Kierkegaard, metaphysics and political theory : unfinished selves

172 Pages·2009·0.72 MB·English

by  Assiter

Kierkegaard, Metaphysics and
Political Theory
Continuum Studies in Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Continuum Studies in Philosophy is a major monograph series from Continuum.
The series features fi rst-class scholarly research monographs across the whole
fi eld of philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the fi eld of
philosophical research.
Aesthetic in Kant, James Kirwan
Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion, Aaron Preston
Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus, Christopher Brown
Augustine and Roman Virtue, Brian Harding
The Challenge of Relativism, Patrick Phillips
Demands of Taste in Kant’s Aesthetics, Brent Kalar
Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature, Justin Skirry
Descartes’ Theory of Ideas, David Clemenson
Dialectic of Romanticism, Peter Murphy and David Roberts
Hegel’s Philosophy of Language, Jim Vernon
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, David James
The History of Intentionality, Ryan Hickerson
Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical Evil, David A. Roberts
Leibniz Re-interpreted, Lloyd Strickland
Metaphysics and the End of Philosophy, HO Mounce
Nietzsche and the Greeks, Dale Wilkerson
Origins of Analytic Philosophy, Delbert Reed
Philosophy of Miracles, David Corner
Platonism, Music and the Listener’s Share, Christopher Norris
Popper’s Theory of Science, Carlos Garcia
Role of God in Spinoza’s Metaphysics, Sherry Deveaux
Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue, James Delaney
Rousseau’s Theory of Freedom, Matthew Simpson
Spinoza and the Stoics, Firmin DeBrabander
Spinoza’s Radical Cartesian Mind, Tammy Nyden-Bullock
St. Augustine and the Theory of Just War, John Mark Mattox
St. Augustine of Hippo, R.W. Dyson
Thomas Aquinas & John Duns Scotus, Alex Hall
Tolerance and the Ethical Life, Andrew Fiala
Kierkegaard, Metaphysics and
Political Theory
Unfi nished Selves
Alison Assiter
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© Alison Assiter 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10: HB: 0-8264-9831-0
ISBN-13: HB: 978-0-8264-9831-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Assiter, Alison.
Kierkegaard, metaphysics, and political theory / Alison Assiter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8264-9831-1
1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855. 2. Metaphysics. 3. Political science–Philosophy.
I. Title.
B4377.A87 2009
171’.2--dc22 2008044604
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
1. The Metaphysical Assumptions of the Classical Liberal 5
2. Human Rights and Fundamentalism 22
3. Some Limitations of the Discourse of Human Rights 38
4. Autonomy and ‘Evil’ 50
5. The Beginnings of an Alternative Metaphysic and Ethics 63
6. Natural Needs 86
7. Metaphysics and Morality 94
8. Love for Family, Friends and Close Associates 119
Conclusion 139
Notes 142
References 145
Index 159
Acknowledgements
There are many people who helped me with the writing of this book.
I began work on it when I took my fi rst ever sabbatical and I was based, for
a period of six months in 2006, at the London School of Economics (LSE).
Various talks I gave there and in many other places over the last two years
have formed early versions of chapters of this work. I would like to thank
the audiences in the LSE and the audience in Bristol University this year.
I would also like to thank the audience at the conference on the H umanities
at Columbia University in 2007 and the audiences at various other confer-
ences where I have been invited to present a paper.
There are a number of people who have read parts of the manuscript
and given me comments and I would like to thank all of them. They are:
Christine Battersby, Iain Grant, an unknown reader for Continuum Press,
Keith Graham, Lita Crociani-Winland, Dave Merrick, Jane Kilby and Anne
Seller. I would particularly like to thank Havi Carel for her very detailed and
helpful commentary and useful corrections to my English, despite her fi rst
language being Hebrew! Chapter 6 is largely a summary of an article writ-
ten with Jeff Noonan and I would like to thank him for allowing me to use
some of this material here.
I would also like to thank Hamid for his love and for helping me to see
the world through different eyes and our son Ben for just being around
sometimes.
Introduction
Much contemporary thinking in political theory about justice and morality
more generally presupposes that we are all rational, autonomous, self-
interested individuals (see, for example, Rawls, 1973, 1993; Kymlica, 1990;
Korsgaard, 1992). We are individuals who, in the words of Susan Moller
Okin ‘(become) mature independent human beings . . . without any men-
tion of how (we) got there’ (Okin, 1989, p. 9). In much of the tradition,
furthermore, we are disembodied.
There is a ‘metaphysical picture’ of the person underlying this, which is
an idealized one. Some of its characteristics are actualized in some thinkers;
some in others. It is broadly a liberal picture although some liberals deny
some of the characteristics and some non-liberals accept some of them.
There are contemporary liberals, I believe, however, who implicitly accept
all of the characteristics of the metaphysic. In what follows I will describe
what I will call the metaphysic underlying the liberal political tradition
although I recognize that it will not apply to all liberal thinkers. I will sug-
gest, specifi cally and additionally, that the metaphysical assumptions I will
outline expose some of the limitations of the discourse of human rights but
also of other classical liberal doctrines. Throughout the book, the theoreti-
cal and philosophical arguments will be illustrated with empirical material.
I will describe the way in which certain forms of fundamentalism offer a
threat to human rights thinking and, in the context, stress the importance
of human rights discourse in a contemporary political and legal sense.
By ‘metaphysic’ in the context, I don’t mean to suggest a theory of being,
but rather a philosophical picture of the person. There are those in the tra-
dition I am about to describe, for example Rawls, and indeed Kierkegaard
too, who would deny vehemently that they hold a metaphysic at all. The
fi rst chapter will focus on the views of Rawls.
In the book, I will suggest a different metaphysical image of the person as
embodied; as essentially connected with others, and as an entity that
changes in time. I will outline an approach to ethics that, it seems to me,
2 Kierkegaard, Metaphysics and Political Theory
connects with or fl ows from this alternative metaphysic. Importantly, how-
ever, this approach to ethics will assume something that seems to me to be
tremendously signifi cant about the liberal tradition, and that is a form of
universalism. This might appear to some to be an unusual claim to make.
Onora O’Neill (1996), for example, has argued that one of the diffi culties
faced by ethical theories that are founded upon substantive metaphysical
assumptions is that those theories will be rejected by those who operate
with different metaphysical presuppositions. However, it seems to me that
there are very good reasons for accepting at least some of the metaphysical
assumptions I will outline in the book.
In certain respects the approach I will offer bears a resemblance to a
number of perspectives, including the communitarian philosophy of, for
example, Alasdair MacIntyre (1981, 1988), Michael Sandel (1982, 1996)
and Waltzer (1983); the approach to ethical thinking known as virtue ethics
and care ethics (see, for example, Gilligan, 1982). However, it differs from
these various outlooks in at least two respects. First, as I have said above,
my perspective will retain a commitment to some version of, in Benhabib’s
words the ‘generalized other’ (1987). This other will not, however, be
disembodied. Secondly, my approach differs from these other outlooks in
so far as it emphasizes (from Kierkegaard 1995), the need to love oneself
before one can offer a concern for another. In elaborating on what this
might mean, I will draw on some psychoanalytic literature.
Idealization and Abstraction
The above images are ideal, in so far as each assumes something about the
self that may not be actualized in practice in any particular human being.
This idealization is different from abstraction. The latter is a matter of
bracketing but not of denying predicates which are true of something
(see, for some useful clarifi cation of this, O’Neill, 1996). Abstraction occurs,
for example, when I decide to disregard the fact that two of my acquain-
tances are each sports people or when I view the members of an orchestra
as musicians and, for that moment, as nothing else. Idealization though is a
different kind of activity. Idealization assumes that predicates are true of
someone that may actually be false of them. Many critics of contemporary
theories of justice, deriving from Rawls, deride these theories of justice for
being abstract (e.g. Sandel, 1982; MacIntyre, 1988; Taylor, 1991).They
suggest that ethical principles must be anchored in real practices or tradi-
tions or sensibilities and criticize those who would universalize their ethical
Introduction 3
principles for ‘abstraction’ which they suggest renders them inoperable as
ethical principles.
Abstraction, however is essential in daily life and it is fundamental in
ethical reasoning. If I cannot abstract from all irrelevant features of people,
I cannot discuss principles about, for example, euthanasia or abortion.
Even ethical particularists, in other words, will need to deploy some abstrac-
tion in order to engage in moral discussion.
My point of disagreement with the ‘liberal’ tradition is different. I will
suggest not that abstraction is wrong, but that the metaphysical ideal of
the person that underlies some of the thinking in the tradition is the
wrong one.
In the fi rst chapter, I outline some of the key features of the liberal
metaphysic of the self. I focus primarily on Rawls, as the most infl uential
liberal thinker of the twentieth century. I argue that, sometimes despite his
intentions to the contrary, his thought is directly derived from the meta-
physic of Descartes and Kant. I argue specifi cally, in relation to Descartes,
that there are two categories of person that lie outside the scope of the
rational self – those who are mad and those who are evil. I suggest that
there is in Rawls’ thinking a similar implication.
In the second chapter, I move to discuss the concept of ‘right’ in more
detail. I argue that one common criticism of the notion – the view that it is
a western cultural construction that is not appropriate for all cultures – is
misguided.
The third chapter outlines some of the limitations of the concept of a
right and specifi cally takes us back to some of the claims of the fi rst chapter,
notably Foucault’s reading of Descartes, and his exclusion of the insane
from the rational subject who becomes the subject of rights. I note a link
between contemporary discussions of terrorism and this Foucauldian
theme. In the twenty-fi rst century, as in the seventeenth, a group of people
is excluded from the rational self; the liberal autonomous subject, and
locked away.
In the fourth chapter, I move to discuss the notion of autonomy specifi -
cally in relation to evil. I argue that it is diffi cult for the classical liberal, with
her focus on autonomy, to account for evil.
Chapter 5 traces an alternative metaphysic of the self. I outline my read-
ing of a selection of Kierkegaard’s writings, but I specifi cally offer what
I describe as his ‘response’ to Descartes and Kant. I suggest that, for Kierke-
gaard, the self is needy, dependent and loving rather than autonomous and
self-interested. Kierkegaard also offers an ethical view that is based on the
notion of loving oneself and others, these others including strangers.