A counterfactual statement is a conditional statement with a false antecedent. For example, the statement "If Joseph Swan had not invented the modern incandescent light bulb,
then someone else would have invented it anyway" is a counterfactual,
because in fact, Joseph Swan invented the modern incandescent light
bulb. The most immediate task concerning counterfactuals is that of
explaining their truth-conditions. As a start, one might assert that
background information is assumed when stating and interpreting
counterfactual conditionals and that this background information is just
every true statement about the world as it is (pre-counterfactual). In
the case of the Swan statement, we have certain trends in the history of
technology, the utility of artificial light, the discovery of
electricity, and so on. We quickly encounter an error with this initial
account: among the true statements will be "Joseph Swan did invent the
modern incandescent light bulb." From the conjunction of this statement
(call it "S") and the antecedent of the counterfactual ("¬S"), we can
derive any conclusion, and we have the unwelcome result that any
statement follows from any counterfactual (see the principle of explosion). Nelson Goodman takes up this and related issues in his seminal Fact, Fiction, and Forecast; and David Lewis's influential articulation of possible world theory is popularly applied in efforts to solve it.
Epistemology
Epistemological problems are concerned with the nature, scope and limitations of knowledge.
Epistemology may also be described as the study of knowledge.
Plato suggests, in his Theaetetus (210a) and Meno
(97a–98b), that "knowledge" may be defined as justified true belief.
For over two millennia, this definition of knowledge has been reinforced
and accepted by subsequent philosophers. An item of information's
justifiability, truth, and belief have been seen as the necessary and
sufficient conditions for knowledge.
In 1963, Edmund Gettier published an article in the journal Analysis,
a peer-reviewed academic journal of philosophy, entitled "Is Justified
True Belief Knowledge?" which offered instances of justified true belief
that do not conform to the generally understood meaning of "knowledge."
Gettier's examples hinged on instances of epistemic
luck: cases where a person appears to have sound evidence for a
proposition, and that proposition is in fact true, but the apparent
evidence is not causally related to the proposition's truth.
In response to Gettier's article, numerous philosophers
have offered modified criteria for "knowledge." There is no general
consensus to adopt any of the modified definitions yet proposed.
Finally, if infallibilism
is true, that would seem to definitively solve the Gettier problem for
good. Infallibilism states that knowledge requires certainty, such that,
certainty is what serves to bridge the gap so that we arrive at
knowledge, which means we would have an adequate definition of
knowledge. However, infallibilism is rejected by the overwhelming
majority of philosophers/epistemologists.
Overlooking for a moment the complications posed by Gettier problems,
philosophy has essentially continued to operate on the principle that
knowledge is justified true belief. The obvious question that this
definition entails is how one can know whether one's justification is
sound. One must therefore provide a justification for the justification.
That justification itself requires justification, and the questioning
continues interminably.
The conclusion is that no one can truly have knowledge of
anything, since it is, due to this infinite regression, impossible to
satisfy the justification element. In practice, this has caused little
concern to philosophers, since the demarcation between a reasonably
exhaustive investigation and superfluous investigation is usually clear.
Others argue for forms of coherentist systems, e.g. Susan Haack. Recent work by Peter D. Klein views knowledge as essentially defeasible. Therefore, an infinite regress is unproblematic, since any known fact may be overthrown on sufficiently in-depth investigation.
The Molyneux problem dates back to the following question posed by William Molyneux to John Locke in the 17th century: if a man born blind, and able to distinguish by touch between a cube and a globe,
were made to see, could he now tell by sight which was the cube and
which the globe, before he touched them? The problem raises fundamental
issues in epistemology and the philosophy of mind, and was widely discussed after Locke included it in the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
A similar problem was also addressed earlier in the 12th century by Ibn Tufail (Abubacer), in his philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Philosophus Autodidactus). His version of the problem, however, dealt mainly with colors rather than shapes.
Modern science may now have the tools necessary to test this
problem in controlled environments. The resolution of this problem is in
some sense provided by the study of human subjects who gain vision
after extended congenital blindness. In one such study, subjects were
unable to immediately link objects known by touch to their visual
appearance, and only gradually developed the ability to do so over a
period of days or months. This indicates that this may no longer be an unsolved problem in philosophy.
Münchhausen trilemma
The Münchhausen trilemma, also called Agrippa's trilemma, purports that it is impossible to prove any certain truth even in fields such as logic and mathematics. According to this argument, the proof of any theory rests either on circular reasoning, infinite regress, or unproven axioms.
The question hinges on whether color
is a product of the mind or an inherent property of objects. While most
philosophers will agree that color assignment corresponds to spectra of
light frequencies,
it is not at all clear whether the particular psychological phenomena
of color are imposed on these visual signals by the mind, or whether
such qualia are somehow naturally associated with their noumena.
Another way to look at this question is to assume two people ("Fred"
and "George" for the sake of convenience) see colors differently. That
is, when Fred sees the sky, his mind interprets this light signal as
blue. He calls the sky "blue." However, when George sees the sky, his
mind assigns green to that light frequency. If Fred were able to step
into George's mind, he would be amazed that George saw green skies.
However, George has learned to associate the word "blue" with what his
mind sees as green, and so he calls the sky "blue", because for him the
color green has the name "blue." The question is whether blue must be
blue for all people, or whether the perception of that particular color is assigned by the mind.
This extends to all areas of the physical reality, where the
outside world we perceive is merely a representation of what is
impressed upon the senses. The objects we see are in truth wave-emitting
(or reflecting) objects which the brain shows to the conscious self in
various forms and colors. Whether the colors and forms experienced
perfectly match between person to person, may never be known. That
people can communicate accurately shows that the order and
proportionality in which experience is interpreted is generally
reliable. Thus one's reality is, at least, compatible to another
person's in terms of structure and ratio.
The problem of moral luck is that some people are born into, live
within, and experience circumstances that seem to change their moral
culpability when all other factors remain the same.
For instance, a case of circumstantial moral luck: a poor
person is born into a poor family, and has no other way to feed himself
so he steals his food. Another person, born into a very wealthy family,
does very little but has ample food and does not need to steal to get
it. Should the poor person be more morally blameworthy than the rich
person? After all, it is not this person's fault that they were born
into such circumstances, but a matter of "luck".
A related case is resultant moral luck. For instance, two
persons behave in a morally culpable way, such as driving carelessly,
but end up producing unequal amounts of harm: one strikes a pedestrian
and kills him, while the other does not. That one driver caused a death
and the other did not is no part of the drivers' intentional actions;
yet most observers would likely ascribe greater blame to the driver who
killed (compare consequentialism and
choice).
The fundamental question of moral luck is how our moral responsibility is changed by factors over which we have no control.
Moral knowledge
Are
moral facts possible, what do they consist in, and how do we come to
know them? Rightness and wrongness seem to be strange kinds of entities,
and different from the usual properties of things in the world, such as
wetness, being red, or solidity. Richmond Campbell has outlined these
kinds of issues in his encyclopedia article "Moral Epistemology".
In particular, he considers three alternative explanations of
moral facts as: theological, (supernatural, the commands of God);
non-natural (based on intuitions); or simply natural properties (such as
leading to pleasure or to happiness). There are cogent arguments
against each of these alternative accounts, he claims, and there has not
been any fourth alternative proposed. So the existence of moral
knowledge and moral facts remains dubious and in need of further
investigation. But moral knowledge supposedly already plays an important
part in our everyday thinking, in our legal systems and criminal
investigations.
What are numbers, sets, groups, points,
etc.? Are they real objects or are they simply relationships that
necessarily exist in all structures? Although many disparate views exist
regarding what a mathematical object is, the discussion may be roughly
partitioned into two opposing schools of thought: platonism, which asserts that mathematical objects are real, and formalism, which asserts that mathematical objects are merely formal constructions. This dispute may be better understood when considering specific examples, such as the "continuum hypothesis". The continuum hypothesis has been proven independent of the ZF axioms of set theory,
so within that system, the proposition can neither be proven true nor
proven false. A formalist would therefore say that the continuum
hypothesis is neither true nor false, unless you further refine the
context of the question. A platonist, however, would assert that there
either does or does not exist a transfinite set with a cardinality less than the continuum but greater than any countable set. So, regardless of whether it has been proven unprovable, the platonist would argue that an answer nonetheless does exist.
The problem of universals refers to the question of whether properties exist, and if so, what they are. Properties are qualities or relations or names that two or more entities have in common. The various kinds of properties, such as qualities and relations, are referred to as universals. For instance, one can imagine three cup holders on a table that have in common the quality of being circular or exemplifying circularity, or bear the same name, "circular cup" or two daughters that have in common being the female offsprings of Frank. There are many such properties, such as being human, red, male or female, liquid, big or small, taller than, father of, etc. While philosophers agree that human beings talk and think about properties, they disagree on whether these universals exist in reality or merely in thought, speech and sight.
Otherwise known as the "paradox
of the heap", the question regards how one defines a "thing." Is a bale
of hay still a bale of hay if you remove one straw? If so, is it still a
bale of hay if you remove another straw? If you continue this way, you
will eventually deplete the entire bale of hay, and the question is: at
what point is it no longer a bale of hay? While this may initially seem
like a superficial problem, it penetrates to fundamental issues
regarding how we define objects. This is similar to Theseus' paradox and the continuum fallacy.
Theseus paradox
Also known as the ship of Theseus,
this is a classical paradox on the first branch of metaphysics,
ontology (philosophy of existence and identity). The paradox runs thus:
There used to be the great ship of Theseus which was made out of, say,
100 parts. Each part has a single corresponding replacement part in the
ship's storeroom. The ship then sets out on a voyage. The ship sails
through monster-infested waters, and every day, a single piece is
damaged and has to be replaced. On the hundredth day, the ship sails
back to port, the voyage completed. Through the course of this journey,
everything on the ship has been replaced. So, is the ship sailing back
home the ship of Theseus or no?
If yes, consider this: the broken original parts are repaired and
re-assembled. Is this the ship of Theseus or no? If no, let us name the
ship that sails into port "The Argo". At what point (during the
journey) did the crew of the Theseus become the crew of the Argo? And
what ship is sailing on the fiftieth day? If both the ships trade a
single piece, are they still the same ships?
This paradox is a minor variation of the Sorites Paradox above,
and has many variations itself. Both sides of the paradox have
convincing arguments and counter-arguments, though no one is close to
proving it completely.
People have a rather clear idea what if-then means. In formal logic
however, material implication defines if-then, which is not consistent
with the common understanding of conditionals. In formal logic, the
statement "If today is Saturday, then 1+1=2" is true. However, '1+1=2'
is true regardless of the content of the antecedent; a causal or
meaningful relation is not required. The statement as a whole must be
true, because 1+1=2 cannot be false. (If it could, then on a given
Saturday, so could the statement). Formal logic has shown itself
extremely useful in formalizing argumentation, philosophical reasoning,
and mathematics. The discrepancy between material implication and the
general conception of conditionals however is a topic of intense
investigation: whether it is an inadequacy in formal logic, an ambiguity
of ordinary language, or as championed by H. P. Grice, that no discrepancy exists.
The mind–body problem
is the problem of determining the relationship between the human body
and the human mind. Philosophical positions on this question are
generally predicated on either a reduction of one to the other, or a
belief in the discrete coexistence of both. This problem is usually
exemplified by Descartes, who championed a dualistic picture. The
problem therein is to establish how the mind and body communicate in a dualistic framework. Neurobiology and emergence
have further complicated the problem by allowing the material functions
of the mind to be a representation of some further aspect emerging from
the mechanistic properties of the brain. The brain essentially stops
generating conscious thought during deep sleep; the ability to restore
such a pattern remains a mystery to science and is a subject of current
research (see also neurophilosophy).
Cognition and AI
This problem actually defines a field, however its pursuits are specific and easily stated. Firstly, what are the criteria for intelligence? What are the necessary components for defining consciousness? Secondly, how can an outside observer test for these criteria? The "Turing Test"
is often cited as a prototypical test of intelligence, although it is
almost universally regarded as insufficient. It involves a conversation
between a sentient being and a machine, and if the being can't tell he
is talking to a machine, it is considered intelligent. A well trained
machine, however, could theoretically "parrot" its way through the test.
This raises the corollary question of whether it is possible to artificially create consciousness (usually in the context of computers or machines), and of how to tell a well-trained mimic from a sentient entity.
A related field is the ethics of artificial intelligence, which addresses such problems as the existence of moral personhood of AIs, the possibility of moral obligations to
AIs (for instance, the right of a possibly sentient computer system to
not be turned off), and the question of making AIs that behave ethically
towards humans and others.
The hard problem of consciousness is the question of what consciousness is and why we have consciousness as opposed to being philosophical zombies.
The adjective "hard" is to contrast with the "easy" consciousness
problems, which seek to explain the mechanisms of consciousness ("why"
versus "how", or final cause versus efficient cause).
The hard problem of consciousness is questioning whether all beings
undergo an experience of consciousness rather than questioning the
neurological makeup of beings.
Intuitively, it seems to be the case that we know certain things with
absolute, complete, utter, unshakable certainty. For example, if you
travel to the Arctic and touch an iceberg, you know that it would feel
cold. These things that we know from experience are known through
induction. The problem of induction in short; (1) any inductive
statement (like the sun will rise tomorrow) can only be deductively
shown if one assumes that nature is uniform. (2) the only way to show
that nature is uniform is by using induction. Thus induction cannot be
justified deductively.
'The problem of demarcation' is an expression introduced by Karl Popper
to refer to 'the problem of finding a criterion which would enable us
to distinguish between the empirical sciences on the one hand, and
mathematics and logic as well as "metaphysical" systems on the other'.
Popper attributes this problem to Kant. Although Popper mentions mathematics and logic, other writers focus on distinguishing science from metaphysics.
Does a world independent of human beliefs and representations exist?
Is such a world empirically accessible, or would such a world be forever
beyond the bounds of human sense and hence unknowable? Can human
activity and agency change the objective structure of the world? These
questions continue to receive much attention in the philosophy of
science. A clear "yes" to the first question is a hallmark of the
scientific realism perspective. Philosophers such as Bas van Fraassen have important and interesting answers to the second question. In addition to the realism vs. empiricism axis of debate, there is a realism vs. social constructivism axis which heats many academic passions. With respect to the third question, Paul Boghossian's Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism is a powerful critique of social constructivism, for instance. Ian Hacking's The Social Construction of What?
constitutes a more moderate critique of constructivism, which usefully
disambiguates confusing polysemy of the term "constructivism."
Philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion
encompasses attempts within metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and
other major philosophical fields to philosophically analyze concepts
within religion, the nature of religion itself, and alternatives to
religion.
Does God exist? A rich variety of arguments including forms of the contingency argument, ontological argument, and moral argument have been proposed by philosophers like Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Gödel, and Aquinas for the existence of God
throughout history. Arguments for God usually refer to some form of
metaphysically or logically necessary maximally great being distinct
from individual deities, although philosophers have also proposed
different concepts of God. Wittgenstein and Kant,
on the other hand, defended religious belief while doubting that
rational arguments could prove God's existence. Philosophers have also
considered objections to the existence of God like the problem of evil and divine hiddenness.
What is God like? Philosophers like John Stuart Mill and Aquinas addressed the question of what the nature of God is if God exists. Some of the key disagreements concern the doctrine of impassibility and the coherency of a maximally great being or properties like omnipotence.
Can religious belief be justified? When? According to the Cambridge
Dictionary of Philosophy, religious epistemology "investigates the
epistemic status of propositional attitudes about religious claims."
Philosophers like Kant, Kierkegaard, William James, and Alvin Plantinga have debated stances towards the epistemic status of religious belief like reformed epistemology, fideism, and evidentialism.
What is the relationship between science and religion? Philosophers like Paul Feyerabend, A. C. Grayling, and Alvin Plantinga have debated whether they are in conflict, incompatible, incommensurable, or independent.
Metaphilosophy
Philosophical progress
A prominent question in metaphilosophy is that of whether or not philosophical progress occurs and more so, whether such progress in philosophy is even possible. It has even been disputed, most notably by Ludwig Wittgenstein, whether genuine philosophical problems actually exist. The opposite has also been claimed, for example by Karl Popper,
who held that such problems do exist, that they are solvable, and that
he had actually found definite solutions to some of them.
David Chalmers divides inquiry into philosophical progress in metaphilosophy into three questions.
The Existence Question: is there progress in philosophy?
The Comparison Question: is there as much progress in philosophy as in science?
The Explanation Question: why isn't there more progress in philosophy?
Metaphilosophy, sometimes called the philosophy of philosophy, is "the investigation of the nature of philosophy". Its subject matter includes the aims of philosophy, the boundaries of philosophy, and its methods.
Thus, while philosophy characteristically inquires into the nature of
being, the reality of objects, the possibility of knowledge, the nature
of truth, and so on, metaphilosophy is the self-reflective inquiry into
the nature, aims, and methods of the activity that makes these kinds of
inquiries, by asking what is philosophy itself, what sorts of
questions it should ask, how it might pose and answer them, and what it
can achieve in doing so. It is considered by some to be a subject prior
and preparatory to philosophy, while others see it as inherently a part of philosophy, or automatically a part of philosophy while others adopt some combination of these views.
The interest in metaphilosophy led to the establishment of the journal Metaphilosophy in January 1970.
Although the term metaphilosophy and explicit attention to
metaphilosophy as a specific domain within philosophy arose in the 20th
century, the topic is likely as old as philosophy itself, and can be
traced back at least as far as the works of Ancient Greeks and Ancient Indian Nyaya.
Relationship to philosophy
Some philosophers consider metaphilosophy to be a subject apart from philosophy, above or beyond it, while others object to that idea. Timothy Williamson argues that the philosophy of philosophy is "automatically part of philosophy", as is the philosophy of anything else. Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu
write that the separation of first- from second-order study has lost
popularity as philosophers find it hard to observe the distinction.
As evidenced by these contrasting opinions, debate persists as to
whether the evaluation of the nature of philosophy is 'second-order
philosophy' or simply 'plain philosophy'.
Many philosophers have expressed doubts over the value of metaphilosophy. Among them is Gilbert Ryle:
"preoccupation with questions about methods tends to distract us from
prosecuting the methods themselves. We run as a rule, worse, not better,
if we think a lot about our feet. So let us ... not speak of it all but
just do it."
Terminology
The designations metaphilosophy and philosophy of philosophy have a variety of meanings, sometimes taken to be synonyms, and sometimes seen as distinct.
Morris Lazerowitz claims to have coined the term 'metaphilosophy' around 1940 and used it in print in 1942. Lazerowitz proposed that metaphilosophy is 'the investigation of the nature of philosophy'. Earlier uses have been found in translations from French. The term is derived from Greek word meta μετά ("after", "beyond", "with") and philosophía φιλοσοφία ("love of wisdom").
The term 'metaphilosophy' is used by Paul Moser
in the sense of a 'second-order' or more fundamental undertaking than
philosophy itself, in the manner suggested by Charles Griswold:
"The distinction between philosophy
and metaphilosophy has an analogue in the familiar distinction between
mathematics and metamathematics."
— Paul K. Moser, Metaphilosophy, p. 562
This usage was considered nonsense by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who rejected the analogy between metalanguage and a metaphilosophy. As expressed by Martin Heidegger:
"When we ask, "What is philosophy?" then we are speaking about
philosophy. By asking in this way we are obviously taking a stand above
and, therefore, outside of philosophy. But the aim of our question is
to enter into philosophy, to tarry in it, to conduct ourselves in its
manner, that is, to "philosophize". The path of our discussion must,
therefore, not only have a clear direction, but this direction must at
the same time give us the guarantee that we are moving within philosophy
and not outside of it and around it."
— Martin Heidegger, Was Ist Das – die Philosophie? p. 21
Some other philosophers treat the prefix meta as simply meaning 'about...', rather than as referring to a metatheoretical 'second-order' form of philosophy, among them Rescher and Double. Others, such as Williamson, prefer the term 'philosophy of philosophy'
instead of 'metaphilosophy' as it avoids the connotation of a
'second-order' discipline that looks down on philosophy, and instead
denotes something that is a part of it.
Joll suggests that to take metaphilosophy as 'the application of the
methods of philosophy to philosophy itself' is too vague, while the view
that sees metaphilosophy as a 'second-order' or more abstract
discipline, outside philosophy, "is narrow and tendentious".
In the analytical tradition,
the term "metaphilosophy" is mostly used to tag commenting and research
on previous works as opposed to original contributions towards solving philosophical problems.
Writings
Ludwig Wittgenstein
wrote about the nature of philosophical puzzles and philosophical
understanding. He suggested philosophical errors arose from confusions
about the nature of philosophical inquiry. In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein wrote that there is not a metaphilosophy in the sense of a metatheory of philosophy.
C. D. Broad
distinguished Critical from Speculative philosophy in his "The
Subject-matter of Philosophy, and its Relations to the special
Sciences," in Introduction to Scientific Thought, 1923. Curt Ducasse, in Philosophy as a Science, examines several views of the nature of philosophy, and concludes that philosophy has a distinct subject matter: appraisals. Ducasse's view has been among the first to be described as 'metaphilosophy'.
Henri Lefebvre in Métaphilosophie
(1965) argued, from a Marxian standpoint, in favor of an "ontological
break", as a necessary methodological approach for critical social
theory (whilst criticizing Louis Althusser's
"epistemological break" with subjective Marxism, which represented a
fundamental theoretical tool for the school of Marxist structuralism).
Paul Moser
writes that typical metaphilosophical discussion includes determining
the conditions under which a claim can be said to be a philosophical
one. He regards meta-ethics, the study of ethics, to be a form of metaphilosophy, as well as meta-epistemology, the study of epistemology.
Topics
Many sub-disciplines of philosophy have their own branch of 'metaphilosophy'.
However, some topics within 'metaphilosophy' cut across the various
subdivisions of philosophy to consider fundamentals important to all its
sub-disciplines. Some of these are mentioned below.
Cognitivity
Systematicity
Methodology
Historicity
Self-reference and Self-application
Immanence and non-immanence
Disagreement and diversity
Primacy of the practical
Philosophy good and bad
Philosophy and expertise
Ends of philosophy
Death of philosophy
Anti-philosophies
Philosophy and assertion
Philosophy and exposition
Philosophy and style
Philosophy as literature
Literature as philosophy
Philosophical beauty
Philosophy as science
Philosophy and related fields and activities
Philosophy and argument
Philosophy and wisdom
Philosophy and metaphilosophy
Philosophy and the folk
Philosophy and 'primitive' life
Philosophy and philosophers
Philosophy and pedagogy
Aims
Some philosophers (e.g. existentialists, pragmatists)
think philosophy is ultimately a practical discipline that should help
us lead meaningful lives by showing us who we are, how we relate to the
world around us and what we should do. Others (e.g. analytic philosophers)
see philosophy as a technical, formal, and entirely theoretical
discipline, with goals such as "the disinterested pursuit of knowledge
for its own sake".
Other proposed goals of philosophy include discovering the absolutely
fundamental reason of everything it investigates, making explicit the
nature and significance of ordinary and scientific beliefs, and unifying and transcending the insights given by science and religion. Others proposed that philosophy is a complex discipline because it has 4 or 6 different dimensions.
Boundaries
Defining philosophy and its boundaries is itself problematic; Nigel Warburton has called it "notoriously difficult". There is no straightforward definition, and most interesting definitions are controversial. As Bertrand Russell wrote:
"We may note one peculiar feature
of philosophy. If someone asks the question what is mathematics, we can
give him a dictionary definition, let us say the science of number, for
the sake of argument. As far as it goes this is an uncontroversial
statement... Definitions may be given in this way of any field where a
body of definite knowledge exists. But philosophy cannot be so defined.
Any definition is controversial and already embodies a philosophic
attitude. The only way to find out what philosophy is, is to do
philosophy."
While there is some agreement that philosophy involves general or fundamental topics, there is no clear agreement about a series of demarcation issues, including:
that between first-order and second-order investigations. Some
authors say that philosophical inquiry is second-order, having concepts,
theories and presupposition as its subject matter; that it is "thinking
about thinking", of a "generally second-order character"; that philosophers study, rather than use, the concepts that structure our thinking. However, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy
warns that "the borderline between such 'second-order' reflection, and
ways of practicing the first-order discipline itself, is not always
clear: philosophical problems may be tamed by the advance of a
discipline, and the conduct of a discipline may be swayed by
philosophical reflection".
that between philosophy and empirical science.
Some argue that philosophy is distinct from science in that its
questions cannot be answered empirically, that is, by observation or
experiment. Some analytical philosophers argue that all meaningful empirical questions are to be answered by science, not philosophy. However, some schools of contemporary philosophy such as the pragmatists and naturalistic epistemologists
argue that philosophy should be linked to science and should be
scientific in the broad sense of that term, "preferring to see
philosophical reflection as continuous with the best practice of any
field of intellectual enquiry".
that between philosophy and religion. Some argue that philosophy is distinct from religion in that it allows no place for faith or revelation:
that philosophy does not try to answer questions by appeal to
revelation, myth or religious knowledge of any kind, but uses reason,
without reference to sensible observation and experiments". However,
philosophers and theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and Peter Damian have argued that philosophy is the "handmaiden of theology" (ancilla theologiae).
Philosophical method (or philosophical methodology) is the study of
how to do philosophy. A common view among philosophers is that
philosophy is distinguished by the ways that philosophers follow in
addressing philosophical questions. There is not just one method that
philosophers use to answer philosophical questions.
Recently, some philosophers have cast doubt about intuition as a
basic tool in philosophical inquiry, from Socrates up to contemporary
philosophy of language. In Rethinking Intuition various thinkers discard intuition as a valid source of knowledge and thereby call into question 'a priori' philosophy. Experimental philosophy is a form of philosophical inquiry that makes at least partial use of empirical research—especially opinion polling—in order to address persistent philosophical questions. This is in contrast with the methods found in analytic philosophy, whereby some say a philosopher will sometimes begin by appealing to his or her intuitions on an issue and then form an argument with those intuitions as premises. However, disagreement about what experimental philosophy can accomplish is widespread and several philosophers have offered criticisms.
One claim is that the empirical data gathered by experimental
philosophers can have an indirect effect on philosophical questions by
allowing for a better understanding of the underlying psychological
processes which lead to philosophical intuitions. Some analytic philosophers like Timothy Williamson
have rejected such a move against 'armchair' philosophy–i.e.,
philosophical inquiry that is undergirded by intuition–by construing
'intuition' (which they believe to be a misnomer) as merely referring to
common cognitive faculties: If one is calling into question
'intuition', one is, they would say, harboring a skeptical attitude
towards common cognitive faculties–a consequence that seems
philosophically unappealing. For Williamson, instances of intuition are
instances of our cognitive faculties processing counterfactuals (or subjunctive conditionals) that are specific to the thought experiment or example in question.
Progress
A
prominent question in metaphilosophy is that of whether or not
philosophical progress occurs and more so, whether such progress in
philosophy is even possible. It has even been disputed, most notably by Ludwig Wittgenstein, whether genuine philosophical problems actually exist. The opposite has also been claimed, for example by Karl Popper,
who held that such problems do exist, that they are solvable, and that
he had actually found definite solutions to some of them.
David Chalmers divides inquiry into philosophical progress in metaphilosophy into three questions.
The Existence Question: is there progress in philosophy?
The Comparison Question: is there as much progress in philosophy as in science?
The Explanation Question: why isn't there more progress in philosophy?
Principia Ethica is a 1903 book by the British philosopher G. E. Moore, in which the author insists on the indefinability of "good" and provides an exposition of the naturalistic fallacy. Principia Ethica
was influential, and Moore's arguments were long regarded as
path-breaking advances in moral philosophy, though they have been seen
as less impressive and durable than his contributions in other fields.
Summary
Moore
suggests that ethics is about three basic questions: (1) "what is
good?", (2) "what things are good or bad in themselves?", and (3) "what
is good as a means?".
What is good
The
first question is concerned with the nature or definition of the term
"good". Moore insists that this term is simple and indefinable. But two forms of goodness have to be distinguished: things that are good in themselves or intrinsically good and things that are good as causal means to other things. Our knowledge of value in itself comes from self-evident intuitions and is not inferred from other things, unlike our knowledge of goodness as a means or of duties. Among the things that are good in themselves, there is an important difference between the value of a whole and the values of its parts.
It is often assumed that the value of a whole just consists in the sum
of the values of its parts. Moore rejects this view and insists that it
fails for certain types of wholes: so-called "organic wholes". Cases of retributive justice are examples of organic wholes.
Such cases are wholes comprising two negative things, a morally vicious
person and pain inflicted on this person as punishment. But the value on the whole is less negative (or maybe even positive) than the sum of the values of the two parts.Again we have to depend on our intuitions to determine how the
intrinsic value of a whole differs from the sum of the values of its
parts.
What things are good or bad in themselves
The
second question of ethics asks about what kinds of things are good in
themselves. Moore discusses various traditional answers to this
question, especially naturalism, which he contrasts with his own
approach. The main problem with naturalism in ethics is its tendency to
identify value with natural properties, like pleasure in hedonism or being more evolved in "Evolutionistic Ethics". He accuses such positions of committing the naturalistic fallacy in trying to define the term "good", an unanalyzable term according to Moore, in terms of natural properties. If such definitions were true, then they would be uninformative tautologies, "'Pleasure is good' would be equivalent to 'Pleasure is pleasure'". But, Moore argues, this is not the case, it is not a tautology but an open question whether such sentences are true. This is why the definition above and naturalism with it fails.
Moore agrees with hedonism that pleasure is good in itself, but
it is not the only intrinsically valuable thing. Another important good
that is valuable in itself is beauty, for example, the beauty of
mountains, rivers and sunsets. Moore proposes a thought experiment, the "method of isolation", as a test to determine whether something has intrinsic value. The test is meant to remove any considerations of the thing being good as a means by isolating the intrinsic values.
The method consists in imagining a world that contains only the thing
in question, for example, a world composed only of a beautiful
landscape. Moore argues that such a world would be better than an ugly
world, even though no one is there to enjoy it in either case, which is
to show that pleasure is not the only thing good in itself.
What is good as a means
Having
answered the second question of ethics, Moore proceeds to the third
question: "What is good as a means?". This question is of particular
relevance since it includes the domain traditionally associated with
ethics: "What ought we to do?".
For this it is necessary to further limit the third question since the
main interest is in "actions which it is possible for most men to
perform, if only they will them; and with regard to these, it does not
ask merely, which among them will have some good or bad result, but
which, among all the actions possible to volition at any moment, will
produce the best total result". So right acts are those producing the most good.
The difficulty with this is that the consequences of most actions are
too vast for us to properly take into account, especially the long-term
consequences. Because of this, Moore suggests that the definition of duty is limited to what generally produces better results than probable alternatives in a comparatively near future.
As the reference to causal means suggests, a detailed empirical
investigation into the consequences of actions is necessary to determine
what our duties are, it is not accessible to self-evident intuitive
insight. Whether a given rule of action turns out to be a duty depends to some extent on the conditions of the corresponding society but duties agree mostly with what common-sense recommends.Virtues, like honesty, can in turn be defined as permanent dispositions to perform duties.
Reception
Principia Ethica was influential, and helped to convince many people that claims about morality cannot be derived from statements of fact. Clive Bell considered that through his opposition to Spencer and Mill, Moore had freed his generation from utilitarianism. Principia Ethica was the bible of the Bloomsbury Group, and the philosophical foundation of their aesthetic values. Leonard Woolf considered that it offered a way of continuing living in a meaningless world. Moore's aesthetic idea of the organic whole provided artistic guidance for modernists like Virginia Woolf, and fed into Bell's concept of Significant form.
Principia Ethica also had a powerful influence on modernism through the anti-empiricism of T. E. Hulme.
Socioculturally, a line can be traced from Principia Ethica to the liberal thought of Roy Jenkins, as evidenced in his 1959 pamphlet Is Britain Civilised? and actuated in his subsequent Home Office reforms which established much of the institutional framework for the permissive society in England.
Moore's ethical intuitionism has been seen as opening the road for noncognitive views of morality, such as emotivism.
C. P. Snow
sketched the enduring influence of Moore on his followers' group-belief
in pleasure: "They tried to get the maximum of pleasure out of their
personal relations. If this meant triangles
or more complicated geometrical figures, well then, one accepted that
too....If you didn't believe in pleasure, you couldn't be civilized".
Principia Ethica has been seen by Geoffrey Warnock as less impressive and durable than Moore's contributions in fields outside ethics. John Maynard Keynes, an early devotee of Principia Ethica, would in his 1938 paper 'My Early Beliefs' repudiate as Utopian Moore's underlying belief in human reasonableness and decency.
The philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard has been a major influence in the development of 20th-century philosophy, especially existentialism and postmodernism. Søren Kierkegaard was a 19th-century Danish philosopher who has been labeled by many as the "Father of Existentialism",
although there are some in the field who express doubt in labeling him
an existentialist to begin with. His philosophy also influenced the
development of existential psychology.
Kierkegaard criticized aspects of the philosophical systems that were brought on by philosophers such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel before him and the Danish Hegelians. He was also indirectly influenced by the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He measured himself against the model of philosophy which he found in Socrates, which aims to draw one's attention not to explanatory systems, but rather to the issue of how one exists.
One of Kierkegaard's recurrent themes is the importance of
subjectivity, which has to do with the way people relate themselves to
(objective) truths. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments,
he argues that "subjectivity is truth" and "truth is subjectivity."
Kierkegaard conveys that most essentially, truth is not just a matter of
discovering objective facts. While objective facts are important, there
is a second and more crucial element of truth, which involves how one
relates oneself to those matters of fact. Since how one acts is, from
the ethical perspective, more important than any matter of fact, truth
is to be found in subjectivity rather than objectivity.
Many of Kierkegaard's earlier writings from 1843 to 1846 were written pseudonymously. In the non-pseudonymous The Point of View of My Work as an Author,
he explained that the pseudonymous works are written from perspectives
which are not his own: while Kierkegaard himself was a religious author,
the pseudonymous authors wrote from points of view that were aesthetic
or speculative. One exception to this is Anti-Climacus, a pseudonymous author developed after the writing of The Point of View:
Anti-Climacus is a religious author who writes from a Christian
perspective so ideal that Kierkegaard did not wish it to be attributed
to himself.
Because the pseudonymous authors write from perspectives which
are not Kierkegaard's own, some of the philosophy mentioned in this
article may not reflect Kierkegaard's own beliefs. Just as other
philosophers bring up viewpoints in their essays to discuss and
criticize them, Kierkegaard assigns pseudonyms to explore a particular
viewpoint in-depth, which may take up a whole book or two in some
instances, and Kierkegaard, or another pseudonym, critiques that
position. For example, the author, Johannes Climacus is not a Christian and he argues from a non-Christian viewpoint. Anti-Climacus,
as mentioned earlier, is a Christian to a high degree and he argues
from a devout Christian viewpoint. Kierkegaard places his beliefs
in-between these two authors.
Most of Kierkegaard's later philosophical and religious writings
from 1846 to 1855 were written and authored by himself, and he assigned
no pseudonyms to these works. Subsequently, these works are considered
by most scholars to reflect Kierkegaard's own beliefs. Where appropriate, this article will mention the respective author, pseudonymous or not.
Themes in his philosophy
Alienation
Alienation
is a term philosophers apply to a wide variety of phenomena, including
any feeling of separation from, and discontent with, society; feeling
that there is a moral breakdown in society; feelings of powerlessness in
the face of the solidity of social institutions; the impersonal,
dehumanised nature of large-scale and bureaucratic social organisations.
Kierkegaard recognizes and accepts the notion of alienation, although
he phrases it and understands it in his own distinctly original terms.
For Kierkegaard, the present age is a reflective age—one that values
objectivity and thought over action, lip-service to ideals rather than
action, discussion over action, publicity and advertising over reality,
and fantasy over the real world. For Kierkegaard, the meaning of values
has been removed from life, by lack of finding any true and legitimate
authority. Instead of falling into any claimed authority, any "literal"
sacred book or any other great and lasting voice, self-aware humans must
confront an existential uncertainty.
Humanity has lost meaning because the accepted criterion of
reality and truth is ambiguous and subjective thought—that which cannot
be proven with logic, historical research, or scientific analysis.
Humans cannot think out choices in life, we must live them; and even
those choices that we often think about become different once life
itself enters into the picture. For Kierkegaard, the type of objectivity
that a scientist or historian might use misses the point—humans are not
motivated and do not find meaning in life through pure objectivity.
Instead, they find it through passion, desire, and moral and religious
commitment. These phenomena are not objectively provable—nor do they
come about through any form of analysis of the external world; they come
about through a direct relationship between one and the external world.
Here Kierkegaard's emphasis is on relationship rather than analysis.
This relationship is a way of looking at one's life that evades
objective scrutiny.
Kierkegaard's analysis of the present age uses terms that resemble but are not exactly coincident with Hegel and Marx's theory of alienation.
However Kierkegaard expressly means that human beings are alienated
from God because they are living too much in the world. Individuals need
to gain their souls from the world because it actually belongs to God. Kierkegaard has no interest in external battles as Karl Marx does. His concern is about the inner fight for faith.
Let us speak further about the wish
and thereby about sufferings. Discussion of sufferings can always be
beneficial if it addresses not only the self-willfulness of the sorrow
but, if possible, addresses the sorrowing person for his upbuilding. It
is a legitimate and sympathetic act to dwell properly on the suffering,
lest the suffering person become impatient over our superficial
discussion in which he does not recognize his suffering, lest he for
that reason impatiently thrust aside consolation and be strengthened in
double-mindedness. It certainly is one thing to go out into life with
the wish when what is wished becomes the deed and the task; it is
something else to go out into life away from the wish.
Abraham had to leave his ancestral home and emigrate to an alien
nation, where nothing reminded him of what he loved—indeed, sometimes it
is no doubt a consolation that nothing calls to mind what one wishes to
forget, but it is a bitter consolation for the person who is full of
longing. Thus a person can also have a wish that for him contains
everything, so that in the hour of the separation, when the pilgrimage
begins, it is as if he were emigrating to a foreign country where
nothing but the contrast reminds him, by the loss, of what he wished; it
can seem to him as if he were emigrating to a foreign country even if
he remains at home perhaps in the same locality—by losing the wish just
as among strangers, so that to take leave of the wish seems to him
harder and more crucial than to take leave of his senses.
Apart from this wish, even if he still does not move from the spot, his
life's troublesome way is perhaps spent in useless sufferings, for we
are speaking of those who suffer essentially, not of those who have the
consolation that their sufferings are for the benefit of a good cause,
for the benefit of others. It was bound to be thus—the journey to the
foreign country was not long; in one moment he was there, there in that
strange country where the suffering ones meet, but not those who have
ceased to grieve, not those whose tears eternity cannot wipe away, for
as an old devotional book so simply and movingly says, "How can God dry
your tears in the next world if you have not wept?" Perhaps someone else
comes in a different way, but to the same place.
— Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong 1993 pp. 102–103
Albert Camus wrote about the idea of being a stranger in the world but reversed Kierkegaard's meaning. A stranger
for Camus was someone living in the world who is forced to exist in a
Christian way even though the individual does not want to be a
Christian. But Kierkegaard was discussing the Christian who wants to be a
Christian living in a world that has abandoned Christianity. Both Camus
and Kierkegaard had in common an equal distaste for a Christian
Democracy where all are forced to take a positive part in Christianity
because freedom of choice would be lacking and in a non-Christian
Democracy where none are allowed to take an active part in Christianity.
Kierkegaard was against voting about Christianity, for him, Christ was
the only authority. Camus called "the existential attitude philosophical
suicide." This is how he put it in The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Writings:
Now, it is admitted that the absurd is the contrary of hope, it is seen that existential thought for Chestov [Lev Shestov,
1866–1938] presupposes the absurd but proves it only to dispel it. Such
subtlety of thought is a conjuror's emotional trick. When Chestov
elsewhere sets his absurd in opposition to current morality and reason,
he calls it truth and redemption. Hence, there is basically in that
definition of the absurd an approbation that Chestov grants it. What is
perceptible in Leo Chestov will be perhaps even more so in Kierkegaard.
To be sure, it is hard to outline clear propositions in so elusive a
writer. But, despite apparently opposed writings, beyond the pseudonyms,
the tricks, and the smiles, can be felt throughout that work, as it
were, the presentiment (at the same time as the apprehension) of a truth
which eventually bursts forth in the last works: Kierkegaard likewise
takes the leap. Kierkegaard's view that despair is not a fact but a
state: the very state of sin. For sin is what alienates from God. The
absurd, which is the metaphysical state of the consciousness of man,
does not lead to God. Perhaps this notion will become clearer if I risk
this shocking statement: the absurd is sin without God. It is a matter
of living in that state of the absurd. I am taking the liberty at this
point of calling the existential attitude philosophical suicide. But
this does not imply a judgment. It is a convenient way of indicating the
movement by which a thought negates itself and tends to transcend
itself in its very negation. For the existential negation is their God.
To be precise, that god is maintained only through the negation of human
reason. (Let me assert again: it is not the affirmation of God that is
questioned here, but rather the logic leading to that affirmation.)
— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays p. 26–32 Vintage books 1955 Alfred A Knopf
Kierkegaard put it this way in Three Edifying Discourses 1843 and Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846):
Getting the majority vote on one's
side and one's God-relationship transformed into a speculative
enterprise on the basis of probability and partnership and fellow
shareholders is the first step toward becoming objective.
— Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Hong p. 66.
The love which covers a multitude
of sins in never deceived. When the heart is niggardly, when one gives
with one eye and with seven eyes looks to see what one will get in
return, then one easily discovers a multitude of sins. But when the
heart is filled with love, then the eye is never deceived; for love when
it gives, does not scrutinize the gift, but its eye is fixed on the
Lord. When the heart is filled with envy, then the eye has power to call
forth uncleanness even in the pure; but when love dwells in the heart,
then the eye has the power to foster the good in the unclean; but this
eye does not see the evil but the pure, which it loves and encourages it
by loving it. Certainly there is a power in this world which by its
words turns good into evil, put there is a power above which turns the
evil into good; that power is the love which covers a multitude of sins.
When hate dwells in the heart, then sin lies at a man's door, and its
manifold desires exist in him; but when love dwells in the heart, then
sin flees far away, and he sees it no more. When disputes, malice,
wrath, quarrels, dissensions, factions fill the heart, does one then
need to go far in order to discover the multitudinousness of sin, or
does a man need to love very long to produce these outside of himself!
But when joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness and temperance dwell in the heart, what wonder, then, that a
man, even if he were surrounded by a multitude of sins, remains an
alien, a stranger, who understands only a very little about the customs
of the country, even if these were explained to him? Would not this,
then, be a covering of the multitude of sins?
— Three Edifying Discourses 1843, Swenson translation 1943 p. 69
Love does not seek its own. Love
does not seek its own, for there are no mine and yours in love. But
"mine" and "yours" are only relational specifications of "one's own";
thus, if there are no mine and yours, there is no "one's own" either.
But if there is no "one's own" at all, then it is of course impossible
to seek one's own. Justice is identified by its giving each his own,
just as it also in turn claims its own. This means that justice pleads
the cause of its own, divides and assigns, determines what each can
lawfully call his own, judges and punishes if anyone refuses to make any
distinction between mine and yours. The individual has the right to so
as he pleases with this contentious and yet legally entitled mine; and
if he seeks his own in no other way than that which justice allows,
justice has nothing with which to reproach him and has no right to
upbraid him for anything. As soon as someone is defrauded of his own, or
as soon as someone defrauds another of his own, justice intervenes,
because it safeguards the common security in which everyone has his own,
which he rightfully has.-But sometimes a change intrudes, a revolution,
a war, an earthquake, or some such terrible misfortune, and everything
is confused. Justice tries in vain to secure for each person his own; it
cannot maintain the distinction between mine and yours; in the
confusion it cannot keep the balance and therefore throws away the
scales-it despairs! Terrible spectacle! Yet does not love in a certain
sense, even if in the most blissful way, produce the same confusion? But
love, it too is an event, the greatest of all, yet also the happiest.
Love is a change, the most remarkable of all, but the most desirable-in
fact we say in a very good sense that someone who is gripped by love is
changed or becomes changed. Love is a revolution, the most profound of
all, but the most blessed!
— Works of Love, 1847, Hong 1995 pp. 264–265
Abstraction
An element of Kierkegaard's critique of modernity in his socio-political work, Two Ages, is the mention of money—which he calls an abstraction. An abstraction is something that only has a reality in an ersatz
reality. It is not tangible, and only has meaning within an artificial
context, which ultimately serves devious and deceptive purposes. It is a
figment of thought that has no concrete reality, neither now nor in the future.
How is money an abstraction? Money gives the illusion that it has
a direct relationship to the work that is done. That is, the work one
does is worth so much, equals so much money. In reality, however, the
work one does is an expression of who one is as a person; it expresses
one's goals in life and associated meaning. As a person, the work one
performs is supposed to be an external realization of one's relationship
to others and to the world. It is one's way of making the world a
better place for oneself and for others. What reducing work to a
monetary value does is to replace the concrete reality of one's everyday
struggles with the world —to give it shape, form and meaning— with an
abstraction. Kierkegaard lamented that "a young man today would scarcely
envy another his capacities or skill or the love of a beautiful girl or
his fame, no, but he would envy him his money. Give me money, the young
man will say, and I will be all right." But Kierkegaard thinks this emphasis on money leads to a denial of the gifts of the spirit to those who are poor and in misery.
Do not forget to do good and to
share – Hebrews 13.16 – But do not forget either that this incessant
talk by worldliness about beneficence and benevolence and generosity and
charitable donations and gift upon gift is almost merciless. Ah, let
the newspaper writers and tax collectors and parish beadles talk about
generosity and count and count; but let us never ignore that
Christianity speaks essentially of mercifulness, that Christianity would
least of all be guilty of mercilessness, as if poverty and misery not
only needed money etc. but also were excluded from the highest, from
being able to be generous, beneficent, benevolent. But people prattle
and prate ecclesiastically-worldly and worldly-ecclesiastically about
generosity, beneficence-but forget, even in the sermon, mercifulness.
Preaching should indeed be solely and only about mercifulness. If you
know how to speak effectually about this, then generosity will follow of
itself and come by itself accordingly as the individual is capable of
it. But bear in mind, that if a person raised money, money, money by
speaking about generosity-bear this in mind, that by being silent about
mercifulness he would be acting mercilessly toward the poor and
miserable person for whom he procured relief by means of the money of
wealthy generosity. Bear this I mind, that if poverty and misery disturb
us with their pleas, we can of course manage to get help for them
through generosity; but bear this in mind, that it would be much more
appalling if we constrained poverty and misery "to hinder our prayers,"
as Scripture says (1 Peter 3:7), by grumbling against us to God-because
we were atrociously unfair to poverty and misery by not telling that
they are able to practice mercifulness. We shall now adhere to this
point in this discourse about mercifulness and guard ourselves against
confusing mercifulness with what is linked to external conditions, that
is, what love as such does not have in its power, whereas it truly has
mercifulness in its power just as surely as it has a heart in its bosom.
It does not follow that because a person has a heart in his bosom he
has money in his pocket, but the first is still more important and
certainly is decisive with regard to mercifulness.
— Works of Love Hong 1995 pp. 315–316
Below are three quotes concerning Kierkegaard's idea of abstraction
which cannot be thought about without thinking about concretion. He
moves from the world historical, the general, to the single individual,
the specific. The first from the esthete and the second from the
ethicist in Either/Or and the third from the book that explained all his previous works; Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
As has already been noted above, all classic
productions stand equally high, because each one stands infinitely
high. If, despite this fact, one were to attempt to introduce an order
of rank into the classic procession, one would evidently have to choose
as a basis for such a distinction, something that was not essential; for
if the basis were essential, the difference itself would become an
essential difference; from that it would again follow that the word
"classic" was wrongly predicated of the group as a whole. The more
abstract the idea is, the smaller the probability of a numerous
representation. But how does the idea become concrete? By being
permeated with the historicalconsciousness.
The more concrete the idea, the greater the probability. The more
abstract the medium, the smaller the probability; the more concrete, the
greater. But what does it mean to say that the medium is concrete,
other than to say it is language, or is seen in approximation to
language; for language is the most concrete of all media. The idea, for
example, which comes to expression in sculpture is wholly abstract, and
bears no relation to the historical; the medium through which it is
expressed is likewise abstract, consequently there is a great
probability that the section of the classic works which includes
sculpture will contain only a few. In this I have the testimony of time
and experience on my side. If, on the other hand, I take a concrete idea
and a concrete medium, then it seems otherwise. Homer is indeed a classic poet,
but just because the epic idea is a concrete idea, and because the
medium is language, it so happens that in the section of the classics
which contains the epic, there are many epics conceivable, which are all
equally classic, because history constantly furnishes us with new epic
material. In this too, I have the testimony of history and the assent of
experience.
— Either/Or Part I, Swenson p. 49, 53
The two positions touched on here
could be regarded as attempts to actualize an ethical life-view. The
reason that they do not succeed is that the individual has chosen
himself in his isolation or has chosen himself abstractly. To say it in
other words, the individual has not chosen himself ethically. He therefore has no connection with actuality,
and when that is the case no ethical way of life can be put into
practice. But the person who chooses himself ethically chooses himself
concretely as this specific individual, and he achieves this concretion
because this choice is identical with the repentance, which ratifies the choice.
The individual with these capacities, these inclinations, these drives,
these passions, influenced by this specific social milieu, as this
specific product of a specific environment. But as he becomes aware of all this, he takes upon himself responsibility
for all of it. He does not hesitate over whether he will take this
particular thing or not, for he knows that if he does not do it
something much more important will be lost. In the moment of choice, he
is in complete isolation, for he withdraws from his social milieu, and
yet at the same moment he is in absolute continuity, for he chooses
himself as a product. And this choice is freedom's choice in such a way
that in choosing himself as product he can just as well be said to
produce himself. At the moment of choice, he is at the point of
consummation, for his personality is consummating itself, and yet at the
same moment he is at the very beginning, because he is choosing himself
according to his freedom.
— Either/Or Part II, Hong p. 251
When in pure thinking mention is
made of an immediate unity of reflection-in-itself and
reflection-in-the-other and of the annulment of this immediate unity,
then something must indeed come between the elements of the immediate
unity. What is this? Yes, it is time. But time cannot be assigned a
place within pure thinking. What, then, do annulment and transition and a
new unity signify? What, if anything, does it mean to think in such a
way that one always merely makes a show of it because everything that is
said is absolutely revoked? And what does it mean not to admit that one
thinks this way but then continually to proclaim from the housetops the
positive truth of this pure thinking? Just as existence has joined
thinking and existing, inasmuch as an existing person is a thinking
person, so are there two media: the medium of abstraction and the medium
of actuality. But pure thinking is yet a third medium, very recently
invented. It begins, it is said, after the most exhaustive abstraction.
Pure thinking is-what shall I say-piously or thoughtlessly unaware of
the relation that abstraction still continually has to that from which
it abstracts. Here in this pure thinking there is rest for every doubt;
here is the eternal positive truth and whatever one cares to say. This
means that pure thinking is a phantom. And if Hegelian philosophy is
free from all postulates, it has attained this with one insane
postulate: the beginning of pure thinking. For the existing person,
existing is for him his highest interest, and his interestedness in
existing in his actuality. What actuality is cannot be rendered in the
language of abstraction. Actuality is an inter-esse [between
being] between thinking and being in the hypothetical unity of
abstraction. Abstraction deals with possibility and actuality, but its
conception of actuality is a false rendition, since the medium is not
actuality but possibility. Only by annulling actuality can abstraction
grasp it, but to annul it is precisely to change it into possibility.
Within abstraction everything that is said about actuality in the
language of abstraction is said within possibility. That is, in the
language of actuality all abstraction is related to actuality as a
possibility, not to an actuality within abstraction and possibility.
Actuality, existence, is the dialectical element in a trilogy, the
beginning and end of which cannot be for an existing person, who qua existing is in the dialectical
element. Abstraction merges the trilogy. Quite right. But how does it
do it? Is abstraction a something that does it, or is it not the act of
the abstractor? But the abstractor is, after all, an existing person,
and as an existing person is consequently in the dialectical element,
which he cannot mediate or merge, least of all absolutely, as long as he
is existing. If he does do it, then this must be related as a
possibility to actuality, to the existence which he himself is. He must
explain how he goes about it-that is, how he as an existing person goes
about it, or whether he ceases to be an existing person, and whether an
existing person has a right to do that. As soon as we begin to ask such
questions, we are asking ethically and are maintaining the claim of the
ethical upon the existing person, which cannot be that he is supposed to
abstract from existence, but that he is supposed to exist, which is
also the existing person's highest interest.
— Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Vol 1, pp. 314–315, Hong translation
Death
Death
is inevitable and temporally unpredictable. Kierkegaard believed that
individuals needed to sincerely and intensely come to realize the truth
of that fact in order to live passionately. Kierkegaard accuses society
of being in death-denial. Even though people see death all around them
and grasp as an objective fact that everyone dies, few people truly
understand, subjectively and inwardly, that they will die someday. For
example, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript,
Kierkegaard notes that people never think to say, "I shall certainly
attend your party, but I must make an exception for the contingency that
a roof tile happens to blow down and kill me; for in that case, I
cannot attend."
This is jest as far as Kierkegaard is concerned. But there is also
earnestness involved in the thought of death. Kierkegaard said the
following about death in his Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1844:
We shall not decide which life
fights the good fight most easily, but we all agree that every human
being ought to fight the good fight, from which no one is shut out, and
yet this is so glorious that if it were granted only once to a past
generation under exceptional circumstances-yes, what a description envy
and discouragement would then know how to give! The difference is about
the same as that in connection with the thought of death. As soon as a
human being is born, he begins to die. But the difference is that there
are some people for whom the thought of death comes into existence with
birth and is present to them in the quiet peacefulness of childhood and
the buoyancy of youth; whereas others have a period in which this
thought is not present to them until, when the years run out, the years
of vigor and vitality, the thought of death meets them on their way.
Who, now, is going to decide which life was easier, whether it was the
life of those who continually lived with a certain reserve because the
thought of death was present to them or the life of those who so
abandoned themselves to life that they almost forgot the existence of
death?
— Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 280
Dread or anxiety
For Kierkegaard's author, Vigilius Haufniensis, anxiety/dread/angst
(depending on the translation and context) is unfocused fear.
Haufniensis uses the example of a man standing on the edge of a tall
building or cliff. From this height he can see all the possibilities of
life. He's reflecting on what he could become if he only threw himself
into the power of his own choice. As long as he stands there he stands
at the crossroads of life, unable to make a decision and live within its
boundaries. The mere fact that one has the possibility and freedom to
do something, even the most terrifying of possibilities, triggers
immense feelings of dread. Haufniensis called this our "dizziness of
freedom."
Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss
becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in
his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence, anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit
the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying
hold of finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs to dizziness.
Further than this, psychology
cannot and will not go. In that very moment everything is changed, and
freedom, when it again rises, sees that it is guilty. Between these two
moments lies the leap, which no science has explained and which no science can explain. He who becomes guilty in anxiety becomes as ambiguously guilty as it is possible to become.
— The Concept of Anxiety, p. 61
In The Concept of Anxiety, Haufniensis focuses on the first anxiety experienced by man: Adam's
choice to eat from God's forbidden tree of knowledge or not. Since the
concepts of good and evil did not come into existence before Adam ate
the fruit, which is now dubbed original sin,
Adam had no concept of good and evil, and did not know that eating from
the tree was evil. What he did know was that God told him not to eat
from the tree. The anxiety comes from the fact that God's prohibition
itself implies that Adam is free and that he could choose to obey God or
not. After Adam ate from the tree, sin was born. So, according to
Kierkegaard, anxiety precedes sin, and it is anxiety that leads Adam to
sin. Haufniensis mentions that anxiety is the presupposition for
hereditary sin.
However, Haufniensis mentions that anxiety is a way for humanity
to be saved as well. Anxiety informs us of our choices, our
self-awareness and personal responsibility, and brings us from a state
of un-self-conscious immediacy to self-conscious reflection. (Jean-Paul Sartre
calls these terms pre-reflexive consciousness and reflexive
consciousness.) An individual becomes truly aware of his or her
potential through the experience of dread. So, anxiety may be a
possibility for sin, but anxiety can also be a recognition or
realization of one's true identity and freedoms.
Whoever has learned to be anxious
in the right way has learned the ultimate. … Anxiety is freedom's
possibility, and only such anxiety is through faith absolutely
educative, because it consumes all finite ends and discovers all their
deceptiveness. And no Grand Inquisitor
has such dreadful torments in readiness as anxiety has, and no secret
agent knows as cunningly as anxiety to attack his suspect in his weakest
moment or to make alluring the trap in which he will be caught, and no
discerning judge understands how to interrogate and examine the accused
as does anxiety, which never lets the accused escape, neither through
amusement, nor by noise, nor during work, neither by day nor by night.
— The Concept of Anxiety, pp. 155–156
Despair
Most emphatically in The Sickness Unto Death,
Kierkegaard's author argues that the human self is a composition of
various aspects that must be brought into conscious balance: the finite,
the infinite, a consciousness of the "relationship of the two to
itself," and a consciousness of "the power that posited" the self. The
finite (limitations such as those imposed by one's body or one's
concrete circumstances) and the infinite (those capacities that free us
from limitations such as imagination) always exist in a state of
tension. That tension between two aspects of the "self" that must be
brought into balance. When the self is out of balance, i.e., has the
wrong understanding of who it is because it conceives itself too much in
terms of its own limiting circumstances (and thus fails to recognize
its own freedom to determine what it will be) or too much in terms of
what it would like to be, (thus ignoring its own circumstances), the
person is in a state of despair.
Notably, Anti-Climacus says one can be in despair even if one feels
perfectly happy. Despair is not just an emotion, in a deeper sense it is
the loss of self, i.e., it describes the state when one has the wrong
conception of oneself.
Is despair a merit or a defect?
Purely dialectically it is both. If one were to think of despair only in
the abstract, without reference to some particular despairer, one would
have to say it is an enormous merit. The possibility of this sickness
is man's advantage over the beast, and it is an advantage which
characterizes him quite otherwise than the upright posture, for it
bespeaks the infinite erectness or loftiness of his being spirit. The
possibility of this sickness is man's advantage over the beast; to be
aware of this sickness is the Christian's advantage over natural man; to
be cured of this sickness is the Christian's blessedness.
— The Sickness Unto Death, p. 45
In Either/Or, A and Judge William each has one epistolary novel in two volumes. The A
is an aesthete well aware that he can use the power of interpretation
to define who he is and what he takes to be valuable. He knows he can
shape and reshape his own self-identity. Nothing binds him to his
relationships. Nothing binds him to his past actions. In the end though,
he also knows he lacks a consistent understanding of who he is. He
lacks a self that resists his own power of reinterpretation. His older
friend Judge William, argues that a deeper concept of selfhood is
discovered as one commits to one's actions, and takes ownership of the
past and present. A concept of oneself, as this particular human being,
begins to take form in one's own consciousness.
Another perspective, one in which an individual can find some
measure of freedom from despair, is available for the person with
religious "faith." This attunes the individual so that he or she can
recognize what has always been there: a self to be realized within the
circumstances it finds itself right now, i.e., this inner attunement
brings about a sort of synthesis between the infinite and the finite.
In Fear and Trembling, Johannes de Silentio argues that the choice of Abraham
to obey the private, unethical, commandment of God to sacrifice his son
reveals what faith entails: he directs his consciousness absolutely
toward "the absolute" rather than the merely ethical, i.e., he practices
an inner spirituality that seeks to be "before god" rather than seeking
to understand himself as an ethically upright person. His God requires
more than being good, he demands that he seek out an inner commitment to
him. If Abraham were to blithely obey, his actions would have no
meaning. It is only when he acts with fear and trembling that he demonstrates a full awareness that murdering a son is absolutely wrong, ethically speaking.
Despair has several specific levels that a person can find themselves, each one further in despair than the last as laid out in The Sickness Unto Death.
The first level is "The despair that is ignorant of being despair
or the despairing ignorance of having a self and an eternal self."
Essentially this level is one which has the wrong conception of what a
self is, i.e., is ignorant of how to realize the self one already
potentially is. In this sense, the person does not recognize his own
despair because he often measures the success of his life based on
whether he himself judges himself to be happy. Regardless of whether you
know you are in despair or not, Kierkegaard asserts, you can still be
in that state. He notes that this is the most common in the world.
The next level of despair is "The despair that is conscious of
being despair and therefore is conscious of having a self in which there
is something eternal and then either in despair does not will to be
itself or in despair wills to be itself." This becomes further
subdivided into three categories: the despair not to will or want to be
oneself, the despair not to will to be a self, and lowest, the despair
to wish for a new self. These three divisions are mostly the self-worth
the person has and the amount to which they understand their own
despair. The despair to not be oneself is pretty straightforward. A
person sees themself as unworthy and as such does not see themself as
worthy before something they do not understand. The despair not to be a
self is deeper, because to not wish to be a self is to wish to not have a
relation to God or at the very least see one's relation to God as
unworthy, and thus shrink from it. The lowest form of this group,
however, is the desire to be a new self. This is logically the deepest
form as it assumes the deepest understanding of one's despair. Once in
despair, without a complete relation to God one will always be in
despair, so to be in this level one understands the permanence of the
despair. The despair in this group arises from the nature of sensate
things and physical desires. These three sub groups are also grouped
under the heading "Despair over the earthly."
The second level of conscious despair under the heading "Despair
over the eternal." Someone in this level views themself in light of
their own weakness. Unlike in the upper level, this weakness is
understood and as such, instead of turning to faith and humbling oneself
before God, they despair in their own weakness and unworthiness. In
this sense, they despair over the eternal and refuse to be comforted by
the light of God.
The last and lowest form of despair is the desire "In despair to
will to be oneself." This last form of despair is also referred to by
Kierkegaard as "demonic despair" (Note that the term demonic is used in
the Classical Greek Sense, not the modern sense). In this form of
despair, the individual finds him or herself in despair, understands
they are in despair, seeks some way to alleviate it, and yet no help is
forthcoming. As a result, the self becomes hardened against any form of
help and "Even if God in heaven and all the angels offered him aid, he
would not want it." At this level of despair the individual revels in
their own despair and sees their own pain as lifting them up above the
base nature of other humans who do not find themselves in this state.
This is the least common form of despair and Kierkegaard claims it is
mostly found in true poets. This despair can also be called the despair
of defiance, as it is the despair that strikes out against all that is
eternal. One last note is that as one travels further down the forms of
despair, the number of people in each group becomes fewer.
Ethics
In Fear and Trembling, Johannes de Silentio analyzes Abraham's action to sacrifice Isaac. Silentio argues that Abraham is a knight of faith.
Many philosophers who initially read Kierkegaard, especially Kierkegaard's (written under the pseudonym of Johannes de Silentio) Fear and Trembling, often come to the conclusion that Kierkegaard supports a divine command law of ethics. The divine command theory is a metaethical
theory which claims moral values are whatever is commanded by a god or
gods. However, Kierkegaard is not arguing that morality is created by God; instead, he would argue that a divine command from God transcends
ethics. This distinction means that God does not necessarily create
human morality: it is up to us as individuals to create our own morals
and values. But any religious person must be prepared for the event of a
divine command from God that would take precedence over all moral and
rational obligations. Kierkegaard called this event the teleological suspension of the ethical. Abraham, the knight of faith, chose to obey God unconditionally, and was rewarded with his son, his faith, and the title of Father of Faith. Abraham transcended ethics and leaped into faith.
But there is no valid logical argument one can make to claim that
morality ought to be or can be suspended in any given circumstance, or
ever. Thus, Silentio believes ethics and faith are separate stages of
consciousness. The choice to obey God unconditionally is a true
existential 'either/or' decision faced by the individual. Either one
chooses to live in faith (the religious stage) or to live ethically (the
ethical stage).
In Either/Or, Kierkegaard insists that the single individual has ethical responsibility
of his life. However, everyone wants to enjoy themselves and ethics
gets in the way of a person's enjoyment of life if taken to extremes.
This results in a battle between those who want to live for pleasure and
those who demand an ethical existence. But Kierkegaard always points
toward the religious goal, an "eternal happiness", or the salvation of the soul as the highest good. He says, be whatever you want, but remember that your soul belongs to God, not to the world.
By now you have easily seen that in his life the ethical individual goes through stages we previously set forth as separate stages. He is going to develop in his life the personal, the civic, the religious
virtues, and his life advances through his continually translating
himself from one stage to another. As soon as a person thinks that one
of these stages is adequate and that he dares to concentrate on it
one-sidedly, he has not chosen himself ethically but has failed to see
the significance of either isolation or continuity and above all has not
grasped that the truth lies in the identity of the two. The person who
has ethically chosen and found himself possess himself defined in his
entire concretion. He then possesses himself as an individual who has these capacities, these passions, these inclinations, these habits,
who is subject to these external influences, who is influenced in one
direction thus and in another thus. Here he then possesses himself as a
task in such a way that it is chiefly to order, shape, temper, inflame,
control-in short, to produce an evenness in the soul, a harmony, which
is the fruit of the personal virtues.
— Either/Or Part 2, Hong p. 262
Resignation has made the individual face or has seen to it that he face toward an eternal happiness as the τέλος
("end", "purpose", or "goal"). This τέλος is not an element among other
elements. Thus the both-and of mediation is not much better, even
though less naïve, than the previously described jovial chatter that
includes everything. At the moment of resignation, of collecting
oneself, of choice the individual is allowed to salute the absolute
τέλος—but then, then comes the mediation. So, too, a dog can be taught
to walk on two legs for a moment but then, then comes the mediation, and
the dog walks on four legs—mediation also does that. Spiritually
understood, a human being's upright walk is his absolute respect for the
absolute τέλος, otherwise he walks on all fours. When it is a matter of
relative elements mediation has its significance (that they are all
equal before mediation), but when it is a matter of the absolute end or
goal, mediation means that the absolute τέλος is reduced to a relative
τέλος. It is not true, either, that the absolute τέλος becomes concrete
in the relative ends, because resignation's absolute distinction will
at every moment safeguard the absolute τέλος against all fraternizing.
It is true that the individual oriented toward the absolute τέλος, is in
the relative ends, but he is not in them in such a way that the
absolute τέλος is exhausted in them. It is true that before God and
before the absolute τέλος we are all equal, but it is not true that God
or the absolute τέλος is equal with everything else for me or for a
particular individual. It may be very commendable for a particular
individual to be a councilor of justice, a good worker in the office,
no.1 lover in the society, almost a virtuoso on the flute, captain of
the popinjay shooting club, superintendent of the orphanage, a noble and
respected father-in short, a devil of a fellow who can both-and has
time for everything. But let the councilor take care that he does not
become too much a devil of a fellow and proceed to do both all this and
have time to direct his life toward the absolute τέλος. In other words,
this both-and means that the absolute τέλος
is on the same level with everything else. But the absolute τέλος has
the remarkable quality of wanting to be the absolute τέλος at every
moment. If, then, at the moment of resignation, of collecting oneself,
of choice, an individual has understood this, it surely cannot mean that
he is supposed to have forgotten it the next moment. Therefore, as I
said before, resignation remains in the individual and the task is so
far from getting the absolute τέλος mediated
into all sorts of both-and that, on the contrary, it is to aim at the
form of existence that permanently has the pathos of the great moment.
In Works of Love and Purity of Heart, Kierkegaard skillfully examines Christian ethics and the maxim, Love Thy Neighbour. Kierkegaard stressed that it was Christianity that "discovered the neighbor".
Test it, place as the middle term
between the lover and the beloved the neighbor, whom one shall love,
place as a middle term between two friends the neighbor, whom one shall
love, and you will immediately see jealousy. Yet the neighbor is
self-denial's middle term that steps in between self-love's I and I, but
also between erotic love's and friendship's I and the other I. ....
Love for the neighbor is therefore the eternal equality in loving.
Equality is simply not to make distinctions and eternal equality is
unconditionally not to make the slightest distinction, unqualifiedly not
to make the slightest distinction. The essential Christian is itself
too weighty, in its movements too earnest to scurry about, dancing, in
the frivolity of such facile talk about the higher, highest, and the
supremely highest. Think of the most cultured person, one of whom we all
admiringly say, "He is so cultured!" Then think of Christianity, which
says to him, "You shall love the neighbor!" of course, a certain social
courtesy, a politeness toward all people, a friendly condescension
toward inferiors, a boldly confident attitude before the mighty, a
beautifully controlled freedom of spirit, yes, this is culture—do you
believe that it is also loving the neighbor? With the neighbor you have
the equality of a human being before God. God is the middle term.
— Works of Love, 1847, Hong p. 44–61
Individuality
For Kierkegaard, true individuality
is called selfhood. Becoming aware of our true self is our true task
and endeavor in life—it is an ethical imperative, as well as preparatory
to a true religious understanding. Individuals can exist at a level
that is less than true selfhood. We can live, for example, simply in
terms of our pleasures—our
immediate satisfaction of desires, propensities, or distractions. In
this way, we glide through life without direction or purpose. To have a
direction, we must have a purpose that defines for us the meaning of our
lives. Kierkegaard puts it this way in Either/Or:
Here, then, I have your view of
life, and, believe me, much of your life will become clear to you if you
will consider it along with me as thought-despair. You are a hater of
activity in life-quite appropriately, because if there is to be meaning
in it life must have continuity, and this your life does not have. You
keep busy with your studies, to be sure; you are even diligent; but it
is only for your sake, and it is done with as little teleology
as possible. Moreover, you are unoccupied; like the laborers in the
Gospel standing idle in the marketplace, you stick your hands in your
pocket and contemplate life. Now you rest in despair. Nothing concerns you;
you step aside for nothing; "If someone threw a roof tile down I would
still not step aside." You are like a dying person. You die daily, not
in the profound, earnest sense in which one usually understands these
words, but life has lost its reality and you "Always count the days of
your life from one termination-notice to the next." You let everything
pass you by; nothing makes any impact. But then something suddenly comes
along that grips you, an idea, a situation, a young girl's smile, and
now you are "involved," for just on certain occasions you are not
"involved," so at other times you are "at your service" in every way.
Wherever there is something going on you join in. You behave in life as
you usually do in a crowd. "You work yourself into the tightest group,
see to it, if possible, to get yourself shoved up over the others so
that you come to be above them, and as soon as you are up there you make
yourself as comfortable as possible, and in this way you let yourself
be carried through life." But when the crowd is gone, when the event is
over, you again stand on the street corner and look at the world.
— Either/Or Part II p. 195–196, 272ff
In Sickness Unto Death
specifically Kierkegaard deals with the self as a product of relations.
In this sense, a human results from a relation between the Infinite
(Noumena, spirit, eternal) and Finite (Phenomena, body, temporal). This
does not create a true self, as a human can live without a "self" as he
defines it. Instead, the Self or ability for the self to be created from
a relation to the Absolute or God (the Self can only be realized
through a relation to God) arises as a relation between the relation of
the Finite and Infinite relating back to the human. This would be a
positive relation.
An individual person, for Kierkegaard, is a particular that no
abstract formula or definition can ever capture. Including the
individual in "the public" (or "the crowd" or "the herd") or subsuming a
human being as simply a member of a species is a reduction of the true
meaning of life for individuals. What philosophy or politics try to do
is to categorize and pigeonhole individuals by group characteristics,
each with their own individual differences. In Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1843 Kierkegaard says the differences aren't important, the likeness with God is what brings equality.
In the hallowed places, in every
upbuilding view of life, the thought arises in a person's soul that help
him to fight the good fight with flesh and blood, with principalities
and powers, and in the fight to free himself for equality before God,
whether this battle is more a war of aggression against the differences
that want to encumber him with worldly favoritism or a defensive war
against the differences that want to make him anxious in worldly
perdition. Only in this way is equality the divine law, only in this way
is the struggle the truth, only in this way does the victory have
validity- only when the single individual fights for himself with
himself within himself and does not unseasonably presume to help the
whole world to obtain external equality, which is of very little
benefit, all the less so because it never existed, if for no other
reason than that everyone would come to thank him and become unequal
before him, only in this way is equality the divine law.
— Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, by Soren Kierkegaard Hong, p. 143
Kierkegaard's critique of the modern age, therefore, is about the
loss of what it means to be an individual. Modern society contributes to
this dissolution of what it means to be an individual. Through its
production of the false idol
of "the public", it diverts attention away from individuals to a mass
public that loses itself in abstractions, communal dreams, and
fantasies. It is helped in this task by the media and the mass
production of products to keep it distracted. Even the fight for
temporal equality is a distraction. In Works of Love he writes:
To bring about similarity among
people in the world, to apportion to people, if possible equally, the
conditions of temporality, is indeed something that preoccupies
worldliness to a high degree. But even what we may call the
well-intentioned worldly effort in this regard never comes to an
understanding with Christianity. Well-intentioned worldliness remains
piously, if you will, convinced that there must be one temporal
condition, one earthly dissimilarity—found by means of calculations and
surveys or in whatever other way—that is equality.
— Works of Love, 1847, Hong 1995 pp. 71–72, see pp. 61–90
Although Kierkegaard attacked "the public", he is supportive of communities:
In community, the individual is,
crucial as the prior condition for forming a community. … Every
individual in the community guarantees the community; the public is a
chimera, numerality is everything…
— Søren Kierkegaard, Journals
Pathos (passion)
For
Kierkegaard, in order to apprehend the absolute, the mind must
radically empty itself of objective content. What supports this radical
emptying, however, is the desire for the absolute. Kierkegaard names
this desire Passion.
In line with this philosophy, some scholars have drawn similarities between the Stoics concept of Apatheia
and Subjective Truth as the highest form of Wisdom. For the Stoics,
Pathos (Passion) is a Perturbation which man has to overcome in a
similar manner to Kierkegaard's concept of Objective Truth.
According to Kierkegaard, the human self desires that which is beyond reason. Desire itself appears to be a desire for the infinite, as Plato once wrote. Even the desire to propagate, according to Plato, is a kind of desire for immortality—that is, we wish to live on in time through our children and their children. Erotic love
itself appears as an example of this desire for something beyond the
purely finite. It is a taste of what could be, if only it could continue
beyond the boundaries of time and space.
As the analogy implies, humans seek something beyond the here and now.
The question remains, however, why is it that human pathos or passion is
the most precious thing? In some ways, it might have to do with our
status as existential beings. It is not thought that gets us through
life—it is action; and what motivates and sustains action is passion,
the desire to overcome hardships, pain, and suffering. It is also
passion that enables us to die for ideals in the name of a higher
reality. While a scientist might see this as plain emotion or simple
animal desire, Kierkegaard sees it as that which binds to the source of
life itself. For Kierkegaard all Christian action should have its ground
in love, which is a passion.
If anyone is unwilling to learn
from Christianity to love himself in the right way, he cannot love the
neighbor either. He can perhaps hold together with another or a few
other persons, "through thick and thin," as it is called, but this is by
no means loving the neighbor. To love yourself in the right way and to
love the neighbor correspond perfectly to one another, fundamentally
they are one and the same thing. When the Law's as yourself has wrested from you the self-love that Christianity sadly enough must presuppose
to be in every human being, then you actually have learned to love
yourself. The Law is therefore: you shall love yourself in the same way
as you love your neighbor when you love him as yourself.
Whoever has any knowledge
of people will certainly admit that just as he has often wished to be
able to move them to relinquish self-love, he has also had to wish that
it were possible to teach them to love themselves. When the bustler
wastes his time and powers in the service of the futile, wikt:inconsequential:inconsequential pursuits, is that not because he has not learned rightly to love himself? When the light-minded person throws himself almost like a nonentity into the folly of the moment and makes nothing of it, is this not because he does not know how to love himself rightly?
When the depressed person desires to be rid of life, indeed of
himself, is this not because he is unwilling to learn earnestly and
rigorously to love himself? When someone surrenders to despair
because the world or another person has faithlessly left him betrayed,
what then is his fault (his innocent suffering is not referred to here)
except not loving himself in the right way? When someone
self-tormentingly thinks to do God a service by torturing himself, what
is his sin except not willing to love himself in the right way? And if,
alas, a person presumptuously lays violent hands upon himself, is not
his sin precisely this, that he does not rightly love himself in the
sense in which a person ought to love himself?
Oh, there is a lot of talk in the world about treachery, and
faithlessness, and, God help us, it is unfortunately all too true, but
still let us never because of this forget that the most dangerous
traitor of all is the one every person has within himself. This
treachery whether it consists in selfishly loving oneself or consists in
selfishly not willing to love oneself in the right way—this treachery
is admittedly a secret. No cry is raised as it usually is in the case of
treachery and faithlessness. But is it not therefore all the more
important that Christianity's doctrine should be brought to mind again
and again, that a person shall love his neighbor as himself, that is as
he ought to love himself? ... You shall love—this, then is the word of
the royal Law.
— Works of Love, Hong p. 22–24
One can also look at this from the perspective of what the meaning of
our existence is. Why suffer what humans have suffered, the pain and
despair—what meaning can all of this have? For Kierkegaard, there is no
meaning unless passion, the emotions and will of humans, has a divine
source.
Passion is closely aligned with faith in Kierkegaard's thought. Faith
as a passion is what drives humans to seek reality and truth in a
transcendent world, even though everything we can know intellectually
speaks against it. To live and die for a belief, to stake everything one
has and is in the belief in something that has a higher meaning than
anything in the world—this is belief and passion at their highest.
Kierkegaard wrote of the subjective thinker's task in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Intellectual reason had been deified by Hegel in his theology and Kierkegaard felt this would lead to the objectification of religion.
There is an old proverb: oratio, tentatio, meditatio, faciunt theologum [prayer, trial, meditation, make a theologian]. Similarly, for a subjective thinker, imagination, feeling
and dialectics in impassioned existence-inwardness are required. But
first and last, passion, because for an existing person it is impossible
to think about existence without becoming passionate, inasmuch as
existing is a prodigious contradiction from which the subjective thinker
is not to abstract, for then it is easy, but in which he is to remain.
In a world-historical dialectic, individuals fade away into humankind;
in a dialectic such as that it is impossible to discover you and me, an
individual existing human being, even if new magnifying glasses for the
concrete are invented. The subjective thinker is a dialectician oriented to the existential;
he has the intellectual passion to hold firm the qualitative
disjunction. But, on the other hand, if the qualitative disjunction is
used flatly and simply, if it is applied altogether abstractly to the individualhumanbeing,
then one can run the ludicrous risk of saying something infinitely
decisive, and of being right in what one says, and still not say the
least thing. Therefore, in the psychological sense it is really
remarkable to see the absolute disjunction deceitfully used simply for
evasion. When the death penalty is placed on every crime, the result is
that no crimes at all are punished. It is the same with the absolute
disjunction when applied flatly and simply; it is just like a silent
letter-it cannot be pronounced or, if it can be pronounced, it says
nothing. The subjectivethinker, therefore, has with intellectual passion
the absolute disjunction as belonging to existence, but he has it as
the final decision that prevents everything from ending in a
quantifying. Thus he has it readily available, but not in such a way
that by abstractly recurring to it, he just frustrates existence. The subjective thinker, therefore, has also esthetic passion and ethical passion, whereby concretion is gained. All existence-issues are passionate, because existence, if one becomes conscious
of it, involves passion. To think about them so as to leave out passion
is not to think about them at all, is to forget the point that one
indeed is oneself and existing person. Yet the subjective thinker is not
a poet even if he is also a poet, not an ethicist even if he is also an
ethicist, but is also a dialectician and is himself essentially
existing, whereas the poet's existence is inessential in relation to the
poem, and likewise the ethicist's in relation to the teaching, and the
dialectician's in relation to the thought. The subjective thinker is not
a scientist-scholar; he is an artist. To exist is an art. The
subjective thinker is esthetic enough for his life to have esthetic
content, ethical enough to regulate it, dialectical enough in thinking to master it. The subjective thinker's task is to understand himself in existence.
— Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 350–351
Subjectivity
Johannes Climacus, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, writes the following cryptic line: "Subjectivity
is Truth". To understand Climacus's concept of the individual, it is
important to look at what he says regarding subjectivity. What is
subjectivity? In very rough terms, subjectivity refers to what is
personal to the individual—what makes the individual who they are in distinction from others. Another way to interpret subjectivity is the unique relationship between the subject and object.
Johann Fichte wrote similarly about subjectivity in his 1799 book The Vocation of Man:
I must, however, remind my reader
that the "I" who speaks in the book is not the author himself, but it is
his earnest wish that the reader should himself assume this character,
and that he should not rest contented with a mere historical
apprehension of what is here said, but really and truly, during reading,
hold converse with himself, deliberate, draw conclusions, and form
resolutions, like his representative in the book, and, by his own labour
and reflection, developed out of his own soul, and build up within
himself, that mode of thought the mere picture of which is laid before
him in the work.
Scientists and historians, for example, study the objective world, hoping to elicit the truth of nature—or perhaps the truth of history.
In this way, they hope to predict how the future will unfold in
accordance with these laws. In terms of history, by studying the past,
the individual can perhaps elicit the laws that determine how events
will unfold—in this way the individual can predict the future with more
exactness and perhaps take control of events that in the past appeared
to fall outside the control of humans.
In most respects, Climacus did not have problems with science
or the scientific endeavor. He would not disregard the importance of
objective knowledge. Where the scientist or historian finds certainty,
however, Climacus noted very accurately that results in science change
as the tools of observation change. But Climacus's special interest was
in history. His most vehement attacks came against those who believed
that they had understood history and its laws—and by doing so could
ascertain what a human's true self is. That is, the assumption is that
by studying history someone can come to know who he really is as a
person. Kierkegaard especially accused Hegel's philosophy of falling
prey to this assumption. He explained this in Concluding Unscientific Postscript:
It is the existing spirit who asks about truth, presumably because he wants to exist in it, but in any case the questioner is conscious
of being an existing individual human being. In this way I believe I am
able to make myself understandable to every Greek and to every rational
human being. If a German philosopher follows his inclination to put on
an act and first transforms himself into a superrational something, just
as alchemists and sorcerers bedizen themselves fantastically, in order
to answer the question about truth in an extremely satisfying way, this
is of no more concern to me than his satisfying answer, which no doubt
is extremely satisfying-if one is fantastically dressed up. But whether a
German philosopher is or is not doing this can easily be ascertained by
anyone who with enthusiasm concentrates his soul on willing to allow
himself to be guided by a sage of that kind, and uncritically just uses
his guidance compliantly by willing to form his existence according to it. When a person as a learner
enthusiastically relates in this way to such a German professor, he
accomplishes the most superb epigram upon him, because a speculator of
that sort is anything but served by a learner's honest and enthusiastic
zeal for expressing and accomplishing, for existentially appropriating
his wisdom, since this wisdom is something that the Herr Professor himself has imagined
and has written books about but has never attempted himself. It has not
even occurred to him that it should be done. Like the customers clerk
who, in the belief that his business was merely to write, wrote what he
himself could not read, so there are speculative thinkers who merely
write, and write that which, if it is to be read with the aid of action,
if I may put it that way, proves to be nonsense, unless it is perhaps
intended only for fantastical beings.
— Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 191
Hegel wanted to philosophize about Christianity but had no intention
to ever become a Christian. For Climacus, the individual comes to know
who he is by an intensely personal and passionate pursuit of what will
give meaning to his life. As an existing individual, who must come to
terms with everyday life, overcome its obstacles and setbacks, who must
live and die, the single individual has a life that no one else will
ever live. In dealing with what life brings his way, the individual must
encounter them with all his psycho-physical resources.
Subjectivity is that which the individual—and no one else—has.
But what does it mean to have something like this? It cannot be
understood in the same way as having a car
or a bank account. It means to be someone who is becoming someone—it
means being a person with a past, a present, and a future. No one can
have an individual's past, present or future. Different people
experience these in various ways—these experiences are unique, not
anyone else's. Having a past, present, and future means that a person is
an existing individual—that a person can find meaning in time and by
existing. Individuals do not think themselves into existence, they are
born. But once born and past a certain age, the individual begins to
make choices in life; now those choices can be his, his parents',
society's, etc. The important point is that to exist, the individual
must make choices—the individual must decide what to do the next moment
and on into the future. What the individual chooses and how he chooses
will define who and what he is—to himself and to others. Kierkegaard put
it this way in Works of Love, 1847:
We are truly reluctant to make a
young person arrogant prematurely and teach him to get busy judging the
world. God forbid that anything we say should be able to contribute to
developing this malady in a person. Indeed, we think we ought to make
his life so strenuously inwardly that from the very beginning he has
something else to think about, because it no doubt is a morbid hatred of
the world that, perhaps without having considered the enormous
responsibility, wants to be persecuted. But on the other hand we are
also truly reluctant to deceive a young person by suppressing the
difficulty and by suppressing it at the very moment we endeavor to
recommend Christianity, inasmuch as that is the very moment we speak. We
put our confidence in boldly daring to praise Christianity, also with
the addition that in the world its reward, to put it mildly, is
ingratitude. We regard it as our duty continually to speak about it in
advance, so that we do not sometimes praise Christianity with an
omission of what is essentially difficult, and at other times, perhaps
on the occasion of a particular text, hit upon a few grounds of comfort
for the person tried and tested in life. No, just when Christianity is
being praised most strongly, the difficulty must simultaneously be
emphasized. (….) Christianly the world's opposition stands in an
essential relationship to the inwardness of Christianity. Moreover, the
person who chooses Christianity should at that very moment have an
impression of its difficulty so that he can know what it is that he is
choosing.
— Works of Love, Hong 1995, pp. 193–194
The goal of life, according to Socrates,
is to know thyself. Knowing oneself means being aware of who one is,
what one can be and what one cannot be. Kierkegaard uses the same idea
that Socrates used in his own writings. He asks the one who wants to be a
single individual the following questions in his 1847 book, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits:
Everyone must make an accounting to
God as an individual; the king must make an accounting to God as an
individual, and the most wretched beggar must make an accounting to God
as an individual—lest anyone be arrogant by being more than an
individual, lest anyone despondently think that he is not an individual,
perhaps because in the busyness of the world he does not even have a
name but is designated only by a number. What else, indeed, is the
accounting of eternity than that the voice of conscience is installed
eternally in its eternal right to be the only voice!...Are you now
living in such a way that you are aware of being a single individual and
thereby aware of your eternal responsibility before God; are you living
in such a way that this awareness can acquire the time and stillness
and liberty to withdraw from life, from an honorable occupation, from a
happy domestic life—on the contrary, that awareness will support and
transfigure and illuminate your conduct in the relationships of life.
You are not to withdraw and sit brooding over your eternal accounting,
whereby you only take on a new responsibility. You will find more and
more time for your duties and tasks, while concern for your eternal
responsibility will keep you from being busy and from busily taking part
in everything possible—an activity that can best be called a waste of
time...Have you made up your mind about how you want to perform your
work, or are you continually of two minds because you want to be in
agreement with the crowd? Do you stick to your bid, not defiantly, not
despondently, but eternally concerned; do you, unchanged, continue to
bid on the same thing and want to buy only the same thing while the
terms are variously being changed?...Are you hiding nothing suspicious
in your soul, so that you would still wish things were different, so
that you would dare robber-like to seize the reward for yourself, would
dare to parade it, would dare to point to it; so that you would wish the
adversity did not exist because it constrains in you the selfishness
that, although suppressed, yet foolishly deludes you into thinking that
if you were lucky you would do something for the good that would be
worth talking about, deludes you into forgetting that the devout wise
person wishes no adversity away when it befalls him because he obviously
cannot know whether it might not indeed be a good for him, into
forgetting that the devout wise person wins his most beautiful victory
when the powerful one who persecuted him wants, as they say, to spare
him, and the wise one replies: I cannot unconditionally wish it, because
I cannot definitely know whether the persecution might not indeed be a
good for me. Are you doing good only out of the fear of punishment, so
that you scowl even when you will the good, so that in your dreams at
night you wish the punishment away and to that extent also the good, and
in your daydreams delude yourself into thinking that one can serve the
good with a slavish mind?
— Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, 1847, Hong pp. 127–140
Subjectivity comes with consciousness of myself as a self. It
encompasses the emotional and intellectual resources that the individual
is born with. Subjectivity is what the individual is as a human being.
Now the problem of subjectivity is to decide how to choose—what rules or
models is the individual going to use to make the right choices? What
are the right choices? Who defines right? To be truly an individual, to
be true to himself, his actions should in some way be expressed so that
they describe who and what he is to himself and to others. The problem,
according to Kierkegaard, is that we must choose who and what we will be
based on subjective interests—the individual must make choices that
will mean something to him as a reasoning, feeling being.
Kierkegaard decided to step up to the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil for himself, replacing Adam, and make his choice in the presence of God, where no one was there to accuse or judge him but his Creator. This is what he had Abraham do in Fear and Trembling. This is how Kierkegaard thought learning about oneself takes place. Here is where the single individual learns about guilt and innocence. His book, The Concept of Anxiety,
makes clear that Adam did have knowledge when he made his choice and
that was the knowledge of freedom. The prohibition was there but so was
freedom and Eve and Adam decided to use it.
In Kierkegaard's meaning, purely theological assertions are subjective truths and they cannot be either verified or invalidated by science, i.e. through objective knowledge. For him, choosing if one is for or against a certain subjective truth is a purely arbitrary choice. He calls the jump from objective knowledge to religious faith a leap of faith, since it means subjectively accepting statements which cannot be rationally justified.
For him the Christian faith is the result of the trajectory initiated
by such choices, which don't have and cannot have a rational ground
(meaning that reason is neither for or against making such choices). Objectively regarded, purely theological assertions are neither true nor false.
Three stages of life
Early
American Kierkegaard scholars tried to reduce the complexity of
Kierkegaard's authorship by focusing on three levels of individual
existence, which are named in passing by one of Kierkegaard's
pseudonyms, Johannes Climacus, who wrote Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
Though the stages represent only one way of interpreting Kierkegaard's
thought, it has become a popular way of introducing his authorship.
In continental European circles, stage theory never took hold in the
same way. This typifies what Kierkegaard was talking about throughout
his writing career. "Early American scholars" and "European circles"
denote partitions of thought concerning the writings of his works. He
was against "reflecting oneself out of reality" and partitioning the
"world of the spirit" because the world of the spirit cannot be
objectively divided. Hegel wrote about his stages in his book, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and Kierkegaard replied in his Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments 1846:
These stages may be compared to
those of the ages of man. The child is still in the primal immediate
unity of the will with nature, as representing both his own nature and
the nature which surrounds him. The second stage, adolescence, when
individuality is in process of becoming independent, is the living
spirituality, the vitality of Spirit, which while setting no end before
it as yet, moves forward, has aspirations, and takes an interest in
everything which comes its way. The third is the age of manhood; this is
the period of work for a particular end, to which the man makes himself
subserviently, to which he devotes his energies. Finally, old age might
be considered as a last stage, which having the Universal before it as
an end, and recognizing this end, has turned back from the particular
interests of life and work to the universal aim, the absolute final end,
and has, as it were, gathered itself together out of the wide and
manifold interests of actual outward existence and concentrated itself
in the infinite depths of its inner life. Such are the determinations
which follow in a logical manner from the nature of the Notion. At the
close it will become apparent that even the original immediacy does not
exist as immediacy, but is something posited. The child itself is
something begotten.
— George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion vol 1 translated by Rev. E B Speiers 1895 p. 266ff
In the world of the spirit, the
different stages are not like cities on a journey, about which it is
quite all right for the traveler to say directly, for example: We left
Peking and came to Canton and were in Canton on the fourteenth. A
traveler like that changes places, not himself; and thus it is alright
for him to mention and to recount the change in a direct, unchanged
form. But in the world of the spirit to change place is to be changed
oneself, and there all direct assurance of having arrived here and there
is an attempt a la Munchausen. The presentation itself demonstrates that one has reached that far place in the world of spirit. ... The pseudonymous author and I along with them were all subjective. I ask for nothing better than to be known in our objective
times as the only person who was not capable of being objective. That
subjectivity, inwardness, is truth, that existing is the decisive
factor, that this was the way to take to Christianity, which is
precisely inwardness, but please note, not every inwardness, which was
why the preliminary stages definitely had to be insisted upon-that was
my idea, I thought that I had found a similar endeavor in the
pseudonymous writings, and I have tried to make clear my interpretation
of them and their relation to my Fragments.
— Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, 1846, Hong translation 1992
In one popular interpretation of stage theory, each of the so-called
levels of existence envelops those below it: an ethical person is still
capable of aesthetic enjoyment, for example, and a religious person is
still capable of aesthetic enjoyment and ethical duty. The difference
between these ways of living are internal, not external, and thus there
are no external signs one can point to determine at what level a person
is living. This inner and outer relationship is commonly determined by
an individual by looking to others to gauge one's action, Kierkegaard
believed one should look to oneself and in that relationship look to
Christ as the example instead of looking at others because the more you
look at others the less you see of yourself. This makes it easier to
degrade your neighbor instead of loving your neighbor. But one must love
the person one sees not the person one wishes to see. Either love the
person you see as that person is the person he is or stop talking about
loving everyone.
Back to the Stages. It is markedly different from Either/Or by a tripartition. There are three stages, an esthetic, an ethical, a religious, yet not abstract
as the immediate mediate, the unity, but concrete in the qualification
of existence categories as pleasure-perdition, action-victory,
suffering. But despite this tripartition, the book is nevertheless an
either/or. That is, the ethical and the religious stages have an
essential relation to each other. The inadequacy of Either/Or is simply that the work ended ethically, as has been shown. In Stages
that has been made clear, and the religious is maintained in its place.
.... A story of suffering; suffering is the religious category. In Stages
the esthete is no longer a clever fellow frequenting B's living room—a
hopeful man, etc., because he still is only a possibility; no, he is
existing [existerer]. "It is exactly the same as Either/Or."
Constantin Constantius and the Young Man placed together in Quidam of
the experiment. (Humor advanced.)
— Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Hong, p. 294, Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, VIB 41:10
Christ's love for Peter was
boundless in this way: in loving Peter he accomplished loving the person
one sees. He did not say, "Peter must first change and become another
person before I can love him again." No, he said exactly the opposite,
"Peter is Peter, and I love him. My love, if anything will help him to
become another person." Therefore he did not break off the friendship in
order perhaps to renew it if Peter would have become another person;
no, he preserved the friendship unchanged and in that way helped Peter
to become another person. Do you think that Peter would have been won
again without Christ's faithful friendship? But it is so easy to be a
friend when this means nothing else than to request something in
particular from the friend and, if the friend does not respond to the
request, then to let the friendship cease, until it perhaps begins again
if he responds to the request. Is this a relationship of friendship?
Who is closer to helping an erring one than the person who calls himself
his friend, even if the offense is committed against the friend! But
the friend withdraws and says (indeed, it is as if a third person were
speaking): When he has become another person, then perhaps he can become
my friend again. We are not far from regarding such behavior as
magnanimous. But truly we are far from being able to say of such a
friend that in loving he loves the person he sees. Christ's love was
boundless, as it must be if this is to be fulfilled: in loving to love
the person one sees. This is very easy to perceive. However much and in
whatever way a person is changed, he still is not changed in such a way
that he becomes invisible. If this-the impossible-is not the case, then
of course we do see him, and the duty is to love the person one sees.
Ordinarily we think that if a person has essentially changed for the
worse, he is then so changed that we are exempt from loving him. But
Christianity asks: Can you because of this change no longer see him? The
answer to that must be: Certainly I can see him; I see that he is no
longer worth loving. But if you see this, then you do not really see him
(which you certainly cannot deny you are doing in another sense), you
see only the unworthiness and the imperfection and thereby admit that
when you loved him you did not see him in another sense but merely saw his excellence and perfections, which you loved.
— Works of Love (1847), Hong 1995, p. 172–173
When a person to whom the possible
pertains relates himself equally to the duality of the possible, we say:
He expects. To expect contains within itself the same duality that the
possible has, and to expect is to relate oneself to the possible purely
and simply as such. Then the relationship divides according to the way
the expecting person chooses. To relate oneself expectantly to the
possibility of the good is to hope, which for that very reason cannot be
any temporal expectancy but is an eternal hope. To relate oneself
expectancy to the possibility of evil is to fear. But both the one who
hopes and the one who fears are expecting. As soon, however, as the
choice is made, the possible is changed, because the possibility of the
good is the eternal. It is only in the moment of contact that the
duality of the possible is equal; therefore, by the decision to choose
hope, one decided infinitely more than it seems, because it is an
eternal decision.
People think that they are speaking with ample experience in dividing a
person's life into certain periods and ages and then call the first
period the age of hope or of possibility. What nonsense! Thus, in talk
about hope they completely leave out the eternal and yet speak about
hope. But how is this possible, since hope pertains to the possibility
of the good, and thereby to the eternal! On the other hand, how is it
possible to speak about hope in such a way that it is assigned to a
certain age! Surely the eternal extends over the whole of life and there
is and should be hope to the end; then there is no period that is the
age of hope, but a person's whole life should be the time of hope! And
then they think they are speaking with ample experience about hope-by
abolishing the eternal.
— Works of Love (1847), Hong 1995, p. 249–251
Stage one: aesthetic
Kierkegaard was interested in aesthetics, and is sometimes referred to as the "poet-philosopher" because of the passionate way in which he approached philosophy.
But he is often said to be interested in showing the inadequacy of a
life lived entirely in the aesthetic level. Aesthetic life is defined in
numerous different ways in Kierkegaard's authorship, including a life
defined by intellectual enjoyment, sensuous desire, and an inclination
to interpret oneself as if one were "on stage." There are many degrees
of this aesthetic existence and a single definition is thus difficult to
offer. At bottom, one might see the purely unreflective lifestyle. At
the top, we might find those lives which are lived in a reflective,
independent, critical and socially apathetic way. But many interpreters
of Kierkegaard believe that most people live in the least reflective
sort of aesthetic stage, their lives and activities guided by everyday
tasks and concerns. Fewer aesthetically guided people are the reflective
sort. Whether such people know it or not, their lives will inevitably
lead to complete despair. Kierkegaard's author A is an example of an individual living the aesthetic life.
You love the accidental. A smile
from a pretty girl in an interesting situation, a stolen glance, that is
what you are hunting for, that is a motif for your aimless fantasy. You
who always pride yourself on being an observateur must, in return, put
up with becoming an object of observation. Ah, you are a strange fellow,
one moment a child, the next an old man; one moment you are thinking
most earnestly about the most important scholarly problems, how you will
devote your life to them, and the next you are a lovesick fool. But you
are a long way from marriage.
— Either/Or Part II p. 7–8
Just consider, your life is
passing; for you, too, the time will eventually come even to you when
your life is at an end, when you are no longer shown any further
possibilities in life, when recollection alone is left, recollection,
but not in the sense in which you love it so much, this mixture of
fiction and truth, but the earnest and faithful recollection of your
conscience. Beware that it does not unroll a list for you-presumably not
of actual crimes but of wasted possibilities, showdown pictures it will
be impossible for you to drive away. The intellectual
agility you possess is very becoming to youth and diverts the eye for a
time. We are astonished to see a clown whose joints are so loose that
all the restraints of man's gait and posture are annulled. You are like
that in an intellectual sense; you can just as well stand on your head
as on your feet. Everything is possible
for you, and you can surprise yourself and others with this
possibility, but it is unhealthy, and for your own peace of mind I beg
you to watch out lest that which is an advantage to you end by becoming a
curse. Any man who has a conviction cannot at his pleasure turn himself
and everything topsy-turvy in this way. Therefore I do not warn you
against the world but against yourself and the world against you.
— Either/Or II, Hong p. 16
Stage two: ethical
The
second level of existence is the ethical. This is where an individual
begins to take on a true direction in life, becoming aware of and
personally responsible for good and evil
and forming a commitment to oneself and others. One's actions at this
level of existence have a consistency and coherence that they lacked in
the previous sphere of existence. For many readers of Kierkegaard, the
ethical is central. It calls each individual to take account of their
lives and to scrutinize their actions in terms of absolute
responsibility, which is what Kierkegaard calls repentance.
If we compare Kierkegaard's idea of ethics with Vedic system of four
aims of life, this Ethical system probably correlates most with Dharma—following this or that religion, set of rules, laws etc. (Hindus would call any religion as "dharma", though dharma is also a law).
He repents himself back into
himself, back into the family, back into the race, until he finds
himself in God. Only on this condition can he choose himself. And this
is the only condition he wants, for only in this way can he choose
himself absolutely. ... I repent myself out of the whole existence.
Repentance specifically expresses that evil essentially belongs to me
and at the same time expresses that it does not essentially belong to
me. If the evil in me did not essentially belong to me, I could not
choose it; but if there were something in me that I could not choose
absolutely, then I would not be choosing myself absolutely at all, then I
myself would not be the absolute but only a product. ... It is a sign
of a well brought up child to be inclined to say it is sorry without too
much pondering whether it is in the right or not, and it is likewise a
sign of a high-minded person and a deep soul if he is inclined to
repent, if he does not take God to court but repents and loves God in
his repentance. Without this, his life is nothing, only like foam. ...
The Either/Or
I erected between living esthetically and living ethically is not an
unqualified dilemma, because it actually is a matter of only one choice.
Through this choice, I actually choose between good and evil, but I
choose the good, I choose eo ipso the choice between good and evil. The original choice is forever present in every succeeding choice.
— Either/Or Part II, Hong, p. 216–217, 224, 237–238, 219
"Judge Wilhelm," a pseudonymous author of Either/Or and the
voice who defines the ethical consciousness, argues that the commitment
to take responsibility for one's own choices must be made individually.
To take responsibility for the various relationships in which an
individual finds him- or herself is a possibility open to every human
being, but it does not follow that every human being chooses to do so as
a matter of course. The meaning of a person's life for Wilhelm depends
on how he takes responsibility for his current and future choices, and
how he takes ownership of those choices already made. For Wilhelm, the
ethically governed person takes responsibility for past actions, some
good and some bad, seeks consistency, and takes seriously the obligation
to live in a passionate and devoted way.
The Christian God is spirit and
Christianity is spirit, and there is discord between the flesh and the
spirit but the flesh is not the sensuous-it is the selfish. In this
sense, even the spiritual can become sensuous-for example, if a person
took his spiritual gifts in vain, he would then be carnal. And of course
I know that it is not necessary for the Christian that Christ must have
been physically beautiful; and it would be grievous-for a reason
different from the one you give-because if beauty were some essential,
how the believer would long to see him; but from all this it by no means
follows that the sensuous is annihilated in Christianity. The first
love has the element of beauty in itself, and the joy and fullness that
are in the sensuous in its innocence can very well be caught up in
Christianity. But let us guard against one thing, a wrong turn that is
more dangerous than the one you wish to avoid; let us not become too
spiritual.
— Either/Or Part II p. 50
The question, namely, is this: Can
this love be actualized? After having conceded everything up to this
point, you perhaps will say: Well, it is just as difficult to actualize
marriage as to actualize first love. To that I must respond: No, for in
marriage there is a law of motion. First love remains an unreal in itself
that never acquires inner substance because it moves only in the
external medium. In the ethical and religious intention, marital love
has the possibility of an inner history and is as different from first
love as the historical is from the unhistorical. This love is strong,
stronger than the whole world, but the moment it doubts it is
annihilated; it is like a sleepwalker who is able to walk the most
dangerous places with the complete security but plunges down when
someone calls his name. Marital love is armed, for in the intention not
only is attentiveness directed to the surrounding world but the will is
directed toward itself, toward the inner world.
— Either/Or Part II, p. 94
The choice itself is crucial for
the content of the personality: through the choice the personality
submerges itself in that which is being chosen, and when it does not
choose, it withers away in atrophy. ... Imagine a captain of a ship the
moment a shift of direction must be made; then he may be able to say: I
can do either this or that. But if he is not a mediocre captain he will
also be aware that during all this the ship is ploughing ahead with its
ordinary velocity, and thus there is but a single moment when it is
inconsequential whether he does this or does that. So also with a
person—if he forgets to take into account the velocity—there eventually
comes a moment where it is no longer a matter of an Either/Or, not
because he has chosen, but because he has refrained from it, which also
can be expressed by saying: Because others have chosen for him—or
because he has lost himself.
— Either/Or Part II, p. 163–164
Stage three: religious
The ethical and the religious
are intimately connected: a person can be ethically serious without
being religious, but the religious stage includes the ethical. Whereas
living in the ethical sphere involves a commitment to some moral absolute, living in the religious sphere involves a commitment and relation to the Christian God. Kierkegaard explained this in Concluding Unscientific Postscript like this:
Johannes the Seducer ends with the thesis
that woman is only the moment. This in its general sense is the
essential esthetic thesis, that the moment is all and to that extent, in
turn, essentially nothing, just as the Sophistic thesis that everything is true is that nothing is true. On the whole the conception of time
is the decisive element in every standpoint up to the paradox, which
paradoxically accentuates time. To the degree that time is accentuated,
to the same degree there is movement from the esthetic, the metaphysical, to the ethical, the religious, and the Christian-religious.
Where Johannes the Seducer ends, the Judge begins: Woman's beauty
increases with the years. Here time is accentuated ethically, but still
not in such a way that precludes the possibility of recollection's
withdrawal out of existence into the eternal.
— Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 298–299
If a man like Kant, standing on the
pinnacle of scientific scholarship, were to say in reference to
demonstrations of the existence of God: Well, I do not know anything
more about that than that my father told me it was so—this is humorous
and actually says more than a whole book about demonstrations, if the
book forgets this.
— Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 552–553
The Kierkegaardian pseudonyms who speak of stage theory consider
religion to be the highest stage in human existence. In one discussion
of religious life, one of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms, Johannes Climacus,
distinguishes two types within this stage, which have been called Religiousness A and Religiousness B. One type is symbolized by the Greek philosopherSocrates,
whose passionate pursuit of the truth and individual conscience came
into conflict with his society. Another type of religiousness is one
characterized by the realization that the individual is sinful and is the source of untruth. In time, through revelation and in direct relationship with the paradox that is Jesus, the individual begins to see that his or her eternal salvation rests on a paradox—God, the transcendent,
coming into time in human form to redeem human beings. For Kierkegaard,
the very notion of this occurring was scandalous to human
reason—indeed, it must be, and if it is not then one does not truly
understand the Incarnation
nor the meaning of human sinfulness. For Kierkegaard, the impulse
towards an awareness of a transcendent power in the universe is what
religion is. Religion has a social and an individual (not just personal)
dimension. But it begins with the individual and his or her awareness
of sinfulness. Here are several quotes from Kierkegaard's where he
discusses his concept of sin.
The sin/faith opposition is the
Christian one which transforms all ethical concepts in a Christian way
and distils one more decoction from them. At the root of the opposition
lies the crucial Christian specification: before God; and that in turn
has the crucial Christian characteristic: the absurd, the paradox, the
possibility of offense. And it is of the utmost importance that this is
demonstrated in every specification of the Christian, since offense is
the Christian protection against all speculative philosophy. In what,
then, do we find the possibility of offense here? In the fact that a
person should have the reality of his being, as a particular human
being, directly before God, and accordingly, again, and by the same
token, that man's sin should be of concern of God. This notion of the
single human being before God never occurs to speculative thought; it
only universalizes particular human phantastically into the human race.
It is exactly for this reason that a disbelieving Christianity came up
with the idea that sin is sin, that it is neither here nor there whether
it is before God. In other words, it wanted to get rid of the
specification 'before God', and to that end invented a new wisdom, which
nevertheless, curiously enough, was neither more nor less than what the
higher wisdom generally is-old paganism.
— The Sickness Unto Death, Hannay, 1989 p. 115
Admittance is only through the
consciousness of sin; to want to enter by any other road is high treason
against Christianity. … The simple soul who humbly acknowledges himself
to be a sinner, himself personally (the single individual), has no need
at all to learn about all the difficulties that come when one is
neither simple or humble. … To the extent Christianity, terrifying, will
rise up against him and transform itself into madness or horror until
he either learns to give up Christianity or-by means of what is anything
but scholarly propaedeutics, apologetics, etc., by means of the anguish
of a contrite conscience, all in proportion to his need-learns to enter
into Christianity by the narrow way, through the consciousness of sin.
— Practice in Christianity, Hong, 1991, p. 67–68
Kierkegaard's thoughts on other philosophers
Kierkegaard and Fichte
Fichte
Kierkegaard wrote much about Johann Gottlieb Fichte in his thesis The Concept of Irony as well as in his first book De omnibus dubitandum est, written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, and his Journals. Fichte wrote the book The Vocation of Man (1800) which called for a progression in the life of the human being from doubt to knowledge and then to faith. De omnibus dubitandum est
is from Descartes and means everything must be doubted. Both
Kierkegaard and Fichte were interested in this idea of beginning with
doubt as well as subjectivity. Kierkegaard wrote: "In Fichte,
subjectivity became free, infinite, negative. But in order for
subjectivity to get out of this movement of emptiness in which it moved
in infinite abstraction, it had to be negated; in order for thought to
become actual, it had to become concrete."
Our whole age is imbued with a
formal striving. This is what led us to disregard congeniality and to
emphasize symmetrical beauty, to prefer conventional rather than sincere
social relations. It is this whole striving which is denoted by—to use
the words of another author—Fichte's and the other philosophers'
attempts to construct systems by sharpness of mind and Robespierre's
attempt to do it with the help of the guillotine; it is this which
meets us in the flowing butterfly verses of our poets and in Auber's
music, and finally, it is this which produces the many revolutions in
the political world. I agree perfectly with this whole effort to cling
to form, insofar as it continues to be the medium through which we have
the idea, but it should not be forgotten that it is the idea which
should determine the form, not the form which determines the idea. We
should keep in mind that life is not something abstract but something
extremely individual. We should not forget that, for example, from a
poetic genius' position of immediacy, form is nothing but the coming
into existence of the idea in the world, and that the task of reflection
is only to investigate whether or not the idea has gotten the properly
corresponding form. Form is not the basis of life, but life is the basis
of form. Imagine that a man long infatuated with the Greek mode of life
had acquired the means to arrange for a building in the Greek style and
a Grecian household establishment—whether or not he would be satisfied
would be highly problematical, or would he soon prefer another form
simply because he had not sufficiently tested himself and the system in
which he lived. But just as a leap backward is wrong (something the age,
on the whole, is inclined to acknowledge), so also a leap forward is
wrong—both of them because a natural development does not proceed by
leaps, and life's earnestness will ironize over every such experiment,
even if it succeeds momentarily.
— Journals, Our Journalistic Literature, November 28, 1835
Kierkegaard and Hegel
Hegel
Many philosophers think that one of Kierkegaard's greatest contributions to philosophy is his critique of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
Indeed, many of Kierkegaard's works are written in response to or as a
critique of Hegel. Although Kierkegaard strongly criticized some aspects
of Hegelian philosophy, his work also shows that he was also positively
influenced by Hegel, and had respect for Hegel himself.
Now everything is set in motion, and usually this also involves making the system popular—per systema influxus physici it lays hold of all men. How Kant
was treated in his time is well known, and therefore I need only
mention the infinite mass of lexicons, summaries, popular presentations,
and explanations for everyman, etc. And how did Hegel fare later,
Hegel, the most modern philosopher,
who because of his rigorous form would most likely command silence? Has
not the logical trinity been advanced in the most ludicrous way? And
therefore it did not astound me that my shoemaker had found that it
could also be applied to the development of boots, since, as he
observes, the dialectic, which is always the first stage in life, finds
expression even here, however insignificant this may seem, in the
squeaking, which surely has not escaped the attention of some more
profound research psychologist. Unity, however, appears only later, in
which respect his shoes far surpass all others, which usually
disintegrate in the dialectic, a unity which reached the highest level
in that pair of boots Carl XII wore on his famous ride, and since he as
an orthodox shoemaker proceeded from the thesis that the immediate (feet
without shoes—shoes without feet) is a pure abstraction and took it [the dialectical] as the first stage in the development. And now our modern politicians!
By veritably taking up Hegel, they have given a striking example of the
way one can serve two masters, in that their revolutionary striving is
paired with a life-outlook which is a remedy for it, an excellent remedy
for lifting part of the illusion which is necessary for encouraging
their fantastic striving. And the actuality of the phenomenon
will surely not be denied if one recalls that the words "immediate or
spontaneous unity" occur just as necessarily in every
scientific-scholarly treatise as a brunette or a blonde in every
well-ordered romantic household. At the happy moment everyone received a
copy of Holy Scriptures, in which there was one book which was almost
always too brief and sometimes almost invisible, and this was, I
regret—the Acts of the Apostles.
And how curious it is to note that the present age, whose social
striving is trumpeted quite enough, is ashamed of the monks and nuns of
the Middle Ages,
when at the same time, to confine ourselves to our own native land, a
society has been formed here which seems to embrace almost the entire
kingdom and in which a speaker began thus: Dear Brothers and Sisters.
How remarkable to see them censure the Jesuitry of the Middle Ages,
since precisely the liberal development, as does every one-sided
enthusiasm, has led and must lead to that. And now Christianity—how has
it been treated? I share entirely your disapproval of the way every
Christian concept has become so volatilized, so completely dissolved in a
mass of fog, that it is beyond all recognition. To the concepts of
faith, incarnation, tradition, inspiration, which in the Christian
sphere are to lead to a particular historical fact, the philosophers
choose to give an entirely different, ordinary meaning, whereby faith
has become the immediate consciousness, which essentially is nothing
other than the vitale Fluidum of mental life, its atmosphere, and
tradition has become the content of a certain experience of the world,
while inspiration has become nothing more than God's breathing of the
life-spirit into man, and incarnation no more than the presence of one
or another idea in one or more individuals.
— Journals IA 328 1836 or 1837
In a journal entry made in 1844, Kierkegaard wrote:
If Hegel had written the whole of
his logic and then said, in the preface or some other place, that it was
merely an experiment in thought in which he had even begged the
question in many places, then he would certainly have been the greatest
thinker who had ever lived. As it is, he is merely comic.
— Søren Kierkegaard, (Journals, 1844)
While Kierkegaard was a student of theology at the University of Copenhagen, Hegelianism had become increasingly popular. Johan Ludvig Heiberg and Hans Lassen Martensen
were key figures in Danish Hegelianism. Kierkegaard remarked in his
journal on 17 May 1843 that Heiberg's writings were "borrowed" from
Hegel, implying Heiberg would have been a nobody without Hegel.
Kierkegaard objected to Hegel's claim that he had devised a system of thought that could explain the whole of reality, with a dialectical
analysis of history leading the way to this whole. Hegel claimed that
the doctrines and history of Christianity could be explained as a part
of the rational unfolding and development of our understanding of the
natural world and our place within it. Kierkegaard considered Hegel's
explanation of Christianity as a necessary part of world history to be a
distortion of the Christian message and a misunderstanding of the
limits of human reason. He attempted to refute this aspect of Hegel's
thought by suggesting that many doctrines of Christianity—including the doctrine of Incarnation,
a God who is also human—cannot be explained rationally but remain a
logical paradox. However, he was in favor of youthful striving after
truth.
Let a doubting youth, but an
existing doubter with youth's lovable, boundless confidence in a hero of
scientific scholarship, venture to find in Hegelian positivity the
truth, the truth of existence-he will write a dreadful epigram on Hegel.
Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that every youth is capable of
overcoming Hegel, far from it. If a young person is conceited and
foolish enough to try that, his attack is inane. No, the youth must
never think of wanting to attack him; he must rather be willing to
submit unconditionally to Hegel with feminine devotedness, but
nevertheless with sufficient strength also to stick to his question-then
he is a satirist without suspecting it. The youth is an existing
doubter; continually suspended in doubt,
he grasps for the truth-so that he can exist in it. Consequently, he is
negative, and Hegel's philosophy is, of course, positive-no wonder he
puts his trust in it. But for an existing person pure thinking is a chimera
when the truth is supposed to be the truth in which to exist. Having to
exist with the help of the guidance of pure thinking is like having to
travel in Denmark with a small map of Europe on which Denmark is no
larger than a steel pen-point, indeed, even more impossible. The youth's
admiration, his enthusiasm, and his limitless confidence in Hegel are
precisely the satire on Hegel. This would have been discerned long ago
if pure thinking had not maintained itself with the aid of a reputation
that impresses people, so that they dare not say anything except that it
is superb, that they have understood it-although in a certain sense
that it is indeed impossible, since no one can be led by this philosophy
to understand himself, which is certainly an absolute condition for all
other understanding. Socrates has rather ironically said that he did
not know for sure whether he was a human being or something else, but in
the confessional a Hegelian can say with all solemnity: I do not know
whether I am a human being-but I have understood the system. I prefer to
say: I know that I am a human being, and I know that I have not
understood the system. And when I have said that very directly, I shall
add that if any of our Hegelians want to take me into hand and assist me
to an understanding of the system, nothing will stand in the way from
my side. In order that I can learn all the more, I shall try hard to be
as obtuse as possible, so as not to have, if possible, a single
presupposition except my ignorance. And in order to be sure of learning
something, I shall try hard to be as indifferent as possible to all
charges of being unscientific and unscholarly. Existing, if this is to
be understood as just any sort of existing, cannot be done without
passion.
— Soren Kierkegaard 1846, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Hong p. 310–311
To refute Hegel's claim that Christianity should be understood as a
part of the necessary evolution of thought, or in Hegelians terms,
Spirit, in Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard attempts to use the story of Abraham
to show that there is a goal higher than that of ethics (questioning
the Hegelian claim that doing one's ethical duty is the highest that can
be said of a human being) and that faith cannot be explained by
Hegelian ethics, (disproving Hegel's claim that Christianity can be
rationally explained by philosophy). Either way, this work can be read
as a challenge to the Hegelian notion that a human being's ultimate
purpose is to fulfill ethical demands.
Kierkegaard's strategy was to
invert this dialectic by seeking to make everything more difficult.
Instead of seeing scientific knowledge as the means of human redemption,
he regarded it as the greatest obstacle to redemption. Instead of
seeking to give people more knowledge he sought to take away what passed
for knowledge. Instead of seeking to make God and Christian faith
perfectly intelligible he sought to emphasize the absolute transcendence
by God of all human categories. Instead of setting himself up as a
religious authority, Kierkegaard used a vast array of textual devices to
undermine his authority as an author and to place responsibility for
the existential significance to be derived from his texts squarely on
the reader. … Kierkegaard's tactic in undermining Hegelianism was to
produce an elaborate parody of Hegel's entire system. The pseudonymous
authorship, from Either/Or to Concluding Unscientific Postscript, presents an inverted Hegelian dialectic which is designed to lead readers away from knowledge rather than towards it.
By doing this, Hegelian critics accuse Kierkegaard of using the
dialectic to disprove the dialectic, which seems somewhat contradictory
and hypocritical. However, Kierkegaard would not claim the dialectic
itself is bad, only the Hegelian premise that the dialectic would lead to a harmonious reconciliation of everything, which Hegel called the Absolute. Kierkegaard stated this most clearly in his book The Concept of Anxiety:
Dogmatics must not explain hereditary sin
but rather explain it by presupposing it, like that vortex about which
Greek speculation concerning nature had so much to say, a moving
something that no science can grasp. That such is the case with
dogmatics will readily be granted if once again time is taken to
understand Schleiermacher's
immortal service to this science. He was left behind long ago when men
chose Hegel. Yet Schleiermacher was a thinker in the beautiful Greek
sense, a thinker who spoke only of what he knew. Hegel, on the contrary,
despite all his outstanding ability and stupendous learning, reminds us
again and again by his performance that he was in the German sense a professor of philosophy on a large scale, because he a tout prix [at any price] must explain all things.
— The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte, Princeton University Press, 1980, p. 20
Kierkegaardian scholars have made several interpretations of how
Kierkegaard proceeds with parodying Hegel's dialectic. One of the more
popular interpretations argues the aesthetic-ethical-religious stages
are the triadic process Kierkegaard was talking about. See section Spheres of existence
for more information. Another interpretation argues for the
world-individual-will triadic process. The dialectic here is either to
assert an individual's own desire to be independent and the desire to be
part of a community. Instead of reconciliation of the world and the
individual where problems between the individual and society are neatly
resolved in the Hegelian system, Kierkegaard argues that there's a
delicate bond holding the interaction between them together, which needs
to be constantly reaffirmed. Jean-Paul Sartre
takes this latter view and says the individual is in a constant state
of reaffirming his or her own identity, else one falls into bad faith.
This process of reconciliation leads to a "both/and" view of
life, where both thesis and antithesis are resolved into a synthesis,
which negates the importance of personal responsibility and the human
choice of either/or. The work Either/Or
is a response to this aspect of Hegel's philosophy. A passage from that
work exemplifies Kierkegaard's contempt for Hegel's philosophy. Note
the comparison between "A" and "B" (Judge Vilhelm) in Either/Or and Stages on Life's Way.
Marry, and you will regret it. Do
not marry, and you will also regret it. Marry or do not marry, you will
regret it either way. Whether you marry or you do not marry, you will
regret it either way. Laugh at the stupidities of the world, and you
will regret it; weep over them, and you will also regret it. Laugh at
the stupidities of the world or weep over them, you will regret it
either way. Whether you laugh at the stupidities of the world or you
weep over them, you will regret it either way. Trust a girl, and you
will regret it. Do not trust her, and you will also regret it. … Hang
yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it either way. Whether
you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it either
way. This, gentlemen, is the quintessence of all the wisdom of life.
— Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or Part I, Hong
My dear reader, if you do not have
the time and opportunity to take a dozen years of your life to travel
around the world to see everything a world traveler is acquainted with,
if you do not have the capability and qualifications from years of
practice in a foreign language to penetrate to the differences in
national characteristics as these become apparent to the research
scholar, if you are not bent upon discovering a new astronomical system
that will displace both the Copernican and the Ptolemaic-then marry; and if you have time for the first, the capability for the second, the idea for the last, then marry also.
Even if you did not manage to see the whole globe or to speak in many
tongues or to know all about the heavens, you will not regret it, for
marriage is and remains the most important voyage of discovery a human
being undertakes; compared with a married man's knowledge of life, any
other knowledge of it is superficial, for he and he alone has properly
immersed himself in life.
— Søren Kierkegaard, Judge Vilhelm, Stages on Life's Way, Hong p. 89
Here are two more from 1846:
As is well known, Hegelian
philosophy has canceled the principle of contradiction, and Hegel
himself has more than once emphatically held judgment day on the kind of
thinkers who remained in the sphere of understanding and reflection and
who have therefore insisted that there is an either/or. Since that
time, it has become a popular game, so that as soon as someone hints at
an aut/aut [either/or] a Hegelian comes riding trip-trap-trap on horse
and wins a victory and rides home again. Among us, too, the Hegelians
have several times been on the move, especially against Bishop Mynster,
in order to win speculative thought's brilliant victory; and Bishop Mynster,
has more than once become a defeated standpoint, even though for being a
defeated standpoint he is holding up very well, and it is rather to be
feared that the enormous exertion of the victory has been too exhausting
to the undefeated victors. And yet there may be a misunderstanding at
the root at the conflict and the victory, Hegel is perfectly and
absolutely right in maintaining that, looked at eternally, sub specie aeterni, there is no aut/aut either/or in the language of abstraction, in pure thought
and pure being. Where the devil would it be, since abstraction, after
all, simply removes the contradiction; therefore Hegel and the Hegelians
should instead take the trouble to explain what is meant by the
masquerade of getting contradiction, movement, transition, etc. into
logic. The defenders of aut/aut are in the wrong if they push their way
into the territory of pure thinking and want to defend their cause
there.
— Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Volume I, p. 305
According to Hegel the truth is the
continuous world-historical process. Each generation, each stage of
this process, is legitimated and yet is only an element of the truth.
Short of resorting to a bit of charlatanry, which helps by assuming that
the generation in which Hegel lived or the one after him is imprimatur, and this generation is the last and world history is past, we are all implicated in skepticism. The passionate question of truth does not even come up, because philosophy has first tricked the individuals into becoming objective.
The positive Hegelian truth is just as deceptive as happiness was in
paganism. Not until afterward does one come to know whether or not one
has been happy, and thus the next generation comes to know what truth
was in the preceding generation. The great secret of the system is close
to Protagoras's sophism "Everything is relative", except that here everything is relative in the continuous process. But no living soul is served by that …
— Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments,
Volume I, by Johannes Climacus, edited by Søren Kierkegaard, 1846,
edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong 1992, Princeton
University Press, p. 33
The whole idea of one generation spending all its time studying past
generations and then the next generation spending their time studying
past generations and making moral and social comments about preceding
generations was called, "The Hegelian cud-chewing process with
three-stomachs—first immediacy—then regurgitation—then down again." He
said, "Maybe a succeeding master-mind could continue this with four
stomachs, etc., down once more and up again. I don't know if the
master-mind grasps what I mean."
Kierkegaard and Schelling
Schelling
In 1841–1842, Kierkegaard attended the Berlin lectures of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. Schelling was a critic of Georg Hegel and a professor at the University of Berlin. The university started a lecture series given by Schelling in order to espouse a type of positive philosophy which would be diametrically opposed to Hegelianism.
Kierkegaard was initially delighted with Schelling. Before he left
Copenhagen to attend Schelling's lectures in Berlin, he wrote to his
friend Peter Johannes Sprang:
Schelling lectures to a select, numerous, and yet also undique conflatum auditorium.
During the first lectures it was almost a matter of risking one's life
to hear him. I have never in my life experienced such uncomfortable
crowding—still, what would one not do to be able to hear Schelling? His
main point is always that there are two philosophies, one positive and
one negative. The negative is given, but not by Hegel, for Hegel's is
neither negative nor positive but a refined Spinozaism. The positive is
yet to come. In other words, in the future it will not be only the
lawyers who become the doctores juris utriusque, for I venture to flatter myself that without submitting another dissertation I shall become a magister philosophiae utriusque.
— Søren Kierkegaard, (Journals, 1841)
At Berlin, Kierkegaard gave high praises to Schelling. In a journal
entry made sometime around October or November 1841, Kierkegaard wrote
this piece about Schelling's second lecture:
I am so pleased to have heard
Schelling's second lecture -- indescribably! I have sighed for long
enough and my thoughts have sighed within me; when he mentioned the
word, "reality" in connection with the relation of philosophy to reality
the fruit of my thought leapt for joy within me. I remember almost
every word he said from that moment on. … Now I have put all my hopes
in Schelling!
— Søren Kierkegaard, (Journals, 1841)
As time went on, however, Kierkegaard, as well as many in Schelling's
audience, began to become disillusioned with Schelling. In a
particularly insulting letter about Schelling, Kierkegaard wrote to his
brother, Peter Kierkegaard:
Schelling drivels on quite
intolerably! If you want to form some idea what this is like then I ask
you to submit yourself to the following experiment as a sort of
self-inflicted sadistic punishment. Imagine person R's meandering
philosophy, his entirely aimless, haphazard knowledge, and person
Hornsyld's untiring efforts to display his learning: imagine the two
combined and in addition to an impudence hitherto unequalled by any
philosopher; and with that picture vividly before your poor mind go to
the workroom of a prison and you will have some idea of Schelling's
philosophy. He even lectures longer to prolong the torture. …
Consequently, I have nothing to do in Berlin. I am too old to attend
lectures and Schelling is too old to give them. So I shall leave Berlin
as soon as possible. But if it wasn't for Schelling, I would never have
travelled to Berlin. I must thank him for that. … I think I should have
become utterly insane if I had gone on hearing Schelling.
— Søren Kierkegaard, (Journals, 27 February 1842)
It is common knowledge that Aristotle used the term first philosophy primarily to designate metaphysics, though he included within it a part that accorded to our conception belongs to theology.
In paganism it is quite in order for theology to be treated there. It
is related to the same lack of an infinite penetration reflection that
endowed the theater in paganism with reality as a kind of divine
worship. If we now abstract from this ambiguity, we could retain the
designation and by first philosophy understand that totality of science
which we might call "ethnical," whose essence is immanence and is
expressed in Greek thought by "recollection," and by second philosophy
understand that totality of science whose essence is transcendence or
repetition. Schelling called attention to this Aristotelian term in
support of his own distinction between negative and positive philosophy.
By negative philosophy he meant "logic"; that was clear enough. On the
other hand, it was less clear to me what he really meant by positive
philosophy, except insofar as it became evident that it was the
philosophy that he himself wished to provide. However, since I have
nothing to go by except my own opinion, it is not feasible to pursue
this subject further. Constantin Constantius
has called attention to this by pointing out that immanence runs
aground upon "interest." With this concept, actuality for the first time
comes into view.
— The Concept of Anxiety 1844, p. 21 and Note p. 21 Nichol
Kierkegaard became disillusioned with Schelling partly because
Schelling shifted his focus on actuality, including a discussion on quid sit [what is] and quod sit
[that is], to a more mythological, psychic-type pseudo-philosophy.
Kierkegaard's last writing about Schelling's lectures was on 4 February
1842. He wrote the following in 1844:
Some men of Schelling's school
have been especially aware of the alteration that has taken place in
nature because of sin. Mention has been made also of the anxiety that is
supposed to be in inanimate nature. Schelling's main thought is that
anxiety, etc., characterize the suffering of the deity in his endeavor
to create. In Berlin he expressed the same thought more definitely by
comparing God with Goethe and Jon Von Muller,
both of whom felt well only when producing, and also by calling
attention to the fact that such a bliss, when it cannot communicate
itself, is unhappiness.
— The Concept of Anxiety, p. 59–60, Note p. 59
Although Schelling had little influence on Kierkegaard's subsequent
writings, Kierkegaard's trip to Berlin provided him ample time to work
on his masterpiece, Either/Or. In a reflection about Schelling in 1849, Kierkegaard remarked that Schelling was "like the Rhine at its mouth where it became stagnant water—he was degenerating into a Prussian 'Excellency'." (Journals, January 1849)
Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Kierkegaard became acquainted with Arthur Schopenhauer's
writings quite late in his life. Kierkegaard felt Schopenhauer was an
important writer, but disagreed on almost every point Schopenhauer made.
In several journal entries made in 1854, a year before he died,
Kierkegaard spoke highly of Schopenhauer:
In the same way that one disinfects
the mouth during an epidemic so as not to be infected by breathing in
the poisonous air, one might recommend students who will have to live in
Denmark in an atmosphere of nonsensical Christian optimism, to take a
little dose of Schopenhauer's Ethic in order to protect themselves
against infection from that malodourous twaddle.
— Søren Kierkegaard, (Journals, 1854)
However, Kierkegaard also considered him, a most dangerous sign of things to come:
Schopenhauer is so far from being a
real pessimist that at the most he represents 'the interesting': in a
certain sense he makes asceticism
interesting--the most dangerous thing possible for a pleasure-seeking
age which will be harmed more than ever by distilling pleasure even out
of asceticism… is by studying asceticism in a completely impersonal way,
by assigning it a place in the system.
— Søren Kierkegaard, (Journals, 1854)
Kierkegaard believes Schopenhauer's ethical point of view is that the
individual succeeds in seeing through the wretchedness of existence and
then decides to deaden or mortify the joy of life. As a result of this
complete asceticism, one reaches contemplation: the individual does this
out of sympathy. He sympathizes with all the misery and the misery of
others, which is to exist. Kierkegaard here is probably referring to the
pessimistic nature of Schopenhauer's philosophy. One of Kierkegaard's
main concerns is a suspicion of his whole philosophy:
After reading through
Schopenhauer's Ethic one learns—naturally he is to that extent
honest—that he himself is not an ascetic. And consequently he himself
has not reached contemplation through asceticism, but only a
contemplation which contemplates asceticism. This is extremely
suspicious, and may even conceal the most terrible and corrupting
voluptuous melancholy: a profound misanthropy.
In this too it is suspicious, for it is always suspicious to propound
an ethic which does not exert so much power over the teacher that he
himself expresses. Schopenhauer makes ethics into genius, but that is of
course an unethical conception of ethics. He makes ethics into genius
and although he prides himself quite enough on being a genius, it has
not pleased him, or nature has not allowed him, to become a genius where
asceticism and mortification are concerned.
— Søren Kierkegaard, (Journals, 1854)
Little else is known about Kierkegaard's attitude to Schopenhauer. On
Schopenhauer himself, Kierkegaard felt that Schopenhauer would have
been patronizing. "Schopenhauer interests me very much, as does his fate
in Germany. If I could talk to him I am sure he would shudder or laugh
if I were to show him [my philosophy]." (Journals, 1854)
Kierkegaard and Eastern philosophy
Because
Kierkegaard read Schopenhauer, and because Schopenhauer was heavily
influenced by Eastern philosophy, it would seem that Kierkegaard would
have shown an awareness of Eastern philosophy. There is, however, little
direct reference to Asian thought in Kierkegaard's writings. Anyone who
is familiar with such Asian traditions as Buddhist, Taoist, or Shinto
philosophy, will quickly see the philosophical similarities that
Kierkegaard shares with these traditions. These similarities perhaps
explain the Japanese reception of Kierkegaard and the fact that Japanese
awareness and translations of Kierkegaard were appearing at least 30
years before any English translations.
There is also extensive Japanese scholarship on Kierkegaard, a
scholarship that interprets Kierkegaard's philosophy in terms of Asian
thought.
This interpretation is understandable when one sees that Kierkegaard's
central concerns of subjectivity, anxiety, freedom, despair, and
self-deception, are also of central concern to Buddhism and,
consequently, that there is nothing exclusively Christian about such
concerns. Both Kierkegaard and Zen Buddhism, for example, have seen the predicaments of existence in very similar ways. A specific example of the similarities here can be seen in Purity of Heart
where Kierkegaard describes the state of awareness that one must enter
in order to partake of confession. Kierkegaard's description of this
state is similar to the state of meditation described by Buddhist
philosophers.
It is distinct, however, in that the aim of confession, for
Kierkegaard, is "to center itself upon this relation to itself as an
individual who is responsible to God" (cf. Kierkegaard, "Purity of
Heart").
Kierkegaard aims to claim back the subject from the "crowd" mentality
of Christendom (cf. Kierkegaard, "On the Dedication to 'That Single
Individual' ") and reaffirm the absolute responsibility to God, which is our telos (cf. Kierkegaard, "Fear and Trembling").
Harald Hoffding
(1843–1931) helped introduce Kierkegaard to Western Europe in the early
years of the 20th century. He compared Kierkegaard to Eastern
philosophy in his 1914 book The Philosophy Of Religion in this way:
A characteristic and very frequent
type of religious faith is determined by the need of rest. The main
cause of fatigue and exhaustion in life is chiefly unrest and
distraction of mind. We are influenced on so many sides that it is
difficult for us to collect our thoughts; we are drawn in so many
directions that we find it difficult to focus our will on any one aim;
so many different and changing feelings are aroused that the inner
harmony of the mind is exposed to the danger of dissolution. Owing to
this feeling of misfit with our ideal we experience an inner need, while
our outer needs are borne in upon us in the guise of pain, frailty, and
dependence on the elementary wants of life. In the Upanishads
we find: "The Self (Atma), the sinless one, who redeems from old age,
death, suffering, hunger, and thirst, whose wishes are the right ones
and whose decree is the right one I am that self which men must inquire
after and seek to know. He who has found and known this Self has
attained all worlds and all wishes." And in another place: "Save me, for
I feel in this world's life like a frog in a sealed fountain." Jesus of
Nazareth says: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will refresh you. Learn of me, and ye shall find rest for your
souls." "Unquiet is our heart," says Augustine to his God, "until it
find rest in Thee." This need for rest rises to a passion in natures
such as St. Theresa, Pascal, and Soren Kierkegaard. There is no doubt an element of deep pathos in Augustine
also, but in his case we have the Platonist and the prince of the
church combined with the earnest seeker, and it is the combination of
all these elements which renders him such a unique figure in the history
of the religious life. St. Theresa felt the need of union with God so
powerfully that death alone could satisfy it: "I knew not where else to
seek this life but in death. The fish, drawn out of the water, sees at
any rate the end of its torment; but what death can compare with the
life in which I languish?"
With Kierkegaard, too, his great desire was to be released from the
struggle of life. The lines which he desired should be inscribed on his
gravestone express this longing: "A little while the search is o'er. The
din of battle sounds no more." In this life the believer finds himself
in an alien element; between the inner and the outer, between life and
its conditions there is a want of harmony. In Kierkegaard's case, too,
we get the metaphor of the fish out of water; it is characteristic of
this type that the same figure should be employed by the ancient Indians
in the Upanishads, by the Spanish nun of the sixteenth century, and by
the northern thinker of the nineteenth century. This trait sheds a light
on the psychology of religion. The aim of man is infinite, but he is
condemned to spend his life in the world of finitude, and hence it
follows that his existence acquires a sort of spasmodic character. In
Kierkegaard, and even in Pascal, this opposition is more sharply brought
out than in St. Theresa. In the latter it evokes longing and inner
aspiration, but her will is occupied entirely by the highest object, and
only her memory and her imagination are free to analyse her
experiences. But both Pascal and Kierkegaard have constantly to summon
the will to their aid; in their case they have a desperate struggle to
keep themselves upright in face of the harsh discord between the true
life and the conditions of actual life; to hold fast to the thought of
the object of faith and to resist the onslaughts of doubt.
— Harald Hoffding, The Philosophy Of Religion, p. 116–118, translated from the German edition by B. E. Meyer 1914
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