Method and Perspective when Reading Kierkegaard (original) (raw)

Kierkegaard is nearly universally acknowledged among philosophers as an interesting, if sometimes tendentious thinker. He is not so universally accorded the distinction of philosopher. That there is philosophical content in his work is readily admitted, yet this is only incidental, it is said, to his primary import as a religious thinker. Such commentators can point to numerous places throughout Kierkegaard's authorship where he makes it unquestionably clear that his overwhelming concern, both personally and qua author, is with the problem of becoming a Christian. This problem, according to Kierkegaard, is one of fidus not intellectus and one of the greatest weaknesses within the professed community of faith was their all too willing acceptance of the philosophical systems of Kant and Hegel. Thus, it could seem easily concluded, Kierkegaard's authorship is fundamentally non-philosophical, his spurious critique of certain theological applications of philosophy aside. His profundity lies in his deft analysis of that significant range of human experience sur rounding personal faith but this-and on his own ground-is outside the purview of reason and is therefore, ipso facto, outside philosophy. Briefly stated this viewpoint finds Kierkegaard a religious irrationalist, if not voluntarist, who constituted faith and reason as separate and immisible domains, the first of ultimate concern and the latter of only minor interest. As a religious thinker concerned with the thus formulated problem of Christian faith, it is similarly sometimes said that Kierkegaard's ethics are private and aesthetic and that he therefore has little or nothing to contribute 1 B olin , Torsten, Søren Kierkegaards etiske åskådning med sårskild hansyn til begreppet 'den enskilde\ academic dissertation, Stockholm , 1918, passim. Buber, M artin, Between Man and Man, R outledge K egan Paul, London, 1947, p. 40. Mackey, Louis, ''T h e Loss o f the W orld in Kierkegaard's Ethics," The Review of Meta physics, X V ,