The Failure of Self-knowledge: Despair and the Limit of Reason in Kierkegaard's Philosophy (original) (raw)
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The Problem of Kierkegaard's Socrates
This essay re-examines Kierkegaard’s view of Socrates. I consider the problem that arises from Kierkegaard’s appeal to Socrates as an exemplar for irony. The problem is that he also appears to think that Socrates cannot be represented as an exemplar for irony. Part of the problem is the paradox of self-reference that immediately arises from trying to represent x as unrepresentable. On the solution I propose, Kierkegaard does not hold that Socrates is in no way representable as an exemplar for irony. Rather, he holds that Socrates cannot be represented as an exemplar for irony in a purely disinterested way. I show how, in The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard makes use of “limiting cases” of representation in order to bring Socrates into view as one who defies purely disinterested representation. I also show how this approach to Socrates connects up with Kierkegaard’s more general interest in the problem of ethical exemplarity, where the problem is how ethical exemplars can be given as such—that is, in such a way that purely disinterested contemplation is not the appropriate response to them.
Throughout his authorship, Kierkegaard shows an intense fascination with Socrates and Socratic self-knowledge. This chapter will trace, in roughly chronological order: (1) the young Kierkegaard’s autobiographical reflections on self-knowledge, when first coming to understand his task as an author; (2) Socrates as a negative figure in The Concept of Irony - where self-knowledge is understood in terms of separation from others and the surrounding society - and the contrast with the Concluding Unscientific Postscript’s treatment of Socrates as an exemplary “subjective thinker”; (3) in Either/Or, the connection between self-knowledge and self-transparency, and the link between self-knowledge and “choosing oneself”, understood as willing receptivity; (4) in writings such as The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death, the importance of sin and our utter dependence upon God for the question of whether self-knowledge is ever really possible; and (5) in Judge for Yourself! and related journal entries, a more precise specification of what Christian self-knowledge might amount to.
Understanding Kierkegaard’s Johannes Climacus in the Postscript
Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2007
In this paper I take issue with James Conant's claim that Johannes Climacus seeks to engage his reader in the Postscript by himself enacting the confusions to which he thinks his reader is prone. I contend that Conant's way of reading the Postscript fosters a hermeneutic of suspicion that leads him (and those who follows his approach) to be unduly suspicious of some of Climacus' philosophical activity. I argue that instead of serving as a mirror of his reader's faults, Climacus is better conceived of as a Socratic figure whose own philosophical activity represents a positive alternative to the Hegel ian style of doing philosophy that is under attack in the Postscript. I close the paper by arguing that Climacus adopts two very different experimental stances in his two books: while in Fragments Climacus adopts the stance of someone who has "forgotten" about Christianity, in the Postscript he openly declares that he is not a Christian and then proceeds to investigate the question, appropriately cast in the first person, "How do I, Johannes Climacus, become a Christian?" I maintain that we will not be in a position to appreciate what makes the Postscript a profound work of philosophy until we obtain a better understanding of the various respects in which Climacus is a Socratic figure.
Faith and Knowledge: Remarks Inspired by Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments
Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook
In this article, I present some reflections on the relationship between faith and knowledge in some of Kierkegaard’s works, primarily the Philosophical Fragments from 1844. I ask, what the project of Climacus consists in, and proceed to show that his opposition between faith and knowledge includes a number of decisions that are neither trivial nor particularly stable. By doing so, I want to present my own doubts as to whether the opposition between faith (by Climacus connected to history, becoming and paradox) and knowledge (connected to intellectual understanding, logic, timelessness and necessity) itself is reasonable. Based on the analysis, I argue that the texts authored by Climacus presuppose a substantial acquaintance with Christian thought and doctrine. This is only indirectly acknowledged by Climacus, and perhaps incompatible with his “thought-project.” Further, I discuss whether his denial of intellectual understanding of traditional Christian thought as a path to faith giv...
"Kierkegaardian Deconstruction and the Paradoxes of Faith"
This paper argues that a properly "Christian deconstruction" of reason, for Kierkegaard, depends on the necessity of finitude and guilt and their rootedness in an existential anthropology. That is, the paradoxes of reason (perhaps practical reason in particular) that lead to reason's own self-deconstruction are precisely exposed in an existential anthropology that conceives of the human being as spirit and thus as task, and as such, inevitably finite and (ironically) powerless vis-à-vis this task. Christian deconstruction then hinges, I argue, on Kierkegaard's existential anthropology, which in turn depends upon finitude or the essential impotency of the human being vis-à-vis an ironic task of selfhood. First, I will discuss Kierkegaard's conception of the self as task from The Sickness Unto Death, as well as the conditions for the possibility of conceiving of such a self. Then I will argue that the conditions for the task of selfhood reveal an ironic paradox at the root of the task itself, and yet this paradox enables the recognition of the impossibility of such a task, allowing for the deconstruction of the self and reason and the moment of grace and decision. Finitude qua impotency and guilt prove then to be a necessity for grace and faith.
On Climacus’s “Against Reason” Thesis
Faith and Philosophy, 2017
I object to Merold Westphal's characterization in Kierkegaard's Concept of Faith (2014) of faith as "against reason." I argue that Kierkegaard scholars emphasize the tension between faith and reason more than Kierkegaard does, affirming and perpetuating a broader antagonism in our own cultural climate. I suggest that the view of faith as "transforming vision" developed by M. Jamie Ferreira and others makes better sense of the different facets of faith pointed out by Westphal and the strengths of his account (especially faith as a passion) while avoiding conceptual and practical problems with the account Westphal has recently offered.
Kierkegaard and the Search for Self-Knowledge
The European Journal of Philosophy 4 (2013), 2013
In the first part of this essay (Sections I and II), I argue that Kierkegaard's work helps us to articulate and defend two basic requirements on searching for knowledge of one's own judgements: first, that searching for knowledge whether one judges that P requires trying to make a judgement whether P; and second that, in an important range of cases, searching for knowledge of one's own judgements requires attending to how one's acts of judging are performed. In the second part of the essay (Sections III and IV), I consider two prima facie problems regarding this conception of searching for knowledge of one's own judgements. The first problem concerns how in general one can coherently try to meet both these requirements at once; the second, how in particular one can try to attend to one's own acts of judging. I show how Kierkegaard's work is alive to both these problems, and helps us to see how they can be resolved.
Despair as a Basic Form of Self-Alienation: An Outline of Kierkegaard’s Dialectics
Filozofia, 2023
My paper follows the discussion opened by Jon Stewart’s recent book on Hegel’s concept of alienation and its influence on nineteenth-century thought, specifically in the chapter devoted to the concept of alienation in S. Kierkegaard. To begin the article, before I get to the central problem I will try to classify the two basic types of alienation we can encounter in the whole of Kierkegaard’s work: the religious (or universal) alienation of the Christian from the world and the existential alienation of man from himself: despair. The core of the study is devoted to an analysis of Kierkegaard’s concept of despair, which Kierkegaard understands as one of the basic structural moments of human subjectivity. Here I will focus particularly on portraying and analyzing the spiritual and dialectical nature of despair. My main intention, however, will be to interpret despair as a fundamental form of the self-alienated self. For despair expresses a state of existence in which the self is not oneself, a state in which the self seems to be separated from its own true self. This interpretation of mine corresponds to Stewart’s view in its basic features. At the end of the paper I will attempt to outline my own understanding of despair as self-alienation within the broader dialectics of existence in Kierkegaard, using the Hegelian model of dialectics.