Volume 9: Kierkegaard and Existentialism (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources) [1 ed.] 9781409426417, 1409426416

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KierKegaard and existentialism

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources Volume 9

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources is a publication of the søren Kierkegaard research Centre

General Editor Jon stewart Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Editorial Board Finn gredal Jensen Katalin nun peter ŠaJda Advisory Board lee C. barrett marÍa J. binetti istvÁn CzaKÓ HeiKo sCHulz Curtis l. tHompson

Kierkegaard and existentialism

Edited by Jon stewart

First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2011 Jon stewart Jon stewart has asserted his right under the Copyright, designs and patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice .. Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kierkegaard and existentialism. – (Kierkegaard research : sources, reception and resources v. 9) 1. Kierkegaard, søren, 1813–1855. 2. Kierkegaard, søren, 1813–1855 – Influence. 3. Existentialism. i. series ii. stewart, Jon (Jon bartley) 198.9–dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kierkegaard and existentialism / [edited by] Jon stewart. p. cm.— (Kierkegaard research ; v. 9) includes bibliographical references and indexes. isbn 978-1-4094-2641-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Kierkegaard, søren, 1813–1855. 2. existentialism. i. stewart, Jon (Jon bartley) b4377.K4525 2010 198’.9—dc22 2010043839 isbn 9781409426417 (hbk)

Cover design by Katalin nun

Contents List of Contributors Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations simone de beauvoir: a Founding Feminist’s appreciation of Kierkegaard Ronald M. Green and Mary Jean Green

vii ix xi xiii

1

nicholas berdyaev: Kierkegaard amongst the artists, mystics, and solitary thinkers George Pattison

23

martin buber: “no-one Can so refute Kierkegaard as Kierkegaard Himself” Peter Šajda

33

albert Camus: walled within god Leo Stan

63

martin Heidegger: Kierkegaard’s Influence Hidden and In Full View Vincent McCarthy

95

michel Henry: the goodness of living affectivity Leo Stan

127

Karl Jaspers: a great awakener’s way to philosophy of existence István Czakó

155

gabriel marcel: the silence of truth Jeanette Bresson Ladegaard Knox

199

vi

Kierkegaard and Existentialism

Jacques maritain: Kierkegaard as “Champion of the singular” Nathaniel Kramer

217

maurice merleau-ponty: Kierkegaard’s Influence on His Work Elisabetta Basso

233

Friedrich nietzsche: rival visions of the best way of life Thomas Miles

263

Franz rosenzweig: a Kindred spirit in alignment with Kierkegaard Claudia Welz

299

Jean-paul sartre: Kierkegaard’s Influence on His Theory of Nothingness Manuela Hackel

323

lev shestov: Kierkegaard in the ox of phalaris George Pattison

355

miguel de unamuno: Kierkegaard’s spanish “brother” Jan E. Evans

375

Jean wahl: philosophies of existence and the introduction of Kierkegaard in the non-germanic world Alejandro Cavallazzi Sánchez and Azucena Palavicini Sánchez

393

Index of Persons Index of Subjects

415 423

list of Contributors

Elisabetta Basso, c/o søren Kierkegaard research Centre, Farvergade 27d, 1463 Copenhagen K, denmark. Jeanette Bresson Ladegaard Knox, dis, danish institute for study abroad, vestergade 5–7, 1456 Copenhagen K, denmark. Alejandro Cavallazzi Sánchez, universidad iberoamericana, mexico City, prolongación paseo de la reforma 880, lomas de santa Fe, mexico, C.p. 01219, distrito Federal, mexico. István Czakó, pázmány péter Catholic university, Faculty of Humanities, department of philosophy, egyetem út 1, 2087 piliscsaba, Hungary. Jan E. Evans, department of modern Foreign languages, division of spanish and portuguese, baylor university, one bear place #97393, morrison Hall 311, waco, tx 76798-7393, usa. Mary Jean Green, department of French and italian, dartmouth College, Hanover, nH 03755, usa. Ronald M. Green, department of religion, thornton Hall, dartmouth College, Hanover, nH 03755, usa. Manuela Hackel, Freie universität berlin, institut für philosophie, Habelschwerdter allee 30, 14195 berlin, germany. Nathaniel Kramer, Humanities Classics and Comparative literature, brigham Young university, 3031 JFsb, provo, ut 84602, usa. Vincent McCarthy, department of philosophy, saint Joseph’s university, 5600 City avenue, philadelphia, pa 19131-1895, usa. Thomas Miles, philosophy department, boston College, 21 Campanella way, Chestnut Hill, ma 02467, usa. Azucena Palavicini, universidad intercontinental “ducit et docet,” Cantera 251, C.p. 14420 tlalpan, mexico City, mexico.

viii

Kierkegaard and Existentialism

George Pattison, Christ Church, oxford ox1 1dp, england. Peter Šajda, slovak academy of sciences, institute of philosophy, Klemensova 19, 813 64 bratislava, slovakia. Leo Stan, Centre for the study of theory and Criticism, university of western ontario, somerville House, rm. 2345a, london, ontario n6a 3K7, Canada. Claudia Welz, Faculty of theology, university of Copenhagen, Købmagergade 44–46, 1150 Copenhagen K, denmark.

preface

The term “existentialism” has traditionally been notoriously difficult to define due to the fact that the word has been attached to the work of so many different thinkers with such diverse agendas and writings. However, there can be no doubt that most of the thinkers who are usually associated with the existentialist tradition, for whatever their actual doctrines, were in one way or another influenced by the writings of Kierkegaard. This influence is so great that it can be fairly stated that the existentialist movement was in large part responsible for the major advance in Kierkegaard’s international reception that took place in the twentieth century. it was with existentialism that Kierkegaard first entered the standard canon of Western philosophy. From that point on it has been customary to begin introductory courses on existentialism with a lecture on Kierkegaard or to include a snippet from his works in anthologies of existentialist writers. the special importance of Kierkegaard for this tradition can be found in a number of different aspects of his writings. Perhaps most significantly his rejection of german idealism as a model for philosophical analysis and his focus instead on the lived experience of the individual were key sources of inspiration for the existentialist writers. they, too, sought to develop a new kind of philosophy that was more in touch with the actual problems of human life and existence, while rejecting what they regarded as abstract conceptual analysis for its own sake. a part of Kierkegaard’s criticism of the tradition of german philosophy was his rejection of what he regarded as their arid form of writing. instead, he pioneered different kinds of genres in order to find a suitable expression for his thought and also to distance himself from then mainstream philosophy. Kierkegaard’s unique style and playful use of genre also exercised an influence on the existentialists. Many of the major figures of the existentialist movement, such as Sartre, Camus, unamuno, and de beauvoir also attempted to present their ideas in literary forms and not just philosophical treatises. In Kierkegaard’s writings one can find a rich array of concepts that became central to the existentialists’ palette. His analyses of concepts such as anxiety, despair, freedom, sin, the crowd, and sickness all came to be standard motifs in existentialist literature. despite the profoundly religious nature of his thought, his writings had a broad appeal to many secular thinkers, who simply imported his ideas into their contexts, while abstracting from their religious aspects. while it has been argued that some thinkers associated with existentialism, such as Heidegger, consciously attempted to hide the importance of Kierkegaard for their thought, others openly acknowledged it by bringing him explicitly into their own analyses. indeed, it can be said that sartre was in large measure responsible for

x

Kierkegaard and Existentialism

canonizing Kierkegaard as one of the forerunners of existentialism by casting him in this role in his influential lecture Existentialism is a Humanism from 1945. at that time immediately after the second world war, some thinkers felt the need to consolidate the movement known as “existentialism.” this was due to the fact that the word had quickly attained a wide currency in cultural life and was being bandied about so irresponsibly that it was in danger of becoming completely meaningless. thus, in this work Sartre makes an attempt to define the fundamental doctrine of the school, which he declares to be the thesis “existence precedes essence.”1 it was claimed by some critics that existentialism was not a genuine philosophical school of thought, and so it was natural for sartre to attempt to create a tradition for it by looking back to thinkers such as Kierkegaard in order to find forerunners and precursors. In this way sartre attempts to incorporate Kierkegaard into the existentialist movement. However, recent scholarship has been attentive to the ideological use of Kierkegaard in this context. indeed, sartre seemed to be exploiting Kierkegaard for his own purposes and not accurately representing the thought of the dane in its original nineteenth-century philosophical milieu. For example, it has been common to point out that Kierkegaard would not even agree with Sartre’s own stated first principle of existentialism quoted above. suspicions of misrepresentation and distortions have led many commentators to go back and reexamine the complex relation between Kierkegaard and the existentialist thinkers. this project is continued in the articles featured in the present volume. Given this profound history of influence, it was decided that it would be appropriate to dedicate a full volume to this tradition of reception on its own, instead of incorporating these articles into the volumes dedicated to the reception of Kierkegaard in philosophy, theology, literature, the social sciences, and socialpolitical thought, although these articles would also fit well in these other volumes. The articles in the present volume feature figures from the French, German, Spanish, and russian traditions of existentialism. they examine the rich and varied use of Kierkegaard by these later thinkers, and, most importantly, they problematize his purported role in this famous intellectual movement.

Jean-paul sartre, L’Existentialisme est un humanisme, paris: nagel 1961, p. 17. (english translation: Existentialism and Humanism, trans. by philip mairet, london: methuen 1948, p. 26.) 1

acknowledgements

in addition to the authors themselves, several people have been involved in the production of this volume, and their selfless efforts are greatly appreciated. Peter Šajda did the enormous preliminary bibliographical work for all the articles not just in this volume but in all the volumes of the “reception” part of the series. His outstanding bibliographies have been a great aid to all of the contributing authors. a number of other scholars have helped to locate older texts, check references, and evaluate articles. Here i would like to express my gratitude to lee C. barrett, ingrid basso, maría J. binetti, istván Czakó, darya loungina, markus Kleinert, david d. possen, Heiko schulz, gerhard schreiber, and gerhard thonhauser. i am deeply grateful to Yusuke suzuki for his help with the Japanese titles and to tamar aylatYaguri for her help with the Hebrew and arabic ones. this volume would never have been realized if it were not for the tireless editorial work of Katalin nun. as usual, Finn gredal Jensen has been of great assistance with checking the proofs and ferreting out the tiniest of errors and inconsistencies. i would like to thank our copyeditor philip Hillyer and our typesetter nicholas wain for making the production process so smooth. on behalf of the members of the editorial and advisory boards, i would like to thank the staff at ashgate publishing for their continued support of the series. Finally, my deepest thanks goes to the contributors of this volume who consistently responded to our often demanding and time-consuming requests with patience and kindness. their efforts have made this volume an important contribution to the understanding of Kierkegaard’s complex relation to the existentialist movement.

list of abbreviations

Danish Abbreviations B&A

Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by niels thulstrup, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: munksgaard 1953–54.

Bl.art. S. Kierkegaard’s Bladartikler, med Bilag samlede efter Forfatterens Død, udgivne som Supplement til hans øvrige Skrifter, ed. by rasmus nielsen, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1857. EP

Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, vols. 1–9, ed. by H.p. barfod and Hermann gottsched, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1869–81.

Pap.

Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. i to xi–3, ed. by peter andreas Heiberg, victor Kuhr and einer torsting, Copenhagen: gyldendalske boghandel, nordisk Forlag, 1909–48; second, expanded ed., vols. i to xi–3, by niels thulstrup, vols. xii to xiii supplementary volumes, ed. by niels thulstrup, vols. xiv to xvi index by niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1968–78.

SKS

Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vols. 1–28, vols. K1–K28, ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, alastair mcKinnon and Finn Hauberg mortensen, Copenhagen: gads Forlag 1997ff.

SV1

Samlede Værker, ed. by a.b. drachmann, Johan ludvig Heiberg and H.o. lange, vols. i–xiv, Copenhagen: gyldendalske boghandels Forlag 1901–06. English Abbreviations

AN

Armed Neutrality, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998.

AR

On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler, trans. by walter lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1955.

ASKB

The Auctioneer’s Sales Record of the Library of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by H.p. rohde, Copenhagen: the royal library 1967.

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BA

The Book on Adler, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998.

C

The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1997.

CA

The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by reidar thomte in collaboration with albert b. anderson, princeton: princeton university press 1980.

CD

Christian Discourses, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1997.

CI

The Concept of Irony, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1989.

CIC

The Concept of Irony, trans. with an introduction and notes by lee m. Capel, london: Collins 1966.

COR

The Corsair Affair; Articles Related to the Writings, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1982.

CUP1

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1982.

CUP2

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1982.

CUPH Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by alastair Hannay, Cambridge and new York: Cambridge university press 2009. EO1

Either/Or, part i, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1987.

EO2

Either/Or, part ii, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1987.

EOP

Either/Or, trans. by alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: penguin books 1992.

EPW

Early Polemical Writings, among others: From the Papers of One Still Living; Articles from Student Days; The Battle Between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, trans. by Julia watkin, princeton: princeton university press 1990.

EUD

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1990.

List of Abbreviations

xv

FSE

For Self-Examination, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1990.

FT

Fear and Trembling, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1983.

FTP

Fear and Trembling, trans. by alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: penguin books 1985.

JC

Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1985.

JFY

Judge for Yourself!, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1990.

JP

Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 1–6, ed. and trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, assisted by gregor malantschuk (vol. 7, index and Composite Collation), bloomington and london: indiana university press 1967–78.

KAC

Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom,” 1854–1855, trans. by walter lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1944.

KJN

Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, vols. 1–11, ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn, alastair Hannay, david Kangas, bruce H. Kirmmse, george pattison, vanessa rumble, and K. brian söderquist, princeton and oxford: princeton university press 2007ff.

LD

Letters and Documents, trans. by Henrik rosenmeier, princeton: princeton university press 1978.

LR

A Literary Review, trans. by alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: penguin books 2001.

M

The Moment and Late Writings, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998.

P

Prefaces / Writing Sampler, trans. by todd w. nichol, princeton: princeton university press 1997.

PC

Practice in Christianity, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1991.

PF

Philosophical Fragments, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1985.

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PJ

Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: penguin books 1996.

PLR

Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Occasion May Require, trans. by william mcdonald, tallahassee: Florida state university press 1989.

PLS

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by david F. swenson and walter lowrie, princeton: princeton university press 1941.

PV

The Point of View including On My Work as an Author, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, and Armed Neutrality, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1998.

PVL

The Point of View for My Work as an Author including On My Work as an Author, trans. by walter lowrie, new York and london: oxford university press 1939.

R

Repetition, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1983.

SBL

Notes of Schelling’s Berlin Lectures, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1989.

SLW

Stages on Life’s Way, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1988.

SUD

The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1980.

SUDP

The Sickness unto Death, trans. by alastair Hannay, london and new York: penguin books 1989.

TA

Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1978.

TD

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1993.

UD

Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1993.

WA

Without Authority including The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air, Two Ethical-Religious Essays, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, An Upbuilding Discourse, Two Discourses at the Communion on

List of Abbreviations

xvii

Fridays, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1997. WL

Works of Love, trans. by Howard v. Hong and edna H. Hong, princeton: princeton university press 1995.

WS

Writing Sampler, trans. by todd w. nichol, princeton: princeton university press 1997.

simone de beauvoir: a Founding Feminist’s appreciation of Kierkegaard ronald m. green and mary Jean green

“ ‘what a curse to be a woman! and yet the very worst curse when one is a woman is, in fact, not to understand that it is one.’ Kierkegaard” simone de beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 2, epigraph1

I. Introduction simone de beauvoir’s The Second Sex is widely regarded as the founding text of the modern feminist movement. in this work, beauvoir combines her extensive reading in philosophy and literary texts with insights drawn from the French existentialist philosopher (and her lifelong partner), Jean-paul sartre (1905–80), to offer a view of woman as “the Other,” a being defined not in her own right, but only as one who is regarded negatively in relation to man. “He is the subject, he is the absolute. she is the other.”2 throughout this text, and the philosophical writings and novels that surround it in her authorship, beauvoir expresses a philosophical and ethical perspective based on the existentialist philosophy she shared with Jean-paul sartre. according to this, the human condition is marked by ambiguity. each of us, regardless of our sex, plays out “[t]he same drama of flesh and spirit, and of finitude and transcendence.”3 as expressed in her well-known assertion, “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman,”4 beauvoir contends that femininity is not a given of biology, but rather a situation produced by “civilization as a whole”5:

the French original reads: “Quel malheur que d’être femme! et pourtant le pire malheur quand on est femme est au fond de ne pas comprendre que c’en est un.”—simone de beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vols. 1–2, paris: gallimard 1949, vol. 2, p. 7. (english translation: The Second Sex, trans. by Constance borde and sheila malovany-Chevallier, new York: alfred a. Knopf 2010, p. 277.) 2 beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 1, p. 15. (The Second Sex, p. 6.) 3 beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 2, p. 573. (The Second Sex, p. 763.) 4 beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 2, p. 13. (The Second Sex, p. 283.) 5 ibid. 1

2

Ronald M. Green and Mary Jean Green what singularly defines the situation of woman is that being, like all other humans, an autonomous freedom, she discovers and chooses herself in a world where men force her to assume herself as Other....Woman’s drama lies in this conflict between the fundamental claim of every subject, which always posits itself as essential; and the demands of a situation that constitutes her as inessential.6

in developing her argument in The Second Sex, beauvoir several times mentions Kierkegaard and draws on his writings. Her use of the quotation attributed to Kierkegaard as an epigraph for the second volume of the original French publication typifies her references to the Danish thinker in this work. Beauvoir repeatedly appears to present Kierkegaard as a writer offering disparaging views of women. as in the epigraph, the quotations drawn from Kierkegaard’s writings and the references to him portray woman as belonging to the weaker sex; she lacks a full measure of reason and reflectivity, and she is prone to illusions. Her greatest value is to stir aspirations to ideality in man—she is an idea into which man projects his own transcendence—but actual relations with her, as in marriage, have the opposite effect of dampening man’s self-transcendence. the 1952 H.m. parshley english translation of The Second Sex, which influenced Anglo-American readings of Beauvoir’s understanding of Kierkegaard, omits the epigraph attributed to Kierkegaard, although it retains almost all of these seemingly negative citations from and references to Kierkegaard. this epigraph is restored in the recent 2010 translation, complete and unabridged, by Constance borde and sheila malovany-Chevallier. However, neither beauvoir nor her translators mention the pseudonymous sources of the Kierkegaard references.7 since The Second Sex is beauvoir’s most widely read work, especially in the parshley translation, many of her readers could reasonably conclude that the sum of beauvoir’s debt to Kierkegaard was to regard him as epitomizing nineteenthcentury male attitudes toward women.8 this conclusion, however, is seriously misleading. beauvoir was far from being merely a critic of Kierkegaard. she was clearly familiar with Kierkegaard’s place beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 1, p. 31. (The Second Sex, p. 17.) sonia sikka, in a brief mention of beauvoir’s use of Kierkegaard in her “the delightful other: portraits of the Feminine in Kierkegaard, nietzsche, and levinas,” in Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. by tina Chanter, university park, pennsylvania: pennsylvania state university press 2001, p. 117, note 3, notes that beauvoir, “frequently attributes remarks made from the aesthetic point of view in Kierkegaard’s works to Kierkegaard himself, mistakenly assuming that they can be counted among the opinions that Kierkegaard holds.” 8 a notable exception here is sylvia walsh. in her article, “Feminine devotion and selfabandonment: simone de beauvoir and søren Kierkegaard on the woman in love,” Philosophy Today, vol. 42 supplement, 1998, pp. 35–40, walsh argues (on p. 35) that “beauvoir’s phenomenological description and critique of feminine devotion and self-abandonment in this text [The Second Sex], especially in the chapter on ‘The Woman in Love,’ bear a close affinity with Kierkegaard’s treatment of these qualities in two of his most important writings, The Sickness unto Death and Works of Love.” this may be true. However, apart from a mention of The Sickness unto Death in a letter by sartre to her (see below, note 44), beauvoir never indicates that she has read The Sickness unto Death, and she nowhere cites it. the same is true of Works of Love, which was not published in a French translation until 1945. 6 7

Simone de Beauvoir: A Founding Feminist’s Appreciation of Kierkegaard

3

in the emergence of existentialist thinking. she drew from him key insights about the human condition, ethics, and the relations of men and women. even her use of Kierkegaard’s writings in The Second Sex is far more nuanced than it seems to be. not only does she appear to recognize the ironic distancing that permeates many of her Kierkegaard references, she was deeply appreciative of Kierkegaard use of fictional literature as a philosophical tool and as a means of exploring gender relations. indeed, in some respects, The Second Sex builds on work begun by Kierkegaard in his own explorations of gender relations in Either/Or and Stages on Life’s Way. II. Beauvoir’s Reading of Kierkegaard we have two main sources for ascertaining beauvoir’s familiarity with Kierkegaard. The first are remarks in her autobiographical writings, principally La force de l’âge translated as The Prime of Life published in 1960,9 her autobiographical account of the 1930s and 1940s, the years during which she began her intensive encounter with Kierkegaard’s writings. these remarks are supported by statements in her diary and in her correspondence with sartre during this period. the second are explicit references to Kierkegaard’s writings in her published works. additionally, a small number of remarks in other published correspondence or interviews mention Kierkegaard in general terms or as one of the key figures in the development of existentialism.10 by triangulating information from these sources, we can develop a solid idea of what beauvoir read. Beauvoir’s personal discovery of Kierkegaard reflected the changes in her philosophical outlook brought about by the war and the nazi occupation of France. it was during the winter of 1939–40 that she began her serious study of Kierkegaard’s writings. speaking of this wartime period in The Prime of Life, she writes: i went on reading Hegel, and was now beginning to understand him rather better. His amplitude of detail dazzled me, and his system as a whole made me feel giddy. it was, indeed, tempting to abolish one’s individual self and merge with universal being, to observe one’s own life in the perspective of Historical Necessity...But the least flutter of my heart gave such speculations the lie. Hate, anger, expectation or misery would assert themselves against all my efforts to by-pass them, and this “flight into the Universal” merely formed one further episode in my private development. i turned back to Kierkegaard and began to read him with passionate interest. the type of “truth” that he postulated defied doubt no less triumphantly than Descartes’ use of “evidence.” Neither History, nor the Hegelian system could any more than the devil in person, upset the living certainty of “i am, i exist, here and now. i am myself.”11

simone de beauvoir, La force de l’âge, paris: gallimard 1960. (english translation: The Prime of Life, trans. by peter green, Harmondsworth: penguin 1960.) 10 in a letter to nelson algren dated august 3, 1947, beauvoir asserts that Kierkegaard, along with Hans Christian andersen, is “the great man of denmark.” simone de beauvoir, A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren, new York: the new press 1997, p. 55. 11 beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 537. (The Prime of Life, pp. 468–9.) 9

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Ronald M. Green and Mary Jean Green

although French translations of Kierkegaard’s major works had appeared throughout the 1930s, in The Prime of Life beauvoir admits that neither she nor sartre had evidenced much interest in them. while stating that they read “omnivorously” during the early 1930s,12 beauvoir admits that they “paid no especial attention to Kierkegaard’s Journal of a Tempter,”13 which was a French translation of “diary of a seducer” in 1929.14 speaking of the period 1933–34, beauvoir confesses their mutual indifference to Kierkegaard: “The first translations of Kierkegaard appeared about this time; we had no particular incentive to read them, and left them untouched.”15 it was, however, in the atmosphere of impending war in 1939, and particularly following the shock of the german entry into paris in June of 1940, that beauvoir undertook a serious reading of Kierkegaard. in her autobiography, she attempts to explain what she calls the “metamorphosis” that occurred during the period when she was writing what would become her first published novel L’invitée (She Came to Stay), from october 1938 to the late spring of 1941: but while i was so laboriously conjuring this novel from the void, the weather broke, the sun moved on, and i became a different person. Hitherto my sole concern had been to enrich my personal life and learn the art of converting it into words. little by little i had abandoned the quasi-solipsism and illusory autonomy i cherished as a girl of twenty; though i had come to recognize the fact of other people’s existence, it was still my individual relationships with separate people that mattered most to me, and i still yearned fiercely for happiness. Then, suddenly, History burst over me, and I dissolved into fragments. I woke to find myself scattered over the four quarters of the globe, linked by every nerve in me to each and every other individual. all my ideas and values were turned upside down; even the pursuit of happiness lost its importance.16

in her introduction to the english translation of beauvoir’s Wartime Diary, margaret a. simons sees beauvoir’s philosophical turn from Hegel to Kierkegaard as expressing itself in Kierkegaardian language when beauvoir writes on January 9, 1941: “i have become conscious again of my individuality and of the metaphysical being that is opposed to this historical infinity where Hegel optimistically dilutes all things. anguish.”17 in 1939 the absence of sartre and other male friends, called up for military service during the drôle de guerre, left beauvoir plenty of time for reading. on november 28, 1939, her daily letter informs sartre that she has borrowed The Concept of Anxiety from the library at her lycée where she was then teaching, and she offers to send it on beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 57. (The Prime of Life, p. 46.) beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 59. (The Prime of Life, p. 48.) 14 søren Kierkegaard, Le journal du séducteur, trans. and introduced by Jean J. gateau, paris: stock, delamain & boutelleau 1929 (Le cabinet cosmopolite, série scandinave, vol. 43). 15 beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 157. (The Prime of Life, p. 135.) 16 beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 423. (The Prime of Life, pp. 369–70.) 17 simone de beauvoir, Journal de guerre: Septembre 1939–Janvier 1941, paris: gallimard 1990, p. 361. (english translation: Wartime Diary, trans. by anne deing Cordero, ed. by margaret a. simons and sylvie le bon de beauvoir, urbana: university of illinois press 2008, p. 28.) 12 13

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to him. Her initial comment on the book may betray her lack of prior acquaintance with Kierkegaard’s work: “in any case, I’ll look it over to find out what it’s about.”18 it is not clear, however, when (or whether) she read it. soon after this initial encounter with The Concept of Anxiety, beauvoir was invited to dinner by her politically-engaged friend Colette audry and had the opportunity to meet Jean wahl (1888–1974), the French scholar whose prefaces and commentaries on Kierkegaard’s work had been crucial in introducing the danish philosopher to a French public. unfortunately, in neither this nor subsequent meetings with wahl does beauvoir tell us what they may have said to each other about Kierkegaard, although we know she finally read what she termed “Wahl’s essays on him” in november 1939.19 it is only beauvoir’s discovery of Fear and Trembling, lent to her by Colette Audry in March 1940 that finally seems to awaken her interest. Although she criticizes the writing (“it’s badly constructed and long-winded”), beauvoir expresses her enthusiasm to sartre: “that fellow did realize what an existential ethics was—and you can already sense there what Kafka [a writer much admired by both beauvoir and sartre] owes to him...he interests me more than i expected.”20 after the disruption of her life caused by the german invasion in the summer of 1940, Beauvoir gets back to sustained philosophical reading only when she finds herself spending the Christmas vacation of 1940 alone in paris while sartre is a prisoner of war in germany. Freed from teaching, she prepares for the break by arming herself with a number of books by Kierkegaard, which she proceeds to read in her favorite hangout, the Café de Flore. as she tells sartre, she is happy to get back to reading Kierkegaard, and she lingers on the description of her solitary Christmas day: “outside the weather’s beautifully cold and dry, and paris has a deserted, country look. i feel comfortable because i’m going to spend quite a while reading Kierkegaard, then i’ll go to the concert....”21 although the only title she refers to in these letters is, again, The Concept of Anxiety, she is clearly reading several other works, as well as the commentaries by Jean wahl, probably his Études kierkegaardiennes, a 750-page introduction to Kierkegaard published in 1938.22 this volume, which draws heavily on german secondary writings on Kierkegaard, has substantial appendices dealing with Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel and his influence on both Heidegger and Jaspers. It also includes nearly ninety pages of extracts from Kierkegaard’s journals and papers. since beauvoir was writing her novel She Came to Stay at this time, it is tempting to think that she may have found parallels between Kierkegaard’s “diary simone de beauvoir, Lettres à Sartre 1930–1939, ed. by sylvie le bon de beauvoir, paris: gallimard 1990, p. 310. the translation here is ours; this portion of the letter is not included in the english translation of the letters. 19 beauvoir, Lettres à Sartre 1930–1939, p. 312. this portion of the letter is not included in the english translation of the letters. 20 simone de beauvoir, Lettres à Sartre 1940–1963, ed. by sylvie le bon de beauvoir, paris: gallimard 1990, p. 146. (english translation: Letters to Sartre, trans. by Quintin Hoare, new York: arcade 1990, p. 304.) 21 beauvoir, Lettres à Sartre 1940–1963, pp. 214–15. (Letters to Sartre, pp. 357–8.) 22 Jean wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: F. aubier 1938. 18

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of a seducer” and the rather cold-blooded seduction of a younger woman undertaken by the novel’s leading male character, pierre. in one passage, pierre, describes his seduction of the young woman, xavière, in terms reminiscent of the “diary.” it is not, he says, sensual enjoyment that he seeks but rather to be the sole object of her attention.23 However, beauvoir’s own accounts of the novel’s conception fail to mention Kierkegaard; rather, they ground the seduction scenes in her own experience with a love triangle she had experienced with sartre and one of her own students. However, the influence of Kierkegaard is evident in the conception of her novel, The Blood of Others, written during the war years and published in 1945. the novel is centered on the moral decisions facing a small group of Resistance fighters, whose leader, the novel’s protagonist, Jean blomart, struggles with the anguish of moral choice: by his actions or failure to act in the face of german oppression, he finds himself responsible for the lives of others. Describing the development of her character, beauvoir comments in The Prime of Life: He gave up trying to untie the gordian knot, and slashed it through. after years of pacifism, he now accepted violence and organized guerilla “outrages” in the teeth of possible reprisals. this resolution did not bring him peace of mind, but peace of mind he no longer aspired to; he resigned himself to a life of mental agony. (i had been very struck by Kierkegaard’s idea that a genuinely moral person could never have an easy conscience, and only pledges his liberty in “fear and trembling.”)24

later in the autobiography, beauvoir invokes Kierkegaard while discussing her wartime play, Les Bouches Inutiles, where she again confronts the moral problem of sacrificing innocent people for a higher cause: “The heroine’s question, ‘Why should we choose peace?’ reflects—as does the end of The Blood of Others—the moral implicit in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.”25 As she finished The Blood of Others, published after the liberation with great success, beauvoir was forced to confront the question of her relationship to “existentialism,” a term that had been inserted into French philosophical discussions by the Christian thinker gabriel marcel (1889–1973). when she was introduced by sartre to the philosopher Jean grenier (1898–1971), who was planning a series of essays on contemporary philosophical trends, Grenier immediately asked Beauvoir to define her philosophical position: “ ‘what about you, madame’ [grenier] enquired. ‘are you an existentialist?’ ”26 Her understanding of the term, at this point in 1944, was vague at best, although she immediately identifies it with Kierkegaard: “I can still recall my embarrassment at this question. i had read Kierkegaard, and the term ‘existential philosophy’ had been in circulation for some time apropos of Heidegger; but i didn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘existentialist,’ which gabriel marcel had recently coined.”27 nevertheless, simone de beauvoir, L’Invitée, paris: gallimard 1943, p. 228. (english translation: She Came to Stay, trans. by ivonne moyse and roger senhouse, new York: w.w. norton 1954, p. 208.) 24 beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 619. (The Prime of Life, pp. 541–2.) 25 beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 673. (The Prime of Life, p. 589.) 26 beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 625. (The Prime of Life, p. 547.) 27 beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 625. (The Prime of Life, pp. 547–8.) 23

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at sartre’s urging, beauvoir accepted grenier’s invitation to write a short piece for his collection, an essay that became Pyrrhus et Cinéas. Following the Liberation of France in 1944, Beauvoir was again forced to define her philosophical identity when The Blood of Others was greeted not only as a novel of the resistance but also as an “existentialist novel,” a label also applied to sartre’s newly-published novels, The Age of Reason and The Reprieve. after some hesitation, both embarked on what beauvoir terms in her autobiography an “existentialist offensive,”28 with sartre writing his essay Existentialism is a Humanism and beauvoir delivering a lecture on literature and metaphysics to the students of gabriel marcel. this lecture was later published in 1946, along with three other essays, as part of a series in sartre and beauvoir’s newly-formed journal, Les Temps Modernes.29 if the name of Kierkegaard is frequently invoked in beauvoir’s short philosophical writings of this period, it is because the danish philosopher is important in explaining how her own thinking and that of Sartre can be defined as a form of existentialism. Kierkegaard continues to play the role of founding father of her own existentialist movement for many years. in an interview aired on australian radio in early 1975, for example, beauvoir responds to a question by pierre vicary about the existentialist movement of the 1940s and 1950s: “existentialism as such began long before then. The first Existentialists were Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Jaspers. then came the Christian existentialism of gabriel marcel and the atheistic existentialism of sartre.”30 our second, and perhaps most important source of information on beauvoir’s familiarity with Kierkegaard are explicit quotations from his writings in her published works. proceeding chronologically, there are two mentions of Kierkegaard in her 1944 philosophical essay, Pyrrhus et Cinéas. The first is at best an uncertain reference to The Concept of Anxiety (in French, Le concept de l’angoisse), which we know from her autobiography she was reading during the drôle de guerre: the nothingness that anguish (angoisse) reveals to me is not the nothingness of my death. it is the negativity at the heart of my life that allows me to constantly transcend all transcendence. and the consciousness of this power is translated not by the assumption of my death, but rather by this “irony” of which Kierkegaard or nietzsche speaks: even though i would be immortal, even though i would try to identify myself with immortal humanity, every end would remain a departure, every surpassing an object to surpass, and that in this game of relationships there is no other absolute than the totality of these very relationships, emerging in the void, without support.31 simone de beauvoir, La force des choses, vols. 1–2, paris: gallimard 1962, vol. 1, p. 60. (english translation: Force of Circumstance, vols. 1–2, trans. by richard Howard, new York: paragon House 1992 [1963], vol. 1, p. 38.) 29 simone de beauvoir, “littérature et métaphysique,” Les Temps Modernes, vol. 1, no. 7, 1946, pp. 1153–63. 30 this interview is presented in max Charlesworth, The Existentialists and Jean-Paul Sartre, new York: st. martin’s press 1975, pp. 5–6. 31 simone de beauvoir, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, paris: gallimard 1944, p. 63. (english translation in Philosophical Writings, ed. by margaret a. simons, marybeth timmermann, and mary beth mader, urbana, illinois: university of illinois press 2004, pp. 114–15.) 28

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This attempt to imagine oneself as immortal, here identified with Kierkegaard and nietzsche, does suggest the plot of beauvoir’s third published novel, All Men Are Mortal, in which Fosca, the protagonist, indeed exemplifies the situation of a man who becomes immortal. However, we are not convinced by the attempt made by barbara Klaw to link beauvoir’s character of régine with Kierkegaard’s regine.32 although Klaw’s article makes many important points about beauvoir’s project throughout the novel of destroying the myth of woman, beauvoir’s own description of the role of régine in All Men Are Mortal in her autobiographical writings does not correspond to any portrait we have of Kierkegaard’s former fiancée.33 in Pyrrhus et Cinéas Beauvoir’s identification of Kierkegaard with the concept of irony could point to many of his works, although beauvoir’s text pins none of these down. one candidate is Fear and Trembling, which is explicitly mentioned in the second quotation from Pyrrhus et Cinéas: even in my heart, this order i hear is ambiguous. there lies the source of abraham’s anguish (angoisse), which Kierkegaard describes in Fear and Trembling. who knows if it’s not a question of a temptation of the devil or my pride? is it really god who is speaking? who will distinguish the saint from the heretic?34

our next references appear in works that arose from four essays that beauvoir published between november 1945 and april 1946 in Les Temps Modernes. these essays were published in 1948 and again in 2008 under the title La Sagesse de Nations.35 one of the essays in this volume, “littérature et métaphysique,” refers to Kierkegaard. the same essay also later became a source for a separate volume published in 1947 as Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté;36 it contains three references to Kierkegaard. The first two of the three references in The Ethics of Ambiguity give no hint of their specific source in Kierkegaard’s writings: From the very beginning, existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity. It was by affirming the irreducible character of ambiguity that Kierkegaard opposed

barbara Klaw, “intertextuality and destroying the myth of woman in simone de beauvoir’s Tous Les Hommes Sont Mortels,” Romanic Review, vol. 89, no. 4, november 1998, pp. 549–66. 33 beauvoir, La force des choses, vol. 1, pp. 96–7. (Force of Circumstance, vol. 1, pp. 65–6.) 34 beauvoir, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, p. 42. (Philosophical Writings, p. 105.) 35 simone de beauvoir, L’existentialisme et la sagesse des nations, paris: gallimard 2008. the four essays published in this volume are “l’existentialisme et la sagesse des nations”; “idéalisme moral et réalisme politique”; “littérature et métaphysique”; and “oeil pour oeil.” these appear in beauvoir’s Philosophical Writings as “existentialism and popular wisdom,” pp. 203–20; “moral idealism and political realism,” pp. 175–93; “literature and metaphysics,” pp. 269–77; and “an eye for an eye,” pp. 245–60. 36 simone de beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, paris: gallimard 1947. (english translation: The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. by bernard Frechtman, secaucus, new Jersey: the Citadel press 1948.) 32

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himself to Hegel, and it is by ambiguity that, in our own generation, sartre in Being and Nothingness, fundamentally defined man, that being whose being is not to be....37 after Hegel, Kierkegaard and nietzsche also railed at the deceitful stupidity of the serious man and his universe. and Being and Nothingness is in large part a description of the serious man and his universe.38

the third reference suggests that Fear and Trembling is once again the source of beauvoir’s thinking about these matters: We have seen that this recourse to the serious is a lie; it entails the sacrifice of man to the thing, of freedom to the Cause. in order for the return to the positive to be genuine it must involve negativity, it must not conceal the antinomies between means and end, present and future; they must be lived in a permanent tension; one must retreat from neither the outrage of violence nor deny it, or, which amounts to the same thing, assume it lightly. Kierkegaard has said that what distinguishes the pharisee from the genuinely moral man is that the former considers his anguish as a sure sign of his virtue; from the fact that he asks himself, “am i abraham?” he concludes, “i am abraham;” but morality resides in the painfulness of an indefinite questioning. The problem which we are posing is not the same as that of Kierkegaard; the important thing to us is to know whether, in given conditions, isaac must be killed or not. but we also think that what distinguishes the tyrant from the man of good will is that the first rests in the certainty of his aims, whereas the second keeps asking himself, “am i really working for the liberation of men?”39

beauvoir’s mention of the pharisee here is interesting. Kierkegaard discusses the ethics of the pharisee and his relation to sin in several places in his writings, including The Sickness unto Death.40 However, there is no mention of the pharisee in Fear and Trembling and no mention anywhere else in Kierkegaard’s writings of the pharisee in connection with abraham. beauvoir may have been crafting her own interpretation here of Kierkegaard’s positions on these matters. the essay “littérature et métaphysique” in La sagesse de nations has only one reference to Kierkegaard: the more actively a philosopher highlights the role and the value of subjectivity, the more he will be led to describe the metaphysical experience within a form that is singular and temporal. not only does Kierkegaard, like Hegel, have recourse to literary myths, but in Fear and Trembling he recreates the story of Abraham’s sacrifice in a manner that touches on the form of the novel, and in the Seducer’s Diary he delivers his original experience in its dramatic singularity.41

beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 14. (The Ethics of Ambiguity, pp. 9–10.) 38 beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 60. (The Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 46.) 39 beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 165. (The Ethics of Ambiguity p. 133.) 40 SKS 11, 82 / SUD, 82. 41 simone de beauvoir, “littérature et métaphysique,” pp. 80–1. (beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 274.) To better reflect the meaning of the French “il livre dans sa singularité dramatique son expérience originelle,” we have changed the translators’ “he delivers the 37

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we will return to this remark later when we try to plumb the depths of beauvoir’s debt to Kierkegaard in The Second Sex. on this basis of this reference to “the seducer’s diary” we can also be reasonably sure that beauvoir was familiar with the content of this work, which had been translated and published apart from Either/Or in 1929. Hélène politis observes that it was common in cheap republications of The Diary and in reviews of it for the Diary to be treated as an autobiographical extract from an intended biography by Kierkegaard.42 this may explain beauvoir’s remark that in the Diary, Kierkegaard “delivers” his original experience. apart from the Seducer’s Diary, however, there is no evidence that beauvoir was familiar with other portions of Either/Or.43 the remainder of beauvoir’s explicit citations from Kierkegaard are drawn from Stages on Life’s Way. these include the epigraph to volume two of The Second Sex; and five additional references to “In Vino Veritas.” One other quotation is drawn from “Reflections on Marriage.” In every case, Beauvoir attributes the quotation or position she is citing to “Kierkegaard,” not to a pseudonym or character in the work. we will return to these quotations when we examine the impact of Kierkegaard on The Second Sex. by 1943, when beauvoir embarked on her own authorship, almost all of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works, some of his discourses, and extracts from his journals had been published in French translations. However, apart from the four works we have mentioned, “the seducer’s diary,” Fear and Trembling, The Concept of Anxiety, and the first two sections of Stages on Life’s Way, we cannot say whether beauvoir read any more of Kierkegaard. of these four works we are most certain, based on intersecting references, of her familiarity with Fear and Trembling and Stages, and less so for the others. in a letter by sartre to beauvoir during his military service he asks her to send him The Sickness unto Death, perhaps suggesting that they each had an opportunity to examine this work.44 However, sartre never mentions reading it, nor does beauvoir.

original experience in its dramatic singularity” to “he delivers his original experience in its dramatic singularity.” 42 Hélène politis, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, paris: Éditions Kimé 2005, p. 202. it is noteworthy that the introduction to Le journal by the translator, gateau, presents the work throughout as based substantially on the biographical details of Kierkegaard’s breach with Regine. Thus, he remarks, “However artificial it may appear, the Johannes-edouard-Cordelia intrigue repeats the real novel where Kierkegaard supplants for Regine a first lover—and reappears after the rupture.” See Le Journal du séducteur, p. xxv. it is true that in this same introduction (p. xxix), gateau quotes Kierkegaard’s remark in his Journal that there is not a single word by him in the pseudonymous writings. nevertheless, her readings in these translations may have primed beauvoir to regard all of Kierkegaard’s writings as autobiographical. 43 The first French translation of the full text of Either/Or was published in 1943, see Ou bien...ou bien, trans. by F. prior, o. prior, and m.H. guignot, paris: gallimard 1943. 44 sartre, Lettres au Castor et quelques autres, vols. 1–2, ed. by simone de beauvoir, paris: gallimard 1983, vol. 2 (1940–63), p. 200.

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III. Kierkegaard’s Influence on Beauvoir the record of beauvoir’s reading in Kierkegaard suggests themes and issues that attracted her interest and eventually entered into her own philosophical and literary production. as edward and Kate Fullbrook note, some of the key questions that interested beauvoir were also those that interested Kierkegaard: “what is the relation between an individual’s freedom and the givenness of his or her situation?...How is the individual related to society?...How does one make moral choices without a set of universal moral absolutes? what is the relation between truth and the knowing subject?”45 Here, we proceed thematically to further develop the ways in which beauvoir’s answers to these questions may have drawn on Kierkegaard’s writings. A. Going Beyond Hegel at the same time in 1939–40 as she was exploring Kierkegaard, beauvoir was also immersed in reading Hegel, particularly the Phenomenology of Spirit. like sartre, she was greatly influenced by Hegel’s idea that the self needs to confront the other to define itself as a subject, such that the category of otherness is necessary for the constitution of the self as a self. this idea is given extreme expression in the epigraph of She Came to Stay, a quotation from Hegel that “each conscience seeks the death of the other.”46 it forms an essential component of her argument in The Second Sex. nevertheless, as the remarks about Hegel in The Prime of Life quoted above show, beauvoir also grew deeply uncomfortable with Hegel’s indifference to the life of the individual existing subject.47 as she says, “Hate, anger, expectation or misery would assert themselves against all my efforts to by-pass them, and this ‘flight into the universal’ merely formed one further episode in my private development. i turned back to Kierkegaard and began to read him with passionate interest.”48 she may have found support for her developing view in Kierkegaard’s explicit rejections of Hegel in Fear and Trembling and elsewhere. B. Freedom along with her preference for the life of the individual, beauvoir was drawn to Kierkegaard’s strong affirmations of individual choice, freedom, and responsibility. in The Prime of Life, she again makes her attraction to Kierkegaard explicit: against sluggish reason, and the void, and everything else, i set up the incontrovertible evidence of a living affirmative. if it seemed perfectly natural for me to accept the ideas of Kierkegaard and sartre, and to become an “existentialist,” that was because my whole past history had prepared me for it. ever since i was a child my temperament had inclined 45 edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Introduction, Cambridge: polity press 1998, p. 61. 46 beauvoir, L’Invitée, p. 8. (She Came to Stay, p. 7.) 47 beauvoir expresses similar discomfort with Hegel and an appreciation of Kierkegaard in her Journal de guerre, see p. 361 (Wartime Diary, p. 319). 48 beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 537. (The Prime of Life p. 469.)

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Ronald M. Green and Mary Jean Green me to trust my wishes and desires, and from all the doctrines which contributed to my intellectual development i selected those which served to strengthen this disposition in me. by the age of nineteen i was already convinced that man, and man alone, is responsible for the direction of his life, and can direct it adequately.49

Kierkegaard’s understanding of human nature as a “psychical-physical synthesis,” as spelled out in The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death is captured on the opening page of The Ethics of Ambiguity, her key philosophical essay from this period: “rational animal,” “thinking reed,” he escapes from his natural condition without, however, freeing himself from it. He is still part of this world of which he is a consciousness....this privilege, which he alone possesses of being a sovereign and unique subject amidst a universe of objects, is what he shares with all his fellow men.50

Kierkegaard may also have influenced Beauvoir’s conception of how two human freedoms interact. In “The Seducer’s Diary,” we find Johannes describing his goal in seducing Cordelia as bringing her to the point “where she has but one task for her freedom, to give herself…so that she practically begs for this devotedness and yet is free.”51 very similarly, in She Came to Stay, beauvoir describes the motives of the young female character who is engaged in a complex mutual seduction with the older pierre: “xavière would have liked to feel that pierre was free and belonged to her alone.”52 the idea that romantic relationships involve the paradoxical objective of wanting to control another’s freedom was shared by sartre and beauvoir. it appears throughout their writings and was shaped, in part, by their reading in Hegel. nevertheless, if we can assume that beauvoir paid close attention to “the seducer’s diary” at the time she was writing her first novel, something that is far from certain, Kierkegaard’s account of the role of freedom in erotic love may have helped shape her thinking here. C. The Critique of “Seriousness” while The Ethics of Ambiguity starts with the affirmation of freedom, it devotes most of its attention to the complex strategies that people employ to evade their responsibility for choosing their values and direction in life. beauvoir terms one of these “the aesthetic attitude.” the individual who adopts it, beauvoir states: claims to have no other relation with the world than that of detached contemplation; outside of time and far from other men, he faces history, which he thinks he does not belong to, like a pure beholding; this impersonal version equalizes all situations; it apprehends them only in the indifference of their differences; it excludes any preference.53

beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 628. (The Prime of Life, p. 550.) beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 11. (The Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 7.) 51 SKS 2, 331 / EO1, 342. 52 beauvoir, L’Invitée, p. 294. (She Came to Stay, p. 235.) 53 beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 94. (The Ethics of Ambiguity, pp. 74–5.) 49 50

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she adds: “such an attitude appears in moments of discouragement and confusion; in fact, it is a position of withdrawal, a way of fleeing from the truth of the present…. but the present is not a potential past; it is the moment of choice and action….”54 some might argue that beauvoir’s reference to the aesthetic evidences Kierkegaard’s influence. We are not certain that we agree. Apart from the fact that there is no reason to believe that beauvoir read the works in which Kierkegaard most discussed or presented the aesthetic as a mode of life, her concept of the aesthetic differs significantly from his. Although it, too, is an evasion of freedom and responsibility, it is less, as it is for Kierkegaard, an entire way of life in which the self submits to control by inner and outer forces than it is a stance taken by some of her artistically inclined acquaintances who chose to escape the tumultuous events of the german occupation by fleeing into a world of pure aesthetic creativity. but if there is reason to question beauvoir’s debt to Kierkegaard in her treatment of the aesthetic in The Ethics of Ambiguity, there can be no doubt that she was directly influenced by Kierkegaard in her sustained critique in this work of “the spirit of seriousness.” although Kierkegaard does not use the term “seriousness” to label evasions of freedom and responsibility or flights from freedom into a world of socially defined values, the criticisms of such evasions permeate his writings. They inform the humorous treatment of the pastor in Fear and Trembling who, while preaching sermons lauding abraham, is quick to vilify anyone who actually chooses the patriarch’s path.55 they reappear in The Sickness unto Death in the discussion of the “despairing narrowness” that permits itself “to be tricked out of its self by ‘the others’ and which, “surrounded by hordes of men…does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too hazardous to be himself and far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, a mass man.”56 Beauvoir’s serious man similarly flees from the responsibility of choosing his own values and, through them, himself. “to avoid the anguish of this permanent choice, one may attempt to flee into the object itself, to engulf one’s own presence in it. in the servitude of the serious, the original spontaneity strives to deny itself.”57 the serious man “escapes the anguish of freedom.”58 “He is afraid of engaging himself in a project….[and] is thereby led to take refuge in the ready-made values of the serious world.”59 in The Ethics of Ambiguity beauvoir makes clear that she understood and appreciated these same motifs in Kierkegaard’s writings: after Hegel, Kierkegaard and nietzsche also railed at the deceitful stupidity of the serious man and his universe. and Being and Nothingness is in large part a description of the serious man and his universe. the serious man gets rid of his freedom by claiming to subordinate it to values which would be unconditioned. He imagines that the accession

54 55 56 57 58 59

beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 96. (The Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 76.) SKS 4, 151–2 / FT, 28–9. SKS 11, 149–50 / SUD, 33–4. beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 35. (The Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 26.) beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 66. (The Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 51.) beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 62. (The Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 44.)

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Ronald M. Green and Mary Jean Green to these values likewise permanently confers value upon himself. shielded with “rights,” he fulfills himself as a being who is escaping from the stress of existence.60

D. The Ambiguity of Ethics Part of “the stress of existence” which the serious individual flees is the daunting responsibility of ethical choice. in The Ethics of Ambiguity beauvoir states that such choice is inherently ambiguous, taking place amidst a series of inescapable antinomies. the individual’s own freedom must be expressed while preserving the freedom of others; the claims of individual human beings must be balanced against those of the many; the demands of the present must be weighed against those of the future; and, as someone involved with the French resistance knew all too well, there is the constant tension between means and ends. even the use of violence against another person, seemingly the antithesis of respect for that person’s freedom, was sometimes necessary to advance the cause of freedom. all these antinomies defy easy acceptance of absolute moral rules or of moral standards handed from without. beauvoir rejects as forms of “seriousness” both Christian absolutes and marxist expediency in the name of a utopian future. there is only the responsibility of individual choice without guidance by moral recipes. “there must be a trial and decision in each case.”61 in developing this view of ethics, beauvoir turns to Kierkegaard. in the quotation from The Ethics of Ambiguity offered above, she points to Fear and Trembling in support of her view. Rejecting “the sacrifice of man to the Thing, of freedom to the Cause,” she rejects attempts to “conceal the antinomies between means and end, present and future.” moral life must be lived “in a permanent tension.” Here she invokes Kierkegaard’s treatment of abraham to highlight the conclusion that “morality resides in the painfulness of an indefinite questioning.”62 a remark in The Prime of Life makes even clearer her understanding of Fear and Trembling as a work that brings to the fore the essential ambiguity of any kind of positive human moral self-estimate. speaking of her novel, The Blood of Others, she says, “i had been very struck by Kierkegaard’s idea that a genuinely moral person could never have an easy conscience, and only pledges his liberty in ‘fear and trembling.’ ”63 Fear and Trembling is not a work that comes immediately to mind in connection with the construction of an atheistic existential ethic. Certainly, beauvoir in no way shares Kierkegaard/Johannes de silentio’s admiration of abraham’s obedience to god above all human ethical considerations, nor does she apparently share the view that human life must be lived in relation to god. but in reading Fear and Trembling—and Kierkegaard—such matters were not on beauvoir’s mind. what interested her and confirmed her own convictions was Kierkegaard’s unrelenting focus on individual moral choice and responsibility in circumstances deprived of certainty and support, and often in the face of opposition. beauvoir’s appreciation of 60 61 62 63

beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 60. (The Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 46.) beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 167. (The Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 134.) beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, p. 165. (The Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 133.) beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 619, note 1 (The Prime of Life, pp. 541–2.)

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Fear and Trembling illustrates her creative appropriation of Kierkegaard’s work, and her willingness to go beyond surface differences to perceive deeper affinities. E. Woman’s Situation as we have seen, beauvoir makes a number of references to Kierkegaard in her postwar philosophical writings, where she stresses the impact his work had exerted on her own response to life in the difficult wartime years. At a time when she herself was becoming personally aware of the anguish of moral choice, Fear and Trembling was, understandably, her most frequently cited Kierkegaard text. in 1946, as she sits down to write The Second Sex, however, she turns to another aspect of Kierkegaard’s thought, the numerous—and often unflattering—observations about women that appear in Stages on Life’s Way. beauvoir begins her study of what it means to be a woman by setting forth her philosophical understanding of woman as the other, and then goes on to explore the image of woman provided by science and history. the lengthy third section that completes the first volume, however, is devoted to the study of myths that have defined women’s identity throughout the ages, with examples drawn from sources ranging from ancient mythology to modern literature. If woman does not define herself but is “always defined as the Other,”64 as beauvoir insists, it is indeed an important part of beauvoir’s project to examine the various and often contradictory views of women that men have devised. In this project she finds a unique philosophical predecessor in Kierkegaard, in the brief fictional monologues and dialogues that appear in Stages on Life’s Way. she pays particular attention to “in vino veritas,” where a group of men gather for a sumptuous meal and take turns presenting their views of women, one more unflattering than the other. as she introduces her study of man’s images of woman, beauvoir emphasizes their contradictory nature: “The object fluctuates so much and is so contradictory that its unity is not at first discerned: Delilah and Judith, Aspasia and Lucretia, Pandora and athena, woman is both eve and the virgin mary. she is an idol, a servant, the source of life, a power of darkness.”65 in making her point, she immediately turns to Kierkegaard: “ ‘to be a woman,’ says Kierkegaard, ‘is something so strange, so confused, and so complicated, that no one predicate can express it, and the multiple predicates that might be used contradict each other in such a way that only a woman could put up with it.’ ”66 in her own voice, beauvoir goes on to comment: “this comes from not being considered not positively, as she is for herself, but negatively, such as she appears to man.”67 this reference to Kierkegaard is perfectly appropriate to beauvoir’s project: she needs to emphasize the contradictory nature of the myths she is examining, which do indeed represent woman “negatively, such as she appears to man.” “in vino veritas,” the source from which this particular quotation is taken, is thus a precursor 64 65 66 67

beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 1, p. 236. (The Second Sex, p. 162.) ibid. ibid. ibid.

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to beauvoir’s own, feminist project, since it brings together a group of men, each of whom presents a different male perspective on woman. as we saw in her remark in “Littérature et métaphysique,” this philosophical use of fictional form, grounded in texts like plato’s Symposium, was clearly an aspect of Kierkegaard that appealed to beauvoir, who, by the time she undertook The Second Sex, had published three novels and a play, in which philosophical problems were worked out through the interaction of characters representing different viewpoints. indeed, it is this aspect of Kierkegaard’s writings that Sara Heinämaa finds the major source of his influence on beauvoir: beauvoir found in Kierkegaard’s works a way of combining her philosophical and literary aspirations. For Kierkegaard, such a combination was not just possible, but necessary. He saw fictional constructions as indispensable for philosophical writing. Kierkegaard held that, through writing and reading, we can experience in the horizon of ideality what we have lived in actuality. this does not mean that the experience is reflected on a new level but rather that it is opened up, that its possible variations are unwound. in writing, due to different dialogical positions and examples, experience can be modified and examined in its different forms. Thus, its ideal components can be disclosed and seen….The fictional context frees the first person experience from its insularity without compromising its absolute character.68

However much beauvoir may have been attracted to Kierkegaard’s evident fictionalization of philosophical viewpoints, in her citations she often fails to distinguish between reality and fiction: views and sentiments expressed by a fictional character—in this example, victor eremita—appear to be attributed to Kierkegaard himself. In the second quotation in this section, Beauvoir goes even further. She first presents another aphoristic pronouncement: “through woman,” wrote Kierkegaard, “ideality enters into life and what would man be without her? many a man has become a genius through a young girl…but none has become a genius through the young girl he married….” “it is only by a negative relation to her that man is rendered productive in his ideal endeavors. Negative relations with woman can make us infinite...positive relations with woman make the man finite to a far greater extent.”69

Although here Beauvoir identifies the source as “In Vino Veritas”—perhaps alerting those familiar with Kierkegaard’s work that the words should not be attributed to the author himself—she does not attribute the opinion to victor eremita, and she goes on to find corroboration of the statement in Kierkegaard’s own life: “In refusing to marry his fiancée, Kierkegaard believes he has established the only valid relation with woman. And he is right in the sense that the myth of woman posited as infinite other immediately entails its opposite.”70 and it is to this view of Kierkegaard’s thought that beauvoir returns as she concludes the section: “and thanks to the sara Heinämaa, Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, MerleauPonty, Beauvoir, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield 2003, pp. 6–7. 69 beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 1, p. 295. (The Second Sex, p. 203.) 70 ibid. 68

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mystery, this negative relation that seemed to Kierkegaard infinitely preferable to positive possession is perpetuated;…this subjective game that can range from vice to mystical ecstasy is for many a more attractive experience than an authentic relation with a human being.”71 it is somewhat ironic that beauvoir is here caught doing what she deplores in critics of her own work: attributing the ideas of fictional characters to their author. Yet, in the end, she takes from “in vino veritas” an important point in support of her own argument: the type of relationship with woman voiced by Kierkegaard’s character tellingly illustrates the way in which such idealization of woman prevents authentic relationships between men and women. a reference to Kierkegaard somewhat later in beauvoir’s text reveals the same conflation of author and character, as the comments on marriage made by the Married Man in “Reflections on Marriage” (and, to some extent, by Victor Eremita in “In vino veritas”) are presented as Kierkegaard’s own: This underlines that loving is not marrying and it is quite difficult to understand how love can become duty. but paradoxes do not faze Kierkegaard: his whole essay on marriage is an attempt to elucidate this mystery. It is true, he agrees: “Reflection is the angel of death for spontaneity....” but “decision is a new spontaneity obtained through reflection....Decision is a religious view of life constructed upon ethical presuppositions, and must, so to speak, pave the way for falling in love and securing it against any danger, exterior or interior.” 72

as beauvoir’s description continues, not only does Kierkegaard absorb the thoughts of his characters, he also assumes their dim view of women: “ ‘a husband, a real husband, is himself a miracle!…as for the wife, reason is not her lot, she is without ‘reflection’; so ‘she goes from the immediacy of love to the immediacy of the religious.’ ”73 these references to Kierkegaard play an important role for beauvoir as she undertakes a project that represents a radical departure from her own philosophical training, enabling her to ground some of her arguments in statements by the founding father of the existentialist movement with which she and sartre had chosen to identify themselves. even more important, they provide an important precedent for her own philosophical reflection on the situation of women, a project in which beauvoir herself has been credited with blazing the way. indeed, in the european philosophical tradition in which she and sartre based their own work, Kierkegaard emerges as the only thinker who gave sustained attention to the question of woman. it is certainly for these reasons that a quotation from Kierkegaard is placed alongside a citation from sartre as the twin epigraphs of the second published volume of The Second Sex, the one that begins with the often-quoted words with which beauvoir summarizes her argument: “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman.”74 in the original French edition these words are preceded by the quotation from Kierkegaard with which we began our discussion: “what a curse to be a woman! and yet the very 71 72 73 74

beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 1, p. 387. (The Second Sex, p. 269.) beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 2, pp. 213–14. (The Second Sex, pp. 455–6.) beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 2, p. 214. (The Second Sex, p. 456.) beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 2, p. 13. (The Second Sex, p. 283.)

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worst curse when one is a woman is, in fact, not to understand that it is one.” this epigraph is followed by a brief statement from sartre: “Half victim, half accomplice, like everyone.”75 the references to both Kierkegaard and sartre provide important philosophical validation for the definition of woman’s contemporary situation that beauvoir is about to provide in her concluding volume of the study, and their words seem to resonate with each other. Here, as in earlier references, the statement is attributed directly to Kierkegaard, although in the fiction it is uttered by Victor eremita. and, like earlier Kierkegaard references, it has been interpreted by many readers of beauvoir as demeaning to women, as it seems to offer further evidence of women’s inability to engage in serious thought. Yet, beauvoir will return to this epigraph in the brief but memorable concluding chapter where she indicates the way to a true experience of liberation: “it is when the slavery of half of humanity is abolished and with it the whole hypocritical system it implies that the ‘division’ of humanity will reveal its authentic meaning and the human couple will discover its true form.”76 For both men and women, in beauvoir’s view, freedom lies in recognition of the false situation in which women now find themselves, one that has already been recognized by “many men,” the first of whom is Kierkegaard: “That she is mystified is something of which many men are conscious. ‘what a curse to be a woman! and yet the very worst curse when one is a woman is, in fact, not to understand that it is one,’ says Kierkegaard.”77 Here Kierkegaard’s message appears in its true light, pointing not to women’s lack of reasoning power, but to their inability to recognize the truth of a situation they have been taught to misread, as beauvoir has now shown, at every stage of their development. Kierkegaard’s words here attain their true significance as a condemnation of the values dominating the bourgeois society of his time, a condemnation which, as we have seen, had already attracted beauvoir’s attention.78 IV. Conclusion we began by noting beauvoir’s use of Kierkegaard in an epigraph for The Second Sex as an apparent spokesman for traditional male attitudes toward women and marriage. beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 2, p. 7. (The Second Sex, p. 277.) beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 2, p. 576. (The Second Sex, p. 766.) 77 beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, vol. 2, p. 564. (The Second Sex, p. 756.) 78 Here we agree with sylvia walsh’s characterization of Kierkegaard’s attitude toward gender relations: “if both woman and man are structured to become spirit, as Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms, with great ambivalence, want to claim, then both must possess and be encouraged to develop the capacities essential to such an existence. this suggests that, rather than emphasizing gender and sexual differences between man and woman, as Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms, in conformity with the trend of the time, frequently did, the present age needs to recognize and promote their common humanity, a goal that Kierkegaard himself, in his clearest and finest moments of insight, also embraced.”—“Issues that Divide: Interpreting Kierkegaard on woman and gender,” in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference “Kierkegaard and the Meaning of Meaning It,” Copenhagen, May 5–9, 1996, ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon stewart, berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 1997 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), p. 205. 75 76

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this impression continues in all her utilizations of Kierkegaard throughout this work, where it is accentuated by the absence of clear acknowledgment on her part that all of the remarks she is quoting were uttered by one of Kierkegaard’s characters, victor eremita in the case of the quotations drawn from “in vino veritas,” and the married Man for those from “Reflections on Marriage.” This utilization of Kierkegaard would certainly lead many of beauvoir’s readers to conclude that she held a rather one-dimensional and largely negative view of the danish thinker. our examination of beauvoir’s debt to Kierkegaard reveals just the opposite. She was powerfully influenced by Kierkegaard at key moments in the development of her thought. reading Fear and Trembling accelerated her abandonment of Hegel and reinforced her commitment to anguished ethical involvement in history. subsequently, Kierkegaard’s literary treatments of gender in “the seducer’s diary” and Stages on Life’s Way provided a model for her own groundbreaking explorations of woman’s situation in The Second Sex. although beauvoir did not claim to be a scholar of Kierkegaard, she openly identified herself with the existentialist tradition he helped create, and she was profoundly influenced by both the form and content of his work.

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Beauvoir’s Corpus Pyrrhus et Cinéas, paris: gallimard 1944, p. 42; p. 63. (english translation: Pyrrhus and Cineas, in Philosophical Writings, ed. by margaret a. simons, marybeth timmermann, and mary beth mader, urbana: university of illinois press 2004 p. 105; p. 114.) Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, paris: gallimard 1947, p. 14; p. 60; pp. 165–6. (english translation: The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. by bernard Frechtman, secaucus, new Jersey: the Citadel press 1948, p. 9; p. 46; p. 133.) Le Deuxième sexe, vols. 1–2, paris: gallimard 1949, vol. 1, p. 236; p. 295, p. 387; vol. 2, p. 7; pp. 213–14; p. 564. (english translation: The Second Sex, trans. by Constance borde and sheila malovany-Chevallier, new York: alfred a. Knopf 2010, p. 162; p. 203; p. 269; p. 277, pp. 455–6; p. 756.) La force de l’âge, paris: gallimard 1960, p. 53; p. 141; pp. 482-3; p. 561; p. 564; p. 603, note. (english translation: The Prime of Life, trans. by peter green, Harmondsworth: penguin 1960, p. 48; p. 135; p. 469; p. 547; p. 550; p. 589.) Lettres à Sartre. 1930–1939, ed. by sylvie le bon de beauvoir, paris: gallimard 1990, p. 310; p. 312; p. 361. (none of these portions of her letters are in the english translation.) Lettres à Sartre. 1940–1963, ed. by sylvie le bon de beauvoir, paris: gallimard 1990, p. 146; pp. 213–15. (english translation: Letters to Sartre, trans. by Quintin Hoare, new York: arcade 1990, p. 304, pp. 357–8.) “littérature et métaphysique,” in L’existentialisme et la sagesse des nations, paris: gallimard 2008, p. 80. (originally published, Les Temps Modernes, vol. 1, no. 7, 1946, pp. 1153–63; english translation: “literature and metaphysics,” in Philosophical Writings, ed. by margaret a. simons, marybeth timmermann, and mary beth mader, urbana: university of illinois press 2004, p. 274.) II. Sources of Beauvoir’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard sartre, Jean-paul, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, paris: gallimard 1943 (Bibliothèque des Idées), pp. 58–84; pp. 94–111; pp. 115–49; pp. 150–74; pp. 291–300; pp. 508–16; pp. 529–60; pp. 639–42; pp. 643–63; pp. 669–70; pp. 720ff. — L’existentialisme est un humanisme, paris: nagel 1946, pp. 27–33. — Situations I, paris: gallimard 1947, pp. 154–5; pp. 162–3; pp. 168ff. — Les carnets de la drôle de guerre. Novembre 1939–Mars 1940, paris: gallimard 1983, pp. 333–7; pp. 342–7; pp. 348ff.; p. 352; pp. 382–3.

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— Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vols. 1–2, ed. by simone de beauvoir, paris: gallimard 1983, vol. 1 (1926–39), p. 451; p. 491; p. 494; p. 496; p. 500; p. 518; vol. 2 (1940–63), p. 11; p. 16; pp. 38–9; pp. 40–1; p. 56; p. 111; p. 129; p. 197; p. 200; p. 215; p. 219; pp. 222–3; p. 224; p. 264; p. 268; p. 279; p. 285; p. 286; pp. 289–90. wahl, Jean, Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: aubier 1938. III. Secondary Literature on Beauvoir’s Relation to Kierkegaard altman, meryl, “beauvoir, Hegel, war,” Hypatia, vol. 22, no. 3, 2007, pp. 66–91. arp, Kristina, The Bonds of Freedom: Simone de Beauvoir’s Existentialist Ethics, Chicago: open Court 2001, p. 23; p. 48; p. 58; p. 100. benktson, benkt-erik, Existens och Tro. Från Sokrates till Simone de Beauvoir, lund: bo Cavefors bokförlag 1977, p. 14; p. 23; p. 27; pp. 29–31; pp. 41–2; p. 64; p. 68; p. 149; p. 185; p. 207; p. 234; p. 253; p. 291; p. 334; p. 338; pp. 344–9; pp. 351–3; pp. 355–6. Fullbrook, edward and Kate Fullbrook, Beauvoir: A Critical Introduction, Cambridge: polity press and Cambridge, massachusetts: blackwell 1998, p. 29; p. 43; p. 54; pp. 61–2; p. 71; p. 118. Heinämaa, sara, Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, MerleauPonty, Beauvoir. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield 2003, p. xii; p. xiv; pp. 3–11; p. 15; p. 19; p. 59; p. 124; pp. 128–31. — “the background of simone de beauvoir’s metaphysical novel: Kierkegaard and Husserl,” Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 79, 2006, pp. 175–90. Klaw, barbara, “intertextuality and destroying the myth of woman in simone de beauvoir’s Tous Les Hommes Sont Mortels,” Romanic Review, vol. 89, no. 4, 1998, pp. 549–66. lundgren-gothlin, eva, Sex and Existence: Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Hanover and london: university press of new england 1996, p. 31; p. 36; p. 40; p. 56; pp. 128–9; p. 133; p. 152; p. 187; p. 226. politis, Hélène, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, paris: Éditions Kimé 2005, p. 137; p. 157, notes 34–8. wahl, Jean, Petite histoire de “l’existentialisme.” Suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard commentaires, paris: editions Club maintenant 1947, p. 13; p. 58. walsh, sylvia, “Feminine devotion and self-abandonment: simone de beauvoir and søren Kierkegaard on the woman in love,” Philosophy Today, vol. 42 supplement, 1998, pp. 35–40.

nicholas berdyaev: Kierkegaard amongst the artists, mystics, and solitary thinkers george pattison

lev shestov’s (1866–1938) own account of his “discovery” of Kierkegaard makes clear that it was through shestov that berdyaev was alerted to the existence of Kierkegaard. nicholas alexandrovich berdyaev (1874–1948) was six years younger than shestov. although of aristocratic background, he had like many of his generation espoused left-wing causes in his youth and served a period of three years’ internal exile for subversive activities. in the early 1900s he established himself as a leading figure of the Russian religious renaissance, whilst maintaining a dialogue with Marxism. Partly filtered through the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900), a defining figure for the religious renaissance, Berdyaev was strongly influenced by German idealism, especially by Fichte and Schelling and, through them, Jacob Böhme. Nietzsche was another significant influence, but he was also importantly shaped by his engagement with russian literature and ideas, above all dostoevsky. unlike shestov he did not leave russia immediately after the revolution, but stayed on until 1922, when he was one of the intellectuals famously deported by lenin on the so-called “philosophy steamer.” after a period in berlin he settled in paris, where he associated with many Catholic intellectuals (including Jacques maritain (1882–1973), Étienne gilson (1884–1978), and gabriel marcel (1889–1973)) as well as with fellow émigrés (with many of whom, however, he had strained relations due to political and religious differences). although berdyaev’s thought had dualistic tendencies, these were not as extreme as shestov’s, and there is a counterbalancing synthesizing movement. nevertheless, as for shestov, everything depends on freedom, and any synthesis of the manifold polarities of human existence that is not based on freedom will, he believes, end in slavery. Yet there is also a theogonic dimension to berdyaev’s thought, such that—unlike in shestov—god is not conceived as entirely external to human beings, but human beings’ actualization of their potential freedom is seen as the way in which god’s freedom is made actual in the world. shestov’s account of his discovery of Kierkegaard strongly suggests that it was through shestov that berdyaev learned about the danish writer and that he did not begin reading him before 1928, by which time the main elements of berdyaev’s mature thought were well established and had been articulated in such major works as The

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Meaning of History,1 the book on dostoevsky,2 and Freedom and the Spirit (published in 1928 this was probably finished before he became acquainted with Kierkegaard, and there are, in any cases, no references to the latter in this book).3 even after this time, references to him are fairly thinly scattered in the various works in which he is mentioned, and there are important works, such as Spirit and Reality (1937)4 in which the danish thinker is not mentioned at all. in the preface to The Beginning and the End (written in 1941 but not published until after the war),5 berdyaev begins by stating that “i have for a long while wanted to write a book in which i should describe my metaphysical position as a whole.”6 He immediately qualifies this by saying that he does not understand the term “metaphysics” in “its traditional and academic meaning.” rather, he is “concerned with the kind of metaphysics which is disclosed in the spirit of, for instance, dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard, nietzsche, pascal, böhme, st. augustine and similar writers, that is to say, as they put it nowadays, with existential metaphysics.”7 Yet if he here acknowledges a conscious kinship with Kierkegaard, he also notes in his autobiography that Kierkegaard was never a decisive thinker for him and in several of his comments about the dane we can see something of the reasons for this reserve. The Destiny of Man is perhaps the first work to include significant references to Kierkegaard,8 which are focused on the latter’s account of the Fall. berdyaev is especially attentive here to the role of anxiety, although this appears in the english translation of the russian страх as “fear.” the search for knowledge, berdyaev says, 1 Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], Смысл истории, berlin: obelisk 1923. (english translation: The Meaning of History, trans. by george reavy, london: geoffry bles 1936.) 2 Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], Миросозерцание Достоевского, prague: YmCa press 1923. (english translation: Dostoevsky, trans. by donald attwater, london: sheed and ward 1934.) 3 Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], Философия свободного духа. Проблематика и апология христианства, Paris: YМСА Press 1927–28. (English translation: Freedom and the Spirit, trans. by oliver Fielding Clarke, london: geoffry bles 1935.) 4 Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], Дух и реальность. Основы богочеловеческой духовности, Paris: YМСА Press 1937. (English translation: Spirit and Reality, trans. by george reavey, london: geoffry bles 1939.) 5 Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], Опыт эсхатологической метафизики. Творчество и объективация [an experiment of eschatological metaphysics: Creation and objectivity], paris: YmCa press 1947. (english translation: The Beginning and the End, trans. by r.m. French, london: geoffry bles 1952.) 6 berdyaev, The Beginning and the End, p. v. 7 ibid. similarly, Kierkegaard is listed amongst the “great artists, mystics and a few solitary and unrecognized thinkers” who “have done more for the understanding of human nature than academic philosophers and learned psychologists and sociologists.” others include, shakespeare, dostoevsky, tolstoy, stendhal, proust, st. augustine, böhme, pascal, bachofen, Feuerbach, and max scheler; see berdyaev, The Beginning and the End, p. 49. 8 Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], О назначении человекa. Опыт парадоксальной этики [on the destiny of man: an experiment of paradoxical ethics], paris: sovremennyye zapiski 1931. (english translation: The Destiny of Man, trans. by n. doddington, london: geoffrey bles 1937.)

Nicholas Berdyaev: Kierkegaard amongst the Artists, Mystics, and Solitary Thinkers 25

“always means transcendence of the object and creative possession of it,” adding that “reality is enriched by knowledge” and that “moral knowledge inevitably strives to better reality.”9 Yet precisely because knowledge involves the transcendence of the knowing subject over its object, god cannot be an object of knowledge and, consequently, there is a tragic dimension in the human quest to know god. if moral knowledge is creative, religious knowledge is only ever responsive. Knowledge demands fearlessness, and “those who stand in awe of traditional moral ideas and valuations…are incapable of creative moral knowledge.”10 but victory over fear does not mean that fear is not lived through. on the contrary, “it may be deeply felt, as was the case with Kierkegaard.”11 moreover, the fruits of the conquest of fear, the knowledge of good and evil, are bitter. “in our world-aeon knowledge means exile from eden, the loss of paradisiacal bliss.”12 Yet berdyaev refuses to regard knowledge as unqualifiedly sinful (as Shestov appears to have done). Rather, what is evil in the Fall has to do with humanity’s resistance to or refusal of the divine call. in a further, somewhat ambiguous comment on Kierkegaard, berdyaev notes that “Kierkegaard says that fear [i.e., anxiety], which he regards as a very important religious phenomenon, is connected with the awakening of spirit.”13 but, berdyaev continues, “fear is a consequence of the Fall. so long as there is sin, there is bound to be fear—fear of god, fear of His judgment. and yet fear must be overcome, for perfect love casteth out fear.”14 it is hard to tell here whether berdyaev is fully aware of Kierkegaard’s distinction between the relationship between anxiety before the Fall and the consequent intensification of anxiety subsequent to the postlapsarian quantitative accumulation of sin, although his remarks do not exclude such awareness. later, he returns to the topic, to comment that “Kierkegaard, who was a remarkable psychologist, takes fear or terror to be the essential characteristic of man. Fear or terror (Angst) is an expression of man’s spirituality, of his inability to be content with himself, of his relation to a transcendent god, of his sinfulness and consequently of his fall from a higher state.”15 A couple of lines later he identifies the Kierkegaardian “groundless fear, awe before the transcendental mystery of existence” with rudolf otto’s (1869–1937) idea of the Mysterium Tremendum.16 this leads to a “tragic and paradoxical” view of human existence, which is also said shortly afterwards to have inspired the “belittling” of human beings in the theology of Karl barth (1886–1968).17

berdyaev, The Destiny of Man, p. 14. ibid. 11 ibid. 12 ibid. 13 ibid., p. 41. 14 ibid. 15 ibid., p. 51. 16 ibid., pp. 51–2. this is highly contestable, since otto’s idea seems precisely to be connected with the encounter with that which is other, external to the self, whereas anxiety is a feature of the self’s self-development. a full treatment of this point would, of course, require a much more extensive discussion than is possible here. 17 ibid., p. 53. 9

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if we might be thinking that berdyaev has not grasped Kierkegaard’s distinction between fear and anxiety, he later discusses just this point, alluding also to an analogous issue in Heidegger. He says: Fear [страх], is the state of the shuddering, trembling, fallen creature on the low plane of existence, threatened with dangers on all sides. Fear is the expectation of helpless suffering, illness, poverty, blows, privations, attacks of enemies….the experience of fear has no reference to the heights of being which man longs to attain and in separation from which he suffers.18

However, “a different meaning attaches to what i should call anguish [тоска] and terror [ужас]. in contradistinction to fear, anguish implies yearning, striving upwards and pain from being down below.”19 these have nothing in common with fear; the “terror before the mystery of existence” that is experienced here is more akin to the “biblical; fear of god” and it is this that Kierkegaard understood when “he brought into anguish and mystic terror an element of fear.” Yet berdyaev nevertheless finds “fear of God” a misleading expression: “There may be fear of wild beasts or infectious disease, but not of god. one may be afraid of the powers of this world, of tsars, commissars or gendarmes, but not of god. our attitude to Him may be one of terror or yearning, but not of fear. this is an important and farreaching distinction.”20 is there, then, an implicit criticism of Kierkegaard for, so to speak, overloading the dice in favor of fear rather than anguish, even if he himself is aware of this distinction? it is unclear, but it seems that something like this is operative in berdyaev’s reserve vis-à-vis the danish thinker. in Solitude and Society (1934),21 berdyaev is attentive to Kierkegaard as a thinker who, in contrast to Hegel, emphasized “the subjective and personal character of every philosophy, [and] the living presence of the philosopher in the act of speculation.”22 in this respect he is compared to dostoevsky and the critic and thinker vissarion belinsky (1811–48). Kierkegaard’s emphasis on subjectivity is further mentioned in a passage distinguishing the connection between objective truth and the collectivity, on the one hand, and the communication of subjective truth as a triumph of personality over egocentricity, on the other.23 similarly, some pages later, berdyaev declares that “Kierkegaard laid the foundations of existential philosophy by challenging the Hegelian universal concept and its fatal effect on the individual.”24 He was led to ibid., p. 174. ibid., p. 175. with reference to the mention of Kierkegaard here, тоска can also be translated “melancholy,” although it is unclear whether berdyaev is intending this to be taken as an allusion to Kierkegaard in this context. 20 ibid., p. 176. 21 Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], Я и мир объектов. Опыт философии одиночества и общения, paris: YmCa press 1934. (english translation: Solitude and Society, trans. by george reavey, london: geoffrey bles 1947 [1938].) 22 berdyaev, Solitude and Society, p. 19. 23 ibid., p. 32. 24 ibid., p. 36. the reference this time is explicitly to Philosophical Fragments— berdyaev gives the german version of the title, and we must assume that, like shestov, he mostly read Kierkegaard in the schrempf translation. 18 19

Nicholas Berdyaev: Kierkegaard amongst the Artists, Mystics, and Solitary Thinkers 27

this position “by the sense of anguish to which the personal drama of his life gave rise,”25 although the spirit of his challenge was not new and, again, augustine, pascal, dostoevsky, and nietzsche are cited as kindred spirits. nevertheless, “Kierkegaard was the most significant exponent of this philosophy”26—a philosophy that berdyaev summarizes in the following terms: “from the existential standpoint, the philosopher is situated on the extra-natural plane, that is, in the inmost depth of being; for the subject himself is a part of being and, as such, communes with its mystery.”27 Kierkegaard’s rigorous adhesion to the existential standpoint means that, despite “a certain affinity” between his thought and that of Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) and martin Heidegger (1889–1976), “there is yet an essential difference between them.”28 why? because “For Kierkegaard, philosophy is itself existence rather than an interpretation of existence; whereas, for Heidegger and Jaspers, who are concerned with a particular philosophical tradition, philosophy is synonymous with interpretation” and they are therefore concerned “to elaborate philosophical categories on an existential basis.”29 However, precisely for this reason, existential philosophy of the Heideggerian kind undermines what is decisive for Kierkegaard, that subjectivity means a paradoxical breach with immanence and the “selfrevelation, that is, transcendence” of the self.30 the difference between Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy and existentialism is even more clearly stated at the start of the essay on “sartre and the Future of existentialism” (1946).31 Here he reflects that, if existentialism is to be understood in a perspective derived from Heidegger and sartre, then “to-day we are astonished to think that men like pascal or Kierkegaard were existential philosophers.”32 as previously mentioned, Kierkegaard does not appear in the substantive systematic work Spirit and Reality (1937),33 but he is mentioned a number of times in Slavery and Freedom (1939).34 again, his focus on the “horror and penitence”

berdyaev, Solitude and Society, p. 37. ibid. 27 ibid. 28 ibid., p. 40. 29 ibid. 30 ibid. Further comments in Solitude and Society mention Kierkegaard’s ideas about tragedy and comedy (p. 71), time (p. 101), and, especially, the moment (p. 109). However, these are merely mentioned in passing and are significant in indicating an acquaintance with Kierkegaard’s writings that goes beyond those passages more extensively discussed. 31 See Николай Бердяев [Nicholas Berdyaev], “Сартр и судьба экзистенциализма,” first published in Russian in his Истина и откровение [truth and revelation], saint petersburg: russian Christian Humanities institute 1996. (english translation: “sartre and the Future of existentialism,” in his Towards a New Epoch, trans. by o.F. Clarke, london: geoffrey bles 1949, pp. 95–104.) 32 berdyaev, “sartre and the Future of existentialism,” p. 105. 33 berdyaev, Spirit and Reality. 34 Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], О рабстве и свободе человека. Опыт персоналистической метафизики, paris: YmCa press 1939. (english translation: Slavery and Freedom, trans. by r.m. French, london: geoffrey bles 1943.) 25 26

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consequent on the Fall is mentioned.35 He is also linked explicitly with shestov in seeing “personalist ethics” as requiring a break with the “common,”36 and a similar link is later made with dostoevsky and the revolt against a world-harmony purchased with the tears of a child—a protest that berdyaev sees as having “eternal truth.”37 the distinction between anguish (Angst) and fear38 is made in terms with which we are already familiar, and Kierkegaard is again cited as also having made a similar distinction.39 Further references in The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, The Divine and the Human, and Truth and Revelation do not add anything new.40 to sum up, berdyaev (in this regard like many other early twentieth-century commentators) sets Kierkegaard in a lineage that typically includes augustine, pascal, dostoevsky, and nietzsche. the key features of his thought that concern berdyaev are the analysis of anxiety—although it is unclear just how clearly he grasped Kierkegaard’s argument—and the emphasis on truth as subjectivity. However, even in these respects, Kierkegaard is only one of many authors, and his contribution is mixed with that of others (a characteristic feature of berdyaev’s style, which rarely involves an extensive or in-depth exegesis of a body of text). even if it is clear that Shestov “Shestovized” Kierkegaard in such a way as to fit him into a negative dialectic that was already a well-established feature of shestov’s “method” at the time when he first discovered the Danish writer, it is clear that he nevertheless became a major focus of the last decade of shestov’s career and enabled the latter to perhaps make his most influential contribution to twentieth-century thought. berdyaev never responded to Kierkegaard in the same degree or depth, although he was prepared to acknowledge his importance and his right to stand alongside some of the major figures of the Western tradition. Nor are the reasons for Berdyaev’s reserve hard to find. In an autobiographical essay he states that none of Kierkegaard (“whom i did not read until late in life”), Heidegger, or Jaspers “had any particular influence on my thought,” and he dissociates himself especially from Kierkegard’s “morbid exultation of sin,” which, he says, “is profoundly uncongenial to me.”41 Yet—and the contradiction might be deemed characteristic of this deliberately unsystematic thinker—he also says in the same berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom, p. 20. ibid., p. 43. 37 ibid., p. 80. 38 berdyaev’s reference to the german terms makes clear that what is translated “anguish” is the russian ужас and “fear” страх. 39 berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom, pp. 52–3. 40 Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], Царство духа и царство кесаря, paris: YmCa press 1949 (english translation: The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, trans. by Donald Lowrie, London: Gollancz 1952); Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], Экзистенциальная диалектика божественного и человеческого, paris: YmCa press 1952 (english translation: The Divine and the Human, trans. by r.m. French, london: geoffrey Bles 1949); and Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], Истина и откровение (english translation: Truth and Revelation, trans. by r.m. French, london: geoffrey bles 1953). 41 Николай Бердяев [nicholas berdyaev], Самопознание. Опыт философской автобиографии, paris: YmCa press 1949. (english translation: Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography, trans. by Katharine lampert, london: geoffrey bles 1950, p. 103.) 35 36

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work that his “experience of the evil and sin which attend human existence was quite different from that of Calvin, or luther or the Jansenists,” adding that “it was more akin to marcion and the gnostics, to dostoevsky and Kierkegaard.”42 but a further reason—although not one that berdyaev himself mentions—is surely that although he affirmed the subjective and, as he saw it, personalist dimension of Kierkegaard’s thought and was happy to embrace its “existential” spirit, he remained committed to a kind of theogonic speculation that, deriving from böhme, was essentially alien to Kierkegaard. this, however, provokes a question as to how we read berdyaev himself, and whether berdyaev’s böhmian speculation was, in the end, itself a cipher for a more radically first-person perspective: that is, whether Berdyaev was, in fact, an essentially speculative or an essentially demythologizing thinker—but that is another discussion.

42

berdyaev, Dream and Reality, p. 167.

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Berdyaev’s Corpus О назначении человека. Опыт парадоксальной этики, paris: sovremennyye zapiski 1931. (english translation: The Destiny of Man, trans. by n. doddington, london: geoffrey bles 1937.) Я и мир объектов. Опыт философии одиночества и общения, paris: YmCa press 1934. (english translation: Solitude and Society, trans. by george reavey, london: geoffrey bles 1938.) О рабстве и свободе человека. Опыт персоналистической метафизики, paris: YmCa press 1939. (english translation: Slavery and Freedom, trans. by r.m. French, london: geoffrey bles 1943.) Экзистенциальная диалектика божественного и человеческого, paris: YmCa press 1952. (english translation: The Divine and the Human, trans. by r.m. French, london: geoffrey bles 1949.) “Сартр и судьба экзистенциализма,” in Истина и откровение, saint petersburg: russian Christian Humanities institute 1996. (english translation: “sartre and the Future of existentialism,” in his Towards a New Epoch, trans. by o.F. Clarke, london: geoffrey bles 1949, pp. 95–104.) Самопознание (опыт философской автобиографии), paris: YmCa press 1949. (english translation: Dream and Reality. An Essay in Autobiography, trans. by Katharine lampert, london: geoffrey bles 1950.) Опыт эсхатологической метафизики. Творчество и объективация, paris: YmCa press 1947. (english translation: The Beginning and the End, trans. by r.m. French, london: geoffry bles 1952.) Царство духа и царство кесаря, paris: YmCa press 1949. (english translation: The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, trans. by donald lowrie, london: gollancz 1952.) Истина и откровение, saint petersburg: russian Christian Humanities institute 1996. (english translation: Truth and Revelation, trans. by r. m. French, new York: Harper and bros. 1953.) “Человек и машина,” Путь, no. 38, may, 1933, pp. 3–38. (english translation: “man and machine” in Bourgeois Mind and Other Essays, trans. by donald attwater, london: sheed and ward 1934, pp. 31–64.) II. Sources of Berdyaev’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard barth, Karl, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., munich: Kaiser 1922, pp. v–vi; p. xii; pp. 15–16; p. 71; p. 75; p. 77; pp. 85–9; p. 93; p. 96; pp. 98–9; p. 114; p. 141;

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p. 145; p. 236; p. 261; p. 264; p. 267; p. 319; p. 325; p. 381; p. 400; pp. 426–7; p. 455; p. 481; pp. 483–4. brunner, emil, Der Mittler: zur Besinnung über den Christusglauben, tübingen: mohr 1927, p. 22; p. 106; p. 159; p. 178, note 1; p. 192, note 1; p. 195, note 1; p. 297; pp. 387–8, note 1. Heidegger, martin, Sein und Zeit, Halle: niemeyer 1927, pp. 175–96, see also p. 190, note 1; p. 235, note 1; and p. 338, note 1. — Was ist Metaphysik?, bonn: Friedrich Cohen 1929. Kierkegaard, søren, Le Concept d’angoisse. Simple méditation psychologique pour servir d’introduction au problème dogmatique du péché originel, par Vigilius Haufniensis, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, introduced by Jean wahl, paris: Félix alcan 1935. — L’Ecole du christianisme (Exercice dans le christianisme), par Anti-Climacus, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le traducteur 1936. przywara, erich, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, munich and berlin: oldenbourg 1929. shestov, lev, Киргегард и экзистенциальная философия (Глас вопиющего в пустыне) [Kierkegaard and the existential philosophy (vox clamantis in deserto)], paris: sovremenniye zapiski i dom Knigi 1939. (French translation: Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle: “vox clamantis in deserto,” trans. by t. rageot and b. de schloezer, paris: vrin 1936.) III. Secondary Literature on Berdyaev’s Relation to Kierkegaard aliotta, antonio, Critica dell Esistenzialismo, roma: perrella 1951. Chiesa, mario, “Cinque esistenzialisti (Kierkegaard, dostoevskij, barth, marcel, berdiaeff),” Rivista Rosminiana, no. 44, 1950, pp. 67–74. Fryszman, Alex, “Kierkegaard og Dostojevskij i den russiske filosofiske og litterære tradition med særlig henblik på de nye tendenser i den russiske filosofi,” in Kierkegaard 1993—digtning, filosofi, teologi, ed. by Finn Hauberg mortensen, odense: institut for litteratur, Kultur og medier, odense universitet 1993, pp. 122–30. loungina, darya, “russia: Kierkegaard’s reception through tsarism, Communism, and liberation,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome ii, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 247–83, see p. 260; p. 263; p. 274. malik, Habib C., Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought, washington, d.C.: Catholic university of america press 1997, p. 396. nagy, andrás, “Kierkegaard in russia. the ultimate paradox: existentialism at the Crossroads of religious philosophy and bolshevism,” in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference “Kierkegaard and the Meaning of Meaning It,” Copenhagen, May 5–9, 1996, ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon stewart,

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berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 1997 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), pp. 107–38. neuhauser, rudolf, “das kierkegaardsche paradigma in der geschichte der literatur. dargestellt am beispiel der russischen literatur,” RasSazu, vol. 16, 1997, pp. 127–48. politis, Hélène, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, paris: Éditions Kimé 2005, pp. 98–9; p. 104, note 61; p. 128, note 89. spinka, matthew, “soren Kierkegaard and the existential theology,” in his Christian Thought: From Erasmus to Berdyaev, englewood Cliffs, new Jersey: prenticeHall 1962. wahl, Jean, Petite histoire de “l’existentialisme”: suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard commentaires, paris: editions Club maintenant 1947, see pp. 65–8.

martin buber: “no-one Can so refute Kierkegaard as Kierkegaard Himself” peter Šajda

the basic dynamics of martin buber’s relation to Kierkegaard appear to be quite simple at first glance: an ambiguous relation in which criticism markedly outweighs appreciation. such a quantitative view would not, however, do justice to a reception that experienced different phases and, despite its clear-cut structure, comprises a variety of facets and nuances that deserve attention on their own. Kierkegaard represented for buber a crucial voice in nineteenth-century philosophy, a voice that was simultaneously an essential corrective to contemporary philosophical trends and a source of new misconceptions. although Kierkegaard in a certain sense prepared the ground for dialogical philosophy, he also yielded inspiration to what buber considered monological streams of twentieth-century philosophical anthropology. Thus, in Buber’s view, Kierkegaard remained a deeply controversial figure, an ambivalent thinker, whom he in 1936 concisely characterized with the statement that “[n]o-one can so refute Kierkegaard as Kierkegaard himself.”1 I. Brief Outline of Buber’s Life and Work martin buber (1878–1965) was born on February 8, 1878 in vienna, the capital of the multi-national austro-Hungarian empire. at the age of three he was sent to lemberg (lwów), the then capital of the Kingdom of galicia and lodomeria, where he stayed first with his grandparents and later with his father. An influential figure in Buber’s early education was his grandfather Salomon Buber (1827–1906), martin buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, berlin: schocken 1936, p. 42 (in his Werke, vols. 1–3, munich: Kösel & lambert schneider 1962–64, vol. 1, p. 235; english translation: “the Question to the single one,” in Between Man and Man, trans. by ronald gregor smith, london: Kegan paul 1947, p. 57). when referring to buber’s works i will refer to the most recent german edition of buber’s collected works Martin Buber: Werkausgabe, vols. 1–21, gütersloh: gütersloher verlagshaus 2001ff. in the case of buber’s works which have not been published in the framework of this edition yet, i will refer to the following edition: martin buber, Werke, vols. 1–3, munich: Kösel & lambert schneider 1962–64. when quoting directly from buber’s works i will avail myself of the early english translations of buber’s works.

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a successful businessman, who was simultaneously a renowned scholar of Jewish classical sources of spirituality, a Hebraist, and an assiduous publisher of Midrashic literature.2 salomon’s genuine interest in and extensive knowledge of Jewish religious heritage exerted long-lasting influence on Buber and provided important incentives for his later research of Hasidism. in the genealogy of his gradual acquaintance with Hasidism buber recalled a formative childhood encounter with the Hasidim in the bukovinian town of sadagora, which apparently left a deep impression on the boy and surrounded the followers of the zaddikim with an aura of mystery and wonder.3 the early experience of the east european Jewry’s religiosity and salomon buber’s “world of the midrash” constituted the substratum on which martin buber would later found his study of the living history of Jewish spirituality. buber’s return to vienna in 1896 was marked by a temporary estrangement from his Jewish roots and by an intensive confrontation with the germanophone culture in a variety of areas—literature, theater, philosophy, and religion. the lively artistic milieu of fin de siècle vienna captured young buber’s attention more than the formal courses at the university, with the Burgtheater4 and the literary circle Jung-wien5 being the most notable aesthetic influences. between 1896 and 1904 buber studied at the universities of vienna, leipzig, zurich, and Berlin attending lectures and seminars led by several distinguished and influential scholars in philosophy, psychology, or sociology, such as wilhelm wundt (1832– 1920), wilhelm dilthey (1833–1911) or georg simmel (1858–1918). buber graduated from the university with the dissertation Zur Geschichte des Individuationsproblems on the Christian mystics nicolaus Cusanus (1401–64) and Jacob böhme (1575–1624) in which he explored issues that were of long-term interest to him and would also be echoed in his confrontation with Kierkegaard: the issue of god’s relation to the cosmos, the parallel relation between unity and multiplicity, the ontological status of the individual. as paul mendes-Flohr pointed out, buber’s confrontation with the problem of individuation and his attempt to formulate an adequate doctrine of unity represent a philosophical striving that dominates much of buber’s pre-dialogical thought.6 2 paul mendes-Flohr, “martin buber as a Habsburg intellectual,” in Jüdische Geschichte als Allgemeine Geschichte, ed. by raphael gross and Yfaat weiss, göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht 2006, p. 14. see also pp. 13–15 and Hans Kohn, Martin Buber. Sein Werk und seine Zeit. Ein Beitrag zur Geistesgeschichte Mitteleuropas 1880–1930, Cologne: Joseph melzer verlag 1961, pp. 16–18. 3 martin buber, Mein Weg zum Chassidismus. Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am main: rütten & loening 1918, p. 10–13 (in Werke, vol. 3, pp. 962–4). 4 buber retained a vivid memory of the strong impact the Burgtheater had on him after his return from lemberg. Cf. martin buber, Begegnung. Autobiographische Fragmente, stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1960, pp. 20–1. 5 see the analysis of buber’s 1897 essay “on viennese literature” discussing the Jung-Wien writers Hermann bahr (1863–1934), Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929), peter altenberg (1859–1919), and arthur schnitzler (1862–1931) in gilya gerda schmidt, Martin Buber’s Formative Years. From German Culture to Jewish Renewal, 1897–1909, tuscaloosa, alabama: university of alabama press 1995, pp. 6–11. 6 paul r. mendes-Flohr, Von der Mystik zum Dialog. Martin Bubers geistige Entwicklung bis hin zu “Ich und Du,” Königstein/ts.: Jüdischer verlag 1979, p. 68.

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starting in 1898, buber was actively involved in the political debates among european Jewish intellectuals, attended zionist Congresses, edited the zionist weekly Die Welt, and stood in direct communication with prominent figures of european zionism including theodor Herzl (1860–1904).7 the increasingly obvious incongruity of buber’s views with the mainstream of zionism, however, prompted buber to withdraw from the frontline of zionism8 and focus on alternative ways of strengthening the Jewish community consciousness. one such way was his extensive project of introducing the Jews of western and Central europe to the spiritual riches of the Hasidic tradition which he believed to contain vital guidance for the contemporary double crisis of the individual and the community.9 in 1922 buber commenced his instruction at the independent House of Jewish learning (Das Freie Jüdische Lehrhaus) in Frankfurt am main administered by Franz rosenzweig (1887–1929) with whom he in 1925 embarked on the large-scale enterprise of a new translation of the Hebrew bible into german. in 1923 buber’s essential work exploring the fundamental principles of dialogical philosophy Ich und Du was published, marking an important turn in his philosophical production. Following the rise of nazism in germany and nsdap’s concentration of political power in 1933, buber resigned from his university position and instead devoted himself to an educational service to the persecuted Jewish community. His philosophical confrontation with the sinister spirit of political collectivism Die Frage an den Einzelnen was published by schocken verlag in 1936, miraculously slipping through the nazi censorship. given the constant deterioration of the political conditions in Germany, Buber finally made his aliyah to israel in march 1938, settling in Jerusalem, where he was promptly offered a teaching post as professor of social philosophy at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem. In Palestine/Israel Buber continued to be a prolific writer, further developing the structures of his dialogical philosophy, writing studies on philosophical anthropology, ethics, philosophy of religion, political theory, pedagogy, or exegesis, publishing new volumes of Hasidic stories and finalizing his translation of the Hebrew Bible. buber’s international recognition grew continuously with his works being translated into a variety of languages, lecture trips to both europe and the united states, and his For more detail on buber’s relation to theodor Herzl see buber, Begegnung. Autobiographische Fragmente, pp. 23–8; maurice Friedman, Begegnung auf dem schmalen Grat. Martin Buber—ein Leben, münster: agenda verlag 1999, pp. 47–65 and schmidt, Martin Buber’s Formative Years, pp. 79–85. 8 Yet another Jewish political figure, who exerted decisive influence on Buber and inspired his doctrine of community was gustav landauer (1870–1919) who later became the Commissioner of enlightenment and public instruction in the government of the short-lived First soviet republic of bavaria. For more detail on buber’s relation to landauer’s socialism, see buber’s work Pfade in Utopia and Friedman, Begegnung auf dem schmalen Grat, pp. 143–62. 9 Buber’s first collection of Hasidic stories appeared in 1906 under the title Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman (Frankfurt am main: rütten & loening) followed by Die Legende des Baalschem (Frankfurt am main: rütten & loening 1907), Vom Leben der Chassidim (Frankfurt am main: rütten & loening 1908) and Die jüdische Mystik (Frankfurt am main: rütten & loening 1909). after the First world war buber published more than a dozen other collections and essays pertaining to Hasidism. 7

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reception of prestigious international prizes, such as the peace prize of the german book trade (1953) or the erasmus prize (1963). martin buber died on June 13, 1965 in Jerusalem. II. Buber’s Early Knowledge of Kierkegaard according to buber’s own statement, Kierkegaard was among the early philosophical influences in his life. In his “Zur Geschichte des dialogischen Prinzips” Buber mentions the fact that he became acquainted with Kierkegaard already as a student and that critical confrontation with Kierkegaard formed an integral part of his early intellectual development.10 A more precise dating regarding Buber’s first contact with Kierkegaard’s thought can be found in buber’s polemical article “a.m. und Constantin brunner” that appeared in 1912 in the journal Ost und West. there buber defends himself against the accusation of plagiarism advanced by an anonymous disciple of Constantin brunner (1862–1937) and explains that his usage of the terms “absolute” and “relative” has been inspired by a thinker far older than brunner, namely, Kierkegaard.11 in order to stress the honesty of his approach to other authors’ intellectual property, he adds that in the 15 years he has known Kierkegaard, he has “at all times and in all clarity” acknowledged his influence.12 this suggests that buber familiarized himself with Kierkegaard probably in 1897 while studying at the university either in vienna or in leipzig. during his university studies buber attended a variety of courses on literature, philosophy, and the history of philosophy in which he might have encountered Kierkegaard. although Kierkegaard was by the end of the nineteenth century still a rarity in the canon of academic philosophy, there are facts indicating that buber actually came across Kierkegaard’s name on academic soil. in 1896 buber enrolled for the winter semester at the university of vienna, where he continued in the summer semester, spending the winter semester of 1897 at the university of leipzig. the courses in vienna comprised a general course on philosophy by adolf stöhr (1855–1921) and a course on practical philosophy by emil reich (1864–1940).13 importantly, the latter also gave a course on Henrik ibsen, which buber attended, and the published version of reich’s lectures from 1894 shows that he presented Kierkegaard as a crucial source of inspiration for ibsen’s critique of modern clergy Published first as Martin Buber, “Nachwort” to Die Schriften über das dialogische Prinzip, Heidelberg: schneider 1954, pp. 287–305, see p. 295 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 298). 11 martin buber, “a.m. und Constantin brunner,” Ost und West, vol. 12, no. 4, 1912, column 337 (in Werkausgabe, vol. 1, p. 181). For more detail on the background of the controversy see the commentary on buber’s essay in Werkausgabe, vol. 1, pp. 315–17. 12 buber, “a.m. und Constantin brunner,” column 337 (in Werkausgabe, vol. 1, p. 181). 13 the list of university courses attended by buber can be found in Martin Buber: Werkausgabe, vol. 1, pp. 301–4. an incomplete english version of the courses is included in schmidt, Martin Buber’s Formative Years: From German Culture to Jewish Renewal, 1897– 1909, pp. 127–30. 10

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in both Love’s Comedy and Brand.14 emil reich’s course on Henrik ibsen was thus one of the earliest contexts in which buber might have encountered Kierkegaard. in leipzig buber attended two introductory courses on the history of philosophy taught by wilhelm wundt and paul barth (1858–1922). even if there is no evidence that either of the two professors would have any expressed interest in Kierkegaard, there is a definite connection between Wilhelm Wundt and one of the prime promoters of Kierkegaard’s thought in the nineteenth century: Harald Høffding (1843–1931). Wundt admired Høffding mainly for his achievements in the field of psychology, quoted his opinions in several of his scientific studies,15 and acknowledged certain similarities between his own concepts and those of Høffding.16 Furthermore, Høffding’s psychology was in the 1890s a frequent topic in the leipzig-based journal Philosophische Studien published by wundt.17 moreover, Høffding exerted influence on Wundt also in the area of philosophy. In his Einleitung in die Philosophie (1901) wundt cites among his sources on the philosophy of the nineteenth century Høffding’s Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, which is a crucial work from the point of view of introducing Kierkegaard into the canon of the modern history of philosophy.18 in 1897–98 one of the courses given by wundt at leipzig, which buber attended, focused precisely on the history of the more recent philosophy.19 emil reich, Henrik Ibsens Dramen. Sechzehn Vorlesungen, dresden and leipzig: e. pierson 1894, pp. 31–2; pp. 61–2. reich refers to georg brandes’ depiction of Kierkegaard and observes a genuine affinity between the Geistesrichtung of ibsen and Kierkegaard. ibid., p. 32. Emil Reich’s course on Henrik Ibsen is listed as the very first course on the list of buber’s courses at the university (winter semester 1896–97). in the published version of reich’s lectures, the lecture on Love’s Comedy is listed as lecture no. 2 and the lecture on Brand as lecture no. 4. 15 wilhelm wundt, “zur Frage des bewusstseinsumfanges,” Philosophische Studien, vol. 7, pp. 229–30; wilhelm wundt, “bemerkungen zur associationslehre,” Philosophische Studien, vol. 7, p. 331; p. 352; wilhelm wundt, “ueber psychische Causalität und das princip des psycho-physischen parallelismus,” Philosophische Studien, vol. 10, p. 61; and wilhelm Wundt, “Ueber die Definition der Psychologie,” Philosophische Studien, vol. 12, p. 3. 16 Wundt, “Ueber die Definition der Psychologie,” p. 3. 17 see especially Harald Høffding, “zur theorie des wiedererkennens,” Philosophische Studien, vol. 8, pp. 86ff. and alfred lehmann, “Kritische und experimentelle studien über das wiedererkennen,” Philosophische Studien, vol. 7, pp. 169–212. 18 wilhelm wundt, Einleitung in die Philosophie, leipzig: wilhelm engelmann 1901, p. 269. wundt refers to the german translation of Høffding’s work from 1895–96. alongside Høffding’s work wundt lists another work relevant for the reception of Kierkegaard within the framework of the history of philosophy in the nineteenth century: georg brandes, Hauptströmungen der Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (berlin: reiss 1924). Høffding’s and brandes’ respective roles in promoting Kierkegaard’s philosophy are elaborated in steen tullberg, “denmark: the permanent reception—150 Years of reading Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome i, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 12–24. 19 the full title of the course was History of the more Recent Philosophy with an Introductory Overview of the History of the Older Philosophy (Geschichte der neueren Philosophie mit einer einleitenden Übersicht über die Geschichte der älteren Philosophie). 14

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the courses for which buber enrolled for the winter semester 1899–1900 at the university of berlin included two on the history of philosophy: one on the general history of philosophy by wilhelm dilthey (1833–1911), the other on nineteenthcentury philosophy by georg simmel (1858–1918).20 it is obvious from several later sources that buber considered these two pedagogues his most important teachers.21 while the Collected Works of simmel suggest only a later interest of simmel in Kierkegaard,22 there is no doubt that Kierkegaard was part of dilthey’s lectures in berlin. dilthey’s Biographisch-literarischer Grundriß that served as a companion for students attending his lectures in berlin23 mentions Kierkegaard in the chapter on the german philosophy of the nineteenth century as a representative of nongerman system-free philosophy.24 the Grundriß—which appeared in six editions between 1885 and 1905—was designed specifically for the course General History of Philosophy that buber attended. to be sure, the university was not the only place where young buber could encounter Kierkegaard. the intellectual legacy of Kierkegaard was a matter of discussion in Viennese literary circles which exerted tangible influence on Buber both before his departure for Leipzig and after his return from Berlin. A key figure for the promotion of Kierkegaard’s thought in vienna in the early twentieth century was the austrian littérateur rudolf Kassner (1873–1959),25 of whose works buber had a thorough knowledge, as his correspondence shows. in a letter dated march 11, 1906 the austrian poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929) urged buber to get acquainted with the works of Kassner, mentioning explicitly Kassner’s treatment of Kierkegaard.26 buber’s reply to this letter contains Cf. schmidt, Martin Buber’s Formative Years: From German Culture to Jewish Renewal, 1897–1909, p. 127; Martin Buber: Werkausgabe, vol. 1, p. 301. 20 buber also attended a course on more recent philosophy by max dessoir in berlin (summer semester 1898) and a course on ethics and social philosophy by simmel (winter semester 1900–01). Cf. Martin Buber: Werkausgabe, vol. 1, pp. 302–3. 21 Cf. mendes-Flohr, Von der Mystik zum Dialog. Martin Bubers geistige Entwicklung bis hin zu “Ich und Du,” p. 32; p. 49; Kohn, Martin Buber. Sein Werk und seine Zeit, p. 21; Martin Buber. Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, ed. by grete schaeder, vols. 1–3, Heidelberg: lambert schneider 1972–75, vol. 3, p. 290. 22 in georg simmel’s Gesamtausgabe the first mention of Kierkegaard can be found in the essay Individualismus from 1917. Cf. georg simmel, “individualismus,” in his Gesamtausgabe, vols. 1–23, Frankfurt am main: suhrkamp 1989–2008, vol. 13, p. 301. 23 see the introduction to wilhelm dilthey, “allgemeine geschichte der philosophie,” in Wilhelm Dilthey. Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–30, göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht 1914ff., vol. 23, p. xvi. 24 ibid., p. 157. the text of the Grundriß published in dilthey’s Gesammelte Schriften is based on the 1905 version. Cf. ibid., p. xviii. 25 a detailed overview of Kierkegaard’s early reception in both germany and austria can be found in Heiko schulz, “germany and austria: a modest Head start: the german reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome i, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 307–69. 26 see Martin Buber. Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, vol. 1, p. 236.

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valuable information on his reading of Kassner, and per consequens also on his encounter with Kierkegaard through Kassner’s writings. after expressing his high respect for Kassner’s work, Buber goes on to say that ever since his first encounter with Kassner in the journal Wiener Rundschau in 1901 he has read everything published by Kassner.27 He specifically gives his opinion on two of Kassner’s books that Hugo von Hofmannsthal recommended to him: Der indische Idealismus (1903) and Die Moral der Musik (1905). both of these works include a number of passages on Kierkegaard, as do four other pieces written by Kassner in the early 1900s.28 the most important literary treatment of Kierkegaard is, however, Kassner’s essay “sören Kierkegaard. aphorismen” that appeared in Die neue Rundschau in may 1906 and at about the same time in Kassner’s collection Motive.29 the climax of this essay is the final chapter on the single individual—a topic that was at the heart of buber’s interest in Kierkegaard. this topic would later be further elaborated and remodelled by Kassner in his works Das Gottmenschentum und der Einzelne (1923) and Der Einzelne und der Kollektivmensch (1931).30 an event of historical importance for the germanophone philosophical world was the inception of the publication of Kierkegaard’s Gesammelte Werke in the Jena-based publishing house of buber’s friend eugen diederichs (1867–1930). this edition containing 12 volumes ran from 1909 to 1922, largely replacing and complementing the older translations.31 Yet another important literary phenomenon that undoubtedly had an impact on buber’s reception of Kierkegaard was the innsbruck-based journal Der Brenner founded in 1910. Kierkegaard’s philosophy and his view of Christianity were discussed at length already in the first years of the journal’s existence, while especially in the 1914 issues Kierkegaard was a recurrent topic. these issues included extensive studies on Kierkegaard by theodor Haecker (1879–1945)32 and

27 Ibid., p. 237. The first essay by Kassner that Buber read was the following: “Die moral der legende. (zu einem buche Jules laforgues),” Wiener Rundschau, no. 8, 1901, pp. 174–9. a reprint of the essay is included in rudolf Kassner, Sämtliche Werke, vols. 1–10, pfullingen: neske 1969–91, vol. 2, pp. 394–405; p. 524. 28 see rudolf Kassner, “der indische idealismus,” in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 1, p. 459; p. 461; pp. 467–8; pp. 474; pp. 476–7; rudolf Kassner, “die moral der musik,” in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 1, p. 667; p. 673; p. 702; pp. 743–4; rudolf Kassner, “die mystik, die Künstler und das leben,” in Sämtliche Werke, p. 33; p. 34; pp. 249–50; rudolf Kassner, “Charles baudelaire: poeta Christianissimus,” in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, p. 142; rudolf Kassner, “zum tode oscar wildes. einiges über das paradoxe,” in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, p. 382; and rudolf Kassner, “andré gide,” in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, p. 390. 29 rudolf Kassner, “sören Kierkegaard. aphoristisch,” in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, pp. 39–97; pp. 518–19. 30 Cf. rudolf Kassner, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 6, pp. 213–27; pp. 302–36. 31 sören Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann gottsched and Christoph schrempf, Jena: diederichs 1909–22. 32 theodor Haecker, “F. blei und Kierkegaard,” Der Brenner, no. 10, 1914, pp. 457– 65.

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Carl dallago (1869–1949),33 as well as translations of Kierkegaard’s works with Haecker’s commentaries.34 Der Brenner was a crucial medium in introducing buber to the thought of Ferdinand ebner (1882–1931)—a spiritual heir of Kierkegaard35— whose writings provided vital material for Buber’s reflections on basic concepts of dialogical philosophy. III. Kierkegaard in Buber’s Corpus Kierkegaard was an important interlocutor throughout much of buber’s active life as an author. although buber’s knowledge of Kierkegaard dated back to his university years, his most intensive literary preoccupation with Kierkegaard took place much later. the period in which Kierkegaard appears repeatedly as an explicit topic in buber’s published works and correspondence stretches roughly from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. this means that buber’s most productive reception of Kierkegaard’s philosophy is to be located in a time when buber was already a mature and accomplished philosopher. the earliest explicit references to Kierkegaard in buber’s corpus stem from the early 1910s. in a letter from october 8, 1911, addressed to ernst elijahu rappeport, buber inserted a brief mention of Kierkegaard’s relation to his pseudonyms.36 in november 1911 he received a letter from the young Hungarian philosopher györgy lukács (1885–1971)37 who shared his interest in Kierkegaard. lukács, who wrote an article on Kierkegaard and regine olsen for the budapest-based literary journal Nyugat in 1910, sent buber the newly published german edition of his work Die Seele und die Formen which contained a reprint of the Nyugat article.38 buber’s reaction Carl dallago, “Über eine schrift ‘sören Kierkegaard und die philosophie der innerlichkeit,’ ” Der Brenner, no. 11, 1914, pp. 468–78; no. 12, 1914, pp. 515–31; no. 13, 1914, pp. 565–78. 34 sören Kierkegaard, “vorworte,” Der Brenner, no. 14, 1914, pp. 666–73; “de omnibus dubitandum est,” Der Brenner, no. 14, 1914, pp. 674–83; “der pfahl im Fleisch,” Der Brenner, no. 16, 1914, pp. 691–712 and no. 17, 1914, pp. 797–814; “Kritik der gegenwart,” Der Brenner, no. 19, 1914, pp. 815–49 and no. 20, 1914, pp. 869–908. the translations of Kierkegaard’s works were as a rule accompanied by theodor Haecker’s foreword or afterword. 35 For buber’s brief comparison of Kierkegaard and ebner see martin buber, “zur geschichte des dialogischen prinzips” (nachwort), in Schriften über das dialogische Prinzip, Heidelberg: schneider 1954, pp. 291–2 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 296–7). For more detail on buber’s reading of Der Brenner and the publication of ebner’s writings in Der Brenner, see rivka Horwitz, Buber’s Way to I and Thou. An Historical Analysis and the First Publication of Martin Buber’s Lectures “Religion als Gegenwart,” Heidelberg: lambert schneider 1978, pp. 170–82. ebner refers to Kierkegaard in Der Brenner as early as 1919. Cf. Ferdinand ebner, “Fragment über weininger,” Der Brenner, no. 1, 1919, p. 28. 36 see Martin Buber. Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, vol. 1, p. 302. 37 see Georg Lukács–Briefwechsel 1902–1917, ed. by Éva Karádi and Éva Fekete, stuttgart: J.b. metzler 1982, p. 258. 38 this essay was originally published in Hungarian as györgy lukács, “sören Kierkegaard és regine olsen,” Nyugat, vol. 1, no. 6, 1910, pp. 378–87. (english translation: ‘the Foundering of Form against life. sören Kierkegaard and regine olsen,’ in Soul and 33

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to the book was positive and encouraging, praising lukács’ sense of orientation in the complex topic.39 in 1912 buber published in the journal Ost und West the already-mentioned apology “a.m. und Constantin brunner,” which, in spite of its concise character, offers crucial clues to buber’s early appropriation of Kierkegaardian concepts. at the core of the controversy is the objection by the unidentified Brunner disciple A.M. that buber adopted brunnerian terminology without citing the source. this concerns, among other things, buber’s usage of the terms “absolute” and “relative.” buber argues that he had formed his terminology prior to the publication of brunner’s work Die Lehre von den Geistigen und dem Volke (1908) and that his employment of the terms is in fact inconsistent with the structure of brunner’s system.40 He explains that if a.m.’s quest for his sources is sincere, it should lead him to other thinkers than Constantin brunner, for example, to Kierkegaard. buber states straightforwardly that the meaning of the terms “absolute” and “relative” in his criticized writings is related to Kierkegaard’s usage of the terms and he includes an example from his essay Die Schaffenden, das Volk und die Bewegung (1902) with which he illustrates what the terms were originally meant to signify.41 it can be concluded on the basis of buber’s exposition that his terminological indebtedness to Kierkegaard as for the terms “absolute” and “relative” dates back to the years 1902–06. it has been suggested by michael theunissen and wilfried greve that buber’s early Kierkegaard reception is likely to be linked to anthropological themes that were decisive for his identification of Kierkegaard as a precursor to dialogical philosophy.42 in this connection the authors pointed to the key concept of Verwirklichung in buber’s early philosophical dialogue Daniel (1913). buber touches upon this subject in his letter of september 30, 1935 to Hans trüb, where he outlines the difference between “individuation” and “personation,” explicitly highlighting Kierkegaard as the thinker who most significantly thematized the issue of personation in modern philosophy.43 The letter ends with Buber’s comment that the fifth dialogue of Daniel attempts to address this problem, albeit in an imperfect manner.44 Even if the fifth dialogue of Daniel does not mention Kierkegaard by name, it does indeed treat themes that were Form, trans. by anna bostock, Cambridge, massachusetts: mit press 1974, pp. 28–41; german translation: ‘das zerschellen der Form am leben: søren Kierkegaard und regine olsen,’ in Die Seele und die Formen: Essays, berlin: Fleischel 1911, pp. 61–91.) 39 Georg Lukács–Briefwechsel 1902–1917, p. 260. 40 buber, “a.m. und Constantin brunner,” columns 335–6 (in Werkausgabe, vol. 1, pp. 178–9). 41 buber, “a.m. und Constantin brunner,” columns 336–7 (in Werkausgabe, vol. 1, p. 180). buber uses the terms “absolute” and “relative” in relation to a community. in his essay “die erneuerung des Judentums” he writes about the “absolute life” and the “relative life” of the Jewish people. Cf. martin buber, “die erneuerung des Judentums,” in his Drei Reden über das Judentum, Frankfurt am main: rütten & loening 1911, p. 72. 42 michael theunissen and wilfried greve, “einleitung: Kierkegaards werk und wirkung,” in Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. by michael theunissen and wilfried greve, Frankfurt am main: suhrkamp 1979, p. 61. 43 see Martin Buber. Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, vol. 2, p. 573. 44 ibid., p. 574.

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in buber’s mind linked to Kierkegaard, such as the critique of the idealist conception of the human i by means of insisting on the essentially relational constitution of the i.45 buber’s claim in Daniel that the becoming of the human i is intrinsically linked to an entry into a relation with alterity is reminiscent of the characteristics of Kierkegaard’s single individual that buber will appreciate in Die Frage an den Einzelnen (1936).46 on the other hand, Daniel clearly postulates the idea of the affirmation of the universe and the decidedly intracosmic orientation of the human i which will later be one of buber’s chief reproaches against Kierkegaard’s concept of the single individual. similarly to Daniel, in buber’s most famous work Ich und Du Kierkegaard’s presence is at best implicit.47 the treatise criticizes in several instances religious paradigms that fail to produce a consistent doctrine of i–thou relationality,48 confronting in one of the instances a paradigm that presents the ideal of a “religious” man which has features resembling buber’s later critique of Kierkegaard’s single individual. the “religious” man of Ich und Du is one “who does not need to take his stand in any relation to the world and to living beings, since the status of social life, that is defined from outside, is in him surpassed by means of a strength that works only from within.”49 buber adds that “the ‘religious’ man stands as a single [Einzelner], isolated [Einziger], separated before god, since he has also gone beyond the status of the ‘moral’ [sittlich] man.”50 Buber’s biographer Maurice Friedman identifies the short chapter, from which the quoted lines are taken, as an unmistakeable criticism of Kierkegaard,51 while robert perkins argues that “what buber criticizes here is at best a parody of Kierkegaard.”52 martin buber, Daniel. Gespräche von der Verwirklichung, leipzig: insel 1913, pp. 140–54 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 70–6). For buber’s critical statements on the idealist concept of i see buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 20; p. 93 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 222–3 and p. 262; “the Question to the single one,” p. 45; p. 80); and martin buber, “das problem des menschen,” in Dialogisches Leben, zurich: gregor müller 1947, p. 391 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 359; “what is man?” p. 163). 46 Cf. buber, “the Question to the single one,” p. 50: “Kierkegaard’s ‘to become a single one’ is, as we have seen, not meant socratically. the goal of this becoming is not ‘right’ life, but the entry into a relation.” 47 Some authors have tried to detect Kierkegaard’s potential conceptual influence on buber’s Ich und Du. Cf. Jacob golomb, “buber’s i and thou vis-à-vis nietzsche and Kierkegaard,” Existentia, vol. 12, 2002, pp. 413–27 or Horwitz, Buber’s Way to I and Thou, pp. 231–4. 48 martin buber, Ich und Du, leipzig: insel-verlag 1923, pp. 123–6 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 150–2; english translation: I and Thou, trans. by ronald gregor smith, new York: scribner 2000 [reprint from 1958], pp. 102–4). 49 buber, Ich und Du, p. 123 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 150; I and Thou, p. 102). 50 buber, Ich und Du, p. 124 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 151; I and Thou, p. 103). 51 Friedman, Begegnung auf dem schmalen Grat, p. 194. 52 robert l. perkins, “buber and Kierkegaard. a philosophic encounter,” in Martin Buber: A Centenary Volume, ed. by Haim gordon and Jochanan bloch, new York: Ktav 1984, p. 279. Perkins gives several reasons why he finds Friedman’s thesis problematic. Cf. ibid., pp. 279–81. 45

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although perkins is right as far as the inaccuracy of rendering Kierkegaard’s ideas is concerned, Friedman obviously has a point in linking this chapter to Kierkegaard. it contains several lines of thought that are addressed in Die Frage an den Einzelnen and elsewhere in buber’s oeuvre in connection with Kierkegaard. Firstly, the target of criticism is an individual-oriented religiosity with marked asocial and acosmic elements. secondly, the religious is seen as separate and superior to the ethical.53 thirdly, a problematic concept of the social is involved, which confuses genuine community with some degenerated modern social structures.54 Fourthly, god and creation are held apart, viewed through a dualistic prism that defines their mutual relation as tension.55 the dualism of god and the cosmos is examined in other chapters of Ich und Du in yet another connection related to buber’s Kierkegaard treatment in Die Frage an den Einzelnen. in the latter work buber claims that Kierkegaard’s single individual’s relation to god is strictly exclusivist: “this relation is an exclusive one...it is the excluding relation, excluding all others.”56 in Ich und Du he corrects this concept by saying that “[i]n the relation with god unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one.”57 it must be noted, however, that even the abovenamed chapter of Ich und Du which deals with themes that from the point of view of buber’s authorship can be regarded as “Kierkegaardian” contains elements which suggest that buber was not thinking solely of Kierkegaard when composing it. buber’s major confrontation with Kierkegaard saw the light of the world 13 years after the publication of Ich und Du in the form of his work Die Frage an den Einzelnen (1936), which emil brunner concisely referred to as “das Kierkegaardbuch.”58 given the constraints of this article i am going to limit my analysis of this central work to its most relevant aspects. First of all, it is important to bear in mind the setting in which the book was written and published, as the dramatic historical circumstances of the 1930s are clearly reflected in the finale of the book.59 the work is in its essence a political manifest

see below for buber’s criticism of Kierkegaard’s hierarchization of the religious and the ethical in Gottesliebe und Nächstenliebe and Von einer Suspension des Ethischen (Gottesfinsternis). 54 see below for buber’s criticism of Kierkegaard’s misconception of human community as the “crowd” or an unholy entity in Die Frage an den Einzelnen, Das Problem des Menschen, Zwei Glaubensweisen, and Dem Gemeinschaftlichen folgen. 55 see below for buber’s elaboration of Kierkegaard’s acosmism in Die Frage an den Einzelnen and Das Problem des Menschen. 56 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 31 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 228; “the Question to the single one,” p. 50). 57 buber, Ich und Du, p. 93 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 130; I and Thou, p. 80). Cf. also buber, Ich und Du, p. 115 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 168–9; I and Thou, pp. 123–4). buber argues along similar lines also in Die Frage an den Einzelnen: “exclusive love to god...is, because he is God, inclusive love, ready to accept and include all love.” buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 34 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 229–30; “the Question to the single one,” pp. 51–2). 58 see emil brunner’s letter to buber from december 12, 1936 in Martin Buber. Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, vol. 2, p. 627. 59 Cf. Friedman, Begegnung auf dem schmalen Grat, pp. 275–7. 53

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underlining the importance of the individual in a time dominated by political groups and collectivist ideologies. there are several positive things buber has to say about Kierkegaard’s concept of the single individual, which is the prime object of his examination. First, to become a single individual is a task which makes the individuum develop into a person, as it requires an entry into a relation.60 Thus, a correlation is established between finding oneself and relating to an other. secondly, since Kierkegaard’s conception of the single individual is essentially relational, it distinguishes itself from both mysticism and individualism, in which either the i or the You ultimately disappear.61 thirdly, the notions of truth and responsibility acquire in the Kierkegaardian vision important existential and relational dimensions. Kierkegaard presents a concept of truth that goes beyond purely noetic truth, since he claims that “the truth for the single one only exists in his producing it himself in action,” that is, when he or she stands its test.62 this interrelatedness is for buber a clear sign of the fact that human truth is “bound up with the responsibility of the person.”63 Buber deems this a definitely postidealist approach64 which can potentially offer vital clues for the crisis of his own troubled age in which the person has been collectivized and the truth politicized.65 obviously, one of the main points of Die Frage an den Einzelnen is the critique of the Kierkegaardian concept of the single individual which ultimately clears the way for buber’s refashioning of the concept according to his own principles. buber’s criticism rests on the key conviction that Kierkegaard’s single individual relates essentially (wesentlich) only to god, whereas his relating to any sphere or segment of god’s creation is in fact non-essential. buber terms this approach acosmic and sees in it a fundamental inner contradiction of Kierkegaard’s doctrine, which he deems inconsistent with Christ’s imperative of neighbor-love.66 textually, buber relies chiefly on Kierkegaard’s supplement to The Point of View for My Work as an buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 31 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 228; “the Question to the single one,” p. 50). earlier buber argues that “[t]he category of the single one, too, means not the subject or ‘man,’ but concrete singularity; yet not the individual who is detecting his existence, but rather the person who is finding himself.” Buber, “The Question to the Single one,” in Between Man and Man, p. 42. 61 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, pp. 16–18 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 220–1; “the Question to the single one,” pp. 43–5). 62 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 96 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 264; “the Question to the single one,” p. 82). see also buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, pp. 20–4 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 223–4 and p. 225; “the Question to the single one,” pp. 46–7 and p. 48). 63 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 96 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 264; “the Question to the single one,” p. 82). 64 buber claims that the struggle against idealism was conducted “by reference to the neglected creaturely bonds of the concrete human person” and denounces the “fictitious responsibility in face of reason, of an idea.” buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 20; p. 93 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 222–3; p. 262; “the Question to the single one,” p. 45; p. 80). 65 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, pp. 93–4 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 262–3; “the Question to the single one,” pp. 80–1). 66 Cf. buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 33; p. 35 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 229; pp. 230–1; “the Question to the single one,” pp. 51–2). 60

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Author entitled “the single individual,” from which he quotes the dictum: “everyone should be chary about having to do with ‘the others,’ and should essentially speak only with god and with himself.”67 according to buber’s interpretation, the exclusivist character of the single individual’s god-relationship is clearly manifested in the fact that one of its constitutive components is the requirement of renunciation of all other essential relationships. this renunciation becomes “the zero of a spiritual graph whose every point is determined in relation to this zero.”68 at the level of Kierkegaard’s personal life religious acosmism is expressed in his renunciation of marriage, while at the level of his thought, it is expressed in his rejection of political involvement and his derogatory depiction of the body politic (res publica) as a “crowd” (Menge).69 buber finds the confusion of the body politic with one of its degenerated forms unacceptable and opposes the idea that the body politic is either without significance for the religious formation of the individual or has negative significance when it curtails the autonomy of the religious sphere.70 Kierkegaard’s substitution of a defective form of society for society as such—a pars pro toto substitution—ends up with the thesis that the category of the single individual should be “as sharply opposed as possible to politics.”71 evidently enough, this is a position that in buber’s eyes offers little hope for an age that is in dire need of individual political responsibility and activity. buber’s response to the crisis of his times takes its point of departure from Kierkegaard’s concept of the single individual which it substantially redefines in order to eliminate its perceived inner contradictions and enhance its cosmic, social, and political relevance. Buber’s community-minded individual, firmly rooted in social interaction is politically engaged, representing a genuine challenge for modern anti-personal collectivisms.72 although buber’s rather extreme interpretation of Kierkegaard provoked counterreactions right after the publication of his work,73 there is no sign that these would buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 31 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 228; “the Question to the single one,” p. 50). Cf. also SV1 xiii, 593 / PV, 106: “[e]veryone should be careful about becoming involved with ‘the others,’ essentially should speak only with god and with himself.” 68 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 47 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 237; “the Question to the single one,” p. 58). 69 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, pp. 49–50 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 238–9; “the Question to the single one,” pp. 59–60). 70 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 56 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 243; “the Question to the single one,” p. 63). 71 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 50 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 239; “the Question to the single one,” p. 60). 72 according to buber’s political evaluation “Kierkegaard’s merely religious category” may be indifferent to the collectivist ideology dominating buber’s time. buber’s socially involved individual represents, however, an evident threat to the ruling group mentality, and therefore “he is bound to be opposed and if possible refuted once for all.” buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 75 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 252; “the Question to the single one,” p. 71). 73 see, for example, wilhelm michel’s letter to buber from november 15, 1936 in Martin Buber. Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, vol. 2, p. 619–20. 67

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prompt him to revise the basic features of his picture of Kierkegaard. at the same time, it should be noted, that buber’s “Kierkegaardbuch” received positive feedback from several scholars with whom buber corresponded: ludwig binswanger, emil brunner, and albert schweitzer.74 Kierkegaard’s dictum that “[e]veryone should...essentially speak only with god and with himself,”75 which formed the core of Buber’s anti-Kierkegaardian reflections in Die Frage an den Einzelnen, reappears as a key argument against Kierkegaard also in buber’s essay “gottesliebe und nächstenliebe” (1940–43).76 this relatively short essay is highly relevant from the perspective of buber’s Kierkegaard reception since it confronts the Hasidic view of religion and ethics with that of Kierkegaard. This is pregnantly expressed at the end of the first chapter: “One must have essential intercourse only with god, says Kierkegaard. it is impossible, says Hasidism, to have truly essential intercourse with god when there is no essential intercourse with men.”77 the leading theme of the essay is “the age old controversy between religion and ethics,”78 which are categories that in buber’s view correspond at a more basic level to the categories of love of god and love of neighbor.79 buber enlists a number of examples from the Hasidic tradition as evidence for the fact that in Hasidism “the pedagogically decisive way is from ‘below’ ‘upward,’ ”80 that is, from love of neighbor to love of god, which is considered “the standard way for individual development.”81 obviously, this is an inversion of the position that buber believes he has found in Kierkegaard. However, buber’s main aim is not to invert the hierarchy he sees in Kierkegaard, but to abolish it altogether. the pedagogical insight that love of neighbor comes first gives way to the general postulate that “[w]hatever is isolated is confusing. wholeness alone...leads man to salvation.”82 therefore, ultimately, Hasidism teaches the “integration of the ethical into the religious”83 Cf. ibid., vol. 2, pp. 620–1; pp. 625–6; p. 627. buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 31 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 228; “the Question to the single one,” p. 50). 76 this essay was published in german as part of the collection Die chassidische Botschaft in 1952. 77 martin buber, “gottesliebe und nächstenliebe,” in Werke, vol. 3, p. 865. (english translation: “love of god and love of neighbour,” in his Hasidism, new York: philosophical library 1948, p. 165.) 78 buber, “gottesliebe und nächstenliebe,” in Werke, vol. 3, p. 861. (“love of god and love of neighbour,” p. 159.) 79 Cf. martin buber, Zwei Glaubensweisen, zurich: manesse 1950, p. 72 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 703). 80 buber, “gottesliebe und nächstenliebe,” in Werke, vol. 3, p. 869. (“love of god and love of neighbour,” p. 170.) 81 buber, “gottesliebe und nächstenliebe,” in Werke, vol. 3, p. 868. (“love of god and love of neighbour,” p. 169.) 82 buber, “gottesliebe und nächstenliebe,” in Werke, vol. 3, p. 867. (“love of god and love of neighbour,” p. 168.) 83 buber, “gottesliebe und nächstenliebe,” in Werke, vol. 3, p. 871. (“love of god and love of neighbour,” p. 173.) 74 75

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so that “the ethical wholly penetrates the religious.”84 buber’s answer to what he perceives as Kierkegaard’s categorical separation of love of god from love of neighbor, and religion from ethics, is the Hasidic doctrine about the “intrinsic unity of both domains” and the conviction that every “genuinely moral deed is done to god.”85 an important work from the perspective of buber’s understanding of Kierkegaard’s role in the history of philosophy is Das Problem des Menschen (1943)—a work based on buber’s inaugural course of lectures as professor of social philosophy at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem (1938).86 in this anthropological analysis of the history of philosophy Kierkegaard plays an important part, and his relations to Hegel and Heidegger are subject to particular examination. the chapter on Hegel depicts the Hegelian system as one in which “such a radical alienation from the anthropological setting of the question [takes place] as has probably never happened before in the history of human thought.”87 this alienation, which led to “the dispossessing of the concrete human person…in favour of universal reason [and] its dialectical processes,”88 was subsequently largely reversed by Kierkegaard. according to buber, Kierkegaard replaced the absolute i of german idealism—“the i which makes a world for itself by thinking it”—with the real human person conditioned by that person’s relationality.89 with respect to this decisive anthropological turn, buber notes that Kierkegaard “certainly grasped like no other thinker of our time the significance of the person.”90 on the other hand, Kierkegaard is said to be still trapped in the Hegelian way of thinking by interpreting the life of the person by means of the dialectic of stages. in his examination of the doctrine of Heidegger buber speaks of a cycle of ages of solitude in the history of the human spirit saying that again and again the human becomes solitary, “he finds himself alone with a universe which has become alien and uncanny.”91 this prompts the human to seek “a form of being which is not included in the world,” a divine form of being that answers the individual’s call. such an approach, characteristic for augustine, pascal, or Kierkegaard has, however, undergone a crucial transformation in buber’s own time. buber asserts that human solitude has a progressive tendency and that “each solitude is colder

buber, “gottesliebe und nächstenliebe,” in Werke, vol. 3, p. 876. (“love of god and love of neighbour,” p. 178.) 85 buber, “gottesliebe und nächstenliebe,” in Werke, vol. 3, p. 870. (“love of god and love of neighbour,” p. 172.) 86 Cf. buber, Between Man and Man, p. vii. 87 buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 348 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 329; “what is man?” p. 137). 88 ibid. 89 buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 391 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 359; “what is man?” p. 163). 90 buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 348 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 330; “what is man?” p. 137). 91 buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 397 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 364; “what is man?” p. 167). 84

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and stricter than the preceding, and salvation from it more difficult.”92 the solitude of his age, which has its roots in nietzsche’s assertion that “god is dead,” leaves for the solitary human no other option than “to seek an intimate communication with himself.” as buber sees it, this is “the basic situation from which Heidegger’s philosophy arises.”93 one of the central historical-philosophical theses in Das Problem des Menschen is that the individualistic character of the philosophical anthropology of the first half of the twentieth century—and pre-eminently the phenomenological anthropology of Heidegger—is largely traceable to Kierkegaard’s theological anthropology.94 Heidegger’s monological existence (Dasein)95 is presented as a secularization of Kierkegaard’s single individual,96 Heidegger’s solicitude (Fürsorge) and Kierkegaard’s neighbor-relation are seen as only seemingly dialogical concepts97 and Heidegger’s concept of “one” (das Man) is viewed as related to Kierkegaard’s “crowd” (Menge).98 these examples serve as evidence for buber’s two main conclusions. First, neither Kierkegaard nor Heidegger are able to lead the human individual into a community based on essential relations. their recipes for the rescue of the individual from the “one” or “crowd” fail to acknowledge the fact that the ultimate state cannot be that of separation, but only that of “genuine communion.”99 secondly, Heidegger eliminates the last dialogical element of Kierkegaard’s thinking—the personal relationship with god—without replacing it with anything else. in this way, he takes the step from acosmism to monologism, thus becoming the herald of a new age of yet colder and stricter solitude. Kierkegaard’s position in buber’s work Zwei Glaubensweisen (1950) is less obvious than in Das Problem des Menschen, but no less intriguing. the explicit treatment of Kierkegaard is very brief, but the book in fact both begins and ends with him. the key structure of the work is buber’s concept of two types of faith—emuna and pistis—the former being associated with the early faith community of the people of israel, the latter with early Christianity.100 buber lists several characteristics which mark the difference between the two types, while in the description of the Christian type of faith there is a surprisingly strong presence of Kierkegaardian terminology. 92

p. 167).

buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 398 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 364; “what is man?”

ibid. buber, “das problem des menschen,” pp. 387–8; p. 391 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 357; p. 359; “what is man?” p. 161; p. 163). 95 buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 399 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 365; “what is man?” p. 168). 96 Cf. buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 409; p. 417 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 372; p. 378; “what is man?” p. 174; p. 179). 97 Cf. buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 409; pp. 414–15 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 372; p. 376; “what is man?” p. 174; p. 178). 98 Cf. buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 407; p. 415 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 371; pp. 376–7; “what is man?” p. 173; pp. 178–9). 99 buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 413 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 375; “what is man?” p. 177). 100 buber, Zwei Glaubensweisen, pp. 7–8 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 655). 93 94

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In contrast to the Jewish type of faith in which the individual “finds himself” in a relationship of faith and is primarily a member of a community, the subject of the Christian type of faith is in the first place a single individual—one that has become a single individual—whose faith is an act of acceptance of what he recognizes as truth.101 this type of faith is marked by discontinuity, since the offered salvation can only be attained by means of a conversion, by believing and recognizing as true something that has so far seemed absurd. such faith originates not from continuity, but requires a break, or as buber terms it: a leap (Sprung).102 The final pages of Zwei Glaubensweisen return to the idea of Kierkegaard as the thinker who gave a diagnosis of the anthropological crisis of the nineteenth century. although he was able to see beyond the dominant pauline form of Christianity,103 his diagnosis of the epoch’s failure was only partially correct. His defense of the autonomy of the individual—the sole subject of salvation—was not designed to overcome the fundamental tension between the individual striving for sanctification and the irredeemably unholy society. in spite of what buber considers lack of insight, Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the irreducible character of the person might play a role in the mutual dialogue between the Christian pistis and the Jewish emuna, both of which can, according to buber, renew themselves by learning from the other.104 buber’s confrontation with Kierkegaard in his much debated essay Von einer Suspension des Ethischen (1952) revives the discussion on the relation between the religious and the ethical which buber dealt with in his earlier writings. taking the biblical story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac as his point of departure, Buber examines philosophical, theological, and political consequences of Kierkegaard’s concept of the teleological suspension of the ethical as presented by Johannes de silentio in Fear and Trembling. it has been shown earlier that buber found himself in agreement with the Hasidic doctrine about the “intrinsic unity” of religion and ethics,105 which he was unable to locate in Kierkegaard. This is reflected in the essay in the form of the counterposition of Kierkegaard’s concept of god and the concept of god found in the old testament. Kierkegaard’s god “establishes the order of buber, Zwei Glaubensweisen, p. 6 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 654). buber, Zwei Glaubensweisen, pp. 6–9 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 654–6). lorenz wachinger argues that the dualism of faith and ethics that buber sees in the apostle paul is reminiscent of the dualism of religion and ethics that buber locates in Kierkegaard. this would suggest that the pauline form of Christianity as depicted by buber might have Kierkegaard’s “spiritualist” religiosity—at least to some extent—as its model. Cf. lorenz wachinger, Der Glaubensbegriff Martin Bubers, munich: max Hueber 1970, p. 176; pp. 182–4; p. 188; p. 191; pp. 196–7; pp. 207–8. also tilman beyrich underscores the fact that “what buber (re)constructs as the specifically Christian, is strongly reminiscent of Kierkegaard,” and adds that Buber seems to be informed about the Christian type of faith not only on the basis of his reading of paul, but largely also on the basis of his reading of Kierkegaard. Cf. tilmann beyrich, “Kann ein Jude Trost finden in Kierkegaards Abraham? Jüdische Kierkegaard Lektüren: Buber, Fackenheim, levinas,” Judaica, vol. 57, 2001, pp. 25–7. 103 buber, Zwei Glaubensweisen, pp. 171–2 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 777). 104 buber, Zwei Glaubensweisen, p. 178 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 782). 105 buber, “gottesliebe und nächstenliebe,” in Werke, vol. 3, p. 870. (“love of god and love of neighbour,” p. 172.) 101 102

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good and evil, and breaks through it where He wishes. He does so from person to person, that is, in direct personal relation with the individual.”106 in a religion based on such a concept of god, “the ethical, the universal and the universally valid is relativized.”107 by contrast, the god of the old testament demands of every human “nothing more than justice and love, and that he ‘walk humbly’ with Him...in other words, not much more than the fundamental ethical.”108 Here again, as in Gottesliebe und Nächstenliebe, buber rejects a hierarchy in which religion and ethics would be viewed as separate and religion would get the upper hand. He finds it dangerous to talk about the relative character of the ethical sphere, as the religious sphere detached from the ethical loses an important criterion of discernment: it becomes nearly impossible to tell apart the voice of god and the voice of moloch.109 the essay resembles buber’s other treatments of Kierkegaard in the sense that it disregards the setting in which Kierkegaard wrote Fear and Trembling and ignores the issues of Kierkegaard’s own time. it rather follows buber’s habit of presenting Kierkegaard as a failed answer to the problems of the twentieth century. although buber points out primarily political symptoms, the cause of the crisis is clearly religious and ethical in nature. buber’s age is “an age in which the suspension of the ethical fills the world in a caricaturized form” and in which “[f]alse absolutes rule over the soul...in the east and in the west, from the left and from the right, they pierce unhindered through the level of the ethical.”110 buber declares that a “new conscience” with sensitivity for the true absolute is needed, one that will guard the souls “against the confusion of the relative with the absolute.”111 whether Kierkegaard, who banished the “laws and values [of the ethical] from the absolute into the relative,”112 can positively contribute to this project is at best questionable. buber’s historical-philosophical essay “zur geschichte des dialogischen prinzips” (1954), which comprises an overview of dialogical trends in post-enlightenment philosophy and theology, paints a picture of Kierkegaard that is merely a reprise of buber’s views formulated in earlier works. Kierkegaard is considered a forerunner of modern dialogical philosophy as far as his concept of the essential relation between the single individual and god is concerned, but the relationship between martin buber, “von einer suspension des ethischen,” in Gottesfinsternis. Betrachtungen zur Beziehung zwischen Religion und Philosophie, zurich: manesse 1953, p. 139 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 589; english translation: “on the suspension of the ethical,” in Eclipse of God, london: victor gollancz 1953, p. 150). 107 buber, “von einer suspension des ethischen,” pp. 138–9 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 589; “on the suspension of the ethical,” p. 149). 108 buber, “von einer suspension des ethischen,” p. 142 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 591; “on the suspension of the ethical,” p. 153). 109 ibid. 110 buber, “von einer suspension des ethischen,” pp. 143–4 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 592; “on the suspension of the ethical,” pp. 154–5). 111 buber, “von einer suspension des ethischen,” p. 144 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 593; “on the suspension of the ethical,” p. 155). 112 buber, “von einer suspension des ethischen,” p. 139 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 589; “on the suspension of the ethical,” p. 149). 106

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the single individual and that individual’s human neighbor, which is not stricto sensu essential,113 disqualifies Kierkegaard’s philosophy from being truly dialogical. also, the references to Kierkegaard in buber’s works published in the second half of the 1950s are largely echoes and variations of his earlier more thorough analyses. in “dem gemeinschaftlichen folgen” (1956) the reality denoted by Kierkegaard as the “crowd” is shown to be an aberration of the genuine community—the true we, that is in all its parts constituted by essential relationships between person and person.114 Kierkegaard’s penetrating diagnosis of the anthropological crisis of the nineteenth century is discussed anew in “der Chassidismus und der abendländische mensch” (1956),115 which elaborates at length on the Hasidic integrative view of religion that refuses to create a distinct domain of religion. the Hasidic approach overcomes the traditional differentiation between the sacred and the profane, prompting the religious individual to awaken in the things of the world a holy reality.116 IV. Buber’s Rejection of “Kierkegaardian” Dualisms in his study in social ontology entitled The Other, michael theunissen described dialogicalism as “at root, and as such, a movement of opposition,” a “new thought” by self-definition, which defined itself against idealism which it perceived as “the philosophy of the ‘universal’ subject or of ‘consciousness in general.’ ”117 as a countermove to the idealist tradition, dialogical philosophy took its start from “my factical human i.”118 It is natural that Buber—who specifically referred to his personal campaign against idealism in Die Frage an den Einzelnen119—was able to recognize in 113

p. 294).

martin buber, “zur geschichte des dialogischen prinzips,” p. 289 (in Werke, vol. 1,

martin buber, “dem gemeinschaftlichen folgen,” Die neue Rundschau, no. 4, december 1956, pp. 597–8 (in Werkausgabe, vol. 6, p. 120). 115 martin buber, “der Chassidismus und der abendländische mensch,” in Werke, vol. 3, p. 944. 116 ibid., p. 942. 117 michael theunissen, The Other: Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Buber, Cambridge, massachusetts: mit press 1984, pp. 257–8. 118 ibid. pp. 258–9. some of buber’s key arguments against idealism can be found in the chapter on Hegel in Das Problem des Menschen. For more detail on buber’s relation to Hegel see edith wyschogrod, “the demise of the Aufhebung and the rise of the between: From ethics to philosophy of religion in martin buber,” in Philosophie de la religion entre éthique et ontologie, ed. by marco m. olivetti, padova: Cedam, pp. 727–46 and nathan rotenstreich, “dialogik und dialektik,” in Martin Buber (1878–1965). Internationales Symposium zum 20. Todestag, ed. by werner licharz and Heinz schmidt, Frankfurt am main: Haag + Herchen 1989, vol. 1, pp. 267–80. 119 In the final chapter of Die Frage an den Einzelnen buber confesses that he actively participated in the “struggle of recent decades against the idealistic concepts of the sovereign, world-embracing, world-sustaining, world-creating I.” Cf. buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 93 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 262; “the Question to the single one,” p. 80). 114

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Kierkegaard an ally in his struggle. it is equally natural that Kierkegaard, with his uncompromising emphasis on the religious formation of the individual, stood closer to buber’s philosophical striving than another post-idealistic thinker who was an even older acquaintance of buber, namely, nietzsche.120 Furthermore, it seems to have been buber’s life-long conviction that it was Kierkegaard who most clearly pointed out to his nineteenth-century contemporaries the fact that their age was experiencing a serious anthropological crisis and consequently attempted to refocus philosophical discourse on the concrete human person. at the same time, it is obvious from what has been said above that Kierkegaard, too, represented a philosophical paradigm against which Buber defined his own thought. although buber found Kierkegaard’s anthropology and theology much more dialogical than the ones he encountered in idealism, there is no doubt that he believed that key concepts of Kierkegaard’s thought need a substantial corrective. the common denominator of buber’s many criticisms of Kierkegaard is that Kierkegaard thinks antagonistically and his being trapped in oppositions renders him incapable of perceiving the underlying unity of being. buber seems to be convinced that Kierkegaard’s vision of reality is strictly dualistic, one that rests upon a fundamental either-or. this vision is segregative and hierarchical by nature, and from the perspective of buber’s own thought appears self-contradictory. throughout buber’s oeuvre there are numerous instances in which he attempts to point to what he considers cardinal dualistic misconceptions in Kierkegaard, primarily in his anthropology and theology. When reflecting on Kierkegaard’s anthropology in Das Problem des Menschen, buber avails himself of the term “theological anthropology” which he employs to emphasize the fact that Kierkegaard’s anthropology envisions two principal protagonists who form a genuine personal bond: the single individual and god. For the single individual god is an irreducible alterity to which he or she relates as to a real other, without, however, god being the sole alterity. according to buber, Kierkegaard’s single individual relates to two distinct types of alterity. He or she relates essentially to the extracosmic alterity and non-essentially to the intracosmic alterity, thus introducing a fundamental axiological separation and hierarchization of the spheres of transcendence and immanence.121 as a consequence of this binarity, a number of near dichotomies arise, all of which are characterized by the preponderance of the “absolute” over the “relative.” buber repeatedly enumerates the most basic of such Kierkegaardian “opposites”: God and the cosmos, love of God and love of neighbor, religion and ethics, the single individual and the “crowd.” the respective roles of Kierkegaard and nietzsche in buber’s intellectual formation, as well as their reception in the community of european marginal Jews (Grenzjuden) are explored in more detail in Jacob golomb’s articles. see, for example, golomb, “buber’s i and thou vis-à-vis nietzsche and Kierkegaard,” pp. 419–23 or Jacob golomb, “Kierkegaard in zion,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 19, pp. 130–4. 121 buber’s accentuation of the immanentist Hasidic theology in his confrontation with theologies stressing the transcendence of god (Kierkegaard, dialectical theology) is thematized also in wachinger, Der Glaubensbegriff Martin Bubers, pp. 231–6. 120

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the most basal of the mentioned dualisms is that of God and the cosmos. this dualism, which is paradigmatic for the mode of relation of the single individual— that is, for Kierkegaard’s anthropology—is, according to buber, closely connected to Kierkegaard’s theory of God. Buber finds Kierkegaard’s concept of God extremely problematic and describes it in several places as reminiscent of early Christian dualistic heresies. He argues in Die Frage an den Einzelnen that acosmic worship of god is close to marcionism, since it creates tension between god-the-Creator and god-the-redeemer,122 and in Das Problem des Menschen he points out that Kierkegaard’s presuppositions “touch on [gnosticism]—obviously without his knowing it.”123 this accusation of dogmatic dubiousness is based on buber’s postulate that Kierkegaard’s concept of god is reductionist to such an extent that the created world appears as practically separated from god, and thus must be renounced as non-essential so that it would not divert the focus of the individual from his or her essential relationship with god. this line of thought is depicted in Das Problem des Menschen by means of a simple equation: the essential relation to god, which Kierkegaard means, presupposes, as we saw, a renunciation of every essential relation to anything else, to the world, to community, to the individual man. it can be understood as a subtraction, which reduced to a crude formula, appears thus: being – (world + man) = object (the object or partner of the essential relation).124

as for the concept of god involved in such a system of relationality, buber concludes the following: “the god of Kierkegaard can only be either a demiurge outgrown by and suffering from his creation, or a saviour who is a stranger to creation, approaching it from without and taking pity on it. Both are gnostic figures.”125 in fact, similar reflections can be found already in Die Frage an den Einzelnen: “god is not an object beside objects. god, indeed, is not the cosmos, but far less is he being minus cosmos. He is not to be found by subtraction and not to be loved by reduction.”126 a god who makes renunciation the cornerstone of the individual’s cosmos-relationship is not only a god that contradicts buber’s idea of god and the god-concept of buber’s Hasidic masters, but also some of the Christian theologians studied and respected by buber. this becomes evident when comparing this kind of god-concept to buber’s elaboration of the theologies of nicolaus of Cusa and Jacob böhme in his dissertation Zur Geschichte des Individuationsproblems. the intrinsic 122 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 35 (in Werke, vol. 1, pp. 230–1; “the Question to the single one,” pp. 52–3). 123 buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 416 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 377; “what is man?” p. 179). 124 buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 416 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 377; “what is man?” pp. 178–9). 125 buber, “das problem des menschen,” p. 416 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 377; “what is man?” p. 179). 126 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 44 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 236; “the Question to the single one,” p. 58).

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presence of god in his creation is one of the recurrent topics in buber’s dissertation. thinking the creation as god’s self-revelation,127 the world-process as the unfolding of god,128 and the cosmos as the place of god’s self-knowledge129 means recognizing god as inherent in his creation and historically inseparable from it. it needs to be noted that buber, whose dialogical philosophy also presents the reader with a variety of dualisms, made an effort in the 1920s and 1930s to develop a more thorough theory of creation in order to highlight the autonomous value of the cosmos and underline “a stable relation between god and nature” in his anthropocentric philosophy.130 all the other above-mentioned dualisms are derived from the one between God and the cosmos and operate according to similar principles. they introduce separation, isolation, and subordination where integration, communion, and unity are the only final answers acceptable to Buber and his Hasidic teachers. Just like Kierkegaard’s god-concept, also his concepts of love of god, religion, and the religious individual are seen as characterized by reductionism. The too narrow definition of these concepts leads to a loss of important dimensions and to a segmentation of reality in which god and religion appear as segments beside segments. thus god ceases to be the all-permeating source of being, and religion is no longer an approach of sanctification to the created world. However, as Buber points out, “God is not an object beside objects,” and “[r]eligion as a specification misses its mark.”131 V. The Dialogical Aftermath the growing corpus of secondary literature on buber’s relation to Kierkegaard is the best testimony to the fact that buber’s interpretation of Kierkegaard proved to be a genuine catalyst for a lively debate on central themes and concepts in both philosophers. this reception of the reception has not been the sole domain of Kierkegaard scholars and buber scholars, rather it has been of interest to a broader intellectual community owing to the nature of the discussed issues. it seems proper to mention here some of the responses to buber’s confrontation with Kierkegaard in order to highlight important trends in the further development of the debate started by buber. Certainly, one of the most intriguing stories is that of the reception of buber’s picture of Kierkegaard among Jewish and particularly israeli philosophers. shmuel Hugo bergman’s (1883–1975) well-known work Dialogical Philosophy from Kierkegaard to Buber132 enriched the debate with a largely different perspective on buber, Zur Geschichte des Individuationsproblems, ph.d. thesis, university of vienna, vienna 1904, p. 14. 128 ibid., p. 13. 129 ibid., p. 32. 130 Horwitz, Buber’s Way to I and Thou, p. 231; see also pp. 231–5. 131 buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 44 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 236; “the Question to the single one,” p. 58). 132 .1974 ,‫ מוסד ביאליק‬:‫ ירושלים‬,‫ הפילוסופיה הדיאלוגית מקירקגור עד בובר‬,‫ שמואל הוגו‬,‫ברגמן‬ [bergman, shmuel Hugo, Dialogical Philosophy from Kierkegaard to Buber, Jerusalem: 127

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Kierkegaard than the one put forward by buber and helped foster a continuous polemic in israeli philosophy. as Jacob golomb remarked in his study on the reception of Kierkegaard in israel, since “both buber and bergman had many students, the dispute between their respective images of Kierkegaard is still going on.”133 apart from direct reactions to buber’s reception of Kierkegaard, it is also instructive to follow how themes crucial for buber’s understanding of Kierkegaard have been processed by more recent Jewish philosophers and theologians—Kierkegaard’s treatment of the akedah134 and Kierkegaard’s compatibility with Hasidic moral doctrines135 being just two. Critical assessment of the accuracy of buber’s philosophical translatio of Kierkegaard by Jewish philosophers is yet another phenomenon worth attention.136 similarly, the international community of Kierkegaard scholars comprises contending streams as for the evaluation of buber’s interpretation of Kierkegaard. on the one hand, well-known Kierkegaard scholars such as robert perkins137 and pia søltoft138 have published readings of Kierkegaard which present Kierkegaard’s exploration of intersubjectivity in a much more plastic way than the often schematic and repetitive presentation found in buber. on the other hand, as george b. Connell and C. stephen evans have pointed out, many of those “deeply drawn” to Kierkegaard’s thought “have reached essentially the same conclusion as buber” and have called “not for a simple rejection of Kierkegaard but instead for a correction of

bialik institute 1974]. (english translation: Dialogical Philosophy from Kierkegaard to Buber, trans. by arnold a. gerstein, albany, new York: state university of new York press 1991.) 133 Jacob golomb, “israel: Kierkegaard’s reception in Fear and trembling in Jerusalem,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome iii, The Near East, Asia, Australia and the Americas, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), p. 33. 134 Cf. bergman, Dialogical Philosophy from Kierkegaard to Buber, pp. 77–93; tilmann Beyrich, “Kann ein Jude Trost finden in Kierkegaards Abraham? Jüdische Kierkegaard lektüren: buber, Fackenheim, levinas,” pp. 20–40. see also the following footnote. 135 Cf. abraham Joshua Heschel, “soren Kierkegaard and the rabbi of Kotzk,” Monastic Studies, vol. 8, 1972, pp. 147–51; Jerome i. gellman, The Fear, the Trembling, and the Fire: Kierkegaard and Hasidic Masters on the Binding of Isaac, lanham, madison: university press of america 1994; Jerome i. gellman, Abraham! Abraham! Kierkegaard and the Hasidim on the Binding of Isaac, aldershot: ashgate 2003; shaul magid, “Hasidism and existentialism? a review essay,” Modern Judaism, vol. 15, 1995, pp. 279–94. 136 Cf. Jacob l. Halevi, A Critique of Martin Buber’s Interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard, ph.d. thesis, Hebrew union College and Jewish institute of religion 1959. 137 robert l. perkins, “buber and Kierkegaard. a philosophic encounter,” in Martin Buber: A Centenary Volume; see also robert l. perkins, “the politics of existence. buber and Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, ed. by martin J. matuštík and merold westphal, bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press 1995 (Studies in Continental Thought), pp. 167–81. 138 pia søltoft, Svimmelhedens Etik. Om forholdet mellem den enkelte og den anden hos Buber, Lévinas og især Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: gads Forlag 2000; see also pia søltoft, “Love and Continuity: The Significance of Intersubjectivity in the Second Part of Either/Or,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1997, pp. 210–27.

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his correction of his age.”139 evidently, two most important results of this ongoing debate have been the intensification of the research of “the social and political side of Kierkegaard”140 and the increasing complexity of the discourse pertaining to the comparison of the two thinkers. in this connection it is important to mention the fact that a considerable number of comparative studies underscore the affinity between the two thinkers. Henri Vergote writes of “a profound relatedness” between buber and Kierkegaard,141 robert perkins stresses “buber’s profound understanding of the thought of Kierkegaard,”142 and genichiro ito seeks to accentuate the dialogical nature of Kierkegaard’s thought.143 another notable trend is that in-depth comparative studies frequently choose to go beyond the actual reception of Kierkegaard’s textual material in buber and complement the discourse by availing themselves of Kierkegaard’s texts that were largely ignored by buber. in this way robert perkins pinpoints similarities between Kierkegaard’s concept of the aesthete in Either/Or and buber’s capricious man in Ich und Du,144 michael oppenheim locates points of convergence in Kierkegaard’s and buber’s expositions of “the social character of existence,” types of alienation from the other, or the necessity of a transcendent opening from such alienation, on the basis of Works of Love and Ich und Du,145 and Wanda Warren Berry identifies a “deep compatibility between Kierkegaard and buber on the meaning of covenant love and its religious significance,” using Kierkegaard’s Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions as her point of departure.146 a natural tendency present in several comparative studies is that of seeking correspondence between buber’s dual concept of i–thou/i–it relations and Kierkegaard’s theory of stages.147 since both of the methodologies are based on a 139 george b. Connell and C. stephen evans, “introduction,” in Foundations of Kierkegaard’s Vision of Community, ed. by george b. Connell and C. stephen evans, new Jersey and london: Humanities press 1992, pp. vii–ix. 140 Cf. ibid., p. ix. 141 Henri-bernard vergote, “la relation chez sören Kierkegaard et martin buber,” Istina, vol. 25, 1980, p. 7. see also Helmut Kuhn, “gespräch in erwartung,” Merkur, vol. 12, no. 2, 1958, p. 110. 142 perkins, “buber and Kierkegaard. a philosophic encounter,” p. 281. 143 genichiro ito, “der einzelne und ich-und-du. Über die betrachtungen bubers über Kierkegaard,” Kierkegaard-Studiet, vol. 1, 1964, pp. 52-5. 144 perkins, “buber and Kierkegaard. a philosophic encounter,” pp. 275–8. 145 michael oppenheim, “Four narratives on the interhuman: Kierkegaard, buber, rosenzweig, and levinas,” in Works of Love, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1999 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 16), pp. 273–8. 146 wanda warren berry, “the wreath of eternity: marriage as paradigm of Covenant love in Kierkegaard and buber,” in “Prefaces” and “Writing Sampler” / “Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions,” ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 2006 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vols. 9–10), p. 291. 147 Cf. John w. petras, “god, man and society: the perspectives of buber and Kierkegaard,” Journal of Religious Thought, vol. 23, no. 3, 1966-67, pp. 124-8. a potential correspondence between Kierkegaard’s conceptualization of the aesthetic orientation and the relational paradigm of i-it is thematized also in perkins, “buber and Kierkegaard: a

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differentiation of basic relational patterns of a concrete human individual they offer a variety of motifs that have been subject to comparative analysis. obviously, the corpus of secondary literature also includes studies that emphasize the differences rather than the affinities between Buber and Kierkegaard, presenting buber’s dialogical thought as a legitimate corrective or making more precise of Kierkegaard’s theory of intersubjectivity148 (adding sometimes new dimensions to buber’s critique),149 or in other cases turning around the positions of the two philosophers and constructing a critique of buber from a Kierkegaardian point of view.150 on the whole, three things can be concluded on the basis of the reception of the reception. First, Buber definitely counts as a philosopher who substantially contributed to the revival of interest in Kierkegaard’s thought in the twentieth century, as his critical analyses provided a framework in which the philosophical reception of Kierkegaard’s anthropology gained a new momentum. secondly, buber did not succeed in stabilizing the somewhat popular view of Kierkegaard as an individualist thinker or a promoter of religious acosmism. this seems to have been caused partly by the fact that buber’s interpretation of Kierkegaard was demonstrably based on a narrow and largely arbitrary selection of Kierkegaard’s texts. thirdly, it is certainly also buber’s merit that the Kierkegaard scholars of the recent decades decided to pay closer attention to Kierkegaard’s conceptualization of intersubjectivity and especially to its religious grounding. in this sense buber can be seen as a thinker who convinced his time that Kierkegaard is someone worth listening to, although he never tired of insisting that “[w]e have much to learn from him, but not the final lesson.”151

philosophic encounter,” pp. 275–8 or berry, “the wreath of eternity: marriage as paradigm of Covenant love in Kierkegaard and buber,” p. 305. 148 Péter Rácz, “Belépés a kapcsolatba. Kierkegaard Budapesten, avagy filozófiájának hatása martin buberre,” Liget, no. 1, 1995, pp. 10–15; Zoltán Hidas, “Az egyes és az őhozzá intézett kérdés. Kierkegaard és buber,” Pannonhalmi Szemle, no. 3, 1996, pp. 41–7. 149 Haim gordon, “a buberian Critique of Kierkegaard’s ‘Fear and trembling.’ implications for leadership and Fighting evil,” Shofar, vol. 15, no. 3, 1997, pp. 86–96. 150 leslie zeigler, “personal existence. a study of buber and Kierkegaard,” Journal of Religion, vol. 40, no. 2, 1960, pp. 80–94. see zeigler’s categorical statement on p. 82: “when we set out to compare buber’s and Kierkegaard’s views of the nature of personal existence, we discover that the opposition between them is so fundamental as to make any similarities peripheral.” 151 martin buber, Die Frage an den Einzelnen, p. 40 (in Werke, vol. 1, p. 234; “the Question to the single one,” p. 55).

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Buber’s Corpus “die erneuerung des Judentums,” Drei Reden über das Judentum, Frankfurt am main: rütten & loening 1911, pp. 57–102. “a.m. und Constantin brunner,” Ost und West, vol. 12, 1912, columns 333–8. Ich und Du, leipzig: insel-verlag 1923, pp. 92–3; p. 115; pp. 123–6. Die Frage an den Einzelnen, berlin: schocken 1936. “das problem des menschen,” Dialogisches Leben, zurich: gregor müller 1947, p. 348; pp. 387–420. Zwei Glaubensweisen, zurich: manesse 1950, pp. 5–11; pp. 170–8. “von einer suspension des ethischen,” Gottesfinsternis. Betrachtungen zur Beziehung zwischen Religion und Philosophie, zurich: manesse 1953, pp. 138–44. “zur geschichte des dialogischen prinzips” (nachwort), in Schriften über das dialogische Prinzip, Heidelberg: schneider 1954, pp. 285–305. “der Chassidismus und der abendländische mensch,” Merkur, no. 10, october 1956, pp. 933–43. “dem gemeinschaftlichen folgen,” Die neue Rundschau, no. 4, december 1956, pp. 597–600. “gottesliebe und nächstenliebe,” in his Werke, vols. 1–3, munich: Kösel & lambert schneider 1962–64, vol. 3, pp. 861–79. Martin Buber. Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten, ed. by grete schaeder, vols. 1– 3, Heidelberg: verlag lambert schneider 1972–75, vol. 1, pp. 235–8; pp. 302–3; p. 440; pp. 472–3; vol. 2, pp. 446–7; pp. 573–4; p. 608; pp. 613–14; pp. 619– 27; p. 635; vol. 3, pp. 87–9; pp. 274–6; pp. 289–93; p. 303; p. 319; pp. 321–5; pp. 469–73; pp. 519–20. Georg Lukács-Briefwechsel 1902–1917, ed. by Éva Karádi and Éva Fekete, stuttgart: metzler 1982, pp. 258–60. II. Sources of Buber’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Kassner, rudolf, “der indische idealismus” [1903], in his Sämtliche Werke, vols. 1–10, pfullingen: neske 1969–91, vol. 1, pp. 458–9; pp. 461–2; pp. 467–8; p. 474; pp. 476–7. — “die moral der musik” [1905], in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 1, pp. 666–7; pp. 673–4; pp. 701–3; pp. 743–4. lukács, georg, “das zerschellen der Form am leben: sören Kierkegaard und regine olsen,” in his Die Seele und die Formen. Essays, berlin: Fleischel 1911, pp. 61–90.

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III. Secondary Literature on Buber’s Relation to Kierkegaard .1974 ,‫ מוסד ביאליק‬:‫ ירושלים‬,‫ הפילוסופיה הדיאלוגית מקירקגור עד בובר‬,‫ שמואל הוגו‬,‫ברגמן‬ [bergman, shmuel Hugo, Dialogical Philosophy from Kierkegaard to Buber, Jerusalem: bialik institute 1974]. (english translation: Dialogical Philosophy from Kierkegaard to Buber, trans. by arnold a. gerstein, albany, new York: state university of new York press 1991.) Beyrich, Tilmann, “Kann ein Jude Trost finden in Kierkegaards Abraham? Jüdische Kierkegaard lektüren: buber, Fackenheim, levinas,” Judaica, vol. 57, 2001, pp. 20–40. brown, James, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Buber and Barth: Subject and Object in Modern Theology, new York: p.F. Collier 1962. golomb, Jacob, “Kierkegaard in zion,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 19, 1998, pp. 130–7. — “buber’s i and thou vis-à-vis nietzsche and Kierkegaard,” Existentia, vol. 12, 2002, pp. 413–27. — ,55 ,‫ עיון‬,”’‫ בין ‘כה אמר זרתוסטרא’ ל’אני ואתה‬:‫ “מרטין בובר בין ניטשה לקירקגור‬,‫ יעקב‬,‫גולומב‬ 2006, 164–137 ‘‫[ עמ‬buber between nietzsche and Kierkegaard: From Thus Spoke Zarathustra to I and Thou], Iyyun, vol. 55, 2006, pp. 137–64. — “israel: Kierkegaard’s reception in Fear and trembling in Jerusalem,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome iii, The Near East, Asia, Australia and the Americas, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 25–38. gordon, Haim, “a buberian Critique of Kierkegaard’s ‘Fear and trembling.’ implications for leadership and Fighting evil,” Shofar, vol. 15, no. 3, 1997, pp. 86–96. Halevi, Jacob l., A Critique of Martin Buber’s Interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard, ph.d. thesis, Hebrew union College and Jewish institute of religion 1959. Hidas, Zoltán, “Az egyes és az őhozzá intézett kérdés. Kierkegaard és Buber” [The single individual and the Question You want to ask this person. Kierkegaard and buber], Pannonhalmi Szemle, no. 3, 1996, pp. 41–7. ito, genichiro, “der einzelne und ich-und-du. Über die betrachtungen bubers über Kierkegaard,” Kierkegaard-Studiet, vol. 1, 1964, pp. 49–55. Kuhn, Helmut, “gespräch in erwartung,” Merkur, vol. 12, no. 2, 1958, pp. 101–24. ‘‫ עמ‬,1983 ,(18/17) ,‫ עלי–שיח‬,“‫ “סרן קירקגור ומרטין בובר על הטוב ורע ועל החטא הקדמון‬,‫ זאב‬,‫לוי‬ 219 – 196 . [levi, zeev, “søren Kierkegaard and martin buber on good and evil and original sin,” Aley-Siah, nos. 17–18, 1983, pp. 196–219.] malik, Habib C., Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought, washington, d.C.: Catholic university of america press 1997, p. ix; p. xii; p. 387; p. 396. martinez, roy, “a response to buber on Heidegger and Kierkegaard,” Auslegung, vol. 13, 1987, pp. 193–219. ,”‫ בין קירקגור לחסידות‬:‫ “פרשת עקדת יצחק במחשבתו הדיאלוגית של מרדכי מרטין בובר‬,‫ אפרים‬,‫מאיר‬ ,‫ חנה כשר‬,‫ משה חלמיש‬:‫ ערכו‬,‫ דמותו בראי ההגות לדורותיה‬:‫ אברהם אבי המאמינים‬:‫בקובץ‬ 293–281 ’‫ עמ‬,2002 ,‫אילן‬-‫ הוצאת אוניברסיטת בר‬:‫ רמת גן‬,‫[ יוחנן סילמן‬meir, ephraim, “akedah in the dialogical thought of martin buber: between Kierkegaard and Hassidism,” in Abraham the Father of the Believers, ed. by moshe Halamis,

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Hanah Kaser and Johanan silman, ramat gan: bar ilan university press 2002, pp. 281–93.] mizuta, makoto, “Kierkegaard and buber. around the Concept of ‘individual,’” Kierkegaard-Studiet (Kierkegaard-Study), vol. 18, 1988, pp. 15–26. morris, thomas F., A Dialectical Development of Kierkegaard’s Stages of Existence and Buber’s Dialogical Way of Life, ph.d. thesis, the american university, washington, d.C. 1984. mueller, robert william, A Critical Examination of Martin Buber’s Criticisms of Søren Kierkegaard, ph.d. thesis, purdue university, west lafayette, indiana 1974. oppenheim, michael, “Four narratives on the interhuman: Kierkegaard, buber, rosenzweig, and levinas,” in Works of Love, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1999 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 16), pp. 249–78. perkins, robert l., “buber and Kierkegaard. a philosophic encounter,” in Martin Buber: A Centenary Volume, ed. by Haim gordon and Jochanan bloch, new York: Ktav 1984, pp. 275–303. — “the politics of existence. buber and Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard in Post/ Modernity, ed. by martin J. matuštík and merold westphal, bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press 1995 (Studies in Continental Thought), pp. 167–81. petras, John w., “god, man and society: the perspectives of buber and Kierkegaard,” Journal of Religious Thought, vol. 23, no. 3, 1966–67, pp. 119–28. Rácz, Péter, “Belépés a kapcsolatba. Kierkegaard Budapesten, avagy filozófiájának hatása martin buberre” [entering the relation. Kierkegaard in budapest or the Influence of his Philosophy on Martin Buber], Liget, no. 1, 1995, pp. 10–15. .262–248 ’‫ עמ‬,1988 ,‫ עיון‬,”‫ “העקדה – בעיית הציות או בעיית השמיעה בין קירקגור לבובר‬,‫ אבי‬,‫שגיא‬ [sagi, avi, “Kierkegaard and buber on the dilemma of abraham in the ‘Akedah’ [The Sacrifice of Isaac],” Iyyun, no. 37, 1988, pp. 248–62.] Šajda, Peter, “Náčrt kritiky Kierkegaardovho konceptu lásky v diele M. Bubera, t.w. adorna a K.e. løgstrupa” [an outline of the Critique of Kierkegaard’s Concept of love by m. buber, t.w. adorno and K.e. løgstrup], Filozofia, vol. 58, no. 7, 2003, pp. 484–93. — “Problém náboženského akozmizmu: Buberova filozoficko-politická kritika Kierkegaarda,” [the problem of religious acosmism: buber’s philosophicalpolitical Critique of Kierkegaard], in Náboženstvo a nihilizmus, ed. by martin Muránsky et al., Bratislava: Filozofický ústav SAV 2010, pp. 44-57. schulz, Heiko, “germany and austria: a modest Head start: the german reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome i, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 349–50. shearson, william a., The Notion of Encounter in Existentialist Metaphysics: An Inquiry into the Nature and Structure of Existential Knowledge in Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Buber, ph.d. thesis, university of toronto, toronto 1970. Søltoft, Pia, “Love and Continuity: The Significance of Intersubjectivity in the second part of either/or,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1997, pp. 210–27.

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— Svimmelhedens Etik. Om forholdet mellem den enkelte og den anden hos Buber, Lévinas og især Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: gads Forlag 2000. steinberg, irwin H., The Search for Meaning: Especially as Viewed Through the Philosophers Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Buber, m.a. thesis, California state university at dominguez Hills 1979. theunissen, michael, “zur wirkungsgeschichte,” in Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. by michael theunissen and wilfried greve, Frankfurt am main: suhrkamp 1979, pp. 61–2. vergote, Henri-bernard, “la relation chez sören Kierkegaard et martin buber,” Istina, vol. 25, 1980, pp. 5–18. wachinger, lorenz, Der Glaubensbegriff Martin Bubers, munich: max Hueber 1970, pp. 56–62; pp. 169–73; pp. 176–7; pp. 182–4; pp. 190–2; pp. 196–7; pp. 207–10; pp. 231–6; pp. 273–4. wahl, Jean, “martin buber und die existenzphilosophie,” in Martin Buber, ed. by paul a. schilpp and maurice Friedman, stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1963, pp. 420– 47, see especially pp. 421–8. warren berry, wanda, “the wreath of eternity: marriage as paradigm of Covenant love in Kierkegaard and buber,” in “Prefaces” and “Writing Sampler“/“Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions,” ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 2006 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vols. 9–10), pp. 289–320. wohlstein, Herman, “till den moderna humanismens kris. sören Kierkegaard och martin buber,” Religion och kultur, June, 1964, pp. 38–41. zeigler, leslie, “personal existence: a study of buber and Kierkegaard,” Journal of Religion, vol. 40, no. 2, 1960, pp. 80–94. zeltner, aimee, “an existential investigation: buber’s Critique of Kierkegaard’s ‘teleological suspension of the ethical,’ ” in Church Divinity, 1987. National Student Essay Competition in Divinity, bristol, indiana: n.p. 1987, pp. 138–54.

albert Camus:

walled within god leo stan

long gone are the days when metaphysical revolt, the pitiless contemptuous affirmation of absurdity, the silent solidarity of all reclusive souls, and the moral confines of freedom constituted genuine philosophical issues in lieu of an occasion for ironic remarks or blasé dismissals, as they have become since. “Chronologically and thematically,” writes Jacob golomb, “Camus is the last thinker on authenticity.”1 but he is not just that. the exemplariness of his biography includes elements that have disappeared almost completely from the personal profile of contemporary thinkers.2 born on november 7, 1913 in a small algerian village, albert became a fatherless child at a very early age. His introduction to philosophy happened when he had just turned 18, thanks to the writer Jean Grenier. When his first marital experience proved a fiasco, he joined the Algerian Communist Party, became more and more involved with the theater, and started a life-long engagement with journalism. during the second world war he worked as editor-in-chief of the clandestine newspaper, Combat and quickly acquired a national fame. the success, however, had its own troubles. For throughout his entire activity, be it literary, philosophical, or dramatic, Camus displayed an uncompromising attachment to the values of freedom, human dignity, and justice. the price paid for this attitude in socio-political matters was, indeed, bitter. Having been expelled from the ranks of algerian communists, Camus gradually turned into an open anti-communist and ended up as a persona non grata amongst the French intelligentsia. on the basis of the same humanism he publicly protested against both the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 and the soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. december 1957 is a memorable date in the history of French culture since this is when albert Camus was granted the nobel prize for literature. although he was diagnosed with tuberculosis since adolescence, his death would not have natural causes. on January 4, 1960 he lost his life in a car crash, leaving behind an impressive corpus that ranges from novels and theatrical plays to philosophical essays and day-to-day journalism. History also remembers him as the theorist of the

1 Jacob golomb, In Search of Authenticity: From Kierkegaard to Camus, new York and london: routledge 1995, p. 119. 2 For more biographical details see ieme van der poel, “Camus: a life lived in Critical times,” in The Cambridge Companion to Camus, ed. by edward J. Hughes, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 2007, pp. 13–25. the chronology of this volume offers useful data, as well. ibid., pp. xi–xvi.

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absurd and of the “crisis of justification”3 which plagued the first half of the twentieth century. He has been called, often sardonically, the directeur de conscience of the middle class or the pope of a secular neohumanism.4 even so, most of his works target an ontological level that goes beyond philosophical fashions, ideological creeds, and crude politics. it is precisely on this level, namely, that of the singular individual,5 that the French-algerian essayist interacts with another thinker with a similar inclination towards polemics, though with a more detached attitude vis-à-vis social and political exigencies. I. Even Rebels Differ one does not risk much by stating that Camus’ reception of Kierkegaard is not very charitable. we shall soon see how and why Kierkegaard’s confrontation with the absurd is highly appreciated by Camus,6 whereas the former’s alleged attack against reason, in tandem with its religious digressions, will be ruthlessly sanctioned. as regards the opposition to Kierkegaard, it may be better understood if we acknowledge what sets Camus apart from Kierkegaard and to what extent. to begin with, it is highly probable that Kierkegaard would have sided with Camus on the obligation to adhere to an “efficacious but limited reason.”7 their disagreement, however, would have emerged not necessarily when “recognizing [reason’s] relative powers,” but rather when the individual is required “to remain in this middle path where the intelligence can remain clear.”8 to that Kierkegaard would have retorted that in matters existential, ethical, and especially, religious, rationality is not of much help. though he may have conceded to Camus that “if i recognize the limits of the

golomb, In Search of Authenticity, p. 123. rené girard, “Camus’ Stranger retried,” in Modern Critical Views: Albert Camus, ed. by Harold bloom, new York and philadelphia: Chelsea House publishers 1989, pp. 79– 105; p. 91. 5 like Kierkegaard, Camus admits that the roots of thinking are ultimately personal. albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, paris: gallimard 1942, pp. 137–8 (in Œuvres complètes d’Albert Camus, vols. 1–9, ed. by roger grenier, paris: gallimard & Club de l’Honnête Homme 1983–, vol. 1, p. 216; english translation: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. by Justin o’brien, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1967, pp. 100–1). see also avi sagi, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd, trans. by batya stein, amsterdam and new York: rodopi 2002, pp. 25–34, where it is argued that the best way to understand Camus (as well as pascal, Kierkegaard, nietzsche, dostoyevsky, and Kafka) is as “a personal thinker.” roger poole concurs by stating that “Camus found in Kierkegaard an ideal model for an existentialism without god.” roger poole, “the unknown Kierkegaard: twentieth-Century receptions,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by alastair Hannay and gordon d. marino, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1998, pp. 48–75; see p. 56. 6 golomb, In Search of Authenticity, p. 126. 7 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 55 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 161; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 36). 8 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 60 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 164; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 40). 3 4

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reason, i do not therefore negate it,”9 Kierkegaard would still stress that our cognitive limitations should make us realize our mind’s impotence. in fact, in Kierkegaard’s judgment, a self-sacrificing reason has more chances to reach the truth than any version, be it relative or limited, of rationalism.10 at the same time, Camus cannot be labeled a rationalist.11 in his theoretical essays, especially, in The Myth of Sisyphus, the efficacious employment of reason he stands by is continually confronted with and perpetually defeated by the truthfulness of “chaos,” “sovereign chance,” and “anarchy.”12 everything, Camus candidly declares, is an “inhuman show in which absurdity, hope, and death carry on their dialogue.”13 moreover, in a “ravaged world” like ours “everlasting nothingness seems the only reality and irremediable despair.”14 instead of deluding ourselves with false hopes and ethereal certainties, life is “lived all the better if it has no meaning.”15 In a restricted sense, the difference from Kierkegaard seems infinite. as we know, Kierkegaard is a declared advocate of Christian creationism and the providential order that undergirds it. in addition, for him, the senseless arbitrariness, the anarchic poison of existence, and the engulfing nothingness of despair are mere epiphenomena of the human fall. the next dissimilarity is that, whereas Camus swears on the liberating capacities of death, consciousness, and rebellion, and on an aesthetics of authentic self-creation,16 Kierkegaard never hesitates to claim, pseudonymously or not, that our salvation rests in Christ alone. what Camus has to offer is just “a lucid invitation to live and to ibid. SKS 4, 242–3 / PF, 37. SKS 4, 249 / PF, 44. SKS 7, 320–1 / CUP1, 349–51. 11 avi sagi argues that Camus defends a “pragmatic rationality” while opposing traditional (metaphysical) rationalism. sagi, Albert Camus, pp. 59–65. 12 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 73 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 173; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 51). 13 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 23 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 140; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 10). 14 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 41 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 152; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 25). 15 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 76 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 175; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 53). 16 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 83–4; p. 95; pp. 129–59; pp. 167–8 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. pp. 179–80; p. 189; pp. 211–31; p. 238; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 59–60; p. 68; pp. 93–118; p. 123). of all three, art possesses the highest cathartic power; see Camus Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 155–6 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 229; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 115). see also albert Camus, L’Homme révolté, paris: gallimard 1951, pp. 311–42 (in Œuvres complètes d’Albert Camus, vol. 3, pp. 281–307; english translation: The Rebel. An Essay on Man in Revolt, trans. by anthony bower, new York: vintage books 1956, pp. 253– 77). see also golomb, In Search of Authenticity, pp. 119–42. interestingly enough, though he dedicates quite a few pages to a close reading of Kafka’s Trial and The Castle, and evaluates them as imperfect absurd works, Camus considers a philosopher, Friedrich nietzsche, a model for “an aesthetic of the absurd.” see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 251 (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 137). For further details, see Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 88–105 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 91–106; The Rebel, pp. 65–80). golomb, “Camus’ ideal of authentic life,” Philosophy Today, vol. 38, no. 3, 1994, pp. 268–77; p. 268. 9

10

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create, in the very midst of the desert.”17 in his turn, Kierkegaard invites us earnestly to believe in and suffer for the god-man, and thus to participate in the drama of redemption. if Camus has words of praise for Friedrich nietzsche, whose importance and message lie in “a sterile and conquering lucidity and an obstinate negation of any supernatural consolation,”18 Kierkegaard, on the other side, never tires of glorifying the transcendent joy, fruitful earnestness, and pacifying hope of religious existence. it is important to note that regarding religion, Camus hopes to pass as an agnostic. “i don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it,” he writes. and he continues: “but i know that i do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.”19 still, the quasi-atheistic undertones of Camus’ skepticism are hard to miss. to quote one of his confessions, “[the] perception of an angel or a god has no meaning for me. That geometrical spot where divine reason ratifies mine will always be incomprehensible to me.”20 at times, the incomprehensibility of religion occasions its sheer negation. For example, in Camus’ philosophy there is no tolerance for any value or sense attached to eternity and everlasting life. not more condoned is any expression of fideism.21 thus, while Kierkegaard might have enjoyed the sporadic diatribes against the church,22 the Camusian assaults on the divine would have been at most a pertinent illustration of the demonic posture. i shall return to this aspect in the final section of this essay. Apart from openly admitting that our cursed world has no place for the Christian god,23 Camus seems to entertain a sadistic representation of the monotheistic deity, who enjoys humiliating humans and seeing them act as “inspired automata.”24 by contrast, Kierkegaard’s god is see the “preface” to the american translation of The Myth of Sisyphus, p. v. Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 251 (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 137). 19 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 73 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 173; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 51). 20 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 67 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 168; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 46). or “i am inclined to believe in the legendary bravado, in that mad laughter of the healthy man provoking a non-existent god.” Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 105 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 195; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 76). see also albert Camus, Carnets, vols. 1–3, paris: gallimard 1962–64, vol. 2, Janvier 1942–Mars 1951, p. 74. (english translation: Notebooks 1942–1951, trans. by Justin o’brien, new York: marlowe & Co. 1998, p. 55.) speaking of his theoretical position from The Rebel, Camus calls it “irreligion” or “provisional atheism.” see sagi, Albert Camus, p. 145. in his turn, roger poole recognizes in Camus “a militant atheist.” see poole, “twentieth-Century receptions,” p. 56. Jacob golomb identifies in Camus’ thought an “ethical nihilism.” See Golomb, In Search of Authenticity, p. 123. 21 see Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 11; p. 21 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 133; p. 139; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. v; p. 2; p 8). 22 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 121–2 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 205–6; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 89). Camus, L’Homme révolté, p. 140. (The Rebel, p. 112.) 23 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 125; pp. 166–7 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 208; pp. 237–8; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 92; p. 122.) see also golomb, In Search of Authenticity, p. 126. 24 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 247 (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 131). 17 18

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primarily driven by love, while divine cruelty never goes beyond the limits of an edifying teleology. what is more, the human relationality to this deity is not only combative and otherworldly-oriented, but also cathartic (i.e., psychologically emancipatory) and not necessarily nihilistic towards this world. not to be forgotten either is that in Kierkegaard’s anthropology, instead of mere puppets, humans enjoy the kingly status of being instituted by the transcendent as free and unique selves.25 Camus’ hypothesis on the close proximity between the Christian religion and twentieth-century communism is another highly controversial point from Kierkegaard’s viewpoint.26 within the same perspective, Camus’ admiration for Dostoyevsky’s Kirilov who exemplifies a deified humanity or “the man-god”27 sounds every bit as troubling. To Kirilov’s existential profile one could easily oppose Kierkegaard’s unabated rejection of self-deification on the basis of sinfulness.28 besides, Camus’ judgment of Christianity does not lack contradictions. For instance, Camus holds that the Christian religion gives “a vast hope” which runs counter to an unfettered affirmation of the absurd. At the same time, he avers that “[it] is possible to be Christian and absurd.”29 Finally, one may speculate that Camus’ hypothesis on the existence of “Christians who do not believe in a future life” would have brought an ironic smile on Kierkegaard’s face or kindled his zesty sarcasm.30 II. The Joyful Imprisonment within the Absurd the previous tentative parallel aims to suggest that Camus and Kierkegaard are separated by an impressive ideational rift, which could explain the harsh treatment the latter receives from the former. be that as it may, before turning to Kierkegaard’s place in the complex economy of The Myth of Sisyphus a short overview of the anthropology proposed in this book is in order. within an anthropological vista, the Camusian selfhood is primarily conflictual, both within and without. The French SKS 11, 129–30 / SUD, 13–14. SKS 9, 86–91 / WL, 80–6. SKS 9, / WL, 135. Pap. ix b 20 / BA, 234. Pap. ix b 22 / BA, 235–6. SKS 26, 127–9, nb32:16 / JP 4, 4911. in L’Homme révolté, pp. 234–5 (in Œuvres completes, vol. 3, pp. 216–17; The Rebel, pp. 189–90), Camus holds that Christianity gave birth to the philosophy of history, the absolutization of which contributed to the advent of the totalitarian tyranny of marxist-leninism. see also Camus, L’Homme révolté, p. 45–6; pp. 92–3 (in Œuvres completes, vol. 3, p. 54; p. 95; The Rebel, p. 28; p. 69). 27 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 146 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 222; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 107). 28 SKS 12, 202 / PC, 205. That is precisely why in Kierkegaard’s theology the crucifixion of Christ harbors the highest soteriological meaning. the exemplar’s imitation, regardless of its sincerity and abnegation, will always be infinitely inferior. 29 see Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 151 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 226; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 112) and Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 246 (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 135). the opposition between hope and absurdity could be fruitfully paralleled with the proximity between faith and offense in Kierkegaard, even if this is not the sense envisioned by Camus. 30 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 151 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 226; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 112). SKS 4, 112 / FT, 15. SKS 5, 250–68 / EUD, 253–73. 25 26

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writer adamantly highlights the tremendous gap between what one thinks one knows and what one knows in reality.31 that is to say, even when the utter absurdity of existence stares me in the face, i pretend i do not see it and continue living as though my life had a higher sense. this particular trait of human nature stems, according to Camus, from an irrepressible aspiration for clarity, familiarity, and comprehension, by virtue of which the individual searches for meaningfulness. thus, everyone is driven by the “nostalgia” or “desire for unity,” the “appetite for the absolute,” the “longing to solve [existential conundrums],” in addition to the “need for clarity and cohesion.”32 but this perfectly legitimate ideal, reasons Camus, is undermined by the dense impenetrability of the outer world.33 moreover, the capacity to think which allegedly marks our difference from other natural rungs is not as reliable as we were led to believe. For we are endlessly besieged by the inevitable contradictoriness of cogitation34 and an entire “horde of [other] irrationals.”35 in fact, the absolute knowledge of inner and outer reality remains, at least within the coordinates of this world, simply impossible.36 every desire to know, every attempt to overcome the inchoate alienation, into which we have been thrown without any reason, continually smash against the defiant walls of unintelligibility, silence, and perishability.37 therefore, the self will never be at peace either with its concrete interiority or its external surroundings. the only certainty one is thus left with concerns one’s alienation from the world and oneself, together with the palpable verities, with which life enchants us.38 overall, the path we are all treading is quite dire in its ruthless implacability. Camus’ humanity is condemned to a constant “ridiculous divorce separating [its] spiritual excesses and the ephemeral joys of the

31 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 33 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 147; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 18). 32 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 32; p. 73 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 146; p. 173; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 17; p. 51). 33 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 33; p. 73 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 147; p. 173; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 19; p. 51). 34 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 31–2 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 145–6; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 16–17). 35 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 37 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 149; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 21). 36 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 26 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 142; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 12). what we can rely only on instead is the hypothetical-metaphorical knowledge that science and artwork provide. Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 36 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 148; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 20). 37 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 35–6 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 149; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 20). 38 irrespective of the impossibility of absolute explanations, we can still count on our sensations and with them, on “the constant attractions of a universe inexhaustible in quantity.” see Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 131–2 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 212; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 95.) see also Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 121–2; p. 134; p. 138; p. 139; p. 145; p. 157 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 206; p. 214; pp. 216–17; p. 222; p. 229; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 89; p. 97; p. 101; p. 102; p. 107; p. 116).

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body,” or the “urge toward unity” and the unfaltering awareness of fragmentation.39 as a result, the lucid person will oscillate between suicide (be it physical, religious, or philosophical), and the head-on confrontation with the monstrosity of existence via consciousness, revolt, art, and solidary action.40 Hence, the everlasting preposterousness of the human lot. in Camus’ oeuvre, the absurd constitutes the key category able to unlock the little we know about our condition and destiny. additionally, the absurdity of life crowns us with a heroic aura. Here Camus distinguishes between an absurdist sensitivity and the absurd as a philosophic notion or factor of intelligibility. To put it briefly, the feeling of absurdity arises from the comparison (and subsequent hiatus) between “an action and the world that transcends it.”41 in general, it is the compound formed by the awareness of, and the emotional response to, the world’s irrationality.42 in matters of clarity and elaboration, things are different concerning the category of the absurd. Here Camus follows his philosophical call and assigns to the absurd multiple meanings. thus, absurdity can denote a mere starting-point43 or “the description, in the pure state, of an intellectual malady [mal de l’esprit].”44 secondly, in an epistemic perspective, it indicates a type of “lucid reason noting its limits.”45 thirdly, Camus extends absurdity to the realm of human existence as a whole. From this vantage, the absurd appears as an immediate ineluctable datum which becomes manifest through “the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of…[our] daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.”46

Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 243 (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 127) and Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 38 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 150; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 22). 40 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 74–5; p. 114 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 174; p. 200; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 52; p. 83). 41 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 48 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 156; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 30). 42 a more extensive treatment of this matter can be found in sagi, Albert Camus, pp. 47–58. 43 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 26 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 142; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 12). 44 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 11 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 133; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 2). 45 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 70 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 171; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 49). 46 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 18 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 137; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 6). see also Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 24–5; pp. 48–9 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 141; pp. 156–7; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 10–11; pp. 30–1). Camus, L’Homme révolté, p. 129–30 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 127; The Rebel, p. 101). on the timeless, as it were, perpetuity of the absurd, see Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 76–8 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 174–6; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 53–5). Camus also declares that the “world itself…is but a vast irrational.” see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 44 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 154; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 27). on the subtle difference between the absurd and the irrational, see Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 36–7 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 149; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 21). Camus, Carnets, vol. 1, Mai 1935–Février 39

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absurdity is also associated with our mortal condition.47 and when it does not refer to the realization of the others’ or our own inhumanity,48 the absurd bears witness to “the primitive hostility of the world.”49 that is to say, it bespeaks a relational kind of antagonism. it is, Camus writes, “essentially a divorce. it lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation.”50 in sum, absurdity emerges through the encounter “between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints,” between “my nostalgia for unity” and “this fragmented universe,” between the “longing for happiness and for reason,” and “the unreasonable silence of the world.”51 to which, Camus crucially adds that every conciliatory endeavor should be rejoined with a lofty scorn.52 viewed through these lens, life strikes one as an “exile…without remedy,” or as a universe “suddenly divested of illusions and lights” whose inhabitants are deprived of both “the memory of a lost home” and “the hope of a promised land.”53 alienation and antagonism come to be the irreparable features of our rapports with worldly existence, the primary attribute of which is a perduring impenetrability.54 Nevertheless, Camus’ reflections do not deserve to be classified as pessimistic. One reason consists of the moving depiction of the “implacable nobility” of the human condition, despite the “basic absurdity” it is engulfed by.55 the emblematic eminence that ennobles the Camusian heroes of the absurd is concretized by a few attitudes. in this precise sense, besides the reckless recognition of life’s fundamentals, Camus will 1942, p. 141. (english translation: Notebooks 1935–1942, trans. by philip thody, new York: marlowe & Co. 1998, pp. 115–16.) 47 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 29–30 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 144–5; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 15–16). 48 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 27–8 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 143–4; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 13–15). 49 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 28 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 144; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 14). 50 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 48 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 156; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 30). see also Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 36–7 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 149; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 21). sagi argues that the same tension can be found in Kierkegaard’s oeuvre, as well. sagi, Albert Camus, p. 18; pp. 23–4. 51 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 71; p. 46 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 171; p. 154; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 50; p. 28). 52 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 78 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 176; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 55). more exactly, the struggle against our ill-fated condition presupposes “a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest).” Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 50 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 157; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 31). 53 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 18 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 137; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 6). 54 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 28–9 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 144; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 14). 55 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 243 (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 127). at the same time, we should take note that Camus considers optimism nonsensical. Carnets, vol. 1, p. 38. (Notebooks 1935–1942, pp. 25–6.)

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acclaim every form of humanist-metaphysical revolt, audacious artistic creations,56 and solidarity-oriented action. of these stances only lucid cognizance and the immanentist rebellion are of relevance to the aims of this study. As regards the first, Camus relates it to the practice of a reasonable honesty (honnêteté).57 the authentic individual must acknowledge the basic absurdity and inevitable contradictions of life, and purposefully choose to live in their midst.58 the absurd spirit should keep “living and thinking with those dislocations,” while withstanding every temptation to conceal the evident or suppress the absurd.59 the sisyphean self must deliberately preserve and confront the very thing that crushes it. A piercing consciousness is the first task we should observe in opposing the abominable irrationality of our environs.60 That is why Camus maintains that hope, when defined in line with any grandiose meaningfulness that transcends life—for example, eschatologically—is nothing but cowardly evasion (esquive).61 but why should we reject hope in any expression? because when one hopes, Camus answers, the individual derives reasons for believing from the primary contradictions of existence. we shall soon see that this idea epitomizes Camus’ main criticism of Kierkegaard. most gravely, when linked with a religious vocation, hope renders life a “terrifying apprenticeship in death.”62 to be sure, the tragedy of the individual “devoid of hope and conscious of being so” is that he or she will lose any connection with and concern for, the future.63 However, this tragic situation should not be countered by means of infinite resignation, to use Kierkegaard’s parlance. even if the lures of hoping never actually disappear—a 56 noteworthy here is sagi’s reminder that Camus and Kierkegaard shared a preference for “the literary form over systematic philosophical writing.” sagi immediately adds that what sets the two apart is that “Kierkegaard wrote his philosophy in literary form, whereas Camus wrote literature.” sagi, Albert Camus, p. 27. For the primarily literary virtues of Kierkegaard’s indirect communication, see poole, “twentieth-Century receptions.” golomb suggests that Camus’ and Kierkegaard’s thought are essentially drawn by “irony and indirect style of communicating.” see golomb, In Search of Authenticity, p. 129. 57 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 37–8; pp. 70–1; pp. 124–5 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 150; p. 171; p. 207; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 21–2; p. 49; pp. 90–1). see also Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 73–4 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 173; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 51.): “and these two certainties—my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle—i also know that i cannot reconcile them. what other truth can i admit without lying, without bringing in a hope i lack and which means nothing within the limits of my condition?” 58 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 74–5 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 174; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 52). 59 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 60; pp. 70–1 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 164; p. 171; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 40; p. 49). 60 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 49–50 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 157; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 31). 61 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 21; pp. 56–7 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 138–9; pp. 161–2; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 8; p. 37). 62 ibid. 63 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 50 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 158; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 32).

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testimony to “the difficulty of the absurd ascesis”64—the noble knight of the absurd must tirelessly assault the supernal fortresses of reconciliation, renunciation, and mystical union. using a Christological-sacramental image, Camus poetically states that such a self feeds its tragic sublimity on “the wine of the absurd and the bread of indifference.”65 Yet, we have to be careful regarding the scope of this indifference because Camus insists that, aside from revolt and freedom, absurdity gives rise to a tremendous passion for life.66 We are now in the position to reconstitute the profile of Camus’ homme absurd. such an individual acts only in accord with his understanding, being fully aware of the latter’s insurmountable boundaries.67 moreover, since the world and life dawn on him as purely “unreasonable,”68 his goal is not to explain or solve the riddle of existence but only to describe the variegated content of his immediate experience.69 Contrary to appearances, he “does not absolutely scorn reason” and is “little inclined to leap before knowing.”70 but, insofar as his greatest enemies are hope and selfdelusion, he knows where the struggle lies: “the absurd,” Camus notes, “is his extreme tension, which he maintains constantly by solitary effort, for he knows that in that consciousness and in that day-to-day revolt he gives proof of his only truth, which is defiance.”71 His highly self-disciplined intelligence is continually “at grips with a reality that transcends it.”72 Similarly to the mythical figure of Sisyphus, Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 154 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 227; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 113). 65 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 75 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 174; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 52). 66 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 38; p. 89 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 150; p. 183; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 22; p. 64). the more problematic supposition, at least from a Kierkegaardian standpoint, is that, if contemplated through an absurd pathos-filled consciousness, the world will be “reborn in all its splendor and diversity.” Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 90 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 184; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 65). For Kierkegaard, the world’s manifold splendor is fully evident only to the gaze of a struggling believer in creationism. the traditional logic of the creationist creed states that the world is aesthetically enjoyable and spiritually edifying only if seen as divine gift. regarding freedom, it is useful to know that the Camusian assumptions are emphatically non-Kierkegaardian. see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 73–90 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 173–84; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 51–65). we can easily contrast Camus’ simplistic reading of god’s relation to human freedom from Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 79 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 177; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 56) with Kierkegaard’s meditation in SKS 20, 57–8, nb:69 / JP 2, 1251. 67 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 54 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 161; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 35). 68 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 70 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 170; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 49). 69 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 130 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 212; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 94). 70 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 56 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 161; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 37). 71 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 78–9 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 176; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 55). 72 ibid. 64

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the absurd spirit carries alone the burden of existence through the joyful-strenuous appropriation of universal futility. Camus observes that “rather than resigning itself to falsehood,” the absurd man prefers to choose purposefully what Kierkegaard took as the inconsolable despair of unreligious life.73 by implication, it is obvious that the absurd hero rebuts such soteriological notions as sin and the afterlife. drawing inspiration from sisyphus’ plight, he condescendingly scorns the gods and “when he contemplates his torment, [he] silences all the idols.”74 moreover, his innocence is not only the most real, but also “irreparable.”75 as to his ferocious hatred of mortality, it originates in an inexhaustible passion for life,76 which explains the unadulterated joy he experiences upon gazing at the “water and sun, warm stones...the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of earth.”77 truly, his luminous, intrepid, and sovereign yes-saying would be worthy of nietzsche’s zarathustra.78 III. The Fall into Religion prior to tackling our theme, a short survey of the textual sources of Camus’ reception is appropriate. the selection in this respect was plentiful. of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous books that Camus could have consulted we count Repetition,79 The Concept of Anxiety,80 the Concluding Unscientific Postscript,81 Practice in

Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 61; pp. 119–20 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 165; p. 204; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 41; pp. 87–8). Camus refers here to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, see SKS 4, 112 / FT, 15. Contrast with Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 246 (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 130), where the attachment to everyday despair is critiqued by Camus. 74 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 167 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 238; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 123). 75 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 76; p. 94 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 175; p. 187; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 53; p. 67). 76 in his Notebooks Camus seems aware of the link Kierkegaard makes between passion, suffering, and passivity. By contrast, the fervor of the absurd man is more active in his infinite affirmation of the world. See Camus, Carnets, vol. 1, p. 83. (Notebooks 1935–1942, pp. 65–6.) 77 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 164 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 236; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 120). that is also why “without negating it, [the absurd man] does nothing for the eternal.” see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 93 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 187; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 66). 78 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 84; p. 93 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 180; p. 187; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 60; p. 66). 79 søren Kierkegaard, La Répétition. Essai d’expérience psychologique par Constantin Constantius, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, paris: alcan 1933. 80 in 1935 two separate translations of this work had been published: Le Concept de l’angoisse, trans. by Jean J. gateau and Knud Ferlov, paris: gallimard 1935 and Le Concept d’angoisse, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, paris: Félix alcan 1935. 81 søren Kierkegaard, Post-scriptum aux Miettes philosophiques, trans. by paul petit, paris: mesmil 1941. 73

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Christianity,82 and Stages on Life’s Way.83 the signed works available to him included The Point of View,84 The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air,85 For Self-Examination,86 Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays,87 Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits,88 and Two Ethical-Religious Essays.89 another possible source was a selection of journal entries.90 now, given his explicit references to Kierkegaard, we can be sure that Camus had some knowledge of Fear and Trembling,91 The Sickness unto Death,92 and Philosophical Fragments.93 Camus seems also fond of the Kierkegaardian speech on “the purity of Heart,” which surfaces in The Myth of Sisyphus and in the Notebooks.94 at the end of 1942 a brief diary entry is søren Kierkegaard, L’Ecole du christianisme, par Anti-Climacus, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le traducteur 1936. 83 søren Kierkegaard, In vino veritas, trans. by andré babelon and C. lund, paris: Éditions du Cavalier 1933; Le Banquet (In vino veritas), trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, paris: Félix alcan 1933; søren Kierkegaard, Coupable? Non coupable? Une histoire de la souffrance: expérience psychologique par Frater Taciturnus, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: p.-H. tisseau 1942. 84 søren Kierkegaard, Point de vue explicatif de mon oeuvre: communication directe, rapport historique, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le traducteur 1940. 85 søren Kierkegaard, Les lis des champs et les oiseaux de ciel, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, paris: alcan 1935. 86 søren Kierkegaard, Pour un examen de conscience, à mes contemporains, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le traducteur 1934. 87 søren Kierkegaard, Le Souverain sacrificateur, le Péager, la Pécheresse, troi discours pour la communion du vendredi, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le traducteur 1934. 88 see note 94 below. 89 søren Kierkegaard, Le Droit de mourir pour la verité. Le Génie et l’apôtre, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le traducteur 1935. 90 søren Kierkegaard, Prières et fragments sur la prière. Extraits du Journal, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le traducteur 1937; Journal. Extraits 1. 1834–1846, trans. by Jean J. gateau and Knud Ferlov, paris: gallimard 1941. 91 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 61 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 165; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 41). søren Kierkegaard, Crainte et Tremblement. Lyrique-dialectique, par Johannes de Silentio, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, paris: Fernand aubier; Éditions montaigne 1935. 92 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 38–9 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 150–1; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 22–3). søren Kierkegaard, Traité du désespoir, trans. by Knud Ferlov and Jean J. gateau, paris: gallimard 1932. 93 søren Kierkegaard, Les Riens philosophiques, trans. by Jean J. gateau and Knud Ferlov, paris: gallimard 1937. Camus, Carnets, vol. 1, p. 83. (Notebooks 1935–1942, pp. 65– 6.) Philosophical Fragments is also the probable source for Camus’ reading of the category of the leap. see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 57 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 161–2; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 37.) 94 see Camus, Carnets, vol. 2, p. 74 (Notebooks 1942–1951, p. 55), where Camus cites Kierkegaard’s definition of despair from Part One of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. see SKS 8, 144 / UD, p. 31. the subtitle of this section is “on the occasion of a Confession. purity of Heart is to will one thing,” and was published in French as a self-standing volume. søren Kierkegaard, La Pureté du coeur, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le 82

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dedicated to the aesthetic relevance of marriage, the endorsement of generality, and the critique of mysticism in Kierkegaard’s thought. obviously, Camus cites here the second volume of Either/Or, while clear allusions to the first volume are found in The Myth of Sisyphus.95 From a diaristic reminder of Kierkegaard’s connection between suffering and interpersonal comparisons, we can safely infer that Camus has in mind one of the three devotional series that form Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits.96 It is now time to turn to the chief topic of this essay. The first written account of Camus’ interaction with Kierkegaard is recorded in the notebooks and dates back to may 1936.97 but apart from just a few other diaristic jottings which are rather insignificant to the overall picture, Camus’ ideational exchange with Søren Kierkegaard happens exclusively in the pages of his chef d’oeuvre, Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Finished in February 194198 and published in october 1942, this particular book represents a wonderful testimony to a historical period which combined, amongst many others, state-sanctioned crime, demythologization of the world, and the failure of systematic-rationalist philosophy. although primarily lyrical, The Myth of Sisyphus extracts several of its definitive statements from a limited, albeit trenchant, use of reason. in the name of an impossible unity, the book merges tragic pathos with a merciless insight.99 its explicit telos is to shed light on “the step taken by the mind when, starting from a philosophy of the world’s lack of meaning, it ends up by finding a meaning and depth in it.”100 Yet, what actually triggers Camus’

traducteur 1936. see also Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 248 note 2 (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 134 note 4). the same happened with the other two parts of Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits; see søren Kierkegaard, Ce que nous apprennent les lis des champs et les oiseaux du ciel, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, paris: Félix alcan 1935; søren Kierkegaard, L’Evangile des souffrances, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-enpareds: le traducteur 1937. 95 Camus, Carnets, vol. 2, p. 55. (Notebooks 1942–1951, pp. 39–40.) see also Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 42 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 153; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 26). the French translation of Either/Or has been available since 1940, see L’alternative. Un fragment de vie. Publié par Victor Eremita. Deuxième partie: Contenant les papiers de B: lettres à A, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le traducteur 1940. i am grateful to Jon stewart for all the bibliographical information regarding the French translations of Kierkegaard available during Camus’ authorial activity. 96 Camus, Carnets, vol. 1, p. 38. (Notebooks 1935–1942, p. 26.) and note 94 above. on religious equality and the consequent suffering that accompanies every intersubjective comparison, see, for instance, SKS 8, 187 / UD, 81. SKS 8, 242–3 / UD, 146. SKS 8, 248–9 / UD, 152. SKS 8, 260–1 / UD, 161. SKS 8, 265 / UD, 165–6. SKS 8, 268–9 / UD, 169–70. 97 Camus, Carnets, vol. 1, p. 38. (Notebooks 1935–1942, p. 26.) 98 Camus, Carnets, vol. 1, p. 224. (Notebooks 1935–1942, p. 189.) 99 see “preface” to Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. v–vi. see also Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 15–16 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 135–6; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 3–4). 100 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 62 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 165; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 42).

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glowing mediations is “the relationship between individual thought and suicide.”101 in this respect, the illegitimacy of suicide is unambiguously proclaimed despite the omnipresence of the absurd.102 Furthermore, in The Myth of Sisyphus Camus audaciously grapples with problems as dissimilar as freedom, the ontological status of the actor, the bliss of erotic seduction, the soteriology of artistic creation, and Kafka’s novels. all of them draw their impetus from the paradoxical glory of an enchained, godless, mortal, yet exuberant and resolute, humankind. the engagement with Kierkegaard’s philosophy has modest origins and aims. as a consistent essayist, albert Camus resists assuming the ex cathedra stance of traditional commentators. with that in mind, in the opening pages of The Myth of Sisyphus he warns us that he is “not examining the philosophy of Kierkegaard or of shestov or, later on, of Husserl.”103 rather, he is “simply borrowing a theme from them and examining whether its consequences can fit the already established rules.”104 we shall see that the theme in question is the absurd’s relation to human reason. As to the specifics of the “established rules,” Camus remains silent. My hypothesis is that they pertain to the threefold task extensively delineated above: the plain recognition of absurdity, the resistance against all hope, and the passionate embrace of a non-religious lifeworld. let us see how in Camus’ reading, Kierkegaard pays heed only to the first task and rejects the remaining two. At first sight, Kierkegaard appears to Camus as an “elusive,” obscure, verbose, and even helpless writer, whose genius is somewhat “slow” (lent).105 Kierkegaard’s alleged helplessness is perhaps linked with the way in which his tentative overcoming of the absurd through a religious engagement ultimately failed. Camus begins his argument by contending that the Kierkegaardian category of despair can be read as an integral part of modernity’s violent attack on rationality. He notes that ever since nietzsche’s zarathustra and Kierkegaard’s “fatal illness, ‘that malady that leads to death with nothing else following it,’ the significant and tormenting themes of absurd thought have followed one another.”106 Camus goes on to say that, in spite of his spiritual facet, Kierkegaard has the merit of having acknowledged and struggled with, “a privileged and bitter moment in which hope has no further place.”107 and as his works had decisive reverberations in twentieth-century philosophy via Jaspers, Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 16–17 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 136; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 4). 102 “preface” to Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. v. on the problem of suicide in Camus, see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 17–23; pp. 77–8 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 136–40; pp. 175–6; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 5–10; pp. 54–5). 103 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 57, note (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 162, note 1; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 37–8, note 6). 104 ibid. 105 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 56–7; pp. 70–1 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 162; pp. 171–2; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 37; pp. 49–50). see also Camus, Carnets, vol. 2, p. 74. (Notebooks 1942–1951, p. 55.) 106 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 39 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 150–1; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 23). SKS 11, 133–7 / SUD, 17–21. 107 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 39; p. 44 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 151; p. 154; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 23; p. 27). 101

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Heidegger, and shestov—whom Camus calls “the existentials”108—Kierkegaard could be regarded as one of the earliest proponents of an “absurd reasoning” in the history of western thought.109 the helplessness i just mentioned may be Camus’ hint at the dramatic condition of reason, which is evinced by the fact that wherever it turns, the human mind “finds nothing but contradictions and nonsense.”110 in a similar manner, Camus assumes that Kierkegaard’s thought “[starts] out from that indescribable universe where contradiction, antinomy, anguish, or impotence reigns.”111 However, provided that his telos is to block “the royal road of reason,” Kierkegaard concomitantly implies that “nothing is clear, all is chaos, that all man has is his lucidity and his definite knowledge of the walls surrounding him.”112 the claim is that that Kierkegaard did not simply chance upon the absurd. rather, he contemplated it from multiple angles through his tormented existence, as well as his chameleonic corpus. in Camus’ memorable words: don Juan of the understanding, [Kierkegaard] multiplies pseudonyms and contradictions, writes his Discourses of Edification [sic] at the same time as that manual of cynical spiritualism, The Diary of the Seducer. He refuses consolations, ethics, reliable principles. as for that thorn he feels in his heart, he is careful not to quiet its pain. On the contrary, he awakens it and, in the desperate joy of a man crucified and happy to be so, he builds up piece by piece—lucidity, refusal, make believe—a category of the man possessed [démoniaque]. that face both tender and sneering, those pirouettes followed by a cry from the heart are the absurd spirit itself grappling with a reality beyond its comprehension. and the spiritual adventure that leads Kierkegaard to his beloved scandals begins likewise in the chaos of an experience divested of its setting and relegated to its original incoherence.113

despite the intricacy and compactness of this passage, a few ideas come to the fore. We remark first the psychological masochism Camus attributes to a Kierkegaard who seems passionately attached to his agonizing inner thorns. next, Camus reveals Kierkegaard’s rebellious side, by virtue of which all rational principles, religious mitigations, and ethical conduct are corporately rebuked. in a third move, Camus proposes an original genealogy of demonism, which culminates in a primordial, as it were, heart-rending trauma. Fourthly, Camus correctly detects in Kierkegaard an unending clash “with a reality beyond [his] comprehension,” but seems completely Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 61 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 165; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 41). 109 that is implied in Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 22 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 139–40; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 9). 110 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 44 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 154; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 27). 111 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 39 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 151; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 23). 112 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 44 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 154; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 27). 113 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 42–3 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 153; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 26). 108

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unaware that, for Kierkegaard, the utterly incomprehensible can be predicated solely on god and Christ as the god-man. lastly, Camus defends an (implausible) tenet, in conformity to which the roots of the Kierkegaardian category of scandal are exclusively aesthetic, being nourished by the incoherent multiplicity of immediate experience. How does one respond to such daring and cursory judgments? given the scarcity of any information about the textual sources, we can only speculate as to whether or not Camus has been entirely entitled to read Kierkegaard in this way. the fact of the matter is that, upon turning to the nuances and original context of the Kierkegaardian corpus, most of Camus’ verdicts sound gratuitous. For example, if we exclude the possibility that Camus reinvented Kierkegaard for rhetorical purposes, then it is difficult to explain how and why an author who drastically condemned every pathological attachment to suffering could have fallen prey to it himself. moreover, to state that Kierkegaard refuses consolations and ethics is to give too much credit to the early period of his authorship, especially, to the aesthete a and his melancholy soliloquies. to be sure, Kierkegaard’s early journals are replete with dramatic acknowledgments of incertitude, inner torments, anxiety, and despair. nonetheless, in and through them Kierkegaard has also satisfied two of his dearest urges, namely, writing and reflecting upon the enigma of selfhood. This misunderstanding aside, one cannot defend Camus’ pronouncements without completely ignoring Judge william’s and Johannes Climacus’ belief in the import of ethics, not to mention Kierkegaard’s own ethically informed Christianity. with respect to the notion of scandal, it might be scandalous to bypass its originally Christological context. sure enough, that Camus pays absolutely no attention to it represents a typical attitude of a thinker who is bent on banishing all gods from earthly life. but if that is the case, that is, if offense in Kierkegaard’s sense is to be deprived of its transcendent point of reference, nothing can guarantee that the scandal will remain as subversive and inwardly troubling as Camus intends. with respect to the threefold structure of Kierkegaard’s edifying strategy, that is, “lucidity, refusal, [and] make believe,” the treachery insinuated here finds no actual support either in Kierkegaard’s biography as we know it today or in the overall teleology of his works.114 but the deadliest Camusian blows are yet to come. after he observes that all existential philosophies, of which Kierkegaard’s occupies a place of honor, deploy a type of reason that is bewildered, unsure about itself, and even “humiliated,”115 Camus detects a certain lack of rectitude. more exactly, when face to face with the elementary irrationality of existence, “the existentials” avow they have found a way out. on Camus’ judgment, Jaspers, Kierkegaard, and shestov portray this exit as exceptionally religious and incommensurable with reason. to elaborate, while “starting out from the absurd over the ruins of reason, in a closed universe 114 Kierkegaard cannot be suspected of manipulating his readers. indirect communication and his elaborate reflections on its teleology are irrefutably indicative of the perpetual, almost obsessive, concern for his authorial responsibility. 115 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 69; pp. 70–1 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 169; pp. 170–1; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 47; p. 49). Camus also speaks about Kierkegaard’s “extreme irrationalization” and apocalyptical overtones; see ibid.

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limited to the human, they deify what crushes them and find reason to hope in what impoverishes them. that forced hope is religious in all of them.”116 as to Kierkegaard, Camus argues that due to the nostalgic roots of his anti-rational reasoning and as a devout “religious philosopher,” he recovers those “direct paths of truth” leading away from the rational and toward an unfathomable transcendent.117 since his thought prioritizes nostalgia for unity over undeluded knowledge,118 and since the “entire effort of his intelligence is to escape the antinomy of the human condition,”119 Kierkegaard, continues Camus, willfully turns his back on the absurdity that triggered his philosophical reflections. In addition, the Camusian Kierkegaard lionizes the irrational by turning it into a self-standing religious category. in this respect, Camus’ judgment on Jaspers holds true of Kierkegaard, as well: “without justification…he suddenly asserts all at once the transcendent, the essence of experience, and the superhuman significance of life.”120 Camus further hypothesizes that precisely because “antinomy and paradox become criteria of the religious,” Kierkegaard is compelled to prioritize the “harshest aspect” of Christian truth, which feeds on a definite “sacrifice of the intellect” and cannot be understood otherwise than sheer scandal.121 besides assigning to scandal 116 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 51 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 158; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 32). Camus further explains: “the moment the notion [of the absurd] transforms itself into eternity’s springboard, it ceases to be linked to human lucidity. the absurd is no longer that evidence that man ascertains without consenting to it. the struggle is eluded. man integrates the absurd and in that communion causes to disappear its essential character, which is opposition, laceration, and divorce.” see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 54 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 160; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 35). 117 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 69; p. 39 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 170; p. 151; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 47; p. 23) and Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 249 (The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 134–5). Camus admits that Kierkegaard’s dedication to religion was so intense that he unhesitatingly sacrificed for its sake his closest companion, regine olsen. see Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 247 (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 132). 118 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 69–70 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 170; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 48). unexpectedly enough, on the next page we read that “Kierkegaard suppresses my nostalgia [for unity].” Camus never clarifies this proviso. Somewhat related is a 1943 diary entry where he maintains that by purity Kierkegaard meant a combination between unity and goodness, which has no reality outside of god. by contrast, Camus confesses: “i am far from the good and i thirst for unity. that is irreparable.” see Carnets, vol. 2, p. 74. (Notebooks 1942–1951, p. 55.) 119 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 58 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 163; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 38–9). For no other reason does Camus state that Kierkegaard’s oeuvre is marked by “an almost intentional mutilation of the soul [meant] to balance the mutilation accepted in regard to the absurd.” see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 59 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 163; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 39). 120 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 51 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 158; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 32). 121 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 56–7 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 162; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 37). besides the intellect, Kierkegaard advocates an explicit denial of corporeality. see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 59 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 163; The Myth of

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a transcendent component122—whereas for Camus, the scandal should fuel the unending rebellion within the immanent only—Kierkegaard requires the believer to set aside all mundane expectations but for the sake of an ultimate expectancy and not in an open heroic encounter with immanent absurdity.123 implicitly, as already stated, Camus chooses to ignore the Christian-salvific grounds that drove Kierkegaard to qualify Christianity as offensive to reason. the reason he opposes the eschatological vista with such fervor is that all its metaphysics necessitates an unacceptable leap, whereby reason’s constitutive inability to understand everything is compensated by a faith which supposedly “illuminates everything.”124 Consequently, existence and the religious passion are, on Camus’ interpretation, “in direct proportion to the gap between [the] powers of explanation and the irrationality of the world and of experience.”125 Camus thus realizes that in reality, “the great cry of hope” from within the tenebrae of irrationalism is Kierkegaard’s means of coming to terms with the absurdity elaborated above. Kierkegaard’s so-called discovery of a refulgent meaning in the heart of darkness belongs to an attitude termed “philosophical suicide,” which Camus condemns throughout his entire book and not only there. moreover, the fideism that governs the Kierkegaardian religiosity envisages a “dazzling” deity who “is maintained only through the negation of human reason.”126 to quote Camus: between the irrational of the world and the insurgent nostalgia of the absurd, [Kierkegaard] does not maintain the equilibrium. He does not respect the relationship that constitutes, properly speaking, the feeling of absurdity. sure of being unable to escape the irrational, he wants at least to save himself from that desperate nostalgia that seems to him sterile and devoid of implication. but if he may be right on this point in his judgment, he could Sisyphus, p. 39). For Camus’ opposite view see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 110–16; pp. 119–20; pp. 133–4; p. 138 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 198–201; p. 204; p. 214; p. 217; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 80–4; pp. 87–8; p. 97; p. 101). 122 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 59–60 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 162–4; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 39–40). 123 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 248 (The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 134). 124 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 52 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 158–9; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 33). 125 ibid. Camus openly disagrees with Kierkegaard’s understanding of “the leap,” and argues that it “does not represent an extreme danger as Kierkegaard would like it to do. the danger, on the contrary, lies in the subtle instant that precedes the leap. being able to remain on that dizzying crest—that is integrity and the rest is subterfuge.” see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 72 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 171–2; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 50). 126 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 69; pp. 61–2 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 169; p. 165; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 47; pp. 41–2). Camus holds that Kierkegaard adopts a mystical attitude towards this god. see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 65–6 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 167; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 45.) He hereby completely ignores the important Kierkegaardian category of the “infinite qualitative difference” between the immanent and the transcendent. SKS 11, 229 / SUD, 117. SKS 11, 233 / SUD, 121–2. SKS 10, 72 / CD, 63. SKS 20, 251–3, nb3:16 / M, 393. SKS 23, 61, nb15:87 / JP 1, 352. SKS 7, 510 / CUP1, 561. SKS 9, 372 / WL, 379. SKS 8, 381 / UD, 285. SKS 11, 104 / WA, 100.

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not be in his negation. if he substitutes for his cry of revolt a frantic adherence, at once he is led to blind himself to the absurd which hitherto enlightened him and to deify the only certainty he henceforth possesses, the irrational….thus it is that, through a strained subterfuge, he gives the irrational the appearance and god the attributes of the absurd: unjust, incoherent, and incomprehensible. Intelligence alone in him strives to stifle the underlying demands of the human heart.127

transcendent meaningfulness, quietist asceticism, and otherworldly expectations are Kierkegaard’s deadly sins in Camus’ eyes. moreover, as Camus views it, Kierkegaard’s absolute, for the sake of which the believer is asked to relinquish worldliness as a whole, is a sadistic deity. in other words, incomprehensibility, incoherence, injustice, and a perverted attachment to the creature’s tribulations are the main qualities of the Kierkegaardian god. in the end, Camus’ principal criticism seems to be of a Feuerbachian extraction: Kierkegaard “makes of the absurd the criterion of the other world, whereas it is simply a residue of the experience of this world.”128 this might explain why Camus is completely uninterested in the Christotheological origins of Kierkegaard’s category of offense, despair, and paradoxicality. instead, his main concern lies with that sensitivity to the absurd, which crusades against hope, resignation, and faith, and which jubilantly appropriates the disconsolate tyranny of despair.129 IV. A Failed Encounter When searching for inspiring exemplars, Camus identifies the legendary figure of don Juan as the epitome of “a life completely imbued with the absurd.”130 in what follows, i intend to show that don Juan’s portrait from Camus’ hand is, indeed, quite different from Kierkegaard’s mozartian don giovanni. this hermeneutic divergence indicates not only that Camus’ familiarity with the main motifs from Kierkegaard’s corpus was extremely selective. In addition, it reconfirms the enormous gap that separates their existential-philosophical creeds. prevalent in the Camusian sketch are don Juan’s “conquering insolence,” his unique laughter and ludic behavior, both of which elucidate his engrossment in dramatic arts. don Juan’s intelligence, Camus tells us further, is unlimited and simultaneously devoid of any trace of melancholy. by virtue of it, he despises the wisdom of vanitas vanitatum and every conviction related to another life or world awaiting us. Camus’ Don Juan epitomizes a selfhood that sacrifices itself on the altar of the present with absolutely no awareness of futurity (that despicable prop of false hopes and facile consolations). He is generous (not kind), virilely silent, and Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 58–9 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 162–3; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 38–9). 128 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 57 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 162; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 38). 129 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 61; p. 78 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 165; p. 176; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 41; p. 55). 130 the other paragons are Faust, don Quixote, the actor, the conqueror, artistic creators, and novelists. 127

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consistently persistent in his solitude. besides, the knightly order he belongs to can and should never be judged on moral terms. nonetheless, this don Juan is not absolutely foreign to ethical determinations. while bringing him down from his pedestal, Camus reminds us that don Juan is an “ordinary seducer,” a “sexual athlete,” who lives by “an ethic of quantity.”131 in what sense? Camus’ detectably esoteric answer is that without any regret, but also far from treating women as pieces in an erotic collection, don Juan merely “exhausts their number and with them his chances of life.”132 undeniably, he loves every single woman “with the same passion and each time with his whole self.”133 but because “desire, affection, and intelligence”134 are what binds him to the fair sex, and because this compound is different with every woman, don Juan is therefore “ethically” inclined to pursue multiplicity in erotic matters. every single one of his myriad loves is “short-lived and exceptional (singulier),”135 liberating and consciously ephemeral, in a word, noble. it is for this very reason, Camus argues (as if echoing, though unawares, Kierkegaard’s victor eremita and Constantin Constantius), that “he must repeat his gift and his profound quest.”136 the seducer’s knowledge of life allows him to love and possess, to conquer and devour without any fear of judicial or eternal punishment. He is, states Camus, simply impermeable to “the powers of eternal reason, of order, of universal morality,” while “the foreign grandeur of a god open to wrath” could never shatter his unorthodox world-view and proclivities.137 Curiously enough, Camus ends his paean of don Juan on a melancholy note. namely, he pictures the old age of the mythical heartbreaker in a monastic setting, where Juan takes delight in the paradoxical joy of contemplating a landscape which is impermeable to human woes. although the denouement is intended as “radiant,” the reader cannot help sensing in it either the covert indication of the former libertine’s misanthropy or the sublimated return of a repressed culpability. it cannot be denied that Camus has read Kierkegaard’s “diary of the seducer” since he expressively calls it a “manual of cynical spiritualism.”138 nonetheless, within the confines of The Myth of Sisyphus, there is no indication that he was even remotely familiar with Kierkegaard’s expatiations on don giovanni, which were available in Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 100–1 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 192; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 72). 132 ibid. 133 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 97 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 190; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 69). 134 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 102 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 193; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 73). 135 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 102 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 193; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 74). 136 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 97 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 190; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 69). by gift (don) Camus probably means here self-giving. see section v below. 137 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 104 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 194; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 75). 138 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 42 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 153; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 26). 131

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French at the time.139 the following comparison between the two interpretations of don Juan is meant to lay bare the unfortunate side of this missed encounter. three points bring Kierkegaard and Camus together on the topic of don Juanism. First, similarly to Kierkegaard, Camus notices that the seducer lives in a continuous immediate present without any ek-static awareness of the past and the future. on the other side, both thinkers suggest that don Juan falls outside the realm of bourgeois respectability.140 thirdly, don Juan represents the embodiment of a repetition conceivable along the lines of immediacy and quantity.141 nevertheless, if placed side by side with the differences, this threefold similarity pales in intensity and importance.142 the overall conduct of the Camusian seducer resembles the feigned drama of a nineteenth-century dandy. He has a highly developed consciousness and yet his simplicity is enthralling. though somewhat enigmatic through his sophisticated manliness, he thrives on a sensual hedonism which, as astonishingly as it might sound, fuses nietzsche’s philosophy with the delights of the boudoir. by way of contrast, on Kierkegaard’s judgment, or at least for eremita’s a, don giovanni lacks several common features of concrete individuality. Here the immediate seducer becomes apparent as a raw force of nature, as an élan vital whose prevalent milieu is music rather than speech or reflexivity. Being deficient in consciousness, he cannot be considered a tragic personage either. moreover, if we conceive ethics in qualitative terms, i.e., as resolute appropriation of pastness, the inward decision for moral values and for present responsibility, and a moderate optimistic affirmation of the future,143 the endeavor to unearth any ethical trait from see note 95 above. see golomb, “Camus’ ideal of authentic life,” p. 269. 141 For a more elaborate comparison of repetition in Kierkegaard, Camus, and nietzsche, see sagi, Albert Camus, pp. 81–5. sagi’s thesis is that from Kierkegaard “Camus takes the idea that absurd existence means a renewed attitude to the self; the absurd hero is a reflective hero, who creates a renewed harmony with his existence or, more precisely, with the basic rift constituting his absurd existence.” ibid., p. 84. no reference is made to the quantitative repetition practiced by don Juan in both Kierkegaard and Camus. 142 For other dissimilarities between Kierkegaard and Camus, see sagi, Albert Camus; golomb, “Camus’ ideal of authentic life,” p. 268; p. 275; golomb, In Search of Authenticity, p. 138. 143 i have endeavored to summarize here Judge william’s understanding of ethics. Considered from a Climacan standpoint, Camus’ Don Juan might be at first sight a good candidate for an ethical figure due to his orientation towards concrete existence, inwardness, and passion. Yet, it is highly unlikely that Johannes Climacus would have accepted an ethical justification of adultery. Also, the notion of a quantitative ethics is a mere oxymoron within the confines of Climacus’ corpus. Camus’ understanding of quantity’s relation to quality is the opposite of Kierkegaard’s. see Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 85–6 and p. 86, note (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 180–2 and note 1; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 61–2 and note 3). SKS 4, 376–8 / CA, 72–4. For more clarifications of the ethics of quantity, compassion, and justice proposed by Camus, see sagi, Albert Camus, pp. 84–5; pp. 159–72. apropos of Camus’ portrayal of the absurd man from The Stranger, Jacob golomb speaks of “an ethics of sincerity” meant to be superseded by a radically immanent ethos of authenticity. golomb, “Camus’ ideal of authentic life.” 139 140

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don Juan’s “personality” may be pointless. another interesting point made by Kierkegaard, which should have aroused Camus’ attention (critically or otherwise), is that seduction in an unmediated sense can be seen as incommensurable with morality only within a Christian context. the argument is that only Christianity has posited the very notion of sexuality, of which don Juan is an invincible champion.144 Finally, to Kierkegaard it would have seemed inconsistent to apply the category of the absurd to don giovanni. as is well known, his position is that, when properly understood, the paradox is experienced in a spiritual trial like abraham’s or apropos of the crucifying ordeals of the Christian faith. V. Between Rebellion and Demonism Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks.145 precisely because the demonic person has an internal consistency and is consistent in the consistency of evil, he also has a totality to lose.146

At one point in his rebuttal of Kierkegaard, Camus defines the absurd as “sin without god”147 and hopes that the reader will find it “shocking.” Now, both within a general theological horizon and in a Kierkegaardian mind frame, such a statement borders on nonsense and could be appreciated only for its rhetorical effect. the irony is, i hypothesize, that Camus hereby inadvertently offers us an inestimable key to his sweeping reception of Kierkegaard. when he points out that the latter is right in describing despair as alienating the self from the divine, whereas his philosophical stance is that the absurd never leads one to god,148 Camus discloses his particular angle and hermeneutic tactics. namely, he values in the danish author the negativity implied in the self’s (or the mind’s) relation to worldliness. However, he consistently dismisses Kierkegaard for giving voice to a positive transcendent solution to this negativity. Camus’ position is thus easy to understand if we remember that the absurd hero is, as shown above, exclusively this-world-oriented and frenetically opposed to religious intelligibility.

Indispensible in this sense is Mladen Dolar and Slavoj Žižek, Opera’s Second Death, new York and london: routledge 2002, pp. 50–8. 145 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 168 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 238; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 123). 146 SKS 11, 220 / SUD, 108. 147 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 60 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 164; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 40). see also Camus, Carnets, vol. 2, p. 21 (Notebooks 1942–1951, p. 12), where we read the following esoteric entry: “secret of my universe: imagining god without human immortality.” the entry is dated 1942, the very year of the publication of The Myth of Sisyphus. 148 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 60 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 164; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 40). 144

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to state that Camus may be thought as a blaise pascal without faith or, to quote Jacob golomb, as “an inverted Kierkegaard,”149 is not inaccurate. the reader should not forget that, like pascal and Kierkegaard, Camus is acutely aware of “those terrifying spaces of the universe that surround me,”150 and of the equivocal bliss of consciousness. but in sharp contrast to them, while rejecting the “god of the philosophers and the scholars,”151 Camus is wholly hostile to the unfathomable redemption of the god of abraham, isaac, and Jacob. my provisional thesis is that, precisely because he was programmatically impervious to religiosity per se, Camus blinded himself to certain Kierkegaardian views which might have urged him to reconsider the blunt rejection of faith or of eschatological hope in the confrontation with the primary absurdity of existence. moreover, Camus would have realized that the anthropological model he proposes is not wholly coherent. in order to substantiate this possible reading, i shall end my analysis by showing how, as strange as it may sound, Camus’ sketch of the rebellious personality represents a puzzling combination between a disenchanted (i.e., godless) theist and a demonic self in Kierkegaard’s sense. the rebel shares with Kierkegaard’s believer an intense sensitivity to the absurd, a passionate dedication to the human cause, and a firm willingness to assume the perils inherent to this dedication. However, Kierkegaard’s faith sees the absurd only in relation to the impenetrable acts of god (as in abraham’s spiritual trial, for instance) or apropos of the unfathomable embodiment of the divine in the person of Christ. in regard to the dramatic imitation of the exemplar (the god-man) and neighbor love, they are both essentially transcendence-oriented in Kierkegaard’s theology, which is not the case of Camus’ humanism. Concerning Kierkegaard’s masterful account of the demonic phenomenon, i hold that it allows us to read the existential attitude endorsed by Camus in a religious key. that is to say, if we intuit a certain spiritual pathology regarding the Camusian authentic self, whose psychological contours i have drawn in the beginning of this essay, then Kierkegaard’s category of the demonic becomes indispensible to a proper understanding of the inner workings of such malady. the reader should also be warned that i do not hereby envisage a moralizing or axiological judgment. instead, i hope to pinpoint some of the reasons why the Camusian reception of Kierkegaard’s religiousness is severely undermined by oversimplifications and misunderstandings despite the texts Camus was able to consult. second, i aim to thematize some problems related to the encounter in Camus’ thought of the need to overcome nihilism through a prometheanSisyphean attack against the divine, on the one hand, and a self-sacrificial love for humanity and justice, on the other. 149 more exactly, “For [Camus], as for Kierkegaard, the notion of intentionality that sustains the authentic attitude retains a vestige of rational correspondence between the subjective world of human pathos and the absurd world which controls its intensity. ‘purity of heart is to will one thing,’ Kierkegaard claims and leaps into absurd faith. Camus too wants but one thing— to preserve the tension of the absurd in order to continue to rebel against it and to struggle authentically with its practical implications.” golomb, In Search of Authenticity, p. 127. 150 blaise pascal, Pensées, trans. by roger ariew, indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett 2004, p. 218. 151 blaise pascal, “mémorial,” in Oeuvres complètes de Pascal, ed. by Jacques Chevalier, paris: gallimard 1954, p. 554.

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after warning us that an absurd individual embodies “the contrary of the reconciled man,”152 Camus is careful to add that the authentic rebellion is exclusively human and has absolutely no connection with the transcendent. He even exults when metaphysical rebels plead for god’s banishment from the world or for the sheer annihilation of god. the absurd’s disenchanted heroes could congregate solely on the ruins of the religious community.153 the implication is that rebellion entails a coming-together outside the purview of the sacred.154 within this particular perspective, Camus’ rebel shares with Kierkegaard’s demonic self the open dismissal of any transmundane relationality.155 but the similarities go far deeper. Kierkegaard had nothing to object to the duty of close and critical introspection. in point of fact, he argued that without a scrupulous self-deepening, faith could take the form of an objectionable (and even hypocritical) certainty. nonetheless, Kierkegaard did not hesitate to designate all attachment to one’s inner imperfection or predicament as straightforwardly evil.156 suggestively enough, to accept the absurd’s insurmountability and to refuse any definitive cure for the spiritual maladies of existence are two tasks explicitly endorsed by Camus in the case of authentic revolt. Camus admits that rebellion presupposes a “constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity,” in conjunction with a willed “insistence upon an impossible transparency,” which “challenges the world anew every second.”157 moreover, since it is “born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition,”158 rebellion gives one the means to scornfully resist all hope, consolation, remorse, and resignation.159

152 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 83, note (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 179, note 1; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 59, note 2). 153 Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 130–2 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 128–9; The Rebel, pp. 102–3). on the inherent solidarity of rebellion, see sagi, Albert Camus, pp. 117–30. 154 Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 25–36 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 37–46; The Rebel, pp. 13–22). 155 in his romantic version, the rebel is depicted as cultivating an open scorn for the moral and divine law, the ceaseless resistance towards obeying god, and a sickly dependence on suffering. see Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 67–75 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 73–80; The Rebel, pp. 47–54.) tellingly enough, these are prominent traits in Kierkegaard’s understanding of the demonic. 156 SKS 11, 222–4 / SUD, 110–12. 157 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 76–7 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 175; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 54). 158 Camus, L’Homme révolté, p. 21 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 33; The Rebel, p. 10). later in the book Camus holds that nihilism attempts to forcefully impose order on a historical framework which completely lacks it. see Camus, L’Homme révolté, p. 273 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 248–9; The Rebel, p. 221). 159 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 76–7; pp. 94–5; p. 165 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 175–6; pp. 187–8; p. 237; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 54; pp. 67–8; p. 121). on the incompatibility between rebellion and any form of consolation, see Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 212–13 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 198; The Rebel, p. 170).

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rebellion has also edifying virtues: it envisions, Camus tells us, “order in the midst of chaos, and unity in the very heart of the ephemeral.”160 For Kierkegaard, such an ideal is to be pursued solely within the confines of Christianity, for only an appropriate relation to God could grant the individual both a unified volition and a harmonious interiority.161 next, Camus argues that, while being impelled by energy and overabundance, the rebel restores the majesty of life162 and affirms its infinite intrinsic value.163 by contrast, Kierkegaard’s Johannes de silentio wonders: “if a human being did not have an eternal consciousness, if underlying everything there were only a wild, fermenting power that writhing in dark passions produced everything, be it significant or insignificant, if a vast, never appeased emptiness hid beneath everything, what would life be then but despair?”164 thirdly, if one decides to avoid philosophical or physical suicide, and to shun the transcendent-eschatological path, the only weapon against the stifling absurdity is aesthetic self-creation which represents, according to Camus, the royal way to subjective authenticity. there is no need to add that Kierkegaard would estimate this position not solely as apostatic, but also as impossible.165 the Camusian refusal of all metaphysical cures does not involve capitulation. in Camus’ view, the absurd may (and should) be thwarted through solidarity.166 therefore, although implacably opposed to religious certainties, hermitic renunciation, and eschatological beatitude, Camus does not uphold nihilistic or anarchist ideals.167 one of the most important points made in The Rebel is that rebellion must be lived in the name of a universal humanness which is permanently worth defending.168 rebellion, explains Camus, requires the surmounting of subjectivity with a view to a decisive care for justice, for the others’ dignity,169 and for the generalized “right not to lie.”170 160

p. 10).

Camus, L’Homme révolté, p. 21 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 33; The Rebel,

SKS 8, 138–250 / UD, 24–154. SKS 5, 17–37 / EUD, 7–29. Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 78 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 176; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 55). see also Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 375–6 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 337; The Rebel, p. 304). 163 Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 25–36 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 37–46; pp. 315–16; The Rebel, pp. 13–22; p. 284). 164 SKS 4, 112 / FT, 15. 165 the Camusian ideal of authenticity is addressed by golomb, In Search of Authenticity, p. 124; p. 127; p. 136. For Kierkegaard’s critiques of utter self-creation, see SKS 11, 146–8 / SUD, 30–3. SKS 3, 247–8 / EO2, 262–3. 166 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 121–2 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 205; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 88–9). 167 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 167 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 237; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 122): “Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth.” 168 Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 306–7 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 277; The Rebel, p. 250). 169 to the rebel the “evil [le mal] experienced by a single man becomes a mass plague.” see Camus, L’Homme révolté, p. 36 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 46; The Rebel, p. 22, translation amended). 170 This is Camus’ definition of freedom. See Camus, Carnets, vol. 2, p. 131. (Notebooks 1942–1951, p. 100.) 161 162

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this means that there is more to existence than the bounteous truth of human senses. as Camus himself explicitly acknowledges, the absurd is a “metaphysical state,”171 while the solidarity proclaimed through rebellion has an atemporal character.172 My first contention here is that in this way Camus confirms Kierkegaard’s belief that a non-religious humanity cannot rid itself of the existential abyss it is ceaselessly haunted by. second, as i read him, Camus validates the view that the life governed by a purely immanent teleology cannot totally dispense with all metaphysical or value-laden judgments.173 Furthermore, it is hard to see why these judgments are wholly incommensurable with, say, the Judeo-Christian anthropology, against which Camus turns with such fervor. However, what interests me is that analogously to the Kierkegaardian demonic, the rebellious self proposed by Camus needs an exit, an existential valve that allows it to cope with the world’s silent irrationality. notwithstanding atheistic and irresistibly attracted by sensorial elementariness, the rebel is unable to free himself completely from the atemporal and the impalpable. rather, he feels called to restore at all costs what is perennial in human nature: the dignifying freedom and ahistorical majesty of every reincarnation of sisyphus. ironically enough, Kierkegaard would say that none of these values is empirically ascertainable. In a sense, they betray a definite nostalgia for something beyond absurdity, isolation, and anxiety, something which the absurd man and the rebel need to hold on to if they want to efficiently circumvent the deadlocks of suicide. be that as it may, the fact remains that Camus, contra Kierkegaard, embraces the belief that only a humanist ethic,174 which must needs be doubled by a love-laden commitment to universal justice, could directly gaze at the fatal beauty of the earth and not perish. as such, revolt implicates a certain emancipation. therefore, it is no wonder that the rebel is not without salvific qualities. In what way does he arrogate to himself the role of a liberator? Camus answers that, by proclaiming the supremacy of humankind on earth, the rebel is equally opposed to the subjective practice of humility and to the

171 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 60 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 164; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 40). 172 Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 306–9 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 277–9; The Rebel, pp. 250–2). 173 Camus is not opposed to the idea of metaphysics per se. in Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 60 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 164; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 40), he purports that the absurd represents “the metaphysical state of the conscious man.” as well, there is “a metaphysical bliss [bonheur] in enduring the world’s absurdity.” see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 129 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 211; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 93; translation amended). For helpful additional remarks in this direction, see sagi, Albert Camus, pp. 38–42; p. 46; pp. 124–30. golomb, “Camus’ ideal of authentic life,” p. 274; golomb, In Search of Authenticity, pp. 136–8. 174 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 119–20; pp. 140–1 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 204; p. 218; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 87–8; p. 103). the morality that urges the rebel is “personal, intuitive, and spontaneous.” golomb, In Search of Authenticity, p. 128. For a clear delineation of Camus’ shift from an individualist perspective on authenticity to a “socially oriented humanism,” see golomb, In Search of Authenticity, pp. 135–40.

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humiliation of others.175 second, even though he rejects all meta-worldly openness, the rebel is nurtured by an unarguable holiness of every individuality.176 His altruistic insurgence is undergirded by vigilance, courage, intelligence, and a continuous consummation, albeit for the sake of purely human values.177 moreover, Camus holds that aside from restlessness, it is self-sacrifice and an “insane generosity”178 that prevail in the rebel’s conduct. of course, the humanist rebellion is not without risk,179 and yet its intrepidity springs from the love of others.180 to summarize this, otherwise complex, picture, we could follow Camus and say that in his gratuitous self-giving, the rebel “eternally…[rejects] injustice without ceasing to acclaim the nature of man and the beauty of the world.”181 in this section, i have ventured to call the Camusian rebel a godless (i.e., demonic) believer. the formula is, no doubt, a cacophony, but i consider it helpful for a possible Kierkegaardian reading of Camus’ anthropology, from which one should not refrain.182 My argument is that this contradictory qualification accounts for the infinite affirmation of worldliness, an absurdist understanding of existence, and the liberating apostasy,183 which synchronously underlie Camus’ glorification of an insurgent, tragic, and hopeless humanity. i have also implied that under Camus’ pen, the rebel displays many features of a suffering savior. ironically enough, not entirely different is Kierkegaard’s understanding of the imitator of Christ, though salvation hinges on the god-man only. noteworthy here is also that in Kierkegaard’s religious psychology, when it refuses the god-man’s redemption, while claiming it could surmount despair solely by its own powers, the self actualizes its evil potential.184 not to be missed either is that Kierkegaard deems as pure hubris the mere intention Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 158 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 230–1; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 117). see also Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 30–1 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 42; The Rebel, p. 18). 176 see golomb, In Search of Authenticity, p. 124. 177 Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 373–4 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 335–6; The Rebel, pp. 302–3). in contrast to rebellion, revolution sooner or later needs a state sponsored terrorism which sustains itself only through totalizing excesses, human reification, slavery, and propagandistic mendacity. see especially Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 221–309 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, pp. 205–79; The Rebel, pp. 177–252). 178 Camus, L’Homme révolté, p. 375 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 337; The Rebel, p. 304). 179 Camus, L’Homme révolté, p. 357 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 321; The Rebel, p. 289). 180 Camus, L’Homme révolté, pp. 375–6 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 337; The Rebel, p. 304). 181 Camus, L’Homme révolté, p. 341 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 3, p. 306; The Rebel, p. 276). 182 my proposal here is not wholly original. the reader can consult rené girard’s excellent analysis from “Camus’ Stranger retried,” especially pp. 96–8. 183 sagi, Albert Camus, p. 145, reproduces a quotation, wherein Camus confesses that “i shall never start from the supposition that Christian truth is illusory, but merely from the fact that i could not accept it.” 184 For the inward nature of evil in Camus, see Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 17–18 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, p. 136; The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 5). 175

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to deliver others from the omnipresent “sickness unto death” (or even to unshackle them from servitude). granted all these disparate elements, the Camusian assumption that Kierkegaard’s anthropology is dishonestly religious may be reversed and viewed as an indirect confirmation that in a theistic setting, the metaphysical rebel shares in the tragic fate of the malevolent selfhood as depicted by Haufniensis and anti-Climacus. by the same token, the demonic is not as incompatible with religiosity as Camus believed. one of the most valuable lessons of Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death is that demonism comes much closer to the divine than the self who adopts it realizes.185 there is yet another aspect that should be touched upon at this juncture. generally speaking, Camus’ grasp of religion in Kierkegaard is not free of shortcomings and could be integrated in a longstanding misguided tradition, the development of which, however, Camus did not live long enough to witness. due either to his limited knowledge of Kierkegaard’s works or to his nietzschean côté, the French writer is unaware of significant points made by Kierkegaard with reference to the mind’s relation to the paradox, on the one hand, and the purported anti-worldly asceticism of religion, on the other.186 regarding the former trope, the danish thinker contends that the battle against offense and the absurd is interminable, and does not simply disappear with the advent of the subjective leap.187 as to the other matter, had he adopted a more nuanced position toward Kierkegaard, Camus would not have rebuked his religious faith as callous, quietistic, and timorous. despite its subjectivism, Kierkegaard’s Christian philosophy is equally far from denying the world and from plunging into half-witted fideistic certainties. Quite on the contrary, the dialectic of faith outlined in Fear and Trembling, in concert with the upbuilding virtues of “the lilies in the field and birds of the air,” Judge William’s sanguine affirmation of the immanent, not to mention the interpersonal ethics fleshed out in Works of Love, are all an unambiguous evidence that, according to Kierkegaard, one is able to believe in god and still intimately sense the world’s unending abundance and sublimity.188 As to the debility of faith, we find in Kierkegaard a testimony to the opposite. innumerable risks, perpetual scandal or offense, the endless efforts to overcome anxiety and despair, plus a radical perception of paradoxicality, let alone the self-sacrificial crux of agape, are the main coordinates of Kierkegaardian fideism. that being the case, contrary to Camus’ expectations, the knighthood of faith has enough room to host even noble iconoclasts like sisyphus.

SKS 11, 220–2 / SUD, 108–10. SKS 11, 241–2 / SUD, 130–1. this is all the more puzzling since Camus admired Kierkegaard’s (lutheran) protestantism, although he had serious doubts concerning its practical side. see Camus, Carnets, vol. 1, p. 42. (Notebooks 1935–1942, p. 29.) 187 Kierkegaard preferred to speak of the leap in connection with existential decisions or when he critiqued the traditional arguments for the existence of god. so there is a sense, in which Kierkegaard, not unlike Camus, is fully aware of the intellectual illegitimacy of the leap. 188 Camus had access to Kierkegaard’s edifying meditations on this theme. see note 94 above. 185 186

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Certainly, the two authors discussed in these pages reflect the ultimate dilemma, to which every one of us remains subjected. one alternative is superbly captured by Camus when he writes: outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty. a world remains of which man is the sole master. what bound him was the illusion of another world. The outcome of his thought, ceasing to be renunciatory, flowers in images. It frolics—in myths, to be sure, but myths with no other depth than that of human suffering and, like it, inexhaustible.189

But what if Kierkegaard’s absurd hope is the other possible answer to our infinite solitude and inexplicable golgotha? and why would a rebel die unreconciled since, as Kierkegaard teaches us, there are gods for whom “everything is possible”?

189 Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 158–9 (in Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, pp. 230–1; The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 117–18).

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Camus’ Corpus Le Mythe de Sisyphe, paris: gallimard 1942, p. 39; pp. 42–3; p. 51; pp. 56–61; p. 65; pp. 69–72. (english translation: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. by Justin o’brien, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1967, p. 23; pp. 25–6; p. 32; pp. 37–41; p. 45; p. 47; pp. 49–50; p. 130; p. 132; pp. 134–5.) Carnets, vols. 1–3, paris: gallimard 1962–89, vol. 1, Mai 1935–Février 1942, p. 38; p 42; p. 83. (english translation: Notebooks 1935–1942, trans. by philip thody, new York: marlowe 1998, pp. 25–6; p. 29; pp. 65–6.) Carnets, vols. 1–3, paris: gallimard 1962–89, vol. 2, Janvier 1942–Mars 1951, p. 55; p. 74. (english translation: Notebooks 1942–1951, trans. by Justin o’brian, new York: marlowe 1998, pp. 39–40; p. 55.) II. Sources of Camus’ Knowledge of Kierkegaard bespaloff, rachel, Cheminements et carrefours, paris: vrin 1938. gateau, Jean J., “préface” to Traité du désespoir, trans. by Knud Ferlov and Jean J. gateau, paris: gallimard 1932. Kierkegaard, søren, Traité du désespoir. (La maladie mortelle), trans. by Knud Ferlov and Jean J. gateau, paris: gallimard 1932. — Crainte et Tremblement. Lyrique-dialectique, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, introduced by Jean wahl, paris: Fernand aubier; Éditions montaigne 1935. — La Pureté du coeur, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le traducteur 1936. — Les Riens philosophiques, trans. by Jean J. gateau and Knud Ferlov, paris: gallimard 1937. — L’alternative. Un fragment de vie. Publié par Victor Eremita. Deuxième partie: Contenant les papiers de B: lettres à A, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazogesen-pareds: le traducteur 1940. — Post-scriptum aux miettes philosophiques, trans. by paul petit, paris: gallimard 1941. — Le Concept d’angoisse, trans. by Jean J. gateau and Knud Ferlov, paris: alcan 1935. mounier, emmanuel, Introduction aux existentialismes, paris: gallimard 1946. sartre, Jean-paul, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, paris: gallimard 1943 (Bibliothèque des Idées), pp. 58–84; pp. 94–111; pp. 115–49; pp. 150–74; pp. 291–300; pp. 508–16; pp. 529–60; pp. 639–42; 643–63; pp. 669–70; pp. 720ff.

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III. Bibliography of Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard and Camus Crumbine, nancy Jay, “on Faith,” in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals, ed. by robert l. perkins, university of alabama: university of alabama press 1981, pp. 189–203. Curtis, Jerry l., “Heroic Commitment, or the dialectics of the leap in Kierkegaard, sartre, and Camus,” Rice University Studies, vol. 59, no. 3, 1973, pp. 17–26. — “albert Camus as anti-existentialist,” Kentucky Romance Quarterly, vol. 22, 1975, pp. 111–23. Долгов, Константин [Dolgov, Konstantin], “Серен Киркегор—предтеча современного экзистенциализма” [Søren Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of Contemporary existentialism], in his От Киркегора до Камю [From Kierkegaard to Camus], moscow: iskustvo 1990, pp. 7–42. duran, Jane, “the philosophical Camus,” The Philosophical Forum, vol. 38, no. 4, 2007, pp. 365–71. Fiala, andrew, “existentialism and repressive toleration,” Studies in Practical Philosophy, vol. 5, no. 19, 2005, pp. 90–111. gammelgaard, Judy, “the Qualitative leap and the Call of Conscience,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2001, pp. 183–98. golomb, Jacob, In Search of Authenticity: From Kierkegaard to Camus, london and new York: routledge 1995. Hoffman, Karen d., “responses to despair: teaching Kierkegaard, Camus and orwell,” Teaching Philosophy, vol. 27, 2004, pp. 337–50. Høeck, Klaus, “I tro eller trods eller væren,” Exil, vol. 3, 1968–69, pp. 122–4. Janke, wolfgang, Existenzphilosophie, berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 1982, pp. 78–9; pp. 84–8. Killinger, John, “existentialism and Human Freedom,” The English Journal, vol. 50, 1961, pp. 303–13. Kodalle, Klaus-m., “diesseits der logik des moralismus. vom ‘geist’ der verzeihung bei Kierkegaard, nietzsche, scheler, dostojewski und Camus,” in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference “Kierkegaard and the Meaning of Meaning It,” Copenhagen, May 5–9, ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon stewart, berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 1997 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), pp. 387–409. López Quintás, Alfonso, “Confrontación de la figura del hombre ‘burlador’ (Tirso), el ‘estético’ (Kierkegaard), el ‘absurdo’ (Camus),” Estudios, vol. 37, nos. 132–5, 1981, pp. 337–80. malik, Habib C., Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought, washington, d.C.: Catholic university of america press 1997, pp. 305–6. pavón, rafael g. and mariano r. reyes, “la decisión de existir por el absurdo: albert Camus y søren Kierkegaard, o sísifo o abraham,” Acta Kierkegaardiana, vol. 2, 2007, pp. 237–49. politis, Hélène, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, paris: Éditions Kimé 2005, pp. 97–9; p. 102, note 30; pp. 107, note 94; p. 108, note 95; p. 154; p. 164, note 177.

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poole, roger, “the unknown Kierkegaard: twentieth-Century receptions,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by alastair Hannay and gordon d. marino, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1998, pp. 48–75. reichenbach, bruce, “Camus and Kierkegaard: a Contrast in existential authenticity,” Christian Scholar’s Review, vol. 5, 1976, pp. 223–40. sagi, avi, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd, trans. by balya stein, amsterdam: rodopi 2002. skjoldager, emanuel, “Camus og Kierkegaard,” Kirke og Kultur, vol. 74, 1969, pp. 360–8. — “i tro eller trods. om Camus og søren Kierkegaard,” Berlingske Tidende, march 1, 1969. stewart, Jon, “France: Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of existentialism and poststructuralism,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome i, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 421–74; pp. 441–3. theunissen, michael, “zur wirkungsgeschichte,” in Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. by michael theunissen and wilfried greve, Frankfurt am main: suhrkamp verlag 1979, pp. 73–4. treiber, gerhard, Philosophie der Existenz. Das Entscheidungsproblem bei Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Frankfurt am main: peter lang 2000. wahl, Jean, Petite histoire de “l’existentialisme”: suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard commentaires, paris: editions Club maintenant 1947, p. 58. wang Qi, “唐璜的神话在‘说’些什么?” [what does the don Juan myth talk about?—byron, Kierkegaard, Camus and their interpretations of don Juan], 外 国美学 [Foreign aesthetics], no. 18, 2000, pp. 236–53. westphal, merold, “Kierkegaard’s politics,” Thought: Fordham University Quarterly, vol. 55, 1980, pp. 320–32.

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readers who move from Kierkegaard to Heidegger frequently come away feeling certain that Kierkegaard has been a significant influence on Heidegger’s thought, especially in Being and Time and the period leading up to it. there are so many parallels, so many shared terms and categories that there must be something to it, one feels, and modern scholars have increasingly detected and deciphered multiple Kierkegaardian sources. Some, convinced that Heidegger must have had specific well-thumbed Kierkegaard texts virtually at his side as he composed sections of Being and Time,1 have worked out in detail the connections and the presumed borrowings. Heidegger never explicitly acknowledges a direct or significant Kierkegaardian influence on Being and Time, and he is grudging, at best, in crediting Kierkegaard with a role in his intellectual development. as John van buren put it in his study of Heidegger’s development: [t]he later Heidegger was, as has been well documented, often puzzlingly reluctant to acknowledge his profound indebtedness to those philosophical traditions that originally helped to put him on the way of the being question in his early Freiburg period, such as the young luther, Kierkegaard, Jaspers, aristotle’s practical writings, Husserl’s sixth investigation, and dilthey.2

in addition, there is no sustained or systematic assessment of Kierkegaard by Heidegger at any time, as there is of other philosophers he read so extensively. when 1 Thus while several, including the present writer, have noted a strong influence of The Concept of Anxiety on Heidegger’s discussion of the same in Being and Time, michael theunissen has discussed at length Heidegger’s use of the discourse “at a graveside” for Heidegger’s reflections on the meaning of death. Others have seen Heidegger’s major category Care as derived from Kierkegaard’s discourse “the Cares of the pagans” and “what we learn from the lilies in the Field and the birds of the air.” John Caputo views Heidegger as having lifted sections of The Sickness unto Death, aspects of the concept repetition from Repetition, and aspects of the notion of time from Either/Or, part two. For discussions of all of these, see below. 2 John van buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King, bloomington, indiana: indiana university press 1994, p. 12. Cf. also John Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics, bloomington, indiana: indiana university press 1987, Chapters 1 and 3. the immediate pages that follow are highly indebted to van buren’s work.

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Kierkegaard is mentioned en passant by Heidegger, it is almost never uncritically and, where there does seem to be some appreciation, Heidegger almost always takes back with the one hand what he has just seemed to give with the other. there is thus a pattern of brief acknowledgment followed by critical distancing in almost all Heidegger’s remarks about Kierkegaard. and yet careful students of Heidegger are convinced that he learned much from Kierkegaard, and far more than he expressly admitted. Being and Time has the stamp of Kierkegaard all over it. in his Radical Hermeneutics, John Caputo was hard-hitting in his criticism of Heidegger’s public stance toward Kierkegaard: Heidegger not only understates his dependence on Kierkegaard, he misstates it. in borrowing upon Kierkegaard’s theory of repetition—without acknowledgement—he invokes Kierkegaard at the most crucial ontological juncture in the published text of Being and Time. and when he does mention Kierkegaard, it is always to dress him down as an ontico-existentiell author….it is clear that Kierkegaard’s contribution to Being and Time goes right to the heart of the ontology which is defended there. Heidegger differs from Kierkegaard, not as an ontological thinker from an ontic, as he likes to make out, but principally in terms of the degree to which Heidegger has formalized and articulated Kierkegaard’s ontology in a more systematic, professorial manner.3

Caputo thus expressed what many informed readers see as Heidegger’s minimization of Kierkegaard’s role both in Being and Time and elsewhere.4 Heidegger’s lectures in the period both before and immediately after Being and Time contain passing references to Kierkegaard which, despite their brevity and critical intent, indicate a substantial engagement with Kierkegaard up to and immediately after the publication of Being and Time. Here one finds many of Kierkegaard’s categories virtually intact. but because the texts of the lecture courses have been published only relatively recently, previous generations of Heidegger readers—except those who actually Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics, pp. 82–3. Caputo also asserts that “[t]hree central sections…—par. 64 (the constancy of the self), par. 65 (temporality), and par. 74 (repetition)—are directly drawn from Kierkegaard’s writings. the treatment of the constancy of the self comes from the discussion of the ‘continuance of sin’ in The Sickness unto Death. the analysis of temporality is dependent upon the analysis of existential temporality in the second volume of Either/Or. and the all-important discussion of repetition is based quite directly upon Kierkegaard.” dan magurshak is willing to entertain the hypothesis that “Heidegger, deeply influenced by [Kierkegaard], made this work his own to such an extent that he failed to realize how much his own existential reflections relied upon Kierkegaard’s writings.” However, magurshak seems to recognize that he is being perhaps overly generous to Heidegger. Cf. dan magurshak, “despair and everydayness: Kierkegaard’s Corrective Contribution to Heidegger’s notion of Fallen everydayness,” in The Sickness unto Death, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1987 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 19), p. 210. 4 Magurshak has worked out in detail the borrowings and influence of The Sickness unto Death found in Being and Time and chides Heidegger for not sufficiently acknowledging Kierkegaard. He accuses Heidegger of “focusing upon shortcomings rather than accomplishments” and notes that the occasional “praise bestowed upon Kierkegaard is almost damning in its faintheartedness.” see ibid. 3

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attended the lectures or heard about them—could easily fail to appreciate the extent of Kierkegaard’s influence and did so. Indeed Kierkegaard, along with Augustine and Luther, belongs to a Lutheran triad of formative influences upon the Heidegger of the post-First world war period. one can go too far by attributing a Kierkegaardian influence to everything in Heidegger that has a resonance with Kierkegaard. For Heidegger is resonating not only with Kierkegaard but with a host of figures that played a major role in the development of Kierkegaard’s own thought, including socrates, aristotle, paul, augustine, and luther. so it is possible for something to sound like it echoes Kierkegaard when it actually may be an augustinian or lutheran influence.5 Heidegger himself protested against this in a letter to Karl löwith dated september 13, 1920 in which he wrote: …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.6

Heidegger was clearly on his guard against being lumped in with the Kierkegaard enthusiasts of the post-First world war period. Heidegger also spoke of Kierkegaard in contradictory ways in statements about his intellectual development (which are well known for their changing points of view about his past). in an autobiographical statement in 1923 he seemed to limit any Kierkegaardian influence when he wrote that “companions in my searching were the young luther and the paragon aristotle, whom luther hated. Kierkegaard gave impulses, and Husserl gave me my eyes.”7 if he did not immediately add something critical and dismissive about Kierkegaard here, in a revisionist utterance 20 years later in 1943 Heidegger dismissed Kierkegaard as “not a thinker but a religious writer” and for many probably neutralized suspicions that Kierkegaard might have been genuinely important to his philosophical development.8 indeed, one of Heidegger’s recent biographers is scathing in his assessment of this statement, as he writes with righteous sarcasm that the very same Heidegger “who [earlier] modeled his interpretation of aristotle on Kierkegaard’s own reading, said in 1943 that Kierkegaard remains essentially remote from aristotle… ‘For Kierkegaard is not a thinker but a religious writer.’ ”9 5 Or, for that matter a Socratic or Aristotle influence—although Heidegger was influenced in important ways precisely by Kierkegaard’s own understanding of Socrates and aristotle. 6 Quoted from Becoming Heidegger: On the Trail of His Early Occasional Writings, 1910–1927, ed. by theodore J. Kisiel and thomas sheehan, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 2007, pp. 97–8 (my emphasis). 7 Quoted by van buren, The Young Heidegger, p. 222. 8 recall that his lectures and letters would of course not have been available to a 1943 audience. 9 see martin Heidegger, “nietzsches wort ‘gott ist tot,’ ” in his Holzwege, Frankfurt am main: Kostermann 1950, p. 230 (in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 1 (Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910–1976), vol. 5, Holzwege (1977), p. 249; english translation: The Question Concerning Technology, trans. by william lovitt, new York: Harper and row 1977, p. 94;

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Heidegger’s relationship and debt to Kierkegaard is thus highly complex, nuanced, and in need of additional detective work, even if the outlines of the puzzle now seem generally clear.10 this brief article surely cannot hope to compress into a few pages the complex and nuanced details of Heidegger’s full intellectual development. moreover, that job has already been largely done by intellectual biographers who have laid it out in significant detail.11 what this article can do is try to sketch chronologically Heidegger’s engagement with the writings of Kierkegaard and Kierkegaardian themes, including those mediated by Karl Jaspers,12 and in the process assess the nature and extent of that influence based on current research. Along the way it will take note of Heidegger’s known references to Kierkegaard and their possible significance. References to Kierkegaard trail off in the period after Being and Time. I. Heidegger’s formal concern, it must be kept in mind, is not the analysis of a struggling individual that Kierkegaard presented with existential interest and passion, coming to self-consciousness in a kairotic moment that has the potential to reorient the individual from the “now” to eternity. Heidegger’s declared interest is the structures of existence themselves that reveal how being is manifested. nonetheless, in his analysis of elements of the structure of human being, Heidegger used many existential categories already seen in Kierkegaard. despite Heidegger’s declared intentions, Being and Time has been repeatedly viewed as manifesting existential concerns, with the result that he had to fend off those who wanted to interpret him as an existentialist. Formally, Heidegger’s problem is being, and his project is a phenomenology of being that begins with a phenomenology of human being (dasein). this is neither Kierkegaard’s problematic nor his project of course, even if Kierkegaard, well in advance of Heidegger, makes many distinctive contributions to a phenomenology of human existence. quoted by van buren, The Young Heidegger, p. 390). with John d. Caputo, “one wonders how Heidegger can possibly have taken Kierkegaard to be only a ‘religious writer’ with no ontological concerns. one wonders how he could have written the ontology of ‘temporality,’ which constitutes the meaning of the being of dasein in Being and Time, without so much as acknowledging Kierkegaard, when the whole analysis, in my view, derives in its main lines from Kierkegaard!” see Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics, p. 16. 10 Yet the work is hampered, it must be admitted, by the absence of a scholarly apparatus in the Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe—an absence oddly insisted upon by Heidegger’s literary heirs that cries out to be rectified. 11 valuable intellectual biographies include van buren, The Young Heidegger; theodor Kiesel, The Genesis of Being and Time, berkeley, California: university of California press 1993; Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics; and otto pöggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, pfullingen: neske 1963 (english translation: Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, trans. by daniel magurshak and sigmund barber, atlantic Highlands, new Jersey: Humanities press 1987). 12 especially in Karl Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, berlin: springer 1919.

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in Heidegger’s telling, the seeds of his own project were sown as early as in 1907, when the then 17-year-old gymnasium student was presented with a copy of Franz brentano’s 1862 dissertation On the Manifold Meaning of Being in Aristotle. Heidegger recounts it as being nothing less than decisive in his philosophical orientation toward the problem of being. several years later, in the years 1910–14, Heidegger along with many others in germany was reading relatively new german-language translations of Kierkegaard.13 at this time he was also reading nietzsche’s Will to Power, dilthey’s collected works, and the German Romantics, and the strongest influence was Nietzsche’s at the time. During this period, influences on the young Heidegger also included the kairological thinking of aristotle, luther, and Kierkegaard, as well as the writings of augustine and pascal.14 in the period 1919 onwards, inspired by luther and Kierkegaard, Heidegger sought to break free of the greek conceptuality underlying traditional theological thought and to penetrate to primal Christianity,15 in the process breaking out of the neo-Scholastic world-view that he had previously had. Confirming the role of

13 in the preface (Vorwort) to his Frühe Schriften Heidegger wrote: “Was die erregenden Jahre zwischen 1910 und 1914 brachten, läßt sich gebührend nicht sagen, sondern nur durch eine Weniges auswählende Aufzählung andeuten: Die zweite um das Doppelte vermehrte Ausgabe von Nietzsches ‘Willen zur Macht,’ die Übersetzung der Werke Kierkegaards und Dostojewskis, das erwachende Interesse für Hegel und Schelling, Rilkes Dichtungen und Trakls Gedichte, Diltheys ‘Gesammelte Schriften.’ ” see martin Heidegger, Frühe Schriften, in his Gesamtausgabe, abteilung 1, vol. 1, p. 56. (Frühe Schriften was first published in Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1972.) in his lectures of winter semester 1929–30, he later commented that the promise of a new philosophy that appeared in Kierkegaard was already past. For him, the inexplicable Kierkegaard mode and the Kierkegaard literature that came out of it has resulted in this not being grasped, and in particular Kierkegaard’s notion of “the moment”: “Was wir hier mit ‘Augenblick’ bezeichnen, ist dasjenige, was Kierkegaard zum erstenmal in der Philosophie wirklich begriffen hat—ein Begreifen, mit dem seit der Antike die Möglichkeit einer vollkommen neuen Epoche der Philosophie beginnt. Die Möglichkeit, sage ich: heute, wo Kierkegaard aus irgendwelchen Gründen Mode geworden ist, sind wir so weit, daß diese Kierkegaard-Literatur und alles, was sich damit umgibt, in aller Weise dafür sorgt, dieses Entscheidende der Kierkegaardschen Philosophie nicht zu begreifen.” see Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilung 2 (vorlesungen 1919–1944), vols. 29–30, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit, ed. by Friedrich-wilhelm von Herrmann (1983), p. 225. (english translation: The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, p. 150: “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 become 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.”) 14 van buren, The Young Heidegger, p. 25; pp. 63–4. 15 ibid., p. 147.

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Kierkegaard in this period is a 1920 Jaspers comment to the effect that both he and Heidegger shared the same passion for Kierkegaard.16 in summer semester 1923, Heidegger prefaced his analysis of dasein and factical being-in-the world with an acknowledgment that “strong influences on the explication presented here come from Kierkegaard’s work.”17 Kierkegaard is also considered to have influenced Heidegger’s view of Socrates’ understanding of the philosophical quest after being as a way of life.18 but, as so often with Heidegger, it is both an acknowledgment and dismissal of Kierkegaard, as Heidegger goes on state that Kierkegaard’s presuppositions, point of departure, and execution of the theme are fundamentally different because Kierkegaard makes it too easy for himself (“weil er es sich zu leicht macht”). and Heidegger goes on to add that, because in his view Kierkegaard was a theologian and wrote from within a stance of faith, he was consequently outside of philosophy.19 Heidegger, having turned his own back on theology and having embraced philosophy as his field and as his profession,20 thus consigned Kierkegaard to the outer darkness (and non-philosophy) of traditional Christian faith. Yet Kierkegaard is viewed as having played no less a philosophical role than having mediated aristotle to Heidegger during this very period. as van buren remarks: Heidegger was certainly aware of not only luther’s, but also Kierkegaard’s positive appropriation of Aristotle. Not only did his first lecture course on Aristotle in [winter semester] 1921–22 open with two mottos from Kierkegaard, and not only was his reading here of the platonic-socratic quest for being organized around Kierkegaard’s concept of “passion” and “subjective truth, “but in [spring semester] 1923 he discussed Kierkegaard’s appropriation of aristotle through his “connection with trendelenburg.”21

during this same period, Jaspers’ Kierkegaard interpretation in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen and Heidegger’s exposure to an early draft of it played a significant role in mediating an appreciation of Kierkegaard’s psychological insights. ibid., p. 150. see Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilung 2, vol. 63, Ontologie. Hermeneutik der Faktizität, ed. by Käte bröcker-oltmanns (1988), p. 30; p. 108; pp. 29–30 (quoted by van buren, The Young Heidegger, p. 169). 18 ibid. 19 i cite the paragraph in full: “Starke Anstöße für die hier vorgelegte Explikation kommen von der Arbeit Kierkegaards. Aber Voraussetzungen, Ansatz und Art der Durchführung und das Ziel sind grundsätzlich verschieden, weil er es sich zu leicht macht. Im Grunde war für ihn nichts fraglich als die eigene Reflexion, die er betrieb. Er war Theologe und stand innerhalb des Glaubens, grundsätzlich außerhalb der Philosophie. Die heutige Lage ist eine andere.” 20 if there is any doubt that the young dozent Heidegger was professionally ambitious and calculating, one needs only to read the Heidegger–Jaspers correspondence of the period to hear him compare career strategies and ambitions with Jaspers. these letters reveal a very human Heidegger trying to make his way in german academic life. Cf. The Heidegger– Jaspers Correspondence (1920–1963), ed. by walter biemel and Hans saner, trans. by gary e. aylesworth, amherst, new York: Humanity books 2003. 21 ibid., p. 223. 16 17

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Moreover, Jaspers’ Kierkegaardian work figured importantly in the friendship that developed between the two men. in that work Jaspers viewed Kierkegaard as stressing factical individual existence over against universal man in general and criticizing idealism as stressing a fantastic being indifferent to the existing person. Jaspers also stressed the personal and enactment sense of passionate subjective truth. in subsequent years, according to van buren, Heidegger continued to rely on Jaspers’ detailed expositions of such Kierkegaardian concepts as existent, the individual, subjective truth, passion, anxiety, and death in which Heidegger often followed Kierkegaard point by point. additional Kierkegaardian categories found in Heidegger include dispersion, repetition, curiosity, inclosing reserve, conscience, guilt, indirect communication, time and the moment.22 Heidegger was influenced by Jaspers’ “limit situations” concept, derived from Kierkegaard (as well as from nietzsche).23 and the Heideggerian concept of care—the very title of Chapter vi in Being and Time (“Care as the being of dasein”) in which Heidegger’s concept of anxiety is laid out—is indebted to Kierkegaard’s discussion of that concept in “what we can learn from the lilies of the Field and the birds of the air” which Heidegger read in translation as early as 1924. (Heidegger’s augustine readings in 1925 also figure in this.)24 II. The Three Kierkegaard Footnotes in being and time (1927) there are three well-known footnotes that refer to Kierkegaard in Being and Time, indisputably Heidegger’s major work. the substance of Heidegger’s acknowledgment is that he regards and values Kierkegaard’s religious discourses more than although Heidegger clearly notes in Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (in Gesamtausgabe, abteilung 2, vol. 24, ed. by Friedrich-wilhelm von Herrmann (1975), p. 408) his differences with Kierkegaard on the meaning of the moment. Cf. discussion below of the third Kierkegaard footnote in Being and Time. 23 Heidegger published a lengthy review of it, in addition to engaging in polite surface correspondence with Jaspers about the work. in Heidegger’s review of Jaspers’ work, he comments little directly on the Referat section (although he does cite it in the footnote in Being and Time referenced above). the Referat itself revolves chiefly around Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death, many of whose categories find parallels in Heidegger’s work. See above where Caputo states his belief that the notion of the constancy of the self in par. 65 of Being and Time is heavily indebted to The Sickness unto Death. there is, however, a positive-sounding comment about Kierkegaard’s methodological rigor: “in regard to Kierkegaard, it should be noted that the height of methodological rigor that he reached has seldom been achieved in philosophy or theology (where he acquired this supreme rigor is of no importance here). we relinquish what is decisive in Kierkegaard if we overlook his methodological consciousness or take it to be of secondary significance.” “Anmerkungen zu Karl Jaspers ‘Psychologie der weltanschauungen,’ ” in Wegmarken, Gesamtausgabe, abteilung 1, vol. 9, p. 41. Quoted in Becoming Heidegger: On the Trail of His Early Occasional Writings, 1910–1927, ed. by Kiesel and sheehan, pp. 147–8. (explanation: the discussion of Jaspers was not in the first edition of Wegmarken, but was added when Wegmarken was published as vol. 9 of the Gesamtausgabe. For the first publication of the text see the bibliography.) 24 van buren, The Young Heidegger, pp. 170–5. 22

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Kierkegaard’s “theoretical” works. to put this treatment of Kierkegaard in a larger context, it should be noted that Heidegger also does not give much recognition in that work to other at least equally significant influences on his overall development and philosophical program, such as aristotle, duns scotus, and Husserl. they, too, have only a few footnotes.25 one reason for this might well lie in the fact that, in the time period just before Being and Time was published, Heidegger was under pressure to publish a book-length manuscript for the sake of his academic career. the completion of Being and Time thus took place in some haste, and the author acknowledged that the rapidly finalized manuscript of Being and Time was only part i of a larger project (that subsequently was never completed in the originally envisioned form).26 but that explanation will neither explain nor excuse the patronizing, dismissive stance in actual references to Kierkegaard. All three footnotes are cited in full below. The first very brief but telling mention of Kierkegaard is the third paragraph of a lengthier footnote. this third paragraph states: “the man who has gone farthest in analyzing the phenomenon of anxiety— and again in the theological context of a ‘psychological’ exposition of the problem of original sin—is s. Kierkegaard.”27 if one does not consider Heidegger’s noting the theological context of Kierkegaard’s treatment of anxiety as ipso facto a negative here, this might be Heidegger’s most positive statement about Kierkegaard. However, if the mention of theological context and original sin does not reveal Heidegger already taking his distance from Kierkegaard, that occurs very clearly in the second of the so-called Kierkegaard footnotes. this second footnote reads: in the nineteenth century, s. Kierkegaard explicitly seized upon the problem of existence as an existentiell problem, and thought it through in a penetrating fashion. but the existential problem was so alien to him that, as regards his ontology, he remained completely dominated by Hegel and by ancient philosophy as Hegel saw it. Thus, there is more to be learned philosophically from his “edifying” writings than from his theoretical ones—with the exception of his treatise on the concept of anxiety.28

this statement is open to multiple interpretations. most have seen it as Heidegger acknowledging the “existentiell” in Kierkegaard only to dismiss him for not have arrived at the “existential,” something that Heidegger will do explicitly in the third 25 in the english translation of Being and Time (trans. by John macquarrie and edward robinson, new York: Harper & row 1962) all of Heidegger’s own footnotes are obscurely placed as endnotes. All citations here are to the first edition of Sein und Zeit (Halle: niemeyer 1927) whose original pagination is preserved in the margins in his Gesamtausgabe, abteilung 1, vol. 2, and in translations of the work. 26 strictly speaking, the published version of Being and Time contains only part i, divisions i and ii of the larger project. even division iii of part i (promised in Sein und Zeit, p. 160; Being and Time, p. 202) never appeared. 27 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 190. Heidegger references the diederichs germanlanguage edition Der Begriff der Angst, vol. 5 in Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann gottsched and Christoph schrempf, Jena: diederichs 1909–22. Cf. Sein und Zeit, p. 190, third paragraph of footnote 1.) 28 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 235, note 1 (my emphasis).

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footnote to be cited below. Heidegger might also seem to be praising Kierkegaard’s edifying discourses (although the term is actually “edifying writings” in Heidegger’s footnote). but is he?29 note that Heidegger says edifying (or upbuilding) writings (Schriften) not discourses (Reden). is Heidegger referencing the edifying writings in order to downplay the “theoretical” ones, as John Caputo, among others, would hold? Heidegger’s treatment of Kierkegaard in some ways parallels Kierkegaard’s treatment of Hegel, although Kierkegaard’s remarks are far more cutting. indeed, Kierkegaard’s anti-Hegel remarks are often viewed as more aimed at the Hegelians in 1840s Copenhagen, and Heidegger’s critical remarks about Kierkegaard seem aimed at the Kierkegaard fad in Germany, as reflected most clearly in his cutting remark in his 1929–30 lectures, “the Fundamental problems of metaphysics,”30 where he attacks the Kierkegaard fad and its resulting literature for causing Kierkegaard’s insight into the importance of the category “the moment” not to be understood. in any event, Heidegger appeared to make an exception for The Concept of Anxiety as the place where something is indeed to be learned from Kierkegaard theoretically—as Heidegger manifestly has done in this work and which will be elaborated below.31 the third footnote dismisses Kierkegaard’s notion of time. the footnote accords Kierkegaard only passing mention on the subject of time,32 whereas Heidegger gave

Heidegger uses the phrase “edifying writings,” which is a broader category than the edifying discourses. It is so broad in fact that it becomes difficult to pin down a more precise meaning for Heidegger—if indeed Heidegger had one and really meant to suggest the edifying writings as a field of exploration of philosophical value or of Kierkegaardian influence upon him. It is theoretically possible that this is really a passing word of admiration of these works. but the more negative interpretation would be to see it as intimating a general dismissal of the “theoretical” writings as philosophically valuable by means of faint praise for the edifying writings, in other words “damning with faint praise.” when Heidegger quotes Kierkegaard at all, it is generally the pseudonymous works that he refers to. There are specific quotations from “what we can learn from the lilies of the Field and the birds of the air” and from Practice in Christianity, however, and these quotations qualify certainly as among the “edifying writings.” 30 see Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilung 2, vols. 29–30, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit. 31 the phrase “edifying writings” can be extended to include The Sickness unto Death, which announces an edifying, or upbuilding purpose, and dan magurshak does precisely this. Cf. below. 32 Heidegger restated his conclusion about Kierkegaard’s notion of the “moment” (Der Augenblick) in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Gesamtausgabe, abteilung 2, vol. 24, Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, pp. 408–9), where Heidegger acknowledges Kierkegaard’s view of the moment but notes that Kierkegaard ties it to an erroneous notion of time, which Heidegger seeks to correct. in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (Gesamtausgabe, abteilung 2, vols. 29–30, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit, p. 225) he praises Kierkegaard’s concept of the moment but notes that the Kierkegaard fad and its literature have negated the possibility that Kierkegaard’s concept had opened up. 29

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a lecture series on augustine’s admittedly more famous theory of time in book x of the Confessions.33 the full citation of the footnote follows: s. Kierkegaard is probably the one who has seen the existentiell phenomenon of the moment of vision with the most penetration; but this does not signify that he has been correspondingly successful in interpreting it existentially. He clings to the ordinary concept of time, and defines the “moment of vision” with the help of “now” and “eternity.” when Kierkegaard speaks of “temporality,” what he has in mind is man’s “being-in-time” [“In-der-Zeit-sein”]. time as within-time-ness knows only the “now”; it never knows a moment of vision. if, however, such a moment gets experiences in an existentiell manner, then a more primordial temporality has been presupposed, although existentially it has not been made explicit. on the “moment of vision,” cf. K. Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, third unaltered edition, 1925, pp. 108ff., and further his “review of Kierkegaard” (ibid., pp. 419–432).34

III. Kierkegaardian Influences upon Heidegger’s being and time A generalized Kierkegaardian influence pervades Being and Time, as Kierkegaardian terminology and categories abound. almost all that Heidegger categorizes as existentiell in Being and Time is tied to Kierkegaard, and some scholars have argued that even what Heidegger calls existential, namely, structures of being, are indebted to Kierkegaard as well. in recent years scholars have also begun to work out in detail the influence of other Kierkegaardian works. in the 1999 Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, for example, alastair Hannay pointed out Heidegger’s apparent dependence upon Kierkegaard’s notion of leveling (Nivellering) in the concept of Einebnung, for which Heidegger drew upon A Literary Review and possibly Kierkegaard’s journals.35 dan magurshak has compared in detail the analysis of the self and the parallel categories in Heidegger that are dependent on Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death.36 in doing so, he noted Heidegger’s concession to Kierkegaard’s “edifying writings” in the second of the controversial Kierkegaard footnotes in Being and Time and pointed out that The Sickness unto Death describes itself as a work for “upbuilding (edification) and awakening.” But he persuasively contends that The Sickness unto Death was nothing less than “a sourcebook for many of the insights of Those who want to argue for a major influence of Kierkegaard on Heidegger must contend with the fact that Heidegger never devoted a single lecture to Kierkegaard, far less a lecture cycle as he did with aristotle, augustine, Kant, Hegel, nietzsche, Husserl, dilthey, and others. still, a comparison of The Concept of Anxiety and the discussion of anxiety in Being and Time makes a powerful case for a major influence of Kierkegaard upon Heidegger in a very major category in Heidegger’s thought. Cf. next section. 34 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 338, note 1. 35 Cf. alastair Hannay, “Kierkegaard’s levelling and the Review,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1999, pp. 78ff., citing Heidegger’s usage in History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. by theodore J. Kisiel, bloomington, indiana: indiana university press 1985. 36 Cf. magurshak,“despair and everydayness,” pp. 209–37. 33

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Being and Time.”37 These influences appear in the general structures of Heidegger’s existential analysis and particularly in the notion of Fallenness (Die Verfallenheit). Kierkegaard-Anti-Climacus’ descriptions of the despair of finitude and the despair of infinitude cover all the same ground as Heidegger’s concepts of inauthenticity and recovered authenticity. and Heidegger’s insights about being-in-the-world as contributing to one’s Fallenness can be seen as merely a restatement of KierkegaardAnti-Climacus’ despair of finitude which had analyzed the problem of rising above everyday unconsciousness of one’s condition to awakened consciousness and the choice of doing something or sinking in indifference.38 michael theunissen viewed Heidegger, in his treatment of being-unto-death, as having used and reworked concepts pertaining to the meaning of one’s own death from Kierkegaard’s edifying discourse “at a graveside” (1845).39 Repetition had already made the point that one cannot have a genuine existence if one has steered clear of life itself. Heidegger finds the same point expanded upon in “At a Graveside” and incorporates it in a major way as a structure of dasein, namely, being-unto-death which must be appropriated on an existentiell level if authenticity is to be achieved.40 achieving a genuine, conscious relationship to one’s own death was a distinctive and original Kierkegaardian theme in the philosophy of his time. notions of everyday avoidance of this by attending to a generalized and abstract notion of death, other modes of flight from oneself, hollow speech—all aspects of Heidegger’s concept of inauthenticity—are highly indebted to Kierkegaard.41 theunissen in fact sees Heidegger’s contrast between authenticity and inauthenticity as the direct parallel of Kierkegaard’s distinction between seriousness and jest (absence of seriousness).42 it is “jest” to treat death as an abstraction and not as part of the structure of human being (dasein).43 thus, along with the anxiety experience, coming to terms with one’s being-unto-death is a key element in individualization (recovery from lostness in the crowd or Das Man) and the emergence of an authentic individual.

ibid., p. 210. and which magurshak accuses Heidegger of confusing with inauthenticity in a way that Kierkegaard did not. 39 SKS 5, 442–69 / TD, 69–102. Cf. also michael theunissen, “das erbauliche im gedanken an den tod. traditionale elemente, innovative ideen und unausgeschöpfte potentiale in Kierkegaards rede An Einem Grabe,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2000, p. 47. 40 ibid., p. 48. 41 ibid., pp. 48–9. 42 ibid., p. 50. 43 Theunissen first articulated his thesis in Der Begriff Ernst bei Kierkegaard, Freiburg: verlag Karl alber 1958. He sees a distinction between the use of mood of seriousness of The Concept of Anxiety and the seriousness–absence of seriousness contrast in the discourse (p. 51). 37 38

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IV. the Concept of anxiety, Chapters I–II recalling the apparent exception that Heidegger made for The Concept of Anxiety among what Heidegger termed Kierkegaard’s “theoretical writings,” the case will be made below for a most decisive influence of Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ work of 1844.44 this analysis of Heidegger’s seeming dependence on Kierkegaard’s work will also serve here as a primary and detailed example of his more extensive appropriation of Kierkegaardian insights. For in Being and Time, Heidegger followed Kierkegaard nearly step-by-step in the exploration and exposition of anxiety,45 in descriptions of the phenomenon of anxiety and attendant phenomena, often in the very language and categories in which Kierkegaard-Haufniensis expressed it (but not in the same metaphysical and theological thinking that frames his discussion). Heidegger’s own formal philosophical program in Being and Time naturally influenced his selective use of Kierkegaard and determined the manner in which Heidegger put together, in a clearer and more systematic form, the various existentiell categories found in Kierkegaard’s authorship. in the end, Heidegger’s presentation of angst in Being and Time is clearer and more sustained, without the metaphysical and religious categories and language that sometimes entangle Kierkegaard’s presentation. Yet it is Kierkegaard’s achievement that Heidegger quite evidently builds upon. Kierkegaard is the psychological giant upon whose shoulders Heidegger stands, as it were, as he describes anxiety more cohesively—and particularly when he peers into the dark woods of “nothing.” it is in fact perhaps not until Heidegger (and subsequently sartre) highlighted the importance of anxiety and its nothing that this far-reaching insight of Kierkegaard was clearly recognized. in order to note Heidegger’s use of Kierkegaard’s pioneering accomplishment, the section below reviews the main sections and themes of Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ approximately 160-page The Concept of Anxiety, with mention of the presence, absence, and treatment by Heidegger of the same term or a parallel category in Being and Time’s discussion of anxiety.46 (the heart of Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ presentation of anxiety is an approximately 20-page section on subjective anxiety. Heidegger’s is an approximately 37-page section on anxiety, within his Chapter vi on Care.)

“Kierkegaard-Haufniensis” refers of course to the Kierkegaard as the author of The Concept of Anxiety behind the veil of the nominal and thinly pseudonymous author on the title page, vigilius Haufniensis. in this section, i fully agree with the thesis of dan magurshak, among others, that The Concept of Anxiety is the keystone of the Kierkegaard–Heidegger relationship. Cf. magurshak, “the Concept of anxiety: the Keystone of the Kierkegaard– Heidegger relationship,” in The Concept of Anxiety, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1985 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 8), pp. 167–95. 45 it may not need to be said but the anxiety that Kierkegaard and Heidegger explore and attempt to analyze is not what most people mean when they use the term “anxiety.” For Kierkegaard and Heidegger themselves, the anxiety that they discuss is the fundamental, essential anxiety of every living human, at least every member of western culture. 46 see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 160–97. (Being and Time, pp. 203–41.) 44

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Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ discussion (Chapter i: “anxiety explaining Hereditary sin retrogressively”) begins with the Christian theological problem of original sin (and the serious interest in how sin can be overcome). on its own terms, it is a rich discussion of a classic Christian doctrine.47 Kierkegaard-Haufniensis advanced toward the concept of anxiety as the fifth in a progression of concepts to be analyzed in the treatise. Only in this fifth concept does Kierkegaard-Haufniensis enter into a description of remembered subjective experience. in seeming parallel but in actual contrast to Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ existential speculation on the Fall, Heidegger’s phenomenology of the being of the human entity (dasein) has the central category of Fallenness (Das Verfallen), but this is not a mere secularization of Kierkegaard’s theological concept. the reason is that, for Heidegger, Fallenness does not represent an individual deed (to be repented) but instead a matter-of-fact universal structure in human being (dasein), a structure raised to awareness through the anxiety experience itself (much as KierkegaardHaufniensis claims that the anxiety experiences raises one’s guilt to the level of awareness). Fallenness for Heidegger is therefore an ontological characteristic of human beings.48 moreover, the contrast between Kierkegaard and Heidegger’s treatment of the Fall illuminates what Heidegger means in his dismissive-sounding remark that Kierkegaard restricted himself to the existentiell—that is, personal experience and deed—in contrast to Heidegger’s self-described interest in the ontological and existential: that is, with structures of human existence as simple givens.49 For Heidegger there is no sense of connection between Fallenness and any sense of guilt or sin. these latter Kierkegaardian (and theological) categories do not arise. nor will Heidegger’s treatment ever use language or imagery suggesting that Fallenness is a deed to be reversed or undone. rather, Fallenness along with thrownness is presented as a given, as a matter-of-fact structure of human existence. indeed, something can be done to move beyond it, toward what Heidegger will call “authenticity,” but it will never involve any suggestion of being saved, as is explicitly the case in Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ Chapter v (“anxiety as saving through Faith”). Kierkegaard-Haufniensis situated his discussion within the context of a notion of the evolution of spirit (and described anxiety as a quality of dreaming spirit not yet awakened). Heidegger operates with no such mention of human origin or implied human spiritual destiny. Certainly one can read Heidegger’s treatment as constituting an evolution and development of dasein in relationship to being (and one can read Heidegger’s own description as existentiell, as not a few have done). nonetheless,

it is not unlike Kant’s position in “on the radical evil in Human nature” (Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)) where Kant insisted on the point that the doctrine of the Fall and consequent original (hereditary) sin make no sense unless understood as every person’s individual deed (despite its universality). 48 see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 191. (Being and Time, p. 235.) 49 of course, Kierkegaard-Haufniensis understood the Fall as a universal experience, but still as the result of a free individual choice, and not as a matter-of-fact structure of human being, as it is for Heidegger. 47

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Heidegger’s concept of Fallenness is at the same time very much a secularization of the Fall as understood by Kierkegaard. Chapter ii (“anxiety as explaining Hereditary sin Progressively”)50 divides formally into two sections: objective anxiety (5 pages) and subjective anxiety (20 pages).51 the heart of Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ analysis occurs within the section on subjective anxiety. Here Kierkegaard-Haufniensis asserts, in highly abstract language, that in anxiety freedom arises to see that it is guilty. it has already been pointed out that there is no moral or religious guilt in Heidegger’s understanding and presentation, just a factical condition (just as death is also a factical condition that belongs to the structure of dasein). Heidegger thus sticks, phenomenologically, with how things are, and does not allow the introduction of any external categories that try to explain why things are the way they are and that might thus influence the perception and interpretation of how things are. this section introduces Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ important pointing to and pointing out of the nothing of anxiety, a category and description that is absolutely essential to Heidegger in his own presentation of anxiety (cf. below for an elaboration of this theme). interestingly, Kierkegaard-Haufniensis is guided to this by the danish language, and he reflects upon the colloquial phrase “to be anxious about nothing.”52 (Heidegger has no parallel to the discussions of the role of generation in anxiety, or the sensuousness of woman, or the relation of the sensuous and the sexual.) Heidegger follows Kierkegaard in contrasting fear and anxiety, and this allows the all-important observation that while fear is fear in the face of something, one has anxiety in the face of nothing, that is, of an indeterminate that never becomes determinate.53 within his phenomenology of the being of dasein in Being and Time, Heidegger characterized anxiety as “one of the most far-reaching and most primordial possibilities of [the] disclosure” of being in the human person (dasein).54 its analysis, within the formal section on “Care as the being of dasein” (Chapter vi) occurs just after the section in which Heidegger had sketched how the human person has fallen away from being into a tranquillizing state of being-in-the-world in which one’s involvement with being is lulled to sleep, or nearly forgotten. this is KierkegaardHaufniensis’ meaning of “dreaming spirit” restated. the situation, before the shudder of awakening in anxiety, is that the human person (dasein) has drifted into an alienation in which its potentiality-for-being is hidden from it. its manifestations are the falling into the impersonal and inauthentic world of “the they” (Das Man): self-alienation from being and one’s possibilities, while mistakenly taking the meaning of one’s being from the impersonal masses. this corresponds step-for-step to the Kierkegaard-Haufniensis analysis, albeit in the terminology of theology and in contrast to the term “retrogressively” in Chapter i (my emphasis). paralleling the treatment of the “objective problem” and the “subjective problem” in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and probably something of a structural joke. 52 SKS 4, 348 / CA, 43. 53 Although Kierkegaard-Haufniensis does remark that, with reflection, the nothing of anxiety becomes more and more a something (SKS 4, 365 / CA, 61), language that suggests, in advance of Heidegger, that reflection on the nothing leads to significant disclosure. 54 see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 182. (Being and Time, p. 226.) 50 51

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metaphysics, which too began in a primordial state of innocence-become-sin and is an awakening to the possibility of recovery. according to Heidegger, the eruption of anxiety shakes this state-of-affairs and initiates a disclosure about one’s authentic possibilities. and so Heidegger sets himself the task of working out what he calls the Befindlichkeit (literally, the way one finds oneself) or “state of mind,” and then characterizes ontologically what is disclosed in it.55 in his fear–anxiety distinction, he follows Kierkegaard in recognizing that fear is always fear of something. as described by Heidegger, fear is always about some entity-in-the-world that constitutes a danger. For him too, the threat in anxiety is completely indefinite. As he puts it, it is no entity ready at hand, nor the sum total of entities ready at hand. “that in the face of which one has anxiety is characterized by the fact that what threatens is nowhere. anxiety ‘does not know’ what that in the face of which it is anxious is.”56 ultimately for Heidegger, the nothing and nowhere of anxiety point up the insignificance of entities in the world and the illusion of significance that they proclaim, hitherto unchallenged. For Heidegger, the ontological significance of anxiety is that one is anxious not in the face of other entities in the world but rather in the face of one’s being-in-the-world. He goes on to note that anxiety discloses dasein’s freedom to choose itself and to take hold of itself, with the possibility of authentic being. Heidegger completely follows Kierkegaard in recognizing that Angst is a thrust into the indeterminate itself, and thus the emphasis on the absence of a definite object.57 it is illusion-shattering and directs one’s attention to something possible but not (yet) actual, namely, one’s possible future being. anxiety for both Kierkegaard and Heidegger is thus an experience of the self at its limits, the disclosure that arises from the nothing at the edge of one’s being—an experience of (current) limits and of (unactualized) possibility. Kierkegaard and Heidegger will finally diverge in the discussion of unactualized possibility, but not without having gone most of the route together.

Befindlichkeit (surely misleadingly translated by macquarrie and robinson as state-ofmind in the first English-language translation of Sein und Zeit) is a profoundly important, noncognitive grasp of the how of dasein: How dasein is and how dasein non-cognitively grasps this how. “disposition” has been suggested in english as a better term, which, if one keeps to the sense of the latin root of “posited,” might be better. in Heidegger’s usage, Befindlichkeit constitutes my grasp, my sense, my affective understanding of how i am. and the content of this Befindlichkeit is not accessible to the structures of cognition. (this is not the conventional german usage of the term.) 56 see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 186. (Being and Time, p. 231.) 57 However, both would hold that to be an important aspect of self-awareness as well. the consciousness of this is discussed by Kierkegaard as consciousness of the familiar philosophical categories finitude and necessity, and by Heidegger, straining to stay clear of the old metaphysics, in the strained new language of “Facticity” (Faktizität) and “thrownness” (Geworfenheit). 55

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V. Nothing if anxiety is the concept that perhaps best demonstrates Heidegger’s dependence upon Kierkegaard, his contemplation of that dark jewel—the nothing of anxiety— crowns his achievement. Heidegger follows Kierkegaard in linking anxiety with nothing and exploring the nothing that each asserts anxiety is about. in Kierkegaard’s authorship, this is part of a pattern of psychological exploration of indeterminate emotions in the aesthetic writings that includes states such as melancholia, boredom, and desire, in addition to anxiety. Heidegger follows Kierkegaard in noting empirical manifestations in the subject of the experience and identifying that which the experience uncovers about the subject’s present. both then go on to identify that which the experience discloses and that to which it points (its intentionality). and for both, the hallmark of anxiety is precisely its disturbing, provocative objectlessness. there simply is and will be no clear, discernible, or distinguishable object. For both Kierkegaard and Heidegger this is not because an object is not yet clear. For no clear object will ever emerge, as Heidegger makes even more emphatic. the essence of anxiety—what makes it the eerie, uncanny experience that it is—is precisely its very objectlessness. For it is not fear of a vague something that could be clarified into a less vague something. there is no-thing,58 and this very no-thingness rises to central significance. The indefiniteness of the object of anxiety is precisely what is particular to the experience and both pursue the indefiniteness of anxiety’s object back to nothingness itself. For Kierkegaard, this begins to suggest the metaphysical nothing out of which god created the world (creatio ex nihilo) in classic Christian metaphysical thinking. in Heidegger, it is not a metaphysical nothing but rather something-in-the-world whose identity remains indeterminate—permanently but importantly indeterminate—and whose very indeterminacy confers upon anxiety the power to disclose that about which one is anxious. the that-about-which-one-is-anxious, for Heidegger, becomes disclosed as the potentiality for authentic being-in-the-world. (ultimately, this can be seen as a secular parallel to anxiety’s discovery in Kierkegaard’s presentation, but is nonetheless distinctive.) as if one needed any more paradoxes here, in Heidegger— other quotations from Being and Time aside—anxiety is in a certain sense not being anxious about nothing. For in the anxiety experience, Heidegger writes, nothing functions as that in the face of which one has anxiety. (in this respect, if Kierkegaard’s nothing is metaphysical, Heidegger’s might be called linguistic.) that in the face of which one has anxiety is identified as being-in-the-world itself.59 in Heidegger’s presentation the indefiniteness of the object discloses that entities within the world are not “relevant” in the anxiety experience: they are not a solution for anxiety but in fact part of the problem. (by virtue of the fact of Fallenness, one is lost in “the they” of the world (Das Man). in short, anxiety reveals the problematic nature of “the they” (Das Man) to dasein as individual subject. anxiety’s objectlessness leads beyond the distraction of entities in the world and to disclosure about the self. this the separation of “nothing” into “no-thing” is a useful word-play in english which does not of course have a direct equivalent in german. 59 see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 187. (Being and Time, p. 231.) 58

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is of course exactly where Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ analysis led as well, except that it specified the possibility (in metaphysical faith-categories) as the taking on of guilt-consciousness for one’s fallen state and eventually taking on sin-consciousness before God. Ironically, the indefiniteness of the object of anxiety is more useful than the definiteness of the object of fear, for the encounter with limit and the indefinite precipitates important disclosure that does not occur in fear. the experience of nothing is not regarded as a simple matter at all, and Kierkegaard-Haufniensis went so far as to call the nothing of anxiety “a complex of presentiments,”60 a dark and crystalline phrase. (other presentiments are not immediately indicated although they certainly include the sympathetic antipathy, antipathetic sympathy, and the dizziness of freedom.) For Heidegger anxiety precipitates ontological discernment in the feeling of eeriness or uncanniness (unheimlich), a sudden feeling of not-being-at-home, that is, the experience of a rupture in what up to now has been a tranquilized feeling of being at home amidst “the they” (Das Man): in short, the rupture of a once contented mass-identity that now no longer works. the result, in Heidegger’s description, is that anxiety has the effect of freeing one from absorption in the everyday tranquillized inauthentic world in which one has been living with other tranquillized inauthentic beings. “this uncanniness pursues dasein constantly, and is a threat to its everyday lostness in ‘the they’….”61 is this not parallel to Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ sense of anxiety disclosing one’s lostness? For the religiously committed Kierkegaard, however, lostness means not only among the crowd but also before the Christian god. VI. Heidegger’s Lecture “What is Metaphysics?” (1929) two years after the publication of Being and Time, Heidegger gave his inaugural lecture as professor in Freiburg. in the subsequently published 20-page talk, he elaborated on the themes of “the nothing” and anxiety. He acknowledged how strange it sounded to inquire into nothing, and that both question and answer can seem inherently absurd. but he insisted that humans experience the limitations of being, even as they try to ignore them. in language worthy of KierkegaardHaufniensis, Heidegger spoke dramatically and ominously of the “common nothing that glides so inconspicuously through our chatter, blanched with the anemic pallor of the obvious.”62 And he scorned attempts to define it metaphysically or merely as an empty idea (for example, as the complete negation of the totality of beings).63 and he cited moods as attunements of beings to being and isolated anxiety as the fundamental mood that reveals the relationship of human being to being itself. SKS 4, 365 / CA, 61. see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 189. (Being and Time, p. 234.) 62 see martin Heidegger, “was ist metaphysik?” in his Gesamtausgabe, abteilung 1, vol. 9, Wegmarken, ed. by Friedrich-wilhelm von Hermann (1976), pp. 103–22. (First published as Was ist Metaphysik, bonn: Friedrich Cohen 1929.) (english translation: “what is metaphysics?” in Pathmarks, trans. by david F. Krell, ed. by w. mcneill, Cambridge and new York: Cambridge university press 1999, pp. 82–96.) 63 ibid., § 16 in both german and english editions. 60 61

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in “what is metaphysics?” Heidegger explored the range of presentiments that Kierkegaard-Haufniensis had attributed to anxiety. anxiety is portrayed as the mood that reveals the nothing in an ambivalent experience characterized on the one hand by what he calls a “peculiar calm,” and on the other by an uncanniness, an ill-at-ease quality (unheimlich) that pervades anxiety. one experiences a shrinking back and a bewildered calm. the anxiety experience is characterized as being repelling but also indicating that there is nowhere to run. this is akin to Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ “sympathetic antipathy.” Heidegger did not include what Kierkegaard-Haufniensis termed “antipathetic sympathy,” an element of grudging or unwilling attraction in the experience.64 Heidegger went on to assert that the encounter with the nothing is indispensable to selfhood and freedom: “without the original revelation of the nothing, no selfhood and no freedom.”65 Heidegger thinks that everyday superficial social living is a construct to avoid the uncomfortable encounter with the nothing. its manifestation is obscured, but anxiety is there all the same and can break out at any moment, even if this only seldom happens: [t]he original anxiety in existence is usually repressed. anxiety is there. it is only sleeping. its breath quivers perpetually through dasein, only slightly in those who are jittery, imperceptibly in the “oh, yes” and the “oh, no” of men of affairs; but most readily in the reserved, and most assuredly in those who are basically daring.66

VII. the Concept of anxiety, Chapters III–V to return to surveying the structure of The Concept of Anxiety: Chapter iii (“anxiety as the absence of the Consciousness of sin”) has no direct parallel in Heidegger’s project, since sin is not an existential category for him. but for Heidegger anxiety does trigger a consciousness, namely, of dasein’s being lost in “the they” (Das Man). this chapter emphasizes anxiety’s relationship to the future (rather than the past), an emphasis entirely shared by Heidegger who understands anxiety as pointing dasein toward its “ownmost possibilities” for being. this chapter also contains Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ observation about the “empty talk” that characterizes the fallen person, whose individuality has melted into the crowd. a comparable category of Gerede (empty language) on the part of a being lost in “the they” (Das Man) is found in Heidegger’s treatment. Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ Chapters iv and v (“the anxiety of sin” and “anxiety as saving through Faith”) have no conceptual parallel in Heidegger, but Chapter iv has its existentiell parallels, to be sure. For Heidegger fully shares the perception of an eeriness in the self-alienated person, of the conflict between wanting to change one’s Kierkegaard wrote of “sympathetic antipathy” and “antipathetic sympathy” in The Concept of Anxiety. Heidegger’s characterization of the experience of the nothing as repelling, and not containing an element of attraction is thus different, but in its effects very much the same. 65 Heidegger, “was ist metaphysik?” and “what is metaphysics?” § 34. 66 Heidegger, “was ist metaphysik?” and “what is metaphysics?” § 4. 64

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condition and wanting to have the condition continue. (Kierkegaard-Haufniensis writes of it as anxiety wanting the actuality of sin to continue.)67 and Heidegger follows Kierkegaard-Haufniensis in attributing the appearance of anxiety to a deeper nature. it is in Chapter iv that Kierkegaard-Haufniensis links inclosing reserve to anxiety, and this too finds a parallel (but not in terminology) in Heidegger’s presentation. Where Kierkegaard associates anxiety with the problem of melancholy and inclosing reserve, these terms receive no mention in Heidegger. However, Heidegger’s discussion of alienation (Entfremdung)68 as closing off dasein from authenticity and possibility corresponds closely to Kierkegaard’s use of inclosing reserve. Heidegger does, however, have the category of Verschlossenheit, resoluteness, which parallels the act of will demanded in Kierkegaard’s conception of selfrecovery. the difference between the two is grace, and here Heidegger would come off as a pelagius to Kierkegaard’s augustine. in contrast to Kierkegaard, Heidegger in Being and Time never associates anxiety with boredom, as Kierkegaard-Haufniensis does.69 Kierkegaard-Haufniensis does not develop the connection at any length but does describe boredom as continuity in nothingness. However, in Heidegger’s 1929–30 lecture course (subsequently published under the title The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics)70 boredom replaced anxiety as the fundamental attunement of dasein. Formally, in Being and Time, anxiety was chosen as “one of those structures” (the others not specified) that exhibit the most far-reaching and most primordial possibilities of disclosure.71 this of course suggests others, and in boredom Heidegger subsequently explored another at great length. in elucidating his concept of boredom, Heidegger makes no reference to Kierkegaard or “the rotation of Crops,” the insightful essay on boredom by aesthete a of Either/Or whose brevity and wit stand in marked contrast to Heidegger’s longwinded analysis. indeed, it takes Heidegger half of the 100 pages devoted to boredom to hit upon the key category of the “interesting,” identified by Aesthete A at the very outset of his piece. Heidegger’s analysis of boredom is connected with his analysis of temporality, thus his emphasis on the roots of the german term: Lange-Weile.72

SKS 4, 416 / CA, 114. see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 178. (Being and Time, p. 222.) 69 SKS 4, 433–4 / CA, 132–3. 70 see Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilung 2, vols. 29–30, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit, pp. 89–245. (english translation: “awakening a Fundamental attunement in our philosophizing,” in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, trans. by william mcneill and nicholas walker, bloomington, indiana: indiana university press 1995, pp. 59–167.) 71 see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 182. (Being and Time, p. 182.) 72 Heidegger is frequently guided by language association in his development of concepts, and this is also markedly the case in his analysis of Angst, where, very much like Kierkegaard in danish, he seems guided by the various idiomatic phrases in german used with Angst (Angst vor, Das Wovor der Angst): “Die Angst ist nicht nur Angst vor…, sondern als Befindlichkeit zugleich angst um.” (see Sein und Zeit, p. 187.) (english translation: “anxiety is not only fear of (or in the face of), but as disposition it is at the same time anxiety about.” see Being and Time, p. 232.) 67 68

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VIII. Death and Anxiety in Being and Time, Heidegger thought out human possibility to the point of nonbeing and included a facet of anxiety that Kierkegaard did not address in The Concept of Anxiety. Heidegger’s exploration of anxiety in relation to being-untodeath has no parallel in Kierkegaard-Haufniensis, even if Kierkegaard recognizes a very similar effective role for contemplating one’s eventual death in his discourse “at a graveside.” For Heidegger, being-unto-death is a singular limit situation that is a matter-of-fact structure of one’s being, one that a person does not consciously experience, one that thus points to a possibility but one that one does not oneself experience (because at the moment of death one no longer is): one’s not-only-possible but inevitable non-being, or the existential structure that is being-unto-death. this aspect of the discussion of possibility is not broached by Kierkegaard-Haufniensis. it emerges in Being and Time when Heidegger returns to anxiety in the section “dasein’s possibility of being-a-whole, and being-towards-death.”73 in his discussion of being-unto-death, Heidegger is really talking about the effects of anxiety upon self-awareness and self-actualization through the unsettling disclosure of personal transiency. Kierkegaard-Haufniensis does not associate anxiety with death or with being-unto-death (although Kierkegaard-anti-Climacus did of course associate it with despair, termed the “sickness unto death”). Heidegger has thereby added to the concept of anxiety, in a context that is relevant to his own philosophical project. His analysis would have rounded out Kierkegaard’s as well. one might even argue that it would have intensified Kierkegaard-Haufniensis’ project of leading the reader to the seriousness of confronting the human condition of guilt and sinfulness. IX. Concluding Summary on the basis of the foregoing, it should be evident that, while Kierkegaard and Heidegger remain very different thinkers overall, Heidegger for his part followed a remarkably parallel, if secular, course. indeed, it is a path that is so similar to Kierkegaard’s and so dependent on it that it appears at times to be a re-working of Kierkegaard’s pioneering existentiell descriptions. Heidegger is more systematic, a professor who has mined Kierkegaard insights and concepts for all they are worth and, it must be admitted, sometimes presented them with greater clarity and cohesiveness. as such, Heidegger’s use of Kierkegaard can be viewed as a clarification of, and systematization of, Kierkegaard’s insights. Heidegger was, however, not nearly humble enough to describe his efforts or achievement in this way. but for those reading both Kierkegaard and Heidegger still from within the categories of traditional Christian theology, this estimation would appear too generous insofar as Heidegger’s secular phenomenology would constitute a form of contemporary pelagianism in which humans seem to have it in their own power to recover from their Fallenness vis-à-vis Kierkegaard’s more classic augustinian position of the need for a divine supplement. division ii, title of section i. see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 236ff. (Being and Time, pp. 279ff.) 73

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Heidegger’s Corpus “anmerkungen zu Karl Jaspers ‘psychologie der weltanschauungen,’ ” (written 1919–21) first published in Karl Jaspers in der Diskussion, ed. by Hans saner, munich: piper 1973, pp. 70–100. see Wegmarken, in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 1 (Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910–1976), vol. 9, ed. by Friedrich-wilhelm von Hermann (1976), pp. 1–44. “drei briefe martin Heideggers an Karl löwith” (1920–21), in Zur philosophischen Aktualität Heideggers: Symposium der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung vom 24. –28. April 1989 in Bonn-Bad Godesberg, vols. 1–3, ed. by dietrich papenfuß and otto pöggeler, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1991–92, vol. 2 (Im Gespräch der Zeit) pp. 27–30. Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung (Freiburg, winter semester 1921–22), in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 2 (Vorlesungen 1919–1944), vol. 61, ed. by walter bröcker and Käte bröcker-oltmanns (1985), p. 24; p. 182. Ontologie. Hermeneutik der Faktizität (Freiburg, summer semester 1923), in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 2 (Vorlesungen 1919–1944), vol. 63, ed. by Käte bröcker-oltmanns (1988), see p. 5; p. 17; p. 30; pp. 41–2; p. 108; p. 111. Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (marburg, summer semester 1925), in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 2 (Vorlesungen 1919–1944), vol. 20, ed. by petra Jaeger (1977). (english translation: History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. by theodore Kisiel, bloomington, indiana: indiana university press 1985.) Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (marburg, summer semester 1927), in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 2 (Vorlesungen 1919–1944), vol. 24, ed. by Friedrich-wilhelm von Hermann (1975), see p. 408. (english translation: The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. by albert Hofstadter, bloomington, indiana: indiana university press 1988.) Sein und Zeit, Halle: niemeyer 1927, pp. 175–96, see also p. 190, note 1; p. 235, note 1; and p. 338, note 1. (in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 1

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(Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910–1976), vol. 2, ed. by Friedrich-wilhelm von Hermann (1977), see pp. 232–61.) Der deutsche Idealismus (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) und die philosophische Problemlage der Gegenwart (Freiburg, sommer semester 1929), in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 2 (Vorlesungen 1919–1944), vol. 28, ed. by Claudius strube (1997), see p. 263, note to § 19c. “was ist metaphysik?” in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 1 (Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910–1976), vol. 9, Wegmarken, ed. by Friedrich-wilhelm von Hermann (1976), pp. 103–22. (originally published as Was ist Metaphysik?, bonn: Friedrich Cohen 1929; english translation: “what is metaphysics?,” in Pathmarks, trans. by david F. Krell, ed. by w. mcneill, Cambridge and new York: Cambridge university press 1999, pp. 82–96.) Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt. Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit (Freiburg, winter semester 1929–30), in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 2 (Vorlesungen 1919–1944), vols. 29–30, ed. by Friedrich-wilhelm von Hermann (1983), see p. 225. (english translation: The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, trans. by w. mcneill and n. walker, bloomington, indiana: indiana university press 1995, p. 150.) “nietzsches wort Gott ist tot,” in Holzwege, Frankfurt am main: Kostermann 1950, p. 230 (in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 1 (Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910–1976), vol. 5, Holzwege (1977), p. 249; english translation: “the word of nietzsche: ‘god is dead,’” in The Question Concerning Technology, trans. by william lovitt, new York: Harper and row 1977, p. 94.) Frühe Schriften, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann, 1972, in martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, abteilungen 1–4, vols. 1–102, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1975–, abteilung 1 (Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910–1976), vol. 1, ed. by Friedrich-wilhelm von Hermann (1978), see “vorwort,” p. 56. II. Sources of Heidegger’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Jaspers, Karl, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, berlin: springer 1919, see pp. 419–32. Kierkegaard, sören, Angriff auf die Christenheit, trans. and ed. by august dorner and Christoph schrempf, stuttgart: Frommann 1896. — Ausgewählte christliche Reden von Søren Kierkegaard. Mit einem Anhang über Kierkegaard’s Familie und Privatleben nach den persönlichen Erinnerungen seiner Nichte, Fräulein Lund, trans. and ed. by Julie von reincke, giessen: ricker 1901. — Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann gottsched, Christoph schrempf, Jena: diederichs 1909–22: — vols. 1–2, Entweder-Oder (1911–13);

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— vol. 3, Furcht und Zittern. Wiederholung (2nd printing, 1909); — vol. 4, Stadien auf dem Lebensweg (1914); — vol. 5, Der Begriff der Angst (1912); — vols. 6–7, Philosophische Brocken. Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift (1910); — vol. 8, Die Krankheit zum Tode (1911); — vol. 9, Einübung im Christentum (1912), p. 70, note 1. — vol. 10, Der Gesichtspunkt für meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller. Zwei kleine ethisch-religiöse Abhandlungen. Über meine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller (1922); — vol. 11, Zur Selbsprüfung der Gegenwart anbefohlen (1922); — vol. 12, Der Augenblick (2nd printing, 1909). — “Kritik der gegenwart,” trans. by theodor Haecker, Der Brenner, vol. 4, 1914, pp. 815–49; pp. 869–908. — Der Begriff des Auserwählten, trans. by theodor Haecker, Hellerau: Hellerauer verlag Jakob Hegner 1917. — Am Fuße des Altars. Christliche Reden, trans. by theodor Haecker, munich: beck 1922. — Der Pfahl im Fleisch, trans., ed. and introduced by theodor Haecker, 2nd ed., innsbruck: brenner 1922 [1914]. — Religiöse Reden, trans. by theodor Haecker, munich: Hermann a. wiechmann 1922. — Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–2, selected, trans. and ed. by theodor Haecker, innsbruck: brenner 1923. — Am Fuße des Altars. Christliche Reden, trans. by theodor Haecker, munich: beck 1922. III. Secondary Literature on Heidegger’s Relation to Kierkegaard adler-vonessen, Hildegard, “angst in der sicht von s. Kierkegaard, s. Freud und m. Heidegger,” Psyche, vol. 25, 1971, pp. 692–715. alcorta, José ignacio de, “Ética kierkegaardiana y ética heideggeriana,” in his Lo Ético en el Existencialismo, tenerife: universidad de la laguna 1951, pp. 65–78. astrada, Carlos, “de Kierkegaard à Heidegger,” Sur, vol. 6, no. 25, 1936, pp. 50–9. bacsó, béla, “a szorongás mint egzisztens kategória” [Fear as an existential Category], Magyar Filozófiai Szemle, vol. 47, nos. 1–2, 2003, pp. 173–83. berthold-bond, daniel, “a Kierkegaardian Critique of Heidegger’s Concept of authenticity,” Man and World, vol. 24, 1991, pp. 119–42. bigelow, patrick, The Conning, the Cunning of Being: Being a Kierkegaardian Demonstration of the Postmodern Implosion of Metaphysical Sense in Aristotle and the Early Heidegger, tallahassee, Florida: Florida state university press 1990. birkenstock, eva, Heißt philosophieren sterben lernen? Antworten der Existenzphilosophie: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Rosenzweig, Freiburg i. br. and munich: alber 1997.

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brod, max, “Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Kafka,” L’Arche, vol. 21, 1946, pp. 44–55. — “Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Kafka,” Prisma, no. 11, 1947, pp. 17–20. — Das Unzerstörbare, stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1968, pp. 144–54. brown, James, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Buber and Barth. Subject and Object in Modern Theology, new York: p.F. Collier 1962. Canine, John david, The Educational Implications of Heidegger’s and Kierkegaard’s Concepts of Death, ed.d. thesis, wayne state university, detroit 1983. Caputo, John d., Radical Hermeneutics, bloomington: indiana university press 1987, pp. 12–16; p. 24; pp. 29–30; p. 32; p. 53; p. 72; pp. 82–3. — “Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the Foundering of metaphysics,” in Fear and Trembling and Repetition, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1993 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 6), pp. 201–24. Chun, Jay Kyung, The Relation to Education of Guilt and Conscience in the Philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger, ph.d. thesis, Columbia university, new York 1985. Colette, Jacques, “Kierkegaard, bultmann et Heidegger,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques, vol. 49, 1965, pp. 597–608. de Feo, nicola massimo, “la dialettica dell’inversione,” in his L’ontologia fondamentale. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, milan: silva 1964, pp. 19–38. deleuze, gilles, “K.e. lögstrup—Kierkegaard und Heideggers Existenzanalyse und ihr Verhältnis zur Verkündigung” (book review), Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, vol. 143, nos. 1–3, 1953, pp. 108–9. démuth, andrej, “søren Kierkegaard—inšpirátor Heideggerovho myslenia,” in Zápas Sørena Kierkegaarda, ed. by roman Králik, nitra: FF uKF 2006, pp. 146–9. de natale, Ferruccio, Esistenza, filosofia, angoscia: tra Kierkegaard e Heidegger, bari: adriatica editrice 1995. disse, Jörg, “philosophie der angst. Kierkegaard und Heidegger im vergleich,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 22, 2002, pp. 64–88. driscoll, giles, “Heidegger’s ethical monism,” The New Scholasticism, vol. 42, 1968, pp. 497–510. düsing, edith, “der begriff der angst bei Kierkegaard und Heidegger,” in Transzendenz und Existenz. Idealistische Grundlagen und moderne Perspektiven des transzendentalen Gedankens. Wolfgang Janke zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. by manfred baum and Klaus Hammacher, amsterdam and atlanta: rodopi 2001 (Elementa, vol. 76), pp. 21–60. Fabro, Cornelio, “l’angoscia esistenziale come tensione di essere-nulla, uomomondo nella prospettiva di Heidegger e Kierkegaard,” Psicoterapie, metodi e techniche, 1980, pp. 63–81. (reprinted in La panarie, vol. 15, 1982, pp. 79–94, and Psichiatria e territorio, vol. 4, 1987, pp. 9–24.) Fehér, istván m., “schelling, Kierkegaard, Heidegger—rendszer, szabadság, gondolkodás. A poszthegeliánus filozófia néhány közös motívuma és filozófiai témája,” trans. by lászló vásárhelyi szabó, Pro Philosophia Füzetek, nos. 11–12, 1997, pp. 3–20. (in german as “schelling, Kierkegaard, Heidegger hinsichtlich system, Freiheit und denken. gemeinsame motive und philosopheme der

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nachhegelschen philosophie,” in Zeit und Freiheit. Schelling, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Heidegger. Akten der Fachtagung der Internationalen SchellingGesellschaft, Budapest, 24. bis 27. April 1997, ed. by istván m. Fehér and wilhelm g. Jacobs, budapest: Éthos könyvek 1999, pp. 17–36.) — Heidegger és a szkepticizmus. A szkeptikus kételyen át a hermeneutikai kérdésig, budapest: Korona nova 1998, pp. 64–74. Fehér, istván m. and wilhelm g. Jacobs (eds.), Zeit und Freiheit. Schelling– Schopenhauer–Kierkegaard—Heidegger. Akten der Fachtagung der Internationalen Schelling-Gesellschaft, Budapest, 24. bis 27. April 1997, budapest: ethos 1999. Figal, Günter, “Verzweiflung und Uneigentlichkeit. Zum Problem von Selbstbegründung und mißlingender existenz bei søren Kierkegaard und martin Heidegger,” Text & Kontext, 1983, pp. 135–51. Fondane, benjamin, “martin Heidegger sur les routes de Kierkegaard et de dostoievski,” in his La conscience malheureuse, paris: Éditions denoël 1936, pp. 169–98. gardini, michele, “l’uomo è un rapporto: l’antropologia di Kierkegaard in margine a un giudizio Heideggeriano,” Discipline filosofiche, vol. 12, no. 1, 2002, pp. 351–82. Hall, Harrison, “love and death. Kierkegaard and Heidegger on authentic and inauthentic Human existence,” Inquiry, vol. 27, 1984, pp. 179–97. Hannay, alastair, Kierkegaard, london: routledge & Kegan paul 1982, p. 2; p. 9; pp. 187–8; pp. 339–40; p. 362. Hasler, Carl robert, Dread as Self-Revealing, ph.d. thesis, university of missouri, Columbia, missouri 1993. Haslund, irene, Tid og væren: en sammenligning mellom Kierkegaards og Heideggers tidsfilosofi, trondheim: norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet 1997 (Filosofisk institutts publikasjonsserie, vol. 25). Henry, Jules, “the term ‘primitive’ in Kierkegaard and Heidegger,” in The Concept of the Primitive, ed. by ashley montagu, new York and london: Free press 1968, pp. 212–28. Herps, H.t.H., Angst, de sleutel tot een ander denken? Een onderzoek naar de rol van de angst in het denken van Kierkegaard en Heidegger, ph.d. thesis, Catholic university of nijmegen 1996. Hoberman, John m., “Kierkegaard’s ‘two ages’ and Heidegger’s Critique of modernity,” in Two Ages, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1984 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 14), pp. 223–58. Hunsinger, george, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the Concept of Death, stanford: stanford university press 1969 (Stanford Honors Essay in Humanities, vol. 12). Huntington, patricia J., “Heidegger’s reading of Kierkegaard revisited: From ontological abstraction to ethical Concretion,” in Kierkegaard in Post/ Modernity, ed. by martin J. matuštík and merold westphal, bloomington, indianapolis: indiana university press 1995 (Studies in Continental Thought), pp. 43–65.

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itzkowitz, Kenneth Jay, Economy and Difference (Plato, Kierkegaard, Bataille, Derrida, Heidegger), ph.d. thesis, state university of new York at stony brook 1987. Janik, allan, “Haecker, Kierkegaard and the early brenner: a Contribution to the reception of ‘two ages’ in the german-speaking world,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, vols. 1–4, ed. by daniel w. Conway, vol. 4 (Social and Political Philosophy: Kierkegaard and “The Present Age”), pp. 123–47. Янева, Десислава [Ianeva, Desislava], “Своеобразието на християнския опит за време във Философски трохи на Сьорен Киркегор и Феноменология на религиозния живот на Мартин Хайдегер” [The Peculiarity of the Christian time experience in Philosophical Fragments by søren Kierkegaard and in Phenomenology of Religious Life by martin Heidegger], in Датската литература в България—един век очарование [danish literature in bulgaria—one Century of enchantment], ed. by the department of german and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Sofia, Sofia: Simolini 2000, pp. 152–8. Jeon Jae-gyeong, The Relation to Education of Guilt and Conscience in the Philosophy of S. Kierkegaard and M. Heidegger, ph.d. thesis, Columbia university, new York 1985. Johnson, patricia a., “the task of the philosopher: Kierkegaard/Heidegger/ gadamer,” Philosophy Today, vol. 28, 1984, pp. 3–18. Joós, Ernő, Isten és lét: körséta Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche és más filozófusok társaságában [god and existence: walking about with Heidegger, Kierkegaard nietzsche and other philosophers], sárvár: sylvester János Könyvtár 1994. Kisiel, theodore, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time, berkeley, California: university of California press 1993. Kisiel, theodore and thomas sheehan (eds.), Becoming Heidegger: On the Trail of his His Early Occasional Writings, 1910–1927, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 2007. Kitou, eiichi, 「キェルケゴールとハイデッガー」[Kierkegaard and Heidegger], in his 『ハイデッガーの存在学』 [Heidegger’s ontology], tokyo: toyoushuppan 1935, pp. 183–9. Koskinen, lennart, Søren Kierkegaard och existentialismen—om tiden, varat och evigheten, nora: nya doxa 1994, p. 8; p. 14; p. 75; p. 84; pp. 165–80. Kristensen, Jens erik and søren gosvig olesen, “offentlighedens anonymitet. Journalismekritikken hos Kierkegaard, de tarde og Heidegger,” Undr, vol. 54, 1988, pp. 34–47. Kuypers, etienne, “lof der schemering. Het dilemma tussen de contingentie van het bestaan en de fundering van een historisch-cultureel universalisme,” in Over Heidegger gesproken, ed. by etienne Kuypers, leuven and apeldoorn: garant 1993 (Rondom Filosofen, vol. 5), pp. 99–117. lancellotti, marco, Filosofie sintetiche del linguaggio (Kierkegaard, Croce, Cassirer, Heidegger), rome: bulzoni 1982 (Biblioteca di Cultura, vol. 218). Larrañeta Olleta, Rafael, “Kierkegaard y Heidegger. La verdad de la filosofía,” in Acercamiento a la obra de Martin Heidegger, ed. by mariano Álvarez gómez, salamanca: sociedad Castellano-leonesa de Filosofía 1991, pp. 27–46.

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— “el poder revelador y liberador de la nada. Conato de retorno al maestro eckhart partiendo de Kierkegaard y Heidegger,” in Ética y Sociología. Estudio en memoria del profesor José Todolí O. P., ed. by luis méndez Francisco, madrid and salamanca: universidad Complutense de madrid-san esteban 2000, pp. 603–24. løgstrup, Knud e., Kierkegaard und Heideggers Existenzanalyse und ihr Verhältnis zur Verkündigung, berlin: blaschker 1950 (Breviarium litterarum, vol. 3). lübcke, poul, “angstbegrebet hos Kierkegaard og Heidegger,” Agrippa, vol. 3, no. 1, 1980, pp. 5–33, and vol. 3, no. 2, 1980–81, pp. 58–82. — “modalität und zeit bei Kierkegaard und Heidegger,” in Die Rezeption Søren Kierkegaards in der deutschen und dänischen Philosophie und Theologie. Vorträge des Kolloquiums am 22. und 23. März 1982, ed. by Heinrich anz, poul lübcke, and Friedrich schmöe, Copenhagen and munich: Fink 1983 (Text & Kontext, sonderreihe, vol. 15), pp. 114–34. magurshak, dan, “the Concept of anxiety: the Keystone of the Kierkegaard– Heidegger relationship,” in The Concept of Anxiety, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1985 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 8), pp. 167–95. — “despair and everydayness: Kierkegaard’s Corrective Contribution to Heidegger’s notion of Fallen everydayness,” in The Sickness unto Death, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1987 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 19), pp. 209–37. Malik, Charles, “To Honor Martin Heidegger (1889–1976): A Christian Reflection on martin Heidegger,” The Thomist, vol. 41, no. 1, 1977, pp. 1–61. malik, Habib C., Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought, washington, d.C.: Catholic university of america press 1997, pp. 391–4. mariani, eliodoro, Analisi esistenziale e pre-comprensione della fede: da Kierkegaard ad Heidegger e Bultmann, le premesse filosofiche della demitizzazione, rome: Istituto Pedagogico Pontificio Ateneo Antonianum 1980. meynen, gerben, Angst in “Sein und Zeit” van M. Heidegger & het begrip angst van S. Kierkegaard. Een vergelijking, ph.d. thesis, university of amsterdam, amsterdam 1991. — “excurs: Kierkegaard en de herhaling,” in his Vrijheid en tijd. Het begrip herhaling in Heideggers “Sein und Zeit,” budel: damon 2005, pp. 189–207. mjaaland, marius g., “the autopsy of one still living. on death: Kierkegaard vs. Heidegger, levinas, and derrida,” in “Prefaces” and “Writing Sampler”/“Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions,” ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 2006 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vols. 9–10), pp. 359–86. mulhall, stephen, Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, oxford: oxford university press 2001. nesiote, n.a., Ὑπαρξισμὸς καὶ χριστιανικὴ πίστις. Ἡ ὑπαρκτικὴ σκέψις ἐν τῇ φιλοσοφίᾳ καὶ ἡ χριστιανικὴ πίστις ὡς τὸ ἀναπόφευκτον καὶ βασικὸν πρόβλημα αυτῆς κατὰ τὸν Sören Kierkegaard καὶ τοὺς συγχρόνους ὑπαρξιστὰς φιλοσόφους Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger καὶ Jean-Paul Sartre, athens: menuma 1985.

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nordentoft, Kresten, Kierkegaard’s Psychology, trans. by bruce H. Kirmmse, pittsburgh: duquesne university press 1978, p. 28; p. 248; p. 394; p. 397. pieretti, antonio, “analisi semantica del concetto di angoscia esistenziale,” Studium, vol. 78, 1982, pp. 601–10. pinto, v., “l’esperienza cristiana della verità. appunti per un confronto tra Heidegger e Kierkegaard,” Atti Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche di Naples, vol. 100, 1990, pp. 283–308. pöggeler, otto, Neue Wege mit Heidegger, Freiburg and munich: Karl alber1992, pp. 25–6; p. 33; p. 36; p. 40; p. 66; pp. 79–80; p. 87; p. 94; p. 99; p. 118; p. 120; p. 127; p. 136; p. 144; pp. 149–55; p. 161; p. 180; p. 196; p. 258; p. 267; p. 282; p. 289; p. 304; p. 322; p. 342; p. 388; p. 430; pp. 468–9; p. 474; p. 477. Prokopski, Jacek Aleksander, “Egzystencja i nicość. Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre” [existence and nothingness. Kierkegaard, Heidegger, sartre], in Aktualność Kierkegaarda. W 150 rocznicę śmierci myśliciela z Kopenhagi, ed. by antoni Szwed, Kęty: Antyk 2006, pp. 109–39. przekupowski, david m., Dialogical Authenticity: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the Quest for Authentic Identity, ph.d. thesis, university of south Carolina, Columbia, south Carolina 2005. Quist, wenche marit, “when your past lies ahead of you. Kierkegaard and Heidegger on the Concept of repetition,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2002, pp. 78–92. — Tidslighed og eksistens hos Kierkegaard og den tidlige Heidegger, ph.d. thesis, university of Copenhagen, Copenhagen 2004. rahimi, pejman, “‫ من كيركيغارد لهايدغر‬:‫[ ”اگزيستانسياليسم‬existentialism: From Kierkegaard to Heidegger], Seday-e Edalat, november, 2002, p. 6. regina, umberto, “la visione esistenziale della natura in Kierkegaard, nietzsche, Heidegger,” in La concezione della natura nella scienza attuale, nella poesia, nella filosofia. Convegno di Naples (26–27 ottobre 1994), naples: loffredo 1995, pp. 151–66. — “La finitudine dell’uomo, l’onnipotenza di Dio e il senso dell’essere. Da Kierkegaard a Heidegger,” in Kierkegaard: filosofia e teologia del paradosso, Atti del Convegno tenuto a Trento il 4–6 dicembre 1996, ed. by michele nicoletti and giorgio penzo, brescia: morcelliana 1999, pp. 280–91. — “oltre la modernità ripercorrendo la via esistenziale da Kierkegaard al secondo Heidegger,” Acta Philosophica, vol. 8, no. 2, 1999, pp. 223–50. reilly, g.d., Self-Understanding as the Hermeneutic Principle in the Theology of Rudolf Bultmann, with Reference to the Work of Martin Heidegger and Søren Kierkegaard, ph.d. thesis, King’s College, university of london, london 1982. rocca, ettore, “l’antigone di Kierkegaard o della morte del tragico,” in Antigone e la filosofia. Hegel, Kierkegaard, Hölderlin, Heidegger, Bultmann, ed. by pietro montani, rome: donzelli 2001, pp. 73–84. saint-germain, Charles-Éric de, L’avènement de la vérité: Hegel, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, paris, budapest and turin: l’Harmattan 2003. schrag, Calvin o., The Problem of Existence: Kierkegaard’s Descriptive Analysis of the Self and Heidegger’s Phenomenological Ontology of Dasein, ph.d. thesis, Harvard university, Cambridge, massachusetts 1956–57.

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schulz, Heiko, “germany and austria: a modest Head start: the german reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome i, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception, Resources, vol. 8), pp. 307–419; see pp. 354–8. schulz, walter, “interpretatorische Hinweise auf die philosophie Kierkegaards, nietzsches und Heideggers,” in his Die Vollendung des deutschen Idealismus in der Spätphilosophie Schellings, stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1955, pp. 274–90. schweidler, walter, “die angst und die Kehre. zur strukturellen verbindung Heideggers mit Kierkegaard,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, vol. 42, 1988, pp. 198–221. seidel, george J., “musing with Kierkegaard. Heidegger’s ‘besinnung,’ ” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 34, 2001, pp. 403–18. slote, michael a., “existentialism and the Fear of dying,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 12, 1975, pp. 17–28. (reprinted in Language, Metaphysics, and Death, ed. by John donnelly, new York: Fordham university press 1978, pp. 69–87.) smith, James K.a., “alterity, transcendence and the violence of the Concept. Kierkegaard and Heidegger,” International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 38, 1998, pp. 369–81. Soykan, Ömer Naci, “Varoluş Yolunun Ana Kavşağında: Korku ve Kaygı— Kierkegaard ve Heidegger’de Bir Araştırma” [Fear and Anxiety: Kierkegaard and Heidegger on the Crossroads of the way to existence], Doğu-Batı, april 1999, pp. 35–53. spanos, william v., “Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and the Hermeneutic Circle. towards a postmodern theory of interpretation as dis-closure,” in Martin Heidegger and the Question of Literature: Toward a Postmodern Literary Hermeneutics, ed. by william v. spanos, bloomington and london: indiana university press 1976, pp. 115–48 (also in Boundary, vol. 2, no. 4, 1975–76, pp. 455–88). stack, george J., “Concern in Kierkegaard and Heidegger,” Philosophy Today, vol. 12, 1969, pp. 26–35. — “the language of possibility and existential possibility,” The Modern Schoolman, vol. 50, 1973, pp. 159–82. stambaugh, Joan, “existential time in Kierkegaard and Heidegger,” in Religion and Time, ed. by anindita niyogi balslev and J.n. mohanty, leiden: e.J. brill 1993 (Studies in the History of Religions, vol. 54), pp. 46–60. takenouchi, Hirobumi, 「ハイデガーとキルケゴール—実存的カテゴリーの問 題をめぐって」 [Heidegger and Kierkegaard—the problem of the existential Categories], 『思索』 [shisaku: meditations (society of philosophy, tohoku university)], vol. 35, 2002, pp. 61–80. ― 「「瞬間」[augenblick]と「突如」[exaiphnes]—ハイデガーのキルケゴー ル批判をめぐって」 [the moment and the exaiphnes—Heidegger’s Criticism of Kierkegaard], 『東北大学哲学会年報』 [annual reports of tohoku philosophical association], vol. 19, 2003, pp. 29–45. theunissen, michael, “das erbauliche im gedanken an den tod. traditionale elemente, innovative ideen und unausgeschöpfte potentiale in Kierkegaards rede An einem Grabe,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2000, pp. 40–73.

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— Kierkegaard’s Concept of Despair, trans. by barbara Harshav and Helmut illbruck, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 2005, p. 4; pp. 26– 30; p. 32, note 69 and note 73; p. 65; p. 67; p. 70; p. 72; pp. 130–1; p. 133, notes 74–6 and notes 77–8. theunissen, michael and wilfried greve (eds.), Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, Frankfurt am main: suhrkamp 1979, pp. 66–73. thomassen, niels, “det eksistentielle synspunkt hos Kierkegaard og Heidegger,” Exil, vol. 3, 1968–69, pp. 33–6. thulstrup, niels, “Kierkegaard, Heidegger og løgstrup,” Kristeligt Dagblad, september 28, 1951. treiber, gerhard, Philosophie der Existenz. Das Entscheidungsproblem bei Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus. Literarische Erkundung von Kundera, Céline, Broch, Musil, Frankfurt am main et al.: peter lang verlag 2000. turner, Jeffrey s., The Concepts of Truth in Science and Morality with Occasional Reference to Heidegger and Kierkegaard, ph.d. thesis, Yale university, new Haven, Connecticut 1987. tuttle, Howard n., The Crowd is Untruth: The Existential Critique of Mass Society in the Thought of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Ortega y Gasset, new York: peter lang 1996 (American University Studies, series v, vol. 176). ussher, arland, A Journey Through Dread: A Study of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre, new York: devin-adair 1955. Vajda, Mihály, “Kétségbeesés és gond. Késői kora-Heideggeriánus széljegyzetek Kierkegaard Die Krankheit zum Tode című könyvéhez” [Despair and Anxiety. late notes in the spirit of the early Heidegger to Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death], Hiány, no. 3, 1993, pp. 24–28. (republished in Kierkegaard Budapesten, ed. by andrás nagy, budapest: Fekete sas 1994, pp. 372–89.) van buren, John, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King, bloomington, indiana: indiana university press 1994, pp. 150–7; pp. 157–203. visker, rudi, “demons and the demonic: Kierkegaard and Heidegger on anxiety and sexual difference,” in Immediacy and Reflection in Kierkegaard’s Thought, ed. by paul Cruysberghs, Johan taels, and Karl verstrynge, leuven: leuven university press 2003 (Louvain Philosophical Studies, vol. 17), pp. 181–95. vogt, annemarie, Das Problem des Selbstseins bei Heidegger und Kierkegaard, gießen: lechte 1936. waelhens, H. de, “Kierkegaard et Heidegger,” in his La Philosophie de Martin Heidegger, louvain: Éditions de l’institut supérieur de philosophie 1942, pp. 330–52. wahl, Jean, “Heidegger et Kierkegaard,” Recherches philosophiques, vol. 2, 1932– 33, pp. 349–70. (also contained in L’un devant l’Autre, paris: Hachette 1998, pp. 69–95.) — “Heidegger et Kierkegaard,” in his Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: aubier 1938, pp. 455–76 and passim. white, Carol Jean, Time and Temporality in the Existential Thought of Kierkegaard and Heidegger, ph.d. thesis, university of California at berkeley, berkeley 1976.

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wyschogrod, michael, Kierkegaard and Heidegger: The Ontology of Existence, london: routledge & Kegan paul 1954. zach, i., Existenziale phänomenologische Hermeneutik bei Martin Heidegger. Untersuchungen im Zusammenhang mit Husserl, Kierkegaard und Dilthey, ph.d. thesis, university of vienna, 1981. zawacki, a., “ ‘the break is not a break.’ Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and poesis as abiding love,” The Antioch Review, vol. 62, 2004, pp. 156–70. zimmerman, michael, The Eclipse of the Self, athens, ohio: ohio university press 1981. zizi, paolo, Ontologia della libertà. (Tra Kierkegaard–Heidegger–Fabro), sassari: edizioni unidata 1987.

michel Henry: the goodness of living affectivity leo stan

Préserver ainsi la vraie nature de l’homme, c’est reconnaître en lui une essence qui, d’une certaine façon, n’est pas la sienne mais celle de l’absolu en tant que Vie dans laquelle prennent naissance les individus que nous sommes.1

though intimately belonging to the twentieth-century school of phenomenology, michel Henry (1922–2002) has not acquired the world fame of other phenomenologists such as martin Heidegger, maurice merleau-ponty, emmanuel levinas, Jacques derrida, not to mention their mentor, edmund Husserl. in spite of the sometimes severe criticisms from within or without phenomenology,2 the freshness, tenacity, and rigor of Henry’s thought cannot be missed, whilst a definitive judgment on its philosophical breadth is far from having been reached. it might not be coincidental that an author whose entire intellectual career was somewhat selfeffacing, albeit perennially incisive, had modest origins. michel Henry was born this article has been written with the help of a generous grant offered by the social sciences and Humanities research Council of Canada, for which i am most grateful. 1 michel Henry, Auto-donation: entretiens et conférences, ed. by magali uhl, montpellier: prétentaine 2002, p. 74. 2 see in this sense, Phénoménologie et christianisme chez Michel Henry, ed. by philippe Capelle, paris: Éditions du Cerf 2004; dominique Janicaud, Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française, Combas: editions de l’éclat 1991; antonio Calcagno, “michel Henry’s non-intentionality thesis and Husserlian phenomenology,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, vol. 39, no. 2, 2008, pp. 117–29; John milbank, “the soul of reciprocity (part one),” Modern Theology, vol. 17, no. 3, 2001, pp. 335–91, see especially pp. 355–66; michael Kelly, “dispossession: on the untenability of michel Henry’s theory of self-awareness,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, vol. 35, no. 3, 2004, pp. 261–82; James Hart, “michel Henry’s phenomenological theology of life: a Husserlian reading of C’est moi, la vérité,” Husserl Studies, vol. 15, 1999, pp. 183–230; Jeremy H. smith, “michel Henry’s phenomenology of aesthetic experience and Husserlian intentionality,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2006, pp. 191– 219; Jeffrey Hanson, “phenomenology and eschatology in michel Henry,” in Phenomenology and Eschatology: Not Yet in the Now, ed. by neal deroo and John panteleimon manoussakis, aldershot: ashgate 2009, pp. 153–66; rudolf bernet, “Christianity and philosophy,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 32, 1999, pp. 325–42.

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in Haiphong in contemporary Vietnam as the son of a marine officer and a concert pianist. ten days after his birth his father died in a car accident. in 1929, he returned with his mother and elder brother to France, where he attended the lycée Henryiv in paris, thriving in an environment imbued with art, literature, and philosophy. after completing a master’s thesis with the title Le Bonheur de Spinoza, he joined the French resistance in 1943, where was nicknamed “Kant” because the only book he carried in his backpack was the Critique of Pure Reason. From 1945 on, he imparted his philosophical versatility at l’université paul valéry in the quiet sunny surroundings of montpellier, after having graciously refused a professorial position at the sorbonne. His wide journeys led him through eastern europe and even to Japan. the authorial activity and conference schedule were every bit as intense. He retired in 1982 and died twenty years later.3 Henry’s indubitable contribution to phenomenology matches his novelistic authorship, the value of which was promptly noted and even valued. (the need for literary expression should not be ignored in any comparison between Henry and Kierkegaard, two authors who devoted their entire reflective energy to probing the endless depths of human inwardness.) Worthy of mention is also that the scope of Henry’s thought was broad enough to include topics as dissimilar as marxist anthropology,4 Kandinsky’s art,5 the genesis of psychoanalysis,6 the barbarity of modern scientism,7 and the hidden philosophical treasures of Christianity.8

3 For more biographical details, see paul audi, Michel Henry. Une trajectoire philosophique, paris: les belles lettres 2006, pp. 9–14 and paul audi, “vivre avec michel Henry. entretien avec anne Henry,” in Auto-donation, pp. 187–216. 4 michel Henry, Marx, vols. 1–2, paris: gallimard 1976. (english translation: Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality, trans. by K. mclaughlin, bloomington: indiana university press 1983.) michel Henry, Phénoménologie de la vie, tome iii, De l’art et du politique, paris: presses universitaires France 2004, pp. 11–182. see also gabrielle dufour-Kowalska, Michel Henry. Un philosophe de la vie et de la praxis, paris: vrin 1980, see especially pp. 125–237; gabrielle dufour-Kowalska, Michel Henry. Passion et magnificence de la vie, paris: beauchesne 2003, pp. 85–149; raphaël gély, Rôles, action sociale et vie subjective. Recherches à partir de la phénoménologie de Michel Henry, brussels: peter lang 2007. 5 michel Henry, Voir l’invisible. Sur Kandinsky, paris: presses universitaires France 2005 and Henry, Phénoménologie de la vie, tome iii, pp. 203–40. 6 michel Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse. Le commencement perdu, paris: presses universitaires France 1985. (english translation: The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis, trans. by douglas brick, stanford: stanford university press 1993.) 7 michel Henry, La barbarie, paris: grasset 1987. 8 michel Henry, C’est moi la Vérité. Pour une philosophie du christianisme, paris: seuil 1996. (english translation: I Am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, trans. by susan emanuel, stanford: stanford university press 2003.) michel Henry, Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair, paris: seuil 2000; michel Henry, Paroles du Christ, paris: seuil 2002.

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I. Either Life or the World in general, Henry’s philosophical work approaches every theme in a purely phenomenological fashion. that is to say, Henry programmatically starts from the most basic principle of Husserlian phenomenology which is that “appearing is more essential than being,”9 while his reflections circle around the immediate environment wherein phenomena present themselves to us. as any other consistent phenomenologist, after having performed the epoché,10 he zeroes in solely on what is immediately given and the way it is given. But Henry is not completely satisfied with this principle. throughout his entire corpus, he incessantly aims to reform classical phenomenology by focusing not on the multiple phenomena we encounter in the world but rather on phenomenality itself, more exactly, on “the manner in which givenness gives itself, pure manifestation manifests itself, and pure revelation reveals itself.”11 the French philosopher christens his phenomenology “ideal”12 or “radical,”13 and he wants to count søren Kierkegaard, for reasons that will soon be more obvious, amongst its sparse forefathers. the call for this sweeping renewal has a very clear explanation. Henry alleges that, as it has been practiced so far, phenomenology betrayed its initial goals. accordingly, he includes (and opposes) under the heading “historical phenomenology” Husserl’s antemortem corpus and Heidegger’s analytic of dasein from Being and Time.14 michel Henry, “phénoménologie de la vie,” in Phénoménologie de la vie, tome i, De la Phénoménologie, paris: presses universitaires de France 2003, pp. 59–76; see p. 60. (english translation: “phenomenology of life,” Angelaki, vol. 8, no. 2, 2003, pp. 100–9; see p. 100.) 10 every phenomenological inquiry is necessarily preceded by a thorough reduction (otherwise known as epoché), whose telos is to abolish what Husserl called “the natural attitude.” this radical bracketing is meant, more exactly, to free the mind of conventional opinions, scientific consensuses of any kind, common sense psychology, cultural assumptions, religious beliefs, and all metaphysical theories of the human subject. 11 michel Henry, “le Christianisme: une approche phénoménologique,” Annales de Philosophie, vol. 18, 1997, pp. 3–17, see p. 4. see also michel Henry, “phénoménologie et sciences humaines,” in Auto-donation, pp. 17ff. throughout this article, unless otherwise stated, all translations from the French are mine. 12 Henry, “le Christianisme,” p. 3. 13 michel Henry, “la question de la vie et de la culture dans la perspective d’une phénoménologie radicale,” Phénoménologie de la vie, tome iv, Sur l’éthique et la religion, paris: presses universitaires France 2004, pp. 11–29. 14 another philosopher whom Henry recurrently relates to is rené descartes; see, for example, michel Henry, Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps: essai sur l’ontologie biranienne, paris: presses universitaires France 1965, pp. 189–213. (english translation: Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, trans. by girard etzkorn, the Hague: martinus nijhoff 1975, pp. 136–53.) Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse, pp. 17–52. (The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis, pp. 11–40.) michel Henry, Phénoménologie de la vie, tome ii, De la subjectivité, paris: presses universitaires France 2003, pp. 57–107; Henry, “phénoménologie et sciences humaines,” pp. 20–1; michel Henry, “Christianisme et phénoménologie,” in Autodonation, pp. 109ff.; pp. 112–13; Henry, “la question de la vie,” pp. 15–17. the other two phenomenologists with whom Henry occasionally enters into dialogue are merleau-ponty and Jean-luc marion; see Henry, Phénoménologie de la vie, tome i, pp. 77–104. 9

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against the mainstream voices of the phenomenological school, Henry declares that, in lieu of dealing with objects for the sake of thematizing their multisided phenomenal givenness,15 phenomenology must address first and foremost the pure fact of appearing.16 in the past, provided the necessity of epoché plus the equal emphasis on intuition and intentionality (consciousness is always consciousness of something), phenomenology prioritized exteriority at the expense of the living interiority of the ego. as a result, consciousness was thought only in relation to an outward objectivity and appearing per se, as a heterogeneous manifestation.17 For Henry, despite its claim to originality, traditional phenomenology has thus perpetuated an ancient prejudice which originates in greek philosophy and which conceives phenomenality in accord with the perception of external objects. to designate this theoretical position, which remains severely questionable from a phenomenological standpoint, Henry uses the formula, “ontological monism.”18 in other words, the original discovery of michel Henry is that classical phenomenology refrained from adequately and completely thinking through pure phenomenality19 and instead addressed phenomena only in terms of the world’s transcendence. Numerous phenomenologists have thus become fixated on a type of appearing that comes from without, remains qualitatively different from the human self, and arises only within the horizon of the world.20 However, Henry’s concern goes in a different direction. He asks whether “a mode of revelation exist[s] other than the showing of intentionality, in which phenomenality would no longer be that of the outside?”21 The answer to this question will include an inflexible critique of ontological monism. Henry’s claim is that everything related to the world is fundamentally contingent upon exteriority, concealing an indifference as to what is given in and through it. moreover, every appearing in the world is in and by itself unable to set out reality or confer existence upon itself.22 as such, the world is indelibly marked by an incapacity to generate or grant being to anything within its compass. because it is transcendent, reasons Henry, what becomes manifest in the exteriority of the world receives its being or phenomenality from somewhere else. From where? Henry’s definitive answer is: from the immanence of life. In this way, his return will be not to the things themselves, as Husserl demanded, but rather to an “essence of manifestation” that is unconditionally opposed to all givenness in the world. this is Husserl’s approach from On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, trans. by John barnett brough, dordrecht: Kluwer 1991. 16 Henry calls it l’apparaître pur; see “phénoménologie et sciences humaines,” p. 19. For more details on Henry’s critiques, see Henry, “le Christianisme,” pp. 4–7; and michel Henry, “Quatre principes de la phénoménologie,” in his Phénoménologie de la vie, tome i, pp. 77ff. 17 “the positing of phenomenality,” Henry observes, “is the movement through which intentionality projects itself outwardly to reach an intentional correlate as transcendent object.” Henry, “le Christianisme,” p. 6. 18 On this specific issue, see Kowalska, Henry. Un philosophe de la vie, pp. 31–5. 19 Henry, “phénoménologie et sciences humaines,” p. 19. 20 Henry, “le Christianisme,” p. 5. 21 Henry, “phénoménologie de la vie,” p. 61. (“phenomenology of life,” p. 101.) 22 Henry, “phénoménologie de la vie,” p. 63. (“phenomenology of life,” p. 102.) 15

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broadly speaking, “life” is the Henryian term for a non-worldly type of phenomenality which is uniquely defined by inner unity or ipseity, self-experience, potency, and especially, affectivity. the reader may have realized by now that, on Henry’s account, life’s mode of appearing is “radically different from that of the world.”23 in fact, here the antithesis between life’s immanence and the world’s transcendence is so emphatic that the former is often referred to as acosmic.24 this is the case because in each of its modalities life quintessentially represents “a self-revelation that experiences itself.”25 since life is always “abrupt, immediate, incontestable, insuperable,”26 there is no hiatus or intentionality-bound separation between life and itself.27 moreover, aside from its unalloyed self-manifestation and contrary to the ontologically impotent world, life is able to generate itself, while sharing its essence with all living beings, as well.28 in sum, if there is life, it cannot be otherwise than immanent, self-referential, and absolute.29 and since it enjoys itself in its self-experience and remains attached to everything it touches, life is pure affection or, as Henry likes to call it, archi-passibility. next, insofar as life’s relation to every living (human) is “foreign to the world,” “ipseity” is another major category of a genuine phenomenology.30 Henry’s argument seems to be that, if human self-experience offers the only access to pure phenomenality, and if what life experiences in the first place is always itself, then there must be a direct connection between the self-revelation of life and human individuality. as Henry puts it rather cryptically, “in life’s process of self-generation, of pathetic selfrevelation in its self-experience and self-enjoyment,” we are confronted with an “ipséité essentielle,” with “a singular self which embraces itself, affects itself, and rejoices in itself.”31 more simply put, in every person life experiences itself fully, 23

p. 8.

Henry, “Christianisme et phénoménologie,” p. 116; see also Henry, “le Christianisme,”

Henry, “phénoménologie et sciences humaines,” p. 24. For the way in which Henry defends himself against the indictment of solipsism, see Phénoménologie de la vie, tome iv, chapters i–iv, pp. 11–66; Henry, Incarnation, §§ 47–8, pp. 339–59; and Henry, “le Christianisme,” pp. 15–16. 25 Henry, “Christianisme et phénoménologie,” p. 116. 26 Henry, “phénoménologie de la vie,” p. 66. (“phenomenology of life,” p. 103.) 27 Henry writes: “the first decisive trait of the revelation of life is that, because it carries no divide or gap within it and never differs from itself, it only ever reveals itself.” Henry, “phenomenology of life,” p. 103. 28 ibid.: “whereas [the appearing of the world] differs from everything that it causes to show itself, in such a way that it is totally indifferent to every such thing, life, on the contrary, keeps within it that which it reveals; it resides inside, in every living being, as that which causes it to live and never leaves it for as long as it lives.” Henry also speaks of a “pathetic, suffering, and volitional immediacy” in every living human. Henry, “Christianisme et phénoménologie,” p. 117. 29 Henry, “phénoménologie de la vie,” pp. 66–7. (“phenomenology of life,” p. 104.) 30 see also audi, Michel Henry, pp. 120–33; Kowalska, Henry. Passion et magnificence, pp. 63–81. a compelling account of singularity in Henry’s overall phenomenology is offered by adina bozga, The Exasperating Gift of Singularity: Husserl, Levinas, Henry, bucharest: zeta books 2009, see especially pp. 241–304. 31 Henry, “le Christianisme,” p. 11. 24

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albeit invisibly. reciprocally, “there can be life only from the viewpoint of the living (vivant) and no living could exist without carrying life within him or her.”32 taken together, pure immanence and ipseity are direct evidence of the affective unity of life. unlike the world which, by virtue of its constitutive neutrality, lets all objects appear in an unconcerned fashion, life is thoroughly suffused with an elemental pathos.33 it is due to the innate affectivity of life that the human self is in its turn eternally, as it were, given to itself and can never rid itself of what it is. we shall soon see how this thesis will prove momentous in Henry’s incorporation of Kierkegaard in The Essence of Manifestation. But before that, two observations are in order. The first is that in Henry’s historical considerations Kierkegaard figures, alongside Schopenhauer34 and nietzsche,35 as the father of a nineteenth-century current, weak, yet remarkable, which takes life as its privileged object of philosophical inquiry. Henry interprets this rather thin line in the history of philosophy as a reaction against the intellectual revolution initiated by galileo, whose apex is attained in contemporary times through the barbaric or nihilistic elimination of life and the absolutization of science. the second preliminary remark is that Kierkegaard’s name surfaces time and again in Henry’s works, and always in relation to past heroic attempts to salvage the philosophical dignity of living subjectivity. a succinct overview of these marginal references to Kierkegaard might thus be an appropriate entry into the citadel of Henry’s reception. to begin with, as early as 1948 Henry expressed his admiration for the danish thinker in a novel titled Le Jeune Officier and published in 1954.36 In his most influential philosophical work, The Essence of Manifestation, Henry comments that because he has been “capable of advancing into a new region and thereby of conferring a new dimension on ontology,” Kierkegaard is antagonistic towards the culture of modernity and should be lauded on that ground.37 within an anthropological perspective, the French author appreciates Kierkegaard’s understanding of greek sensuality as an enigma,38 the active side of passivity,39 the self-reference of despair,40 plus the fact that the science of psychology is unable to explain away the qualitative changes or leaps within human existence.41 moving Henry, “phénoménologie et sciences humaines,” p. 27. For details, see also Kowalska, Henry. Un philosophe de la vie, pp. 54–8; pp. 79–97; pp. 117–24; audi, Michel Henry, pp. 133–54. 34 Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse, pp. 159–99. (The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis, pp. 130–63.) Henry, Phénoménologie de la vie, tome ii, pp. 109–46. 35 Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse, pp. 249–342. (The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis, pp. 204–80.) Henry, Phénoménologie de la vie, tome ii, pp. 147–61. 36 audi, Michel Henry, p. 11. 37 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, paris: presses universitaires de France 1963, p. 57. (english translation: The Essence of Manifestation, trans. by girard etzkorn, the Hague: martinus nijhoff 1973, p. 44.) 38 that is to say, as free of culpability. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 136, note 12. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 110, note 12.) 39 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 371. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 298.) 40 Henry, C’est moi la vérité, pp. 166–7. (I Am the Truth, p. 132.) 41 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 519 note 10. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 413, note 10.) However, later in the same book, Henry maintains that qualitative determinations 32 33

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to the ethical domain, Henry mistakenly attributes to Kierkegaard the thesis that ethics entails a certain permanence, by dint of which “each generation…finds itself confronted with the same task as the preceding generation.”42 on religious soil, Henry draws inspiration from Kierkegaard’s depiction of god as hidden in and indiscernible from, the realm of appearance.43 that might explain why he illustrates the complete concealment of essence in its very manifestation with Kierkegaard’s discussion of the biblical motif of the lily in the field.44 next, Kierkegaard is associated by Henry with the augustinian apothegm that god is interior intimo meo et superior summo meo (more inward than my innermost and higher than my uppermost).45 Finally, a possible intimation of the contemporaneity with Christ as interpreted by Kierkegaard is briefly brought up by Henry when the latter develops the problem of intersubjectivity.46 scattered throughout the Henryian corpus are also a few obscure allusions, the textual origin of which one cannot identify with certainty. these short references lead us to expect that Kierkegaard links horror with the inability to grasp the intimacy of the absolute,47 that he defended the timelessness of evil,48 the externality of revelation,49 the positive qualification of sinfulness,50 or that he allegedly separated real existence from organic corporeality.51

do not arise from decisional leaps. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 842. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 669.) Contrast this with, for example, SKS 4, 388 / CA, 85. 42 Henry, Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps, p. 6, note. (Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, p. 4, note 4.) the allusion is to Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. Henry forgets that Kierkegaard views faith in god as an endless unfathomable task for every singular individual of every generation, vis-à-vis which ethics may be a temptation, given the ethical requirement of universality and intelligibility. SKS 4, 153 / FT, 59–60. 43 Here Henry hints at the Christ’s incognito. Henry, “Christianisme et phénoménologie,” p. 124. 44 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 552. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 440.) later, Henry will quote Kierkegaard to suggest that “what manifests itself…in the world, has nothing to do with the reality of life.” Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 563 and note 7; Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, p. 449 and note 7. the quotation can be found in Jean wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: aubier 1938, p. 289. 45 the expression appears in book 3 of augustine’s Confessions. Henry, “Christianisme et phénoménologie,” p. 125. 46 Henry, Incarnation, p. 350. 47 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 383. (The Essence of Manifestation, pp. 307–8.) 48 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, pp. 564–5. (The Essence of Manifestation, pp. 450–1.) Henry equates the atemporality of evil with the universality of despair as affirmed by Kierkegaard in SKS 11, 138–44 / SUD, 22–8. 49 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 837. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 666.) this may be a possible allusion to Philosophical Fragments, though this particular title never explicitly surfaces in Henry’s comments on or references to Kierkegaard. 50 Henry, Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps, p. 302. (Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, p. 217.) this might be a covert reference to SKS 4, 392 / CA, 89, though it does not faithfully render Kierkegaard’s point. 51 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 795. (The Essence of Manifestation, pp. 633–4.)

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In general, the issue of which specific books Henry used does not pose too many problems. recurrent and abundant references are made, as we shall soon see, to The Sickness unto Death and The Concept of Anxiety. Henry seems to have been familiar with “what we learn from the lilies in the Field and from the birds of the air”52 and Practice in Christianity.53 a secondary source for Henry’s reception is Jean wahl’s (1888–1974) classical study, Études kierkegaardiennes.54 with the exception of the lax references just mentioned, nothing entitles us to assume that Henry’s knowledge of Kierkegaard’s authorship went beyond these limits. II. When Despair is not a Sickness unto Death it is interesting to note that some of these brief remarks on Kierkegaard found a very rich soil in Henry’s thought. Christ’s incognito—the particular instantiation of a larger withdrawal of the divine—the antimodern impetus of Kierkegaard’s thought, the incommensurability between positivistic psychology and the intimate workings of subjectivity, and especially, the absolute’s disclosure within human interiority had a strong impact on Henry, especially given his unique place and internal polemics in the phenomenological movement. As Kierkegaard’s influence on his work did not pass unnoticed in scholarly circles,55 the present study will suggest additional paths in this direction, doubled by a series of more critical remarks. prior to that, however, i intend to detail carefully the major interpretations of Kierkegaard from The Essence of Manifestation and Incarnation. overall, my hypothesis will be that, despite its limitations, selectivity, and even misunderstandings, Henry’s exegesis succeeds in opening a fresh perspective on Kierkegaard, the scope and implications of which we can barely guess. after all, if contemporary phenomenology should pay more attention to Kierkegaard’s understanding of temporality, subjective concreteness, and religious existence, Kierkegaard scholarship can immensely profit from the considerable results of phenomenological thought. in this regard, Henry’s exegesis is just the tip of a much larger iceberg. The first significant encounter with Søren Kierkegaard occurs in the closing section of Henry’s monumental volume The Essence of Manifestation, published in 1963 and elaborated over the previous 15 years or so. For our purposes here, we should keep in mind that in this book, an indisputable landmark in the history of twentieth-century european thought, Henry lays the groundwork for a transcendental phenomenology of life that is supposed to bridge the gap that classical phenomenology established between phenomena and their phenomenality. it is not my intention to even try to summarize Henry’s reasoning, whose amplitude, complexity, coherence, Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 552, note 3. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 440, note 3.) the text is part two of Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. in the note Henry references the passage found in SKS 8, 286 / UD, 188. 53 Henry, Incarnation, p. 350. 54 see note 44 above and Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 563, note 7. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 449, note 7.) 55 Hanlon, introduction to Henry, “phenomenology of life,” p. 97. audi, Michel Henry, p. 233. see also the bibliography below. 52

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and innovativeness are difficult to match. Suffice it to say that in The Essence of Manifestation, Henry propounds (pace Heidegger) a subject-centered ontology, wherein affective self-experience is posited as primordial to the exclusion of all mediation by the world. In addition, Henry finds in subjective affectivity or affective ipseity “the ultimate foundation of all things in the sense of a phenomenological foundation.”56 thirdly, apart from bespeaking the essence of human selfhood, which is life, affectivity represents “the first condition of [human] sensibility.”57 Throughout a significant part of his book, Michel Henry shows how, phenomenologically, the difference between life’s self-delight and self-enduring is negligible. For this very reason, Kierkegaard, who has already intuited the radical unity between suffering and joy, reaps Henry’s praise. in support, Henry invokes the idea, probably taken from The Sickness unto Death, that when at its peak, despair might turn into the origin of beatitude.58 secondly, Henry sees in Kierkegaard the proponent of “a positive ontology of subjectivity, an ontology which in the philosophy of existence plays the role of an essential foundation.”59 and if to this we add that Henry takes despair to be a modality of the affective ground that ensures the cohesion of human selfhood, then his enthusiasm for Kierkegaard begins to gain clearer contours. but let us see the argument behind this intellectual interest. Henry frontally approaches Kierkegaard’s subjective ontology in the conclusion of his magnum opus, more exactly in chapter 70. broadly put, Henry attempts to demonstrate the connection between despair and the affective core of being. the larger aim is to suggest that the absolute, whose structure is radical immanence, inhabits every person and reveals itself without remainder as affectivity. Henry’s reasoning can be summarized thus: if the unity of the self is ensured by a passive relation to being; if this unifying passivity cannot be conceived outside the affective dimension of human existence; and if despair is but one tonality of affectivity, it immediately follows that despair is inextricably linked to the immanent ground of the self’s existence. in essence, despair negatively confirms this fact by revealing the impossibility for the self to detach itself from its immanent origin. in attempting to break the affective bond between the self and the source of its life, notes Henry, despair discovers that “it cannot do this and encounters an insurmountable contradiction.”60 Consequently, “[in] despair, in suffering, in each [affective] tonality of existence there is revealed, as that which reveals it to itself, the absolute.”61 our affects come thus to indicate not only the absoluteness of life, but also the unbreakable unity of our selfhood. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 825. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 656.) Jean-François lavigne, “de l’être de l’ego à la parole de dieu: parcours philosophique et pensée phénoménologique dans l’œuvre de michel Henry,” in Michel Henry, la parole de la vie, ed. by Jad Hatem, paris: l’Harmattan 2003, pp. 21–34, see p. 27. 58 Henry, “phénoménologie de la vie,” p. 73. (“phenomenology of life,” p. 107.) 59 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 519, note 10. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 413, note 10.) by “philosophy of existence” Henry designates the existential phenomenology of Karl Jaspers. 60 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 857. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 681.) emphasis in original. 61 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 858. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 682.) 56 57

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“affectivity,” continues Henry, “reveals the absolute in its totality because it is nothing other than its perfect adherence to self, nothing other than its coincidence with self, because it is the self-affection of being in the absolute unity of its radical immanence.”62 that said, it does not surprise us that Henry sets himself the goal of showing that Kierkegaard’s category of despair, taken as an affective tonality amongst others, makes us realize that affectivity constitutes the ground of both life’s ipseity and human selfhood. Yet, the connection with Kierkegaard’s expostulations on the spiritual import of despair is not so straightforward. and that is due, i think, to Henry’s methodology, in general. the phenomenological reduction obliges him, in a sense, to dispense with all metaphysical assumptions (such as Kierkegaard’s Christian creationistic psychology) in the interest of bringing forth the transcendental structures that allow phenomena to appear. and this is how Henry’s methodology works when applied to Kierkegaard’s ontology of despair. Henry starts from the premise that in The Sickness unto Death Kierkegaard astutely perceives and poignantly theorizes63 “the fundamental affective tonalities of existence.”64 in addition, these tonalities are integrated by Kierkegaard “in the internal structure of immanence, as pure possibilities willed and prescribed by it.”65 However, after openly admitting that, for Kierkegaard, “the ego…is the relationship to self…posited by another,”66 Henry leaves behind Kierkegaard’s hairsplitting analysis of the self’s relation to this other and the task to become oneself before the other. instead, he alleges that despair phenomenalizes itself “in the impossibility for the ego of breaking the bond which attaches him to himself, namely, his relationship to himself, in the impossibility of escaping this suffering.”67 put otherwise, despair emerges when “the ego ontologically bound to itself in its original passivity with regard to self, in the relationship to self which constitutes it, refuses this passivity, decides to break this relationship.”68 by implication, despair belongs exclusively to the sphere of interiority or, to use the Henryian parlance, to immanence. its selfundermining proclivities notwithstanding, despair validates the self’s passivity towards and ineradicable adherence to, itself. in brief, while in despair, subjectivity experiences, though via negativa, its living core. after pointing out that, for Kierkegaard, the object of despair is an “eternal self,” Henry restates that ipseity is the very crux of life, the endlessly suffering and/ ibid. Henry considers Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death “a theoretical work.” Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 851 note 23. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 676, note 23.) 64 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 850. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 676.) 65 ibid. 66 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 852. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 677.) emphasis in original. 67 despair, Henry writes, issues from a will to “[burst] the bonds which attach the ego to itself, the will to defeat oneself.” ibid. 68 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 852. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 678.) the same holds true for the kind of despair which is phenomenalized as willing to be itself, that is to say, as willing to be a self which one is not. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, pp. 856–7. (The Essence of Manifestation, pp. 680–1.) 62 63

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or joyful self-experience of an immanence which is averse to all transcendence. moreover, as it bespeaks the indestructibility of life, despair must be “a mode of eternal and absolute life.”69 when translated into the language of theology, this tenet amounts to claiming that the “foundation of despair is god himself.”70 nonetheless, in Henry’s account (as in Kierkegaard’s), despair remains equivocal. For, besides a phenomenalization of absolute life, despair constitutes a monstrous attempt to unbind the inextricable, to destroy the unbreakable, to annihilate the eternally living. what that means is that despair wills to inaugurate a certain distance between the ego and itself “so that the ego could be rid of itself and no longer be concerned about its own life.”71 the crucial proviso here is that “this attempt of life at destroying itself and separating itself from itself, of destroying itself or of knowing itself, does not destroy life any more than it knows it; it is only a new mode of this life, a form of despair.”72 the despairing self is therefore inevitably impotent vis-à-vis life. more tragic, however, is that its obstinate and continuous attempts to objectify the latter, to institute an impossible self-distance, and to thus defy the ontological texture of reality fuels the ceaseless perpetuation of despair. so, when looked upon phenomenologically, Kierkegaard’s analysis of the malady of spirit becomes the equivocal confirmation of an ontology of the subject, whose threefold roots are immanence, life, and affectivity. in the opening section, i have alluded to the fact that Henry’s phenomenology will derive some of its ultimate tenets from a close analysis of human corporeality. below, we shall see how Kierkegaard’s discussion of anxiety from The Concept of Anxiety allows Henry to project his phenomenology of embodied subjective life within a Christologicaltrinitarian perspective.73 whereas with his right hand Kierkegaard equips Henry with an illustration of the centrality of affectivity for an ontology of the individual self, with his left hand he will open a decisive path into a possible phenomenology of a transcendental body. III. Anxiety, Divine Life, and Filial Corporeity in the opening pages of Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, michel Henry remarks that “[to] the extent that it puts mind and body into relationship, this structure [i.e., the ontological constitution of human existence] is the most ‘dialectic’ of all, it is a paradox which we can, with Kierkegaard, look upon as fundamental, for it truly Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 855. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 679.) Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 857. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 681.) 71 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 855. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 680.) in this regard, one could argue that despair operates as an affective correlate of the ontological monism which, we remember, depreciates pure phenomenality—i.e., life’s self-generating, self-revealing, and self-sustaining ipseity—by reducing it to the appearing of objects in the exteriority of the world. 72 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 855. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 680.) emphasis in original. 73 the most complete expression of Henry’s Christian phenomenology of life can be found, however, in C’est moi la vérité. 69

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plays the role of a foundation.”74 the context and telos of this statement coincide with those depicted in the beginning of our exploration. since he intensely opposes every form of ontological monism, Henry considers it imperative to reinvestigate the specific phenomenality of the human body, however, by way of opposition to the Husserlian analyses of intentional consciousness and pure ego, or to merleau-ponty’s own account of the flesh.75 For Henry, the insuperable life of the ego is concretized before anything else in our corporeality which is susceptible to various impressions. With that in mind, he asserts that “we can no longer limit [the first philosophy’s] field to the sole sphere of [disembodied or pure] subjectivity; its object is actually something altogether different, for example, it is this dialectical structure which inextricably binds consciousness with the body, or again, it is existence precisely as existence of a real and incarnated being.”76 generally speaking, what Henry envisions is to show how the spirit’s coincidence with the body within human nature represents a privileged avenue in thinking the ultimate livingness of the immanent. nevertheless, Kierkegaard’s contribution to a fresh understanding of corporeality is not developed within the confines of Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body. Henry takes it up in another work. the book is titled Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair and is usually known as the first installment of Henry’s Christian trilogy.77 exactly 37 years after the publication of The Essence of Manifestation, the montpellier phenomenologist reopens the problematic of his chef d’oeuvre, but this time against the backdrop of the trinitarian doctrine of Christianity. to anticipate, the “Christian turn” of Henry’s thought emerges when genesis and, especially, the prologue to the gospel of John are phenomenologically contemplated as a coherent transcendental theory on the incarnate condition of humanity and its divine origin.78 Though without an apologetic agenda or theological-fideistic undertones, this unexpected shift of perspective faced severe opposition within the phenomenological school.79 However, Henry nonchalantly rejected all critiques by claiming that we can discern a cardinal kinship between the phenomenology of life and the philosophical infrastructure of Christianity. the general argument of Incarnation starts from the rather evident premise that every corporeal sensation or act is always doubled by a living self-experience. “our mundane body,” Henry states, “does not point only to an invisible subjectivity: under its visible forms there hides, always present and alive, a living body [une chair] which does not cease impressing itself in the pathos of its night.”80 in the preceding pages, i have outlined the major traits of la vie as a phenomenological category. Henry, Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps, p. 3. (Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, p. 2.) 75 see note 14 above. 76 Henry, Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps, p. 10. (Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, p. 7.) 77 see note 8 above. 78 Henry, Incarnation, pp. 324–6. 79 rudolf bernet, “Christianity and philosophy,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 32, 1999, pp. 325–42; dominique Janicaud, La phénoménologie dans tous ses états, paris: gallimard 2009. 80 Henry, Incarnation, pp. 285–6. 74

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Amongst these traits we have identified the intrinsic absoluteness and unsurpassable invisibility of life’s unique phenomenality. in Incarnation the novel element tackled by Henry is the constitutive, autonomous intelligibility and indomitable power of life. Life, Henry holds, is undergirded by “a phenomenological self-justification” or “self-revelation, over which nothing could exert its power and which thus establishes [oeuvre] every single modality of life, the most frightening, as well as the noblest.”81 Concurrently, Henry insists that he does not hereby endorse an irrational vitalism. His justification is that, in all of its manifestations, life is driven by a primordial transparency or archi-intelligibility, the coordinates of which have been intuited by the author of the gospel of John. From here on, Henry’s phenomenological approach will consistently converge with the trinitarian language of Christianity, and that not haphazardly. in describing “the reciprocal phenomenological interiority between life and its word,”82 the prologue to the Johannine gospel points, according to Henry, to nothing less than the unity between each living human and absolute life or god. in other words, our individual existence, which remains forever incapable of giving reality to itself, is given to itself “only within the absolute and infinite life of God.”83 with or without our awareness, our finitude dwells in and is inhabited by God as long as it is alive. moreover, the relation between humanity and god mirrors the dynamic between life and its word, on the one hand, and that between the word and every conceivable transcendental self, on the other.84 translated into the Henryian vocabulary, we read that “it is in the word itself, in the originary ipseity of the archi-son that every transcendental Self is riveted to itself, given to itself as this specific Self that it is.”85 In the final analysis, the fact that every individual is transcendentally subjected to an unrepeatable singularity through the self-givenness of life reflects the intratrinitarian and non-worldly dynamic between the Father (or life) and the son (or the logos). so, if we accept that, transcendentally speaking, we are all individual sentient selves,86 that god is the invisible life in us,87 and that vitality is the primary attribute of our body, then Christ or the embodied son becomes “the transcendental phenomenological condition, which is also ultimate and radical, of all flesh possible.”88 Since our flesh ultimately reflects the “Archi-passibility of the Archiflesh of absolute Life,”89 a phenomenological investigation of the human body will be congruous with the phenomenology of incarnation that undergirds the Christian religion.90 what interests me here is not the legitimacy of Henry’s interaction with ibid., pp. 320–1. ibid., p. 352. 83 ibid. 84 ibid., p. 351. 85 ibid. 86 ibid., p. 322. 87 ibid., p. 327. 88 ibid., p. 365. 89 ibid., p. 318; the same idea is formulated on p. 365. 90 ibid., p. 366. see also Kowalska, Henry. Passion et magnificence, pp. 233–52; sébastien laoureux, L’immanence à la limite. Recherches sur la phénoménologie de Michel Henry, paris: Éditions du Cerf 2005, pp. 179–232. 81 82

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Christian theology. Rather I find relevant that la chair, by dint of its fundamental difference from the objective body which is manifestable solely in the exteriority of the world, confirms the Judeo-Christian teaching from Genesis 1:27 concerning the “co-naturalness between the divine and human essence.”91 in this manner, the subjective or living body becomes the phenomenological gateway to god. Furthermore, in line with the Christian doctrine of the triune deity, Henry holds that the preeminent transcendental conditions of corporeality are the generation of the word within the Father and the incarnation of logos.92 but what is the precise place and relevance of Kierkegaard in this baroque picture? we have seen how in The Essence of Manifestation, Henry brings to light the phenomenological relevance of The Sickness unto Death and interprets despair as the affective ground of the self’s being. in Incarnation, Henry goes a step further. He explicitly calls Kierkegaard “the creator [inventeur] of a radical phenomenology,”93 who, due to an “acknowledged precedence of affectivity,”94 proposed a nonHegelian (and non-Heideggerian) “dialectic of pathos.”95 to clarify his point, at the outset of § 37 Henry connects Kierkegaard’s genius with the thematization of the interdependence between “the concept of anxiety and that of possibility [pouvoir].”96 thereby he hopes to establish that, “by linking anxiety to possibility, Kierkegaard invites us to test [Henry’s] own thesis, in conformity to which transcendental affectivity constitutes the internal possibility of every conceivable [bodily] force or power.”97 Kierkegaard thus assists Henry in showing how every human act is fuelled by a series of affective determinations which remain heterogeneous to the “calculating foreseeing thought” and to the appearing in the world, governed as it is by the laws of exteriority, visibility, and representation.98 the reason why Kierkegaard deserves the honorable title of an authentic phenomenologist is, according to Henry, twofold. First, together with despair, anxiety reconfirms the self’s pathos-filled oneness with itself. It attests, writes Henry, that “there is in us a transcendental self incapable of throwing itself off.”99 second, besides denoting “the paroxysmal expression of the essence of self,” of the fervor, whereby and wherein the self is fastened to itself, anxiety is inseparable from “the possibility of being able which is the Self’s infinite freedom.”100 Freedom is Henry, Incarnation, pp. 321–2. ibid., pp. 332–3; p. 367; p. 373. 93 ibid., p. 272. 94 ibid., p. 270. 95 ibid., p. 282 and note 1. Kierkegaard’s dissimilarity to Heidegger’s analytic of dasein is cursorily stated in L’essence de la manifestation, p. 519, note 10. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 413, note 10.) 96 Henry, Incarnation, p. 270. in French, pouvoir as a noun means power or force, while its verbal form designates the generic fact of being able to do something. thus, the very semantics of the word will enable Henry to connect Kierkegaard’s anxiety of being able with the various capacities or powers of human corporeality. 97 ibid., p. 270. 98 ibid., p. 273. 99 ibid., p. 278. 100 ibid., p. 277. 91 92

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connoted here in the most immediate sense, but also within a transcendental-vitalist horizon. this can be seen from Henry’s thesis that the body’s basic ability to move and by implication every human act necessarily proceed from “a radical freedom conferred on the individual in the process of one’s generation in the absolute life as a transcendental self.”101 Kierkegaard enters the picture when Henry endeavors to prove that the equal self-giving of life in each individual lies at the origin of the free motility of the human body. with that goal in mind, Henry turns to the “reduction of objectivity” which purportedly underlies Kierkegaard’s discussion of anxiety via innocence. He observes that by performing “an initial elimination of all objectivity,”102 Kierkegaard’s anxious innocence allows us “to situate the possible…outside the realm of thought and within the radical immanence of life, to which innocence allots an exemplary pathos.”103 Furthermore, as ignorant, innocence should be conceived along the lines of “an immediate unity with itself and [as] absorbed, as it were, within this immediacy.”104 and since by dint of its ipseity, innocence substantiates an inescapable self-givenness, while, as we said, its living character is fraught with pathos, it immediately follows that innocence shares all the attributes of la chair. In sum, “all flesh is innocent.”105 Kierkegaard’s lesson so far is that anxiety secretly dwells within innocence as its innermost affect, placing every one of us before the “abyssal possibility” of being able. moreover, given the co-existence in its gist of pleasure and repulsion, anxiety coevally obeys “the law of pathos” and is susceptible to “the vertigo of freedom.”106 in short, in anxiety the ardent gift of life intersects the bodily “i can” of the transcendental self. moreover, if the anxious possibility of being able “supports every elementary power of our living body (chair),”107 then the relevance of the Kierkegaardian anxiety to a renewed phenomenology of immanent life cannot be easily contested. in this way Henry discerns an incontestable link between anxiety—which is, let us not forget, an affective tonality108—the human body, and this body’s livingsentient-active nature. what we have established so far is that, when considered in the horizon of innocent immediacy, of pure possibility,109 and of corporeal acts, the

ibid. ibid., p. 272. 103 ibid., p. 274, emphasis in original. “impermeable to the knowledge of thought, innocence does not, in fact, cease experiencing itself in its proper pathos. in point of fact, it is only in this sense that, while given in its pathetic immediacy, without being concerned to see or to be seen, something like innocence is possible.” ibid. 104 ibid., p. 273. 105 ibid., pp. 274–5. 106 ibid., p. 276. 107 ibid., p. 275. 108 ibid., p. 291; p. 310. 109 in Henry’s reading, the possibility of being able, which Kierkegaard understands as intimately related to anxiety, is part and parcel of the ipseity of the transcendental self. this constitutes an additional reason for taking Kierkegaard as a radical phenomenologist. ibid., pp. 288–9. 101 102

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phenomenological import of anxiety appears beyond doubt. but that is not the case, Henry hurries to add, of the Kierkegaardian analysis in its entirety. more exactly—and this is the second major thesis of Henry’s reading of The Concept of Anxiety—although the forerunner of a radical phenomenology, Kierkegaard was not radical enough. Henry commences with the observation that, beginning with § 5 of The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard puts forward an “explanation” of Angest which is severely clouded by exteriority, intentionality, and absurdity. From this point onward, the Kierkegaardian analysis leaves the territory of “the internal phenomenological structure of the transcendental self”110 and enters the realm of ontological monism. in what sense? the object of Henry’s criticism is the Kierkegaardian view of the spiritual self as the synthesis of two irreconcilable constituents. Here it is noteworthy that of the two ontological pairs deployed by Kierkegaard, namely, psyche/body111 and temporality/eternity, Henry retains only the former.112 what he also observes is that in Kierkegaard’s view, the spirit perceives itself as being paradoxically united with the corporeal component of the synthesis. why is this perception paradoxical? because, as Kierkegaard conceives them, none of the elements involved in the spirit’s synthesis could exist on its own. this amounts to saying that, if taken separately, neither the body, nor the soul, and not even the spirit is self-sufficient. What is more, even if it is the third that synthetically brings together two completely different elements, the spirit somewhat finds itself in each of them.113 thus, “The Concept of Anxiety builds a dialectic wherein the body could not exist as it is, that is, as a mere body, as animal rawness, nor could the spirit subsist and remain in itself since ‘it has its self outside itself’ because of its paradoxical relation to an external body which belongs to it.”114 However, Henry professes that the anxiety and paradoxicality, by means of which the spirit experiences its own corporeality, hide more truth than Kierkegaard ever realized. Kierkegaard might reenter the path of genuine phenomenology but only on the condition that we interpret spirit as life, and anxiety as what indelibly links the spirit to the body. Henry’s claim is that Kierkegaard remains praiseworthy for having intuited the possible analogy between a spirit whose bond with its corporeality is essentially anxious (and therefore, ambiguous), and the constitutive equivocity of the human body, in general. However, for Henry, the body is not only a material entity ruled by an opaque physiology and commensurable with representational (that is, ontologically ibid., p. 279. SKS 4, 349 / CA, 43. SKS 4, 354 / CA, 48. 112 SKS 4, 388 / CA, 85. precisely for this reason Henry misreads Kierkegaard with reference to the connection between human sexuality and the emergence of time. according to Henry, Kierkegaard sees sexuality as giving rise (via objective anxiety) to temporality. Henry, Incarnation, p. 292. at the same time, for Henry, such an understanding of temporality qualifies a philosophical view as ontologically monist. In contradistinction, The Concept of Anxiety explicitly states that temporality is posited solely by the moment, wherein “time constantly intersects eternity and eternity constantly pervades time.” SKS 4, 392 / CA, 89. 113 Henry, Incarnation, pp. 284–5: “the spirit resides in each term of the synthesis, and thus not only in our soul, but also in our objective body.” 114 ibid., pp. 279–80. 110 111

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monistic) thinking. the body strikes us also as the repository of the immanent, invisible, non-worldly absoluteness of a chair vivante.115 Thus, what Henry finds remarkable in Kierkegaard’s psychology is that the spirit’s ambiguity is generated by anxiety and the bodily component of the synthesis. For it is in the twilight of anxiety that the spirit appears as both this material body “with its functions—nutrition, excretion, and so on, with its destiny, its arduous development, its ephemeral maturity, and inevitable decline,” and at the same time, as the “intelligible contemplation of eternal verities or the joy of living and experiencing itself.”116 Henry reasons that since the spirit is torn between the physiological materiality and an empyrean sublimity, and since the latter two are separated by “an abyss which the spirit could never cross [by itself],”117 Kierkegaard is compelled to posit anxiety as immanent to human spirituality, and the unity between the spirit and the body, as absurd. but where exactly did Kierkegaard go wrong? Henry answers: Kierkegaard never takes into consideration the objective body as such; he understands it only in its synthetic relation to the soul in the spirit….this implies, of course, that this body “differs” from the spirit, but also that in its turn and in itself the spirit has nothing to do with the absurd, but rather with its opposite: the domain of an absolute justification and legitimation, of an self-legitimation….by not distinguishing the twofold source of anxiety whose intuition it blazingly pursued, the Kierkegaardian analysis slides out of the [radical] reduction to the extent that the paradoxical synthesis between body and soul in the spirit, which surreptitiously renders this body and particularly the sexual difference as objective determinations, points, and inevitably so, to the ek-static appearing of the world. it is as placed within such exteriority that the sexual difference suddenly seems absurd and anxiety-laden to a spirit which does not recognize itself in it.118

Kierkegaard does not realize, in other words, that “the presence of spirit within our body” authenticates that we are all subjected to transcendental life, and that primarily by virtue of our inborn corporeality.119 His error is to have conceived the spirit’s selfrelation as exterior, and therefore in the horizon of the world. How so? indeed, the spirit recognizes itself as one with the body, but because its mission is arguably to focus on immaterial truths, it deems the former recognition unnatural and absurd. nevertheless, Henry states, if we leave aside such a dualistic-heteronomous approach and adopt a radically phenomenological perspective, Kierkegaard’s synthesis between the body and soul in the spirit has the inestimable merit of unearthing the originary life of our visible bodies. in Henry’s wording, [precisely] because our objective body is a magical, constitutively double object, because under its surface given to light, under the visible shore of its skin, fastened to and inseparable from it, there unfolds the invisible of our organic body that abides in the ibid., p. 286. ibid., p. 281. 117 ibid. 118 ibid., pp. 283–4, emphasis in original; p. 300. the bracketing Henry talks about here is the radical reduction to the sphere of immanent life, whereby phenomena are seen in their phenomenality in lieu of the outward horizon of the world. see section i above. 119 Henry, Incarnation, p. 285. 115 116

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Henry’s apprehension regarding Kierkegaard’s possible ontological monism goes even deeper. the French phenomenologist holds that the Kierkegaardian argument is open to question not solely due to its positing of a heterogeneity between spirit (that is, life) and body. by reducing the body to its sexuality, Kierkegaard superimposed on the extant dissimilarity an anxiety-filled distance between spirituality and the gendered condition of humanness. now, the spirit will experience an even greater disturbance than that provoked by its merely embodied nature.121 two consequences immediately follow, according to Henry. First, the anxiety that underlies the exteriority-based rapport between body and spirit cannot have any phenomenological pertinence. the most it could do, and this is the second implication, is to make plain the inevitable failure of all erotic desire which in Henry’s thought designates the attempt to reach and feel the other in their pathetic self-experience. interestingly enough, the intrinsic impossibility of eros to get through to the other’s life will be taken up by Henry as a prop for the trinitarian-phenomenological tenets propounded at the end of Incarnation.122 Ironically, he thus confirms that 153 years after Kierkegaard’s Works of Love the deadlocks of eroticism are still a valid introduction to the truth of Christianity.123 be that as it may, the erotic phenomenon could be highly illustrative for the philosophical crossroads discussed here. that is to say, even if Kierkegaard’s and Henry’s thought part ways in more than one regard, with their encounter a completely new and unexplored landscape opens before our eyes. it is to a synoptic layout of this landscape and its determinate bounds that i turn in the concluding section. IV. An Unfinished Dialogue ultimately, one can only speculate as to the magnitude of Kierkegaard’s direct influence on Henry. For in addition to the open interaction which I have just detailed, Henry’s thought proposes a significant number of tenets whose flavor seems to have come straight from the Kierkegaardian cuisine. Far from exhausting the list, i mention en passant Henry’s realization of the in principle impossibility of

ibid., p. 287, emphasis in original. see also 1 Corinthians 15:39–44. Henry, Incarnation, p. 305: “the Kierkegaardian analysis leaves behind the sphere of immanence when it turns to what i called the second source of anxiety, i.e., the synthesis of body and soul in the spirit, the body being considered in itself and by its sexual difference as an objective phenomenon.” 122 ibid., §§ 40–5, pp. 292–329. 123 Yet, we should not forget that, whereas Kierkegaard struggled with the possibility and status of a Christian ethics crowned by the imperative of neighbor love, Henry endeavors to unpack phenomenologically the trinitarian message of the Johannine prologue. 120 121

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knowing the absolute,124 his processual depiction of selfhood,125 and the affective or pathos-informed roots of thinking, in general.126 not to be missed either is the fact that Henry equates the individual person with a selfhood whose source lies not in oneself but in god,127 and that for him, Christianity exhibits a non-greek type of thinking.128 Kierkegaard’s student cannot but regret that, when expanding on the reciprocal and foundational relation between joy and suffering in view of life as god, Henry never mentions the Kierkegaardian Christian Discourses. the latter can effortlessly be understood as a devotional application of the phenomenological ontology of affectivity sketched above.129 another Kierkegaardian feature is the constitutive duplicity of Christ whom Henry endeavors to think at the crossroads between the visible humanness and the godly invisibility.130 similarly to Kierkegaard, he notes that the Word of God (or Christ) edifies us only incognito, that is to say, by hiding its gift.131 next, like Kierkegaard but starting from slightly dissimilar premises, Henry is acutely aware that the ethical must be thought in terms of living subjectivity,132 while a proper comprehension of intersubjectivity cannot turn its back to religion.133 in a different register, when Henry deplores the “dilution of living thought within the anaemic confines of representation,”134 we are instantly reminded of Kierkegaard’s own multilayered warnings against the dissolution of the concrete self in and by abstract objectivity. also, Henry’s relentless attacks against modern science, which he finds guilty of a barbaric omission or nihilistic banishment of life, echo Kierkegaard’s uneasiness concerning the scientific advancements of his contemporaneity.135 Finally, in both Kierkegaard and Henry we come across Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 511. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 407.) a few lines down Henry actually quotes Kierkegaard stating that socrates’ ignorance was a form of apprehensive worship of the true god. Henry also shares with Kierkegaard the recognition of the discrepancy between philosophical rationalism and reality (or the truth). Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 516. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 411.) 125 Henry, Incarnation, p. 357. 126 Henry, “phénoménologie de la vie,” p. 70 (“phenomenology of life,” p. 105); Henry, “Christianisme et phénoménologie,” pp. 113–14. 127 Henry, “le Christianisme,” p. 14. Henry, Auto-donation, p. 136. another important proto-Kierkegaardian point in this respect is that Christ relates solely to single individuals. Henry, Incarnation, p. 354. 128 Henry, “Christianisme et phénoménologie,” p. 110. 129 see, for instance, Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 843. (The Essence of Manifestation, pp. 670–1.) SKS 10, 107–66 / CD, 95–159. 130 Henry, “Christianisme et phénoménologie,” p. 122. SKS 12, 132–40 / PC, 127–36. see also SKS 4, 133–6 / FT, 38–41. 131 Henry, Incarnation, p. 358. 132 Henry, “le Christianisme,” p. 15. SKS 7, 124–31 / CUP1, 133–41. SKS 7, 326–8 / CUP1, 357–60. 133 Henry, Incarnation, p. 347. 134 Hanlon, introduction to Henry, “phenomenology of life,” p. 98. 135 Henry, “phénoménologie et sciences humaines,” p. 26. Henry, “Christianisme et phénoménologie,” pp. 109–12; p. 115; p. 118. Henry, “la question de la vie,” pp. 17–19. For Kierkegaard’s criticisms against natural sciences, see SKS 25, 185–8, nb27:72 / JP 3, 2823. SKS 20, 58–62, nb:70 / JP 3, 2807. SKS 20, 63–7, nb:73 / JP 3, 2809. SKS 20, 69, nb:80 / 124

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an exquisitely argued denunciation of self-idolatry in all spiritless individuals, an attitude stemming from a larger suspicion against modern democracy.136 as in any other exchange between two great minds, perspectival differences and unintended misconceptions are inevitable. Since five studies on Henry’s reading of Kierkegaard are already available,137 my aim below is merely to suggest a few additional considerations in the hope that they will soon be studied in greater detail. one of the most striking limitations of Henry’s reception issues from the utter disregard for Kierkegaard’s use of pseudonymity and its existential maieutic. this negligence has dire consequences for Henry’s interpretation of anxiety and also for his position vis-à-vis certain views defended in The Sickness unto Death. For example, by completely ignoring the pseudonymous roots of both The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death, Henry misses the fact that the relationship between their pseudonyms is conceived by Kierkegaard hierarchically. vigilius Haufniensis is a highly skilled dialectician who wonders whether contemporary psychology can cover such enigmatic phenomena as evil, original sin, and faith. by contrast, antiClimacus is a declared Christian, a spirit superior to Haufniensis, whose fideistic pronouncements remind us of the old testament prophets, even though they are concomitantly counterbalanced by conceptual rigor and dialectical refinement. equally dubious is the fact that in Henry’s judgment, there is no difference between anxiety and despair. For him, they are both modalities of life or manifestations of the affective core of the human condition.138 However, even if it is conceived by Kierkegaard as a psychological state, anxiety is also the condition of possibility for primordial sin, in particular, and for sinfulness, in general. in its turn, despair strikes one as a more or less personal (i.e., conscious-volitional) attitude. thus, despair in Kierkegaard’s sense is not a state one inherits or is born into, but rather a misrelation to the self’s transcendent founder, god. in sum, whereas anxiety is an affective tonality, albeit soteriologically informed, despair points beyond affects and toward a degraded relationality. in contrast to anxiety which is the “transcendental” condition of sin, despair is sin as such. Hence the Christological-salvific core of The Sickness unto Death which Henry, again, completely bypasses. the next questionable aspect is that the ego and the self are used interchangeably in Henry’s reading of Kierkegaard from The Essence of Manifestation. Henry forgets here that in The Sickness unto Death selfhood is defined along the lines of a selfrelational synthesis of opposite elements, whose spirituality does not reside in its synthetic character (as Henry claims vis-à-vis Kierkegaard’s analysis of anxiety) but rather in its relation to itself. moreover, Henry does not acknowledge that Kierkegaard differentiates between a theological and an ontic self, so to speak, and that the latter must consciously and willfully pursue the former. the task of self-becoming in JP 4, 4267. SKS 20, 71, nb:84 / JP 3, 2817. SKS 20, 73–4, nb:87 / JP 3, 2820. SKS 23, 44, nb15:65 / JP 4, 4174. SKS 24, 314–15, nb23:222 / JP 3, 2822. SKS 25, 324, nb29:45 / JP 3, 2824. 136 Henry, Incarnation, p. 359. 137 see nicole tambourgi-Hatem’s and Jeffrey Hanson’s articles in the bibliography. 138 see Henry, Incarnation, p. 310 and Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 851 (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 677).

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Kierkegaard implies therefore an intentional and endless relation to oneself.139 even more importantly, the unending nature of self-becoming stems from the fact that, due to the fallen condition of subjectivity, the theological self cannot be fully and flawlessly actualized in this life, though it remains a perpetual telos. in the same soteriological context, despair gives rise to an “infinite qualitative abyss” between the human and the divine, the ontological implications of which are vastly ignored by Henry.140 the most noticeable among them is that the ground of despair is not the Creator, as Henry wants it, but human evil. another point that Henry completely passes over in silence is that, far from indicating our impenetrable ipseity, despair, according to Kierkegaard’s depiction, could lead to self-estrangement and fatally turn against life either through physical suicide or through its demonic assaults against god. my general conjecture is that Henry’s exegesis could be severely contested if we take a closer look at the topic of sin in Kierkegaard’s works, and particularly at the infinite qualitative difference between the immanent and the transcendent. In this sense, the following remark made by the French thinker on the occasion of a paper given in montpellier in 1996 speaks for itself: my perspective is phenomenological, it is a phenomenology of life. in a lutheran perspective, for example, everything i have said is inaccurate since the human being is placed at the level of sin and lives in an evil universe. Consequently, as Kierkegaard puts it, faith [foi] consists in the belief [croyance] that it is possible to make a leap into another dimension, namely, that of the apocalypse wherefrom evil is absent. it is a faith in the possibility to live on a level which is free from all evil. i, for one, did not approach this aspect of the issue, mea culpa!141

this oversight is, i claim, not a mere accident. since he is concerned with the affective ipseity of life and as suspicious of any philosophical discourse centered on exteriority, difference, or separation (which are all modes of appearing in the world), Henry is to a certain degree forced to brush aside Kierkegaard’s soteriological language of sin and salvation, together with the individual’s debilitating separation from god and one’s true self. to offer a peremptory example, when arguing that Kierkegaard admirably sees in adam the combination of a human archetype and a single individual, Henry envisions the transcendental truth that the essence is fully given in each of its manifestations, that life fully, though imponderably, experiences itself in every living.142 by contrast, Kierkegaard’s Haufniensis insisted that adam

139 Henry is as unaware that, for Kierkegaard, introspection—which institutes a distance towards or separation from oneself—remains an endless task. SKS 5, 87–106 / EUD, 79– 101. 140 that is why Henry cannot but disregard the Kierkegaardian criticisms of the mystical attitude, grounded precisely on the de facto impossibility of communing with the divine as long as sinfulness exists. 141 Henry, Auto-donation, p. 124. paul audi holds that the topic of sinfulness goes against the very spirit of Henry’s “onto-phenomenology.” audi, Michel Henry, p. 233, note 6. 142 Henry, Incarnation, pp. 324–5.

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remains the unique human being in the entire history of humankind, through whom sinfulness entered the world and thus changed it radically. to be even more accurate, from Kierkegaard’s dialectic between anxiety and sin Henry retains the following: The relation in terms of which anxiety and desire plunge into lapse [faute], rendering the latter effective, is just a mere instance of the absolutely essential and general relation which ties affectivity and action. This relation is precisely our own flesh….the reason why the Word has taken on a finite body [chair finie] like ours is that the latter fell prey to sin and death. Consequently, the flesh [chair]…opens a field wherein, while relegating the sensations of his desire to the relation touching/touched, man has the power, which he attributes to himself only, to become and make himself into whatever he wills, and thus to adore himself doubly, in this feigned power as well as in his pleasures. this selfadoration leads him to death because the object of adoration—the feigned power and the sensations it causes—does not have the capacity to empower itself, to give life to itself. And thus man adores his own impotence and entrusts himself to his finitude and death. by becoming incarnate, the word has taken unto itself the sin and death, which are inscribed into our finite body, and destroyed them by dying on the Cross. What is thus restored is the originary condition of humankind, its transcendental birth within the divine life, outside of which no life comes into life.143

However, for Henry, the Incarnation of Logos signifies not only the restoration of the primordial relationality between the human and the divine. the “First living,” the originary transcendental self, or the embodied son authenticates the very unity between the two realms within the ipseity of each living person.144 divine grace is not the unmerited gift given by an absolute deity to a creature unworthy of salvation (as Kierkegaard repeatedly affirmed) but a recondite indication of the original affectivity of absolute life.145 Henry goes so far as to hold that god experiences himself in our own flesh, that from a transcendental standpoint, there is no distance or separation between our individual corporeal existence and divine life.146 on this ground, Henry writes, “we must recognize between the Word and flesh much more than an affinity—rather an identity of essence which is nothing other than that of absolute life.”147 given the essential coincidence between humanity and divinity ibid., pp. 290–1; p. 334, emphasis in last sentence quoted is mine. see also ibid., p. 293; p. 310; p. 330; pp. 332–3; pp. 369–70. 144 Significant in this sense is Henry, C’est moi la vérité, pp. 71–167. (I Am the Truth, pp. 53–132.) 145 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 825. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 656.) 146 when he admits “the radical heterogeneity of transcendental affectivity towards sensibility,” Henry endeavors to argue solely that the former is the latter’s foundation. Henry, Incarnation, p. 329, emphasis in original. 147 Henry, “phénoménologie de la vie,” p. 75, emphasis added (“phenomenology of life,” p. 108). see also Henry, Incarnation, pp. 331–2, where it is stated that the embodied Word testifies to a “co-naturalness between divine essence and our essence.” Henry further clarifies: “Because, if a life like ours is incapable of giving life to itself, if it is given to itself for the sake of enjoying its life solely within the absolute infinite Life of God, then God’s life dwells in our finite life as the latter dwells in God as long as it lives. That is how the repetition of the reciprocal phenomenological interiority between life and its word within each living 143

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within the flesh, Henry will be perfectly entitled to observe that any affirmation of the absolute as transcendent reality—which by the way pervades Kierkegaard’s authorship as a whole—remains tributary to an intentional, and therefore worldoriented, understanding of revelation.148 As for Kierkegaard, it is precisely within a heterological-salvific framework that he discusses the self’s constitutive anxiety and achieved despair. on his judgment, to state anything about god, Christ, and their intratrinitarian rapports starting from these fallen human phenomena would be an entirely illegitimate correlation. within a postlapsarian perspective, the two ontological realms remain separated by a qualitative abyss.149 the most despair could communicate about god is that he is the only possible savior, and that the opposite of sin is faith. sinfulness in Kierkegaard points to a degraded or qualitatively compromised existence, to a life capable of murderously turning against itself and its truth. thus, as already suggested, if we are to read Kierkegaard’s soteriological Christianity through Henry’s terminology, then we have to admit that, inasmuch as sin posits an infinite qualitative difference and by consequence, an existential chasm between humanity and god, religiosity becomes commensurable with intentionality. and here it might be useful to remember that besides equating subjectivity with the truth, Kierkegaard (via Johannes Climacus) was as certain that, when understood soteriologically, subjectivity is untruth.150 ergo, from a strictly theological viewpoint, some differences between our thinkers are, indeed, insurmountable. with regard to human selfhood, it is not immediately evident that Kierkegaard ever favored a similarity of essence between the immanent and the transcendent. indeed, despite his relentless stress on sin, Kierkegaard adopts the language of creationism apropos of humankind, and that especially in The Sickness unto Death. moreover, the language of atonement and reconciliation with god is very prominent in Kierkegaard’s Christology. However, although he never denies that humans are made in God’s image or that the Word has become flesh, Kierkegaard would certainly have opposed any analogy between the generation of the son in the Father and the creation of human selfhood. also, beyond the language of love and personhood, Kierkegaard did not refrain from referring to god as the omnipotent immutable fundament of everything that is. next, even if creation issued

person [vivant] is accomplished, namely, as phenomenological interiority between this living and absolute life.” Henry, Incarnation, p. 352. see also ibid., pp. 327–8; p. 330; p. 351; p. 358. 148 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 847, note 14. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 673, note 14.) 149 This can be easily seen when comparing Henry’s definition of spirit as one with the third person of the trinity, to Kierkegaard’s notion of spirit as a derived, self-directed relation which is the object of a dramatic self-becoming through faith, suffering, and struggling against sin. For Kierkegaard, the latter three are all phenomenalizations of non-identity, of an ontological rupture. therefore, they must be undergirded by a distinct intentionality, whose status deserves further elaboration. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, pp. 859–60. (The Essence of Manifestation, p. 683.) 150 SKS 7, 189 / CUP1, 207.

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from agape (and thus from a gratuitous decision) in lieu of necessity, Kierkegaard would not doubt that the Creator is eternally independent of the created.151 as to the incarnation of logos, the danish thinker is rather suspicious of any attempt to go beyond the latter’s relevance for human salvation.152 suggestively enough, he associates Christ’s embodiment mainly with two specific issues: divine love and the human task of imitation. in his theology, the word’s corporeality is conceived exclusively in the horizon of the soteriological drama. Furthermore, the primary determinations of incarnation are absurdity and offense, two categories which could never be incorporated in Henry’s immanent phenomenology.153 that said, although fruitful results might be reached by comparing Kierkegaard’s and Henry’s Christology,154 it remains a fact that the former never linked the generation of the son in the Holy trinity to the creation of humankind depicted in the opening chapters of the bible. to conclude, the reception analyzed above possesses all the premises of a genuine dialogue which still awaits its full development. this possible exchange between Henry and Kierkegaard would be truly enriching for their oeuvres, particularly from a religious standpoint. For instance, Henry could convincingly argue that if the incarnation is a genuine event, then the meaning and ontological status of human corporeality is much more consequential than Kierkegaard led us to believe.155 Henry would thus help us understand whether Kierkegaard paid enough attention to the ontological condition of the body after Christ’s embodiment, and if not, why. in his turn, Kierkegaard, as already stated, would be justified to argue that Henry simply does not have enough reasons to speak about “the infinite distance that separates Christ from other people.”156 second, Kierkegaard would disapprove of Henry in the sense that, were we to assign sinfulness any real effectivity, immanence within a Christian perspective should not be conceived non-intentionally. in addition, sinfulness in Kierkegaard’s sense would bring further clarity to Henry’s (Christian) SKS 13, 325–39 / M, 263–81. the closest Kierkegaard gets to Henry is when he holds that incarnation implies a regenerative renewal of human nature and that in Christ god becomes a suffering servant. SKS 4, 230–42 / PF, 23–36. SV1 xii, 432–75 / JFY, 160–209. However, Kierkegaard was inflexible with respect to the affirmation of the eternal qualitative gap between the Savior and the sinful, which obstructs every sense of essential identity between them. For instance, SKS 11, 233 / SUD, 122. 153 see in this sense, Henry, Incarnation, pp. 350–1; p. 368; p. 370; p. 373. 154 the same could be said about ethics, the inconveniences of eroticism, and intersubjectivity. 155 in this regard, Kierkegaard’s view is prototypically protestant. that is, he never inquired into the possibility that the human body might be more than the source of (inner or outer) suffering and carnal temptation, though the orthodox Christological premises of his thought should have prompted him to do so. 156 Henry, C’est moi la vérité, p. 162. (I Am the Truth, p. 129.) moreover, Kierkegaard would retort to Henry that a properly Christological understanding of this distance is incommensurable with a dialectic of forgetfulness and recollection, which is specifically platonic. Contrast C’est moi la vérité, pp. 168–91 (I Am the Truth, pp. 133–51) with SKS 4, 218–22 / PF, 9–14. 151 152

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reflections on contemporary attacks against life.157 my hypothesis in this regard is that, when grasped as a highly destructive power, sinfulness may account better for the barbaric assaults against the sanctity of life and would also keep us on the Christian territory that is so dear to Henry. Fourthly, Kierkegaard can be seen as complementary to Henry if one grants his emphasis on the central role played by God’s self-sacrificial or suffering love in the economy of salvation and the essence of life. lastly, Henry seems unaware that Christian singularity is never a mere datum by virtue of the atemporal ipseity of life and the incarnation of the word. instead, as Kierkegaard constantly stresses, it connotes an ideality to be intentionally, permanently, and lovingly followed. after all, from a Christian perspective there might be more truth to intentionality, exteriority, and transcendence than michel Henry ever admitted.

see, for instance, Henry, Incarnation, p. 312. the most important work in this respect is La barbarie; see note 7 above.

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bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Henry’s Corpus L’essence de la manifestation, paris: presses universitaires de France 1963, pp. 56– 7; p. 136, note; p. 371; p. 383; p. 511; p. 519, note; p. 552; p. 563; p. 565, note; p. 795; pp. 837–8; pp. 850–8. (english translation: The Essence of Manifestation, trans. by girard etzkorn, the Hague: martinus nijhoff 1973, p. 44; p. 110, note 12; p. 298; p. 308; p. 407; p. 413, note 10; p. 440; p. 449; p. 451, note 8; p. 633; p. 666; pp. 676–82.) Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps: essai sur l’ontologie biranienne, paris: presses universitaires France 1965, p. 3; p. 6, note; p. 302. (english translation: Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, trans. by girard etzkorn, the Hague: martinus nijhoff 1975, p. 2; p. 4, note 4; p. 217.) Marx, une philosophie de la réalité, paris: gallimard 1976, vol. 1, pp. 37–8; p. 143; p. 146; p. 148–9; p. 209. (english translation: Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality, trans. by Kathleen mclaughlin, bloomington, indiana: indiana university press 1983, p. 19; pp. 73–4; p. 76; p. 78; p. 98.) La barbarie, paris: grasset 1987, p. 121. Du communisme au capitalisme. Théorie d’une catastrophe, paris: Éditions odile Jacob 1990, pp. 96–6. C’est moi la vérité. Pour une philosophie du christianisme, paris: seuil 1996, pp. 166–7. (english translation: I Am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, trans. by susan emanuel, stanford: stanford university press 2003, p. 132.) Le cadavre indiscret, paris: albin michel 1996, p. 73. Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair, paris: seuil 2000, pp. 270–92; p. 296; p. 300; p. 305; p. 308; p. 325; pp. 349–50; p. 368. Auto-donation: entretiens et conférences, ed. by magali uhl, montpellier: prétentaine 2002, p. 124; p. 125. Phénoménologie de la vie, vols. 1–4, paris: presses universitaires de France 2003–4, vol. 1, De la Phénoménologie, p. 73. II. Sources of Henry’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard dufrenne, mikel and paul ricoeur, Karl Jaspers et la philosophie de l’existence, paris: seuil 1947, pp. 22–6; pp. 48–9; p. 52; p. 88; p. 111; pp. 117–18; p. 133, note; p. 145; p. 153, note; p. 167; p. 179, note; p. 180; p. 182; p. 191; p. 196, note; p. 197, note; p. 217; p. 232, note; p. 244; p. 247, note; p. 248, note; p. 249, note;

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p. 250; p. 251, note; p. 254; note; p. 257, note; p. 259; p. 267; p. 285, note; p. 293, note; p. 298, note; p. 310; p. 320, note; pp. 333–4; p. 338; p. 349; p. 390. Heidegger, martin, Sein und Zeit, Halle: niemeyer 1927, pp. 175–96, see also p. 190, note 1; p. 235, note 1; and p. 338, note 1. Jaspers, Karl, Philosophie, vols. 1–3, berlin: springer 1932, vol. 1, p. 12; p. 15; p. 300; p. 317; p. 337; vol. 2, p. 151; p. 274; p. 320. Kierkegaard, sören, Traité du désespoir, trans. by Knud Ferlov and Jean J. gateau, paris: gallimard 1932. — Ce que nous apprennent les lis des champs et les oiseaux du ciel, trans. by paulHenry tisseau, paris: Félix alcan 1935. — Le concept de l’angoisse, trans. by Knud Ferlov and Jean gateau, paris: gallimard 1935. — Les miettes philosophiques, trans. by paul petit, paris: le seuil 1947. sartre, Jean-paul, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, paris: gallimard 1943 (Bibliothèque des Idées), pp. 58–84; pp. 94–111; pp. 115–49; pp. 150–74; pp. 291–300; pp. 508–16; pp. 529–60; pp. 639–42; 643–63; pp. 669–70; pp. 720ff. — L’existentialisme est un humanisme, paris: nagel 1946, pp. 27–33. varet, gilbert, L’ontologie de Sartre, paris: presses universitaires France 1948, p. 44, note 1. wahl, Jean, Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: aubier 1938. III. Bibliography of Secondary Literature on Kierkegaard and Henry García-Baró, Miguel, “Quelques réflexions sur les rapports entre éthique et phénoménologie radical,” in A Felicidade na Fenomenologia da Vida: Colóquio Internacional Michel Henry, ed. by Florinda Martins, Lisbon: Centro de Filosofia da universidade de lisboa 2006, pp. 203–15. giraud, vincent, “Kierkegaard et don Juan,” Revue Philosophique de Louvain, vol. 104, no. 4, 2006, pp. 787–811. Hanson, Jeffrey, “michel Henry’s problematic reading of Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, vol. 38, no. 3, 2007, pp. 248–60. — “michel Henry and søren Kierkegaard on paradox and the phenomenality of Christ,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 17, no. 3, 2009, pp. 435–54. moonen, Christoph, “touching from a distance: in search of the self in Henry and Kierkegaard,” Studia Phaenomenologica, vol. 9, 2009, pp. 147–56. tambourgi-Hatem, nicole, “Contemporaneités: tchekhov, Kierkegaard, michel Henry,” Annales de philosophie de l’Université Saint-Joseph, vol. 17, 1996, pp. 39–63. — “michel Henry, contemporain de Kierkegaard,” Annales de philosophie de l’Université Saint-Joseph, vol. 18, 1997, pp. 67–88. — “michel Henry, lecteur du ‘Concept d’angoisse’ de Kierkegaard,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, vol. 126, 2001, pp. 339–57.

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— “l’événement Christ: Kierkegaard–michel Henry,” Iris, Annales de philosophie de l’Université Saint-Joseph, vol. 23, 2002, pp. 61–76. — “le secret partagé: Kierkegaard–michel Henry,” in Michel Henry. Pensée de la vie et culture contemporaine. Colloque international de Montpellier, paris: beauchesne éditeur 2006, pp. 195–210.

Karl Jaspers: a great awakener’s way to philosophy of existence istván Czakó

the german psychologist and philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) was surely one of the most important figures in the twentieth-century reception of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre. whether the reception of his thought “in a stricter philosophical sense” really began with Jaspers himself, as it was claimed by anz,1 is open to discussion. Jaspers’ prominent contribution to the philosophical interpretation and dissemination of Kierkegaard’s thinking at a very early stage of reception, however, is indisputable.2 The influence of the Danish thinker on Jaspers can hardly be overestimated;3 his entire work can also be read, as theunissen remarks, “as a unique Kierkegaard commentary.”4 although, as we shall see, he did not assimilate Kierkegaard’s thought without reserve or ambivalence, Jaspers can rightly be characterized as a “genuinely productive recipient”5 in this regard. In what follows, first Jaspers’ philosophical development will be outlined, thereafter the results of the preceding research will be surveyed, and finally an attempt will be made to reconstruct Jaspers’ readings,

1 see wilhelm anz, “zur wirkungsgeschichte Kierkegaards in der deutschen theologie und philosophie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 79, no. 4, 1982, p. 466. 2 the canonization of Kierkegaard’s thought in the academic philosophical scene is closely connected with Jaspers’ resolute work. as he remarks, the danish thinker was at the time of his early lectures in effect unknown as a philosopher. see Karl Jaspers, “nachwort (1955) zu meiner Philosophie,” in his Philosophie, vols. 1–3, 4th ed., berlin, Heidelberg and new York: springer 1973 [1932], vol. 1, p. xx. 3 Jaspers himself claims in his late autobiographical retrospect: “Kierkegaard verdanke ich den Begriff der ‘Existenz,’ der mir seit 1916 maßgebend wurde, um das zu fassen, worum ich mich bis dahin in Unruhe bemüht hatte.” see Karl Jaspers, Philosophische Autobiographie, in Karl Jaspers, ed. by paul arthur schilpp, stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1957, p. 71. 4 see Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. by michael theunissen and wilfried greve, Frankfurt am main: suhrkamp 1979, p. 62. 5 Heiko schulz, “germany and austria: a modest Head start: the german reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome i, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), p. 351.

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reception and interpretation of Kierkegaard in the light of his published works as well as his Nachlass.6 I. Underway to Kierkegaard: A Brief Survey of Jaspers’ Philosophical Development Karl theodor Jaspers was born in the northern german town of oldenburg in February 23, 1883.7 His father Karl Jaspers (1850–1940) was a jurist who later became a bank manager and his mother Henriette tantzen (1862–1941) was from a local farming community. The climate of his family was strongly influenced by the political culture of liberalism, and Jaspers often referred to the milieu of early liberal democratic thought as a specific aspect of his education. Jaspers continued his studies in rather different scientific fields. Although he showed an early interest in philosophy, especially in the thought of the rationalist philosopher baruch spinoza (1632–77), he initially studied law for three semesters in Heidelberg and munich, subsequently switching to medicine in 1902. one reason for this shift of interest may be seen in the fact that Jaspers’ very serious, life-long illness was first diagnosed at the age of 18. His early teaching on the “limit-situations”8 such as illness, struggle, and death presumably can also have its origin to a certain degree in his permanent experience of his extremely frail health condition.9 Jaspers obtained a doctorate in medicine (dr. med.) in 1909. thereafter he became an assistant at the psychiatric Clinic in Heidelberg where emil Kraepelin (1856–1926), the founder of contemporary scientific psychiatry, as well as of psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics, had worked some years earlier. in

as at the time of composition of my article (July–september 2009) the catalogue of Jaspers’ personal library was not yet completed, some essential questions regarding his reception of Kierkegaard remain inevitably open, and will be the task for future research. i am deeply indebted to Hans saner, Jaspers’ former assistant, the publisher of the Nachlass, for having informed me in detail about Jaspers’ library and about his use of Kierkegaard’s texts as well as of contemporary secondary literature. without his generous support substantial parts of my work could not be realized. i am further grateful to anton Hügli and Kurt salamun for their important advice during my research. a special thanks also to Jon stewart for his enormous help in providing me with the relevant texts. 7 For Jaspers’ biography see first of all his Philosophische Autobiographie, in Karl Jaspers. (english translation: “philosophical autobiography,” in The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, ed. by paul arthur schilpp, new York: tudor 1957, pp. 1–94.) see also Hans saner, Karl Jaspers in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Hamburg: rowohlt 1970, pp. 7–68; Kurt salamun, Karl Jaspers. Eine Einführung in sein Denken, 2nd revised and enlarged ed., würzburg: Königshausen & neumann 2006, pp. 13–21; and suzanne Kirkbright, Karl Jaspers: A Biography. Navigations in Truth, new Haven, Connecticut: Yale university press 2004. 8 For a detailed treatment of the concept see Jonna bornemark, “limit-situation. antinomies and transcendence in Karl Jaspers’ philosophy,” SATS-Nordic Journal of Philosophy, vol. 7, no. 2, 2006, pp. 51–73. 9 see salamun, Karl Jaspers, p. 14. 6

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1913 Jaspers published his first major work entitled General Psychopathology10 and obtained his Habilitation in psychology from the philosophy Faculty at the university of Heidelberg. due to this book, especially to his methodology, Jaspers gained fame in the field of psychopathology, and in 1916 he became extraordinary professor of psychology. in 1919 he issued his protophilosophical work Psychologie der Weltanschauungen11 which was based on his university lectures and in which he first discussed Kierkegaard. Although Jaspers’ famous Neo-Kantian colleague Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936), the representative of the “scientific philosophy,” was rather critical and skeptical concerning the philosophical relevance and consistency of his whole project,12 this work became gradually canonized as the inauguration of a new philosophical school called “existential philosophy”13 from the mid1920s. in this book Jaspers’ psychological method was already expressly shaped by philosophical influences and was evolving into a philosophical doctrine. Two years after Psychologie der Weltanschauungen was published, in 1921, Jaspers—in spite of rickert’s explicit opposition—became full professor of philosophy at the university of Heidelberg.14 while Jaspers was working as a psychologist in Heidelberg, he came into contact with max weber (1864–1920), and also with other intellectuals who gathered around him. Weber’s influence on Jaspers both in a political and in intellectual sense remained all the time preponderant; he was profoundly captivated by weber’s greatness as a thinker and man. At the same time Jaspers was rather dissatisfied with Wilhelm windelband’s (1848–1915) and Heinrich rickert’s pure formalistic interpretation of Kantian philosophy, and he tried to reconstruct his thought as an account of metaphysical experience, spontaneously decisive freedom, and authentic inner life. He was deeply influenced by Kant’s system, and his whole philosophical enterprise Karl Jaspers, Allgemeine Psychopathologie. Ein Leitfaden für Studierende, Ärzte und Psychologen, berlin: springer 1913. (english translation: General Psychopathology, trans. by J. Hoenig and m.w. Hamilton, Chicago: university of Chicago press 1963.) 11 Karl Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, berlin: springer 1919. 12 see rickert’s review: “psychologie der weltanschauungen und philosophie der werte. besprechung von Jaspers’ ‘psychologie der weltanschauungen,’ ” Logos, vol. 9, 1920–21, pp. 1–42. see also martin Heidegger’s critical, unpublished review: “anmerkungen zu Karl Jaspers’ ‘psychologie der weltanschauungen’ (1919/21),” in Karl Jaspers in der Diskussion, ed. by Hans saner, munich: piper 1973, pp. 70–100. 13 although the term “existential philosophy” (Existenzphilosophie) was introduced by Fritz Heinemann in 1929, Jaspers himself used the term some time earlier. Karl Jaspers, Existenzphilosophie. Drei Vorlesungen gehalten am Freien Deutschen Hochstift in Frankfurt a. M. September 1937, 2nd ed., enlarged with an afterword, berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 1956 [berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 1938], p. 86 (english translation: Philosophy of Existence, trans. by richard F. grabau, philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press 1971, p. 95): “Heinemann’s use of the word at that time did not strike me as strange, for i have been using it in my lectures since the middle twenties and, because of Kierkegaard, did not suspect it of being anything new.” 14 rickert considered Jaspers’ appointment as an ordinary professor of philosophy in Heidelberg as a clear sign of the decay of philosophy itself. anyway, it is clear that Jaspers never actually received an academic training in philosophy. see saner, Karl Jaspers, p. 31; p. 37. 10

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can also be seen as an expansion of the main Kantian thoughts in the life-problems of existential philosophy.15 this critical attitude towards neo-Kantianism was shared by Jaspers and martin Heidegger (1889–1976), with whom Jaspers became acquainted via edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the founder of phenomenological philosophy, in Freiburg in 1920. in the following years Heidegger visited Jaspers repeatedly in Heidelberg; moreover, in the beginning, he considered Jaspers as a fellow-in-arms in the struggle against the formalistic philosophies of the professors of that time. although originally both of them were fundamentally engaged with problems of Existenz, which were raised by Kierkegaard in a genuine manner,16 their cooperation was never fully untroubled, and finally Heidegger’s short, but politically highly problematic rectorate in 1933 caused an open break between them.17 obviously the beginnings of existential philosophy would be completely inconceivable without the discovery and intensive appropriation of søren Kierkegaard’s thinking. although some german translations as well as monographs were available from a very early period,18 indeed the first 12-volume edition of the Gesammelte Werke was in progress from 1909,19 nonetheless, according to ludwig leonard H. ehrlich, Karl Jaspers: Philosophy as Faith, amherst: university of massachusetts press 1975, p. 117: “the stream of Jaspers’ thought can be regarded as the confluence of the conception of reason, which has its main source in Kant, and that of Existenz, which has its main source in Kierkegaard.” 16 in spite of their common interest in Kierkegaard, Jaspers emphasized mainly the fundamental differences between himself and Heidegger. see his letter of January 30, 1838 in martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, Briefwechsel 1920–1963, ed. by walter biemel and Hans saner, munich and Frankfurt am main: piper and vittorio Klostermann 1992, p. 278. a short but significant statement on Kierkegaard appears also in a letter of April 29, 1966 sent by Jaspers to his (and also Heidegger’s) former student Hannah arendt (1906–75), to whom Jaspers had a long and intensive intellectual contact: “Kierkegaard [clung] to a sophisticated conceptual structure for interpreting Christian faith as faith by virtue of the absurd, an ‘ingenuous’ conceptual structure from which dialectical theology lives and for which it has fallen, so to speak, while suppressing the fact that Kierkegaard once declared this whole conceptual structure a poetic one and that he launched an attack against the church from which it is hardly capable of recovering.” see Hannah arendt and Karl Jaspers, Correspondence 1926–1969, ed. by lotte Kohler and Hans saner, trans. by robert and rita Kimber, san diego, new York and london: Harcourt brace & Co. 1992, p. 636 (letter no. 396); see also ibid., p. 301; p. 549; p. 637. 17 as for Jaspers’ relation to Heidegger see Karl Jaspers, Notizen zu Martin Heidegger, ed. by Hans saner, munich and zurich: piper 1978. see also the contributions to the part “Jaspers and Heidegger: distance and relation” of the volume Karl Jaspers: Philosopher among Philosophers / Philosoph unter Philosophen, ed. by richard wisser and leonard H. ehrlich, würzburg: Königshausen & neumann-rodopi 1993, pp. 107–70. 18 see schulz, “germany and austria: a modest Head start,” pp. 388–419. 19 sören Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann gottsched and Christoph schrempf, Jena: diederichs 1909–22 (in the following GW1). However, as schulz remarks, “even although by 1914 ten of the twelve volumes comprised by the former’s edition of Kierkegaard’s Gesammelte Werke had already been published, it can barely be overlooked that the edition itself was still a more or less academic affair.” see schulz, “germany and austria: a modest Head start,” p. 330. 15

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Edelstein, Jaspers first heard about Kierkegaard from his philosopher friend Erich Frank (1883–1949).20 edelstein recounts this event as follows: among all his Heidelberg friends, it was Karl Jaspers with whom Frank had the closest philosophical contact. Jaspers himself was deeply troubled by the same problems that beset Frank. like him, he had studied the great philosophers of the past, but “with his insurpassable intellectual integrity, his independence of mind, he had always maintained a critical attitude toward them.” naturally, Frank spoke to his friend about his exciting new discovery of Kierkegaard in whom he thought he had found the conceptual means for a new approach to philosophy. and, according to Frank’s own account, “Jaspers caught fire at once. It was in this discussion that the movement of existentialism was started.”21

it was July 1914, the time of the outbreak of the First world war. Jaspers’ chronic illness kept him from military service. He took a position as lecturer in psychology in the philosophical Faculty. as ehrlich reports, much of Jaspers’ “avid reading of the first German edition of collected works by Kierkegaard, edited by Gottsched and schrempf, found its way in the lecture courses of those years. the subjects of those courses were keyed to the concept of Weltanschauung, which was much in use at that time.”22 another important source for Jaspers’ early knowledge of Kierkegaard was certainly the innsbruck-based fortnightly cultural periodical Der Brenner, which was founded and edited by ludwig von Ficker (1880–1967).23 this periodical was a very important organ for the dissemination of Kierkegaard’s thought, especially in consequence of theodor Haecker’s (1879–1945), association with the Brenner Circle and contribution to the periodical.24 martin Heidegger subscribed to Der

Saner traces the beginnings of Kierkegaard’s influence on Jaspers back to 1913. see Karl Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vols. 1–2, ed. by Hans saner, munich and zurich: r. piper 1981, vol. 2 (Fragmente, Anmerkungen, Inventar), p. 764. (english translation: The Great Philosophers, vols. 1–4, ed. by Hannah arendt et al., trans. by ralph manheim et al., new York: Harcourt, brace & world 1962–95.) it is clear, however, that this influence did not yet prevail in the first edition of his Allgemeine Psychopathologie. Jaspers himself reports that he was reading Kierkegaard already before 1914. see Jaspers, “nachwort (1955) zu meiner ‘philosophie,’ ” p. xix. 21 ludwig edelstein, “erich Frank’s work: an appreciation by ludwig edelstein,” in erich Frank, Wissen Glauben Wollen: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Philosophiegeschichte und Existentialphilosophie, ed. by ludwig edelstein, zurich and stuttgart: artemis verlag 1955, p. 419. 22 leonard H. ehrlich, “Jaspers reading Kierkegaard: an instance of the double Helix,” in Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Joseph w. Koterski and raymond J. langley, amherst, new York: Humanity books 2003, p. 240. 23 see Habib C. malik, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought, washington, d.C.: Catholic university of america press 1997, pp. 370–1. 24 Haecker’s significant contribution to the dissemination of Kierkegaard’s thought was his Sören Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit, munich: schreiber 1913. also important was his early translation entitled Kritik der Gegenwart, innsbruck: brenner 1914. 20

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Brenner from 1911;25 edmund Husserl also read the periodical regularly and enjoyed Haecker’s essays.26 Karl Jaspers’ relation to Der Brenner and his knowledge of Kierkegaard through this important organ undoubtedly requires further historical research. it is clear, however, that he “read Der Brenner in its early years, with the result that his landmark analysis of key Kierkegaardian categories appeared in 1919 under the title Psychologie der Weltanschauungen.”27 the Brenner served to heighten a sense of crisis in many thinkers; also Jaspers’ critique of modernity is evidently indebted to basic Kierkegaardian thoughts which were at that time mediated by this highly important organ. According to the University records, Jaspers announced altogether five courses on Kierkegaard at the university of Heidelberg between 1914 and 1948. He gave two seminars on him, namely in 1918–19 (Psychologische Übungen über Kierkegaard) and in 1923 (Übungen über Kierkegaard). moreover, he lectured three times on him: in 1928–29 (Kant und Kierkegaard),28 1934–35 (Kierkegaard), and 1937 (Kierkegaard).29 Jaspers gave his last lecture on Kierkegaard in basel in 1958–59 (Erweckende Philosophen: Lessing, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche)30 and his last seminar in 1960 (Kierkegaards Christlichkeit),31 one year before his retirement. obviously, however, Kierkegaard could have been more or less the subject of other courses held by Jaspers as well: it is therefore a task for further research to reconstruct his interpretation of Kierkegaard in all of his university lectures and seminars. in the last years of the weimar republic Jaspers published a controversial political work, Man in the Modern Age,32 which contained a carefully worked out critique of parliamentary democracy and in many respects reflected the influence of Kierkegaard.

see malik, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard, p. 391. as Jaspers remarks, both he and the young Heidegger had in common the impact of Kierkegaard: “Gemeinsam war die Ergriffenheit von Kierkegaard.” Jaspers, Philosophische Autobiographie, enlarged new ed., munich: piper 1977, p. 94. 26 malik, Receiving Søren Kierkegaard, p. 391. 27 ibid. 28 in a letter of october 2, 1928, Jaspers reports to Heidegger on this lecture course on Kierkegaard. see Heidegger and Jaspers, Briefwechsel 1920–1963, p. 106 (letter no. 71). 29 see Karl Jaspers in seiner Heidelberger Zeit. Dokumentationsband zur Ausstellung in der Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg vom 9. Juni bis 27. August 1983, ed. by Joachim-Felix leonhard, Heidelberg: Heidelberger verlagsanstalt und druckerei 1983, pp. 103–6. 30 as regards the structure of Jaspers’ presentation of Kierkegaard in this lecture course see his “endgültige disposition. durchgeführte vorlesung (1958–59)” in Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, pp. 764–8. 31 see saner’s remark in Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 763. From the “inventar” it appears that Jaspers also gave a seminar on Kierkegaard in 1956 (see “mappe xiii: Kierkegaards historische stellung / nachwirkung” and “mappe 6: aus dem Kierkegaardseminar sommer 1956”); see Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 1070; p. 1072. 32 Karl Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, 2nd ed., berlin and leipzig: walter de gruyter 1931. (english translation: Man in the Modern Age, trans. by eden and Cedar paul, london: routledge and Kegan paul 1966.) 25

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shortly afterwards, in his three-volume work Philosophy,33 he characterized Kierkegaard as the one who, “radically shaken in view of nothingness and honesty, philosophized out of a love of being, as the alternative.”34 it was primarily due to this monumental opus that Jaspers became known as a leading german philosopher of Existenz. in the mid-1930s Jaspers held far-reaching guest lectures in groningen35 and in Frankfurt.36 His groningen lectures Reason and Existenz contain the most detailed interpretation of Kierkegaard which was published in his lifetime. in 1937 Jaspers was removed from his professorship, and he was forced into retirement. His publication activity was restricted in 1938, and five years later it was officially prohibited by the Reichsschrifttumskammer.37 He felt himself a marked man until the end of the second world war. due to the Jewish background of his wife gertrud mayer (1879–1974), with whom Jaspers always had a deep and affectionate spiritual contact, they lived in imminent danger during the years of the war.38 After 1945 Jaspers figured prominently on the list of intellectuals who were allowed to play a public role in the process of german political re-foundation. From this time on Jaspers defined himself primarily as a popular philosopher and educator. as one of the people responsible for reopening Heidelberg university, he wrote at length on university reforms and emphasized the role of liberal humanistic education as a means of disseminating democratic ideas throughout germany. deeply displeased with some german political developments, Jaspers accepted a professorship at the university of basel in February 194839 and thus left germany.40 At that time his main fields of interest and intensive publication activity were centered around actual political questions, problems concerning religious and philosophical faith, and the philosophy of history. He also elaborated a monumental project on the world history of philosophy, but he was able to complete only one volume,

Karl Jaspers, Philosophie, vols. 1–3, berlin and Heidelberg: springer 1932. (english translation: Philosophy, vols. 1–3, trans. by e.b. ashton, Chicago and london: university of Chicago press 1969.) 34 Jaspers, Philosophie, vol. 1, p. ix. (Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 2.) 35 Karl Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz: Fünf Vorlesungen gehalten vom 25. bis 29. März, groningen and batavia: J.b. wolters’ uitgevers-maatschappi 1935. (english translation: Reason and Existenz: Five Lectures by Karl Jaspers, trans. by william earle, milwaukee, wisconsin: marquette university press 1997.) 36 see Jaspers, Existenzphilosophie. Drei Vorlesungen gehalten am Freien Deutschen Hochstift in Frankfurt a. M. September 1937, 1938. (Philosophy of Existence.) 37 saner, Karl Jaspers, p. 45. 38 the deportation of Jaspers and his wife gertrud mayer was scheduled for april 14, 1945. Heidelberg was, however, liberated on march 30 by troops of the u.s. army. see saner, Karl Jaspers, p. 48. 39 one year earlier, in 1947, Jaspers held guest lectures in basel, which in some respects also treated Kierkegaard. see Karl Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, munich: piper 1948, p. 15; p. 22; p. 95; pp. 127–8. 40 as saner remarks, this “escape” of Jaspers was never forgiven by germany and it was treated directly as a treachery. His highly positive, nearly “heroic” post-war reputation changed in a short time to a rather critical tone. see saner, Karl Jaspers, p. 56. 33

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namely The Great Philosophers, which was only published posthumously.41 this work contains the most exhaustive treatment of Kierkegaard’s life and thought in the whole oeuvre. after having retired in 1961, Karl Jaspers died in basel on February 26, 1969. II. The Ambiguities of Jaspers’ Relation to Kierkegaard as Reflected in the Literature even although, as we have seen, a lot of research still remains to be done concerning the materials of Jaspers’ own library42 as well as the Nachlass,43 his relation to Kierkegaard has constituted an extensively treated issue in the literature since the mid1930s.44 The first major work which intensely deals with Jaspers’ interpretation of Kierkegaard is a theological dissertation by Jan sperna weiland entitled Humanitas— Christianitas, published in 1951.45 after having presented Kierkegaard’s thoughts on the basis of his writings from the period 1844–46, and those of Jaspers from the time 1931–49, in part three, entitled “apology of Christianity,” weiland discusses the main differences between the two thinkers and develops a theological criticism against them. the main point of contention with Jaspers is his methodology as well as his use of Kierkegaard. according to weiland, Kierkegaard is one of the most maltreated thinkers of the last centuries. the fact that he was a Christian is again and again neglected or “mentioned in a footnote”: or it is considered as an aspect which one need not take into account. even Jaspers in his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen treats and maltreats Kierkegaard in this way.…it may not, even not “methodologically,” be overlooked that Kierkegaard was a Christian.46

it is also objected, that Jaspers is “again and again considered to be the representative of a Christian ‘philosophy of existence.”47 in 1957 there appeared a short article by Jean wahl (1888–1974), a professor of philosophy at the sorbonne, entitled “a see Hans saner’s report about the state of Jaspers’ extensive manuscripts on Kierkegaard in Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 764. saner also gives a detailed account of the contents of the unpublished material, see pp. 764–909; pp. 1058–74. 42 Concerning the records of Jaspers’ library see the bibliography below. i am very thankful to Hans saner for his generous help in the survey of Jaspers’ readings of Kierkegaard. 43 as regards the published Nachlass, the following parts are relevant in this context: Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 1, pp. 416–93; vol. 2, pp. 763–909; pp. 1058– 74. 44 see Jean wahl, “le problème du choix, l’existence et la transcendance dans la philosophie de Jaspers,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 41, no. 3, 1934, pp. 405– 44. the following overview is based on a selection from the special literature and therefore cannot be seen as a complete survey of the issue at all. For a complete list of the relevant texts see the bibliography below. 45 Jan sperna weiland, Humanitas—Christianitas: A Critical Survey of Kierkegaard’s and Jaspers’ Thoughts in Connection with Christianity, assen: van gorcum 1951 (Philosophia religionis, vol. 3). 46 ibid. 47 ibid. 41

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Contribution to the Jaspers and Kierkegaard issue,”48 in which Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard was treated, mainly from the point of view of his work Von der Wahrheit (1947). wahl stresses here not only the similarities but also the differences between them, which were, otherwise, also emphasized by Jaspers himself.49 leo gabriel, in his comprehensive monograph entitled Existenzphilosophie, published in 1968, also deals briefly with Jaspers’ relation to Kierkegaard.50 He stresses mostly the differences between them and claims that Jaspers “clearly regresses to the ethicalhistorical line of existential thought.”51 in the chapter “existenzphilosophie” from the volume Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards edited by michael theunissen and wilfried greve in 1979 one can read a concise yet clear overview of Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard. First of all it is claimed that Jaspers received deeply and intensely the Kierkegaardian thinking, and in many of his works Kierkegaard is not only cited but also frequently paraphrased. it is called into question, however, whether Jaspers’ methodology, namely, to omit all the Christian content from the works of Kierkegaard, is from a hermeneutical point of view defensible at all. according to the authors, Jaspers himself was to some extent conscious of this problem.52 the “correspondence of the form and function of philosophizing”53 is considered by them as the basis for Jaspers’ closeness to Kierkegaard’s thinking. wilhelm anz, some years later, deals with Jaspers in the context of the german reception of Kierkegaard. For him Jaspers’ work marks, as regards the philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte, the very beginning of the reception. He also stresses, however, the main methodological differences between them, namely, that Kierkegaard’s philosophy and his existential categories are used by Jaspers in an essentially modified form.54 although it is evident that many topics from Either/Or, part two, are already implicitly present in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, anz regards Jaspers’ reading of the part “metaphysical Caprice” from Philosophical Fragments,55 which exposes the dialectic of reason and existence, as the “first step on the way to the philosophy of Existenz.”56 Hermann schmid in 1991 presents Jaspers’ relation to Kierkegaard from the point of view of the connection between their criticism of their respective ages and Jean wahl, “ein beitrag zum thema Jaspers und Kierkegaard,” trans. by Hans Hartmann, in Karl Jaspers, ed. by paul arthur schilpp, stuttgart: w. Kohlhammer 1957, pp. 430–5. 49 see ibid., p. 434. 50 see the chapter “Kierkegaard und Jaspers (transzendenz),” in leo gabriel, Existenzphilosophie, vienna and munich: Herold 1968, pp. 203–5. 51 see gabriel, Existenzphilosophie, p. 205. 52 see Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. by michael theunissen and wilfried greve, Frankfurt am main: suhrkamp 1979, p. 63. 53 ibid., p. 65. 54 anz, “zur wirkungsgeschichte Kierkegaards in der deutschen theologie und philosophie,” p. 475. 55 SKS 4, 242–52 / PF, 37–48. 56 anz, “zur wirkungsgeschichte Kierkegaards in der deutschen theologie und philosophie,” p. 471. 48

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the question of the possibility of Existenz. First of all Man in the Modern Age is dealt with in order to show the parallels between them. Jaspers’ conception of Existenz, which is always in “situation” and can only be “illuminated,” is seen as the principal meeting point between the two thinkers.57 although Jaspers follows Kierkegaard’s criticism of his age, he also differs from him in some respects.58 in his rich paper delivered in 1996 giuseppe Cantillo makes an attempt to reconstruct Kierkegaard’s influence on Jaspers’ thought in the mirror of the latter’s writings. First, he systematically identifies the relevant segments of the corpus, and then he gives an overview of its main works from 1919 to 1962, together with the Nachlass. According to him, one can find in Kierkegaard’s teaching on the subjectivity of truth or rather on subjectivity as truth the most significant point of this reception, which is also closely connected to the topic of existential communication.59 even although the exposition of the issue remains roughly outlined, Cantillo’s approach and methodology may be seen as an anticipated form of later historical research. the following year Habib C. malik published his Receiving Søren Kierkegaard, which contains an exhaustive overview of the early impact of Kierkegaard’s thought. this book is based on high-level historical research, and although Jaspers is only sporadically mentioned in it,60 it is indispensable in this field just the same, primarily because of its excellent presentation of the Brenner.61 as we have seen, this periodical was, from the mid-1910s, one of the most important organs for disseminating Kierkegaard’s thought, and was also read by Jaspers.62 in 2000 one of my papers appeared which also treated some parallels and differences between Kierkegaard’s and Jaspers’ concept of faith and history.63 the publication of the volume Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy in 2003 is certainly a significant development of the research, for it contains not only translations of some relevant selections from Psychologie der Weltanschauungen,64 but also two remarkable articles on Jaspers’ appropriation of Kierkegaard. in his contribution “Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard” merold westphal points out that “Jaspers is the most Kierkegaardian of the twentiethcentury ‘existentialist’ philosophers.”65 simultaneously, however, he also emphasizes their deep difference. Whereas “in Kierkegaard’s writings the Most Significant schmid, “Kierkegaard og Jaspers,” p. 87. ibid., p. 92. 59 Giuseppe Cantillo, “Kierkegaard e la filosofia dell’esistenza di Karl Jaspers,” in Kierkegaard. Filosofia e teologia del paradosso. Atti del convegno tenuto a Trento il 4–6 dicembre 1996, ed. by michele nicoletti and giorgio penzo, brescia: morcelliana 1999 (Religione e Cultura, vol. 13), p. 272. 60 malik, Receiving Kierkegaard, pp. 391–2. 61 ibid., pp. 367–92. 62 ibid., p. 391. 63 istván Czakó, “das problem des glaubens und der geschichte in der philosophie Kierkegaards und Karl Jaspers,’ ” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2000, pp. 373–82. 64 see Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Koterski and langley, pp. 205–22; pp. 243–57. 65 merold westphal, “Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard,” in Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Koterski and langley, p. 224. 57 58

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other to human existence is god in Jesus of nazareth,” Jaspers’ “transcendence is, as it is meant to be, thoroughly abstract.”66 westphal, while mainly analyzing Jaspers’ picture of Kierkegaard on the basis of his posthumous work The Great Philosophers, also first discusses Jaspers’ hermeneutical thesis that our “perception of his life and personal character must be kept in mind as we study Kierkegaard’s thoughts and meaning-configurations….The two cannot be separated.”67 this biographical insistence on Kierkegaard’s factual being as an “exception”68 seems to be for westphal, from a strictly philosophical point of view, a non sequitur and an unjustified claim, both de facto and de jure.69 after having outlined the existential categories which were appropriated by Jaspers from Kierkegaard, as well as his juxtaposition with nietzsche, westphal claims that “Jaspers misunderstands the theory of the stages and thereby fails to identify the unity of Kierkegaard’s text,”70 because he is not aware of the “religiousness C,” which is implicitly elaborated in some post-Postscript writings.71 in his judgment, Jaspers’ attempted dialogue with Kierkegaard about Christianity is also abortive “for the simple reason that Jaspers is too deeply mired in traditional misreadings of Kierkegaard to grasp the truly radical nature of his understanding of Christianity.”72 leonard H. ehrlich, in his article “Jaspers reading Kierkegaard,” surveys the main parts of Jaspers’ oeuvre which deal with the danish thinker.73 in his opinion, although one might try to distinguish different stages of the development of Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard, one has to see above all its original unity. Jaspers’ late conception of the awakeners and of Kierkegaard’s status among them is…not a new stage but is contained in Jaspers’ earlier reception of Kierkegaard, even as the helix of Jaspers’ reception of the legacy of past thought is intertwined with that of his philosophizing concerning the truth of being for man in time.74 ibid., pp. 223–4. Jaspers, “Kierkegaard,” in his The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 230. 68 the existential category of “exception” (Ausnahme) is for Jaspers of crucial importance. according to ehrlich, “nowhere else is Jaspers’ kinship to Kierkegaard manifested with such constant reference to, dependence on and interpretation of him” like in his treatment of the exception. ehrlich, Karl Jaspers: Philosophy as Faith, p. 111. as for Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard’s concept of “exception,” see his Philosophische Logik, munich: piper 1947, vol. 1: Von der Wahrheit (only one volume was published), pp. 755–6; p. 764. 69 westphal, “Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard,” p. 227. 70 ibid., p. 231. 71 see merold westphal, “Kierkegaard’s teleological suspension of religiousness b,” in Foundations of Kierkegaard’s Vision of Community: Religion, Ethics and Politics in Kierkegaard, ed. by george b. Connell and C. stephen evans, atlantic Highlands, new Jersey: Humanities press 1992, pp. 110–29. 72 westphal, “Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard,” p. 233. 73 in one of his earlier works ehrlich also accounts Jaspers’ indebtedness to Kierkegaard. see his Karl Jaspers: Philosophy as Faith, pp. 211–12. 74 ehrlich, “Jaspers reading Kierkegaard: an instance of the double Helix,” p. 239. ehrlich’s position is, that “for Jaspers the importance of Kierkegaard lay in his reception of Kierkegaard as the helix essentially intertwined with that of Jaspers’ unfolding philosophizing.” ibid., p. 241. 66 67

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as ehrlich points out, Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard was ambivalent, in so far as he not only perceived the decisive originality in Kierkegaard’s response to the crisis of modernity, but also shied away from Kierkegaard’s negative, acosmic conception of Christianity, which presaged the end of Christianity itself.75 the most recent treatment of the issue is a short yet very rich part of Heiko schulz’s intensive study on the history of the german reception of Kierkegaard’s thought.76 schulz categorizes Jaspers as a “genuinely productive recipient,” due to the “systematical boldness and independence of assimilating and transforming [Kierkegaard’s] ideas in correspondence to his own philosophical preferences and intentions.”77 it is pointed out that Jaspers’ whole philosophical enterprise can be seen as an attempt to reveal the genuine possibilities of philosophy under the conditions of modernity and that he perceived and received Kierkegaard’s thought precisely within the framework of this general project. The impact and significance of Kierkegaard for Jaspers can be perceived in his fundamental conception of philosophy as the “illumination of Existenz” which can only be indirectly mediated,78 whereas their difference appears first of all in the fact that Kierkegaard’s view of Christian faith is for Jaspers philosophically unacceptable. III. Jaspers’ Readings of Kierkegaard there can be no doubt that Jaspers was an avid and careful reader of Kierkegaard, whom he considered to be “the most important thinker of our post-Kantian age.”79 Just a quick look at his early work Psychologie der Weltanschauungen may convince us of his impressive knowledge of Kierkegaard’s writings, the first German edition of which was in progress at exactly that time.80 This first edition was read very carefully by Jaspers; all the volumes of the series are full of his different marks, underlinings, and marginal notes.81 moreover, he also owned the 28-volume second edition by emanuel Hirsch (1888–1972)82 and the selection edited by liselotte richter.83 From ibid., p. 238. schulz, “germany and austria: a modest Head start,” pp. 351–4. 77 ibid., p. 351. 78 ibid., p. 352. 79 Jaspers, The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 191. 80 Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, trans. and ed. by gottsched and schrempf. 81 His actual use of Kierkegaard’s texts was, however, rather selective. regarding the peculiarities of Jaspers’ treatment of Kierkegaard, Ehrlich remarks: “Although the first part of The Sickness unto Death was of substantive importance to Jaspers’ thinking, he never referred to the second part. similarly, he placed the greatest value on Kierkegaard’s philosophical pseudonyms, especially Climacus, and on his Journals, but never on the Edifying and Christian Discourses. of the Christian writings Jaspers valued only the Attack upon Christendom.” see ehrlich’s editorial note to “reading Kierkegaard 1: becoming manifest,” in Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Koterski and langley, p. 245. 82 sören Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–28, trans. and ed. by emanuel Hirsch, düsseldorf and Cologne: diederichs 1950–69 (in the following GW2). 83 sören Kierkegaard, Werke, vols. 1–5, trans. and ed. by liselotte richter, reinbek bei Hamburg: rowohlt 1960–64. 75 76

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Hirsch’s edition Jaspers read through only a few texts; he was especially interested in polemical writings from the period of Kierkegaard’s “last battle” which were published in the volume Der Augenblick.84 this is otherwise remarkable, because during his whole authorship Jaspers was particularly interested in and attached a great importance to Kierkegaard’s biting criticism of established Christianity, although his own criticism, which was copiously elaborated in his lectures Der philosophische Glaube85 as well as in the later opus, Philosophical Faith and Revelation,86 was based on rather different presuppositions. The five-volume selection of Liselotte richter was barely used by him. besides these multi-volume editions, from his early years as a psychologist, Jaspers had also collected a great number of individual translations. He was intensively interested not only in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous, Christian, and polemical writings, but also in his Nachlass and biography. the latter had, in Jaspers’ interpretation of Kierkegaard, a central hermeneutical function, because he was convinced that “we cannot set aside the picture of his [sc. Kierkegaard’s] nature that emerges when we understand the meaning of what he has thought.”87 although, as we have seen, one may discuss this biographical principle of Jaspers’ reading of Kierkegaard,88 it is far from arbitrary, but is grounded in the genuine existential character of Kierkegaard’s thought. therefore, it is no wonder that Jaspers was a very careful reader not only of the journals and of the Nachlass (which can be seen in the items in his library), but he also had excellent knowledge of the contemporary secondary literature, especially in biographies. He openly claimed his particular indebtedness to the relevant writings of emanuel Hirsch.89 as regards his use of secondary literature, we can state that Jaspers owned an impressive collection of works of this group as well, several of which he also intensively studied. although in his published works he does not quote or refer to secondary sources, in the posthumous work The Great Philosophers, the fourth volume of which contains the largest treatment of Kierkegaard he ever wrote, he refers not only to his most preferred commentator emanuel Hirsch, but also quotes

sören Kierkegaard, Der Augenblick. Aufsätze und Schriften des letzten Streites, trans. by Hayo gerdes, in GW2, abt. 34, 1959. 85 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, pp. 60–89, see especially pp. 66–75. 86 Karl Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, munich: piper 1962, pp. 479–536. (english translation: Philosophical Faith and Revelation, trans. by e.b. ashton, london: Collins 1967, pp. 321–68.) 87 in addition it is also claimed that “Kierkegaard burst upon our age through his life as well as through his thought. the thinker refers us to what he has thought, the thought refers us to the thinker. what he lived and shows us in the Journals is as essential as his work. His nonacting reveals as much as his acting.” Jaspers, “Kierkegaard,” in his The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 230. 88 see westphal, “Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard,” p. 227. 89 Jaspers possessed and used Hirsch’s Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2, gütersloh: bertelsmann 1933. see also Jaspers, “Kierkegaard,” in his The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 194. i am grateful to anton Hügli for having called my attention to this important source of Jaspers’ knowledge and interpretation of Kierkegaard. 84

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from relevant works of other leading interpreters like torsten bohlin,90 Johannes Hohlenberg,91 walter lowrie,92 o.p. monrad,93 and theodor Haecker.94 the above short overview can undoubtedly convince us that Jaspers was a highly erudite reader of Kierkegaard, and he was absolutely qualified to interpret his thinking. even though he thought that “the task of presenting Kierkegaard as an integral whole has so far not been accomplished,”95 he still hesitated to compose a comprehensive monograph on the danish thinker (as he did, for instance, on nietzsche,96 whom he otherwise consistently juxtaposed to Kierkegaard). one reason for this may be that Jaspers has clearly seen the serious immanent problems of commenting on him, which he also concisely expressed: “what becomes of Kierkegaard in someone else’s interpretation is no longer Kierkegaard.”97 be that as it may, Jaspers’ whole philosophical work can be seen as a genuine and productive interpretation of Kierkegaard’s thought which undeniably determined contemporary philosophical reception and greatly contributed to the development of the philosophy of Existenz.98 IV. Jaspers’ Reception of Kierkegaard in the Light of His Writings Jaspers’ whole work is deeply permeated by Kierkegaard’s thinking, which is evidenced by the vast number of references, quotations, direct and indirect allusions, as well as other forms of intertextuality in many of his texts. since it is impossible to identify and interpret all these passages one by one within the framework of an individual article, in the following an attempt will be made to survey the most relevant parts of Jaspers’ work, in order to outline the main points and ambiguities of his perception, use, and reception of the danish thinker. 90 torsten bohlin, Sören Kierkegaards Leben und Werden, trans. by peter Katz, gütersloh: bertelsmann 1925. 91 Johannes Hohlenberg, Søren Kierkegaard, trans. by maria bachmann-isler, ed. by theodor wilhelm bätscher, basel: benno schwabe 1949. 92 walter lowrie, Das Leben Sören Kierkegaards, düsseldorf and Cologne: eugen diederichs 1955. 93 o.p. monrad, Sören Kierkegaard. Sein Leben und seine Werke, Jena: diederichs 1909. 94 theodor Haecker, Essays, munich: Kösel 1958. 95 Jaspers, “Kierkegaard,” in his The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 194. 96 see Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche. Einführung in das Verständnis seines Philosophierens, berlin: walter de gruyter 1936. 97 ibid. indeed he used to say: “one cannot write on Kierkegaard without making a fool of oneself.” see leonard H. ehrlich, “editor’s note,” in Jaspers, The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 190. in his Philosophy Jaspers also remarks (Philosophie, vol. 1, p. xx): “Beim Referieren Kierkegaards merkte ich, daß er nicht referierbar ist.” 98 it has to be stressed that the german Existenz is retained in english translations for Jaspers’ concept of human actualization of existential possibilities within the individual’s temporality by virtue of his risk, freedom, and decision. the word “existence” is used for Jaspers’ concept Dasein, which means man’s being-there-in-the-world as an object among objects (and thus clearly differs from Heidegger’s use of the concept).

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A. Between Psychology and Philosophy: Kierkegaard’s Impact on the Early Works although at the time of composing his earliest work General Psychopathology in 1913 Jaspers was apparently not yet aware of Kierkegaard, in the fourth edition of the book in 1946 he mentions him (together with nietzsche) as the greatest figure of “intuitional psychology.”99 However, the significance of Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, which was published after six years of avid and intensive reading of Kierkegaard, can hardly be overestimated in this respect. Jaspers’ discovery of Kierkegaard,100 and the integration of his thought in the framework of Jaspers’ psychological and philosophical project, led to the genesis of a work which counts up to the present as the overture of existential philosophy. in this work Jaspers constructed a typology of mental attitudes which was intended to provide an interpretive account of basic psychological forms (or world-views). besides this finely chiseled psychological typology his analysis also contains a wider criticism of human rationality. as in his General Psychopathology, Kierkegaard and nietzsche are also linked in this work as “the greatest psychologists of world-views.”101 even although this approach is completely opposed to martin Heidegger’s famous dissociation of the two figures,102 they were consistently juxtaposed in the whole oeuvre of Jaspers, the reasons of which were copiously declared in the first lecture of his Reason and Existenz.103 a good example of Jaspers’ highly productive appropriation of Kierkegaard is the part entitled “The Aesthetic Orientation” in the first chapter of the work, where Jaspers describes the main features of aesthetic experience from a purely psychological point of view. although here there are neither quotations nor references nor allusions to the danish thinker, nonetheless the text manifests a profound perception of his thought, which is also expressly acknowledged at the end of the passage.104 the later parts of the work manifest Jaspers’ excellent knowledge of the oeuvre of Kierkegaard. Almost all of the volumes of the first edition of Gottsched and schrempf, which were published before 1919, were quoted or alluded to in the

Karl Jaspers, Allgemeine Psychopathologie. Ein Leitfaden für Studierende, Ärzte und Psychologen, 4th ed., berlin and Heidelberg: springer 1946 [1913], p. 262: “Durchaus einzig und die größten von allen verstehenden Psychologen sind Kierkegaard und Nietzsche.” 100 see his “preface” to the fourth edition in 1954 in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, 6th ed., berlin, Heidelberg, and new York: springer 1971, p. x. 101 see Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 12. they are also juxtaposed in the section “Kierkegaard und nietzsche: leiden oder lust als letztes,” in Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, pp. 225–6. 102 It is well known that whereas Heidegger considered Nietzsche’s work the fulfillment of western metaphysics, he did not regard Kierkegaard as a thinker but as a “religious writer.” see his “nietzsches wort ‘gott ist tot,’ ” in his Holzwege, 7th ed., Frankfurt am main: vittorio Klostermann 1994, p. 249. 103 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, pp. 1–27. (Reason and Existenz, pp. 19–50.) 104 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 61: “Diese Einsichten sind vor allem Kierkegaard zu verdanken.” 99

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text.105 one can read extensive analyses of central Kierkegaardian categories such as “moment,”106 “paradox,”107 “indirect communication,”108 and “guilt”;109 moreover, his existential interpretation of immortality110 is also treated. With regard to the particular significance of the conception of “limit situation,”111 which was first elaborated here, for the whole work of Jaspers, his appropriation of Kierkegaard’s or rather Climacus’ concept of guilt is of particular significance. Jaspers claims that Kierkegaard “assumes a unique psychological position with respect to guilt. He does not objectivize the opposition into metaphysical principles, neither does he wallow in the sentimental consciousness of the miserable sinner; he does, however absolutize the consciousness of guilt in subjective Existenz.”112 He distinguishes two aspects of Kierkegaard’s concept of guilt: “1. the fundamental consciousness of guilt in the limit situation as the consciousness of total guilt visà-vis each and every individual guilt. 2. ‘eternal remembrance’ of this guilt as the ‘mark of the relationship to eternal bliss.’ ”113 the limit situation is the core of the most powerful consciousness of Existenz, which is at the same time consciousness of something absolute. Jaspers sees in the existential analysis of the phenomenon of guilt of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript a genuine apprehension and extensive elaboration of this aspect of guilt which precisely therefore has a crucial significance for him. After having given a copious overview of the section “The decisive expression for existential pathos: guilt,” he critically claims, however, that Kierkegaard “says nothing about the very experience of world-views themselves. He merely hints that such powers are wholly beyond the world: they are alone with God….It is a reflective, solitary religiosity of thought.”114 this criticism of Kierkegaard’s acosmistic and solipsistic view of Existenz and Christianity is 105 see, for instance, Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 90; pp. 94–6; p. 99; pp. 217–18; pp. 238–9; pp. 245–7; p. 339; p. 341; pp. 348–9; p. 351; pp. 354–5; p. 357; p. 359; pp. 370–81. 106 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, pp. 95–6. see Kiekegaard, Der Begriff Angst, in GW1, vol. 5, pp. 78–80, which corresponds to SKS 4, 384–96 / CA, 81–93. 107 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, pp. 217–18. see Kierkegaard, Philosophische Brocken, in GW1, vol. 6, pp. 34–5 which corresponds to SKS 4, 242–52 / PF, 37–48. 108 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, pp. 333–5. 109 ibid., pp. 245–7. see Kierkegaard, Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, in GW1, vol. 7, pp. 209–37, which corresponds to SKS 7, 477–504 / CUP1, 523–55. 110 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, pp. 238–9. see Kierkegaard, Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, in GW1, vol. 6, pp. 242–53 which corresponds to SKS 7, 158–66 / CUP1, 171–9. 111 see Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, pp. 202–47. 112 ibid., p. 245. (english translation: “reading Kierkegaard 2: guilt: the Fundamental limit situation,” trans. by edith ehrlich, in Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Koterski and langley, p. 253.) 113 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 245. (“reading Kierkegaard 2: guilt: the Fundamental limit situation,” p. 254.) 114 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 247. (“reading Kierkegaard 2: guilt: the Fundamental limit situation,” pp. 256–5.)

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characteristic of Jaspers’ entire work and shows the ambiguity of his appropriation of Kierkegaard. Jaspers’ most important early contribution to the dissemination of Kierkegaard’s thought is certainly his “Referat Kierkegaards” in this work.115 even though he writes that “the present exposition is not presented for the sake of Kierkegaard but for the problem at hand,”116 this well-elaborated interpretive account of the process of becoming a self in The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death was in fact a very important impulse for the philosophical reception of Kierkegaard’s thought. Here, however, an important characteristic of Jaspers’ methodology also becomes manifest, namely, that he tries to omit what seems irrelevant for his own purpose, namely, “all ‘Christian’ matter.”117 as we have seen, many commentators consider this selective character of Jaspers’ appropriation of Kierkegaard rather problematic.118 one reason for this treatment may be seen in the fact that Jaspers had serious hesitations not only about Kierkegaard’s acosmic interpretation of Christianity but also about some aspects of Christianity itself which were clearly developed in his later works on philosophical faith.119 this critical distance is highly characteristic of the whole work of Jaspers and reveals the immanent ambiguity of his reception of the danish thinker. in the years he was working on Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, Jaspers’ study of Hegel was closely intertwined with that of Kierkegaard. the decisive significance of the Danish thinker in the formation of Jaspers’ philosophy was directly channeled by his contraposition of the two thinkers. the chapter “spirit between Chaos and Form”120 clearly shows how Jaspers’ interpretation of Hegel led him finally to his definitive turn to Kierkegaard. He stresses that even though there were several contemporary counterstrokes against Hegelian philosophy (natural sciences, political liberalism, schopenhauer), they actually did not understand him: the true appropriate counterpunch, based on an understanding of Hegel, was delivered by Kierkegaard. in his stress of responsibility, the timeless import of the decision made in time, on subjective thinking (instead of impersonal contemplation), in the restoration of the either/or, in taking hold of the paradoxes, the antinomies that cannot be solved through thought, in his renunciation of any system as the ultimate doctrine about Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, pp. 370–81. (english translation: “reading Kierkegaard 1: becoming manifest,” trans. by edith ehrlich, in Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Koterski and langley, pp. 243–51.) 116 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 370. (“reading Kierkegaard 1: becoming manifest,” p. 245.) 117 ibid. 118 see, for instance, weiland, Humanitas—Christianitas, p. 80; Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. by theunissen and greve, p. 65; anz, “zur wirkungsgeschichte Kierkegaards in der deutschen theologie und philosophie,” p. 473. 119 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, pp. 66–75 and Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, pp. 479–536 (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, pp. 321–68). 120 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, pp. 308–35. (english translation: “reading Hegel: life between Chaos and Form,” in Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Koterski and langley, pp. 205–22.) 115

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Kierkegaard is interpreted in this chapter as a “philosopher of indirect communication” who urges “individuals to become individual human beings, and appeal[s] to the life that is in the other.”122 even though this sharp contraposition of the two thinkers seems to be somewhat one-sided in the light of the newer Quellenforschung,123 Jaspers’ impressive knowledge of the oeuvre of the two thinkers as well as the originality of his interpretation are beyond dispute. B. Jaspers’ Diagnosis of His Age and His Systematic Works after having published Psychologie der Weltanschauungen Jaspers spent more than a decade—beside his considerable teaching activity at the university of Heidelberg— with intensive study of the history of philosophy and with the elaboration of his own thought. as a result of his resolute efforts, two of his works appeared in 1931–32 which established his reputation in the public sphere as well as on the philosophical scene. The first one bore the title Man in the Modern Age and contained Jaspers’ analysis of the ethical and intellectual situation of his age, whereas the second one was Jaspers’ three-volume opus magnum entitled Philosophie,124 which was—and so far remains—the most comprehensive work on the philosophy of Existenz in the German-speaking world. Both of them reflect Jaspers’ intensive and productive appropriation of Kierkegaard’s thought. Jaspers alludes immediately in the “introduction” of Man in the Modern Age to Kierkegaard’s diagnosis of his age, which he studied intensely and is regarded as entirely relevant for our age.125 although—in contrast to Psychologie der Weltanschauungen—he does not quote any passages from Kierkegaard, a quick glance at the text can convince us that he deeply assimilated the danish thinker’s Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 329. (“reading Hegel: life between Chaos and Form,” p. 214.) 122 For Jaspers the “prophets of indirect communication” such as socrates, Kant, and Kierkegaard, “refuse to be prophets; they merely arouse, call attention to something, make us restless, only make things problematic but do not give us any rules, do not teach how we should live.” see Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 332. (“reading Hegel: life between Chaos and Form,” p. 219.) This statement clearly reflects one of Climacus’ sentences in the Postscript: “that is why it is so foolish, unless one’s life is dialectical à la an apostle, to want to reassure people about their eternal happiness, because, with regard to something in which the individual person has only himself to deal with, the most one person can do for another is to unsettle him.” see SKS 4, 352 / CUP1, 387. 123 see, for instance, Jon stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, Cambridge and new York: Cambridge university press 2003. 124 Karl Jaspers, Philosophie, vols. 1–3, 4th ed., berlin, Heidelberg and new York: springer 1973 [1931]. 125 Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, pp. 10–11. as for Kierkegaard’s diagnosis of his age see first of all his review En literair Anmeldelse, in SKS 8, 7–106 / TA, 1–112. 121

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criticism of his age. Jaspers’ detailed diagnosis and criticism of mass society which oppresses the existing individual126 is clearly inspired by Kierkegaard’s concept of the individual.127 it is, however, also claimed that Kierkegaard does not have any objective doctrine or instruction for his own age, but he rather uses the method of “indirect communication.”128 Jaspers’ conception of the mass as public,129 as well as the term “leveling”130 are clearly of Kierkegaardian origin.131 moreover, also Kierkegaard’s criticism of the press132 has an unambiguous echo in his diagnosis of age.133 From this short but very impressive work it appears that Jaspers actually was a “genuinely productive recipient”134 of Kierkegaard’s thought: he not only assimilated the main existential categories of the danish thinker, but he also shaped a very effective diagnosis of his own age, which may be considered as a further development of Kierkegaard’s original one, in the context of the post-First world war intellectual milieu of the early 1930s. at the end of the work Kierkegaard is mentioned anew as the origin of existential philosophy,135 and also his concept of Existenz is referred to as a negative path which leads out of the world to isolation and to being a self.136 the major publication of Jaspers’ earlier period, and probably of his entire career, is his Philosophy from 1932. each of the three volumes of this work (Philosophische Weltorientierung, Existenzerhellung, Metaphysik) describes a particular way of being and knowing: orientation, existence, and metaphysical transcendence. these are the three essential existential modalities of human life and knowledge. as in Man in the Modern Age, there are no quotations in this work—which in a sense may be a sign of Jaspers’ efforts to develop his own philosophy—the text, however, gives evidence of a comprehensive knowledge and appropriation of Kierkegaard’s thought.137 whereas in the early protophilosophical work Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard was well marked by the great number of explicit quotations from the writings of the danish Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, pp. 25–70. ibid., p. 13. as for Kierkegaard’s concept of individual as well as for his criticism of his passionless and reflective age see his A Literary Review in SKS 8, 66–104 / TA, 68–110. 128 Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, p. 13. 129 ibid., pp. 35–6. 130 ibid., p. 67. as for Kierkegaard’s use of the category “leveling” (Nivellering), see SKS 8, 80ff. / TA, 84ff. 131 as for Kierkegaard’s use of the term “public” as a “phantom” see SKS 8, 86ff. / TA, 90ff. also Jaspers’ concept of “decisonlessness” seems to be connected to Kierkegaard’s critical claim, that the abstract, reflecting age is “passionless.” See Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, pp. 43–5; p. 150 as well as SKS 8, 66 / TA, 68. 132 SKS 8, 86–7 / TA, 90–1. 133 Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, pp. 108–11. 134 schulz, “germany and austria: a modest Head start,” p. 351. 135 Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, p. 145. 136 ibid., p. 163. 137 in the “epilogue” to the third edition of the work, however, Jaspers also highlights his ineliminable distance from the danish thinker. see Jaspers, “nachwort (1955) zu meiner Philosophie,” in his Philosophie, vol. 1, p. xx. 126 127

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thinker, this impressive opus rather makes use of Kierkegaard’s existential categories and genuine philosophical insights. One can perceive his significance already in the fact that he is named at the very beginning of the work as the representative of “psychology in the illumination of Existenz”;138 in addition, Jaspers’ basic concept of Existenz itself is clearly Kierkegardian.139 the well-known statement “Existenz ist, was sich zu sich selbst und darin zu seiner Transzendenz verhält”140 is an almost literal adoption of anti-Climacus’ well-known phrase at the beginning of The Sickness unto Death about the existential structure of self.141 In the chapter “Philosophy and Religion” of the first volume, Jaspers also deals with the philosophical problems of Christianity. according to him, the Christian representation of the god-man and its claim that Jesus is the truth and the life leads inevitably to unacceptable alternatives. Kierkegaard’s conception of Christianity is also treated in this context. How was it possible that Kierkegaard eminently grasped the man as Existenz and yet never renounced his faith in the god-man? at this point Jaspers’ clearly identifies the position of the Danish thinker with that of his Climacus writings by claiming that Kierkegaard in faith made Jesus an absurdity, and he gave up on objective existing Christianity.142 in a similar context anti-Climacus’ central category, the paradox of imitation of Christ, is also mentioned briefly in the second volume.143 moreover, in the part “religious negation of the world,” Kierkegaard is indirectly alluded to as an “exception” and a “hero of negativity” the religiosity of whom represents the negative decision against the world and the floating (Schweben) of Existenz.144 in addition, Kierkegaard is also named in connection with Jaspers’ phenomenology of will. For Jaspers, will and choice are indissoluble, and both of them are closely connected to the self. the self is not an abstraction but an active relation to itself which is constituted by an existential creation of itself. Jaspers considers in anti-Climacus’ famous sentence “the more will, the more self” exactly the genuine shaping of this origin of the self.145

Jaspers, Philosophie, vol. 1, p. 12 and p. 203. ibid., p. 15. 140 ibid., p. 12. 141 SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 13. even though Jaspers’ thought was developed in a characteristically theistic framework, it has to be strongly emphasized that his concept of “transcendence” is in no way identical with the “other” of anti-Climacus. whereas namely the “other” in The Sickness unto Death is sensu eminentiori the god of Christian revelation, Jaspers sharply distinguishes between “transcendence” which can be grasped by philosophical faith and its dogmatic fixations in religion which also cause the distortion of religion itself. see Jaspers, Philosophie, vol. 1, p. 300. although it is clear, that Kierkegaard’s (or antiClimacus’) concept of Christianity was based on existential subjectivity, and as such was by far not an objectivistic one, the sacrificium intellectus required for the paradoxical belief in the reality of god-man was for Jaspers ab ovo inacceptable. 142 Jaspers, Philosophie, vol. 1, p. 317. 143 ibid., vol. 2, p. 274. regarding anti-Climacus’ use of the category “imitation,” see SKS 12, 227–49 / PC, 232–57. 144 Jaspers, Philosophie, vol. 2, p. 320. 145 ibid., p. 151. see also SKS 11, 145 / SUD, 29. 138 139

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beyond these implicit or explicit allusions, the whole opus seems to be just as much inspired by Kierkegaard’s existential thought as by Kant’s transcendental system. although Jaspers does not name Kierkegaard, his central claim that philosophy always arises from possible Existenz146 clearly reflects the influence of the Danish thinker. similarly, he uses the category of “being-between” while designing the act of philosophizing;147 this term was, however, first used by Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus in order to grasp the actuality of Existenz as “inter-esse” between the hypothetical unity of abstraction of thought and being.148 thus here we can also see a clear sign of Jaspers’ assimilation and productive reception of Kierkegaard’s thought. the “illumination of Existenz” as a basic methodological principle is undoubtedly a genuine approach to the problems of Existenz. it is, however, clearly anticipated by Kierkegaard’s thought that Existenz cannot be grasped by abstract concepts and system,149 but only by way of indirect communication. to sum up: Jaspers’ impressive opus magnum can rightly be counted not only as a standard work of philosophy of Existenz but also as a milestone in the german philosophical reception of Kierkegaard’s thought. the comprehensive systematic work Von der Wahrheit from 1947, which is the first volume of Jaspers’ Philosophische Logik, gives further evidence of his intensive reception of Kierkegaard.150 Here Jaspers not only mentions Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript among the principal logical works of history,151 but he also quotes explicitly some of Kierkegaard’s writings in the text. interestingly enough, he refers to Kierkegaard as the origin of the concept of “existential thinking.”152 although it is clear that this concept basically corresponds to the way of thinking of the “subjective thinker” of Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus,153 it seems to me that the locution in the form in which it is composed by Jaspers does not appear at all in the original texts of Kierkegaard. it is rather a philosophical terminus technicus which—certainly not without reason—has been attributed to the danish thinker during the history of reception. the central categories which attract Jaspers’ interest in Kierkegaard in this work are certainly those of “becoming manifest” and “exception.” as in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen,154 the first part of The Sickness unto Death is also treated here in order to explore the development of the “self” and its “becoming manifest.”155 Jaspers, Philosophie, vol. 1, pp. 24–36. ibid., pp. 268ff. 148 SKS 7, 286 / CUP1, 314. 149 SKS 7, 114 / CUP1, 118. 150 Jaspers, Philosophische Logik, vol. 1. 151 ibid., p. 18. 152 ibid. 153 SKS 7, 320–8 / CUP1, 349–60. 154 as we have seen, the category “becoming manifest” was already intensely treated in the part “das werden des selbst umschrieben als offenbarwerden” of Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, pp. 370–81. 155 Jaspers, Philosophische Logik, vol. 1, pp. 541–4. Kierkegaard’s significance in this respect is strongly emphasized by Jaspers, see ibid., p. 541. 146 147

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Jaspers tried to enlighten the meaning of the existential category “exception” by way of a number of quotations from Kierkegaard’s different works as well as from his Nachlass.156 according to him, it was Kierkegaard alone who philosophically accomplished the full illumination in consciousness of his being an exception.157 besides the explicit quotations, there are also some allusions to Kierkegaard’s texts, for instance, to Johannes de silentio’s concept of teleological suspension of the ethical in Fear and Trembling.158 lastly, some remarks by Jaspers point to the historical significance of the Danish thinker.159 C. Kierkegaard in Jaspers’ Published Lectures and Articles in the spring of 1935 Jaspers held public guest lectures upon invitation from the university of groningen, Holland. the lectures were immediately edited and published under the title Reason and Existenz in the same year, and this edition was later followed by several reprints. The first of the five lectures bears the title “The origin of the Contemporary philosophical situation: the Historical meaning of Kierkegaard and nietzsche,”160 and this is de facto Jaspers’ most extensive treatment of Kierkegaard which was published in his lifetime. both Kierkegaard and nietzsche are treated briefly again in the last lecture, entitled “Possibilities for Contemporary philosophizing: our situation through Kierkegaard and nietzsche: the problem: not to philosophize as an exception but in the light of the exception.”161 whereas, as we have seen, Heidegger sharply distinguished between the “thinker” nietzsche and the “religious writer” Kierkegaard, Jaspers consistently juxtaposed them, for he was convinced that there is a “compelling affinity” between them so that “their very differences make their common features…much more impressive.”162 what they basically had in common was “a type of thought and humanity which was indissolubly connected with a moment of this epoch, and so understood by them.”163 In the first lecture there is a great number of allusions to and quotations from different pieces of the first German edition of Kierkegaard’s published works164

ibid., pp. 755–6. ibid., p. 756. 158 ibid., p. 599; p. 753. see also SKS 4, 148–59. / FT, 54–67. 159 Jaspers, Philosophische Logik, vol. 1, p. 905; p. 963; p. 965; p. 1024. 160 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, pp. 1–27. (Reason and Existenz, pp. 19–50.) see also the three fragments, which were written at different times, in connection with Jaspers’ comparison of nietzsche and Kierkegaard in Reason and Existenz and in his book on nietzsche. in Jaspers, The Great Philosophers: The Disturbers, pp. 294–9. 161 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, pp. 93–111. (Reason and Existenz, pp. 127–47.) 162 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 5. (Reason and Existenz, p. 24.) it is a basic methodological principle for Jaspers that Kierkegaard and nietzsche should be studied together and they should be mutually interpreted. see Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 112. 163 ibid. 164 see GW1. First of all the volumes 2, 4, 6, 7 and 8 are alluded to or exlicitly quoted in the text. see Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, pp. 7–13; p. 15; p. 20; p. 112. somewhat oddly, william earle’s english translation does not indicate Jaspers’ allusions and also fails 156 157

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as well as from the two-volume selection from the journals by Haecker.165 moreover, gottsched’s selection from the journals is also used here166 just like the documents of Kierkegaard’s late polemic with the established Church.167 a sentence of Kierkegaard is quoted from Hirsch’s monumental Kierkegaard-Studien, which at that time had just recently been published.168 although the philosophical relevance of Kierkegaard and nietzsche was widely discussed in the early period of reception, Jaspers was convinced that they really marked a new period in the history of philosophy, and they were “the authentically great thinkers of their age.”169 according to Jaspers’ basic intuition, nietzsche and Kierkegaard have “a type of thought and humanity” in common, “which was indissolubly connected with a moment of this epoch, and so understood by them.”170 Therefore, the purpose of his analysis is to present the affinity in their thought, in their actual thinking of Existenz and finally in the way they understood themselves.171 Kierkegaard’s conception of Christianity, which is based on the absurd and martyrdom,172 is interpreted as something negative which destroys the established and permanent conditions173 and creates a new atmosphere. His thought arises from the depths of Existenz and tries to read again “the original text (Urschrift) of individual, human existential relations.”174 His criticism of system and his method of indirect to present the bibliographical dates of the explicit quotations, which were otherwise very carefully given in the original german edition. 165 Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher. see Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, pp. 7–9; pp. 13–15; pp. 19–22; p. 112. 166 see Søren Kierkegaard. Buch des Richters. see also Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 7; p. 20; p. 112. 167 Søren Kierkegaards agitatorische Schriften und Aufsätze. 1851–55, trans. and ed. by albrecht dorner and Christoph schrempf, stuttgart: Frommann 1896. see Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 10; p. 20; p. 112. 168 emanuel Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2, gütersloh: bertelsmann 1933. see also Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 12. 169 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 5. (Reason and Existenz, p. 24.) 170 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 6. (Reason and Existenz, p. 24.) 171 ibid. 172 in Jaspers’ reading Kierkegaard’s Christianity is based on an acosmic negation of world: “Kierkegaard leaped to a Christianity which was conceived as an absurd paradox, as decision for utter world negation and martyrdom.” Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 15. (Reason and Existenz, p. 36.) this negativity can, however, be alienating. “with Kierkegaard, who revivified the profound formulas of theology, it can seem like the peculiar art of perhaps a nonbeliever, forcing himself to believe.” Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 16. (Reason and Existenz, p. 36.) 173 as Jaspers remarks, Kierkegaard looked upon the established Chritianity of his age as “upon an enormous deception in which god is held to be a fool.” Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 10. (Reason and Existenz, p. 29.) although it is clear that this extremely critical standpoint was represented by the late Kierkegaard in his last polemical writings, they are, however, scarcely present in his works before 1854. Jaspers’ picture of Kierkegaard seems to be therefore in this respect somewhat selective and one-sided. 174 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 8. (Reason and Existenz, p. 27.) see also SKS 7, 573 / CUP1, 630.

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communication results from his conception of Existenz. the basic demand for honesty, which is for them “the ultimate virtue to which they subject themselves,”175 is common both for nietzsche and Kierkegaard. they were exceptions “in every sense”176 who fundamentally experienced their epoch as ruin, and they felt the end of this whole history.177 Jaspers not only provides an extensively elaborated overview of the significant parallels between the two thinkers, which make their differences secondary, but also deals with the new philosophical situtation produced by Kierkegaard and nietzsche. He stresses that “in modern philosophy several decisive themes have been developed through Kierkegaard. the most essential basic categories of contemporary philosophizing, at least in germany, go back to Kierkegaard.”178 this statement is, as regards the contemporary philosophies of Existenz, hardly questionable. one commentator sees, however, in his following claim an unintentional yet correct selfcriticism: “it might be that philosophizing in the fashion of Kierkegaard secretly nourishes itself on the substance of Christianity, which it ignores in words.”179 in any case, it is obvious that these lectures not only represent the most important part of Jaspers’ published works regarding his interpretation of Kierkegaard but also constitute a prominent contribution to his reception and explication. in september 1937, that is, two years after Reason and Existenz, Jaspers gave a series of lectures at the invitation of the german academy of Frankfurt. the lectures were published the following year with the title Philosophy of Existence. since Jaspers had just been dismissed from his university position, these lectures were his last opportunity to make a public statement for several years. the lectures contain all his basic thoughts on the encompassing, existential truth and reality. in fact, there are no quotations here from the writings of Kierkegaard, and the danish thinker is mentioned only twice. in the “introduction” it is claimed that “Existenz is one of the words for reality, with the accent Kierkegaard gave it: everything essentially real is for me only by virtue of the fact that i am myself.”180 Finally, in the “epilogue” Jaspers remarked that he had been using the expression “philosophy of existence” since the mid-1920s and, “because of Kierkegaard, [he] did not suspect it of being anything new.”181 despite the lack of quotations, the work is permeated by Kierkegaard’s thought. Jaspers’ use of fundamental categories such as “truth,”182 “exception,”183

Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 8. (Reason and Existenz, p. 28.) Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 16. (Reason and Existenz, p. 37.) 177 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 9. (Reason and Existenz, p. 29.) 178 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 23. (Reason and Existenz, p. 45.) 179 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 23. (Reason and Existenz, p. 46.) see michael theunissen’s remark in Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. by theunissen and greve, p. 63. 180 Jaspers, Existenzphilosophie, 1st ed., 1938, p. 1. (Philosophy of Existence, pp. 3–4.) 181 Jaspers, Existenzphilosophie, 2nd ed., 1956, p. 86. (Philosophy of Existence, pp. 95.) 182 see Jaspers, Existenzphilosophie, 1st ed., 1938, pp. 26–54. (Philosophy of Existence, pp. 33–61.) 183 Jaspers, Existenzphilosophie, 1st ed., 1938, pp. 37–9. (Philosophy of Existence, pp. 44–6.) 175 176

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“authority,”184 and “leap”185 clearly manifests his essential debt to Kierkegaard as well as his productive reception. due to his resolute work, Kierkegaard’s thought found a significant echo in the deep cultural crisis of interwar Germany. after the second world war, Jaspers was invited by the university of basel to give guest lectures at the Philosophical Faculty. In July 1947 he delivered five lectures in basel, which were published the following year. the title of the volume, The Philosophical Faith,186 alludes to one of Jaspers’ most significant existential categories. although his concept of faith is obviously closely connected to that of the danish thinker, he also tried to separate it from the Christian faith conceived by Kierkegaard as absolute paradox and absurd. whereas Jaspers’ “philosophical faith” connects Existenz to transcendence,187 it is not constituted either by the paradoxical decision of the individual or by its relation to the—similarly paradoxical—revelation (or to the historical fact of incarnation), but it always includes the movement of reason conceived in a Kantian way.188 since this faith is in no way a conceptual content (fides quae creditur)189 but an existential possibility, it remains necessarily in Schweben der Existenz.190 Jaspers’ claim that “every faith is historical”191 seems to be closely connected to Johannes Climacus’ dialectical exposition of the relation between faith and history.192

Jaspers, Existenzphilosophie, 1st ed., 1938, pp. 40–7. (Philosophy of Existence, pp. 47–53.) 185 Jaspers, Existenzphilosophie, 1st ed., 1938, pp. 20–2. (Philosophy of Existence, pp. 24–6.) 186 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube. although the volume contains six lectures, the fifth one was omitted. 187 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, p. 28: “Glaube heißt das Bewußtsein der Existenz in bezug von Transzendenz.” 188 in consequence of the a priori limits of reason god cannot be known, he is rather deus absconditus and absolutely transcends the world. “Mit solcher Bereitschaft ist verknüpft: erstens die Vergewisserung der absoluten Transzendenz Gottes zur Welt: der deus absconditus rückt fern, wenn ich ihn begreifen möchte….” Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, p. 28. to be sure, Johannes Climacus would absolutely agree with this position. the fundamental difference between the two thinkers on this point is, rather, that whereas for Jaspers the credo quia absurdum is a kind of Unphilosophie and the sacrificium intellectus is a falsity, for Climacus the “crucifixion of the understanding” is precisely the authentic characteristic of faith. see SKS 7, 545 / CUP1, 600. this difference follows basically from Kierkegaard’s theological position, namely, that god cannot be perceived not only because of the limits of pure reason, but first of all because of sin, and therefore he is per definitionem “the unknown” for reason. see SKS 4, 245 / PF, 39. 189 there are, obviously, certain contents of philosophical faith, for example, god’s existence; they are, however, certainly not of a conceptual kind. see Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, pp. 29–37. 190 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, p. 20. 191 ibid., p. 86. 192 SKS 4, 278–86 / PF, 79–88. 184

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the danish thinker is also explicitly mentioned and quoted in some passages of the work. First, his early criticism of schleiermacher is quoted from the journals,193 and then his concept of historicity of faith is also explained.194 From several explicit (unidentified) quotations from The Sickness unto Death and The Concept of Anxiety, it appears that Jaspers’ concept of the “demonic”195 is based for the most part on Anti-Climacus’ phenomenology of defiance196 as well as on vigilius Haufniensis’ analysis of anxiety about the good.197 in the last lecture Kierkegaard and nietzsche are linked as nineteenth-century counterparts of prophets and as great disturbers.198 both of them were exceptions, and they tried to awaken the sleeping world. Kierkegaard’s conception of absurd Christianity is interpreted in this context as the end of Christianity itself.199 Jaspers also published a number of speeches, papers, and essays which dealt with the danish thinker. the volume Appropriation and Polemic contains three articles which were written after Jaspers’ emigration to switzerland.200 The first one is a paper which was originally delivered in February, 1951 in the pen Club of basel, and it bore the title “Kierkegaard.”201 in this enthusiastic but also critical text Jaspers, after having briefly outlined the early period of the history of reception, deals with Kierkegaard’s ambiguous relation to Christianity, with his personality and work, and lastly with his significance in the history of philosophy. The text contains several unidentified quotations from Kierkegaard’s journals202 as well as from his published works, first of all from the Climacus writings203 and from the late polemical pamphlet The Moment.204 the careful selection of the quoted passages shows Jaspers’ excellent skills in Kierkegaard’s whole textual corpus. in one of the very last sentences of “A First and Last Explanation”—a short yet significant piece Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, p. 15. see also Die Tagebücher, vol. 1, p. 54, which corresponds to Pap. i a 273 / JP 2, 1096. 194 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, p. 15. also Johannes Climacus’ famous sentence from the Postscript is alluded to: “Warum glaubst Du?—mein Vater hat es mir gesagt.” Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, p. 22. see SKS 7, 502 / CUP1, 552–3; see also SKS 20, 417, nb5:114 / JP 2, 1170. 195 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, p. 95; see also pp. 96–7. 196 SKS 11, 181–7 / SUD, 67–74. 197 SKS 4, 420–37 / CA, 118–36. From a philological and methodological point of view it is remarkable, that Jaspers sometimes simply abbreviates the quoted text without marking the omitted passages. Compare, for instance, the long quotation from The Concept of Anxiety in the last paragraph on p. 96. (“Die Verschlossenheit kann die Offenbarung wünschen…und nun hat sie gesiegt.”) with the original passage in SKS 4, 428–9 / CA, 127–8. this method gives the impression that Jaspers in certain cases does not quote directly from Kierkegaard’s text but from his own notes or memory. 198 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, pp. 127–8. 199 ibid., p. 128. 200 Karl Jaspers, Aneignung und Polemik. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze zur Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. by Hans saner, munich: piper 1968. 201 ibid., pp. 296–312. 202 see, for instance, ibid., p. 301; pp. 306–7. 203 see, for instance, ibid., p. 297; p. 298; p. 301; p. 303. 204 see, for instance, ibid., p. 301; pp. 304–5. 193

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which is attached to Climacus’ Concluding Unscientific Postscript—Kierkegaard claims that the purpose of his pseudonyms is only “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.”205 this passage, which was certainly central for Kierkegaard’s self-interpretation as an author, was perceptively considered by Jaspers as a key text for the interpretation of Kierkegaard’s whole authorship. it is not by chance that the formula “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”206 returns or is at least alluded to not only here but in all three articles of the volume.207 moreover, it also appears in the early lectures Reason and Existenz208 and in the late fragmentary work The Great Philosophers.209 Kierkegaard and nietzsche are repeatedly linked in this article as well.210 both of them are characterized as “storm-birds”211 who presage the oncoming catastrophe without any positive doctrines. they only draw attention to the problems of Existenz and call out to the individual for honesty.212 the second article was originally a radio talk which was broadcast in 1955 on the occasion of the centenary of Kierkegaard’s death.213 Here Jaspers provides a clear-cut overview of Kierkegaard’s extraordinary life and far-reaching works, as well as of his main thoughts. in this article only some passages from the journals are quoted,214 together with the central claim that Kierkegaard wanted to read the “original text” of the human relations of Existenz.215 Jaspers approaches the figure of Kierkegaard by means of the category of the “exception”216 and claims that neither his life nor his thought can be understood on the basis of a specific historical type.217 as regards the philosophical reception, Jaspers remarks that the philosophers cut out the Christian content from Kierkegaard’s work and try to find a doctine on the human relations of Existenz.218 it is claimed that Kierkegaard cannot be honestly

SKS 7, 573 / CUP1, 629–30. see also SKS 12, 281 / WA, 165–6. Jaspers, Aneignung und Polemik, p. 297. 207 ibid., p. 297; p. 318; p. 320; p. 323. 208 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 8. (Reason and Existenz, p. 27.) 209 Jaspers, The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 204; p. 232; p. 290. 210 Jaspers, Aneignung und Polemik, pp. 308–9; p. 311; p. 337; p. 394. 211 ibid., p. 309; see also p. 327. For the original context of the expression “storm-bird” in Kierkegaard’s corpus see SKS 18, 271, JJ:391 / KJN 2, 250. 212 Jaspers, Aneignung und Polemik, p. 309; see also p. 304; p. 314; p. 325. 213 Karl Jaspers, “Kierkegaard. zu seinem 100. todestag,” in his Aneignung und Polemik, pp. 312–21. 214 ibid., pp. 315–16. 215 ibid., p. 320. 216 ibid., p. 316. 217 ibid., p. 319. 218 Ibid., p. 320. It seems to me, however, that this methodology is first of all characteristic of Jaspers himself. Heidegger, for instance, claims that “von [Kierkegaard’s] ‘erbaulichen’ Schriften philosophisch mehr zu lernen ist als von den theoretischen.” martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 18th ed., tübingen: niemeyer 2001, p. 235. 205 206

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bypassed in contemporary philosophy, but it is likewise impossible to gain through him a positive and systematic doctrine of human life.219 the third article was originally composed for the international Kierkegaard Colloquium which was organised by unesCo in 1964.220 this paper highlighted first of all the ambiguity of Kierkegaard,221 which is closely connected not only to his personality but also to his method of “indirect communication.”222 Kierkegaard’s self-interpretation and polemic with the established Church is presented on the basis of several quotations from The Moment223 and from his journals.224 Jaspers interprets Kierkegaard here as an “exception”225 who seeks “earnestness”226 and “honesty.”227 according to him, the main impact of the danish thinker on the twentieth century may be to upset the age, to disturb and to urge the individual to honesty.228 D. Philosophical Faith vs. Revelation Jaspers unfolded the problems of philosophical faith not only in his lectures of 1947 but also in his late comprehensive work Philosophical Faith and Revelation.229 in this opus many of Kierkegaard’s main works as well as central passages of his Nachlass are alluded to, paraphrased, or even quoted.230 moreover, an entire chapter is dedicated to his dialectical conception of Christianity and to his late criticism of the established Church.231 Jaspers explains here his basic convinction that Kierkegaard’s “fight was not a late aberration of his, but the outcome of an irresistibly maturing insight. it resulted from the poetic construction of Christianity he had derived from theological dialectics.”232 it was, however, not authentic Christianity which was demanded by

Jaspers, Aneignung und Polemik, p. 320. Karl Jaspers, “Kierkegaard heute,” in his Aneignung und Polemik, pp. 322–9. 221 Jaspers, Aneignung und Polemik, p. 322. see also ibid., p. 329. 222 ibid., p. 323. 223 ibid., p. 325. 224 ibid., p. 324. 225 ibid. 226 ibid. 227 ibid., p. 325. 228 ibid., pp. 328–9. 229 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation). regarding Jaspers’ sketches and materials relevant for the interpretation of Kierkegaard in this work see the “inventar” composed by Hans saner in Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, pp. 1073–4. 230 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 47; p. 118; p. 182; p. 227; p. 243; p. 322; pp. 513ff. in certain cases also the pseudonymous authors are indicated, see for instance p. 227; pp. 243–4 (on p. 243 a passage from Fear and Trembling is erroneously ascribed to Johannes Climacus). 231 see Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, pp. 513–27. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, pp. 346–56.) 232 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 513. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, p. 346.) 219 220

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him, but simply and solely “honesty.”233 Considering that Kierkegaard’s late polemic was a necessary consequence of his genuine radical conception of Christianity, Jaspers regards the textual vehicle of this fight, namely, the journal The Moment234 as the most important work “to have appeared on the church in our time.”235 at the same time, however, Jaspers also explains his criticism of Kierkegaard’s concept of Christianity. His basic argument is that Kierkegaard’s highly sophisticated dialecticpoetic construction of the Christian faith is in the end acosmic,236 and it means “the end of Christianity in the world. if the Christian faith is what he construed it to be, probably no one can believe it any more—and Kierkegaard, although passionately eager to believe, never claimed to be doing so in person.”237 that is, if Kierkegaard was right, Christianity could not exist at all. as a result of this we do not have to follow him but to take his desire for honesty seriously. For Jaspers, Kierkegaard himself is not a position but rather a “way of thinking.”238 according to Jaspers: Kierkegaard was the first to draw the conclusion that historical research is irrelevant to the believer. its results do not matter to him; the occupation with them leads away from faith rather than toward it. what we should hear is not a historically questionable witness but the witness of faith; this is the mouthpiece of revelation.239

Climacus’ conception about the immanent historicity of faith240 is so central for Jaspers that he claims that Kierkegaard “gave us the idea of…‘historicity.’ ”241 in this regard Jaspers wholly agrees with Kierkegaard: philosophical faith is, like Climacus’ Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 514 (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, p. 347): “Kierkegaard is not fighting here as a Christian, for Christianity, but as a human beeing, for veracity. ‘Quite simple: i want honesty. i am neither clemency nor rigour—i am human honesty.’ ” see also Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 517; p. 519. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, p. 349; p. 351.) 234 sören Kierkegaard, Der Augenblick. Aufsätze und Schriften des letzten Streites, trans. by Hayo gerdes, in GW2, tome 34, 1959. 235 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 519. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, p. 351.) 236 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 516 (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, p. 348): “the way shown by Kierkegaard under the pseudonyms of Climacus and anticlimacus…a construction of following Christ in the unequivocal sense of total world denial—would lead us astray.” 237 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 517. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, pp. 349.) Jaspers repeats on p. 518 (p. 350): “a Christian faith that uses Kierkegaard’s theological construct to comprehend itself as incomprehensible, as necessarily absurd…would be as apt to mean the end of this Christianity and this church as would Kierkegaard’s exposure of ecclesiasticism.” 238 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 519. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, p. 351.) 239 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 47. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, pp. 16–17.) 240 SKS 4, 287–306 / PF, 89–110. 241 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 246. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, p. 158.) 233

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paradoxical faith par excellence, historical, “for faith and the historical are entirely commensurate.”242 Considering that Jaspers ab ovo methodologically eliminates from his interpretation of Kierkegaard all Christian content,243 and moreover, sharply criticizes—among others—the “demand on exclusiveness” of biblical faith,244 it is somewhat surprising that he claims that “all of us are Christians in the sense of biblical faith.”245 in the chapter “the modes of encompassing,” Jaspers refers to the basic distinction between existence and Existenz. while explaining Existenz he paraphrases Kierkegaard’s or anti-Climacus’ famous formula from The Sickness unto Death: “Existenz is the self that works on itself in cognizance of its relation to its constituent power.”246 As we have seen, this “definition” already appears in Psychologie der Weltanschauungen247 and thus gives evidence of the organic continuity of Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard.248 as regards the intellectual context, it is important to see that here Jaspers indirectly criticizes sartre’s famous thesis that “existence precedes essence,”249 while claiming that “if we reverse this approach—if we call Existenz primary, preceding the general and the essence—we go wrong again, since the individual needs the general to be himself.”250 Existenz always requires the “living struggle” of communication. self-isolated, without the general, one cannot come to himself.251

SKS 4, 297 / PF, 99. Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 370. 244 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, pp. 69–75. 245 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 53. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, p. 21.) in his Nachlass Jaspers also claims: “we are all Christians, and also Jews, insofar as we have been nurtured in this western spirit, and have a relationship to the bible.” see Jaspers, The Great Philosophers. The Disturbers, p. 287. as merold westphal remarks, “it is hard to imagine anything less in the spirit of Kierkegaard than this ‘all of us are Christians’ with its appeal to the fact that our fathers have lived in this house for a millennium.” see westphal, “Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard,” in his Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Koterski and langley, p. 233. it seems to me, however, that westphal’s criticism is in this point not wholly appropriate, because Jaspers does not deal here with Kierkegaard’s standpoint but with his own and interprets biblical religions as cultural sources of western thought, which is hard to deny. 246 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 118. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, p. 66.) see also SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 14. emphasis in original. 247 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 371. 248 later in the work also anti-Climacus’ “phenomenology of despair” from The Sickness unto Death is briefly unfolded. See Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 322. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, pp. 212–13.) 249 Jean-paul sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, paris: gallimard 1946, p. 21. 250 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 118. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, p. 67.) it is well known that sartre’s thesis was—somewhat earlier—also sharply criticized by martin Heidegger. see his Über den Humanismus, 10th ed., Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 2000, p. 20. 251 Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 120. (Philosophical Faith and Revelation, p. 68.) 242 243

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summing up, we can state that in this monumental work from Jaspers’ oeuvre the concept of philosophical faith is not treated in isolation but in the overall context of Jaspers’ whole philosophy. the overview of this context clearly shows not only his imposing knowledge and intensive reception of Kierkegaard’s thought, but reflects also his criticism of, and resolute distance from, the danish thinker. this inner ambiguity seems to be—in the same way as intensity and affinity—an immanent characteristic of this highly productive reception. E. Kierkegaard as a Great Awakener Considering that Kierkegaard was for Jaspers “the most important thinker of our post-Kantian age,”252 and that he was widely discussed in many of Jaspers’ university courses, publications, and unpublished notes, it seems to be somewhat surprising that he still hesitated to publish a comprehensive monograph on the danish thinker. one reason for this may be seen in Jaspers’ hermeneutical thesis, according to which “what becomes of Kierkegaard in someone else’s interpretation is no longer Kierkegaard.”253 therefore, the attempts to reconstruct his philosophy or theology in the form of a system or objective doctrine have always necessarily failed. it is by no means accidental that “the task of presenting Kierkegaard as an integral whole has so far not been accomplished.”254 Kierkegaard was for Jaspers not a didactic thinker, but an awakening one, who “does not leave us with a knowledge that clearly tells us what is what, but casts us back to ourselves.”255 somewhat ironically, Jaspers’ most extensive treatment of Kierkegaard in the framework of his late comprehensive project entitled The Great Philosophers256 remained fragmentary and unpublished.257 Here he interprets the danish thinker Jaspers, The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 191. ibid., p. 194. 254 ibid. 255 ibid., pp. 191–2. later, on page 232, it is also claimed that “Kierkegaard is an awakener, not a leader.” according to Jaspers, the great awakeners “do not present us with a doctrine dominating their world of ideas, they do not lead the movement of ideas in a single decisive direction. rather, they create an unrest revealing a depth which becomes palpable as truth and actuality, beyond what they think, say, and point to. they do not offer the security provided by knowledge, a faith, a way of life. but they lead to the awakening of what lies ready in the darkness of the possible existenz of man.” Jaspers, The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 35. 256 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 1, pp. 416–93; vol. 2, pp. 763–909; pp. 1058–74. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, pp. 190–290; pp. 294–9.) as regards the textual corpus of this unfinished work it has to be remarked that the English translation does not follow the exact philological principles of the original edition, which reflects the rather fragmentary state of the text. it seems that the english editors preferred to compose a readerfriendly translation rather than a philologically correct yet fragmentary one. 257 as for the basic structure of Jaspers’ imposing project of a world history of philosophy as well as of the great philosophers, see Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Koterski and langley, pp. 9–12. see also leonard H. ehrlich, “philosophy and its History. the double Helix of Jaspers’ thought,” in Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Koterski and langley, pp. 19–30. 252 253

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amongs the “great awakeners,” such as pascal, lessing, and nietzsche. what they all have in common is that what they suffer, personally and in their thinking, is the impact of modernity: the collapse of the stabilizing universalism of Christianity; the loss of faith, of authority, of tradition; the rise of modern science and its irrevocable preemption of the realm of cogent knowledge; the boundlessness in the use of rationality; the abandonment of the individual coupled with his manipulability in his abandonment.258

Therefore, it is no wonder that Jaspers displayed a marked philosophical affinity to these thinkers, especially to Kierkegaard and nietzsche. the main topics of Jaspers’ interpretation of Kierkegaard in this project are Kierkegaard’s life, works, modes of thought, problems posed, and themes, as well as his conception of the stages of Existenz. Kierkegaard’s biography and his problems of life are genuinely illuminated with a great number of accurately selected passages from different german editions of his journals.259 From this part it appears that Jaspers was deeply interested and competent in Kierkegaard’s life history. the reason for this was not a simple psychological or historical interest but rather Jaspers’ basic hermeneutical intuition that in Kierkegaard’s case life and work cannot be separated: “what he lived and shows us in the Journals is as essential as his work. His non-acting reveals as much as his acting.”260 accordingly, he copiously treats Kierkegaard’s youth, illness, decisions, his relation to Regine, the fight with the Corsair, and the attack on the Church. the greatness of the danish thinker can be seen in the fact that for him his abnormal physical and mental state also had a meaning, and he accomplished an interpretive transformation of his illness.261 after this, Jaspers provides an overview of Kierkegaard’s work and his basic thoughts in the light of his Climacus writings, as well as The Concept of Anxiety, Stages on the Life’s Way, and The Sickness unto Death.262 He claims that Kierkegaard’s “philosophical will to insight and his Christian will to faith are both of extraordinary force.”263 despite the diversity of standpoints and contents of his numerous writings, there is an astonishing structural coherence in the chronological sequence of his works. although Kierkegaard published several monumental works, no one of them “may be claimed to be his main opus, in which he can be found in his entirety.”264 in consequence of his highly sophisticated use of the pseudonyms, his texts cannot be interpreted as pieces of a homogeneous corpus, but they should rather be explained ehrlich, “philosophy and its History. the double Helix of Jaspers’ thought,” p. 27. Jaspers mainly uses here the following selections: Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher; Søren Kierkegaard. Buch des Richters; Søren Kierkegaard und sein Verhältnis zu “ihr.” Aus nachgelassenen Papieren; and Søren Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu seiner Braut. regarding his reception of and comprehensive expertise in the secondary literature, one should emphasize his use of Hirsch’s Kierkegaard-Studien and Hohlenberg’s Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie. 260 Jaspers, The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 231. 261 ibid., pp. 195–231. 262 ibid., pp. 231–54. 263 ibid., p. 232. 264 ibid., p. 233. 258 259

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from the point of view of the pseudonymous author at issue. this hermeneutical principle is so important that if we wish to quote his pseudonymous writings, we should quote the pseudonym at issue and not Kierkegaard himself.265 the most fragmentary part of the text is certainly Jaspers’ exposition of the stages of Existenz.266 the stages are “world-views,” and “possible attitudes toward life taken by the individual within existence.”267 although Jaspers consistently claims that Kierkegaard has no objective theory, here he remarks that “if anything in Kierkegaard comes close to a doctrine that embraces the entire thinking and gives it design, it is the doctrine of the stages.”268 this theory is regarded as absolutely central for Kierkegaard, since it constitutes the unity of the entire pseudonymous production. thus, the theory of the stages can be considered as an “analogue of a system.”269 it is based, however, on concepts which, instead of mediating any objective knowledge, awaken Existenz and subjectivity. therefore, the system itself can never be seen as an objective doctrine of life. after having characterized the aesthetic and the ethical stages in light of Either/Or and Stages on the Life’s Way, Jaspers deals with religiousness a and b mainly on the conceptual basis of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. whereas religiousness a as a “humanistic religion”—which, however, goes far beyond the deism of the eighteenth century—is treated by Jaspers with a deep sympathy,270 the paradoxical and absurd religiousness b is discussed by him with a biting criticism.271 Jaspers here repeats his view, which was already formed in Philosophical Faith and Revelation, by claiming: “if Kierkegaard’s Christianity is the one and only one, then his thinking would spell the end of Christianity brought about by Christian thinking itself.”272 therefore, he does not accept “that Kierkegaard’s conception of Christianity is the true one and comprehends authentic Christianity.”273 what Christianity really is cannot be explored in such a negative way as Kierkegaard did.274 ibid., p. 235. see also SKS 7, 571 / CUP1, 627–8. Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, pp. 785–849. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, pp. 254–90.) 267 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 786. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 255.) 268 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 789. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 258.) 269 ibid. 270 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 809. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 274.) 271 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 825 (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 284): “against the construction of Johannes Climacus and against Kierkegaard’s faith we suggest that this is a poetical fiction—hence the guilt of refusal, of the ‘no.’ it is the ‘betrayal’ of what is human, of the beloved, of the world.” 272 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 844. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 285.) see also his Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, p. 517. 273 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 847. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 288.) 274 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 845 (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 286): “Kierkegaard’s greatness can hardly be derived from his interpretation of Christian faith, which on the contrary he formulates in a manner that strikes us as the self265 266

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as regards Kierkegaard’s dialectic, Jaspers, on the one hand, compares it with that of his “counterfigure,” that is, Hegel, and, on the other hand, he confronts his basic concept “paradox” with the antinomies of Kant.275 Contrary to Hegel’s mediation, “by dialectic Kierkegaard posits a thinking that disrupts rather than unites, that holds firmly to a thinking that accepts the insoluble, incomprehensible.”276 at this point Jaspers was clearly not aware of the positive aspects of Kierkegaard’s reception of Hegel, and he explained it—certainly in accordance with the mainstream of contemporary interpretations—somewhat one-sidedly, as a purely negative relation. whereas all the writings of Kierkegaard are intended to “deceive” into Christianity, he himself, in the last analysis, leaves the Christian faith open-ended. He is a “policeman”277—whose task is to uncover fraud, and to claim for honesty— rather than an eminent Christian. if this is the case then “in what way can Kierkegaard be appropriated if i take him seriously, without simultaneously adopting his explicit goal, that is, the goal of becoming a Christian? by taking his indirect communication seriously.”278 the inner core and genuine form of Kierkegaard’s thought is in Jaspers’ view indirect communication. in consequence, Kierkegaard remains necessarily an ambiguous thinker—but through his pathos and will for honesty he is also an awakening one. V. Jaspers’ Relation to Kierkegaard: Productive Reception and Immanent Ambiguity although a lot of more meticulous research—with saner’s words “geduldige Kleinarbeit”279—is still needed to reconstruct the whole picture of Jaspers’ relation to Kierkegaard, the above overview allows us to draw some conclusions regarding this relationship, which had a decisive role in the philosophical reception and canonization of Kierkegaard’s thought after the First world war. Concerning the reading of “the original text (Urschrift) of individual, human existential relations,”280 Jaspers considered Kierkegaard the most important thinker of “our post-Kantian age.”281 given that Jaspers’ basic concern was precisely to transcend the lifeless formalism of neo-Kantianism, at that time predominant in Continental philosophy, deconstruction of this faith. it is an artful dialectic of unsolved contradictions that discovers in them the truth of god’s actuality.” 275 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 817. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 277.) 276 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 815. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 274.) 277 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 845. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 286.) see also SV1 xiii, 571 / PV, 87. 278 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 848. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 289.) 279 see his editorial note in Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 764. 280 Jaspers, Vernunft und Existenz, p. 8. (Reason and Existenz, p. 27.) see also SKS 7, 573 / CUP1, 630. 281 Jaspers, The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 191.

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and to grasp and illuminate the philosophical problems of factual life, the discovery of Kierkegaard’s thought struck him as a “revelation.”282 in the deep cultural and intellectual crisis of the World Wars Kierkegaard’s exceptional figure was perceived by him as a “storm-bird”283 presaging the oncoming catastrophe without providing any positive doctrine. Kierkegaard’s criticism of the age and his demand for honesty, which were also central to nietzsche, were for Jaspers of peculiar importance. this is the reason why his interpretation of Kierkegaard’s life and thought never lacked a close investigation into Kierkegaard’s late polemical writings. beyond Kierkegaard’s genuine reading of the “original text” of Existenz, Jaspers mostly appreciated the way of his thinking and the highly sophisticated method of “indirect communication.” this method was productively assimilated in Jaspers’ basic concept of “illumination of Existenz,” which signifies for him the only way of authentic philosophizing. it is characteristic of Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard that it apparently lacks disparate periods and dramatic changes. although in his early opus, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, lengthy quotations and paraphrases were preponderant, in some of the later works there prevails a deeper, conceptual assimilation, with this modification being nothing other than a sign of an ever-engrossed appropriation. as we have seen, Jaspers had an impressive command not only of those parts of Kierkegaard’s work which were available in german translation at that time, but also the relevant secondary literature. His use of this abundant literature should be certainly subject to further research. Although his published writings are not filled with explicit discussions of the different interpretations, in a fragmentary piece of the Nachlass he sharply criticizes both the theological and the philosophical explanations.284 moreover, as we have seen, his conception of Kierkegaard also differs openly and definitely in crucial points from that of Heidegger’s. Although, by turning Kierkegaard’s exceptional literary production into an academic “philosophy of Existenz,” he undoubtedly made an outstanding contribution to the dissemination of Kierkegaard’s thought in german philosophical culture, he nevertheless, as is known, for certain reasons hesitated to compose a comprehensive monograph on the danish thinker. His late, posthumously published interpretation of Kierkegaard as a “great awakener” is, despite its fragmentary state, certainly important. From the above survey it is clear that Kierkegaard’s thought made a decisive impact on Jaspers’ whole philosophical enterprise which certainly forms a milestone in the history of Kierkegaard reception in the twentieth century. nevertheless, Jaspers strongly emphasizes that he “did not become an adherent of Kierkegaard.”285 His appropriation was perceptibly just as much critical and ambivalent as intensive and productive. His methodological convinction was that it is “possible to understand Kierkegaard’s basic thoughts and to appropriate them…completely divorced from

282 283

143. 284 285

Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, 6th ed., 1971, p. x. Jaspers, Aneignung und Polemik, p. 309; p. 327. see also SKS 18, 271, JJ:39 / KJN 2, Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 904. Jaspers, Philosophie, vol. 1, p. xx.

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Christianity.”286 the core of Jaspers’ program was to put in parentheses the Christian content of Kierkegaard’s thought while appropriating and interpreting his genuine conception of Existenz. whether this selective methodology was really adequate to grasp the core of Kierkegaard’s thinking may be—and was de facto—a subject of discussion. it is remarkable, however, that whereas Jaspers designates Kierkegaard as a “Christian philosopher,”287 and he claims that “Kierkegaard confesses himself a Christian”288 and “he spoke directly as a Christian,”289 in the Nachlass he points out that Kierkegaard was no “preacher of Christianity.”290 apart from the apparent ambivalence of these designations it should be noted that from the point of view of Kierkegaard’s self-interpretation all of them are highly problematic, and they may have a completely inadequate message. therefore, it is probably not unfounded to remark that Jaspers’ use of these categories—at least terminologically—reflects his own conception of Kierkegaard rather than that of the danish thinker. Jaspers, on the one hand, certainly transformed many of Kierkegaard’s genuine insights according to his own philosophical preferences and intentions. on the other hand, however, he also preserved and developed the legacy of Kierkegaardian thought in his own deeply humanistic thinking. His theonomic conception of Existenz as that which “relates itself to itself and thus to its transcendence”291 clearly reflects both sides of this reception. “there is no doubt that Kierkegaard remains ambiguous”292—he remarked in the Nachlass. as we have seen, his relation to Kierkegaard was as ambiguous as Kierkegaard himself. nevertheless he preserved all along an intimacy with the danish thinker’s thought while resolutely thinking from the origins of philosophical faith and Existenz.

286 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 849. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 290.) 287 Jaspers, “Kierkegaard,” in his Aneignung und Polemik, p. 297. 288 Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, p. 226. on the contrary, in his above-quoted article Jaspers claims: “Kierkegaard ist ein christlicher Philosoph, aber von merkwürdiger Art: Er bekennt sich nicht als Christ….” Jaspers, “Kierkegaard,” in his Aneignung und Polemik, p. 297. 289 Jaspers, “Kierkegaard heute,” p. 326. 290 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 905. see also his “Kierkegaard. zu seinem 100. geburtstag,” p. 319. 291 Jaspers, Philosophie, vol. 1, p. 15. 292 Jaspers, Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 2, p. 849. (The Great Philosophers, vol. 4, p. 290.)

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Jaspers’ Corpus Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, berlin: springer 1919, p. 12; p. 61; p. 90; pp. 94–6; p. 99; pp. 217–18; pp. 238–9; pp. 245–7; pp. 255–6; pp. 238–9; p. 329; p. 332–5; p. 339; p. 341; pp. 348–9; p. 351; pp. 354–5; p. 357; p. 359; pp. 370– 81. (excerpts in english in Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Joseph w. Koterski and raymond J. langley, amherst, new York: Humanity books 2003, pp. 205–22; pp. 243–57.) Die geistige Situation der Zeit, berlin and leipzig: walter de gruyter 1931, pp. 10–11; pp. 13–14; pp. 35–6; pp. 43–5; p. 145; p. 163. (english translation: Man in the Modern Age, trans. by eden and Cedar paul, london: routledge & Kegan paul 1951, p. 17, pp. 20–1; p. 141; pp. 152–3; p. 160; p. 177.) Philosophie, vols. 1–3, berlin: springer 1932, vol. 1, Philosophische Weltorientierung, p. 12; p. 15; p. 300; p. 317; p. 337; vol. 2, Existenzerhellung, p. 151; p. 274; p. 320. (english translation: Philosophy, vols. 1–3, trans. by e.b. ashton, Chicago and london: university of Chicago press 1969–71, vol. 1, p. xvi; p. 2; p. 9; p. 54; p. 56; p. 219; p. 301; p. 315; p. 332; vol. 2, p. 135; p. 239; p. 278.) “Herkunft der gegenwärtigen philosophischen situation (die geschichtliche bedeutung Kierkegaards und nietzsches),” in his Vernunft und Existenz. Fünf Vorlesungen, groningen: J.b. walters 1935, pp. 1–27. (english translation: “the origin of the Contemporary philosophical situation: the Historical meaning of Kierkegaard and nietzsche,” in his Reason and Existenz: Five Lectures, trans. by william earle; afterword by pol vandevelde, milwaukee: marquette university press 1997, pp. 19–50. see also “Kierkegaard and nietzsche: their Historic Significance,” in Karl Jaspers: Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. by edith ehrlich, leonard H. ehrlich, and george b. pepper, athens, ohio, and london: ohio university press 1986, pp. 37–53.) Existenzphilosophie. Drei Vorlesungen gehalten am Freien Deutschen Hochstift in Frankfurt a. M. September 1937, berlin: de gruyter 1938, p. 1. (english translation: Philosophy of Existence, trans. by richard F. grabau, philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press 1995, pp. 3–4.) Existenzphilosophie. Drei Vorlesungen gehalten am Freien Deutschen Hochstift in Frankfurt a. M. September 1937, 2nd ed., enlarged with an afterword, berlin: de gruyter 1956, p. 86. (english translation: Philosophy of Existence, trans. by richard F. grabau, philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press 1995, p. 95.) “nietzsche und das Christentum,” in his Wahrheit und Leben. Ausgewählte Schriften, stuttgart and zürich and salzburg: europ. buchclub s. d., pp. 355–417. (republished in his Aneignung und Polemik. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze

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zur Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. by Hans saner, munich: piper 1968, pp. 330–8, see especially p. 337 and p. 396. “Foreword,” in Karl Jaspers et la philosophie de l’existence, ed. by paul ricoeur and mikel dufrenne, paris: seuil 1947, pp. 7–8. Von der Wahrheit, in his Philosophische Logik, munich: piper 1947, vol. 1, p. 18; p. 266; p. 312; p. 434; pp. 541–4; p. 599; p. 753; pp. 755–6; p. 764; p. 853; p. 905; p. 963; p. 965; p. 1024. Der philosophische Glaube, munich: piper 1948, p. 15; p. 22; p. 28; pp. 32–5; pp. 56–7; p. 84; pp. 86–7; pp. 95–7; pp. 127–8. “the importance of nietzsche, marx and Kierkegaard in the History of philosophy,” Hibbert Journal, vol. 49, 1950–51, pp. 226–34. “Kierkegaard, leben und werk,” Universitas, vol. 6, no. 10, 1951, pp. 1057–70. (republished in his Rechenschaft und Ausblick, munich: piper 1951, pp. 115– 33; and in his Wahrheit und Leben. Ausgewählte Schriften, stuttgart, zürich and salzburg: europ. buchclub n.d., pp. 338–54.) “Kierkegaard,” Universitas, vol. 6, 1951, pp. 1057–70. (republished in his Rechenschaft und Ausblick, munich: piper 1951, pp. 115–33; and in his Aneignung und Polemik. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze zur Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. by Hans saner, munich: piper 1968, pp. 296–311.) “Kierkegaard,” Der Monat, vol. 3, no. 33, 1951, pp. 227–36. “was ist existentialismus?” Schweizer Illustrierte, vol. 40, no. 18, 1951, p. 15; p. 26. (republished in his Aneignung und Polemik. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze zur Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. by Hans saner, munich: piper 1968, pp. 497–501.) “Kierkegaard,” Neubau, vol. 7, no. 3, 1952, pp. 95–9. “the importance of Kierkegaard,” Cross Currents, vol. 2, no. 3. 1952, pp. 5–16. “Kierkegaard. zu seinem 100. todestag” Die Gegenwart, vol. 10, 1955, pp. 759–62; republished in his Aneignung und Polemik. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze zur Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. by Hans saner, munich: piper 1968, pp. 312–21. “actualité de Kierkegaard,” La table ronde, 1955, no. 95, pp. 53–65. Philosophische Autobiographie, in Karl Jaspers, ed. by paul arthur schilpp, stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1957, pp. 1–79; p. 57; p. 64; p. 71. (republished in Karl Jaspers, Philosophie und Welt: Reden und Aufsätze, munich: piper 1958, pp. 275–402; and in Karl Jaspers: Werk und Wirkung: zum 80. Geburtstag von Karl Jaspers, 23. Februar 1963, ed. by Klaus piper, munich: piper 1963, pp. 19– 129; enlarged new edition: Philosophische Autobiographie, munich: r. piper 1977, p. 85; p. 94; p. 103; p. 115; p. 125; english translation: “philosophical autobiography,” in The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, ed. by paul arthur schilpp, new York: tudor 1957, pp. 1–94.) Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, munich: piper 1962, p. 54; p. 118; p. 137; p. 176; p. 179; p. 182; p. 227; p. 243; pp. 245–6; p. 287; p. 322; p. 341; p. 469; p. 511; pp. 513–25. (english translation: Philosophical Faith and Revelation, trans. by e.b. ashton, london: Collins 1967, p. 16; p. 21; pp. 57–8; pp. 66–7; p. 80; p. 114; pp. 157–8; p. 212; p. 225; p. 294; p. 315; pp. 346–56.)

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“Kierkegaard heute” in his Aneignung und Polemik. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze zur Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. by Hans saner, munich: piper 1968, pp. 322–9. “Chi è Kierkegaard?” Ethica, vol. 8, 1969, pp. 81–90. Die großen Philosophen: Nachlaß, vol. 1 (Darstellungen und Fragmente; Nachlaß), vol. 2 (Fragmente, Anmerkungen, Inventar), ed. by Hans saner, munich and zurich: r. piper 1981, vol. 1, pp. 416–93; vol. 2, pp. 763–909; pp. 1058–74. (english translation: The Great Philosophers, vols. 1-4, trans. by edith ehrlich et al., new York et al.: Harcourt, brace & world 1962-95, vol. 4 (The Disturbers: Descartes, Pascal, Lessing, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche; Philosophers in Other Realms: Einstein, Weber, Marx), pp. 190-290; pp. 294-99.) “lebensbeschreibung,” in Briefwechsel, 1945–1968 (Karl Jaspers and Karl Heinrich bauer), ed. by renato de rosa, berlin and Heidelberg and new York: springer 1983, p. 4. Hannah Arendt–Karl Jaspers Correspondence 1926–1969, ed. by lotte Köhler and Hans saner, trans. by robert and rita Kimber, san diego, new York and london: Harcourt brace & Co. 1992, p. 301; p. 549; pp. 636–7. Briefwechsel, 1920–1963 (martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers), ed. by walter biemel and Hans saner, munich: piper 1992, p. 106; p. 170; pp. 277–8. II. Sources of Jaspers’ Knowledge of Kierkegaard bohlin, torsten, Kierkegaards dogmatische Anschauung in ihrem geschichtlichen Zusammenhange, gütersloh: bertelsmann 1927. Christensen, arild, “titanismus bei grabbe und Kierkegaard,” Orbis Litterarum, vol. 14, 1959, pp. 184–205. dempf, alois, Kierkegaards Folgen, leipzig: Jakob Hegner 1935. diem, Hermann, Sören Kierkegaard. Spion im Dienste Gottes, Frankfurt am main: Fischer 1957. gerdes, Hayo, Das Christusverständnis des jungen Kierkegaard: ein Beitrag zur Erläuterung des Paradox-Gedankens, itzehoe: die spur 1962. grossart, Friedrich, “grundmotiv und aufbau der pseudonymen schriften Kierkegaards,” Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 139–82. Hirsch, emanuel, Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2, gütersloh: bertelsmann 1933. Hohlenberg, Johannes, Sören Kierkegaard, ed. by th.w. bätscher, basel: schwabe 1949. Kierkegaard, søren, Die Lilien auf dem Felde und die Vögel unter dem Himmel. Drei fromme Reden. Hohepriester—Zöllner—Sünderin. Drei Beichtreden von Sören Kierkegaard, trans. and ed. by albert bärthold, Halle: Fricke 1877 (2nd ed. 1885). — Lessing und die objective Wahrheit: aus Sören Kierkegaards Schriften, trans. and ed. by albert bärthold, Halle: Fricke 1877. — Sören Kierkegaards agitatorische Schriften und Aufsätze. 1851–55, trans. and ed. by albert dorner and Christoph schrempf, stuttgart: Frommann 1896.

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— Ausgewählte christliche Reden von Sören Kierkegaard. Mit einem Anhang über Kierkegaard’s Familie und Privatleben nach den persönlichen Erinnerungen seiner Nichte, Fräulein Lund, trans. and ed. by Julie von reincke, giessen: ricker 1901 (2nd ed., giessen: töpelmann 1909). — Zwei ethisch-religiöse Abhandlungen von Sören Kierkegaard. 1. Darf ein Mensch sich für die Wahrheit töten lassen? 2. Über den Unterschied zwischen einem Genie und einem Apostel, trans. and ed. by Julie von reincke, giessen: ricker 1902. — Das Tagebuch des Verführers, trans. and ed. by max dauthendey, leipzig: insel 1903 (2nd ed., 1905). — Sören Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu seiner Braut. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus seinem Nachlaß, trans. by e. rohr, ed. by Henriette lund, leipzig: insel 1904. — Sören Kierkegaard und sein Verhältnis zu “ihr.” Aus nachgelassenen Papieren, trans. and ed. by raphael meyer, stuttgart: Juncker 1905. — Sören Kierkegaard. Buch des Richters (journals 1833–55 in excerpts), trans. and ed. by Hermann gottsched, Jena and leipzig: diederichs 1905. — Kritik der Gegenwart, trans. and ed. by theodor Haecker, innsbruck: brenner verlag 1914. — Der Pfahl im Fleisch, trans., ed. and introduced by theodor Haecker, innsbruck: brenner 1914. — Der Begriff des Auserwählten, trans. and ed. by theodor Haecker, Hellerau: Hegner 1917. — Am Fuße des Altars. Christliche Reden, trans. and ed. by theodor Haecker, munich: beck 1922. — Die Krisis und eine Krisis im Leben einer Schauspielerin. Mit Tagebuchaufzeichnungen des Verfassers, trans. and ed. by theodor Haecker, innsbruck: brenner verlag 1922. — Religiöse Reden, trans. and ed. by theodor Haecker, munich: Hermann wiechmann 1922. — Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–2, selected, trans. and ed. by theoder Haecker, innsbruck: brenner 1923. — Die Reinheit des Herzens. Eine Beichtrede, trans. by lina geismar, munich: Kaiser 1924. — Der Begriff der Ironie mit ständiger Rücksicht auf Sokrates, trans. and ed. by wilhelm Kütemeyer, munich: Kaiser 1929. — Über den Begriff der Ironie mit ständiger Rücksicht auf Sokrates, trans. and ed. by Hans Heinrich schaeder, munich and berlin: oldenburg 1929. — Die Tagebücher 1832–39, ed. and trans. by Hermann ulrich, berlin: Hochweg 1930. — Der Einzelne und die Kirche. Über Luther und den Protestantismus, trans. and ed. by wilhelm Kütemeyer, berlin: wolff 1934. — Die Krankheit zum Tode. Eine christlich-psychologische Entwicklung zur Erbauung und Erweckung, trans. by thyra dohrenburg, ed. by ingeborg Frieder, bremen: storm 1949. lowrie, walter, Das Leben Sören Kierkegaards, trans. by günther sawatzki, düsseldorf-Köln: eugen diederichs 1955.

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monrad, o.p., Sören Kierkegaard. Sein Leben und seine Werke, Jena: diederichs 1909. niedermayer, gerhard, Sören Kierkegaard und die Romantik, leipzig: Quelle & meyer, 1909. Philosophische Rundschau, ed. by Hans-georg gadamer and Helmut Kuhn, Sonderheft Kierkegaard-Literatur, tübingen: J.C.b. mohr 1962. rehm, walter, Kierkegaard und der Verführer, munich: Hermann 1949. reuter, Hans, S. Kierkegaards religionsphilosophische Gedanken im Verhältnis zu Hegels religionsphilosophischem System, leipzig: Quelle & meyer 1914. III. Secondary Literature on Jaspers’ Relation to Kierkegaard anz, wilhelm, “zur wirkungsgeschichte Kierkegaards in der deutschen theologie und philosophie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 79, no. 4, 1982, pp. 451–82. baumgarten, eduard, “Für und wider das radikale böse. meditationen über wesentliche differenzen zwischen Jaspers und max weber; zwischen Jaspers, Kant, goethe, Kierkegaard und nietzsche,” in Karl Jaspers, ed. by paul arthur schilpp, stuttgart: w. Kohlhammer 1957, pp. 323–53. Cantillo, Giuseppe, “Kierkegaard e la filosofia dell’esistenza di Karl Jaspers,” in Kierkegaard: filosofia e teologia del paradosso, Atti del Convegno tenuto a Trento il 4–6 dicembre 1996, ed. by michele nicoletti and giorgio penzo, brescia: morcelliana 1999, pp. 265–78. Cochrane, arthur C., The Existentialists and God: Being and the Being of God in the Thought of Sören Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Tillich, Etienne Gilson, Karl Barth, philadelphia: westminster press 1956. Czakó, istván, “das problem des glaubens und der geschichte in der philosophie Kierkegaards und Karl Jaspers,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2000, pp. 373– 82. — “Hit és történelem viszonya Kierkegaard és Karl Jaspers gondolkodásában” [the relation between Faith and History in Kierkegaard’s and Karl Jaspers’ thought], Magyar Filozófiai Szemle, no. 3, 2003, pp. 359–71. ehrlich, leonard H., Karl Jaspers: Philosophy as Faith, amherst: the university of massachusetts press 1975, p. 18; p. 32; p. 66; p. 102; pp. 111–12; p. 122; p. 142; p. 184; pp. 211–12. — “Jaspers reading Kierkegaard. an instance of the double Helix,” in Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Joseph w. Koterski and raymond J. langley, amherst, new York: Humanity books 2003, pp. 236– 42. Fabro, Cornelio, “Jaspers et Kierkegaard,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques, vol. 37, 1953, pp. 209–32. gabriel, leo, Existenzphilosophie: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre. Dialog der Positionen, vienna and munich: Herold 1968, pp. 203–5.

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giesz, ludwig, “schwindel der Freiheit,” Studium Generale, vol. 14, 1961, pp. 509–20. Jung, Hwa Yol, “Confucianism and existentialism: intersubjectivity as the way of man,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 30, 1969–70, pp. 186–202. Killinger, John, “existentialism and Human Freedom,” The English Journal, vol. 50, 1961, pp. 303–13. Kim, tyong-Ho, Existentielle Dialektik und politische Praxis. Interpretationen zum Problem der Dialektik bei Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx und Jaspers, ph.d. thesis, university of munich 1958. Kossak, Jerzy, “Kierkegaard i Jaspers” [Kierkegaard and Jaspers], Zeszyty Teoretyczne Argumentów, vol. 1, no. 24, 1966, pp. 49–64. majors, troy e., “the existence–thought disjunction,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 8, 1970, pp. 15–23. mejovsek, g., “Die Metamorphose vom Dasein Existenz und der Begriff der Existenzerhellung in der Philosophie Karl Jaspers” unter Berücksichtigung verwandter Wandlungsphänomene im Denken von Pascal, Kierkegaard, Heidegger und Sartre, ph.d. thesis, university of vienna, vienna 1983. nesiote, n.a., Ὑπαρξισμὸς καὶ χριστιανικὴ πίστις. Ἡ ὑπαρκτικὴ σκέψις ἐν τῇ φιλοσοφίᾳ καὶ ἡ χριστιανικὴ πίστις ὡς τὸ ἀναπόφευκτον καὶ βασικὸν πρόβλημα αυτῆς κατὰ τὸν Sören Kierkegaard καὶ τοὺς συγχρόνους ὑπαρξιστὰς φιλοσόφους Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger καὶ Jean-Paul Sartre, athens: menuma 1985. pareyson, luigi, La filosofia dell’esistenza e Carlo Jaspers, naples: loffredo 1940. paul, Jean-marie, “Kierkegaard sous le regard de Jaspers. deux philosophies de l’existence,” in Kierkegaard. La découverte de l’existence, ed. by régis boyer and Jean-marie paul, université de nancy, Centre de recherches germaniques et scandinaves 1990 (Bibliothèque Le texte et l’idée, vol. 1), pp. 143–79. Pizzuti, Giuseppe Mario, “Fede filosofica e rivelazione: trascendenza e comunicazione. Convergenza e distonie nel rapporto Jaspers–Kierkegaard,” Velia, no. 4, 1991, pp. 45–59. — “Suggestioni e referenze kierkegaardiane dell’esperienza di Dio nella biografia speculativa di Karl barth e di Karl Jaspers,” in Teologia razionale, filosofia della religione, linguaggio su Dio, ed. by marcello sanchez sorondo, rome: Università Pontificia Lateranense, Herder 1992, pp. 299–335. saner, Hans, Karl Jaspers in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Hamburg: reinbek 1970, pp. 94–103. Santos, Delfim, “Jaspers na Filosofia Contemporânea,” in Obras Completas de Delfim Santos, vols. 1–4, lisbon: Fundação gulbenkian 1971–88, vol. 2, pp. 268–79. schmid, Hermann, “Kierkegaard og Jaspers. Forbindelsen mellem samtidskritik og spørgsmålet om muligheden for eksistens,” in Kierkegaard inspiration. En antologi, ed. by birgit bertung, paul müller, Fritz norlan, and Julia watkin, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1991 (Søren Kierkegaard Selskabets populære skrifter, vol. 20), pp. 82–95. schweidler, walter, “die ethik des augenblicks. Jaspers, Kierkegaard, wittgenstein,” in Karl Jaspers: Philosopher among Philosophers/Philosoph unter Philosophen,

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ed. by richard wisser and leonard H. ehrlich, würzburg and amsterdam: Königshausen & neumann-rodopi 1993, pp. 202–14. theunissen, michael and wilfried greve (eds.), Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, Frankfurt am main: suhrkamp 1979, pp. 62–8. tilliette, xavier, “ ‘philosopher devant l’exception’ ou Jaspers lecteur de Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard, ed. by Jean brun, paris: borderie 1981 (Obliques, special issue), pp. 167–75. todorov, Christo, “das thema des todes als verbindungslinie zwischen Kierkegaard und Jaspers,” in Søren Kierkegaard. Philosoph, Schriftsteller, Theologe. Vorträge des bulgarisch-dänischen Seminars Sofia 31. März–2. April 1992, Sofia: internationale Kyrill und method-stiftung 1992, pp. 41–9. treiber, gerhard, Philosophie der Existenz. Das Entscheidungsproblem bei Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus. Literarische Erkundung von Kundera, Céline, Broch, Musil, Frankfurt am main et al.: peter lang 2000. wahl, Jean, “le problème du choix, l’existence et la transcendance dans la philosophie de Jaspers,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 41, no. 3, 1934, pp. 405–44. — “Jaspers et Kierkegaard,” in his Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: aubier 1938, pp. 477–509. — Petite histoire de “l’existentialisme”: suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard commentaries, paris: editions Club maintenant 1947, p. 12; p. 25; p. 27; p. 36; p. 50; p. 60. — La pensée de l’existence, paris: Flammarion 1951 (Bibliotèque de philosophie scientifique). — “ein beitrag zum thema Jaspers und Kierkegaard,” in Karl Jaspers, ed. by paul arthur schilpp, stuttgart: w. Kohlhammer 1957, pp. 430–5. weiland, Jan sperna, Humanitas—Christianitas: A Critical Survey of Kierkegaard’s and Jaspers’ Thought in Connection with Christianity, assen: van gorcum 1951 (Philosophia Religionis, vol. 3). westphal, merold, “Jaspers’s reception of Kierkegaard,” in Karl Jaspers on Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy, ed. by Joseph w. Koterski and raymond J. langley, amherst, new York: Humanity books 2003, pp. 223–35.

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it is perhaps the intense focus on the irrefragable conditions of human life, the elaborate attention to detail in his analysis of man’s being in the world, the extraordinary gift of language, the pristine character of thought, and the meticulous study of the human mind that distinguish Kierkegaard from other writers in the past who vigorously explored existence—socrates, augustine, montaigne, and pascal to name a few—and made his meditations a tremendously rich source of inspiration, stimulation, and admiration. the philosophy of existence1 is without a doubt profoundly linked to the writings of Kierkegaard. many express openly how inspired they became by studying Kierkegaard’s works (sartre and Jaspers), while others are more silent, though the influence is obvious (Heidegger). The French philosopher-playwright Gabriel marcel (1889–1973)2 is in a different category since he developed his philosophy of existence independently of any direct influence not just from Heidegger, Jaspers, and buber but from Kierkegaard; yet it is fair to say that he was somehow indebted to Kierkegaard.

i distinguish between existentialism and philosophy of existence. many of the philosophers whom sartre, particularly in his Existentialism is a Humanism (1946), grouped together in the category of existentialism were opposed to this characterization, for example Heidegger and Marcel. I think it is far more justified to see Sartre as the existentialist or the representative of existentialism and the others—most of whom were not in agreement on essentials—as representatives of different types of philosophy of existence. philosophy of existence is thus an umbrella concept to cover thinkers such as Heidegger, marcel, Jaspers, wahl, berdyaev, unamuno, and, of course, sartre too. perhaps it is, in fact, even more appropriate to speak of philosophies of existence. 2 marcel viewed himself as a philosopher-playwright, and as he pointed out in the preface to marie-madeleine davy’s book Un philosophe itinérant (paris: Flammarion 1959) he insists on the hyphen. marcel wrote about twenty books on philosophy, thirty plays and three books on the theater as well as several music compositions. marcel’s philosophy dates primarily from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s; from 1950, he was predominantly interested in reflecting on the dehumanization of man by various aspects in modern society such as, for example, technology. 1

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I. marcel developed his philosophy of concrete ontology long before terms such as “existence” and “existential” became common use in 1940s French philosophy. in his dictionary of philosophy andré lalande argues that marcel’s essay “existence et objectivité”3 from 1925 is the first French use of the terms “existence” and “existentiel” in the Kierkegaardian sense.4 An opponent of being defined through a philosophical tradition, system, or -ism, marcel involuntarily found himself viewed as one of founders of French existential thought. in 1964, marcel participated in a colloquium at the unesCo in paris along with Heidegger, sartre, Jaspers, and many others. the colloquium was consecrated to the thought of Kierkegaard and was called Kierkegaard Alive.5 marcel decided to speak of Kierkegaard in his writings and simply named his exposé, “Kierkegaard in my thinking.”6 Marcel begins his paper by stating that Kierkegaard’s influence on his thinking seemed to him to be “practically nonexistent.”7 a few years before his death, Marcel confirms this lack of direct influence by Kierkegaard on his thinking in his talks with the French philosopher, poet, and journalist pierre boutang.8 the connections between Kierkegaard and marcel that marcel himself can identify are one thing; the connections that an interpreter such as myself can identify are another. though marcel’s philosophy does not have roots in Kierkegaard’s works, there are in their thinking several areas of convergence and parallel paths: both had an affinity to Socrates, both shared an interest in Schelling, both reproached Hegel and idealism and both were passionately engaged in thinking from concrete being. there are also a number of similarities when it comes to their personal lives: they were both raised in wealthy families, both were allowed to pursue their thought free from constraints of a university schedule, and both treasured the theater. marcel’s main objection to idealist philosophy9 echoed in many ways that of Kierkegaard. with Kierkegaard, marcel shared “a deep dissatisfaction with idealism and its all-inclusive claims.”10 both believed that man belongs to the realm of the non-qualifiable since man’s Being cannot be seized. Being is irreducible, gabriel marcel, “existence et objectivité,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 30, april–may 1925, pp. 175–95. (reprinted as an appendix to Journal métaphysique, paris: gallimard 1927, pp. 309–29.) 4 andré lalande, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, 5th ed., paris: presses universitaires de France 1947, p. 308. 5 Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’UNESCO à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, paris: gallimard 1966. 6 gabriel marcel, “Kierkegaard en ma pensée,” in ibid., pp. 64–80. 7 ibid., p. 64. 8 pierre boutang, Gabriel Marcel interrogé, ed. by Joël bouëssée, paris: J.-m. place 1977. 9 Though at first influenced by idealism, Marcel quickly grew weary of it. He studied german, english, and american idealism; Francis Herbert bradley and Josiah royce remained, however, among the names that made a lasting impression on marcel. 10 Gabriel Marcel, “Some Reflections on Existentialism,” Philosophy Today, vol. 8, no. 4, 1964, p. 251. 3

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indemonstrable, and inexhaustible. being, marcel would say, is a mystery, not a problem to be solved.11 to claim a comprehensive, absolute explanatory system of existence was viewed both by Kierkegaard and marcel as an illusion, a phantom (Kierkegaard). philosophy cannot be detached from life, the act of being. it was, however, blaise pascal, maurice blondel, and Henri bergson more than Kierkegaard who opened marcel’s eyes to philosophy as dependent upon experience, as a reflective act of existential drama and exploration, and not as a self-enclosed abstract way of thinking. when marcel states that philosophy is “experience transmuted into thought,”12 he expresses the same aversion for the alienating speculation of idealism that Kierkegaard did a hundred years before. A reflection without roots in experience is abstract speculation that dissolves not only ethics13 but dispenses of the question of the meaning of man’s being which is utterly absurd to both philosophers. it was bergson in particular who gave marcel a “passion for the concrete and the most profound wariness against abstractions and mere words,”14 after the latter attended his lectures at the Collège de France between 1908 and 1910. it must, however, also be said that marcel’s comprehension of philosophical inquiry and his passionate preoccupation with existence was greatly, if not predominantly, influenced by concrete events, especially the First World War.15 thus independently of any influence from Kierkegaard’s merciless criticism, Marcel too rejected turning existence into an intelligible, all-encompassing system. II. Kierkegaard and Marcel share an affinity with Socrates, though it is safe to say this affinity is expressed differently. Where it is explicit in Kierkegaard, it is implicit in marcel. socrates’ focus on dialogue and existence appealed to both Kierkegaard and i here allude to a pivotal distinction in the philosophy of marcel, namely that of mystery and problem. A problem is like an obstacle blocking our way that can be objectified and verified. A problem is solvable. A problem is addressed in an impersonal manner where the subject becomes detached from the problem it is investigating. it makes no difference who is posing the question/problem (“what is the cure for cancer,” “How can a computer virus be fixed?,” “Why is grass green?” etc.). With a mystery, on the other hand, the subject or the questioner and the question cannot be separated. They are tied together like fish and water. posing philosophical questions, such as “what is the ultimate meaning of my life?” “what am i?” or “where are the dead?” involves the totality of the questioner. what is before me and what is in me merge to become one. love, hope, freedom, body-soul—they are all mysteries. mysteries are insoluble, yet they are not unknowable. they are accessible via participation (see note 37). 12 gabriel marcel, Du Refus à l’invocation, paris: gallimard 1940, p. 39. (english translation: Creative Fidelity, trans. by robert rosthal, new York: noonday press 1964, p. 26.) 13 SKS 7, 115ff. / CUP1, 119ff. 14 Marcel, “Some Reflections on Existentialism,” p. 251. 15 due to poor health, marcel was not a soldier but worked for the red Cross. one of his assignments was to inform relatives that their loved ones were either missing or killed in action. 11

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marcel as their struggle to bring empirical reality into thought can be viewed as a reflection of Socratic conscience. Their affinity with Socrates is, in fact, logical in view of their critique of idealism. When Kierkegaard writes that “Socrates’ infinite merit is precisely that of being an existing thinker, not a speculative thinker who forgets what it means to exist,”16 marcel would agree. existence is the starting point and end point in philosophy, and the tool is reflection (see below). The act of existing must be incorporated into our philosophizing. it is here, by the way, that marcel—unlike Kierkegaard—focuses his attention on the incarnate nature of human life: existence, soul and body cannot be separated, making human incarnation the metaphysical given in philosophy. man’s incarnation is the soul embodied in a personal act. the socratic dialogue inspired both Kierkegaard and marcel in their way of writing and communicating philosophy: Kierkegaard develops his famous indirect communication, and marcel writes in a dialectical, inquisitive, and openly exploring form in which he envisions the reader’s comments and then comments on them, making his writing an unsystematic open-ended dialogue with others and himself. Marcel’s Socratic method consists in a dialectic between life and reflection “working…up from life to thought and then down from thought to life again, so that [one] may try to throw more light upon life.”17 both marcel’s and Kierkegaard’s way of communicating philosophy elicit self-examination. Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms are like a maze of characters speaking from and discussing various points of view, provoking the reader to examine his own point of view. marcel, however, never uses pseudonyms, unless we regard the many characters in his plays as different pseudonyms in the Kierkegaardian sense. we must be cautious with this comparison though. as marcel remarks himself in “Kierkegaard in My Thinking,” he too finds a similarity between his dramatic writings and Kierkegaard’s indirect communication, but the similarity dissolves quickly upon further inspection.18 Kierkegaard uses his pseudonyms as existential types, personified concepts, and as personal spokesmen that relate to one another dialectically, whereas marcel in his plays is eager to make his characters full-bodied and believable as individuals and not in any way his spokesmen.19 regardless of whether Kierkegaard used his pseudonyms as a venue for different existential perspectives, it is true to say that marcel was keen to avoid making his characters into modalities of existence. this is why we cannot imagine Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms on stage; they would simply not be credible. a theater stage demands real people in flesh and blood, anything less would rob the characters of any authenticity. The play would not breathe the air of reality and would drop lifeless to the stage. the stage SKS 7, 188 / CUP1, 205. gabriel marcel, The Mystery of Being, vols. 1–2, trans. by g.s. Fraser, london: Harvill press 1950–51, vol. 1, p. 41. (French original: Le mystère de l’être, vols. 1–2, paris: aubier 1951.) 18 gabriel marcel, “Kierkegaard en ma pensée,” in Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’UNESCO à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, p. 76. 19 we can question whether, in fact, it is altogether a true account of Kierkegaard’s use of his pseudonyms, but this is not the place to explore this. 16 17

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cannot come to life without the use of embodied personalities. empirical reality appears right before our eyes, and this makes the theater the creative and reflexive medium of the here and now in a way that the written word can never be. in the preface to the Metaphysical Journal, marcel writes that “one of my pupils once asked me whether my philosophy could not be considered to be a kind of neo-Socratism. The expression struck me very much, and on reflection I wonder whether the description would not be the least inexact that could be applied to me.”20 marcel’s use of the journal form along with his fragmented writing style can be viewed as an application of the socratic method, but he also used the socratic sense of dialogue in his “Friday afternoons,” where he held an open house for everyone who wanted to investigate a philosophical theme that he came up with. Jean wahl (1888–1974), emmanuel lévinas (1906–95), Jean-paul sartre (1905–80), paul ricoeur (1913–2005), and other philosophers frequented his apartment on the rue de tournon in paris to stimulate their thinking together and thereby mirrored what marcel says in Présence et immortalité: “it seems to me that the most authentic philosophical thought is situated at the crossroads or in the meeting between the self and the other.”21 Kierkegaard, on his part, enjoyed his many walks and talks around the city of Copenhagen and often commented on them in his journals upon his return home. those comments sparked philosophical thoughts that he scrutinized in front of his desk before sending them out into the world in the shape of books. philosophy to both Kierkegaard and Marcel is a never-ending reflection that demands personal openness and appropriation—a socratic attitude. there is no summa summarum in philosophy, in life or in a person. III. The first time Marcel encountered Kierkegaard’s name was in 1906–07 in the famed Harald Høffding’s (1843–1931) L’Histoire de la philosophie,22 but marcel—a young 20 the quotation is from marcel’s preface to the english translation and is not mentioned in the original from 1927: Metaphysical Journal, trans. by bernard wall, london: barrie & rockliff 1952, pp. xii–xiii. 21 gabriel marcel, Présence et immortalité: Journal métaphysique (1939–1943) et autres textes, paris: Flammarion 1959, p. 23. 22 marcel mentions this in his “Kierkegaard en ma pensée,” p. 65. marcel actually remembers the title incorrectly since the book by Høffding is called History of Modern Philosophy and not History of Philosophy. Den nyere Filosofis historie (vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: philipsen 1894–95), see Harald Høffding, History of Modern Philosophy: A Sketch of the History of Philosophy from the Close of the Renaissance to our own Day, vols. 1–2, trans. by b.e. meyer london: macmillan 1900. (French translation: Histoire de la philosophie moderne, vols. 1–2, trans. by p. bordier, paris: Félix alcan 1906.) though a couple of translations of Kierkegaard’s writings had come out in late nineteenth-century France, Kierkegaard was, in fact, largely introduced to the French in the wake of ibsen’s success by the dramatic art scene of Paris, for example the Théâtre libre, by the enormously influential actor, theater manager, and stage renewer Andre Antoine, and not by university professors, see Jacques lafarge, “Kierkegaard dans la tradition française,” in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference ‘Kierkegaard and The Meaning of Meaning It,’

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university student—found the reflections set forth there hard to follow. This may have been due to Høffding’s account of Kierkegaard as much as to Kierkegaard’s thought or maybe even to the initial reception of Kierkegaard in France as a reactionary and an individualist. marcel explains in his paper for the unesCo colloquium that he had not read Kierkegaard’s collected works,23 and, in fact, there are but a handful of references to Kierkegaard in marcel’s writings.24 what is typical of marcel when Kierkegaard is mentioned is that there is no exploration or dwelling on the possible connections between his own and Kierkegaard’s thought. in Mystery of Being and Du refus à l’invocation the references to Kierkegaard are only tenuous. in Du refus à l’invocation, for example, marcel groups Kierkegaard with schopenhauer and nietzsche as being vigilant opponents of turning the philosopher into a mere Fachmann but does not move on to explore his approach to philosophy with that of Kierkegaard’s, which can be said to be identical. it is altogether characteristic of marcel that he is not so much in a discussion with philosophers as lévinas is with Heidegger or Kierkegaard with danish Hegelian idealists as much as he is in dialogue with the questions and dramas of human existence. this is not to say that marcel did not read Kierkegaard or read philosophers, theologians, novelists, poets, and playwrights who themselves were more or less inspired by Kierkegaard (for example, bergson, wahl, maritain, rilke, and ibsen), but it can be argued that he did not study Kierkegaard in depth, or if he did, this study did not manifest itself in his writings. this ignorance of Kierkegaard is noted by marcel himself in 194725 and by several interpreters, for example Jean wahl in Philosophies of Existence.26 in his paper at the unesCo conference, we learn that marcel read Philosophical Fragments sometime around 1935 and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments around 1940 or even the beginning of 1941.27 the latter made a profound impression ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon stewart, berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 1997 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), p. 277. 23 marcel, “Kierkegaard en ma pensée,” pp. 64–5. 24 in particular, i like to call attention to gabriel marcel, “Ce que nous devons à Kierkegaard,” Figaro Littéraire, november 12, 1955, pp. 64–80; gabriel marcel, “de pascal à Kierkegaard,” in L’homme problématique, paris: aubier 1955, pp. 126–34; gabriel marcel, “désespoir et philosophie,” La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 309, 1939, pp. 1026–32; gabriel marcel, Du refus à l’invocation, paris: gallimard 1940, p. 9; p. 89; p. 290; and marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol. 2, p. 54; p. 95; p. 106; p. 177. 25 gabriel marcel, “regard en arrière,” in Existentialisme chrétien: Gabriel Marcel, ed. by Jeanne delhomme, roger troisfontaines, pierre Colin, J.p. dubois-dumée, and gabriel marcel, paris: plon 1947, p. 310. 26 Jean wahl, Philosophies of Existence, london: routledge and Kegan paul 1968, p. 24. (original French: Les Philosophies de L’Existence, paris: librairie armand Colin 1959.) 27 marcel, “Kierkegaard en ma pensée,” p. 65. the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, we also learn, had been recommended to him by Father de lubac who is considered one the most prominent French theologians of the twentieth century. However, we know that paul petit’s translation of Postscript only came out in 1941, so it must have been sometime that year that marcel read the book and not in 1940; Philosophical Fragments, also translated by paul petit, only came out in France in 1947, a few years after petit died at the hands of the nazis. this means that marcel did not read the Fragments in the French translation but could

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on him, he says,28 but 1940–41 is well after marcel had found his own method of inquiry, identified and explored his own philosophical ideas and well after the foundation of his concrete ontology was established, not to mention well after most of his major works had been published. this would thus make any direct impact by Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments on his thinking minimal at best. it is, however, interesting and entirely comprehensible that marcel singles out the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. though it is safe to assume that marcel had heard of many of the other works by Kierkegaard, it is not The Sickness unto Death or The Concept of Anxiety (both of which could have been of relevance in his own thinking) that he reads, but it is the voluminous Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments that made a lasting impression on him. this book, with its abundant use of words such as “existence” and “existential” that subsequently entered the terminology of philosophy for good and that marcel himself made ample use of, influenced many other philosophers of existence. For a thinker such as marcel, it would have been bizarre had it not impressed him. marcel does not go into what it is about the Concluding Unscientific Postscript that made a profound impression on him, but in view of his own philosophical focus we can make a qualified guess. The thoughts in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript may, overall, have appealed to Marcel because he here finds a kindred spirit: a defender of existence and experience in philosophical thinking and a guardian of the human spirit. the critical starting point for Kierkegaard in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript is similar to marcel’s: it is to safeguard and expose the relationship to truth of the “existing subject in concreto.”29 but more particularly speaking, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript could also have been of interest to Marcel because of the attention to reflection that we see in certain chapters in Part two. Kierkegaard, or rather his pseudonym Climacus, speaks in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments of the difference between objective reflection30 and subjective reflection,31 which he equates with a doublereflection.32 Kierkegaard’s “double-reflection” contributes to elucidate his indirect communication. Marcel also makes a distinction within reflection itself, though it has specifically less to do with (indirect) communication than it has to do with the act of reflection. He calls it the distinction between primary and secondary reflection.33 have read it in the German translation since he was fluent in German. The Fragments had been translated into german in its entirety as early as 1910. 28 marcel, “Kierkegaard en ma pensée,” p. 65. 29 SKS 7, 177 / CUP1, 193. 30 SKS 7, 176 / CUP1, 193. 31 SKS 7, 176 / CUP1, 192. 32 SKS 7, 73 / CUP1, 73. 33 schelling’s distinction between negative and positive philosophy was a source of inspiration for Marcel’s distinction between primary and secondary reflection. One must not think of primary reflection as being superior to secondary or as if it comes before secondary reflection. Marcel struggles with language when writing about this distinction and did come up with other words for it, for example, analytical reflection for primary reflection and metaphysical reflection for secondary reflection.

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Though the two forms of reflection of the two thinkers are not identical, there are some interesting points of convergence. If we are to find any direct clues as to the issue of Marcel and reflection in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, it is perhaps to be found in L’homme problématique—a book that primarily focuses on examining human disquietude. Marcel refers in this book to Kierkegaard’s distinction within reflection when he mentions that pascal is the perfect example of Kierkegaard’s “subjective thinker,”34 someone whose work is “determined by the tasks and difficulties of his life.”35 However, marcel does not proceed to explore any potential parallel paths between his own and Kierkegaard’s distinction within reflection. Climacus writes that “just as the subjective existing thinker has set himself free by the duplexity, so the secret of communication specifically hinges on setting the other free.”36 one is awarding freedom to the other by not imposing the truth on him, by giving him the space to explore, appreciate, and appropriate it himself. marcel’s secondary reflection has a similarly liberating effect. Secondary reflection requires personal participation in the act of thinking and relating to existence. it will lead the individual to an openness (disponibilité) that creates a passageway not only to the other as other in his or her own right but to being as fullness (plénitude). subjective reflection (Kierkegaard) and secondary reflection (Marcel) represent a reflection that reflects on the self as an existing self in a creative process of becoming, it communicates in silence and speaks the language of inwardness (Kierkegaard) and participation,37 qua presence (marcel). the subjective existing thinker expresses, as earlier stated, what Climacus calls a double-reflection. There is something quite extraordinary about this doublereflection: “All the essential content” of the doubly reflected subjective thinking “is essentially a secret.”38 Double-reflection is a gateway to the secrecy of being in truth. truth, meaning, values cannot be directly communicated. they exist in secrecy and silence. objective truths hide nothing, divulge everything in fact, but on an existential scale truths cannot be transferred from one person to another. the message in a secret will not be understood fully unless the individual has gone through a personal appropriation of this secret. existential truth is silent. Objective reflection does not contain a double-reflection because “to objective reflection, truth becomes something objective, an object, and the point is to disregard the subject.”39 In a similar way, Marcel’s primary reflection reduces experience to object categories. truth, body, self, thou, etc. are treated as isolated elements, objectified and broken down into pieces with the hope to surmount the problems gabriel marcel, L’homme problématique, paris: aubier 1955, p. 127. my translation. ibid., p. 128. my translation. 36 SKS 7, 74 / CUP1, 74. 37 participation is a key concept for understanding the philosophy of marcel. we cannot detach ourselves from being in existence. existence is characterized by participation since we can never not participate: to be incarnate, to feel, to think, to love, etc. are all to participate in life. there are, however, many degrees of participation, going from immediate sensation to communion or intersubjectivity. 38 SKS 7, 79 / CUP1, 79. 39 SKS 7, 176 / CUP1, 192. 34 35

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they raise, but to marcel—and to Kierkegaard—this represents a retreat from existence. “When the question about truth is asked objectively, truth is reflected upon objectively as an object to which the knower relates himself,” states Climacus.40 Objective reflection and primary reflection objectifies man’s uniqueness, robbing a person of their individuality. Climacus explains that “to subjective reflection, truth becomes appropriation, inwardness, subjectivity, and the point is to immerse oneself, existing, in subjectivity.”41 in a similar way, marcel believes that secondary reflection depends on the personal categories in man’s relating to existence, thereby proposing a philosophy of the individual’s thinking thought deeply rooted in the personal origins of becoming. Double-reflection or secondary reflection recovers the continuum of experience. Access to the realities of Being thus depends on a reflexive act that Marcel calls secondary reflection. The secondary reflection is a reflexive act within the subject’s personal experience but not viewed in its exclusively private perspective. Reflection and experience merge in secondary reflection since “reflection has its roots in the daily flow of life.”42 Philosophical inquiry is a dialectical interplay between reflection and life. Primary reflection follows a linear thought process and exists in the realm of the problematic and the objective. Primary reflection isolates the subject from experience, thereby creating a distance between the subject who poses questions and the question, between the inside and the outside. this is a distance that is necessary if one is posing objective, solvable problems and thus acting and reflecting within the realm of science, for example. Answers should be verifiable; they should be objectively scrutinized and exhibited. Primary reflection is used to solve problems not just in science (such as, finding a cure for cancer) but in everyday life (such as, getting from a to b), but it reduces existential being. Just as long as the two forms of reflection remain within their own field of expertise, everything is fine. Primary reflection will, however, transform reality into an abstract, symbolic and alienating entity if it is used to reflect on issues such as love, death, freedom, faith, or the self. It can analyze them, take them apart, but not synthesize them. marcel writes in Mystery of Being: “Where primary reflection tends to dissolve the unity of experience which is first put before it, the function of secondary reflection is essentially recuperative; it reconquers that unity.”43 The secondary reflection is a creative act like life itself since it builds a bridge between philosophical thought, the act of philosophizing, and the human, concrete existence of the subject, or maybe it is even more than a bridge since there is rather a merging of the two. marcel strove to go beyond the traditional dichotomies of subject and object, existence and thought, body and soul, in order to arrive at genuine being, at presence, at a concrete realm that defies logical explanation and verifiable demonstration.

40 41 42 43

SKS 7, 182 / CUP1, 199. SKS 7, 176 / CUP1, 192. marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol. 1, p. 77. ibid., p. 83.

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Authentic existence is never possible without reflection, but the question is how to reach this authentic existence. according to Kierkegaard, it is possible via double-reflection, and, according to Marcel, it is possible via secondary reflection. Though certainly not identical, these two forms of reflection have an essential similarity. they both create the possibility of incorporating the existing subject in the process of reflecting, of reflexively interacting with the world, and thus they both show that the essence of truth lies in personal appropriation, to use Kierkegaard’s terminology. in marcel’s terminology, we would say that the objective thinker is a “homo spectans” (a spectator, an observer) and the subjective thinker a “homo particeps” (a participant).44 there is also a similarity in the way they understand how double-reflection or secondary reflection are crucial for the continual process of becoming. Their reflection brings in the concrete in the act of becoming. Truth is always approximate since its beginning or end cannot be set. man is homo viator45— man the wayfarer or wandering man in the process of becoming. Primary reflection creates the illusion that we can give a systematic expression of existence. it reduces existence to instrumentalism and turns it into a demonstrandum. Life becomes a solvable problem. Through secondary reflection one recovers oneself as a mystery. the secrecy of being, as marcel would call it, is inaccessible to objective knowledge, to the realm of primary reflection. It eludes the mind which interprets being in terms of problems that can be solved. the secrecy of being is accessible only via secondary reflection and will only be disclosed silently to the person who is engaged in embodied existence. if we exclude human drama from philosophy, we starve philosophy to death and make it irrelevant to the life of man. the Concluding Unscientific Postscript studies the invisible reality of existence that is equivalent to the mystery of being in marcel’s terminology. in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript Marcel undoubtedly found a kindred spirit in the fight for the non-objectifiable sphere of life that both encompasses us and transcends us, that both eludes us and captures us. Kierkegaard and marcel want to alert us to the importance of thinking through experience, to the existence of the individual, and to sensitize us to the call to be, to the ontological exigence, to use a marcellian concept. IV. Gabriel Marcel has often been labeled a Christian existentialist or the front figure of French Christian existentialism.46 to a man who protested against such labels since he found them to be expressions of a reductive way of thinking, he naturally objected

ibid., p. 122. gabriel marcel, Homo Viator: Prolégomènes à une métaphysique de l’espérance, paris: aubier 1945. 46 marcel rejected the label on numerous occasions in verbal and written form and even expressed his views to sartre himself. in 1947, when the anthology Existentialisme chrétien: Gabriel Marcel (paris: plon 1947) came out about his philosophy, marcel reluctantly accepted the title but later regretted it. 44 45

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to this characterization which largely originated from sartre.47 marcel did not want to be called an existentialist, let alone a Christian one, and he did not see how a philosophy of existence could ever be an -ism,48 such systematization just seemed like a contradiction of terms. marcel’s studies on human existence are not Christian oriented. it is far fairer to say that they carry a religious tone (or maybe the term “metaphysical” is even better). His philosophy was not occupied with exploring what it means to be a Christian but rather what it means to be human, or what is being.49 Faced with such a task, he inevitably came across issues and questions of a transcendent nature. though marcel converted to Catholicism at the age of 40,50 Christianity can hardly be said to have played a defining role in his philosophy. When he uses a religious term, for example, “faith,” he is interested in exploring the concept from a philosophical perspective showing, in this case, that faith does not only have religious value but ontological value for man. marcel observes that “for Kierkegaard, the center remains somehow Christ,”51 whereas for marcel himself the center is never Christ but always human existence and human relations, the being between beings and the concrete approaches to this being. unlike the case with the works of Kierkegaard, Jesus Christ plays no role in marcel’s philosophy. marcel even states in “Kierkegaard in my thought”52 that his own faith did not originate in an experience with Christ, or being contemporary with Christ as Kierkegaard would word it, but rather through the music of bach. marcel is not a representative of any denominational thinking, and Christianity is not an indispensable presupposition. However, it certainly helps to understand his philosophy if it is viewed through a theistic optic, but access to the depths of his thinking is only possible if one interprets his philosophy philosophically. marcel’s religious (or metaphysical) tone is perhaps best portrayed in the sense of transcendence that he links to man’s ontological exigence (l’exigence ontologique), the search for fullness (plénitude), the invocation or appeal in our depths that asks us to answer the call to be through something that transcends verifiable facts but particularly by Jean-paul sartre in L’existentialisme est un humanisme, paris: editions nagal 1946. 48 gabriel marcel, “an autobiographical essay,” in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, ed. by paul arthur schilpp and lewis edwin Hahn, la salle, illinois: open Court 1984, p. 49. 49 marcel writes in Du refus à l’invocation, pp. 192–3 (Creative Fidelity, p. 147) that he has been concerned with two preoccupations in his writings; the first one deals with “what I would call the exigence of being…” and the other has to do with “the obsession with beings grasped in their singularity and at the same time the mysterious relations which bind them together.” 50 marcel, an only child, had been raised by his father, who was not a religious person and by his maternal aunt who later married his father. marcel’s Jewish mother died when he was 4, and marcel became agnostic himself before converting in 1929. ten years prior to his conversion, he had married a woman, Jacqueline boegner, from one of the prominent protestant families in France. 51 Marcel, “Some Reflections on Existentialism,” p. 250. 52 marcel, “Kierkegaard en ma pensée,” p. 71. 47

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not experience. though their relation to transcendence or god (the absolute thou in Marcel’s terminology) is different, being specifically Christian or even more precisely protestant in Kierkegaard’s case and more non-confessionally religious or metaphysical in marcel’s,53 the aim with Kierkegaard’s and marcel’s writings in this regard runs on a parallel path:54 to exhibit and find access to the invisible reality of being (love, faith, freedom, truth, hope, presence), or the mystery of being that can only be articulated indirectly and appropriated directly. the call to be or ontological exigence discloses a fundamental and metaphysical disquietude of man that continually places him in a situation of decisional freedom between despair which is the profound grief of a soul in exile and creative fidelity which is the affirmation of being and the acknowledgement of a transcendent sphere to man’s existence, a channel through which the self also becomes what the individual is. we do not automatically enter into fullness or plenitude. plenitude is not guaranteed but continually chosen by the individual. the ontological exigence can be smothered by the wrong approach to the mystery of being, leaving the individual to despair and turning the individual into a functionalized and instrumentalized person trapped in the realm of the problematic. it is to read the meta-problematic in the language of having and not being.55 Kierkegaard also speaks of this disquietude particularly in regard to the self. in The Sickness unto Death he speaks of despair as a form of existential alienation where the self is a prisoner within the individual’s own life. The Sickness unto Death deals with the death of the spiritual and authentic self, a death that comes about by ignoring that man is a synthesis of the finite and infinite. Though Marcel may not go as far as to speak of following God’s plan for the individual and certainly would not proclaim that only a Christian understands what the sickness unto death is, as Kierkegaard or rather anti-Climacus does, marcel would concede to the transcendental character of ontological exigence.56 The invisible and unverifiable reality of being is rooted in what Marcel labels “the spirit of truth.” The epistemological subject who pursues definite objectified goals (translating Egyptian hieroglyphics, finding a cure for cancer, or solving a murder) does not exist within the spirit of truth since the subject still exists within the realm of problem-solving categories. the epistemological subject cannot apprehend or evoke the realm of love, faith, freedom, etc. the inexhaustible profundity of love, faith, freedom, etc. demands a different approach than an investigation that would detach the subject from the object it investigates. within the spirit of truth, the individual becomes irreplaceable, not interchangeable, becomes concrete, not general and neutral. this naturally calls Kierkegaard’s single individual to mind. in order to hear the call to be and become this individual, man must be in a state of marcel would never be able to follow Kierkegaard into the religious stage b for example. 54 marcel remarks on this himself in his “Kierkegaard en ma pensée,” pp. 73–4. 55 gabriel marcel, Être et avoir, paris: aubier 1935. 56 marcel even begins to call ontological exigence “exigence of transcendence,” particularly in The Mystery of Being. this does not mean that we transcend experience. the transcendent lies embedded in immanence, so to speak, as there is nothing beyond experience. exigence of transcendence indicates participation in something beyond the things of the world. 53

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the spirit of truth, and through the spirit of truth, man can experience participation, presence, and plenitude. provoked by the bewildering and wondrous realities of human experience, both marcel and Kierkegaard explore many of the same aspects of life and many of the same philosophical concepts, including their close look at love and faith. love and faith are to neither of them a mere emotion (love) or an opinion (faith). there is, moreover, an intimate bond between them in both marcel and Kierkegaard. according to marcel, to love is to testify to the invisible reality of being; it is the apprehension of the unverifiable essence of being and thus to answer the call of ontological exigence. marcel believes that it is also an experience of love57 that testifies to the immortality of the other since this experience confirms the loved one’s being as presence even after death. This kind of presence that defies the ultimate separation resembles at times Kierkegaard’s talk of the freest and most faithful love that is recollecting a loved one who has died.58 the other as thou59 cannot perish or, as one of marcel’s characters says, “to say that one loves a being means, ‘thou, at least, thou shalt not die.’ ”60 Love as presence is an affirmative act of being, a concrete application of being in the world. love is also conceived by marcel as an act of faith in transcendence. Kierkegaard would undoubtedly sympathize with marcel’s view that while i have an opinion, i am a belief; belief is essentially a mysterious act. To have faith is to affirm the mystery of being. Marcel and Kierkegaard meet in their comprehension of love and faith as being essentially of an unfathomable and elusive yet concrete nature in their expressions. but as with many other concepts, Kierkegaard’s exploration of faith and love is intimately linked to the Christian understanding of faith and love whereas marcel stays on the philosophical side of any theological reflections. in his paper at the unesCo conference in 1964, marcel contends that even though Kierkegaard did not have any direct influence on his thinking, it may be fair to say that his approach to philosophical writing and way of investigating existence paralleled Kierkegaard’s before he was even aware of Kierkegaard.61 Kierkegaard helped create a certain Zeitgeist that nietzsche later on picked up on and helped solidify. within philosophy, an opening to a new perspective—dare i say paradigm—saw the light of day. marcellian thought is largely solitary, but marcel can still be considered to be indebted to Kierkegaard in the sense that they both come from the same family of thought, and though marcel does not extract any 57

being.

Love along with hope and creative fidelity comprise his concrete approaches to

see SKS 9, 345ff. / WL, 351ff. SKS 9, 348ff. / WL, 355ff. marcel developed a distinction between i–thou and i–it independently of but at the same time as martin buber; he also developed a distinction from i–thou: thou being transcendence. 60 marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol. 2, p. 61. marcel also recounts an incident at the 1937 world Congress of philosophy where he and at the time the foremost representative of critical idealism in France, leon brunschvicg, discussed death. brunschvicg did not understand marcel’s focus on his own death to which marcel replies that he was much more concerned with the death of his loved ones than his own death, stressing his focus on intersubjectivity. 61 marcel, “Kierkegaard en ma pensée,” p. 66. 58 59

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particular concepts, distinctions, or ideas from Kierkegaard’s works, Kierkegaard paved the way for a particular intellectual climate committed to illuminating the tapestry of existence, a philosophical milieu and mindset that in the twentieth century produced thinkers as diverse as Heidegger, Jaspers, sartre, berdyaev, unamuno, and ortega, a philosophical milieu that also allowed marcel to mature as a philosopherplaywright.

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Marcel’s Corpus Être et avoir, paris: aubier 1935, p. 106. (english translation: Being and Having, new York: Harper & row 1965, p. 40, note 1; p. 73; p. 75; p. 104.) Essai de philosophie concrete, paris: gallimard 1940, p. 11; pp. 101–2; p. 327; p. 334. Homo Viator. Prolégomènes à une métaphysique de l’espérance, paris: aubier 1944, p. 224; p. 264; p. 276; p. 280; p. 285; p. 303; p. 352. (english translation: Homo Viator: Prolegommena to a Metaphysics of Hope, trans. by emma Caufurd, new York: Harper & brothers 1962, p. 160, p. 170; p. 198; p. 201; p. 205; p. 218; p. 264.) Le Mystère de l’être, vols. 1–2, paris: aubier 1951, vol. 2 (Foi et réalité), p. 55; p. 105; p. 178. (english translation: The Mystery of Being, vols. 1–2, trans. by g.s. Frasier, london: Harvill press 1950–51, vol. 2 (Faith and Reality), p. 54; p. 95.) Le Déclin de sagesse, paris: plon 1954, p. ii. (english translation: The Decline of Wisdom, trans. by maya Harari, london: Harvill press 1954, p. vii.) “Ce que nous devons à Kierkegaard,” Le Figaro littéraire, november 12, 1955 [interviews with gabriel marcel and others]. “de pascal à Kierkegaard,” in his L’homme problématique, paris: aubier 1955, pp. 126–34. (english translation: “From pascal to Kierkegaard,” in Problematic Man, trans. by brian thompson, new York: Herder and Herder 1967, pp. 101–6.) “Some Reflections on Existentialism,” Philosophy Today, vol. 8, no. 4, 1964, pp. 248–57. “Kierkegaard en ma pensée,” in Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’UNESCO à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, paris: gallimard 1966, pp. 64–80. II. Sources of Marcel’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard bataille, georges, L’Expérience intérieure, paris: gallimard 1943, in his Œuvres Complètes, vols. 1–12, paris: gallimard 1970–88, vol. 5, p. 24; p. 56; p. 128, note. blanchot, maurice, Faux Pas, paris: gallimard 1943, p. 10; p. 19; pp. 25–30. Camus, albert, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, paris: gallimard 1942, pp. 39–40; pp. 42–4; pp. 50–1; pp. 56–61; p. 65; pp. 68–72; p. 178; p. 180; pp. 182–3. Heidegger, martin, Sein und Zeit, Halle: niemeyer 1927, pp. 175–96, see also p. 190, note 1; p. 235, note 1; and p. 338, note 1.

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Jaspers, Karl, Philosophie, vols. 1–3, berlin and Heidelberg and new York: springer 1973 [1932], vol. 1 (Philosophische Weltorientierung), p. 12; p. 15; p. 300; p. 317; p. 337; vol. 2 (Existenzerhellung), p. 151; p. 274; p. 320. sartre, Jean-paul, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, paris: gallimard 1943 (Bibliothèque des Idées), pp. 58–84; pp. 94–111; pp. 115–49; pp. 150–74; pp. 291–300; pp. 508–16; pp. 529–60; pp. 639–42; 643–63; pp. 669–70; pp. 720ff. — L’existentialisme est un humanisme, paris: nagel 1946, pp. 27–33. wahl, Jean, Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: librairie philosophique J. vrin 1938. III. Secondary Literature on the Marcel’s Relation to Kierkegaard anderson, thomas C., “the experimential paths to god in Kierkegaard and marcel,” Philosophy Today, vol. 26, no. 1, 1982, pp. 22–40. Cappuccio, Sofia, “Le dimensioni dello spirito umano nell’esistenzialismo di Kierkegaard e di g. marcel,” in Storia e Valori. Convegno di Naples (16–17 ottobre 1990), naples: loffredo 1992, pp. 157–63. Crosby, John F., “marcel and Kierkegaard on Hope and despair,” in Values and Human Experience: Essays in Honor of the Memory of Balduin Schwartz, ed. by stephen schwarz and Fritz wenisch, new York: peter lang 1999, pp. 209–18. González Uribe, H., “Tres modelos de interioridad en la filosofía contemporánea: Kierkegaard, marcel y peter wust,” Revista de Filosofía, vol. 20, nos. 58–9, 1987, pp. 91–104. Knox, Jeanette bresson ladegaard, Gabriel Marcel. Håbets filosof, fortvivlelsens dramatiker, odense: syddansk universitetsforlag 2003, p. 26; p. 34; p. 72; p. 140. morigi, s., “nervature kierkegaardiane nel pensiero francese del novecento: da gabriel marcel a denis de rougemont e rené girard,” in Kierkegaard e la letteratura, ed. by massimo iritano and inge lise rasmussen, rome: Città nuova 2002 (NotaBene. Quaderni di Studi Kierkegaardiani, vol. 2), pp. 101–25. muyskens, James l., “marcel and Kierkegaard: the religious life as a venture in uncertainty,” in his The Sufficiency of Hope: The Conceptual Foundations of Religion, philadelphia: temple university press 1979, pp. 106–13. parain-vial, Jeanne, “gabriel marcel et Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard, ed. by Jean brun, paris: borderie 1981 (Obliques, special issue), pp. 185–91. politis, Hélène, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, paris: Éditions Kimé 2005, pp. 34–5; p. 41, notes 122–3; p. 85; p. 100, note 6; pp. 118–19; pp. 121–8 passim; pp. 132–5; p. 152; p. 154; p. 156, notes 5–31; p. 162, note 156; p. 182; p. 228, note 107; p. 244, note 2. stewart, Jon, “France: Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of existentialism and poststructuralism,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome i, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception, Resources, vol. 8), pp. 421-74; see p. 432; p. 445; p. 457.

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wahl, Jean, Petite histoire de “l’existentialisme”: suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard commentaires, paris: editions Club maintenant 1947, p. 50; pp. 53–4.

Jacques maritain: Kierkegaard as “Champion of the singular” nathaniel Kramer

I. A Biographical Sketch of Jacques Maritain Jacques maritain was an eclectic philosopher, treating numerous aspects of philosophy during his long career; among them metaphysics, political philosophy, philosophy of science, education, and aesthetics. His prodigious work spans more than half a century, with his first publication appearing in 1906 and his last at the time of his death in 1963. because of his broad ranging philosophical and political interests, maritain is not easy to categorize as a philosopher. He is probably best known, however, as one of the most influential interpreters of Thomas Aquinas in the twentieth century. along with Étienne gilson (1884–1978), maritain was a key figure in the Thomist revival of the twentieth century. Central to his life’s work and his philosophical viewpoint was the Catholicism to which he converted, along with his wife raïssa, in 1906. deeply concerned with the relation between reason and faith, maritain would become a lifelong champion of the religious and spiritual within the academy. Jacques maritain was born on november 18, 1882 in paris to paul maritain, a prominent lawyer, and geneviève Favre, the daughter of the French politician, Jules Favre. He entered the lycée Henri iv in 1898 and in 1901 the sorbonne where he studied philosophy and the natural sciences. it was at the sorbonne that maritain’s spiritual inclinations took on more solid shape. though raised as a liberal protestant, the contemporary academic climate, saturated as it was with Comte’s positivism and a pervasive materialism, appeared reductive and shallow to maritain. He sought for something deeper that connected the collocation of disparate facts into some whole, into truth itself. it was also at the sorbonne that maritain met his future wife raïssa oumansoff. the daughter of Jewish immigrants, she, like maritain, was also searching for something beyond the spiritually arid climate of the French academy. discouraged by what they had found in their academic experience at the sorbonne, they entered into a suicide pact that if they did not discover some greater meaning or purpose to existence they would end their lives.

i would like to thank my research assistant, Catherine guyon, for her careful attention to the bibliographic material. Her attentiveness and patience as well as her instincts are much appreciated.

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two events seemed to have steered the maritain’s away from the fatal consequences of such a pact, and a third event would alter maritain’s intellectual direction forever. The first was a series of lectures given by Henri Bergson (1859– 1941) at the Collège de France where bergson was Chair of ancient philosophy. maritain and räissa were introduced to bergson and invited to attend the lectures by Charles péguy (1873–1914), a socialist writer and family friend. bergson’s lectures satisfied, at least in part, their complaint about the present conditions of the Sorbonne and French intellectual life in general. bergson’s theory of intuition in particular was central in rehabilitating metaphysics as a legitimate philosophical enterprise for Maritain. This interest in the thought of Henri Bergson would lead to Maritain’s first book, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, published in 1914.1 although the book is an incisive critique of bergson via a comparison with the thought of st. thomas aquinas, a critique which maritain never relinquished, maritain remained an ardent admirer of bergson. maritain’s and raïssa’s attendance at the lectures was followed shortly by their conversion to Catholicism in 1906, a conversion largely influenced by the writer léon bloy (1846–1917). their conversion to Catholicism would prove to be a decisive influence on both of them. Indeed much of Maritain’s work must be construed as making room for faith and spirituality in an academy dominated by the materialism and positivism of Comte, renan, and taine. maritain’s defense of Catholicism and Catholic thought would itself become a lifelong pursuit and thoroughly color and infuse everything he did and wrote. after spending two years in Heidelberg studying biology with Hans driesch, the maritains returned to paris. in 1910 maritain began reading thomas aquinas’ Summa Theologica at the suggestion of Father Humbert Clérissac, a dominican friar who was also their spiritual advisor and confidant. Maritain then spent the next two years immersing himself in the works of thomas aquinas. it would be impossible to overestimate the impact of aquinas’ thought on maritain’s own work. a fortune left to maritain by pierre villard, a former student who died in battle during the First world war, enabled maritain and his wife to found the thomist study Circle, a group which met in their home at versailles and later at meudon. there would be many thomist study groups that would follow. the introduction to aquinas’ work also forced a reconsideration of bergson’s own thought in maritain’s mind and resulted in a displacement of Bergson’s influence in favor of Aquinas’. As mentioned above, Maritain’s first book was a rebuttal of Bergson’s philosophy, and the following years would see an extensive production of philosophical works with thomism at its core. the initial impact of reading aquinas was to demonstrate to maritain that Catholicism and philosophy were not incompatible, a belief that he had seemingly held since his conversion to Catholicism. The influence of Aquinas’ thought would become the governing philosophical influence evident throughout Maritain’s writing and would have a lasting impact on his life and philosophy. maritain’s conversion to Catholicism, his return to the medieval philosopher aquinas, and maritain’s argument that both were philosophically relevant certainly Jacques maritain, La philosophie bergsonienne, paris: m. rivière 1914. (english translation: Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, trans. by mabelle l. and J. gordon andison, new York: philosophical library 1955.)

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ran against the current of the times. Maritain’s prodigious publications reflect his devout commitment to Catholicism even as they reflect a broad-ranging intellect. His early philosophical work involves a thomistic-inspired critique of bergson and other secular opponents. this work also quickly transitions to a defense of Catholicism. among the important works in this vein are Antimoderne and Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau.2 during this period, maritian also evinced an interest in aesthetics as demonstrated by his Art and Scholasticism.3 it was in this last effort that maritain revealed the founding motivation for his work by connecting his Catholic convictions and his philosophy. because of circumstances that erupted in the mid-1920s, maritain’s work took on a more social and political cast during the decade and after. His ostensible involvement with a political organization known as action Française, a protoFascist, ultranationalist, right-wing group, led to maritain’s reconsideration of his own politics, and especially those vis-à-vis the roman Catholic Church. maritain was never directly affiliated with the group, but did contribute pieces to their party magazine, La Revue Universelle, and knew Charles maurras, the leader of the organization. in 1926, action Française was formally condemned by pope pius xi, which threatened the church standing of all those affiliated with the group. Although maritain’s standing was not in question, his apparent association with the group led him to clarify for himself his political views and develop a political philosophy founded on principles of liberal Christian humanism and natural law. this interest in the social and political would carry on into the late 1940s and early 1950s. among these works are the early Integral Humanism, where maritain shifts politically from the right to the left, and the later Man and State, written in the united states just after the second world war.4 maritain’s chef d’oeuvre is universally considered to be Distinguish or Unite: The Degrees of Knowledge, which is his primary work in epistemology.5 Fundamentally thomist in orientation, Degrees of Knowledge sees knowledge as necessarily a part of metaphysics and thus prioritizes metaphysics over epistemology. maritain rejects therefore the idea that universal notions are creations of the mind and Jacques maritain, Antimoderne, new revised ed., paris: éditions de la “revue des jeunes” 1922; Jacques maritain, Trois réformateurs. Luther, Descartes, Rousseau, paris: plonnourrit 1925. (english translation: Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau, anonymous translation, new York: Charles scribner’s sons 1929.) 3 Jacques maritain, Art et scolastique, Paris: L. Rouart et fils 1927. (English translation: Art and Scholasticism, trans. by J.F. scanlan, new York: Charles scribner’s sons 1930.) 4 Jacques maritain, Humanisme intégral. Problèmes temporels et spirituels d’une nouvelle chrétienté, paris: Chantenay 1936. (english translations: True Humanism, trans. by m.r. adamson, london: bles 1938 and Integral Humanism: Temporal and Spiritual Problems of a New Christendom, trans. by Joseph w. evans, new York: Charles scribner’s sons 1968.) Jacques maritain, Man and the State, Chicago: university of Chicago press 1951. (French translation: L’Homme et l’État, trans. by robert and France duval, paris: presses universitaires de France 1953.) 5 Jacques maritain, Distinguer pour unir ou les degrés du savoir, bruges and paris: desclée de brouwer 1932. (english translation: Distinguish to Unite or The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. by gerald b. phelan, new York: Charles scribner’s sons 1959.) 2

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have no foundation in reality, and asserts instead that we know the world through concepts which are universal. the work attempts to explain the relationship between philosophy, science, and religion and to see them as all related branches of knowing, with suprarational knowledge being the highest form of knowing. Maritain’s teaching appointments were numerous. In 1912, Maritain first became professor of philosophy at the lycée stanislaus and also gave lectures at the institut Catholique de paris. in 1914, he was named assistant professor at the institut Catholique and later became full professor there. He was appointed to the Chair of logic and Cosmology in 1928 and would keep this position until 1939. maritain would also hold several appointments at universities throughout the united states. during the second world war, he remained in the u.s., teaching at princeton and Columbia as well at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto. In 1948, maritain accepted a chair at princeton, where he remained until his retirement in 1952. He would also teach at the universities of Chicago and notre dame during his career at princeton as well. at the end of the second world war, maritain was appointed by president de gaulle to be the French ambassador to the vatican, and he would represent France in the drafting of the united nations universal declaration of Human rights. maritain’s close association with the vatican began in 1917 when he was called to rome to discuss the apparitions at la salette with pope benedict xv. He would also be called to rome during the action Française affair. at the end of 1965 maritain received what would be his greatest recognition from the vatican. pope paul vi presented maritain with a message addressed to Catholic intellectuals, and the pope expressed his gratitude for maritain personally: “[t]he Church is grateful to you for the work of your whole life.”6 not all of his actions as a Catholic were, however, without controversy. His 1936 Integral Humanism apparently raised the suspicions of rome enough for maritain to be under some threat of condemnation. in 1967, towards the end of his life, maritain published The Peasant of the Garonne which criticized the post-vatican Council reforms, reforms that maritain perceived as a return to modernism and phenomenology. in maritain’s view, such reforms were in conflict with Catholicism.7 He would publish two other works prior to his death that also dealt with his controversial work on the aggiornamento or “bringing up to date” of the Church: On the Grace and Humanity of Jesus (1967) and On the Church of Christ (1970).8 Jean-luc barré, Jacques & Raïssa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven, trans. by bernard e. doering, notre dame, indiana: university of notre dame press 2005, p. 426. 7 Jacques maritain, Le paysan de la Garonne: un vieux laïc s’interroge à propos du temps present, bruges and paris: desclée de brouwer 1966. (english translation: The Peasant of the Garonne, trans. by m. Cuddihy and e. Hughes, new York: Holt, rinehart and winston 1968.) 8 Jacques maritain, De la Grâce et de l’humanité de Jésus, bruges and paris: desclée de brouwer 1967. (english translation: On the Grace and Humanity of Jesus, trans. by Joseph w. evans, new York: Herder and Herder 1969.) Jacques maritain, De l’Église du Christ: la personne de l’Église et son personnel, bruges and paris: desclée de brouwer 1970. (english translation: On the Church of Christ: The Person of the Church and Her Personnel, trans. by Joseph w. evans, notre dame, indiana: university of notre dame press 1973.) 6

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with raïssa’s health failing, the maritain’s returned to France in 1960. raïssa would pass away a year later, and maritain moved to toulouse, deciding to live with a religious order called the little brothers of Jesus. in 1970 maritain petitioned to join the brotherhood and took his vows in 1971, living at toulouse with the brotherhood until he died on 28 april 1973. maritain was buried next to raïssa at Kolsheim on 2 may. Jacques maritain and his work remain a source of interest and study. the Jacques maritain Center was established at the university of notre dame in 1957 and the international Jacques maritain institute in 1974 at rome. there are almost twenty national associations dedicated to the study of maritain and his work. the French 15-volume complete works was completed in 1994.9 this complete works also contains the work of maritain’s wife, raïssa. a 20-volume english edition of maritain’s complete works began to appear in 1995, with ralph mcinerny at notre dame as the founding editor. II. Primary Works that Discuss Kierkegaard a word or two is perhaps in order about the place and role of Kierkegaard in the works of maritain before proceeding to a more detailed discussion of the role in maritain’s thought. The name of Kierkegaard is relatively significant in Maritain’s work, but appears often as a placeholder for a certain way of thinking rather than appearing in the context of extensive or intensive engagement with the specifics of Kierkegaard’s thought. maritain himself seems to suggest that Kierkegaard had become for his contemporaries as well as for himself a kind of theme or type in his own work when he writes in his Moral Philosophy that he will “not undertake an intensive study of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Dewey and Bergson. It will suffice for our purpose to disengage from the testimony of each a certain note, a certain characteristic sign, which will serve as a theme for our reflections.”10 Moral Philosophy is one of two texts in maritain’s corpus that treats Kierkegaard in detail, and one is led to understand that the significance of Kierkegaard is boiled down to “a certain note, a characteristic sign” (i will explore this “characteristic sign” of Kierkegaard below) rather than a substantial treatment of Kierkegaard in his own right. the most substantial commentary on Kierkegaard’s thought by maritain occurs in Existence and the Existent (1947) and Moral Philosophy (1960). Existence and the Existent is described by maritain as an essay on the existentialism of st. thomas aquinas, though it is also very much a critique of contemporary existentialism. Moral Philosophy was written much later in maritain’s career and situates Kierkegaard, though this is not his primary purpose, within the history of western moral philosophy. references to these two texts will comprise the bulk of the analysis of maritain’s see Oeuvres complètes de Jacques et Raïssa Maritain, vols. 1–16, Fribourg: Éditions universitaires 1986–2000. 10 Jacques maritain, La philosophie morale: examen historique et critique des grands systèmes, paris: gallimard 1960, p. 439. (english translation: Moral Philosophy: An Historical and Critical Survey of the Great Systems, trans. by marshall suther et al., new York: scribner 1964, p. 353.) 9

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interest in Kierkegaard below. three other texts that contain more than a mere nod to Kierkegaard are: From Bergson to Thomas Aquinas, The Range of Reason, and a paper titled “Contemporary renewals in religious thought” from the published proceedings of the 1940 university of pennsylvania bicentennial Conference on religion.11 since the main outlines of maritain’s thinking about Kierkegaard are presented primarily and most substantially in Existence and the Existent and Moral Philosophy, i have referred almost exclusively to these two key works. One other note before I proceed: two pieces that appeared at first to be the most promising on the connection between maritain and Kierkegaard were found to be excerpts from Existence and the Existent and Moral Philosophy. these two pieces are titled “From existential existentialism to academic existentialism,” published in the Sewanee Review in 1948, and “the Champion of the singular,” published in French in Recherches et débats in 1957.12 Full bibliographic information is provided in the footnote below. III. Existential Existentialism and “The Champion of the Singular” the decisive philosophers who inform maritain’s thinking are without doubt st. thomas aquinas and Henri bergson. Kierkegaard does play a role in maritain’s thinking but a relatively minor one. This may, at first, seem somewhat surprising given maritain’s life-long interest in questions of faith and the place of religion in philosophy. Yet maritain’s references to Kierkegaard remain rather few and his discussion of Kierkegaard, in general, rather limited. as an example of Kierkegaard’s limited significance for Maritain, one may point to Maritain’s central text, The Degrees of Knowledge, in which there occurs only a single reference to Kierkegaard, and that in a footnote. while such an example does not adequately express the entire impact of Kierkegaard’s thought on maritain, it does suggest that Kierkegaard is a consistent point of reference but rarely a substantial one. the reasons for this, i would like to suggest, may coincide with a more general criticism leveled at maritain: that while Maritain’s writings remain significant and influential (as attested by the numerous societies and journals currently devoted to his work), he often responded in his work to contemporary philosophical and theological issues. this tends to give his work a rather dated feel. similarly, his interest in Kierkegaard appears to be less directed toward Kierkegaard himself and his oeuvre than in responding to the particular historical reception of Kierkegaard, namely, that of French existentialism. 11 Jacques maritain, De Bergson à Thomas d’Aquin: Essais de métaphysique et de morale, new York: Éditions de la maison française 1944. see also Jacques maritain, Raison et raisons: essais détachés, paris: egloff 1947 (english translation: The Range of Reason, new York: Charles scribner’s sons 1953); and Jacques maritain, “Contemporary renewals in religious thought,” in Jacques maritain, Joseph l. Hromádka, william J. mcgarry et al., Religion and the Modern World, philadelphia: university of philadelphia press 1941, pp. 1–25. 12 Jacques maritain, “le champion du singulier,” Recherches et débats, 1957, no. 19, pp. 14–19 and Jacques maritain, “From existential existentialism to academic existentialism,” Sewanee Review, vol. 56, no. 2, 1948, pp. 210–29.

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Though Maritain will posit a significant departure from the existentialism of Sartre and others with the help of Kierkegaard, it is clear that the Kierkegaard of maritain’s thought is very much filtered by the French reception of Kierkegaard in the 1930s and 1940s and forties. in lieu of this, and for better or for worse, maritain’s Kierkegaard bears the obvious marks of Jean wahl’s 1938 Kierkegaard Studies and pierre mesnard’s 1948 work The True Face of Kierkegaard.13 both texts were important to the critical reception of Kierkegaard in France during this period, but also contributed to the peculiarities found in that reception. as eric pons writes, the French reception of Kierkegaard “is founded on a double confusion: 1) the French Kierkegaard is the Kierkegaard of the so-called autobiographical journals. 2) Kierkegaard is received through germany and is presented as a german Kierkegaard.”14 The first point is well-taken with regard to maritain’s reading of Kierkegaard since this “French Kierkegaard” colors, in the main, every reference to Kierkegaard in maritain’s writing. mesnard, based on his readings of Kierkegaard’s journals, saw Kierkegaard as the victim of psychological illness stemming from his father, and this illness is given explanatory force for all of Kierkegaard’s authorship. maritain echoes precisely this penchant for biographical explanation when he writes that “[t]he paradoxes and elegances of Kierkegaard concealed a tragic singularity—his father’s pact with the enemy [i.e. the devil], his own misery, the solitary despair he bore within him from adolescence, the bruising of the sensuality by the imaginary, and finally, impotence.”15 maritain continues by claiming that Kierkegaard hoped to escape his pathology through marriage to regine olsen but was thrown back on “the wound of his singularity.”16 this led Kierkegaard, according to maritain, to think of himself as outside of or beyond the universal, and thus exceptional to it. the consequence of such a constant return to Kierkegaard’s biography is that it allows maritain to dismiss, or at least simplify, Kierkegaard on some key points. because of this confusion, there is little effort at all on the part of maritain to distinguish between Kierkegaard as historical person and the numerous pseudonyms which Kierkegaard uses. “tormented by himself in this way, hiding himself under masks and pseudonyms which were still himself, and at intervals giving a glimpse of his own visage as still another mask, in such a way as to render the masquerade still more puzzling, irony was for him the witness and the cloak of his own secret.”17 maritain insists that the pseudonyms are mere masks and can be dismissed simply as subterfuge. one need only grasp the individual subject behind them. Furthermore, far from drawing upon the range of Kierkegaard’s corpus, maritain restricts himself to those texts which would come to dominate the French reception of Kierkegaard. these are for maritain, Fear and Trembling, “guilty/not guilty,” Jean wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: J. vrin 1936 and pierre mesnard, Le vrai visage de Kierkegaard, paris: beauchesne 1948. 14 eric pons, “the French reception of the papirer,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2003, p. 348. 15 maritain, La philosophie morale, p. 449. (Moral Philosophy, p. 362.) 16 ibid. 17 maritain, La philosophie morale, pp. 440–1. (Moral Philosophy, p. 354.) 13

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The Moment, The Sickness unto Death, and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. while all of these texts appear in one form or another in maritain’s references to Kierkegaard, it is Fear and Trembling that predominates. in this context, it may be worthwhile to note that maritain’s wife raïssa also wrote an essay on abraham, titled “the story of abraham.”18 Surprisingly, Kierkegaard figures but little here and comes under some criticism in a footnote for focusing excessively on the story of isaac at the expense of the entire history of abraham and his relationship to god. abetting her husband’s view, raïssa sees Fear and Trembling as a case of faith at the extremes; exceptional and therefore suspect. Further echoing her husband’s and the French reception’s penchant for biographical-based readings of Kierkegaard, de silentio’s Fear and Trembling is symptomatic of Kierkegaard’s own spiritual development and an expression of Kierkegaard’s own spiritual test. therefore Fear and Trembling has less to say about abraham than it does about Kierkegaard. That Kierkegaard functions as a transitional figure to Bergson and to the thought of Aquinas, the two major influences on Maritain, does, however, suggest something of an important role for Kierkegaard in maritain’s thinking. indeed, in Moral Philosophy maritain goes so far as to suggest that Kierkegaard is responsible for “put[ting] ethics back on its feet” and, in Existence and the Existent, “the central intuition on which the existentialism of a Kierkegaard lived was in the last analysis the same as that which lies at the heart of thomism.”19 Coming from one of the most important thomists of the twentieth century, this last reference suggests that Kierkegaard deserves to be taken into consideration in maritain. maritain describes his Existence and the Existent, first published in French in 1947, as an essay on the existentialism of st. thomas aquinas. noting the anachronism of calling aquinas an existentialist, maritain nevertheless insists that such a description is not simply dressing thomism up in (then) fashionable terms, but rather that such a description goes a long way in understanding aquinas’ affirmation of the primacy of existence. Maritain thus claims to be not just a Thomist but a paleo-thomist, one who has uncovered and revealed the existentialism lying at the heart of thomistic thought. this repositioning of aquinas as an existentialist is owed, maritain suggests in the introduction, to Kierkegaard who is responsible for the current interest in existentialism. if Existence and the Existent is an essay on aquinas’ existentialism, it is also, however, very much a critique of the current existentialism of maritain’s day. while sartre is rarely mentioned, it is clear that he, as well as the other French existentialists, serve as the backdrop for maritain’s critique. a fundamental assertion of the book is that contemporary existentialism has misread Kierkegaard’s valorization of subjectivity and thus confused existence and subjectivity itself.

raïssa maritain, “Histoire d’abraham,” in Oeuvres complètes de Jacques et Raïssa Maritain, vol. 14, pp. 567–617. 19 maritain, La philosophie morale, p. 444 (Moral Philosophy, p. 357) and Jacques maritain, Court traité de l’existence et de l’existant, paris: Hartmann 1947, p. 208. (english translation: Existence and the Existent, trans. by lewis galantiere and gerald b. phelan, new York: vintage books 1966, p. 130.) 18

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to emphasize the differences between Kierkegaard and the French existentialists, maritain divides existentialism into an academic or “atheistic existentialism” and that of Kierkegaard (and others) as “existential existentialism.” existential existentialism has remained true to its original insights into the intuition of existential being, insights that Aquinas himself first articulated. This opposition between these two existentialisms rests on a further opposition between religious subjectivity and philosophy. For maritain [t]he existentialism of Kierkegaard, of Kafka, of shestov, of Fondane, was an essentially religious irruption and claim, an agony of faith, the cry of the subjectivity towards its god. it was at the same time a revelation of the person and of his anguish in the face of the nothingness which is nonbeing in the existent, “the crack in the existent.” but because of the historic circumstances in which it was born, and particularly because of Hegel and the implacable fascination of his totalitarianism of the reason, it was the misfortune of this existentialism to arise and develop within philosophy.20

because the existentialism of Kierkegaard and the others developed within philosophy, it underwent, according to maritain, a process of assimilation. academic existentialism attempted to make of existential existentialism’s “imprecatory posture” an object of knowledge, and thus transmuted this raw subjectivity into a principle upon which a new philosophical system might be built. It is, after all, this notion of radical subjectivity that Maritain finds most compelling in Kierkegaard and which maritain claims as Kierkegaard’s central contribution to western philosophy. For the most explicit acknowledgement of this, it is necessary to refer to maritain’s 1960 Moral Philosophy. as mentioned above, maritain states in the beginning of the chapter on Kierkegaard that he is not interested in the entire corpus of Kierkegaard but what he calls “a certain characteristic sign.” this sign is nothing other than “the theme of the singular (enkelte) which is of most significance for us in Kierkegaard.”21 maritain adds that “[m]orbidly, no doubt, but with an insight all the keener for that, Kierkegaard’s thought was concentrated upon his own suffering subjectivity.”22 this turn to the biographical allows maritain to connect Kierkegaard’s notion of the singular to the lived and intensely personal suffering on the part of the “historical” Kierkegaard. the result of such a connection is that in the genuine and deepest meaning of Kierkegaardian anguish, it must be said that by way of a spiritually crucifying existence, Kierkegaard revealed to modern philosophy a truth which undoubtedly was always known to the saints and was always more or less scrutinized by theologians, but which went far beyond philosophy; a truth which modern philosophy was unable to understand and which has disorganised it.23

20 maritain, Court traité de l’existence et de l’existant, p. 201. (Existence and the Existent, pp. 125–6.) 21 maritain, La philosophie morale, p. 440. (Moral Philosophy, p. 354.) 22 ibid. 23 maritain, Court traité de l’existence et de l’existant, pp. 197–8. (Existence and the Existent, p. 123.)

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if Kierkegaard was able to “disorganize” the assumptions upon which modern philosophy is built through his tormented turn inward to himself, martiain is nonetheless ambivalent about the consequences of such a turn. Maritain offers in the quotation below what is perhaps his most significant praise of Kierkegaard, not just in Existence and the Existent but in all of his texts, and then in the same breath he also delivers one of his fundamental criticisms of Kierkegaard: we believe that the central intuition on which the existentialism of a Kierkegaard lived was in the last analysis the same as that which lies at the heart of thomism. we refer to the intuition of the absolutely singular value and the primacy of the act of existing, the existentia ut exercita. But in Kierkegaard it sprang from the depths of a faith filled with anguish, robbed of its intelligible or superintelligible structure, desperately expecting the miraculous and rejecting the mystical possession for which it thirsts; it sprang from a radically irrationalist thought which rejects and sacrifices essences and falls back upon the night of subjectivity.24

in Kierkegaard’s arrival at a thomistic intuition of existence, he also, according to maritain, devolved into an irrationalism that ultimately led to the pathological collapse of his own self. Certainly the biographical plays an important role in such a view, but maritain also evinces a deeper skepticism about where such an intensification of subjectivity leads. maritain asks in Moral Philosophy: [w]as not Kierkegaard in fact too preoccupied with his singularity to be able quite to keep himself from betraying its mystery? and is it not by avoiding mirrors instead of seeking them, and by forgetting oneself in the object, that a man can best respect the integrity of his own inner depths, all the while knowing them, but with an inexpressible knowledge?25

while the confusion between Kierkegaard and his pseudonyms may allow maritain the possibility of dismissing Kierkegaard rather easily in this regard, the quotation above reveals what is at stake for maritain in his interest in Kierkegaard. such a preoccupation with singularity results in a radical irrationalism that refuses the possibility of knowledge. For maritain this is untenable. while he is not willing to allow Kierkegaard and his view of subjectivity to be simply subsumed into the philosophical by the existentialists, neither is maritain willing to allow Kierkegaard’s “night of subjectivity” in which no understanding of the self can take place and no knowledge of the self can be had. maritain criticizes Kierkegaard on precisely this point when he writes, “[i]n order to recover the true singular and its unique ethical and religious value, Kierkegaard turned his back on the universe of demonstration and objective certitudes, on the universe proper to reason.”26 ultimately maritain must leave Kierkegaard behind and, in the case of Existence and the Existent, prefer aquinas as the solution. maritain, Court traité de l’existence et de l’existant, pp. 208–9. (Existence and the Existent, p. 130.) 25 maritain, La philosophie morale, p. 441. (Moral Philosophy, pp. 354–5.) 26 maritain, La philosophie morale, p. 445. (Moral Philosophy, p. 358.) 24

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if Kierkegaard comes up short in maritain’s critique of French existentialism, the irrationalism maritain fears in Kierkegaard returns in his late work Moral Philosophy. originally published in 1960, Moral Philosophy attempts a systematic and historical overview of the development of moral philosophy within the western philosophical tradition. The volume is divided into three sections with the first part devoted to a discussion of reason in plato and socrates and concluding with Kant, the second focusing on Hegel, Marx, and Comte, and the final part discussing a philosophical reorientation of the problems introduced by the figures in the second. Although maritain notes that Kierkegaard did not articulate or develop a moral philosophy, his focus on the singular was central to what maritain calls a re-orientation of the crisis of moral philosophy. It is perhaps suggestive that we find Kierkegaard in the last part of the book occupying a relatively major role in maritain’s discussion of the historical development of moral philosophy; he is situated with sartre, with John dewey following, and then bergson. in this third part of maritain’s Moral Philosophy, the section devoted to moral philosophy itself, we find Kierkegaard coupled with Sartre under the heading “Person and Liberty,” the first section of which deals with Kierkegaard in particular. maritain suggests in the beginning of this chapter that Kierkegaard is responsible for refocusing the direction of western philosophy on the individual and individual subjectivity. in doing so, Kierkegaard has “put ethics back on its feet. and by the same token he re-established the individual person (no longer exalted to the skies as by Kant, but crying out to god from the bottom of the abyss) in its authentic absolute value, he restored the morality of the conscience, and he banished the Hegelian Sittlichkeit and the emperor of this world.”27 the interlocutors in Moral Philosophy are no longer the French existentialists and aquinas. now, the “champion of the singular,”28 as maritian calls Kierkegaard, is positioned vis-à-vis Kant and his claim to universal reason and Hegel. Kierkegaard rejects Kant’s claim to universal reason as well as Hegel’s Sittlichkeit by restoring the morality of individual conscience and choice. Just as in Existence and the Existent, however, maritain in Moral Philosophy rejects what he sees as the final consequence of this move toward the singular. If Kierkegaard is credited with putting ethics back on its feet, the radical subjectivity that made this possible also threatens to dissolve that same contribution. the irrationalism maritain rejected in his Existence and the Existent now leads to the possibility of a “supra-ethics” or what de silentio calls the “teleological suspension of the ethical.” For maritain, de silentio’s suspension of the ethical is a rupture of the ethical and thus inherently problematic. such a suspension of the ethical introduces a false duality, according to maritain, a division that creates the idea that there are two ethical worlds. maritain writes in Existence and the Existent that “Kierkegaard’s great error, amid all his great intuitions, was to separate and oppose as two heterogeneous worlds the world of generality, or universal law, and that of the unique witness borne

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maritain, La philosophie morale, pp. 444–5. (Moral Philosophy, pp. 357–8.) see maritain, “le champion du singulier.”

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by the ‘knight of the faith’....in reality these two worlds are in continuity; both form part of the universe of ethics.”29 in acknowledging the potential rupture within ethics, maritain attempts to recoup ethics and even de silentio’s suspension of the ethical. where de silentio posits, according to maritain, a rupture with the ethical, maritain sees the revelation of an “existential truth, and the central theme which commands the ethical life in its entirety.”30 this existential truth is the understanding that “being face to face with god is at the heart of all moral life and of every authentically moral decision.”31 thus maritain attempts to rescue moral philosophy and the supra ethics imposed by Kierkegaard from what he sees as a descent into irrationality. therefore, while Kierkegaard represents an important course correction in the history of moral philosophy, Kierkegaard’s subjectivity is ultimately too dangerous. maritain is likewise skeptical that this turn inward to the self produces the experience of faith, the existential dialectic as he calls it. maritain concludes that “[i]t is because Kierkegaard is a Christian that at the end of his existential dialectic he finds himself face to face with God; an atheist, the end of his existential dialectic, will find himself face to face with the void.”32 thus it is not the existential dialectic itself that has brought Kierkegaard face to face with god but the fact that he was already Christian. while maritain does not go so far as to suggest that Kierkegaard’s movement of faith is ultimately irrelevant, the above does allow for maritain to posit that this turn inward is only part of the process. maritain posits that one must in fact make an additional move; the move outside of oneself, back to reason, back to universal truths, back to a “realism” in order to be faithful. it would be reductive to think that maritain’s reason, his science, his moral philosophy, is simply positivist or rationalist. rather faith and reason belong together. this is what aquinas made possible for maritain, while in Kierkegaard: there was a kind of sublime aberration fatal to doctrine, and [his] fault, pregnant with consequences, was to believe that in order to glorify transcendence it was necessary to destroy reason; whereas what is necessary is to humiliate reason before the author of reason and by this act save it.33

a last point should be addressed in maritain’s relationship to Kierkegaard: maritain’s Catholicism and Kierkegaard’s lutheranism. in commenting on Kierkegaardian maritain does, however, suggest that Kierkegaard’s relationship to the ethical is much more ambivalent than the French existentialists have claimed. maritain makes this distinction between Kierkegaard and the contemporary appropriation of Kierkegaard when he writes “they [atheistic existentialists] reject the ethical universal along with all essence. they do not sacrifice it in pain and anguish, as Kierkegaard did, knowing its value the while. Rather they wantonly repudiate it with the pleasure of barbarians and they know not what they do.” maritain, Court traité de l’existence et de l’existant, pp. 93–4. (Existence and the Existent, p. 56.) 30 maritain, La philosophie morale, p. 459. (Moral Philosophy, p. 370.) 31 ibid. 32 maritain, La philosophie morale, p. 448. (Moral Philosophy, p. 361.) 33 maritain, Court traité de l’existence et de l’existant, pp. 210–11. (Existence and the Existent, p. 132.) 29

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anxiety and doubt, maritain writes that such doubt “is probably the kind of exaggerated feeling of guilt peculiar to lutheranism, in whose eyes every trace of egoism or of concupiscence, even though involuntary or not consented to, is a sin, so that for a human act to be exempt from blame it would require an angelically pure psychological context.”34 this view in maritain that in lutheranism every action is either moral or immoral, righteous and obedient or sinful, is not entirely accurate, but it allows maritain to emphasize some deep and debilitating pathology within Kierkegaard that explains the problems and paradoxes that exist in Fear and Trembling or The Moment. this broader relationship between Catholicism and lutheranism also leads maritain to ask whether Kierkegaard’s experience was analogous to those of the Catholic mystics. this question of Kierkegaard’s religious experience as perhaps mystical was apparently also raised by Jean wahl in his Kierkegaard Studies, although maritain never cites wahl directly in this regard.35 Kierkegaard is praised by maritain for exactly his intense introspection into himself, this unflinching look into the abyss of himself to find God, but Maritain is unwilling to grant de silentio’s abraham, or for that matter Kierkegaard himself, the same kind of mystical status associated with the great Catholic mystics. in sum, Kierkegaard is an important moment in the history of western philosophy for Maritain. Maritain finds in Kierkegaard’s non-philosophical experience of being alone before god and being brought face to face with one’s self a crucial defense of spiritual experience against a rationalism that attempts to subsume everything within it. Though Maritain finds this compelling and an important corrective to the trajectory of western philosophical thought, he is quick to provide his own corrective to Kierkegaard. as much as Kierkegaard is the champion of the singular in maritain’s view, such singularity is really only “an extreme case of the ethical life in all its extension, in which it is always up to the conscience and the prudence of the singular to carry out the right practical decision, the decision in which the general laws covering the case in question are incarnated and individualized.”36 thus Kierkegaard as “champion of the singular” fails to acknowledge the fundamental connection between the individual as individual and the ethical which pertains in every human interaction as well as one’s relationship with god. For this, maritain turns to aquinas.

34 35 36

maritain, La philosophie morale, p. 451. (Moral Philosophy, p. 363.) see pons, “the French reception,” p. 355. maritain, La philosophie morale, p. 459. (Moral Philosophy, p. 370.)

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Maritain’s Corpus “de la pensée catholique et de sa mission,” Der katholische Gedanke, vol. 4, 1930, p. 349. Distinguer pour unir ou les degrés du savoir, paris: desclée de brouwer 1932, p. 464. (english translation: Distinguish to Unite: or, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. under the supervision of g.b. phelan, new York: Charles scribner’s sons 1959, p. 234.) De la philosophie chrétienne, paris: desclée de brouwer 1933, p. 61. (english translation: An Essay on Christian Philosophy, trans. by edward H. Flannery, new York: philosophical library 1955, p. 33.) “mission de la pensée chrétienne,” La Vie intellectuelle, vol. 27, no. 1, 1934, pp. 44–5. “Prymat duchowości nawrót do św. Tomasza z Akwinu,” Wiadomosci Literackie, vol. 11, no. 1, 1934, p. 7. Sept leçons sur l’être et les premiers principes de la raison spéculative, paris: pierre téqui 1934, p. 31. (english translation: A Preface to Metaphysics: Seven Lectures on Being, new York and london: sheed and ward 1939, p. 25.) Humanisme intégral: Problèmes temporels et spirituels d’une nouvelle chrétienté, paris: aubier 1936, p. 80. (english translation: True Humanism, anonymous translation, new York: Charles scribner’s sons 1938, p. 63.) “del saber moral,” in Para una filosofia de la persona humana, buenos aires: Cursos de cultura catolica 1937, p. 77. “d’un nouvel humanisme ou d’un humanisme intégral,” Bulletin de l’Union pour la Vérité, vol. 44, nos. 9–10, 1937, pp. 6–35. Le crépuscule de la civilisation, paris: Éditions nouvelles lettres 1939, p. 4. (english translation: The Twilight of Civilization, london: sheed and ward 1943, p. 7.) De Bergson à Thomas d’Aquin: Essais de métaphysique et de morale, new York: Éditions de la maison Française 1944, pp. 94–9. Court Traité de l’Existence et l’Existant, paris: Hartmann 1947, p. 11; p. 93; p. 98; p. 119; pp. 197–8; p. 201; pp. 208–12; p. 229. (english translation: Existence and the Existent, trans. by lewis galantiere and gerald b. phelan, new York: vintage books 1966, p. 2; p. 56; p. 59; p. 72; p. 123; p. 125; pp. 130–2; p. 143.) Raison et Raisons, paris: egloff 1948 [1947], p. 96; p. 175. (english translation: The Range of Reason, no translator indicated, new York: scribner 1953, p. 46; p. 200; p. 206.)

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Neuf leçons sur les notions premières de la philosophie morale, paris: pierre téqui 1951, p. 142. (english translation: An Introduction to Basic Problems of Moral Philosophy, no translator indicated, new York: magi books 1990, p. 157.) Approches de Dieu, paris: alsatia 1953, p. 17. (english translation: Approaches to God, trans. by peter o’reilly, new York: Harper and brothers 1954, p. 9.) “about Christian philosophy,” in The Human Person and the World of Values, ed. by balduin v. schwarz, new York: Fordham university press 1960, p. 3. La philosophie morale: examen historique et critique des grands systèmes, paris: gallimard 1960, pp. 20–1; 26; p. 32; p. 148; p. 232; p. 269; pp. 439–59; p. 464; p. 475; p. 488; p. 491; pp. 545–6; p. 559; p. 568. (english translation: Moral Philosophy: An Historical and Critical Survey of the Great Systems, trans. by marshall suther et. al., new York: scribner 1964, p. 7; p. 12; p. 17; p. 112; p. 183; p. 214; pp. 353–70; p. 374; p. 384; p. 394; p. 397; pp. 440–1; p. 451; p. 458.) Le philosophe dans la cité, paris: alsatia 1960, p. 170; p. 181. Man’s Approach to God, pennsylvania: the archabbey press 1960, p. 15. The Responsibility of the Artist, new York: Charles scribner’s sons 1960, p. 108. “preface,” in georges Cattaui, Léon Bloy, paris: Éditions universitaires 1961, pp. 7–9. “letter to The Basilian Teacher,” The Basilian Teacher, vol. 6, no. 8, 1962, pp. 289–90. Dieu et la permission du mal, paris: desclée de brouwer 1963, p. 7. (english translation: God and the Permission of Evil, trans. by Joseph w. evans, milwaukee, wisconsin: bruce publishing Co. 1966, p. vii.) “1er Janvier 1946,” Cahiers Jacques Maritain, vol. 4, 1982, p. 57. La loi naturelle ou loi non écrite: texte inédit, ed. by georges brazzola, Fribourg, suisse: Éditions universitaires 1986, p. 76; p. 78; p. 149. (english translation: Lectures on Natural Law, trans. by william sweet in The Collected Works of Jacques Maritain, vol. 6, notre dame: university of notre dame press forthcoming.) “Hommage à theodor Haecker,” Cahiers Jacques Maritain, no. 31, 1995, pp. 39–40. II. Sources of Maritain’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard brod, max, “sur Kierkegaard, Heidegger et Kafka,” L’Arche, no. 21, 1946, pp. 44– 54. Collins, James, The Mind of Kierkegaard, Chicago: Henry regnery Company 1953. Fondane, benjamin, “le lundi existentiel et le dimanche de l’histoire” in his L’Existence, paris: gallimard 1945, pp. 25–53. mesnard, pierre, Le vrai visage de Kierkegaard, paris: beauchesne 1948. sartre, Jean-paul, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, paris: gallimard 1943 (Bibliothèque des Idées), pp. 58–84; pp. 94–111; pp. 115–49; pp. 150–74; pp. 291–300; pp. 508–16; pp. 529–60; pp. 639–42; pp. 643–63; pp. 669–70; pp. 720ff.

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shestov, lev, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle: “vox clamantis in deserto,” trans. by t. rageot and b. de schloezer, paris: vrin 1936. III. Secondary Literature on Maritain’s Relation to Kierkegaard angier, tom p.s., Either Kierkegaard/Or Nietzsche: Moral Philosophy in a New Key, aldershot: ashgate 2006, p. 53; p. 59. barré, Jean-luc, Jacques et Raïssa Maritain: Les Mendiants du Ciel, paris: stock 1996, p. 17; pp. 555–6. bars, Henry, La Politique selon Jacques Maritain, paris: les Éditions ouvrières 1961, pp. 82–3. — Maritain en notre temps, paris: Éditions bernard grasset 1959, pp. 43–4; p. 171, p. 204; pp. 301–2; p. 320; p. 347. daly, mary F., Natural Knowledge of God in the Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, Rome: Officium Libri Catholici/Catholic Book Agency 1966, p. 90. dennehy, raymond, “maritian’s ‘intellectual existentialism’: an introduction to His metaphysics and epistemology,” in Understanding Maritain: Philosopher and Friend, ed. by deal w. Hudson and matthew J. mancini, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1987, p. 201. Floucot, Yves, Jacques Maritain ou la fidélité à l’éternel, paris: Fac-éditions 1996, pp. 151–2; p. 170. Frei, eduardo y ismael bustos, Maritain Entre Nosotros, santiago de Chile: instituto de educacion politica 1964, pp. 12–13. Hudecki, dennis, “Kierkegaard: Historical inquiry and the individual,” in The Philosophy of History: A Re-Examination, ed. by william sweet, aldershot: ashgate 2004, p. 99; p. 103. idinopulos, thomas a., The Erosion of Faith, Chicago: Quadrangle books 1971, p. 125; pp. 144–6. macquarrie, John, Two Worlds are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism, minneapolis: Fortress press 2005, p. 252. mcinerny, ralph, The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain, indiana: university of notre dame press 2003, pp. 144–5; p. 157; p. 178. nottingham, william J., Christian Faith and Secular Action: An Introduction to the Life and Thought of Jacques Maritain, missouri: the bethany press 1968, pp. 126–7. sagi, avi, Kierkegaard, Religion, and Existence, trans. by batya stein, amsterdam: rodopi 2000, p. 13. suther, Judith d. “poetry, poetics, and the maritains,” Jacques Maritain: The Man and His Metaphysics, ed. by John F.x. Knasas, indiana: american maritain association 1988, p. 3; pp. 8–9.

maurice merleau-ponty: Kierkegaard’s Influence on His Work elisabetta basso

The inquiry into Kierkegaard’s influence on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1908–61) work is quite complex, since it involves further questions concerning not only the theoretical kernels of the two philosophers’ respective work but also their receptions in the history of Continental philosophy.1 actually, one might wonder whether it is possible to define the inquiry in terms of “influence,” since Merleau-Ponty would certainly have refused to consider it as the “cause” or the “root” of a philosophical work, as he pointed out—for instance—in his essay from 1945 on paul Cézanne (1839–1906), writing of the authentic “originality” of an artist’s creation.2 the thorniest problem one has to tackle when inquiring into the relationship between merleau-ponty and Kierkegaard, is the question about the plausibility of outlining a general definition of both “existentialism” and “phenomenology” and their relationship. The present academic literature on this subject is countless. We just confine ourselves to Herbert spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, 3rd revised and enlarged ed., the Hague: martinus nijhoff 1982, see part 3 (“the French phase”), Chapter 8, § 3 (“phenomenology and existentialism”), pp. 436–40; david Cooper, Existentialism: A Reconstruction, oxford and Cambridge, massachusetts: blackwell 1990; mrinal Kanti bhadra, A Critical Survey of Phenomenology and Existentialism, new delhi: indian Council of philosophical research 1990; The Existentialists: Critical Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre, ed. by Charles Guignol, Lanham Rowman & Littlefield 2004; A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism, ed. by Hubert l. dreyfus et al., oxford: blackwell 2006; Phenomenology and Existentialism in the Twentieth Century, ed. by anna-teresa tymieniecka, dordrecht: springer 2009. 2 maurice merleau-ponty, “le doute de Cézanne,” in his Sens et non-Sens, paris: nagel 1948, pp. 15–49, see p. 37 (originally published in Fontaine, vol. 8, no. 47, 1945, pp. 80–100; english translation: “Cezanne’s doubt,” in Sense and Non-Sense, trans. by Hubert dreyfus and patricia allen dreyfus, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1964, pp. 9–25, see p. 20): “Thus, the ‘hereditary traits,’ the ‘influences’—the accidents in Cezanne’s life— are the text which nature and history gave him to decipher. they give only the literal meaning of his work. but an artist’s creations, like a man’s free decisions, impose on this given a figurative sense which did not pre-exist them.” But one can also mention Merleau-Ponty’s quotation from Heidegger’s The Principle of Reason—in his Signs—where the german philosopher points out that “when we are considering a man’s thought, the greater the work accomplished (and greatness is in no way equivalent to the extent and number of writings) the richer the unthought-of element in that work. that is, the richer is that which, through this work and through it alone, comes toward us as never yet thought of.” see also maurice 1

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in any event, merleau-ponty never wrote anything specially focused on Kierkegaard, and even though we can find several references to him in Merleauponty’s corpus, none of Kierkegaard’s works is specially mentioned, nor are specific passages from them quoted directly. in fact, for merleau-ponty, Kierkegaard represents less a “theme” or a “subject” for philosophical “knowledge” than a witness to a way of considering the philosophical attitude. one of these is not the quest for “already-acquired truths,” but—as the French philosopher maintained in his Praise of Philosophy—“the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance [and] from ignorance to knowledge.”3 and it is certainly emblematic that Kierkegaard and this way of conceiving philosophy as “philosophical life” is mentioned right at the beginning of merleau-ponty’s inaugural lecture at the Collège de France (1952), a meaningful occasion for the philosopher to take stock of the achievements of his own intellectual path and to outline its future stakes. In any case, even though we cannot really find something like a Kierkegaardian “inheritance” or “influence” in Merleau-Ponty’s work, we have to recognize the importance the Danish philosopher had for the main figures and debates which were important for merleau-ponty during his philosophical education in paris in the 1920s and 1930s.4 in the French context of the 1930s, Kierkegaard was indeed one of the most important points of reference in the philosophical scene, one which was primarily concerned with the reception of german phenomenology and existential philosophy. as merleau-ponty would state in a later lecture on his “philosophy of existence,” although “the term ‘existentialism’ has come to designate almost exclusively the philosophical movement which arose in France after 1945, chiefly as a result of sartre’s instigation,” in reality this philosophical movement “is tied to a long and complicated tradition, since it actually begins with Kierkegaard’s philosophy, and following this, is derived from philosophies such Husserl’s and Heidegger’s in germany.”5 merleau-ponty, “le philosophe et son ombre,” in his Signes, paris: gallimard 1960, pp. 201– 28, see p. 202. (originally published in Edmund Husserl, 1859–1959. Recueil commémoratif publié à l’occasion du centenaire de la naissance du philosophe, ed. by Herman leo van breda and Jacques taminiaux, the Hague: martinus nijhoff 1959; english translation: “the philosopher and his shadow,” in Signs, trans. by richard mcCleary, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1964, pp. 159–81, see p. 160.) 3 maurice merleau-ponty, “Éloge de la philosophie,” in his Éloge de la philosophie et autres essais, paris: gallimard 1960, pp. 11–63 (originally published as Éloge de la philosophie. Leçon inaugurale faite au Collège de France, le jeudi 15 janvier 1953, paris: gallimard 1953; english translation: “in praise of philosophy,” in In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. by John wild, James edie, and John o’neill, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1988 [1963] pp. 3–67, see p. 5). 4 Cf. Hélène politis, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, paris: Kimé 2005, see part 2: “interprétations prétendument philosophiques: l’absurde, le concret, l’existence,” pp. 83–164; margaret teboul, “la réception de Kierkegaard en France, 1930–1960,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, vol. 89, 2005, pp. 315–36. 5 maurice merleau-ponty, “la philosophie de l’existence,” in his Parcours deux. 1951–1961, ed. by Jacques prunair, lagrasse: verdier 2000, pp. 247–70 (originally published in Dialogue, vol. 2, no. 3, 1966, pp. 307–22. the lecture took place in paris on november

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since his early training in philosophy, merleau-ponty followed the typical path of a French academic, becoming a student at the prestigious École normale supérieure in paris in 1926—where he graduated in 1930—then becoming a junior member of the faculty (agrégé répétiteur) and receiving his doctorate in 1945 with his two main works: The Structure of Behavior6 and the Phenomenology of Perception.7 after the war, he joined the faculty of the university of lyon and founded with Jean-paul sartre (1905–80)—his old friend from the École normale—the journal Les Temps modernes, which he coedited until 1953. From 1949 to 1952 he held the chair of psychology and pedagogy at the sorbonne, where he gave three courses respectively on “Consciousness and the acquisition of language” (1949–50),8 “the Child’s relations with others” (1950–51),9 and “phenomenology and the sciences of man” (1950–51).10 in 1952 he was elected to the Collège de France to the chair formerly occupied by Henri bergson (1859–1941), edouard le roy (1870–1954), and louis lavelle (1883–1951). He taught there until his death in 1961. during the 1930s, merleau-ponty attended the celebrated alexandre Kojève’s (1902–68) seminar on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit at École des Hautes Études,11 17, 1959; english translation: “the philosophy of existence,” trans. by allen s. weiss, in The Debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, ed. by Jon stewart, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1998, pp. 492–503, see p. 492). 6 maurice merleau-ponty, La structure du comportement, paris: presses universitaires de France 1942. (english translation: The Structure of Behaviour, trans. by alden l. Fisher, boston: beacon press 1965.) 7 maurice merleau-ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, paris: gallimard 1945. (english translation: Phenomenology of Perception, trans. by Colin smith, london and new York: routledge 2002 [london: routledge & Kegan paul 1962].) 8 maurice merleau-ponty, “la conscience et l’acquisition du langage,” in his Psychologie et pédagogie de l’enfant. Cours de Sorbonne 1949–1952, lagrasse: verdier 2001, pp. 9–88 (originally published in Merleau-Ponty à la Sorbonne. Résumé de cours 1949–1952, paris et al.: Cynara 1988, pp. 9–88; english translation: Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language, trans. by Hugh J. silverman, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1973). 9 maurice merleau-ponty, Les relations avec autrui chez l’enfant, in his Parcours, 1935–1951, ed. by Jacques prunair, lagrasse: verdier 1997, pp. 147–229 (originally published as Les relations avec autrui chez l’enfant, paris: Centre de documentation universitaire 1951; english translation: “the Child’s relations with others,” trans. by william Cobb, in The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1964, pp. 96– 155). 10 maurice merleau-ponty, Les sciences de l’homme et la phénoménologie, paris: tournier et Constans 1953 (republished in Merleau-Ponty à la Sorbonne, pp. 397–464; english translation: “phenomenology and the sciences of man,” trans. by John wild, in The Primacy of Perception, ed. by James e. edie, pp. 43–95). 11 these lectures were later edited in book form: Introduction à la lecture de Hegel: Leçons sur la “Phénoménologie de l’Esprit” professées de 1933 à 1939 à l’École des Hautes Études, ed. by raymond Queneau, 2nd ed., paris, gallimard 1968 [1947]. (english translation: Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the “Phenomenology of Spirit,” trans. by James H. nichols Jr., ed. by alan d. bloom, new York and london: basic books 1969.)

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which had a strong impact not only on his own reception of Hegel and german phenomenology, but also, more generally, on the development of phenomenology in France.12 As stated by another of the main figures of the French Hegelianism, Jean Hyppolite (1907–68)—who had been one of merleau-ponty’s fellow students at École normale, and who translated Hegel’s Phenomenology into French during the 1930s13: “Hegel [was] undoubtedly for us like aristotle was for the middle age.”14 so merleau-ponty maintained that “interpreting Hegel mean[t] taking a stand on all the philosophical, political, and religious problems of our century.”15 the importance of Kojève’s reading of Hegel for merleau-ponty’s generation— together with Jean wahl’s (1888–1974) work entitled Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel (1929)16—lies in having introduced in France a part of Hegel’s corpus which was still unknown at that time, namely, the early theological works and the Phenomenology of 1807. For all their differences, the two readings of Hegel by wahl and Kojève respectively shared the refusal of considering the german philosopher as Kierkegaard had considered him, as the “philosopher of philosophers and the maker of systems.”17 according to wahl, Kojève and also Hyppolite, the dialectic of the Phenomenology revealed, instead of the system’s synthesis and reconciliation, a troubled and enigmatic consciousness, which was not so far away from Kierkegaard’s.18 in Hyppolite’s words, Hegel’s Phenomenology “look[ed] like a heroic effort to bring back the vertical transcendence to a horizontal one,”19 and on this point, see spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, pp. 440–7. The first part of Hyppolite’s translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology was published in 1939, and the second one in 1941 (La Phénoménologie de l’esprit, paris: aubier). later, in 1946, he published his doctoral dissertation (sorbonne) on the Genèse et structure de la “Phénoménologie de l’esprit” de Hegel, paris: aubier montaigne 1946. (english translation: Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit,” trans. by samuel Cherniak and John Heckman, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1974.) 14 Jean Hyppolite, “la ‘phénoménologie’ de Hegel et la pensée française contemporaine” (1955), in his Figures de la pensée philosophique. Écrits de Jean Hyppolite (1931–1968), vols. 1–2, paris: presses universitaires de France 1992 [1971], vol. 1, pp. 231–41, see p. 241. 15 maurice merleau-ponty, “l’existentialisme chez Hegel,” in his Sens et non-sens, pp. 125–39, see p. 126 (originally published in Les Temps modernes, no. 7, 1946, pp. 1311–19; english translation: “Hegel’s existentialism,” in Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 63–70, see p. 64). 16 Jean wahl, Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel, 2nd ed., paris: presses universitaires de France 1951 [paris: rieder 1929]. Jean wahl, like Hyppolite (from 1949), was professor at the sorbonne (from 1936 to 1967). 17 Cf. Hyppolite, “la ‘phénoménologie’ de Hegel et la pensée contemporaine,” p. 233. 18 Cf. Jean wahl, “la lutte contre le hégélianisme,” in his Études kierkegaardiennes, 2nd ed., paris: vrin 1949 [1938], pp. 86–171 (originally published as “Hegel et Kierkegaard,” Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, vol. 112, pp. 321–80); and Jean wahl, “Hegel and Kierkegaard,” in his Études kierkegaardiennes, pp. 159–71 (originally published in Verhandlungen des Dritten Hegelkongresses vom 19. bis 23. April 1933 in Rom, ed. by b. wigersma, tübingen: mohr and Haarlem: willink 1934, pp. 235–49). see also Jean Hyppolite, “vie et prise de conscience de la vie dans la philosophie hégélienne d’iéna,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, no. 45, 1938, pp. 45–61. 19 Hyppolite, “la ‘phénoménologie’ de Hegel et la pensée contemporaine,” p. 240. 12 13

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that is why Hegel’s philosophy could become, at that time, a point of reference for all the philosophical currents, like existentialism and marxism, which had formerly criticized it. so, the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in France has to be read in some respects in parallel with that of Kierkegaard,20 and we have to keep this in mind if we want to understand not only the role played by Kierkegaard at the origin of what the historians of philosophy have called “French existentialism,” but also merleauponty’s own reading of the danish philosopher. we will see below indeed that most of merleau-ponty’s references to Kierkegaard go together with references to Hegel. actually, the better part of the academic literature on “existentialism”—especially that which tries to define the common roots of the “existential tree”21—usually detects the most relevant of them in Kierkegaard’s opposition to Hegel’s quest for “absolute knowledge.”22 so, for a large number of merleau-ponty’s contemporaries, Hegel and Kierkegaard represented two opposite ways of conceiving philosophy: the former based on the philosophical tradition of the quest for incontrovertible evidence and an objective-essential truth, the latter on the inquiry into the individual existing subject on this point, see georges Canguilhem, “Hegel en France,” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, nos. 28–9, 1948–49, pp. 282–97, see pp. 283–4. but see also Jeanpaul sartre, Critique de la Raison Dialectique, précédé de Questions de Méthode, vol. 1, Théorie des Ensembles Pratiques, paris: gallimard 1960 (english translation: Search for a Method, trans. by Hazel e. barnes, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1963, p. 11): “Kierkegaard is inseparable from Hegel, and this vehement negation of every system can arise only within a cultural field entirely dominated by Hegelianism.” the secondary literature concerning Hegel’s reception in France is wide. For a bibliographical account until 1990, see a. bohm and v.Y. mudimbe, “Hegel’s reception in France,” Journal of French Philosophy, vol. 6, no. 3, 1994, pp. 5–33. We confine ourselves here to giving just a few more references: John Heckman, “introduction,” in Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit,” pp. xv–xli; roberto salvadori, Hegel in Francia: filosofia e politica nella cultura francese del Novecento, bari: de donato 1974; gwendolyne Jarczyk and pierre-Jean labarrière, De Kojève à Hegel, 150 ans de pensée hégélienne en France, paris: albin michel 1996; bruce baugh, French Hegel: From Surrealism to Postmodernism, new York: routledge 2003. 21 Cf. emmanuel mounier, Introduction aux existentialismes, paris: denoël 1947. (english translation: Existentialist Philosophies: An Introduction, trans. by eric blow, london: rockliff 1948.) 22 such academic literature is countless. we just mention here, for example: Hubert l. dreyfus and mark a. wrathall, “a brief introduction to phenomenology and existentialism,” in A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism, ed. by dreyfus et al., pp. 1–6. Cf. also Hubert l. dreyfus: “the roots of existentialism,” in A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism, ed. by dreyfus et al., pp. 137–61; and robert wicks: “French existentialism,” in A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism, ed. by dreyfus et al., pp. 206–27. as for merleau-ponty’s contemporaries, see above all Jean beaufret, “a propos de l’existentialisme,” in his De l’existentialisme à Heidegger: Introduction aux philosophies de l’existence, paris: vrin 1986, pp. 11–54; Henri lefebvre, L’existentialisme, 2nd ed., paris: anthropos 2001 [paris: Éditions du sagittaire 1946]; and emmanuel mounier, Le personnalisme, 17th ed., paris: presses universitaires de France 2001 [1949] (english translation: Personalism, trans. by philip mairet, london: routledge & Kegan paul 1952). For a critical reading towards this historiographical view opposing idealism and existentialism, see Jon stewart, Idealism and Existentialism: Hegel and Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Philosophy, new York and london: Continuum 2010. 20

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and its concrete contradictions. one might think, on this point, of georges gurvitch’s (1894–1965) sorbonne lectures of 1928–30 on “the Current leaning of german philosophy”—which merleau-ponty attended23—where the French sociologist, writing of the different roots of martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) descriptive analytic of existence, considered Kierkegaard as an “irrational existentialist.”24 we might also think of Karl löwith’s (1897–1973) French article of 1934–35, “the achievement of Classical philosophy by Hegel and its dissolution in marx and Kierkegaard,”25 a paper that intervened in one of the main philosophical debates of that time, concerning the role of philosophy as regards “existence.”26 but we should also mention the way in which lev shestov (1866–1938)—in his Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle (1936)—assimilated Kierkegaard’s “dramatic” thought in order to nourish his own refusal of a philosophy based only on faith in reason,27 as well as a part of Jean wahl’s works, namely, that in which the philosopher takes on the role of historian of “existential philosophy” by presenting the “nonphilosopher” Kierkegaard as its founding father.28 We can also find this kind of anti-Hegelian perspective in another figure who is widely present within the early works of merleau-ponty: the swiss psychiatrist ludwig binswanger (1881–1966). binswanger’s “phenomenological anthropology” was fundamental for Merleau-Ponty during the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s. in his Phenomenology of Perception, for instance, the French philosopher mentions binswanger’s Dream and Existence,29 a work where the swiss psychiatrist dwelt upon Cf. emmanuel de saint aubert, Vers une ontologie indirecte. Sources et enjeux critiques de l’appel à l’ontologie chez Merleau-Ponty, paris: vrin 2006, p. 104. 24 Cf. georges gurvitch, Les tendances actuelles de la philosophie allemande. E. Husserl, M. Scheler, E. Lask, N. Hartmann, M. Heidegger, paris: vrin 1930, pp. 210–11. 25 Karl löwith, “L’achèvement de la philosophie classique par Hegel et sa dissolution chez Marx et Kierkegaard,” Recherches philosophiques, vol. 4, 1934–35, pp. 232–67. 26 Cf. the meeting of the “société Française de philosophie” of december 4, 1937, where Jean wahl, nicholas berdyaev, rené berthelot, paul ludwig landsberg, gabriel marcel, and léon brunschvicg (discussing also some letters from raymond aron, georges bastide, rachel bespaloff, martin Heidegger, Jeanne Hersch, Karl Jaspers, louis lavelle, raymond lenoir, emmanuel lévinas, Karl löwith, Käte nadler, H. pollnow, and denis de rougement), discussed the theme put on the agenda by Jean wahl: “subjectivité et transcendance.” this meeting is very important for understanding Kierkegaard’s reception in France during the 1930s and the 1940s, see Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie, vol. 37, 1938, pp. 161–93. 27 see lev shestov, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, paris: vrin 1936. (english translation: Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy, trans. by elinor Hewitt, athens: ohio university press 1969.) 28 Cf. wahl’s paper at the meeting of the “société Française de philosophie” of december 4, 1937, and, later, his article on “Kierkegaard: son influence en France,” Revue danoise, vol. 1, 1951, pp. 34–6. but see also wahl’s “les philosophies de l’existence,” in Encyclopédie Française, paris: société nouvelle de l’encyclopédie Française 1935–53 and 1955–62, vol. 19, pp. 12:3–14, see pp. 12:6–7 and p. 12:8. For more details on wahl’s reception of Kierkegaard, see politis, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle, pp. 109–30. 29 ludwig binswanger, “traum und existenz,” in his Ausgewählte Werke: in vier Bänden, vols. 1–4, ed. by Hans-Jürg barun, Heidelberg: asanger 1992–94, vol. 3, pp. 95–119 23

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the opposition between Kierkegaard’s thorough analysis of individual subjectivity and Hegel’s quest of objectivity.30 nevertheless, compared to the French historiographers of existentialism, such a position towards the juxtaposition Hegel–Kierkegaard was more nuanced in binswanger, since the aim of his analysis of individual existences was also the quest for their universal “forms” or “styles.” according to him, this way of considering existence in regard both to the individuality and the universality of the human being could be indeed associated “with the names—to cite only a few—of Heraclitus, plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Heidegger.”31 all these authors would share the aim of going beyond the singular and contingent expressions of existence in order to look for the principle which governs them. now, what is most interesting in this kind of quest for objectivity is that it does not dissolve the singularity of subjectivity, but it understands it dialectically by detecting its structure and its normative way of “functioning.” as we shall see below, such a structural approach to the subjectivity of experience will be fundamental in merleau-ponty’s way of sketching his own phenomenological engagement. the anthropological turn given by binswanger to the phenomenological perspectives by respectively edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Heidegger was also very important for merleau-ponty’s own project of bringing phenomenology into the context of concrete life. In some respects, we can find in both Binswanger and merleau-ponty the same purpose of pursuing a philosophical problem freely from the straight lines of disciplines, authors, and academic definitions. So we can find the same apparent eclecticism which led them to connect philosophy not only with human sciences, like psychology, psychoanalysis, or social sciences, but also with the history of art, epistemology and some sciences of the living being like biology, medicine, and even ethnology.32 Together with his interests in the “canonical” philosophical authors of the time― such as descartes, spinoza, leibniz, Hegel, bergson—during the 1930s merleauponty devoted himself to the study of the methodological problems of psychology and experimental psychology. in order to prepare his dissertation on the topics of the bodily experience of the world in perception, he attended aron gurwitsch’s (1901– (originally published in Neue Schweizer Rundschau, vol. 23, 1930, pp. 673–85; pp. 766–79; english translation: “dream and existence,” in Being-in-the-world: Selected Papers of Ludwig Binswanger, trans. by Jacob needleman, new York: Harper & row 1963, pp. 222–48; this translation was revised by Keith Hoeller in Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, vol. 19, no. 1, 1984–85, special issue on “dream and existence”). 30 ludwig binswanger, “dream and existence,” trans. revised Hoeller, pp. 100–1: “as psychotherapists, we must go beyond Hegel, for we are not dealing with objective truth, with the congruence between thinking and being, but with ‘subjective truth,’ as Kierkegaard would say.” 31 ibid., p. 97. 32 we can just limit ourselves here to mention also the importance that both merleau-ponty and Kierkegaard, together with binswanger, have had for the “anti-psychiatric” movement since the 1960s. on this point, cf. Herbert spiegelberg, Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry: A Historical Introduction, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1972, see p. xxviii and p. 121. but see also georges lanteri-laura, “le voyage dans l’antipsychiatrie anglaise,” L’évolution psychiatrique, vol. 61, no. 3, pp. 621–33.

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73) lectures on Gestalt psychology at the sorbonne, and he turned mostly to the analysis of Gestalttheorie, but also behaviorism, psychoanalysis, psychopathology, and neurology. in February 1929, at the sorbonne, he attended the celebrated lectures by Husserl entitled “introduction to transcendental phenomenology,” which were reworked and published in French two years later as Cartesian Meditations.33 these lectures had a great impact on merleau-ponty, whose entire speculation can be read as a constant analysis and questioning of Husserl’s work and of the authentic meaning of “phenomenology” against its academic systematization. as the French philosopher pointed out by the opening question of his Phenomenology of Perception—“what is phenomenology?”—the sense of this “movement” lies exactly in the ways in which one practices it.34 thus, according to him, if we can recognize and “discover it in every quarter, certainly in Hegel and Kierkegaard, but equally in marx, nietzsche and Freud,” it is not on the basis of a “purely linguistic examination of the texts….it is less a question of counting up quotations than of determining and expressing in concrete form this phenomenology for ourselves.”35 For merleau-ponty, discovering phenomenology in Hegel’s or Kierkegaard’s texts, as well as analyzing Husserl’s or Heidegger’s phenomenological programs, does not correspond to detecting some general philosophical “themes,” but to focusing on a method of accounting for some philosophical problems like “space,” “time,” and “world,” which always concern us, since they cannot be thought apart from our lived experience of them. this is the sense of the Phenomenology of Perception’s main thesis, according to which “phenomenology is a philosophy which puts essences back into existence, and does not expect to arrive at an understanding of man and the world from any starting point other than that of their ‘facticity.’ ”36 according to merleau-ponty, if “we shall find in ourselves, and nowhere else, the unity and the true meaning of phenomenology,”37 it is precisely because of the immanence of every authentically phenomenological approach, for which the universality of knowledge is not guaranteed either by the positive objectivity of things or by the power of an absolute consciousness, but by things themselves as they are perceived and experienced. edmund Husserl, Méditations cartésiennes: introduction à la phénoménologie, trans. by gabrielle peiffer and emmanuel lévinas, paris: vrin 1992 (originally published, paris: armand Colin 1931; english translation: Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. by dorion Cairns, the Hague: martinus nijhoff 1960). Cf. also edmund Husserl, Méditations cartésiennes; et Les conférences de Paris, ed. and trans. by marc de launay, paris: presses universitaires de France 1994. 34 merleau-ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, pp. 7–8 (Phenomenology of Perception, pp. VII–VIII): “Phenomenology can be practiced and identified as a manner or style of thinking…it existed as movement before arriving at complete awareness of itself as a philosophy…phenomenology is accessible only through a phenomenological method.” 35 merleau-ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 8. (Phenomenology of Perception, p. viii.) 36 merleau-ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 7. (Phenomenology of Perception, p. vii.) 37 merleau-ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 8. (Phenomenology of Perception, p. viii.) 33

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so, the very originality of merleau-ponty’s speculation lies in his effort of employing and reworking the Husserlian methodology in order to rethink the concepts of life, perception, knowledge, and consciousness by overcoming the classical philosophical distinction between empiricism and intellectualism. it is this philosophical concern which motivates his interest in the history of psychology during the 1940s and the early 1950s. in his main works of the 1940s as well as in his lectures at the sorbonne, psychology is never “interpreted merely from its express declarations,”38 and so it is never conceived as a mere discipline, but as the starting point for a radical reflection on reason according to the model of Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences.39 if merleau-ponty’s inquiry into the phenomenological “transcendental” method begins with psychology and the analysis of the problem of “behavior” and “perception,” it is in order to bring the philosopher “back into the presence of the world as we live it”40 by “reaffirming rationality at the level of experience.”41 what both perception and behavior show is that the “facts” of our experience are not a collection of sensations, nor are they organized by a pure cogito superimposed upon them. rather, they order themselves spontaneously through the creation of some “rules” or “structures,”42 by which the phenomenologist can grasp their “meaning,” namely, their “sense” or “orientation.”43 that is why, merleauponty maintains, “the laws of our thought are for us laws of being…not because we communicate with a pre-personal thought but rather because they are for us absolutely coextensive with everything that we can affirm.”44 this “strange ability” that we have—through “the uniqueness of our experience”—of “grasping something Cf. merleau-ponty, Les sciences de l’homme et la phénoménologie, p. 3. (“phenomenology and the sciences of man,” p. 45.) 39 see edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: eine Einleitung in die phanomenologische Philosophie, ed. by w. biemel, 2nd ed., the Hague: martinus nijhoff 1962 (Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke, ed. by the Husserl archive, louvain, vol. 6) [1954] (originally published, belgrade 1936; english translation: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. by david Carr, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1970). 40 merleau-ponty, Les sciences de l’homme et la phenomenology, p. 8. (“phenomenology and the sciences of man,” p. 49.) 41 merleau-ponty, Les sciences de l’homme et la phenomenology, p. 11. (“phenomenology and the sciences of man,” p. 51.) 42 merleau-ponty, La structure du comportement, p. 134 (The Structure of Behaviour, p. 123): “thus there is a norm inscribed in the facts themselves.” 43 according to roger poole, merleau-ponty would share with Kierkegaard such a philosophical description of “how we make sense” out of “raw” experience: cf. his Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, Charlottesville and london: university press of virginia 1993, p. 26; pp. 278–9. 44 merleau-ponty, Les sciences de l’homme et la phenomenology, p. 9. (“phenomenology and the sciences of man,” p. 50.) the coextensive or immanent relationship—based on perception—between the laws of thought and the laws of being would make merleau-ponty able to think at the same time the universality and plurality of the subjectivity. maria villelapetit remarks that such a “plural identity” of the self, however, would not correspond to Kirkegaard’s pseudonym: cf. maria villela-petit, “le soi incarné. merleau-ponty et la question 38

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which is more than a contingent fact,”45 of entering “into others and re-enact[ing] their deeds,”46 is what merleau-ponty calls “the metaphysical in man.”47 and it is a “paradoxical” metaphysics, since it aims to describe the emergence of being as an in-itself which is for us.48 it is in this context that Kierkegaard appears for the second time—after the “preface”—in the Phenomenology of Perception. merleau-ponty does not quote a specific work by the Danish philosopher but just mentions his critique of “objective thought” in order to promote the idea that it is the perceptive experience or “antepredicative knowledge” that is the very origin of the “object,” not the idea or an objective actuality separated from a singular consciousness.49 merleau-ponty will take up such a Kierkegaardian opposition to the “objective thought” on two other occasions during the 1950s in order to “invite us to revise the ordinary notions of subject and object.”50 in a text of 1956 on the philosophical “discovery of subjectivity,” du sujet,” in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ed. by emmanuel de saint aubert, paris: Hermann 2008, pp. 79–123, see p. 109. 45 merleau-ponty, Les sciences de l’homme et la phenomenology, p. 14. (“phenomenology and the sciences of man,” pp. 54–5.) 46 maurice merleau-ponty, “le métaphysique dans l’homme,” in his Sens et non-sens, pp. 165–96, see p. 187 (originally published in Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 52, nos. 3–4, 1947, pp. 290–307; english translation: “the metaphysical in man,” in Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 83–98, see p. 94). 47 Cf. merleau-ponty, “le métaphysique dans l’homme,” p. 187 (“the metaphysical in man,” p. 94): “thus is founded a truth which, as pascal said, we can neither reject nor completely accept. metaphysics is the deliberate intention to describe this paradox of consciousness and truth.” 48 merleau-ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 100 (Phenomenology and Perception, p. 71): “we must discover the origin of the object at the very centre of our experience; we must describe the emergence of being and we must understand how, paradoxically, there is for us an in-itself.” according to bernard waldenfels, merleau-ponty’s concept of “paradox” would be similar to Kierkegaard’s: cf. bernard waldenfels, “le paradoxe de l’expression chez merleau-ponty,” in maurice merleau-ponty, Notes de cours sur “L’origine de la géométrie” de Husserl: Recherches sur la phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty, ed. by renaud barbaras, paris: presses universitaires de France 1998, pp. 331–48, see p. 336. 49 Cf. merleau-ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 100 (Phenomenology and Perception, p. 71): “i detach myself from my experience and pass to the idea….thus ‘objective’ thought (in Kierkegaard’s sense) is formed—being that of common sense and of science—which finally causes us to lose contact with perceptual experience, of which it is nevertheless the outcome and the natural sequel. the whole life of consciousness is characterized by the tendency to posit objects, since it is consciousness, that is to say selfknowledge, only in so far as it takes hold of itself and draws itself together in an identifiable object. and yet the absolute positing of a single object is the death of consciousness, since it congeals the whole of existence, as a crystal placed in a solution suddenly crystallizes it.” according to mark taylor, merleau-ponty would have taken from Kierkegaard the criticisms against the “archimedean point” towards which the philosopher aspires: cf. mark taylor, Altarity, Chicago: university of Chicago press 1987, pp. 61–81, see p. 65. 50 according to merold westphal, such a revision of any dualistic interpretation of these polarities is what merleau-ponty shares with Kierkegaard. unlike Kierkegaard, however, merleau-ponty’s conception of subjectivity as based on the primacy of perception would

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in particular, he will praise “subjectivity in the Kierkegaardian sense, which is no longer a region of being but the only fundamental way of relating oneself to being, which makes us be something instead of skimming over all things in ‘objective’ thinking, and which in the last analysis does not really think of anything.”51 this perspective—which is nourished, during the 1940s, by analysis in depth of respectively Gestalttheorie, Karl Jaspers’ (1883–1969) phenomenological psychiatry, eugène minkowski’s (1885–1972) structural psychopathology, as well as Kurt goldstein’s (1878–1965) and viktor von weizsäcker’s (1886–1957) holist neurology—results in a reading of the Husserlian concepts of phenomenological reduction or eidetic intuition (Wesensschau) which emphasizes its “concrete and familiar nature.”52 in order to account for this “dual character, at the same time universal and concrete”53 of the eidetic intuition, merleau-ponty will go so far as to write of a “phenomenological positivism.”54 moreover, in this way of grasping the intelligible structure of the “facts” in the facts themselves—so in the singularity of our individual lives—merleau-ponty recognizes also Hegel’s phenomenological dialectic: this enterprise is fairly close to that of Hegel, as is suggested by Husserl’s use of the word “phenomenology.”…a phenomenology, therefore, has a double purpose. it will make him incapable of accounting for the Kierkegaardian self-relating self, so it would be “insufficiently subjective (since not every inwardness is Cartesian).” Cf. Merold Westphal, “situation and suspicion in the thought of merleau-ponty: the Question of phenomenology and politics,” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, ed. by galen a. Johnson and michael b. smith, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1990, pp. 158–79, see p. 179. 51 maurice merleau-ponty, “partout et nulle part,” in his Signes, pp. 191–4, see p. 192 (originally published in Les philosophes célèbres, ed. by maurice merleau-ponty, paris: l. mazenod 1956, pp. 186–7; also in his Éloge de la philosophie et autres essais, paris: gallimard 1989, pp. 143–98; english translation: “everywhere and nowhere,” in his Signs, trans. by richard mcCleary, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1964, pp. 126– 58, see p. 152). the section of “les philosophes célèbres” on “the discovery of subjectivity” included also a chapter devoted to Kierkegaard (pp. 242–9), by georges gusdorf, who succeeded merleau-ponty as agrégé répétiteur at the École normale supérieure in the 1950s. see also maurice merleau-ponty, “la philosophie dialectique” (1955–56), in his Résumés de cours. Collège de France 1952–1960, paris: gallimard 1968, pp. 75–87. (english translation: “dialectical philosophy,” in In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays, pp. 121–9, see p. 124.) 52 merleau-ponty, Les sciences de l’homme et la phenomenologie, p. 12. (“phenomenology and the sciences of man,” p. 53.) He goes on as follows: “For anyone who considers them from outside, the experiences we live through, our Erlebnisse, as Husserl calls them, can certainly be socially and physically determined. nevertheless there is a way of taking them through when they acquire a meaning that is universal, intersubjective, and absolute. but in pursuing this way, i must not limit myself to living through the experience; i must grasp its sense, and this is the functioning of ‘eidetic intuition.’ ” 53 merleau-ponty, Les sciences de l’homme et la phenomenologie, p. 13. (“phenomenology and the sciences of man,” p. 53.) 54 merleau-ponty, Les sciences de l’homme et la phenomenologie, p. 9. (“phenomenology and the sciences of man,” p. 50.)

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Merleau-Ponty often reasserts the affinity between Husserl and Hegel during the 1940s as well as in the 1950s, and this leads him to deal with Kierkegaard’s thought again. in an article from 1946 on “Hegel’s existentialism” he sides with Hyppolite by considering Hegel as “the inventor of that reason, broader than the understanding, which can respect the variety and singularity of individual consciousnesses, civilizations, ways of thinking, and historical contingency but which nevertheless does not give up the attempt to master them in order to guide them to their own truth.”56 nevertheless—according to merleau-ponty—Hegel’s successors would “have placed more emphasis on what they rejected of his heritage than on what they owe to him.”57 now, Kierkegaard is taken here as the main example of such a way of rejecting Hegel’s philosophy. once again, merleau-ponty does not mention a specific work by the Danish philosopher, even though the reference to the ironic definition of Hegel’s systematic thought as a “castle of ideas”58 leads us to recognize a famous passage from Kierkegaard’s journals.59 in fact, in this article merleau-ponty does not focus on Kierkegaard’s own philosophical project, his aim being rather to present Hyppolite’s reading of Hegel by emphasizing the concrete-historical character of the Phenomenology with regard to the Encyclopedia’s system. Kierkegaard’s opposition to the late Hegel is employed here by merleau-ponty in order to recognize at the level of history the same immanent or “ambiguous” ontology which characterizes his phenomenological approach to behavior and perception.60 that is why he claims to share Kierkegaard’s

merleau-ponty, Les sciences de l’homme et la phenomenologie, p. 11. (“phenomenology and the sciences of man,” p. 52.) 56 merleau-ponty, “l’existentialisme chez Hegel,” p. 126. (“Hegel’s existentialism,” p. 63.) 57 ibid. 58 merleau-ponty, “l’existentialisme chez Hegel,” p. 127 (“Hegel’s existentialism,” p. 64): “Kierkegaard, the first to use ‘existence’ in the modern sense of the word, deliberately set himself up in opposition to Hegel. the Hegel he had in mind was the late Hegel, who treated history as the visible development of a logical system, who sought in the relationships between ideas the final explanation of events, and who subordinated the individual experience of life to the life appropriate to ideas, as to a destiny. this Hegel of 1827 offers us nothing but a ‘palace of ideas,’ to use Kierkegaard’s phrase, where all historical antitheses are overcome, but only by thought.” 59 SKS 18, 303, JJ:490 / KJN 2, 279. 60 on the concept of “ambiguity” in both merleau-ponty and Kierkegaard, see andré Clair, Pseudonymie et paradoxe. La pensée dialectique de Kierkegaard, paris: vrin 1976, p. 11. 55

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“reminding the philosopher of his own inherence in history,”61 and he likens it to Hegel’s phenomenology, “since [it] does not propose to connect concepts but to reveal the immanent logic of human experience in all its sectors.”62 thus, according to merleau-ponty, if we can write of the “existentialist” thought of Hegel, it is “in that it views man not as being from the start a consciousness in full possession of its own clear thoughts but as a life which is its own responsibility and which tries to understand itself.”63 merleau-ponty takes up this position towards “Kierkegaard’s Hegel” in the preface that he writes in 1956 for an anthology he edited on Les philosophes célèbres, where he deals again with the affinity between Hegel’s and Husserl’s phenomenology, by evoking the contemporary French “Hegel revival.” in section six, on “existence and dialectic,” he wonders what a philosopher like Husserl, “dedicated to what he sees, positive, and systematically naïve,” could have in common “with the cunning philosopher who digs ever deeper beneath his intuition in order to find another intuition there, and who is referred back to himself by every spectacle.”64 to answer this question—he suggests—we have to focus not on the Hegel whom the nineteenth century had turned away from, but on “Kierkegaard’s Hegel,” “the possessor of a marvelous secret which enabled him to speak of all things without a thought by mechanically applying dialectical order and connection to them.”65 we have, rather, to focus on the Hegel “rehabilitated” by the French contemporaries, the one “who has not wanted to choose between logic and anthropology, who made dialectic emerge from human experience but defined man as the empirical bearer of Logos.”66 that is why, in this perspective, according to merleau-ponty, dialectic and intuition are not simply compatible; there is a point at which they meet... through Husserl’s career we can follow the laborious process which gradually sets intuitions in motion, changes the positive notation of “immediate data” into a dialectic of time and the intuition of essences into a “phenomenology of genesis,” and links together in a living unity the contrasting dimension of a time which is ultimately coextensive with being.67

nevertheless, merleau-ponty’s agreement with the contemporary French reception of Hegel, namely, his way of “existentializing” Hegel, does not result in a “Kierkegaardization” of him.68 this means that even in considering Hegel’s Phenomenology, merleau-ponty, “l’existentialisme chez Hegel,” p. 127 (“Hegel’s existentialism,” p. 64): “Kierkegaard is right in objecting that mere thought is not enough to enable the individual to overcome the contradictions facing him. that he is faced with dilemmas neither term of which he can accept.” 62 merleau-ponty, “l’existentialisme chez Hegel,” p. 129. (“Hegel’s existentialism,” p. 65.) 63 ibid. 64 merleau-ponty, “partout et nulle part,” p. 196. (“Everywhere and nowhere,” p. 156.) 65 ibid. 66 ibid. 67 ibid. 68 Jacques Colette, in his L’existentialisme, 4th ed., paris: presses universitaires de France 2007, rightly points out that “between Kierkegaard and merleau-ponty, there are not only the 61

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merleau-ponty never discredited logic or dialectic. as maintained in his lectures of 1955–56 on “dialectical philosophy,” he rather remarks that Kierkegaard’s polemic against Hegel’s “objective” and “world-historical” thought, while sane in itself,69 failed to recognize, because of its attack on “mediation,” what actually characterized the dane’s own thought, namely, the “concrete dialectic” which distinguishes thought insofar as it is conceived as experience.70 according to the merleau-ponty, insofar as it is “subjective,” Kierkegaard’s thought is still dialectical, since it “does not make being rest upon itself but makes it appear before someone as the response to an interrogation.”71 to understand this statement we have to recall the ontology of perceptive experience, according to which—as the French philosopher maintained in an article from 1948 on sartre’s existentialism with regard to the criticisms issued against it by respectively Catholics (gabriel marcel, 1889–1973) and marxists (Henri lefebvre, 1901–91)—“our knowledge of some outside reality depends on our having apprehended within ourselves that process by which we come to know. no in itself would be accessible to us if it were not at the very same time for us, and the meaning we find in it depends on our consent.”72 We find here once again Merleauponty’s opposition to both intellectualism and materialism together with the need of revising the ordinary conception of subject and object as the opposition between interior and exterior.73 according to him, what both marcel and lefebvre share in new readings of Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit, but above all Husserl’s philosophy” (p. 42; my translation). For an account of merleau-ponty’s reading of Hegel as an “existentialist” from a political point of view, see Kerry H. whiteside, Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of an Existential Politics, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1988. whiteside argues that merleau-ponty’s existentialization of Hegel aimed at opposing sartrian reading of Kierkegaard’s reflection on the “individual” as opposite to the “social.” 69 according to Hubert l. dreyfus and patricia allen dreyfus, merleau-ponty’s criticism against Hegel’s attempts to absorb the individual in universal harmony—so the elimination of the incarnate perceiver—would correspond to Kierkegaard’s criticism of the moral individual (cf. Hubert l. dreyfus and patricia allen dreyfus, “translators’ introduction,” in merleauponty, Sense and Non-Sense, p. xviii). 70 merleau-ponty, “la philosophie dialectique,” p. 83. (“dialectical philosophy,” p. 126.) 71 merleau-ponty, “la philosophie dialectique,” pp. 79–80. (“dialectical philosophy,” pp. 123–4.) On this point, Merleau-Ponty states the affinity between Kierkegaard and Heidegger. see also merleau-ponty, “la philosophie dialectique,” p. 81 (“dialectical philosophy,” p. 125): “although here again Hegel only provided the formula, the dialectic has always been conceived as the experience of thought, in other words, a journey in the course of which it learns, even though what it learns was already there, ‘in itself,’ before reflection which is only its passage to being for itself.” 72 merleau-ponty, “la querelle de l’existentialisme,” in his Sens et non-sens, pp. 141– 64, see p. 159 (originally published in Les Temps modernes, no. 2, 1945, pp. 344–56; english translation: “the battle over existentialism,” Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 71–82). 73 see also merleau-ponty, “partout et nulle part,” p. 163 (“everywhere and nowhere,” p. 130): “we do not have to choose between a false conception of the ‘interior’ and a false conception of the ‘exterior.’ philosophy is everywhere, even in the ‘facts,’ and it nowhere has a private realm which shelters it from life’s contagions.”

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their criticism of existentialism, despite their fundamental opposition, is the same metaphysical need of denying the ambiguity of human experience in order to give it an “essence” or “nature,” either a spiritual or a material one. that is why—in such a context—merleau-ponty rather agrees, as for the question of religious life, with Kierkegaard’s non-essentialist way of conceiving faith, one which “is not faith in any being.”74 and that is why he maintains also, against lefebvre’s materialism, that marxism’s strongest argument against a philosophy of the “subject” is actually an “existential” one, for—as stated by marx himself in his thesis on Feuerbach—“the main thing wrong with all past materialism…is that it considers the thing, reality, the tangible world only as object or intuition, not as concrete human activity; as practice, not subjectively.”75 it is on the basis of such an anti-essentialist or dialectical conception of man’s subjectivity that merleau-ponty can conclude that “at this point Kierkegaard and marx, the two halves of Hegelian posterity, come together.”76 such a statement is very interesting in order to understand merleau-ponty’s approach to Kierkegaard, one which never occurs on a “thematic” level, but rather on a theoretical or epistemological one.77 the way in which merleau-ponty introduces Kierkegaard’s merleau-ponty, “la querelle de l’existentialisme,” p. 151. (“the battle over existentialism,” p. 76.) 75 merleau-ponty, “la querelle de l’existentialisme,” p. 159. (“the battle over existentialism,” p. 80.) on the other hand, merleau-ponty will later end in criticizing sartre’s marxism exactly because of his “extreme subjectivism,” which would lead him to consider dialectic as “an illusion”: cf. merleau-ponty, “sartre et l’ultra-bolchevisme,” in his Les aventures de la dialectique, paris: gallimard 1955, pp. 136–280, p. 139. (english translation: “sartre and ultrabolshevism,” trans. by Joseph bien, in The Debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, ed. by Stewart, pp. 355–447, see p. 357.) In this context we find another reference to Kierkegaard. by criticizing sartre’s claims of refusing “the ultimatum of facts” in his consent to the Communist party, merleau-ponty remarks: “the C.p. is always justifiable by the permanent reason that its violence is perhaps nothing other than proletarian violence. the ‘yes’ is barely distinguishable from the ‘no,’ just as, with Kierkegaard, faith was barely distinguishable from incredulity.” merleau-ponty, “sartre et l’ultra-bolchevisme,” p. 148. (“sartre and ultrabolshevism,” p. 362.) 76 merleau-ponty, “la querelle de l’existentialisme,” p. 158. (“the battle over existentialism,” p. 79.) 77 this approach to Kierkegaard’s thought characterizes in a way also sartre’s reception of it. one could mention sartre’s lecture “the singular universal,” where he wonders what Kierkegaard’s testimony “has to offer to me, a twentieth-century atheist who does not believe in sin.” (Jean-paul sartre, “l’universel singulier,” in his Situations IX—Mélanges, paris: gallimard 1972, pp. 152–90 (originally published in Kierkegaard vivant, paris: gallimard 1966, pp. 20–63; english translation: “Kierkegaard: the singular universal,” Between Existentialism and Marxism, trans. by John mathews, new York: pantheon books 1974, pp. 141–69, see p. 160). sartre’s passage is interesting also because it is precisely on this occasion that he mentions and compares merleau-ponty to Kierkegaard: cf. sartre, “Kierkegaard: the singular universal,” p. 160: “i would say that the state of ignorance represents, for the individual, being-in-exteriority. these exterior determinations are interiorized in order to be re-exteriorized by a praxis which institutes them by objectifying them in the world. this is what merleau-ponty was saying when he wrote that History is the milieu in which ‘a form 74

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conception of faith is revealing on this point.78 Just as in the 1945 paper entitled “the battle over existentialism,” whose aim lay in focusing the ontological “ambiguity” of an incarnate subjectivity, so also in the article on Christianity from the following year entitled “Faith and good Faith,”79 merleau-ponty’s inquiry into religion originates again in the both epistemological and ontological problem of the relationship between world and consciousness. so, the theological concept of Incarnation, that is, the “exteriorization” of God, would reflect in the sphere of the religious life the same paradoxicality which characterizes the relations of the world of sensation. since the perceptive experience shows that consciousness is not pure, but always needs to pass through the external in order to create a meaning, which— like consciousness itself—is “mediated” and therefore “ambiguous,” so the message god left men made them be “moments of a greater perfection”80 which is always “to be done,”81 which means he “became consciousness and became man.”82 that is why man’s “relation to god is “ambiguous” or dialectical, because it does not exist without separation.”83 and that is why, according to merleau-ponty, Kierkegaard thought it impossible to say “i am a Christian” in the way one says “i am tall” or “i am short,” because being a Christian means living the contradiction of good and evil, and so it also means not being a Christian. never absolutely good or absolutely bad, man cannot be sincere, for sincerity supposes a definite nature which one can assess without ambiguity. it is a matter not of contemplating oneself but of constructing and going beyond oneself.84

For this reason, merleau-ponty thinks that the history of god in the world can be thought of only in terms of human categories. as he claims in his lectures of 1947–48 at the École normale supérieure on “the union of body and soul” in the works of the nicolas malebranche (1638–1715), maine de biran (1766–1824), and

burdened with contingency suddenly opens up a cycle of the future and commands it with the authority of the instituted.’ the cycle of the future is a meaning: in the case of Kierkegaard, it is the self.” 78 So we could say, about Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on religion, what Jacques Colette said about Kierkegaard’s position: “Penseur réligieux, il l’est assurément. Mais il n’est à aucun titre philosophe de la religion.” Cf. Jacques Colette, Kierkegaard et la non-philosophie, paris: gallimard 1994, where he also compares Kierkegaard’s philosophical position to merleauponty’s “non-philosophy”; see in particular chapter 9: “antiphilosophie et non-philosophie,” pp. 187–213. 79 maurice merleau-ponty, “Foi et bonne foi,” in his Sens et non-sens, pp. 351–70 (originally published in Les Temps modernes, no. 5, 1946, pp. 769–82; english translation: “Faith and good Faith,” trans. by Hubert dreyfus and patricia allen dreyfus, in Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 172–81). 80 merleau-ponty, “Foi et bonne foi,” p. 358. (“Faith and good Faith,” p. 175.) 81 merleau-ponty, “Foi et bonne foi,” p. 359. (“Faith and good Faith,” p. 175.) 82 merleau-ponty, “Foi et bonne foi,” p. 359. (“Faith and good Faith,” p. 176.) 83 ibid. 84 ibid.

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bergson, one can conceive religion only in terms of religious “experience.”85 god indeed “cannot be related to a comprehensible object,”86 since he has always to be accomplished through the accomplishment of ourselves in the world. that is why our relation to him—like our being in a world whose sense or meaning is neither fixed, definitive, nor guaranteed—is a form of faith, and exactly one that “would be more similar to Kierkegaard’s conception,” since “faith, according to Kierkegaard, is no longer faith in something or in some being.”87 so we can also understand better now why, for merleau-ponty, the very philosophy is a phenomenological one. since experience’s meanings are always “recent” or to be done for us, so rationality or order are never given beforehand. that means that our knowledge of the objects as independent from our direct perception is actually a faith. that is why philosophy cannot be considered apart from experience, and that is why it could not but be phenomenology, as the overcoming of the evidence of the objects by describing the way experience develops. as merleau-ponty wrote in his Phenomenology of 1945: “experience anticipates a philosophy and philosophy is merely an elucidated experience.”88 and in order to reassert such a position towards the philosophical attitude, in his Praise of Philosophy he chooses Kierkegaard: even those who have desired to work out a completely positive philosophy have been philosophers only to the extent that, at the same time, they have refused the right to install

85 maurice merleau-ponty, L’union de l’âme et du corps chez Malebranche, Biran et Bergson. Notes prises au cours de Maurice Merleau-Ponty à l’École Normale Supérieure (1947–1948), ed. by Jean deprun, paris: vrin 2002 [1978], p. 44. (english translation: The Incarnate Subject: Malebranche, Biran, and Bergson on the Union of Body and Soul, trans. by paul b. milan, ed. by andrew g. bjelland and patrick burke, amherst, new York: Humanities books 2001, p. 60.) 86 merleau-ponty, L’union de l’âme et du corps chez Malebranche, Biran et Bergson, p. 44. (The Incarnate Subject: Malebranche, Biran, and Bergson on the Union of Body and Soul, p. 60.) 87 ibid. on merleau-ponty’s position regarding the religious question, cf. emmanuel de saint aubert, Le scénario cartésien. Recherches sur la formation et la cohérence de l’intuition philosophique de Merleau-Ponty, chapter 7 (“le chiasme vérité de l’harmonie préétablie. merleau-ponty et leibniz,” § 2–3). see also emmanuel de saint aubert, De Leibniz à Pascal, de la théodicée à la négativité positive de l’homme, paris: vrin 2005, p. 228, note 3, where de saint aubert quotes a passage from a merleau-ponty manuscript, in which Kierkegaard is mentioned: “Il y a un théisme acosmique: Dieu comme contenant tout l’être. Comme étant suprême qui réunit en lui-même tout ce dont les étants sont faits….Il y a un théisme du Dieu architecte: pensée finaliste, elle-même plus ou moins proche du théisme acosmique: car la production du monde existant chez Leibniz est un ‘mécanisme métaphysique.’ II y a (christianisme) un théisme qui ne croit pouvoir s’affirmer comme théisme que moyennant une sorte d’athéisme subordonné, moyennant une critique perpétuelle des idoles ou des faux dieux. P. ex. critique du Dieu architecte ou du Dieu monarque (Maritain), critique de toute réalisation de Dieu (Kierkegaard), de toute conviction d’être en possession de Dieu.” 88 merleau-ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 91. (Phenomenology of Perception, p. 63.)

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such a paradoxical way of being philosophers by questioning philosophy and the philosophical attitude, is what merleau-ponty recognizes as the “non-philosophy” which characterizes the scene since “the achievement of metaphysics in Hegel and the collapse of german idealism.”90 merleau-ponty’s last lectures at the Collège de France (1958–61) are therefore devoted to an inquiry “into the meaning of the question of the possibility of philosophy since Hegel, as stated, in particular, by the title of the 1960–61 lectures on “philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel.”91 the presence of Kierkegaard here is stronger than in any other of merleau-ponty’s works. To understand it, we have to recall briefly the direction taken by the later thought of the French philosopher. in the collected notes of The Visible and the Invisible92—the book he was working on when he died in 1961—merleau-ponty effects a transition from the analysis of the perceptual consciousness which characterized the Phenomenology of Perception to an inquiry into the “world of life,” which brings to the fore the profundity of the perceiving act instead of the perceiving cogito. so he gives up his “phenomenology of consciousness”—which remained confined, according to him, within a conception that did not escape the subject/object dichotomy—to turn to a “philosophy of being.” the two constituent poles of perception, the cogito and the world, would be actually bound in a single, indissoluble, and transcendent structure—the “intertwining” or chiasm, for which Merleau-Ponty formulates the concept of “flesh”—which would be the ontological condition of the possibility of all of our perceptions as our being in the world. merleau-ponty devotes the last part of his work to developing a “questioning ontology” which “considers totality and its articulations” by overcoming the metaphysical “categories of substance, subject/object, [and] causality” in order to “unveil a different kind of being, where there appear what we call ‘matter,’ ‘spirit,’ ‘reason.’ ”93 the question he puts now to philosophy reads as follows: merleau-ponty, “Éloge de la philosophie,” p. 14. (In Praise of Philosophy, p. 5.) maurice merleau-ponty, “la philosophie aujourd’hui. Cours de 1958–1959,” in his Notes de cours 1959–1961, paris: gallimard 1996, pp. 33–157, see p. 38 (my translation). Cf. also merleau-ponty’s Résumé of these lectures: “[possibilité de la philosophie] (1958–1959),” in his Résumés de cours. Collège de France 1952–1960, paris: gallimard 1968, pp. 139–56. (english translation: “philosophy as interrogation,” in In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays, pp. 167–80.) 91 merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel. Cours de 1960–1961,” in his Notes de cours 1959–1961, pp. 269–352 (originally published in Textures, vol. 74, nos. 8–9, 1974, pp. 83–129 and vol. 75, nos. 10–11, 1975, pp. 145–73; english translation: “philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” in Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Merleau-Ponty, ed. by Hugh J. silverman, new York, london: routledge 1988, pp. 9–83). 92 maurice merleau-ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, paris: gallimard 1964. (english translation: The Visible and the Invisible, trans. by alphonso lingis, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1968.) 93 merleau-ponty, “la philosophie aujourd’hui,” p. 37 (my translation). 89 90

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what exactly are we looking for when we try to abstract from nature the categories… which are traditionally involved in ontology? what can be the relation between the new ontology and classical metaphysics? Could it be the negation and the end of philosophy, or, on the contrary, is it perhaps the very same inquiry restored to its vital sources?94

it is exactly at this point of merleau-ponty’s “philosophy as interrogation” that the name of Kierkegaard appears again, and once more together with Hegel, marx, and nietzsche: “with Hegel something comes to an end. after Hegel, there is a philosophical void. this is not to say that there has been a lack of thinkers or of geniuses, but that marx, Kierkegaard, and nietzsche start from a denial of philosophy.”95 now, merleau-ponty wonders if such an “age of non-philosophy” that we have entered since the end of metaphysics is the “destruction of philosophy,” or rather its “very realization,” the preservation of its essence.96 the answer he gives to this question is quite interesting since it seems to clarify, in the final analysis, the meaning that Kierkegaard’s philosophical thought had for his own work. actually, according to him, philosophers such as Kierkegaard, marx, and nietzsche, who started from a denial of philosophy, could not realize the new ontology he is looking for, since their works were “too preoccupied with the struggle against Hegel and classical metaphysics, and to this extent have too much in common with them, to permit us to see clearly what remains of philosophy in these non-philosophies.”97 that is why these non-philosophies, even though they may provide a language for their successors, an interrogation, the beginnings of analyses with a quite new depth—cannot by contrast guide posterity: it is to posterity itself that they leave the task of giving the final meaning to their work. They live on in us rather than our having a clear perspective on them and we involve them in our own problems rather than solving theirs with ours.98

it is a perspective that in a way anticipates what sartre will claim in 1966 in his lecture on “the singular universal,” where he praises the “living Kierkegaard” who “exists for us” and “forms the object of our discussion, an instrument of our thought.”99 Unlike Sartre, nevertheless, in the final analysis Merleau-Ponty thinks that Kierkegaard’s thought, together with marx and nietzsche, cannot answer what he calls “the perpetual ambitions of philosophy,” that is—according to the example of Husserl and Heidegger100—a “pure interrogation” which “is not a residue from merleau-ponty, “[possibilité de la philosophie],” p. 141. (“philosophy as interrogation,” pp. 167–8.) 95 merleau-ponty, “[possibilité de la philosophie],” p. 142. (“philosophy as interrogation,” p. 168.) 96 ibid. 97 ibid. 98 merleau-ponty, “[possibilité de la philosophie],” p. 143. (“philosophy as interrogation,” p. 169.) 99 sartre, “Kierkegaard: the singular universal,” p. 141. 100 as regards Husserl, cf. merleau-ponty, “[possibilité de la philosophie],” p. 148. “philosophy as interrogation,” p. 173: “in Husserl it is clear that the pure interrogation…is 94

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metaphysics, not its last breath nor a yearning for its lost empire,”101 but a fundamental ontology able to explore the regions of being through contact with existents.102 merleau-ponty takes up this standpoint again in his lectures on “philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” where he wonders what happens when—as in marx and Kierkegaard—“philosophy seeks to be philosophy while remaining nonphilosophy, i.e. a ‘negative philosophy’ ”: For marx, the realization of philosophy is its destruction as independent philosophy [philosophie separée] (Hegel is to be understood here). Kierkegaard advances further, for philosophy is sacrificed. Philosophy masks the whole of existence [l’existence intégrale] which “includes” other existences and surpasses them from within. this antiphilosophy is above all anti-system—against Hegel the scholar—not against the Hegel of 1807 and earlier.103

such a “philosophy as the negation of the detached philosophy”104 would correspond, according to merleau-ponty, to the ruin of classical philosophy’s thought of a detached absolute. in his lecture notes of 1960–61, he examines this theme as the “problems linked to what is within [the world of experience], what is beyond, and their relationship,” and he links such a question to “the problem of Christianity”:105 “religion as the death of god.—death of god: Hegel’s word, marx’s theory of ideologies, Kierkegaard’s pharisean Christianity, nietzsche’s word.—this does not mean (according to Heidegger): es gibt keinen Gott.—it does mean: the absolute must be thought by a mortal (capable of dying).”106 This statement about Kierkegaard’s criticism of Pharisean Christianity confirms that merleau-ponty’s reading of Kierkegaard does not operate on a thematic level but on a theoretical one. in the context of such a discussion on the meaning of philosophy since Hegel, the problem of Christianity indeed concerns not so much the the proper means of opening us to the world, to time, to nature, to contemporary and living history.” as regards Heidegger, cf. ibid., pp. 177–8: “Commentators have missed what, from the preface to Sein und Zeit, was the declared aim of his [Heidegger’s] thought: not to describe existence, Dasein (which has been incorrectly translated in French as ‘human reality’), as a fundamental and autonomous sphere—but, through Da-sein, to get at being, the analysis of certain human attitudes being undertaken only because man is the interrogation of being.” 101 merleau-ponty, “[possibilité de la philosophie],” p. 148. (“philosophy as interrogation,” p. 173.) 102 merleau-ponty, “[possibilité de la philosophie],” p. 156. (“philosophy as interrogation,” p. 180.) 103 merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel,” p. 275. (“philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” p. 9.) 104 merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel,” p. 279. (“philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” p. 13.) 105 ibid. 106 ibid. merleau-ponty takes up this statement again in his notes on The Visible and the Invisible: cf. Le visible et l’invisible, p. 234; The Visible and the Invisible, p. 183: “start from the present: contradictions etc. ruin of philosophy—show that that calls in question not only the classical philosophy but also the philosophies of the dead god (Kierkegaard—nietzsche— sartre) inasmuch as they are its contrary.”

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topics of religion as the way of considering philosophically the relationship between experience and the absolute. the Hegelian “absolute” to which merleau-ponty opposes marx’s and Kierkegaard’s criticisms is a theoretical one, which concerns once again the problem which is at the origin of his own thought since his first works, that is, the relationship between immanence and transcendence. now, Kierkegaard’s and marx’s refusal of both Hegel’s dogmatism (“experience by the concept”) and skepticism (“concept by experience”) are criticized by merleau-ponty insofar as they would be prisoners themselves of “the same oscillation between dogmatism and skepticism.”107 in their criticism of Hegel’s absolute, marx and Kierkegaard would not have realized that “the problem of a philosophy which might be non-philosophy remains in toto as long as one thinks consciousness or ‘object’ [Gegenstand].”108 We find here the same criticism that Merleau-Ponty had already addressed to Kierkegaard’s position against Hegel’s phenomenological dialectic. if marx and Kierkegaard “pick up certain mistakes that Hegel made, sometimes reproducing Hegel poorly,” it is because they do not interrogate “Hegel about what truly caused

107 merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel,” p. 309; “philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” p. 43: “His [Hegel’s] successors will protest against his dogmatism (Kierkegaard and marx), and against his skepticism or his conciliation (marx and Kierkegaard). He necessarily collapses the ‘alienation’ [Entäusserung]. He takes the bourgeois state for the state. He takes established religion for the truth—praxis must be absolute.” 108 ibid. see also merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel,” p. 317 (“philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” pp. 50–1: “the risk implies the return to skepticism, to dogmatism—or rather to the two. the absolute [can be] considered as expressing itself on the same account in everything that is, ‘the enduring’ (because what is, is all that can be). thus the bourgeois state and established religion are thought as an expression of the absolute, which they obviously are, but in [connection] with another future.—Hegelian reconciliation: the worst stupidities are treated as historical barriers, because that is what they are. the absolute empties itself, becomes indifference and pure conservation, because its tie with the vertical world of experience is released. we repress this skeptico-dogmatism in the name of a nominal absolute. the absolute is practically the empty ‘nothing’ of skeptics, and the world is practically the positivity of all that ‘endures’ while in 1807 the negative was at work. i have said that the movement of experience to things spoken is inevitable. but this means that in a sense philosophy negates itself in formulating itself (what Kierkegaard will call pharisaism.)” in his english translation of these notes, Hugh J. silverman writes, “Kierkegaard’s conception of the ‘becoming’ of the human individual (in Concluding Unscientific Postscript) is matched here with, for example, abraham the Knight of Faith who must sacrifice his son Isaac at the request of God (in Fear and Trembling). Abraham must will the impossible. For him simply to affirm his faith to others would not be to establish it. Abraham must go beyond any objectification of his belief (the leap of faith). Since the pharisees were the doctors of law, self-righteous in their strict observance of doctrine and ritual, Merleau-Ponty is suggesting, paradoxically, that Kierkegaard’s affirmation that one cannot be a Christian when one claims to be a Christian is itself a pharisaical law. For Kierkegaard to deny someone his Christianity on the basis of his assertion of faith is a kind of law which seems to be set down to hold in all cases.” (Cf. Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Merleau-Ponty, pp. 306–7, note 58.)

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the ruin of the enterprise.”109 it is not the Phenomenology of Spirit’s dialectical negativity of the absolute that led Hegel to build “a philosophy which remained a philosophy of consciousness, of representation and of the subject,”110 since “by definition, the Hegelian absolute is In and For-itself. It is neither on the side of the in-itself, nor on the side of the For-itself, as they present themselves on the level of ‘consciousness’ (that is, at the same time correlative and destructive of one another).”111 by refusing in toto the Hegelian “absolute”—and not just its later disjunction in the order of phenomena—marx and Kierkegaard then could not grasp the “good ambiguity,” that is, the “movements of experience, which bring understanding,” and in which “we reach the absolute which is not something behind it or under it, but which is a water-mark within it and which exists only as a water-mark.”112 that is why they fail to acknowledge such a “negative philosophy,” that is, a “negativity which works, which is negativity only when it is in practice and which eliminates the immanence-transcendence alternative in philosophy,” and—even by claiming “experience”—they reopen “the vertical world”113 and so the “bad” alternative of philosophy. so, at the end of his philosophical path, merleau-ponty takes up again the same concept of “ambiguity,” which had formerly characterized the inquiry into the human experience as “incarnate subjectivity.” together with that of “experience,” merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel,” p. 318. (“philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” p. 51.) 110 merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel,” p. 317. (“philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” p. 51.) 111 merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel,” pp. 318–19. (“philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” p. 52.) merleau-ponty goes on as follows: “if it is truly in-itself/For-itself and not the pursuit of the in-itself by the For-itself, a movement from one to the other, it is such only in the context of experience. it is the limb and face of experience, the manifestation of the intimacy of the one and the other which “consciousness” never succeeds in attaining.” 112 merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel,” p. 319. (“philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” p. 52.) 113 merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel,” pp. 317–18 (“philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” p. 51): “the dissociation: ‘the enduring’— the empty absolute, was inevitable with a philosophy which remained a philosophy of consciousness, of representation and of the ‘subject.’—Hegel admirably deepened these notions, made them supple, showing the paradoxical relationships between consciousness and the object and its metamorphoses. but in conserving the relation to the self and the relation to the external world, he could not avoid the fact that the double envelopment was equivocal, and that the fissure appears at the level which phenomena must seal. Perhaps it is here that Hegel has not succeeded in his desire to link philosophy and non-philosophy. will marx succeed better? if one accepts this appreciation of Hegel, the perspective in which he is placed here, it is to be feared that marx will not succeed any better. as Kierkegaard claims to have experienced with the present age against the established state and established religion, marx reopens the vertical world onto the future, but he does not interrogate Hegel about what truly caused the ruin of the enterprise. what marx questions was not necessarily responsible for the dislocation.” 109

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this concept is now reworked in order to overcome not only the alternative between subject and object, but also, more in depth, the alternative between immanence and transcendence. in the last analysis, the ambiguity is now the ontological concern of “a philosophy that negates itself in formulating itself (what Kierkegaard will call pharisaism),”114 since “the very formulation of this living ‘ambiguity’ makes experience disappear”: the formulation transforms it into something said, into the positive, and makes the negative disappear in the 1807 sense—it restores the truth. the Hegelian philosophy of 1807 (like Kierkegaard’s Christianity) excludes the utterance. once uttered, it returns to identity. speculation separates itself from dialectic, that is, the absolute [is] conceived as absolute negation or as absolute affirmation [position] (the “positively rational” in The Encyclopedia.)115

merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel,” p. 317. (“philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” p. 50.) 115 merleau-ponty, “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel,” p. 320. (“philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” p. 53.) Here merleau-ponty adds the following marginal note: “Cf. marx’s claim ‘i am not a marxist.’ what is needed is a self-critique of absolute knowledge, which is the only absolute, the only Selbstbewusstsein. an (external) knowledge of the absolute in the sense of Bewusstsein is, by definition, false. Marxist praxis is something like Kierkegaard’s decision.” in his english translation of merleau-ponty’s notes, Hugh J. silvermann supposes that “Kierkegaard’s decision” could be either his “attack upon Christendom” in order to assert what is truly Christian or his decision not to marry regine because his ideal love for her could not be fulfilled. (Cf. Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Merleau-Ponty, p. 311, note 88.) 114

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Merleau-Ponty’s Corpus Phénoménologie de la perception, paris: gallimard 1945, p. 8; p. 100. (english translation: Phenomenology of Perception, trans. by Colin smith, london and new York: routledge 2002, p. viii; p. 71.) “Complicité objective,” in Les Temps modernes, no. 34, 1948, pp. 1–11 (also in his Parcours 1935–1951, lagrasse: verdier 1997, pp. 112–21, see p. 118). “la querelle de l’existentialisme,” in his Sens et non-sens, paris: nagel 1948, pp. 141–64, see p. 151; p. 158 (originally published in Les Temps modernes, no. 2, 1945, pp. 344–56; english translation: “the battle over existentialism,” Sense and Non-Sense, trans. by Hubert dreyfus and patricia allen dreyfus, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1964, p. 76; p. 79). “l’existentialisme chez Hegel,” in his Sens et non-sens, paris: nagel 1948, pp. 125–39, see pp. 127–8 (originally published in Les Temps modernes, no. 7, 1946, pp. 1311–19; english translation: “Hegel’s existentialism,” in Sense and Non-Sense, trans. by Hubert dreyfus and patricia allen dreyfus, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1964, pp. 63–70, see p. 64). “Foi et bonne foi,” in his Sens et non-sens, paris: nagel 1948, pp. 351–70, see p. 359 (originally published in Les Temps modernes, no. 5, 1946, pp. 769–82; english translation: “Faith and good Faith,” in Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 172–81, see p. 176). “sartre et l’ultra-bolchevisme,” in his Les aventures de la dialectique, paris: gallimard 1955, chapter 5, pp. 136–280, see p. 148. (english translation: “sartre and ultrabolshevism,” in Adventures of Dialectic, trans. by Joseph bien, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1973, pp. 95–201, see p. 104; also in The Debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, ed. by Jon stewart, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1998, pp. 355–447, see p. 362.) “Éloge de la philosophie,” in his Éloge de la philosophie et autres essais, paris: gallimard 1960, pp. 11–63, see p. 14 (originally published in Éloge de la philosophie. Leçon inaugurale faite au Collège de France, le jeudi 15 janvier 1953, paris: gallimard 1953; english translation: “in praise of philosophy,” in In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. by John wild, James edie, and John o’neill, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1988, pp. 3–67, see p. 5). “partout et nulle part,” in his Signes, paris: gallimard 1960, p. 192 (originally published in Les Philosophes célèbres, ed. by maurice merleau-ponty, paris: l. mazenod 1956, p. 186; english translation: “everywhere and nowhere,” in

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Signs, trans. by richard mcCleary, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1964, p. 152). Le visible et l’invisible, paris: gallimard 1964, p. 234. (english translation: The Visible and the Invisible, trans. by alphonso lingis, evanston: northwestern university press 1968, p. 183.) “la philosophie de l’existence,” in his Parcours deux. 1951–1961, ed. by Jacques prunair, lagrasse: verdier 2000, pp. 247–70, see p. 248 (originally published in Dialogue, vol. 2, no. 3, 1966, pp. 307–22; english translation: “the philosophy of existence,” trans. by allen s. weiss, in The Debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, ed. by Jon stewart, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1998, pp. 492–503, see p. 492). “la philosophie dialectique” (1955–1956), in his Résumés de cours. Collège de France 1952–1960, paris: gallimard 1968, pp. 75–87, see pp. 79–80; p. 83. (english translation: “dialectical philosophy,” in In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. by John wild, James edie and John o’neill, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1988, pp. 121–9, see p. 123.) L’union de l’âme et du corps chez Malebranche, Biran et Bergson. Notes prises au cours de Maurice Merleau-Ponty à l’École Normale Supérieure (1947–1948), ed. by Jean deprun, paris: vrin 1968, p. 44. (english translation: The Incarnate Subject: Malebranche, Biran, and Bergson on the Union of Body and Soul, trans. by paul b. milan, ed. by andrew g. bjelland and patrick burke, amherst, new York: Humanities books 2001, p. 60.) “[possibilité de la philosophie] (1958–1959),” in his Résumés de cours. Collège de France 1952–1960, paris: gallimard 1968, pp. 139–56, see p. 142. (english translation; “philosophy as interrogation,” in In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. by John wild, James edie, and John o’neill, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1988 pp. 167–80, see p. 168.) “philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel. Cours de 1960–1961,” in his Notes de cours 1959–1961, paris: gallimard 1996, pp. 269–352, see p. 275; p. 279; p. 309; pp. 317–18; p. 320 (originally published in Textures, vol. 74, nos. 8–9, 1974, pp. 83–129 and vol. 75, nos. 10–11, 1975, pp. 145–73; english translation, “philosophy and non-philosophy since Hegel,” in Philosophy and NonPhilosophy since Merleau-Ponty, ed. by Hugh J. silverman, new York, london: routledge 1988, pp. 9–83, see p. 9; p. 13; p. 43; pp. 50–51; p. 53). “la philosophie aujourd’hui. Cours de 1958–1959,” in his Notes de cours 1959– 1961, paris: gallimard 1996, pp. 33–157, see p. 38. manuscript: preparatory notes of the 1958 course on Le concept de Nature (suite.) L’animalité, le corps humain, passage à la culture (janvier–mai 1958), bibliothèque nationale de France, vol. 16, p. 26. II. Sources of Merleau-Ponty’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard benda, Julien, Tradition de l’existentialisme ou Les Philosophies de la vie, paris: grasset 1947, p. 27, note; p. 28, note; p. 36; p. 72; p. 99, note; p. 104, note.

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binswanger, ludwig, “traum und existenz,” Neue Schweizer Rundschau, vol. 23, 1930, pp. 673–85; pp. 766–79. — “das raumproblem in der psychopathologie,” in Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, vol. 145, 1933, pp. 598–647 (published also in his Ausgewählte Vorträge und Aufsätze, vols. 1–2, bern: Francke 1947–55, vol. 2, pp. 618–43). Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie, vol. 37, 1938, pp. 161–93 (séance du 4 décembre 1937 de la société française de philosophie: discussion on Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Jaspers. Contributions by Jean wahl, nicholas berdyaev, rené berthelot, paul ludwig landsberg, gabriel marcel et léon brunschvicg.) Canguilhem, georges, “Hegel en France,” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, nos. 28–9, 1948–49, pp. 282–97, see pp. 283–4. gurvitch, georges, Le tendances actuelles de la philosophie allemande. E. Husserl, M. Scheler, E. Lask, N. Hartmann, M. Heidegger, paris: vrin 1930, pp. 210–11; p. 216; p. 229. gusdorf, georges, “Kierkegaard,” in Les philosophes célèbres, ed. by maurice merleau-ponty, paris: l. mazenod 1956, pp. 242–9. Heidegger, martin, Sein und Zeit, Halle: niemeyer 1927, pp. 175–96, see also p. 190, note 1; p. 235, note 1; and p. 338, note 1. Hyppolite, Jean, Genèse et structure de la “Phénoménologie de l’esprit” de Hegel, paris: aubier-montaigne 1946, p. 16; p. 52; p. 480. Jaspers, Karl, Allgemeine Psychopathologie. Ein Leitfaden für Studierende, Ärzte und Psychologen, 4th ed., berlin-Heidelberg: springer 1946 [1913], p. 262. lefebvre, Henri, L’existentialisme, paris: Éditions du sagittaire 1946. löwith, Karl, “l’achèvement de la philosophie classique par Hegel et sa dissolution chez marx et Kierkegaard,” Recherches philosophiques, vol. 4, 1934–35, pp. 232–67. marcel, gabriel, Être et avoir, paris: aubier 1935, p. 106. — Homo Viator. Prolégomènes à une métaphysique de l’espérance, paris: aubier 1944, p. 224; p. 264; p. 276; p. 280; p. 285; p. 303; p. 352. mounier, emmanuel, Le personnalisme, paris: presses universitaires de France 1949, pp. 13–14; p. 51; p. 54, note; p. 62; p. 65; p. 67; p. 81; p. 116. sartre, Jean-paul, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, paris: gallimard 1943, p. 64; p. 133; p. 285; p. 641. — “Qu’est-ce que la littérature?,” in his Situations II, paris: gallimard 1948, pp. 55–330, see p. 236 (originally published in Les Temps modernes, June, 1947, pp. 1607–41; english translation: What is Literature?, trans. by bernard Frechtman, new York: philosophical library 1949, p. 205). shestov, lev, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle: “vox clamantis in deserto,” trans. by t. rageot and b. de schloezer, paris: vrin 1936. waelhens, alphonse de, La philosophie de Martin Heidegger, louvain: Éditions de l’institut supérieur de philosophie 1942, pp. 330–52. wahl, Jean, Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel, 2nd ed., paris: rieder 1929.

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— “le Journal métaphysique de gabriel marcel,” in his Vers le concret. Études d’histoire de la philosophie contemporaine. William James, Whitehead, Gabriel Marcel, paris: vrin 1932, pp. 185–217, see p. 188; p. 200; pp. 207–9 (originally published in Revue de métaphysique et de morale, no. 1, 1930, pp. 75–111). — “préface,” in his Vers le concret. Études d’histoire de la philosophie contemporaine. William James, Whitehead, Gabriel Marcel, paris: vrin 1932, pp. 29–46, see p. 31; p. 41; p. 45. — Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: aubier 1938. III. Secondary Literature on Merleau-Ponty’s Relation to Kierkegaard bello, eduardo, De Sartre a Merleau-Ponty. Diálectica de la libertad y el sentido, murcia: universidad de murcia 1979, p. 18; p. 25; pp. 32–3; p. 35; p. 69; pp. 84–5; pp. 175–6. Carman, taylor, Merleau-Ponty, london, new York: routledge 2008, p. 174; p. 225. Clair, andré, Pseudonymie et paradoxe. La pensée dialectique de Kierkegaard, paris: vrin 1976, p. 11. Colette, Jacques, “Colloque Kierkegaard: groupe de discussion. deuxième séance de table ronde,” in Kierkegaard vivant, paris: gallimard 1966, p. 303. — Kierkegaard et la non-philosophie, paris: gallimard 1994, p. 10; p. 63; p. 134; p. 136; p. 173; p. 192; pp. 204–7; p. 215; p. 220; pp. 224–5; p. 231; p. 233. — L’existentialisme, 4th ed., paris: presses universitaires de France 2007 [1994], p. 17; p. 42. Cueille, Jean-noël, “la profondeur du négatif: merleau-ponty face à la dialectique de Hegel,” Chiasmi International, no. 2, 2000, pp. 301–35, see p. 301. délivoyatzis, socratis, La dialectique du phénomène (Sur Merleau-Ponty), paris: méridiens Klincksieck 1987, p. 257. dillon, martin C., Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press 1988, p. 37. dreyfus, Hubert and patricia allen dreyfus, “translators’ introduction,” in maurice merleau-ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1964, pp. 17–18; pp. 25–7. erfani, Farhang, “sartre and Kierkegaard on the aesthetics of boredom,” Idealistic Studies, vol. 34, no. 3, 2004, pp. 303–17, see p. 316. gilmore, Jonathan, “between philosophy and art,” in The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty, ed. by Carman taylor and mark b.n. Hansen, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 2005, pp. 291–317, see p. 308. Hall, Ronald L., “The Origin of Alienation: Some Kierkegaardian Reflections on merleau-ponty’s phenomenology of the body,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 12, 1981, pp. 111-22. Heckman, John, “introduction,” in Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit,” trans. by samuel Cherniak and John Heckman, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1974, pp. xv-xli.

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Hyppolite, Jean, “la ‘phénoménologie’ de Hegel et la pensée française contemporaine” (1955), in Figures de la pensée philosophique. Écrits de Jean Hyppolite (1931–1968), vols. 1–2, 2nd ed., paris: presses universitaires de France 1992 [1971], vol. 1, pp. 231–41, see p. 234. — “merleau-ponty,” in Figures de la pensée philosophique. Écrits de Jean Hyppolite (1931–1968), vol. 2, pp. 685–758, see p. 707. langer, monika m., Merleau-Ponty’s “Phenomenology of Perception”: A Guide and Commentary, Houndmills, basingstoke and london: macmillan press 1989, p. ix; p. xviii; p. 151; p. 175. lanteri-laura, georges, “le voyage dans l’anti-psychiatrie anglaise,” L’Évolution psychiatrique, vol. 61, no. 3, pp. 621–33, see pp. 625–6. leijen, arie, “grote goden, wie ben ik? Hegel, merleau-ponty en Kierkegaard over de verhouding tot het absolute,” in De God van denkers en dichters. Opstellen voor Samuel Ijsseling, ed. by e.e. berns et al., amsterdam: boom 1997, pp. 59–77. paci, enzo, Diario fenomenologico, 5th ed., milan: il saggiatore 1961 [1956]. — “Kierkegaard vivant et la véritable signification de l’histoire,” in Kierkegaard vivant, paris: gallimard 1966, pp. 111–24, see p. 122. politis, Hélène, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, paris: Éditions Kimé 2005, p. 127; pp. 140–1; p. 154; pp. 158–9. poole, roger, “the unknown Kierkegaard: twentieth-Century receptions,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by alastair Hannay and gordon d. marino, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1998, pp. 48–75, see p. 55; p. 68. —Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, Charlottesville and london: university press of virginia 1993, p. 26; p. 278; p. 279. rapport, nigel, “ ‘the truth is alive.’ Kierkegaard’s anthropology of dualism subjectivity and somatic Knowledge,” Anthropological Theory, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 165–83, see p. 172. saint aubert, emmanuel de, Le scénario cartésien. Recherches sur la formation et la cohérence de l’intuition philosophique de Merleau-Ponty, paris: vrin 2005, p. 82; p. 226; p. 228. — Vers une ontologie indirecte. Sources et enjeux critiques de l’appel à l’ontologie chez Merleau-Ponty, paris: vrin 2006, p. 104; p. 170. sartre, Jean-paul, “merleau-ponty,” in his Situations IV: Portraits, paris: gallimard 1964, pp. 189–287, see p. 192 (originally published as “merleau-ponty vivant,” in Les Temps Modernes, nos. 184–5, 1961, pp. 304–76; english translation: “merleau-ponty vivant,” trans. by benita eisher, in Situations, new York: Fawcett world library 1966, pp. 156–226; reprinted in The Debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, ed. by Jon stewart, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1998, pp. 565–625, see p. 567). — “l’universel singulier,” in his Situations IX: Mélanges, paris: gallimard 1972, pp. 152–90, see p. 159; p. 170; p. 178 (originally published in Kierkegaard vivant, paris: gallimard 1966, pp. 20–63; english translation: “Kierkegaard: the singular universal,” Between Existentialism and Marxism, trans. by John

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mathews, new York: pantheon books, 1974, pp. 141–69, see p. 146; p. 154; p. 160). schrader, george alfred (ed.), Existential Philosophers: Kierkegaard to MerleauPonty, new York, london: mcgraw-Hill 1967. spiegelberg, Herbert, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, 3rd revised and enlarged ed., with the collaboration of Karl schuhmann, the Hague: m. nijhoff 1982, p. 443. stengel, Kathrin, Das Subjekt als Grenze. Ein Vergleich der erkenntnistheoretischen Ansätze bei Wittgenstein und Merleau-Ponty, berlin and new York: de gruyter 2003, p. 45. taylor, mark C., Altarity, Chicago: university of Chicago press 1987, p. 65; p. 77. todes, samuel, Body and World, Cambridge, london: mit press 2001, p. 8; p. 306, note 17. villela-petit, maria, “le soi incarné. merleau-ponty et la question du sujet,” in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ed. by emmanuel de saint aubert, paris: Hermann 2008, pp. 79–123, see p. 109. waelhens, alphonse de, “une philosophie de l’ambiguïté,” in maurice merleauponty, La structure du comportement, 2nd ed., paris: presses universitaires de France 2002 [1949], pp. v–xv, see p. xii. wahl, Jean, Petite histoire de “l’existentialisme”: suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard commentaries, paris: editions Club maintenant 1947, p. 13; p. 58. — “les philosophies de l’existence,” Encyclopédie Française, paris: société nouvelle de l’encyclopédie Française 1957, vol. 19, pp. 12:3–14, see pp. 12:6–7 and p. 12:8. — Les philosophies de l’existence, 2nd ed., paris: armand Colin 1959 [1954], see p. 15. (english translation, Philosophies of Existence: An Introduction to the Basic Thought of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, Sartre, trans. by F.m. lory, london: routledge and Kegan paul 1969.) — [untitled article] in Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’Unesco à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, paris: gallimard 1966, pp. 205–12. waldenfels, bernard, “le paradoxe de l’expression chez merleau-ponty,” in maurice merleau-ponty, Notes de cours sur “L’origine de la géométrie” de Husserl. Recherches sur la phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty, ed. by renaud barbaras, paris: presses universitaires de France 1998, pp. 331–48, see p. 336. westphal, merold, “situation and suspicion in the thought of merleau-ponty: the Question of phenomenology and politics,” in Ontology and Alterity in MerleauPonty, ed. by galen a. Johnson and michael b. smith, evanston, illinois: northwestern university press 1990; pp. 158–79 and pp. 200–4, see pp. 178–9. whiteside, Kerry H., Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of an Existential Politics, princeton, new Jersey: princeton university press 1988, see p. 17; p. 92; pp. 97–8; p. 274.

Friedrich nietzsche: rival visions of the best way of life thomas miles

I. Comparing Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on the Best Way of Life søren Kierkegaard is compared with the german philosopher Friedrich nietzsche (1844–1900) perhaps more frequently than with any other figure. Traditionally hailed as the twin fathers or forefathers of existentialism, they are mutually credited with developing some of its most central ideas, including an emphasis on lived experience, individuality, passion, inwardness, sincerity, and responsibility. the idea of comparing Kierkegaard and nietzsche seems to have occurred to some of Nietzsche’s original readers, and the first study comparing Kierkegaard and Nietzsche was published before nietzsche’s death.1 since then there have been more than 60 articles and at least 15 full-length studies solely devoted to comparing Kierkegaard and nietzsche. oddly, though, the authors of these studies are often unaware of the vast body of literature on this topic, and even the most recent studies claim to be the first to compare Kierkegaard and nietzsche.2 moreover, there has yet to be a detailed study of nietzsche’s reading and reception of Kierkegaard. even after thomas brobjer’s brief but groundbreaking article showing that nietzsche almost certainly read about Kierkegaard in secondary sources, most scholars of Kierkegaard and nietzsche remain unaware of this historical connection.3 naturally, a philosophical comparison of their ideas does not depend upon any such historical connection, but as i will show, exploring nietzsche’s reception of Kierkegaard yields valuable insights for a comparison of their most central ideas. one of the things that makes a comparison of Kierkegaard and nietzsche so inviting is that they share a similar approach to philosophy. both attack traditional forms of philosophy as too detached, “objective,” and abstract to address the important issues of actual human life. instead, both embrace a more passionate, subtle, and artful Karl ernst Knodt, “die gefahr ‘nietzsche’ und ihre nachwirkung in der neuesten deutschen lyrik,” Monatsblätter für deutsche Literatur, vol. 1, 1897, pp. 364–9 and pp. 395– 402. 2 see, for example, tom p.s. angier, Either Kierkegaard / Or Nietzsche: Moral Philosophy in a New Key, Aldershot: Ashgate 2006. Angier claims to have written the first “indepth investigation of the relation between the two philosophers,” p. 4. 3 thomas brobjer, “nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 41, no. 2, 2003, pp. 251–63. 1

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approach to philosophy. there are many particular points of comparison between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, but surely one of the most important and influential is that they share a fundamental approach to ethics. whereas most modern ethicists focus narrowly on whether a person’s particular actions are right or wrong and seek universal principles for determining this, Kierkegaard and nietzsche adopt a more holistic approach. they focus on a person’s way of life as a whole and ask what way of life is best.4 For both, a way of life can be roughly defined as a fundamental existential orientation that shapes one’s particular judgments, actions, goals, and character traits. Kierkegaard is famous for proposing three possible ways of life: the aesthetic life of pleasure, the ethical life of self-responsibility, and the religious life of faith. in truth, though, Kierkegaard’s typology of ways of life is more nuanced and varied than this suggests. perhaps most problematically, this simple schema leaves out the life of resignation that Kierkegaard often contrasts with the life of faith. nietzsche also gives various typologies of ways of life, each defined by a “morality” (Moral) or “mode of valuation” (Wertungs-Weise). in one of the most consistent patterns, nietzsche compares the life of the ancient noble, the life of the slavish or ascetic person, and the life of his ideal “free spirit” or “sovereign individual.” in addition to developing typologies of different ways of life, Kierkegaard and nietzsche each offer a morphology detailing how some ways of life collapse and fail through their own internal contradictions and how a transition to a new way of life is possible. Kierkegaard’s concept of despair and nietzsche’s concept of nihilism both describe not some particular problem or lack, but the internal collapse of an entire way of life. in this study, i will leave aside a defense of this general approach to ethics and focus instead on the specific ways of life Kierkegaard and Nietzsche respectively present as ideal. i will offer a critical comparison of Kierkegaard’s ideal life of faith and nietzsche’s ideal life of sovereignty. since these ways of life represent their highest ideals and stand at the center of their respective philosophies, i believe this comparison will reveal several of the most important points of agreement and disagreement between them. it will also bring us into confrontation with many of the central ideas and questions of existentialism generally. this critical comparison will involve comparing and contrasting these ideals to note their similarities and differences. it will also involve exploring the arguments each could offer against the other’s ideal way of life. thus, i will attempt to elucidate the best arguments Kierkegaard’s philosophy can offer to convict nietzsche’s life of sovereignty of despair and the best arguments nietzsche’s philosophy can offer to convict Kierkegaard’s life of faith of nihilism; i will also examine how each of them as i have argued elsewhere, in focusing on ways of life as a whole Kierkegaard and nietzsche are reintroducing what was once a central project for ancient greek ethicists like plato and aristotle. this, among other things, makes Kierkegaard and nietzsche surprisingly valuable sources for the contemporary movement known as “virtue ethics” which aims to revive many of the concerns and questions of ancient greek ethics. see my “either/or: reintroducing an ancient approach to ethics,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2008, pp. 158–78.

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could respond to these critiques. in other words, i will explore the dialogue between the philosophies of Kierkegaard and nietzsche on the best way of life. i will not try to close this dialogue by declaring one of them to decisively defeat the other, as many other studies of Kierkegaard and nietzsche have (unsuccessfully) sought to do. likewise, i will not try to erase the profound differences between the ideals of Kierkegaard and nietzsche or declare them to be basically equivalent.5 i aim to map out where the lines of agreement and disagreement between Kierkegaard and nietzsche actually lie so that we can better learn from the dialogue between them and better understand the issues raised in this dialogue. i will end this section by providing a working sketch of Kierkegaard’s life of faith and nietzsche’s life of sovereignty as i understand them. then in the next section i will consider the question of what nietzsche knew of Kierkegaard and how this influence may have manifested itself in his writings. I will attempt to expand upon brobjer’s research by offering a more detailed picture of what nietzsche likely knew about Kierkegaard’s philosophy and by suggesting additional places in nietzsche’s texts where he may have been responding to Kierkegaard. These historical findings will inform the final section of the article in which I examine the philosophical arguments Kierkegaard and nietzsche can offer each other’s ideal way of life. a complete description of the ideal lives proposed by Kierkegaard and nietzsche would obviously be beyond the scope of this study, but i will attempt to provide a working sketch of some of the main features of each. describing Kierkegaard’s life of faith meets with the immediate difficulty that Kierkegaard thinks that faith is indescribable. Kierkegaard is famous for insisting that from a rational, worldly perspective the nature of this faith appears “absurd,” and that Christian faith in particular entails a series of paradoxes that repel rational comprehension. Yet Kierkegaard’s writings contain some helpful portraits of the life of faith, most famously the figure of Abraham in Fear and Trembling. one thing that this example shows, without explaining away the paradox of faith, is that faith is not primarily a matter of religious belief or doctrine.6 in Fear and Trembling, faith is described as an inward existential “movement,” a way of fundamentally orienting oneself towards existence and towards oneself.7 Yet this existential orientation is not just a matter of inwardness, it manifests itself outwardly in the way one acts on a daily basis. in other words, faith is not a belief one holds, it is a way of life one lives. on one hand, the life of faith is a highly individualistic life. because faith cannot be communicated and because it causes offense, it places a person in “cosmic isolation.”8 Kierkegaard believes that through faith one attains individual integrity and comes to be an individual in the most complete sense. Yet Kierkegaard does to use Kierkegaard’s (Hegelian) term, i will not try to “mediate” between Kierkegaard and nietzsche such that their differences disappear. this worry seems to motivate alastair Hannay’s objection to any notion of a “dialogue” between Kierkegaard and nietzsche. alastair Hannay, “nietzsche/Kierkegaard: prospects for dialogue?” in Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays, london: routledge 2003, pp. 207–17. 6 see, for example, SKS 12, 115 / PC, 106: “Christianity is no doctrine.” 7 see, for example, SKS 4, 203 / FTP, 139. 8 SKS 4, 171 / FTP, 107. 5

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not advocate a life of rugged, self-reliant individualism. on the contrary, the life of faith involves trusting absolutely in god rather than in oneself. Faith in god requires that one set aside faith in oneself and one’s own self-reliant abilities. For example, abraham is able to renounce isaac all on his own, but he needs god in order to regain isaac with joy.9 as this suggests, contrary to his reputation as a gloomy thinker, Kierkegaard’s ideal is a life of joy in our everyday existence. this is one of the central themes of Fear and Trembling, in which a fundamental stance of joy toward life is what makes abraham a “knight of faith” in contrast to a “knight of resignation” who lacks this joy.10 it is also a central theme of his later devotional discourses The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air. For Kierkegaard, faith is not a matter of ascetic world-renunciation: the life of faith is contrasted with the life of resignation, in which one’s relationship to god is conceived of as incommensurable with life in the finite world. But the joy of faith is also importantly different from the pleasure or enjoyment of the aesthetic life; this is shown by the fact that the joy of faith persists even amidst great suffering and loss. in addition, the joy of faith contrasts with the complacent sense of self-satisfaction found in the “ethical life” proposed by Either/ Or’s pseudonym, Judge wilhelm. Faith entails recognizing oneself as guilty and as “capable of nothing before god”; it also entails accepting divine forgiveness with joy and gratitude. nietzsche’s ideal life of sovereignty is also a life of individuality, integrity, and joyful life-affirmation, although on very different grounds. Nietzsche describes the figure who lives this ideal life under different labels in different works (“free spirit,” “new philosopher,” “overman,” “sovereign individual”), but as i have shown elsewhere nietzsche provides a fairly consistent portrait of what his ideal way of life is like.11 the way of life represented by these various formulations can be characterized by three fundamental things: independence, self-mastery in the form of a conscience or sense of self-responsibility, and life-affirmation. by independence, nietzsche means that one is free from conformity to the mores and moral values of one’s society; the sovereign individual is also free of the asceticism and slavishness Nietzsche finds at the heart of dominant Western values. Yet for nietzsche this independence is as much a challenge as it is an ideal. He recognizes that absent the usual constraints, one may lack the constraint necessary to hold any values at all.12 nihilism, in its most dangerous form, is the possibility that we will not be able to value anything at all once traditional values SKS 4, 180 / FTP, 65. see, for example, SKS 4, 130 / FTP, 65. SKS 4, 132 / FTP, 66. SKS 4, 145 / FTP, 79. 11 thomas miles, “on nietzsche’s ideal of the sovereign individual,” International Studies in Philosophy, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 5–25. 12 Friedrich nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches. Ein Buch für freie Geister, vol. 1, Chemnitz: ernst schmeitzner 1878, § 230, p. 194. (english translation: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. by r.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1996, § 230, p. 110); Friedrich nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft, leipzig: C.g. naumann 1886, § 201, p. 126; § 203, p. 131. (english translation: Beyond Good and Evil, trans. by walter Kaufmann, new York: random House 1989 [1966], § 201, p. 114; § 203, p. 118.) 9

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and constraints begin to fail. what is needed to replace these traditional constraints, according to nietzsche, is the constraint of a new form of conscience (Gewissen).13 in contrast to the self-torturous “bad conscience” or “guilty conscience” he wants to banish, nietzsche’s ideal conscience is a self-mastery and responsibility based on self-reverence and self-affirmation. Perhaps the best description of this kind of conscience is found in nietzsche’s portrait of the “sovereign individual”: “the proud awareness of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, this power over oneself and over fate, has in his case penetrated to the profoundest depths and become instinct, the dominating instinct,” an instinct he will call his “conscience.”14 i think this conscience as a “dominating instinct” can best be understood as one’s central guiding passion in life, the drive of discipline and self-severity that nietzsche thinks allows its possessor to accomplish or create great things. this brings us to the third feature of nietzsche’s highest way of life: lifeaffirmation. One of the things that Nietzsche looks for in a higher type is faith in oneself: “some fundamental certainty which a noble soul possesses in regard to itself” and which manifests itself as “reverence for itself.”15 but the conscience of nietzsche’s sovereign individual should not be thought of as a blind faith in oneself. unlike the ascetic bad conscience, which seeks to invent guilt as an instrument of self-torture or in order to give life some minimal meaning, the sovereign conscience involves an open, honest relation with oneself. the sovereign individual’s selfaffirmation is in part a realistic appraisal of a person’s accomplishments in the world, but it is also an acknowledgment of ability to keep commitments: “the right to stand security for oneself and to do so with pride, thus to possess also the right to affirm oneself.”16 there seems to be a kind of self-strengthening cycle going on within this way of life: one’s instinctive self-affirmation manifests itself in a self-reverence which ensures that one keeps one’s commitments (a sovereign conscience). this sovereign, self-affirming conscience then allows outward excellence, the accomplishment of great things in the world: “this mastery over himself also necessarily gives him mastery over circumstances.”17 this “mastery” in the world (e.g., the creation of artistic masterpieces) in turn confirms and further strengthens the individual’s selfaffirmation, thus completing the cycle. Nietzsche’s highest type is also life-affirming in a broader sense. Contradicting many caricatured views of nietzsche, he is explicit

Friedrich nietzsche, Morgenröthe. Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurtheile, leipzig: e.w. Fritzsch 1887 § p4, p. ix. (english translation: Daybreak, trans. by r.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1997 § p4, p. 4); nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 61, p. 79. (Beyond Good and Evil, § 61, p. 72); Friedrich nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral. Eine Streitschrift, leipzig: C.g. nauman 1887, § ii:2–3, p. 45. (english translation: On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. by walter Kaufmann and r.J. Hollingdale, new York: vintage books 1989 [1967], § ii:2–3, p. 60.) 14 nietzsche, Genealogie, § ii:2, pp. 44–5. (Genealogy, § ii:2, p. 60.) 15 nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 287, p. 259. (Beyond Good and Evil, § 287, pp. 227–8.) 16 nietzsche, Genealogie, § ii:3, pp. 44–5. (Genealogy, § ii:3, p. 60.) 17 nietzsche, Genealogie, § ii:2, pp. 44–5. (Genealogy, § ii:2, p. 60.) 13

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in his disdain for petty self-interest.18 nietzsche’s best way of life entails that one affirm not just himself but life and existence as a whole. the joy of nietzsche’s highest way of life is not just found in a sense of one’s own worth and ability; it is, to use nietzsche’s term, a Dionysian joy in which one affirms the whole of existence. II. Nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Having reviewed the respective ideals of Kierkegaard and nietzsche, i will now turn to the historical question of nietzsche’s knowledge and reception of Kierkegaard. the most important source of this knowledge was one of nietzsche’s few friends and original readers, the danish literary critic georg brandes (1842–1927). nietzsche and brandes never met in person, but they became familiar with each other’s work and struck up a warm correspondence by letter. sometime between the autumn of 1875 and the spring of 1888 Nietzsche was first exposed to Brandes through a German translation of the first two volumes of Brandes’ Main Currents in 19th Century Literature.19 nietzsche later recommended this work to a friend as “still today the best cultural book [Kulturbuch] in german on this large subject.”20 on the basis of his admiration for brandes nietzsche had his publisher send brandes a copy of Beyond Good and Evil and, later, On The Genealogy of Morals. brandes read and greatly admired these books as well as nietzsche’s Human, All-Too Human, which he already possessed.21 on november 26, 1887 brandes wrote a warm a letter of thanks to nietzsche in which he praises his works: “a new and original spirit breathes to me from your books.”22 nietzsche was thrilled to receive this attention and praise, especially given his professional admiration for brandes. He wrote back to brandes expressing his desire to have readers like brandes “whom one honors.”23 nietzsche was even more thrilled to hear from brandes less than four months later that brandes would be offering a lecture course on nietzsche at the university of Copenhagen.24 this was to be the first university class on Nietzsche and the first and only time in Nietzsche’s own lifetime that he would receive this level of professional attention. Feeling otherwise alone, unread, and greatly unappreciated (“as if i were something singular

18 nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 260, p. 231. (Beyond Good and Evil, § 260, p. 197.) nietzsche, Genealogie, § i:2, p. 3–4. (Genealogy, § i:2, p. 26.) 19 see georg brandes, Hovedstrømninger i det 19de Aarhundredes Litteratur, vols. 1–6, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1872–90. (english translation: Main Currents in 19th Century Literature, vols. 1–6, trans. by diana white and mary morison, new York: macmillan 1906. see also brobjer, “nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard,” p. 253.) 20 letter from nietzsche to Carl Fuchs, august 22, 1888. Nietzsche Briefwechsel, ed. by mazzino montinari, vols. 1–6, berlin: walter de gruyter 1984, vol. 5, p. 394. 21 georg brandes, Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by a.g. Chater, new York: Haskell 1972 [1914], p. 62. 22 ibid., p. 63. brandes includes his correspondence with nietzsche in this text. 23 ibid., p. 64. 24 ibid., p. 79.

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and absurd, something that for the present need not be taken seriously”), nietzsche suddenly found his hopes and aspirations greatly affirmed by Brandes.25 it is in this context that we should understand brandes’ recommendation to nietzsche that he read Kierkegaard and nietzsche’s reply that he would soon do so. in a letter to brandes on January 8, 1888 nietzsche praises brandes’ psychological astuteness in his essay “goethe and denmark” in the Goethe Yearbook.26 this essay contains a five-page discussion of Kierkegaard and his view of Goethe.27 replying on January 11, 1888, brandes sent nietzsche a copy of his Moderne Geister, and a letter specifically recommending the essay on Ibsen. This essay also contains several discussions of Kierkegaard.28 Following this recommendation, brandes writes: there is one scandinavian writer whose works would interest you, if only they were translated: Sören Kierkegaard; he lived from 1813–1855 and is in my opinion one of the profoundest psychologists that have ever existed. a little book i wrote about him (translated, leipzig, 1879) gives no adequate idea of his genius, as it is a sort of polemical pamphlet written to counteract his influence. But in a psychological respect it is, I think, the most subtle thing i have published.29

in a reply dated February 19, 1888 nietzsche writes: “on my next visit to germany i propose to take up the psychological problem of Kierkegaard and at the same time to renew acquaintance with your older literature. it will be of use to me in the best sense of the word—and will serve to restore good humor to my own severity and arrogance of judgment.”30 scholars who have written about Kierkegaard and nietzsche have generally concluded that because this trip to germany never happened, nietzsche must have never got the chance to learn anything about Kierkegaard or his ideas. they read nietzsche’s proposal to study Kierkegaard as an admission that he as yet knows nothing about him.31 Contrary to this reading, i think it would be odd for nietzsche to “propose to take up the psychological problem of Kierkegaard” if he did not already have some preliminary knowledge of Kierkegaard, at least enough to spark his interest and to see that there was a “psychological problem” to be addressed. moreover, if we understand the second sentence of nietzsche’s reply to refer not just to brandes’ work but also to Kierkegaard’s work, this indicates that nietzsche knew enough about Kierkegaard to realize he could serve as a useful and respectable foil to many of nietzsche’s ideas. ibid. see ibid., p. 68. see also georg brandes, “goethe und dänemark,” Goethe Jahrbuch, vol. 2, 1882, pp. 1–48. 27 see brandes, “goethe und dänemark,” pp. 40–4. 28 georg brandes, “Henrik ibsen,” in Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century, trans. by rasmus anderson, new York: thomas Crowell Company 1923, pp. 349–96. references to Kierkegaard are on pp. 357–8; pp. 359–60; p. 368; pp. 372–3; p. 375; pp. 379–80; p. 382. (in german as “Henrik ibsen,” in Moderne Geister: Literarische Bildnisse aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Frankfurt: rütten & loening 1887, pp. 413–65.) 29 brandes, Friedrich Nietzsche, pp. 69–70. 30 ibid., p. 71. 31 brobjer lists several examples. see brobjer, “nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard,” p. 252. 25 26

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this is not merely a matter of conjecture; there is good evidence that nietzsche had in fact read much about Kierkegaard in secondary sources, including several pages of quotations from Kierkegaard’s books. the “older literature” by brandes that nietzsche resolves to reread is almost surely his Main Currents in 19th Century Literature, which also contains many discussions of Kierkegaard.32 that nietzsche mentions this work together with his intention to study Kierkegaard may indicate that nietzsche remembered reading about Kierkegaard in them. in any case, nietzsche did not have to return to germany to renew his acquaintance with this work and its many references to Kierkegaard. brandes sent nietzsche the second volume of this work with his next letter, on march 7, 1888.33 brandes would have known that nietzsche had read about Kierkegaard in his essay on goethe, and it seems that he may have been intentionally trying to spark nietzsche’s interest in Kierkegaard by sending him further reading in which he would encounter Kierkegaard’s ideas. in addition to these works by brandes, nietzsche read about Kierkegaard in at least two other secondary sources. The first is a German translation of The Christian Ethics by the danish theologian and bishop Hans lassen martensen (1808–84).34 in preparing for his attack on Christian ethics in Daybreak, nietzsche read at least the first volume of this work in translation in the spring and summer of 1880.35 this volume contains a detailed analysis of Kierkegaard’s thought covering 27 consecutive pages and containing several important quotations from Kierkegaard’s texts.36 nietzsche also read and underlined two passages about Kierkegaard in a german translation of Outlines of Psychology on the Foundation of Experience by the danish philosopher and psychologist Harald Høffding (1843–1931).37 reading this book in the fall of 1887, nietzsche underlined the central sentence in Høffding’s description of Kierkegaard’s notion of “repetition” and wrote “nb” (nota bene) in the margin: “Deshalb ist für S. Kierkegaard die Möglichkeit der Wiederholung das ethische Grundproblem.” (“therefore the possibility of repetition is for s.

nietzsche read a german translation of this work, Die Hauptströmungen der Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, vols. 1–5, trans. by adolf strodtmann and w. rudow, berlin and leipzig: merseburg 1872–87. Hereafter references to this work will be from the english translation, see brandes, Main Currents in 19th Century Literature. references to Kierkegaard are in vol. 1 p. 17; p. 39; p. 180; vol. 2, p. 11; pp. 15–16; pp. 27–9; pp. 63–4; pp. 70–6 passim; p. 80; p. 123; pp. 156–9; p. 179; p. 189. 33 brandes, Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 73. 34 nietzsche read the second edition of the german translation of this text, see Hans lassen martensen, Die christliche Ethik, trans. by alexander michelsen, gotha: besser 1873. Hereafter references to this text will be from the english translation, see Hans lassen martensen, Christian Ethics, vols. 1–2, trans. by C. spence, edinburgh: t. & t. Clark 1873. 35 see brobjer, “nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard,” pp. 255–6. 36 see martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, p. 209; pp. 217–36; p. 305. 37 Harald Høffding, Psychologie in Umrissen auf Grundlage der Erfahrung, trans. by F. bendixen, leipzig: Fues 1887. (Hereafter references to this text will be from the english translation: Outlines of Psychology, trans. by mary e. lowndes, london: macmillan 1891; originally as Psykologi i Omrids paa Grundlag af Erfaring, Copenhagen: p.g. philipsen 1882.) 32

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Kierkegaard the fundamental problem of ethics”).38 nietzsche also drew a vertical line in the margin of the footnote to this passage. this footnote quotes Kierkegaard’s Repetition: He who wishes only to hope, is a coward; only to remember, is voluptuous; but he who desires repetition, is a man….when existence has been explored to its depths, it will be seen whether there is courage to understand, and inclination to rejoice in, the fact that life is a repetition.39

this note also references Kierkegaard’s Practice in Christianity and The Moment in discussing his attack on Christendom as falling away from original Christianity: “the problem of repetition is re-introduced from another side by s. Kierkegaard, in his polemic, namely, against established Christianity as ‘a present which has forgotten its origins.’ ”40 the fact that nietzsche marked these passages is a good indication that he was aware of two important points of comparison between himself and Kierkegaard. First, given nietzsche’s own polemical attacks on Christianity, he would naturally find sympathy with Kierkegaard’s “polemic against Christianity.” More specifically, although they critique Christianity from different points of view, Kierkegaard as a Christian and nietzsche as an atheist, they agree in at least one argument: that modern Christianity has fallen away from its “origins” in the life and teaching of Jesus. secondly, nietzsche likely saw a parallel between Kierkegaard’s notion of “repetition” and his own notion of “eternal recurrence.” the notion of rejoicing in the understanding that one’s life is a matter of repetition closely parallels nietzsche’s ideal of being able to joyfully say “yes” to the prospect that one’s own life recurs eternally. what else would nietzsche have read about Kierkegaard in reading these secondary texts? nietzsche would have encountered several discussions including a long quotation from Kierkegaard on his use of pseudonyms and his explanations for this “indirect communication.”41 He would have also read Kierkegaard’s description of the aesthetic life as one of “personal lawlessness” and lack of constraint.42 these sources also discuss Kierkegaard’s tendency toward martyrdom and his conception of martyrdom as a criterion of truth.43 in addition to these particular ideas, several of the most central aspects of Kierkegaard’s ideal life of faith are recurring themes in these sources. For example, nietzsche would have read many discussions of Kierkegaard’s strong brobjer, “nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard,” p. 259. nietzsche read the german translation of this text (Psychologie in Umrissen auf Grundlage der Erfahrung). 39 Høffding, Psykologi i Omrids, pp. 280–1. the reference corresponds to SKS 4, 10 / R, 132. 40 ibid., p. 280. 41 brandes, Main Currents in 19th Century Literature, vol. 1, p. 39; vol. 2, pp. 156–9; p. 179. 42 ibid., vol. 2, pp. 63–4; p. 75. 43 brandes, “goethe und dänemark,” p. 41; brandes, “Henrik ibsen,” in Creative Spirits, p. 382. 38

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belief in individualism.44 martensen says that “with great talent and powerful onesidedness,” Kierkegaard “has been with us the advocate of individualism” and that Kierkegaard “made it the aim of his life to promote and carry through the category ‘the individual.’”45 martensen quotes Kierkegaard’s declaration of this intent in The Point of View: “the individual is the category through which, in regard to religion, time, history, the entire race must pass.”46 martensen goes on to criticize Kierkegaard for being too extreme in this individualism, a sentiment that brandes echoes in his essay on ibsen.47 brandes also mirrors martensen in indicating that for Kierkegaard the source and significance of this individuality is religious in nature.48 in harmony with this portrayal of Kierkegaard’s individualism, these sources also contain many discussions of Kierkegaard’s critique of modern mediocrity and lack of passion.49 brandes quotes Kierkegaard in Either/Or making a point that nietzsche himself often makes: “let others lament that the times are evil: i lament that they are paltry and contemptible, for they are utterly without passion. the thoughts of mankind are as thin and as feeble as lace-women. the thoughts of their hearts are too insignificant to be sinful.”50 one aspect of Kierkegaard’s critique of modern mediocrity with which nietzsche would have been especially sympathetic is his assertion that “wherever the multitude is, there is untruth.” 51 in contrast, for Kierkegaard, socrates is a model for the kind of honesty and passionate integrity he finds missing in the modern world.52 From martensen nietzsche would have also learned much about Kierkegaard’s concept of “leveling” (Nivellering), the process of collapse in which reverence for qualitative distinctions becomes so eroded that we are left with bland mediocrity in place of any conception of excellence. martensen mentions Kierkegaard’s notion of leveling more than once, and explains Kierkegaard’s view that “this age is the age of breaking up, the age of ‘leveling,’ in which all authority is undermined by insidious reflection, and becomes daily more so.”53 in books written after his reading

martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, p. 208; pp. 217–36; p. 304; brandes, “Henrik ibsen,” in Creative Spirits, pp. 357–8; p. 368; pp. 372–3. 45 martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, p. 217; p. 219. 46 ibid., vol. 1, p. 236. the reference is to SV1 xiii, 604 / PV, 118. 47 martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, pp. 227–8; p. 230; p. 236; brandes, “Henrik ibsen,” in Creative Spirits, p. 368. 48 martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, p. 225; brandes, “Henrik ibsen,” in Creative Spirits, pp. 372–3. 49 brandes, Main Currents in 19th Century Literature, vol. 2, pp. 28–9; pp. 75–6; martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, pp. 228–9; pp. 232–4; brandes, “Henrik ibsen,” in Creative Spirits, pp. 359–60. 50 brandes, “Henrik ibsen,” in Creative Spirits, pp. 359–60. the reference is to SKS 2, 37 / EO1, 27. 51 martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, p. 228. the reference is to SV1 xiii, 592 / PV, 105. 52 ibid., p. 222; p. 225. 53 ibid., pp. 232–3. 44

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of martensen, nietzsche himself uses the term “leveling” (Ausgleichung) to describe the same process by which we become mediocre and passionless.54 as already indicated, nietzsche would have learned that along with this attack on modern mediocrity, Kierkegaard offered an attack on modern Christianity.55 i have already discussed Høffding’s brief account of Kierkegaard’s objection that modern Christianity does not resemble original Christianity. martensen quotes Kierkegaard making this same point a different way, arguing that “Christianity is a vast deception; that all these thousands, without saying anything further, call themselves Christians; those many, many men, whose far, far greatest number, from all that can be discerned, have their lives in entirely different categories.”56 nietzsche certainly agreed with this assessment, and he employed a similar argument at several points in developing his own attack on modern Christianity.57 these sources also include several discussions of Kierkegaard’s rejection of rational theology and his ideal of a faith as a passion that must be embraced “in virtue of the absurd.”58 martensen writes that Kierkegaard “declares war against all speculation, and also against such persons as seek to speculate on faith and strive after an insight into the truths of revelation.”59 martensen portrays Kierkegaard as endorsing a form of Christianity that lacks any notion of church or dogma.60 He explains that Kierkegaard regarded Christianity as a “paradox,”61 a paradox that is “divinely absurd (credo quia absurdum).”62 martensen writes that for Kierkegaard faith is “the highest passion, which, thrilled by the consciousness of sin and guilt, appropriates to itself the paradox in defiance of the understanding” and “must be believed ‘in virtue of the absurd.’ ”63 lastly, martensen also explains that for Kierkegaard faith is a matter of living and acting a certain way, not believing a certain doctrine. He writes that for Kierkegaard For examples of nietzsche’s usage of this term see nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 242, p. 191 (Beyond Good and Evil, § 242, p. 176), and nietzsche, Genealogie, § i:12, p. 25; § i:16, p. 36 (Genealogy, § i:12, p. 44; § i:16, p. 54). nietzsche uses Ausgleichung rather than Nivellierung, the closest german equivalent of the danish Nivellering. of course it is possible that Kierkegaard and nietzsche both developed this idea independently or inherited it from other thinkers, but we cannot rule out the possibility of a direct influence here. 55 martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, p. 223; p. 225; p. 228; Høffding, Outlines of Psychology, p. 280; brandes, “Henrik ibsen,” in Creative Spirits, p. 379. 56 martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, p. 225. the reference is to SV1 xiii, 529 / PV, 41. 57 see, for example, nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 46, p. 64. (Beyond Good and Evil, § 46, p. 60). also see Friedrich nietzsche, Der Antichrist, leipzig: C.g. naumann 1895, §39, p. 261. (english translation: The Anti-Christ, trans. by r.J. Hollingdale, london: penguin books 1990 [1968], § 39, p. 163.) 58 brandes, Main Currents in 19th Century Literature, vol. 2, p. 11; pp. 15–16; p. 72; martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, pp. 222–4; p. 304; brandes, “Henrik ibsen,” in Creative Spirits, pp. 379–80; p. 382. 59 martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, pp. 223–4. 60 ibid., p. 235. 61 ibid., pp. 223–4; p. 235; p. 304. 62 ibid., p. 224. 63 ibid. the reference is to SKS 4, 131 / FTP, 65. 54

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faith is “a continued exercise of the absurd, and of a practical love to god, which shows itself in obedience and ‘acts of love’ towards separate individuals.”64 martensen makes clear that Kierkegaard understands this way of living and acting as a matter of imitating the example set by Jesus and that for Kierkegaard “eternal bliss is joined to the imitation of this marvelous example.”65 in other words, nietzsche would have learned that Kierkegaard’s conception of faith focuses on this life and finds heavenly “eternal bliss” not in an afterlife but in the life lived on earth in the imitation of Christ. nietzsche would have also learned that Kierkegaard put great emphasis on “subjectivity” in the sense of inwardness and sincerity.66 From both brandes and martensen, nietzsche would have learned Kierkegaard’s famous declaration that “subjectivity is the truth.”67 in brandes’ essay on ibsen, nietzsche would have read that Kierkegaard “laid the entire stress on personal sincerity.”68 given the portrait of Kierkegaard provided by these secondary sources that nietzsche read, i think it is beyond doubt that nietzsche knew something of Kierkegaard when he resolved to “take up the psychological problem of Kierkegaard.” nietzsche had read, often more than once, about some of the most central aspects of Kierkegaard’s ideal life of faith such as individuality, passion, sincerity, and the idea of an absurd faith.69 of course, it remains unclear exactly what information nietzsche retained from these works. moreover, there are some important aspects of Kierkegaard’s ideal that are missing from these sources and that nietzsche is unlikely to have known about, for example, Kierkegaard’s emphasis on joy in contrast to ascetic resignation and Kierkegaard’s notion of faith as higher than ethics (the teleological suspension of the ethical). How would nietzsche have received what he read of Kierkegaard? as i have indicated at various points in the discussion, nietzsche would have had sympathy with much of what read about Kierkegaard’s ideal life, especially its emphasis on individuality, passion, and inwardness. nietzsche would have also been sympathetic with Kierkegaard’s attack on mediocrity and the Christian church. Yet nietzsche, like brandes, rejected the central aspect of Kierkegaard’s ideal life: Christian faith. this is, as Kierkegaard would expect, the stumbling block and “offense” that nietzsche would not accept. nonetheless, given all that nietzsche would have agreed with in Kierkegaard’s ideal, he could not easily denounce this form of Christianity as either “herdlike” conformity or ascetic world-hatred. in other words, nietzsche’s usual arguments against Christianity do not apply to Kierkegaard’s form of Christianity. ibid., p. 235. ibid., p. 304. 66 brandes, Main Currents in 19th Century Literature, vol. 2, p. 72; martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, p. 219; pp. 222–3; brandes, “Henrik ibsen,” in Creative Spirits, pp. 379–80; p. 382. 67 brandes, Main Currents in 19th Century Literature, vol. 2, p. 72; martensen, Christian Ethics, vol. 1, p. 222. 68 brandes, “Henrik ibsen,” in Creative Spirits, p. 382. 69 another likely, but undocumented, source of nietzsche’s knowledge of Kierkegaard was lou salome, who had studied Kierkegaard before meeting nietzsche, and with whom nietzsche had some of the most profound philosophical discussions of his life. brobjer, “nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard,” p. 258. 64 65

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Kierkegaard presented an odd and seemingly impossible category in nietzsche’s way of thinking: an individualist Christian. Kierkegaard’s conception of a joyful “faith for this life” also presents a challenge to nietzsche’s conception of Christianity as a matter of ascetic self-hatred and world-hatred. it may be that nietzsche’s interest in writing on “the psychological problem of Kierkegaard” stemmed from the difficulty of fitting Kierkegaard into his usual conceptions of Christianity. although nietzsche never got the chance to write a study of Kierkegaard, we might still ask whether nietzsche ever responded to Kierkegaard in his writings or whether Kierkegaard’s ideas influenced any of these writings. Since Nietzsche never explicitly refers to Kierkegaard anywhere other than in his letter to brandes, this question can only be answered speculatively by arguing for veiled references or influences. I think it is unlikely that Kierkegaard was the source of any of nietzsche’s major ideas on the issues in which they are in agreement, for example, their mutual emphasis on lived experience, individuality, passion, and integrity. many of nietzsche’s ideas on these issues were already expressed in his earliest works, those that precede his first reading of sources on Kierkegaard: for example, nietzsche’s Untimely Meditation, “schopenhauer as educator,” published in 1874. moreover, nietzsche’s fullest exposure to Kierkegaard (and brandes’ pressure to read and respond to him) did not occur until very late in nietzsche’s career, only months before his mental collapse. Yet there may be a case to be made for some particular influence by Kierkegaard on nietzsche or a particular reference to him in nietzsche’s writings. brobjer suggests one possible reference, a reaction to nietzsche’s reading of martensen’s Christian Ethics early in his career when he was researching for his critique of Christian ethics in Daybreak. brobjer suggests that Daybreak § 9 probably makes a reference to Kierkegaard as one of the rare moral thinkers who, like socrates, advocates ethical individualism rather than ethical conformity: “those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of socrates, offer the individual a morality of selfcontrol and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions.”70 to this i would add two further suggestions for possible references to Kierkegaard in specific passages in Nietzsche as well as the possibility of a general influence on 70 brobjer, “nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard,” p. 258; nietzsche, Morgenröthe, § 9, p. 9. (Daybreak, § 9, p. 11.) i think understanding the context of this apparent reference is also informative. as i have argued before, i think brobjer understates the case when he says merely that Kierkegaard “read and criticized” martensen. as a professor of Hegelian philosophy and, later, the head of the state-run danish Church, martensen bore the brunt of Kierkegaard’s attacks during Kierkegaard’s final and most vicious polemical period. Of all the figures with whom Kierkegaard feuded publicly, Martensen was perhaps his greatest arch-enemy. although martensen’s treatment of Kierkegaard in Christian Ethics is quite civil, it illustrates the central point of contention between them, namely that Kierkegaard was an advocate of a strong form of individualism, especially with respect to spiritual matters, whereas martensen defended a much more communal form of religion. since nietzsche’s primary criticism of Christianity is that it is a “herd” phenomenon with disastrous effects for individuality, he perhaps unwittingly aligns himself with Kierkegaard as an individualist in opposition to martensen.

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nietzsche’s Christology in The Anti-Christ. these references are in texts written late in 1888, in the months following brandes’ recommendation that he read Kierkegaard and his gifts of texts that discuss Kierkegaard. in brandes’ essay on goethe, the one nietzsche praises in his letter, nietzsche would have read several pages on Kierkegaard’s largely negative reaction to goethe. in particular, he would have read that Kierkegaard attacked goethe’s permissive attitude toward sexuality as indicative that goethe was a pleasure-seeker representing a kind of naturalistic assault on the ethical.71 nietzsche revered goethe greatly, and goethe seems to be one of nietzsche’s models for an ideal “free spirit” or “sovereign individual.”72 in one of the most powerful passages in Twilight of the Idols, nietzsche associates goethe with his own highest ideals and seems to directly address Kierkegaard’s critique of goethe: goethe conceived of a strong, highly cultured human being, skilled in all physical accomplishments, who, keeping himself in check and having reverence for himself, dares to allow himself the whole compass and wealth of naturalness, who is strong enough for this freedom; a man of tolerance, not out of weakness, but out of strength, because he knows how to employ to his advantage what would destroy an average nature; a man to whom nothing is forbidden, except it be weakness, whether that weakness be called vice or virtue….a spirit thus emancipated stands in the midst of the universe with a joyful and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only what is separate and individual may be rejected, that in the totality everything is redeemed and affirmed—he no longer denies….but such a faith is the highest of all possible faiths: i have baptized it with the name Dionysos.73

Here nietzsche not only addresses the issue of whether goethe is an aesthetic “pleasure-seeker,” he also portrays his ideal stance of joyful affirmation as a kind of faith, an alternative to Christian faith. (Two passages later Nietzsche reaffirms his reverence for Goethe and specifically mentions their “agreement over the ‘Cross.’ ”74) i suspect that nietzsche may have had Kierkegaard in mind in offering this particular defense of goethe. i also suspect that nietzsche might have had Kierkegaard in mind in a passage in The Anti-Christ in which he addresses modern Christians and offers “a psychology of ‘belief,’ of ‘believers.’ ”75 Nietzsche specifically addresses those who take the fact brandes, “goethe und dänemark,” p. 44. see, for example, nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 256, p. 271 (Beyond Good and Evil, § 256, p. 196) and nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, oder: Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophirt, leipzig: C.g. naumann 1889, “streifzüge,” § 51, p. 129. (english translation: Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, trans. by r.J. Hollingdale, london: penguin books 1990 [1968], “expeditions,” § 51, p. 115.) 73 nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, “streifzüge,” § 49, pp. 126–7. (Twilight, “expeditions,” § 49, p. 114.) 74 nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung, “streifzüge,” § 51, p. 129. (Twilight, § 51, “expeditions,” p. 115.) in his footnote to this passage r.J. Hollingdale explains that this refers to “goethe’s Venetian Epigrams, in which the Cross is one of four things goethe says he cannot endure.” 75 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 50, pp. 285–7. (The Anti-Christ, § 50, pp. 178–9.) 71 72

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that they are passionately moved by Christianity as proof of its truth: “it appears, if i have not misheard, that there exists among Christians a kind of criterion of truth called ‘proof by potency.’ ‘belief makes blessed: therefore it is true.’ ”76 nietzsche criticizes this line of reasoning as saying nothing more than “ ‘i believe that belief makes blessed—consequently it is true,’ ” and he says that “this ‘consequently’ would be the absurdum itself as a criterion of truth.”77 in discussing this particular form of Christian faith, i suspect that nietzsche might have had in mind what he had read about Kierkegaard’s notion of absurd faith and his dictum that “subjectivity is the truth.” Lastly, I believe that Nietzsche might have been influenced by Kierkegaard or even had Kierkegaard in mind in developing his Christology in The Anti-Christ. nietzsche gives a highly idiosyncratic and, by his own admission, a very selective account of Jesus in this book.78 Yet several of the main characteristics that nietzsche attributes to Jesus in this book match closely with the main characteristics of Kierkegaard’s life of faith, characteristics that nietzsche read about in the sources discussed above. For example, nietzsche says that the “original Christianity” we find in Jesus is a way of life, not a doctrine or creed: a “new way of living, not a new belief.”79 nietzsche insists that “only Christian practice, a life such as he who died on the Cross lived, is Christian.”80 sounding very much like Kierkegaard, nietzsche writes that to “reduce being a Christian, Christianness, to a holding something to be true…means to negate Christianness.”81 likewise, nietzsche portrays Jesus as standing apart from, and even opposed to, any kind of established religious institution or church: “Christianity negates the church.”82 nietzsche does not explicitly label Jesus an individualist, but he implies as much by describing him as a kind of “free spirit” who recognizes no “society,” “state” or “civic order.”83 in harmony with Kierkegaard’s conception of absurd faith, nietzsche insists that with Jesus faith is “opposed to any kind of word, formula, law, belief, dogma” and that “the idea is lacking that a faith, a ‘truth’ could be proved by reasons (his proofs are inner ‘lights,’ inner feelings of pleasure and self-affirmation, all of them ‘proofs of strength’).”84 much like Kierkegaard’s emphasis on inwardness and subjectivity,

ibid. ibid. 78 nietzsche even lists passages that he thinks have been misattributed to Jesus. see nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 45, pp. 276–9. (The Anti-Christ, § 45, pp. 171–3.) 79 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 33, p. 259. (The Anti-Christ, § 33, p. 158.) 80 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 39, pp. 256–7. (The Anti-Christ, § 39, p. 163.) see also Der Antichrist, § 33, pp. 258–9; §35, p. 261; and § 41, pp. 269–70. (The Anti-Christ, § 33, p. 158; § 35, p. 159; and § 41, p. 166.) 81 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 39, pp. 265–7. (The Anti-Christ, § 39, p. 163.) 82 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 27, p. 250. (The Anti-Christ, § 27, p. 151). see also Der Antichrist, § 29, pp. 251–3; § 32, pp. 256–8; § 36, pp. 261–2. (The Anti-Christ, § 29, pp. 152–3; § 32, pp. 156–7; § 36, p. 160.) 83 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 32, pp. 256–8. (The Anti-Christ, § 32, pp. 156–7.) 84 ibid. 76 77

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nietzsche thinks Jesus emphasizes inward experiences and “inner realities.”85 For example, he thinks Jesus understands “redemption” as a kind of inward experience attained by living a life of love and peace: “it is through the practice of one’s life that one feels ‘divine,’ ‘blessed,’ ‘evangelic,’ at all times a ‘child of god.’ ”86 in keeping with this, nietzsche portrays the “original Christianity” of Jesus as joyfully lifeaffirming, focusing entirely on this world and rejecting any emphasis on an afterlife or a “beyond”: “the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ is a condition of the heart, not something that comes ‘upon the earth’ or ‘after death.’ ”87 nietzsche repeatedly refers to Jesus as the bringer of “glad tidings,” an “evangel,” offering what nietzsche describes as “an actual and not merely promised happiness on earth.”88 It is essential to Nietzsche’s account of Jesus that he is not a unique figure but rather a psychological type, one that is rare but that may recur in any age: “even today, such a life is possible, for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible at all times.”89 whether or not nietzsche had Kierkegaard in mind as a recurrence of this type, it seems clear that The Anti-Christ offers what is in many ways a very Kierkegaardian Christology, one that may have actually been influenced by Kierkegaard. At the very least, Kierkegaard may have influenced Nietzsche’s decision to give a separate treatment of the “psychological type” of Jesus and “original Christianity,” one very different from his critical treatment of later Christianity. if in fact nietzsche had Kierkegaard or his ideal life of faith in mind as a recurrence of this Christ-like type, this would obviously be a very complimentary association for Kierkegaard. Yet, as i will discuss shortly, this association entails a critique since nietzsche also criticizes this psychological type. Thus, exploring the possibility of Kierkegaard’s influence on Nietzsche in the ways i have suggested reveals important insights into how nietzsche might critically respond to Kierkegaard’s ideal life of faith. III. Contrasting Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on the Best Way of Life Having reviewed nietzsche’s reading and reception of Kierkegaard, i will now attempt to establish how Kierkegaard’s life of faith and nietzsche’s life of sovereignty stand in critical contrast with each other by elucidating the arguments they could bring to bear in critiquing each other’s ideals. i will begin with nietzsche’s potential critiques of Kierkegaard’s ideal life of faith. as i mentioned earlier, many of nietzsche’s usual critiques of Christianity fail to apply to Kierkegaard’s form of Christianity. despite this, I think Nietzsche would still find a deep ressentiment and nihilism within the life Kierkegaard is proposing. Building on what was just discussed, the first Nietzschean criticism of Kierkegaard’s ideal i will call the absurd faith argument. nietzsche joins Kierkegaard nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 29, pp. 251–3; § 32, pp. 256–8; § 34, pp. 259–61. (The Anti-Christ, § 29, p. 153; § 32, pp. 156–7; and § 34, p. 158.) 86 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 33, pp. 258–9. (The Anti-Christ, § 33, pp. 157–8.) 87 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 34, pp. 259–60. (The Anti-Christ, § 34, pp. 158–9.) 88 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 42, pp. 270–1. (The Anti-Christ, § 42, p. 166.) 89 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 39, pp. 265–7. (The Anti-Christ, § 39, pp. 163–4.) 85

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in criticizing the overemphasis on “pure rationality” in modern philosophy. but nietzsche also directly criticizes the stance of absurd faith, “credo quia absurdum,” that Kierkegaard ascribes to the knight of faith.90 among other places, nietzsche finds this form of faith in the writings of one of his favorite writers, Blaise Pascal (1623–62). nietzsche held pascal in very high esteem despite his Christianity, and might have had a similar reaction to Kierkegaard.91 (the comparison of Kierkegaard and pascal is one that nietzsche would have found in reading and rereading brandes’ work.92) nietzsche revered pascal as a potential higher type ruined by Christianity. in The Anti-Christ nietzsche laments that Christianity has corrupted “the reason even of the intellectually strongest natures by teaching men to feel the supreme values of intellectuality as sinful, as misleading, as temptations.”93 Nietzsche finds Pascal the most regrettable failure of this kind, but he might have had a similar response to Kierkegaard: “the most deplorable example: the depraving of pascal, who believed his reason had been depraved by original sin while it had only been depraved by his Christianity!”94 in nietzsche’s diagnosis, this acceptance of an absurd faith marks an ascetic and slavish self-sacrifice of one’s reason, what he calls the “suicide of reason.” Nietzsche remarks on the absurd “faith of pascal, which resembles in a gruesome manner a continual suicide of reason—a tough, long-lived, wormlike reason that cannot be killed all at once and with a single stroke.”95 nietzsche explains that accepting blind, absurd faith is an ascetic self-sacrifice and a slavish abdication of one’s pride in oneself: “From the start, the Christian faith is a sacrifice: a sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and selfmockery, self-mutilation.”96 so whether or not nietzsche has Kierkegaard in mind as a thinker who promotes absurd faith, nietzsche has a severe critique of this conception of faith as representing a stance of ascetic self-hatred and nihilism. although nietzsche criticizes this notion of absurd faith, he concedes that it matches with the original Christianity as taught and practiced by Jesus. nietzsche identifies Pascal’s kind of faith as the “faith demanded, and not infrequently attained, by original Christianity,” in contrast to the faith of those like martin luther, who nietzsche thinks perverted the original Christian message.97 it is likely, therefore, that he would concede to Kierkegaard that his conception of faith is that of “original Christianity.” this is precisely what makes Kierkegaard’s ideal life of faith immune For example, see nietzsche’s 1886 preface to the second edition of Daybreak. Friedrich nietzsche, Morgenröthe. Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurtheile, leipzig: e.w. Fritzsch 1887, § p3, p. viii. (Daybreak, § p3, p. 4.) 91 as brobjer points out, nietzsche may have regarded Kierkegaard as a brilliant psychologist, regardless of his faith, in the way he regarded pascal. see brobjer, “nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard,” p. 262. 92 brandes, Main Currents in 19th Century Literature, vol. 2, p. 189. 93 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 5, pp. 219–20. (The Anti-Christ, § 5, p. 129.) 94 ibid. 95 nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 46, p. 64. (Beyond Good and Evil, § 46, p. 60.) 96 ibid. 97 ibid. 90

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to nietzsche’s usual critiques of Christianity: nietzsche does not intend these usual critiques to apply to the Christianity of Jesus. they are aimed at what he sees as the ascetic Christianity developed by paul (whom nietzsche calls “the antithetical type to that of the ‘bringer of glad tidings’ ”)98 and at the modern remnants of this ascetic Christianity. Nonetheless, Nietzsche does have specific criticisms of the life of absurd faith he attributes to Jesus. Nietzsche finds in Jesus “a combination of the sublime, the sick and the childish.”99 nietzsche calls him an “anti-realist” and accuses him of an “instinctive hatred of every reality” resulting in “flight into the ‘ungraspable,’ into the ‘inconceivable.’ ”100 He thinks that his absurd faith is childlike in its simplicity, non-rationality, and tendency toward the fantastical. nietzsche suspects that Jesus was a kind of idiot-savant, describing his absurd faith as “a return to childishness in the spiritual domain” and diagnosing it as a symptom of “degeneration.”101 thus, nietzsche’s criticism of Jesus takes aim at precisely the characteristic that unites Kierkegaard and Jesus (and pascal): absurd faith. nietzsche argues that this faith is a form of degeneration and decadence. the next nietzschean argument against Kierkegaard’s ideal we might call the selfdenigration argument. whereas Kierkegaard would accuse nietzsche’s sovereign individual of despairing self-inflation, Nietzsche would accuse Kierkegaard’s knight of faith of nihilistic self-deflation. For example, Nietzsche would find evidence of nihilism in the fact that Kierkegaard’s knight of faith renounces all self-reliance and adopts a stance of utter dependency on god. For Kierkegaard, as for nietzsche, faith in oneself and faith in god are mutually exclusive. as we learn in Fear and Trembling, the person of faith does not trust in himself, as the hero of the ethical life does, but rather he trusts entirely in god. For nietzsche, a fundamental, instinctive faith in oneself is a sign of health and nobility of soul.102 in contrast, nietzsche would condemn the knight of faith’s renunciation of this faith in himself as slavishly self-denigrating. nietzsche diagnoses this kind of will to dependency as resulting from an inner weakness and an “anarchy of the instincts” which make one unable to maintain individual independence.103 the fact that this dependency involves a stance of absolute obedience would make Kierkegaard’s life of faith subject to another set of Nietzsche’s fiercest attacks. Nietzsche portrays a stance of obedience as a central defining feature of the herd-like, slavish man.104 according to nietzsche, the stance

nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 42, p. 270. (The Anti-Christ, § 42, p. 166.) nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 31, p. 255. (The Anti-Christ, § 31, p. 155.) 100 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 32, p. 256; § 29, p. 153. (The Anti-Christ, § 32, p. 156; § 29, p. 153.) 101 ibid. 102 nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 287, pp. 258–9. (Beyond Good and Evil, § 287, pp. 227–8.) 103 nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 258, p. 228. (Beyond Good and Evil, § 258, p. 202.) 104 nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 199, pp. 121–3 (Beyond Good and Evil, § 199, pp. 110–11); nietzsche, Genealogie, § i:14, p. 29. (Genealogy, § i:14, p. 47.) 98 99

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of obedience to what lies outside of oneself results from inner weakness that renders one unable to command and obey oneself.105 as nietzsche would predict, and Kierkegaard freely admits, the stance of obedient dependency on god requires that one consider oneself nothing before god and that one will to be nothing before god. although Kierkegaard’s life of faith involves accepting your life in the world as a gift and task from god, it also involves the will to “make yourself nothing, become nothing before god.”106 this matches closely with one of Nietzsche’s most straightforward definitions of nihilism: “the will to nothingness.” nietzsche explains this will to nothingness as the “will to self-belittlement” and self-torture in which a weak and resentful person vents his aggression against himself.107 thus, nietzsche could argue that Kierkegaard’s conception of faith is rooted in nihilism and self-hatred. the last and closely related nietzschean argument against Kierkegaard’s life of faith we might call the guilt argument. For nietzsche, one of the most dangerous forms that nihilistic self-belittlement can take is moralistic self-accusation, the belief in one’s own fundamental guilt. nietzsche thinks that an emphasis on sin and guilt is anathema to the original teachings of Jesus: “in the entire psychology of the ‘gospel’ the concept guilt and punishment is lacking; likewise the concept reward. ‘sin,’ every kind of distancing relationship between god and man, is abolished—precisely this is the ‘glad tidings.’ ”108 in contrast, one of nietzsche’s most frequent criticisms of all later Christianity is that it promotes “the denigration and self-violation of man through the concept of sin.”109 nietzsche singles out the notion of guilt before God, a notion on which Kierkegaard puts great emphasis, as representing a particularly vicious form of this self-hatred within the man of ressentiment: “guilt before god: this thought becomes an instrument of torture to him. He apprehends in ‘god’ the ultimate antithesis of his own ineluctable animal instincts; he reinterprets these animal instincts themselves as a form of guilt before god.”110 nietzsche believes such self-judgments are not really about regret for actual acts of wrongdoing. He points out that those who are most prone to feelings of guilt are often those who are most free of actual guilt whereas those who are most guilty, that is, criminals, are least likely to feel guilt.111 in nietzsche’s analysis, guilt is a psychological and sociological phenomenon in which those who are inwardly weak preserve some sense of power by venting their aggressive drives against themselves, finding and condemning themselves as guilty out of a need to torture themselves. The concept of guilt can also be used against others in a form of “imaginary revenge,” by making others feel guilty for being happy or strong. in either case, nietzsche believes that the conception of moral guilt is a manifestation of intense resentment. moreover, see, for example, nietzsche, Genealogie, § i:14, p. 29. (Genealogy, § i:14, p. 47.) SKS 11, 16 / WA, 10. 107 nietzsche, Genealogie, § iii:28, pp. 181–2; § iii:25, pp. 170–5. (Genealogy, § iii:28, pp. 162–3; § iii:25, pp. 153–6.) 108 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 33, p. 258. (The Anti-Christ, § 33, p. 157.) 109 nietzsche, Der Antichrist, § 56, p. 298. (The Anti-Christ, § 56, p. 187.) 110 nietzsche, Genealogie, § ii:22, p. 88. (Genealogy, § ii:22, p. 92.) 111 nietzsche, Genealogie, § ii:14, p. 73. (Genealogy, § ii:14, p. 81.) 105 106

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nietzsche indicates that the concept of guilt is a central cause of the modern crisis of nihilism. according to nietzsche, the concept of guilt had previously saved us from “suicidal nihilism” by making sense of life’s suffering (“i suffer as punishment for something i did wrong”).112 but over the centuries the self-belittling effects of the belief in our own guilt and worthlessness has taken its toll; this attempted “cure” for nihilism ends up intensifying the disease. Convinced of our own abject guilt and worthlessness, we have become “weary of man” and lost the will to ourselves, thereby returning to the condition nietzsche calls nihilism.113 thus, nietzsche could argue that despite Kierkegaard’s vision of a joyful, life-affirming Christianity, his insistence on the concept of guilt precludes this, contributing instead to nihilism. How might Kierkegaard respond to these critiques? First, in response to the absurd faith argument Kierkegaard would of course welcome the comparison of his ideal way of life with the life of Jesus, since that is what it is supposed to be. Kierkegaard would readily concede that from an external perspective this faith will seem like madness and idiocy. Yet he would question nietzsche’s reading of the gospel on the topic of this Christian life. nietzsche seems to simply ignore or dismiss whatever in the gospels offends his sense of what Jesus stood for: for example, the many references to guilt and sin before god. Kierkegaard might diagnose this kind of willfully selective reading as “offense” in the face of actual Christianity. For Kierkegaard, Christianity is both joyfully life-affirming and severe regarding guilt and sin. in response to the guilt argument, Kierkegaard could offer a counterargument against nietzsche’s notion of guilt. simply put, nietzsche seems to have no way of dealing with what we might call “actual guilt.” guilt may be a widespread sociological phenomenon, and this phenomenon may arise from historical and psychological conditions as nietzsche says it does. but as nietzsche admits, the sociological and psychological phenomenon of guilt has little or nothing to do with actual guilt from particular acts of wrongdoing. Yet Kierkegaard would insist that in each individual’s life there are inevitably particular acts that the individual recognizes as wrong by his own standards (whatever these may be), and thus what we might call actual guilt remains a reality for each individual, regardless of one’s exposure to the (separate) historical and sociological phenomenon of guilt. unless nietzsche makes the implausible claim that his sovereign individuals would never do anything wrong according to their own beliefs and standards, the problem of guilt in a very straightforward sense arises. nietzsche certainly cannot do away with all notions of wrongdoing without making all ethical evaluative judgments of human life impossible. as Johannes says in Fear and Trembling, “[a]n ethics which ignores sin is an altogether futile discipline.”114 therefore, the past that needs redemption is not just the grand-scale historical past redeemed by the accomplishments of nietzsche’s sovereign individual. Kierkegaard would insist that every so-called ‘sovereign individual’ also has a past, a personal history, in which there are particular acts of nietzsche, Genealogie, § iii:28, pp. 181–2. (Genealogy, § iii:28, pp. 162–3.) nietzsche, Genealogie § iii:14–16, pp. 130–41; § iii:20, pp. 153–7; § iii:28, pp. 181– 2. (Genealogy, § iii:14–16, pp. 122–9; § iii:20, pp. 139–41; § iii:28, pp. 162–3.) 114 SKS 4, 188 / FTP, 124. 112 113

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wrongdoing. so it seems that Kierkegaard’s “problem of guilt” at least begins. if it is not to be resolved through divine forgiveness of sin, how could nietzsche attempt to resolve it, especially through self-reliance alone? in response to the self-denigration argument, Kierkegaard would freely admit that from a worldly perspective, the absolute obedience demanded by Christianity is slavish or at least overly severe. but Kierkegaard would insist that this absolute obedience to god is a condition of absolute individuality. Far from being selfdenigrating, Kierkegaard maintains that Christianity actually presents man with an almost offensively exalted conception of himself.115 moreover, Kierkegaard could respond penitentially to nietzsche’s attacks, namely, by confessing that many supposed Christians actually act out of slavishness, resentment, or ascetic life-denial just as Nietzsche says they do. But he would maintain that this does not reflect in any way on the ideal of Christianity, which remains a life of genuine love and true individuality. For Kierkegaard, Christianity requires not just the appearance of love, freedom from hatred, an individual conscience, etc., but the reality of these things in one’s concrete life. so Kierkegaard could use nietzsche’s accusations to further intensify our repentance and to prompt the confession he and nietzsche each prompt their readers to make: that what in the modern world is called Christianity is the opposite of true, “original Christianity.” but Kierkegaard could make these concessions to nietzsche while still maintaining his ideal of the life of faith. Having examined nietzschean attacks on Kierkegaard’s life of faith, i will now turn to Kierkegaard’s potential critiques of nietzsche’s life of individual sovereignty. as others have done, i will explore how nietzsche’s ideal matches the portraits of various forms of despair that Kierkegaard’s pseudonymn anti-Climacus traces in The Sickness unto Death. studies comparing Kierkegaard and nietzsche often try to link nietzsche’s best way of life with what Kierkegaard calls the aesthetic life.116 i have previously argued against this view by showing how far nietzsche’s ideal figure is from Kierkegaard’s aesthete when these types are properly understood.117 what nietzsche’s ideal has to do with “aesthetics” is not that it is the life of enjoyment or pleasure, but rather that it involves the creation of works of art, or of oneself as something like a work of art. In contrast to the superficial life of pleasure, nietzsche expects that this creative life will entail a deep and often painful spiritual struggle. in fact, nietzsche makes clear his disdain for the “pleasure-seeking and SKS 11, 199 / SUD, 85. a version of this suggestion may be found in a number of studies (malantschuk, Hannay, Kellenberger, Clayton) and is the central thesis of angier’s recent book, see angier, Either Kierkegaard / Or Nietzsche, p. 1; gregor malantschuk, “Kierkegaard and nietzsche,” trans. by margaret grieve, in A Kierkegaard Critique: An International Selection of Essays Interpreting Kierkegaard, ed. by Howard a. Johnson and niels thulstrup, Chicago: Henry regnery 1962, p. 124; James Kellenberger, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Faith and Eternal Acceptance, london: macmillan press 1997, p. 124; alastair Hannay, “nietzsche/Kierkegaard: prospects for dialogue?” p. 210; p. 212; John powell Clayton, “zarathustra and the stages on life’s way: a nietzschean riposte to Kierkegaard?” Nietzsche-Studien, no. 14, 1985, p. 191. 117 thomas miles, “Kierkegaard and nietzsche reconsidered,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2007, pp. 441–69. 115 116

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lack of conscience” of what Kierkegaard would call the aesthetic life.118 nietzsche’s emphasis on the “great responsibility” and “autonomy” of his aesthetically creative hero clearly distinguish his ideal from Kierkegaard’s aesthetic life.119 Furthermore, nietzsche applauds great artists and creators for their inner strength and integrity, precisely the qualities that Kierkegaard’s aesthetic person lacks.120 i think it is far more helpful to consider nietzsche’s ideal of sovereignty as a form of what Kierkegaard calls “the ethical life,” a life defined by self-reliant self-responsibility. in The Sickness unto Death this life is diagnosed as a form of despair, specifically “active defiant despair.” This despair involves “wanting to be oneself,” specifically wanting to be the self one arbitrarily creates rather than one’s actual self. As Anti-Climacus explains, the person of defiant despair wants to use his freedom “to rule over himself, or create himself, make this self the self he wants to be, determine what he will have and what he will not have in his concrete self.”121 Anti-Climacus finds this attempt at self-creation to fail of its own internal contradictions, since this self “is constantly relating to itself only experimentally, no matter what it undertakes, however great, however amazing and with whatever perseverance.”122 He explains that this attempt to master or create oneself becomes only an arbitrary, “fictional” building project in which the self is “forever building only castles in the air.”123 He argues that since one’s free, self-reliant willpower “exerts the loosening as much as the binding power; it can, at any moment, start quite arbitrarily all over again and, however far an idea is pursued in practice, the entire action is contained within a hypothesis.”124 the problem is not only that this self relates to itself only experimentally, but that since it lacks any notion of authority superceding its fleeting and sometimes contradictory whims, it cannot undertake anything with the seriousness necessary to bring this undertaking to completion: “it recognizes no power over itself; therefore in the final instance it lacks seriousness and can only conjure forth the appearance of seriousness, even when it bestows upon its experiments its greatest possible attention.”125 i think that what anti-Climacus presents here is a powerful critique of selfreliance and the possibility of sovereignty. i will now attempt to articulate more carefully the specific arguments against Nietzsche’s ideal to be found here. The first Kierkegaardian critique we might call the self-mastery argument. anti-Climacus suggests that you cannot “master” yourself, or base any lasting commitments on self-mastery, since the “binding power” of one’s will is no stronger than the “loosening power” of one’s will. as i read it, this is a version of the old socratic argument that self-mastery is impossible because the self that is mastered is the nietzsche, Morgenröthe, 1887, § p4, p. ix. (Daybreak, § p4, p. 4.) nietzsche, Genealogie, § ii:2, pp. 93–5. (Genealogy, § ii:2, pp. 58–60.) 120 nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 188, pp. 108–10. (Beyond Good and Evil, § 188, pp. 100–2.) 121 SKS 11, 182 / SUDP, 99 122 SKS 11, 184 / SUDP, 100. 123 ibid. 124 ibid. 125 ibid. 118 119

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same self that is supposed to be master.126 in the life of sovereignty what binds you to your commitments is your own arbitrary will. but this is also what threatens to dissolve your commitments: as a sovereign individual, you can change your mind, and your commitments and values, whenever you want. this sovereign freedom has a self-defeating catch in that none of these commitments and values could be lasting or secure. whatever of your own will, passion, and seriousness you bring to bear in making a commitment can equally be brought to bear to change or drop this commitment. For this reason, anti-Climacus claims that commitments and values upheld on the strength of one’s own self-reliant responsibility necessarily remain a mere experiment or hypothesis, subject to revision at any moment. this argument suggests that nietzsche’s ideal of sovereignty is self-defeating: individual sovereignty relies upon, but also precludes, having lasting values and commitments. note that the argument here is not that nietzsche advocates a life without lasting commitments, as others have suggested.127 the argument is that despite the fact that nietzsche advocates a life of responsibility and lasting commitments, these are made impossible by the fact that these commitments are sovereign commitments, upheld only by one’s own independent, sovereign conscience. if sovereign independence and personal integrity are not mutually supportive, as nietzsche supposed, but rather mutually incompatible, the life of the sovereign individual is doomed to internal collapse and disintegration. Closely related to this, anti-Climacus’ account suggests what we might call the problem of meaning argument. nietzsche supposes that his sovereign individuals will find or create meaning in their lives; in fact, he relies on them to restore the meaning to the lives of others as well. but if one cannot uphold lasting commitments and everything accomplished through this sovereignty is merely provisional and hypothetical, nothing accomplished in this way could have genuine meaning or significance. A person cannot simply endow his projects or himself with value or significance by the force of his will. Since the sovereign individual rejects any power over himself, he cannot gain meaning or significance in this way either. As a result, the sovereign way of life necessarily lacks meaning or significance. Given that for Anti-Climacus this attempt to create a fictional self involves a loss of one’s actual self, a third argument emerges that we might call the loss of self argument. in pretending to be able to create himself, this person both avoids and rejects the self he has. as anti-Climacus says, what is constructed in this process of self-creation is not a self at all but only a kind of empty riddle: the self wants in its despair to savor to the full the satisfaction of making itself into itself, of developing itself, of being itself; it wants to take the credit for this fictional, masterly project, its own way of understanding itself. and yet what it understands itself to be is in the final instance a riddle; just when it seems on the point of having the building finished, at a whim it can dissolve the whole thing into nothing.128 see, for example, plato’s Republic, 431a. For example, anger makes this claim: “nietzsche actually depreciates the idea that strong evaluative constraints on the will are desirable.” see angier, Either Kierkegaard/Or Nietzsche, p. 42. 128 ibid. 126 127

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thus, not only does the sovereign individual fail to create the self that he wants to have, but his continual attempts to construct a created, hypothetical self result in a failure to have a substantial self altogether. so, far from establishing individuality, it seems that nietzsche’s sovereignty precludes meaningful individuality. Having outlined the case Kierkegaard’s writings can offer against nietzsche’s ideal sovereign individual, i will now address how nietzsche might respond to these critiques. nietzsche might begin by insisting that the kind of self-mastery envisioned in these critiques is very different from the self-mastery he proposes. sovereign self-mastery is not the same as ascetic self-control. unlike the ascetic, Nietzsche’s self-affirming individual is not divided within himself; he does not turn against his own natural drives. i think nietzsche could use aristotle’s schema to say that the sovereign individual is more like the “moderate” man (the σώφρων) whose drives are already in line with what he knows to be good than the “self-controlled” (ἐγκρατής) man whose drives would lead him astray from what he knows to be good unless he controls and suppresses them.129 nietzsche might also reply that if there is a “loosening power” in the sovereign individual’s life, it is not the same as the “binding power.” the binding power is one’s “dominating instinct,” one’s greatest passion in life; whatever drives or wishes might run contrary to this as a “loosening power” are by definition not as strong as the dominating drive. it is true that from an external perspective there may be something arbitrary about what a person’s greatest drive or passion in life happens to be. likewise, and along with this, it may seem arbitrary what particular commitments a person happens to undertake. but in the life nietzsche advocates, once one comes to have this passion and enter into these commitments, they cannot just as easily or arbitrarily be done away with. the self-reverence with which the sovereign individual makes a promise also ensures that the promise will not be broken arbitrarily or on a whim, even for the sake of something else that this individual desires or values. Sovereign individuals do not fulfill their commitments out of pursuit of “narrow utility,” which would allow for such wavering as the needs of narrow utility change. Rather, they fulfill their commitments because they value and respect themselves enough to keep their word. whatever these competing desires and values may be, they do not override their value and respect for themselves as people who keep their commitments. For these reasons, a defender of nietzsche’s ideal could argue that nietzsche’s particular kind of self-mastery is immune to the critique of self-mastery found in The Sickness unto Death. if this is the case, it does much to address the next two arguments against nietzsche’s ideal. the loss of meaning argument seems to rest on the strength of the self-mastery argument. Nietzsche would be the first to admit that a life lacking all constraint would dissolve into meaninglessness. without lasting commitments and strong constraints we would descend into meaningless nihilism. but if we can successfully defend nietzsche’s conception of self-mastery, then we have no reason to fear this objection. nietzsche envisions his sovereign individual as precisely that figure who can redeem us from the nihilism brought about by ascetic ideals and their collapse. the sovereign individual does not impose meaning by fiat. 129

see book 7 of aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

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Rather this figure’s actual, manifested excellence in creations and accomplishments grant us renewed “belief in man” and hope for human possibilities. as nietzsche says, the person who provides us a “glance of something perfect, wholly achieved, happy, mighty, triumphant” is the “man who justifies man,” the figure “for the sake of which one may still believe in man!”130 likewise, the argument that nietzsche’s proposed sovereignty involves a loss of self also rests on the strength of the self-mastery argument. once again, nietzsche would admit that if one lacked the ability to have lasting commitments such that one’s life became meaningless, mature human selfhood could not be achieved. this is precisely what nietzsche calls décadence, and he thinks it involves the internal disintegration of the self. but if we have no reason to think that the sovereign individual necessarily lacks constraint and meaning, we have no reason to fear the loss of self suggested by this objection. nietzsche could also point out that behind these three arguments against sovereignty there is a notion of self-creation that is very different from the self-creation he proposes. What Kierkegaard describes as active defiance is a matter of momentary, capricious refashioning of the entire self according to one’s current preferences. as nietzsche makes clear in the “giving oneself style” passage of The Gay Science, the self-creation he proposes is not a matter of sudden, arbitrary attempts to restructure or recreate the self as a whole. not everything about one’s self is able to be changed. there are some things that simply must be accepted (e.g., in nietzsche’s own case, his debilitating sickness), although one can perhaps make something valuable out of these hardships. moreover, what can be changed is changed only “through long practice and daily work at it.”131 For nietzsche, this task of “becoming oneself” by becoming a sovereign individual is not something achieved in the moment of choice or decision, but through a long and difficult process of growth and personal development. it is, in fact, the work of a lifetime. Having examined several of the arguments and replies Kierkegaard and nietzsche could exchange in a dialogue on the best way of life, i think we are left without a decisive defeat on either side. both have insightful, penetrating, and deeply challenging objections to the other’s ideal way of life, and we can learn much by bringing them into a critical exchange. as we might expect from Kierkegaard and nietzsche, in the end we are not given a final answer already worked out for us. Instead we are brought into enlightened confrontation with a series of penetrating ethical questions: what is the nature of individuality? what are the limits of self-reliance? what is the basis for personal responsibility? what is the proper response to wrongdoing and guilt? what is the source of life’s greatest joy and the foundation of genuine lifeaffirmation? I hope to have shown that the agreements and disagreements between Kierkegaard and nietzsche establish the contours of a valuable dialogue on these issues, a dialogue that remains open for us to continue.

nietzsche, Genealogie, § i:12, pp. 24–5. (Genealogy, § i:12, pp. 43–4.) Friedrich nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, Chemnitz: e. schmeitzner 1882, p. 207. (english translation: The Gay Science, trans. by walter Kaufmann, new York: vintage books 1974, § 290, p. 232.) 130 131

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Nietzsche’s Corpus Morgenröthe. Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurtheile, Chemnitz: schmeitzner 1881, § 9, p. 9. Götzen-Dämmerung, oder: Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophirt, leipzig: C.g. naumann 1889, § “streifzüge,” § 49, pp. 126–7. Der Antichrist, leipzig: C.g. naumann 1895, § 27, pp. 249–51; § 29, pp. 251–3; §§ 32–3, pp. 256–9; §§ 35–6, pp. 261–2; § 39, pp. 265–7; §§ 41–2, pp. 269–71; § 50, pp. 285–7. Nietzsche Briefwechsel, section 3, vol. 5, ed. by giorgio Colli and mazzino montinari, berlin: walter de gruyter 1984, see letter 997 from nietzsche to georg brandes dated February 19, 1888, p. 259. II. Sources of Nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard brandes, georg, Die Hauptströmungen der Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, vols. 1–2, trans. by adolf strodtmann, leipzig: F. dunker 1876. — “goethe und dänemark,” Goethe Jahrbuch, vol. 2, 1882, pp. 1–48. — “Henrik ibsen,” in Moderne Geister: Literarische Bildnisse aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Frankfurt: rütten & loening 1887, pp. 413–65. Høffding, Harald, Psychologie in Umrissen auf Grundlage der Erfahrung, trans. by F. bendixen, leipzig: Feus 1887. martensen, Hans lassen, Die christliche Ethik. Allgemeiner Theil, trans. by alexander michelsen, gotha: besser 1871. III. Secondary Literature on Nietzsche’s Relation to Kierkegaard adams, robert merrihew, “the Knight of Faith,” in The Existentialists: Critical Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre, ed. by Charles Guignon, Lanham and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefied 2004, pp. 19–32. akiyama, Hideo, 『ニヒルと神—キェルケゴールとニーチェ』 [Kierkegaard and nietzsche], tokyo: shakaishisou-kenkyuukai-shuppann-bu 1951. angier, tom p.s., Either Kierkegaard / Or Nietzsche: Moral Philosophy in a New Key, aldershot: ashgate 2006. arendt, Hannah, “tradition and modern age,” Partisan Review, vol. 21, no. 1, 1954, pp. 53–75. — “marx, Kierkegaard et nietzsche,” Preuves, no. 133, 1962, pp. 14–29.

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arffmann, andreas, “Kierkegaard og nietzsche,” Kristeligt Dagblad, november 7, 1994. assaad-mikhail, Fawzia, “nietzsche et Kierkegaard. les possibilités d’une interprétation nietzschéenne de Kierkegaard: dialogue des morts-vivants,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 71, no. 4, 1966, pp. 463–82. — “mort de l’homme et subjectivité.” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 73, 1968, pp. 430–61. — “Kierkegaard interprète de nietzsche,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 78, no. 1, 1973, pp. 45–87. balthasar, Hans urs von, “Kierkegaard und nietzsche,” Prometheus. Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Idealismus, Heidelberg: F.H. Kerle 1937, pp. 695– 734. baumgarten, eduard, “Für und wider das radikale böse. meditationen über wesentliche differenzen zwischen Jaspers und max weber; zwischen Jaspers, Kant, goethe, Kierkegaard und nietzsche,” in Karl Jaspers, ed. by paul arthur schilpp, stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1957, pp. 323–53. bense, max, “die idee der naturerkenntnis bei nietzsche und Kierkegaard,” Unsere Welt. Zeitschrift des Keplerbundes zur Förderung der Naturwissenschaften, vol. 29, no. 1, 1937, pp. 33–36. berardini, sergio Fabio, “oltre il nichilismo. Kierkegaard e nietzsche,” in L’edificante in Kierkegaard, ed. by Isabella Adinolfi and Virgilio Melchiorre, Genova: Il melangolo 2005 (Quaderni di studi kierkegaardiani, vol. 4), pp. 241–57. berry, thomas, “dostoevsky and socrates,” The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research, vol. 14, 1991, pp. 224–9, and vol. 15, 1992, pp. 45–52. bespaloff, rachel, Cheminements et carrefours. Julien Green, André Malraux, Gabriel Marcel, Kierkegaard, Chestov devant Nietzsche, paris: vrin 1938. beyer, Harald, “nietzsche og Kierkegaard,” Edda. Nordisk tidsskrift for litteraturforskning, vol. 42, 1955, pp. 161–72. binkley, luther J., “the origins of existentialism: Kierkegaard and nietzsche,” in his Conflict of Ideals: Changing Values in Western Society, new York: van nostrand 1969, pp. 127–61. Boehm, Rudolf, “Het wijsgerig mensbeeld in de filosofie der XIXe eeuw,” Dietsche Varande en Belfort, vol. 106, 1961, pp. 565–75. bøggild, Jacob, “Kierkegaard & nietzsche & slavemoralen,” Passage, vol. 27, 1997, pp. 105–29. bohlin, torsten, “Kierkegaard och nietzsche,” Meddelelser fra Søren Kierkegaard Selskabet, vol. 2, 1950, pp. 28–31. bonifazi, Conrad, Christendom Attacked: A Comparison of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, london: rockliff 1953. børge, vagn, “nietzsche og Kierkegaard—deres aktualitet er enorm,” Viborg Stifts Folkeblad, december 3, 1957. brahde, per, Magt og afmagt. Kierkegaard og Nietzsche spejlet i Karen Blixens forfatterskab, aalborg: aalborg universitet 2004 (Arbejdspapirer om filosofi og videnskabsteori, no. 5). brobjer, thomas H., “nietzsche’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 41, 2003, pp. 251–63.

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brock, werner, An Introduction to Contemporary German Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1935, pp. 46–87. Cantoni, Remo, “La figura del Freigeist in nietzsche,” Archivio di filosofia (Kierkegaard e Nietzsche), milan and rome: bocca 1953, pp. 239ff. Castelli, enrico (ed.), Archivio di filosofia (Kierkegaard e Nietzsche), milan and rome: bocca 1953. Cinelli, Albert, “Nietzsche and Kierkegaard on Existential Affirmation,” Southwest Philosophy Review, vol. 5, 1989, pp. 135–41. Clair, andré, “Énigme nietzschéenne et paradoxe Kierkegaardien,” Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, vol. 27, 1977, pp. 196–221. Clayton, John powell, “zarathustra and the stages on life’s way. a nietzschean riposte to Kierkegaard?” Nietzsche-Studien, vol. 14, 1985, pp. 179–200. Conant, James Ferguson, Three Philosophers: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and James, ph.d. thesis, Harvard university, Cambridge, massachusetts 1991. Cosby, glen alan, The Living Word: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and their Relation to Socrates, ph.d. thesis, emory university, atlanta, georgia 1998. Csejtei, Dezső, Filozófiai etűdök a végességre. Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard és Nietzsche a halálról [philosophical studies about the Finitude. schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and nietzsche on death], veszprém: veszprémi Humán tudományokért alapítvány 2001. de Feo, nicola massimo, “la dialettica dell’inversione,” in L’ontologia fondamentale. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, milan: silva 1964, pp. 19–38. delgaauw, bernard, Denkers van deze tijd. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Barth, Niebuhr, Sartre, Bultmann, Franeker: wever 1953. earle, w.a., “the paradox and death of god: Kierkegaard and nietzsche,” in Radical Theology: Phase Two: Essays in a Continuing Discussion, ed. by C.w. Christian and glenn r. wittig, philadelphia: J.b. lippincott 1967, pp. 27–42. enders, markus, “das verständnis von wahrheit bei sören Kierkegaard, ludwig Feuerbach und Friedrich nietzsche,” in Die Geschichte des philosophischen Begriffs der Wahrheit, ed. by markus enders and Jan szaif, berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 2006, pp. 301–35. eriksen, trond berg, Nietzsche og det moderne, oslo: universitetsforlaget 1989, pp. 24–6. Farmer, Yanick, La Notion d’Authenticité chez Nietzsche et Kierkegaard, m.a. thesis, laval university, Canada 1995. Fink-eitel, Heinrich, “Kierkegaards vorgreifende Kritik an nietzsche und Foucault,” in his Die Philosophie und die Wilden. Über die Bedeutung des Fremden für die europäische Geschichte, Hamburg: Junius 1994, pp. 299–354. gabriel, leo, Existenzphilosophie: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre. Dialog der Positionen, vienna and munich: Herold 1968. Garff, Joakim, “En rænkefuld patron. Ironi hos Kierkegaard og Nietzsche,” Kredsen, vol. 53, no. 2, 1987, pp. 46–67. gerlach, Hans-martin, “spätbürgerliche philosophie und Konservatismus,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 24, 1976, pp. 603–17. giesz, ludwig, “schwindel der Freiheit,” Studium Generale, vol. 14, 1961, pp. 509–20.

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.51–50 ’‫ עמ‬,1985 ,53 ,‫ מאזנים‬,”‫ “קפקא בין קירקגור וניטשה‬,‫ יעקב‬,‫[ גולומב‬Golomb, Jacob, “Kafka between Kierkegaard and nietzsche,” Moznaim: Literary Monthly of the Hebrew Writers in Israel, no. 53, 1985, pp. 50–1.] — “Kafka’s existential metamorphosis: From Kierkegaard to nietzsche and beyond,” Clio, vol. 14, 1985, pp. 271–86. — “buber between nietzsche and Kierkegaard. From ‘thus spoke zarathustra’ to ‘i and thou,’ ” Iyyun, vol. 55, 2006, pp. 137–64. gómez, michael a., The Philosophy of Struggle, the Struggle of Philosophy: Unamuno, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and the Relation to Modernism, ph.d. thesis, boston university, boston 2002. gottlieb, roger s., “The Existing Individual and the Will-to-Power.” A Comparison of Kierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s Answers to the Question: What Is it to Make a Transition from One Value System to Another? ph.d. thesis, brandeis university, boston 1975. gramont, Jérôme de, “Kierkegaard. acheminement vers la vie,” in his Le discours de la vie: trois essais sur Platon, Kierkegaard et Nietzsche, paris, budapest, and turin: l’Harmattan 2001, pp. 129–240. grau, gerd-günther, “nietzsche und Kierkegaard. wiederholung einer unzeitgemässen betrachtung,” Nietzsche-Studien, vol. 1, 1972, pp. 297–333. (english version: “nietzsche and Kierkegaard,” in Studies in Nietzsche and the JudaeoChristian Tradition, Chapel Hill, north Carolina: university of north Carolina press 1985, pp. 226–51.) — Kritik des absoluten Anspruchs. Nietzsche—Kierkegaard—Kant, würzburg: Königshausen & neumann 1993. — “Jüdischer nietzscheanismus oder nietzscheanischer antisemitismus. brandes, nietzsche und Kierkegaard,” in Jüdischer Nietzscheanismus, ed. by werner stegmaier and daniel Krochmalnik, berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 1997 (Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung, vol. 36), pp. 127–50. — Vernunft, Wahrheit, Glaube. Neue Studien zu Nietzsche und Kierkegaard, würzburg: Königshausen & neumann 1997. griesemann, otto a., “nietzsche und Kierkegaard. seher unserer zeit,” Der Convent, vol. 2, 1951, pp. 252–54. Hannay, alastair, “nietzsche/Kierkegaard. prospects for dialogue?” in his Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays, london and new York: routledge 2003, pp. 207–17. Hargreaves, H.J., “nietzsche e Kierkegaard,” Kriterion (bello Horizonte), vols. 7–8, 1949, pp. 193–201. Harper, ralph, The Seventh Solitude: Man’s Isolation in Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche, baltimore: Johns Hopkins press 1965 and 1967. Hasegawa, Hiroshi, 『格闘する理性—ヘーゲル、ニーチェ、キルケゴール』 [Fighting reason—Hegel, nietzsche and Kierkegaard], tokyo: Kawadeshoboushinsha 1987. Henrici, peter, “di fronte a marx, Kierkegaard e nietzsche,” in his “maurice blondel di fronte alla filosofia tedesca,” Gregorianum, no. 56, 1985, pp. 615–38. Henriksen, Jan-olav, The Reconstruction of Religion. Lessing: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, grand rapids, michigan: eerdmans 2001, pp. 75–129.

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Hill, brian victor, “Kierkegaard/nietzsche/marx,” in his Education and the Endangered Individual: A Critique of Ten Modern Thinkers, new York and london: teachers College press 1973, pp. 77–82. Hinman, Lawrence M., “Temporality and Self-Affirmation. A Kierkegaardian Critique of nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 11, 1980, pp. 93–119. van der Hoeven, Johan, “Kierkegaard en nietzsche als stormvogels i & ii,” Beweging, vol. 49, 1985, pp. 8–11 and pp. 41–3. Høffding, Harald, “Kierkegaard og nietzsche,” in his Mindre Arbejder, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1899–1913, vol. 3, pp. 186–95. (previously published in Svensk tidskrift, 1911, no. 1, pp. 332–9.) Hoppe, günter, Der Wille zur Vollkommenheit und die Dekadenz. Eine psychologische Untersuchung unter Anleitung von Kierkegaard und Nietzsche, ph.d. thesis, university of bonn, bonn 1958. Hubben, william, Four Prophets of our Destiny: Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kafka, new York: macmillan 1952. Hudson, deal wyatt, Three Responses to Romanticism: Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, ph.d. thesis, emory university, atlanta, georgia 1978. ijsseling, Hester, Over voorwoorden. Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, ph.d. thesis, university of amsterdam, amsterdam 1997. ikejima, shigenobu, 「ニイチェとキェルケゴール」 [nietzsche and Kierkegaard],『理想』 [risou], vol. 62, 1935, pp. 88–100. Jakobsen, Frode, “nietzsche og Kierkegaard,” Gads danske Magasin, vol. 36, 1942, pp. 514–25. — “nietzsche og Kierkegaard,” in his Standpunkter. Fra Besættelsestid til Vietnam, 1966, pp. 237–49. Jaspers, Karl, “Kierkegaard und nietzsche: leiden oder lust als letztes,” in his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, berlin: springer 1919, pp. 225–6. — “Herkunft der gegenwartigen philosophischen situation (die geschichtliche bedeutung Kierkegaards und nietzsches),” in his Vernunft und Existenz. Fünf Vorlesungen, groningen: J.b. walters 1935, pp. 1–28. (in english as “the origin of the Contemporary philosophical situation. the Historical meaning of Kierkegaard and nietzsche,” in his Reason and Existence: Five Lectures, trans. by william earle, milwaukee: marquette university press 1997, pp. 19–50.) — “the importance of nietzsche, marx and Kierkegaard in the History of philosophy,” Hibbert Journal, vol. 49, 1950–51, pp. 226–34. Joós, Ernő, Isten és lét: körséta Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche és más filozófusok társaságában [god and existence: walking about with Heidegger, Kierkegaard nietzsche and other philosophers], sárvár: sylvester János Könyvtár 1994. Kellenberger, James, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche: Faith and Eternal Acceptance, london: macmillan / st. martin’s 1997 (Library of Philosophy and Religion). Keller, daniel lynn, A Comparative Study of Pathologizing in Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, ph.d. thesis, emory university, atlanta, georgia 1980. Knodt, Karl ernst, “die gefahr ‘nietzsche’ und ihre nachwirkung in der neuesten deutschen lyrik,” Monatsblätter für deutsche Literatur, vol. 1, 1897, pp. 364–9 and pp. 395–402.

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Kodalle, Klaus-m., “diesseits der logik des moralismus. vom ‘geist’ der verzeihung bei Kierkegaard, nietzsche-scheler, dostojewski und Camus,” in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference “Kierkegaard and the Meaning of Meaning It,” Copenhagen, May 5–9, 1996, ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon stewart, berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 1997 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), pp. 387–409. Kraus, a., “nietzsches und Kierkegaards auffassung vom wesen der musik,” Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor Pszchologie, vol. 8, 1940, pp. 265–74. Kuypers, etienne, “enkele gedachten over de relatie van F. nietzsche en s. Kierkegaard tot de opvoeding.” V.I.C., vol. 13, no. 4, 1984, pp. 63–73. — “subjectiviteit als maatstaf voor Kierkegaard en nietzsche,” in his Verantwoordelijk handelen. De uitdaging van een nieuwe toekomst, leuven/amersfoort: acco 1990, pp. 77–81. — “zwijgend spreken. over mystieke metafysica,” Filosofie, vol. 5, no. 6, 1995, pp. 11–18. Kwiatkowski, Stanisław, “Egzystencjalne uwarunkowania potrzeby myślenia: Kierkegaard, nietzsche” [existential Conditions of the need for thought: Kierkegaard, nietzsche], Studia Filozoficzne, no. 4, 1987, pp. 51–65. larrañeta olleta, rafael, “nietzsche y Kierkegaard: vuelta al origen,” in Conocer a Nietzsche, salamanca: sociedad Castellano-leonesa de Filosofía 1996, pp. 259–71. leendertz, willem, “Kierkegaard, schopenhauer, nietzsche & de existentiephilosophie,” in Philosophia; beknopt handboek tot de geschiedenis van het wijsgerig denken, vols. 1–2, ed. by Hendrik van oyen, utrecht: de Haan 1949, vol. 2, pp. 337–78. lewis, Charles, “Kierkegaard, nietzsche, and the Faith of our Fathers,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 20, 1986, pp. 3–16. lønning, per, The Dilemma of Contemporary Theology: Prefigured in Luther, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, oslo: norwegian universities press 1962. löwith, Karl, “Kierkegaard und nietzsche,” Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 11, 1933, pp. 43–66. — Kierkegaard und Nietzsche oder philosophische und theologische Überwindung des Nihilismus, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1933. lund, margaret, “the single ones (Kierkegaard and nietzsche),” Personalist, vol. 41, 1960, pp. 15–24. malantschuk, gregor, “Kierkegaard og nietzsche,” Det Danske Magasin, vol. 3, no. 6, 1955, pp. 381–95. Makarushka, Irena, “Reflections on the ‘Other’ in Dinesen, Kierkegaard, and nietzsche,” in Kierkegaard on Art and Communication, ed. by george pattison, new York and london: macmillan/st. martin’s 1992, pp. 150–9. malik, Habib C., Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought, washington, d.C.: Catholic university of america press 1997, p. ix; p. xx; p. 140; pp. 249–50; pp. 253–4; p. 284; pp. 287–8; pp. 318–19; p. 326; pp. 333–6; pp. 340–1; p. 344; p. 351; p. 353; p. 359; pp. 369–70; pp. 372–3; pp. 376–7; p. 383; p. 394.

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Franz rosenzweig: a Kindred spirit in alignment with Kierkegaard Claudia welz

it is not clear which of søren Kierkegaard’s writings Franz rosenzweig (1886– 1929) read, and explicit references to Kierkegaard are rare. nonetheless, they clearly show that rosenzweig highly appreciated him. Furthermore, a comparison of their writings shows that they are kindred spirits. both of them can with justice be called existentialist thinkers. in order to demonstrate this, i will proceed in four steps. in a first step, I will present the few places where Rosenzweig explicitly mentions Kierkegaard. in a second step, i will describe how the relation between Kierkegaard and rosenzweig has been portrayed in the twentieth-century secondary literature. in a third step, i will summarize the results of the most recent investigations. Finally, i will point to some desiderata of the research on Kierkegaard and rosenzweig. I. Rosenzweig’s Explicit References to Kierkegaard rosenzweig was born in Kassel and grew up as the only child of a rich, assimilated Jewish family. He first studied medicine; later he focused on philosophy and history. He wrote his ph.d. thesis, entitled Hegel und der Staat, with Friedrich meinecke (1862–1954) as his supervisor. He was on the point of conversion to Christianity when the experience of a Yom Kippur service in 1913 brought him back to Judaism. until the First world war, he studied with Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) at the Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in berlin. during the war, he wrote his main work The Star of Redemption and decided against a research career.1 strickened with progressive paralysis in 1922, he continued to write essays during many years of his illness and translated Judah Halevi (ca. 1075–1141) and the Hebrew bible together with martin buber (1878–1965). while working on the Star, rosenzweig confessed to “gritli,” that is, margrit rosenstock-Huessy (1893–1959), the wife of his best friend eugen rosenstockHuessy (1888–1973), that he wrote the book “with a mixture of recklessness and ‘fear and trembling,’ and the feeling of very defective preparation.”2 it is possible Franz rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, Frankfurt am main: J. Kaufmann 1921. Franz rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”-Briefe. Briefe an Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy, ed. by inken rühle and reinhold mayer, tübingen: bilam 2002, p. 229 (letter from February 5, 1919): “mit einer Mischung aus Leichtsinn und Furcht und Zittern, und dem Gefühl sehr mangelhafter Vorbereitung.” 1 2

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but not certain that rosenzweig here alludes to the title of Kierkegaard’s book Fear and Trembling. the same formulation can also be found in the bible (tobit 13:5; philippians 2:12) and in the Musaf prayer at the Jewish new Year’s feast. in the introduction to the Star Kierkegaard is presented as someone who shares the resistance against the Hegelian integration of revelation into the all and the translation of the individual into the universal.3 whether Fear and Trembling is in the background or not, rosenzweig’s critique goes well with Johannes de silentio’s idea of the “suspension” of the ethical in the sense of the universal. personal experience matters—for Kierkegaard just as for rosenzweig. it is no coincidence that rosenzweig mentions “søren Kierkegaard’s own consciousness, or the consciousness designated by some other first and last name, of personal sin and of personal redemption, which neither aspired to nor gave access to a dissolution into the cosmos.”4 both rosenzweig and Kierkegaard approach redemption via negativa, against the backdrop of the consciousness of sin. sin is an experience that singularizes. both of them describe sin as a form of self-enclosure in which the self shuts itself in. Here the Jew and the Christian share and continue a common biblical heritage. in a letter to martin buber of december 24, 1922, rosenzweig describes Kierkegaard’s paradoxical thought as corresponding to his life, and therefore, he finds him trustworthy: “Aber hinter jedem Paradoxon Kierkegaards spürt man biographische Absurda—und deshalb muß man ihm credere.”5 in this letter rosenzweig compares Kierkegaard with Karl barth (1886–1969) and Friedrich gogarten (1887–1967), the founders of the movement of “dialectical theology.” while rosenzweig senses biographical absurda behind each paradox of Kierkegaard, he states polemically that behind barth’s colossal negations one senses nothing but the wall on which they are painted, the whitewashed wall of his immaculate and well-ordered life. in a letter to gritli of august 14, 1920, however, he speaks of the “Kierkegaardian gap,” which he sees (rightly or wrongly) also in barth: that he does not like to believe in growth, creation, the church etc., although he knows about it.6 in a letter to eugen rosenstock-Huessy of september 1, 1919, rosenzweig compares the night in which he nearly converted to Christianity and was, through

3 Franz rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, Frankfurt am main: J. Kaufmann 1921, p. 12. (english translation: The Star of Redemption, trans. by barbara e. galli, madison: university of wisconsin press 2005, p. 13.) 4 rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 12. (The Star of Redemption, p. 13.) 5 Franz rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, ed. by rachel rosenzweig and edith rosenzweig-scheinmann, the Hague: martinus nijhoff 1976ff., vol. 1, Briefe und Tagebücher, p. 876. in this letter rosenzweig refers to “Barths zweite Auflage des Römerbriefs” (ibid., p. 875). in a letter to max dienemann of november 7, 1924, he refers to “both” of barth’s commentaries on paul’s letter to the romans (cf. ibid., p. 998). 6 rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”-Briefe, p. 644: “Hans schickt, zur Weiterschickung an Eugen, etwas Neues von Barth. Stark wie immer, aber doch mit seiner Lücke, der Kierkegardschen [sic!] Lücke, dass er an das Wachstum, die Schöpfung, die Kirche u.s.w. nicht glauben mag, obwohl er davon weiss.”

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eugen, placed vis-à-vis du rien, facing suicide as an option,7 with eugen’s so-called “Kierkegaardzusammenstoss.” obviously, his friend was not as keen on Kierkegaard as rosenzweig himself. unfortunately, we know neither exactly the reason for this “clash with Kierkegaard” nor what it consisted in. as far as i know, these more or less mysterious remarks are the only places where rosenzweig directly mentions Kierkegaard. in any case, the issues connected to his name are issues of life and death. these issues are taken up in the secondary literature. II. Twentieth-Century Secondary Literature on the Relation between Rosenzweig and Kierkegaard in the twentieth century there are relatively few works that compare the thought of Kierkegaard and rosenzweig and to my knowledge none that deals with a historical investigation of rosenzweig’s reception of Kierkegaard.8 the indirect and subtle, yet close connections between their worlds of thought have seldom been thematized at all. in 1974 shmuel Hugo bergman’s book Dialogical Philosophy from Kierkegaard to Buber appeared in Hebrew; its translation was published in 1991. it contains individual studies on the respective philosophers, also on rosenzweig, but no explicit comparison.9 in other books on Kierkegaard rosenzweig is mentioned too, but not with the aim of comparing their projects.10 in his unpublished doctoral dissertation Sören Kierkegaard and Franz Rosenzweig: The Movement From Philosophy to Religion from 1976, michael david oppenheim claims that in consequence of Kierkegaard’s and rosenzweig’s understanding of philosophy and religion as two opposed ways of life, “they concluded that the individual’s quest for authenticity in existence demanded that he undertake the movement from philosophy to religion.”11 this is the main thesis of the dissertation. while Kierkegaard “describes the movement as one from despair to faith,” rosenzweig “speaks of it in terms of the abandonment of a life of the latter is implicit in the formulation “vis-à-vis du rien bzw. vis-à-vis der andächtig heruntergeholten Phiole” (rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”-Briefe, p. 420) which is an allusion to goethe’s Faust, who then decided to sell his soul to mephistopheles instead of putting an end to his life. 8 in his “introduction” to rosenzweig’s Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man, and God (trans. and ed. by nahum glatzer, introduced by Hilary putnam, Cambridge, massachusetts and london: Harvard university press 1999, pp. 1–20), Hilary Putnam claims that Rosenzweig, like Wittgenstein, is “influenced by Kierkegaard,” and that “both share a profoundly critical attitude toward the traditional philosophical search for a theory of the ‘essence’ of things” (ibid., p. 2). However, he only refers to secondary literature concerning wittgenstein and Kierkegaard. 9 shmuel Hugo bergman, Dialogical Philosophy from Kierkegaard to Buber, trans. by arnold a. gerstein, albany: state university of new York press 1991. 10 see, for example, pia søltoft, Svimmelhedens Etik—om forholdet mellem den enkelte og den anden hos Buber, Lévinas og især Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: gads Forlag 2000, pp. 34–7. 11 Microfilm at the University of California, Santa Barbara, p. vi. 7

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isolation and meaninglessness for one of communication and trust.”12 Yet, one can ask whether the opposition between philosophy and religion is really their shared view. after all, rosenzweig called the Star a “system of philosophy”: in his own retrospective description from 1925, the Star is “bloß ein System der Philosophie” and not a Jewish book.13 Yet, at least its final Part III is hardly understandable without religious prerequisites. and Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus uses reason in order to get beyond reason, thereby discovering god as the frontier of thinking that is at once inside and outside of it. the paradox is “the passion of thought” that renders thinking paradoxical: it wants to discover “something that thought itself cannot think.”14 in order to discover what it cannot think, it must think. thus thinking must use itself in order to reach the unthinkable as an object of thought that at the same time eludes it. the paradox can only be thought in introducing the difference between the known and the unknown into thought. this move is at once philosophical and religious. in an essay from 1978, michael d. oppenheim inquires into Kierkegaard’s and rosenzweig’s methods of communication and the theories of time.15 their “critiques of idealism” and “rediscovery of the individual both as the author and as the recipient of the philosophical communication” give the foundation for the comparison, which comes to the result that a Heraclitean understanding of time as an ongoing stream or process led Kierkegaard to express his ideas by “indirect communication,” since direct communication treats knowledge as a fixed matter and presupposes that the individual stands in a timeless position, and brought rosenzweig to write a substantial part of his work through letters.16 rosenzweig’s letters and pedagogical writings are indeed reminiscent of Kierkegaard’s maieutic notion of the upbuilding and his antipersuasive rhetoric.17 However, it seems to me that Kierkegaard went even a step ibid., p. vii. Franz rosenzweig, “das neue denken,” in rosenzweig, Kleinere Schriften, ed. by edith rosenzweig, berlin: schocken verlag 1937, pp. 373–98, see p. 374. 14 SKS 4, 242–3 / PF, 37. 15 michael d. oppenheim, “taking time seriously: an inquiry into the methods of Communication of søren Kierkegaard and Franz rosenzweig,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, vol. 7, 1978, pp. 53–60. 16 ibid., pp. 53–6. 17 Cf. tim Hagemann, Reden und Existieren. Kierkegaards antipersuasive Rhetorik, berlin and vienna: philo 2001; george pattison, “the rhetorics of the upbuilding discourses,” in his Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses: Philosophy, Theology, Literature, london: routledge 2002, pp. 141–61; george pattison, “the theory and practice of language and Communication in Kierkegaard’s upbuilding discourses,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 19, 1998, pp. 81–94. in a letter to martin buber, published as “the builders: Concerning the law” (1923), rosenzweig writes a passage that recalls the prefaces to Kierkegaard’s upbuilding discourses: “For a word does not remain in its speaker’s possession; he to whom it is addressed, he who hears it, or acquires it by chance—they all get a share of it; the word’s fate, while in their possession, is more fate-ful than what its original speaker experienced when first uttering it…your words have really gone through the experience of a change of heart: they have been changed…you speak now to other hearers, even though they are the same as the ones who listened to you before.” see Franz rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, ed. by nahum n. glatzer, new York: schocken 1987 [1955], p. 73. 12 13

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further than rosenzweig in his new thinking. the title of oppenheim’s essay quotes rosenzweig’s own description of his “speech-thinking” [Sprachdenken]: it needs the other and takes time seriously, because it cannot anticipate the other’s answer but has to wait for everything and depends on the other for its own.18 in actual conversation, i do not know in advance what the other will say to me because i myself do not even know what i am going to say; by contrast, lonely logical thinking allows the thinker to know his thoughts in advance.19 Kierkegaard wrote his pseudonymous works and upbuilding discourses without expecting a direct reply from his reader. readers can sit and decide in all privacy what to make of that which they are reading. rosenzweig, however, developed his thought in the face of concrete others whom he met personally. Correspondingly, the time frame is different: for rosenzweig, the time to be bridged is the time from talk to talk or from letter to letter, while for Kierkegaard it can be centuries. In the final analysis, Rosenzweig’s method of communication remains more “direct” than Kierkegaard’s. Klaus wivel’s polemics against Kierkegaard’s Works of Love in the name of rosenzweig can hardly be counted as a scholarly achievement.20 another, very different interpretation of Kierkegaard’s book can be found in the following piece: commenting on Works of Love, michael oppenheim has written a comparative chapter on Kierkegaard, buber, rosenzweig, and levinas that shows how close Kierkegaard and rosenzweig are in their understanding of the interhuman, that is, of the importance, possibilities, and limits of relationships between humans, and the role that the god-relationship plays in these relationships. the god-relationship is seen as essential to the development of a self that is transformed by god’s love.21 the narratives of the aforementioned authors reveal three common, underlying themes, namely, that “relationships to other persons are the sine qua non of human living, the quest for authenticity ultimately points to a relationship to the divine, and the relationship to god requires the individual to turn to the neighbor.”22 the model of the autonomous self that gives primacy to self-consciousness, self-reliance, and selfdirection is thereby rejected.23 in her monograph on the theme of death and existence eva birkenstock examines the question of whether philosophizing means learning to die and presents

rosenzweig, “das neue denken,” p. 387. (english translation: “the new thinking,” in Philosophical and Theological Writings, trans. and ed. by paul w. Franks and michael l. morgan, indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett 2000, pp. 126–7.) 19 ibid. 20 Klaus wivel, Næsten Intet. En jødisk kritik af Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1999. Cf. also the review by bruce H. Kirmmse, “Klaus wivel, Næsten Intet. En jødisk kritik af Søren Kierkegaard. C.a. reitzels Forlag, Copenhagen 1999. 212 pp.,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 22, 2002, pp. 237–40. 21 michael oppenheim, “Four narratives on the interhuman: Kierkegaard, buber, rosenzweig, and levinas,” in Works of Love, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1999 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 16), pp. 249–78, here p. 249 and pp. 253–4. 22 ibid., p. 251. 23 ibid., p. 252. 18

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the answers of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, sartre, and rosenzweig.24 their texts are analyzed and contextualized thoroughly, yet it is relatively seldom that Kierkegaard’s and rosenzweig’s thought is compared. the result of the comparison is that for both of them the acknowledgment of death (and not the suppression of its facticity) is the basis of relating to human mortality. to start with, the loneliness of the self is the main motif—and then the ways part: rosenzweig leads us from the miserable monologue to a dialogical existence with another and sees the possibility of overcoming death in the experience of love, of self-abandoning devotion,25 while—on birkenstock’s view—Kierkegaard does not show a way out of the desperate isolation.26 one wonders whether this result would be different if birkenstock had not only analyzed the discourse “at a grave” (1845) but also the discourse “the work of love in remembering one dead,” to which she refers in a footnote.27 III. Recent Investigations giacomo bonagiuso’s article from 2002 focuses on silence and the word.28 a ph.d. thesis that focuses on this theme is in production. in my dissertation Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy from 2008 i have compared Kierkegaard’s and rosenzweig’s stances on seven interrelated topics.29 the comparison of Kierkegaard’s and rosenzweig’s alternatives to theodicy is guided by a twofold understanding of this problem, which can count as the common denominator of these authors, namely, as the hermeneutical problem of how to interpret the epistemic ambiguity of god’s transcendence (see subsections a–C below) and as the ethical problem of how to cope emotionally and practically with experiences of evil and suffering (see subsections d–F). subsection g analyzes their respective interpretations of the book of Job and then reviews their reasons for rejecting a theodicy. eva birkenstock, Heißt philosophieren sterben lernen? Antworten der Existenzphilosophie: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Rosenzweig, Freiburg i. br. and munich: alber 1997. 25 ibid., p. 223; p. 284; p. 286. 26 see ibid., p. 50, which refers to the discourse “ved en grav,” see SKS 5, 442ff. / TD, 69ff. 27 Cf. ibid., p. 33, note 10; see SKS 9, 339–52 / WL, 317–29. For an analysis of this discourse that demonstrates that, for example, theodor adorno’s and Knud e. løgstrup’s criticisms are misplaced, see ulrich lincoln, Äußerung: Studien zum Handlungsbegriff in Søren Kierkegaards Die Taten der Liebe, berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 2000 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 4), pp. 420–40. 28 giacomo bonagiuso, “dalla morte: il silenzio e la parola. Kierkegaard e rosenzweig,” in Il religioso in Kierkegaard. Atti del convegno di studi organizzato dalla Società Italiana per gli Studi Kierkegaardiani tenutosi dal 14 al 16 dicembre 2000 a Venezia, ed. by isabella Adinolfi, Brescia: Morcelliana 2002, pp. 393–409. 29 Claudia welz, Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, tübingen: mohr siebeck 2008 (Religion in Philosophy and Theology, vol. 30), pp. 89–276. additional references to Kierkegaard’s and rosenzweig’s texts can be found on the page numbers indicated at the respective paragraphs. 24

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A. Explaining Experiences of God’s Absence, Distance, or Hiddenness in explaining experiences of god’s absence, distance, or hiddenness, Kierkegaard and Rosenzweig focus on five factors: (1) God’s revelation, (2) the influence of human action, (3) the difference between sin and faith, (4) the role of temporality, and (5) the role of language. they agree on the following points:30 (1) god is not “given” to us except in his giving himself. revealing himself, god is also concealing himself. as the absolute, he nonetheless relates himself to us, but sometimes only incognito. Hence, the invisible might appear in, with and among the visible—other than it is. (2) god’s love might be hidden sub contrario and at places where we would never have expected it to be. it can be discovered by us only if we let ourselves be moved into love: by becoming loving persons, loving others. (3) the eyes of the sinner see only a lack of love, thereby making the presence of god’s love appear absent, while faith lets us see love despite apparent lovelessness. What looks like a void of love can only be filled by loving in the void. (4) god’s eternal love presents itself in every temporal moment as the future of the past—and wishes to be welcomed and awaited patiently in times of trials. (5) Human language is the locus of god’s love, which speaks to us in human words, emotions, and actions. speaking about god ideally makes god present by representing his presence but actually tends to absent the speaker from god as long as he is presented as a “He” rather than addressed as “You” in dialogue. speaking with god in prayer presupposes that he is near enough to hear. Characteristic disagreements occur as regards god’s giving-himself in(to) human temporality.31 Kierkegaard’s early discourses on James 1:17–2232 are examples of the apophatic dimension of his theology, which is complemented by a kataphatic Christological dimension. what he has outlined in 1843 with regard to god as the absolute good, he has in 1847 specified with regard to God as love, in Works of Love. according to Kierkegaard, god can be omnipresent because he is not himself bound to spatiotemporality and its limitations. He can be present to every present and can be at different places at the same time. due to god’s being spirit we cannot become aware of god’s presence without consciously relating to it—in spiritual “contemporaneity” with god. rosenzweig, of course, does not share Kierkegaard’s trinitarian concept of God. He criticizes both the “humanization” of God in the crucified and his “spiritualization.”33 instead, he describes the threefold modality of god’s relating to the world in creation, revelation, and redemption. in The Star of Redemption and in his letters he repeatedly reminds his Christian friends of the “not-yet” of redemption and God’s All-love. The world is not yet finished. God does not want to redeem man34

Cf. ibid., pp. 89–117; pp. 182–97; pp. 384–5. Cf. ibid., pp. 97–9; pp. 179–81; pp. 190–2. 32 “every good and every perfect gift is from above” (1843) in three variations, see SKS 5, 41–56 / EUD 31–48. SKS 5, 129–42 / EUD, 125–39. SKS 5, 143–58 / EUD, 141–58. 33 rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 504. (The Star of Redemption, p. 425.) 34 as an element of the triad “god, world, man,” “man” does not denote the gender, but translates rosenzweig’s german collective noun Mensch, i.e., human being. 30 31

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“without him.”35 therefore, redemption takes time. rosenzweig portrays god’s love as being ever wholly of the moment, reaching one point after the other.36 in contrast to Kierkegaard, he in this context conceptualizes the presence of god’s love as temporal and refuses to define it as an essential attribute. Love “is” only as relation to the beloved. love’s presence is co-presence—or love is not present at all. rosenzweig cannot, as Kierkegaard could, console individuals who feel abandoned by god’s love in assuring them that they are surely loved by god regardless of whether they can experience his love at present or not. nonetheless, sooner or later, god’s love will also have reached the temporarily abandoned person. that it gradually becomes omnipresent is, however, a hypothesis that is not verifiable by experience, at least not here and now. Hence, rosenzweig’s model no less than Kierkegaard’s demands faith in god’s love—be it in its hidden presence here and now, or in its still outstanding presence in the future. B. The Presence of God Transcendent How can god as transcendent become present to us such that we become aware of his presence? this is examined by considering his presence in relation to (a) phenomenality,37 (b) temporality,38 and (c) human action.39 (a) In his 1853–55 journals, Kierkegaard clarifies that as spirit God is related paradoxically or inversely to what appears phenomenally. He can come so near to reality that he is “in the midst of the streets of Jerusalem” or “before our very noses.”40 However, god’s nearness is not to be confused with familiarity. because of his omnipresence god in one sense is the nearest of all, and yet in another sense he is infinitely far away, though “infinitely concerned.”41 in order to give us free opportunities for free development, god withdraws from visibility and renounces his opportunities of manipulating the development. since god is present only invisibly, the fact that the world does not see him does not prove very much. worldly appearances say nothing about how god is in himself and how he relates to us. phenomenality is, so to speak, the hiding place of his love. like Kierkegaard, rosenzweig assumes that god is the non-phenomenal origin of the phenomenal world. in agreement with Kierkegaard, he in the Star and in Understanding the Sick and the Healthy (1921) points to god’s manifestations in human language, above all to his name that is meaningful only in the form of address.42 addressed by his name, god appears as unmistakably distinguished from what he is not, because his 35 36 37

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rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, pp. 336–7. (The Star of Redemption, p. 284.) Cf. rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 209. (The Star of Redemption, p. 177.) Cf. welz, Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, pp. 117–19; pp. 197–

Cf. ibid., p. 120; pp. 206–12. Cf. ibid., pp. 121–3; pp. 212–15. 40 SKS 26, 221, nb32:132. 41 SKS 26, 340, nb34:29. 42 Cf. Franz rosenzweig, Das Büchlein vom gesunden und kranken Menschenverstand, ed. by nahum norbert glatzer, düsseldorf: Joseph melzer verlag 1964, pp. 100–2. (Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, pp. 80–3.) 38 39

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“givenness” in the name presupposes his giving of himself and his being called by us. god’s phenomenality in his name is bound to his revelation, which is not visibility in general. what is rendered visible and audible is precisely the relation between god and his opposite—a relation that is realized and actualized only in an interaction. revelation is communication. in addition, rosenzweig discovers god’s love in human language of love. love “is” only in becoming word. instead of drawing conclusions from the human to the divine love, rosenzweig—like Kierkegaard—does precisely the opposite, understanding the language of the song of songs as theomorphous rather than anthropomorphous. In the words of love human and divine love merge. love, like language, is at once sensuous and suprasensuous, eternal in truth, ephemeral in appearance.43 (b) in the opening prayer of Works of Love Kierkegaard describes god’s presence in trinitarian differentiations.44 as eternal love beyond time and as the creative source of all love within time, god is the timeless origin of the temporal; as self-giving love, god’s eternity has entered into time and become temporal in Jesus’ history; as spirit of love, god is omnipresent in the sense of being-present-to-every-present-hereand-now. rosenzweig agrees with Kierkegaard that god’s eternity is relevant for us insofar as it breaks into time and becomes a being-together of god and human beings. both of them discover the renewal of time in the moment when time and eternity touch each other. rosenzweig distinguishes between god’s timeless eternity and the “trinity” of his temporal relations to his creatures, namely, the past and continued present of creation, the present of revelation as “meeting-point” of the “elements” god, man, and world, and the anticipated present and future of redemption. (c) although nothing can demonstrate that god’s love really abides, Kierkegaard takes this thought as the comforting and upbuilding thought, since the concealedness of God’s love is the necessary condition for the edification of human love.45 For Kierkegaard, the most serious problem does not consist in god’s apparent absence or withdrawal, but rather in our inattentiveness to his attentive presence that does not miss the least thing we do. Yet, god with all his power restricts this very power and hides his love so that we are not overwhelmed by him, but remain free to act of our own will. In Rosenzweig, we find an even more radical statement: God holds sway over the world not just by hiding his sway, but by deceiving us about himself.46 Faith shall be without force, and this is possible only if we are free not to believe in god or to believe in him despite appearances and despite the disadvantages it might entail. The more difficult it becomes for us, the riskier it becomes for God himself. in respecting human freedom, god makes godself dependent on it too. we are created without willing it, but revelation and redemption do not occur against our will. becoming aware of god’s presence as love is a challenge insofar as it is not phenomenal from the very start, but has to become phenomenal—through human faith in the invisible, through a trusting interpretation of appearances that suggest otherwise, and through speech acts that presuppose that god is here. 43 44 45 46

Cf. rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 256. (The Star of Redemption, p. 216.) SKS 9, 12 / WL, pp. 3–4. Cf. SKS 9, 221 / WL, 218. Cf. rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 336. (The Star of Redemption, p. 284.)

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C. God’s Immanence and Transcendence: Hegel’s Heritage Reconsidered How is the relation between god’s immanence and transcendence determined in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love and rosenzweig’s Star, and in which sense, if at all, can these books be read as “phenomenologies of love” and as such as variations of the Phenomenology of Spirit by georg wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)? Kierkegaard’s answer to the first part of the question can very briefly be formulated as follows.47 as infinite love, god is ontologically prior to our acts, but love’s transcendence can only be described starting from finite acts of love and in contrast to them. this does not imply that the relation between immanence and transcendence is a simple contrast; rather, immanence and transcendence are dialectically interrelated in love, or more precisely, in each respective work of love. what is visible and feasible of human acts refers beyond itself to its invisible and incomprehensible origin. or, to put it the other way round, the transcendence of (divine) love expresses itself in the immanence of (human) works of love—as that which cannot be expressed in them as proposition but conditions them. if it is true that divine transcendence expresses itself in human movements of transcendence, then god is not only absolutely transcendent or “beyond being” in a metaphysical sense. Kierkegaard accepts “absolute transcendence” with regard to human knowledge of god, that is, in the framework of theoretical philosophy, but not in the framework of practical philosophy. as regards rosenzweig, at least five types of relations between immanence and transcendence can be found in the Star.48 (1) in part i, the “elements” god, man, and world are equally transcendent to each other, but without “knowing” that their relation could be otherwise. (2) in part ii, their transcendence turns into immanence. (a) In the first book that deals with creation, the contrast between immanence and transcendence emerges for the first time, (b) in the second book, which deals with revelation, the contrast is extinguished, and (c) in the third book, which deals with redemption, the contrast arises again in the form of an intertwinement of opposites and their teleological mediation. god’s becoming immanent is also described in temporal terms, namely, as his becoming present. (3) in part iii, rosenzweig reverses the perspectives: it is no longer god who is to become immanent, but man and world. The intertwinement of immanence and transcendence is finally dissolved into god’s all-embracing immanence, into which all creatures will be included in the end. Like Kierkegaard, Rosenzweig can also define divine transcendence in relation to human action; however, he does so primarily in the context of the ongoing process of the redemption of world and man, climaxing in god’s own redemption. unlike rosenzweig, Kierkegaard speaks only of god’s active role as our redeemer, who seems to be the redeemer of humanity more than of this world. Works of Love can be read as a “phenomenology of love” in the sense that it reflects on different forms of love, which are specified as human actions in their relation to god’s activity. both Kierkegaard and Hegel describe the structure of the absolute as “reduplication” and as “spirit” synonymous with “love.” However, the similarity in 47 48

Cf. welz, Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, pp. 123–5. Cf. ibid., pp. 216–18.

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terminology should not lead to the assumption that they also mean the same thing with what they are saying. rosenzweig overtly expresses his (dis)agreements with Hegel, with the german idealistic tradition, and with the Christian tradition upon which it is based. in contrast to Hegel and Kierkegaard, he does not speak of love as a form or function of “spirit.” He even opposes the spirit that separates the Christian and the Jew to the love that unites them.49 Yet, the language spoken by human beings serves the same function for him as the Holy spirit in Christianity: it builds the bridges of translation and linguistic (re)presentation and thereby bridges the differences of tongue and time. thus, although the Star cannot be designated as a “phenomenology of spirit,” it can be designated as a phenomenology of divine love that shows itself in human language—first and foremost in biblical language, but also in its revival in our words. let me now explain the most striking commonalities and differences between Hegel’s, Kierkegaard’s, and rosenzweig’s phenomenologies.50 i suggest there are four. (1) in contrast to Hegel, Kierkegaard does not focus on forms of consciousness or the self-relation of an absolute spirit but portrays, on the one hand, human love in different existential situations, (mis)relations, and forms of interaction, and, on the other hand, its regulative ideal of divine love as described in the new testament. viewing the “is” in the light of the “ought,” he also views the norm and criterion of our actions. both Kierkegaard and rosenzweig envision factuality in the light of the actuality of god’s possibilities and describe love not primarily as knowing of the other, but as form of praxis, of acting for and in favor of the other. love is no longer thought in the context of a “science of appearing knowledge” where it is to become an intentional object of knowledge, but in a social and soteriological context where it concerns human life as whole. (2) according to Kierkegaard’s and rosenzweig’s ethical phenomenologies, god’s love becomes phenomenally present only in its (not causally or mechanically predetermined) effects, that is, in interhuman relations, and only in actu, that is, in human actions and interpretations. the structure of the Star allows rosenzweig to define God’s relation to phenomenality in different ways. (i) As creator of the phenomenal world, god is the origin of and the condition of possibility for all phenomena. (ii) as revealer of his (non)phenomenal love, god presents his activity in the medium of human language. (iii) as redeemer of his creatures, god is not yet, but one day will be seen “face to face” in a new sort of hyper-cosmic phenomenality. in virtue of shifting frames of reference, the phenomena of love as well as the qualification of the horizon in which they appear can change. (3) For Hegel, eternal love enters into a temporal process in whose course its self-negation is a necessary step. by contrast, Kierkegaard believes that god’s eternal love remains unchanged in the course of time. while love’s movement is a paradoxical simultaneity of moving outward and inward, according to Kierkegaard, it is a successive being in-itself, moving out-of-itself and returning to-itself, according letter to gritli from august 19, 1919; Cf. rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”-Briefe, p. 390: “Der Geist wird uns immer scheiden. Das habe ich immer gewußt. Aber ich habe auch immer gewußt, daß uns die Liebe einigt.” 50 Cf. welz, Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, pp. 125–39; pp. 219–25. 49

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to Hegel. Kierkegaard believes that love’s identity is consummated in a movement of generosity and self-expenditure, whereas Hegel grasps it in terms of recuperation and return upon itself. while Hegel thinks of a dialectical self-mediation of the spirit in history as a whole, Kierkegaard refrains from founding individual actions done in the spirit of love in a philosophy of history. rosenzweig’s point of departure is the present event of revelation, from which he looks back into the past of origin and forth into the future of fulfillment. He describes a dialogical process unfolding between god and man rather than a dialectical development of history. Yet, he constructs the Star as “a system of philosophy” with an overall view on creation, revelation, and redemption, including insights from mystical theosophy about the eternal in god. (4) Hegel takes erotic love as a model for his account of the spirit’s love and affirms what Kierkegaard criticizes: a unity of the difference that extends the self and includes another self in such a way that both identify themselves with one another. While Hegel’s concept of the absolute spirit comprises the finite spirit that finally knows its identity with the eternal, Kierkegaard insists that the temporally existing spirit remains, for the time being, “before god.” However, Kierkegaard’s description of being or abiding “in love” comes very close to Hegel’s, since “in” the interiority of eternal love and in its practical performance, the separation is annulled. Hegel attributes to spirit what Kierkegaard attributes to love: it is only what it does—however, while Hegel understands spirit as self-conscious beingfor-the-other-of-itself, Kierkegaard’s concept of spirit breaks away from the model of self-consciousness and dissolves love’s self-objectivation in favor of its selfcommunication as a gift. rosenzweig’s approach is similar to Kierkegaard’s in that he places particular emphasis on love as a relation to genuine alterity. like Kierkegaard, he rejects Hegel’s monism, in which god’s love for others turns out to be his self-relation. Further, he agrees with Kierkegaard that god’s love for us is expressed in our love for the neighbor, which is not a direct effect of divine love but is made possible by it. D. How to Transcend and Transform Negativity? transcending and transforming negativity cannot mean that we surpass temporality, but rather that it is qualified differently, namely, by the way we are present in it. what is it that could give rise to a metamorphosis of the time we live through? Kierkegaard comes to the decision that the evil, sin and suffering that we can experience in the present can be transcended and transformed by means of religious and ethical movements of human self-transcendence, which connect us, within time, to the eternal beyond time. in our temporal movements of faith, love, and hope, god’s eternal love transcending time becomes present also as transcendence in the course of time.51 (1) Faith reconciles us with reality insofar as it relativizes experiences of negativity: they do not have the final say. The meeting “place” of God and human beings actually is a certain outlook on life. if god can give witness of his presence only in faith in which a human being is spiritually “contemporaneous” with him, it 51

Cf. ibid., pp. 140–8 and pp. 179–81.

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is crucial not to give it up, for in faith, the way and the goal coincide: temporality is understood as a way that cannot reach a dead end. this insight can help one from becoming stuck in a desperate moment where god seems to be absent; instead, this moment is transformed into a movement holding out the prospect that one might become co-present with his presence as love again. (2) but how can the hidden presence of god’s love be rediscovered? Kierkegaard’s answer is: only in our own loving. A negatively qualified present can be transformed into a present that enriches and enhances our life by our love, because in love, we “see” the present differently, and it actually becomes different. evil is seen in the light of god’s grace: as a not-yet good that possibly becomes a good. linking human love and lack of evil, Kierkegaard refrains from defending god, since in his opinion it is not our business to justify what he does; we should rather pay attention to what we do. believing in the good entails the practice of willing and doing the good. For Kierkegaard, love is the “power from above that translates evil into good.”52 accordingly, love not only determines the way we see reality, but it is also a power to transform it. even if the good is far from obvious, the one who loves presupposes that it is there, thereby loves it and builds up love in others. thus, becoming a loving person is the only adequate means to stop the proliferation of evil. (3) to love means to hope, to “relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of the good.”53 without hope, we are not ready for a renewal of what is and has been, since we are still occupied with the past. with hopeful, patient expectancy as our modus recipiendi of god’s eternal presence in the length of time, the eternal can already be present and effective in our life when we are still waiting for fulfillment. like Kierkegaard, rosenzweig sees reality in the light of possibility and focuses on what we can contribute to a change for the better. even if there is not much to be done, the attitude in which it is done is decisive: is it trust or mistrust? mistrust tends to become self-sabotage, since it not only disheartens, but will also deprive us (1) of faith, the power of perseverance in remembrance of the past, (2) of love, the power of buoyancy that “be-souls” the present and brings it to life, and (3) of hope, the proleptic power of inviting the future. Yet, there are noteworthy shifts of emphasis.54 For rosenzweig, faith entails the expectancy of the coming Kingdom, whose realization is a goal that is not yet reached, while for Kierkegaard, the way and the goal coincide in faithful expectancy. they both stress the present aspect of anticipation, but, for Kierkegaard, revelation and redemption can coincide in the very moment when god’s presence can be felt, whereas, for rosenzweig, the revelation of god’s presence and the anticipation of redemption in his presence are in no case the same as the redemption that is yet to come. the difference is due to the fact that rosenzweig conceptualizes redemption as an event that concerns the whole world including all of god’s creatures, while Kierkegaard confines it to an event that concerns a single self alone. However, both

52 53 54

SKS 5, 71 / EUD, 61. SKS 9, 249 / WL, 249. Cf. welz, Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, pp. 225–40.

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rosenzweig and Kierkegaard advocate agapeistic ethics as a modus vivendi with the “wound of negativity.”55 while in part ii of the Star faith, love and hope are linked with time-related movements of transcendence, part iii introduces a distinction between the Jewish and the Christian relation to time that is in tension with the explanations of part ii. rosenzweig’s thesis about the Christian “rule” over time and the Jewish “denial” of time has consequences for his description of the Christian and Jewish ways of dealing with suffering. we come to know that Christians overcome suffering through its shaping [Gestaltung] and mastering, while the Jewish people is passively transformed by what it suffers.56 rather than bearing its cross, it seems to be starcrossed. but ultimately, the “unlucky star” will turn out to be the “star of redemption” not only for the Jews, but also for the Christians. the redemption from the most extreme suffering that can in no way be handled by the sufferers any more, since it destroys their very existence, can only come from god, the god of the living and the dead. rosenzweig illustrates this thought by reciting a parable from Judah Halevi’s Book of Kuzari that is connected with isaiah 53—a parable that compares the vicarious suffering of the servant with the transfiguration of a seed-grain that falls into the earth and seemingly changes into earth, water and dirt, but nonetheless, according to a secret plan, becomes a tree that brings forth the fruit like the one out of which its seed once came.57 E. Divine and Human Love both Kierkegaard and rosenzweig ground their ethics of love on a religious experience, the certainty of being loved by god. let us now see for what reasons they speak of divine love when human love is at issue.58 Kierkegaard, first, refers to God’s love as the origin of human love. We find love in each other’s heart which no human being has placed there. second, god’s love is, in Kierkegaard’s view, not only prior to human love, but is also operating in and upon our interhuman love relationships, as that which connects the lover and beloved—as “middle term” [Mellembestemmelse]59 or medium through which and in which we can act. god’s love is the energy effective in all human works of love. in addition, Kierkegaard takes recourse to the authority of the divinely given love commandment in order to conserve the continuity of love despite the discontinuity of human feelings of love. Rosenzweig, like Kierkegaard, first describes the human dependence on divine love and discovers the temporal and logical priority of god’s love in relation to human love. Yet, the one-sidedness and previousness of god’s love to the human soul i am using this metaphorical expression for experiences that hurt, but can neither be avoided nor easily be accepted as meaningful, i.e., for experiences of negativity—both in the sense of something that should be there, but is not, and of something that is there, but should rather not be there. 56 rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 472. (The Star of Redemption, p. 399.) 57 Cf. rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 476. (The Star of Redemption, pp. 401–2, translation modified.) 58 Cf. welz, Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, pp. 149–50; pp. 240–4. 59 SKS 9, 111 / WL, 107. 55

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that merely receives and accepts his love is to develop into a reciprocal relationship. the love for god shall be expressed in love for the neighbor, and it is god himself who commands it. our being loved by god shall become our own loving. according to Kierkegaard, the prius of god’s love can be experienced only a posteriori—in our loving and our love relations, namely, as that which makes human love possible and invigorates it from within. no human works of love could be without the divine love that is constantly at work in them. rosenzweig, too, sees the act of love as cooperation between God and man, as “a unification of human action and divine work.”60 we are the ones who perform the act, but god is the one who awakens us to act this way, and it is his will we fulfill in doing so. Therefore, Rosenzweig’s account of love of neighbor founded in god’s love is faced with the same query as Kierkegaard’s: do human beings have to believe in god in order to be or become loving persons, or would it be enough to be loved by god, maybe without knowing it? F. How to Comprehend Incomprehensible Love? Kierkegaard’s conception of love has become an object of interest for philosophy of emotion—but in what sense, if at all, can it be termed as an emotion? since i have earlier elaborated on this issue,61 i will skip right away to rosenzweig’s view62 and contrast it with Kierkegaard’s. rosenzweig makes it plain that he does not want love to be understood theoretically at all. love is, above all, to be experienced and practiced, not to be explained. this is an attitude that corresponds to Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the works of love. what love “is” depends on what it “does.” rosenzweig more often says what love is surely not. While Kierkegaard identifies God directly with love and sees human love as being alive only as long as it lives from god’s love, therefore refusing to determine love as a virtue in the classical sense, since it is not due to human powers, rosenzweig attributes love neither to god nor to human beings. the reason for the non-attribution of love is the disappearance of the bearer of the attribute in the activity of loving.63 This fits well with Kierkegaard’s idea that God as love is pure activity and with the idea that non-preferential love includes the selfdenial of the lover. However, Kierkegaard presupposes that god’s love as well as the love of the neighbor, in contrast to erotic love, is constant, whereas rosenzweig describes god’s love, neighbor love, and erotic love alike as continuous only in being radically discontinuous. it is born and re-born in a moment, an event of momentary self-transformation. Would this description not fit for an emotional feeling? on the one hand, rosenzweig criticizes emotional love for the same reason as Kierkegaard. it lacks continuity. He claims that love should not just be a transient rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 329. (The Star of Redemption, p. 279.) Cf. Claudia welz, “How to Comprehend incomprehensible love? Kierkegaard research and philosophy of emotion,” Kierkegaardiana, vol. 24, 2007, pp. 261–86; see also welz, Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, pp. 150–72. 62 Cf. welz, Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, pp. 244–51. 63 Cf. rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 209. (The Star of Redemption, trans. by Barbara E. Galli, pp. 176–7, translation modified.)

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emotive emergence. it must be stable and permanent—like god’s love—if the lover is to be more than merely the empty vehicle of a passing agitation. on the other hand, rosenzweig ascribes a positive function to feeling love insofar as it leads us to the neighbor. while Kierkegaard fears that our immediate inclinations lead us away from the neighbor, rosenzweig fears that the neighbor is leapt across if we do not rely on the “blindness”64 (i.e., the impartiality) of love—love in the sense of empathy that intuitively “sees” the person nearest to us who needs our attention. love relates god, man, and world, but they are and remain different from each other. in contrast to Kierkegaard, rosenzweig does not oppose erotic love to the spirit’s love. G. Reasons for Having no Reason to Defend God this section deals with (1) Kierkegaard’s and rosenzweig’s interpretations of Job’s story, (2) their reasons for and ways of resisting theodicy, and (3) the question of how convincing their undertakings are.65 (1) Kierkegaard’s non-pseudonymously published discourses on Job show that he rather accepts dark riddles in human life than dark sides in god.66 He prefers to give up the comprehensibility of individual biographies, as well as of world history, instead of the idea of a loving god—a god who is love in everything, in what we understand and in what we cannot understand. like Kierkegaard’s Job, rosenzweig bears witness to the willingness to accept everything from god’s hand; unlike him, rosenzweig does not identify loss itself with a good gift.67 in contrast to Kierkegaard, he embraces both the possibility of god tempting man and of man tempting god. the aim is to preserve trust against all temptations—trust in a god who is the “dispenser of sufferings and not the Crucified one,”68 as rosenzweig states polemically, possibly also against Christian attempts to “solve” Job’s problem with reference to Christ’s suffering for us. rosenzweig, too, believes in a god who in his shekhina suffers with his creatures,69 but this belief shall neither excuse god nor excuse us from our task, namely, to resist the greatest temptation among all temptations: to become disheartened. in a letter to martin buber,70 he criticizes Job’s friends for the same reason as Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard assumes that Job’s friends wanted to tell him that the sinner is essentially guilty, which is not untrue. Kierkegaard himself claims that, as sinners in relation to god (not necessarily to men!) all human beings (except for Christ) always suffer because they are guilty. Yet, Cf. rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 340. (The Star of Redemption, p. 286.) Cf. welz, Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, pp. 172–81; p. 183; pp. 251–76. 66 Cf. the 1843 discourse “the lord gave, and the lord took away; blessed be the name of the lord,” SKS 5, 115ff. / EUD, 109ff. see also and the 1847 discourse “the Joy of it that in relation to god a person always suffers as guilty,” SKS 8, 361ff. / UD, 264ff. 67 Cf. rosenzweig, Die “Gritli”-Briefe, p. 727. 68 rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 518. (The Star of Redemption, p. 435, translation modified.) 69 Cf. rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 513. (The Star of Redemption, p. 433.) 70 letter from spring 1924, cf. rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, p. 945. 64 65

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one human being has no right to say this to another. Rosenzweig confirms the view that all deeds hang together and that every action reflects on the agent. He writes that he “primitively” believes that pleasure and pain are reward and punishment—with one reservation that is “not primitive”: all calculation with this formula, especially from a third-person perspective, is forbidden. therefore, he does not want to justify god towards persons who see themselves in a Job-like position. theodicies are normally not carried out such that both the complaint against god and his defense are conducted in the first-person perspective alone. (2) Kierkegaard’s journals show that he studied intensively leibniz’s Théodicée.71 He considers precisely the differences in perspective and criticizes leibniz’s thought of an all-embracing teleology, since the notion of a well-structured, harmonious universe does not rectify the situation if there is a single person who has a valid cause for complaint. For Kierkegaard, the problem of theodicy arises not primarily in a cosmological context but in the context of the god-relationship of the individual. The only authentic theodicy is not a justification of God before the tribunal of reason but the justification of the individual’s faith in God’s eyes. He seeks to strengthen the individual’s faith in love, since god’s universal love cannot be rationally proved. this acknowledgment of the limits of human reason provides a reasonable reason not to defend or justify god. However, although Kierkegaard does not judge about the all from a quasi-divine perspective, his faith in god’s love includes the assumption that God knows what he is doing, regardless of whether we understand it or not. For Kierkegaard, it is not philosophy but faith, love, and hope that reconcile us with reality. this is a reconciliation that is claimed to remain beyond understanding, whereas Hegel’s point is exactly that the peace of god above reason can only be known through reason. While Hegel wants to catch everything in reflection, even the rationale of God’s reflections, Kierkegaard decides to stop reflection here and to trust in god’s inscrutable will willing the good for us, even if the good looks bad in our eyes. Far from affirming reality in toto, just as it is, Kierkegaard recommends that we take everything from god’s hands—as something that might not be good yet but can become a good. Correspondingly, in a letter to Hans ehrenberg, rosenzweig criticizes Hegel’s theodicy and refuses to see god in history as a whole.72 He sees god in every single ethical event, but not in a historical totality. rosenzweig points to the problem that the result of human action turns out otherwise than intended. that is the reason why, in his opinion, god has to redeem us not through, but from history—through religion. In this context, Rosenzweig defines religion as “the only true theodicy.”73 Notabene, it is a “theodicy” in quotation marks. rosenzweig’s letter turns against a speculative form of religion and emphasizes its practical dimension. what is the role of religion in our redemption from history? rosenzweig rejects the view that God is effectively influencing history as a whole, and that history is the vessel of His notes were written in the years 1842–43, cf., for example, in SKS 19, 390–2, not13:23. 72 letter dated september 26, 1910, cf. rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, pp. 112–13. 73 ibid. 71

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divinity. the redemption from history that occurs already in history depends on what is beyond history. even if timelessness poses new problems, it is not without good reason that rosenzweig introduces an eternity that is not just the depth-dimension or transcendence of limited time. in faith, love and hope we relate to an eternity that transcends time, but is experienced as such within time. we cannot escape from the “misery of history” as long as we are alive, but the prospect of an eternity beyond time might effect a change in the way we experience our life in time. rosenzweig refuses a rational defense of god for nearly the same reasons as Kierkegaard. they both see epistemological barriers with regard to god and with regard to history. as for god, the apophatic aspects of Kierkegaard’s theology, that is, the claims that god’s love is hidden in the world and “visible” only with the “eyes of faith,” are equivalent to rosenzweig’s claims that god’s essence remains hidden apart from and in spite of revelation. like Kierkegaard, rosenzweig suspects that phenomenality might deceive us about god. unlike Kierkegaard, rosenzweig does not explain that by resorting to the hiddenness of god’s omnipresence in spiritual terms, he only resorts to the temporality of god’s relations to otherness. as for the historical process in which they occur, both Kierkegaard and rosenzweig admit that god’s plans with his creatures are beyond human understanding. (3) the strength of this way of dealing with negativity is obvious: it is an encouragement to affirm life in spite of all that threatens it. But there are also disadvantages. Can the difficulties of Kierkegaard’s account be discovered in Rosenzweig’s account as well? I will focus on five points. (1) Kierkegaard deals with the ambiguity of god’s (non)phenomenality by means of favorable interpretations that help us to accept everything as a “good gift from above.” this entails the danger that we fail to distinguish between that which we must accept as something that we cannot change and that which we should not accept because it is our job to change it. it entails the danger that evil is not transformed into good but just (mis)interpreted as a good. seen from a post-shoah perspective, it is all the more obvious that the task of resisting evil and of fighting against injustice in concrete cases does not, in Kierkegaard’s writings, receive the attention it deserves. Kierkegaard concentrates on the individual and “inward” ways of coping privately with evil and suffering, but he neglects the “external” world and its social and political institutions. i see the same danger in rosenzweig’s account of Judaism in part iii of the Star. since israel is no longer stateless and “outside of history” (which it probably never has been), it is faced with problems and challenges similar to those of the rest of the world. Yet, rosenzweig is more suspicious than Kierkegaard of what comes “from above” (or from elsewhere). both Kierkegaard and rosenzweig rely on the self-presentation of a god who gives himself in love. However, whereas Kierkegaard mainly struggles with the problem that god’s unconditionally good gift is perverted if it is not received rightly but taken for worse than it is, rosenzweig underscores that god must present himself not only among, but also as, good and evil, and that he must not only test, but even tempt us. rather than seeing everything as a possible good, rosenzweig sharply distinguishes between good and evil. (2) both Kierkegaard and rosenzweig use teleological arguments that could be misused for theodicies. rosenzweig’s teleology toward timelessness and oneness,

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with the hope that the Last Judgment “extinguishes the flames of hell,”74 approaches Kierkegaard’s idea of a consolation of eternal happiness after hard times on earth. Kierkegaard explains that the time of suffering, and be it throughout the whole life, is only a moment or transition compared to the victory that lasts forever. similarly, rosenzweig sees everything under the seal of suspension: god’s love has only not yet reached everyone, the tears are only not yet wiped away from all faces, and the unredeemed world is only not yet redeemed. the imperfection and incompleteness of the present state of affairs is explained by an eschatological proviso: it is only a transitional phase that necessarily precedes the final reconciliation of everything and everyone. since rosenzweig, in contrast to Kierkegaard, does not think of a “fall” and a “corruption” of creation, eschatological redemption primarily means neither the redemption from sin and its consequences, nor the restitution of a paradise that had been lost, but rather the all-uniting perfection and completion of reality. in rosenzweig’s Star, it is surely not world history that could justify god—but maybe the end of the story and the history of salvation could count as his self-justification. so far, however, the happy ending has not arrived. we are left with the question of whether it is an empty promise or not. (3) rosenzweig’s appreciation of divinely granted human freedom (including the price we have to pay for it) amounts to the same as Kierkegaard’s appreciation of god’s self-restriction. on the one hand, god’s responsibility for having initiated an unfinished project is not denied in the least, and Rosenzweig’s affirmation of the status quo despite its deficiency does not aim at providing excuses for God. It is, at the same time, an affirmation of our own responsibility to continue this so far open-ended project to the best of our ability. on the other hand, this very model of divine–human cooperation in the continued creation and design of the world suggests at least one possible excuse for god: since he grants us the freedom to accelerate or delay the coming of the Kingdom, the process of redemption is in any case influenced by our action and lack thereof. This draws most of our attention to our own task, and in case something goes wrong, we are the first to blame for it. This exonerates god enormously. in this respect, rosenzweig’s eschatological proviso has the same effect as Kierkegaard’s idea that we always suffer and are guilty in relation to god. Yet rosenzweig does not make any effort to balance out the costs for the misuse of our freedom against the benefit of being free. Like Kierkegaard, rosenzweig refuses to state “objectively” whether god is good or not. the one who mistrusts god will not be persuaded by any rational defense of god, and the one who trusts him will not need any defenses. (4) rosenzweig’s Star has been accused of offering a poor perception of suffering in favor of an outlook that is too optimistic, and of marginalizing negativity with reference to its presumed provisional nature.75 sin and suffering, death and evil are all placed nicely within the dynamics of love. although the latter is also rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung, p. 302. (The Star of Redemption, p. 256.) Cf. for instance bernhard grümme, “Noch ist die Träne nicht weggewischt von jeglichem Angesicht.” Überlegungen zur Rede von Erlösung bei Karl Rahner und Franz Rosenzweig, altenberge: oros-verlag 1996 (Münsteraner theologische Abhandlungen, vol. 43), pp. 501–6, in reply to schmied-Kowarzik’s criticism. 74

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the case in Kierkegaard’s writings (and to this extent negativity is “tamed” there, too), Kierkegaard indeed raises the issue more often and more intensely in his published writings than rosenzweig does in his. However, one should not forget that rosenzweig’s friends received the lion’s share of his writings in the form of letters. Here the theme turns up “untamed.” besides, rosenzweig’s translations offer more material that has scarcely been noticed in this context, for example, his notes to the poem The Helper by Judah Halevi.76 in contrast to what he writes in the Star, Rosenzweig does not appeal to God the revealer, but first of all to the creator, who is not yet near and present. instead of singing a hymn of praise in the community, the heart prays all alone and does not sing. this “depth of despair” where even faith and hope are lost and have to be learned again can hardly be suspected of being too optimistic. the word “learn” should not mislead us: compared to Kierkegaard’s “gospel of suffering”77 with discourses on, for example, the “school of suffering” educating for eternity, rosenzweig rarely uses pedagogical arguments. when the human power of perseverance is lost in extreme helplessness, then suffering is no longer a chance for character development. then god himself must help us to believe in him. (5) rosenzweig’s Star and his speech-thinking have also been questioned with respect to the crisis of language, the speechlessness in and after auschwitz. is it in the most unredeemed borderline situations of human existence really possible to anticipate the future redemption? How can we trust god in the face of horrendous suffering? rosenzweig was not so naïve not to know that history speaks against this trust. as if he had a presentiment of what would happen two decades after he had written the Star, rosenzweig wrote not only about the attitudes and practices that help to bear the suffering, but also about a sort of suffering that is unbearable. regarding the Jewish people, he recounts Halevi’s parable of the seed-grain: though disfigured by its destruction, it transfigures everything else. Is this one more version of a theodictic argument, an answer given too early? it tries to make sense of the seemingly senseless, just like a theodicy—with one decisive difference: it is not a rationalization or legitimization of the suffering of others. the speaker belongs to those concerned and includes his “i” in a “we.” the parable is a form of hermeneutical self-help. god’s secret plan remains his secret, and none of us can know whether the parable proves true or not. However, although we do not know the end of god’s story with his creatures yet, rosenzweig’s non-theodictic “theodicy” through religion can at least give us courage to live our lives within and despite the catastrophes that happen in history. His book leads us outside of his book, right into this present life that is ours. this is the only place where his daring thoughts can be tested. likewise, here one must decide whether Kierkegaard’s discourses actually Cf. Franz Rosenzweig and Jehuda Halevi: Translating, Translations, Translators, trans. and ed. by barbara e. galli, montreal: mcgill-Queen’s university press 1995, p. 212, and the translation by barbara e. galli, “Franz rosenzweig’s theory of translation through Kabbalistic motifs,” in The Legacy of Franz Rosenzweig: Collected Essays, ed. by luc anckaert, martin brasser, and norbert samuelsen, leuven: leuven university press 2004 (Louvain Philosophical Studies, vol. 18), pp. 190–7, here p. 192. 77 SKS 8, 313ff. / UD, 213ff. 76

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accomplish what they are written for: to help to transform one’s own suffering into acting for the good of others. IV. Desiderata there remain many topics that have not yet been examined—many topics still to be explored. in conclusion, let me mention three of these. (1) First, it would be interesting to inquire into the topic of “truth” in Kierkegaard and rosenzweig, for example, in a comparison of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and the Star of Redemption. both authors thematize the problem of the subjectivity or objectivity of truth and see human existence proceeding on a path that leads from a state of untruth to a participation in divine truth without ever “having” it on one’s own. this is a view that does not allow for absolute truth claims—a view that is promising in regard to the relationship between different religions and their different life orientations. (2) second, as a comparison of The Sickness unto Death and Works of Love on Kierkegaard’s side and of Understanding the Sick and the Healthy and the Star plus personal letters on rosenzweig’s side could show, both of them account for the process of becoming oneself in contrasting negative phenomena such as selfenclosure and despair with their inversions: the openness of trust and love. in both authors, the singularity of the sinning self is opposed to the sociality of the speaking soul that relies on another. this invites an investigation of the dynamics of identity and self-transformation.78 (3) third, as my short remarks on oppenheim’s article from 1978 already indicated, the topic of “language” and (in)direct communication is a topic that is far from having been treated exhaustively. both the divine–human dialogue in prayer and the interhuman communication in private or social, also educational, contexts, are topics that are dear to Kierkegaard and rosenzweig—topics that also deserve more scholarly attention.

i have taken up this topic in a paper at the conference of the international rosenzweig society in paris on may 19, 2009: “becoming oneself vis-à-vis the other: trust and selftransformation in Kierkegaard and rosenzweig” (published in german as “selbstwerdung im angesicht des anderen: vertrauen und selbstverwandlung bei Kierkegaard und rosenzweig,” in Wir und die Anderen / We and the Others, ed. by martin brasser and Hans martin dober, Freiburg im breisgau: Karl alber 2010 (Rosenzweig-Jahrbuch / Rosenzweig Yearbook, vol. 5), pp. 68-83). 78

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Rosenzweig’s Corpus Der Stern der Erlösung, Frankfurt am main: suhrkamp 1921, p. 12. (english translation: The Star of Redemption, trans. by barbara e. galli, madison: university of wisconsin press 2005, p. 13.) Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, ed. by rachel rosenzweig and edith rosenzweig-scheinmann, the Hague: martinus nijhoff 1976–, vol. 1, Briefe und Tagebücher, p. 876. Die “Gritli”-Briefe. Briefe an Margrit Rosenstock-Huessy, ed. by inken rühle and reinhold mayer, tübingen: bilam 2002, p. 420. II. Sources of Franz Rosenzweig’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard barth, Karl, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., munich: Kaiser 1922, pp. v-vi; p. xii; pp. 1516; p. 71; p. 75; p. 77; pp. 85-9; p. 93; p. 96; pp. 98-9; p. 114; p. 141; p. 145; p. 236; p. 261; p. 264; p. 267; p. 319; p. 325; p. 381; p. 400; pp. 426-7; p. 455; p. 481; pp. 483-4. III. Secondary Literature on Franz Rosenzweig’s Relation to Kierkegaard birkenstock, eva, Heißt philosophieren sterben lernen? Antworten der Existenzphilosophie: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Rosenzweig, Freiburg i. br. and munich: alber 1997. bonagiuso, giacomo, “dalla morte: il silenzio e la parola. Kierkegaard e rosenzweig,” in Il religioso in Kierkegaard. Atti del convegno di studi organizzato dalla Società Italiana per gli Studi Kierkegaardiani tenutosi dal 14 al 16 dicembre 2000 a Venezia, ed. by Isabella Adinolfi, Brescia: Morcelliana 2002, pp. 393–409. moltmann, Jürgen, Das Kommen Gottes: Christliche Eschatologie, gütersloh: Kaiser 1995, p. 52. (english translation: The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. by margaret Kohl, minneapolis: Fortress press 1996, p. 34.) oppenheim, michael d., Sören Kierkegaard and Franz Rosenzweig: The Movement from Philosophy to Religion, ph.d. thesis, university of California at santa barbara 1976. — “taking time seriously. an inquiry into the methods of Communication of søren Kierkegaard and Franz rosenzweig,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, vol. 7, 1978, pp. 53–60.

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— “Four narratives on the interhuman: Kierkegaard, buber, rosenzweig, and levinas,” in Works of Love, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 1999 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 16), pp. 249–78. søltoft, pia, Svimmelhedens Etik—om forholdet mellem den enkelte og den anden hos Buber, Lévinas og især Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: gads Forlag 2000, pp. 34–7. welz, Claudia, “How to Comprehend incomprehensible love? Kierkegaard research and philosophy of emotion,” in Kierkegaardiana, vol. 24, 2007, pp. 261–86. — Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, tübingen: mohr siebeck 2008 (Religion in Philosophy and Theology, vol. 30). — “selbstwerdung im angesicht des anderen: vertrauen und selbstverwandlung bei Kierkegaard und rosenzweig,” in Wir und die Anderen / We and the Others, ed. by martin brasser and Hans martin dober, Freiburg im breisgau: Karl alber 2010 (Rosenzweig-Jahrbuch / Rosenzweig Yearbook, vol. 5), pp. 68–83. wivel, Klaus, Næsten Intet. En jødisk kritik af Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1999.

Jean-paul sartre: Kierkegaard’s Influence on His theory of nothingness manuela Hackel

I. Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) is considered to be the most influential and, at the same time, the most controversial philosopher of French existentialism. over the course of his life, sartre’s thinking underwent several fundamental changes. His early essays, and his first philosophical magnum opus, Being and Nothingness (1943),1 exhibit the influence of Edmund Husserl’s (1859–1938) phenomenology and its focus on the analysis of human consciousness. after 1939, sartre and his lifelong partner simone de beauvoir (1908–86) came increasingly to concentrate—under the influence of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and søren Kierkegaard—on the problem of understanding human beings in concrete life-situations. sartre’s focus thus came to be the idea of radical human freedom, which he regarded as condemnation and opportunity at the same time. radical human freedom is condemnation because the single individual is completely helpless in the face of his decisions, which give birth to themselves autonomously, but nevertheless has to accept responsibility without being able to justify himself. Yet it is also opportunity inasmuch as the individual’s life is open for self-creation, independently of moral or social bondage. sartre analyzes this ambivalence of human freedom on the basis of anxiety as an existential emotion and of human behavior such as bad faith. Furthermore, on the basis of “the look,” love and other aspects of social life, Sartre investigates the conflict-ridden relationship between the single individual and other people. the second world war and the post-war period shaped sartre’s sense of social responsibility. From the mid-1940s onward, sartre strove for a social system which would guarantee human freedom, and so embraced marxism and the Communist movement. sartre’s second magnum opus, the Critique of Dialectical Reason I wish to thank Lara Subašić, Ingo Wieneke, and David D. Possen for their help in translating this article. 1 Jean-paul sartre, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, paris: gallimard 1943. (english translation: Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. by Hazel e. barnes, new York: washington square press 1956.)

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(1960),2 mirrors this tendency. sartre frequently appeared before the public, where he expressed his views on sociopolitical questions such as the algerian and vietnam wars; furthermore, he visited leftists all over the world. sartre’s public engagement turned him into one of the most popular and, at the same time, most discussed persons of the twentieth century. in 1964, he famously refused the nobel prize. In his final years, Sartre searched for a new philosophical beginning, but his striving was broken off by his death. nevertheless, sartre left behind a comprehensive life’s work, consisting of philosophical writings, novellas and novels, theater plays, scenarios, existential-psychoanalytic biographies, and essays. II. Introduction to the Question of Sartre and Kierkegaard a Kierkegaard expert reading the early sartre will recognize one thing at once: the omnipresence of Kierkegaard’s thought within sartre’s philosophical outlook. However, it would appear that Sartre marginalizes Kierkegaard’s influence, making only rare references to the dane. in Being and Nothingness, for example, sartre’s extensive magnum opus, which cannot be imagined without Kierkegaard’s preparatory work, sartre refers to Kierkegaard only four times. what is the reason for this obvious disparity between the admitted and the actual Kierkegaardian influence on sartre? is roger poole right in claiming that “sartre never ceased trying to evade the issue of his debt to Kierkegaard”?3 or are there other reasons? this article tries to answer this question. in order to do so, three steps will need to be taken. The first will be to investigate which of Kierkegaard’s writings could have been, and which evidently were, known to sartre. Here three questions can be helpful: (1) which of the Kierkegaardian writings existed in French translation? (2) of these, which can be proven to have been read by sartre? (3) Finally, of which books could sartre have gained indirect knowledge by reading other authors who refer to Kierkegaard? the second step of my investigation will be to ask: How does sartre make use of Kierkegaard’s thought, and how does he integrate it into his own philosophical outlook? this can be ascertained particularly well by means of the direct references to Kierkegaard that accompany the development of Being and Nothingness, and which also had an influence on Sartre’s later writings. But there are numerous indirect references to basic Kierkegaardian ideas and concepts as well. these references too are informative, and will be summarized shortly. For technical reasons, the investigation will be subject to a limitation: only sartrian writings published prior to 1948 will be considered. the reason for this is the following: while the present article focuses on sartre’s reception of Kierkegaard Jean-paul sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, vol. 1, Théorie des ensembles pratiques, paris: gallimard 1960. (english translation: Critique of Dialectical Reason, Theory of Practical Ensembles, trans. by alan sheridan-smith, ed. by Jonathan rée, london: nlb and atlantic Highlands, new Jersey: Humanities press 1976.) 3 roger poole, “the unknown Kierkegaard: twentieth-Century receptions,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by alastair Hannay and gordon d. marino, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1998, p. 54. 2

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from an existentialist point of view, a second article4 will examine sartre’s reception of Kierkegaard from a social point of view. the reason for this division of labor arises from the following fact: the thought of the early Sartre, still under the influence of Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian ontology, revolves around the individual and his relationship to the world. by contrast, the thought of the later sartre, marked by the second world war and marxism, centers on the relationship between the individual and the society, and is concerned with responsibility and morality. For sartre himself, of course, this division was not so radical. in his later writings, he only partly turned his back on his early philosophy. most of his basic ideas were in fact preserved, and early topics were revisited, even if in a changed form and with different emphasis. For this reason, these transitions will at least be mentioned. III. Kierkegaard Translations in France in the 1930s and 1940s when sartre graduated from the École normale supérieure in 1929, Kierkegaard was hardly known in France. only a few and rather short passages of Kierkegaard’s writings had then been translated into French. examples of such passages are the essay “the difference between a genius and an apostle,” “Fragments d’un journal,” and the “Diapsalmata” from the first part of Either/Or.5 In 1929, a flood of new French translations commenced. that year the “seducer’s diary” was published,6 see michael burn’s article on Jean-paul sartre in Kierkegaard’s Influence on Social-Political Thought, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate forthcoming (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 14). 5 søren Kierkegaard, En quoi l’homme de génie diffère-t-il de l’apôtre? Traité éthiquereligieux, trans. by Johannes gøtzsche, Copenhagen: Hagerup and paris: nilsson 1886; søren Kierkegaard, “Fragments d’un journal,” trans. by Jean J. gateau, Commerce, no. 12, 1927, pp. 153–64; pp. 165–202; and søren Kierkegaard, “intermèdes,” trans. by lucien maury, La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 167, 1927, pp. 192–209. For further information on the French translations, see Jacques lafarge, “Kierkegaard dans la tradition française: les conditions de sa réception dans les milieux philosophiques,” in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference “Kierkegaard and the Meaning of Meaning It,” Copenhagen, May 5–9, 1996, ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon stewart, berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 1997 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), pp. 274–90; Jacques lafarge, “l’Édition des Œuvres complètes de Kierkegaard en français: contexte—historique—objectifs—conception— réalisation,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2000, pp. 300–16; nelly viallaneix, “lectures françaises,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. by niels thulstrup and marie mikulová thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 8), pp. 102–20; F.J. billeskov Jansen, “the study in France,” Kierkegaard Research, ed. by marie mikulová thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1987 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 15), pp. 134–59; Hélène politis, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, paris: Kimé 2005; and Jon stewart, “France: Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of existentialism and poststructuralism,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome i, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 460–5. 6 søren Kierkegaard, “le journal du séducteur,” trans. by Jean J. gateau, Biblioteque universelle et Revue de Genéve, vol. 2, december, 1929, pp. 714–43. 4

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which again is only a part of Either/Or—the complete book would only appear decades later. in 1932, The Sickness unto Death followed under the title Traité du désespoir.7 next, in 1933, there appeared two parallel translations of “in vino veritas,” the first part of the Stages on Life’s Way, and Repetition.8 paul Henri tisseau continued this line with Three (sic!) Discourses at the Communion on Fridays in 1934 and with Fragments religieux in 1935.9 of special interest for sartre is the year 1935, when Fear and Trembling and three translations of The Concept of Anxiety all appeared at once.10 tisseau supplemented the pseudonymous writings with the edifying discourses, “purity of Heart” and The Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air.11 in 1937, Philosophical Fragments appeared as Riens philosophiques in the translation of Knud Ferlov and Jean-Jacques Gâteau.12 in the same year, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments began gradually appearing in reviews.13 in 1940, tisseau published his translation of The Point of View for My Work as an Author.14 From 1942 to 1961, five volumes of passages from Kierkegaard’s journals gradually appeared in the translation of Gâteau and Ferlov.15 Finally, a complete translation of the Stages on Life’s Way was published in 1948.16 On the one hand, the sudden flood of translations, which reached its climax in the 1930s, mirrored the growing French interest in Kierkegaard. on the other hand, it reflected the pent-up demand for Kierkegaard translations in France, relative to see søren Kierkegaard, Traité du désespoir. (La maladie mortelle), trans. by Knud Ferlov and Jean J. gateau, paris: gallimard 1932. 8 søren Kierkegaard, In vino veritas, trans. by andré babelon and C. lund, introduced by andré babelon, paris: Éditions du Cavalier 1933 (2nd ed., 1992) and søren Kierkegaard, La Répétition. Essai d’expérience psychologique par Constantin Constantius, trans. by paulHenri tisseau, paris: alcan 1933. 9 søren Kierkegaard, Le Souverain sacrificateur, le Péager, la Pécheresse, troi discours pour la communion du vendredi, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: chez le traducteur 1934 and søren Kierkegaard, “Fragments religieux,” trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, Le Semeur, July 1834 and January 1935. 10 søren Kierkegaard, Crainte et Tremblement. Lyrique-dialectique, par Johannes de Silentio, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, introduced by Jean wahl, paris: Fernand aubier; Éditions montaigne 1935 and søren Kierkegaard, Le concept de l’angoisse, trans. by Jean J. gateau and Knud Ferlov, paris: gallimard 1935. 11 søren Kierkegaard, Les lis des champs et les oiseaux de ciel, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, paris: alcan 1935 and søren Kierkegaard, La Pureté du coeur, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le traducteur 1936. 12 søren Kierkegaard, Les Riens philosophiques, trans. by Jean Jacques gateau and Knud Ferlov, paris: gallimard 1937. 13 Cf. billeskov Jansen, “the study in France,” p. 147; lafarge, “Kierkegaard dans la tradition française,” p. 284. (The first complete translation: Post-scriptum aux Miettes philosophiques, trans. by paul petit, paris: mesmil 1941.) 14 søren Kierkegaard, Point de vue explicatif de mon oeuvre: communication directe, rapport historique, trans. by paul-Henri tisseau, bazoges-en-pareds: le traducteur 1940. 15 søren Kierkegaard, Journal. Extraits, vols. 1–5, trans. by Jean Jacques gateau and Knud Ferlov, paris: gallimard 1942–61. 16 søren Kierkegaard, Étapes sur le chemin de la vie, trans. by F. prior and m.H. guignot, paris: gallimard 1948. 7

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other countries, like germany, which already possessed translations of nearly the entire Kierkegaardian oeuvre by that time. thus Kierkegaard, if belatedly, came into fashion. treatises about Kierkegaard began appearing at the same time as, or even earlier than, these translations. an example is Jean wahl’s (1888–1974) Études kierkegaardiennes, a collection of essays published in 1938, and a book of great importance for sartre as well.17 However, even if Kierkegaard’s writings glutted the French market in the 1930s and early 1940s, the list of translations has significant gaps. Important texts such as Kierkegaard’s dissertation The Concept of Irony, the complete text of Either/Or, Kierkegaard’s late writings (excluding The Sickness unto Death), and many of his edifying discourses remained inaccessible to the public until the 1970s and 1980s. They appeared only in the context of the first edition of his complete works.18 For the purposes of the present study, these dates and details are highly significant. For whenever sartre uses Kierkegaardian concepts that were developed in a text that had not yet been translated, this means that sartre must have aquired those concepts from Kierkegaard second-hand. this holds, for example, for the central idea of Either/Or’s second part, that is, that the individual shall choose himself.19 and it further concerns the connection between freedom, vertigo, and anxiety that Kierkegaard establishes in The Concept of Anxiety, and which sartre already picks up in his early essay The Transcendence of the Ego. IV. Sartre’s Reading of Kierkegaard A. The Beginning: Sartre’s Phenomenological Period in her memoirs of her time with sartre after the École normale supérieure, simone de beauvoir compiled a small list of books which she and sartre had read during sartre’s military service in tours 1929–31. one of these is Kierkegaard’s “seducer’s diary,” published in French in 1929.20 However, de beauvoir mentions it only negatively: “we paid no especial attention to Kierkegaard’s Journal of a Tempter.”21 so far it seems that Kierkegaard was not yet interesting for sartre. Hence it is surely no coincidence that Heidegger, with whom sartre frequently connects Kierkegaard, also did not bear meaning for sartre.22 sartre had not yet see Jean wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: aubier 1938. Cf. politis, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle, p. 203. 19 Cf. sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 516. (Being and Nothingness, pp. 440–1.) 20 Kierkegaard, “le journal du séducteur.” 21 simone de beauvoir, La force de l’âge, paris: gallimard 1960, p. 53. (english translation: The Prime of Life, Harmondsworth: penguin 1983 [1960], p. 48.) 22 in his War Diaries sartre remembers a likewise failed reading of Heidegger which took place at the same time: “i’d read What is Metaphysics? without understanding it in 1930, in the journal Bifur.” see Jean-paul sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre. Novembre 1939–Mars 1940, paris: gallimard 1983, p. 225, note. (english translation: The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre: November 1939–March 1940, trans. by Quintin Hoare, new York: pantheon books 1984, p. 183.) 17 18

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discovered human existence as a field of investigation. He was still fascinated by the issue of human consciousness which provoked his interest in Henri bergson (1859–1941), and, later, in Husserl.23 For this reason, it was not surprising that during his stay in berlin in 1933–34, sartre exclusively studied Husserl and was too “saturated” by him to be ready for Heidegger (or Kierkegaard). therefore, in 1934, sartre failed to read Heidegger, and abandoned Being and Time at the latest after the introduction.24 this implies that sartre did not reach Heidegger’s only reference to Kierkegaard, which does not appear until the third part of Being and Time. nevertheless, in sartre’s berlin essay The Transcendence of the Ego (published 1936–37) Kierkegaard’s “shadow” is already present.25 in this important essay, which can be seen as the root of Being and Nothingness, sartre develops the groundwork of his concept of freedom. to him, freedom means the activity of the immediate consciousness. sartre’s aim in this essay is to maximize the independence of the immediate consciousness. according to sartre, immediate consciousness logically precedes reflection, and is free from all possible causation. This idea goes back to sartre’s understanding of the immediate consciousness as an absolute spontaneity, as a steadily self-producing stream of consciousness which does not depend on anything but itself. Hence sartre understands human identity not as something which precedes and governs consciousness, but, on the contrary, as a product of consciousness. this has a double consequence. First, it means that the human being is only seemingly a sovereign subject. He is not able to affect his conscious processes willingly; in fact, he is at their mercy and reduced to a mere spectator. He is not the master in his own house, and this fact produces his anxiety: “there is something distressing for each of us, to catch in the act this tireless creation of existence of which we are not the creators….indeed, the me can do nothing to this spontaneity, for will is an object which constitutes itself for and by this spontaneity.”26 second, Cf. Un film realizé par Alexandre Astruc et Michel Contat, paris: gallimard 1977, pp. 39–44. (english translation: Sartre by Himself: A Film Directed by Alexandre Astruc and Michel Contat, trans. by richard seaver, new York: urizen books 1978, pp. 26–30.) the young sartre was interested in bergson’s Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (paris: alcan 1889) and in berlin he exclusively read Husserl’s Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (Halle: niemeyer 1913), which fascinated him all year long. This exposure to Bergson and Husserl influenced Sartre’s early essays, which deal with the concept of consciousness. 24 Cf. sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 225. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, pp. 182–3.) 25 peter Knopp, “sartre und Kierkegaard: eine zeitverschobene parallelaktion?,” in Carnets Jean-Paul Sartre. Der Lauf des Bösen, ed. by peter Knopp and vincent von wroblewsky, Frankfurt am main: peter lang 2006, p. 54. 26 Jean-paul sartre, “la transcendance de l’ego. esquisse d’une description phénoménologique,” Recherches philosophiques, vol. 6, 1936–37, pp. 119–20, my emphasis. (english translation: The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness, trans. by Forrest williams and robert Kirkpatrick, new York: octagon books 1972 [new York: the noonday press 1957], p. 99.) sartre originally refers to anxiety; the translation has therefore missed an important point. the French passage begins as follows: “Il y a quelque chose d’angoissant pour chacun de nous.” (“there is something for everyone of us inducing anxiety.”) 23

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this means that the conscious processes are incalculable. at every moment, the individual can revise his own projects, involving a complete change of his identity. He thus never knows if he will still be the same tomorrow or radically changed. sartre interprets his result as “the vertigo of possibility” or “vertiginous freedom”27; and here one can already see Kierkegaard’s picture of vertigo at the abyss, in The Concept of Anxiety, shining through. given that he had not yet read The Concept of Anxiety, where did sartre obtain this picture of vertiginous freedom?28 We thus find, paradoxically, that Kierkegaard was partly an inspiration for The Transcendence of the Ego, even though sartre did not yet know Kierkegaard. in Being and Nothingness, Sartre himself affirms that it is a Kierkegaardian picture and not another’s, that he had already evoked in 1934. Sartre there repeats and specifies Kierkegaard’s image of vertigo at the abyss in order to illustrate the anxiety producing knowledge of one’s own freedom.29 moreover, he explicitly involves Kierkegaard in the discussion. there is another fact suggesting a Kierkegaardian echo in The Transcendence of the Ego. in 1932, the Nouvelle Revue Française, which sartre read regularly, published an essay entitled “Kierkegaard: l’angoisse et l’instant.”30 the article was penned by Jean wahl. For several years, sartre had already been reading his works with interest, and he would continue to read them years after.31 in his essay, wahl draws the following relation between freedom, anxiety and the vertigo: “anxiety...is freedom under the spell...of itself, reflecting itself in its possibility. It is the vertigo of freedom.”32 it seems likely that sartre had read this wahlian essay as well, and had applied it in his own work.

sartre, “la transcendance de l’ego. esquisse d’une description phénoménologique,” p. 120. (The Transcendence of the Ego, p. 100.) 28 Cf. also beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 141. (The Prime of Life, p. 135.) 29 Cf. sartre, L’être et le néant, pp. 66–9. (Being and Nothingness, pp. 29–32.) 30 Jean wahl, “Kierkegaard: l’angoisse et l’instant,” La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 234, 1932, pp. 634–55. 31 one can, for example, be sure that sartre read wahl’s works Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel (1929), Vers le concret (1932) and the essays “Heidegger et Kierkegaard” (1933) and “subjectivité et transcendence” (1937), collected in Études kierkegaardiennes. see sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 166; p. 229 (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 131; p. 186); sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 479 (Being and Nothingness, p. 408); Un film realizé par Alexandre Astruc et Michel Contat, pp. 39–40. (Sartre by Himself, pp. 26–7); and beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 53 (The Prime of Life, p. 48). traugott König, “zur neuübersetzung,” epilogue to Sartre, Das Sein und das Nichts. Versuch einer phänomenologischen Ontologie, ed. by traugott König, reinbek bei Hamburg: rowohlt 1998, pp. 1076ff. 32 Jean wahl, Kierkegaard. L’un devant l’autre, paris: Hachette 1998, p. 49, my emphasis. 27

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B. The Second World War and Sartre’s Ontological Period 1. Freedom and Nothingness until 1939, sartre remained silent about Kierkegaard. there are no indications that sartre had been engaging with the dane. wahl’s 1938 collection of essays, Études kierkegaardiennes, which sartre quotes several times in Being and Nothingness, is the only exception.33 it seems that it is mainly due to wahl’s efforts that Kierkegaard attracted sartre’s attention. second, an indirect source for sartre’s information about Kierkegaard is Heidegger’s Being and Time, which sartre had started reading once more on whitsunday 1939. this time, sartre was not only deeply impressed by Heidegger’s book, but also experienced a radical change in his thinking because of it. it is no exaggeration to say that foundation stones of sartre’s Being and Nothingness like nothingness (Néant), bad faith (mauvaise foi), authenticity, historicity, facticity and transcendency emerged under Heidegger’s influence. However, these are precisely the elements that Heidegger had already adapted from Kierkegaard by eliminating their religious context. sartre knew of Kierkegaard’s meaning for Heidegger; he had read about it in wahl’s book. but sartre still did not have any direct knowledge about Kierkegaard. already in 1939, sartre acknowledged Heidegger’s importance (and thereby, indirectly, Kierkegaard’s importance, too) for his own philosophy: This [Heideggerian] influence has in recent times sometimes struck me as providential, since it supervened to teach me authenticity and historicity just at the very moment when war was about to make these notions indispensable to me. if i try to imagine what i’d have made of my thought without those tools, i am gripped by retrospective fear.34

in september 1939, war became an immediate reality for sartre, though less as a war itself than as an involuntary isolation from parisian intellectual life. with hardly any work in his capacity as a military meteorologist, and later during his time a prisoner of war, Sartre had much time to write and to reflect. During these years, Sartre wrote the first draft of Being and Nothingness. in this book, he wanted to present his “morality of authenticity.”35 at the same time, he wanted to reconcile in Being and Nothingness sartre will refer to wahl’s essays “Heidegger et Kierkegaard” and “subjectivité et transcendence,” where wahl relates Kierkegaard to other “existential philosophers” such as nietzsche, Jaspers, and Heidegger. see sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 479. (Being and Nothingness, p. 408.) wahl, Kierkegaard. L’un devant l’autre, pp. 69–95; pp. 205–20. 34 sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 224. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 182.) 35 Cf. sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, pp. 122–3; pp. 136–45; p. 216. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, pp. 95–6; pp. 107–14; p. 175.) see also Jean-paul sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vols. 1–2, ed. by simone de beauvoir, paris: gallimard 1983, vol. 1, pp. 455–6; pp. 458–9; p. 465; p. 469. (english translation: Witness of My Life. The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir 1926–1939, ed. by simone de beauvoir, trans. by lee Fahnestock and normann macafee, Harmondsworth: penguin 1994, p. 382; p. 385; p. 390; p. 393.) 33

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Husserl with Heidegger. to put it in other words: by means of his Heideggerian instruments, sartre wanted to interpret his Husserlian concept of consciousness in an existentialist way.36 In this period of critical self-reflection and when he was beginning the notes for Being and Nothingness, sartre began reading Kierkegaard. on december 1, 1939, he ordered The Concept of Anxiety from de beauvoir,37 and on December 16, we find Sartre’s first comments about Kierkegaard’s book.38 As he reflected on his own moral philosophy, sartre found The Concept of Anxiety to be a convenient resource. Just as Kierkegaard already shows the inconsistency of relevant conceptions of ethics in the introduction of The Concept of Anxiety and tries to establish a new ethical conception in the course of the book, sartre also refuses current ethical conceptions. by drawing on Heidegger’s analysis of human existence [Dasein], sartre himself sought to write an ethics in which “our absolute liberty and our condition in a life unique but bounded by death, our inconsistency as creatures without a god and yet not our own makers, and our dignity, our autonomy as individuals and our historicity” relate.39 He concluded that only by investigating human nature can he write his ethics.40 For Sartre, this includes an identification of the human being as a historical being between facticity and transcendence, an analysis of human freedom and, linked with it, a concept of authenticity. all of these points are important to Kierkegaard as well. by analyzing the diary entries and letters, we can reconstruct how sartre read the first two chapters of The Concept of Anxiety. sartre even copied some passages of

Cf. sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 1, p. 386; p. 388. (Witness of My Life, pp. 322–3, p. 324.) Cf. also sartre’s letter of november 13, 1939, which is missing in the english edition, see sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 1, p. 407. one can easily trace Husserl’s and Heidegger’s influence on Being and Nothingness. in the introduction, sartre begins with his version of Husserl’s phenomenological concept of consciousness; and already in the first part, he passes on to interpreting it in an existentialist way by means of Heideggerian and Kierkegaardian tools. problems then arise at this interface. For example, sartre blurs the concepts of consciousness and action; furthermore, he gets into trouble when trying to motivate his concept of the lack of being. 37 Cf. sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 1, p. 451. (Witness of My Life, p. 378.) 38 unfortunately, some of sartre’s diaries are lost like, for example, diary iv (december 12–december 16, 1939). it is possible, though improbable, that it contained notes sartre took when he first began reading Kierkegaard. The Diaries VI–X (December 23, 1939—presumably January 31, 1940), which might have been informative about the end of sartre’s reading of Kierkegaard, are also lost. However, sartre had already returned The Concept of Anxiety to beauvoir on January 3, 1940, which argues against a solid reading of the book, all the more since sartre had been reading a number of other books, keeping his diary, and working on his novel—all at the same time. 39 sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 1, p. 455. (Witness of My Life, p. 382.) 40 Cf. sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 1, pp. 470–1. (Witness to My Life, p. 395.) 36

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Kierkegaard’s book.41 like Heidegger, sartre dissociates himself from the Christian context of Kierkegaard’s concepts and concentrates on the concept of freedom,42 and more specifically on the connection between freedom, possibility, nothingness, and anxiety. Comparing Heidegger’s and Kierkegaard’s concepts of anxiety, sartre writes: anguish at nothingness, with Heidegger? dread from freedom, with Kierkegaard? in my view it’s one and the same thing,43 for freedom is the apparition of nothingness in the world. before freedom, the world is a plenum which is what it is, a vast swill. after freedom, there are differentiated things, because freedom has introduced negation. and negation can be introduced into the world by freedom only because freedom is wholly numbed by nothingness. Freedom is its own nothingness….it is by freedom that we can, at every instant, establish a distance from our essence, which becomes powerless and suspended in nothingness, ineffective. Freedom establishes a discontinuity, it is a breaking of contact….it is the foundation of transcendence, because—beyond what is—it can project what is not yet. it denies itself, in fact, because future freedom is negation of present freedom.44

In this passage, the most important ideas from the first part of Being and Nothingness (“the problem of nothingness”) are already present. First, sartre’s phenomenological concept of consciousness recurs here. the immediate consciousness creates “its” world by taking up a point of view from which its environment is being structured. it differentiates between foreground and background, between single objects and between the world and itself. thereby, it creates a “ ‘hodological space’…[i.e.] the conformation of the world such as it appears to me…, the paths that criss-cross it, its holes, its traps, its perspectives.”45 Here, nothingness occurs as the activity of consciousness: as a negation and production of structures. At first glance, one cannot see the affinity to Kierkegaard’s concept of nothingness. However, sartre’s explanation of why consciousness is able to negate, establishes the connection. Consciousness, that is, freedom—sartre localizes freedom in the spontaneity of consciousness—is its own nothingness. what Kierkegaard describes as the leap—the impossibility of explaining free action—returns in sartre as “a 41 Cf. sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 166; p. 168. (The War Diaries of JeanPaul Sartre, pp. 131–2; p. 133.) 42 Cf. Knopp, “sartre und Kierkegaard: eine zeitverschobene parallelaktion?,” p. 47. 43 Cf. also sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 66. (Being and Nothingness, p. 29.) sartre’s opinion that one must mediate between Kierkegaard and Heidegger seems to be unfounded. For in Kierkegaard, too, anxiety refers to a nothingness, specifically, to a possibility. However, sartre’s concept of nothingness has its parallel in the concept of the leap in Kierkegaard. 44 sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, pp. 166–7. (The War Diaries of JeanPaul Sartre, p. 132.) already at the start of his reading of Kierkegaard, sartre noticed that Kierkegaard had strongly influenced Heidegger’s concept of anxiety. See Sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 166 (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 131) and sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 1, p. 491; p. 494 (Witness of My Life, p. 413; p. 416). 45 sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 163. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 129.)

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discontinuity between the motives and the act.”46 the human being always realizes himself at a distance: to the objects of the world, to himself, to his own past and future. sartre substantiates this point by referring to his own experience. Having resolved to abstain from his daily breakfast, he soon has to realize how difficult it is to stick on his own resolution. if Kierkegaard is right to call “the possibility of freedom” anguish, it’s not without a touch of anguish that i discovered once again yesterday morning that i was entirely free to break the piece of bread which the waitress had placed beside me….nothing in the world could stop me doing do, not even myself….to refrain is merely “to put off,” to remain in suspense, to pay closer attention to other possibles. in the idea of “stopping” there’s the image of a sturdy arm coming to check my arm. but i do not possess an inhibiting arm, i cannot personally erect barriers in myself between me and my possibles—that would be to abdicate my freedom and i cannot do it.47

everybody has probably experienced the trivial circumstance that one is not constrained to stick to one’s own resolutions. However, this contains a deeper fact. the individual always has the possibility to revise his decisions, to “change his mind,” to “take the bait.” in Being and Nothingness, sartre will dramatize this awareness using the character of the dostoevskyan gambler. what sartre calls “nothingness” here—the interruption of the chain of cause and effect, the hiatus between occasion and action—is nothing other than Kierkegaard’s concept of the leap as a basis for his interpretation of every human being’s first sin as a free action, and for his opposition to every scientific explanation of freedom. However, strictly speaking, this is not Kierkegaard’s concept of nothingness. to Kierkegaard, nothingness means the not-yet-being of freedom. in anxiety, freedom is only a possibility—the human’s potential and duty at the same time—it still has to be turned into reality. to that extent, what appears in anxiety is the possibility of freedom.48 sartre understands the Kierkegaardian genitivus subjectivus (freedom is possible, but not yet real) as a genitivus objectivus (freedom possesses possibilities): freedom is already real, in actu; it carries itself out by composing and realizing possibilities. what Kierkegaard still aims for, sartre already takes for granted as a fact that human being cannot escape from. Here, Sartre already draws his first moral conclusion from his concept of freedom: no situation is ever determined; the individual always has a choice. the human being always keeps a distance to what is given. His ability to transcend the facts makes it possible for him to overcome constraints and to find alternative actions. Thus, for example, everyone is free to take part in the war or to desert: sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 169. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 133.) Cf. also sartre, L’être et le néant, pp. 63–4. (Being and Nothingness, p. 27.) alfred dandyk, Unaufrichtigkeit. Die existentielle Psychoanalyse im Kontext der Philosophiegeschichte, würzburg: Könighausen & neumann 2002, pp. 77–81. 47 sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 158. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, pp. 124–5.) 48 Cf. SKS 4, 348 / CA, 42: “the possibility of possibility.” 46

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when sartre therefore writes to de beauvoir on december 21, 1939 that he has “found a theory of nothingness while reading,”50 he is right insofar as The Concept of Anxiety has helped him to interpret his phenomenological concept of spontaneity ontologically and to find an approach to his ethics. Sartre is now able to build a bridge between Husserl and Heidegger. 2. Anxiety and Ethics Sartre’s specific interpretation of freedom and nothingness leads to his own version of anxiety.51 in The Transcendence of the Ego he has already defined it as the consciousness’ awareness of its own spontaneity. in the War Diaries and Being and Nothingness sartre develops his thought further. in Kierkegaard, let us recall, the individual anticipates in anxiety the possibility of both freedom and guilt. this is how Kierkegaard explains the ambiguity of anxiety.52 sartre, however, declares freedom itself to be a monster.53 the human being is “condemned to be free.”54 He is exposed to his spontaneity which continuously chooses the human being without him being able to interfere. thus anxiety arises as “freedom’s anguish at itself.”55 “Consciousness is frightened by its own spontaneity because it senses this spontaneity as beyond freedom.”56

sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 204. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 164.) 50 sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 1, p. 500. (Witness of My Life, p. 421.) Cf. also sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 1, p. 518. (Witness of My Life, p. 436.) 51 Cf. peter Caws, “der ursprung der negation (49–118),” in Jean-Paul Sartre: Das Sein und das Nichts, ed. by bernard n. schumacher, berlin: akademie verlag 2003 (Klassiker auslegen, vol. 22), p. 56. 52 sartre, too, uses the category of the ambiguous, and always refers to Kierkegaard when doing so. However, he returns to it in all possible connections, so that one can hardly speak of an affinity. See Sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 153 (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 120) and sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 138, note (Being and Nothingness, p. 94). see also Jean-paul sartre, Situations I. Essais critiques, paris: gallimard 1947, p. 155, pp. 162–3. 53 sartre himself uses this expression in “la transcendance de l’ego. esquisse d’une description phénoménologique,” p. 120. (The Transcendence of the Ego, p. 100.) 54 sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 515. (Being and Nothingness, p. 439.) 55 sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 167. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 132.) 56 sartre, “la transcendance de l’ego. esquisse d’une description phénoménologique,” p. 120. (The Transcendence of the Ego, p. 100.) 49

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in Being and Nothingness sartre illustrates his version of anxiety by means of two dramatic situations. the gambler who, one day before, had earnestly resolved to stop gambling, now discovers that his resolution has no causal influence on his future behavior. Due to the fact that one cannot fix spontaneity, every decision is always called anew into question. therefore, the gambler can change his mind at any time and start gambling again. His past will only be of influence if he affirms it in the present. thus “i perceive with anguish that nothing prevents me from gambling. the anguish is me since by the very fact of taking my position in existence as consciousness of being, i make myself not to be the past of good resolutions which I am.”57 with regard to the individual’s relation to his own future, sartre comes back to the Kierkegaardian picture of the vertigo at the abyss. However, his interpretation, based on his concept of spontaneity, is rather surprising. like Heidegger, sartre repeats Kierkegaard’s distinction between fear and anxiety: “fear is fear of beings in the world whereas anguish is anguish before myself.”58 the hiker who stands before the abyss realizes with fear the danger of falling down. However, the cause of anxiety is not the danger emanating from the abyss; rather, it comes from himself, from his own freedom. “vertigo is anguish to the extent that i am afraid not of falling over the precipice, but of throwing myself over.”59 because the human being always decides about himself spontaneously and anew, he can break with the continuity of his hitherto existing way of life and drop his current identity at every moment. this means that his future remains radically open. what counts to him in the present—life itself, for example—might be without value tomorrow. sartre calls this activity of human freedom “nothingness.” Freedom not only breaks the causal chains of the world, but every seeming constancy of his own identity as well. there is no stability of the self: “this self with its a priori and historical content is the essence of man. anguish as the manifestation of freedom in the face of self means that man is always separated by a nothingness from his essence.”60 the nature of a human being is never decided once and for all. in other words: “now freedom...is not subject to any logical necessity...[i]n it existence precedes and commands essence.”61 sartre therewith adopts an important Kierkegaardian sartre, L’être et le néant, pp. 70–1. (Being and Nothingness, p. 33.) sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 66. (Being and Nothingness, p. 29.) 59 ibid. 60 sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 72. (Being and Nothingness, p. 35.) 61 sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 513. (Being and Nothingness, p. 438.) Cf. also sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 72; pp. 547–50 (Being and Nothingness, p. 35; pp. 469–71); and Jean-paul sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, paris: nagel 1946, pp. 22–3. (english translation: Existentialism and Humanism, trans. by philip mairet, new York: Haskell House publishers 1948, p. 28.) like Kierkegaard, sartre states that existential concepts cannot be explained, but must be understood in a different way. Kierkegaard claims that understanding always refers to the life of a concrete person and includes action (as opposed to the abstract scientific way of understanding, which takes place independently of the single person’s reality). However, sartre’s point is not the same as Kierkegaard’s. Kierkegaard understands “Know yourself” as a demand. by contrast, sartre only asserts that human existence cannot be explained because it never stops, but continuously creates itself anew. this recalls Kierkegaard’s concept of existence as being in process, which means it cannot be locked up in a system. see, among 57 58

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premise. in The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard had already underlined that nobody is irrevocably stuck in his way of living. no matter how deep someone is lost in sin, in bondage, he always has the possibility of breaking with his present situation. similarly, sartre states that the individual always has the choice whether to stay in his present state of mind—whether it be as sorrowful or angry, as a coward, or a gambler—or to break with it. the moral dimension of this statement consists in the individual’s full responsibility for himself. excuses such as “i could not help…” or “i am what i am,” are no longer accepted. However, for this full maturity one must pay a high price: the individual must trade his existential safety for it. one can never lean back and claim that “i know who i am,” for one is in process; the current way of life is always in question and can be changed at every time. sartre is therefore right by stating, contra Kierkegaard, that anxiety “isn’t a psychological phenomenon, [but is] an existential structure of human reality.”62 However, one can argue against sartre that Kierkegaard does describe it as such, and indeed doubly so. First, according to Kierkegaard, anxiety expresses the existential insecurity of the lone human being. However, anxiety derives from another fact, namely, the world which human can always lose—projects can fail, relationships can break—throughout strokes of fate, the individual’s objective ignorance, the unreliability of other people, etc.63 second, and above all, Kierkegaard discusses the ethical dimension of anxiety. In the Christian context, however, it receives another definition than in Sartre’s work. what creates anxiety, according to Kierkegaard, is the possibility of becoming guilty. the abyss is an emblem for the person’s possibility of falling, namely, in the biblical sense. those who become guilty in front of god, fall endlessly.64 therefore, the abyss is an abyss (a depth without a ground) which causes vertigo. to sartre, who stands outside the Christian context, the ethical abyss is different. the lone person is responsible for his actions without being able to justify himself. He cannot attribute his values to an absolute being or to human nature. they remain individual, for they emanate from his spontaneous self-related choice which takes place before rationalization. Therefore, human values cannot be justified; they can only be discovered, and are always called into question. sartre, however, professes to observe that this human choice suffers from a double lack: on the one hand, a lack others, SKS 3, 169–70 / EO2, 173. SKS 4, 273ff. / PF, 73ff. SKS 4, 320–1 / CA, 12–13. SKS 4, 381–2 / CA, 77ff. SKS 4, 446–51 / CA, 146–51. Cf. also Kierkegaard’s objection to an explanation of the biblical fall of man by means of concupiscence and the fall of mankind by means of hereditary sin: SKS 4, 332–48 / CA, 25–41. thus, sartre initially blanks out Kierkegaard’s ethical thought. Yet it returns in connection with sartre’s discussion of bad faith and authenticity. 62 sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 167. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 132.) 63 Cf. SKS 4, 454–61 / CA, 155–62. Cf. also Kierkegaard’s edifying discourse “to need god is a Human being’s Highest perfection” which appears shortly after The Concept of Anxiety and illuminates it; see, SKS 5, 291–316 / EUD, 297–326. SKS 13, 13–14 / PV, 7–8. 64 Cf. SKS 4, 459–60 / CA, 161: “whoever learns to know his guilt only by analogy to judgments of the police court and the supreme court never really understands that he is guilty, for if a man is guilty, he is infinitely guilty.”

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of being, of identity, because the individual is always in process. on the other hand, a lack of metaphysical justification, because he can neither justify his existence because it is contingent—sartre demonstrates this fact in Nausea—nor can he justify his values. the highest human value which sartre claims to discover is therefore the ens causa sui, the being which is its own foundation and justification at the same time, in other words: god. However, the human striving to become god fails because god is a contradictory concept. this is why the human being remains unhappy, or, to use Hegelian terms against Hegel: the unhappy consciousness cannot be mediated.65 In the following, Sartre takes his specific understanding of the ethical dimension of anxiety—anxiety appears because the individual cannot justify his way of living— as a guide for his reading of Fear and Trembling. on april 30, 1940, sartre ordered this book together with The Sickness unto Death and Kafka’s diaries, only two days after he (re)ordered “the seducer’s diary.”66 in his letters to de beauvoir, sartre repeatedly mentions Abraham’s anxiety, because i really have to get to it….i have to make it clear that if we are free, we are free not only to choose our acts, but to choose our good, though, in other respects, such as Kafka and Kierkegaard, the good is not arbitrary and a person is always guilty in choosing it.67

sartre here has on his mind basic decisions that every human being must make in his life. He thereby appeals to Heidegger’s thought that one always becomes guilty because choosing one possibility of life means rejecting other possibilities which also demand their rights. in his novel The Age of Reason, on which he was working at the same time, sartre gives an example of such a situation of necessary decision: mathieu has made marcelle pregnant. on the one hand, he wants to stay disengaged and neither marry marcelle nor become a father. He does not love her, although he regularly sleeps with her. His original life plan was to be his sole master and to let no one else rule his life. He wanted to “be self-impelled, and able to say: ‘i am because i will; i am my own beginning.’ ”68 on the other hand, he feels responsible. He is tormented by the thought of killing the unborn child; he knows that the pregnancy humiliates marcelle, and he does not want to let her down.69 He has to decide, but whatever he chooses—he will become guilty: towards the unborn child if he lets marcelle abort it, towards marcelle Cf. sartre, L’être et le néant, pp. 127–39. (Being and Nothingness, pp. 84–95.) (“the For-itself and the being of value.”) 66 Cf. Jean-paul sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 2, p. 197; p. 200. (english translation: Quiet Moments in a War: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir. 1940–1963, ed. by simone de beauvoir, trans. by lee Fahnestock and norman macafee, new York: scribner 1993, p. 161; p. 164.) 67 sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 2, p. 264. (Quiet Moments in a War, p. 214, translation slightly modified.) Cf. also Sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 2, p. 215; p. 219. (Quiet Moments in a War, p. 176; p. 180.) 68 Jean-paul sartre, L’âge de raison, paris: gallimard 1945, p. 65. (english translation: The Age of Reason, trans. by eric suton, 6th printing, new York: bantam books 1964 [1947], pp. 53–4.) 69 Cf. sartre, L’âge de raison, pp. 26ff.; pp. 57–8; and pp. 116–21. (The Age of Reason, pp. 17ff.; pp. 46–7; and pp. 102–7.) 65

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if he lets her down and she carries the child to term, towards himself if he contracts debts to pay for the abortion or even agrees to become a father. according to sartre, the cases of Kierkegaard and Kafka, whose diaries sartre has read parallel to Fear and Trembling, are similar: both men chose their own welfare and left their fiancées knowing that they thereby became guilty. However, one cannot even say that they chose their welfare, since there was no genuine choice to make between their own welfare and that of their fiancées. It is, instead, the choosing person himself who is divided. Choosing to be a writer, or choosing the partnership—both alternatives would have made a part of them unhappy; they would have become guilty towards themselves in either case. Kierkegaard’s aesthete takes this dilemma as his philosophy of life: do whatever you want to, and you will regret it.70 according to sartre, the collision between two equal alternatives arises from the fact that neither of them can be justified a priori, but must be weighted by the choosing person himself, depending on his fundamental choice.71 However, what appears in sartre as a modern interpretation of tragic choice, is seen differently by Kierkegaard. according to Kierkegaard, the ethical sphere does not collapse per se, but is suspended by a higher sphere of existence: the paradox of faith, then, is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal… there is an absolute duty to god, for in this relationship of duty the individual relates himself as the single individual absolutely to the absolute….[i]f this duty is absolute, then the ethical is reduced to the relative.72

abraham decides to kill isaac because god wants him to. the act is to be understood as an exception, but not as a sign of the invalidity in principal of the universal, that is, the ethical sphere. abraham’s anxiety arises from the fact that he acknowledges the ethical way of life and, moreover, cannot be sure that it is really god who demands the killing so that he, Abraham, is justified. The alternatives—to kill Isaac or to let him live—are not equal here. to kill isaac must be categorically preferred if the killing carries out a divine order; but it must be categorically condemned if the order is not divine. anxiety thus arises because abraham cannot know, but must believe what is the case: “the ethical expression for what abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac—but precisely in this contradiction is the anxiety.”73 Cf. SKS 2, 48–9 / EO1, 38–9. beauvoir states similarly: “i had been very struck by Kierkegaard’s idea that a genuinely moral person could never have an easy conscience, and only pledges his liberty in ‘fear and trembling.’ ” see beauvoir, La force de l’âge, p. 556, note. (The Prime of Life, pp. 541–2.) Cf. beauvoir, La force de l’âge, pp. 555–8. (The Prime of Life, pp. 540–4; p. 589.) 72 SKS 4, 163 / FT, 70. in The Concept of Anxiety, however, Kierkegaard argues slightly differently. There he tries to show that current ethics is contradictory, and this deficiency makes it necessary to establish a higher kind of ethics. Kierkegaard then introduces a second ethics, which also makes an interpretation of abraham’s situation possible. see SKS 4, 324–31 / CA, 16–24. 73 SKS 4, 126 / FT, 30. 70 71

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sartre renews this problem in his speech Existentialism is a Humanism from 1945. At first, it seems that he stays closer to Kierkegaard’s version. However, Sartre soon generalizes the angel’s voice commanding abraham into any voice commanding any person. sartre does not ask, like Kierkegaard, if the command is really of divine nature, but rather if the voice really commands the good.74 the problem of the irreligious person is precisely the following: “[t]here disappears with Him [god] all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori.”75 sartre’s conclusion is therefore the same as the one he had reached in 1939–40: “if i regard a certain course of action as good, it is only i who choose to say that it is good and not bad,”76 and this choice cannot be justified in any way. The individual discovers himself as the origin of his values. whether he is geared to the values of his epoch, his class, etc., or whether he refuses to do so—it is always his business; other people’s values have no priority because they cannot be justified any more than his own ones. in principle, sartre thereby draws the consequences from Kierkegaard’s abraham: in the moment of action, every individual is, like abraham, on his own. He must decide on his own what he believes to be right: whether it is an angel or a demon demanding the action. in this moment, he is abandoned (verlassen)—sartre refers here to Heidegger—that is, he has to decide on his own without having the possibility of justifying his decision, and this is why abraham remains silent.77 “[e]ven if god existed, that would make no difference…what man needs is...to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of god.”78 To Kierkegaard, both are the same, since he identifies God with the good. However, one must nonetheless differentiate: Kierkegaard refers by this to the second ethics, which concerns religious existence. For this understanding it is not important to know which action in the world is good and which one is evil. on the contrary: Kierkegaard is convinced that the single individual does not have the necessary comprehension to decide this question. therefore, what actually counts is the acting person’s attitude toward his own conditions. to put it in other words, the good is earnestness as the right relation to himself and belief as the right relation to god. only if they accompany the individual’s action, does it become a good action. see SKS 4, 409–12 / CA, 107–10. SKS 4, 446–51 / CA, 146–51. 75 sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, p. 35. (Existentialism and Humanism, p. 33.) 76 sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, p. 31. (Existentialism and Humanism, p. 31.) 77 According to Kierkegaard, a human being can only be justified by God—either throughout a revelation or the last Judgment. However, the human being is alone with his decisions in any case. First, one must believe that it is really a divine revelation one is obeying—that is the reason for abraham’s anxiety. Cf. also Kierkegaard’s discussion of contemporaneity: people living at the same time with Christ cannot take advantage of their special situation because one cannot understand god immediately, but has to believe. see SKS 4, 258–71 / PF, 55–71. Contemporaneity is thus realizing the Christian message in one’s own life, no matter when one lives. Second, justification can only be gained when the human being is no longer acting, i.e., is dead. see SKS 4, 155–60 / FT, 62–7. 78 sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, p. 95. (Existentialism and Humanism, p. 56.) Cf. also thomas seibert, Existenzphilosophie, stuttgart and weimar: metzler 1997 74

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sartre’s interpretation of Fear and Trembling ends here. For his purposes, Kierkegaard’s book is reduced to “abraham’s anxiety,” which he moreover adapts for his own context.79 From this point on, Kierkegaard’s and sartre’s philosophical conceptions diverge. Kierkegaard continues to investigate anxiety within the Christian context. From his point of view, the human being either fails because of anxiety (sin, despair), or he overcomes it (belief). by contrast, from sartre’s point of view, anxiety cannot be overcome, but only concealed. He therefore analyzes the strategies of concealing anxiety (bad faith) and inquires into the possibility of living with it (authenticity). 3. Seriousness versus Play one can reliably reconstruct sartre’s reading of The Concept of Anxiety and Fear and Trembling. but for The Sickness unto Death and “the seducer’s diary,” the case is different. it may be that the unpublished notes that sartre took between the end of march 1940 and the publication of Being and Nothingness contain some information about those two books. but there is no direct reference to be found in Sartre’s published texts. Nevertheless, significant parallels do indicate the partial relevance of these texts to sartre’s thought. For example, let us take sartre’s analysis of bad faith. although sartre had already been occupying himself with this phenomenon before he started reading Kierkegaard, and although, in Being and Nothingness, he used his own instruments and examples to investigate bad faith, it would be wrong to say that Kierkegaard had no influence on this Sartrian concept. For example, Kierkegaard’s analysis of the demonic in The Concept of Anxiety and his concept of despair in The Sickness unto Death are closely related to sartre’s bad faith. However, concerning this and other concepts, it cannot clearly be said whether they result logically from the nature of things, which means that sartre (re)discovered them independently of Kierkegaard, or whether they resulted from a (direct or indirect) reading of Kierkegaard. perhaps both sides of the story are true. 80 (Sammlung Metzler, vol. 303), pp. 142–6. what is new in comparison to sartre’s early position is that, in a move reminiscent of Kant, he now claims that the human being chooses all human beings by choosing himself. 79 Further reading of Fear and Trembling cannot be proven and seems improbable. sartre’s War Diaries might have told us more about this, but sartre did not continue them after march 28, 1940. it seems quite certain, however, that sartre did not study Fear and Trembling intensely. He ordered the book on april 30, 1940, mentioned it on may 10, for the first time, and sent back all of the books he then possessed on May 13. Fear and Trembling was presumably one of them, for sartre did not mention it again (with one exception). He consequently had it in hand for only a single week. 80 For the case of “the seducer’s diary” the parallel is certainly pure coincidence. in a recollection of his childhood, sartre makes a confession which might have come from Kierkegaard’s “seducer’s diary”: “what i see underlying all those ill-starred, touching adventures is the impossibility i was in of conceiving a happy love after the seduction. once the woman had been conquered, i no longer had any idea what to do with her....to be honest, for a long time—and perhaps to this very day—nothing struck me as more moving than the moment at which the avowal of love is finally wrenched forth. And I think today that what

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In some cases, Sartre himself referred to his affinity with Kierkegaard, for example, in the context of his contrast between seriousness and play. already in Nausea, and later in his War Diaries, sartre criticized those who give up their freedom for the existing order by uncritically adopting other people’s values. those serious people calculate “that the world dominates man, that there [are] laws and rules to observe—all outside us, stratified, petrified.”81 they follow other people’s judgments; they do not dare to make their own decisions, or to assume responsibility for their lives. in this, one recognizes Kierkegaard’s description of the philistine in The Sickness unto Death, which belongs to finitude’s despair. The philistine “finds it too hazardous to be himself and far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, a mass man.”82 He does not make use of his freedom (his infinitude). rather, resigning it promises to give him comfort and the sense of security. in Being and Nothingness, seriousness returns as a version of bad faith. the serious person abandons his freedom, his ability of transcending the existing world, that is, finding possibilities of overcoming it. Surprisingly, Sartre does not refer to Kierkegaard’s concept of finitude’s despair here. Contrasting seriousness and play, he refers instead to Kierkegaard’s concept of irony: “play, like Kierkegaard’s irony, releases subjectivity. What is play indeed if not an activity of which man is the first origin, for which man himself sets the rules, and which has no consequences except according to the rules posited?”83 Here it seems that sartre is not aware of the parallel to The Sickness unto Death. the reason for it can be found by retracing this thought. the cited passage from Being and Nothingness is almost literally copied from sartre’s diaries. there is only one difference: in 1940, the reference to Kierkegaard is still used to captivate me in that avowal, even back in my childhood, was the spellbound freedom from which it emanates.” see sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, pp. 324–5. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 267.) in the 1930s, likewise, sartre treats women more as objects of his lust than as respectable personalities. He behaves toward them like a comedian, aiming to provoke certain reactions. thus what sartre says about himself as a child can be said about the young man, too: “i required a total naivety to the woman’s part. in that perishable work of art i was trying to construct, the woman represented the raw material which i had to mould.” see sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 347. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 286.) Cf. also sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, pp. 344–5 (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 284); sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 1, p. 136; pp. 184–200; pp. 202–3; pp. 203–4; pp. 290ff. (Witness of My Life, p. 111; pp. 151–64; pp. 166–7; pp. 167–8; pp. 241ff.); and sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 2, pp. 88–95; p. 99; pp. 104–10 (Quiet Moments in a War, pp. 70–6; pp. 79–80; pp. 84–9). this attitude only seems to have changed in 1940 when he announces that now he rather “like[s] to have full relationships” (sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 2, p. 111 (Quiet Moments in a War, p. 90)), those relationships which come into being only after the seduction. Maybe Sartre orders “The Seducer’s Diary” out of this self-reflection; in any case it is certain that the reflections took place before Sartre received the book from Beauvoir. 81 sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 395. (The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 325.) 82 SKS 11, 150 / SUD, 34. 83 sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 669. (Being and Nothingness, p. 580.) a human being’s consciousness of being at the origin of one’s values was defined as anxiety. The serious person who tries to conceal his anxiety is therefore in bad faith. Cf. ibid., pp. 39–40. (Chapter iv.2.2.)

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missing; sartre added it only subsequently. by the time he entered his considerations into his diary, sartre had not yet read The Sickness unto Death. thus sartre’s concept of seriousness may be traced back to other ideas. Heidegger’s analysis of inauthenticity (Uneigentlichkeit) and authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) certainly influenced Sartre, as he himself attested. Additionally, it seems that Chapter iv of The Concept of Anxiety plays a certain role, too. Kierkegaard differentiates there between seriousness and earnestness. on the one hand, there is the pedants’ seriousness. They become serious about something outward and finite, such as the national debt, the categories, or a performance at the theater. one can easily unmask them by means of socratic irony. on the other hand, there is the earnestness of those who take themselves as the object of their earnestness.84 However, in Kierkegaard, who investigates earnestness in the Christian context, the concept of play, that is, the person becoming his own legislator, does not appear. to Kierkegaard, earnestness instead implies the understanding that the human depends on god in all his actions. not choosing one’s own self from god’s hand, but trying to create it, is for Kierkegaard defiance.85 thus sartre, despite his reference to Kierkegaard, in fact reveals his actual distance from him. instead, his concept of play brings sartre closer to nietzsche. this is not surprising, given that sartre had already been enthusiastic about nietzsche as a young man. regarding oneself as the origin of all values is nothing other than the activity of nietzsche’s child.86 the child, nietzsche’s prototype for the playing human, has overcome traditional values; he has destroyed the existing moral world and has created it anew out of himself. the child is preceded by the lion that breaks with reverence and obedience, or in sartre’s words: with seriousness.87 4. The Individual and the System while the early sartre primarily picks up on Kierkegaardian anxiety as an existentialist category and interprets it within the frame of his own conception of freedom, the Cf. SKS 4, 450–1 / CA, 149–50. The passage has certainly influenced Heidegger’s concept of the crowd (man) and thus, indirectly, sartre’s concept of seriousness as well. 85 Cf. SKS 11, 180–7 / SUD, 67–74. 86 Cf. Friedrich nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra. Ein Buch für alle und keinen, leipzig: Kröner 1930, pp. 25ff. one should not forget that sartre criticizes seriousness against the background of his starting a debate with historical materialism. therefore sartre’s critique is especially of a sociopolitical nature. 87 it seems that, to sartre, seriousness (and not earnestness) is identical with the ethical in Kierkegaard. in his essay on georges bataille (“un nouveau mystique,” 1943), he portrays the ethical person as someone who sacrifices every single moment, i.e. the immediacy of here and now, for a project of life as a whole which is to be fulfilled only in the future. See sartre, Situations I, pp. 168ff. However, the ethical person would never speak of a sacrifice. It is not really clear where sartre obtained this picture of the Kierkegaardian ethic. one cannot find it in Wahl; and Either/Or was not yet published in French in 1943. sartre might have found it in Stages on Life’s Way, which was already on the French market. there the ethical person underlines the central category of resolution by which the human being gives his life a direction, and to which he subordinates all particular qualifications. See SKS 6, 96–113 / SLW, 101–19). did sartre, then, read Stages? 84

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later sartre primarily stresses the opposition between Kierkegaard and Hegel as an opposition between the individual and the system. sartre himself strove for a synthesis of his version of existentialism and marxism. However, the more he became sociopolitically engaged, the more his initial sympathy for Kierkegaard cooled down. One can already find an anticipation of this development in Being and Nothingness. in a discussion of solipsism, sartre treats the question how the individual gains knowledge of other people’s existence. in this connection, sartre distances himself from Hegel’s position in The Phenomenology of Spirit which understands the other as an object of knowledge.88 to sartre, Hegel’s argument is as follows: Hegel understands the other as a necessary condition for the individual’s self-consciousness. The other reflects my picture so that i (re)gain myself as an object. everything depends on how the other sees me; i depend on his recognition, and from there my interest in the other arises. this dependency founds the death struggle of consciousnesses: i use everything available, even my life, to degrade the other to a dependent consciousness which exists only to recognize me. the slave is the master’s truth. However, Hegel wants to overcome this one-sidedness. therefore he aims for a reciprocal recognition which generates the self-consciousness in general. sartre offers four arguments against Hegel. First—sartre refers to his phenomenological derivation of the immediate consciousness—the single person’s consciousness does not depend on being recognized. it has reality on its own because it is experience (of itself). second, consciousness creates its unity (selfhood (ipséité)) by itself without thereby depending on another consciousness. third, the human being never succeeds in gaining a fixed identity, whether through its own self-consciousness or in its image reflected by the others. For its identity is always in question, and selftranscending, because of the spontaneous activity of the immediate consciousness. Fourth, sartre accuses Hegel of betraying the individual with regard to his demands: as a universal game of infinitely recognizing and being recognized, “self-consciousness in general” takes place beyond the individual’s perspective. according to sartre, this is impossible in principle. a consciousness which is reduced to an object (of recognition, for example) loses its character as consciousness, as experience. therefore, Hegel illegitimately puts the being of consciousness on a par with its being recognized; life on a par with representation. the individual’s inner perspective is irreducible. in contrast to Hegel, sartre strictly distinguishes between the for-itself (pour-soi) (the way i appear to myself, the experience) and the for-others (pour-l’autrui) (the way i appear to other people, the object) and assigns them different ontological characters. against the Hegelian claim to reduce everything to knowledge, sartre defends Kierkegaard’s claim that the individual existence is irreducible: Here as everywhere we ought to oppose to Hegel Kierkegaard, who represents the claims of the individual as such. the individual claims his achievement as an individual, the recognition of his concrete being, and of the objective specification of a universal structure….the particular is here the support and foundation of the universal; the 88 Cf. g.w.F. Hegel, Sämtliche Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe, vols. 1–20, ed. by Hermann glockner, stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann verlag 1928–41, vol. 2, pp. 148–58.

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according to sartre, Hegel’s model of “self-consciousness in general” ignores the individual’s claim for recognition of his concrete reality. For this reason, Kierkegaard accuses Hegel90 in the introduction to The Concept of Anxiety of having mixed up the spheres—thought and being, possibility and reality, logic and ethics, mediation and the either/or of human choice. in The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard underlines the individual’s significance for Christian-ethical problems, the very category that Hegel cannot think.91 sartre, however, does not adhere to his defense of Kierkegaard against Hegel. in his later writings, he will search in part for a balance between systematic thought and individualism. in this connection, he will oversimplify Kierkegaard’s picture and thereby distort it. V. Recapitulatory Conclusion: Kierkegaard’s Influence on Sartre’s Philosophy the account given above does not exhaust the correspondences between Kierkegaard and the early sartre, which are far more extensive than sartre’s explicit references to Kierkegaard’s works might indicate. indeed, it is striking how sparsely sartre refers to the dane. names like Heidegger, Husserl, descartes, Freud, bergson, and later sartre, L’être et le néant, pp. 295–6. (Being and Nothingness, pp. 239–40.) Cf. also seibert, Existenzphilosophie, p. 129; pp. 139ff. 90 although Kierkegaard refers much more to Hegel than to Hegelians, it seems clear that his criticisms are directed much more at danish Hegelians than at Hegel himself. see Jon stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, Cambridge and new York: Cambridge university press 2003. in The Concept of Anxiety the reader finds only a short summary of this discussion. an exhaustive reconstruction of Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel or Hegelianism is beyond the scope of this article. since Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel(ianism) is highly compact in The Concept of Anxiety it seems difficult to understand without background knowledge (which, for example, might result from the reading of other books on Kierkegaard). therefore, it is quite certain that sartre’s knowledge of Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel(ianism) is based on other sources of information, for example, on wahl’s essay “Hegel et Kierkegaard” which is included in Études kierkegaardiennes. there wahl explains Kierkegaard’s most important points of critique of Hegel(ianism)’s systematic thought. with regard to Kierkegaard’s personal life, wahl writes: “[i]t was his existence itself which destroyed Hegelianism. Kierkegaard has conceived throughout his own private experience that there are irreducible subjective elements, that there is something unique, something incommensurable.” Jean wahl, Kierkegaard. L’un devant l’autre, paris: Hachette 1998, p. 105. See also Wahl’s classification of Kierkegaard as a Hegelian unhappy consciousness which incorporates a protest against this category at the same time in ibid., pp. 111ff. 91 Cf. SKS 4, 317–21 / CA, 9–14. SKS 11, 230–1 / SUD, 119–20. Here the discussion returns to the category of the existential concept which cannot be thought within a system. see also alfred dandyk, Unaufrichtigkeit, pp. 48–9; pp. 96–101. this critique goes back to Kierkegaard’s own understanding of actuality that significantly differs from German idealism’s understanding of this concept, and which is one of the reasons for Kierkegaard’s being disappointed by schelling’s berlin lectures. 89

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on increasingly Hegel and marx, appear more frequently than Kierkegaard. even philosophers who had little influence on Sartre are mentioned more often. Sartre’s obvious disregard for Kierkegaard’s contribution stands in contradiction to the strong presence of Kierkegaard’s concepts in Sartre’s early philosophical writings. At first sight, this gives the impression that sartre was being dishonest concerning his debt to Kierkegaard. but this contradiction can be explained by several reasons. First of all, sartre had obviously read very little of Kierkegaard—unlike Husserl and Heidegger, whose books he had studied and discussed for months, and to which he dedicated larger essays and chapters. sartre’s reading of Kierkegaard never exceeded skimming. moreover, he was often interested in Kierkegaard only insofar as he hoped to gain information about specific problems he was dealing with. Hélène Politis, who dismisses Kierkegaard’s influence on Sartre as negligible, is to that extent right when she states: “sartre is interested in Kierkegaard to elucidate other thinkers or writers (for a better comprehension of Heidegger or Kafka).”92 However—and this is the second point—it is precisely because of his indirect reading of Kierkegaard that sartre succeeded in building important cornerstones of his own philosophical conception. what would sartre be without concepts like facticity and transcendence, choice,93 anxiety and nothingness, the failure of the ens causa sui, or, closely connected with it, the unhappy state, bad faith,94 and authenticity, historicity, and so forth—concepts which are inseparably connected with Kierkegaard’s oeuvre? thus politis is wrong when she claims: “Contrary to the legend, he [sartre] owes him [Kierkegaard] very little.”95 one should be more precise and put the matter as follows: sartre mostly does not bother to trace the genealogy of his concepts. if he had done so, he would have encountered Kierkegaard much more often, and consequently would have estimated the Dane’s significance for his own oeuvre more highly. Instead, Sartre is quite often satisfied to make use of politis, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle, p. 136. both of them, Kierkegaard and sartre, speak of a choice by which a human “makes” himself. see “the balance between the esthetic and the ethical,” in SKS 3, 153–314 / EO2, 155–338. see also sartre, L’être et le néant, pp. 515–16 (Being and Nothingness, pp. 440–1); wahl, Kierkegaard. L’un devant l’autre, pp. 121ff.; annemarie pieper, Einführung in die Ethik, 5th ed., tübingen and basel: Francke 2003, pp. 206–7. the most striking difference between them seems to be the question whether the self is already there and has to be re-chosen (Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition) or whether it first has to be created (Sartre’s concept of fundamental choice). However, if one questions when and how sartre’s fundamental choice takes place, for example, in which sense one can speak of a “choice” and who is choosing— the young child, or the later person, and how often a radical change can be observed, one will come to the conclusion that Sartre is not so far from Kierkegaard as first impressions suggest, especially if one considers sartre’s concept of authenticity—“a self-recovery of being which was previously corrupted,” and one will see the parallel to Kierkegaard’s choice of the given self. see sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 111, note. (Being and Nothingness, p. 70, note.) in opposition to this point of view, see Regin Prenter, “Frihedsbegrebet hos Sartre på baggrund af Kierkegaard,” Ordet og Ånden. Reformatorisk kristendom, Copenhagen: gads Forlag 1952, pp. 177–89. 94 Cf. dandyk, Unaufrichtigkeit, pp. 123–9. 95 politis, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle, p. 135; cf. also Johan grooten, “le soi chez Kierkegaard et sartre,” Revue philosophique de Louvain, vol. 51, 1952, pp. 64–89. 92 93

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Kierkegaard’s concepts that he comes across in Heidegger and wahl. and there is also a reason for it: sartre was more attracted by Heidegger’s atheistic adaption of Kierkegaard than by Kierkegaard himself, in whose “Concept of Anxiety…there are countless things within theologic terms that are obviously a bit forbidding.”96 since Heidegger himself mostly remained silent about Kierkegaard,97 sartre basically came to know about the existing connection only from wahl. and it was wahl who, at the same time, informed sartre about the basic Kierkegaardian concepts.98 third, one should not neglect sartre’s way of discussing his contemporaries. if he takes up other philosophers’ conceptions, he does not do so in order to learn and apply them as a disciple. by contrast, he singles out certain central ideas which promise to help him find answers to his own philosophical questions. However, he then changes those ideas by taking them out of their context. in a number of cases, sartre’s creative way of assimilating others’ ideas goes so far that the original author might raise an objection.99 this concerns, for example, “abraham’s anxiety” as well as his theory of nothingness: in both cases sartre refers to Kierkegaard.100 His often patchwork-like way of dealing with other philosophical conceptions helps sartre to find innovative solutions to his problems; but it also leads to disruptions and contradictions within sartre’s own conceptions. sartre’s reading of Kierkegaard is anything but simple. at least, one cannot claim that Sartre owes nothing to Kierkegaard. However, the difficulty arises when one tries to ascertain whether sartre’s picture of Kierkegaard still resembles Kierkegaard—or whether it has already become too much of sartre himself.

96

p. 413.)

sartre, Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vol. 1, p. 491. (Witness of My Life,

97 except Heidegger’s footnote which he dedicated to Kierkegaard in connection with the distinction between anxiety and fear, and which sartre discovered as well. Cf. martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 17th ed., tübingen: niemeyer 1993, p. 190, note; sartre, Les carnets de la drôle de guerre, p. 166 (The War Diaries, p. 131); and sartre, L’être et le néant, p. 66 (Being and Nothingness, p. 29). 98 the titles of wahl’s essays already announce his strategy. He mainly investigates central concepts in Kierkegaard (and is mostly less interested in giving information about individual works) and reveals his importance to Heidegger, Jaspers, and other existential philosophers. 99 as politis radically claims: “[t]here is no conception, no concept, no word having a similar meaning in the one and the other.” see politis, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle, p. 142. 100 In fact, Sartre’s concept of nothingness significantly predates his reading of Kierkegaard or Heidegger. Cf. Knopp, “sartre und Kierkegaard: eine zeitverschobene parallelaktion?,” in Carnets Jean-Paul Sartre. Der Lauf des Bösen, p. 48). it can already be found in sartre’s concept of spontaneity which he develops under the influence of Bergson and Husserl in The Transcendence of the Ego. Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety only seems to have helped him to draw the ontological-existential conclusions from it.

bibliography

I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Sartre’s Corpus L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, paris: gallimard 1943 (Bibliothèque des Idées), pp. 58-84; pp. 94-111; pp. 115-49; pp. 150-74; pp. 291300; pp. 508-16; pp. 529-60; pp. 639-42; pp. 643-63; pp. 669-70; pp. 720-2. (english translation: Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. by Hazel e. barnes, new York: washington square press 1956, pp. 21-45; pp. 55-70; pp. 73-150; pp. 107-29; pp. 235-45; pp. 433-41; pp. 45280; pp. 553-6; pp. 557-75; pp. 580-1; pp. 625-8. L’existentialisme est un humanisme, paris: nagel 1946, pp. 27-33. (english translation: Existentialism and Humanism, trans. by philip mairet, new York: Haskell House publishers 1948, pp. 31-2.) “un nouveau mystique,” in his Situations I, paris: gallimard 1947, pp. 143-88, see pp. 154-5; pp. 162-3; pp. 168ff. “Question de methode,” in Critique de la raison dialectique, vol. 1, Théorie des ensembles pratiques, paris: gallimard 1960, pp. 13-111, see pp. 15-32. (english translation: Search for a Method, trans. by Hazel e. barnes, new York: alfred a. Knopf 1963, pp. 3-181, see pp. 3-34.) Critique de la raison dialectique, vol. 1, Théorie des ensembles pratiques, paris: gallimard 1960, p. 117, note 1. (english translation: Critique of Dialectical Reason, trans. by alan sheridan-smith, london: new left books 1976, pp. 1718, note 6.) “Kierkegaard: l’universal singulier,” in Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’Unesco à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, paris: gallimard 1966, pp. 2063. (english translation: “Kierkegaard: the singular universal’ in Between Existentialism and Marxism, trans. by John matthews, london: new left books 1974, pp. 141-69.) Les carnets de la drôle de guerre. Novembre 1939–Mars 1940, paris: gallimard 1983, pp. 333-7; pp. 342-7; pp. 348ff.; p. 352; pp. 382-3. (english translation: The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre: November 1939-March 1940, trans. by Quintin Hoare, new York: pantheon books 1984, p. 120; p. 124; p. 131; p. 132; p. 139; p. 164.) Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres, vols. 1-2, ed. by simone de beauvoir, paris: gallimard 1983, vol. 1 (1926-39), p. 451; p. 491; p. 494; p. 496; p. 500; p. 518; vol. 2 (1940-1963), p. 11; p. 16; pp. 38-9; pp. 40-1; p. 56; p. 111; p. 129; p. 197; p. 200; p. 215; p. 219; pp. 222-4; p. 264; p. 268; p. 279; pp. 285-6; pp. 28990. (english translation of vol. 1: Witness of My Life. The Letters of Jean-Paul

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Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir 1926-1939, ed. by simone de beauvoir, trans. by lee Fahnestock and normann macafee, Harmondsworth: penguin 1994, p. 378; p. 413; p. 416; p. 421. english translation of vol. 2: Quiet Moments in a War: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir. 1940-1963, ed. by simone de beauvoir, trans. by lee Fahnestock and norman macafee, new York: scribner 1993, p. 5; p. 10n; p. 161; p. 164n; p. 214.) II. Sources of Sartre’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard beauvoir, simone de, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, paris: gallimard 1944, p. 42; p. 63. — Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, paris: gallimard 1947, p. 14; p. 60; pp. 165-6. — Le Deuxième sexe, vols. 1-2, paris: gallimard 1949, vol. 1, p. 236; p. 295, p. 387; vol. 2, p. 7; pp. 213-14; p. 564. — La force de l’âge, paris: gallimard 1960, p. 53; p. 141; pp. 482-3; p. 561; p. 564; p. 603, note. Camus, albert, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, paris: gallimard 1942, p. 39; pp. 42-3; p. 51; pp. 56-61; p. 65; pp. 69-72. Heidegger, martin, Sein und Zeit, Halle: niemeyer 1927, pp. 175-96, see also p. 190, note 1; p. 235, note 1; and p. 338, note 1. Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’Unesco à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, paris: gallimard 1966. merleau-ponty, maurice, Phénoménologie de la perception, paris: gallimard 1945, p. 8; p. 100. — “Complicité objective,” in Les Temps modernes, no. 34, 1948, pp. 1-11. — “la querelle de l’existentialisme,” in his Sens et non-sens, paris: nagel 1948, pp. 141-64, see p. 151; p. 158 (originally published in Les Temps modernes, no. 2, 1945, pp. 344-56). — “l’existentialisme chez Hegel,” in his Sens et non-sens, paris: nagel 1948, pp. 125-39, see pp. 127-8 (originally published in Les Temps modernes, no. 7, 1946, pp. 1311-19). — “Foi et bonne foi,” in his Sens et non-sens, paris: nagel 1948, pp. 351-70, see p. 359 (originally published in Les Temps modernes, no. 5, 1946, pp. 769-82). — “sartre et l’ultra-bolchevisme,” in his Les aventures de la dialectique, paris: gallimard 1955, chapter 5, pp. 136-280, see p. 148. — “Éloge de la philosophie,” in his Éloge de la philosophie et autres essais, paris: gallimard 1960, pp. 11-63, see p. 14 (originally published, Éloge de la philosophie. Leçon inaugurale faite au Collège de France, le jeudi 15 janvier 1953, paris: gallimard 1953). — “partout et nulle part,” in his Signes, paris: gallimard 1960, p. 192 (originally published in Les Philosophes célèbres, ed. by maurice merleau-ponty, paris: l. mazenod 1956, p. 186). — Le visible et l’invisible, paris: gallimard 1964, p. 234. wahl, Jean, Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: aubier 1938.

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III. Secondary Literature on Sartre’s Relation to Kierkegaard arnou, rené, “l’existentialisme à la maniére de Kierkegaard et J.p. sartre,” Gregorianum, vol. 27, 1946, pp. 63-88. aron, raymond, Marxism and the Existentialists, trans. by Helen weaver and robert addis, new York: Harper & row 1969, p. 176. barnes, Hazel a., “translator’s introduction” to Jean-paul sartre, Being and Nothingness, new York: philosophical library 1956, pp. viii-xliii. bernstein, richard J., Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity, philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press 1971, see especially pp. 84-164. billeskov Jansen, Frederik Julius, “the study in France,” in Kierkegaard Research, ed. by niels thulstrup and marie mikolová thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1987 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 15), pp. 134-59. — “les études kierkegaardiennes en France,” in Kierkegaard. La découverte de l’existence, ed. by régis boyer and Jean-marie paul, nancy: Centre de recherches germaniques et skandinaves de l’université de nancy ii 1990, pp. 215-27. birkenstock, eva, Heißt philosophieren sterben lernen? Antworten der Existenzphilosophie. Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Rosenzweig, Freiburg i. br. et al.: alber 1997. Bousquet, François, “Note sur les études françaises concernant les Discours Édifiants de Kierkegaard,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2000, pp. 246-50. Caron, Jacques, “remarques sur la réception française de Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard aujourd’hui. Actes du Colloque de la Sorbonne, ed. by Jacques Caron, odense: university press 1998, pp. 69-80. Catalano, Joseph s., A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, Chicago: the university of Chicago press 1986, p. 21; p. 23; pp. 37-40; pp. 70-1; p. 214. Caws, peter, “der ursprung der negation (49-118),” in Jean-Paul Sartre: Das Sein und das Nichts, ed. by bernard n. schumacher, berlin: akademie verlag 2003 (Klassiker auslegen, vol. 22), pp. 45-62. Chiodi, pietro, Sartre and Marxism, trans. by Kate soper, atlantic Highlands, new Jersey: Humanities press 1976, pp. 4-5; p. 17; pp. 29-30; pp. 81-2; pp. 104-5, 117; pp. 128-9. Cochrane, arthur C., The Existentialists and God: Being and the Being of God in the Thought of Sören Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Tillich, Etienne Gilson, Karl Barth, philadelphia: the westminster press 1956. Cole, James preston, “the Function of Choice in Human existence,” The Journal of Religion, vol. 45, 1965, pp. 196-210. Cortese, alessandro, “Kierkegaard-sartre: appunti di metodologia,” Filosofia e Vita, no. 6, 1965, pp. 31-49. Cumming, robert, “existence and Communication,” Ethics, vol. 65, no. 2, 1954-55, pp. 79-101. Curtis, Jerry l., “Heroic Commitment, or the dialectics of the leap in Kierkegaard, sartre, and Camus,” Rice University Studies, vol. 59, no. 3, 1973, pp. 17-26.

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dandyk, alfred, Unaufrichtigkeit. Die existentielle Psychoanalyse im Kontext der Philosophiegeschichte, würzburg: Könighausen & neumann 2002, see especially pp. 48-56; pp. 77-81; pp. 86-101; pp. 105-9; pp. 123-33; pp. 174-82. delgaauw, bernard, Denkers van deze tijd. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Barth, Niebuhr, Sartre, Bultmann, Franeker: wever 1953. desan, wifrid. The Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre, garden City: doubleday & Company 1965, pp. 44-5; p. 66. dowell, roland Christensen, Eschatological Implications in the Existentialist Philosophies of Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Marcel, newton: andover newton theological school 1957. dunning, stephen n., Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Inwardness, princeton: princeton university press 1985, p. 261n4. erfani, Farhang, “sartre and Kierkegaard on the aesthetics of boredom,” Idealistic Studies, vol. 34, 2004, pp. 303-17. Fingarette, Herbert, Self-Deception, berkeley, los angeles and london: university of California press 2000, see pp. 91-109. Flam, leopold, De krisis van de burgerlijke moraal. Van Kierkegaard tot Sartre, antwerp: uitg. ontwikkeling 1956. — “sartre tussen Kierkegaard en marx,” Tijdschrift van de Vrije Universiteit van Brussel, vol. 4, 1962, pp. 1-29. Flynn, thomas, Existenzialismus. Eine kurze Einführung, vienna: turia + Kant 2008, see especially pp. 7-34; pp. 43-60; pp. 66ff.; 71-8; pp. 93-6; p. 103; pp. 114-17; pp. 119-25; pp. 147-8. Frank, manfred, “nachwort,” Selbstbewußtseinstheorien von Fichte bis Sartre, ed. by manfred Frank, Frankfurt am main: suhrkamp 1991, pp. 413-599, see especially pp. 492-599. gabriel, leo, Existenzphilosophie. Kierkegaard. Jaspers. Heidegger. Sartre. Dialog der Positionen (2nd completely revised ed. of Existenzphilosophie von Kierkegaard zu Sartre), vienna and munich: Herold 1968. gemmer, anders, “ufordøjet Kierkegaard,” Gads danske Magasin, 1946, pp. 37783. (republished in his Filosofisk Potpourri, Copenhagen: skjern 1949, pp. 7585). grandjean, louis e., “sartre og Kierkegaard,” Berlingske Aftenavis, november 26, 1946. — Fra Yokohama til Tersløse, Copenhagen: rasmus navers 1948, see especially pp. 65-9. grangier, edouard, “abraham, oder Kierkegaard, wie Kafka und sartre ihn sehen,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, vol. 4, no. 3, 1949-50, pp. 412-21. Griffin, Christopher O., “Bad Faith and the Ethic of Existential Action: Kierkegaard, sartre, and a boy named Harry. we were so tiny but we were sincere,” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 54, 2001, pp. 173-96. grimsley, ronald, “French existentialism,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. by niels thulstrup and marie mikulová thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 8), pp. 121-34. grooten, Johan, “le soi chez Kierkegaard et sartre,” Revue philosophique de Louvain, vol. 50, 3rd series, no. 25, 1952, pp. 64-89.

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Hohlenberg, Johannes, “Jean-paul sartre og hans forhold til Kierkegaard,” Samtiden, vol. 56, no. 5, 1947, pp. 310-22. Howells, Christina, “sartre and negative theology,” The Modern Language Review, vol. 76, no. 3, 1981, pp. 549-55. Hübscher, alfred, “der existenzbegriff bei Heidegger, sartre und Kierkegaard,” Kirchenblatt für die reformierte Schweiz, vol. 105, no. 13, 1949, pp. 194-9. Janke, wolfgang, Existenzphilosophie, berlin and new York: walter de gruyter 1982, p. 93; p. 95; pp. 97-8; pp. 111-12; p. 115; p. 126. Johnson, Howard a., “Kierkegaard and sartre,” The American Scandinavian Review, vol. 35, 1947, no. 3, pp. 220-5. Jolivet, régis, Les doctrines existentialistes de Kierkegaard à Jean-Paul Sartre, abbaye de saint-wandrille: editions de Fontenelle 1948. Jonker, Christine, The Self in the Thought of Kierkegaard, Sartre and Jung, stellenbosch: university of stellenbosch 2001. Jørgensen, Poul Henning, “Från Kierkegaard till Sartre,” Kyrkornas värld, vol. 8, 1962, pp. 250-6. Kaneko, takezou, 『キェルケゴールからサルトルへ—実存思想の歩み』 [From Kierkegaard to sartre—the development of existential thought], tokyo: shimizu-koubun-dou 1967. Kern, edith, Existential Thought and Fictional Technique: Kierkegaard, Sartre, Beckett, new Haven, Connecticut: Yale university press 1970. Knopp, peter, “sartre und Kierkegaard: eine zeitverschobene parallelaktion?,” in Carnets Jean-Paul Sartre. Der Lauf des Bösen, ed. by peter Knopp and vincent von wroblewsky, Frankfurt am main et al.: peter lang 2006, pp. 43-61. König, traugott, “zur neuübersetzung,” epilogue to sartre, Jean-paul, in Das Sein und das Nichts. Versuch einer phänomenologischen Ontologie, ed. by traugott König, reinbek bei Hamburg: rowohlt 1998, pp. 1073-88. Koskinen, lennart, Søren Kierkegaard och existentialismen. om tiden, varat och evigheten, nora: nya doxa 1994, p. 8; p. 146. Kousaka, masaaka, 『キェルケゴールからサルトルへ—実存哲学研究』 [From Kierkegaard to sartre—a study of existential philosophy], tokyo: Koubun-dou 1949. ladegaard Knox, Jeanette bresson, “some remarks on the French reception of philosophical Fragments,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2004, pp. 350-5. lafarge, Jacques, “Kierkegaard dans la tradition française: les conditions de sa réception dans les milieux philosophiques,” in Kierkegaard Revisited: Proceedings from the Conference “Kierkegaard and the Meaning of Meaning It,” Copenhagen, May 5-9, 1996, ed. by niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon stewart, berlin and new York: de gruyter 1997 (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), pp. 274-90. — “précisions sur la réception française de Kierkegaard (réponse à J. Caron),” Kierkegaard aujourd’hui. Actes du Colloque de la Sorbonne, ed. by Jacques lafarge, odense: university press 1998, pp. 81-90. — “l’Édition des Œuvres complètes de Kierkegaard en français: contexte— historique—objectifs—conception—réalisation,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2000, pp. 300-16.

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larson, Curtis w.r., “Kierkegaard and sartre,” Personalist, vol. 35, 1954, pp. 12836. lévy, bernard-Henry, Sartre. Der Philosoph des 20. Jahrhunderts, munich: dtv 2005, see especially p. 113; p. 166; p. 526; p. 538; pp. 541-2; p. 599. liisberg, sune, “den levende Kierkegaard, den nye sartre, den evige...,” Slagmark— tidsskrift for idéhistorie, no. 44, 2005, pp. 141-4. Løgstrup, Knud Ejler, “Sartres og Kierkegaards skildring af den dæmoniske indesluttethed,” Vindrosen, vol. 13, no. 1, 1966, pp. 28-42. lowrie, walter, “existence as understood by Kierkegaard and/or sartre,” Sewanee Review, vol. 63, July–september 1950, pp. 379-401. mcbride, william l., “sartre’s debts to Kierkegaard. a partial reckoning,” in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, ed. by martin J. matuštík and merold westphal, bloomington, indianapolis: indiana university press 1995 (Studies in Continental Thought), pp. 18-42. mejovsek, gabriele, Die Metamorphose vom Dasein Existenz und der Begriff der Existenzerhellung in der Philosophie Karl Jaspers. Unter Berücksichtigung verwandter Wandlungsphänomene im Denken von Pascal, Kierkegaard, Heidegger und Sartre, vienna: university of vienna 1983. message, Jacques, “remarques sur la réception de Begrebet Angest en France (19351971),” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2001, pp. 323-9. Muñoz, Arias, “Las bases ontológicas del conflicto intersubjetivo en J.P. Sartre,” Anales del Seminario de Metafisica, vol. 15, 1980, pp. 11-54. nesiote, n.a., Ὑπαρξισμὸς καὶ χριστιανικὴ πίστις. Ἡ ὑπαρκτικὴ σκέψις ἐν τῇ φιλοσοφίᾳ καὶ ἡ χριστιανικὴ πίστις ὡς τὸ ἀναπόφευκτον καὶ βασικὸν πρόβλημα αυτῆς κατὰ τὸν Sören Kierkegaard καὶ τοὺς συγχρόνους ὑπαρξιστὰς φιλοσόφους Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger καὶ Jean-Paul Sartre, athens: menuma 1985. pedersen, olaf, Fra Kierkegaard til Sartre, Copenhagen: arne Frost-Hansens 1947. pieper, annemarie, Einführung in die Ethik, 5th ed., tübingen and basel: Francke 2003, see pp. 262-6. — “Freiheit als selbstinitiation,” in Jean-Paul Sartre: Das Sein und das Nichts, ed. by bernard n. schumacher, berlin: akademie verlag 2003 (Klassiker auslegen, vol. 22), pp. 195-210. piety, marilyn g., “good Faith,” in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. by robert l. perkins, macon, georgia: mercer university press 2003 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 5), pp. 157-79. politis, Hélène, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une reception, paris: Kimé 2005, p. 85; p. 108, note 95; pp. 118-19; p. 121; p. 127, note 85; pp. 135-44 passim; pp. 150-9 passim; p. 162, note 156; p. 164, note 178; p. 233, p. 235; p. 249-50. poole, roger C., “indirect Communication i: Hegel, Kierkegaard, and sartre,” New Blackfriars, vol. 47, 1966, pp. 532-41. — “the unknown Kierkegaard: twentieth-Century receptions,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by alastair Hannay and gordon d. marino, Cambridge: Cambridge university press 1998, pp. 48-75.

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Prenter, Regin, “Frihedsbegrebet hos Sartre på baggrund af Kierkegaard,” in his Ordet og Ånden. Reformatorisk kristendom. Afhandlinger og artikler, Copenhagen: gads Forlag 1952, pp. 177-89. Prokopski, Jacek Aleksander, “Egzystencja i nicość. Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre,” in Aktualność Kierkegaarda. W 150 rocznicę śmierci myśliciela z Kopenhagi, ed. by Antoni Szwed, Kęty: Antyk 2006, pp. 109-39. .187–182 ‘‫ עמ‬,1950 ,4 ,‫ מולד‬,”‫ “קירקגור וסארטר‬,‫ ישעיהו‬,‫[ רבינוביץ‬rabinowitz, Yeshiahu, “Kierkegaard and sartre,” Molad, no. 4, 1950, pp. 182-7.] reed, ross Channing, “Love” and Addiction: The Phenomenological Ontologies of Kierkegaard and Sartre: An Existential Theory of Addiction, Chicago: loyola university of Chicago 1994. reinhardt, Kurt Frank, The Existentialist Revolt: The Main Themes and Phases of Existentialism. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, Marcel, milwaukee: bruce 1952. roberts, david e., “Faith and Freedom in existentialism: a study of Kierkegaard and sartre,” Theology Today, vol. 8, 1951-52, pp. 469-82. roloff, volker, “existentielle psychoanalyse als theatrum mundi. zur theatertheorie sartres,” in Sartre. Ein Kongreß, ed. by traugott König, reinbek bei Hamburg: rowohlt 1988, pp. 93-106. schnädelbach, Herbert, “sartre und die Frankfurter schule,” in Sartre. Ein Kongreß, ed. by traugott König, reinbek bei Hamburg: rowohlt 1998, pp. 13-35. schulz, walter, “das problem der angst in der neueren philosophie,” in Aspekte der Angst. Starnberger Gespräche 1964, ed. by Hoimar v. ditfurth, stuttgart: thieme 1965, pp. 1-23. seibert, thomas, Existenzphilosophie, stuttgart and weimar: metzler 1997 (Sammlung Metzler, vol. 303), pp. 17-35; pp. 126-46. shearson, william a., The Notion of Encounter in Existentialist Metaphysics: An Inquiry into the Nature and Structure of Existential Knowledge in Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Buber, toronto: university of toronto 1970. –82 ’‫ עמ‬,1975 ,‫ מוסד ביאליק‬:‫ ירושלים‬,‫ אכסיסטנציאליזם‬:‫ “ קירקגור כאכזיסטנציאליסט” בספרו‬,‫ רן‬,‫סיגד‬ .117 [sigad, ran, “Kierkegaard as existentialist,” in his Studies in Existentialism, Jerusalem: bialik institute 1975, pp. 82-117.] sløk, Johannes, “om begrebet existens hos Heidegger, sartre og Kierkegaard,” Dansk teologisk Tidsskrift, 1947, pp. 230-40. — “Kierkegaard og fransk eksistentialisme,” Kristeligt Dagblad, January 7, 1948. slote, michael a., “existentialism and the Fear of dying,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 12, 1975, pp. 17-28. (reprinted in Language, Metaphysics, and Death, ed. by John donnelly, new York: Fordham university press 1978, pp. 69-87.) søe, niels H., “mennesket i historien,” For Kirke og Kultur, vol. 56, 1951, pp. 96106. søltoft, pia, “etika sartre-nál és Kierkegaard-nál,” Magyar Filozófiai Szemle, nos. 1-2, 2003, pp. 185-200. soper, william wayne, The Self and Its World in Ralph Baton Perry, Edgar Sheffield Brightman, Jean-Paul Sartre and Søren Kierkegaard, boston: boston university 1962.

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sørensen, Hans, “sartre og Kierkegaard,” Jyllandsposten, may 9, 1946. spanggaard, K.d., “eksistentialismen, J.p. sartre og søren Kierkegaard,” Berlingske Aftenavis, January 23, 1946. theunissen, michael and greve, wilfried, “einleitung: Kierkegaards werk und wirkung. iii. zur wirkungsgeschichte. 3. philosophie. b) existenzphilosophie,” in Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. by michael theunissen and wilfried greve, Frankfurt am main: suhrkamp 1979, pp. 62-76. Toeplitz, Karol, “F. Kafki i J. P. Sartre’a reinterpretacja ‘Konfliktu Abrahama’ ” [F. Kafka and J. P. Sartre’s Reinterpretation of the “Abraham Conflict”], Gdańskie Zeszyty Humanistyczne, vol. 2, no. 28, 1985, pp. 41-55. toettcher, r.w., Kierkegaard and Sartre: A Comparison of the Conception of Freedom of Two Existentialist Philosophers, london: university of london 1963-64. treiber, gerhard, Philosophie der Existenz. Das Entscheidungsproblem bei Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus; literarische Erkundungen von Kundera, Céline, Broch, Musil, Frankfurt am main et al.: peter lang 2000 (Europäische Hochschulschriften, series 20, Philosophie, vol. 610), see especially pp. 15-67 (chapter “Kierkegaard”); and pp. 133-61 (chapter “sartre”). ussher, arland, A Journey Through Dread: A Study of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre, new York: devin-adair 1955. viallaneix, nelly, “lectures françaises,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. by niels thulstrup and marie mikulová thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 8), pp. 102-20. vloemans, antoon, “sartres mensbeeld en het einde van het existentialisme,” Nieuw Vlaams Tijdschrift, 22, 1969, pp. 597-615. wahl, Jean, Petite histoire de “l’existentialisme”: suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard commentaires, paris: editions Club maintenant 1947, p. 13; p. 44; pp. 50-60 passim; p. 63. — Kierkegaard. L’un devant l’Autre, paris: Hachette 1998, see especially pp. 221-5 (essay “Kierkegaard: son influence en France”). weiss, gail, “reading/writing between the lines,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 31, 1998, pp. 387-409. wesche, tilo, Kierkegaard. Eine philosophische Einführung, stuttgart: reclam 2003, see especially pp. 62-3. whitmire, John Floyd, On the Subject of Autobiography: Finding a Self in the Works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Derrida, villanova university, villanova, pennsylvania 2005. zeegers, victor, “l’existentialisme de Kierkegaard à Jean-paul sartre,” Revue générale belge, no. 8, 1959, pp. 1-18. zimmermann, rainer, Kritik der interkulturellen Vernunft, paderborn: mentis 2002, see especially pp. 78-81.

lev shestov: Kierkegaard in the ox of phalaris george pattison

I. Introduction lev shestov is the nom de plume of leib isaakovich schwartzmann, a highly idiosyncratic writer on philosophy, literature and religion who was born in Kiev in 1866 and died in paris in 1938.1 the son of a wealthy Jewish businessman, he worked for a period in the family business, whilst pursuing his literary and other interests in an amateur capacity. The first fruits of these were the books Shakespeare and his Critic Brandes (1898) and Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche: The Good in the Teaching of Tolstoy and Nietzsche: Philosophy and Preaching (1900).2 in the following period he became acquainted with members of the so-called russian religious renaissance, including nicholas berdyaev (1874–1948), with whom he continued to have close relations until his death. However, the tendencies of shestov’s own thought were rather different from the majority of representatives of the russian religious renaissance. He never converted to orthodoxy, and was largely non-observant with regard to his own Judaism.3 in the period before the russian revolution he published further works on, for example, anton Chekhov (1860–1904), Henrik ibsen (1828–1906), Fyodor mikhailovich dostoevsky (1821– 81), and Berdyaev himself, as well as general reflections on philosophy and life, often in an aphoristic form reminiscent of some works of Friedrich nietzsche (1844– 1900). Following the revolution, shestov made his way to paris in 1919, where he remained until his death. as we shall see in relation to his interpretation of Kierkegaard, shestov’s thought could without difficulty be described as an extreme form of irrationalism, which involves the complete rejection of the claims of reason to define the content, limits, and although his name is customarily transliterated into english as shestov, the French transliteration—Chestov—occasionally appears in english-language sources. 2 Лев Шестов [Lev Shestov], Шекспир и его критик Брандес [shakespeare and his Critic brandes], Saint-Petersburg 1898 and Лев Шестов [Lev Shestov], Добро в учении гр. Толстого и Фр. Нитше, saint-petersburg 1900. (english translation of the latter: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche: The Good in the Teaching of Tolstoy and Nietzsche: Philosophy and Preaching, trans. by bernard martin, athens, ohio: ohio university press 1969.) 3 as we shall see in what he writes about Kierkegaard, he treats “scripture” as encompassing both old and new testaments, and appears to be as comfortable with paul as he is with abraham or Job. 1

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possibilities of human life. His judgments of particular texts were often arbitrary— berdyaev accused him of “shestovizing” whatever he read4—yet he wrote with extraordinary verve and is capable of posing fundamental questions that open whole new ways of looking at the author under consideration and as well as pinpointing important larger issues broached in a given text. it is hard to gauge his subsequent influence and his closest disciple, Benjamin Fondane (1898–1944), died at a young age, a victim of the Holocaust. nevertheless, it is clear that shestov gave a certain inspiration to some existentialist writers (Camus’ discussion of Kierkegaard in The Rebel is explicitly dependent on shestov). the philosopher vladimir Jankélévitch (1903–85) also spoke of Shestov’s influence on him, even though there is little or no discussion of the latter in Jankélévitch’s philosophical works.5 Jon stewart goes so far—rightly, in the view of the present author—to compare Shestov’s influence on the French reception of Kierkegaard to that of Kojève with regard to the reception of Hegel.6 shestov’s “discovery” of Kierkegaard is well documented by letters and other sources.7 in april/may 1928 he visited martin buber (1878–1965) in Frankfurt, where, as he put it, “everybody was speaking about Kierkegaard and i had to admit that i didn’t know of him,”—adding that Kierkegaard had “passed russia by”8 and that “even berdyaev” (who, he said “reads everything”) “doesn’t know of him.”9 although it is not strictly true that Kierkegaard had “passed russia by” prior to this date, it is clear that he had had only a scattered reception in pre-revolutionary russia.10 4 We find a similar remark in Lévinas’ review of Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle in Revue des Études Juives, vol. 40, 1937, p. 139, where he writes that, as presented by shestov, Kierkegaard’s ideas bear a remarkable resemblance to those of shestov himself! 5 see the famous remark that, at a young age, Jankélévitch imagined himself to be shestov reincarnated; quoted in Hélène politis, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, paris: Éditions Kimé 2005, p. 98. 6 see Jon stewart, “France: Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of existentialism and poststructuralism,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome i, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 421–74, see p. 428. 7 See Наталья Баранова-Шестова [Natalya Baranova-Shestova], Жизнь Льва Шестова. По переписке и воспоминаниям современников [the life of lev shestov: through Correspondence and memoirs of his Contemporaries], vols. 1–2, paris: la presse libre 1983, vol. 2, pp. 12ff. 8 this comment is later repeated as the opening sentence of the book on Kierkegaard. 9 Наталья Баранова-Шестова [Natalya Baranova-Shestova], Жизнь Льва Шестова. По переписке и воспоминаниям современников [the life of lev shestov: through Correspondence and memoirs of his Contemporaries], vol. 2, pp. 12ff. 10 For further details of Kierkegaard’s reception in russia prior to the revolution see darya loungina, “russia: Kierkegaard’s reception through tsarism, Communism, and liberation,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome ii, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 247–83. the article also includes a discussion of shestov.

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despite the endorsement of buber, it would be some time before shestov began reading Kierkegaard in earnest. the reason for this seems largely to have been the fact that he was also occupied in this period with reading Being and Time and his understanding of this work was to be decisively affected by what he later read in Kierkegaard. indeed, martin Heidegger (1889–1976) would prove to be the catalyst that led him to start reading Kierkegaard in earnest. the occasion was a visit to Freiburg in november 1928, when shestov called on edmund Husserl (1859–1938), whom he had met at a conference in amsterdam shortly prior to his visit to buber and whom he had been charged to invite to paris (this invitation led to the lectures published as Meditations Cartésiennes). at Husserl’s home he also met Heidegger himself, and it was in a conversation about Heidegger’s work that Husserl made shestov promise to read Kierkegaard. shestov reported being surprised at such a recommendation coming from the founder of phenomenology, but he would later see the relevance of Husserl’s advice. indeed, he would argue that “Heidegger’s whole book consists only of putting [Kierkegaard’s] ideas into a Husserlian framework,” and that Being and Time, far from being a genuine work of phenomenology, was “the attempt, under the flag of phenomenology to smuggle something non-philosophical into the territory of philosophy, that is, the biblical account of the fall and of original sin.”11 prompted by Husserl, shestov now set to work studying Kierkegaard in german translation.12 but this was no exercise in scholarly research. as benjamin Fondane wrote, “Kierkegaard did not become an object of curiosity, an example of a historical intellectual position that was to be classified amongst other positions, but it was Kierkegaard’s own passion that was being relived, entering, living, into the living.”13 in the 1930s this reading bore fruit in lectures and courses at the sorbonne and the russian society of religion and philosophy and even a radio broadcast (read by his daughter, on account of his impenetrable russian accent). these included the several chapters of the extended essay “in the ox of phalaris” (1933) that would in turn be incorporated into the book Athens and Jerusalem,14 the lecture “Kierkegaard and dostoevsky” that was printed “by way of an introduction” to his study Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy (written in Russian, but appearing first in French

11 Баранова-Шестова [Baranova-Shestova], Жизнь Льва Шестова [the life of lev shestov], vol. 2, p. 17. 12 it is perhaps worth noting that shestov’s russian transliteration of the name “Kierkegaard” reflects German pronunciation, so that the final “d” has to be pronounced. More recent Russian transliterations reflect the Danish pronunciation more closely. 13 benjamin Fondane, Rencontres avec Léon Chestov, paris: plasma 1982, p. 187. 14 Лев Шестов [Lev Shestov], “В фаларийском быке” [In the Ox of Phalaris], in his Афины и Иерусалим [athens and Jerusalem], paris: YmCa press 1951, p. 146. (originally published as “dans le taureau de phalaris (le savoir et la liberté),” in Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, vol. 58, nos. 1–2, 1933, pp. 18–60. in the following, i shall be quoting from the following edition: lev shestov, Athènes et Jérusalem: Un Essai de Philosophie Religieuse, paris: aubier 1967 [paris: vrin 1938]. the discussion of Kierkegaard is in sections xi–xv of the essay.

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translation in 1936),15 his most influential and enduring contribution to Kierkegaard reception in France.16 with regard to this last comment, the circumstances of shestov’s émigré existence have meant that, although there are certain respects in which his approach is distinctively Russian, it is probably chiefly in relation to the reception of Kierkegaard in France that his work has had its greatest impact.17 although there was a reception of Kierkegaard in France prior to the 1930s, it was in this period that the danish thinker began to be extensively translated into French and to become the focus of a developing secondary literature.18 as previously noted, it is hard to gauge the precise measure of the impact made by shestov’s distinctive reading of Kierkegaard, and shestov’s absurdism would be countered in 1938 by Jean wahl’s (1888–1974) Études kierkegaardiennes,19 directed towards the recovery of a more properly “philosophical” Kierkegaard. nevertheless, the memorable way in which shestov sharpened the most intellectually scandalous elements in Kierkegaard’s writings undoubtedly did much to create a certain image of Kierkegaard in the era of existentialism. after some general comments about shestov’s thought, i shall look at his three main contributions to the interpretation of Kierkegaard: the chapters from “in the ox of phalaris,” the lecture on dostoevsky and Kierkegaard (delivered on 5 may, 1935), and the book on Kierkegaard and existential philosophy. i shall give most weight to the last, as the most significant of these works. as previously indicated, shestov opposed himself to the dominance of reason in the history of western thought. From parmenides, through socrates, plato, aristotle, medieval philosophy, spinoza, Kant, and Hegel down to Husserl, philosophy has sought to understand the world and human existence in terms of rational necessity. on this view, the kind of necessity seen in the laws of nature is also extended to the realm of the good and even the gods themselves are subject to it. the laws of nature cannot, it is assumed, be contrary to the laws of god. this leads philosophy to an attitude of detachment and indifference in face of existence and to deny the possibility of radical novelty. However, shestov argues, what is mostly concealed in this history of reason is that reason is unable to ground its own claims. the decision to view the world in terms of reason is not itself a decision that can be rationally justified. The hegemony of reason is thus always implicitly violent and coercive. this has been discerned by what might be called a minority report in the history of ideas. This is represented for Shestov by such figures as Plotinus, Luther, Pascal, Kierkegaard, dostoevsky, and nietzsche—and, by no means least, the bible. such lev shestov, Киргегард и экзистенциальная философия (Глас вопиющего в пустыне), paris: sovremenniye zapiski i dom Knigi 1939 (republished, moscow: progress and gnozis 1992). (english translation: Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy, trans. by elinor Hewitt, athens: ohio university press 1969; in French as Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle: “vox clamantis in deserto,” trans. by t. rageot and b. de schloezer, paris: vrin 1936.) 16 see loungina, “russia: Kierkegaard’s reception” for further details. 17 on further translation into english and other languages, it has, of course, also entered more generally into the international reception of Kierkegaard’s work. 18 For full discussion see politis, Kierkegaard en France. 19 Jean wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: aubier 1938. 15

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thinkers realize that the person of the philosopher takes priority over the truth of their philosophy, and that the apparent self-evidence of the primacy of reason is, in fact, eminently questionable. nevertheless, such is the force of reason—and the terror of being excluded from the world made safe by reason—that even these thinkers typically lose their nerve in the last resort. thus, nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence is seen by shestov as actually weakening his insights into radical freedom. the role given to the ethical by Kierkegaard is seen as playing a similar role. only the bible is unshakeable in its resistance to the hegemony of reason. II. In the Ox of Phalaris These themes are reflected in Kierkegaard’s various writings on Kierkegaard, as they are throughout his oeuvre. “in the ox of phalaris” was published in the Revue Philosophique and is therefore the first substantial published testimony to Shestov’s reading of Kierkegaard. subtitled “Knowledge and liberty,” the closing sections of this essay focus especially on the danish writer. the essay begins by commenting on a quotation from the preface to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit that “philosophy should defend itself against becoming edifying,”20 a saying he further links to the Socratic identification of virtue and knowledge, which, he says, is the articulus stantis et cadentis philosophiae. the fruit of this identification is the belief that the virtuous man would be happy, even if imprisoned in the ox of phalaris: that is, that we ought to submit ourselves to whatever life imposes on us as the outworking of universal, natural necessity.21 the first part of the essay thereafter wends in Shestov’s typically loose, discursive style through a series of reflections on, primarily, Hegel, Socrates, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and luther. Coming to Kierkegaard, shestov says that here, even more clearly than in the case of nietzsche, we see “the intimate connections that exist between knowledge and liberty or rather the loss of liberty.”22 However, even though he struggled against it, Kierkegaard never escaped from the spell of socratic thinking and from the idea of the good man being happy in the ox of phalaris. in his journals, Kierkegaard speaks of his “secret” that would make even the stones weep—but what is this secret? according to shestov, it is the fact that his break with regine olsen was not a free act in which he voluntarily sacrificed the prospect of human happiness to god but a necessity imposed on him from outside, by a “banal, offensive and in his own eyes even shameful and repugnant circumstance.”23 the closest parallel to Kierkegaard’s experience is that of orpheus, powerless to stop the powers of hell— that is, the eternal implacable laws of nature—from taking from him what he most loved. Kierkegaard’s retelling of this as an act of sacrifice is like Adam’s fig-leaf, an attempt to conceal the shame consequent on knowledge of reality.24 20 21 22 23 24

Quoted in shestov, Athènes et Jérusalem, 1967, p. 109. ibid., p. 123. ibid., p. 164. ibid., p. 167. ibid., p. 169.

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all of this is especially apparent in Fear and Trembling and The Concept of Anxiety. Here we see that Kierkegaard did not submit to necessity without a struggle and fought for a faith capable of believing that god could give him back his regine. in doing so he made despair, not wonder, the beginning of philosophy and fought for “the right ‘to weep and curse’ and to oppose his tears and curses to the unlimited exigencies of reason that have enchained the human will by means of universal and necessary truths.”25 in this spirit he opposed the knight of faith to the knight of resignation, such Kierkegaardian faith echoing plotinus’ vision of what is ἐπέκεινα νοῦ καὶ νοήσεως (beyond mind and knowledge): “the impossible.” to believe, as Kierkegaard would say in The Sickness unto Death “is to lose one’s reason in order to find God”; it is a “leap into the unknown.”26 this leads shestov into a more extended discussion of Fear and Trembling. with regard to his “suspension of the ethical” (shestov never seems to add the prefatory adjective “teleological” although, as we shall see, it might have served his analysis of Kierkegaard’s position), abraham offers a counterexample to socrates. Yet, although Kierkegaard looks to abraham as the exemplar of faith, he does so only after having assured himself and reminded his readers of the existence of “the world of spirit” that is subject to “an eternal divine order.”27 “in the last moment, Kierkegaard turns to ‘the ethical’; it is only there that he hopes to find protection,”28 a point that shestov underlines with reference to the discourse “the thorn in the Flesh,” where Kierkegaard states that the “world of the spirit” treats all with absolute equality: that is, it is a world subject to universal and unalterable laws. elsewhere, Kierkegaard says that “god is the friend of order” (shestov does not give a reference), which, shestov suggests, means that “god is the slave of order.”29 strangely, Kierkegaard’s inability finally to break with the ethical is indicated by his praise of the “grandeur” of the knight of faith and even the category of knighthood itself, since, as shestov points out, knighthood is a rank in a hierarchical order of values. Had Kierkegaard been able to follow his protests through to the end there would have been no talk of “grandeur” or “knighthood”! in the light of this it is telling, he suggests, that Kierkegaard only ever speaks of “suspending” but not of “abrogating” the laws of ethics.30 similar lessons can be drawn from Repetition, in which we see a young man reeling from a broken engagement and turning away from the counsels of a Professor publicus ordinarius (whom shestov sees as representative of Hegel) to the biblical thinker Job.31 shestov also sees Kierkegaard’s ultimate surrender to the power of necessity in a passage from the journals in which Kierkegaard suggests that the most terrifying feature of the crucifixion was not Christ’s cry of dereliction but God’s inability to help him. He quotes: 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

ibid., p. 173. ibid., p. 174. ibid., p. 177. ibid. ibid., p. 179. ibid., p. 185. ibid., p. 183.

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it was horrible for Christ, and that is how it is generally presented. but it seems to me that what was much more horrible was for god to have to listen to that cry. to be immutable at that very moment! Frightful! but no, that is not what is most frightful. What is most frightful is being immutable and at the same time being love. Oh! Infinite, profound, unfathomable suffering.32

these lines, he says, need no comment: not only Kierkegaard himself, but even god is subject to universal and necessary truths that constrain his freedom of action. god is constrained by his own immutability—and where is luther’s insistence on god as the Deus omnipotens ex nihilo omnia creans (the omnipotent god creating all things out of nothing)?33 in The Sickness unto Death Kierkegaard would quote st. paul’s saying that “all that is not of faith is sin,”34 but Kierkegaard himself is under the spell of a knowledge that is not of faith. this can perhaps be seen most clearly in The Concept of Anxiety, where Kierkegaard’s retelling of the Fall significantly deviates from the biblical original. the bible in no way sees the state of innocence as one of weakness. it may be incomprehensible to us, who know shame, but, according to shestov, “god did not ‘know’ good and evil, god does not ‘know’ anything. god ‘creates’ everything.”35 “Freedom,” he adds, “consists in the force and power of not admitting evil into the world. god, the free being, never chose between good and evil.”36 sin did not originate, as Kierkegaard suggests, from within human beings’ original possibilities, but is an external and hostile force. in this respect it is consistent that Kierkegaard’s “psychological” explanation of the Fall is matched by his inability to make sense of the serpent. against Kierkegaard, anxiety does not explain the loss of liberty but is consequent upon that loss. the true horror religiosus is not, as Kierkegaard imagines, the sight of abraham lifting his knife to slay isaac but when we see the monster called necessity, otherwise called nothingness, approach a person, and this person, as if bound by a supernatural spell, is not only incapable of making the least movement [of resistance]…but, on the contrary, bends all the powers of their soul to justify and “understand,” i.e., to transform what is only given to human beings in experience as a fact into an eternal truth.37

in the end, Kierkegaard too is numbed by this “fact” and, as with nietzsche’s amor fati (love of fate), urges human beings to renounce what is beyond their powers. However, shestov concludes, “in modern language, human beings must awaken from their secular dream and decide to think in the categories in which they live.”38

32 33 34 35 36 37 38

ibid., p. 185. ibid., p. 186. SKS 11, 196 / SUD, 82. shestov, Athènes et Jérusalem, 1967, p. 189. ibid., p. 189. ibid., p. 193. ibid., p. 197.

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III. Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky as previously noted, shestov gave a talk on Kierkegaard and dostoevsky on 5 may, 1935 (the anniversary of Kierkegaard’s birth) and this was later incorporated “by way of an introduction” into the book on Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy. it is, it may be said, somewhat typical of shestov’s “method” to pair thinkers he regards as either exceptionally close or exceptionally antithetical. in the case of dostoevsky and Kierkegaard, the relationship could not be closer. “without fear of exaggerating,” shestov says, “dostoevsky might be called Kierkegaard’s double.”39 the lecture begins with a comment on the perennial challenge of thinking about the Fall and original sin and how this challenge exposes two fundamentally different approaches, that of revelation and that of speculative philosophy. natural thought, as if enchanted by the fatal necessity of the law of death and, on the basis of what appear to be “the immediate givens of consciousness” (a phrase alluding to bergson), cannot but see that there is something that “ought not to be” in human beings. the catharsis offered by Greek tragedy delivers human beings from this deficient state and brings them back into harmony with the eternal and immutable truths behind appearances, thus opening a perspective from which there is neither birth nor death—a process that anticipates and epitomizes the movement of speculative philosophy. in contrast to this, only the “book of books,” the bible, offers an “enigmatic exception.”40 according to the bible, god is the sole cause of all that is and all that is is “very good.” How, then, does evil arise? it comes, the bible tells us, from knowledge. once human beings have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and observe “the immediate givens of consciousness” with eyes wide open they cannot help seeing that all is not good. For Hegel, the serpent was right. Knowledge is to be preferred to innocence. Kierkegaard, who, according to shestov, had “been nourished” by Hegel and even “venerated” him came to see the flaw in this judgment: he “felt suddenly that the philosophy of his master contained a fatal lie, a piece of treachery, a dangerous temptation, and he recognized in it the eritis scientes (you will be knowing) of the biblical serpent.”41 this led Kierkegaard to turn from Hegel to Job, “and from Job he went on to abraham, not to aristotle, the master of those who know, but to the one whom scripture calls the father of faith. For abraham he left even socrates.”42 the faith he saw in abraham was above and beyond knowledge, and he learned that it is not the case that all that is, is reasonable. However, the point is not that scripture is totally opposed to knowledge. Human beings are given the power to name all that has been created by god. However, they are not content with this and want to secure their experience by finding its basis in universal and immutable laws. against this, Kierkegaard found in Job’s cries “a new dimension of thought”—they were like the trumpets that brought the walls of Jericho crashing down and “this is 39

28. 40 41 42

lev shestov, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, 3rd ed., paris: vrin 1972, p. ibid., p. 12. ibid., p. 20. ibid., p. 21.

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the fundamental theme of existential philosophy.”43 thus, the opposite of sin is not virtue but freedom, and the struggle for faith we see in Kierkegaard is “the mad struggle for possibility. because only possibility opens the way to salvation. in the end only one thing matters: all things are possible for god.”44 Turning finally to Dostoevsky, Shestov notes that he had learned from one of his own masters, the critic vissarion belinsky (1811–48), that it was possible to refuse a universal harmony if that harmony depended on the sufferings of history’s victims. in the light of this refusal such scenes from the novels as Hippolyte’s confession (in The Idiot), the reflections of Ivan and Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov and of Kirillov in Demons, the underground man and such novellas as The Dream of a Ridiculous Man are simply variations on the book of Job.45 in this perspective, dostoevsky and Kierkegaard are both “voices crying in the desert”—a biblical allusion that provides shestov with the subtitle for his book. IV. Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy we now turn to Kierkegaard and Existential Philosophy. rather than simply summarizing this highly readable book, i shall instead focus on some of the key questions it raises for the interpretation of Kierkegaard. Here, in full acknowledgment of shestov’s far from scholarly approach to the text, we shall see that he nevertheless raises important issues and that, despite his criticisms of Kierkegaard, his positive appreciation of the danish thinker’s contribution to the history of ideas is not, in the last resort, entirely contrary to a central tendency in the latter’s own writing. amongst the most important topics from Kierkegaard’s work that shestov focuses on is the question of possibility, a question epitomized in the saying from The Sickness unto Death that has already been touched on, namely, the saying that “god is—that all things are possible.”46 The importance of this definition to Kierkegaard—and to shestov’s interpretation of Kierkegaard—is indicated when shestov repeats that Kierkegaard’s life’s work was identical with “faith’s senseless struggle for possibility.”47 but does Kierkegaard himself live up to the radical faith expressed in that saying? does he win the struggle for possibility? we have already seen shestov’s reservations regarding Kierkegaard’s ability to complete the movement beyond reason and the eternal and immutable laws of nature, and he will essentially repeat that criticism here. nevertheless, he will argue—perhaps more in the positive tone of the lecture on Kierkegaard and dostoevsky—that Kierkegaard went as far as perhaps any human being can in challenging the assumed hegemony of these laws. in the opening chapter, entitled “Job and Hegel,” shestov hails Kierkegaard for taking the part of the bible against philosophy and speculative truth. that he does so, shestov says, is testimony to the fact that his thought “is in no way purely an 43 44 45 46 47

ibid., p. 25. ibid., p. 27. ibid., p. 28. SKS 11, 156 / SUD, 40 shestov, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, 1972, p. 167.

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intellectual activity” and has less to do with wonder than “the pangs of despair and terror.”48 this is apparent in Repetition, where the consolation that is offered by “a universally acknowledged philosophy” and a “professor publicus ordinarius” is contrasted with that offered by Job, “who, sitting in the ashes and wiping the sores of his body with a potsherd let fall some fleeting remarks and reflections.”49 but “the private thinker Job’s opposition to philosophy is not only to the universally celebrated Hegel, but also to the greek symposium, that is, to plato himself”50—or, for that matter, to leibniz or spinoza. to choose Job over Hegel is “to reverse the course of time, to go back to an epoch, thousands of years ago, when no one had any idea as to what knowledge and science would bring us.”51 However, this rejection of philosophy is a rejection not only of speculative reason but also of ethics. to oppose reason is not only to expose oneself to the charge of being a misologos (or, it may be, simply an idiot), it is to define oneself as bad, as a sinner, and as a rebel. This therefore leads Kierkegaard directly to the question posed in Fear and Trembling, namely, the question as to the teleological suspension of the ethical. From the point of view of ethics and its universalizable laws, abraham is the worst of criminals, an infanticide. but, by virtue of his faith that god would give him another isaac, or give him isaac again, in this world, abraham goes beyond the bounds of ethics. at this point we see again how, as in “in the ox of phalaris,” shestov, like so many of his contemporaries, reads Kierkegaard in an essentially biographical way. Fear and Trembling is on this view essentially a fictionalized account of the unhappy love story of Søren Kierkegaard and the fiancée he jilted, Regine Olsen. In the light of this identification, Shestov effectively fuses what the pseudonym Johannes (de silentio) says about abraham’s faith—“i cannot accomplish this movement”— and what Kierkegaard says in his journal—“if i had had faith, regine would have remained mine.”52 this, however, means that, in Fear and Trembling itself, abraham’s challenge to the universality of ethics is not, in the end, carried through. Faith is actually unable to overcome the limits imposed by ethics. as shestov puts it, “so, when Kierkegaard feels that he has not been given the power to, as he put it, ‘accomplish the ultimate movement of faith,’ he turns towards the ethical and its menacing ‘You shall.’ ”53 but this also means that since, as Kierkegaard had stated, “if ethics is supreme, then abraham is lost,” that, faced by “the arsenal of horrors that ethics has at its disposal,” Kierkegaard finally surrendered his “senseless struggle.”54 a further dimension of Kierkegaard’s “failure” at this point is brought out by shestov’s reading of The Concept of Anxiety. as we have already seen in his comments on the connections between Kierkegaard and Being and Time, shestov identifies the doctrines of the Fall and of original sin as central issues linking 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

ibid., p. 37. ibid., p. 38. ibid., p. 39. ibid., pp. 39–40. ibid., p. 102. ibid., p. 164. ibid., p. 167.

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Heidegger and Kierkegaard. the Fall, as described by Kierkegaard (and “smuggled” into phenomenology by Heidegger) reveals the power of nothing, a power so great that it makes us succumb to the ungrounded demand of reason that we submit ourselves to its universal laws. shestov quotes from the well-known passage from The Concept of Anxiety in which Kierkegaard describes how the spirit exists in the state of innocence as “dreaming” of its own possibilities and how this dream of possibility awakens anxiety.55 there is nothing to justify such anxiety—and yet this very “nothing” is itself sufficient to make us anxious. As Shestov puts it, “Anxiety in the face of nothingness is the cause of original sin and of the fall of the first human being—this is the fundamental idea of Kierkegaard’s authorship.”56 However, it is precisely here that, according to shestov, we can specify further the failure of that authorship. For although The Concept of Anxiety appears to take its point of departure in the biblical text, shestov repeats the criticism he had made in “in the ox of phalaris” that Kierkegaard deviates from the bible in key respects. For the bible, he says, tells us nothing about anxiety prior to the Fall. only after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did the first human beings become capable of anxiety: it was through flattery, not anxiety, that the serpent suborned eve. Kierkegaard’s interpretation, however, is in no way in conformity with the biblical account, “but rather resembles the interpretation of original sin offered by speculative philosophy.”57 that “innocence is at the same time anxiety” is an idea derived not from the bible but from the ancient gnostics and their modern inheritors.58 Kierkegaard’s deviation from the Bible is further confirmed by his own admission that he cannot understand the serpent. However, as shestov sees it, it is crucial that the power of nothingness—which is the only power over which the serpent disposes—is not itself part of human beings’ original ontological endowment but threatens them from outside, as it were: in their innocence, human beings lived in the presence of god, but, whoever says god says that all things are possible. the serpent, who tempted human beings, has nothing at his disposal except nothingness, and this nothingness, even though it was nothing—or, more precisely, because it was nothing but nothing—lulled the human spirit to sleep, and, thus made drowsy, human beings became the victims of anxiety.59

nothingness, in other words, is a destructive external power and not a part of the original constitution of human beings who, as first created, lived in the fullness of a paradisal life in the presence of god—and, for shestov could still be living that life today if they were not in the grip of the anxiety-engendering knowledge of good and evil. Here, he insists, we must take the bible at face value: it is knowledge and not anxiety that explains the Fall. Yet Kierkegaard’s account is nevertheless important. shestov quotes—and frequently recurs to—a line he finds in The Concept of Anxiety, that “anxiety is 55 56 57 58 59

SKS 4, 347 / CA, 41. shestov, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, 1972, p. 131. ibid., p. 128. ibid., pp. 131–2. ibid., p. 134.

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the vertigo of freedom,” to which, he says, Kierkegaard adds that “speaking psychologically, the Fall always takes place in a swoon.”60 in the journals, he also tells us, Kierkegaard goes further: “anxiety is an alien force that seizes the individual; however, one cannot, one does not want to tear oneself away from it; but what one fears, one also at the same time desires.”61 shestov says of this statement that, “i do not believe that a single one of the most profound religious thinkers has ever succeeded in grasping so precisely the meaning of original sin.”62 His criticism of Kierkegaard on this point, it might be added, is therefore not hostile. on the contrary, he suggests that this criticism itself takes us closer to the real tendency of Kierkegaard’s thought. returning to the comparison between Johannes de silentio’s confession that he is unable to make the movement of faith and Kierkegaard’s confession that, if he had had faith he would have kept regine, it is now clear that this failure of faith is itself a kind of “repetition” of the original Fall. as such it is a paradigmatic instance of sin. Here we see Kierkegaard himself, mirrored in the incomprehension of his pseudonym, “paralyzed” by nothingness, “swooning” in freedom’s infinite vertigo. but why does freedom have this effect on us? and why, as shestov puts it, do we come to believe “that knowledge gives human beings more than freedom”?63 essentially, it is because a free act is an act of which the consequences are indeterminable: Freedom is freedom because it is not able to foresee its consequences: something good, perhaps, but perhaps also something bad, very bad. we dare not even attribute an illimitable freedom to god for we would not then be able to know in advance what god would bring to pass. an insurmountable anxiety constantly whispers in our ears: what if god will bring about something bad?64

of course, on shestov’s analysis, such anxiety is possible only subsequent to having eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. but, be that as it may, it is this anxiety, namely the anxiety that freedom—human or divine—might bring about negative consequences, that makes us susceptible to the demands of ethics. For ethics, according to shestov, is precisely the attempt to limit the scope of free actions by contextualizing them in a network of prescribed relationships. in other words, ethics offers “knowledge” of the outcomes of actions, such that a good action will lead to good results, a bad action to bad, etc. moreover, a person who refuses to be counseled by ethics will ipso facto put themselves in the ranks of the immoralists and thereby make themselves the objects of all possible denunciations. and, as we have just seen, anxiety leads us to set limits even to divine freedom. even god, we habitually insist, must act in such a way as to conform to the laws of ethics. this, as shestov sees it, is precisely the force of the expression “the ethico-religious” that ibid., p. 183. this second statement does not follow immediately in Kierkegaard’s text as shestov seems to imply. 61 ibid., p. 184. 62 ibid. 63 ibid., p. 170. 64 ibid., p. 171. 60

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we find in Kierkegaard—that it is an attempt to bring “the novelty, the unknown, [and] the distant” characteristics of what is genuinely religious into accord with the “known, close, and habitual” characteristics of the ethical.65 in Kierkegaard’s own journals we see a constant struggle with the ethical. sometimes he seems close to defying its threatening “You shall,” as when he writes in the journal (shestov does not give a reference) that god allows everyone the freedom to decide for themselves who shall be their isaac and where they might find him. We are allowed such complete freedom that even a “futile” or “wretched” or “boring” or comical case such as that of Kierkegaard himself can acquire a global significance, historically, infinitely greater than the exploits of Alexander the great or the emigration of peoples.66

in such comments, Kierkegaard seems to have forgotten the demands of the ethical, according to which there is always a calculable relationship between actions and outcomes, and to have opted instead for the absurdity of the irreducibly individual. And, sometimes, Kierkegaard himself avows his lack of confidence in “the ethical.”67 to abandon the ethical, however, and to admit the absurdity of all things being possible for anyone at any moment is to expose oneself to scandal—and, as Kierkegaard well saw, faith will always be accompanied by the possibility of scandal or offense. For Kierkegaard himself this was focused on the Christian claim of god appearing in a human life, in the form of a servant, although shestov believes that the scandal of faith is already implicit in the claim that for god all things are possible, “for whom it is possible to take the form of a slave and for whom it is equally possible to take the form of a King or a master.”68 the subjection of god himself to the demands of ethics has dramatic consequences in shestov’s reading of Kierkegaard. this reading extended beyond the pseudonyms of the early period to such texts as Works of Love and Practice in Christianity and to the religious preoccupations of the later journals in which Kierkegaard directly depicted the religious life. but Kierkegaard’s inability—despite his own “senseless struggle for possibility” and his disavowal of the ethical—decisively to break with ethics’ “You shall” leads him to constrain the divine possibilities in a way that has appalling consequences. the Christianity that we see in the later Kierkegaard is typically a “cruel” or “hard” Christianity.69 this can be seen in how Kierkegaard portrays the consolation offered by Christianity as consisting in an intensification of human suffering. shestov quotes from the journals: “perhaps the sufferer lacks something—such as even more intense sufferings. even more intense sufferings! who is so cruel as to dare to say that? my friend, it is Christianity, it is the doctrine that is offered us as the sweetest consolation.”70 65 66 67 68 69 70

ibid. ibid., p. 172. ibid., p. 174. ibid., p. 176. ibid., pp. 169ff. ibid., p. 179.

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Truly to be a believer is to be able to make sacrifices such as the sacrifice God demanded of abraham. the price of the forgiveness that Christianity offers is that we become not merely believers but disciples who live like strangers on earth, despised and rejected of men, and finally crucified. As in the case of Abraham, the biblical prototype of such a life—the life of Christ himself—is also a kind of paradigm for Kierkegaard’s own story of unhappy love. but it is, in its way, even more unhappy. shestov quotes: the life of Christ…is an unhappy love unique in kind. He loved by virtue of his divine thought, he loved the entire human race….[but] Christ did not make himself unhappy, in a human sense, merely for the sake of his own. no! He made himself and he made his own as unhappy as, humanly speaking, it is possible to be….He sacrificed himself solely in order to make those he loved as unhappy as he himself was!71

behind such words, shestov says, we discern the fact that Kierkegaard himself did not or could not quite believe in god’s omnipotence or omnipotentiality. For Kierkegaard, even the god who created the world out of nothing and who created the human race was powerless in the face of the reality of sin. shestov sees this most clearly expressed in a passage from the journals that he had already used in “in the ox of phalaris,” namely, the passage in which Kierkegaard suggests that the most terrifying feature of the crucifixion was not Christ’s cry of dereliction but God’s inability to help him. this concludes as follows, “but no, that is not what is most frightful. what is most frightful is being immutable and at the same time being love. Oh! Infinite, profound, unfathomable suffering.”72 what this means is that even god is thus subjected to the power of the ethical, “because above [god] reigns the deaf and thus indifferent power of the ethical with its implacable ‘You shall’: You shall be immutable.”73 and the consequence for human beings is that “there remains only one thing for us to do, to imitate god and the son of god who became incarnate; to endure without questioning the horrors assigned to us and to find our blessedness in them.”74 this is, in effect, a repetition of the essential thought of greek philosophy and the teaching that “a virtuous man will know how to be happy, even in the ox of phalaris.”75 in this sense, shestov says, the imitation of Christ actually reverts to the imitation of socrates and socratic ἀταραξία.76 or, it is to reduce the knight of faith to a knight of resignation.77 in this regard, Kierkegaard’s own testimony that, in confronting the Church with the demand that it relearn how to suffer, he did not regard himself as capable of fulfilling that same demand is interpreted in rather

71 72 73 74 75 76 77

ibid., p. 213. shestov, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, 1972, p. 229. ibid., p. 230. ibid. ibid. ibid., p. 267. ibid., p. 268.

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positive terms by shestov. For, as shestov sees it, no one could bear the kind of cruelty that the Christianity to which the later Kierkegaard bore witness demands.78 Yet, as we have seen, Kierkegaard was not unequivocal in his endorsement of the ethical “You shall” and even in passages stating the necessity of suffering he indicates the possibility of an alternative. Here, shestov says, “we are reaching the point that not only constitutes the central idea of the philosophy of Kierkegaard but also what always has and always will be the object of the most intense thoughts of all living human beings. this is what plotinus called ‘the most important matter’ and scripture ‘the one thing needful.’ ”79 it is a question, namely, as to the scope and power of the love of god. appealing to testimony that, at his death bed, Kierkegaard affirmed his belief that—in complete defiance of the fact that he had left her and she had married another—regine nevertheless belonged and would belong in eternity to him, shestov comments that if what Kierkegaard said had any sense at all, then we are obliged to admit that a fact as banal as his break with regine olsen was really an event of greater importance than the discovery of america or the invention of gunpowder. because even if, in a certain perspective, it remained invisible and concealed from the eyes of all, Kierkegaard had succeeded despite everything in securing his rights relating to regine against all the evidence—and thus all the foundations of our “thought” would be thereby shaken and philosophy would have to leave Hegel for Job and socrates for abraham.80

and even if we consider Kierkegaard’s testimony to have been ambiguous, what more can we expect of a person? “Kierkegaard did not come to accomplish the movement of faith, his will was paralyzed, ‘in a swoon.’ but he hated and cursed his impotence as passionately as anyone is capable of doing. would that not already be the first ‘movement’ of faith? Would that not already count as faith? Authentic faith?”81 V. Discussion what are we to make of shestov’s reading of Kierkegaard? it was undoubtedly an exceptionally passionate and engaged reading, comparable we might say to that of the young man of Repetition’s reading of Job. and where shestov expresses himself critically of Kierkegaard, we should not suppose that he is thereby minimizing the importance of the latter or the courage with which he attacked the eternal and immutable laws of reason—even if this attack ended in defeat. at the same time, his tendency to conflate the multiple voices of Kierkegaard’s authorship into the single

ibid., pp. 274–5. Ibid., p. 280. This seems to conflict with Shestov’s earlier claim that the idea of anxiety in the face of nothingness was Kierkegaard’s most fundamental thought, but this kind of hyperbole and possible self-contradiction is a rather characteristic feature of shestov’s writing. 80 shestov, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, 1972, p. 294. 81 ibid., p. 381. 78 79

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voice of the historical individual søren Kierkegaard, “a voice crying in the desert,” and his free use of textual material raise a variety of problems. perhaps a central question is the one focused on god’s immutability in face of the cross. as shestov presents what Kierkegaard is saying here, the issue seems to be whether god might, for example, have used this power to free Jesus from the physical sufferings of the cross—and perhaps Kierkegaard’s own text encourages us to think in those terms. but is that really the main point here? if we turn to The Sickness unto Death and the motif of god being “that all things are possible”—a justifiably central feature of Shestov’s interpretation of Kierkegaard82—it is clear that Kierkegaard is not essentially talking in that work about the kind of power god might be able to display in, for example, performing miracles. indeed, it is a striking feature of Kierkegaard’s theology in general that he is exceptionally constrained in his discussion of miracles. the question for The Sickness unto Death—as becomes more and more explicit in the course of the work—is rather the question of forgiveness: is god a god capable of forgiving all? in the light of this question, the ultimate forms of despair that Kierkegaard examines are precisely those that involve refusing the possibility of forgiveness. this is the question on which everything hangs. as such, it is also the question of love and whether god is free to love in the face of no matter what objection to or refusal of his love. the answer of The Sickness unto Death is it seems, clear: there is nothing that god cannot forgive, and there is nothing and nobody that is beyond the scope of god’s love. but in these terms, god’s being unable to intervene physically to mitigate the sufferings of Jesus on the cross does not of itself mean that god is deprived of the freedom to choose to love—in this case, to love both his son and those for whom the son prayed even as they were putting him to death. in this sense, then, shestov’s objection seems not to be maintained. moreover, the actual powerlessness of god in the face of the cross seems to make the forgiveness that believers see exemplified in it all the more appropriate for what derrida has called a “pure” forgiveness, “worthy of its name”— “a forgiveness without love: unconditional but without sovereignty.”83 in this regard, shestov’s own failure to distinguish between what we might call natural and moral laws confuses the issue as to just what he is demanding of Kierkegaard and, more generally, of a genuinely religious view of life. nevertheless, the relentlessness of shestov’s critical passion undoubtedly leads him—and can help lead us—into the gravitational field of Kierkegaard’s central religious concerns.

82 83

and of which, as shestov notes, Kierkegaard himself said that it was his “motto.” Jacques derrida, Foi et savoir, paris: Éditions de seuil 1996, p. 133.

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Shestov’s Corpus “В фаларийском быке” [In the Ox of Phalaris], in his Афины и Иерусалим [athens and Jerusalem], paris: YmCa press 1951, pp. 127–54. (originally published as “dans le taureau de phalaris (le savoir et la liberté),” in Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, vol. 58, nos. 1–2, 1933, pp. 18–60; republished in lev shestov, Athènes et Jérusalem: Un Essai de Philosophie Religieuse, paris: aubier 1967. the discussion of Kierkegaard is in sections xi–xv of the essay.) Sören Kierkegaard Philosophe Religieux (5 radio talks), in Les Cahiers de RadioParis, paris, december 15, 1937, pp. 1214–42. Киргегард и экзистенциальная философия:(Глас вопиющего в пустыне), paris: sovremenniye zapiski i dom Knigi 1939. (republished, moscow: progress and gnozis 1992; French translation: Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle: “vox clamantis in deserto,” trans. by t. rageot and b. de schloezer, paris: vrin 1936; english translation: Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy, trans. by elinor Hewitt, athens: ohio university press 1969.) II. Sources of Shestov’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Kierkegaard, sören, Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–2, trans. and ed. by theodor Haecker, innsbruck: brenner 1923. — Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. by H.C. Ketels, Hermann gottsched, and Christoph schrempf, 3rd revised printing, Jena: diederichs 1923. — Erbauliche Reden, trans. by albert dorner and Christoph schrempf, Jena: diederichs 1924. III. Secondary Literature on Shestov’s Relation to Kierkegaard .7–3’‫ עמ‬,1973 ,30 ,‫ גזית‬,”‫ “ תפיסת האלוהים בשסטוב ובקירקגור‬,‫ אדיר‬,‫[ כהן‬Kohen, adir, “the Conception of god in shestov and in Kierkegaard,” Gazith: Art and Literary Journal, no. 30, 1973, pp. 3–7.] Асмус, Валентин [Asmus, Valentin], “Лев Шестов и Кьеркегор (Об отношении Л. Шестова к зачинателю западноевропейского экзистенциализма)” [Lev shestov and Kierkegaard (on l. shestov’s attitude towards the pioneer of european existentialism)], Научные доклады высшей школы. Философские науки, no. 4, 1972, pp. 70–80.

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Аверин, Борис [Averin, Boris], “Страх прямого высказывания (Лев Шестов, Сёрен Кьеркегор, Гумберт Гумберт)” [Fear of direct statement (lev shestov, Søren Kierkegaard, Humbert Humbert) ], Семиотика страха [Semiotics of Fear], moscow: russkiy institut and Jevropa 2005, pp. 172–84. Бердяев, Николай [Berdyaev, Nicholas], “Лев Шестов и Киркегор” [Lev Shestov and Kierkegaard], Типы религиозной мысли в России [types of religious Thought in Russia], Собрание сочинений [Collected Works], vol. 3, Paris: YmCa press 1989, pp. 398–406. Fondane, benjamin, “Chestov et Kierkegaard et le serpent” in his La conscience malheureuse, paris: Éditions denoël 1936, pp. 229–57. (originally published in Les Cahiers du Sud, vol. 21, 1934, pp. 534–54.) — “rencontres avec léon Chestov,” in léon Chestov, Le Pouvoir des clefs (Potestas clavium), trans. by boris de schloezer, paris: Flammarion 1967, pp. 5–33, see pp. 13–18; pp. 21–8. grimsley, ronald, “Chestov,” in The Legacy and Interpretation of Kierkegaard, ed. by niels thulstrup and marie mikulová thulstrup, Copenhagen: C.a. reitzel 1981 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 8), pp. 276–7. Яковлев, Вадим [Jakovlev, Vadim], “Сёрен Кьеркегор и Лев Шестов” [Søren Kierkegaard and lev shestov], in Кьеркегор:Наслаждение и долг [Kierkegaard: pleasure and duty], rostov-on-don: phoenix 1998, pp. 380–3. loungina, darya, “russia: Kierkegaard’s reception through tsarism, Communism, and liberation,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome ii, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kirkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 247–83; see pp. 257–63; p. 267; pp. 272–3. maia neto, José raimundo, The Christianization of Pyrrhonism: Scepticism and Faith in Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Shestov, dordrecht: Kluwer academic 1995 (International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol. 144). makolkin, anna, “russian, stalinist and soviet re-readings of Kierkegaard: lev shestov and piama gaidenko,” Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes, vol. 44, nos. 1–2, 2002, pp. 79–96. (Russian translation: Маколкин, Анна, “Опыт прочтения Керкегора в России и в Советском Союзе: от Льва Шестова до Пиамы Гайденко,” Вопросы философии, no. 1, 2004, pp. 147– 60.) mclachlan, James m., “shestov’s reading and misreading of Kierkegaard,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. 28, 1986, pp. 174–86. moyn, samuel, “transcendence, morality and History: emmanuel levinas and the discovery of Kierkegaard in France,” Yale French Studies, no. 104, 2004, pp. 22–54. nagy, andrás, “the Hungarian patient,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome ii, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 155–88; see p. 161; p. 169. patterson, david, The Literary and Philosophical Expressions of Existential Faith: A Study of Kierkegaard, Tolstoi, and Shestov, ph.d. thesis, university of oregon, eugene, oregon 1978.

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— “Shestov, Kierkegaard, and the Origin of Nothingness: Reflections on the Fall,” American Benedictine Review, vol. 39, 1988, pp. 15–30. perlini, tito, “Kierkegaard in Šestov,” in Il religioso in Kierkegaard. Atti del convegno di studi organizzato dalla Società Italiana per gli Studi Kierkegaardiani tenutosi dal 14 al 16 dicembre 2000 a Venezia, ed. by Isabella Adinolfi, Brescia: morcelliana 2002, pp. 39–69. politis, Hélène, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, paris: Éditions Kimé 2005, p. 41, note 117; pp. 85–109 passim; pp. 116–23 passim; p. 128, notes 91–6; p. 131; p. 147; p. 154; p. 158, note 66; p. 161, note 145; p. 164, note 177; p. 174. Порус, Владимир [Porus, Vladimir], “С. Кьеркегор, Л. Шестов и проблема культуры” [S. Kierkegaard, L. Shestov and the Problem of Culture], Collegium, no. 16, 2004, no. 16, pp. 133–53. sløk, Johannes, “Kierkegaard og fransk eksistentialisme,” Kristeligt Dagblad, January 7, 1948. Соколов, Борис [Sokolov, Boris], “Движение ‘против’: Серен Кьеркегор и Лев Шестов” [The Movement ‘against’: Søren Kierkegaard and Lev Shestov], Русская и европейская философия: пути схождения [russian and european philosophy: ways of Consolidation], st. petersburg: Centre of research and publishing “Cathedra,” vol. 1, 1997, pp. 176–84 stewart, Jon, “France: Kierkegaard as a Forerunner of existentialism and poststructuralism,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, tome i, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon stewart, aldershot: ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Responses, vol. 8), pp. 421–74; see pp. 427–8; p. 452. Стрельцова, Галина [Streltzova, Galina], “Пapaдокс философии Серена Kьеркегора” [The Paradox of the Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosophy], Вестник Московского университета [moscow university bulletin], series 7, Philosophy, no. 4, 2000, pp. 106–20. tambourgi-Hatem, nicole, “Kierkegaard et Chestov, philosophes du tragique,” Iris. Annales de philosophie de l’Université Saint-Joseph, vol. 25, 2004, pp. 121–31.

miguel de unamuno: Kierkegaard’s spanish “brother” Jan e. evans

I. Miguel de Unamuno and his Introduction to Kierkegaard miguel de unamuno (1864–1936) repeatedly refers to søren Kierkegaard as his brother in The Tragic Sense of Life, his most philosophical work, published in 1913.1 In the first chapter Unamuno names Kierkegaard along with others like Pascal and st. augustine as men who shared his tragic sense of life.2 However, the stories of Kierkegaard and unamuno were intertwined at an earlier date. unamuno’s foremost biographer, mario valdés, states that unamuno ordered and received the 14 volumes of the first edition of the Samlede Værker published by drachmann and Heiberg as they came out from 1901 to 1906.3 How did it happen that unamuno began to read Kierkegaard, who was virtually unknown in the iberian peninsula at the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth? in a 1907 essay entitled, “ibsen and Kierkegaard,” unamuno reveals that his reason for learning danish was so that he could read ibsen, but he says that he was rewarded for his efforts by gaining access to the works of Kierkegaard.4 the meeting of Kierkegaard and unamuno was unlikely but understandable, given unamuno’s skills and interests. when Jesús-antonio Collado wrote his foundational work, Kierkegaard y Unamuno: La existencia religiosa, which was published in 1962, he complained that only in the recent years had there been a few spanish translations of Kierkegaard’s individual works available in spain in

see, for example, miguel de unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, madrid: renacimiento 1913 (in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 7; english translation: The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and in Peoples, trans. by J.e. Crawford, london: macmillan 1921. all translations from the spanish are mine). 2 unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, p. 22 (in Obras completas, vol. 7, p. 120). 3 mario valdés, introduction to An Unamuno Source Book, toronto: university of toronto press 1973, p. xx. 4 miguel de unamuno, “ibsen y Kierkegaard,” Los Lunes de El Imparcial, march 25, 1907 (in Obras completas, vol. 3, p. 289). the actual course of events was that unamuno’s first introduction to Kierkegaard came while reading the critic of Ibsen, Georg Brandes, who mentions Kierkegaard as the spiritual father of ibsen’s Brand. 1

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addition to The Concept of Anxiety.5 unamuno was able to make use of the 14 volumes from Copenhagen because he was a linguist and unafraid to tackle a new language.6 unamuno was as much a philosopher as a linguist and had built on the greeks a knowledge of immanuel Kant (1724–1804), georg wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Karl Krause (1781–1832), Herbert spencer (1820–1903), arthur schopenhauer (1788–1860), and Friedrich nietzsche (1844–1900). He also read and entered into conversation with liberal protestants Friedrich schleiermacher (1768–1834), albrecht ritschl (1822–89), and adolf Harnack (1851–1930). His literary output in the Escelicer Obras completas includes nine volumes of essays, novels, short stories, poems, and plays. His most famous novel is San Manuel Bueno, Martyr,7 which has been translated into many languages and is often taught not only in literature classes but also in classes on existentialism. unamuno was born in the basque city of bilbao in 1864 and had a conservative Catholic upbringing guided by his devout mother after the early death of his more liberal father. at the age of 20 he had already received his doctorate from the university of madrid where he imbibed the positivism of the age and jettisoned his childhood Catholic faith. in 1891 he accepted a professorship in greek language and literature at the university of salamanca, where he was made rector in 1901. unamuno was dismissed from the post in 1913 for supporting the allied Forces in the First world war and was exiled from the country in 1924 after criticizing the ruling dictator, general primo de rivera. it was during his exile from 1924 to 1930, most of which was spent in paris, that he gained international fame. at the fall of primo de rivera in 1930 he returned to salamanca, where he was reinstated as rector in time to see the second republic proclaimed in 1931. He fell against the political grain again in 1936 when he criticized Franco publicly and was put under house arrest where he died in december of that year. unamuno is often associated with the generation of 1898, a group of writers in spain who were coming into their mature, productive years when “El Desastre,” befell spain, the loss of its remaining colonies in the spanish american war. through the use of all literary genres from the persuasive essay to the novel, poetry, and drama, the Generation of 1898 was said to have redefined Spanish values for a country that had lost its national identity. The definition of the group has been questioned by many critics, most pointedly because the themes that the generation of 1898 writers took up were not necessarily particular to the spanish situation but rather reflected the loss of confidence in nineteenth-century science, positivism, and progress in the wake of the bleak results of the first waves of industrialism

Jesús-antonio Collado, Kierkegaard y Unamuno: La existencia religiosa, madrid: editorial gredos 1962, p. 9. 6 nelson orringer claims that unamuno learned german while reading Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logik. see his introduction to miguel de unamuno, Treatise on Love of God, ed. by nelson orringer, urbana and Chicago: university of illinois press 2007, p. xiv. 7 miguel de unamuno, San Manuel Bueno, mártir, madrid: atlantida 1931 (in Obras completas, vol. 2; english translation: “san manuel bueno, martyr,” in Abel Sanchez and Other Stories, trans. by anthony Kerrigan, Chicago: regnery 1956). 5

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throughout europe.8 While Unamuno certainly commented specifically on Spanish culture and values in an attempt to correct its faults and redirect its priorities, his most compelling theme became the question of immortality after a spiritual crisis in 1897. unamuno’s encounter with Kierkegaard came soon thereafter, and unamuno latched on to his “brother Kierkegaard” as he sought to deal with the fact that the intellect tells us unequivocally that this life is all that there is, and the heart tells us there must be more. II. Unamuno’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard there is no question about unamuno’s having read almost all of the Kierkegaardian corpus. The 14 volumes of the first edition of the Samlede Værker which unamuno studied are still available to scholars in the Casa museo unamuno in salamanca. all but two of the volumes show evidence of having been read because of the marginal notes made by Unamuno. The notes take two forms; the first and most frequent are simple glosses of the danish words in spanish and german. the second is a series of one, two or three vertical lines which mark passages which caught unamuno’s attention. it is not surprising that some of these are quoted later in unamuno’s work. using the marginal annotations as a guide, we can say with fairly good certainty that unamuno read most of Kierkegaard’s work except volumes 5 and 8 which contain Four Upbuilding Discourses, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, A Literary Review, and Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. there are other volumes that are partially read. the Concluding Unscientific Postscript is a text that unamuno quotes frequently, and it shows careful reading until page 494 when the marginal notations stop. it is therefore likely that unamuno did not read “a First and Last Explanation” on page 546, which is significant because there he would have found Kierkegaard’s explanation for his use of the pseudonyms and his desire to separate his own voice from theirs. it is also the case that unamuno only read part of volume 13. although From the Papers of One Still Living and The Concept of Irony have significant numbers of glosses and a few passage notations, it is clear that unamuno got bored with the newspaper articles at the beginning and those occurring after The Concept of Irony because they show no markings at all. this means that unamuno also did not read On My Work as an Author, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, or “the single individual,” all of which would have helped unamuno’s understanding of Kierkegaard’s perspective on his writing. given this fact and the copious amounts of notations in Either/Or, Stages on Life’s Way, and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, it is my contention that Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship had a much greater impact on unamuno than the works which Kierkegaard signed in his own name, even though there is evidence that he read some of the specifically religious writings like Works of Love. see pedro Cerezo galán, El mal del siglo: El conflicto entre Ilustración y Romanticismo en la crisis finisecular del siglo XIX, madrid: editorial biblioteca nueva 2003.

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throughout unamuno’s work there are clear indications of his embrace of Kierkegaardian themes such as “truth is subjectivity,” indirect communication, and the maieutic ideal, which will be explored in the next section. However, the number of times in which Kierkegaard is specifically referred to is very difficult to determine because unamuno was not conscientious about attribution. in fact, one unamuno scholar, sánchez barbudo, almost accuses unamuno of plagiarism of Kierkegaard when he says that one can find obvious references to Kierkegaard in Unamuno in essays as early as 1903 but that “he quotes him perhaps less than he should have.”9 in fact, the earliest known (to this author) mention of Kierkegaard in unamuno is in an essay entitled “the ‘soul’ of manuel machado” in 1902.10 unamuno had just read Harald Høffding’s (1843–1931) book on Kierkegaard, and he probably reflects Høffding’s assessment of Kierkegaard in calling Kierkegaard a great, melancholy thinker of irrationalism. the other connection made is that of Kierkegaard being a model for Ibsen’s character, Brand, a figure which Unamuno returns to in other places, especially in “ibsen and Kierkegaard,” where he says that the foundation of ibsen’s plays is the theology of Kierkegaard.11 the “ibsen and Kierkegaard” article of 1907 is the first one in which extensive quotations are made from Kierkegaard. However, even if unamuno attributes a quotation to Kierkegaard, he often does not cite the particular work from which the quotation comes. unamuno mentions Either/Or and Stages on Life’s Way earlier in the essay, but not in connection with the quotation he takes from the “diapsalmata” of Either/Or i: let others complain that the times are evil. i complain that they are wretched, for they are without passion. people’s thoughts are as thin and fragile as lace, and they themselves as pitiable as lace-making girls. the thoughts of their hearts are too wretched to be sinful. it is perhaps possible to regard it as sin for a worm to nourish such thoughts, but not for a human being, who is created in the image of god. their desires are staid and dull, their passions drowsy. they perform their duties, these mercenary souls, but just like the Jews, they indulge in trimming the coins a little; they think that, even though our lord keeps ever so orderly an account book, they can still manage to trick him a little. Fie on them! that is why my soul always turns back to the old testament and to shakespeare. there one still feels that those who speak are human beings; there they hate, there they love, there they murder the enemy, curse his descendants through all generations―there they sin.12

it is Kierkegaard’s emphasis on passion and lived truth that draws unamuno to him over and over again. in the same article, unamuno “quotes” Kierkegaard as saying, “Christendom does nothing but play at Christianity,” which could be a paraphrase of

sánchez barbudo, Estudios sobre Unamuno y Machado, madrid: ediciones guardarrama 1959, p. 65. 10 see miguel de unamuno, “el ‘alma’ de manuel machado,” Heraldo de Madrid, march 18, 1902 (in Obras completas, vol. 3, see p. 1078). 11 unamuno, “ibsen y Kierkegaard,” in Obras completas, vol. 3, p. 289. 12 SKS 2, 37 / EO1, 27–8. unamuno, “ibsen y Kierkegaard,” in Obras completas, vol. 3, pp. 290–1. 9

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various places in The Moment.13 However, the point that he makes is that Kierkegaard stood for “[a] savage love of the truth, of felt truth, and not only truth conceived logically, but truth that is life.”14 it is Kierkegaard’s emphasis on lived truth, on the fact that “truth is subjectivity” that is most significant in what we can call Unamuno’s existentialism. there are numerous other slight references to Kierkegaard in unamuno’s works which this essay cannot refer to in detail. rather, i will turn now to the major themes of “truth as subjectivity,” “indirect communication,” and the maieutic ideal which unamuno gained from his reading of Kierkegaard. III. Unamuno’s Appropriation of Kierkegaard unamuno recognized in Kierkegaard a writer who cared passionately about the individual and authentic existence. it is not surprising then that, from the vantage point of the second half of the twentieth century, critics began to see unamuno as one of the links from the origins of existentialism in Kierkegaard through to martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Jean-paul sartre (1905–80). as early as 1956 philosopher albert levi maintained, “the existentialism of unamuno is the transitional link between the generation of Kierkegaard and that of Heidegger, but its sympathies lie altogether with the former. uninterested in essence, it is entirely concerned with man’s existence.”15 the heart of unamuno’s existentialism is his embrace of the Kierkegaardian claim that “truth is subjectivity,” articulated by Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. there he says, “An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person.”16 there are at least three key elements of unamuno’s thought that resonate with Climacus’ statement about truth. First and foremost is the uncertain nature of truth. the second is that for truth to matter, it must be lived. the last provides the means by which truth becomes lived―passion. I will treat each of these in more detail below. The first sense of truth here is ideal truth or propositional truth. Climacus recognizes that this sort of truth is always an approximation because both the object of truth and the knower of truth are constantly changing.17 unamuno underscores the passage in which Climacus claims, “the paradox is the objective uncertainty that is the expression for the passion of inwardness that is truth.”18 unamuno wholly embraces Climacus’ assertion that truth is an approximation and that whatever truth a person ascertains should be held modestly. unamuno excoriates those who believe 13 most likely SV1 xiv, 145 or 228 (which corresponds to SKS 13, 177 or 268 / M, 133 or 214). 14 unamuno, “ibsen y Kierkegaard,” in Obras completas, vol. 3, p. 289. 15 albert levi, “the Quixotic Quest for being,” Ethics, vol. 66, 1956, p. 135. 16 SKS 7, 186 / CUP1, 203. 17 see C. stephen evans, “truth and subjectivity,” in his Kierkegaard’s Fragments and Postscript: The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus, atlantic Highlands, new Jersey: Humanities press 1983, pp. 115–35. 18 SKS 7, 187 / CUP1, 205.

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that they have the truth neatly tied up and especially those who persecute others whose view of truth does not agree with the dogmatist. unamuno says that his mission as an author is to disturb those who have a narrow, dogmatic sense of truth. He says that he seeks “to fight against those who resign themselves to whatever, to Catholicism, to rationalism, to agnosticism, to make all of those unsettled and full of longing.”19 uncertainty is the foundation of unamuno’s philosophy, his tragic sense of life. at the beginning of his chapter entitled “in the depths of the abyss,” a chapter in which the Postscript figures greatly, Unamuno embraces uncertainty and a particular kind of skepticism as his response to the problem of immortality. rationally we know that we will die, but the heart through faith wants to believe that there is more. unamuno calls for his particular kind of skepticism, which is not by any means Cartesian doubt but rather more like pyrrhonian doubt, to be applied equally to reason and to faith. He challenges the person interested in authentic existence to live in the tension between the two. He says of rationality and irrationality (faith): “these two powers can never make peace, and we must live by their war. we must make of this war, of war itself, the very condition of our spiritual life.”20 unamuno says that the person who would build his faith on uncertainty cannot lie. immediately thereafter, he quotes Climacus, who asserts that we do not believe with reason; religious faith is not only not supported by reason but is contra-rational. His translation from the danish into spanish is a bit different from the standard english translation. “poetry is illusion before understanding, religiousness illusion after understanding. poetry and religiousness suppress the vaudeville of the worldly wisdom of living. every individual that is not living poetically or religiously is foolish.”21 the target of unamuno’s criticism is rationalism, which we will see in many forms. He wants to say that there is always something more to human existence, something that is irreducible to reason. in this same passage he again quotes Climacus, calling Christianity la salida desesperada, or “the desperate way out,” because it gives hope when rationally there is none. unamuno’s quoting of the “desperate way out” comes from “possible/actual theses by lessing,” where Climacus says: “all honor to mediation! no doubt it can help a person in yet another way, as it presumably helped the author of Fear and Trembling to seek the leap as a desperate way out, just as Christianity was a desperate way out when it entered the world and will continue to be that for everyone who actually accepts it.”22 i shall return to unamuno’s need for Christianity to be the “desperate way out” a little later on. the second sense of truth in Climacus’ view of “truth is subjectivity” with which unamuno resonates is that of the need for truth to be lived if it is to matter at all. unamuno has no patience for abstract, philosophical thought that does not bear on unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, p. 313 (in Obras completas, vol. 7, pp. 297–8). 20 ibid. p. 172. 21 SKS 7, 414 / CUP1, 457. unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, p. 197 (in Obras Completas, vol. 7, p. 226). 22 SKS 7, 104 / CUP1, 106. 19

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how a person will live. in the same sixth chapter of The Tragic Sense of Life, entitled “in the depths of the abyss,” calling Kierkegaard his brother again, unamuno quotes a very long passage from the Postscript about the danger of abstract thought. in part it says: the dubiousness of abstraction manifests itself precisely in connection with all existential questions, from which abstraction removes the difficulty by omitting it and then boasts of having explained everything. it explains immortality in general, and see, it goes splendidly, inasmuch as immortality becomes identical with eternity, with the eternity that is essentially the medium of thought. but abstraction does not care about whether a particular existing human being is immortal, and just that is the difficulty. It is disinterested, but the difficulty of existence is the existing person’s interest, and the existing person is infinitely interested in existing.23

unamuno takes this passage from Climacus as a criticism of Hegel, whom he calls the prototype of the rationalist who takes away our life. For unamuno, the issue at the heart of this discussion of abstract thought is immortality. rationality takes away life because rationally one must face the inevitability of death. reason tells us that this life ends and there is nothing beyond the grave. the will to live beyond death is so strong, however, that it must overcome reason. unamuno uses Climacus to argue against the bankruptcy of rationalism. He says, “the vital consequence of rationalism would be suicide. Kierkegaard says it very well.”24 He then quotes from “actual and ethical subjectivity,” eliminating part of the text to further his own purposes: “suicide is the only existence-consequence of pure thinking….we do not praise suicide, but certainly the passion. now, however, a thinker is a creature worth seeing, who at certain times of the day is singularly ingenious but otherwise has nothing in common with a human being.”25 unamuno is emphasizing again that truth must be lived. i have argued in another place that unamuno created a character, augusto pérez, in his novel, Niebla (Mist), who is the picture of such a pure thinking individual whose only logical end is suicide.26 unamuno wants the reader to grapple with the need for faith and reason to live together in tension so that the possibility of immortality is kept alive. taking a page from william James (1842–1910), unamuno asserts that the will is what brings god into existence, at least insofar as god is meaningful to a human individual. this is unamuno’s doctrine of querer creer (to want to believe) which he alludes to as early as the Diario íntimo (1897–1902), but which becomes an important theme of The Tragic Sense of Life. unamuno wants to believe in god so that this life is not all that there is. For life to have any meaning, given the inevitability of death, we must believe in god as the guarantor of our immortality. but unamuno is a skeptic in the pyrrhonian sense, and therefore he fashions his doctrine of wanting SKS 7, 275–6 / CUP1, 302. unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, p. 117 (in Obras completas, vol. 7, p. 178). 25 SKS 7, 281 / CUP1, 308. 26 see Jan e. evans, Unamuno and Kierkegaard: Paths to Selfhood in Fiction, lanham, maryland: lexington books 2005, p. 81. 23 24

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to believe as the foundation that he needs in order to live. He famously dismisses rational proofs that god objectively exists. He calls the existence of god “insoluble” by reason, but also says that reason cannot possibly prove that he does not exist either.27 unamuno says that to believe in god is to create him. there is a play here on the spanish verbs of creer (to believe) and crear (to create). it is in this context that he quotes Climacus, who says, “god doesn’t think, he creates; he doesn’t exist, he is eternal.”28 Climacus is making the point that thinking and action are separate in human existence, but for god they are one and the same. unamuno uses the quotation for his own purposes.29 He imbues humans with divine attributes and claims that by wanting god to exist we create him and add to his being by existing ourselves. He says, “we have created god to save the universe from nothing….the only real thing is consciousness….and we need god to save consciousness, not in order to think existence, but rather to live it.”30 we need god in order to live because without him as the guarantor of immortality, our existence means nothing. so here we see again how Christianity can be the “desperate way out,” a way to contra-rationally embrace life. it is not surprising that unamuno underscores the Postscript passage in which Climacus famously discusses the relative truth in which the pagan and the person who lives in a Christian state pray.31 unamuno sees in the example the necessity of living in the truth and not just knowing it. unamuno later “quotes” the passage in The Tragic Sense of Life, and again it seems more like a paraphrase, one suited to his point: “if of two men, Kierkegaard says, one prays to the true god with personal insincerity, and the other prays with the passion of infinity to an idol, it is the first who prayed in reality to an idol and the second who prays in truth to god.”32 unamuno’s point, which he acknowledges is a gloss on Climacus’ example, is to say that the true god is the one to whom the supplicant prays with longing. the longing is the existential proof of the truth, the only proof that one can have of god’s existence. The God whom I long for defines my actions, whether he objectively exists or not. unamuno puts it this way: “to believe in god is to long that he exists and in addition,

unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, p. 181 (in Obras completas, vol. 7, pp. 218–19). 28 SKS 7, 305 / CUP1, 332. 29 there is one more quotation from Postscript that i will not deal with in this study, because unamuno seems to completely misunderstand the context in which Climacus is speaking. the quotation is: “the totality-category is the religious; everything else that lacks this is, viewed essentially, illusion, whereby even the greatest criminal is basically guiltless and a good-natured person is a saint.” SKS 7, 488 / CUP1, 538. it is found in unamuno’s Chapter on “the practical problem,” near the end of Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, p. 280 (in Obras completas, vol. 7, p. 277). 30 unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, p. 155 (in Obras completas, vol. 7, p. 201). 31 SKS 7, 184 / CUP1, 201. 32 unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, pp. 176–7 (in Obras completas, vol. 7, p. 214). 27

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to conduct yourself as though he did exist: it is to live from this longing and to make it the inner spring of our action.”33 the third element of Climacus’ view that “truth is subjectivity” with which unamuno resonates is that for truth to matter it requires passion and action. the means whereby truth is appropriated is through passion which leads to action. while reading the Postscript, unamuno underscored “at its highest, inwardness in an existing subject is passion; truth as a paradox corresponds to passion, and that truth becomes a paradox is grounded precisely in its relation to an existing subject.”34 in an essay entitled “what is truth?” unamuno says unequivocally that truth is what one believes with all his heart and soul. to the question, “what does it mean to believe with all one’s heart and soul?” he responds, “to live according to that truth.”35 For Unamuno the truth that defines our existence is the undeniable fact that we will all die, juxtaposed against the desire for there to be life after death. unamuno’s overriding concern with immortality was well established before he underscored in the Postscript “but the expression for the utmost exertion of subjectivity is the infinitely passionate interest in its eternal happiness.”36 Climacus’ eternal happiness unamuno reads as immortality. He believes that though rationally we know that we will die, the heart, the subjectively living part of our being, believes that life will not end with death. neither one of these contradictory forces will release its grip on us, so we must live in the paradox, live in the tension between the two. unamuno calls on his reader to act on the passion to live forever, knowing that it is irrational to do so: “act in such a way that in your own judgment and in the judgment of others you may merit eternity. make yourself irreplaceable so that you do not deserve to die. or perhaps, act as if you were to die tomorrow, but to die in order to survive and be eternalized.”37 this declaration from the end of The Tragic Sense of Life sounds like Climacus’ account of socrates, found on the same page of the Postscript as the story about the pagan and the Christian praying: “but socrates! He poses the question objectively, problematically; if there is an immortality….He stakes his whole life on this ‘if’; he dares to die, and with the passion of the infinite he has so ordered his whole life that it might be acceptable—if there is an immortality.”38 unamuno’s mission in his work was to awaken his reader to passionate existence, just as Climacus enjoins his reader in the Postscript. Contrasting abstract thought with real existence, Climacus says in a passage underlined by unamuno: “the demand of abstraction upon him is that he become disinterested in order to obtain something to know, the requirement of the ethical upon him is to be infinitely interested in existing.”39 i believe that unamuno took from Climacus one of his most powerful metaphors to drive home his desire to move the reader to grapple with the question unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, pp. 183–4 (in Obras completas, vol. 7, p. 219). 34 SKS 7, 182 / CUP1, 199. 35 unamuno, “¿Qué es verdad?,” in Obras completas, vol. 3, p. 864. 36 SKS 7, 58 / CUP1, 53. 37 unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, p. 258 (in Obras completas, vol. 7, p. 264). 38 SKS 7, 184 / CUP1, 201. 39 SKS 7, 287 / CUP1, 316. 33

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of immortality in passionate existence. in “possible and actual theses by lessing,” Climacus says: but the genuine subjective existing thinker is always just as negative as he is positive and vice versa: he is always that as long as he exists, not once and for all in a chimerical mediation….He is cognizant of the negativity of the infinite in existence [Tilværelse]; he always keeps open the wound of negativity, which at all times is a saving factor (the others let the wound close and become positive—deceived)….He is, therefore, never a teacher, but a learner, and if he is continually just as negative as positive, he is continually striving.40

in this passage about the genuine subjective existing thinker, unamuno underlined the danish word Saar and translated it in the margin by the spanish words herida and llaga. the volume of the Samlede Værker in which the Postscript was published came out in 1902, three years before unamuno’s book Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, in which he wrote: “look, reader, though i do not know you, i love you so much that if i could hold you in my hands, i would open up your breast and in the center of your heart i would make a wound and into it i would put vinegar and salt, so that you might never rest again, and would live in continual anxiety and endless longing.”41 the unhealed wound pressures the individual into seeking a cure, to be in constant, passionate pursuit of authentic existence. Climacus’ “continual striving” is unamuno’s “endless longing.” the method that unamuno uses to disturb, probe, and awaken his reader is Kierkegaardian “indirect communication,” partly made possible through the maieutic ideal. if one is to communicate about authentic existence, then one’s communication must be indirect. authentic existence requires subjective thinking. subjective thinking allows the individual to appropriate the truth for himself or herself in inwardness. Hearing truth is not enough. Climacus says: “the difference between subjective and objective thinking must also manifest itself in the form of communication.”42 objective thinking requires certainty and results, while subjective thinking acknowledges uncertainty and does not seek results. unamuno embraces uncertainty and does not need results. unamuno underlines a passage in the Postscript dealing with risk, faith, and uncertainty which he later uses in Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, though without direct attribution. the quotation reads: Without risk, no faith. Faith is the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness and the objective uncertainty. if i am able to apprehend god objectively, i do not have faith, but because i cannot do this, i must have faith. if i want to keep myself in faith, i must continually see to it that i hold fast the objective uncertainty, see to it that in the objective uncertainty i am “out on 70,000 fathoms of water” and still have faith.43

40 41 42 43

SKS 7, 85 / CUP1, 85. unamuno, Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, in Obras completas, vol. 3, p. 241. SKS 7, 74 / CUP1, 73. SKS 7, 186–7 / CUP1, 204.

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unamuno uses the image of being “out on 70,000 fathoms of water” in a conversation he has with a friend about the friend’s perceived need to believe in hell in order to keep him on the straight and narrow path morally. the friend calls hell his “plank” which he grabs in the ocean of moral uncertainty. unamuno decries the need for hell as an objective foundation for morality and tells his friend that he himself is the plank and that God is the ocean: “Man floats in God without any need of a plank, and the only thing i desire is to take away the plank, to leave you alone, to give you hope and make it so that you feel that you are floating.”44 in freeing the friend from his dependence on the plank, unamuno likens himself to don Quixote who freed the galley slaves. He notes that the galley slaves were not grateful, but freeing them was still the right thing to do. Any personal benefit in the communication was not the primary motivation for the communicator of truth. in a book from 1927, How to Make a Novel, unamuno articulates the maieutic ideal explicitly as he comments on his work as a writer of fiction. He says that, as he goes about making the novel of his life, he wants the reader to go about making his own novel. He does not seek clones of himself. rather, he challenges the reader, saying: and every reader who is a man of depth, a human, is a reader, an author of what he reads, of what he is reading. what you are now reading here, reader, you are saying it to yourself and it is as much yours as it is mine. if it’s not that way, you are not reading.45

the point of owning the reading for oneself is the appropriation of the truth in inwardness, but the results of that will not be known. one of the ways in which unamuno as a novelist practices the maieutic ideal is to craft his narratives in such a way that at the end there are as many questions as at the beginning. there are no tidy resolutions to matters of eternal importance. again, in How to Make a Novel he says: “any reader who in reading a novel concerns himself with how the characters will turn out without concerning himself with his own end does not deserve to have his curiosity satisfied.”46 unamuno thus meets the qualification of inwardness that Climacus outlines when commenting on the other pseudonymous works: “But the absence of a conclusion is expressly a qualification of inwardness, because a conclusion is something external and the communication of a conclusion an eternal relation between a knower and a nonknower.”47 uncertainty and ambiguity allow the individual to appropriate the truth in inwardness. unamuno does not quote from Kierkegaard nor does he refer specifically to Kierkegaard in How to Make a Novel, but the influence of Unamuno’s reading of Kierkegaard is unmistakable. Unamuno’s greatest use of specific Kierkegaardian texts came in his 1913 The Tragic Sense of Life, his most philosophically substantive book. there he quotes six times from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and mentions Kierkegaard five other times. In this study I have focused on the importance of Kierkegaard in 44 45 46 47

unamuno, Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, in Obras completas, vol. 3, p. 235. unamuno, Como se hace una novella, in Obras completas, vol. 8, p. 761. ibid., p. 750. SKS 7, 264 / CUP1, 289.

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unamuno’s thought as it pertains to the central themes of existentialism. unamuno’s existentialism can be clearly linked to the Kierkegaardian concept of “truth is subjectivity,” within which we have explored the uncertain nature of truth, the need for truth to be lived and not just known, and the passion required for truth to be lived in inwardness. Further affinities between Kierkegaard and Unamuno are Unamuno’s use of indirect communication to reveal existential truth and his practice of the maieutic ideal in relating to his reader. what unamuno found in Kierkegaard was a writer whose passionate embrace of existence drew him into reading all of his works, beginning in 1901. showing the staying power of Kierkegaard’s influence, Unamuno writes in one of his books as late as 1925, The Agony of Christianity: For my part, it has happened to me many times when i have encountered in a text a man, not a philosopher or a sage or thinker, when i have encountered a soul and not a doctrine, i have said to myself, “but i’ve been this one! i have lived again with pascal in his century and in his culture, and i have lived with Kierkegaard in Copenhagen.”48

the huellas or tracks of Kierkegaard in unamuno are too many to be fully exhausted in a single book, much less in a single article. the following bibliography will attest to the historical and current interest in the relationship between these two authors.

miguel de unamuno, L’agonie du Christianisme, trans. by Juan Cassou, paris: F. rieder 1925, p. 28. (First spanish edition: La agonía del cristianismo, madrid: renacimiento 1931, pp. 38–9; in Obras completas, vol. 7, p. 314.) 48

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Unamuno’s Corpus “el ‘alma’ de manuel machado,” Heraldo de Madrid, march 18, 1902. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 3, p. 1078.) “los naturales y los espirituales,” La España Moderna, vol. 17, no. 193, 1905. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 1, p. 1223.) “soledad,” La España Moderna, vol. 17, no. 200, 1905. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by m. garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 1, pp. 1262–3.) “sobre la erudición y la crítica,” La España Moderna, vol. 17, no. 204, 1905. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 1, p. 1275.) “el secreto de la vida,” La España Moderna, no. 211, 1906. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 3, p. 883.) “ibsen y Kierkegaard,” Los Lunes de El Imparcial, march 25, 1907. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 3, pp. 289–93.) “rousseau, voltaire y nietzsche,” La Nación (buenos aires), august 4, 1907. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 3, p. 570). “verdad y vida,” La Nación (buenos aires), march 22, 1908. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 3, p. 265.) “Un filósofo del sentido común,” La Nación (buenos aires), october 7, 1910. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 3, pp. 551–2.) “sobre la tumba de Costa,” Nuestro Tiempo, no. 147, 1911. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 3, p. 946.) Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, madrid: renacimiento 1913, p. 7; p. 22; pp. 111–13; pp. 117–18; p. 124; p. 154; pp. 176–7; p. 197; p. 253; p. 280; p. 318. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 7, p. 120; p. 161; pp. 174–5; p. 178; p. 182; p. 200; p. 214; pp. 226–7; p. 277; p. 300; english translation: The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and in Peoples, trans. by J.e.

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Crawford, london: macmillan 1921, p. 3; p. 109; p. 115; p. 123; p. 153; p. 178; p. 198; p. 257; p. 287; p. 327.) Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho según Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, explicada y comentada por Miguel de Unamuno (Life of Don Quixote and Sancho), madrid: renacimiento 1914. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 3, p. 54.) L’agonie du Christianisme, trans. by Juan Cassou, paris: F. rieder 1925, p. 28. (First spanish edition: La agonía del cristianismo, madrid: renacimiento 1931, pp. 38–9; reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 7, p. 314.) “Forord,” in Den tragiske Livsfølelse hos Mennesker og Folkeslag (danish translation of Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, Copenhagen: p. Haase & søns Forlag 1925, pp. 5–6 (preface dated by unamuno as march 17, 1925).) San Manuel Bueno, mártir, y tres historias más, madrid: atlantida 1931. (reprinted in Obras completas, vols. 1–9, ed. by manuel garcía blanco, madrid: escelicer 1966–71, vol. 2, p. 1123; english translation: “san manuel bueno, martyr,” in Abel Sanchez and Other Stories, trans. by anthony Kerrigan, Chicago: regnery 1956.) “a Federico urales,” in Federico urales, Evolución de la filosofía en España, vols. 1–2, barcelona: revista blanca 1934, vol. 2, pp. 205–9. “Carta a Clarín,” in Epistolario a Clarín, ed. by menéndez y pelayo, madrid: escorial 1941, p. 82. II. Sources of Unamuno’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard brandes, georg, Henrik Ibsen, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1898, p. 29; p. 50; p. 69; p. 82; p. 88; p. 92; pp. 98–9; p. 102; p. 145. Høffding, Harald, Søren Kierkegaard som Filosof, Copenhagen: p.g. philipsen 1892. (german translation: Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph, stuttgart: Frommann 1896.) — Religionsfilosofi, Copenhagen: nordisk Forlag 1901, p. 118; p. 166; p. 261; p. 335; p. 351, p. 357, p. 359, p. 361. Kierkegaard, søren, Samlede Værker, vols. 1–14, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1901– 06. — Il diario del seduttore, trans. by l. redaelli, turin: bocca 1910. III. Secondary Literature on Unamuno’s Relation to Kierkegaard Abellán, José Luis, “Influencias filosóficas en Unamuno,” Insula, vol. 181, 1961, p. 11. ardila, J.a.g., “el ‘hacer política’ de unamuno y el punto de vista platónicokierkegaardiano,” Bulletín Hispanique, no. 104, 2001, pp. 169–90. ― “Nueva lectura de Niebla: Kierkegaard y el amor,” Revista de la Literatura, vol. 70, no. 139, 2008, pp. 85–118.

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bachelor, r. F., Unamuno Novelist: A European Perspective, Oxford: Dolfin 1972, p. 37. bandera, Cesáreo, “el quijotismo de unamuno y la envidia,” in Literatura y pensamiento en España: Estudios en honor de Ciriaco Morón Arroyo, newark, delaware: Cuesta 2003, pp. 115–35. Cerezo galán, pedro, Las máscaras de lo trágico: Filosofía y tragedia en Miguel de Unamuno, madrid: editorial trotta 1996. Collado, Jesús antonio, La existencia religiosa en Kierkegaard y su influencia en el pensamiento de Unamuno, ph.d. thesis, Facultad de Filosofía y letras, madrid 1961. — Kierkegaard y Unamuno. La existencia religiosa, madrid: editorial gredos 1962. — “unamuno y el existencialismo de søren Kierkegaard,” Revista de la Universidad de Madrid, vol. 13, nos. 49–50, 1964, pp. 145–61. Corona marzol, gonzalo, “unamuno y Kierkegaard: la mujer y el amor en Niebla,” in Actas de la Sociedad Española de Literatura General y Comparada, Zaragoza, 18 al 21 de noviembre de 1992, zaragoza, spain: universidad de zaragoza-banco zaragozano 1994, pp. 103–13. Csejtei, Dezső, “A hit lovagja spanyol földön. Kierkegaard-Unamuno párhuzamok,” Magyar Filozófiai Szemle, nos. 1–2, 2003, pp. 81–99. (english translation: “the Knight of Faith on spanish land. Kierkegaard and unamuno,” Letras Peninsulares, vol. 13, nos. 2–3, 2000–01, pp. 707–23.) erro, Carlos alberto, “unamuno y Kierkegaard,” Sur, vol. 8, no. 49, 1938, pp. 7– 21. estelrich i artigues, Joan, “Kierkegaard i unamuno,” La Revista, vol. 5, no. 84, 1919, pp. 83–4. — “Kierkegaard y unamuno,” Gaceta Literaria, vol. 4, no. 78, 1930. evans, Jan e., “unamuno and Kierkegaard: Clarifying the relationship,” Revista Hispánica Moderna, vol. 56, 2003, pp. 298–310. — “Kierkegaard’s aesthete and unamuno’s San Manuel Bueno, Mártir. a study in the ethical life,” Christian Scholar’s Review, vol. 34, 2004, pp. 43–54. — “Passion, Paradox and Indirect Communication. The Influence of Postscript on miguel de unamuno,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2005, pp. 137–52. — Unamuno and Kierkegaard: Paths to Selfhood in Fiction, lanham, maryland: lexington books 2005. — “Kierkegaard, unamuno, and don Quijote as the Knight of Faith,” Symposium, vol. 60, 2006, pp. 3–16. — “la metáfora de la llaga en søren Kierkegaard y miguel de unamuno: la importancia del sufrimiento en la existencia auténtica,” Cuadernos de la cátedra Miguel de Unamuno, vol. 46, no. 2, 2008, pp. 13–25. — “miguel de unamuno’s reception and use of the Kierkegaardian Claim that ‘truth is subjectivity,’ ” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofía, vol. 64, 2008, pp. 403–16. evans, Jan e. and C. stephen evans, “Kierkegaard’s aesthete and unamuno’s Niebla,” Philosophy and Literature, vol. 28, 2004, pp. 342–52.

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Farré, luis, “unamuno, william James y Kierkegaard,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, vol. 57, 1954, pp. 279–99 and vol. 58, 1954, pp. 64–88. (reprinted in his Unamuno, William James, Kierkegaard y otros ensayos, buenos aires: la aurora 1967, pp. 17–97.) — “Hegel, Kierkegaard y dos españoles: ortega y gasset y unamuno,” in La Nación, buenos aires, July 21, 1963. (reprinted in his Unamuno, William James, Kierkegaard y otros ensayos, buenos aires: la aurora 1967, pp. 151–60.) Fasel, oscar a. “observations on unamuno and Kierkegaard,” Hispania, vol. 38, 1955, pp. 443–50. García Bacca, Juan David, “Kierkegaard y la filosofía contemporánea española,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, vol. 151, 1967, pp. 94–105. garcía Chicón, agustín, La autenticidad como sustancia de la verdad. Influencia de Kierkegaard en Unamuno, málaga: d. Juan de austria 1987. gómez, michael a., The Philosophy of Struggle, the Struggle of Philosophy: Unamuno, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and the Relation to Modernism, ph.d. thesis, boston university 2002. gonzález Caminero, nemesio, “miguel de unamuno, precursor del existencialismo,” Pensamiento, vol. 6, 1949, pp. 455–71. gullón, ricardo, “imágenes del otro (en torno a unamuno, Kierkegaard y dostoievski),” Revista Hispanoamericana Moderna, vol. 31, 1965, pp. 210–21. igual arroyo, maria Jesus, Pensée et existence. Kierkegaard et Unamuno, ph.d. thesis, université de paris i, paris 2000. lago bornstein, Juan Carlos, “unamuno y Kierkegaard: dos espíritus hermanos,” Anales del Seminario de Metafísica, vol. 21, 1986, pp. 59–71. Landsberg, Pablo Luis, “Reflexiones sobre Unamuno,” Cruz y Raya, no. 31, 1935, pp. 7–54. lópez aranguren, José luis, “sobre el talante religioso de miguel de unamuno,” Arbor, vol. 11, no. 36, 1948, pp. 485–503. macgregor, J., “dos precursores del existencialismo: Kierkegaard y unamuno,” Filosofia y letras, vol. 22, nos. 43–4, 1951, pp. 203–19. malik, Habib C., Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought, washington, d.C.: Catholic university of america press 1997, p. xx; pp. 284–7; p. 342, note 9. meyer, François, “Kierkegaard et unamuno,” Revue de Littérature Comparée, vol. 29, 1955, pp. 478–92. — La ontología de Miguel de Unamuno, trans. by Cesáreo goicoechea, madrid: editorial gredos 1962. morón arroyo, Ciriaco, “unamuno y Hegel,” in Miguel de Unamuno, ed. by antonio sánchez barbudo, madrid: taurus 1974, pp. 151–79. palmer, donald d., “unamuno’s don Quijote and Kierkegaard’s abraham,” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. 3, 1969, pp. 295–312. paucker, e. Krane, “Kierkegaardian dread and despair in unamuno’s ‘el que se enterró,’ ” Cuadernos de la Cátedra Miguel de Unamuno, nos. 16–17, 1966–67, pp. 75–91.

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politis, Hélène, Kierkegaard en France au XXe siècle: archéologie d’une réception, paris: Éditions Kimé 2005, p. 106, note 85; p. 119; p. 123, note 5; p. 133; p. 138; p. 158, note 59. roberts, gemma, “el Quijote, clavo ardiente de la fe de unamuno,” Revista Hispánica Moderna, vol. 32, no. 1, 1966, pp. 17–24. — “un modo de la existencia religiosa en Paz en la guerra: una coincidencia con Kierkegaard,” Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century, vol. 7, 1979, pp. 329–36. — Unamuno: afinidades y coincidencias kierkegaardianas, boulder Colorado: society of spanish and spanish-american studies 1986. sánchez barbudo, antonio, “la intimidad de unamuno: relaciones con Kierkegaard y w. James,” Occidental, no. 7, 1949, pp. 10–13. — “la formación del pensamiento de unamuno. una experiencia decisiva: la crisis de 1897,” Hispanic Review, vol. 18, 1950, pp. 218–43. — “diferencia entre unamuno y Kierkegaard,” in his Estudios sobre Unamuno y Machado, madrid: guadarrama 1959, pp. 189–93. — “unamuno y Kierkegaard,” in his Estudios sobre Unamuno y Machado, madrid: guadarrama 1959, pp. 65–79. serrano, susan, The Will as Protagonist: The Role of the Will in the Existentialist Writings of Miguel de Unamuno: Affinities and Divergences with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, sevilla: padilla libros 1996. sinclair, alison, “Concepts of tragedy in unamuno and Kierkegaard,” in Re-reading Unamuno, ed. by nicholas g. round, glasgow: university of glasgow press 1989, pp. 121–38. ― Uncovering the Mind, manchester: manchester university press 2001. tornos, andrés m., “sobre unamuno y Kierkegaard,” Pensamiento, vol. 18, 1962, pp. 131–46. uscatescu, Jorge, “Kierkegaard e unamuno o l’interiorità segreta,” Città di Vita, vol. 5, 1978, pp. 347–62. (spanish translation in Arbor, vol. 103, nos. 403–4, 1979, pp. 25–40.) — “unamuno y Kierkegaard. medio siglo después de la muerte de unamuno, 1936– 1986,” Filosofia Oggi, vol. 9, nos. 3–4, 1986, pp. 475–86. — “unamuno y Kierkegaard,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, nos. 440–1, 1987, pp. 283–93. webber, ruth House, “Kierkegaard and the elaboration of unamuno’s Niebla,” Hispanic Review, vol. 32, 1964, pp. 118–34. wright, sarah, “ethical seductions: a Comparative reading of unamuno’s ‘el Hermano Juan’ and Kierkegaard’s Either/Or,” Anales de la Literatura Contemporanea, vol. 29, no. 2, 2004, pp. 119–34; pp. 489–504.

Jean wahl: philosophies of existence and the introduction of Kierkegaard in the non-germanic world alejandro Cavallazzi sánchez and azucena palavicini sánchez

Dans son rapport avec le religieux, Kierkegaard est un amant malheureux, c’est-à-dire qu’il n’est peut-être pas, au sens étroit du mot, ou qu’il n’est peut-être pas toujours, un croyant, mais un poète, le poète du religieux. Jean wahl1

Jean wahl can be considered a historian, a poet, and also a philosopher. His main interests run from plato and aristotle to søren Kierkegaard, gabriel marcel (1889– 1973), and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80). His research interests also include figures such as william James (1842–1910), edmund Husserl (1859–1938), Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), maurice merleau-ponty (1908–61), martin Heidegger (1889–1976), and his own mentor Henry bergson (1859–1941). Jules lequier (1814–62), Chaim perelman (1912–84), and william sheldon (1898–1977) appear in his repertoire as well. Historically speaking, Jean wahl is acknowledged as an authority on authors such as Kierkegaard, g.w.F. Hegel (1770–1831), and Friedrich nietzsche (1844–1900). He is also known as a serious scholar on literary figures such as Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81), nicholas berdyaev (1874–1948), arthur rimbaud (1854–91), Franz Kafka (1883–1924), and pierre Jean Jouve (1887–1976), to mention just a few. in opposition to several philosophical trends such as platonism, Cartesianism, or Hegelianism, wahl developed what he called a “philosophy of existence.” He studied plato, Hegel, and descartes as a means of establishing his main argument about reality. wahl ventured into topics relevant for his own philosophical project regarding existence, unity, and plurality. He was not interested in fashions or philosophical trends but in fundamental questions: “in many cases, Jean wahl may

we would like to thank maría José binetti, luis guerrero martínez, nassim bravo, anil paul John, and Carlos Cornejo for their invaluable help with this article, and we express our deep gratitude to Jon stewart for his guidance in the development of this work. the authors of this article made the translations from French and spanish to english when needed. 1 Jean wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: aubier 1938, p. 441.

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be defined as the child’s question within the Trojan walls of thought.”2 one of his basic questions was how philosophy can be related to existence, mainly to human existence. wahl discovered in Kierkegaard the clearest approach to the kind of philosophy that he intended to develop. in this article we will try to show wahl’s own interpretation of Kierkegaard, and the influence that Kierkegaard had on his later philosophy. In addition, we will try to explain one of wahl’s most consistent interests: comparing and contrasting Kierkegaard with different authors, especially those related to the existentialist movement. I. Life and Works Jean andré wahl was born on may 15, 1888 in a Jewish family in marseille. He studied at the lycèe louis le grand and later at the École normale superieure where he graduated in 1907. after his graduation, he was awarded a scholarship by the thiers Foundation just before the the First world war broke out in 1914. He began his career as a disciple of Henry bergson. at the time, he read the spanish author george Santayana (1863–1952). He was one of the first French scholars to study Anglosaxon philosophy. in Les philosophies pluralistes d’Angleterre et d’Amérique, his thesis dissertation of 1920, which he wrote with bergson as his advisor, he presented a detailed reflection on the pragmatism of William James.3 He also did research on ancient philosophy with a focus on authors such as plato and parmenides, especially on the idea of unity. wahl considered plato to be a post-pythagorean: in his system the limited and the unlimited are united in the idea of the good. as for the existence of ideas, wahl states: “plato, on the basis of mathematics, like the pythagoreans, researches the moral ideas just as socrates did, adding thoughts that come from the aesthetic experience which leads us to admit the existence of the ideas.”4 wahl emphasizes the problem of existence and essence in which individuals and ideas are put into Plato’s context. According to Wahl, Plato’s would be the first system where argumentation and discourse stand as the bridge between the infinite ideas and the individual. this notion was vital for his later developments in the philosophy of existence. during 1928 and 1929, wahl traveled to Freiburg to study the roots and basis of phenomenology. in the lectures he attended there he met emmanuel levinas (1906–95). in 1929, he published Le Malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel.5 wahl studied Hegel and the key concepts of his system: being, existence, samuel moyn, Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics, ithaca, new York: Cornell university press 2005, p. 177. 3 Jean wahl, Les Philosophies pluralistes d’Angleterre et d’Amérique, paris: alcan 1920. 4 Jean wahl, “Historie de l’argumentation philosophique,” in Symposium sobre la argumentación filosófica, ed. by Centro de estudios filosóficos, Mexico City: UNAM 1963, p. 10. 5 Jean wahl, Le Malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel, paris: rieder 1929. 2

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essence, and the Idea. Wahl and Alexandre Kojève (1902–68) were the first philosophers to introduce Hegel’s philosophy in France, but they did so only in order to oppose this kind of thought. generally speaking, wahl presented Hegel’s thought as metaphysical. Hegel’s version of idealism is known as absolute idealism. Hegel was considered to represent the system of universal mediation or universal argumentation. in this universal mediation, there is a constant assertion of identity between the inner and the outer, from world history to final judgment. In this same sense, Christianity was rationalized by Hegelian reason, which conceived of historical moments as conquests of the divine. thus, there was a divinization of given facts in which everything is related to “absolute spirit” in a necessary way. in the early 1930s, wahl organized several debates with gabriel marcel in order to encourage the discussion of Continental philosophy (especially the relationship between French and german philosophy); these debates brought together students from all over europe. this effort helped to consolidate phenomenological and existential thinking among many universities in europe. this was a response to the orthodox neo-Kantian philosophy that was commonly studied during that time in academic circles. among the students who participated in those gatherings were emmanuel lévinas, alexandre Koyré (1892–1964), eric weil (1904–77), alexandre Kojève, and Jacob gordin (1896–1947). the work of wahl motivated generations of thinkers to learn about not only phenomenology but also existentialism. by this time the german translations of Kierkegaard became more available and popular, and the need for a scholarly interpretation by a French author was evident. Wahl was one of the first French intellectuals to accomplish this task. He was responsible for presenting Kierkegaard to important personalities such as Jean-paul sartre and gabriel marcel, who later admitted that he read Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments and other works based on wahl’s advice in 1935.6 wahl became professor at the sorbonne in 1936, where he remained until the second world war, when he was interned in the drancy deportation camp. He managed to escape to the united states, where, with the support of the rockefeller Foundation, he established, together with Jacques maritain (1882–1973) and gustave Cohen (1879–1958), the École libre des Hautes Études in new York—a university for exiled French academics. the staff of the university included names such as the anthropologist Claude lévi-strauss (1908–2009) and the linguist roman Jakobson (1896–1982). wahl also held a position in mount Holyoke, an art school for women in south Hadley, massachusetts. due to the initiative of a French professor, Helle patch, wahl organized the “dècades de mount Holyoke” from 1942 to 1944 (also known as “pontigny-en-amèrique”), which consisted of important gatherings of exiled French artists and intellectuals eager to discuss american and english culture. after the war, wahl returned to France, where he founded the Collège philosophique in 1946, and the review Deucalion. He also took the position of director of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale in 1950 and became president gabriel marcel, “Kierkegaard en ma pensée,” in Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’Unesco à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, paris: gallimard 1966, p. 65.

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of the société française de philosophie. at that time he wrote poetry about his experience of captivity during the war; these poetic works were compiled in the book Poèmes de circonstance.7 From this time until his death on June 19, 1974 he intensively continued his work as researcher, but also as a teacher and author. He died at the age of 88 at the Faculty of philosophy at the sorbonne. II. Wahl on Hegel and Kierkegaard: le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel (1929) Le Malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel, published in 1929, can be classified as a metaphysical interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy. The book treats Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit and depicts the concept known as the “the unhappy consciousness.” throughout this work, wahl explores the possibility of an existential Hegel. He emphasizes the notion of the individual subject in the context of Hegel’s dialectic, and ascribes to the unhappy consciousness the central role of being the motor of the entire system. the relevance of Kierkegaard here is critical because of his notion of the single individual, which wahl introduces as a key notion in his interpretation of the Hegelian dialectic. within Hegel’s philosophy, the analysis of the unhappy consciousness is located in the “self-Consciousness” chapter, where subjective consciousness is developed on its way to objective consciousness. the unhappy consciousness is a result of the master–slave dialectic, and it incorporates the previous stages in the development. the unhappy consciousness, which follows Hegel’s analysis of stoicism and ancient skepticism, is a milestone for wahl’s interpretation of Hegel’s system, in which categories such as Christianity, romanticism, and the individual are relevant. the most precise and particular characterization of the unhappy consciousness is found here: “only romanticism will be able to allow us to revive Christianity in its essence—where the unhappy consciousness presents itself in its essential form—not only because of romanticism’s desire to revive the past…but also and especially because of its relationship with the past itself.”8 one must say that “man is essentially separated from god, and thus essentially unhappy…and at the same time he is essentially united with Him, and thus essentially happy.”9 the unhappy consciousness is characterized along these lines throughout Hegel’s system, for instance, in Judaism, as a sublation of the master–slave dialectic.10 it is also depicted as the relationship of subject–object, and specifically in the form it takes in a religion such as Judaism, where god is represented as the highest form of separation. From another standpoint, Hegel’s figure of Jesus and Christianity annihilates the relation between master and slave. Christianity favors man’s autonomy, generating a happy consciousness: “If the Jew is the first personification Jean wahl, Poèmes de circonstance (1939–1941), Lyon: Confluences 1944. (English translation: Voices in the Dark: Fifteen Poems of the Prison and the Camp, trans. by Charles guenter, Kirkwood, missouri: the printery 1974.) 8 wahl, Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel, p. 15. 9 ibid., p. 19. 10 ibid., p. 24. 7

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of the unhappy consciousness, then at the very moment that Jesus personifies the happy consciousness, he is also the unhappy consciousness. nothing could be more in agreement with Hegelianism than this idea.”11 with this aim, wahl goes on to describe the unhappy consciousness in terms of diverse stages of Hegel’s thought such as the latter’s analysis of the Church, the middle ages, and also Hegel’s relationship with other philosophers such as Fichte or Jacobi. even if Kierkegaard is not broadly mentioned in this text, he is present implicitly in the use of the concept of the individual subject, which is developed in order to depict Hegel’s system. later, wahl criticizes Hegel in the section “the struggle against romanticism and Hegelianism” in Études kierkegaardiennes. this characterization is very helpful if one wishes to see how romantic and Hegelian views are related to Kierkegaard. wahl describes the unhappy consciousness precisely and connects it to the main figures that influenced Hegel, such as Schleiermacher, Fichte, Schelling, and well-known movements such as rational and pietistic protestantism, Hellenism, the enlightenment, and Kantianism. in the context of this inquiry about existence and being, wahl pursues arguments concerning existence that also lead him to descartes’ ontological argument. the Cartesian ergo in the sentence Cogito ergo sum, is considered as the point of departure of an existence inexorably attached to thought. wahl considered the “distinctness and clearness of the ideas”12 in a way that thought is related to existence by means of simple natures or, in other words, of essences. in order to establish the importance of existence, wahl also mentions Kant, particularly his answer to the ontological argument: existence cannot be derived from essence. He writes, “according to Kant there is no such hierarchy of beings; everything that exists, exists with the same right, and the existence of god is even less certain than the existence of the other beings.”13 in this way of thinking, existence is no longer defined as a predicate (as in the philosophies of Descartes or Plato), but instead it is regarded as an indefinable verb. III. Wahl on Kierkegaard: Études kierkegaardiennes (1938) before Jean wahl’s work Études kierkegaardiennes very few people knew much about Kierkegaard in France. but after it, everybody did. before 1938, Kierkegaard was known, apart from in scandinavia, only in some circles of german thought, but he was certainly not recognized as an important figure in the rest of Europe at that time. the need to study Kierkegaard arose in France due to the recent interest in authors such as Husserl and Heidegger, who were then in vogue. adorno describes the importance of this work in his review from 1939: Kierkegaard’s influence began only indirectly when Scheler and the German phenomenological school made itself felt in France. Heidegger, however, who became known in France in connection with the latter school, may safely be regarded as a pupil ibid., p. 36. Jean wahl, “Histoire de l’argumentation philosophique,” in Symposium sobre la argumentación filosófica, p. 11. 13 Jean wahl, The Philosopher’s Way, new York: oxford university press 1948, p. 32. 11

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Alejandro Cavallazzi Sánchez and Azucena Palavicini Sánchez of Kierkegaard as well as of Husserl. the group of French philosophers around the Recherches Philosophiques, following pretty much the line of Jaspers and Heidegger, has to face the necessity of going back to the sources of the existential fashion now current in germany. wahl’s book serves this purpose. it is most carefully documented and displays a striking knowledge not only of Kierkegaard’s works but also of the extensive literature about him. it aims more at a description of his life and philosophical intentions than at a discussion beyond the limits of as exact as possible a motivation of his thoughts. in wahl’s own terms, he prefers “interpretations to explanations.”14

suddenly, the rest of the european continent was eager to know about this thinker. However, there were no studies on him and very few translations in languages other than german. samuel moyn explains the importance of wahl’s work as follows: Two figures, however, thanks to their book-length studies on the subject, were absolutely beyond question the most significant in the dissemination and popularization of Kierkegaard in intellectual circles. There was first of all the émigré Russian-Jewish thinker lev shestov (in paris, “leon Chestov”), who contributed not just individually but through his leadership of a coterie of loyal disciples. and, against the background established by all of the more minor figures, there towered the philosopher Jean Wahl (also of Jewish origin). His various “Kierkegaardian studies”—the phrase he used as the title of his 1938 collection of writings from the period—were not only most important in the Kierkegaard enthusiasm in France generally but, more directly for these purposes, they were critical for levinas’ philosophical development in particular.15

Études kierkegaardiennes is a book of more than 600 pages, dedicated to Kierkegaard. at the same time, it treats the topics of the most interest to wahl’s contemporaries, including those related to the period’s phenomenology and to Levinas and Heidegger. The first chapter, the title of which could be translated as “outline of a life and a portrait,” is a sketch of Kierkegaard’s biography. it contains a number of topics that would later be known among the existentialists: Kierkegaard’s unique personality, the regine olsen affair, and his religious conversion. For scholars nowadays these pages would fall short of the mark by today’s standards since there are now so many good biographies on Kierkegaard, but in wahl’s time this was a meaningful and significant introduction. Understandably, Wahl’s sources about Kierkegaard were mainly german, as were the ones upon which he based his translations. we can estimate the degree of wahl’s interest in different Kierkegaardian topics by considering the length of the individual chapters. For instance, his second chapter “the pseudonym and the spheres of existence” is quite short in comparison to studies today. it seems that the complexity of the pseudonymity problem was not very well appreciated at the time. wahl remarks that Kierkegaard’s use of pseudonymity was an interesting and important aspect of his writing but fails to develop the issue any further. most of the chapter is dedicated to Either/Or, which is natural due to the theodor w. adorno, “Études kierkegaardiennes. Jean wahl. paris: Fernand aubier. 1938. 745 pp.,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 36, no. 1, 1939, pp. 18–19. 15 samuel moyn, “transcendence, morality, and History: emmanuel levinas and the discovery of søren Kierkegaard in France,” Yale French Studies, no. 104, 2004, p. 28. 14

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number of pseudonyms found in that work. However, a twenty-first-century reader would find lacking a more detailed study of the rest of the pseudonymous works. wahl’s main interests are shown in the next three chapters, which constitute the core of the book. these chapters are “the struggle against romanticism,” “the struggle against Hegel,” and “the struggle against all philosophy.” wahl presents a belligerent Kierkegaard, a kind of anti-philosopher, whom he sometimes compares to Pascal, an anti-rationalist who defines the limits of knowledge and the starting point of faith. For Wahl, Kierkegaard identifies Romanticism with the aesthetic sphere; he mentions romantic irony as an extrapolation of Hellenic irony but which is unable to return to the seriousness of Greek thought. From Romantic irony the figures of Faust and don Juan were born. wahl uses Kierkegaard’s critique of the erotic stages to attack romanticism as well as to link its content to the historical. this is a fruitful way of introducing the danish author to philosophers. wahl uses the Kierkegaardian concepts of despair, ethics, and humor as a way of surpassing the aesthetic and the ethical stages, or as a reflection on the consciousness of faith. The central goal of wahl’s work was to show that Kierkegaard was an anti-Hegelian. during wahl’s time philosophers were interested in elaborating a critique of rationalist philosophy, and Kierkegaard served this purpose. wahl continually notes Kierkegaard’s idea of the impossibility of a system. with regard to the problem of the beginning of philosophy, he writes: “the question about the beginning is, according to Kierkegaard, the achilles heel of Hegelian philosophy. if one makes even a single concession to speculation about the beginning, everything is lost. an absolute beginning is a chimera.”16 after this, wahl points out the well-known idea of an opposition between Hegelian truth as objectivity and Kierkegaardian truth as subjectivity. in fact, for wahl, this discussion serves as a showcase for the gnoseological problem of western philosophy as a whole. For wahl, Hegelianism means the implosion of philosophy itself since it is the death of passion.17 Human life and individuality are reduced to a system. wahl’s reading of Hegel was typical of the early twentieth century, and it made possible the work of authors such as Kojève and Hyppolite, who were his disciples. nowadays the idea of Kierkegaard and Hegel being antagonists is common. this was in large part due to wahl. it must be remembered that in those times, with the exception of germany and scandinavia, people in europe had no idea of the Kierkegaard–Hegel relation at all. The refining of the picture of the relation of Kierkegaard and Hegel that took place later in the century was only possible thanks to wahl’s pioneering work. although wahl remarks on Kierkegaard’s and Hegel’s differences, he also points out similarities, especially in concepts such as the stages, repetition, dialectics, subjectivity, and paradox. wahl mentions that Kierkegaard and Hegel found common ground against the same enemies: romantic aestheticism and the shallow intellectualism of their times. also with regard to ethics, Hegel critiques Kantian morality, favoring instead a metaphysical and historical conception of the world. Kierkegaard criticizes the same thing, but he uses the idea of religious sacrifice. In 16 17

wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, p. 117. ibid., p. 120.

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this context wahl mentions that the Kierkegaardian division into three stages is the result of Hegel’s influence. Wahl also compares the idea of repetition as reaffirmation with the Hegelian notion of Aufhebung or mediation. possibly, one of wahl’s most developed ideas was that of the dialectic. He was very interested in the existential dialectic as a new way of understanding the human condition. the link between Hegel and Kierkegaard on this topic is quite clear since Kierkegaard maintains the notion of negation. the difference is found on a spiritual level where the individual can only realize his own self in religious categories (before god). the notions of sin and faith are essential for this. This leads to a final criticism. In Chapter V, “The Fight against all philosophy,” wahl presents Kierkegaard as a revolutionary who struggled against the entire intellectual trend of his time. Kierkegaard condemns all mundane sagacity: philosophy and especially Christian philosophy. this is a contradictio in terminis since faith and reason are two different worlds. Christianity stands in opposition to reason; it is polemical and scandalous. the more denmark’s theologians tried to prove Christianity, the more they denied it, in Kierkegaard’s view. Two of Kierkegaard’s most influential works for later existentialism are discussed in the next chapters: Fear and Trembling and The Concept of Anxiety. wahl’s analyses of these works served as introductions to Kierkegaard’s thought by presenting the key issues to the broad intellectual public in France. perhaps the affinity of these subjects to the nihilistic and atheist scholars of the time was the factor that made Kierkegaard into a central influence for them. However, an atheist reading of Kierkegaard cannot be blamed on wahl since he understands well the religious implications of the works. the next chapters are detailed studies on certain Kierkegaardian topics; for instance, in Chapter viii, “the theory of existence,” wahl explains this subject with reference to choice, passion, becoming, uncertainty, subjective thought, and indirect communication. in this text wahl discusses not only the concept of existence but also asks if it is even possible to teach such a concept. the goal is to answer the question: how do i become myself? in the next chapter, “the theory of belief,” the same method is applied: what is it to believe? and how can belief be achieved? Here he explains the concept of contemporaneity and the paradox between doubt and faith. this problem is also presented in the following chapter, “existence and paradox.” Here wahl’s religious concerns are fully revealed when, for example, he deals with problems such as Christ as the god-man. Christian faith is presented as purely paradoxical, as a contradiction that is able to resolve the human condition. For someone interested in seeing the associations that wahl made with Kierkegaard and other authors, Chapter xiv is crucial. this chapter explores Kierkegaard’s relationship vis-à-vis other authors such as luther, pascal, Jacobi, Herder, Hamann, Fichte, schleiermacher, grundtvig, poul martin møller, origen, tertullian, and even James and nietzsche. Kierkegaard’s relation to these last two authors is something that wahl develops in several texts since he finds an important affinity among them: Kierkegaard is, with nietzsche, the master of the existential dialectic; with him, he teaches us the art of the contraries in life; and if spirit is not always or even primarily a synthesis but a struggle between contraries maintained in their purity, and at the same

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time it is an effort to think about what transcends them and resides above them, if spirit is conceived as the monologue in front of the reality which excites it, attracts it and never responds to it, then Kierkegaard’s thought is one of those in which spirit’s character is best manifested.18

wahl added some extracts from the journals, something that had not yet been done so extensively in the French language; he translated passages from the german edition of Hermann ulrich.19 these texts were helpful to wahl as he completed the ideas of the preceding chapters, and they presented material that was entirely new to the French reading public. with regard to its historical relevance, Études kierkegaardiennes was one of the most important works on Kierkegaard of the century; it opened the door to a study of Kierkegaard in France, and this proved crucial for the development of existentialism, phenomenology, personalism, and hermeneutics. IV. Wahl on Types of Existentialism: “Heidegger and Kierkegaard” (1932) wahl grounds “existence” upon a different philosophical basis than the traditional philosophies of such as plato, descartes, or Hegel. this way of proceeding can be called “the philosophy of existence.” wahl is reluctant to use the term “existentialism”; instead, he employs the expression “philosophies of existence,” although he is aware that Kierkegaard would not agree with him. the philosophy of existence is characterized by wahl as “a union of metaphysical empiricism and the feeling of disquiet.”20 wahl develops his so-called philosophy of existence taking Kierkegaard’s thought as his point of departure. wahl is aware of the dialogue between Kierkegaard’s thought and the entire philosophical tradition, mainly represented by the Hegelian and Cartesian trends. wahl’s research led him to the fundamental task of defining Kierkegaard’s thought due to its significance for the philosophies of existence. He contrasts the philosophy of existence with all previous philosophy. Wahl’s major task, through all his academic life, was to define the philosophy of existence. thus, taking Angst as the point of departure for Heidegger’s philosophy, wahl proposes that the entire Heideggerian way of thinking can be interpreted as a secularization of Kierkegaard. He argues for this in a 1932 article in Recherches philosophiques entitled “Heidegger et Kierkegaard.”21 wahl explains Kierkegaard’s continuity with Heidegger’s thought with the exception of the concept of religiosity.22 ibid., p. 452. Sören Kierkegaard, vols. 1–2, ed. and trans. by Hermann ulrich, berlin: Hochweg verlag 1925–30, vol. 2 (Die Tagebücher 1832–1839). 20 Jean wahl, Les Philosophies de l’existence, paris: armand Colin 1954, p. 13. 21 Jean wahl, “Heidegger et Kierkegaard. recherche des éléments originaux de la philosophie de Heidegger,” Recherches philosophiques, vol. 2, 1932–33, pp. 349–70. 22 this position could be found also in Knud ejler løgstrup, Kierkegaards und Heideggers Existenzanalyse und ihr Verhältnis zur Verkundigung, berlin: blaschker 1951; and michael wyschorgrod, Kierkegaard and Heidegger: The Ontology of Existence, new York: Humanities press 1964. 18 19

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in the 1964 colloquium Kierkegaard vivant organized by the unesCo, wahl notes that Heidegger’s reception of Kierkegaard is difficult to demonstrate due to the lack of references made by Heidegger to the danish author.23 in fact, wahl mentions that there were only two brief occasions where Heidegger mentioned Kierkegaard’s work in Being and Time. this is shocking considering the relevance of Kierkegaard’s work in Heidegger. in fact, Heidegger was invited to participate in the same colloquium. However, he did not attend and but sent one of his fellow students Jean beaufret (1907–82) to read one of his papers that did not mention Kierkegaard at all. wahl’s interpretation of Heidegger, focusing especially on its link with Kierkegaard, could also be used to build a bridge between Hegel and Heidegger. with Kierkegaard as intermediary, wahl managed to reconcile the gap between Heideggerian philosophy, which was mainly based on the idea of a world constructed by a subject, and Hegel’s proposal, which was viewed at that time as a metaphysical construction of the world by absolute reason. wahl constructs a phenomenological ontology from the Cartesian ego, linking this with Kierkegaard’s individual subject and also with emmanuel levinas’ idea of subjectivity. in later works, such as The Philosopher’s Way (which was originally written in english) wahl presents Kierkegaard’s thought as a milestone in western philosophy.24 there he is hailed as a key thinker for understanding the relationship among the modern and the contemporary traditions. V. Wahl on Contemporary Existentialism and Kierkegaard: petite histoire de l’existentialisme (1947) in his Petite histoire de l’ existentialisme (1947) wahl’s goal is simply to explain the development of existentialism. this somewhat introductory text, originally taken from a conference, explains many of the central postulates of existentialism. it gives a brief account of Kierkegaard’s relation to Heidegger as well as the following thinkers: nicholas berdyaev, georges gurvitch (1894–1965), alexandre Koyré, maurice de gandillac (1906–2006), gabriel marcel, and emmanuel levinas. at the end of this discussion there is an appendix in which a series of reflections and dialogues are presented between Jean wahl and max brod (1884–1968) on the relation between Kafka and Kierkegaard. in this text, Kierkegaard’s presence is inevitable. wahl argues, “the word ‘existence’ in the philosophical sense that it is used today was employed for the first time and discovered by Kierkegaard.”25 wahl presents the main thesis and sketches the propositions and boundaries of existentialism; he mentions that this kind of philosophical trend is presented as impossible to define because it is opposed to the traditional way of doing philosophy. then wahl shows how existentialism can be seen as a reaction to idealist philosophies such as those of plato, Hegel, or spinoza, Jean wahl, [no title], in Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’Unesco à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, paris: gallimard 1966, p. 206. 24 see wahl, The Philosopher’s Way. 25 Jean wahl, Petite histoire de “l’existentialisme”: suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard commentaires, paris: limoges 1947, p. 12. 23

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and designates Hegelian thought as the most radical of these. Hegelianism states that no human fact makes sense on its own until it is directed towards the absolute idea to which everything is connected. the philosophies of existence were born in this context, as a reaction against the totality and the anonymity of the individual subject. Kierkegaard is considered by wahl as the precursor of philosophers such as Heidegger, Jaspers and marcel who developed some of same questions as Kierkegaard but in different ways: for example, the idea of the single individual as expressed in the categories of subjectivity and life. in addition, the work shows the failure of Hegelian reason: “we will never get to that absolute stated by Hegel, which he claims to reach by the development of the idea and only at the end of the development of the idea.”26 this might be taken as the starting point of the philosophy of existence, not only due to its criticism of the tradition but also due to its claims about the limits of reason in contrast to praxis and action. Hegel’s role as a thinker is criticized by the philosophies of existence, and his concept of the absolute was critically taken up by the later existentialist authors. Jean wahl explains: The Absolute is something hidden that reveals itself in fleeting fragments, in scattered explosions, by kinds of intermittent lighting….thus, we are continually exposed to a kind of shipwreck; our thought is wrecked, and in this very failure our thought realizes itself, because it is conscious of the background of being where everything becomes scattered.27

the ideas of failure, dispersion and discontinuity are the terms in which wahl analyzes Kierkegaard and his followers as part of these philosophies of existence. Finally, in the last part of the text, wahl refers to his French contemporaries such as sartre and marcel. He presents many examples from them in order to apply his general theses on existentialism. afterwards, wahl presents commentaries and objections by many authors, including nicholas berdyaev who characterizes Kierkegaard’s philosophy as an expression of his own existence.28 another opinion on Kierkegaard’s thought was that of gurvitch. He thinks that the term “existence,” which was originally presented by Kierkegaard and then made the foundation of the philosophies of existence, has, since its very beginning, been reduced and impoverished due to Kierkegaard’s emphasis on religion and individuals.29 Finally, levinas’ opinion was that Kierkegaardian thought had become known in the philosophical world due to Heidegger.30 at the end of the text, there is an appendix in which wahl discusses brod’s interpretation of the Kafka–Kierkegaard relation. despite the brevity and disorder of wahl’s analysis, the text is full of important observations, such as the one made on Fear and Trembling

26 27 28 29 30

ibid., p. 25. ibid., pp. 25–6. ibid., p. 65. ibid., p. 70. ibid., p. 83.

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where the figure of Abraham is analyzed. There Wahl suggests the complexity of Kierkegaard’s concept of indirect communication.31 VI. Wahl on Jaspers and Kierkegaard: la pensée de l’existence (1951) this work is an exposition of the concept of existence in the philosophy of Jaspers in relation with Kierkegaard.32 wahl thought that Jaspers adopted the terms “essence” and “existence” from Kierkegaard. For wahl, Jaspers’ thought improves upon that of Kierkegaard because it adds the concept of the other to the existing individual. wahl begins the book by studying the concept of existence by contrasting Kierkegaard to other philosophies, as was done in The Philosopher’s Way. with Jaspers, wahl inserts the notion of historicity in Kierkegaard’s concrete individual; its external determinations are linked to its context. wahl presents the problem of the paradox in Kierkegaard: the transcendent being is something that can only be understood in terms of contradictions. society appears, within the context mentioned above, as something symbolic. it is an opportunity for the individual to be authentic, but society on its own does not guarantee anything; society itself does not provide anything decisive for the individual. For example, religion, art, or philosophy are only means by which individuals achieve transcendence, but these manifestations can work against the individual also, as is shown in the aesthetic or ethical stages. this is where wahl criticizes Jaspers—if the truth is only found in subjectivity, how could society work at all? How do individuals truly communicate? the initial thesis of the work (to show Jaspers’ thought as continuous with Kierkegaard’s) seems to fail at this point, because even if initially (around the 1930s) Jaspers took concepts from Kierkegaard, in his later philosophy he seems to develop a philosophy that is just the opposite of Kierkegaard’s. Jaspers even opposes the new existentialist movement and tries to bring back the importance of tradition. the work provides more questions than answers to the topics presented. are Kierkegaard and Jaspers similar or different? despite wahl’s unfortunate attempt to compare and contrast the thought of Kierkegaard and Jaspers, it is worth mentioning that this is another proof of the interest in explaining, disseminating, and secularizing Kierkegaard’s thought. VII. Wahl on Western Philosophy and Kierkegaard: the philosopher’s way (1948) this work was conceived as a manual and is an introduction to philosophy by subject. it is thus a survey of the history of philosophy by its main topics such as substance, being, causality, freedom, the soul, god, and dialectics. each category functions as a chapter; in each one wahl reviews past authors from the ancient greeks to contemporary philosophers. although it is an introductory text to philosophy’s main problems, the book also reveals wahl’s perspective on Kierkegaard. in fact, many of the chapters end 31 32

ibid., pp. 99ff. Jean wahl, La pensée de l’existence, paris: Flammarion 1951.

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with Kierkegaard’s opinion, suggesting that his philosophy is the most significant. For example, in Chapter 3, “being, existence, reality,” wahl portrays the common metaphysical view of existence and the critique of existentialism on this topic. it presents the classic view of the term “existence” in the early twentieth century, a notion made popular by sartre and French philosophy: existence precedes essence. wahl links Kierkegaard to the existentialism of the time, especially matching Kierkegaard’s notions with Heidegger, marcel, sartre, and levinas. the usual distinctions are made on the problem of theistic or atheistic existentialism, and wahl manages to include nietzsche in the discussion: “we might even say that Heidegger moves in the world of nietzsche with the feelings of Kierkegaard and in the world of Kierkegaard with the feelings of nietzsche.”33 Throughout the text we find Wahl’s detailed knowledge of Kierkegaard on subjects that he developed earlier in Études kierkegaardiennes, such as religiosity, sin, dread, possibility, and existence. if someone wanted to know about wahl’s reception of Kierkegaard, the best place to start is definitely the Études, but the novelty of The Philosopher’s Way is that we are able to see wahl’s comparison of Kierkegaard’s thought together with the entire history of philosophy. due to its historical perspective, The Philosopher’s Way is full of comparisons between Kierkegaard and authors who are not usually associated with him. in the fourth chapter about the concept of “becoming,” wahl links this notion to Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition, which is presented as “isolating and eternalizing in a certain manner some moments of the becoming.”34 this happens again in the next chapter, where wahl links “Quantity and Quality” to the moment. in Chapter 8, “Freedom,” wahl mentions that Kierkegaard is the starting point for the philosophy to come; he mentions the concept of sin as an important notion for understanding choice and possibilities. He goes further and mentions that nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and even ibsen have the same thought on freedom: the free act is when we assume responsibility of our own action and its consequences, as an expression of our most real and profound self. in the next chapter, “theory of Knowledge,” after giving an extensive account of different philosophies, wahl presents the Kierkegaardian theory of subjective truth as a new way of thinking from traditional gnoseology. wahl points out that Kierkegaard transcends the idea that truth is found only in the intellect, and instead claims that the deepest truth is found in a person’s inner being. This is also the idea of authenticity as fidelity to one’s own self. in Chapter 10, “mediacy and immediacy,” wahl links Kierkegaard to bergson and James as thinkers who fought against rationalist philosophy. He shows the concept of contemporaneity as the way of being immediate with the god-man. two chapters later, in “things, living beings and persons,” wahl again compares Kierkegaard and James as two kinds of supernaturalist Romanticists who are not satisfied with the traditional conception of nature and who are not able to explain miracles or human interiority. in Chapter 14, “negative ideas,” wahl says that no other philosopher has pointed out the difference between ancient and modern thought as clearly as Kierkegaard has on the concept of evil. in the chapter dedicated to “god” wahl mentions again the difference between atheist and theist existentialism. this time he 33 34

wahl, The Philosopher’s Way, p. 43. ibid., p. 65.

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compares Kierkegaard’s work to Pascal’s as a kind of fideism, and finally, in Chapter 19, “dialectics,” wahl points out that the Kierkegaardian existential dialectic is actually a sublation itself of the Hegelian system, an idea that is found in several works. there and in the conclusion wahl notes the idea of Kierkegaard as a critic of Hegel—a thought that was very important for him and his contemporaries because it shows the failure of modern philosophy. this was one of the most important goals of the existentialism of the early twentieth century: to oppose the classical philosophy that they viewed as rationalist and vague. wahl suggests that many solutions to the main philosophical problems are found in Kierkegaard. the same texts used in The Philosopher’s Way can be found in a later work, Traité de Métaphysique (1953),35 which was much more ambitious and attempted to give an account of the concepts used before but in a much more systematic way. although this work is much more extensive, its topics and arguments are quite similar, and Kierkegaard appears in the same places as in the former text. the task of contrasting Kierkegaard’s philosophy with all the philosophical traditions has resulted in a very rich and profound work. VIII. The Philosophies of Existence and Conclusions: les philosophies de l’existence (1954) Jean wahl published Les philosophies de l’existence in 1954. in this work, he returns to the analysis of existence. wahl argues that the philosophy of existence has existed for many centuries. Socrates could be considered the first philosopher of existence. However, “it is a fact that only in the nineteenth century did the philosophies that were called ‘philosophies of existence’ assert themselves.”36 wahl researches the essence, origins, history, and main exponents of this kind of thought. in this investigation wahl presents his view of Kierkegaard as the origin of the so-called “philosophies of existence,” and he mentions the importance of his thinking for its anticipation of phenomenology and vitalism. wahl also considers Kierkegaard’s work as a reflection of his life, for instance, based upon certain events of his biography, mainly the affair with regine olsen. wahl presents an interpretation of many categories in Kierkegaard’s thought: for example, indirect communication was developed by Kierkegaard, according to Wahl, due to his difficulty in communicating with his former fiancée.37 wahl opposes Kierkegaard to Hegel and to every speculative philosophy that represents the traditional way of studying being. the study of essences, ideas, and stable modes of being leads to the search for a universal mode of movement within ideas. Kierkegaard is a reaction against the classic philosophical proposals such as those of plato, descartes, and especially Hegel. the point of departure of philosophies of existence is Kant’s response to st. anselm’s ontological argument: “Kant has insisted on the fact that existence can 35 36 37

Jean wahl, Traité de métaphysique, paris: payot 1953. wahl, Les Philosophies de l’existence, p. 5. ibid., p. 8.

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never be derived from essence.”38 philosophies of existence maintain that human beings do not exist based upon any essence; human existence is not determined by anything pre-established. on the contrary, philosophers of existence consider that “the essence of man is to exist.”39 this thought denies ideas and essences as providing forms of human guidance. in contrast to traditional philosophy, the philosophy of existence has a continual concern with communication and expression of the subjective human aspects of life as a counterpart of speculative thinking. the subjective human aspect of knowledge concerns possibility, ambiguity, and disintegration; these are phenomena which are impossible to capture in a philosophical system. taking this into consideration, wahl presents Kierkegaard and the philosophies of existence as developing from these subjective categories such as alterity, existence, ambiguity, facticity, repetition, angst, authenticity, finitude, offense, choice, the moment, subjectivity, communication, despair, sin, and trembling. However, it is clear that the main category for the subjective philosophies considered by wahl is existence. all these categories are analyzed by wahl from the standpoint of Kierkegaard: “the existing person is the one whom Kierkegaard calls ‘the single individual’ or ‘the subjective thinker.’ He is always in relation to himself and has an infinite concern for himself.”40 wahl is aware of Kierkegaard’s anthropology and how in his thought existence is identified with the individual subject. In some way, existence is a sort of anthropomorphization of the being whose transcendence is given by its source. the multiple characterizations of existence take place as long as they pertain to human beings. Existence “cannot be defined, it cannot be objectively known.”41 Wahl considers this definition of existence as taken from the dialogue between Kierkegaard and the Hegelian tradition, but it reflects not only the key role of the human realm shown by Kierkegaard but also the impossibility of the constant requirements of Hegel’s system in its desire for definition, stability, and objectivity. “all existence is separation.”42 existence is considered to be the reality of the human condition: unstable, indefinable, and lonely. In some specific authors: this existence is related to the transcendent; this is the case with marcel. by contrast, this condition is different in other authors; that is, in the case of sartre or Heidegger, existence only relates to itself or, at most, to nothingness or to death. despite these differences, the main source for the philosophies of existence is Kierkegaard and especially his category of the subject; this is true not only from a theoretical standpoint but also from the experiences of Kierkegaard’s own life. wahl perceives Kierkegaard not only as the father of existentialism but also as the first author to conceive the idea of life beyond thought and outside a system, the one person who did not identify being with a mere concept. this approach gives birth to a new kind of philosophical investigation directed towards new categories— dispersion, unsteadiness, possibility, and life—within a discourse that is not considered philosophical as such. the philosophies of existence are a reaction to 38 39 40 41 42

ibid., pp. 13–14. ibid., pp. 21–2. ibid., p. 44. ibid. ibid., p. 51.

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the systematic approaches. their intention is to show, present or display but never to demonstrate, as in a scientific point of view, the immensity of the human condition and being. wahl’s theory of the philosophy of existence and especially of Kierkegaard’s thought constitutes one of the most influential Kierkegaard interpretations in France. He is an obligatory reference for scholars who wish to understand Kierkegaard, French philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, and even postmodern thought. wahl made the appropriation of Kierkegaard in France possible, and wahl’s works presented his philosophy to later important figures such as Hyppolite, Kojève, Bataille, Derrida or Žižek. wahl’s investigations of Kierkegaard’s thought led him to a unique and original interpretation of this author and his categories. wahl’s interest was to juxtapose the traditional philosophy to Kierkegaard and the philosophies of existence. He was, if not the first, one of the pioneering French philosophers who presented Kierkegaard to the French public and to the rest of the non-germanic world. even today, many of his insights are helpful to contemporary discussions due to their richness, depth, originality, and precision.

bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Wahl’s Corpus Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel, paris: rieder 1929. “le mysticisme de Kierkegaard,” Hermès, no. 1, 1930, pp. 16–23. “review of Kierkegaard’s Le journal du séducteur” in La Nouvelle Revue Française, vol. 35, no. 204, 1930, pp. 424–6. “Hegel et Kierkegaard,” Revue philosophique, vol. 56, nos. 11–12, 1931, pp. 321– 80. “Kierkegaard: l’angoisse et l’instant,” La Nouvelle Revue Française, vol. 20, no. 223, 1932, pp. 634–55. “Heidegger et Kierkegaard recherche des éléments originaux de la philosophie de Heidegger,” Recherches philosophiques, vol. 2, 1932–33, pp. 349–70. “sur quelques catégories kierkegaardiennes: l’existence, l’individu isolé, la pensée subjective,” Recherches philosophiques, vol. 3, 1933–34, pp. 171–202. “Hegel et Kierkegaard,” Verhandlungen des dritten Hegelkongresses vom 19. bis 23. April 1933 in Rom, ed. by b. wigersma, tübingen: J.C.b. mohr 1934, pp. 235– 49. “la théorie de la croyance chez Kierkegaard,” Foi et Vie, vol. 35, no. 64, 1934, pp. 639–60. “le problème du choix, l’existence et la transcendance dans la philosophie de Jaspers,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 41, no. 3, 1934, pp. 510–52. “søren Kierkegaard: le paradoxe,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, vol. 24, no. 2, 1935, pp. 218–31. “subjectivité et transcendance,” Bulletin de la Societé française de philosophie, vol. 37, no. 5, 1937, pp. 161–93. Études kierkegaardiennes, paris: aubier 1938. “Cheminements et carrefours par rachel bespaloff,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, vol. 129, nos. 1–2, 1940, pp. 86–104. Existence humane et transcendance, paris: la baconnière 1944. “realism, dialectic and the transcendent,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 4, no. 4, 1944, pp. 496–506. “existentialism: a preface,” New Republic, vol. 113, 1945, pp. 442–4. “Freedom and existence in some recent philosophies,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 7, no. 1, 1946, pp. 538–56. “Kierkegaard and Kafka,” in The Kafka Problem, ed. by angel Flores, new York: new directions 1946, pp. 277–91. Petite histoire de “l’existentialisme”: suivie de Kafka et Kierkegaard commentaires, paris: limoges 1947.

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“Some Brief Reflections about the Definition of Metaphysics in the Congress on the philosophy of science,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol 8, no. 4, 1948, pp. 712–13. The Philosopher’s Way, new York: oxford university press 1948, p. 7; p. 11; p. 13; p. 32; pp. 40–1; pp. 42–8 passim, pp. 50–1; p. 54; pp. 63–5 passim; pp. 92–3; p. 131; p. 134; p. 178; pp. 192–3; pp. 196–7; p. 199; p. 201; p. 216; p. 226; p. 229; p. 231; p. 244; pp. 282–4; pp. 292ff.; p. 308; pp. 315–18 passim; p. 322. “Kierkegaard. Son influence en France,” Revue Danois. Commerciale, sociale, culturelle, no. 1, 1951, pp. 220–4. (reprinted in his Kierkegaard: l’Un devant l’Autre, paris: Hachette littératures 1998, pp. 34–6.) La pensée de l’existence, paris: Flammarion 1951 (Bibliotèque de philosophie scientifique). L’Expérience métaphysique, paris: Flammarion 1951, pp. 170–7. Traité de métaphysique, paris: payot 1953, p. 14; p. 24; pp. 47–8; p. 90; pp. 115–16; p. 125; p. 133; p. 145; p. 157; p. 288, note; p. 297; p. 301; p. 307; p. 369; p. 371; p. 373; p. 389; p. 429; p. 457; pp. 461–2; p. 474; p. 476; p. 482; p. 504; p. 508; pp. 539–40; p. 544; pp. 550–7 passim; p. 584; pp. 601–3; pp. 614–20 passim; p. 640; p. 643; p. 665; p. 669; pp. 688–93 passim; p. 697; pp. 701–3; p. 709; pp. 711–12; p. 715. Les philosophies de l’existence, paris: armand Colin 1954. (english translation: Philosophies of Existence: An Introduction to the Basic Thought of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, Sartre, trans. by F.m. lory, london: routledge and Kegan paul 1969.) “Ce que nous devons a Kierkegaard,” Le Figaro littéraire, november 12, 1955 [interviews with Jean wahl and others]. “Kierkegaard et le romantisme,” in Vues sur Kierkegaard, ed. by georges Henein and magdi wahba, le Caire: la part du sable 1955, pp. 19–21 (also in Symposion Kierkegaardianum, Copenhagen: munksgaard 1955 (Orbis literarum, tome 10, no. 1–2), pp. 112–17). “ein beitrag zum thema Jaspers und Kierkegaard,” in Karl Jaspers, ed. by paul arthur schilpp, stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1957, pp. 430–5. “espoir et désespoir chez Kierkegaard,” Cahiers du Sud, 55, no. 371, 1963, pp. 28– 33. “Historie de l’argumentation philosophique,” in Symposium sobre la argumentación filosófica, ed. by Centro de estudios filosóficos, Mexico City: UNAM 1963, pp. 7–19. “Kierkegaard und das problem der zeit,” Schweizer Monatshefte, vol. 43, 1963–64, pp. 197–8. [untitled article] in Kierkegaard vivant. Colloque organisé par l’Unesco à Paris du 21 au 23 avril 1964, paris: gallimard 1966, pp. 205–12. La logique de Hegel comme phenomenologie, paris: Centre de documentation universitaire 1969. Kierkegaard: L’un devant l’autre, paris: Hachette littératures 1998.

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II. Sources of Wahl’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard adorno, theodor wiesengrund, Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des Ästhetischen, tübingen: mohr 1933. asmussen, eduard, Entwicklungsgang und Grundprobleme der Philosophie, Flensburg: laban & larsen 1911. baeumler alfred, “Hegel und Kierkegaard,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 2, no. 1, 1924, pp. 116–30. barth, Heinrich, “Kierkegaard der denker: vier vorlesungen,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 4, 1926, pp. 195–234. basch, victor, “un individualiste religieux. sören Kierkegaard,” La Grande Revue, august, 1903, pp. 281–320. bastide roger, “Kierkegaard et le christianisme social,” Revue de Christianisme social, vol. 49, no. 2, 1937, pp. 189–99. bauer, wilhem, Die Ethik Sören Kierkegaards, Kahla: beck 1912. bellessort, andré, Le Crépuscule d’Elseneur, paris: perrin 1926. bespaloff, rachel, “la répétition,” Revue Philosophique, may–June, 1934, pp. 335–63. — “Crainte et tremblement,” Revue Philosophique, no. 119, 1935, pp. 43–72. bohlin, torsten, Sören Kierkegaard und das religiöse Denken der Gegenwart. Eine Studie, munich: rösl 1923. — “luther, Kierkegaard und die dialektische theologie,” Die Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, no. 7, 1926, pp. 163–98. — Kierkegaards dogmatische Anschauung in ihrem geschichtlichen Zusammenhange, gütersloh: bertelsmann 1927. — Sören Kierkegaards Leben und Werden. Kurze Darstellung auf Grund der ersten Quellen, gütersloh: bertelsmann 1927. brandes, georg, Søren Kierkegaard. En kritisk Fremstilling i Grundrids, Copenhagen: gyldendal 1877. — Sören Kierkegaard. Ein literarisches Charakterbild, leipzig: barth 1879. — Kierkegaard und andere skandinavische Persönlichkeiten, dresden: reißner 1924. brunner, emil, “das grundproblem der philosophie bei Kant und Kierkegaard,” Zwischen den Zeiten, vol. 3, 1924, pp. 31–46. buber, martin, Die Frage and den Einzelnen, berlin: schocken 1936. Congar, Yves, “Kierkegaard et luther,” Foi et vie, august–september 1934, pp. 712–17. dallago, Carl, Der Christ Kierkegaards, innsbruck: brenner 1914. — Ueber eine Schrift: Sören Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit, innsbruck: brenner 1914. de rougemont, denis, “Formé et transformation ou l’acte selon Kierkegaard,” Hermes, January, 1936, pp. 83–92. — “Kierkegaard en France,” La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 273, 1936, pp. 971– 6. delacroix, Henri, “sören Kierkegaard,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, no. 1, 1900, pp. 451–84.

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deleuran, victor, Esquisse d’une etude sur Sören Kierkegaard, paris: university of paris 1897. dempf, alois, Kierkegaards Folgen, leipzig: Hegner 1935. diem, Hermann, “methode der Kierkegaard Forschung,” Zwischen den Zeiten, no. 6, 1928, pp. 140–71. — Philosophie und Christentum bei S. Kierkegaard, munich: Kaiser 1929. Fischer, Friedrich Karl, Die Nullpunkt-Existenz, dargestellt an der Lebensform Sörens Kierkegaards, munich: beck 1933. Fondane, benjamin, “Héraclite le pauvre, ou nécessité de Kierkegaard,” Cahiers du Sud, vol. 13, no. 177, 1935, pp. 757–70. — La concience malheureuse, paris: denoël et steele 1936. Fuglsang-damgaard, Hans, “pascal et Kierkegaard,” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuse, vol. 10, no. 3, 1930, pp. 242–63. geismar, eduard, “das ethische stadium bei sören Kierkegaard,” Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie, vol. 1, no. 2, 1923, pp. 227–300. — Sören Kierkegaard. Seine Lebensentwicklung und seine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller, göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht 1927. — “la personnalité de Kierkegaard,” Revue de métaphysique et morale, no. 2, 1933, pp. 137–59. gemmer, anders, Sören Kierkegaard und Karl Barth, stuttgart: strecker & schröder 1925. gilg, arnold, Sören Kierkegaard, munich: Kaiser 1926. guardini, romano, “der ausgangspunkt der denkbewegung sören Kierkegaards,” Hochland, vol. 24, 1927, pp. 12–33. Haecker, theodor, S. Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit, munich: schreiber 1913. — Christentum und Kultur, munich: Kösel & pustet 1927. — Der Begriff der Wahrheit bei Sören Kierkegaard, innsbruck: brenner 1932. Himmelstrup, Jens, Sören Kierkegaards Sokratesauffassung, neumünster: wachholtz 1927. Hirsch, emanuel, Kierkegaard-Studien, gütersloh: bertelsmann 1930. Høffding, Harald, “s. Kierkegaard,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 21, 1913, pp. 713–32. — Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph, stuttgart: verlag 1922. — “pascal et Kierkegaard,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vol. 30, no. 2, 1923, pp. 221–46. Hoffmann, raoul, Kierkegaard et la certitude religieuse, geneva: romet 1907. Jacob, günter, “der geistbegriff bei gogarten und Kierkegaard,” Christliche Welt, no. 68, 1929, pp. 68–73. Kierkegaard, sören, Der Einzelne und die Kirche: über Luther und Protestantismus, trans. by wilhelm Kütemeyer, berlin: woff 1934. Koch, Karl, Sören Kierkegaard, trans. by a. nicolet, paris: Je sers 1934. Künneth, walter, Die Lehre von der Sünde, dargestellt an dem Verhältnis der Lehre Sören Kierkegaards in ihrem Verhältnis zur Lehre der neuesten Theologie, gütersloh: bertelsmann 1927. lavelle, louis, “l’individu et l’absolu,” Le Temps, april, 1936, pp. 81–93.

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lombardi, Franco, Kierkegaard, Florence: sansoni 1937. löwith, Karl, Das Individuum in der Rolle des Mitmenschen, munich: drei masken verlag 1928. — Kierkegaard und Nietzsche oder philosophische und theologische Ueberwindung des Nihilismus, Frankfurt am main: Klostermann 1933. — “l’achèvement de la philosophie classique par Hegel et sa dissolution chez marx et Kierkegaard,” Recherches philosophiques, vol. 4, 1934–35, pp. 232–67. lowtzki, Fanny, “s. Kierkegaard: l’expérience subjective de la révélation religieuse,” Revue de psychanalyse, vol. 9, no. 2, 1936, pp. 204–315. meerpohl, bernhard, Die Verzweiflung als metaphysisches Phänomen und die Philosophie Sören Kierkegaards, würzburg: becker 1934. monrad, olaf peder, S. Kierkegaard. Sein Leben und seine Werke, Jena: diederichs 1909. nadler, Käte, Der dialektische Widerspruch in Hegels Philosophie und das Paradoxon des Christentums, leipzig: meiner 1931. niedermeyer, gerhard, Sören Kierkegaard und die Romantik, leipzig: Quelle & meyer 1909. — “Ostern bis Pfingsten 1848, die Wende in der religiösen Krise Sören Kierkegaards, zugleich seine erste und entscheidende berührung mit luther,” Luther. Vierteljahrsschrift der Luther-Gesellschaft, vols. 1–2, 1927, pp. 42–53. nielsen, Christian, Der Standpunkt Kierkegaards innerhalb der Religionpsychologie, borna and leipzig: noske 1911. preiss, th., “a propos de Kierkegaard,” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuse, no. 1, 1936, pp. 46–64. przywara, erich, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, munich: oldenbourg 1929. reuter, Hans, S. Kierkegaards religionsphilosophische Gedanken im Verhältnis zu Hegels religionsphilosophischem System, leipzig: Quelle & meyer 1914. richter, liselotte, Der Begriff der Subjektivität bei Kierkegaard, würzburg: triltsch 1934. rodemann, wilhelm, Hamann und Kierkegaard, gütersloh: bertelsmann 1922. ruttenbeck, walter, Sören Kierkegaard. Der Christliche Denker und Sein Werk, berlin: trowitzsch 1929. schrempf, Christof, Sören Kierkegaard. Ein unfreier Pionier der Freiheit, Frankfurt am main: neuer Frankfurter verlag 1907. — Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie, Jena: diederichs 1927–28. shestov, lev, Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle: “vox clamantis in deserto,” trans. by t. rageot and b. de schloezer, paris: vrin 1936. slotty, martin, Die Erkenntnislehre S.A. Kierkegaards. Eine Würdigung seiner Verfasserwirksamkeit vom zentralen Gesichtspunkte aus, strassburg: Kassel 1915. sodeur, gottlieb, Kierkegaard und Nietzsche. Versuch einer vergleichenden Würdigung, tübingen: mohr 1914 (Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher, series 5, no. 14). thust, martin, “das marionettentheater sören Kierkegaards,” Zeitwende, vol. 1, no. 18, 1925, pp. 18–38.

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— Sören Kierkegaard: Der Dichter des Religiösen. Grundlagen eines Systems der Subjektivität, munich: beck 1931. tisseau, paul-Henri, “l’adolphe de b. Constant et la répétition de Kierkegaard,” Revue de littérature comparée, vol. 13, no. 2, 1933, pp. 239–58. — Commentaries, notes and introductions to søren Kierkegaard, in sören Kierkegaard, Oeuvres Complètes, trans. and ed. by paul-Henri tisseau and else-marie Jacquet-tisseau, vols. 1–20, paris: Éditions de l’orante 1966–86. vetter, august, Frömmigkeit als Leidenschaft. Eine Deutung Kierkegaards, leipzig: insel 1928. voigt, Frederich adolf, Sören Kierkegaard im Kampfe mit der Romantik, der Theologie und der Kirche. Zur Selbstprüfung unserer Gegenwart anbefohlen, berlin: Furche-verlag 1928. warmuth, Kurt, “sören Kierkegaard, ein prophet der innerlichkeit,” Monatsschrift für Pastoraltheologie, vol. 12, no. 24, 1928, pp. 109–12. weber, Heinrich, “zwei propheten des irrationalismus, Joh. g. Hamann und sören Kierkegaard als bahnbrecher der theologie des Christusglaubens,” Neukirchliche Zeitschrift, vols 1–2, no. 28, 1917, pp. 23–58; pp. 77–125. III. Secondary Literature on Wahl’s Relation to Kierkegaard adorno, theodor w., “Études kierkegaardiennes. Jean wahl. paris: Fernand aubier. 1938. 745 pp.,” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 36, no. 1, 1939, pp. 18–19. Haroutunian, Joseph a., “Short History of Existentialism by Jean wahl,” The Journal of Religion, vol. 30, no. 4, 1950, pp. 296–7. Koppang, ole, “Quelques pensées kierkegardiennes dans la philosophie de Jean wahl,” Symposion Kierkegaardianum, Copenhagen: munksgaard 1955 (Orbis literarum, tome 10, fasc. 1–2), pp. 112–17. lindley, samuel e., “La Pensee de L’Existence by Jean wahl,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 62, no. 4, 1953, pp. 638–40. loewenberg, Jacob, “Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel by Jean wahl,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 40, no. 5, 1931, pp. 500–1. løgstrup, Knud e., Kierkegaards und Heideggers Existenzanalyse und ihr Verhältnis zur Verkundigung, berlin: blaschker 1950 (Breviarium litterarum, vol. 3). marcel, gabriel, “désespoir et philosophie,” La Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 39, 1939, pp. 1027–32. moyn, samuel, “transcendence, morality, and History: emmanuel levinas and the discovery of søren Kierkegaard in France,” Yale French Studies, no. 104, 2004, pp. 22–54. — Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics, ithaca, new York: Cornell university press 2005. rankin, K.w., “La Pensée de l’Existence by Jean wahl,” Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 13, 1953, pp. 374–5.

index of persons

abraham, 8, 9, 13, 14, 49, 85, 224, 229, 265, 266, 337-40, 346, 360-2, 364, 368, 369, 403. adam, 147, 334, 359. adorno, theodor w. (1903-69), german philosopher, 397. altenberg, peter (1859-1919), german author, 34. anz, wilhelm, 155, 163. aristotle, 95, 97, 99-102, 236, 286, 358, 362, 393. aquinas, thomas (ca. 1225-74), scholastic philosopher and theologian, 211, 217, 218, 222-9 passim. augustine of Hippo (354-430), church father, 24, 27, 28, 47, 97, 99, 101, 104, 113, 133, 199, 375. bach, Johann sebastian (1685-1750), german composer, 209. bahr, Hermann (1863-1934), german author, 34. barth, Karl (1886-1968), swiss protestant theologian, 25, 300. barth, paul (1858-1922), german philosopher, 37. bataille, georges (1897-1962), French writer, 408. beaufret, Jean (1907-82), French philosopher, 402. beauvoir, simone de (1908-86), French philosopher and author, ix, 1-21, 323, 327, 331, 334, 337. She Came to Stay (1943), 4-5, 11-12. Pyrrhus et Cinéas (1944), 7-8. The Blood of Others (1945), 6-7, 14. Les Bouches Inutiles (1945), 6.

All Men are Mortal (1946), 8. The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), 8-9, 1214. The Second Sex (1949), 1-3, 10-11, 1519. The Prime of Life (1960), 3, 5-6, 11, 14. belinsky, vissarion, (1811-48), russian literary critic, 26, 363. benedict xv, pope (1854-1922), 220. berdyaev, nicholas (1874-1948), russian philosopher, 23-32, 212, 355, 356, 393, 402, 403. bergman, shmuel Hugo (1883-1975), german Jewish philosopher, 54, 55, 301. bergson, Henri (1859-1941), French philosopher, 201, 204-24 passim, 227, 235, 239, 248, 328, 344, 362, 393, 394, 405. binswanger, ludwig (1881-1966), swiss psychiatrist, 46, 238, 239. birkenstock, eva, 303, 304. bloy, léon (1846-1917), French author, 218. bohlin, torsten (1889-1950), swedish theologian, 168. böhme, Jacob (1575-1624), german mystic, 23-24, 29, 34, 53. bonagiuso, giacomo, 304. boutang, pierre (1916-98), French philosopher and author, 200. blondel, maurice (1861-1949), French philosopher, 201. brandes, georg (1842-1927), danish author and literary critic, 268-79 passim. brentano, Franz (1838-1917), german philosopher, 99. brobjer, thomas, 263, 265, 275.

416

Kierkegaard and Existentialism

brod, max (1884-1968), german-speaking Czech Jewish author and composer, 402-403. brunner, Constantin (1862-1937), german Jewish philosopher, 36, 41. brunner, emil (1889-1966), swiss protestant theologian, 43, 46. buber, martin (1878-1965), german philosopher, 33-61, 199, 299, 300, 301, 303, 315, 356, 357. Ich und Du (1923), 35, 42-3, 56. buber, salomon (1827-1906), martin buber’s grandfather, 33, 34. Calvin, John (1509-64), French protestant theologian, 29. Camus, albert (1903-60), French author, ix, 63-94, 356. The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), 63-94. Cantillo, giuseppe, 164. Caputo, John, 96, 103. Cézanne, paul (1839-1906), French painter, 233. Chekhov, anton (1860-1904), russian author, 355. Christ, 44, 65, 78, 85, 89, 139, 145, 149, 150, 165, 174, 209, 274, 277, 278, 280, 282, 307, 314, 315, 360, 361, 370, 368, 396, 400. Clérissac, Humbert (i.e. baptiste placide léopold) (1864-1914), French author, 218. Cohen, gustave (1879-1958), French historian, 395. Cohen, Hermann (1842-1918), german Jewish philosopher, 299. Comte, auguste (1798-1857), French philosopher, 217, 218, 227. Cusanus, nicolaus (1401-64), german mystic, 34, 53. dallago, Carl (1869-1949), austrian author, 40. derrida, Jacques (1930-2004), French philosopher, 127, 370, 408.

descartes, rené (1596-1650), French philosopher, 3, 219, 239, 344, 393, 397, 401, 406. dewey, John (1859-1952), american philosopher, 221, 227. diederichs, eugen (1867-1930), german publisher, 39. dilthey, wilhelm (1833-1911), german philosopher, 34, 38, 95, 99. don giovanni, 81, 83, 84. don Juan, 77, 81-4, 399. don Quixote, 384, 385. dostoevsky, Fyodor mikhailovich (182181), russian author, 23-9 passim, 67, 333, 355, 357, 358, 362, 363. driesch, Hans adolf eduard (1867-1941), german biologist and philosopher, 218. duns scotus (ca. 1265-1308), scottish theologian, 102. ebner, Ferdinand (1882-1931), austrian philosopher, 40. edelstein, ludwig, 158, 159. ehrenberg, Hans (1883-1958), german theologian, 315. ehrlich, leonard, H. (1929-), austrian-born philosopher, 159, 165, 166. Faust, 399. Ferlov, Knud (1881-1977), danish translator, 326. Feuerbach, ludwig (1804-72), german philosopher, 81, 247. Fichte, Johann gottlieb (1762-1814), german philosopher, 23, 397, 400. Ficker, ludwig von (1880-1967), german author and publisher, 159. Fondane, benjamin (1898-1944), romanian-French poet, 225, 356, 357. Frank, erich (1883-1949), german philosopher, 159. Freud, sigmund (1856-1939), austrian psychologist, 240, 344.

Index of Persons gabriel, leo, 163. galileo galilei (1564-1642), italian scientist, 132. gandillac, maurice de (1906-2006), French philosopher, 402. Gâteau, Jean-Jacques (1887-1967), French translator, 326. gilson, Étienne (1884-1978), French philosopher, 23, 217. goethe, Johann wolfgang von (1749-1832), german poet, author, scientist and diplomat, 269, 270, 276. gogarten, Friedrich (1887-1967), german protestant theologian, 300. goldstein, Kurt (1878-1965), german Jewish neurologist, 243. golomb, Jacob, 55, 63, 85. gordin, Jacob (1896-1947), english composer, 395. gottsched, Hermann (1848-1916), german protestant theologian, 159, 169, 177. grenier, Jean (1898-1971), French philosopher, 6, 7, 63. greve, wilfred, 41, 163. grundtvig, nikolai Frederik severin (17831872), danish theologian, historian, poet and author, 400. gurvitch, georges (1894-1965), russianborn French sociologist and jurist, 238, 402, 403. gurwitsch, aron (1901-73), lithuanianborn Jewish american philosopher, 239-40. Haecker, theodor (1879-1945), german author and critic, 39, 40, 159, 160, 168, 177. Halevi, Judah (ca. 1075-1141), Hebrew poet, 299, 318. Hamann, Johann georg (1730-88), german philosopher, 400. Hannay, alastair, 104. Harnack, adolf von (1851-1930), german protestant theologian, 376.

417

Hegel, georg Friedrich wilhelm (17701831), german philosopher, 3-5, 9, 11-13, 19, 26, 47, 102, 103, 140, 171, 172, 188, 200, 204, 225, 227, 235-40 passim, 243-7 passim, 250-5 passim, 299, 300, 308-10, 315, 337, 343-5, 356, 358-60, 362-4, 369, 376, 381, 393-407 passim. Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), 11, 235, 236, 254, 308, 343, 359. Heidegger, martin (1889-1976), german philosopher, ix, 5-7, 26-8, 47, 48, 77, 95-125, 127, 129, 135, 140, 158, 159, 169, 176, 189, 199, 200, 204, 212, 234, 238-40, 251, 252, 304, 323, 325, 327, 328, 330-9 passim, 342-6 passim, 357, 365, 379, 393, 397, 398, 401-7 passim. Being and Time (1927), 95-125 passim, 129, 328, 330, 357, 364, 402. Henry, michel (1922-2002), French philosopher, 127-54. Heraclitus, 239. Herder, Johann gottfried (1744-1803), german philosopher, 400. Herzl, theodor (1860-1904), austroHungarian Jewish journalist, 35. Hirsch, emanuel (1888-1972), german protestant theologian, 166, 167, 177. Høffding, Harald (1843-1931), danish philosopher, 37, 203, 204, 270, 273, 378. Hofmannsthal, Hugo von (1874-1929), german author, 34, 38, 39. Hohlenberg, Johannes (1881-1960), danish painter and writer, 168. Husserl, edmund (1859-1938), german philosopher, 76, 95, 97, 102, 127-9, 138, 158, 160, 234, 239-45 passim, 251, 323, 325, 328, 331, 334, 344, 345, 357, 358, 393, 397. Hyppolite, Jean (1907-68), French philosopher, 236, 244, 399, 408.

418

Kierkegaard and Existentialism

ibsen, Henrik (1828-1906), norwegian playwright, 36, 37, 204, 269, 272, 274, 355, 375, 378, 405. Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich (1743-1819), german philosopher, 397, 400. Jakobson, roman (1896-1982), russianborn american linguist, 395. James, william (1842-1910), american philosopher, 381, 393, 394, 400, 405. Jankélévitch, vladimir (1903-85), French philosopher, 356. Jaspers, Karl (1883-1969), german philosopher, 5, 7, 27, 28, 76, 78, 79, 95, 98, 100, 101, 104, 155-97, 199, 200, 212, 243, 393, 398, 403, 404. Job, 304, 314, 315, 360, 362, 363, 364, 369. John, 138, 139. Jouve, pierre Jean (1887-1976), French writer, 393. Kafka, Franz (1883-1924), Czech-austrian novelist, 5, 76, 225, 337, 338, 345, 393, 402, 403. Kandinsky, wassily (1866-1944), russian painter, 128. Kant, immanuel (1724-1804), german philosopher, 128, 157, 175, 188, 227, 358, 376, 397, 406. Kassner, rudolf (1873-1959), austrian philosopher, author and critic, 38, 39. Kierkegaard, søren aabye (1813-55) From the Papers of One Still Living (1838), 377. The Concept of Irony (1841), 327, 377. Either/Or (1843), 3, 4, 10, 12, 56, 75, 82, 113, 163, 187, 266, 272, 325, 326, 327, 340, 377, 378, 398. Repetition (1843), 73, 105, 271, 326, 360, 364, 369. Fear and Trembling (1843), 5, 6, 7, 1015 passim, 19, 49, 50, 74, 90, 176, 223, 224, 229, 265, 266, 280, 282,

300, 326, 337, 338, 340, 360, 364, 380, 400, 403. Philosophical Fragments (1844), 74, 163, 175, 204, 326, 395. The Concept of Anxiety (1844), 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 73, 103, 106, 112, 114, 134, 137, 142, 146, 171, 180, 186, 205, 326, 327, 329, 331, 334, 336, 340-6 passim, 360, 361, 364, 365, 376, 400. Stages on Life’s Way (1845), 3, 10, 1519 passim, 74, 186, 187, 223, 326, 377, 378. Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1845), 56, 105, 114, 377. Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), 73, 170, 175, 181, 187, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 223, 319, 326, 377, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385. A Literary Review of Two Ages (1846), 104, 173, 377. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), 74, 75, 134, 377. Works of Love (1847), 56, 90, 144, 3039 passim, 319, 367, 377. Christian Discourses (1848), 145. The Point of View for My Work as an Author (ca. 1848), 44, 45, 74, 272, 326, 377. The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Devotional Discourses (1849), 74, 134, 266. Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1849), 74, 326. The Sickness unto Death (1849), 9, 10, 12, 13, 74, 90, 104, 134-6, 140, 146, 149, 171, 174, 175, 180, 184, 186, 205, 210, 223, 283, 284, 286, 319, 326, 327, 337, 340, 341, 342, 344, 360, 361, 363, 370. Two Ethical-Religious Essays (1849), 74.

Index of Persons Practice in Christianity (1850), 73-4, 134, 271, 367. On My Activity as a Writer (1851), 377. For Self-Examination (1851), 74. The Moment (1855), 167, 180-3, 223, 229, 271, 379. Journals, notebooks, Nachlaß, 5, 74, 78, 104, 167, 177, 180-2, 186, 203, 223, 244, 306, 315, 325, 326, 359, 360, 364, 366, 367, 368, 401. Kojève, alexandre (1902-68), russian-born French philosopher, 235, 236, 356, 394, 395, 399, 408. Koyré, alexandre (1892-1964), russianborn French philosopher, 395, 402. Kraepelin, emil (1856-1926), german psychiatrist, 156. Krause, Karl (1781-1832), german philosopher, 376. lalande, pierre andré, (1867-1963), French philosopher, 200. lavelle, louis (1883-1951), French philosopher, 235. le roy, edouard (1870-1954), French philosopher, 235. lefebvre, Henri (1901-91), French sociologist, 246, 247. leibniz, baron gottfried wilhelm von (1646-1716), german philosopher and mathematician, 239, 315, 364. lenin, vladimir ilyich (1870-1924), russian statesman, 23. lequier, Jules (1814-62), French philosopher, 393. lessing, gotthold ephraim (1729-81), german writer and philosopher, 186, 380, 384. levi, albert, 379. lévi-strauss, Claude (1908-2009), French anthropologist, 395. lévinas, emmanuel (1906-95), lithuanianFrench philosopher, 127, 203, 204, 303, 394, 395, 398, 402, 403, 405.

419

löwith, Karl (1897-1973), german Jewish philosopher, 97, 238. lowrie, walter (1868-1959), american translator, 168. lukács, georg (1885-1971), Hungarian philosopher, novelist and literary critic, 40, 41. luther, martin (1483-1546), german protestant theologian, 29, 95, 97, 99, 100, 219, 279, 358, 359, 361, 400. maine de biran, François-pierre-gonthier (1766-1824), French philosopher, 246. malebranche, nicolas (1638-1715), French philosopher, 248. malik, Habib C., 164. marcel, gabriel (1889-1973), French philosopher, 6, 7, 23, 199-215, 246, 393, 395, 402, 403, 405, 407. maritain, Jacques (1882-1973), French Catholic philosopher, 23, 204, 21732, 395. martensen, Hans lassen (1808-84), danish theologian, 270-5 passim. marx, Karl (1818-83), german philosopher and economist, 227, 238, 240, 247, 251-4, 345. mcinerny, ralph, 221. meinecke, Friedrich (1862-1954), german historian, 299. merleau-ponty, maurice (1908–61), French philosopher, 127, 138, 233-61, 393. mesnard, pierre, 223. minkowski, eugène (1885-1972), French Jewish psychiatrist, 243. møller, poul martin (1794-1838), danish poet and philosopher, 400. monrad, olaf peter, 168. montaigne, michel de (1533-92), French essayist and philosopher, 199. mozart, wolfgang amadeus (1756-91), austrian composer, 81.

420

Kierkegaard and Existentialism

nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900), german philosopher, 7-9, 13, 23, 24, 27, 28, 48, 52, 66, 76, 83, 90, 99, 101, 132, 165, 168, 169, 176-8, 181, 186, 189, 204, 211, 240, 251, 252, 263-298, 342, 355, 358, 359, 361, 376, 393, 400, 405. olsen, regine (1822-1904), 8, 40, 186, 223, 359, 360, 364, 366, 369, 398, 406. oppenheim, michael david, 301, 302, 303, 319. origen (ca. 185-ca. 254), church father, 400. ortega y gasset, José (1883-1955), spanish philosopher, 212. otto, rudolf (1869-1937), german protestant theologian, 25. pascal, blaise (1623-1662), French mathematician, physicist and philosopher, 24, 27, 28, 47, 85, 99, 186, 199, 201, 206, 279, 280, 358, 375, 386, 399, 400, 405. parmenides, 358, 394. paul, 97, 280, 361. paul vi, pope (1897-1978), 220. pelagius, 113, 114. péguy, Charles (1873-1914), French socialist writer, 218. perelman, Chaim (1912-84), polish-born belgian philosopher, 393. pius xi, pope, (1857-1939), 219. plato, 16, 100, 227, 239, 358, 364, 393, 394, 397, 401, 402, 406. plotinus, 358, 360, 369. politis, Hélène, 10, 345. poole, roger, 324. reich, emil (1864-1940), austrian literary scholar, 36, 37. renan, ernest (1823-1892), French philosopher, 218. richter, liselotte, 166, 167. rickert, Heinrich (1863-1936), german philosopher, 157.

ricoeur, paul (1913-2005), French philosopher, 203. rilke, rainer maria (1875-1926), german poet, 204. rimbaud, arthur (1854-91), French poet, 393. ritschl, albrecht (1822-89), german protestant theologian, 376. rosenstock-Huessy, eugen (1888-1973), 299, 300. rosenstock-Huessy, margrit (1893-1959), 299. rosenzweig, Franz (1886-1929), german Jewish philosopher and theologian, 35, 299-351. rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-78), French philosopher, 219. santayana, george (1863-1952), spanish american philosopher, 394. sartre, Jean-paul (1905-80), French philosopher, ix, x, 1-21 passim, 27, 106, 184, 199, 200, 203, 209, 212, 221-27 passim, 234, 235, 246, 251, 304, 323-54, 379, 393, 395, 403-7 passim. Being and Nothingness (1943), 9, 13, 323-54 passim. Existentialism is a Humanism (1945), x, 7, 339. The Age of Reason (1945), 7, 337. The Reprieve (1947), 7. scheler, max (1874-1928), german philosopher 397. schelling, Friedrich wilhelm Joseph von (1775-1854), german philosopher, 23, 200, 397. schleiermacher, Friedrich d.e. (1768-1834), german protestant theologian, 180, 376, 397, 400. schmid, Hermann, 163. schnitzler, arthur (1862-1931), german author, 34.

Index of Persons

421

schopenhauer, arthur (1788-1860), german philosopher, 132, 171, 204, 275, 376. schrempf, Christoph (1860-1944), german protestant theologian, 159, 169. schulz, Heiko, 166. schweitzer, albert (1875-1965), Francogerman philosopher and physician, 46. shakespeare, william (1564-1616), english dramatist, 378. sheldon, william d. (1898-1977), american psychologist, 393. shestov, lev (1866-1938), ukrainianFrench philosopher, 23, 25, 28, 76-8, 225, 238, 355-370, 398. simmel, georg (1858-1918), german scholar, 34, 38. sisyphus, 72, 73, 84, 88, 91. socrates, 97, 100, 199, 200-2, 203, 227, 272, 275, 284, 342, 358-60, 362, 368, 369, 383, 394, 406. solovyov, vladimir (1853-1900), russian philosopher, 23. spencer, Herbert (1820-1903), english philosopher, 376. spinoza, baruch de (1632-77), dutch philosopher, 128, 156, 239, 358, 359, 364, 402. stewart, Jon, 356. stöhr, adolf (1855-1921), austrian philosopher, 36.

tertullian (ca. 160-235), church father, 400. theunissen, michael, 41, 51, 105, 155, 163. trendelenburg, Friedrich adolf (1802-72), german philosopher and philologist, 100.

taine, Hippolyte (1828-1893), French philosopher, 218.

Zižek, Slavoj (1949-), Slovenian philosopher, 408.

ulrich, Hermann, 401. unamuno, miguel de (1864-1936), spanish philosopher, novelist and essayist, ix, 212, 375-391. wahl, Jean (1888-1974), French philosopher, 5, 134, 162, 163, 203, 204, 223, 229, 236, 238, 327, 329, 330, 358, 393-414. Études kierkegaardiennes (1938), 5, 134, 223, 327, 330, 358, 397-401, 405. weber, max (1864-1920), german sociologist, 157. weil, eric (1907-77), French philosopher, 395. weiland, Jan sperna, 162. westphal, merold, 164, 165. weizsäcker, viktor von (1886-1957), german physician and physiologist, 243. windelband, wilhelm (1848-1915), german philosopher, 157. wivel, Klaus, 303. wundt, wilhelm (1832-1920), german scholar, 34, 37.

index of subjects

absolute and relative, 36, 41, 50, 52. absurd, 49, 63-72 passim, 76-81, 84-8, 90, 142, 150, 174, 177, 179, 180, 187, 265, 273, 274, 277-9, 279, 280, 282, 367. acosmism, 43, 44, 45, 48, 57, 131, 166, 170, 171, 183. akedah, 55. alienation, 47, 56, 68, 70, 108, 113, 210. ambiguity, 1, 8, 9, 14, 247, 248, 254, 255, 304, 334, 385, 407. anguish, see “anxiety.” anthropology, 33, 35, 48, 52, 53, 57, 67, 8890, 128, 238, 245, 407. anxiety, ix, 8, 9, 13, 15, 24-8, 77, 78, 88, 90, 101, 102, 105-14 passim, 137, 140-9 passim, 180, 228, 323, 327, 328, 329, 332-9 passim, 343,345, 346, 361, 365, 366, 384. appropriation, 83, 105, 203, 206, 207, 208, 210, 383, 384, 385. atonement, 149. authenticity, 63, 87, 105, 107, 113, 202, 208, 301, 303, 330, 331, 340, 342, 345, 380, 384, 405, 407. authority, 179, 186, 284. autonomy, 4, 49, 284, 396. bad faith, 323, 330, 334, 340, 341, 345. beginning of philosophy, 399. behaviorism, 240. berlin, 23, 34, 38, 299, 328. bible, 35, 150, 300, 358, 359, 361-5 passim. genesis, 138, 140. Job, 304, 314, 315, 360, 362-4, 369. isaiah, 312. song of songs, 307.

tobit, 300. philippians 300. James, 305. boredom, 110, 113. Burgtheater, 34. care, 101. Catholicism, 209, 217-20 passim, 228, 229, 380. choice, 11, 13-15, 174, 227, 287, 333, 336, 338, 339, 344, 345, 400, 405, 407. Christendom, 271, 378. Christianity, 48, 49, 67, 78, 80, 87, 99, 128, 138, 139, 145, 149, 165-7, 170-89 passim, 190, 209, 248, 252, 255, 271-83 passim, 309, 367, 368, 369, 378, 380, 382, 395, 396, 400. Christology, 149, 150, 276, 277, 278. cogito, 241, 244, 250, 397. communication, 26, 35, 164, 185, 206, 302, 303, 307, 385, 407. indirect, 101, 170-7 passim, 182, 188, 189, 202, 205, 271, 302, 319, 378, 379, 384, 386, 400, 403, 406. community, 35, 43, 48, 49, 51, 53, 318. conscience, 101, 202, 227, 229, 266, 267, 283, 284, 285. contemporaneity, 133, 305, 400, 405. creation, 43, 53, 54, 65, 149, 150, 307, 308, 310, 317, 368. crowd, 45, 48, 51, 52, 105, 111, 112. crucifixion, 360, 368. das Man (“the they”), 48, 105, 110-12. see also “crowd.”

424

Kierkegaard and Existentialism

death, 7, 65, 71, 91, 101, 105, 108, 114, 148, 156, 207, 210, 303, 304, 318, 362, 381, 383. death of god, 48, 252. decision, 14, 17, 171, 174, 179, 229, 287, 333, 335, 337, 339, 341. see also “choice.” defiance, 72, 180, 287, 342. demonic, the, 66, 84-6, 89, 90, 147, 180, 340. Der Brenner, 39, 40, 159, 160, 164. desire, 110, 144, 148, 286, 378. despair, ix, 65, 76, 78, 81, 84, 87, 90, 105, 114, 132, 135-7, 140, 146-9 passim, 172, 210, 223, 264, 283, 284, 285, 301, 318, 340, 341, 360, 364, 370, 399, 407. dialogical philosophy, 33, 35, 40, 41, 50-4 passim. dizziness, see “vertigo.” double-reflection, 205, 206, 207, 208. doubt, 3, 228, 380, 400. duty, 17, 338. earnestness, 66, 182, 342. eternal happiness, 317, 383. ethics, the ethical, 1, 2, 5, 9, 14, 17, 19, 28, 35, 43, 46, 47, 49, 50, 52, 64, 77, 78, 82, 83, 88, 90, 133, 145, 172, 176, 187, 201, 224, 226-9, 264, 266, 270-6 passim, 280, 282, 284, 287, 300, 304, 309, 310, 312, 315, 331-8 passim, 344, 359, 360, 364, 366, 367-9, 383, 399, 404. evil, 25, 29, 84, 86, 90, 133, 146, 147, 304, 310, 311, 316-18, 361, 362, 365, 366, 405. exception, 165, 174-6, 178, 181, 182. existence, 23, 25, 27, 48, 56, 65, 68, 72, 8591 passim, 102, 107, 135, 136, 138, 181, 184, 199, 200-2, 205, 207-9, 224-6, 238, 239, 252, 381, 394, 397, 401, 402, 406, 407.

faith, 48, 49, 81, 85, 86, 90, 100, 146, 149, 164, 166, 171, 179, 180, 184-6, 188, 190, 207, 209, 210, 211, 217, 218, 223-8 passim, 247-9, 264-7, 27382 passim, 305, 306, 308, 310-18 passim, 338, 360-69 passim, 380, 384, 399, 400. Fall, the, 24, 25, 28, 65, 105, 107-12 passim, 114, 317, 357, 361-6 passim. fear, 6, 14, 24-6, 28, 108, 109, 111, 299, 330, 335. feminism, 1-21. finitude, 1, 105, 210, 341, 407. Frankfurt am main, 35, 161, 178, 356. freedom, 11-14, 18, 23, 72, 76, 88, 108-12 passim, 140, 141, 157, 206, 207, 210, 267, 276, 279, 283, 284, 285, 307, 317, 323, 327, 328-35 passim, 341, 359, 361, 363, 366, 367, 404, 405. god, 8, 14, 23, 25, 26, 34, 42-54 passim, 66, 78, 81, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 110, 111, 133, 137-40, 145-9, 151, 165, 170, 210, 224, 225, 227-9, 248, 249, 252, 266, 274, 280-3, 30-19 passim, 331, 336-9, 342, 359-70 passim, 378, 381-5 passim, 396, 400, 404, 405. god is dead, see “death of god.” god-man, 66, 78, 85, 89, 174, 400, 405. grace, 113, 148, 311. guilt, 101, 107, 108, 111, 114, 170, 228, 266, 267, 273, 281-3, 287, 334. Hasidism, 34, 46. Hegelianism, 103, 204, 236, 247, 393, 397, 401, 402. history, 3, 161, 164, 178, 179, 244, 245, 272, 310, 314, 316, 317, 319. hope, 65, 71, 76, 81, 85, 86, 91, 210, 310-18 passim. humor, 399. idealism, 51, 52, 101, 202, 302. german, ix, 23, 47, 200, 201, 250, 395.

Index of Subjects imitation, 85, 89, 150, 174, 274, 368. immanence, see “transcendence.” immediacy, 17, 83, 141, 405. immortality, 170, 211, 377, 380-4. inauthenticity, 105, 342. incarnation, 139, 148, 150, 179, 202, 248. inclosing reserve, 101, 113. indirect communication, see “communication.” individual, the, 11, 34, 35, 39, 42-5, 48-54 passim, 64, 105, 137, 139, 145, 147, 173, 210, 223, 227, 267, 272, 275, 276, 282, 285, 286, 287, 302, 323, 325, 334-9 passim, 342-4 passim, 384, 396, 397, 403, 404, 407. see also “single individual.” individualism, individuality, 4, 44, 57, 83, 89, 112, 131, 207, 263, 266, 272, 274, 275, 277, 283, 286, 287, 344, 399. innocence, 109, 141, 361, 362, 365. intentionality, 110, 130-2, 140, 142, 149, 151. inter-esse, 175. interesting, the, 113. inwardness, 128, 206, 207, 264, 265, 274, 277, 379, 383-6. irrationalism, irrationality, 71, 78-81, 86, 88, 226, 227, 228, 355, 378, 380. irony, 7, 8, 223, 341, 342, 399. isolation, 54, 88, 173, 265, 302, 304. jest, 105. joy, 66, 68, 73, 77, 82, 91, 135, 137, 143, 145, 266, 268, 274-8 passim, 282, 287. Judaism, 33-61, 299-321, 355, 396. Kantianism, 157, 158, 166, 179, 189, 395, 397, 399. knight of faith, 91, 227, 266, 279, 280, 360, 368. language, 106, 305-9 passim, 318, 319. last Judgment, 317.

425

leap, 49, 80, 90, 147, 179, 332, 333, 360, 380. Les Temps Modernes, 7, 8, 235. leveling, 104, 173, 272, 273. logos, 139, 140, 148, 150, 245. look, the, 323. love, 12, 17, 149-51, 207, 210, 211, 274, 278, 283, 303-19 passim, 323, 368, 369, 370. of neighbor, 44, 46, 47, 48, 52, 85, 310, 313, 314. maieutics, 146, 302, 378, 379, 384-6. marriage, 2, 17, 19, 45, 75, 223. martyrdom, 177, 271. marxism, 14, 23, 128, 237, 246, 247, 323, 325, 343. materialism, 217, 218, 246, 247. meaning, meaningfulness, 66, 68, 69, 71, 75, 81, 165, 201, 248, 249, 285-7, 302. mediation, 135, 188, 246, 308, 344, 380, 384, 395, 400. melancholy, 110, 113, 378. miracles, 370, 405. moment, the, 101, 103, 104, 170, 407. morality, 9, 14, 82, 84, 227, 264, 275, 325, 330, 385, 399. mysticism, mystics, 34, 44, 75, 229, 310. natural law, 219. negativity, negation, 9, 84, 174, 254, 31012, 316, 318, 332, 384. nihilism, 85, 264, 266, 278-82 passim, 286. nothingness, nothing, 7, 9, 65, 110-13 passim, 161, 225, 281, 323, 330-5 passim, 345, 346, 361, 365, 366. offense, 78, 81, 90, 150, 265, 274, 282, 367, 407. ontological argument, 397, 406. ontology, 51, 96, 102, 132, 135-7, 145, 200, 205, 244, 246, 250-2, 325, 402. other, the, 1, 11, 15, 45, 51, 206, 211, 303, 343, 404.

426

Kierkegaard and Existentialism

paradox, 79, 81, 90, 137, 170, 171, 179, 188, 223, 229, 242, 248, 250, 265, 273, 300, 302, 306, 310, 338, 379, 383, 399, 400, 404. passion, 72, 80, 82, 98, 100, 101, 263, 272, 273-5, 286, 378, 379, 381-6 passim, 400. phenomenology, 108, 114, 127-54, 150, 158, 174, 180, 220, 234-6, 239, 240, 244, 245, 249, 309, 323, 325, 357, 365, 394, 395, 398, 401, 406, 408. politics, 45, 64, 219. positivism, 217, 218, 243, 376. possibility, 113, 114, 140, 141, 329, 332-4, 363, 365, 405, 407. press, the, 173. pseudonymity, pseudonyms, 2, 10, 40, 77, 146, 187, 202, 223, 226, 271, 283, 377, 398. psychoanalysis, 128, 239, 240. psychology, 110, 132, 134, 136, 143, 146, 157, 169, 174, 239, 240, 241. rationalism, rationality, reason, 2, 64, 65, 76, 77, 380, 381. rebellion, 63, 65, 71, 72, 80, 84-9 passim. recognition, 343, 344. reconciliation, 72, 149, 236, 315, 317. redemption, 66, 85, 89, 278, 282, 300, 30518 passim. religiousness a and b, 165, 187. renunciation, 45, 53, 72, 87, 171, 266, 280. repetition, 83, 96, 101, 270, 271, 366, 399, 405, 407. resignation, 71, 81, 86, 264, 266, 274, 360, 368. resoluteness, 113. responsibility, 11-14, 44, 45, 83, 171, 245, 263, 264, 266, 267, 284-7 passim, 317, 323, 325, 341, 405. revelation, 129, 149, 179, 182, 183, 189, 273, 300, 305, 307, 308, 310-12, 316, 362. revolt, see “rebellion.” romanticism, 396, 397, 399.

sacrifice, 9, 14, 49, 279, 338, 359, 368, 399. salvation, 46, 48, 49, 65, 89, 147-51 passim, 317, 363. scandal, see “offense.” seduction, 5, 6, 12, 76, 84. seriousness, 12-14, 105, 285, 340, 341, 342, 399. sickness unto death, 90, 114, 210. sin, 9, 25, 29, 73, 84, 102, 107, 108, 111, 112, 114, 133, 147-51 passim, original, 146-8, 149, 150, 151, 228, 272, 273, 279, 281-3, 300, 305, 315, 317, 318, 334, 336, 340, 357, 361-8 passim, 378, 400, 405, 407. single individual, the, 39, 42-4, 48-53 passim, 64, 147, 210, 225, 323, 338, 377, 396, 403, 407. skepticism, 66, 226, 253, 380, 396. socratic method, 202, 203. solidarity, 63, 71, 87, 88. solipsism, 4, 170, 343. solitude, 47, 48, 82, 91. speculative philosophy, 201, 202, 273, 362, 364, 365, 399, 406, 407. spirit, 142-4, 244, 250, 305, 306, 309, 310, 365, 400. stages, 47, 56, 165, 186, 187, 399, 404. subjective truth, 26, 29, 100, 101, 164, 37880, 383, 386, 399, 405. subjectivism, 28, 90. subjective thinking, subjective thinker, 171, 175, 206, 208, 384, 400, 407. subjectivity, 9, 26, 27, 28, 87, 132, 134-8 passim, 145, 147, 149, 164, 187, 207, 224-8 passim, 239, 243, 247, 248, 254, 274, 277, 319, 341, 37880, 383, 386, 399, 402-4, 407. suffering, 69, 75, 78, 91, 135, 136, 145, 151, 225, 266, 282, 304, 310-19 passim, 361, 363, 367, 368-70. suicide, 69, 76, 80, 87, 88, 147, 217, 279, 301, 381. suspension, see “teleological suspension.” system, systematic philosophy, 3, 38, 47, 75, 171, 175, 177, 182, 185, 187, 200,

Index of Subjects 201, 209, 225, 236, 240, 244, 252, 302, 310, 342-4, 394-7, 399, 405, 407. teleological suspension, 49, 50, 176, 227, 228, 274, 300, 338, 360, 364. temporality, 104, 113, 134, 142, 305, 306, 310, 311, 316. see also “time.” terror, 25, 26, 359, 364. see also “fear.” “the they,” see das Man. theodicy, 304, 314-19 passim. thomism, 218, 224, 226. time, 101, 103, 104, 240, 245, 246, 272, 302, 303, 305, 307, 310-12, 316. transcendence, 2, 7, 25, 85, 130, 131, 137, 147, 149, 151, 173, 179, 190, 209, 210, 211, 228, 236, 304, 312, 316, 404, 407. and immanence, 52, 130, 131, 132, 136, 137, 147, 149, 150, 253-5, 308-310.

427

trinity, 137-9, 144, 150, 305, 307. trust, 302, 311-19 passim. uncertainty, 379, 380, 384, 385, 400. unhappy consciousness, 337, 396, 397. university of berlin, 34, 38. university of leipzig, 34-8 passim. university of vienna, 34, 36, 38. university of zurich, 34. values, 12, 13, 83, 89, 206, 266, 285, 336, 337, 339, 341, 342, 360. vaudeville, 380. vertigo, 141, 327, 329, 335, 336, 366. vitalism, 139, 406. women, 15-19, 82. Weltanschauung, 159. zionism, 35.