er Frihedens Mulighed.”  SKS 4, 414– 415 / CA, 112.  SKS 4, 329 / CA, 21– 22.  SKS 4, 395 / CA, 92.  For example, he uses the word “spiritlessness” as the subject of sentences and says about it many things that one normally would rather say about spiritless persons. See SKS 4, 398 / CA, 95.

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is selfhood and only exists as an individual self that does not possess freedom in the way of a property but is freedom, that is, possession of itself as a self.⁴⁵ The transformation of the human person in the Fall is a transformation of her freedom, which now turns from a potentiality into an inescapable reality that is no other than the existence as a self: “However, the real (egentlige) self is posited only by the qualitative leap. In the prior state there can be no question about it.”⁴⁶ The emergence of selfhood is the emergence of our responsibility for our own mode of being as a unity or a synthesis of two different dimensions that Kierkegaard calls psyche and body.⁴⁷ In other words, we take over the responsibility for our existence in the way of an embodied spirit whose paradoxical existence is a task for this spirit itself: “First in sexuality is the synthesis posited as a contradiction, but like every contradiction it is also a task, the history of which begins at the same moment. This is the actuality that is preceded by freedom’s possibility.”⁴⁸ In sexuality, psyche and body become opposed to each other and the relation between them is not a natural unity any longer but is converted into a task. From then on, we ourselves must determine the manner in which we want to exist as a unity of these two dimensions. Our self-awareness as embodied spirit emerges at the moment we convert the possibility of sin into a real possibility of a real free self that knows what sin is and can and must therefore always choose between good and evil. In the leap into sin we choose our permanent exposure to the possibility of evil and thereby become morally responsible for our actions. The origin of our existence as free and responsible selves is identical with our first experience of becoming guilty. Kierkegaard characterizes this transition as follows: Hence anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs in this dizziness. Further than this, psychology cannot and will not go. In that very moment, everything is changed, and freedom, when it rises, sees that it is guilty. Between these two moments lies the leap, which no science has explained and which no science can explain.⁴⁹

 In this manner, Kierkegaard says for example of “a genius who is religious” that he knows “that he is freedom” (SKS 4, 409 – 410 / CA, 107– 108). He also identifies the spirit with freedom (SKS 4, 394 / CA, 91).  SKS 4, 382 / CA, 79.  Cf., e. g., SKS 4, 384, 392 / CA, 81, 88.  SKS 4, 354 / CA, 49.  SKS 4, 365 – 366 / CA, 61.

René Rosfort

Concrete Infinity

Imagination and the Question of Reality Abstract: This essay examines the ambiguous role of imagination in Kierkegaard’s work, arguing that the concept of imagination is fundamental to his existential transformation of the question of reality. At the core of Kierkegaard’s treatment of the imagination is the tension of infinity and finitude at work in human experience of reality. In order to bring out the originality of Kierkegaard’s understanding of imagination, his treatment of imagination is situated against the background of Kant’s use of the concept to deal with the scientific revolution of the question of reality.

Imagination plays a fundamental role in Kierkegaard’s work. In many ways, one can argue that imagination is what makes Kierkegaard’s work stand out in the tradition of Western philosophy. The imaginative intensity of his thought animates his use of irony, is at the heart of his poetics, and breathes life into the innumerable characters that articulate his ideas. Trying to remove the imaginative aspect of his conceptual work or to distil his theoretical points out of the imaginative material distorts his thinking and impoverishes his contribution to philosophy. Kierkegaard works with and through imagination in his endeavor to articulate an account of the human being as a concrete, sensuous individual who exists through abstract thinking and conceptual language. His poetics struggle with articulating the particular and concrete character of language in and through the abstract form of language. Imagination is not, however, merely a vehicle of his thinking. He also investigates imagination as a vital part of human existence and as an ethical problem in our understanding of the reality of our existence. In this essay, I examine the ambiguous role that imagination plays in Kierkegaard’s thought, arguing that the concept of imagination is fundamental to his existential transformation of the question of reality. Imagination discloses the ambiguity of infinity and finitude at work in the human experience of reality. We experience reality as a complex manifestation of presence and absence. Reality is that which it is, and yet human reality is permeated with that which it is not, i. e., our imaginative representations. I will argue that Kierkegaard’s work with this imaginative saturation of human reality is conducive to his existential transformation of the question of reality. In order to bring out the originality of DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-010

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Kierkegaard’s transformation of the question of reality, I will situate his treatment of imagination in the context of the protracted philosophical debate about imagination and reality. After a short sketch, in the second section, of Descartes’ struggle to make sense of the ambiguous character of reality, I turn to Kant’s transcendental reconfiguration of the philosophical approach to reality, and in particular to how the concept of imagination plays a critical, and ambiguous, role in his understanding of the relations between the mind and the body, thinking and sensing, the infinite and the finite. In the two concluding sections, I show how this Kantian reconfiguration of reality provides a theoretical background against which we can make sense of Kierkegaard’s concept of imagination. My argument is that Kierkegaard uses the ambiguity of imagination to show that the reality of human existence is fragile because of the ethical challenge that we must understand the human being, ourselves and other people, as a concrete infinity.

I Imagination and Reality Anti-Climacus argues that imagination is “the capacity instar omnium,” and “[w]hen all is said and done, whatever of feeling, knowing, and willing a human being has depends upon what imagination [Phantasie] he has, upon how a human being reflects himself—that is, upon imagination.”¹ This emphasis on our imaginative capacity is not a strange thing in itself, since imagination plays an obvious role in the life of human beings. What is strange, though, is that imagination—in more than one sense—seems to have dropped out of much academic philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. Contemporary philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and ethics is carried out without explicit treatment of the concept of imagination. This is perhaps more evident in Anglophone philosophy than in continental philosophy, but generally speaking the concept of imagination has drifted from the minds of philosophers over into the minds of literary scholars and psychologists. The reason for this is difficult to pin down, but one might argue that the loss of imagination in philosophy is connected with the growing specialization of academic philosophy and the ensuing difficulty to deal with issues that produce more questions than answers and, moreover, transcend conceptual and disciplinary boundaries. Imagination has a protean character, as Anti-Climacus points out, insofar as it plays a critical role in most aspects of human existence. It is a concept that by its very defini-

 SKS 11, 147 / SUD 30 – 31, translation slightly modified.

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tion—to produce and manipulate images—seems to defy our endeavors to arrive at an unambiguous understanding of its function in human life. The theoretical labor to understand our imaginative capacities is ambiguous in itself, because it depends on our ability to make use of and, at the same time, to domesticate those very capacities. It is difficult to define or examine the concept of imagination without taking into account other human features and capacities. Basic philosophical topics such as emotion, understanding, experience, normativity, and freedom all have imaginative aspects to them, and critical questions concerning these topic revolve around whether an emotion, a norm, an experience is imaginative or real. Imagination turns into a vacuous concept if considered in isolation from questions about feeling, thinking, and willing. How we feel, think, and act is qualified and to a certain extent constituted by imagination. A feeling is shaped by the imaginative aspects in and through which it is experienced, and our thoughts are clothed in images and only strenuously, if at all, are we able to disentangle thinking from imagery. Our actions, in turn, are guided, for good and for bad, by our imaginative reconfiguration of the present, past, and future. In other words, imagination is characterized by a chiaroscuro entanglement of presence and absence in human life. Every aspect of our existence seems to be affected by our imaginative capacity, and yet that very capacity becomes peculiarly insubstantial or impalpable, when we try to hone in on a definition or provide an explanation of its basic functions. In his lapidary description of the fundamental role of imagination in human existence, Anti-Climacus argues that this explanatory difficulty stems from the ambiguous role that imagination plays in our understanding of reality. Too much imagination makes reality fantastical, and too little imagination turns reality stale and prosaic. Throughout his works, Kierkegaard connects this ambiguity with the constitutional ambiguity, or synthetic reality, of human beings as “intermediary beings.”² We are sensuous beings whose life is tethered to the impersonal nature in and by means of which we live. Our reality is made possible and conditioned by the physical necessities that govern our life as human beings. Our reality is not, however, limited to or exhausted by the physical world in which we live. We experience reality, and our experiences are refracted through our imagination, acquiring the perceptual depth, temporality, and significance particular to human existence. The necessary presence of physical reality merges with the imaginative possibility of absence. We live as physical beings, but our experience of being the beings that we are is entangled with the

 SKS 7, 301 / CUP1, 329.

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imaginative possibilities of not being who we are. In this sense, imagination is the medium or very possibility of imaginary reflections of our being, i. e., imagination makes us the peculiar beings that we are by producing reflections of ourselves through which we experience and reflect upon ourselves as something we are not. This interplay of presence and absence, being and imaginative reflections of being, is that which makes a human being a self: Imagination is infinitizing reflection, and therefore the elder Fichte quite correctly assumed that even in relation to knowledge the imagination is the origin of the categories. The self is reflection, and the imagination is reflection, is the reproduction [Gjengivelse] of the self, which is the possibility of the self. The imagination is the possibility of any and all reflection, and the intensity of this medium is the possibility of the intensity of the self.³

Imagination is the medium of infinity by reproducing the necessity of being in possibility. This possibility of infinity is foundational in the sense that the human being becomes a self in and through the infinite possibilities of imaginatively reproducing the self that it is not. This foundation is not stable nor solid, but imaginary, and thus constantly destabilizes our life as concrete individuals, i. e., afinite, sensuous being that is conditioned by the nature in and by which it lives. These imaginative reproductions not only enrich, but also complicate a human life. In the very possibility of becoming the self that one is through imaginative reproductions of that which one is not lurks the danger of dehumanizing the self (one’s own self as well as the self that is the other). The self is not only the infinite reflection of that which it is not. It is also a concrete being with finite temporal and physical limits. The self cannot, however, understand itself as or be reduced to these temporal and physical conditions. To know oneself as a self, and to recognize the other as a self, is to understand the infinity of imaginative reflection at work in a human self, i. e., to understand the self that the self is not. This reflective self-knowledge that imagination makes possible can, however, turn into fantastic imaginary reproductions: “the more knowledge increases, the more it becomes a kind of inhuman knowledge, in the obtaining of which a human being’s self is squandered, much the way men were squandered on building pyramids, or the way men in Russian brass bands were squandered on being just one note, no more, no less.”⁴ The ambiguity of presence and absence involved in imagination thus discloses the fragile reality in which humans live their lives. As we shall see later, Kier-

 SKS 11, 147 / SUD 31, translation modified.  Ibid., translation slightly modified.

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kegaard makes systematic use of the notion of existence in his transformation of the question of reality. The fragility of human reality is caused by the fact that imagination makes absence a constitutional feature of the reality in which humans live. The human being exists, or goes out of its being, in and through the absence produced by the imaginative reflections and is thus compelled to find its being through the being that it is not. To be a self is to make ourselves concrete through imaginative reproductions, or, as Arne Grøn argues: “To be a self involves positioning ourselves in front of [fore-stille sig] something that is a measure [målestok] for the self.”⁵ Grøn is here, as Kierkegaard does constantly, playing on the polysemy of the Danish word “at forestille,” which can mean “to present,” “to introduce,” “to represent,” and “to imagine.” The various meanings of this word, and of the way we use the word, reveals that the fundamental problem at stake in the ambiguity of imagination is the question about the reality of our existence as a self. We introduce, present, and represent our self in and through imagination (forestilling), and it is our self that is at stake in the imaginative reproductions by means of which we feel, think, and act. We cannot merely be the self that we are, nor can we simply present or represent ourselves as the self we want to be. In other words, we exist as a self through our representations (forestillinger), but there is more to our existence as a self than what we imagine ourselves (forestille os) to be. Being a self is not merely to imaginatively represent who we think we are or want to be, but also to know what we are, i. e., the concrete being that we are together with the context and circumstances that make us into the particular being that we are. We exist as a subject that is also object (genstand) existing in a world of objects that object to (genstand, i. e., står over for/imod) our imaginative representations of ourselves. Existing as a self means to live in a world that challenges our imaginative reproductions of who we think or want to be. Our understanding of ourselves is therefore inextricably entangled in our understanding of the world as a world of objects that put into question our self. The task of being a self is to become a self in and through the reality in which a person finds herself as both a present object and an absent subject. Kierkegaard’s work with imagination in his existential transformation of the question of reality is arguably one of his major contributions to the tradition of Western philosophy. One way to understand the significance of this transformation is to situate his work in the philosophical debate about reality in the wake of the scientific revolutions in the sixteenth century. The central problem of this debate was how understand infinity in a world that was discovered to be governed

 Arne Grøn, Subjektivitet og negativitet: Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1997, p. 230.

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by natural necessities that could be understood in terms of finite, temporal, and sensible factors. These discoveries had the philosophical consequence that the traditional separations of infinity and finitude, eternal and temporal, soul and body gradually lost their stability, and consequently the question of reality gained a new and more complex vigor.

II The New Hierogamy The entanglement of finite sensibility and infinite thinking has haunted human thought ever since the dawn of philosophy, and the attempts to account for it has shaped the (textbook) highway and the myriad of lesser-travelled pathways that constitute the history of Western philosophy. A revolutionary change occurred with the development of scientific methods from the sixteenth century onwards. One of the most dramatic challenges to philosophy came with Galileo’s telescopic discovery that the moon is not “smooth, even, and perfectly spherical [exactissimæque sphæricitatis],” “as the great crowd of philosophers have believed about this and other heavenly bodies,” but “uneven, rough, and crowded with depressions and bulges.”⁶ The discovery of an infinity that seemed to behave in frightening accordance with our sensible familiarity with the finite world accentuated a problem that had previously hidden itself in the folds of traditional metaphysics: how is it possible to think an infinity tarnished with finite imperfection? The philosopher Lars Christiansen has called this discovery “the new hierogamy,” arguing that although Galileo himself was an unambiguous mathematical idealist and “more platonic than Plato,” his observation left philosophy with a disturbingly ambiguous heritage: On the one hand, “heaven gained an entirely new dynamic realism,” but on the other “the ethereal tranquility had come to a definite end.”⁷ This ambiguous offspring of the (un)holy marriage of heaven and earth had a revolutionary impact on the philosophical concept of imagination, and on the philosophical use of imagination. Philosophers could no longer respectfully merely engage in an imaginative quest for infinite tranquility of an unsoiled soul.

 Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius, Veneto: Thomas Baglioni 1610, p. 7; English translation: Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius or the Starry Messenger, trans. by Albert van Helden, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1989, p. 40. For a fascinating interpretation of imaginative reverberations of Galileo’s discovery, see Lawrence Lipkin, What Galileo Saw: Imagining the Scientific Revolution, New York: Cornell University Press 2014.  Lars Christiansen, Metafysikkens Historie, second revised and expanded edition, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag 2003, pp. 194, 196.

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Rather, they had to account for the finite in their exploration of infinity, and for the infinite in their exploration of finitude. Descartes responded promptly to this challenge with a radical separation of sensible matter and immaterial thinking, i. e., his (in)famous ontological dualism of a thoughtless body and bodiless mind. As with most great philosophical endeavors, though, Descartes’ dualism is more complex than the label we use to understand it. Descartes was well aware that the ontological separation of mind and body presented a challenge to our understanding of the life of human beings in a thoughtless nature that suddenly did not care about human thinking. His correspondence with princess Elisabeth of Bohemia towards the end of his life is a testimony to this uncomfortable awareness.⁸ Elisabeth suffered from the physical effects (“low grade fewer, accompanied by a dry cough”) of prolonged episodes of “sadness [tristesse],”⁹ and many of the letters between the two discuss the problem of understanding how a person can live a meaningful life when being constantly influenced by two entirely different causal substances. The late work, The Passions of the Soul, was the immediate result of this correspondence, and is Descartes’s systematic answer to the penetrating criticism that Elisabeth levels at his dualism in her letters: All the struggles that people customarily imagine [a coustume d’imaginer] between the lower parts of the soul, which is called sensitive, and the higher, which is rational [raisonnable], or between the natural appetites and the will, consists only in the opposition between the movement which the body by its spirits and the soul by its spirits will tend to excite simultaneously in the gland. For there is only a single soul in us and this soul has within itself no diversity of parts; the very one that is sensitive is rational, and all its appetites are volitions [des volontez].¹⁰

This critique of the time-hallowed separation of the soul into higher (rational) and lower (sensitive) parts is Descartes’s attempt to employ the burgeoning physiological studies of his time in transforming the normatively structured dualism

 René Descartes, Correspondance avec Élisabeth et autres lettres, ed. by Jean-Marie Beyssade and Michelle Beyssade, Paris: Garnier-Flammarion 1989 / The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, ed. and trans. by Lisa Shapiro, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 2007.  Descartes, Correspondance avec Élisabeth et autres lettres, pp. 95 – 96 / The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, p. 86  René Descartes, Les passions de l’âme, Oeuvres de Descartes, tome XI, ed. by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, Paris: Léopold Cerf 1903, p. 364 / The Passions of the Soul, trans. by Stephen H. Voss, Indianapolis: Hackett 1989, p. 44.

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predominant for almost two millennia.¹¹ Both ancient philosophers and Christian theologians had worked with a normative denigration of the senses and their sooty commerce with baser matters in order to make room for the infinite strivings of our soul. For Descartes, this explicitly normative anthropology goes against the physiological evidence of the mechanic, a-rational functioning of the body, and results in inefficient, and at times damaging, treatments of physical and existential ailments. There is only one indivisible soul moved by both sensible and rational appetites through “the little gland in the middle of the brain.”¹² Human behavior cannot liberate itself of its bodily functions; and thus only by understanding our bodily functions (e. g. “les nerves,” “le cerveau,” “les muscles,” “le sang”) are we able to mend our flawed behavior, because “the will [le volonté]” has no “power to excite the passions directly.”¹³ In other words, we are sensible creatures, and our rational engagement with the world is inescapably entangled with the a-rational passions of our sensible lives. This is not to say, though, that Descartes does not elevate our (mathematical) soul to an infinity free of sensible complications. This he certainly does but, as the correspondence with Elisabeth reveals more clearly than his published writings, he is mindful of the fact that for all its philosophical wonders, pure (mathematical) thinking does not hold sway over the concrete life of a human being. To Elisabeth’s persistent worry about his distinction of mind and body, Descartes concedes that he is aware of this problem, and reassures her that he “is not one of those cruel philosophers who want their sage to be insensible.”¹⁴ Contrary to traditional religious or rationalistic remedies for existential problems that council an abandonment of earthly worries and sensible stimuli, Descartes argues that the human soul is ticklish, and can thus only be moved by “some sort of titillation [quelque sorte de chatoüillement].”¹⁵ Accordingly, as Alexandre Matheron has convincingly argued, Descartes spent most of his philosophical en-

 Besides his own scientific studies, he read carefully both Andreas Versalius’s De humani corporis fabrica (1543) and William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (1628); see Vincent Aucante, La philosophie médicale de Descartes, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2006, pp. 62– 78; Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, “Cartesian Physiology,” in Descartes‘ Natural Philosophy, ed. by Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster, and John Sutton, London: Routledge 2000, pp. 349 – 382.  Descartes, Les passions de l’âme, p. 365 / The Passions of the Soul, p. 45.  Ibid.  Descartes, Correspondance avec Élisabeth et autres lettres, p. 96 / The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, p. 87.  Descartes, Les passions de l’âme, p. 430 / The Passions of the Soul, p. 92.

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ergy trying to understand “the vital rhythms” of this ticklish soul.¹⁶ Against the background of Galileo’s discovery that the actual surface of the infinitely perfect moon was uneven and cratered, Descartes argued that although the infinite essence of the soul is the pure thinking of mathematics, the lived soul is rugged and restless. The subsequent history of philosophy has in many ways been a struggle with this ambiguity. Together with Bacon, Descartes inaugurated a transformation of philosophy “from a contemplative to a practical exercise, so that the required result is dominion over nature.”¹⁷ The perturbation of thinking—about the behavior of nature as well as the reality of human beings—wrought by anonymous matter became the primary concern of philosophy throughout the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth century.¹⁸ While Descartes’s ambiguity was a result of an attempt to maintain an ontological distinction between nature (matter) and soul (mind), his successors were more explicitly concerned with practical endeavors to overcome this theoretical impasse. Some thinkers tried to solve the ambiguity by prioritizing the senses (e. g. empiricists such as Locke, Hume, and Smith), while others strived towards the unambiguous tranquility of the mind (e. g. rationalists such as Spinoza, Malebranche, and Leibniz). What mattered was not so much the metaphysical question of what nature is, but how to understand the reality of nature, i. e., how humans explain and make use of nature for their own purposes. The quest for unambiguous and thus functional methods to deal with nature led these thinkers to prioritize either the finite reality of the senses or the infinite reality of the mind. It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that Kant’s revolutionary attempt to maintain, and further explore, the Cartesian ambiguity sparkled a systematic philosophical interest in the power and limits of imagination. In fact, the time from Kant to the existentialists in the first half of the twentieth century can be considered the heyday of philosophical and literary explorations of the ambiguity of imagination.¹⁹

 Alexandre Matheron, “Psychologie et politique: Descartes et la noblesse du chatouillement,” in his Études sur Spinoza et les philosophies de l’âge classique, Lyon: ENS Éditions 2011, pp. 25 – 54.  Stephen Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210 – 1685, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006, p. 229.  Stephen Gaukroger, The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680 – 1760, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010, pp. 229 – 256.  James Engell, The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1981; Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination: Toward a Postmodern Culture, London: Routledge 1988, pp. 155 – 248; Maurizio Ferraris, L’immaginazione, Bologna: Mulino 1996, pp. 115 – 132.

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III Ambiguous Reality The question of reality is at the core of Kant’s philosophy, and imagination is the heart of that core. Like most thinkers of his time, Kant works out his philosophy in an explicit exchange with the sciences of his day. In Kant’s philosophy, natural science functions as a constant challenge to our rational endeavors to understand the world. He explains this in the preface to his first work, On Living Forces: “Science is an irregular body without harmonious proportions and uniformity,” so true scientific discoveries in one area of science do not necessarily mean that those truths hold in other areas. Therefore, when dealing with scientific discoveries, we cannot, he argues, “regard insight [Einsicht] into some truth [Wahrheit] or other as equivalent to the broad sum total of superior knowledge [Erkenntnis].”²⁰ Kant spent a major part of his intellectual energy exploring the irregular physical nature of which human beings are a part. His philosophy is therefore, from the first writings to the monumental Opus Postumum, informed and shaped by the conviction that the philosopher has “the obligation to search among the causes of things [Weltursachen] as far as is possible for us, and follow the chain in accordance with known laws as far as it extends.”²¹ This insistence on the immediacy of the senses (Empfindungen) in the dialectics with understanding (Verstand) is the cornerstone of his transcendental philosophy, and responsible for the basic ambiguity of transcendental idealism and empirical realism that animates his thinking.²² Contrary to traditional idealism, Kant’s particular transcendental version is formed in a constant exchange with the concrete manner in and by which we, as human beings, are affected by the reality of time and space, hence the empirical realism. His empirical realism, on the other hand, differs from traditional realism in the sense that the particular way in which we experience reality does not exhaust the reality of which we are a

 Immanuel Kant, Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte und Beurtheilung der Beweise, deren sich Herr von Leibniz und andere Mechaniker in dieser Streitsache bedient haben, nebst einigen vorhergehenden Betrachtungen, welche die Kraft der Körper überhaupt betreffen, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, Berlin: Georg Reimer 1910, p. 9 / Natural Science, trans. by Jeffrey B. Edwards and Martin Schönfeld and ed. by Eric Watkins, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012, p. 9.  Immanuel Kant, Über die Vulkane im Monde in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 8, Berlin: Georg Reimer 1923, p. 76 / Natural Science, trans. by Olaf Reinhardt and ed. by Eric Watkins, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012, p. 76, translation slightly modified.  Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. Jens Timmermann, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 1998, pp. A370 – 372 / Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, pp. A370 – 372.

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part. It is our particular human reality that we experience, and although this reality is animated by more than we can comprehend, our understanding is bound to this particular human perspective, hence the transcendental idealism. This dialectics of sensibility and understanding in our experience of reality finds its most cogent theoretical articulation in the Transcendental Deduction in the first Critique. Imagination is the foundational concept in the dialectics explored in this central part of Kant’s critical system that Dieter Henrich has aptly described as “the crepuscular and enigmatic catacombs of a treasure stove.”²³ In fact, human experience is “the mere effect of the imagination, a blind though indispensable function of the soul without which we would have no knowledge [Erkenntnis] at all, but of which we are seldom even conscious [bewusst].”²⁴ Basically, imagination carries out a twofold function in Kant’s philosophy: a transcendental (productive) and an empirical (reproductive) one. Although I do not think the distinction is as clear-cut as Kant wants it to be, here I will look only at the transcendental, productive function of imagination as the tissue that binds together the two roots of human experience, understanding and sensibility, and not the reproductive, empirical function that allows human beings to represent things that are no longer actually present in experience. As we will see in the following sections, it is precisely the fragility of this conceptual distinction of our various imaginative capacities that is explored and developed further in Kierkegaard’s investigation and use of imagination. The transcendental function of imagination is critical to Kant’s understanding of reality, and it is entangled in the seemingly never-ending debate about how to understand his categorical distinction between things as they are in themselves and as they are experienced by human beings, i. e., the question of the reality of human experience. This discussion is often divided into two camps: “The Two-Aspect View” and “The Two-World View.”²⁵ The first camp regards Kant’s distinction as epistemological, i. e., involving two ways of under-

 Dieter Henrich, Identität und Objektivität. Eine Untersuchung über Kants tranzendentalen Deduktion, Heidelberg: Carl Winther Universitäts Verlag 1976, p. 101. Henrich is here probably alluding to Aquinas’ characterization of the imagination as a thesaurus of the senses in the quote above.  Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. A78/B103, translation slightly modified.  For a presentation and helpful discussion of this central aspect of Kant’s philosophy, see Karl Ameriks, Kant’s Elliptical Path, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, pp. 75 – 99; for a detailed historical exposition, see Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Deduction: An Analytical-Historical Commentary, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015; for an interpretation similar to the one argued for here, see Lucy Allais, Manifest Reality: Kant’s Idealism and his Realism, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015.

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standing the same reality, while the other holds that the distinction is ontological, i. e., involving two ontologically distinct realities. One way to approach this debate is to look at the ambiguous role that transcendental imagination plays not only in Kant’s theoretical philosophy, but in his philosophy in general. On the one hand, transcendental imagination is what makes empirical experience possible, but, on the other, it is also that which makes possible the infinite ideas that transcend the finite bounds of human experience. Kant famously makes productive use of this ambiguity by means of his uncompromising distinction between theoretical and practical philosophy. He somehow attenuates this distinction in the third Critique with its detailed exploration of “the projects [Entwürfe] of the imagination.”²⁶ These projects are the seductive production of “the play of imagination in its freedom,” and the focus on imaginative freedom in this work downplays the theoretical and practical ambiguity of the imagination for the sake of exploring the tasteful experiences of beauty and the sublime, “where the understanding is in the service of the imagination, and not vice versa.”²⁷ The reconciliation between the theoretical and practical uses of human thinking at work in the last Critique is fascinating, not least because of its requalification of the discussion of Kant’s ontology. By examining our imaginative capacity to produce “an equilibrium of the vital powers [Gleichgewicht der Lebenskräfte] in the body”²⁸ instead of insisting on the irreconcilable ambiguity of the imagination, the last Critique has often been read as Kant’s (auto)critique of the strict separation of sensibility and understanding at work in the first two Critiques. Here is not the place to go into the vexed debate.²⁹ Suffice it to say that the ambiguous role of imagination in our experience and understanding of reality is more pronounced in the first two Critiques, and it is in these works that we find the most systematic examination of the ambiguity of reality. This ambiguity is most evident in the tension between the theoretical priority of empirical, or objectively valid, experience in the first critique and the practical priority of the experience of freedom in the second, and is reflected in the apparently incompatible transcendental roles that imagination plays in these

 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, Berlin: Georg Reimer 1908, p. 242 / Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. and ed. by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000, p. 242.  Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, pp. 242, 350.  Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, p. 333.  For discussions of this debate, see Volker Gerhardt, Immanuel Kant: Vernunft und Leben, Stuttgart: Philip Reclam 2002, pp. 282– 283; Luigi Scaravelli, Scritti su Kant, Florence: La Nouva Italia Editrice 1973, pp. 357– 368; Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the Critique of Judgment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007, pp. 23 – 63.

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two aspects of human experience. Empirical experience is made possible by means of the imagination, whereas experience of freedom involves a conscious struggle against the same imagination that is bound to and tarnished by the sensibility that makes us the particular human creatures that we are. The moral law that sets us free from the empirical conditions our imagination ties us to belongs, as Kant famously argued, to all creatures of reason, not only humans. The problem that Kant was keenly aware of is that we cannot shed our human coil. We cannot detach ourselves from the sensibility that is integral to the experience that imagination makes possible. Our experience of freedom is therefore bound to the particular empirical world that this human imaginative capacity makes visible. So, in order to bring forth the strength of human freedom, what is particularly human must be excluded from the experience of freedom, namely, imagination. As Kant writes in the second Critique, a true moral action must contain “keine Anschauung,” i. e., moral action must be conducted without the sensible intuition that makes human experience human. Or put differently, it is by putting into question or criticizing our finite human experience and our temporal ideas of what makes us human (e. g. happiness, virtues, pleasure, interest, compassion, prudence) that we make intelligible room for an objective moral action. To perform a moral action we need to overcome our imaginative understanding of ourselves by submitting ourselves to a law that goes beyond what we consider to be human, and “[a]s submission to a law, i. e., as a command (indicating constraint for the sensibly affected subject), it therefore contains in it no pleasure but instead, so far, displeasure in the action.”³⁰ Only by defying the powers of imagination are we able to sense the purity of the moral law that reveals to us a world we cannot imagine, but only reach through unimaginable (and often unpleasant) actions. As Kant explains: To a natural law, as a law to which objects of sensible intuition [sinnlicher Anschauung] as such are subject, there must correspond a schema, that is, a universal procedure of the imagination [Einbildungskraft] (by means of which it presents a priori to the senses the pure concept of the understanding which the law determines). But no intuition [keine Anschauung] can be put under the law of freedom [Gesetze der Freiheit] (as that of a causality not sensibly conditioned)—and hence under the concept of the unconditioned good as well —and hence no schema on behalf of its application in concreto. ³¹

 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, Berlin: Georg Reimer 1908, p. 80 / Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. by Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, p. 80.  Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, p. 69 / Practical Philosophy, p. 69.

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Now, if we maintain, as Kant asks us to do, that human experience is both theoretical and practical, it would seem that these two aspects of our experience are incompatible—even despite the attempt in the third Critique to build an aesthetic bridge between the two, which, as I mentioned, is supposed to attenuate the dint of this incompatibility. This incompatibility is basically one between experience and being, nature and freedom, phenomenon and noumenon, the concrete and the infinite, and it entails an explanatory cul-de-sac whether one adopts “The Two-Aspect View” or “The Two-World View.” One way to interpret this explanatory impasse is to view it as the inevitable ambiguity of human reality as it is articulated by the ambiguous function of imagination. Imagination is what makes reality possible, and yet that same reality challenges the possibilities of our imaginative capacities. In other words, human reality is only possible through an imaginative experience that is tethered to the empirical conditions of concrete sensibility, and yet that same reality is only possible through an unimaginable conception of freedom that we have to respect by struggling against the imaginative capacity that makes our reality human. This fundamental ambiguity accentuates the question of the will. How can I use my freedom to create a reality that I cannot construct myself? How can I work towards the realization of the unconditioned good in concreto when I cannot experience or imagine that which I shall do? These questions brings us to the core of Kierkegaard’s concept and use of imagination, and I will argue that the ambiguity of the finite and the infinite explored by Descartes and accentuated in Kant’s work with the imagination is conducive to a reconsideration of the critical role of imagination in Kierkegaard’s existential approach.

IV Unimaginable Existence As we have seen, few thinkers have made such heavy use of imagination in the articulation of their thought as Kierkegaard, few have ascribed to imagination a more central role in what it means to be human, and yet few have been so skeptical of imaginative transformations of reality as Kierkegaard.³² Contrary to Descartes and Kant, Kierkegaard did not engage systematically with the natural sciences of his day. This does not mean that Kierkegaard’s think For a cogent analysis of the role of imagination in Kierkegaard’s theory of subjectivity, see Arne Grøn, “Imagination and Subjectivity,” Ars Disputandi, vol. 2, 2002, pp. 27– 36; for a detailed interpretation of the role of imagination in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, see M. Jamie Ferreira, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991.

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ing is unaffected by the contemporary scientific explorations of nature. The first half of the nineteenth century was enraptured about science. The period was bustling with seminal scientific discoveries and technological inventions, and images of science and of scientific methods shaped the philosophical and theological discussions of the day. Romantic philosophers imbibed the idealistic cosmology of German Naturphilosophen and the Newtonian speculation of British natural theologians. In turn, they themselves produced all-encompassing, allegedly conclusive scientific explanations of God, the world, and human beings.³³ One of the most interesting features of the intellectual climate in the years leading up to the Darwinian revolution is the rich imaginative energy at work in the construction of these speculative cathedrals of nature. The romantic philosophers ventured into a seemingly infinite probing of human thinking and feeling. They abounded in imaginative configurations of reality that were a mix of unrestrained speculation, rational confidence, and the newest scientific discoveries. If the scientific image of the world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is characterized by a gradually more aggressive insistence on the finite and on the priority of the senses, the image of the natural world in the romantic era was dominated by the infinite and a seemingly unruffled faith in the powers of the human mind. For Kierkegaard, this romantic conception was epitomized by Hegel and his Danish followers, and from the outset much of his intellectual effort went into an examination and critique of this peculiar worldview.³⁴ So, even though he did not deal explicitly with the natural sciences (although his journals and papers are full of carping reflections on scientific endeavors), the quest for scientific objectivity characteristic of the period shapes his critique of the romantic worldview. One of the focal points of this critique concerns the disappearance of the individual in a scientific worldview and, in particular, the problems of sacrificing the existential reality of particular life-views (Livs-Anskuelse) for the greater good of a universal philosophical explanation of the world. The importance that Kierkegaard ascribes to the exploration of individual life-views (most famously, of course, the aesthetical, the ethical, and the religious) is hard to miss, while

 Cf. Klaus Stein, Naturphilosophie der Frühromantik, Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 2004, pp. 11– 16; John H. Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991, pp. 192– 225. Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, London: Harper Press 2008, pp. 435 – 465.  Jon Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003; K. Brian Söderquist, The Isolated Self: Truth and Untruth in Søren Kierkegaard’s On the Concept of Irony, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 2007.

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the theoretical relation between life-views, reality, and imagination is more complex.³⁵ Human beings, Kierkegaard consistently argues, are in need of a life-view that can provide their life with meaning and existential orientation. Life-views come unbidden by the sheer fact that we are situated and embodied creatures who think about our particular life. As Wilhelm argues in the second part of Either-Or in a letter to his young friend who tries to evade the humdrum of everyday life by constantly fragmenting the idea of a life: “Every human being, no matter how slightly gifted he is, however subordinate his position in life may be, has a natural need [en naturlig Trang] to formulate a life-view [Livs-Anskuelse], a conception of life and of its purpose.”³⁶ This need is what drives our imagination. We imagine our life, and our life is oriented by the images that we produce. Wilhelm not only points to the inescapable need for a lifeview, he also argues that because ideas about life come unbidden, the individual has to make his ideas about life concrete by choosing to live by some of them, while rejecting others. The question of life-views therefore presents itself for the individual as an ethical task: He has his place in the world; in freedom he himself chooses his place—that is, he chooses this place. He is a specific individual; in the choice he makes himself into a specific individual; namely into the same one, because he chooses himself. An individual thus chooses himself as a complex specific concretion and therefore he chooses himself in his continuity. This concretion is the individual’s reality [Denne Concretion er Individets Virkelighed], but since he chooses it according to his freedom, it may also be said that it is his possibility or, in order to use such an aesthetic expression, it is his task.³⁷

We have to examine, clarify, and understand our particular view of life if we want to find our own life-view instead of simply adopting those of our immediate surroundings (e. g. our society, our parents, lovers, and friends). The ethical task is thus to produce our own life-view: “For a human being to live ethically it is necessary that he becomes conscious of himself, so thoroughly that no accidental element escapes him. The ethical does not want to wipe out this concretion but sees in it its task, sees the material with which it has to construct [danne] and that which it has to construct.”³⁸ On the other hand, as Wilhelm makes abundantly clear, our life-view cannot be a free-floating creative imaginary production. It has to be bound to the reality of our concrete life. It is exactly the neglect  For a cogent discussion of this complexity, see Ettore Rocca, Kierkegaard, København: Gyldendal 2016, pp. 197– 204.  SKS 3, 175 / EO2, 155.  SKS 3, 240 / EO2, 251, translation slightly modified.  SKS 3 241 / EO2, 253, translation modified.

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of the concrete reality of an individual human life that was the strongest point in Kierkegaard’s critique of the infinite aspirations of the romantic worldview.³⁹ Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the problem of imaginative representations of reality and the concrete reality of an individual life grows so vigorous that it eventually shatters the notion of life-view, and from the Postscript onwards Kierkegaard increasingly substitutes the notion of life-view with the notion of existence. The notion of existence questions the normativity involved in the life-views that are supposed to provide the person with images of how to live a life.⁴⁰ These images or representations [forestillinger] are ambiguous in the sense that on the one hand they animate our imagination by providing cues for our imagining, and yet, on the other, they restrain and impoverish those same imaginative capacities by imposing universal guidelines for how to image a life. This ambiguity of the ethical aspects of life-views is what Johannes de Silentio explores in Fear and Trembling, arguing that: In the ethical view of life [For den ethiske Betragtning af Livet], it is the task of the single individual to strip himself of the qualification of interiority and to express this in something external. Every time the individual shrinks from it, every time he withholds himself in or slips down again into the qualifications of feeling, mood, etc. that belong to interiority, he trespasses, he is immersed in spiritual trial [Anfægtelse].⁴¹

This is not to say that Kierkegaard completely leaves behind the idea of establishing a life-view in the later part of his authorship. Rather, he develops the notion of existence out of the ambiguity of our representations of a life-view. As we saw in the first section, we use images to re-present [fore-stille] to ourselves how to live a life, and those images feed on both the abstract stability of exterior measures and the restless movement of interiority. The notion of existence provides us with the means to capture and explore this ambiguity. As Climacus writes in The Postscript: For the existing person, existing is for him his highest interest, and the interest in existing is reality [Interesseretheden i at existere Virkeligheden]. What reality is cannot be stated in the language of abstraction. Reality is an inter-esse between the abstraction’s hypothetical unity of thinking and being [Eenhed af Tænken og Væren]. The abstraction deals with pos-

 K. Brian Söderquist, “Irony,” in The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard, ed. by John Lippitt and George Pattison, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013, pp. 344– 364.  For an analysis of the question of normativity, see Grøn, Subjektivitet og negativitet, pp. 28 – 29, 85 – 95.  SKS 4, 161 / FT, 69.

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sibility and reality, but its conception of reality is a false reproduction [Gjengivelse], since the medium is not reality, but possibility.⁴²

The notion of existence requalifies the conception of reality by insisting on the unimaginable aspects of a reality that cannot be reproduced imaginatively. Our life is situated in a reality that we have not chosen ourselves, and of which we are an integral part. We cannot escape the passivity involved in being part of this reality by thinking or imagining another reality. And yet, human reality is not a brute fact, and our life is not merely constituted and shaped by what happens to us. Our inter-esse between thinking and being transforms the givenness of life into the problem of existence by articulating the dialectics of presence and absence at the heart of our being. We experience our reality as our reality, and we are intimately interested in our reality. We are, so to say, implicated by our experience of reality in the sense that we are singled out by our interested engagement with reality. Our individual interests—our ideas, feelings and desires— shape our reality, thus separating it from the reality of other human beings. And this interested engagement in reality not only separates us from others, it also separates us from ourselves by complicating our understanding of who and what we are. Our interests are not bound to our senses, to our presence, but animated by an absence through our seemingly infinite capacity to create imaginative variations on what we are not. Our interest in reality detaches us from our immediate reality, making us into beings who are both present and absent, i. e., “intermediary beings”⁴³ whose reality is ethical because it depends upon how we deal with our detachment from the world, other people, and ourselves, i. e., upon how we ex-ist. Put differently, our reality is reflected thorough an absence produced by our imagination, and we cannot exist without the imaginative possibility of this absence. And yet, the notion of existence accentuates the ambiguity of imagination by dissolving the imaginative stability constitutive of a life-view. Existence is not absence, but an interested presence, which means that we cannot exist through the imaginative reproduction of life-views (whether they are aesthetical, ethical or religious). Our imaginative constructions lack the brute facts of being, or rather the immediate concreteness of presence. The problem of imagination becomes most manifest in suffering. As Anti-Climacus argues in Practice in Christianity: [T]he image produced by the imagination [Indbildningskraft] is not that of true perfection [den sande Fulkommenheds]; it lacks something—reality’s suffering, i. e., the reality of suf-

 SKS 7, 286 / CUP1, 314, translation significantly modified.  SKS 7, 301 / CUP1, 329.

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fering [Virkelighedens Lidelse eller Lidelsens Virkelighed]. True perfection is perfection—with the reality of suffering. That is, perfection is the fact that day after day, year after year, perfection is found in reality’s suffering. What a terrible contradiction; not that perfection is found in something more perfect but rather that perfection is found in something infinitely less perfect. And this is precisely the imperfection of the image of the imagination: the imperfect [det Ufuldkomne] is not reproduced [gjengivet]. Ah yes, this is the really unfortunate part: in reality it is extremely rare to find true perfection because it is so hard and exhausting to be perfect in the only place perfection can truly exist; it is so hard to be perfect in reality, and for just that reason, it is true perfection.⁴⁴

Suffering brings out the concrete challenges involved in living with the ambiguity of imagination. This ambiguity discloses the dialectics of reality and imagination involved in suffering. Our experience of suffering is uniquely real in the sense that it impossible to reproduce imaginatively. Suffering brings out the irreproducible real character of existence. Suffering discloses the completion or perfection of existence (Fuldkommenhed). The reality of our existence becomes manifest in suffering, and our particular (way of dealing with) suffering is the most real (complete or perfect) expression of the individual existence that we are. On the other hand, the reality of our suffering reveals the imperfect (det Ufuldkomne) in the perfection of our reality. We suffer because of our imperfection, i. e., we suffer from the reality of our imperfection. The imperfection in perfection is the imaginative absence in our concrete existence that constitutes the reality of the particular individual that we are. This imaginative absence in our concrete existence is the perfect (present) imperfection (absence) or the imperfect (absent) perfection (presence) that we exist with but which we cannot reproduce imaginatively.

V Concrete Infinity With the question of suffering, Kierkegaard returns to the problem that Descartes struggled with, namely, how to understand the interplay of thinking (mind) and being (matter) in the reality of a living human being. Thinking provides us with images of life abstracted from the sensuous turmoil of being, while being itself constantly disturbs these images with its unimaginable movements. Our imagination is affected by both aspects of being human, and living as a human being means dealing with the problems of these two aspects of existing as a being who live in and through imaginative reflections of that which it is and

 SKS 12, 188 / PC, 188, translation significantly modified.

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is not. However, while Descartes’s analysis of the imagination worked with a conception of nature as an objective realm that can be understood independently of the workings of the human mind, Kierkegaard’s approach to imagination is constructed from Kant’s conception of nature as inescapably entangled with the human mind. For Kant, we cannot understand—let alone explain—nature independent of the human mind. It is not a question of an objectively pure nature standing over, below, or beyond a purely subjective human mind. On the contrary, to understand both nature and mind we need to work through the images—or unimaginable schemes, as Kant calls them⁴⁵—of the mind. This means that the question of nature becomes a question about the (objectively valid) reality of our construction of nature through the synthetic conception of human understanding. Imagination plays a foundational, transcendental role in this synthetic conception, since it brings together the two distinct aspects—or trunks (Stämme), as Kant calls them⁴⁶—of human understanding, the infinity of reason and the finitude of the senses, in our experience of reality. However, we also saw that for Kant human freedom is not bound to experienced reality. Freedom discloses a (practical) reality within the empirically concrete reality that we (theoretically) experience, understand, and live with through the “blind, but indispensable work” of the imagination. It is in this sense that the question of human reality is accentuated in Kant’s transcendental treatment of imagination. How can we understand the reality that we are if we cannot experience or imagine it? Our presence in reality is thus perforated or destabilized by a constitutional absence. For Kant, this question is explored from the impersonal transcendental perspective in his attempt to construct an objectively valid account of the ambiguity of human reality. Kierkegaard’s notion of existence develops this ambiguity by rejecting the possibility of a transcendental, theoretical account of human reality. Whereas Kant considers the reproductive, empirical work of the imagination to be a part of empirical psychology, and thus a “foreigner [Fremdling]” to the transcendental, a priori examination of reality,⁴⁷ Kierkegaard’s existential approach does not accept this sharp distinction between the a priori and the empirical in our understanding of reality. As Climacus argues: “The only reality there is for an existing person is his own ethical reality; he merely has knowledge about any other reality. Genuine knowledge is a translation into possibility.”⁴⁸ This emphasis on the reality of an existing human being as an ethical reality, constituted by the interest of the individual human being, places    

Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. A140/B179. Ibid., pp. A15/B29, A835/B863. Ibid., pp. A848/B877. SKS 7, 288 / CUP1, 316, translation slightly modified.

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psychology in the center of his understanding of imagination. This does not mean that Kierkegaard abandons Kant’s insistence on the foundational (transcendental) character of the imagination in the synthesis of the body and the mind. On the contrary, the foundational character is accentuated by insisting on the existing human being. To exist is to engage with the challenge of both thinking and being the reality of which we are a part, and this engagement is only possible through the imaginative reproduction of that which we are not. The emphasis on the ethical constitution of existence transforms the problem of infinity and finitude at the heart of the explorations of imagination in Descartes and Kant. For these two thinkers, infinity still functions as a point of orientation outside the embodied human mind (respectively, the pure soul and the things in themselves). For Kierkegaard, however, infinity is engrained in human existence, and the task of the individual human being is to work with “the ambiguity, in which time and eternity touch each other,” i. e., with the challenges of existence in and through time, “whereby time constantly severs [afskærer] eternity and eternity constantly saturates time.”⁴⁹ The dialectics of the reality of suffering that Kierkegaard works with brings to the fore the problem of infinity in human existence. We are implicated in our suffering in the sense that it is intimately our suffering, and yet our suffering transcends our understanding of ourselves by complicating our understanding of the reality of which we are part. Our suffering is one of the most concrete aspects of our existence, and yet the causes of our suffering are unimaginably infinite, as are also our ways of dealing with our suffering. We do not suffer merely from what is present. Human suffering is, as mentioned, saturated with absence. In fact, the absence of explainable causes of suffering is part of what makes human suffering human. Our suffering is concrete, perhaps the most concrete experience of being, and yet the concreteness of suffering is marked by an absence that makes possible an infinity of imaginative explanations. Kierkegaard shows us—in the words of Arne Grøn—that we cannot think the transcendence of infinity independent of the problem of immanence, because “[t]ranscendence does not simply lie beyond our experience, but involves our experience as such – as something which happens in understanding and as understanding in and through that which happens [als ein Widerfahrnis im Verstehen und als Verstehen im Widerfahrnis].”⁵⁰

 SKS 4, 392 / CA, 89, translation modified.  Arne Grøn, “Widerfahrnis und Verstehen,” in Hermeneutik der Transzendenz, ed. by Ingolf U. Dalferth, Pierre Bühler, and Andreas Hunziker, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2015, p. 59.

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Kierkegaard’s work with the ambiguity of imagination, I would argue, thus complicates our understanding of reality by making us aware of the confluence of infinity and finitude in our concrete existence. The reality at stake here is personal as well as interpersonal. It is a question of how to understand that we are concrete individual persons existing with the infinite absence articulated in this concrete reality. This absence cannot be exhausted by our imaginative representations. Our imaginative representations reveal an absence that binds us to a reality that we ourselves have not created. Imagination is the reality of the possibilities that let us become who we are, and yet imagination is also that which can make us lose the sense of the concrete reality constitutive of being human. Our existence is in this sense a concrete infinity, a present absence and an absent presence, in which it is our ethical task to become the infinity that we are through the concrete finitude we imagine ourselves to be.⁵¹

 I would like to thank Arne Grøn, Claudia Welz, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this essay.

Issues

Vilhjálmur Árnason

The Danger of Losing Oneself Habermas’s Species Ethics in Light of Kierkegaards’s Existential Analysis Abstract: Kierkegaard’s existential analysis plays an important role in Habermas’s argument against liberal eugenics. Kierkegaard’s notion of a power greater than ourselves is translated into post-metaphysical terminology. Habermas regards natural contingency as a condition for human self-projection and grounds agency in the intersubjective structures of language. It is argued that Habermas’s reasoning about the pathologies of the lifeworld can be compared to and complemented by Kierkegaard’s existential analysis of the sickness of the spirit. These radically different approaches can be jointly used in combatting the oblivion of human existence that characterizes objectivistic thinking of the kind that permeates liberal eugenics.

I Introduction The philosophy of Jürgen Habermas has not been characterized by existential themes. Nor has his theory been prominent or influential in bioethical discussion. However, in his essay, The Future of Human Nature, ¹ Habermas surprisingly turned his attention to bioethics and did so partly from an existential perspective where Kierkegaard plays an important role. Habermas’s concern was occasioned by radical liberal ideas about genetic enhancement which he thinks could undermine the conditions for human self-understanding. In this essay, I deal with the question why Habermas takes an existential turn in this context and evaluate whether and how this suits his purposes. In particular, I try to show the significance of Kierkegaard’s theory for Habermas’s project. I argue that while Kierkegaard’s notion of a power greater than ourselves plays a key role in this context, Habermas must translate that into post-metaphysical terminology. For that he draws both on natural contingency as a condition for human selfprojection and on the intersubjective structures of language which substantiates

 Jürgen Habermas, Auf dem Weg zu einer liberalen Eugenik, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2002 / The Future of Human Nature, trans. by William Rehg, Hella Beister, and Max Pensky. Cambridge: Polity Press 2003. DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-011

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and mediates all human thought and action. Furthermore, I argue that important similarities can be found between pathologies of the lifeworld which undermine the human conditions for freedom and responsibility and the sickness of the spirit analyzed by Anti-Climacus. These different analyses can complement each other in resisting the instrumentalization which threatens the ethical self-understanding of the human species. The essay proceeds in the following way. In the first section, I briefly outline some features of Habermas’s communicative ethics that are relevant for the ensuing discussion. I discuss the main themes of Habermas’s critique of liberal eugenics and why he thinks that it may affect the self-understanding of the human species. I also try to show why he turns to existential philosophy for an ethics of the species. In the second section, I summarize the consent argument which Habermas puts forth against liberal eugenics and evaluate it in light of Sartre’s theory of radical freedom and bad faith. I argue that this approach does not suit Habermas’s purposes, mainly because of Sartre’s inadequate analysis of the relationship between freedom and facticity. In the third section, I discuss Habermas’s notion of facticity and argue that a major reason why Habermas draws on Kierkegaard is because of the latter’s argument that the individual is dependent on enabling conditions beyond his control. The relevance of this for Habermas’s critique of liberal eugenics is discussed. In the fourth section it is shown how Habermas uses our natural contingency to argue for moral equality of humans and how that may be threatened by eugenic practices. In the fifth section, the focus is on the linguistic structure of human facticity. It is shown how language has played a central role throughout Habermas’s philosophy and that he has always been preoccupied with factors which threaten to undermine communicative competence and discursive practices. It is argued that Habermas’s reasoning about the pathologies of the lifeworld can be compared to and complemented by Kierkegaard’s existential analysis of the sickness of the spirit. Both are examples of critical diagnoses that cannot be readily supported by empirical evidence. In the sixth section this comparison is further substantiated by showing how insights from both Kierkegaard and Habermas can be used to counteract against the naïve objectivism of the kind of bioethics which forgets to take crucial existential questions into account in its analyses. Finally, the argument is briefly summarized in concluding words.

II Post-Metaphysical Ethics and Liberal Eugenics It is useful first to briefly place Habermas’ discussion of liberal eugenics in the context of Habermas’s communicative ethics which is characterized by an emphasis on

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the formal conditions for practical discourse, i.e., discourse which deals with questions about what to do and how to live. According to Habermas, it is not the task of moral philosophy to argue for the substantive conclusions of practical discourse, but only to explain the conditions for participants to reach those conclusions in a fair way. For this purpose, Habermas focuses on the conditions for engaging in an argumentation, free from domination, which aims at distinguishing between those norms which do not stand to reason and those which are worthy of recognition.² Moreover, universalistic communicative ethics limits itself to questions of justice since questions about “the good life” can only be answered within a context of a particular life or a cultural life form. Habermas agrees with John Rawls that the issues of the good life must be left for individuals and citizens to decide in light of their own abilities, aspirations, culture and value-orientations. In a pluralistic and post-metaphysical world, philosophy no longer has the authority to argue for a right way to live. Similarly to Habermas, Rawls argues that a good society is characterized by general respect for principles of justice which accommodate a variety of individual life-projects. It provides individuals with “the freedom of choice – within the framework of just institutions.”³ In light of this it is interesting that Habermas’s essay on genetic enhancement is not a critical analysis of the conditions for bioethical discourse from a procedural perspective, but shows more substantial concerns for the problematic implications that eugenic practices may have both for the liberal vision of human life and more basically for human self-understanding. Habermas argues that liberal eugenics is only compatible with political liberalism if it does not unfairly affect the opportunities of individuals to project their lives. In his essay on the future of human nature, he aims to show that the emphasis on unrestricted eugenic freedom of parents to design their offsprings could threaten to objectify children and undermine their ability to freely project their life. The permissible policies of liberal eugenics lead to a “specific type of paternalism,”⁴ which is incompatible with political liberalism, “because the selection of desirable dispositions cannot be a priori dissociated from the prejudgment of specific life-projects.”⁵ Moreover, Habermas argues that genetic enhancement programs obliterate the distinction between persons and things: “In making their choice, the parents [would only be] looking to their own preferences, as if disposing of an object.”⁶

 Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 43−115.  John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1971, p. 447.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 64.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 66.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 51.

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For this reason, Habermas argues that philosophy can no longer avoid taking a substantive position since “the ethical self-understanding of language-using agents is at stake in its entirety”,⁷ threatened by certain uses of reproductive genetic biotechnology. The situation we find ourselves in today requires a “species ethics” which scrutinizes the existential mode of being human which is compatible with the liberal vision of pluralism of world views and the freedom of individuals to project their lives. It requires that philosophy reflect on the very conditions for human agency and responsibility. Habermas describes the ethical self-understanding of the species in the existential terminology of freedom, responsibility and selfprojection. It is understandable, therefore, that Habermas turns to existential philosophy for the task of clarifying the conditions for human agency. It is essential to the existentialist conception of human existence that man is not a thing or an object of production. A central existential theme is that individuals accept the responsibility placed upon them as free human beings.⁸ According to Habermas, this post-metaphysical ethical task was initiated by Kierkegaard, who analyzed the formal conditions for existential freedom and responsibility which are at stake in this context. The role of philosophy in relation to this task, Habermas argues, is to account for the general mode of “being-ableto-be-oneself” without orienting that in any particular direction, which in a pluralist world must be a personal decision.⁹ By drawing on Kierkegaard, it is possible in his view to deal with ethical-existential issues without violating “the conditions of pluralism of worldviews” and thus provide a post-metaphysical answer to the question of “the good life.”¹⁰ This invites a discussion about awareness of individuality, responsibility and freedom as a mode of being. Before discussing why Habermas turns to Kierkegaard rather than to other existentialist thinkers in this context, it is instructive to take a further look at his arguments against liberal eugenics.¹¹ I will focus on the question why he turns to existential philosophy to deal with these issues. I discuss this with a particular reference to Sartre’s notion of bad faith which can be used to counteract some of Habermas’s claims concerning the effects of liberal eugenics on human agency.

 Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 11.  For a discussion of existentialist conception of human existence, see, for example, John Macquarrie, Existentialism, Harmondworth: Penguin Books 1976, chapters 3 and 11.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 6.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 11.  His arguments raise several difficult questions that I will not deal with in this context. I have discussed this in Vilhjálmur Árnason, “From Species Ethics to Social Concerns: Habermas’s Critique of “Liberal Eugenics” Evaluated,” in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, vol. 35, 2014, pp. 353 – 367.

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III The Argument from Bad Faith In a previous paper, I have argued that there are three main arguments in Habermas’s critique of liberal eugenics: the argument from consent, responsibility, and instrumentalization.¹² In order to connect more concretely to existentialist themes I will briefly discuss Habermas’s argument about consent of the person undergoing genetic programming and the different attitudes implied in eugenic practices. He distinguishes between the clinical attitude of negative eugenics or therapeutics and the instrumentalizing or optimizing attitudes related to genetic enhancement. He argues that it is reasonable to presume that everyone would accept the clinical attitude but not the optimizing one. Or, as Habermas puts it, “assumed consensus can only be invoked for the goal of avoiding evils which are unquestionably extreme and likely to be rejected by all.”¹³ In cases of genetic enhancement, on the other hand, there is always the risk that the person-to-be would reject the intentions of the designer. He argues that it is an indefensible risk to allow enhancing genetic programming, which formulates life purposes for a future person from a third person perspective, i. e. the parents’ own preferences which the person-to-be might reject. “The programmed person,” Habermas writes, “may feel the lack of a mental precondition for coping with the moral expectation to take, even only in retrospect, the sole responsibility for her own life.”¹⁴ As can be seen from this, Habermas uses strong existential terminology in the formulation of his critique of the optimizing perspective. In cases of dissonance, he writes, eugenic interventions would “reduce ethical freedom insofar as they tie down the person concerned to rejected but irreversible intentions of third parties, barring him from the spontaneous self-perception of being the undivided author of his own life.”¹⁵ The future person may experience the intentions of the genetic intervention as an “alien determination” and thus be robbed of the responsibility to shape her life in her own way.¹⁶ Such genetic programs imply a shift from the natural “given” to a production of desired characteristics, chosen from a third person perspective. This changes the natural contingency with which we are confronted (our genetic Geworfenheit, to use Heidegger’s terminology) into a conceived project of other persons through genetic enhance-

    

Cf. Árnason, “From Species Ethics to Social Concerns.” Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 43. Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, pp. 81– 82. Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 63. Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 89.

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ment. Habermas does not say that the individual will be confronted with the genetic trait as a mute and unanswerable fact; that would entail a naive genetic determinism. It is “the genetic programming,” that is, the parental intentions engrained, as it were, in the person’s body, that constitutes this facticity. It is instructive to evaluate these arguments in light of Sartre’s radical theory of existential freedom. In the language of Sartre, the genetic makeup of an individual is part of what constitutes the facticity to which each person is bound to respond and thus endow with meaning and significance. Sartre’s theory of existential freedom implies that this act of responding to elements of one’s facticity is fully the individual’s own responsibility and all attempts to evade it are examples of bad faith. From this perspective, the intentions harbored by genetic programming play no significant role because the individual’s condition has “meaning only in and through my project.”¹⁷ In this way, the individual inevitably transcends the facticity of her situation, and it is a test of her moral integrity to acknowledge that. In Sartre’s existential scheme, there can be no such thing as “irreversible intentions of third parties,” barring the individual from freely projecting his own life. If the individual experiences the intrusion of the designer in the “consciousness of her own autonomy,”¹⁸ it is due to her own interpretation. The existential individual is condemned to freedom in this manner, and accordingly, she is the sole author of the significance of her own life. Although this argument from bad faith shows how existential ideas can be turned against Habermas’s thesis, it does not undermine it. The fact that an individual inevitably gives meaning to his experience has no decisive bearing on its moral dimension. I am responsible for how I react to being robbed on the street, but it does not change the moral fact that I have been wronged. A designed individual will surely respond to and give meaning to her genetic programming, but she is nevertheless faced with “this sort of framing of a person by others” that may be unjustifiable.¹⁹ In the argument from consent Habermas describes the issue in psychological terms of consciousness of responsibility. But he also argues more objectively that once genetic programming has been introduced, each person can “regard her own genome as the consequence of a criticizable action or omission.”²⁰ While this could be characterized as an exercise in

 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes, New York: Philosophical Library 1956, p. 554.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 81.  Joel Anderson, Review of “The Future of Human Nature, by Jürgen Habermas,” in Ethics, vol. 115, 2005, p. 817.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 82.

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bad faith, it can also be argued that it places persons in a position that we have good reasons to avoid. Moreover, it has been convincingly argued that having more choice is not always better than having less. There are “psychic costs” related to having options that previously did not exist. As Gerald Dworkin writes, “once I am aware that I have a choice, my failure to choose now counts against me. I can now be responsible, and be held responsible, for events that prior to the possibility of choosing were not attributable to me.”²¹ While this can be dealt with by the “fear of freedom” charge and analysis of bad faith, this proceeds exclusively at the individual level and ignores “the sociology of the situation.”²² In the case of eugenics, there can be relevant unintended side effects that relate both to the particular child and more generally to the human community and moral agency. This is at least partly what is involved in Habermas’s call for a species ethics and these concerns are not properly addressed by “the jargon of authenticity,” to use Adorno’s phrase about Sartre’s strong emphasis on the subjectivity of freedom.²³

IV Freedom and Necessity, Natality and Creation Habermas does not draw on Sartre’s existentialism and writes that the “ethically conscious conduct of life should not be understood as narrow-minded self-empowerment.”²⁴ It seems to me that Sartre’s analysis does not suit Habermas‘s purposes because of the flawed notion of facticity, accompanied with Sartre’s strong conception of transcendence or radical freedom. While Sartre emphasizes “the ontological priority of the in-itself over the for-itself,”²⁵ he describes the in-itself in terms of “brute things” which freedom endows with significance by responding to them. “Thus although brute things…can from the start limit our freedom of action, it is our freedom itself which must first constitute the framework, the technique, and the ends in relation to which they will manifest themselves as limits.”²⁶ Facticity is constitutive of freedom only in the sense that the for-itself is inevitably engaged

 Gerald Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988, p. 67.  Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy, p. 69.  Theodor W. Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, trans. by Knut Tarnowski and Fredrick Will, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1973.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 10.  Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 484.  Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 482.

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with objective resistance, “but these resistances and obstacles have meaning only in and through the free choice which human reality is.”²⁷ On the other hand, when Habermas talks about facticity in this context he emphasizes the enabling features of the contingent factors that ground the radically situated subject. For Habermas, facticity provides human beings, as it were, both with roots and wings. This could help us to clarify why Habermas draws upon Kierkegaard rather than other existential thinkers in his approach to eugenics. On the surface, Kierkegaard’s statement that “the self is freedom” could be conflated with Sartre’s notion of radical freedom. But, as Kierkegaard writes, “freedom is the dialectical element in the categories of possibility and necessity.”²⁸ His analysis of despair proceeds largely in terms of these categories which can be related to Habermas’s criticism of liberal eugenics. The most obvious point of connection on the existential level is the condition of a person who would reject the intentions of genetic programming. One form of despair in Kierkegaard’s analysis is the defiance of the one not wanting to be oneself and willing to be someone else.²⁹ The state of the dissenting person, who might accuse her parents for the intentions harbored in a genetic programming, could be described in Kierkegaard’s terminology: “possibility outstrips necessity, the self runs away from itself in possibility so that it has no necessity to return to. This then is possibility’s despair. Here the self becomes an abstract possibility; it exhausts itself floundering about in possibility.”³⁰ From Kierkegaard’s perspective, this condition need not be dependent on any concrete life situation, but surely it could be exacerbated by the possibilities opened up by genetic programming. Not only do they increase the options in the external environment, where “the self is swallowed up in the abyss”³¹ of ever more possibilities to pursue and consume. Here the existential task is one of resoluteness, of collecting oneself together so as not to go astray and “become nothing but an atmospheric illusion”³² in the sea of possibilities. The “genetic exceptionalism” in this context entails, however, that the optimizing attitude related to genetic enhancement creates a space for this existential abyss within oneself through the parental intentions engrained in the person’s genetic makeup. When the natural constitution of a human being becomes a matter of choice rather than contingent chance, it radically changes the conditions for freedom.

     

Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 489. SKS 11, 145 / SUDP, 59. SKS 11, 164 / SUD, 80. SKS 11, 151 / SUD, 66. SKS 11, 151 / SUD, 66. SKS 11, 152 / SUD, 66.

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It brings possibility into the basis of human existence which requires “necessity as a constraining factor in relation to possibility.”³³ In the words of Michael Sandel, eugenic parenting “misses the part of freedom that consists in a persisting negotiation with the given.”³⁴ It is implied in Habermas’s argument that eugenic parenting consists precisely in the gift of certain genetic dispositions or characteristics which implies that the individual is “at the disposal of some other person.”³⁵ The problematic aspects of this from a liberal perspective have already been discussed above. For Habermas, however, this human intervention in one’s hereditary factors does not meet “the conceptual requirement of constituting a beginning that we cannot control.”³⁶ The “we” here clearly refers not only to those who are subject to eugenic parenting but to human beings generally. As Habermas points out, this has rarely been addressed by philosophy with the important exception of Hannah Arendt’s discussion of natality as a precondition for free action. “In acting, human beings feel free to begin something new because birth itself, as a divide between nature and culture, marks a new beginning.”³⁷ It is against this background that it makes sense to say that the individual “knows herself to be the irreducible origin of her own actions and aspirations.”³⁸ If parental aspirations have been engrained in her genetic makeup it threatens to disturb the spontaneous awareness of the acting subject. Habermas argues that the programmed individual “cannot see the programmer’s intention, reaching through the genome, a contingent circumstance restricting her scope of action.”³⁹ The root of the problem in the case of dissenting individuals is rather “the lack of necessity” as analyzed by Kierkegaard. “What is really missing is the strength to obey, to yield to the necessary in one’s self, what might be called one’s limits.”⁴⁰ And this cannot be described merely as “this self’s fantastically reflecting itself in possibility,”⁴¹ because in the case of the programmed person “the necessary in oneself” has itself been made the object of fabrication which threatens to dissolve the self in possibilities.

 SKS 11, 151 / SUD, 65.  Michael Sandel, The Case against Perfection. Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, Cambridge: The Belknap Press 2007, p. 83.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 58.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 58.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 59.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 58.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 60.  SKS 11, 152 / SUD, 67.  SKS 11, 152 / SUD, 67.

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For Kierkegaard, the remedy to despair is for the self to be “grounded transparently in the power that established it,”⁴² i. e., by having faith in God. It is tempting to ask whether the problem that Habermas invokes isn’t an inevitable part of religious thinking which regards human beings as God’s creatures. Sartre famously tackled this question in his essay “Existentialism is a Humanism” where he likens God to “a superior sort of artisan.” “Thus the concept of man in the mind of God is comparable to the concept of a paper cutter in the mind of the manufacturer.”⁴³ This is a key element in Sartre’s argument about the unique characteristic of human beings that “existence precedes essence.” If human qualities were preconceived in the divine mind, existential freedom and responsibility could not be accounted for. From Habermas’s viewpoint this account of God conflates the ideas of creation and manufacturing or technical production. The latter reduces God to the state of a human who would program another person “according to his own preferences.”⁴⁴ And here Habermas delves into theological discourse which is of major relevance in this context: “God remains ‘a God of free men’” only as long as we do not level out the absolute difference that exists between the creator and the creature. Only then, the fact that God gives form to human life does not imply a determination interfering with man’s self-determination.”⁴⁵ From this perspective one can see the creator as the ground of one’s existence, as an enabling power which constitutes human freedom rather than eliminates it. As Habermas writes, this implies “an entirely different kind of dependence” from the one created by genetic programming, engineered by another human being “at his own discretion.”⁴⁶ Clearly, the notion of God in Kierkegaard’s thought is very different from the one depicted by Sartre in “Existentialism is a Humanism.” Habermas recites the first book of Moses, Gen, 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.”⁴⁷ To create man in his own image implies, contrary to Sartre’s argument, the idea of humans as free creatures, capable of returning God’s affection in loving one’s neighbour. This resonates with key themes in Kierkegaard. As Iben Damgaard writes: “The imago Dei is a human being’s qualification as spirit, which means that a human being is a self who is free to dis-

 SKS 11, 164 / SUD, 79.  Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, trans. by Bernard Frechtman, New York: The Wisdom Library 1957, p. 14.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 115.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, pp. 114− 115.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 115.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 114.

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cover and become himself in and through his relations to others and himself.”⁴⁸ As I said above, Habermas seems to draw on Kierkegaard’s ideas explicitly because of his emphasis—contrary to Sartre’s existentialism—on the dependency of the individual on “a power beyond our control.”⁴⁹ For Kierkegaard, in Habermas’s words, “finite spirit depends on enabling conditions beyond its control”⁵⁰ and must “recognize its dependence on an Other as the ground of its own freedom.”⁵¹ For Habermas, this transcendent enabling power must be given a postmetaphysical translation. I will now turn more explicitly to his analysis of these factors.

V Natural Facticity and Moral Equality The above discussion was generated by the consent argument and I have argued elsewhere⁵² that this approach is in part too individualistic and psychological to sufficiently counter the liberal position that Habermas set out to criticize. That is because this argument makes it dependent on the lived experience of the programmed person whether genetic enhancement is problematic or not. This approach does not address the more serious problem, to be discussed below, that eugenic programming might affect our moral lifeworld in such a way that future persons would be docile subjects, living content in their programmed condition. Habermas insists, however, that we have to reflect deeper on the implications of genetic enhancement and those reflections lead him to the conditions for human agency and how they can be undermined by eugenic practices. This leads us more explicitly than before to the question about the nature of contingency or facticity in Habermas’s argument and how that can be related to the existential analysis of Kierkegaard. The facticity discussed by Habermas is twofold, natural and socio-linguistic. Together these factors provide the concretely given contingency which the individual appropriates and on the basis of which he is the initiator of his actions and becomes the author of his own life. His arguments relating to these two factors are different, but both play an important role in his species ethics. Habermas

 Iben Damgaard, “Who will not wonder at this Chameleon? Pico and Kierkegaard on Human Dignity and Imago Dei,” in Ethics of In-Visibility Imago Dei, Memory, and Human Dignity in Jewish and Christian Thought, ed. by Claudia Welz. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2015, 133‒154, p. 149.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 10.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 10.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 9.  Árnason, “From Species Ethics to Social Concerns.”

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writes that “we should not understand this dependence on a power beyond our control in naturalistic terms, but above all as an interpersonal relation.”⁵³ Nevertheless, he emphasizes that the natural contingency of fertilization, “the unforeseeable combination of two different sets of chromosomes,” is a “necessary presupposition for being-able-to-be-oneself and for the fundamentally egalitarian nature of our interpersonal relationship.”⁵⁴ Two different, though related claims, are implied here: A statement about the existential conditions for human selfprojection (that we have been discussing in relation to natality), and an ethical statement about equality. Clearly this statement about equality does not imply that we are all born equal because this natural contingency entails quite different genetic endowments to individuals. However, such natural inequalities do not matter for the demand of respecting the egalitarian nature of our interpersonal relationship. A translator and interpreter of Habermas writes: “The conditions of symmetry and reciprocity that make relations of mutual recognition possible in the structures of speech and interaction do not presuppose that we are all born equal. But they do imply that the ethical horizon that we inhabit requires the equality we encounter in the inaccessibility of our genetic contingency to technical or ethical choice.”⁵⁵ This interpretation is stronger than Habermas’s own position which is quite compatible with making the human genome accessible for therapeutic purposes. As discussed previously, he opposes genetic programming which aims at formulating life projects for a future person from a third person perspective. This step threatens to erase the distinction between human subjectivity and “the world of objects which can merely be manipulated.”⁵⁶ Habermas’s warning is that by erasing this distinction, the ethical self-understanding of the human species, as self-projecting creatures who are responsible for their lives, is threatened. He looks towards the future where genetic modification of traits would have “become normal practice” and poses pressing questions that have been largely neglected in the debate about genetic enhancement: “Will we be still be able to come to a self-understanding as persons who are the undivided authors of their own lives, and approach others, without exception, as persons of equal birth?”⁵⁷ As Max Pensky observes, “the claim must be that current genetic technologies already point in the directions of future ethical dilemmas, which a fu-

 Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 10.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 13.  Max Pensky, The Ends of Solidarity. Discourse Theory in Ethics and Politics, Albany: State University of New York Press 2008, p. 226.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 47.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 72.

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ture ethical lifeworld cannot reasonably be expected to handle without fundamental harms to the moral status of (future) persons.”⁵⁸ Habermas states that by becoming conscious of our natural constitution, which we unconsciously take for granted, our ability to act spontaneously and authentically, is damaged. This will affect the possibility for taking full responsibility for one’s life story.⁵⁹ The Danish philosopher Karin Christiansen has argued that Habermas fails to “explain how the existential analysis is related to his reflections on the sociological and psychological impact of genetic enhancement in the realm of communicative action.”⁶⁰ She writes: “The question is, whether a change in our cultural life form will be taking place and impact on the very conditions for ‘the unconditionedness of freedom of truth,’ if we open the gates for genetic enhancement?”⁶¹ Christiansen maintains that this argument lacks empirical evidence and is therefore vulnerable to criticism. She also points out that from the perspective of Kierkegaard, the individual’s option of choosing to become himself should not be affected by her somatic or psychological constitution. It remains unclear, therefore, what impact genetic intervention will have on the existential level. In order to evaluate this criticism, it is relevant to consider at which level Habermas’s argument is advanced. Habermas is aware that his argument is inevitably speculative. It has even been argued that his essay on The Future of Human Nature is best seen as a kind of science fiction.⁶² His striking statement about eugenic practices in liberal societies could, for example, be read in this light: “In liberal societies, eugenic decisions would be transferred, via markets governed by profit orientation and preferential demands, to the individual choice of parents and, on the whole, to the anarchic whims of consumers and clients.”⁶³ For this interpretation, the future reference of Habermas’s argument, the possible consequences of making genetic modification of traits a normal practice, which is an understandable move to make from a universalistic moral perspective, is very important. As Max Pensky point out:

 See Pensky, The Ends of Solidarity, p. 226.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 55.  Karin Christiansen, “The Silencing of Kierkegaard in Habermas’ Critique of Genetic Enhancement,” in Medicine Health Care and Philosophy, vol. 12, 2009, p. 147.  Christiansen, “The Silencing of Kierkegaard in Habermas’ Critique of Genetic Enhancement,” p. 154.  David Gurnham, “Bioethics as Science Fiction: Making Sense of Habermas’s The Future of Human Nature.” in Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, vol. 21, 2012, pp. 235 − 246.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 48.

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…the technical hurdles that stand in the way of such a positive eugenics are at present so high as to put such designer babies in the realm of science fiction. But it seems warranted to suppose that this may not remain the case. The relevant question is whether, if and when such technical hurdles are overcome, the facts of the matter are still such that they can be satisfactorily debated under the present terms at all.⁶⁴

On this reading, it becomes a moot point whether the assertions made about the effects on moral agency and self-understanding of genetically modified people are empirically true or false. The important questions concern the impact they have on the moral imagination and public discourse about human genetic enhancement. Its merits would lie in stimulating the readers to think critically about the limitations of narrow bioethical approaches that fail to reflect on the wider and unintended implications of genetic technology for our democratic ethos, ethical self-understanding and moral equality.

VI And the Word Became God In the preceding discussion the emphasis has been on the natural aspect of our contingency, but Habermas’s reflections on human facticity lead him also into the structures of the logos. This aspect of Habermas’s argument resonates better than its natural counterpart with the Kierkegaardian claim that a finite spirit must “recognize its dependence on an Other as the ground of its own freedom.”⁶⁵ Habermas makes it clear that this power cannot be theologically understood and speaks instead of the “logos of language [that] embodies the power of the intersubjective, which precedes and grounds the subjectivity of speakers.”⁶⁶ From this perspective, the linguistically embodied individual is condemned to meaning in the sense of Maurice Merleau-Ponty,⁶⁷ rather than to freedom in the Sartrean sense. This also implies that the individual is at best no more than a co-author of his own life. It is crucial, nevertheless, that the other co-author be not another person who has the life project of the individual at her disposal. The linguistically structured lifeworld, as the medium of communicative practices, is a historical material that is beyond our control but which we can

 Pensky, The Ends of Solidarity, p. 232.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 9.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 11.  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. by Colin Smith, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1962, p. xix.

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make our own and responsibly take possession of.⁶⁸ As Merleau-Ponty writes, “[t]here is an autochtonous significance of the world which is constituted in the dealings which our incarnate existence has with it, and which provides the ground of every deliberate Sinngebung.”⁶⁹ The recognition of this dependence on an Other as the ground for beingable-to-be-oneself is a key factor in Habermas’s argument in The Future of Human Nature. It does not come as a surprise that he finds this ground in linguistic structures. Language has always been at the center of Habermas’s philosophy and has embodied an emancipatory, not to say a redeeming function. When he became professor at the University of Frankfurt in 1965 Habermas said in his inaugural address: “The human interest in autonomy and responsibility is not mere fancy, for it can be apprehended a priori. What raises us out of nature is the only thing whose nature we can know: language. Through its structure, autonomy and responsibility are posited for us. Our first sentence expresses unequivocally the intention of universal and unconstrained consensus.”⁷⁰ It can be argued that Habermas’s entire theoretical program is an attempt to flesh out this thought. He undertook the ambitious project to provide normative foundations to social criticism through a theory of communicative action and pragmatics of communication rooted in the use of language.⁷¹ Besides positively laying out the framework for a theory of argumentation, he has systematically analyzed the forces that distort communication and stand in the way of democratic politics based on discursive practices. A key theme in this theory is the moral task of protecting “the web of intersubjective relations of mutual recognition by which…individuals survive as members of a community.”⁷² Another running theme in Habermas’s philosophy is the distinction between communicative and instrumental action and the importance of recognizing and maintaining the difference between these two types of action. Of particular interest in this context is Habermas’s argument about how the communicatively structured lifeworld is being colonized by systems. The lifeworld is increasingly

 Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 13.  Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, p. 441.  Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. by Jeremy J. Shapiro, Boston: Beacon Press 1971, p. 314.  Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, trans. by Thomas McCarthy, Boston: Beacon Press 1984. See, e. g., Kenneth Baynes, The Normative Grounds of Social Criticism. Kant, Rawls and Habermas, Albany: SUNY Press 1992, Chapter 3.  Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen, Cambridge: Polity Press 1992, p. 200.

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made subject to strategic technological thinking and economic power.⁷³ This process is characterized by “the penetration of forms of economic and administrative rationality into areas of action that resist being converted over to the media of money and power because they are specialized in cultural transmission, social integration, and child-rearing, and remain dependent on mutual understanding as a mechanism for coordinating action.”⁷⁴ This colonization of the lifeworld by systems is made manifest for example in the commercialization of practices that have been regulated in intersubjective, communicative relations. This development has engendered various social pathologies which have been described for example in terms of increased anomie, loss of motivation, erosion of social bonds and unwillingness to take responsibility.⁷⁵ If we analyze the argument about the dangers of new reproductive technologies in terms of the colonization of the lifeworld by systems of productions and market forces, then we focus on the shared conditions for the self-understanding of the species as free and responsible beings rather than on the different sociological and psychological impact genetic manufacturing may have upon individuals. Although Habermas has mainly analyzed “the standards governing the normative deliberations that enter into democratic will formation”⁷⁶ from the formal standpoint of the pragmatics of communication, he has always emphasized that the competencies of the actors must be complemented by the structures of the lifeworld: “any universalistic morality is dependent upon a form of life that meets it halfway. There has to be a congruence between morality and the practices of socialization and education.”⁷⁷ The diagnosis of the pathologies of the lifeworld thus have a reference to the idea of being the enabling background for the emancipatory goal of democratic interaction. Habermas’s argument against liberal eugenics is that the normative structures of this background are threatened at its core by genetic practices which implicitly at least aim at undermining the fundamental distinction between optimizing production and communicative praxis. Whereas in the former, one employs some efficient means to have desired effects upon an object, in the latter, interaction is symbolically mediated

 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, trans. by Thomas McCarthy, Boston: Beacon Press 1987.  Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, p. 330.  James Gordon Finlay, Habermas. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005, p. 57.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 12.  Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 207.

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to facilitate communication between subjects that can come to mutual understanding. Habermas argues that the fundamental distinction between the made and the grown is constitutive of the self-understanding of the species. The new kind of self-transformation and instrumentalization opened up by genetic enhancement confronts the human species with two main options: “to proceed autonomously according to the standards governing the normative deliberations that enter into democratic will formation, or to proceed arbitrarily according to the subjective preferences whose satisfaction depends on the market.”⁷⁸ His criticism of liberal eugenics implies that bioethical thought which conceptualizes the risk of genetic intervention purely in terms of harms and their prevention for individuals is too narrow to grasp the severity of the problem.⁷⁹ This is, at bottom, instrumental thinking, which explains partly why it is so uncritical of technological developments in genetics and their contribution to human happiness. By seeing freedom in terms of individual preference satisfaction, free from state intervention, they lose sight of the consequences these practices may have on human interaction in the lifeworld. One can also take another and more Kierkegaardian perspective towards the point that Habermas is advancing about narrow bioethical approaches. This criticism resonates with “the vulgar” or “the common view” described in The Sickness unto Death which “completely overlooks the fact that one form of despair is precisely this of not being in despair, that is, not being aware of it.”⁸⁰ This can be related to Habermas’s concern about the effects that genetic enhancement practices may have upon the self-understanding of the species. In The Sickness unto Death Kierkegaard /Anti-Climacus writes: “The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing; every loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed.”⁸¹ Such a loss of “one’s soul” cannot be readily supported by empirical evidence (as was called for by Christiansen discussed above). Its analysis requires a critical standpoint from which a revealing diagnosis of the sickness of the spirit, the pathology of the self, can be carried out. “Because the physician has a definite and articulate conception of what it is to be healthy, and tests a person’s condition against this.”⁸²

 Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 12.  Cf. Matti Häyry, Rationality and the Genetic Challenge. Making People Better?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010, p. 179.  SKS 11, 140 / SUD, 53.  SKS 11, 148 / SUD, 62−63.  SKS 11, 139 / SUD, 53.

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This resonates with the standpoint of a critical theory of society. In the words of Anti-Climacus, the gradual erosion of the communicative lifeworld through eugenic self-instrumentalization of the human species “can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing,” even though it is the grave danger of losing ourselves as a species capable of assuming responsibility for itself. The pathologies of the lifeworld can easily go unnoticed and will not be properly evaluated by empirical investigation which is not rooted in critical theory. This enables the theorist to “diagnose the sickness” with “knowledge and discernment”⁸³ much in the way as the scrutinizer of the spirit does in The Sickness unto Death. Genetic decisions which aim at optimizing the traits of the child change “the very rules of the game,”⁸⁴ Habermas argues, by changing the moral status of future persons. But in line with what was said in the beginning, the knowledge in this context is not about the “right way to live,” but about the general prerequisites for being able-to-be-oneself or to project one’s life in a responsible way. This could be called a methodological or stylistic likeness between Habermas and Kierkegaard, but the question remains whether there are more substantial similarities between Kierkegaard’s analysis of the existential conditions for becoming oneself and Habermas’s analysis of the communicative conditions for the species being capable of assuming responsibility for itself. Karin Christiansen points out that “Habermas is exchanging God for the subject-transcending power of language.”⁸⁵ One cannot help thinking of the logos of language as stated in the Gospel of John: “And the Word was God.” It is a most complex comparison for several reasons. One reason is that it revolves around the individual on the one hand and the species being on the other hand. But this must not be overstated. The individuality under examination in Kierkegaard’s works is in the last analysis a general existential analysis,⁸⁶ as it concerns or reveals the intersubjective conditions for being-able-to-be-oneself. Habermas’s analysis of the “ethical self-understanding of the species,” on the other hand, deals with the conditions necessary for the ascription of moral responsibility to each and every individual. Regardless of this difference, the fundamental concern for both thinkers are the conditions for human agency which, we should recall, are at stake in Habermas’s critique of liberal eugenics.

 SKS 11, 139 / SUD, 53.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 92.  Christiansen, “The Silencing of Kierkegaard in Habermas’ Critique of Genetic Enhancement,” p. 153.  Cf. the chapter entitled, “The Generality of this Sickness (Despair)” (SKS 11, 138 / SUD, 52).

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VII Countermoves Against Existential Oblivion A more complex and difficult comparison of Habermas and Kierkegaard has to do with “the Other as the ground of its own freedom.” Habermas states that this power “need not be understood in a religious sense”⁸⁷ and emphasizes the radical dependence of the individual upon structures beyond her control but to which she at the same time owes everything as a being nourished by meaning and sustained by “the web of intersubjective relations of mutual recognition.” This emphasis is on the common rather than the individual, on what can be communicated rather than not is certainly more in the spirit of Hegel than of Kierkegaard. The dialectical relation described is not one between the finite individual and the infinite power, but between the individual subject capable of speech and the logos of language. To paraphrase Merleau-Ponty who stated that “the transcendental descends into history,”⁸⁸ we can say that by discussing the enabling power in light of the intersubjective structures of language the transcendent God in Habermas’s post-metaphysical translation has descended into history. Habermas writes: “It remains ‘our’ language. The unconditionedness of truth and freedom is a necessary presupposition of our practices, but beyond the constituents of ‘our’ form of life they lack any ontological guarantee. Similarly, the ‘right’ ethical self-understanding is neither revealed nor ‘given’ in some other way. It can only be won in a common endeavor.”⁸⁹ This passage shows clearly that Habermas’s concern is mainly for the general conditions that enable speaking subjects to assume responsibility and engage in democratic practices. And this provides support for seeing the main relevance of his argument for a further analysis of the pathologies of the lifeworld rather than the pathology of the self that engaged Kierkegaard in many of his writings. However, Kierkegaard also discerned a crisis in culture and society which, according to Mark Dooley, threatened “the very soul of the age: It was a crisis that struck at the heart of the European Lebenswelt, destroying, in so doing, the ethical and religious vision of the human subject. And what Kierkegaard offered in response was a way of reviving and revitalizing that damaged human world.”⁹⁰ It requires a special investigation to compare and contrast these anal-

 Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 9.  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs, trans. by Richard C. McCleary, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, p. 107.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 11.  Mark Dooley, “Kierkegaard: Reenchanting the Lebenswelt,” in Kierkegaard as Phenomenologist: An Experiment, ed. by Jeffrey Hanson, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 2010, p. 170.

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yses of the pathologies of the Lebenswelt from the radically different viewpoints of Kierkegaard and Habermas. No doubt, such an investigation would probably show that while these two thinkers have quite incompatible views on the democratic ethos, their joint concern is the danger of losing ourselves which is the great lure of our contemporary predicament. In the present context, this common concern is more important than religious or non-religious interpretations of the other as a ground for human freedom and responsibility. Most importantly for the project of resisting liberal eugenics and naïve objectivism of uncritical bioethics, insights from Habermas and Kierkegaard could complement each other in a valuable way. When Habermas argues that the liberal program of positive eugenics threatens to undermine our species being, he is criticising narrow and naïve bioethical approaches, as those advanced in liberal eugenics, for forgetting to take crucial existential questions into account. In analyzing possible harms and risks of eugenic programs, human beings are conflated into one general category, ignoring completely how different individuals might be affected. By discussing these issues in objective terms, there is no concern for how a person’s relation to her body, for example, might be affected.⁹¹ Drawing on Helmut Plessner’s analysis, Habermas emphasizes how “the actual experience of living one’s own life collides with the reifying perspective of a producer or bricoleur.”⁹² John Harris, a major spokesman of liberal eugenics, ridicules Habermas‘s concern with the lived experience of the body and simply states: “The evidence is that human beings are fairly robust and well able to adapt to new conceptions of themselves and their place in the universe.”⁹³ Habermas was right in responding to the naïve objectivism of liberal eugenics by drawing on phenomenological and existential analysis, emphasizing the relevance of the first person perspective which is often forgotten in bioethical discourse. As Arne Grøn writes: “Existential thinking is a countermove against this kind of oblivion of human existence.”⁹⁴ And Habermas’s worry that the ethical self-understanding of the species may be under threat squares very well with Kierkegaard’s constant concern that humans are forgetting what individual existence implies: “If we exist in such a way that we forget what this means, we do

 I discuss this in Vilhjálmur Árnason, “Towards Critical Bioethics,” Cambridge Quarterly of Health Care Ethics, vol. 24, no. 2, 2015, pp. 154– 164.  Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, p. 51.  John Harris, “No Sex Selection Please, We’re British,” Journal of Medical Ethics, vol. 31, no. 5, p. 286.  Arne Grøn, “Phenomenology of Despair ‒ Phenomenology of Spirit,” in Kierkegaard im Kontext der deutschen Idealismus, ed. by Axel Hutter and Anders Moe Rasmussen, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2014, p. 243.

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not simply come to live a different form of life. We come to live a life we do not understand.”⁹⁵ Kierkegaard’s critique of this existential oblivion is primarily directed at speculative thinking or rather at the way in which such thinking may lead individuals into self-forgetfulness.⁹⁶ Like speculative thinking objectivistic science tends to abstract from the individual in search for general knowledge and technological mastery. As I said above, Habermas has persistently criticized the dominance of instrumental rationality in the prevailing social and political discourse, where he draws largely upon Hegel’s distinction between labor and interaction.⁹⁷ It was not until he entered the eugenic debate, however, that he explicitly complemented this criticism of objectivistic science with phenomenological and existential arguments. This should not come as a surprise because the individual and the social perspectives have always been dialectically related in Habermas’s thought. In his communicative ethics he has demonstrated how the human person is psychologically vulnerable as a creature who relies heavily on social and cultural structures. Since individuation is inevitably socialization the existential and species-ethical analyses are complementary allies in resisting the theoretical as well as the cultural forces that threaten to undermine human agency. In aligning himself with Kierkegaard, Habermas has added a fruitful dimension to his thought that will not only enable us to reflect deeper on the implications of genetic enhancement but more generally on threats to the ethical self-understanding of the human species.

VIII Concluding Words I have argued that Habermas’s use of existential analysis plays an important role in his argument against liberal eugenics. He fleshes out the ethical self-understanding of the species in terms of the human capacity for freedom and responsibility. I have also tried to show that an interpretation of Habermas’s argument should not be limited to the existential dimension of individual action and decisions. It must be related to his deeper analysis of the basic conditions for freedom, speech and action in the linguistic structures of the lifeworld. The genetic programming that threatens to undermine our communicative practices by self Grøn, “Phenomenology of Despair ‒ Phenomenology of Spirit,” p. 242.  Jon Stewart, Kierkegaard‘s Relation to Hegel Reconsidered, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003, pp. 483‒488.  Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, trans. by John Viertel, Boston: Beacon Press 1973, pp. 142‒169.

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instrumentalization of the species facilitates pathologies of the lifeworld. I compared this with the diagnosis of despair in The Sickness unto Death and argued that these analyses could complement each other in a valuable way. Although they come from very different perspectives, these insights can be jointly used in resisting the oblivion of human existence that characterizes uncritical objectivistic thinking of the kind that permeates liberal eugenics. I thank my colleague, Björn Þorsteinsson, for comments on an earlier draft of this essay. I also thank anonymous reviewers for useful criticism that helped me develop my argument, and René Rosfort at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre for valuable assistance.

Jonathan Wood

What Was I Thinking? Korsgaard, Crowell, and Kierkegaard on the Phenomenology of Ethically Informed, Unreflective Action Abstract: Building on recent work by Steven Crowell, I argue that the phenomenon of normatively informed, unreflective action is indeed a genuine problem for Christine Korsgaard’s account of self-constitution. However, I also suggest that this phenomenon cannot in general be sufficiently captured by the idea, to which Crowell adverts, of “mindless coping.” Against this background, I bring out some of the strengths of Kierkegaard’s distinctive conception of “inwardness,” “earnestness” and “romantic love within marriage” as forms of agency that are both unreflective and yet ethically informed, neither thematically minded nor wholly mindless.

One important contribution that Heideggerian existential phenomenology has made to contemporary analytic philosophy of action is in focusing our attention to the deep significance of our everyday, unreflective ways of engaging with the world. In a paper entitled “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein? Heidegger and Korsgaard on the Sources of Normativity,”¹ Steven Crowell builds on this Heideggerian legacy by making the case for a kind of agency that is not reflective but nonetheless allows for a normative guidance based on one’s practical identities. Although Crowell and Korsgaard’s respective theories of agency have much in common, he ultimately finds that Korsgaard’s account cannot allow for the significance of unreflective action. In many ways, we can understand Crowell’s critique of Korsgaard’s neo-Kantianism as mirroring a similar critique that Kierkegaard mounted towards the postKantian idealism of his own day. Much of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre, including both the texts written by pseudonymous authors and the texts he wrote under his own name, constitutes an analysis of what David Gouwen’s aptly describes as “diseases of reflection.”² However, although Kierkegaard shares Crowell’s concerns about over-intellectualizing agency, the alternative, Drefusian account of unreflective action that Crowell offers is not one that Kierkegaard would accept.  Steven Crowell, “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein? Heidegger and Korsgaard on the Sources of Normativity,” European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 15, no. 3, 2007, pp. 315 – 333.  David Gouwens, Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, p. 27. DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-012

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Part of the purpose of this essay is to draw Kierkegaard into this debate. By bringing Kierkegaard into conversation with Korsgaard and Crowell I hope to highlight how Kierkegaard’s attention to the nuances in the phenomenology of ethical life can help contribute to the debate within analytic philosophy about self-constitution. Moreover, I also hope to show how bringing Kierkegaard into such a contemporary debate can sharpen our understanding of the subtle distinctions within Kierkegaard’s texts generally, but in particular in regards to unreflective agency in The Concept of Anxiety and Either/Or. The ultimate goal of this essay is to show how Kierkegaard’s existential approach can be put to use in and revitalized through a dialogue with analytic philosophy of action. Inasmuch as a philosophy of existence must be able to make sense out of our everyday, unreflective actions, it is my contention that Kierkegaard’s existential approach can both renew and be renewed by such a dialogue. The structure of the essay is as follows. In the first section (I), I will assess two possible ways in which Korsgaard may try to explain unreflective action and then show why each of these options fail to do justice to the normative significance of certain kinds of unreflective actions. In the second section (II), I examine Crowell’s alternative conception of unreflective action as mindless coping. I argue that although Crowell’s conception of mindless coping does in fact capture the phenomenology of unreflective action that is informed by technical norms (e. g. speed chess, basketball, etc.), his account does not go far enough to explain how an agent can become unreflectively aware of the solicitations of ethical norms. In section three (III), I turn to Kierkegaard and his pseudonymous authors. Haufniensis, for instance, also describes the phenomenology of mindless coping (what he will term “habit”) as a fundamentally basic way in which we are solicited by our environment. However, Haufniensis does not see all unreflective action as conforming to the phenomena of mindless coping. Haufniensis also has a model of a kind of “second nature”—or, in his own terms, “acquired originality”—that is not mindless: in his descriptions of earnestness and inwardness he provides a rich phenomenological account of “minded” unreflective action. After presenting a Kierkegaardian account of earnestness and inwardness as unreflective action, in the fourth section (IV) I will turn to assess a Korsgaard-inspired objection to the effect that certain kinds of practical identities, rather than being constituted pre-reflectively, seem to require a robust form of reflective endorsement in order to be constituted as such. I will revisit Crowell’s primary example he uses to exemplify the notion of mindless coping—being drawn by affection to do a kind act for my wife—to help articulate this objection. Finally, I shall return to Kierkegaard for the resources to counter the Korsgaardian objection. In order to do this I look to another of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authors, Judge Wilhelm, who develops a phenomenology of romantic love and de-

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fends an account of marriage that seeks to preserve the immediacy of romantic love and it’s mutual responsiveness. I will show how Wilhelm’s account of marriage allows us to see the difference a practical commitment makes to something immediate and in a way that does not rely on the model of reflective distance in order to account for the endorsement of this commitment.

I Crowell’s Critique: The Distortion of the Phenomenology of Action In “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein? Heidegger and Korsgaard on the Sources of Normativity,” Steven Crowell offers a corrective to what he sees as deficiencies in Christine Korsgaard’s account of agency. Of particular interest is Crowell’s argument to the effect that Korsgaard’s account distorts the phenomenology of agency by over-intellectualizing action. Given Korsgaard’s repeated and explicit reference to an action as an act-for-the-sake-of-an-end that is reflectively endorsed, it may indeed seem as if Korsgaard is unable to account for the phenomenology of unreflective action, simpliciter. However, Crowell observes that Korsgaard’s account of the agent as animal-plus-reflection allows for two possibilities in characterizing normatively-informed, unreflective action: either as the by-product of instinct or as implicitly involving deliberation. He writes: Suppose I am simply drawn to do a kind act for my wife—“drawn by affection” as we would say. Are we to imagine that it is not I, but my instinctual animal identity, that acts in this case? We cannot appeal to just any aspect of my psychology, since Korsgaard relegates much of that to what merely happens “to” or “in” me—that is, to what is not self-determining in the sense necessary for action. But the idea that a non-deliberated action cannot be mine unless it stems from the workings of instinct is phenomenologically impossible to maintain.³

Crowell rightly sees that certain unreflective actions cannot simply be a product of my instinctual animal identity because the “kind act for my wife” is a normatively informed response to a situation that is acquired rather than given. Being drawn by affection in this case is not something merely instinctual, the affection is what it is only because it is “intentionally directed toward my wife, and she, in turn, is present to me as she is in such an action because I am who I am, because of my practical identity as her husband.”⁴  Crowell, “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein?,” p. 328.  Ibid., p. 329.

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The other option that Crowell offers to Korsgaard is prima facie more plausible: viz. to maintain that unreflective action functions by recognizing a principle that was the prior object of a deliberative endorsement. Indeed, this appears to be the route that Korsgaard expressly favors. Citing Korsgaard’s John Locke lectures,⁵ Crowell states: …the idea of reflective endorsement, contrary to appearances, need not involve an explicit act of reflection: “[a]cting on rational principle need not involve any step-by-step process of reasoning, for when a principle is deeply internalized we may simply recognize the case as falling under the principle.” In such cases we can say that the action is not preceded by a decision but “embodies” one.⁶

Korsgaard wants to maintain that some rational principles can be internalized to the point that in a given situation one can immediately recognize what-shouldbe-done-for-the-sake-of-some-end without any explicit act of reflection. The idea here is that a prior endorsement of a rational principle can establish one’s practical identity in such a deep way that certain possibilities just appear in the light of the principle—and others respectively remain undisclosed—as we engage with our environment unreflectively. However, Crowell argues that these notions of internalization and immediate recognition cannot cohere with Korsgaard’s wider account of agency. He writes: While this conception saves the phenomena, however, Korsgaard’s ontology cannot support it. If the person is understood as animal- plus-reflection, and reflection is understood as a second-order intention, the notion of “internalization”—sedimented beliefs and desires that you once “actively arrived at” and so go to make up “you”—remains a metaphor whose efficacy depends entirely on Korsgaard’s equivocal concept of self-consciousness. Once they are no longer objects of specific choice, but rather sedimented products of such choices, beliefs and desires I have “actively arrived at” seem little different in their ontological (and hence motivational) status than any other element of my psychology. If acting on them in non-deliberative mindless coping is supposed to instantiate the concept of reflective endorsement, this can only be because Korsgaard has smuggled the idea of reflection as a deliberative act into the concept of self-consciousness. Nothing in the phenomenology

 Christine M. Korsgaard, Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009. The book is based on Korsgaard’s John Locke Lectures. Lecture one: “The Metaphysical Foundations of Normativity” (http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~/korsgaar/ #Publications, 1– 28) (6/15/2015); Lecture two: “Autonomy, Efficacy and Agency,” (http:// www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~/korsgaar/#Publications, 1– 27); Lecture three: “Expulsion from the Garden: the Transition to Humanity,” (http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~/korsgaar/#Publications, 1– 28) (6/15/2007).  Crowell, “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein?,” p. 328.

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of action, however, supports the claim that the way mindless coping is solicited by the world is a matter of making decisions.⁷

Crowell’s criticism here is twofold. First, he argues that Korsgaard’s attempt to account for unreflective action by means of an internalization of a rational principle hinges entirely upon her equivocation of the notion of self-consciousness. On the one hand, Korsgaard describes the kind of general self-consciousness operative in unreflective action in terms of immediate self-awareness. On the other hand, Korsgaard argues that the structure of self-consciousness is essentially reflective. Crowell refers to statements Korsgaard makes in order to substantiate this latter claim: “the human mind is self-conscious in the sense that it is essentially reflective,” where reflection is our ability to “turn our attention onto our perceptions and desires themselves,”⁸ constituting “awareness of our mental states as such,” that is, as items in “mental space.”⁹ Crowell argues that the attempt to explain the general capacity for immediate self-awareness in terms of a specific mental act leads to a vicious infinite regress.¹⁰ That is, if self-awareness is only possible by reifying or thematizing our act of perception into an object of reflection, then that act of perception must be recognized as identical to the act of reflection. After all, as Dan Zahavi writes, “in order to have self-awareness, it is not enough that I am de facto thinking of myself; I also need to know or realize that it is myself I am thinking of. In order to be a case of self-awareness, it is not sufficient that A is conscious of B; in addition, A must be conscious of B as being identical to A.”¹¹ But the act of reflection is not able to recognize the act of perception as being identical with itself without either assuming that reflection already has a prior “acquaintance with itself,” a self-awareness prior to reflection (in which case the structure of self-consciousness cannot be essentially reflective),¹² or this act of reflection must itself await a further act of reflection in order to become self-aware, and then we are left with an infinite regress. Second, Crowell argues that the very attempt to save the phenomena of unreflective action by appealing to the notion of the internalization of rational principles distorts the phenomenology. When I engage my environment unreflective-

 Ibid., pp. 328 – 329.  Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, pp. 92– 93.  Korsgaard, Self-Constitution, p. 115.  Crowell, “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein?,” p. 320.  Dan Zahavi, Self-Awareness and Alterity, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1999, pp. 18 – 19.  Ibid., p. 19.

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ly, my actions have an immediate intrinsic meaning to me prior to and apart from any reflective deliberation of them. For example, take the case of being drawn to affection to do a kind act for a friend. If I am drawn by affection to do a kind act for a friend this plausibly need not be because I have previously decided that these kinds of acts are appropriate to friendships of our sort; our friendship very well may not even have been the product of a reflectively endorsed decision. Our proximity to other people often can provide the environment in which friendships arise. One only needs to think of our relationships that have grown organically from within shared workspaces, as fellow students, as neighbours, etc., in order to see that some friendships plausibly begin apart from any reflective endorsement. Oftentimes one “finds” oneself already in friendships and “finds” oneself being solicited to act in particular ways because of these relationships, without ever choosing to be friends or endorsing principles that require acting in these particular ways. But this nonetheless does not mean that these actions do not have meaning and normative significance for who we are – on the contrary, experience tells us that they certainly do. According to the line of objection we are considering, however, Korsgaard’s account of agency cannot account for these phenomenological relations without distorting the phenomena, that is, without redescribing the phenomena in such a way as to make this either an activity that fails to be expressive of who I am or an implicitely reflective activity. As Crowell writes, “[to] claim that because I have a self-conscious nature it is legitimate to describe mindless coping as involving implicit decisions about what incentives to follow is…to abandon phenomenology for a rationalistic reconstruction.”¹³

II Crowell on Unreflective Action On Crowell’s account in “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein?” unreflective action is “mindless.” Crowell adopts this particular conception of unreflective action from Hubert Dreyfus and he quotes him: “At the foundation of Heidegger’s new approach is a phenomenology of ‘mindless’ everyday coping skills as the basis of all intelligibility.”¹⁴ Dreyfus, for one, has taken the notion of mindless coping to refer to a range of actions that are “non-conceptual, non-propositional, non-rational, non-linguistic and non-mental.”¹⁵ Crowell claims that this kind of  Crowell, “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein?,” p. 329.  Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, Cambridge: MIT Press 1991, p. 3.  Hubert Dreyfus, “The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” in Inquiry, 2007, vol. 50, no. 4 pp. 352– 365.

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coping is the primary way in which “things present themselves to me as governed by ‘in-order-to’ relations.’”¹⁶ In fact, the entire environment in which our practical life takes place is nothing other than a totality or network of these “in-order-to” relations. The way that we access these “in-order-to” relations involves a kind of “sight” (what Heidegger calls Umsicht or circumspection,¹⁷) Crowell claims, though this sight does not involve anything like a “consciously formulated intention,” rather sight is closer to what Korsgaard calls “the animal’s representation of its environment, even though Heidegger would not describe it as a ‘representation.’”¹⁸ However, in order for these in-order-to relations to show up as significant to us we need to have these relations “anchored in something that establishes what is being done for what,” what Heidegger calls the “for-thesake-of-which” (worumwillen).¹⁹ For instance, when I am building a wall, I am trying to be a carpenter (being a carpenter is something that is of practical concern to me), and as I act for-the-sake-of this possibility things present themselves to me in my environment according to their in-order-to relations. Crowell tells us that the mindless agent, “the kind of subject who can be an agent while being absorbed in the world,” does not involve “overcoming the passivity in its nature”²⁰ and the agency does not involve “making decisions.”²¹ Certainly, these claims seem especially persuasive when we look at cases of technical expertise. For example, Hubert Dreyfus writes: The expert chess player, classed as a international master or grandmaster…can play at the rate of 5 – 10 seconds a move and even faster in without any serious degradation in performance…We recently performed an experiment in which an international master, Julian Kaplan, was required to add numbers presented to him in a series of beeps about one per second, while at the same time playing five-second-a-move chess against a slightly weaker, but master level player. Even with his analytical mind completely occupied by adding numbers, Kaplan more than held his own in a series of games.²²

 Crowell, “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein?,” p. 319.  Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, New York: Harper & Row 1962, p. 98.  Korsgaard, Self-Constitution, p. 97.  Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 98.  Ibid., p. 329.  Crowell, “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein?,” p. 328.  Hubert Dreyfus, “Towards a Phenomenology of Ethical Expertise,” in Human Studies, vol. 14, no. 4, 1991, p. 235.

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In the case of speed chess, the grandmaster does not experience the game in terms of a series of reflectively endorsed decisions, but rather as a kind of intuitive action. Pre-reflectively, the grandmaster “feels” what piece to put where. Furthermore, Crowell implies that the concept of mindless coping can also be applied to cases where we are solicited, unreflectively, by ethical affordances. He writes: When I am drawn by affection to do a kind act for my wife, I am not driven by some blind impulse that operates in accord with norms but not in light of them…The affection is what it is only because it is intentionally directed toward my wife, and she, in turn, is present to me as she is in such action because I am who I am, because of my practical identity as her husband.²³

To be sure, much of what we do that we would consider ethical does appear to be mindless in Crowell’s sense of the word. I hold the door open for a stranger, I help a neighbor carry his bags up the steps, and I am drawn by affection to do kind acts for my wife, all without reflection. However, mindlessness can also be seen to be quite dangerous for our ethical life. For instance, although I may be able to unconsciously respond to my wife in a loving way, relationships that are characterized by mindless coping have rather negative connotations in our common parlance—we say that such relationships are just “going through the motions” or that they “have lost their spark.” And of course, this isn’t just a third-personal description, there is a first-person character to this kind of relationship. This does not mean that such relationships have some deep resentment below the surface nor does it mean that the couple no longer genuinely loves one another. Rather, I think the reasons we describe these relationships this way is because they have become habitual and their routines operate according to a background knowledge of the other that is more or less already established. And this leads to the experience, for both parties involved, that one’s spouse is no longer truly responsive to who one is in this moment. And I think this kind of habit in the way we relate to others is not limited to romantic relationships. Habit can also characterize the way that we relate to our friends, neighbors, and to strangers. Although these might be seen as rather banal observations, I think it helps point to an important difference between how we can become unreflectively aware of technical affordances and how we can become unreflectively aware of ethical affordances. Part of the argument in this essay is that we need a particular account of minded unreflective action in order to ac-

 Crowell, “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein?,” p. 329.

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count for the medio-passive activity of making oneself sensitive to the singularity of the other in the originality of the situation. By this I do not mean to suggest that Crowell’s phenomenology of mindless coping is inaccurate, or at all deficient, for many cases. Nor is it that Crowell lacks the resources to formulate an account for how we become (or fail to become) sensitive to the ethical affordances in our environment. Crowell’s conceptions of care and inauthenticity/authenticity seem to provide a possible structure for explaining just this kind of phenomenon. For instance, in his most recent book, Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger, he writes: Because being a father is my practical identity, I have a reason to attend my son’s violin recital rather than join the usual Wednesday night poker game with my friends. But don’t I already have such a reason just because I am a father, even if I don’t value myself under that description? To the extent that fatherhood is an institutionally defined condition rather than an existential project, I do ‘have’ such a reason; but only if I care about fatherhood will that reason have normative force for me. And if I act on it without caring (say, because it is my duty), I shall not fulfill the normative demands of being a father.²⁴

Although Crowell is not necessarily referring to unreflective acts here, it seems clear that his conception of care can account for the kind of capacity to unreflectively make oneself sensitive to ethical affordances, the kind of capacity that allows ethical norms to get their grip on me. Moreover, in his recent book Crowell also employs the notion of minded unreflective action. Mentioning the debate between Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell, Crowell highlights the way in which the concept of mindless coping has been contested in regards to its application to unreflective action. However, he writes: “It matters little whether we indicate the meaningfulness of action with the term ‘minded’ (as we shall do here) or with some other term. It is important only that we understand rightly the relation between the meaningfulness of acting and the ‘totality of significance’ that is world.”²⁵ Nevertheless, I think that there is more at stake here than simple semantics. The distinctiveness of an agent’s unreflective, ethical comportment to it’s environment (in contrast to technical comportment) requires a willed sensitivity to the irreducible singularity of the other, a sensitivity that cannot be gained without “overcoming the passivity in its nature.” The sensitivity to the singularity of the other is dulled while one is merely “absorbed in the world.” An unreflective sensitivity to ethical norms, in

 Steven Crowell, Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013, p. 291, my emphasis.  Ibid., p. 286.

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this sense, requires a volitional overcoming of one’s passivity through the mediopassive activity of mindedness. It is here that Kierkegaard’s analysis of unreflective action can come into relief. Kierkegaard’s conception of unreflective action provides us with an account of how an individual is able to actively awaken a sensitivity to the ethical significance of solicitations in her environment. In what follows, I shall defend this claim, beginning with some later sections of The Concept of Anxiety. Although he does have a notion of “mindless coping”—what he will term “habit”—Haufniensis sees this an ethically deficient form of self-constituting action. Haufniensis has another notion of unreflective action that is neither mindlessly habitual nor does it resort to implicit deliberation. This account of unreflective action comes in Haufniensis’ account of earnestness and inwardness.

III Haufniensis on Earnestness and Inwardness in Unreflective Action In The Concept of Anxiety, Haufniensis relies on an analysis of disposition in Karl Rosenkranz’s Psychology or the Science of Subjective Spirit as a kind of springboard for his description of earnestness.²⁶ Rosenkranz defines disposition as the “unity of feeling and self-consciousness” whereby the “content of the selfconsciousness is felt by the subject as his own.”²⁷ Dispositions are affective states and they allow for a kind of natural, immediate way in which we relate ourselves to our environment. However, for the adult at least, dispositions are not merely a part of our instinctual animal nature. Developed human beings are able to be self-conscious with respect to their dispositions—that is, they are able to have a reflexive awareness of the disposition as a disposition. As Rosenkranze states: “If the clarity of cognition is lacking, knowledge of the feeling, there exists only the urge of the spirit of nature, the turgidity of immediacy.”²⁸ Haufniensis develops the foregoing analysis in order to use it to illuminate the phenomenon of earnestness. Whereas certain kinds of dispositions may be natural

 For the background on Kierkegaard’s relationship to Rosenkranz, see Heiko Schulz, “Rosenkranz: Traces of Hegelian Psychology and Theology in Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard and his German Contemporaries, Tome II, Theology, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2007 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 7), pp. 161– 196.  SKS 4, 448 / CA, 148.  Ibid.

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and arise involuntarily, for example, a tendency to be cheerful or a propensity to be aggressive, Haufniensis claims that: “no one is born with earnestness.” Earnestness is a kind of disposition that is not given but must be “acquired.” Haufniensis writes, “disposition is a determinant of immediacy, while earnestness, on the other hand, is the acquired originality of disposition…”²⁹ Like disposition, earnestness is an affective state that involves a kind of comportment towards ones environment, however, unlike disposition, earnestness is brought about through a kind of volitional activity of the agent. The verb “acquire” (from the Danish erhverve) here does not denote a pure passivity, as in the sentence “he acquired an inheritance,” but rather is employed to denote the middle-voice (semantically not syntactically), as in “he acquired a proficiency in math.” It involves both an activity and a passivity. In other words, one does not find oneself with earnestness, in the way one may find oneself to have woken up with a cheerful disposition, one strives to make oneself earnest. What is acquired here is an “originality,” that is, an attunement to the situation that is sensitive to the distinctiveness of the particular normative affordances presenting me. When one acquires the originality of earnestness, one’s tasks and one’s relationship to their environment is made new again. “The earnest person is earnest precisely through the originality with which he returns in repetition.”³⁰ Again, this awareness is not something that certain situations simply draw out of one; rather this originality must be acquired and preserved in and through an active striving where “its originality [is] preserved in the responsibility of freedom.”³¹ Haufniensis provides us with the example of the clergyman to flesh out this obscure notion of the acquired originality of disposition. Haufniensis tells us that this clergyman has two tasks each Sunday: the task of reciting the common prayer and baptizing children. Of course, some days he may be naturally more enthusiastic and other days less so. At times he will move the congregation to a certain extent and at other times he may put them to sleep. Faced with such monotonous tasks each Sunday it is easy to see how an individual may lose enthusiasm. Haufniensis claims that: “Earnestness is alone capable of returning every Sunday with the same originality to the same thing.”³² What Haufniensis means is that we misunderstand earnestness if we conceive of it as equivalent with something like an enthusiastic disposition that is elicited by one’s environment and one’s tasks. Earnestness is not elicited. Rather, it involves actively striving to be alive to the singularity of the other in the situation, alive to the task I    

Ibid. SKS 4, 448 / CA, 149. Ibid. Ibid.

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am engaging in, and a striving to be sensitive to the ethical solicitations of one’s environment. In the case of the clergyman, earnestness here means allowing oneself to return to the task of baptizing children, a task one has performed perhaps hundreds of times, but with an openness to see the uniqueness in each child’s face and an openness to feel the significance of the symbolism in the act as if for the first time. Earnestness means striving to recite the words of the common prayer as a pious expression of the longing in one’s soul, being receptive to the nuances of the meaning of every word as if it were the first time reading the prayer. It is for this reason that Haufniensis contrasts earnestness with habit. Haufniensis claims that all unreflective action that is not preserved in an acquired originality becomes a habit. “When the originality in earnestness is acquired and preserved, then there is succession and repetition, but as soon as originality is lacking in repetition, there is habit.”³³ A repetition involves performing some action that one has done before or engaging in a situation with which one is well familiar. As such, however, a repetition of acts is not equivalent with a habit. A habit involves a repetition that is “mindless.” That is, habit involves a form of agency where there is no active striving to remain open to the situation as if it were for the first time but instead the action derives its primary normative orientation from one’s past experience. This is why when “originality” is missing repetition becomes merely habitual. Although there may be a great competence that can be exhibited in habit—as in, for instance, Dreyfus’ examples of speed chess —there is also a great ethical danger. As Kierkegaard writes in Works of Love: “Habit is not like other enemies that one sees and against one aggressively defends oneself; the struggle is actually with oneself in getting to see it.”³⁴ So far, I have shown why Haufniensis’ account of earnestness is not mindless do to an activity that allows the individual to be continually alive to the situation. However, it may not yet seem clear at this point that this minded activity of earnestness is actually unreflective. After all, one might presume that combating habit seems to require some sort of reflective distance in order to first recognize the habit as being what it is. In order to dispel this concern, I want to turn now to examine a constituent feature of earnestness, what Haufniensis calls inwardness.

 SKS 4, 448 / CA, 149.  SKS 9, 43 / WL, 37.

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IV Inwardness and Action The relationship between inwardness and earnestness is obscure and Haufniensis never entirely explains this relationship. More times than not, Haufniensis seems to equate inwardness and earnestness. For instance, he writes: “It is no doubt difficult to give a definition of inwardness. At this point, I shall say that it is earnestness.”³⁵ Nevertheless, there seems to be at least one obvious difference between inwardness and earnestness. Inwardness describes the formal characteristics of a kind of immediate, concerned self-awareness in action. Earnestness, on the other hand, describes the same phenomenon but from the point of view as an active (i. e. minded) virtue and/or a character trait. At first glance, one obvious way of understanding the notions of inwardness and earnestness is in terms of a reflective theory of self-consciousness, that is, where inwardness and earnestness operate as second-order identifications or endorsements of first-order phenomena. This particular interpretation is even supported by Haufniensis’ claim that, “having become truly earnest about that which is the object of earnestness, a person may very well, if he so wishes, treat various things earnestly, but the question is whether he first became earnest about the object of earnestness. This object every human being has, because it is himself…”³⁶ Due to the use of the term “object” here we might be lead to believe that Haufniensis’ account of inwardness necessarily involves something like an objectification of first-order phenomena. However, despite this, perhaps unfortunate use of terminology, Haufniensis is explicit in that inwardness and earnestness do not require reflective self-objectification. Haufniensis defines inwardness as a kind of unreflective action and he contrasts this with the kind of action that is the result of reflective contemplation. He writes: The most concrete content that consciousness can have is consciousness of itself, of the individual himself – not the pure self-consciousness, but the self-consciousness that is so concrete that no author, not even the one with the greatest power of description, has ever been able to describe a single such self-consciousness, although every single human being is such a one. This self-consciousness is not contemplation, for he who believes this has not understood himself, because he sees that meanwhile he himself is in the process of becoming and consequently cannot be something completed for contemplation. This self-consciousness therefore is action, and this action is in turn inwardness…³⁷

 SKS 4, 446 / CA, 146.  SKS 4, 450 / CA, 150.  SKS 4, 443 / CA, 143.

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Haufniensis describes a contrast here between reflective self-consciousness (the pure self-consciousness that is conceivably the kind of self-consciousness an author could describe in general) with immediate self-consciousness. Immediate self-consciousness is irreducibly first-personal and is defined in terms of its particularity, a particularity that Haufniensis claims no author can describe.³⁸ This kind of self-consciousness is aware of itself immediately and prior to reflection, and, most importantly, Haufniensis defines this immediate self-awareness in contrast to contemplation: inwardness is action. Here the model of the self-consciousness in inwardness is not one where the individual reflects in order to know what to do and then acts accordingly, rather the model of self-consciousness here suggests a seamlessness between the affordance for action and the action.³⁹ In the Epigraph to The Concept of Anxiety, Haufniensis invokes Hamann’s praise of Socrates: He “was great in that he distinguished between what he understood and what he did not understand.” Later in the book, Haufniensis returns to Hamann’s words in order to explain how inwardness operates as a kind of immediate understanding prior to reflection. He writes: There is an old saying that to understand and to understand are two things, and so they are. Inwardness is an understanding, but in concreto the important thing is how this understanding is to be understood. To understand a speech is one thing, and to understand what it refers to, namely, the personal, is something else; for a man to understand what he himself says is one thing, and to understand himself in what was said is something else.⁴⁰

Haufniensis makes the distinction here between understanding something abstractly and understanding something in accordance with one’s concerned personal relationship to it. Here the contrast is not between degrees of attention but between a kind of abstract thinking and self-concerned awareness.⁴¹ Inwardness

 Dan Zahavi uses similar language to describe the notion of ipseity: “It is something that distinguishes my very mode of existence, and, although I can fail to articulate it, it is not something I can fail to be” (Dan Zahavi, Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1999, p. 116).  What I mean by “the seamlessness between the affordance for action and the action” here can be explained by the way Haufniensis equates inwardness with “certitude” (Vished) (SKS 4, 439, 445, 450 / CA, 138, 146, 151). Inasmuch as inwardness is described as both certitude and action, the picture we get of inwardness is one where there is no doubt or confusion that can get between seeing a possibility to be acted upon and acting upon it.  SKS 4, 442 / CA, 142.  Third-personal self-objectification, where an individual “wants to make himself into an abstraction,” necessarily “lacks inwardness,” and therefore “every form of the absence of inwardness…is in the sphere of self-reflection.” (SKS 4, 442 / CA, 141, 142).

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itself does not add any content to the understanding, rather inwardness involves the inward appropriation of what is being understood. For instance, it is quite easy to immediately understand the proposition that all men die, however, it is another thing altogether to personally understand death as one’s own lot. As we learn in At a Graveside, third-personal understanding of death is not a sufficient condition for understanding one’s own mortality, in the sense of inwardly appropriating this understanding. The inwardness involved in seriously understanding oneself as a mortal here does not require any additional cognitive operation on top of understanding that man is mortal—it is not as if inwardness were the reflective conclusion of a syllogism (e. g. All men die, I am a man, therefore I will die). Rather, inwardness involves self-concerned thinking of oneself as the very one who will die.⁴² Haufniensis’ descriptions of inwardness show us why reflective self-objectification is not necessarily required in order to have an attunement to the normative affordances in my environment. The non-objectified self-awareness of inwardness is sufficient for immediately understanding that death is my lot, or that my neighbor is in need and I should help him, or that my wife’s wellbeing is part of my responsibility in this very moment.

V Korsgaard and Crowell on the Phenomenology of Romantic Love in Marriage The preceding account has gone some way in defending a conception of unreflective action that is neither mindless nor implicitly the result of reflective deliberation. However, there may still be lingering doubts concerning whether or not the preceding account of unreflective action really maps on to the kinds of actions that spring from more mature forms of practical identity. The idea here is that certain kinds of practical identities, rather than being constituted pre-reflectively, seem to require a robust form of reflective endorsement in order to be constituted as such. For instance, it is unclear whether the primary example that Crowell uses to exemplify the phenomenon of normatively informed, unreflective

 In At a Graveside, Kierkegaard presents the distinction between thinking the thought of death in “mood” and thinking the thought of death with inwardness and earnestness. Although thinking the thought of death can certainly be a reflective activity, the deciding difference between thinking the thought of death in self-forgetfulness and thinking the thought of death as one’s own lot (self-transparently) is that inwardness is involved in the latter.

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action—being drawn by affection to do a kind act for one’s wife—really escapes a Korsgaardian reflective deliberation model of agency. At first blush, it seems quite plausible that such an example, rather than militating against a Korsgaardian theory of unreflective action, actually plays into her hand. For example, Korsgaard might reply that the kind of affective sensitivity that is attuned to one’s spouse’s happiness and thus allows for the alighting of certain affordances for action is a constituent standard of the practical identity of being a husband or wife, and this particular practical identity (being a husband or wife) is not one that one adopts without a reflective endorsement. Marriage appears to be an example of one of the most monumental decisions in life that one can make and therefore a decision that generally is not taken without careful deliberation. Surely, one (generally) does not publically confess their lifelong commitment to another without first asking themselves whether they should act in accordance with their love and desire for the other person? Reflectively distancing oneself from one’s desire in order to ask whether there is good reason to marry this person seems like a natural step that most people would make on the way to marriage. In fact, it appears prima facie that the kind of practical identity that is constituted in marriage is an ideal example to exhibit Korsgaard’s reflective deliberation model of self-constitution. There are two parts to this Korsgaardian response. First, when one is drawn by affection to do a kind act for one’s spouse one is unreflectively recognizing one’s identity as a husband or wife (one is, so to say, seeing through the eyes of a husband or wife) and therefore capable of responding immediately to normative solicitations to be a loving partner. Second, there is the claim that the kind of practical identity of being a husband is one that fits the Korsgaardian structure of reflective deliberation, that is, the identity is constituted by calling into question one’s inclinations in order to ask whether one should be motivated by them. From the perspective of the Kierkegaardian stance we are considering, the first claim seems innocuous and largely correct (so long as it allows for the distinctive difference that it makes when earnestness and inwardness are either absent or present in the action). However, the second claim is one that Kierkegaard, or at least Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author, Judge Wilhelm, will disagree with. As we will now see, Judge Wilhelm argues that even practical identities that do involve decisive commitment, such as marriage, nevertheless need not rely on doubt and reflective distance in order to draw a normative response.

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VI Judge Wilhelm on Love and Marriage Judge Wilhelm’s own case for the choice-worthiness of the practical identity involved in married life comes as a kind of response to two cultural conceptions of love and its role in marriage. He writes: “Our age has discerned…romantic love very well…it has taken two directions, one of which at first glance appears to be a wrong way, that is, immoral; the other one, which is more respectable, nevertheless, in my opinion, misses out on what is more profound in love.”⁴³ On the one hand, there is the common notion that love is mere transient sensuousness and therefore marriage is simply a temporary arrangement until this sensuousness is lost. This view has a certain distrust of any real continuity to love and therefore places a great emphasis on the moment, even though there may be an attempt to draw out this moment into an extended temporal duration. “It thinks that one can probably stay living together for some time, but it wants to keep an escape open in order to make a choice if a happier choice comes along.”⁴⁴ On the other hand, Wilhelm also entertains the cultural idea of love as culminating in the “marriage of convenience.” Here the idea is that because of love’s transient nature, it should solely be in the service of reflection. The marriage of convenience “steers a middle course here between immediate love and calculating understanding; for this really ought to be called…the marriage based on calculation.”⁴⁵ Here there is a “neutralization of sensuousness” for the purpose of placing it under the authority of rational control. Such marriages of convenience have “respect as a solid basis for a marital relation” and allow for the improvement of one’s “social status” and allow one to excel in “making a living.” However, Wilhelm thinks that both of the preceding views of marriage contain within them a certain reflective skepticism towards immediate romantic love. Wilhelm claims that the worries articulated here about the transient nature of romantic love and the capitulation involved in the marriage of convenience are both reflectively-based conclusions. However, Wilhelm argues that this “reflection” is “something that romantic love does not have” and as such it distorts the very nature of what is beautiful about romantic love. For the view that sees love as transient, the idea that at any moment they might find themselves engaged in a relationship they no longer desired plays itself out in a skepticism that constantly “want to keep an escape open.” This form of skepticism fails to be

 SKS 3, 30 / EO2, 22.  SKS 3, 31 / EO2, 23.  SKS 3, 36 / EO2, 26 – 27.

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truly receptive to the affectivity of romantic love to the same extent that it fails to commit itself to this love. In this sense, the view that understands love as transient relates to the affect as something that merely happens to an individual rather than being an affect that they identify themselves with and in. In the case of the marriage of convenience, there is also a similar kind of reflective scepticism: “Inasmuch as it now appeared as a defect in romantic love that it was not reflective, it might seem proper to have true marital love begin with a kind of doubt. This might seem all the more necessary because we come to it out of a world of reflection.”⁴⁶ By contrast with the skepticism that is willing to be moved by the affectivity of love but only to the extent that it may at any moment choose to jettison the attachment, the marriage of convenience is equally as skeptical but in a different way: “it belongs essentially to [this conception of] marriage to annihilate the first love by doubting the possibility of realizing it, in order through this annihilation to make marital love possible and actual…”⁴⁷ In the marriage of convenience there is an attempt to preserve love by modifying it—that is, by submitting it to the power and authority of rational calculation. In these kinds of marriages, a modified notion of love is supposed to be preserved by grounding the relationship on instrumental reasons rather than on immediate affect. Wilhelm’s task then, throughout the rest of the chapter, is to show how romantic love and marital life are not “eccentric” but rather can be brought together into a higher “concentricity” without robbing romantic love of its “certainty” and “immediacy.” Or, in other words, Wilhelm’s task is to show “how the first love could come into relation with the ethical…without having this happen by means of a reflection that altered it – since it is merely drawn up into a higher immediate concentricity.”⁴⁸ Wilhelm begins his task by reorienting his reader to the phenomenal qualities of romantic love. Such love, he tells us, provides “the unity of freedom and necessity.” When one falls in love “the individual feels drawn by an irresistible power to another individual but precisely therein feels his freedom.” There is a strange affectivity in romantic love wherein one feels compelled by something outside of their control and yet nonetheless identifies so closely with this compulsion that it seems to be an expression of the core of oneself. “The individual feels himself free in this necessity, feels his own individual energy in it, feels precisely in this the possession of everything he is.”⁴⁹ By allowing himself to be drawn by the power of affection, the lover feels drawn    

SKS 3, 37 / EO2, 29. Ibid. SKS 3, 63 / EO2, 57. SKS 3, 50 / EO2, 43.

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into an practical identity that provides a meaningfulness and purpose to his actions. This kind of romantic love is an “absolute awakening” to the world whereby new possibilities seem to spring up everywhere. In the love between two there is an openness to one another and a kind of intuitive responsiveness. However, this mutual intuitive responsiveness is not the product of calculation or deliberative reflection. Romantic love is “an absolute intuiting…But all this it has not by reflection; it has this immediately.”⁵⁰ Romantic love, for Wilhelm, describes a practical form of identification that is pre-reflective but nonetheless, in Korsgaard’s words, expresses the way an individual “values herself and sees her life worth living.” But of course, this affective identification is not merely passive—it is not something that is experienced as merely happening to the individual. Like earnestness, being a lover (in the romantic rather than the reflective sense) involves an active receptivity—it means allowing oneself to be drawn by affection to act in loving ways towards the beloved.⁵¹ This practical identification is fundamentally affective but it nonetheless provides the light from which certain normative affordances show up in relief. Here we have a case of self-constitution that comes prior to any reflective endorsement. In romantic love there is a responsiveness and a spontaneity that derives its character from the ways in which we value each other—in love there is “the unity of freedom and necessity.” According to Kierkegaard’s paradigmatic “ethicist,” then, romantic love is “in itself immediately certain” and “sufficiently secure, it needs no support.” Nevertheless, Wilhelm believes that romantic love can become “ennobled” in marriage, that is, Wilhelm is keen to show us the real significance that a practical commitment makes to something that is immediate without resorting to reflection. The particular conception of marriage that Wilhelm appeals to here is religious in nature but there is a more general principle that we can glean from it, namely, that marriage does not need to rely on doubt and reflective distance in order to “ennoble” one’s love. Wilhelm gives the example of thanking God for one’s beloved as an example of how immediate love “can be taken up into a higher concentricity and for that doubt is still not needed.”⁵² He writes:

 SKS 3, 49 – 52 / EO2, 42– 45.  It is important to note that affective identification with such love can, in some cases, actually be self-alienating. Rather than finding affective identification, it is possible to experience such love as militating against some other fundamental form of practical identity or in some way limiting one’s freedom. I take it that this is part of young Aesthete’s problem. I thank John Davenport for raising this point with me.  SKS 3, 53 / EO2, 47.

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…they [the lovers] do not seek God on the day of trouble, nor is it fear and anxiety that cause them to pray; their hearts, their whole beings are filled with joy—what is more natural for them, then, than to thank God for it…But such thanksgiving, like all prayer, is united with an element of work (not in the external but in the internal sense), here the work of willing to hold fast to this love. The nature of first love is not changed thereby; no disturbing reflection is involved; it does not come apart at the joints. It still has all of its blessed and confident self-assurance; it is merely caught up in a higher concentricity…it is drawn up into the ethical by the good intention…⁵³

By giving thanks to God for one another the lovers take up a “good intention” to their love that is motivated by the superabundance of their joy. But the “good intention” taken up in thanksgiving is not like a wish or a prediction for some future state of affairs, it is an activity because it involves an “element of work,” that is, thankfulness implies protecting and preserving that for which one is thankful. Even though romantic love is immediately certain and secure, the “good intention” of thanksgiving provides a kind of protection and continuity to romantic love by recognizing and taking up one’s responsibility to protect and preserve this love. What is crucial here in this passage is that the intention formed is not based on doubt, it is not the product of a “disturbing reflection.” To doubt this love, to distance oneself from it in order to call it into question, would be to annihilate what is most beautiful about immediate love: “This love is strong, stronger than the whole world, but the moment it doubts it is annihilated; it is like a sleepwalker who is able to walk the most dangerous places with complete security but plunges down when someone says his name.”⁵⁴ To love is akin to trust and it involves an active receptivity to the other and a giving of oneself to the other.⁵⁵ Romantic “love is…immediately certain” and because of this “romantic love and reflective love…[are] confrontational positions.” Reflective distance is precisely what halts this active receptivity to the other in order to call it into question. So it seems clear, to Wilhelm at least, that reflective deliberation cannot preserve romantic love—it cannot preserve the “blessed” immediacy and trust of romantic love. There is a subtly to Wilhelm’s point here that can be easily missed. Wilhelm is not arguing that romantic love necessarily cannot have anything whatsoever to

 SKS 3, 53 / EO2, 47.  Ibid., p. 94.  According to Wilhelm, this is part of the young Aesthete’s problem. “This is how it is with you, and you will also see how egotistical your enjoyment is, and that you never give of yourself, never let others enjoy you” (SKS 3, 33 / EO2 24– 25).

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do with reflection,⁵⁶ rather the argument is that the immediate trust and receptivity of romantic love cannot be replaced with reflectively endorsed reasons for trust and receptivity. “What I want to stress, however, is the beauty in the marriages that have as little ‘why’ as possible. The less ‘why,’ the more love—that is, if one perceives the truth in this…Indeed the less ‘why’ the better.”⁵⁷ Wilhelm is not arguing that a married couple should not be able to reflect and respond to questions and recount a posteriori reasons for their relationship. What he is arguing is that the ultimate “reason” for their relationship should not be the product of rational judgment but should only be love itself.

VII Conclusion Kierkegaard’s existential approach is attentive to the fact that we spend much of our lives unreflectively engaging with our environment, and his phenomenology of ethical life emphasizes the different ways in which we can be more or less ethically aware of our possibilities in such activity. Haufniensis describes earnestness as a kind of disposition that is not natural but “acquired” through a kind of middle-voice activity, and he describes inwardness in terms of an immediate self-awareness in action. Wilhelm, in contrast, focuses specifically on the unreflective actions that are motivated by love. By drawing his reader’s attention to the phenomenology of romantic love as a spontaneous trust and intuitive understanding, he is able to show that the transition to marriage does not need to rely on questioning the certainty and immediacy of love for the commitment. Through dialogue with Korsgaard and Crowell, we can see how Kierkegaard’s existential approach provides a more nuanced account of how an individual is able to unreflectively awaken a sensitivity to the particularity of the other. Unlike Korsgaard, Kierkegaard shows us how unreflective actions can indeed be robust acts of self-constitution. And in contrast with Crowell, Kierkegaard’s account differentiates the minded forms of unreflective action from more ethically deficient forms of “mindless” habit.⁵⁸

 “May I now remind you that it is a mistake to assume that reflection only annihilates [and remind you] that it rescues just as much…” (SKS 3, 53 / EO2, 46).  SKS 3, 68 / EO2, 63.  I am indebted to Beatrice Han-Pile, John Davenport, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this essay. I am most grateful to Dan Watts for his very helpful suggestions and encouragement.

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Kierkegaard’s Dual Individual: Reconciling Selfhood in the Existentialist and Analytic Traditions Abstract: Kierkegaard and later existentialists were centrally concerned with the irreducibility of the first person perspective. Kierkegaard sought to defend this perspective from the objectivizing tendencies of Idealism, while philosophy today, with its near-universal commitment to some form of naturalism, likewise struggles to accommodate, or simply dismisses, subjective properties. We find ourselves caught between an understanding of persons as a type of object, and existentialist analyses of the self as a subject structurally incapable of coinciding with itself. We thus need, to use a phrase from Sellars, a form of “stereoscopic” vision—for which Kierkegaard’s account of selfhood provides important resources.

Existentialism as a tradition is notoriously amorphous, with no clear definition, no defining tenets, and nothing like a canonical list of adherents. In broader usage the term has, as Jon Stewart has noted, “come to be associated with so many different ideas that it means virtually nothing at all,”¹ while within philosophy the term is as much notable for those who rejected the label of existentialist, such as Heidegger (even Jaspers, who retained the term “existence philosophy,” rejected “existentialism”) as those who embraced it. Taking the Sartre of Being and Nothingness as the paradigmatic case, one can define existentialism so loosely as to take in such radically un-Sartrean figures as Augustine and Pascal, or so narrowly as to leave us only Sartre himself, and even then only for a decade or two. Nonetheless, one of the key features of existentialist thought broadly construed, albeit one shared with the wider phenomenological traditions of the twentieth century, is a concern with the irreducibility of the first person perspective. As Diego Bubbio has recently argued, a defining feature of post-Kantian continental thought is a certain perspectivism, a refusal (which Bubbio illuminatingly describes as a kenotic move) to adopt an implicitly sub specie aeternitatis view of existence.² If there is anything like a foundational commitment  Jon Stewart, Idealism and Existentialism: Hegel and Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Philosophy, New York: Continuum 2010, p. 165.  Paolo Diego Bubbio, Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition: Perspectivism, Intersubjectivity, and Recognition, Albany, NY: SUNY Press 2014. DOI 10.1515/9783110493016-013

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among existentialists, then even more so than Sartre’s infamous “existence precedes essence,” it would be to the irreducibly situated, perspectively bound character of subjectivity—not merely as a point of departure, but as a standing condition for all philosophy and all analysis. The existentialist self is always an emplaced, finite subject, and cannot finally and ultimately transcend that condition. Moreover, it is always “thrown,” in Heideggerian parlance, into a world already freighted with a history and with socially mediated meanings. It is a being that already finds itself in a world, with others, and incapable of repudiating its freedom and its responsibility. This represents a considerable “thickening” from existentialism’s phenomenological antecedents. As Pierre-Jean Renaudie has recently argued, there is a palpable turn in Sartre’s work from the evaluatively neutral phenomenology of La transcendance de l’Ego to the ethically engaged stance of L’Être et le Néant,³ with its concern with the possibilities of bad faith and the quest for authenticity. We might describe this as precisely the existential turn in phenomenology—a turn that then looks very much like a re-turn to the sort of first-personally engaged Kierkegaardian stance. It is clear that Kierkegaard’s thought exerted a vast influence on the key figures of twentieth century existentialism, and Kierkegaardian themes and approaches are recognizable throughout the existentialist corpus. Yet it is also clear that the Kierkegaard of the existentialists is a somewhat partial figure, particularly with respect to the ways in which his Christian commitments are bracketed or sidelined by figures such as Jaspers⁴ and Sartre.⁵ Kierkegaard is sometimes described simply as an existentialist, and sometimes placed at one or more remove as the “father” or “grandfather” of existentialism. (Sartre implies Kierkegaard to be the “great uncle” of his own generation of philosophers, an even more complex relation!)⁶ While the question of whether Kierkegaard can

 Pierre-Jean Renaudie, “Me, Myself and I: Sartre and Husserl on Elusiveness of the Self,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 46, no. 1, 2013, pp. 99 – 113.  István Czakó, “Karl Jaspers: A Great Awakener’s Way to Philosophy of Existence,” in Kierkegaard and Existentialism, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2011 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 9), pp. 163 – 165.  Consider how quickly Sartre moves, in “The Singular Universal,” his UNESCO colloquium address on Kierkegaard from 1964, beyond Kierkegaard’s Christian concern about whether an historical point of departure can be given for an eternal happiness: “of course, what he takes aim at here is the scandalous paradox of the birth and death of God, of the historicity of Jesus. But we must go further, for, if the answer is yes, the transhistoricity pertains, just as well to Jesus, to Søren, his witness, and to us, the grandnephews of Søren” (Jean-Paul Sartre, “Kierkegaard: The Singular Universal,” in Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by Josiah Thompson, Garden City, NY: Anchor 1972, p. 232).  Ibid.

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properly be called an existentialist is an important one, one thing he can certainly be said to share with existentialism is its concern for the irreducibility of the first person perspective. Kierkegaard, both in propria persona and via the pseudonyms, consistently takes the first person perspective to be fundamental—not in the epistemically foundational way in which Descartes does, nor in the ontologically totalizing way in which post-Kantian idealists such as Hegel and Fichte do, but in a way that is pragmatic, eschatologically directed, and concerned ultimately with the ongoing emplaced predicament of the individual. Or, to use a word that seems irresistible here, an existential way. That emphasis, which already made Kierkegaard orthogonal to the philosophical direction of his own era, also sets him, and his existentialist successors, on a collision course with our own.

I Naturalism and the First Person Kierkegaard does not merely set up “the single individual” (enkelte) as an analytically basic unit, such as we might build a political or sociological analysis out of, but as the being figured by every such individual’s first person perspective on its own existence. This emphasis on the subjective and perspectival is deliberately offered as a corrective against an era that, in Kierkegaard’s view, had dissolved such perspectival questions into an increasingly objectifying, depersonalized frame of reference. While the idealism of Hegel and Fichte certainly emphasized the role of consciousness, they also sought to move beyond individual consciousness and its bounded concerns to an analysis of intersubjectivity and ultimately of being itself. Against this, Kierkegaard wants to call us back to an account of individual consciousness so singular that it cannot be analyzed away, nor its specificity absorbed into a wider account of being: The most concrete content that consciousness can have is consciousness of itself, of the individual himself–not the pure self-consciousness, but the self-consciousness that is so concrete that no author, not even the one with the greatest power of description, has ever been able to describe such a single self-consciousness, although every single human being is such a one.⁷

Where the Fichtean move of self-founding consciousness and the Hegelian drama of intersubjectivity quickly moves away from the situation of the individual, Kierkegaard wants to dwell with that concrete remainder of individuality. In

 SKS 4, 443 / CA, 143.

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an era of panoptic system-building, Kierkegaard remains committed to giving the first person its due; he seeks persistently to remind his reader that they are inescapably individual, finite, situated subjects. Kierkegaard’s views may have been offered as a corrective to his own philosophical milieu, but from within the somewhat insular environs of continental philosophy it’s easy to forget just how much that emphasis on the first person perspective still runs counter to the tenor of much contemporary thought. Hegelian idealism has been out of vogue in the Anglophone world since the deaths of Bradley and McTaggart, but its place has been taken by a form of scientific naturalism that ultimately has no room for perspectival properties or facts. Understandably, the special success of science has led philosophers, especially those who see their profession as continuous with or even subsidiary to the natural sciences, to seek to make their methodological, epistemological, and in many cases ontological assumptions compatible with those of science. In particular, philosophers have been quick to sign up to the claim that all reality is material, and that supernatural explanations are ruled out a priori. Given the unprecedented explanatory and predictive power demonstrated by the scientific method, philosophers have understandably felt compelled to accept at least the methodological commitments of science—namely, to a wholly material, uniformly law-governed, causally closed universe—as at least demarcating what counts as an acceptable empirical claim. It would be wrong to imply uniformity here, for there is a diversity of naturalisms to be found within philosophy, as Lynne Rudder Baker notes: Success has catapulted science and technology into the intellectual spotlight all over the world. Naturalism, the philosophical companion of science, now dominates Anglophone philosophy. As befits a reigning worldview, naturalism comes in many varieties, with little in common save (1) a commitment to science as the discoverer of what really exists and how we know it and (2) a repudiation of anything that smacks of the supernatural.⁸

At the strong end of this spectrum we find claims that subjective properties are wholly illusory. Philosophers such as Daniel Dennett, with his “heterophenomenology” that seeks to study mental phenomena in a wholly third-personal way,⁹ would see Vigilius Haufniensis’ concrete “single self-consciousness” as, at best, a confused description of what are in fact essentially objective phenomena. An ontological naturalist of an even stronger stripe might say that insofar as this

 Lynne Rudder Baker, Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013, p. 3.  Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained, London: Penguin 1991.

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consciousness is meant to be beyond the reach of objective description (“so concrete that no author, not even the one with the greatest power of description, has ever been able to describe,”)¹⁰ then it cannot figure in a scientific ontology and so cannot be said to exist at all. Nothing that is essentially first-personal can find a place in an ontology that only admits scientifically warrantable objects, for the framework of science is non-negotiably third personal. It should be noted that there has been considerable pushback within philosophy against some of the stronger claims of naturalism, for instance in the defense of “liberal naturalism” against the stronger version usually known as “scientific naturalism.”¹¹ Scientific naturalism may be associated with a particularly comprehensive reductionism, but not all naturalists are ipso facto reductionists. Yet this counter-movement has nonetheless occurred within naturalism, not against it; some form of naturalism remains a default background assumption. That inevitably leaves the status of wholly subjective properties in a somewhat precarious position, even among naturalists who don’t want to dispense with these altogether.

II Selves as Objects, Or Even Less This naturalistic backdrop has inevitably had an influence on the way in which selfhood is discussed within analytic philosophy. The rejection of supernaturalism marked the death knell for the idea that we’re essentially Cartesian souls, but as we’ve just seen it also problematized the very idea of subjective properties. If ontology can only accommodate entities that are either endorsed by science or at least not incompatible with science—for instance, by being reducible to objects that are scientifically available—then it becomes hard to see exactly where first person perspectives fit into such an ontology. While some analytic philosophers of personal identity have sought to defend the first person perspective as indispensable,¹² even they continue to treat selves or persons (I’ll here use the terms interchangeably though there is an important distinction to be made later) as, in J.L. Austin’s phrase, just another variety of the

 SKS 4, 443 / CA, 143.  On liberal naturalism and its challenge to scientific naturalism see, e. g., Naturalism in Question, ed. by Mario di Caro and David MacArthur, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2004.  See, e. g., Geoffrey Maddell, “Personal Identity and the Idea of a Human Being,” in Human Beings, ed. by David Cockburn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991, pp. 127– 142; Lynne Rudder Baker, Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000.

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“medium-sized dry goods” that populate the world of metaphysicians.¹³ They view selves as objects among other objects, and seek to determine the identity and persistence conditions of these objects, which in practice means their reidentification conditions: what needs to survive for this person to survive—a living animal? A brain? Part of a brain? A chain of appropriately connected mental states? A soul? The assumption of analytic personal identity theory is that if selves or persons are to be respectable inclusions in our ontology, then there must be some objective answers to questions like these. The problem is that such objective answers seem of necessity to miss the very subjective—indeed, existential—features of existence that made us ask questions about selfhood and identity in the first place: am I the same self that did that terrible thing back then? Do I bear responsibility for that past self? What will happen to me in the future? Will I survive? These questions are all intrinsically indexical, with the first-person-perspective essential to their structure and content. You can’t ask them about someone else and still be asking the same question. But to borrow Wilfrid Sellars’ terminology,¹⁴ once we swap out the “manifest image” of the world for the “scientific image,” perspectival properties, such as those essential to the sort of subjectivity Kierkegaard describes, either lose their descriptive purchase or vanish altogether. A complete ontology of the universe would be devoid of indexical facts¹⁵: from a God’s eye perspective there are facts about various configurations of matter, but there are no real facts about regions of that matter being here rather than there, or constituting you rather than me. Likewise, given the eternalism that seems to be almost totally accepted in contemporary physics, there are events, which have sequence and temporal duration; but there are no real facts about these events happening now rather than then. Moreover, the analytic approach to personal identity is constantly threatened by reductionism: if we can describe the identity and persistence conditions of persons in sub-personal terms—as we must, lest we lapse into circularity— then it seems we can dispense with the language of persons altogether. Hence many philosophers of personal identity have gone even further down the reductionist path of contemporary naturalism towards eliminativism, analyzing selves out of existence altogether.¹⁶ If we start from the assumption that selves are ob-

 John L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, ed. by G.J. Warnock, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1964, p. 8.  Wilfrid Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” in Frontiers of Science and Philosophy, ed. by Robert Colodny, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 1962, pp. 35 – 78.  Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986, p. 54.  See, e. g., Thomas Metzinger, Being No-One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity, Cambridge MA: MIT Press 2003.

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jects, then they’re up against the view taken by a great many contemporary metaphysicians that there are no macrophysical objects. The only ultimately real objects are fundamental particles; everything else—to borrow a phrase from AntiClimacus: “an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.”¹⁷—is an “object” by courtesy or convention only.

III Existentialist Selfhood Anxieties over the scientific worldview reducing the subjective dimension of existence were abroad as early as William Blake’s prayer “May God us keep/ From Single vision & Newton’s sleep!”¹⁸ The deliverances of particle physics and the overthrow of even the Newtonian mechanistic universe in the first decades of the twentieth century made that alienation of fundamental ontology from the human lifeworld even more pronounced. Existentialism, of course, noticed this, such that Jaspers could assert that: Physical reality has become more and more alien. First it was conceived in terms of bodies arranged in non-perspectival space, without relation to a perceiver; then it was reduced to the underlying spatial being of particles differing only from each other quantitatively in size and motion; and finally now nature cannot even be imagined, but can be described only in mathematical formulae. As we came to know an unfathomably remote reality accessible only to measurement, the world began at the same time in a mysterious way to take on the character of “appearance” for us. In the end we were able to take this appearance for full reality once more, but in such a way that now “true” reality is nowhere. Everything is real in its own way, and at the same time everything is only a perspective. The same thing happens to our knowledge of human existence. ¹⁹

Yet existentialism is fundamentally opposed to this reduction of human reality— especially human freedom—into the scientific image. In particular, it emphatically rejects the idea of selves as objects; indeed as Dan Hutto notes, Sartre’s axiom that existence precedes essence for beings like us “is the locus classicus of the idea that selves are not objects.”²⁰ Yet it does so on very different grounds from

 SKS 11, 148 / SUD, 33.  William Blake, The Letters of William Blake, ed. by Geoffrey Keynes, New York: Macmillan 1956, p. 79.  Karl Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence, trans. by Richard F. Grabau, Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press 1971, pp. 66 – 67.  Daniel D. Hutto, Stephen Mulhall, The Self and Its Shadows: A Book of Essays on Individuality as Negation in Philosophy and the Arts (book review), Notre Dame Philosophical Review, 22nd

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those of contemporary reductionists. In different ways, figures like Sartre and Heidegger sought to reject any understanding of the self as an enduring, diachronic entity à la the Cartesian-Husserlian transcendental ego. Sartrean being-for-itself is no sort of reidentifiable substance, but instead pure negation: The for-itself can not sustain nihilation without determining itself as a lack of being…the for-itself is perpetually determining itself not to be the in-itself. This means that it can establish itself only in terms of the in-itself and against the in-itself…The concrete, real in-itself is wholly present to the heart of consciousness as that which consciousness determines itself not to be.²¹

This non-coincidence is simply given in the very structure of intentionality itself: while we can be non-thetically or non-positionally conscious that we are conscious, and so self-aware in a non-thematized way, “consciousness,” as Stephen Mulhall puts it, “turns out to be intrinsically incapable of self-identity,” because when turned on itself, “its object is itself as it was rather than as it is (that state of itself that it no longer is).”²² As soon as the self apprehends itself as empirical ego, it has already gone beyond itself just in making itself into an object. Hence Existenz, according to Jaspers, “cannot know itself and at the same time be identical with what it knows.”²³ And this means that: “What I myself am, therefore, always remains a question…My authentic self can never become my possession; it remains my potentiality. If I knew it, I would no longer be it, since I become inwardly aware of myself in temporal existence only as a task.”²⁴ This language of task also marks both a connection with Kierkegaard’s conception of the self as a task (opgave) and the existentialist tradition. The existentialist self, to the extent we can speak of it at all, is not something that can be said to exist so much as it is a striving to exist, a process that aims at the (ultimately impossible) task of coinciding with itself. It’s in that very split that the possibilities of authenticity and inauthenticity are taken to lie,²⁵ as well as the apprehension of the self as a

May 2014 (http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/48418-the-self-and-its-shadows-a-book-of-essays-on-individuality-as-negation-in-philosophy-and-the-arts) (27/7/2015).  Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes, London: Routledge 1989, p. 85.  Stephen Mullhall, The Self and Its Shadows: A Book of Essays on Individuality as Negation in Philosophy and the Arts, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013, pp. 45 – 46.  Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence, p. 38.  Ibid.  Cf. Renaudie, “Me, Myself, and I: Sartre and Husserl on Elusiveness of the Self,” p. 108: “The position of ego is the outcome of an impossible act of consciousness that is unable to reach the object it was aiming at, so that the ego is never what it is supposed to be. Accordingly, transcendence of the ego has a moral significance, insofar as it means that I am fostering an illusion and

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task, in Sartrean mauvoise foi as in Kierkegaardian fortvivelse. This ethical dimension of non-coincidence is also in evidence in Haufniensis’ discussion of temporality and guilt, in which we’re told that “repentance must become an object to itself, inasmuch as the moment of repentance becomes a deficit of action.”²⁶ The repenting subject cannot coincide with the self it repents over; every moment it repents of itself, it is already moving through time, and its failure to atone compounds its guilt.

IV The Stereoscopic View We have then a clash between two different conceptions of the self: one, according to which selves are essentially public, enduring or purduring objects with specifiable persistence conditions and at least theoretically determinable durations; the other, according to which selves are an ongoing process of self-negation that can never be synchronically self-identical, let alone diachronically. (Perhaps for this reason, the existentialist tradition never sought to address the Lockean problematic of identity across time, of what makes me the same self as envisioned past and future selves.) But here’s the problem: we need both. Our position is that described by de Beauvoir in the opening pages of The Ethics of Ambiguity: “He is still a part of this world of which he is a consciousness. He asserts himself as a pure internality against which no external power can take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things.”²⁷ Or as Jaspers puts it: “Man is the nothingness of a speck of dust in the limitless universe—and he is a creature of a depth capable of cognizing the universe, and of encompassing it within himself. He is both, between both.”²⁸ And this duplexity, of being both objects and incommensurable subjects, demands an approach that gives both dimensions their due without collapsing one into the other. Such duplexity is no artefact of the last century, but, as our mention of philosophers grappling with the first person and naturalism attests, a living and pressing problem. If anything, advances in neuroscience since the heyday of existentialism make this duplexity even more urgent. We are increasingly pinned

lying to myself about myself each time I am entering the world scene and positing myself as an ego.”  SKS 4, 419 / CA, 118.  Simone De Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. by Bernard Frechtman, New York: Open Road 2011, p. 1.  Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence, p. 72.

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between ever more extensive neural explanations of experience and behavior, and our irreducibly subjective experience of the world. We incorrigibly experience ourselves as at least partially free, yet are continually supplied with an increasingly fine grained account of our determination by physical laws. Jaspers worried that science has turned our world to “mere appearance,” yet science doesn’t entirely permit us to see through those appearances, as if we could see and live in the scientific image of the world alone. Rather than resolving the conflict between the objective and the subjective, scientific naturalism has made it more poignant. This is particularly the case with respect to the fundamental question of what we are. Most of us would now accept a story that goes roughly like this: each of us is an object, composed ultimately of subatomic particles structured into atoms, thence into molecules, chemical compounds, cells, and ultimately into individual organisms of the species Homo sapien. Yet each of us also experiences ourselves as being me, a distinct locus of consciousness not wholly reducible to any particular set of physical, psychological, or social facts about ourselves. Most of the time there’s no particular tension between these views. We do have experiences where we shift from one way of seeing ourselves to the other, but they are rarely even noticed let alone felt as problematic. Consider, briefly, Sartre’s comments on our relationship to our body qua object and our lived body: So far as the physicians have had any experience with my body, it was with my body in the midst of the world and as it is for others. My body as it is for me does not appear to me in the midst of the world. Of course during a radioscopy I was able to see the picture of my vertebrae on a screen, but I was outside in the midst of the world. I was apprehending a wholly constituted object as a this among other thises, and it was only by a reasoning process that I referred it back to being mine; it was much more my property than my being.²⁹

Looking at an x-ray or hearing a surgeon describe how she will be operating on me, I can approach my body as just another object in the world, as simply another token of the human species. Yet this is not fundamentally how I live my body, which I do in a way that is, again, irreducibly perspectival. That this body is my body is a defining and structuring truth of my existence; from a third personal perspective, however, that this body is my body means nothing more than that Jones’ body is Jones’ body, Kierkegaard’s body is Kierkegaard’s body, and so forth. The indexical my plays a crucial role that vanishes when we consider the body or the self in the necessarily non-personal mode of science.

 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pp. 303 – 304.

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This loss haunts much of the analytic literature on selfhood, particularly of the reductive/eliminative variety. The analytic approach, as mentioned, constantly struggles to maintain a grip on the very indexical, perspectival properties of experience that motivate our concern for identity in the first place. First person perspectives always threaten to dissipate into a universe devoid of any perspectival facts, yet those facts remain inescapably important for us. Reductionism turns on the idea that there is no “deep further fact” (in Derek Parfit’s phrase) about whether a given set of physical and psychological properties is this person or that person. We can see the force of such arguments when we view persons third personally, but when we are considering ourselves they are curiously impotent to dissolve egocentric concern. As I’ve argued elsewhere,³⁰ if you found yourself confronted with some of the exotic thought experiments analytic philosophers trade in, as a result of which you found yourself unclear about whether it would be you or someone else who was to, say, undergo torture tomorrow after a series of brain operations, you would not be able to take “there is no real answer” for an answer. The first personal dimension that existentialists articulate simply can’t be captured if we translate our talk of persons into sub-personal terms like psychological continuity, organic continuity, and so on. Yet that is not simply to dismiss the analytic approach as practically useless. Indeed, it answers to another set of identity questions that are no less existentially pressing: what, for instance, is the moral status of a patient in a permanent vegetative state with respect to their past and social relations? Is it them anymore, or not? What of those drifting deeper into Alzheimer’s disease or dementia? And many of our forensic legal and moral practices turn precisely on reidentification as a means of settling identity questions, which in turn tend to be linked to physical continuity: DNA tests, CCTV footage, and so on. So both the self-as-object and self-as-perspective-on-itself (with the resultant problems of non-self-identity) are indispensable. Somehow, we need to find a view in which both these dimensions are held together. To use another phrase from Sellars’ discussion of the manifest and scientific images, philosophy needs stereoscopic vision in this domain. René Rosfort has recently argued that Kierkegaard is particularly well-placed to show us what Sellarsian stereoscopic vision would look like, against the unabashedly “monoscopic” approach put forward by critics like Heidegger on one side and C.P. Snow on the other.³¹ One might think, based on some of his critical  Patrick Stokes, “Will it be me? Identity, Concern and Perspective,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 43, no. 2, 2013, pp. 206 – 226.  René Rosfort, “Kierkegaard in Nature: The Fragility of Existing with Naturalism,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2014, pp. 79 – 108.

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comments on the sciences in his Journals,³² not to mention his avowed supernaturalism,³³ that Kierkegaard would be a monoscopic partisan against naturalism. Yet Rosfort, while urging that “we need to find a way to reformulate Kierkegaard’s concepts and notions…to bring out the strength of his thinking in a naturalized context,”³⁴ sees him as offering “an important contribution to contemporary debates about the scope and limits of naturalism, and of how to create a dialogue between philosophy and the natural sciences”³⁵ by dint of his dialectical interplay of objective and subjective elements of being. I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment. In what follows I offer a contribution to this project of recovering stereoscopic vision via Kierkegaard by considering how this dialectic plays out with respect to the question of selfhood and personal identity of the person-as-object and the non-self-coincident subject.

V Kierkegaard and Double Vision What makes Kierkegaard particularly interesting in this regard is that despite the existentialist tenor of his overall approach, he nonetheless has something of a foot in both camps—or at least gives both camps the resources to gain a foothold. In his most sustained discussions of the nature of selfhood, in The Sickness Unto Death and the second part of Either/Or, we find a concern with both the person (mennesket) as a diachronic, public, reidentifiable intersubjective object, and with the self (selvet) as a point of reflexivity that is never simply identical with or reducible to the person, yet without being any sort of Cartesian immaterial substance or homunculus. Anti-Climacus and Judge William, in their different

 E. g.: “Absolutely no benefit can be derived from involving oneself with the natural sciences…What is confusing is that it is never dialectically clarified which is which, how philosophy is to make use of natural science. Is the whole thing a clever metaphor (of which one could therefore just as well be ignorant), is it an example, an analogy, or is it of such importance that [our] theory must be reformulated to take it into account?” (SKS 20, 73, NB: 87 / KJN 4, 71– 72), this modified translation is given and discussed in Rosfort, “Kierkegaard in Nature,” pp. 102– 103.  See, e. g., Jamie Turnbull, “Kierkegaard’s Supernaturalism,” in Kierkegaard and Christianity, ed. by Anthony Burgess, Abrahim Khan, Roman Králik, Peter Šajda, and Jamie Turnbull, Toronto: Kierkegaard Circle, University of Toronto, 2008 (Acta Kierkegaardiana, vol. 3), pp. 72– 88.  Rosfort, “Kierkegaard in Nature,” p. 85.  Ibid., p. 105.

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but interconnected ways, gesture towards what a stereoscopic vision of the self might look like.³⁶ With respect to the first part, the self qua object, consider the well-worn ontology of the person developed in The Sickness Unto Death. Here, the person or human being (mennesket) is described not as an unanalyzable singularity, but as a “synthesis” of opposing factors. Note that this isn’t entirely distinct from the reductionist thrust of much analytic work on selfhood: we can speak of persons in sub-personal terms, as concatenations of psychological and physical properties. Yet this, crucially, is only The Sickness Unto Death’s first word on what we essentially are. Forgive me quoting yet again the (in)famous opening salvo of that work in full: A human being is spirit [Mennesket er Aand]. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates to itself or is the relation’s relating to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation’s relating to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way, a human being is still not a self.³⁷

Right from the outset we have an apparently contradictory claim: the human being (mennesket) is spirt (aand) and spirit is self (selvet) yet mennesket is not selvet. Yet Anti-Climacus is not violating the law of the transitivity of identity here, but simply asserting that qua synthesis human beings are not thereby selves. Yet crucially, the self, selvet, is not to be understood as any sort of Cartesian “ghost in the machine” that is somehow added to the human being, mennesket. This is a way of thinking about selves that Kierkegaard rejects as early as the Gilleleje journals: “What did I find? Not my “I,” [ikke mit Jeg], for that is exactly what I was trying in that way to find (I imagined, if I may say so, my soul shut up in a box with a spring lock in front, which the external surroundings would release by pressing the spring).”³⁸ It finds further repudiation in Judge William’s denial that “there is something within [the subject] that in relation to everything else is absolute, something whereby he is who he is even if the change he achieved by his wish were the greatest possible” such that “he could be changed continually and yet remain the same, as if his innermost being were an algebraic symbol that could signify anything whatever it is assumed to be.”³⁹  Many of the themes discussed in the following sections are elaborated on in Patrick Stokes, The Naked Self: Kierkegaard and Personal Identity, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015.  SKS 11, 129 / SUD, 13, translation modified.  SKS 17, 27, AA:12 / KJN 1, 21– 22.  SKS 3, 206 / EO2, 214– 215.

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There is also a pervasive concern throughout Kierkegaard’s work, as early as The Concept of Irony, with various forms of continuity and consistency as essential to self-constitution. In The Concept of Irony the psychology of the ironist is said to collapse across time into atomism precisely because of a lack of internal continuity and interrelation; composed entirely of disconnected, episodic moods, it fails to achieve self-constituting continuity. Judge William’s aesthete likewise fails to achieve a stable identity because of its dissolution across moods and projects: “Or can you think of anything more appalling than having it all end with the disintegration of your essence into a multiplicity, so that you actually became several…and thus you would have lost what is the most inward and holy in a human being, the binding power of the personality?”⁴⁰ Judge William insists that the “soul” be understood as something radically distinct from the things of finitude. And yet, Judge William’s self is not something abstract, but is rather a self-relation within the concrete contents of psycho-physical life: “The self contains in itself a rich concretion, a multiplicity of qualities, of characteristics—in short, it is the total aesthetic self that is chosen ethically.”⁴¹ Anti-Climacus too is very much aware of the person (mennesket) as a concatenation of psycho-physical factors. As we’ve seen, he defines the human being, mennesket, in precisely those terms: a synthesis of opposed properties, including precisely physical and psychological properties, and he also understands persons as at least in part defined socially and intersubjectively. Yet we also need to be careful here that when Anti-Climacus implicitly describes the self as a state that a human being achieves, he does so in a way that cannot simply be integrated into the (broadly neo-Lockean) project of delineating the persistence conditions of persons. Firstly, while Anti-Climacus decries lives that lack a form of integrative consistency, he contrasts that consistency to mere continuity-for sin, which for Anti-Climacus is despair, and therefore lack of self also has its “increasingly established continuity.”⁴² More seriously, for both Judge William and Anti-Climacus it is entirely possible to be a human being, et menneske, which we can understand as a type of intersubjective object, yet not a self, et selv. Selfhood, as we know, is a state to be achieved for Kierkegaard, not a given of human existence. On its face, that might not be a problem for the metaphys-

 Ibid. Rosfort too notes the importance of this objective continuity in both The Concept of Irony and Either/Or. See Rosfort, “Kierkegaard in Nature,” p. 91.  SKS 3, 213 / EO2, 222.  SKS 11, 218 / SUD, 106.

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ical approach to the self, for some analytic philosophers⁴³ have taken “self” or “person” to be a “phase sortal,” a status that can be ascribed to a human animal during certain phases of its career. Anti-Climacus’ talk of human beings, mennesker, gaining and losing selfhood may well sound compatible with this picture, and indeed this may be one reason why Kierkegaard has been so easily co-opted into the narrativist version of the “psychological object” approach to personal identity by commentators such as John J. Davenport and Anthony Rudd.⁴⁴ And on that level I do think Kierkegaard does have useful things to say for philosophers working in the broad neo-Lockean tradition regarding selfhood, and the narrativist approach in particular: useful things regarding the selfreflexivity of memory and imagination, self-constituting choice, and practical identity-construction. But—and here is where we shift from one lens of the stereoscope to the other—Kierkegaard’s phenomenology of selfhood also subverts that metaphysical project. Narrativism about personal identity, it should be noted, has been presented precisely as a means of interrelating the subjective and the objective in a way that seems at first glance highly sympathetic with Kierkegaard’s approach. Ricoeur, for instance, offers narrativity as the poesis through which we interrelate the “time of the world” and the “time of the soul,” the objective time of clocks and calendars and lived, phenomenological time.⁴⁵ He further takes narrative to mediate idem-identity (roughly, one’s “objective” spatio-temporal sameness across time) and ipse-identity (one’s subjective, agential identity, the object of imputation for instance)⁴⁶ as irreducible aspects of what each of us essentially is. Hence narrative might appear to offer a paradigm instance of “stereoscopic vision,” holding both the forms of continuity appealed to in analytic accounts of personhood and the irreducible subject of the existentialist and phenomeno-

 Eric T. Olson, The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997.  See most recently John J. Davenport, Narrative Identity, Autonomy and Morality: From Frankfurt and MacIntyre to Kierkegaard, New York: Routledge 2012; Anthony Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative: A Kierkegaardian Approach, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, and various chapters by and responding to Davenport and Rudd in Narrative, Identity, and the Kierkegaardian Self, ed. by John Lippitt and Patrick Stokes, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2015.  Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vols. 1– 3, trans. by Kathleen McLaughlin/Blamey and David Pellauer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1984– 1988.  Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. by Kathleen Blamey, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1992.

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logical traditions in a constant dialectic. However, as I have argued elsewhere,⁴⁷ narratively constituted selves, and the narrative time intrinsic to them, themselves become objects that the subjective self surpasses and fails to coincide with. In ways that Kierkegaard is particularly alive to, we are always-already beyond our narratives, not coincident or identical with them. For Kierkegaard, we always transcend any objective account we can give of ourselves, even when that objective account takes the form of an intersubjective self-constituting narrative.

VI Selves Beyond Personhood Both Anti-Climacus and Judge William, as well as Kierkegaard himself in the Upbuilding Discourses, speak of the self as something achieved through a process of distinction from and appropriation of the life of a diachronically extended person. The discourses from 1843 speak of self-constitution being made possible through a “nakedness of soul,”⁴⁸ a detachment of the subject from “everything within him by which he himself belongs to the world and he therein for the world”⁴⁹ that allows the “inner being” to be constituted and strengthened. This language of nakedness also occurs in both Either/Or and The Sickness Unto Death, in both cases referring to the subject’s capacity to detach itself from and transcend its concrete facticity, which it must then re-appropriate as that which it is, and, crucially, that which it is answerable for. Indeed, this separability is essential to the soteriological focus of Kierkegaard’s project: if I am to be judged for the life I lead, then in some sense I have to transcend that life. I qua self am responsible for the life of myself qua person, which entails that I am in a sense both conceptually and phenomenologically separable from that person. Again, we see the self’s non-identity with itself that haunts Sartre’s text, a gulf between the subjective self and the person as an object of that self’s contemplation, a gulf that has also appeared in various guises in recent analytic accounts of selfhood (e. g. in the work of Galen Strawson, Mark Johnston, and Marya Schechtman). Once again, first person perspective is essential to selfhood in this sense. It is only in taking responsibility for my life that I attain selfhood, and I do so on the basis of a concern that is intrinsically self-reflexive. Climacus’ “infinite passionate interest in my eternal happiness” (salighed) shares, I would suggest, some  Patrick Stokes, “Narrative Holism and the Moment,” in Narrative, Identity, and the Kierkegaardian Self, Edinburgh: ed. by John Lippitt and Patrick Stokes, Edinburgh University Press 2015, pp. 63 – 77.  SKS 5, 163 / EUD, 163 – 164.  SKS 5, 93 / EUD, 86.

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distinctive features of egocentric concern as analytic philosophy understands it; it has a self-referentiality that can’t be captured by rephrasing the concern in third personal terms. Baker gives the examples of Oedipus plucking out his eyes in horror upon realizing that he himself killed Laius,⁵⁰ and Ernest Mach’s shock at realizing that the unkempt man he is looking at is in fact his own reflection.⁵¹ In such cases, the affective response is conditioned by a self-reflexivity that changes the experience in a way that strains the resources of language to convey. The cry of Oedipus: O Light! May I never look on you again, Revealed as I am, sinful in my begetting, Sinful in marriage, sinful in shedding of blood!⁵²

—cannot be understood merely as a forceful statement that patricide and incest are inherently shameful things. Oedipus’ horror is an irreducibly self-referential one, that he himself, not merely someone, fulfilled the oracle’s grim prophecy about the child of Laius and Jocasta. Likewise, as Climacus discusses,⁵³ there are existentially pressing phenomena that can only be understood first personally. Knowing that I am to die, as he discusses at length, cannot simply be a matter of knowing about the mortality of an organism that just happens to be me. The full subjective dimension of a confrontation with my mortality, the thought that I will die, involves a reflexivity that, like the concretion of consciousness Haufniensis describes, is beyond the scope of language to fully express.⁵⁴ And that too applies, according to Climacus, to what it is to be immortal. Immortality, Kierkegaard tells us, is judgment, and as such it requires a distinctively and essentially first-personal response: “Fear it, it is only all too certain; do not doubt whether you are immortal—tremble, because you are immortal.”⁵⁵ But to fear immortality and to care about judgment is to look at oneself, at the human being one is, in a way that both appropriates and implicitly transcends one’s concretion. Moreover, the temporality of the objective person and the subjective self are radically different, a crucial dimension here that Kierkegaard’s work demon-

 Baker, Persons and Bodies, p. 79.  Baker, Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective, p. 38.  Sophocles, The Theban Plays, trans. by E.F. Watling, London: Penguin 1986, p. 59.  SKS 7, 153 – 158 / CUP1, 165 – 170.  On this topic see Patrick Stokes, “Death,” in The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard, ed. by George Pattison and John Lippitt, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013, pp. 365 – 382.  SKS 10, 212 / CD, 203.

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strates through its continual return to the here-and-now character of selfhood, or what Karl Verstrynge has called the “tensed position of the subjective thinker.”⁵⁶ This is a point that has largely been lost in analytic discussions of personal identity that have tried to find space for the first-person perspective within the framework of objective metaphysics: from within that framework, the very nowness of self-experience disappears just as much as the me-ness. Think of the distinctive temporality of “the eleventh hour” discussed in An Occasional Discourse (“Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing”). Viewed third personally, the human being is an organism that lives for a particular span of time, and whose life-possibilities are largely biologically qualified much as they are for plants and animals.⁵⁷ Death hangs as an ever-present possibility over this timeline, but as a causally explicable, datable event. If we view the life of an animal—including a human animal— from a third personal, objective frame, there is simply some fact of the matter about when that animal dies, and why. Yet by dint of being subject to eternal judgment, according to Kierkegaard, humans have a radically transformed relationship to temporality: we both live in chronological time, in which there is a biologically conditioned “time for everything,” and in eternity, understood as final judgment over the whole. This gives the present moment the quality of being “the eleventh hour,” the point at which eternal judgment looms over chronological time. But from a third person perspective, this “eleventh hour” property is invisible. And unlike Ricoeurian narrative poesis, this way of interrelating two temporal realms does not generate a third realm, which the subject still fails to coincide with. Rather, analogous to Kierkegaard’s account of consciousness in Johannes Climacus, ‘the eleventh hour’ describes a non-reified “third” term for the point of collision, the mellemværelse or “in-between-being,” in which we have our existence. Likewise, a Kierkegaardian psychologist might look at a patient and diagnose despair. Perhaps they could even discern when someone entered or came out of despair, and thereby, when she became a self, how long she has been a self, and so on. Yet from the first personal perspective of the patient herself no such temporal reckoning with despair is possible, for despair is a wholly present tense concern: “Every actual moment of despair is traceable to possibility; every moment he is in despair he is bringing it upon himself. It is always the present tense; in relation to the actuality there is no pastness of the past: in every actual moment of despair the person in despair bears all the past as present in possi-

 Karl Verstrynge, “Being and Becoming a Virtual Self: Taking Kierkegaard into the Realm of Online Social Interaction,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2011, p. 308.  SKS 8, 125 – 126 / UDVS, 9 – 10.

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bility.”⁵⁸ For the subject, selfhood and despair are questions about the here and now—a “here” and a “now” that from a purely objective (impersonal, atemporal, aperspectival) frame have no real existence.

VII Taking Kierkegaard Forward The relationship between this objective frame and the deliverances of phenomenology is a standing problem for philosophy, and a fortiori, for discussions of personal identity and self-experience. It’s a common view among different camps of philosophy that the objective/naturalist worldview tends to collapse everything into itself and thereby elides what are irreducibly subjective features of experience, while the phenomenological frame tends to simply bracket anything non-phenomenal and proposes to exist in splendid isolation from the scientific image. This is a caricature, but like all good caricatures, its exaggerations capture something recognizably true. Yet as I’ve suggested, what is needed (and what some phenomenologists in particular have started to work on) is finding a way to preserve both pictures: Sellars’ stereoscopic vision. But with respect to selfhood, this is not simply a question of vision, but an interaction problem. The term “interaction problem” invokes the Cartesian question of how an immaterial thinking substance can interact casually with a material substance such as a body. (Call it the “how can ghosts turn doorknobs?” problem.) Here I want to suggest a different interaction problem: how do selves, present-tense loci of experience, interact with persons, understood as essentially diachronic entities constituted by various forms of continuity? My claim is that Kierkegaard equips us with resources for coming at this problem. In Kierkegaard we find a collision between the person as a locatable, datable, studyable public entity, and the self as an irreducibly first personal perspective on the same. And we also find rich and nuanced discussions of what it is like to live in this duplexity and the ways in which it colors and transfigures experience. For Kierkegaard the individual is both a diachronic entity, composed of various forms of psychological, physical, and social continuity, and an irreducibly present tense subject that, in Sartrean terms, never coincides with itself. In his accounts of the self in Either/Or and The Sickness Unto Death, and his account of what it is to live at the intersection of diachronic, biological time and punctual, soteriological time in Purity of Heart, we see philosophically incisive attempts to lay out how these things hang together. And, in the manner of existentialism rather than simply phenomenology,

 SKS 11, 132– 133 / SUD, 17.

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he does so from an engaged, ethically embedded perspective—precisely the sort of urgency that analytic discussions of personal identity originally started from but which have tended to drop out of its ambit. Kierkegaard, then, provides a point of departure for trying to bring what is right about each of these approaches to selfhood into a nuanced synoptic view. He will not be the whole story. But he is an excellent place to begin.

List of Contributors Vilhjálmur Árnason is professor of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of History and Philosophy, University of Iceland, Iceland. Clare Carlisle is senior lecturer in philosophy and theology at the Department of Theology & Religious Studies, King’s College London, UK. Daniel Conway is professor of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, USA. Arne Grøn is professor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen is a PhD fellow at the European Institute, The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK Noreen Khawaja is assistant professor at the Department of Religious Studies, Yale University, USA. Mélissa Fox-Muraton is professor of philosophy at École Supérieure de Commerce de Clermont-Ferrand/PHIER, Université Clermont Auvergne, France. Bernhard Obsieger is assistant professor of philosophy at the Division of Humanities, Saint Louis University Madrid, Spain. René Rosfort is associate professor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. K. Brian Söderquist is associate professor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Patrick Stokes is senior lecturer in philosophy at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, Australia. Johan Taels is professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Antwerp, Belgium. Gerhard Thonhauser is lecturer in philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Austria. Jonathan Wood holds a PhD in philosophy from the Department of Philosophy, University of Essex, UK.

Index Absurd, the 12, 20, 126, 153 – 154, 166, 186 Aesthetic, the 63, 139, 207, 210 Anxiety 8, 12, 18, 105, 129, 135, 139 – 142, 146, 151, 153, 161, 171, 175 – 182, 185 f., 189 – 191, 258 Arendt, Hannah 9, 23, 77, 225 Aristotelian 31, 54, 59 Aristotle 30 f., 36, 49 – 51, 54 – 66, 102 – 104, 113 Augustine 117, 261 Authentic 20, 25, 67 f., 122 f., 129, 132, 166, 268 Authenticity 58, 71, 113 – 115, 117, 120 f., 128 f., 154, 160, 166, 223, 247, 262, 268 Bespaloff, Rachel

2, 7 – 12, 15 – 25

Christ 32, 53, 115, 119 – 127, 129 Christendom 40, 45 f., 49, 115 – 118, 122 – 126, 153, 167 f. Christian 22, 30 – 34, 37, 40 – 47, 56, 67, 113, 115 – 130, 133, 153, 167 – 170, 200, 262 Christianity 27, 29, 33, 40, 42 – 46, 116, 124 – 126, 128 f., 153, 165, 167, 272 Consciousness 32, 60, 66, 85 f., 105, 121 – 123, 154 – 158, 160, 170 f., 175 f., 222, 251, 263, 265, 268 – 270, 277 f. Death 8, 16, 72, 74, 105 – 107, 136 f., 142, 147, 153, 158, 161 f., 166, 175 f., 178 – 180, 189, 253, 262, 264 f., 277 f. de Beauvoir, Simone 165, 269 Descartes, René 8, 194, 199 – 201, 206, 211 – 213, 263 Desire 121, 132, 156, 171 f., 181, 188 f., 210, 242 f., 254 Despair 12, 19, 22, 24, 27, 66, 105, 131, 133, 136 – 139, 142 – 145, 147, 149 – 151, 153, 157 – 162, 164, 224, 226, 233 f., 238, 274, 278 f. Dialectical 13, 21, 30 f., 66 f., 156 – 158, 224, 235, 237, 272, 276 Dialectics 21, 202 f., 210 f., 213

Earnestness 25, 67, 116, 128, 239 f., 248 – 251, 253 f., 257, 259 Emotion 171 – 173, 176, 178, 181, 195, 226 Eternal, the 76 f., 79 f., 99, 149, 160, 163, 185, 198, 273 Ethical, the 20, 24 f., 58, 62 – 65, 79, 89, 107, 121, 132, 134 f., 139, 141, 148, 150 f., 207 – 210, 256, Ethics 49 f., 54 – 61, 64, 117, 121, 136, 194, 217 – 221, 223, 227, 236 f. Existence 7 – 9, 11 – 17, 20 – 24, 28, 30 – 32, 37, 41, 43, 45 f., 49, 52, 58 – 60, 62 – 64, 66 – 68, 71 – 90, 91 – 111, 113 f., 116 f., 120 – 122, 124, 126 – 130, 132 f., 136 f., 144 f., 148 – 151, 153 – 160, 162, 166, 171 – 179, 182 – 186, 188 – 191, 193 – 195, 197, 206, 209 – 214, 217, 220, 225 f., 231, 236, 238, 240, 252, 261 – 263, 266 – 268, 270, 274, 278 f. Existential 7 – 9, 11 – 25, 27, 29, 32, 37, 39, 42, 49 – 51, 55 f., 59 – 61, 63 – 68, 71 – 73, 76 – 79, 81 f., 84 – 89, 92, 100, 102, 105, 109 f., 113 – 118, 120, 123, 125, 128, 131, 133, 149, 153 – 156, 159 – 161, 164 – 167, 170, 174 f., 193, 197, 200, 206 – 208, 212, 217 f., 220 – 222, 224, 226 – 229, 234 – 237, 239 f., 247, 259, 262 f., 266 Existentialism 7 – 8, 12, 14, 17 f., 27, 49, 71, 114 f., 117, 121, 129, 153, 167, 223, 226 f., 261 – 263, 267, 269, 279 Existentialist 7 – 9, 11 – 13, 17, 113 – 115, 132, 153 – 156, 160, 162, 167 f., 201, 220 f., 261 – 263, 267 – 269, 271 f., 275 Faith

11, 45 f., 117 – 119, 121 f., 126 – 128, 134 – 139, 144 f., 147 – 151, 153, 161, 164 f., 167, 218, 220 – 223, 226, 262 Feeling 13, 22, 134, 172, 176, 189, 194 f., 207, 209 f., 248 Fondane, Benjamin 7 – 12, 14 – 24 Freedom 20, 113, 132, 153, 158, 160, 163, 165, 171, 178 – 182, 185 – 187, 190 f., 195,

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204 – 206, 208, 212, 218 – 227, 229 f., 233, 235 – 237, 249, 256 f., 262, 267, 273 Freud, Sigmund 131, 136 – 138, 142

Jaspers, Karl 7, 9, 11, 13 f., 17, 23, 25, 45, 51 f., 167, 261 f., 267 – 270 Jesus 128, 262

Gadamer, Hans-Georg 49 – 67 God 19, 22, 24, 29, 36, 40, 53, 61, 63, 114, 117, 121 – 123, 125, 127, 129, 134 f., 146, 162 f., 165, 168 f., 188, 207, 226, 230, 234 f., 257 f., 262, 266 f. Guilt 80, 95, 156, 163, 181, 183 – 186, 191, 269

Kant, Immanuel 8, 19, 55, 104, 107, 159, 193 f., 201 – 206, 212 f. Kantian 54, 104, 159, 194, 240, 261, 263 Kierkegaard, Søren (Works) – Christian Discourses (CD) 24, 169 f., 277 – Concluding Unscientific Postscript (CUP) 17, 30 f., 59 f., 64, 66, 68, 71 – 74, 76 – 83, 85 – 87, 92 – 111, 126 f., 195, 210, 212, 277 – Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (EUD) 123, 276 – Either/Or (EO) 24, 67, 100, 121, 161 – 165, 208, 240, 255 – 259, 272, 274, 276, 279 – Fear and Trembling (FT) 25, 113, 119, 125 f., 130., 131, 133 – 148, 209 – Judge For Yourself! (JFY) 126, 129 – Literary Review (LR) 79, 144 – Philosophical Fragments (PF) 53, 120 f. – Practice in Christianity (PC) 53, 113, 119, 121, 124 – 129, 210 f. – Repetition (R) 88, 113 f., 120, 155, 161, 164 – Stages on Life’s Way (SLW) 61 – The Concept of Anxiety (CA) 81, 93, 160 f., 175 f., 181 f., 184, 186 – 191, 213, 240, 248 – 252, 263, 265, 269 – The Concept of Irony (CI) 113, 115, 117, 132, 274 – The Moment (M) 25 – The Point of View (PV) 40 – The Sickness unto Death (SUD) 28, 75, 80, 95, 122, 131, 137 f., 147, 149, 151, 156 – 160, 163 – 165, 194, 196, 224 – 226, 233 f., 238, 267, 272 – 274, 276, 279 – Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (TD) 161 f. – Two Ages (TA) 24, 64, 127 – Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (UDVS) 278 – Works of Love (WL) 250

Habermas, Jürgen 217 – 237 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 10, 29 – 37, 42, 44, 47, 51, 56, 103, 125, 155 f., 158, 207, 235, 237, 261, 263 Hegelian 27, 29 – 31, 42, 103, 263 f. Heidegger, Martin 7 – 11, 13 f., 17, 25, 27 – 47, 51, 53 – 55, 61, 67, 73, 79, 86, 89, 115, 117, 129, 141, 153 f., 159 – 161, 165 – 167, 171, 173 – 177, 179, 184, 186, 221, 239, 241, 244 f., 261, 268, 271 Hermeneutical 45, 49 – 57, 60, 61, 65, 68, 93, 174 f. Hermeneutics 49 – 51, 53 – 55, 59, 61, 93 History 8, 13, 18 – 20, 27, 29 f., 33 – 38, 40 – 42, 47, 50 f., 67, 75, 100 f., 115, 153, 163, 165, 182, 184, 191 Human condition 13, 20 f., 23 f., 58, 71 f., 87 – 90, 121, 161 f., 171, 178 f., 181, 185 – 187, 218 Husserl, Edmund 157, 171 – 174, 262, 268 Identity 60, 75, 115, 117 f., 120 f., 153, 167 – 170, 183 – 185, 241 f., 246 f., 253 – 255, 257, 265 f., 268 f., 271, 272 – 276, 278 – 280 – Personal Identity 153, 167, 170, 265 f., 272 f., 275, 278 – 280 Imagination 58, 66, 162, 174, 193 – 198, 201 – 206, 208 – 214, 230, 275 Infinity 126, 193 f., 196 – 200, 211 – 214 Intentionality 157, 171 – 176, 268 Inwardness 62, 67 f., 73, 122 f., 126 – 128, 132, 157, 159, 239 f., 248, 250 – 254, 259 Irony 113, 115 – 123, 127 – 129, 141, 145, 149 f., 193

Knowledge 19, 23 f., 33, 49 – 51, 54 – 66, 72, 91 – 92, 96 – 98, 100 – 102, 105, 119, 159,

Index

174, 184, 186 – 188, 196, 202 f., 212, 234, 237, 248, 267 – Practical knowledge (Phronesis) 49 – 51, 54 – 58, 61, 65 Love 114, 122, 128, 146, 161, 163, 172, 239 – 241, 246, 253 – 259 Mood

285

Resignation 24, 126, 128, 130, 136, 146 – 149 Responsibility 24, 60, 64, 102, 155, 157 f., 162, 164 f., 179 f., 182, 185 – 188, 191, 218, 220 – 222, 226, 229, 231 f., 234 – 237, 249, 253, 258, 262, 266, 276 Revelation 56, 164, 174 f., 178 f.

102, 209, 253, 274

Narrative 28, 75, 109, 132 f., 141 f., 144, 275 f., 278 Naturalism 261, 263 – 266, 269 – 272 Nietzsche, Friedrich 10, 16, 27, 29, 33 – 37, 40, 47, 65, 91, 100 Normative 121, 170, 200, 231 – 233, 239 f., 244, 247, 249 f., 253 f., 257 Normativity 159, 195, 209, 239, 241 – 243, 247 Ontology

43, 54, 204, 242, 265 – 267, 273

Paradox 22, 30, 32, 99, 119, 129, 140, 185, 262 Passion 11, 15 f., 23, 25, 65 – 67, 132, 134 f., 138, 145, 163, 165, 199 f. Phenomenology 17, 44 f., 88 f., 156, 158, 171, 174 f., 239 – 244, 247, 253, 259, 262, 275, 279 – Phenomenological 20, 50 f., 154, 159, 171, 174 f., 236 f., 240 f., 244, 261 f., 275 f., 279 Plato 8, 50, 57, 68, 114, 116, 118, 198 Platonic 113 f., 117, 120 f., 198 Reality 12 f., 22, 31, 37, 50, 64 – 65, 67, 113, 155, 161 f., 170, 173, 178, 182, 190 f., 193 – 198, 201 – 204, 206 – 214, 224, 264, 267 Religion 122, 124 f. 167 – Religious 40 f., 44, 50 f., 56, 59, 61 f., 64, 66, 119, 122, 124, 127, 132, 134, 137, 140 f., 153 f., 162 – 165, 167, 169 f., 191, 200, 226, 235 f., 239, 257 Religious, the 24, 29, 50, 61, 67 f., 116 207, 210, 226, 235 f., 239, 257 Repentance 154, 161 – 165, 269

Sartre, Jean-Paul 7 f., 12 f., 15, 18, 20, 25, 115, 117 f., 121, 129, 154, 157, 160 f., 166, 171, 175, 177, 179, 182, 185 f., 218, 220, 222 – 224, 226 f., 261 f., 267 f., 270, 276 Self 22, 51, 53, 60, 63, 67, 75, 80, 84, 100, 104, 114 f., 142, 144, 146 f., 149 – 151, 156 – 160, 163, 165 f., 168, 170, 171, 180 – 185, 190 f., 196 f., 224 – 226, 233, 235 – 237, 261 f., 266, 268 – 279 – Self-awareness 174, 191, 243, 251 – 253, 259 – Self-consciousness 58, 156, 242 f., 248, 251 f., 263 f. – Self-knowledge 62, 67, 122, 174, 196 – Self-understanding 50, 53 – 55, 68, 174, 217 – 220, 228, 230, 232 – 237 Selfhood 41 f., 75, 80, 174, 179, 185 f., 190 f., 261, 265 – 267, 271 – 276, 278 – 280 Shestov, Lev 7 – 12, 14 – 17, 19 – 24 Silence 134, 140 f. Sin 117, 121 f., 129, 155, 161, 164 f., 186 – 191, 274 Single Individual 33, 37, 42 – 44, 58, 64, 67, 209, 263 Socrates 49 f., 59, 68, 99, 113, 116, 118 – 120, 132 f., 252 Socratic 62, 113, 115 – 117, 120 – 122, 129 Spirit 68, 138, 160, 191, 199, 217 f., 226 f., 230, 233 f., 248, 273 – Spiritual 11, 18 f., 22, 61, 120, 122, 124, 128, 131, 133, 138, 147, 154, 156, 159, 166, 168, 170, 209 Subjectivity 7, 17 f., 21 f., 30 – 32, 36 f., 42 f., 60, 64, 73, 75, 77, 116, 132, 159, 206, 223, 228, 230, 262, 266 Suffering 19 f., 75, 84, 125, 128, 135, 146 f., 157, 210 f., 213

286

Index

Temporality 8, 77, 80, 88, 114 f., 181, 183 – 185, 195, 269, 277 f. Transcendence 13, 17 f., 20 – 22, 81, 213, 223, 268 Truth 15, 18 – 21, 24, 33, 49 – 52, 55 – 57, 59 – 61, 63, 65, 67 f., 99 f., 113 – 115, 117,

122, 125, 149, 155, 202, 229, 235, 259, 270 Wahl, Jean

7 – 17, 19 – 24