kierkegaard general Flashcards
the self, the ethical and suffering
- Self-consciousness is not just constituted by relationship to ‘other’
- At ethical and level of freedom, agency is fulfilled through participation in the universal
- Ethics of self-realisation/positive freedom
- The self is only itself through process of realisation
- Suffering is crucial for becoming an adult
- If you want freedom to rather than freedom from, you have to engage with negativity
- Ethical = mediation of otherness
personal context - pseudonyms
Problem of pseudonyms – to what extent is the text an expression of K’s own views?
Fear and Trembling by Johannes de Silentio (K later claims that he made a mistake in renouncing Regina. It is not clear that the Kantian-Hegelian view of ethics would be accepted by K. This work seems to be part of a dialectical move within a much wider strategy)
personal context - family
K’s father had a guilt complex because he cursed God as a child serf in Jutland and seduced the maid – whom he married (K junior’s mum)
- Wife and five children died prematurely – K senior thought this was a punishment
- Lived in guilt-induced world
As a child he was vital but physically weak – developed bitter wit as defence
- Physical weakness vs. intellectual power
- Thought was ‘the idea for which I can live or die’
personal context - engagement
Regina Olsen = engagement to eligible lady. Central event
Broke off engagement and ignited public scandal – felt a ‘divine protest’ calling him to be an ‘individual’
philosophical fragments
K starts writing – Philosophical Fragments published in 1844
- Anti-Hegelian. Rejects Hs’s idea of systems
- Particular view of Xianity in ethics – refusal to identify Xianity with Hegelian Sittlichkeit
- To be free is to be free from, not free to
- He was fascinated with vigorous immoralists like Don Juan who were living passionately
- He thought more of this stage of existence than mere conventional morality
- Those living in Sittlichkeit are not truly living
criticism of religion
- K was critical of modern society – viewed it as conformist and anti-individualist
- Attacked state Protestantism as ‘worldly well being and soft-hearted mediocrity’
- K saw himself as a missionary with the purpose of reintroducing Xianity into Christendom
- It is not doctrinal as much as existential communication with one’s self: ‘the precise opposite of speculation’
- Viewed Hegelianism as having led people to forget how to live as Xians
hegelianism summarised
- H advocated revival of natural theology
- Reason = objective structure, not just the minds of particular subjects
- H is last of great speculative Xian Platonists
hegelianism concerns on freedom and dualism
Freedom is the basis of morality
- Link to Kant and Kierkegaard – all concerned with role of freedom in morality
Hegel cannot accept Kant’s dualism
- Questions noumenal vs. phenoumenal distinction
hegels speculative theology
- Religion = knowledge possessed by the finite mind of its nature as absolute mind – in religion, finite life rises to the infinite - Hostile towards church thought
- Universe = unity of elements and philosophy
- lutheran - religion and philosophy have the same content, imaginative in religion and conceptual in philosophy
- existentialist, existence precedes essence. emphasis on the I
- but also need to presuppose an ‘other’, defined by position in society
hegels view on man and god
god is man - eternal activity of god’s self-manifestation. in self-creation, god is man
man is god - god creates man’s consciousness as an element of his. god thinks through us
more emphasis on god as process
K response to Hegel’s speculative theology
- H’s mode of religious thought threatens individual’s faith
- H’s view institutionalises religion too much
- For K, you need to recognise your individual calling
- Hegel seems to abolish faith
In the conclusion of the Postscript, K says that ‘man only begins to exist in faith’ - Before this choice has been made, reason and faith will always appear to conflict because reason alone is inadequate: ‘life must be lived forwards, but understood backwards’
Hegel’s political thought and Kierkegaard response
Hegel’s political thought
- Truth = unity of universal and subjective will
- Universal = found in the state, which is the divine idea on earth
K’s response to H’s political thought
- ‘the individual is the category through which, form a religious point of view, our age, our race must pass’
- ‘how often have I shown that fundamentally Hegel makes men into heathens…for in the animal world the individual is always less important than the race. But it is the peculiarity of the human race that just because the individual is created in the image of God the individual is above the race’
k on knowledge
In Philosophical Fragments, K took up the old Socratic paradox concerning how one can learn that which one does not already (in some sense) know
- S came to conclusion in Meno that knowledge is recollection and a sense ‘within’
- K contrasts this with the view that in Xianity, truth comes from ‘without’. A teacher is required to reveal to man that he is in error
- Contrasting with Socratic view
- JC does not simply draw out pre-existing ideas but presents radically new ideas
- Only from this point on can man distinguish truth from falsehood – the ‘moment’ is vital
- The learner is changed from total ignorance to possessing eternal knowledge and thereby becoming a new creature is a leap of faith – not a rational transition
- The learner is faced with the paradox of the incarnation – the idea that the eternal enters into the temporal
- This is a scandal to ‘reason’ – the reason for this paradox is illuminate after the leap (cf. analogy of king and maiden)
Need to recognise error to achieve this state
point of the book - general
- To attack upon Hegel as part of the Platonic succession
- Instead of cogito ergo sum, ‘being is faith’ - Necessity of faith
- Cf. use of figure of Abraham
Abraham is the father of faith and for K, he is a model of the Xian life in fear and trembling, facing the paradox and absurdity of faith
pont of the book - the ethical
Wants to challenge the idea of the sufficiency of the ethical
Faith is outside the domain of human standards of rationality
Contrast between standpoint of faith represented by Abraham and ethics
Faith is the ‘highest passion of a person’
