"Interest" in Kierkegaard's structure of consciousness

International Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 48, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 438-458

  Stokes, Patrick ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 77952103649     PISSN: 00190365     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/ipq200848463     Document Type: Review

References (49)

1. The series Kierkegaard's Writings will be referred to here according to the International Kierkegaard Commentary system of abbreviations and format (title, volume: page number) and appear here in the following order: SUD The Sickness Unto Death, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1980)
2. JC Johannes Climacus, or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985)
3. PF Philosophical Fragments, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985)
4. CUP:1 Concluding Unscientific Postscript to 'Philosophical Fragments' Volume One, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992)
5. SLW Stages on Life's Way, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988)
6. FT Fear and Trembling, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983)
7. CD Christian Discourses, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1997)
8. WL Works of Love, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1995). References to the Papirer follow the standard abbreviation system; translations follow those in the appendices to the Kierkegaard's Writings series
9. Stephen N. Dunning, "The Illusory Grandeur of Doubt: The Dialectic of Subjectivity in Johannes Climacus" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon GA: Mercer Univ. Press, 1994), p. 204
10. Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. John Cottingham (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), p. 13
11. A. J. Rudd, "Kierkegaard and the Skeptics," British Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1998): 73
12. We here follow the assumption made in most (though not all) of the secondary literature that at least Chapter I of Pars Secunda is written in Climacus's voice. This approach (exemplified by the Hongs) is criticized by commentators such as Michael Strawser, but with respect to at least some of Johannes Climacus it seems, if not indisputably correct, at least acceptable. While everything prior to Pars Secunda is written about Johannes Climacus rather than by him, the sudden cessation of the narration that characterizes the rest of the work does imply that, even if the voice is not directly that of Climacus, it represents a faithful account of his intellectual development and ideas. Michael Strawser, "Kierkegaardian Meditations on First Philosophy: A Reading of Johannes Climacus," Journal of the History of Philosophy 32 (1994): 627
13. But it is important to note that Kierkegaard is not using this as an absolute term. As Nordentoft notes, "'pure' immediacy in Kierkegaard is more a concept, an intellectual construction which is employed for analytic purposes, than the name of a factual condition in man." Kresten Nordentoft, Kierkegaard's Psychology, trans. Bruce Kirmmse (Pittsburgh PA: Duquesne Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 81-82
14. There is an obvious sympathy between this reading of Climacus and McDowell's model of experience as being conceptual "all the way out." See John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1994). Unfortunately a full discussion of this intriguing topic is beyond the scope of the present essay, though I hope at least to gesture towards some potential points of engagement
15. Landkildehus's recent discussion of McDowell and Kierkegaard initiates a topic that I think will prove important; see Søren Landkildehus, "Answering Stoicism: Kierkegaard vs. McDowell" in Acta Kierkegaardiana, Vol. 2, ed. Roman Kralik et al. (Mexico City: Sociedad Iberoamericana de Estudios Kierkegaardianos, 2007), pp. 184-92. I am grateful to Søren for our illuminating conversations on this subject
16. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp-Smith (London UK: Macmillan, 1929), p. 93
17. John W. Elrod, Being and Existence in Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Works (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975), p. 50
18. The infelicities of language here create traps for unwary Kierkegaard commentators. Stuart Dalton, for example, claims that once it acquires language, the infant "no longer experiences the world directly," yet to speak of "experiencing the world" seems too mediated a description for direct, non-"conscious" sense-reception. Dalton is very much aware of the problems of speaking about such infant "consciousness" and acknowledges that the infant's "consciousness" is "a mystery to us, and the unmediated character is a purely speculative presupposition." Yet he also uses phrases such as "[l]anguage brings an element of ideality into consciousness" that are potentially misleading by virtue of the ambiguous use of "consciousness." What exists after the acquisition of language is, on this reading at least, radically different to and discontinuous with what was there before it; yet both are here called "consciousness. " Stuart Dalton, "Johannes Climacus as Kierkegaard's Discourse on Method," Philosophy Today 47 (2003): 369
19. Indeed, the sense given to the term varies within individual works. Robert C. Roberts identifies three senses of the term within Two Ages alone, each carrying different values in the context of that work's critique of the present age. Robert C. Roberts, "Passion and Reflection" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Two Ages, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon GA: Mercer Univ. Press, 1984), p. 92
20. Or, if there is a relation without this medium, it is not the relation of opposition that properly characterizes ideality and reality. Rather, to quote Gordon Marino, "[e]xistence (qua immediacy) is simply passed over into ideality and that is the end of it. In Kierkegaard's terms there is no 'collision' between these two worlds apart, only a transition from the one into the other." Gordon D. Marino, Kierkegaard's Anthropology, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1988, p. 10
21. Stephen N. Dunning, Kierkegaard's Dialectic of Inwardness: A Structural Analysis of the Theory of Stages (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985), p. 17
22. For an excellent recent discussion of Kierkegaard and the Hegelian problem of the beginning (one that discusses in greater depth many of the themes considered here), see Daniel Watts, "The Paradox of the Beginning: Hegel, Kierkegaard and Philosophical Inquiry," Inquiry 50 (2007): 5-33
23. C. Stephen Evans, "Where There's A Will There's A Way: Kierkegaard's Theory of Action" in Writing the Politics of Difference, ed. Hugh J. Silverman (Albany NY: SUNY Press, 1991), p. 78
24. Donald Davidson, "How is Weakness of the Will Possible?" in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980), pp. 21-42
25. For Hegel, "spurious infinity" (as developed in the "Lesser Logic" of the Encyclopedia) is infinity regarded as "endless iteration" or "endless progression" as in the movement of time. This is opposed to "genuine (wahrhafte) infinity," which involves self-subsistence and self-determination rather than abstract limitlessness. See Merold Westphal, "Kierkegaard's Psychology and Unconscious Despair" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Sickness Unto Death, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon GA: Mercer Univ. Press, 1987), pp. 58-59
26. There have since been many forceful and generally successful defenses of Kierkegaard against this charge; for a comprehensive collection, see Kierkegaard After MacIntyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative and Virtue, ed. John J. Davenport and Anthony Rudd (Chicago IL: Open Court, 2001)
27. Dunning, "The Illusory Grandeur of Doubt," p. 217
28. This is also made explicit in a sketch for Johannes Climacus in Kierkegaard's journal: "Doubt arises through my becoming a relation between two; as soon as it ceases, doubt is cancelled ... it is remarkable that in the world of mind as soon as one is divided it does not become two but three" (Pap. IV B 10:2 n.d., 1842-43)
29. Confusingly, Kierkegaard uses realitet and virkelighed ("actuality") interchangeably here, as opposed to the different senses that the words have elsewhere; see the Hong's footnotes to Johannes Climacus (JC 331 n. 17)
30. Interestingly, Schopenhauer discerns important differences in sense between the German analogues of these synonyms: "Thus cause and effect are the whole essence and nature of matter; its being is its acting. The substance of everything material is therefore very appropriately called in German Wirklichkeit, a word much more expressive than Realität." Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York NY: Dover, 1969), p. 9
31. Many commentators have noted that Kierkegaard's use of modsigelse usually means something weaker than a logical contradiction and have suggested alternative translations, since the strictly logical relation implied by "contradiction" can lead to serious misinterpretations. See, e.g., John Lippitt and Daniel Hutto, "Making Sense of Nonsense: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 98 (1998): 279
32. For a detailed discussion of this distinction between these different modes of apprehending mortality, see my "The Power of Death: Retroactivity, Narrative, and Interest" in International Kierkegaard Commentary: Prefaces/Writing Sampler and Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon GA: Mercer Univ. Press, 2006), pp. 387-417
33. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Ernest C. Mossner (London UK: Penguin, 1969), p. 146
34. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Ibid. Of course, if a reader did not agree about "the thing," Hume's task would run aground precisely at this point
35. Furtak notes that Roberts uses "emotion" to refer to episodic states while "passion" picks out a stable pattern of ongoing concerns. Furtak rejects this vocabulary, appealing instead to the Hellenistic schema that distinguishes between episodic instances of emotion and the underlying commitments that express themselves in those episodes. Rick Anthony Furtak, Wisdom in Love: Kierkegaard and the Ancient Quest for Emotional Integrity (Notre Dame IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2005), p. 143 n. 2
36. Merold Westphal, Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript (West Lafayette IN: Purdue Univ. Press, 1996), p. 51
37. Westphal, Becoming a Self, p. 138
38. Edward J. Hughes, "How Subjectivity Is Truth in the 'Concluding Unscientific Postscript,'" Religious Studies 31.2 (June 1995); online version accessed August 31, 2007
39. C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript: The Religious Philosophy of Johannes Climacus (Atlantic Highlands NJ: Humanities Press, 1983), p. 56
40. A. H. Khan, "Lidenskab in Efterskrift" in Kierkegaard: Resources and Results, ed. Alastair McKinnon (Montreal, Quebec: Wilfred Laurier Univ. Press, 1982), p. 110
41. Gordon D. Marino, Kierkegaard in the Present Age (Milwaukee WI: Marquette Univ. Press, 2001), p. 19
42. M. Jaime Ferreira, Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith (Oxford UK: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 125-26
43. Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith (Ibid., p. 126
44. Myron B. Penner, "The Normative Resources of Kierkegaard's Subjectivity Principle," International Journal of Systematic Theology 1 (1999): 75
45. Mark C. Taylor, Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship: A Study of Time and the Self (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975), p. 44
46. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (London UK: Routledge, 1958), p. xxix
47. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford UK: Blackwell, 1962), p. 227
48. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Ibid., p. 237
49. Marino, Kierkegaard in the Present Age, p. 19