Abstract
In Chap. 12 I argued that authenticity is the decisive orientation of secular societies in their opposition to immunity-resistant authoritarianism. In Chap. 13 I argued that the fallibility of the claim that there is an x that is absolute does not stop x from being absolute. Both chapters confirm that the secular norm to be unconditionally authentic is the heir of the transcendent absolute of traditional religions. However, we can still object that this norm cannot be the heir of the religious absolute because the religious absolute is something outside space and time, while the secular norm to be unconditionally authentic must not transcend the limits of space and time. For a reply, I resort to Soren Kierkegaard.
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Notes
- 1.
In the 4th Meditation, Descartes says that it is particularly by free will that “I understand myself to be a certain image and resemblance of God;” AT VII 57.
- 2.
Kierkegaard’s claim that our self-relating has “been constituted by another” (1941:10) is reminiscent of Aristotle’s claim that the active intellect, nous poietikos, comes “from without” (De generatione animalium 2, 736b 28; cp. De anima 3, Chap. 4). Both may be understood to claim that our ability not only to reason the way we can ascribe reasoning to rats and cats, which is only nous pathetikos, but also to consciously think and control our thinking is not self-constituted but due to a factor we cannot control, although Kierkegaard explains consciousness as self-relating. The secular can agree with both Kierkegaard and Aristotle, finding the factor “from without” in nature that has produced us with this extraordinary ability (see above Chaps. 9 and 10).
References
Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling (1843), tr. A. Hannay, London: Penguin 1985.
———, The Sickness unto Death (1849), Princeton: Princeton UP 1941, tr. W. Lowrie.
———, The Sickness unto Death (1849), Princeton: Princeton UP 1980, tr. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong.
———, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Crumbs (1846), ed. Alastair Hannay, Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2009.
Steinvorth, Ulrich. Pride and Authenticity, New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2016.
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Steinvorth, U. (2017). Kierkegaard—But not Rational Metaphysics—Can Relate Us to the Absolute. In: Secularization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63871-3_15
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