Kierkegaard: The Arguments of the Philosophers

402 Pages·1999·27.62 MB·English

by  Alastair Hannay

KIERKEGAARD
The Arguments of
the Philosophers
EDITOR: TED HONDERICH
The purpose of this series is to provide a contemporary assessment and
history of the entire course of philosophical thought. Each book
constitutes a detailed, critical introduction to the work of a philosopher
of major influence and significance.
Plato J. C. B. Gosling
Augustine Christopher Kitwan
The Presocratic Philosophers Jonathan Barnes
Plotinus Lloyd P. Gerson
The Sceptics R. J. Hankinson
Socrates Gerasimos Xenophon Santas
Berkeley George Pitcher
Descartes Margaret Dauler Wilson
Hobbes Tom Sore11
Locke Michael Ayers
Spinoza R. J. Delahunty
Bentham Ross Harrison
H#lu.U2 Barry Sttoud
Butler Terence Penelhum
John Stuart Mill John Skorupski
Thomas Reid Keith Lehrer
Kant Ralph C. S. Walker
Hegel M. J. Inwood
Schopenhauer D. W. Hamlyn
Kierkegaard Alastair Hannay
Nietzsche Richard Schacht
Karl Marx Allen W. Wood
Gottlob Frege Hans D. Sluga
Meinong Reinhardt Grossmann
Husserl David Bell
G. E. Moore Thomas Baldwin
Wittgenstein Robert J. Fogelin
Russell Mark Sainsbury
William James Graham Bird
Peirce Christopher Hookway
Santayana Timothy L. S. Sprigge
DWY J. E. Tiles
Bergson A. R. Lacey
J. L. Austin G. J. Watnock
Karl Popper Anthony O’Hear
AYE John Foster
Sartre Peter Caws
KIERKEGAARD
The Argzlments of the Philosophers
Alastair Hannay
London and New York
First published I982 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
First published in paperback 1991 by Routledge
Reprinted 1993
This edition reprinted in hardback 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
0 1982, 1991 Alastair Hannay
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd,
Chippenham, Wiltshire
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Ptdication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of CongressC ataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN O-41 5-20370-8
ISBN 041 ‘j-20392-9 (set)
Publisher’s note
The publisher has gone to grear lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original book may be apparent
To the memory of
ERSKINE HANNAY
(190046)

Contents
. . .
Preface Xl11
I A Kind of Philosopher 1
1 .Life and infhence 1
2 Paraphilosopher 8
3 Preview 12
II Turning Hegel Outside-in 19
1 Preliminary 19
2 The unhappy consciotcsness 22
3 ‘Becoming infinite' 31
4 Two s&-paradigms 40
S The journey inwards without itinerary 48
III The Knight of Faith’s Silence 54
1 The aesthetic works 54
2 Eq&/ibrittm 62
3 Repetition 66
4 The teleological suspension of the ethical 72
5 The gnsayable 83
IV The Dialectic of Faith 90
1 The dialectic works 90
.? Faith and the condition 97
3 Subjectivity and truth 122
4 The problem of existence 139
S The problem of communication 146
V Pathology of the Self 157
1 The psychological works 157
2 Sin and human imperfection 171
vii
CONTENTS
3 Pre- and post-threshold anxiety 177
4 Despair and its cure 190
5 Sin as defiance 199
VI Purity of Heart 205
1 The acknowledged works 205
.? The highest good 210
3 Double-mindedness 215
4 Willing one thing: Kierkegaard and Kant 224
5 Integrity and truly willing one thing 231
VII Love of One’s Neighbour 241
1 The happiness of others 241
2 The non-morality of natural love: three lines of argument 243
3 The requirements and functions of practical loue:
Kierkegaard and Kant 254
4 Is practical love humane? 240
li The transcendent source of value 270
VIII Equality and Association 276
1 Equality and politics 276
2 Authority and the individual 280
3 Levelling 1 283
4 Levelling 2 289
5 Equality in difference 293
IX The ‘Abstract’ Individual 302
1 Kierkegaard and Marx 302
2 Marx on Peuerbacb 307
3 Methodological abstraction 310
4 Defending Kierkegaard 314
5 Religion as a constant 324
x Unconcluding Postscript 329
References 337
Notes 339
Select Bibliography 378
Index 382
. . .
VIII
Satan, saint, or Socrates . . .
As a spiritual type, in a wide sense,K ierkegaard belongs to the
Mephistopheles category. Like that devil’s charge d’affaires in
Goethe, he is possessedo f a superior intellect, which he deploys
with the same supple facility and tirelessness.T hey are both, in
their at once witty, impudent, and dazzling ways, irresistible. In
fact, Kierkegaardg oes one better than the devil, being without
rival in the art of attacking reason with its own weapons. He is
not just Mephistopheles,h e is at the same time Mephistopheles’s
victim, man, Faust. It is not only against others that he turns his
weapons,i n the end he turns them without mercy on himself. . . .
[While] Mephistopheless imply dissolvesi n a smoke of brilliant
conversation . , . Kierkegaard is the dire sufferer of his own
satanism. He is, one might say, the tragic satan. . . .
The Doomed Fiddlers, by William Heinesen,
Gyldendal, Copenhagen,1 965, p. 144,
my translation
Kierkegaardw as by far the most profound thinker of the last
century. Kierkegaard was a saint.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, in private correspondence
with M. O’C. Dru in Acta Philosophica Fennica,
vol. 28, nos l-3 (7 976),.North-Holland Publishing
Company, Amsterdam, 1976
People think the world needs a new republic, a new social
order, and a new religion, but it never occurs to anyone that
what the world now needs, confused as it is by much knowing,
is a new Socrates.
S&en Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death,
Samlede Vazrker, vol. 15, pp. 144-5, my translation