The normative resource of Kierkegaard's subjectivity principle

International Journal of Systematic Theology

Volumn 1, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 73-88

  Penner, Myron B ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 61149431798     PISSN: 14631652     EISSN: 14682400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1463-1652.00005     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. L. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 27.
2. S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. and ed. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), vol. 1, pp. 511 f.
3. Kierkegaard's penchant for signing pseudonyms to his earlier 'aesthetic' works opens a hermeneutical Pandora's Box - one which I do not intend to open here. Throughout the paper I will retain a sensitivity to the pseudonyms and their discrete personalities, but will also use 'Kierkegaard' interchangeably with a given pseudonym's name to refer to the ideas contained in Kierkegaard's writings.
4. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, p. 203
5. As a general concept, existence denotes a temporal unfolding and a becoming in time, inherently comprised of motion. See Kierkegaard's discussion of proving the existence {Tilvarelse) of something in time space in Philosophical Fragments, Johannes Climacus, trans. and ed. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 39ff.
6. Heidegger uses these terms in a more developed and specific way than Kierkegaard uses subjectivity, but they share a basic agreement. For Heidegger 'care' is the fundamental constituent of Dasein (the human person) with the three-fold manifestation of possibility, facticity and falling, while 'concern' denotes an individual's relations to things, not other persons. See M. Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).
7. This is not to be understood as Cartesian substance dualism.
8. See J. D. Caputo, Radical Henneneutics. Repetition, Deconstruction and the Hermeneutic Project (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 300, n. 22.
9. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1. p. 73; cf. vol. 2, pp. 243-7. Robert C. Roberts also draws this distinction in 'Existence, Emotion and Virtue: Classical Themes in Kierkegaard' in A. Hannay and G. D. Marino, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 178
10. See also Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, trans. and ed. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1967), vol. I, no. 73; vol. IV, no. 4542, 4571.
11. Kierkegaard distinguishes two kinds of existence: factual and ideal (thought, conceptual). See his discussion in Philosophical Fragments, pp. 39ff. Factual being refers to that which exists as actual, and there are no degrees of this type of being. Ideal being, or essence, can be explored for coherence and to see what logical relations it involves, but essence is conceptual and not in a necessary relationship with factual being qua actuality/existence. Kierkegaard is very careful here to avoid Anselm's error of identifying existence as a property of a thing, which Kant so cogently rebutted. See Journals, vol. I. no. 1057.
12. C. S. Evans, 'Realism and Antirealism in Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript' in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, p. 172
13. See also Evans, Kierkegaard's 'Fragments' and 'Postscript': The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1983), pp. 119f.
14. M. Westphal, Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1996), p. 116.
15. J. Heywood Thomas, 'Kierkegaard's Alternative Metaphysical Theology', History of European Ideas 12 (1990), p. 59.
16. This fits very nicely with some recent attempts at articulating the eschatological significance of narrative Christology. See R. Bauckham, The Future of Jesus Christ (Finlayson Memorial Lecture, 1996, in press).
17. Journals, vol. IV, no. 4550
18. See K. Barth, Church Dogmatics 1/2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), p. 466
19. P. Ricoeur, 'Philosophical Hermeneutics and Theological Hermeneutics', Studies in Religion 5 (1975-6), p. 25
20. See also K. Vanhoozer, 'The Spirit of Understanding: Special Revelation and General Hermeneutics' in R. Lundin, ed. , Disciplining Hermeneutics. Interpretation in Christian Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 159-63.
21. Works of Love, trans. and ed. H. V. and E. H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 227-35.
22. For example, D. R. Law in Kierkegaard as Negative Theologian (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 71. Kierkegaard may be seen as completely against epistemology only if epistemology is perceived in the very narrow way of the Enlightenment; that is, to have as its appropriate and legitimate task to ascertain and prescribe indubitable foundations for the adjudication of beliefs (as abstract, independently existing propositions). If we cease to think of epistemology in this prescriptive, infallibilist and a priori way, and instead focus on it as a descriptive, fallible task, describing how it is that some beliefs are privileged and others not, then this picture of Kierkegaard disappears.
23. See P. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 21, 301 f.
24. See L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), nos. 370, 373.
25. Journals, vol. III, no. 3127
26. Philosophical Fragments, pp. 87f
27. D. R. Law, Kierkegaard as Negative Theologian, p. 89. For Law's discussion of the senses of tro, see pp. 86-9
28. See also H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong, editorial note 43, Journals, vol. II, no. 311
29. and C. S. Evans, 'Realism and Antirealism in Kierkegaard', p. 171.
30. S. Kierkegaard, Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review, trans. and ed. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 62, 64, 68.
31. See Kierkegaard, Two Ages, pp. 62, 77.
32. C. S. Evans, Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript, p. 69.
33. C. S. Evans, Passionate Reason: Making Sense of Kierkegaard's 'Philosophical Fragments' (Indianapolis Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1992), p. 134.
34. Kierkegaard writes: 'A life-view is more than a quintessence or a sum of propositions maintained in its abstract neutrality; it is more than experience [Erfaring], which as such is always fragmentary. It is, namely, the transubstantiation of experience [Erfaringens Transubstantiation]: it is an unshakable certainty in itself won from all lived experience [Empirie]'. Early Polemical Writings, trans. and ed. J. Watkin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 76.
35. L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), p. 167.
36. L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, p. 105.
37. See M. Kober. 'Certainties of a World-Picture. The Epistemological Investigations in On Certainty', in H. Sluga and D. G. Stern, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 418f.
38. For Wittgenstein, these world-pictures are much more a function of communal interaction than Kierkegaard was willing to grant. As I understand it, these world pictures are, for Wittgenstein, the product of language-games: see On Certainty, p. 105.
39. P. Helm, Belief Policies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 58.
40. P. Helm, Belief Policies, p. 58.
41. For a sampling of current virtue epistemologies, see A. I. Goldmann, Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge, MA. : Harvard University Press, 1986)
42. J. Kvanvig, The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1992)
43. E. Sosa, Knowledge in Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
44. L. Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
45. See C. O. Schrag, The Self after Postmodernity (London: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 24-7.
46. C. O. Schrag, The Self after Postmodernity, p. 25.
47. See also 'The Kierkegaard Effect in the Shaping of Modernity' in M. J. Matǔstík and M. Westphal, eds, Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 1-17.
48. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. and ed. H. V. and E. H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 2 vols.
49. Either/Or, vol. 2, pp. 207-27
50. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, pp. 555ff
51. See also S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. and ed. H. V. and E. H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983).
52. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, p. 207
53. This is the entire point of Fragments, to which Concluding Unscientific Postscript is the conclusion. The epigraph to Fragments reads: 'Can a historical point of departure be given for an eternal consciousness; how can such a point of departure be of more than historical interest; can an eternal happiness be built on historical knowledge?' This is expanded further in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, especially chapter four (pp. 361-86).
54. S. Kierkegaard, Repetition, trans. and ed. H. V. and E. H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 149.
55. This is the subject of Kierkegaard's Works of Love.