Johannes Climacus as Kierkegaard's discourse on method

Philosophy Today

Volumn 47, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 360-377

  Dalton, Stuart ^a  

^a MONMOUTH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 60950088210     PISSN: 00318256     EISSN: 00318256     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/philtoday200347425     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. Abbreviations: DM: René Descartes, Discourse on the Method, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 111-76
2. JC: Søren Kierkegaard, Johannes Climacus, or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)
3. JP: Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. Howard and Edna Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967-1978). I will cite the volume number followed by the entry number
4. I discussed the significance of these five different conclusions in "How to Avoid Writing: Prefaces and Points of View in Kierkegaard," Philosophy Today 44 (Summer 2000): 123-36
5. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Johannes Climacus has by and large been ignored. For example, in the recent International Kierkegaard Commentary 7: Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus, ed. Robert Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1994), the editor's introduction does not mention Johannes Climacus once, and only one essay out of thirteen deals with the text in any way. It's a little odd, and misleading, that they even chose to include Johannes Climacus in the title
6. One exception to the general tendency to ignore what Johannes Climacus has to say about methodology is Gregor Malantschuk, Kierkegaard's Thought, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 160-78. But Malantschuk's reading of the methodological message in Johannes Climacus is significantly different from mine
7. Strictly speaking, Johannes Climacus does not have a pseudonym. (In fact, no author is designated on the manuscript's title page.) Because of this I have felt free to alternate between "Johannes Climacus" and "Søren Kierkegaard" in my references to the author of this text, according to what seemed appropriate in each case (and also according to my own foolish whims). Rather than being disturbed by this lack of authorial consistency, I urge the reader to adopt the attitude of "A. F...".in her/his article, "Who is the Author of Either/Or": "Most people, including the author of this article, think it is not worth the trouble to be concerned about who the author is. They are happy not to know his identity, for then they have only the book to deal with, without being bothered or distracted by his personality." Søren Kierkegaard, The Corsair Affair, ed. and trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 16
8. The comments of Per Lønning on the nature of Kierkegaard's "authority" are also very illuminating. See his "Kierkegaard: A Stumbling-Block to "Kierkegaardians," Kierkegaard Revisited, ed. Niels Cappelørn and Jon Stewart (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997), pp. 94-106
9. Currently the most complete account of these three dreams is available in John R. Cole, The Olympian Dreams and Youthful Rebellion of René Descartes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), pp. 59-88
10. Stephen N. Dunning summarizes Climacus' three different responses to the three different versions of de omnibus dubitandum est in his article "The Illusory Grandeur of Doubt: The Dialectic of Subjectivity in Johannes Climacus," International Kierkegaard Commentary 7, pp. 203-22. Dunning then goes on to contrast the account of doubt in Johannes Climacus with the account of doubt given by Judge William in Either/Or and the account by Anti-Climacus in The Sickness unto Death
11. This means that the "beginning" of philosophy can only be understood as an individual leap. M. Jamie Ferreira discusses the various leaps in Kierkegaard' s writings, including, but not limited to, the leap of faith, in his, "Faith and the Kierkegaardian Leap," The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alastair Hannay and Gordon Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 207-34
12. Michael Strawser argues that this section of the book provides one of the earliest, and most complete, sources for the arguments about the gap between language and the world that Kierkegaard worked out more extensively in die pseudonymous works that followed. See his Both/And: Reading Kierkegaard from Irony to Edification (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), pp. 74-81
13. A. J. Rudd discusses this theme of doubt as a threshold to authentic subjectivity as it plays out in the later works of Johannes Climacus, the Postscript and the Fragments. See his, "Kierkegaard and the Sceptics," British Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1998): 71-88
14. Another good general discussion of Kierkegaard's work vis-à-vis the skeptical tradition is Richard Popkin's "Kierkegaard and Scepticism," in Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Josiah Thompson (New York: Anchor, 1972), pp. 342-72
15. Julie E. Maybee takes a similar approach in her excellent article "Kierkegaard and the Madness of Reason," Man and World 29 (October 1996): 387-406, but with an even broader focus. She argues that Kierkegaard equates all objective, systematic rationality with a kind of madness that "will make you sick" (p. 387). This is a very interesting way of turning the tables on one traditional criticism of Kierkegaardian subjective thinking and subjective truth: the claim that they are not fundamentally different from insanity
16. In the introduction to Gilles Deleuze: Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco (Minneapolis: University Minnesota Press, 1997), Daniel W. Smith argues compellingly that Deleuze, like Nietzsche, is fundamentally concerned with health, and engaged in a symptomatological reading of both philosophy and literature. Kierkegaard, I believe, belongs in the same tradition
17. Robert C. Roberts discusses many of Kierkegaard' s arguments in favor of passionate engagement with the world, and opposed to detached spectatorship, in his "Passion and Reflection," International Kierkegaard Commentary 14: Two Ages, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1984), pp. 87-106
18. Robert C. Roberts also discusses issues of health and "character" in Kierkegaardian texts in his essay, "Existence, Emotion, and Virtue: Classical Themes in Kierkegaard," in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, pp. 177-206
19. Julia Watkin looks at contemporary efforts in physics to produce a theory of everything as some of the most current examples of the futility of attempting to create an existential system. See her article, "Boom! The Earth is Round! - On the Impossibility of an Existential System," International Kierkegaard Commentary: Concluding Unscientific Postscript to "Philosophical Fragments," ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997), pp. 95-114