Abstract
The decline of Marxism has left an ideological vacuum in Eastern Europe and many scholars in this part of the world have begun to turn to Kierkegaard for insights into the nature of genuine community or of the role of the individual in society. This move may seem odd to those who view Kierkegaard as the father of twentieth-century existentialism. Fortunately, however, existentialism is just as dead as Marxism and so are many of the other ‘-isms’ (e.g. positivism, Freudianism, structuralism) that define what has come to be known as ‘modernity’. This means that the task of identifying the social and political significance of Kierkegaard’s thought has become less problematic than it was when interpretations of Kierkegaard were so often laden with anachronistic existentialist ideas.
This essay makes an argument that is very similar to the one made in my article, ‘The Reality of the World in Kierkegaard’s Postscript’ (in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), International Kierkegaard Commentary: Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996), thus portions of the text of the present essay have been reprinted with the permission of Mercer University Press. The aim of the present essay is broader, however, than that of the article on the Postscript, The claims of the former are made with respect to Kierkegaard’s authorship as a whole, whereas those of the latter are restricted to the Postscript.
This essay has benefited greatly from criticisms and revisions suggested by Hubert L. Dreyfus, George L. Kline, George Pattison and Robert L. Perkins.
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Notes
This essay makes an argument that is very similar to the one made in my article, ‘The Reality of the World in Kierkegaard’s Postscript’ (in Robert L. Perkins (ed.), International Kierkegaard Commentary: Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996)
Louis Mackey, ‘The Loss of the World in Kierkegaard’s Ethics’ in Review of Metaphysics XV: 4 (1962) pp. 602–20.
Søren Kierkegaard, Concept of Dread (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1944) p. 40.
Cf., e.g., Robert Widenman, ‘Kierkegaard’s Terminology and English’, in Kierkegaardiana VII (1968), pp. 116–18
Gregor Malantschuk, Nøglebegreber i Søren Kierkegaards tœnkning, ed. Grethe Kjœr and Paul Müller [Key Concepts in Søren Kierkegaard’s Thought] (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, 1993) pp. 210–12
Anton Hügli, Die Erkenntnis der Subjektivität und die Objektivität des Erkennens bei Søren Kierkegaard [The Knowledge of Subjectivity and the Objectivity of Knowing], Basier Beiträge zur Philosophie und Ihrer Geschichte (Basel: Editio Academica, 1973) p. 103.
The Hongs translate ‘evigt anlagte Vœsen’ as ‘the being intended for eternity’. The expression ‘to intend’ was not, however, an acceptable translation of ‘at anlœggé in the first part of the nineteenth century. Ferrall and Gudm. Repp, for example, define’ at anlœggé as ‘to found, establish, construct’ (J. S. Ferrall and Thorl. Gudm. Repp, A Danish-English Dictionary [Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1845] p. 16)
Herman Vinterberg and C. A. Bodelsen, Dansk — Engelsk Ordbog [Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1966] vol. I, p. 47).
Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart, trans. Douglas V. Steere (New York: Harper and Row, 1948) p. 126/SV
Birgit Bertung, Om Kierkegaard, Kvinder og Kœrlighed — en studie i Søren Kierkegaards kvindesyn [On Kierkegaard, Women and Love: A Study of Kierkegaard’s Views on Women] (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, 1987) p. 24.
Cf. CUP I, p. 320. This is, in fact, a recurrent theme of the Postscript which, it has been argued, is actually a polemic directed against the ‘peculiar epistemology [egenartet Erkendelseslœre]’ of Martensen (Arild Christensen, ‘Efterskriftens Opgør med Martensen’ [The Confrontation with Martensen in the Postscript in Kierkegaardiana (IV) 1962, p. 48.
Cf. Poul Lübcke, ‘Selvets ontologie hos Kierkegaard’ [Kierkegaard’s Ontology of the Self] in Kierkegaardiana (XIII) 1984, p. 58.
Cf., e.g., Birgit Bertung, Kierkegaard, Kristendom og Konsekvens [Kierkegaard and the Logic of Christianity] (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, 1994) pp. 60
M. Jamie Ferreira, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) p. 37
Gregor Malantschuk, ‘Studier i Frihedens Bevægelse hos Søren Kierkegaard’ [Studies in the Movement of Freedom According to Søren Kierkegaard] in Frihed og Eksistens (Freedom and Existence) (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, 1980) pp. 235–49.
Paul Holmer, ‘On Understanding Kierkegaard’, in A Kierkegaard Critique, ed. Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962) pp. 40–53.
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984) p. 40.
John Davenport, ‘The Meaning of Kierkegaard’s Choice between the Aesthetic and the Ethical: a Response to MacIntyre’, in Southwest Philosophy Review 11: 2 (1995) pp. 73–108.
Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard (London and New York: Routledge, 1982) p. 160.
SV XII, 285. At the time of writing I was unable to locate this text in any of the existing English translations of Kierkegaard. The text is entitled ‘To Taler ved Altergangen om Fredagen’ [Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays] and is from 1851. It has since been published in Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Without Authority (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Cf., e.g., PC, p. 172. Cf. also, M.G. Piety, ‘Kierkegaard on Religious Knowledge’, in History of European Ideas 22: 2 (1996) pp. 105–12
Jørgen K Bukdahl, Om Søren Kierkegaard (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1981) p. 53.
Hermann Deuser, ‘Kierkegaards Verteidigung der Kontingenz: “Daß etwas Inkommensurables in einem Menschenleben ist”’ [Kierkegaard’s Defence of Contingency: ‘That there is something Incommensurable in a Human Life’] in Kierkegaardiana 15 (1991) p. 113
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Piety, M.G. (1998). The Place of the World in Kierkegaard’s Ethics. In: Pattison, G., Shakespeare, S. (eds) Kierkegaard The Self in Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26684-5_2
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