Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered (Modern European Philosophy)

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KIERKEGAARD’S RELATIONS TO HEGEL RECONSIDERED Jon Stewart’s groundbreaking study is a major reevaluation of the complex relations between the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Hegel. The standard view on the subject is that Kierkegaard defined himself explicitly as the antipode of Hegel and thus that he viewed Hegel’s philosophy with utter disdain. Jon Stewart shows convincingly that Kierkegaard’s criticism was not primarily of Hegel but of a number of contemporary Danish Hegelians. Kierkegaard’s own view of Hegel was in fact much more positive than is usually thought, even to the point where he was directly influenced by some aspects of Hegel’s work. Any scholar working in the tradition of Continental philosophy will find this an insightful and provocative book with implications for the subsequent history of philosophy in the twentieth century. The book will also appeal to scholars in religious studies and the history of ideas.

Jon Stewart is Associate Research Professor of Philosophy at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen, an institution funded by the Danish National Research Foundation.

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MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY General Editor Robert B. Pippin, University of Chicago Advisory Board Gary Gutting, University of Notre Dame Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Humboldt University, Berlin Mark Sacks, University of Essex

Some Recent Titles Daniel W. Conway: Nietzsche’s Dangerous Game John P. McCormick: Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism Frederick A. Olafson: Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics Gunter ¨ Zöller: Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy Warren Breckman: Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory William Blattner: Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism Charles Griswold: Adam Smith and the Virtues of the Enlightenment Gary Gutting: Pragmatic Liberalism and the Critique of Modernity Allen Wood: Kant’s Ethical Thought Karl Ameriks: Kant and the Fate of Autonomy Alfredo Ferrarin: Hegel and Aristotle Cristina Lafont: Heidegger, Language and World-Discourse Nicholas Wolsterstorff: Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology Daniel Dahlstrom: Heidegger’s Concept of Truth Michelle Grier: Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion Henry Allison: Kant’s Theory of Taste Allen Speight: Hegel, Literature and the Problem of Agency J. M. Bernstein: Adorno Will Dudley: Hegel, Nietzsche and Philosophy Taylor Carman: Heidegger’s Analytic Douglas Moggach: The Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer

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KIERKEGAARD’S RELATIONS TO HEGEL RECONSIDERED

JON STEWART The Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen

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   Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521828383 © Jon Stewart 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2003 - isbn-13 978-0-511-07124-9 eBook (EBL) - isbn-10 0-511-07124-8 eBook (EBL) - isbn-13 978-0-521-82838-3 hardback - isbn-10 0-521-82838-4 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Denne afhandling er af Det Teologiske Fakultet ved Københavns Universitet antaget til offentligt at forsvares for den teologiske doktorgrad. København den 10. juni, 2002. Steffen Kjeldgaard-Pedersen, dekan This treatise has been accepted by the Theological Faculty at the University of Copenhagen for public defense for the degree of doctor habil. of theology. Copenhagen, June 10, 2002. Steffen Kjeldgaard-Pedersen, Dean. This book has been published with financial support from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities.


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CONTENTS

page xiii xv

Acknowledgements Abbreviations of Primary Texts

xix

Preface Introduction I. The Standard View of Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel II. Thulstrup’s Formulation of the Standard View III. The Reception of the Issue after Thulstrup IV. Thesis and Methodological Considerations 1 Kierkegaard and Danish Hegelianism I. Right and Left Hegelianism in Prussia and the German States II. The Danish Hegelians III. The Critics of Hegel in Denmark Appendix: Historical and Biographical Overview 2 Traces of Hegel in From Papers of One Still Living and the Early Works I. Hegel’s Absence in “Another Defense of Woman’s Great Abilities” II. Hegel and Kierkegaard’s Early Theory of Stages III. Von Jumping-Jack in The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars IV. Heiberg’s Perseus and From the Papers of One Still Living A. Some Background Information about Perseus B. References to the Beginning of Philosophy in Hegel’s Logic C. References to the Stages of Poetry in Hegel and Heiberg D. The Reception of From the Papers of One Still Living vii

1 3 14 27 32 45 45 50 70 83 90 92 97 105 115 115 118 123 126


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3 The Ironic Thesis and Hegel’s Presence in The Concept of Irony I. The Ironic Thesis II. Kierkegaard’s Own Assessment of His Hegelianism III. The Structure of the Text IV. Hegel’s Account of the Daimon V. Hegel’s Account of Socrates vis-à-vis the Other Greek Schools VI. Hegel’s Account of Socrates as the Founder of Morality VII. Hegel’s Account of Irony and the Ironic Subject VIII. Hegel’s Criticism of Romantic Irony

132 135 141 144 150

4 Hegel’s Aufhebung and Kierkegaard’s Either/Or I. The Title “Either/Or” and Its Origin II. The Problem of the Aufhebung of the Law of Excluded Middle III. The Work of Art and Its Dialectic IV. Two Interpretations of Antigone V. The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage: “Love’s Dialectic”

182 184

5 Kierkegaard’s Polemic with Martensen in Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est I. The Allusion to Martensen in the Title II. Kierkegaard’s Discussion of Absolute Knowing A. The Concept of Absolute Knowing in Hegel B. Johannes Climacus and Absolute Knowing III. The Individual and the Subjective Beginning of Philosophy with Doubt A. Doubt and the Justification of Science in Hegel B. Johannes Climacus’ Examination of Subjective Doubt IV. Kierkegaard’s Appropriation of Hegel on “Sense-Certainty” A. Hegel’s Analysis of “Sense-Certainty” B. Johannes Climacus, Language, and Consciousness

157 161 166 170

195 209 218 225 238 242 249 250 254 261 262 263 268 269 273

6 Kierkegaard’s Repetition and Hegel’s Dialectical Mediation I. The Contradiction of Consciousness in De Omnibus II. Repetition as an Ethical Concept III. Repetition, Mediation, and Movement in Logic IV. Repetition as a Religious Concept

282 284 288 292 297

7 Hegel’s View of Moral Conscience and Kierkegaard’s Interpretation of Abraham I. Descartes and Martensen in the Preface

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contents II. Problema I: The Murderer Sand and Kierkegaard’s Abraham A. Hegel’s View of Ethics and the Moral Conscience B. Johannes de silentio’s Criticism C. An Analogous Example III. Problema II: Absolute Duty and the Inner and the Outer IV. Problema III: The Problem of Communication and Justification 8 Martensen’s Doctrine of Immanence and Kierkegaard’s Transcendence in the Philosophical Fragments I. The Paradox and Mediation A. Climacus’ Doctrine of the Paradox B. The Role of Mediation C. The Allusions to Martensen D. The Criticism of Martensen’s Article on Mediation II. The Modal Categories III. Necessity in History IV. The Absolute Method 9 The Dispute with Adler in The Concept of Anxiety I. Actuality and the Spheres of Logic and Existence II. Immediacy and Faith III. Reconciliation and Mediation IV. Movement in Logic A. Hegel’s Conception of Dialectical Movement B. Vigilius Haufniensis’ Criticism V. Quantity, Quality, and the Leap VI. Innocence and Immediacy A. Hegel’s Account of the Original Sin B. Vigilius Haufniensis’ Criticism of Innocence as Immediacy 10 The Polemic with Heiberg in Prefaces I. Kierkegaard’s Relation to Heiberg Immediately Prior to Prefaces II. Systematic Philosophy and the Conception of Prefaces as a Work III. References to the System in Preface I IV. The Reference to the Systematic Tendency in Preface VI V. Hegel and Mediation in Preface VII VI. Hegel and Hegelians in Preface VIII

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310 310 315 321 323 329 336 339 339 341 345 347 355 359 368 378 380 385 390 396 397 399 405 411 412 414 419 421 424 427 431 437 441


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11 Subjective and Objective Thinking: Hegel in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript I. The True Targets of the Postscript II. Speculative Philosophy and Eternal Happiness III. Speculative Philosophy and the Paradox of Christianity IV. Speculative Philosophy’s Conceptual Understanding of Christianity A. Hegel’s Conceptual Understanding of Christianity B. Climacus’ Criticism of Christianity as a Form of Knowing V. Speculative Philosophy and Forgetting Oneself VI. The Criticism of the Presuppositionless Beginning VII. The Criticism of the World-Historical Perspective VIII. The Criticism of the Unity of Thought and Being IX. Speculative Philosophy and the Law of Excluded Middle X. The Absence of an Ethics in the System 12 Adler’s Confusions and the Results of Hegel’s Philosophy I. Kierkegaard’s Contact with Adler II. Christianity as a Sublated Concept III. Adler’s Attempt to Explain His Revelation IV. Adler and the Absence of an Ethics in Hegel 13 Kierkegaard’s Phenomenology of Despair in The Sickness unto Death I. Speculative Thought’s Mistaken Moral Psychology II. The Misguided Attempt to Comprehend Sin III. Rational Theology or the Pastor’s Rational Justification of Faith IV. Martensen and the God-Man V. Anti-Climacus’ Dialectic and Phenomenology A. Hegel’s Dialectical Method B. Phenomenology and Dialectic in “The Forms of This Sickness” C. Phenomenology and Dialectic in “The Continuance of Sin” D. A Change in Position? 14 Kierkegaard and the Development of Nineteenth-Century Continental Philosophy: Conclusions, Reflections, and Reevaluations I. The Results of the Present Study: Attempt at an Overview

448 453 466 470 472 472 476 483 488 497 502 510 515 524 526 532 537 543 550 553 559 564 567 572 573 578 584 587

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contents A. The First Period: 1834–1843 B. The Second Period: 1843–1846 C. The Third Period: 1847–1855 D. Conclusions about the Development of Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel II. The Standard Picture of the History of NineteenthCentury Continental Philosophy III. The Consequences of the Present Study for the Standard Picture IV. Kierkegaard, Hegel, and the Nature of NineteenthCentury Continental Philosophy A. Some Examples Indicative of a Metalevel Dispute B. Kierkegaard’s Conception of Himself and of Philosophy C. The Classification of Kierkegaard in the History of Nineteenth-Century Continental Philosophy

xi 597 605 612 615 618 622 632 633 640 650

Foreign Language Summaries Bibliographies

653 659

Subject Index Index of Persons

685 689


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I express my deepest gratitude to the Danish National Research Foundation and the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen where I have been employed in the capacity of Forskningslektor or Associate Research Professor since 1995. The excellent resources at the Centre have greatly facilitated work on this project and increased its scholarly merits immeasurably. The human resources there have also been of inestimable importance, and in this regard I would like to thank above all the Centre’s Director, Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, for his constant encouragement and unwavering belief in both this project and me. In addition, I thank Alastair Hannay, Hermann Deuser, and Arne Grøn for their support through the years. I am also indebted to Michael Theunissen for his guidance and invaluable suggestions at the initial stages of my research. Many thanks are also due to those who have helped me to proofread various parts of this work: Daniel Conway, Louie Matz, Richard Purkarthofer, and Loy Stewart; their suggestions have improved the manuscript significantly. I am deeply grateful to my friends and colleagues at the Centre for many useful discussions through the years: Noel Adams, Søren Bruun, István Czako, ´ Simonella Davini, Niels Nymann Eriksen, Dar´ıo González, Jan Holmgaard, Bruce Kirmmse, Zachary Price, Ettore Rocca, Wang Qi, Brian Söderquist, Bronislaw Swiderski, Christian Fink Tolstrup, and Arild Waaler. This project was written over a period of several years. During this time I have used parts of the manuscript for public lectures; in addition, some parts of it have appeared in earlier drafts as articles in academic journals. I gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the editors of the Jahrbuch für Hegelforschung, Kierkegaardiana, the Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, and Persona y Derecho for allowing me to reprint this previously published material here in its full context.

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acknowledgements

I am thankful to the Danish Research Agency for its generous financial support of this publication. Finally, I thank my friends, David Kangas and András Nagy, for relentlessly pushing me to see to an end this project, which I often despaired of ever completing.


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ABBREVIATIONS OF PRIMARY TEXTS

hegel’s writings Aesthetics I–II = Hegel’s Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, vols. 1–2, translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975, 1998. Briefe I–IV = Briefe von und an Hegel, vols. 1–4, edited by Johannes Hoffmeister. Hamburg: Meiner 1961. Cited by volume and page number. EL = The Encyclopaedia Logic. Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, translated by T. F. Gerats, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris. Indianapolis: Hackett 1991. Cited by paragraph number (§). ETW = Early Theological Writings, translated by T. M. Knox. Fragments translated by Richard Kroner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1948; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1975. Cited by page number. First Phil. of Spirit = First Philosophy of Spirit in G. W. F. Hegel. System of Ethical Life and First Philosophy of Spirit, edited and translated by H. S. Harris and T. M. Knox. Albany, New York: SUNY Press 1979. Cited by page number. Hist. of Phil. I–III = Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vols. 1–3, translated by E. S. Haldane. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner ¨ 1892–96; Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press 1955. Cited by volume and page number. Jub. = Sämtliche Werke. Jubiläumsausgabe in 20 Bänden, edited by Hermann Glockner. Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag 1928–41. Phil. of Hist. = The Philosophy of History, translated by J. Sibree. New York: Willey Book Co. 1944. Cited by page number. Phil. of Mind = Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, translated by William Wallace and A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1971. Cited by paragraph number (§). Phil. of Nature = Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1970. Cited by paragraph number (§). xv


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abbreviations of primary texts Phil. of Religion I–III = Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vols. 1– 3, translated by E. B. Speirs and J. Burdon Sanderson. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: The Humanities Press 1962, 1968, 1972. Cited by volume and page number. PhS = Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1977. Cited by page number. PR = Elements of the Philosophy of Right, translated by H. B. Nisbet, edited by Allen Wood. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 1991. Cited by paragraph number (§) with the exception of the Preface which is so noted and cited by page number. SL = Hegel’s Science of Logic, translated by A. V. Miller. London: George Allen and Unwin 1989. Cited by page number. TJ = Hegels theologische Jugendschriften, edited by Herman Nohl. Tübingen: Verlag von J. C. B. Mohr 1907. Cited by page number.

kierkegaard’s writings A = The Book on Adler, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1998. KW vol. 24. ASKB = Auktionsprotokol over Søren Kierkegaards Bogsamling, edited by H. P. Rohde. Copenhagen: The Royal Library 1967. B&A I–II = Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaard, vols. 1–2, edited by Niels Thulstrup. Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1953–54. CA = The Concept of Anxiety, translated by Reidar Thomte in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980. KW vol. 8. CI = The Concept of Irony; Schelling Lecture Notes, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1989. KW vol. 2. COR = The Corsair Affair; Articles Related to the Writings, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1982. KW vol. 13. CUP1 = Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1992, vol. 1. KW vol. 12.1. CUP2 = Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1992, vol. 2. KW vol. 12.2. EO1 = Either/Or 1, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1987. KW vol. 3. EO2 = Either/Or 2, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1987. KW vol. 4. EPW = Early Polemical Writings: From the Papers of One Still Living; Articles from Student Days; The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars,


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abbreviations of primary texts

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translated by Julia Watkin. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1990. KW vol. 1. EUD = Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1990. KW vol. 5. FT = Fear and Trembling; Repetition, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1983. KW vol. 6. JC = Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1985. KW vol. 7. JP = Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 1–6, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press 1967–78. Cited by volume number and entry number. Index and Composite Collation, vol. 7, by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press 1978. KW = Kierkegaard’s Writings, vols. 1–26, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1978–2000. LD = Kierkegaard: Letters and Documents, translated by Henrik Rosenmeier. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1978. (A translation of B&A.) KW vol. 25. M = The Moment and Late Writings, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1998. KW vol. 23. P = Prefaces, translated by Todd W. Nichol. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1998. KW vol. 9. Pap. = Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. 1–16, edited by P. A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr, and E. Torsting. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1909–48; supplemented by Niels Thulstrup. Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1968–78. Cited by volume number and entry number. PC = Practice in Christianity, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1991. KW vol. 20. PF = Philosophical Fragments; Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1985. KW vol. 7. PV = The Point of View, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1998. KW vol. 22. R = Repetition, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1983. KW vol. 6. SKS = Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, 28 text volumes and 28 commentary volumes, edited by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette


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abbreviations of primary texts

Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, and Alastair McKinnon. Copenhagen: Gad Publishers 1997– . SL = Stages on Life’s Way, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1988. KW vol. 11. SUD = The Sickness unto Death, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980. KW vol. 19. SV1 = Samlede Værker, first edition, vols. 1–14, edited by A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange. Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1901–06. SV2 = Samlede Værker, second edition, vols. 1–15, edited by A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1920–36. TA = Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age, A Literary Review, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1978. KW vol. 14. UD = Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1993. KW vol. 15. WA = Without Authority, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1997. KW vol. 18. WL = Works of Love, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1995. KW vol. 16.


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PREFACE

As an aid to the non-Danish reader, I have made it my practice to translate the titles of Danish books and articles in the body of my text and to give the original titles in footnotes. I have, however, allowed titles of works in the Danish secondary literature and Danish journal titles to stand in the original. German and French titles have been given in the original languages. All quotations from Hegel’s primary texts are from those works given in the list of abbreviations. When referring to Kierkegaard’s quotations of Hegel, I have usually chosen to cite from the standard translations of Hegel’s writings instead of using Hong’s translations of Kierkegaard’s quotations. Many of the Danish works used in this study, in both the primary and the secondary literature, have yet to be translated into English. Since this material is not accessible to the non-Danish reader, it would have been unreasonable simply to allude to it briefly in a footnote and leave it to the reader to do the follow-up work. Due to this I have found myself obliged to quote this material extensively. I have tried to integrate these quotations into my text as much as possible so that they do not make for onerous reading. All translations from these works are my own unless otherwise noted. When possible, I have used as my main Danish text the new critical edition of Kierkegaard’s works currently being produced by the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre (i.e., Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, edited by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup and Alastair McKinnon, Copenhagen: Gad Publishers 1997– ). In my work I have frequently used the philological account of the various texts and the Realkommentar, both of which are found in the volumes of commentary that accompany the text volumes of the edition. The use of this often new material has been a great benefit to this investigation, and I am indebted to my colleagues for it.

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INTRODUCTION

Although the research community in the English-speaking world has witnessed a new wave of interest in Kierkegaard’s work over the last several years, the secondary literature has remained somewhat uneven, often treating him as a figure isolated from the intellectual tradition and context out of which his thought was born. Few of the major commentators do much to situate his thought vis-à-vis the tradition of German idealism which preceded him or the Danish philosophical milieu in which he was educated, and it is here that many issues and connections remain to be explored. One of the issues that has hitherto been treated most unevenly is the complex relation of Kierkegaard’s philosophy to that of Hegel. The general importance of a study of this relation should be self-evident to any student of Kierkegaard’s thought. References to Hegel occur throughout his literary corpus from his earliest works, and his contact with Hegelianism has often been seen as one of the most important dimensions of his biography and intellectual development. Many aspects of Kierkegaard’s thinking, such as his conception of stages, his dialectical methodology, and his understanding of Socrates and Antigone, seem to recall key doctrines and analyses from Hegel’s philosophy. While many scholars would agree that much of Kierkegaard’s rich and diverse thought is best understood as being in a sort of dialogue with Hegel’s philosophy, few have done much to establish the concrete points of contact in a historical fashion. Thus, for anyone even mildly familiar with Kierkegaard, the value of an investigation of his relation to Hegel and German idealism should be obvious and in no need of justification. There are any number of reasons why this issue, so central to understanding Kierkegaard, has not been treated more often or more rigorously than it has. First, in a number of his books, there are several passages in which Kierkegaard assumes a tone of animosity towards Hegelian philosophy. Some of his criticisms seem straightforwardly ad hominem in character and at times resemble those of other contemporaries who were simply trying to vilify Hegel without a serious examination of his thought. 1


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introduction

Perhaps the clearest example of this is Kierkegaard’s little-known comedy from his student days entitled, The Battle between the Old and the New SoapCellars. There he caricatures the Danish Hegelians with whom he was familiar and satirizes Hegel’s stilted philosophical jargon. This clearly belongs to Kierkegaard’s juvenilia and thus is by no means a representative text; nonetheless, some of its satirical character survives in scattered passages in the mature works. Kierkegaard’s own negative rhetoric with respect to Hegel and above all to Hegelians would seem to imply that his thought has little or nothing in common with that of Hegel and that any comparative study would simply be misguided. Whatever else it might mean, Kierkegaard’s animated tone testifies to the historical importance of Hegel’s philosophy and the need for learned persons of the day to come to terms with it. There were enthusiastic admirers and bitter critics, but there was no way of avoiding taking some position on the philosopher who dominated much of academic life in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s at first in his own person and later through the agency of his students. In any case, most commentators have simply taken Kierkegaard at what seems to have been his word and have subsequently interpreted his appraisal of Hegel as universally negative. Few scholars have been able to look past Kierkegaard’s rhetoric to see if it is in accordance with the actual content of his analyses of Hegel’s thought. Another reason why Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel has not been analyzed more critically than it has is that a number of issues between Hegel and Kierkegaard appear to be cut and dry and seem to assign the two thinkers to opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum. One example can be found in their respective views on systematic philosophy. For Hegel, systematic or speculative philosophy is the kind of thinking that conceives of all cognitive categories and notions of truth in their organic relation to one another. This conception of philosophy stands in contrast to what Hegel calls “dogmatism,”1 which abstracts categories and notions from their context and sees them in isolation. According to Hegel, concepts, propositions, and individual analyses fit together like tiles in a mosaic, each needing the others and the whole in order to be meaningful. Thus, the universal perspective of absolute knowing, which constitutes a panoptic, objective view, transcending all individual and partial perspectives, necessarily implies a speculative conception of all the various finite notions of truth. For Kierkegaard, on the other hand, this objective view is simply an impossible, self-deceptive abstraction from the particular individual and is ultimately incommensurable with experience and truth as lived by the human subject. Thus, according to his view, truth is necessarily subjective and individual and cannot be demonstrated by discursive or conceptual thought. Second, Hegel’s methodology seems 1

Hegel, EL, § 32, Remark; Jub., vol. 8, p. 106.


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the standard view

3

to imply that no individual notion of truth is absolute in itself, but rather such notions are continually mediated by others. Any given notion or concept is invariably dissolved or aufgehoben into other concepts. However, for Kierkegaard, the individual existing subject is absolute and stubbornly resists reduction or mediation of any kind. Given these radically different presuppositions concerning objective and subjective reflection, objective and subjective truth, and the reduction and mediation of concepts, it seems as though the two thinkers have nothing in common since they use diametrically opposed first premises as their respective points of departure. A careful examination of the current state of affairs in the secondary literature reveals that the need for a detailed study of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is more acute than might otherwise have been thought. Many commentators allude to Kierkegaard’s enmity towards Hegel’s philosophy as a fact given in advance of any investigation. Due to the history of reception of the issue, the agreed upon presupposition is that Kierkegaard was one of the major critics of Hegel. Some commentators briefly note that he attended Schelling’s lectures in Berlin where he received a somewhat jaded picture of Hegel’s philosophy, but few have explored Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel in a fashion that truly takes into account the cultural context and historical setting in which Kierkegaard was writing. Most comparative studies tend to abstract both Hegel and Kierkegaard from their respective historical contexts and analyze their positions directly vis-à-vis one another without taking into consideration other possible influences. This has led commentators to seize upon and develop what they perceive to be points of comparison and contrast, but once the historical background becomes clear, it is obvious that these points in fact have little to do with Kierkegaard’s actual intentions or his own understanding of his relation to Hegel. Thus, what is needed is a somewhat more historically oriented approach that looks at the issue afresh, unencumbered by the old misconceptions and prejudices.

i. the standard view of kierkegaard’s relation to hegel There seems to be a standard view of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, which has today become firmly ensconced as a result of any number of factors in the history of scholarly reception. The standard view regards this relation as a purely negative one. Kierkegaard is thus thought to have rejected Hegel’s philosophy wholesale and to have used aspects of it only to ridicule them, often ironically. He is thought to have been entirely original and to have taken leave of his philosophical predecessor right from the beginning. Moreover, a part of his criticism of Hegel is characterized by a strikingly personal tone. Unlike Aristotle’s criticism of Plato


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or Fichte’s criticism of Kant, there is thought to be a strong personal element in Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. He is conceived as having criticized not just Hegel’s thought on its own terms but also the way in which that thought led Hegel himself to a misguided life. Kierkegaard is thus said to have waged a rabid campaign against both Hegel’s philosophy and his person. This is, generally speaking, what I understand by “the standard view” in the understanding of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. This view has been around virtually since the beginning of the twentieth-century reception of Kierkegaard’s thought at the time when he began to become known internationally. In what follows, I wish to review very briefly some typical examples of this view. The history of the reception of this issue is quite large, and what follows is to be regarded only as a cursory overview, the goal of which is merely to highlight what I take to have been the general tendency in the interpretation of the issue by some of the leading names in the scholarship. With regard to the Danish reception, this standard view of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel plays at least a minor role in Eduard Geismar’s influential work, Søren Kierkegaard. Hans Livsudvikling og Forfattervirksomhed from 1927–28.2 It cannot be said that the issue of Kierkegaard’s criticism of Hegel is the central one in Geismar’s study as a whole, but it does come up in his discussions of The Concept of Irony3 and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.4 While Geismar is willing to admit that there is some ambiguity in Kierkegaard’s use of Hegel in the Concept of Irony, regarding the work as displaying a “partial Hegelianism,”5 he nonetheless sees in Kierkegaard’s authorship a deep criticism of Hegel that begins even prior to this text.6 By contrast, Geismar sees the Concluding Unscientific Postscript as an open struggle against Hegel himself, among other things, against Hegel’s pantheism and against Hegel’s principle of the unity of the inner and the outer, of Christianity and culture. While Geismar’s account is mercifully free of any personal anti-Hegel element, he nonetheless understands much of Kierkegaard’s polemics as being directed against Hegel himself and sees the two thinkers as occupying diametrically opposed positions.7 Despite underscoring this polemic with Hegel, Geismar was criticized for making Kierkegaard too Hegelian.8 2 3 4 5 7 8

Eduard Geismar, Søren Kierkegaard. Hans Livsudvikling og Forfattervirksomhed, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1927–28. Ibid., vol. 1, første del, pp. 90–101. Ibid., vol. 1, tredie del, pp. 5–21, pp. 44–91. 6 Ibid., vol. 1, første del, pp. 97–98. Ibid., vol. 1, første del, p. 99. Ibid., vol. 1, tredie del, p. 6. See K. Olesen Larsen’s article, “Noget om Afgørelsen i Øjeblikket,” in Søren Kierkegaard læst af K. Olesen Larsen, ed. by Vibeke Olesen Larsen and Tage Wilhjelm, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad 1966, vol. 1, pp. 21–73, especially pp. 27–59. See also Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel. Forschungsgeschichte, Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer 1969, pp. 90–99.


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Geismar’s analyses are almost entirely immanent to Kierkegaard’s own works, and he does very little by way of Quellenforschung; indeed, he sticks so closely to Kierkegaard’s primary texts that some of his analyses border on paraphrase. While Geismar mentions the names of the main Danish Hegelians, he does not do much to trace Kierkegaard’s criticisms of their texts but instead assumes them to be directly related to key doctrines in Hegel’s own works. Another important figure in the history of the Danish reception was the Professor of Theology, N. H. Søe, whose history of philosophy, Fra Renæssancen til vore Dage from 1945,9 was highly influential due in part to the fact that it was used for years as a textbook. In this work Søe includes sections on both Hegel and Kierkegaard. The latter is of particular importance since Kierkegaard’s work and authorship are portrayed as being determined by Hegel and specifically as being critical of him. There is a tendency in Søe to evaluate the matter in Kierkegaard’s own language and from his perspective. It is not difficult to see the author’s partisanship in passages like the following: “On the whole Kierkegaard is not only Hegel’s most important . . . theological opponent, but his thoughts have their lasting validity for all times.”10 Finally, the nature of Søe’s work, as a history of Western philosophy since the Renaissance, determines the character and agenda of his analysis of Kierkegaard, who is portrayed as one figure in the series of great thinkers from Descartes to then contemporary French existentialism. Søe writes, “The first significant theologian, who understood Hegel and then declared open war on him, was S. Kierkegaard.”11 Thus, for the sake of his historical overview, Søe has an interest in seeing Kierkegaard in relation to Hegel, one of the towering figures in the tradition. But this causes him to ignore entirely Kierkegaard’s contemporary Danish context. No attempt is made to evaluate Kierkegaard’s relation to the Danish Hegelians, who were presumably deemed unworthy of inclusion. This work has seen several reprints and has been influential for many years. Søe’s work is also illustrative of another aspect of the history of reception of the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. It is a platitude to say that research changes with the political climate of the day, and it would be naive to think that it is ever completely free of some ideological investment. The ideological commitments of a given body of research are usually more or less invisible to those immediately involved with it, and they usually only become apparent years later when the political landscape has changed enough to make a sufficient contrast with the past. Thus, the contours of previous ideologies gradually come into focus. Kierkegaard 9 10

N. H. Søe, Fra Renæssancen til vore Dage. Filosofisk tænkning med særligt henblik p˚a de moralske og religiøse problemer, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag 1945. Fourth revised edition 1964. 11 Ibid., fourth edition, p. 151fn. Ibid., fourth edition, p. 186.


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research has been no exception. Kierkegaard has often been held up as the heroic advocate of freedom, equality, the individual, and human rights against all possible forces of oppression. With regard to the issue of his relation to Hegel, this usually comes out in the form that Hegel is cast in the role of one of the foremost representatives of these oppressive forces. Writing in 1945, Søe introduces Hegel as follows: “He is thus a main presupposition both for K. Marx and for the view of life of modern Nazi Germany.”12 Here Hegel is made responsible for the abuses of both extremes of the political spectrum. It is odd to read this kind of thing today, but at the time it was precisely thinking of this sort that hindered genuine research on Hegel’s thought from gaining a foothold in either the Danish or the anglophone literature. Another exponent of the standard view was Søren Holm, the Professor of Theology at the University of Copenhagen, whose numerous publications span a period of some forty years from the 1920s to the 1960s. Holm never made any single study of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, but he did have occasion to treat this issue, albeit briefly, in his two main works on Kierkegaard (i.e., Søren Kierkegaards Historiefilosofi from 195213 and Grundtvig und Kierkegaard from 195614 ). In the latter, Holm’s comparative study, Hegel comes up frequently as an important point of orientation for understanding the positions of Kierkegaard and Grundtvig. Holm’s general view is that although Kierkegaard knew Hegel’s philosophy well and was influenced by its language and its general constellation of problems, nevertheless he was “the sharpest opponent of this philosophy.”15 Holm goes on to treat Kierkegaard’s criticism of mediation,16 the system,17 objective thinking,18 and necessity in history,19 all of which he takes to be essential parts of a Hegel critique. Holm’s work on Kierkegaard’s philosophy of history is above all a study of the Philosophical Fragments, although he includes accounts of individual discussions from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Practice in Christianity. Holm’s understanding of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel with respect to the topic under consideration is expressed as follows in the Preface: “Kierkegaard’s philosophy of history and his subsequent understanding of Christianity arose in a polemic against Hegel’s philosophy.”20 Given this, one would expect to find an extended analysis of Hegel’s philosophy of history, but Holm disappoints the reader in 12 13 14 15 17 19 20

Ibid., fourth edition, p. 137. Søren Holm, Søren Kierkegaards Historiefilosofi, Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, Arnold Busck 1952. Søren Holm, Grundtvig und Kierkegaard. Parallelen und Kontraste, tr. by Gunter ¨ Jungbluth, Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, Arnold Busck; Tubingen: ¨ Katzmann Verlag 1956. 16 Ibid., pp. 25ff. Ibid., p. 13. 18 Ibid., pp. 57ff. Ibid., pp. 35ff. Ibid., pp. 82ff. Søren Holm, Søren Kierkegaards Historiefilosofi, op. cit., p. 6.


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this expectation. With only the most cursory account of Hegel’s philosophy of history, Holm goes through Kierkegaard’s well-known discussions of, among other things, movement in logic,21 the transition from possibility to actuality,22 and the god-man,23 all of which are taken to be criticisms of key doctrines in Hegel. Holm embodies the standard view quite well since there is no real attempt to examine Hegel’s philosophy on its own terms, and the whole discussion is presented from what is taken to be Kierkegaard’s perspective. Moreover, very little is done to trace other possible sources, and when the aforementioned doctrines are discussed, there is no suspicion that Kierkegaard might be in dialogue with other authors besides Hegel. Thus, in the absence of any real research either on Hegel’s own philosophy or on the contemporary authors writing about it, Holm simply conveys what seems to be the agreed upon view of Kierkegaard’s critical relation to Hegel. Another important figure in the Danish history of the reception of the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel was the Ukrainian-born philosopher Gregor Malantschuk. While Malantschuk never dedicated any single work to exploring this relation, he does treat aspects of it in several of his books. In his general introduction to Kierkegaard entitled, Kierkegaard’s Way to the Truth, Malantschuk portrays Hegel as the representative of the modern trend of secular rationalism, which has imperiled Christianity.24 Hegel is seen as one of the leading causes of the spiritual destruction of the age, which Kierkegaard dedicates himself to combatting. Thus, Malantschuk juxtaposes Kierkegaard to Hegel, portraying the two as single-minded opponents representing two opposing principles and world-views. In his work Kierkegaard’s Thought, Malantschuk is somewhat more even-handed. He originally characterizes the relation as follows: “Generally speaking Kierkegaard took a negative position toward Hegelian ‘speculation,’ but it is interesting to note that he was able to use much of what he learned from Hegel.”25 After this Malantschuk goes on to list a series of familiar objections that Kierkegaard purportedly had to Hegel’s philosophy,26 which is followed by a few examples of Kierkegaard’s positive co-opting of specific analyses from Hegel. Finally, Malantschuk concludes that Kierkegaard is best seen as a Hegel-critic. He 21 23 24 25

26

22 Ibid., pp. 34ff. Ibid., pp. 28ff. Ibid., pp. 48ff., pp. 107ff. Gregor Malantschuk, Kierkegaard’s Way to the Truth. An Introduction to the Authorship of Søren Kierkegaard, tr. by Mary Michelsen, Montreal: Inter Editions 1987, pp. 13–16. Gregor Malantschuk, Dialektik og Eksistens hos Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag 1968, p. 60. Quoted from the English translation: Kierkegaard’s Thought, tr. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1971, p. 58. A similar series of Hegel criticisms can be found in Malantschuk’s Fra Individ til den Enkelte. Problemer omkring Friheden og det etiske hos Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel 1978, pp. 250–257.


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writes, “Hegel’s great influence upon Kierkegaard was, however, indirect. The errors Kierkegaard discovered in Hegel’s system and which had a decisive negative influence upon his understanding of central philosophical and theological themes had to be corrected, and Kierkegaard saw this as one of his tasks.”27 Thus, the struggle against Hegel is conceived as one of the main goals of Kierkegaard’s authorship as a whole. Malantschuk’s research, like that of Søe before him, gives clear expression to the ideological commitments of the day. He portrays Hegel as the forerunner of the totalitarian communist states with his purported absorption of ethics into the state and his glorification of the monarch as the highest power. Malantschuk traces the line from Strauss to Feuerbach and then claims: The next step happens with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who with their consistently executed materialistic life-view end up as declared opponents of Christianity. It was not only the dialectic in modified form but also the view of freedom, the ethical and the individual as a disappearing moment, which Marx and Engels could take over from Hegel and incorporate into their philosophy. Thus, Marx and Engels could, with the help of the central concepts in Hegel’s philosophy . . . construct a system, whose actualization ultimately would mean the death of Christianity.28

Hegel is made responsible for the anti-Christian nature of Marxism and set in the immediate context of the debate about Marxism, which was taking place in Denmark at the time. He is portrayed as a thinker hostile to Christianity both from this Marxist side and from the side of Nietzsche: “It must further be noted that Friedrich Nietzsche’s atheistic and antiChristian life view is only completely understandable against the background of the foundation of paganism which Hegel’s philosophy had prepared.”29 From very early in the history of reception, this standard view was constantly reinforced in countless reference works, anthologies, commentaries, and so on. Robert Bretall’s well-known work, A Kierkegaard Anthology,30 which originally appeared in 1938, has served as an introductory textbook for anglophone students of Kierkegaard for many years now. In both the general introduction to the work as a whole and in the introductions to the various selections, Bretall is careful to point out how the 27 28

29 30

Gregor Malantschuk, Dialektik og Eksistens, op. cit., p. 66. Kierkegaard’s Thought, op. cit., p. 65f. Gregor Malantschuk, Fra Individ til den Enkelte, op. cit., p. 257. See also his Den kontroversielle Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Vintens Forlag 1976, p. 66f. English translation: The Controversial Kierkegaard, tr. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 1980, pp. 22–23, p. 80. Ibid., p. 257. Robert Bretall (ed.), A Kierkegaard Anthology, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1946. Previously Harper and Brothers 1938; Augsburg Publishing House 1943.


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passages selected are illustrative of Kierkegaard’s disdain for Hegelianism, which, we are told, “he hated above all else.”31 For Hegel’s principle of mediation Kierkegaard is said to have had “an unyielding hatred.”32 Characterizing the content of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Bretall writes, “Hegel and his cohorts are attacked with every weapon in S. K.’s armory.”33 One can hardly help but notice the personal tone in these descriptions of what are purportedly philosophical points of disagreement between two thinkers. Through this anthology, generations of anglophone students have had it ingrained into them that a central part of Kierkegaard’s work was a thoroughgoing anti-Hegel campaign. Similarly, any number of the entries concerning Hegel’s philosophy listed in Jens Himmelstrup’s “Terminologisk Register,” which appeared in 1936 as part of a supplement volume to the second Danish edition of Kierkegaard’s complete works,34 clearly manifest the same general tendency in interpretation. The editors of this second edition were conscious of the fact that their commentaries were woefully inadequate, and to compensate in part for this they decided to include the “Terminologisk Register,” the goal of which was to provide the reader with at least some help in sorting out the difficult concepts. But the entries did not shrink from interpretation and presented a very definite picture of Kierkegaard, a picture that reflected the view not so much of Kierkegaard but of their author. For example, under the entry “mediation,” one reads, “Kierkegaard, who thinks that there are oppositions which cannot be bridged, has, as a sharp opponent of Hegel and his mediating method, caustic statements about mediation.”35 Similarly, in the related entry on the law of excluded middle, the reader is told, that “[i]t is Kierkegaard’s impassioned claim that the Hegelian conception of the law of contradiction is incorrect.”36 Here it is emphatically confirmed that Kierkegaard was a critic of Hegel, and this point about mediation is illustration of this, even though the issue is considerably more complicated, as will be seen in the body of this study.37 Similarly, in Himmelstrup’s entry on “the leap,” the same presumed anti-Hegel polemic is in evidence. There one reads, “It is Kierkegaard’s impassioned claim that this form of transition [sc. the leap] in Hegel’s logic rests on an error; no reflection on concepts can produce any movement; mediation is a chimera, and Kierkegaard especially emphasizes 31 33 34

35 36 37

32 Ibid., p. 19. Ibid., p. 340. Ibid., p. 191. Samlede Værker, second edition, ed. by A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange, vols. 1–15, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1920–36. Volume 15 contains a “Sagregister” by A. Ibsen and the “Terminologisk Register” by Jens Himmelstrup. “Terminologisk Register” in SV2, vol. 15, p. 633. “Terminologisk Register” in SV2, vol. 15, p. 757. Chapter 4, Sections I and II; Chapter 11, Section IX.


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that it is an error pure and simple when Hegel’s system believes that it has a so-called ‘absolute’ or presuppositionless beginning.”38 In this entry the leap is portrayed as a point of profound discontinuity between Hegel and Kierkegaard. It is one of Kierkegaard’s explicit points of criticism of Hegel; moreover, it is immediately associated with other wellknown criticisms, such as that of mediation and the absolute beginning. But no mention is made of the fact that Hegel was one of the original sources of the concept of the leap and that it was from him, among others, that Kierkegaard in fact appropriated it.39 Thus, while a more impartial treatment might see this as a positive point of influence of Hegel on Kierkegaard, Himmelstrup portrays it as an unambiguous point of critique. Under the entry, “actuality” (i.e., “Virkelighed”), one finds a similar example. The term is explained once again as a part of Kierkegaard’s general campaign against Hegel. In order to illustrate the fact that Kierkegaard’s use of this term is critical of Hegel, Himmelstrup cites the following passage from The Concept of Anxiety: “Thus when an author entitles the last section of the Logic ‘Actuality,’ he thereby gains the advantage of making it appear that in logic the highest has already been achieved, or if one prefers, the lowest.”40 The astute reader will notice that nowhere in this passage is Hegel’s name mentioned. Himmelstrup seems not to be aware of the fact that the concept of actuality in Hegel (i.e., “Wirklichkeit”) does not appear as the last section of his Science of Logic but rather in an undistinguished section midway through the second (of three) books. Himmelstrup thus makes an interpretative leap for the reader by quoting this passage as a criticism of Hegel. As will be demonstrated later, there is clear evidence that in this passage Kierkegaard in fact has in mind another target and that the criticism has nothing to do with Hegel himself.41 Finally, the entry on “the System” is extremely misleading along the same lines. The first thing that the reader is told is the following: “As a rule this expression in Kierkegaard is synonymous with Hegel’s philosophical system.”42 This, however, forgets the innumerable passages in which Kierkegaard criticizes his Danish contemporaries for writing “the system.” For example, in Prefaces, there is a criticism of various unnamed writers of the system: I assume that Mr. A. A., whose promises supposedly have not weakened him, went to work and wrote the system. . . . [T]herefore posito I assume that if Mr. A. A. did not write the system, then Mr. B. B. wrote it – then 38 39 41 42

“Terminologisk Register” in SV2, vol. 15, pp. 697–98. 40 CA, pp. 9–10; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 317–318. Treated in Chapter 9, Section V. Chapter 9, Section I. “Terminologisk Register” in SV2, vol. 15, p. 711.


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what? . . . Then one would indeed have to read it, unless Mr. C. C. would instantly be kind and philanthropic enough to promise a summary of the system and also position us in the point of view.43

As will be discussed later,44 in a draft Kierkegaard specifically identifies Mr. A. A., Mr. B. B., and Mr. C. C. with three Danish contemporaries.45 Thus, there can be no doubt that when he speaks of “the system” in this passage, he is not thinking of Hegel. In the entry in question Himmelstrup goes on at length to outline the structure of Hegel’s elaborate system. This again conveys the impression that Kierkegaard in his “criticism” was primarily concerned with Hegel himself. Moreover, the entry ends with an obligatory section entitled, “Kierkegaard’s Critique of Hegel’s System,” which further reinforces the idea that the system is intended to refer specifically to something in Hegel’s primary texts and not to some general conception of philosophy which Kierkegaard finds objectionable or, as previously, to some specific imitator of Hegel’s system. The entries in Himmelstrup’s Register suggest that Kierkegaard wishes to issue a criticism of Hegel on the various points. But that Hegel is the intended target is by no means obvious from the passages cited by way of illustration. The fact that this Register accompanied the authoritative critical edition of the collected writings gave it an air of legitimacy and authority. If one wanted to know what Kierkegaard meant by specific concepts, one needed to look no further than the Register, which provided both a brief explanation of the individual concepts and relevant passages in Kierkegaard’s texts where they were illustrated. In this way Himmelstrup’s Register served in a sense to codify the individual aspects of the anti-Hegel polemic which Kierkegaard was thought to be engaged in, and thus it played a role in the establishment of a kind of Kierkegaard orthodoxy with regard to this issue. Moreover, the way in which commentaries have traditionally been written to Kierkegaard’s works reflects the standard view that Kierkegaard was engaged in a campaign against Hegel.46 It might seem a great blessing 43

44 45 46

P, p. 39; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 500–501. See COR, p. 5; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 399–400: “It is the system toward which the age is directing its efforts. Prof. R. Nielsen already has published twenty-one logical §s that constitute the first part of a logic that in turn constitutes the first part of an all-encompassing encyclopedia.” (Cited in full in Chapter 11, Section I.) Here “the system” is associated with Rasmus Nielsen. See COR, p. 6; SV1, vol. 13, p. 400: “Who failed to notice that Dr. Beck has abolished religion in order to make room for the system?” Here the system is associated with Andreas Frederik Beck. Chapter 10, Section V. P, Supplement, p. 119; Pap. V B 96. See SKS, vol. K4, pp. 606–608. I refer here to, for example, the commentaries written by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie in the early English translations, the more extensive ones written by Howard Hong in the Princeton translation series, Kierkegaard’s Writings, the ones in the German translation of Kierkegaard’s collected works (Gesammelte Werke, tr. and ed. by Emanuel Hirsch, Hayo Gerdes, and Hans-Martin Junghans, 36 Abteilungen in 26 volumes, with Registerband. Düsseldorf, Cologne: Eugen Diederichs Verlag 1950–69; second edition,


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that editions of Kierkegaard’s works, unlike those of other thinkers, have been accompanied by commentaries that aid the reader in the understanding of difficult passages and obscure references. But the commentaries written for Kierkegaard’s works have not been value-neutral with respect to interpretation, and a very specific picture of Kierkegaard often emerges from them. Whenever there is a passage in one of Kierkegaard’s texts that employs any kind of philosophical language, there is immediately a tendency in the commentaries to refer to Hegel, even though the language employed may be quite standard in the history of philosophy. Especially when there seems to be a critical remark, whose target is difficult to identify, there is a tendency to cite some passage in Hegel’s works as the probable source. This gives the reader the mistaken impression that Kierkegaard is constantly in dialogue with Hegel’s primary texts. But the true source is quite often some little-known contemporary Danish figure. The twenty-some volumes of Hegel’s collected works make for fertile soil for the commentator in search of a passage that fits the required context. This search is facilitated by Glockner’s Hegel-Lexikon,47 which provides commentators with a host of ready-made passages to choose from for any given key word. The result is a series of commentaries that evoke the impression that Hegel was the only philosopher whom Kierkegaard was interested in, while other contemporaries such as Immanuel Hermann, (i.e., “the younger”) Fichte or Franz von Baader, who were major figures in their day, are simply disregarded as insignificant. The same tendency can be seen in the selection under the heading, “Hegel,” in the English edition entitled, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers.48 There one finds very few actual quotations from or references to Hegel’s primary texts. These few are set together with a number of journal entries containing vague allusions, which are in serious need of interpretation before they can be associated with Hegel. In many of the passages the discussion is clearly about specific Hegelians, some of whom are mentioned by name, and this juxtaposition seems to imply that there is no significant difference between Hegel himself and any given Hegelian. Moreover, there are included under this same heading

47 48

36 Abteilungen in 30 volumes, Gutersloh: ¨ Gütersloher Verlagshaus 1986–95), and those written by Niels Thulstrup in his editions of individual works (Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift, ed. with Introduction and Commentary by Niels Thulstrup, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1962. In English as Commentary on Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. by Robert J. Widenmann. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1984; Philosophiske Smuler, ed. with Introduction and Commentary by Niels Thulstrup, Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1955; C. A. Reitzel 1977, 1990). Hermann Glockner, Hegel-Lexikon, Stuttgart: Fr. Frommanns Verlag, Gunter ¨ Holzboog 1957, vols. 25–26 of Jub. Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 1–6, ed. and tr. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press 1967–78, vol. 2, pp. 207–228.


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a fair number of passages where neither Hegel’s own name nor the word “Hegelian” appears, but where there is, apparently in the opinion of the editors, a general discussion of some aspect of Hegel’s philosophy. But the interpretation involved in associating these passages with Hegel himself requires justification. Perhaps what is most unfortunate is the way in which all of these quite heterogeneous entries are categorized under the heading “Hegel.” This categorization and presentation of the material leads the reader in a specific direction and conveys the impression that the various vague references and allusions contained in the passages are to be understood uniformly as referring to Hegel himself. This has been the most complete edition of Kierkegaard’s Nachlaß or Papirer in English ever since it was published, and thus it has done much to shape the reception of this issue simply by the editorial decisions it has made and the way in which the material has been presented. While this edition has been important and indeed useful in making Kierkegaard’s journals accessible to anglophone readers and to this extent has undeniably served an important function, nevertheless, with respect to Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, it simply repeats uncritically the standard view and has helped to calcify it in the literature. These seemingly banal things, such as the categorization of journal entries under the heading, “Hegel,” or the explanation of key concepts in Kierkegaard by means of a reference to his purported polemic with Hegel, have had a profound effect on the history of Kierkegaard reception and have served to shape the picture of his relation to Hegel. It would be impossible to enumerate all the factors in the history of reception that have led to the standard view, and thus I allow these few examples to suffice. The influence of anthologies like that of Bretall and reference works like that of Himmelstrup is intangible, but they can be seen as a kind of barometer for the reception of the issue. They give a general indication of the atmosphere of the reception of Kierkegaard’s thought and set the tone for students and first time readers to understand his works. The examples mentioned here (and one could mention many others) demonstrate that the view that Kierkegaard had a campaign against Hegel existed in the literature from the very early stage of the reception at the beginning of the twentieth century. Kierkegaard was introduced to the modern reader in part by means of his purported Hegel critique. This was natural enough given that Hegel was the well-established philosophical figure of his period. Kierkegaard’s position in the history of philosophy was located and defined specifically vis-à-vis Hegel (i.e., as a Hegel critic). It will be noted that none of the works mentioned here was specifically a study of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. They focus primarily on other themes and have quite different goals and objectives. But when they come to mention Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel,


14

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there is a striking degree of homogeneity in what is said. Thus, there seems to have been a general consensus on this issue among the leading scholars of the day. Because no one cared to delve into the matter further, it remained a fixed truth, a general point of orientation, which itself was never called into question. If there was disagreement or discussion, then it was about the details (i.e., whether Kierkegaard was partially influenced by Hegel on one point or another), but the presumed fact about his overall anti-Hegel campaign remained unquestioned. There is little evidence that any of these scholars knew much about Hegel’s thought in its own right, and this is perhaps one of the reasons why they spared themselves the trouble of examining the matter more closely. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the research on the issue went in the direction that it did once scholars began to write specialized monographs and longer studies on Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. The view had been in the air for a long time and was waiting for someone to come along and provide a foundation for it by means of research.

ii. thulstrup’s formulation of the standard view One of the most important figures in the history of the reception of the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel was the Professor of Theology, Niels Thulstrup. While the general tendency of regarding Kierkegaard’s position as a straightforward campaign against Hegel was around long before Thulstrup’s day, he was the one who crystalized it, giving it its clearest, most unambiguous formulation; moreover, his work aimed explicitly to ground it by means of a scholarly investigation of the issue. Thus, in a sense, he can be said if not to have established then to have grounded in scholarship the paradigm in mainstream research today for understanding Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. In addition to a number of scattered essays, Thulstrup addresses this issue directly in two major works. The first is his study, Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel. Forschungsgeschichte.49 This book serves the function of systematically tracing and evaluating the secondary literature on the issue up until circa 1960. In this work Thulstrup does little by way of actual research but instead merely gives his opinion about the various articles and books that he investigates. But his opinion (i.e., that Kierkegaard is engaged in a major anti-Hegel campaign) is presupposed from the start and never argued for since this is presumably the task of his second book on the issue (which is discussed later). Thulstrup’s ideological investments come out clearly in the following passage, in which he explains his reasons for not treating Hermann 49

Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel. Forschungsgeschichte, op. cit.


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15

Schweppenhäuser’s Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Spekulation:50 Die Lehrer des Verfassers sind Th. W. Adorno und H. Marcuse samt ihren Hausgöttern Feuerbach und Marx. Hinter ihnen steht ja Hegel, den der Verfasser gegen Kierkegaards Angriff verteidigt. . . . Schweppenhäusers ausgeklügelte Abhandlung ist ein typisches Epigonenwerk, ein beklagenswertes Zeugnis dessen, wie weit man sich von echter Wissenschaftlichkeit und sauberer Philosophie entfernen kann, es zeugt von dem, was man früher den Scharfsinn der Wahnsinnigen nannte. Eine Erörterung der Arbeit in ihrer Gesamtheit oder in Einzelheiten ist deshalb zwecklos.51

The tone of this passage speaks for itself. Given the wholly ad hominem nature of this dismissive attack without the slightest attempt to evaluate the arguments of the author, it is difficult to know what Thulstrup understands by “echter Wissenschaftlichkeit.” This is, in any case, an instructive example of the ideological commitments that for years surrounded the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. Thulstrup’s most influential work is doubtless his doktordisputats, entitled Kierkegaards forhold til Hegel og til den spekulative idealisme indtil 1846, published in 1967 with German and English translations following thereafter.52 Thulstrup begins by exploring the historical sources of Hegelianism in Denmark during Kierkegaard’s time and then goes on to trace chronologically the various loci in which key words, such as “Hegel” or “Hegelianism” appear, first in the journals and papers and later in Kierkegaard’s published works. The strength of this book lies clearly in its historical setting of the stage of the issue in the first few chapters.53 Although the historical aspect of the relation is treated fairly thoroughly until 1842, the actual philosophical account of Hegel in Kierkegaard’s mature works is rather cursory; for example, the final chapter purports to analyze among other things, Either/ Or, Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Thulstrup’s compressed account in that chapter in no way does justice to these difficult texts and is disproportionate when considered in relation to the amount of time he spends on Kierkegaard’s unpublished writings and lesser known early works. It appears that Thulstrup embarked on the ambitious project of working through everything Kierkegaard wrote and, due to the enormous mass of material, was unable to get past the year 1842. He thus added a perfunctory final 50 51 52

53

Hermann Schweppenhäuser, Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Spekulation. Eine Verteidigung, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1967. Munich: Edition Text + Kritik 1993. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel. Forschungsgeschichte, op. cit., p. 175. I.e., Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980. German translation: Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel und zum spekulativen Idealismus 1835–1846, Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kolhammer 1972. Some of this historical material is repeated in Thulstrup’s Commentary on Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, op. cit. See also Philosophiske Smuler, ed. with Introduction and Commentary by Niels Thulstrup, op. cit.


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chapter to give the appearance of at least having worked up to the crucial year 1846. As the title indicates, there is not even the pretension of an account of The Sickness unto Death or anything else published by Kierkegaard after 1846. Thulstrup’s main claim with regard to the question of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel can be seen in its most concise form in his Introduction where he designates the following as the central thesis of the book: “Hegel and Kierkegaard have in the main nothing in common as thinkers, neither as regards object, purpose, or method, nor as regards what each considered to be indisputable principles.”54 After completing his account of the historical material, Thulstrup proceeds to go through Kierkegaard’s corpus passage for passage, trying to demonstrate how the thought found there is fundamentally at odds with Hegel’s on each and every issue. For instance, with regard to their respective views on the philosophy of religion, Thulstrup writes, “There is an absolute opposition between the viewpoints of Hegel and Kierkegaard on the relation between philosophy and Christianity.”55 Later he claims, “the incompatibility [sc. of Kierkegaard’s thought] with speculative philosophy of religion is insurmountable.”56 On a similar note, he declares further, the “theory of stages, which is suggested in The Concept of Irony, is also in total discord with Hegel’s philosophy.”57 Thulstrup summarizes Kierkegaard’s references to Hegel in the Papirer from 1842 to 1845 as follows: “Kierkegaard immediately states on every relevant point his fundamental disagreement with Hegel.”58 Thus, Thulstrup never wavers from his main thesis or allows any counterevidence to weaken or qualify it in any way. While there was not much new in Thulstrup’s work, it did lend authority to the suspicions of previous scholars. It seemed to demonstrate via what looked like actual research the claim about the radical discontinuity between Hegel and Kierkegaard. Thulstrup’s view has cast a long shadow over the secondary literature and has been taken up uncritically by a number of scholars of nineteenth-century European philosophy. Most commentators continue to see it as a foregone conclusion that Kierkegaard rejected everything that had even the slightest look of Hegelianism about it. His view has come to form a kind of standard background knowledge for the vast majority of Kierkegaard students and scholars, even those who are not primarily interested in the issue of his relation to Hegel. 54 55 57 58

Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, p. 12. 56 Ibid., p. 209. (My italics.) Ibid., p. 82. (My italics.) Ibid., p. 260. (My italics.) Ibid., p. 296. (My italics.) In reference to Pap. V, Thulstrup writes: “The disharmony was fundamental, and it appears at any point that Kierkegaard pounced on in Hegel.” (Ibid., p. 315. My italics.)


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It would be impossible to give an exhaustive exposition of all the material that has somehow been influenced by Thulstrup’s view. Instead, I will treat his interpretation in some detail as an example of what has clearly been the most prevalent tendency in the research on this issue. While Thulstrup did not invent this view, he does formulate and encapsulate it better than any of the others, and for this reason I take it as paradigmatic. Despite Thulstrup’s apparent success as evidenced by his influence, there are a number of reasons to believe that his view of the matter is oversimplified. When one examines Kierkegaard’s works carefully, one can see that his relation to Hegel was in fact considerably more differentiated than Thulstrup would have one believe. At every stage of Kierkegaard’s literary career, there were points of overlap between his thought and that of Hegel. (1) For example, at virtually the very beginning of his intellectual career Kierkegaard seems to have experienced a phase of infatuation with Hegel’s philosophy. In his dissertation, The Concept of Irony, one can discern a marked Hegelian influence, which Kierkegaard himself acknowledges. In that work, he repeatedly praises Hegel above all for his analyses of Socrates and Greek culture. In a remark that seems to refer to this time, Kierkegaard’s teacher, Frederik Christian Sibbern, speaks offhandedly of Kierkegaard’s “Hegelian period.”59 Moreover, in a journal entry from 1850, which refers back to this period, Kierkegaard openly speaks of his discipleship to Hegel at that time: “Influenced as I was by Hegel and whatever was modern, without the maturity really to comprehend greatness, I could not resist pointing out somewhere in my dissertation that it was a defect on the part of Socrates to disregard the whole and only consider individuals numerically. What a Hegelian fool I was!”60 Given Thulstrup’s thesis of the absolute discontinuity in the thought of the two men, he is at some pains to explain away Kierkegaard’s confession that he was “a Hegelian fool.” Thulstrup still has available the interpretive option of claiming that Kierkegaard might have been positively influenced by Hegel’s thought in his youth when The Concept of Irony was written and then in his mature years came to reject it. But even this is too much for Thulstrup to admit. “Kierkegaard’s own position,” he says, “which is not formulated directly or fully thought out in this work cannot correctly be designated as Hegelian.”61 Apparently, even Kierkegaard himself could 59

60 61

H. P. Barfod (ed.), “Indledende Notiser,” in his Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer. 1833–1843, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1869, pp. lii–liii. See also Encounters with Kierkegaard. A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1996, p. 217. JP, vol. 4, 4281; Pap. X-3 A 477. Translation slightly modified. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 261. See also Thulstrup’s article “Sören Kierkegaard, historien de la philosophie de Hegel,” (Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 27, 1965, pp. 521–572), where he attempts to minimize Hegel’s influence in The Concept of Irony.


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not, on Thulstrup’s view, claim with justice that an aspect of his thought was Hegelian. (2) There is also evidence of a Hegelian influence in Either/Or. For example, the analysis of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone, which appears in the chapter, “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic of Modern Drama,” seems to be profoundly influenced by Hegel’s famous interpretation. In Kierkegaard’s journals there are reading notes to the section of Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics where this work is treated.62 Moreover, some scholars have noted certain structural similarities between Either/Or and the Phenomenology of Spirit or some of Hegel’s other works.63 In Either/Or Kierkegaard applies to the concepts of the aesthetic and the ethical the Hegelian categories of immediacy and reflection. For example, in “The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage,” Judge Wilhelm tries to convince the aesthete that immediate impulses towards love must be brought into the ethical relation of marriage. Just as Hegel does in the Phenomenology, Kierkegaard has his pseudonymous author begin with immediate knowledge and progress to more sophisticated notions of truth. Thus, based on this similarity, one might say that the basic structure of Either/Or is in a sense Hegelian. Finally, at least one scholar has noted the similarities (which Kierkegaard himself hints at64 ) between Hegel’s celebrated discussion of the unhappy consciousness in the “Self-Consciousness” chapter of the Phenomenology and Kierkegaard’s account of the reflective aesthete or “the unhappiest man.”65 (3) The period between Either/Or and the Postscript also provides evidence that Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel was more subtle and varied than Thulstrup claims. There is compelling evidence that some of the key concepts that Kierkegaard develops during this period, such as repetition66 and the leap,67 in fact have their origin in Hegel. Moreover, in a journal entry from the year 1845, Kierkegaard clearly acknowledges his intellectual debt to Hegel and speaks of him in the most deferential of terms. He writes: I feel what for me at times is an enigmatic respect for Hegel; I have learned much from him, and I know very well that I can still learn much more from him when I return to him again. . . . in confidence that an open road for thought might be found there, I have resorted to philosophical books

62

63 64 65 66 67

JP, vol. 2, 1592; SKS, vol. 19, p. 245, Not8:51. JP, vol. 2, 1593; SKS, vol. 19, p. 246, Not8:53. JP, vol. 5, 5545; SKS, vol. 19, pp. 285–286, Not10:1. See also JP, vol. 2, 1591; SKS, vol. 19, p. 237, Not8:39.1. E.g., Mark C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard, Berkeley: University of California Press 1980, pp. 228–262. E.g., EO1, p. 222; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 215–216. E.g., Mark C. Taylor, op. cit., p. 240. Explored in Chapter 5, Section IV; Chapter 6, Section I. Explored in Chapter 9, Section V.


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and among them Hegel’s. But right here he leaves me in the lurch. His philosophical knowledge, his amazing learning, the insight of his genius, and everything else good that can be said of a philosopher I am willing to acknowledge as any disciple. Yet, no, not acknowledge – that is too distinguished an expression – willing to admire, learn from him. But, nevertheless, it is no less true that someone who is really tested in life, who in his need resorts to thought, will find Hegel comical despite all his greatness.68

To be sure, this passage is not an unqualified encomium to Hegel, but it does indicate a profound ambivalence in Kierkegaard’s assessment of him. By his own admission Kierkegaard feels an odd respect for Hegel, even though he calls him in a certain sense “comical.” Here one finds a tone decidedly different from the polemical passages that Thulstrup is wont to cite. In this entry Kierkegaard’s straightforward praise of Hegel’s philosophical knowledge and insight hardly sounds like the words of someone who rejected Hegel entirely. This passage is conspicuously missing from Thulstrup’s account. (4) Moreover, after the Postscript, Kierkegaard continues to employ Hegel’s methodology. His use of dialectical analysis in, for instance, his account of the levels of despair in The Sickness unto Death represents further evidence of a more positive assessment of Hegel’s philosophy than his polemical rhetoric would seem to imply. Many scholars have noted that in The Sickness unto Death Kierkegaard not only directly and unapologetically makes use of a form of the Hegelian dialectic to his own ends but also adopts much of the technical vocabulary from the idealist tradition. This last period of Kierkegaard’s authorship is intriguing since, although he puts aside the direct polemics against Hegelianism in which he had so long been engaged, in his own analyses he nonetheless uses some aspects of Hegel’s thought more overtly than ever. This gives evidence for a complicated and differentiated relation to Hegel, to which Thulstrup’s analysis can hardly do justice. Hence, one has ample reason already at the outset to call Thulstrup’s thesis into question as overly simplistic and one-sided. These suspicions are confirmed when one sees the actual execution of his thesis in the course of his book. In his treatment of Kierkegaard’s works, Thulstrup systematically analyzes Kierkegaard’s references to Hegel, doing everything possible to minimize the importance and value of the passages in question or anything that might be regarded as a Hegelian element in Kierkegaard’s thought. His account of The Concept of Irony is typical. At first the reader is told that it was natural for Hegel to be mentioned occasionally in the work “since Kierkegaard almost always reacted to every stimulus from his reading or other type of information.”69 Thus, 68 69

JP, vol. 2, 1608; Pap. VI B 54.12. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 215.


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Kierkegaard purportedly had no particular interest in Hegel per se during the composition of The Concept of Irony, but Hegel was simply one of the many authors whom he just so happened to be reading at the time. Thulstrup’s claim that Kierkegaard had no interest in Hegel on his own terms is difficult to reconcile with the fact that Hegel’s texts are often quoted or alluded to in the work. Along with the primary sources for Socrates (i.e., Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes), Hegel is the author referred to most often in the book. The frequency of these references indicates a substantial interest in and study of Hegel’s thought. Given this, it would be absurd to minimize his use of Hegel here and understand it as nothing more than just an accident with no further significance. In addition, the works of Hegel that Kierkegaard makes use of, according to Thulstrup’s view, cannot be taken seriously on their own terms. He writes: “Only a single book and a single article, which Hegel published himself, are identified and used by Kierkegaard, namely the Philosophy of Right and the long review of Solger’s writings. On the other hand, he used much more extensively Hegel’s posthumously published lectures, on the Philosophy of History, Aesthetics and the History of Philosophy.”70 Following this observation, Thulstrup calls into question the authenticity and value of Hegel’s lectures and employs this as an argument for the claim that what Kierkegaard knew of Hegel was not really Hegel at all. This appraisal of the lecture notes is not in harmony with contemporary Hegel scholarship which, although recognizing the status of the notes of Hegel’s students for what they are, nonetheless generally regards them as authoritative and as useful supplements to his published works when used with the appropriate care. Thulstrup is reluctantly obliged to acknowledge that Kierkegaard did make use of the Philosophy of Right, a bona fide text by Hegel’s own hand, published in his lifetime, but he claims nonetheless that these passages cannot carry much weight for the following reason: “Kierkegaard does not take account of the fact that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right as a totality does not occupy a large place within the whole Hegelian system, and thus the uniquely Hegelian element does not receive full justice in Kierkegaard.”71 This is something of a non sequitur since even though the Philosophy of Right is indeed an elaboration of the section “Objective Spirit” from the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and thus constitutes only a small part of the overall system, this in no way diminishes its importance. Indeed, it is today as in Thulstrup’s time perhaps the most read and most frequently taught of all of Hegel’s works. The problematic nature of Thulstrup’s claim can be made clear with another example. One might say with equal justice that the celebrated analysis of lordship and bondage 70 71

Ibid., p. 216. Translation slightly modified. Ibid., p. 217.


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in the Phenomenology is unimportant since it occupies only a small place in the system, but this is clearly absurd given the significance of that short section both for Hegel’s thought as a whole and for the understanding and reception of his philosophy. Given the fact that the Philosophy of Right is the only genuine text by Hegel that is alluded to directly in The Concept of Irony, according to Thulstrup, Kierkegaard himself did not understand Hegel well enough to call himself a Hegelian with justice: It will have been noticed that in all essential respects Kierkegaard knew and utilized the historical sections within the various works of Hegel that belong to the philosophy of spirit. In The Concept of Irony we find mentioned neither the Phenomenology of Spirit nor the Science of Logic nor the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, that is, none of the major systematic works published by Hegel himself. The most natural assumption is, then, that while writing his book Kierkegaard did not have first-hand knowledge of these works, and his understanding of Hegel’s philosophy as a whole, as system, was correspondingly deficient.72

What Thulstrup calls “the most natural assumption” is rather dubious given that Kierkegaard must have had some knowledge of the Science of Logic since he refers to it expressly in his early work, From the Papers of One Still Living,73 which of course antedates The Concept of Irony. Moreover, it is obvious that the reason Kierkegaard does not mention these other works is the simple fact that they are not relevant to the theme of his dissertation (i.e., Socrates and irony). He has, however, conscientiously studied the various works where Hegel treats this theme. Further, even if Kierkegaard had not read the texts mentioned by Thulstrup at the time he was writing The Concept of Irony, he nevertheless may have adequately grasped certain features of Hegel’s philosophy which were important for him (e.g., Hegel’s methodology, his conception of history or his analysis of Socrates and the Greeks). Hence, it is hardly necessary for Kierkegaard to have had a complete command of every detail of Hegel’s system for him to find Hegel’s philosophy insightful or useful in some of its aspects. Thulstrup argues further that what Kierkegaard mentions of Hegel in The Concept of Irony is not necessarily Hegelian or what is essential to Hegel: “Kierkegaard’s reading of Hegel . . . was essentially confined to sections containing historical matters and conceptual analyses.”74 The essential aspects of Hegel’s philosophy, according to Thulstrup, are omitted by Kierkegaard, who “has nothing to say about Hegel’s principles, 72

73 74

Ibid., p. 245. Koch agrees with Thulstrup that Kierkegaard was generally not familiar with Hegel’s primary texts. Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse eller om Adolph Peter Adler og om Søren Kierkegaards forhold til ham, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag A/S 1990, pp. 196–197. EPW, p. 61; SKS, vol. 1, p. 17. EPW, p. 62fn.; SKS, vol. 1, p. 18fn. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 255.


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nor anything about Hegel’s purpose. On Hegel’s method we find only scattered comments.”75 There is nothing contradictory in saying that Kierkegaard found aspects of Hegel’s philosophy interesting and made use of them, although he never felt the need to enter into an extended discussion of Hegel’s method and purpose. Kierkegaard need not even have been aware of such things for him to have been influenced by Hegel on specific topics. Moreover, although there may be only “scattered comments” about Hegel’s dialectical methodology, Kierkegaard nevertheless unapologetically uses it in other texts. Once again, an overt discussion of the matter is not necessary for there to be a positive influence. Finally, one begins to wonder what after all the essential aspects of Hegel’s philosophy are in Thulstrup’s view. While this has been (and indeed still is) a matter of some debate in Hegel scholarship, Thulstrup presupposes that what is essential to Hegel is obvious to all and thus should have been obvious to Kierkegaard, had he known Hegel’s thought adequately. Thulstrup’s uneasiness about Kierkegaard’s self-proclaimed Hegelianism reaches its apex when he concludes his discussion of the dissertation by saying that Kierkegaard was never a Hegelian in any sense in The Concept of Irony but rather was ironically taking up the role of one. Thulstrup claims: “On the basis of a partial knowledge of the dialectical method and of certain parts of Hegel’s works, the historical, not the systematic, Kierkegaard as an experiment wished to try his hand at the role of a Hegelian historian of philosophy.”76 Thulstrup brings this covert role playing into connection with Kierkegaard’s strategy of indirect communication: “Kierkegaard . . . was not a Hegelian, but one who as an experimenter chose the indirect method, chose to appear as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”77 As will be seen later,78 this does not square with the historical circumstances surrounding Kierkegaard’s dissertation, which speak against this kind of ironic reading. Thulstrup thus neutralizes the portions of Kierkegaard’s writing that appear to contradict his thesis by claiming that they are to be read as ironic criticisms or parodies of Hegel rather than at face value as Kierkegaard’s actual thought. While this interpretation salvages his thesis, Thulstrup offers no textual or other evidence to support it. Moreover, by using this argument, one could conveniently eliminate any aspect of Kierkegaard’s thought that one finds objectionable, claiming that it is merely a guise or an ironic strategy that he does not mean seriously. This procedure, however, reveals that there is already a hidden interpretive agenda that has been presupposed. Specifically, it presupposes that Kierkegaard intended a serious criticism of Hegel with this irony, but no independent evidence is presented to support this claim. There is an arbitrariness in the selection of the passages claimed 75 77

Ibid., pp. 254–255. Ibid., p. 260.

76 78

Ibid., p. 261. Chapter 3, Section I.


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to be ironic, and this arbitrariness is based upon an interpretation that has already been presupposed without argumentation. Finally, Thulstrup must contradict his own numerous arguments against any trace of true Hegelianism in this work in order to claim that, in fact, Hegel is after all present as a guise that Kierkegaard uses. It is clear from all of these passages that Thulstrup is hard pressed to explain away Kierkegaard’s claim about the Hegelian nature of The Concept of Irony. This explains why he is careful to avoid mentioning other passages in which Kierkegaard gives a positive assessment of Hegel. But the lengths to which Thulstrup must go to purge Kierkegaard of all possible positive influence by Hegel are demonstration enough that such influences are indeed present. Thulstrup’s view is misguided since it leads one to overlook the many points of positive contact between the two thinkers – points which Kierkegaard himself is more willing to acknowledge than Thulstrup. Thulstrup’s own unbending and undifferentiated position ultimately undercuts the very purpose of his comparative study since it leaves him no room for real comparison or contrast. The task of the comparative historian of philosophy is usually understood to involve an examination of the relation between two thinkers by comparing and contrasting their thought on given points – methodology, perceived problems, general principles, presuppositions and specific analyses, theories, and solutions. One might understand the relation in terms of the categories of identity and difference, i.e., the two thinkers in question will hold certain things in common, and this will form the aspect of identity, so to speak, and against this background of identity, important differences between the two will stand out. A comparative study is interesting in that it works within the parameters of these two categories, for example, by bringing to light little-known points of contact against a commonly accepted background of discontinuity or difference, or by making more acute the differences by tracing more clearly the points of similarity. One can suppose as a methodological assumption that two thinkers working within the same tradition (i.e., the modern European one) and in the same century (i.e., the nineteenth) will have at least minimally a few things in common, and it would be unthinkable for there to be nothing but absolute difference or discontinuity. Indeed, the very notion of absolute discontinuity is problematic. No two thinkers can be absolutely antithetical since there would be no room for differences of opinion if there were no shared ground against which such differences might appear. There would be no debate at all since there would be no common discourse or point of contact. In short, there can be no discussion if there is no common language. Even if the two thinkers contradicted each other on every single point, which is unimaginable, then there would at least be an agreed upon agenda or set of issues upon which there is disagreement.


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Conversely, no two thinkers are entirely identical. Even within tightly knit schools of thought there are diverging views; there is always orthodoxy and heterodoxy, dogma and heresy. Hence, when speaking of two different thinkers, it is absurd to speak either of absolute identity or absolute difference. Thulstrup goes through Kierkegaard’s published works and journals trying to demonstrate that Hegel and Kierkegaard constitute the antipodes of nineteenth-century thought. Indeed, he gives the impression that they hardly belong to the same intellectual universe at all. By the all too consistent insistence on his thesis, which is formulated in such an extreme manner, Thulstrup unwittingly renders his investigation considerably less interesting than it might otherwise have been. One wonders how a study on Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel can be useful or instructive if in the final analysis there is in fact no real relation. If, indeed, Kierkegaard and Hegel share absolutely nothing in common, then no comparison is possible in the first place. In a certain sense it might be argued that Thulstrup’s claim that Kierkegaard was carrying out a grand polemic against Hegel has in fact served to overemphasize the actual role of Hegel in the authorship generally. When one takes the authorship as a whole, Hegel only appears explicitly in From the Papers of One Still Living, The Concept of Irony, and a few of the pseudonymous works. In the places where his name does appear, there are rarely extended analyses. Thus, even while Kierkegaard in other works does tend to use Hegelian language and methodology without mentioning Hegel’s name explicitly, it is by no means clear that Hegel’s thought occupies the central place in Kierkegaard’s thinking that Thulstrup inadvertently attributes to it. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that for many years the Concluding Unscientific Postscript was Kierkegaard’s most read book (at least in the anglophone tradition); as a result, many people received a somewhat slanted view of the authorship as a whole based on that single, admittedly important, work. Since Hegel seemed to play such a significant role in that text, one inferred that he must then also play that role in the rest of the authorship. But it is clear that the Postscript is more or less unique in this sense, that Hegel does not play the same role in the other works, and finally that when the authorship is seen as a whole, the Postscript, though significant, in fact constitutes only a small fraction of the entire production. In this way Hegel or the purported Hegel critique has taken on a disproportionate degree of importance in Kierkegaard’s vast authorship. In his posthumously published The Point of View for My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard surveys his authorship as a whole and gives an account of his overall strategy of publication and the role of the individual works in it. If one presupposes him to have had a campaign against Hegel, then in this work one would have the right to expect that he would give some


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account of his intentions in this regard. But in fact one finds virtually no mention of Hegel at all. Hegel’s name only appears once in a footnote in its adjectival form, “Hegelian.” Moreover, from the context it becomes clear that Kierkegaard is in fact thinking of Johan Ludvig Heiberg, a Danish Hegelian, and not of Hegel himself.79 Thus, the absence of any account by Kierkegaard himself of an anti-Hegel campaign in his authorship seems to imply that the matter has been overstated. One of the reasons Thulstrup’s influence has been so profound and so many Kierkegaard scholars have taken up his conclusions uncritically is that most studies that examine this issue have been carried out by Kierkegaard specialists who have only a limited knowledge of Hegel. Thus, Kierkegaard commentators have not always been in a position to evaluate Thulstrup’s thesis critically. Moreover, few established Hegel scholars to date have taken up the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. These comments are not meant as a criticism of either Kierkegaard or Hegel scholarship but rather of the modern tendency towards academic specialization in general. Thulstrup tries to make a case80 for his credentials in German idealism by pointing out that he has authored a short monograph on Hegel,81 but nonetheless his lack of knowledge of Hegel’s philosophy is in evidence in many places. This is clearly seen by the fact that he continually falls into a number of what are commonly referred to as the Hegel myths and legends. These expressions have come to characterize the various popularized distortions of Hegel’s philosophy such as the claims that Hegel’s dialectical methodology consisted in a movement from thesis to antithesis to synthesis;82 that Hegel believed in the end of history in his own time;83 that Hegel was a determinist, a fatalist, and an opponent of free will;84 that whatever happens in history is, for Hegel, 79

80 81 82 83 84

He writes: “I have not with the smallest fraction of the capacities granted me striven to express . . . that the world is good, loves the true, wills the good, that the demand of the times is the truth, that the human race is the true or presumably even God, and therefore the task (Goethean and Hegelian) is to satisfy the age”(PV, p. 88fn.; SV1, vol. 13, p. 572fn.). It is clear that Kierkegaard is thinking of Heiberg’s work, On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age, in which Heiberg points out Goethe and Hegel as the two great spirits of the day. (See Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid, Copenhagen 1833, pp. 36ff. ASKB 568. Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 1, pp. 417ff.) In the same text Heiberg also argues that philosophy is the demand of the age. (See ibid., pp. 21ff.; Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 1, pp. 102ff.) Thus, the single reference to Hegel is in fact a reference to Heiberg’s use of him in his essay. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. xii. Niels Thulstrup, Hegel, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1967, 83pp. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 63, p. 85, pp. 172–173. Ibid., p. 173, p. 186. Ibid., p. 25, p. 291, p. 302, p. 323. See also his “Kierkegaard and Hegel, 1. The System and Method of Hegel,” in Kierkegaard and Speculative Idealism, ed. by Niels Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 4), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel 1979, pp. 57– 58.


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ipso facto justified;85 that Hegel claimed that his speculative logic eliminates the law of contradiction;86 that Hegel was the official philosopher of the Prussian state,87 or that Hegel saw in his own system “the crowning achievement of the whole history of philosophy.”88 All of these caricatures, distortions, and misconceptions, typical for the state of research in Thulstrup’s time, have long since been refuted and laid to rest by contemporary scholarship, and Thulstrup’s appeal to them does not speak well for his command of Hegel’s primary texts. Finally, many scholars with a specialization in the history of philosophy have the unfortunate tendency of raising their intellectual heroes onto pedestals and of viewing historical debates as struggles between forces of good and evil. Such scholars see it as their appointed duty to defend their champion against all challengers. A part of this involves the creation of a Feindbild to which one can return at one’s convenience in order to criticize something as the opposite of what is presumed to be the correct view, in this case that of Kierkegaard. While such animated engagement in the issues may be lauded, it in no way can be seen as serving the purpose of dispassionate historical-philosophical research. Thulstrup falls victim to a sort of uncritical hero worship, which Kierkegaard throughout his life consistently deplored. Thulstrup represents one of the most pronounced examples of a general tendency in Kierkegaard scholarship towards straightforward apologia. For example, he reviles Hegel by referring to him sarcastically throughout the work as “the Master.” Thulstrup’s general attitude is in evidence in his discussion of The Concept of Irony where he writes: “We can also, as several scholars and interpreters have done, doubt the correctness of Kierkegaard’s self-proclaimed discipleship to Hegel in this book . . . because we cannot imagine that such a shrewd genius as Kierkegaard could possibly have let himself be taken in by Hegel.”89 One can see here a clear case of question begging in the portrayal of Hegel as a seducer of youth who was unable to dupe the astute Kierkegaard. This sort of disposition puts all critical thinking into abeyance, prejudices every meaningful issue ahead of time, and can hardly be said to be in accordance with honest and serious scholarship.90 It is obvious that to approach the matter in this way prohibits one from seeing the relation as an honest dialogue between two equal interlocutors. The goal of scholarship in the history of philosophy should be to understand what is at issue philosophically in the authors under examination and not to erect 85 86 88 90

Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 224. 87 Ibid., p. 55. Ibid., p. 25, p. 291, p. 302, p. 330. 89 Ibid., p. 214. Ibid., p. 32. See Henning Fenger, Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, tr. by George C. Schoolfield, New Haven, Connecticut, and London: Yale University Press 1980, p. 132: “It appears to me that [Thulstrup’s] main thesis was the point of departure for [his] work . . . and not the objective result of an unbiased investigation.” See also ibid., p. 149.


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a monument for a thinker who one has already decided ahead of time was in sole possession of truth and wisdom. Thulstrup’s work, for all of its outward appearance of being a piece of history of philosophy, has thus hindered Kierkegaard research from making headway towards an understanding of his philosophical sources. The idea of Kierkegaard’s radical originality brings with it the notion that he relied on no previous thinkers. As a result, to this day the research community is still lacking an adequate extended study of Kierkegaard’s relation to, for example, Fichte, Schelling, Hamann, Feuerbach, Schleiermacher, Gunther, ¨ the younger Fichte, and Baader, to say nothing of his Danish contemporaries, Heiberg, Sibbern, and Martensen. This remains one of the most poorly understood periods in the history of philosophy in large part due to the enigmatic role of Kierkegaard in it. Thus, Thulstrup’s work on this issue has exerted a profoundly negative effect on the secondary literature. His oversimplified interpretation has firmly ensconced “the standard view” in the research community and has led to a quasi-official Kierkegaard orthodoxy, which for years has stood in the way of a more critical examination of the matter. Thulstrup’s investigation told the Kierkegaard research community at the time what it wanted to hear (i.e., that Kierkegaard was an uncompromising critic of Hegel), and since the issue was so cut and dry, this view has remained largely unchallenged until the present day. After Thulstrup’s work the matter seemed to be more or less decided, and there seemed to be no reason to look into it more closely. Fortunately, since Thulstrup’s time, there have been at least a few dissenting opinions who have wished to see the matter with nonpartisan eyes.

iii. the reception of the issue after thulstrup While the paradigm set by Thulstrup has dominated the vast part of the mainstream research until today, there have been a number of scholars since then who have called into question his one-sided view of the matter. These scholars have, by means of different methodologies and agendas, tried to indicate points of positive contact between Hegel and Kierkegaard. As a result they have made a significant start in reevaluating the long-standing prejudices surrounding the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. Perhaps the most significant of these works in the post-Thulstrup research is Mark C. Taylor’s Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard, for which he received the degree of Doctor of Theology at the University of Copenhagen in 1980.91 Instead of merely taking up Kierkegaard’s side on 91

Mark C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard, op. cit. This work has recently been reissued under the same title by Fordham University Press (New York 2000) as volume number 14 in the series Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, edited by John


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each of the issues as Thulstrup does, Taylor offers a much more balanced assessment in an effort to bring the two thinkers into a genuine dialogue. He writes, “My goal, in sum, is to bring Hegel and Kierkegaard closer together so that their differences can emerge more clearly.”92 Taylor selects what he sees as an underlying theme, which he uses throughout the book as a fixed point to compare and contrast the works of Hegel and Kierkegaard. “The central thesis underlying our investigation,” he writes, “is that Hegel and Kierkegaard develop alternative phenomenologies of spirit that are designed to lead the reader from inauthentic to authentic or fully realized selfhood.”93 By this he understands above all the modern problem of creating and discovering oneself in the modern context of fragmentation, estrangement, and alienation. Appropriately, he takes the Phenomenology of Spirit as the paradigmatic text from Hegel in regard to this theme of the realization of the self. His procedure is to compare the Phenomenology with a number of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works where, he argues, the same issue is treated. Unfortunately, by analyzing everything in terms of this one theme, Taylor has considerably limited the scope and importance of his study. Moreover, this theme, even though broadly conceived and having the advantage of providing a measure of continuity to the study, nonetheless tends to force many different analyses into a scheme where they do not always fit cleanly, and thus the continuity that is provided is often only apparent. Perhaps what is most problematic is the way in which this theme hinders the author from treating specific discussions on their own terms. For example, although it might be insightful to view Hegel’s analysis of world history, of political theory or of religion as a journey to selfhood, this is clearly not the way Hegel conceived of these discussions himself. The problem of modern self-identity or of the individual’s self-conception, at least so formulated, is more important for Taylor’s philosophical agenda than for Hegel’s.94 Despite Taylor’s attempt to bring Hegel and Kierkegaard into a genuine dialogue without taking sides or viewing the matter from the perspective of the one thinker or the other, his methodology tends to undermine

92 93 94

D. Caputo. This new publication is effectively an identical reproduction of the first edition. The only difference between the two editions is a 12 page preface with the title “Returnings,” which Taylor has added to the second edition (pp. ix–xxi). See also his various articles: “Journeys to Moriah: Hegel vs. Kierkegaard,” Harvard Theological Review, 70, 1977, pp. 305–326. “Love and Forms of Spirit. Kierkegaard vs. Hegel,” Kierkegaardiana, 10, 1977, pp. 95–116; “Dialectics and Communication. Hegel and Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard and Dialectics, ed. by Jørgen K. Bukdahl, Aarhus: Institute for Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion 1979, pp. 5–52. Mark C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard, op. cit., p. 21. Ibid., p. 13. See Thulstrup’s “A Ghost-Letter Caused by Mark C. Taylor’s Journeys with Hegel and Kierkegaard,” in Liber Academiae Kierkegaardiensis, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, Tomus V, 1983, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel’s Forlag A/S 1984, p. 94, p. 97.


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this goal. In his various discussions, Taylor breaks up his analyses into two parts, one on Hegel and one on Kierkegaard.95 This sort of procedure, which seems natural enough in a comparative study, does not engender a dialogue but instead gives rise to two different accounts of a given issue. His long Chapter 6 provides a good case in point. There he first summarizes the entirety of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and then goes on to do the same for Kierkegaard’s Either/Or to the ostensible end of demonstrating the similarities between these two works. The summary of the two texts may be interesting in itself, but by breaking up these extended discussions in this way, Taylor leaves open many questions about the actual points of contact. Thus, his treatment of the commonalities and differences between the two thinkers is impeded by a procedure that produces what at times seems to be two different discussions with little more than superficial similarities. Taylor is not interested in outlining any sort of development in Kierkegaard’s relationship to Hegel since he is only tracing a single theme. This leads him to view Kierkegaard’s oeuvre as a monolithic whole and to cite in the same context various passages from different periods and texts without regard to the issues of pseudonymity, development, and the like. This is misleading since by this procedure one is able to create patchwork positions, which it is not clear that Kierkegaard ever actually held. Moreover, Kierkegaard’s thought was not born in a single instant but rather developed over a period of time. But Taylor’s procedure does not allow him to distinguish different positions or periods in Kierkegaard’s development. The relation of Kierkegaard to Hegel is more complex and differentiated than has often been thought due in part to the fact that it changed over time. Thus, to explore the question of Hegel’s influence on Kierkegaard, one must first put the specific subject-matter of the study into a determinate context by designating what period or work is at issue. Taylor’s theme-oriented procedure is thus distorting in individual analyses and fails to do justice to the intellectual-biographical development of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. Therefore, although Taylor’s work represents in many respects a considerable improvement over Thulstrup’s, it still does not treat the issue in an ultimately satisfying manner. Given his theme-oriented methodology, Taylor has written a work that explains more about his own philosophical views on the self and the modern problem of alienation than about the actual historical relation between Kierkegaard and Hegel. He ignores the tremendous amount of historical-philosophical documentation that could help him to illuminate this relation. After Taylor there 95

This practice is common in comparative studies on the Hegel–Kierkegaard connection. See Eduard von Hagen, Abstraktion und Konkretion bei Hegel und Kierkegaard, Bonn: Bouvier 1969.


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have been no monograph-length studies dedicated specifically to the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. There have, however, been a handful of works that have touched on this issue in the pursuit of different goals and agendas. One significant contribution to the issue is the disputats from 1990 of the Professor of Philosophy, Carl Henrik Koch, under the title, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse.96 As his subtitle indicates, Koch’s work seeks to investigate primarily the Hegelian theologian Adolph Peter Adler and Kierkegaard’s relation to him. He thus states quite clearly at the beginning that the work is not about Hegel or Hegelianism.97 Yet in working through Adler’s Hegelian works, Koch has occasion to touch on a number of aspects of the Danish Hegel reception, which were relevant for Kierkegaard. His approach is clearly one of Quellenforschung, and his work thus departs significantly and indeed fruitfully from Taylor’s work in point of methodology. This leads Koch to a more differentiated view of Kierkegaard’s understanding of Hegel. While Koch still sees a part of Kierkegaard’s critique as being aimed at Hegel himself, he tries to show how much of it is also directed at Adler.98 But given that Koch’s investigation is primarily concerned with Adler, the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is only incidental. Thus, even though Koch makes important contributions to understanding this relation, given that it is not his main concern in this study, he makes no attempt to explore it systematically. Thus, a great number of issues with regard to this topic still remain unexplored by means of source-work research. With regard to the German research, Michael Theunissen has published two works that are of particular relevance for the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, namely Das Selbst auf dem Grund der Verzweiflung from 199199 and Der Begriff Verzweiflung from 1993.100 Both works concentrate primarily on The Sickness unto Death. Theunissen presents a Kierkegaard, who appropriates and modifies different aspects of Hegel’s logic for his own purposes. Specifically, he sees Kierkegaard as applying a Hegelian dialectic in his analysis of the forms of despair.101 Thus, Kierkegaard is understood to be in a productive and positive relation to Hegel with regard to this specific point. Like the work of Taylor, 96 97 99 100

101

Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse eller om Adolph Peter Adler og om Søren Kierkegaards forhold til ham, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag A/S 1990. 98 E.g., p. 61. Ibid., p. 10. Michael Theunissen, Das Selbst auf dem Grund der Verzweiflung. Kierkegaards negativistische Methode, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Anton Hain Meisenheim Gmbh 1991. Michael Theunissen, Der Begriff Verzweiflung. Korrekturen an Kierkegaard, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1993. Also noteworthy is his earlier work, Der Begriff Ernst bei Søren Kierkegaard, Freiburg and Munich: Verlag Karl Alber 1958. Michael Theunissen, Das Selbst auf dem Grund der Verzweiflung, op. cit., p. 28, pp. 32–33, pp. 53–54, p. 60. Der Begriff Verzweiflung, op. cit., p. 20f., p. 82, p. 93, pp. 140–156.


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Theunissen’s study is thematic since he is concerned with exploring the concept of despair. Thus, he does not pursue the historical or biographical aspect of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. Another recent work that has Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel as one of its secondary themes is Sophia Scopetea’s Kierkegaard og græciteten from 1995.102 Scopetea presents a refreshingly differentiated picture of this relation. She argues that Hegel exerts a profound positive influence on the Kierkegaard of The Concept of Irony.103 Kierkegaard is, she claims, receptive in particular to Hegel’s account of Socrates and Romantic irony. But yet she is careful to point out that Kierkegaard is never a Hegelian or a blind follower. Instead, he remains in a critical dialogue with Hegel throughout the work. Thus, Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is portrayed as an ambivalent one at this early stage of the authorship. Later in works such as the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, she argues, Kierkegaard becomes more openly critical of Hegel. This investigation also represents an important contribution to the general understanding of the issue, but its significance remains limited for the question at hand since the theme of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is only a subsidiary issue to the study in general. The recent work of the Professor of Theology, Arne Grøn has also avoided characterizing Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel as purely negative. On the contrary, in various books and articles, Grøn has indicated a number of thematic points of continuity between the two thinkers. He has, for example, suggested that in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love there is a dialectic of recognition that is similar to that sketched by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit.104 One of the central claims in his doctoral disputats, entitled, Subjektivet og negativitet from 1997, is that there is a fundamental methodological similarity between The Sickness unto Death and the Phenomenology.105 Taking up one of the main themes from Theunissen’s work, Grøn tries to demonstrate that The Sickness unto Death contains a phenomenological analysis that is very much derivative from Hegel. He also draws similarities between Kierkegaard’s conception of human beings as a synthesis in The Concept of Anxiety and the Hegelian conception of synthesis.106 Thus, Grøn attempts to sketch points of similarity between the two thinkers based on specific themes or methodologies. His approach is, like Taylor’s and Theunissen’s, thematic, and thus 102 103 104 105

106

Sophia Scopetea, Kierkegaard og græciteten. En kamp med ironi, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1995. E.g., p. 121, pp. 126–127, pp. 131–140, p. 147, pp. 149–150, pp. 153–154, p. 156. Arne Grøn, “Kærlighedens gerninger og anerkendelsens dialektik,” Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift, 54, 1991, pp. 260–270. Arne Grøn, Subjektivet og negativitet: Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1997, pp. 137– 142. See also his article, “Kierkegaards Phänomenologie?” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1996, pp. 91–116. Arne Grøn, Subjektivet og negativitet, op. cit., p. 66.


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he is not interested in establishing the historical connections between the two thinkers by means of Quellenforschung. All of these works in the period after Thulstrup have, each in its own way, performed an invaluable service to Kierkegaard research. By dropping the needless polemic with Hegel that characterized so much of the earlier research, they have been able to see new connections and points of positive influence of Hegel on Kierkegaard. Moreover, the change in the political climate has also meant that the authors from this most recent period have not been caught up in the ideological commitments of earlier scholars in the immediate aftermath of fascism and later during the Cold War. This has opened the door for a fresh look at the issue. But while these studies make useful contributions and point in the right direction, much work still needs to be done. None of the works mentioned here, with the exception of Taylor’s, is dedicated specifically to the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, and even Taylor’s book does not attempt a systematic analysis of Kierkegaard’s texts specifically with an eye towards this issue but rather limits itself to a single theme. Thus, the revolution in the research on the issue after Thulstrup is still far from complete. There is a sense of suspicion that Thulstrup’s presentation of the matter is too one-sided, but only scattered individual points of positive contact have been established. In addition, the vast number of points on which Kierkegaard, according to Thulstrup, criticizes Hegel have gone generally unchallenged.

iv. thesis and methodological considerations Given this state of affairs in the secondary literature, it should be evident that more scholarly work needs to be done on the question of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. I have entitled this study Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered since I wish to take a fresh look at this issue and to reevaluate the views of, among others, Thulstrup and Taylor. The present investigation contains both a general thesis about the relation between Hegel and Kierkegaard and also what might be regarded as a more specific historical thesis about how this relation came about and changed throughout Kierkegaard’s career. With respect to the general thesis, I hope to establish in a concrete and detailed way the claim for the positive influence of Hegel on Kierkegaard. Thus, when compared with Thulstrup’s interpretation, my main thesis can be viewed as the claim that there are many more points of comparison and similarity between the two thinkers than are generally recognized. But this is only a part of the claim I wish to defend, since by getting clearer about the points of comparison, I hope also to bring into relief the points of contrast. Indeed, it would be absurd to write a book that is the mirror image of Thulstrup’s, with the guiding intuition being that instead of absolute


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difference there is nothing but similarity between Hegel and Kierkegaard. By contrast, my goal is to give a balanced assessment of the issues. I do not wish to prejudice my study with an approach that is either pro-Hegel or pro-Kierkegaard. Instead, I wish to analyze in a nonpartisan fashion the points of both similarity and difference. This will serve two distinct purposes: first it will make it possible in general to achieve a truer picture of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel than has been possible heretofore, and second and more specifically it will bring out more clearly what is really characteristic of the genius and originality of Kierkegaard once it is clear how much of Hegel is present in his work. It should be said at the outset that I regard it as misguided to try to determine whether or not Kierkegaard was ultimately a Hegelian. By framing the issue of the relation as one of identity and difference, one might be tempted to work through Kierkegaard’s texts in order to determine quantitatively how many passages, themes, or concepts are Hegelian in origin. This would give rise to the fruitless question of how many such Hegelian passages would be necessary before one would have a preponderance and would be able with justice to call Kierkegaard a Hegelian. This is an antimony which I have no interest in pursuing. The question is not whether Kierkegaard was a Hegelian since this way of understanding the issue makes it an all or nothing proposition: either Kierkegaard was a Hegelian or he was not. The goal of the present study is to see the matter in a more nuanced fashion and to examine precisely which of Hegel’s texts, doctrines, or ideas influenced Kierkegaard positively or negatively at any given period in his life. This procedure will, I hope, allow for a balanced and differentiated analysis of the issue. I have tried to reflect this, by using the plural “relations” in my title, by which I wish to indicate my conviction that the issue cannot be reduced to a single relation. Instead, I wish to argue that Kierkegaard had several different relations to Hegel that evolved over time. My historical or biographical thesis concerning Kierkegaard is that his intellectual development with regard to Hegel passed through three discernible stages.107 In his early works, characterized primarily by From the Papers of One Still Living (1838), The Concept of Irony (1841), and Either/Or (1843), he was strongly and positively influenced by Hegel and Hegelian philosophy. After this there was a middle period beginning with Fear and Trembling (1843). This period is characterized by what most commentators have taken to be his most overt and aggressive criticism of Hegel. I wish to show that this criticism is, however, directed primarily at other 107

A part of this thesis builds on the suggestion made by Henning Fenger (in response to Thulstrup) that Kierkegaard had an early pro-Hegelian phase which turned into a negative anti-Hegel period following Either/Or. Henning Fenger, Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, tr. by George C. Schoolfield, New Haven, Connecticut, and London: Yale University Press 1980, pp. 132–149.


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sources and not at Hegel himself. This period culminated in 1846 with the Concluding Unscientific Postscript where Kierkegaard gave his most extended response to Hegel’s philosophy or, more exactly, to the discussions about it that were then taking place in Denmark. In the unpublished Book on Adler, which was written primarily during 1846, many of the same criticisms from the Postscript appear. This work marks the end of the second period. After The Book on Adler there was a final period in which Kierkegaard dropped his polemic and for one reason or another made his peace with Hegelianism. During this final period, although in both the published works and the journals there appear substantially fewer direct references to Hegel, Kierkegaard openly uses Hegelian concepts and methodologies as in The Sickness unto Death. It is this three-step development in Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel that constitutes the historical thesis of my study. My procedure has been to select the most important of Kierkegaard’s works in which Hegel or Hegelianism seems to play a significant role. These have then been used as the main subject-matter of my study. I have arranged them in chronological order and have worked through them each individually in order to determine if there were any recognizable general tendencies in the development of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. I have then evaluated these discussions in light of my understanding of Hegel’s doctrines as presented in his primary texts and lectures. Due to this procedure, the present investigation is more about Kierkegaard than about Hegel since Kierkegaard’s texts constitute the primary subject-matter. Thus, the perspective that my discussion takes is not that of Hegel looking forward to Kierkegaard or of the two being in some ahistorical dialogue (as in Taylor), but rather that of Kierkegaard looking backward to Hegel. I wish to arrive at a differentiated picture of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel that brings out changes in this relation in different texts and periods in his career. I will thus explore the various aspects of Kierkegaard’s contact with Hegel’s thought in their different contexts, examining each of these aspects on its own. By means of this procedure it will be possible to avoid couching the issue in the way Thulstrup does, in terms of a dichotomy about whether Kierkegaard was a Hegelian or not. The danger of a comparative study of this kind is that there is so much primary material to take into account that one is never able to work through it all adequately. I have been enjoined to make some painstaking decisions about which of Kierkegaard’s texts would be central to my investigation and which ones would be treated only marginally or left out altogether. A word about these decisions may be in order here. I will begin with a brief explanation of the role of Kierkegaard’s journals, notebooks, and papers in the present investigation. Since this study is conceived as a piece of history of philosophy, I am interested primarily in what has in the


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secondary literature traditionally been taken to be Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel. This critique has generally been thought to be found in his published writings and above all in his pseudonymous works. Therefore, I have for the most part used these published writings as the main objects of investigation in this study. Usually, I refer to the unpublished journals and papers only as additional sources of information about Kierkegaard’s developing views on Hegel. They are thus used primarily to elucidate or supplement the discussions of Hegel and Hegelianism in the published works. But I have neither worked through the journals and papers systematically with an eye toward Hegel nor treated them as independent texts in their own right, with the exception of (1) an early entry that is illustrative of Kierkegaard’s theory of stages108 and (2) the unpublished works, The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, and The Book on Adler, which are generally acknowledged to be more or less independent texts, although, strictly speaking, they belong to the journals. The final reason for my sparing use of the Nachlaß is that these journals and papers are currently being reedited and published in a radically new and different form in the new critical edition of Kierkegaard’s works (i.e., Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter). It thus seemed imprudent to embark on a rigorous study of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel in the journals before this work was completed or at least well underway. I have also been obliged to limit this study primarily to the main published works in which Hegel plays or has in the secondary literature been thought to play a significant role. The religious works that appeared in Kierkegaard’s own name have been omitted since they are not concerned primarily with the Hegel problematic in any obvious way. By contrast, I have chosen the texts that have the most overt and frequent discussions of Hegel’s philosophy. In this group I count the following: The Concept of Irony, Fear and Trembling, The Concept of Anxiety, Prefaces, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and The Book on Adler. Next I selected other texts, which, although containing fewer direct references to Hegel and Hegelianism, nonetheless were implicitly concerned with similar issues treated by Hegel or made use of Hegelian methodology or language. In this group I include the following: From the Papers of One Still Living, Either/Or, Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, Repetition, Philosophical Fragments and The Sickness Unto Death. I am aware of the fact that these decisions may well be controversial, but I believe that the results of this study have proven them to be judicious. For the purposes of my investigation a selection was useful and indeed necessary. I thus make no claim to have explored every possible trace of a Hegelian influence or criticism in Kierkegaard’s works. I have reluctantly chosen not to treat 108

JP, vol. 4, 4398; SKS, vol. 17, pp. 117–119, BB:25, treated in Chapter 2, Section II.


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Works of Love or Stages on Life’s Way in any detailed fashion, although scholars have identified Hegelian elements in them. Likewise, I have not treated the criticism of Hegel that appears in Kierkegaard’s notes to Schelling’s lectures, Philosophie der Offenbarung (1841–42). The philological and interpretive difficulties involved in a study of this text have led me to conclude that it would be best treated in the context of an investigation of Kierkegaard’s relation to Schelling. Though I have studied and used some of this material here in an ad hoc fashion, I make no claim for completeness in my treatment. Throughout his authorship Kierkegaard tends to repeat the same discussions of what seem to be different aspects of Hegel’s thought. This has enjoined me to make some editorial decisions about when to treat any given discussion. As a rule I have given the full treatment at the first occurrence of a discussion in Kierkegaard’s works and have noted subsequent treatments as they occur. In this way I have attempted to avoid in my text the repetitions that occur frequently throughout Kierkegaard’s works. When a given discussion has been supplemented with further arguments or altered by new positions, I have noted the changes and made an attempt to put them into the larger general context of Kierkegaard’s changing relation to Hegel. Due to the length of this work, I have endeavored to make the individual chapters and analyses as self-contained as possible. The result is the inevitable repetition of some material. I have tried to minimize this by means of frequent cross-references to other parts of the text where the material is also treated. What has been influential in the interpretation of the development of nineteenth-century philosophy is what has been perceived as Kierkegaard’s explicit, self-conscious criticism of Hegel. It is this explicit critique that will be the focus of this study, and for this reason I am, as has just been noted, primarily interested in ascertaining an overview of Kierkegaard’s knowledge of Hegel’s philosophy and his assessment of it. This is, of course, not to deny that one can make illuminating and interesting comparisons and contrasts that Kierkegaard himself never saw or at least never wrote about. But since the main goal of this project is to understand Kierkegaard as a part of the development of nineteenth-century European thought, the focus will not be on this abstract comparison of issues but on what has commonly been regarded as his own explicit criticisms. Thus, this investigation is not a piece of analytic history of philosophy that compares two given thinkers abstractly and places them in an ahistorical forum of ideas independently of the question of their actual explicit assessment of one another.109 Instead, it is to be conceived as a corrective 109

As an example one can take Taylor’s comparison of the accounts of Abraham offered by Hegel and Kierkegaard (in “Journeys to Moriah: Hegel vs. Kierkegaard,” Harvard


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work in the history of philosophy. There are doubtless many fruitful connections and points of dispute between Hegel and Kierkegaard that the commentator can discover, but for the purposes of this investigation I have generally limited myself to assessing Kierkegaard’s own account. The enormity of material constituted by the primary texts has made it necessary to limit the investigation in this manner; due to this limitation (and the others mentioned here), the present work can hardly be seen as exhausting the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. The fact that Kierkegaard read Hegel’s texts and had contact with his philosophy from different concrete sources seems to justify a historical approach of this kind. It would be a different matter if one wanted to compare on some thematic issue the thought, for example, of Socrates with that of Confucius, where there was no historical point of contact. In that kind of a study there would be no alternative but to make a thematic analysis in the absence of any actual historical connection. Likewise, a study that wanted to take up an anachronistic relation, such as Kant’s critique of Heidegger, would be obliged to proceed in the same fashion. This methodology is fine on its own terms and perhaps appropriate for any number of studies; however, it seems to me to be a mistake to employ it when one is concerned with philosophical figures who are contemporaries and where at least one of them is known to have had contact with the thought of the other. Given that Kierkegaard in fact knew the works and thought of Hegel, it seems absurd to abstract from this and to try to make comparisons and contrasts, which Kierkegaard himself never conceived of. It would be irresponsible to ignore the enormous body of historicalphilosophical material that could help to document Kierkegaard’s actual contact with Hegel’s primary texts and with the Hegelian movements, in favor of constructing, as it were, a priori an imagined point of contact or connection, which exists only in the mind of the commentator. This body of historical material stands at the disposal of anyone with the requisite language and research skills, and not to use it would amount to making the absurd claim that historical documentation is not relevant or necessary for the exploration of a specific historical connection. This historical material is, to be sure, in need of interpretation, but the parameters of the discussion should, it seems to me, be dictated by it and not by the fantasy of the commentator. Presumably Kierkegaard knew best his Theological Review, 70, 1977, pp. 305–326). Hegel’s account comes in an edition called the Early Theological Writings, which is a collection of manuscripts from his period as a student of theology. These manuscripts were only discovered in the twentieth century and thus were not available to Kierkegaard. Therefore, to compare this analysis with Kierkegaard’s famous account in Fear and Trembling is ahistorical since the latter cannot genuinely be seen as a response to the former. Taylor employs the same procedure in his article, “Love and Forms of Spirit. Kierkegaard vs. Hegel,” (Kierkegaardiana, 10, 1977, pp. 95–116), where he analyzes their respective accounts of love, taking once again Hegel’s Early Theological Writings as his main text for Hegel’s account.


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own intellectual commitments and knew best what he found agreeable or objectionable in Hegel’s philosophy and can do without the help of the modern commentator prompting him on that score. Thus, I wish to make Kierkegaard’s own assessment of Hegel the main object of investigation and not some imagined theme (such as that proposed by Taylor), which never occurred to Kierkegaard himself. Many studies of the major figures of the history of philosophy make little attempt to understand these figures as historical (i.e., as located in a specific cultural and historical context). By contrast, more often than not, they are used as pawns in the current debates that frame our own modern academic world. The result is that these thinkers must be transformed into something new in order to play the requisite role in the context of today, and they thus end up lobbying for causes that they never heard of. Much of the reception of the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel has also been a victim of this. The debate has been conceived along ideological lines in order to support a specific picture of the development of nineteenth-century European philosophy. But in this way Kierkegaard in his own intellectual context has largely been lost sight of. In this investigation I wish to concentrate primarily on the philosophical issues at stake in Kierkegaard’s reaction to Hegel, and for this reason mine is not a historical study in the narrow sense. Thus, I forego giving a detailed account of Kierkegaard’s biography or of the history of Hegelianism in Denmark (although these matters are broached somewhat schematically in my first chapter). This said, in the course of this investigation I have found myself obliged to treat some historical and biographical aspects in an ad hoc fashion because they are relevant for the proper explication of specific passages. But Kierkegaard’s primary texts always dictate the occasions for and the extent of the use of this historical or biographical material. My main interpretative principle has been to try to understand Kierkegaard as he understood himself and was in fact understood or presumably would have been understood by his contemporaries to the degree to which this is possible on the basis of the historical source material relevant for his own writings and for the reception of them. I have thus tried to reconstruct his position in its relation to contemporary discussions with which he is known to have been familiar. This is an important point for the present study since it is impossible to evaluate Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel without also taking into account his relation to the Danish Hegelians. As I will argue at some length below, the bulk of his criticism is aimed at his Danish contemporaries and not at Hegel himself. Thus, in order to identify the targets of Kierkegaard’s criticisms effectively, it is necessary to obtain a clear picture of whom he was arguing against, and this can only be done with a historically oriented interpretative approach. Indeed, many of the most egregious misconceptions of


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Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel stem from an ignorance of the cultural and intellectual milieu in which Kierkegaard lived and wrote. This said, I of course do not want to reduce Kierkegaard to some idiosyncrasy of his local context or deny the universal appeal and importance of his thought and writing. The sentiment of wanting to make Kierkegaard speak to our modern world is doubtless an admirable one. To be sure, far too much research in the history of philosophy treats historical figures or issues as ends in themselves. As a result research tends to lose touch with the question about why such research is interesting, valuable, or relevant in the first place. This should certainly not be the approach when one treats a philosopher from a different age. On the contrary, we should continually pose our modern questions to thinkers of the past and continually ask ourselves about the relevance of our research projects on them. But by the same token, one should avoid being overeager to make the figures of the tradition relevant to the modern world and to our modern ideological agenda, for when we go back to the tradition in order to call up a thinker from the past for insight on a modern problem, we will often find that in the process of bringing that thinker into the modern age we in effect lose important aspects of his or her own thought. When we apply these thinkers from the past to our current problems, we often lose the very essence of those thinkers by abstracting them out of their historical context, and if there was ever a thinker rooted in a specific historical context, it was surely Kierkegaard. There might be some ideas in Kierkegaard that we can extrapolate and build up into a theory that answers to our contemporary world, but when we do this, we must be aware of the fact that, instead of looking back to Kierkegaard for insight, we are rather quite often looking at ourselves in a mirror. It can hardly be anything other than this, given that the problems of our present day world are ours and not his, as is the motivation for constructing an interpretation that makes him palatable to our contemporary views. Moreover, we do Kierkegaard no service by trying to see him as a thinker of our present day. By transferring his views into a context for which they were never intended, we often simply render them ridiculous. Finally, I would like to note that in the present study little attention has been paid to marking out the different positions specifically with respect to the various pseudonyms. I am, of course, aware that this procedure runs counter to much of current Kierkegaard research. Many scholars influenced by the post-modernist trend in contemporary literary theory claim that the key to understanding Kierkegaard’s works is to keep separate the individual pseudonyms and to distinguish as carefully as possible among them. The guiding idea behind this view is that Kierkegaard meticulously conceived of the individual pseudonyms in advance and, as he wrote, invested each of them with its own idiosyncratic voice, language, and philosophical position, which were all different from one another


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and at variance with the views that he argues for in the signed works. This conception is in my opinion mistaken, and I have rejected it for the purposes of the present work for four main reasons. (1) With respect to the subject of this investigation, it became apparent very early on that Kierkegaard’s discussions of Hegel and Hegelianism did not vary among the pseudonyms. On the contrary, the same handful of issues, criticisms, and formulations are repeated again and again with little variation throughout the authorship and thus throughout the different pseudonyms. For example, the charges that Hegel’s system lacks an ethics or that it, despite all its pretensions, remains unfinished can be found in numerous works with various pseudonyms. The consistency and continuity displayed in these discussions and similar ones seems to imply that this handful of issues was in fact what interested Kierkegaard himself and was not something he artificially invented in order to ascribe to a pseudonymous author. Moreover, this seems to be confirmed by the fact that precisely the same criticisms and formulations appear again and again in the unpublished journals and papers as well. Thus, with all theoretical issues aside, it would have little meaning, with respect to this particular study, to insist rigorously on the distinctions that are purportedly implied by the pseudonyms. (2) Recent philological research on the genesis of Kierkegaard’s writings has called into question the weight that one should attribute to the different pseudonyms generally.110 From this research it is clear that Kierkegaard originally planned for certain works to appear under his own name and only at the last minute removed his name and added a pseudonym. This is precisely the way in which Vigilius Haufniensis came to be the author of The Concept of Anxiety, which was planned and written entirely under the presupposition that it would appear under Kierkegaard’s own name. In earlier drafts Kierkegaard’s name appears as the author on the title page, but on the clean copy of the manuscript, which Kierkegaard submitted to the printer, the lower part of the page has been cut off precisely below the word “by,” and Kierkegaard has then at the last minute added at the bottom right-hand side of the page the name of the pseudonymous author, “Vigilius Haufniensis.” In addition, he scratched out his own initials after the motto of the book, which follows the title page, and has once again added the name, “Vigilius Haufniensis.” However, while he made these quick changes, Kierkegaard forgot that other parts of the text could only refer to himself and not to his pseudonym. For example, in a footnote Kierkegaard refers to his 110

Søren Bruun, “Tekstredegørelse” to Begrebet Angest in SKS, vol. K4, pp. 307–339. See also Søren Bruun, “The Genesis of The Concept of Anxiety,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2001, pp. 1–14.


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stay in Berlin in 1841–42, where he attended Schelling’s lectures.111 This only makes sense as an allusion to Kierkegaard’s own biography and not to that of the pseudonymous author. This example is far from being anomalous in Kierkegaard’s works. Philosophical Fragments was also intended to be a signed text, and even in the clean copy Kierkegaard’s own name appears as the author; only at the last minute did Kierkegaard replace it by “Johannes Climacus” and thus relegate himself to the role of editor.112 Here there can be no talk of Kierkegaard consciously constructing a characteristic voice or position for the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis or Johannes Climacus since he only decided at the last minute to have the works appear pseudonymously. Indeed, everything points to the fact that both of these pseudonyms are completely ad hoc inventions. (3) The philological research gives evidence of an indiscriminate use of material between the pseudonymous and the signed works. Kierkegaard’s polemical text Prefaces provides an example of this.113 Although ultimately the work appeared under the pseudonym Nicolaus Notabene, the individual parts of the text were originally written for different purposes before the idea of publishing them together under a single title with this pseudonym occurred to Kierkegaard. For example, Preface II was originally intended as a book-review of Christian Winther’s Four Novels.114 At the time when Kierkegaard wrote this text, it was conceived to be a signed work just like his other book-reviews (i.e., From the Papers of One Still Living and later the review of Two Ages). Only when he hit upon the idea for the work Prefaces was this text assigned the pseudonym Nicolaus Notabene. Similarly, Preface VII was originally written as the Preface to The Concept of Anxiety, but Kierkegaard decided to remove it from that context because it was too polemical. Thus, it represents a text that he originally conceived to be written in his own name, and then presumably changed to the pseudonym of The Concept of Anxiety (i.e., Vigilius Haufniensis), and finally changed again to the pseudonym Nicolaus Notabene for inclusion in Prefaces. Thus, with regard to this text, it is difficult to claim that one should ascribe great significance to the fact that it is ultimately attributed to Nicolaus Notabene, qua pseudonym, since Kierkegaard seems to have used the material indiscriminately between the two texts and among the three authors (i.e., his own name and then the two pseudonyms). 111 112 113 114

CA, p. 59fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 364fn. See also CA, p. 21fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 328fn. Jette Knudsen and Johnny Kondrup, “Tekstredegørelse” to Philosophiske Smuler in SKS, vol. K4, pp. 171–196, especially pp. 192–193. See Johnny Kondrup and Kim Ravn, “Tekstredegørelse” to Forord, in SKS, vol. K4, Section 3, “Tilblivelseshistorie,” pp. 542–564. I.e., Christian Winther, Fire Noveller, Copenhagen 1843. See Pap. V B 81.


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(4) Finally, when discussing this issue, one must constantly bear in mind that the use of pseudonyms and anonyms was commonplace in Copenhagen in the first half of the nineteenth century. Indeed, virtually every major writer used a pseudonym at one time or another, including thinkers as antithetical to Kierkegaard as Bishop Mynster. The reason for this was the small size of the intellectual community in Denmark where the leading figures were all personally acquainted. Copenhagen was considered a market-town and not a cosmopolitan European capital on a par with Paris or Berlin.115 The aforementioned Johan Ludvig Heiberg, one of Denmark’s leading men of letters at the time, complains of the provincial nature of Copenhagen in an article from 1828.116 Heiberg says explicitly that Copenhagen is a place where everyone knows everyone. As a result, the use of a pseudonym was simply a common precaution used to avoid embarrassment or unnecessary offense. When the matter is seen from this perspective, it is clear that it would be a mistake to read much more into Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms than this simple function. For all of these reasons, I have not placed much weight on the issue of the different pseudonyms for the purposes of the present study, although I of course recognize that this runs somewhat contrary to Kierkegaard’s own emphasis on them. It should be noted that this is only a negative statement about my own methodology (i.e., one that explains why the methodology I have employed here is not in line with one of the main interpretive trends in contemporary Kierkegaard research). It is thus not to be construed as a positive statement about the theoretical role of the pseudonyms in Kierkegaard generally. This is, of course, a large issue that cannot be adequately treated in this context. Although I have paid little attention to the use of the different pseudonyms in Kierkegaard’s works, I have, by contrast, made a great deal of his frequent use of hidden references to his contemporaries, references that, I would like to argue, can be conceived as a kind of code. When he wanted to criticize one of his contemporaries, he often did so indirectly; instead of using the names of his opponents, he made use of anonyms, such as Dr. Hjortespring117 (which he used to refer to Heiberg), or, as in the passage quoted earlier in Section I, Mr. A. A., Mr. B. B and 115 116

117

See George Pattison, ‘Poor Paris!’ Kierkegaard’s Critique of the Spectacular City (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 2), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1999. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Om den i det offentlige Liv herskende Tone,” in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, 1828, no. 86, article II. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 8, p. 452.) “It is well-known that in a good many respects our good Copenhagen answers poorly to the concept of a large and populous capital city. Daily we are made the subject of laughter among foreigners, who look with amazement at how we here are all birds of the same feather, where everyone knows everyone else, to the extent that it is even fashionable to call strangers, persons quite unknown to one, gentlemen and ladies alike, by their first names.” CUP1, p. 184; SKS, vol. 7, p. 169f.


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Mr. C. C. Just as Kierkegaard used pseudonyms in an attempt to remain anonymous as an author, so also he used anonyms for his intellectual enemies in order to give them at least a semblance of anonymity. He also availed himself of a handful of key phrases or terms which he clearly associated with particular individuals. This was perhaps a part of the strategy of indirect communication. The key terms and anonyms functioned as a kind of code for Kierkegaard’s contemporary readers, who were doubtless able to identify the real targets of the criticism by means of them. In connection with the Corsair affair, Kierkegaard, in line with Heiberg’s aforementioned comment, laments the fact that the small size of Copenhagen, in contrast to Paris or Berlin, obliges one as an author to make certain concessions when criticizing others; he says that one must “use precautionary procedures,”118 which would not be necessary in a larger literary scene: in a smaller setting “other rules of procedure must be adopted. In a limited setting, it is never wise to want to live in the delusion that one is living in a large setting; it is better to know the circumstances and then to act according to them.”119 He uses the metaphor of sediment to describe bad literary works and complains that one must use indirect methods in criticizing them in a small literary scene: “In a limited literary setting, it is, regrettably, impossible to express in an ordinary way that sediment is sediment, because we live so close to one another.”120 This explains at least in part why Kierkegaard availed himself of pseudonyms, anonyms and code words. For Kierkegaard’s contemporaries, seeing through the code was presumably a relatively simple matter, but unfortunately the passage of time has rendered it more cryptic. The modern reader can nonetheless reconstruct at least a part of it by going back and examining the works of some of his contemporary opponents. Once one decodes the references and learns who his real targets are, one gains a picture of the various texts and of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, which is entirely different from the mistaken one that has enjoyed such wide currency heretofore. The historical aspect of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, which is emphasized in the present investigation, remains very much unexplored in Kierkegaard studies in general and above all in the anglophone literature. Although there is no shortage of studies on the Hegel-Kierkegaard connection, there has been very little work done in any language that puts this connection into any historical-philosophical perspective or attempts to ground it with historical documentation. The hope is that this book will go some distance toward filling this gap in the literature. 118 119 120

COR, Supplement, p. 204; Pap. VII-1 B 72, p. 260. COR, Supplement, p. 206; Pap. VII-1 B 72, p. 261. COR, Supplement, p. 205; Pap. VII-1 B 72, p. 260.


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The goal of my investigation is to locate Kierkegaard in his proper historical-philosophical context so that it is possible to obtain a truer picture of his relation to Hegel than the reigning view has provided. In this way I hope to uncover the true targets of his criticisms. By tracing Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel through the three stages outlined earlier, I will demonstrate the main negative thesis of the present study, namely, that Kierkegaard never had the anti-Hegel campaign that he is so often thought to have had. By examining Kierkegaard’s works individually, I hope to establish my positive thesis that there are a number of heretofore neglected points of positive influence of Hegel on Kierkegaard. The goal of the present study is ultimately to call into question a number of preconceived beliefs about Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel and, as a result, about the development of Continental philosophy. This will, I hope, occasion a fundamental reevaluation of the standard interpretation of Kierkegaard’s role in this philosophical tradition.

P1: ILM/IKJ P2: ILM/IKJ QC: ILM/IKJ T1: ILM CY232-02 0521828384 June 16, 2003 17:27

1 KIERKEGAARD AND DANISH HEGELIANISM

Before I turn to an examination of Kierkegaard’s texts, it will be useful to say something about the intellectual scene in Denmark during the first half of the nineteenth century and Hegel’s influence on it. As was indicated in the Introduction, due to the enormous mass of material it is impossible in the context of this investigation to give a detailed account of the history of Hegelianism in Denmark. Nonetheless, it will be useful here at the outset to discuss briefly some of the most important figures involved in the discussion about Hegelianism during Kierkegaard’s lifetime and to examine his contact with them and thus with Hegel’s philosophy at one degree removed. Pursuant of this goal, I have dedicated the second and third sections of the present chapter to a brief review of the principal adherents and critics of Hegelianism in Denmark during the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s. It should be noted that my account can be nothing more than a cursory overview, appropriate only for the limited purposes of the present study. In addition to orienting the reader in Kierkegaard’s historical context, my goal is to introduce the various personalities and their main works so that they will not be completely unfamiliar when I come, in the body of this study, to discuss them in an ad hoc fashion in connection with my analyses of Kierkegaard’s texts.

i. right and left hegelianism in prussia and the german states A natural presupposition for the Hegelian movement in Denmark is, of course, the development of the Hegelian schools in Prussia and Germany, which I will endeavor to sketch here in a most cursory fashion. This account must, however, be prefaced by a brief caveat about the word “Hegelian.” Works on the history of philosophy often tend to paint in broad strokes. Tidy, yet distorting categories are used to characterize long periods in the history of ideas. One such category that is frequently applied to much of nineteenth-century European philosophy is 45


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“Hegelianism.” There is a tendency to regard the so-called Hegelians as second-rate minds, the idea being that these thinkers simply popularized and promulgated Hegel’s thought without adding anything new or original of their own. This, however, misunderstands the nature of the Hegelian schools, which were constantly developing on the basis of new interpretations of Hegel’s thought as well as changing social and political circumstances. Thus, the Hegelian schools cannot be seen as simply a banal repetition of Hegel’s own ideas. Instead, the Hegelians in both Germany and Denmark were highly original thinkers in their own right, who responded to the most important intellectual and socio-political challenges of their day. Moreover, they applied the basic principles of Hegel’s philosophy to new problems, issues, and fields, often in quite original ways with novel results. The academic scene in Prussia and the German states in the 1820s and 1830s had Berlin as its focal point. Since its founding in 1810, the University of Berlin had attracted the most prestigious scholars in the German-speaking world and in a short time had eclipsed Jena as the leading university in Germany. During the 1820s the faculty in Berlin boasted names such as Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), Johann August Wilhelm Neander (1789–1850), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788– 1860), and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834). In 1818 Hegel, then in Heidelberg, accepted the offer of a professorship in the Prussian capital where he was to stay until his death in 1831. Hegel’s Berlin period represents the zenith of his philosophical career. It was there that in 1821 he published his last major work, the Philosophy of Right. But it was perhaps less through his written work than through his popular lectures that he was able to exert a powerful influence on his contemporaries and to dominate German academic life as no one since Kant had been able to do. His lectures during this period attracted the most able students of an entire generation, among whom figured the likes of Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), Bruno Bauer (1809–82), David Friedrich Strauss (1808– 74), and Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72). It was primarily in Berlin that Hegel delivered his celebrated lectures on the philosophy of history, the philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and the history of philosophy. After his death Hegel’s students collected, collated, and edited their notes from these lectures and published them as a part of the first collected edition of Hegel’s works.1 Today these lecture notes constitute an important source, which supplements the writings by Hegel’s own hand. In addition to his lectures, Hegel’s popularity also grew through his work as editor 1

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1–18, ed. by Ludwig Boumann, Friedrich Förster, Eduard Gans, Karl Hegel, Leopold von Henning, Heinrich Gustav Hotho, Philipp Marheineke, Karl Ludwig Michelet, Karl Rosenkranz, and Johannes Schulze, Berlin 1832–45.


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of the journal, Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik, which appeared for the first time in 1826. This was referred to simply as “the Hegel journal” and became an important organ for the dissemination of his philosophy already during his lifetime and long after his death. Given Hegel’s enormous popularity and the intrinsic obscurity of his writings, it is hardly surprising that after his death in 1831 there was a scramble among his students for the rights to his philosophical heritage. The rise of the factions known as the “right” and “left Hegelians” has been well explored by intellectual historians,2 and it will suffice for the purposes of the present study to outline the basic contours of the debate without entering into its details. The best-known battlefield of the Hegelian factions was in the political sphere, but it was in the fields of philosophy of religion and theology where the distinctive schools of Hegelianism were originally formed. (In particular, the latter was important for the discussion about Hegel’s thought in Denmark and thus for Kierkegaard.) The difficulty of Hegel’s varied pronouncements on religion made for fertile ground for this debate. The school known as right Hegelianism argued that Hegel held conventional religious views and that his philosophy was ultimately compatible with traditional Christianity. Among the most prominent members of this faction were Karl Friedrich Göschel (1784–1861), Karl Daub (1765–1836), Philipp Marheineke (1780–1846), and Karl Ludwig Michelet (1801–93). They argued that Hegel’s philosophy provided the key for a true understanding of Christianity by showing it to be built on a system of metaphors or representations [Vorstellungen] which can be unveiled and grasped by thought. Once understood correctly, these representations take on their true and eternal meaning. For these theologians, Hegel’s thought did not present a threat to orthodoxy, but, on the contrary, would strengthen and invigorate it. They claimed that the notion of a personal God could still be maintained according to Hegel’s premises. Moreover, they argued that Hegel’s philosophy was fully consistent with the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Left Hegelianism was represented by figures such as David Friedrich Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach. They drew radically different conclusions from the same basic premises of Hegel’s philosophy of religion. Strauss’ influential Das Leben Jesu3 interprets in a negative way Hegel’s claim about 2

3

E.g., William J. Brazill, The Young Hegelians, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press 1970. Jacques D’Hondt, Hegel et hégélianisme, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1982. George Lasson, Was heißt Hegelianismus? Berlin: Reuther & Reichard 1916. Robert MacKintosh, Hegel and Hegelianism, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1903. Willy Moog, Hegel und die Hegelsche Schule, Munich: Verlag Ernst Reinhardt 1930. René Serreau, Hegel et hégélianisme, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1963. John Edward Toews, Hegelianism: the Path Toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805–1841, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1980. David Friedrich Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, vols. 1–2, Tubingen ¨ 1835–36.


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the representational form of religious thinking, arguing that the stories featured in the history of Judaism and Christianity are nothing but insubstantial myths or mere representations with no genuine basis in reality. Moreover, the notion of the incarnation of Christ is merely a metaphorical way of saying that the divine exists in all human beings. Similarly, Feuerbach argued in his Das Wesen des Christentums 4 that since Hegel’s philosophy demonstrated that all reality is necessarily constructed with categories of human thought, God is nothing more than a projection of the human mind according to these categories. As a mere projection of human thought, Christianity can make no claim to possess ultimate ontological truth but rather is merely one of many transitory forms of human consciousness. Feuerbach also set off a debate about Hegel’s views on the immortality of the soul when he anonymously published his Gedanken u¨ ber Tod und Unsterblichkeit.5 In this work he argues from Hegelian premises against any doctrine of personal immortality. Thus, left Hegelianism denied the ontological basis of Christianity along with some of its most important doctrines such as the notion of a personal God and the immortality of the soul. According to the left Hegelians, Hegel’s God was, if anything, pantheistic and impersonal. In time the left Hegelians began to shift the terrain of the debate from the religious to the political sphere, where the terms “right” and “left” are usually employed. The right Hegelians such as Hegel’s biographer Karl Rosenkranz (1805–79) and Johann Eduard Erdmann (1805–92) emphasized the immanent reason in the existing order as resulting from the development of spirit through the ages. They defended a form of whiggism, welcoming new historical developments such as the rise of modern technology and the advancement of the natural sciences as unambiguous signs of the progress of world spirit and the realization of human freedom. They differed from the left Hegelians in that they regarded as misguided and impertinent the desire to overthrow the contemporary social and political order, which world spirit had taken so long to construct. It should be noted that the right Hegelians were by no means hopeless reactionaries but were usually advocates of a constitutional monarchy. Only a few extreme cases ever argued that existing institutions were the product of the rational divine will or that Hegel’s famous statement that the rational is the actual and the actual the rational6 is to be interpreted to mean that actual existing conditions and institutions,

4 5

6

Ludwig Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums, Leipzig 1841. Kierkegaard owned the second edition from 1843 (ASKB 488), which contained significant changes. Ludwig Feuerbach, Gedanken u¨ ber Tod und Unsterblichkeit aus den Papieren eines Denkers, nebst einem Anhang theologisch-satyrischer Xenien, herausgegeben von einem seiner Freunde, Nuremburg ¨ 1830. PR, Preface, p. 20; Jub., vol. 7, p. 33. EL, § 6; Jub., vol. 8, p. 48.


right and left hegelianism

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whatever they might be, are rational and ipso facto philosophically justified.7 It should be noted that during this period the kinds of intellectual tendencies that paraded under the name of “Hegelianism” were quite heterogeneous. As one intellectual historian writes, “Like all the parties at the time, the Young Hegelians never formed a rigid phalanx of thought. Unity never meant unanimity; the party never transcended the individuals who composed it.”8 The same can be said of the right Hegelians. As is common with any intellectual trend, what originated in a set of primary texts and teachings from a single author was quickly appropriated for use in very different contexts in ways that its originator could never have foreseen and would hardly have condoned. Indeed, the disputes which formed the basis of the divisions within the Hegelian schools is demonstration enough that the people designated as “Hegelians” in fact had radically different opinions on any number of themes, not the least of which were religion and politics. The attempt of Arnold Ruge (1802– 80) to create a kind of literary Hegelian party through his journalistic efforts failed due not merely to the Prussian censors but also to the bitter internal disputes among the various editors and contributors. Moreover, Hegel’s philosophy came to be applied to any number of different fields such as theology, law, history, and the arts. Thus, “Hegelianism” came to be concerned not just with philosophy in Hegel’s sense but with countless other fields and issues that went far beyond his philosophical system. Thus, one should be careful to distinguish between Hegel, strictly speaking, and Hegelianism as a historical phenomena, which often only had a loose connection with his thought. The discussions, criticisms and reevaluations of Hegel’s thought that were taking place in Prussia and the German states were profoundly influential for the intellectual scene elsewhere. As the left Hegelians were sent into exile, they brought with them these discussions and debates about Hegel’s philosophy, which they published in German and other languages in their political and philosophical journals. Just as there was a movement from Prussia and Germany outward as scholars departed from their homeland, so also there was a movement inward as foreign scholars made their pilgrimage to Berlin and learned of Hegel’s philosophy and the debates surrounding it, which they then took back with them 7

8

See Emil L. Fackenheim, “On the Actuality of the Rational and the Rationality of the Actual,” Review of Metaphysics, 89, 1969, pp. 690–698. M. W. Jackson, “Hegel, the Real and the Rational,” International Studies in Philosophy, 19, 1987, pp. 11–19. Yirmiahu Yovel, “Hegel’s Dictum that the Rational Is Actual and the Actual Is Rational,” in Konzepte der Dialektik, ed. by Werner Becker and Wilhelm K. Essler, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 1981, pp. 111–127. Adriaan Peperzak, Philosophy and Politics: A Commentary on the Preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff 1987, pp. 92–103. William J. Brazill, The Young Hegelians, op. cit., p. 12.


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when they returned to their native countries. In this way Hegel reached Denmark through the work of Danish scholars who studied or taught in Prussia or the German states. When they returned to Denmark, they brought different aspects of Hegel’s thought to bear on various discussions in contemporary Danish intellectual life.

ii. the danish hegelians Hegel’s philosophy reached Denmark in the mid-1820s and found there a full spectrum of commentators from zealous advocates to bitter critics. The goal of this section is to sketch briefly (1) the main personalities involved in the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark and (2) their biographical relation to Kierkegaard. Although the thinkers to be examined here can be designated as “Danish Hegelians,” one must avoid regarding them as a homogeneous group. The term, “Danish Hegelians” is a rough and ready category by means of which a handful of thinkers with a certain family resemblance can be classified. However, one must bear in mind that each of them interpreted and reacted to Hegel in his own way based on his own education, intellectual interests, and goals. Thus, it would be a mistake to assume that the figures that made up the movement of Danish Hegelianism all thought alike or that they made up a sort of political party or social club with some measure of solidarity. On the contrary, there was a great deal of internal strife among the Danish Hegelians about the proper interpretation and use of Hegel. Like their German counterparts, the Danish Hegelians can best be characterized not by their unanimous agreement on some specific issue but by the internal disagreement about various aspects of Hegel’s thought. When discussing these thinkers, one must thus resist the urge to regard them as uncritical parrots of Hegel (despite the fact that they are often portrayed as such). Probably the leading exponent of Hegelianism in Denmark was the philosopher, poet, literary critic, and dramatist Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791–1860).9 Heiberg was a many-sided genius who played an extremely important role in Danish intellectual history during the so-called Golden Age of Denmark. He came from a family of intellectuals and from an early age knew personalities, such as the poet Adam Oehlenschläger (1779–1850) and the physicist Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851). He 9

For more detailed accounts of Heiberg’s life and work see the following: Henning Fenger, The Heibergs, tr. by Frederick J. Marker, New York: Twayne Publishers Inc. 1971. Harald Høffding, “Heiberg og Martensen,” in his Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, pp. 129–137. Johanne Luise Heiberg, Et liv genoplevet i erindringen, vols. 1–4, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1973, fifth revised edition. Morten Borup, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1947–49. Paul V. Rubow, Heiberg og hans skole i kritiken, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1953.


the danish hegelians

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graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1817 with a dissertation on Spanish literature.10 From 1819–22 he lived in Paris, studying French drama. Later he went to Schleswig-Holstein, then a dukedom belonging to the Danish crown, where he taught at the University of Kiel from 1822 to 1824. There for the first time he came into contact with Hegel’s thought through the Professor of Philosophy, Johan Erik von Berger (1772–1833).11 After having read some of Hegel’s works himself, Heiberg became so taken by them that he made a journey to Berlin in 1824 in order to meet the philosopher personally. There he attended Hegel’s lectures and met with some of the leading intellectual figures in Berlin. Inspired by Hegel, Heiberg wrote in his native Danish a treatise entitled, On Human Freedom, which he published in the same year.12 This treatise, which Heiberg claimed to be the first work in Danish on Hegel’s philosophy,13 attempted to employ a Hegelian methodology in order to treat the free will controversy, then reigning in Copenhagen, surrounding the claims of the Professor of Medicine, Frantz Howitz (1789–1826).14 Heiberg, by quoting and referring frequently to Hegel’s main works, effectively introduced him into Danish philosophy. This initial work was followed quickly by another short monograph, this time written in German, entitled, Der Zufall, aus dem Gesichtspunkte der Logik betrachtet.15 This work treated concepts such as necessity, probability, and contingency from a Hegelian perspective. It was taken as another declaration of Heiberg’s affiliation with Hegel’s philosophy.16 During this same period, from 1824 to 1825, Heiberg worked on a ¨ book in German entitled Grundlinien zum System der Asthetik als spekula17 tiver Wissenschaft, where he purportedly attempts to work out a theory 10

11 12

13

14 15

16

17

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, De poëseos dramaticæ genere hispanico, et præsertim de Petro Calderone de la Barca, principe dramaticorum, Copenhagen 1817. ASKB 1928. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 11, pp. 1–172.) See Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Autobiographiske Fragmenter,” in Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 11, pp. 498ff. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Om den menneskelige Frihed. I Anledning af de nyeste Stridigheder over denne Gjenstand, Kiel 1824. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 1–110.) Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Fortale,” to Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen 1841–43, vol. 1, p. xiv. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 10, p. 590.) See Oluf Thomsen, F. G. Howitz og hans Strid om Villiens Frihed, Copenhagen: Levin og Munksgaard 1924. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Der Zufall, aus dem Gesichtspunkte der Logik betrachtet. Als Einleitung zu einer Theorie des Zufalls, Copenhagen 1825. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 11, pp. 325–359.) Anonymous [Frederik Christian Sibbern], “Der Zufall, aus dem Gesichtspunkte der Logik betrachtet. Als Einleitung zu einer Theorie des Zufalls. Von Dr. I. L. Heiberg. Kopenhagen. Verlag von C. A. Reitzel. Druck von H. F. Popp. 1825. 30 Sider med Titelblad og alt,” Dansk Litteratur-Tidende for 1825, no. 44, p. 691. See “Heiberg an Hegel,” February 20, 1825. Hegel, Briefe III 487; Letter 124 in Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Johan Ludvig Heiberg, vols. 1–5, ed. by Morten Borup, Copenhagen:


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of aesthetics based on Hegel’s speculative system. Regrettably, he never published this work since he was unable to bring it to a satisfactory completion. It is interesting to note that the composition of this study antedated the publication of Hegel’s posthumous Lectures on Aesthetics, which appeared from 1835 to 1838.18 In preparing his manuscript, Heiberg used lecture notes taken by friends who were present at one of Hegel’s courses.19 By writing in German Heiberg hoped (in vain, as it turned out) to obtain an academic position at a German or Prussian university. He returned to Copenhagen in 1825, where he authored a series of theatrical works for the Royal Theater, where he obtained a permanent post in December of 1828. This allowed him the luxury of returning to philosophy and to Hegel. In 1830 Heiberg was appointed as Lecturer in Logic, Aesthetics, and Danish Literature at the newly founded Royal Military Academy,20 the closest he ever came to a university position in philosophy. In 1832 he published as a textbook for his students his Outline of the Philosophy of Philosophy or Speculative Logic.21 This work is largely a paraphrase of Hegel’s Science of Logic. It employs Hegel’s dialectical methodology and in large part follows the structure of Hegel’s text. It was the first major work on Hegel’s logic in the Danish language and was the forerunner of a whole series of books by Danish scholars on the same subject that would appear over the next several years. Heiberg’s most important attempt to introduce Hegelianism in Denmark appeared in 1833 in the form of a short treatise under the title, On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age.22 This work appeared as a pamphlet and was an invitation to a series of philosophical lectures, which were to be based on Hegel’s philosophy. The work caused such controversy, above all for its statements about religion, that the lectures

18

19 20

21

22

Gyldendal 1947–50, vol. 1, pp. 162–163. See Morten Borup, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1947–49, vol. 1, p. 139. The three volumes of Hegel’s aesthetics appeared for the first time as a part of the first edition of Hegel’s collected writings, which was published between 1832 and 1845 by Hegel’s friends and students. Vorlesungen u¨ ber Aesthetik, I–III, ed. by Heinrich Gustav Hotho, Berlin 1835–38, vols. 10-1, 10-2, 10-3 in Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1– 18, Berlin 1832–45. See “Heiberg an Hegel,” February 20, 1825: Hegel, Briefe III 487; Letter 124 in Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Johan Ludvig Heiberg, ed. by Morten Borup, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 162–163. See Flemming Conrad, Smagen og det nationale. Studier i dansk litteraturhistorieskrivning 1800–1861, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag 1996, pp. 150–179. Morten Borup, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 14–17. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Grundtræk til Philosophiens Philosophie eller den speculative Logik. Som Ledetraad ved Forelæsninger paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1832. (Reprinted as Ledetraad ved Forelæsninger over Philosophiens Philosophie eller den speculative Logik ved den kongelige militaire Høiskole in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 111– 380.) Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid, Copenhagen 1833. ASKB 568. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 381–460.)



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were never given.23 In it Heiberg analyzes what he perceives as the crisis of his age. He claims that religion and art have lost their once central importance in contemporary life and have been replaced by relativism and nihilism. He thus sees his age as being in a period of crisis, which is in the process of forming itself towards a new world-view. For Heiberg, Hegel’s philosophy alone can provide the framework with which the contemporary chaos of thought can be overcome. Only it offers a viable and stable truth in the face of the waves of relativism, alienation, and nihilism. Only it can unite the various spheres of human life and activity and bring them into a unitary whole by seeing what is necessary in all of them. Like Hegel, Heiberg relegates religion to a secondary role behind philosophy, claiming that while religion grasps the truth of the world only in terms of concrete particulars, thus mistakenly taking the particular for the universal, philosophy grasps the universal or the essential as it is in itself. No doubt due to its controversial nature, this work had a popular appeal and introduced Hegel to a general public beyond trained academics.24 In 1835 Heiberg published his Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College,25 which was more ambitious than his previous work on logic, although it is considerably shorter. Here Heiberg makes a general case for the truth of idealism, claiming that universal categories of thought underlie all transitory experience. He tries to demonstrate that all human experience ultimately must refer back to thought. Given that thought is the basis of all experience, logic, as the discipline that examines the forms of thought, must be foremost among the sciences. In this work Heiberg picks up on some of the main motifs from On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age. He claims that only the abstract categorial structure of thought can provide the stability lacking in the chaotic present age. In 1837 Heiberg published the first number of a journal under his direction called Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. This review, to which Kierkegaard had a subscription, was conceived by Heiberg as a forum for Hegelian philosophy in Denmark. There is evidence that Kierkegaard originally planned to publish in this journal his book-review of the novel by Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75), Only a Fiddler ; the review was eventually published as an independent monograph under the title From the Papers of One Still Living.26 Although Heiberg’s journal saw only two numbers, it was profoundly influential and occasioned much controversy. In the second number of Perseus, which appeared in August of 1838, 23 24 25

26

See Chapter 2, Section I. Henning Fenger, The Heibergs, op. cit., pp. 132–134. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Indlednings-Foredrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1835. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 461–516.) See Chapter 2, Section IV.


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Heiberg published an article entitled, “The System of Logic.”27 This text contains the first twenty-three paragraphs of a Hegelian system of logic and thus overlaps with the first part of his aforementioned Outline of the Philosophy of Philosophy or Speculative Logic. This article was a response to criticisms of the pretensions of Hegel’s logic to begin without presuppositions with the category of pure being. In 1839 Heiberg was involved in a debate concerning another aspect of Hegel’s logic. Bishop Mynster had written an article entitled, “Rationalism, Supernaturalism,” in which he criticized Hegel’s principle of mediation and his critique of the law of excluded middle.28 Heiberg responded to this with an article entitled, “A Remark on Logic in Reference to the Right Reverend Bishop Mynster’s Treatise on Rationalism and Supernaturalism,” which defends the Hegelian principle of mediation against Mynster’s criticisms.29 This debate attracted much attention, and many of Copenhagen’s leading intellectual figures were involved in it. Heiberg’s Hegelianism focused primarily on two themes which for him were closely bound together: logic and aesthetics. His interest in applying Hegelian philosophy to aesthetics clearly comes from his longstanding interest in poetry and drama. He found in Hegel’s system a way to understand these art forms as representing a higher philosophical truth. He wrote and lectured on logic several times, and all of his works on logic freely use examples from the arts. He indicates that his Outline of the Philosophy of Philosophy or Speculative Logic and his “The System of Logic” are intended to provide the background for his theory of aesthetics.30 He clearly gives aesthetics a more central role in his philosophical thinking than Hegel does. Moreover, he had no qualms about making emendations to Hegel’s system to suit his own purposes. In his works on logic, he makes slight 27

28

29

30

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det logiske System,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 2, 1838, pp. 1–45. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 113– 166.) Jakob Peter Mynster, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 249–268. (Reprinted in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, vols. 1–6, Copenhagen 1852–57, vol. 2, pp. 95–115.) Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “En logisk Bemærkning i Anledning af H. H. Hr. Biskop Dr. Mynsters Afhandling om Rationalisme og Supranaturalisme i forrige Hefte af dette Tidsskrift,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 441–456. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 167–190.) See Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det logiske System,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 2, 1838, p. 3. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 115– 116.): “The author allows himself to present herewith the first contribution to the working out of a long nourished plan, namely to expound the system of logic. . . . Furthermore, he has the goal with the present exposition and its continuation to clear the way for an aesthetics, which he for a long time has wished to write, but which he cannot send out into the world without ahead of time having given it the support in logic upon which it can rest.”



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changes, for example, altering the initial triad – being, nothing and becoming – from Hegel’s original scheme, grouping together being and nothing as the first category, with becoming as the second, and adding determinate being [Tilværen] as the third.31 Thus, while Heiberg generally follows Hegel’s sequence, he weights the individual categories somewhat differently. Likewise, in his response to Oehlenschläger,32 he, apparently unknowingly, diverges from Hegel’s ordering of the poetic arts (presumably since he did not have Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics at his disposal): while Hegel placed epic first, as the immediate form of poetry, and lyric second as mediated, Heiberg treats lyric as immediate and epic as one of three forms of Romantic poetry, which are all mediated.33 Heiberg was able to exercise a considerable influence on the Danishspeaking public since he was one of the leading public figures in diverse aspects of Copenhagen’s intellectual and cultural life throughout the 1820s and 1830s. It would be a distortion to think of him merely as one of the Danish Hegelians since his intellectual activity went far beyond merely promulgating Hegel’s philosophy. He was an elegant spokesman for Hegel’s philosophy due precisely to the fact that he was able to put it in a comprehensible and attractive form. In a letter dated from 1843, Nikolai Fogtmann (1788–1851), Bishop of Aalborg, writes the following to Mynster: “The most important support for Hegelianism among us [in Denmark] is without doubt Prof. Heiberg because he is clever and knows how to give everything that he treats a smooth and shiny appearance.”34 It is difficult to evaluate the degree to which Heiberg can properly be considered a Hegelian or even the degree to which he considered himself one. On the one hand, in his earliest Hegelian period immediately after meeting Hegel in Berlin, he seems to reject the notion that he is a follower of Hegel. He writes the following in a letter a` propos of his recently published work On Human Freedom: I have indeed in this treatise drawn attention to Hegel, without whom a controversy of this kind does not seem to me to be able to take place, but it has not been my intention to declare myself a Hegelian. (I have, moreover, quite a lot against all -ians, regardless of what first name they put before 31

32

33 34

This deviation from Hegel was criticized by Adler in his review of the work. Adolph Peter Adler, “J. L. Heiberg, Det logiske System, a) Væren og Intet, b) Vorden, c) Tilværen, i Perseus Nr. 2, Kjøbenhavn 1838,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 3, 1840, pp. 474–482. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Svar paa Hr. Oehlenschlägers Skrift: ‘Om Kritiken i Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, over Væringerne i Miklagard,’ ” in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, 1828, (I, no. 7; II, no. 8; III, no. 10; IV, no. 11; V, no. 12; VI, no. 13; VII, no. 14; VIII, no. 15; IX, no. 16). (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 194–284.) See Henning Fenger, The Heibergs, op. cit., p. 136. See Chapter 2, Section IV. “Letter from Bishop Fogtmann to Mynster, Aalborg, 1843,” in Af efterladte Breve til J.P. Mynster, ed. by C. L. N. Mynster, Copenhagen 1862, p. 227.


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kierkegaard and danish hegelianism this, their family name, which an etymologist perhaps might think to derive from “asinus.”) My presentation is, as far as I know, quite my own and even different from Hegel’s, at least in the method, although indeed in the main point it is in agreement with the Hegelian thought.35

From this it is clear that Heiberg does not want to claim the title “Hegelian” and indeed is critical of those who do. Moreover, the many deviations from Hegel’s works that Heiberg allows himself suggest that he regards himself as an independent thinker inspired by, but not a slave to, Hegel. On the other hand, in his “Autobiographical Fragments” written in 1839, Heiberg describes his encounter with Hegel’s philosophy in almost evangelical terms. He recalls how, upon his return trip from Berlin after meeting Hegel, he suddenly grasped the essence of the Hegelian system in a kind of revelation: While resting on the way home in Hamburg, where I stayed six weeks before returning to Kiel, and during that time was constantly pondering what was still obscure to me, it happened one day that, sitting in my room in the König von England with Hegel on my table and in my thoughts, and listening at the same time to the beautiful psalms which sounded almost unceasingly from the chimes of St. Peter’s Church, suddenly, in a way which I have experienced neither before nor since, I was gripped by a momentary inner vision, as if a flash of lightning had illuminated the whole region for me and awakened in me the theretofore hidden central thought. From this moment the system in its broad outline was clear to me, and I was completely convinced that I had grasped it in its innermost core, regardless of however much there might be in the details which I still had not made my own and perhaps will never come to make my own.36

Moreover, the fact that Heiberg felt obliged to defend Hegel against the criticisms leveled by Mynster and others seems to speak for his Hegelianism as being a part of his self-understanding. Finally, in Copenhagen at the time it seems to have been generally known that Heiberg was a Hegelian. Given these ambiguities in his relation to Hegel, the label “Hegelian” cannot be applied to Heiberg without some qualifications. 35

36

Letter 126, “J.L. Heiberg til H.C. Ørsted,” March 25, 1825, from Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Johan Ludvig Heiberg, ed. by Morten Borup, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 164–165. In the same letter Heiberg expresses reservations about his own aptitude and disposition for presenting Hegel’s philosophy to others: “But with what concerns me, I dare not give myself credit for a sufficient knowledge of this system to discharge such a difficult task, and I likewise do not know how far I would be successful in an undertaking of this kind since I feel a greater inclination to present my own ideas than to set myself into a foreign train of thought so completely, which would be necessary for this.” Ibid., p. 167. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Autobiographiske Fragmenter,” in Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 11, p. 500. (Excerpts from and paraphrases of this text were originally published in Christian Molbech, Dansk poetisk Anthologie, vols. 1–4, Copenhagen 1830–40, vol. 4, pp. 243–300, p. 275.)



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Kierkegaard’s relation to Heiberg was by no means transparent. Despite his later criticisms, Kierkegaard seems in fact to have been something of a follower of Heiberg for a period.37 As a student, he read Heiberg and seems to have been anxious to win his approbation and to be accepted into the Heiberg circle of aesthetics and criticism.38 In his student days Kierkegaard published articles in Heiberg’s influential journal Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post39 and is said to have attended soirées at Heiberg’s home.40 Their relationship seems nonetheless to have been a rather formal one. Since Kierkegaard did not cultivate a deeper friendship with Heiberg, he was not obliged later to temper or qualify his criticism. What seems particularly to have turned Kierkegaard against Heiberg was a short book-review of Either/Or that Heiberg wrote in his journal Intelligensblade,41 in which he criticized the work in a rather dismissive manner. From this point on Kierkegaard had nothing but scorn for Heiberg. Under the name of the pseudonymous editor of the work, Victor Eremita, he first published a polemical response to this review with the title, “A Word of Thanks to Professor Heiberg.”42 In another article in his journal Urania,43 Heiberg discussed briefly Kierkegaard’s Repetition and once again evoked his anger. After writing drafts of different responses,44 Kierkegaard settled on the idea for his work Prefaces, which was his most extended polemic with Heiberg. The affectation and zeal of Heiberg’s Hegelian revelation evoked Kierkegaard’s satire. In the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus satirizes the account, quoted previously, which he describes as Heiberg’s miraculous conversion to Hegelianism, referring to him as “Dr. Hjortespring”: “But I have no miracle to appeal to; ah, that was Dr. Hjortespring’s happy fate! According to his own very well 37

38

39 40 41 42 43 44

See Henning Fenger, Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, tr. by George C. Schoolfield, New Haven, Connecticut, and London: Yale University Press 1980, pp. 135–149. Sejer Kuhle, ¨ “Søren Kierkegaard og den heibergske Kreds,” Personalhistorisk Tidsskrift, 68, series 12, vol. 2, 1947, pp. 1–13. See H. P. Holst’s Letter to H. P. Barfod, September 13, 1869, in Encounters with Kierkegaard. A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1996, p. 13. For an account of the significance of this journal, see Henning Fenger, The Heibergs, op. cit., pp. 118–141. Recounted in Henrik Hertz’s diaries, in Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 218. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Litterær Vintersæd,” Intelligensblade, vol. 2, no. 24, March 1, 1843, pp. 285–292. ASKB U 56. In COR, pp. 17–21; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 411–415. Fædrelandet, no. 1168, March 5,1843. See Chapter 10, Section I. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det astronomiske Aar,” Urania, 1844, pp. 77–160. ASKB U 57. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 9, pp. 51–130.) Namely, “Open Letter to Professor Heiberg, Knight of Dannebrog from Constantin Constantius,” R, Supplement, pp. 283–298; Pap. IV B 110–111, pp. 258–274. “A Little Contribution by Constantin Constantius, Author of Repetition,” R, Supplement, pp. 299–319; Pap. IV B 112–117, pp. 275–300.


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written report, he became an adherent of Hegelian philosophy through a miracle at Streit Hotel in Hamburg on Easter morning . . . an adherent of the philosophy that assumes that there are no miracles. Marvelous sign of the times!”45 Kierkegaard had no patience for Heiberg’s unqualified enthusiasm for Hegel and constantly made it the object of satire. After the dispute had calmed down somewhat, Heiberg and his family remained important for Kierkegaard. In 1846 Kierkegaard published a lengthy book-review of a novel entitled Two Ages, which was published by Heiberg and authored anonymously by Heiberg’s mother, the gifted Thomasine Christine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd (1773–1856), who was one of Denmark’s leading novelists of the day. In 1847 Kierkegaard published a series of articles under the title, The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, which was about Heiberg’s wife, Johanne Luise Heiberg (1812– 90), who was a celebrated actress in Copenhagen’s theater scene.46 Thus, even though the polemic with Heiberg faded in time, Kierkegaard continued to be interested in the Heiberg circle throughout his life. The second important spokesman for Hegelianism in Denmark was the theologian Hans Lassen Martensen (1808–84). Although his zeal was clearly more moderate than Heiberg’s, Martensen must be counted as one of the most important sources regarding Hegel’s philosophy for his fellow countrymen. One must be particularly careful not to regard Martensen as an uncritical Hegelian, although this is the picture that Kierkegaard paints of him. It must be stated that Martensen did not regard himself as a Hegelian per se and in fact offered many criticisms of Hegel throughout his career. In any case, there can be no doubt about the fact that he was extremely important for the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark. Martensen was born in Flensborg, the son of a German mother and a Danish father, and thus learned the German language and culture from his earliest childhood.47 He lived in Copenhagen from 1817 to 1834 45

46 47

CUP1, p. 184; SKS, vol. 7, p. 169. See also “Hired waiters presumably are not needed. – Yet all is not thereby past – Heiberg himself is a diplomat, before that miracle in Hamburg, where through a miracle he gained an understanding of and became an adherent of a philosophy that (remarkably enough) does not accept miracles”(FT, Supplement, p. 324; Pap. IV B 124, in Pap. XIII, p. 364). Also in his journals he writes: “Who has forgotten the beautiful Easter morning when Prof. Heiberg arose to understand Hegelian philosophy, as he himself has so edifyingly explained it – was this not a leap? Or did someone dream it?”( JP, vol. 3, 2347; Pap. V C 3). In the Concept of Anxiety he writes: “The system is supposed to have such marvelous transparency and inner vision that in the manner of the omphalopsychoi [navel souls] it would gaze immovably at the central nothing until at last everything would explain itself and its whole content would come into being by itself. Such introverted openness to the public was to characterize the system”(CA, p. 81; SKS, vol. 4, p. 384). See Johanne Luise Heiberg, Et liv genoplevet i erindringen, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 172–176. Of singular importance for the details about Martensen’s life is his autobiography: Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1882–83. See also the following: Skat Arildsen, Biskop Hans Lassen Martensen. Hans Liv, Udvikling og



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and received his degree in theology from the university there in 1832. Kierkegaard knew Martensen from his early student days. In Summer Semester 1834 Martensen was his teacher at the University of Copenhagen for private tutorials on Schleiermacher’s Der christliche Glaube.48 That same year Martensen traveled to Germany in order to learn more about Hegel and German philosophy. Naturally enough, he first journeyed to Berlin where Hegelianism was still thriving.49 There he made the acquaintance of Marheineke, who was the dominant figure on the scene. In a letter from Berlin dated December 20, 1834, Martensen describes as follows the current state of Hegelianism: “Hegel’s philosophy still attracts the greatest interest in philosophy circles in Germany despite its many bad disciples and the many attacks which have been made on it. I do not think that it has been surpassed yet; one must fight against it until one either overcomes it or is oneself overcome by it.”50 From Berlin he continued on to Heidelberg where he met with the aforementioned Hegelian theologian, Karl Daub, who tried to employ Hegel’s dialectical methodology to further the ends of Protestantism. Martensen went on to Tubingen ¨ and met Strauss, whose Das Leben Jesu had just appeared and was causing much controversy. The next stop on his tour was Munich where he attended Schelling’s lectures and made the acquaintance of the speculative theologian Franz von Baader (1765–1841). Martensen continued to Vienna and eventually to Paris where he met Heiberg, in whom he found a friend and ally in philosophical matters.51 After these extensive travels, Martensen returned to Copenhagen in 1836 to formulate his own views on Hegelianism and speculative philosophy. He was appointed Lecturer of Systematic Theology at the University

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Arbejde, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1932. See also Harald Høffding, “Heiberg og Martensen,” in his Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, pp. 137–146. Josepha Martensen, H. L. Martensen i sit Hjem og blandt sine Venner, Copenhagen: J. Frimodts Forlag 1918. C. I. Scharling (ed.), H. L. Martensen. Hans Tanker og Livssyn, Copenhagen: P. Haase & Søns Forlag 1928. Jens Holger Schjørring, “H. L. Martensen,” in his Teologi og filosofi. Nogle analyser og dokumenter vedrørende Hegelianismen i dansk teologi, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1974, pp. 27–35. For an account in English see Jens Holger Schjørring, “Martensen,” in Kierkegaard’s Teachers, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 10), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1982, pp. 177–207. See also the Introduction by Curtis L. Thompson in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, Atlanta: Scholars Press 1997, pp. 1–71. See JP, vol. 4, 3843–3844; Pap. I C 20, in Pap. XII, pp. 126–131. See also Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 78. See Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 85ff. See also Martensen’s letter to H. C. Ørsted from December 20, 1834 in Breve fra og til Hans Christian Ørsted, ed. by Mathilde Ørsted, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen 1870, vol. 2, pp. 134–140. “Letter to H.C. Ørsted” from December 20, 1834 in Breve fra og til Hans Christian Ørsted, ed. by Mathilde Ørsted, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 135. See Johanne Luise Heiberg, Et liv genoplevet i erindringen, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 281–282. See also Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 218–227, vol. 2, pp. 24–39.


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of Copenhagen, later becoming a full professor in 1840. During this period, Martensen seems to have been quite enthusiastic about Hegel’s philosophy of religion, praising Hegel for recognizing the conceptual necessity of religious thought. In 1836 in the journal, Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, Martensen reviewed Heiberg’s aforementioned Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College.52 There he gave a generally positive assessment of Hegelian philosophy, claiming that it is the greatest philosophical achievement of the modern age. He nonetheless criticizes certain aspects of Hegel’s philosophy of religion, criticisms to which Kierkegaard was attentive.53 In 1837 Martensen completed his dissertation, written in Latin, which was entitled, On the Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness.54 There he criticized the notion of autonomy which he saw as characteristic of modern thought such as Hegel’s. At the University of Copenhagen in Winter Semester 1837–38 Martensen gave a course entitled “Introduction to Speculative Dogmatics,” which Kierkegaard attended.55 The lectures continued through Summer Semester 1838 and Winter Semester 1838–39.56 In these lectures he developed a philosophy of religion with some affinities to Hegel. In Winter Semester 1838–39 Martensen gave a survey of German philosophy under the title, “Lectures on the History of Modern Philosophy from Kant to Hegel.” Among Kierkegaard’s journals and papers there are notes to this course written in someone else’s hand.57 These lectures were popular and evoked much academic discussion and even controversy. It was the success of Martensen’s lectures that occasioned Heiberg to declare that Hegel’s philosophy had finally become a causa victrix in Danish intellectual life.58 At this time Martensen also betrayed his allegiance to Hegelianism with his lectures on moral philosophy, which he later published. In 1839 he, like Heiberg, defended 52

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Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole. Af J. L. Heiberg, Lærer i Logik og Æsthetik ved den kgl. militaire Høiskole,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 16, 1836, pp. 515–528. See Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, p. 93. Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia conscientiae sui humanae in theologiam dogmaticam nostri temporis introducta, Copenhagen 1837. ASKB 648. Danish translation: Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, tr. by L. V. Petersen, Copenhagen 1841. ASKB 651. English translation: The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in Modern Dogmatic Theology, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, op. cit., pp. 73–147. SKS, vol. 19, pp. 125–143, Not4:3–12. A complete list of Martensen’s lectures can be found in Skat Arildsen, Biskop Hans Lassen Martensen. Hans Liv, Udvikling og Arbejde, op. cit., pp. 156–158. SKS, vol. 18, pp. 374–386, KK:11. See also Pap. II C 27–28, in Pap. XIII, pp. 3–116. Pap. II C 25, in Pap. XII, pp. 316–331. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Fortale,” to Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen 1841–43, vol. 1, p. xv. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 10, p. 591.)



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Hegel’s critique of the law of excluded middle against Bishop Mynster’s criticism.59 He argued that the principle of mediation was the principle of Christianity since the doctrine of the incarnation could not be understood without it. Martensen was a charismatic figure who attracted many students. In the journals from 1849, Kierkegaard, looking back on his student days, describes Martensen as creating “quite a sensation”60 at the University of Copenhagen. Martensen’s popularity among the students earned him not merely Kierkegaard’s animosity but also attracted much attention in the Danish intellectual community generally. Martensen’s lectures brought him into the public eye and functioned as a sort of forum for the general debate about the legitimacy of the introduction of Hegelian philosophy into theological questions.61 As a result of his promulgation of Hegel’s doctrines among the students, he quickly became the object of public criticism by an anonymous critic in Kjøbenhavnsposten.62 Critics harped on the fundamental differences between Hegel’s speculative philosophy and Protestantism, which they claimed were ultimately incompatible. For a time Martensen made an attempt to defend himself against these criticisms and tried to maintain a Hegelian position. As late as 1841 he published a work entitled, Outline of the System of Moral Philosophy,63 which bears a decidedly Hegelian stamp.64 But in 1842, however, Martensen experienced a crisis as a result of new publications by some of the left Hegelians who were unapologetically critical of religion and Christianity in particular. Ludwig Feuerbach’s Wesen 59

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Hans Lassen Martensen, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme og principium exclusi medii i Anledning af H. H. Biskop Mynsters Afhandling herom i dette Tidsskrifts forrige Hefte,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 456–473. PF, Supplement, pp. 226–227; Pap. X-2 A 155, p. 117. Translation slightly modified. See Henning Fenger, The Heibergs, op. cit., pp. 139–140. Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse eller om Adolph Peter Adler og om Søren Kierkegaards forhold til ham, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag A/S 1990, pp. 27ff. See the anonymous criticism: “Nogle Træk til en Charakteristik af den philosophiske Aand, som for Tiden findes hos de Studerende ved Kjøbenhavns Universitet,” Kjøbenhavnsposten, vol. 14, no. 25, January 26, 1840, pp. 97–99. Martensen’s response: “Philosophisk Beskedenhed i Kjøbenhavnsposten,” Fædrelandet, vol. 1, no. 50, January 29, 1840, pp. 259–261. The anonymous rejoinder: “Philosophiske Suffisance i Fædrelandet,” Kjøbenhavnsposten, vol. 14, no. 31, February 1, 1840, pp. 121–124. Martensen’s response “Erklæring,” Fædrelandet, vol. 1, no. 56, February 4, 1840, pp. 315–316. The final article, “Sidste Indlæg: Sagen contra Lector Martensen som Mandatarius for Hegel & Comp,” Kjøbenhavnsposten, vol. 14, no. 41, February 11, 1840, pp. 161–163. Hans Lassen Martensen, Grundrids til Moralphilosophiens System, Copenhagen 1841. ASKB 650. English translation: Outline to a System of Moral Philosophy, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, op. cit., pp. 245–313. See the review: Peter Michael Stilling, “Grundrids til Moralphilosophiens System, udgivet til Brug ved academiske Forelæsninger af Dr. H. Martensen. Reitzels Forlag. 109 S. 80- . Kjøbenhavn 1841. (Priis 1 Rbd.),” Theologisk Tidsskrift, Ny Række, 7, 1843, pp. 88–115. See the discussion in Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1990, pp. 172–175.


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des Christentums65 and Strauss’ Die christliche Glaubenslehre66 claimed to be furthering Hegel’s philosophy, yet the Danish theologian could recognize in their positions nothing of his own notion of Christianity. When this anti-Christian tendency began to emerge in certain forms in Denmark,67 Martensen felt obliged to modify his position, lest he be associated with the radicals. In 1842 he openly criticized Strauss and took a stand on the side of orthodoxy in “The Present Religious Crisis.”68 Moreover, at the end of 1842 he refused an invitation from the German philosopher and theologian Eduard Zeller (1814–1908) to submit an article for the newly founded journal, the Theologische Jahrbücher, in which Strauss was also involved. At the beginning of 1843 he refused a similar invitation from Marheineke to join a philosophical society dedicated to Hegel’s thought.69 Martensen’s Hegelian period did not impede his professional advancement. Even during the controversy regarding Hegel’s principle of mediation, he remained on the best of terms with Hegel’s critic, Bishop Mynster. In a letter dated June 18, 1839, Mynster writes: “Moreover, yesterday I had a long philosophical discussion with Martensen; naturally, regardless of this dispute, we are the best of friends.”70 In 1845 Martensen became a royal chaplain despite relatively scant experience in preaching. In 1849 he published his best-known work on theology, Christian Dogmatics,71 which cannot be considered straightforwardly “Hegelian,” although it is clearly a piece of systematic theology with some Hegelian strands. By this time Martensen’s initial burst of enthusiasm for Hegelianism had clearly waned, and he had backed off considerably from its most provocative aspects.72 65 66

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Ludwig Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums, Leipzig 1841. See ASKB 488. David Friedrich Strauss, Die christliche Glaubenslehre, vols. 1–2, Tubingen ¨ 1840–41. Danish translation: Fremstilling af den christelige Troeslære i dens historiske Udvikling og i dens Kamp med den moderne Videnskab, tr. by Hans Brøchner, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen 1842–43. ASKB 803–804. See Jens Holger Schiørring’s mention of “the examination scandal” and “Frederik Andreas Beck” in his article “Martensen,” in Kierkegaard’s Teachers, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, op. cit., p. 192. See Leif Grane, “Det Teologiske Fakultet 1830–1925,” in Københavns Universitet 1479–1979, ed. by Leif Grane, vol. 5, Det Teologiske Fakultet, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1980, pp. 366–367. S. V. Rasmussen, Den unge Brøchner, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1966, pp. 16–26. See also Harald Høffding, “Hans Brøchner,” in his Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, pp. 196–206. This is discussed in Chapter 3, Section I. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Nutidens religiøse Crisis,” Intelligensblade, vol. 1, no. 3, 1842, pp. 53–73. For an account of both of these episodes, see Jens Holger Schjørring, Teologi og filosofi. Nogle analyser og dokumenter vedrørende Hegelianismen i dansk teologi, op. cit., pp. 27–35. “Mynster to his eldest son Joachim,” June 18, 1839, in Nogle Blade af J.P. Mynster’s Liv og Tid, ed. by C. L. N. Mynster, Copenhagen 1875, p. 404. See also p. 69. Hans Lassen Martensen, Den christelige Dogmatik, Copenhagen 1849. ASKB 653. See Helweg’s assessment: Hans Friedrich Helweg, “Hegelianismen i Danmark,” Dansk Kirketidende, vol. 10, no. 51, December 16, 1855, pp. 827–828.



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Martensen was never a full-fledged devotee of Hegelianism,73 and the issue of how Hegelian he was after the entire course of his intellectual development remains open. In his autobiography Martensen denies that he was ever a Hegelian at all. He explains his goal as a teacher of Hegel’s philosophy as follows: I had to, if possible, get [the students] enthused about Hegel, and yet I had to oppose him and bring them to oppose him. Whether I always succeeded in this to the same degree I must leave undecided. But I can assert with certainty that all the way through I have maintained my theonomic standpoint in contrast to Hegel’s autonomic, that the intuitive view of faith and revelation was for me the principal thing in contrast to the autonomic in Hegel. I could not agree with a thinking which wanted to produce its own content. I sought only a second-order reflection on that which is given in revelation. When it is often said that during this my initial period at the University I was a representative of Hegelianism, then this is a most uncritical assertion which totally ignores my explicit and justified declarations in my dissertation, and which has been refuted by each of my literary works.74

One should, of course, be wary of taking autobiographical statements made years after the fact at face value, but nonetheless there is some support for Martensen’s claim. In a letter from as early as 1836, Martensen indicates that he is no longer satisfied with the “autonomic principle” of Hegel’s philosophy, which is precisely the criticism he recalls in his autobiography almost a half a century later.75 In a part of his review of Perseus, Sibbern portrays Martensen not as a Hegelian but rather as one of the great critics of Hegel.76 In a letter from 1839 Mynster notes that Martensen was “not nearly such a strict Hegelian as Heiberg.”77 Even during the period when Martensen had the most success among the students, it is not clear that he was universally regarded as a Hegelian. In a letter from 1841, Fogtmann writes to Mynster in a way that implies that he distances Martensen from the real Hegelians: “I have recently 73

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One author tells us that “Martensen, apart from a brief period around 1833–34 was not actually a Hegelian, but rather he wanted to use Hegel’s method to create a speculative theology.” Leif Grane, “Det Teologiske Fakultet 1830–1925,” op. cit., p. 363. See Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 4–5. Quoted from Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, op. cit., p. 8. See also vol. 2, pp. 5–7. See vol. 1, pp. 146–147 where Martensen says that he broke with Hegel. “Letter from Martensen to Sibbern,” March 19, 1836, in Breve fra og til F.C. Sibbern, ed. by C. L. N. Mynster, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel 1866, vol. 1, pp. 181– 183. See Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1, Juni 1837. Kjøbenhavn. Reitzels Forlag. XIV og 264 S. 8. Priis 1 Rbd. 84 Skill. – (Med stadigt Hensyn til Dr. Rothes: Læren om Treenighed og Forsoning. Et speculativt Forsøg i Anledning af Reformationsfesten.),” in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 20, 1838, Article VIII pp. 405–449. See especially p. 406. “Mynster to his eldest son Joachim,” June 18, 1839, in Nogle Blade af J. P. Mynster’s Liv og Tid, ed. by C. L. N. Mynster, Copenhagen 1875, p. 404.


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read much in Prof. Martensen’s theological writings and have found a great interest in them. He is certainly, as Your Holiness once remarked, a true Christian theologian, who is not bound by Hegelian formulations.”78 This seems to indicate that Martensen was not generally regarded as the most convinced or dogmatic Hegelian at the time. Moreover, Martensen did indeed offer criticisms of Hegel in each of his works which have been designated as “Hegelian.” Martensen was also critical of the subordination of religion to philosophy in Hegel’s thought and was more interested than Hegel in the concept of a personal God.79 He also criticizes Hegel’s philosophy for dismissing as unscientific anything that cannot be reduced to its categories. At the end of his “Lectures on the History of Modern Philosophy from Kant to Hegel,” he offers a number of criticisms of Hegel’s philosophy and notes some of the leading contemporary critics. He enumerates three points that, to his mind, remained unanswered in Hegel: the notion of (1) a personal God, (2) a personal Christ, and (3) the immortality of the individual.80 With these points of divergence, one can see that Mynster’s assessment seems to be correct: Martensen’s Hegelianism was more qualified and less zealous than Heiberg’s. Despite this, it does seem that Martensen was at least perceived to be a Hegelian by some people. Otherwise it would not make sense for the aforementioned Eduard Zeller to solicit his work in the service of a Hegelian journal or for Marheineke to invite him to become a member of a Hegelian society.81 Moreover, his response to the anonymous critic in Kjøbenhavnsposten has the look of a Hegelian. Although Martensen is, of course, at pains there to defend himself against the charge that he has corrupted the students at the University of Copenhagen, he is also quite anxious to defend Hegel’s philosophy against both misunderstanding and criticism. Kierkegaard’s criticism of Martensen is more aggressive than his criticism of Heiberg due perhaps to the fact that Martensen was only a few years older than Kierkegaard and thus was regarded as more of a threat by him.82 While Heiberg was perceived as a mentor, Martensen was perceived as a rival. In many journal entries Kierkegaard compares himself and his work with that of Martensen. As was noted previously, Kierkegaard in his student days attended Martensen’s tutorials and apparently was at 78 79 80 81 82

“Letter from Bishop Fogtmann to Mynster, Aalborg, 1841” in Af efterladte Breve til J.P. Mynster, ed. by C. L. N. Mynster, Copenhagen 1862, p. 221. See Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 103ff. Pap. II C 25, in Pap. XII, p. 328. See also p. 331. Jens Holger Schjørring, Teologi og filosofi. Nogle analyser og dokumenter vedrørende Hegelianismen i dansk teologi, op. cit., p. 27. For Kierkegaard’s relation to Martensen see M. Neiiendam, “Martensen, Mynster og Kierkegaard,” in C. I. Scharling, H.L. Martensen. Hans Tanker og Livssyn, op. cit., pp. 94–127.



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that time favorably impressed by the command of German philosophy and theology that Martensen displayed. However, Kierkegaard seems to have lost much of his respect for him when Martensen returned from Germany in 1836 and began to advocate Hegelianism and proclaim that he had gone beyond it. In his journals Kierkegaard writes: Some teach that eternity is comic, or more correctly, that in eternity a person will perceive a comic consciousness about the temporal. This wisdom we owe especially to the last three or four paragraphs of Hegel’s Aesthetics. Here [in Denmark] it has been presented in one of the journals by Professor Martensen. Although the professor, after his return [from Germany], and since his first appearance in the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, has invariably assured us that he has gone beyond Hegel, he certainly did not go farther in this case.83

This claim of “going beyond Hegel” is one that Kierkegaard returns to again and again throughout his career. Expressions like this seem to have been common during this period.84 In his autobiography, Martensen recalls, “I had to lead my listener through Hegel; we could not stop with him, but rather, as was said, we had to go beyond him.”85 This expression seems to refer to the then recent sequence of famous German philosophers, Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, who displaced one another in succession. Each new philosopher started from the premises of his predecessor and reworked them in a new, original manner, thus incorporating and surpassing the previous system. In this way each of these philosophers was said to “have gone beyond” his predecessor. After Hegel’s death the question that resounded during the 1830s was who would pick up the torch and go beyond Hegel.86 In his memoirs one of Martensen’s students, the later priest and author Johannes Fibiger (1821–97), describes the way in which one regarded the intellectual task of the age: “One had to imitate [Hegel’s philosophy] and bring it even further; one was supposed to build one’s own system and go beyond Hegel and become the great 83

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CA, Supplement, p. 207; Pap. V B 60, p. 137. Translation slightly modified. See also CA, Supplement, p. 213; Pap. V B 72.33: “The whole wisdom of the superiority of the comic we owe to the three or four last paragraphs in Hegel’s Aesthetics, although it has also been presented with bravura by one who long since has gone beyond Hegel; and while he astonished women and children with his discourse, he would not as much as intimate that it was Hegel’s.” See also JP, vol. 6, 6947; Pap. XI-3 B 57, p. 107: “Professor Martensen ‘goes further’ – that is to be expected of Prof. M.” See commentary to “at gaae videre” in SKS, vol. K4, pp. 259–260. See Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 4. See Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1, Juni 1837. Kjøbenhavn. Reitzels Forlag. XIV og 264 S. 8. Priis 1 Rbd. 84 Skill. – (Med stadigt Hensyn til Dr. Rothes: Læren om Treenighed og Forsoning. Et speculativt Forsøg i Anledning af Reformationsfesten.),” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 19, 1838, Article I, p. 313: “Few seem to be aware that to correctly make use of the great content discussed here [sc. of Hegel’s philosophy] . . . one must go beyond it.”


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man of the scholarly world.”87 Kierkegaard was critical of Martensen and others for their pretensions to have unseated Hegel and to have assumed the role of his successor in this distinguished series of thinkers. As has been noted, Kierkegaard became increasingly incensed by what he perceived as Martensen’s base attempt to profit from Hegel’s genius. Kierkegaard speaks positively of Hegel in this regard and negatively of his parrots and emulators. He writes, for example: “Those who have gone beyond Hegel are like country people who must always give their addresses as via a larger city; thus the addresses in this case read – John Doe via Hegel.”88 Many years later he writes in his journals, naming Martensen explicitly, “Professor Martensen . . . is only an insignificant thinker and essentially only a reporter and correspondent for German thinkers and professors.”89 Another reason for Kierkegaard’s animosity was a straightforward jealousy. In 1837 Martensen published an article on a new version of Faust by Nicolaus Lenau,90 a pseudonym for the Austro-Hungarian poet Niembsch von Strehlenau (1802–50). The article appeared in Heiberg’s review, Perseus, and in a sense served to make Martensen the protégé of Heiberg and to give notice to the academic community that he was the up and coming young scholar in Danish intellectual life. Kierkegaard himself had tried to get into the good graces of Heiberg and his circle, but he was quickly displaced by the new academic star, Martensen. What was worse, the theme of Faust was one that fascinated Kierkegaard in particular at that time. In his early journals one finds many long discussions of it, and it seems clear that he was planning a manuscript of some kind on it.91 He was thus startled and upset when Martensen’s article appeared since it undercut his own plans for a study of the subject. He became bitter and

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Johannes Fibiger, Mit Liv og Levned som jeg selv har forstaaet det, ed. by Karl Gjellerup, Copenhagen 1898, p. 73. JP, vol. 2, 1572; SKS, vol. 18, p. 109, FF:176. In an apparent reference to Martensen from 1836, Kierkegaard writes: “The Hegelian cud-chewing involving three stomachs – first, immediacy – then it is regurgitated – then down once more; perhaps a successor master-mind could continue this with four stomachs etc., down again and then up again. I do not know whether the master-mind understands what I mean.” JP, vol. 2, 1566; Pap. I A 229. Pap. X-6 B 103. See also JP, vol. 3, 3034; Pap. X-2 A 117. CUP1, p. 195f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 180f. JP, vol. 2, 1570; SKS, vol. 17, p. 50, AA:40. JP, vol. 2, 1573; SKS, vol. 17, p. 262, DD:141. JP, vol. 2, 1576; SKS, vol. 18, p. 14, EE:26. JP, vol. 2, 1738; SKS, vol. 19, p. 375, Not12:7. JP, vol. 6, 6460; Pap. X-1 A 588. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Betragtninger over Idéen af Faust med Hensyn paa Lenaus Faust,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 1, 1837, pp. 91–164. ASKB 569. JP, vol. 5, 5100; SKS, vol. 17, pp. 18–30, AA:12. JP, vol. 2, 1177; Pap. I A 88. JP, vol. 2, 1178; Pap. I A 104. JP, vol. 4, 4387; Pap. I A 122. JP, vol. 1, 795; Pap. I A 150. JP, vol. 2, 1671; Pap. I A 154. Pap. I A 274. SKS, vol. 18, p. 78, FF:19. SKS, vol. 17, pp. 205–207, CC:14–18. JP, vol. 5, 5077; Pap. I C 46. JP, vol. 2, 1179; SKS, vol. 19, p. 94, Not2:7. JP, vol. 5, 5110; Pap. I C 61. JP, vol. 5, 5111; SKS, vol. 19, p. 94f., Not2:10. JP, vol. 5, 5160; Pap. I C 102. JP, vol. 3, 2703; SKS, vol. 17, pp. 104–106, BB:14. Pap. I C 114.



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envious of Martensen’s success,92 and this initiated a lifelong enmity on Kierkegaard’s part, an enmity that, it should be noted, was reciprocated by Martensen. Kierkegaard’s criticism became all the more bitter when he saw Martensen’s lectures become popular. During his most productive period of work between 1843 and 1846, Kierkegaard often caustically criticizes Martensen’s positions without mentioning his name as, for example, in the Philosophical Fragments and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.93 From journal entries it is clear that Kierkegaard felt slighted by some of Martensen’s remarks in the Introduction to his Christian Dogmatics.94 In his autobiography, Martensen describes Kierkegaard’s animosity thus: In the beginning his [Kierkegaard’s] relation to me had been friendly, but it assumed an increasingly hostile character. He was moved to this in part by the differences in our views and in part by the recognition I enjoyed from the students and the public, a recognition which he clearly viewed – nor did he attempt to conceal it – as an unjustified overestimation . . . I was now chosen to be the object of his attack, and he sought to disparage me, my abilities, and my work in many ways. He sought to annihilate and extinguish every bit of activity that emanated from me.95

Kierkegaard remained a critic of Martensen until the end of his life. His journals from the years 1849–50 are full of criticisms of Martensen’s Dogmatics.96 In Kierkegaard’s attack on the Danish Church in the last year of his life, Martensen, then having been elected Bishop of Zealand, was the target of much of his critique. Indeed, it was Martensen’s eulogy to his predecessor Mynster, in which he said that the deceased bishop had been a witness to the truth, that set off Kierkegaard’s campaign of criticism in the first place.97 Kierkegaard’s animosity towards Martensen stayed with him his whole life and lies behind much of his anti-Hegelian polemics. Another important advocate of Hegelianism in Denmark was the priest, Adolph Peter Adler (1812–69).98 Adler was almost the same age as 92 93 94 95

96 97

98

See JP, vol. 5, 5225; Pap. II A 597. See also JP, vol. 2, 1183; SKS, vol. 17, p. 49, AA:38. JP, vol. 5, 5226; SKS, vol. 18, p. 83, FF:38. See Arild Christensen, “Efterskriftens Opgør med Martensen,” Kierkegaardiana, 4, 1962, pp. 45–62. Pap. X-6 B 113, p. 143. JP, vol. 6, 6636; Pap. X-6 B 137. Martensen mentions this in his autobiography: Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 146. Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 140. Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., pp. 196–197. Translation slightly modified. Pap. X-6 B 103–193, pp. 129–193. See “Was Bishop Mynster a ‘Truth-Witness?” and the other articles in The Moment: “Var Biskop Mynster et ‘Sandhedsvidne,’ et af ‘de rette Sandhedsvidner’ – er dette Sandhed ?” in Fædrelandet, no. 295, 18 December 1854; M, pp. 3–8; SV1, vol. 14, pp. 5–10. For Kierkegaard’s relation to Adler see: Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse eller om Adolph Peter Adler og om Søren Kierkegaards forhold til ham, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag A/S 1990. Leif Bork Hansen, Søren Kierkegaards Hemmelighed og Eksistensdialektik, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1994.


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Kierkegaard, and his father, like Kierkegaard’s, belonged to the nouveau riche in Copenhagen’s high society. Adler began his studies in theology at the University of Copenhagen in 1832. In 1837 he traveled abroad to Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France. In Germany he was able to familiarize himself with Hegel’s thought. He returned to Denmark in 1839, and on the basis of his studies abroad he wrote his dissertation, The Isolated Subjectivity in Its Most Important Forms,99 which he completed in 1840, a year before Kierkegaard’s dissertation. His official opponents at the oral defense were Sibbern and Martensen. Directly thereafter in Winter Semester 1840–41, he gave lectures on Hegel’s philosophy, which became the basis for his book, Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic.100 This work was an important source for Kierkegaard’s understanding of Hegel’s logic and the object of criticism in The Concept of Anxiety. In addition, Adler wrote reviews of the works on speculative logic by Heiberg and Rasmus Nielsen.101 After his dissertation, Adler was appointed priest on the Danish island of Bornholm in 1841. Up until this point he had been a full-fledged Hegelian. While many Danish intellectuals in the 1830s and 1840s experienced a Hegelian period and then later came to reject Hegel due to one reason or another, this rejection was nowhere so dramatic as in the case of Adler. After his appointment as priest, Adler claimed to have experienced a revelation, and this event marked his turn away from Hegelianism. He purported to have been visited by Christ personally in December of 1842. According to the account that Adler gives in the Preface to his collection, Some Sermons,102 Christ came to him one evening while he was writing and dictated sacred verses to him. Moreover, he was commanded by Christ to destroy his writings on Hegel’s philosophy. Needless to say, these claims, once made public, were a great embarrassment to the Danish Church, which after some inquiries suspended and ultimately fired the priest. Adler continued to write on a number of other topics, but his days as a Hegelian and as a controversial public figure were over after this episode. Kierkegaard knew Adler personally: they attended the same school at the same time, and both studied theology at the University of Copenhagen, Kierkegaard starting in 1830 and Adler a year later. Kierkegaard followed closely the controversy surrounding Adler’s suspension and dismissal by the Church. In Hans Brøchner’s recollections of Kierkegaard, 99 100 101

102

Adolph Peter Adler, Den isolerede Subjectivitet i dens vigtigste Skikkelser, Copenhagen 1840. Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag over Hegels objective Logik, Copenhagen 1842. ASKB 383. Adolph Peter Adler, “J. L. Heiberg, Det logiske System, a) Væren og Intet, b) Vorden, c) Tilværen, i Perseus Nr. 2, Kjøbenhavn 1838,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 3, 1840, pp. 474–482. Adolph Peter Adler, En Anmældelse, egentlig bestemt for Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, Copenhagen 1842. Adolph Peter Adler, Nogle Prædikener, Copenhagen 1843, pp. 3–4. ASKB U 9. See A, Supplement, pp. 339–340.



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he recounts how after the revelation Adler came to visit Kierkegaard some time in the latter half of 1843.103 Kierkegaard was so taken by Adler that he planned a book on him, which he began work on in the summer of 1846. This so-called Book on Adler was never published, perhaps out of respect or personal feeling for Adler, and was found among Kierkegaard’s papers and eventually published posthumously. What fascinated Kierkegaard was what he perceived as the obvious contradiction between Adler’s Hegelianism and his revelation, and this constitutes the centerpiece of Kierkegaard’s analysis. I have mentioned here the most important advocates of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark, but it would be misleading to give the impression that Danish Hegelianism consisted only of these few personalities. Indeed, there were a host of other thinkers in Denmark in the 1830s and 1840s whose names were associated with Hegelianism at one time or another, names such as Rasmus Nielsen (1809–84), Carl Weis (1809–72), Hans Brøchner (1820–75), Peter Michael Stilling (1812–69), Andreas Frederik Beck (1816–61), Carl Emil Scharling (1803–77), Christian Fenger Christens (1819–55), Rudolf Varberg (1828–69), Ditlev Gothard Monrad (1811–87), and the brothers Frederik Christian Bornemann (1810–61) and Johan Alfred Bornemann (1813–90). In the course of this study I will have occasion to discuss some of these figures. There is a tendency in Kierkegaard scholarship to convey the idea that Hegelian philosophy represented the scholarly status quo at the time and that the Danish academy was dominated by Hegelians. This is indeed sometimes the impression that one receives when reading Kierkegaard himself. But from the very presence of the critics, which constitute the subject of the next section, it is clear that Hegelianism never enjoyed a position of undisputed hegemony in Danish intellectual life. Moreover, apart from Heiberg, one cannot really speak of full-fledged Hegelians, let alone an intellectual community dominated by them. Indeed, while Heiberg exercised a great influence for a time in literary and dramatic criticism, he never held a university position in philosophy. As one intellectual historian concludes, “In spite of Heiberg’s efforts, Hegel did not catch on in Denmark.”104 A number of Danish intellectuals passed through a brief Hegelian phase, but these phases were usually fairly shortlived, and the individuals involved never formed an organized or coherent school. Thus, one can hardly speak of Hegelianism as being a dominant school in Denmark during this or any other period. This said, I pass now from the advocates of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark to the critics. 103

104

Hans Brøchner, “Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard,” Det Nittende Aarhundrede, Maanedsskrift for Literatur og Kritik, vol. 5, March 1877, § 20. English translation cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., pp. 234– 235. Leif Grane, “Det Teologiske Fakultet 1830–1925,” op. cit., p. 363. See also Skat Arildsen, Biskop Hans Lassen Martensen. Hans Liv, Udvikling og Arbejde, op. cit., p. 163.


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iii. the critics of hegel in denmark After Heiberg, Martensen, and others had introduced Hegel into academic life in Denmark, a handful of anti-Hegelians rose up in opposition to the new trend. Just as those thinkers usually assigned to the category “Hegelians” are not to be conceived as uncritical, unoriginal parrots of Hegel, so also those assigned to the category of “anti-Hegelians” cannot be said to have rejected Hegel’s thought entirely. On the contrary, many of the so-called Hegel critics themselves experienced a Hegelian period. Moreover, many co-opted specific aspects of Hegel’s thought in their mature views, even while criticizing other aspects. Thus, one must be cautious about the use of these general categories. Among those usually classified as anti-Hegelian was Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785–1872), a jurist and philosopher at the University of Copenhagen.105 Sibbern was an interestingly ambivalent figure. He was profoundly influenced by German thought and from the earliest days had a number of essentially Hegelian proclivities, such as the desire to overcome traditional dualisms (e.g., freedom and necessity, individual and state). But despite these seemingly Hegelian views, Sibbern is usually numbered among the Hegel critics in Denmark. He is particularly important because of both his personal relation to Kierkegaard and his role as the towering figure on the Danish philosophical scene of the day. After completing his doctoral dissertation in Copenhagen in 1811, Sibbern made an extended trip to Germany where he came into contact with the leading minds of the age including Fichte, Schleiermacher, Goethe, and Schelling. At this time Hegel had yet to achieve any great reputation, and Fichte and Schelling were regarded as the major figures in the German philosophical milieu. Sibbern returned to the University of Copenhagen in 1813 to assume a professorship. This was the beginning of a long and distinguished university career that would last until 1870. During his career he published major treatises on every area of philosophical inquiry. Despite the fact that Sibbern has been consistently categorized as a Hegel critic, there are many signs, particularly in his early works, that indicate that he had a rather favorable opinion of Hegel’s philosophy. For example, as early as 1822 (i.e., two years before Heiberg’s On Human Freedom purportedly introduced Hegel into Denmark), Sibbern in his On 105

See Harald Høffding, “Frederik Christian Sibbern,” in his Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, pp. 97–117. Jens Himmelstrup, Sibbern, Copenhagen: J. H. Schultz Forlag 1934. Poul Kallmoes, Frederik Christian Sibbern. Træk af en Dansk Filosofs Liv og Tænkning, Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaards Forlag 1946. Poul Lubcke, ¨ “F. C. Sibbern: Epistemology as Ontology,” Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, 13, 1976, pp. 167–178.


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Knowledge and Enquiry refers to Hegel’s Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences by way of illustration.106 Moreover, he alludes to the Science of Logic, calling it “both profound and penetrating.”107 In 1825 Sibbern anonymously reviewed Heiberg’s treatise on contingency.108 At the time Sibbern was already an established professor of philosophy, whereas Heiberg was just beginning to write philosophical works. This review, like On Knowledge and Enquiry, does not give the impression that its author is an anti-Hegelian. Sibbern briefly alludes to Heiberg’s earlier treatise, On Human Freedom, in order to indicate its continuity with the work under review. The point of continuity is that both works are written from a Hegelian perspective: The author shows himself in the present work, just as in the previous one, to be a resolute follower of Hegel’s philosophy. He is not intimidated but perhaps rather attracted by its difficulty and has read his way well into it. We also believe him to be in a position to be able to give some excellent contributions to elucidate these speculations, which certainly deserve to be studied and pursued, and to make them more attractive than they are in Hegel’s own difficult, rough, and rather unhappily expressed language.109

The tone here is indicative of the measured criticism of the review. Sibbern alludes to Hegel’s difficult style but unhesitatingly agrees that his philosophy is worthy of careful consideration. Moreover, it is clear that Sibbern welcomes Heiberg’s attempts to explain Hegel’s philosophy and to make it better known. In the body of the review Sibbern explicitly lauds Heiberg for his use of Hegel’s speculative methodology. This short review, which shows a very positive disposition towards both Heiberg and Hegel himself, stands in sharp contrast to Sibbern’s later criticism. In the series of articles published in 1829–30 under the title Philosophical Review and Collection, Sibbern quotes and refers to Hegel on a couple of occasions.110 In one passage he defends Hegel against unjust criticisms. It would be a mistake, he says, to condemn Hegel on account of his dry, indeed graceless language and his difficult presentation without respecting the truly great value which lies in it and which in truth has naturally enough been very attractive to the speculative minds of the day, both the older and the younger ones, 106 107 108

109 110

Frederik Christian Sibbern, Om Erkjendelse og Granskning. Til Indledning i det academiske Studium, Copenhagen 1822, p. 21. Ibid., p. 82. [Anonymous] Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Der Zufall, aus dem Gesichtspunkte der Logik betrachtet. Als Einleitung zu einer Theorie des Zufalls. Von Dr. J. L. Heiberg. Kopenhagen. Verlag von C. A. Reitzel. Druck von H. F. Popp. 1825. 30 Sider med Titelblad og alt,” Dansk Litteratur-Tidende for 1825, no. 44, pp. 689–702. Ibid., p. 691. Frederik Christian Sibbern, Philosophiskt Archiv og Repertorium, vols. 1–4, Copenhagen 1829–30, vol. 1, p. 5, pp. 25–26fn.


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kierkegaard and danish hegelianism especially the latter, who in the richest period of the inner development of the Idea are entirely correct to find something as stimulating, as refreshing and delightful in the most abstract movements in the speculative train of thought as in poetry’s soul-elevating, -expanding, and -liberating effects.111

Here as in the review of Heiberg’s treatise on contingency, Sibbern refers to Hegel’s difficult style, but, while criticizing this style, he clearly is positively disposed towards the actual content of Hegel’s thought. Needless to say, this encomium does not square with Sibbern being a tireless critic of Hegel. In 1838 in the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, Sibbern published a long review of the first number of Heiberg’s aforementioned Hegelian journal, Perseus.112 This work represents one of the major documents in the history of the Danish Hegel reception. In a letter Sibbern indicates that the long review was intended not just as a criticism of Heiberg’s journal but as a general assessment of Hegel’s philosophy.113 Sibbern’s reputation as anti-Hegelian comes primarily from this work. This review, which was longer than Heiberg’s journal, was later in part republished as a monograph under the title, Remarks and Investigations Primarily Concerning Hegel’s Philosophy.114 In it Sibbern takes issue with any number of things in Hegel’s philosophy (i.e., his logic, his philosophy of religion, and his general philosophical methodology). Sibbern is particularly critical of Heiberg’s criticism of what the latter believed to be the sad state of philosophy in Denmark and of the concomitant belief that Hegel’s philosophy was urgently required to improve the situation. As was mentioned, for all his anti-Hegelianism, Sibbern remained a somewhat ambivalent figure. For example, he had a notion of the harmony of the universe or the idea of God which corresponds rather straightforwardly to what Hegel called “absolute knowing” or “the absolute Idea.” Moreover, he shared with Hegel an organic conception of the world and the notion of a developmental progression of concepts. Given Sibbern’s many positive statements about Hegel and their profound agreement on many issues, one is led to the conclusion that what 111 112

113 114

Ibid., vol. 2, p. 116. Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1, Juni 1837. Kjøbenhavn. Reitzels Forlag. XIV og 264 S. 8. Priis 1 Rbd. 84 Skill. – (Med stadigt Hensyn til Dr. Rothes: Læren om Treenighed og Forsoning. Et speculativt Forsøg i Anledning af Reformationsfesten.),” in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 19, 1838, Article I, pp. 283–360; Article II, pp. 424–460; Article III, pp. 546–582; 20, 1838, Article IV, pp. 20–60; Article V, pp. 103–136; Article VI, pp. 193–244; Article VII, pp. 293–308; Article VIII pp. 405–449. “Letter from Sibbern to Zeuthen,” September 12, 1837, in Breve fra og til F.C. Sibbern, ed. by C. L. N. Mynster, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 192–193. Frederik Christian Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, betragtet i Forhold til vor Tid, Copenhagen 1838. ASKB 778.



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has been taken as his criticism of Hegel is in fact in large part a criticism of Heiberg. As was noted, Sibbern’s only real anti-Hegelian treatise, indeed the one work from which he received the reputation for being anti-Hegelian, is his review of Heiberg’s Perseus. But this work is primarily a criticism of Heiberg. While, to be sure, Sibbern indicates his disagreement with Hegel on individual points, he is careful to point out to the reader that Heiberg’s presentation of Hegel is often incorrect and that Hegel’s own position is much more reasonable than that presented by Heiberg. Sibbern calls Heiberg a dilettante in philosophy115 and writes in the very first article of the review, “Indeed, I would hope that no one will make Professor Heiberg’s Hegelian statements the foundation for his judgment of Hegel’s philosophy. That would be to run the risk of doing a great injustice to Hegel.”116 The tone of this clearly indicates a respect for Hegel, despite whatever philosophical differences Sibbern might have had with him. Given Sibbern’s early positive statements about Hegel and his later negative ones about both Hegel and Heiberg, one can perhaps infer that Sibbern, like Kierkegaard, was particularly incensed at Heiberg’s evangelizing for Hegelianism. That this comes to expression in a critical review of Heiberg’s journal is no accident since the journal was intended as an organ for the promulgation of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark. Kierkegaard knew Sibbern personally and, as a young man, seems to have been on good terms with the popular teacher. Indeed, for a time Kierkegaard was a regular guest at the Sibberns’ home. Sibbern seems also to have played the role of a sort of chaperon, at times accompanying Kierkegaard on his visits to Regine Olsen.117 With respect to intellectual matters, Sibbern acted as mentor to him during the years of Kierkegaard’s studies. Kierkegaard attended many courses that Sibbern offered on various subjects.118 Sibbern was the first reader on Kierkegaard’s dissertation committee and in this capacity advised the young candidate on the work. During his stay in Berlin, Kierkegaard wrote a letter to Sibbern which evinces both familiarity and warmth.119 Although in time Kierkegaard became estranged from Sibbern,120 he seems to have shared his mentor’s 115

116 117 118 119

120

Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1,” in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 19, 1838, Article I, p. 290. Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, op. cit., p. 8. Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1,” op. cit., p. 335. Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, op. cit., p. 53. See Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit. 1996, p. 37. Valdemar Ammundsen, Søren Kierkegaards Ungdom. Hans Slægt og hans Udvikling, Copenhagen: Universitetstrykkeriet 1912, pp. 77–107. LD, 55; B&A I, p. 83. Cf. also LD, 49; B&A, pp. 71–73. LD, 51; B&A I, pp. 75–77. See also Hans Brøchner, “Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard,” op. cit., § 35. English translation: Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 241. See JP, vol. 6, 6196; Pap. IX A 493. Pap. VI B 201. Pap. X-1 A 446.


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criticisms of Hegel. Indeed, many of Sibbern’s criticisms of Hegel in the review of Perseus prefigure Kierkegaard’s own. Nonetheless there were differences; for example, Kierkegaard clearly came to reject Sibbern’s speculative approach to philosophy and did not share with Sibbern the search for a unity or harmony in the universe. Also classified among the Hegel critics was Poul Martin Møller (1794– 1838),121 a poet and professor of philosophy at the University of Christiania (today Oslo) and later, from 1830, in Copenhagen. Like Sibbern, Møller cannot properly be classified as a Hegel critic without qualification, for he was, even more so than Sibbern, ambivalent towards Hegel.122 Like many intellectuals in Denmark, Møller experienced a period in which he was infatuated by Hegel. He made a study of Hegel during his time in Christiania, and it was when he returned to Copenhagen in 1830 that his pro-Hegel period can be said to have begun. During this time he and Heiberg seem to have been generally regarded as Denmark’s foremost representatives of Hegelianism.123 Indeed, one commentator from the period suggests that Møller was the first Hegelian in Denmark.124 Møller’s course from 1834 to 1835, published posthumously under the title Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, is written in a Hegelian tone. For example, in his Introduction he calls the history of philosophy, “the history of human consciousness.”125 There he lauds Hegel as follows: “With extraordinary genius and unusual learning, Hegel strove to grasp reason’s eternal history in the actual development of philosophy and has executed this plan . . . with a strength with which no other has executed it.”126 Predictably these lectures owe much to the first volume of 121

122

123 124

125 126

See F. C. Olsen, “Poul Martin Møllers Levnet,” in Møller’s Efterladte Skrifter, vols. 1– 3, Copenhagen 1839–43, vol. 3, pp. 1–115. ASKB 1574–1576. Vilhelm Andersen, Poul Møller, hans Liv og Skrifter, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1894, third edition 1944. Ludvig Daae, “Fra Poul Møllers Liv som Professor i Christiania,” Historiske Samlinger, ed. by Den Norske Historiske Kildeskriftkommission, vol. 3, no. 1, 1908, pp. 1–20. Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen, Poul Møller Studier, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1940. For Møller’s relation to Hegel, see Arne Löchen, “Poul Möller og Hegels Filosofi,” ˚ Nyt Tidsskrift, Ny Række, 3. Argang, 1894–95, pp. 447–456. Uffe Andreasen, Poul Møller og Romanticismen, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1973, pp. 17–43. Vilhelm Andersen, Poul Møller, hans Liv og Skrifter, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1894, third edition 1944, pp. 302– 316, pp. 359–372. See also Harald Høffding, “Poul Møller,” in his Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, pp. 119–121. See Frederik Ludvig Bang Zeuthen, Et Par Aar af mit Liv, Copenhagen 1869, p. 44. Hans Friedrich Helweg, “Hegelianismen i Danmark,” Dansk Kirketidende, vol. 10, no. 51, December 16, 1855, pp. 825–837, and December 23, 1855, pp. 841–852. See pp. 826– 827. Poul Martin Møller, “Forelæsninger over den ældre Philosophies Historie,” in Møller’s Efterladte Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 284. ASKB 1574–1576. Poul Martin Møller, ibid., p. 285.



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Hegel’s posthumous Lectures on the History of Philosophy, which appeared in 1833.127 But later Møller came to reject Hegel. Critical elements are already present as early as 1835 in Møller’s review128 of Sibbern’s On Poetry and Art. The break was complete with his long article in 1837, “Thoughts on the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality.”129 This work was a response to the discussions, alluded to above, among the German Hegelians regarding the question of whether or not Hegel had a doctrine of personal immortality. Friedrich Richter (1807–56), in Die Lehre von den letzten Dingen,130 argued that Hegel denied the immortality of the soul as a mistaken belief, whereas the aforementioned right Hegelian Karl Friedrich Göschel argued that in fact proofs for the existence of God could be derived from Hegel’s philosophy.131 Other leading figures such as Immanuel Hermann, the younger Fichte (1797–1879), and Feuerbach were also involved in the debate. As was noted previously, it was around this issue that the schools of right and left Hegelianism separated and took form. In the article Møller claims that nowhere in Hegel’s philosophy can one find a doctrine of the personal immortality of the soul which is in harmony with that taught by Christianity. He thus argues, contrary to the right Hegelians, that Hegel’s philosophy is not consistent with Christianity. Further, he argues, in a way that anticipates Kierkegaard, that speculative philosophy remains incomplete since it consists only of abstract concepts that cannot take account of individual experiences, which remain outside the system. Møller’s rejection of Hegel in this article was regarded by Heiberg, his comrade-in-arms, as an act of treason against Hegel’s philosophy. In an 127

128

129

130

131

The three volumes of Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy appeared for the first time as a part of the first edition of Hegel’s collected writings, which was published between 1832 and 1845 by Hegel’s friends and students. Vorlesungen u¨ ber die Geschichte der Philosophie, I–III, ed. by Karl Ludwig Michelet, Berlin 1833–36, vols. 13–15 in Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1–18, Berlin 1832–45. Poul Martin Møller, “Om Poesie og Konst i Almindelighed, med Hensyn til alle Arter deraf, dog især Digte-, Maler-, Billedhugger- og Skuespillerkonst; eller: Foredrag over almindelig Æsthetik og Poetik. Af Dr. Frederik Christian Sibbern, Professor i Philosophien. Første Deel. Kiøbenhavn. Paa Forfatterens Forlag, trykt hos Fabritius de Tengnagel. 1834,” Dansk Literatur-Tidende for 1835, no. 12, pp. 181–194; no. 13, pp. 205–209. (Reprinted in Møller’s Efterladte Skrifter, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen 1839–43, vol. 2, pp. 105–126. ASKB 1574–1576.) Poul Martin Møller, “Tanker over Muligheden af Beviser for Menneskets Udødelighed,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 17, Copenhagen 1837, pp. 1–72, pp. 422–53. (Reprinted in Møller’s Efterladte Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 158–272.) Friedrich Richter, Die Lehre von den letzten Dingen, vol. 1, Eine wissenschaftliche Kritik aus dem Standpunct der Religion unternommen, Breslau 1833; vol. 2, Die Lehre von jüngsten Tage. Dogma und Kritik, Berlin 1844. Karl Friedrich Göschel, Von den Beweisen für die Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele im Lichte der spekulativen Philosophie, Berlin 1835.


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article in the first number of Perseus, Heiberg refers to Møller anonymously as a deserter.132 In response to Heiberg’s comment, Sibbern in his review of Perseus, claims that it was impossible for such an active and original thinker as Møller to remain a Hegelian for long.133 In a footnote in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard himself describes Møller’s relation to Hegelianism: “Poul Møller, when everything here at home was Hegelian, judged quite differently . . . for some time he first spoke of Hegel almost with indignation, until his wholesome, humorous nature made him smile, especially at Hegelianism.”134 Kierkegaard attended Møller’s lectures and was by all accounts fond of him. He was attracted by Møller’s poetical side and by his love for the Greek and Roman classics. Møller’s interest in irony apparently in part inspired Kierkegaard to write on the same theme for his dissertation.135 Møller’s premature death in 1838 robbed Denmark of one of its potentially greatest minds and Kierkegaard of an important mentor and ally. In 1844 Kierkegaard dedicated The Concept of Anxiety to his memory.136 According to some biographers,137 Møller’s criticism of Kierkegaard’s 132

133

134 135

136

137

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Recension over Hr. Dr. Rothes Treenigheds- og Forsoningslære,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 1, 1837, p. 33. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 41–42.) “I might add I know well that this utterly simple solution to the task will not satisfy everyone, in particular those who are interested in the most recent fermentation in philosophy. But it has still not been shown whether the striving, which is in itself laudable, among these most recent men of this movement, that is, their striving after progress beyond the present circle of philosophy, is not unwittingly a regress; whether the system, which they just left, does not contain what they now are looking for outside it, in which case they would have gone over the stream after water. Yet it does not seem that these deserters would ever come to make up their own corps; for their goal is too indeterminate, for if they also could name something or another for which they are searching, for example, a future worldview, then they cannot say anything about the way which leads there, but it is just that which is at issue in philosophy, which cannot be served by having its property on the moon.” Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1,” op. cit., Article I, p. 336. Frederik Christian Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, op. cit., p. 54. ASKB 778. CUP1, p. 34fn.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 41fn. Among Møller’s posthumous works there is a fragment entitled, “On the Concept of Irony,” which was written in 1835 and published in the second edition of his posthumous writings. Poul Martin Møller, “Om Begrebet Ironie,” in Efterladte Skrifter, ed. by Christian Winther, F. C. Olsen, Christen Thaarup, and L. V. Petersen, vols. 1–6, Copenhagen 1848– 50, vol. 3, 1848, pp. 152–158. Socratic irony is also treated in his “Forelæsninger over den ældre Philosophies Historie,” in Efterladte Skrifter, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen 1839–43, vol. 3, pp. 363ff. ASKB 1574–1576. See SKS, vol. 17, pp. 225–226, DD:18. See detailed account in H. P. Rohde, “Poul Møller,” in Kierkegaard’s Teachers, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 10), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1982, pp. 91–108. See also Frithiof Brandt, Den unge Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaards Forlag 1929, pp. 336–446. Frithiof Brandt, Den unge Søren Kierkegaard, op. cit., p. 432. Walter Lowrie, Kierkegaard, London: Oxford University Press 1938, pp. 143–149.



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general polemical attitude helped the young Kierkegaard out of what has been regarded as his period of perdition between 1836 and 1838. In a draft of the dedication to The Concept of Anxiety, Møller is referred to as “the mighty trumpet of my awakening.”138 Scholars have noted that Møller’s influence on many aspects of Kierkegaard’s thought has been profound,139 and it seems almost inconceivable that Møller’s assessment of Hegel was not important for Kierkegaard’s developing views. One of the most important and the most consistent of the Hegel critics in Denmark was the theologian and later Bishop Jakob Peter Mynster (1775–1854).140 Hegel’s philosophy never occupied a central place in his thought, but Mynster did play an important role as a critic of some of Hegel’s Danish followers. Mynster was awarded his degree in theology at the extraordinarily young age of nineteen. He then worked for some years as a private tutor, during which time he read the German philosophers – Kant, Schelling, and Jacobi. In 1802 he became a pastor and received his first parish in a rural town in southern Zealand. In 1811 he was awarded a prestigious position as curate in Copenhagen’s Cathedral Church of Our Lady. Thus, by the time the issue of Hegelianism reached Denmark, Mynster was already an established priest and theologian.141 Unlike the other Danish scholars mentioned here, Mynster was of the same generation as Hegel himself and thus experienced first-hand the rise of Hegelian philosophy. He seems to have been suspicious of the new intellectual trend from the very beginning, even if he only spoke out on the subject later. In his autobiography he describes the new movement and his reaction to it as follows: Philosophy had been dormant in Germany for many years; now with Hegel it was again brought to life, but in a form in which it did not attract me at all, regardless of the extraordinary talents the originator had. Since Hegel’s 138 139 140

141

CA, Supplement, p. 178; Pap. V B 46. E.g., Poul Lübcke, “Det ontologiske program hos Poul Møller og Søren Kierkegaard,” Filosofiske Studier, vol. 6, 1983, pp. 127–147. For Mynster’s biography and thought see the following: Jakob Peter Mynster, Meddelelser om mit Levnet, ed. by F. J. Mynster, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1854, 1884; O. Waage, J. P. Mynster og de philosophiske Bevægelser paa hans Tid i Danmark, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel 1867. C. L. N. Mynster (ed.), Nogle Blade af J.P. Mynster’s Liv og Tid, Copenhagen 1875; C. L. N. Mynster (ed.), Nogle Erindringer og Bemærkninger om J.P. Mynster, Copenhagen 1877; Niels Munk Plum, Jakob Peter Mynster som Kristen og Teolog, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad 1938. Jens Rasmussen, J. P. Mynster. Sjællands Biskop 1834–1854, Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag 2000. Bruce Kirmmse, “Piety and Good Taste: J. P. Mynster’s Religion and Politics,” in his Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1990, pp. 169–197. For an account of Mynster’s view of Hegelianism see O. Waage, “Hegelianismens Fremkomst i Danmark og Mynsters Forhold til denne Retning,” in his J.P. Mynster og de philosophiske Bevægelser paa hans Tid i Danmark, op. cit., pp. 104–117.


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kierkegaard and danish hegelianism appointment in Berlin, his philosophy had become regarded as the end all, and the arrogance of his followers knew no limits. I was indeed convinced that it would not last long, but I was disappointed in the expectation that it would all be over with Hegel’s death, for on the contrary it only really began to be dominant then.142

Here Mynster indicates his irritation with Hegel’s followers, while admitting his admiration for Hegel himself. But generally he seems to regard his own role as something of a spectator to the whole matter. Mynster’s anti-Hegelian polemics began with an article from 1833 entitled “On Religious Conviction,”143 in which he took issue with Heiberg’s On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age. Mynster concentrated his critique on Heiberg’s interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy of religion, criticizing Heiberg for reading Hegel as a secular thinker. Thus, the criticism is ultimately of Heiberg’s interpretation of Hegel and not of Hegel himself. Mynster quotes Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion in order to show that to Hegel’s mind Christianity is still true and influential, contrary to Heiberg’s claims. (This provides an instructive example for the difficulty of assigning the various thinkers to the one or the other side of the Hegel debate. Here the purportedly anti-Hegelian Mynster defends Hegel’s philosophy of religion against the claims made by the purportedly pro-Hegelian Heiberg.) Shortly after this debate, in 1834 Mynster was appointed bishop and spent the rest of his life in this service. Mynster, who was of course personally acquainted with both Heiberg and Martensen, was the instigator of the aforementioned debate about Hegel’s criticism of the law of excluded middle. The debate began in 1839 with the publication of his article, “Rationalism, Supernaturalism,”144 in which he responds to the claim of the Hegelian, Johan Alfred Bornemann, that rationalism and supernaturalism are antiquated standpoints.145 In his initial response Mynster concentrates on demonstrating that the positions of rationalism and supernaturalism are in fact still relevant in contemporary theology. At the end of his article he notes that the two views, being opposites, cannot both be antiquated at the same time since if the one were antiquated then the other would then be prevailing. Thus, unless the law of excluded middle is no longer valid, 142 143

144

145

Jakob Peter Mynster, Meddelelser om mit Levnet, op. cit., (1884), p. 239. Jakob Peter Mynster, “Om den religiøse Overbevisning,” Dansk Ugeskrift, vol. 3, no. 76– 77, 1833, pp. 241–258. (Reprinted in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, vols. 1–6, Copenhagen 1852–57, vol. 2, pp. 73–94.) Jakob Peter Mynster, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 249–268. (Reprinted in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 95– 115.) Johan Alfred Bornemann, “Af Martensen: de autonomia conscientiae. Sui humanae,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 1–40. See p. 3.



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then at least one of these views must still be alive and well. In this context Mynster refers to Hegel’s criticism of the law of excluded middle and his claim that opposites can be mediated. Mynster does little more than sketch Hegel’s position and note his disagreement with it, and with this the article ends. This article evoked the responses, previously mentioned, from Heiberg and Martensen, who felt called upon to come to Hegel’s defense. In 1842 Mynster took up the issue again in what purported to be a review article of two related works about the issue by Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841)146 and the younger Fichte.147 Mynster’s article, later for the sake of simplicity given the title, “On the Laws of Logic,”148 examines in detail the laws of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle in order to evaluate Hegel’s criticisms. Mynster criticizes the Hegelian principles of mediation and Aufhebung, which eliminate strict distinctions, such as that between rationalism and supernaturalism in theology. He makes a defense of the Aristotelian law of excluded middle against Hegel’s criticism. Despite what seems to be a fundamental disagreement with Hegelianism, Mynster never dedicated a large portion of his energy to combatting it.149 Indeed, it is probably an overstatement to claim that Mynster was a major critic of Hegel in the Danish context; this is in any case not the way he viewed himself. In his autobiography he describes his overall relation to Hegelian philosophy as follows: [Hegelianism] was the one aspect of the age which left me cold and showed me how little I, as long as this trend lasted, could expect to find an entry with my scholarly efforts, which in no way would fit with the prevailing tone. I felt neither the inclination nor the ability to step forth to battle against the Hegelian philosophy. I only engaged in a few skirmishes, which, however, were perhaps not wholly without effect. Thus, in 1833 on occasion of a remark by Heiberg, I wrote an article, “On Religious Conviction” (Dansk Ugeskrift III, 241); but it did not evoke any further treatises. Only several years later in 1839 when, on occasion of a remark by another author, I wrote “Rationalism, Supernaturalism” (Tidsskrivt for Literatur og Kritik I, 249) did 146 147 148

149

Johann Friedrich Herbart, De principio logico exclusi medii inter contradictoria non negligendo commentatio, qua ad audiendam orationem . . . invitat, Göttingen 1833. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, De principiorum contradictionis, identitatis, exclusi tertii in logicis dignitate et ordine commentatio, Bonn 1840. ASKB 507. Jakob Peter Mynster, “De principio logico exclusi medii inter contradictoria non negligendo commentatio, qua ad audiendam orationem. . . . invitat. Jo. Fr. Herbart. Gottingae 1833. 29 S. 80- , De principiorum contradictionis, identitatis, exclusi tertii in logicis dignitate et ordine commentatio. Scripsit I. H. Fichte. Bonnae 1840. 31 S. 80- ,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, vol. 7, 1842, pp. 325–352. (Reprinted as “Om de logiske Principer,” in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 116–144.) For Mynster’s view on Hegelianism see Leif Grane, “Det Teologiske Fakultet 1830–1925,” op. cit., p. 360.


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kierkegaard and danish hegelianism Heiberg and Martensen come forth as opponents, which again occasioned me, albeit after a few years, to write a book-review, “On the Laws of Logic” (ibid. VII, 325).150

It is perhaps something of an overstatement to cast Mynster in the role of an outspoken Hegel critic, especially given the fact that his anti-Hegelian corpus amounts to only three essays, and by far the better part of these is directed against Heiberg and Bornemann. What is, however, characteristic of Mynster’s position vis-à-vis Hegel is his consistency. Unlike most of the other thinkers mentioned here, Mynster never had a Hegelian period but rather seems to have rejected Hegel’s philosophy from the beginning and never to have modified his opinion substantially. Kierkegaard knew Mynster from his earliest childhood and was confirmed by him in 1828.151 His father was moved by Mynster’s sermons, which he attended regularly. Kierkegaard himself also went to hear Mynster and seems to have maintained a favorable opinion of him until 1838 when his father died. He writes in his journals that he was sent to tell Mynster of the death of his father and was irritated when Mynster seemed to have difficulty remembering who the dead man was.152 Nonetheless there is evidence that individual analyses in Either/Or, Philosophical Fragments, and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript are intended to support Mynster’s position in the debate about the principle of mediation.153 Throughout the years Kierkegaard became more and more estranged from Mynster, who embodied for him the prototypical representative of the official Church of Denmark, which in his view departed greatly from the Christianity of the New Testament. Despite this estrangement, Kierkegaard remained on more or less cordial terms with Mynster throughout his life, often paying him visits and sending him his newly published works. Kierkegaard’s criticism was tacit during Mynster’s lifetime, but when Mynster died in 1854, neither politeness nor discretion remained to temper it any longer. In the article entitled, “Was Bishop Mynster a Witness to the Truth,”154 Kierkegaard begins his public criticism of Mynster which became increasingly bitter in a series of essays. The gallery of personalities and events mentioned here is important for an understanding of Kierkegaard’s picture of Hegel since he followed the debates in Denmark surrounding Hegelianism in conjunction with

150 151 153 154

Jakob Peter Mynster, Meddelelser om mit Levnet, op. cit. (1884), pp. 240–241. 152 Pap. XI-2 A 419. LD, p. 4, IV; B & A I, p. 4. Explored later in, respectively, Chapter 4, Sections I–II; Chapter 8, Section I; Chapter 11, Section IX. “Var Biskop Mynster et ‘Sandhedsvidne,’ et af ‘de rette Sandhedsvidner’ – er dette Sandhed ?” in Fædrelandet, no. 295, 18 December 1854; M, pp. 3–8; SV1, vol. 14, pp. 5–10.



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or in lieu of reading the primary texts. Thus, the picture that he received was largely shaped by these discussions, which were in the public eye at the time. Figures such as Martensen and Heiberg are thus of crucial importance for Kierkegaard’s understanding of Hegel since it was their interpretation of Hegel and their discussion of the consequences of Hegel’s philosophy that Kierkegaard became familiar with. As I wish to show, often what Kierkegaard criticizes as “Hegelian” is in fact a specific appropriation or misappropriation of Hegel by people like them. Likewise, the criticisms put forth by Sibbern, Møller, and Mynster, by pointing to controversial issues in different aspects of Hegel’s thought, offered a model of critique for the young Kierkegaard. Thus, an appreciation of the context of the debate about Hegelianism in Denmark that reigned in Kierkegaard’s time is imperative if one wishes to understand correctly Kierkegaard’s view of Hegel and if one is not to assume uncritically that what he says about Hegelian philosophy, as he knew it, is the same as what is to be found in the writings of Hegel himself. In his article, “Hegelianism in Denmark” from shortly after Kierkegaard’s death, Hans Friedrich Helweg (1816–1901) lists the common set of names associated with Danish Hegelianism. Somewhat surprisingly, Kierkegaard plays a central role in his account. Helweg notes the ambiguity of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel as follows: “I have heretofore not mentioned S. Kierkegaard in this overview of Hegelianism in Denmark, and yet he stands in the most intimate relation to it, although one can indeed be in doubt about whether one should say that he belonged to it or rather that he rejected it, and to what extent the end of his life was in accordance with the beginning of his career.”155 Here Helweg correctly notes that Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel and Hegelianism is not an easy matter to form a final judgment about. It is ambiguous, contradictory, and deeply differentiated. Moreover, Helweg implies that Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel changed over the course of his life. This is in accordance with the thesis of Helweg’s article, namely, “Hegelianism came to an end in Kierkegaard, and yet he never completely rejected Hegel.”156 At first Helweg’s comments might strike one as unexpected since one is accustomed to thinking of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel as being one that is wholly unambiguous (i.e., as being wholly negative). But after this brief account of the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark, one can see that this history of reception is itself full of ambiguity. On the one hand, it is almost impossible to assert without qualification that 155 156

Hans Friedrich Helweg, “Hegelianismen i Danmark,” Dansk Kirketidende, vol. 10, no. 51, December 16, 1855, p. 829. Ibid., p. 829.


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anyone, even Heiberg, Hegel’s most enthusiastic follower, was straightforwardly a Hegelian. So-called Hegelians, such as Martensen, rejected the label with some justice. For virtually all of the so-called Hegelians, the period of their pro-Hegel affiliation was short-lived, and, as they matured intellectually, they came to reject Hegel’s philosophy. On the other hand, the purported critics of Hegel, such as Sibbern, were profoundly influenced by certain aspects of Hegel’s thought. Many of the critics, such as Møller, themselves had a Hegelian period. Even the most consistent anti-Hegelian, Mynster, admits that he has great respect for Hegel himself although he disdains the excesses of some of Hegel’s followers. Given all this, it is highly misleading to speak of Hegel advocates and Hegel critics as if these were two straightforward and unambiguous categories. Instead it is better to speak of the general discussion of the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark and to resist the urge to place the individual figures into neat categories, which are invariably misleading. The ambiguity in the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark can be used as a clue for understanding Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. Given that most of the leading names in Danish intellectual life of the period were all quite taken with Hegel’s philosophy for a period and then came to reject it as their thought developed further, it seems quite plausible that Kierkegaard as well could conceivably have experienced the same development. His own teachers and mentors – Heiberg, Møller, and Sibbern – were all highly influenced by Hegel; it seems almost inconceivable that this positive influence would not also have been formative for Kierkegaard. Later when some of these thinkers came to reject Hegel, their criticisms were carefully studied by the young Kierkegaard, who then reformulated them in accordance with his own intellectual agenda. It is thus conceivable that Kierkegaard too came to reject the Hegelian trend in the same manner as the others. All of this points to a development in his thought and not to a single static relation to Hegel. In the course of this investigation, I would like to follow Helweg’s intuition. I wish to try to make the picture of this relation more differentiated by finding out more precisely how well Kierkegaard knew Hegel’s texts at the different stages of his career. Moreover, I would like to try to piece together the picture of Hegel that Kierkegaard received in order to understand the nature of his assessment more precisely. Once this picture is clear, then one can begin to evaluate the true character of what has for so long been understood as his one-sided criticism of Hegel. With these preliminaries out of the way, I now turn to an analysis of Kierkegaard’s own texts in order to begin the actual construction of this picture.


historical and biographical overview

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appendix: historical and biographical overview Contemporary Events 1811 1812 1813

1816 1817

1818 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826

1827

1828 1830

Kierkegaard’s Life

Sibbern travels to Germany Hegel: Science of Logic, Book I: The Doctrine of Being Sibbern named professor in Copenhagen Hegel: Science of Logic, Book II: The Doctrine of Essence Hegel: Science of Logic, Book III: The Doctrine of the Concept Hegel: The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences Heiberg: Christmas Fun and New Year’s Jesting Hegel appointed professor in Berlin Hegel: Philosophy of Right

1813

Born in Copenhagen, May 5

1821

Pupil at Borgerdydskole in Copenhagen

Sibbern: On Knowledge and Enquiry P. M. Møller: The Adventures of a Danish Student Heiberg travels to Berlin Heiberg: On Human Freedom Heiberg: Der Zufall, aus dem Gesichtspunkte der Logik betrachtet Sibbern: The Posthumous Letters of Gabrielis Heiberg: “On Vaudeville as a Dramatic Art” Marheineke: Die Grundlehren der christlichen Dogmatik als Wissenschaft First number of Heiberg’s Flyvende Post Grundtvig: Christian Sermons Hegel: The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (2nd expanded edition) Heiberg: Elves Hill

1828

Confirmation by J. P. Mynster Student at the University of Copenhagen

P. M. Møller named professor in Copenhagen Sibbern’s lectures on psychology begin

1830

(continued)


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appendix: (continued) Contemporary Events

1831

1832

1833

1834

1835

1836

Hegel: The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (3rd expanded edition) Hegel†

Heiberg: Outline of the Philosophy of Philosophy or Speculative Logic Hegel: Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Grundtvig: Scandinavian Mythology Heiberg: On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age Mynster: “On Religious Conviction” Tryde: “Review of On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age” Hegel: Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vols. 1–2 Martensen embarks on his trip to Germany

Hegel: Lectures on Aesthetics, vol. 1 Heiberg: Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College Sibbern: Logic as Doctrine of Thought F. Schlegel: Lucinde Strauss: Das Leben Jesu, vol.1 Martensen returns from his trip to Germany Martensen’s review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course Hegel: Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 3 Strauss: Das Leben Jesu, vol. 2


1831

Finishes exams in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, history, mathematics, philosophy, and physics

1834

“Another Defense of Woman’s Great Abilities” appears in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post

1836

“The Morning Observations in Kjøbenhavnsposten No. 43” “On the Polemic of Fædrelandet ” “To Mr. Orla Lehmann” all in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post



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appendix: (continued) Contemporary Events 1837

1838

1839

P. M. Møller: “Thoughts on the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality” First number of Heiberg’s Perseus Martensen’s article on Lenau’s Faust Erdmann: Vorlesungen u¨ ber Glauben und Wissen als Einleitung in die Dogmatik und Religionsphilosophie Martensen: On the Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness I. H. Fichte: “Spekulation und Offenbarung” Martensen’s lectures begin: Speculative Dogmatics Hegel: Lectures on the Philosophy of History Hegel: Lectures on Aesthetics, vol. 2 Sibbern: Remarks and Investigations Primarily Concerning Hegel’s Philosophy Second number of Heiberg’s Perseus P. M. Møller† Schaller: Der historische Christus und die Philosophie Hegel: Lectures on Aesthetics, vol. 3 ¨ Philosophie und Feuerbach: Uber Christentum Mynster: “Rationalism, Supernaturalism” Heiberg: “A Remark on Logic in Reference to the Right Reverend Bishop Mynster’s Treatise on Rationalism and Supernaturalism” Martensen: “Rationalism, Supernaturalism and the principium exclusi medii”

Kierkegaard’s Life 1837

Teaches Latin at Borgerdydskole in Copenhagen The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars∗

1838

Death of father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard From the Papers of One Still Living

(continued)


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1841

1842

Trendelenburg: Logische Untersuchungen Adler: The Isolated Subjectivity in Its Most Important Forms The Corsair begins publication Strauss: Die christliche Glaubenslehre, vol. 1 Nielsen: The Use of the Speculative Method in Sacred History Martensen: Meister Eckart Hegel: Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (2nd edition) Hegel: Lectures on the Philosophy of History (2nd edition) Hegel: Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1 (2nd edition) Feuerbach: Das Wesen des Christentums Martensen: Outline for a System of Moral Philosophy Rasmus Nielsen: Paul’s Letter to the Romans Rasmus Nielsen: Speculative Logic in Its Essentials, 1st number Heiberg: New Poems Werder: Logik. Als Commentar und Ergänzung zu Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik Strauss: Die christliche Glaubenslehre, vol. 2 Martensen: “The Present Religious Crisis” Marheineke: Einleitung in die o¨ffentlichen Vorlesungen u¨ ber die Bedeutung der Hegelschen Philosophie in der christlichen Theologie Feuerbach: Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft Trendelenburg: Erläuterungen zu den Elementen der aristotelischen Logik


Completes Examination at Faculty of Theology Engagement to Regine Olsen

1841

Master’s Thesis: The Concept of Irony Dissolution of engagement to Regine Olsen Trip to Berlin; attends Schelling’s lectures

1842

Return to Copenhagen Begins work on Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est ∗



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1843

1844

1845

Beck: The Concept of Myth or the Form of the Religious Spirit Rasmus Nielsen: The Use of the Speculative Method for the Sacred History Rasmus Nielsen: Speculative Logic in its Essentials, 2nd number P. M. Stilling: Philosophical Observations on the Meaning of Speculative Logic for Science Adler: Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic Mynster: “On the Laws of Logic” Hegel: Lectures on Aesthetics, vol. 1 (2nd edition) Hegel: Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 2 (2nd edition) Trendelenburg: Die logische Frage in Hegels System Martensen: The Christian Baptism Adler: Some Sermons Adler: Studies Rasmus Nielsen: Speculative Logic in its Essentials, 3rd number Hegel: Lectures on Aesthetics, vols. 2–3 (2nd edition) P.M. Stilling: The Modern Atheism or the Consequences of the So-Called Neohegelianism Rasmus Nielsen: Speculative Logic in its Essentials, 4th number Hegel: Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 3 (2nd edition) Rasmus Nielsen: Propaedeutic Logic Adler: Documents Concerning My Suspension and Dismissal


1843

Short Trip to Berlin Either/Or Two Edifying Discourses Repetition Fear and Trembling Three Edifying Discourses Four Edifying Discourses

1844

Two Edifying Discourses Three Edifying Discourses Philosophical Fragments The Concept of Anxiety Prefaces Four Edifying Discourses

1845

Short Trip to Berlin Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions Stages on Life’s Way Eighteen Edifying Discourses (from 1843 to 1844) (continued)


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1847

1849

Feuerbach: Das Wesen der Religion Adler: Some Poems Adler: Studies and Examples Adler: Theological Studies Adler: Attempt at a Brief Systematic Exposition of Christianity in its Logic Marheineke: System der christlichen Dogmatik Adler: Observations Built on the Basis of My Attempt at a Brief Systematic Exposition of Christianity in its Logic Adler: Theological Studies, II

Martensen: Christian Dogmatics


Satirized in The Corsair Trip to Berlin Concluding Unscientific Postscript A Literary Review of Two Ages The Book on Adler∗

1847

Edifying Discourses in Various Spirits Works of Love

1848

Christian Discourses The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress The Point of View for My Work as an Author∗ The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air Two Ethical-Religious Essays The Sickness unto Death Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays Practice in Christianity An Edifying Discourse On My Work as an Author Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays For Self-Examination Begins work on Judge for Yourselves∗

1849

1850 1851

Feuerbach: Vorlesungen u¨ ber das Wesen der Religion

1852

Adler: Christian Treatises

1853

Adler: Moments with Respect to the Work of Reconciliation in Jesus Logically Exposited Bishop Mynster† Martensen named Bishop

1854

1851

1854

Polemical articles I–II in Fædrelandet



89



1860 1869 1872 1884

Heiberg† Adler† Sibbern† Martensen†

†

= death

∗

= posthumously published.

Polemical articles III–XXI in Fædrelandet This Must Be Said, So Let It Be Said The Moment, I–IX, X∗ Christ’s Judgment on Official Christianity The Unchangeableness of God Dies in Frederik’s Hospital, November 11

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2 TRACES OF HEGEL IN FROM THE PAPERS OF ONE STILL LIVING AND THE EARLY WORKS

In the present chapter I wish to embark on the examination of Kierkegaard’s texts by analyzing the references to Hegel’s philosophy in the published works and unpublished journals during the period immediately preceding his dissertation, The Concept of Irony (1841) – the period from late 1834, when the first article appeared, until the fall of 1838 when From the Papers of One Still Living was published. This will help to give some idea of Kierkegaard’s basic disposition toward Hegel as he set about writing his dissertation and embarked on a literary career. Thus, in this chapter Kierkegaard’s juvenilia will be explored for clues about his relation to Hegel. In this context there are four different texts to be considered. The first text comes from the scattered articles that Kierkegaard, as a young student, wrote for Heiberg’s journal Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post.1 These articles are concerned primarily with local social and political issues of the day. Generally speaking, they contain no sign of a discussion of Hegel or Hegelianism and thus are not in any obvious way of any particular significance for the present study. However, the first article, “Another Defense of Woman’s Great Abilities,” is relevant indirectly since, although it is not concerned with any particular aspect of Hegel’s philosophy, it is a response to some of Heiberg’s remarks in his deeply Hegelian work, On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age. The first section of the present chapter will therefore be dedicated to this short article. 1

These articles are “Another Defense of Woman’s Great Abilities”; “Ogsaa et Forsvar for Qvindens høie Anlæg,” in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad, no. 34, December 17, 1834. “The Morning Observations in Kjøbenhavnsposten No. 43”; “Kjøbenhavnspostens Morgenbetragtninger i Nr. 43,” in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad, no. 60, February 18, 1836. “On the Polemic of Fædrelandet”; “Om Fædrelandets Polemik, 1–2,” in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad, no. 82–83, March 12–15, 1836. ASKB U 55. “To Mr. Orla Lehmann”; “Til Hr. Orla Lehmann,” in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad, no. 87, April 10, 1836. ASKB U 55. These articles are available in English as “Articles from Student Days,” in EPW, pp. 1–102.

90

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The second text to be discussed is an entry from Kierkegaard’s early journals.2 In the entry he develops a theory of stages and compares it directly to Hegel’s dialectical movement from immediacy to mediation and finally to mediated immediacy. The entry is important due to the centrality of Kierkegaard’s later, more detailed theory of stages. It shows him to be in a serious dialogue with Hegel’s philosophy and specifically with Hegel’s dialectical methodology. Although he ultimately distinguishes between his own four-step movement and Hegel’s triadic one, he is far from rejecting Hegel’s dialectical methodology out of hand. On the contrary, his theory has the look more of a modification of Hegel’s than of a criticism of it. The third text that will be explored in this chapter is The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars from Kierkegaard’s journals and papers.3 This is a fragment of a comedy apparently intended for the amusement of fellow-students at the student union of the University of Copenhagen. The comedy is relevant since it is primarily a satire on academic life and specific Hegelians from the Danish intellectual scene at the time. For some commentators, this work is the strongest evidence of the young Kierkegaard’s rejection of Hegel’s thought. In the third section I will examine this work and will argue that it satirizes one specific individual in the Danish Hegelian movement in a way that has nothing in particular to do with Hegel’s own philosophy. The fourth work to be treated is clearly the most important one from this period – Kierkegaard’s From the Papers of One Still Living. This short text, which appeared on September 7, 1838, is Kierkegaard’s first book. It is a review of Hans Christian Andersen’s novel Only a Fiddler (1837)4 and contains some general considerations on contemporary Danish literature and the art of writing. Of significance is the fact that this work was originally written for Heiberg’s Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, which was the express organ of Danish Hegelianism. Presumably due to this fact, Kierkegaard’s book-review contains a number of direct references to Hegel’s philosophy and in addition often employs Hegelian terminology. Section IV is dedicated to exploring this work. In this chapter I would like to argue that, despite the apparent polemic with Hegel in The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, there are a number of clear Hegelian characteristics in the thought of Kierkegaard during this period. The positive Hegelian influence, I wish to claim, comes primarily from Kierkegaard’s association with Heiberg, who played an important and positive role for him during his years as a student. While Kierkegaard is never uncritical in his stance toward Hegel, he has 2 3 4

JP, vol. 4, 4398; SKS, vol. 17, pp. 117–119, BB:25. EPW, pp. 103–124; SKS, vol. 17, pp. 280–297, DD:208. Hans Christian Andersen, Kun en Spillemand, Copenhagen 1837.

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no ideological objections to making use of Hegel’s language or certain aspects of his thought. He is rather in a dialogue with him: he takes inspiration from certain aspects of Hegel’s thought and then develops or modifies them in his own manner. Thus, there is no anti-Hegel polemic or campaign at this stage in his career. On the contrary, Kierkegaard, like many of his contemporaries, was provoked and inspired by Hegel’s thought during this period.

i. hegel’s absence in “another defense of woman’s great abilities” Among Kierkegaard’s early articles one is of some interest even though it contains only the vaguest of references to Hegel’s philosophy. The brief article, “Another Defense of Woman’s Great Abilities,”5 was published under the pseudonym “A” in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad on December 17, 1834. In this text, which was Kierkegaard’s first publication, the author satirically treats the issue of the emancipation of women and the prospect of their participation in scholarly activities. Kierkegaard’s article was preceded by another one entitled, “In Defense of Woman’s Higher Origin,” which was authored by the student of theology, Peter Engel Lind (1814–1903),6 one of Kierkegaard’s classmates at the Borgerdydskole.7 Kierkegaard’s article in and of itself is not of great significance for understanding his later thought and certainly does not show his most progressive or sympathetic side with respect to the issue of the emancipation of women. It is nonetheless important for an understanding of his relation to Heiberg and thus indirectly to Hegel. Kierkegaard’s article can be seen as a polemical or satirical response to statements that Heiberg made in his treatise, On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age, from 1833. As was mentioned,8 in this work Heiberg tries to evaluate in terms of Hegel’s thought what he believes to be the crisis of the present age in art, religion and philosophy. He argues that Hegel’s philosophy will be able to save the present age from its destructive tendencies and thus restore a sense of truth and meaning. This work constitutes one of the most important documents in the development of Hegelianism in Denmark. At the time Heiberg’s piece 5

6 7

8

“Ogsaa et Forsvar for Qvindens høie Anlæg,” op. cit. [pp. 142–143]; EPW, pp. 3–5; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 5–8. All bracketed page numbers to Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post refer to the photomechanical reproduction, edited by Uffe Andreasen, vols. 1–4, Copenhagen: Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab 1980–84. P. E. [Peter Engel Lind], “Qvindens høiere Oprindelse forsvaret,” Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad, no. 33, December 4, 1834, [pp. 139–140]; EPW, Supplement, pp. 131–133. See Sejer Kuhle, ¨ “Søren Kierkegaard og den heibergske Kreds,” Personalhistorisk Tidsskrift, 68, series 12, vol. 2, 1947, p. 2. Apparently Lind founded a debating club of which the young Kierkegaard was a member. Chapter 1, Section II.

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provoked a controversy in the literary world. It was criticized in print by the student of theology Frederik Ludvig Bang Zeuthen (1805–74),9 the then priest and later bishop Jakob Peter Mynster,10 the priest Eggert Christopher Tryde (1781–1860),11 and by an unidentified anonymous reviewer.12 Heiberg is taken to task above all for his seemingly dismissive remarks about Christianity and for his claim that philosophy occupies a position higher than religion. It is interesting to see how the young Kierkegaard responds to this work in the context of this debate. Heiberg’s treatise was offered as an invitation to a series of lectures in the Hegelian spirit. At the end of the work the author states his goal of presenting Hegel’s philosophy in a way that is accessible by showing how the abstract Concept in fact rests on common representations and experiences. These common representations, he believes, can be used as a didactical aid by means of which people without philosophical education can gain a foothold in Hegel’s philosophical idealism. Heiberg then invites interested readers to sign up for these lectures, and further, quite uncharacteristically for the time, he extends the invitation to “cultured ladies”: The author of the present work nourishes at least the hope that he has now come so far that . . . in a series of lectures he will be able to present an “Introduction to Philosophy” accessible to all cultured people. Indeed, this hope is so alive in him that he does not even assume that he needs to limit himself to a lecture for gentlemen but dares to believe that also cultured ladies will, in that they make the group more beautiful by their presence, be able to participate in the lecture’s serious investigations; for if men usually have a sharper and more consistent understanding and a greater dialectical proclivity, then, on the other hand, the feminine sex is 9

10

11

12

Frederik Ludvig Bang Zeuthen, “Oplysninger til Prof. J.L. Heibergs Skrift: Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nærværende Tid,” Kjøbenhavnsposten, vol. 7, no. 76, April 18, 1833, pp. 301–302; no. 77, April 19, 1833, pp. 305–306. See Heiberg’s response, “I Anledning af Hr. Magister Zeuthens saakaldte Oplysninger,” Dagen, no. 100, April 26, 1833. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 1, Tillæg II, pp. 453– 460.) Kts. [ Jakob Peter Mynster], “Om den religiøse Overbeviisning,” Dansk Ugeskrift, vol. 3, no. 76 og 77, 1833, pp. 241–258. (Reprinted in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, vols. 1–6, Copenhagen 1852–57, vol. 2, pp. 73–94.) Anonymous [Eggert Christopher Tryde], “Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid. Et Indbydelses-Skrift til en Række af philosophiske Forelæsninger. Af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Kbhavn. 54 S. 80- ,” Dansk Litteratur-Tidende for 1833, no. 41, pp. 649–660; no. 42, pp. 681– 692; no. 43, pp. 697–704. See also Heiberg’s response: “I Anledning af Recensionen over mit Skrift: Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid. (Dansk Litt. Tid. No. 41– 43),” Dansk Litteratur-Tidende for 1833, no. 46, pp. 765–780. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, Tillæg I, pp. 437–452.) See also Tryde’s rejoinder: “Svar fra Anmelderen af Professor Heibergs Skrivt, ‘Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid,’ paa Forfatterens Erklæring i Litteraturtidenden No. 46,” Dansk LitteraturTidende for 1833, no. 49, pp. 820–828. [Anonymous], “Et alvorligt Ord over Professor Heibergs Skrift om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid,” Kjøbenhavnsposten, vol. 7, no. 155, August 9, 1833, pp. 617–618.

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traces of hegel in the early works accustomed to having a more certain, infallible disposition for immediately comprehending the truth and, undisturbed by all finite determinations, for looking into the infinite in which they rest, the unity, in which they consist; and the author sees the one ability as just as effective for knowledge as the other.13

Here Heiberg makes at least a limited case for the ability of women to participate in philosophical activity, although, not surprisingly, it by no means strikes one by today’s standards as being particularly progressive especially when one considers the argument that “they will make the group more beautiful by their presence.” Heiberg was perhaps motivated to try to include women in philosophical activity by the two talented women in his own life, namely, his mother, Thomasine Christine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, known as Fru Gyllembourg, and his wife, Johanne Luise Heiberg. Fru Gyllembourg was the anonymous author of a number of popular novels, and Heiberg himself saw to the publication of these works. Heiberg’s wife was a woman of great intellect and beauty, whose skill as an actress was admired by the elite of the Golden Age. Their home (to which Fru Gyllembourg belonged after the death of her second husband, the Swedish nobleman, Carl Frederik Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, [1767–1815]) became an important literary salon in Copenhagen’s intellectual life. It was there that Thomasine Gyllembourg and Johanne Luise Heiberg actively participated in discussions about art and literature. (Moreover, years later Heiberg, at the request of the young Mathilde Fibiger [1830–72], helped her to publish her controversial book, Twelve Letters from Clara Raphael,14 which was a pioneering work in the Danish language for the cause of women’s emancipation. Heiberg wrote a preface and appeared as editor of the work, while the author remained hidden behind the pseudonym of Clara Raphael.15 ) It was thus natural for Heiberg to extend an invitation to all cultured ladies to attend his lectures on philosophy since he had already experienced women participating fruitfully and capably in such discussions and had readily recognized their intellectual abilities. The idea of inviting women to philosophical lectures was made the object of satire in the articles by Lind and the young Kierkegaard, which appeared in Heiberg’s own journal, Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post. The ironic claim of Lind’s article, “In Defense of Woman’s Higher Origin,” is that women have a higher origin than men. Needless to say, this thesis is 13

14 15

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid, Copenhagen 1833, p. 53. ASKB 568. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 435– 436.) [Mathilde Fibiger], Tolv Breve fra Clara Raphael, published by Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Copenhagen 1850. See Morten Borup, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1947–49, vol. 3, pp. 147–151.

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satirical. Lind states: “We thus confidently put forward the principle that woman is a superterrestrial being, as such only an object for veneration, and that she ought to act only to display herself in her glory.”16 In other words, woman is to be admired for her beauty and not for any particular ability or personal achievement. Given this premise, Lind finds it objectionable that Heiberg extends to women an invitation to a series of lectures on Hegel’s philosophy. Referring to Heiberg’s invitation, Lind writes: “Some men in particular . . . do not seem to appreciate this truth, notably those who, by encouraging woman to participate in scholarly tasks, seem to want to set themselves above her. We shall not enlarge upon this further but, to their honor, believe that women themselves regard this enterprise as wrong.”17 The claim seems to be that by inviting women to scholarly lectures, Heiberg fails to respect them for their natural character, which is to be venerated. Instead, such an invitation lowers them to the tasks of scholarship, which is the domain of men. It puts them in an inferior position where they must learn from men and thus slights their true, elevated status. Lind claims that women are to be the objects of veneration but are in no way to be conceived as being equal or worthy of equal education, which would afford them the opportunity of achieving something through their own abilities. Kierkegaard’s article has much the same character and tone. He begins by referring to Heiberg’s lectures and Lind’s article: “So much has been said against the ladies’ seeking to educate themselves in a theoretical as well as in a practical direction. Indeed, even in no. 33 of this journal an irony over this is presented to the public, chiefly regarding the academic education offered them at the present time through lectures.”18 These “lectures” were, of course, those that Heiberg intended to give and to which On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age was the introduction and invitation. Here Kierkegaard, like Lind, satirizes Heiberg for his belief that women could profit from lectures of this kind: “Hardly was man created before we find Eve already as audience at the snake’s philosophical lectures, and we see that she mastered them with such ease that at once she could utilize the results of the same in her domestic practice. In the countries of the East, they tried to satisfy this talent for speculation and the allied craving for deeper knowledge already manifest here; for this reason women were confined in seraglios.”19 Here Kierkegaard, with his reference to the biblical story, implies that disaster is the result of women learning new things and this was the cause of the Fall of all 16 17 18 19

EPW, Supplement, p. 132; Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad, no. 33, December 4, 1834 [p. 139]. EPW, Supplement, p. 132; Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad, no. 33, December 4, 1834 [p. 139]. EPW, p. 3; SV1, vol. 13, p. 5. Translation slightly modified. EPW, p. 3; SV1, vol. 13, p. 5. Translation slightly modified.

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humanity. This can be interpreted straightforwardly as a traditional form of sexism or as merely a flippant polemic in bad taste, but this is not what is of particular interest for the present study. In any case, the allusions to “philosophical lectures” and to “speculation” make the reference to Heiberg quite clear. There are other allusions as well. In his treatise Heiberg employs Hegelian language when speaking about the present age, often referring to epochs of world spirit. Kierkegaard refers here to the ability of women to understand the spirit of the age: “Regarding history, they keep abreast of events, and many a paper, many a journal that man considers insignificant does not escape their keen eye – in fashion magazines they study the spirit of the age.”20 Then in a direct reference to Heiberg’s invitation to cultured ladies, he continues: “Thanks, therefore, to you, great men, who help them up to the peaks of knowledge but nevertheless do not forget the other sex. Therefore it is so lovely to see that the man who especially wishes to have an effect upon the ladies does not, however, forget the men and finally extends his philanthropic enthusiasm to all.”21 These references can leave little doubt about the target of the satire here. What is interesting for the purposes of this investigation is not so much what this article evidences about Kierkegaard’s sexism or his views on women but rather what it fails to say. As was mentioned, Heiberg’s On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age was the source of considerable controversy immediately after its appearance. It was above all criticized by theologians. What is odd here is that Kierkegaard does not feel the need to enter into the debate and that he is provoked neither by Heiberg’s Hegelianism nor by the seemingly dismissive statements about religion and Christianity, statements that produced a general outcry among contemporary priests and theologians. Moreover, one of Heiberg’s sharpest critics was Mynster, whom Kierkegaard highly esteemed during this period. Thus, while there was an anti-Hegelian movement aligned against Heiberg and an anti-Hegelian campaign afoot, Kierkegaard at this time felt no need to join it, even though the topics discussed in Heiberg’s treatise would later be among the most important for him. Even his respect for Mynster does not draw him into the debate. This is significant since it shows that during this period, Kierkegaard had no polemic against Hegel or against Heiberg’s Hegelianism. He stayed out of a controversy that he well could have entered if he had felt the need to object to Heiberg’s introduction of Hegel into the debate about the contemporary status of art and religion. On the contrary, the only thing that he finds objectionable about these lectures is Heiberg’s extension of an invitation to cultured ladies. Moreover, the flippant tone of Kierkegaard’s essay suggests that he does not take the substantive issues of the piece seriously. 20

EPW, p. 4; SV1, vol. 13, p. 7.

21

EPW, p. 4; SV1, vol. 13, p. 7.

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hegel and kierkegaard’s early theory of stages

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This is of significance because in Prefaces from 1843, Kierkegaard comes back to discuss Heiberg’s treatise again, and there the discussion is quite different. Although it, like the article here, is polemical and satirical and thus not particularly substantive in nature, it nonetheless ostensibly takes aim at Heiberg’s Hegelianism, whereas the article here ignores it almost completely. This clearly indicates a change in Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, which is reflected in the change in his relation to Heiberg.

ii. hegel and kierkegaard’s early theory of stages Although I will make no attempt to give a systematic account of Kierkegaard’s journals with an eye toward references to Hegel, there is one entry in particular that requires special attention for its use of Hegel’s dialectical scheme. It is an entry dated January 27, 1837, in which Kierkegaard sketches a theory of stages and explicitly refers to Hegel by way of contrast.22 Thulstrup argues that this passage, in which Kierkegaard distinguishes his scheme, which contains four stages, from Hegel’s, which contains three, indicates Kierkegaard’s fundamental rejection of Hegel’s thought.23 Malantschuk also reads it as a part of an anti-Hegel polemic.24 I wish to argue, on the contrary, that his use of this scheme shows that, far from rejecting Hegel’s philosophy out of hand, the young Kierkegaard was in fact inspired by and in a dialogue with it. It is clear that Kierkegaard at this time was interested in the triadic structure of Hegel’s dialectical method. Hegel’s dialectical triad is characterized by a movement that involves first, immediacy, second, mediation, and third, the unity of the two in a “mediated immediacy.” In various discussions of the dialectic, Hegel characterizes the first stage as “the immediate.” This can mean a number of different things depending on the context of the discussion. At the ontological level, pure being is immediate since it is the most basic (and the most indeterminate) possible category. It is considered on its own with no relation to anything else. But for a thing to be what it is at all, it must be conditioned or mediated by other things that determine it. Thus, the category of being is mediated by its opposite, the category, nothing. Finally, the categories of being and nothing are conceived in their dialectical unity as a single, unitary category – becoming. 22 23 24

JP, vol. 4, 4398; SKS, vol. 17, pp. 117–119, BB:25. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, pp. 96–104. Gregor Malantschuk, Dialektik og Eksistens hos Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag 1968, pp. 143–146. English translation: Kierkegaard’s Thought, tr. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1971, pp. 147–150.

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Although ontology is the most fundamental level, perhaps the easiest way to understand Hegel’s conception of mediation and immediacy is with the example of his philosophy of history. In the “Spirit” chapter of the Phenomenology, history passes through three stages. The first stage, called “the true spirit,” is represented by the Greek polis. What is characteristic about this stage in history is that the Greeks as a people have an immediate, unreflective relationship to their culture and social life. Hegel illustrates this with the example of the characters of Antigone and Creon in Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone. For them, the beliefs, laws, and values of their culture are immediately true without question. One is one’s culture, and there is no distance or separation between the two. At the second stage, represented by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the collective individual called “spirit” awakens to the manifold contradictions and hypocrisies of its culture and becomes estranged from it. This is the age of “self-alienated spirit” at which a people has a mediated relationship to its culture (i.e., its relation is mediated by reflection, skepticism, critical thinking, etc.). At the final stage, spirit returns to itself in a new unity. Here the individuals in their collectivity arrive at a new relation to their culture, which Hegel calls a “mediated immediacy.” By this he means that one still has the immediate spontaneous feeling for one’s culture, but it is no longer naive or uncritical as at the first stage. Likewise, it is no longer wholly destructive and negative as at the second stage. At the final stage of history, spirit returns to itself. This can also be seen as the goal of Hegel’s political philosophy, which aims to overcome the alienation of the modern age by resurrecting the spontaneous feeling of identification of the individual with his or her culture, which was characteristic of the Greek polis, and reintroducing it at a higher conceptual level. The movement from immediacy to mediation to mediated immediacy is one of the hallmarks of Hegel’s dialectical method. It is this Hegelian scheme that Kierkegaard refers to in the journal entry in question. Kierkegaard’s immediate source of information about Hegel’s dialectic is almost certainly Heiberg. In a series of articles in response to Oehlenschläger,25 Heiberg sketches the different forms of poetry in terms of the Hegelian structure, assigning lyric to the stage of immediacy, epic to that of mediation, and drama to the final stage which unifies the preceding ones. In his journals from this period, Kierkegaard returns again and again to this scheme.26 In an entry from January 16, 1837, he even

25

26

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Svar paa Hr. Oehlenschlägers Skrift: ‘Om Kritiken i Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, over Væringerne i Miklagard,’ ” in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, 1828 (I, no. 7; II, no. 8; III, no. 10; IV, no. 11; V, no. 12; VI, no. 13; VII, no. 14; VIII, no. 15; IX, no. 16). (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 194–284.) JP, vol. 2, 1565; Pap. I A 225.

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99

sketches Heiberg’s taxonomy of forms in detail.27 There one finds the following schema:

Here the different genres of drama are divided into three stages, which are intended to correspond to the Hegelian triad of immediacy, mediation, and mediated immediacy. This is clear from the headings “immediate,” “reflective,” and “unity.” Kierkegaard’s interest in this scheme shows an interest not merely in Hegel’s or Heiberg’s aesthetics but also in Hegel’s overall methodology and the structure of his system. Kierkegaard was inspired by this structure and, after having worked with it, decided that it was in need of modification. In the key entry, he writes: “The system has only three stages: immediacy, reflection and unity; but life has four.”28 Kierkegaard here indicates a desire to modify Hegel’s scheme with the addition of a fourth stage. He distinguishes between the system and life, as he will come to do many times later.29 In other passages he refers to “life’s dialectic,” and this is apparently what he attempts to sketch.30 The identification here of “the system” with Hegel’s system is unmistakable given the three stages that he lists and has read about in Heiberg’s account of the different forms of poetry. Moreover, Hegel himself is mentioned explicitly in the passage. It should be noted that Kierkegaard was not original in his desire to modify Hegel’s dialectical scheme by adding a fourth stage. In his 27 28 29

30

JP, vol. 5, 5192; SKS, vol. 17, p. 113, BB:23. JP, vol. 4, 4398; SKS, vol. 17, p. 119, BB:25. Translation slightly modified. E.g., P, p. 49; SKS, vol. 4, p. 510: “This doubt is overcome not in the system, but in life.” CUP1, p. 109; SKS, vol. 7, p. 105: “(a) a logical system can be given; (b) but a system of existence cannot be given.” JP, vol. 1, 751; Pap. I A 113. JP, vol. 5, 5118; Pap. I A 120.

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Fermenta Cognitionis,31 the theologian Franz von Baader also criticizes Hegel for the triadic nature of the dialectical movement and instead suggests a fourfold scheme. Kierkegaard was familiar with this work as is evinced by his reading notes from precisely this period.32 In Sibbern’s review of Perseus, which appeared in 1838, one year after the journal entry in question, he refers to Baader and offers his own examples of “the manifold quadrads of life.”33 Here he specifically contrasts Hegel’s triadic structure with a fourfold or quadratic one; moreover, Sibbern associates the quadratic structure with “life” in contrast to abstract thinking, just as Kierkegaard does. Finally, in a satirical speech from a comedy written by students and performed at the student association Academicum from this period, the fictional character Peer Mikkelsen also contrasts the triads of Hegel’s system with the fourfold nature of life.34 This suggests that this particular modification of Hegel’s dialectical scheme was much discussed at the time and thus was presumably something Kierkegaard picked up on from the discussion going on around him rather than something that he invented himself. This said, it should be noted that the way in which he seems to want to develop and employ this structure could well be original. Kierkegaard goes on to distinguish between the three stages in Hegel and the stages that he himself wants to describe. Thus, it is clear that Kierkegaard himself had already begun to develop his theory of stages at this early point in his career. It is not clear to what purpose he intends to put these stages: it may be that he was merely sketching them in order to clarify them for his own purposes, or it may be that he intended to write something fictional that followed this scheme. It is conceivable that he intended to write a novel of some sort in which he traces these different stages in the life of a particular individual. But for whatever his ultimate purpose might have been, in his early journals he collected a great deal of material to help illustrate the four distinct stages that he believes best characterize life. Therefore, it will be worthwhile to examine carefully the stages that he traces in this crucial entry and compare them with Hegel’s account of the dialectical movement from immediacy to mediation to mediated immediacy. The four stages that Kierkegaard sketches are intended to characterize the four ages of a human being: childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age. At the same time they are intended to correspond to the stages in 31 32 33

34

Franz Baader, Fermenta Cognitionis, no. 1–5, Berlin 1822–24. ASKB 394. SKS, vol. 17, p. 106, BB:15. See also Pap. X–2 A 222. Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 19, 1838, Article III, p. 562. Frederik Christian Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, betragtet i Forhold til vor Tid, Copenhagen 1838, p. 132. ASKB 778. See H. C. A. Lund, Studenterforeningens Historie 1820–70, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen 1896–98, vol. 1, pp. 451–452.

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the development of human history generally.35 The first corresponds to childhood and is characterized as follows: The first is the stage in which the child has not separated himself from his surroundings (“me”). The I is not given but there is the possibility of it, and to that extent it is a conflict. It is formed in vague and fleeting outlines, just like the sea-maidens which the waves produce only to form new ones again (see an engraving). I would like to think that all of these profuse and fleeting forms will be formed into a unity by a stroke of magic, these multitudinous elements standing alongside each other in childhood, crowding each other out in order to enter into the eternal present of the I; in childhood there is an atomistic multiplicity, in the I there is the one in the many.36

The main characteristic of this first stage is that the individual has not become self-conscious and thus is not aware of the difference between himself and his environment. Kierkegaard underscores this aspect in a slightly earlier entry from January 7, 1837.37 In both passages he refers to an engraving of the “sea-maidens” from a dictionary of mythology.38 The picture shows the waves of the ocean which, when breaking, form the shapes of heads of women. They are ultimately still indistinct from the ocean since they disappear into the water again only an instant after being formed. Kierkegaard continues with his description of this first stage: As far as I know mythology, this stage corresponds to the oriental mythologies. It is the divine fullness which streams down like the golden rain on Danaë’s lap; to use an expression from dogmatics, it is the original righteousness which, as the Catholic dogmaticians believe, was given to man – in superabundance, if I may say so. But as life by means of an endless approximation comes closer to self-consciousness, the more apparent the conflict becomes. And thus in addition I get the multiplicity which has been regarded as adequate justification for calling these mythologies Romantic, yet only somewhat analogous to what I call “Romanticism,” since the genuinely Romantic stage is the reproduced first stage. But at this point life still has not gained self-consciousness, still has not gained a center of gravity within itself, and thus the multiplicity exerts a pressure. Just as in a room with a low ceiling (it is relatively the same, however high or low it is) an extremely complicated and overcrowded painting on the ceiling seems to press down and gives one the feeling that it is sinking down, just so is the heaven of the Orientals, whereas the Greeks’ light drawings and beautiful forms produce harmony and serenity.39 35 36 37 38 39

JP, vol. 2, 1966; SKS, vol. 18, p. 75, FF:2. JP, vol. 4, 4068; SKS, vol. 18, p. 77, FF:16. JP, vol. 4, 4398; SKS, vol. 17, p. 117, BB:25. Translation slightly modified. JP, vol. 4, 4394; Pap. I A 319. See also JP, vol. 5, 5100; SKS, vol. 17, pp. 18–30, AA:12. See SKS, vol. K2–3, p. 127, 97.5; see illustration on p. 129. JP, vol. 4, 4398; SKS, vol. 17, p. 117f., BB:25. Translation slightly modified.

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In the second part of the passage Kierkegaard associates this initial stage with oriental mythology and contrasts it to that of the Greeks. In this point he follows Hegel who puts the oriental world at the first stage in the development of history in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History.40 In fact Hegel characterizes the oriental world as prehistory in the sense that it has not yet reached consciousness of itself and of the idea of freedom. Thus, for Hegel actual history begins with the Greeks. On this point Kierkegaard seems to be in agreement with him. It should also be noted that Kierkegaard says that his third stage, which he characterizes as Romanticism, “is the reproduced first stage.” Thus, like Hegel’s stages, Kierkegaard’s will repeat themselves at higher levels with richer content. Kierkegaard now moves on to the second stage, which corresponds to youth. While the first stage was associated with the orientals, the second is associated with the Greeks. Kierkegaard describes this stage as follows: But after this turmoil comes a peace, an idyllic well-being. It is the youth’s satisfaction in family and school (church and state); this is the second stage: the Greek mythology. Here is genuine balance, here the divine is merged in the world . . . in such a way as it never has merged or ever will, either before or after in the world’s development, although this is indeed the case in the single individual’s development, for in what I specifically call the “Romantic” a question arises about a satisfaction lying beyond the world and which therefore cannot be found in the world, and even in the fourth stage it is to be found only in the form that there is still so much given in the world which is adequate if one is modest and unassuming (resignation), yet there is little to hope for; at least this is the way Christianity, which certainly has the greatest historical significance regarding the solution of this issue, has answered it. Yes, fundamentally Christianity has everything to hope for, so the expression “little” really refers to the philosopher’s struggle.41

In this passage Kierkegaard explicitly draws the comparison between “the world’s development” and “the single individual’s development,” both of which are intended to run through the stages parallel with one another. Kierkegaard characterizes this second stage as one of peace and harmony; in a similar fashion, according to Hegel’s romanticized view of the Greek world, there is a harmony and balance that reigns until the institutions of the Greek polis come into conflict with each other. It is at this stage that the idea of freedom becomes conscious in a people for the first time and the individual becomes self-conscious. Here Kierkegaard and Hegel seem once again to be in agreement since Hegel also sees the Greek world as existing in the harmony of immediacy. 40 41

Hegel, Phil. of Hist., pp. 111–222; Jub., vol. 11, pp. 158–294. JP, vol. 4, 4398; SKS, vol. 17, p. 118, BB:25. Translation slightly modified.

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After describing these first two stages, Kierkegaard writes, “Observations on the last two stages are to be found among my papers.”42 The reader is thus obliged to reconstruct stages three and four based on information he has provided here in this passage and elsewhere in the early papers. Given that the first stage corresponded to childhood and the second stage to youth, it would seem to follow that the third stage will correspond to adulthood. In his description of the first stage, Kierkegaard has already characterized the third stage as “Romanticism” and indicated that it will correspond to the first stage in some way. Throughout his early journals Kierkegaard contrasts the ancient world with the Romantic (i.e., the second stage with the third).43 In these journals there are many character sketches, which are intended to represent the third stage. In one entry he associates Faust, Don Juan, and the Wandering Jew with the third stage.44 There is evidence that Kierkegaard has done considerable research on each of these figures at this early period in order to employ them in some large project that uses this four-step scheme.45 This stage would correspond to what Hegel calls “self-alienated spirit,” which he characterizes with an analysis of the protagonist of Diderot’s The Nephew of Rameau.46 All of these characters are symbols of disharmony – they are all alienated from traditional belief and custom and thus are not at home in the world. In one passage Kierkegaard says that this stage is characterized by the two halves of the idea being held apart by something foreign.47 Elsewhere it is called an “unsatiated desire.”48 Kierkegaard’s account of the characters mentioned here bears a striking resemblance to Hegel’s analysis of self-alienated spirit. The alienation of the Romantic leads to a reconciliation49 and to the fourth stage, which is, for Kierkegaard, old age. In the description of the second stage, he alludes to the fourth stage, which he characterizes as one of “resignation” and with which he associates Christianity. In one entry he contrasts the age of Romanticism with “our period of understanding,”50 implying that the latter is the fourth stage. There he characterizes Romanticism as dwelling in the realm of representation of the great sublime in the individual, whereas “our age” is concerned with the masses, nations, and peoples. This final stage, however, remains the least developed.

42 43

44 45 46 47 49

JP, vol. 4, 4398; SKS, vol. 17, p. 118, BB:25. E.g., Pap. I C 135. JP, vol. 1, 16; Pap. I A 135. JP, vol. 2, 1563; Pap. I A 170. JP, vol. 3, 3804; Pap. I A 171. JP, vol. 3, 3809; Pap. I A 217. JP, vol. 3, 3811; Pap. I A 219. JP, vol. 1, 852; Pap. I A 221. JP, vol. 2, 1179; SKS, vol. 19, p. 94, Not2:7. See JP, vol. 1, 795; Pap. I A 150. See section Pap. I C. Hegel, PhS, pp. 296–321; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 376–405. 48 JP, vol. 3, 3803; Pap. I A 155. JP, vol. 3, 3801; Pap. I A 140. 50 E.g., JP, vol. 4, 4063; Pap. I A 139. JP, vol. 3, 3805; Pap. I A 200.

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There can be no doubt that Kierkegaard’s account of these stages is modelled on Hegel’s since after describing these first two stages, he then goes on to compare his scheme explicitly with that of Hegel. He asks: To what extent does Hegel include my first two stages, since his first stage (the immediate) as pure abstraction is actually nothing, and all philosophy before its retrogressive systematic movement must begin with the conflict; in his system he perhaps has the conflict between the I and the world as the first stage but not the corresponding first analogous stage, and his peace is not Grecian, which can correspond only to a prior stage, which is my first one but Hegel’s last.51

Here Kierkegaard indicates two points at which his scheme differs from that of Hegel: (1) while his first stage is the same as Hegel’s since both are characterized by the “I” stepping out from the world, he stresses that this conflict between the “I” and the world takes place again in his “corresponding first analogous state” (i.e., the third stage, Romanticism). This conflict, he seems to claim, is absent in Hegel’s third stage, presumably because this is the stage of unification and harmony in Hegel. (2) While, for Kierkegaard, the second stage is characterized by peace and harmony, which he associated with the Greeks, by contrast, Hegel’s “peace is not Grecian.” For Hegel, ultimate harmony is only achieved at the end of the dialectical movement (i.e., at the third stage), and thus it comes about after the Greek world has been aufgehoben. In Kierkegaard’s scheme, the peace and harmony are to be found at the second stage, which, as has been seen, is characterized by Greek mythology. It should be noted that the differences between the two schemes are perhaps overstated when one considers Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History. These appeared in print for the first time in 1837 in the edition of Eduard Gans (1798–1839),52 and thus it would have been impossible for Kierkegaard to have had access to them at the time of the journal entry. (Gans’ Foreword is dated June 8, 1837.) The material there is divided into not three but four stages. As was mentioned previously, the first two, “The Oriental World” and “The Greek World,” correspond perfectly to Kierkegaard’s. It is rather in regard to the last two that there are significant differences. For Hegel, the third stage is “The Roman World” and the fourth, “The Germanic World.” Kierkegaard’s third stage, Romanticism, would seem to fit better with Hegel’s fourth stage. The details here are less important than the general point that Kierkegaard uses Hegel’s scheme and self-consciously sees himself as modifying it. If this is correct, then it shows a surprising Hegelian influence on the young Kierkegaard. It confirms that Kierkegaard’s theory of 51 52

JP, vol. 4, 4398; SKS, vol. 17, p. 119, BB:25. Hegel, Vorlesungen u¨ ber die Philosophie der Geschichte, ed. by Eduard Gans, Berlin 1837, vol. 9 in Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1–18, Berlin 1832–45.

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stages ultimately stems from or finds its original inspiration in Hegel. Kierkegaard’s modification of Hegel’s theory of stages demonstrates a critical approach even at this very early stage of his intellectual development. However, although he, to be sure, wants to revise Hegel’s threestep movement, this is by no means a polemic against or outright rejection of Hegel. On the contrary, Kierkegaard seems to be working within the Hegelian paradigm. He assumes a Hegelian conception of development through discernible stages that displace one another. The first three stages – immediacy, mediation, and mediated immediacy – follow the Hegelian structure perfectly. Thus, in this journal entry Kierkegaard demonstrates a surprising familiarity with Hegel’s dialectical method, which he in large measure accepts.

iii. von jumping-jack in the battle between the old and the new soap-cellars Also from the early period of Kierkegaard’s career dates the unpublished comedy, The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, in which he satirizes Hegelian philosophy. In this work while the Phenomenology of Spirit is named, there are no direct quotations of any primary texts by Hegel. Act II of the comedy is of particular importance: it takes place at “the Prytaneum,” a place where meetings and philosophical discussions are held. In the discussions there one finds references to a number of Hegelian ideas, such as the “bad infinity”53 and the dialectical opposition of concepts.54 It might appear that the work is intended as a satire on Hegel. Yet its actual target proves to be specific Danish Hegelians, and its focus is on their personalities rather than the Hegelian ideas they espouse. In this section I will concentrate on analyzing one of the characters from the work who is of particular importance for his Hegelian statements, namely, von Jumping-Jack [Hr. von Springgaasen]. I will argue that this character is intended as a caricature of Martensen.55 I will further claim that while it is clear that Kierkegaard wants to satirize the Hegelian, Martensen, there is no criticism of anything particularly Hegelian about him. From the allusions in the work to Hegel’s philosophy, Thulstrup deduces that the comedy is a straightforward satire on Hegel, and this seems 53 54 55

EPW, p. 122; SKS, vol. 17, p. 295, DD:208. (Translated in EPW as the “spurious infinity.”) EPW, p. 124; SKS, vol. 17, p. 297, DD:208. Usually the character of Mr. Phrase is taken to be a caricature of Martensen. See Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 188. Jens Holger Schjørring, “Martensen,” in Kierkegaard’s Teachers, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 10), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1982, p. 200. I follow Fenger in claiming that Mr. von Jumping-Jack is Martensen: Henning Fenger, Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, tr. by George C. Schoolfield, New Haven, Connecticut, and London: Yale University Press 1980, pp. 141–142.

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to be the general view. Thulstrup rather hastily concludes: “The decisive proof of the correctness of this interpretation, that Kierkegaard did not become a Hegelian, is simply the existence of the play itself. A convinced Hegelian could never have written a play such as Kierkegaard’s since the system prohibited a position that Kierkegaard consciously embraced.”56 It is difficult to know ultimately what to make of this little-known, unfinished comedy or how much stock to put in it; nevertheless it seems prudent to urge caution before drawing conclusions of this kind about Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel based on it. Thulstrup again poses the question wrongly by couching the issue in terms of whether Kierkegaard was a Hegelian or not, thus making the matter an undifferentiated dichotomy. The issue is not whether Kierkegaard was a Hegelian (i.e., whether Kierkegaard agreed with Hegel on all points or whether he saw himself as falling into line with one or the other of the Hegelian schools) but rather what particulars they have in common and where they part company. Nonetheless Thulstrup’s claim that this work is fundamentally anti-Hegelian does, at least at first glance, seem to be supported by the use of many of Hegel’s key terms and the stilted Hegelian rhetoric that appears in the mouths of some of the characters. But to say that something is anti-Hegelian does not necessarily mean that it is anti-Hegel. In other words, Kierkegaard wishes to satirize specific Hegelians or a specific context of discussion of Hegelian philosophy, but this satire has nothing intrinsically to do with anything in Hegel’s thought itself. To understand The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, one must have some familiarity with the context in which it was written. In the fall of 1836 Martensen returned from his long study-trip abroad.57 He had been in virtually all of the major university towns in Germany and had met most of the leading philosophers and theologians of the day. One of his final stops was Paris, where in summer of 1836 he met Heiberg and his wife for the first time.58 On that occasion Heiberg, who had been trying to make an inroad for Hegel in Denmark for more than a decade, spoke about his efforts with Martensen who, fresh from his trip from Germany, was excited to join the cause and to promote Hegel’s philosophy. In his autobiography Martensen recalls that they spoke for a long time about various aspects of Hegel’s philosophy and its reception.59 It seems quite probable that on that occasion Heiberg suggested that Martensen write a review of his Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military 56 57 58

59

See Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 192. See Chapter 1, Section II. See Johanne Luise Heiberg, Et liv genoplevet i erindringen, vols. 1–4, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1973, fifth revised edition, vol. 1, pp. 281–282. See also Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1882–83, vol. 1, pp. 218–227, vol. 2, pp. 24–39. Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 218–222.

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College, which was given in November 1834 when Martensen had already left for Germany, and which was subsequently published in 1835.60 In any case, making Heiberg’s acquaintance must certainly have been one of the inspirations for Martensen’s review. Martensen then returned to Copenhagen in the fall of 1836. His return home after almost two years abroad was the cause of some excitement among the local students and scholars interested to hear the latest about the academic world of Germany and Prussia. One of the first things that Martensen did upon his return was to write the review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course. It was published in the December number of the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, which seems to have appeared in January 1837.61 At first glance this short review of a short lecture seems to be fairly insignificant, but if one sees it in its proper historical context, then one quickly realizes that its importance can hardly be overestimated. This was the first work that Martensen published in Denmark after his return.62 It was in a sense the first statement of his philosophical perspective after his trip, and it was doubtless anxiously awaited by many readers. This marked the beginning of a tremendously successful period for Martensen. He defended his dissertation, On the Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, on July 12th, 1837, and one month later he was appointed lecturer at the Faculty of Theology. His lectures in the fall of 1837 were among the most popular in the entire history of the University of Copenhagen. Martensen’s influence immediately after his return is attested to by Kierkegaard himself. Even years later he still recalls the event: “It is now roughly ten years since Prof. Martensen returned home from foreign travels, bringing with him the newest German philosophy and creating quite a sensation with this novelty.”63 In another late journal entry, Kierkegaard recalls, “Home from abroad at the opportune moment with Hegel’s philosophy, he [Martensen] made a big sensation, had extraordinary success, won over the whole student generation to ‘the system.’”64 Students and scholars in Denmark were starved for information about the philosophical ferment in Germany following Hegel’s death in 1831. Martensen was 60

61

62

63 64

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Indlednings-Foredrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1835. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 461–516.) Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole. Af J. L. Heiberg, Lærer i Logik og Æsthetik ved den kgl. militaire Høiskole,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 16, 1836, pp. 515–528. The only other thing that Martensen published at this time was his German work on Lenau’s Faust, which he had already written in the spring of 1836 and which was published in Germany in December of that year: Ueber Lenau’s Faust, by Johannes M. . . . . . . n. Stuttgart 1836. See Mindre Skrifter og Taler af Biskop Martensen, ed. by Julius Martensen, Copenhagen 1885, pp. 1–2. PF, Supplement, pp. 226–227; Pap. X-2 A 155, p. 117. Translation slightly modified. JP, vol. 6, 6748, p. 395; Pap. X-6 B 171, p. 262.

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able to provide this information and apparently present it in a way that was more exciting and attractive to students than Heiberg had been able to do. Thus, he was able to create something of a sensation in the local intellectual scene. It was Martensen’s ability to charm the students that particularly irritated Kierkegaard. Moreover, also in a journal entry from much later Kierkegaard attests specifically to the importance of Martensen’s article: Martensen, “after his return, and since his first appearance in the Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, has invariably assured us that he has gone beyond Hegel.”65 It might seem odd that so many years later Kierkegaard would still refer to a short review article. But this indicates that Martensen’s article was far more important than a simple review. Moreover, the fact that Kierkegaard recalls the article as immediately following Martensen’s return from Germany indicates the importance of the timing and context of the work. Immediately after his return from abroad Martensen was able to exercise a significant influence over the students. He brought with him the latest news about the development of the Hegelian schools in Germany. He was able to convey to the students his own sense of excitement and enthusiasm for the recent discussions surrounding Hegel’s philosophy. Most significant for the present purposes was the fact that he also brought with him the difficult technical terminology from Hegelian philosophy. This seems to have caught fire among the students who were perhaps all too anxious to appropriate it. Many contemporary reports attest to the fact that this was one of the most striking and indeed irritating things about the student scene surrounding Martensen. Two years later in 1839 a new student organization was founded in opposition to the more conservative student union. The new organization was called the Academic Reading Association Academicum, and Kierkegaard’s elder brother, Peter Christian Kierkegaard, was among the founding members.66 The Academicum, which was right around the corner from the lecture hall, was the place where Martensen’s lectures on Hegel’s philosophy were discussed by enthusiastic students. When one reads about the discussions that took place at the Academicum, one cannot help but be reminded of Kierkegaard’s satirical comedy. The lively atmosphere is attested to by various reports. For example, Carl Ploug (1813–94), the founding president of the association, describes the ambiance created by Martensen thus: Both Martensen’s lectures – which were also attended by quite a few nontheology students who thereafter crowded into the adjacent Academicum – and the philosophical studies cultivated for awhile by the older and younger 65 66

CA, Supplement, p. 207; Pap. V B 60, p. 137. Translation slightly modified. Quoted in full on p. 65 above. H. C. A. Lund, Studenterforeningens Historie 1820–70, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 447.

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people influenced by him furnished rich material for conversation during the first nine months that the Academicum existed, and the reading rooms were disproportionately well supplied with the same fare. . . . The result of this was that nearly all conversations were conducted in Hegelian terminology; these discussions used a jargon of unnecessary foreign words, which posited or negated, manifested or mediated everything possible, and soon elicited a satire, which surely contributed a great deal to their being abolished.67

A similar account comes from another former student, the later priest Frederik Nielsen (1818–89), who describes the discussions at the Academicum thus: “It was a philosophical glossolalia, which often was on the verge of going over the line and degenerating into a hodgepodge of philosophical neologisms! . . . There were discussions about triads, categories, negations, mediations, immanence and transcendence, etc., and this debate was no less animated than that described by Holberg in his Peder Paars.”68 At the beginning of 1840, an anonymous critic attacked Martensen in the journal Fædrelandet for instilling the theology students at the University of Copenhagen with an arrogant and corrupt spirit and for leading them away from Christianity. Although the critic does not mention the Academicum explicitly, his description of the philosophical debates among Martensen’s students is in perfect harmony with the accounts just quoted: “The discussion must always be standardized with one Hegelian phrase or another . . . Hegelian terminology and Hegelian clichés must always be brought in. Mediations, incarnations, negations, negations of negations, immanences, etc., belong to the order of the day.”69 The theologian and politician Henrik Nikolai Clausen (1793– 1877), who at the time was Martensen’s colleague on the Faculty of Theology, also complains in his autobiography of the affected Hegelian jargon that was employed among Martensen’s students during this period.70 These accounts all allude to the stilted philosophical language used by the students and Martensen, their misguided teacher. These descriptions capture the tone of Kierkegaard’s comedy perfectly. When one recalls Kierkegaard’s disdain for Martensen and his rivalry with him, it is easy to imagine that the satire in The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars is intended as a criticism of him and the students surrounding him. 67 68 69

70

Carl Ploug, “Akademicum, en Episode af Studenterlivet for 40 Aar siden,” Illustreret Tidende, 24, no. 1224, March 11, 1883, p. 295. Frederik Nielsen, Minder. Oplevelser og Iagttagelser, Aalborg 1881, pp. 35–36. [Anonymous], “Nogle Træk til en Charakteristik af den philosophiske Aand, som for Tiden findes hos de Studerende ved Kjøbenhavns Universitet,” Kjøbenhavnsposten, 14, no. 25, January 26, 1840, p. 98. Henrik Nikolai Clausen, Optegnelser om Mit Levneds og min Tids Historie, Copenhagen 1877, p. 213.

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Kierkegaard seems to have written The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars between January 27 and May 29, 1837, that is, immediately after Martensen’s review article appeared.71 (Thus, the long-standing view in the secondary literature is anachronistic, namely, that Act II of The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars is intended as a satirical account of the discussions at the Academicum.72 ) The importance of Martensen’s article for Kierkegaard’s comedy is evidenced by the fact that it is quoted, paraphrased, and alluded to several times. This supports the thesis that von Jumping-Jack, the main “Hegelian” figure in the piece, is intended to be a satire of Martensen. For example, von Jumping-Jack says, “Yes, that’s all very fine with the popular, but my doubt is by no means popular; it is not a doubt about this, that, or the other, about this thing or that thing; no it is an infinite doubt.”73 This is a paraphrase of Martensen’s review, where he writes, The demand, “de omnibus dubitandum est,” is easier said than done, for what is required is not finite doubt, not the popular doubt about this or that particular thing, with which one always reserves something for oneself which cannot be called into doubt. It is not sufficient to mention the unconditioned thought as truth, but the truly unconditioned thought must be expressed determinately, and, note well, it must be expressed as unconditioned. Science thus demands absolute, infinite doubt.74

As will be explored in more detail later,75 Kierkegaard clearly associated the slogan “de omnibus dubitandum est,” or “one must doubt everything,” with Martensen, who repeated it not only in his lectures but also in his written works. This was a part of Martensen’s stock portrayal of the skeptical method, which he attributed to Hegel’s philosophy. Moreover, Kierkegaard puts into the mouth of von Jumping-Jack two slogans from Descartes, “cogito ergo sum” and, as in the previous passage, “de omnibus dubitandum est.” He has him say, “I repeat, gentlemen, I have gone beyond Hegel. It was, namely, modern philosophy, which began with Descartes, who said: cogito ergo sum and de omnibus dubitandum est.”76 These were slogans that Martensen frequently employed after his return. Indeed even prior to his return in a letter from Vienna to Sibbern dated March 19, 71 72

73 74 75 76

Leon Jaurnow and Kim Ravn, “Tekstredegørelse” to Journalen DD in SKS, vol. K17, pp. 361–364. See Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., pp. 192ff. Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse eller om Adolph Peter Adler og om Søren Kierkegaards forhold til ham, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag A/S 1990, pp. 27–28, p. 33. Frithiof Brandt, Den unge Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaards Forlag 1929, pp. 420ff. EPW, p. 114; SKS, vol. 17, p. 288, DD:208. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus,” op. cit., p. 519. Chapter 5, Section I. EPW, p. 119; SKS, vol. 17, p. 292, DD:208. Translation slightly modified.

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1836, Martensen indicates his dissatisfaction with Hegel’s philosophy and in so doing repeats the Cartesian “cogito ergo sum” several times as a slogan. He writes: The foundation of the Hegelian philosophy is indeed already given in Descartes, who with his “Cogito ergo sum,” which he posited as the only certain thing, tore himself free from the “credo ut intelligam” of scholastic philosophy. One demands now a philosophy without authority and presuppositionless, which is absolutely grounded in itself and allows nothing to be valid except what the necessity of pure thought brings with it, be it now that it is determined as causa sui or as critical autonomous reason or as pure I or finally as absolute Concept, where the presuppositionlessness at the point of departure from pure being has attained its highest peak. This abstraction from all authority and presupposition seems to me to have reality only if there is no actual presupposition and authority for the human being, i.e. if the human being has no auctor. If, by contrast, there is a creator, and if the religious relation is the human being’s basic relation, then it seems to me that every abstraction from it is irreligious when it is serious and not merely a problematic discussion intra fidem. For when I posit “cogito ergo sum” as the only certain thing, then it is at bottom the creation which posits itself as what is certain, instead of knowing itself together with the creator in conscience.77

From this passage, in which Martensen outlines the basic contours of both his review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture and his dissertation, it is clear that he associates the slogan, “cogito ergo sum,” with Hegel even though it is never used in this way in Hegel’s own texts. The two slogans, “cogito ergo sum” and “de omnibus dubitandum est,” appear in a number of Martensen’s lectures during this period. They can be found in his treatment of Descartes in his course, “Introduction to Speculative Dogmatics,” in 1837–38.78 They come up again in his “Lectures on the History of Philosophy from Kant to Hegel,” which were the object of discussion in the Academicum in 1839.79 They also appear in Martensen’s dissertation, On the Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness.80 77 78 79 80

“Letter from Martensen to Sibbern,” Vienna, March 19, 1836 in Breve fra og til F.C. Sibbern, ed. by C. L. N. Mynster, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen 1866, vol. 1, pp. 181–182. SKS, vol. 19, p. 131, Not4:7. SKS, vol. 19, p. 137, Not4:10. Pap. II C 25, in Pap. XII, p. 282. Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia conscientiae sui humanae in theologiam dogmaticam nostri temporis introducta, Copenhagen 1837, § 5, § 12, § 24. ASKB 648. Danish translation: Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, tr. by L.V. Petersen, Copenhagen 1841, § 5, § 12, § 24. ASKB 651. English translation: The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in Modern Dogmatic Theology, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, Atlanta: Scholars Press 1997, p. 85, p. 100, p. 125. Kierkegaard recalls Martensen’s use of the slogan “cogito ergo sum” much later in the authorship: CUP1, p. 317; SKS, vol. 7, p. 288. CUP1, p. 318; SKS, vol. 7, p. 290.

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Kierkegaard has von Jumping-Jack use the two slogans from Descartes several times, occasionally with slight variations.81 The issue of the character of Faust, which is brought up by von Jumping-Jack, also points clearly to Martensen. Kierkegaard has the character say the following: “My dear fellow! I fully perceive what ails you. It is the Faustian problem; it is what modern philosophy, which, said in parenthesi, began with Descartes, has suffered from to a great extent. . . . since I am just in the process of giving a short account of modern philosophy since Descartes, I can perhaps oblige the rest of those present by speaking about it publicly so all can hear.”82 There are two things to note in this passage. First, there is a clear allusion to Martensen’s review. There he gives a thumbnail sketch of the history of philosophy, in which he assigns a central place to Descartes. The second thing to note is the reference to Faust. Towards the end of his review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture, Martensen closes his brief summary of the history of modern philosophy with an allusion to Faust: Here I merely take the liberty of calling to mind Goethe’s Faust. He too gave up faith for doubt. He too speculates about logos but can in no way accept that it should mean “the Word.” He reformulates it again and again – here is a true picture of modern speculation in its relation to revelation. The poet has been guided by good sense, for the issue depends on the various interpretations of logos.83

The point is that by understanding the revelation as a necessary development of the Concept, speculative philosophy gives it a purely secular meaning. Faust’s struggle to translate the Greek word, “λoγ ´ oς ” from the opening lines of the Gospel of John can be seen as an analogy for this issue in speculative philosophy. The Greek term, usually rendered as “the Word,” could mean something wholly secular such as “the thought” or “the force,” translations which would, like speculative philosophy, deprive Christianity of its metaphysical significance and reduce key doctrines to

81

82 83

EPW, p. 118; SKS, vol. 17, p. 291, DD:208: “It was Descartes who said cogito ergo sum and de omnibus dubitandum.” EPW, p. 117; SKS, vol. 17, p. 290, DD:208: “It was Descartes, then, who uttered the remarkable, eternally unforgettable words cogito ergo sum and de omnibus disputandum est – words that in every well-ordered speculative state really ought to be learned in confirmation instruction, words of which no theological graduate, at least ought to be ignorant, since no speculative spiritual advisor can hope to carry out his difficult call successfully without them. Yes, what a great thought – someday it will go so far that one will regard these words, I repeat them, cogito ergo sum and de omnibus disputandum est, as the state’s scholarly order of the day.” EPW, p. 114; SKS, vol. 17, p. 288, DD:208: “Yes, sometimes I have been troubled by a truly scholarly doubt as to whether I have indeed doubted enough, for doubt is the specific character of modern philosophy, which, said in parenthesi, began with Descartes, who said de omnibus disputandum est.” EPW, p. 116; SKS, vol. 17, p. 289, DD:208. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus,” op. cit., p. 527.

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simple forms of human thought or natural forces. This seems to be the target of Kierkegaard’s satire in the previously quoted passage from the comedy where he characterizes the problem of modern philosophy as “the Faustian problem.” As has been mentioned earlier, in 1837 Martensen published an article in Heiberg’s Perseus on a version of the Faust legend by Nicolaus Lenau.84 Already in 1836 his German work on the subject had appeared.85 At the time Kierkegaard himself had considered writing something on Faust and was deeply vexed when Martensen’s article appeared.86 This represents a significant episode in Kierkegaard’s early rivalry with Martensen, which was to last his entire life. Kierkegaard has von Jumping-Jack continue with his account of the history of modern philosophy in a way that closely follows that of Martensen in his review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture. The point of Martensen’s overview is to show that all previous philosophical systems employed doubt only partially and thus inadequately; only Hegel’s system employs it completely and is thus without presuppositions. For this reason Hegel’s system was in his view the highest achievement in philosophy theretofore: the Hegelian system “has an infinite meaning for our times since it contains the most complete and comprehensive development of rational knowledge. With this it thinks that an entire era in the history of philosophy, which sought to solve the riddle of existence independent of all tradition and any given positivity, comes to a close.”87 Thus, Martensen interprets the history of philosophy with a teleology that leads up to Hegel. He says the following of Spinoza: “Spinoza gave up on the ‘I.’ He doubted the reality of the subject, but the objective, the substance, the causa sui, he accepted without further investigation as the firm, indubitable point from which he developed his entire system.”88 Kierkegaard refers to this passage when he has von Jumping-Jack say, “Spinoza now carried through this standpoint purely objectively, so that all existence became undulations of the absolute.”89 In both passages the point is that Spinoza concentrated on the object sphere but forgot to examine the subject with skeptical doubt. Kierkegaard has von Jumping-Jack go on to mention Kant and Fichte, just as Martensen does in his account.90 84 85 86

87 89 90

Hans Lassen Martensen, “Betragtninger over Idéen af Faust med Hensyn paa Lenaus Faust,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 1, 1837, pp. 91–164. ASKB 569. Ueber Lenau’s Faust, by Johannes M. . . . . . . n. Stuttgart 1836. JP, vol. 5, 5225; Pap. II A 597: “Oh, how unhappy I am – Martensen has written a treatment of Lenau’s Faust!” See also JP, vol. 2, 1183; SKS, vol. 17, p. 49, AA:38. JP, vol. 5, 5226; SKS, vol. 18, p. 83, FF:38. 88 Ibid., p. 520. Ibid., p. 515. EPW, p. 118; SKS, vol. 17, p. 291, DD:208. EPW, p. 118; SKS, vol. 17, p. 291f., DD:208: “This objectivity, however, was entirely distilled out in the critical development, and whereas Kant carried through this skepticism only to a certain extent, it was reserved for Fichte to look this Medusa in the face in the night of criticism and abstraction.”

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Finally, Martensen evaluates Hegel’s philosophy as the culmination of the history of philosophy and thus as philosophy’s highest achievement theretofore. At the end of his overview Martensen writes: “All subordinate systems which have the rationalistic principle in themselves without having carried it out are this system’s certain booty and must let themselves be taken up as moments in it.”91 Kierkegaard mocks this enthusiastic assessment of Hegel by having von Jumping-Jack say: “but it was Hegel who speculatively drew together the previous systems, and therefore with him knowledge has reached its proper dogmatic peak.”92 Similarly he writes: “In other words, philosophy is the evening of life, and with Hegel, who speculatively drew together the previous rational systems, this evening has world-historically begun.”93 Here there is an implicit distinction between Hegel and the Hegelian who praises him. The criticism is not of any particular doctrine or theory in Hegel’s own philosophy but rather of the enthusiastic claims made on its behalf by Hegel’s followers. From these references, it is clear that Kierkegaard criticizes Martensen, but there is no substantial doctrine from Hegel’s philosophy at issue here. Martensen is criticized for his superficial account of the history of philosophy and the role of skeptical doubt in it. Thus, while Kierkegaard criticizes a Hegelian, his criticisms have nothing intrinsically to do with Hegel’s actual philosophy. From the fact that Kierkegaard satirizes a number of Danish Hegelians and uses some of their best known catch-phrases, it does not follow that he satirizes Hegel’s thought, let alone that he sees nothing whatsoever of value in it. This is the non sequitur that Thulstrup and other commentators have fallen victim to when they immediately identify any given Hegelian with Hegel himself and take a criticism of the former to be the same as a criticism of the latter. Kierkegaard’s satire is aimed at the arrogance and affectation of zealots who are anxious to jump on board as soon as a new philosophical fad comes along. Martensen and his students could just as easily have been enthusiastic followers of any other trend. It is the clique of followers and adherents that he wants to criticize and not Hegel’s own thought, which is never really discussed. It is, of course, possible that there was something philosophically deeper behind the criticism, but this cannot be determined on the basis of this text alone. What this text does indicate is that Kierkegaard was passionately interested in the discussion about Hegelianism in Denmark and was familiar with the circles in which this discussion was taking place. 91 92 93

Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus,” op. cit., p. 524. EPW, p. 119; SKS, vol. 17, p. 292, DD:208. EPW, p. 122; SKS, vol. 17, p. 295, DD:208.

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heiberg and from the papers of one still living

115

iv. heiberg’s perseus and from the papers of one still living As was mentioned in the introductory remarks to this chapter, From the Papers of One Still Living is a book-review of Hans Christian Andersen’s novel Only a Fiddler. Kierkegaard intended to publish the review in the second number of Heiberg’s journal Perseus.94 In this section, I would like to argue that the original plan to publish the piece in Perseus determines its entire character.95 The work seems to be intended to endear Kierkegaard to Heiberg. Kierkegaard knew full well that Heiberg was estranged from Andersen at the time, and thus it is no coincidence that his review is critical of Andersen’s novel.96 Moreover, Kierkegaard refers frequently to the anonymous works of Fru Gyllembourg, which were published by Heiberg.97 For the purposes of this investigation, these factors are less important than the aspects of Hegel’s philosophy that appear in the text. The work contains a number of Hegelian aspects precisely because it was intended for publication in a Hegelian journal. I will begin by giving a bit of background information regarding the nature and conception of the journal. Then I will examine a number of passages from Kierkegaard’s text itself that provide internal evidence for a Hegelian influence. Finally, I will explore scattered bits of evidence concerning the contemporary reception of the work, which also point in the direction of it being influenced by Hegel. A. Some Background Information about Perseus. The first number of Perseus had appeared in June of 1837 and thus was already in print when Kierkegaard began work on From the Papers of One Still Living; the second number, for which Kierkegaard’s review was intended, eventually appeared in August of 1838. Kierkegaard’s friend, Emil Boesen (1812–79), writes to his cousin Martin Hammerich (1811–81) in a letter dated July 20, 1838: “Søren Kierkegaard . . . has recently written a piece on Andersen which will go into Heiberg’s Perseus; it is written in a rather heavy style, but otherwise it is quite good.”98 It is not known for certain why the piece 94

95

96 97 98

See Johnny Kondrup, “Tekstredegørelse” to Af en endnu levendes Papirer, in SKS, vol. K1, pp. 68–72. See also Henning Fenger, Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, op. cit., pp. 138–141. In the “Historical Introduction” to her translation of From the Papers of One Still Living, Julia Watkin argues to the contrary: “That Kierkegaard should be regarded as here espousing Hegelianism in any form is thus a misunderstanding of his aim and intention. Granted, he intended his review for Heiberg’s Perseus, but this in itself is no proof of Hegelianism.” EPW, p. xxxi. See Chapter 10, “Berømmelsens Kalosker,” in Niels Birger Wamberg, H. C. Andersen og ˚ ˚ Heiberg. Andsfrænder og Andsfjender, Copenhagen: Politikens Forlag 1971, pp. 93–121. EPW, p. 64; SKS, vol. 1, p. 20. EPW, p. 67fn.; SKS, vol. 1, p. 23fn. EPW, p. 69; SKS, vol. 1, p. 25. Carl Weltzer, “Stemninger og Tilstande i Emil Boesens Ungdomsaar,” in Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, seventh series, vol. 1, Copenhagen 1951–53, pp. 408–414.

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was never published in Perseus as intended, but it is quite possible that Heiberg was dissatisfied with the style. This is evidenced by a letter that Kierkegaard writes to him on July 28, 1838. It seems that Heiberg had read the manuscript and requested that Kierkegaard make some stylistic modifications. In the letter Kierkegaard responds: Honored Professor, I received your letter last night. Only one point in it troubles me somewhat. I am afraid that it may seem in some way as if I almost tried to get around that warning contained in your first letter by employing those same ordinary and imprecise phrases in which you orally stated your stylistic requirements. On this occasion, I cannot refrain from asking you, sir, to remember, as far as you are able to do so, those remarks I then made, which I think contained an Amen that was modified in several ways. – Unless, that is, I have been so unfortunate as to have expressed myself incomprehensibly, just as I see from your letter that I must have misunderstood you. As for my essay and its fate, I will, sir, take the liberty of visiting you in this connection very soon.99

Apparently Kierkegaard did make some revisions with the help of his former classmate Hans Peter Holst (1811–93).100 It is unclear exactly what happened after this, but one can surmise that Heiberg simply stuck with his original assessment and rejected the article on the basis of its unwieldy style. Ultimately, Kierkegaard published the review as a monograph on his own. The key to understanding the role of Hegel in this work is to bear in mind the context for which it was written. Despite its ultimate fate, the work was originally intended as a review article in Perseus. In order to understand why this fact is important, it will be necessary to look briefly at the nature and conception of the journal. Heiberg regarded Perseus as the official organ for Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark.101 It was to be the Danish equivalent of the Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik, which were still being published in Berlin by Hegel’s students. The journal was to play a central role in Heiberg’s plans to educate his fellow Danes in Hegel’s thought. The agenda of the journal is stated clearly in the editor’s prefatory remarks “To the Readers” in the first number of Perseus from 1837. There Heiberg declares the goal of the journal as follows: we are lacking a journal which is exclusively devoted to the undertakings of the Idea, and this not merely in a single direction of these undertakings but in their entire scope; for the more the rising culture splits up and 99 100

101

LD, 9; B & A I, p. 43. “Letter H. P. Holst to H. P. Barfod,” September 11, 1869, in Encounters with Kierkegaard. A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1996, p. 12. See Johnny Kondrup, “Tekstredegørelse” to Af en endnu levendes Papirer, in SKS, vol. K1, pp. 71–72. See Henning Fenger, Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, op. cit., pp. 138–141.

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particularizes the various interests of spirit, the more important it becomes to collect them anew in the highest unity, in which they all, after having traversed their empirical differences, could meet in the service of the Idea, could stand alongside the others, and thereby win their common unification. To meet the need of this kind of asylum for the undertakings of the Idea, which is ever more perceptible in our literature, the undersigned dares to make a beginning in that he herewith inaugurates a Journal for the Speculative Idea.102

With the words, “the Idea” and “spirit,” Heiberg, of course, employs key terms from Hegel’s philosophical vocabulary. He refers indirectly to the final triad of Hegel’s system (i.e., the triad of absolute spirit), which consists of art, religion and philosophy.103 The goal is thus to present specific aspects of these different spheres “in the highest unity.” Heiberg goes on to explain more precisely the nature of the contributions that he expects. They should specifically be articles in different fields that aim to make clear the speculative Idea, which underlies all representations: This more exact determination of the Idea as “speculative” states the plan of the present journal. Indeed, the Idea is immediately present in everything essential: in nature, in the world of the soul, in politics; and no true undertaking, regardless of what object it has, regardless of into what empirical details it branches off, is abandoned by its Idea. But it is not enough that the Idea is present; it also wants to be recognized as such. Only then is it speculative, only then is it the self-conscious Idea; and it is precisely this consciousness of the Idea, this sympathy and daily interaction with it, which this journal wishes to promote. No academic field is excluded here; they can all be included provided only that they are successful in developing their Ideas with the consciousness of speculation. To this extent it is the form which is essential here; the objects do not matter; it is only a matter of speculation having put its stamp on them. Any scholarly content can be raised to this form and is then, not by virtue of the content but by virtue of the form, worthy of being taken up in the circle of the undertakings of idealism.104

The stated goal of the journal is, in short, to explicate the speculative Idea in the different spheres of knowing. Thus, Heiberg invites contributions that employ Hegel’s speculative method in the various academic disciplines. Kierkegaard doubtless had in mind Heiberg’s words outlining the goal of Perseus when he was writing his review. In the letter quoted 102 103

104

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Til Læserne,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 1, 1837, pp. v–vi. ASKB 569. Ibid., pp. vii: “But, regarded from the other side, the speculative Idea also has a characteristic content, which right from birth bears the mark of the speculative form without needing to win it for itself. This content is art, religion and philosophy.” Ibid., pp. vi–vii.

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here, the tone of the young Kierkegaard is of someone willing to comply with Heiberg’s guidelines in order to have the opportunity to publish in Perseus. Thus, it seems certain that Kierkegaard must have been attentive to Heiberg’s description of the kind of articles the journal was to feature. Given this, it is hardly surprising that one can find Hegelian elements in the work. Moreover, the fact that Kierkegaard wrote for the Hegelian journal at all indicates that he had no ideological objections to Heiberg’s Hegelianism at this time. In addition to these prefatory words about the objective of the journal, Heiberg himself provides an example in the same first number of the kind of speculative work that he envisions for Perseus. There he published a long review105 of a book entitled, Doctrine of the Trinity and Reconciliation: A Speculative Investigation on Occasion of the Reformation Celebration, written by the priest Valdemar Henrik Rothe (1777–1857).106 This review article uses the book under discussion as an occasion to make a case for Hegel’s philosophy. A number of tangential discussions take up various issues surrounding the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark and have nothing intrinsically to do with Rothe’s book. As the lead article in the first number, the review served as a sort of guideline for the kind of articles that Perseus was intended to feature. This was the model of a book-review that Kierkegaard had at his disposal when writing From the Papers of One Still Living. As in Heiberg’s review of Rothe’s work, so also in Kierkegaard’s text there are references to Hegel’s philosophy that are not, strictly speaking, relevant to the book he is reviewing. Likewise, a number of key terms from Hegel’s technical philosophical vocabulary appear. Thus, there is every reason to think that Kierkegaard in some respects modelled his review of Andersen on Heiberg’s review of Rothe. B. References to the Beginning of Philosophy in Hegel’s Logic. At the beginning of the work Kierkegaard makes a gesture to Heiberg by alluding to Hegel in a positive manner. In the opening pages, he discusses the modern notion of progress, which seems to congratulate itself for having reached a point in history that is far superior to the past. Each new age conceives of itself as a radical new beginning, thus forgetting its debt to previous ages. In this context Kierkegaard discusses Hegel’s attempt to begin philosophy without presuppositions. In a strikingly deferential passage, he writes: If we meet this phenomenon in its most respectable form, as it appears in Hegel’s great attempt to begin with nothing, it must both impress and 105

106

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Recension over Hr. Dr. Rothes Treenigheds- og Forsoningslære,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 1, 1837, pp. 1–89. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 1–112.) Valdemar Henrik Rothe, Læren om Treenighed og Forsoning. Et speculativt Forsøg i Anledning af Reformationsfesten, Copenhagen 1836. ASKB 746.

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please us: impress us, in view of the moral strength with which the idea is conceived, the intellectual energy and virtuosity with which it is carried out; please us, because the whole negation is still only a movement inside the system’s own limits, undertaken precisely in the interest of retrieving the pure abundance of existence.107

Here Kierkegaard refers to the ongoing debate at the time about the beginning of philosophy in Hegel. To say that Hegel’s philosophy begins with nothing refers to his attempt to find a starting point for philosophy that is not question-begging in the sense that it already presupposes the objects of science. In both the Science of Logic and the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel makes this beginning with the concept of pure being. Thus, when Hegel says that he wants to begin with nothing, he does not mean the ontological category of nothingness but rather a starting point that does not presuppose something about science.108 In the passage just quoted Kierkegaard indirectly pays his respects to Heiberg, who made a case for Hegel on this score in the aforementioned review of Rothe’s Doctrine of the Trinity and Reconciliation in the first number of Perseus. In connection with a long tangential discussion of the issue, Heiberg argues that Hegel’s philosophy makes good on the claim to begin without presuppositions: As is known, the Hegelian system moves through nothing but triads. In every one, the first moment is immediate . . . the second is the mediation or development of the first, and finally the third is the new and synthetic unity, which is no longer immediate, but rather produced by mediation. But every first or immediate moment is given, namely, by the last previous triad, whose result or not immediate unity it was. If in this way we now go further and further back, then we come to the very first moment, to the no longer relative immediacy but rather the absolute one, which is itself the system’s absolute beginning. Should we now say of this first unit, being = nothing, that it is given or not given, that it is a presupposition or not? Admittedly, it is not given in the same manner as all of those following the first moment in every triad, for these have come from a previous cycle, but prior to the first cycle there is no previous one, and therefore there is nothing that can be surpassed. The most obvious answer is that the absolute first moment is not given. One must necessarily admit this; one must recognize that the system really delivers what it promises: a presuppositionless beginning.109 107 108

109

EPW, p. 61; SKS, vol. 1, p. 17. Thulstrup takes Kierkegaard to be making a ludicrous mistake: “Had Kierkegaard only read Hegel’s prefaces to the first and second editions of that work [sc. the Science of Logic] and the introductory section ‘With What Must the Science Begin?’ he would hardly have written what he did here. For Hegel, logic begins chiefly with ‘being’ [and not nothing]. . . . What Kierkegaard has written is simply incorrect.” (Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 168.) Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Recension over Hr. Dr. Rothes Treenigheds- og Forsoningslære,” op. cit., pp. 35–36. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 45–46.)

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Unlike the other categories or moments in the system, which are produced in the dialectical movement on the basis of their predecessors, the first moment is primary and does not refer to anything previous. There is thus a natural beginning of philosophy, which is to be found in the only nonderivative concept – pure being. Heiberg continues by addressing an apparent contradiction in this view: But this basic contradiction . . . lies necessarily in the demand made on the beginning of philosophy . . . philosophy should namely (1) begin without presuppositions; but everything has presuppositions; only nothing is without presupposition; philosophy must thus begin with nothing; but as is known nothing comes from nothing . . . but thus from this beginning, philosophy does not come to any development or does not come into existence. From this it follows inevitably that it (2) must begin with a presupposition or something given. Thus, a demand is made on philosophy, that what is original, with which it begins, shall be both given and not given. This demand is fulfilled with being = nothing. On the basis of the identity of being and nothing both are the same original thing; but as being it is given, as nothing it is not given.110

To meet the contradictory demand that philosophy begin both with something given and with something not given, Heiberg slightly modifies Hegel’s scheme. Instead of beginning as Hegel does with pure being, which passes over into the second category, nothing, Heiberg claims that philosophy begins with the aggregate category of being = nothing.111 In any case, Heiberg makes the claim that Hegel’s beginning is, at least with a slight modification, the true beginning of philosophy. This aspect of Hegel’s philosophy was taken up by Sibbern in the first article of his aforementioned review of Heiberg’s Perseus. In this part of his review, which appeared in April of 1838, Sibbern addresses Hegel’s position itself, noting the ambiguities in the two different beginnings set forth in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic. But Sibbern is also interested in responding to Heiberg’s claims. He is suspicious of Heiberg’s modification and defense of Hegel’s position on the beginning of philosophy and invites him to work it out in more detail: “it would interest me to see Professor Heiberg make a start from this beginning so that the thought is firmly maintained that what is original is supposed to be both given and not given. It would also interest me to see him proceed from his nothing = being as from what is original, which is by contrast what Hegel does.”112 Realizing the deviation from Hegel’s view, Sibbern asks 110 111

112

Ibid., pp. 36–37. (Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 2, pp. 46–47.) This modification later comes to be criticized by Adler. Adolph Peter Adler, “J. L. Heiberg, Det logiske System, a) Væren og Intet, b) Vorden, c) Tilværen. I Perseus Nr. 2. Kjøbenhavn 1838,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 3, 1840, pp. 474–482. Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 19, 1838, Article I, p. 335. Frederik

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Heiberg for an explanation of the double category of being and nothing and of how a beginning can be made with it. This constitutes the background to the passage quoted earlier where Kierkegaard lauds “Hegel’s great attempt to begin from nothing.” It is striking that he simply affirms Heiberg’s defense of Hegel, even though this had been criticized by Sibbern. Kierkegaard continues in the same deferential tone, “the entire recent literature . . . has forgotten that the beginning with nothing of which Hegel speaks was mastered by himself in the system and was by no means a failure to appreciate the great richness actuality has.”113 Here Kierkegaard even refers to the system in a positive manner. What is particularly interesting is that he says that the system does not overlook the “great richness actuality has,” which is precisely a point that he later will come to criticize (namely, that the system is purely abstract and cannot capture the actuality of the existence of the individual). It is difficult to see in these statements anything other than a deferential gesture to Heiberg. They have nothing to do with the matter at hand in the text, and at the beginning of the work Kierkegaard goes out of his way twice to tip his hat to Hegel. This is evidence of the fact that he was aware of the guidelines for the articles intended for publication in Perseus and was anxious to follow them carefully. Both of the passages cited here114 refer to Hegel’s Science of Logic, which Kierkegaard in fact mentions in a footnote. He is again strikingly deferential, referring to Hegel’s Logic as an “immortal work”: The Hegelians, however, must not be taken altogether literally when they mention their relation to actuality, for when in this respect they refer to their master’s immortal work (his Logic), it seems to me to be like the rules governing rank and precedence, in which, beginning with secretaries (Seyn, pure being), one then through “other secretaries” (das Andre, das Besondre, Nichts – therefore it is also said that other secretaries sind so viel wie Nichts) – lets the category “actual secretaries etc.” appear, without therefore being entitled to conclude that there is in actuality a single “actual secretary.”115

This passage uses a reference to the system of offices in the official hierarchy to make a point about Hegel’s logic. According to the new Danish system of 1808, the lowest rank was designated “other secretaries,” above which was placed, for example, “secretary of war.” It was common to attach the word “actual” to certain ranks in order to indicate that the office in question was in fact an active one and not merely a pro forma title. The “actual” offices were then ranked one class higher than the merely

113 114 115

Christian Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, betragtet i Forhold til vor Tid, Copenhagen 1838, p. 53. ASKB 778. EPW, p. 62; SKS, vol. 1, p. 18. I.e., EPW, p. 61; SKS, vol. 1, p. 17 and EPW, p. 62; SKS, vol. 1, p. 18. EPW, p. 62fn.; SKS, vol. 1, p. 18fn.

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titular ones.116 The analogy seems to imply that the attempt to derive the category of actuality from the other categories (i.e. being, nothing, etc.) is problematic since it arrives at the abstract category of actuality without ever discussing anything actual. This seems to prefigure a later criticism of the notion of actuality in German idealism which appears for the first time in Either/Or,117 but at the same time it is in tension with the claim to which it is a footnote, namely, that the beginning of the system “was by no means a failure to appreciate the great richness actually has.”118 Kierkegaard also alludes to Hegel’s notion of the immanent negation of the Concept that propels the dialectic forward. The context is again Kierkegaard’s criticism of the modern arrogance that regards contemporary governments and institutions as enlightened and superior to those of the past. He compares this tendency with Hegel’s notion of immanent negation: “Like Hegel, it [the tendency] begins, not the system but existence, with nothing, and the negative element, through which and by virtue of which all the movements occur (Hegel’s immanent negativity of the Concept), is distrust, which undeniably has such a negative force that it . . . must end by killing itself.”119 The modern view tends to see previous systems as self-destructing due to their inner contradictions. The seed of their destruction lies within themselves as a hidden contradiction and thus comes from within and not from without. In a passage cited earlier, Kierkegaard refers to the same doctrine in a positive manner in his praise of Hegel: “the whole negation is still only a movement inside the system’s own limits.”120 According to Hegel, philosophy should constitute an immanent system of thought. This is the point of his objection to Kant’s notion of a thingin-itself which is by definition transcendent and beyond the possibility of human experience and knowledge. Hegel argues against all forms of transcendence, which he takes to be conceptually incoherent. The point of a phenomenology as a philosophical method is to indicate that even things such as unseen forces, the thing-in-itself, and God, are objects for consciousness. The doctrine of immanent or internal negation is the idea that specific notions or concepts find their contradiction not in some external transcendent other that enters the scene adventitiously but rather in an other or negation that each notion posits from within itself, in the sense that, for example, being posits nothing. Thus, one does not need to appeal to anything external to account for the movements of the Concept or world spirit. 116 117 119 120

See the commentary to this passage in SKS, vol. K1, p. 83, “Rangforordning.” 118 EPW, p. 62; SKS, vol. 1, p. 18. EO1, p. 32; SKS, vol. 2, p. 41. EPW, p. 64; SKS, vol. 1, p. 20. Translation slightly modified. EPW, p. 61; SKS, vol. 1, p. 17.

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This point is of particular interest since it will come to be one of great ambiguity in Kierkegaard. Here he goes out of his way to single out this Hegelian doctrine for praise. Moreover, in works such as Either/Or and The Sickness unto Death, he takes up a kind of phenomenological method that uses this mechanism of internal negation and that presupposes a system of immanence. However, by contrast, in works such as Philosophical Fragments he criticizes the Hegelian notion of immanence and makes a plea for an absolutely transcendent other (i.e., God). I will have occasion to trace Kierkegaard’s development of this point in what follows. From these scattered references alone it is difficult to draw conclusions about the extent of Kierkegaard’s knowledge of the Science of Logic. One cannot necessarily infer with Thulstrup121 that Kierkegaard’s knowledge of Hegel at this point was wholly derivative from Heiberg since there is no evidence that it is Heiberg’s account of the beginning of philosophy or immanent negation that Kierkegaard is thinking of. Moreover, it would hardly have cost the young Kierkegaard much to look through the opening pages of the Science of Logic. It should be noted that he owned a copy of the Science of Logic, which was published in 1833 in the collected works edition,122 and thus he could certainly have availed himself of it when writing these pages. The fact that he does not say more about that text here cannot be taken as evidence that he was not familiar with it since From the Papers of One Still Living has as its object of investigation Andersen’s skill as a novelist and not Hegel’s Logic. On the contrary, the fact that such an apparently wholly irrelevant theme such as Hegel’s Logic finds its way into this work at all suggests that Kierkegaard at least knew enough about it to be provoked by it. Ultimately, the question of how well Kierkegaard knew Hegel’s primary texts is in a sense beside the point since it is clear in any case that he knew about this issue in Hegel from one source or another and was interested in it. Regardless of whether or not Kierkegaard had made a study of Hegel’s Logic, it seems obvious that these direct allusions to Hegel at the beginning of the piece should be read as gestures to comply with Heiberg’s conception of Perseus as a journal for speculative philosophy. To write for this journal, Kierkegaard needed in passing to demonstrate a familiarity with Hegel’s philosophy and with the current discussions about it in Denmark. C. References to the Stages of Poetry in Hegel and Heiberg. In From the Papers of One Still Living there is also a vague allusion to Hegel’s theory of the developmental stages of poetry, which are presented in the 121 122

Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., pp. 166–175, especially p. 170. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, I–III, ed. by Leopold von Henning, Berlin 1833, vols. 3–5 in Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1–18, Berlin 1832–45. ASKB 552–554.

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posthumously published Lectures on Aesthetics. Kierkegaard notes that Andersen’s development as a poet did not follow the sequence outlined by Hegel. This refers to yet another one of Heiberg’s previous discussions. As was noted previously, in a series of articles from 1828 published in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Heiberg gives a response to his main rival in the field of aesthetics, the advocate of Romanticism, Adam Oehlenschläger.123 There he organizes the genres of poetry in ascending order. According to this scheme, lyric constitutes the first stage; epic poetry, the second; and drama, the third. Drama is itself subdivided into further categories. These forms constitute a hierarchy, and the last form of drama represents the highest perfection of poetry. When developing this scheme, Heiberg did not have at his disposal the published version of Hegel’s lectures on aesthetics, although he seems to have had some lecture notes to work with.124 What is significant here is that this scheme deviates from Hegel’s ordering of the genres of poetry. Heiberg ascribes to lyric the first or immediate stage, whereas Hegel puts epic in this place and attributes to lyric the second stage, or the stage of mediation.125 Despite this deviation it seems that Kierkegaard took Heiberg’s scheme to be synonymous with Hegel’s view.126 He even indicates himself that it would make more sense for poetry to begin with epic,127 but he seems to be unaware that this is precisely the way in which Hegel describes it in his aesthetics. Kierkegaard refers to Andersen’s development as a poet and writes: “we find as good as no intimation whatever of the stage he must normally run through after the lyric – the epic.”128 Similarly, Kierkegaard observes in passing that Andersen “skipped over his epic [stage]”129 and moved on to drama. Here Kierkegaard, following Heiberg’s scheme, places lyric first and epic second. As has been noted, the volumes of Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics were published for the first time from 1835 to 1838. (Direct quotations and references to this work 123 124

125 126 127 128 129

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Svar paa Hr. Oehlenschlägers Skrift: ‘Om Kritiken i Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, over Væringerne i Miklagard,’” op. cit. See Heiberg’s letter to Hegel: “Soon I hope to be able to do more toward the same end, when my work (written in German) appears – Grundlinien zum System der Aesthetik als spekulativer Wissenschaft, which is being printed in Schleswig – a work about which my lone regret is that I am only familiar with your interesting and deeply penetrating lectures on this subject from incomplete notes which were imparted to me in Berlin.” “Heiberg an Hegel,” February 20, 1825. Hegel, Briefe III 487; Letter 124 in Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Johan Ludvig Heiberg, vols. 1–5, ed. by Morten Borup, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1947–50, vol. 1, pp. 162–163. Hegel, Aesthetics II, pp. 1037–1039; Jub., vol. 14, pp. 322–325. See JP, vol. 2, 1565; Pap. I A 225. See JP, vol. 2, 1565; Pap. I A 225. See also SKS, vol. 17, p. 113, BB:23. JP, vol. 2, 1565; Pap. I A 225. See also JP, vol. 1, 126; Pap. I A 212. EPW, p. 70; SKS, vol. 1, p. 26. EPW, p. 70; SKS, vol. 1, p. 26. See also SKS, vol. 19, p. 94, Not2:7 where Kierkegaard also follows Heiberg’s scheme: “We should not forget that Don Juan has to be grasped lyrically (therefore with music); the Wandering Jew epically, and Faust dramatically.”

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in Kierkegaard only begin to appear in 1841.130 ) These references to the stages of poetry must also be taken as a gesture to Heiberg and as an attempt to make explicit the speculative Idea in the work under examination, in accordance with the stated goal of Perseus. Kierkegaard also uses Hegel’s categories of immediacy and reflection in his analysis of Andersen’s work. The different stages of art and poetry in both Hegel and Heiberg are characterized by these categories. As was alluded to previously, the first stage is the immediate, the second is reflection, and the third unites the two into what Hegel calls “mediated immediacy.” Here Kierkegaard uses these same categories to discuss Andersen’s work. He writes: “As far as [Andersen’s] relation to A Story of Everyday Life is concerned, we certainly may justly reckon him among the misunderstanding readers mentioned earlier, who, also through these short novels among other things, are brought to a certain degree of reflection, which, however, is in no way carried through to any significant degree.”131 Kierkegaard goes on to characterize the work of Steen Steensen Blicher (1782–1848) as “unreflective folk poetry.”132 Thus, while Andersen has reached the stage of reflection, Blicher remains at the level of immediacy. These characterizations of the work of Andersen and Blicher in terms of Hegelian categories can be seen as yet another attempt to make the book-review appropriate for Heiberg’s Hegelian journal. Thulstrup infers from all this that Kierkegaard’s analysis here is derived from Heiberg,133 a claim that seems undeniable. However, he goes on to argue that, given that Kierkegaard did not know Hegel’s text, his analysis on this point cannot with justice be called “Hegelian.” This overestimates the importance of a familiarity with the primary texts. In a sense if it were merely a matter of the label, one could conceivably become a convinced Hegelian without ever reading a single text by Hegel. A mastery of the primary texts of an author is thus not essential either for an influence or for a personal affiliation. Thulstrup fails to entertain the possibility that Kierkegaard might unknowingly have adopted certain concepts from Hegel that were being generally discussed at the time and thus might be in some measure Hegelian without having direct knowledge of Hegel’s texts.134 This is not an unlikely possibility given how much of Hegel’s philosophy was in fact in the air when Kierkegaard was studying. Moreover, what is specifically Hegelian here is not so much the sequence of genres of 130 131 132 133

134

JP, vol. 2, 1592; SKS, vol. 19, p. 245, Not8:51. JP, vol. 5, 1593; SKS, vol. 19, p. 246, Not8:53. JP, vol. 5, 5545; SKS, vol. 19, pp. 285–286, Not10:1. EPW, p. 74; SKS, vol. 1, p. 29. See also EPW, p. 79; SKS, vol. 1, p. 34. EPW, p. 74; SKS, vol. 1, p. 29. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 175. Paul V. Rubow, Heiberg og hans skole i kritiken, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1953, pp. 47–59. See also Henning Fenger, The Heibergs, tr. by Frederick J. Marker, New York: Twayne Publishers 1971, pp. 136–138. See Henning Fenger, “Hegel, Kierkegaard and Niels Thulstrup,” in his Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, op. cit., pp. 136–137.

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poetry, which could be a matter of debate among different Hegelians, but rather the attempt to create such a sequence based on a systematic principle in accordance with the sequence: immediacy, reflection, and their unity in mediated immediacy. This is something that Hegel, Heiberg, and Kierkegaard all have in common despite their disagreement about the details. It should be noted that Brandt and Hirsch represent dissenting voices in this debate about the degree of Hegel’s influence in From the Papers of One Still Living. Hirsch sees a strong relation between Hegel and Kierkegaard in this work. In particular he points out an affinity between Hegel’s concept of lyric and that of Kierkegaard.135 Likewise, Brandt sees here a Hegelian-Heibergian theory of aesthetics.136 In Kierkegaard’s text, there is only an allusion, but this allusion does indicate a general interest in and familiarity with Hegel’s aesthetics at the most rudimentary level, if not a rigorous study of the subject. Although Kierkegaard does not sustain this discussion, he does return to it or something like it in Either/Or. There he follows a couple of different dialectical sequences along Hegelian lines that characterize specific works of art into stages.137 D. The Reception of From the Papers of One Still Living. In addition to all of this evidence internal to the text, there are a number of reasons external to it to regard this work as containing Hegelian elements. The first of these is a remark in Andersen’s autobiography, where he recalls Kierkegaard’s review of his work. Andersen writes that From the Papers of One Still Living was “somewhat difficult to read because of the Hegelian heaviness of expression.”138 He adds that due to this “one also said in jest that only Kierkegaard and Andersen had read the book to the end.”139 From this it is clear for Andersen and his contemporaries that the style and language of the work bears the stamp of Hegel’s philosophy. A follower of Heiberg, the poet and playwright Henrik Hertz (1797–1870), refers to this as well in his diary. In one entry he mentions taking a walk with Kierkegaard and discussing the book. In another he writes: “Those who have picked up on the German philosophy are completely incapable of practicing it in Danish. Their text teems with words of which no Dane knows the meaning. [Kierkegaard’s] work on Andersen shows what language we can 135 136 137 138

139

Emanuel Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2, Gutersloh: ¨ C. Bertelsmann 1933, vol. 1, pp. 13–24. Frithiof Brandt, Den unge Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaards Forlag 1929, pp. 136ff. See, for example, Chapter 4, Section III. Hans Christian Andersen, Mit Livs Eventyr, Copenhagen 1855, p. 198. (Reprinted in Andersen’s Samlede Skrifter, vols. 1–15, Copenhagen 1876–80, vol. 1, p. 188.) See Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 28. Hans Christian Andersen, ibid., p. 198. (Samlede Skrifter, vol. 1, p. 188.)

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expect from this philosophy.”140 It is clear in this context that “the German philosophy” is a reference to that of Hegel. Thus, Hertz as well took the book to be written in a distinct Hegelian language, to which he, apparently like others, objects. Second, given that Kierkegaard’s manner of expression was regarded as being Hegelian, the conclusion was drawn that he must belong to the Hegelian school. In his vaudeville, A Comedy in the Open Air,141 which was performed at the Royal Theater in 1840, Andersen parodies Kierkegaard as a Hegelian in order to take revenge for the negative review. In the comedy, the character of Dalby represents Kierkegaard. In many of Dalby’s statements one can find quotations and paraphrases of From the Papers of One Still Living. Dalby speaks in a highly affected manner; his long, incoherent, jargon-laden sentences are clearly intended to satirize Kierkegaard’s serpentine style in the review. There can be no doubt that Andersen intends to parody Kierkegaard as a Hegelian with the character of Dalby; indeed, even Kierkegaard himself recognizes it. In the journals and papers there is a draft of a response to Andersen’s satire, which was never published. There Kierkegaard writes: “In this comedy, theater manager Dalby appears in several roles, among others also as a hairdresser. I deal only with this performance. This character is meant to be a prating Hegelian.”142 Kierkegaard is concerned only with this character since it is the one that is intended to be a satire on him. Thus, for whatever one makes of From the Papers of One Still Living today, it was understood in its time as a statement of Hegelian aesthetics and as having been written in a Hegelian spirit. In his planned response to Andersen, Kierkegaard goes on to say why it would be futile for him to attempt to explain that he in fact is not a Hegelian. Rather than make a straightforward denial of being influenced by Hegel, he casts his defense in terms of a dichotomy: either he has made a careful study of Hegel’s philosophy and accepted it, or he has not. If the former is the case, writes Kierkegaard, “it would be crazy . . . to say it in a conversation with Andersen because he probably would not be able to attach a sensible thought to it.”143 If Kierkegaard were really a Hegelian, then there would be no sense in affirming or denying it to Andersen who has no understanding of philosophy and thus would not know what it meant to be a Hegelian in the first place. Clearly, this is not a denial of an affiliation with Hegel but rather a criticism of Andersen. “I would,” Kierkegaard continues, “at least hesitate to use such a significant predicate about myself, even if I were conscious that I had tried 140 141 142 143

Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 218. Hans Christian Andersen, En Comedie i det Grønne, Copenhagen 1840. EPW, Supplement, p. 220; Pap. III B 1, p. 108. Translation slightly modified. EPW, Supplement, p. 220; Pap. III B 1, p. 108.

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to make myself familiar with Hegel’s philosophy.”144 Here once again there is no denial that Kierkegaard ever studied Hegel’s primary texts but merely that he would not be so immodest as to claim publicly that he is a Hegelian. He now moves to the second half of the dichotomy: “Or by ‘a Hegelian’ I would understand a person who, superficially influenced by this thought, now deceived himself with a result he did not possess.”145 In this case, Kierkegaard imagines people who claim to be Hegelians without really knowing Hegel’s thought very well. If he falls into this category, Kierkegaard says, then it would not make sense to explain it to Andersen, who is not in a position to distinguish a genuine Hegelian (i.e., one who knows Hegel’s thought and texts well and agrees with them) from a false one (i.e., one who only superficially knows them and yet still boasts of being a Hegelian). It will be noted here that both sides of the dichotomy amount to a criticism of Andersen’s lack of knowledge about Hegel’s philosophy. This is the reason why Kierkegaard does not want to bother to explain to him his position vis-à-vis Hegel, regardless of what that position might be. But it should be noted that in either case Kierkegaard values Hegel’s philosophy sufficiently to criticize Andersen for his ignorance of it. On the whole, Hegel’s appearance in From the Papers of One Still Living is unobtrusive, yet he is present in many ways. He neither dictates nor dominates the discussion. Although there are here no direct quotations of any of Hegel’s works, he is alluded to occasionally as one might allude to secondary literature or a dominant intellectual movement that one can presuppose most readers to be at least in part familiar with. But, clear Hegelian elements are operative here. Even though it is difficult to claim that Kierkegaard gives a thoroughly Hegelian analysis or interpretation of Andersen’s novel, he nonetheless uses Hegelian categories and terminology in his discussions. Moreover, Hegel is not perceived as an enemy to be attacked. For example, Kierkegaard uses uncharacteristically positive tones when he mentions systematic philosophy, immanent negation, and the attempt to begin philosophy with the category of being. Here Hegel is simply an important intellectual trend that must be acknowledged and can be used when profitable. The references to Hegel’s philosophy that one finds here are by no means in harmony with the later negative picture of Hegel that is presented, for example, in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. The issue of the beginning of philosophy and the degree to which the system can capture actuality appear later in a much more negative light.146 This is a clear indication that the character of Kierkegaard’s statements about Hegel changed over the course 144 145 146

EPW, Supplement, p. 220; Pap. III B 1, p. 108. EPW, Supplement, p. 220; Pap. III B 1, p. 108. Translation slightly modified. Treated in Chapter 11, Section VI.

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of time. Finally, the gratuitous nature of many of the Hegel references seems to indicate that they are aimed to satisfy Heiberg’s Hegelianism and to bring the work into accordance with the stated goal of Perseus. This also explains Kierkegaard’s “Hegelian style,” for which he was reproached by Andersen and Hertz. In the final analysis, there can be no doubt that this work is profoundly influenced by Hegel, regardless of whether Kierkegaard’s knowledge of him was derived from a study of his primary texts or from the secondhand accounts of Heiberg or others. In the years immediately after Hegel’s death in 1831, his philosophy became such a ubiquitous force in learned circles in both Germany and Denmark that every educated person was obliged to take some sort of position on it. This ubiquity created what might be called a “second Hegel” in the form of a picture presented by commentators, translators, adherents, and critics. It was a picture that in many cases went far beyond anything that could be said to find a reasonable sanction in the primary texts. Naturally enough, the number of learned persons exceeded the number of Hegel scholars, and the result was that many educated people in Denmark came to learn about Hegel and were obliged to take a stand on him in accordance with the picture they had gained not from a careful study of the primary texts but rather from more accessible commentators like Heiberg and Martensen. The absence of direct quotations from or readings notes to Hegel’s texts in Kierkegaard’s works and unpublished papers during this period indicates that this is largely his picture of Hegel at this point. Just as today educated people are compelled to take some sort of stand on, for example, deconstructionist theory due to its predominance in literary criticism and other fields, even though few of them have ever actually read the texts in which it is grounded theoretically, so also Kierkegaard was compelled to take a stand on Hegel without in every case a thorough familiarity with the primary texts. This is particularly obvious in the references to Hegel’s philosophy that appear in Kierkegaard’s works prior to The Concept of Irony since, although he does not seem to have made a careful study of the primary texts, he nevertheless clearly had formed some ideas about Hegel and does not hesitate to allude to him and discuss some of his better known concepts. This said, despite his apparent lack of familiarity with Hegel’s primary texts, Kierkegaard’s early works and journal entries demonstrate a number of Hegelian elements, a fact that seems primarily to be due to Heiberg’s influence. The analysis of From the Papers of One Still Living reveals that Kierkegaard’s view of Hegel’s aesthetics is derived largely from Heiberg’s hierarchy of poetic genres. Likewise, his view of Hegel’s logic found therein is perhaps also derived from Heiberg’s discussion of the beginning of philosophy in Hegel. From the analysis of the theory of stages from the papers, it is clear that Kierkegaard is using Heiberg’s

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exposition of the taxonomy of forms of poetry, characterized by the stages of immediacy, reflection, and unity, and seems unaware that there is a scheme in Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, which also contains four stages. The fact that Kierkegaard’s initial information about Hegel comes from Heiberg is significant for a number of reasons. First, his information was in part inaccurate, as has been seen, for example, with the account of the hierarchy of poetic genres. Other contemporary writers complained of Heiberg’s distortions of Hegel’s thought on other issues. For example, in response to some of Heiberg’s claims about Hegel’s philosophy of religion in On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age, Mynster responds: “But however suspicious it seems to be for the system and even for many propositions which Hegel . . . has allowed himself to write, we cannot convince ourselves to attribute to him these crass conceptions.”147 Likewise, as has been seen previously, in response to Heiberg’s comments about the beginning of logic with the category of being in the review of Rothe’s Doctrine of the Trinity and Reconciliation, Sibbern warns the reader against accepting uncritically Heiberg’s account of Hegel’s position.148 So also Adler protests against Heiberg’s conflating the categories of being and nothing in Hegel.149 Thus, insofar as Kierkegaard depended on Heiberg for his information about Hegel, the picture that he received was at times somewhat distorted. But what importance one should attribute to these distortions is open to debate. As I have tried to argue, Thulstrup makes too much of the ways in which the secondhand accounts diverge from Hegel himself since he ultimately wants to argue that Kierkegaard was only familiar with the distorted secondhand versions and thus could not possibly have been influenced by Hegel himself. While this might be the sense in which a purist would take it, this forgets that there are numerous thinkers in the nineteenth century who are designated as “Hegelians” in the history of philosophy, even though their thought deviates from Hegel significantly, indeed deviates from it much more than the examples from Heiberg outlined here. Thus, it would be absurd to insist on an exact knowledge of Hegel when speaking of the question of positive influence. The result of such an insistence would be a purist position that is so strict that it 147

148

149

Kts. [ Jakob Peter Mynster], “Om den religiøse Overbeviisning,” Dansk Ugeskrift, vol. 3, no. 76 and 77, 1833, pp. 257–258. (Reprinted in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 93.) Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1,” in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 19, 1838, Article I, p. 335. Frederik Christian Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, betragtet i Forhold til vor Tid, Copenhagen 1838, p. 53. ASKB 778. Quoted above on p. 73. Adolph Peter Adler, “J. L. Heiberg, Det logiske System, a) Væren og Intet, b) Vorden, c) Tilværen. I,” op. cit., pp. 474–482.

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would be impossible for there ever to be any actual cases of it. On this definition there would be no Hegelians at all, and Heiberg himself, given his deviations from Hegel’s primary texts, could not be designated as such. Moreover, the exact nature of Kierkegaard’s knowledge of Hegel is in a certain sense not so important given the character of the influence. The young Kierkegaard uses certain concepts and analyses from Hegel’s philosophy for his own purposes. Given that his goal is to apply these concepts and analyses in his own context and in accordance with his own agenda, he is distorting them (at least with regard to their original context) in any case. Thus, it does not matter so much if the original concept comes directly from Hegel himself or in the form of a slight variant through the filter of Heiberg or others. What is important is that there is a general thought or concept that can be traced back to Hegel. In this sense one can see a clear influence of Hegel on Kierkegaard in specific cases, and one need not stubbornly insist on proof of Kierkegaard’s familiarity with specific passages in Hegel’s primary texts as Thulstrup does. At this early period, Kierkegaard perceives no contradiction in, on the one hand, using aspects of Hegel’s thought in From the Papers of One Still Living and, on the other hand, satirizing specific Hegelians in The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars. This significant point is one that many commentators have failed to notice. For Thulstrup, for example, a criticism of any one of the Hegelians for anything at all is ipso facto a criticism of Hegel himself. Instead, one must examine the nature of the criticism and see if it is actually some aspect of Hegel’s thought that is being criticized or merely a specific person. Kierkegaard himself distinguished between Hegel, to whom he was generally deferential during this early period, and specific Hegelians. In From the Papers of One Still Living, he is quite positive with respect to Hegel’s actual ideas and philosophy; by contrast, in The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, he is quite critical of Martensen who bears the brunt of his satire. This distinction is important since later Kierkegaard comes into open dispute with Martensen and others and comes to criticize them under the name of Hegel; however, all the evidence speaks for the view that he is in fact positively disposed towards Hegel’s philosophy itself during this early period.

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3 THE IRONIC THESIS AND HEGEL’S PRESENCE IN THE CONCEPT OF IRONY

Kierkegaard’s dissertation, The Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates (1841), is the first work in which there are clear signs of a careful study of Hegel’s primary texts. Up until this point in Kierkegaard’s incipient literary career, the references to Hegel are vague, and there are no extended textual analyses of his works. By contrast, The Concept of Irony contains several quotations from a number of Hegel’s writings and lectures as well as detailed discussions of a number of his most famous analyses. The absence of such quotations and analyses in the works prior to this makes it difficult to evaluate with any certainty what Kierkegaard actually knew of Hegel, but here for the first time there is a wealth of material that can be evaluated. In this work Kierkegaard cites extensively Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History,1 History of Philosophy,2 and Aesthetics3 as well as the Philosophy of Right4 and Hegel’s review of Solger’s posthumous writings.5 1 2

3

4

5

Vorlesungen u¨ ber die Philosophie der Geschichte, ed. by Eduard Gans, Berlin 1837, vol. 9 in Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1–18, Berlin 1832–45. Vorlesungen u¨ ber die Geschichte der Philosophie, I–III, ed. by Karl Ludwig Michelet, Berlin 1833–36, vols. 13–15 in Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1–18, Berlin 1832–45. ASKB 557–559. Vorlesungen u¨ ber Aesthetik, I–III, ed. by Heinrich Gustav Hotho, Berlin 1835–38, vols. 10-1, 10-2, 10-3 in Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1–18, Berlin 1832–45. ASKB 1384– 1386. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse, Berlin 1821. Reprinted in Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1–18, Berlin 1832–45, vol. 8, ed. by Eduard Gans, Berlin 1833. Zweite Auflage 1840. ASKB 551. ¨ “Uber Solger’s nachgelassene Schriften und Briefwechsel. Herausgegeben von Ludwig Tieck und Friedrich von Raumer. Erster Band 780 S. mit Vorr. XVI S. Zweiter Band 784 S. Leipzig, 1826,” Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik, Erster Artikel (March 1828), no. 51–52, pp. 403–416, no. 53–54, pp. 417–428; Zweiter Artikel (June 1828), no. 105–106, pp. 838–848, no. 107–108, pp. 849–864, no. 109–110, pp. 865–870. Reprinted in Vermischte Schriften, I–II, ed. by Friedrich Förster and Ludwig Boumann, Berlin 1834–35, vols. 16–17 in Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1–18, Berlin 1832–45, vol. 16 (1834), pp. 436–506. ASKB 555–556. In Jub. vol. 20, pp. 132–202. English translation: “Solger’s Posthumous Writings and Correspondence,” tr. by Diana Behler, in Hegel, Encyclopaedia of

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In The Concept of Irony Kierkegaard’s main object of study is irony as employed by Socrates. This analysis occupies all of Part One and some of Part Two of the work. But the text goes beyond a study of the figure of Socrates himself. Kierkegaard also examines the views on irony of a number of German writers, such as Friedrich von Schlegel (1772– 1829), Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853), Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger (1780–1819), Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, the author behind the pseudonym Jean Paul (1763–1825), and Hegel himself. Part One of the work consists of three chapters. In the lengthy first chapter, “The View Made Possible,” Kierkegaard analyzes the person of Socrates based on the various pictures of him presented by the primary sources – Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes – and attempts to bring to the fore hints of Socratic irony found there. He consistently interprets Socratic irony as something essentially negative in character, which refutes and destroys arguments, customs, traditions, and so forth, without having any positive content with which to replace them. There are only occasional references to Hegel in this chapter.6 In Chapter 2, “The Actualization of the View,” Kierkegaard analyzes the daimon as well as Socrates’ trial and condemnation and attempts to extend his interpretation of Socratic irony to these subjects. Hegel plays a particularly important role in this discussion and indeed can be said to dominate it. In Chapter 3, “The View Made Necessary,” Kierkegaard discusses the Greek Sophistic movement and the schools of Greek thought influenced by Socrates. In this context he interprets Socrates as a world-historical individual in the transformation of Greek culture. There he argues in Hegelian fashion that Socrates’ irony is necessary in the movement of world history. Here as well Hegel is cited frequently and is an important figure in the discussion. Part One is followed by an appendix entitled, “Hegel’s View of Socrates,” which treats Hegel’s account explicitly and which will also be examined in some detail later. While the first part of the dissertation treats the figure of Socrates historically and takes up the issue of his relation to irony, the second discusses the concept of irony on its own terms. In this context Kierkegaard examines the notion of irony of the German Romantics, which he contrasts to Hegel’s view of Socratic irony. Kierkegaard follows Hegel here and interprets Socratic irony as being world-historically necessary and thus justified in contrast to the irony of the Romantics, which is merely flippant. For Kierkegaard, the irony of Tieck and Schlegel is merely indiscriminate, nihilistic criticism in contrast to that of Socrates, which,

6

the Philosophical Sciences in Outline and Critical Writings, ed. by Ernst Behler, New York: Continuum 1990, pp. 265–319. E.g., CI, p. 35; SKS, vol. 1, p. 96. CI, p. 46; SKS, vol. 1, p. 107. CI, p. 101; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 154–155. CI, p. 132; SKS, vol. 1, p. 183. CI, p. 135fn.; SKS, vol. 1, p. 186fn. CI, p. 152fn.; SKS, vol. 1, p. 202fn.


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although negative, is guided by a profound moral vision. Socrates thus remains serious in his irony, whereas the Romantics use it only as an instrument for play. Kierkegaard’s discussion of both the figure of Socrates and irony in the German Romantics is largely shaped by Hegel to whom he constantly refers throughout this part of the text. Although there have been a number of disputes about the role and status of Hegel in this work, there is overwhelming evidence that The Concept of Irony is a deeply Hegelian text. Indeed, Høffding argues that The Concept of Irony is of little value since Kierkegaard at the time was so much under Hegel’s sway.7 According to his view, this Hegelian orientation caused Kierkegaard to misinterpret the figure of Socrates. Following Høffding, Himmelstrup argues that Kierkegaard was essentially Hegelian when he wrote this text, and therefore that his understanding of Socrates was largely shaped by Hegel.8 Likewise, Hirsch9 and Fenger10 also argue for a strong Hegelian influence in this work. In the present chapter, I would like to support the view of these commentators: I wish to argue that, whatever Kierkegaard’s later relation to Hegel might have been, here in his student years he was clearly infatuated by aspects of Hegel’s philosophy, which he unapologetically adopted and employed. Evidence for this thesis can be found in both the content of the work itself and in Kierkegaard’s later comments on it. In Section I of the present chapter I will address the well-known claim that Kierkegaard’s apparently positive use of Hegel in The Concept of Irony is itself merely ironic and thus is to be understood as an attempt to criticize Hegel indirectly and to fool the Hegelian faculty members on Kierkegaard’s dissertation committee. I will argue that this view is not plausible since it is not in harmony with the historical circumstances surrounding the dissertation. In the second section I will evaluate some of Kierkegaard’s own statements about his intellectual development, which indicate that he himself regarded his dissertation as being profoundly influenced by Hegel. In Section III, I will address the claim that the sequence of the three chapters of Part One of the book follows a Hegelian pattern due to the references to the modal categories of possibility, 7

8 9 10

Harald Høffding, “Søren Kierkegaard,” in his Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, p. 151. He too argues that Kierkegaard had a Hegelian phase early in his career. Jens Himmelstrup, Søren Kierkegaards Opfattelse af Sokrates, Copenhagen: Arnold Busck 1924, pp. 42–84. Emanuel Hirsch, Kierkegaard-Studien, vols. 1–2, Gutersloh: ¨ C. Bertelsmann 1933, vol. 2, pp. 572–602. Henning Fenger, Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, tr. by George C. Schoolfield, New Haven, Connecticut, and London: Yale University Press 1980, p. 147: “As a historian, one can also read Kierkegaard’s dissertation as a piece of Hegelian writing which – without following Hegel in all its details – must be regarded all the same as a respectable piece of work in the spirit of the Hegelian school.”


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actuality, and necessity, which are found in the titles of these chapters. I will argue that there is nothing particularly Hegelian about this pattern, which resembles more closely Kant’s account of the modal categories than Hegel’s. Sections IV–VIII will constitute the actual textual analysis in the present chapter. With the help of this exegesis, I wish to argue that Kierkegaard follows almost to the letter Hegel’s treatment of Socrates in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Moreover, Kierkegaard’s account of Romantic irony comes virtually verbatim from Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. By means of these similarities, I hope to establish that The Concept of Irony is a profoundly Hegelian work with respect to its content.

i. the ironic thesis At first glance, the issue of Hegel in The Concept of Irony seems straightforward and unproblematic. Given the number of quotations and allusions to him in the text, it would seem that Hegel’s influence is so obvious that it is hardly in need of demonstration. Moreover, given that this is not a pseudonymous work, the interpreter can seemingly attribute the Hegelian views expressed here to Kierkegaard in a more or less straightforward manner. Unfortunately, this seemingly obvious point has been rendered complicated by what has come to be known as “the ironic interpretation” of the work. As has been noted,11 The Concept of Irony is one of the most difficult texts for Thulstrup to make sense of due to the fact that it seems to rely so heavily on Hegel. Thulstrup is at pains to minimize the importance of Hegel, whose influence during this period Kierkegaard himself acknowledges. Thulstrup tries to avoid this problem by arguing that The Concept of Irony is itself an ironic work and that Kierkegaard was cunningly assuming the role of a Hegelian in order to criticize Hegel indirectly or ironically. This thesis draws on a tradition of Kierkegaard interpretation that goes back at least as far as Pierre Mesnard’s Le vrai visage de Kierkegaard (1948).12 Since Mesnard’s work, it has been taken up and championed by a host of others, and today it has become so prevalent that it seems to be the standard view of the matter.13 11 12

13

Introduction, Section II. Pierre Mesnard, Le vrai visage de Kierkegaard, Paris: Beauchesne et ses fils 1948. N.b. Helweg hints at this view as early as 1855: Hans Friedrich Helweg, “Hegelianismen i Danmark,” Dansk Kirketidende, vol. 10, no. 51, December 16, 1855, p. 830. For example, Wilhelm Anz, “Die religiöse Unterscheidung,” in Symposiom Kierkegaardianum, ed. by Wilhelm Anz, et al. (Orbis Litterarum, Tome 10, Fasc. 1-2), Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1955, pp. 5–17. J. Heywood Thomas, Subjectivity and Paradox, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1957, p. 11. Lee M. Capel, “Historical Introduction,” in his translation of The Concept of Irony, London: Collins 1966, e.g., p. 8. Roger Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia 1993, pp. 44–46. Louis Mackey, Points of View. Readings of Kierkegaard. Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1986, pp. 1–22. For a dissenting view, see Sophia Scopetea, Kierkegaard og græciteten. En kamp med ironi, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1995, pp. 101–106.


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At the end of the chapter which he dedicates to The Concept of Irony, Mesnard merely suggests his ironic interpretation without any real argument or evidence. There he refers to an early German translator, Wilhelm Kütemeyer, who also hinted at this view.14 Mesnard claims: Kierkegaard’s attitude in this whole affair is in fact manifestly ironic, one could even add, ironic in the second degree. The first consisted of “presenting under the stamp of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen his most secret ideas, hidden behind the guise of a historic study.”15 The second aimed at nothing less than solemnly registering his declared purpose to destroy the system and to vex the established order and nevertheless to receive all the yes-votes from the representatives of Hegelian philosophy and bourgeois society.16

According to Mesnard, Kierkegaard used irony at two different levels. First, it was the subject of his dissertation; this use is straightforward and unproblematic. Second, and more interestingly, the dissertation itself was ironic at a metalevel in the sense that Kierkegaard himself was ironically playing the role of a Hegelian to criticize precisely that position. This was then presumably a part of Kierkegaard’s strategy of indirect communication, which forbade him from criticizing Hegel directly. According to Mesnard, Kierkegaard pretended here ironically to be a Hegelian for two reasons: (1) in order to fool the Hegelian faculty members into accepting his dissertation, which was in fact, unbeknownst to them, critical of Hegel, and (2) in order to dupe bourgeois society, which was dominated by Hegelianism, and deceive it into giving its approbation as well. Both of these purported motives prove ill-founded when one examines the actual historical circumstances surrounding the work. The first motivation Mesnard attributes to Kierkegaard is the desire to fool the Hegelian faculty members by pretending to be a Hegelian. This argument proves implausible when one considers the composition of Kierkegaard’s dissertation committee and of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen at the time.17 As was noted previously,18 there was never really any unified Hegelian school per se in Denmark, and the claim that the faculty at the University of Copenhagen was dominated by Hegelians is simply not true. Kierkegaard’s dissertation advisor and first 14 15 16 17

18

Wilhelm Kutemeyer, ¨ Der Begriff der Ironie mit ständiger Rücksicht auf Sokrates von S.A. Kierkegaard, Munich: Kaiser Verlag 1929. Ibid., p. 343. Pierre Mesnard, Le vrai visage de Kierkegaard, op. cit., pp. 178–179. For a complete account of the circumstances of Kierkegaard’s dissertation see Carl Weltzer’s “Omkring Søren Kierkegaards Disputats,” in Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, sixth series, ed. by J. Oskar Andersen and Bjørn Kornerup, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1948–50, pp. 284–311. See Encounters with Kierkegaard. A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1996, pp. 29–32. Chapter 1, Section III.


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reader was Sibbern, who was not a Hegelian but, on the contrary, one of the most outspoken critics of Hegelianism in Denmark. In 1838, three years before Kierkegaard’s dissertation, Sibbern published his review of Heiberg’s Perseus in which he was critical of both Hegel and Heiberg’s Hegelianism.19 Thus, he could certainly not have been the one whom the dissertation was intended to fool. Before the oral defense, the work had to be approved by six professors on the faculty. Three professors of classical philology also served as official readers of Kierkegaard’s dissertation: Johan Nikolai Madvig (1804–86), Peter Oluf Brøndsted (1780–1842), and Frederik Christian Petersen (1786–1859). None of these men had any stake whatsoever in Hegelianism, and they could likewise not have been among the Hegelians whom Kierkegaard intended to dupe.20 In addition, the famous physicist, then rector of the university, Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851), read and approved the dissertation. Ørsted was well read in philosophy and highly influenced by Kant. He can by no means be seen as an advocate of Hegelianism.21 In fact, in a letter to Heiberg, he reports that his progress in philosophy stopped with Hegel whom he found dry and impossible to read.22 Moreover, his questions to Heiberg show that he was quite suspicious of the new trend. Thus, none of these men, all senior scholars on the committee, can be rightly considered a Hegelian.23 The final reader, Martensen, was a known Hegelian, but he only became a member of the dissertation committee by chance and at the last 19

20

21 22

23

Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1, Juni 1837. Kjøbenhavn. Reitzels Forlag. XIV og 264 S. 8. Priis 1 Rbd. 84 Skill. – (Med stadigt Hensyn til Dr. Rothes: Læren om Treenighed og Forsoning. Et speculativt Forsøg i Anledning af Reformationsfesten.),” in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 19, 1838, Article I, pp. 283–360; Article II, pp. 424–460; Article III, pp. 546–582; 20, 1838, Article IV, pp. 20–60; Article V, pp. 103–136; Article VI, pp. 193–244; Article VII, pp. 293– 308; Article VIII, pp. 405–449. Frederik Christian Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, betragtet i Forhold til vor Tid, Copenhagen 1838. ASKB 778. In Madvig’s autobiography, Livserindringer (Copenhagen 1887), he describes the academic aspiration that haunted him during the early 1830s. He recalls: “It was entirely contrary to my nature to attempt a superficial satisfaction of this aspiration through the appropriation of the formulas of the philosophical system which was dominant for a time – the Hegelian system – and only later did I find the time and occasion for a more continuous study of the philosophical systems from Spinoza and then from Kant onward.” See Harald Høffding, “Hans Christian Ørsted,” in his Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, pp. 49–56. Ørsted’s letter to Heiberg, April 1, 1825, Letter 127 in Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Johan Ludvig Heiberg, vols. 1–5, ed. by Morten Borup, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1947–50, vol. 1, p. 171. It must be noted that Madvig, Petersen, and Ørsted worked together with Heiberg on his journals, but one cannot properly speak of them as belonging to his school or as Hegelians since all of these journals, with the exception of Perseus, were general literary journals with no particular Hegelian affiliation. See Paul V. Rubow, Heiberg og hans skole i kritiken, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1953, p. 134.


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minute, and Kierkegaard had no way of knowing ahead of time that he would be one of the readers. Sibbern, as Kierkegaard’s advisor, was responsible for getting together the six signatures required for the acceptance of the work by the faculty. After he had the first five together from the aforementioned colleagues, he had to cast around for a final reader. The logical choice would have been the new professor of philosophy, Rasmus Nielsen, who had replaced Poul Martin Møller. Nielsen had been an enthusiast of Hegel’s philosophy at this time but had only just received the professorship (professor extraordinarius) at the University of Copenhagen on April 22, 1841. Kierkegaard submitted his dissertation only a short time later on June 3 of the same year. Thus, he could not have known ahead of time of the possibility of this Hegelian being a reader on his dissertation committee. It would therefore be historically mistaken to think that Kierkegaard formulated a strategy of an ironic dissertation in order to fool Nielsen. Sibbern approached Nielsen about the dissertation, but the latter declined to have anything to do with it since he had already been thoroughly alienated by Kierkegaard’s unprovoked attack on his competence.24 Thus, by default Martensen became the sixth reader.25 Moreover, although he had been a lecturer from 1838, Martensen only became professor in January 1841, and thus could not have been perceived by Kierkegaard as a potential reader before that time.26 But the dissertation is thought to have been completed between January 10 and June 3, 1841.27 Given that Kierkegaard had no way of foreseeing the course of events involved in Martensen’s appointment, it is impossible that he could have formulated his purported ironic strategy during the years previous 24

25 26

27

When Sibbern encouraged Kierkegaard to apply for an academic position at the University of Copenhagen, Kierkegaard expressed reservations, stating that he did not feel adequately prepared. Hans Brøchner recounts the exchange in his recollections: “Once he [Kierkegaard] told me that Sibbern had suggested he apply for a position as a lecturer in philosophy. Kierkegaard had replied that in that case he would have to insist on a couple of years in which to prepare himself. ‘Oh! How can you imagine that they would hire you under such conditions?’ asked Sibbern. ‘Yes, of course, I could do like Rasmus Nielsen and let them hire me unprepared.’ Sibbern became cross and said: ‘You always have to pick on Nielsen!’” When Nielsen got wind of this, he refused to be a reader on Kierkegaard’s dissertation committee, even though Sibbern asked him personally and even though he would have been the logical choice. Hans Brøchner, “Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard,” Det Nittende Aarhundrede, Maanedsskrift for Literatur og Kritik, vol. 5, March 1877, § 21. In English in Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 235. See also Carl Weltzer, “Omkring Søren Kierkegaards Disputats,” op. cit., p. 286. Søren Bruun and Johnny Kondrup, “Tekstredegørelse” to Om Begrebet Ironi in SKS, vol. K1, p. 139. See Skat Arildsen, “Universitetsansættelse og Avancement,” in his Biskop Hans Lassen Martensen. Hans Liv, Udvikling og Arbejde, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1932, pp. 151–155. The King of Denmark approved the appointment in December 1840. Søren Bruun and Johnny Kondrup, “Tekstredegørelse” to Om Begrebet Ironi in SKS, vol. K1, p. 128.


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when he conceived of the project and began working on it. It must be recalled that there is evidence that Kierkegaard conceived of The Concept of Irony and began work on it as early as 1837.28 Moreover, the bulk of the work seems to have been written between summer 1838 and summer 1839.29 Thus, the motivation that Mesnard cites of wanting to dupe the Hegelians on the faculty is based on historical inaccuracies. Aside from Martensen, there were no Hegelians to dupe, and with respect to him, since he was appointed professor so late, it is impossible that Kierkegaard could have known that he was going to be a reader at all. Mesnard cites as the second motivation the desire to dupe the status quo and “bourgeois society.” This too evinces a misunderstanding of the political and intellectual climate in which Kierkegaard’s dissertation was written. During the years after Hegel’s death in 1831 his philosophy was regarded, contrary to Mesnard’s claim, as a grave danger to the bourgeois social order. Hegel’s students, Feuerbach and Strauss, had shocked the theological world with their works. When it became known that Feuerbach was the author of Gedanken u¨ ber Tod und Unsterblichkeit,30 he was fired from his teaching post and barred from university life forever thereafter. Some five years later Strauss lost his position at the University of Tübingen after the publication of his Das Leben Jesu.31 Hegel’s philosophy was perceived as such a threat to established religion, politics, and morals that the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, in 1840 saw himself obliged to appoint Schelling to a professorship at the University of Berlin for the express purpose of destroying the dangerous Hegelian tendencies toward pantheism among the students.32 In 1841 a ban was put on all left Hegelians, which prohibited them from teaching at a Prussian university.33 The journal, the Hallische Jahrbücher, which had been one of the most important forums for the dissemination of Hegelian philosophy, was outlawed in 1841 by the Prussian government.34 In 1843 its successor, the Deutsche Jahrbücher was banned, and its editor Ruge along with other Hegelians fled into exile. 28

29 30

31 32

33 34

See JP, vol. 5, 5262; SKS, vol. 17, p. 240, DD:58. JP, vol. 2, 1708; SKS, vol. 17, p. 248, DD:83. JP, vol. 2, 1714; SKS, vol. 18, p. 93, FF:90. JP, vol. 2, 1703; SKS, vol. 17, p. 235, DD:38. JP, vol. 4, 4243; SKS, vol. 17, pp. 245–246, DD:75. Søren Bruun and Johnny Kondrup, “Tekstredegørelse” to Om Begrebet Ironi in SKS, vol. K1, p. 128. Ludwig Feuerbach, Gedanken u¨ ber Tod und Unsterblichkeit aus den Papieren eines Denkers, nebst einem Anhang theologisch-satyrischer Xenien, herausgegeben von einem seiner Freunde, Nuremburg ¨ 1830. David Friedrich Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, vols. 1–2, Tubingen ¨ 1835–36. See F. W. J. Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung 1841–42, ed. by Manfred Frank, Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main 1977; third revised edition, 1993. Anhang II: “Historische Hintergrunde ¨ der Berufung Schellings; Schellings Auftreten in Berlin 1841,” p. 486. William J. Brazill, The Young Hegelians, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press 1970, p. 87. Ibid., pp. 74–82, pp. 87–88.


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The situation was little different in Denmark. As was noted previously, Martensen’s lectures at the University of Copenhagen in 1838 on Hegel and speculative philosophy were strikingly popular among the students, but he was attacked publicly for corrupting the morals of the youth by introducing Hegel’s philosophy into theological questions.35 Moreover, the publication of Feuerbach’s Wesen des Christentums36 and Strauss’ Christliche Glaubenslehre37 caused great alarm among the Danish intellectual community at this time. In 1842, only a year after Kierkegaard’s dissertation, Hans Brøchner, a student of theology who had translated some of Strauss’ works, was refused the opportunity to take his examination by the Theological Faculty at the University of Copenhagen when it became known that he shared some of Strauss’ views.38 This was not an isolated incident. As one intellectual historian records: “The storm caused by Brøchner’s application can be understood as the clearest illustration of a more general tendency.”39 Another Danish theologian, Andreas Frederik Beck, was made the target of criticism in 1842 for his The Concept of Myth or the Form of the Religious Spirit40 in which he espoused the views of Bruno Bauer.41 For his views, he was barred from obtaining a position in the service of the Danish Church. It was these events that compelled Martensen to modify his position publicly in order to distance himself from Hegelianism, which he did in his article “The Present

35

36 37 38

39

40 41

See the anonymous criticism: “Nogle Træk til en Charakteristik af den philosophiske Aand, som for Tiden findes hos de Studerende ved Kjøbenhavns Universitet,” Kjøbenhavnsposten, vol. 14, no. 25, January 26, 1840, pp. 97–99. Martensen’s response: “Philosophisk Beskedenhed i Kjøbenhavnsposten,” Fædrelandet, vol. 1, no. 50, January 29,1840, pp. 259–261. The anonymous rejoinder: “Philosophiske Suffisance i Fædrelandet,” Kjøbenhavnsposten, vol. 14, no. 31, February 1, 1840, pp. 121–124. Martensen’s response: “Erklæring,” Fædrelandet, vol. 1, no. 56, February 4, 1840, pp. 315–316. The final article, “Sidste Indlæg: Sagen contra Lector Martensen som Mandatarius for Hegel & Comp,” Kjøbenhavnsposten, vol. 14, no. 41, February 11, 1840, pp. 161–163. Ludwig Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums, Leipzig 1841. See ASKB 488. David Friedrich Strauss, Christliche Glaubenslehre, vols. 1–2, Tubingen ¨ 1840–41. See ASKB 803–804. See S.V. Rasmussen, Den unge Brøchner, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1966, pp. 16–31. See also Harald Høffding, “Hans Brøchner,” in his Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, pp. 196–206. Frederik Nielsen, Minder, Oplevelser og Iagttagelser, Aalborg 1881, p. 43f. F. L. Liebenberg, Nogle Optegnelser om mit Levnet, Copenhagen 1894, p. 26f. Jens Holger Schjørring, Teologi og filosofi. Nogle analyser og dokumenter vedrørende Hegelianismen i dansk teologi, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1974, pp. 33, 36ff. Jens Holger Schjørring, “Martensen,” in Kierkegaard’s Teachers, ed. by Niels Thulstrup and Marie Mikulová Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 10), Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag 1982, p. 192. See also Leif Grane, “Det Teologiske Fakultet 1830–1925,” in Københavns Universitet 1479–1979, ed. by Leif Grane, vol. 5, Det Teologiske Fakultet, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1980, p. 366. Andreas Frederik Beck, Begrebet Mythus eller den religiøse Aands Form, Copenhagen 1842. ASKB 424. Jens Holger Schjørring, Teologi og filosofi, op. cit., 1974, pp. 36–49.


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Religious Crisis.”42 Admittedly, some of these events took place a year after Kierkegaard’s dissertation and in an atmosphere where things changed quickly. Nonetheless they do give evidence for the fact that different aspects of Hegel’s philosophy were highly controversial and that some of his followers were regarded as dangerous. Given this great stir surrounding Hegelianism at the time, it would be an absurd historical error to think that Kierkegaard, by portraying himself as a Hegelian, would thus have ingratiated himself to bourgeois society. Apart from these problems of the historical context, there are also some deep theoretical problems with the ironic reading: namely, it covertly presupposes an anti-Hegelian stance based presumably on other, later texts (e.g., the Concluding Unscientific Postscript). But one could with equal justice make the opposite presupposition and claim that Kierkegaard’s “anti-Hegelian” statements in the later texts are ironic and that he was thus covertly pro-Hegelian based on a reading of this text. The ironic thesis thus plays a double game with a secret agenda: it wishes to dismiss certain readings as ironic, but in order to do so it must tacitly favor other readings that in fact are not ironic but rather transparent, but it provides no criteria for distinguishing between these and no evidence for the reading it covertly favors. In this way the ironic reading presupposes a position for which it is not prepared to argue. In the final analysis, there is no evidence that Kierkegaard wanted to be ironic in his dissertation in the way indicated by Mesnard. The ironic reading is anachronistic since it transposes Kierkegaard’s later polemical rhetoric toward Hegel onto this early period. Kierkegaard was during his time as a student rather ambivalent to Hegel, and in the works and journal entries prior to The Concept of Irony there is no evidence of the later polemic. In addition to this historical information, a number of other arguments based on evidence both internal and external to the text refute the ironic reading. First, I will examine the external evidence, which includes Kierkegaard’s own assessment of the work, and after this I will turn to an examination of the text itself.

ii. kierkegaard’s own assessment of his hegelianism Apart from the actual content of the work, which will be examined later, there are many reasons external to the text itself to believe that Kierkegaard was strongly under Hegel’s influence at the time of the composition of The Concept of Irony. Above all, his own later assessments of the work consistently describe it as Hegelian in character. In the journals and papers from the year 1850, almost ten years after the dissertation, there is 42

Hans Lassen Martensen, “Nutidens religiøse Crisis,” Intelligensblade, vol. 1, no. 3, 1842, pp. 53–73.


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a revealing passage which Himmelstrup uses as his point of departure.43 There Kierkegaard writes: Influenced as I was by Hegel and whatever was modern, without the maturity really to comprehend greatness, I could not resist pointing out somewhere in my dissertation44 that it was a defect on the part of Socrates to disregard the whole and only consider individuals numerically. What a Hegelian fool I was! It is precisely this that powerfully demonstrates what a great ethicist Socrates was.45

Although it is evident that Kierkegaard was critical of Hegel when writing this entry in 1850, nonetheless he says rather clearly that at the time of his dissertation he was under Hegel’s sway, indeed, so much so that he mistakenly criticized Socrates along Hegelian lines. The self-critical expression, “a Hegelian fool,” leaves little ambiguity in this regard. Thulstrup cites this passage with some embarrassment in a footnote and tries unconvincingly to make sense of it by arguing that it too is ironic.46 But this journal entry in no way supports an ironic interpretation. Kierkegaard says here with regret that he was “a Hegelian fool” and not that he was pretending to be one for the sake of issuing a criticism. On the contrary, he says in this passage that he regrets giving a Hegelian critique of Socrates. If he were merely playing the role of a Hegelian ironically, then he would presumably have no reason for regret. This passage is not anomalous. In a similar one from 1854, Kierkegaard expresses regret at having promulgated in his dissertation an aspect of Hegel’s doctrine of the state. He writes: “That the state in a Christian sense is supposed to be what Hegel taught – namely that it has moral significance, that true virtue can appear only in the state (something I also childishly babbled after him in my dissertation47 ), that the goal of the state is to improve men – is obviously nonsense.”48 Here Kierkegaard 43 44

45 46 47

48

Jens Himmelstrup, Søren Kierkegaards Opfattelse af Sokrates, op. cit., p. 12. Presumably CI, p. 234; SKS, vol. 1, p. 275: “Here the subject shows itself to be the deciding factor, as that which arbitrarily determines itself within itself. But the limiting of the universal that takes place thereby is one that the subject himself arbitrarily posits at every moment. It is possible for this curtailment of the universal to remain fast and not be occasional, for the universal to be acknowledged in its determinateness, only in a total system of actuality. But this Socrates lacks. He negated the state, but he did not come back again to the state in a higher form in which the infinite he negatively required is affirmed.” JP, vol. 4, 4281; Pap. X-3 A 477. Translation slightly modified. (Cited previously on p. 17.) Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, p. 215fn. Presumably CI, pp. 228–235; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 271–276. For example, CI, pp. 229; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 271–272: “But Socrates destroyed the immediate, substantial political consciousness and did not arrive at the idea of the state, and as a result virtue can be defined only in this abstract way and has its reality neither in the state nor in the full personality yielded only by the state.” JP, vol. 4, 4238; Pap. XI-2 A 108, p. 114.


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admits once again by way of self-criticism to having parroted one of Hegel’s claims. As in the preceding passage, it is clear that Kierkegaard no longer believes this to be true and regrets having claimed it previously, but this entry leaves no room for doubt that, at least according to his own interpretation of his intellectual development, he uncritically accepted some aspects of Hegel’s philosophy at the time of his dissertation and was not merely ironically pretending to do so. Finally, there is in the journals from 1845 a relevant entry, which was originally a part of a draft of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. There Kierkegaard under the pseudonym of Johannes Climacus criticizes himself as being under the sway of Hegel in The Concept of Irony: “In his dissertation, Magister Kierkegaard was alert enough to discern the Socratic but is considered not to have understood it, probably because, with the help of Hegelian philosophy, he has become super-clever and objective and positive, or has not had the courage to acknowledge the negation.”49 By saying that he used “the help of Hegelian philosophy” and by designating himself as “objective” and “positive” – terms that he consistently associates with Hegel – Kierkegaard at this later date seems again to think that his interpretation of Socrates in the dissertation was too Hegelian in character. As in the other journal entries, he again indicates that this allegiance to Hegel at that time led him to misunderstand important aspects of the figure of Socrates. All of these passages demonstrate that Kierkegaard at a later date judged himself to have been strongly influenced by Hegel while he was a student writing The Concept of Irony and that he later repudiated these aspects of Hegelianism. They make it clear that he sees the Hegelian influence as only a passing phase that he later rejected. The tone of selfcriticism and regret provides clear evidence that Kierkegaard was truly influenced by Hegel and was not merely pretending to be a Hegelian. If he had intentionally wanted to parody Hegelian philosophy by playing the role of a Hegelian, then there would be no need for regret or self-critique at a later period. Kierkegaard’s assessment of himself as a Hegelian at this time squares with the accounts given about him by some of his contemporaries. For example, Sibbern recalls as follows a chance encounter with Kierkegaard on the street during roughly this time: I do remember, however, that once, during his Hegelian period, he met me at Gammeltorv and asked me what relationship obtained between philosophy and actuality, which astonished me, because the gist of the whole of my philosophy was the study of life and actuality. But subsequently I of 49

JP, vol. 5, 5796; Pap. VI B 35.24. See CUP1, p. 503; SKS, vol. 7, p. 456: “What, then, is irony, if one wants to call Socrates an ironist and does not, like Magister Kierkegaard, consciously or unconsciously want to bring out only the one side?”


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course realized that the question was a natural one for a Hegelianized thinker.50

What is important here is not so much the question posed but rather Sibbern’s allusion to Kierkegaard’s Hegelian period and his description of him as a “Hegelianized thinker.” Sibbern speaks of this Hegelian period in a manner that suggests that it was generally recognized and in no need of explanation or defense. The fact that Sibbern designates it as a “period” implies that it was something transitory, which Kierkegaard later came to reject. Sibbern’s remarks are consistent with what Brøchner says of Kierkegaard, when he writes: “For a long time he was much occupied with Hegelian philosophy, which indeed seems to have overwhelmed him until an ethical respect for the conditions of existence taught him to see the errors in that philosophy.”51 Brøchner here also implies that Kierkegaard had a Hegelian period that he later moved beyond. This remark comes in the context of a discussion about the main influences on Kierkegaard during his studies at the University of Copenhagen, which would seem to imply that his Hegelian period took place during this time. Given this evidence, one can infer that Sibbern and Brøchner refer to this period when Kierkegaard was still a student. Both Kierkegaard’s own accounts of his intellectual development and the accounts of his contemporaries attest to the fact that he had a Hegelian period early in his career. The results from Chapter 2 clearly support this conclusion since, as was seen, there was ample evidence of a positive Hegelian influence in From the Papers of One Still Living and scattered journal entries from the period. Given this, there is every reason to suspect that there might be some Hegelian elements in Kierkegaard’s other works from this period, the most important of which is The Concept of Irony. The nature of these elements now remains to be explored.

iii. the structure of the text In addition to this external evidence provided primarily by the journals and papers and secondhand reports, it has been claimed that the very 50

51

H. P. Barfod (ed.), “Indledende Notiser,” in his Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer. 1833–1843, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1869, pp. lii–liii. Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., “Letter F. C. Sibbern to H. P. Barfod,” September 19, 1869, p. 217. Translation slightly modified. The similarity between this remark and a journal entry from this period suggests this dating. JP, vol. 2, 1592; SKS, vol. 19, p. 245, Not8:51. “Letter H. Brøchner to C. K. F. Molbech,” February 17, 1856. Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 251.


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structure of The Concept of Irony itself is Hegelian in nature.52 Specifically, it is argued that there is a Hegelian triad of categories in the movement of the three chapters that constitute Part One. According to this view, in the titles of these chapters – “The View Made Possible,” “The Actualization of the View,” and “The View Made Necessary” – Kierkegaard uses the purportedly Hegelian categories – possibility, actuality, and necessity – to structure his work. Thus, it is claimed, he seems to want to convey the idea that there is a Hegelian methodology operative in the work. The issue is, however, a complicated one since these categories are, of course, not original in Hegel but rather go back to Aristotle.53 Kant’s understanding of the categories is most important for the issue at hand. In his table of categories in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant lays out twelve categories in four different groups. He assigns under the categories of modality the following pairs: possibility/impossibility, existence/nonexistence, and necessity/contingency. With the exception of the second category, existence (“Dasein” instead of “Wirklichkeit”), these categories fit Kierkegaard’s scheme. This variant is, however, insignificant since the two terms were taken synonymously as is seen by the fact that in Hegel’s lectures one finds them used interchangeably.54 Moreover, in Martensen’s account of Kant’s categories in his “Lectures on the History of Modern Philosophy from Kant to Hegel” (given in Winter Semester 1838–39) he uses “Virkelighed” and not “Tilværelse,”55 the Danish equivalent of “Dasein.” This might be an indication that Kierkegaard’s source for these categories was Martensen’s lectures and not Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In any case, the variant is of no significance, and the structure of the three chapters in Part One of The Concept of Irony can be seen to correspond to these Kantian categories. 52

53

54

55

This apparently goes back to Eduard Geismar’s work, Søren Kierkegaard. Hans Livsudvikling og Forfattervirksomhed, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1926–27, vol. 1, første del, pp. 95–103. Geismar merely suggests this correlation without fleshing it out in any detail. Gregor Malantschuk, Dialektik og Eksistens hos Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag 1968, p. 66. English translation: Kierkegaard’s Thought, tr. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1971, p. 65. See also Hong’s “Historical Introduction,” in his translation of CI, p. xvi: “In Part One of Irony, the Hegelian pattern is followed: possibility, actuality and necessity.” One will recall that it was Trendelenburg’s treatment of precisely these modal categories which interested Kierkegaard so avidly after his return from Berlin in 1842. See Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, vols. 1–2, Berlin 1840, vol. 2, pp. 97– 138. ASKB 843. See Arnold B. Come, Trendelenburg’s Influence on Kierkegaard’s Modal Categories, Montreal: Inter Editions 1991. Jacques Message, “Kierkegaard, Trendelenburg: La logique et les catégories modales,” Kairos, 10, 1997, pp. 49–61. During that same period, Kierkegaard also made a study of Aristotle’s works on logic with an eye towards this issue. Hegel refers to the modal categories mentioned as follows, “possibility, existence (actuality) and necessity.” (Hegel, Hist. of Phil. III, p. 439; Jub., vol. 19, p. 567. The full passage is cited later.) Hegel makes precise the category of “existence” [Dasein] by naming the category “actuality” [Wirklichkeit] immediately after it, thus avoiding all ambiguity. Pap. II C 25, in Pap. XII, p. 286.


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By organizing the categories in the way he does, Kant indicates that there is an organic relation between the categories in each of the four sets. Specifically, he claims that the third category in each group is always a combination of the first and the second. With respect to the modal categories, Kant claims, necessity is “the existence which is given through possibility itself.”56 By this he seems to mean that of the large set of things that are possible, there is a subset of things that are necessary, and these in fact do exist. Thus, necessity is possibility realized in the realm of existence. (Later in the “Interlude” to the Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus will come to criticize this position (i.e., that necessity is the combination of existence and possibility), which has been mistakenly attributed to Hegel.57 The same position is criticized in The Sickness unto Death.58 ) Hegel takes the insight about the logical interrelation of the categories and develops it in his own idiosyncratic fashion in the Science of Logic. In the section entitled, “Actuality” (which constitutes the third part of the Wesenslogik or “The Doctrine of Essence”), he treats these categories and attempts to demonstrate their organic relations to one another. In the second chapter of that section he works through an elaborate analysis of the different aspects of the modal categories. There he tries to demonstrate that these categories mutually imply and thus reciprocally condition one another in contrast to the unilateral Kantian conception according to which the third in the group is the combination of the first and the second. Moreover, Hegel’s account is much more differentiated than a straightforward analysis of the sequence of categories – possibility, actuality, necessity; by contrast, Hegel distinguishes a number of variants of the three categories, such as “formal actuality,” “relative necessity,” “real possibility” and “absolute necessity,” and supplements the three original modal categories with others. Thus, the matter in Hegel is much more complicated than either Kant’s table of categories or Kierkegaard’s scheme. It will be noted that Kierkegaard’s sequence – possibility, actuality, necessity – differs from Hegel’s since in the latter actuality precedes possibility; indeed, Hegel criticizes Kant for placing possibility first. In the account 56 57

58

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. by Norman Kemp Smith, London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., New York: St. Martin’s Press 1963, B 111, p. 116. (My italics.) See Hong’s note 12, p. 299 to PF, also note 35, p. 175 to SD. Hong attributes this to Hegel on the basis of the following passage in the Encyclopaedia Logic: “It is true that necessity has been rightly defined as the unity of possibility and actuality.” But Hong fails to quote what Hegel says immediately after this: “But when it is expressed only in this way, this determination is superficial, and therefore unintelligible”(EL, § 147; Enz I, pp. 330–331). Hegel draws on this view but departs from it in significant ways. SUD, p. 36; SV1, vol. 11, p. 149: “The philosophers are mistaken when they explain necessity as a unity of possibility and actuality – no, actuality is the unity of possibility and necessity.”


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of Kant’s view of the modal categories, which Hegel gives in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, one reads, “The categories of modality . . . come forth, viz. possibility, existence (actuality) and necessity. Possibility should come second; in abstract thought, however, the empty conception comes first.”59 Here Hegel criticizes Kant’s ordering of the categories as a typical error caused by abstraction. Moreover, there is in Hegel’s own account very little that resembles the simple sequence of possibility, actuality, and necessity. It is not necessary to examine Hegel’s intricate analysis in detail since Kierkegaard is not, strictly speaking, interested in an account of these categories for their own sake and does not draw on this aspect of Hegel’s philosophy at all in his dissertation. The use of these categories in the chapter titles of Part One of The Concept of Irony seems to imply that the phenomenon of Socratic irony, which Kierkegaard designates as “the view,” will be analyzed in terms of each of these three categories. Yet, at first glance, it is not obvious how Kierkegaard’s chapters reflect a dialectical movement in terms of these categories. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the titles reflect the actual content of the individual chapters at all. Fortunately, Kierkegaard provides a few scattered explanatory remarks on this question. At the end of Chapter 1, which deals with possibility, he says by way of clarification: I have allowed the whole development to reach a point of final confrontation. I have thereby procured a possibility of being able to explain the discrepancy among these three views [sc. Xenophon, Plato and Aristophanes] by a view of Socrates corresponding to it. But with all this I still have come no further than the possibility, for even though the explanation propounded is able to reconcile the opposing powers, it by no means follows that this explanation is therefore entirely correct. If, however, it could not reconcile them, then it could not possibly be correct. Now, however, it is possible.60

Here the use of the category of possibility concerns the possibility of explaining the discrepancies in the account of Socrates given by the three major primary sources. Kierkegaard tries to do this by means of an interpretation of Socrates as ironic. The idea seems to be that he has merely suggested this interpretation without proof and that at this point in the text it is merely one interpretive possibility among others. Chapter 2 then purportedly interprets the irony of Socrates under the aspect of a new category, namely, actuality. Kierkegaard explains the shift in the analysis and his employment of this category as follows: “From this point on, the investigation will take another form. I shall deal with some phenomena that as historical facts do not need to be provided through a mistaken view but merely need to be kept in their inviolate innocence and thereupon explained. . . . This section could be called ‘The 59 60

Hegel, Hist. of Phil. III, p. 439; Jub., vol. 19, p. 567. See SL, p. 327; Jub., vol. 4, p. 404. CI, p. 155; SKS, vol. 1, p. 205.


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Actualization of the View,’ because it actualizes itself through all these historical data.”61 Kierkegaard reminds the reader again and again in this section that he is no longer concerned with personal interpretations of the authors Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes, but rather with actual historical facts, such as Socrates’ daimon and his condemnation by his fellow Athenians.62 The historical information is then interpreted as indicative of Socratic irony, presumably in order to support the claim about the mere possibility of that irony, which was established in the first chapter. Thus, the agreed upon historical facts of Socrates’ existence transform the thesis from one of mere possibility to concrete actuality. In the final chapter of Part One, Socrates’ use of irony is considered as necessary (i.e., from the world-historical point of view). The older order of Greek life was no longer viable, and Socrates’ use of irony as a negative tool set loose the historical forces that ultimately destroyed it. His role in the historical movement is seen in hindsight as necessary for the dissolution of classical Greek culture: “Early Greek culture had outlived itself, a new principle had to emerge, but before it could appear in its truth, all the prolific weeds of misunderstanding’s pernicious anticipations had to be plowed under, destroyed down to the deepest roots. The new principle must contend; world history needs an accoucheur. Socrates fills this place.”63 Seen in this fashion, the irony of Socrates is not merely a historical fact among others but rather a necessity of world history. In the chapter, “The World-Historical Validity of Irony,” from Part Two of the work, Kierkegaard again takes up the notion of historical necessity in strongly Hegelian terms: Even though world spirit in any process is continually in itself, this is not the case with the generation at a certain time and with given individuals at a certain time in the same generation. For them, a given actuality does not present itself as something that they are able to reject, because the world process leads the person who is willing to go along and sweeps the unwilling one along with it. But insofar as the idea is concrete in itself, it is necessary for it to become continually what it is – that is, become concrete.64

Here he understands there is to be a historical necessity in the destruction of the actuality of any given historical period. There is a necessity not in every historical detail but only in those changes of history that conform to the Idea. Given that Socratic reflection and skepticism corresponded to the changes in the Idea of world spirit at the time, they were historically necessary. Thus, necessity replaces actuality as the relevant category in the analysis. 61 62 63 64

CI, p. 156; SKS, vol. 1, p. 206. See also CI, pp. 259–264; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 297–302. CI, p. 157; SKS, vol. 1, p. 207. CI, p. 167; SKS, vol. 1, p. 215. CI, p. 211; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 255–256. CI, p. 259; SKS, vol. 1, p. 297. Translation slightly modified. (My italics.)


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It is difficult to know exactly what to make of the claim that the organizational structure of Part One is Hegelian in character. Kierkegaard’s scheme only vaguely follows the pattern of Hegel’s analysis of these categories in the Science of Logic. Given that Hegel’s discussion of the modal categories does not follow the sequence – possibility, actuality, necessity – it cannot be said that this sequence is Hegelian or that Kierkegaard’s use of it is indicative of a Hegelian view.65 Given this, it is unclear why any contemporary would have thought that this aspect of the dissertation was typically Hegelian, especially given that many other philosophers from Aristotle onward treat these categories as well. Moreover, aside from the few explanatory comments Kierkegaard provides here, the actual content of his chapters seems only loosely related to these categories anyway. In what follows I would like to argue that there are many discussions and analyses in The Concept of Irony that are derived from Hegel, and that it is not so much the work’s structure as its content that bears the stamp of Hegel’s thought. On the basis of the discussion in Section II in this chapter, it is clear that there is good reason to suspect that Kierkegaard’s dissertation might be influenced by aspects of Hegel’s philosophy; I now turn to a treatment of the content of the text itself in order to determine if it bears out this hypothesis. Kierkegaard mentions Hegel several times throughout The Concept of Irony, often merely referring briefly to some aspect of his thought, and for this reason it would be impractical to go through every single reference serially. Therefore, it will be useful to pick out some passages as representative of his use of Hegel in the text generally. In addition to various scattered references and allusions, there are a handful of extended discussions in which Kierkegaard analyzes in detail some aspect of Hegel’s thought, and it is these which will be particularly productive to examine. With an analysis of these passages, it will be possible to gain a sense for how well Kierkegaard knew Hegel’s works in addition to what use he makes of him and which aspects of his philosophy he seems sympathetic to and which ones he rejects. In what follows I propose to analyze the following passages: (1) Kierkegaard’s discussion of Hegel’s interpretation of the daimon at the beginning of Chapter 2, “The Actualization of the View,”66 (2) Chapter 3, “The View Made Necessary,”67 (3) the 65

66 67

The categories discussed here will become important themes in Kierkegaard’s later works, particularly after he becomes familiar with Trendelenburg’s logic. See PF, pp. 74–78; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 274–277. SUD, p. 36; SV1, vol. 11, p. 149. CUP1, pp. 314ff.; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 286ff. CA, p. 49; SKS, vol. 4, p. 354. But here in The Concept of Irony, he is not yet concerned per se with the general question of the conceptual or logical relations among them, although he had considered the question of the modal categories somewhat during this period. See JP, vol. 2, 1592; SKS, vol. 19, p. 245, Not8:51. JP, vol. 2, 1593; SKS, vol. 19, p. 246, Not8:53. CI, pp. 157–167; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 207–215. CI, pp. 198–218; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 244–262.


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appendix to Part One entitled, “Hegel’s View of Socrates,”68 (4) the chapter from Part Two entitled, “The World-Historical Validity of Irony, the Irony of Socrates,”69 and (5) Kierkegaard’s criticism of Romantic irony in the chapter “Irony after Fichte.”70

iv. hegel’s account of the daimon The first analysis to be treated is the account of Hegel’s interpretation of the daimon71 which comes at the beginning of the second chapter, “The Actualization of the View.” This is the point in the discussion when Kierkegaard moves to his treatment of the life and person of Socrates. The discussion begins with a treatment of the references to the daimon in the texts of Xenophon and Plato and then moves on to the modern interpretations of it. There can be no doubt that Kierkegaard draws heavily on Hegel here, and in fact his discussion follows exactly Hegel’s own treatment in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy.72 In addition, Kierkegaard also quotes from Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History73 and from the Philosophy of Right.74 Kierkegaard begins by claiming that previous writers have not been able to understand the daimon correctly due to the fact that it has always been interpreted as something external or accidental to Socrates’ character. By contrast, Hegel has attained clarity on this issue by understanding the phenomenon of the daimon as representative of Socrates’ fundamental moral disposition. In the following passage, Kierkegaard approvingly cites Hegel as an authority on the issue: “One of Hegel’s statements expresses in a general sense and yet very pregnantly how to understand the daimon: ‘Socrates, in assigning to insight, to conviction, the determination of men’s actions, posited the individual as capable of a final moral decision, in contraposition to country and customary morality, and thus made himself an oracle in the Greek sense.’”75 Kierkegaard cites a similar passage from the Philosophy of Right,76 apparently to make the same point, while noting that Hegel’s most extended discussion of the issue comes in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Thus, at the beginning of his discussion, Kierkegaard makes it clear that Hegel’s account of the issue is important for him. 68 70 72 73 74 75

76

CI, pp. 219–237; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 263–278. 69 CI, pp. 259–271; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 297–308. CI, pp. 272–323; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 308–352. 71 CI, pp. 157–167; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 207–215. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 421–425; Jub., vol. 18, pp. 89–100. CI, p. 161; SKS, vol. 1, p. 211. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 269–270; Jub., vol. 18, pp. 350–351. CI, p. 162; SKS, vol. 1, p. 211. Hegel, PR, § 279, Remark; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 385–386. CI, p. 161; SKS, vol. 1, p. 211. Hegel, Phil. of Hist., pp. 269–270; Jub., vol. 11, p. 350. Translation slightly modified. N.b. In quoting Kierkegaard’s quotations of Hegel, I use the standard English translations of Hegel and not Hong’s translations of Kierkegaard’s quotations. CI, p. 162; SKS, vol. 1, p. 211.


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Hegel’s analysis of the Greek world is now the object of his attention. Classical Greek culture was governed by traditional morality or what Hegel calls “Sittlichkeit” (usually translated as “ethical life”). This was reflected in the religion, the customs and the laws of the state, all of which were believed to have their sanction in the gods. Such customs and laws represented an absolute moral command which the individual, being immediately immersed in them, never thought to question. By incessantly calling into doubt established religion and morality and demanding that they justify themselves rationally, Socrates represented the destructive force of individuality and subjective freedom. “Socrates’ position,” Kierkegaard writes, “is that of subjectivity, of inwardness, which reflects upon itself and in its relation to itself detaches and volatilizes what is established in the flood of thought that surges over it and carries it away while it itself recedes again into thought.”77 With Socrates the individual was for the first time invested with the burden of moral reflection and judgment, and this new principle of individuality comes into conflict with traditional morality. Hegel portrays the conflict by juxtaposing the Delphic oracle, one of the main organs of traditional morality, with Socrates’ daimon, which is conceived as a kind of inner, subjective oracle, representing the principle of individuality. Since the oracle was essentially a medium for the propagation of traditional morality, its utterances were perceived as having absolute validity. By appealing to the oracle, the people effectively denied themselves the freedom of decision and action, for they allowed the oracle to choose and to determine their course of action for them. Kierkegaard cites Hegel once again: “This element, the fact that the people had not the power of decision, but were determined from without, was a real factor in Greek consciousness; and oracles were everywhere essential where man did not yet know himself inwardly as being sufficiently free and independent to take upon himself to decide as we do. This subjective freedom . . . was not yet present with the Greeks.”78 The unreflective citizen thus had no subjective freedom or autonomy since life was lived in accordance with established patterns and customs, which were thought to have their legitimation in their antiquity or in the gods. The oracle, understood as the mouthpiece for traditional morality and universality, is then contrasted with the daimon of Socrates, which is individual. The daimon is not something external or adventitious like the oracle; moreover, it is not accessible to the public sphere but rather dwells within the person of Socrates himself and is thus subjective. It represents the principle of subjective freedom that stands in contradiction to 77 78

CI, p. 163; SKS, vol. 1, p. 212. Translation slightly modified. CI, p. 163; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 212–213. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, p. 423; Jub., vol. 18, p. 97. See PhS, pp. 340–432; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 542–544.


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traditional morality and indeed poses a threat to it. But the daimon does not represent the extreme limit of individuality but only a sort of halfway house between it and the universality of traditional morality. Kierkegaard quotes Hegel once again: “the daimon of Socrates stands midway between the externality of the oracle and the pure inwardness of the mind.”79 The daimon is not synonymous with Socrates’ own private will; indeed, it often warns him against doing things that his private will would otherwise like to do. Thus, although it is in Socrates, qua individual, the daimon is not wholly subjective; rather, it has an objective validity since it transcends Socrates’ individual will, but yet it still stands in contrast to the universal public morality of the oracle. Kierkegaard indicates that his account of Hegel’s interpretation of the daimon is here at an end and that he will now use it as a point of departure or foundation upon which he intends to build.80 His addition to Hegel’s account involves merely the observation that the phenomenon of the daimon is consistent with his own interpretation of the irony of Socrates. With its negative commands and warnings, the daimon provided Socrates with a truth that was for him valid and objective. Thus, the daimon furnished Socrates with a stable truth (albeit a purely negative one) that remained sacrosanct even with respect to his own skeptical questioning, and in this one finds, according to Kierkegaard, its ironic element: “If we now add to this the polemical consciousness into which Socrates absorbed his whole relation to his contemporaries . . . the security provided for him by the daimon against being perplexed by all the happenings in life, then Socrates’ position once again manifests itself as irony.”81 The essential point here is that the daimon’s commands had no positive content but rather were always negative in character; the daimon warned Socrates and told him what not to do, but it never gave him positive suggestions for action. Thus, this interpretation of the daimon is consistent with Kierkegaard’s claim that Socrates had no positive doctrine and remained in a position of pure ironic negativity with respect to traditional morality. Kierkegaard finishes his discussion by contrasting his general methodology with that of Hegel and by offering a criticism of him on this point. Clearly referring to Hegel, he writes: “As a rule, irony is understood ideally, is assigned its place as a vanishing element in the system, and is 79 80

81

CI, p. 164; SKS, vol. 1, p. 213. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, p. 425; Jub., vol. 18, p. 99. Translation slightly modified. CI, p. 165; SKS, vol. 1, p. 214: “This concludes my exposition of Hegel’s presentation, and, here as always when one has Hegel along . . . I have thereby acquired a footing from which I can safely start out on my own excursion to see whether there might be some particular worthy of note to which I can safely return whether or not I have found anything.” CI, p. 166; SKS, vol. 1, p. 214. Translation slightly modified.


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therefore treated very briefly.”82 Kierkegaard is critical of Hegel’s speculative method of abstracting irony out of its actual concrete context and analyzing it as an abstract concept in relation to a general system of concepts. For Kierkegaard, by contrast, irony is not just an abstract concept but rather a concrete utterance or action in a specific situation: This is the purely personal life with which science and scholarship admittedly are not involved. . . . Whatever the case may be, grant that science and scholarship are right in ignoring such things; nevertheless, one who wants to understand the individual life cannot do so. And since Hegel himself says somewhere that with Socrates it is not so much a matter of speculation as of individual life, I dare to take this as sanction for my procedural method in my whole venture, however imperfect it may turn out because of my own deficiencies.83

Kierkegaard’s method, in contrast to Hegel’s, will be to analyze irony in its concrete context in the life of a specific individual. According to Kierkegaard, Hegel has with his method overlooked important aspects of irony, for in order to understand the irony of Socrates one must examine his use of it within the context of his life and cultural setting. Hegel allegedly fails to see this since he is purportedly only interested either in the historical concept [Begriff ]that is represented by the Greek world or in irony as a concept in a general theory of aesthetics. The details of history are, it is claimed, of no interest to him. What is interesting to note here is that Kierkegaard grants the legitimacy of “science and scholarship” and recognizes that this is the domain where Hegel’s analyses are operative. He is further willing to recognize that Hegel makes no claim about the life of the individual, which is not the subject-matter of a scientific analysis. His objection seems to be that the life of Socrates cannot be fully grasped by means of a purely scholarly method. But there is no criticism of the method on its own terms or of Hegel for his employment of it. Kierkegaard develops this point further at the beginning of the appendix, “Hegel’s View of Socrates.” The relation between the original discussion and its development here is clear since he refers to his previous discussion in a footnote.84 Here Kierkegaard criticizes Hegel for overlooking important aspects of the figure of Socrates, arguing that Hegel is not concerned with the various empirical particulars in his analysis of history: The difficulty implicit in the establishment of certainty about the phenomenal aspect of Socrates’ life does not bother Hegel. He generally does not acknowledge such trivial concerns. . . . Although he himself observes that 82 84

83 CI, pp. 166–167; SKS, vol. 1, p. 215. CI, p. 166; SKS, vol. 1, p. 214. CI, p. 219fn.; SKS, vol. 1, p. 263fn.: “With Socrates (to bring up again a previously quoted remark by Hegel, which strangely enough is by Hegel) it is a question not so much of philosophy as of individual life.”


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with respect to Socrates it is a matter not so much of philosophy as of individual life, there is nothing at all in his presentation of Socrates in Geschichte der Philosophie to illuminate the relations of the three different contemporary views of Socrates.85

Kierkegaard goes so far as to criticize Hegel for not being historically exacting.86 He attributes Hegel’s lack of interest in matters of philology or textual criticism to his insistence upon taking in a wider historical perspective: “Anything like this is effort wasted on Hegel, and when the phenomena are paraded, he is in too much of a hurry and is too aware of the great importance of his role as commander-in-chief of world history to take time for more than the royal glimpse he allows to glide over them.”87 According to Kierkegaard, by viewing history only from the macrolevel, Hegel has not been able to grasp fully the nature of Socrates and his use of irony. This claim seems to prefigure Kierkegaard’s later criticism, which charges philosophy and the system with being idealized and abstracted from actuality. Strangely enough, in his Introduction, Kierkegaard says just the opposite of this and indeed praises Hegel’s methodology on precisely this point. There he discusses the difference between an empirical account of history and a philosophical one. His discussion is derived wholly from Hegel. He begins by claiming with Hegel that philosophy necessarily involves a historical element, given that concepts, which are the objects of philosophy, are historically contingent entities: “Concepts, just like individuals, have their history and are no more able than they to resist the dominion of time, but in and through it all they nevertheless harbor a kind of homesickness for the place of their birth. Indeed, philosophy can now on one side no more disregard the recent history of this concept than it can stop with its earliest history.”88 Kierkegaard is quick to point out that, although concepts have their histories, there is a difference between a purely historical account, which merely recounts various actions, and a philosophical-historical account, which interprets the general historical pattern or idea behind the manifold phenomena: “Just as the individual making a confession is certainly able not only to reel off the incidents of his life chronologically but also to relate them entertainingly but still does not comprehend them himself, so history certainly is also able to declare the eventful life of the human race with pathos in a loud voice 85 86

87 88

CI, p. 221; SKS, vol. 1, p. 265. CI, pp. 221–222; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 265–266: “He uses one single dialogue from Plato as an example of the Socratic method without explaining why he chose this particular one. He uses Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Apology, and also Plato’s Apology, quite uncritically.” CI, p. 222; SKS, vol. 1, p. 266. CI, p. 9; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 71–72. See Hegel, PR, Preface, p. 21; Jub., vol. 7, p. 35: “As far as the individual is concerned, each individual is in any case a child of his time; thus philosophy, too, is its own time comprehended in thoughts.”


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but must leave it to the senior (philosophy) to explain it.”89 This is, of course, an essentially Hegelian view and corresponds generally to the distinction, outlined in the Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, between “original history,” which is concerned with facts and empirical data, and “philosophical history,” which is concerned with an interpretation of history in terms of abstract thought. Kierkegaard surprisingly goes on to insist on this Hegelian distinction, claiming that philosophy should concentrate on the universal, while history concentrates on the particulars. Each has its own domain, and they should avoid merging into one another. Both philosophy and history “ought to have their rights so that, on the one hand, the phenomenon has its rights and is not to be intimidated and discouraged by philosophy’s superiority, and philosophy, on the other hand, is not to let itself be infatuated by the charms of the particular, is not to be distracted by the superabundance of the particular.”90 Here he says directly that philosophy should avoid slipping into the realm of pure particularity for which it is unsuited. The surprising thing about this passage is that it contradicts precisely what Kierkegaard argues for in the passage just discussed. As has been noted, there he seems to criticize Hegel for concentrating on the universal and ignoring the particular, claiming that by so doing Hegel has missed the point of the notion of irony. But here in the Introduction, he says: “The same holds for the concept of irony: philosophy is not to look too long at one particular side of its phenomenological existence and above all at its appearance but is to see the truth of the concept in and with the phenomenological.”91 Here he insists that the goal of philosophy is to examine irony abstractly as a concept and not to be concerned primarily or exclusively with a specific use made of it by specific individuals. Moreover, Kierkegaard states, empirical or original history fails to see the true importance of the figure of Socrates. In his Introduction, Kierkegaard announces that in this work he intends to examine the philosophical concept of irony, but in order to do so he must first come to terms with the history of the concept. He claims that the concept of irony was introduced into the world by Socrates, and for this reason he must first give a philosophical-historical account of Socrates in order to understand

89 91

90 CI, pp. 10–11; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 72–73. CI, p. 10; SKS, vol. 1, p. 72. CI, p. 11; SKS, vol. 1, p. 73. Kierkegaard goes so far as to make a plea for a systematic understanding of history: “Just as it has been correctly pointed out that nature is unable to adhere to the concept . . . so also something similar can legitimately be said about history, inasmuch as every single fact does indeed evolve, but only as an element, and the whole sum of historical existence is still not the completely adequate medium of the idea, since it is the idea’s temporality and fragmentariness . . . that long for the backward-looking repulse emanating, face against face, from consciousness.” Ibid.


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the concept.92 But to give a purely empirical account of the particulars would not be sufficient. “Moreover,” he writes, “if through an intimate familiarity with Socrates’ life and way of living someone gained a notion of his singularity, he would still not therefore have a total concept of what irony is.”93 But it is precisely the understanding of Socrates as an individual that Kierkegaard aims at in the body of the text. Later Hegel is cited as one who sees Socrates in his historical context. At first Kierkegaard writes: “The point of this, of course, is not to tear Socrates out of his historical context – on the contrary, it is to see him properly in that context.”94 He then goes on to quote Hegel to the same effect: “But Socrates did not grow like a mushroom out of the earth, for he stands in continuity with his time.”95 On the one hand, Kierkegaard insists on understanding the person of Socrates and Socratic irony as individual phenomena in the sphere of empirical actuality; on the other hand, he insists that they must be understood in a scholarly fashion in terms of the Concept. It is difficult to know what to make of Kierkegaard’s inconsistency here. It suggests that he was developing his ideas as he was writing and can be seen as indicative of an uncertain or ambivalent relation to Hegel generally. In any case, it cannot be reconciled with the ironic interpretation. If Kierkegaard were ironically playing the role of a Hegelian, it would not make sense for him to criticize Hegel on this point and thus fall into a contradiction with his own methodological considerations. Such an obvious contradiction would merely call attention to the anti-Hegelian aspect of the text, which would undermine Kierkegaard’s purportedly ironic intent. These criticisms would merely serve the purpose of provoking the ire of the purported Hegelians on the faculty. They would also contradict his strategy of indirect communication, which would forbid him from giving such a direct criticism. It is fair to say that in “The Daimon of Socrates,” Hegel dominates the discussion. It is his interpretation of the daimon that Kierkegaard discusses at length and largely adopts. He does not expand Hegel’s analysis in any detail and is in no way critical of it as a point of departure; indeed, he cites Hegel at length without much analysis at all. At the end of his discussion, Kierkegaard points out that his interpretation of Socratic irony is wholly consistent with Hegel’s account of the daimon. It thus seems indisputable that Hegel is crucial for shaping Kierkegaard’s views on this matter. The daimon represents, for Hegel and Kierkegaard, 92

93 94 95

CI, p. 9; SKS, vol. 1, p. 71: “Before I proceed to an exposition of the concept of irony, it is necessary to make sure that I have a reliable and authentic view of Socrates’ historicalactual, phenomenological existence.” CI, p. 11; SKS, vol. 1, p. 73. Translation slightly modified. CI, p. 199; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 244–245. CI, p. 199; SKS, vol. 1, p. 245. Hegel Hist. of Phil. I, p. 384; Jub., vol. 18, p. 42.


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Socrates’ general negative relation to the established order. This is the key for Hegel’s understanding of Socrates as a world-historical figure and for Kierkegaard’s understanding of the concept of irony as essentially negative. Moreover, Hegel is an important interlocutor for Kierkegaard, which can be seen above all in the criticism that Kierkegaard offers. There he carves out his own position and methodology in contrast to Hegel.

v. hegel’s account of socrates vis- a` -vis the other greek schools In the third and final chapter of Part One, “The View Made Necessary,”96 Kierkegaard turns to an analysis of the figure of Socrates as a worldhistorical individual in the Hegelian sense (i.e., as someone who set off profound changes in the development of history by helping to bring about the destruction of historical concepts that are no longer viable). Socrates is analyzed as “a turning point”97 in history since he was in part responsible for the destruction of the Greek polis as a form of life. Kierkegaard’s language and methodology in this discussion are, as before, profoundly Hegelian.98 Once again following exactly Hegel’s analysis in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy,99 he divides his own account here into two parts: first he examines Socrates in relation to what came before (i.e., the Sophistic movement in Greek thought) and then in relation to what came after (i.e., the post-Socratic schools). In a typically Hegelian passage, Kierkegaard emphasizes Socrates’ importance in the development of world spirit and says that the goal is “to become conscious of the idea that is the meaning of his existence in the world, of the phase in the development of world spirit that is symbolically indicated by the singularity of his existence in history.”100 Kierkegaard reminds the reader that the task now is not to view Socrates in his concrete historical context as before but rather to grasp his meaning for world history in thought or, as Hegel would say, according to the Concept: “He [sc. Socrates] is not, because he is not the object of immediate apprehension. . . . He is, because of thought he is, which corresponds to the emergence of the Idea in the world of mind – but, please note, the Idea in its abstract form, its infinite negativity. Thus, the form of his 96 98

99 100

CI, pp.198–218; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 244–262. 97 CI, p. 200; SKS, vol. 1, p. 245. E.g., CI, p. 200; SKS, vol. 1, p. 246: “Precisely because it is a turning point in history, Hegel talks about it again and again; sometimes his task is to describe it, and sometimes he uses it as an example. Therefore, everyone who has read anything at all of Hegel must be familiar with his views on this, and I shall not vex people by repeating what no one can say so well as Hegel himself.” Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, “The Sophists,” pp. 352–384; Jub., vol. 18, pp. 5–42. “The Philosophy of the Socratics,” pp. 448–487; Jub., vol. 18, pp. 122–169. CI, pp. 198; SKS, vol. 1, p. 244.


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existence in history is not a perfectly adequate pictorial indication of his significance for spirit.”101 As seen previously, Kierkegaard seems to have an ambiguous position on this point, making a plea for an understanding sometimes in terms of the Concept and sometimes in terms of the particular empirical phenomenon itself. Here he clearly comes down on the side of Hegel, claiming that the various empirical facts about Socrates’ life are not sufficient for a philosophical-historical analysis of his importance; instead, one must investigate his conceptual meaning for history. Kierkegaard begins by trying to understand Socrates in relation to the Sophists. Again Hegel is referred to at the start as the authority on the issue.102 The Sophists are characterized as wanting to teach to the young a “universal culture”103 that would prepare them to participate fully in civic life. They introduced a kind of reflection that called tradition and law into doubt only to return again and put them back into place: “In its first form, this education shakes the foundations of everything, but in its second form it enables every pupil of integrity to make everything firm and fast again. . . . In Sophistry, reflection is awakened; it shakes the foundations of everything, and it is then that Sophistry lulls it to sleep again with reasons.”104 The Sophist gives arguments and reasons for every cause, and thus a stability is reestablished in the face of the original skepticism. Thus, something positive replaces the original negation. Kierkegaard is critical of Hegel’s understanding of the Sophists as wholly negative. He quotes at length the beginning of the account of the Sophists in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy in order to analyze and criticize it.105 Kierkegaard’s point seems to be that the Sophistic movement is portrayed by Hegel as something wholly negative (i.e., wholly skeptical), without any positive aspect. Kierkegaard writes by way of commentary: It seems, however, that Hegel makes the Sophistic movement too grandiose, and therefore the distrust one may have about the correctness of his view is strengthened even more by the presence, in his subsequent discussion of Sophistry, of various points that cannot be harmonized with it; likewise, if this were the correct interpretation of Sophistry, there is much in his conception of Socrates that would make it necessary to identify Socrates with them.106 101 102 103 105

106

CI, p. 198; SKS, vol. 1, p. 244. Translation slightly modified. CI, p. 201fn.; SKS, vol. 1, p. 247fn.: “Here again Hegel has provided excellent expositions.” 104 CI, p. 205; SKS, vol. 1, p. 250. CI, p. 203; SKS, vol. 1, p. 248. CI, pp. 206–207; SKS, vol. 1, p. 251. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, p. 352; Jub., vol. 18, p. 5: “This firm ground – whether it be a security of natural being or the security of definite conceptions, principles, customs and laws – becomes vacillation and loses its stability. . . . We see this movement arising in the so-called Sophists.” CI, p. 207; SKS, vol. 1, p. 251.


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Kierkegaard, using Hegelian language, has already claimed that Socrates introduced into the world the principle of “finite subjectivity.”107 Given that Socrates is characterized as subjectivity, it is important for Kierkegaard to contrast him to the Sophists who also are often represented as champions of subjectivism. According to Kierkegaard, the Sophists and Socrates cannot be distinguished in Hegel’s account.108 Contrary to Hegel, Kierkegaard argues that the Sophists were not wholly negative. Rather, they tried to offer solutions to the skepticism they had initiated: “the Sophists’ pompous, confident parading, their matchless self-sufficiency . . . is proof enough that they thought themselves able to satisfy the demands of the times, not by shaking the foundations of everything but, after having shaken the foundations, by making it all secure again.”109 The Sophists tried to find a remedy to the disease of critical thinking, which had afflicted Greek culture, and thus they “considered themselves to be physicians to the age.”110 For Kierkegaard, evidence for the positive aspect of the Sophists is also provided by the very nature of their rhetorical abilities. In public speaking, the orator always makes a particular case (i.e., something in particular is always argued for, and this is ipso facto something positive). Thus, for Kierkegaard the Sophists were in the final analysis always positive. Given this interpretation of the Sophists, Kierkegaard is able to distinguish them from Socrates whom he sees as wholly negative. He contrasts the view of Socrates with that of Protagoras as portrayed in Plato’s dialogue of the same name: “Protagoras’ thesis that virtue can be taught is certainly positive; it contains a high degree of confidence in existence and in the Sophistic art. On the other hand, the Socratic thesis that virtue cannot be taught is negative.”111 Contrary to the Sophists, Socrates’ role in world history is purely negative, and his goal is to overcome this principle of positivity: “But irony is the very incitement of subjectivity, and in Socrates irony is truly a world-historical passion. In Socrates, one process ends and with him a new one begins.”112 Thus, Socrates’ use of irony plays an important role in the development of Greek history. It is in this sense “that irony has a world-historical validity.”113 This irony initiated the transformation of the Greek world and shook it out of its traditional way of life forever. This use of irony was, according to Kierkegaard, wholly absent among the Sophists. Now that he has analyzed the figure of Socrates in relation to what preceded him (i.e., the Sophists), Kierkegaard begins the second part 107 108 109 111 113

CI, p. 201; SKS, vol. 1, p. 246. See Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 385–387; Jub., vol. 18, pp. 43–45, where Hegel does in fact distinguish them. 110 CI, p. 208; SKS, vol. 1, p. 252. CI, p. 207; SKS, vol. 1, p. 251. 112 CI, p. 211; SKS, vol. 1, p. 256. CI, p. 208; SKS, vol. 1, p. 253. CI, p. 211; SKS, vol. 1, p. 255.


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of the analysis and turns to an account of what came after him, namely, the Megaric, Cyrenaic, and Cynic schools inspired by him.114 This once again follows exactly Hegel’s account of the subject-matter in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy. As before, Kierkegaard here begins his analysis by addressing Hegel’s view of the issue: “Hegel . . . notes that Socrates had been reproached for the derivation of so many diverse philosophies from his teaching; he replies that this was on account of the indefiniteness and abstraction of his principle.”115 However, for Kierkegaard, the fact that so many later philosophies trace their origins back to Socrates is not a result of the abstractness of his philosophy and thus a ground for criticism but rather evidence that Socrates’ position was purely negative: if the Socratic position had included the limitation that every intermediate positivity must necessarily have, then it most certainly to all eternity would have been impossible that so many descendents could try to claim their right of primogeniture. If, however, his position was infinite negativity, then it is easily explained, since this contains within itself the possibility of everything, the possibility of the whole infinity of subjectivity.116

According to Kierkegaard, it would make sense that Socrates’ philosophy was interpreted in so many different ways if it were, as he claims, without positive content since then later schools could read whatever they wanted into his position and claim him as their heir. This would presumably not have been possible, had Socrates espoused a clear, fixed positive position that would, by virtue of its positivity, have stood in contradiction to other positive views and thus have made it impossible for those views to claim it as a forerunner. Kierkegaard acknowledges that for Hegel as well the diversity of the Socratic schools is the result of the essential negativity of Socrates’ teaching: “In discussing the three Socratic schools (Megaric, Cyrenaic, and Cynic), Hegel notes that all three schools are very different from one another and adds that this alone clearly shows that Socrates had no positive system.”117 Kierkegaard agrees with Hegel on this point but insists that his comments here must be supplemented: “Not only did he have no positive system, but he was devoid of positivity. . . . It does not suffice to say that from the heterogeneity of the Socratic schools the conclusion may be drawn that Socrates had no positive system; but it must be added that by its pressure the infinite negativity made all positivity possible, 114

115

116

CI, p. 214; SKS, vol. 1, p. 259: “We now proceed to show in Socrates the other side of the bifrontic character implicit in every historical beginning: we must look at his relation to the development that traces its beginning back to him.” CI, p. 215; SKS, vol. 1, p. 260. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, p. 449; Jub., vol. 18, p. 125: “The most varied schools and principles proceeded from this doctrine of Socrates, and this was made a reproach against him, but it was really due to the indefiniteness and abstraction of his principle.” 117 CI, p. 216; SKS, vol. 1, p. 260. CI, p. 215; SKS, vol. 1, p.260.


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has been an infinite incitement and stimulation for positivity.”118 For Kierkegaard, Socrates had no positive element at all. Socrates’ negativity was important for stimulating subsequent schools to move into a position of positivity, and thus his position contained “within itself a multiplicity of beginnings.”119 This then concludes Kierkegaard’s account. Hegel is omnipresent in this chapter. Kierkegaard cites him at length and closely follows his analyses from the Lectures on the History of Philosophy; the accounts Hegel gives of the Sophistic movement, of Socrates and of the later Socratic schools are repeated and generally approved of. Hegel’s account of world history and of Socrates as a world-historical figure are also adopted. Only with respect to the questions of the positivity of the Sophists and the infinite negativity of Socrates does Kierkegaard venture what he perceives as slight modifications of Hegel’s position, arguing that there is no positive aspect in Socrates at all. In any case, Hegel’s influence here in this section seems to be unquestionable.

vi. hegel’s account of socrates as the founder of morality The next section to be explored is “Hegel’s View of Socrates,”120 an appendix at the end of Part One in which Kierkegaard once again discusses Hegel explicitly.121 At this point he has completed his account of Socrates, and now his goal is to situate his understanding of Socrates in the context of other interpretations. This appendix thus represents, so to speak, Kierkegaard’s treatment of the literature on the topic of his thesis. But he tells his readers at the start that he has no intention of giving a survey of the various historical interpretations of Socrates. For him, there is only one theory worthy of mention, namely, Hegel’s: “Hegel clearly provides a turning point in the view of Socrates. Therefore, I shall begin with Hegel and end with Hegel, without giving attention to his predecessors, since they, insofar as they have any significance, have been corroborated by his view, or to his successors, since they have only relative value in comparison with Hegel.”122 Kierkegaard is so taken by Hegel’s analysis that he does not bother to examine other interpretations. He praises Hegel overtly, in particular lauding his grasp of history.123 In this appendix, Kierkegaard approvingly cites long passages from Hegel’s analysis of Socrates in the 118 120 121 122 123

119 CI, p. 217; SKS, vol. 1, p. 261. CI, p. 216; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 260–261. CI, pp. 219–237; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 263–278. See Sophia Scopetea, Kierkegaard og græciteten, op. cit., pp. 131–134. CI, pp. 220–221; SKS, vol. 1, p. 264. CI, p. 221; SKS, vol. 1, p. 264: “Just as his presentation of the historical usually cannot be charged with wasting time on wrangling about minutiae, so it focuses with prodigious intellectual intensity upon specific, crucial, central battles. Hegel apprehends and comprehends history in its large formations.”


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Lectures on the History of Philosophy and speaks of Hegel in a generally deferential tone. At the beginning he takes up his criticism of Hegel’s methodology where he left off in the discussion examined previously;124 since I have treated this issue previously,125 I will not repeat it again here. After levelling this criticism, Kierkegaard goes on to analyze Hegel’s account of Socrates in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, and this forms the main subject-matter of the appendix. Here Kierkegaard announces that he will concentrate his energies on a single aspect of Hegel’s interpretation of Socrates, which, to his way of thinking, captures the very heart of Hegel’s position. This is the question that Kierkegaard uses as the title of a subsection here, namely, “In What Sense Is Socrates the Founder of Morality?”126 According to Hegel, the revolution in thought effected by Socrates is that the universal good is something that must be recognized by the individual.127 With this revolution the terms of morality are shifted from the outer sphere to the inner. Formerly, moral laws had been considered to be a part of the fabric of the universe independent of the views of any specific individuals. As Antigone says of the laws of the gods, “They are not of yesterday or today, but everlasting,/Though where they came from, none of us can tell.”128 Contrary to this conception of natural law, Socrates claims the conscience of the individual has jurisdiction in moral matters. In this sense Socrates is the founder of a new conception of morality that is still alive today. Kierkegaard underscores Hegel’s claim that Socrates’ teaching had no positive content but instead was essentially negative. The Socratic dialectic or λεγχoς finds the contradictions in any given argument but is not able to construct an edifice itself, and for this reason many Platonic dialogues end in πoρα. This negative aspect essentially frees one from the commands of traditional morality and leaves it to the individual to decide what is right.129 “In the old Greek culture,” Kierkegaard explains, “the individual was by no means free in this sense but was confined in the 124 126 127

128 129

125 In Section IV in this chapter. CI, pp. 166–167; SKS, vol. 1, p. 215. CI, p. 225; SKS, vol. 1, p. 269. CI, p. 226; SKS, vol. 1, p. 269. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, p. 386; Jub., vol. 18, p. 44: “Socrates’ principle is that man has to find from himself both the end of his actions and the end of the world, and must attain to truth through himself.” Hegel, PhS, p. 261; Jub., vol. 2, p. 333. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, p. 386; Jub., vol. 18, p. 45. In this context, Kierkegaard appropriately alludes to the “Morality” section of the Philosophy of Right. CI, pp. 227–228; SKS, vol. 1, p. 270: “In his Philosophie des Rechts he [sc. Hegel] discusses morality before proceeding to ethics. And under morality he discusses in the section ‘Good and Conscience’ the moral forms of evil, hypocrisy, probabilism, Jesuitism, the appeal to conscience, irony. Here the moral individual is the negatively free individual. He is free because he is not bound by another, but he is negatively free precisely because he is not limited in another. When the individual by being in his other is in his own, then for the first time he is in truth (i.e. positively) free, affirmatively free. Therefore, moral freedom is arbitrariness; it is the possibility of good and evil.” See Hegel, PR, §§ 129–140, esp. § 140, Remark; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 204–223.


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substantial ethic; he had not as yet taken himself out of, separated himself from, this immediate relationship, still did not know himself. Socrates brought this about . . . he brought the individual to this by universalizing subjectivity, and to that extent he is the founder of morality.”130 The conscience was universalized and then came to take the place of the universal, natural law or traditional morality. With Socrates the individual became for the first time the vessel in which moral judgment occurred. The abstracting of conscience to moral judgments ultimately ignores the actual empirical individual who is filled with inclinations and irrational impulses. For this charge, Kierkegaard cites Hegel’s approving reference to Aristotle’s famous criticism: Socrates “places all the virtues in judgment (cognition). Hence it comes to pass that he does away with the irrational-feeling part of the soul, that is, inclination and habit.”131 Virtue and morality according to Socrates’ conception thus become so abstract as to depart from the sphere of actuality. For moral action to take place at all, there must be not merely an abstract moral law but also a determinate empirical moral agent to act on it. There must be two aspects of morality: “the universal and the actualizing individuality, the real spirit.”132 Socrates has in a sense destroyed morality by insisting on the former at the expense of the latter. This view forgets that in order for a moral action to take place, it must be performed by an agent in the sensible world with passions and irrational inclinations. According to Hegel’s criticism, Socrates’ position, by its insistence on the purity of abstract moral judgment, effectively eliminates the possibility of actual moral acts in the empirical world. From this analysis, says Kierkegaard, one can see that there was for Hegel a positive content, albeit an abstract one, in Socrates’ teaching. The individual conscience must provide a positive content from within itself. It must manifest the universal moral law. As has just been seen, this is, according to Hegel, precisely the defect in Socrates’ moral view. Since by nature the universal moral law is abstract, it cannot be determined concretely in the realm of action. Kierkegaard quotes Hegel again: “but the main point with Socrates is his knowledge for the first time reached this abstraction. The good is . . . the universal. . . . It is a principle, concrete within itself, which, however, is not yet manifested in its concrete development, and in this abstract attitude we find what is wanting in the Socratic standpoint, from which nothing that is affirmative can, beyond this, be adduced.”133 Ultimately, the universal good that Socrates preaches is indeterminate since it remains in the abstract realm of thought and is 130 131 132 133

CI, p. 228; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 270–271. CI, p. 229; SKS, vol. 1, p. 271. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, p. 412; Jub., vol. 18, p. 77. CI, p. 230; SKS, vol. 1, p. 272. CI, p. 232; SKS, vol. 1, p. 274. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 406–407; Jub., vol. 18, pp. 70–71. Translation slightly modified.


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foreign to the sphere of actuality, the empirical realm of determinate content.134 It appears that the universal has no positive content, and thus “Socrates had advanced the universal only as the negative.”135 Since the universal has no fixed content, the action of the moral individual reduces to arbitrariness. The individual is left to act according to whim: “Here the subject shows itself to be the deciding factor, as that which arbitrarily determines itself within itself. But the limiting of the universal that takes place thereby is one that the subject himself arbitrarily posits at every moment.”136 In the absence of any determinate principle upon which to act, the moral agent has recourse only to his own arbitrary will. Kierkegaard, by way of conclusion, returns to the theme of irony in order to make clear that the results of Hegel’s discussion are in harmony with his thesis about irony. He claims that from Hegel’s analysis of Socrates as the founder of morality, one can rightly attribute to Socrates irony in moral matters. “If we wish,” Kierkegaard writes, “to include the qualification of irony, which Hegel so frequently stresses, that for irony nothing is a matter of earnestness, then this can also be claimed for the negatively free subject, because even the virtues he practices are not done with earnestness.”137 Since the moral individual has only an abstract moral law as his principle, a law that is indeterminate in the realm of actuality, he cannot be serious about his actual actions being moral. This leads to what Hegel calls “dissemblance” and “duplicity.”138 In other words, the individual cannot really be serious about acting in accordance with a moral law since, according to this view, his actions, while purporting to be noble and virtuous, are always necessarily tainted by irrational desires. Thus, the individual in principle cannot act morally in the mundane sphere where he is forever a slave to irrational passions in the absence of any genuine moral content. This analysis is consistent with Kierkegaard’s thesis about irony since the ironic individual is likewise not serious about his or her actions. Kierkegaard is thus happy to find in Hegel an authority that supports his view. At the end of his analysis, Kierkegaard criticizes the static or finished view of Socrates as presented by Hegel’s speculative philosophy. For Kierkegaard, one must essentially understand Socrates and his life not as a static entity but as a process. “The real difficulty with Hegel’s view of Socrates,” he claims, “is centered in the continual attempt to show how Socrates interpreted the good, and what is even more wrong in the 134

135 137 138

CI, p. 234; SKS, vol. 1, p. 275. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 417–418; Jub., vol. 18, p. 83: “The positive, which Socrates sets in the place of what was fixed and has now become vacillating, in order to give a context to the universal, is . . . obedience to law. . . . it remains in its content undetermined.” 136 CI, p. 234; SKS, vol. 1, p. 275. CI, p. 233; SKS, vol. 1, p. 275. CI, p. 235; SKS, vol. 1, p. 276. See Hegel, PhS, pp. 374–383; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 471–484.


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view, as I see it, is that it does not accurately adhere to the direction of the trend in Socrates’ life. The movement in Socrates is toward arriving at the good. His significance in the world development is to arrive there (not to have arrived there at some time).”139 Socrates plays the role in the worldhistorical process as the founder of morality, as someone who reached a new conception of the good, and this is the picture of him that the system presents. But this is distorting since Socrates in his own life was always in the process of moving toward the good with each new discussion and new interlocutor. “Now,” Kierkegaard writes, “this does not mean that he arrived there almost toward the end of his life, but that his life was a continual arriving at the good and having others arrive at it.”140 Kierkegaard emphasizes Socrates’ role as a teacher who helped individuals move from the realm of actuality to that of abstract morality. He thus did not stop once he reached abstract morality himself; instead, he returned again and again to help others to reach it. “But in order to be able to hold him fast at this point, in order never to forget that the content of his life was to make this movement at every moment,” Kierkegaard claims, “we must recollect his significance as a divine missionary. Although Socrates himself places much weight on his divine mission, Hegel has ignored this.”141 This completes Kierkegaard’s account of Hegel’s interpretation. The missionary aspect of Socrates’ work is indicative of the fact that it was begun anew with each new discussion. The criticism seems to be that Hegel ignores this by seeing the life of Socrates, as it were, backwards from a world-historical perspective, which tends to reify both the person of Socrates and his activity. Aside from the final point of criticism, Kierkegaard’s view of Hegel in this section is quite positive. Indeed, at the beginning of his discussion he indicates that his view amounts to a mere modification of Hegel’s.142 In his criticism, Kierkegaard notes the one aspect of Hegel’s analysis that he does not agree with, but up until that point they have traversed a lot of ground together. Moreover, Kierkegaard seems to acknowledge that these attempts to distance his view from Hegel’s position are ultimately unsuccessful since they are in many ways question-begging: he indicates that his procedure is different from Hegel’s but that Hegel’s might well

139 140 141

142

CI, p. 235; SKS, vol. 1, p. 276. CI, p. 235; SKS, vol. 1, p. 276. Translation slightly modified. CI, p. 236; SKS, vol. 1, p. 277. A variant of this criticism appears later in the Postscript, where Socrates is used as the exemplar of the subjective thinker who is always in the process of becoming in contrast to the speculative philosopher who is pure being. See CUP1, p. 92f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 91f. CI, p. 225; SKS, vol. 1, p. 268: “However, when I consider the Hegelian account in its totality and consider it in relation to the modification I have advanced, I believe that it all can best be dealt with under one rubric: In what sense is Socrates the founder of morality?” (My italics.)


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still be the true and correct one for scholarship and science.143 In the previous discussions Hegel played a positive role, and Kierkegaard drew from his analyses frequently in his own account of Socrates. Here Hegel’s own analysis is made the subject-matter of discussion in its own right, and Kierkegaard’s view is on the whole no less positive.

vii. hegel’s account of irony and the ironic subject Kierkegaard announces at the beginning of Part Two that he will take leave of his historical account of Socrates and embark upon an analysis of the concept of irony itself.144 Of particular interest here is the chapter, “The World-Historical Validity of Irony, the Irony of Socrates,” in which he again draws heavily on Hegel.145 Here Socratic irony is contrasted with the irony employed by the Romantics. In his Introduction to Part Two, after briefly touching on the contributions to the understanding of the concept made by Friedrich von Schlegel, Tieck, Solger, and Jean Paul, he declares that it is Hegel’s work on the issue which he finds the most impressive,146 saying, “Finally, here irony also met its master in Hegel.”147 Kierkegaard’s overall assessment seems to be that Hegel’s understanding of the concept of irony is insightful, if somewhat incomplete.148 He explains: At the point in all his systems where we could expect to find a development of irony, we find it referred to. Although, if it all were copied, we would have to concede that what is said about irony is in one sense not so inconsiderable, in another sense it is not much, since he says just about the same thing on every point. . . . Yet I am far from being able to lament justifiably over Hegel as Hegel laments over his predecessors. There are excellent 143 144

145 146

147 148

CI, pp. 166–167; SKS, vol. 1, p. 215. (Cited in footnote 83.) For an excellent treatment of this section see Ernst Behler, “Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Romanticism,” in Kierkegaard Revisited, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon Stewart (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1997, pp. 13–33. CI, pp. 259–271; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 297–308. In this section Kierkegaard refers primarily to Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 397–406; Jub., vol. 18, pp. 58–70. See CI, p. 244; SKS, vol. 1, p. 284. Kierkegaard here indicates the nature of Hegel’s importance on this issue with relation to his predecessors: “While the Schlegels and Tieck had their major importance in the polemic with which they destroyed a previous development, and while precisely for this reason their position became somewhat scattered, because it was not a principal battle they won but a multitude of skirmishes, Hegel, on the other hand, has absolute importance by defeating with his positive total view the polemic prudery.” CI, p. 242; SKS, vol. 1, p. 282. In this context he alludes to the treatment of irony in Hegel’s review of Solger and in the Lectures on Aesthetics (CI, p. 244; SKS, vol. 1, p. 284). See also CI, pp. 261–262; SKS, vol. 1, p. 299: “In my opinion, the significance of this formation has not received sufficient attention hitherto – all the more strange, since Hegel has treated the negative with such decided partiality. But the negative in the system corresponds to irony in the historical actuality. In the historical actuality the negative exists, which is never the case in the system.”


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observations especially in his review of Solger’s posthumous writings . . . even if the presentation and characterization of negative positions . . . are not always as exhaustive, as rich in content, as we could wish.149

While Kierkegaard applauds Hegel’s criticism of the Schlegels, he claims that it nonetheless led him to a one-sided reading.150 Kierkegaard claims that Hegel’s polemic against the Schlegels, the German champions of irony, clouded his view of the concept. Kierkegaard begins his analysis here with an account of the historical process in Hegelian terms.151 According to this view, history moves by virtue of contradictory concepts in the world-views of historical peoples at any given time: “a contradiction appears, by means of which the world process takes place. The given actuality at a certain time is the actuality valid for the generation and the individuals in that generation, and yet, if there is a reluctance to say that the process is over, this actuality must be displaced by another actuality.”152 When a concept [Begriff ] is no longer viable and its contradictions become apparent, it must be replaced by another. In this way history passes through different forms during the course of time. But the past, however contradictory it may be, is never wholly discarded: “Here we see how intrinsically consistent the world process is, for as the more true actuality presses onward, it nevertheless itself esteems the past; it is not a revolution but an evolution.”153 The historical process is not one of pure negation or of a replacement change of one period with another; rather, it is an Aufhebung that preserves each historical period whose time has expired and raises it up into a new form. Kierkegaard goes on to interpret the world-historical individual, a concept borrowed from Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, as the ironic subject. According to Kierkegaard, the ironic subject is one who stands in a negative relation to the entire actuality of his time and plays a role in the march of world history: Inasmuch as the new [sc. age] must forge ahead, here we meet the prophetic individual who spies the new in the distance, in dim and undefined contours. The prophetic individual does not possess the future – he has only a presentiment of it. . . . He battles for the new and strives to 149 150

151 153

CI, p. 244; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 283–284. See CI, p. 265; SKS, vol. 1, p. 303: “But the fact that Hegel became irritated with the form of irony closest to him naturally impaired his interpretation of the concept. . . . In no way does this mean that Hegel was not right about the Schlegels and that the Schlegelian irony was not on a very dubious wrong road. All that it says is that Hegel has surely conferred a great benefit through the earnestness with which he takes a stand against any isolation, an earnestness that makes it possible to read much that he has written with much invigoration and considerable edification. But on the other hand, it must be said that by his one-sided attack on the post-Fichtean irony he has overlooked the truth of irony, and by his identifying all irony with this, he has done irony an injustice.” 152 CI, p. 260; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 297–298. CI, p. 259; SKS, vol. 1, p. 297. CI, p. 260; SKS, vol. 1, p. 298.


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destroy what for him is a vanishing actuality, but his task is still not so much to destroy as to advance the new and thereby destroy the past indirectly. But the old must be superseded; the old must be perceived in all its imperfection. Here we meet the ironic subject. For the ironic subject, the given actuality has lost its validity entirely.154

The ironic subject is thus one who helps instigate changes in history by bringing to the fore the contradictions present in the world-view of his age. This is how Kierkegaard understands the figure of Socrates. He summarizes his previous account of Socratic irony by saying: “the whole of existence has become alien to the ironic subject and the ironic subject in turn alien to existence, [and] as actuality has lost its validity for the ironic subject, he himself has to a certain degree become unactual.”155 The ironic individual is out of sync with his world-historical period. The ironic stance is an expression of this, for it represents a general negation of everything in a given age. This is the meaning of Kierkegaard’s characterization of irony “as the infinite absolute negativity.”156 Given this stance, the ironic subject in a sense stands aloof and does not interfere, allowing the internal contradiction within the world-view to work itself out. Like Hegel, Kierkegaard emphasizes the internal negation of the concept that irony effects. He cites Hegel to support his claim that the ironic subject can destroy the principle of the world-historical period in which he lives by finding its contradiction and allowing it to dissolve itself immanently instead of importing a criticism from outside.157 Kierkegaard once again refers to Socrates and places his irony in the historical context: For him, the whole given actuality had entirely lost its validity; he had become alien to the actuality of the whole substantial world. This is one side of irony, but on the other hand he used irony as he destroyed Greek culture. His conduct toward it was at all times ironic; he was ignorant and knew nothing but was continually seeking information from others; yet as he let the existing go on existing, it foundered.158

This is, for Hegel, “the universal irony of the world.”159 Socrates’ ironic stance allowed the contradictions in traditional Greek morality to become 154 156

157

158 159

155 CI, p. 259; SKS, vol. 1, p. 297. CI, pp. 260–261; SKS, vol. 1, p. 298. CI, p. 261; SKS, vol. 1, p. 299. See CI, p. 261; SKS, vol. 1, p. 299: “It is negativity because it only negates; it is infinite, because it does not negate this or that phenomenon; it is absolute, because that by virtue of which it negates is a higher something that still is not.” The ironic subject is infinite since he negates everything and not just some particular thing. See Lee M. Capel, “Historical Introduction,” in his translation of Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony, London: Collins 1966, p. 32. CI, pp. 262–263; SKS, vol. 1, p. 300: “Precisely because every particular historical actuality is continually but an element in the actualization of the Idea, it carries within itself the seeds of its own downfall.” After citing Hegel, Kierkegaard writes: “and in this the world of irony is very accurately interpreted”(CI, p. 262; SKS, vol. 1, p. 300). CI, p. 264; SKS, vol. 1, p. 302. CI, p. 262; SKS, vol. 1, p. 300. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, p. 400; Jub., vol. 18, p. 62.


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apparent without actively evoking them. Socrates merely asked questions and then observed how the proponents of traditional morality fell into confusion and contradiction in their attempts to answer them. Thus, the seed for the destruction of Greek ethical life was planted and, once planted, required no further cultivation on the part of Socrates.160 Kierkegaard then associates irony with subjectivity. The worldhistorical individual must be self-consciously aware of his negative assessment of the actual and his own negative stance toward it: “But if irony is a qualification of subjectivity, then it must manifest itself the first time subjectivity makes its appearance in world history. Irony is, namely, the first and most abstract qualification of subjectivity. This points to the historical turning point where subjectivity made its appearance for the first time, and with this we have come to Socrates.”161 This is, of course, precisely Hegel’s claim (i.e., that Socrates represents the principle of subjectivity or subjective freedom in contrast to traditional morality). Thus concludes Kierkegaard’s own, highly Hegelian view of the historical Socrates, which he now, somewhat paradoxically, contrasts with that of Hegel.162 He cites Hegel who claims that Socratic irony consisted in making the abstract concrete. This, of course, refers to the Socratic method of crossexamination, which seeks individual examples that are meant to illustrate some general point. Hegel says, If I say I know what reason is, what belief is, these are only but quite abstract ideas; it is necessary, in order to become concrete, that they should be explained, and that it should be understood that what they really are, is unknown. The irony of Socrates has this great quality of showing how to make abstract ideas concrete and effect their development, for on that alone depends the bringing of the Concept into consciousness.163

Hegel, as a critic of static, abstract ideas, lauds Socrates for his attempt to make them concrete and develop them in a dialectical fashion. By claiming not to know or to understand anything, Socrates obliged his interlocutors to try to explain their views more precisely. This invariably involved trying to illustrate general rules or definitions, which the interlocutors thought were clear, with concrete examples. Socrates then went to work showing the contradictions involved in the individual examples given and how they did not fit the general definition. Kierkegaard’s criticism

160

161 162

163

It will be recalled (Chapter 2, Section IV, B) that Hegel’s doctrine of the immanent or internal negation of the Concept was singled out for praise in From the Papers of One Still Living. CI, p. 264; SKS, vol. 1, p. 302. CI, pp. 264–265; SKS, vol. 1, p. 302: “Since Hegel declares himself against viewing Socrates’ position as irony, it becomes necessary to look at the objections found here and there in his books.” CI, p. 267; SKS, vol. 1, p. 304. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, p. 400; Jub., vol. 18, p. 62. Translation slightly modified.


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is aimed at this point in Hegel’s interpretation. “But this confuses everything,” Kierkegaard complains, “the description of Socratic irony completely loses its historical weight. . . . Socrates’ understanding was by no means one of making the abstract concrete, and the examples cited are certainly very poorly chosen.”164 Kierkegaard objects since this would seem to attribute to Socrates some positivity, namely, the concrete.165 It would seem to imply that Socrates already knows ahead of time some idea made concrete, which is the goal of his discussion. Here as before the purported criticism seems to be best characterized as a modification based on a larger context of shared views and not as a complete or utter rejection of Hegel’s analysis, given how much of Hegel’s analysis he has used and incorporated into his discussion. Kierkegaard finally comes to answer the question raised by this chapter. He claims that Socrates (unlike the Romantics) is “world-historically justified”166 in his use of irony insofar as he, qua world-historical individual, brought traditional Greek morality to an end and thus caused history to move beyond this stage of immediacy. Here Kierkegaard does not add anything new to what he has already discussed regarding the general role of Socrates as a world-historical individual in the development of Greek culture. Like the other discussions, this one follows Hegel’s analysis very closely. For all of his criticisms of Hegel here, Kierkegaard seems to admit that in the final analysis there is not much disagreement. He is careful to point out once again that his conclusions are consistent with Hegel’s.167

viii. hegel’s criticism of romantic irony While the chapters from The Concept of Irony analyzed up until now have proven to be largely modelled on Hegel’s account of Socrates in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, the long chapter from Part Two, entitled “Irony after Fichte,”168 is, I wish to argue, modelled on Hegel’s brief account of irony in his Lectures on Aesthetics.169 Kierkegaard continues his discussion of the previous chapter, now examining different instantiations of Romantic irony, treating specifically the leading authors of the German Romantic movement: Friedrich von Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, and 164 165

166 167

168 169

CI, p. 267; SKS, vol. 1, p. 304. CI, p. 267; SKS, vol. 1, p. 304. He claims that (1) this positivity may be a fair characterization of Plato but not Socrates and (2) Socrates’ whole life was a movement in the opposite direction, namely, from the concrete to the abstract. CI, p. 271; SKS, vol. 1, p. 308. CI, p. 270; SKS, vol. 1, p. 307: “I believe, therefore, that everyone will agree with me that there is nothing in these Hegelian observations to preclude the assumption that Socrates’ position was irony.” CI, pp. 272–323; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 308–352. Hegel, Aesthetics I, pp. 64–69; Jub., vol. 12, pp. 100–106.


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Solger. I wish to argue in this section that Kierkegaard’s criticism of these Romantics is largely borrowed from Hegel170 and that his account of their respective positions can be seen as an expansion on that presented by Hegel. The first obvious point of overlap concerns Hegel’s analysis of the origin of modern irony in the philosophy of Fichte. It was, Hegel argues, Fichte’s philosophy of the subjective ego which provided the theoretical framework for Friedrich von Schlegel’s theory of irony. Hegel writes: Fichte sets up the ego as the absolute principle of all knowing, reason, and cognition, and . . . the ego . . . remains throughout abstract and formal. Secondly, this ego is therefore in itself just simple, and, on the one hand, every particularity, every characteristic, every content is negated in it, since everything is submerged in this abstract freedom and unity, while, on the other hand, every content which is to have value for the ego is only posited and recognized by the ego itself.171

Fichte’s theory of the self-positing “I” or ego transfers to the individual subject the criteria for truth and validity. These criteria are no longer conceived as being given by the external world but instead as being posited by the subject. But this transcendental ego is purely formal (i.e., devoid of any determinate content), and for this reason the individual ego is free to supply whatever content it wishes. It is in this that Hegel sees the problem. The self-positing “I” denies the truth and validity of everything in the external world and sets itself up as the ultimate judge and arbiter of truth, but this truth has no content in itself, and a given thing is true by virtue not of anything intrinsic to the matter itself but only of the fact that it is posited by the subject. The individual subject realizes this formal structure of truth and knows that its own determinations of truth are at bottom arbitrary. It thus comes to take up an ironic attitude toward even its own judgments and creations. It knows that it can negate all customs, beliefs, ideas, and the like, at a whim, and it therefore takes none of them seriously. This subject holds beliefs only ironically and shows its superiority to others in its ability to drop them at a moment’s notice and take up others, which are equally arbitrary. This is the aspect of Fichte’s philosophy that, according to Hegel, Friedrich von Schlegel developed in his account of Romantic irony. In his chapter “Irony after Fichte,” Kierkegaard begins his account in exactly the same way, tracing Romantic irony back to Fichte. He gives a brief account of the problem of the thing-in-itself in Kant’s philosophy and Fichte’s attempt to resolve it with the theory of the self-positing 170 171

For Hegel’s criticism of the Romantics, see Otto Pöggeler, Hegels Kritik der Romantik, Bonn: Rheinische Wilhelms-Universität 1956. Hegel, Aesthetics I, p. 64; Jub., vol. 12, p. 100. Translation slightly modified.


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subject. He writes: The producing “I” is the same as the produced “I.” “I = I” is the abstract identity. By so doing [Fichte] infinitely liberated thought. But this infinity of thought in Fichte is, like all Fichte’s infinity (his ethical infinity is ceaseless striving for the sake of this striving itself; his esthetic infinity is ceaseless producing for the sake of this producing itself; God’s infinity is ceaseless development for the sake of the development itself), negative infinity, an infinity in which there is no finitude, an infinity without any content.172

By eliminating the external other (i.e., the thing-in-itself), Fichte unites subject and object. Since the world is merely something posited by the subject, it has no independent existence and is thus continuous with the subject itself. In the second half of the passage quoted, Kierkegaard emphasizes the same critical point as Hegel: the lack of content in Fichte’s subject. Kierkegaard follows Hegel’s account by connecting this principle in Fichte with Romantic irony. Specifically, Schlegel and Tieck reinterpreted Fichte’s theory of the subject for their own purposes: “This Fichtean principle that subjectivity, the ‘I,’ has constitutive validity, is the sole omnipotence, was grasped by Schlegel and Tieck, and on that basis they operated in the world.”173 Schlegel and Tieck take the self-positing subject of Fichte, which was originally conceived as an atemporal epistemological presupposition (i.e., a condition for all knowing), and turn it into an actual temporal, empirical subject. Thus, in an odd twist, an epistemological principle becomes a model for actual life. The second point of overlap between the accounts of Hegel and Kierkegaard concerns the conception of the artistic life promulgated by the Romantics. In his discussion Hegel shows how this general concept of the self-creating subjective ego in Fichte is reformulated and turned into a model for life by Schlegel. This constitutes the link from the epistemological point about the self-positing “I” to aesthetics. The subject’s creation of the content of actuality is conceived as a specific kind of life, which is higher and grander than that of the common person, namely, “living artistically.” Hegel describes this as follows: the ego is a living, active individual, and its life consists in making its individuality real in its own eyes and in those of others, in expressing itself, and bringing itself into appearance. For every man, by living, tries to realize himself and does realize himself. Now in relation to beauty and art, this acquires the meaning of living as an artist and forming one’s life artistically. But on this principle, I live as an artist when all my action and my expression in general, in connection with any content whatever, remains for me a mere show and assumes a shape which is wholly in my power.174 172 174

173 CI, p. 275; SKS, vol. 1, p. 311. CI, p. 273; SKS, vol. 1, p. 309. Hegel, Aesthetics I, p. 65; Jub., vol. 12, p. 101.


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Hegel criticizes this Romantic view of the artistic life, which, as it were, creates reality from itself, giving the world truth, meaning, and beauty at will and then at the next moment negating it again. This constitutes a part of the ironist’s self-conception. The self-ironic artist arrogantly regards himself as the truly enlightened one since he has seen through the hollowness of traditional customs and values: “he who has reached this standpoint of divine genius looks down from his high rank on all other men, for they are pronounced dull and limited, inasmuch as laws, morals, etc., still count for them as fixed, essential, and obligatory.”175 Kierkegaard once again follows Hegel’s analysis, discussing in detail the notion of “living poetically.”176 He describes this notion of the ironist’s artistic self-creation in much the same way as Hegel. The ironist can create himself ex nihilo by choosing to be and do anything at all; the ironist does not feel bound by traditional laws, customs, or conceptions of what is good or right or wrong. He is free to exercise “infinite poetic freedom.”177 This is demonstrated by the fact that he plays a series of radically different roles, shifting from the one to the other at will. Like Hegel, Kierkegaard notes the arrogance of the ironist, who regards with contempt others who accept customs or habits handed down to them by their culture or tradition.178 The third point of overlap concerns what Hegel in his analysis points out as the absence of character in the Romantic ironist. A result of the view of the artistic life is, for Hegel, that the ironist has no enduring identity. Since he changes his actions, views and life every day, the ironist becomes, as it were, schizophrenic. Everything is reduced to the fleeting passion of the moment. Hegel contrasts the mutable character of the Romantic ironist with the steadfast character of Cato the Younger: Irony loves this irony of loss of character, for true character implies, on the one hand, essentially worthy aims, and, on the other hand, a firm grip of such aims, so that the whole being of its individuality would be lost if the aims had to be given up and abandoned. This fixity and substantiality constitutes the keynote of character. Cato can live only as a Roman and a republican.179

While the Romantics reproach their reading public for being too shallow or ignorant to appreciate the profundity of the characters they produce, Hegel attributes the general lack of success among the Romantics to precisely the fact that the characters they portray stand for nothing and lack any clear character trait. This is the true reason, Hegel claims, that 175 176 178 179

Hegel, Aesthetics I, p. 66; Jub., vol. 12, p. 102. 177 CI, p. 281; SKS, vol. 1, p. 317. CI, p. 280; SKS, vol. 1, p. 316. CI, pp. 280–281; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 316–317. Hegel, Aesthetics I, pp. 67–68; Jub., vol. 12, pp. 104–105.


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Romantic art fails to hold the attention of the public. Its characters are transitory and ultimately uninteresting. Once again Kierkegaard follows Hegel’s analysis, treating the characterless individual that the ironist becomes. He discusses character in Kantian terms as the “an sich,” contrasting the unreflective individual with the ironist. He writes: “But just as commonplace people do not have any an sich but can become anything, so also the ironist has none.”180 The contrast here is between unreflective people, who live in the immediacy of the customs and values of their culture, and the Romantic ironist. The latter have no character of their own since the character they have comes to them from without. By contrast, the Romantic has no intrinsic character but for a different reason. The Romantic ironist has no enduring identity beyond his momentary mood: “As the ironist poetically composes himself and his environment with the greatest possible poetic license, as he lives in this totally hypothetical and subjunctive way his life loses all continuity. He succumbs completely to mood. His life is nothing but moods.”181 Here Kierkegaard also refers to Hegel explicitly in approval of his criticism of Tieck on this issue.182 In his analysis of the individual thinkers – Schlegel, Tieck, and Solger – Kierkegaard also draws heavily on Hegel, even though Hegel does not go into any detailed analysis of these thinkers in the section on irony from the Lectures on Aesthetics. Of particular interest is Kierkegaard’s account of Solger. He mentions explicitly Hegel’s brief account of Solger’s irony in the section under examination,183 but, more importantly, he draws heavily on Hegel’s aforementioned book-review of the then recently published edition of Solger’s posthumous writing, edited by Ludwig Tieck and the historian, Frederik von Raumer (1781–1873).184 A specific point of overlap in this regard concerns Hegel’s criticism of Solger for not recognizing the positive aspect of the dialectical method. In the Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel criticizes Solger as a purely negative thinker who did not realize the positive aspect of the dialectic. According to Hegel, the dialectic of course passes through three distinct stages: a position is (1) posited, then (2) negated, and finally, once the conceptual unity between the position and its negation has been recognized, (3) the negation is negated in a positive moment. Hegel’s reproach of Solger is that he has only recognized the negative element but not the higher 180 182

183 184

181 CI, p. 284; SKS, vol. 1, p. 319. CI, p. 281; SKS, vol. 1, p. 317. CI, p. 285; SKS, vol. 1, p. 320: “It is especially for this that Hegel criticizes Tieck, and it is also present in his correspondence with Solger. At times he has a clear grasp of everything, at times he is seeking; at times he is a dogmatician, at times a doubter, at times Jacob Böhme, at times the Greeks, etc. – nothing but moods.” CI, p. 308; SKS, vol. 1, p. 340. ¨ Hegel, “Uber Solger’s nachgelassene Schriften und Briefwechsel. Herausgegeben von Ludwig Tieck und Friedrich von Raumer. Erster Band 780 S. mit Vorr. XVI S. Zweiter Band 784 S. Leipzig, 1826,” Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik, 1828, op. cit.


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positive moment. “To this negativity Solger firmly clung,” Hegel writes, “and of course it is one element in the speculative Idea, yet interpreted as this purely dialectical unrest and dissolution of both infinite and finite, only one element, and not, as Solger will have it, the whole Idea.”185 Even though the second stage (i.e., the negative stage) is an important and essential part of the dialectical movement, what makes it truly speculative is the third positive stage, which unites the previous moments and keeps them from falling apart from each other as independent entities. In this critique of Solger, Kierkegaard follows Hegel exactly. He too reproaches Solger for not recognizing the true nature of the speculative dialectic. He writes: “Throughout this whole investigation, Solger seems to have a dim notion of the negation of the negation, which in itself contains the true affirmation. But since the whole train of thought is not developed, the one negation erroneously slips into the other, and the true affirmation does not result.”186 Indeed, Kierkegaard even mentions Hegel explicitly, indicating that he is the original source of this criticism.187 Given this, there can be no doubt that this aspect of Kierkegaard’s analysis is derived straightforwardly from Hegel. Another point of overlap can be found in Hegel’s employment of the phrase “infinite absolute negativity” in his description of Romantic irony; this definition proves to be profoundly important for Kierkegaard. In his brief account of Solger’s position in the section on irony from the Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel employs this phrase to describe Solger’s irony. He writes: “In this process [Solger] came to the dialectical moment of the Idea, to the point which I call ‘infinite absolute negativity.’”188 By this Hegel means that Solger negated the philosophical Idea. He reduced the universal of the Idea to a whim of the individual, only to reconstruct it once again and then negate it yet again. In other words, Solger denied the concept of truth and beauty in general and regarded it to something subjective. The position of Solger is absolute negativity because it fails to include the third stage at which a positive moment replaces the negative one. The negative thus remains absolute as the final moment. The formulation, “infinite absolute negativity,” appears many times throughout The Concept of Irony, above all in Part Two,189 and is important for the development of Kierkegaard’s view of irony. In his account in 185 186

187 188 189

Hegel, Aesthetics I, pp. 68–69; Jub., vol. 12, p. 106. CI, p. 317; SKS, vol. 1, p. 348. See CI, p. 323; SKS, vol. 1, p. 352: “[Solger] does have the negation of the negation, but still there is a veil in front of his eyes so that he does not see the affirmation.” CI, p. 317; SKS, vol. 1, p. 348: “Hegel perceived this very clearly and therefore articulates it explicitly on page 470.” Hegel, Aesthetics I, p. 68; Jub., vol. 12, p. 105. CI, p. 26; SKS, vol. 1, p. 87. CI, p. 254; SKS, vol. 1, p. 292. CI, p. 259; SKS, vol. 1, p. 297. CI, p. 261; SKS, vol. 1, p. 299. CI, p. 271; SKS, vol. 1, p. 307. CI, p. 273; SKS, vol. 1, p. 309. CI, p. 312; SKS, vol. 1, p. 343. CI, p. 323; SKS, vol. 1, p. 352.


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the chapter, “Irony after Fichte,” he borrows Hegel’s phrase to describe Romantic irony. There it comes up many times, for example, in his description of the origin of Romantic irony in Fichte: “In Fichte, thought was infinitized, subjectivity became the infinite, absolute negativity, the infinite tension and urge.”190 He employs this same expression in his analysis of Solger. In the chapter “The World-Historical Validity of Irony, the Irony of Socrates,” Kierkegaard explains this expression as follows: “Here, then, we have irony as the infinite absolute negativity. It is negativity, because it only negates; it is infinite, because it does not negate this or that phenomenon; it is absolute, because that by virtue of which it negates is a higher something that still is not.”191 The main point seems to be that Romantic irony is infinite in the sense that it indiscriminately negates everything, whereas Socratic irony or controlled irony is finite, being directed only at specific finite things. Finally, Kierkegaard makes no attempt to hide his debt to Hegel in this chapter. He refers to him directly on several occasions to indicate that he is freely using Hegel’s analysis or that he is in agreement with Hegel’s results. For example, he recalls the discussion from the chapter “The World-Historical Validity of Irony, the Irony of Socrates,” indicating his agreement with Hegel’s criticism of Romantic irony in contrast with Socratic irony. Unlike Socratic irony, which was directed at specific beliefs or institutions that Socrates found to be internally contradictory, Romantic irony is all-encompassing. It negates not select things for a specific reason but rather everything generally. Thus, it serves no higher purpose than to glorify the subject employing it. For this reason Kierkegaard views Socrates’ use of irony as justified, when seen historically, since it was aimed at a specific goal. By contrast, the Romantics’ use of irony has no goal other than the self-indulgent pleasure of the ironist himself. Kierkegaard writes: “Now, there certainly may have been much in actuality that needed criticism. . . . there may well have been much in existence that had to be cut away precisely because it was not actuality, but it was utterly indefensible for irony to aim its criticism at all actuality for that reason.”192 On this point Kierkegaard entirely shares Hegel’s criticism of Romantic irony: “We also perceive here that this irony was totally unjustified and that Hegel’s hostile behavior toward it is entirely in order.”193 190 192 193

191 CI, p. 261; SKS, vol. 1, p. 299. CI, p. 273; SKS, vol. 1, p. 309. CI, p. 276; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 312–313. CI, p. 275; SKS, vol. 1, p. 311. The oddity should be noted that in much of contemporary research Kierkegaard is taken, primarily by interpreters influenced by a post-modernist approach, to hold precisely this view of all-negating irony, which he associates with Romantic irony and which clearly resembles the use of irony in post-modernism. But it is clear that this is the position that Kierkegaard, following Hegel, wishes to criticize and not the one he wishes to defend.


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Although there are more parallels and points of overlap that could be explored, I take these to be sufficient to establish the thesis that the chapter “Irony after Fichte” is modelled on Hegel’s discussion of irony in the Lectures on Aesthetics. The main features of Hegel’s brief account of Romantic irony are all mentioned by Kierkegaard here. Kierkegaard follows closely Hegel’s account of the origin of irony in Fichte, of living artistically in irony, and of the absence of an enduring character in the ironist, in a number of passages lauding Hegel explicitly. Although Hegel does not analyze the irony of Schlegel, Tieck, or Solger in any detail in this brief account of irony, he does in any case allude to all three, and more detailed discussions of each of them come elsewhere in these lectures and in other texts. Kierkegaard expands upon Hegel’s brief allusions to Schlegel, Tieck, and Solger to illustrate his account of Romantic irony and to contrast it with Socratic irony. One can still debate the degree to which Kierkegaard was influenced by Hegel’s criticism of the Romantics in this chapter, but the fact that he was influenced by him is beyond question. In Section III of the present chapter I explored the argument that the structure of Part One of the The Concept of Irony might have been intended to have a Hegelian look about it in that it follows the categories of possibility, actuality, and necessity. Now it is clear that the content of the work is more Hegelian than this structure. One can see The Concept of Irony as a sort of commentary on a part of Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy. When one looks at Hegel’s table of contents for the relevant section, one can map Kierkegaard’s analyses here in the dissertation onto it in a fairly straightforward manner. This can be represented as follows: Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy

Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony

A. The Sophists (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 352–384/ Jub., vol. 18, pp. 5–42)

Part One: The View Made Necessary (CI, pp. 198–214/ SKS, vol. 1, pp. 243–259)

B. Socrates (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 384–448/ Jub., vol. 18, pp. 42–122) 1. The Socratic Method (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 397–406/ Jub., vol. 18, pp. 58–70)

Part Two: The World-Historical Validity of Socrates (CI, pp. 258–271/ SKS, vol. 1, pp. 297–308)


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hegel in the concept of irony a. Irony (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 398– 402/Jub., vol. 18, pp. 59–64)


b. Midwifery (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 402– 404/Jub., vol. 18, pp. 64–67)


c. Aporeia (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 404–406/ Jub., vol. 18, pp. 67–70) 2. The Principle of the Good (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 406–425/ Jub., vol. 18, pp. 70–100)

Appendix: Hegel’s View of Socrates (CI, pp. 219–237/ SKS, vol. 1, pp. 263–278)

a. The Principle of Subjective Freedom (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 407–414/ Jub., vol. 18, pp. 71–79)


b. The Aspects of the Universal (Hist.of Phil. I, pp. 414–421/ Jub., vol. 18, pp. 79–89)


c. The Daimon (Hist.of Phil. I, pp. 421–425/ Jub., vol. 18, pp. 89–100)

The Daimon of Socrates (CI, pp. 157–167/ SKS, vol. 1, pp. 207–215)

3. The Fate of Socrates (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 425–448/ Jub., vol. 18, pp. 100–122)

The Condemnation of Socrates (CI, pp. 167–197/ SKS, vol. 1, pp. 215–245)

a. The Charges (Hist.of Phil. I, pp. 431– 440/Jub., vol. 18, pp. 103–113) α. Socrates Introduced New Gods (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 432– 435/Jub., vol. 18, pp. 103–107)

1. Socrates Does Not Accept the Gods Accepted by the State, and He Introduces New Deities (CI, pp. 168–183/ SKS, vol. 1, pp. 216–230)

β. Socrates Led the Youth Astray (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 435–440/Jub., vol. 18, pp. 107–113)

2. Socrates Seduces the Youth (CI, pp. 183–197/ SKS, vol. 1, pp. 231–243)


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b. The Proposal of an Alternative Penalty (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 440–445/ Jub., vol. 18, pp. 113–118) c. The Aftermath (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 445– 448/Jub., vol. 18, pp. 118–122) C. The Philosophy of the Socratics (Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 448–487/ Jub., vol. 18, pp. 122–169)

Part One: The View Made Necessary (CI, pp. 214–218/ SKS, vol. 1, pp. 259–262)

1. The Megarics 2. The Cyrenaic School 3. The Cynic School

It should be noted that there are some differences in the nature of the correspondences; for example, Kierkegaard’s sections “The Daimon of Socrates” and “The Condemnation of Socrates” follow Hegel’s analyses very closely, whereas in “The World-Historical Validity of Socrates” he refers to aspects of the corresponding analysis in Hegel (e.g., Hegel’s treatment of irony and midwifery), without following Hegel’s discussion in any detail. Nonetheless, this scheme can be used as a basic guide to the importance of Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy for The Concept of Irony. Given the similarities between the two texts, it seems that Kierkegaard largely structured The Concept of Irony in accordance with this part of Hegel’s lectures. In addition, as has been argued in Section VIII, Kierkegaard’s criticism of Romantic irony in the chapter “Irony after Fichte” was modelled on Hegel’s account of irony in the Lectures on Aesthetics. Thus, Kierkegaard shows his substantial debt to these two Hegelian texts. The long quotations of Hegel’s texts here also suggest that Kierkegaard is not yet wholly the master of the subject-matter. At times lengthy passages are cited with little or no explanation or discussion, and often Kierkegaard allows the quotations from Hegel’s texts to carry the analysis for him. In virtually every discussion after the first chapter, Kierkegaard draws heavily on the content of Hegel’s individual analyses and largely accepts Hegel’s views on the key issues. Indeed, Kierkegaard makes it a point at the end of each section to say that his view is consistent with Hegel’s. He accepts, for example, Hegel’s account of Socrates as a world-historical figure and as a destructive force in Greek ethical life, Hegel’s characterization of Socrates’ irony as infinitely negative and his criticism of the German Romantics. He also has a rather Hegelian conception of the movement


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and development of history. Finally, the very thesis of the work that irony is a negative concept is essentially a Hegelian notion that Kierkegaard appeals to many times for support. Not only does Kierkegaard draw heavily on the content of Hegel’s thought in The Concept of Irony, but he also in many passages makes use of clearly Hegelian language. He speaks, for example, of “world history,” of “the unfolding of the Idea,” of the “phenomenological,” of “being-inand-for-itself,” “the world historical,” and “world spirit.” Thus, as both this work and From the Papers of One Still Living attest, Hegel’s philosophical language seems to have been perceived by Kierkegaard as a legitimate tool for the expression of his ideas. This is of particular interest since, even during this early period, he is critical of philosophical jargon as is evinced by The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars. In The Concept of Irony, Hegel is used sometimes as a tool, sometimes as a commentator, and sometimes as a participant in a discussion. Hegel’s role here is much greater than in From the Papers of One Still Living, where aspects of his philosophy were alluded to briefly without any accompanying discussion. By contrast, in The Concept of Irony there is no longer any doubt that Kierkegaard has read and studied carefully many of Hegel’s primary texts. They are quoted and analyzed in detail in a fashion that is unique in Kierkegaard’s authorship. Neither before nor after this work are Hegel’s primary texts made the object of Kierkegaard’s study to anything approaching the extent seen here. Although Hegel’s thought does not set the agenda for the study as a whole, he is clearly the most important interlocutor who at times comes to dominate the discussion. Sometimes Kierkegaard cites him, seeking support for some view in his authority, or makes use of his analyses as a focal point for some discussion. By virtue of the vast number of references to Hegel that run throughout The Concept of Irony, there can be no doubt that Hegel plays an important role in this text. Even the ironic thesis implicitly admits this since, by arguing that Kierkegaard is playing the role of a Hegelian in this work, authors like Thulstrup acknowledge that there are indeed Hegelian elements present. Thus, the question becomes one of the nature of that role. As has been seen, one interpretation of Hegel’s large role in The Concept of Irony is the thesis that the use of Hegel here is ironic. But, as I have tried to demonstrate, this reading is implausible for a number of reasons. (1) It was not consonant with Kierkegaard’s own self-understanding of The Concept of Irony as is testified by the references to it in his journals. (2) It does not square with the tone of the text itself where one at times finds criticisms of Hegel. The tone is not that of a naive devotee of Hegel, which one would expect in a parody or satire. (3) The ironic reading does not make sense on its own terms since the faculty at the University of Copenhagen was at the time of Kierkegaard’s dissertation no more


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dominated by Hegelians than the bourgeois social order was, and thus there was no one for Kierkegaard to dupe by pretending to be a Hegelian. The ironic reading of The Concept of Irony makes the mistake of transferring Kierkegaard’s later polemical stance onto this early text, thus confusing different periods of his intellectual development. To put the matter differently, the Hegel of The Concept of Irony is not the same as the Hegel of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. In the former, Hegel is hardly portrayed as an enemy. These distinctions are lost on interpreters who tend to take the criticism of the Postscript to be the paradigm for Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. Like Thulstrup, they thus believe that Kierkegaard and Hegel have nothing in common based on what they think they know of the later works. Then when they go back and see the numerous references to Hegel in The Concept of Irony, they are obliged to make a decision. One can, as I have, simply say that Kierkegaard changed his views about Hegel as his own thought developed. Or one might insist, as the ironic thesis does, that there is only one static Kierkegaard with a single position and viewpoint with respect to Hegel. If one chooses to follow this course, one is compelled to invent some sort of ad hoc story about The Concept of Irony to minimize the importance of the undeniable Hegelian elements found there. But, as has been argued, the story that the ironic reading tells is wholly arbitrary and lacking any historical basis. Thus, it seems much more plausible simply to admit that Kierkegaard was captivated by certain aspects of Hegel’s thought during his student years as the statements by Sibbern and Brøchner attest.194 This is conceivable given the fact that Hegel’s philosophy was very much in the air at the time and that a number of Copenhagen’s leading intellectuals, many of whom were Kierkegaard’s friends and associates, also had a period of infatuation with Hegelianism before they came to reject it. Thus, there is nothing strange or extraordinary about thinking that Kierkegaard too had a period of this kind, during which he was interested in and indeed found convincing some aspects of Hegel’s philosophy, and The Concept of Irony itself provides ample testimony that this is precisely what happened. 194

Treated in Section II in this chapter.

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4 HEGEL’S AUFHEBUNG AND KIERKEGAARD’S EITHER/OR

After his dissertation, the next work that Kierkegaard wrote was Either/Or, which appeared in two volumes under the name of the pseudonymous editor Victor Eremita in 1843 (i.e., two years after The Concept of Irony). It is the work that in Kierkegaard’s own mind marks the beginning of his actual authorship.1 Either/Or was apparently begun during his stay in Berlin (from late October 1841 to early March 1842) and then completed during the months immediately following his return to Denmark.2 Kierkegaard ultimately finished the book in November of 1842,3 and it was published in February of the following year. The subject-matter of the work overlaps in some respects with that of The Concept of Irony, but the way in which it is treated differs radically. Perhaps the most obvious points of contact can be found in the chapter on tragedy. Likewise, “The Seducer’s Diary” has been thought to represent the ironic stance of Romantic individualism, as embodied by Friedrich von Schlegel’s Lucinde, which is of course discussed in some detail in The Concept of Irony.4 Some see the entire account of the esthete in Part One as corresponding to the irony of the Romantics. Likewise the section entitled, “Rotation of Crops,” seems to be a portrayal of Romantic nihilism, which is criticized in The Concept of Irony. Aside from these points, much of the content of Either/Or departs from that of the dissertation. 1 2

3 4

PV, p. 10; SV1, vol. 13, p. 521. In a letter from Berlin he cites the desire to complete the work as one of his reasons for wanting to return to Copenhagen: “It is absolutely imperative that I return to Copenhagen this spring. For either I shall finish Either/Or by spring, or I shall never finish it”(LD, 68; B&A I, p. 107). In a later letter he writes in the same vein, “I am coming to Copenhagen to complete Either/Or. It is my favorite idea, and in it I exist. . . . As soon as I have finished Either/Or, I shall fly away again like a happy bird. . . . but first I must finish Either/Or and that I can only do in Copenhagen” (LD, 69; B&A I, p. 108). See Jette Knudsen and Johnny Kondrup, “Tekstredegørelse” to Enten-Eller in SKS, vol. K2–3, especially pp. 38–58. See JP, vol. 5, 5568; Pap. III B 189. See George Pattison, Kierkegaard and the Crisis of Faith, Melksham, Wiltshire: The Cromwell Press 1997, pp. 38–39, p. 76.

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hegel’s aufhebung and kierkegaard’s either/or

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Moreover, the tone of the two works is quite different. While the latter clearly has the look of an academic treatise, the former is much more literary. In contrast to Either/Or, the dissertation contains numerous quotations from the ancient Greek authors and contemporary commentators. While Kierkegaard is careful to give evidence and weigh arguments in The Concept of Irony, there are few scholarly trappings of this kind in Either/Or. Not surprisingly, Hegel’s role in Either/Or is also different from that in The Concept of Irony. There are few direct references to Hegel, and one does not find the lengthy quotations or textual analyses that were present in the dissertation. However, one point of continuity between the two texts is a complete absence of anti-Hegel polemics which is so prevalent in later works. Given that there are few references to Hegel and no polemics against him, the casual reader might be led to the conclusion that Hegel is entirely absent from Either/Or. But Hegel does play an important role in this text despite the relatively small number of direct references. In this chapter, I would like to argue first that Either/Or was conceived primarily as a response to a debate, which was taking place in Denmark at the time, about Hegel’s doctrine of mediation or, more specifically, his criticism of the law of excluded middle. Second I will try to demonstrate that this text employs a kind of Hegelian dialectical development in some of its analyses. Thus, I will claim that, like The Concept of Irony, this work is profoundly influenced by Hegel. Some of the Hegelian elements in Either/Or, particularly in Part Two, have been noted by the secondary literature. For example, Høffding has noted the similarities between Judge Wilhelm’s interpretation of love and marriage in the first chapter, “The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage,” and Hegel’s account of immediacy and mediation.5 Likewise, it has been noted that the long chapter, “The Balance Between the Aesthetic and the Ethical,” contains dialectical movements akin to Hegel’s thought as well as the deeply Hegelian discussion of universality and particularity.6 In addition, Taylor has sketched a loose comparison of Either/Or and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.7 Despite this preponderance of literature that argues for a positive Hegelian influence in Either/Or, Thulstrup’s dissenting voice has carried the most weight. True to his thesis, Thulstrup argues that this text has nothing in common with Hegel and that when Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authors here discuss some aspect of Hegel’s 5

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Harald Høffding, Søren Kierkegaard som Filosof, Copenhagen and Kristiania: Gydendalske Boghandel 1892, pp. 92ff. See also his “Søren Kierkegaard,” in his Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, p. 158. Knud Hansen, Søren Kierkegaard. Ideens Digter, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1954, pp. 82ff. Mark C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard, Berkeley: University of California Press 1980, pp. 228–262.

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philosophy, then it is only in order to criticize it.8 I wish to argue that once again this view is erroneous and, as has been indicated, that there are a number of profoundly Hegelian aspects in the work. I would like to examine in some detail a handful of passages in which there seems to be a clear Hegelian influence. First, I would like to explore the origin of the expression “either/or” in the contemporary debates about Hegel’s logic. In Section II, I will then analyze a key discussion in the second chapter of Part Two in which Judge Wilhelm treats the issue of mediation specifically and distinguishes the sphere of freedom from that of abstract thought and Hegel’s speculative philosophy.9 In the third section I would like to explore a discussion in the “Insignificant Introduction” from the second chapter of Part One,10 where the esthete discusses the criteria for judging a great work of art. His criticism of onesided, nonspeculative criteria recalls Hegel’s discussion in the Lectures on Aesthetics. Next I will compare the interpretations of Sophocles’ Antigone that are given by Hegel and Kierkegaard and that constitute a part of the subject-matter of the chapter “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic of Modern Drama” in volume 1 of Either/Or.11 Finally, in Section V, I will return to Part Two in order to explore the discussion in the first chapter in which Judge Wilhelm portrays marriage as the ethical Aufhebung of immediate, Romantic love.12 I wish to demonstrate that a Hegelian three-step dialectical movement is present here as well. My main thesis in this chapter is that Either/Or is of a piece with the works that preceded it insofar as it too is positively influenced by Hegel. As in those other works, while this influence is by no means naive or wholly uncritical, Kierkegaard has no qualms with availing himself of various aspects of Hegel’s thought.

i. the title “either/or” and its origin An understanding of the meaning and origin of the title of the work itself is crucial for an appreciation of Hegel’s role in it. Kierkegaard tells us that the title “Either/Or” [Enten-Eller] is intended to call to mind speculative philosophy. In a letter from Berlin he writes: “‘Either/Or’ is indeed an excellent title. It is piquant and at the same time also has a speculative 8

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Thulstrup summarizes his view with respect to Part Two of the work by saying, “on every point that was important to him, Judge Wilhelm has directly criticized, not just corrected Hegel. It becomes abundantly clear that as thinkers they are totally divergent in points of departure, methods and conclusions.” Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980. p. 333. EO2, pp. 170–176; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 166–172. EO1, pp. 47–59; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 55–66. Specifically, EO2, pp. 153–164; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 152–162. EO2, pp. 17–32 and ff.; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 26–38 and ff.

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the title “either/or” and its origin

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meaning.”13 Under the pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, he says the same thing in his review of Either/Or in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript: “Either/Or, the title of which is in itself indicative, has the existencerelation between the aesthetic and the ethical materialize into existence in the existing individuality. This to me is the book’s indirect polemic against speculative thought which is indifferent to existence.”14 What precisely does Kierkegaard mean by this? In this initial section I wish to address this question by tracing the title “Either/Or” to the ongoing debate about Hegel’s logic in Denmark. This is the key, I wish to argue, for understanding what is referred to as “the book’s indirect polemic against speculative thought.” In the work, two positions, which represent fundamentally opposing views, are presented. They seem to resist all mediation and require of the reader an absolute choice. The expression, “either/or,” is intended to indicate that the one view or the other must be adopted but not both. The title thus reflects the dichotomy presented by the two parts of the work. Victor Eremita confirms this in the preface: “A’s papers contain a multiplicity of approaches to an aesthetic view of life. . . . B’s papers contain an ethical view of life. As I allowed my soul to be influenced by this thought, it became clear to me that I could let it guide me in determining the title. The title I have chosen expresses precisely this.”15 Moreover, the two views stand in a static opposition, and the dichotomy is never resolved: “these papers come to no conclusion.”16 Thus, it is clear that the expression “either/or” is intended to represent the opposition of the views of the esthete and Judge Wilhelm. This conception of the work as a juxtaposition of two contradictory positions seems to be inspired at least in part by Hegel’s criticism of the law of excluded middle and of traditional Aristotelian logic generally since in that criticism Hegel uses the formulation “either/or” frequently as an abbreviated form of the law of excluded middle. This influence becomes clear when one examines how this expression was used at the time in the Danish discussions about Hegel’s logic. By tracing the formulation “either/or” back to Hegel, I do not mean to suggest that he is the only possible source but rather that he was one of the most important ones for Kierkegaard and the contemporary works he was reacting to. Hegel uses the expression “either/or” several times to denote the kind of one-sided thinking that fails to grasp the dialectical interconnection of 13 14 16

JP, vol. 5, 5551; LD, 68; B&A I, p. 107. 15 EO1, p. 13; SKS, vol. 2, p. 21. CUP1, p. 252; SKS, vol. 7, p. 229. EO1, p. 14; SKS, vol. 2, p. 21. See EO1, p. 14; SKS, vol. 2, p. 21: “When the book is read, A and B are forgotten; only the points of view confront each other and expect no final decision in the particular personalities.” See CUP1, p. 252; SKS, vol. 7, p. 229: “That there is no conclusion and no final decision is an indirect expression for truth as inwardness and in this way perhaps a polemic against truth as knowledge.”

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things and instead insists on viewing issues as simple dichotomies such as freedom and necessity, finitude and infinity, individual and state, human and divine, and so on.17 For Hegel, speculative philosophy presupposes that knowing involves a network of interrelated beliefs. Thus, it must examine not just individual ideas but rather the totality of beliefs and concepts that constitute a belief system. Speculative philosophy treats the whole and examines individual beliefs in their relation to that whole. In the following passage from the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel uses the expression “either/or” to refer to what he calls “dogmatism,” which, in contrast to speculative philosophy, isolates concepts and abstracts them from their organic unity: But in the narrower sense dogmatism consists in adhering to one-sided determinations of the understanding whilst excluding their opposites. This is just the strict “either-or,” according to which (for instance) the world is either finite or infinite, but not both. On the contrary, what is genuine and speculative is precisely what does not have any such one-sided determination in it and is therefore not exhausted by it; on the contrary, being a totality, it contains the determinations that dogmatism holds to be fixed and true in a state of separation from one another united within itself.18

Dogmatism sees truth on the one side or the other of individual disjunctive pairs, whereas speculative philosophy overcomes these immediate contradictions and sees them as compatible by viewing such pairs from a different, more abstract perspective.19

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Hegel was certainly not the first to use this expression. Indeed, it has traditionally been a common way of referring to disjunctions in classical logic. For example, Kant writes: “In logic the ‘either-or’ always denotes a disjunctive judgment; for if one member is true, the other must be false. For instance, a body is either moved or not moved, i.e., at rest; for one speaks there simply of the relation of the cognition to the object.” Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, tr. by James W. Ellington, in Philosophy of Material Nature, Indianapolis: Hackett 1985, p. 126fn. Hegel, EL, § 32, Addition; Jub., vol. 8, p. 106. See also EL, p. 8fn.; Jub., vol. 8, p. 13: “One would always do better not to talk about philosophy at all as long as, in spite of one’s depth of feeling, one is still so deeply entangled in the one-sidedness of the understanding that one knows nothing better than the either-or.” EL, § 80, Addition; Jub., vol. 8, p. 189: “But again it is usually said also that the understanding must not go too far. This contains the valid point that the understanding cannot have the last word. On the contrary it is finite, and, more precisely, it is such that when it is pushed to an extreme it overturns into its opposite. It is the way of youth to toss about in abstractions, whereas the man of experience does not get caught up in the abstract either-or, but holds onto the concrete.” EL, § 65; Jub., vol. 8, p. 171: “This standpoint is not content when it has shown that mediate knowing, taken in isolation, is inadequate for the [cognition of ] truth; its particularity is that immediate knowing can only have the truth as its content when it is taken in isolation, to the exclusion of mediation. – Exclusions of this kind betray that this standpoint is a relapse into the metaphysical understanding, with its either-or.” See also Jub., vol. 1, p. 410. See Hegel, EL, § 82; Jub., vol. 8, p. 195: “The speculative or positively rational apprehends the unity of the determinations in their opposition, the affirmative that is contained in their

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Hegel refers once again to the “either/or” in his discussion of the law of excluded middle, one of the three fundamental laws of traditional logic. The first is the law of contradiction, according to which nothing can be both P and not-P (i.e., contradictory predicates cannot be attributed to the same thing at the same time). The second, which can be seen as the inverse of the first, is the law of the excluded middle term, which states that everything must be either P or not-P.20 According to this law, between contradictory judgments there can be no third, intermediate “middle” term: a thing is either P or not-P, but it must be one of the two. In his discussion of the law of excluded middle in the Encyclopaedia, Hegel refers once again to the “either/or”: Instead of speaking in accordance with the law of excluded middle (which is a law of the abstract understanding), it would be better to say, “Everything stands in opposition.” There is in fact nothing, either in heaven or on earth, either in the spiritual or the natural world, that exhibits the abstract “either-or” as it is maintained by the understanding. Everything that exists at all is concrete and hence is inwardly distinguished and selfopposed.21

According to common sense there is an either/or, but when philosophical reflection enters the scene it demonstrates that there are no such absolute opposites. A thing is an opposite only in relation to its other, to which it is an opposite. For Hegel, the contradiction between P and not-P is incoherent since not-P is indeterminate; it is merely the abstract negation of the first term. By contrast, he tries to redefine contradiction in terms of opposites or contraries such as north and south. Such opposing pairs do not have an independent existence but are, he claims, identical at the conceptual level. The point here for the moment is simply to note that the formulation “either/or” appears in Hegel in the context of the discussion of the law of excluded middle. In a final passage, Hegel employs the expression “either/or” in connection with a discussion of one of his best known philosophical terms, “Aufhebung,” or in its verbal form, “aufheben.”22 The German verb, “aufheben,” has two or three contradictory meanings and cannot be rendered adequately in English. Common translations are the rather stilted terms “to sublate” or “to supersede.” In the following passage, Hegel

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dissolution and in their transition.” See also Hegel, SL, p. 56; Jub., vol. 4, p. 54: “It is in this dialectic as it is here understood, that is, in the grasping of opposites in their unity or of the positive in the negative, that speculative thought consists.” The final law of thought is of course the law of identity, according to which if anything is P, then it is P, or, put differently, everything is identical to itself. Hegel, EL, § 119, Addition 2; Jub., vol. 8, p. 280. Translation slightly modified. (My italics.) See B. C. Birchall, “Hegel’s Notion of Aufheben,” Inquiry, 24, 1981, pp. 75–103.

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explains that the overcoming of opposites in speculative philosophy is implied in the variety of meanings of this German word: we should remember the double meaning of the German expression “aufheben.” On the one hand, we understand it to mean “clear away” or “cancel” and in that sense we say that a law or regulation is cancelled [aufgehoben]. But the word also means “to preserve,” and we say in this sense that something is well taken care of [wohl aufgehoben]. This ambiguity in linguistic usage, through which the same word has a negative and a positive meaning, cannot be regarded as an accident nor yet as a reason to reproach language as if it were a source of confusion. We ought rather to recognize here the speculative spirit of our language, which transcends the “either-or” of mere understanding.23

According to nonspeculative thinking, when one is presented with a dichotomy, one must choose one side and negate or cancel the other. This is the thinking designated by the formulation, “either/or.” But for speculative philosophy, such contradictions are not merely negated but also preserved as they become reformulated at a higher level. Thus, more sophisticated concepts contain within themselves seemingly contradictory elements that have been mediated or rendered consistent. Given this account, Hegel’s term of art, “Aufhebung,” can be regarded as the opposite of what might be called Kierkegaard’s principle of the “either/or.” This aspect of Hegel’s doctrine of contradiction was taken up in the discussion of Hegelianism in Denmark during Kierkegaard’s time.24 In 1838 Sibbern treated extensively Hegel’s doctrine of contradiction in a section of his long review of Heiberg’s Perseus.25 In this article, he makes a case for classical logic against Hegel’s speculative logic. In his discussion

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Hegel, EL, § 96, Addition; Jub., vol. 8, p. 229. (My italics.) See CUP1, p. 222f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 202f. For the whole discussion, see V. Kuhr, Modsigelsens Grundsætning, Copenhagen and Kristiania: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1915. Anton Hugli, ¨ “The Principle of Contradiction,” in Concepts and Alternatives in Kierkegaard, ed. by Marie Mikulová Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 3), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel 1980, pp. 272–280. Skat Arildsen, “Striden om de logiske Principer og om Rationalismens og Supranaturalismens Begreb,” Chapter 8 in his Biskop Hans Lassen Martensen. Hans Liv, Udvikling og Arbejde, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1932, pp. 142–150. O. Waage, “Strid om de logiske Principer og om Rationalismens of Supranaturalismens Begreb,” in his J. P. Mynster og de philosophiske Bevægelser paa hans Tid i Danmark, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel 1867, pp. 123–152. Henning Høirup, Grundtvigs Syn paa Tro og Erkendelse. Modsigelsens Grundsætning som Teologisk Aksiom hos Grundtvig, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1949, pp. 73–75, pp. 85–89. Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Om den Maade, hvorpaa Contradictionsprincipet behandles i den hegelske Skole, med mere, som henhører til de logiske Grundbetragtninger,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 19, 1838, Article II, pp. 424–460, especially pp. 424– 433. Frederik Christian Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, betragtet i Forhold til vor Tid, Copenhagen 1838, pp. 79–115, especially pp. 79–88. ASKB 778.

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of the law of excluded middle, Sibbern employs several times the Latin formulation of the “either/or,” “aut/aut”:26 Like the law of contradiction, it [sc. principium exclusi medii inter duo contradictoria] stands against flux since it basically aims at explaining that everything is determinable, that everything must be something definitely determinate and that therefore an aut/aut is generally valid. Certainly one might frequently observe, that a middle link can force its way in between the aut/aut, which seems to posit only two contradictoria, that is two things, of which the one is thought to be necessarily opposed to the other. . . . I call the proposition “the law of determination,” and it states that every question ultimately reduces to a yes or a no or to something decided.27

This passage makes clear the contrast between the Hegelian view and the view expressed by the “aut/aut.” For Hegel, a third term can always be introduced between contradictory pairs, whereas according to the “aut/aut” and the law of excluded middle, every determinate thing stands in a dichotomy which cannot be mediated. In 1839 following Sibbern’s article, there was an extended debate about this point in Hegel’s speculative logic in the journal, Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik. In that year Mynster published his article, “Rationalism, Supernaturalism,” in which he discussed, among other things, the law of excluded middle in Hegel’s philosophy. The immediate occasion for Mynster’s piece was a review of Martensen’s dissertation. The author of the review, Johan Alfred Bornemann, a Hegelian student of theology and law, claimed that the opposition between rationalism and supernaturalism had been rendered obsolete by Hegel’s speculative logic, which mediates or sublates such contradictory pairs.28 In his article Mynster responded, arguing that the laws of classical logic were still true and that between rationalism and supernaturalism no mediation was possible. He too uses the formulation “aut/aut” in his discussion:29 We also find this law [sc. principium exclusi medii inter duo contradictoria] treated with apparent disapproval in Hegel’s Logic. . . . We note simply that when he explains the law in the sense in which it is usually understood . . . he uses examples which make it clear that, for him, the law itself is 26

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Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Om den Maade, hvorpaa Contradictionsprincipet behandles i den hegelske Skole,” op. cit., p. 432; Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, op. cit., p. 87. See also Sibbern’s “Hegel i Forhold til vor Tid,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 19, 1838, Article I, p. 313; Sibbern Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, op. cit., p. 31. Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Om den Maade, hvorpaa Contradictionsprincipet behandles i den hegelske Skole,” op. cit., pp. 431–432; Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, op. cit., pp. 86–87. Johan Alfred Bornemann, “Af Martensen: de autonomia conscientiae. Sui humanae,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 3ff. Jakob Peter Mynster, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, p. 267. (Reprinted in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, vols. 1–6, Copenhagen 1852–57, vol. 2, p. 114.)

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laughable.30 . . . When we here say the following: “the revelation which Christianity rests on is either supernatural or is not supernatural,” then it is presumably clear straightaway that all mediation is impossible here and that all such attempts can only lead to a partial grounding, a teetering and an oscillating back and forth between rationalistic supernaturalism and supernatural rationalism, as one has seen so often. . . . Aut, aut; one can mediate between opposites but not between contradictions. Every basic scientific theory must decide for the one or the other of the mutually contradictory opposing views.31

Mynster thus joins forces with Sibbern in condemning speculative logic. He insists on the aut/aut between rationalism and supernaturalism, which allows of no mediation by some middle term. It was with this article that the debate proper can be said to have begun. Mynster’s article was perceived as a provocation against Hegelian philosophy. In the next number of the journal, the Hegelians – Heiberg and Martensen – responded to the attack with a defense of Hegel. In both articles, the law of excluded middle is the central object of investigation, and the formulation “either/or” is frequently employed. In his article Heiberg writes: One can claim there that between right and left, front and back, up and down, north and south, there is no medium (namely, no intermediate direction), just as little as between hot and cold or the opposites in electricity and magnetism; furthermore, that one must either be at home or be out, that one must either be silent or speak, and in general, that one must either be inside or outside of a certain limit in everything. The more trivial the examples one chooses, the less the criticism against their aut/aut can do.32

Here Heiberg clearly associates the expression, “aut/aut,” with the view of absolute opposites, which allow no mediation; indeed, he seems to take it as a synonym for the law of excluded middle. By employing the personal pronoun “their,” he associates this view with the Hegel critics, Sibbern and Mynster. In his response to Mynster, Martensen likewise uses the expression “aut/aut,” and its Danish equivalent “enten-eller” several times. He characterizes Mynster’s position as an either/or (i.e., an absolute choice

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Mynster cites Hegel here: “When the determinations sweet, green, square are taken – and all predicates are meant to be taken – and then it is said that spirit is either sweet or not sweet, green or not green, and so on, this is a triviality leading nowhere.” (Hegel, SL, p. 438; Jub., vol. 4, p. 544.) Jakob Peter Mynster, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme,” op. cit., pp. 265–267; Blandede Skrivter, vol. 2, pp. 113–114. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “En logisk Bemærkning i Anledning af H. H. Hr. Biskop Dr. Mynsters Afhandling om Rationalisme og Supranaturalisme i forrige Hefte af dette Tidsskrift,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, p. 444. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 2, p. 173.)

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between rationalism and supernaturalism).33 He writes: “But can one stop with the opposition between pantheism and theism, with the aut/aut? Is it not precisely the task of our time to sublate this unhappy aut/aut, in which Jacobi’s noble, truth-loving soul was ensnared and from which he thought that there was no deliverance.”34 Martensen, arguing in line with Hegel’s philosophy of religion, tries to demonstrate that the very nature of Christianity implies a speculative way of thinking that stands in contrast to an absolute either/or: “The central point of Christianity – the doctrine of the incarnation, the doctrine of the God-man – shows precisely that Christian metaphysics cannot remain in an either/or [Enten Eller], but that it must find the truth in a third which that law [sc. the law of excluded middle] rules out.”35 Moreover, Martensen tries to demonstrate the Aufhebung of rationalism and supernaturalism directly. In a final dramatic passage, he translates the expression, “aut/aut,” once again into the vernacular and uses the Danish formulation, “enten-eller,” that one recognizes from Kierkegaard’s title: If theology does not want to be without result, it likewise may not be presuppositionless, just as little ab exteriori as ab interiori, and especially not concerning the historical revelation when the opposition between rationalism and supernaturalism now comes forth as the opposition between idea and fact; it can then be designated “either” idea “or” fact, but also here thought will mediate or will not find rest until it discovers the invisible copula which connects the fact with the idea.36

Here Martensen brings the point to a head with this turn of phrase to which Kierkegaard was attentive. One can imagine that it was this article in particular that provoked Kierkegaard given his animosity for Martensen. This was not the end of the debate. In 1842, Mynster issued a rejoinder to Heiberg and Martensen.37 In this second article Mynster again employs the Latin form of the expression a couple of times. In one passage he writes: “However much my honored opponents and I agree with respect to much which is important and essential, a difference is still present with respect to which the principium exclusi medii asserts itself. We could

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Hans Lassen Martensen, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme og principium exclusi medii i Anledning af H. H. Biskop Mynsters Afhandling herom i dette Tidsskrifts forrige Hefte,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 456–457. 35 Ibid., p. 458. Ibid., p. 467. Ibid., p. 473. Jakob Peter Mynster, “De principio logico exclusi medii inter contradictoria non negligendo commentatio, qua ad audiendam orationem . . . invitat. Jo. Fr. Herbart. Gottingae 1833. 29 S. 80- , De principiorum contradictionis, identitatis, exclusi tertii in logicis dignitate et ordine commentatio. Scripsit I. H. Fichte. Bonnae 1840. 31 S. 80- ,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, vol. 7, 1842, pp. 325–352.(Reprinted as “Om de logiske Principer,” in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 116–144.)

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not on both sides be right: aut/aut.”38 In another passage, after offering a criticism of Martensen’s dissertation, he writes in the same vein: “Aut/aut; there is no third.”39 As can be seen from both of these passages, Mynster tends to use this formulation as a slogan for his thesis that the law of excluded middle is still valid. What is important in all this is the fact that the expression “either/or” was not something that Kierkegaard himself invented but rather a slogan or catchword in the discussion about the law of excluded middle in Hegel’s philosophy that was taking place in Denmark. It is clear that Kierkegaard followed this discussion and that he applauded Sibbern’s and Mynster’s efforts.40 Thus, his employment of this expression in the title of his work was full of significance both for himself and for the contemporary reader. The first appearance of the formulation “either/or” in Kierkegaard’s writings comes in The Concept of Irony where it appears twice in its Latin form, “aut/aut.”41 The Latin formulation also shows up several times years later in the Postscript.42 There Kierkegaard contrasts the principle of the either/or directly with Hegel’s speculative logic: “As is well known, Hegelian philosophy has cancelled the law 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.”43 There is evidence in the text of Either/Or itself that Kierkegaard intends this formulation to refer to the contemporary discussion with the Danish Hegelians about contradiction and the law of excluded middle.44 38 39 40

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42 43 44

Ibid., p. 343; Blandede Skrivter, vol. 2, p. 135. Ibid., p. 346; Blandede Skrivter, vol. 2, p. 138. In summer 1839 in his journals, he uses virtually the same formulation as Mynster: “All relative contrasts can be mediated; we do not really need Hegel for this, inasmuch as the ancients point out that they can be distinguished. Personality will for all eternity protest against the idea that absolute contrasts can be mediated (and this protest is incommensurable with the assertion of mediation); for all eternity it will repeat its immortal dilemma: to be or not to be – that is the question (Hamlet).” JP, vol. 2, 1578; SKS, vol. 18, p. 34f., EE:93. CI, p. 81; SKS, vol. 1, p. 139: “On the front of the stage, then is Socrates – not as someone who rashly brushes away the thought of death and clings anxiously to life, not as someone who eagerly goes toward death and magnanimously sacrifices his life; not as someone who takes delight in the alteration of light and shadow found in the syllogistic aut/aut when it almost simultaneously manifests broad daylight and pitch darkness, manifests the infinitely real and the infinitely nothing.” CI, pp. 82–83; SKS, vol. 1, p. 140: “At the end of the Apology, however, an attempt is made to show that to die is a good. But this observation is once again an aut/aut, and since the view that death is nothing whatever emerges in conjunction with the one aut, the extent to which one can share the joy that encircles both these continents like the ocean becomes somewhat doubtful.” CUP1, pp. 304–307; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 277–279. See also TA, pp. 66–67; SV1, vol. 8, p. 63. CUP1, p. 304f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 277. Translation slightly modified. See V. Kuhr, Modsigelsens Grundsætning, op. cit., p. 9: “it is in actuality also this formulation of an either/or . . . which Kierkegaard is thinking of with the law of contradiction. . . .

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In the “Diapsalmata,” the esthete reflects on the meaning of the expression “either/or.” He begins by listing a number of disjunctive possibilities, “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.”45 He then makes the bold claim that in all these disjuncts we find “the quintessence of all the wisdom of life.”46 The esthete continues, “It is not merely in isolated moments that I, as Spinoza says, view everything aeterno modo, but I am continually aeterno modo. Many believe they, too, are this when after doing one thing or another they unite or mediate these opposites. But this is a misunderstanding, for the true eternity does not lie behind either/or but before it.”47 The esthete claims that there is no eternity in going beyond the contradiction to something higher as Hegel tries to do, but rather the true eternity is found in the need to choose between the static opposition. It is clear from this discussion that the formulation, “either/or,” is intended to represent a position in explicit contrast to Hegel’s speculative philosophy. This formulation is also discussed in the same context by Judge Wilhelm in Part Two.48 The esthete distinguishes himself from Hegelian philosophy by his indifference to the dichotomy presented by life. It does not matter if he does one thing or the other. There is a point of commonality since both the esthete and the Hegelian reject the either/or, but they do so for different reasons. On the one hand, the esthete rejects it with his nihilism – he is simply indifferent to all choices; on the other hand, the Hegelian eliminates choices by mediation. Thus, the esthete rejects the either/or ahead of time by his general disposition, whereas the Hegelian rejects it after the fact by mediating the dichotomy. Although it may seem that the “either/or” is for Kierkegaard only a moral concept,49 in drafts from the work that survive in his journals, he explicitly associates the expression with logic and the law of contradiction: What matters most to me about the whole of Either/Or is that it become really evident that the metaphysical meaning that underlies it all leads everything everywhere to the dilemma. The same also underlies the little philosophical essay: tautology as the highest law of thought, namely, if the

45

46 48 49

And in Either/Or Kierkegaard in his book has set up and conceives actually only two (contradictory) possibilities, the stage of the esthete and that of the ethicist, between which one must make a choice.” EO1, p. 38; SKS, vol. 2, p. 47. See also EO2, pp. 158–159; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 156–157. There can be little doubt here that Kierkegaard’s biography plays a large role both in this example and in the content of Either/Or as a whole. This work was written immediately after his dissolution of the engagement with Regine Olsen, which was certainly a part of what caused him to go to Germany. 47 EO1, p. 39; SKS, vol. 2, p. 48. EO1, p. 39; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 47–48. See EO2, pp. 157–178, esp. p. 170; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 155–174, esp. p. 166. For the relation between the logical and the ethical implications of this concept, see, V. Kuhr, Modsigelsens Grundsætning, op. cit., p. 11.

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law of contradiction is true (and it is expressed by either/or), it is . . . the scientific expression for it, and it is the only unity into which it can be taken up and by which the system becomes possible.50

Here Kierkegaard underscores the logical principle of contradiction in a way continuous with the previous discussion of the issue by Sibbern and Mynster. In a draft from the esthete’s papers, the Hegelians’ view of contradiction is again rejected: “Therefore, I have not like some philosophers cancelled the law of contradiction by going beyond.”51 Anyone who had been following the discussion at the time would doubtless have understood Kierkegaard’s title in connection with it. The title would have been perceived as a clear declaration of allegiance to the critics of Hegel’s doctrine of mediation. This is confirmed by Kierkegaard’s own assessment. In the passage cited earlier from the Postscript, his pseudonymous author, in reference to the title of Either/Or, alludes to “the book’s indirect polemic against speculative thought.”52 This polemic is also evidenced by Heiberg’s reference to it in his review of Either/Or where he writes: “But what does the title of the book mean? The second volume is absolute, here there can be no question of an either/ or, and the book, far from refuting the proposition that the law of contradiction is sublated (p. 176), is on the contrary a proof more for its correctness.”53 Since, as modern commentators have also noticed, Kierkegaard seems clearly to weight the argument in favor of Judge Wilhelm’s position and not that of the esthete, the text loses its ostensibly dialectical balance. The two positions are by no means recommended to the reader on an equal footing. Thus, Heiberg sees the book as a failed attempt to refute the Hegelian Aufhebung of the law of contradiction and excluded middle since ultimately the esthete’s position is sublated by that of the judge. Kierkegaard, like Sibbern and Mynster before him, in effect rehabilitates the either/or, which Hegel had claimed was the trademark of dogmatism. By using this title, Kierkegaard is ironically playing on a known Hegelian hobbyhorse. It is ultimately unimportant whether or not Kierkegaard was familiar with the passages from, for example, Hegel’s Encyclopaedia Logic, in which the formulation “either/or” was employed. Whatever his knowledge of Hegel’s primary texts might have been, there can be no doubt but that he knew this expression in the context of the discussion surrounding the law of excluded middle that was taking place between the Danish Hegelians and their critics. With the work Either/Or, 50 51 52 53

EO1, Supplement, p. 526; Pap. III B 177, pp. 189–190. Translation slightly modified. EO1, Supplement, p. 528; Pap. III B 179.63, p. 209. Translation slightly modified. CUP1, p. 252; SKS, vol. 7, p. 229. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Litterær Vintersæd,” Intelligensblade, vol. 2, no. 24, March 1, 1843, p. 292. ASKB U 56.

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aufhebung and the law of excluded middle

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Kierkegaard, like Sibbern and Mynster, argues that there are contradictory views that allow no mediation and no middle term; the antimony of the aesthetic and the ethical is his grand example. These constitute, for him, an absolutely contradictory pair, an unresolvable dichotomy, which enjoins an existential decision and which defies the dialectical Aufhebung. With the formulation “either/or” in the title, Kierkegaard invokes the Danish discussion about the law of excluded middle. There is thus nothing new or original in Kierkegaard’s title, rather it can be seen as an example of his appropriation of material at hand for his own purposes, in this case for the purpose of a title.

ii. the problem of the aufhebung of the law of excluded middle In the chapter “The Balance Between the Aesthetic and the Ethical” from Part Two there is an important discussion for understanding Kierkegaard’s overall relation to Hegel in Either/Or on the issue of mediation.54 There Judge Wilhelm treats the issue of contradiction, which is crucial for Hegel’s dialectical methodology. As has just been seen in the discussion of the expression “either/or,” this appears to be a crucial point of departure from Hegel’s thought insofar as the entire book seems to be based on the idea of an absolute contradiction that is intended as an explicit contrast to Hegel’s doctrine of the Aufhebung of the law of excluded middle. The passage to be explored here can be seen as the theoretical background or justification for this general view of contradiction, which is in evidence in the very structure of the work. Although there are no direct quotations, one can judge from the content of the discussion that Kierkegaard has in mind here not so much Hegel’s primary texts as the contemporary Danish debate about the issue of the law of excluded middle. I wish to argue in this section that despite what at first seems to be a polemical stance against Hegel’s principle of mediation, Judge Wilhelm ultimately sketches a position that is in harmony with Hegel. I will further claim that the criticism has little to do with logic but is rather ethical in character and that its targets are specific Danish students of Hegel’s philosophy. Before I examine the passage in question, it will be useful to say a few words about Hegel’s disputed doctrine of contradiction. Hegel’s account of the law of excluded middle draws on a longstanding discussion in the history of philosophy. Aristotle argued for the metaphysical truth of this principle, claiming that it was the most 54

EO2, pp. 170–176; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 166–172. See CUP1, pp. 189–198; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 173–181.

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important principle of being.55 According to this law, a given predicate or its negation must be attributed to a given subject, but not both (i.e., there is no third mediating term between the two). A given rose is either red or not red, but it cannot be both at the same time. Since Aristotle this has traditionally been counted as one of the fundamental laws of logic. In both the Science of Logic and the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel discusses the law of excluded middle and argues that, upon closer examination, it collapses into an identity.56 Hegel’s argument is that contradictory pairs in fact represent a unity at the ontological level. This unity is already present in the very notion of an opposite. He uses different colors as an example: “In the doctrine of contradictory concepts, one concept is, for instance, called blue . . . the other not-blue, so that this other would not be an affirmative (like, for instance, yellow), but is just the abstractly negative that has to be held fast. – That the negative is also positive within itself is . . . already implied in the determination that that which is opposed to an other is its other.”57 Hegel’s point here is that a concept cannot be an opposite unless it is the opposite of some other determinate concept. The first concept is determined by the second insofar as it is conceived as an opposite. Thus, concepts are complementary, and any given concept, insofar as it is an opposite, stands in a necessary relation to another concept. This necessary relation between concepts can be seen as a higher identity which goes beyond the individual member terms. When seen from the abstract level, there is thus a kind of arbitrariness at work in calling one concept “positive” and the other “negative,” one concept “the one” and its opposite “the other.” Each is what it is only in its relation to the other. Hegel illustrates this with a number of examples: In the positive and the negative we think we have an absolute distinction. Both terms, however, are implicitly the same, and therefore we could call the positive “the negative” if we liked, and conversely we could call the negative “the positive” as well. Consequently, assets and debts are not two particular, independently subsisting species of assets. What is negative for the debtor is something positive for the creditor. The same applies to a road to the east: it is equally a road to the west. Thus, what is positive and what is negative are essentially conditioned by one another, and are what

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Aristotle, Metaphysics IV, Chapters 3, 4, 7. He introduces the law of excluded middle as follows: “Distinction in itself gives us the principle: ‘Everything is something essentially distinct’ – or (as it has also been expressed): ‘Of two opposed predicates, only one belongs to something,’ and ‘There is no third. . . . The principle of the excluded third is the principle of the determinate understanding which tries to avoid the contradiction and by doing so commits it.” Hegel, EL, § 119; Jub., vol. 8, p. 276. Hegel, EL, § 119; Jub., vol. 8, p. 277.

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they are only in their relation to one another. There cannot be the north pole of a magnet without the south pole nor the south pole without the north pole.58

For any two things to be opposites, they must have something in common as a criterion or basis for comparison; otherwise, they would not be opposites in the first place since, in the absence of such a criterion, it would be like comparing apples with oranges. They must be opposites with respect to some particular quality or aspect. The criterion that serves as the basis for comparison simultaneously constitutes the basis for their ontological unity. Insofar as north and south are latitudinal directions, they are ontologically identical. Opposites thus constitute an identity at the conceptual level (i.e., at the level of the Concept). Thus, Hegel’s criticism of the law of excluded middle is to say that a concept is determined both by what it is and by what it is not. For example, north is what it is (i.e., it has self-identity), but it is also determined by what it is not, namely, as the opposite of south. Thus, north is both north and not north at the same time. As indicated in the previous section, this Hegelian doctrine was a topic of discussion in Denmark when it came under attack by Sibbern and Mynster. It will be useful to examine the nature of the responses of Hegelians Heiberg and Martensen to see what strategy they employed in order to make a case for Hegel’s speculative logic. Heiberg claims that the problem at the heart of the debate lies in a misunderstanding of the scope of the law of excluded middle. He argues that the law is used correctly when applied to objects in the empirical sphere. A relation of absolute, unmediated opposites “can only take place in the finite or empirical [sc. realm]. . . . If one therefore wants to have examples for which the principium exclusi medii is employed, then one takes them from this sphere [sc. the empirical sphere].”59 According to Heiberg, the law of excluded middle applies to the empirical sphere but is not relevant in the sphere of abstract thought. When one is concerned with speculative philosophy and the Concept, then opposites are mediated or aufgehoben. Heiberg continues: “In the same fashion the principium exclusi medii is sublated everywhere, where one takes up the standpoint of the Concept and the Idea, for this standpoint’s entire activity aims at mediating opposites.”60 Heiberg gives a number of examples of issues that are best understood from the standpoint of Hegel’s speculative

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Hegel, EL, § 119, Addition 1; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 278–279. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “En logisk Bemærkning i Anledning af H. H. Hr. Biskop Dr. Mynsters Afhandling om Rationalisme og Supranaturalisme i forrige Hefte af dette Tidsskrift,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, p. 444. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 172–173.) Ibid., p. 445; Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 175.

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philosophy and where the law of excluded middle is best seen as aufgehoben: But if the principium exclusi medii were itself not excluded from the Idea, then man, as a unity of soul and body, would be impossible; the state could not be a unity of opposing forces; Christ would be exclusus as medium between God and man; no religion, art, poetry, philosophy could exist, for everywhere it would be manifest that the principium exclusi medii was the principium exclusi Dei.61

Hegel’s philosophy operates at the abstract, theoretical level of these disciplines (e.g., theology, art, and politics), and the scope of the law of excluded middle must be understood as limited to this level. Heiberg argues that Mynster, by denying Hegel’s speculative logic, simultaneously denies the possibility of the aforementioned doctrines (e.g., that Christ is a mediating agent between God and human beings). Thus, Heiberg’s strategy for resolving the conflict lies in separating two spheres – the empirical and the speculative – and limiting the scope of the validity of the law of excluded middle to the former. Although he does not bother to go into much detail to outline the two spheres, Martensen in his response to Mynster’s article essentially supports Heiberg’s solution to the problem. He discusses the role of Hegel’s Phenomenology as the road to true science. He explains that there can be oppositions at any given point along that road, but not at the level of science itself, which is reached at the end of the journey: With this way of observing the matter one will constantly note that a contradiction can already be mediated, although, among the manifold of individuals of the age, it has maintained its contradictory character. In this sense, the aut/aut can freely maintain its validity to all eternity; but this meaning is not what is at issue when science is observed in and for itself.62

Martensen, following Heiberg, thus distinguishes between two spheres, arguing that the law of excluded middle applies to the nonspeculative sphere prior to science but has no validity at the level of science proper, which is, of course, the level of Hegel’s philosophy. When one examines Judge Wilhelm’s solution to the problem of mediation in Either/Or, one finds that it strongly resembles that given by the Danish Hegelians Heiberg and Martensen. Judge Wilhelm discusses this doctrine of contradiction in Hegel and tries to indicate that his own views are in a certain sense consistent with it. He distinguishes between two spheres: on the one hand, “the sphere 61 62

Ibid., pp. 445–446; Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 175. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme og principium exclusi medii i Anledning af H. H. Biskop Mynsters Afhandling herom i dette Tidsskrifts forrige Hefte,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 470–471.

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of thought,” which he clearly associates with Hegel and speculative philosophy, and on the other hand, “the sphere of freedom.”63 The sphere of freedom is “situated in the area of action, philosophy in the area of contemplation.”64 Thought is the realm of mediation, freedom, that of absolute dichotomy. Thought is the realm of necessity, freedom, that of autonomous action. Thought examines the external deed, freedom, the internal. The realm of freedom is thus designated by the expression “either/or.”65 It is immediately apparent from these characterizations that the two spheres correspond to Heiberg’s distinction between the empirical realm and the standpoint of the Concept. Judge Wilhelm argues that the sphere of thought is the sphere of mediation in which all contradictions are aufgehoben or come together in a higher unity, whereas by contrast the sphere of freedom admits no mediation, and genuine contradiction is present. For Judge Wilhelm, the sphere of freedom is oriented toward the future, whereas that of thought is oriented toward the past: “You turn toward the future, for action is essentially future tense; you say I can either do this or do that. . . . Philosophy turns toward the past, toward the totality of experienced world history; it shows how the discursive elements come together in a higher unity; it mediates and mediates.”66 On this point, Judge Wilhelm’s characterization of Hegel’s philosophy is wholly accurate. Hegel makes clear that his philosophy cannot see into the future and has no predictive power. On the contrary, philosophy must have a determinate subject-matter before it can begin to go to work. It can only analyze the events of history after they have already happened, as Hegel says in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right with his famous allusion to the Owl of Minerva.67 The dialectical

63

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67

EO2, p. 173; SKS, vol. 3, p. 169. See JC, p. 154; Pap. IV B 1, p. 136: “Would it not be an illusion to give negativity the appearance of having continuity? In the sphere of thought, is not the negative what evil is in the sphere of freedom and thus, like evil, without continuity?” See Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Der Zufall, aus dem Gesichtspunkte der Logik betrachtet. Als Einleitung zu einer Theorie des Zufalls, Copenhagen 1825, p. 23. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 11, p. 350.) Heiberg distinguishes between “the abstract sphere of the mathematical sciences” and “the sphere of freedom.” EO2, p. 170; SKS, vol. 3, p. 166. See EO2, p. 171; SKS, vol. 3, p. 167: “But if the contradiction is present, then it is an Either/Or.” EO2, p. 170; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 166–167. See also EO2, pp. 170–171; SKS, vol. 3, p. 167: “Now, I assume that philosophy is right, that the principle of contradiction is actually cancelled or that philosophers at every moment elevate it into the higher unity that is for thought. Yet this cannot, after all, apply to the future, for the contradictions certainly must be present before I can mediate them.” Hegel, PR, Preface, p. 23; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 36–37: “As the thought of the world, it [sc. philosophy] appears only at a time when actuality has gone through its formative process and attained its completed state. This lesson of the concept is necessarily also apparent from history, namely that it is only when actuality has reached maturity that the ideal appears opposite the real and reconstructs this real world, which it has grasped in its substance, in the shape of an intellectual realm. When philosophy paints its grey

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mediation and sublation of views and positions that characterizes speculative philosophy thus applies only to the past. Given that philosophy cannot mediate opposing terms that as yet do not exist, it can offer no normative guidance regarding future action. The realm of morality thus falls within the domain of the sphere of freedom. In one’s capacity as a free individual and not as a speculative philosopher, the ethical issue about how one should comport oneself in the future is nevertheless important: The philosopher declares: “This is the way it was up until now.” I ask: “What am I supposed to do if I do not want to be a philosopher,” for if I want to be a philosopher, I am well aware that I, like other philosophers, will have to mediate the past. For one thing, this is no answer to my question “What am I supposed to do?” for even if I had the most brilliant philosophic mind there ever was, there must be something more I have to do besides sitting and contemplating the past.68

Philosophy occupies a sphere distinct from that of freedom and ethical action. If one is too absorbed in philosophy and thus in the realm of necessity, then one can neglect ethics in one’s own life, which falls within the realm of freedom.69 In the first of the Two Edifying Discourses published parallel to Either/Or on May 16, 1843, Kierkegaard discusses the proper relation to the past, the present and the future. The discourse is entitled “The Expectancy of Faith” and takes as its point of departure Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Here Kierkegaard outlines in some detail how the believer is oriented towards the future in what he calls “the expectancy of faith.” He writes: “The ability to be occupied with the future is, then, a sign of the nobility of human beings.”70 The believer is oriented to the future with the concept of faith. One need not explicate this further to recognize in it the positive contrasting view to which the negative criticism in Either/Or corresponds. The sphere of freedom is the sphere of the religious believer, conscious of the challenge of faith. The philosopher is criticized for viewing the past and thereby not being oriented towards the future in the expectancy of faith. Thus, the idea seems to be that Hegelian philosophy with its focus on history leads away from the proper religious disposition toward the

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in grey, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the grey in grey of philosophy; the Owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.” Quoted by Heiberg in Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid, Copenhagen 1833, p. 7. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 387–388.) EO2, p. 171; SKS, vol. 3, p. 167. Translation slightly modified. It must be recalled that Kierkegaard later repeatedly criticizes Hegel for not having an ethics, by which he seems to understand something specifically prescriptive, which enjoins concrete action. See Chapter 11, Section X; Chapter 12, Section IV. See EUD, p. 17; SKS, vol. 5, p. 27.

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future. In this way it seems clear that this edifying discourse is intended as a complement to the criticism offered in Either/Or. To return to Judge Wilhelm’s analysis, in contrast to the realm of freedom, the realm of philosophy and thought is portrayed as the realm of necessity. This is also an accurate understanding of Hegel, who constantly underlines the necessity of philosophic thought, albeit necessity understood in his own idiosyncratic fashion. In the following passage, Kierkegaard indirectly refers to Hegel’s Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, which is composed of the three philosophical disciplines: logic, the philosophy of nature, and the philosophy of spirit: “The spheres with which philosophy properly has to deal, the spheres proper to thought, are logic, nature, and history. Here necessity rules, and therefore mediation has its validity.”71 That logic and nature operate with necessary laws is unproblematic, but the claim that there is a necessity in history is more troublesome. Kierkegaard correctly interprets Hegel’s theory as a form of compatibilism: History . . . is more than a product of the free actions of free individuals. The individual acts, but this action enters into the order of things that maintains the whole of existence. What is going to come of his action, the one who acts does not really know. But this higher order of things that digests, so to speak, the free actions and works them together in its eternal laws is necessity, and this necessity is the movement in world history.72

The individual acts freely, but the aggregate actions of countless individuals at the macrolevel produce world-historical events that display a necessity and a rationality that the human mind can grasp and analyze philosophically. Thus, insofar as philosophy considers history at this level, it operates with necessity and uses the concept of mediation appropriately. Hegel’s view of history is thus compatibilist and not deterministic as Thulstrup would have it.73 But philosophy is silent about the autonomous action of the individual taken on its own, for this belongs to the realm of freedom. Judge Wilhelm continues: “Philosophy has nothing at all to do with what could be called the inner deed, but the inner deed is the true life of freedom. Philosophy considers the external deed, yet in turn it does not see this as isolated but sees it as assimilated into the world-historical process.”74 The philosophical study of history is not concerned with the freedom of individuals per se. “For the historical process,” he writes, “there is no question of an either/or, but nevertheless no philosopher can think of denying that for the acting individual there is such a question.”75 There is thus a

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72 EO2, p. 174; SKS, vol. 3, p. 170. EO2, p. 174; SKS, vol. 3, p. 170. See Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 25, p. 291, p. 302, p. 323. 75 EO2, p. 175; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 170–171. EO2, p. 174; SKS, vol. 3, p. 170.

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dialectic of action according to which an individual is in part shaped by his world-historical situation and in part free to determine his individual action: “So even the lowliest of individuals has a double existence. He, too, has a history, and this is not simply a product of his own free acts. The interior deed, on the other hand, belongs to him and will belong to him forever; history or world history cannot take it from him.”76 Regardless of the results of a rigorous philosophy of history, which demonstrates the necessity in world-historical movements, the freedom of the individual will always remain. For Judge Wilhelm, the solution to the problem lies in keeping the two spheres separate in order to avoid confusion about the tension between mediation and absolute choice. Thought is the realm of mediation, and freedom, that of contradiction: “For thought, the contradiction does not exist; it passes over into the other and thereupon together with the other into a higher unity. For freedom, the contradiction does exist, because it excludes it.”77 There can be no mediation in the realm of freedom since the very nature of freedom is to choose between alternatives. So long as one keeps in mind the distinction between these two spheres, the problem of the Aufhebung of the law of excluded middle disappears. This analysis demonstrates the compatibility of Judge Wilhelm’s doctrine of the absolute either/or with Hegel’s doctrine of mediation and noncontradiction. With the distinction between the sphere of thought and the sphere of freedom, both doctrines get their due without contradicting each other. Thus, there is no incompatibility between the doctrine that Judge Wilhelm expounds and Hegel’s philosophy on this point. The Judge’s remarks here are in some ways reminiscent of Kierkegaard’s concluding comments at the end of the individual chapters and sections in The Concept of Irony, where he is careful to underline the fact that his analyses and interpretations are compatible with Hegel’s. Finally, this solution is precisely the one proposed by Heiberg and Martensen, from whom one can infer it was derived. This conclusion is also consistent with what is said later in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, where Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author, Johannes Climacus, is careful to point out that his emphasis on the existential realm of freedom is compatible with Hegel’s philosophy and his speculative doctrine of contradiction.78 Just like Judge Wilhelm, Johannes Climacus insists that the two spheres be kept separate. So long as they are not confused, there is no problem. Both pseudonymous authors are willing to recognize the legitimacy of the philosophical sphere of mediation on its own terms. Moreover, the emphasis here on keeping

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77 EO2, p. 173; SKS, vol. 3, p. 169. EO2, p. 175; SKS, vol. 3, p. 171. CUP1, p. 305; SKS, vol. 7, p. 277f. Examined in Chapter 11, Section IX.

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the two spheres apart is reminiscent of a passage (discussed earlier79 ) in The Concept of Irony in which Kierkegaard distinguishes his approach from Hegel’s. While granting that Hegel’s view is appropriate for scholarship and academics, Kierkegaard nevertheless argues that it neglects the personal or biographical aspect that he wants to underscore.80 Also in Either/Or, despite the agreement on the point in logic, a hint of a criticism still remains to be explored. The critical aspect in Judge Wilhelm’s analysis foreshadows an argument that will be examined in more detail in the Postscript.81 He points out that speculative philosophy tends to lose itself in contemplation of the past, and it thus forgets the relevant ethical questions of the present: “For the philosopher, world history is ended, and he mediates. This accounts for the repugnant spectacle that belongs to the order of the day in our age – to see young people who are able to play games with the titanic forces of history, and who are unable to tell a simple human being what he has to do here in life, nor do they know what they themselves have to do.”82 An account of world history can by no means be seen as a substitute for an ethics, not an ethical theory, but a specific conception of how to live. The Judge writes, “If the philosopher is only a philosopher, absorbed in philosophy and without knowing the blessed life of freedom, then he misses a very important point, he wins the whole world and he loses himself – this can never happen to the person who lives for freedom, even though he lost ever so much.”83 The point seems to be that the philosopher, burying himself in speculative analyses, neglects his ethical obligations by neglecting the realm of freedom altogether. Questions of ethics, which should be pressing, never arise for him. Judge Wilhelm asserts that since the philosopher is absorbed in the realm of thought, he tends to be abstracted from the realm of action. It is as if he were a spectator waiting for the events to run their course so that he could subject them to dialectical analysis. Judge Wilhelm criticizes the 79 80

81 83

Chapter 3, Section IV, p. 153. There Kierkegaard claimed that Hegel’s analysis of Socrates missed the point since it viewed the life of Socrates as something complete. There he writes in reference to Socrates and Hegel’s analysis: “This is the purely personal life with which science and scholarship admittedly are not involved. . . . Whatever the case may be, grant that science and scholarship are right in ignoring such things; nevertheless, one who wants to understand the individual life cannot do so. And since Hegel himself says somewhere that with Socrates it is not so much a matter of speculation as of individual life, I dare to take this as sanction for my procedural method in my whole venture, however imperfect it may turn out because of my own deficiencies”(CI, pp. 166–167; SKS, vol. 1, p. 215. Cited in Chapter 3, footnote 83). Socrates is thus analyzed from the realm of thought. But this overlooks the existential aspects of Socrates’ life and action as an individual in the realm of freedom. 82 EO2, p. 171; SKS, vol. 3, p. 167. See Chapter 11, Section V. EO2, p. 176; SKS, vol. 3, p. 171.

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esthete for the same tendency and compares him with the speculative philosopher in this regard: If someone asks you whether you will sign a petition to the king, or whether you desire a constitution or the right to impose taxes, or whether you want to join this or that charitable cause, you answer, “My esteemed contemporaries, you misunderstand me. I am not a participant at all; I am outside. . . . ” So it is also with the philosopher. He is outside; he is not a participant. He sits and grows old listening to the songs of the past; he has an ear for the harmonies of mediation.84

The argument seems to be that being absorbed in the realm of necessity tends to blind one to the ethical choices of the moment, thus rendering one an absent-minded spectator. The argument has the flavor of an ad hominem since it does not make any claim against the truth or validity of Hegel’s speculative thought or principle of mediation but rather against a certain disposition toward it. One could presumably be a Hegelian and still be authentic if one recognized the limitations of philosophy and consigned it to its appropriate sphere, while at the same time recognizing one’s freedom as an individual in the existential sphere. Indeed, the judge does not ask for any more than this. Insofar as one abstracts from action and tries to view the world from the panoptic, atemporal perspective of absolute knowing, the philosopher “makes himself into the absolute.”85 The philosopher forgets his time is but one contingent historical moment that will pass and tries to make that moment an absolute. But the truth of the matter is that “the system is in a continual process of becoming.”86 In the course of time the past comes to be reinterpreted again and again as new ages become chapters in the annals of world history. The philosopher tends to reify his own position in history since it is always from his perspective that the analyses are given. This, of course, overlooks the transitory nature of any given period and historical perspective. Thus, the philosopher’s perspective is clearly limited. The plea seems once again to be for an awareness of the developing course of life, seen not only backwards from a third person perspective, but also forwards, as the individual in the first person lives and experiences it. This analysis of the issue of mediation is somewhat different from the previous ones in the Danish discussion in the sense that Judge Wilhelm wants to use it to draw ethical conclusions from the original logical principle. For Hegel, the issue of the law of excluded middle is primarily a question of logic, which has repercussions for his dialectical methodology and thus for any number of other philosophical subdisciplines. The 84 85

EO2, pp. 171–172; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 167–168. 86 EO2, p. 173; SKS, vol. 3, p. 169. EO2, p. 172; SKS, vol. 3, p. 168.

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discussion of this issue in Denmark during Kierkegaard’s time also focused on the issue in logic and its consequences above all in theology. By contrast, Judge Wilhelm’s concern is with the ethical consequences of the Aufhebung of the law of excluded middle since mediation would seem to eliminate autonomous choice between genuine, mutually exclusive alternatives, which is crucial for ethics.87 In this sense he changes considerably the focus and the terms of the discussion that preceded him. Judge Wilhelm’s focus on ethics points away from Hegel’s original discussion and toward a specifically Danish context of Hegel reception. Indeed, despite the numerous passages that are concerned with this issue in the work, nowhere is there a reference to either the Science of Logic or the Encyclopaedia Logic, although there are indirect allusions to the Danish debate.88 In the passages analyzed here the brunt of the criticism is aimed at the contemporary Hegelians rather than at Hegel’s philosophy itself. This is clear from the fact that Judge Wilhelm speaks not of Hegel but of the “young people” playing games with world history. This is further clear when he distinguishes the true devotees of scholarship from the young people of the day: I respect scholarship, and I honor its devotees, but life, too, has its demands. And even though I, if I saw one single extraordinarily endowed intellect one-sidedly lose himself in the past, would be perplexed about how I should form a judgment, about what opinion I should have alongside the respect I would hold for his intellectual competence – I am not perplexed today when I see a host of young people, not all of whom could possibly be philosophic minds, lost in today’s favorite philosophy, or what I am somewhat tempted to call the adolescent philosophy of our day.89

There is a pun in the word for “favorite philosophy” [Yndlings-Philosophi] and the “adolescent philosophy” [Ynglings-Philosophi]. With this pun Judge Wilhelm associates Hegel’s philosophy with the irresponsible youths or adolescents who are the object of his criticism. If one wishes to insist on seeing this as a criticism of Hegel, at best one could claim that it is a natural consequence of Hegel’s philosophy that it leads “young people” who study it to abstract from their concrete ethical situation

87

This interpretation of the issue is consistent with, for example, Kierkegaard’s understanding of the category of actuality not as an abstract logical category but as something concerned with one’s own life and existence (i.e., as something relevant for ethics and not logic). See JP, vol. 5, 5535; SKS, vol. 19, p. 235, Not8:33. See also EO1, p. 32; SKS, vol. 2, p. 41. 88 E.g., EO2, p. 170; SKS, vol. 3, p. 166. EO1, Supplement, p. 528; Pap. III B 179.63, p. 209. 89 See EO2, p. 172; SKS, vol. 3, p. 168.

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and thus make them ethically irresponsible. But, generally speaking, the Judge seems less interested in the original point in Hegel’s logic than in the behavior of his followers. One can gain a better appreciation of the nature of the criticism once one identifies the “young people” who are taken to task. Some insight is provided by a letter from Sibbern to his former student, the priest Frederik Ludvig Bang Zeuthen (1805–74). The letter, dated July 4, 1839, speaks of the debate set off by Mynster’s article: Are you able to get hold of a copy of Petersen’s Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik in your district? Recently, namely in the number for April, there was an article in it from Mynster under the title, “Rationalism, Supernaturalism.” He tries to make good on the claim that the distinction between these two is in no way “antiquated,” as was claimed in another article in the journal, and he thinks that here there is an aut/aut, between which everyone must decide. This article has caused some agitation among the young speculative theologians here, who have been rather dissatisfied with it. A few responses will come in the next number, one from Prof. Heiberg and another from Lecturer Martensen, who in particular must have seen the article as a challenge to themselves.90

Here Sibbern portrays the stir that Mynster’s article gave rise to among the students of theology at the time. There can be little doubt that Judge Wilhelm’s criticism is aimed at these students and the arrogance with which they defended the Hegelian principle of mediation. That Kierkegaard intends the judge’s remarks here as a criticism of contemporary students of theology seems to be confirmed by a comment in the memoirs of Henrik Nikolai Clausen. In his description of the Hegelian movement in Denmark, Clausen recalls specifically the impact of Martensen’s lectures, “Introduction to Speculative Dogmatics,” from Fall Semester of 1837, at which Kierkegaard was present.91 Clausen describes with disdain the immaturity and affectation of the young students of theology who were quick to use stilted Hegelian language in their discussions. In this context Clausen refers explicitly to the passage from Either/Or cited earlier. He writes: “Soon the favorite philosophy [YndlingsPhilosophi] of the day – to use an expression from Søren Kierkegaard – became the adolescent philosophy [Ynglings-Philosophi] of the day.”92 The 90

91 92

“Letter from Sibbern to Zeuthen,” July 4, 1839, in Breve fra og til F.C. Sibbern, ed. by C. L. N. Mynster, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen 1866, vol. 2, pp. 194–195. See also Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 19, 1838, Article I, p. 307; Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, op. cit., p. 25. Here Sibbern refers to these students as the “younger theologians.” SKS, vol. 19, pp. 125–143, Not4:3–12. Henrik Nikolai Clausen, Optegnelser om Mit Levneds og min Tids Historie, Copenhagen 1877, p. 213.

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fact that Clausen uses Kierkegaard’s turn of phrase to refer to these discussions among Martensen’s students indicates that for him there was no ambiguity about the fact that they were the target of Kierkegaard’s criticism in Either/Or. For Clausen and Kierkegaard’s other contemporaries the allusion was obvious. That Kierkegaard was irritated by Martensen’s success in the classroom and his popularity among the students is testified by a journal entry from ten years after the fact (i.e., from 1849). Kierkegaard begins by recalling how Martensen returned from Germany and presented Hegel’s philosophy to the students. He continues: “It was the philosophy of points of view – the demoralizing aspect of that kind of survey – that fascinated young people and opened the prospect of swallowing up everything in half a year.”93 Later in the same entry Kierkegaard refers once again to the “demoralizing aspect in allowing young people to do this.”94 It is clear that he takes Martensen to have exercised a corrupting influence on the students of the day. The references to the “young people” again echo the words of Judge Wilhelm and seem to fix the object of his discussion. Thus, the target seems to be the same as that in The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, where Hegelian discussions with affected jargon were satirized. Kierkegaard thus again criticizes a specific context of Hegel reception among the students of theology of the day, but this polemic has nothing to do with the original point about Hegel’s criticism of the basic laws of Aristotelian logic. Indeed, in a journal entry from much later Kierkegaard indicates that his criticism is not of mediation on its own terms: “Yet, again I do not want to dispute the fact that there is mediation, but rather the shamelessness of wanting to make it something superior.”95 This makes clear that Kierkegaard’s criticism is of those who attribute to mediation more than it is due and not of the principle itself. Thus, the criticism is of something quite different than is usually thought and much closer to home. In the final analysis Judge Wilhelm’s position with respect to Hegel is ambivalent. On the one hand, he demonstrates a certain deference toward Hegel himself, while, on the other hand, he reproaches Hegel’s followers for their lack of self-reflectivity. This ambivalence comes out clearly in another passage in which he discusses speculative philosophy’s approach to history: “It seems, to me at least, that there is much foolish and incompetent talk mixed up in this point of view. I do not deny that the young necromancers who want to conjure up the spirits of history are especially ludicrous to me, but I also genuflect deeply to the 93 94 95

PF, Supplement, p. 226; Pap. X-2 A 155, p. 117. PF, Supplement, p. 227; Pap. X-2 A 155, p. 117. JP, vol. 2, 1617; Pap. X-4 A 385. Translation slightly modified.

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magnificent accomplishments our age has to exhibit.”96 This ambivalent disposition can be explained when understood in its historical context. It has been noted that Kierkegaard, on the one hand, was deeply impressed with many aspects of Hegel’s philosophy in The Concept of Irony. On the other hand, due to largely personal reasons, he at this time held in disdain a number of Danish Hegelians such as Martensen, Rasmus Nielsen, and their students. This personal enmity explains some of the ad hominem character of his criticisms of the Hegelians (e.g., the claims that they are unreflective, self-deceived, etc.). If one bears in mind the extremely polemical climate of Danish intellectual life of the day – a climate that tended to polarize issues often along personal lines – then one can begin to assess properly Kierkegaard’s negative view of the Danish Hegelians. However, it is important not to allow these personal animosities and grudges to be taken for genuine philosophical issues in their own right. Thus, it is necessary in this context to distinguish his view of Hegel from his view of the Danish Hegelians. It has become virtually a cliché in the secondary literature that the question of mediation constitutes a major point of contrast between Hegel and Kierkegaard. While Hegel is conceived as the philosopher of mediation, Kierkegaard is thought to be the philosopher of the either/or. The two are thus thought to be at opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum with regard to this issue. But what is interesting to note is that with respect to the original point in Hegel’s logic, Judge Wilhelm is in perfect agreement with Hegel. At the level of the understanding there exists an either/or, and the laws of Aristotelian logic are valid. By contrast, at the level of the Concept, there is no either/or, and mediation and necessity are valid. Although Judge Wilhelm uses different language, designating that distinction as that between the realm of freedom and that of necessity, the point is the same. Both Hegel and the Judge offer a compromise solution. There is an either/or at one level and mediation at another. Thus, contrary to the standard view, the Judge does not have any quarrel with respect to the point in logic. Oddly enough, the polemic is not aimed at the point in logic at all, but rather it is directed against the young people who become absorbed in the contemplation of the past or who confuse the two spheres to the point where they neglect their ethical obligations. The mistake in the secondary literature is that the ethical aspect of Judge Wilhelm’s criticism has been entirely overlooked as have the numerous references to the “young people” or the “young necromancers.” Thus, the criticism has generally been understood as directed against Hegel himself. But as is clear from this analysis, on the point of logic, Judge Wilhelm is at pains

96

EO2, pp. 174–175; SKS, vol. 3, p. 170.

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the work of art and its dialectic

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to make his view consistent with that of Hegel and aims his criticism at a wholly different target.

iii. the work of art and its dialectic In the “Insignificant Introduction” to the second chapter of Part One, “The Immediate Erotic Stages,” the esthete discusses different criteria for judging the truly great work of art.97 The discussion shows clear signs of Hegelian influence. This is confirmed at least superficially by Kierkegaard’s notes on his reading of Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics found in his journals from 1841 to 1842.98 Moreover, Hegel is referred to directly in this passage in Either/Or itself.99 Here the esthete examines in order three possible criteria for determining the great work of art; the first places the emphasis on the subject-matter, which is regarded as the essential element. At the second stage a case is made for the formative activity of the individual artist as the essential thing. Finally, what is called “the idea” of the work of art is introduced as the third criterion. Here the measuring rod is the degree of abstraction of the idea of the work of art, with representation of the most abstract idea being the greatest work. The criteria are examined and rejected as being one-sided until an adequate view is reached, just as in the Phenomenology individual concepts are examined and rejected as partial or incomplete before absolute knowing is reached. In this section I wish to analyze this aspect of Hegelian influence. Before I turn to the “Insignificant Introduction,” I will briefly say a few words first about Hegel’s methodology and second about a discussion in Heiberg that was influential for Kierkegaard’s account. Hegel is known for his dialectical methodology, which examines individual concepts for internal consistency. The word “concept” [Begriff ] is Hegel’s term for any kind of belief system or conceptual scheme. It involves a certain criterion for truth and the set of beliefs that issue from it. Hegel’s dialectical procedure first involves discovering the contradiction inherent in any given concept. Once the contradiction is brought to the fore, the concept must be abandoned and a new one posited. The next concept is not a wholly new beginning but contains elements of the old concept. As the dialectical movement progresses, concepts thus become more and more complex in the sense that they contain more and more of the content of previous concepts. Hegel’s dialectical movement operates with three stages or moments. Sometimes he refers to these stages as the in-itself, for-itself, and in-and-for-itself aspects of the concept or 97 98

99

EO1, pp. 47–59; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 55–66. JP, vol. 2, 1592; SKS, vol. 19, p. 245, Not8:51. JP, vol. 2, 1593; SKS, vol. 19, p. 246, Not8:53. JP, vol. 5, 5545; SKS, vol. 19, pp. 285–286, Not10:1. See also JP, vol. 2, 1591; SKS, vol. 19, p. 237, Not8:39.1. EO1, p. 50; SKS, vol. 2, p. 58. EO1, p. 53; SKS, vol. 2, p. 61.

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sometimes as the object, the subject, and the dialectical interrelation of the two. The third member of the movement is thought to bring together the first and the second, which in their isolation were one-sided and incomplete. In his Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel employs this methodology in his discussion of the idea of beauty. The triadic movement that he describes there strongly resembles the movement of the esthete’s stages here. Hegel refers to the first stage not as subject-matter but as “real independent objectivity.”100 This is the aspect of the work of art as a concrete, real, existing object (i.e., the material of which it is made). But there are many objects such as trees and rocks that are real and substantive but yet are not works of art. Thus, in the work of art there must also be a subjective side or, as Hegel says, a “concept” in the mind of an artist: “But, since it is only the Concept which has to give itself existence and reality in objectivity, objectivity will have to bring the Concept to actuality in objectivity itself.”101 Both the objective, empirical side, which the esthete calls the subject-matter, and the subjective side of the artistic conception must be present. For Hegel, the unity of these two sides is what he calls the “idea of the beautiful.”102 This is the same term the esthete uses to describe his third stage. Heiberg was attentive to Hegel’s dialectical methodology which he made use of in his analysis of art. During the 1830s, Heiberg published a number of works on aesthetics in his journal Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post. For Heiberg, the distinction between content [Stof ] and form [Form] was crucial.103 In his Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College, Heiberg turns to aesthetics to illustrate the logical relation between content and form. There he runs through a Hegelian series of stages starting with the subject-matter and moving to the technical organization or form before culminating in the unity of both or, as one commentator puts it, in “the rebirth of the poetic idea in the outward form of the work.”104 His discussion bears a remarkable resemblance to that of the esthete. Heiberg begins with the understanding of the work of art based on matter [Materie] or content [Stof ] alone: “The fine arts, just like the sciences, stand on the standpoint of finitude insofar as the objects upon which they carry out their activity have an independent existence apart from that activity or are a content. Marble, colors, tones exist independently 100 101 102 103

104

Hegel, Aesthetics I, p. 110; Jub., vol. 12, p. 158. Hegel, Aesthetics I, p. 110; Jub., vol. 12, pp. 158–159. Hegel, Aesthetics I, p. 110; Jub., vol. 12, p. 159: “The totality is the Idea.” See Paul V. Rubow, Heiberg og hans skole i kritiken, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1953, pp. 60– 62. See also Henning Fenger, The Heibergs, tr. by Frederick J. Marker, New York: Twayne Publishers. 1971, p. 126, p. 136. Henning Fenger, The Heibergs, op. cit., p. 135.

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of the form which sculpture, painting, music give them.”105 Just as in Hegel’s dialectic, the work of art must be made of some material stuff and must have an outward existence in the world. But this material content is not enough to constitute a work of art since that material can exist alone as a simple object of nature. Therefore, Heiberg hastens to add that this is only one side of the work of art: “But in this whole consideration we have only observed the arts from their one, admittedly necessary and indispensable, but nevertheless merely subordinate side, from the side which one is wont to call the real in contrast to the ideal.”106 The second aspect of the work of art is the idea of the artist. The raw material is shaped and formed in accordance with an abstract idea in the mind of the artist: “Since now thought or feelings can also exist independently of the work of art . . . they are the material for art but an ideal material whose nature is the opposite of the real material which we examined first.”107 Despite Heiberg’s misleading use of the expression “ideal material,” it is clear that he means the plan or idea in the mind of the artist as opposed to the material of which the work of art is composed. The third view is the combination of the ideal “material” and the real material in the true work of art: “Here we thus see one sole form, namely, the art form, the opposition of two materials, such that it gives priority to the one but is itself subordinated to the other.”108 Heiberg’s point here is that the ideal is higher than the material, and their unity falls between these two poles: “The statue or the painting is of a higher unity than stones or colors, but they are of a lower nature than the ideas which are expressed in them.”109 Thus, the dualism of content and form is aufgehoben in the work of art itself. For Heiberg, poetry represents the genre of art that sublates the dichotomy of content and form on the basis of the fact that poetry’s material is language that is an expression of thought. Thus, concludes Heiberg, “art’s ideal is realized in poetry.”110 The ideal is the absolute unity of content and form. Heiberg’s account here prefigures that of the esthete in many ways. It moves through a series of stages based on the dialectic of content and form. It aims to determine the great work of art or the great artist. For Heiberg the supreme artist is Goethe, whereas for the esthete Mozart 105

106 107 108 109

110

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Indlednings-Foredrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole,” Copenhagen 1835, p. 14. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 478.) Ibid., p. 15; Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 1, pp. 479. Ibid., p. 16; Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 1, p. 480. Ibid., p. 16; Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 1, p. 480. Ibid., p. 16; Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 1, p. 480. See Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid, Copenhagen 1833, p. 33. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 414.) Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Indlednings-Foredrag,” op. cit. p. 17; Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 1, p. 481.

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occupies this place of honor. Kierkegaard was familiar with Heiberg’s writings on aesthetics and indeed, as will be seen later, even has the esthete refer to Heiberg in this discussion. It thus seems fairly safe to conclude that it is from Hegel via Heiberg that Kierkegaard derived his dialectical movement of aesthetic stages.111 The first view examined by the esthete is that the subject-matter itself ultimately determines the greatness of a work of art. According to this view, a particularly propitious subject-matter lends itself to artistic representation. Thus, there is a certain degree of chance involved when an artist hits upon a subject appropriate for artistic creation. Perhaps the artist will find a favorable subject-matter by means of which to manifest his artistic idea, but perhaps he will not. This view accordingly takes credit away from the artist. The great artist would never have become great if the particular subject-matter upon which he worked had not presented itself. This view “considers that many a poet has lived who would have been just as immortal as Homer if that glorious subject-matter had not been taken over by him, many a composer who would have been just as immortal as Mozart if the opportunity had offered itself.”112 Thus, the subject-matter enjoys a privileged status here, and the identity and skill of the artist is secondary. As in Hegel’s dialectic, the movement begins by positing truth on the side of the object. Now comes the Aufhebung of this concept. For the esthete, this view is mistaken in its one-sidedness. Here he exhibits the key intuition behind speculative thinking in his desire to hold the two elements together in a single concept and not allow them to be taken up individually or in abstraction from one another: “The subject-matter is an essential element, inasmuch as it is one factor, but it is not the absolute, since it is only one element.”113 By emphasizing the subject-matter at the expense of the artist, this view overlooks how the artist transforms the raw material. Although one may be able to speak of good fortune with regard to an artist hitting upon an appropriate subject-matter, a great work of art is not purely accidental since the genius of the artist and the subject-matter are bound together: “Here the emphasis is just as much on Homer as on the subject-matter. Here is the deep harmony that pervades every production we call classic.”114 The esthete’s Hegelian proclivities are clearly in evidence when he emphasizes the necessary marriage between the artist and the subject-matter: In a classic work, good fortune – that which makes it classic and immortal – is the absolute correlation of the two forces. . . . For example, 111 112 114

See George Pattison, “Søren Kierkegaard: A Theatre Critic of the Heiberg School,” The British Journal of Aesthetics, 23, 1983, pp. 25–33. 113 EO1, p. 51; SKS, vol. 2, p. 59. EO1, p. 47; SKS, vol. 2, p. 55. EO1, p. 48; SKS, vol. 2, p. 56.

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if it is said that it was Homer’s good fortune that he acquired that most exceptional epic subject-matter, this can lead one to forget that we always have this epic subject-matter through Homer’s conception, and the fact that it appears to be the most perfect epic subject-matter is clear to us only in and through the transubstantiation due to Homer. If, however, Homer’s poetic work in permeating the subject-matter is emphasized, then one runs the risk of forgetting that the poem would never have become what it is if the idea with which Homer permeated it was not its own idea, if the form was not the subject-matter’s own form.115

The subject-matter in a sense cannot exist apart from the artist who transforms it. Without the intervention of the artist, there is no subject-matter but only raw material such as a slab of marble. This thesis is strikingly similar to what Hegel says to illustrate the relation between content and form in the Encyclopaedia Logic. In fact, Hegel uses the same example: “The only genuine works of art are precisely the ones whose content and form show themselves to be completely identical. We can say of the Iliad that its content is the Trojan War or, more precisely, the wrath of Achilles; and in saying this we have said everything, but also very little, for what makes the Iliad into the Iliad is the poetic form into which that content is moulded.”116 Thus, the esthete’s thesis is the same as Hegel’s, namely, subject-matter alone cannot determine the great work of art. The use of the same example of Homer’s works leads one to suspect that Kierkegaard might have been familiar with this passage. The next concept examined is the claim that the activity of the artist is the essential factor in the greatness of the work of art. The weight now shifts from the external object (i.e., the subject-matter) to the subject (i.e., the artist). This movement from object to subject or from in-itself to for-itself is, of course, one of the hallmarks of the Hegelian dialectic. According to this second view, the genius of the artist can take any given subject-matter and transform it into a great work of art. Homer is the great poet because of his inherent genius and not because of any particular subject-matter. One can recognize the hand of the genius in the most trivial works. Here the subject-matter is arbitrary or inessential since the great artist can always turn it into something great. Thus, the roles are now reversed, and the artist enjoys the privileged status, while the subjectmatter plays a secondary role. Now one turns once again to the Aufhebung of the concept. The emphasis on the formative activity of the subject also fails in its one-sidedness. Not every work of a great artist is ipso facto a great work; thus, even though a recognized genius puts his hand to something, the material is not a matter of indifference to the result. Like Hegel, the esthete uses 115 116

EO1, pp. 49–50; SKS, vol. 2, p. 57. Hegel, EL, § 133, Addition; Jub., vol. 8, p. 303.

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a reductio ad absurdum argument to show the internal contradiction of this position: “The same individuality may have produced many different things, but they are not to be compared with it. For example, Homer also wrote a Batrachomyomachia117 but did not become a classic writer or immortal through it.”118 Thus, the subject-matter is relevant since “if whatever makes a classic work classic lies simply and solely in the producing individual, then everything he produced would inevitably be classic.”119 Here the esthete reduces this thesis to absurdity, using the obvious argument that not everything produced by a great artist is great. With this claim, the esthete emphasizes again the necessary interconnection of the two elements. He not only employs Hegel’s speculative methodology but expressly underscores it: “Consequently, a single aspect cannot be used as the basis for an order of rank, because it is still too essential to be sufficiently accidental, too accidental to be a basis for an essential ranking. But this thoroughgoing mutual permeation . . . justifies saying . . . that the subject-matter permeates the form and also that the form permeates the subject-matter.”120 Thus, for the esthete, the truth and greatness of the work of art lies in understanding its speculative concept (i.e., the necessary interconnection of content and form). Moreover, a view that emphasizes only one side and ignores the other is false: “This unity, this mutual intimacy in each other, every classic work has, and thus it is readily perceived that every attempt at a classification of the various classic works that has as its point of departure a separation of subject-matter and form or of idea and form is eo ipso a failure.”121 Thus, for the esthete as for Hegel, form and content are united in a great work of art.122 A third criterion for the classification of a great work of art is now proposed. This dialectic, like Hegel’s, has a teleology since the esthete hopes to demonstrate that this third concept is the correct one: “I believe, however, that the following observations will open the prospect for a division that will have validity.”123 According to this new view, “the idea” of artistic experience is the necessary and essential aspect. What is at issue here is the level of abstraction of the idea.124 The esthete argues: “The most abstract ideal conceivable is the sensuous in its elemental originality. 117 118 120 122

123 124

The apocryphal Homeric work, The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice. 119 EO1, p. 50; SKS, vol. 2, p. 58. EO1, p. 50; SKS, vol. 2, p. 58. 121 EO1, p. 54; SKS, vol. 2, p. 61. EO1, pp. 52–53; SKS, vol. 2, p. 60. See Hegel, EL, § 133, Addition; Jub., vol. 8, p. 302: “Form and content are a pair of determinations that are frequently employed by the reflective understanding, and, moreover, mainly in such a way that the content is considered as what is essential and independent, while the form, on the contrary, is unessential and dependent. Against this, however, it must be remarked that in fact both of them are equally essential, and that . . . there is no more a formless content than a formless stuff.” EO1, p. 54; SKS, vol. 2, p. 62. EO1, p. 56; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 63–64: “I can choose either the works with the most abstract medium or those with the most abstract idea. In that respect, I prefer the idea, not the medium.”

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But through which medium can it be presented? Only through music.”125 For reasons the esthete does not discuss, other forms of art cannot capture sensuous originality as music can. The conclusion the esthete wants to draw is that Mozart’s Don Giovanni is “the perfect unity of this idea and its corresponding form.”126 It has an abstract idea at its heart and is expressed in music, an abstract form. For this reason, there can, for the esthete, be no second Don Giovanni. By contrast, other classics such as the poems of Homer or Goethe’s Faust can be imitated ad infinitum: Homer found a perfect epic subject-matter, but because history offers more epic subject matter, many more epic poems are conceivable. . . . Goethe’s Faust is really a classic work, but it is a historical idea, and therefore every extraordinary time in history will have its Faust. Faust has language as its medium, and since this is a much more concrete medium, for that reason, too, many works of the same kind are conceivable.127

In contrast to Homer’s epics and Goethe’s Faust, which have a concrete element, Don Giovanni stands alone as truly great by virtue of the abstract nature of its artistic idea. The esthete does not flesh out this third concept in much detail since he uses this criterion not to classify art works generally but rather to justify in an ad hoc fashion his claim that Don Giovanni is the greatest of all works of art. He is more interested in Don Giovanni than in the idea of the work of art per se. At the end of his account here, the esthete looks back on this “movement of thought”128 and describes it in a way reminiscent of Hegel’s description of the movement of the dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit. At first a concept is presented, and only when the so-called natural consciousness (i.e., Hegel’s idealized, phenomenological actor) examines it and discovers its inconsistency, is it compelled into motion. The esthete writes: “Thought was calm, rested happy in its knowledge; then I went to it and begged it to bestir itself once more, to venture the ultimate. . . . It labored in vain; egged on by me, it was continually going beyond itself and continually collapsing back into itself. It was continually looking for a foothold and finding none, continually trying to find bottom, but could neither swim nor wade.”129 The movement of thought here is like that of Hegel’s natural consciousness, which in vain continually shifts the variables in its conceptual scheme in order to come up with a consistent concept. Individual criteria for truth are continually mediated and transformed into more complete concepts. What is puzzling in this discussion is that Hegel is mentioned twice, and both times the one-sided view in favor of the subject-matter is ascribed to him. Thus, despite the esthete’s overt use of Hegelian methodology, 125 127 129

EO1, p. 56; SKS, vol. 2, p. 64. EO1, p. 57; SKS, vol. 2, p. 64. EO1, p. 58; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 65–66.

126 128

EO1, p. 57; SKS, vol. 2, p. 64. EO1, p. 58; SKS, vol. 2, p. 65.

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when he mentions Hegel in this context, it is not to praise his speculative approach to art but to criticize him for insisting on the importance of the subject-matter: There was a school of estheticians who, because of a one-sided emphasis on the significance of form, were not without guilt in occasioning the diametrically opposite misunderstanding. It has often struck me that these estheticians were as a matter of course attached to Hegelian philosophy, inasmuch as both a general knowledge of Hegel and a special knowledge of his aesthetics give assurance that he strongly emphasizes, especially with regard to the aesthetic, the importance of the subject-matter.130

A little later, Hegel is mentioned a second time by name and once again associated with the proponents of the first view, which gives priority to the subject-matter: “Hegel reinstated the subject-matter, the idea, in its rights and thereby ousted those transient classic works, those superficialities.”131 At first glance this seems to be a puzzling misreading of Hegel especially given that the esthete makes use of precisely Hegel’s speculative methodology by seeing the two different elements of the work of art in their necessary connection. Some light is shed on the issue when we identify the unnamed school of estheticians in the first passage cited as Heiberg and his circle.132 There was long debate in Danish literature, originally between the poet Jens Baggesen (1764–1826) and his rival Adam Oehlenschläger (1799– 1850), concerning the relative significance of form and content in art. While Oehlenschläger emphasized content as the main element in poetry, Baggesen argued that form and technical expertise were the most important. Heiberg took up Baggesen’s case against Oehlenschläger on several occasions. In the passage above the esthete notes the contradiction between Heiberg’s emphasis on form and his open advocation of Hegel’s philosophy, which, according to the esthete, emphasizes just the opposite (i.e., subject-matter).133 According to Heiberg, the spectators can immediately enjoy a work of art, but the critic must be concerned only with the work’s form or with the technical mastery it displays. Thus, 130 132

133

131 EO1, p. 53; SKS, vol. 2, p. 61. EO1, p. 50; SKS, vol. 2, p. 58. Commentators also refer to Christian H. Weisse, System der Aesthetik von der Idee der Schönheit, vols. 1–2, Leipzig 1830 (ASKB 1379–1380), where there is indeed an extended discussion of content and form. See vol. 1, pp. 110ff. It must be noted that the esthete is at least careful to distinguish Hegel from his followers. EO1, p. 53; SKS, vol. 2, p. 61: “Like so many others, however, this effort found its subduer in Hegel. It is a sad truth about Hegelian philosophy that on the whole it has by no means achieved the importance, neither for the past nor for the present age, that it would have achieved if the past age had not been so busy scaring people into it but rather possessed a little more calm presence of mind in appropriating it to itself, and if the present age had not been so indefatigably active in driving people beyond it.” Here one will recall Kierkegaard’s repeated criticism of Martensen for his claim to have gone beyond Hegel.

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“form is the sole object of criticism.”134 Elsewhere, Heiberg writes: “Here in Denmark it has recently been hotly disputed what should be seen as the main thing, content [Materien] or form. To this one can answer in short that in poetry and in all of the fine arts this opposition does not entirely exist such that one cannot even say that form is the main thing, but rather one must say that it is the one and only thing.”135 Heiberg’s argument here is not easy to understand given what he says about the unity of content and form in poetry representing the highest form of art and given that Hegel’s speculative philosophy insists on the unity of both content and form.136 According to Hegel’s dialectic, there can be no form without content and no content without form, and the “idea” of the work of art is the organic unity of these two elements.137 This seems also to be the upshot of the esthete’s dialectic here in this analysis. Heiberg is aware of this, and he compares the relation of content and form in the work of art with that of the body and the soul.138 For Heiberg, even though there is no work of art without a given content, just as one can never observe a soul outside the body, nevertheless the work’s artistic basis lies in its form, just as the essence of a human being lies in the soul and not the body. Whatever the case may be here regarding Kierkegaard’s, Heiberg’s or the esthete’s understanding of Hegel’s view on the subject-matter of art, there can be no doubt, given the similarities to Hegel’s philosophy in the analysis presented by the esthete, that Hegelian methodology is employed here. Whether there is a direct Hegelian influence here or an indirect one via Heiberg’s dialectic is ultimately unimportant. First, there is clearly a Hegelian movement through the three stages. Moreover, just as in Hegel’s dialectic, so also here the criterion for the truth of the concept is first on the side of the object and then on the side of the subject and then in the unity of both. Finally, the esthete’s insistence on an integrative

134

135

136 137

138

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Svar paa Hr. Oehlenschlägers Skrift: ‘Om Kritiken i Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, over Væringerne i Miklagard,’” I no. 7, in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, 1828, (I, no. 7; II, no. 8; III, no. 10; IV, no. 11; V, no. 12; VI, no. 13; VII, no. 14; VIII, no. 15; IX, no. 16). (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 203.) See also Heiberg’s letter to H. C. Ørsted, January 5, 1831, Letter 236 in Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Johan Ludvig Heiberg, vols. 1–5, ed. by Morten Borup, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1947–50, vol. 2, pp. 96–98. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Grundtræk til Philosophiens Philosophie eller den speculative Logik. Som Ledetraad ved Forelæsninger paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1832, § 98, Remark 3, p. 52. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 216.) See Paul V. Rubow, Heiberg og hans skole i kritiken, op. cit., p. 62. For example, Hegel, Aesthetics I, p. 70; Jub., vol. 12, p. 107: “It has already been said that the content of art is the Idea, while its form is the configuration of sensuous material. Now art has to harmonize these two sides and bring them into a free reconciled totality.” Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Svar paa Hr. Oehlenschlägers Skrift: ‘Om Kritiken i Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, over Væringerne i Miklagard,’” op. cit., I, no. 7; Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 3, p. 202.

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approach that takes into account seemingly opposing elements is clearly reminiscent of Hegel’s speculative philosophy.

iv. two interpretations of antigone In the chapter “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic of Modern Drama,” from Part One of Either/Or, Kierkegaard’s esthete analyzes among other things, Sophocles’ famous tragedy, Antigone. This constitutes a natural point of comparison with Hegel, whose treatment of this work is well known. In his discussion the esthete cites from Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics.139 There is thus good evidence that Kierkegaard was familiar with Hegel’s accounts of the famous drama. Some commentators have already argued that the esthete’s interpretation of Antigone is Hegelian. For example, George Steiner writes, “It is the Hegelian Antigone which lies behind the tormented silhouette in Either/Or. . . . Contrasting, in certain respects antithetical, as they are, the Antigone readings and transformations proposed by Hegel and by Kierkegaard remain inseparable.”140 I would like to support Steiner’s general thesis that much of Kierkegaard’s Antigone interpretation is derived from Hegel’s. I would, however, like to develop Steiner’s claim somewhat and argue that Kierkegaard took to heart Hegel’s analysis of the distinction between ancient and modern tragedy and applied Hegel’s characterization of the modern notion of tragedy to the story of Antigone. In this way he modifies the story by Sophocles in order to make it into a modern tragedy. His entire analysis, although original in its development, is thus informed and motivated by Hegel’s characterization of the nature of modern tragedy. Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone is clearly Hegel’s favorite drama; indeed, he says directly, “Of all the masterpieces of the classical and the modern world . . . the Antigone seems to me to be the most magnificent and satisfying work of art of this kind.”141 He discusses the drama in the initial sections of the “Spirit” chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit and again in the Lectures on Aesthetics.142 In the Phenomenology the analysis is intended 139 140

141 142

EO1, p. 147; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 146–147. George Steiner, Antigones, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984, pp. 65–66. See also Walter Rehm, “Kierkegaards Antigone” in his Begegnungen und Probleme, Bern: A. Franke AG 1957, pp. 274–316, especially pp. 284–285. Karsten Friis Johansen, “Kierkegaard on ‘The Tragic,’” Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, 13, 1976, pp. 105–146, especially pp. 122– 124. Dar´ıo González, “El ‘reflejo’ de lo trágico. Nota sobre la Ant´ıgona de Kierkegaard,” Persona y Derecho, 39, 1998, pp. 107–135. Isak Winkel Holm, “Reflection’s Correlative Fate: Figures of Dependence in Søren Kierkegaard’s A Literary Review,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1999, pp. 149–163. Hegel, Aesthetics II, p. 1218; Jub., vol. 14, p. 556. It is also alluded to in the Philosophy of Right. PR, § 166; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 246–247. PR, § 144, Remark; Jub., vol. 7, p. 227.

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to illustrate the fundamental tension at the heart of the Greek world that led to its downfall. In this context Hegel does not therefore analyze the drama Antigone as a piece of literature or art per se; rather, this discussion of the Antigone is a part of a larger historical analysis of the Greeks as a world-historical people. By contrast, in his Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel discusses the tragedy specifically as a work of art. Although he examines the piece in these two quite different contexts, the general points he makes are much the same. The esthete’s Antigone interpretation, which is located at the end of a longer analysis of the nature of ancient and modern drama, contains many Hegelian aspects.143 The claim of the esthete is that what characterizes modern drama is a sense of individuality that is lacking in ancient drama. His discussion is not so much an interpretation of the ancient tragedy as a retelling of it with significant changes in order to illustrate specific aspects of modern and ancient tragedy. Thus, the esthete’s use of the Antigone is, in a sense, quite different from Hegel’s. I will try to show that the modifications to the play that the esthete effects are intended to turn the ancient Greek tragedy into a modern tragedy. The esthete does this by using Hegel’s definition of modern tragedy from the Lectures on Aesthetics and by modifying key aspects of the Antigone in order to bring it into accordance with this definition. He thus presents the reader with his own modern version of the story along the lines sketched by Hegel. According to the esthete’s version, the conflict of the drama is not between the family and the state (i.e., between Antigone and Creon) but rather between two conflicting forces within Antigone herself. The esthete, following Hegel’s definition, has devised a way to make the conflict an inward one. I begin by looking at Hegel’s account of the difference between ancient and modern tragedy as he presents it in the Lectures on Aesthetics. According to Hegel, the tragic heroes in ancient drama are motivated by the substantial nature of their characters and their ethical relations. By contrast, in modern tragedy, these things no longer carry any weight, and the motivation becomes more arbitrary. He writes: “But in modern tragedy it is generally the case that individuals do not act for the sake of the substantial nature of their end, nor is it that nature which proves to be their motive in their passion; on the contrary, what presses for satisfaction is the subjectivity of their heart and mind and the privacy of their own character.”144 This understanding of the motivation of action also changes the nature of the tragic conflict in modern drama. According to Hegel, while the tragic conflict in ancient drama was between external things such as the family and the state, the tragic conflict in modern 143 144

EO1, pp. 153–164; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 152–162. Hegel, Aesthetics II, p. 1225; Jub., vol. 14, p. 565.

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drama takes place within the individual. He writes: The heroes of Greek classical tragedy are confronted by circumstances in which, after firmly identifying themselves with the one ethical “pathos” which alone corresponds to their own already established nature, they necessarily come into conflict with the opposite but equally justified ethical power. The Romantic dramatic personae, on the other hand, are from the beginning in the midst of a wide field of more or less accidental circumstances and conditions within which it is possible to act either in this way or in that. Consequently the conflict, for which the external circumstances do of course provide the occasion, lies essentially in the character to which the individuals adhere in their passion.145

The move from ancient to modern tragedy can be characterized as a move from outer to inner. Modern tragedy is then more psychological in the sense that its focus is the soul of the individual and not the external circumstances. Hegel’s example is the character of Hamlet: “Therefore the collision [in Hamlet] turns strictly here not on a son’s pursuing an ethically justified revenge and being forced in the process to violate the ethical order, but on Hamlet’s personal character.”146 The focus is on Hamlet’s wavering back and forth, his uncertainty and procrastination, in short on the inner psychological forces battling for hegemony over his character. It is this Hegelian account that Kierkegaard uses in the reworking of the story of Antigone that the esthete presents. The claim for a Hegelian influence here is strengthened by the fact that Kierkegaard was clearly familiar with Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. As has been seen, he had already used these lectures in The Concept of Irony, where he quotes from them directly. Indeed, as was noted, he also quotes from them in this section of Either/Or.147 Even more important are his reading notes to the third volume of these lectures. These notes, which are quite detailed, come from the years 1841–42 (i.e., just prior to Either/Or).148 Here it is clear that Kierkegaard has read carefully Section III, “The Several Generic Types of Poetry.” Under this heading come “A) Epic Poetry, B) Lyric Poetry and C) Dramatic Poetry.” Therefore, there can be no doubt that Kierkegaard was familiar with Hegel’s analysis. It is in his final section on dramatic poetry that Hegel discusses the differences between ancient and modern drama analyzed in the previous paragraph; indeed, Hegel’s section is entitled, “The Difference Between Ancient and Modern Drama.” This is strikingly 145 146 147 148

Hegel, Aesthetics II, p. 1226; Jub., vol. 14, p. 567. Hegel, Aesthetics II, pp. 1225–1226; Jub., vol. 14, p. 566. EO1, p. 147; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 146–147. JP, vol. 2, 1592; SKS, vol. 19, p. 245, Not8:51. JP, vol. 2, 1593; SKS, vol. 19, p. 246, Not8:53. JP, vol. 5, 5545; SKS, vol. 19, pp. 285–286, Not10:1. See also JP, vol. 2, 1591; SKS, vol. 19, p. 237, Not8:39.1.

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similar to Kierkegaard’s title “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic of Modern Drama.” At the beginning of his treatment the esthete indicates that he intends to change the story of Antigone to suit his own purposes. He briefly explains the main events of the narrative and then hints that he wishes to make some modifications: “So, then, the family of Labdakos is the object of the indignation of the gods: Oedipus has killed the sphinx, liberated Thebes; Oedipus has murdered his father, married his mother; and Antigone is the fruit of this marriage. So it goes in the Greek tragedy. Here I deviate. With me, everything is the same, and yet everything is different.”149 The esthete thus uses some of the fundamental aspects of the plot as his point of departure and then goes on to indicate which changes in the story he wishes to make. He proposes the following: “Everyone knows that he [Oedipus] has killed the sphinx and freed Thebes, and Oedipus is hailed and admired and is happy in his marriage with Jocasta. The rest is hidden from the people’s eyes, and no suspicion has ever brought this horrible dream into the world of actuality. Only Antigone knows it.”150 The difference that the esthete wishes to introduce is that no one besides Antigone knows that Oedipus has killed his father and married his mother. All of the rest of Thebes regard the marriage as a legitimate and happy one. The esthete then analyzes Antigone’s situation in terms of the concept of anxiety. Due to its inward nature, anxiety is a modern emotion. Like Hegel, Kierkegaard’s esthete uses Hamlet as an example of a modern tragic figure characterized specifically by this emotion: “Anxiety, therefore, belongs essentially to the tragic. Hamlet is such a tragic figure because he suspects his mother’s crime.”151 The esthete’s claim is that sorrow is what characterizes ancient Greek tragedy, whereas anxiety is what characterizes modern tragedy. Then it becomes clear why he wishes to make the modification he does in the story of Antigone in the original of Sophocles, Antigone suffers sorrow but not anxiety, while in the esthete’s modern version she suffers from anxiety due to the secret that she knows about Oedipus. The esthete uses Hegel’s analysis in his characterization of the ancient world as lacking in subjective reflection, which is the sign of modern thought. The esthete writes, using very Hegelian language: “the ancient world did not have subjectivity reflected in itself. Even if the individual moved freely, he nevertheless rested in substantial determinants, in the state, the family, in fate. This substantial determinant is the essential fateful factor in Greek tragedy and is its essential characteristic.”152 This 149 151 152

150 EO1, p. 154; SKS, vol. 2, p. 153. EO1, p. 154; SKS, vol. 2, p. 153. EO1, p. 155; SKS, vol. 2, p. 154. EO1, p. 143; SKS, vol. 2, p. 143. See also EO1, p. 149; SKS, vol. 2, p. 148. EO1, p. 154; SKS, vol. 2, p. 152. EO1, pp. 155–156; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 154–155.

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characterization is drawn directly from Hegel’s analysis which sees the substance of the Greek ethical life as resting in the institutions of the family and the state. The esthete’s characterization of modern tragedy also has a profoundly Hegelian ring to it: “in the modern period situation and character are in fact predominant. The tragic hero is subjectively reflected in himself, and this reflection has not only reflected him out of every immediate relation to state, kindred, and fate but often has even reflected him out of his own past life.”153 This follows very closely Hegel’s account of modern tragedy which sees the element of reflection as being first introduced by modern tragedy. Hamlet, the modern tragic figure par excellence, is characterized by reflection. Kierkegaard’s esthete now compares the two versions in order to illustrate the difference between the ancient and the modern accounts. He first takes the original story by Sophocles: “In Greek tragedy, Antigone is not occupied at all with her father’s unfortunate fate. This rests like an impregnable sorrow on the whole family.”154 There is thus a general sense of sorrow surrounding the history of the family but no anxiety. The esthete then goes on to analyze the modern story of Antigone that he proposes (i.e., Antigone alone knows of Oedipus’ incestuous marriage). He contrasts the Antigone of Sophocles with his own version: “Whereas the Greek Antigone goes on living so free from care that, if this new fact had not come up, one could imagine her life as even happy in its gradual unfolding, our Antigone’s life, on the other hand, is essentially at an end.”155 In contrast to the ancient Antigone, the esthete’s Antigone is consumed inwardly by the secret that is hers alone. Hence, she cannot live happily or be carefree like the Greek Antigone. Kierkegaard’s esthete distinguishes between two tragic collisions in his version of the story. The first is the conflict between protecting the good name of Oedipus and Antigone’s own happiness prior to the entrée of Haemon. With respect to her familial duties, he writes: “She is proud of her secret, proud that she had been selected in a singular way to save the honor and glory of the lineage of Oedipus. When the grateful nation acclaims Oedipus with praise and thanksgiving, she feels her own significance, and her secret sinks deeper and deeper into her soul, ever more inaccessible to any living being.”156 Thus, Antigone feels honored to carry the secret alone, and by so doing she is responsible for Oedipus’ success and is linked with his fate. This secret separates her from everyone else. Her duty is to extol and maintain the memory of Oedipus. Antigone gladly sacrifices her own personal happiness and lives in suffering with her secret in order to preserve the good name of Oedipus: “She dedicates her life to sorrowing over her father’s fate, over her own.”157 153 155 157

EO1, p. 143; SKS, vol. 2, p. 143. EO1, p. 156; SKS, vol. 2, p. 155. EO1, p. 158; SKS, vol. 2, p. 156.

154 156


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The second collision is when Haemon enters the scene, and Antigone must sacrifice her love for him in order to keep the secret.158 Antigone’s most sacred duty toward Oedipus comes into conflict when she falls in love with Haemon. She is bound morally to keep the secret and thus to honor her father: “To confide in any other living being now would be to dishonor her father; her life acquires meaning for her in its devotion to showing him the last honors daily, almost hourly, by her unbroken silence.”159 But to keep a secret from one she loves (i.e., Haemon) would be a betrayal of that love. Kierkegaard’s esthete describes this as follows: “Now my Antigone is no ordinary girl, and her dowry likewise is not ordinary – her pain. Without this dowry, she cannot belong to any man – that, she feels, would be taking too great a risk. To conceal it from such an observant person would be impossible; to wish to have it concealed would be a breach of her love – but with it can she belong to him?”160 If Antigone keeps the secret to herself, then she is pious to her father Oedipus but untrue to her lover Haemon. If, by contrast, she reveals her family secret to Haemon, then while she is true to him, she sullies the reputation of her father. Kierkegaard’s esthete imagines the situation of this second collision and the tragic end of this modern Antigone. Haemon knows that Antigone is keeping some sort of a secret from him and does everything he can to extract it from her. He knows clearly of her deep piety and veneration for her father and pleads with her in his name to reveal the secret. This only makes Antigone suffer more since it is precisely for the sake of her father that she keeps the secret. As long as she lives, Antigone must endure the torment of keeping the secret in the face of Haemon’s entreaties. According to the esthete, when she yields and betrays the secret of Oedipus to him, she must die: “Only in the moment of her death can she confess the fervency of her love; only in the moment she does not belong to him can she confess that she belongs to him.”161 Antigone cannot continue to live with the thought that she has betrayed the memory of her father, and thus she must die. But up until that point, her life is nothing but suffering due to her harboring the secret. This is for Kierkegaard’s esthete a truly tragic situation in the modern sense. Aside from the esthete’s use of Hegel’s definition of modern tragedy to recast the Antigone, he takes over a number of other aspects of Hegel’s analysis. One point of similarity is the esthete’s understanding of history and the role of the individual, which is decidedly influenced by Hegel. In the Preface to the Philosophy of Right, Hegel writes: “As far as the individual is concerned, each individual is in any case a child of his time.”162 The

158 160 162

159 EO1, p. 161; SKS, vol. 2, p. 159. EO1, p. 163; SKS, vol. 2, p. 161. 161 EO1, p. 164; SKS, vol. 2, p. 162. EO1, pp. 162–163; SKS, vol. 2, p. 161. Hegel, PR, Preface, p. 21; Jub., vol. 7, p. 35. Quoted in Chapter 3, footnote 88.

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esthete seems to paraphrase this when he says: “Every individual, however original he is, is still a child of God, of his age, of his nation, of his family, of his friends, and only in them does he have his truth.”163 There seems to be a tension between this statement and Kierkegaard’s repeated statements about the absolute, irreducible nature of the individual. In a similar vein, the esthete writes at the very beginning of the chapter: “If someone were to say: ‘The tragic, after all, is always the tragic,’ I would not have very much to urge to the contrary, inasmuch as every historical development always lies within the sphere of the concept.”164 This also seems to follow Hegel’s conception of history in terms of a general concept of the historical period. In the first case, it is the individual who is equated with the whole, and in the second, it is the individual historical phenomena. In both cases the emphasis is placed upon the wider perspective beyond the individual. These passages square with at least the one strand of The Concept of Irony where Kierkegaard also employs a Hegelian understanding of history in terms of the development of the abstract Concept. Perhaps the most obvious point of contact in this section is when the esthete alludes to Hegel directly and quotes from the Lectures on Aesthetics. Here the esthete comments upon Hegel’s understanding of compassion or pity: It is well known that Aristotle maintains that tragedy should arouse fear and compassion in the spectator. I recall that Hegel in his Aesthetics picks up this comment and on each of these points makes a double observation, which, however, is not very exhaustive. . . . Hegel notes that there are two kinds of compassion, the usual kind that turns its attention to the finite side of suffering, and the truly tragic compassion. This observation is altogether correct but to me of less importance, since that universal emotion is a misunderstanding that can befall modern tragedy just as much as ancient tragedy. But what he adds with regard to true compassion is true and powerful: “das wahrhafte Mitleiden ist im Gegentheil die Sympathie mit der zugleich sittlichen Berechtigung des Leidenden.”165

Clearly, the esthete’s assessment of Hegel’s conception of compassion is in fact quite positive. He wishes merely to supplement it or to point out a different aspect, but there is no trace of criticism here; on the contrary, Hegel’s assessment is lauded as “true and powerful.” The esthete then goes on to indicate the difference between his view and that of Hegel: “Whereas Hegel considers compassion more in general and its differentiation in the difference of individualities, I prefer to stress the difference in compassion in relation to the difference in tragic guilt.”166

163 165

EO1, p. 145; SKS, vol. 2, p. 142. EO1, p. 147; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 146–147.

164 166


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225

Finally, the esthete, like Hegel, uses the concept of dialectic. This is of particular interest since Kierkegaard hails himself as a dialectical thinker and uses a dialectical methodology in any number of other works. In connection with the issue of tragic guilt the esthete writes, “Here I am face to face again with the curious dialectic that places the family’s iniquities in relation to the individual. This is what is inherited. Ordinarily, dialectic is thought to be rather abstract – one thinks almost solely of logical operations. But life will quickly teach a person that there are many kinds of dialectic, that almost every passion has its own.”167 Here it is clear that Kierkegaard’s esthete is speaking of Hegel’s dialectic since the passage concerns the relation of the universal, in this case, the family, to the particular (i.e., the family member).168 In any case, the issue of dialectic is one that Hegel and Kierkegaard share, even though Kierkegaard has a conception of dialectic that removes it from purely logical analysis and puts it in the sphere of actuality and life. From this analysis it seems clear that Kierkegaard’s use of Antigone is very much inspired by Hegel’s accounts of this work. Even though what Kierkegaard does with it is original, it is clear that he takes his point of departure in Hegel’s distinction between ancient and modern tragedy. It is conceivable, indeed probable, that Hegel’s section, “The Difference Between Ancient and Modern Drama,” from the Lectures on Aesthetics was a source of inspiration or even a model for his chapter “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic of Modern Drama.” In addition, the esthete seems to use Hegel’s Antigone interpretation from the Phenomenology, as is evidenced by his talk of ethical substance and reflectivity. Thus, even though the esthete changes the story and thus analyzes a different version of it than Hegel, the changes he makes are based on Hegel’s definition of modern tragedy, and thus the esthete’s account is still full of Hegelian elements.

v. the aesthetic validity of marriage: “love’s dialectic” As some commentators have noted, Judge Wilhelm seems to employ Hegelian methodology in his discussion of love and marriage in the first chapter of Part Two, “The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage.”169 It has been claimed that Hegel’s doctrine of mediation can be seen in Judge Wilhelm’s argument that the immediate impulse of love must be 167 168

169

EO1, p. 159; SKS, vol. 2, p. 158. See also EO1, p. 151; SKS, vol. 2, p. 150. It is this relation of universal to particular that Kierkegaard later develops with the concept of repetition, which is explored in Chapter 6, Section I. In addition, the issue of hereditary sin and the relation of the individual to the human race in general is explored in The Concept of Anxiety. EO2, pp. 17–32 and ff.; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 26–38 and ff.

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mediated and transformed into the institution and ethical union of marriage.170 In this chapter, another three-step dialectical movement is discernible. Judge Wilhelm refers to this as “love’s dialectic.”171 This movement illustrates yet another well-known aspect of Hegel’s dialectical methodology, namely, that of immediacy and mediation. Although he ignores Part One entirely, Thulstrup addresses the apparently Hegelian elements in each chapter of Part Two. With regard to “The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage,” he cannot help but admit that there are a number of parallels between Judge Wilhelm’s analysis and Hegel,172 although he attempts to minimize these in a number of different ways. Instead of simply admitting the existence of the Hegelian elements and then claiming that they are ironic as he did in his interpretation of The Concept of Irony, Thulstrup here tries to find a reason to reject the individual elements on an ad hoc basis. He acknowledges that Judge Wilhelm’s account of the movement from immediate romantic love to love in the sphere of reflection in the institution of marriage is essentially Hegelian,173 but he nevertheless insists that there are decisive differences. He claims Judge Wilhelm cannot be a Hegelian since he is a clear proponent of free will, whereas Hegel was a determinist. Thulstrup writes: “Judge Wilhelm is just not a spokesman for this notion. His whole reasoning process proceeds in the sphere of freedom, not in that of necessity, where the possibilities of choice are genuine and not illusory as in Hegel.”174 As an argument, this of course has nothing to do with the analysis of love and marriage which is at issue. Moreover, this evinces a profound (yet regrettably widespread) misunderstanding of Hegel’s notion of necessity. Hegel was a compatibilist and not a determinist, which, as will be seen later, is something Kierkegaard understood better than Thulstrup. It will be recalled from Chapter 2, Section II, that Kierkegaard was inspired by Hegel’s dialectical movement from immediacy, to mediation, to mediated immediacy, which he presumably knew from Heiberg’s discussions of it in his works on aesthetics. In the early journal entry examined there, Kierkegaard attempts to sketch a revised version of this scheme, which adds a fourth stage. From the discussion in Either/Or, it is clear 170

171 172 173 174

See Harald Høffding, Søren Kierkegaard som Filosof, Copenhagen and Kristiania: Gydendalske Boghandel 1892, pp. 92ff. See also his “Søren Kierkegaard,” in his Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, p. 158. EO2, p. 18; SKS, vol. 3, p. 27. See Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 324. See ibid., p. 326. See ibid., p. 327. See p. 323: “By means of this poetic work to confront the reader with an alternative between the esthetic and the ethical attitude toward life, there is a clear indication of the rejection of the speculative mode of development in which individual choice is illusory because the process originates and continues with necessity, not freedom, for the individual as well as for world history.”

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that Kierkegaard is still fascinated by the basic Hegelian structure. Judge Wilhelm’s discussion follows the Hegelian triad perfectly.175 The first stage Judge Wilhelm portrays is that of romantic love, the concept of love advocated by the young esthete. The essential characteristics of this concept of love are immediacy and sensuality. Judge Wilhelm describes this stage as follows: “First I shall indicate the characteristics of romantic love. One could say in a single word: it is immediate. To see her and to love her would be one and the same.”176 The language here of “immediacy” is obviously Hegelian. In romantic love there is no calculating or rational consideration of feelings but rather an immediate, spontaneous impulse. Romantic love is a simple reaction to the object of desire, and precisely in this simplicity one finds its charm. Judge Wilhelm continues his characterization of this concept: “Romantic love manifests itself as immediate by exclusively resting in natural necessity. It is based on beauty.”177 This kind of love has its beginning in a natural sensuous reaction evoked by the beloved. The esthete extols this feeling. The romantic advocates giving it free rein and criticizes everything that hinders it as repressive and evil. This concept is now examined dialectically as the Judge goes in search of its internal contradiction, which will lead to its Aufhebung. Not surprisingly, the natural element of romantic love constitutes the contradiction in the concept. Since it is based on the sensuous, it is not stable. Romantic love is impulsive and can only exist in the spontaneous moments of sensuous desire, beyond which it has no enduring features. Thus, romantic love collapses into individual moments. Judge Wilhelm explains the contradiction as follows: Although this love is based essentially on the sensuous, it nevertheless is noble by virtue of the consciousness of the eternal that it assimilates, for it is this that distinguishes all love from lust: that it bears a stamp of eternity. The lovers are deeply convinced that in itself their relationship is a complete whole that will never be changed. But since this conviction is substantiated only by a natural determinant, the eternal is based on the temporal and thereby cancels itself.178

Romantic love takes itself to be eternal but has no such principle within itself; on the contrary, it is grounded in transitory desire. It knows only momentary satisfaction and has no glimpse of the eternal. Thus, it proves contradictory and is aufgehoben in the sense of negated, yet an aspect of it will be preserved and resurrected at the third stage. 175

176 178

It will be noted that when Kierkegaard comes to treat the issue of love and marriage again in Stages on Life’s Way, he avails himself of the same structural movement. SL, pp. 156–175; SKS, vol. 6, pp. 146–163. 177 EO2, p. 21; SKS, vol. 3, p. 29. EO2, pp. 19–20; SKS, vol. 3, p. 28. EO2, p. 21; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 29–30.

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The view that is posited next as the claim opposed to romantic love is the marriage of convenience or the love of reflection. Just as immediacy is the sphere of romantic love, so also reflection and rational calculation represent the sphere of the marriage of convenience. Judge Wilhelm introduces this concept as follows: “The second way out, the respectable way, was the marriage of convenience. One immediately hears in the designation that the sphere of reflection has been entered.”179 For Judge Wilhelm, the marriage of reflection is a typical outgrowth of the age of reflection, which subjects everything to rational consideration. The marriage of reflection is based on a sense of resignation or cynicism about the possibility of true love. It satisfies itself with the ceremony and outward trappings of marriage and does not expect more. This view scoffs at the romantic and regards all talk of love as sentimental nonsense. This clearly corresponds to the sphere of mediation for Hegel, which was described previously with the example of self-alienated spirit.180 Here there is no longer any immediate or spontaneous feeling since the marriage of convenience is governed wholly by calculated pragmatic concerns. This conception also falls victim to self-contradiction when examined closely. It sets its object beyond the prospective spouse in some pragmatic consideration such as money or status: “It is a motive foreign to the marriage itself that becomes the decisive factor – for example, out of love of her family a young girl marries a man who is able to rescue it.”181 But these contingent external considerations are, like spontaneous desire, transitory and cannot provide a stable basis for the eternal. As Judge Wilhelm puts it: “Consequently, the eternal, which as already indicated above, belongs to every marriage, is not really present here, for a commonsensical calculation is always temporal.”182 Thus, the marriage of convenience is also based on the contingent and collapses under the weight of its own internal contradiction (i.e., its pretence to be eternal rather than grounded in finite, calculated self-interest). Judge Wilhelm now indicates that his task is to unite these two attempts into a third view that, on the one hand, preserves their positive features while, on the other, avoiding their contradictions. The beauty of immediacy and spontaneity that characterize romantic love must be preserved without the transitoriness and mutability of passion and desire. Likewise, the caution and prudence of the marriage of convenience must be preserved, but its cynical lovelessness must be overcome. Judge Wilhelm puts forth the challenge of this third view, the view of love within marriage, as follows: “The question remains whether the immediate, the

179 181

EO2, pp. 26–27; SKS, vol. 3, p. 35. EO2, pp. 27–28; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 35–36.

180 182

Chapter 2, Section II. EO2, p. 27; SKS, vol. 3, p. 35.

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first love, by being caught up into a higher, concentric immediacy, would not be secure against this skepticism so that the married love would not need to plough under the first love’s beautiful hopes, but the marital love would itself be the first love with the addition of qualifications that would not detract from it but would ennoble it.”183 Again drawing on Hegelian language, Judge Wilhelm indicates that the task is to characterize marriage as a “higher concentric unity” that unites and sublates the two previous stages. For Judge Wilhelm, love within the institution of marriage represents the satisfactory concept in the dialectic of love. In it the two previous views are aufgehoben to form an internally consistent third view: “Therefore, inasmuch as in the foregoing I have indicated romantic love and reflective love as confrontational positions, it will be clearly apparent here to what extent the higher unity is a return to the immediate, to what extent this contains, in addition to the something more that it contains, that which was implicit in the first.”184 This final stage is what Hegel calls “the mediated immediacy.”185 The immediate feeling of spontaneous love is preserved, but it is contained within the mediated relationship of marriage. It should be noted here that Judge Wilhelm’s doctrine of marriage is essentially Hegelian with respect to its content. In the Philosophy of Right and the Encyclopaedia, Hegel treats the concept of marriage.186 In both places he argues that in marriage the immediate feelings of love that come from nature are aufgehoben and brought into an ethical [sittliche] relation by spirit. From this discussion it is clear that Judge Wilhelm is as much a Hegelian as the esthete at least with respect to methodology. Even though the content of their discussions and arguments is different, they employ essentially the same methodology. Once again a dialectical movement through three distinct stages is discernible, and once again Hegel’s doctrine of the dialectical movement from immediacy to mediation to mediated immediacy is clearly illustrated here. In this chapter I have confined myself to an analysis of a handful of passages and by so doing have neglected a number of other discussions that also display distinct Hegelian elements. For example, I have not examined the esthete’s account of “the unhappiest one,” which in the text itself is explicitly compared with Hegel’s celebrated discussion of the unhappy consciousness in the “Self-Consciousness” chapter of the Phenomenology 183 185

186

184 EO2, p. 30; SKS, vol. 3, p. 38. EO2, pp. 29–30; SKS, vol. 3, p. 37. In his sketch of this in Stages on Life’s Way, this stage is referred to in profoundly Hegelian terms as a “new immediacy.” SL, pp. 162; SKS, vol. 6, pp. 151–152. SL, pp. 163; SKS, vol. 6, p. 152. Hegel, PR, §§ 161–169; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 239–249. Phil. of Mind, §§ 519–522; Jub., vol. 10, pp. 399–400. See Robert Lee Perkins, “The Family: Hegel and Kierkegaard’s Judge Wilhelm,” Hegel-Jahrbuch, 1967, pp. 89–100.

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of Spirit.187 In addition, in his Preface Victor Eremita uses the terms “the inner” and “the outer,” which have been taken to be Hegelian.188 I likewise pass over this issue here since it will be treated in some detail later.189 These passages have been left aside since they are not particularly relevant to the themes that I have selected as the main ones for the present chapter. The nature of the use of Hegel in Either/Or is different from that of The Concept of Irony. In the former there are no extended analyses of his primary texts, and Hegel does not dominate the discussion as he did in parts of the dissertation. As a result, one has the sense that in Either/Or Kierkegaard has more thoroughly developed his own literary voice (albeit through pseudonyms). While Kierkegaard’s use of Hegel in The Concept of Irony was generally a straightforward appropriation of specific analyses, here it is much more varied. The present chapter has demonstrated that Hegel’s presence in Either/Or takes many forms. (1) The analysis of Antigone and of the notion of modern tragedy (Section IV) provides an example of the fact that, as in The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard uses specific discussions in Hegel as sources of inspiration. He takes certain ideas and analyses from Hegel as starting points and then develops them in his own way. However, his use of Hegel here is considerably more free than it was in The Concept of Irony. In the dissertation he follows very closely Hegel’s analyses of, for example, Socrates and Romantic irony. In Either/Or, by contrast, he uses Hegel’s account of Antigone, but his own reconstruction and reinterpretation of the story is the focal point. (2) In addition, the two authors, A and B, use Hegel’s dialectical methodology in their respective analyses. Examples of this have been seen with the esthete’s dialectic of the work of art (Section III) as well as Judge Wilhelm’s dialectic of love (Section V). These discussions display some of the best-known features of Hegel’s method. In a Hegelian fashion, the former analysis places the criterion for the great work of art first on the side of the object in the form of the raw material of the work of art (in-itself ), then on the side of the subject in the form of the talent and ability of the artist independent of the given material (for-itself ), and finally in the unity of the two in the idea of the work of art (in-and-for-itself ). In Judge Wilhelm’s analysis, the concept of love is traced in its movement through the Hegelian stages of immediacy (romantic love), mediation (marriage of convenience), to mediated immediacy (love in marriage). (3) Not only do both pseudonymous authors individually use the dialectical methodology in their respective analyses of sundry topics, but the 187 188

EO1, p. 222; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 215–216. See Mark C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard, Berkeley: University of California Press 1980, p. 240. 189 See Chapter 7, Section III. EO1, pp. 4–5; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 12–13.

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positions they represent themselves also stand in some kind of a dialectical relation to one another. At first glance, it seems as if the two points of view are supposed to be in a straightforward nondialectical opposition, constituting an absolute either/or with no possibility of mediation or compromise. Yet, there is nevertheless a kind of dialectic at work in the two views portrayed in the two volumes of the work. The aesthetic is first presented as a possible view, and then the ethical is opposed to it. But the two opposing views do not remain in a static opposition but rather enter into a dialogue with each other. The ethical is not a simple opposition, rather it contains the aesthetic within itself and thus represents the dialectical Aufhebung of the aesthetic. The esthete is a nondialectical thinker who sees two unmoving opposites: “He still persists in thinking that the ethical lies outside the aesthetic, and this even though he himself must admit that life gains beauty through the ethical view.”190 But Judge Wilhelm, the ethical individual, is dialectical; he sees the ethical as a higher form that encompasses the aesthetic. Judge Wilhelm devotes much of his argument to showing how the ethical interprets the aesthetic categories at a higher level. For example, marriage is the sublation, not the simple negation, of immediate desire. Thus, the two possibilities that are presented are not really on an equal footing since it seems clear that Kierkegaard cannot help but prefer the ethical to the aesthetic. In some of Kierkegaard’s other works, there is a sense in which a third category, “the religious,” comes to complement the first two. The question is whether or not this is a genuine third category or whether it should be understood as an aspect of the ethical. Here in Either/Or, Kierkegaard has still not thoroughly developed this third category, and at this point the ethical and the religious are still mixed together. Yet the later addition of this third category to the initial dichotomy seems to imply that the two original opposing terms are not the final word, but rather that there is in fact a triadic structure akin to Hegel’s. It seems to imply that the two views presented in Either/Or cannot remain in a static opposition but must enter into a dialectical movement that results in a third term or a higher unity.191 Of course, it should be noted that the movement from aesthetic to ethical to religious is not, strictly speaking, dialectical in Hegel’s sense due to the fact that the aesthetic and the ethical do not represent conceptual opposites in the way that, for example, being and nothing do. But given the analyses in the present chapter as well as preceding chapters,192 there can be no doubt about the fact that Hegel was one of Kierkegaard’s most important sources of inspiration for the development of the theory 190 191

192

EO2, p. 299; SKS, vol. 3, p. 283. See the discussion in CUP1, p. 294; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 268f. Here Kierkegaard associates the stages, the esthetic, the ethical, and the religious with immediacy, mediation, and mediated immediacy. Chapter 2, Section II.

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of stages. Perhaps one can find in this one of the most interesting aspects of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel in Either/Or. Even though Kierkegaard seems to indicate his rejection of Hegelian mediation with the title of the work and its insistence on an absolute dichotomy along with the emphasis on the sphere of freedom, a closer look reveals that in fact the views presented in the body of the text are still profoundly stamped with Hegel’s speculative thought. It may seem as if Hegel plays a relatively minor role here in Either/Or given the fact that in two large tomes only a few passages bear a marked similarity to his methodology or actual doctrines or analyses. But this misses the point since, as has been noted, it is the very conception of the work as a dichotomous either/or that is at some level a reaction to Hegel’s notion of mediation and Aufhebung. In this sense, Hegel is the motivation of the entire work or at least its structure and general conception (Sections I and II). Either/Or represents Kierkegaard’s first published response to the contemporary debate about this aspect of Hegel’s logic, but the issue will continue to exercise him for the next several years. Seen in the context of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel as a whole, Either/Or can be regarded in some ways as the crowning point of his initial period of development. All of the main texts from this first period – From the Papers of One Still Living, The Concept of Irony, and Either/Or – show clear signs of a profound Hegelian influence. Kierkegaard has no objections to using specific analyses from Hegel and co-opting his dialectical methodology. Moreover, although he raises an occasional critical point or modifies one or another of Hegel’s views, there is rarely a polemical tone vis-à-vis Hegel himself. If by some strange historical accident only these three works survived from Kierkegaard’s entire corpus, then one would probably conclude that the author was a Hegelian at least to some degree. It was after this period that his relation to Hegel became more complicated. It is worth examining in detail the reasons for the change. On March 1, 1843, Heiberg published a brief and dismissive bookreview of Either/Or in his journal Intelligensblade.193 The significance of this snub can only be appreciated once one understands the nature of Kierkegaard’s relation to Heiberg up until that point. As has been noted previously, Kierkegaard had done his best to make a place for himself in the Heiberg circle. He attempted to publish From the Papers of One Still Living in Heiberg’s journal Perseus. Knowing that Heiberg was an enthusiast of Hegel, Kierkegaard demonstrated a familiarity with Hegel’s thought, which he overtly employed in The Concept of Irony and Either/Or. In both texts Heiberg and his works are frequently referred to in a very

193

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Litterær Vintersæd,” Intelligensblade, vol. 2, no. 24, March 1, 1843, pp. 285–292. ASKB U 56.

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complimentary fashion.194 In Either/Or there is a long analysis of The First Love,195 a comedy by another of Heiberg’s favorites, the French playwright Augustin Eugène Scribe (1791–1891), which Heiberg had translated into Danish and which was a success at Copenhagen’s Royal Theater. In June 1842 Kierkegaard published an article, entitled “Public Confession,” in which he criticizes the Hegelians, Rasmus Nielsen, Peter Michael Stilling, Andreas Frederik Beck as well as the founder of Tivoli, Georg Johan Bernhard Carstensen (1812–57), but yet Heiberg is mentioned positively.196 In a later journal entry he writes of this article, “As early as the article ‘Public Confession’ there was a signal shot . . . suggesting that Professor Heiberg was the literary figure I wanted to protect; he and Mynster both were mentioned there and as unmistakably as possible.”197 At this same time there was a dispute between Heiberg and Carstensen that was occasioned by an article by Heiberg in the Intelligensblade.198 Concerning this Kierkegaard writes in his later journals, “I was once offered 100 rd. per ark by Carstensen, at the time he had Figaro or Portefeuillon, for an article against Heiberg.”199 Despite this lucrative offer, Kierkegaard declined to criticize Heiberg publicly at this time. All of this evidence indicates that the young Kierkegaard held Heiberg in great esteem and was anxious to win his praise. This explains his consternation with Heiberg’s public condemnation of Either/Or. Heiberg’s negative review, entitled “Literary Winter Crops,” was an incontrovertible rebuff. In the review Heiberg takes up a discussion of the books that were published in winter, including Either/Or, which he treats metaphorically as a kind of winter crop. He introduces the book thus: Further, in recent days, like a lightning bolt from a clear sky, a monster of a book has fallen suddenly down into our reading public; I mean the work consisting of two large and thick volumes or of fifty-four large sheets with small print, Either/Or by Victor Eremita. It is therefore almost with respect to its volume that the book must be called a monster, for it is already impressive in its size before one yet knows what spirit lives in it, and I do not doubt that if the author wanted to let it be exhibited for money, he would take in just as much as by letting it be read for money.200

194

195 196 197 198 199 200

CI, p. 26; SKS, vol. 1, p. 88. CI, p. 329; SKS, vol. 1, p. 357. EO1, p. 105; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 108–109. EO1, p. 109; SKS, vol. 2, p. 112. EO1, p. 110; SKS, vol. 2, p. 113. EO1, p. 130; SKS, vol. 2, p. 132. EO2, p. 63; SKS, vol. 3, p. 69. EO1, pp. 231–279; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 225–270. In COR, pp. 3–12; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 397–406; Fædrelandet, no. 904, June 12, 1842. JP, vol. 5, 6201; Pap. IX A 166. See also JP, vol. 6, 6748, p. 395; Pap. X-6 B 171, p. 261. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Smaa Skjermydsler,” Intelligensblade, vol. 1, no. 9, July 15, 1842, pp. 224–228. JP, vol. 6, 6624; Pap. X-3 A 99. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Litterær Vintersæd,” op. cit., p. 288.

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Heiberg’s tone is flippant, suggesting that he does not take the work seriously. He makes fun of the book for its inordinate length before saying a word about its content; he shows an utter lack of deference towards the author and the work under examination. In the critical part of the review, Heiberg imagines a fictional reader and his problems in grappling with the cumbersome text. He describes this reader with the impersonal pronoun “one,” something which Kierkegaard constantly harps on in his response. Heiberg criticizes the work in the first line for being badly organized and difficult to follow. He writes: One finds oneself thus for the first in Either, and here one does not find oneself very well, for one notices that one has not nearly as much time as the author. It is an unpleasant, awkward walk when one constantly has the feeling of wanting to be ahead of the person who is holding one under the arm. One comes across many piquant reflections; some of them are perhaps even profound; one does not know for certain, for when one believes one has seen a point . . . one once again becomes disoriented. One becomes impatient about the fact that the author’s uncommon brilliance, learning and stylistic ability are not united with an ability for organization which could let the ideas spring forth plastically.201

The assessment here seems to be mixed; while the work is praised for its display of learning and command of style, it is criticized for being disorganized and a bit boring. These few positive words seem hardly to have been enough for Kierkegaard. Heiberg goes on to discuss the “Diary of the Seducer,” which he criticizes as being shocking to morality. He writes: One now hastens to the “Diary of the Seducer,” for already the title implies that this production must be more creative than critical. And in a way one is not disappointed in this expectation, but one is disgusted, one is nauseated, one is revolted, and one asks oneself not whether it is possible for a person to be like this seducer but whether it is possible that an author can be so constituted that he finds pleasure in setting himself into a character of this kind and in working out this character in his quiet thoughts.202

It should be noted that Heiberg is not a simple bourgeois prude in this regard since he goes on to relish the thought of how this chapter will offend the moralists. Nonetheless he does not seem to find much of redeeming value in this part of Either/Or. After having finished Part One, Heiberg’s imagined reader “closes the book and says, ‘Enough! I have enough of Either, and I’ll not have any Or.’”203 Heiberg does, however, give a very cursory assessment of Part Two, which is generally positive. 201 203

Ibid., pp. 289f. Ibid., p. 290.

202

Ibid., pp. 290f.

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Even though Kierkegaard’s work appeared pseudonymously, it seems the academic world was too small to conceal the identity of its author. Although Heiberg does not mention him by name, the tone of his review seems to indicate that he knows exactly whom he is criticizing, for the tone is clearly that of an older, established professor condescending to criticize the work of a young writer. From this point on Kierkegaard’s relation to Heiberg seems to have been wholly negative. Now for the first time he enters into polemics with the man who for a time he courted as a potential mentor. Either/Or was Kierkegaard’s first major independent work after his dissertation, the book with which he hoped to make a name for himself in the Danish literary world. Given how seriously he took his literary works and the high hopes that he doubtless had for this one, it does not take much effort to imagine his indignation with Heiberg. Kierkegaard replied to this review, again under the pseudonym of Victor Eremita, in a rather bitter and sarcastic article published in Fædrelandet on March 5, 1843, with the title, “A Word of Thanks to Professor Heiberg.”204 Here it is clear from the article that Kierkegaard thinks that Heiberg passed judgment on the work too hastily after only a cursory reading of it. Thus, he not surprisingly failed to grasp the upshot of its structure and the main points of its content. In his response Kierkegaard constantly talks about “one,” referring to Heiberg’s imaginary reader. In much the same tone Kierkegaard refers to Heiberg’s review in Prefaces.205 From the moment Heiberg’s review appeared Kierkegaard had nothing but disdain for him. Polemical comments directed against him are frequent throughout the works that Kierkegaard published after Either/Or. In a letter Hans Peter Holst (1811–93), his friend of youth, tells of Kierkegaard’s disappointment: Kierkegaard “was quite depressed by the fact that Heiberg would never really involve himself with his [Kierkegaard’s] writings or recognize him as a philosopher.”206 In his recollections of Kierkegaard, Hans Brøchner portrays the change in Kierkegaard’s relation to Heiberg, which he traces to the event of the review. He recounts how Heiberg was once being ridiculed by a pseudonymous pamphlet, which was a parody of his poem A Soul After Death (1841). He recalls, Kierkegaard “did not like Heiberg being made the object of such jest. He spoke with warmth of his [Heiberg’s] importance as an aesthetician and as the aesthetic educator of his generation in our country. K[ierkegaard] ranked H[eiberg] above all the contemporary 204 205 206

In COR, pp. 17–21; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 411–415; Fædrelandet, no. 1168, March 5, 1843. Translation slightly modified. P, p. 24; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 486–487. “H. P. Holst to H. P. Barfod,” September 13, 1869. Quoted from Encounters with Kierkegaard. A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1996, p. 13.

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aestheticians in Germany.”207 But Kierkegaard’s positive assessment of Heiberg changed forever after the review. Brøchner continues: “Later, after Either/Or had appeared and Heiberg had written his well-known review of it, S.K. once spoke to me about him and made no secret of his displeasure at H[eiberg]’s behavior. He recognized Heiberg’s importance as an aesthetician, but now also emphatically emphasized his limitations. ‘I could name a whole series of aesthetic problems about which H[eiberg] hasn’t a clue.’”208 Here Brøchner portrays in no uncertain terms the review of Either/Or as the turning point in the relation. In a single moment Heiberg goes in Kierkegaard’s eyes from being the leading theorist of aesthetics of the age to being someone who has no idea about any number of problem constellations in the field. Given all this, there can be no doubt that Kierkegaard’s disposition toward Heiberg changed radically at this time. Reflecting on his intellectual development years later, Kierkegaard himself points to the change in his relation to Heiberg. There he states unambiguously that the review of Either/Or was the decisive factor: Then in the spring of 1843 came Either/Or. I had steadfastly expressed nothing but respectful devotion to Prof. Heiberg, had also received proofs of his favor; there is surely not one single syllable in the whole book Either/Or which can affront him, but there certainly are good words expressed for him, and yet Prof. H. could not resist a compulsion to make himself (falsely) important (in the Intelligentsblade), trying to make it ridiculous, saying it was such a big book, etc.; the whole thing was only a tap, but one for which he perhaps has paid and will continue to pay dearly.209

Kierkegaard explicitly portrays the review as the turning point with regard to his relation to Heiberg. He even intimates that he attempted to avenge this offense, presumably by means of his literary works, such as Prefaces. A part of his criticism of Heiberg was also a polemical stance against Heiberg’s intellectual hero, Hegel. Thus, it is only after this review that Kierkegaard begins his polemical rhetoric against Hegel. But although he overtly takes this stand against Hegel, his polemic, as should be clear from its motivation, is in fact with Heiberg (and the other Danish Hegelians). After Either/Or one finds nothing either in the journals or in the published works to indicate a renewed study of or interest in Hegel’s primary texts.210 If Kierkegaard’s later polemic was directed at Hegel per 207

208 209 210

Hans Brøchner, “Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard,” Det Nittende Aarhundrede, Maanedsskrift for Literatur og Kritik, vol. 5, March 1877, § 11. English translation cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 231. Hans Brøchner, “Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard,” ibid., § 11. Encounters with Kierkegaard, ibid., p. 231. JP, vol. 6, 6748, p. 395; Pap. X-6 B 171, p. 261. Translation slightly modified. The sole exception to this is the unpublished manuscript, Johannes Climacus, or De Omnibus dubitandum est, which was written in part concurrently with Either/Or.

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se, one would expect some evidence that Hegel’s works received at least enough further attention to cause Kierkegaard to reconsider his previous favorable evaluation of them. The absence of such evidence suggests Kierkegaard’s subsequent criticisms of Hegel were really directed at Heiberg. Thus, Kierkegaard first had a period, in which he was positively and openly influenced by Hegel. Then he entered into a period of polemics against above all Heiberg and as a result put on the appearance of pursuing a polemic against Hegel. Kierkegaard’s pro-Hegelian period clearly includes the texts treated so far in this investigation – From the Papers of One Still Living, The Concept of Irony and Either/Or. I will argue in the next chapter that Johannes Climacus, or De Omnibus dubitandum est also displays a positive influence from one of Hegel’s primary texts and thus falls into this first period. In Chapter 6 Kierkegaard’s book Repetition will be explored. This work, I wish to argue, represents a transitional text since one finds in it at least a hint of a polemical criticism against Hegel himself. The second period, characterized by this criticism can be said to begin with Fear and Trembling, which contains several critical references to Hegel’s philosophy. Here Kierkegaard develops an important part of his strategy of revenge against Heiberg, namely the anti-Hegel polemic.

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5 KIERKEGAARD’S POLEMIC WITH MARTENSEN IN JOHANNES CLIMACUS, OR DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM EST

The name “Johannes Climacus” is well known as the pseudonymous author of the Philosophical Fragments and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. What is less well known is that Kierkegaard planned a work entitled, Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, in which he intended to treat a number of philosophical themes in a literary fashion. About fifty pages of the manuscript were written apparently between the last few months of 1842 and the first few of 18431 and were first published in Barfod’s edition of Kierkegaard’s journals.2 In this text Kierkegaard takes up a number of issues surrounding Hegel’s philosophy that were being discussed in Denmark at the time (e.g., the problem of the beginning of philosophy and the problem of systematic doubt). In tone and content, much of the work is satirical of Hegelianism in a way reminiscent of The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars. The work takes the form of an intellectual biography of a naive young student named Johannes Climacus. It recounts how he became fascinated by the most recent philosophical movements and above all by the claim that modern philosophy begins with doubt. The Introduction tells, among other things, of Climacus’ childhood and how his relation to his dialectical father prepared the way for his future philosophical contemplation. Part One relates how he begins his studies and comes into contact with discussions about “the recent philosophers.”3 He is captivated by the Latin phrase used in those discussions, “de omnibus dubitandum est,” or “everything must be doubted,” and vows to examine its implications at all costs. The body of Part One is filled with Climacus’ deliberations about three theses: “(1) Philosophy begins with doubt; (2) in order to philosophize,

1 2 3

The key for the dating of this manuscript is the journal entry, JP, vol. 3, 3300; SKS, vol. 18, p. 231, JJ:288. H. P. Barfod (ed.), Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer. 1844–46, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1872, pp. 78–132. JC, p. 130; Pap. IV B 1, p. 113.

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one must have doubted; (3) modern philosophy begins with doubt.”4 In the first three chapters, Climacus takes each of these claims in turn and reduces them to contradictions and absurdities. After having exposed the confusions of the unnamed recent thinkers regarding these theses, Climacus vows at the beginning of Part Two to part company with the philosophers and no longer to pay any attention to them. Unfortunately, Part Two is only a few pages long and in much rougher form than the preceding text. In these few passages, however, the nature of consciousness and language is examined in a surprisingly Hegelian fashion. In a journal entry Kierkegaard recounts his plan for the work and how he intends for it to develop and end: Johannes does what we are told to do – he actually doubts everything – he suffers through all the pain of doing that, becomes cunning, almost acquires a bad conscience. When he has gone as far in that direction as he can go and wants to come back, he cannot do so. He perceives that in order to hold on to this extreme position of doubting everything, he has engaged all his mental and spiritual powers. If he abandons this extreme position, he may very well arrive at something, but in doing that he would have also abandoned his doubt about everything. Now he despairs, his life is wasted, his youth is spent in these deliberations. Life has not acquired any meaning for him, and all this is the fault of philosophy.5

Kierkegaard thus uses Johannes Climacus as a literary refutation of universal skeptical doubt. The professor of philosophy who preaches “de omnibus dubitandum est” promptly forgets it after coming down from the lectern. It is impossible for him to incorporate this universal skepticism into his daily life since one would simply not be able to function if absolutely everything were called into doubt at every instant. Kierkegaard creates in the character of Johannes Climacus someone who takes the maxim literally and really tries to think it through and to act consistently with it. The idea of the work seems then to be to show the impossibility and absurdity of this. In this way, the work can be seen as a literary refutation in the form of a reductio ad absurdum of the position of universal doubt. From this outline it appears to be primarily the disappointment and despair of Climacus that are still missing from the narrative. From this account of the plot alone it is far from clear what the main issue of this text has to do with Hegel. There are passages both in the body of the work and in various drafts that can be (and have been) read as a criticism of Hegel. For example, in the brief prefatory note to the text, there is a reference to “the system,”6 which has been associated 4 5 6

JC, p. 132; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 115–116. JC, Supplement, pp. 234–235; Pap. IV B 16. JC, p. 117; Pap. IV B 1, p. 103.


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with Hegel’s system.7 In the same note, the author characterizes his goal in the work as follows: “I . . . seek to counteract the detestable untruth that characterizes recent philosophy.”8 Predictably, this seems to some readers to be an unambiguous reference to Hegel’s philosophy. In the same journal entry cited previously, Kierkegaard makes it clear that the goal of De Omnibus is to criticize contemporary philosophy with the help of this intellectual biography: By means of the melancholy irony, which did not consist in any single utterance on the part of Johannes Climacus but in his whole life, by means of the profound earnestness involved in a young man’s being sufficiently honest and earnest enough to do quietly and unostentatiously what the philosophers say (and he thereby becomes unhappy) – I would strike a blow at philosophy.9

As previously, this reference to “philosophy” can be interpreted as a straightforward reference to Hegel’s philosophy in particular. Moreover, Hegel’s name appears several times in different drafts of De Omnibus.10 Finally, Hegel is associated with the fictional person of Johannes Climacus in a journal entry from January 20, 1839 (i.e., long before Kierkegaard began work on De Omnibus itself).11 All of this has been interpreted to mean that the text is to be viewed as an attempt at a kind of literary refutation of Hegel. De Omnibus can be regarded as Kierkegaard’s Candide. Just as Voltaire uses the character of a naive young man to refute Leibniz’s theory that ours is the best of all possible worlds, so also Kierkegaard uses Johannes Climacus, the naive young student, to refute the claims about skeptical doubt made by the Danish Hegelians. Voltaire seems to reduce Leibniz’s theory to absurdity by ironically portraying Candide’s stubborn adherence to it despite the terrible events taking place around him, which seem so obviously to refute it. Similarly, Johannes Climacus is firmly convinced that there must be something to the claims about the beginning of philosophy with doubt, and thus he analyzes these claims from several different directions in order to try to make sense of them. The challenge is to try to determine if there is a substantive philosophical criticism in De Omnibus or if it is merely a flippant satire.

7 8 10

11

See Hong’s first note to De Omnibus in his translation, JC, p. 321. 9 JC, Supplement, p. 234; Pap. IV B 16. JC, p. 117; Pap. IV B 1, p. 104. JC, Supplement, p. 246; Pap. IV B 2.4. JC, Supplement, p. 243; Pap. IV B 2.6. JC, Supplement, p. 246; Pap. IV B 2.16. JC, Supplement, p. 258; Pap. IV B 10.12. JC, Supplement, p. 262; Pap. IV B 13.9. JC, Supplement, pp. 264–265; Pap. IV B 13.17. JC, Supplement, p. 266; Pap. IV B 2.14. JC, Supplement, p. 231; SKS, vol. 17, p. 277, DD:203; JP, vol. 2, 1575: “Hegel is a Johannes Climacus who does not storm the heavens as do the giants – by setting mountain upon mountain – but climbs up to them by means of his syllogisms.”



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In the present chapter I will argue that in fact there is in the work no real pretense of a criticism of Hegel. On one hand, I will try to support this thesis negatively, first with regard to Part One of the text, by arguing that no substantial aspects of Hegel’s thought are present there. Although it might seem at first glance that some of the doctrines being examined by Johannes Climacus in Part One look something like those of Hegel, in fact none of them can be said to be found in Hegel’s works themselves. Part Two, however, contains an analysis of the chapter “Sense-Certainty” from the Phenomenology of Spirit. But while Hegel’s thought is indeed present in this part of the work, there is no criticism of it; on the contrary, it is used in a positive way. On the other hand, I will argue positively in support of the aforementioned thesis that the work’s true target of criticism is not Hegel but Kierkegaard’s old rival Martensen. While Martensen’s name does not appear in the text, the work is full of hidden allusions to him. Despite this, there is a tendency nevertheless to want to find in these allusions some aspect of Hegel’s thought. While, to his credit, Thulstrup is careful to identify the quotations from Martensen’s texts that appear in the work, he mistakenly assumes that Martensen is simply an uncritical mouthpiece for Hegel, and he thus sees Hegel himself as the ultimate target of the work.12 I wish to show that, while Thulstrup is correct in pointing out Kierkegaard’s criticisms of Martensen here, the positions that are criticized are Martensen’s alone and have nothing to do with Hegel. Due to the short length of this fragmentary work, I will be able to treat it more or less systematically. In the first section I will try to demonstrate the most obvious connections to the main historical target of the work, Martensen. In the second section, I will turn to Chapter 1, “Modern Philosophy Begins with Doubt,”13 in which the problem of the beginning of philosophy is discussed. What is most important in this chapter is the criticism of the concept of absolute knowing. Then I will continue with Chapter 2, “Philosophy Begins with Doubt,”14 which explores the question of the relation of the individual to the problem of doubt. Finally, I will turn to Part Two15 where Kierkegaard examines in some detail Hegel’s chapter “Sense-Certainty” from the Phenomenology of Spirit. I want to argue that, while Kierkegaard is critical of the Hegelian Martensen in Part One, when he turns to Hegel’s primary text in Part Two he is remarkably receptive and deferential toward Hegel himself. 12

13 14 15

After listing the three theses about philosophical doubt that are featured in the work, Thulstrup writes: “In this context it is particularly important to clarify how Kierkegaard’s posing of problems and solutions relates to Hegel’s (and thus also to Martensen’s and thus far anonymous Danish Hegelians’).” Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, p. 301. JC, pp. 133–143; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 116–126. JC, pp. 144–156; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 126–139. JC, pp. 161–172; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 141–150.


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i. the allusion to martensen in the title The claim that De Omnibus is directed against Martensen is supported most obviously by the very title of the work itself. As was noted previously,16 the expression used in the title, “de omnibus dubitandum est,” was employed many times by Martensen in a slogan-like fashion. In reaction, Kierkegaard employed the expression (in this Latin formulation and in Danish equivalents) satirically in a number of works throughout his literary career.17 In this way he was able to criticize Martensen indirectly since he could rely on the fact that the contemporary Danish reading public would associate this expression with the person of Martensen and thus see the satire in the allusion. This phrase thus served in Kierkegaard’s works as a kind of code word for Martensen. In this section I will briefly trace the history of this expression and examine the context in which Martensen employs it. My thesis is that although the expression ultimately has another source and is in fact used by Hegel himself, it is Martensen’s employment of it that Kierkegaard wishes to satirize in De Omnibus. The phrase, “de omnibus dubitandum est,” originally goes back to Descartes. It appears in the opening lines of his Principia philosophiae (1644) in his discussion of the method of universal doubt.18 Descartes observes that all human beings in the course of their upbringing come to accept as true a number of beliefs based on empirical experience. Many of these beliefs turn out to have no solid grounding and amount to no more than prejudices. In order to systematically reexamine one’s belief system, Descartes proposes his famous method of doubt by means of which one exposes one’s beliefs to an all-encompassing skepticism. In his first paragraph Descartes writes: “It seems that the only way of freeing ourselves from these opinions [sc. prejudices] is to make the effort, once in the course of our life, to doubt everything [de iis omnibus studeamus dubitare] which we find to contain even the smallest suspicion of uncertainty.”19 16 17

18 19

Chapter 2, Section III, p. 110. E.g., EPW, p. 114; SKS, vol. 17, p. 288, DD:208. EPW, p. 118; SKS, vol. 17, p. 291, DD:208. EPW, p. 119; SKS, vol. 17, p. 292, DD:208. EO2, p. 95; SKS, vol. 3, p. 97. FT, pp. 5–6; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 101–102. PF, p. 82; SKS, vol. 4, p. 281. P, p. 49; SKS, vol. 4, p. 510. P, p. 18; SKS, vol. 4, p. 482: “As I opened the book I read these words: ‘One must doubt everything.’ For that reason I sent the book straight back, for this phrase is offensive to me and like an obscenity which one should only insinuate.” SL, p. 34; SKS, vol. 6, p. 38: “This cannot seem strange to anyone, inasmuch as everyone, after all, has doubted everything.” SL, p. 120; SKS, vol. 6, p. 114. SL, Supplement, p. 540; Pap. V B 175.4. CUP1, p. 195; SKS, vol. 7, p. 179. CUP1, p. 200; SKS, vol. 7, p. 184. CUP1, p. 255; SKS, vol. 7, p. 231. CUP1, p. 264f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 240. CUP1, p. 405; SKS, vol. 7, p. 369: “One writes on paper, ‘Doubt everything’ – then one has doubted everything.” LD, 213; B&A I, p. 235. LD, 215; B&A I, p. 239. See SKS, vol. K4, pp. 583–584. Quoted from The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, tr. by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, vols. 1–2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985, vol. 1, p. 193.


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The subtitle to this opening paragraph reads: “The seeker after truth must, once in the course of his life, doubt everything [de omnibus . . . esse dubitandum], as far as is possible.”20 The goal of this method is to purge the mind of prejudices in order to begin anew from the ground up and to justify one’s beliefs by means of reason alone.21 This method of doubt is treated by Hegel in his account of Descartes in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy. (It will be noted that the published version of these lectures is of course based on student notes that were edited by Karl Ludwig Michelet [1801–93] and were first published in three volumes from 1833 to 1836.22 ) There one finds the passage from Descartes, just quoted, paraphrased with the precise formulation that is found in the title of Kierkegaard’s work: “Descartes expresses the fact that we must begin from thought as such alone, by saying that we must doubt everything (De omnibus dubitandum est); and that is an absolute beginning.”23 Hegel notes in his analysis that the point of Descartes’ skepticism was not simply to dwell in it as the ancient skeptics did but rather to use it to arrive at truth.24 In a draft of De Omnibus Kierkegaard refers to this aspect of Hegel’s analysis, which indicates his familiarity with it.25 (There can be no doubt that Kierkegaard knew this part of Hegel’s lectures since in another draft he cites them directly.26 ) Since Hegel 20 21 22 23 24

25

26

Ibid., p. 193. N.b. Kierkegaard refers to this point in Descartes in Fear and Trembling: FT, pp. 5–6; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 101–102. Descartes, Opera Philosophica, Amsterdam 1678. ASKB 473. Vorlesungen u¨ ber die Geschichte der Philosophie, I–III, ed. by Karl Ludwig Michelet, Berlin 1833–36, vols. 13–15 in Hegel’s Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe, vols. 1–18, Berlin 1832–45. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. III, p. 224; Jub., vol. 19, p. 335. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. III, pp. 224–225; Jub., vol. 19, p. 335: “This first proposition [that everything must be doubted] has not, however, the same signification as skepticism, which sets before it no other aim than doubt itself, and requires that we should remain in this indecision of mind, an indecision wherein mind finds its freedom. It rather signifies that we should renounce all presuppositions – that is, all hypotheses which are accepted as true in their immediacy – and commence from thought, so that from it we should in the first place attain to some fixed and settled basis, and make a true beginning. In skepticism this is not the case, for with the skeptics doubt is the end at which they rest.” Translation slightly modified. JC, Supplement, p. 246; Pap. IV B 2.16: “He [Johannes Climacus] had already been struck by Hegel’s and Spinoza’s saying that Descartes did not doubt as a skeptic for the sake of doubting, but for the sake of finding truth.” JC, Supplement, pp. 264–265; Pap. IV B 13.17: “He [Johannes Climacus] regrets that he did not begin immediately with Descartes, all the more so because he recalls that Hegel praises Descartes for his ‘childlike and simple exposition’ – but that was precisely why he did not begin, because it sounded like sarcasm by Hegel, who certainly was a long way from praising the childlike and the simple and who in other passages says of Descartes: ‘mit ihm ist weiter nichts anzufangen.’” With regard to Descartes’ “childlike and simple exposition,” Kierkegaard quotes here from Jub., vol. 19, p. 334: Descartes “geht ganz einfach und kindlich dabei zu Werke.” (N.b. this passage is omitted from the English translation, Jub., vol. 19, where it should appear on p. 224.) With regard to the passage, “mit ihm ist weiter nichts anzufangen,” Kierkegaard seems to have in mind Hist. of Phil. III, p. 224; Jub., vol. 19, p. 335: “Was nun die Methode anbetrifft, wie er die Gedanken gestellt,


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employs this statement in his exposition and since it is clear that Kierkegaard knew this analysis, it might seem to some readers that Kierkegaard’s allusion to it in the title is an obvious satirical criticism of him. But a closer examination of the matter reveals that it is not so much Hegel’s use of this expression in his lectures as Martensen’s appropriation of it that is most important for understanding Kierkegaard’s work and the criticism found there. Martensen employed the phrase “de omnibus dubitandum est” many times and indeed turned it into a slogan. For example, in 1836 it appeared in his review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College.27 In part following Hegel’s account in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Martensen characterizes modern philosophy as beginning with Descartes’ radical break from scholastic thinking. While the philosophy of the Middle Ages was based on faith, the philosophy introduced by Descartes tried to establish its foundation on reason alone. Martensen writes: doubt is the beginning of wisdom. . . . Descartes had indeed expressed this thought and advanced the demand for a presuppositionless philosophy, but a long time was needed before the thought could be developed into a concept and before the expressed demand for a presuppositionless philosophy could actually be realized. The demand “de omnibus dubitandum est” is easier said than done, for what is required is not finite doubt, not the popular doubt about this or that particular thing, with which one reserves something for oneself which cannot be called into doubt.28

Martensen claims that Descartes began the history of modern philosophy with this principle of doubt, but it was not applied rigorously or completely until Hegel. Only he, according to Martensen, managed to eliminate finally all prejudices of thought and to begin without presuppositions. In De Omnibus there is a direct reference to this passage from Martensen that Kierkegaard cites in Part Two of the work: “Another time [ Johannes Climacus] heard one of the philosophizers, one whose utterances people especially trusted, express himself this way: ‘To doubt everything is no easy matter; it is namely, not doubt about one thing and another, about this or that, about something and something else, but is a speculative doubt about everything, which is by no means an easy

27

28

wie sie abgeleitet hat, so hat dieß kein besonderes Interesse für uns. – Es ist im Ganzen wenig von seiner Philosophie zu sagen.” See CUP1, p. 334fn.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 205fn.: “Hegel, however, does not speak this way; by means of the identity of thinking and being he is elevated above a more childlike manner of philosophizing, something he himself points out, for example, in relation to Descartes.” Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole. Af J. L. Heiberg, Lærer i Logik og Æsthetik ved den kgl. militaire Høiskole,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 16, 1836, pp. 515–528. Ibid., pp. 518–519.



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matter.’”29 (As has been seen previously,30 the second part of this passage was also paraphrased in The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars.) If there is any uncertainty left, Martensen’s name figures in a draft of the text in reference to this passage: “Professor Martensen made an exception. He explains that it is no easy matter, that one can understand, if it would only be of some help.”31 The Latin phrase featured in the title appears again in 1837 in Martensen’s doctoral dissertation, On the Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, where he rehearses much the same material about the history of philosophy. There he writes: “Descartes, who may be seen as the founder of modern philosophy, since he wanted to construct science from the ground up, arrived at the proposition, de omnibus dubitandum est.”32 In this account Descartes is portrayed as taking the first step towards a modern conception of autonomy, which is the object of the dissertation. In the same paragraph Martensen employs the other well-known Latin slogans, “cogito ergo sum” and “sub specie aeternitatis,” which Kierkegaard also satirizes in various texts.33 The slogan “de omnibus dubitandum est” is quoted by Bornemann in his review of Martensen’s dissertation: “The beginning of all wisdom is to subject one’s purported knowledge to a critique (de omnibus dubitandum).”34 This seems to indicate that this slogan was generally associated with Martensen. Moreover, as has been noted previously,35 in 1837–38 as a young student, Kierkegaard attended Martensen’s lecture course, “Introduction to Speculative Dogmatics.” In his lecture notes from November 29, 1837, one reads the following: “Descartes (d. 1650) said: cogito ergo sum and de omnibus dubitandum est. He thereby produced the principle for modern Protestant subjectivity. By means of the latter proposition – de omnibus dubitandum est – he gave his essential watchword, for he thereby denoted

29

30 31 32

33 34 35

JC, pp. 164–165; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 143–144. See CI, p. 247; SKS, vol. 1, p. 286: “there is a qualitative difference between speculative doubt and common doubt about this or about that.” See also CI, p. 254; SKS, vol. 1, p. 292. CI, p. 259; SKS, vol. 1, p. 297. Chapter 2, Section III, p. 110. JC, Supplement, p. 249; Pap. IV B 2.7. Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia conscientiae sui humanae in theologiam dogmaticam nostri temporis introducta, Copenhagen 1837, § 5, p. 19. ASKB 648. Danish translation: Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, Copenhagen 1841, § 5, p. 16. ASKB 651. The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in Modern Dogmatic Theology, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, Atlanta: Scholars Press 1997, § 5, p. 85. Translation slightly modified. For “cogito ergo sum,” see Chapter 2, Section III, pp. 110ff. For “sub specie aeternitatis,” see Chapter 11, Section I, p. 460f. Johan Alfred Bornemann, “Af Martensen: de autonomia conscientiae. Sui humanae,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, p. 27. Chapter 1, Section II.


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a doubt not about this or that but about everything.”36 Kierkegaard’s description of Johannes Climacus attending a lecture on philosophy by one of the modern philosophers37 could easily be taken as autobiographical and as alluding to his own attendance at Martensen’s lectures.38 The suggestion that the work is autobiographical was indeed made by Barfod in his brief introductory remarks to De Omnibus in his edition of Kierkegaard’s journals.39 Martensen repeats the same phrase in his “Lectures on the History of Modern Philosophy from Kant to Hegel,” in 1838–39. Descartes is once again contrasted with the scholastics in a way that is quite similar to the previous course: Only Descartes expressed the great proposition that man must begin from the very beginning and investigate everything from the foundation. His principles were thus: 1) De omnibus dubitandum est, and 2) Cogito ergo sum. . . . In order not to remain in this doubt, Descartes wanted that one doubt everything, for only thereby can a point be found which it is impossible to doubt, and this point is: cogito ergo sum.40

From the similarity in formulations, it is clear that Martensen is recycling his lectures. It will be recalled that the two Latin slogans mentioned here were also attributed to the character von Jumping-Jack and satirized in The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars. Finally, without appealing to the Latin formulation, Martensen discusses this principle of doubt many years later in his autobiography. Recalling his trip to Germany, he explains the principle specifically in his account of the thought of the theologian Karl Daub (1765–1836), whom he met in Heidelberg. There he writes, ostensibly characterizing Daub’s views: “Philosophy should lead us to a dialectical skepticism, to doubt, not about this or that particular thing, but to absolute doubt. This absolute doubt should lead us to Hegel’s presuppositionless thinking.”41 While the Latin catchword is missing here, the principle is the same. It is interesting to compare this passage with one from Fear and Trembling, which appeared on October 16, 1843 (i.e., only months after De Omnibus was apparently written). There Kierkegaard, under the pseudonym of Johannes 36 37 38

39 40 41

SKS, vol. 19, p. 131, Not4:7. JC, pp. 164–166; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 143–144. Thulstrup, among others, has explored the autobiographical aspect of the text. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., pp. 296–310. For a critical assessment of this tendency, see Henning Fenger, Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, tr. by George C. Schoolfield, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1980, pp. 145– 147. H. P. Barfod (ed.), Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer. 1844–46, op. cit., p. 78. Pap. II C 25, in Pap. XII, p. 282. Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1882–83, vol. 1, p. 117.



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de silentio, writes: “Here . . . is the dormant comic element in the plot, that is, bringing Faust into an ironic relation to those slapstick fools who chase after doubt in our own day, present external arguments to prove that they actually have doubted – for example, a doctoral diploma – or swear that they have doubted everything, or prove it by once having met a doubter in their travels.”42 Here Kierkegaard alludes to the fact that Martensen was known to have taken an extended study tour of the German states during which he met many of the leading scholars of the age. In the passage cited previously from Martensen’s autobiography, it is Karl Daub whom he met on his travels who was the representative of the principle of skeptical doubt. Although Martensen published his autobiography years after Kierkegaard’s death, and it would obviously be anachronistic to think that Kierkegaard is referring to just this passage, nevertheless it is extremely likely that Martensen in his lectures recounted much the same thing about skeptical doubt with allusion to Daub. The passage from Fear and Trembling also refers to “a doctoral diploma,” which is a hidden allusion to the honorary degree of Doctor of Theology, which Martensen was awarded in 1840 by the Faculty of Theology at the University of Kiel. In the passage quoted from Fear and Trembling, Johannes de silentio discusses the doubt of Faust, a figure who had long interested Kierkegaard. It will be recalled that Martensen published an article on Lenau’s Faust in 1837.43 While the formulation “de omnibus dubitandum est” does not appear there, the theme of Faust as a doubter is central to Martensen’s article.44 Due to this work, Martensen was associated with the figure of Faust in the mind of both Kierkegaard (who was irritated by the article) and the contemporary reading public. In the description of Faust in the passage in question, the attentive reader can hear a criticism of the doubt that Martensen had made into a kind of slogan among the students at the time: “But he [Faust] is a doubter; his doubt has destroyed actuality for him, for my Faust is so ideal that he is not one of those scientific doubters who doubt one hour every semester on the podium but otherwise are able to do everything else.”45 The allusion to the teacher advocating doubt from the podium seems clearly to be a hidden reference to Martensen. Kierkegaard’s description of Faust as one who has taken doubt so seriously that it has destroyed actuality for him recalls the plot of the manuscript De Omnibus, where Johannes Climacus is also destroyed by taking doubt 42 43

44 45

FT, p. 110; SKS, vol. 4, p. 198. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Betragtninger over Idéen af Faust med Hensyn paa Lenaus Faust,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 1, 1837, pp. 91–164. ASKB 569. See also Ueber Lenau’s Faust, by Johannes M.......n. Stuttgart 1836. Ibid., pp. 108ff. See also Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus,” op. cit., p. 527. FT, p. 110; SKS, vol. 4, p. 198. See also EO1, p. 207–210; SKS, vol. 2, pp. 202–205. EO1, Supplement, p. 454; SKS, vol. 17, p. 19, AA:12.


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too seriously. It will be noted that both the phrase “de omnibus dubitandum est” and the notion of Faust as a doubter were objects of satire in The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars.46 Thus, once again these two texts seem to have the common goal of satirizing Martensen. In the Concluding Unscientific Postscript one finds further evidence in a passage that apparently associates the phrase “de omnibus dubitandum est” with Martensen and his students. One reads: Thus, for example, if speculative thought, instead of didactically discoursing on de omnibus dubitandum and acquiring a chorus of followers who swear to swear by de omnibus dubitandum, had instead made an attempt to have such a doubter come into existence in existence-inwardness so that one could see down to the slightest detail how he goes about doing it – well, if it had done this, that is, if it had started to do this, then in turn it would have abandoned it and understood with shame that the grand slogan every parroter swears he has carried out is not only an infinitely difficult task but an impossibility for an existing person.47

Here one finds a statement of the upshot of De Omnibus (i.e., someone who, internalizing the slogan, “de omnibus dubitandum est,” attempts the impossible by trying to doubt everything in actual life). Martensen is ridiculed in his lectures for “didactically discoursing” and for using the slogan. His students are ridiculed as “a chorus of followers” and parrots. In the later journals there is an entry in which Kierkegaard directly associates Martensen with the phrase. There one reads: “Martensen was just as dogmatically rigid when he lectured on de omnibus dubitandum as when he lectured on a dogma.”48 Here Kierkegaard years later recalls the phrase specifically in the context of Martensen’s popular lectures. One could hardly hope for a clearer statement of the source of this slogan than this entry. It also shows that the slogan continued to be an issue for him even more than a full decade after Martensen’s lectures. Given all this, there can be little doubt that the phrase “de omnibus dubitandum est” was in Kierkegaard’s mind associated with Martensen. The work seems to be conceived with him specifically in mind and, as has been suggested, could well have had its beginning and main inspiration in his lecture hall. Kierkegaard was clearly disconcerted by Martensen’s popularity among the students and by his authority in matters of philosophy and theology. In the passage cited previously, it is presumably Martensen who is described as “one of the philosophizers . . . whose utterances people especially trusted.”49 Kierkegaard saw Martensen as a corrupting influence on his naive fellow students. With Johannes Climacus he creates in the form of a literary character just such a naive student 46 47 49

EPW, p. 116; SKS, vol. 17, p. 289, DD:208. CUP1, p. 255; SKS, vol. 7, p. 231. JC, pp. 164–165; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 143–144.

48

JP, vol. 3, 3107; Pap, X-3 A 544.


kierkegaard’s discussion of absolute knowing

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who is misled by a teacher such as Martensen and by the discussions surrounding Hegelianism. A general problem in the secondary literature on Kierkegaard has been an inability to distinguish Hegel’s actual position from that of specific Hegelians. As has been noted previously,50 the tendency in the history of ideas to designate a specific thinker as “Hegelian” or a group of thinkers as “Hegelians” is a matter of convenience that is useful for characterizing certain very general intellectual trends; however, among the so-called Hegelians, both German and Danish, there were radical differences and divergences – both among themselves and vis-à-vis Hegel. The idea of a homogeneous school or movement is simply a mistake, and thus it is dangerous to assume that the view of any given Hegelian on any given issue is the same as that of Hegel himself (or as that of any other given Hegelian for that matter). This unfortunate tendency is found in much of the secondary literature, with perhaps the most influential example being Thulstrup, who in his account of De Omnibus associates Martensen immediately with Hegel. But, as is seen from this brief analysis, while the expression “de omnibus dubitandum est” appears in Hegel, it was Martensen’s frequent employment of it that was clearly the most important for Kierkegaard. As has already been seen,51 Kierkegaard seized upon the expression “either/or” for the title of his famous book. While, to be sure, this expression was employed by Hegel in his criticism of Aristotle’s law of excluded middle, it was clearly the Danish debate about this criticism that served to turn this expression into a readily recognizable slogan. By means of it, one could refer indirectly to those thinkers (primarily Sibbern and Mynster) who opposed Hegel’s principle of mediation and insisted on the either/or dichotomy. So also here in De Omnibus, Kierkegaard seizes on a phrase that, like the expression “either/or,” had a long history and was also employed by Hegel, but it was clearly Martensen’s employment of it that is significant. It is only with Martensen that the expression comes to take on its slogan-like character. Moreover, it is Martensen’s use of it that Kierkegaard’s contemporary Danish reader would have been familiar with. Thus, before even beginning with the actual analysis of the text, one has every reason to suspect that Martensen will play a major role as one of Kierkegaard’s targets.

ii. kierkegaard’s discussion of absolute knowing Kierkegaard begins with an account of Johannes Climacus exploring the thesis “Modern philosophy begins with doubt.”52 The central question 50 51 52

Chapter 1, Section I, p. 45f. and Section II, p. 50. Chapter 4, Section I. JC, pp. 133–143; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 116–126.


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that is explored in the first part of this chapter is what is meant by the word “modern.” It seems to indicate that modern philosophy, unlike ancient or medieval, begins with doubt. So understood, the thesis is a historical one that concerns different kinds of philosophy. But there is an ambiguity in that the idea seems to be that true philosophy begins with doubt and that only a pseudo-philosophy would begin with presuppositions that have not been subjected to critical consideration. In this sense this third thesis (i.e., that modern philosophy begins with doubt) is not a historical one but rather concerns philosophy in general and thus becomes synonymous with the first thesis that philosophy begins with doubt. Therefore, there is a deception at work here in that the two theses pretend to be two different claims, although they say the same thing. This is the conclusion that Johannes Climacus arrives at.53 The analysis of this question takes up the first few pages of the first chapter.54 It is difficult to find in this discussion any issue inherent in Hegel’s philosophy. It seems rather to be a criticism of Martensen and the inexact formulation of his thesis.55 But since there is in any case no temptation to interpret this analysis as something stemming from Hegel, there is no reason to pursue it further here. However, the last few pages of the chapter, which fall under the heading, “A Presentiment,”56 seem to take up an issue that is a genuine one in Hegel’s thought, namely, that of absolute knowing. Although Hegel’s name is never mentioned here, and there is no overt criticism of his view, this passage might be construed as a critique of this controversial doctrine. I wish to demonstrate that the position criticized is not one that can be properly attributed to Hegel and is best understood in the context of Martensen’s lectures. In order to evaluate Kierkegaard’s criticism correctly, it will first be necessary to examine briefly the concept of absolute knowing in Hegel’s philosophy. This account will serve as a basis for comparison with the view criticized in De Omnibus. A. The Concept of Absolute Knowing in Hegel. The final chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, entitled “Absolute Knowing,” has caused a great deal of debate in Hegel interpretation and has been the source of some of 53 54 55

56

JC, pp. 138–139; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 121–123. JC, pp. 133–138; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 116–121. In his review of Heiberg’s lecture, Martensen is guilty precisely of confusing claims about the history of philosophy with claims about philosophy in general. Specifically, he briefly sketches the characteristic elements of the leading philosophical movements from the Middle Ages to Hegel; however, when he discusses Descartes and the method of doubt, he makes claims about philosophy in general: “The absolute autonomy of thought is the principle of philosophy. . . . Science thus demands absolute, infinite doubt.” Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus,” op. cit., p. 519. JC, pp. 138–143; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 121–126.



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the best-known misconceptions about his philosophy. About half of this chapter consists of a review of the previous forms of knowing that the work has run through. Hegel’s point with this review is to indicate that absolute knowing is the general concept that contains within itself all the previous ones. Thus, absolute knowing is the grasping of all of the previous concepts and modes of knowing together as a complete system of thought. It is thus that he defines the Absolute Concept: “The realm of spirits which is formed in this way in the outer world constitutes a succession in time in which one spirit relieved another of its charge and each took over the empire of the world from its predecessor. Their goal is the revelation of the depth of spirit, and this is the Absolute Concept.”57 The Absolute Concept is therefore the most abstract concept, which encompasses all others. By grasping the Concept, the observer ipso facto sees the previous ones in their systematic interconnection since they are all related in it. Since it contains all of the previous forms of knowing, the Absolute Concept is complete or exhaustive. The concept of absolute knowing thus has nothing to do with gaining knowledge of some particular secret or ultimate wisdom. Instead, it is merely the comprehension of the various forms of thought in their systematic unity. The idea behind the dialectical movement of the Phenomenology of Spirit is that each finite or limited concept already contains within itself the seeds of a more complete one. This is the reason why the content of the Phenomenology becomes richer and richer as the work progresses. Finally, the organic totality of all the concepts is what Hegel describes as absolute knowing. He writes: “This last shape of spirit – the spirit which at the same time gives its complete and true content the form of the self and thereby realizes its concept as remaining in its concept in this realization – this is absolute knowing.”58 Here Hegel says explicitly that absolute knowing is the complete concept or the Concept that is exhaustive in its content. All of the previous concepts in the dialectical process of the Phenomenology of Spirit were one-sided or incomplete, and for that reason they were dialectically aufgehoben. Yet, in their Aufhebung these views pointed towards other conditions for knowing, which they themselves were lacking. The teleology of the dialectic is supplied by the fact that in the course of the process there must be a point at which all of the transcendental conditions for knowing are laid bare. When the dialectic reaches this point, it stops, for it can go no further; this then is absolute knowing. History, art, and religion all grasp a form of knowing, but they nonetheless maintain an empirical element. Given this empirical aspect, the truth 57 58

Hegel, PhS, p. 492; Jub., vol. 2, p. 619. Hegel, PhS, p. 485; Jub., vol. 2, p. 610. Translation slightly modified. See PhS, p. 485; Jub., vol. 2, p. 610: “Our own act here has been simply to gather together the separate moments, each of which in principle exhibits the life of spirit in its entirety, and also to stick to the notion in the form of the notion.”


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that obtains in these fields is not necessary. By contrast, absolute knowing grasps philosophical truth conceptually or according to the necessary systematic development of the Concept. It sees in this story the necessary movement from universal to particular to individual. Therefore, absolute knowing is knowing according to the Concept or according to the categorial form itself, and devoid of empirical instantiation: absolute knowing “is spirit that knows itself in the shape of spirit, or a conceptual knowing.”59 To know something according to the Concept means recognizing in that sphere of phenomena the dialectical movement of the categories themselves (i.e., universality, particularity and individuality). Therefore, to know the Concept qua Concept is to recognize these categories qua categories divested of their various empirical or accidental instantiations. Since absolute knowing is the knowing of the categories and not of their empirical forms, it is atemporal in a way the latter are not. Absolute knowing grasps the necessary categorial movement hidden in history and religion, a movement that is timeless. The spirit of the Greek world or the conception of the divine in revealed religion is each essentially bound to its temporal forms and its empirical instantiation. By contrast, the Absolute Concept is the conceptual movement that underlies them all and transcends time: “Spirit necessarily appears in time, and it appears in time just so long as it has not grasped its pure Concept, i.e. has not annulled time.”60 Since the Absolute Concept is, so to speak, a priori, it is not limited to any fixed temporal location; therefore, at the end of the dialectic, consciousness “sets aside its time-form.”61 By recognizing the universal categorial movement of the Concept in the various spheres, consciousness here recognizes the unity in the various forms. In the course of the dialectical movement the various concepts were grasped in an isolated fashion, and there were no connections made among them. With absolute knowing, consciousness achieves the overview of the various spheres that allows it to recognize the unified patterns of world history, of religion, and so on as having a common structure, which is a pattern of its own thought. Consciousness ceases to see each concept individually in its particular phenomenological form but instead comes to recognize the unitary nature of all of these forms since it sees that all of the concepts and forms of consciousness have in common the same categorial movement. Now the individual concepts are not seen in abstraction or taken individually but rather are taken in “their organic self-grounded movement.”62 This overview and grasping of the systematic interconnection of the concepts is the Absolute Concept. Given that philosophical knowing is this panoptic overview and that the entire process must be at an end before it can be properly grasped in its 59 60 62

Hegel, PhS, p. 485; Jub., vol. 2, p. 610. Translation slightly modified. 61 Hegel, PhS, p. 487; Jub., vol. 2, p. 612. Hegel, PhS, p. 487; Jub., vol. 2, p. 612. Hegel, PhS, p. 491; Jub., vol. 2, p. 617.



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systematic context, it follows that philosophy can take place only after the results of the other domains lie finished and open for examination. “Only when the objective presentation is complete,” Hegel writes, “is it at the same time the reflection of substance or the process in which substance becomes self. Consequently, until spirit has completed itself in itself, until it has completed itself as world spirit, it cannot reach its consummation as self-conscious spirit.”63 This squares with what Hegel says with his allusion to the Owl of Minerva in the Philosophy of Right.64 The point is that the historical movement can only be understood philosophically after it is complete. Only when that movement is at an end can one analyze it for its abstract categorial structure. Therefore, philosophy has no predictive power; instead, Hegel conceives of the Concept as a universal structure of thought, which, like Kant’s categories, is a priori or necessary. Hegel does not claim that history itself is actually at an end with absolute knowing.65 His point is that one can only understand and interpret philosophically or in terms of the categories those events that have already taken place. Given this understanding of the notion of absolute knowing, it is easier to grasp what Hegel says in the Introduction to his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, where he addresses himself specifically to the kind of commonsense objection raised by Kierkegaard in De Omnibus: how can a given philosophy be, on the one hand, one among many philosophies in the historical sequence and, on the other hand, the absolute truth in its own right. Hegel claims that it is a mistake to conceive of the history of philosophy as a series of different, independent philosophies ( just as it is a mistake to conceive of the individual concepts of natural consciousness as autonomous entities). If these ways of thinking are truly philosophical, then they belong to a single developing Idea. This Idea is philosophy itself. Thus, there is ultimately only a single philosophy that is developing through time and not countless discrete ones. On the one hand, Hegel’s philosophy is one finite moment in the development of the Idea and, on the other hand, insofar as it grasps the Idea it captures some enduring truth. In the discussion from De Omnibus there is a criticism of at least some version of this. 63

64 65

Hegel, PhS, p. 488; Jub., vol. 2, p. 614. He formulates this somewhat differently as follows: “As spirit that knows what it is, it does not exist before, and nowhere at all, till after the completion of its work of compelling its imperfect ‘shape’ to procure for its consciousness the ‘shape’ of its essence, and in this way to equate its self-consciousness with its consciousness.” Hegel, PhS, p. 486; Jub., vol. 2, p. 611. Hegel, PR, Preface, p. 23; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 36–37. Quoted in Chapter 4, Section II, p. 199fn. The source of this Hegel myth is a single sentence in Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History. See Phil of Hist., p. 103; Jub., vol. 11, p. 150: “The history of the world travels from east to west, for Europe is absolutely the end of history.” See Reinhart Klemens Maurer, “Teleologische Aspekte der Hegelschen Philosophie,” in his Hegel und das Ende der Geschichte, Freiburg and Munich: Verlag Karl Alber 1980, pp. 173–208. Joseph L. Esposito, “Hegel, Absolute Knowledge, and the End of History,” Clio, 12, 1983, pp. 355– 365.


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B. Johannes Climacus and Absolute Knowing. I now return to Kierkegaard’s text in order to examine his treatment of the concept of absolute knowing. The problem for Johannes Climacus is to determine whether the thesis – modern philosophy begins with doubt – is an historical one about a particular philosophy or a universal one about philosophy in general. Towards the end of this chapter his considerations focus on the ambiguity of this dual nature. Once again describing the intellectual striving of Johannes Climacus, Kierkegaard writes: “He then tried to combine what he had separated in thinking that the thesis must be either purely philosophical or purely historical. Presumably it is a mystery that modern philosophy is simultaneously the historical and the eternal, he thought, and what is more, it is aware of this itself. Indeed, it is a union similar to the union of the two natures in Christ.”66 Just as Christ is both divine and human, eternal and temporal, so also philosophy is at once historical and at the same time eternal. Philosophy is historical in that any given philosophy is a part of the history of philosophy. Understood in this way, it is a part of a larger ever-developing sequence. But then, on the other hand, “modern” (i.e., presumably Hegelian) philosophy seems to claim that it can reach an eternal ahistorical perspective which encompasses all finite forms of knowing: modern philosophy must become conscious of itself as an element in a prior philosophy, which in turn must become conscious of itself as an element in the historical unfolding of the eternal philosophy. Thus the philosopher’s consciousness must encompass the most dizzying contrasts: his own personality, his little amendment – the philosophy of the whole world as the unfolding of the eternal philosophy.67

One can easily recognize here Hegel’s claim that there are not several distinct philosophies that develop over time but rather a single philosophical Idea. Kierkegaard continues to allude to the eternal philosophy in the next section.68 66 67 68

JC, pp. 139–140; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 122–123. JC, p. 140; Pap. IV B 1, p. 123. JC, p. 147; Pap. IV B 1, p. 129: Kierkegaard writes: Johannes Climacus “one day heard one of the philosophers apropos of that thesis, say ‘This thesis does not belong to any particular philosopher; it is a thesis from the eternal philosophy, which anyone who wishes to give himself to philosophy must embrace.’” This claim would then seem to portray Hegel’s philosophy as the absolute philosophy. This recalls, at least vaguely, Hegel’s thesis that all philosophies are at bottom one philosophy in that they represent different forms of the notion. This is parallel to his claim that all religions are at bottom one religion. This Hegelian thesis is discussed by Heiberg in his On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age: “the different philosophical systems . . . all contain the same philosophy, only seen from different levels of culture in humanity’s development, just as the different religions all contain the same God, observed from different standpoints in the religious Idea, and just as the different works of art contain the same beauty in alternating forms, or the different forms of poetry contain the same poetry under changed conditions. All differences are grounded in unity; they are only moments in



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In working through this issue, Climacus arrives at a criticism of some version of the Hegelian view of absolute knowing, which is referred to as such without reference to Hegel himself. The heart of the objection is that it is impossible for any finite, particular individual to arrive at eternal knowing since this implies omniscience. Kierkegaard describes Climacus’ considerations thus: the individual’s knowledge was always merely knowledge about himself as a moment and about his significance as a moment. On the presupposition that this was actually possible – something he still could not really grasp, since it was not clear to him how a moment could be conscious of itself merely as a moment, inasmuch as this consciousness was an impossibility without a consciousness that was more than consciousness of oneself as a moment, because otherwise my consciousness would have to reside in another – this knowledge would then become a very relative knowledge and would by no means be an absolute knowledge. But how would it be possible for every single moment to become aware also of its eternal validity as a moment in the whole? That, after all, would require that the individual be omniscient and that the world be finished.69

Johannes Climacus notes that a particular individual or philosophy has only a partial perspective both of the world and of its place in it. Therefore, it is impossible for any particular philosophy to go beyond this limited view and to see itself in the larger totality of philosophy. The first objection seems to be that this view implies omniscience, which is clearly beyond the capacity of the finite human view. The second criticism argues that the view of absolute knowing implies a static or finished picture of the world or the whole which is surveyed. It thus denies that the world is still developing and any given theory runs the risk of being contradicted by future changes and developments. These objections need to be examined in order to determine the degree to which they can be regarded as applicable to Hegel’s doctrine itself. The first charge seems to be a straightforward appeal to common sense. Human beings are finite, and their knowing is limited and flawed. When they can be said to know something, it is only from a limited or finite perspective. Kierkegaard writes: “to become conscious of the eternal in the whole historical concretion, indeed, according to the standard that it did not involve only the past, this [Climacus] believed was reserved for the deity.”70 Thus, to claim to know something beyond the limited perspective of the individual is presumption. The key to understanding the relevance of this criticism for Hegel’s position is to keep in mind that by

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it, i.e. they are the necessary stages in the unity’s own development.” Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid, Copenhagen 1833, p. 6. ASKB 568. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 1, p. 386.) 70 JC, pp. 141–142; Pap. IV B 1, p. 124. JC, p. 141; Pap. IV B 1, p. 124.


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“absolute knowing,” Hegel does not mean omniscience, but rather seeing the vast unity of things by virtue of their common conceptual structure. It is the Concept that they all have in common and that even a finite or limited mind can grasp. Since the Concept is a priori, to use Kant’s language, one knows it will be present in all phenomena, and in this sense the claim is eternal or absolute. But this does not imply that the individual is empirically acquainted with every particular phenomenon and knows everything in this sense. In fact, Hegel calls the infinity of particular empirical phenomena “the bad infinity” and says that it, as such, is not and can never be the subject-matter of science or philosophy.71 There is thus no claim made for omniscience. The second charge claims that in order to reach this final truth, the world would have to be in a finished state where it is no longer developing. While it is, for Hegel, true that philosophy can only make a study of the past, this does not imply that the present is already completed and that one is looking at it, as it were, from the outside. Hegel is clear that history is continually in movement and does not reach a stasis. It is merely a methodological point that philosophy can only examine the past and endeavor to see it in its totality theretofore. The past is a fixed entity in that the events to be explored have already happened, but this does not imply that history no longer progresses or that new interpretations of the past do not appear. As new events or phenomena arise, they are then incorporated into the totality of systematic knowing as established theretofore. But the word “totality” or the expression “absolute knowing” does not imply that the future is already taken up and incorporated into the system before it happens. This seems to be implied in the passage quoted previously where Kierkegaard claims this absolute knowing “did not involve only the past,”72 the implication being that it should also involve the future. But then the objection arises, how then can it be absolute or total knowing if it fails to include the future? Is it not partial knowing since it is limited to the past? For Hegel, this knowledge is absolute only in the sense that regardless of what particular empirical shapes arise in the future, one knows already a priori that they will be incarnated or instantiated in the form of the Concept. Similarly, for Kant one knows today that the objects one will perceive tomorrow will be in space and time not because one knows what particular objects one will see tomorrow but because one knows the a priori forms of human perception or sensible intuition. Thus, absolute knowing is valid for the future as eternal or atemporal knowledge in this limited sense because it is a necessary or a priori truth. Hence, Kierkegaard can again be seen as offering a

71 72

Hegel, PR, Preface, pp. 20–21; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 33–34,discussed in Chapter 8, Section IV. JC, pp. 141–142; Pap. IV B 1, p. 124.



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criticism of some version of Hegel’s doctrine and not of the original doctrine itself. There is reason to think that these criticisms were never intended to be of Hegel in the first place but rather that they were aimed at some variant of the Hegelian thesis, which was perhaps propounded by one of the Danish Hegelians. In some of Martensen’s works one can find traces of the caricatured view of Hegel’s doctrine criticized by Kierkegaard. In his review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College, Martensen praises Hegel’s system for enveloping into itself all other systems in the history of philosophy. He writes: “Anyone who in our age has followed the thinking self-consciousness in its striving for light and clarity cannot help but admire and recognize the sublime necessity of reason and the deep consistency which runs throughout the Hegelian system. All subordinate systems which have the rationalistic principle in themselves without having carried it out are this system’s certain booty and must be absorbed as moments in it.”73 Martensen portrays the systems in the history of philosophy as being aufgehoben in that of Hegel. Although he goes on to criticize Hegel, this pretentious claim was enough to blind Kierkegaard to the finer nuances in Martensen’s position. I wish to suggest that Kierkegaard’s criticism can best be understood as a critique of the pretension of Martensen and his students for claims like this. In his dissertation, Martensen himself employs the concept of absolute knowing. He tends generally to use it to mean the knowledge of God, which he regards as the subject-matter of both theology and philosophy. At the beginning of the work he writes: “the most certain thing the human is capable of thinking cannot possibly be derived from some other thing that is more certain, but is an absolute knowledge a priori.”74 By this Martensen refers to the knowledge of God. Here he borrows the Hegelian concept of absolute knowing and presents it as his own or at least in the context of his own thought. He continues: “Knowledge of every divine mystery and its relation to the human is mediated by this most certain truth for the human; this grounds his entire approach to being and thinking, provides the standpoint for his reflection, and forms, so to speak, the culmination point from which all speculative outlooks onto the kingdom of the divine

73

74

Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus,” op. cit., p. 524. See also: “[Hegel’s philosophy] has an infinite meaning for our times since it contains the most complete and comprehensive development of rational knowledge. With this it thinks that an entire era in the history of philosophy . . . comes to a close. But the new era which we await in science cannot come about before the old one has ended. The Hegelian philosophy is in this respect an unavoidable point for anyone who has participated in modern scientific reflection.” Ibid., p. 515. Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia, op. cit., p. 18. Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, op. cit., p. 15. The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, op. cit., p. 84.


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are opened (specula – speculatio).”75 Here Martensen explains his speculative approach to dogmatics. He notes the etymological connection between the Latin words, “specula,” meaning “outlook,” and “speculatio,” which means “speculative thinking.” Thus, the goal of speculative thinking is to gain an outlook or overview of the whole and not to dwell on the individual parts. Martensen seems to imply that this speculative approach can come to an understanding of “every divine mystery.” Moreover, he claims that from this standpoint one can look out onto the divine. This would seem to fit the target which Kierkegaard aims at with his criticism, quoted previously, that knowledge of the whole is impossible for a finite human being and is “reserved for the deity.”76 Finally, at the beginning of Martensen’s course, “Speculative Dogmatics,” he explains the concept of dogma by appealing to precisely the contrast that is found in De Omnibus (i.e., that between particular historical forms and the eternal truth). There one finds in Kierkegaard’s notes the following: The historical development of this faith to the ecclesiastical dogma – both the differences, which have arisen in this development, and the oppositions in the consciousness of the universal church – are presented in the Christian history of dogma and symbolics. By contrast dogmatics itself does not stop with knowing the dogma in its relative historical forms, but strives to know it in its absolute truth. It performs this task only when it, as speculative science, knows the dogma as Idea.77

Here Martensen makes a plea for a speculative approach to dogmatics. Only with this approach, he claims, are the Church dogmas understood in their absolute truth. This truth transcends the relative truth of the individual historical stages of the development of the individual dogmas. (Needless to say, this is a clear analogue to Hegel’s understanding of the different philosophies in the history of philosophy in contrast to the Idea itself.) Kierkegaard with his criticism seems to have in mind claims like this in defense of the notion of absolute knowing. Contemporary reports uniformly testify to the arrogance of the students of theology who, encouraged by Martensen, believed that with Hegel’s philosophy they had reached some final truth. For example, Martensen’s student, the aforementioned Frederik Nielsen, characterizes as follows the way in which Hegel’s philosophy was understood among his fellow students during the late 1830s: “Hegelian philosophy was a true child of Germany, presumptuous and arrogant on all sides. 75

76

Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia, op. cit., p. 19. Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, op. cit., p. 16. The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, op. cit., p. 85. Translation slightly modified. 77 SKS, vol. 18, p. 374f., KK:11. JC, pp. 141–142; Pap. IV B 1, p. 124.



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The absolute had come; there were no secrets either in heaven or on earth.”78 Here Hegel’s philosophy is portrayed as being lauded as the final truth that dissolved all mysteries. It will be noted that this is the claim that Martensen made on its behalf in his dissertation. Another of Martensen’s students, Johannes Fibiger, describes the atmosphere of the lectures in similar terms. Fibiger recalls: One had to have lived at that time to be able to conceive of the strange being [of Hegelian philosophy], indeed, even to be able to believe in the possibility of it. Under the absolutism of German philosophy, every thinker was zealous to work on the Tower of Babel of fantasy; what we heard all around us was nothing less than that every grandiloquent speaker made it virtually his goal in life to build a tower even higher. We were told that the universe with all of its large and small secret niches had been investigated and explained in the Concept; all riddles were solved; Hegel and his host of disciples in Berlin had finished the job. . . . One had to imitate [Hegel’s philosophy] and bring it even further; one was supposed to build one’s own system and go beyond Hegel and become the great man of the scholarly world. After a short time this was the only air we inhaled; the only one we heard at the university which sounded like a voice from the future was Martensen’s brilliant speech, and there was not so little in it of airy stones for that kind of building.79

Fibiger attests to the general perception of the finality of Hegel’s philosophy, which was thought to have penetrated into every corner of the world and to have explained everything. This seems to be akin to the view of absolute knowing portrayed in De Omnibus. Moreover, Fibiger also portrays the perceived goal of scholarly inquiry at the time (i.e., to go beyond Hegel by building one’s own system). It has been seen previously80 that this expression is one that Kierkegaard associates with Martensen, and this passage from Fibiger seems to confirm it since he states this as the then current understanding of the task of philosophy and specifically associates it with Martensen’s lectures. He criticizes Martensen for his abstractions and demagoguery. This account squares with the claims of Martensen’s anonymous critic in Kjøbenhavnsposten. It will be recalled that Martensen was attacked by an unknown critic who criticized him for exerting a negative influence on the students of theology and leading them away from Christianity. In the first article, the students are reproached for their arrogance and their claims to know the truth: Hegel’s “doctrine is regarded [sc. among 78 79 80

Frederik Nielsen, Minder. Oplevelser og Iagttagelser, Aalborg 1881, pp. 35–36. Johannes Fibiger, Mit Liv og Levned som jeg selv har forstaaet det, ed. by Karl Gjellerup, Copenhagen 1898, p. 73. Chapter 1, Section II, p. 65f.


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the students] in general as being the pure, absolute, incontrovertible truth (diese Philosophie, das ist die Philosophie).”81 The critic continues, “All previous stages of philosophy point towards Hegel and achieve their completion in him, beyond which one cannot come.”82 Here one finds something very close to the claim criticized by Kierkegaard in De Omnibus. Like Kierkegaard, the anonymous critic is offended by the pretension of a secular philosophy claiming to have reached “the absolute truth.” Moreover, the critic reproaches Martensen’s students for their naive belief that they know the truth since they are familiar with Hegel: “In particular they think that they are in possession of the philosopher’s stone when they have studied Hegel’s philosophy; they believe that they are already in possession of a portion of absolute truth when they have devoted themselves to a study of Hegel for a short time.”83 This leads one to believe that the positions being criticized are not to be found in Hegel’s texts but rather in Martensen’s lecture hall. While these examples do not ultimately prove that this is the object of Kierkegaard’s criticism, they do provide clear evidence about from where Kierkegaard could have received such a view of Hegel’s concept of absolute knowing. One might wish to argue that in the final analysis it does not really matter if Kierkegaard is criticizing Martensen or Hegel since it is the doctrine of absolute knowing that he is really after in any case. But, as has been seen here, there is a great deal of diversity in the interpretation of this doctrine, and much of it goes far beyond any position found in Hegel. The fact that the positions criticized are not Hegel’s is indication enough of this diversity. With his doctrine of absolute knowing, Hegel makes no claims for omniscience or for the solution to every mystery. Thus, it hardly makes sense to attribute to him all of the claims of his overzealous followers. This is to miss the point of Kierkegaard’s criticism, which is directed against just those followers. Moreover, the nature of the criticism in De Omnibus seems to support the interpretation that Martensen is the true target. The objections that I have sketched here are based only on a single short passage. In De Omnibus there is no analysis of Hegel’s primary texts where the issue is discussed. If he had wanted to, Kierkegaard could easily have portrayed Climacus as poring through Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit or the Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy and uncovering some contradictions, which he would then go on the criticize. But he does not do this. Instead he portrays Climacus as analyzing specific views that he has heard in the lecture hall. The views criticized are much more loose than something 81

82

[Anonymous], “Nogle Træk til en Charakteristik af den philosophiske Aand, som for Tiden findes hos de Studerende ved Kjøbenhavns Universitet,” Kjøbenhavnsposten, vol. 14, no. 25, January 26, 1840, p. 97. 83 Ibid., p. 98. Ibid., p. 97.


the subjective beginning of philosophy with doubt 261 taken from a specific textual analysis from one of Hegel’s works. Thus, while one can insist on claiming that the criticism here can still be found in Hegel at some level, this does not seem to be the point of Kierkegaard’s account of Johannes Climacus. He has something specific in mind and it is not one of Hegel’s primary texts but rather Martensen and his students, with their arrogant claims on behalf of Hegel’s philosophy. Given that this is Kierkegaard’s target, there is no reason for him to examine in detail the accounts of absolute knowing in Hegel’s texts. Although the matter is difficult to adjudicate conclusively since one can only partially reconstruct the versions of Hegel’s philosophy that were current in the discussions and lectures at the time, Martensen would be the logical candidate for criticism here since he is clearly the main target elsewhere in the work and since he put forth the interpretations of Hegel that look suspiciously like the ones Kierkegaard criticizes. Contemporary reports also testify to the pretension and arrogance of Martensen and his students in their assertions that Hegel’s philosophy is the truth pure and simple. These reports indicate indirectly that Kierkegaard was not alone in his irritation about this. In any case, the views criticized here are not Hegel’s, and, given the arguments presented here, there is no reason to think that Kierkegaard himself intends this discussion to be critical of him in the first place.

iii. the individual and the subjective beginning of philosophy with doubt The first section of the present chapter demonstrated that the phrase “de omnibus dubitandum est” was for Kierkegaard a code word for Martensen. But in a sense the question is not so much whether or not this allusion can be traced to Martensen, for even readers such as Thulstrup will admit this. The real question concerns whether or not Martensen’s use of the expression and his general treatment of philosophical doubt, for which it stands, is in harmony with some principle in Hegel’s own thought. What needs to be explored is whether this is some idiosyncrasy in Martensen or a straightforward appropriation of a specific aspect of Hegel’s dialectical method. This is the question to be addressed in the present section. One commentator sees the matter as entirely straightforward: “Martensen was a Hegelian, and Hegel endorsed Descartes’ position that philosophy begins with doubt.”84 Thus, presumably Kierkegaard’s criticism of Martensen is ipso facto valid for Hegel as well. Contrary to this view, I wish to argue (1) that Martensen’s account of doubt is at variance with that of Hegel, 84

T. H. Croxall, “Assessment Part 1: Biographical and General,” in his translation Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est and a Sermon, London: Adam and Charles Black 1958, p. 20.


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for whom skeptical doubt is not an issue, (2) that Kierkegaard’s use of it indicates that he distinguishes Martensen from Hegel on this point, and (3) that his criticism is of the former and not of the latter. I will base my contention on an analysis of the second chapter of De Omnibus.85 It will be useful to begin the analysis with a brief account of the role of doubt in Hegel’s dialectical method and in his conception of the justification of a scientific philosophy. A. Doubt and the Justification of Science in Hegel. The issue of skeptical doubt is one that Hegel, to be sure, addresses, but it cannot be seen as central to his thought or his methodology in the way it is for Descartes. In the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel distinguishes science from common sense and indicates that the relation between them implies the need for a “phenomenology.” He discusses the problem of grounding or justifying philosophy in relation to other academic disciplines. Philosophy, unlike other disciplines, cannot make presuppositions or rely on common sense;86 rather, it is obliged to begin from the ground up and to justify itself instead of relying on justification from the outside. Common sense demands an explanation before it can accept science: “Only what is completely determined is at once exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and appropriated by all. The intelligible form of science is the way open and equally accessible to everyone, and consciousness as it approaches science justly demands that it be able to attain to rational knowledge by way of the ordinary understanding.”87 Science must be able to justify itself to common sense. It seeks to raise the ordinary consciousness to philosophy. The goal of the Phenomenology is to meet this demand for an explanation or justification. The strategy of the work is to demonstrate that all accounts of the world based on common sense fail on their own terms and must be abandoned as internally contradictory. The justification of science is characterized by means of a metaphor of a ladder: “Science on its part requires that self-consciousness should have raised itself into this aether in order to be able to live – and actually to live – with science and in science. Conversely, the individual has the right to demand that science should at least provide him with the ladder to this standpoint, should show him this standpoint within himself.”88 The prejudices of common sense are gradually peeled off one by one as the dialectical movement 85 86

87 88

JC, pp. 144–156; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 126–139. Hegel, EL, § 1; Jub., vol. 8, p. 27: “Philosophy misses an advantage enjoyed by the other sciences. It cannot like them rest the existence of its objects on the natural admissions of consciousness, nor can it assume that its method of cognition, either for starting or for continuing, is one already accepted.” Hegel, PhS, pp. 7–8; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 19–20. Hegel, PhS, pp. 14–15; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 28–29.


the subjective beginning of philosophy with doubt 263 progresses. Thus, while moving from a lower to a higher standpoint, one is gradually liberated from the erroneous assumptions of common sense. It will be noted that the justification of science takes place not directly in terms of science but indirectly as a criticism of common sense. The Phenomenology thus begins with common sense on its own terms and proceeds by exposing its inner contradictions until the dialectic, of its own momentum, is led to the level of science. It will be noted that in Hegel’s account of his dialectical methodology in the Introduction to the Phenomenology there is no talk of Descartes or of his method of skepticism. The phenomenological method that Hegel uses to justify science to common sense does not take place by any procedure of skeptical doubt. First, natural consciousness does not begin the procedure by doubting; on the contrary, it is begun when natural consciousness uncritically posits a specific common-sense conception of truth. Second, the contradiction in the different concepts is not exposed by any skeptical method on the part of natural consciousness. The contradictions arise naturally in the course of the dialectical analysis. Thus, there is no particular reason to think that any of the discussion about doubt in De Omnibus derives directly from Hegel. Skeptical or Cartesian doubt is simply not an issue for him. B. Johannes Climacus’ Examination of Subjective Doubt. In the second chapter of De Omnibus the thesis “philosophy begins with doubt” is examined. Here the discussion shifts from the objective question about the beginning of philosophy to the subjective question of the individual’s relation to that beginning. The main argument is that if philosophy begins with doubt, then this doubt cannot be handed down objectively, but rather each individual must appropriate it for himself. The original statement that one must embrace the eternal philosophy serves as the starting point for the rest of the chapter. The question that Johannes Climacus poses to himself is how he is to embrace the eternal philosophy and its beginning with doubt.89 He is strengthened in his desire to determine the individual’s relation to this beginning when he hears of the three types of philosophical starting points: (1) the absolute beginning, (2) the objective beginning, and (3) the subjective beginning. Kierkegaard describes as follows the third variant: “the subjective beginning is the work of consciousness, by which it elevates itself to thinking or to positing the abstraction.”90 Of these three beginnings, this last one is of particular interest to Johannes Climacus: “He was well aware that if any of the 89

90

JC, p. 148; Pap. IV B 1, p. 131: “he wanted to investigate, how the single individual must relate to that thesis, and, consequently, how the single individual must embrace philosophy.” JC, p. 149; Pap. IV B 1, p. 131. Translation slightly modified.


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beginnings mentioned was the one in question, it had to be the third, because reflecting about philosophy’s absolute and objective beginning had to be left to those who had already become philosophers. The subjective beginning, however, was certainly the one with which the individual started from not having been a philosopher to become a philosopher.”91 (By this Kierkegaard seems to refer to Hegel’s claim to justify science to common sense and to raise ordinary consciousness to the level of philosophy.) Most important for Climacus is the fact that the subjective beginning seems to be the only one that answers the question of the individual’s relation to the thesis. Johannes Climacus tries to come to terms with the nature of the subjective beginning in order to determine what kind of relationship to philosophy it implies. He wonders, does the thesis, “philosophy begins with doubt” hold true eternally in the same way that mathematical truths do? The key argument that Climacus hits upon is that there is a fundamental difference between this claim and mathematical truths. The latter are universal and impersonal in the sense that they are true regardless of who pronounces them; by contrast, the thesis “philosophy begins with doubt” is subjective, like a religious or ethical truth, and for this reason the person who pronounces it is essential since the cognitive value of the claim will vary from person to person: “we would still require acquaintance with the personality of the speaker with respect to religious theses and also, up to a point, with respect to an ethical thesis, for anyone could state a religious or an ethical thesis, but it would not necessarily follow that in everyone’s mouth it would become a religious or an ethical thesis.”92 Further he reasons, “If a two-year-old child could be taught a mathematical thesis, it would be essentially just as true in the child’s mouth as in the mouth of Pythagoras. If we taught a two-year-old child to say these words, ‘I believe that there is a God’ or ‘Know yourself,’ then no one would reflect on those words.”93 Ethical and religious truths have a necessary inward value for the speaker and thus are not valid if uttered rote in the way that mathematical truths are. Climacus puts the claim about philosophy beginning with doubt into this category of inward truths. This classification implies that doubt cannot truly be taught or handed down from teacher to student. If this could be done, it would be uncritically accepted from an external authority and thus would no longer be doubt; rather, each individual must doubt for himself before he can begin actual philosophical cognition. The individual cannot simply accept this doubt but instead must appropriate it personally. By teaching or commanding doubt, one falsifies it since one makes the pupil accept the teacher’s doubt. Hence, doubt can only be carried out on an 91 93

JC, p. 149; Pap. IV B 1, p. 132. JC, p. 152; Pap. IV B 1, p. 135.

92

JC, p. 151; Pap. IV B 1, p. 134.


the subjective beginning of philosophy with doubt 265 individual basis, but this eliminates the teacher and any philosophical tradition. Philosophy thus begins anew each time that the process of doubt is initiated. The question to be addressed now is what all of this has to do with Hegel. Given the previous analysis of Hegel’s method, it is difficult to see how it can be construed as one of skeptical doubt akin to that of Descartes. The issue becomes clearer when one sees how Hegel’s philosophy is portrayed by Martensen. In his accounts, Martensen attributes to Hegel the method of Cartesian doubt. His reason for doing so is clearly a passage from the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit where Hegel explains the phenomenological procedure of the work. There he writes: Natural consciousness will show itself to be only the Concept of knowledge, or in other words, not to be real knowledge. But since it directly takes itself to be real knowledge, this path has a negative significance for it, and what is in fact the realization of the Concept counts for it rather as the loss of its own self; for it does lose its truth on this path. The road can therefore be regarded as the pathway of doubt, or more precisely the way of despair.94

Hegel describes how natural consciousness experiences the inconsistencies and shortcomings of its concepts of truth in the course of the phenomenological examination. He plays on the etymological relation between the German words “Verzweiflung” or “despair” and “Zweifel” or “doubt.” (Both Martensen95 and Kierkegaard play on their Danish equivalents, “Fortvivlelse” and “Tvivl.”96 ) At first Hegel characterizes the series of figures of the Phenomenology as “the pathway of doubt” and then he corrects himself and renames it “the way of despair.” This is of course a description from the perspective of natural consciousness who despairs at the demise of its truth claim. Hegel then continues, using a formulation that Martensen was keen to parrot: “For what happens on it [the pathway of doubt] is not what is ordinarily understood when the word ‘doubt’ is used: shilly-shallying about this or that presumed truth, followed by a return to that truth again, after the doubt has been appropriately dispelled – so that at the end of the process the matter is taken to be what it was in the first place.”97 Martensen frequently repeats this sentence in various forms and quotes it almost verbatim in his review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College.98 It will be noted that Martensen puts this description of Hegel’s dialectical method together with Hegel’s 94 95 96 98

Hegel, PhS, p. 49; Jub., vol. 2, p. 71. Translation slightly modified. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Betragtninger over Idéen af Faust med Hensyn paa Lenaus Faust,” op. cit., p. 105, p. 108, p. 118. 97 Hegel, PhS, p. 49; Jub.,vol. 2, p. 71. EO2 , pp. 211ff.; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 203ff. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus,” op. cit., pp. 518–519.


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description of Descartes’ skeptical method in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy. But there is nothing in Hegel to justify this association. Finally, Hegel characterizes the nature of this philosophical skepticism as “the resolve, in science, not to give oneself over to the thoughts of others, upon mere authority, but to examine everything for oneself and follow only one’s own conviction, or better still, to produce everything oneself, and accept only one’s own deed as what is true.”99 From this definition it should be clear that Hegel is not speaking of any systematic procedure of doubt as in Descartes. He is concerned with an examination of the different concepts at the different levels. The internal consistency of the concepts is what is at issue, and natural consciousness is compelled to respect the contradictions that arise in the concepts and accordingly modify or abandon them. It must thus act in accordance with the logic of the concepts and not under the influence of some external, less rational forces. Philosophical doubt is important for Descartes but not for Hegel. For the latter, the issue is the internal consistency of particular concepts, which is quite different from a method of universal doubt. Natural consciousness at the beginning of the Phenomenology does not begin as a skeptic or with a method of doubt but, all to the contrary, as the voice of naive common sense. The whole issue of philosophical doubt captured in the phrase “de omnibus dubitandum est” and in the thesis about modern philosophy beginning with doubt is a hobbyhorse of Martensen that has little to do with Hegel. First, in his review of Heiberg’s lecture, Martensen presents Hegel as a kind of German Descartes who employed the method of skeptical doubt. After stating that Hegel’s goal was to find the unconditioned thought, he continues: Finding this means nothing more or less than finding the point outside the world, which the ancient Greek sages already sought. (Da mihi punctum & caelum terramque movebo.) This point, independent of experience and consciousness, Hegel sought to find by carrying out dialectical doubt. This is thought’s infinite abstraction from all determination. One abstracts not merely from all given reality but also from the “I,” for this too is only a concrete form of thought.100

This is a distortion of Hegel’s thought since, as has been seen, he did not employ Descartes’ method of universal doubt in order to arrive at a point that could serve as the foundation for knowledge. What Martensen describes here is Descartes’ search for a solid point of certain knowledge from which to build. Rather enigmatically, Martensen conflates “infinite abstraction from all determination,” which is a formulation from Hegel, 99 100

Hegel, PhS, p. 50; Jub., vol. 2, p. 72. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus,” op. cit., p. 521.


the subjective beginning of philosophy with doubt 267 with doubt. When Hegel talks about beginning with the category of being, which is an abstraction from all determinations, this has nothing to do with doubt and is not arrived at by means of any skeptical, Cartesian procedure. Second, in Martensen’s lectures, the “History of Modern Philosophy from Kant to Hegel,” he once again conflates the thought of Descartes with that of Hegel. He describes Hegel’s dialectical method as follows: “The method with which the process takes place is the negative. Every thought contains its own negation, its own opposite, differences. . . . The third standpoint is now that where the person again wins satisfaction after having gone through all doubt.”101 Here Martensen confuses the second stage of the Hegelian dialectic with that of doubt. The third stage is then thought to overcome this doubt and return to certainty. This is again a clear distortion of Hegel’s method since dialectical negation is clearly different from doubt. The negation in Hegel appears not by doubting the first term but by the production of its opposite, which is conceived as its negation. Moreover, this is one of the things that Kierkegaard complains about (i.e., that Martensen makes grand claims to have doubted everything), but in the end he drops this doubt and returns to any number of given positive doctrines. The problem lies in the characterization of the dialectical method as one of doubt. Thus, when Kierkegaard satirizes the procedure of skeptical doubt, it cannot with justice be construed as a reference to Hegel himself. His entire criticism targets the use of a Cartesian method of doubt to construct a subjective beginning of philosophy. But given that there is no such method in Hegel, Kierkegaard’s analysis of the subjective nature of doubt has nothing to do with Hegel’s thought. But there is again no reason to think that Kierkegaard himself ever intended it as such. It seems highly probable that the true target is Martensen who portrays the method of Hegel’s philosophy in this way. The question to be addressed now is whether there is any evidence that indicates that Kierkegaard intended this as a criticism of Martensen and not of Hegel. One bit of evidence can be found in the Preface to Fear and Trembling where Descartes is featured as the hero and the Hegelians as the villains. In connection with the issue of doubt, Johannes de silentio expressly mentions figures who peopled the university scene: Every speculative monitor who conscientiously signals the important trends in modern philosophy, every assistant professor, tutor, and student, every rural outsider and tenant incumbent in philosophy is unwilling to stop with doubting everything but goes further. . . . [I]t can probably be taken for granted that they have doubted everything, since otherwise it certainly would be odd to speak of their having gone further.102 101

Pap. II C 25, in Pap. XII, p. 321.

102

FT, p. 5; SKS, vol. 4, p. 101.


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It is no accident that he targets figures at the university since it was the assistant professor Martensen and his students who were pretentiously making claims about the need to doubt everything before beginning a study of philosophy. Moreover, one finds here the expression of “going further,” which Kierkegaard consistently associates with Martensen.103 Here Johannes de silentio points away from Descartes and towards Martensen. Given all this, it seems clear that Kierkegaard intends Martensen as the target of this criticism and not Hegel or Descartes. The issue in fact concerns Martensen’s conflation of Hegel’s thought with that of Descartes. Given that the formulation “de omnibus dubitandum est” can unambiguously be traced back to Martensen and given that the account of Hegel’s philosophy as employing a procedure of doubt stems from Martensen (and has little justification in Hegel’s thought itself), it seems safe to conclude that the criticism of this point in De Omnibus is directed against Martensen. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that Kierkegaard ever intended the account of the subjective beginning of philosophy with doubt to be a criticism of Hegel in the first place.

iv. kierkegaard’s appropriation of hegel on “sense-certainty” In many respects the few pages104 that constitute the unfinished Part Two of the manuscript of De Omnibus are for the purposes of this investigation the most interesting and the most important since they demonstrate a striking familiarity with the first part of the “Consciousness” chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, entitled “Sense-Certainty.” The only time Hegel is alluded to by name in the entire work is in a footnote in Part Two in which Kierkegaard refers to this chapter. There he writes: The terminology of modern philosophy is often confusing. For example, it speaks of sinnliches Bewußtsein, wahrnehmendes B[ewußtsein], Verstand, etc., although it would be far preferable to call it “sense perception,” “experience,” for in consciousness there is more. It would be interesting to see how Hegel would formulate the transition from consciousness to self-consciousness, from self-consciousness to reason. When the transition consists merely of a heading, it is easy enough.105

Here Kierkegaard gives the clue about the origin of the discussion in Part Two by naming the three parts of the “Consciousness” chapter (i.e., “Sense-Certainty” [“Die sinnliche Gewißheit”], “Perception” [“Die Wahrnehmung”], and “Force and the Understanding” [“Kraft und 103 104 105

See Chapter 1, Section II, p. 65f. JC, pp. 161–172; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 141–150. JC, p. 169fn.; Pap. IV B 1, p. 148fn. See JC, Supplement, p. 258; Pap. IV B 10.12.


kierkegaard’s appropriation of “sense-certainty”

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Verstand”]). In this section I want to argue that Kierkegaard’s account can be seen largely as a commentary on the “Sense-Certainty” section. Moreover, despite the criticism in the passage just cited (i.e., that Hegel failed to provide adequate transitions between the individual chapters of the Phenomenology), Kierkegaard’s assessment of the “Sense-Certainty” section is, I wish to argue, quite positive and his account of consciousness and language is largely derivative from it. A. Hegel’s Analysis of “Sense-Certainty.” Before I turn to Kierkegaard’s analysis, I will briefly sketch Hegel’s “Sense-Certainty” section, the first substantive analysis in the Phenomenology of Spirit and thus the beginning of the dialectical march to absolute knowing. The dialectic of “Sense-Certainty” introduces the first concept for dialectical examination. Hegel’s phenomenological actor, natural consciousness, begins with the common sense belief in a predetermined external world, which is immediately accessible to the human subject. The claim that runs throughout the “Consciousness” chapter generally is the simple view that there exist external things independent of the knowing subject. The “Consciousness” chapter posits various forms of realist metaphysics that assert the independent reality of the external world. The first of these views is that featured in “Sense-Certainty” (i.e., the minimalist assertion that there is an external something). As Kierkegaard notes, Hegel’s terminology can be misleading, for Hegel does not use the term “sense-certainty” to denote the variety of sense experience; instead, this expression is intended to designate the most undifferentiated form of existence given in sense.106 This form of consciousness is not concerned with an object that can be discerned “in virtue of a host of distinct qualities” or that contains “a rich complex of connections, or [is] related in various ways to other things.”107 Hegel puts it bluntly: “Neither of these has anything to do with the truth of sensecertainty.”108 The object model of “Sense-Certainty” is instead simply that which we are immediately aware of: “The knowledge or knowing which is at the start or is immediately our object cannot be anything else but immediate knowledge itself, a knowledge of the immediate or of what simply is.”109 This model of objectivity as pure being represents the most simple and minimal criterion for objectivity, and for this reason it is the first one featured in the Phenomenology. In typical Hegelian fashion, the dialectic here moves through three distinct stages. The object model of the concept is first considered as in-itself and as belonging to the object, then 106 107 109

Hegel, PhS, p. 67; Jub., vol. 2, p. 93: “The wealth of sense-knowledge belongs to perception, not to immediate certainty, for which it was only the source of instances.” 108 Hegel, PhS, p. 58; Jub., vol.2, p. 82. Hegel, PhS, p. 58; Jub., vol. 2, p. 82. Hegel, PhS, p. 58; Jub., vol. 2, p. 81.


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as for-itself and belonging to the subject, and finally as in- and for-itself where it is united in both. At the first stage one tries to see pure undifferentiated being on the side of the object. This is what is immediately given and true. Hegel writes of natural consciousness: “All that it says about what it knows is just that it is; and its truth contains nothing but the sheer being of the thing.”110 Pure being is thus any autonomous and external entity that exists independent of the subject. This amorphous entity is designated by the term the “This.” Since natural consciousness has not yet reached the level of properties, the term “This” is used simply to indicate the existence of something without determining it further, for example, as a chair or a tree, which would require properties. Natural consciousness claims that there exists some particular autonomous object, which it expresses by saying, “This is.” The demonstrative character of the “This” purportedly makes it possible to pick out the individual object. Any external object ought to be able to be designated by being pointed out as a “This.” Hegel distinguishes two distinct aspects of the “This,” namely, the “Now” and the “Here.”111 The particular spatio-temporal position is what designates the particularity of any given object.112 The claim of natural consciousness is that there is a particular object, which it formulates by saying, “This is Here, Now.” The dialectical movement, however, proves internally inconsistent. Neither the “Here” nor the “Now” is able to pick out a particular object. Hegel demonstrates this with the following argument. He begins with the dialectical examination of the “Now”: To the question: “What is Now?,” let us answer, e.g. “Now is Night.” In order to test the truth of this sense-certainty a simple experiment will suffice. We write down this truth; a truth cannot lose anything by being written down, any more than it can lose anything through our preserving it. If now, this noon, we look again at the written truth we shall have to say that it has become stale.113

In natural consciousness’s attempt to assert that a particular object exists “now,” it means [meinen] that at this particular moment it exists. But the term “now” is not a particular but rather a universal term that can refer to any given point in time. Therefore, simply by saying that the object exists now, natural consciousness has still not determined any particular temporal moment. In short, natural consciousness does not say what it means since it wants to assert something particular about the object, but because it employs a universal term, the truth of the particular is not expressed and is lost in the indeterminacy of universality. 110 112 113

111 Hegel, PhS, pp. 59–60; Jub., vol. 2, p. 83. Hegel, PhS, p. 58; Jub., vol. 2, p. 81. In the corresponding section in the Encyclopaedia, Hegel refers to the “Here” and “Now” as “spatial and temporal singleness.” Hegel, Phil. of Mind, § 418; Jub., vol. 10, p. 264. Hegel, PhS, p. 60; Jub., vol. 2, p. 83.



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A parallel argument, which is applied to the spatial term, “Here,” runs as follows: “‘Here’ is, e.g., the tree. If I turn round, this truth has vanished and is converted into its opposite: ‘No tree is here, but a house instead.’”114 The same word “Here” is used to designate different locations, first the space where the tree is located and then that where the house is located. Thus, the “Here,” qua universal, is incapable of designating any particular place and therefore cannot isolate a particular object of sense-certainty. Just as the “Now” refers to any time, the “Here” refers to any place. Once again natural consciousness means [meinen] to refer to a particular place but cannot express it with the universal term the “Here.” As a result of the failure of the first stage, natural consciousness now tries to make revisions in its concept to resolve the contradictions. It adopts a second strategy which reverses the roles of the subject and the object. Hegel says, “When we compare the relation in which knowing and the object first came on the scene, with the relation in which they now stand in this result, we find that it is reversed. The object, which was supposed to be the essential element in sense-certainty, is now the unessential element.”115 Now instead of the object being regarded as the immediate and the true, the focus shifts to the individual subject which is now thought to be the particular, and by virtue of this particularity determines objectivity. Therefore, the truth “is in the object as my object, or in its being mine; it is, because I know it.”116 The various immediate means of knowing the objects of sense-certainty are all domiciled in a singular subject: “The force of its truth thus lies now in the ‘I,’ in the immediacy of my seeing, hearing, and so on.”117 Thus, the pure “I” or individual subject replaces the “This” or the being of the object. Now particularity dwells on the side of the subject and not the object. Hegel now analyzes the “I” with the same dialectical scrutiny that was applied to the “This.” As it turns out, the “I” runs aground on universality in precisely the same way as the “This.” The term “I” does not designate any particular subject but, like the “This” is a universal: “The ‘I’ is merely universal like ‘Now,’ ‘Here,’ or ‘This’ in general. . . .When I say ‘this Here,’ ‘this Now,’ or a ‘single item,’ I am saying all Thises, Heres, Nows, all single items. Similarly, when I say ‘I,’ this singular ‘I,’ I say in general all ‘I’s.’”118

114 115 116

117

Hegel, PhS, pp. 60–61; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 84–85. Hegel, PhS, p. 61; Jub., vol. 2, p. 85. Hegel, PhS, p. 61; Jub., vol. 2, p. 85. The German is as follows: “Ihre Wahrheit ist in dem Gegenstande als meinem Gegenstande oder im Meinen; er ist, weil Ich von ihm weiß.” In this passage, Hegel plays on the possessive pronoun “my” or “mine” [mein] and the verb “to mean” or “to intend” [meinen] which he uses in the sense of meaning or intending a particular object whose particularity is not able to be captured linguistically due to the universality of language. See also PhS, p. 71; Jub., vol. 2, p. 98. 118 Hegel, PhS, p. 62; Jub., vol. 2,p. 86. Hegel, PhS, p. 61; Jub., vol. 2, p. 85.


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Elsewhere Hegel makes the same point: “Similarly when I say ‘I,’ I mean my single self to the exclusion of all others, but what I say, viz. ‘I,’ is just every ‘I,’ which in like manner excludes all others from itself.”119 Since every subject uses “I” to refer to him- or herself, the term on its own has no referential value; it is not a particular but rather a universal.120 The third stage unifies the previous two. Now instead of trying to locate particularity unilaterally on the side of the object or the subject, natural consciousness tries to see it in the combination of the two or in their moment of contact: “Sense-certainty thus comes to know by experience that its essence is neither in the object nor in the ‘I,’ and that its immediacy is an immediacy neither of the one nor of the other. . . . Thus we reach the stage where we have to posit the whole of sense-certainty itself as its essence, and no longer only one of its moments.”121 Here the aspect of particularity is thought to lie in the point of interaction between the subject and the object. This moment of particularity is designated as the new “Here” and the new “Now.” This particular moment of contact is what is essential, and thus natural consciousness concentrates exclusively on it, trying to keep it and it alone in focus: “I, this ‘I,’ assert then the ‘Here’ as a tree, and do not turn round so that the Here would become for me not a tree.”122 Not surprisingly, this particular moment of contact is also unable to be captured linguistically with the universal terms “Here” and “Now.” The first dialectical analysis is of the temporal point of contact or the “Now.” Like its predecessor this new “Now” is always transitory and never endures beyond the moment: “The Now, as it is pointed out to us, is Now that has been, and this is its truth; it does not have the truth of being. Yet this much is true, that it has been. But what essentially has been [gewesen ist] is, in fact, not an essence that is [kein Wesen]; it is not, and it was with being that we were concerned.”123 Natural consciousness is unable to pick out the 119

120

121 122 123

Hegel, EL, § 20; Jub., vol. 8, p. 47. See EL, § 24, Remark; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 85–86: “Everyone is a whole world of representations, which are buried in the night of the ‘I.’ Thus, ‘I’ is the universal, in which abstraction is made from everything particular, but in which at the same time everything is present, though veiled.” See also PR, § 4, Addition; Jub., vol. 7, p. 51: “‘I’ is thought and likewise the universal. When I say ‘I,’ I leave out of account every particularity such as my character, temperament, knowledge, and age. ‘I’ is totally empty; it is merely a point – simple, yet active in this simplicity.” See Hegel, Phil. of Mind, § 381, Remark; Jub., vol. 10, pp. 24–25. See also EL, § 24, Remark; Jub., vol. 8, p. 85: “When I say ‘I,’ I mean myself as this singular, quite determinate person. But when I say ‘I,’ I do not in fact express anything particular about myself. Anyone else is also ‘I,’ and although in calling myself ‘I,’ I certainly mean me, this single person, what I say is still something completely universal.” Hegel, PhS, p. 62; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 86–87. Translation slightly modified. Hegel, PhS, pp. 62–63; Jub., vol. 2, p. 87. Hegel, PhS, p. 63; Jub., vol. 2, p. 88. Translation slightly modified. In this passage, Hegel is playing on words again. In German the past participle of the verb “sein,” “to be” is “gewesen,” which is etymologically related to the word “Wesen” or “essence.” Thus, something which has been or no longer is has, so to speak, no essence.



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specific moment of contact between the subject and the object with the word “Now” since the “Now” is a universal term. The same movement happens with the spatial term of the point of contact, the new “Here.” The particular space in which the interaction between subject and object occurs becomes a plurality of “Heres”: “The Here pointed out, to which I hold fast, is similarly a this Here which, in fact, is not this Here, but a Before and Behind, an Above and Below, a Right and Left. The Above is itself similarly this manifold otherness of the above, below, etc.”124 Natural consciousness is unable to express the particular spatial point of contact with the universal term. Once again the particularity collapses into universality. The upshot of Hegel’s analysis in “Sense-Certainty” is that “pure being” cannot be used to determine a particular object since it is too general. It is simply undetermined universality. Every time natural consciousness tries to use it to determine some particular object, the object’s particularity is dissolved. The particular or determinate “This” or “I” invariably collapses into the universality of pure being. Hegel writes: “And what consciousness will learn from experience in all sense-certainty is, in truth, only what we have seen, viz. the This as a universal, the very opposite of what that assertion affirmed to be universal experience.”125 It is a matter of expressing accurately the particularity of the object. One means to refer to an individual object but is unable to pick it out or designate it in its particularity with the category of pure being. These linguistic descriptions of particularity always rely on universal terms that destroy the particular nature of the object intended. This is where the dialectic ends at the conclusion of the “Sense-Certainty” section, and it is the job of the rest of the Phenomenology to resolve the problems of universality and particularity that have their origin here. B. Johannes Climacus, Language, and Consciousness. With this background, I now return to Kierkegaard’s discussion. The similarities with Hegel begin almost straightaway with the discussion of immediacy. Kierkegaard writes, again describing the thought of Johannes Climacus: He asked what the nature of consciousness would be when it had doubt outside itself. There is consciousness in the child, but it has doubt outside itself. How then, is the child’s consciousness qualified? It is actually not qualified at all, which can also be expressed by saying that it is immediate. Immediacy is precisely indeterminateness. In immediacy there is no relation, for as soon as there is a relation immediacy is cancelled. Immediately, therefore, everything is true, but this truth is untruth the very next moment, for in immediacy everything is untrue.126 124 126

125 Hegel, PhS, p. 65; Jub., vol. 2, p. 90. Hegel, PhS, p. 64; Jub., vol. 2, p. 89. JC, p. 167; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 145–146. Translation slightly modified.


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This could well be a synopsis of Hegel’s discussion of immediacy in “SenseCertainty.” Natural consciousness believes it had an immediate relation to its object, and thus that everything is immediately true. But yet this immediacy turns out to be indeterminate since the immediate, unqualified object for consciousness – pure being – is indeterminate. Natural consciousness learns that its relation to the object is mediated. The temporal term “Now” is mediated by other temporal terms, “before,” “after,” “day,” “night,” and so on. Likewise, the spatial term “Here” is mediated by other spatial terms, “above,” “below,” “to the right,” and so on. Thus, what appeared to be immediately known in fact relies on a whole network of terms and concepts. The question of truth and doubt only arises after the stage of immediacy where there is no doubt and therefore no true or false. Kierkegaard then goes on to introduce two new terms – reality [Realitet] and ideality – which at first glance seem to have nothing to do with Hegel’s analysis. Yet when viewed in context, these terms are clearly meant to capture precisely the contradiction between universality and particularity that is portrayed in “Sense-Certainty.” Kierkegaard writes: “Immediacy is reality; language is ideality; consciousness is contradiction. The moment I make a statement about reality, contradiction is present, for what I say is ideality.”127 Kierkegaard alludes to Hegel’s analysis of the inability to specify the particular object in words or language. The “This” is indeterminate since it expresses everything and not the particular “This” or object it is intended to express. The particularity of the object is what Kierkegaard calls “reality,” while the attempt to express it in language is what he calls “ideality.” The connection to Hegel’s analysis is even more obvious when Kierkegaard writes: “In reality by itself there is no possibility of doubt; when I express it in language, contradiction is present, since I do not express it but produce something else.”128 One cannot express the particular in language, which is a system of universal terms because in the attempt to do so the particular is transformed into something universal. Kierkegaard writes: Therefore, it is language that cancels immediacy; if man could not talk he would remain in the immediate. This could be expressed, he [ Johannes Climacus] thought, by saying that the immediate is reality, language is ideality, since by speaking I produce the contradiction. When I seek to express sense perception in this way, the contradiction is present, for what I say is something different from what I want to say. I cannot express reality in language, because I use ideality to characterize it, which is a contradiction, an untruth.129

127 129

128 JC, p. 168; Pap. IV B 1, p. 146. JC, p. 168; Pap. IV B 1, p. 147. JC, Supplement, p. 255; Pap. IV B 14.6; JP, vol. 3, 2320.



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This is strikingly similar to Hegel’s formulation of the same thought. In his conclusion, Hegel uses an example of a piece of paper to explain the result of this analysis: They mean “this” bit of paper on which I am writing – or rather have written – “this”; but what they mean is not what they say. If they actually wanted to say “this” bit of paper which they mean, if they wanted to say it, then this is impossible, because the sensuous This that is meant cannot be reached by language, which belongs to consciousness, i.e. to that which is inherently universal.130

The similarity in these two passages establishes another parallel between the two analyses. In both cases the issue concerns the inability to express the particular, which is intended, with the universal terms of language. Another point of contact is Kierkegaard’s characterization of consciousness as the contradiction that unites the two terms “reality” and “ideality” or, for Hegel, “particular” and “universal.” Kierkegaard writes: “The duplexity is reality and ideality; consciousness is the relation.”131 For Hegel as well, consciousness plays the key role: it is consciousness that attempts to formulate the truth claims, and it is for consciousness that the contradiction arises. This is an express part of Hegel’s phenomenological method according to which contradictions arise since both terms – the object and the concept – are united in consciousness: “For consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of the object, and on the other hand, consciousness of itself; consciousness of what for it is the true, and consciousness of its knowledge of the truth. Since both are for the same consciousness, this consciousness is itself their comparison.”130 There would be no contradiction if the two conflicting terms were not both members of the same consciousness. Thus, Kierkegaard claims: “The possibility of doubt, then, lies in consciousness, whose nature is a contradiction that is produced by a duplexity and that itself produces a duplexity.”133 Kierkegaard also mentions Hegel’s doctrine of reflection in his discussion. For Hegel, reflection is the second stage of logic in which concepts are conceived as having two elements that are “reflected” into each other (e.g., substance and accident, cause and effect, essence and appearance). For Hegel these elements are dialectically related to each other and form a single concept. Kierkegaard writes: “Reflection is the possibility of the relation; consciousness is the relation, the first form of which is contradiction.”134 Kierkegaard distinguishes between reflection, which always involves two terms, and consciousness, which involves three – the subject and object and their relation. Here as well he follows Hegel’s doctrine. For Hegel, 130 132 134

Hegel, PhS, p. 66; Jub., vol. 2, p. 91. Hegel, PhS, p. 54; Jub., vol. 2, p. 77. JC, p. 169; Pap. IV B 1, p. 147.

131 133

JC, p. 168; Pap. IV B 1, p. 146. JC, p. 168; Pap. IV B 1, p. 146.


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reflection is only a finite part of his philosophical system and not the final word. Thus, Hegel also criticizes reflection as limited. Kierkegaard then notes that the threefold relation of consciousness contains within it the binary relation of the reflection. The conclusion for Kierkegaard is that the threefold relation is necessary for doubt: “If there were nothing but dichotomies, doubt would not exist, for the possibility of doubt resides precisely in the third, which places the two in relation to each other.”135 On this issue Kierkegaard follows Hegel closely. His emphasis on a threefold movement instead of a binary one bears an obvious resemblance to Hegel’s methodology. It is unfortunate that Part Two of De Omnibus is only fragmentary. Here Kierkegaard displays a careful study of at least one small part of Hegel’s philosophical corpus. Perhaps surprisingly for some, he is not critical of Hegel’s account here136 but in fact follows it so closely that his analysis at times amounts to a paraphrase. Kierkegaard introduces some of his own terminology, but the issues involved are clearly the same. While Kierkegaard frames the discussion in the context of skeptical doubt, this is not a guiding issue in Hegel. Nonetheless the similarities between the two accounts can hardly be denied. The fact that Kierkegaard offers no criticism of Hegel here in Part Two seems to confirm the results of the analysis of Part One, namely that his criticism is of Martensen and not of Hegel. Indeed, it hardly makes sense for him to criticize Hegel in Part One and then go on in Part Two to give a careful, approving analysis of a difficult part of Hegel’s epistemology. What is interesting about De Omnibus is that it illustrates the difference in Kierkegaard’s mind between Hegel and Hegelians. First, the issue of skeptical doubt is mistakenly presented by the Hegelian Martensen as an aspect of Hegel’s philosophy. This issue is made the object of satire in the work. There are at least two possible interpretations of this: either Kierkegaard, out of an ignorance of Hegel’s own philosophy, thought he was criticizing Hegel, when in fact he was criticizing Martensen’s account of him, or he intended all along to criticize Martensen and was interested only secondarily in Hegel’s own thought. The analysis given here clearly supports the latter view. If one concentrates on the text itself, one finds no indication that Kierkegaard sees himself as carrying on a polemic of any kind with Hegel. Moreover, his careful analysis of “Sense-Certainty” in Part Two is difficult to square with the view that he was ignorant of Hegel’s 135 136

JC, p. 169; Pap. IV B 1, p. 148. Kierkegaard does at the very end sketch a criticism of the attempt to answer doubt systematically. In this regard he contrasts ancient skepticism with modern skepticism. However, the criticism here seems more relevant for Descartes and the question of doubt than for Hegel’s philosophical project which, as has been seen above, is not concerned with the issue of skeptical doubt. See JC, p. 170; Pap. IV B 1, p. 149.



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dialectical methodology. This is especially difficult to imagine when one considers that Hegel’s discussion of this methodology comes in the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit, which immediately precedes the “Sense-Certainty” chapter, precisely the section of text that Kierkegaard analyzes so attentively. Thus, it is very improbable that he overlooked Hegel’s Introduction completely. Second, there is a perhaps conscious change between the two parts of De Omnibus where Kierkegaard shifts from an account of Martensen to an analysis of Hegel’s primary text. While he spends virtually all of the first part criticizing the Hegelian Martensen, in the second part he turns to a section of one of Hegel’s own works, and the tone changes considerably. The satirical tone from Part One disappears as do most of the narrative aspects. Instead of telling a story as he did in Part One, Kierkegaard seems in Part Two to have forgotten the narrative and to be simply doing philosophy. The analysis in Part Two is clearly of the “SenseCertainty” chapter in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This would seem to afford Kierkegaard with a golden opportunity to criticize or satirize Hegel if he wished to do so. But surprisingly, the tone in this section is neither critical nor satirical. Instead, Kierkegaard approvingly repeats in his own words the essentials of Hegel’s analysis. This is striking in a text that is otherwise so overtly directed against a known Hegelian, Martensen. Once again the conclusion can only be that Kierkegaard’s argument is not with Hegel but with Martensen. The overall goal of the text seems to be to indicate both the hypocrisy of Martensen’s claim to doubt everything and the way in which this claim misleads the students. There is an interesting passage in a draft of The Concept of Anxiety, which appeared on June 17, 1844, not long after Kierkegaard worked on De Omnibus. There Kierkegaard writes: “philosophers have never quite surrendered to the negative and thus have never earnestly done what they have said. They merely flirt with doubt.”137 Here he alludes to Martensen and his students vaguely with the word “philosophers” and indicates Martensen’s hypocrisy by saying that he has never done what he said. Martensen says that one should doubt everything and indeed claims that this is a necessary precondition for philosophy, but he himself never applies the principle. Moreover, those students who are so naive as to take Martensen’s injunction seriously and actually try to apply it, end up in utter confusion. This is the dilemma of Johannes Climacus. He has been seduced by Martensen who merely flirts with doubt. There are a number of similarities between De Omnibus and the other main unpublished text from this initial period, namely The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars. Most obviously, both of these texts take aim 137

CA, Supplement, p. 176; SKS, vol. 19, p. 211, Not7:21; JP, vol. 3, 3284. See CA, p. 146fn.; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 445–446fn.


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at Martensen and his students. (1) Thus, it is no accident that both texts have as their setting the university milieu in Copenhagen. In De Omnibus, Johannes Climacus constantly recalls things that he has heard from the recent philosophers in the lecture hall. In the Soap-Cellars the reader is taken into the “the Prytaneum” for a first-hand taste of the philosophical discussions which are carried out in Hegelian jargon. By portraying different aspects of the student scene in Copenhagen, Kierkegaard is able to criticize Martensen in his capacity as a teacher and a zealot for Hegel’s philosophy. (2) Both texts are written in a literary form and not a standard philosophical or theological one. The Soap-Cellars is a comedy, and De Omnibus is a kind of satirical novel. Kierkegaard could have attacked Martensen openly as the anonymous critic in Kjøbenhavnsposten did, but this was not his preferred style. His polemics against Martensen could be best carried out in more literary genres. Instead of attacking Martensen with a moralistic article, Kierkegaard devises the idea of a satirical novel that traces the hapless career of one of Martensen’s students. In this way he can make a study of the negative results of Martensen’s influence. Moreover, this allows him to criticize Martensen indirectly, a technique he continues to employ until the attack on the Church in the final year of his life, when he turns to a direct attack on Martensen. (3) Even though the criticism in the Soap-Cellars and De Omnibus is indirect, Kierkegaard is still careful to include in both texts unmistakable references to Martensen. Thus, in both texts he avails himself of the Cartesian slogans “cogito ergo sum” and “de omnibus dubitandum est.” As has been seen, these slogans were taken from Martensen’s published works and lectures and would presumably have been immediately recognized by his contemporaries. This use of code words is typical of Kierkegaard’s strategy of criticizing his opponents indirectly. (4) While the goal of both works is to satirize Martensen, the things for which he is satirized are slightly different. In the Soap-Cellars, the criticism seems to be more flippant. Kierkegaard seems to want to make fun of the affected Hegelian language used the discussions among Martensen’s students. He wants to satirize their naive zeal and arrogance in defending the new trend. By contrast, in De Omnibus his criticism is aimed much more specifically at Martensen’s pretension to have doubted everything. The argument seems to be that Martensen’s claim that one must doubt everything in order to philosophize ultimately has a negative effect on any student naive enough to believe it. Thus, Martensen is portrayed as someone who corrupts the minds of the young people with irresponsible slogans of this kind, which even he himself does not take seriously. The character of Johannes Climacus is supposed to demonstrate the negative effects of one who does take it seriously.



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(5) Neither the Soap-Cellars nor De Omnibus was ever completed or published. This might be an indication of the fact that they were written more for Kierkegaard’s private amusement than for wider public consumption. One can also well imagine that it would have been rather uncomfortable for him vis-à-vis Martensen and his students if these works had appeared in print and he had become known as the author. It is perhaps no accident that Martensen’s critic in Kjøbenhavnsposten was anonymous. Given the foregoing analyses, it seems safe to conclude that De Omnibus belongs to what I have designated as the first period in Kierkegaard’s authorship. This period, which includes all of the texts examined in this investigation up until now, is characterized by Kierkegaard’s generally positive disposition towards Hegel. In all of these works (e.g., From the Papers of One Still Living, The Concept of Irony, and Either/Or), as in De Omnibus, he incorporates and positively uses some aspect of Hegel’s thought. In all of these works there is clear evidence of a study of some of Hegel’s primary texts. Moreover, there is no anti-Hegel campaign or any trace of a polemic against Hegel himself. To be sure, there are criticisms of various aspects of Hegel’s analyses here and there (e.g., in The Concept of Irony), but the tone is always that of someone in an honest dialogue with another thinker. There is give-and-take and a clear recognition of the aspects of Hegel’s thought that Kierkegaard is in agreement with. In none of these texts is there a one-sided rejection of Hegel or an unqualified Hegel critique, as Thulstrup would have it. Traditionally, the two satirical texts the Soap-Cellars and De Omnibus have been regarded as exceptions to this general pattern since they seem at first glance to contain precisely the kind of polemical rhetoric that one has taken to be a part of the anti-Hegel campaign and thus to be directed against Hegel’s philosophy. The enigmatic nature of some of the allusions has fostered this view and allowed it to continue more or less unchallenged. But the analysis of these texts has shown that in fact they were not aimed at Hegel at all but rather at Martensen. This becomes unambiguous once the obscure allusions have been traced. Moreover, the context of both works as a criticism of the student milieu surrounding Martensen’s lectures also makes clear that the actual critique that the works aim at has nothing to do with Hegel, even though some of his language or key expressions from his philosophy might be present (e.g., absolute knowing and the bad infinity). Thus, nothing in these works disqualifies them from being categorized along with the others that belong to what I am designating as the first period in Kierkegaard’s authorship. It will be noted that Kierkegaard’s relation to the different Danish Hegelians even during this early period is quite complex. Right from the beginning he is critical of Martensen as is evinced quite clearly from journal entries and from the two unpublished satirical texts, the Soap-Cellars


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and De Omnibus. In his article “Public Confession” from June 12, 1842, he is also critical of the Hegelians Rasmus Nielsen, Peter Michael Stilling, and Andreas Frederik Beck.138 But although during this early period he is critical of these Hegelians, he is quite positively disposed towards Heiberg, the most zealous Hegelian of them all. In this same article in which Kierkegaard takes the others to task, he goes out of his way to tip his hat to Heiberg, a fact that he himself mentions explicitly later.139 Heiberg also plays a positive role in From the Papers of One Still Living and Either/Or. Similarly, Kierkegaard was a close friend of Hans Brøchner (his second cousin), who was known for his translations of the Strauss works and for his defense of his right to hold the views of a free thinker.140 Brøchner’s left Hegelianism did not seem to get in the way of the friendship. Thus, Kierkegaard’s criticism of the Hegelians – Martensen, Nielsen, Stilling, and Beck – seems to be at least in part independent of their being Hegelians. For if he had an adamant objection to their Hegelianism, he would presumably also have had the same objection to the Hegelianism of Heiberg and Brøchner. Most importantly for the purposes of this study, while the SoapCellars, “Public Confession,” and De Omnibus criticize specific Hegelians, there is still no polemical tone vis-à-vis Hegel himself. On the contrary, Kierkegaard is consistently careful to distinguish between Hegel and the true targets of his critique. For example, in “Public Confession” he criticizes Rasmus Nielsen for his imitation of Hegel’s philosophy and then writes: “We cannot go backward; Hegel’s Logic has stood the test of Prof. Nielsen’s thought.”141 It is clearly Nielsen and Nielsen alone whom he wants to criticize. Similar examples have been seen in Either/Or. Given that De Omnibus was written towards the end of 1842 and the beginning of 1843 and thus overlaps with Either/Or, which appeared on February 20, 1843, it is not surprising that their respective discussions about Hegel’s philosophy also overlap at one important point. In Judge Wilhelm’s criticism of the “young necromancers” who have forgotten the central ethical questions of their own life one can see a portrait of Martensen’s students. The discussion about the doctrine of mediation in Hegel from the second volume of Either/Or has traditionally been taken as a straightforward criticism of the point in Hegel’s logic. As has been demonstrated,142 however, it has much more to do with the contemporary Danish discussion of the issue and the student milieu in Copenhagen. This discussion from Either/Or thus clearly overlaps with De Omnibus. 138 139 140 141 142

In COR, pp. 3–12; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 397–406; Fædrelandet, no. 904, June 12, 1842. JP, vol. 5, 6201; Pap. IX A 166. See S.V. Rasmussen, Den unge Brøchner, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1966, pp. 16–31. In COR, p. 8; SV1, vol. 13, p. 402; Fædrelandet, no. 904, June 12, 1842. In Chapter 4, Section II.



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The connection between the two texts is clinched when one sees that the main themes of De Omnibus appear in Either/Or. Judge Wilhelm issues the following criticism: This, I believe, ought to be borne in mind in regard to the enthusiasm of despair with which our age hears the acquired recommended in contrast to the immediate, as if it were this it depended upon to destroy everything lock, stock, and barrel in order to build anew. It has really made me uneasy to hear the jubilation with which younger men, just like the terrorists in the French Revolution, shout: de omnibus dubitandum. Perhaps I am prejudiced. But I do believe, however, that we must distinguish between personal and scientific doubt.143

Here one finds a reference to the “younger men,” presumably Martensen’s students, who are mentioned directly in connection with the slogan “de omnibus dubitandum est.” The young people are criticized for their overenthusiasm and their self-congratulation in overthrowing what is given and starting from the ground up. In the final sentence a distinction is suggested “between personal and scientific doubt.” This distinction is what Johannes Climacus is missing in De Omnibus. He takes a claim about Cartesian scientific doubt to be one about personal doubt. In other words, the slogan “de omnibus dubitandum est” is intended to be a statement about a specific philosophical procedure or method and was never intended to be applied in some more literal sense to one’s own life. In the Preface to Fear and Trembling, Johannes de silentio is careful to point out that Descartes also made this essential distinction.144 The point in De Omnibus seems to be that Martensen has not made this distinction sufficiently clear and has thus misled his students. Given these connections it seems that Either/Or and De Omnibus can both be seen as belonging to the first period of Kierkegaard’s authorship with regard to his relation to Hegel. In both cases the target is Martensen and his students. Moreover, both texts include and incorporate positive elements from Hegel’s philosophy. While Kierkegaard can be said to be engaged in a very active campaign against Martensen at this point in his authorship, there is nothing to indicate that he was engaged in any such campaign against Hegel. Despite all of the criticisms of Martensen and the other Hegelians, Hegel himself is still regarded as a positive source of ideas and inspiration at this point. 143 144

EO2, p. 95; SKS, vol. 3, p. 97. See also EO2, pp. 211–212; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 203–204. FT, pp. 5–6; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 101–102.

P1: ILM/IKJ P2: ILM/IKJ QC: ILM/IKJ T1: ILM CY232-07 0521828384 May 26, 1904 20:22

6 KIERKEGAARD’S REPETITION AND HEGEL’S DIALECTICAL MEDIATION

After Either/Or the next two pseudonymous works to appear were Fear and Trembling and Repetition, which were both published on October 16, 1843 (the same day that Three Edifying Discourses appeared in Kierkegaard’s own name). These two works introduced two new pseudonyms into the authorship: Johannes de silentio of Fear and Trembling and Constantin Constantius of Repetition. I will treat Repetition first since I wish to establish the connections between it and De Omnibus. Repetition seems to have been written in part during Kierkegaard’s short stay in Berlin in May of 1843 and in part upon his return to Copenhagen.1 The concept of repetition is a central one for Kierkegaard. Prior to the book Repetition, the concept appears in Either/Or and De Omnibus and then after it in The Concept of Anxiety. Moreover, repetition seems to be linked closely to other well-known Kierkegaardian concepts such as “the paradox” and “the moment.” Although it is a central concept, it was relatively short lived in Kierkegaard’s total authorship. It spans the period from Either/Or (February 20, 1843) to The Concept of Anxiety ( June 17, 1844), after which it virtually disappears. In this chapter I will limit myself to an analysis of the concept of repetition only as it is relevant for Kierkegaard’s understanding of and relation to Hegel. Thus, I cannot in this context treat the concept itself exhaustively and am obliged to omit an extended analysis of many of its important aspects.2 At first glance the book, Repetition, seems not to have much to do with Hegel’s thought. There is only a single direct allusion to Hegel in the entire text. Thus, there might not seem to be any particular connection between Hegel and the notion of repetition. However, there are two reasons to think that this concept is relevant for Kierkegaard’s use, 1 2

Henrik Blicher, “Tekstredegørelse” to Gjentagelsen in SKS, vol. K4, especially pp. 12–28. For an excellent and very complete study of this concept in Kierkegaard generally, see Dorothea Glöckner’s Kierkegaards Begriff der Wiederholung (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 3), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1998.

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repetition and dialectical mediation

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understanding and criticism of Hegel’s philosophy. First, the concept appears in Part Two of Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, where Kierkegaard analyzes Hegel’s account of “Sense-Certainty.” This juxtaposition can hardly be regarded as accidental. Second, in the lone direct reference to Hegel in the book, Repetition, the concept is associated with the Hegel’s concept of mediation: “repetition proper is what has mistakenly been called mediation.”3 It seems to be a point of general consensus in the secondary literature that the concept of repetition is meant as a criticism of this Hegelian concept. Thus, both Either/Or and Repetition are concerned with this well-known Hegelian principle, the former with a negative claim about the limits of the scope of mediation and the latter with a positive doctrine. Hegel’s conception of dialectic and mediation therefore seems to be central to Kierkegaard’s general interests at least during this period of the authorship. I wish to argue that, strangely enough, Kierkegaard’s original source for the concept of repetition was Hegel himself. Thus, Kierkegaard uses one aspect of Hegel’s philosophy, develops it, and then uses it to criticize another aspect of that same philosophy. This ambivalence is typical of his complicated relation to Hegel. One interesting aspect of the book, Repetition, is that it was discussed and criticized by Heiberg in an article called “The Astronomical Year,” from his journal Urania in 1844.4 The article is ostensibly concerned with the regularities and repetitions of nature, and in this context he comes to mention Kierkegaard’s book. Heiberg is, generally speaking, quite positive in his assessment of Kierkegaard’s work, yet he claims that it misunderstands the notion of repetition by applying it to the realm of spirit and not to that of nature, where it properly belongs. As with Heiberg’s review of Either/Or, Kierkegaard took this criticism of Repetition very badly. His journals are full of drafts of a response to Heiberg which he never published. These drafts are useful since Kierkegaard’s own conception is clarified in his attempt to respond to Heiberg’s criticism. In a long footnote in The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard under a different pseudonym, Vigilius Haufniensis, discusses both the concept of repetition and the book Repetition, and responds specifically to Heiberg’s discussion.5 This polemic with Heiberg is helpful in that it forces Kierkegaard to elaborate on his notion of repetition as well as on his intentions with the book. But it should be noted that Heiberg’s critique has nothing to do with his Hegelianism per se and that Kierkegaard’s response

3 4

5

R, p. 148; SKS, vol. 4, p. 25. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det astronomiske Aar,” Urania, 1844, pp. 77–160. ASKB U 57. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 9, pp. 51– 130.) CA, pp. 17–19fn.; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 324–327fn.


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cannot be construed as a criticism of Hegel as some commentators have thought.6 Although the book Repetition itself will constitute the focus of the present chapter, it will be necessary to examine Kierkegaard’s use of the concept of repetition in other works. Thus, I will begin by briefly examining the account of repetition that is given in the second part of De Omnibus. I will try to show that this account is indebted to Hegel’s analysis of “Sense-Certainty” in the Phenomenology of Spirit. In the second section I will give an account of Kierkegaard’s conception of repetition as an ethical concept that is used in contrast to recollection and hope. I will try to argue that this aspect of the concept of repetition is a continuation of the discussion in Either/Or where the criticism of Hegel’s principle of mediation was not so much metaphysical as moral. In the third section, I will explore Kierkegaard’s conception of repetition as an alternative to Hegelian mediation with regard to the metaphysical question of motion. Finally, in the fourth section I will explore the various religious aspects of the notion of repetition. Although I will concentrate primarily on Kierkegaard’s discussion in the book Repetition, I will also have recourse to his journals and papers where his response to Heiberg is to be found. I will argue that Repetition reflects Kierkegaard’s ongoing considerations about the principle of mediation in Hegel’s philosophy. While in Either/Or there was a moral criticism of the followers of Hegel’s philosophy who were blinded by this principle, in Repetition one finds a metaphysical criticism of the principle itself, specifically in the context of the problem of motion. But the odd thing about this criticism is that Kierkegaard derives the very concept of repetition from Hegel himself.

i. the contradiction of consciousness in de omnibus Kierkegaard introduces the notion of repetition in the last few pages of Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est.7 As was seen in the previous chapter, there he discusses Hegel’s account of “Sense-Certainty” from the “Consciousness” chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit and goes on to posit the thesis, borrowed from Hegel, that consciousness is “a relation whose form is contradiction.”8 He associates the idea of contradiction

6

7 8

E.g., John D. Caputo, “Repetition and Kinesis: Kierkegaard on the Foundering of Metaphysics,” in his Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and the Hermeneutic Project, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1987, pp. 19–20. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, p. 348, p. 350. JC, pp. 171–172; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 149–150. JC, p. 171; Pap. IV B 1, p. 149.


the contradiction of consciousness in de omnibus 285 in this context with the notion of repetition. His claim is that the contradiction is first present with the concept of repetition: “immediately there is no collision, but mediately it is present. As soon as the question of a repetition arises, the collision is present, for only a repetition of what has been before is conceivable.”9 Thus, the concept of repetition arises surprisingly in his explication of this analysis from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Before I look at the argument, it must be recalled that in that account Kierkegaard is working with the distinction between actuality (or reality) and ideality, the former being the empirical realm of existence and life, and the latter, the realm of abstract thought and concepts. This is important since these two terms determine the structure of the argument here. Kierkegaard explains the claim about repetition and the contradiction of consciousness with a three-step argument. The first step is as follows: “In reality [Realiteten] as such, there is no repetition.”10 He explains that reality only exists in a single moment and not over an extended period of time. Thus, nothing can be repeated in a single moment since repetition implies a previous moment when the thing repeated happened the first time. For there to be a repetition, there must be an original first instance: “If the world, instead of being beauty, were nothing but equally large unvariegated boulders, there would still be no repetition. Throughout all eternity, in every moment, I would see a boulder, but there would be no question as to whether it was the same one I had seen before.”11 In order to see the boulder as the same, one must step out of the single moment of existence and compare it with a previous moment. For true repetition an aspect of what Kierkegaard calls “ideality” is required; one must have the idea of a boulder in mind in order to determine whether or not a particular object is a boulder. The repetition lies in this categorization of a particular object under a universal or ideal. Without this ideal aspect, there is never any repetition since in the pure actuality of the moment there is only a plurality of individual, isolated moments with no connection to one another. Kierkegaard now moves to the second step in his argument, which is the opposite of the first, namely, “In ideality alone there is no repetition.”12 Ideality or the realm of ideas, which is the opposite of actuality, displays no repetition since it is eternal and unchanging: “the idea is and remains the same and as such it cannot be repeated.”13 For repetition to take place something must change between the first and the second moment of the repetition. There must be some aspect of difference. If there is no change, then there is only one moment and no repetition. 9 11 13

JC, p. 171; Pap. IV B 1, p. 149. JC, p. 171; Pap. IV B 1, p. 149. JC, p. 171; Pap. IV B 1, p. 150.

10 12

JC, p. 171; Pap. IV B 1, p. 149. JC, p. 171; Pap. IV B 1, pp. 149–150.


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Thus, in the realm of abstract ideas there is no repetition since there is no change. What is required is concrete mutable objects in the realm of actuality. Now Kierkegaard comes to his conclusion which brings together the first and the second claim. Since repetition can take place neither in actuality alone nor in ideality alone, it must take place in a synthesis of both: “When ideality and reality touch each other, then repetition occurs. When, for example, I see something in the moment, ideality enters in and will explain that it is a repetition.”14 Actuality is required for one to experience a particular event at a particular moment, and ideality is required for one to associate that particular event with a previous one and thus to recognize it as an instance of repetition. Thus, both aspects are required for repetition: the particular empirical entity and the abstract ideal of which it is an instance. Kierkegaard describes this relation and the cooperative work of actuality and ideality as a contradiction; indeed, this is for him what characterizes the contradiction of consciousness: Here is the contradiction, for that which is, is also in another mode. That the external is, that I see, but in the same instant I bring it into relation with something that also is, something that is the same and that also will explain that the other is the same. Here is a redoubling; here it is a matter of repetition. Ideality and reality therefore collide – in what medium? In time? That is indeed an impossibility. In eternity? That is indeed an impossibility. In what, then? In consciousness – there is the contradiction.15

There is an individual external object that one perceives. The object or event can be understood insofar as it can be ordered or categorized under some abstract concept. Thus, it can be conceived as a repetition of something else by virtue of an abstract concept that unites the two. The philosophical problem is how this takes place and how the universal or the ideal relates to the particular. Kierkegaard’s argumentation here follows the same form as the preceding analysis. This relation of actuality and ideality cannot take place in time (i.e., in the realm of mutable particulars) since there would then be no universal term to unite them. Likewise, it cannot take place in eternity (i.e., in the timeless realm of ideas) since then there would be no particular instances to unite. Kierkegaard concludes that the two terms – “ideality” and “reality” – must come together in consciousness. Their unity in consciousness is the contradiction. This is where the repetition takes place. What is striking about this analysis is how heavily it depends on Hegel’s account of “Sense-Certainty,” which is analyzed in the pages just before the passage where repetition is introduced. As will be recalled from the 14

JC, p. 171; Pap. IV B 1, p. 150.

15

JC, p. 171; Pap. IV B 1, p. 150.


the contradiction of consciousness in de omnibus 287 previous chapter, Hegel explored the contradiction between universal and particular that takes place when one tries to express in language an empirically perceived particular object. What is perceived is a particular, but what is said is a universal – a tree, a house, and so on. It is the sphere of empirical particularity that Kierkegaard calls “actuality” or “reality” and the sphere of language and universality that he calls “ideality.” He writes: “Intrinsically there is already a contradiction between reality and ideality; the one provides the particular defined in time and space, the other the universal.”16 Hegel’s distinction between universal and particular is at least a part of what Kierkegaard means by ideality and reality. When Kierkegaard says that repetition is the contradiction of consciousness, he is in effect simply repeating Hegel’s thesis in the “Sense-Certainty” chapter. Hegel says that consciousness is caught in a contradiction since it cannot say what it means (i.e., it means the particular, but it says the universal). He writes: “Of course, we do not envisage the universal This or Being in general, but we utter the universal; in other words, we do not strictly say what in this sense-certainty we mean to say.”17 Following Hegel completely, Kierkegaard says: “The moment I make a statement about reality, contradiction is present, for what I say is ideality.”18 The contradiction that Kierkegaard speaks of is clearly the same as that pointed out by Hegel – the inability of language to capture the particularity of empirical experience. Even Hegel’s way of arguing is imitated by Kierkegaard. As was seen in the previous chapter, first Hegel presumes that the truth lies in the particularity of the object (i.e., in actuality), and this proves to be mistaken. Then he presumes that it lies in the cognition of the thinking subject, but this also proves to be mistaken. Finally, the third phase arises: “SenseCertainty thus comes to know by experience that its essence is neither in the object nor in the ‘I,’ and that its immediacy is neither an immediacy of the one nor of the other.”19 The truth is posited in the unity of both terms – the object and the subject. Kierkegaard’s argument follows a similar form. First, he argues that there is no repetition in the realm of actuality on its own.20 Then he argues similarly that there is no repetition in the realm of ideality on its own.21 Finally, the claim is that repetition 16 18 20

21

17 Hegel, PhS, p. 60; Jub., vol. 2, p. 84. JC, Supplement, p. 257; Pap. IV B 10.7. 19 Hegel, PhS, p. 62; Jub., vol. 2, p. 86. JC, p. 168; Pap. IV B 1, p. 146. This first claim, that in actuality there is no repetition since each moment begins anew and there is no continuity, is also borrowed from Hegel: “The Now is pointed to, this Now. ‘Now’; it has already ceased to be in the act of pointing to it. The Now that is, is another Now than the one pointed to” (PhS, p. 63; Jub., vol. 2, p. 88). In other words, in the immediate realm of actuality nothing holds firm. As with Kierkegaard’s example of boulders, there is simply plurality and no repetition. N.b. that this second stage differs from Hegel’s in that Kierkegaard is concerned here with abstract ideas, whereas for Hegel the “I” of the second stage is thought to be a particular.


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takes place in the unity of both terms – “actuality” and “ideality” – just as for Hegel the third stage is the unity of subject and object. What Kierkegaard calls “repetition,” at least in this context, is what Hegel means by the relation of universality to particularity. The only way one can recognize a sensible particular as a repetition is by virtue of a universal concept that one already possesses. Without universals there would be no repetition since there would only be a plurality of dissimilar particulars. By the same token, without particulars there would be no repetition since there would be only eternal universals, which could never repeat. Thus, repetition can take place only in the relationship between the two. This can be regarded as the epistemological groundwork for the notion of repetition, a groundwork that Kierkegaard borrows from Hegel. This conclusion – that the notion of repetition arises from an analysis of Hegel’s discussion of consciousness – is striking since Kierkegaard seems ultimately to want to use the notion of repetition to criticize Hegel’s notion of mediation.

ii. repetition as an ethical concept The opening pages of Repetition present a preliminary reflection on the concept of repetition itself.22 Its primary aspect seems to be ethical in the broadest sense of the term. That the concept repetition is essential for ethics is confirmed later in the text when Constantin Constantius writes: “repetition is the watchword in every ethical view.”23 In this context it is contrasted to the concepts of recollection and hope; the point of this contrast seems to be that repetition is the superior concept with respect to ethics. It is hailed as the secret to life and happiness. In Either/Or Judge Wilhelm addresses the esthete with regard to this topic: “You . . . will certainly agree with me . . . that people are divided into two great classes: those who live predominantly in hope and those who live predominantly in recollection. Both indicate an improper relation to time.”24 There he mentions the term “repetition” without elaborating on it.25 The discussion here in Repetition can thus be seen as the continuation of this one initiated in Either/Or. In this section I wish to try to show that this aspect of the doctrine of repetition can be seen as an extension of Judge Wilhelm’s 22 24 25

23 R, p. 149; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 25–26. R, pp. 131–133; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 9–11. EO2, p. 142; SKS, vol. 3, p. 140. EO2, p. 141; SKS, vol. 3, p. 140: “The source of your unhappiness is that you locate the essence of love simply and solely in these visible symbols. If these are to be repeated again and again . . . then it is no wonder that you are uneasy . . . for if what gave [these symbols] validity was the condition of being the first time, then a repetition is indeed an impossibility. But true love has an utterly different value; it does its work in time and therefore will be able to review itself in these external signs and has – this is my main point – a completely different idea of time and of the meaning of repetition.”


repetition as an ethical concept

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discussion of the notion of mediation.26 Thus, when seen as a moral concept, repetition can be conceived as an alternative to mediation. Constantin Constantius begins his discussion with a criticism of the notion of recollection. He contrasts recollection directly with the notion of repetition, which he says will replace it: “say what you will, this question will play a very important role in modern philosophy, for repetition is a crucial expression for what ‘recollection’ was to the Greeks. Just as they taught that all knowing is a recollecting, modern philosophy will teach that all life is a repetition.”27 Repetition is to be taken in connection not with abstract metaphysical issues but with life and human action: the Greeks use the notion of recollection in epistemology, whereas Constantius’ modern philosophy with its use of repetition is concerned with “life.” This is the first indication that Constantius is concerned to sketch repetition as a concept of ethics.28 He contrasts the two concepts in terms of their relation to the past and the future: “Repetition and recollection are the same movement, except in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated backward, whereas genuine repetition is recollected forward.”29 The idea seems to be that whenever one recollects, one is focused on a specific event in the past; but when one repeats an action in a habitual fashion, one is directed toward the future instances of the repetition, even though the original precedent for it lies in the past. The repetition takes place when a contemplated action becomes real. This contemplation prior to the action implies a relation to the future. Constantin Constantius contrasts the two concepts – repetition and recollection – in terms of the criterion of happiness. Once again he indicates that this is an ethical concept since he associates it with happiness, claiming that “repetition . . . makes a person happy, whereas recollection makes him unhappy.”30 He continues this contrast using as an example the relation of love, the central theme of Judge Wilhelm’s corresponding discussion. Constantius quotes from Part One of Either/Or saying: Recollection’s love, an author has said, is the only happy love. He is perfectly right in that, of course, provided one recollects that initially it makes a person unhappy. Repetition’s love is in truth the only happy love. Like recollection’s love, it does not have the restlessness of hope, the uneasy adventurousness of discovery, but neither does it have the sadness of recollection – it has the blissful security of the moment.31

Recollection of love cannot be truly happy for two reasons. First, to recall a love in the past implies that it no longer exists. Thus, this recollection 26 28 29 31

27 R, p. 131; SKS, vol. 4, p. 9. Treated in Chapter 4, Section II. What is unusual here is the positive way in which he uses the expression “modern philosophy,” which is usually a pejorative term intended to refer to the Danish Hegelians. 30 R, p. 131; SKS, vol. 4, p. 9. R, p. 131; SKS, vol. 4, p. 9. R, pp. 131–132; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 9–10. See EO1, p. 41; SKS, vol. 2, p. 50.


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is mixed with melancholy or regret since it is of a love which is in the past and not in the present. Nostalgia or recollection of a past love is ipso facto unsatisfying since it merely underscores the fact that it no longer exists. Second, the recollection of a love prior to its consummation is a painful one since it is of a restless and uncertain state when the outcome was in doubt. By contrast, repetition is “the blissful security of the moment.” When love is taken as a state and not as a process, then it can be conceived as the habitual repetition of specific actions in daily life. It would simply mean one’s usual interaction with the lover without the Sturm und Drang of an unconsummated or lost love. The state of love is in its stability a higher happiness than either recollection or hope. Constantius now turns to his criticism of hope, which is also contrasted with the concept of repetition. The point seems to be to indicate that hope is restless and unsatisfying, whereas repetition is stable and enjoyable: “Hope is a lovely maiden who slips away between one’s fingers; recollection is a beautiful old woman with whom one is never satisfied at the moment; repetition is a beloved wife of whom one never wearies, for one becomes weary only of what is new.”32 Here one can clearly hear something of the moralistic tone of Judge Wilhelm. Hope is vain since one is only frustrated and disappointed when it does not come to fulfillment as one anticipated. Constantius seems to imply that hope in marriage is a sign that one is bored with one’s love. It implies that one requires something new and exciting in order to sustain it. By contrast, love in repetition is a stable relation that does not require novelty in each new occurrence: “One never grows weary of the old, and when one has that, one is happy. He alone is truly happy who is not deluded into thinking that the repetition should be something new, for then one grows weary of it.”33 Thus, in contrast to hope and recollection, repetition is hailed as the highest form of ethical conduct – it is the staid day-to-day relation that one has with one’s spouse. One does not have vain hopes since repetition has already been consummated; likewise, one does not have nostalgic recollection since repetition is something that still exists and continues. Repetition is exalted as the secret of life since it avoids the disappointment of vain hope and the dissatisfaction and self-indulgence of recollection: “But he who does not grasp that life is a repetition and that this is the beauty of life has pronounced his own verdict and deserves nothing better than what will happen to him anyway – he will perish.”34 Moreover, Constantius continues: “Repetition . . . is actuality and the earnestness of existence.”35 It is actuality since it does not refer to a merely possible future as with hope; likewise, it is earnestness since it is mature 32 34

R, p. 132; SKS, vol. 4, p. 10. R, p. 132; SKS, vol. 4, p. 10.

33 35

R, p. 132; SKS, vol. 4, p. 10. R, p. 133; SKS, vol. 4, p. 11.


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and does not constantly crave what is novel. This analysis has a profoundly moralistic ring to it. Constantius criticizes hope and recollection in the way that the classical moralists criticize avarice and gluttony. Moral virtue inheres in repetition, whereas hope and recollection are the road to vice. At first glance it might seem as if this discussion of the concept of repetition as an ethical notion has nothing whatsoever to do with the account of it in De Omnibus, where it was regarded as an abstract principle of epistemology. However, upon closer examination, one can see that the same principle is at work in both analyses. The upshot of the analysis in De Omnibus was that there was a unity of abstract ideality and concrete particularity. There repetition was defined as this contradiction of consciousness. In the analysis in the book Repetition, the concept repetition is contrasted to recollection and hope. The stability of repetition comes from the fact that it is the unity of an abstract principle in the realm of ideality with one’s appropriation of it in one’s daily actions. Thus, there is a universality of thought connected to a particularity of action. Only with repetition is the universal connected to the particular. One begins with a universal principle, for example, the ideal of marriage. This principle is affirmed and taken up by those individuals who make it their own in the concrete actions of their daily lives. Repetition in this sense means appropriation.36 One interprets and appropriates abstract ideals in one’s actions. Thus, one has the unity of an abstract principle in the realm of ideality and a concrete action in the realm of actuality. Kierkegaard distinguishes three kinds of repetition in his journals. The version discussed here corresponds to the first kind, which he explains as follows: “When I am going to act, my action has existed in my consciousness in conception and thought – otherwise I act thoughtlessly – that is, I do not act.”37 An action performed without reflection or not informed by an ideal cannot be said to have any moral worth. Thus, Constantius says, without the category of repetition, “all life dissolves into an empty, meaningless noise.”38 The ideal aspect of action gives it its stability and ethical value. This unity of ideality and actuality was precisely the way in which repetition was described in the analysis in De Omnibus. Thus, the two analyses are in fact consistent and indeed complement each other. The ethical aspect of repetition can be regarded as a continuation of the discussion of mediation in Either/Or. It will be recalled that Judge 36

37 38

See Heiberg’s account of the notion of appropriation. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, IndledningsForedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1835, pp. 6–8. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 468–470.) R, Supplement, p. 326; SKS, vol. 18, p. 191, JJ:159.; JP, vol. 3, 3793. R, p. 149; SKS, vol. 4, p. 25.


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Wilhelm reproaches the followers of Hegel’s philosophy with being obsessed with the past and thus forgetting their ethical relations in the present. This is a result of the principle of mediation that leads the unwary to focus on the past in order to find specific principles that can be mediated. This leads the “young necromancers” away from a reflective relation to the present. This is, according to Judge Wilhelm, a mistaken relation to time. The positive model set up in contrast to the Hegelian principle of mediation with its concern with the past is Judge Wilhelm’s bourgeois conception of the married life. The judge indicates that virtue is to be found in the stable existence of marriage in a way that is consonant with the recommendation, made in Repetition, of repetition in the relation of love. Moreover, the example used here in Repetition of a relation of love clearly recalls the judge’s encomium for married life. The stable life of love in marriage is a forerunner of the concept of repetition. Indeed, as has been seen, the term itself is already mentioned in Judge Wilhelm’s discussion. Thus, while the contrasting terms to repetition – recollection and hope – are not associated with Hegel’s philosophy, the main issue of the appropriate relation to time does at some level concern the issue of mediation. This explains how repetition, when seen in its moral aspect, can be regarded as an alternative to mediation.

iii. repetition, mediation, and movement in logic As was noted previously, Constantin Constantius mentions Hegel directly and compares the notion of repetition with the Hegelian notion of mediation. Constantius in short order issues a number of criticisms of this doctrine of mediation: “it is incredible how much flurry has been made in Hegelian philosophy over mediation and how much foolish talk has enjoyed honor and glory under this rubric.”39 This discussion takes up (in a more direct way than the previous one) the analysis of Hegel’s doctrine of the Aufhebung of the law of excluded middle that began in Either/Or. Since this Hegelian doctrine and the contemporary Danish discussion of it were examined previously,40 I will forego an account of this here. In this section I will argue that Constantin Constantius intends the notion of repetition to be a more philosophically satisfying response to the problem of motion than Hegelian mediation. The main difference between the two, for Constantius, lies in the fact that mediation is immanent whereas repetition is transcendent; the former, he claims, reduces to a tautology, while the latter represents true movement. I wish to argue that the key to understanding this claim about repetition can be found in the analysis from De Omnibus where repetition is interpreted as the paradoxical unity of ideality and actuality. 39

R, p. 148; SKS, vol. 4, p. 25.

40

Chapter 4, Section II.


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Constantius’ frequent contrasting of “repetition” and “mediation” poses the main interpretative problem. How does Constantius conceive of the relation between these two concepts and why does he think that repetition is a more satisfactory philosophical concept than mediation? In Part Two of Repetition, just before the series of letters, Constantius takes up this issue and underscores the relevant aspects of repetition by which it can be contrasted with that of mediation. Both concepts are intended to solve the philosophical problem of motion, but to his mind only repetition does so adequately. At first he contrasts the concept to ancient Greek philosophy and its notion of recollection, and then he turns to “modern philosophy,” which is presumably a reference to Danish Hegelianism: “Modern philosophy makes no movement; as a rule it makes only a commotion, and if it makes any movement at all, it is always within immanence, whereas repetition is and remains a transcendence.”41 The notion of movement is, of course, connected to that of mediation in Hegel’s philosophy since it is through mediation that movement takes place. Individual concepts generate their opposites, and then these pairs of categories are mediated, thus producing new concepts. Thus, being produces its opposite, nothing, and the two opposites are united in a third concept, becoming. In this way there is a movement from one concept to the next.42 In the passage quoted Constantius indicates that while this sort of mediation is immanent, his notion of repetition is transcendent. In order to understand Constantius’ use of the terms “immanence” and “transcendence” in this context, one must first look at the claim that there is no movement in logic. At the beginning of his unpublished response to Heiberg, Kierkegaard, apparently still intending to use the pseudonym Constantin Constantius, takes up the issue of movement and specifically of its application in the field of logic. He writes: In our day some have gone so far that they have even wanted to have movement in logic. There they have called repetition “mediation.” But movement is a concept that logic simply cannot support. Mediation, therefore, must be understood in relation to immanence. Thus understood, mediation may not again be used at all in the sphere of freedom, where the subsequent always emerges – by virtue not of an immanence but of a transcendence.43

In this analysis one finds again the distinction from Either/Or between the sphere of freedom and that of necessity (i.e., between the realm of existence and that of abstract thinking and logic).44 Constantius indicates a confusion in the understanding of repetition as mediation. In Hegel’s 41 42 43 44

R, p. 186; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 56–57. This is explored in more detail in Chapter 9, Section IV. R, Supplement, p. 308; Pap. IV B 117, p. 288. EO2, pp. 170–176; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 166–172.


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dialectic there is a sense of repetition in that the various concepts and categories repeat themselves at the various levels in the system. Thus, for example, the category of being in the Seinslogik corresponds to the category of essence in the Wesenslogik. The category of being is aufgehoben in essence, which means that it receives a higher and richer meaning. Constantius claims that since movement in logic is only a movement of abstract categories, which are homogeneous entities, then this movement is an immanent movement of thought itself. It has no relation to anything outside of thought. This purely immanent movement in logic is, for Constantius, simply a mistake since no real change or movement actually takes place. The movement from one abstract category to another, he argues, is not genuine movement. Constantius indicates that repetition is his suggestion for a concept analogous to mediation but in the sphere of freedom. In doing so, Constantius again indicates that mediation and repetition are intended to do similar work. He writes: Therefore, the word “mediation” has contributed to a misunderstanding in logic, because it allowed a concept of movement to be attached to it. In the sphere of freedom, the word “mediation” has again done damage, because, coming from logic, it helped to make transcendence of movement illusory. In order to prevent this error or this dubious compromise between the logical and freedom, I have thought that “repetition” could be used in the sphere of freedom.45

Repetition is thus intended to rectify the misunderstanding about movement that the concept of mediation has propagated. The claim seems to be that by conceiving of movement only as a movement of abstract categories, Hegel’s philosophy neglects the movement that exists in what Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms call “the sphere of freedom.” Repetition is the appropriate concept for the sphere of freedom since it represents a relation of transcendence. Constantius’s thesis is that transcendence is a necessary feature of any account of real movement. Thus, the key is to understand the notion of transcendence that Constantius thinks is relevant for genuine movement in the sphere of freedom. In The Concept of Anxiety, Vigilius Haufniensis explains the aspect of transcendence as follows: “The history of the individual life proceeds in a movement from state to state. Every state is posited by a leap. As sin entered into the world, so it continues to enter into the world if it is not halted. Nevertheless, every such repetition is not a simple consequence but a new leap.”46 Each new state is a new beginning. It is transcendent with respect to the previous one.47 It does not lie 45 46 47

R, Supplement, p. 308; Pap. IV B 117, pp. 288–289. CA, p. 113; SKS, vol. 4, p. 415. See John D. Caputo, “Repetition and Kinesis,” op. cit., p. 18.


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in any necessary cause and effect relation with the previous state, and for this reason it is free. With respect to ethics, the criticism is that by conceiving of movement as necessary, Hegel eliminates the voluntarist or free element. One state smoothly and necessarily leads to the next, and there is no room for free will.48 This necessary movement is so subtle as to be no movement at all at least in comparison to a radical or voluntarist leap. This would seem to indicate that Kierkegaard has a Sartrean strain in that he believes each moment to be radically different from the past and that thus the individual is ultimately free to choose himself and his actions ex nihilo at each moment without being predetermined by his past. This interpretive option is problematic since it leaves Kierkegaard with a number of problems. For example, it seems to eliminate the very conception of a personal identity over time; what is left over is a schizophrenic individual with no continuity in his biography and self-image. If one understands by a person, someone who has the ability to see himself in a coherent development over time, then the view presented here would place the very concept of a person in danger. Moreover, this interpretation makes it difficult to explain the actual relation between the two terms of the repetition. For Kierkegaard movement implies a transcendent relation between two distinct things, whereas in logic movement takes place among abstract concepts that are all immanent to thought. Here the claim is that the relation between the moments of repetition (i.e., the original instance and its repetition) is a transcendent relation. The question that arises is how the second instance can be regarded as a “repetition” of an earlier one if there is no continuity between them. If there is only discontinuity and transcendence, then there are only individual atomic events with no repetition or identity between them. The main problem in interpreting the concept of repetition is identifying the status of the two moments that constitute the repetition. If they are simply two different actions, then it is not clear how one is to understand the claim that repetition involves transcendence. This would seem to imply that the two actions are radically different or incommensurable, which would seem to destroy the very concept of repetition. The solution to the problem of interpretation on this point lies in the analysis of the notion of repetition that was given in Part Two of De Omnibus. If one recalls that analysis, then one gains a hint about the claim of transcendence here. In De Omnibus in connection with Hegel’s account of “Sense-Certainty,” Kierkegaard talks about the contradiction of consciousness that unites ideality and actuality. He argues that repetition is 48

It will be noted that Hegel’s discussion of mediation concerns only concepts and is not about the free will of individuals, which he in no way denies. Hegel talks about the necessary relation of concepts to one another, which makes mediation possible. This principle is then transferred by Kierkegaard to the sphere of freedom and action, which is clearly not compatible with Hegel’s understanding of it.


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not possible in either of these spheres alone but only in the unity of the two in consciousness. Now this analysis can be used to interpret the claim about the notion of transcendence. If one takes repetition in its ethical aspect, then it clearly involves a concrete action in the realm of actuality. But what is being repeated? It is not a previous action but rather an ethical principle, law, or contemplated action in the realm of ideality. By appropriating an abstract principle or law and acting on it in accordance with one’s own interpretation and moral sentiment, one repeats the abstract principle from the realm of ideality with a concrete action in the realm of actuality. Kierkegaard writes: When movement is allowed in relation to repetition in the sphere of freedom, then the development becomes different from the logical development in that the transition becomes. In logic, transition is movement’s silence, whereas in the sphere of freedom it becomes. Thus, in logic, when possibility, by means of the immanence of thought, has determined itself as actuality, one only disturbs the silent self-inclosure of the logical process by talking about movement and transition. In the sphere of freedom, however, possibility remains and actuality emerges as a transcendence.49

Here Kierkegaard characterizes transcendence as something new which comes into being or becomes actual. The transition is not a purely conceptual one but rather one characterized by a movement from something merely possible to something actual. In this sense repetition is transcendent. It spans the gap between the realm of ideality and that of actuality. The realm of action is transcendent vis-à-vis the realm of thought. However, this is not to say that there can be a direct translation of it into actuality. On the contrary, there is no easy formula, and one must interpret the ethical principle of ideality for oneself and take responsibility for that interpretation in the concrete realm of action. The relation between the two spheres remains a paradox and a contradiction. In this sense repetition has transcendence, whereas mediation does not, since mediation presumably operates wholly in the realm of ideality and has no contact per se with actuality. In order to understand the force of the argument here, one must recall Heiberg’s solution to the debate about the Aufhebung of the law of excluded middle that was examined previously.50 Heiberg indicated that the law applied in the empirical realm, where one is concerned with concrete sensible entities. Here individual objects are clearly separable and independent of one another. In this realm there are any number of examples of the true either/or. This is what Kierkegaard called “the realm of freedom.” However, Heiberg continues with the claim that the law is aufgehoben in the realm of thought, where one is concerned with 49 50

R, Supplement, pp. 309–310; Pap. IV B 117, p. 290. Chapter 4, Section II, p. 197f.


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concepts. Thus, mediation can take place among concepts, which are all in the immanent sphere of thought. This Kierkegaard dubbed “the realm of necessity.” In Either/Or Judge Wilhelm generally agreed with Heiberg’s explanation, but here Constantius uses the distinction between the two realms to ground his criticism. As has been seen, for Constantius, movement understood as the mediation of concepts is tautologous in that it takes place among homogeneous entities (i.e., concepts). There is thus no real movement. By contrast, the concept of repetition is a genuine movement in that its terms are radically heterogeneous: the one being in the abstract realm of ideality and the other in the concrete realm of actuality. Here is a purportedly more robust account of change since a mere ideal or abstract principle is appropriated and transformed into a concrete action. There is thus a genuine movement and a radical transformation from one state to another. Repetition thus bridges the gap between the realms of freedom and necessity, whereas mediation only operates in the one (i.e., in the realm of necessity). When all is said and done the relation to Hegel evinced in the account of the concept of repetition is more or less continuous with the relation to him evinced in the previous texts: Kierkegaard begins in De Omnibus by taking a specific concept or discussion in Hegel, here “Sense-Certainty,” which he analyzes, develops, and revises in his own fashion. As in those previous works, here there can be no talk of a straightforward rejection of Hegel. Instead, the relation seems to be one of a productive dialogue and of a development from one concept of repetition to another. Thus, even though the concept of repetition is intended to be an alternative to Hegel’s notion of mediation, this does not mean that Constantius utterly rejects Hegel and has only criticism and abuse for him. On the contrary, he has borrowed much from him and has traversed much ground together with him before ultimately parting company over the issue of immanence and transcendence. His “criticism” in fact turns out to be a variant of the solution to the debate about the law of excluded middle proposed by the Hegelian Heiberg.

iv. repetition as a religious concept The understanding of repetition as a religious concept introduces a new dimension, which again distinguishes it from the Hegelian notion of mediation. That repetition is a religious concept is made clear when Kierkegaard says it is the “conditio sine qua non for every issue of dogmatics.”51 Indeed, he even says directly, “Repetition is and remains 51

R, Supplement, p. 324; Pap. IV B 120, p. 309. See also: “In my interpretation, the issue of repetition is formulated in a completely different way; in its striving it points toward the religious, which in so many ways is intimated and adequately expressed.” R, Supplement, p. 313; Pap. IV B 47, p. 293.


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a religious category.”52 It seems that not merely does repetition have a religious dimension, but rather that this is its fundamental aspect. In The Concept of Anxiety, Vigilius Haufniensis underscores the religious or specifically Christian element of repetition. In a key passage he even indicates which aspects of the concept he considers to have religious significance: “Constantin mentions several times that repetition is a religious category, too transcendent for him, that it is the movement by virtue of the absurd, and on p. 142 it is further stated that eternity is the true repetition.”53 Here Vigilius Haufniensis names as religious aspects of the concept of repetition the following: (1) the transcendent nature of repetition, (2) repetition as absurdity, and (3) repetition as eternity. It will be useful to examine each of these in turn. I wish to argue that these religious aspects of the concept are also intended to stand in contrast to Hegel’s notion of mediation and that they further represent a development of the metaphysical criticism of the concept. (1) Kierkegaard indicates that due to its aspect of transcendence, the concept of repetition is fundamentally religious. Since I have already explored what Kierkegaard means when he says that repetition is transcendent, I will now examine the implications of this transcendence for the religious aspect of the concept. The notion of repetition is associated with atonement and redemption: [R]epetition progresses along this path until it signifies atonement, which is the most profound expression of repetition. Precisely because I had this in mind, I took care not to confuse mediation and repetition, because mediation is within immanence and therefore can never have before it the transcendence of a religious movement . . . to say nothing of the actuality of sin, which is not to be nullified by any mediation.54

Kierkegaard says explicitly that the notion of transcendence was one key point in which repetition is distinguished from mediation. In The Concept of Anxiety, he argues that sin enters the world by means of a qualitative leap. Originally human beings lived in the harmonious state of paradise, and then came original sin, which signified a radical break from this state. This ushers in a new state in which humans are alienated from the world and from God. This is the second form of repetition in Kierkegaard’s aforementioned list of the three forms in his journals: “Inasmuch as I am going to act, I presuppose that I am in an original integral state. Now comes the problem of sin, which is the second repetition, for now I 52 53 54

R, Supplement, p. 326; Pap. IV A 169; JP, vol. 3, 3794. CA, p. 18fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 327fn. Translation slightly modified. R, Supplement, p. 313; Pap. IV B 117, pp. 293–294. See also: “When repetition is defined in that way, it is: transcendent, a religious movement by virtue of the absurd – when the borderline of the wondrous is reached, eternity is the true repetition.” R, Supplement, p. 305; Pap. IV B 117, p. 285.



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must return to myself again.”55 At this stage one’s actions are merely the repetition of one’s sinfulness without the hope of redemption. With the death of Christ, this second stage is overcome and a reconciliation takes place between human beings and God. This, says Kierkegaard, is “the most profound expression of repetition.” This final stage of redemption in a sense represents a repetition of the first stage. Although humanity cannot revert to the original state of paradise, nevertheless the fact of the original sin is no longer decisive for its fate. This third stage represents, for Kierkegaard, the true repetition: “The real paradox by which I become the single individual, for if I remain in sin, understood as the universal, there is only repetition no. 2.”56 Here one has the possibility, thanks to divine grace, of overcoming one’s sinfulness. This is the Christian challenge of the third form of repetition, which is presumably the true and highest form. Each of these three stages represents for Kierkegaard a radical discontinuity. In each case the change is something transcendent that enters from the outside. Therefore, it cannot be reached or bridged by mediation. As has been seen previously, Hegel’s dialectic follows precisely this threefold movement, which passes through the stages of immediacy, mediation, and mediated immediacy. It was clear that Kierkegaard was familiar with this dialectical movement in Hegel since he worked with it in the early journal entry examined previously57 and used it in Judge Wilhelm’s description of the stages in the dialectic of love in “The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage.”58 Kierkegaard’s third term or stage of the concept of repetition (i.e., the second immediacy) corresponds to Hegel’s account of mediated immediacy. Indeed, Hegel interprets this Christian movement in very much the same way as Kierkegaard. For Hegel, the death of Christ represents the Aufhebung of the old law and reestablishes the contract between humanity and God. This new relation is no longer a simple immediacy (i.e., one does not revert to the original state of paradise in the Garden of Eden), but rather it is a mediated immediacy, the promise of salvation and paradise as mediated through the person of Christ. The difference between Hegel’s and Kierkegaard’s accounts of the movement from sin to paradise to redemption is that the former sees the truth of this movement in its abstract conceptual aspect. Therefore, since it is ultimately a movement of concepts, the movement is, says Kierkegaard, immanent (i.e., to thought). Kierkegaard rejects this primarily cognitive understanding of sin and redemption. This third form of repetition underscores the freedom due to transcendence that underlies human action: “Repetition not only is for 55 56 57 58

R, Supplement, p. 326; SKS, vol. 18, p. 191, JJ:159.; JP, vol. 3, 3793. R, Supplement, p. 326; SKS, vol. 18, p. 191f., JJ:159.; JP, vol. 3, 3793. JP, vol. 4, 4398; SKS, vol. 17, pp. 117–119, BB:25. Analyzed in Chapter 2, Section II. EO2, pp. 17–32 and ff.; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 26–38 and ff. Analyzed in Chapter 4, Section V.


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contemplation but . . . it is a task for freedom . . . it signifies freedom itself.”59 One has the opportunity to become what one is by repeating in one’s action one’s true nature as determined by God. By contrast, Kierkegaard sees the Hegelian notion of mediation as a denial of freedom; for this reason he calls the abstract realm of thought and conceptual analysis “the realm of necessity.” Moreover, sin cannot be eliminated by mediation or reason but only by the absolute paradox of Christ, the eternal made temporal. In addition, with respect to the concept of transcendence, there is an analogy between the notion of repetition and Kierkegaard’s conception of faith. Religious faith has as its object something transcendent, which cannot be reached by human reason. In Fear and Trembling, this is Abraham’s faith in the divine command. Thus, Abraham, Kierkegaard’s knight of faith, believes but with fear and trembling and not with the confidence of scientific truth. So also in ethics, with the appropriation and repetition of an abstract, transcendent ethical principle, one participates in moral life as an agent, but part of being a moral agent is making mistakes. Thus, when one acts by appropriating a principle or hearkening to a divine command, there are no guarantees. One must ultimately, like Abraham, remain in fear and trembling and in uncertainty regarding the correctness of one’s actions. (2) Vigilius Haufniensis also names as one of the religious aspects of repetition that “it is the movement by virtue of the absurd.”60 By “absurdity” here one can understand that which Kierkegaard called “the contradiction of consciousness” in De Omnibus, in other words, the fundamental and irreconcilable incommensurability between actuality and ideality or particularity and universality, God and man, and so on. This aspect of the concept of repetition makes it similar to that of the paradox (i.e., the idea of the eternal becoming temporal). This is the fundamental paradox that characterizes Christianity for Kierkegaard. Thus, repetition can be understood as the absolute paradox of Christianity. Here too one sees a unity of ideality and actuality, of eternity and temporality. It is a paradox that cannot be explained or mediated but rather must be accepted as a contradiction or paradox. By contrast, Hegelian philosophy tries to bridge the gap by means of mediation. (3) The third claim about the religious side of repetition is its association with eternity. As has just been seen, Kierkegaard directly links the two concepts: “eternity is the true repetition.”61 It is clear from the original analysis of repetition in De Omnibus that the concept itself consists of two parts – actuality and ideality. The latter gives repetition its stability since it is eternal. In other works, such as the Philosophical Fragments, 59 60

R, Supplement, p. 324; Pap. IV B 120, p. 308. 61 CA, p. 18fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 327fn. CA, p. 18fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 327fn.



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Kierkegaard refers to God simply as “the eternal.” Likewise, here in Repetition, in the discussion of the ordeal embodied by Job, the eternal is associated with God.62 Thus, the claim that eternity is the true repetition can be interpreted to mean that repetition is concerned with God. As has just been seen, Kierkegaard associates the concept of repetition with the paradox of Christianity (i.e., the eternal becoming temporal). This unity is, for Kierkegaard, the highest repetition. It also corresponds to the third form of repetition that Kierkegaard lists and associates with the concept of redemption. This was the point of the eternal God becoming temporal (i.e., to effect a reconciliation after the original sin). Thus, this third aspect is consistent with the first two. This religious dimension of the concept of repetition shows most clearly its relation to other well-known Kierkegaardian concepts such as the paradox, the absurd, and the moment. These terms seem eventually to have supplanted the notion of repetition in Kierkegaard’s authorship. With respect to Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, the religious aspect of repetition points in the direction of later criticisms associated with the terms listed previously. Although in Repetition itself, he only criticizes Hegel directly for his doctrine of mediation, one can see here the groundwork for a number of later discussions and criticisms. Thus, the religious dimension of the concept of repetition is not so much of direct relevance for Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel as it is important in its consequences. In Repetition there are occasionally passages that seem to hint that the notion of repetition is aimed at a target other than Hegel. For example, Constantin Constantius contrasts Job with the professor or professional thinker. Here he shows a strain of anti-intellectualism in favor of a more simplistic view: Fortunately, my friend is not looking for clarification from any worldfamous philosopher or any professor publicus ordinarius; he turns to an unprofessional thinker who once possessed the world’s glories but later withdrew from life – in other words, he falls back on Job, who does not posture on a rostrum and make reassuring gestures to vouch for the truth of his propositions but sits on the hearth and scrapes himself with a potsherd and without interrupting this activity casually drops clues and comments.63

This passage recalls the criticisms in De Omnibus and other works of Martensen whom Kierkegaard sees as engaging in pretentious posturing without any substance. Martensen likewise, for Kierkegaard, uncritically refers to Hegel, a “world-famous philosopher,” for the truth. This contrast of Job with the professor or professional thinker shows the side of 62

See R, p. 210; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 76–77.

63

R, p. 186; SKS, vol. 4, p. 57.


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Kierkegaard that rejects abstract conceptual analysis in favor of a lived philosophy. One can also hear a criticism of Martensen in the passage quoted previously, where Constantius writes, “Modern philosophy makes no movement; as a rule it makes only a commotion.”64 This also recalls the criticism of Martensen in the context of his lectures where he makes irresponsible claims in order to attract great public attention. These allusions highlight the fact that Kierkegaard is still engaged in a polemic with the contemporary Danish Hegelian scene and specifically with the view of mediation put forth by Martensen and Heiberg. Thus, his proposal of repetition as an alternative to Hegelian mediation can be seen at least in part as a response to these Danish Hegelians. Despite passages like these, the notion of repetition can still be conceived as a criticism of Hegel himself (i.e., of Hegel’s doctrine of mediation or Aufhebung). This marks a shift from what was seen in the previous chapters, which demonstrated that the bulk of the criticism was actually aimed at Kierkegaard’s Danish contemporaries and that there was never any intention of carrying on a polemic with Hegel himself in the first place. Constantius’ analysis here can be seen as a development of the position of Judge Wilhelm in Either/Or. Following Heiberg’s analysis, the Judge merely delimits the scope of the law of excluded middle and confines it to “the sphere of freedom,” that is, to actuality. He nonetheless grants that Hegel’s doctrine of mediation or of the Aufhebung of the law of excluded middle is correct when limited to “the sphere of necessity,” that is, to the abstract analysis of concepts. In Either/Or the only criticism is of the conflation of these two spheres in the attempt to apply the principle of mediation to the sphere of freedom or in arguing that an absolute either/or exists in the sphere of necessity. Moreover, Judge Wilhelm’s criticism is primarily of a moral character and is aimed not at Hegel himself but at his uncritical followers who have become lost in their contemplation of the past. In Repetition, a new dimension to this criticism is developed. The notion of repetition is one that straddles the two spheres. It is the point of contact between ideality and actuality. This notion allows Constantius to criticize the doctrine of the Aufhebung of the law of excluded middle and mediation for in fact being tautologous or empty since they operate only with abstract concepts immanent to thought. In other words, in Either/Or the criticism was limited to merely drawing the limits of the two spheres, while the legitimacy of the Hegelian principle was recognized within the one sphere (i.e., that of necessity). In Repetition, by contrast, Constantius actively criticizes the notion of mediation on its own terms, saying that it is not a true movement, that it is a tautology, and so on, since it does not bridge the two spheres. Thus, the position with respect to Hegel, as 64

R, p. 186; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 56–57.



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presented by the pseudonyms, becomes more detailed and worked out with the concept of repetition. Yet, strangely enough, repetition is a concept that Kierkegaard in De Omnibus originally borrowed from Hegel’s analysis of “Sense-Certainty.” Kierkegaard is attracted to this analysis since it ends with a contradiction inside consciousness itself, namely, that consciousness means or intends the particular in the empirical world but can only say the universal and thus cannot say what it means. This Hegelian analysis is important for Kierkegaard, who often discusses, for example, faith in the same manner. In Fear and Trembling Abraham’s faith is not something that can be verbalized or discursively justified. It is from this conception of faith that Kierkegaard generates his theory of indirect communication, which he believes is the only form of communication that can express matters of this kind. Thus, Kierkegaard is interested in Hegel’s analysis since it indicates the limits of language and discursive expression as well as the incommensurability between language and empirical phenomena. He is thus in agreement with much of what Hegel says about the relation of the universal to the particular, and it is from Hegel’s analysis that he finds inspiration for the concept of repetition. This again bears witness to Kierkegaard’s profoundly ambivalent relation to Hegel. In terms of Kierkegaard’s overall relation to Hegel, it is not easy to place Repetition in the development that has been traced so far. In the works treated up until now, there has been no real trace of an open antiHegel polemic. Can it be said that this begins here in Repetition? The only time in the entire book that Hegel is mentioned by name, there is indeed a hint of a polemical tone. There Constantius writes the following: “The Greek explanation of the theory of being and nothing, the explanation of ‘the moment,’ ‘non-being,’ etc. trumps Hegel.”65 In the previous discussions when a criticism of Martensen or some other contemporary was intended, Kierkegaard tended to write something like “a Hegelian,” or “modern philosophers.” Here, by contrast, Hegel is mentioned explicitly. The indication seems to be that it is specifically his notion of mediation itself which is at issue. But, given that this is the only mention of Hegel in the entire work, it would be an exaggeration to say that this marks the beginning of Kierkegaard’s polemical relation to him and unambiguously ushers in what I have been referring to as the second period of his authorship. One can, however, regard this as a transitional text where a hint of the later polemics can be found, although by no means to any great degree. The other thing that disqualifies Repetition from falling into the first period of Kierkegaard’s authorship is the fact that it does not immediately evince any clear positive influence from Hegel. The groundwork for the 65

R, pp. 148–149; SKS, vol. 4, p. 25.


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concept of repetition appears in De Omnibus, where it is formed along the lines of the model provided by Hegel’s analysis of “Sense-Certainty.” Then in Repetition itself, the concept is developed in a way that goes beyond the original analysis there. Thus, while the concept of repetition is clearly influenced by Hegel, this influence is one of original inspiration which occurs prior to the book Repetition. Given that there are also hidden references to Martensen in the text, it might still be that Kierkegaard in fact intends the criticism of mediation here to be a criticism solely of him and not of Hegel, but the fact that he refers to Hegel directly indicates that he has no problem with being perceived as being in a polemic with Hegel himself, whereas previously (in, for example, The Concept of Irony and Either/Or) he had no problem borrowing things from Hegel and praising him overtly. The reason for sharpening his tone vis-à-vis Hegel might be Kierkegaard’s desire to distance himself in the eyes of his reading public from the contemporary Danish Hegelians Martensen and Heiberg. Whereas previously on the basis of The Concept of Irony and From the Papers of One Still Living he could have been mistaken as a Hegelian, now Kierkegaard wants to make absolutely certain that his works are perceived as having nothing at all in common with those of Martensen and Heiberg. One way of doing so was to criticize Hegel, the main intellectual figure whose name was associated with theirs in Denmark at the time.

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7 HEGEL’S VIEW OF MORAL CONSCIENCE AND KIERKEGAARD’S INTERPRETATION OF ABRAHAM

As has been noted previously, Fear and Trembling appeared together with Repetition and Three Edifying Discourses on October 16, 1843. It contains some of Kierkegaard’s best-known concepts, such as the knight of faith, the paradox, the leap, and the absurd. Here Kierkegaard under the pseudonym, Johannes de silentio, gives his rich analysis of the Abraham and Isaac story to illustrate these and other concepts. In a series of three “Problemata,” he discusses the conundrums raised in the story by Abraham’s reaction to the divine command to sacrifice his only son. The first “Problema” treats what is referred to as “the teleological suspension of the ethical.” Here the claim is set forth that the usual ethical duties and obligations can be “suspended” by a divine command. In the second “Problema,” Johannes de silentio argues that there is an absolute duty towards God which renders one’s other duties finite and relative. Finally, in the third “Problema,” the problem of communication is discussed; given the private nature of the divine command, it was, according to Johannes de silentio, impossible for Abraham to explain his actions to others. Hegel’s role in this text is significant. Although Kierkegaard usually has his pseudonyms employ expressions such as “a Hegelian,” or “recent philosophy,” Johannes de silentio uncharacteristically refers to Hegel directly in several passages. His anti-Hegel polemics were noted by two anonymous contemporary reviewers of Fear and Trembling. One reviewer discusses Fear and Trembling and Repetition together, noting how the author of both works defines himself in a negative relation to Hegel.1 In a similar vein, the other reviewer says Fear and Trembling “steps forth as an opposition against the view of life’s highest concerns which has been the result of more recent scholarship and has passed over from the system 1

-v, “Frygt og Bæven. Dialektisk Lyrik af Johannes de Silentio. Kjøbenhavn 1843. Gjentagelsen. Et Forsøg i den experimenterende Psychologi af Constantin Constantius. Kjøbenhavn 1843,” For Litteratur og Kritik, 2, 1844, pp. 373–391, especially p. 375.

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into popular culture.”2 In the Preface to the work, Johannes de silentio overtly issues a number of criticisms of the Danish Hegelians. Then in each of the three “Problemata” he sets out a position to be discussed by indicating first how the position is in accordance with Hegel’s philosophy and then how it is at variance with it. There are thus three parallel passages at the beginning of each discussion which indicate the importance of Hegel for the problem at issue. Hegel therefore seems at least superficially to be one of the book’s main interlocutors. In the present chapter I will explore Johannes de silentio’s view of Abraham and his criticism of Hegel contained in it. I omit any comparison of this account with Hegel’s treatment of Abraham in the Early Theological Writings,3 which, being published for the first time in 1907, were unknown to Kierkegaard.4 In my first section, I will interpret the criticisms in the Preface to Fear and Trembling as a continuation of those set forth against Martensen in Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est. In Section II, I will examine “Problema I,” which contains a reference to Hegel’s account of the moral conscience in the Philosophy of Right. I will discuss the relevance of this account in Hegel for the discussion of the requirement for Abraham to disregard one’s usual ethical duties and obligations. Section III will treat “Problema II” and the criticism of Hegel’s purported view of the ultimate commensurability of the inner and the outer, which conflicts with Johannes de silentio’s view that the paradox of faith is personal and inward and cannot be directly reflected outwardly. Section IV will examine briefly the third “Problema,” which concerns the problem of the commensurability of the divine command to sacrifice Isaac and the problem of justifying such an action to others. In this chapter I will argue that while the criticism of Hegel is uncharacteristically direct and thus seems to indicate a straightforward polemic, upon closer analysis, it becomes clear that the repeated references to Hegel at the beginning of each section are incommensurable with the set of issues that Johannes de silentio himself is concerned with in the work. This raises the question of why Johannes de silentio refers to Hegel at all in the text if he is not interested in analyzing or criticizing his views. I will argue that the odd use of Hegel in this work in fact has very little to do with Hegel himself but is rather a part of Kierkegaard’s continuing polemic against Martensen and the beginning of his polemic against Heiberg. 2 3

4

[J. F. Hagen], “Frygt og Bæven. Dialektisk Lyrik af Johannes de Silentio. (Kbhavn. VII og 135 S. Reitzel. Priis 1 Rbd.),” Theologisk Tidsskrift, Ny Række, 8, February 2, 1844, pp. 197–198. Hegels theologische Jugendschriften, ed. by Herman Nohl, Tübingen 1907, pp. 243–260. (In English as Early Theological Writings, tr. by T. M. Knox, Fragments tr. by Richard Kroner, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1948; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1975, pp. 182–205.) See Mark C. Taylor’s “Journeys to Moriah: Hegel vs. Kierkegaard,” Harvard Theological Review, 70, 1977, pp. 305–326.


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i. descartes and martensen in the preface Johannes de silentio’s Preface to Fear and Trembling is openly polemical against the Danish Hegelians. It contains indirect references to Martensen, Heiberg, and Rasmus Nielsen. Here Johannes de silentio runs through a palette of stock criticisms that Kierkegaard uses throughout the corpus. I wish to argue that the Preface is aimed primarily at Martensen and can be seen as a part of the continuing polemic, which began in The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars and Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est. As was seen previously,5 Martensen’s use of the Cartesian slogan “de omnibus dubitandum est” was made the object of Kierkegaard’s criticism. It was also seen6 how Martensen conflated Hegel’s statements about the dialectical method with Descartes’ method of systematic doubt. These themes are taken up again in the Preface to Fear and Trembling where Descartes is held up for praise, while the brunt of the criticism falls squarely on Martensen. Johannes de silentio begins by criticizing “the speculative monitor who conscientiously signals the important trends in modern philosophy.”7 This is a clear allusion to Martensen, who became popular for his lectures, which in Kierkegaard’s eyes were little more than reports about the recent developments in German philosophy with nothing new or original. This allusion seems beyond doubt when one sees the further reference to the “assistant professor, tutor, and student,”8 which recalls Martensen and the clique of students that surrounded him. The modern philosopher “is unwilling to stop with doubting everything but goes further.”9 This recalls Martensen, who claims to have doubted everything and to have surpassed the standpoint of skepticism. As in De Omnibus, it is pointed out that, despite the obvious difficulty, no guidance is given about how one should actually apply this method of doubt in praxis: “They have all made this preliminary movement and presumably so easily that they find it unnecessary to say a word about how, for not even the person who in apprehension and concern sought a little enlightenment found any, not one suggestive hint or one little dietetic prescription with respect to how a person is to act in carrying out this enormous task.”10 As has been seen, Kierkegaard wanted to use the character of Johannes Climacus to demonstrate the absurdity and impracticality of universal skepticism: this was precisely the point of the manuscript De Omnibus. Johannes de silentio cites two passages from Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy to illustrate that Descartes himself never intended for his method 5 6 8 10

Chapter 2, Section III, p. 110f. Chapter 5, Section I. 7 FT, p. 5; SKS, vol. 4, p. 101. Chapter 5, Section III. 9 FT, p. 5; SKS, vol. 4, p. 101. FT, p. 5; SKS, vol. 4, p. 101. FT, p. 5; SKS, vol. 4, p. 101.


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to be valid for everyone or to be employed as a maxim for ethical action. Johannes de silentio says by way of commentary: “He [Descartes] did not shout ‘Fire! Fire!’ and make it obligatory for everyone to doubt, for Descartes was a quiet and solitary thinker, not a shouting street watchman; he modestly let it be known that his method had significance only for him and was partly the result of his earlier warped knowledge.”11 Descartes was true to his word and to himself. He carried out his method without trying to impose it on anyone else. The criticism here clearly seems to be of Martensen who in a sense shouted, “Fire! Fire!” in his lectures with the slogan “de omnibus dubitandum est,” which he employed as a kind of moral imperative for his students. Martensen uses this slogan not as a descriptive account of a certain method employed by a specific thinker in the history of philosophy but rather as a prescriptive maxim. Johannes de silentio thus distinguishes between Descartes’ actual method and Martensen’s distortion and misappropriation of it. Now a slight shift is made to indicate the specific content of Fear and Trembling, although the target remains the same. Johannes de silentio began by criticizing Martensen’s claim that modern philosophy has gone beyond universal doubt to establish a foundation that is wholly without presuppositions. This epistemological issue was central to De Omnibus; in Fear and Trembling by contrast the issue is faith and revelation, and so the expression “to go beyond” is transferred from the epistemological context, where it meant going beyond doubt, to the religious context, where it means going beyond faith. Johannes de silentio writes: In our age everyone is unwilling to stop with faith but goes further. It perhaps would be rash to ask where they are going, whereas it is a sign of urbanity and culture for me to assume that everyone has faith, since otherwise it certainly would be odd to speak of going further. It was different in those ancient days. Faith was then a task of a whole lifetime, because it was assumed that proficiency in believing is not acquired either in days or in weeks.12

The criticism of those who wish to go further than faith is a familiar one that Kierkegaard tends to associate with Martensen. The idea is that by applying the speculative method to dogmatics, Martensen goes beyond the immediacy of faith by understanding the key dogmas of Christianity in terms of the Concept: “Even if someone were able to transpose the whole content of faith into conceptual form, it does not follow that he has comprehended faith, comprehended how he entered into it or how it entered into him.”13 Johannes de silentio does not expand on this criticism. The basic point seems to be that a conceptual understanding 11 13

FT, p. 6; SKS, vol. 4, p. 102. FT, p. 7; SKS, vol. 4, p. 103.

12

FT, p. 7; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 102–103.


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of faith has nothing to do with the actual faith of the individual. This criticism will get its full treatment in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and for this reason I defer my discussion of it until later.14 It should, however, be noted that this charge had already been made against Hegel by Martensen himself.15 Kierkegaard uses the final paragraph of the Preface in a very demonstrative fashion to distance his pseudonymous author from the philosophers of his age. Here he foreshadows a number of criticisms that he will develop in more detail later in the corpus. Johannes de silentio writes: “The present author . . . has not understood the system, whether there is one, whether it is completed.”16 Here he issues an indirect criticism of Heiberg and Rasmus Nielsen for their unfulfilled promises to deliver a philosophical system. He continues, “The present author . . . is . . . a supplementary clerk who neither writes the system nor gives promises of the system, who neither exhausts himself on the system nor binds himself to the system.”17 This criticism appears several times in other works and will be explored in more detail later.18 Finally, Johannes de silentio implores his readers and critics not to regard his work as a system or to try to incorporate him into the system. He emphatically repeats twice that he is “by no means a philosopher,”19 presumably meaning a Hegelian. Thus, right at the start of the work, Johannes de silentio in no uncertain terms declares himself a critic of the Danish Hegelians. If any further proof is needed to demonstrate the claim that the Preface is aimed polemically against Martensen, then evidence can be found in a journal entry from 1850. The entry in question is a draft of a response to Martensen’s Dogmatic Elucidations (1850).20 In the piece Kierkegaard sketches briefly his polemic with Martensen through the pseudonymous works. In one passage he notes to himself what he needs to add to the manuscript: “Now some quotations from the Preface to Fear and Trembling, from Prefaces and from the Concluding Postscript.”21 Here Kierkegaard clearly intends to insert into his manuscript some illustrations of his polemic with Martensen. He says explicitly that he should remember to quote from, among other things, the Preface to Fear and Trembling, thus implying that this Preface was intended as a criticism of Martensen. The fact that he singles it out here (along with Prefaces and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript) seems to indicate that he 14 15

16 18 20 21

Chapter 11, Section IV. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole. Af J. L. Heiberg, Lærer i Logik og Æsthetik ved den kgl. militaire Høiskole,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 16, 1836, pp. 525–528. 17 FT, p. 7; SKS, vol. 4, p. 103. FT, p. 7; SKS, vol. 4, p. 103. 19 FT, p. 7; SKS, vol. 4, p. 103. Chapter 9, Section I. Hans Lassen Martensen, Dogmatiske Oplysninger. Et Leilighedsskrift, Copenhagen 1850. ASKB 654. JP, vol. 6, 6636, p. 328; Pap. X-6 B 137, p. 187. Translation slightly modified.


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takes it to be a clear-cut or representative example of his polemic with Martensen. This Preface signals to the reading public immediately that the author of the work is a critic of Heiberg, Martensen, Nielsen, and the other Danish Hegelians. It seems as if Kierkegaard needs to have his pseudonym announce this to his readers overtly, even though the actual content of this work contains much more than criticism of the Hegelians. The use of Hegel here in the Preface thus seems to be a matter of self-definition or of defining a position by contrast to that of the known Hegelians.22 The Preface is interesting since it seems to suggest that these Hegelians will play a central role in the text. Moreover, the criticisms raised in this Preface can be seen as continuous with those in the unpublished De Omnibus. It is conceivable that when Kierkegaard gave up on De Omnibus, deciding that its form was inappropriate for the criticisms he wanted to raise, he found in Fear and Trembling a different avenue to explore his differences with the Hegelians. This would explain in part the shift in the Preface from the issue of doubt which was seen in De Omnibus to that of faith which is central to Fear and Trembling. One can thus see a continuity and development from the one text to the other.

ii. problema i: the murderer sand and kierkegaard’s abraham In “Problema I,” Johannes de silentio addresses the question, “Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?” He criticizes Hegel explicitly and even refers directly to a section in the Philosophy of Right as the object of his criticism. This reference will play a crucial role in understanding the differences between Johannes de silentio and Hegel. In this section, I wish to contrast Hegel’s conception of the moral conscience and Johannes de silentio’s account of the teleological suspension of the ethical. I will argue that the reference to Hegel in the context of the discussion in Fear and Trembling is odd since Hegel’s purpose in the Philosophy of Right is wholly different from that of Johannes de silentio. This suggests that Hegel’s role here is something other than just the object of criticism. A. Hegel’s View of Ethics and the Moral Conscience. Before turning to Fear and Trembling, I will say a word about Hegel’s general conception of ethics and the moral conscience and then locate his understanding of the role of the individual within it. For Hegel, the key term in this context is “Sittlichkeit,” which has been translated as “ethical life.” By this term he 22

It will be recalled that this point was made by the anonymous reviewer, -v, “Frygt og Bæven. Dialektisk Lyrik af Johannes de Silentio. Kjøbenhavn 1843. Gjentagelsen. Et Forsøg i den experimenterende Psychologi af Constantin Constantius. Kjøbenhavn 1843,” op. cit., p. 375.


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refers to the concrete realm of customs, duties, institutions, and mores that are generally accepted in any given society. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel underscores the connection between everyday customs and his conception of ethical life: “But if it is simply identical with the actuality of individuals, the ethical [das Sittliche], as their general mode of behavior, appears as custom [Sitte]; and the habit of the ethical appears as a second nature which takes the place of the original and purely natural will and is the all-pervading soul, significance, and actuality of individual existence.”23 Here one can readily see the etymological connection between Sittlichkeit and Sitte or custom. “Sittlichkeit” is characterized by immediacy; it is the sphere that precedes reflectivity, alienation, and thus criticism. By analyzing forms of ethical life in concrete historical communities, Hegel attempts to discern the rationality in this realm of established custom. This rational element is then developed as an aspect of the rational state. For Hegel, the contrasting term to “ethical life” is what he in the Philosophy of Right and elsewhere calls “morality” [Moralität].24 While ethical life is immediate and intuitive, morality is abstract and mediated. Hegel tends to associate “morality” with Kant’s moral theory, which he criticizes as overly abstract and individualistic. For Hegel, the conception of ethics as Moralität overlooks the realm of customary relationships in society.25 He writes: “Morality” [Moralität] and “ethics” [Sittlichkeit], which are usually regarded as roughly synonymous, are taken here in essentially distinct senses. Yet even representational thought seems to distinguish them; Kantian usage prefers the expression “morality,” as indeed the practical principles of Kant’s philosophy are confined throughout to this concept, even rendering the point of view of ethics impossible and in fact expressly infringing and destroying it.26

For Hegel, ethical life is already presupposed in Kant’s ethical theory. One must first have a conception of the various relationships that constitute social life in order to abstract from it to reach an abstract moral law such as Kant’s categorical imperative. The section that Johannes de silentio refers to from the Philosophy of Right is “The Good and Conscience.” This section appears in the “Morality” chapter, and thus the figures treated there belong to the sphere of abstract thought. Kierkegaard mentions this section earlier

23 24 25 26

Hegel, PR, § 151; Jub., vol. 7, p. 233. See Alfred Elsigan, “Zum Begriff der Moralität in Hegels Rechtsphilosophie,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Philosophie, 5, 1972, p. 188. Hegel, PR, § 148, Remark; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 229–230. Hegel, PR, § 33, Remark; Jub., vol. 7, p. 85. Translation slightly modified.


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in The Concept of Irony where he quotes from it seemingly with approval.27 It also comes up later in Practice in Christianity.28 In “The Good and Conscience” Hegel treats different forms of Romantic individualism. Hegel is particularly critical of kinds of Romantic individualism that posit the arbitrary will of the individual as the absolute criterion of moral judgment. He believes that this can lead to veiling the worst kinds of crime under the cloak of legitimacy. This section is of interest to Kierkegaard since it is the relation of the individual to the universal or to the universal moral law that is at issue in the teleological suspension of the ethical. In the “The Good and Conscience,” Hegel defines conscience as follows: “Subjectivity, in its universality reflected into itself, is the absolute inward certainty of itself; it is that which posits particularity, and it is the determining and decisive factor – the conscience.”29 Johannes de silentio’s interpretation of Abraham presents a number of parallelisms to Hegel’s account of the moral conscience. First, for Hegel, the forms of subjectivism tend to absolutize the moral conscience; likewise, for Johannes de silentio, the divine command issued to Abraham is absolute by virtue of its origin in a divine source. Second, for Hegel, the very nature of conscience is private in the sense that subjectivity determines itself. As Hegel says, conscience is “infinite formal certainty of itself, which for this very reason is at the same time the certainty of this subject.”30 Likewise, for Johannes de silentio, the relation between God and man is by its very nature subjective and private and thus cannot be justified or explained to others. Finally, the forms of subjectivism that Hegel analyzes posit themselves as higher than accepted custom, civil law, and the like, just as Abraham, according to Johannes de silentio’s interpretation, has an absolute calling that puts all other external moral commands and duties into abeyance. In both cases the moral conscience is placed above that of the state, generally accepted custom, familial duty, and the like. Only its demands are regarded as absolute. For Hegel, ethical action is grounded in the rational institutions, duties, mores, and so on of a people. This rational element is recognizable and explicable by philosophy and scholarship. Insofar as it is rational, it is also the universal. Therefore, moral action, while performed by individuals, is by its very nature universal in character. Hegel writes: “What constitutes right and duty, as the rationality in and for itself of the will’s determinations, is essentially neither the particular property of an individual, nor is its form that of feeling or any other individual – i.e. sensuous – kind

27

28 30

CI, pp. 227–228; SKS, vol. 1, p. 270. See Merold Westphal, “Abraham and Hegel,” in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals, ed. Robert L. Perkins, Alabama: University of Alabama Press 1981, p. 67. 29 Hegel, PR, §; 136; Jub., vol. 7, p. 195. PC, p. 87; SV1, vol. 12, p. 83. Hegel, PR, § 137; Jub., vol. 7, p. 196.


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of knowledge, but essentially that of universal determination of thought, i.e. the form of laws and principles.”31 The problem arises in that the moral conscience is essentially particular. As Johannes de silentio constantly points out, the divine command confronts Abraham as an individual, and it is he alone who has access to it and who is called upon to act. This particularity of the moral conscience then brings it into conflict with the universality of the ethical life of the community. Hegel interprets this conflict not as one between the individual and something external (e.g., the state, civil law, accepted custom) but as a self-contradiction within the individual himself. He writes: The conscience is therefore subject to judgment as to its truth and falsity, and its appeal solely to itself is directly opposed to what it seeks to be – that is, the rule for a rational and universal mode of action which is valid in and for itself. . . .The ambiguity associated with conscience therefore consists in the fact that conscience is assumed in advance to signify the identity of subjective knowledge and volition with the true good, and is thus declared and acknowledged to be sacrosanct, while it also claims, as the purely subjective reflection of self-consciousness into itself, the authority which belongs only to that identity itself by virtue of its rational content which is valid in and for itself.32

Hegel’s view is that the conflict of conscience with the state or civil law is only a consequence of the deeper conflict of the moral conscience with itself. At bottom, the moral conscience is irrational in its willing. Although there is a claim, implicit or explicit, for absolute validity on the part of the moral conscience, its content is nevertheless wholly subjective. Hegel understands the conflict to be immanent and characterizes it as one between universal and particular (i.e., between the good generally and the private will). There might seem to be a disanalogy between Hegel’s account of moral conscience and Johannes de silentio’s account of Abraham in that, as Johannes de silentio is careful to point out, Abraham makes no claim for the universal validity of his action. He never tries to universalize the maxim of his action or to convince others to act in the same way. Thus, he seems to recognize the subjectivity of his moral conscience. Yet even though Abraham does not try to universalize his action and does not consider it discursively justifiable, he nevertheless must think that it is in some sense absolutely correct since otherwise he presumably would not prepare to do something that he does not want to do and that is clearly at odds with traditional moral duties about which he is certain. The absolute validation of his action comes from God Himself. This is 31

Hegel, PR, §137; Jub., vol. 7, p. 197.

32

Hegel, PR, §137; Jub., vol. 7, p. 197f.


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Abraham’s warrant that his action is higher than law, custom, and so on. He does not universalize his particular action but rather the general principle of acting at all costs as divine command bids.33 Although he is unable to argue for it or prove it discursively due to the subjective nature of the relation in which God gives the command, he must feel that he is correct and that anyone who is given a divine command ought to act on it as he does. Nonetheless the internal contradiction is present. According to Hegel, this absolute claim is in conflict with the particular content of the action. For Hegel, the danger lies in the individual who via the moral or religious conscience elevates his own private will to the status of the universal and thereby runs the risk of acting immorally. It is at this point that he begins his discussion of the potential for moral evil: “Where all previously valid determinations have vanished and the will is in a state of pure inwardness, the self-consciousness is capable of making into its principle either the universal in and for itself, or the arbitrariness of its own particularity, giving the latter precedence over the universal and realizing it through its action – i.e. it is capable of being evil.”34 This is the question raised by the figure of Abraham. Is he the highest embodiment of moral action or is he simply evil? Hegel’s conclusion is twofold. First, while the state can accept the moral conscience of the individual in some forms, it cannot regard it as its principle: “[T]he state cannot recognize the conscience in its distinctive form, i.e. as subjective knowledge, any more than science can grant 33 34

The issue of one’s absolute duty toward God is the subject of “Problema II.” Hegel, PR, § 139; Jub., vol. 7, p. 200. Hegel categorizes in ascending order ever more radical forms of subjective evil (PR, § 140, Remark; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 204–223), which correspond in part to his analyses in the Phenomenology of Spirit entitled “Virtue and the Way of the World” (from the “Reason” chapter) and “Dissemblance or Duplicity” and “Conscience, the Beautiful Soul, Evil and its Forgiveness” (from “Spirit”). Commentators have identified some of Hegel’s contemporaries as the targets of his criticism. See J. Y. ´ Calvez, “L’âge d’or. Essai sur le destin de la ‘belle aˆ me’ chez Novalis et Hegel,” Etudes Germaniques, 9, 1954, pp. 112–127. D. O. Dahlstrom, “Die schöne Seele bei Schiller und Hegel,” Hegel-Jahrbuch, 1991, pp. 147–156. Moltke S. Gram, “Moral and Literary Ideals in Hegel’s Critique of ‘The Moral View of the World,’” Clio, 7, 1978, pp. 375–402. Emanuel Hirsch, “Die Beisetzung der Romantiker in Hegels Phänomenologie. Ein Kommentar zu dem Abschnitte uber ¨ die Moralität,” Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft, 2, 1924, pp. 510–532. Also in Materialien zu Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. by Hans Friedrich Fulda and Dieter Henrich, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1973, pp. 245– 275. André Kaan, “Le mal et son pardon,” in Hegel-Tage Royaumont 1964: Beiträge zur Deutung der Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 3, Bonn: Bouvier 1966, pp. 187–194. Pierre-Jean Labarrière, “Belle aˆ me, mal et pardon,” Concordia, 1, 1982, pp. 11–15. Benjamin C. Sax, “Active Individuality and the Language of Confession: The Figure of the Beautiful Soul in the Lehrjahre and the Phenomenology,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 21, 1983, pp. 437–466. Donald Phillip Verene, “Two Forms of Defective Selfhood: The Spiritual Animal Kingdom and the Beautiful Soul,” in his Hegel’s Recollection. A Study of Images in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Albany: State University of New York Press 1985, pp. 92–103. Karlheinz Well, Die schöne Seele und ihre sittliche Wirklichkeit, Frankfurt am Main and Bern: Peter Lang 1986.


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any validity to subjective opinion, assertion, and the appeal to a subjective opinion.”35 Therefore, and this is the second conclusion, the individual in the state has a right to moral conscience so long as the acts it compels do not conflict with the universally valid civil law. This said, Hegel also is willing to allow moral conscience a fair bit of leeway even when it in fact does conflict with the laws of the state. For example, he allows for the conscience of the individual to be absolute for the individual in instances of conscientious objectors to military service.36 But his point is that individual conscience cannot be made into a principle of universal morality or civil law without leading to chaos. Hegel also makes room for matters of religious conscience in the rational state. Here it is clear that his position is to a certain extent compatible with that of Johannes de silentio. He is able to acknowledge Abraham, like Johannes de silentio, as a knight of faith for following the demands of his moral or religious conscience, but only up to a certain point. The right of the individual moral conscience is limited to a certain sphere and stops as soon as it comes into conflict with the law (i.e., if Abraham actually attempts to sacrifice Isaac, then he must be prosecuted since the state cannot permit the universalization of the individual acts of faith and conscience that encroach on the rights of others). Although Johannes de silentio praises Abraham’s faith, there is nothing that would prevent him from accepting Hegel’s conclusion here since he is clearly interested primarily in the religious rather than the political implications of the problem. B. Johannes de silentio’s Criticism. Johannes de silentio begins the first “Problema” by outlining the view of ethics as something universal. He then uses this as a hypothetical statement as follows: “If this is the case, then Hegel is right in ‘The Good and Conscience,’ where he defines man only as a ‘moral form of evil’ (see especially The Philosophy of Right), which must be annulled [ophævet] in the teleology of the moral in such a way that the single individual who remains in that stage either sins or is immersed in spiritual trial.”37 If ethics is conceived as having the universal for its benchmark, then Hegel is correct in his negative judgment of arbitrary individualism since it is clear that such individualism contradicts the 35 36

37

Hegel, PR, § 137; Jub., vol. 7, p. 197. Hegel, PR, § 270; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 353–354: “A state which is strong because its organization is fully developed can adopt a more liberal attitude in this respect, and may completely overlook individual matters which may affect it, or even tolerate communities whose religion does not recognize even their direct duties towards the state (although this naturally depends on the numbers concerned). It is able to do this by entrusting the members of such communities to civil society and its laws, and is content if they fulfil their direct duties towards it passively, for example by commutation or substitution of an alternative service.” In a footnote to this passage Hegel mentions precisely the example of exempting citizens from military service who have moral or religious objections. FT, p. 54; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 148–149. Translation slightly modified.


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universal. Of course, in the context of The Philosophy of Right, Hegel is not interested in the possibility of this individualism being a manifestation of a “spiritual trial” as Johannes de silentio is. Hegel’s only point is the uncontroversial claim that radical individualism or the moral conscience cannot be made into the sole criterion for morality or civil law. Johannes de silentio’s criticism lies in the fact that Hegel does not leave open this possibility of a “spiritual trial” or of a teleological suspension of the ethical. He continues: “But Hegel is wrong in speaking about faith; he is wrong in not protesting loudly and clearly against Abraham’s enjoying honor and glory as a father of faith when he ought to be sent back to a lower court and shown up as a murderer.”38 Johannes de silentio criticizes Hegel’s approach for being inapplicable in the sphere of faith. An ethics defined in terms of the universal must demand that Abraham be prosecuted and condemned like any other murderer. Anything less would be inconsistent and thus wrong; however, he overlooks the fact that from a different perspective (i.e., a religious one), the same act, which from the perspective of civil law and Sittlichkeit is illegal and immoral, respectively, can also be a sign of the highest faith. Hegel is purportedly inconsistent in not following through on his view of civil law, which would seem to require him to condemn Abraham. The reference to “The Good and Conscience” is odd since Hegel’s analysis concerns neither Abraham nor faith. But this seems to be what Johannes de silentio ascribes to him. The Philosophy of Right is an analysis of civil law and not religion. Thus, the acts of the moral conscience are in this context analyzed only from the perspective of civil law; from this perspective, Abraham is a potential murderer and nothing more. Hegel does not deny that there are other possible perspectives. Indeed, Hegel’s philosophy is rightly known for the way in which it examines the same phenomenon or concept from different perspectives and at different levels. Thus, while what Johannes de silentio says of Hegel here is in itself true, this cannot be regarded as Hegel’s only or final word on the matter. His analysis of religion is far richer than these passages on the moral conscience here in the context of his political philosophy. Hegel also discusses the question of moral conscience in the Phenomenology of Spirit,39 the Encyclopaedia,40 and the Lectures on the History of Philosophy,41 but Johannes de silentio only refers to the account in the Philosophy of Right. Johannes de silentio then states the thesis of this section and indeed of the work as a whole: “faith is namely this paradox that the single individual 38 39 40 41

FT, pp. 54–55; SKS, vol. 4, p. 149. Hegel, PhS, pp. 383–409; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 484–516. Hegel, Phil. of Mind, §§ 503–512; Jub., vol. 10, pp. 391–397. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 420–412; Jub., vol. 18, pp. 93–95. Hist. of Phil. I, pp. 442–443; Jub., vol. 18, pp. 115–116.


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is higher than the universal – yet, please note, in such a way that the movement repeats itself, so that after having been in the universal he as the single individual isolates himself as higher than the universal.”42 This is the core of Johannes de silentio’s position to which he returns again and again. It is clear that he does not mean that arbitrary individualism is higher than the universal. This is the point of his quick caveat, which evinces a very Hegelian perspective. But Johannes de silentio’s problem is then to distinguish his legitimate, faith-based “individualism,” which is higher than the universal, from the arbitrary kind advocated by the Romantics. He tries to do this with the example of Abraham, which is, of course, interpreted as a divine command that suspends the usual rules of social ethics and morality. Johannes de silentio then continues with his criticism of Hegel by pointing out that there must be some legitimate space between the individual and social morality such that the individual can be allowed to deviate from customary social ethics without being branded evil or arbitrary. He writes: For if the ethical – that is, social morality – is the highest and if there is in a person no residual incommensurability in some way such that this incommensurability is not evil (i.e. the single individual, who is to be expressed in the universal), then no categories are needed other than what Greek philosophy had or what can be deduced from them by consistent thought. Hegel should not have concealed this, for after all, he had studied Greek philosophy.43

What Johannes de silentio understands here by “Greek philosophy” is not wholly clear. The point is perhaps that for Hegel there is no incommensurability or mystery, and thus everything can be known and openly adjudicated; thus Hegel shares with the Greeks the view of transparency and open access to the truth. Johannes de silentio tends to contrast this with his interpretation of the Christian view, which involves transcendence and incommensurability, where the truth remains hidden. The paradox of the God-man and faith is nondiscursive. Thus, Johannes de silentio’s point in the passage is that Hegel has not gone beyond the standpoint of transparency of Greek philosophy. But in spite of the numerous misinterpretations of Hegel’s social and political philosophy which see him as destroying the individual and deifying the state, his goal is in fact to preserve the sanctity of the individual and to allow room for individuality within the state. This is made clear in his criticism of the Sittlichkeit of the Greek polis, which he characterizes as an immediacy that does not allow for subjective freedom and destroys 42 43

FT, p. 55; SKS, vol. 4, p. 149. Kierkegaard also broaches the question of an exception to the universal in Repetition. R, p. 226; SKS, vol. 4, p. 92. FT, p. 55; SKS, vol. 4, p. 149.


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individuality.44 By contrast, the modern world, as shaped by the French Revolution and Romanticism, is one in which the ethical life of the community has been fragmented and individuals have become monadic units or atoms in the social sphere.45 This is the price the modern world must pay for winning its individualism from the ancient world. The goal that Hegel sets for himself in his political philosophy is to win back the universal spirit of the community that modernity has lost, while maintaining individuality in the sense of a mediated relation to social ethics. The goal is a deep and meaningful sense of social community like the Greeks, but in a mediated way that does not destroy the individual. Johannes de silentio’s interpretation of the story of Abraham and Isaac turns on the doctrine of the “teleological suspension of the ethical.”46 Abraham entered into a direct or private relation to the divine.47 This relation, since it is with God, is absolute and thus infinitely higher than any finite relation. Therefore, Abraham stands “in an absolute relation to the absolute.”48 This absolute relation to the divine is one of faith or personal revelation which by its very nature is private or subjective. It is precisely alone, qua individual, that one enters into this relation with God. From this arises the tension: since the relation is with God it is absolute and infinitely higher than even the highest universal human moral laws and ethics, yet this relation is only possible for a single individual, who is then, qua single individual, set above such universal moral laws. The question then arises how the individual who has a revelation or receives an absolute command of conscience knows that it is genuine. Johannes de silentio poses this question and alludes indirectly to Hegel’s political philosophy. He writes: “How does the single individual reassure himself that he is legitimate? It is a simple matter to level all existence to the idea of the state or the idea of society. If this is done, it is also simple to mediate, for one never comes to the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal.”49 The upshot of Johannes de silentio’s analysis is that the individual can never be completely sure of the divine revelation. Since there is no mediation, there remains a gap between God and human beings, universal and particular, a gap that reason and knowledge cannot overcome. This seems to be one of the most important conclusions of Johannes de silentio’s entire interpretation of the story. Abraham can never be wholly certain 44 45 46 47

48 49

Hegel, PhS, pp. 266–289; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 339–367. Hegel, PhS, pp. 355–363; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 449–459. FT, p. 66; SKS, vol. 4, p. 159. This is implied when Kierkegaard contrasts Abraham with the tragic hero and says, “Here the necessity of a new category for the understanding of Abraham becomes apparent. Paganism does not know such a relationship to the divine. The tragic hero does not enter into any private relationship to the divine”(FT, p. 60; SKS, vol. 4, p. 153). FT, p. 56; SKS, vol. 4, p. 150. FT, p. 62; SKS, vol. 4, p. 155. FT, p. 62; SKS, vol. 4, p. 155.


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in the sense of discursive rationality. Therefore, his belief is not one of complacent certainty but rather of anxiety and tension. He has faith but with fear and trembling. The point of the allusion to Hegel’s political philosophy seems to be that it is an easy matter to construct the rational state discursively, but to believe with deep anxiety is infinitely more difficult. In his account of the forms of subjectivism, Hegel analyzes a position that corresponds quite well to Johannes de silentio’s interpretation of Abraham. It is the penultimate form of subjectivism analyzed in the long Remark to § 140 of the Philosophy of Right. This is the view according to which personal conviction, be it of a divine command or of the goodness of one’s own will, is placed above all other considerations. Here Hegel seems to address Johannes de silentio’s position directly: But if a good heart, good intentions, and subjective conviction are said to be the factors which give actions their value, there is no longer any hypocrisy or evil at all; for a person is able to transform whatever he does into something good by reflection of good intentions and motives, and the element of his conviction renders it good. Thus, there is no longer such a thing as crime or vice in and for itself, and instead of those free and open, hardened and undiluted sinners referred to above we have a consciousness of complete justification by intention and conviction.50

If everyone who sincerely believed that he received a divine call were obliged to teleologically suspend the usual ethical duties and act as the divine voice commanded, then the result could well include a host of terrible crimes all committed in the name of God. Johannes de silentio’s argument is potentially the same as that of any given fanatical religious terrorist. In short, it justifies any action. If conviction or faith is made the sole criterion for action, then the very possibility of a wrongful action is eliminated since that conviction can have any given content whatsoever. Indeed, on this view, it is not the content that is at issue.51 For this reason Hegel believes that ethical views like truth claims must be negotiated in practice in the public forum. One cannot remain secure in the subjectivity of one’s own heart, but rather one is obliged to enter into moral life with others in which ethical views are open for critical examination.

50 51

Hegel, PR, § 140, Remark, (e); Jub., vol. 7, pp. 213–214. See Hegel, PR, § 140, Remark, (e); Jub., vol. 7, p. 214: “In so far as we speak of judging and pronouncing a verdict on an action, this principle requires that the agent should be judged only in terms of his intention and conviction, or of his faith – not in the sense in which Christ requires faith in objective truth (so that the judgment passed on a person of bad faith, i.e. on one whose conviction is bad in its content, must also be negative, in keeping with this evil content), but in the sense of loyalty to one’s conviction (in so far as a person, in his action, remains true to his conviction), i.e. in the sense of formal, subjective loyalty, which is alone in keeping with duty.” See PhS, pp. 386–387; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 487–488. Hegel’s description of this position sounds very much like Kierkegaard’s plea for passion in faith, without regard to any determinate content.


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Hegel also argues that this position is internally contradictory. If one thinks that issues can be negotiated and truth can be determined on the basis of good reasons in what Habermas calls “communicative action,” then one’s convictions based on reasons are an important and necessary part in any communicative exchange. If, on the contrary, one believes that one cannot know the truth and that reasons and arguments play no role whatsoever, then one admits at the same time that private convictions about these matters are trivial; indeed, this is the reason why the one insisting on the absolute nature of the moral conscience rejects accepted values, civil law, ethics, and the like as trivial or merely subjective. Hegel points out the contradiction as follows: For in the first instance, conviction is supposed to be the basis of ethics and of man’s supreme worth, and is thereby declared to be a supreme and sacred value; and in the second case, all that we are concerned with is error, and my conviction is insignificant and contingent, in fact a purely external circumstance which I may encounter in one way or another. And my conviction is an extremely insignificant thing if I cannot recognize the truth; for it is a matter of indifference how I think, and all that remains for me to think about is that empty good as an abstraction of the understanding.52

By claiming an epistemological agnosticism in order to dismiss or “suspend” accepted practices and values, one forfeits the right to make any positive moral claim oneself. One’s personal conviction is trivial if the matter cannot be discursively negotiated or adjudicated. Thus, Hegel censures the subjective nature of the moral conscience which Johannes de silentio extols; indeed, it is the subjective situation of Abraham that makes the story so interesting for Johannes de silentio. His relation to God and the revelation of the divine command are his and his alone. Hegel has no problem with moral or religious conscience per se. Indeed, he distinguishes between legitimate conscience as it appears in Sittlichkeit53 from subjective or formal conscience in Moralität. He analyzes legitimate conscience as one that, unlike the formal conscience, has a determinate and genuinely universal content that is guaranteed by the state.54 The problem for him is the subjective nature of formal conscience which he believes cannot be given free rein in the context of civil law. If there is no conflict with civil law, then Hegel is happy to allow the moral conscience any number of excesses. But Johannes de silentio makes no attempt to ground the actions of the moral conscience in civil law or to defend it in the face of established legal institutions. Indeed, he does not seem interested in the implications of this doctrine for 52 53 54

Hegel, PR, § 140, Remark, (e); Jub., vol. 7, p. 216. Hegel, PR, § 137, Remark; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 196–198. Hegel, PR, § 270; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 348–366. See also Phil. of Mind, § 552; Jub., vol. 10, pp. 433–445. PR, § 268; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 345–346.


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political philosophy. Thus, the two appear to be at cross purposes since the contexts of their discussions are quite different. C. An Analogous Example. The motivation behind Hegel’s position can best be understood when one has some sense of the social and political milieu in which he wrote his Philosophy of Right.55 Here one finds an example that offers an interesting parallel to Johannes de silentio’s account of Abraham. Hegel came from Heidelberg to the Royal FriedrichWilhelms-Universität in Berlin in 1818, holding his inaugural lecture on October 22nd. In that Winter Semester of 1818–19, he lectured on his political philosophy. At this time the student movement in the form of the Burschenschaften was taking root throughout Prussia and the German states. The liberal students, encouraged by a number of professors, among them Hegel’s lifelong rival Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773–1843),56 lobbied for, among other things, pan-German nationalism, political equality, a constitutional monarchy, and popular sovereignty. They consolidated their movement at the Wartburg Festival of October 18, 1817. The leaders of Prussia and the German states were alarmed by this development, and in January 1819, the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm III (1770–1840), ordered professors who encouraged the liberal students dismissed from their posts. This was the atmosphere when Hegel arrived in Berlin in the fall of 1818. The situation exploded on March 23, 1819, when a theology student by the name of Karl Ludwig Sand (1795–1820), inspired by the higher calling of German nationalism, murdered the Russian noble August von Kotzebue (1761–1819), a conservative writer critical of the student movement and German unification. This action confirmed the authorities’ worst fears of what the spirit of youth and freedom were capable of, and they reacted with severe measures, imprisoning students and dismissing professors as “demagogues.” The “Karlsbad Decrees” were issued in August of 1819 by a council of ministers of the German states and called for a disbanding of the fraternities and political associations, a new censorship and closer governmental control of university appointments. In these actions a number of professors were dismissed from their posts including Fries in Jena and the theologian Wilhelm De Wette (1780–1849), Hegel’s colleague in Berlin. Hegel’s position in this matter is somewhat difficult to characterize since he does not readily fall into the one camp or the other. On the one hand, he was a lifelong advocate of Napoleon and of constitutionalism 55

56

See Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak, Philosophy and Politics: A Commentary on the Preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Dordrecht, and Boston, and Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff 1987, pp. 15–31. Cf. Willem van Dooren, “Hegel und Fries,” Kantstudien, 61, 1970, pp. 217–226.


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and a consistent critic of the conservative forces of the Restoration. He sympathized with many of the goals of the politically active students and helped some of them in practical matters, posting bail for his imprisoned student Gustav Asverus (1798–1843) and supporting his former Heidelberg student Friedrich W. Carové (1789–1852) in his application for a position in Berlin.57 On the other hand, he rejected their extremism and self-righteousness. He thus criticizes Fries for encouraging the worst aspects of youthful enthusiasm at Wartburg. The Preface to the Philosophy of Right was written very much with this in mind; there Hegel openly enters into polemics against Fries and this tendency.58 Thus, Hegel was neither a Prussian apologist nor an agitator in the student movement. Hegel’s reaction and assessment of the episode of the murder of Kotzebue is illuminating for the question at hand since Sand’s action provides an analogue to Johannes de silentio’s Abraham. Sand, who was condemned and ultimately executed in May of 1820, was regarded by his supporters not as a criminal but as a “pious heart,” justified in his actions. De Wette, in a letter, which, once discovered, led to his dismissal, writes to Sand’s mother that her son’s error “is excused and to a certain extent abolished by the strength and purity of his conviction, and his passion is sanctified by the good source from which it flows. He was sure of his cause, he considered it right to do what he did, and thus he did right.”59 Like Johannes de silentio’s Abraham, Sand believed he had a higher calling that suspended both civil law and accepted custom. In the final analysis, he is thought to have done what was right by following the call of his heart or his moral conscience. Both De Wette and Schleiermacher (who sympathized with his plight) were theologians,60 and De Wette’s view was grounded in a theological subjectivity that Hegel rejected. As was mentioned, Sand himself was a student of theology. Hegel is critical of the attempt to justify heinous acts, like that of Sand, under the name of piety, religion, or divine calling. He considers this simple fanaticism and self-indulgent arrogance. While Hegel helped De Wette with financial support after his colleague’s dismissal, he had nothing but disdain for this kind of view, which raises subjectivity above law and custom. Kierkegaard wants to make room for the legitimate place of revelation. This is an issue with which he wrestles not only here but also elsewhere in the corpus.61 Hegel has no reason to deny the possibility of divine revelation in principle but argues only that, with respect to civil law, 57 58 59 60 61

See Horst Althaus, Hegel und die heroischen Jahre der Philosophie, Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag 1992, pp. 318–320. Hegel, PR, Preface, pp. 15–16; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 26–28. Quoted from Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak, Philosophy and Politics, op. cit., p. 20. For an account of Hegel’s relation to Schleiermacher during this period, see Horst Althaus, Hegel und die heroischen Jahre der Philosophie, op. cit., pp. 323–326. The most obvious example is The Book on Adler.


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truth must be socially negotiable and defensible in the public sphere. For Kierkegaard, matters of faith remain forever hidden and concealed in the private sphere. In any case the two thinkers are at cross purposes on this issue since the contexts of the two discussions are so different that they preclude fruitful comparison – Hegel’s account being concerned with moral and political theory and Johannes de silentio’s with revelation and faith. This leads one to wonder why Hegel is introduced into this discussion at all. One explanation might be that the reference to Hegel here and at the beginning of the two other Problemata has a symbolic significance in the sense that Kierkegaard feels obliged to criticize him in order to declare his independence from Hegel’s Danish followers. But it is not clear, at least in the case of this first “Problema,” that there is any real content behind this symbolic opposition. This is, of course, not to imply that Hegel’s political philosophy is absolutely irrelevant for the themes of Fear and Trembling. Rather the way in which Johannes de silentio takes Hegel’s discussion of “The Good and Conscience” so radically from its original political context to the religious one, which he wants to discuss, makes one suspicious about the degree to which he really wants to criticize Hegel’s own position. It seems instead that he finds in it a convenient target by means of which to set up his own view and a convenient symbol that would have a clear significance to his contemporary Danish reader.

iii. problema ii: absolute duty and the inner and the outer In “Problema II,” Johannes de silentio begins his account in a fashion parallel to the previous one. Just as in “Problema I,” Johannes de silentio’s procedure is first to say that given certain presuppositions about ethics, Hegel was right and then that, in regard specifically to the problem of Abraham and faith, he was wrong, thereby introducing a critical point. I will argue here that while there is a potential conflict in the views of the two men, Johannes de silentio’s ostensible critique of Hegel regarding the inner and the outer is rather enigmatic since he takes these terms from Hegel’s philosophy out of their original contexts and gives them a meaning in accordance with his own discussion of faith without any attempt to explore the actual issue in Hegel. I wish to argue that this can be explained by the fact that the true target of this criticism is not Hegel at all, as it purports to be, but rather Heiberg. The main argument of this section is that there is an absolute duty towards God that is higher than any finite duty. The argument can be seen as a corollary to the one in the first “Problema” about the teleological suspension of the ethical. Johannes de silentio returns to the same example to illustrate the point: “The ethical expression for [Abraham’s]


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relation to Isaac is that the father must love the son. This ethical relation is reduced to the relative in contradistinction to the absolute relation to God.”62 Abraham’s duty as a father is “suspended” by his higher duty towards God since his relation to God is higher than his relation to his own son or to any other human being. Johannes de silentio’s main argument for this principle comes from a passage in Luke that he cites: “As we all know, Luke 14.26 offers a remarkable teaching on the absolute duty to God: ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.’”63 Johannes de silentio interprets this to mean that the finite duties one has in usual ethical relations are only relative in comparison to the absolute duty one has towards God. He is critical of those who try to soften this claim by reinterpreting the passage from Luke in order to render it more palatable. As in his account of the teleological suspension of the ethical, here in his account of the absolute duty to God, Johannes de silentio employs the notion of the paradox that the individual is higher than the universal.64 In this absolute duty towards God, the individual must remain an individual and not attempt to see this duty as an expression of the universal. This is the difference for Johannes de silentio between the tragic hero, who makes a sacrifice in accordance with the universal, and the knight of faith, who makes a sacrifice in accordance with the particular (i.e., his own particular relation to God). The latter is the paradox of faith, which defies rational explanation. It is more difficult to determine the role of Hegel in this discussion than in the previous one. The main point implicitly seems to be the same as in the previous section (i.e., that by insisting on the universal in ethics, Hegel does not allow for the possibility that the individual can be higher than the universal in the case of a divine command that suspends the usual universal ethical laws). Thus, Hegel purportedly does not recognize that the absolute duty towards God outweighs finite human duties.65 Hegel is introduced at the beginning of the section, once again, in a seemingly ambivalent fashion as in the previous analysis. The formulation is again hypothetical: “if there is nothing incommensurable in a human life, and if the incommensurable that is present is there only by an accident from which nothing results insofar as existence is viewed from

62 64 65

63 FT, p. 72; SKS, vol. 4, p. 163. FT, pp. 70–71; SKS, vol. 4, p. 162. FT, p. 70; SKS, vol. 4, p. 162. As has been seen in the previous section, Hegel finds problematic any subjectively justified absolute duty since it can be filled with any given content. Since his objections to this view have been explored in the previous section, I will not repeat them here. All of this is only implicit here in “Problema II.”


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the idea, then Hegel was right.”66 Hegel’s philosophy is based on the premise of the ultimate rationality of the world. The universe displays a logos that is accessible to human beings, and what is not comprehensible or governed by reason is accidental, which is not the object of scientific investigation. Johannes de silentio brings up Hegel in this way in order to contrast the Hegelian view of the ultimate rationality and commensurability of the world with his own view of the paradox of faith, which is incomprehensible to reason. Johannes de silentio now turns to the negative assessment of the Hegelian view. He alludes to the doctrine of the inner and the outer. While this doctrine has deep roots in the history of philosophy and theology and can by no means be said to have originated in Hegel, Johannes de silentio associates it with him: But [Hegel] was not right in speaking about faith or in permitting Abraham to be regarded as its father, for in the latter case he has pronounced judg¨ ment both on Abraham and on faith. In Hegelian philosophy, das Außere (die Entäußerung) is higher than das Innere. . . . But faith is the paradox that interiority is higher than exteriority, or to call to mind something said earlier, the uneven number is higher than the even.67

Johannes de silentio’s main argument against the ostensibly Hegelian principle of the dialectical relation of the inner and the outer is that, with faith properly understood, the inner is in fact higher than the outer and the two terms are not commensurable. By contrast, the goal purportedly implied by the Hegelian principle seems to be that one should purge oneself of the inner and live in the expression of the outer: Thus in the ethical view of life, it is the task of the single individual to strip himself of the qualification of interiority and to express this in something external. Every time the individual shrinks from it, every time he withholds himself in or slips down again into the qualifications of feeling, mood, etc. that belong to interiority, he trespasses, he is immersed in spiritual trial. The paradox of faith is that there is an interiority that is incommensurable with exteriority, an interiority that is not identical, please note, with the first but is a new interiority.68

Johannes de silentio conceives of faith as essentially a private and inward relation of the individual to God. Therefore, any outward sign of it would be meaningless or even misleading or distorting. This is precisely what he argues in “Problema III.” Evaluating this criticism is not easy since Johannes de silentio has taken this principle so far out of its original context in Hegel’s philosophy that 66 68

FT, p. 68; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 160–161. FT, p. 69; SKS, vol. 4, p. 161.

67

FT, pp. 68–69; SKS, vol. 4, p. 161.


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it no longer has anything to do with Hegel himself. The issue of the inner and the outer is understood by Hegel primarily as epistemological and metaphysical. His primary discussion of it appears in the Science of Logic in his account of inner hidden forces and their expression in the phenomenal world.69 There Hegel tries to demonstrate the conceptual unity of two terms, force and expression, inner and outer, which are not independent but rather mutually condition one another. Hegel shows this by pointing out the circular arguments involved in justifying the two terms: one begins by explaining a given external phenomenon in terms of an unseen inner force behind it, and then when the question is raised about how one can know that this unseen force even exists, the claim is made that it must exist since the phenomenon is its expression. Thus, each term is at first taken as cause or ground and then as effect or consequent. Hegel’s point is to show that these terms refer to complex concepts that consist of two reciprocal parts. The outer is necessary for the inner and vice versa since when one of these terms is posited, the other is immediately already implied. In his discussion of the forms of explanation in natural science,70 Hegel also uses the terms “the inner” and “the outer.” One kind of biological explanation attempts to grasp the organism in terms of specific systems (i.e., the nervous system, the muscular system, and the digestive system). In accordance with the natural science of the day, Hegel understands these systems to belong to the organism’s outer morphology. This attempt at explanation is, according to Hegel, characteristic of the field of anatomy. By contrast, there is another kind of explanation that belongs to physiology. According to this kind of explanation, an organism is understood in terms of its functions: sensibility, irritability, and reproduction. These are thought to constitute the inner aspect of the organism. Hegel criticizes both kinds of explanation as one-sided since they analyze specific systems and functions in isolation and not in the context of the entire organism. Hegel attempts to demonstrate that the inner aspect of an organism cannot be understood without its outer aspect and vice versa. Thus, the inner and the outer represent reciprocal parts of the organic whole. It should be clear that Hegel’s discussion of the inner and the outer in these contexts has nothing to do with Johannes de silentio’s discussion. Hegel makes no claims about how the outer or the inner is related to faith and certainly does not discuss Abraham in this context as Johannes de silentio implies. He does not claim that the outer is higher than the inner; on the contrary, the two are dialectically related concepts, which means 69 70

Hegel, SL, pp. 518–528; Jub., vol. 4, pp. 648–661. EL, §§ 138–141; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 313–319. PhS, pp. 160–172; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 208–223. See also his criticism of physiognomy and phrenology: PhS, pp. 185–210; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 239–271.


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that they are reciprocal and thus on equal footing. Likewise, Hegel does not claim that the individual should eliminate his interiority and make it external. Johannes de silentio seems to take key terms from Hegel’s philosophy and then apply them in a context that is wholly his own. As in “Problema I,” this raises the question of why Hegel is mentioned here at all. The answer seems again to have something to do with the need to carry on an overt polemic against the Danish Hegelians. Evidence for this explanation can be found in the context of Kierkegaard’s changing relation to Heiberg. The notion of the inner and the outer was one aspect of Hegel’s philosophy that Heiberg adopted and applied to any number of academic fields that he was interested in. He refers to these categories in many very different works, including everything from drama to natural science.71 It can be said without exaggeration that these categories became one of the trademarks of his thought. In his main work on logic, Outline of the Philosophy of Philosophy or Speculative Logic from 1832, Heiberg analyzes these concepts at length. There he writes: The standpoint upon which essence is determined as the inner is one of those upon which representation takes root, without wanting to retreat from it. “The inner essence” is even a quite current way of speaking. . . . But it is also valid here that the essence thus determined is phenomenon, for what is determined as the inner, is precisely in this determination determined as the outer, for each for itself is the totality; or, the inner, seen from the standpoint of the outer, is itself outer for it, and in opposition to this, the outer likewise becomes the inner in the same way as the parts are the whole and the whole the parts. . . . The difficulty, which representation has to overcome, is to unite the two points of view.72

Like Hegel, Heiberg insists that the inner and the outer must be understood in dialectical relation to each other and cannot be grasped in isolation. Heiberg goes on to develop this basic Hegelian intuition into an elaborate theory of appearances. In his drama Fata Morgana from 1838 he treats the notion of the illusions presented by appearances, and in one of the dialogues he underscores directly the dialectical relation of 71

72

E.g., Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Indlednings-Foredrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1835, p. 29. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 1, p. 499.) “Om Principet for Historiens Begyndelse,” Intelligensblade, no. 35–36, September 1, 1843, p. 261. (Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 400.) “Det astronomiske Aar,” Urania, 1844, p. 137. ASKB U 57. (Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 9, p. 108.) “Symbolik,” Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad, II, no. 4, January 28, 1834, [pp. 23–24]. (Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 10, pp. 162–164.) See also Martensen’s review: “Nye Digte af J. L. Heiberg (1841. 80- 249 S. Reitzel.),” Fædrelandet, vol. 2, no. 398, January 10, 1841, p. 3209. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Grundtræk til Philosophiens Philosophie eller den speculative Logik. Som Ledetraad ved Forelæsninger paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1832, § 115, Remark 2. See also §§ 112–114. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 252–253.)


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the inner and the outer.73 He develops this theory further in 1842 in this article “The Starry Heavens” from the Intelligensblade.74 Perhaps the immediate occasion for Johannes de silentio’s use of the categories of the inner and the outer was Heiberg’s article, “Contribution to a Philosophy of the Visible,” which appeared in the Intelligensblade on May 15, 1843 (i.e., only two months after Heiberg’s review of Either/Or, and in the same journal). In this article Heiberg discusses the human senses and their relation to perception generally and to the appreciation of art specifically. There he explains that for aesthetics the outer is higher than the inner: For while in the highest sphere of spirit, the picture is lower than the object, by contrast just the opposite is the case in mere empirical objectivity: here the picture is of a higher nature than the object because the picture is aesthetic, the object only realistic. The aesthetic Idea or beauty always rests on the outer surface of objects and never penetrates into their internal, realistic structure; precisely therefore this Idea is always pictorial, for the picture is the immaterial outer surface itself.75

This is a position for which Heiberg was well known in his capacity as aesthetic theorist. In the second volume of Perseus from 1838 in his article “On the Art of Painting,” he defines beauty in much the same way: “Beauty is in general only the outer surface of the existing actuality, not its inner material.”76 Heiberg’s claim that beauty is to be found in the outer appearance leads him to the position that the outer is higher than the inner in the field of aesthetics. This is the position that Johannes de silentio seems to be responding to. It becomes even more clear that Heiberg is the true source of the criticism when one compares this polemical use of the categories of the inner and the outer with the nonpolemical use of them in The Concept of Irony and Either/Or. In the former, the categories are used to explain the nature of Socrates: “he belonged to the breed of persons with whom the outer as such is not the stopping point. The outer continually pointed to something other and opposite. . . .The outer was not at all in harmony with the 73

74 75

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Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Fata Morgana, Copenhagen 1838, pp. 49–50. ASKB. 1561. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Poetiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel 1862, vol. 2, pp. 146–147.) See also Martensen’s review: “Fata Morgana, Eventyr-Comedie af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. 1838. 125S. 80- . Kjøbenhavn. Schubothes Boghandling,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 19, 1838, pp. 361–397. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Stjernehimlen,” Intelligensblade, no. 14, October 1, 1842, p. 29. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 9, p. 30.) Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Bidrag til det Synliges Philosophie,” Intelligensblade, vol. 3, no. 28, May 15, 1843, p. 89. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 367–368.) See Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Om Malerkunsten i dens Forhold til de andre skjønne Kunster,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, no. 2, 1838, p. 127. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 281.)


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inner but was rather its opposite, and only under this angle of refraction is he to be comprehended.”77 One of the most famous examples of the use of these concepts is in the Preface to Either/Or, which begins with the sentence: “It may at times have occurred to you, dear reader, to doubt somewhat the accuracy of that familiar philosophical thesis that the outer is the inner and the inner is the outer.”78 Kierkegaard again uses these categories in the second of the Two Edifying Discourses from 1843, entitled “Every Good and Every Perfect Gift Is from Above.”79 They also appear in the discourse “Strengthening in the Inner Being,” from Three Edifying Discourses from 1843.80 In these works, they are neither employed in a polemical fashion nor associated with Hegel. The polemical usage begins in Fear and Trembling (i.e., after Kierkegaard’s alienation from Heiberg due to Heiberg’s dismissive review of Either/Or). Kierkegaard continues to refer to these categories throughout the corpus but now in a polemical fashion.81 On the whole, Hegel’s role in “Problema II” is in a sense as irrelevant for the actual issue at hand as in Johannes de silentio’s first analysis. Once again Hegel is set up as an opposing view, but the position that Johannes de silentio describes has only a linguistic similarity with Hegel’s actual view. The use of Hegel in these two Problemata seems enigmatic since it is not clear why Johannes de silentio would use him to frame the issue to be discussed or set him up as an opposing position without discussing any of his actual views. This can be explained in terms of Kierkegaard’s break with Heiberg. Kierkegaard wished to mark a distance between himself and Heiberg, which he does by ostensibly opposing the view of his pseudonym to that of Hegel. But it is clear from these analyses that the views of Hegel that he mentions have little if anything to do with the actual content of the discussions in Fear and Trembling. Thus, the criticisms seem to be only for the sake of appearances and not substantial.

iv. problema iii: the problem of communication and justification The third and final “Problema” concerns the issue of Abraham’s silence. Johannes de silentio formulates it thus: “Was it ethically defensible for Abraham to conceal his undertaking from Sarah, from Eliezer, and from Isaac?”82 The issue is not just Abraham’s silence but the problem of 77 79 81

82

78 EO1, p. 3; SKS, vol. 2, p. 11. CI, p. 12; SKS, vol. 1, p. 74. 80 See EUD, p. 101; SKS, vol. 5, p. 106. See EUD, p. 48; SKS, vol. 5, p. 55. E.g., SL, p. 375; SKS, vol. 6, p. 349. SL, p. 428; SKS, vol. 6, p. 396. SL, p. 441; SKS, vol. 6, p. 408. CUP1, p. 54; SKS, vol. 7, p. 58. CUP1, p. 138; SKS, vol. 7, p. 129. CUP1, p. 296fn.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 270fn. CUP1, p. 542; SKS, vol. 7, p. 492. JP, vol. 2, 2111; SKS, vol. 18, p. 170, JJ:96. FT, p. 82; SKS, vol. 4, p. 172.


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discursive justification in general. Given the doctrines of the teleological suspension of the ethical and the absolute duty towards God, which were examined in the first two Problemata, the question now becomes whether or not one can appeal to that absolute duty or divine revelation in order to explain or justify one’s actions to others when they are in conflict with accepted ethics and civil law. What is strange is that Hegel and Johannes de silentio in a certain sense come to the same conclusion, namely, that any appeal of this kind must be regarded as illegitimate. In this section, I want to argue that, once again, Johannes de silentio’s use of Hegel cannot be made sense of as a straightforward reference to Hegel’s philosophy. As has been seen in Section II, Hegel sees grave dangers in the view that he calls “the law of the heart” (i.e., the idea that one can act according to the private convictions of one’s own heart without subjecting them to public scrutiny). For Hegel, this can lead to a mad subjectivism that rejects any form of discursive justification. He reduces this position to absurdity by indicating the contradiction involved: “It may also be remarked that, as far as the mode of action of other people in relation to my own action is concerned, it follows from this that, if their faith and conviction make them regard my actions as crimes, they are quite right to do so.”83 If personal conviction is made the only standard for law and ethics, then one is obliged to accept the personal convictions of everyone else. Thus, when one is tried, condemned, and imprisoned for a murder committed out of the conviction of moral conscience of its obedience to a higher law, then one cannot consistently reproach civil law or those responsible for its execution since this too has the status of a conviction. Even if one attempts to justify one’s actions in this way, this justification or defense is ultimately meaningless since no adjudication is possible. In the discussion in the third “Problema,” Johannes de silentio examines a number of examples of hiddenness and recognition or revealedness in the sphere of both ethics and aesthetics. He is careful to distinguish the uniqueness of Abraham’s situation from that of others. Abraham, even if he wanted to, could not explain the divine command and make others understand it. This is the reason for his anxiety and why he is ultimately so alone. If Abraham were to attempt to explain the revelation discursively, then he would be dishonest. Johannes de silentio writes: “Even though I go on talking night and day without interruption, if I cannot make myself understood when I speak, then I am not speaking. This is the case with Abraham. He can say everything, but one thing he cannot say, and if he cannot say that – that is, say it in such a way that the other understands it – then he is not speaking.”84 The problem is that the divine command, qua revelation, cannot be grasped by reason; moreover, any attempt to do 83 84

Hegel, PR, § 140, Remark (e); Jub., vol. 7, p. 216. FT, p. 113; SKS, vol. 4, p. 201.


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so will only be a distortion. Johannes de silentio writes: “Now, Abraham can describe his love for Isaac in the most beautiful words to be found in any language. But this is not what is on his mind; it is something deeper, that he is going to sacrifice him because it is an ordeal. No one can understand the latter, and thus everyone can only misunderstand the former.”85 The attempt to explain the divine command would only lead to misunderstanding since it is in itself incomprehensible. This is the reason for his repeated question throughout the book, “Abraham, who can understand him?” Ultimately, his action cannot be understood since the divine command defies reason. No outward justification of Abraham’s actions is possible. Johannes de silentio, however, suggests that inward justification to oneself is possible, and in this he perceives a distinction between his view and that of Hegel. He sets up the issue here just as in the two previous Problemata with a reference to Hegel. He writes: “The ethical as such is the universal; as the universal it is in turn the disclosed. The single individual, qualified as immediate, sensate, and psychical, is the hidden. Thus his ethical task is to work himself out of his hiddenness and to become disclosed in the universal.”86 The universal demands of ethics are available to all in the public sphere. This is the reason they are universal. Johannes de silentio’s thesis is that in the case of divine revelation, as in Abraham’s case, silence or hiddenness is appropriate given the nature of the relation. Here Johannes de silentio introduces Hegel into the discussion to indicate a position contrary to his thesis: If there is no hiddenness rooted in the fact that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, then Abraham’s conduct cannot be defended, for he disregarded the intermediary ethical agents. . . . The Hegelian philosophy assumes no justified hiddenness, no justified incommensurability. It is, then, consistent for it to demand disclosure, but it is a little bemuddled when it wants to regard Abraham as the father of faith and to speak about faith.87

Johannes de silentio grants that communicability or “disclosure” is a legitimate demand in certain spheres (e.g., the aesthetic), but in the religious sphere this disclosure is inappropriate: “The first immediacy is the aesthetic, and here the Hegelian philosophy certainly may very well be right. But faith is not the aesthetic, or else faith has never existed because it has always existed.”88 Johannes de silentio and Hegel are talking about two different things. In his account of subjectivity and the moral conscience in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel never purports to talk about faith per se. In that context, he is interested in those concepts solely in their relation to morality and 85 87


86 88



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political philosophy. In the passage cited previously, Johannes de silentio grants that Hegel’s view has validity in a certain sphere, which is here called “the aesthetic,” but that it loses this validity when applied to faith and religion. But Hegel never purports to apply this analysis to faith and religion. Thus, it is once again enigmatic that Johannes de silentio in this context refers to Hegel, seemingly in continuation with his reference to “The Good and Conscience” from “Problema I,” in order to determine the final word on Hegel’s account of the moral conscience. He uses a strawman position as an antipode to his own in order to explicate his own view by way of contrast. Although Johannes de silentio mentions Hegel by name, the position he presents in the context of faith and religion has nothing to do with Hegel himself. According to Johannes de silentio, Abraham cannot in any way attempt to justify his action discursively to others. He is bound to accept in silence the judgment of civil law. As strange as it may seem, Hegel and Johannes de silentio are in perfect agreement that private conviction cannot be used to ground or justify anything. This is an important qualification. But this only shows more clearly the inappropriateness of Johannes de silentio’s reference to Hegel since the issue in the Philosophy of Right is one of grounding and justification in terms of rationality. Hegel’s whole point is that the private moral conscience cannot be used to justify action that is in conflict with civil law. Thus, the use of Hegel in all three Problemata is odd since Johannes de silentio does not seem to be in a dialogue with anything in Hegel’s primary texts. Some light can be shed on the use of Hegel in the third “Problema” when one recalls the claim, mentioned in the previous section, from Heiberg’s article, “Contribution to a Philosophy of the Visible.” Heiberg claims, with regard to aesthetics, that the outer is higher than the inner since it is visible and thus accessible to sense and aesthetic judgment. Johannes de silentio’s discussion of the aesthetics in this third “Problema” strikes one as oddly out of place in an analysis of religious faith and revelation. But this discussion makes more sense when one regards it as a polemic with Heiberg’s preference of the outer over the inner in the context of aesthetics. Thus, it is no accident that Heiberg’s aesthetic category, “the interesting,” is alluded to right at the beginning of the discussion.89 Johannes de silentio claims that while transparency and disclosure might be legitimate in aesthetics, they have no place in religion, which always involves an aspect of hiddenness. This helps to explain the reference 89

FT, p. 82; SKS, vol. 4, p. 173. See SKS, vol. K4, p. 141. Heiberg discusses this concept in his review of Oehlenschläger’s Dina. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Dina,” Intelligensblade, vol. 2, no. 16–17, November 15, 1842, pp. 73–106, see p. 80, pp. 95ff. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 365–394, see p. 371, pp. 384ff.)


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to Hegel in this “Problema.” What is at issue is Heiberg’s thesis about the visible and the transparent in contrast to the hidden in aesthetics. Johannes de silentio thus criticizes Heiberg’s position, but instead of doing so directly, he uses Hegel’s name so as to do so indirectly. But from the allusions and above all from the focus on aesthetics in the discussion, one can see that Heiberg is the main target here. It is clear that Kierkegaard has Johannes de silentio use Hegel for his own purposes. In each of the references to Hegel at the beginning of each of the Problemata, Johannes de silentio grants that Hegel is right in some limited manner or under certain presuppositions, and then he issues his criticism, saying that Hegel is wrong if he talks about Abraham and faith. It is here that the problem is most obvious since it is clearly Johannes de silentio and not Hegel who is interested in talking about Abraham and faith. Thus, Johannes de silentio uses “Hegel” each time to set up the issue and to represent a position contrary to his own, but when one takes the issue on Johannes de silentio’s terms (i.e., as an issue of faith and religion), then the two discussions are so different that they defy comparison since this is clearly not the context of Hegel’s original analysis. Moreover, when one understands the issue on Hegel’s terms (i.e., in the context of political philosophy), then there is in the final account no conflict between their positions since Johannes de silentio also concedes that the demands of moral conscience cannot be justified discursively or used as a defense in civil law. The odd use of Hegel in Fear and Trembling can be explained, on the one hand, by Kierkegaard’s ongoing criticism of Martensen and, on the other hand, by his then recent break with Heiberg. As has been indicated in the previous chapters, Kierkegaard’s more or less amicable relation to Heiberg came to an end with Heiberg’s negative review of Either/Or. After the review Kierkegaard sought ways to criticize Heiberg publicly. In Fear and Trembling he for the first time hits upon the idea of doing so via a polemic with Hegel. Heiberg’s stated goal was to disseminate the word of Hegel’s philosophy to his fellow Danes. This was one of the main things that Heiberg was known for as a public figure in Denmark’s intellectual scene. Under these circumstances, what could be a better way of criticizing Heiberg than to criticize Hegel? By criticizing Hegel, Kierkegaard was in effect saying that Heiberg’s entire intellectual project was misguided and his evangelizing on Hegel’s behalf was a mistake. The other main target seems to be Martensen. From the criticisms issued in Fear and Trembling one can see that Kierkegaard is still exercised by Martensen’s success and popularity. In the “Preliminary Expectoration,” Johannes de silentio portrays theology as the prostitute of philosophy, alluding to Martensen’s claim that philosophy is theology and his


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subsequent use of philosophical trends in, for example, his lectures on dogmatics: Love indeed has its priests in the poets, and occasionally we hear a voice that knows how to honor it, but not a word is heard about faith. Who speaks to the honor of this passion? Philosophy goes further. Theology sits all rouged and powdered in the window and courts its favor, offers its charms to philosophy. It is supposed to be difficult to understand Hegel, but to understand Abraham is a small matter. To go beyond Hegel is a miraculous achievement, but to go beyond Abraham is the easiest one of all.90

Reference is made to Martensen here with his claims to have gone beyond Hegel. The point of this passage seems to be that Martensen has in effect prostituted theology by making it dependent on philosophy. But Johannes de silentio wishes to point out that there are aspects of theology such as questions of faith, about which it should not submit itself to the judgment of philosophy. Moreover, in “Problema III” Martensen is alluded to (in a fashion similar to the allusions in the Preface) in connection with his claims about doubt.91 But since this allusion has already been explored,92 I forego an analysis of it here. The polemic with Heiberg and Martensen would explain the use of Hegel in Fear and Trembling. In his Preface Johannes de silentio polemicizes against the Danish Hegelians generally with indirect references to the individual personalities. Then in the body of the text he uses Hegel in a polemical way at the beginning of each of the Problemata. Thus, this text is the first published work that seems to be openly polemical against Hegel on a substantial scale. But here one runs up against the problem of the lack of fit between the views of Hegel, which are alluded to, and the actual content of the discussions purportedly intended as a criticism of those views. It becomes clear that Kierkegaard has gone out of his way to bring Hegel’s name into the discussion. The ostensible criticisms of him seem forced. There are no analyses of or quotations from any of his primary texts. At bottom Kierkegaard is not so much interested in a criticism of any of the views of Hegel mentioned in the text; indeed, those views have nothing to do with the content of Johannes de silentio’s discussions. He is, however, primarily interested in a polemic with Heiberg and Martensen, and this seems to be the main reason why Hegel’s name appears in the text at all. In an ostensible polemic with Hegel, Kierkegaard has found a weapon that he can use against Heiberg and Martensen. This explains the odd use of Hegel in this text and the profound incongruity between Hegel’s discussions of the issues and Kierkegaard’s. 90 92

FT, pp. 32–33; SKS, vol. 4, p. 128. Chapter 5, Section 1, p. 246f.

91

FT, p. 110; SKS, vol. 4, p. 198.


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Of course, nothing stands in the way of a commentator who wants to find a substantive philosophical discussion in these allusions to Hegel, and certainly there is no reason to think that Hegel’s and Kierkegaard’s views on philosophy of religion or political theory are the same or are even consistent with each other. But this abstract comparison of their views does not explain what is at issue in the text. The main point of the references to Hegel here is to criticize Heiberg and Martensen and not any particular doctrine in Hegel’s philosophy. This becomes even more clear when one compares the Hegel of Fear and Trembling with the Hegel of The Concept of Irony. In both works Hegel is thought to play a substantial role. However, in The Concept of Irony Hegel’s primary texts are quoted frequently and long analyses of them are offered. The content of Kierkegaard’s discussions of Socrates’ daimon, his role vis-à-vis the other Greek schools, his conception of morality, and his use of irony are largely the same as those found in Hegel’s discussions. By contrast, in Fear and Trembling Hegel is merely named at the beginning of each of the Problemata in a single sentence. There are no quotations from his primary texts and no analyses. The references to Hegel in the text are incommensurable with the actual content of Kierkegaard’s discussions. All of this leads to the conclusion that the use of Hegel in Fear and Trembling is only pro forma and has nothing substantially to do with Hegel’s philosophy. The polemic with Hegel is used by Kierkegaard merely as a means by which he can criticize Heiberg and Martensen and publicly disassociate himself from them.


8 MARTENSEN’S DOCTRINE OF IMMANENCE AND KIERKEGAARD’S TRANSCENDENCE IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS

Philosophical Fragments was published on June 13, 1844, with Johannes Climacus as author and Kierkegaard himself as editor. It is often claimed that the title of the work, Philosophical Fragments or a Fragment of Philosophy, is intended as an ironic criticism of systematic philosophy. In the text of the Fragments itself Hegel’s name comes up directly only three times: twice in footnotes1 and once in its adjectival form in reference to Hegelians.2 Hegel is also mentioned in preliminary drafts of the work.3 There appear, moreover, a number of philosophical terms, such as “the system,” “mediation,” and “the absolute method,” which seem to be associated with Hegel or at least with Hegelians. These references are often found among criticisms of contemporaries such as Martensen and Grundtvig. It will thus be necessary to evaluate each of these references in order to determine to what degree they can be regarded as genuine allusions to Hegel. In the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the same pseudonymous author, Johannes Climacus, criticizes a review of the Fragments,4 which he believes overlooks essential aspects of the book. The review came from the pen of the Hegelian Andreas Frederik Beck (1816–61) and appeared in a German journal for theology. In the Postscript, Climacus lists a host of things that he says are at work in the Fragments: The contrast of form, the teasing resistance of the imaginary construction of the content, the inventive audacity (which even invents Christianity), the only attempt made to go further (that is, further than the so-called 1 2 3 4

PF, p. 78fn.; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 277fn.–278fn. PF, p. 86fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 285fn. PF, p. 82; SKS, vol. 4, p. 281. PF, Supplement, p. 190; Pap. V B 5.3. PF, Supplement, p. 200; Pap. V B 14, p. 71. PF, Supplement, p. 217; Pap. V B 9. PF, Supplement, p. 205; Pap. V B 41, p. 94. Anonymous [Andreas Frederik Beck], “Philosophische Smuler eller en Smule Philosophie (Philos. Brocken oder ein Bischen Philosophie). Af S. Kierkegaard. Kiöbenhavn (Copenhagen), Reitzel. 1844. 80- ,” in Neues Repertorium für die theologische Literatur und kirchliche Statistik, Berlin, vol. 2, no. 1, April 30, 1845, pp. 44–48. Reprinted in Materialien zur Philosophie Sören Kierkegaards, ed. by Michael Theunissen and Wilfried Greve, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1979, pp. 127–131.

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speculative constructing), the indefatigable activity of irony, the parody of speculation in the entire plan, the satire in making efforts as if something ganz Außerordentliches und zwar Neues were to come of them, whereas what always emerges is old-fashioned orthodoxy in its rightful severity – of this the reader finds no hint in the report.5

The Hegelian Beck is accused of failing to pick up on “the parody of speculation in the entire plan.” This indicates clearly that not just a small part of the Philosophical Fragments but the work generally is intended as a criticism of some aspect of speculative thought. This criticism is, however, often carefully concealed, and it is little wonder that Beck fails to see it. From this it is clear that Kierkegaard sees the Fragments as a criticism of speculative thought, but it is uncertain precisely which doctrine or doctrines it is intended to criticize. This, however, is made clear in a later journal entry (presumably from 1846) in which he responds negatively to another review of the work. This review was written pseudonymously by another Hegelian, Johan Frederik Hagen (1817–59), and appeared in the Theologisk Tidsskrift in May of 1846.6 Kierkegaard criticizes the review for having missed the essential critical point about Hegelian mediation that was made in the Fragments. He caricatures the reviewer’s remarks as follows: J[ohannes] C[limacus] is certainly justified in the way in which he emphasizes the dialectical, but (yes, now comes the wisdom) on the other hand one must not forget mediation. Historically, J. C. comes after Hegelianism. J. C. without a doubt knows just as much about mediation as such a theological graduate. In order, if possible, to get out of the spell of mediation, constantly battling against it, J. C. decisively brought the problem to its logical conclusion through the vigor of a qualitative dialectic.7

Here Johannes Climacus is characterized as attempting to escape “the spell of mediation” and indeed as “constantly battling against it.” By insisting on the Hegelian principle of mediation,8 the reviewer has failed to see that the crucial point of the work was precisely a criticism of this principle. Thus, the reviewer, Kierkegaard complains, has in effect overlooked the content of the entire work. Kierkegaard continues: “An author who really understands himself is better served by not being read at all, or by having five genuine readers, than by having this confusion about mediation spread abroad only all too much with the help of a good-natured reviewer, spread with the help of his own book, 5 6

7 8

CUP1, p. 275fn.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 250fn. 80. [Johan Frederik Hagen], “Philosophiske Smuler eller en Smule Philosophi. Af Johannes Climacus. Udgivet af S. Kierkegaard. 164 S. Kbhvn. 1844. (Reitzel 80 Sk.),” Theologisk Tidsskrift, Ny Række, 10, 1846, pp. 175–182. PF, Supplement, p. 223; SKS, vol. 20, pp. 46f., NB: 47. Kierkegaard seems to have in mind p. 181 of the review.


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which was written specifically to battle against mediation.”9 By saying that the objective of the Fragments was to criticize the Hegelian principle of mediation, Kierkegaard identifies the speculative doctrine at issue. The claim that the Fragments “was written specifically to battle against mediation” will be my point of departure in this chapter. As has been seen previously,10 the notion of mediation was criticized in both Either/Or and Repetition, and in both cases the pseudonymous author took a position with respect to the contemporary Danish debate surrounding Hegel’s criticism of the laws of contradiction and excluded middle. Thus, Philosophical Fragments, I wish to argue, can be seen as a continuation and development of this discussion. Specifically, the work is primarily a polemic against Martensen’s claims for the use of mediation in speculative theology. One can find the positions that Climacus criticizes in the Fragments in Martensen’s article, “Rationalism, Supernaturalism and the principium exclusi medii,”11 which was written in response to Mynster’s “Rationalism, Supernaturalism.”12 Thus, while Thulstrup13 and others see in the Fragments a straightforward criticism of Hegel, I wish to argue that the matter is much more complicated and that Climacus’ true interlocutor is Martensen. In order to make good on this claim, I will in the first section examine in detail Chapter 3, entitled, “The Absolute Paradox.” I will argue that the famous account of the paradox is formulated as a response to the Hegelian doctrine of mediation as presented by Martensen in the context of theology. Next I will analyze the “Interlude” between Chapters 4 and 5 where Climacus tries to refute two purportedly Hegelian claims: first, that the concept of necessity follows from the concepts of possibility and actuality (treated in Section II), and, second, that there is necessity in history (Section III). Climacus attempts to refute these views in order to make room for his own doctrine that there was no necessity in the god’s coming into historical existence. I wish to argue that this too is a criticism of Martensen’s article, specifically of the claim that the incarnation is a conceptual necessity. In Section IV, I will treat the brief allusion to Hegel’s absolute method, which comes in a footnote in the “Interlude.”14 I will 9 10 11

12

13 14

PF, Supplement, p. 224; SKS, vol. 20, p. 47, NB: 47. See Chapter 4, Sections I–II, and Chapter 6, Section III. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme og principium exclusi medii i Anledning af H. H. Biskop Mynsters Afhandling herom i dette Tidsskrifts forrige Hefte,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 456–473. Jakob Peter Mynster, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 249–268. (Reprinted in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, vols. 1–6, Copenhagen 1852–57, vol. 2, pp. 95–115.) Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, pp. 359–365. PF, p. 78fn.; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 277fn.–278fn.


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argue that the critical comments have little to do with Hegel’s doctrine and will suggest that the tone and the nature of the criticism point to Martensen as the true target.

i. the paradox and mediation Chapter 3 of the Fragments, entitled “The Absolute Paradox,”15 offers one of the many criticisms of the tradition of rational theology in Kierkegaard’s authorship. Johannes Climacus criticizes the rationalists (among others Spinoza and Leibniz) for attempting to offer discursive proofs for the existence of God. He tries to show that all such demonstrations fall short of what they intend to prove and that in each of them there is a “leap”16 that cannot be justified deductively. The issue of the limits of human knowledge runs through the whole discussion. The wellknown account of the paradox is formulated against this background. While Hegel’s name does not appear in this chapter, his doctrines of immanence and mediation seem to inform it. I wish to argue that Climacus has in mind these doctrines specifically as they appear in Martensen’s speculative theology. A. Climacus’ Doctrine of the Paradox. Climacus begins with the epistemological question of the limit of the understanding. His claim is that the human mind runs up against certain natural limitations. He calls this “the ultimate paradox of thought,” which he defines as the desire of the understanding “to discover something that thought itself cannot think.”17 The natural limitation of thought is simply the unknown. Climacus then goes on to define the unknown provisionally as the god: “But what is this unknown against which the understanding in its paradoxical passion collides and which even disturbs man and his self-knowledge? It is the unknown. But it is not a human being, insofar as he knows man, or anything else that he knows. Therefore, let us call this unknown the god.”18 Later he defines the paradox as the tension between the divine and human aspects of the teacher.19 Here the divine simply stands for something transcendent and beyond the sphere of human knowing. This is what the human mind cannot understand but must simply believe. Climacus thus prepares the ground for his criticism of rational theology. With proofs for god’s existence, rational theology tries to know something that cannot be known. It tries to capture discursively or deductively something beyond 15 17 19

16 PF, p. 43; SKS, vol. 4, p. 248. PF, pp. 37–48; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 242–252. 18 PF, p. 39; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 244–245. PF, p. 37; SKS, vol. 4, p. 243. PF, p. 62; SKS, vol. 4, p. 264: “Faith, then, must constantly cling firmly to the teacher. But in order for the teacher to be able to give the condition, he must be the god, and in order to put the learner in possession of it, he must be man. This contradiction is in turn the object of faith and is the paradox, the moment.”


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the sphere of what is knowable. It tries to bring what is transcendent into the realm of immanence. For Climacus, these arguments must always fail since they try to span the gap between the known and the unknowable, between human beings and God. From this he ultimately wants to conclude that man’s relation to God cannot be one of knowledge alone. To capture the distinction more clearly, Climacus introduces the concept of absolute difference.20 The relation between man and God is thought to be one of absolute difference, which Climacus defines as sinfulness.21 I put aside the question of sinfulness for the moment in order to concentrate on the epistemological question, which is crucial for the whole discussion. He begins with this issue and tries to understand the absolute difference as the limit of human knowledge: What, then, is the unknown? It is the frontier that is continually arrived at, and therefore when the category of motion is replaced by the category of rest it is the difference, the absolute difference. But it is the absolutely different in which there is no distinguishing mark. Defined as the absolutely different, it seems to be at the point of being disclosed, but not so, because the understanding cannot even think the absolutely different.22

The absolute difference is that point where human knowledge comes to a halt. According to this view, the human mind can only grasp things that are similar to itself. Thus, a human being can understand other human beings. But the relationship to God is characterized by the absolute difference since there are no common points to seize hold of. Thus, the absolute difference or absolute other cannot be understood or demonstrated by human knowing. Climacus wants to employ it for specific theological purposes. Given that there is an absolute difference between God and man, it follows that man is ignorant since he cannot know by himself in what the difference consists and thus cannot know God. Moreover, since there is an absolute difference between God and man, no Hegelian mediation is possible in this case. Therefore, only God himself can reveal the difference to man and make him aware of his sinfulness and thereby of the difference: if a human being is to come truly to know something about the unknown (the god), he must first come to know that it is different from him, absolutely different from him. The understanding cannot come to know this by itself (since, as we have seen, it is a contradiction); if it is going to come 20

21

See CUP1, p. 412; SKS, vol. 7, p. 374f.: “But between God and a human being (let speculative thought just keep humankind to perform tricks with) there is an absolute difference; therefore a person’s absolute relationship with God must specifically express the absolute difference, and the direct likeness becomes impudence, conceited pretense, presumption, and the like.” 22 PF, pp. 44–45; SKS, vol. 4, p. 249. PF, p. 47; SKS, vol. 4, p. 251.



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to know this, it must come to know this from the god. . . . Just to come to know that god is the different, man needs the god and then comes to know that the god is absolutely different from him.23

Climacus thus understands at least a part of Christ’s mission as that of making humans aware of the absolute difference between themselves and God. Given that man can only know what is like himself, this knowledge cannot be transmitted by God in the transcendent sphere but rather must be imparted by him in human form. The knowledge of the absolute difference can only be transmitted by one in a position of equality. For Climacus, this nonetheless remains a paradox. Although it looks as if Climacus’ view is a skeptical one, it is clear from the end of his analysis that it is not. The criticism of rational theology is merely that one cannot demonstrate God’s existence or have knowledge of God by means of unaided human reason. This is due to the fact that God is an absolutely transcendent other, beyond the normal realm of human comprehension. Climacus’ objection is against those who claim to know God without divine aid. He writes: “when the god by his omnipotent resolution . . . wills to be just like the lowliest person, then let no innkeeper or philosophy professor fancy that he is such a clever fellow that he can detect something if the god himself does not give the condition.”24 But this objection does not mean that one cannot know God at all, only that one cannot know Him on the strength of one’s own reason. On the contrary, with the incarnation God reveals himself to human beings and by so doing provides the condition by which He can be known. Thus, one can know God but only with divine aid. But it cannot be discursively demonstrated that God entered into human history as a human being in order to communicate the message. This is the paradox that defies reason. This seems to be the epistemological point behind the doctrine of the paradox. B. The Role of Mediation. I would like to argue that Climacus formulates the doctrine of the paradox, which has just been outlined, in response to the Hegelian notion of mediation. Unlike the treatments of this issue in Either/Or and Repetition, the question of mediation in Philosophical Fragments is interpreted with regard to the specific issue of the difference between man and God. Unlike the treatment in those works, here the discussion is firmly situated in the context of theology and concerns specifically the notion of the incarnation. The criticism can nonetheless be seen as a continuation of those issued in the previous works and as a part of the discussion of the issue of mediation that was taking place in Denmark at that time. 23

PF, p. 46; SKS, vol. 4, p. 251.

24

PF,pp. 64–65; SKS, vol. 4, p. 266.


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The claim that the doctrine of the paradox is intended as a criticism of the doctrine of mediation and of the god-man is supported by a number of journal entries from the period of the composition of the Fragments and slightly earlier. There Kierkegaard consistently distinguishes philosophy from Christianity by insisting that mediation belongs to the former, while paradox belongs to the latter: “Philosophy’s idea is mediation – Christianity’s, the paradox.”25 This juxtaposition of mediation and paradox seems to make it clear that the doctrine of the paradox is intended to do the same work in Christianity as mediation does in philosophy. In a similar passage, Kierkegaard compares his own thought with that of Leibniz: “What I usually express by saying that Christianity consists of paradox, philosophy in mediation, Leibniz expresses by distinguishing between what is above reason and what is against reason.”26 Here the same point is repeated: mediation and the paradox are parallel concepts that are characteristic of two different spheres. Finally, he says directly, “Even the idea of mediation, the watchword of the more recent philosophy, is the direct opposite of Christianity.”27 In the text of the Fragments itself there is ample evidence of a polemic against mediation. For example, Climacus alludes to the doctrine of mediation in the final sentences of the book. There as in the journal entries just quoted the question concerns the difference between philosophy and Christianity. Climacus writes: If in discussing the relation between Christianity and philosophy we begin by narrating what was said earlier, how shall we ever, not finish, but ever manage to begin, for history just keeps on growing. If we begin with “the great thinker and sage Pontius Pilate, executor Novi Testamenti,” who in his own way merits a good deal of gratitude from Christianity and philosophy, even if he did not invent mediation, and if, before beginning with him, we have to wait for one or two decisive books (perhaps the system) that have already been announced ex cathedra several times, how shall we ever manage to begin?28

Here the doctrine of mediation is mentioned only as an aside. Pontius Pilate is said to have given much to both philosophy and Christianity even though “he did not invent mediation.” The satire here lies in the ironic implication that the principle of mediation has been a great service to both philosophy and Christianity. Thus, mediation is alluded to in a rhetorical or polemical fashion without any accompanying analysis. This is understandable given that Climacus takes the body of the work itself to have provided an adequate analysis and response to the doctrine and 25 26 27 28

JP, vol. 3, 3072; SKS, vol. 19, p. 211, Not7:22. JP, vol. 3, 3073; SKS, vol. 19, p. 390, Not13:23. JP, vol. 2, 2277; SKS, vol. 18, p. 125, HH:2. Translation slightly modified. PF, pp. 109–110; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 305–306.



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its inapplicability to theological questions. In any case, the allusion to it here in the last sentence of the work is indication of its centrality for the argument of the Fragments as a whole. References to mediation are scattered throughout the body of the text. For example, in a passage from Chapter 5, Climacus alludes to the principle of mediation as a way of contrasting ancient philosophy to modern. He writes: All such human profundity leads to nothing or in our own time may lead to being considered genuine speculative profundity, since the despised sophism has become the miserable secret of genuine speculation (only the devil knows how it happened), and what antiquity regarded negatively – “to a certain degree” (the mocking toleration that mediates everything without making petty distinctions) – has become the positive, and what antiquity called the positive, the passion for distinctions, has become foolishness.29

Kierkegaard frequently uses the formulation “to a certain degree” to refer to the concept of mediation.30 A given thing is “to a certain degree” A and “to a certain degree” not-A. While ancient philosophy is concerned with making distinctions, modern philosophy eliminates them with the doctrine of mediation.31 Moreover, in a footnote in the “Interlude” Climacus refers specifically to Hegel’s doctrine of contradiction, which is, of course, synonymous with his principle of mediation. In the footnote Climacus explains his use of the word “contradiction” in order to distinguish it from a Hegelian usage: Here the word “contradiction” must not be taken in the volatilized sense into which Hegel has misled himself and others and miscast contradiction itself – namely, that it has the power to produce something. As long as nothing has come into existence, contradiction is merely the impelling urge to wonder, its nisus, not the nisus of coming into existence; when something has come into existence, contradiction is once again present as the nisus of wonder in the passion that reproduces the coming into existence.32

Here Climacus indicates his disagreement with the productive aspect of the Hegelian doctrine of mediation. For Hegel, contradictory opposites produce a third concept, in violation of the law of excluded middle. Thus, the category of becoming is produced from the contradiction of being 29 30

31

32

PF, p. 91; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 288–289. See the entry, “til en vis Grad,” in the “Sagregister” by A. Ibsen in Samlede Værker, second edition, ed. by A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange, vols. 1–15, Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag: Copenhagen 1920–36, vol. 15, pp. 415–416. See the short text at the beginning of The Concept of Anxiety: “The age of making distinctions is past. It has been vanquished by the system. In our day, whoever loves to make distinctions is regarded as an eccentric whose soul clings to something that has long since vanished.” CA, p. 3; SKS, vol. 4, p. 310. PF, p. 86fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 285fn.


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and nothing. By contrast, according to Aristotle’s view, contradiction is conceived as an indeterminate negation of the first term (i.e., A and notA). Thus, for Aristotle the second term (i.e., not-A) is not any determinate thing but merely the abstract negation of the first term. The contradiction or negation of blue is not some determinate color such as yellow or red but rather not-blue. Thus, no third is produced. The passage quoted demonstrates clearly that Kierkegaard is aware of Hegel’s criticism of the Aristotelian definition and his reformulation of the concept. Finally, at the beginning of Chapter 3, when the concept of the paradox is introduced, the concept of mediation is mentioned as well. Climacus uses it in an example as follows: “Similarly, the human act of walking, so the natural scientists inform us, is a continuous falling, but a good steady citizen who walks to his office mornings and home at midday probably considers this an exaggeration, because his progress, after all, is a matter of mediation – how could it occur to him that he is continually falling, he who unswervingly follows his nose.”33 Here Climacus simply alludes to the principle with a seemingly trivial example, but its placement at the beginning of the analysis of the paradox is significant. It is introduced to illustrate the notion of the paradox as transcendent. Climacus begins with the claim that human thinking always seeks its own limit by trying to know what cannot be known, but “because of habit we do not discover this.”34 Since one is in the habit of thinking (i.e., in the realm of mediation), one is unaware of the drive of the human mind to go beyond this. The parallel Climacus draws seems to be that walking is like thinking in that it seems to be continuous and interrupted, like the realm of mediation, which is characterized by smooth transitions from the one point to the next. But in fact walking involves a leap since it is really a falling, and thinking likewise always involves a leap or a movement beyond itself. Given these examples, there is a great deal of internal and external evidence that the issue of mediation is central to the argument of the Fragments. Thus, I take it to be demonstrated that the position to be criticized, or at least one of them, is mediation. While there is clearly a general Hegelian context here in the criticism of mediation, it remains to be seen whether it is Hegel’s own position or someone else’s that Climacus wants to criticize. In the Fragments there are no analyses of this point in Hegel’s philosophy and no quotations from his works on logic. The only reference to Hegel’s logic occurs in the footnote quoted earlier about the productive aspect of the Hegelian notion of contradiction. But even this is not accompanied by any analysis. Moreover, in the journals there is nothing to indicate a renewed study during this period of any of Hegel’s primary texts, let alone the Science of Logic. All of this seems to indicate

33

PF, p. 37; SKS, vol. 4, p. 243.

34

PF, p. 37; SKS, vol. 4, p. 243.



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that the point about mediation in Hegel’s logic itself is secondary and that the real issue and the real target of the criticism lie elsewhere. C. The Allusions to Martensen. The criticism here in the Fragments can best be conceived as aimed against Martensen, who in his contribution to the debate about the question of Hegelian mediation, claimed that the fundamental significance of the Christian revelation is the mediation or unity of God and man. There is every reason to think that Martensen is the main target of the work. Right away in the Preface there are hidden allusions to him. There Climacus is careful to distinguish himself from pretentious contemporary writers, who expect their works to be of great significance. He writes: For this to happen, the guilty person would have to be singularly stupid by nature, and, most likely, by yelling day in and day out in antistrophic antiphones every time someone deluded him into thinking that now a new era, a new epoch, etc. was beginning, he would have so completely bellowed the sparsely bestowed quantum satis of common sense out of his head that he would have been transported into a state of bliss, into what could be called the howling madness of the higher lunacy, symptomatized by yelling, convulsive yelling, while the sum and substance of the yelling are these words: era, epoch, era and epoch, epoch and era, the system.35

This seemingly enigmatic passage is in fact an allusion to Martensen. In 1837 Martensen defended his Latin dissertation, On the Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness.36 Later in 1841 it was translated into Danish by Lauritz Vilhelm Petersen (1817–79). In the Introduction to the translation, Petersen writes the following of Martensen’s dissertation: “It was the first work that was published in Denmark in the modern speculative direction and heralded the era in theology from which people have now already begun to mark time.”37 Climacus thus mocks the pretension of this claim that Martensen’s dissertation is an epoch-making work in the history of Danish theology. Here Martensen is also associated with the

35

36 37

PF, p. 6; SKS, vol. 4, p. 216. See also PF, Supplement, pp. 226–227; Pap. X-2 A 155, p. 117: “[Martensen] actually has always been more of a reporter than an original thinker. . . . He makes quite a splash, and in the meantime young students use the opportunity to inform the public in print that with Martensen begins a new era, epoch, epoch, era, etc. (Note: See the Preface to Philosophical Fragments.)” Translation slightly modified. Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia conscientiae sui humanae in theologiam dogmaticam nostri temporis introducta, Copenhagen 1837. ASKB 648. Hans Lassen Martensen, Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, tr. by L.V. Petersen, Copenhagen 1841, “Forord” (unnumbered pages). ASKB 651. English translation: The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in Modern Dogmatic Theology, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, Atlanta: Scholars Press 1997, p. 74. Translation slightly modified. See the commentary in SKS, vol. K4, pp. 202–203.


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key terms “the system” and “the higher lunacy,” in contrast to “the higher unity (sc. of contradictories).” Martensen is alluded to again in Chapter 1 where Climacus refers to the doctrine of mediation with the familiar formulation “to a certain degree.” From his comments it is clear that he thinks that mediation leads to a position half-way, which ultimately says nothing. He writes: With half-thoughts, with higgling and haggling, with claiming and disclaiming, as if the individual to a certain degree owed something to another person but then again to a certain degree did not, with vague words that explain everything except what is meant by this “to a certain degree” – with all such things one does not go beyond Socrates or reach the concept of revelation, either, but simply remains in empty talk.38

Here Climacus once again uses the slogan “to a certain degree” to characterize the doctrine of mediation. In this passage there are two hints that are helpful in determining the target. First the formulation of going beyond Socrates. This expression occurs several times throughout the body of the book39 as well as in “The Moral” at the end of the text.40 As has been noted, the formulation of “going beyond” was one that Kierkegaard associated with Martensen.41 Moreover, going beyond Socratic ignorance to establish a positive position was also something that Kierkegaard associated with Martensen’s claims to begin with doubt and then to go beyond this doubt and establish a positive doctrine. Second the reference to “the concept of revelation” is crucial. The applicability of Hegel’s criticism of the law of excluded middle to key Christian doctrines was central to the contemporary Danish debate. The main doctrine at issue was that of the revelation. Martensen defended the view that the revelation of God in human form in history is an example of Hegelian mediation. Thus, he claims, the very essence of Christianity is supported by this view. In this same passage from the Fragments there is also a direct reference to mediation, which is seen as eliminating all distinctions, which is ridiculed as “a common lunacy” and a “commune naufragium.”42 Martensen is alluded to again later indirectly with reference to the question of skeptical doubt. As has been seen,43 Kierkegaard associated the phrase “de omnibus dubitandum est” with him. In the “Interlude” to the Fragments, Climacus writes: “Yet it is not so difficult to understand this or to understand how this casts light on belief, provided one is not utterly confused by the Hegelian doubt about everything, against which there is really no need to preach, for what the Hegelians say about it is of such a nature that it seems rather to favor a modest doubt as to whether 38 39 40 42

PF, p. 11; SKS, vol. 4, p. 220. E.g. PF, p. 96; SKS, vol. 4, p. 293. PF, p. 97; SKS, vol. 4, p. 294. 41 Chapter 1, Section II, p. 65f. PF, p. 111; SKS, vol. 4, p. 306. 43 Chapter 5, Section I. PF, p. 12; SKS, vol. 4, p. 220.



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there really is anything to their having doubted something.”44 Here Climacus talks not of Hegel but of “Hegelians” who have claimed to doubt everything. Given what has been said previously about the formula “de omnibus,” there can be little doubt that the target here is Martensen. Finally, further evidence comes from years later in 1850 when Kierkegaard wanted to write something in response to the controversies surrounding Martensen’s then recently published Christian Dogmatics.45 In a draft found in his papers, Kierkegaard refers to the way in which Martensen ignored the pseudonymous works, many of which were aimed at him. In this context, Kierkegaard disdainfully writes of Martensen: “mediation is his existence-category.”46 Here Martensen is associated directly with the principle of mediation. Moreover, by referring to this as an “existence-category,” Kierkegaard tries to indicate what he takes to be the category mistake in Martensen’s way of thinking, which would take a principle from abstract thinking and make it into a principle of life. D. The Criticism of Martensen’s Article on Mediation. Given these allusions, there is every reason to suspect that Martensen is important for the Fragments. I now turn to his article, “Rationalism, Supernaturalism and the principium exclusi medii,” which, I wish to argue, is the main target of the criticism of mediation in the Fragments. This is clear when one examines the context and the content of his article. With respect to its context, it will be recalled that Mynster’s article, “Rationalism, Supernaturalism,” set off the Danish debate about Hegel’s concept of mediation.47 Mynster’s claim was that, given the law of excluded middle, rationalism and supernaturalism, qua contradictory terms, cannot both be antiquated at the same time since if the one were antiquated, then the other would ipso facto not be antiquated. In this context Mynster critically alludes to Hegel’s treatment of the law of excluded middle, claiming that, despite Hegel’s criticism, this Aristotelian law is still valid for all sound thinking. This article evoked a response from Heiberg, who concentrates almost exclusively on the question of Hegel’s criticism of the laws of contradiction and excluded middle in the context of logic.48 He only fleetingly alludes to the implications of the doctrine of mediation for Christianity. By contrast, Martensen, a trained theologian, makes this the main point of his article. He is interested above all in showing that the central doctrines of 44 45 46 48

PF, p. 82; SKS, vol. 4, p. 281. Hans Lassen Martensen, Den christelige Dogmatik, Copenhagen 1849. ASKB 653. 47 See Chapter 4, Sections I–II. JP, vol. 6, 6636; Pap. X-6 B 137. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “En logisk Bemærkning i Anledning af H. H. Hr. Biskop Dr. Mynsters Afhandling om Rationalisme og Supranaturalisme i forrige Hefte af dette Tidsskrift,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 441–456. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 2, pp. 167–190.)


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Christianity, such as the Incarnation and the Trinity, are supported by the Hegelian principle of mediation. Kierkegaard felt himself called upon to respond to this application of Hegelian logic to Christianity and thus to come to the aid of Mynster. It has already been noted that Kierkegaard was quite familiar with the ongoing debate about the Hegelian doctrine of mediation. But in case there is any doubt about its relevance for the Fragments, one will note that the issue is referred to explicitly in the final pages of the work. There Climacus writes: But here I shall stop. Even if I were a better dialectician than I am, I would still have my limits. Basically, an unshakeable insistence upon the absolute and absolute distinctions are precisely what makes a good dialectician. This is something we in our day have completely disregarded in and by sublating the law of contradiction, without perceiving what Aristotle indeed emphasized, namely that the thesis that the law of contradiction is sublated is based upon the law of contradiction, since otherwise the opposite thesis, i.e. that it is not sublated, would be equally true.49

Here Climacus alludes to the Hegelian criticism of the law of contradiction, and by saying “in our day” he makes reference to the contemporary debate about this issue. Climacus points out the self-contradictory nature of denying the law of contradiction (i.e., in order to deny it, one must implicitly appeal to it). While he explicitly attributes this objection to Aristotle, it had also been raised by Sibbern in his article on the issue in his “Review of Perseus.”50 Sibbern’s article can be seen as a forerunner to the debate proper, which had as its focus the question of the mediation of the theological views of rationalism and supernaturalism. The article is alluded to directly or indirectly by virtually all of the participants in the debate. This objection is referred to explicitly by Andreas Ferdinand Schiødte (1816–87) in his anonymous contribution to the debate51 and by Mynster in his most extensive treatment of the issue.52 Thus, there can be no doubt that this debate is relevant for the Fragments. It now 49 50

51

52

PF, pp. 108–109; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 304–305. Translation slightly modified. Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Om den Maade, hvorpaa Contradictionsprincipet behandles i den hegelske Skole, med Mere, som henhører til de logiske Grundbetragtninger,” in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 19, 1838, p. 426. Frederik Christian Sibbern Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, betragtet i Forhold til vor Tid, Copenhagen 1838, p. 81. ASKB 778. Anonymous [Andreas Ferdinand Schiødte], “Et Par Ord til nærmere Overveielse angaaende de tre saakaldte logiske Principer,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, vol. 2, 1839, p. 121. Jakob Peter Mynster, “De principio logico exclusi medii inter contradictoria non negligendo commentatio, qua ad audiendam orationem . . . invitat. Jo. Fr. Herbart. Gottingae 1833. 29 S. 80- , De principiorum contradictionis, identitatis, exclusi tertii in logicis dignitate et ordine commentatio. Scripsit I.H. Fichte. Bonnae 1840. 31 S. 80- ,” Tidskrift for Literatur og Kritik, 7, 1842, p. 333. (Reprinted as “Om de logiske Principer,” in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 124.)



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remains to be seen specifically which article or aspect of the debate is most significant. In his article, “Rationalism, Supernaturalism and the principium exclusi medii,” Martensen argues that the fundamental doctrines of Christianity rest on the concept of mediation. He writes: “The central point of Christianity, the doctrine of Incarnation, the doctrine of the God-man, indeed shows precisely that Christian metaphysics cannot rest on an either/or, but that it only finds the truth in the third, which this law excludes.”53 Here he uses what later becomes the “Kierkegaardian” formulation of the either/or in order to characterize the position that he believes is foreign to Christianity. The very goal of modern theological thinking, says Martensen, is to unite opposites and “to grasp the identity of what is contradictory for the understanding.”54 He claims the fact that the law of contradiction “cannot be a final court of appeals in theology also appears obvious in practice when we see how Christianity continually sublates it.”55 Thus, Martensen’s thesis is that mediation is the very principle of Christianity. Martensen is primarily interested in the question of the incarnation and in the person of Christ, which is clearly one of the main issues in the Fragments. He contrasts Christianity with Judaism, saying that while the latter remains with a strictly transcendent conception of God, insisting on an absolute split between man and God, what characterizes Christianity is the incarnation. But he goes on to say that Christianity is characterized by Hegelian logic (i.e., by mediation), whereas Judaism is characterized by Aristotelian logic (i.e., the either/or or the law of excluded middle). He writes: The metaphysics of the Jewish religion may, by contrast, stringently maintain [the law of excluded middle] precisely because Judaism’s standpoint is the pure, unmediated supernaturalism, which can only think God in a distant infinity beyond the world and human consciousness as the absolutely supernatural creator of heaven and earth, and can only think of man as the being, which is eternally restricted by the limitations of finitude and being something created.56

It lies in the very notion of the incarnation that God became man and thus came down from the transcendent sphere and entered into the human realm. Like Kierkegaard, Martensen says that, for the Jews, Christ must have been an offense since he appeared to be a human being who claimed to be God. Their persecution of Christ, he argues, was based on Aristotelian logic: “Seen from the point of view of logic, their accusation 53 54 56

Hans Lassen Martensen, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme og principium exclusi medii,” op. cit., p. 458. 55 Ibid., p. 458. Ibid., p. 457. Ibid., p. 458.


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rested on the principium exclusi medii or on the assumption that the contradicting predicates ‘God’ and ‘man’ could not be mediated in the selfsame subject. But according to the same logic, one could attack every fundamental dogma of Christianity.”57 Thus, argues Martensen, the claim for a pure supernaturalism as supported by the law of excluded middle is antithetical to Christianity. The second argument of Martensen’s article is that supernaturalism or the conception of God as a transcendent other, located in a supernatural sphere, is on its own conceptually incoherent. It can only be understood in contrast to its opposite, namely naturalism. The two constitute complementary concepts. Thus, the notion of the supernatural or of a supernatural God, must be mediated by the notion of the natural. Both fall within the immanent sphere of thought: “I cannot help but see that the concept of the supernatural cannot become actual except by being mediated by what is natural and thus must contain it as its own moment. The important insight of logic, that every concept contains its other or its negative, has already shown itself to be so fruitful for science and demands its due here.”58 Following Hegel’s logic, Martensen argues that isolated positions are conceptually incoherent; instead, such positions must be seen in their larger context as the complements to opposite positions. Thus, supernaturalism and naturalism constitute a dialectical pair that necessarily belong together. The result of this view is that no position or concept can stand on its own, alone in some transcendent sphere. The universe of concepts constitutes an immanent sphere of thought. It is along these lines that Martensen understands the person of Christ and the incarnation. He argues that one must conceive of Christ as an immanent determination. Although he descended from the supernatural sphere, this is a dialectical concept and is thus necessarily related to the natural sphere. Martensen claims: “But the horizon, which opens up with the well-known views indicated here – and it is precisely this horizon which in our time has become more expansive than ever before – leads one to see Christianity as the immanent determination of God’s essence and the divine world order.”59 Thus, Martensen draws on Hegel’s doctrine of the immanent development of the Concept. There is no transcendent term or, in Climacus’ language, no absolute other. Martensen uses the Hegelian doctrine of immanence in the context of philosophy of religion. The underlying premise is that the concept of the divine is no different from any other object of consciousness. It is always a representation of the human mind determined according to specific fixed rules for representation. Thus, the concept of the divine develops 57 59

Ibid., p. 458. Ibid., p. 463.

58

Ibid., p. 459.



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according to these rules, but it is a purely immanent development of the concept, and there is no term that is external to consciousness. Thus, when Martensen talks of the person of Christ, he speaks of the idea or concept of Christ. Martensen claims that the modern age needs to overcome naive religious thinking in terms of metaphors and stories and grasp the truth and necessity in terms of the abstract Concept. Thus, one will be able to think the immanence of the divine. He writes: The thinking human spirit stands unreconciled opposite the great mystery, and, instead of thinking it as revelation, it considers only its own createdness and the inconceivability of the divine things. The immanent thinking inspired by the dialectic, by contrast, does not find any rest before it knows the mystery as revelation. If the Trinity is really to have meaning for thought, as the absolute truth, then it must also claim that this meaning becomes the key to the entire system of the world, then all actuality in heaven and on earth must be taken up into its circle, then it must be known as the concept which conceives itself and everything.60

He claims that the unity of Christ and human nature has not been consistently thought through at the conceptual level. This is now made possible for the first time by the philosophies of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. Thus, Martensen uses the doctrines of mediation and immanence to claim that the basic doctrines of Christianity can be grasped by unaided human reason and thus can be the objects of knowledge. This background information about Martensen’s article helps to explain the motivation for a number of arguments in the Fragments. For example, Martensen’s claim that supernaturalism and naturalism, God and man, represent two complementary, dialectically related concepts is criticized at least indirectly in the work. Climacus allows a mock Hegelian to raise an objection to the doctrine of the absolute difference that he has just advanced. He writes: But this difference cannot be grasped securely. Every time this happens, it is basically an arbitrariness, and at the very bottom of devoutness there madly lurks the capricious arbitrariness that knows it itself has produced the god. If the difference cannot be grasped securely because there is no distinguishing mark, then, as with all such dialectical opposites, so it is with the difference and the likeness – they are identical.61

Climacus’ allusion to “dialectical opposites” is the only hint he gives that he is concerned with a Hegelian argument here. The dialectical opposites are presumably God and man, which mutually condition one another as reciprocal concepts. Climacus indicates that since the difference or

60

Ibid., p. 465.

61

PF, p. 45; SKS, vol. 4, p. 250.


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the unknown cannot be identified, it must collapse. Here he draws on Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles, which states that what cannot be distinguished is identical. He then compares this with the doctrine of mediation, according to which the difference between opposites collapses at the level of speculative thinking. He now goes on to try to answer this objection. Although there is no real analysis of the issue, Climacus claims that this view that all difference ultimately reduces to identity is merely obfuscation, which he calls here a “fantastical fabrication.”62 He thinks the problem is only a trick played by the abstract understanding, which has no basis in actuality. Only in the abstract immanent realm of thought can God and man be considered identical. But in actuality there is an essential difference, which he defines as sin later in the discussion. Second, in response to Martensen’s claim that the divine is a part of the immanent sphere of concepts Climacus formulates his doctrine of the god as the absolutely different. Indeed, the doctrine of the absolute other is just the opposite of the doctrine of immanence. Climacus is intent on sketching the limits of reason. He insists that the realm of immanence reaches only so far before it runs up against the unknown. The underlying claim is that there is a transcendent sphere beyond human thinking. The notion of the god as something absolutely different is intended to defy an all-encompassing immanent scheme. The god is not simply different from humans in the way apples and oranges are different, but rather he is absolutely different. The difference lies not in some relative difference in the immanent sphere of thought where things such as apples and oranges can be compared and contrasted, but rather it transcends this sphere. For this reason it is the absolute difference. Thus, Climacus takes up a supernaturalist position in defense of Mynster and against Martensen. Third, Kierkegaard formulates his doctrine of the paradox in response to Martensen’s claim that the divine is immanent to human understanding and can therefore be known by thought. Thus, it is no accident that in the Fragments Climacus criticizes rationalism and its immanent attempts to ground faith. If the incarnation can be understood in terms of a concept, then the divine is comprehensible to human reason. According to this view, the divine is brought into the sphere of human thought, and the epistemological problems are resolved. By contrast, Climacus formulates the doctrine that the absolute other is transcendent and cannot be grasped by reason precisely because it is absolutely other.63 If the god is absolutely different, then he cannot be grasped by unaided human reason. The human mind can only know what is like itself (i.e., what is within its own immanent sphere). In order to know the divine, a human being must have help from the god. 62 63

PF, p. 45; SKS, vol. 4, p. 250. See also A, pp. 119–120; Pap. VII-2 B 235, pp. 207–208.



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It will be noted that while the general context of the discussion is about Hegel’s logic, the more immediate and urgent issue – both in the debate generally and for Climacus – has to do with theology. The absence of quotations from or references to Hegel’s writings is striking given the importance of the issue of mediation. This seems to indicate that while Hegel’s criticism of the laws of Aristotelian logic is no doubt in the background of this discussion, it is not the central point, and in its original context it would probably not have evoked Kierkegaard’s criticism. It is rather the application of the principle of mediation in a theological context that makes the issue for him a pressing one. Clearly the Danish discussion of this issue is most important and not Hegel’s treatment of it in the Science of Logic. It might be argued that the position being criticized is still Hegelian in the sense that Martensen simply reiterates Hegel’s philosophy of religion by giving a fairly standard right-Hegelian account. This might be true in a sense, but it will be noted that there are likewise no references to Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion either in the text or in the journals and papers from the period. This indicates that even though at least a part of the view being criticized is, to be sure, Hegelian, nonetheless the polemic is with Martensen and not with Hegel. Kierkegaard is not provoked by Hegel’s logic or his philosophy of religion but rather by Martensen’s use of them. Moreover, there are instances where one can clearly distinguish between Martensen and Hegel in the text of the Fragments in the sense that there is a positive Hegelian influence alongside a polemic against Martensen. This can be seen from the following considerations. Although Climacus clearly wants to reject some of the essentials of Martensen’s position, nonetheless when one ignores for a moment the polemical posturing, there are many indications that he does not reject the principle of mediation entirely but rather uses and incorporates it into the doctrine of the paradox. For example, he describes the paradox as follows: “Thus the paradox becomes even more terrible, or the same paradox has the duplexity by which it manifests itself as the absolute – negatively, by bringing into prominence the absolute difference of sin and, positively, by wanting to sublate this absolute difference in the absolute equality.”64 Climacus’ formulation here is interesting since what he calls “the paradox” is precisely what Hegel calls “the dialectical relation of concepts.” Climacus even uses the Hegelian term “to sublate,” “ophæve,” the Danish equivalent of “aufheben.” There is a clear Hegelian movement in his description: a negation or a difference, sublated into a higher unity or an “absolute equality,” where the difference or the contradiction disappears.

64

PF, p. 47; SKS, vol. 4, p. 252. Translation slightly modified.


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In another passage Climacus characterizes the paradox in exactly the way in which Hegel characterizes the concept of mediation (i.e., as that which unites contradictory notions). Climacus writes: “but the paradox specifically unites the contradictories, is the eternalizing of the historical and the eternal. Anyone who understands the paradox any other way may retain the honor of having explained it, an honor he would win by his unwillingness to be satisfied.”65 This too indicates that Kierkegaard does not want to reject the Hegelian principle outright but rather to make use of it for his own purposes by modifying and reformulating it in terms of the paradox. It should be noted that in Practice in Christianity the concept of the God-man is central. There when the pseudonymous author AntiClimacus speaks of the God-man as a sign of contradiction,66 it is clear that this is a Hegelian use of “contradiction” and not an Aristotelian use. Contradiction is conceived as the relation of opposites (i.e., god and man) and not as a pure negation (i.e., god and not-god). This is further evidence that the paradox is more closely related to the Hegelian concept of mediation than it would seem to be at first glance. Further evidence for a similarity between Hegelian mediation and the paradox can be found in the journals. In an undated entry from around 1842–43 with the heading “The Absolute Paradox,” Kierkegaard writes: Insofar as philosophy is mediation, it holds true that it is not complete before it has seen the ultimate paradox before its own eyes. This paradox is the God-man and is to be developed solely out of the idea, and yet with constant reference to Christ’s appearance, in order to see whether it is sufficiently paradoxical, whether Christ’s human existence does not bear the mark of his not being the individual human being in the profoundest sense, to what extent his earthly existence does not fall within the metaphysical and the aesthetic.67

Here the doctrines of mediation and the paradox of the God-man are explicitly compared. It seems clear that the paradox is not conceived as the opposite of mediation but rather as one variant or example of it. The two do not mutually exclude one another; on the contrary, mediation is only completed by the paradox. Climacus uses Hegelian language in claiming that both are “developed solely out of the idea.” Thus, this constitutes another example of appropriation. Given this, it seems obvious that the concept of mediation as presented by Martensen clearly provoked Kierkegaard. As a result he formulated the doctrine of the paradox as a response. But in his formulation of this doctrine he ends up incorporating at least some of the basic principles of the original Hegelian doctrine. While Kierkegaard may have aimed 65 66 67

PF, p. 61; SKS, vol. 4, p. 263. Translation slightly modified. PC, pp. 124–127; SV1, vol. 12, pp. 116–119. PC, pp. 132–136; SV1, vol. 12, pp. 124–127. JP, vol. 3, 3074; SKS, vol. 19, p. 418, Not13:53.


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at rejecting Martensen’s theology, he nonetheless employs some aspects of the original Hegelian principle of mediation in his refutation. This should be indication enough that the criticism here is not intended to be aimed at Hegel but rather at Martensen. Climacus objects to the application to which Martensen puts this principle and the conclusions he draws from it but has no qualms about availing himself of the actual Hegelian principle itself. Thus, despite all of the polemical rhetoric, Kierkegaard seems to use this aspect of Hegel’s methodology as a positive source of inspiration and as a tool that he can appropriate and employ for his own purposes. This squares with the previous analysis68 concerning Judge Wilhelm’s view of Hegel’s doctrine of mediation. While it looked as if the whole point of Either/Or was to criticize this Hegelian doctrine, in the final analysis Judge Wilhelm’s position turned out to be in perfect harmony with it.

ii. the modal categories In the “Interlude”69 between Chapters 4 and 5 (entitled, “Is the Past More Necessary than the Future? or Has the Possible by Having Become Actual, Become More Necessary Than It Was?”) Johannes Climacus takes up two related issues: first, the metaphysical question of the relation of the modal categories, possibility, actuality and necessity, and, then, the question of historical knowledge. The discussion thus begins with the metaphysical issue that serves as the groundwork for the historical question. It is in this section that Hegel’s name appears explicitly. Moreover, in the introductory remarks to the “Interlude” Climacus alludes to “the most recent philosophy,”70 which one can infer is Hegelianism. Here Climacus is interested in demonstrating two things: first, that there is no relation between the modal categories of actuality and necessity since nothing comes into the realm of actuality by necessity. This thesis is the occasion for a discussion of the view, often attributed to Hegel, that necessity follows from possibility and actuality. The second thesis, which follows from the first, is that the god’s coming into the world and thus entering into history was not something necessary. In order to argue for this thesis, Climacus spends a fair bit of time refuting the claim that there is necessity in history. In the present section I will explore Climacus’ first argument in the “Interlude,”71 and in the next section I will address the second.72 In the present section I will argue that the claim Climacus uses as a counterargument (i.e., that necessity is the unity of possibility and actuality) cannot be rightly attributed to Hegel. 68 70 72

Chapter 4, Section 2. PF, p. 73; SKS, vol. 4, p. 273. PF, pp. 75–88; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 275–284.

69 71

PF, pp. 72–88; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 272–284. PF, pp. 72–75; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 272–275.


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According to Climacus, anything that enters into actuality is ipso facto possible and not necessary. Given the fact that a given thing could come into being, it follows that there was a time prior to this when it did not exist. Since it did not exist, it was clearly not necessary. Thus, anything that can come into existence falls under the category of possibility and not necessity. Climacus puts the argument as follows: “Precisely by coming into existence, everything that comes into existence demonstrates that it is not necessary, for the only thing that cannot come into existence is the necessary, because the necessary is.”73 Coming into existence is characteristic of possibility or contingency and not necessity. Nothing necessarily comes into existence. Climacus then raises what has been thought to be a Hegelian argument as an objection, albeit without mentioning Hegel explicitly: “Is not necessity, then, a unity of possibility and actuality?”74 He proceeds to give the following refutation of this view: Possibility and actuality are not different in essence but in being. How could there be formed from this heterogeneity a unity that would be necessity, which is not a qualification of being but of essence, since the essence of the necessary is to be. In such a case, possibility and actuality in becoming necessity, would become an absolutely different essence, which is no change, and, in becoming necessity or the necessary, would become the one and only thing that precludes coming into existence, which is just as impossible as it is self-contradictory.75

Climacus operates with a concept of strict, logical necessity when he says, for example, “the essence of the necessary is to be.” According to this view, everything that is necessary exists. This is the view of strict logical necessity that would be the case in every possible world. While empirical truths may vary from one possible world to the next, logical or mathematical truths, such as “a square is a figure with four sides,” or “2 + 3 = 5,” must necessarily hold true in every possible world since their denial would result in a conceptual self-contradiction. This is what the concept of a square is and what the addition of the given quantities means. There is no possible world in which “2 + 3 = 7” or in which there is a circular square or one with five sides. For Climacus as well, if something is necessary, it must be true in every possible world without reference to the categories of possibility and actuality, which are different in kind. Climacus’ argument against the view that necessity is the unity of possibility and actuality is that the categories are fundamentally different. As he says, necessity has “an absolutely different essence” from possibility and actuality. This would make it impossible for possibility and actuality to merge into necessity. 73 75

PF, p. 74; SKS, vol. 4, p. 274. PF, p. 74; SKS, vol. 4, p. 274.

74

PF, p. 74; SKS, vol. 4, p. 274.


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To his mind, this is not a possible change but rather a straightforward replacement. The problem with the standard interpretation of this issue is quite simple: the position being criticized is not Hegel’s. Many commentators,76 take the claim that necessity is the unity of possibility and actuality to be Hegel’s. In defense of this interpretation, they tend to refer to the same few passages in the Science of Logic and the Encyclopaedia Logic. But in the analyses that they point to Hegel nowhere makes the claim that necessity is the unity of possibility and actuality. Moreover, none of these commentators gives an account of the modal categories in Hegel. The question of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the modal categories was raised earlier in the context of The Concept of Irony, where the sequence of chapters (i.e., “The View Made Possible,” “The Actualization of the View,” and “The View Made Necessary”) seemed to follow a specific categorial structure that was attributed to Hegel.77 As was seen in that discussion, there is no reason to think that the dialectical movement from possibility to actuality and then to necessity is characteristically Hegelian. This is in any case not the sequence of categories in the Science of Logic or the Encyclopaedia Logic. Hegel’s analysis follows a different sequence and is considerably more differentiated, including a number of intermediary concepts. In the Encyclopaedia Hegel does say, “It is true that necessity has been rightly defined as the unity of possibility and actuality.”78 This is the passage that commentators tend to cite, but they neglect to quote what Hegel writes immediately after this, namely, “But when it is expressed only in this way, the determination is superficial, and therefore unintelligible.”79 This is the only time in the entire analysis that Hegel connects these three modal categories, and in so doing it is obvious that he is referring to someone else’s position and that he is doing so only in order to distance himself from the view. From this formulation it is clear that Hegel takes no credit for being the founder of this doctrine, and, from the discussion that follows, it is further clear that he sees it as being in need of revision. The view that both Hegel and Kierkegaard refer to is actually that of Kant. In The Concept of Irony the issue was primarily that of the simple sequence of the modal categories (i.e., possibility, actuality, necessity). Here in Philosophical Fragments, the claim is about a specific relation 76

77 79

Eduard Geismar, Søren Kierkegaard. Hans Livsudvikling og Forfattervirksomhed, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1927–28, vol. 1, tredie del, pp. 67–68. Søren Holm, Søren Kierkegaards Historiefilosofi, Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, Arnold Busck 1952, p. 36. Johannes Sløk, Die Anthropologie Kierkegaards, Copenhagen: Rosenkilde und Bagger 1954, p. 36. Gregor Malantschuk, Kierkegaard’s Way to the Truth. An Introduction to the Authorship of Søren Kierkegaard, tr. by Mary Michelsen, Montreal: Inter Editions 1987, pp. 101–103. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., p. 363. See Hong’s note 12, p. 299 to PF, also note 35, p. 175 to SD. 78 Hegel, EL, §147; Jub., vol. 8, p. 330. Treated in Chapter 3, Section III. Hegel, EL, § 147; Jub., vol. 8, p. 330.


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between these three categories, namely that the third category, necessity, is the unity of the other two (i.e., possibility and actuality). As was noted in the preceding analysis,80 for Kant in the table of categories the third category in each of the four groups is the unity of the first and the second. Kant describes the relations of the categories as follows: “in view of the fact that all a priori division of concepts must be by dichotomy, it is significant that in each class the number of the categories is always the same, namely, three. Further, it may be observed that the third category in each class always arises from the combination of the second category with the first.”81 Thus, with respect to the categories of quantity – unity, plurality, totality – the last category, totality, can be seen as a combination of the two preceding categories (i.e., as the unity of a plurality). Similarly, for the categories of quality, limitation is the combination of reality and negation. Thus, with respect to the modal categories, necessity is the unity or combination of possibility and actuality (i.e., precisely the thesis that Climacus wants to refute). By contrast, according to Hegel’s account of the modal categories in the Encyclopaedia Logic, actuality is defined as “the unity . . . of essence and existence.”82 This dialectical unity of actuality in its aspect of identity is possibility83 and in its aspect of difference is contingency.84 Moreover, in Hegel’s account there are several other categories at work as well (i.e., essence, existence, and contingency), which are not in Kierkegaard’s triad of possibility, actuality and necessity. In the Science of Logic further variants are introduced: real actuality, formal actuality, real possibility, relative necessity, absolute necessity, and so on.85 Finally, the three aspects of necessity are condition, matter, and activity.86 There is nothing to indicate that Hegel takes necessity to be the unity of possibility and actuality. His view is far more complicated and differentiated than this simple claim. The notion that Climacus wants to criticize Hegel by criticizing the claim that necessity is the unity of possibility and actuality is a nonissue created by the secondary literature. Indeed, Climacus himself never claims to be criticizing Hegel with his refutation of this view. Hegel’s name is only mentioned later in a footnote to the subsection from the “Interlude” entitled “The Past.” It seems clear that both Climacus and Hegel are referring to Kant, and both want to criticize his position. This provides an instructive example of how misunderstandings arise and are 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

Chapter 3, Section III. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. by Norman Kemp Smith, London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., New York: St. Martin’s Press 1963, B 110, p. 116. Hegel, EL, § 142; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 319–322. Hegel, EL, § 143; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 322–325. Hegel, EL, § 144; Jub., vol. 8, p. 325. Hegel, SL, pp. 541–553; Jub., vol. 4, pp. 677–696. Hegel, EL, §§ 148–149; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 336–337.


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spread in the secondary literature. The present one seems to have resulted from the preliminary assumption by the commentators that Kierkegaard is involved in a critical dispute with Hegel. This mistaken intuition has then led them to mistakenly identify him as the target of this particular criticism. The train of thought appears to have been that the commentators (perhaps via Glockner’s Hegel-Lexikon87 or other authors in the secondary literature) came upon the reference to Hegel’s Encyclopaedia Logic,88 quoted earlier, in which Hegel refers to Kant’s position in order to critique it. Instead of analyzing Hegel’s account of the modal categories to determine if the view in question was his, they simply attributed it to him without question. But if they had taken the trouble to examine his analysis, they would have seen that his own view has nothing to do with that of Kant, to which he refers. Thus, the guiding intuition that there must be some campaign against Hegel at work here has led to the creation of a Hegel critique in the secondary literature that never existed in Kierkegaard’s text itself.

iii. necessity in history Climacus uses the argument about the categories of possibility, actuality, and necessity as the preliminary analysis for his account of history, which now follows in the “Interlude.”89 Specifically, his argument that necessity does not follow from possibility and actuality is taken up again in the context of history. Here the thesis is that all historical events are merely possible and not necessary. Climacus makes this argument with a view to the issue of the God entering into history and the concept of belief. He goes through different possible interpretations of the claim that there is necessity in history. This discussion has been taken to be a straightforward refutation of Hegel’s philosophy of history and specifically of his well-known thesis that history displays a conceptual necessity that is comprehensible to the speculative philosopher.90 At first glance there seems to be evidence that Hegel’s view is at issue. In drafts of the Fragments,91 it was at this point in the text that Kierkegaard began an excursus on Hegel, which he left out in the final version. Moreover, Hegel is mentioned directly in a long footnote that Climacus dedicates specifically to him.92 In contrast to the standard view, I wish to argue that Climacus’ 87 88 90

91 92

Hermann Glockner, Hegel-Lexikon, Stuttgart: Fr. Frommanns Verlag, Gunter ¨ Holzboog 1957, vols. 25–26 of Jub. 89 PF, pp.75–88; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 275–284. Hegel, EL, Jub., vol. 8, p. 330. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., pp. 362–365. Anders Kingo, Analogiens teologi. En dogmatisk studie over dialektikken i Søren Kierkegaards opbyggelige og pseudonyme forfatterskab, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad 1995, pp. 322–324. PF, Supplement, pp. 200–209; Pap. V B 13, pp. 70–76, Pap. V B 41, pp. 94–97. PF, p. 78fn.; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 277fn.–278fn.


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argument here is motivated by Martensen’s claim that the incarnation was necessary. This claim was a part of Martensen’s defense of the use of the principle of mediation and speculative philosophy in theology in his article “Rationalism, Supernaturalism and the principium exclusi medii.”93 Before evaluating Climacus’ arguments, one must first determine what Hegel means when he speaks of necessity in history. Unfortunately, Hegel’s best-known theses about history have been surrounded by countless misunderstandings, such as the notion that history comes to an end94 or culminates with the Hegelian system itself.95 Among these are numerous misconceptions of his famous claim that history does not progress accidentally or by chance but instead displays a necessity. This thesis has sounded to many interpreters like a crass determinism or fatalism. His view is, however, considerably more subtle than these misinterpretations would indicate. Hegel’s thesis about necessity in history is perhaps best understood as a corollary to his general idealist program. Like Kant, Hegel believes that there are certain a priori or necessary categories that give human experience and cognition coherence and order. Without these categories, our experience would be chaotic, and determinate objectivity itself would be impossible. For Hegel, these categories are the three moments of the Concept: universality, particularity, and individuality. These moments are not static but instead develop dialectically, the one into the other. For Hegel, these categories structure all human experience and cognition. Regardless of what sphere of inquiry one is concerned with – natural science, ethics, political theory, religion – these structures are present in any attempt to understand the object domain. Thus, just as 93 94

95

Hans Lassen Martensen, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme og principium exclusi medii,” op. cit., pp. 456–473. See Alexandre Kojève, Introduction a` la lecture de Hégel: Leç ons sur la phénoménologie de ´ ´ l’esprit professées de 1933 a` 1939 a` l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, ed. by Raymond Queneau, Paris: Gallimard 1947, 1971. In English as Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, tr. by James H. Nichols Jr., New York: Basic Books 1969. Alexandre Koyré, “Hégel a` Iéna (à propos de publications récentes),” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, 118, 1934, pp. 274– 283; reprinted in Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuse, 15, 1935, pp. 420–458. Joseph L. Esposito, “Hegel, Absolute Knowledge, and the End of History,” Clio, 12, 1983, pp. 355–365. Reinhard Klemens Maurer, Hegel und das Ende der Geschichte. Interpretationen zur Phänomenologie des Geistes, Stuttgart, Berlin, and Cologne: Kohlhammer 1965. Philip T. Grier, “The End of History and the Return of History,” The Owl of Minerva, 21, 1990, pp. 131–144. Wilhelm Seeberger, Hegel oder die Entwicklung des Geistes zur Freiheit, Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag 1961, p. 63. This myth was made famous by Nietzsche. See Untimely Mediations II, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” tr. by R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1983, § 8, p. 104: “History understood in this Hegelian fashion has been mockingly called God’s vicissitudes on earth, though the god referred to has been created only by the history. This god, however, became transparent and comprehensible to himself within the Hegelian craniums and has already ascended all the dialectically possible steps of his evolution up to this self-revelation: so that for Hegel the climax and terminus of the world process coincided with his own existence in Berlin.”



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for Kant, one knows ahead of time that one’s perceptions will be necessarily ordered by, for example, relations of cause and effect, substance and accident, so also, for Hegel, one knows ahead of time that one’s attempts to understand any given subject-matter or to think at all will be determined by the categories of universality, particularity, and individuality. These categories thus supply necessity regardless of the particular subject-matter. With regard to the question of history, for Hegel, when one makes history the object of cognition, it immediately and ipso facto has a kind of necessity (i.e., the necessity of thought). In other words, any attempt to think of history will display the necessary categorial structure of the Concept. History, like any other field, displays a movement from universal to particular to individual. In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Hegel tries to interpret world-historical development in terms of this movement. It is to be noted here that Hegel does not claim that some independent, external historical event such as a particular war or leader is necessary. For Hegel, particular historical events are thus not predetermined.96 The claim is that thought’s attempt to understand history must have a certain necessary structure in common with all thought. A key part of his idealism is the denial that there is an independent other of thought that exists on its own. Thus, there is no “history” in and of itself that the mind comes along and interprets. There are no independent historical facts in this sense. On the contrary, history is simply the mind’s representation of the past to itself. Thus, this representation, qua representation, must, for Hegel, display certain necessary structures. With this background information, I return to Climacus’s text in order to explore his account of necessity in history. In the “Interlude” Climacus addresses himself to a couple of different possible interpretations of the thesis that the past is necessary. These will be examined in turn in order to determine to what degree they can properly be attributed to Hegel. I wish to argue that Hegel’s position has nothing to do with the first interpretation that Climacus wants to criticize (i.e., that the past is necessary simply because it happened). Moreover, while Hegel’s theory might seem to fit somewhat better with the second interpretation (i.e., that necessity is concerned with the apprehension of the past), the kind of “apprehension” that Climacus discusses has nothing to do with Hegel’s claims about the speculative comprehension of history. Ultimately, I wish to argue that 96

In Either/Or Kierkegaard correctly interprets this aspect of Hegel’s theory as a form of compatibilism: “History . . . is more than a product of the free actions of free individuals. The individual acts, but this action enters into the order of things that maintains the whole of existence. What is going to come of his action, the one who acts does not really know. But this higher order of things that digests, so to speak, the free actions and works them together in its eternal laws is necessity, and this necessity is the movement in world history”(EO2, p. 174; SKS, vol. 3, p. 170).


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Martensen’s article is much closer to the context of Climacus’ discussion than anything in Hegel’s philosophy of history. (1) According to the first interpretation, which is discussed in the section entitled, “The Past,” from the “Interlude,” the claim that the past is necessary means merely that from the perspective of the present the past is unchangeable. What is done is done. But, Climacus points out, it does not follow from this that the past is necessary. At the time the individual actions and events came into existence they were not necessary. The coming into existence is always something free. Later in the “Interlude” he states his thesis as follows: “The past is not necessary, inasmuch as it came into existence.”97 Climacus here relies heavily on his previous analysis of the modal categories. Drawing on his previous argument, Climacus claims that anything that has come into existence is ipso facto contingent and not necessary. If it came into existence, then there was a time when it did not exist, and thus at that time it was not necessary. Therefore, that something can come into existence at all is a sign that it is possible rather than necessary. Thus, it is only an illusion of the present that views the past as something necessary simply because from the perspective of the present it is unchangeable. Climacus writes: “The past can be regarded as necessary only if one forgets that it has come into existence.”98 Climacus continues by employing a kind of reductio ad absurdum. He argues that if a given historical event were necessary, then there would be two absurd results: first, with respect to history or the past, there would be a determinism, according to which there is a fixed course of events: If the past had become necessary, then it would not belong to freedom any more – that is, belong to that in which it came into existence. Freedom would then be in dire straits, something to laugh about and to weep over, since it would bear responsibility for what did not belong to it, would bring forth what necessity would devour, and freedom itself would be an illusion and coming into existence no less an illusion.99

In short, if events in the past were necessary, then there would be no freedom of action. In other words, according to this view, all historical events were not the result of the free actions of free individuals but rather were necessarily determined. Such a view would then eliminate all ethical responsibility since individuals could not have acted in any other than way they did. While the first result refers to the past and its effect on the present, the second absurd result refers to the future. Climacus argues that the determinism in past events would imply a necessary sequence that would reach into the present and beyond. Thus, necessity would apply not merely to 97 99

PF, p. 79; SKS, vol. 4, p. 279. PF, pp. 77–78; SKS, vol. 4, p. 277.

98

PF, pp.77; SKS, vol. 4, p. 276.



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the past but also to the future: If the past had become necessary, the opposite conclusion could not be drawn with respect to the future, but on the contrary it would follow that the future would also be necessary. If necessity could supervene at one single point, then we could no longer speak of the past and the future. To want to predict the future (prophesy) and to want to understand the necessity of the past are altogether identical, and only the prevailing fashion makes the one seem more plausible than the other to a particular generation.100

This argument operates with a notion of necessity according to which a thing is necessary by virtue of the fact that it exists in the sequence of necessary cause and effect relations. Everything stands in a necessary relation to the chain of cause and effect. Given this view, something can of necessity come into existence, that is, as a result of previous causes. This is not to say that its existence is necessary as such (i.e., that it is necessary in every possible world), but it is necessary in the particular sequence of cause and effect in this particular world. Thus, according to this notion of necessity, a thing can come into existence and still be necessary insofar as it was the necessary result of a specific cause. Moreover, the sequence of cause and effect relations of the past determines what will happen in the future. Thus, this notion of necessity applies equally to both the past and the future. There is no evidence that Climacus intends for his criticism of this interpretation of the thesis of necessity in history to be a criticism of Hegel. It is a mistake on the part of the secondary literature to interpret this discussion in this fashion since the notion of necessity at work here has nothing to do with that of Hegel. On the one hand, it is clear that the issue of philosophy prophesying the future is foreign to Hegel, who, with his famous allusion to the Owl of Minerva,101 says explicitly that philosophy can analyze only what has already taken place and cannot look into the future. On the other hand, as has been noted previously, for Hegel necessity is conceived as logical necessity rather than a mechanical necessity conditioned by the cause and effect relations of a particular place and time. Hegel uses necessity in the strong sense of logical truths that are 100

101

PF, p. 77; SKS, vol. 4, p. 277. It will be noted that this view was sketched earlier in Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est: “It would already be a precarious matter, so it seemed to him, for someone to undertake to prophesy. And yet, just as one could have an intimation of a necessity in the past, was it not also conceivable that one could have an intimation of a necessity in the future. Philosophy, however, wanted to permeate everything with the thought of eternity and necessity, wanted to do this in the present moment, which would mean slaying the present life with the thought of eternity and yet preserving its fresh life. It would mean wanting to see what is happening as that which has happened and simultaneously as that which is happening; it would mean wanting to know the future as a present and yet simultaneously as a future.” JC, pp. 142–143; Pap. IV B 1, p. 125. Hegel, PR, Preface, p. 23; Jub., vol. 7, p. 37.


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necessary in every possible world. Unlike concepts, which are necessarily true, there are no empirical objects that necessarily exist in all possible worlds. Existence is contingent, and there is nothing whose essence or concept necessarily implies its existence. But the view presented and criticized here is more an empiricist conception of necessity (i.e., the necessity of a particular empirical truth in the cause and effect relations of a given possible world in contrast to the necessity of a universal truth valid in every possible world). Given that Climacus’ argument addresses a concept of necessity that is foreign to the Hegelian view, it seems obvious that Hegel cannot be the target. (2) There is, however, a second interpretation of the thesis that there is necessity in history, which might seem to be more relevant for the purported criticism of Hegel’s view.102 This interpretation is offered in the fourth section of the “Interlude” under the heading, “The Apprehension of the Past.” Climacus says, the past “becomes even less necessary through any apprehension of it.”103 Here the claim is that our human comprehension or knowledge of a given historical event does not make it necessary. Climacus argues as follows: If the past were to become necessary through the apprehension, then the past would gain what the apprehension lost, since it would apprehend something else, which is a poor apprehension. If what is apprehended is changed in the apprehension, then the apprehension is changed into a misunderstanding . . . knowledge of the past does not confer necessity upon it – for all apprehension, like all knowing, has nothing from which to give.104

The argument is that if there is no necessity in the subject-matter of history, then our perception of it cannot make it necessary. If it could, it would amount to reshaping the subject-matter and imposing a form on it from the outside. This would clearly be a distortion. Thus, if there is to be necessity in history, it must be in history itself and not in our understanding of it. Climacus’ argument seems at first glance to be aimed at the Hegelian view since it claims that history or the past cannot be made “necessary through any apprehension of it.” This might sound like a criticism of Hegel’s claim that there is necessity in history according to a speculative comprehension of it. In other words, it could seem to be a criticism of the view that the grasping of the speculative Concept in history renders the past necessary. However, a closer examination of the matter 102

103

See Gregor Malantschuk, Dialektik og Eksistens hos Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag 1968, p. 242f. English translation: Kierkegaard’s Thought, tr. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1971, p. 253f. 104 PF, pp. 79–80; SKS, vol. 4, p. 279. PF, p. 79; SKS, vol. 4, p. 279.



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reveals no evidence in the text of this section that suggests that Climacus ever intended the criticism here to be of Hegel’s philosophy of history. Although he freely alludes to several thinkers in his discussion of this interpretation (i.e., Daub, Leibniz, Plato, Aristotle, Baader),105 there is no reference to Hegel. (The only direct reference to him comes in the aforementioned footnote at the end of this section.106 ) Moreover, when Climacus talks about the “apprehension of the past,” he nowhere indicates that he means by this is a speculative comprehension of history according to the Concept. Nowhere in his analysis does he use Hegelian language of this kind. When Hegel talks of a speculative understanding of the past (or of any given subject-matter), he invariably uses the verb “begreifen” (usually translated as “to conceive”) since it is etymologically related to the word for “Concept” (i.e., “Begriff ”). By contrast, when Climacus sketches the position to be criticized, he uses the word “at opfatte” and the substantive, “Opfattelse,” which is translated as “apprehension” in the title of the section. These correspond to the German verb, “auffassen,” and the substantive “Auffassung,” neither of which is a technical term in Hegel. A closer examination of the text reveals that the kind of knowledge of the past that Climacus has in mind is not speculative knowing (i.e., knowledge according to the Concept) but rather simple knowledge of individual events. This can be seen from the somewhat cryptic reference to Boethius. Climacus writes: “Knowledge of the present does not confer necessity upon it; foreknowledge of the future does not confer necessity upon it (Boethius); knowledge of the past does not confer necessity upon it – for all apprehension, like all knowing, has nothing from which to give.”107 Climacus conflates knowledge of the past and of the future, and his thesis is that neither implies necessity. To illustrate the notion of knowledge he has in mind, he refers to Boethius. In a draft of this passage one can see that the thesis itself is in fact a paraphrase of Boethius. There Kierkegaard quotes from Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy as follows: “But apprehension is not able to do it either; nam sicut scientia praesentium nihil his quae fiunt, ita praescientia futurorum nihil his, quæ ventura sunt, necessitatis importat [for just as knowledge of the present does not impart necessity to the present, so foreknowledge of the future imparts no necessity to that which will happen] (Boethius, Liber V).”108 When he says that “apprehension is not able to do it either,” he clearly means that apprehension cannot supply necessity any more than the first interpretation (i.e., the past as the past). Thus, there can 105 106 107 108

PF, p. 80; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 279–280. This footnote is treated in the following section of the present study. PF, p. 80; SKS, vol. 4, p. 279. See SKS, vol. K4, pp. 277–278. PF, Supplement, p. 211; Pap. V B 15.8.


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be no doubt that he has borrowed this criticism from Boethius. The kind of knowledge that Boethius is talking about has to do with specific events and not with a speculative understanding of history in Hegel’s sense. Boethius is concerned with the problem of reconciling freedom with divine omniscience and foreknowledge.109 His argument is that divine foreknowledge of the future does not confer necessity on those specific future events. This is a problem constellation that is foreign to Hegel and a conception of knowledge that has nothing to do with speculative knowing according to the Concept. Finally, the position being criticized cannot be Hegel’s since it presupposes a strict split between subject and object, knowing and known, which is precisely what Hegel’s philosophy is designed to overcome. The argument presupposes an autonomous historical realm independent of human thought and consciousness. Then when human thought tries to grasp this realm, it orders and thereby distorts the object sphere in accordance with the categories of thought. Thus, the necessity is imposed on the object sphere artificially from without and “is changed into a misunderstanding.” This is not Hegel’s position. Hegel argues, on the contrary, that there is not an autonomous sphere of history apart from thought. History is just our series of representations. Thus, the mind does not impose a necessity on something other than itself, but rather the category “necessity” is already in our understanding and conceptions of history, which we can never get behind to see history in itself. Given that all accounts of history are interpretations, the concept of history in itself is self-contradictory and belongs to the dualistic models that Hegel tries to refute. Given that Hegel’s view of history is not at issue in Climacus’ discussion, I wish to argue that what is more relevant for the view of history criticized in the “Interlude” is Martensen’s article “Rationalism, Supernaturalism and the principium exclusi medii,” where these Hegelian principles are applied to the doctrine of the Incarnation (i.e., God becoming human and entering history). Martensen makes a case for the conceptual understanding of the incarnation. More or less in line with Hegel’s philosophy of religion, he argues that the goal of modern theology is to grasp in thought the true content of religious myths and stories that invariably appeal to feeling and intuition. The goal is to replace feeling with thought and arbitrariness with necessity. Theology is only reconciled with dogma when it is seen in its necessary place in the system.110 One example of a doctrine that needs to be grasped by the necessity of thought is the incarnation. Thus, one must understand the doctrine of 109

110

See Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, tr. by S. J. Tester, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press and London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1978 (Loeb Classical Library), Book V, Prose Section IV, pp. 405–413. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme og principium exclusi medii,” op. cit., p. 464.



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the Incarnation as the Concept working itself out in time, that is, as the universal (God the Father) becoming particular (the Son) in history.111 To grasp it in this fashion is to see its necessity. While there might be several stories to tell that make the event more comprehensible to the untrained mind, the abstract Concept itself is what is necessary. The Concept must be stripped of its empirical and metaphorical element in order that it might stand alone as the truth. Martensen claims that the incarnation, understood in its conceptual aspect, was “absolutely necessary.” The incarnation was naturally produced by the one-sidedness of the universal or of a pure supernaturalism. The universal had to posit a particular as its other. The supernatural God had to descend into the natural sphere. Martensen writes: “the revelation of Christ and the community life founded by him comes forth as something absolutely necessary, not just as something which cannot remain absent, but as the central point of the universe, and the goal of the entire teleological development of the world, to which everything else is related only as a midway and transitory point.”112 Thus, he claims that the incarnation is truly understood only when it is grasped as the necessary culmination of the conceptual development. Martensen claims, that “the coming of Christ does not have a relative significance but an absolute one . . . the necessity of the incarnation is not merely practical . . . but purely metaphysical.”113 Given this, it is no accident that Climacus is anxious to refute the view that there is necessity in history and that in his analysis he has an eye specifically toward the doctrine of the incarnation. Martensen goes on to argue that, as a result of this doctrine, faith and knowledge are mediated: “But the metaphysical necessity of Christianity, which is hereby admitted, need only be developed in order that the opposition between supernaturalism and rationalism, reason and revelation, faith and knowledge will also be sublated.”114 This is precisely the view that Climacus tries to refute in the “Interlude.” The goal of the analysis of necessity in history is to make a statement about faith. Ultimately, Climacus wants to insist on a distinction between knowledge and faith. The whole point of his analysis is to show that the incarnation (i.e., the coming into existence of the God) is never something that can be witnessed. Thus, the contemporary of Christ, although he may have seen the actual person of Christ, never saw the coming into existence of the divine. Thus, the contemporary is at no advantage with respect to faith. The object of knowledge is something that one can see, not so the object of faith. Faith in Christ means specifically faith in the incarnation, which no one was witness to. It can thus in principle never become an object 111 112 114

For an account of this doctrine in Hegel, see Chapter 11, Section IV. 113 Ibid., p. 461. Martensen, op. cit., p. 462f. Ibid., p. 461.


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of knowledge. Faith, by contrast, is “an act of freedom, an expression of the will.”115 Further evidence of the importance of Martensen for this analysis is Climacus’ allusion to skeptical doubt. Climacus contrasts the belief in sense perception defended by Greek skepticism with the doubt of Hegelian philosophy. He writes: Immediate sensation and cognition cannot deceive. . . . However strange it may seem, this thought underlies Greek skepticism. Yet it is not so difficult to understand this or to understand how this casts light on belief, provided one is not utterly confused by the Hegelian doubt about everything, against which there is really no need to preach, for what the Hegelians say about it is of such a nature that it seems rather a favor to a modest doubt as to whether there really is anything to their having doubted something.116

This passage has generally been taken as a straightforward criticism of Hegel. But Climacus talks specifically about “Hegelians” and not about Hegel himself. As has been seen previously, Kierkegaard consistently associates the doctrine of modern skeptical doubt with Martensen.117 It was Martensen’s sloganizing claims that one must doubt everything in order to begin with philosophy that Kierkegaard made the constant target of his criticisms. Thus, Martensen is the target here, and this indirect reference is a part of the general polemic with him in this section. This evidence indicates that Martensen’s claims about the necessity of the incarnation are considerably more important for the motivation of the analysis of necessity in history in the “Interlude” than anything in Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Hegel is not interested in claiming that any or all historical events are necessary or that the specific event of God coming into existence was causally necessary or predetermined. Moreover, he does not argue that knowledge of any specific event confers necessity on it. The incarnation is not central to Hegel’s theory of history, whereas it is one of the key issues in Martensen’s article. Thus, the context of the discussion of the incarnation in the “Interlude” can best be interpreted as being in dialogue with Martensen’s discussion of the same issue. The “Interlude” can thus be seen as a continuation of the discussion of the paradox examined in Section I in this chapter insofar as that discussion was also motivated by Martensen’s claims for the immanence of thought about the divine.

iv. the absolute method In the footnote at the end of the section “The Past,” Climacus names Hegel directly and refers to his doctrine of “the absolute method.”118 115 117 118

PF, p. 83; SKS, vol. 4, p. 282. See Chapter 5, Section I. PF, p. 78fn.; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 277fn.–278fn.

116

PF, p. 82; SKS, vol. 4, p. 281.


the absolute method

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He alludes to Hegel’s notion of history as “the concretion of the Idea” and asks a number of presumably critical questions about it, which he leaves unanswered. This is the place, if anywhere in the book, where Climacus is concerned with Hegel himself. There survive a couple of different drafts of this footnote where Hegel is also referred to by name several times.119 In this section I will begin by discussing the notion of “the absolute method” in Hegel and will then use this to determine to what degree Climacus wants to criticize this notion. Ultimately, I wish to argue that the criticism here is concerned not so much with the absolute method or with Hegel’s philosophy of history but rather with the fact that no account of the ethical existence of the individual is given in a philosophical analysis of this kind. Hegel introduces the concept of “the method” or “the absolute method” in the culminating section of the Science of Logic entitled “The Absolute Idea.”120 The notion of the absolute Idea is in Hegel what other philosophers simply call “the absolute” (i.e., the concept of the universe or everything that is, taken as a whole). For Hegel the abstract, universal structure is valid for all reality. Since the Idea is pure structure at this level, devoid of empirical content, it is pure form. The form is the dialectical movement from (1) an abstract universal to (2) a concrete particular, and finally to a unity in (3) singularity where the particular is united with the universal. Conceiving of things in terms of this form is the method.121 Hegel calls this method “absolute” since, qua synonym with the absolute Idea, it encompasses all thought and reality. Thus, the absolute method follows the dialectical movements and sees the three moments of the Idea as being necessarily contained within it and as dialectically developing out of it. Hegel writes: “The essential point is that the absolute method finds and cognizes the determination of the universal within the latter itself.”122 The absolute method recognizes that the universal must determine and posit itself in a particular. But this particular is not an external other but rather is already implicitly contained in the universal itself. At the third stage, the universal cannot stand statically opposed to the particular, but rather they are in a dialectical relation that shows them ultimately to be united. This is the way in which Hegel discusses the notion of the absolute method in logic. While the expression, “the absolute method,” plays a rather minor role in Hegel’s primary texts, it seems to have been a key term in the history of the reception of his philosophy. It appears in the expanded second edition of Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus’ Historische Entwickelung der

119 120 121 122

PF, Supplement, pp. 200–205; Pap. V B 14, pp. 70–76. PF, Supplement, pp. 205–209; Pap. V B 41, pp. 94–97. Hegel, SL, pp. 824–844; Jub., vol. 5, pp. 327–353. Hegel, SL, p. 825; Jub., vol. 5, p. 329. Hegel, SL, p. 830; Jub., vol. 5, p. 335.


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speculativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel, which also appeared in a Danish translation.123 The expression comes up several times in Trendelenburg’s Die logische Frage in Hegels System124 and also appears in his main work, Logische Untersuchungen.125 Hegel’s conception of “method” is treated at length in a review article by Christian Hermann Weisse (1801–66), which criticizes a work by the Hegelian, Julius Schaller (1810–68).126 There is nothing in the text of the Fragments to indicate that Kierkegaard takes the expression, “the absolute method,” from Hegel’s primary texts. It thus seems most likely that it came from one of the commentators. There is evidence that he first encountered the concept in connection with Weisse’s article. In the journals from 1837 there are reading notes to this article in which the expression “the absolute method” appears explicitly. Kierkegaard writes: “Weize attempts in his treatise, ‘die drei Grundfragen der gegenwärtigen Philosophie aimed against die Philosophie unserer Zeit. Zur Apologie und Erläuterung des Hegelschen Systemes v. Dr. Julius Schaller. Leipzig 1837. 8.,’ to make clear the first question about the method, i.e. the absolute method.”127 Moreover, from the journals and papers it is also evident that Kierkegaard made a study of the aforementioned texts by Trendelenburg around the same time as the composition of the Fragments.128 Kierkegaard employs the expression, “the absolute method,” for the first time in The Concept of Irony, where he uses it to refer to the three-step dialectic of Hegel in contrast to the two-step or purely negative dialectic of Plato.129 There Kierkegaard gives a surprisingly positive account of the absolute method, which he uses in criticism of the Socratic method. The latter is lacking the completion and unity provided by “the dialectical trilogy” of the absolute method. It will be noted that Hegel in his account makes this same comparison between, on the one hand, the speculative dialectic, which is designated as the absolute method and, on the other 123

124 125 126

127 128 129

Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus, Historische Entwickelung der speculativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel, Zweite verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage, Dresden and Leipzig 1839 [1837, ASKB 461], p. 389. Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus, Historisk Udvikling af den speculative Philosophie fra Kant til Hegel, tr. by S. Kattrup, Copenhagen 1841, p. 339. ASKB 462. Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Die logische Frage in Hegels System. Zwei Streitschriften, Leipzig 1843, p. 6, p. 9, p. 10, p. 11, p. 26. ASKB 846. Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, vols. 1–2, Berlin 1840, vol. 1, p. 83. ASKB 843. C.H. Weisse, “Die drei Grundfragen der gegenwärtigen Philosophie. Mit Bezug auf die Schrift: Die Philosophie unserer Zeit. Zur Apologie und Erläuterung des Hegelschen Systemes. Von Dr. Julius Schaller, Leipzig, Hinrichs. 1837. gr. 8.,” Zeitschrift für Philosophie und spekulative Theologie, ed. by I. H. Fichte, vol. 1, no. 1, 1837, pp. 67–114, see p. 81. SKS, vol. 19, p. 170, Not4:46. See also SKS, vol. 19, p. 170, Not4:46.c. SKS, vol. 19, p. 171, Not4:47. SKS, vol. 18, p. 225, JJ:266. See also Pap. V B 49.6. CI, p. 32; SKS, vol. 1, p. 93.


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hand, the dialectic of Plato.130 While the discussion in The Concept of Irony has little to do with the one in the Fragments, it is significant that Kierkegaard understands and uses the term, “the absolute method,” as early as his dissertation. In the Philosophical Fragments, Climacus mentions “the absolute method” in the context of both logic and the philosophy of history. His brief analysis comes in the aforementioned footnote, which follows the discussion of necessity in history in the section “The Past.” Climacus indicates in the draft of this passage that he is interested in the method as applied to history: “But we shall not discuss logic here; we shall merely consider the application of the absolute method to the historical.”131 With respect to the absolute method as applied to history, Climacus seems to have in mind specifically the movement of the universal to the particular or the becoming concrete of the abstract Idea in history.132 That this is primarily what Climacus understands by “the absolute method” is supported by the following: “In the historical sciences [the absolute method] is a fixed idea and because the method properly begins to become concrete there – since, after all, history is the concretion of the Idea – Hegel certainly has had occasion to display a rare scholarship, a rare ability to shape the material, in which through him there is turmoil enough.”133 Further on he asks the following questions about the absolute method, questions that focus on the same point about the Idea becoming concrete: “Why become concrete at once, why begin at once to construct imaginatively in concreto, or could not this question be answered in the dispassionate brevity of abstraction, which has no means of distraction or enchantment? What does it mean that the Idea becomes concrete, what is coming into existence, how is it related to that which has come into existence, etc.?”134 Thus, there seems to be little doubt that Climacus understands the absolute method as the philosophical comprehension of the Idea becoming concrete, specifically in history. It now remains to be seen what his criticism of this point is. While Climacus purports to examine the notion of the absolute method in history, the criticism seems to be primarily a moral one that has nothing intrinsically to do with the philosophy of history. The first part of the criticism is that when the absolute method is applied to history it might be able to explain the macrolevel forces of world history but fails to understand the individual. The criticism is that it claims to explain everything, while in fact it has omitted what is most important. Climacus 130 131 132 133 134

Hegel, SL, pp. 830–832; Jub., vol. 5, pp. 336–338. PF, Supplement, p. 201; Pap. V B 14, p. 71. Hegel’s thesis in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy is that in history the abstract Idea of freedom works itself out dialectically. PF, p. 78fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 278fn. PF, p. 78fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 278fn. Translation slightly modified.


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writes: “Too bad that Hegel, merely for the sake of illusion, did not have 1843 years at his disposal, for then he presumably would have had time to make the test as to whether the absolute method, which could explain all world history, could also explain the life of one single human being.”135 The upshot of the criticism is that for all of Hegel’s analyses of world history, he has nothing to say about ethics and the life of the individual: “The absolute method explains all world history; the science that is to explain the single human being is ethics.”136 This recalls Kierkegaard’s later criticism that the system has no ethics.137 The second part of the criticism is that the speculative study of history is deceptive since it leads one away from what is most important. The inquirer originally asks about the ethical question (i.e., about what he or she as a particular individual should do). This is, for Climacus, the pressing question, and it is with it that one turns to the speculative philosophy of history. While a speculative account of history can explain many things, it never responds to the ethical question of the individual. But one becomes so transfixed by the account speculative philosophy gives that one forgets the original question that led one to the study of philosophy in the first place. “Now, it goes without saying,” Climacus writes, “that it is a swindle to get all world history instead of one’s own insignificant person – if one does not gain in the trade. Yet people are deceived, deceived insofar as they do not come to understand themselves, which is made evident by their supposing that they have understood the whole world without this.”138 The teacher claims that the abstract Idea itself is unclear and in order to make it clear says that it must be analyzed as instantiated in the concrete. But this appeal to the concrete and the accompanying detailed analysis of the manifold concreteness in history function as a kind of distraction that makes one forget the original question of one’s ethical existence. The inquirer becomes so captivated by the plurality of historical forms and with the illusion that something grand has been understood that he forgets the original motivation for the inquiry in the first place. Climacus thus concludes that this method is “an instrument of distraction, nothing but an instrument of distraction.”139 It will be noted that this is primarily a criticism that concerns what Climacus considers to be an indirect result of Hegel’s philosophy of history and not any direct criticism either of the method or of a speculative approach to history. The criticism seems to focus on the student of 135 136 137 138 139

PF, Supplement, p. 201; Pap. V B 14, p. 71. This criticism comes up again in the Postscript. See CUP1, p. 307fn; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 279–280fn. CUP1, p. 310; SKS, vol. 7, p. 282f. PF, Supplement, p. 207; Pap. V B 41, p. 96. Treated in Chapter 11, Section X. PF, Supplement, p. 202; Pap. V B 14, pp. 72–73. PF, Supplement, p. 205; Pap. V B 14, p. 76.


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philosophy, who is deceived into forgetting the central question of ethics in the course of a study of world history. This is much the same criticism that Judge Wilhelm issued in Either/Or when he discussed the problem of mediation.140 The critique there was also not so much of any particular conception of history but of a misunderstanding of the scope of a speculative account. Judge Wilhelm was particularly concerned about the young people of the age who were led astray in the contemplation of history. The only difference is the target of the criticism. Judge Wilhelm’s main target seemed to be the young students of philosophy who were naive and impressionable enough to allow themselves to be seduced by speculative philosophy and who were thus distracted from the question of their own ethical existence. By contrast, here in the Fragments the primary target seems to be the teachers of speculative philosophy, who deceive the young students by pretending to explain something with the absolute method, only to get the students so absorbed in the diversity and manifold of the concrete historical forms that they forget the ethical question. Thus, the one is a criticism of the naive student and the other of the deceiving teacher. Hegel’s speculative philosophy does not purport to explain the question of ethics in the sense in which Climacus understands it (i.e., as the ethical existence of a single individual). Moreover, Hegel claims, it is not the job of science to do so. On the contrary, Hegel says that there are phenomena that do not manifest the Concept and thus fall outside the realm of science: For since the rational . . . becomes actual by entering into external existence, it emerges in an infinite wealth of forms, appearances, and shapes and surrounds its core with a brightly colored covering in which consciousness at first resides, but which only the Concept can penetrate in order to find the inner pulse, and detect its continued beat even within the external shapes. But the infinitely varied circumstances which take shape within this externality as the essence manifests itself within it, this infinite material and its organization, are not the subject-matter of philosophy. To deal with them would be to interfere in things with which philosophy has no concern, and it can save itself the trouble of giving good advice on the subject.141

Hegel, like Climacus, is aware of the deceptive or seductive nature of the concrete and for this reason insists that philosophy should keep to an analysis of concepts and avoid getting too involved in the manifold details of the empirical realm. Moreover, Hegel says explicitly that there is an infinite variety of things that it cannot explain. Thus, while his system aims to explain the interconnections of all fields of scientific inquiry, it 140 141

See Chapter 4, Section II. Hegel, PR, Preface, pp. 20–21; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 33–34.


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does not purport to explain everything. Kierkegaard himself agrees with this since he repeats on many occasions that science cannot provide any insight into the ethical existence of the individual. For example, science cannot give an adequate discursive analysis of Abraham’s actions, and objective knowledge cannot give an adequate account of the faith of the individual, which is by its very nature subjective. Thus, it is problematic to conceive of this as a criticism of Hegel for lacking an account of the individual in his scientific analysis of history. Such a criticism would confuse the two spheres (i.e., of objective and subjective knowing), which Kierkegaard consistently insists on segregating, since this would imply that it is correct to expect an account of the ethical existence of the individual in a scientific analysis of history. The term “the absolute method” does not seem to be of any particular importance for the criticism that Climacus wishes to issue. It is used only to refer to the way in which the student is deceived by becoming lost in the concrete. Moreover, there is no evidence either in the text or the journals that Kierkegaard’s use of “the absolute method” is based on a reading of Hegel’s Science of Logic. In all probability he picked it up from his reading of Chalybäus, Trendelenburg, Weisse, or others. As has been noted, Hegel gives a full account of the structure of the Idea itself. Moreover, he warns against becoming too absorbed in the concrete details of the empirical realm, which he regards as unphilosophical. Thus, it is difficult to regard the criticism here as being an informed one about Hegel’s own position. This can hardly come as a surprise given the fact that there is no evidence that Kierkegaard made a study of Hegel’s primary texts again on occasion of writing the Fragments. This suggests that the criticism is aimed at something in the Danish Hegelian scene. One likely source is again Martensen and specifically his “Lectures on the History of Modern Philosophy from Kant to Hegel” from Winter Semester 1838–39. In the notes to this course, which were found among Kierkegaard’s journals and papers, albeit apparently recopied in someone else’s hand, one finds a glowing discussion of Hegel’s method.142 The concept of “the method” was something of a hobbyhorse for Martensen. In discussing the philosophical method in his dissertation he writes: Method is, if we are not mistaken, that law which the truth itself has imposed on human thought in order to arrive at its knowledge, the eternal way along which the infinite truth will be found by the finite spirit; it is the necessary bond between the object of knowledge and the knowing subject. To doubt that there actually exists such an objective method would be the same thing as admitting that no transition or point of contact is found between God

142

Pap. II C 25, in Pap. XII, pp. 321ff., p. 329.


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and finite knowledge, that, in other words, there is no knowledge of God and the divine things.143

Later Martensen discusses the concept of “the method” in similar terms in his Outline of the System of Moral Philosophy.144 Given the tone and the nature of the criticism offered in the Fragments, Martensen makes a good candidate as the target of the critique. Also relevant for Kierkegaard was doubtless Bornemann’s discussion of the method of philosophy specifically in its relation to theology, which he put forth in his review of Martensen’s dissertation.145 At most the critical comments about “the absolute method” can be conceived as a metalevel critique about what philosophy is and what sort of an account it can give (i.e., a conceptual account of history or a personal account of the ethical life of the individual). But a critique of this kind rests on any number of assumptions about the nature of philosophy as a discipline, assumptions that are not made the object of discussion. This criticism can thus best be seen as an extension of the moral criticism originally offered by Judge Wilhelm. Kierkegaard often criticizes the overenthusiastic students of Hegel’s philosophy for getting carried away in abstractions and thus forgetting to ask the question about their own ethical existence. Here he criticizes their teachers for leading them down this path of forgetfulness. One of those teachers was doubtless Martensen. But this has little to do with anything in Hegel’s primary texts, let alone his account of the absolute method. Various analyses in this chapter have demonstrated the little-recognized role of Martensen in the Fragments. The point of departure was Kierkegaard’s own claim that the Fragments “was written specifically to battle against mediation.”146 The role of mediation in the text has led most commentators to conceive of the book as a grand polemic against Hegel’s speculative logic, in which mediation plays a key role. However, this fails to explain the central issues of the Fragments (i.e., the incarnation and the object of Christian faith). This constellation of issues points not to Hegel’s logic but rather to Martensen’s article “Rationalism, Supernaturalism and the principium exclusi medii.” While Martensen appeals to 143

144

145 146

Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia, op. cit., § 1, pp. 2–3. ASKB 648. Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, op. cit., § 1, pp. 2–3. ASKB 651. The Autonomy of Human SelfConsciousness, op. cit., § 1, p. 77. Hans Lassen Martensen, Grundrids til Moralphilosophiens System, Copenhagen 1841, § 6, pp. 4–7. ASKB 650. English translation: Outline to a System of Moral Philosophy, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, Atlanta: Scholars Press 1997, § 6, pp. 256–257. Johan Alfred Bornemann, “Af Martensen: de autonomia conscientiae. Sui humanae,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, p. 14. PF, Supplement, p. 224; SKS, vol. 20, p. 47, NB: 47.


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Hegel’s logic in this work, the central issues of his article are theological and, moreover, virtually identical with those in the Fragments. The doctrine of God as the absolutely different is intended as an alternative to Martensen’s conception of Christianity as purely immanent and thus of the divine as being continuous with the human. The doctrine of the absolute paradox is intended as a refutation of Martensen’s conceptual interpretation of the incarnation. Finally, Climacus’ claim that one cannot know the divine with unaided human reason is intended as a response to Martensen’s claim that an adequate conceptual understanding of the incarnation can be achieved by human reason alone. The refutations of the various conceptions of necessity in history are aimed at Martensen’s claim that the incarnation was conceptually necessary as a historical event. Finally, the critical remarks about the absolute method seem to be directed against Martensen’s deception of the young students, whom he misleads and deceives into forgetting their fundamental ethical and religious questions in the course of an abstruse account of history. Given all this, Martensen’s role in the work can hardly be overestimated. Nonetheless one might still want to argue that despite this polemic with Martensen, Climacus is simultaneously in a polemic with Hegel to the degree to which Martensen is putting forth a specific version of Hegel’s doctrines. Thus, insofar as Climacus criticizes Martensen, the Hegelian, he also criticizes Hegel himself. The analyses set forth here, however, have shown that while the specific things being criticized might appear to be Hegelian at first glance, upon further examination they prove to have little to do with any of Hegel’s original doctrines. For example, while Hegel does use the expression “the absolute method,” Climacus does not criticize this doctrine itself, but rather concentrates on the way in which people have been misled and distracted from what is most important by unnamed teachers of this doctrine. Similarly, while it appears that the doctrine of the absolute paradox is intended as a direct critique of the Hegelian doctrine of mediation, closer examination reveals that from the way in which the paradox is described it in fact has profound similarities with the Hegelian doctrine. Moreover, researchers have read into the text a number of anti-Hegelian criticisms that in fact were never intended as such by Kierkegaard himself (e.g., the claim that necessity is the unity of possibility and actuality). All of this is of course not to imply that Kierkegaard was a Hegelian or that he shared a great deal with Hegel philosophically. On the contrary, many things in the Fragments indicate radically different philosophical investments. For example, Hegel’s view is that the goal of philosophy is to provide conceptual analyses, whereas Climacus’ view is that philosophy should give one insight into one’s own personal ethical existence. Similarly, Hegel’s doctrine of the modal categories is considerably different from what Climacus presents in the “Interlude.” But these


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presuppositions are not points of dispute that Climacus has put forth in the the work itself. This is something that the commentator can put together for the sake of the comparison in part on the basis of the arguments that he has put forth. One is free to make such comparisons, but to do so would be ahistorical since it is clear that Kierkegaard’s intent is to carry out a polemic against Martensen.


9 THE DISPUTE WITH ADLER IN THE CONCEPT OF ANXIETY

On June 17, 1844, only four days after the Philosophical Fragments was published, two new works appeared, The Concept of Anxiety and Prefaces. Both texts seem to contain a polemic against Hegel and specific Hegelians. This was, generally speaking, a period of particular philosophical ferment for Kierkegaard as is evinced by many passages in the journals and papers.1 The Concept of Anxiety mentions Hegel by name several times and seems to be generally more openly polemical with him than the Philosophical Fragments. The theme of the work is the issue of hereditary sin, which is indicated by the subtitle, “A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin.” In his Introduction, Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author, Vigilius Haufniensis, explains the subject-matter of the treatise as follows: “The present work has set as its task the psychological treatment of the concept of ‘anxiety’ but in such a way that it constantly keeps in mente and before its eye the dogma of hereditary sin.”2 In the discussion of sin, a number of other philosophical issues are touched upon, such as freedom of the will, and a number of philosophical fields are explored, such as philosophical anthropology and psychology. This clearly makes The Concept of Anxiety one of Kierkegaard’s more philosophical works. Many scholars have seen the criticisms offered in The Concept of Anxiety as being directed against Hegel. Thulstrup characterizes this as “the book’s whole anti-Hegelian perspective.”3 Another scholar sees Kierkegaard’s interest in philosophy during this period as primarily motivated by his desire to criticize Hegel’s system:

1 2 3

See, for example, Notebook 13, and Notebook 14 in SKS, vol. 19, pp. 381–427. Journal JJ also contains scattered philosophical refiections. CA, p. 14; SKS, vol. 4, p. 321. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, p. 351.

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What interested [Kierkegaard] in particular was Schelling’s criticism of Hegel’s rationalistic system, and upon his return to Copenhagen in 1842 he turned to the study of Leibniz, Descartes, and Aristotle, as well as to the anti-Hegelian writings of Adolf Trendelenburg and portions of W. G. Tennemann’s history of philosophy. Each of these studies . . . furnished him with an arsenal for his relentless battle with Hegel and speculative idealism.4

It has already been seen in the foregoing chapters that the first part of this claim cannot be correct since at the time when Kierkegaard went to Berlin to attend Schelling’s lectures he had no particular polemic with Hegel. With respect to the second part of this quotation, I want in this chapter to try to reevaluate the view that Kierkegaard was engaged in a “relentless battle with Hegel” in The Concept of Anxiety. Specifically, I want to argue that although at first glance Hegel seems to be the main target of criticism in this work, on closer examination in fact very little of Hegel’s thought is actually present. Just as in the Preface to Fear and Trembling, the pseudonymous author of The Concept of Anxiety goes out of his way to indicate that he is not a speculative philosopher. Moreover, in the first few pages of both books, Hegel is mentioned by name and a number of his better known doctrines are briefly discussed. Thus, as in Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard in The Concept of Anxiety feels the need to have his pseudonymous author distance himself from Hegel’s philosophy in an overt manner at the very beginning of the work. Vigilius Haufniensis indicates the importance of this discussion from the Introduction by saying: “What has been developed here is probably too complicated in proportion to the space that it occupies (yet, considering the importance of the subject it deals with, it is far from too lengthy); however, it is in no way extraneous, because the details are selected in order to allude to the subject of the book.”5 Here Vigilius Haufniensis indicates directly that the issues concerning Hegel’s philosophy, which he touches on in the Introduction, are central to the book in general. In this chapter I will focus on three different parts of the text. The most extended discussion of Hegel comes in the Introduction, and thus I will first discuss individually several different aspects of Hegel’s philosophy which are touched upon in the opening pages. This will constitute the subject-matter for Sections I–IV. Vigilius Haufniensis gives several examples in his Introduction that illustrate his main point that the Hegelians have confused two different spheres – that of abstract thought and that of existence. In my first section the issue concerns the category of actuality, which has been placed in an abstract system of pure logic. Haufniensis claims that this category has been misunderstood by the Hegelians since 4 5

Reidar Thomte, “Historical Introduction,” in his translation of CA, p. vii. CA, p. 14; SKS, vol. 4, p. 321.


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it cannot be adequately grasped as an abstract concept. I will examine in Section II his criticism of the claim that faith, like the first category in logic, is something immediate, which must be aufgehoben. In Section III, the issue of mediation and reconciliation is addressed. Here Vigilius Haufniensis again accuses the Hegelians of confusing the abstract realm of thought, to which dogmatics belongs, with the concrete realm of ethics. In Section IV, I will take up the criticism of movement in logic. This will then conclude the account of the Introduction. Section V examines a passage from Vigilius Haufniensis’ third chapter in which he explores the issue of movement in logic once again. In Section VI, I will turn to Vigilius Haufniensis’ short § 3 entitled, “The Concept of Innocence,” from the first chapter, in which he first criticizes the interpretation of innocence as a finite stage destined for Aufhebung and then posits his own thesis of innocence as ignorance. I will argue that the real target of Vigilius Haufniensis’ purported criticism of Hegel here is the Hegelian Adolph Peter Adler and in particular Adler’s Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic.6 Virtually all of the main points concerning Hegel’s philosophy that Vigilius Haufniensis touches on can be found in the Introduction to this work. Moreover, Vigilius Haufniensis refers to what he calls “the slogan ‘method and manifestation,’ ” which “Hegel and his school”7 have made use of. This expression or “slogan” appears as follows in Adler’s Introduction: “In this the movement is already given, and since it thus does not come from without but from a difference existing in the identity, it is also self-movement, that is, it is at once matter’s and thought’s self-movement and objective reflection, at once manifestation and method.”8 Moreover, in a draft of The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard refers to this work.9 Even though Adler’s text is cited directly here in the draft and in the Introduction to the printed text, most commentators have generally failed to see the importance of Adler for The Concept of Anxiety.10 Kierkegaard has Vigilius Haufniensis criticize Adler under the name of Hegel and Hegelianism. Thus, the points he picks out for criticism for the most part belong to Adler and his presentation and not to Hegel himself.

i. actuality and the spheres of logic and existence Vigilius Haufniensis’ discussion at the beginning of the Introduction seems to focus primarily on aspects of Hegel’s conception of logic. In 6 7 8 9 10

Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag over Hegels objective Logik, Copenhagen 1842. ASKB 383. CA, p. 11; SKS, vol. 4, p. 319. Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag, op. cit., p. 14. See SKS, vol. K4, pp. 355–356. CA, Supplement, p. 181; Pap. V B 49.5. The sole exception is Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse eller om Adolph Peter Adler og om Søren Kierkegaards forhold til ham, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag A/S 1990, pp. 189–197.


actuality and the spheres of logic and existence 381 a draft Hegel and the Hegelians are mentioned directly.11 The first issue to be taken up is the role of the category of actuality [Virkelighed] in logic. The main objection is to the use of this existential category in an abstract system of logic. In this section I will try to show that Haufniensis’ arguments are aimed more at the Danish Hegelians Adler, Nielsen, and Heiberg than at Hegel himself. Moreover, while, to be sure, Kierkegaard and Hegel differ in their understanding of the concept of actuality, Kierkegaard seems to overlook the fact that Hegel’s understanding accords with the standard conceptions of this notion in the German idealist tradition where it is treated precisely as an abstract category. It was seen that the category of actuality interested Kierkegaard since his dissertation and since his first stay in Berlin. One reason for his wellknown disappointment with Schelling’s lectures was that the German philosopher was operating with an abstract conception of the term. At first Kierkegaard was excited by Schelling’s use of the category “actuality,” which he thought was meant in the existential sense. He writes from Berlin: I am so happy to have heard Schelling’s second lecture – indescribably. I have been pining and thinking mournful thoughts long enough. The embryonic child of thought leapt within me . . . when he mentioned the word “actuality” in connection with the relation of philosophy to actuality. I remember almost every word he said after that. Here, perhaps, clarity can be achieved. This one word recalled all my philosophical pains and sufferings.12

He later found Schelling’s lectures tedious since actuality was treated merely as an abstract, logical category. Kierkegaard’s disappointment is reflected in the following aphorism in Either/Or, which was written during the time he was in Berlin attending Schelling’s lectures: “What philosophers say about actuality [Virkelighed] is often just as disappointing as it is when one reads on a sign in a secondhand shop: Pressing Done Here. If a person were to bring his clothes to be pressed, he would be duped, for the sign is merely for sale.”13 In a similar fashion, Kierkegaard, who conceived of “actuality” as an existential category and not a purely logical one, felt himself duped by Schelling’s use of the word. In The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard has Vigilius Haufniensis take up an issue that had thus exercised him for a long time. His contention, as in earlier works, is that actuality is not an abstract concept that belongs in a system of logic but rather something concrete that belongs to what 11

12 13

JP, vol. 3, 3653; Pap. V B 49.1: “Thus when an author entitles the last section of the Logic ‘actuality’ which Hegel has done and the Hegelian school did again and again the advantage is gained that it seems as if through logic the highest were already reached, or, if one prefers, the lowest.” JP, vol. 5, 5535; SKS, vol. 19, p. 235, Not8:33. EO1, p. 32; SKS, vol. 2, p. 41.


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is conceived as the realm of ethics. Kierkegaard has Haufniensis write: Thus when an author entitles the last section of the Logic “Actuality,” he thereby gains the advantage of making it appear that in logic the highest has already been achieved, or if one prefers, the lowest. In the meantime, the loss is obvious, for neither logic nor actuality is served by placing actuality in the Logic. Actuality is not served thereby, for contingency, which is an essential part of the actual, cannot be admitted within the realm of logic. Logic is not served thereby, for if logic has thought actuality, it has included something that it cannot assimilate, it has appropriated at the beginning what it should only praedisponere. The penalty is obvious. Every deliberation about the nature of actuality is rendered difficult, and for a long time perhaps made impossible, since the word “actuality” must first have time to collect itself, time to forget the mistake.14

The argument, which also appears in the Postscript,15 is that actuality is misunderstood when it is conceived as an abstract category of logic. Actuality involves contingency, whereas in logic everything follows of necessity. Therefore, the contingent aspect of actuality is lost when it becomes a part of the necessary system of logic. Thus, justice is not done to the notion of actuality. Likewise, justice is not done to the system of logic that cannot appropriate actuality into its system. If it attempts to do so, the result is merely a distortion and misapplication of the term “actuality.” When Hegel uses this term, he is of course working within the same tradition as Kant and Schelling who understand “actuality” as one of the categories of logic or what is today understood as metaphysics. For Hegel, actuality does not refer to everything that exists but rather to the rational aspects of the world of spirit and nature, which are the objects of scientific investigation. There is an infinity of particulars that, to be sure, exist but that display no rational development and for this reason defy scientific analysis. According to Hegel’s terminology, while these particulars exist, they do not belong to actuality. Thus, when Hegel says: “What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational,”16 it is in a sense a tautology. It is not a justification of oppressive institutions or states simply by virtue of the fact that they exist.17 Hegel’s logic thus treats the 14

15 16 17

CA, pp. 9–10; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 317–318. Quoted in Introduction. See CA, p. 16fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 324fn.: “If this is considered more carefully, there will be occasions enough to notice the brilliance of heading the last section of the Logic ‘Actuality,’ inasmuch as ethics never reaches it. The actuality with which logic ends means, therefore, no more in regard to actuality than the ‘being’ with which it begins.” CUP1, p. 122f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 118. Hegel, PR, Preface, p. 20; Jub., vol. 7, p. 33. See also EL, § 6; Jub., vol. 8, p. 48. Rudolf Haym, Hegel und seine Zeit. Vorlesungen u¨ ber Entstehung und Entwicklung, Wesen und Werth der hegel’ schen Philosophie, Berlin 1857 (reprint Hildesheim: Olms 1962), pp. 357ff. See also Karl R. Popper, “What Is Dialectic?” Mind, 49, 1940, pp. 413ff. Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1961, p. 702.


actuality and the spheres of logic and existence 383 category of actuality, but it is not, as Vigilius Haufniensis asserts, the last category or of any special significance. This is, however, a key term in Kierkegaard’s conception of what has been called the existential sphere, which stands apart from conceptual or discursive thought. The criticism Kierkegaard has Vigilius Haufniensis set forth, if directed against Hegel, begs the question since he essentially criticizes Hegel (along with the rest of the German idealists) for not having the same notion of actuality as he has. He presupposes a specific meaning of the term, which is at variance with that of the preceding tradition. The issue ultimately comes down to two wholly different concepts of the term “actuality.” Evidence for the question-begging aspect of this criticism can be found in the anecdote mentioned previously, which was related by Sibbern. During Kierkegaard’s years as a student, Sibbern met him one day in the street. The old professor recalls: “But I do remember, however, that once during his Hegelian period, he met me at Gammeltorv [sc. the old market] and asked me what relationship obtained between philosophy and actuality [Virkelighed], which astonished me, because the gist of the whole of my philosophy was the study of life and actuality [Virkelighed].”18 Sibbern’s confusion is evidence of the fact that Kierkegaard had not grasped the standard use of the term “actuality” in philosophy at the time since Sibbern, like Schelling and Hegel, was working with a traditional understanding of the concept. Moreover, Kierkegaard’s question suggests that he had his own conception of the term more or less already worked out even at this early period. Thus, his disappointment with Schelling was simply a linguistic confusion. As soon as Kierkegaard heard Schelling use the word “actuality,” his ears pricked up and he became excited, immediately assuming that Schelling understood the same thing by the term as he did. This, he thought, was the answer to his philosophical longings. When after more lectures it became apparent that Schelling had a quite different understanding of the term, then Kierkegaard became disappointed. Contrary to Kierkegaard’s own assessment, the cause of his disappointment was not so much the purportedly shallow philosophy of Schelling but rather Kierkegaard’s own preconceived notion of actuality and his personal investment in it. The real target of this criticism is not so much Hegel as the systems of logic among the Danish Hegelians, such as those of Adler and Heiberg. Of particular importance for The Concept of Anxiety is Adler’s aforementioned Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic, which appeared in 1842. Kierkegaard gives his reader a hint that Adler is the true target when in 18

H. P. Barfod (ed.), “Indledende Notiser,” in his Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer. 1833–1843, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1869, pp. lii–liii. In English in Encounters with Kierkegaard. A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1996, p. 217. Cited previously in Chapter 3, p. 143f.


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the passage quoted previously he has Vigilius Haufniensis allude to an author who “entitles the last section of the Logic ‘Actuality.’” This is the main point upon which the entire passage turns since by making “actuality” the last section, the unnamed author bestows upon it a special importance. The usual response in the secondary literature is to take this as an allusion to Hegel. In both the Science of Logic and the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel treats the concept of actuality as a category in “The Doctrine of Essence,” the second of the three main divisions of both works. But in neither case is it the final category or paragraph even of “The Doctrine of Essence,” let alone of the work as a whole. Thus, the author referred to by Vigilius Haufniensis cannot be Hegel. By contrast, Adler’s work on logic covers material that corresponds to only the first two parts of Hegel’s system of logic (i.e., “The Doctrine of Being” and “The Doctrine of Essence”). The titles of the last three paragraphs of Adler’s work are as follows: “§ 28. The Whole and the Parts – Force and Expression – Actuality,” “§ 29. Formal Actuality – Possibility – Accident,” and “§ 30. Real Actuality – Real Possibility – Absolute Necessity.” Thus, it is Adler who treats the concept of actuality in the last paragraphs of his logic. Although Adler roughly follows Hegel’s organization, he differs from Hegel’s presentation in many details. The most obvious difference is that Adler’s account lacks the final division or “The Doctrine of the Concept.” The result is that the category of actuality accidentally takes on a more important role in Adler’s account than in Hegel’s since it forms the final culminating category in Adler, whereas it occupies an undistinguished position some two-thirds of the way through Hegel’s Logic. Thus, if one is to take Vigilius Haufniensis’ comments about “actuality” here as a criticism, then they can only refer to Adler and not to Hegel. Another target of Vigilius Haufniensis’ criticism here is Heiberg, and thus this work can be seen as a part of the ongoing polemic with him. The first twenty-three paragraphs of Heiberg’s “The System of Logic” appeared as an article in 1838 in the second number of his journal Perseus. In a draft to The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard refers directly to this work and to its unfulfilled promise of a system: “In his ‘System of Logic’ . . . the author indicated in the ‘Preface’ the course of development, namely, that the published essay was ‘the first contribution to a long-cherished plan of setting forth the system of logic.’”19 Kierkegaard satirically quotes from Heiberg’s Preface to criticize the unfulfilled promise.20 Both Heiberg and Rasmus Nielsen are mentioned by name in another draft to the work: “If Prof. Heiberg did not write the system, then Prof. Rasmus 19 20

CA, Supplement, p. 180; Pap. V B 49.5. Translation slightly modified. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det logiske System,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 2, 1838, p. 3. ASKB. 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1861–62, vol. 2, p. 115.)


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Nielsen would write it – and what then? Let us indeed learn to appreciate our benefactors, the good people who are so good at helping us with promises.”21 When Nielsen published the first part of Speculative Logic in its Essentials in 1841,22 he deigned to distribute a subscription offer for the remaining parts of the system when the work eventually came out.23 Four volumes did appear between 1841 and 1844 along with a complete work on logic, the Propaedeutic Logic,24 but Nielsen nevertheless earned Kierkegaard’s scorn with the pretension of distributing a subscription scheme. Kierkegaard refers to the uncompleted system several times in the Postscript 25 and elsewhere.26 Here there can be no ambiguity about the targets of the criticism since they are named directly. From this analysis it seems clear that Vigilius Haufniensis in the Introduction to The Concept of Anxiety has in mind Adler, Heiberg, and Nielsen more than Hegel himself. Though Kierkegaard does not have Vigilius Haufniensis criticize Hegel directly on the issue of the concept of actuality, this is not to say that the two are ultimately in agreement. They clearly have very different conceptions of the category. Hegel understands actuality as one of the abstract categories of modality in line with the German philosophical tradition. By contrast, Kierkegaard interprets it as part of the immediately experienced existential sphere. Again Hegel and Kierkegaard are at cross purposes since they do not share the same understanding of this important term. This is clear from the fact that in Kierkegaard’s attempts to justify his interpretation of actuality he does not acknowledge the use of the modal categories in the philosophical tradition within which Hegel is working. In any case, this analysis provides an illustrative example of how commentators have failed to see that although Kierkegaard’s view is by no means consistent with Hegel’s, this does not necessarily mean that his criticism of the opposite view is in fact a criticism of Hegel.

ii. immediacy and faith The next issue that Vigilius Haufniensis takes up in his Introduction is that of immediacy, and again there is, he claims, a confusion between the 21 22 23

24 25 26

Pap. V B 47.7. Rasmus Nielsen, Den speculative Logik i dens Grundtræk, Copenhagen 1841–44, (no. 1 1841, pp. 1–64; no. 2 1842, pp. 65–96; no. 3 1843, pp. 97–144; no. 4 1844, pp. 145–196). See Chapter 11, Section I. See also Harald Høffding, Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, p. 185. Svend Erik Stybe, “Filosofi,” in Københavns Universitet 1479–1979, vol. 10, Det filosofiske Fakultet, 3. Del, ed. by Povl Johannes Jensen, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1980, p. 62. Rasmus Nielsen, Den propædeutiske Logik, Copenhagen 1845. ASKB 699. CUP1, p. 106; SKS, vol. 7, p. 103. CUP1, p. 107; SKS, vol. 7, p. 104. CUP1, p. 216; SKS, vol. 7, p. 198. COR, pp. 5–6; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 399–400. COR, p. 8; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 402–403. See JP, vol. 3, 3288; Pap. III B 192, where Nielsen is caricatured under the name of “Niels Rasmussen.”


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sphere of logic and that of existence. Specifically, the claim is that the notion of immediacy is appropriate in the sphere of logic, whereas it leads to misunderstandings when it is applied to faith. In this section I wish to show that the criticism is directed at Adler and is only indirectly relevant for Hegel. Vigilius Haufniensis responds specifically to claims made by Adler in the Introduction to his Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic, where the issue of immediacy in Christian faith is discussed at length. Vigilius Haufniensis’ argument is aimed against the understanding of faith as something immediate in the field of dogmatics. This conception of faith involves an unreflective understanding of the scriptures or of the person of Christ as divine without any further interpretation or analysis. The opposite conception would be of faith as the result of, for example, a philosophical or theological analysis either of the historical events themselves or of the scriptures. For Vigilius Haufniensis, when faith is regarded as immediate, what is implied thereby is that this immediacy should be overcome: “Thus when in dogmatics faith is called the immediate without any further qualification, there is gained the advantage of the necessity of not stopping with faith.”27 Immediacy is always conceived to be a lower form of knowing that must give way to reflection and conceptual thought. Thus, if faith is conceived as immediacy, then it is relegated to being something finite and imperfect, which must ultimately be abandoned for a more satisfactory understanding. Vigilius Haufniensis does not want to insist on immediacy as such against conceptual knowing and thus adds the caveat “without any further qualification.” His own view seems to be that faith is a return to immediacy after a conceptual understanding. This is what is called in other works “the new immediacy.”28 Along these same lines, in Fear and Trembling, Johannes de silentio writes: “faith is not the first immediacy but a later immediacy.”29 Similarly, in the journals, Kierkegaard explains that some people believe on the basis of immediacy and others on the basis of reflection, but true faith comes after both of these stages: most men never reach faith at all. They live a long time in immediacy or spontaneity. Finally they advance to some reflection, and then they die. The exceptions begin the other way around; dialectical from childhood, that is, without immediacy, they begin with the dialectical, with reflection, and they go on living this way year after year. . . .[A]nd then, at a more mature age, faith’s possibility presents itself to them. For faith is immediacy or spontaneity after reflection.30

27 28 29 30

CA, p. 10; SKS, vol. 4, p. 318. See FT, p. 69; SKS, vol. 4, p. 161. See CUP1, p. 347fn.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 318fn. SL, pp. 162–163; SKS, vol. 6, pp. 151–152. SL, pp. 483–484; SKS, vol. 6, pp. 444–445. JP, vol. 2, 1123; SKS, vol. 20, p. 363, NB4: 159. FT, p. 82; SKS, vol. 4, p. 172. JP, vol. 2, 1123; SKS, vol. 20, p. 363, NB4: 159.


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The conception of the stages of faith sketched there – first as immediacy, then as reflection and then finally as a new immediacy – is profoundly Hegelian in character. As has been seen,31 Hegel’s dialectic runs through the movement of what he calls immediacy, mediation, and then mediated immediacy, which is a return to immediacy at a higher level. Thus, Kierkegaard’s conception of faith on this point in fact follows a Hegelian scheme and could very well be derived from it. In the passage in question from The Concept of Anxiety, Vigilius Haufniensis’ argument is purely negative. His claim is that conceiving of faith as something to be superseded does justice neither to faith nor to dogmatics. His first argument is as follows: “The loss is quite obvious. Faith loses by being regarded as the immediate, since it has been deprived of what lawfully belongs to it, namely its historical presupposition. Dogmatics loses thereby, because it does not begin where it properly should begin, namely, within the scope of an earlier beginning.”32 The historical basis for faith is the incarnation: the divine becoming finite or temporal at a specific historical point in time. This is not something that anyone can have an immediate relation to since no one was an immediate witness to it. But if faith is conceived as something immediate, then Haufniensis believes that this “historical presupposition” is neglected since the immediate relation must always be something else (e.g., feeling, direct revelation), and not the all-decisive historical event. The main point is that there is a conflation of dogmatics and logic in that, by conceiving of faith as something immediate and thus ignoring the historical background, dogmatics begins like logic with the immediate. The argument Vigilius Haufniensis gives is as follows: Instead of presupposing an earlier beginning, it [dogmatics] ignores this and begins without ceremony, just as if it were logic. Logic does indeed begin with something produced by the subtlest abstraction, namely, what is most elusive: the immediate. What is quite proper in logic, namely, that immediacy is eo ipso cancelled, becomes in dogmatics idle talk. Could it ever occur to anyone to stop with the immediate (with no further qualification), since the immediate is annulled at the very moment it is mentioned, just as a somnambulist wakes up at the very moment his name is mentioned.33

Surprisingly, this is a positive assessment of the attempt to begin logic and thus philosophy with immediacy or pure being. Elsewhere Kierkegaard is critical of attempts of the Danish Hegelians to make a presuppositionless beginning in philosophy.34 Here, by contrast, logic is praised and distinguished from dogmatics and faith. In logic it makes sense to begin with the immediate or specifically with pure being as a point of departure, 31 33

Chapter 2, Section II. CA, p. 10; SKS, vol. 4, p. 318.

32 34

CA, p. 10; SKS, vol. 4, p. 318. See Chapter 11, Section VI.


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which is then surpassed by ever more sophisticated categories. But it is a mistake to conceive of faith in this fashion since faith is something autonomous that is not continuous with knowing. To surpass it with conceptual knowing would amount to eliminating faith altogether. Thus, there is a disanalogy between logic and faith since the category of immediacy (i.e., being) in logic is continuous with the other categories, whereas faith is not continuous with forms of knowing. While Hegel uses the term “immediacy” in his logic and epistemology, this is not his usual way of talking about faith. In fact, he criticizes the conception of faith as immediate in other authors.35 In Hegel the distinction is rather between, on the one hand, picture thinking [Vorstellung], which characterizes religious knowing, and, on the other hand, conceptual thought, which is the mark of philosophical knowing. To be sure, Hegel talks about going beyond the conception of the divine, understood as “picture thinking,” but he does not equate this conception with faith. On the contrary, Hegel sees no incompatibility between, on the one hand, faith, properly understood (i.e., as “mediated immediacy”) and, on the other hand, philosophical knowing. The problem is when the immediacy of picture thinking is associated with faith since this leads to the conclusion that faith must be overcome in reflection and philosophical knowing. This is what Vigilius Haufniensis rejects. But Hegel does not claim that true faith is overcome by philosophical knowing but only the conception of immediacy in picture thinking. Vigilius Haufniensis seems to recognize this by pointing out that in epistemology and logic, it makes sense to talk of immediacy, as Hegel does, but this does not apply to faith. Therefore, it is not Hegel who is the target of this criticism but rather the theologians who apply the notion of immediacy from logic to an understanding of faith and religion. In the margin of a draft Kierkegaard adds: “and this happens every day before our eyes,”36 which seems to imply that his focus is on his contemporaries and not on Hegel. There are a number of possible candidates for targets of the criticism here since there were a number of contemporary theologians who conceived of faith as immediacy in one form or another.37 One possibility would be the Hegelian Philipp Marheineke (1780–1846), who made much of the distinction between faith and knowledge; the former he conceived as immediate and the latter as mediated.38 Likewise, Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) conceived of faith as the immediate that

35 36 37 38

E.g., Hegel, EL, § 63; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 166–169. CA, Supplement, p. 180; Pap. V B 49.2. See the commentary in SKS, vol. K4, pp. 351–352. Philipp Marheineke, Die Grundlehren der christlichen Dogmatik als Wissenschaft, Zweite, völlig neu ausgearbeitete Auflage, Berlin 1827, e.g., pp. 48f. ASKB 644.


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must be penetrated by conceptual knowing.39 Another possible target is Martensen’s dissertation, The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, where the view is set forth that human beings have a primordial consciousness of God, which is the basis of faith. Thus, faith is grounded in an immediate consciousness of the divine.40 But we do not need to explore the concept of faith in these authors in any detail since the occasion for Vigilius Haufniensis’ criticism is again Adler. The criticism is specifically of the Introduction to Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic where Adler blends together logic and religion (as he continues to do in the rest of the work). Adler protests against empty conceptions of Christianity and against abstract conceptions of the divine: “Being only becomes result when it is derived from thought’s observations, that is, when, for example, I derive Christianity from observations about the necessity of having an ethical institution for the instruction and improvement of man.”41 Adler rejects this view as follows: Thus, the Christianity which is given to me as a result of the aforementioned observation is only an abstract conception of Christianity, which does not contain more than reflection, that is, only the abstract instruction and improvement. The specific, substantial essence is given to me only when Christianity is conceived not merely as the result of a series of thoughts, but as the unity of thought itself and immediacy, as the Word in the flesh. . . .We only receive the truth when it is conceived as thought in immediacy, the ethical spirit and will in reality and life.42

Adler goes on to underscore the importance of immediacy. He interprets the significance of Christ as giving the possibility of an immediate relation to the believers. This is, he claims, the true meaning of the words, “the Word became flesh.” Adler’s position is that immediate faith requires conceptual knowing to be understood adequately, but the immediate element is essential on its own terms if faith is not to dissolve into abstract ideas. Thus, faith must ultimately be aufgehoben by knowing, yet immediacy is necessary. This seems to fit well with the position that Vigilius Haufniensis finds objectionable. It is thus no accident that Haufniensis 39

40

41 42

Ferdinand Christian Baur, Die christliche Gnosis oder die christliche Religionsphilosophie in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Tubingen ¨ 1835, e.g., p. 95. ASKB 421: “Der Inhalt der πιστις ist somit nur das Unmittelbare, durch dessen Negation erst die γνωσις zum wahren Begriff hindurchdringt.” Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia conscientiae sui humanae in theologiam dogmaticam nostri temporis introducta, Copenhagen 1837, § 21, p. 82. ASKB 648. Danish translation: Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, tr. by L.V. Petersen, Copenhagen 1841, § 21, p. 67. ASKB 651. English translation: The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in Modern Dogmatic Theology, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, Atlanta: Scholars Press 1997, § 21, p. 118. Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag, op. cit., pp. 7–8. Ibid., pp. 8–9.


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makes the comparison of dogmatics with logic since he wants to criticize the way in which Adler incorporates key religious concepts and doctrines in his account of Hegel’s logic. In any case, the criticism here cannot rightly be conceived as a criticism either of Hegel’s logic or of his conception of religion. Hegel is himself one of the most outspoken critics of the conception of faith as immediacy. That Hegel is not the intended target is evidenced by the fact that Vigilius Haufniensis goes out of his way to praise Hegel’s use of immediacy in logic; the criticism is of those who wish to conceive of immediacy in faith and of those who confuse dogmatics and logic. Moreover, Kierkegaard’s conception of faith as a second immediacy in fact has much in common with Hegel’s concept of mediated immediacy. According to Kierkegaard’s own account, faith is not supposed to stop at the first immediacy but is only the result of a movement through reflection and to something else. Thus, he too in a sense thinks that the first immediacy must be aufgehoben to the advantage of a later stage. Given these similarities to Hegel’s own view of faith, it is not clear why Kierkegaard would have reason to want to have Vigilius Haufniensis criticize this view in the first place.

iii. reconciliation and mediation Next Vigilius Haufniensis discusses the related terms “reconciliation” and “mediation.” These words are often used to describe different aspects of Hegel’s thought, and indeed both were employed as technical terms by Hegel himself. However, the context of the discussion in the Introduction to The Concept of Anxiety once again points to Adler. Moreover, I wish to argue that the way in which Haufniensis uses them indicates that his understanding of Hegel was largely derived from Adler and other secondary sources. (1) The first key term that is taken up is “reconciliation” [Forsoning]. This is a concept that, for Hegel, constitutes a point of contact between philosophy and Christianity. In terms of religious thinking, Christianity offers a reconciliation of God and humanity and the possibility of redemption. For Hegel, philosophical knowing is the reconciliation of the manifold dualisms, such as subject-object and mind-body. As spirit comes to know itself in the course of history and in the different conceptions of the divine, it overcomes its alienation from the world since it sees its own reflection in it. By grasping the Concept in the various spheres, the subject recognizes those spheres as its own thought. In this way a reconciliation is effected since the phenomena in the various spheres cease to be something alien and other and become instead an expression of the thought of the subject himself. When one regards something as ultimately transcendent or other, then, according to Hegel, one views the matter


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from an incomplete and partial perspective that should be transcended. In the Philosophy of History lectures, Hegel refers to his philosophy explicitly as a theodicy: “Our mode of treating the subject is, in this aspect, a theodicy – a justification of the ways of God . . . so that the ill that is found in the world may be comprehended, and the thinking spirit reconciled with the fact of the existence of evil.”43 Spirit is thus reconciled with the external world in all of its manifold forms. The corollary to the doctrine in Hegel’s account of Christianity or the revealed religion is that the individual believer sees himself in Christ and is reconciled with the divine. Hegel’s philosophy employs a Christian metaphor in speaking of the result of a speculative understanding of history as reconciliation. In the Preface to the Philosophy of Right, Hegel employs an interesting image to describe the task of philosophy: “To recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present and thereby to delight in the present – this rational insight is the reconciliation with actuality which philosophy grants to those who have received the inner call to comprehend.”44 Common sense is struck by the injustice and evil in the world. Christ came to the world, preached love and forgiveness, and was crucified by a wicked humanity. Yet this was necessary for Christ to bring about the reconciliation of man and God. Thus, for Hegel, in the cross, there is a rose, or something positive. The sacrifice of Christ was necessary for human beings to be saved and to be reconciled. The key to Christian thinking is to recognize this positive aspect and thus to grasp the true significance of Christ’s mission. According to Hegel, philosophical knowing functions in much the same way. It allows one to see beyond the surface of an apparently foreign or alien reality and to reach a true understanding of one’s unity with it. The goal of Hegel’s philosophy is to understand this reconciliation and unity in the various spheres and to overcome all alienation and dualism. Hegel has thus been seen as expanding on a fundamentally Christian concept in philosophy. Although he uses the concept of reconciliation in a metaphorical fashion, it is clear that Hegel does not mean to imply that in this context the term is to be taken in its deeper Christian meaning. He of course makes no claims for the ability of philosophy to offer salvation to human beings in the religious sense. Salvation has 43

44

Hegel, Phil. of Hist., p. 15; Jub., vol. 11, p. 42. See Phil of Hist., p. 457; Jub., vol. 11, p. 569: “That the history of the world, with all the changing scenes which its annals present, is this process of development and the realization of spirit – this is the true theodicy, the justification of God in history. Only this insight can reconcile spirit with the history of the world.” Hegel, PR, Preface, p. 22; Jub., vol. 7, p. 35. See Adriaan Peperzak, Philosophy and Politics: A Commentary on the Preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff 1987, pp. 105ff.


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been made possible through Christ; the goal of philosophy is merely to understand it. In the Introduction of The Concept of Anxiety, Vigilius Haufniensis discusses the notion of reconciliation in recent philosophy and argues that there is a conflation of the two spheres at work here. One can speak of “mediation” in the abstract realm of logic but not of “reconciliation,” which belongs to the concrete sphere of ethics and religion. Vigilius Haufniensis holds to the theological principle that there can be no reconciliation without Christ. Thus, any purely human reconciliation such as that presented in secular philosophy must necessarily fail. Human beings are not capable of achieving reconciliation on the basis of their own strength alone. Contrary to Martensen’s view that philosophy and religion are one,45 Kierkegaard consistently claims that philosophy and Christianity cannot in principle be united.46 In The Concept of Anxiety, Vigilius Haufniensis notes that the word “reconciliation” is understood traditionally in its theological context and complains about its use in Hegelian philosophy: “Thus when one sometimes finds, and almost solely in propaedeutic investigations, the word ‘reconciliation’ used to designate speculative knowledge, or to designate the identity of the perceiving subject and the object perceived, or to designate the subjectiveobjective, etc., it is obvious that the author is brilliant and that by means of this brilliance he has explained every riddle.”47 It is clear from the fact that he says that the Hegelian thinker “has explained every riddle,” that Vigilius Haufniensis sees the use of the term “reconciliation” as doing explanatory work in the argument. His point, however, is that in fact nothing is explained: “If it is now assumed that Hegelian philosophy has actually grasped Kant’s skepticism . . . and now has reconstructed the earlier in a higher form and in such a way that thought does not possess reality by virtue of a presupposition – does it therefore also follow that this reality, which is consciously brought forth by thought, is a reconciliation?”48 Vigilius Haufniensis draws into question the claim that the dialectical Aufhebung of specific forms of consciousness necessarily leads to a reconciliation. This might be some abstract kind of reconciliation, but it is certainly not reconciliation in the religious sense. Philosophy as a purely human undertaking can never achieve reconciliation, which is the task of the divine. Human reconciliation must remain empty and illusory. 45

46 47 48

Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia, op. cit., § 1, p. 3. Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, op. cit., § 1, pp. 3–4. The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, op. cit., § 1, p. 77. E.g., JP, vol. 3, 3245 and JP, vol. 1, 416; SKS, vol. 17, pp. 30–34, AA:13–14. CA, pp. 10–11; SKS, vol. 4, p. 318. Translation slightly modified. CA, p. 11; SKS, vol. 4, p. 319.



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The context of Vigilius Haufniensis’ discussion of this term unambiguously leads back to Adler. Reconciliation is perhaps the most important theme of the Introduction to Adler’s Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic. Adler declares in the very first lines that the goal of philosophy is reconciliation: [Philosophy’s] goal is . . . to negate the opposition between thought and being, between subjectivity and objectivity, the I and the external world, thought and the reality of thought, thought and the works of thought, the universal λóγoς and the manifestations of λoγoς ´ and its concrete forms in the world. . . .To bring reconciliation between these forms of thought here in life and thought itself is philosophy’s goal.49

Vigilius Haufniensis comments on this passage as follows: “two sciences, ethics and dogmatics, become radically confused, especially when after the introduction of the term ‘reconciliation’ it is further pointed out that logic and λóγoς correspond to each other, and that logic is the proper doctrine of λo´ γoς.”50 The main theme of all of the criticisms in Haufniensis’ Introduction is that there is a confusion between the sphere of abstract logic and that of ethics. Although there were other Hegelians such as Martensen, who interpreted the term “λoγoς ´ ” along Hegelian lines,51 the immediate source for Vigilius Haufniensis’ discussion is clearly Adler. In connection with the term “reconciliation,” Adler uses the Greek word λoγoς ´ with its associations from the opening lines of the Gospel of John.52 As has been seen in the previous section, Adler refers to just this passage in his Introduction: “The specific, substantial essence is given to me only when Christianity is conceived not merely as the result of a series of thoughts, but as the unity of thought itself and immediacy, as the Word in the flesh.”53 The incarnation is conceived in terms of the category of immediacy. In

49 50 51

52

53

Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag, op. cit., p. 1. CA, p. 12; SKS, vol. 4, p. 319. See Martensen: “And yet the Word alone can enable the human’s individuality to be fulfilled and be permeated by the true universality, because ‘the Word,’ which is the utterance of God or the most universal Essence, only expresses the universal or such individualia which are also universalia. Therefore only by entering into human nature can the eternal Word, λoγoς ´ , ground the true Christ and liberate his knowledge from is in Christ and constitutes his nature, every particularity. For this reason only, that λoγoς ´ can he with justice demand faith in his person.” Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia, op. cit., § 32, p. 124. Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, op. cit., § 32, p. 124. The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, op. cit., § 32, p. 141. “In the beginning was the Word [λoγoς ´ ]. . . . And the Word [λoγoς ´ ] became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” John 1.1 and 1.14. Revised Standard Version translation. Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag, op. cit., pp. 8–9. Cited in footnote 42.


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the body of the text, Adler uses the same allusion to illustrate the concept of abstract, absolute beginning: “The same duality also lies in the use of ‘Ding an sich,’ ‘the highest being,’ ‘the thing’s first ground’ and ‘final cause’ which is at once called the first and the last, just as the Gospel’s ‘word’ and ‘λoγoς’ ´ is at once alpha and omega, whereby it is designated as that which exists before everything and returns when everything is abstracted away.”54 Vigilius Haufniensis objects to the use of the terms “λoγoς ´ ” and “reconciliation” in logic since for him they belong primarily to the realms of ethics and faith. This passage illustrates how Adler is quick to explain concepts from logic with concepts from Christian dogmatics. Further evidence for the claim that Vigilius Haufniensis has in mind Adler and not Hegel is the reference in the passage quoted earlier to accounts of reconciliation “in propaedeutic investigations.”55 If the target were Hegel, then presumably reference would have been made to one of his works. Here, by contrast, the reference is to “propaedeutic investigations,” like Adler’s Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic. It is hard to imagine how this reference can be taken as an allusion to Hegel himself. Moreover, in this passage Haufniensis is concerned with the author of these speculative investigations; he says it is obvious that by appealing to the word “reconciliation,” “the author is brilliant and that by means of this brilliance he has explained every riddle.”56 The satirical tone here is clearly characteristic of the many criticisms of Hegel’s imitators that Kierkegaard issues elsewhere. Here Haufniensis reproaches Adler for attempting to look brilliant for his application of the concepts from dogmatics in an account of Hegel’s logic. Finally, it is clearly Adler who confuses the Christian category of reconciliation with secular philosophy. Throughout his paraphrase of Hegel’s logic, Adler repeatedly invokes key concepts from dogmatics. Needless to say, in this respect his account of logic differs decidedly from Hegel’s. It is precisely this confusion of categories that is under attack in the Introduction to The Concept of Anxiety. (2) The second term from Hegel’s philosophy that Vigilius Haufniensis takes up in his discussion is “mediation.” As has been seen previously,57 Hegel’s notion of mediation was the cause of much discussion in Denmark at the time and one that Kierkegaard himself was keenly interested in. Given that this notion has already been discussed in some detail, I forego giving an account of it anew in this context. The allusion to “mediation” here can then be regarded as a part of Kierkegaard’s ongoing discussion of it. In the following passage from the Introduction, Vigilius 54 56 57

55 CA, p. 10; SKS, vol. 4, p. 318. Ibid., p. 26. CA, pp. 10–11; SKS, vol. 4, p. 318. Chapter 4, Sections I–II. Chapter 6, Section III. Chapter 8, Section I.



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Haufniensis claims that this concept is mistakenly conflated with the notion of reconciliation: One rejects synthesis and says “mediation.” Very well. Brilliance, however, demands more – one says “reconciliation,” and what is the result? The propaedeutic investigations are not served by it, for naturally they gain as little in clarity as does the truth, as little as a man’s soul gains in salvation by having a title conferred upon him. On the contrary, two sciences, ethics and dogmatics, become radically confused.58

The idea here is much the same as before: dogmatics belongs to the abstract realm of thought or logic, whereas ethics is a distinct sphere. True reconciliation belongs to the latter, whereas abstract mediation belongs to the former. Therefore, since the two terms belong to separate spheres, one ought not use them as synonyms. Moreover, Haufniensis objects, “ ‘Mediation’ is equivocal, for it suggests simultaneously the relation between the two and the result of the relation, that in which the two relate themselves to each other as well as the two that related themselves to each other.”59 Theterm “mediation” is thus thought to be ambiguous, whereas the term “synthesis” is presumably more precise. Again the source of Vigilius Haufniensis’ discussion is the Introduction to Adler’s Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic. In his § 2, Adler outlines the elder Fichte’s position of subjective idealism. This is opposed to a form of objectivism that gives being priority over thought, which Adler outlines in § 3. He introduces Hegel’s philosophy as the position that will mediate the two. Moreover, in this context he explicitly uses the term “mediation” several times: “But the dialectical movement, by which the Hegelian system is characterized, does not lie merely in the negation. Dialectic for Hegel . . . includes both negation and mediation. We have said that negation is immediacy’s transition into the opposite; mediation is the reconciliation of the opposites into a higher unity.”60 Here one finds all of the key terms from Vigilius Haufniensis’ Introduction: negation, movement, mediation, reconciliation.61 The second aspect of the criticism concerns the ambiguity of the term “mediation,” which, for Vigilius Haufniensis, should be rejected in favor of the term “synthesis.” This criticism seems to evince a misconception of Hegel’s notion of dialectical movement. Vigilius Haufniensis apparently unknowingly refers to a long-standing caricature of Hegel’s

58 60 61

59 CA, p. 11; SKS, vol. 4, p. 319. CA, pp. 11–12; SKS, vol. 4, p. 319. Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag, op. cit., p. 19. Moreover, one finds here one of the sources of Kierkegaard’s famous phrase about Hegel’s philosophy reconciling opposites not in “a higher unity,” as Adler writes, but in “a higher madness.” See Dar´ıo González, “On Kierkegaard’s Concept of Madness,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1996, pp. 277–292.


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dialectic, namely, the triad of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, which, contrary to general opinion, never occurs in Hegel at all. Kierkegaard has Vigilius Haufniensis write: “There is an old, respectable philosophical terminology: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. A more recent terminology has been chosen in which ‘mediation’ takes the third place.”62 This has historically been one of the most egregious misunderstandings of Hegel’s notion of dialectic.63 Hegel never uses these terms, and his dialectical method is considerably more sophisticated than this simple formula would suggest. Kierkegaard apparently received this misconception from its original source, Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus’ Historische Entwickelung der speculativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel, which appeared in 183764 and in a revised second edition in 1839.65 Moreover, the work was translated into Danish in 1841.66 Kierkegaard owned a copy of both the first edition and the Danish translation. It is not entirely clear to what degree Kierkegaard ascribes to this misconception. There can be no doubt that the immediate source for the use of the terms “reconciliation” and “mediation” is Adler. Thus, the weight of most of Vigilius Haufniensis’ critical remarks clearly falls on him and not on Hegel. It might be argued that one nevertheless can still construe the discussion of these terms as a criticism of Hegel himself, who uses both terms in a technical sense in his philosophy. This is of course true, but many of Vigilius Haufniensis’ criticisms do not apply to Hegel himself but rather seem to be aimed at Hegel’s imitators. Moreover, to insist on these criticisms as somehow aimed in some general sense against the general tenor of Hegel’s philosophy is to miss the very concrete criticism of Adler, who is clearly the intended target.

iv. movement in logic The next issue to be explored is Vigilius Haufniensis’ discussion of movement in Hegel’s logic. There are two passages in which this comes up: a brief one in the Introduction67 and another later at the beginning of Chapter 3.68 The former will be the subject of this section and the latter 62 63 64 65

66 67

CA, p. 11; SKS, vol. 4, p. 319. See Gustav Mueller, “The Hegel Legend of ‘Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis,’ ” Journal of the History of Ideas, 19, 1958, pp. 411–414. Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus, Historische Entwickelung der speculativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel, Dresden 1837, p. 299. ASKB 461. Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus, Historische Entwickelung der speculativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel, Zweite verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage, Dresden and Leipzig 1839, p. 328; see also pp. 401ff. Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus, Historisk Udvikling af den speculative Philosophie fra Kant til Hegel, tr. by S. Kattrup, Copenhagen 1841, p. 285. ASKB 462. 68 CA, pp. 81–85; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 384–388. CA, pp. 12–14; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 320–322.


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of the next. The issue of movement in logic is one that Kierkegaard returns to many times; variations of it can be found in a number of forms in his other works (e.g., in the Postscript).69 This issue was briefly touched on previously in connection with Repetition.70 Moreover, this criticism is related to the general issue of mediation and the Aufhebung of the law of excluded middle, which can be found throughout the authorship. I will first examine the way in which Hegel conceives movement to be generated from the dialectical relation of concepts. I will then explore the criticisms offered by Vigilius Haufniensis in order to determine whether or not they can be said to apply to Hegel’s view. I wish to argue that even though these criticisms can indeed be conceived as directed against Hegel at some level, the intended target is nonetheless Adler. A. Hegel’s Conception of Dialectical Movement. The key to understanding Hegel’s conception of dialectical movement is an appreciation of his reinterpretation of the laws of classical logic. The locus classicus for this reinterpretation is in the “Doctrine of Essence” from the Science of Logic where Hegel explicates his doctrine of difference [Unterschied]. He distinguishes among three different concepts of difference, (1) absolute difference [der absolute Unterschied], (2) diversity [Verschiedenheit], and (3) opposition [Gegensatz]. I will briefly examine each of these in order to show their relevance for Hegel’s conception of movement in logic and for his criticism of the laws of classical logic. The first concept of difference is what Hegel refers to as “absolute difference.” This involves simply the abstract negation of a given term (i.e., A and not-A).71 Hegel refers to this difference as self-related because the first term is not negated by something else or other, but is simply repeated and negated abstractly: “Difference in itself is self-related difference; as such, it is the negativity of itself, the difference not of an other but of itself from itself.”72 There is no relation to any second term. Thus, according to this conception of difference, the negation of, for example, blue is not-blue; it is not any determinate color (e.g., red, white, or green) but simply the abstract indeterminate other of blue. Therefore, this relation is ultimately not one of determinate difference between blue and something else but rather a relation of identity of blue with itself. Hegel writes: “Difference as thus unity of itself and identity, is in its own

69 70 71 72

CUP1, p. 109f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 106f. CUP1, p. 113; SKS, vol. 7, p. 109f. CUP1, p. 308f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 281. Chapter 6, Section III. I remind the reader of the discussion in Chapter 4, Section II, concerning Hegel’s criticism of the law of excluded middle. Hegel, SL, p. 417; Jub., vol. 4, p. 516.


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self determinate difference. It is not transition into an other, not relation to an other outside it.”73 This demonstrates, for Hegel, that the notion of difference contains the notion of identity within itself, just as identity contains an aspect of difference. This notion of absolute difference is, for Hegel, ultimately uninteresting since it has no determinate other. It leads back to the original subject and the dialectic comes to a halt. It will be noted that this is Aristotle’s conception of contradiction. By rejecting this notion of difference, Hegel implicitly says that the Aristotelian concept of contradiction is empty and uninteresting. Hegel’s second notion of difference is that of diversity. According to this concept, the difference is posited by the subject making the contrast and is, strictly speaking, external to the two things being contrasted. Each term can exist on its own and is indifferent to the other. Thus, diversity involves examples such as “an elephant is different from a chair.” In this case there is nothing intrinsic to the two terms that invites the contrast in the first place. Moreover, both an elephant and a chair can exist independently of each other, and the one does not stand in any special relation vis-à-vis the other. The platitude of common sense that this notion captures is that everything is different from everything else. This notion of difference is also inadequate according to Hegel since it too is indeterminate in the sense that the two terms at issue have nothing to do with one another. An elephant is different from a chair, but so also is a loaf of bread, a photon, and a tree. Everything simply exists indifferently to everything else. Each term is, to be sure, determinate in itself, but this determination has nothing to do with the other. The final notion of difference is that of opposition or contrariety. Hegel considers this the true notion of difference which constitutes the Aufhebung of identity and difference in contradiction. According to this notion, the first term is negated neither abstractly nor by an indifferent other as in the first two stages, but rather by its own determinate other (i.e., its opposite). Here the negation of north is south, and the negation of right is left, of positive is negative, of up is down, and so on. Each of the terms stands in a necessary relation to the other; indeed, they mutually condition one another and cannot exist on their own in the way an elephant and a chair can. According to this conception, a given term does not merely have an other as in diversity but has specifically its other. From this third conception of difference, movement in logic is possible. Hegel’s criticism of the Aristotelian law of contradiction is that it does not lead anywhere and is simply a nonstarter. By contrast, when contradiction is conceived as opposition or contrariety [Gegensatz], then the 73

Hegel, SL, p. 418; Jub., vol. 4, p. 517.


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negation of the first term produces a determinate other, and this is then a movement from one category to another. For example, the negation of substance produces accident; the negation of being produces nothing, and so on. In each case the determinate other allows the dialectical movement to go forward. Thus, everything turns on the reinterpretation of the classical notion of contradiction. B. Vigilius Haufniensis’ Criticism. From Vigilius Haufniensis’ description of Hegel’s doctrine it is clear that he is familiar with Hegel’s reinterpretation of the concept of contradiction. Indeed, he describes precisely Hegel’s doctrine of determinate negation according to which the negative produces its opposite and thus not only negates but sublates it: The negative, then, is immanent in the movement, is something vanishing, is that which is annulled. If everything comes about in this manner, nothing comes about at all, and the negative becomes an illusion. Nevertheless, precisely in order to make something come about in logic, the negative becomes something more; it becomes that which brings forth the opposition, not a negation but a contraposition. And thus the negative is not the stillness of the immanent movement: it is “the necessary other,” indeed, something that may be very necessary for logic in order to bring about movement, but it is something that the negative is not.74

When Haufniensis says that negation “brings forth the opposition, not a negation but a contraposition,” he explicitly states the difference between Hegel’s concept of contradiction as opposition or “contraposition” and the Aristotelian notion of contradiction as pure “negation.” Moreover, he shows his familiarity with the Hegelian view with his use of the expression, “the necessary other.” This is of course Hegel’s way of referring to negation as opposition (i.e., a thing is negated not by some random other as in diversity [Verschiedenheit] but rather by its own necessary other), namely its opposite. Thus, there can be no question here of Haufniensis failing to understand Hegel’s view.75 Two criticisms of the notion of movement in logic are issued in the passage in question. The main one seems to be that introducing movement

74 75

CA, p. 13; SKS, vol. 4, p. 321. See SKS, vol. K4, p. 366. Kierkegaard’s understanding of this point may well have come from Trendelenburg: Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Die logische Frage in Hegels System. Zwei Streitschriften, Leipzig 1843, p. 15. ASKB 846. Trendelenburg is almost certainly one of the main sources for Vigilius Haufniensis’ discussion. In a draft of The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard refers directly to the text by Trendelenburg that he uses: “Note. Should anyone want further explication of the unwarranted use of the negative in logic, I simply refer him to Adolf Trendelenburg, Die logische Frage in Hegels System. Zwei Streitschriften, Berlin 1843. Trendelenburg is well-schooled in Greek philosophy and is unimpressed by humbug.” CA, Supplement, p. 181; Pap. V B 49.6. See CUP1, p. 110; SKS, vol. 7, p. 107.


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into logic is simply a category mistake. The abstract realm of logic is fixed and eternal. Thus, there can be no movement here. By contrast, the immediate existential sphere features movement and change. Vigilius Haufniensis expresses this as follows: “In logic, no movement can come about, for logic is, and whatever is logical only is. This impotence of the logical consists in the transition of logic into becoming, where existence and actuality come forth. So when logic becomes deeply absorbed in the concretion of the categories, that which was from the beginning is ever the same.”76 The idea seems to be that logic is concerned with the necessary and the eternal, whereas change or movement is the characteristic of existence or actuality. The abstract categories, which are the subject-matter of logic, remain unchanged and do not evince the same movement as concrete objects in the sphere of existence. This criticism is in accord with the others that have been examined in that in each case Vigilius Haufniensis insists on a strict separation between two spheres. In his second criticism Vigilius Haufniensis argues that the notion of an immanent movement in logic is illusory. The claim seems to be that all movement necessarily involves transcendence, and therefore an immanent movement is a misnomer: “Every movement, if for the moment one wishes to use this expression, is an immanent movement, which in a profound sense is no movement at all. One can easily convince oneself of this by considering that the concept of movement is itself a transcendence that has no place in logic.”77 There is really no movement in the realm of logic since all of the categories are immanently related to each other. Thus, what counts as movement for Hegel is simply a tautology. True movement, by contrast, involves a transcendent aspect. This is the same argument that Constantin Constantius gave in Repetition when he contrasted the concept of repetition, which was transcendent, with that of mediation, which was immanent.78 While Hegel’s logic clearly constitutes the general context of the discussion in the passage in question, there are indications that this criticism is aimed primarily at other targets. In a draft of the passage in question, Kierkegaard begins by saying, “Even in our little Denmark men have come to the rescue of movement in logic.”79 This indicates that he is concerned here not merely with the general issue in Hegel’s logic but also with the use of it in the works of his Danish contemporaries. In this draft Kierkegaard eliminates all ambiguity by naming specifically the figures he has in mind. He mentions both Heiberg and Adler by name, referring 76 77 79

CA, pp. 12–13; SKS, vol. 4, p. 320. Translation slightly modified. 78 Treated in Chapter 6, Section III. CA, p. 13; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 320–321. CA, Supplement, p. 180; Pap. V B 49.5. Translation slightly modified. See also Pap. V C 4, 373.


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to Heiberg’s “The System of Logic” and Adler’s Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic.80 But even without the draft there are indications in the text itself that associate these criticisms with Adler, who uses the word “movement” almost as a slogan in the Introduction to his Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic.81 Adler speaks of the concept of movement in Hegel’s logic as follows: The system does not give itself either self-movement or movement in some arbitrary manner. The movement consists in the fact that a one-sided moment sublates itself and passes over into its opposite, in other words, in the necessity with which thought with its right to self-determination shows that a one-sided moment is something other than what it seems to be, i.e. is its own negation, passes over into its opposite.82

Despite the addition of some technical jargon, this is a fairly straightforward account of Hegel’s doctrine of contradiction. Moreover, Adler goes on to discuss the important role of negation in this movement.83 This is, of course, what is at issue in the discussion in the Introduction to The Concept of Anxiety. Perhaps most importantly, Adler, in referring to a work on speculative logic by Peter Michael Stilling (1812–69),84 makes the claim that “movement runs through all of life.”85 It is in particular this association of movement in logic with life and actuality which Vigilius Haufniensis finds objectionable. His constant plea is to keep the two spheres separate. In the passage under examination, one can find hidden references to Adler in the criticism of the Hegelian play on words with “Wesen” and “gewesen.” In a key footnote Vigilius Haufniensis reproaches Hegelians for using fatuous plays on words to support their claims in logic: Wesen ist was ist gewesen; ist gewesen is a tempus praeteritum of Seyn, ergo, Wesen ist das aufgehobene Seyn, the Seyn that has been. This is a logical movement! If anyone would take the trouble to collect and put together all the strange pixies and goblins who like busy clerks bring about movement in Hegelian logic (such as this is in itself and as it has been improved by the school),

80 81 82 83

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CA, Supplement, p. 181; Pap. V B 49.5. See also Pap. V C 4, 373. Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag, op. cit., pp. 3, 8, 14, 17–19. Ibid., § 7, p. 18. Ibid., § 8, p. 19: “In this movement negation has its significance. When we are supposed to define what we understand by ‘negation,’ then it is the completely expressed other, the opposite.” Peter Michael Stilling, Philosophiske Betragtninger over den speculative Logiks Betydning for Videnskaben, Copenhagen 1842. Stilling writes: “It [the dialectic] is the principle for all of life and movement and is the soul in all processes in the objective world of nature.” Ibid., p. 30. Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag, op. cit., § 7, p. 18.


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a later age would perhaps be surprised to see that what are regarded as discarded witticisms once played an important role in logic.86

Here Vigilius Haufniensis seems to refer to passages that appear in the Encyclopaedia Logic 87 and the Science of Logic 88 in which Hegel notes that the past participle, “gewesen,” of the German verb for “to be” or “sein” is etymologically related to the word for essence, “Wesen.” Hegel, like many philosophers, uses etymologies occasionally to illustrate how language captures what he takes to be some speculative truth. Adler refers to the play on words with Wesen and gewesen several times in his work. For example, he explains: “But since the higher being is thus mediation, since it has sublated the immediate moments of being, they are no longer – immediately; in other words, they have been, are surpassed, have fallen out of immediacy, are no longer immediately present, ‘sie sind gewesen’; therefore their higher being is called essence [Væsenet].”89 At the beginning of the large section “Essence” in Adler’s logic, he explains the transition from being to essence as follows: “The entire immediate being is also, so to speak, dead. . . . It has been, ‘ist aufgehobenes Seyn,’ ‘die Negation der Sphäre des Seyns.’”90 Here one finds the expression “aufgehobenes Seyn” or “sublated being,” which appears in the passage quoted previously from Vigilius Haufniensis’ Introduction. This is of course a quotation from Hegel’s Science of Logic,91 but it is no accident that it appears in Adler, who brings it to Kierkegaard’s attention. Given these references to Adler’s text, there can be no doubt about the immediate source. The other target here is Heiberg. In the aforementioned draft Heiberg is referred to directly and is ridiculed for his attempts to imitate Hegel’s logic. In this context the issue of movement in logic is central, which is clear indication of the fact that Heiberg is one of those in Denmark who tries to “come to the rescue of movement in logic.” In the draft Kierkegaard writes: In his “System of Logic,” which despite all movement, does not come further than to § 23 . . . and despite its proud title, was not able to emancipate 86 87

88

89 90 91

CA, p. 12fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 320fn. See SKS, vol. K4, p. 363. Hegel, EL, § 112, Addition; Jub., vol. 8, p. 263: “As for the further significance and use of the category of essence, we can recall first at this point how the term ‘Wesen’ is employed to designate the past for the German auxiliary verb ‘sein’; for we designate the being that is past as ‘gewesen.’” See also PhS, p. 63; Jub., vol. 2, p. 88: “The Now, as it is pointed out to us, is Now that has been, and this is its truth; it has not the truth of being. Yet this much is true, that it has been. But what essentially has been [gewesen ist] is, in fact, not an essence that is [kein Wesen]; it is not, and it was with being that we were concerned.” Hegel, SL, p. 389; Jub., vol. 4, p. 481: “The German language has preserved essence [Wesen] in the past participle [gewesen] of the verb to be; for essence is past – but timelessly past – being.” Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag, op. cit., § 21, p. 102. See also p. 103. Ibid., § 22, p. 104. Hegel, SL, p. 394; Jub., vol. 4, p. 486: “Essence is sublated being.”


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itself from a very subordinate existence in a periodical, Professor Heiberg nevertheless succeeded in making everything move – except the system, which comes to a halt at § 23, although one might have believed that the system would have moved by itself through an immanent movement.92

Kierkegaard satirizes Heiberg for not completing his “System of Logic”; the first installment appeared in the second number of Perseus and contained the first twenty-three paragraphs.93 Despite Heiberg’s promises, no sequel ever followed, and the system remained a torso. Since the work was supposed to be an example of Hegel’s logic and was thus to use Hegel’s method of the immanent development of concepts, Kierkegaard satirically asks why it did not move forward on its own and thus display the self-movement that is characteristic of Hegel’s logic. While this reference is purely satirical, Kierkegaard does go on the quote from Heiberg’s work and to take issue with him on the issue of the transition from quality to quantity. At the beginning of Vigilius Haufniensis’ account in Chapter 3, Heiberg is satirized anew, once again in a discussion about, among other things, movement in logic. Haufniensis alludes to Heiberg’s aforementioned account of the quasi-mystical vision of the Hegelian system that he claimed to have experienced. In his “Autobiographical Fragments” Heiberg writes that he in an instant was “gripped by a momentary inner vision” that allowed him to see the “hidden central thought” in Hegel’s system.94 Vigilius Haufniensis satirizes Heiberg’s enthusiasm here with a direct allusion to the “inner vision.” He writes: “The system is supposed to have such marvelous transparency and inner vision that . . . it would gaze immovably at the central nothing until at last everything would explain itself and its whole content would come into being by itself. Such introverted openness to the public was to characterize the system.”95 This is clear evidence that the polemic with Heiberg that began after the review of Either/Or continues here in this work. The tone of these passages is no doubt polemical, and thus The Concept of Anxiety must clearly be classified together with the texts that display an ostensible anti-Hegel polemic. The sense of satire or even hostility towards Hegel’s philosophy is similar to the negative tone in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. This tone in The Concept of Anxiety can perhaps be explained by the fact that Kierkegaard has in mind Adler and

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CA, Supplement, p. 180; Pap. V B 49.5. Translation slightly modified. See SKS, vol. K4, p. 364. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det logiske System,” op. cit., pp. 1–45. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 113–166.) Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Autobiographiske Fragmenter,” in Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 11, p. 500. Cited in full in Chapter 1, Section II, p. 56. CA, p. 81; SKS, vol. 4, p. 384.


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Heiberg. The polemic with Heiberg requires no explanation since during this period after the book-review of Either/Or and Heiberg’s discussion of Repetition Kierkegaard was obviously motivated to respond to Heiberg polemically. Part of this, I have argued, involves carrying on an overt anti-Hegel polemic on the surface of the text while making allusions to Heiberg below the surface. With regard to Adler, there is no obvious reason why Kierkegaard would be interested in a polemic against him. It was, however, in December of 1842 that Adler claimed to have his revelation, which he announced in 1843 in his Some Sermons.96 Thus, it is conceivable that Adler had already attracted Kierkegaard’s attention by this time. In a letter to his brother Peter Christian Kierkegaard dated June 29, 1843, Kierkegaard mentions Adler as “a phenomenon worth paying attention to.”97 Thus, it is conceivable that Kierkegaard was already disturbed by the way in which Adler conflated Hegel’s logic and key terms and concepts from Christian dogmatics. This confusion of categories is also at the heart of Kierkegaard’s criticism of Adler in the later unpublished Book on Adler. The fact that Kierkegaard never published any direct criticism of Adler, although he was clearly exercised by Adler’s works and person for many years, attests to the fact that he was interested in a more indirect critique. Such an indirect critique could well be carried out under the name of a critique of Hegel. Thus, although Hegel’s name appears in the text, Adler’s work is constantly referred to. All of this seems to indicate that the polemical, anti-Hegel tone of the criticisms in The Concept of Anxiety can be understood in terms of Kierkegaard’s break with Heiberg and his incipient criticism of Adler. If one still wishes to insist on seeing the criticism of movement in logic as a criticism of Hegel, then it can perhaps be best understood in terms of the general issue of immanence and transcendence. As has been seen,98 this issue is a divisive one for Hegel and Kierkegaard. While Hegel’s whole aim is to create a philosophy of immanence in order to resolve the problems of post-Kantian German idealism, Kierkegaard assumes a position closer to dualism. Here the argument presupposes that movement must be transcendent and thus cannot take place in an immanent sphere. While he defends this view elsewhere under other pseudonyms, his conception of movement as transcendence is in this context an unargued assumption (presumably since its role here is primarily polemical). Hegel’s view is of course that this conception leads to absurdity since to speak of the movement of any given thing presupposes the continuity of that thing. If there were only radical discontinuity between the two terms of the movement, then one would not be talking about the movement of a single thing at all but rather about a replacement 96 97 98

Adolph Peter Adler, Nogle Prædikener, Copenhagen 1843. ASKB U 9. LD, 83; B&A I, p. 122. Examined in Chapter 12, Section I. Chapter 6, Section III. Chapter 8, Section I.


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change involving two different things. Thus, according to Hegel, in order for the notion of movement to make sense at all, one must presuppose identity and immanence. These criticisms indicate Kierkegaard’s familiarity with some of the fundamental principles of Hegel’s logic. Regardless of whether it is derived from Hegel’s primary texts or from other sources such as Adler, Heiberg, or Trendelenburg, Kierkegaard’s grasp of these points in Hegel’s logic seems quite sound. But although Hegel is referred to by name here, the criticisms of movement in logic seem unambiguously to point to other targets. Moreover, these criticisms clearly belong to Kierkegaard’s ongoing considerations of the notion of mediation and the criticism of Aristotle’s law of excluded middle. The issue is discussed here under various catchwords (i.e., “movement in logic,” “negation,” “transition,” and “mediation”). This points back to the Danish context where these matters were at the center of the contemporary discussion.

v. quantity, quality, and the leap In his introductory remarks to Chapter 3, entitled “Anxiety as the Consequence of that Sin which Is Absence of the Consciousness of Sin,”99 Vigilius Haufniensis briefly returns to the issue of movement in logic, and again Hegel is named explicitly. In this context two criticisms are issued: first that movement in logic is a methodological presupposition that is inconsistent with the pretension of the lack of all presuppositions, and second that there must be a qualitative gap between the two terms for movement to take place, and this gap is absent in the sphere of thought and immanence. In this second criticism, Vigilius Haufniensis uses the famous image of the leap to characterize movement. In this section I would like to explore both of these criticisms. I will argue that Kierkegaard’s immediate source for both discussions is Adler. The first criticism was originally issued by Schelling and is referred to by Adler. The second discussion is ultimately more interesting due to its use of the image of the leap. I will argue that the immediate source for this image is Adler who derives it from Hegel himself. (1) Vigilius Haufniensis’ first criticism is concerned with the notion of movement in logic and the claim that Hegel’s philosophy begins without presuppositions. He begins by singling out three terms – “negation,” “transition,” and “mediation.” The first and the last he has already treated in the Introduction, and thus here he focuses on the term “transition.” He writes: In recent philosophy there is a category that is continually used in logical no less than in historical-philosophical inquiries. It is the category of transition. 99

CA, pp. 81–85; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 384–388.


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However, no further explanation is given. The term is freely used without any ado, and while Hegel and the Hegelian school startled the world with the great insight of the presuppositionless beginning of philosophy, or the thought that before philosophy there must be nothing but the most complete absence of presuppositions, there is no embarrassment at all over the use in Hegelian thought of the terms “transition,” “negation,” and “mediation,” i.e., the principles of motion, in such a way that they do not find their place in the systematic progression. If this is not a presupposition, I do not know what a presupposition is.100

The criticism here is quite straightforward: Hegel’s philosophy claims to be free of presuppositions; nevertheless, it makes the methodological presupposition that there is movement of mediation. This is betrayed by the fact that the terms in question – “negation,” “transition,” and “mediation” – already imply a conception of movement that to Haufniensis’ mind is illegitimate in logic. The criticism that Vigilius Haufniensis raises is derived straightforwardly from Adler. In the Introduction to his Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic, Adler writes: “It is furthermore a common criticism of Hegel that it is a mere illusion that he begins without presuppositions.”101 One of these common criticisms, he continues, is “that even if he does not presuppose anything else, he nonetheless presupposes movement, something for which Schelling reproaches him in the Preface to Cousin’s French and German Philosophy.”102 Adler here refers to the famous Preface to the German translation of a work by the French philosopher Victor ¨ französische und deutsche Philosophie Cousin (1792–1867), with the title Uber (1834).103 This Preface was the object of much contemporary discussion since it was the first thing that Schelling had published on philosophy since 1815. In this Preface Schelling writes: “The first presupposition of the philosophy which purportedly presupposes nothing, was that the pure logical Concept as such has the property or the nature that it of itself . . . passes over into its opposite . . . in order then again to return back into itself.”104 Here Schelling describes the Concept in Hegel and claims that it presupposes movement by its very nature. From all this it seems clear that Adler is Kierkegaard’s immediate source for this criticism, which is hardly surprising given how much he uses Adler’s Popular Lectures 100 101 102 103

104

CA, p. 81; SKS, vol. 4, p. 384. See SKS, vol. K4, p. 449f. Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag, op. cit., § 7, p. 17. Ibid., § 7, p. 17. ¨ The Preface to Victor Cousin’s Uber französische und deutsche Philosophie. Aus dem Französischen von Dr. Hubert Beckers, nebst einer beurtheilenden Vorrede des Herrn von Schelling, Stuttgart, Tübingen 1834, pp. iii–xxviii. ASKB 471. Reprinted as “Vorrede zu einer philosophischen Schrift des Herrn Victor Cousin,” in Schelling’s Ausgewählte Schriften, vols. 1–6, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1985, vol. 4, pp. 617–640. ¨ französische und deutsche Philosophie, ibid., p. xv. Schelling’s Ausgewählte Victor Cousin, Uber Schriften, op. cit., vol. 4, p. 629.



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on Hegel’s Objective Logic throughout The Concept of Anxiety (and particularly in the Introduction). Moreover, Schelling is the original source of the criticism, a fact which Adler alludes to in his Introduction.105 (2) Vigilius Haufniensis then goes on in the second criticism to illustrate what he conceives to be the true notion of transition, which takes place in the realm of freedom. The criticism is continuous with what was written in Part Two of Either/Or.106 It will be recalled that there the distinction was drawn between the realm of thought and the realm of freedom – a distinction that was introduced to try to resolve the issue of the Aufhebung of the law of contradiction and excluded middle. Now Kierkegaard has Vigilius Haufniensis employ the related notion of “the sphere of historical freedom.”107 Vigilius Haufniensis argues that real movement or transition must be transcendent. The two points which the transition links must be discontinuous. In Hegel’s logic there is no leap in this sense because the movement is immanent.108 Vigilius Haufniensis portrays the discontinuity in the realm of freedom as a leap, and this reference to the leap is important for his understanding and use of Hegel’s thought. Most commentators take the image of the leap to have been derived exclusively from Lessing as seems to be indicated in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.109 Another possible source is Rötscher, whom Kierkegaard also mentions in connection with the concept.110 The context of the notion of the leap is of course that of the traditional philosophical problem of change or movement. It is clear that Kierkegaard also has in mind Aristotle’s various discussions of this issue111 as is evidenced by his frequent use of the Aristotelian phrase ´ µτ αβασ ις ς λλo γ ´ νoς . While it is thus clear that the concept of the leap is a broad issue that has several sources, I wish to argue that the immediate source of the concept here in the context of The Concept of Anxiety is Hegel. This claim stands in sharp contrast to the view of many commentators who see the leap as a crucial point where Kierkegaard departs from Hegel.112 But surprisingly, this notion can be traced back to Hegel himself via Adler and is already present at this period two years 105

106 108

109 110 111 112

The general criticism of the presuppositionless beginning of philosophy will be treated in more detail later, specifically in connection with the Danish discussion of the issue (Chapter 11, Section VI), and for this reason I forego a treatment of it here. 107 CA, p. 82; SKS, vol. 4, p. 385. Examined in Chapter 4, Section II. This can of course be regarded as a development of the criticism in the Introduction (treated in the previous section), that movement within an immanent sphere is no movement at all. CUP1, pp. 93–106; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 92–103. See also JP, vol. 3, 2342; Pap. V B 1.3. JP, vol. 3, 2350; Pap. V C 8. E.g., Categoriae 15a 13ff., 15b 12; Physica 226b 2ff.; De Caelo 270a 27; De Generatione et Corruptione 314b 15; De Anima 417b 15–16; Metaphysica 1069b 12. E.g., Nelly Viallaneix, “Kierkegaard, lecteur de Leibniz,” Critique, 1968, p. 900. Udo Johansen, “Hegel und Kierkegaard,” Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung, 7, 1953, p. 22, pp. 44–46.


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prior to the Postscript. All of this requires some explanation of its context in Hegel’s thought. The relevant issue in Hegel’s logic is the relationship between quantity and quality. Common sense conceives of these two categories as separate and independent of one another, but Hegel’s philosophy attempts to demonstrate the necessary dialectical relationship between them. Hegel points out that increasing or decreasing specific quantities has more or less definite limits at which point a change in quality must occur as a result. One example is the quantitative increase or decrease in the temperature of water: “the temperature of water is, up to a point, indifferent in relation to its liquid state; but there comes a point in the increasing or decreasing of the temperature of liquid water where this state of cohesion changes qualitatively, and the water is transformed into steam, on the one hand, and ice, on the other.”113 Quality is indifferent to quantity only within fixed limits. At some point a quantitative change results in a qualitative one. The gradual increase or decrease of particular quantities (e.g., degrees of heat or cold) constitutes a continuous spectrum; by contrast, the change in quality is of a more radical nature. In the Science of Logic, Hegel characterizes this kind of change in terms of a leap: “On the qualitative side, therefore, the gradual, merely quantitative progress which is not in itself a limit, is absolutely interrupted; the new quality in its merely quantitative relationship is, relatively to the vanishing quality, an indifferent, indeterminate other, and the transition is therefore a leap.”114 According to Hegel, there is only gradual progress in quantitative change, but in qualitative change there is a leap.115 While the source of his information is not yet clear, Kierkegaard seems to have been familiar with Hegel’s example since he refers to it in the journals from this period. There one reads: How does a new quality emerge from a continuous quantitative determination?. . . . A leap. . . .Thus, every quality emerges with a leap. Are these leaps then entirely homogeneous. The leap by which water turns to ice, the leap by which I understand an author, and the leap which is the transition from good to evil. More sudden, Lessing’s Faust, the evil spirit, who is as hasty as the transition from good to evil.116

113 114 115

116

Hegel, EL, § 108, Addition; Jub., vol. 8, p. 255. Hegel, SL, p. 368; Jub., vol. 4, p. 458. See also SL, p. 370; Jub., vol. 4, p. 460. PhS, p. 6; Jub., vol. 2, p. 18. Hegel, EL, § 37, Addition; Jub., vol. 8, p. 117. In the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel defines the “leap” as follows: “ ‘Leap’ here means qualitative distinction and qualitative alteration, which appear to take place without mediation, whilst, on the contrary, what is (quantitatively) gradual presents itself as something mediated.” Hegel, EL, § 35, Addition; Jub., vol. 8, p. 110. JP, vol. 3, 2345; Pap. V C 1. Translation slightly modified.



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Here Kierkegaard repeats Hegel’s example of the qualitative change from water to ice in his list of instances of the leap. Moreover, later in the same entry Hegel is referred to by name. Thus, it seems quite likely that Kierkegaard was familiar with this concept from Hegel’s text. Even if Kierkegaard did not read this passage in the Science of Logic, he certainly read about it in Adler’s Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic. Adler uses it several times and makes considerably more of the concept than Hegel: “Instead of coming to us according to ratio and connection, the qualities come to us as if by a leap.”117 Moreover, Adler goes on to make the larger claim: “Thus in the sphere of spirit: every human revelation stands as a qualitative leap in the human process of development, sublating the old measure and putting in a new one.”118 It is clear that Kierkegaard was familiar with this aspect of Hegel’s logic from Adler since he refers to it directly in the journals. He writes the following of the transition from quality to quantity: “Magister Adler (in his Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic, Copenhagen 1842) makes the movement even better. He says (p. 48), ‘when the quality is indifferent, quantity appears as the qualifying factor.’”119 One could hardly wish for a clearer statement of a source. In the published text of The Concept of Anxiety itself, Vigilius Haufniensis associates Hegel with the leap: “It is an unforgivable reticence when one makes no secret of the fact that things indeed do not happen quite that way in the world and yet conceals the consequence of this for the whole of logical immanence by permitting it to drift into logical movement as does Hegel. The new quality appears quickly, with the leap, with the suddenness of the enigmatic.”120 In the footnote to this passage, he continues: “Hegel made use of the leap, but in logic. . . . However, Hegel’s misfortune is exactly that he wants to maintain the new quality and yet does not want to do it, since he wants to do it in logic, which, as soon as this is recognized, must acquire a different consciousness of itself and of its significance.”121 Thus, Vigilius Haufniensis makes no attempt to hide the fact that Hegel is one of the sources of the notion of the leap (which makes it all the more enigmatic that this has not been recognized in the secondary literature). When one looks at the journals and papers, one finds that this is the first time that Kierkegaard in fact uses this concept in this context. This seems to confirm the fact that Hegel via Adler is his source.

117 118 119 120

Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag, op. cit., § 21, p. 97. Ibid., § 21, p. 98. CA, Supplement, p. 181; Pap. V B 49.5. Translation modified. See also Pap. V C 4. 121 CA, p. 30fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 337fn. CA, p. 30; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 336–337.


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Vigilius Haufniensis uses this analysis in many different ways and contexts. In his analysis of the original sin, for example, one of his main claims is that there is a radical qualitative difference which is introduced into the world with sin: “Thus sin comes into the world suddenly, i.e., by a leap; but this leap also posits the quality, and since the quality is posited, the leap in that very moment is turned into the quality and is presupposed by the quality and the quality by the leap.”122 Here Vigilius Haufniensis retains Hegel’s image of a leap, and again the issue of quality is essential. Thus, even though the discussion is different, Vigilius Haufniensis applies a Hegelian principle to an issue in dogmatics. He does the same thing later to refute the notion that sin concerns the human race generally and not each individual. He interprets the expression “by Adam’s sin, sinfulness came into the world” as follows: If all this is kept in mind, the above expression will have limited truth. The first posits the quality. Adam, then, posits sin in himself, but also for the race. However, the concept of race is too abstract to allow the positing of so concrete a category as sin, which is posited precisely in that the single individual himself, as the single individual, posits it. Thus sinfulness in the race becomes only a quantitative approximation.123

Vigilius Haufniensis’ use of the categories of quality and quantity is what is essential here. Sin, conceived as a characteristic of the human race generally, is a “quantitative” relation (i.e., a gradual spectrum of more or less sinfulness among everyone). Vigilius Haufniensis, by contrast, wants to conceive of sin as a qualitative matter for each individual. All of this constitutes the background for Vigilius Haufniensis’ criticism here. The important point is that he describes “the sphere of historical freedom” in terms of a quantitative leap: “In the sphere of historical freedom, transition is a state. However, in order to understand this correctly, one must not forget that the new is brought about through the leap. If this is not maintained, the transition will have a quantitative preponderance over the elasticity of the leap.”124 The sphere of historical freedom is presumably introduced to constitute a contrast to the sphere of logic. In the former, transition and movement take place in terms of radical qualitative leaps from one state to another. By contrast, in logic there is only a gradual quantitative increase or decrease but no real radical change in kind and thus no real movement. The concept of the leap has become the very trademark of Kierkegaard’s philosophy in introductory texts and reference works. It is all the more surprising to learn that one of its original sources is his purported enemy Hegel. Thus, it is not the typical Kierkegaardian concept that it 122 123

CA, p. 32; SKS, vol. 4, p. 338. Translation slightly modified. 124 CA, p. 85; SKS, vol. 4, p. 388. CA, p. 57; SKS, vol. 4, p. 362.


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has been conceived to be, and, moreover, it cannot be taken straightforwardly as a part of his polemic with Hegel given that he has borrowed the concept from Hegel (among others) in the first place. To be sure, Kierkegaard develops this concept in his own way and puts it into a different context; nevertheless, the basic Hegelian meaning is still present as is evinced by Kierkegaard’s constant reference to the qualitative and the quantitative. This represents a very surprising point of contact between Hegel and Kierkegaard and provides another example of Kierkegaard’s appropriation of something from Hegel’s thought. This is also a good illustration of the eclectic nature of Kierkegaard’s thought. He does not hesitate to borrow key terms and concepts from other thinkers for his own purposes. He takes the term out of its original context and develops it in a new one, giving it his own original twist. Moreover, he sees no contradiction in borrowing one concept from Hegel (e.g., the leap) in order to criticize another concept in Hegel (e.g., movement in logic). This is clear indication of the extremely differentiated nature of his relation to Hegel, which defies any simple, one-sided characterization. Finally, he has no problem borrowing a concept from Hegel during a period when he is in open conflict with the Hegelians Martensen, Heiberg and now Adler. This is again evidence for the fact that Kierkegaard’s relation to his contemporary Danish Hegelians is not identical to his relation to Hegel himself.

vi. innocence and immediacy In a short section called “The Concept of Innocence” from the first chapter, Vigilius Haufniensis seems to allude to Hegel’s interpretation of the original sin.125 He criticizes Hegel’s account of innocence as a state of immediacy, which must be aufgehoben, and sets forth his own view of innocence as ignorance. The criticism runs along the same lines as the ones in the Introduction: in the conception of innocence as immediacy, there is a confusion between the realm of ethics and that of logic. Immediacy is a concept from logic, whereas innocence is a concept from ethics. The criticism has affinities with that of the conception of faith as immediacy, i.e., when faith is conceived as immediacy, then it is regarded as something to be superseded. In this section I wish to argue that if the criticism is conceived as being directed against Hegel, the main point of critique is that the Hegelian dialectic of immediacy and mediation is immanent, whereas for Haufniensis there is a qualitative difference between the state of innocence and the state of guilt, which can only be described as transcendent. I will first examine Hegel’s interpretation of the original sin in which he conceives of the original state of humanity 125

CA, pp. 35–38; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 341–344.


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as one of immediacy. Then I will turn to Haufniensis’ criticism of the conception of innocence as immediacy. A. Hegel’s Account of the Original Sin. In both the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion126 and the Encyclopaedia Logic,127 Hegel treats the doctrine of the original sin and the issue of humanity’s original state of innocence. In the Encyclopaedia, he analyzes the biblical account of the Fall. His interpretation is that the biblical myth is misleading in that it presents the original state of humanity as one of innocence and immediacy, the implication being that this is the natural condition of human beings. For Hegel, by contrast, humanity’s separation from nature, which is represented symbolically in the story of the tree of knowledge, is not accidental but instead is a necessary part of what it is to be human. His interpretation is as follows: Now, it says in our myth that Adam and Eve . . . found themselves in a garden, in which there were both a tree of life and a tree of cognition of good and evil. We are told that God had forbidden this human pair to eat of the fruits of the latter tree. . . . So what this means is that humanity should not come to cognition, but remain in a state of innocence. We also find this representation of the original state of humanity as one of innocence and of union among other peoples that have reached a deeper consciousness. What is correct in it is the implication that the schism in which we find everything human involved can certainly not be the last word; but, on the other hand, it is not correct to regard the immediate, natural unity as the right state either.128

For Hegel, to live in a state of immediacy or immediate harmony of nature is unworthy of human beings. It is therefore absurd to think of this state as the true one for which humans are destined. Animals live in this immediate harmony, but human beings must transcend it, which occurs via alienation from nature. For Hegel, the Garden of Eden was no paradise but rather a prison appropriate for animals who are bound by natural necessity. This is a place that humans must ultimately leave.129 Hegel continues by interpreting the penalty God imposes on Adam and Eve: At this point there follows the so-called curse that God laid upon human beings. What this highlights is connected with the antithesis of man and nature. Man must labor in the sweat of his brow and woman must bring 126

127 128 129

Hegel, Phil. of Religion I, pp. 270–290; Jub., vol. 15, pp. 279–299. Phil. of Religion II, pp. 198–204; Jub., vol. 16, pp. 72–77. Phil. of Religion III, pp. 45–62; Jub., vol. 16, pp. 257– 272. Hegel, EL, § 24, Addition 3; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 91–97. See also PR, § 18, Addition; Jub., vol. 7, p. 70. Hegel, EL, § 24, Addition 3; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 93–94. As Hegel says in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, “For the state of innocence, the paradisiacal condition, is that of the brute. Paradise is a park, where only brutes, not men, can remain.” Phil. of Hist., p. 321; Jub., vol. 11, p. 413.



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forth in sorrow. What is said about labor is, more precisely, that it is both the result of the schism and also its overcoming. Animals find what they need for the satisfaction of their wants immediately before them; human beings, by contrast, relate to the means for the satisfaction of their wants as something that they themselves bring forth and shape.130

Unlike animals, human beings have the ability to shape their environment and change it according to their wishes. Their needs are satisfied only as a result of their own efforts. The Fall represents symbolically the overcoming of the immediacy of nature and the attainment of a truly human life. By partaking of the tree of knowledge, humanity transcends its animal nature and becomes like God. Thus, the knowledge acquired in the original sin is the divine aspect in human beings. Hegel interprets this as the realization of humanity’s true nature: But the myth does not conclude with the expulsion from paradise. It says further, “God said: Behold Adam is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” Cognition is now called something divine and not, as earlier, what ought not to be. So in this story there lies also the refutation of the idle chatter about how philosophy belongs only to the finitude of spirit; philosophy is cognition, and the original calling of man, to be an image of God, can be realized only through cognition.131

It is through the divine aspect that humans become what they are and cease to be mere nature. By acquiring knowledge and reason, humanity steps out of the realm of nature and enters into the realm of spirit. What is portrayed as a curse resulting from a chance event is, for Hegel, in fact a blessing resulting from necessity. Only by means of the alienation from nature can humanity become what it is and thereby transcend the realm of nature. The biblical myth portrays it as a chance event, just as other stories from Genesis give etiologies for natural phenomena (e.g., why serpents have no legs) in terms of specific chance events. But there lies behind these stories a hidden necessity. According to Hegel, there is a necessity in the nature of spirit itself. Spirit is never the idyllic state of innocence, but by virtue of the dialectical nature of the concept it always already has mediation: “Spirit is not something merely immediate; on the contrary, it essentially contains the moment of mediation within itself.”132 It is the nature of spirit to work through the stages of immediacy, mediation and finally mediated immediacy. Spirit wins back its unity with nature, but in a new mediated fashion which is higher than the original one. Thus, a straightforward interpretation of the biblical account is misleading in that it understands the natural state of humanity as immediacy 130 131 132

Hegel, EL, § 24, Addition 3; Jub., vol. 8, p. 95. Hegel, EL, § 24, Addition 3; Jub., vol. 8, p. 95. Hegel, EL, § 24, Addition 3; Jub., vol. 8, p. 94.


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by representing this state as a paradise that has been lost. According to Hegel, the dogma of the original sin captures this truth: [W]e must give up the superficial notion that original sin has its ground only in a contingent action of the first human pair. It is part of the concept of spirit, in fact, that man is by nature evil; and we must not imagine that this could be otherwise. The relationship [of man to nature] in which man is a natural being, and behaves as such, is one that ought not to be. Spirit is to be free and is to be what it is through itself. Nature is, for man, only the starting point that he ought to transform.133

The mediation and alienation of man from nature that is captured by the doctrine of the original sin is, for Hegel, a veridical account of the necessary character of spirit when it is understood correctly. The account of the Fall “is no causal conception but the eternal history of spirit. . . .The Fall is therefore the eternal myth of man – in fact, the very transition by which he becomes man.”134 B. Vigilius Haufniensis’ Criticism of Innocence as Immediacy. I now return to The Concept of Anxiety to see what use Vigilius Haufniensis makes of this Hegelian interpretation. It will be noted that Haufniensis does not mention specifically Hegel’s interpretation of the Fall; instead, he mentions only Hegel’s concept of immediacy at the very beginning in order to criticize those who wish to make use of it for dogmatics. He writes: Here, as everywhere, it is true that if one wants to maintain a dogmatic definition in our day, one must begin by forgetting what Hegel has discovered in order to help dogmatics. One gets a queer feeling when at this point one finds in works on dogmatics, which otherwise propose to be somewhat orthodox, a reference to Hegel’s favored remark that the nature of the immediate is to be annulled, as though immediacy and innocence were exactly identical.135

Given that Vigilius Haufniensis does not mention Hegel’s own interpretation of the Fall, it seems possible that he wants to criticize specific theologians who use Hegel’s philosophy in order to interpret specific aspects of dogma. Vigilius Haufniensis seems to have in mind here theologians such as Marheineke who in his Grundlehren der christlichen Dogmatik136 appeals to Hegel’s philosophy on this point. 133 134 135 136

Hegel, EL, § 24, Addition 3; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 95–96. Translation slightly modified. Hegel, Phil. of Hist., pp. 321–322; Jub., vol. 11, p. 413. CA, p. 35; SKS, vol. 4, p. 341. Philipp Marheineke, Die Grundlehren der christlichen Dogmatik als Wissenschaft, op. cit., § 260, pp. 147–148, p. 153. Another possible source is Heiberg: “The story about paradise can be regarded as the determinate designation of this real beginning, in which what follows rests as in a seed rich in content, and in which therefore the divine is immediately present. This way of regarding the manner stays in the middle between the two, mutually opposed and therefore one-sided views, according to which paradise is posited either



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Vigilius Haufniensis’ criticism is that there is an equivocation of the terms “immediacy” and “innocence.”137 As has been seen previously in the discussion of faith, for Haufniensis, the former is a term taken from logic, whereas the latter belongs properly to ethics. To regard them as synonymous is to confound two different kinds of concepts and discussions. He writes: Hegel has quite consistently volatilized every dogmatic concept just enough to appeal to a man of reduced existence as a clever expression for the logical. That the immediate must be annulled, we do not need Hegel to tell us, nor does he deserve immortal merit for having said it, since it is not even logically correct, for the immediate is not to be annulled, because it at no time exists. The concept of immediacy belongs in logic; the concept of innocence, on the other hand, belongs in ethics.138

When Vigilius Haufniensis says that the immediate “at no time exists,” he seems to be referring to Hegel’s notion that immediacy and mediation always exist together in a dialectical relation, and thus the one cannot exist without the other. For Hegel, the terms in the pairs of concepts – innocence and experience, immediacy and mediation – mutually condition one another. Immediacy implies mediation and vice versa. The concept of innocence would not exist unless it had some contrasting, opposing term (e.g., guilt or experience). It only makes sense to refer back to a period of innocence from a period when that innocence was lost. If innocence were the only state or condition, then the concept itself would not exist. Indeed, one does not say that animals are innocent or good or evil; on the contrary, these categories seem to be misapplied in reference to animals. Thus, for Hegel, all concepts stand in an immanent relation to one another. For this reason immediacy as a pure abstraction from mediation cannot be said to “exist” anywhere. By contrast, for Haufniensis, innocence does exist and belongs to the concrete sphere of the ethical. It is something that exists for all human beings just as it did for Adam. Given this, the two need to be carefully distinguished. This criticism squares with the ones in the Introduction, which claim that the results of Hegel’s philosophy lead to a confusion of logic and ethics.

137 138

as a pure condition of imperfection, which has no other fate than to be sublated, or as an absolute and concrete condition of perfection from which humanity has fallen back into the bad and the imperfect. In the real beginning the perfect is present, but it is only immediate, which means that it is determined to be abandoned in order that it can be acquired again and thereby becomes humanity’s property in a higher meaning than that which came to it merely as allotted or given, in which there is not any progress or development and therefore, likewise, not any true appropriation.” “Om Principet for Historiens Begyndelse,” Intelligensblade vol. 3, no. 35–36, September 1, 1843, pp. 267– 268. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 401–402.) See Arne Grøn, Begrebet Angst hos Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1993, p. 32. CA, p. 35; SKS, vol. 4, p. 341.


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Later in the section, Vigilius Haufniensis discusses the relation between innocence and immediacy in a different way, which in his view also contrasts with Hegel’s account: Innocence, unlike immediacy, is not something that must be annulled, something whose quality is to be annulled, something that properly does not exist, but rather, when it is annulled, and as a result of being annulled, it for the first time comes into existence as that which it was before being annulled and which now is annulled. Immediacy is not annulled by mediation, but when mediation appears, in that same moment it has annulled immediacy. The annulment of immediacy is therefore an immanent movement within immediacy, or it is an immanent movement in the opposite direction within mediation, by which mediation presupposes immediacy. Innocence is something that is cancelled by a transcendence, precisely because innocence is something (whereas the most correct expression for immediacy is that which Hegel uses about pure being: it is nothing).139

Here the key distinction is between immanence and transcendence. Vigilius Haufniensis argues that the abstract category of immediacy is sublated immanently by mediation since mediation necessarily belongs to immediacy. By contrast, the concrete fact of innocence requires something from outside, something transcendent, for the concept of guilt. Vigilius Haufniensis’ discussion relies on the distinction between quantitative change, which is immanent, and qualitative change, which is transcendent. The movement from immediacy to mediation is merely a quantitative change; by contrast, “Innocence is a quality.”140 Thus, the change from innocence to experience or sin is a qualitative one that requires a leap. Vigilius Haufniensis’ interpretation of innocence differs from Hegel’s in its emphasis. Hegel sees it as the beginning of the movement from immediacy to mediation and to mediated immediacy. By contrast, Vigilius Haufniensis characterizes innocence fundamentally as ignorance. He writes: “The narrative in Genesis also gives the correct explanation of innocence. Innocence is ignorance. It is by no means the pure being of the immediate, but it is ignorance.”141 For Haufniensis, the movement is from innocence to guilt. The main claim is that there is a qualitative difference between these two states. This difference is smoothed over when innocence is conceived as immediate and guilt as mediation. Immediacy and mediation are immanent categories, but guilt is something transcendent to innocence since it comes from the outside and introduces a qualitatively new state. This seems to be the main objection to conceiving of innocence as immediacy. 139 140

CA, pp. 36–37; SKS, vol. 4, p. 343. Translation slightly modified. 141 CA, p. 37; SKS, vol. 4, p. 343. CA, p. 37; SKS, vol. 4, p. 343.



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This highlights a fundamental difference between the views of Hegel and Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms. As has been seen,142 the issue of immanence and transcendence is a divisive one. In Section IV in this chapter, it was seen that one of the criticisms against Hegel’s concept of movement in logic was that this movement is in fact wholly immanent and thus not real movement at all. Thus, this critique is a key one that recurs many times. It is still a matter of discussion whether or not Kierkegaard has in mind Hegel’s own account of the Fall or if he is thinking of theologians influenced by Hegel, such as Marheineke, who applied concepts such as immediacy and mediation to Christian dogmatics. Ultimately, discerning the true target in this case is not so important since the criticism is general enough that it can nonetheless be conceived as being aimed against Hegel in any case. If it is so conceived, then it can best be understood as a part of Kierkegaard’s ongoing critique of Hegelian immanence. Given this analysis, it seems clear that the bulk of Kierkegaard’s criticism in The Concept of Anxiety falls on Adler and not on Hegel. This fact raises some difficult questions. Why does Kierkegaard have Vigilius Haufniensis mention Hegel and give the impression of criticizing him? Did Kierkegaard think he was criticizing Hegel by criticizing a Hegelian? If this is the case, then he could not have known much about Hegel’s own philosophy from the primary texts since then he could not help but be aware of the difference between the primary texts and the account presented by Adler. This is the interpretation that Koch gives, namely, that Kierkegaard’s knowledge of Hegel was largely derived from secondhand accounts.143 Similarly, Thulstrup tries to argue that Kierkegaard could not have been positively influenced by Hegel since he was not familiar with Hegel’s primary texts.144 But this position has a condescending tone about it since in order to make a case for Kierkegaard’s originality and independence from Hegel, Thulstrup must ultimately argue that Kierkegaard was ignorant of his works (i.e., ignorant of one of the most important intellectual figures of the day). To avoid this view, I prefer the interpretation that Kierkegaard knew exactly what he was doing and intended to criticize Adler and not Hegel all along. But why then does he use Hegel’s name explicitly and frequently in the text if Hegel is not the real object of criticism? The answer is that Kierkegaard uses Hegel as a kind of decoy or disguise in order to veil the true objects of his criticism. Two years later in 1846 Kierkegaard wrote an entire book dedicated to Adler and his purported revelation, but never published it. The Concept of Anxiety can be seen as a second Book on Adler in 142 143 144

Chapter 6, Section III. Chapter 8, Section I. Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse, op. cit., p. 195. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, op. cit., for example, p. 168.


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the sense that it contains an extended polemic with Adler’s Hegelianism and its application to problems of religion. The criticisms in the Introduction to The Concept of Anxiety all return to the same point, namely, that the sphere of abstract logic and that of existence have been confused. This is the upshot of The Book on Adler as well. But in The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard wanted to keep the target of his criticism more or less anonymous so that he could publish the work with impunity. Thus, the strategy he came up with was to appear to be in a polemic with Hegel by using Hegel’s name explicitly and then in fact to criticize Adler’s confusion of Christian concepts and categories with Hegelian philosophy. On this interpretation Kierkegaard knew precisely what he was doing, and he knew full well that he was criticizing Adler whose position deviated from Hegel’s in significant respects. On this interpretation although Kierkegaard can be seen as criticizing specific results of Hegel’s philosophy, his criticism is not of Hegel’s primary texts but of a specific Danish Hegelian and the use to which he puts some of Hegel’s concepts and doctrines. Although there is no doubt that Adler is the immediate occasion for Kierkegaard’s criticisms in The Concept of Anxiety, there are still some significant points that could be conceived as criticisms of Hegel. It is clear that Hegel and Kierkegaard have different definitions of the concepts of existence and actuality. It is also clear that Hegel and Kierkegaard see differently the relation of philosophy to religion and knowing to faith. Finally, it is abundantly clear that they are in disagreement about the issue of movement in logic and the question of immanence and transcendence. I have tried to underscore these points and to indicate their basis in the different projects and investments of the two thinkers. In a sense one can see the difference between them in the simple fact that Hegel is primarily interested in doing philosophy (in the modern sense of conceptual analysis), whereas Kierkegaard is not. Thus, Hegel analyzes religion from an abstract perspective of thought. Kierkegaard, by contrast, is perhaps best seen as a religious thinker, who is interested in the religious life of the individual. While this is of course fully legitimate on its own terms, it is not philosophy. Thus, he often stands at cross purposes with Hegel, who is concerned with a quite different project.

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10 THE POLEMIC WITH HEIBERG IN PREFACES

Prefaces appeared on June 17, 1844, the same day as The Concept of Anxiety. The pseudonymous author, Nicolaus Notabene, refers to himself in the text simply as N. N. These initials correspond, whether by accident or design, to the Latin phrase “nomen nescio,” or “I do not know the name,” which was a typical form of anonym. As the simple title implies, the work is a series of prefaces without the books to which they are prefaces. The author is purportedly a henpecked husband whose wife has forbidden him from pursuing his passion to be a writer, an activity which she takes to be a sign of marital infidelity. While he is thus obliged to desist from writing actual books, he tries to slip out of the prohibition on a technicality, i.e., by writing prefaces. This is purportedly the origin of the eight prefaces, which constitute the eight chapters of the work. There is evidence that Prefaces was a somewhat ad hoc construction.1 From Kierkegaard’s Nachlaß, it is clear that he had written most of the prefaces previously for specific purposes before he conceived of the idea for the work itself. Preface I was a reworking of what was originally a satirical text on Heiberg under the title, “A New Year’s Gift,” which was to appear at the New Year of 1843–44. Preface II was taken from a draft of a book-review2 that Kierkegaard planned to write on Christian Winther’s Four Novels.3 Preface VII was originally written as the Preface to The Concept of Anxiety. Preface VIII or some version thereof was originally intended as a preface to a philosophical journal that Kierkegaard planned but never published.4 Kierkegaard thus had some unused prefaces along with other odds and ends lying fallow among his papers, which perhaps caused him to hit upon the idea of using them in a work consisting only of prefaces. 1

2 3 4

This discussion is based on the results put forth by Johnny Kondrup and Kim Ravn in their “Tekstredegørelse” to Forord, in SKS, vol. K4, Section 3, “Tilblivelseshistorie,” pp. 542–564. See P, Supplement, p. 114; Pap. V B 81. Christian Winther, Fire Noveller, Copenhagen 1843. See JP, vol. 5, 5574; SKS, vol. 18, p. 148, JJ:14. JP, vol. 5, 5712–5713; Pap. V A 100–101.

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the polemic with heiberg in prefaces

He then presumably set about writing the other prefaces and thinking out the story of the hapless Nicolaus Notabene, which was the ad hoc premise for the entire work. Prefaces has been called “the most purely satirical work in the Kierkegaardian corpus.”5 It may also be the most polemical, for it is here that Kierkegaard through his pseudonym, Nicolaus Notabene, carries out his most extended polemic against Heiberg. The object of his criticism is primarily Heiberg’s person and his various literary reviews. Here Kierkegaard’s criticism is more overt than most of his other attacks. Prefaces is also one of the most parochial of Kierkegaard’s works: it contains constant indirect references to Heiberg, Martensen, Mynster, and others. Here Kierkegaard is concerned above all, if not exclusively, with his Danish contemporaries rather than any wider or more universal philosophical issue. In his brief account of Prefaces,6 Thulstrup interprets the work as a polemic against Hegel and speculative philosophy generally. While he recognizes the many references to Heiberg, Thulstrup makes no distinction between, on the one hand, the various aspects of Heiberg’s own literary and philosophical activity and, on the other hand, Hegel’s philosophy. Thus, for Thulstrup, when Kierkegaard criticizes Heiberg, he simultaneously criticizes Hegel. In this chapter I would like to argue that Thulstrup’s interpretation of the book is mistaken in that it fails to grasp the nature of the actual points about Heiberg’s work that Kierkegaard finds objectionable. When one examines systematically the various references to Heiberg, one finds that most of them have nothing whatsoever to do with his Hegelianism and that the ones that do refer to Hegelianism are concerned with it only incidentally. The few times when Kierkegaard satirizes Heiberg’s Hegelianism, what is at stake is not Hegel’s philosophy on its own terms but rather Heiberg’s appropriation and use of it. Thus, when one looks into the matter more closely, one sees that the claim for a Hegelian focus is mistaken. The target of Kierkegaard’s satire or polemic here is first and foremost the person of Heiberg and not Hegel’s thought. In the opening section I will review some of the ground covered in previous chapters by discussing briefly the biographical relation between Kierkegaard and Heiberg during the years immediately preceding the publication of Prefaces. I would like to argue that this relation is essential for understanding the work. The second section discusses the concept behind the work, which seems at face value to imply a criticism of systematic philosophy. The third section treats Preface I, where Nicolaus Notabene 5 6

“Translator’s Introduction,” by William McDonald in his translation of Prefaces. Tallahassee: The Florida State University Press 1989, p. 5. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980, pp. 365–369.

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mentions the system, which seems immediately to signal a criticism of Hegel. After this I will skip ahead since primarily the three final chapters or prefaces seem to be concerned with Heiberg’s Hegelianism. In Preface VI, Nicolaus Notabene alludes to the “systematic tendency” in theology, which seems at first glance to be a reference to Hegel’s philosophy of religion. In the fourth section I will try to show that this expression in fact refers to a movement in Denmark at the time that wanted to make Christianity primarily an intellectual matter. Preface VII returns to the problem of mediation, which, as has been seen, was discussed from as early as Either/Or. Finally, the long Preface VIII mentions many of the key terms from Hegel’s philosophy. I wish to argue that there Nicolaus Notabene distinguishes sharply between Hegel and the Hegelians and that he is above all concerned to criticize Heiberg’s propagation of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark.

i. kierkegaard’s relation to heiberg immediately prior to prefaces When one examines the circumstances in which Prefaces was written, the interpretation of the work as primarily a polemic against Heiberg becomes almost inevitable. The countless references and allusions to Heiberg throughout the book leave little doubt that he plays an important role here. But the question remains: What specifically motivated Kierkegaard to take Heiberg to task so severely at just this time? I would like to address this question in the present section. I would like to argue that Prefaces can be regarded as Kierkegaard’s most extended reply to the two negative and dismissive assessments of his work, which were written by Heiberg. It is no accident that Preface II is dedicated to a criticism of book-reviews and critics. In this preface – as in the rest of the book – there are several direct and indirect allusions to Heiberg. As was discussed previously,7 Kierkegaard as a young student curried the favor of Heiberg and his circle. He published articles in Heiberg’s journal, Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, and seemed to have no objections to either Heiberg’s aesthetics or his Hegelianism. The relation between the two men only turned sour in the spring of 1843. As was noted,8 the occasion for the falling out was Heiberg’s aforementioned review of Either/Or, which appeared in his journal Intelligensblade on March 1, 1843.9 Under the title “Literary Winter Crops,” Heiberg dismissively discussed Either/Or. Kierkegaard, qua Victor Eremita, responded immediately to this review 7 9

8 Chapter 4, Conclusion, pp.232–237. Chapter 2, Section IV, pp. 115ff. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Litterær Vintersæd,” Intelligensblade, vol. 2, no. 24, March 1, 1843, pp. 285–292. ASKB U 56. See the discussion in the Conclusion to Chapter 4.

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in an article entitled, “A Word of Thanks to Professor Heiberg.”10 But his criticism of Heiberg was far from finished. In Prefaces, specifically in Preface IV, he has Nicolaus Notabene write: “What, I wonder, will ‘one’ say about this book now? My dear reader, if you are not able to find out in any other way, then our literary telegraph manager, Prof. Heiberg, will probably be kind enough to be a tax collector again and tally the votes, just as he did in connection with Either/Or, and report it in Intelligensblade.”11 The passage is taken from an earlier journal entry12 for use in Prefaces.13 The reference in this passage establishes the connection between Heiberg’s review of Either/Or and Prefaces. Given that some of the same material appears in “A Word of Thanks to Professor Heiberg” and Prefaces, it seems that at least a part of Prefaces is a reworking of the criticisms of Heiberg that Kierkegaard presented in his first response. It is clear that avenging himself once again for this review was one of Kierkegaard’s main motivations in writing the book. If the matter were allowed to drop after Heiberg’s review of Either/Or and Kierkegaard’s response, there might still have been some possibility of a future reconciliation; but this was not to be the case. The occasion for the renewed dispute and the immediate occasion for Prefaces was once again a critical assessment by Heiberg of another of Kierkegaard’s works. In December 1843 the first number of Heiberg’s journal Urania (the number for 1844) appeared. It was here that Heiberg announced his new-found interest in astronomy.14 The second article in the journal is Heiberg’s aforementioned “The Astronomical Year.”15 The piece is primarily concerned with the relation of the modern individual to the changes and beauties of nature. Heiberg argues that sensitivity to nature has been blunted in the modern world, and his goal in the article is to try to make the reader more attuned to it. In this context he comes to discuss the changes of the seasons and the orbits of the planets and the other regular repetitions in nature. This provides him with the occasion to allude to Kierkegaard’s Repetition, which had just appeared. He writes: In a recently published work, which even has the word “repetition” as its title, something very beautiful and fitting is said about this concept, but the author has not distinguished between the essentially different meanings

10 11 13 14

15

In COR, pp. 17–21; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 411–415; Fædrelandet, no. 1168, March 5, 1843. 12 Pap. IV B 51. P, pp. 23–24; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 486–487. See Johnny Kondrup and Kim Ravn, “Tekstredegørelse” to Forord, in SKS, vol. K4, p. 549. Heiberg’s interest in astronomy is evident already in the article “Stjernehimlen,” in Intelligensblade, vol. 2, no. 14, October 1, 1842, pp. 25–48. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 9, pp. 25–49.) See Chapter 6, Introduction. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det astronomiske Aar,” Urania, 1844, pp. 77–160. ASKB U 57. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 9, pp. 51–130.)

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which repetition has in the sphere of nature and in the sphere of spirit. Thereby he has come into the error that repetition should play the same role in a future philosophy as “that which one by an error has called mediation plays in the present one.”16

Heiberg quotes from Repetition17 and takes up the question of mediation, which he takes to be a crucial point with regard to Constantin Constantius’ introduction of the concept of repetition. Heiberg’s assessment of the work is not wholly negative, but he does allow himself some critical comments. His primary criticism is that the work confuses the repetitions of the natural world with those of the social world. Heiberg continues: Indeed, one can say of nature that it is itself mediated by lawful repetitions, but in the sphere of spirit mediation also encompasses something more than simple repetition, something which has already been sufficiently noted in the above remarks. The fact that the author really, in the renown he attributes to repetition, primarily has had in mind the categories of nature and perhaps, without knowing it, has extended the validity of the concept outside its rightful limits, seems to be obvious in part by the fact that he precisely has applied it to a concept of philosophy of nature, namely movement, in that he means that the concept of repetition would be able to provide a reconciliation between the Eleatics and Heraclitus, that is, between the two opposed philosophical schools, of which the one denied all movement, and the other by contrast saw everything in movement.18

Here Heiberg argues for what he regards as an essential distinction between the Hegelian notion of mediation and the simple notion of repetition in the realm of spirit. He claims that Constantin Constantius has in mind primarily the meaning of repetition from the philosophy of nature which he illegitimately tries to apply to the realm of spirit. Apart from this philosophical issue, there is also a polemical tone in Heiberg’s comments. Once again the text that he is commenting upon is pseudonymous, but from his comments it is perfectly clear that he knows full well that it is Søren Kierkegaard who stands behind the pseudonym Constantin Constantius: in part from the fact that what the author, not only in this work but in others which undoubtedly have the same source, tends toward, is what one calls a philosophy of life, but in a philosophy of this kind a sympathizing cohabitation with nature will be an essential moment, but sympathy with nature cannot take place, unless one feels pleasure with its repetitions.19 16 17 18 19

Ibid., p. 97. (Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 9, p. 70.) R, p. 148; SKS, vol. 4, p. 25. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det astronomiske Aar,” op. cit., pp. 97–98. (Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 9, pp. 70–71.) Ibid., p. 98. (Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 9, p. 71.)

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Heiberg implies that he knows that Kierkegaard is responsible for Repetition and other pseudonymous works such as Either/Or. He is careful to draw a distinction between Kierkegaard’s view of repetition and his own. The ability to see through the pseudonyms immediately makes the criticisms more polemical and personal and less scholarly. It is clear that Kierkegaard was upset by Heiberg’s off-handed remarks about his works. From his unpublished journals and papers one can see that he was planning a response to the comments in “The Astronomical Year.” However, he never published an article directly in response to Heiberg on this point, although he wrote drafts for at least two such articles.20 Prefaces includes some of the material that is found in these drafts and can be seen as the response to Heiberg’s comments both here and previously. Although Kierkegaard had some of the material, which would end up in Prefaces, written in draft form before this time, he only conceived of the book and of collecting this material into a single work after the appearance of Heiberg’s Urania in December of 1843.21 Kierkegaard had written a number of journal entries about Heiberg and his various academic activities. These entries turn negative after the review of Either/Or. In Prefaces, Kierkegaard brings forth and collects all of this material which he accumulated for various occasions and incorporates it in the form of various prefaces. He thus concentrates his anti-Heibergian polemics into this work. Although there is every reason for Kierkegaard to embark on a polemic with Heiberg at this point, there is by contrast no trace of a renewed reading of or interest in Hegel. This will be significant in evaluating the role of Hegel in this work.

ii. systematic philosophy and the conception of prefaces as a work It is often assumed that the concept of Prefaces is anti-Hegelian in the sense that instead of giving a substantive, systematic account of a specific subject-matter, which is usually reserved for the body of the text, it instead presents only prefaces and never gets to, indeed never intends to get to, the body of the text. By writing a book that consists solely of prefaces, Kierkegaard seems to be registering a protest against the traditional conceptions about how a text is supposed to be constructed. He breaks with the traditional systematic pattern by writing a book that consists solely 20

21

For example, “Open Letter to Professor Heiberg, Knight of Dannebrog from Constantin Constantius,” R, Supplement, pp. 283–298; Pap. IV B 110–111, pp. 258–274. “A Little Contribution by Constantin Constantius, Author of Repetition,” R, Supplement, pp. 299–319; Pap. IV B 112–117, pp. 275–300. See Johnny Kondrup and Kim Ravn, “Tekstredegørelse” to Forord, in SKS, vol. K4, Section 3, “Tilblivelseshistorie,” pp. 561ff.

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of prefaces; it is a book with no body and no conclusion. Moreover, the various prefaces themselves are not related to one another but instead refer to imaginary books or journals. In this way Kierkegaard calls into question the reader’s intuitions about the nature and structure of an academic treatise. The work can thus purportedly be seen as an implicit criticism of systematic philosophy, which insists on each argument and analysis having its specific place within the whole. According to this reading, Prefaces can be seen as in a line with the Philosophical Fragments and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, calling into question the conception of philosophy as a systematic enterprise. Instead of a philosophical work consisting of a preface, a main argument, and a conclusion, it can also consist of fragments or a series of unrelated prefaces or a postscript to a text that is far longer than the actual text itself. In this section I would like to examine this issue in detail. I would like to argue that, despite this interpretation, Kierkegaard is in agreement with Hegel about the nature and role of the preface. Moreover, Kierkegaard might well have taken some of the inspiration for his conception of a preface from Hegel himself. Thus, it is mistaken, I want to claim, to interpret the concept and structure of Prefaces as an implicit criticism of systematic philosophy generally or of Hegel specifically. In regard to the issue of the role of the preface, Kierkegaard seems to allude to Hegel’s remarks in the Phenomenology of Spirit about the superfluous nature of prefaces in a systematic work. Like Kierkegaard, Hegel is self-reflective about the nature of prefaces in his Preface to the Phenomenology. The opening lines of the work begin with a consideration of the nature of philosophical knowing. It is in this context that he talks about prefaces: It is customary to preface a work with an explanation of the author’s aim, why he wrote the book, and the relationship in which he believes it to stand to other earlier or contemporary treatises on the same subject. In the case of a philosophical work, however, such an explanation seems not only superfluous but, in view of the nature of the subject-matter, even inappropriate and misleading. For whatever might appropriately be said about philosophy in a preface – say a historical statement of the main drift and the point of view, the general content and results, a string of random assertions and assurances about truth – none of this can be accepted as the way in which to expound philosophical truth.22

Hegel goes on to claim that philosophical truth can only be known by actually working through the individual arguments. This is the task of a philosophical treatise. Thus, a preface can do little more than make bald claims and assertions about the arguments to come, but it 22

Hegel, PhS, p. 1; Jub., vol. 2, p. 11.

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cannot do the actual work of demonstration, which takes place in the body of the text. For this reason a preface cannot be regarded as a genuinely philosophical piece of work. Moreover, given that philosophy is, Hegel claims, an organic system, no part of it can be treated on its own in a preface since all the parts necessarily belong to the whole. In the Preface to Prefaces, Nicolaus Notabene enters into his own theoretical considerations about the nature of the preface. He seems to have in mind the aforementioned passage from the Phenomenology when he writes the following: But now . . . it is easy to perceive that [a preface] must not deal with a subject, because in that case the preface itself would become a book, and the question of the preface and the book would be pushed aside. The preface as such, the liberated preface, must then have no subject to treat but must deal with nothing, and insofar as it seems to discuss something and deal with something, this must nevertheless be an illusion and a fictitious motion.23

The main theoretical point that Nicolaus Notabene seems to want to make is that it is necessary to conceive of a preface not as a slave in the service of a particular work of which it is a part, but rather as an autonomous entity with its own rights. Like Hegel, Nicolaus Notabene underscores the problem of touching on the substantive subject-matter of the work in the preface, which seems to confuse the concept of the preface with that of the actual body of the work. Also like Hegel, Nicolaus Notabene notes that what seems to be left for the preface is superficialities and trivialities. Thus, he seems to be in agreement with Hegel about the superfluous nature of a preface to a philosophical work. This is, of course, not to say that they are in agreement about the role of systematic philosophy. From these considerations, its seems problematic to construe the concept of Prefaces and its message about the autonomy of the preface as a criticism of Hegel and systematic philosophy. On the contrary, Hegel is wholly in agreement with Nicolaus Notabene that the preface is not to be conceived as an organic part of a larger whole. Instead, it is an independent entity and stands on its own apart from the actual subject-matter of science. Thus, far from wanting to criticize Hegel, Nicolaus Notabene seems to find in the Preface to the Phenomenology some of the inspiration for his own considerations of the notion of the preface as an autonomous piece of writing.24 23 24

P, p. 4f.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 469. As has been seen in Chapter 5, Section IV, there is clear evidence that Kierkegaard was familiar with this text. See JC, p. 168f.; Pap. IV B 1, p. 147. JC, Supplement, p. 246; Pap. IV B 2.4. JP, vol. 2, 1594; SKS, vol. 19, p. 399, Not13:34.

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iii. references to the system in preface i The brief Preface I seems at first glance to be a polemic against Hegel since Nicolaus Notabene ends it with a tirade against the system, which most commentators take to be straightforwardly identical with Hegel himself. He writes: “generations to come will not even need to learn to write, because there will be nothing more to write, but only to read – the system.”25 This recalls the criticisms of the system that are well known from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. But when one looks into the matter more closely with an eye to determining what specifically is at issue in this criticism, one finds a number of indirect allusions and references to Heiberg, who is, I wish to argue, Nicolaus Notabene’s sole target here. It becomes clear that this preface is concerned with Heiberg and – despite the allusion to the system – not with Hegel when one sees the numerous allusions to the former that come in rapid succession. The initial one appears in the second paragraph when Nicolaus Notabene writes: “If a person wants to publish a book, he should first consider at what time of year it will appear. The time of year is of enormous importance.”26 Here Nicolaus Notabene alludes to Heiberg’s aforementioned review of Either/Or, “Literary Winter Crops.” As was noted, this review had as one of its motifs the fact that the book was published in the winter and was thus a kind of winter crop. Heiberg writes: The mass of books which is accustomed to appear here in Denmark in the intermediary space from the late fall until the New Year’s time and – since there are many latecomers – in the first few months after New Year’s is, so to speak, a winter crop, which only in spring will perceptibly sprout forth, insofar as it, indeed, has had the strength for the still and imperceptible sprouting in the earth’s womb, without which it chokes and never becomes green. The reading public is the soil in which the literary crops either sprout forth or perish. . . . Also for books there is a trial period only after the end of which one can say what they are actually good for, and one will hardly find it too long when one fixes its term from New Year to spring. The literary spring then arrives for these productions simultaneously with the natural spring; just like the latter, it becomes the time of resurrection; only when spring has taken place do the literary seeds show themselves as actually fruitful for literature.27

Heiberg contemplates the different fates of literary works based on the time at which they are published. Nicolaus Notabene’s allusion sarcastically elaborates on Heiberg’s metaphor here. 25 26 27

P, p. 14; SKS, vol. 4, p. 478. Translation slightly modified. P, p. 13; SKS, vol. 4, p. 477. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Litterær Vintersæd,” Intelligensblade, vol. 2, no. 24, March 1, 1843, pp. 285–286. ASKB U 56.

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The second example of a clear allusion to Heiberg is a reference to Urania. Nicolaus Notabene continues: “On this matter all the wisest and best men agree that New Year’s is the moment.”28 This allusion is continued below: “See, I have done all this and am therefore happy to pass on to the esteemed public my New Year’s gift, especially elegant and dainty.”29 The allusion is to the comments about the journal Urania, which Heiberg made in the “Postscript to Urania,” which was published in Intelligensblade.30 There Heiberg explains the concept of the journal and describes it as a New Year’s gift due to its date of publication in December: “The plan with Urania is specifically to deliver in every issue: first an astronomical orientation calendar for the coming year; then treatises on scholarly subjects, especially those, whose material is related to determinations of the calendar; finally (since the book is a New Year’s gift, determined for the aesthetically cultivated public), belletristic contributions of larger size.”31 Kierkegaard returns again and again to this characterization of Urania as a New Year’s gift. Indeed he even mentions it as a New Year’s gift before Heiberg uses the expression.32 The third allusion in the text concerns Heiberg’s claims about “the demand of the age.” Here Nicolaus Notabene writes: If one wants to publish a book, one should next make sure that it will be of benefit. To that end one asks a publisher or a philosophical fellow or one’s barber, or a passerby what it is that the age demands. Lacking this, one comes up with something oneself, about which one does not forget to say that it is what the age demands. Not everyone, of course, is given the mental capacity to understand the age’s demand, so much the less when to the doubtful it may seem that the age’s demand is multifarious and that the age, although it is only one, can have like Maren Amme, several voices.33

Here Nicolaus Notabene refers to an expression that Heiberg first used in his controversial treatise On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age. There Heiberg analyzes the ills of the present age, which he regards as being in a state of crisis. Only philosophy, he argues, is able to save it from this chaotic state and return it to a stable heading by showing it the truth. In this context he writes: But just as the light which shines for us at night is hardly noticed in the rays of the day, so also in an age where so much else has been developed from its seed, the truth, as long as it is substance and therefore in the form 28 30 31 32

33

29 P, p. 14; SKS, vol. 4, p. 478. P, p. 13; SKS, vol. 4, p. 477. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Eftertale til Urania,” Intelligensblade, vol. 4, no. 44–46, February 1, 1844, pp. 227–236. Ibid., p. 231. See Johnny Kondrup and Kim Ravn, “Tekstredegørelse” to Forord, in SKS, vol. K4, Section 3, “Tilblivelseshistorie,” p. 545, note, and R, Supplement, p. 281; Pap. IV B 101. P, pp. 13–14; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 477–478. Translation slightly modified. (My italics.)

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of the accidental, must shine with a dim light; and thus with justice the age demands that it should develop itself from its husk in order to become the naked truth, the transparent truth, which has cast off its accidental dress so that its form no longer veils it, but, as nakedness, shows, indeed is, it itself.34

Heiberg’s main claim in the treatise is that the demand of the age is to grasp philosophically (i.e., according to the Concept) the competing strands of current intellectual and cultural life. Only in this way, he claims, can the age be rescued from its aimless nihilism. Criticism of “the demands of the age” comes up again later in Prefaces.35 Given these many references there can be no doubt from the general context that this polemic is with Heiberg and not with Hegel. There still remains, however, the allusion to the system, which most readers take to be synonymous with Hegel. To understand the remarks about the system, one must examine the passage as a whole. Here Nicolaus Notabene writes: “Therefore I vow: as soon as possible to realize a plan envisaged for thirty years, to publish a system of logic, and as soon as possible to fulfill my promise, made ten years ago of a system of aesthetics; furthermore, I promise a system of ethics and dogmatics, and finally the system.”36 A version of this appears in a draft of The Concept of Anxiety and was explored previously.37 The focus is not on the system per se but on promising to write one. As was seen in the previous chapter, this is not an allusion to Hegel but rather to Heiberg’s remarks at the beginning of his work, “The System of Logic,” from the second number of Perseus. The subtitle of this article indicates that it is the first twenty-three paragraphs of a complete system of logic, the rest of which is to follow. At the beginning of the treatise Heiberg writes: The author allows himself to present herewith the first contribution to the working out of a long nourished plan, namely to expound the system of logic. . . . Furthermore, he has the goal with the present exposition and its continuation to clear the way for an aesthetics, which he for a long time has wished to write, but which he cannot send out into the world without ahead of time having given it the support in logic upon which it can rest.38

In this passage Heiberg indicates his intention to write a complete system of logic, which will constitute the groundwork for his aesthetics. Both the system of logic and the system of aesthetics along with Heiberg’s “long 34

35 36 37 38

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid, Copenhagen 1833, p. 29. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 381–460.) (My italics.) P, p. 50; SKS, vol. 4, p. 511. P, p. 51; SKS, vol. 4, p. 511. P, p. 14; SKS, vol. 4, p. 478. Translation slightly modified. Chapter 9, Section I, pp. 384–385 and Section IV, p. 403. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det logiske System,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 2, 1838, p. 3. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 115–116.)

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nourished plan” are alluded to in the previously quoted passage from this preface.39 If the striking similarities between these two passages do not make it clear that this passage in Prefaces is intended to be a criticism of Heiberg, then the matter is clinched by similar statements in a draft of a response to Heiberg’s comments on Repetition, which is found in Kierkegaard’s journals and papers under the title “A Little Contribution by Constantin Constantius, Author of Repetition.”40 There Kierkegaard refers to Heiberg by name and writes sarcastically, “Of late [Heiberg] has turned his gaze to the far-flung yonder, where, staring prophetically ahead like a brooding genius, he beheld the system, the realization of long contemplated plans.”41 Here Kierkegaard writes “long contemplated plans,” an echo of the “long nourished plan” from the Introduction to “The System of Logic.” In a footnote to this passage he writes: “See the Preface to the 23 logical §§ in Perseus,” after which he goes on to quote the opening lines of Heiberg’s article, cited earlier. Thus, there can be no doubt that the passage refers to Heiberg’s promises and plans, as expressed in his article, to write a system of logic. Despite the reference to the system, this preface has nothing to do with Hegel. By contrast, there is overwhelming evidence that it is concerned exclusively with Heiberg. There is a loose connection to Heiberg’s Hegelianism since his “System of Logic” is, to be sure, modelled on Hegel’s works on logic. But the content or methodology of this work is not criticized. Instead it is the promise of a system, which clearly concerns Heiberg and has nothing to do with the content of Hegel’s thought.42 This cannot be conceived as a reference to Hegel himself since Hegel did not make empty promises of a system.43 Hegel himself published complete works on logic and thus cannot be reproached for not delivering a system of logic. Nicolaus Notabene’s remarks only make sense as a criticism of Heiberg and not of Hegel. One can see here quite clearly the non sequitur at work in Thulstrup’s reasoning in his interpretation of the work as a criticism of Hegel. He begins with the observation that Heiberg was one of the main Danish Hegelians and then notes that Kierkegaard criticizes Heiberg in Prefaces. However, from these two true premises, he draws the invalid conclusion that therefore Kierkegaard criticizes Hegel in Prefaces. This is invalid since the things that Heiberg in the work is criticized for have nothing to do with his Hegelianism. 39 40 41 42 43

Alluded to in Chapter 9, Section I, p. 384. “A Little Contribution by Constantin Constantius, Author of Repetition,” R, Supplement, pp. 299–319; Pap. IV B 112–117, pp. 275–300. R, Supplement, p. 299; Pap. IV B 116, p. 278. See Theodor W. Adorno, Kierkegaard, Construction of the Aesthetic, tr. by Robert HullotKentor, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1989, p. 106. See Hélène Politis, “Kierkegaard et ‘l’exigence du temps,’ ” Kairos, 10, 1997, pp. 87ff.

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iv. the reference to the systematic tendency in preface vi Preface VI purports to be a preface to a series of twenty-four sermons, the goal of which is edification. From his various edifying discourses, Kierkegaard was certainly accustomed to writing prefaces of this kind. But unlike Kierkegaard’s edifying or upbuilding authorship, these sermons claim, apparently ironically, to form a systematic work. At first glance this preface seems to be a criticism once again of the system44 and of the “systematic tendency” in theology, which are of course usually associated with Hegel’s philosophy. At the beginning one reads: As for the work itself, the cultured person will readily discover that throughout the twenty-four sermons of which the volume consists there is a striving, a leading theme, a systematic tendency. The individual sermon will not stand by itself or mean anything by itself, but by continually pointing beyond itself it will lead the reader to the totality, by which alone the cultured person can be built up.45

Here Nicolaus Notabene ironically plays the role of a systematic theologian by this indication of the character of the sermons to which this is a preface. He indicates that each sermon has its own particular place within the whole, and none can be made sense of on its own. This seems to lead one to think immediately that Nicolaus Notabene intends to criticize Hegel and systematic theology here. However, when one examines the matter more closely, one sees that the true target of this preface is Heiberg’s elitism and his attempt to turn religion into a purely intellectual matter. Whatever grounded philosophical or theological point there may be here is only secondary. The claim that this preface is aimed at Heiberg is supported by the constant references found here to “the cultured,” who are the intended readers of the imagined sermons. These references are unambiguous allusions to Heiberg. In On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age, Heiberg distinguishes sharply between the cultured and the uncultured. The former he sees as the true bearers of the flame of world spirit, by whose agency the cultural life of humanity progresses: But no less does humanity have its representatives, namely those individuals among whom its consciousness is awakened to the higher clarity, while it still is more or less sleeping among the masses. These representatives we call “artists,” “poets,” “teachers of religion,” “philosophers.” We also call them “humanity’s teachers” and “educators,” and this they are in truth but not in their own individual power. They are this only by the fact that they

44 45

P, p. 32f.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 494. P, p. 31; SKS, vol. 4, p. 493. Translation slightly modified.

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present the mirror in which humanity sees itself and becomes conscious of itself as its own object.46

The uncultured masses simply tarry along afterwards once the cultured people have already ushered in the new age with their creative work. Heiberg explains: Inasmuch as they approach these representatives or come far behind them, the masses occupy different standpoints whose position itself determines the varying relationship between the past and the present. If one wants to observe again the differences in this manifold from two main points of view, then we could divide the individuals into the cultured and the uncultured, the latter of which could likewise be regarded as the representatives of humanity, but, as it were, in a larger and more popular chamber, a kind of lower house, in contrast to the aristocratic, less numerous chamber, which consists of those, to whom we actually gave the name of representatives. By contrast, the uncultured, having simply confined themselves to the individual life, are excluded from all representation other than that of their own persons.47

The notion of a division between, on the one hand, a cultured class, which is ahead of its time, and, on the other hand, the semibarbarous, uncultured masses is a standard theme in Heiberg. He often flatters the vanity of his readers and auditors by appealing to them as members of the class of the cultured elite. In his Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College, Heiberg talks of those who have a calling for philosophy and addresses his work specifically to them: Thus the demand of the age calls to all but doubly to the chosen, whose destiny it is to hasten ahead of the masses, each in his individual circle of activity, and plant the flag of culture in a heretofore untrodden soil. To say more about the recommendation of philosophical knowing I take to be unnecessary at least in this group. Though I thus now invite you, gentlemen, to follow me to the separate domain, in which abstract thought, set at a distance from the world’s movements and the bustle of the moment, makes its invisible dominion secure, I do not forget that my honored listeners are destined to participate in these movements, in this bustle, to step out into life and actuality, and to give these their best abilities and powers.48

46 47 48

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid, op. cit., p. 11. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 391.) Ibid., p. 14. (Prosaiske Skrifter, vol. 1, pp. 394–395.) Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Indlednings-Foredrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1835, p. 35. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 506.)

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Heiberg addresses his students at the Royal Military College as members of the cultural elite who are themselves “destined to participate in” the movements of world spirit. Here one sees again his lofty statement about “the demand of the age.” Kierkegaard was repelled by this kind of elitism, in particular when applied to matters of religion. If further evidence is required to support the claim that Heiberg is the target of this preface, then it can be found in a passage where Nicolaus Notabene more or less says so directly. Heiberg is named straightforwardly as one of the main spokesmen for the view put forth in this preface: “It is again this totality toward which [the work] strives. The cultured person thus seeks the congregation, to call to mind a word of the poet to whom the present devotional work is so very much indebted and whom I do myself the honor of naming as the authority and as the chosen bard of the cultured, the pondering Professor Heiberg.”49 By saying that the present work owes much to Heiberg, Nicolaus Notabene is in an ironic fashion identifying him as the target of the criticism here. In this passage Notabene refers to Heiberg’s controversial collection New Poems from 1841. There in the opening poem, “Church Service,” the angel says to the poet, “Attach yourself to the congregation/And through it to God.”50 The angel encourages the poet to seek God not via nature but through the religious congregation. Kierkegaard’s conception of the absolute irreducibility of the individual religious believer finds this conception objectionable, just as he objects to Grundtvig’s conception of the primacy of the community in Christianity. If there is a serious point in this preface, then it lies in the attempt to defend Christianity against a kind of intellectualism which Heiberg represented. Nicolaus Notabene begins by contrasting his fictional systematic sermons with Bishop Mynster’s Sermons,51 which also aim at edification. With this ironic comparison, Notabene defends Mynster and criticizes Heiberg’s elitism, which seems to make Christianity a matter only for the cultured. He says that in Mynster’s Sermons “one will to no avail look for such a [systematic] tendency,”52 which his own work displays. Since it is not systematic, this work “no longer satisfies – the cultured.”53 Mynster began his career as a rural priest in southern Zealand where he had a peasant congregation. His version of Christianity was generally critical of the arid intellectualism and rationalism of the Danish Church of the day. Nicolaus Notabene’s choice of him as an example is not accidental. 49 50 51

52

P, pp. 33; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 494–495. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Nye Digte, Copenhagen 1841, p. 14. ASKB 1562. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Poetiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1862, vol. 10, p. 173.) E.g., Jakob Peter Mynster, Prædikener paa alle Søn- og Hellig-Dage i Aaret, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen 1823. Prædikener, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen 1826–32. ASKB 228. Prædikener paa alle Søn- og Hellig-Dage i Aaret, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen 1837. ASKB 229–230. 53 P, p. 31; SKS, vol. 4, p. 493. P, p. 31; SKS, vol. 4, p. 493.

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In addition to Heiberg, there were others in the context of the Danish intellectual scene who wanted the church to become more intellectual. Another source of inspiration for this preface was a review of Either/Or, written by the priest Hans Peter Kofoed-Hansen (1813–93).54 In this review, the author argues that the church should become more up-to-date and more in touch with the latest intellectual trends. He writes: [A]s long as one can still hear the old cobblers’ morality and everyday trivialities from the pulpit or as long as one can still hear the so often repeated assurances which the tired soul, in hope, fear, trembling, and despair, has lost confidence in, one can just as well talk to oneself at home on one’s sofa. The so-called awakened and holy people may therefore say what they want, yet the cultured people of the recent age are no longer satisfied with the old-fashioned Christianity or the old faith but demand that it be presented in a new and fresh form, which only a philosophical bath is able to give it.55

While this work does not directly criticize Mynster’s Sermons for not being academic or systematic enough, it seems to be what Nicolaus Notabene is thinking of in Prefaces since it was Mynster who responded to this criticism in an article published in Heiberg’s Intelligensblade on January 1, 1844, under the title, “The Church Polemic.”56 Preface VI can be seen as Kierkegaard’s response on Mynster’s behalf. It should already be abundantly clear that these polemics regarding the Danish church are far removed from Hegel’s philosophy. Nicolaus Notabene’s ironic claim is that Mynster’s sermons do not have all of the scholarly apparatus that is required by the cultured elite, and for this reason this work is not satisfying to them. Kofoed-Hansen and implicitly Heiberg are thus condescending in the criticism of Mynster and the common believer, claiming that such an unsystematic treatment cannot satisfy the cultured person. Nicolaus Notabene writes: The collection [of sermons] is very beautifully rounded out by starting with a sermon on the object of the devotional hour and ending with a sermon against offense, but one seeks in vain for anything scholarly in this plan. The venerable author has provided a sermon for every festival day and has particularly had in mind that the single individual would take out his book on the festival days, would gather his thoughts away from 54

55 56

[Hans Peter Kofoed-Hansen], “Enten–Eller. Et Livs-Fragment udgivet af Victor Eremita. 2 Dele. Kjøbenhavn 1843. 1ste Deel 470S. 2den Deel 368 S. 80- ,” in For Literatur og Kritik. Et Fjerdingsaarsskrift, vol. 1, no. 4, Odense 1843, pp. 377–405. See P. P. Jørgensen, H. P. Kofoed-Hansen ( Jean-Pierre): med særligt Henblik til Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen and Kristiania: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1920, pp. 95–197. [Hans Peter Kofoed-Hansen], “Enten–Eller. Et Livs-Fragment,” op. cit., p. 385. Kts. [ Jakob Peter Mynster], “Kirkelig Polemik,” Intelligensblade, vol. 4, no. 41–42, January 1, 1844, pp. 97–114.

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worldly distraction, would remind himself of the object of a devotional hour, would read the appointed sermon aloud to himself and perhaps to those close to him, would be built up by what was read, would not entirely forget it during the course of the week, but on the other hand, after having read his sermon, he would also cheerfully close the book, unconcerned about the connection of this sermon to the others, to the whole, without examining and ascertaining by close examination whether the Herr Bishop had succeeded in constructing a whole or whether it had been the Herr Bishop’s intention to want to construct a whole.57

Here, once again ironically, Nicolaus Notabene suggests that an edifying work can serve its purpose without being systematic or scholarly. Heiberg and others miss the point of this aspect of Christian edification by mistakenly seeking a systematic structure in the work of Mynster. In essence their criticisms are question-begging since they presuppose that a systematic approach is appropriate for every subject-matter, and then when they fail to find a systematic structure in Mynster’s sermons, they criticize him for it. But they fail to see that it was never Mynster’s intention to give a systematic account in the first place. Moreover, Christianity resists such a systematic account since true Christianity is, for Nicolaus Notabene, fundamentally antithetical to a system. In this sense, this can be taken as a criticism of attempts to impose a systematic structure on Christianity. But Notabene’s immediate targets are quite close to home. Nicolaus Notabene now moves to his second point of critique, which concerns the relation of the individual to religion and Christianity. Here again he appeals to Bishop Mynster as a contrast to the imagined systematic work. The point seems to be that while Mynster’s sermons draw the reader back to himself and occasion him to reflect on his own relation to Christianity, the cultured thinker abstracts from the individual. Nicolaus Notabene writes: “Bishop Mynster’s collection. . . . will particularly awaken and nourish in the single individual a more earnest self-examination, a deeper concern about himself and for himself, his well-being, his salvation, his eternal happiness. The presentation is also designed for this, which often makes it almost impossible for the reader to escape the thought that what he is reading pertains to himself.”58 This is implicitly a praise of Mynster for reminding the reader of his own personal interest in Christianity. This is indeed precisely what Kierkegaard himself insists on in other works. By contrast, the cultured thinker writing for the cultured public is not concerned about the individual: For the cultured person, however, it is truly too little to have to deal with an individual human being, even though that human being is himself. He 57 58

P, p. 31f.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 493f. Translation slightly modified. P, p. 32; SKS, vol. 4, p. 494.

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does not want to be disturbed when he is to be built up, does not want to be reminded of all the trifles, of individuals, of himself, because to forget all this is precisely the upbuilding. The life of the congregation, the grand definition of the system, the purely human – all of which does not tempt the individual to think about himself or to want to finish something but builds him up only by his thinking it over – are the subject for consideration in the present work.59

The systematic thinker has a conception of edification according to which the individual is edified by associating with the whole (i.e., the congregation). This refers once again to Heiberg’s claims about the congregation referred to earlier. By contrast, Mynster’s and presumably Kierkegaard’s view of edification concerns each individual’s personal relation to Christianity. Nicolaus Notabene’s criticism concerns what he perceives as Heiberg’s attempt to turn Christianity into something for educated people alone. The goal of Christianity is not to play a role in learned debates of the day. The goal of the true Christian is more than being one of Heiberg’s cultured individuals. Nicolaus Notabene writes ironically: That for which Christianity has striven through eighteen hundred years is specifically to produce the cultured person, who is the fairest flower and richest unfolding of the Christian life. . . . the cultured person provides the criterion and thereby contributes to the exaltation of the doctrine that admittedly began as a village affair (paganism) but now through the cultured has gained admittance to the circles where tone, manners, elegance, wit, intellect are reconciled with their vanquished opposite.60

Nicolaus Notabene criticizes Heiberg’s treatment of Christianity as a matter for educated people alone. First this betrays a complacency of assuming that every educated person is ipso facto a Christian. This is precisely the complacency at the heart of Christendom that Kierkegaard returns to criticize again later. Moreover, it excludes the uncultured and uneducated masses from full participation in Christian life and belief. Although it might appear that Nicolaus Notabene’s criticisms are of Hegel and speculative theology, in fact his targets are much more local than this. It seems overwhelmingly clear that this polemic is concerned with Heiberg and his elitism and not with Hegel or any particular aspect of his thought. At best one might argue that the systematic or intellectual tendency in theology that Nicolaus Notabene objects to is the natural result and outgrowth of Hegel’s philosophy of religion. But there is no grounds for this claim in this preface itself.

59 60

P, pp. 32–33; SKS, vol. 4, p. 494. Translation slightly modified. P, p. 33; SKS, vol. 4, p. 495. Translation slightly modified.

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v. hegel and mediation in preface vii The main theme of Preface VII seems to be the concept of mediation; moreover, there are once again references to the system61 in addition to an allusion to the first triad in Hegel’s logic, which of course consists of being, nothing, and becoming.62 Finally, Hegel’s name itself even appears here.63 Although it might appear a foregone conclusion that this preface is concerned primarily with Hegel, a closer examination renders this first impression problematic. Although the word “mediation” occurs several times throughout this preface, there is no philosophical treatment or criticism of the concept of mediation in Hegel; indeed, it is not even clear how this concept is understood here. Moreover, the tone of the preface is not academic but rather satirical and ad hominem, and there is good evidence that Nicolaus Notabene’s true target here is once again Heiberg and the Danish Hegelians. The first piece of evidence that this preface is concerned with Heiberg and the Danish Hegelians is philological in nature. As was mentioned in the Introduction to this chapter, Preface VII was originally intended as the Preface to The Concept of Anxiety. It was then rejected in favor of another one before finding its way into Prefaces. Kierkegaard removed this preface from The Concept of Anxiety with the remark: “N.B. This is not to be used since it will distract attention from the matter at hand. Therefore I have written a little preface, which will be printed with the book.”64 Kierkegaard seems to be worried here that his polemical comments have been too direct and that this polemic will lead his readers away from the actual content of The Concept of Anxiety. For this reason he decided to remove it from that context. By saying this, Kierkegaard implicitly states that the polemic here is with his Danish contemporaries. Presumably a polemic against Hegel himself would be less sensational given that he was already long since dead and was not an active participant in the Danish literary scene as were Heiberg and the other Danish Hegelians. One can hardly imagine a polemic with Hegel exciting the reader to the point that attention is distracted from the content of the text itself. The question arises why Kierkegaard was not worried that the polemical tone of this preface would also distract attention from the actual subjectmatter of Prefaces. The answer is clear: the subject-matter of this work is itself polemical and not substantive. Another piece of evidence can be found in the fact that Nicolaus Notabene refers to and criticizes above all philosophical or literary commentators, which implies ipso facto a distinction between these commentators and the original thinker whom they are commenting upon. 61 63 64

62 P, p. 45; SKS, vol. 4, p. 506. P, p. 39; SKS, vol. 4, p. 500f. P, p. 45; SKS, vol. 4, p. 506. P, Supplement, p. 118; Pap. V B 71. Translation slightly modified.

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Nicolaus Notabene wants primarily to criticize the lack of originality of his contemporary Danish thinkers who try to imitate Hegel. He imagines an author wanting to write a book on a given subject on which there are already ten books. The new book then does not add anything to what was already said in the ten previous ones but rather “mediates” the information contained in them: If mediation were really all that it is made out to be, then there is probably only one power that knows how to use it with substance and emphasis; that is the power that governs all things. And there is only one language in which it belongs: the language that is used in that council of divinity to which philosophers send delegates no more than small landholders do, and from which philosophers receive regular couriers no more than small landholders do. Since, however, the authors of the eleventh book are least of all concerned to hear about what may take place in that council, it readily follows that mediation means something else, yes, to speak more definitely, that it means nothing at all, although it still enjoys divine veneration and worship and gives everyone absolute importance.65

Although this passage seems at face value to be concerned with the principle of mediation, the criticism is that the Danish Hegelians are in fact unoriginal thinkers. They have simply internalized Hegel’s jargon and repeated it without any new or original thought having been added. Nicolaus Notabene criticizes the works of these thinkers, which are like the eleventh book on the same subject which “yields no new thought, but the only difference from the earlier ones is that the word ‘mediation’ appears several times on each page.”66 The most obvious piece of evidence that Hegel is not the true target comes toward the end of this preface where Notabene distinguishes between Hegel and someone who tries to win a reputation via Hegel. First Nicolaus Notabene refers to the issue of the beginning of philosophy: “I am already acquainted with . . . the story about the new philosophy’s beginning with Descartes, and the philosophical fairy tale about how being and nothingness combined their deficit so that becoming emerged, plus whatever marvelous things happened later in the narrative’s sequel.”67 This issue of the beginning of philosophy was discussed 65 66

67

P, p. 35f.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 497f. P, p. 36; SKS, vol. 4, p. 498. Translation slightly modified. This could well be a reference to Adler, who, as was seen in the previous chapter, is the object of much of Vigilius Haufniensis’ criticism in the Preface to The Concept of Anxiety. The term “mediation” plays a particularly important role in the Introduction to Adler’s Populaire Foredrag over Hegels objective Logik, Copenhagen 1842, § 9, pp. 19–20. ASKB 383. It is also mentioned in Heiberg’s “Det logiske System,” op. cit., § 10, pp. 21f. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 137f.) P, p. 45; SKS, vol. 4, p. 506. Translation slightly modified.

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by Heiberg in his “System of Logic”;68 it was also discussed specifically with reference to Descartes by Martensen in his aforementioned review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College.69 When one reads these lines about being and nothing combining to produce becoming, one thinks immediately of Hegel. But then one pauses when one reads the last part about “the narrative’s sequel.” This does not seem to make any sense with respect to Hegel. What sequel is there in Hegel that Nicolaus Notabene could be referring to? It does, however, make perfect sense when understood as a reference first to the initial paragraphs of Heiberg’s “System of Logic,” where Heiberg discusses these same categories, and second to the work as a whole, which promises a sequel. Nicolaus Notabene then contrasts Hegel himself with this: One reads all of this in German, and when one reads it in Hegel, one reads it in such a way that one learns something from it and often turns with deference back to the master. But even if what Hegel said were as certain as that amo belongs to the verbum: amavi, amatum, amare, and even if it were as evident as the demonstration of the Pythagorean theorem, it would still be just as fatuous as an adult’s wanting to make himself important by publishing on this subject a book that was not intended for the young and for complete novices.70

Nicolaus Notabene professes a certain degree of respect and even appreciation for Hegel’s own writings but objects to Heiberg’s attempt to co-opt them and present them to a wider public in the way he tried in Perseus to present a system of logic which is so very similar to Hegel’s. Another piece of evidence that the work is aimed at Heiberg and the Danish Hegelians comes from the manuscript of this preface that is found in the journals. In the published text one reads satirical criticisms of the anonyms Mr. A. A., Mr. B. B., and Mr. C. C.: I assume that Mr. A. A., whose promises supposedly have not weakened him, went to work and wrote the system. . . . therefore posito I assume that if Mr. A. A. did not write the system, then Mr. B. B. wrote it – then what? . . . Then one would indeed have to read it, unless Mr. C. C. would instantly be kind and philanthropic enough to promise a summary of the system and also position us in the point of view.71

68 69

70 71

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det logiske System,” op. cit., §§ 1–8, pp. 8–18. (Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 121–133.) Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole. Af J.L. Heiberg, Lærer i Logik og Æsthetik ved den kgl. militaire Høiskole,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 16, 1836, pp. 517ff. See Chapter 5, Section III. P, p. 45; SKS, vol. 4, p. 506. Translation slightly modified. P, p. 39; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 500–501.

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In the draft Kierkegaard identifies Mr. A. A. with Heiberg, Mr. B. B. with Rasmus Nielsen, and Mr. C. C. with Peter Michael Stilling.72 Here as often elsewhere, Kierkegaard has, as was customary in the journalistic polemics of the day, removed the names in the published version. In this context he constantly refers to the “promises” made by these thinkers. As has been seen in this chapter and in previous ones,73 these criticisms of the failure to complete promised systems are allusions to, on the one hand, Heiberg’s “The System of Logic,”74 which constituted the first twentythree paragraphs of a promised system, and, on the other hand, Rasmus Nielsen’s incomplete Speculative Logic in its Essentials,75 to which a subscription scheme was offered. In this preface one looks in vain for a criticism of Hegel himself or of his principle of mediation. There were criticisms of this principle among many of Hegel’s contemporary critics, such as Trendelenburg76 and the younger Fichte,77 but one finds nothing of this kind here. The satirical tone and the numerous references to the local Danish Hegelians lead one to the conclusion that there is not much left of the original Hegelian principle in the criticism. Thus, there is every reason to think that this discussion of mediation is intended as an allusion to the Danish debate about the issue. But it can in no way be seen as a substantial treatment of the issue on a par with the discussions in Either/Or and the Postscript. The account here is purely polemical and not philosophical. Nicolaus Notabene’s critique seems to be aimed particularly at the imitators of Hegel. He wonders why some Hegelian does not take out an ad in the newspaper and offer to explain philosophy and history by means of mediation to all interested parties: “Assisted by mediation, everyone is then able to acquire absolute and immortal importance in relation to bygone world history. Therefore it is strange that in the Adresseavis no one offers to perfect everyone (in less than three hours), everyone with only middling preparatory knowledge.”78 This recalls the reports about Martensen’s lectures that seemed to offer the philosopher’s stone to the students after a single semester.79 Nicolaus Notabene’s real target is the pretension of 72 73 74 75 76 77

78 79

P, Supplement, p. 119; Pap. V B 96. See SKS, vol. K4, pp. 606–608. E.g., Chapter 9, Section I, pp. 384–385. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det logiske System,” op. cit., pp. 1–45. (Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 113–166.) Rasmus Nielsen, Den speculative Logik i dens Grundtræk, Copenhagen 1841–44. Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Die logische Frage in Hegels System. Zwei Streitschriften, Leipzig 1843. ASKB 846. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, De principiorum contradictionis, identitatis, exclusi tertii in logicis dignitate et ordine commentatio, Bonn 1840. ASKB 507. Beiträge zur Charakteristik der neueren Philosophie, oder kritische Geschichte derselben von Des Cartes und Locke bis auf Hegel. Zweite, sehr vermehrte und verbesserte Ausgabe. Sulzbach 1841, pp. 842–871. See also pp. 807ff. ASKB 508. P, p. 37; SKS, vol. 4, p. 499. Translation slightly modified. See Chapter 5, Section II, pp. 258–260.

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mediocre thinkers to be great minds by imitating this Hegelian principle. His criticism is of people like Heiberg, Nielsen, Stilling, Martensen, and Adler who do what any “industrious parrot”80 can do by imitating Hegel. But this is, if anything, a praise of Hegel for his originality, even if Kierkegaard does not happen to agree with him on every point.

vi. hegel and hegelians in preface viii The eighth and final preface, the longest in the book, is purportedly to a new philosophical journal, entitled Philosophical Deliberations.81 As was indicated previously, there is evidence that Kierkegaard in fact intended to found a journal of this kind and thus that this preface is not wholly fictional. Here there is ample evidence at first glance that suggests that Hegel plays a significant role here. This preface is divided into paragraphs presumably in order to mimic the Hegelians’ style of writing. Hegel is also named directly,82 and, moreover, there are scattered references to the system,83 the mediation of opposites in a higher unity,84 the absolute,85 philosophy as the highest form of cognition,86 the Idea,87 and the Concept,88 all of which seem to point to Hegel as the prime target of the satire here. I wish to argue that this final preface, like the previous ones, is directed primarily against Heiberg. In this preface, which is full of direct and indirect references and allusions to Heiberg’s works, Nicolaus Notabene satirizes Heiberg in his role as editor of philosophical journals and in particular for his propagation of Hegel’s philosophy in this journalistic forum. The very premise of this preface, namely as a mock Danish journal of philosophy in contrast to Heiberg’s Perseus, suggests that the criticism is aimed at the dissemination or reception of Hegel’s philosophy via literary journals. By having Nicolaus Notabene write a preface to a journal, Kierkegaard is able to satirize Heiberg’s journalistic activity. By means of this device, he is able to contrast Nicolaus Notabene’s journal with Heiberg’s Perseus, which is mentioned explicitly in the first paragraph.89 Notabene begins by comparing his undertaking with Heiberg’s and speculates on his own prospects of success given the fact that Perseus only saw two numbers.90 He likewise contrasts his own lowly

80 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 90

81 P, p. 65; SKS, vol. 4, p. 525. P, p. 36; SKS, vol. 4, p. 498. P, p. 56; SKS, vol. 4, p. 517. P, p. 57; SKS, vol. 4, p. 518. P, p. 49; SKS, vol. 4, p. 510. P, p. 65; SKS, vol. 4, p. 525. P, p. 58; SKS, vol. 4, p. 518. P, p. 60; SKS, vol. 4, p. 520. P, p. 64; SKS, vol. 4, p. 524. P, p. 62; SKS, vol. 4, p. 522. P, p. 50; SKS, vol. 4, p. 511. P, p. 63; SKS, vol. 4, p. 523. 89 P, p. 47; SKS, vol. 4, p. 508. P, p. 63; SKS, vol. 4, p. 523. I.e., no. 1, 1837, no. 2, 1838.

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stature with that of Heiberg: any younger person would feel flattered by the mere thought of the literary prestige of having the honor of being a contributor to Prof. Heiberg’s journal, which no younger person understands better than I, who still am often reminded of how at the time the youthful mind felt intoxicated by daring to believe that a contribution would not be rejected, of how no young cadet could look up more enthusiastically to the famous general under whose banner he is to fight than I did to the Flyvepost’s unforgettable editor.91

This reference to Heiberg is clearly autobiographical. As was noted previously,92 as a student Kierkegaard wrote a number of articles in Heiberg’s Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post; in addition, his review of Hans Christian Andersen’s Only a Fiddler, entitled Papers of One Still Living, was intended for Heiberg’s Perseus. The article was rejected, and Kierkegaard published it on his own. This episode nonetheless shows the young Kierkegaard’s desire to win the approval of Heiberg and indicates that he at the time apparently had nothing against helping him to further his academic agenda of Hegelianism. These direct references to Heiberg as the editor of Perseus and Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post here at the beginning point to the view that Heiberg is the main object of criticism. Nicolaus Notabene contrasts his journal with Heiberg’s by saying that while Heiberg’s stated goal is to investigate the three aspects of the speculative Idea (i.e., art, religion, and philosophy), his goal, by contrast, is to explain to himself how this is possible. While Heiberg presupposes a knowledge that is taught to the reader, Nicolaus Notabene professes an ignorance and invites his contributors to explain philosophy to him. The goal of his journal is to cure the ignorance of its editor and to make philosophy accessible to him and others like him who have failed to understand it: “My purpose, then, is to serve philosophy; my qualification for this is that I am obtuse enough not to understand it, indeed still more obtuse – obtuse enough to betray it. And yet my enterprise can only benefit philosophy, since no harm can come to it from the fact that even the most obtuse person can make it out.”93 In contrast to Heiberg who wishes to instruct with his journal, Nicolaus Notabene expresses his wish as follows: “My scholarly expectation is that I may be overcome, may win by losing, or to express myself in another way that tallies exactly with my feelings, that good people may succeed in enabling me to understand philosophy.”94 This then allows Nicolaus Notabene to contrast the purpose of his journal with that of Heiberg’s Perseus: “Is this not a good 91 92 93 94

P, pp. 47–48; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 508–509. Translation slightly modified. Chapter 2, Section IV. P, p. 51; SKS, vol. 4, p. 512. Translation slightly modified. P, p. 55; SKS, vol. 4, p. 515. Translation slightly modified.

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purpose, and is it not one different from the purpose of those who previously have attempted to publish a philosophical journal, even though in it there is agreement with their purpose: to want to serve philosophy? Yet the services are different; the one serves it through his wisdom, the other through his obtuseness.”95 Here the former is an ironic reference to Heiberg, while the latter is presumably an ironic self-reference to Nicolaus Notabene himself. Nicolaus Notabene’s ironically feigned stupidity is intended to satirize Heiberg’s elitism. As has been seen, Heiberg claims that philosophy is solely the domain of the cultured. Moreover, according to his view, some have a calling to philosophy as a vocation, while others do not. The satirical speech made by the voice of philosophy explains to Nicolaus Notabene why he does not belong to the group of those chosen to understand: “I am only for the chosen ones, for those who were marked early in their cradles.”96 In his response, Nicolaus Notabene says, “Then the confusion will come to an end, the chosen ones will follow you, and the rest of us will not sorrow too much over our having been excluded.”97 There is a passage that makes particularly clear that Nicolaus Notabene distinguishes between Hegel and the Hegelians, and that he intends to criticize the latter. He states that it is the goal of his journal to gain an understanding of Hegel’s philosophy, which has eluded him heretofore, and he intends to ask his readers for an explanation of it: There is one thing that I do desire of my contemporaries: it is an explanation. Consequently I do not deny that Hegel has explained everything; I leave that to the powerful minds who will also explain what is missing. I keep my feet on the ground and say: I have not understood Hegel’s explanation. From this, in turn, I draw no other conclusion than that I have not understood him. I leave further conclusions to the powers that be who find authorization for this in their personalities.98

Here Nicolaus Notabene indirectly contrasts Hegel and Heiberg. With respect to Hegel he says that he does not understand him, and he explicitly refrains from giving further commentary on this. In other words, he offers no criticism of Hegel for being unintelligible or nonsensical, but says merely that he has not understood him. By contrast, the last sentence may be read as questioning the presumption of Heiberg for having appointed himself as Hegel’s Danish spokesman. Nicolaus Notabene thus says that he defers to experts such as Heiberg who claim to understand Hegel’s philosophy and asks them to explain it to him. Here once again it is quite clear that the criticism is not of Hegel’s philosophy itself but of Heiberg’s dissemination of it and his pretension to 95 97

P, p. 51; SKS, vol. 4, p. 512. P, p. 64; SKS, vol. 4, p. 524.

96 98

P, p. 63; SKS, vol. 4, p. 523. P, p. 56; SKS, vol. 4, p. 516f.

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explain it. Nicolaus Notabene then voices his expectation that Heiberg and the Danish Hegelians should provide him with a comprehensible account of the Hegelian philosophy. There is further evidence that Nicolaus Notabene’s primary targets here are Heiberg and the Danish Hegelians. At the beginning of the second paragraph he criticizes those who labor for philosophy: “However satisfying it is to see philosophy spread throughout the land, so that before long no one will be found anymore who is not moved by its impulse, initiated into its blessings, for me this satisfaction has still not been able to overcome the doubt about whether the many qui nomen philosophiae dederunt have actually understood what was said and what they themselves said.”99 Here Nicolaus Notabene speaks above all of Heiberg’s propagation of Hegelian philosophy in Denmark. Thus, it is clear that Nicolaus Notabene is not speaking of Hegel himself but of those of his contemporaries who have been influenced by him. This is confirmed by what follows: “On the basis of certain observations, I once believed that I had ascertained things were not entirely right with some of my esteemed contemporaries.”100 Nicolaus Notabene’s constant references to his “contemporaries” make it clear that he has in mind Danish Hegelians such as Heiberg and not Hegel himself. In what follows there is also a reference to Martensen’s claim “to doubt everything,”101 which Kierkegaard, as was seen previously,102 constantly invokes with the Latin phrase “de omnibus dubitandum est.” As in the previous preface, Nicolaus Notabene is critical of Hegel’s Danish imitators. Here he surely has Heiberg and Martensen in mind. He indicates how often the Hegelians claim originality while in fact they are merely parroting Hegel: I have read philosophical treatises in which nearly every thought, almost every expression, was from Hegel. After having read through them, I have thought: Who, now, actually is the author? Hegel, I have then said to myself, is the author; the one who has written the treatise is his reporter and as such he is dependable and accurate. This I could understand. But look! This was not the way it was; the author was a man who had gone beyond Hegel.103

Nicolaus Notabene refers to Heiberg’s “The System of Logic” in which Heiberg begins his own account of logic in a fashion more or less identical with Hegel and then in the last paragraphs makes some slight modifications, thereby claiming originality. The beginning of his final paragraph reads as follows: “By way of excursus it can still be noted (for those who are interested), to what degree the exposition given heretofore is different 99 101 103

100 P, p. 49; SKS, vol. 4, p. 510. P, p. 49; SKS, vol. 4, p. 510. 102 Chapter 5, Section I. P, p. 49; SKS, vol. 4, p. 510. P, p. 57; SKS, vol. 4, p. 517. Translation slightly modified.

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from that of Hegel. (1) For Hegel absolute being is expounded with the categories: a) being, b) nothing, c) becoming. But this order must be seen as a slight oversight, for it is in conflict with the rest of the system’s entire structure.”104 Nicolaus Notabene criticizes this as follows: Hegel knew how to formulate the whole of modern philosophy in such a way that it looks as if he brought everything to an end and everything previous tended toward him. Someone else now makes a similar presentation, a presentation that to a hair is inseparable from Hegel’s, that consequently is pervaded at every point by this final thought, and to this is added a concluding paragraph in which one testifies that one has gone beyond Hegel.105

This seems clearly to refer to Heiberg’s pretension to originality and to the correction of the errors of Hegel. But it is clear that in itself this is not a criticism of Hegel. Although key concepts from Hegel’s philosophy are mentioned several times throughout this preface, there is no substantive discussion of his thought whatsoever. On the contrary, Nicolaus Notabene is concerned with the dissemination of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark,106 which is Heiberg’s doing. Nicolaus Notabene finds this presumptuous and condescending. But this has nothing to do with Hegel’s philosophy per se. In a certain sense it could just as well be any other given philosophical trend since the content of that philosophy is not specifically at issue, at least not here. Prefaces can be regarded as the high point of Kierkegaard’s polemic with Heiberg. Even though he had published a brief response to Heiberg’s review of Either/Or and had written sketches of articles against Heiberg, Kierkegaard concentrates his anti-Heiberg polemic in its most vigorous form in Prefaces. It is interesting to compare the picture of Hegel that Kierkegaard presents in light of the changing relation to Heiberg. As was seen previously, in Kierkegaard’s early work, From the Papers of One Still Living, Hegel was presented in a quite positive light. Hegel is also used in a very positive way in both The Concept of Irony and Either/Or, and in both texts Heiberg is also referred to deferentially. As has been argued, at this early period Kierkegaard was interested in Heiberg’s aesthetic program and, indeed, aspired to publication in Heiberg’s Hegelian journal. Now some years later in Prefaces, Kierkegaard has his pseudonym criticize specifically Heiberg’s journal and his promulgation of Hegelianism in Denmark. Moreover, Hegel himself is also mentioned occasionally in less 104 105 106

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det logiske System,” op. cit., § 23, p. 44. (Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 165.) P, p. 57; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 517–518. P, p. 48; SKS, vol. 4, p. 509. P, p. 49; SKS, vol. 4, p. 510. P, p. 56; SKS, vol. 4, p. 516.

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than respectful tones. This change in view comes only after Kierkegaard’s alienation from Heiberg, which was caused by Heiberg’s reviews of his works and seems to be more or less independent of Heiberg’s Hegelianism. Why then did Kierkegaard choose to make this one of the central points of his polemic with Heiberg? One of the reasons is almost certainly that this was something that Heiberg was known for in intellectual circles in Denmark, and thus Kierkegaard could have his pseudonym refer to some aspect of Hegel’s thought or to the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark, and his readers would immediately associate the comment with Heiberg. Thus, Kierkegaard could make his polemic with Heiberg more entertaining and effective due to the fact that Heiberg was such a visible figure in Danish intellectual life, and Kierkegaard could thus rely on his reading public knowing certain things about him. If this is correct, then the question of Hegel’s own philosophy is ultimately a secondary issue since the primary goal, at least of Prefaces, is clearly to satirize Heiberg and not to criticize any specific aspect of Hegel’s thought. Prefaces can fairly be said to belong to the second period in Kierkegaard’s developing relation to Hegel, i.e., to the period of texts, beginning with Fear and Trembling, which use Hegel polemically. However, the antiHegel rhetoric here is not particularly sharp and the role that Hegel himself actually plays here is quite minimal, especially when compared to the role played by unnamed Hegelians. If one puts aside the references to Hegelians and looks only for references to Hegel himself, one finds that his name in fact only occurs a couple of times in the text, and nowhere is any substantial philosophical point from his thought taken up for serious discussion. Thus, as in Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, and The Concept of Anxiety, so also in Prefaces Hegel seems to be present in some vague way in a couple of individual passages, but he can in no way be said to play a dominant role in the work as a whole. Hegel is used in different ways in these texts, but he is not the primary subject matter of the discussion in his own right. Moreover, in all of these texts much of what goes under the name of Hegel is in fact a discussion with others (e.g., with Martensen in Philosophical Fragments, or with Adler in The Concept of Anxiety, and now with Heiberg in Prefaces). As was mentioned in the Introduction to this chapter, Prefaces is Kierkegaard’s most polemical work: its polemic is directed almost solely against Heiberg. To be sure other figures such as Martensen, Nielsen, Stilling, and Kofoed-Hansen play a role here, but Heiberg is undoubtedly the main target. This polemic can be witty, amusing – indeed, it is – and even true, but for whatever it is, it cannot be regarded as a substantive philosophical statement or criticism. What is being attacked in the work is the person and character of Heiberg, which in the context of journalistic polemics in nineteenth century Copenhagen makes perfect sense; indeed, literary invective of this nature was common practice, and Heiberg

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himself was one of its most able practitioners, but in the context of philosophy or logic this amounts to a simple argumentum ad hominem. Thus, Prefaces can under no circumstances be regarded as a philosophical criticism of Hegel’s thought and only with a stretch of the imagination can it be regarded as a philosophical criticism of Heiberg’s. The main goal of the piece seems to be polemic and amusement and nothing more. Kierkegaard makes fun of Heiberg but makes little if any attempt to address the theoretical issues of Heiberg’s thought. Thus, for the purposes of the present investigation, it seems clear that if Kierkegaard has a substantive criticism of Hegel’s philosophy, one must look elsewhere for it.


11 SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE THINKING: HEGEL IN THE CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT

Kierkegaard published the Concluding Unscientific Postscript on February 28, 1846, and many individual bits of evidence indicate that it is a crucial text in his literary corpus as a whole. It was of course the companion volume to the Philosophical Fragments and was therefore published under the same pseudonym, Johannes Climacus. Moreover, the Postscript represents one of the most comprehensive statements of his mature views: not only do earlier ideas find their full expression there, but outlines of a number of views developed later can also be discerned. The Postscript is one of the most philosophical texts authored by Kierkegaard and has been regarded by some commentators as the origin of the existential tradition of European philosophy. All of this has made it one of his most read works and one of the most important for the reception of his thought in general. In reviewing his authorship as a whole, Kierkegaard himself reserves a special place for the Postscript, designating it “the turning point” in his literary work.1 In his own account of his literary career in The Point of View for My Work as an Author, he explains his general publication plan and the unique role of the Postscript therein. There he omits his early book-review, From the Papers of One Still Living, and his dissertation, The Concept of Irony, and declares that his authorship began in 1843 with Either/Or. This work initiates the series of pseudonymous books that lead up to the Postscript in 1846.2 In the Postscript itself in the section “A Glance at a Contemporary Effort in Danish Literature,” Johannes Climacus characterizes these works as “aesthetic.” In The Point of View for My Work as an Author and On My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard indicates that he intentionally published, parallel to these pseudonymous works, a series of religious writings, the 1 2

PV, p. 55; SV1, vol. 13, p. 542. PV, p. 31; SV1, vol. 13, p. 523. See also Pap. X-1 A 118. Namely, Either/Or (Victor Eremita) 1843, Repetition (Constantin Constantius) 1843, Fear and Trembling ( Johannes de silentio) 1843, the Philosophical Fragments ( Johannes Climacus) 1844, The Concept of Anxiety (Vigilius Haufniensis) 1844, Prefaces (Nicolaus Notabene) 1844, and Stages on Life’s Way (Hilarius Bookbinder) 1845.

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hegel in the postscript

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various upbuilding or edifying discourses. There were thus two parallel authorships – one religious and one aesthetic. The Postscript is particularly important since it brings together the parallel authorships. Kierkegaard writes: “The first division of books is aesthetic writing; the last division of books is exclusively religious writing – between these lies the Concluding Unscientific Postscript as the turning point.”3 Although the Postscript also has a pseudonym (i.e., Johannes Climacus), Kierkegaard adds “A First and Last Explanation” on unnumbered pages at the end of the work in which he reveals that he is the author of the various pseudonymous works, including the Postscript itself. This work is therefore in a sense both pseudonymous and signed. Moreover, it unites the two parts of the authorship. Kierkegaard refers to this publication strategy as a “comprehensive plan in the entire production.”4 A word of caution about this plan must be given since, as has been noted previously,5 there is evidence that Kierkegaard’s decision to publish some of the works pseudonymously was not carefully planned but rather only decided at the last minute and on the spur of the moment. Moreover, it would be a mistake to insist on a hard and fast distinction between the edifying authorship and the pseudonymous works since, as recent authors have pointed out, they have much in common with respect to both content and form. The explanation for this elaborate publication scheme lies in Kierkegaard’s biography. He seems to have been obsessed with the idea that he would die, as Christ did, at the age of thirty-three.6 Apparently, sometime after his dissertation he thus conceived of the plan for a parallel authorship that would be completed before he reached the age of thirty-four. He planned for the Postscript to be his final book according 3

4

5 6

PV, p. 31; SV1, vol. 13, p. 523. See also PV, p. 8; SV1, vol. 13, p. 496: “Two Edifying Discourses (1843) is in fact concurrent with Either/Or. And in order to safeguard this concurrence of the directly religious, each pseudonymous work was accompanied concurrently by a little collection of ‘edifying discourses’ – until the Concluding Postscript appeared.” Translation slightly modified. JP, vol. 6, 6346; Pap. X-1 A 116. For a detailed account, see Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, “The Retrospective Understanding of Søren Kierkegaard’s Total Production,” in Kierkegaard. Resources and Results, ed. by Alastair McKinnon, Montreal: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 1982, pp. 18–38. Introduction, Section IV, pp. 40–41. SKS, vol. 20, pp. 122f., NB: 210: “It is strange that I have become 34 years old. It’s wholly unfathomable; I was so sure that I would die before that birthday or on it that I could really be tempted to assume that my birthday has been recorded wrong.” See also Hans Brøchner’s recollections of Kierkegaard: “K[ierkegaard] once told me – it occurs to me in referring to his age – that as a young man he had for many years had the firm conviction that he would die when he reached the age of thirty-three. (Was it Jesus’ age which also was to be the norm for Jesus’ imitator?) This belief was so ingrained in him that when he did reach this age, he even checked in the parish records to see if it really were true; that was how difficult it was for him to believe it.” Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard. A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1996, p. 240.


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to this scheme, being certain that he would die afterwards. In this sense the word “concluding” in the title refers to the work not just as a conclusion to the Philosophical Fragments but also as the termination of Kierkegaard’s activity as an author generally. Thus, it seems that in the Postscript Kierkegaard was at some level trying to settle old scores and to present a final or culminating picture of his views.7 Another biographical reason for the notion that the Postscript was to be his final work was that Kierkegaard intended to give up writing altogether and become a country priest. In February 1846, just a few weeks before the appearance of the Postscript, he writes: it is now my intention to qualify as a pastor. For several months I have been praying to God to keep on helping me. For it has been clear to me for sometime now that I ought not to be a writer any longer, something I can only be totally or not at all. This is the reason I have not started anything new along with proof-correcting except for the little review of Two Ages, which again is concluding.8

Kierkegaard did, of course, continue his literary production after the Postscript. However, the character of the works after 1846 is different, with the religious writings assuming the central role that the pseudonymous writings had enjoyed before. Corresponding to this turning point in Kierkegaard’s published works is a shift in focus in his journals and papers. Prior the Postscript, the entries in the journals are a mixture of reflections on various subjects, lecture notes, reading notes, drafts of works in progress, but after 1846 the journals take on a different character. After the Postscript, the entries are more self-referential in the sense that Kierkegaard attempts repeatedly to explain himself and his literary production. The journals take on the aspect of an apologia pro mea vita. Given these various factors both biographical and literary, the importance of the role of the Postscript as a pivotal work for Kierkegaard’s literary enterprise as a whole can hardly be overestimated. 7

8

This should make one wary of the so-called “ironic” readings of the work, which regard it as making one big joke in its general construction or its use of Hegel’s philosophy. If Kierkegaard conceived of the Postscript as his final book before his death, a book that he worked on vigorously to complete before what he perceived as his imminent demise, then it hardly makes sense that he would take such pains merely for the sake of a joke. E.g., Henry E. Allison, “Christianity and Nonsense,” Review of Metaphysics, 20, 1967, pp. 432–460. Reprinted in Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by Josiah Thompson, Garden City, New York: Anchor Books 1972, pp. 289–323. See the response in Alastair Hannay’s “Kierkegaard and What We Mean by ‘Philosophy,’” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 2000, pp. 1–22. JP, vol. 5, 5873; SKS, vol. 18, p. 278, JJ:415. In a similar vein, he writes in his journals in 1848: “Originally I had thought to end my work as an author with the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, to withdraw to the country and in quiet unobtrusiveness to sorrow over my sins”( JP, vol. 6, 6157; SKS, vol. 20, p. 393, NB5:51).



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Not only was the Postscript the turning point in Kierkegaard’s authorship generally, but it was also an important turning point in his relation to Hegel. From the very first publications, From the Papers of One Still Living and The Concept of Irony, through the pseudonymous works up to the Postscript, there had been a steady dialogue with Hegelian philosophy. Sometimes sympathetic and sometimes hostile, the dialogue clearly was important to Kierkegaard’s intellectual agenda. The previous discussions come to a head in the Postscript where Hegel’s philosophy seems to be made one of the main objects of discussion and criticism. After the Postscript, Kierkegaard, for whatever reason, makes his peace with Hegelianism. After 1846 there are almost no references to it in either Kierkegaard’s published works or the journals, and thus it apparently ceases to be an issue for him after this time. Once again many factors point to the Postscript as the decisive work for this shift. The Postscript constitutes a crucial text in the present investigation since it is generally perceived as Kierkegaard’s most extended criticism of Hegelianism. The very title of the book as “unscientific” seems to be intended as an ironic reference to Hegel’s conception of philosophy as a system. Here terms such as “the system,” “the method,” “speculative philosophy,” and “the objective view,” all seem to stand for Hegel and Hegelianism. In the body of the text, Johannes Climacus opposes to these terms what he considers fundamentally Christian categories. While speculative philosophy makes use of direct communication, Christianity uses indirect communication. While the individual is objectively related to the objects of speculative philosophy, the Christian believer is subjectively related to his or her belief. While speculative philosophy is attractive and seductive, Christianity represents something repellent, an offense. While speculative philosophy is passionless, Christianity represents infinite pathos and passion. While the speculative thinker abstracts from himself in order to gain a speculative perspective, the Christian concentrates as much as possible on himself as an existing individual subject. Thus, Christianity is presented as the antipode of speculative philosophy, and the two positions are in a sense carved out in relation to one another. Despite all this, I will argue that the standard interpretation of the Postscript as a polemic with Hegel is, generally speaking, a misunderstanding. When one examines the text carefully, one finds that although a great deal of it purports to be about Hegel, little of Hegel’s actual thought is present. The picture of Hegel presented here is not one based on his primary texts but is rather simply a position, in many ways arbitrary, which Kierkegaard has Climacus use as a contrast to his own view. In this sense, the Hegel of the Postscript has more to do with Kierkegaard than with the actual thought or writings of the German philosopher himself. I wish to argue that the polemic here is in fact primarily with


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Martensen9 and Heiberg, who stood for a certain picture of Hegelianism in Kierkegaard’s eyes. This becomes clear when one examines a number of veiled terms and expressions, which Johannes Climacus uses to refer to these Danish Hegelians in the text. In this chapter, I will claim, contrary to the standard view, that Hegel’s presence in the Postscript is at best secondhand. Although there is a fair amount of repetition in the text, a commentary on virtually the entire work would be required in order to extract all of the purported criticisms of Hegelian doctrines. Since I cannot provide a systematic commentary of this kind in the present study, I have endeavored to isolate the most important criticisms that have then been treated individually. In this chapter I will first analyze specific, frequently used, terms and expressions, which I refer to as Kierkegaard’s “code,” since (as in other works) he identifies the contemporary targets of his various criticisms in the work by means of such encoded expressions. In the next section I will turn to Climacus’ account of “The Speculative Point of View”10 in which he argues for the absurdity of basing faith on speculative philosophy. In Section III, I will treat Climacus’ claim that speculative philosophy eliminates the paradox of Christianity by explaining it.11 Section IV continues this discussion by treating Climacus’ criticism that speculative philosophy reduces Christianity to a finite form of knowing.12 The next section treats the frequently recurring criticism that the speculative philosopher tends to forget his own existence in his abstract thought.13 In Section VI, I will examine Climacus’ criticism of speculative philosophy for the claim to make a presuppositionless beginning.14 In the next section I will examine the ethically misguided desire to become a world-historical individual which, Climacus claims, speculative philosophy promotes.15 Then in Section VIII, I will turn to Climacus’ criticism of the thesis of the unity of being and thought that lies at the foundation of Hegel’s philosophy.16 Next, I will return to the discussion of the law of excluded middle,17 which has been explored in previous chapters in the context of other works.18 Finally, I will examine Climacus’ charge,

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

See Arild Christensen, “Efterskriftens Opgør med Martensen,” Kierkegaardiana, 4, 1962, pp. 45–62. CUP1, pp. 50–57; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 54–61. CUP1, pp. 199–231; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 182–211. CUP1, pp. 199–231; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 182–211. CUP1, pp. 50–57; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 54–61. CUP1, pp. 106–125; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 103–120. CUP1, pp. 129–141; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 121–131. CUP1, pp. 106–125; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 103–120. CUP1, pp. 129–141; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 121–131. CUP1, pp. 189–199; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 173–182. CUP1, pp. 329–335; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 300–306. CUP1, pp. 304–310; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 277–282. CUP1, pp. 399–422; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 363– 384. Chapter 4, Section II. Chapter 9, Section IV.


the true targets of the postscript

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which appears in a number of scattered passages throughout the text, that Hegel’s system has no ethics.

i. the true targets of the postscript It is understandable that in the history of interpretation, the Postscript has been generally regarded as Kierkegaard’s great polemic against Hegel, if only due to the number of times key terms from Hegelian philosophy, such as “the system,” “the method,” “world history,” and “mediation,” appear in the text. But a number of factors should make one wary of this interpretation. First, the heyday of Hegelianism in Denmark reached its climax around the time of Kierkegaard’s dissertation in 1841 and was over in 1846 when the Postscript appeared.19 In a footnote in the work itself, Climacus refers to Poul Martin Møller’s relation to Hegel.20 He writes: “when everything here at home was Hegelian, [Møller] judged quite differently.”21 The period referred to is presumably 1837 when Møller published his essay “Thoughts on the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality,” in which he distanced himself from Hegel’s philosophy.22 The time in question can hardly be later than this since Møller died a year later in 1838. Thus, it is no surprise that Climacus uses the past tense, thus indicating that the period during which everything in Denmark was Hegelian was over at the time when he was writing this work. If Hegelianism was no longer a decisive trend in Danish intellectual life, why would Kierkegaard feel the need to criticize it at this point and why not earlier when it was more vital? Moreover, it is hard to overlook the bitter personal tone of Climacus’ attack, which is difficult to explain merely by a difference of philosophical viewpoints. Hegel and his followers are accused of being dishonest, presumptuous, immoral, and absent-minded; having no sense of humor; playing tricks; deceiving the youth, and so on. Kierkegaard had offered criticisms of Hegel in the past, but they rarely had the tone of personal accusations. What is different about the Postscript? Why did this ad hominem tone suddenly appear? When one reads the ostensible polemic against Hegel in the Postscript, one is surprised to find that there are virtually no quotations from Hegel’s primary texts, no textual analyses, and when 19

20 22

Koch puts the end of Danish Hegelianism at 1849 with the publication of Martensen’s Den christlige Dogmatik. But it remains an open question to what degree this work is really Hegelian. Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse eller om Adolph Peter Adler og om Søren Kierkegaards forhold til ham, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag A/S 1990, p. 20. 21 CUP1, p. 34fn.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 41fn. See Chapter 1, Section III, pp. 74–77. Poul Martin Møller, “Tanker over Muligheden af Beviser for Menneskets Udødelighed,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 17, Copenhagen 1837, pp. 1–72, pp. 422–53. (Reprinted in Møller’s Efterladte Skrifter, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen 1839–43, vol. 2, pp. 158–272. ASKB 1574–1576.)


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Hegel’s name does come up, it is usually incidental and not in the context of any substantive discussion of his thought. Instead, certain key terms or concepts like the ones listed previously are presented, which are generally intended to stand for Hegelianism or some picture of it. As has been indicated, I would like to argue that the Postscript is primarily concerned not so much with Hegel himself but rather with Kierkegaard’s old enemies Martensen and, perhaps to a lesser degree, Heiberg, two of the chief exponents of Danish Hegelianism. The claim that the Postscript is intended in large part as a hidden polemic against Martensen is supported by a number of scattered pieces of evidence. In his journals, Kierkegaard reflects on a controversy between Martensen and a student of theology, Magnus Eir´ıksson (1806–81). The latter, who was familiar with Kierkegaard’s code, rightly saw in the Postscript a criticism of Martensen, but in an unpublished response Kierkegaard says ironically that in “the whole book no student can have found a word about Prof. Martensen.”23 This suggests that Kierkegaard intentionally avoided mentioning actual names in his text and instead engaged in indirect or veiled criticism as he did in most of the other works examined so far. In his autobiography from years later Martensen reflects on Kierkegaard’s animosity. In a very telling fashion, he writes of Kierkegaard: “He sought to annihilate and extinguish every bit of activity that emanated from me. He did not attack me directly at all. . . . he never attacked me in straightforward and open battle.”24 Years later in his attack on the Church, Kierkegaard himself says more or less the same thing when reflecting back on this period: Bishop Martensen and I are not, as they say, entirely unacquainted with each other. For many years there has been, literarily, an unsettled account between us. But as long as the old bishop, who for better or for worse was such a friend of calmness, was living (also out of devotion to my late father), I took care from my side that it could go on quietly. . . . I refused to attack him by name – and Bishop Martensen maintained silence.25

Here Kierkegaard says straightforwardly that he criticized Martensen covertly through the pseudonyms and other means, and that he intentionally made an effort to veil these criticisms out of respect both for his father, presumably to avoid a scandal, and for Bishop Mynster, who was 23

24

25

CUP2, Supplement, p. 132; Pap. VII-1 B 88, p. 292. Eir´ıksson was one of Martensen’s students who published under his own name what was essentially material from Martensen’s lectures. Martensen accused him of plagiarism, and a bitter controversy ensued in which Eir´ıksson tried to get Martensen dismissed from the university. Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1882–83, vol. 2, p. 140. Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 197. M, p. 81; SV1, vol. 14, p. 95f.



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on good terms with Martensen. In a journal entry Kierkegaard reflects on the criticisms of Martensen that he presented through the years under the various pseudonyms. He notes explicitly, “the pseudonyms always made only an indirect attack.”26 Although these criticisms were veiled, contemporary readers had no difficulty recognizing Martensen as their target. Years later in the context of the attack on the church, Kierkegaard writes: Even when the person who for Bishop Martensen certainly must be regarded as the most dangerous person to say it, even when Prof. Nielsen in print gave him to understand that my pseudonym had disposed of him, which then for him the most dangerous person (next to Prof. Nielsen) to say it, Dr. Stilling, again in print gave him to understand, and which later was quite bluntly said to him in print – Bishop Martensen maintained silence.27

Here Kierkegaard refers to Rasmus Nielsen’s joint review of the Postscript and Martensen’s Christian Dogmatics (1849),28 in which Nielsen shows the former to be a criticism of precisely the kind of objective thinking contained in the latter. Kierkegaard’s response to this review was that Nielsen had been too direct in his criticism of Martensen.29 He felt so strongly about this that it caused a falling out between Kierkegaard and Nielsen after a period when the two men were on quite good terms. There is evidence in Kierkegaard’s journals that he was exercised by Martensen’s Dogmatics and planned a response to the work that he never published, presumably because the polemic would have had to be too direct.30 The second reference in the passage quoted previously is an allusion to a work by the Hegelian Peter Michael Stilling, which was also critical of Martensen’s Dogmatics.31 These allusions make it clear that readers such as Nielsen and Stilling could see in the Postscript the polemic against Martensen, although Kierkegaard took care not to name the target of his criticism directly. One of the ways in which Kierkegaard covertly criticized Martensen was via what seemed to be a criticism of Hegel. That this criticism was carried out under the flag of a critique of Hegel was also noted by Kierkegaard’s contemporaries. In his article on Danish Hegelianism, 26 27 28

29 30

31

JP, vol. 6, 6636, p. 327; Pap. X-6 B 137, p. 187. M, p. 81; SV1, vol. 14, p. 96. Rasmus Nielsen, Mag. S. Kierkegaards “Johannes Climacus” og Dr. H. Martensens “Christelige Dogmatik.” En undersøgende Anmeldelse, Copenhagen 1849. ASKB 701. See also his Dr. H. Martensens dogmatiske Oplysninger, Copenhagen 1850. ASKB 703. Pap. X-6 B 83–102. Pap. X-6 B 133–143. See also “Martensen’s Dogmatics and its Reception,” in Kierkegaard and the Church in Denmark, by Niels Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 13), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel 1984, pp. 169–197. Peter Michael Stilling, Om den indbildte Forsoning af Tro og Viden med særligt Hensyn til Prof. Martensens Dogmatik, Copenhagen 1850. ASKB 802.


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Hans Friedrich Helweg writes: “Later as is well known, Kierkegaard’s protest against Hegel through the pseudonyms became an ever sharper attack on Martensen.”32 Here Helweg says that it is “well known,” i.e., that it is obvious to the contemporary reader. Martensen himself clearly recognizes this as well when he writes: “His [Kierkegaard’s] writings of course contained all sorts of polemical and satirical attacks on speculation, a portion of which was directed at me.”33 During the years before the publication of the Postscript, Kierkegaard’s enmity for Martensen reached new heights. There are a number of personal reasons that can explain his animosity. While Kierkegaard was passed over for academic posts, Martensen was appointed to the Royal Danish Society of Scholars in 1841 and in the same year received the position of professor extraordinarius and later in 1850 the position of ordinarius.34 In short, Kierkegaard was embittered about the lack of recognition that he received, while his rival was showered with praise. Martensen explains their relation thus: “In the beginning his [sc. Kierkegaard’s] relation to me had been friendly, but it assumed an increasingly hostile character. He was moved to this in part by the differences in our views and in part by the recognition I enjoyed from the students and the public, a recognition which he clearly viewed – nor did he attempt to conceal it – as an unjustified overestimation.”35 Particularly bitter for Kierkegaard was the fact that Martensen was appointed to the coveted position of official Court Priest in 1845. As is clear from Kierkegaard’s journals and papers, this is something that exercised him considerably.36 Martensen obtained this position with the help of Bishop Mynster, who some ten years earlier had been involved in polemics with the Hegelians and even with Martensen himself. This turn of events embittered Kierkegaard even more towards both Martensen and Mynster, and it took place at precisely the time when he was writing the Postscript. But while there was, to be sure, an ad hominem element in Kierkegaard’s polemic with Martensen, there was also a serious theological point, which cannot be explained in purely biographical or psychological terms. Kierkegaard saw in the figure of Martensen, who began as a university professor and became a priest, an inappropriate 32 33 34

35 36

Hans Friedrich Helweg, “Hegelianismen i Danmark,” Dansk Kirketidende, vol. 10, no. 52, December 23, 1855, p. 842. Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 141. Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 197. Translation slightly modified. See Skat Arildsen, “Universitetsansættelse og Avancement,” in his Biskop Hans Lassen Martensen. Hans Liv, Udvikling og Arbejde, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1932, pp. 154– 155. Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 140. Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 196. SKS, vol. 20, p. 205, NB2:160. Pap. X-1 A 106. Pap. X-2 A 155, p. 118. Pap. X-3 A 55, p. 50. Pap. X-6 B 135, p. 182. Pap. XI-2 A 310.



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and indeed unholy mixture of secular philosophy and Christianity. To his mind, this mixture compromises and corrupts the true nature of Christian faith.37 (This is also an essential part of Kierkegaard’s criticism of Adler.) Kierkegaard was convinced that Martensen lacked the inwardness and subjective character to be a priest and a spokesman for Christianity. Although Martensen’s name does not appear in the text of the Postscript itself, it does appear in drafts, both alone and along with the names of other Hegelians.38 The direct references to Martensen himself were later changed and replaced by more anonymous formulations, such as “a Hegelian.” Moreover, Kierkegaard refers to Martensen several times in his later comments about the Postscript.39 For these reasons Martensen makes a much better candidate than Hegel as the true, albeit veiled, target of the Postscript. Further, when one examines closely the key terms, which Kierkegaard repeats and associates with Hegelianism in this text, one finds that they in fact refer to Martensen and not to Hegel. For example, he repeats again and again the Latin phrase “de omnibus dubitandum est.” As was explored previously, in 1842–43 Kierkegaard wrote a draft for a short work, which he never published, entitled, Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est. It is the story of a young student of theology who tries to come to terms with the Cartesian principle of universal doubt. As was argued previously,40 that work was a criticism of Martensen and of what Kierkegaard perceived as the pernicious effect that Martensen’s courses had on the students at the University of Copenhagen. The plot of De omnibus is also briefly presented in the Postscript 41 and the slogan “de omnibus dubitandum est” appears several times both in Latin and in Danish equivalents.42 The criticism of Martensen is thinly veiled and would clearly have been recognized by a contemporary reader. There can be little doubt that, here as before, the expression “de omnibus dubitandum est” is, for Kierkegaard, a catchword for Martensen.43 Another code word is “the system,” which has traditionally been understood as referring to Hegel. In his attack on the Church, Kierkegaard directly associated this term with Martensen. He writes: “Things went on very quietly with regard to the system, in which Bishop Martensen did not draw the longest straw. I refused to attack him by name – and Bishop 37 38

39 40 42 43

See M, pp. 329–331; SV1, vol. 14, pp. 343–345. CUP2, Supplement, p. 72; Pap. VI B 54.4. CUP2, Supplement, p. 72; Pap. VI B 98.58. CUP2, Supplement, pp. 29–30; Pap. VI B 98.15, p. 179. CUP2, Supplement, p. 30; Pap. VI B 24.1. See CUP2, Supplement, pp. 156–157; Pap. X-6 B 116. In this journal entry from 1849–50 he even has as a title “About Prof. Martensen, Prof. R. Nielsen, Johannes Climacus.” 41 CUP1, p. 310; SKS, vol. 7, p. 282f. See Chapter 5. E.g., CUP1, p. 195; SKS, vol. 7, p. 179. CUP1, p. 200; SKS, vol. 7, p. 184. CUP1, p. 255; SKS, vol. 7, p. 231. CUP1, p. 264f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 240. CUP1, p. 405; SKS, vol. 7, p. 369. See Chapter 5, Section I.


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Martensen maintained silence.”44 Here Kierkegaard indicates that he criticized Martensen under the catchword “the system,” which has invariably been associated with Hegel in the secondary literature. In a journal entry from 1850, Kierkegaard discusses the attacks of his pseudonymous authors on Martensen. There he writes, addressing Martensen directly: “But you will not deny it, will you, Prof. M[artensen]. You do not want the embarrassment of being the only one in the kingdom to deny that from the very beginning these pseudonyms, in a highly disturbing and annoying manner, have had a bearing on the system. And this whole matter of the system, again, was chiefly linked to your name.”45 Here Kierkegaard declares unambiguously that one of the goals of his pseudonymous writings was to criticize Martensen under the term “the system.” He continues by listing a series of other names that were associated with the system.46 In a journal entry from circa 1851 Kierkegaard states the point again directly: “Home from abroad at the opportune moment with Hegel’s philosophy, he [Martensen] made a big sensation, had extraordinary success, won over the whole student generation to ‘the system’. . . . Since he represented the ‘system,’ I disagreed with Prof. Martensen and he with me.”47 Here it seems clear that Martensen is taken to represent a general tendency that is only indirectly related to Hegel. The criticism seems rather to be of those who try to imitate Hegel and the other German philosophers, and who make pretentious claims about their own systems. As has been noted earlier,48 Kierkegaard was incensed by Martensen’s claim to have gone further than Hegel himself. The expression of “going further” of course appears many times in many different forms in the Postscript and in other texts.49 In the Postscript, Johannes Climacus refers to this frequently without mentioning Martensen’s name. For example, in his discussion of Trendelenburg’s criticism of Hegel’s logic, he praises Trendelenburg for avoiding a sycophantic relation to Hegel, which he clearly associated with Martensen: “It is by no means my view 44 45 46

47 48 49

M, p. 81; SV1, vol. 14, p. 96. JP, vol. 6, 6636, p. 326; Pap. X-6 B 137, pp. 185–186. JP, vol. 6, 6636, p. 327; Pap. X-6 B 137, p. 186: “Do you recall . . . it was ‘the system.’ Yes, there was a matchless movement and excitement over the system then, and Prof. M[artensen], the profound genius, who praised it, and Prof. Heiberg, who also praised it, and Stilling and Nielsen and Tryde and God knows who else – yes, there was hardly anyone in the whole kingdom, or at least in the whole capital, who in one way or another was not related to the system in suspenseful expectation.” See also JP, vol. 6, 6448; Pap. X-1 A 553. JP, vol. 6, 6449; Pap. X-1 A 556. JP, vol. 6, 6748, pp. 395–396; Pap. X-6 B 171, p. 262. See Chapter 1, Section II. See also FT, p. 5; SKS, vol. 4, p. 101. FT, p. 7; SKS, vol. 4, p. 103. FT, p. 9; SKS, vol. 4, p. 105. FT, p. 23; SKS, vol. 4, p. 119. FT, pp. 32–33; SKS, vol. 4, p. 128. FT, p. 37; SKS, vol. 4, p. 132. FT, p. 69; SKS, vol. 4, p. 161. FT, p. 88; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 177–178. FT, pp. 121–123; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 208–210. CUP1, p. 469; SKS, vol. 7, p. 426. CUP1, p. 482; SKS, vol. 7, p. 437.



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that Hegelian philosophy has not had a salutary influence on Trendelenburg, but it is fortunate that he has perceived that wanting to improve Hegel’s structure, to go further, etc. will not do (a mendacious approach by which many a botcher in our age arrogates Hegel’s celebrity to himself and mendicantly fraternizes with him).”50 There can be little doubt that Kierkegaard has Martensen in mind here. He consistently saw Martensen as an unoriginal thinker who gained success merely by attaching himself to Hegel’s name and profiting from his fame: “I know very well that for a long time now here in Denmark certain people have made themselves important by what they have learned from the Germans and rendered practically word for word (as if it were their own), that they have compiled various diverse German thinkers, professors, assistant professors, tutors, etc.”51 Later in his journals Kierkegaard associates the figure of “the Privatdocent” with Martensen. He indicates that the Postscript is a fictionalized account of systematic philosophy, although it draws inspiration from specific figures such as Martensen. A part of this fiction was to create a German figure, the Privatdocent. He indicates in several places that this too was a part of his strategy of hiding his polemic. He states as follows that for this reason he made Germany the fictionalized setting: “it is poetically appropriate to keep the scene vague, roughly in Germany, recognizable by ‘the Privatdocent.’ ”52 While Kierkegaard insists that “Professor M[artensen] is mentioned nowhere in the book,”53 and that the figures criticized are fictitious caricatures, he goes on to associate Martensen with the slogan of “going further.”54 In another entry from the same period, Kierkegaard again hints that the figure of the Privatdocent is supposed to be a caricature of Martensen. Kierkegaard states that he disagreed with Martensen and writes further: “For my part I let the pseudonyms express the disagreement, but in such a softened and blurred fashion that the scene could just as well be in Germany, where at that time the Privatdocent was a stock character, whereas we did not have a single one. Martensen 50

51 52

53 54

CUP1, p. 110; SKS, vol. 7, p. 107. (My italics.) See also ibid: “I am very happy to be able to refer to a man who thinks soundly and fortunately is educated by the Greeks . . . a man who has known how to extricate himself and his thought from every trailing, groveling relation to Hegel, from whose fame everyone usually seeks to profit, if in no other way, then by going further.” (My italics.) See also CUP1, p. 370; SKS, vol. 7, p. 337: “To take a minor example, just as there surely have been some who simply have not cared very much about understanding Hegel but have certainly cared about the benefit one has by even going beyond Hegel, so also it is tempting enough to go beyond in connection with something so great and meaningful as Christianity.” CUP2, Supplement, p. 162; Pap. X-6 B 128, p. 170. Translation slightly modified. CUP2, Supplement, p. 162; Pap. X-6 B 128, p. 170. Translation slightly modified. The Privatdocent is an academic position at the German university that corresponds roughly to assistant professor or visiting lecturer. CUP2, Supplement, p. 162; Pap. X-6 B 128, p. 170. CUP2, Supplement, p. 162; Pap. X-6 B 128, p. 170.


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was never named: the whole context was poetically maintained.”55 Here he indicates once again that he employs an indirect strategy and that he intentionally distorts things so as not to make his true target, Martensen, so readily recognizable. Here Kierkegaard confirms what Helweg said previously, i.e., that the pseudonymous works carried on a polemic with Martensen and not with Hegel. Another code word in the Postscript that seems to be associated with Martensen is the Latin phrase “sub specie aeterni” or “sub specie aeternitatis” (i.e., “under the view of eternity”).56 Climacus uses this phrase several times to describe the aperspectival or absolute perspective of systematic philosophy, which casts its view over all of world history. This phrase is traditionally associated with Spinoza who employs it as follows in his Ethics: “It is in the nature of reason to perceive things in the light of eternity [sub quadam specie aeternitatis].”57 In his account of Spinoza in both the Science of Logic and the Lectures on the History of Philosophy,58 Hegel explains Spinoza’s epistemology with reference to this phrase: “Spinoza makes the sublime demand of thought that it consider everything under the form of eternity, sub specie aeterni, that is, as it is in the absolute.”59 Martensen appropriates this slogan ( just as he did the Cartesian slogan “de omnibus dubitandum est”). It appears several times in his works, for example, in his dissertation On the Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness,60 in his review of Heiberg’s Fata Morgana,61 and in his treatise Meister Eckhart.62 Moreover, 55 56

57 58

59 60

61

62

JP, vol. 6, 6748, p. 396; Pap. X-6 B 171, p. 262. Translation slightly modified. CUP1, p. 81; SKS, vol. 7, p. 81. CUP1, p. 192; SKS, vol. 7, p. 176. CUP1, p. 217; SKS, vol. 7, p. 199. CUP1, p. 227; SKS, vol. 7, p. 207. CUP1, p. 301; SKS, vol. 7, p. 274. CUP1, p. 306; SKS, vol. 7, p. 279. CUP1, p. 307; SKS, vol. 7, p. 279f. CUP1, p. 308; SKS, vol. 7, p. 281. CUP1, p. 309; SKS, vol. 7, p. 282. CUP1, p. 329; SKS, vol. 7, p. 300. CUP1, p. 362; SKS, vol. 7, p. 330. CUP1, p. 533; SKS, vol. 7, p. 484. See also SUD, p. 97; SV1, vol. 11, p. 208. Part II, Proposition 44, Corollary 2. Quoted from Spinoza, The Ethics and Selected Letters, tr. by Samuel Shirley, ed. by Seymour Feldman, Indianapolis: Hackett 1982, p. 93. Hegel, Jub., vol. 19, p. 404: “For the true kind of knowing Spinoza demanded that one think sub specie aeterni, in absolutely adequate concepts, i.e. in God.” (N.b. This passage is not translated in Hist. of Phil. III.) See also Hegel, Hist. of Phil. III, pp. 276–277; Jub., vol. 19, p. 405: Hegel quotes the Ethics, Part II, Proposition 44, Corollary 2, quoted earlier. Hegel, SL, p. 538; Jub., vol. 4, p. 674. Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia conscientiae sui humanae in theologiam dogmaticam nostri temporis introducta, Copenhagen 1837, § 5, p. 20. ASKB 648. Danish translation: Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, tr. by L. V. Petersen, Copenhagen 1841, § 5, p. 18. ASKB 651. English translation: The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in Modern Dogmatic Theology, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, Atlanta: Scholars Press 1997, § 5, p. 86. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Fata Morgana, Eventyr-Comedie af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. 1838. 125S. 80 . Kjøbenhavn. Schubothes Boghandling,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 19, 1838, p. 371. Hans Lassen Martensen, Mester Eckart. Et Bidrag til at oplyse Middelalderens Mystik, Copenhagen 1840, p. 41. ASKB 649. English translation: Meister Eckhart: A Study in Speculative Theology, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, op. cit., p. 177.



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it is quoted in Bornemann’s review of Martensen’s dissertation.63 Thus, Climacus’s frequent use of this Latin expression would presumably remind his readers of Martensen and would serve to identify him as one of the targets of criticism in the discussion where it appeared. Another target of criticism in the Postscript is Heiberg, whose name also appears in drafts of the work.64 Heiberg is ridiculed for his overenthusiastic account of his conversion to Hegelianism,65 and for his unfinished system. The former is a reference to Heiberg’s aforementioned account of his miraculous comprehension of the broad outline of Hegel’s system, which he experienced in Hamburg on his return trip from Berlin in 1824.66 The latter is a reference to Heiberg’s “The System of Logic,” which ended at § 23, while promising further installments.67 The comments here in the Postscript are clearly part of Kierkegaard’s ongoing polemic with him. The criticism of the uncompleted system could also be a reference to Rasmus Nielsen. Like that of Martensen and Heiberg, Nielsen’s name appears in a draft of the Postscript.68 Also like Martensen and Heiberg, Nielsen was one of the leading Danish Hegelians. He worked together with Martensen as a junior professor at the University of Copenhagen. Like Martensen, Nielsen was only a few years older than Kierkegaard, and, as has been noted previously,69 an animosity developed between the two men early on when Kierkegaard accused Nielsen of being unprepared to assume the professorship at the University of Copenhagen, which he was awarded in 1841. In the years after his appointment, Nielsen, who was apparently quite zealous in his espousal of Hegel, claimed to have already worked out in his head the basic outlines of a speculative system. As was mentioned,70 Nielsen published the first part in 1841 under the title, Speculative Logic in its Essentials, in which he offered a subscription plan for the forthcoming parts of the system.71 On the overleaf of the first installment he writes: This outline is to be regarded as a fragment of a philosophical methodology, the first part of which will contain logic with a preliminary introduction. 63 64

65 67 68 69 71

Johan Alfred Bornemann, “Af Martensen: de autonomia conscientiae. Sui humanae,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, p. 9. CUP2, Supplement, p. 41; Pap. VI B 40.5, p. 123. CUP2, Supplement, p. 44; Pap. VI B 98.36. CUP2, Supplement, p. 44; Pap. VI B 98.38. CUP2, Supplement, p. 45; Pap. VI B 98.41. 66 See Chapter 1, Section II, p. 56. CUP1, p. 184; SKS, vol. 7, p. 169f. See Chapter 10, Section III. CUP2, Supplement, pp. 42–43; Pap. VI B 40.7. 70 See Chapter 9, Section I, p. 385. Chapter 3, Section I. See Harald Høffding, Danske Filosofer, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag 1909, p. 185. Svend Erik Stybe, “Filosofi,” in Københavns Universitet 1479–1979, vol. 10, Det filosofiske Fakultet, 3. Del, ed. by Povl Johannes Jensen, Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag 1980, p. 62.


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The necessity of having a printed guide for the oral lecture has hastened the publication. The remaining installments will follow eventually as the lecture announced in the catalogue of courses approaches. Copenhagen, the 10th of November 1841. R. Nielsen.72

Although Nielsen managed to publish four installments from 1841 to 1844, the work was never completed. The text simply broke off in medias res at the end of each number, in anticipation of the next one, which would take it up again. The fourth number from 1844 (which proved to be the final one) ends in the middle of a sentence, which served to underscore the incomplete nature of the system. In Kierkegaard’s journals Nielsen is constantly ridiculed for his subscription scheme.73 The works on logic by Heiberg and Nielsen are the uncompleted system that Johannes Climacus criticizes unflaggingly in the Postscript.74 He writes: “When Lessing said these words, the system was presumably not finished; alas, and now he is dead! If he were living now, now when the system has been completed for the most part or is at least in the works and will be finished by next Sunday, believe me, Lessing would have clutched it with both hands.”75 In an even sharper tone, Climacus, as a prospective convert, tells of his dialogue with the systematic thinker: “When I for the last time very innocently said to one of the initiates, ‘Now tell me honestly, is it [sc. the system] indeed completely finished, because if that is the case, I will prostrate myself, even if I should ruin a pair of trousers’. . . . I would invariably receive the answer, ‘No, it is not entirely finished yet.’”76 These comments are perplexing if taken as a reference to Hegel since there has never been an issue in Hegel of the system being incomplete. But they make perfect sense in their historical context as references to Heiberg and Nielsen. In an article published in Fædrelandet on June 12, 1842, Kierkegaard states directly that Nielsen is the target of this criticism: It is the system toward which the age is directing its efforts. Prof. R. Nielsen already has published twenty-one logical §§ that constitute the first part of a logic that in turn constitutes the first part of an all-encompassing encyclopedia, as intimated on the jacket, although its size is not more explicitly 72 73

74 75

76

Rasmus Nielsen, Den speculative Logik i dens Grundtræk, Copenhagen 1841–44. Overleaf to the first installment, 1841. JP, vol. 3, 3288, p. 326; Pap. III B 192, p. 230. CUP2, Supplement, p. 134; Pap. VII-1 B 88, p. 294. SKS, vol. 20, p. 417, NB5:115. Pap. IX A 291. Pap. X-6 B 88, p. 94. Pap. X-6 B 89, p. 98. This criticism is also found in PF, pp. 109–110; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 305–306. See also JP, vol. 6, 6636; Pap. X-6 B 137, p. 186. CUP1, p. 106; SKS, vol. 7, p. 103. See also CUP1, p. 216; SKS, vol. 7, p. 198: “Similarly, a professor publishes the outline of a system, assuming that the work, by being reviewed and debated, will come out sooner or later in a new and totally revised form.” CUP1, p. 107; SKS, vol. 7, p. 104.



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given, presumably not to intimidate, since people certainly will venture to conclude that it will be extremely large. . . . It has often been encouraging to me to think that Professor R. Nielsen is writing such a book. He already has written twenty-one §§ and several years ago published a subscription prospectus for a systematic ethics that will amount to at least twenty-four printed sheets when it is finished.77

Here both elements are clearly present: the subscription prospectus and the incomplete system. It has already been seen that this same criticism was levelled against Heiberg in Prefaces.78 Here while Kierkegaard has nothing but abuse for Hegelians and the attempt to imitate Hegel’s logic, he has nothing to say about Hegel himself. It has been noted that Kierkegaard has Martensen in mind in his criticism of the assistant professor or Privatdocent, but there is evidence that this is also intended as a criticism of Martensen’s colleague, Nielsen. Kierkegaard uses the Privatdocent to designate a particular type of academic careerist and sophist. In the journals he describes this character type as follows: The Privatdocent is a didacticizing braggart, a lightly armed encyclopedist. He has a slapdash kind of scholarliness; he is neither teacher nor independent thinker . . . a Privatdocent relates himself superstitiously to the system. . . . The Privatdocent is a halfness; he has the pretentious form of the didacticizing lecturer and has essentially nothing to say, or he has a short rigmarole in which he in turn has joint ownership with every other Privatdocent. . . . The Privatdocent is an utterly fanciful character; he does not accomplish anything; he merely makes wind, especially by means of promises and announcements. Therefore as an author a Privatdocent belongs mainly to subscription-prospectus dust-jacket literature.79

This description with its reference to the “subscription-prospectus” seems to refer to Nielsen. Kierkegaard was bitterly envious of Nielsen’s academic success. He saw him as an unoriginal and mediocre thinker who merely exploited Hegel’s fame to gain professional advancement. Moreover, he regarded him as unreflectively deferential to Hegel’s philosophy. Kierkegaard frequently uses the expressions “the Privatdocent” and “Herr Professor” as terms of derision in this context. With these terms he understands the role of Nielsen and Martensen as professional philosophers or academics and by so doing contrasts them with his conception of the true philosopher in the Greek sense. This also allows him to contrast them with his view of the true Christian believer. In his later criticism of Martensen in the attack on the Church, Kierkegaard recalls his previous criticism of him as one of the assistant professors.80 77 79 80

78 See above Chapter 10, Section III. COR, pp. 5–6; SV1, vol. 13, p. 400. CUP2, Supplement, pp. 133–134; Pap. VII-1 B 88, pp. 293–294. See M, pp. 290–291; SV1, vol. 14, pp. 300–301.


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The final main target of the Postscript, who has been little recognized at least in the anglophone literature is, Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872). A profoundly influential poet and priest, Grundtvig is regarded as one of the most important figures in Danish culture, although he is hardly known outside Scandinavia. He was a prolific writer and authored many works on history as well as Nordic myths and legends. In his historical works, above all his World Chronicles (1812, 1814, 1817)81 and his mammoth Handbook on World History (1833–43),82 he was interested in determining the place and mission of the Scandinavian people in the development of Christianity. He saw Christianity as being in need of a renewal that could only come from Scandinavia. His history writing was thus a central part of his theology. While Grundtvig was not a Hegelian, his views on history have often been confused with those of Hegel. Kierkegaard’s relation to Grundtvig is an interesting one.83 He carried on a polemic with Grundtvig in many of his published works and in his journals.84 He had many theological objections to Grundtvig’s views, which emphasized history and the religious community and not the individual. The polemic with Grundtvig also took on a personal dimension since Kierkegaard’s elder brother, Peter Christian, was a Grundtvigian. In the Postscript Grundtvig is named explicitly, and reference is made to his “matchless discovery” and his doctrine of the living word.85 The section 81

82 83

84

85

Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, Kort Begreb af Verdens Krønike i Sammenhæng, Copenhagen 1812. Kort Begreb af Verdens Krønike, betragtet i Sammenhæng, Copenhagen 1814. Udsigt over Verdens-Krøniken fornemmelig i det Lutherske Tidsrum, Copenhagen 1817. See Kemp Malone, “Grundtvig’s Philosophy of History,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 1, 1940, pp. 291–298. William Michelsen, Tilblivelsen af Grundtvigs historiesyn: idehistoriske studier over Grundtvigs Verdenskrønniker og deres litterære forudsætninger, Copenhagen: Grundtvig-Selskabet 1954. Sigurd Aage Aarnes, Historieskrivning og Livssyn hos Grundtvig, Bergen: Universitetsforlaget 1961. Ole Vind, Grundtvigs historiefilosofi, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1999. Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, Haandbog i Verdens-Historien. Efter de bedste Kilder, vols. 1–3, Copenhagen 1833–43. See Søren Holm, Grundtvig und Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, Arnold Busck 1956. Hellmut Toftdahl, Kierkegaard først og Grundtvig s˚a, Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, Arnold Busck 1969. Carl Weltzer, Grundtvig og Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1952. Emanuel Skjoldager, Hvorfor Søren Kierkegaard ikke blev Grundtvigianer, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1977. Otto Bertelsen, Dialogen mellem Grundtvig og Kierkegaard, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1990. Otto Bertelsen, Kierkegaard og de første Grundtvigianere, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1996. F. J. Billeskov Jansen, Grundtvig og Kierkegaard med ni andre a˚ ndshistoriske essays, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1996. E.g., SL, p. 259; SKS, vol. 6, p. 241. SL, p. 378; SKS, vol. 6, p. 351. SL, pp. 463–464; SKS, vol. 6, pp. 427–428. PF, p. 107; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 303–304. CUP2, Supplement, pp. 16–27; Pap. VI B 29, pp. 101–112. CUP2, Supplement, p. 27; Pap. VI B 30, pp. 112–113. CUP2, Supplement, pp. 27–29; Pap. VI B 33, pp. 114–115. CUP1, p. 36f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 43. In 1825 Grundtvig claimed to have made “a matchless discovery” about the true nature of Christianity. The discovery was that the true essence of Christianity was not to be found in the Bible, which merely gave information and descriptions of Christ, but rather in what he calls “the living word” which has been spoken in the Church through the centuries. The living word means for Grundtvig the



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“The Church”86 from Chapter 1 of Part 1 of the work is dedicated to criticizing Grundtvig, whose name also appears several times in drafts of the work.87 Johannes Climacus criticizes Grundtvig’s theory of history in the Postscript, which has often been taken as a criticism of Hegel due to the simple fact that Hegel’s philosophy of history is today better known than that of Grundtvig. Key terms such as “spirit” or “world history,” which have been generally understood as references to Hegel, are in fact code words for Grundtvig. Thus, Grundtvig, along with Martensen, Heiberg, and Nielsen, are, although little recognized, the true targets of criticism in the Postscript. When one examines the Postscript and above all the purported criticisms of Hegel, one finds that the code words mentioned here come up over and over again: “going further,” “de omnibus dubitandum est,” “the Privatdocent,” “the unfinished system,” and so on. Commentators have taken many of these terms as straightforward references to Hegel88 and have thus failed to see them for what they are, namely, code words. The key to understanding Kierkegaard’s text is to understand this code and to link up the specific historical personalities with the individual encoded expressions. The important things to note here are (1) that these code words refer almost invariably to Martensen, Heiberg, Nielsen, and Grundtvig, and not to Hegel and (2) that for this reason the criticisms often contain an ad hominem element, which must be recognized and purged if they are to be regarded as having philosophical value. When one follows up the references consistently in each of the sections in which Hegel is purportedly criticized, the result is that there is in fact virtually no Hegel left in the text once the references for each of the encoded words and expressions have been identified in the context of the various criticisms. In his journals from some years later, Kierkegaard makes the following very telling entry about how he conceived of the Postscript and its relation

86 87 88

Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed, the Sacrament, and Baptism. This oral tradition, he claims, has priority over scripture. By concentrating on the spoken word in the church, Grundtvig hoped to deliver Christianity from the elaborate interpretations of rationalist theologians and return it to the simple believer. CUP1, pp. 34–46; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 41–52. E.g., CUP2, Supplement, pp. 16–29; Pap. VI B 29, pp. 101–115. CUP2, Supplement, p. 29; Pap. VI B 98.14. For example, Niels Thulstrup, “Kierkegaard’s Approach to Existence versus Hegelian Speculation,” in Kierkegaard and Speculative Idealism, ed. by Niels Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 4), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel, 1979, p. 98: “Kierkegaard is as completely unsympathetic toward Hegel in the Postscript as he is in the foregoing pseudonymous works. In only very few places, to be sure, does he mention Hegel and the Hegelians by name, but he speaks instead of ‘speculation,’ ‘the modern speculation,’ ‘the System,’ ‘Christian speculation,’ ‘the science.’ These terms mean basically the same thing.”


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to Hegel and speculative philosophy. He writes: I regarded the Concluding Postscript to be, among other things, a Danish protest against modern speculation; I understood, as time will surely bear me out, that when the tyrannical opinion by which “the System” maintained itself has vanished, my pseudonym will be acknowledged to have been right in his view that it was genuinely Danish to regard the exaggerations of this speculation as comic, yet without forgetting that it is also Danish to love and honor true scholarship, such as Greek scholarship at present, which actually is what the pseudonym uses, although he is also indebted very much to an earlier German scholarship as well as to Hegel.89

Here Kierkegaard indicates that the polemic in the Postscript is with certain “exaggerations” made in the name of speculative philosophy. At first it sounds as if he understands this as a criticism of Hegel, but then it is clear from the final sentence that he in fact admires Hegel and values his scholarship. Thus, the criticism is not of Hegel himself but of specific Hegelians, who make an inappropriate use of certain aspects of Hegel’s thought. I take this to be an important interpretive clue to understanding the Postscript.

ii. speculative philosophy and eternal happiness The first purported account of Hegel’s philosophy comes in the second chapter of Part One, “The Speculative Point of View,”90 in which speculative philosophy is criticized along with other objective approaches to Christianity. I will argue that Johannes Climacus’ criticism here is not of Hegel’s philosophy per se but rather of the attempt to base religious faith on speculative thought. An analysis of the code words contained in this chapter makes it obvious that this criticism is aimed primarily at Martensen. In order to understand this criticism, it will be necessary to say a few words about its role in the context of the work as a whole. The Postscript begins with an analysis of various approaches to Christianity, which Climacus tries to demonstrate are fundamentally mistaken. His central claim, which is explored in some detail later in the work, is that Christianity is essentially subjective in the sense that it concerns human beings as individuals. Christianity offers the possibility of eternal happiness, which is of interest to one as an individual. In the Introduction, Climacus writes: “without having comprehended Christianity . . . I have at least understood this much, that it wants to make the single individual eternally happy and that precisely within this single individual it presupposes this infinite interest in his own happiness as conditio sine 89 90

CUP2, Supplement, pp. 162–163; Pap. X-6 B 128, p. 171. Translation slightly modified. CUP1, pp. 50–57; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 54–61.


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qua non.”91 The offer of eternal happiness is of the highest importance to the individual. In Part One, Climacus examines different approaches to Christianity, which he designates as “objective,” i.e., those which attempt to gain knowledge of Christianity based on the methods and means available in such academic fields as philology or history. He tries to demonstrate the incommensurability between, on the one hand, the evidence and discursive arguments used to demonstrate the truth of Christianity via scholarly means and, on the other hand, the individual’s infinite interest in eternal happiness which is at stake. When the evidence is examined and the arguments weighed out, Climacus argues, there will always be a gap between, on the one hand, the merely approximative historical knowledge of Christ or philological knowledge of the Bible and, on the other hand, the degree of certainty required to stake one’s eternal happiness. With the issue understood in this way, even the best possible evidence and arguments urging the truth of Christianity will be hopelessly inadequate when compared with the risk of losing one’s eternal happiness. Speculative philosophy, for Climacus, belongs to this group of mistaken approaches to Christianity since it attempts to see Christianity as an objective historical phenomenon. It must be noted that Climacus has nothing against the fields of philology, history, per se or even against the knowledge of religion or Christianity that results from them. What he objects to is the use of their results in an attempt to ground faith discursively. The first thing to note about this initial discussion of speculative philosophy is that it abounds in veiled references to Martensen. In this section, Climacus writes: “Speculation does everything – it doubts everything, etc. The speculative thinker, on the other hand, has become too objective to talk about himself. Therefore he does not say that he doubts everything but that speculation does it.”92 Although Martensen’s Cartesian motto, “de omnibus dubitandum est,”93 does not appear here, the image of a speculative thinker employing universal doubt is clearly intended to evoke Martensen. It has been noted that Martensen’s claim to have gone beyond Hegel was a never-ending source of criticism for Kierkegaard.94 Climacus sarcastically addresses the abstract speculative thinker thus: Therefore, my precious human being, most honorable Mr. Speculative Thinker, you at least I value to approach in subjective address: O my friend! how do you view Christianity, that is, are you a Christian or are you not? The question is not whether you are going further but whether you are a Christian, unless going further in a speculative thinker’s relation to Christianity means ceasing to be what one was.95 91 93 95

CUP1, p. 16; SKS, vol. 7, p. 25. See Chapter 5, Section I. CUP1, p. 52; SKS, vol. 7, p. 56. (My italics.)

92 94

CUP1, p. 51; SKS, vol. 7, p. 56. See Chapter 1, Section II, 65f.


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Here Climacus criticizes the speculative thinker for going beyond Christian belief by subordinating it to a philosophical understanding of the world. There is reason to believe that Martensen or his version of Hegelianism is the real target of Climacus’ critique, given the formulation “going further.” Moreover, when one examines the content of Climacus’ criticism here, it becomes more obvious that his target cannot be Hegel’s thought per se. For Climacus, speculative philosophy is an objective form of knowing since it approaches Christianity from a historical and conceptual perspective, which is, for him, objective.96 This approach, according to his view, while correct for scholarship, is incorrect with regard to faith since Christianity itself is subjective, and this subjectivity is characterized by an infinite passion and interest in one’s eternal happiness: “if Christianity is essentially subjectivity, it is a mistake if the observer is objective. In all knowing in which it holds true that the object of cognition is the inwardness of the subjective individual himself, it holds true that the knower must be in that state. But the expression for the utmost exertion of subjectivity is the infinitely passionate interest in its eternal happiness.”97 While Christians are passionate and infinitely interested in the promise of Christianity, speculative philosophers are detached in their approach to their subject-matter. To be a good objective thinker or scientist, one must be disinterested. By understanding Christianity as a historical phenomenon, speculative philosophy, asserts Climacus, misses the point of its true inward and subjective nature. History or speculative philosophy can discover many outward facts about Christianity and its development but nothing about its subjective significance. The issue is set up as follows: either speculative philosophers are believers and base their faith on their speculative philosophy, in which case they are comical since they base their eternal happiness on merely approximative knowledge;98 or they are not believers and never allow the question to arise since they are so absent-minded and forgetful of themselves in their pursuit of speculative philosophy. But upon closer examination, this reasoning contains a false dichotomy since there is clearly a third scenario, wherein speculative philosophers are believers but are careful not to base their faith on their speculative knowledge. If speculative philosophy distinguishes the two spheres – knowledge and faith, scholarship and religion – then there is no conflict. Thus, Climacus is not critical of speculative philosophy per se but only of an inappropriate understanding or application of it by people like Martensen. 96

97

CUP1, p. 50; SKS, vol. 7, p. 54: “The speculative point of view conceives of Christianity as a historical phenomenon; the question of its truth therefore becomes a matter of permeating it with thought in such a way that finally Christianity itself is the eternal thought.” 98 CUP1, p. 54f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 58f. CUP1, p. 53; SKS, vol. 7, p. 57.


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Climacus allows for this third possibility and says explicitly that speculative philosophers can in principle be true Christians provided they make a clear separation between their faith or subjective relation to Christianity and their speculative understanding of it. There is no conflict, provided one recognize the limits of speculative philosophy and not try to apply it to ground one’s faith: “If the speculative thinker is also a believer . . . he must long since have perceived that speculative thought can never have the same meaning for him as faith. Precisely as a believer he is indeed infinitely interested in his own eternal happiness and in faith is assured of it . . . and he does not build an eternal happiness on his speculative thought.”99 One would be comical if one attempted to base one’s eternal happiness on speculative philosophy since such objective knowledge, qua scientific knowledge, is only approximation and cannot provide the degree of certainty required to stake one’s eternal happiness. But so long as the believer observes this and continues to do speculative philosophy, seeing it all the while in its proper place, then there is in principle no contradiction, and the speculative philosopher can be a true Christian. This interpretation is supported by a journal entry from 1849–50, in which Kierkegaard writes the following in reference to the conclusions of the Postscript: Is scientific scholarship thereby abolished or made impossible? No. But the judgment about Christian scholarship has become something else. Instead of the inflated conceitedness about going further than faith, faith is established in its manorial right, and scholarship, or the scholar’s life, is to be regarded as an enjoyment, a pleasure, etc. that he may wish for – which can also be granted to him if he, please note, declares for the faith, receives and acknowledges his order to remain courteously within its boundary and recognize scholarship not as higher but as lower.100

Kierkegaard indicates that the goal of the Postscript is to sketch the limits of objective or scientific scholarship, but he is careful to point out that he has no objection to it so long as it remains in its proper sphere. Here it is clear from Kierkegaard’s use of the slogan “going further” that what is at issue is not Hegel’s thought or speculative philosophy itself but rather Martensen’s claim to have gone beyond faith. The criticism is of those Hegelian theologians, like Martensen, who confuse the two spheres and who base their faith on speculative knowing. Climacus is above all concerned to carve out an impregnable sphere for faith and to assign academic knowledge to its proper place, but it will be noted that none of this is a criticism of Hegel’s understanding of Christianity or even an attempt at such a criticism. 99 100

CUP1, p. 55; SKS, vol. 7, p. 59. CUP2, Supplement, pp. 156–157; Pap. X-6 B 116, p. 149. (My italics.)


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iii. speculative philosophy and the paradox of christianity In this section I will treat a part of the discussion of the chapter “Subjective Truth, Inwardness; Truth is Subjectivity.”101 Here Johannes Climacus repeats many of the most important doctrines sketched in the Philosophical Fragments and interprets them in relation to Hegelian philosophy. In a sense this discussion can be seen as a continuation of the section “The Speculative Point of View,” which was just examined previously in Section II. The issues that Climacus broached there receive fuller treatment here; in fact, he alludes directly to his discussion of speculative philosophy and the other objective approaches to Christianity discussed in the first part of the book.102 His main thesis here as there is that speculative philosophy is first an inappropriate approach for grasping the true nature of Christianity and second a false understanding of the nature of Christian faith. Specifically, he argues that speculative philosophy is wrong when it tries to resolve the paradox of Christianity. I wish to argue that despite what might seem to be allusions to Hegel’s philosophy of religion, the discussion here is only indirectly concerned with Hegel. Indeed, the main criticism is not of Hegel at all but rather of treating an academic account of Christianity as the basis for private belief. Not surprisingly, these passages are rife with indirect allusions to Martensen,103 who (as in “The Speculative Point of View”) seems clearly to be the main target of criticism. Climacus’ criticism concerns the paradox of Christianity. His doctrine of the paradox is a complex one, which was treated in some detail in the Philosophical Fragments. In the Postscript he writes: “The Socratic paradox consisted in this, that the eternal truth was related to an existing person.”104 Christianity, however, represents the absolute paradox: “The thesis that God has existed in human form, was born, grew up, etc. is certainly the paradox sensu strictissimo, the absolute paradox.”105 The key point for Climacus is that Christianity rests on this paradox, and the true Christian must simply accept it without seeking an explanation. The paradox of Christianity defies all attempts at scientific explanation or discursive analysis. It is simply a mystery that must be accepted as such. According to Climacus, the problem is that speculative philosophy is not content to remain in uncertainty or in Socratic ignorance but rather presses on in an attempt to explain the phenomenon. In this context, 101 102 103

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CUP1, pp. 199–231; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 182–211. CUP1, p. 212; SKS, vol. 7, p. 194. E.g. “de omnibus dubitandum est,” CUP1, p. 200; SKS, vol. 7, p. 184; “going beyond,” CUP1, p. 204; SKS, vol. 7, p. 187. CUP1, p. 207; SKS, vol. 7, p. 189. CUP1, p. 213; SKS, vol. 7, p. 195; “the professor,” CUP1, p. 220f.; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 201f. CUP1, p. 231f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 211. 105 CUP1, p. 217; SKS, vol. 7, p. 198. CUP1, p. 207; SKS, vol. 7, p. 190.


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Climacus uses his familiar expression for Martensen who wants “to go beyond Hegel” and applies it to going beyond Socratic ignorance. Speculative philosophy tries to explain the paradox of Christianity (i.e., that the infinite, eternal God became temporal). But by explaining the paradox, speculative philosophy destroys the possibility of faith that requires paradox, uncertainty, and the absurd as its object. If the paradox is explained objectively by speculative philosophy, then it ceases to be an object of faith and becomes the object of scientific knowledge. When the objective thinker tries to base his faith upon this explanation, he misunderstands the nature of Christianity. By explaining the paradox, he destroys the very nature of faith. For Climacus, Christianity is supposed to be precisely “an absurdity to the understanding.”106 It is repellent to reason and objective thinking. He suggests that the nature of Christianity is a mystery: “Suppose that Christianity was and wants to be a mystery, an utter mystery. . . . Suppose that a revelation sensu strictissimo must be a mystery and be recognizable just by its being a mystery.”107 For Climacus, the danger of the modern age is that the offense and paradox of Christianity have been forgotten, and people have simply become Christians as a matter of course, but in this way the very nature of Christianity is destroyed. According to this view, speculative philosophy, by assuming a world-historical perspective, overcomes all contradictions and resolves all paradoxes. It reconciles the individual with the world and with Christianity.108 Christianity is essentially a paradox, but this paradox is forgotten in a Hegelian philosophical explanation of it and in an insistence on reconciliation. Thus, there is no longer paradox or offense but rather resolution. The moment of paradox is at best a transitory stage to be aufgehoben. The discussions of Hegel and Climacus are at cross purposes since they are clearly discussing two quite different things. Hegel wants to give an analysis in the academic field of the philosophy of religion, whereas Climacus is concerned with religious faith. When Hegel analyzes Christianity according to the Concept, he is concerned with a philosophical understanding of the Christian religion and not with personal faith. When a conceptual analysis is applied to religion, it renders the result that Christianity follows a conceptual movement.109 But this is not to say that every understanding of religion or of Christianity must be conceptual or philosophical. It could well be that although philosophy interprets the necessity of the Concept of religion at the level of the speculative thinking, there is nevertheless a paradox and mystery at the level of individual subjectivity and private faith. The problem is once again the attempt to base one’s faith on a philosophical or conceptual understanding of 106 108 109

107 CUP1, p. 213; SKS, vol. 7, p. 195. CUP1, p. 213; SKS, vol. 7, p. 195. See Chapter 9, Section III, pp. 390–394. This is the subject of the next section of this chapter.


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Christianity. There is nothing in Hegel’s position that would prevent him from accepting Climacus’ doctrine of the paradox, given that it is to be understood in the context of personal belief. Thus, the criticism here ultimately reduces to a point about one’s relation to faith and not about Hegel’s philosophy. This seems to imply a criticism of Martensen who, to Kierkegaard’s mind, regards a speculative understanding of Christianity as the final word not only for scholarship but also for religious faith, thus confusing the two different spheres. It will be recalled that Martensen, who in the context of the debate about Hegelian mediation, argued for the conceptual understanding of Christianity as the final word.110 Thus, it is Martensen who holds the position that Climacus wants to criticize.

iv. speculative philosophy’s conceptual understanding of christianity The chapter “Subjective Truth, Inwardness: Truth is Subjectivity”111 also treats speculative philosophy’s understanding of Christianity. It must be pointed out once again that Hegel is concerned with philosophy of religion as a branch of philosophy, and his account of Christianity does not purport to be anything more than this. Philosophy is, according to Hegel’s understanding, an examination of the Concept; therefore, philosophy of religion is the field of study that examines the Concept in various forms of religion.112 It will be noted that there is no statement about the nature of private faith or about the individual believer. In this section I will first give a brief account of Hegel’s conceptual interpretation of Christianity. I will then argue that what Climacus criticizes is not this scholarly interpretation but rather an attempt to base faith on such an interpretation. His criticism turns out to be of Heiberg’s exaggerated claims about the ultimate truth of the conceptual understanding. A. Hegel’s Conceptual Understanding of Christianity. Like other forms of human experience, such as natural science, politics, and art, religion, for Hegel, operates with the basic categories of the Concept. In the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Hegel explains that Christianity contains within itself the three moments of the Concept, i.e., the fundamental categories of universality [Allgemeinheit], particularity [Besonderheit], and their unity in individuality [Einzelheit].113 The Concept is the universal 110 111 112 113

See Chapter 8, Section I, pp. 347–355. CUP1, pp. 199–231; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 182–211. See Hegel, Phil. of Religion I, pp. 18–35; Jub., vol. 15, pp. 36–52. Hegel, EL, § 163; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 358–361.


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form found in all reality. The conception of the divine in Christianity thus follows this structure as well. Hegel writes: the Absolute Spirit exhibits itself (α) as eternal content, abiding selfcentered, even in its manifestation; (β) as distinction of the eternal essence from its manifestation, which by this difference becomes the phenomenal world into which the content enters; (γ ) as infinite return, and reconciliation with the eternal being, of the world it gave away – the withdrawal of the eternal from the phenomenal into the unity of its fullness.114

Hegel characterizes these different aspects of the Concept in their Christian form by understanding (1) universality as the abstract God, i.e., God as Father, (2) particularity as the abstract God become man in Christ, and (3) individuality or the unity of the two in the Holy Spirit. Christianity represents the highest form of religious knowing since it contains the self-conscious realization of the three aspects of the Concept. At the first stage, the divine is conceived as simple universality.115 Self-consciousness externalizes itself and posits itself in the realm of the beyond. Hegel refers to this as the “othering” or “externalization” [Entäußerung] of self-consciousness. This conception is then reified and thought to be a real, independent, ontological entity: “The element of pure thought, because it is an abstract element, is itself rather the ‘other’ of its simple, unitary nature, and therefore passes over into the element proper to picture-thinking – the element in which the moments of the pure Concept obtain a substantial existence relatively to one another.”116 God is conceived as a purely abstract other, who exists in the abstract realm beyond the mundane sphere. Here the divine is characterized fundamentally by the category of universality: “Under the ‘moment’ of Universality – the sphere of pure thought or the abstract medium of essence – it is therefore the Absolute Spirit, which is at first the presupposed principle, not, however, staying aloof and inert, but (as underlying and essential power under the reflective category of causality) creator of heaven and earth.”117 According to this view, God is an abstract projection of the self-conscious subject. He is thus conceived as a thought or something that dwells in “the sphere of pure thought” and thus not as a sensible particular. God is simply a static, immobile entity in the beyond. Understood historically, this conception of the divine as abstract universality corresponds, according to Hegel, to Yahweh, the God of Judaism. According to Hegel’s view, nothing can remain wholly abstract; if something is to be determinate, it must also have a concrete, particular side. 114 115 116 117

Hegel, Phil. of Mind, § 566; Jub., vol. 10, p. 455. Hegel, Phil. of Religion III, pp. 7–33; Jub., vol. 16, pp. 223–247. PhS, pp. 466–469; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 586–590. Hegel, PhS, p. 467; Jub., vol. 2, p. 587. Hegel, Phil. of Mind, § 567; Jub., vol. 10, p. 455.


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Thus, God, conceived as Yahweh or as the abstract God of thought, must abandon His universality and abstraction and enter into the empirical world of particularity. This then represents the second stage at which Christ appears as a concrete particular in the empirical sphere.118 In order for God to be determinate, He must have some aspect of difference or some opposing term. The divine “is, in fact, the negative in its own self and, moreover, the negativity of thought or negativity as it is in itself in essence; i.e. simple essence is absolute difference from itself, or its pure othering of itself.”119 With the coming of Christ, God thus becomes “the self-opposed or ‘other’ of itself.”120 God, as universal and abstract, and Christ, as concrete and particular, mutually determine one another. Each term needs the other to be what it is. Hegel says, the “actuality or self-consciousness [sc. Christ], and the in-itself as substance [sc. God, the Father], are its two moments through whose reciprocal externalization, each becoming the other, Spirit comes into existence as this their unity.”121 Hegel calls Christianity “the revealed religion” since the divinity, by becoming an empirical being, is revealed or is made known to man. With Christ, God ceases to be an alien entity or something essentially different from man which confronts him as an “other.” Christ has a dual meaning – first as a particular empirical presence but also as an absolute being. Christ is explicitly the particular and finite (an immediate, existing natural creature) and implicitly the universal and infinite (the universal God). Hegel summarizes his Christology thus: “Spirit is known as self-consciousness and to this self-consciousness it is immediately revealed, for Spirit is this self-consciousness itself. The divine nature is the same as the human, and it is this unity that is beheld.”122 In the third stage of revealed religion, the two moments of universality and particularity are united.123 Now the opposition between God in the beyond and Christ in the empirical sphere is overcome, and the sphere of the universal self-consciousness is introduced: “Spirit is thus posited in the third element in universal self-consciousness; it is its community.”124 The death and resurrection of Christ represent the overcoming of the natural sphere of particularity. Christ as a particular individual must die in order to establish the ethical substance or universal religious community. This universal spirit is indeed the very nature of Christ who thus only in death becomes what he truly is: “The movement of the community as selfconsciousness that has distinguished itself from its picture-thought is to 118 119 121 123 124

Hegel, Phil. of Religion III, pp. 33–100; Jub., vol. 16, pp. 247–308. PhS, pp. 469–471; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 590–592. 120 Hegel, PhS, p. 467; Jub., vol. 2, p. 587. Hegel, PhS, p. 465; Jub., vol. 2, p. 584. 122 Hegel, PhS, p. 460; Jub., vol. 2, p. 578. Hegel, PhS, p. 457; Jub., vol. 2, p. 575. Hegel, Phil. of Religion III, pp. 100–151; Jub., vol. 16, pp. 308–356. PhS, pp. 471–478; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 592–601. Hegel, PhS, p. 473; Jub., vol. 2, p. 594.



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make explicit what has been implicitly established. The dead divine man or human God is in himself the universal self-consciousness.”125 Now universality of the absolute God and the particularity of Christ are aufgehoben and reunited in a higher form in the religious community. In the death of Christ, feeling, the domain of human beings, is united with thought, the domain of the divine, and thus in the living spirit in the Christian community people find the fulfillment of this deepest need, the need to reconcile the countless oppositions of human life. For Hegel, this is picture-thinking’s way of representing a profound philosophical truth. Now the relation of philosophical knowing to religious knowing comes into focus. Hegel claims that religion and philosophy have the same content but different ways of interpreting it.126 He writes in the Encyclopaedia Logic: “It is true that it [sc. philosophy] does, initially, have its objects in common with religion.”127 In terms of the levels of knowing examined in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the content that the dialectical movement examines in the “Religion” chapter is the same as in “Absolute Knowing.”128 Thus, the goal of philosophy – to unite subject and object and to overcome countless other dualisms – is already complete in the “Religion” chapter since the revealed religion effects the reconciliation. There is then both a religious and a philosophical interpretation of the monistic unity of the world. The religious interpretation, which understands this truth in terms of picture-thinking, personifies the monistic unity of the universe in the Christian Trinity. For the common believer, these abstract truths can only be grasped in a simplified form by means of concrete examples and stories drawn from normal human experience. For example, God’s externalizing of Himself into the world and the return to Himself are not grasped as a necessary movement of the Concept but instead as a story of the birth and life of Christ. The conceptual truth of God and Christ are understood via the metaphor of the Father and the Son. 125 126

127

128

Hegel, PhS, p. 473; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 594–595. See “The Position of the Philosophy of Religion Relatively to Philosophy and Religion,” Phil. of Religion I, pp. 18–35; Jub., vol. 15, pp. 36–52. See Quentin Lauer, “Hegel on the Identity of Content in Religion and Philosophy,” in Hegel and the Philosophy of Religion, ed. by Darrel E. Christensen, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1970, pp. 261–278. Hegel, EL, § 1; Jub., vol. 8, p. 41. PhS, p. 479; Jub., vol. 2, p. 602: “Spirit itself as a whole, and the self-differentiated moments within it, fall within the sphere of picture-thinking and in the form of objectivity. The content of this picture-thinking is Absolute Spirit.” PR, § 270; Jub., vol. 7, p. 349: “The content of religion is absolute truth, and it is associated with a disposition of the most exalted kind.” EL, § 45, Addition; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 135– 136: “absolute idealism can hardly be regarded as the private property of philosophy in actual fact, because, on the contrary, it forms the basis of all religious consciousness. This is because religion, too regards the sum total of everything that is there, in short, the world before us, as created and governed by God.” See PhS, p. 488; Jub., vol. 2, p. 614: “The content of religion proclaims earlier in time than does Science, what Spirit is, but only Science is its true knowledge of itself.”


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For Hegel, although this religious knowledge is true in the sense that it corresponds to the Concept, it is not adequate. It still requires a further kind of knowing for its completion. He explains: This form is not yet Spirit’s self-consciousness that has advanced to its Concept qua Concept: the mediation is still incomplete. This combination of being and thought is, therefore, defective in that. . . . the content is the true content, but all its moments, when placed in the medium of picture-thinking, have the character of being uncomprehended [in terms of the Concept], of appearing as completely independent sides which are externally connected with each other.129

The stories religion tells portray events as accidental, but for Hegel the Concept that they represent is necessary. Thus, a philosophical understanding of the Concept is the understanding of the logical necessity of its unfolding. Philosophical knowledge can see the Concept as Concept in its necessity without the veil of picture-thinking. What is lacking in the picture-thinking of Christianity is the ability to capture the necessity of the Concept. The goal, for Hegel, is for the individual to recognize himself in the Concept in its various spheres. Only in this way does the individual or a people become aware of itself. According to Hegel, this is not wholly possible with religion since necessity is still lacking: So far as Spirit in religion pictures itself to itself, it is indeed consciousness, and the reality enclosed within religion is the shape and the guise of its picture-thinking. But, in this picture-thinking, reality does not receive its perfect due, viz. to be not merely a guise but an independent free existence; and conversely, because it lacks perfection within itself it is a specific shape which does not attain to what it ought to show forth, viz. Spirit that is conscious of itself.130

Self-conscious Spirit must understand itself as the Concept, and this is what Hegel understands by absolute knowing. For Hegel, Christianity thus represents the next highest form of truth after philosophical knowing. It has the same content as philosophical knowing, but it understands it not in the way philosophy does, as pure concepts, but as “picture-thinking.” The myths and stories of the scriptures are not simply contingent or accidental but represent necessary conceptual truths. These truths are couched in the form of a story so that they can be accessible to all, but, for Hegel, the philosopher can divest these truths from their stories and see them in their pure, conceptual form. B. Climacus’ Criticism of Christianity as a Form of Knowing. With this background information about Hegel’s philosophy of religion, the criticism 129 130

Hegel, PhS, p. 463; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 581–582. Translation slightly modified. See also PhS, pp. 465–466; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 585–586. PhS, pp. 477–478; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 599–601. Hegel, PhS, p. 412; Jub., vol. 2, p. 520.



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put forth by Johannes Climacus can now be evaluated. Climacus begins by noting that speculative philosophy does not deny the truth of Christianity but claims rather to present it: “By no means does speculative thought say that Christianity is untruth; on the contrary, it specifically says that speculation comprehends the truth of Christianity.”131 The problem is with what speculative philosophy takes this truth to be. For Hegel, when understood within the field of the philosophy of religion, Christianity is the highest form of religion and, indeed, contains the highest truth. But this conceptual truth, which is of interest to Hegel, is, for Climacus, clearly different from the subjective truth and the paradox that he understands as being the necessary characteristic of Christian faith: “Then it is not Christianity that is and was and remains the truth, and the speculative thinker’s understanding is not the understanding that Christianity is the truth – no, it is the speculative thinker’s understanding of Christianity that is the truth of Christianity. The understanding is thus something other than the truth.”132 As has been seen, for Climacus, Christianity means paradox, passion, and offense. It is more than simply a categorial movement. When speculative thinkers take the speculative truth of Christianity to be the final truth, then they are mistaken since the truth of Christianity is something inward. “Speculative thought,” Climacus writes, “is objective, and objectively there is no truth for an existing individual but only an approximation, since by existing he is prevented from becoming entirely objective. Christianity, on the other hand, is subjective; the inwardness of faith in the believer is the truth’s eternal decision.”133 The speculative philosopher’s interpretation cannot in principle be the truth of Christianity for the individual believer. Thus, the truth upon which one bases one’s faith cannot be that of a speculative interpretation of Christianity. The criticism that Climacus takes up here was raised earlier against Heiberg’s presentation of Hegel’s philosophy in On the Significance of Philosophy for the Present Age.134 In the critical responses to this work by Mynster135 and Tryde136 the objection was raised that a conceptual understanding of Christianity leaves out essential features of religiosity. While this understanding may be fine for the philosopher, it cannot satisfy the 131 132 134

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136

CUP1, p. 223; SKS, vol. 7, p. 203. See also SL, p. 452; SKS, vol. 6, p. 418. 133 CUP1, p. 224; SKS, vol. 7, p. 204. CUP1, p. 223; SKS, vol. 7, p. 204. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid, Copenhagen 1833. ASKB 568. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861– 62, vol. 1, pp. 381–460.) Jakob Peter Mynster, “Om den religiøse Overbevisning,” Dansk Ugeskrift, vol. 3, no. 76– 77, 1833, pp. 241–258. (Reprinted in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, vols. 1–6, Copenhagen 1852–57, vol. 2, pp. 73–94.) Anonymous [Eggert Christopher Tryde], “Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid. Et Indbydelses-Skrift til en Række af philosophiske Forelæsninger. Af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Kbhavn. 54 S. 80 ,” Dansk Litteratur-Tidende for 1833, no. 41, pp. 649–660; no. 42, pp. 681–692; no. 43, pp. 697–704.


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inward longing of the religious believer. In his anonymous review, Tryde argues against the claim that Heiberg makes for the subordination of religious knowing to philosophy. He argues that Heiberg “is incorrect in demanding that we seek that which gives the soul its peace and its rest in this given itself, or in the knowledge of its true essence, which philosophy provides; he is incorrect in not recognizing religion for more than a subordinate, more mediated form.”137 He rejects the attempt to interpret religion merely as one form of knowing among others. This kind of a categorization reduces religion to a formalism, which can in no way satisfy the religious believer. Tryde thus criticizes Heiberg’s attempt to assign to religion a role inferior to philosophy. His contention is that the multitude of religious experiences and feelings cannot be incorporated in philosophical knowing since they cannot be reduced to a conceptual form. Heiberg responded to Tryde’s review and to the question of whether there can be anything higher than philosophical thought.138 His main argument is that so long as theology claims to be concerned with knowledge, it is continuous with philosophy: “But philosophy is theology; otherwise it would not be what it is itself. And theology is philosophy; otherwise it is nothing.”139 Given this, theology can be compared with philosophy with regard to the question of knowing. Heiberg argues that philosophical knowledge does not destroy religious feeling but instead preserves it and understands it correctly in the Idea. He asks his anonymous reviewer: “What is it then that the reviewer (and with him virtually everyone else) finds lacking in the speculative Idea?”140 He explains that Hegel’s philosophy is an examination of what Hegel calls the Idea, i.e., the abstract Concept and the concrete empirical instantiations. He argues that religious emotions such as love and hope are included in the Idea insofar as they are finite forms of it. Thus, one need look no further than the abstract speculative Idea to find what one seeks in religion: Everything which one demands outside philosophy is thus contained within philosophy itself. Everything which is needed for our satisfaction dwells inside this circle. My reviewer, who, dissatisfied with possessing the finite determinations within philosophy, demands to possess them outside philosophy, demands the impossible if he does not want to give up philosophy entirely. If, by contrast, he wants to continue with philosophy, then he needs 137 138

139

140

Ibid., p. 701. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “I Anledning af Recensionen over mit Skrift: Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid. (Dansk Litt. Tid. No. 41–43),” Dansk Litteratur-Tidende for 1833, no. 46, pp. 765–780. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, Tillæg I, pp. 437–452.) Ibid., p. 770. (Martensen, also following Hegel, makes the same claim. See Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia, op. cit., § 1, p. 3f. Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, op. cit., § 1, p. 3. The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, op. cit., p. 77.) Ibid., p. 778.



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only to take a step forward, and he will then learn, if indeed he has not already learned it, that the occupation with the speculative Idea produces all the joy, excitement, love, enthusiasm, in short, all the noble and elevated feelings, which he now seeks outside the world in which their existence is grounded. For all these feelings are the Idea itself but not yet developed; in the development therefore they do not stop, but they are purified and made clear and thereby win in energy.141

Thus, Heiberg claims that one need not appeal to an independent sphere of religion where religious emotions exist, but rather they already exist in philosophy itself (i.e., in Hegel’s philosophy). In his rejoinder to Heiberg’s response,142 Tryde gives a long list of religious terms such as redemption, reconciliation, and eternal life, which he says are absent in any abstract philosophical account.143 The criticism offered by Climacus was also anticipated, oddly enough, by Martensen in his review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College. Martensen begins by arguing that some things cannot be incorporated into a rationalistic system such as Hegel’s: But another question is whether rationalism is the philosophy or only a moment of it with relative validity, whether the age which strove for a pure rational knowledge, will be satisfied with its results now that it possesses the means to reach it. For the more these results become apparent, the more obvious it will become that it is insufficient to capture the entire fullness of life.144 141 142

143

144

Ibid., p. 779f. Anonymous [Eggert Christopher Tryde], “Svar fra Anmelderen af Professor Heibergs Skrivt, ‘Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid,’ paa Forfatterens Erklæring i Litteraturtidenden No. 46,” Dansk Litteratur-Tidende for 1833, no. 49, pp. 820– 828. Ibid., p. 828: “The reviewer answers to this that he has actually already experienced that the occupation with the speculative Idea creates for its devotee joy, excitement, enthusiasm; but what it has not created for him and what he nonetheless greatly needs and what he therefore seeks outside it is not resignation under the power which the Idea exercises in life and beyond the individual subject, but childlike confidence and devotion in a heavenly Father’s providence and governance, by which he feels elevated above every fatalistic power; it is redemption not only from the evil, which seems to be outside him, but from that which is inside him, from the power of sin in him and over him, and which he cannot help but perceive as a disturbance in the absolute Idea living in him; it is an atonement, which is not only a dissolution of the difference in a unity, but a reconciliation of the fallen, sinful human individual with his eternal Father; it is an eternal life, in which he, the self-conscious individual which he now is, participates, not in such a way that his individuality is sublated or his self disappears, but such that it is preserved, and he, with all those who love God, grows forth more and more to the freedom of the magnificence of God’s children, in the unity of love, which, precisely because it proceeds from love, indeed will always intimately connect the one with the other and everyone with God, but will never allow everyone to disappear and grow together in one, in such a way that it would destroy the self.” Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole. Af J.L. Heiberg, Lærer i Logik og Æsthetik ved den kgl. militaire Høiskole,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 16, 1836, p. 524.


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Martensen names poetry and religion as ways of thinking that cannot be adequately grasped by a philosophical system based on reason. He argues that both contain something irreducible and inexplicable that defies the system: If only the soul of logic exists, then poetry remains only the reflection of the Concept and religion its symbol. And yet we cannot give up the demand that the soul of poetry should be more than merely rational and that the consolation which religion gives us should contain more than what logical consistency necessary produces; there is in both something inexplicable, something which can only be understood by faith, a freedom, which to be sure contains necessity in itself, but is infinitely more than this.145

Here one finds the clear outlines of Climacus’ view. First, religion is conceived as something inexplicable to reason. There is a distinction between what reason and what faith can grasp. Martensen criticizes Hegel’s understanding of Christianity as merely a form of the Concept: “If religion is only a symbolic form for eternal concepts or reason, then it ‘is’ not the truth itself but only the truth’s reflection; likewise, it cannot be the absolute power in our consciousness, but only the object for a speculative or aesthetic interest.”146 Thus, like Climacus, Martensen argues that Hegel’s philosophical system and Christianity ultimately cannot be reconciled. It will be noted that these objections are raised against Heiberg’s presentation of Hegel’s views and against Heiberg’s inflated claims that everything is captured by the Idea including the emotions and sentiments of the individual religious believer. While Hegel uses the term “the Absolute” or “the Absolute Idea” to mean the whole of the universe, this is always understood in its philosophical sense as the organic unity of all the concepts that constitute the universe. There is thus no claim made about private emotions of particular individuals. Indeed, Hegel himself claimed that such things cannot be grasped philosophically; they belong to the bad infinity of particularity and have nothing to do with philosophy. Thus, it is a distortion of Hegel’s philosophy when Heiberg claims that one can find in it everything that one needs to satisfy the longings of the religious believer. Moreover, Hegel’s conceptual account of Christianity in his philosophy of religion has nothing to do with the faith of the individual believer. His hierarchy of forms of knowledge, which places religion under philosophy, is to be understood only in the context of his system; and in this context “religion” means “philosophy of religion” and not personal faith. Heiberg’s discussion conflates the academic discipline of theology with the more general term “religion.” On the one hand, in arguing that religion is a form of knowing and thus 145

Ibid., p. 525.

146

Ibid., p. 525.



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continuous with philosophy, he clearly has in mind theology, and indeed he even says so with the slogan “theology is philosophy.” But then, on the other hand, when he tries to meet Tryde’s criticism about a philosophical account leaving out essential aspects of the inward life and emotions of the particular believer, then it is clear that neither he nor Tryde is speaking of theology any more but rather of religious feeling and conscience generally. Thus, when Heiberg claims that the Idea can satisfy this realm of private belief, just as it does the academic realm of theology, then he has clearly made a claim that goes beyond Hegel’s philosophy, which purports to be nothing more than an academic (or to use his word, “scientific”) account of religion. Hegel clearly recognizes the conception of religious faith that Climacus makes a case for. Evidence for this can be found in the “Spirit” chapter of the Phenomenology, where he is critical of the Enlightenment’s critique of Christianity. He argues there that the Enlightenment misunderstands the nature of religious belief by seeing it in terms of its own categories of empirical science or, as Climacus would say, as something “objective.” Hegel writes that the Enlightenment falsely charges religious belief with basing its certainty on some particular historical evidences which, considered as historical evidences, would certainly not guarantee the degree of certainty about their content which is given by newspaper accounts of any happening – further, that its certainty rests on the accidental preservation of these evidences; on the one hand, the preservation by means of paper, and on the other hand, by the skill and honesty of their transference from one piece of paper to another, and lastly, on the correct interpretation of the meaning of dead words and letters.147

According to the Enlightenment, belief must be demonstrated by means of empirical evidence, and this is the standard it imposes on religious faith. The critical thinking of the Enlightenment easily demonstrates the many problems with the historical record and draws the same conclusion that Climacus does (i.e., this evidence cannot possibly justify religious belief). But the Enlightenment is mistaken when it thinks that the Christian founds his or her belief on the basis of historical evidence about Christ’s life or on the exactitude of the philological record. Hegel points out that this is a misunderstanding of the nature of religious belief that does not appeal to this kind of evidence. The realm of religion operates with its own categories, which are distinct from Enlightenment reason. Like Climacus, Hegel indicates that one should not confuse the two spheres: “Faith, in its certainty, is an unsophisticated relationship to its absolute object, a pure knowing of it which does not mix up letters, paper, and copyists in its consciousness of absolute being, and does not bring itself 147

Hegel, PhS, p. 338; Jub., vol. 2, p. 426f.


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into relation with it by means of things of that kind.”148 Moreover, like Climacus, Hegel recognizes that faith lies in the inwardness of the individual: “This consciousness is the self-mediating ground of its knowledge; it is spirit itself which bears witness to itself, both in the inwardness of the individual consciousness and through the universal presence in everyone of faith in it.”149 In the Philosophy of Right in the context of Hegel’s discussion of the inalienability of religious freedom, one reads that “a human being must decide such inward matters entirely within himself.”150 Thus, despite Hegel’s conceptual analysis of Christianity in his philosophy of religion, it is clear that he recognizes and indeed anticipates some of Climacus’ criticisms of objective thinking in the Postscript and is well aware that religious belief is not based on external evidence. Hegel, like Climacus, clearly distinguishes between the two realms (i.e., that of science and scholarship, on the one hand, and that of private religious faith, on the other). It will be noted that this same discussion is played out again in a debate between the theologian Ludvig Helweg (1818–83) and his reviewer, the aforementioned Johan Frederik Hagen. In his long article, “On Faith and Knowledge”151 from 1843, which was based on lectures given in 1842, Helweg discusses critically Hegel’s philosophy of religion and above all the status of religion in Hegel’s system. This article was attacked anonymously by Hagen,152 one of Martensen’s students, who sought to defend Hegel’s cause in the matter. He argues that Hegel’s philosophy neither eliminates religion nor reduces it to something subordinate. Helweg wrote a somewhat bitter rejoinder to the review,153 insisting that Hegel’s philosophy regards religion or specifically faith as a sublated form. All of this shows that in Denmark as in Germany this was a central point of contention in the discussions about Hegel’s philosophy. Moreover, it is indication that Kierkegaard was not alone with his concerns about the status of belief in Hegel’s philosophy. The conclusion to be drawn from this discussion is the same as that of the previous section. Hegel is concerned in his philosophy of religion with understanding forms and conceptions of the divine at the conceptual 148 150 151 152

153

149 Hegel, PhS, p. 338; Jub., vol. 2, p. 427. Hegel, PhS, p. 338; Jub., vol. 2, p. 427. Hegel, PR, § 66, Addition; Jub., vol. 7, p. 123. Ludvig Helweg, “Om Tro og Viden. Et Forsøg til en Characteristik af Nutidens Theologie,” For Literatur og Kritik, 1, 1843, pp. 20–67, pp. 123–160. Johan Frederik Hagen [anonymous], “Om Tro og Viden. Et Forsøg til en Characteristik af Nutidens Theologie, af L. Helweg, Cand. theol. Første Artikel. (I Tidsskrift for Literatur og Critik, udgivet af det fyenske literaire Selskab, redigeret af Dr. og Overlærer C. Paludam-Muller. ¨ Første Aargangs første Hefte. Odense 1843),” Theologisk Tidsskrift, Ny Række, 7, 1843, pp. 350–356. Ludvig Helweg, “Nogle Bemærkninger fremkaldte ved en i Theologisk Tidsskrifts 7de Binds 2det Hefte indrykket Recension af min Afhandling ‘Om Tro og Viden,’” For Literatur og Kritik, 1, 1843, pp. 406–413.


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level. By contrast, Climacus is concerned with the personal faith of the individual. These two discussions, while very different, do not mutually exclude one another. There is nothing that precludes speculative thinkers from grasping the nature of the Trinity in a speculative manner (i.e., according to the Concept) and then putting this understanding aside when they turn to the inwardness of their own conscience and to their personal faith. As was seen in the previous section, Climacus explicitly allows for this possibility. From the standpoint of speculative philosophy, religion stands under philosophy and is subordinated to philosophical knowing, but this has nothing to do with personal faith, which is absolute. Thus, given that Hegel’s position is not excluded by Climacus’, it is difficult to see how Climacus’ comments here can be understood as a criticism of Hegel’s philosophy itself. Climacus makes no attempt to criticize Hegel’s interpretation of the Trinity or the development of the Concept in Christianity. It seems once again that the objection is against a confusion of the two spheres, a confusion that both Hegel and Climacus insist must be avoided. Here one can see a clear-cut example of precisely what Kierkegaard himself indicated in the journal entry quoted previously154 (i.e., that his criticism is not of Hegel, whose scholarship he respects as scholarship, but of certain exaggerated claims made on behalf of Hegel’s philosophy in the Danish context). While Hegel claimed that individual emotions and feeling were not the object of philosophical examination, Heiberg claimed that they were in the Idea and that everything that one needed for one’s private religious life was to be found there.

v. speculative philosophy and forgetting oneself A criticism raised originally in “The Speculative Point of View”155 but that recurs frequently later156 is the claim that speculative philosophy leads the individual to forget himself. Johannes Climacus is suspicious of speculative philosophy as a potentially seductive or corrupting influence since it obliges one to abstract from the realm of existence and to concentrate on the aperspectival view of the universe as a whole. In this section, I will argue that this argument cannot be seen as a criticism of Hegel and is best conceived as a criticism of some of Hegel’s overenthusiastic followers. It recalls the objections, raised by Judge Wilhelm, that mediation leads young people away from their ethical duties.157 154 155 156 157

CUP2, Supplement, pp. 162–163; Pap. X-6 B 128, p. 171. Discussed on p. 466 in this chapter. CUP1, pp. 50–57; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 54–61. CUP1, pp. 106–125; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 103–120. CUP1, pp. 129–141; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 121– 131. Explored in Chapter 4, Section II.


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The danger, which Climacus points out, is that speculative philosophy can distract and seduce one into thinking in an exclusively objective manner so that the fundamental question about one’s own eternal happiness is never raised: “But for the speculative thinker the question of his personal eternal happiness cannot come up at all, precisely because his task consists in going away from himself more and more and becoming objective and in that way disappearing from himself and becoming the gazing power of speculative thought.”158 Speculative thought tends to abstract from the individual since it aims at an analysis of the whole. Thus, the danger for one as a potential Christian believer is that one could forget oneself entirely in the abstraction of speculative thought and thus forget the issue of one’s eternal happiness. Johannes Climacus takes up this criticism again later when he discusses speculative philosophy’s attempt to incorporate existence into a system. His thesis states: “A system of existence cannot be given.”159 Here he argues that the concept of existence itself is fundamentally at odds with the concept of a system of thought and thus cannot be captured by a system: “System and conclusiveness correspond to each other, but existence is the very opposite. . . . Existence is the spacing that holds apart; the systematic is the conclusiveness that combines.”160 The claim here recalls Kierkegaard’s criticisms of Hegel’s view of Socrates from The Concept of Irony. There he criticized Hegel for treating the life of Socrates as something finished. Such a view is only valid from a historical perspective that looks back on past ages and peoples. But there is never this sense of completeness for the individual living his or her life. Climacus thus points out that for those still living this sense of completedness is an illusion: “when an existence is a thing of the past, it is indeed finished, it is indeed concluded, and to that extent it is turned over to the systematic view. Quite so – but for whom? Whoever is himself existing cannot gain this conclusiveness outside existence, a conclusiveness that corresponds to the eternity into which the past has entered.”161 Climacus contrasts the existing human being with the human being as presented by the system. The former is always in the process of becoming and is characterized by a “continued striving.” The latter is something complete and finished: “The continued striving is the expression of the existing subject’s ethical life-view.”162 This is the point of the quotation from Lessing that Climacus finds so important.163 Human life is the eternal struggle and search for the truth, not the attainment of it. This discussion leads to the criticism that speculative philosophy induces one to abstract from one’s own existence and thus to forget oneself 158 160 162

CUP1, p. 56; SKS, vol. 7, p. 60. CUP1, p. 118; SKS, vol. 7, p. 114. CUP1, p. 121f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 117.

159 161 163

CUP1, p. 118; SKS, vol. 7, p. 114. CUP1, p. 118f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 114. CUP1, p. 106; SKS, vol. 7, p. 103.



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as an existing individual. Climacus seems to argue in principle against the panoptic view that speculative philosophy promotes since it is a perspective that no individual human can really have. It is aperspectival and can only be achieved by means of abstraction: “But who, then, is this systematic thinker? Well, it is he who himself is outside existence and yet in existence, who in his eternity is forever concluded and yet includes existence within himself – it is God.”164 Climacus sees pretension in the desire to view the world from a panoptic perspective of speculative philosophy since this, he claims, is the desire to play God. He goes so far as to call this immoral.165 Climacus takes up this issue yet again in the chapter “Becoming Subjective” from Section II.166 There his criticism is that speculative philosophy tends to substitute the world-historical perspective for the ethical. He begins by distinguishing once again between the subjective, inward realm of Christianity and the objective realm of speculative philosophy. As has been seen, the distinguishing feature of Christianity is the issue of eternal happiness: “Christianity wants to give the single individual an eternal happiness, a good that is not distributed in bulk but only to one, and to one at a time.”167 By contrast, speculative philosophy tends to abstract from the individual and to view things from a world-historical perspective. This then can lead the unwary individual to forget his own subjectivity and existence and to substitute the activity of speculative thinking for it. Climacus writes: it is supposed to be certain that the objective trend toward becoming an observer is in modern linguistic usage the ethical answer of what I am to do ethically. (To be an observer, that is the ethical! That a person ought to be an observer is the ethical answer – otherwise one is compelled to assume that there is no question whatever about the ethical and hence no answer either.)168

Instead of being concerned with the ethical life of the individual, speculative philosophy recommends that one contemplate the world from a speculative perspective. Thus, the very activity of speculative philosophy itself is purportedly conceived as a positive ethical program. This cannot be a criticism of Hegel or speculative philosophy per se since speculative philosophy does not compel one to forget one’s own existence; rather, it is one’s own attitude towards oneself and towards speculative philosophy that leads to this. The question is whether or not one allows oneself to be so absorbed in speculative philosophy and world history that one forgets oneself and one’s own existence. As was noted in Section II, Climacus grants that a speculative philosopher can be a true 164 166 167

165 CUP1, p. 119; SKS, vol. 7, p. 115. CUP1, p. 119; SKS, vol. 7, p. 115. CUP1, pp. 129–141; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 121–131. 168 CUP1, p. 133; SKS, vol. 7, p. 124f. CUP1, p. 130; SKS, vol. 7, p. 122.


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Christian provided that he does not try to ground his belief in speculative thought. As in Either/Or (where the distinction was made between the sphere of freedom and the sphere of thought), Climacus here separates the two spheres, which he designates as subjective and objective thought, and accords each its own validity. The problem is when the two spheres are confused or when the objective usurps the subjective and becomes the only sphere. Just like Judge Wilhelm in Either/Or, Climacus here goes so far as to laud speculative philosophy provided that it remain within its proper sphere and not purport to do anything else: But I should add a word here, in case anyone misunderstands a number of my remarks. . . . Honor be to speculative thought, praised be everyone who is truly occupied with it. To deny the value of speculative thought . . . would, in my eyes, be to prostitute oneself and would be especially foolish for one whose life in large part and at its humble best is devoted to its service, and especially foolish for one who admires the Greeks.169

Here he cautions the reader against interpreting his remarks as a criticism of speculative philosophy per se. There is no genuinely philosophical criticism here at all but only a personal one directed at particular individuals. Moreover, if the criticism amounts merely to the fact that the individual becomes so engaged in speculative philosophy that he or she forgets to live and becomes inauthentic, then it matters little whether one is distracted by one’s concern with speculative philosophy or by something else. There are any number of different ways in which one can be distracted from the question of one’s existence and one’s eternal happiness. One might argue that it is the abstract perspective of speculative philosophy that, by concentrating the focus on the macrolevel, tends to lead one to a perspective sub specie aeternitatis and thus to forget oneself. But the claim that speculative philosophy lends itself to this kind of selfforgetfulness cannot be a criticism of speculative philosophy per se. All science operates at this abstract level and is not concerned with individual cases as such. Insofar as the task of science is conceived as the discovery of general laws or principles, it is clear that abstraction from the individual case is a necessary part of all science. One can never think of a general law by concentrating exclusively on individual cases, let alone on oneself as an individual. The realm of science is the realm of universals (i.e., universal patterns or laws). There can in principle be no science of particulars. Thus, it is hardly surprising that science forgets the individual person since it never purports to explain the individual, qua individual, in the first place. Climacus writes: “What is concrete thinking? It is thinking where there are a thinker and a specific something (in the sense of 169

CUP1, p. 55f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 59.



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particularity) that is being thought.”170 This sort of thinking of particulars surely exists, but it has nothing to do with science, and to expect science to be concerned with particulars simply evinces a misunderstanding of the nature of the scientific enterprise. Science wants to find a general law for a particular phenomenon, and thus while it analyzes particular phenomena in a particular time and space, its aim is not to give a particular law for each such particular phenomenon since then there would be as many laws as phenomena and nothing would have been explained. Thus, science is not interested in the particular, qua particular. The argument, if it is conceived in this way, must thus be a criticism of all scientific enquiry and not merely Hegelianism and speculative philosophy. The Absolute Concept, which, for Hegel, encompasses all the other individual concepts, is simply a perspective intended to win insight in the realm of science. It has no claim on the individual scholar, qua existing individual. Many realms of science require one, qua investigator, to take a wider view of the phenomena, e.g., a geologist must view the geological development of the planet on a large scale in order to understand a particular geological formation in the present; likewise, an astronomer or cosmologist must view the history of the universe as a whole in order to comprehend and explain the formation of stars, galaxies, and so on. The wide view of things is the natural result of any realm of enquiry that operates with the uncontroversial premise that phenomena are interconnected in various ways and thus must be investigated not as isolated, monadic entities but as developing systems. Climacus has no criticism of this as a method for science but objects to it as a way of understanding the life of an individual. But since Hegel’s philosophy does not purport to evaluate the individual per se, this cannot be a criticism of his thought. This argument is, in all probability, intended as a criticism of specific personalities, such as Martensen and his students, who Kierkegaard believes have forgotten the ethical. Due to the abstract approach that they have learned from objective scholarship, these young scholars have become forgetful of themselves. The reproach here recalls the passage from Either/Or in which Judge Wilhelm is critical of the negative effects of Hegelian philosophy on the young students of Copenhagen.171 Here it is clear that the object of criticism is not Hegel’s philosophy itself but rather the distracted young people who, captivated by the lure of observing events from a world-historical perspective, have forgotten their 170 171

CUP1, p. 332; SKS, vol. 7, p. 303. EO2, p. 171; SKS, vol. 3, p. 167: “For the philosopher, world history is ended, and he mediates. This accounts for the repugnant spectacle that belongs to the order of the day in our age – to see young people who are able to play games with the titanic forces of history, and who are unable to tell a simple human being what he has to do here in life, nor do they know what they themselves have to do.” (Discussed above in Chapter 4, Section II, p. 203.)


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own inward subjectivity. It has been noted172 that Kierkegaard was jealous of Martensen’s popularity among the students, and it could well be that the objection is aimed against him as a corrupter of the youth, who has seduced and distracted the young students from the most essential questions of Christianity. The “argument” is thus probably grounded in biographical and not philosophical motivations.

vi. the criticism of the presuppositionless beginning I now turn to Johannes Climacus’ account of the presuppositionless beginning of philosophy. This appears in the section on the fourth thesis attributed to Lessing.173 The thesis of this section again concerns the difference between the subjective and the objective approach to Christianity. As in his previous discussions, Climacus insists that the two spheres be kept separate. In the present section I will concentrate on the analysis under the heading “A System of Logic Can Be Given,”174 which considers the claim that Hegel’s philosophy purports to make a presuppositionless beginning.175 This recalls the discussion from De Omnibus where Kierkegaard analyzes in some detail the threefold beginning of philosophy.176 (Climacus also criticizes the notion of movement in logic.177 But since this belongs more properly to the discussion of the law of excluded middle, it will be treated later.178 ) I will argue that Climacus is concerned much more with the Danish discussion of the issue of the beginning of philosophy than with Hegel. His comments are best understood as responses to Heiberg’s claims on behalf of Hegel. 172 173 174 175

176 177

178

Chapter 1, Section II, pp. 64–67. CUP1, pp. 106–125; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 103–120. CUP1, p. 109; SKS, vol. 7, p. 105. For alternative accounts of this issue, see Justus Hartnack, “Kierkegaards Angreb p˚a Hegel,” in Sprogets mesterskab. Festskrift til Johannes Sløks 70-˚arsdag, ed. by Kjeld Holm and Jan Lindhardt, Viby: Centrum 1986, pp. 30–39. Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse, op. cit., pp. 42–47. See also CA, p. 81; SKS, vol. 4, p. 384. JC, p. 149; Pap. IV B 1, p. 131. Climacus’ claim is that a logical system is something static, and movement belongs to the sphere of existence and not logic. Thus, when Hegel wants to use movement in logic, he commits a category mistake: “It is indeed curious to make movement the basis in a sphere in which movement is inconceivable, or to have movement explain logic, whereas logic cannot explain movement”(CUP1, p. 109f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 106). Climacus lauds Trendelenburg’s logic for its rehabilitation of classical logic against Hegel’s speculative logic. The point here is simply that logic belongs to the sphere of objective thinking and thus has nothing to do with subjectivity or actuality as Climacus understands the terms. Thus, logic must restrict itself to the categories of objective thinking: “In a logical system, nothing may be incorporated that has a relation to existence, that is not indifferent to existence”(CUP1, p. 110; SKS, vol. 7, p. 107). Section IX.


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Climacus’ criticism concerns the beginning of philosophy, which had been an important issue in modern philosophy since Descartes and which was much debated in Germany in Hegel’s time. In The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard mentions it in connection with Fichte179 and Solger.180 Climacus’ treatment refers specifically to a long debate about the issue in the Danish discussion of Hegelianism. Before looking at this debate, I will first briefly examine Hegel’s own account of the beginning of philosophy. His most detailed and straightforward discussion of this issue comes in an introductory section of the Science of Logic entitled “With What Must the Science Begin?” Hegel reviews previous attempts to ground philosophy either on some immediate truth or piece of knowledge or on something reflected, which is the result of mediation. True to his dialectical penchant, he indicates that this is a false dichotomy since everything is both mediated and immediate: “there is nothing, nothing in heaven or in nature or mind or anywhere else which does not equally contain both immediacy and mediation, so that these two determinations reveal themselves to be unseparated and inseparable and the opposition between them to be a nullity.”181 It is a logical impossibility to begin with absolute immediacy or absolute mediation since the two are mutually determining concepts. To be sure, for Hegel, philosophy begins with immediacy, but this is already an abstraction and a reflection with reference to mediation. Hegel explains this as follows: “Simple immediacy is itself an expression of reflection and contains a reference to its distinction from what is mediated. This simple immediacy, therefore, in its true expression is pure being.”182 The philosophical science of logic begins with pure being, which is the most indeterminate and abstract category. In this sense it is immediate. But this conception of immediacy is determined by mediation. The other categories are derived from pure being, and from that point on objectivity becomes more and more determinate. These categories are implicitly contained within the abstract immediacy of pure being. Likewise, the abstraction and immediacy of pure being are conditioned by the mediation and determination of the other categories: “The essential requirement for the science of logic is not so much that the beginning be a pure immediacy, but rather that the whole of the science be within itself a circle in which the first is also the last and the last is also the first.”183 In the Encyclopaedia Logic he writes in a similar vein, “Within the science this standpoint, which in this first act appears as immediate, must 179 181 182

183

180 CI, p. 311; SKS, vol. 1, p. 343. CI, p. 273f.; SKS, vol. 1, p. 310. Hegel, SL, p. 68; Jub., vol. 4, pp. 70–71. Hegel, SL, p. 69; Jub., vol. 4, p. 72. See also EL, § 86; Jub., vol. 8, p. 203: “Pure being makes the beginning, because it is pure thought as well as the undetermined, simple immediate, [and because] the first beginning cannot be anything mediated and further determined.” Hegel, SL, p. 71; Jub., vol. 4, p. 75.


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make itself into the result, and (what is more) into its last result, in which it reaches its beginning again and returns into itself. In this way, philosophy shows itself as a circle that goes back into itself; it does not have a beginning in the same sense as the other sciences, so that the beginning only has a relation to the subject who makes the decision to philosophize, but not to the science as such.”184 Thus, philosophical knowledge for Hegel forms a circle in which the last member returns to the first, and there is no such thing as an absolute beginning without any presuppositions in the sense of the Cartesian cogito is thought to be.185 Instead, the true beginning lies in the will of the individual to decide to contemplate logic. This beginning is made with complete abstraction and the category of pure being. In Germany, Hegel’s claims to begin his philosophical system with the concept of being were criticized by, among others, Schelling and the younger Fichte. In the aforementioned Preface to the German translation of a work by Victor Cousin, Schelling criticized Hegel’s interpretation of the category of pure being as the point of departure for the philosophical system.186 Schelling distinguishes between the abstract concept of being and concrete individual beings. He claims that the former cannot be immediate since it is merely an abstraction from the latter. Thus the experience of concrete entities, and not the abstract concept of being, is immediate and primary. In his mammoth Beiträge zur Charakteristik der neueren Philosophie, oder kritische Geschichte derselben von Des Cartes und Locke bis auf Hegel, the younger Fichte argues against Hegel’s beginning by trying to point out implicit assumptions, which he claims it contains.187 There was thus already a lively debate about the issue of the beginning of philosophy in Germany prior to and contemporaneous with the debate in Denmark, which was the immediate occasion for Climacus’ comments. The debate about the beginning of philosophy in Denmark was initiated by Martensen in his aforementioned review article of Heiberg’s 184 185

186

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Hegel, EL, § 17; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 63–64. Translation slightly modified. N.b. Hegel does use the expression “absolute beginning”: Hegel, SL, p. 70; Jub., vol. 4, p. 73: “All that is present is simply the resolve, which can also be regarded as arbitrary, that we propose to consider thought as such. Thus the beginning must be an absolute, or what is synonymous here, an abstract beginning; and so it may not presuppose anything, must not be mediated by anything nor have a ground; rather it is to be itself the ground of the entire science.” Cf. also SL, p. 74; Jub., vol. 4, p. 79. ¨ The Preface to Victor Cousin’s Uber französische und deutsche Philosophie. Aus dem Französischen von Dr. Hubert Beckers, nebst einer beurtheilenden Vorrede des Herrn von Schelling, Stuttgart, Tübingen 1834, pp. iii–xxviii. ASKB 471. Reprinted as “Vorrede zu einer philosophischen Schrift des Herrn Victor Cousin,” in Schelling’s Ausgewählte Schriften, vols. 1–6, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1985, vol. 4, pp. 617–640. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, Beiträge zur Charakteristik der neueren Philosophie, oder kritische Geschichte derselben von Des Cartes und Locke bis auf Hegel. Zweite, sehr vermehrte und verbesserte Ausgabe, Sulzbach 1841, pp. 842–871. See also pp. 807ff. ASKB 508.



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Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College.188 In his article Martensen borrows heavily from Hegel’s Encyclopaedia Logic.189 True to Hegel’s account, he sketches the beginning of philosophy as “thought’s infinite abstraction from all determination” in the categories of being and nothing. He writes: The thought which is independent of experience and consciousness but which determines both must also be set forth in the form, which is in itself without presupposition. Thus, one must abstract from every determination in objective thought itself. The only point which now does not fail, while all others fall away, the only glimmer of light, so to speak, which remains while all the other lights have since been extinguished in the night of abstraction, is the pure abstract self, the pure being = nothing. This is the most empty and most contentless of all determinations of thought, but also that from which it is impossible to abstract. It is the one category which is without presupposition, but itself is presupposed and is contained in all others; and only here does thought win a foothold and can knowledge of the independent truth in itself begin.190

Martensen praises Hegel’s dialectical method for having exposed the groundless presuppositions of previous systems and having reduced them to absurdity. He likewise praises Hegel for finding the true point of departure for philosophy where previous systems had failed. Heiberg echoes Martensen’s praise of Hegel in his aforementioned review of The Doctrine of the Trinity and Reconciliation by Valdemar Henrik Rothe.191 In a long, tangential passage, he discusses the concept of a beginning in Hegel’s system as well as Martensen’s review. He explains that the first moment in each triad is immediate and is sublated by the second which is mediated. Therefore, one need only trace the series of categories all the way back to the first category in the first triad to find the most immediate category of all. For Heiberg, this position is occupied by the dialectically related categories of being and nothing. He claims that the basic opposition of being and nothing is “absolute immediacy, which is itself the system’s absolute beginning.”192 With this he concludes: 188

189 190 191 192

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Indlednings-Foredrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1835. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 461–516.) See Hegel, EL, §§ 61–78; Jub., vol. 8, pp. 164–184. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus,” op. cit., pp. 521–522. Valdemar Henrik Rothe, Læren om Treenighed og Forsoning. Et speculativt Forsøg i Anledning af Reformationsfesten, Copenhagen 1836. ASKB 746. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Recension over Hr. Dr. Rothes Treenigheds- og Forsoningslære,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 1, 1837, p. 36. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 45.) See also Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Grundtræk til Philosophiens Philosophie eller den speculative Logik. Som Ledetraad ved Forelæsninger paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1832, §§ 5–7, § 27. (Reprinted


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“One must recognize that the system really delivers what it promises: a presuppositionless beginning.”193 In the first article of his review of Heiberg’s Perseus, Sibbern treats the question of the presuppositionless beginning under the heading “Concerning the Hegelian Conception of Philosophy with Respect to Its Point of Departure and Its Entire Foundation.”194 He begins by critically examining the role of the Phenomenology of Spirit in the system. Although in the Introduction to the Science of Logic Hegel speaks of the Phenomenology as a kind of propaedeutic to the system,195 nevertheless the first categories presented in the Science of Logic are also purportedly the beginning of the system. Thus, it is not entirely clear where exactly the beginning takes place or if it takes place twice.196 More importantly, Sibbern recalls Heiberg’s claims (in the “Review of Dr. Rothe’s Doctrine of the Trinity and Reconciliation”) that the dual category of being and nothing is the absolute beginning and challenges him to demonstrate how a beginning can be made from them: “it would interest me to see Professor Heiberg make a start from this beginning so that the thought is firmly maintained that what is original is both given and not given. Also it would interest me to see him proceed from his nothing = being as from what is original, which is by contrast what Hegel does.”197 Sibbern is suspicious since Heiberg has changed Hegel’s scheme by treating being and nothing as a single category and not as two distinct ones in the sequence. He asks Heiberg for a demonstration of how a system of logic can be derived from this dual category.

193 194

195 196 197

in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 116–117, pp. 127–128.) See Hegel, SL, p. 73; Jub., vol. 4, p. 78: “The beginning, therefore, contains both, being and nothing, is the unity of being and nothing.” Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Recension over Hr. Dr. Rothes Treenigheds- og Forsoningslære,” op. cit., p. 36. (Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 46.) Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Angaaende det Hegelske Begreb om Philosophie med Hensyn til dens Udgangspunct og dens hele Grundlag,” in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, no. 19, 1838, pp. 315–360; a part of his “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1, Juni 1837. Kjøbenhavn. Reitzels Forlag. XIV og 264 S. 8. Priis 1 Rbd. 84 Skill. – (Med stadigt Hensyn til Dr. Rothes: Læren om Treenighed og Forsoning. Et speculativt Forsøg i Anledning af Reformationsfesten.),” in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 19, 1838, Article I, pp. 283–360; Article II, pp. 424–460; Article III, pp. 546– 582; 20, 1838, Article IV, pp. 20–60; Article V, pp. 103–136; Article VI, pp. 193– 244; Article VII, pp. 293–308; Article VIII, pp. 405–449. Frederik Christian Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, betragtet i Forhold til vor Tid, Copenhagen 1838, pp. 33–78. ASKB 778. Hegel, SL, p. 28f.; Jub., vol. 4, p. 18. SL, p. 48; Jub., vol. 4, pp. 43–44. SL, p. 49; Jub., vol. 4, p. 45. SL, pp. 68–69; Jub., vol. 4, p. 71. N.b. this criticism is repeated by Climacus in the Postscript. CUP1, p. 117; SKS, vol. 7, p. 113. Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Angaaende det Hegelske Begreb om Philosophie med Hensyn til dens Udgangspunct og dens hele Grundlag,” op. cit., p. 335. Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, op. cit., p. 53.



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Heiberg responded to Sibbern in the next number of Perseus with his “The System of Logic.”198 In his introductory comments, Heiberg states that his goal with the treatise is to examine the initial section of Hegel’s logic with the aim of defending it against its critics. Although he names Schelling directly as a hostile critic, it seems almost certain that his real goal is to respond to Sibbern’s challenge. In a sense Heiberg simply repeats what he already said in the “Review of Dr. Rothe’s Doctrine of the Trinity and Reconciliation” but in a more systematic fashion. The treatise is organized according to numbered paragraphs, and this is the form in which Heiberg works through the initial categories of a system of Hegelian logic. Just as previously in his Outline of the Philosophy of Philosophy or Speculative Logic and his “Review of Rothe,” Heiberg deviates from Hegel’s analysis by combining being and nothing into a single category, which he insists is the absolute beginning without presuppositions. Sibbern was not Heiberg’s only critic on this issue. The Hegelian theologian Adolph Peter Adler critically reviewed “The System of Logic.”199 While Sibbern criticized Heiberg’s Hegelianism from a perspective outside the Hegelian school, Adler’s criticism can be seen as internal, given that he was at the time still very much under the influence of Hegel’s philosophy and in particular his logic. Despite this difference, Adler’s criticism of Heiberg is in many ways much the same as Sibbern’s. Adler complains above all about Heiberg’s modification of the first triad from Hegel’s sequence (a) being, (b) nothing, (c) becoming, to the sequence (a) being and nothing, (b) becoming, and (c) determinate being. It is this debate that Climacus takes up in the Postscript. The title of this section, “A System of Logic Can Be Given,” seems to be a reference to Heiberg’s “The System of Logic” and to other works of Danish imitators of Hegel. This seems to be confirmed by the opening lines of the section, which refer to Heiberg: “The dialectic of the beginning must be clarified. The almost amusing thing about it, that the beginning is and then in turn is not, because it is the beginning – this true dialectical remark has long enough been like a game that has been played in Hegelian society.”200 This paradoxical claim that the beginning both is and is not is one that Heiberg makes several times. In his Outline of the Philosophy of Philosophy or Speculative Logic he argues in one paragraph that philosophy 198

199

200

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det logiske System,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 2, 1838, pp. 1–45. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 113–166.) Adolph Peter Adler, “J. L. Heiberg, Det logiske System, a) Væren og Intet, b) Vorden, c) Tilværen, i Perseus Nr. 2, Kjøbenhavn 1838,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 3, 1840, pp. 474–482. Adler also treats the issue of the demand for a presuppositionless beginning in philosophy in his Den isolerede Subjectivitet i dens vigtigste Skikkelser, I, Copenhagen 1840, § 1, especially pp. 4–6. CUP1, p. 111; SKS, vol. 7, p. 108.


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must be presuppositionless and must thus begin with nothing. He then continues in the next paragraph by claiming that philosophy must yet begin with something if it is to make a start at all. Finally, these two contradictory claims come together in a third paragraph where he writes: “Philosophy must then begin with a subject-matter which is both given and not given, both something and nothing.”201 Similarly in his “Review of Rothe” Heiberg writes: “a demand is made on philosophy that what is original, with which it begins, should be both given and not given. This demand is fulfilled with being = nothing.”202 Moreover, with the reference to “Hegelian society” in contrast to Hegel himself, Climacus points to his Danish contemporaries and not to Hegel’s primary texts. Finally, Climacus writes: “Hegelian logicians . . . define the immediate, with which logic begins, as follows: the most abstract remainder after an exhaustive abstraction.”203 This definition comes not from Hegel but from Heiberg’s “The System of Logic.” Heiberg claims that “this original thing must be the utmost, the last abstraction from everything, and for this very reason it must be the absolute first in the development, i.e. the beginning.”204 These passages leave little doubt that Heiberg’s account of the beginning of philosophy is primarily at issue. Climacus is particularly critical of the pretension of beginning with nothing or without presuppositions. He summarizes the view he wishes to criticize thus: “The system begins with the immediate and therefore without presuppositions and therefore absolutely, that is, the beginning of the system is the absolute beginning.”205 This is precisely the claim that Heiberg defends against his critics. As has been noted, he constantly refers to the beginning as “absolute” and “presuppositionless.” Climacus argues that the immediate category of pure being cannot be an absolute beginning since existence always comes first. In other words, the system’s relation to the immediate is always something derivative and not original. It is the result of abstraction: How does the system begin with the immediate, that is, does it begin with it immediately? The answer to this must certainly be an unconditional “no.” If the system is assumed to be after existence . . . the system does indeed come 201 202 203 204

205

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Grundtræk til Philosophiens Philosophie eller den speculative Logik, op. cit., § 7. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 116–117.) Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Recension over Hr. Dr. Rothes Treenigheds- og Forsoningslære,” op. cit., p. 37. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 47.) CUP1, p. 114; SKS, vol. 7, p. 110. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Det logiske System,” op. cit., § 6, cf. also § 7. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 129, pp. 129–132.) See also Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Grundtræk til Philosophiens Philosophie eller den speculative Logik, op. cit., § 26. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 127.) See also Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag over Hegels objective Logik, Copenhagen 1842, p. 21. ASKB 383. CUP1, p. 111; SKS, vol. 7, p. 108.



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afterward and consequently does not begin immediately with the immediate with which existence began. . . . The beginning of the system that begins with the immediate is then itself achieved through reflection.206

In order to reach the immediate, one must abstract from everything else. Given that the system can only begin with reflection or abstraction, the question arises: “How do I bring to a halt the reflection set in motion in order to reach that beginning?”207 Climacus claims that reflection is infinite and is thus unable to stop itself. Therefore, something else must intercede from outside and stop it. Hegel also believes that the kind of reflection that can be characterized by the bad infinity can continue indefinitely; however, true speculative thinking will stop by itself when it reaches the level of abstraction of pure being. This is the natural limit of abstraction, beyond which thought cannot go.208 The human mind can conceive of nothing more abstract than pure being. Climacus claims that reflection can only be stopped by a conscious decision of the individual, and only thus can a beginning be made.209 But this decision undermines the claim of an absolute beginning: “But if a resolution is required, presuppositionlessness is abandoned. The beginning can occur only by something else, and this something else is something altogether different from the logical, since it is a resolution.”210 Decision and resolution belong to the sphere of freedom and not the sphere of logic and objectivity. This realm of freedom precedes that of logic or abstraction. Climacus writes: If the individual does not stop reflection, he will be infinitized in reflection, that is, no decision is made. By thus going astray in reflection, the individual really becomes objective; more and more he loses the decision of subjectivity and the return into himself. Yet it is assumed that reflection can stop itself objectively, whereas it is just the other way around; reflection cannot be stopped objectively, and when it is stopped subjectively, it does not stop of its own accord, but it is the subject who stops it.211

Given that a resolution is required to stop reflection and to begin the system, the beginning ultimately rests on subjectivity. Moreover, according to Climacus, the act of absolute abstraction based on a resolution cannot be maintained, and before long it begins to lapse, and determinate 206 207 208

209 210

CUP1, p. 111f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 108. Translation slightly modified. CUP1, p. 112; SKS, vol. 7, p. 109. Climacus criticizes Hegel’s notion of the “bad” or the “spurious infinity” in this context, claiming that he is introducing into logic an ethical category (i.e., the bad). But in Hegel the word “bad” here has no ethical connotation. He uses the term “spurious” to distinguish two notions of infinity, and the term is not intended to have any ethical significance. CUP1, p. 112f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 109f. See CUP1, pp. 335–338; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 306–309. 211 CUP1, p. 115f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 112. CUP1, p. 113; SKS, vol. 7, p. 110.


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content enters the scene once again.212 Climacus seems to claim that this absolute exertion is impossible, and the result is that one does not begin with absolute abstraction but rather with some approximation thereof. But once again, this is not to begin with nothing. It should be noted that Hegel’s position is essentially in agreement with that of Climacus. Hegel himself says that philosophy begins when the subject makes its own thought an object of investigation. This is for Hegel a “free act”213 of the individual. In his discussion of skepticism, he makes it clear that the beginning of logic is an act of the will. It is not necessary that one begin with a method of universal doubt like Descartes in order to arrive at a position without presuppositions. The same result is effected, Hegel says, “by the freedom that abstracts from everything, and grasps its own pure abstraction, the simplicity of thinking – in the resolve of the will to think purely.”214 Here it is clear that for Hegel as well the act of abstraction is performed by the will of the individual. Hegel’s conception of philosophy as a circle is very much in the spirit of Climacus’ purported criticism since it implies that thought is a process and that there is no single fixed point where everything begins. As has been seen, Hegel says directly that there is neither absolute immediacy nor absolute mediation; instead, the two terms mutually condition each other. Thus, Climacus’ “criticism” that the immediacy of pure being is not immediate but rather an abstraction, is perfectly in line with Hegel’s point. Given that Climacus’ critical comments are generally in agreement with Hegel’s own view of the matter, it seems clear that Climacus takes as his point of reference the debate among the Danish Hegelians and not Hegel’s primary texts. If he were interested in Hegel’s understanding of the issue, the natural place to start would be “With What Must the Science Begin?” But there is no account of or even reference to this text here. By contrast, given the many references to Heiberg, it seems far more plausible that the criticism is aimed at him and his claims about the beginning of philosophy. The point of Climacus’ analysis in general is to show that while it is possible to create a system of logic in the way Heiberg has, this system nevertheless has nothing to do with existence or with what is really important. By contrast, existence itself cannot be systematized. Thus, the point seems to be that Climacus wants to contrast the system and its beginning with his own notion of existence and wants to argue that the two be kept separate. 212

213

CUP1, p. 114; SKS, vol. 7, p. 110f.: “If, namely, the act of infinite abstraction is not the kind of trick of which two can very well be done at the same time, if, on the contrary, it is the most strenuous work that can be done – what then? Then all my strength will go into maintaining it. If I do not use all my strength, I do not abstract from everything.” 214 Hegel, EL, § 78; Jub., vol. 8, p. 184. Hegel, EL, § 17; Jub., vol. 8, p. 63.


criticism of the world-historical perspective

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vii. the criticism of the world-historical perspective The next discussion to be examined is the beginning of the chapter “Becoming Subjective” from Section II.215 Johannes Climacus discusses what has been thought to be Hegel’s conception of world history and levels criticisms against it. There is one point of critique purportedly of Hegel which I will concentrate on here: Climacus’ claim that speculative philosophy encourages the individual to dedicate his or her life to gaining world-historical significance and thus to ignore genuine ethical virtue. I will argue that although some very general aspects of Hegel’s conception of the philosophy of history are present in this discussion, the position Climacus wants to criticize is not Hegel’s since there is in Hegel’s philosophy no ethical recommendation for action of this kind. There is, however, abundant evidence that the true target of this criticism is the Danish theologian Grundtvig. The criticism that Climacus levels is that speculative philosophy’s grand view of things from a world-historical perspective tends to encourage the unreflective individual to want to become a world-historical personality. Since from the world-historical perspective most individuals as such are of little import, one is encouraged to overcome one’s limited individuality and to try to become someone who has a profound impact on one’s age, just as Alexander the Great or Napoleon had on theirs. It then becomes a sort of ethical imperative to gain world-historical importance. But, so the objection goes, the world-historical view operates with categories that are different from genuinely ethical ones. Instead of encouraging individuals to be good or virtuous, this perspective encourages them to be influential and historically important: “the absolute ethical distinction between good and evil is world-historically-aesthetically neutralized in the aesthetic-metaphysical category of ‘the great,’ ‘the momentous,’ to which the bad and the good have equal access.”216 The moral monsters of history are proof enough that to be a world-historical personality is no guarantee for having a morally virtuous character. The macrolevel perspective of speculative philosophy, according to Climacus, leads the unwary individual to aspire to win world-historical significance.217 For Climacus, this is an inappropriate understanding of the subjectivity and the individual, who, qua ethical subject, should be indifferent to 215 216 217

CUP1, pp. 129–141; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 121–131. CUP1, p. 134; SKS, vol. 7, p. 126. CUP1, p. 135; SKS, vol. 7, p. 126: “it is also immoral or at least a temptation to consort too much with world history, a temptation that can easily lead a person to want also to be world-historical when the time comes that he himself is going to act.”


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world-historical fame: By continually being occupied as an observer of the accidental, that accessorium by which world-historical figures become world-historical, a person is easily misled into confusing this accessorium with the ethical and easily misled, unhealthily, flirtingly, and cowardly to being concerned about the accidental, instead, himself existing, of being infinitely concerned about the ethical.218

The unwary individual concentrates on trying to gain world-historical importance, which is largely accidental, and by so doing forgets the realm of his or her own inward ethical subjectivity. The individual thus cultivates all the wrong “virtues” in an attempt to become a world-historical personality. With respect to this point Climacus betrays a rather Kantian understanding of ethics according to which the good lies in the good will of the ethical agent alone and not in the result of the action. Thus, the truly ethical individual is one who acts with deep ethical passion and is indifferent to the outcome or world-historical significance of his or her act: True ethical enthusiasm consists in willing to the utmost of one’s capability, but also . . . in never thinking whether or not one thereby achieves something. As soon as the will begins to cast a covetous eye on the outcome, the individual begins to become immoral – the energy of the will becomes torpid, or it develops abnormally into an unhealthy, unethical, mercenary hankering that even if it achieves something great, does not achieve it ethically – the individual demands something other than the ethical itself.219

For Climacus, one should will and do the ethical for its own sake and not with the motivation of becoming a world-historical individual. By acting for the sake of world-historical significance, the individual sells “his relationship to God, though not for money.”220 In other words, one betrays one’s own ethical individuality and thus one’s relation to God for the sake of world-historical significance. The world-historical perspective is, for Hegel, assumed solely in order to examine the Concept in history. History judges concepts in the sense that it exposes their inner contradictions, but what it judges is logical consistency and not moral value. Hegel does not encourage anyone to become a world-historical individual. Indeed, in a sense it is not in the hands of the individual anyway. Hegel says that world spirit uses worldhistorical personalities to achieve its ends, but these specific individuals themselves have only a vague inkling of the higher purpose that they are 218 219

CUP1, p. 135; SKS, vol. 7, p. 126. CUP1, p. 135; SKS, vol. 7, p. 126f.

220

CUP1, p. 137; SKS, vol. 7, p. 128.



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serving.221 Moreover, it would be strange for Climacus to criticize Hegel for these mistaken ethical assessments in view of the fact that he also purportedly criticizes him for having no ethics at all.222 Clearly, if Hegel has no ethics, then he also has no ethical recommendations to offer about how one ought to strive to become a world-historical figure. One might still be tempted to interpret this discussion as a criticism of Hegel given the importance of his philosophy of history. Some of the passages cited recall Judge Wilhelm’s complaint that under the influence of speculative philosophy the young people of the age have become lost in the contemplation of the past, while forgetting their ethical obligations in the present.223 That discussion concerned Hegel only indirectly since it was aimed at the Danish discussion of the Hegelian doctrine of mediation and at unnamed Danish students of his philosophy. In Climacus’ discussion here in “Becoming Subjective” there are no quotations of or references to Hegel’s philosophy of history and generally no indications that it is Hegel’s analysis of history that is at issue. Thus, one must look elsewhere for the target of the criticism. In the anglophone secondary literature, the standard view has always been that whenever Climacus criticizes world history and the worldhistorical perspective, he has in mind Hegel’s philosophy of history. The absence of quotations or direct textual references to Hegel’s works should make one suspicious of this view. What has been little appreciated in this context is Climacus’ criticism of Grundtvig’s theory of world history. As was indicated in the Introduction to this chapter, Kierkegaard was a virulent critic of Grundtvig’s view of Christianity, his conception of the role of the church,224 and his theory of history. In 1812 Grundtvig published his Chronicle of World History in which he, years before Hegel, gave an account of the march of peoples and nations. From 1833 to 1843 appeared his Handbook for World History, which continued in a similar vein. Like Hegel, Grundtvig claimed that the divine will was realized in history. Also like Hegel, Grundtvig believed in the possibility of reconciliation through history. He saw the Danish people as having a historical mission with respect to the development of the Christian religion. Moreover, the term “world spirit,” which is usually immediately associated with Hegel, was crucial in Grundtvig’s view of history. There are a number of reasons to believe that Grundtvig rather than Hegel is the target of Climacus’ criticism. Perhaps most important is the fact that Grundtvig, unlike Hegel, was a priest, and his conception of history was essential to his conception of 221

222 223 224

Hegel, Phil. of Hist., p. 30; Jub., vol. 11, p. 60: “Such [world-historical] individuals had no consciousness of the general Idea they were unfolding, while pursuing their aims.” Translation slightly modified. Explored in Section X in this chapter. Examined above in Chapter 4, Section II. Also examined in Section V in this chapter. See CUP1, pp. 34–46; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 41–52.


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Christianity. This is significant since Climacus’ criticism is not of a historical perspective per se but rather of its leading away from what, to his mind, is true Christianity. Given that Grundtvig was a priest, his doctrine was perceived by Climacus as particularly dangerous to Christianity. Throughout his writings Kierkegaard consistently objects to the introduction of what he regards as foreign, secular principles and concepts into Christianity. For this reason, he has no qualms with Hegel’s philosophy when it is understood as a secular philosophy with no pretensions with regard to Christianity. But he objects violently when the priests Martensen and Adler attempt to take specific aspects of this philosophy and apply it to Christianity. Similarly, it is not so much any particular theory of history that Climacus objects to here, but rather Grundtvig’s application of a theory of history to an understanding of Christianity. It should be noted that ten years later in numbers 6 and 7 of The Moment, Kierkegaard in his own name criticizes Grundtvig directly for confusing the secular with the Christian and for ignoring the true nature of “the Christianity of the New Testament.” This is thus a consistent point of criticism that appears throughout the later part of Kierkegaard’s authorship. In the journals and papers there are a number of passages that associate Grundtvig with the world-historical. In an entry from 1851 Kierkegaard writes: “Almost from the beginning Grundtvig was limited to listening only to himself. And always this insistence on Christianity as doctrine, propositions – and then the world-historical.”225 In an undated entry, he writes: “Just as a basso at times can carry the tune so deep that one cannot hear it at all but only by standing close to him and observing some convulsive movements of the mouth and throat is sure that something is happening – so also Grundtvig at times goes so deep into history that one sees nothing at all; but deep it is!”226 These satirical comments are continuous with the tone of the discussion in the Postscript. With respect to the Postscript in particular, there are a number of reasons to believe that Grundtvig is the real object of criticism in Climacus’ critique of world history. A careful analysis reveals that the work is full of indirect allusions to Grundtvig. In the beginning of his analysis, Climacus alludes to “the community of believers,” which was a stock phrase employed by Grundtvig who, in contrast to Kierkegaard, emphasized the religious community: “Behold faith is indeed the highest passion of subjectivity. But just pay attention to what the clergy say about how rarely it is found in the community of believers (this phrase, ‘the community of believers,’ is used in about the same sense as when people speak of what is called a subject of sorts).”227 Later in his criticism of the nineteenth century as being obsessed with world history, Climacus 225 227

JP, vol. 6, 6733; Pap. X-4 A 56. CUP1, p. 132; SKS, vol. 7, p. 124.

226

JP, vol. 5, 6565; Pap. X-2 A 307.



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alludes again indirectly to Grundtvig: But with regard to the present generation and every single individual, to let the ethical become something whose discovery requires a prophet with a world-historical eye on world history – that is a rare ingeniously comic invention. . . . But that it takes a prophet, not a judge, no, but a seer, a world-historical brawler, who aided by one deep and one blue eye, aided by familiarity with world history, perhaps also by coffee grounds and fortune telling cards, believes he discovers the ethical, that is, what the times demand . . . now this is confusion – producing in two ways, something for which a person who likes to laugh must always feel indebted to the wise men!228

From this passage it is clear that Grundtvig is the actual target of the criticism since Grundtvig and not Hegel played the role of the historical prophet and saw the Danish people as invested with a specific worldhistorical mission. Most significant is the reference to “the ethical,” which is at issue in the purported criticism of Hegel. What Climacus objects to is the ethical significance of the individual being conceived as something on the level of world history. For Climacus, by contrast, the ethical was always something individual. This is continuous with Kierkegaard’s other objections to Grundtvig’s emphasis on the community of believers at the expense of the individual. Hegel’s image of the Owl of Minerva makes clear his view that philosophy has nothing to do with prophecy or looking into the future since its task is merely to interpret the past and to trace the movement of the Idea in it.229 Moreover, Hegel makes no attempt to discover “the ethical” in world history. When one studies the drafts of the Postscript, one passage after another emerges in which Grundtvig is directly mentioned in connection with the world-historical. As was noted previously, Grundtvig is known for his “matchless discovery” (den mageløse Opdagelse) that the living word is the true essence of Christianity.230 Kierkegaard alludes to this in a draft when he refers to “a wonderful [mageløse] light of world history and the future of humanity.”231 In this passage he indirectly refers to Grundtvig by employing the adjective “mageløse,” and associates him with world history. That the criticism is aimed at Grundtvig is clear in the following draft of the Postscript: “Every more quiet concern about the religious, every more inward understanding that in fear and trembling applies ethical categories to itself in self-concern, readily feels painfully disturbed by world-historical ale-Norse unconstraint that nonchalantly is busy only 228 229 230 231

CUP1, p. 144f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 134f. See also CUP2, Supplement, p. 26; Pap. VI B 29, pp. 111–112. Hegel, PR, Preface, p. 23; Jub., vol. 7, p. 37. See Section I, p. 464f. of this chapter. CUP2, Supplement, p. 18; Pap. VI B 29, p. 103. See CUP1, p. 234; SKS, vol. 7, p. 213.


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with great visions and matchless discoveries, readily feels painfully affected by the Grundtvigian inept unruliness.”232 Here the complaint is that Grundtvig is so concerned with the world-historical that he has forgotten that ethics is a matter of the individual and that ethical categories apply only to individuals. Grundtvig’s absent-minded concern with the world-historical is also satirized in the following passage: “Grundtvig, on the other hand, is as a thinker a confused genius who gets carried away from himself into the heights, the depths, the world-historical.”233 Finally, Grundtvig is criticized for his affected image as a Danish prophet: “Grundtvig appears on an elevation in the forest background. . . . He is artistically draped in a great cloak, has a staff in his hand, and his face is concealed by a mask with one eye (deep and profound, so as to see into world history).”234 While there is much more to be said on this issue and on the Kierkegaard-Grundtvig relation generally, these passages and many others like them suffice to demonstrate that when Climacus talks of the world-historical, he has Grundtvig in mind and not Hegel. With regard to Hegel, at most one could argue that when Climacus talks of the historical tendency of the age, he has in mind both Hegel and Grundtvig since a theory of history was central for the thought of both men. But even this minimal claim loses plausibility as soon as one explores in detail exactly what is being criticized in the individual passages. When one takes the trouble to do so, it is difficult to find anything resembling a substantive criticism of Hegel’s philosophy of history, whereas by contrast abuse is constantly heaped upon Grundtvig.

viii. the criticism of the unity of thought and being The next question to be explored is Johannes Climacus’ purported criticism of Hegel’s claim to have united thought and being.235 This comes up as an issue first at the beginning of the chapter “Subjectivity Truth, Inwardness: Truth is Subjectivity”236 and then later in a short passage in the chapter “Actual Subjectivity, Ethical Subject: the Subjective Thinker.”237 I will treat these two passages as a part of the same analysis. The thesis of the unity of thought and being is, of course, one that appears in different 232 233

234 235 236 237

CUP2, Supplement, p. 27; Pap. VI B 30. See PF, p. 107; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 303–304. CUP2, Supplement, p. 29; Pap. VI B 98.14. See also CUP2, Supplement, p. 28; Pap. VI B 33: “The absolute, world-historical shout is raised; it can be heard over more than one kingdom.” JP, vol. 5, 5832; Pap. VI B 235, p. 293. See JP, vol. 1, 195; SKS, vol. 18, p. 13, EE:22. CUP1, pp. 189–199; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 173–182. CUP1, pp. 329–335; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 300–306.


criticism of the unity of thought and being

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forms with different nuances throughout the history of philosophy. For example, it is well-known as one of the main theses of Parmenides, Descartes, and Spinoza. It is the central dogma of Schelling’s Identitätsphilosophie, which finds its best-known exposition in the System of Transcendental Idealism. It appears in Hegel’s thought as well, for example, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, which has as its goal to close the gap between thought and being. In his Preface, Hegel writes: “everything turns on grasping and expressing the true, not only as substance, but equally as subject.”238 The task of the Phenomenology is to work through various forms of dualisms and expose their inner contradictions in order to reach a point where there is no separation between subject and object, thought and being, and so on. It should also be noted that the question of the unity of being and thinking is linked to traditional discussions about the ontological argument and to Kierkegaard’s own continuing discussion of the question of mediation and the law of excluded middle. It is commonly accepted that Climacus’ criticism here is of Hegel’s principle of thinking subject as substance. But given that this claim is one that echoes throughout the history of philosophy, there is no reason to regard it as the private property of Hegel. I wish to argue that a closer examination of the matter reveals that in fact Climacus primarily has in mind not Hegel but rather Martensen and in particular his presentation of Descartes. In the first account to be explored,239 Climacus entertains two different possibilities with respect to the relation of the unity of thought and being: either being is conceived as empirical in this relation, or it is conceived as an abstract concept. Climacus’ argumentative strategy is to demonstrate that absurd conclusions can be drawn from both premises, which then allows him to conclude that the original claim about the unity of thought and being is false. The first part of the dichotomy is that being is conceived as empirical or in Climacus’ sense existential. Here what is at issue is not the general notion of being but some particular being or entity: “If . . . being is understood as empirical being, then truth itself is transformed into a desideratum and everything is placed in the process of becoming, because the empirical object is not finished, and the existing knowing spirit is itself in the process of becoming.”240 It is clear that Climacus is concerned with the being of human subjects who are always developing or becoming. One recalls from the Concept of Irony the criticism of Hegel’s understanding of Socrates as something finished and complete in contrast to Socrates’ own experience of his life, according to which he was always in the transitory 238 239 240

Hegel, PhS, p. 10; Jub., vol. 2, p. 22. CUP1, pp. 189–199; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 173–182. CUP1, p. 189; SKS, vol. 7, p. 174.


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state of becoming.241 In this sense, speculative philosophy is mistaken when it claims to have reached some absolute or final truth about being since empirical being is always becoming and thus can never be given a final judgment. Since the individual is not complete or finished, the abstract thinker can never reach the truth. Thus, this empirical understanding of the term “being” cannot be what is meant by the abstract thinker since it defies any claim for finished truth. While empirical being is clearly what Climacus understands by the being of an existing individual, it is antithetical to an abstract account, and thus the slogan about the unity of being and thinking must employ the concept of being in a different sense. Climacus now turns to the other side of the dichotomy. He supposes that speculative philosophy claims that what it understands by being is not concrete empirical being, but rather the abstract concept of being per se. Climacus explains this as follows: The term “being” in those definitions must, then, be understood much more abstractly as the abstract rendition or the abstract prototype of what being in concreto is as empirical being. If it is understood in this way, nothing stands in the way of abstractly defining truth as something finished, because, viewed abstractly, the agreement between thinking and being is always finished.242

In fact this is the way in which being is represented both in the Science of Logic and in the Phenomenology of Spirit. For Hegel, pure being is an indeterminate concept and not a determinate particular thing. But for Climacus absurd conclusions also follow from this conception of being as abstract: “But if being is understood in this way, the formula is a tautology; that is, thinking and being signify one and the same, and the agreement spoken of is only an abstract identity with itself.”243 If being is conceived merely as a thought, then there is no difference between being and thinking to start with. Thus, the claim that being is united with thinking is tautologous. Given that absurdities follow from both interpretations, it seems that the original claim of the unity of thought and being is itself contradictory. Climacus takes up this discussion again later244 and presents in a more favorable light the second half of the dichotomy (i.e., being understood as an abstract concept). He grants that the unity of thought and being may well be true at the abstract level, but, he argues, it has nothing to do 241 242 243

244

See Chapter 3, Section VI, pp. 164–165. CI, p. 235; SKS, vol. 1, p. 276. CUP1, p. 190; SKS, vol. 7, p. 174. CUP1, p. 190; SKS, vol. 7, p. 174. See Rasmus Nielsen, Den propædeutiske Logik, Copenhagen 1845, p. 26. ASKB 699. Nielsen explores the question of the tautological relation between being and thinking. CUP1, pp. 329–335; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 300–306.



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with existence.245 In this way he shifts the focus of the argument from the thesis of the unity of being and thought to the speculative philosopher’s relation to this thesis: “Well, Hegel is in the right, and yet we have not gone one step further. The good, the beautiful, the ideas are in themselves so abstract that they are indifferent to existence and indifferent to anything other than thought-existence. The reason that the identity of being and thinking holds true here is that being cannot be understood as anything but thinking.”246 Climacus once again complains that this unity can only exist as a thought. It leaves out of consideration existence as he understands it. Pure thinking is always general or universal, while “existence is always the particular.”247 While thought can unite being and thinking, existence keeps the two separate.248 The unity of thought and being may well be true, but it is an irrelevant truth to the existing individual. As in the discussion of the law of excluded middle, Climacus again underscores that the problem is not with abstract thinking per se but with the confusion of categories, which mistakenly sees an account of existence in abstract thinking: “To conclude from this that the abstract does not have reality is a misunderstanding, but it is also a misunderstanding to confuse the discussion by asking about existence in relation to it or about actuality in the sense of existence.”249 The abstract conception of being is ultimately unsatisfying for the existing individual. The urgent question is about one’s own existence and not about something objective or abstract. The problem is once again when one confuses the two spheres and takes the abstract philosophical Concept for a satisfactory account of one’s own particular being or existence. This discussion has generally been taken to be a straightforward criticism of Hegel. However, Hegel’s role here is very much the same as that in the discussion about the two spheres of existence and thought, which began in Either/Or.250 There the appeal was to keep the two spheres separate, and the criticism was not of Hegel per se since he consistently remained on the one side of the dichotomy (i.e., that of thought). The criticism was rather of those who confuse the spheres and seek the truth of existence in abstract thinking. This separation of the two spheres is 245

246 248

249 250

See Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag over Hegels objective Logik, op. cit., § 5, p. 13: “Logic delivers the unity of thought and being, which philosophy in its completion demands. Logic grounds itself in abstraction, and abstraction makes thought and being identical in that it cannot keep them in any difference or show the one to be here and the other there.” See also his Den isolerede Subjectivitet i dens vigtigste Skikkelser, I, op. cit., §§ 1–5. 247 CUP1, p. 330; SKS, vol. 7, p. 301. CUP1, p. 329; SKS, vol. 7, p. 300. CUP1, p. 330; SKS, vol. 7, p. 301: “Here existence separates the ideal identity of thinking and being; I must exist in order to be able to think, and I must be able to think (for example the good) in order to exist in it.” See also CUP1, p. 332; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 303. CUP1, p. 330; SKS, vol. 7, p. 301. Discussed above in Chapter 4, Section II.


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one that Climacus returns to again in his discussion about the law of excluded middle.251 At most Hegel is criticized for simply being irrelevant since his abstract thought has nothing to do with existence. However, as in Either/Or, the harshest criticism here is clearly reserved for his followers, who confuse the two spheres. The most obvious hint that Climacus gives to indicate that Hegel is not the main object of criticism comes in the discussion of the ontological argument. Climacus describes the argument as follows: “When, for example, it is said: God must have all perfections, or the highest being must have all perfections, to exist is also a perfection; ergo the highest being must exist, or God must exist – the whole movement is deceptive.”252 In a footnote to this Climacus explicitly distinguishes Hegel from the position that he calls “deceptive.” He writes: “Hegel, however, does not speak this way; by means of the identity of thinking and being he is elevated above a more childlike manner of philosophizing, something he himself points out, for example, in relation to Descartes.”253 Here Climacus explicitly distinguishes between Hegel and Descartes. To be sure, Hegel is associated with the unity of thought and being, but there is no conflict since that unity is consistently conceived as abstract. The problem seems to be with Descartes and others who confuse the abstract unity with some empirical element. This indicates that at least some of Climacus’ criticism is aimed at Descartes. In the passage just cited Climacus refers to Hegel’s account of Descartes in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy. According to Descartes’ dualism there are two kinds of substance: thinking substance or mind and extended substance or matter. These two are united in human beings, but how they are united was one of the most difficult problems for Descartes to solve. At the beginning of this treatment, Hegel characterizes this central aspect of Descartes’ thought as follows: “the spirit of [Descartes’] philosophy is simply knowledge as the unity of thought and being.”254 Hegel explains the Cartesian cogito in terms of this principle: “The ‘I think’ directly involves my being; this, says Descartes, is the absolute basis of all philosophy. The determination is in my ‘I’; this connection is itself the first matter. Thought as being and being as thought – that is my 251 252 253

254

Section IX in this chapter. CUP1, p. 334; SKS, vol. 7, p. 305. Translation slightly modified. CUP1, p. 334fn.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 305fn. See JC, Supplement, pp. 264–265; Pap. IV B 13.17: “He [ Johannes Climacus] regrets that he did not begin immediately with Descartes, all the more so because he recalls that Hegel praises Descartes for his ‘childlike and simple exposition’ – but that was precisely why he did not begin, because it sounded like sarcasm by Hegel, who certainly was a long way from praising the childlike and the simple and who in other passages says of Descartes: ‘mit ihm ist weiter nichts anzufangen.’” See Hegel, Hist. of Phil. III, p. 224; Jub., vol. 19, p. 335. Discussed above in Chapter 5, Section I, p. 243f. Hegel, Hist. of Phil. III, p. 225; Jub., vol. 19, p. 336. See also PhS, p. 352; Jub., vol. 2, p. 445.



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certainty, ‘I’; in the celebrated Cogito ergo sum we thus have thought and being inseparably bound together.”255 Thus, it is not so much the principle of the unity of thought and being in Hegel’s own philosophy that is at issue but rather in the philosophy of Descartes, which Hegel presents. A closer examination reveals that Climacus has in mind in particular Martensen’s account of Descartes and his cogito argument, which is interpreted as leading to the principle of the unity of thought and being. It has already been noted in the preceding discussions that Martensen’s Cartesian slogans “cogito ergo sum” and “de omnibus dubitandum est” were ridiculed by Kierkegaard again and again.256 Climacus’ discussion of the principle of the unity of thought and being can be seen as an extension of the discussion of the first of these. Just as with the other slogans, Martensen in the case of the unity of thought and being borrows from Hegel’s account of Descartes in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, where the formulation originally appears, and, by frequent repetition, turns it into a slogan. That Martensen is Kierkegaard’s main source for the principle of the unity of thought and being is evidenced by a number of different texts. In Kierkegaard’s notes to Martensen’s lecture course “Introduction to Speculative Dogmatics” (1837–38), one finds reference made to Descartes’ principle of the unity of thought and being. His notes from November 29, 1837, refer to the Cartesian cogito ergo sum as “the absolute identity of thought and being.”257 Similarly, in Kierkegaard’s notes to Martensen’s lectures on the “History of Modern Philosophy from Kant to Hegel” (1838–39) the following is written: “Doubt” [Tvivl ] comes from “two” [Tve], just like Zweifel and dubitatio, and that between which it is doubted is: thought and being, or the content of doubt is whether my thought also has reality. In order not to remain in this doubt, Descartes wanted that one doubt everything, for only then can a point be found which it is impossible to doubt, and this point is: cogito ergo sum. This should not be translated “therefore,” 1) but “I think, and, thinking, I am.” Thought and being thus coincide; there is no contradiction in the proposition; ergo is thus a copulative and not a conclusive particle. 2) Similarly, “I think” should not be taken empirically but it is the pure I, my self-consciousness, not my feeling or anything else. Concerning everything, Descartes thus says I can doubt, for example, whether I am sitting here, but about my thought I cannot doubt, thus here is the identity of thought and being.258

In this passage one finds precisely the key formulation about the identity of thought and being. This appears here almost like a slogan on a par with “cogito ergo sum” and “de omnibus dubitandum est.”

255 256 257

Hegel, Hist. of Phil. III, p. 228; Jub., vol. 19, p. 339. See Chapter 2, Section III, and Chapter 5, Section I. 258 Pap. II C 25, in Pap. XII p. 282. SKS, vol. 19, p. 131, Not 4:7.


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Martensen rehearses this same material in his dissertation, The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness. There he speaks once again explicitly of the identity of thought and being in reference to Descartes: As in this way in defiance of all external authority he sought the source of certainty, he found by means of his inquiry that the thinking spirit has existence in itself, that thought itself is the spirit’s existence (cogito ergo sum). Consequently, since he had in principle shown the identity of thought and being, he taught that everything which is to have truth and certainty in itself is only to be sought in thinking itself. . . . [W]hen further we may say that the truth’s own concept lies in this identity of thought and being, then selfconsciousness, which is the absolute for this identity, must be recognized as the source of all truth and certainty.259

All of these passages are strikingly similar. In all three it is Descartes who is associated with the unity of being and thinking, and not Hegel. Thus, there is every reason to think that it is this presentation of the thought of Descartes that Kierkegaard has in mind when he has Climacus present the issue. The passage from Martensen’s dissertation was discussed by Bornemann in his review of the work. In his account, Bornemann writes, “If the Cartesian principle is this, ‘I think and thinking I am,’ then what one says thereby is not merely that what is valid in the true human consciousness is present (i.e., the identity of thought and being) but also that human consciousness, doubting everything, starting from itself, can determine what is and what is not.”260 Thus, this was one aspect of Martensen’s work which attracted attention and was thematized in the contemporary discussion, of which Kierkegaard was clearly aware. This is all the more reason to think that “the unity of thought and being” functioned as an encoded expression that referred to Martensen. Climacus continues his diatribe against Martensen, arguing once again that speculative philosophy forgets the individual. What is new here is his characterization of this forgetfulness as a kind of madness. The notion of a “higher lunacy” runs throughout the text.261 The point is that even though objective thought may be true in and of itself, it nevertheless represents a kind of madness in its forgetfulness of the individual: “The objective truth as such does not at all decide that the one stating it is sensible; on the contrary, it can even betray that the man is a lunatic, although

259

260 261

Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia, op. cit., § 5, p. 19f. Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, op. cit., § 5, pp. 16–17. The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, op. cit., p. 85f. Johan Alfred Bornemann, “Af Martensen: de autonomia conscientiae. Sui humanae,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, p. 7. See also p. 12f. See Dar´ıo González, “On Kierkegaard’s Concept of Madness,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1996, pp. 277–292.



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what he says is entirely true and especially objectively true.”262 Climacus further caricatures Martensen: “When an assistant professor, every time his coattail reminds him to say something, says de omnibus dubitandum est and briskly writes away on a system in which there is sufficient internal evidence in every other sentence that the man has never doubted anything – he is not considered lunatic.”263 Climacus’ references to the “assistant professor” and to the phrase “de omnibus dubitandum est” leave no doubt that he once again has Martensen in mind here. Although the context seems to be a purely philosophical one about the unity of thought and being, from the tone and content of the critical passages there can be little doubt that Climacus’ criticism is more of Martensen and his uncritical relation to Hegel than of Hegel’s thought itself. Climacus describes the character type embodied by Martensen as follows: If a German philosopher . . . first transforms himself into a superrational something . . . 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. . . . 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.264

The problem is in Martensen’s attempt to “form his existence according to” Hegel’s philosophy. While Hegel’s philosophy may be interesting and insightful on its own terms, it is wholly objective and thus has nothing to do with the individual or that individual’s existence. Once again the problem involves the category mistake of taking the objective for the subjective or allowing the objective to usurp the place of the subjective.265 One is led yet again to the conclusion that the target at which the criticism is aimed is not Hegel, even though his position doubtless lurks 262 263 264 265

CUP1, p. 194; SKS, vol. 7, p. 178. CUP1, p. 195; SKS, vol. 7, p. 179. See Arild Christensen, “Efterskriftens Opgør med Martensen,” op. cit., p. 55. CUP1, p. 191; SKS, vol. 7, p. 175. Kierkegaard raises here the possibility of mediation resolving the dichotomy of the subjective and the objective, and once again argues that mediation only applies to the realm of abstraction and not to existence. Thus subjectivity and subjective reflection are absolute and defy all mediation. Since we will examine the issue of mediation in more detail later, I forego an analysis of it here.


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in the background somewhere as does his account of Descartes; instead when the key terms of the text are decoded, it is clear that Climacus has in mind primarily Martensen. Many of the arguments found here prove in the final analysis to be in large measure polemical and thus lacking in philosophical value. The philosophical point is merely the renewed plea to keep the spheres of existence and of thought separated. The criticism is of specific individuals who fail to do so and not of Hegel since, for however irrelevant his thought might have been for the sphere of existence, he was at least consistent in avoiding confusing it with the sphere of thought, where his philosophy was valid.

ix. speculative philosophy and the law of excluded middle In this section we return to the issue of Hegel’s doctrine of the dialectical Aufhebung of the law of excluded middle which comes up again and again throughout Kierkegaard’s corpus. In the Postscript the issue is treated in a couple of different places, each time in the context of a larger discussion of issues related to Hegelianism as Johannes Climacus perceives it. The first account comes in the chapter “Actual Subjectivity, Ethical Subjectivity; the Subjective Thinker,”266 and the second in the second division of the chapter “The Issue in Fragments.”267 Climacus says that the former treats the issue in its logical or ontological aspect, while the latter discusses it in its ethical aspect.268 These passages will now be examined in turn. (1) Johannes Climacus begins his account in “Actual Subjectivity, Ethical Subjectivity; the Subjective Thinker” by alluding to the long debate in Denmark, discussed previously, surrounding the Hegelian doctrine of contradiction.269 He mentions directly270 the conflict on the issue between Bishop Mynster and the Danish Hegelians.271 Moreover, 266 267 268 269 270 271

CUP1, pp. 304–310; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 277–282. CUP1, pp. 399–422; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 363–384. CUP1, p. 400; SKS, vol. 7, p. 364. Chapter 4, Sections I and II. Chapter 6, Section III. Chapter 8, Section I. Chapter 9, Section IV. CUP1, pp. 304–305; SKS, vol. 7, p. 277f. Jakob Peter Mynster, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 249–268. (Reprinted in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 95– 115.) Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “En logisk Bemærkning i Anledning af H. H. Hr. Biskop Dr. Mynsters Afhandling om Rationalisme og Supranaturalisme i forrige Hefte af dette Tidsskrift,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 441–456. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 167–190.) Hans Lassen Martensen, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme og principium exclusi medii i Anledning af H. H. Biskop Mynsters Afhandling herom i dette Tidsskrifts forrige Hefte,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 456–473. Jakob Peter Mynster, “De principio logico exclusi medii inter contradictoria non negligendo commentatio, qua ad audiendam orationem . . . invitat. Jo. Fr.


speculative philosophy and law of excluded middle 511 he names Heiberg and Martensen explicitly in drafts.272 When this issue was discussed in Either/Or, the main argument put forth by Judge Wilhelm was that there are two distinct spheres, on the one hand, the abstract sphere of thought, where there is no absolute contradiction, and, on the other hand, the empirical sphere of freedom where the either/or is always present. This solution, which was borrowed from the Hegelians Heiberg and Martensen, allows Judge Wilhelm to grant speculative philosophy a certain validity while at the same time making it possible for him to carve out an existential realm of freedom and choice. In the Postscript Climacus affirms essentially the same solution that was proposed by Judge Wilhelm. On the one hand, one can speak of mediation and of the Aufhebung of the law of excluded middle in the realm of thought: “Hegel is perfectly and absolutely right in maintaining that, looked at eternally, sub specie aeterni, there is no aut/aut 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.”273 On the other hand, in the realm of existence and freedom, the law of excluded middle is still valid. Climacus, like Judge Wilhelm, distinguishes between the two spheres and argues that the problem only arises when they are confused: The defenders of the aut/aut are in the wrong if they push their way into the territory of pure thinking and want to defend their cause there. . . . the aut/aut of contradiction is eo ipso cancelled when it is lifted out of existence and taken into the eternity of abstraction. On the other hand, Hegel is just as much in the wrong when he, forgetting the abstraction, plunges from it down into existence in order by hook or by crook to cancel the double aut.274

According to Climacus, both the Hegelians and the anti-Hegelians are right, provided that they apply their principle only to their respective spheres. Thus, Climacus does not really go beyond the arguments of Judge Wilhelm. This is hardly surprising since nothing new had happened in the debate in the interim, and there is no evidence to indicate that Kierkegaard made a study of Hegel’s primary texts after 1843. It might be noted that while both Climacus and Judge Wilhelm criticize the speculative thinker for neglecting the future while concentrating on the past, Climacus is more direct in indicating that what is behind this criticism is a specific conception of what the correct Christian disposition is.

272 273

Herbart. Gottingae 1833. 29 S. 80 , De principiorum contradictionis, identitatis, exclusi tertii in logicis dignitate et ordine commentatio. Scripsit I. H. Fichte. Bonnae 1840. 31 S. 80 ,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 7, 1842, pp. 325–352. (Reprinted as “Om de logiske Principer,” in Mynster’s Blandede Skrivter, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 116–144.) CUP2, Supplement, p. 72; Pap. VI B 54.4. CUP2, Supplement, p. 72; Pap. VI B 98.58. 274 CUP1, p. 305; SKS, vol. 7, p. 278. CUP1, p. 305; SKS, vol. 7, p. 277f.


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The principle of the either/or is fundamental for Christianity. He writes: But where everything is in a process of becoming, where only so much of the eternal is present that it can have a constraining effect in the passionate decision, where the eternal relates itself as the future to the person in a process of becoming – there the absolute disjunction belongs. In other words, when I join eternity and becoming, I do not gain rest but the future. Certainly this is why Christianity has proclaimed the eternal as the future, because it was proclaimed to existing persons, and this is why it also assumed an absolute aut/aut.275

The Christian is oriented neither towards the routine of daily life nor towards the past of world history but rather towards the eternal. Yet as a finite human being, the believer cannot grasp the eternal as the eternal and thus must grasp it merely as the future.276 Since mediation can only be applied to the past, the speculative thinker is essentially oriented towards the past, which according to Climacus is thus contrary to the true Christian orientation. This comparison of the Christian orientation with that of speculative philosophy at first seems puzzling since the two would not seem to have anything to do with one another in any obvious way that would invite comparison in the first place. When Hegel analyzes world history, there is no claim that such an analysis is a part of a true Christian disposition or orientation towards belief. But this comparison begins to make sense when one regards the criticism as directed not at Hegel but at Martensen. The essential difference here is that while Hegel limits his analysis to philosophical subject-matter, the Hegelian Martensen applies specific Hegelian principles in the context of Christianity. This is what Climacus objects to.277 There are indications in Climacus’ discussion that confirm that the real target is Martensen, who is seen as mistakenly importing Hegel’s philosophy into religion. Climacus refers to Martensen as “the doubting youth” (which recalls the expression “de omnibus dubitandum est”278 ): “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 for existence – he will write a dreadful epigram on Hegel.”279 This seems to be a description of the plot of Kierkegaard’s aborted work, Johannes Climacus, or De Omnibus dubitandum est, which was inspired by Martensen. Climacus’ criticism here is that there is a clear absurdity in looking for the truth of existence in speculative philosophy. Thus, the criticism is not of any given principle or doctrine in Hegel’s philosophy but instead of Martensen and 275 276 278

CUP1, p. 307; SKS, vol. 7, p. 279f. CUP1, p. 306; SKS, vol. 7, p. 278f. See Chapter 5, Section I.

277 279

See Chapter 8, Section I, pp. 347–355. CUP1, p. 310; SKS, vol. 7, p. 282.


speculative philosophy and law of excluded middle 513 those like him who have purportedly sought the truth of their own existence in Hegel’s system. This displays a confusion of the two spheres since one should not think to look in a system of logic for the truth about existence. While there are elaborations of specific points, with respect to the issue of Hegel’s criticism of the law of excluded middle, Climacus’ position is essentially that of Judge Wilhelm. Judge Wilhelm is concerned that speculative philosophy leads astray nameless young people (i.e., Martensen’s students) by enticing them to forget themselves in the contemplation of world history. Similarly, Climacus seems keen to criticize Martensen’s confusion of Christianity with Hegelianism. Despite the two different pseudonyms and the passage of time between Either/Or and the Postscript, the criticism here seems essentially the same. (2) In the chapter “The Issue in Fragments,” Johannes Climacus makes reference to this previous discussion and continues it.280 The analysis here, he indicates, represents the ethical aspect of the issue of the law of excluded middle. In this account, Climacus talks about the concept of mediation in relation to what he calls “the absolute, τ ελoς.” ´ By this term, he seems to refer to the eternal happiness of salvation, which is the absolute τ ελoς ´ of human beings. As has been seen, for Climacus the free choice of Christian belief is an absolute one of infinite importance to the individual given the fact that what is at issue is one’s eternal happiness. The problem with mediation in this regard is twofold. First, it does not recognize the absolute decision or the absolute τ ελoς ´ and instead tries to mediate. Thus, it does not see the question of whether to be a Christian or not as an absolute choice. On this view, one can be partially a Christian or can believe a little. It thus reduces an absolute choice to a relative one where this sort of mediation is possible. Climacus puts it thus: “When it is a matter of relative elements, mediation can have its significance (that they are all equal before mediation), but when it is a matter of the absolute τ ελoς, ´ mediating means that the absolute τ ελoς ´ is reduced to a relative 281 τ ελoς.” ´ While many decisions might admit of compromises or partial mediation, the decision enjoined by Christianity and by the absolute τ ελoς ´ is absolute. One believes or one does not believe; there is no middle way. Second, the principle of mediation cannot be applied where one of the opposed terms is the absolute τ ελoς ´ . Mediation is possible between opposite terms on the same level, but makes no sense between terms that are not equal. The absolute τ ελoς ´ , qua absolute, is infinitely higher than any relative decision and therefore cannot be compared with such a decision. The absolute τ ελoς ´ is in a category by itself. Thus, when mediation tries

280

CUP1, p. 399; SKS, vol. 7, p. 363.

281

CUP1, p. 400; SKS, vol. 7, p. 364.


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to see the absolute τ ελoς ´ as merely one term among others, it misses the very point of the absolute τ ελoς ´ . Climacus takes a councilor of justice as an example of complacent Christianity. He writes: “But let the councilor take care that he does not . . . proceed to do both all this and have time to direct his life toward the absolute τ ελoς ´ . In other words, this both/and means that the absolute τ ελoς ´ is on the same level with everything else. But the absolute τ ελoς ´ has the remarkable quality of wanting to be the absolute τ ελoς ´ at every moment.”282 The term “absolute τ ελoς ´ ” is new here, but the point has been made before: the concept of the Aufhebung of contradictory pairs does not apply to the sphere of existence, which is the sphere of individual faith. In short, the existential cannot be mediated. The criticism is aimed at the notion of mediation as applied to Christian belief. While the principle of mediation clearly originates in Hegel’s metaphysics, Hegel makes no attempt to apply it to the belief of the individual. Hegel never tries to mediate “the absolute τ ελoς ´ .” Thus, the criticism must be of some Hegelian, presumably Martensen, who applies this principle to Christianity. One indication that this is indeed the case is that Martensen’s plea for skeptical doubt is referred to in this passage: “One writes on paper, ‘Doubt everything’ – then one has doubted everything.”283 Once again, this recalls Martensen’s slogan, “de omnibus dubitandum est.” It also underscores the crucial difference between merely saying something and actually putting it into practice, something that Martensen (in the manuscript, Johannes Climacus, or De Omnibus dubtandum est) was reproached for not having appreciated. Moreover, Climacus alludes to Martensen’s reference to the famous saying attributed to Archimedes. In his review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College, Martensen describes Hegel’s search for the true, stable point of departure for philosophy and compares it with finding the Archimedean point: “Finding this means nothing more or less than finding the point outside the world, which the ancient Greek sages already sought. (Da mihi punctum & caelum terramque movebo.) This point, independent of experience and consciousness, Hegel sought to find by carrying out dialectical doubt.”284 Climacus refers to this as follows: “Mediation looks fairly good on paper. First one assumes the finite, then the infinite, and then one says on paper: This must be mediated. An existing person has unquestionably found there the secure foothold outside existence where he can mediate – on paper. The Archimedean point has been found, but one does not notice that 282 283 284

CUP1, p. 401; SKS, vol. 7, p. 365. CUP1, p. 405; SKS, vol. 7, p. 369. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus,” op. cit., p. 521. Discussed in Chapter 5, Section III, p. 266f.


the absence of an ethics in the system

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it has succeeded in moving the whole world.”285 The criticism is that although Hegel’s philosophy has found the stable point from which to begin, this is irrelevant for the realm of existence. Mediation can take place among the abstract categories of thought, but it has nothing to do with existential choice and religious faith. These two discussions merely confirm and flesh out what has already been said about the issue of mediation in Either/Or and elsewhere. In the first account, very little new is discussed, but instead the issue of mediation is blended together with a number of other criticisms of Hegelianism. The second account discusses the impossibility of mediation in the ethical sphere, which is characterized by absolute choice and the absolute τ ελoς. ´ Generally speaking, Climacus’ position on the issue of mediation is more or less the same as that of Judge Wilhelm, with the exception of the introduction of the term “the absolute τ ελoς ´ .” The Aufhebung of opposites and the either/or of choice are assigned to separate spheres where each has its own validity. The critical points of both discussions are aimed at an improper application of the Hegelian principle and not at that principle itself.

x. the absence of an ethics in the system One criticism to which Johannes Climacus does not devote any extended analysis but that comes up briefly in many scattered passages is his claim that the system, presumably Hegel’s philosophy, has no ethics.286 This criticism was issued earlier in Fear and Trembling,287 Stages on Life’s Way,288 and in the journals and papers.289 In the Postscript the claim that the system has no ethics is so frequent that it comes to sound almost formulaic. Although Climacus does not develop this criticism in any detail, it is at least worth a brief glance if only because it is repeated so often. I will argue that what lies behind this criticism is a specific conception of ethics, which is at odds with that of Hegel. 285 286

287

288

289

CUP1, p. 419; SKS, vol. 7, p. 381. CUP1, p. 119; SKS, vol. 7, p. 115. CUP1, p. 121; SKS, vol. 7, p. 116. CUP1, p. 133f.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 125f. CUP1, p. 296fn.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 270fn. CUP1, p. 307fn.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 279fn. FT, p. 83; SKS, vol. 4, p. 173: “Accordingly, this examination must constantly wander into the territory of ethics, while in order to be of consequence it must seize the problem with aesthetic fervor and concupiscence. These days, ethics rarely involves itself with a question like this. The reason must be that the system has no room for it.” SL, p. 231; SKS, vol. 6, p. 215: “Basically, it is easy enough except for someone who has been lent the helping hand of the privateer-wealth of the system and thereby in turn the beggar’s staff. Only if one is so circumspect as to want to construct a system without including ethics does it work; then one obtains a system in which one has everything, everything else, and has omitted the one thing needful.” See PF, Supplement, p. 207; Pap. V B 41, p. 96. JP, vol. 2, 1611; SKS, vol. 20, p. 44, NB:42. Pap. VII-2 B 253, p. 162, p. 214f. JP, vol. 1, 654; Pap. VIII-2 B 86, p. 171f.


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It is worthwhile here at the beginning to say a word about Hegel’s understanding of ethics in order to determine whether or not he had an ethical theory.290 For Hegel, ethics, like other realms of human activity, embodies the movement of the Concept. Thus, when he analyzes various ethical theories, he does so in terms of the Concept. In both the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, he offers extended accounts of conceptions of ethical life embodied in various concrete historical communities, for example, the Greeks and the Romans. Moreover, both the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Right offer extended criticisms of Kant’s ethical theory as well as various ethical views of the Romantics. In the Philosophy of Right he puts forth his own theory and sketches what he regards as the rational state. By this he understands not merely a specific form of government but the whole network of relations including individuals, families, work conditions, cultural values, and religion. For Hegel, in the course of history these relations develop gradually and come to constitute the ethical life of a people. His thesis is that this development is dictated by the idea of freedom, which slowly emerges in human history. The goal of the philosopher is then to recognize the rational elements in existing reality, which correspond to this idea. Thus, from this and from what was said previously about Hegel’s conception of ethics,291 there can be no doubt that Hegel had some theory of ethics, although it may be one that is idiosyncratic in certain ways. The criticism of Hegel for not having an ethical theory is not unique to Johannes Climacus. In fact, this charge was first raised in the Danish context by Sibbern in his review of Perseus.292 While Sibbern sees in Hegel some interesting fragments of a moral philosophy, he criticizes him for not working them out in more detail. Moreover, Hegel was also reproached for not having an ethics by Martensen, who is usually portrayed by Kierkegaard as one of Hegel’s naive and uncritical supporters. In 1841 in the Preface to his Outline to a System of Moral Philosophy, Martensen writes: “It can be considered strange that Hegel has not given his contemporaries a worked-out ethics, as he has given them a workedout aesthetics and philosophy of religion.”293 Moreover, Martensen is critical of the attempt to understand Hegel’s theory of the state as a substitute for an ethical theory. He claims, however, that the foundations 290 291 292

293

See Allen W. Wood, “Does Hegel Have an Ethics,” in his Hegel’s Ethical Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990, pp. 8–11. Chapter 7, Section II, pp. 310–315. Frederik Christian Sibbern, “Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee. Udgiven af Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Nr. 1,” op. cit., Article I pp. 322–323. Frederik Christian Sibbern, Bemærkninger og Undersøgelser, fornemmelig betreffende Hegels Philosophie, op. cit., pp. 40–41. Hans Lassen Martensen, Grundrids til Moralphilosophiens System, Copenhagen 1841, p. vi. ASKB 650. English translation: Outline to a System of Moral Philosophy, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, op. cit., p. 247.



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for an ethical theory are already present in Hegel but still need to be developed: Everyone who has studied attentively the Philosophy of Religion and the Aesthetics will have had ample opportunity to be persuaded that Hegel has known a higher morality than that whose end is absorbed in the state. These works contain the clearest indications of a higher ethical knowledge and especially the Aesthetics contains significant contributions to knowledge of the purely ideal meaning of the moral personality.294

Martensen makes it his goal to work out what he sees as the implicit theory contained in Hegel’s thought and thus to go further than Hegel. What is surprising here is that Martensen is not the uncritical Hegelian he is portrayed as being and, moreover, that Climacus in fact uses Martensen’s criticism of Hegel. Perhaps what irritated Kierkegaard the most was not that Martensen’s position contradicted his own but rather that they held views on some issues that were all too similar.295 One of the basic points of Climacus’ criticism seems to be that there is an absurdity in the idea of having a complete philosophical system that lacks an ethics. He alludes to the criticism in Stages on Life’s Way when he writes: “certainly everyone will also perceive that what another author has observed regarding the Hegelian system is entirely in order: that through Hegel a system, the absolute system, was brought to completion – without having an ethics.”296 This passage seems to ask the question of how it is possible to write a philosophical system and to forget ethics, which traditionally belongs to any systematic account of philosophy. For Climacus, the fact that Hegel’s philosophy has no ethics is another piece of evidence that Hegelian philosophers are essentially absent-minded with respect to their own existence and the ethical responsibilities that it enjoins. He writes: “Whereas the Hegelian system in absent-mindedness goes ahead and becomes a system of existence, and what is more, is finished – without having an ethics (the very home of existence), the other simpler philosophy, presented by an existing individual for existing individuals, is especially intent upon advancing the ethical.”297 This is consistent with Climacus’ claim that the system leads people to neglect their religious life since it encourages them to contemplate the past instead of anticipating salvation in the future. Such abstract contemplation has led these Hegelian philosophers to forget ethics altogether, even 294 295

296

Ibid., p. vii. English translation, pp. 247–248. With regard to the general overlap in views, Croxall claims the following: “In spite, however, of Kierkegaard’s criticisms there are echoes of Martensen’s influence in Kierkegaard’s pages, and points of contact.” T. H. Croxall, “Hegelianism in Denmark,” in his translation Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est and a Sermon, London: Adam and Charles Black 1958, p. 49. 297 CUP1, p. 121; SKS, vol. 7, p. 116. CUP1, p. 119; SKS, vol. 7, p. 115.


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ethics as a part of the system. There are other similar passages,298 but Climacus never really sustains this criticism or develops it further. In any case, these passages will suffice to represent his criticism on this point. A facile solution to the problem raised by this criticism would be simply to point out that Hegel in fact does have an ethical theory and to conclude that Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms are mistaken in their claim to the contrary. But simply to point to the fact that Hegel does indeed have an ethics is neither interesting nor informative since surely Kierkegaard knew this. I would like rather to argue that, while Hegel wrote and theorized about ethics, his conception of it is wholly different from that of Climacus and that this is the actual reason for the criticism. What Climacus understands by “ethics” or “the ethical” is a large issue that cannot be addressed adequately here. However, suffice it to say that for him ethics is not an abstract field of inquiry as it was for Kant or Mill; rather, it concerns one’s own existence and self-understanding, which he claims the followers of Hegel’s philosophy forget. Climacus often lauds Socrates or Greek philosophers generally since their philosophy was immediately connected with the way in which they led their lives. These thinkers are contrasted explicitly to the academic German philosopher of the university.299 Throughout his corpus Kierkegaard often refers to the biographical anecdotes in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers.300 The philosophers portrayed there, regardless of how strange or idiosyncratic, are for him a model for the philosophical life. These thinkers are hailed as living and acting with passion, whereas the speculative philosopher is criticized as lacking passion. But, as has been noted, Hegel (along with the rest of the tradition of ethical thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) has a completely different conception of ethics. For him, self-evaluation or self-understanding may be valid in and of itself, but it cannot be the object of scholarly inquiry or what he calls “science.” Science in its different spheres attempts to examine the Concept, which is universal, and it would be absurd to try to apply this to individual self-understanding, which by its very nature is particular. Thus, when Climacus says that Hegel has no ethics, he is not denying that Hegel had a theory of ethics in the Philosophy of Right, but instead he is indicating that Hegel did not give an account of the individual, qua individual, in that person’s self-relation. This clearly falls outside the realm of science for Hegel. But yet, upon closer 298

299 300

E.g., CUP1, p. 296fn.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 270fn.: “Hegelian philosophy culminates in the thesis that the outer is the inner and the inner is the outer. With this, Hegel has finished. But this principle is essentially an aesthetic-metaphysical principle, and in this way Hegelian philosophy is happily and safely finished without having anything to do with the ethical and the religious.” See CUP1, p. 307fn.; SKS, vol. 7, p. 279fn. CUP1, p. 191; SKS, vol. 7, p. 175. Diogenes Laertius, De Vitis Philosophorum Libri X, Leipzig 1833. ASKB 1109. Diogen Laertses filosofiske Historie, vols. 1–2, tr. by Børge Riisbrigh, Copenhagen 1812. ASKB 1110–1111.



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consideration, it also, albeit for different reasons, falls outside the realm of science for Climacus. The whole point of Climacus’ analysis is that the ethical, as he understands it, is something fundamentally distinct from the sphere of science and scholarship; indeed, many of the mistakes of modern scholarship stem from confusing the two spheres. Given this, it would be inconsistent to criticize Hegel for having no ethics in his system since his analysis has shown that ethics does not belong in a system in the first place. Indeed, on Climacus’ own premises he has no reason to expect to find an ethics in a systematic philosophy. For Hegel to give a detailed account of ethics within the system would amount either to a mistaken conception of ethics (i.e., as an obtusely abstract one worthy of criticism) or to a confusion of the spheres (i.e., of the realm of freedom and the realm of necessity, of the subjective and the objective, of ethics and science, etc.). Put differently, Climacus’ criticism condemns Hegel both ways: either Hegel has an ethics within the system, and this is wrong since ethics cannot be systematized and belongs to the realm of freedom, or Hegel has no ethics within the system and has thus forgotten ethics entirely. Given this way of setting up the issue, it is in principle not possible for Hegel to avoid one of the two horns of the dilemma. This criticism differs from the previous ones insofar as it cannot with any certainty be traced back directly to one of Kierkegaard’s Danish contemporaries (although later it is attributed to Adler301 ). But yet it is still not clear that it is best conceived as a criticism of Hegel himself since it may be part of the general criticism about the self-forgetfulness of specific Hegelians. It might be seen as a criticism of the corrupting influence of Hegel’s philosophy on young people in that it leads them away from concentrating on the ethical aspect of their own life and tempts them to become absorbed in abstract contemplation. But once again, this has nothing to do with the Hegel of the primary texts. It will be noted that in this context there is no discussion of Hegel’s actual account of ethics in the Philosophy of Right. This said, this analysis nonetheless makes quite clear that Kierkegaard and Hegel have completely different conceptions of ethics generally. While Hegel conceives of ethics as a part of science and thus as a specific abstract subject-matter that displays the Concept, Kierkegaard conceives of it in a much less academic sense as a kind of philosophy of life. This constitutes a fundamental difference between the two thinkers. In the Postscript Johannes Climacus paints a picture of “speculative philosophy” that represents the antithetic term to Christianity. Generations of readers have taken this to be a straightforward criticism of Hegel, but, 301

A, p. 129; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 251.

302

CUP1, p. 242; SKS, vol. 7, p. 220.


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as has been seen, the matter is not so simple. The problem is that the picture, which is presented, corresponds very little to anything that can be found in Hegel’s primary texts. Instead, Hegel’s name seems to be used by Climacus merely as a symbol for what he perceives to be the cultural ills of the day. Climacus complains that the problem is not with speculative philosophy but with the entire age: “it finally became clear to me that the deviation of speculative thought and, based thereupon, its presumed right to reduce faith to a factor might not be something accidental, might be located far deeper in the orientation of the whole age – most likely in this, that because of much knowledge people have entirely forgotten what it means to exist and what inwardness is.”302 Here Climacus sounds like any of a number of the religious reformers who were active in Denmark at the time. This moralistic tone in Kierkegaard’s works was noticed by contemporary readers. Martensen, for example, writes of Kierkegaard that in his criticism of the Danish Church, “he addressed himself to the masses – he, who had earlier disdained the masses and had sought only a quiet encounter with the individual. His method differed in no way from that of the sects, that attack the Established church because it is not in accord with what they call the Christianity of the New Testament.”?? Similarly, Sibbern also commenting on Kierkegaard’s later attack on the Church says that he saw in Kierkegaard “only a sectarian, whose attacks resemble those made by the Baptists and the Mormon preachers.”?? The moralistic tone that Kierkegaard uses to criticize the Danish Church is the same as that which Climacus uses to criticize the objective thinker: in both cases the charge concerns having a false relationship to Christianity. A part of this criticism is the Danish Hegelians and the cultural ills they represent. They seem generally to be regarded as embodying one of the gravest dangers to Christianity. Climacus presents a Feindbild under the name of Hegel in order to attack it, but this is at best a self-consciously caricatured picture of Hegel produced by Climacus’ own moral critique and seems to be the result of a number of complicated personal and biographical motivations. The personal or biographical dimension of the Postscript has been overlooked in the literature, which would like to see the work as a straightforward criticism of Hegel. Kierkegaard never held a university position, and thus he could engage in a bitter tirade against the “docents.” He thought that Nielsen was unprepared to become a professor at the university, and the result was his consistent satire of Nielsen’s unfinished 303 304

Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 17. Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 203. Letter “F. C. Sibbern to Petronella Ross,” March 26, 1855, in Breve til og fra F.C. Sibbern, ed. by C. L. N. Mynster, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1866, vol. 2, p. 224. Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 104.



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system and constant promises. He thought that Martensen was unfit to be court priest, and as a result Martensen is criticized under the headings “speculative philosophy,” “the objective thinker,” and the like. He resented Heiberg’s dismissive comments about Either/Or and Repetition, and as a result Heiberg is satirized as Dr. Hjortespring for his overenthusiastic pro-Hegel campaign. He thought that Grundtvig was affected and had a mistaken conception of Christianity, which neglected the individual, and as a result Grundtvig is constantly satirized for his preoccupation with world history. But all of this has nothing to do with Hegel. These various personal grudges and animosities are present in the Postscript in an encoded form. While the unwary reader will associate the key code words immediately with Hegel, the true targets of Climacus’ criticisms are almost invariably much closer to home. It would therefore be a mistake to overlook these biographical aspects. As Martensen says of his relation to Kierkegaard, “no matter how much people talk in general about objectivity, about the principle of the thing, and about justice in connection with literary disputes and similar affairs, personal issues nonetheless play an important role, often in the narrowest way, and it is impossible to arrive at an adequate explanation without reference to them.”?? Although, to be sure, a great deal of the Postscript is ad hominem in character and thus of limited interest to anyone exploring the philosophical dimensions of the work, a number of the criticisms can be seen in a more positive light when they are regarded as moral critique in line with the ancient moralists. The arguments and criticisms of the moralists are in a sense ad hominem since they criticize moral vice in particular individuals, but the criticism is not just this in that it takes the individual as an example of a universal, i.e., for some general principle or tendency of the age. In this sense moral criticism makes use of particular individuals to make a legitimate philosophical point. Thus, to the extent that Kierkegaard uses the examples of Martensen, Heiberg, Grundtvig, and Nielsen to make a general point, his criticisms are not merely ad hominem. The criticisms of Martensen for claiming to have gone further than Hegel or for constantly repeating “de omnibus dubitandum est” are only ad hominem and cannot be universalized to a general philosophical point. By contrast, the criticism of him as an objective thinker who represents an objective approach to Christianity has genuine substantive content that transcends Martensen’s person. These are the points one should focus on if one is interested in exploring the actual issues at stake. It will, however, be noted that these moral criticisms are not philosophical criticisms of Hegel. As the analysis presented here suggests, the problem 305

Hans Lassen Martensen, Af mit Levnet, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 13. Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 201.


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is not with Hegel’s thought but with a certain moral disposition of the age (albeit in some vague sense indirectly influenced by Hegel), which leads to an inappropriate approach to Christianity. Thus, Climacus is not really in dialogue with Hegel directly and has no real complaint about the actual content of his philosophy. The long-standing perception that the Postscript is Kierkegaard’s great polemic with Hegel is in the final analysis nothing more than a myth based on an ahistorical understanding of the text. In this case Thulstrup is in a sense right but for the wrong reasons. It is true, as he says, that in this text Kierkegaard and Hegel have little in common, not because their thought is so disparate or fundamentally at odds, but rather because Kierkegaard argued against Hegel in name only and in fact his polemic was actually with Martensen, Heiberg, Grundtvig, and Nielsen. Generations of scholars have been thrown onto the wrong track by taking Climacus’ rhetoric seriously when he seems to inveigh against Hegel. But, as has been seen, this is in fact nothing more than rhetorical guise motivated by personal animosities towards Martensen and the others, and very little by way of philosophical disagreement with Hegel stands behind it. It is regrettable that so many Kierkegaard commentators have focused on his rhetoric in this work without recognizing it as such. By so doing, they have failed to perceive the true target of the criticisms. After all of the passages that are concerned with Martensen, Heiberg, Grundtvig, or Nielsen have been extracted from the text, is there anything from Hegel that remains? I have tried to point out that there are issues in the text that are of more general philosophical interest, such as the problem of a beginning in philosophy, and thus while Climacus’ target or interlocutor may well be Hegel, it may just as well be any number of other philosophers from the tradition. Moreover, in each of the passages that purportedly refer to Hegel, Climacus is invariably drawing on the discussion of Hegelianism in the Danish philosophical literature. In the final analysis, however, the positions that Climacus criticizes have little, if anything, to do with Hegel himself. Some of the discussions analyzed here reveal a metalevel dispute between Hegel and Kierkegaard. For example, their respective conceptions of ethics are quite disparate. For Hegel ethics is a matter of the Sittlichkeit of a people, whereas for Kierkegaard it has something to do with the correct Christian disposition of the individual. Similarly, their discussions about faith are at cross purposes since Kierkegaard is concerned with the faith of the individual, whereas Hegel is concerned with the abstract notion of faith as one cognitive faculty among others. These discussions are indications of a disagreement at a much more general level than is usually assumed. The disagreement is not about some detail in Hegel’s thought but rather with an entire conception of philosophy shared by Hegel and many others in the tradition.



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The Postscript clearly marks the climax of what I have designated as the second period of Kierkegaard’s authorship. The final work from this period, The Book on Adler, can be regarded merely as a kind of addendum, at least with respect to the issue of Hegel’s philosophy. There many of the same criticisms from the Postscript are repeated without anything substantially new being added except for the fact that they are illustrated in the specific person of Adler. Thus, Kierkegaard shifts his target from Martensen to Adler. Both are accused of confusing Hegel’s philosophy with Christianity and with the private faith of the individual. With The Book on Adler the second phase of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel comes to a close. With it the polemical disposition towards Hegel and above all Hegelians comes to an end, and Hegel’s philosophy thereafter ceases to be thematized as an issue.

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12 ADLER’S CONFUSIONS AND THE RESULTS OF HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY

A work that affords an indirect yet useful glimpse of Kierkegaard’s view of Hegel is his unpublished The Book on Adler (also translated under the title On Authority and Revelation1 ). Kierkegaard started work on it in May of 1846, only a few months after the Concluding Unscientific Postscript appeared and the authorship was to come to an end. It was revised off and on over the next several years. The main discussion of the work concerns the purported revelation of the Danish priest, Adolph Peter Adler. Prior to his revelation, Adler was a convinced Hegelian, and Kierkegaard argues that Adler’s confused state of mind is, at least in part, a result of a Hegelian influence. Thus, in this work Kierkegaard discusses Hegel and Hegelianism indirectly in a number of places. These passages must be examined in order to sketch a general picture of Kierkegaard’s assessment of Hegel during this period immediately after the Postscript. Moreover, there are reasons to believe that Kierkegaard’s picture of Hegel’s philosophy might have been in large measure derived from Adler’s expositions of it.2 Thus, Kierkegaard’s relation to Adler is doubly important for the purposes of this investigation. Kierkegaard had previously criticized Adler in The Concept of Anxiety. As was seen previously,3 the main work under scrutiny there was Adler’s Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic.4 Although Adler is never mentioned directly in the work, Kierkegaard has his pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis criticize Adler’s use of Christian doctrines in his explication of Hegel’s logic. The main point of criticism there concerned the conflation of two 1 2

3 4

On Authority and Revelation: The Book on Adler, tr. Walter Lowrie. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1955. This is the thesis of Koch’s book on the relation between Adler and Kierkegaard. Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse eller om Adolph Peter Adler og om Søren Kierkegaards forhold til ham, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag A/S 1990. Chapter 9. Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag over Hegels objective Logik, Copenhagen 1842. ASKB 383.

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distinct spheres, i.e., that of abstract logic and that of existence. Thus, it is no surprise that in The Book on Adler Kierkegaard makes the same general criticism of Adler for conflating Christianity with secular philosophy and thus for being deeply confused about his own personal faith. Thus, these two works can be seen as continuous with one another. The Book on Adler is divided into four chapters. In the first, entitled “The Historical Situation,” Kierkegaard traces Adler’s original claim to have had a revelatory experience and the reaction of the State Church. The second chapter concerns the concept of revelation itself. Here Kierkegaard repeats a number of his arguments from elsewhere (e.g., his account of the paradox and of contemporaneity from the Philosophical Fragments and his account of the argument from the section entitled “The Evidence of the Centuries for the Truth of Christianity” from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript). In the third chapter Kierkegaard begins by examining one by one the questions put to Adler by the Danish Church concerning his revelation and Adler’s subsequent responses. It continues with a discussion of the four works by Adler that appeared in 1846. Kierkegaard notes that surprisingly nothing new is said about the revelation in these books. He tries to demonstrate that they represent a radical break from Adler’s original claims. The final chapter, entitled “A Psychological View of Adler as a Phenomenon and as a Satire on the Hegelian Philosophy and the Present Age,” will be of particular interest since, as the title indicates, Adler’s relation to Hegelian philosophy is a central theme. In the present chapter I will examine the initial section, entitled simply “Psychological Exposition,”5 in which Kierkegaard gives a psychological analysis of Adler by tracing his biography through its most important stages. Here the main issue is whether Adler could regard Christianity in purely secular terms as a concept sublated by philosophy without betraying his vocation as a priest. In other words, a priest cannot regard Christianity in purely secular terms as a sublated concept that finds its true expression in philosophy. Next I will take up the second section, “The Crisis in Magister Adler’s Life,”6 in which Kierkegaard argues that although Adler burnt his Hegelian manuscripts and, with this gesture, purported to give up Hegelian philosophy, he nevertheless remained down deep a Hegelian since he tried to explain his revelation instead of simply remaining silent. I will then skip to the fourth section, “The Fundamental Defect in Adler that Conditions the Misrelation.”7 There Kierkegaard returns to the charge that Hegel’s philosophy lacks an ethics and tries to show that Adler, under Hegelian influence, confuses the subjective with 5 6 7

A, pp. 90–98; Pap. VII-2 B 235, pp. 176–185. A, pp. 98–103; Pap. VII-2 B 235, pp. 185–189. A, pp. 111–132; Pap. VII-2 B 235, pp. 198–217.


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the objective, and the existential with the scientific by trying to analyze his past while lacking any ethical relation towards the future. In the present chapter I am not interested in Adler per se or in Kierkegaard’s view of him; instead, my goal is to gain a glimpse of Kierkegaard’s assessment of Hegel indirectly via his criticism of Adler. Given the fact that this work is so little known among anglophone readers, it will be useful to say a word about Adler and his relation to Kierkegaard before beginning the discussion of the text itself. In this chapter I wish to argue that Kierkegaard’s criticism is not so much of different aspects of Hegel’s philosophy on their own terms but rather of Adler’s conflation of an abstract philosophical account with his own personal faith and existence.

i. kierkegaard’s contact with adler As noted previously,8 Adler was known as a Hegelian primarily on the basis of his dissertation The Isolated Subjectivity in its Most Important Forms9 and his book Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic.10 After his studies and a brief lectureship at the University of Copenhagen, he received an appointment as priest on the island of Bornholm. In a letter to his wife dated July 24, 1841, Bishop Mynster on a visit to Bornholm reports the following about the newly appointed priest: I will now tell you a bit more about the rest of my trip. From . . . Rønne . . . I came to Mag. Adler in Hasle. He was, as you can well imagine, a typical Copenhagener. But what touched me more was that Adler, despite his Hegelianness, has quite good abilities to preach and to attend to his post, and that his wife, who is also a good person, is extremely happy in Hasle, although she is a Copenhagen lady. The congregation, I believe, is also fond of them.11

Mynster notes the contrast between the cosmopolitan Adler with his Hegelianism and the provincial congregation in Hasle. Kierkegaard discusses this point at some length in his analysis of Adler. When Adler returned to Copenhagen in 1842 to see to the publication of his sermons he experienced his revelation. In December of that year he was purportedly visited by Christ in person. According to his account, Christ appeared and proceeded to dictate to him the true account of the origin of evil. Christ then ordered him to destroy his writings and manuscripts on Hegel’s philosophy. Adler announced these events in 1843 in the Preface 8 9 10 11

Chapter 1, Section II, p. 67f. Adolph Peter Adler, Den isolerede Subjectivitet i dens vigtigste Skikkelser, I, Copenhagen 1840. Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag over Hegels objective Logik, op. cit. ASKB 383. C.L.N. Mynster (ed.), Nogle Blade af J. P. Mynster’s Liv og Tid, Copenhagen 1875, pp. 421– 422.


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to his collection, Some Sermons.12 This work presented a series of twentythree sermons allegedly written with the inspiration of Christ, with Adler as his instrument, and in which appeared the sacred verses dictated to him by Christ. Later in the same year Adler published his Studies,13 which also contained strange assertions no less difficult for the reading public to accept. These works caused a scandal when they appeared since Adler was after all a representative of the Church.14 Bishop Mynster graciously suggested that Adler take a leave of absence from his post in the hope that the affair would pass, but Adler intransigently rejected the prudent suggestion. Mynster had little choice in the matter and, at the order of the chancellery of the Danish Church, was obliged to suspend the renegade priest on January 19, 1844. Adler’s congregation petitioned to have him reinstated, but their plea remained unrequited. Adler was asked to answer to the Church in 1845 when Mynster posed four questions to him regarding above all his revelation.15 These Adler answered somewhat evasively in a series of letters, which he later published along with Mynster’s official statements regarding the affair and other materials relating to the dismissal.16 Mynster asked him to retract some of his statements regarding the revelation and hoped that Adler would acknowledge being in a confused state of mind at the time. In his responses, Adler defended himself by arguing that his statements had been misconstrued. He retreated somewhat by saying that his revelation could not be regarded as on a par with the revelations of Christianity. This was, however, not enough for Mynster who ultimately found himself obliged to call for Adler’s dismissal in 1845. Adler nevertheless received a pension, which supported his later literary endeavors. 12 13 14 15

16

Adolph Peter Adler, Nogle Prædikener, Copenhagen 1843. ASKB U 9. See A, Supplement, pp. 339–340. Adolph Peter Adler, Studier, Copenhagen 1843. This affair is treated in detail in Chapter 7 of Koch’s En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse, op. cit. The questions were the following: “1) Do you recognize that you were in an overwrought and confused condition when you wrote and published your Sermons and so-called Studies? 2) Are you clear that it is fanatical and incorrect to expect and follow such supposed, external revelations, as for example, the one you described in the Preface to your Sermons? 3) Do you recognize that in your aforementioned printed works there are several false statements, deviating from Christian teaching? 4) Do you admit that in the said writings there are to be found several statements that are offensive, indecent or highly unsuitable?” English translation cited from Julia Watkin, “The Criteria of EthicalReligious Authority: Kierkegaard and Adolph Adler,” in ACME – Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’ Università degli Studi di Milano, vol. 41, no. 1, 1992, p. 29. With respect to the final question, it is likely that Mynster had in mind primarily Adler’s professed view that witches should be burned. See Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse, op. cit., pp. 151–152. Adolph Peter Adler, Skrivelser min Suspension og Entledigelse vedkommende, Copenhagen 1845. ASKB U 10.


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After this time Adler continued to write prolifically on a variety of topics. In 1846 he published four different works: Studies and Examples,17 New Poems,18 Attempt at a Short Systematic Exposition of Christianity in its Logic,19 and finally Theological Studies.20 Kierkegaard bought these works soon after their publication and read them attentively. Later Adler faded from the limelight, although he continued to publish on religion and diverse subjects: his works during these years include a lexicon on the Bornholm dialect of Danish, local stories from Bornholm, and a travel report. He continued to live in the same parish where he had been priest until he moved back to Copenhagen in 1853, where he lived until his death in 1869. Kierkegaard was acquainted with Adler personally and was much provoked both by his claim to have experienced a revelation and by the reaction of the State Church. It raised for him the general philosophical and theological question of authority. He began work on the text of The Book of Adler in the summer of 1846 (i.e., in the same year he acquired the four books by Adler mentioned earlier). While the main part of the work seems to have been written between summer 1846 and January 1847, Kierkegaard was exercised by it until his death.21 In the course of its genesis the book had several titles: first in January 1847 it was called The Book on Adler, and Kierkegaard himself was given as the author. Then later in the same year, the title was changed to The Religious Confusion of the Present Age Illustrated by Mag. Adler as a Phenomenon, a Mimic Monograph by Johannes Climacus, with Kierkegaard as the editor.22 Finally in 1848 came the title A Cycle of Ethical-Religious Essays, with Kierkegaard once again as the author. This title attempts to conceal the polemic in that it, unlike the previous two, makes no mention of Adler whatsoever. Indeed, generally speaking, the later versions of the work seem to be attempts to present the larger philosophical and theological point while concealing the person of Adler as the target. Kierkegaard writes in his journals, “If I name Adler, then I will have the desperate man to deal with, which I by no means want.”23 Just as the titles changed, so also did the pseudonyms. Kierkegaard considered using several different pseudonymous authors for the book including “Petrus Minor,” “Thomas Minor,”

17 18 19 20 21

22

Adolph Peter Adler, Studier og Exempler, Copenhagen 1846. ASKB U 11. Adolph Peter Adler, Nogle Digte, Copenhagen 1846. ASKB 1502. Adolph Peter Adler, Forsøg til en kort systematisk Fremstilling af Christendommen i dens Logik, Copenhagen 1846. ASKB U 13. Adolph Peter Adler, Theologiske Studier, Copenhagen 1846. ASKB U 12. See Julia Watkin’s Introduction in her edition, Nutidens Religieuse Forvirring: Bogen om Adler, Copenhagen 1984. See also “Historical Introduction,” in The Book on Adler, tr. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1998. 23 A, Supplement, p. 334; Pap. X-6 B 61. A, Supplement, p. 223; Pap. VIII-2 B 21.


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“Vincentius Minor,” “Ataraxius Minor”24 and the well-known “Johannes Climacus.”25 Presumably due to his personal acquaintance with Adler, Kierkegaard decided not to publish the work, and it was left among his papers where it was discovered after his death. The text first appeared posthumously in 1872 in Barfod’s edition of Kierkegaard’s journals and papers.26 A small part of the Book on Adler entitled “On the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle” was published by Kierkegaard in Two Ethical-Religious Essays from 1849 under the pseudonym H. H. In On My Work as an Author, Kierkegaard gives this essay a central role,27 which can be taken as evidence for the general importance of the Book on Adler in the authorship as a whole.28 It is clear that Kierkegaard knew Adler personally and had at least a minimal contact with him. There is unfortunately not much information available regarding the extent of their personal relationship. It is likely and indeed almost inevitable that they were acquainted at least at a distance from very early on since both attended Copenhagen’s elite Borgerdydskole which both entered in 1821.29 It is also highly probable that Adler and Kierkegaard knew each other during their time as students at the university since both studied theology. Adler began at the university in 1831; Kierkegaard, in 1830. Adler took his examinations in 1836; Kierkegaard, in 1833. Adler finished his degree in 1840; Kierkegaard, in 1841. At the University of Copenhagen Adler’s dissertation was only the second to be allowed to be submitted in Danish, Kierkegaard’s the third.30 In his journals from around 1842 Kierkegaard refers to Adler’s Hegelian work The Isolated Subjectivity in its Most Important Forms31 and later from 1844 to Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic.32 The first concrete evidence of Kierkegaard’s interest in Adler is a letter from Kierkegaard to his brother Peter Christian dated June 29, 1843. There Kierkegaard mentions Adler who had just come to Copenhagen. He writes: You know that there is in town a Magister Adler, who became a pastor on Bornholm, a zealous Hegelian. He has come over here to publish some sermons in which he will probably advocate a movement in the direction 24 25 26

27 28

29 30 32

Pap. VIII-2 B 26. A, Supplement, p. 224; Pap. VIII-2, B 24. A, Supplement, p. 223; Pap. VIII-2, B 21. H. P. Barfod (ed.), Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer 1844–46, Copenhagen 1872, pp. 451–704. See also Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer 1847, Copenhagen 1877, pp. 229–241. PV, p. 6fn.; SV1, vol. 13, p. 494fn. PV, Supplement, pp. 193–194; Pap. X-1 A 351, pp. 228–230. see also JP, vol. 6, 6447; Pap. X-1 A 551. Both Koch and Hohlenberg argue for the centrality of The Book on Adler in Kierkegaard’s corpus. Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse, op. cit., p. 11. Johannes Hohlenberg, Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen 1940, pp. 218ff. A fellow classmate, F. L. Liebenberg, recalls having both Kierkegaard and Adler as classmates. F. L. Liebenberg, Nogle Optegnelser om mit Levned, Copenhagen 1894, p. 11. 31 JP, vol. 5, 5549; Pap. III B 130. LD, XV; B & A I, pp.17–18. A, Supplement, pp. 213–214; Pap. V B 49.5.


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of orthodoxy. He has a good head on him and has considerable experience in many casibus of life, but at the moment he is a little overwrought. Nevertheless it is always possible that this is a phenomenon worth paying attention to.33

The tone of this letter does not suggest that there was any kind of amicable relation as a result of their time as schoolboys or university students. One can glean from this letter Kierkegaard’s respect for Adler’s intellect and ability, which is qualified only by the comment that “at the moment he is a little overwrought.” Later in the same year (i.e., the year following the revelation), Adler visited Kierkegaard.34 In his recollections, Brøchner recounts the event as it was conveyed to him by Kierkegaard: Kierkegaard told me about a couple of strange incidents concerning Magister Adler at the time when Adler’s mental disturbances began. One day Adler came to Kierkegaard with a work he had published and talked to him for a long time about both of their activities as religious writers. Adler made it clear to Kierkegaard that he viewed him [Kierkegaard] as a sort of John the Baptist in relation to himself, who, since he had received the direct revelation, was the genuine Messiah. I still remember the smile with which Kierkegaard told me that he replied to Adler that he was completely satisfied with the position that Adler assigned to him: he found it a very respectable function to be a John the Baptist and had no aspirations to be a Messiah. During this same visit, Adler read aloud a large portion of his work to Kierkegaard; some of it he read in his ordinary voice, the rest in a strange whisper. Kierkegaard permitted himself to remark that he could not find any new revelation in Adler’s work, to which Adler replied: “Then I will come to you again this evening and read all of it to you in this voice (the whisper), and then you shall see, it will become clear to you.” When he told me the story, Kierkegaard was much amused by this conviction of Adler’s that the variation in his voice could give the writings greater significance. In my first year as a student I once heard a remark by Adler concerning Kierkegaard. He spoke of Kierkegaard’s brilliant conversation, but advanced the opinion that Kierkegaard sometimes prepared for his conversations.35

From this story one can derive a number of things. First, the account of Adler’s assessment of Kierkegaard in the last two sentences confirms the suspicion that the two were familiar with each other at least at a distance during their time as students. But they do not seem to have 33 34 35

LD, 83; B&A I, p. 122. Koch puts the date of this visit at either June or July 1843 or December 1843. Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse, op. cit., p. 200. Hans Brøchner, “Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard,” Det Nittende Aarhundrede, Maanedsskrift for Literatur og Kritik, vol. 5, March 1877, § 20. English translation cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard. A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1996, pp. 234–235.


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had any sort of personal relation given the tone of the letter cited previously, in which Adler is portrayed virtually as a stranger. Second, the visit that Brøchner recounts is important since it is the first clear evidence of a direct and more profound contact between the two men. Moreover, its tone gives some insight into Adler’s disposition with respect to Kierkegaard and the latter’s reaction. The fact that Adler sees in Kierkegaard a John the Baptist who is to prepare the way for himself as a new Messiah indicates that Adler perceives Kierkegaard as an intellectual ally. That he so openly tells Kierkegaard this, even though they do not seem to have had any close personal relationship previously, is testimony to Adler’s confidence and trust in him. Adler’s disposition toward Kierkegaard seems to confirm, as contemporary and later authors have noted,36 that the two men had many things in common. With respect to Kierkegaard’s disposition towards Adler, it is clear that he is skeptical but yet still indulgent. He is glib but not openly critical of the association of himself with John the Baptist and Adler with the Messiah. Although he can have a laugh with Brøchner at Adler’s expense, he refrains from mocking him directly. The fact that Kierkegaard never published the text that he took great care to rework and correct suggests that he felt a sense of pity for Adler despite the latter’s excesses. He writes in his journals: “the trouble is that I am sorry for A[dler], and I am almost afraid that [the book] will have too strong an effect on him.”37 These facts also seem to attest to an affinity between the two men. Finally, Brøchner’s casual allusion to Adler’s “mental disturbances” suggests that Adler’s “revelation” was generally regarded as a manifestation of psychological instability. This is somewhat surprising given the amount of effort Kierkegaard put into working through the matter of Adler’s purported revelation. The ravings of a madman would presumably not merit this degree of reflection. In the work itself Kierkegaard uses an argument e concessis. In other words, for the sake of argument he concedes the truth of the revelation itself and concentrates on Adler’s actions and assertions after the event. He tries to show how these actions are not consistent with those of one who has actually had a revelation. The true apostle chosen by God to 36

37

It has been argued that Kierkegaard was so interested in Adler precisely because he saw so much of himself in him. Both criticized the established church, and both felt that they had some special calling. These similarities were already noted by contemporaries such as Hans Friedrich Helweg, “En Parallel mellem to Profeter,” Dansk Kirketidende, vol. 10, no. 40, September 30, 1855, pp. 641–651. See also his “Hegelianismen i Danmark,” Dansk Kirketidende, vol. 10, no. 51, December 16, 1855, pp. 843–852. A recent work tries to argue that both Adler and Kierkegaard suffered from epilepsy, which resulted in, among other things, their prolific writings: Leif Bork Hansen, Søren Kierkegaards Hemmelighed og Eksistensdialektik, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag 1994. A, Supplement, p. 224; SKS, vol. 20, p. 196, NB2:138. See also JP, vol. 5, 6049; SKS, vol. 20, p. 201, NB2:150.


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deliver His message is not a glorified position; instead, like Christ, he is subject to humiliation and mockery by his contemporaries. The selfsatisfaction displayed by Adler in his comments about his revelation are in Kierkegaard’s view fundamentally inconsistent with the humility of a true apostle.

ii. christianity as a sublated concept In the first short section of Chapter 4, entitled “Psychological Exposition,”38 Kierkegaard begins his treatment of Adler’s relation to Hegelian philosophy. As the title indicates, he gives a psychological and biographical analysis of Adler’s situation leading up to the period of the revelation. The goal of this analysis, he says, is to highlight the fundamental “contradiction and self-contradiction”39 in Adler’s situation. The contradiction Kierkegaard refers to is that of confounding a Hegelian view of Christianity with Christian faith. Kierkegaard goes back and traces Adler’s education and contact with Hegelianism at the university. His discussion here illuminates a number of general criticisms in the Postscript by crystalizing them in the specific person of Adler. My aim in this section is to determine whether or not these specific criticisms of Adler can be seen as criticisms of Hegel’s philosophy generally. It is thus important to separate what is genuinely philosophical from what is merely ad hominem or directed at the person of Adler. The most important issue that arises in this context is Hegel’s speculative understanding of Christianity as a development of the Concept.40 Kierkegaard’s criticism is that Adler in his role as a priest needs a more substantial conception of Christianity than this. I wish to argue that, with respect to Hegel, Kierkegaard’s criticism is that the abstract philosophical account of Christianity cannot claim to be the final truth. It must recognize the subjective faith of the individual as something higher. The reason for this criticism lies in the ambiguity of the status of Hegel’s analysis of Christianity and in the interpretation of it by Adler and others as being the final word, at the expense of personal faith. Kierkegaard’s psychological account proceeds chronologically, and thus he begins with Adler as a young theological candidate. Without saying so directly, Kierkegaard implies that Adler had not made a conscious decision about his personal relation to Christianity by this time. Kierkegaard writes, “right up to this moment he has not come, either as a child or as a youth or as a theological student, into any decisive contact with Christianity, even less with the earnest question of whether 38 39

A, pp. 90–98; Pap. VII-2 B 235, pp. 176–185. 40 See also Chapter 11, Section IV above. A, p. 98; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p.184.


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he himself is a Christian.”41 Despite his theological training and his Christian culture, Adler has not raised the personal and existential question of his own relation to Christianity but is simply a Christian as a matter of course. This kind of complacent Christianity exemplifies what Kierkegaard sees as symptomatic of the age and therefore criticizes repeatedly. It was during his time as a student that Adler came into contact with Hegelian philosophy. Kierkegaard thus moves to Adler’s exposure to Hegelian philosophy and its possible influence on his relation to Christianity. Here Kierkegaard is clearly satirical in his portrayal of the inflated claims made by the followers of Hegel: Adler “now really begins to study, and of course the study of Hegelian philosophy, a philosophy that, supported by omnipotent opinion, presumably stands at the peak of all scholarliness, outside of which there is no salvation, nothing but darkness and obtuseness.”42 Here it is not the content of any specific Hegelian doctrine that is criticized but merely the fact that it is the dominant intellectual trend of the day and that it has many overenthusiastic followers. Given the fact that Adler had no fixed relation to Christianity until this time, he was, according to Kierkegaard, particularly vulnerable to the influence of Hegel’s philosophy. Had he already made a conscious decision about his relation to Christianity, he would have been able to put Hegel’s philosophy of religion into its proper perspective and avoid confusing it with religious faith. Kierkegaard writes: [Adler] does not possess one single qualification that could make him inwardly aware that this philosophy completely confuses Christianity; there is no deeper religious life in him that might hold him back from entering into this philosophy. In a religious sense, he lacks the full marching equipment of orthodoxy and of a deeper religious impression; he is lightly armed, and thus it is too natural and too easy for him to understand carelessly what Hegel has carelessly taught, that his philosophy was the highest development of Christianity.43

Here the discussion seems to concern partly Hegel and partly Adler. With respect to the former, there is, according to Kierkegaard, something misleading in the conception of Christianity in the philosophy of religion presented by Hegel. This is a criticism that was explored in full detail in the Postscript.44 According to Hegel, Christianity, understood

41 42 43 44

A, p. 93; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 179. Translation slightly modified. A, p. 93; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 179. Translation slightly modified. A, pp. 93–94; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 179. CUP1, pp. 199–231; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 182–211.


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at the conceptual level, is not the highest truth but rather is surpassed by philosophical knowing. Hegel’s philosophy thus reduces Christianity to something finite or to an inadequate expression of the Concept. According to Kierkegaard, this mistakenly puts Christianity on a par with finite scientific knowledge and thus confuses the objective knowledge of science with the subjective faith of Christianity. For Kierkegaard, while Christianity can be examined in this way, its true essence has nothing to do with objective knowledge of this kind. As has been seen in the analysis of this argument in the Postscript,45 the stated goal of Hegel’s philosophy of religion is to give a scientific account of the Concept in its religious forms. There is thus no pretension to explain the inward, subjective faith of the individual that Kierkegaard is interested in. The criticism of Adler is that he fails to keep the scientific account of Christianity separate from inward faith and religiosity. During his study of Hegel’s philosophy, he fails to see that it is not concerned with the inward faith of the individual; moreover, he never thinks to ask about his own inward faith and his own personal relation to Christianity. The result is a confusion of the categories of subject and object, of scientific knowledge and faith. Kierkegaard underscores that even after Adler’s graduation from the university, he was not moved to reflection about his relation to Christianity or its uneasy conjunction with Hegelianism.46 The problem is not in Adler’s Hegelianism per se, but in his understanding of it as the final word about Christianity. Adler is what Kierkegaard portrays in the Postscript as absent-minded since he has forgotten his own existential relation to Christianity.47 He does not allow the question of his own personal eternal happiness to arise since he views Christianity solely from the objective perspective of speculative philosophy. Kierkegaard then moves on to the period of Adler’s appointment as priest. He indicates that there would be nothing problematic had Adler gone on to become a professor of philosophy. With such a position, he would have been at liberty to expound the Hegelian doctrine, and his own personal relation to Christianity would presumably have been the only casualty. But there is a real and, for Kierkegaard, obvious contradiction in Adler’s becoming a priest: “Magister Adler then seeks an appointment, not as professor of philosophy or of Hegelian philosophy, for which he also had qualified himself, but as pastor, as a teacher of the Christian religion, for which he also had qualified himself – through the study of Hegelian philosophy.”48 Kierkegaard ironically underscores the contradiction 45 46

47

Explored above in Chapter 11, Section IV. A, p. 95; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 181: “But his life-development was such that it was quite natural that he reached his high point in becoming a Hegelian, in exactly the same sense as Hegelian philosophy was humankind’s highest development.” 48 A, p. 95; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 181. CUP1, pp. 54–55; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 58–59.


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involved here.49 He continues: On the strength of his rather exceptional acquaintance with Hegelian philosophy, he presumably even hopes to become an unusually competent pastor. This is not at all immodest, by no means. If it is true that Hegelian philosophy is the highest development of Christianity, then it is eo ipso an advantage for the pastor to know this philosophy intimately. – Not, then, in the way a man ordinarily, at least sometimes, begins his activity as a pastor, after rejuvenating himself, in the earnestness of making up his mind, through his childhood’s impression of the essentially Christian in harmony with a strict Christian upbringing, with the Bible in hand; no, on the strength of a graduate degree, with Hegel’s eighteen elegantly bound volumes, and hoping that there will be abundant leisure for further studies of and for new books about Hegel – Magister Adler becomes a pastor.50

Hegel’s philosophy of religion might give an interesting and insightful account of Christianity when seen philosophically, but it is silent about the faith of the individual. It thus cannot be seen as a proper preparation for the priesthood, an office that is concerned specifically with fostering the faith of the congregation. Thus, Adler is Kierkegaard’s symbol for the modern confusion about faith since he managed to obtain an appointment as a priest, with his only preparation being a study of Hegel’s philosophy. Such a study might be useful for an academic understanding of Christianity that a philosopher aims at, but it has nothing to do with the true nature of Christian belief, which is inward and subjective. This is, for Kierkegaard, a negative commentary both on the Church, which would appoint a priest on such a basis while wholly overlooking the inward subjective religiosity of the candidate, and on Adler himself who lacks this religiosity. It will be noted that this is not a criticism of Hegel’s philosophy per se since Kierkegaard indicates that there would be no problem had Adler gone on to become a professor of philosophy. The problem lies in the confusion of philosophy with faith. What is new here is Kierkegaard’s characterization of the true nature of Christianity as naive and unsophisticated. There is a contrast between, on the one hand, personal reflection and “childhood’s impressions” of Christianity, both of which are subjective, and, on the other hand, a study of Hegel’s philosophy, which is objective. Only the former is required for one to become a Christian or a priest. The latter may be fine and good on its own but is at best irrelevant for Christian faith. The contradiction Adler embodies becomes more acute since his appointment is in a rural and provincial village on the island of Bornholm. The faith 49

50

Kierkegaard uses the dash to the same effect later: “He [sc. Adler] does not become a pastor in the capital city – it is not inconceivable that someone could succeed in slipping through, indeed in going proudly through life as a Christian pastor – in Hegelian categories.” A, p. 96; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 183. A, p. 95; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 181.


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of the uneducated parishioners on Bornholm is uncorrupted by the temptations of the learned. It is pristine Christianity which confronts Adler in his congregation. Kierkegaard describes this simple faith as follows: Magister Adler becomes a rural pastor, and thus is brought essentially into contact and into a responsible relation with simple, ordinary people who, lacking acquaintance with Hegel, as the case may still be out in the country, have an earnest even though meager Christian education, so that they, ignorant of every volatilization, believe simply in the essentially Christian and have it with them as something present.51

Kierkegaard constantly emphasizes the importance of the dialectical relation to Christianity, which never reaches a point of rest as scientific knowledge does. Faith is always in motion since it is a part of the present and the believer is always contemporaneous with Christ. Here Kierkegaard indicates that this is the relation of the uneducated to Christianity: “Simple, believing people do not associate with the essentially Christian in such a way that they have it historically at a distance of eighteen hundred years, and even less do they have it imaginatively at a mythical distance.”52 Adler is portrayed as isolated among his congregation since he has been corrupted by the modern intellectual trends of which his brethren know nothing. Thus, Adler and his congregation have wholly different conceptions of faith and Christianity. Kierkegaard tries to demonstrate the contradictions that must have been evident to Adler in the execution of his duties: “To stand at the pulpit (thus before God) and proclaim what one in accordance with one’s education is presumably far beyond; to sit at a deathbed and comfort a dying man with what one is oneself far beyond.”53 If from a philosophical perspective one regards Christianity only as an inadequate expression of the Concept that must be surpassed, then such a conception would make it impossible for one to be a priest. The plausibility of this view as a part of a larger philosophical position is open for debate, but it can only be perceived as a contradiction by a priest in the execution of his official duties. This is the contradiction that Adler embodies for Kierkegaard. According to Kierkegaard, this contradiction reached a boiling point, and Adler had to choose between Christianity and Hegelianism. This was precisely what happened with the revelation, which was a sign that Adler chose Christianity and rejected Hegel or at least purported to do so. Kierkegaard points out the irony here in the fact that Adler only became aware of his personal relation to belief and thus only became a true Christian “one year after he, happy and fortunate, had been appointed as a Christian 51 53

52 A, p. 96; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 182. A, p. 96; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 182. A, pp. 97–98; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 184. Translation slightly modified.


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pastor.”54 Kierkegaard takes this absurdity to be characteristic of the modern misunderstanding of Christianity. He thinks that Hegel’s philosophy, as understood and expounded by its devotees, is in part responsible for this misunderstanding. In this section it seems that Kierkegaard’s criticism is more of Adler than of Hegel’s philosophy generally. Adler is confused since he tries to understand Hegel’s philosophy of religion as the final word about Christianity. He thus forgets that this is an objective, scientific account that offers no insight into the inward religious life of the individual. Thus, Adler, though a student of theology and later a priest, forgets his personal relation to Christianity. He thus becomes absent-minded. The confusion is not inherent in Hegel’s philosophy but in Adler’s appropriation of it. There is nothing in Hegel’s philosophy that necessarily leads one to the confusion of the objective and the subjective sides of Christianity. Indeed, Kierkegaard grants that one can still be a Hegelian and have a proper relation to Christianity provided that one keep the two spheres clearly separated. Moreover, not all admirers of Hegel go to the extremes of Adler. The problem for Kierkegaard is with followers of Hegel such as Adler and Martensen, who take the Hegelian understanding of Christianity to be the absolute understanding or the final word and by so doing deny all other relations to Christian faith. This blinds them to the subjective relation of the individual to Christianity about which Hegel’s scientific philosophy is silent. Kierkegaard’s criticism here seems thus to be more of these forms of Hegelianism and the mistakes and misunderstandings resulting from them than of any inherent contradiction in Hegel’s philosophy itself.

iii. adler’s attempt to explain his revelation In the next section, “The Crisis in Magister Adler’s Life,”55 Kierkegaard examines the purported change in Adler that the revelation effected. The crisis referred to in the title is Adler’s radical break from his former association with Hegelian philosophy. Kierkegaard’s argument is that, despite the purported break manifested by the outward gesture of burning his Hegelian manuscripts, Adler still remained profoundly Hegelian. The gesture of breaking with Hegel by destroying the manuscripts is, according to Kierkegaard, only self-deception. The purportedly Hegelian aspect of Adler’s behavior is his attempt to explain his revelation, just as Hegel’s speculative philosophy attempts to explain the true Christian revelation by means of a conceptual analysis. In this section I wish to argue first that the criticism is aimed primarily at Adler’s confusion of the Hegelian objective explanation with his own private, subjective one and second 54 55

A, p. 98; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 184. Translation slightly modified. A, pp. 98–103; Pap. VII-2 B 235, pp. 185–189.


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that Kierkegaard has no quarrel per se with a conceptual analysis of the Christian revelation provided that it is made clear that such an analysis has nothing to do with faith. Kierkegaard begins by noting that it appears from Adler’s description of the event in the Preface to his Sermons that a radical break has taken place. In his description of the change in Adler, he alludes to aspects of Hegel’s philosophy that he has discussed elsewhere. Kierkegaard writes: The main point is . . . that Magister Adler by a qualitative leap was transported from the medium of philosophy, and specifically from the fantastic medium of the Hegelian philosophy (pure thought and pure being), into the sphere of religious inwardness. The main point is that by a qualitative leap from the objectivity of abstract thinking Magister Adler came to himself.56

Kierkegaard recalls here a criticism from the Postscript,57 where he argued that the principle of the unity of thought and being is either a mere tautology if being is understood abstractly or a contradiction if it is understood concretely or existentially. The point with respect to Adler is that theretofore he, as a student of theology and as a newly appointed priest, had never been concerned about his own existential relation to Christianity. The revelation signals for the first time in Adler’s life a concern for his own inwardness and religiosity: “But in contrast to the objectivity and disinterestedness of abstract thinking, he may be said to have come to himself insofar as he has come to be concerned about himself. This is what is new, what his whole life development has been ignorant of, this religious impression of himself in self-concern.”58 Here Kierkegaard claims that before this period Adler had not raised the question of his own personal relation to Christianity and faith. Kierkegaard then analyzes the meaning of the gesture of Adler’s burning his Hegelian manuscripts. This act, when taken at face value, seems clearly to indicate an absolute and clean break with Hegel’s philosophy. But Kierkegaard notes that often such overt outward gestures do not necessarily correspond to a change in inward disposition. He refers implicitly to the principle of the unity of the inner and the outer:59 Not infrequently there is an alarming misrelation between the inner decision (the strength of the resolution, deliverance, healing) and its outer manifestations. If one desires to draw correct conclusions, one can hardly conclude directly from the latter to the former; one can rather conclude inversely that the greater the need for a striking outward manifestation of the decision, the less the inner certitude.60 56 57 58 59

A, p. 99; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 185. CUP1, pp. 189–190; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 173–174. Examined in Chapter 11, Section VIII. A, p. 100; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 186. 60 A, p. 100; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p.186. See Chapter 7, Section III.


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Kierkegaard points out many cases of dissemblance in which the outer signs do not correspond to the inner person. According to his view, a person with the correct self-relation, in order to avoid conveying a false impression, would avoid giving outward signs of an inner change until he was certain of that change. Moreover, such a person would not give outward signs in order to ensure himself of the metamorphosis in his inward state. The individual must first test the strength of his own resolve in his inwardness before presenting it to others as a changed state of affairs. While Adler’s gesture of burning his Hegelian manuscripts seems at face value to indicate a break, it can also indicate insecurity and indecision since it implies that the Hegelian manuscripts would still represent a temptation if they remained accessible. Kierkegaard writes: Therefore, instead of burning the manuscripts, Magister Adler perhaps would have been wiser and more circumspect to continue for a period to devote a specific hour or two every day to being occupied with Hegel in order to satisfy himself that he actually was changed, inasmuch as the physical and the moral can so easily be confused: abandoning Hegel with the burning of his Hegelian manuscripts.61

The physical and symbolic act of burning the manuscripts is by no means synonymous with making an inward break with Hegelianism; on the contrary, it may be indicative of a continued dependence on Hegel’s thought. Kierkegaard then tries to show that despite this outward act, Adler remained a Hegelian. His argument is that Adler’s statements about his revelation, instead of simply leaving the matter a mystery, undertake to explain it. This attempt at explanation is, for Kierkegaard, characteristic of Hegelian philosophy: Lyrically, subjectively, Magister Adler is fully and firmly convinced that he once and for all has eternally broken with Hegelian philosophy – by burning the manuscripts – that by a revelation he is eternally rescued from the prolixities of Hegelian philosophy. But, see, when he is then induced to explain what he understands by this revelation and how he understands himself in its having happened to him, he regresses to the old Hegelian volatilizations.62

Again there is here a discussion both of Hegel’s philosophy of religion and of the person of Adler. With respect to the former, the criticism seems to be that speculative philosophy of religion attempts to explain what defies explanation, i.e., religious faith. Kierkegaard writes: “When we take away the eighteen hundred years, the hiding place, and place Hegelian philosophy in the situation of contemporaneity, its operation clearly shows that it deceitfully explains away a revelation instead of openly 61

A, p. 102; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 188.

62

A, p. 102; Pap. VII-2 B 235, pp. 188–189.


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denying it.”63 This recalls the criticism from the Fragments and the Postscript 64 that Hegel’s philosophy of religion destroys Christianity by explaining it as a manifestation of the Concept. For Kierkegaard, the essence of Christianity is a mystery or a paradox (i.e., the divine becoming human), which cannot be explained. Not only is Adler’s approach wrong in mistaking faith and mystery for something to be explained, but it is also dishonest. Kierkegaard claims that Hegel’s philosophy is deceptive in that, instead of denying the truth of Christianity openly and professing a straightforward atheism, it claims that its speculative understanding is the truth of Christianity. It tries to explain it and thus makes Christianity something that it is not (i.e., the object of science). It would be more honest to deny the truth of Christianity directly than to treat it in this way, which in fact turns it into something different. This explains Kierkegaard’s quite different relation to right and left Hegelians. While he is consistently negative towards right Hegelian thinkers, most obviously Martensen, he is quite ambivalent and even positive toward left Hegelians, such as Feuerbach. He seems to regard the left Hegelians with some respect since they regard Hegel’s philosophy as essentially secular and go on to work out the logical conclusions of this. There is thus no pretension of piety or religious faith. By contrast, the right Hegelians see in Hegel’s philosophy a support for Christianity. They claim that this philosophy helps one to a true understanding of Christian doctrine. This is what Kierkegaard finds particularly objectionable. He sees in right Hegelianism a dangerous secularism parading under the guise of piety. In his eyes a straightforward atheism is preferable. The criticism is, however, also of Adler. According to Kierkegaard, Adler displays an utter confusion of categories by, on the one hand, claiming to have a revelation and then, on the other hand, trying to explain it. The result is that Adler appears comical: “Only the extraordinary merit of the comic is reserved for Magister Adler: to be in every way the man for everything, the man with the revelation and the man with the explanation.”65 In his attempts to explain his revelation, Adler proves that he in fact is not aware of what a revelation actually is. He does not understand that it is a mystery that cannot be explained. This confusion in Adler, according to Kierkegaard, “indirectly – satirically makes manifest the contradiction in Hegelian philosophy.”66 Adler represents an individual in which a general type of error is manifested. The criticism of Adler’s attempt to explain his revelation comes up again in the penultimate section of Chapter 4. The section, “The

63 64 65

A, p. 103; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 189. Treated respectively in Chapter 8, Section I; Chapter 11, Section IV. 66 A, p. 103; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 189. A, p. 103; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 189.


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Fundamental Defect in Adler That Conditions the Misrelation,”67 begins with a criticism of the Hegelian notion of a revelation. Adler’s flurry of literary productivity displays, for Kierkegaard, a confusion typical of this Hegelian notion. Kierkegaard takes this literary production as an attempt at explanation, which he sees as contrary to the nature of a revelation. He tries to demonstrate that there is an incongruity between the deep emotion of the inner awakening of Adler and his portrayals and explanations of it, which are expressed in a way that, for Kierkegaard, runs counter to Christianity. Kierkegaard thus analyzes new evidence for the argument he gave in the previous section that Adler attempts to explain his revelation in a fashion characteristic of Hegelian philosophy. As was seen earlier in the discussion of Hegel’s philosophy of religion,68 Hegel understands the revelation of Christ in the world as a specific aspect of the development of the Concept (i.e., as particularity). It is thus a part of an abstract categorial movement that runs through the forms of universality, particularity, and individuality. A categorial movement is the object of scientific investigation, but, for Kierkegaard, the meaning of the revelation of Christ for us is a matter of faith and thus subjective. Adler commits the error of portraying what should be an inward, subjective revelation as something objective. For Kierkegaard, it would have been better if Hegel’s philosophy simply denied the revelation flatly instead of leaving the matter open. As has been discussed previously, the confusion is not on Hegel’s side since his explicit goal is to give a philosophical account of religion, which means comprehending specific religious phenomena in terms of abstract categories. Hegel’s account is of Christianity as a conceptual structure, and he does not claim that this constitutes one’s individual faith. It is merely a part of a scientific account of religion. Given that it is a part of a scholarly account and is conceived as a form of knowing, Christianity occupies a specific finite place in that account and will have a specific relation vis-à-vis other forms of knowing (e.g., the natural sciences or philosophy). But this is not to say that a conceptual account is the only possible one, but rather if one is interested in a conceptual account (as Hegel is), then Christianity will be understood in the way it is presented there. As previously, the crucial part of the criticism here is that Kierkegaard attributes Adler’s confusion to the fact that he was a Hegelian. Like other Hegelians, Adler confuses the objective with the subjective: “But, Magister Adler, unfortunately enough, is a Hegelian. There can now be no hope that something would rescue him from the mistake, since all his scholarliness must confirm him precisely in the idea that he altogether correctly, philosophically accurately, characterizes his subjective 67 68

A, pp. 111–132; Pap. VII-2 B 235, pp. 198–217. Especially Chapter 11, Section IV.


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change with having had a revelation.”69 It is one of Kierkegaard’s best known theses that Christianity is something inward and subjective. As in the Postscript,70 he here uses the analogy of love. Like love, faith is an inward relation, which in the outward sphere is invisible. Adler confuses these terms in his account of his revelation: “he confuses the subjective with the objective, his altered subjective state with an external event, the dawning of a light upon him with the coming into existence of something new outside him, the falling of the veil from his eyes with his having had a revelation.”71 This is proof for Kierkegaard that Adler does not fully understand the Christian concept of a revelation and that in fact he still lacks a true sense of Christian inwardness. According to Kierkegaard, what would have been in keeping with the concept of a revelation is a period of quiet reflection concerning the nature and meaning of the revelation. One would need time to digest the meaning of the revelation and to consider its implications for the various aspects of one’s life. But instead of withdrawing into reflection, Adler engaged in a flurry of literary activity. This activity is an outward, even ostentatious sign, not in keeping with the inward event of a revelation. Moreover, it becomes a kind of diversion and only adds to Adler’s self-deception. The irony is that with his revelation Adler claims to have made a break with Hegelian philosophy. But when he describes his revelation, he uses Hegelian terms, an act which, for Kierkegaard, displays the same confusion of categories.72 As has been indicated before, there is, by Kierkegaard’s own admission, no necessary contradiction between being a true Christian and offering a scientific account of Christianity as Hegel wants to do.73 The key is to keep separate the two spheres (i.e., religious faith and objective knowing). According to Kierkegaard, Adler is the victim of precisely this confusion and is thus comical. He has a revelation, which should be a mystery and something inward, but yet he explains it in a fashion similar to an objective treatment. Adler thus displays an utter confusion of religious and secular categories. In the final analysis, the criticism here seems once again to be more of Adler than of Hegel.

69

70 72

73

A, p. 119; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 206. See also: “As a pastor he presumably did not have opportunity to pursue a course of study, since he was, after all, fully occupied with Hegel – and as a Hegelian he was initiated, with full devotion and conviction initiated into the total confusion of the essentially Christian.” A, p. 116; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 203. 71 A, p. 117; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 204. CUP1, p. 54; SKS, vol. 7, p. 58. A, p. 119; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 206: “By a confusion of the subjective and the objective, Magister Adler is ensnared in the opinion that he has had a revelation; by having had a revelation, he presumably thinks that he has broken entirely with Hegelian philosophy, which cannot accommodate the qualitative concept of a revelation.” CUP2, Supplement, pp. 156–157; Pap. X-6 B 116, p. 150.


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iv. adler and the absence of an ethics in hegel In the section from Chapter 4 entitled “The Fundamental Defect in Adler That Conditions the Misrelation,”74 Kierkegaard brings up a handful of arguments against Hegelian philosophy as embodied by Adler, one of which has just been explored. All of these arguments have been seen in one form or another in his earlier works. The analysis focuses primarily on Adler’s remarkable literary production immediately following the revelation. One familiar criticism that comes up here is the claim that Hegel’s philosophy has no ethics. This criticism was mentioned in Fear and Trembling, Stages on Life’s Way, and the Postscript and has been treated previously.75 Thus, the charge is not new, but it is explored in more detail here than in the other works. The claim is that Hegel’s philosophy is concerned only with the past and forgets the ethical existence of the individual. This, according to Kierkegaard, is what Adler does in his obsession with interpreting his revelation. Kierkegaard returns to the criticism that was originally issued in Either/Or,76 i.e., that, given that Hegel’s philosophy is concerned only with the past, it is silent about the future, which is the realm of ethics. He writes: “Hegelian philosophy has no ethics; therefore it has never occupied itself with the future, which is essentially the element or medium of ethics. Hegelian philosophy looks at the past, at the six thousand years of world history, and now is busy with showing each individual development to be an element in the world-historical process.”77 Although there is nothing in itself wrong with this philosophy in its understanding of the past, it neglects the ethical dimension of the individual and one’s relation to the future. Thus, one cannot use Hegel’s philosophy to try to understand oneself: “From this it follows quite simply that every living person who with the help of Hegelian philosophy wants to understand himself in his own personal life falls into the most foolish confusion.”78 Kierkegaard points out that since Hegel’s philosophy can only analyze something after it has taken place, its disciple “will be able to understand his life only when it is past, when it has been traversed, when he is dead – but now unfortunately, he is living.”79 Hegel’s philosophy, it is claimed, can offer no insight, ethical or otherwise, into the life of the living and developing individual but can only analyze a fixed event after the fact. According to Hegel, there is a certain sense in which the meaning of the life of the individual can only be truly comprehended after the fact. Later thinkers may understand the life of a particular individual better than 74 75 76 77 79

A, pp. 111–132; Pap. VII-2 B 235, pp. 198–217. Chapter 11, Section X. EO2, pp. 170–176; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 166–172. 78 A, p. 129; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 215. A, p. 129; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 215. A, p. 129; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 215.


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that individual himself by virtue of the perspective of hindsight afforded by their later historical situation. In a sense we understand the meaning and significance of the lives of, for example, Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar better than they themselves did since, from our historical perspective, we are in a better position to judge and evaluate the impact of their lives and works than they were. While this is true with regard to history in general, this is clearly not the ethical perspective Kierkegaard is concerned with. According to Kierkegaard, Adler’s flurry of literary productivity is a symptom of this Hegelian disposition. Adler unreflectively concentrates on his literary production and neglects reflection on his revelation with reference to the future. Kierkegaard sees this as a typical symptom of the ethical void of Hegelianism: Magister Adler, then, has no decisive ethical presuppositions; Hegelian philosophy has taught him to do without an ethics. Thus there is nothing to halt him and make him see his latest productivity, even if it was the most brilliant ever written, as a mistake that does not lead him closer to understanding himself in what is decisive for his life: to have had a revelation – but leads him away from it.80

In this literary productivity, Adler focuses on interpreting and explaining the past (i.e., his revelation) and by so doing neglects his relation to the future. Once again Kierkegaard associates this with Adler’s Hegelianism: “But a Hegelian must encourage him [sc. Adler] in his idea that his procedure is the right one, since he is now in the process of viewing this condition as an element in his life-development.”81 Just as Hegel analyzes specific world-historical peoples of the past as finite moments in the march of world history, so also Adler analyzes his revelation as a finite moment in the development of his own life. Just as Hegel in his philosophy of history is oriented towards the past, so also is Adler in his personal life. While this backwards orientation is appropriate for a philosophy of history, it is inappropriate for an individual in his life. Once again Kierkegaard concludes by indicating that Adler can be seen as embodying the confusions that result from a conflation of Hegelian philosophy with one’s own personal existence. While an orientation toward the past may be appropriate for a professor of philosophy, it does not fit someone, like Adler, who claims to have received a divine revelation: A quiet still-life professor is better able to skulk through life in an illusion of retrospection; he himself is number 0 and therefore presumably is busy only with the past and with understanding it as an element. But when an 80

A, p. 129; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 215.

81

A, p. 130; Pap. VII-2 B 235, pp. 216–217.


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awakened person, who has even burned his Hegelian manuscripts, nevertheless tries to view his lyrical muddled state as an element in his lifedevelopment, he certainly gets Hegelian philosophy into hot water, by which it is not served at all.82

Here Kierkegaard clearly distinguishes between “Hegelian philosophy” and Adler’s misappropriation of it. Hegel’s philosophy “is not served at all” by individuals like Adler who apply it to their individual lives. Adler demonstrates his continuing affiliation with Hegel’s philosophy by continuing to reflect on the past, which is inappropriate for a priest who is supposed to be concerned with the ethical and thus the future. By this confusion Adler is true neither to himself as a priest nor to Hegel’s philosophy. The discussion here in The Book on Adler of the charge of the absence of an ethics in Hegel seems to confirm the conclusion reached in the analysis of this charge in the Postscript, 83 namely that the criticism is more of the misapplication of Hegel’s philosophy by specific individuals than of Hegel’s philosophy itself. Hegel’s philosophy, which analyzes specific phenomena at the abstract conceptual level, requires that those phenomena already exist beforehand in order for them to be objects of scholarly investigation. Thus, Hegel’s philosophy of history, for example, is concerned with the analysis of previous historical epochs and not with the present or the future. For Kierkegaard, this may well be fine for a philosophy or a scholarly account of a specific phenomenon, and it will be noted that Kierkegaard offers no criticism of this on its own terms. The problem is that it has nothing to do with the ethical life of the individual, which must be oriented toward the future in “the expectancy of faith.”84 Thus, the danger is once again when the sphere of abstract thought and scholarship is confused with and mistakenly applied to the sphere of personal existence. This, it is claimed, is what Adler has done. The objection is not so much against Hegel or even a Hegelian conception of ethics but rather of the confusion of this conception with the ethics of the individual. At best one can argue that Hegel’s philosophy misleads irresponsible or absent-minded people like Adler to mistake their own ethical existence, but there is nothing necessary in Hegel’s philosophy itself that would lead one to this, and it seems rather to be the result of an irresponsible application of certain aspects of it to a sphere where Hegel never intended for it to apply. Adler is thus one person who stands for a general tendency, which seems to be an indirect result of Hegel’s philosophy. With respect to Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, The Book on Adler is not important for the originality, the variety or the depth of its criticisms. First, 82 83 84

A, pp. 131–132; Pap. VII-2 B 235, p. 218. Chapter 11, Section X. This is of course the title of the first of the Two Upbuilding Discourses from 1843. EUD, pp. 7–29; SKS, vol. 5, pp. 15–37.


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all of these criticisms have appeared in previous works. Here Kierkegaard reworks a number of these earlier criticisms and applies them specifically to Adler’s confusions. The argument in Either/Or that the speculative philosopher only analyzes the past and forgets about the future is repeated and interpreted in terms of Adler’s analysis of his revelation. The argument from Fear and Trembling, Stages on Life’s Way, and the Postscript that Hegel’s philosophy has no ethics is interpreted in terms of Adler being engrossed in a flurry of literary activity in which he forgets the ethical concerns in his own life. The argument from the Postscript that Hegel reduces the past to finite moments is also interpreted in terms of Adler’s understanding of the event of his revelation, which he reduces to a finite fact. With respect to variety, the Postscript far surpasses this work in the comprehensiveness of its criticisms. The Postscript explores a wider variety of criticisms while going into much greater detail than The Book on Adler. The importance of this work lies rather in the fact that it helps shed light on some of the criticisms that have been examined previously by presenting them from a different angle. Kierkegaard wrote the Postscript just before The Book on Adler; therefore, it comes as no surprise that many of the same criticisms occur here. However, there is a significant difference that here each of the criticisms is tied specifically to the person of Adler. All of the criticisms mentioned earlier have been interpreted as criticisms of Hegel. Here, however, it is clear that Kierkegaard does not direct them at Hegel’s philosophy itself; instead, these are criticisms of Adler and those followers of Hegel who mistakenly apply the Hegelian categories of thought to the realm of existence, religion, and ethics, where they are not applicable. While the Postscript was written in a code that concealed its targets, The Book on Adler is directed explicitly against a particular individual. Instead of purporting to argue directly against Hegel as the Postscript seemed to do, this work is critical of an individual who has become confused in part as a result of a Hegelian influence. The Book on Adler therefore supports the argument made in the previous chapter, namely that Kierkegaard’s criticism is not so much of Hegel as of his Danish followers. Here one can recognize, in the person of Adler, the concrete object of a number of criticisms in the Postscript whose targets were uncertain. It is clear that Adler is, for Kierkegaard, someone who embodies the general type of objective Christian sketched in the Postscript. He is Hegelian; he lacks inwardness and reflectivity; he confuses objective, scientific knowledge with Christian faith; he forgets his own personal relation to Christian faith. This suggests that Kierkegaard’s criticisms in previous works, which were purportedly of Hegel, are also directed against specific individuals in the context of Hegelianism in Denmark and are not based on a close reading of the primary texts, a suspicion supported by the absence of direct quotations and textual analysis in virtually every work after Either/Or.


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When reflecting on his pseudonymous works in the fall of 1846 during the time when he was working on The Book on Adler, Kierkegaard writes: “It was really ironic of me to live so much on the streets and avenues while I was writing the pseudonymous works. The irony consisted of belonging to a completely different sphere qua author and spending much time on the streets and in the markets. The irony was directed at the intellectual, affected Hegelian forces we have, or had, here at home.”85 Here he indicates that the way in which he lived his life during this period was intended as a criticism not of Hegel but of the “affected Hegelian forces” in Denmark. Thus, the criticisms offered in those pseudonymous works are presumably aimed at the same targets. These criticisms sketch general types of errors that Kierkegaard sees in the actions and writings of the Danish Hegelians with whom he had firsthand contact. This provides strong evidence for the general thesis of the present study, i.e., while the first period in Kierkegaard’s authorship is characterized by a close study of Hegel’s primary texts, the second period is concerned with his critique of various Hegelians and a general indifference towards Hegel himself. In my analysis, I have endeavored to demonstrate that most of the arguments in The Book on Adler do not really make sense as criticisms of Hegel’s philosophy per se. To be sure, Kierkegaard is more obsessed with the problem of a revelation in Adler than with the question of Adler’s Hegelianism, but he does bring the two into connection with each other by saying that Adler’s confusion is a result of his Hegelianism. He criticizes what he sees as the effects of Hegelianism on the unwary. In this sense Kierkegaard sounds like a moralist who criticizes Hegel’s philosophy as a vice or temptation leading away from Christianity. It is a part of what Kierkegaard perceives as the general moral depravity of the age. But this sort of moralizing is not a criticism of any specific aspect of Hegel’s philosophy but is a much more general assessment of the spiritual condition of the age as illustrated by certain confused individuals. The Book on Adler is the final work by Kierkegaard that seems to contain a polemic with Hegel. Thus, it is the final text in what I have designated here as the second period in the authorship. It should be noted that this period runs from 1843 to 1846 and thus only amounts to three years. In other words, it is considerably shorter than the first period, which began with Kierkegaard’s early articles (1834–36) and From the Papers of One Still Living (1838) and ended with Either/Or (1843). It is also considerably shorter than the third period (i.e., from 1847 to Kierkegaard’s death in 1855), a period characterized by the absence of Hegel as an issue. Thus, when Kierkegaard’s authorship is regarded as a whole, the period of the anti-Hegelian rhetoric is actually remarkably short-lived. However, since 85

JP, vol. 5, 5937; SKS, vol. 20, p. 39, NB:36.


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the years 1843–46 were so productive for him, one has the mistaken impression that this second period is much longer than it actually is, and one thus takes it to be paradigmatic for his entire authorship. However, as has been shown, this is by no means representative of his relation to Hegel generally. Everything prior to it is quite positive with respect to Hegel, and everything after it is silent on the subject. Moreover, by no means can all the texts from this second period be properly designated as “anti-Hegelian.” Even the apparently most anti-Hegelian texts from this brief three-year period do not in fact contain the criticisms of Hegel that they have generally been thought to contain. On the contrary, many of them display several points of positive influence. The purported criticisms of Hegel from this period turn out almost invariably to be aimed at other targets for reasons that do not have anything to do with Hegel’s philosophy. The difference between what I am calling the first and the second periods of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel can be best illustrated by means of a brief comparison of the role of Hegel in The Concept of Irony and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the two texts in Kierkegaard’s authorship that seem to contain the most extended discussion of Hegel’s philosophy. The Concept of Irony contains several long quotations from Hegel’s primary texts, which are accompanied by lengthy analyses. In this work the young Kierkegaard criticizes some details of Hegel’s analyses but on the whole is quite receptive. He uses a great deal of material from Hegel and states his agreement with him. By contrast, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript contains virtually no quotations from Hegel’s primary texts, even though Hegel’s name appears many times. As a result, the analyses contained in the work are not based on any specific discussion in Hegel’s works. There is no evidence that Kierkegaard ever returned to a study of Hegel’s primary texts in order to write the Postscript. This strongly supports the view, which I have tried to establish in the previous chapter, that the use of Hegel in the work has very little to do with anything in Hegel’s primary texts but instead Hegel’s name is associated with a position that Kierkegaard constructs and that he takes to be typical of specific mistaken tendencies of the age. While Hegel’s name appears frequently in both texts, his actual role is strikingly different. In The Concept of Irony, where there is actually a discussion of Hegel’s primary texts, his role is generally quite positive. Kierkegaard accepts some things and rejects others, but on the whole he has no objection to using Hegel’s analyses and discussions. By contrast, in the Postscript, where there is no account of the primary texts, the polemics comes to the fore. In this text as well as the others from the second period, Kierkegaard seems to feel the need to distance himself from the Hegelians. For this reason there is a polemical relation to Hegel, but in name only, since there is no concomitant criticism of his works; indeed,


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there is no treatment of his works as was the case in The Concept of Irony. These two texts can be seen in many ways as paradigmatic for the first and second periods in the overall development of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. While one can clearly discern two different kinds of relation to Hegel with these two periods, the perhaps somewhat surprising result is that in neither case is there the outright criticism of Hegel that the secondary literature has always taken there to be.

P1: IWV/IKJ P2: ILM/IKJ QC: ILM/IKJ T1: ILM CY232-14 0521828384 May 26, 2003 15:34

13 KIERKEGAARD’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF DESPAIR IN THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH

Kierkgaard’s short, yet influential, work The Sickness Unto Death appeared on July 30, 1849. The book was written a full year earlier in the spring of 1848.1 Kierkegaard kept the manuscript for several months along with a number of other works that he had recently completed before he decided to have it printed. One of the reasons for the delay was that he was contemplating publishing it as a part of a larger work that included parts of Practice in Christianity, The Point of View, Armed Neutrality, and Two Ethical-Religious Essays. This is clear from his journals, where he writes: “My intention was to publish all the completed manuscripts in one volume, all under my name – and then to make a clean break.”2 In the end, of course, the works were published individually, some signed and some pseudonymous. With regard to its content, The Sickness unto Death can be seen as a kind of Christian psychology or anthropology. Part One is divided into three sections labeled simply A, B, and C. In the first section Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Anti-Climacus analyzes the notion of despair, which, he argues, is the sickness unto death. In Section B, he makes the case that this sickness is more widespread than is generally recognized. In Section C, “The Forms of the Sickness,” he gives a taxonomy of the various forms of despair in accordance first with the categories of finitude/infinitude and possibility/necessity and then later with the levels of consciousness. In Part Two of the work, despair is given a specifically Christian interpretation as sin. Here Anti-Climacus sketches the notion of offense that is explored in more detail in Practice in Christianity. The issue of Hegel’s presence in The Sickness unto Death is a complicated one.3 On the one hand, his name is never mentioned in the text; 1 2 3

JP, vol. 6, 6457; Pap. X-1 A 583. JP, vol. 5, 6136; SKS, vol. 20, p. 365, NB4:160. JP, vol. 6, 6517; Pap. X-2 A 147. The Sickness unto Death is perhaps the most important work that Thulstrup fails to treat in his study of the Hegel-Kierkegaard relation. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980.

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phenomenology of despair in sickness unto death

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likewise, terms such as “Hegelianism” or “Hegelians,” which appear frequently in earlier works, are also absent. On the other hand, the word “speculation” does come up a couple of times where Anti-Climacus briefly criticizes the speculative approach to Christianity. In addition, he mentions “the philosophers,”4 a term that he tends to use to refer to the Danish Hegelians. What is perhaps most important is that the form of the argument of at least a part of the work strongly resembles Hegel’s dialectical method. This has been noted in the literature and is clearly the best-known issue concerning Hegel in the text. I wish to argue that while the content of Hegel’s philosophy is wholly absent from the discussions of The Sickness unto Death, his dialectical methodology is at least in part taken up here. This is significant since it marks a clear point of continuity in Kierkegaard’s position on, among other things, the issue of mediation. As in Either/Or,5 he has his pseudonym use a dialectical movement akin to that of Hegel. In this chapter, I will begin by examining what have been taken to be the direct criticisms of speculative theology and then will move on to an account of the dialectical methodology employed in the different parts of the work. In the first section, I will examine Anti-Climacus’ criticism of speculative thought’s overly abstract and idealized moral psychology that is presented in the section “The Socratic Definition of Sin.”6 In the second section, I will treat his criticism of speculative philosophy’s purportedly misguided attempt to comprehend sin, which according to AntiClimacus is based on paradox (i.e., something incomprehensible).7 I will then turn to an examination of speculative theology’s attempts to ground Christianity in arguments and reasons.8 In the fourth section, I examine Anti-Climacus’ criticism of speculative philosophy for neglecting the individual and placing emphasis on the generation or the crowd.9 This, he argues, is inconsistent with a number of basic Christian doctrines. After a discussion of these criticisms and these specific passages, I will turn to the issue of the dialectical form of The Sickness unto Death and its similarity to Hegelian methodology in particular in Section C of Part One, “The Forms of This Sickness” and in Section B of Part Two, “The Continuance of Sin.” What I would like to argue here is that Anti-Climacus in fact overtly avails himself of Hegel’s philosophical methodology. This indicates the mistaken nature of the standard interpretations, which regard Kierkegaard as straightforwardly critical of Hegel’s principle of Aufhebung and mediation.

4 6 7 8 9

5 Treated above in Chapter 4, Section V. SUD, p. 118; SV1, vol. 11, p. 228. SUD, pp. 87–96; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 199–207. SUD, pp. 96–100; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 207–211. SUD, pp. 100–104; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 211–214. SUD, pp. 117–124; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 226–234.


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It will be useful, before beginning the analysis of the text itself, to say a few words about the place of The Sickness unto Death in Kierkegaard’s relationship to Hegel generally. In the foregoing I have traced this relationship through two more or less distinct periods: the first period is characterized by an openly positive relation to Hegel; it runs from the early articles (1834–36) through Either/Or (1843) and might even be thought to include Repetition (1843). The second period begins with Fear and Trembling (1843) and ushers in a stage of overt anti-Hegel polemics aimed primarily at Martensen, Heiberg, and Adler. This period culminates with the Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) and can be said to include The Book on Adler (1846) as a kind of addendum. We have now to sketch the third and final period of Kierkegaard’s authorship with regard to his relation to Hegel. This third period runs from 1847 after The Book on Adler until Kierkegaard’s death in 1855. This period is characterized by its virtual absence of discussions, either positive or negative, of Hegel. For whatever reason, Kierkegaard seems to drop his ongoing dialogue with Hegelian philosophy after the end of his polemic with the Danish Hegelians. From 1847 onward there appear almost no references to Hegel either in the published works or in the journals and papers. Thus, this final period is in a sense a vacuum with regard to the theme of the present investigation. Kierkegaard seems simply not to have been interested in Hegel’s philosophy any longer. This renders it problematic to treat this third period in the same way as the first and the second were treated since there must be material to analyze before one can give an analysis. Given that there is no obvious material relevant for the discussion of Hegel’s philosophy, it seems prudent simply to say so and refrain from any analysis at all. For these reasons I have elected not to give any extended account of this third and final period of Kierkegaard’s authorship. The one exception to this policy is the text treated in the present chapter. The Sickness unto Death is unique in this late period since it uses Hegel’s dialectical methodology so overtly. It does not break with the other texts from this period since there is no anti-Hegel polemic as previously, but nonetheless it does stand alone with regard to its methodology, which closely follows a Hegelian pattern. For this reason and due to the fact that The Sickness unto Death has attracted attention in the secondary literature as a text influenced by Hegel,10 I have felt myself obliged to offer an extended 10

E.g., Stephen N. Dunning, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Inwardness. A Structural Analysis of the Theory of Stages, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1985, pp. 214– 233. Arne Grøn, “Kierkegaards Phänomenologie?” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1996, pp. 91–116. Daniel Berthold-Bond, “Lunar Musings? An Investigation of Hegel’s and Kierkegaard’s Portraits of Despair,” Religious Studies, 34, 1998, pp. 33–59. See also James Bogen, “Remarks on the Kierkegaard-Hegel Controversy,” Synthese, 13, 1961, pp. 372– 389. F.-E. Wilde, “Die Entwicklung des dialektischen Denkens bei Kierkegaard,” in


speculative thought’s mistaken moral psychology 553 treatment of it. But I recognize that there is a certain absurdity in allowing a single short text to represent an entire period in Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, especially since the treatment of the first two periods demonstrated how rich and complicated the relation was during those periods. I recognize this limitation, but I nonetheless think that it is the only reasonable solution to the intrinsic problem of giving any account of this third period, which is characterized not by some positive object of investigation in the form of references to Hegel but rather by its lack thereof. I thus allow this chapter to stand for the third period as a whole, while acknowledging that there may well be more that could be done with this final period of Kierkegaard’s authorship with regard to this issue. For my part, however, I have been unable to find other unambiguous traces of Hegel’s philosophy or criticisms of it in this late period. At the end of this chapter, I will return to some of these considerations about the meaning of this third period for the overall development of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel.

i. speculative thought’s mistaken moral psychology In Chapter 2 of Part Two, “The Socratic Definition of Sin,” Anti-Climacus begins his discussion of speculative theology.11 In this chapter, he discusses Socrates’ thesis that one never intentionally does what is wrong but instead that wrongful acts are the result of lack of knowledge of what is right. He contrasts this account with what he takes to be the true Christian view of sin, which focuses primarily on will and volition. AntiClimacus believes the salient features of the Christian doctrine can be made apparent by means of this contrast. It is in the context of this discussion that he brings up speculative thought. Specifically, he criticizes speculative thought for having an inadequate account of moral psychology since it operates with the mistaken assumption that anyone who knows the good and the truth will immediately act in accordance with it. AntiClimacus argues that this is an idealized view since humans often act irrationally or wrongly even when they know the good and thereby know that their actions are wrong. The references to speculative thought here have been taken as straightforward allusions to Hegel’s philosophy. In this section I will argue, on the contrary, that there is no reason to think that the criticism of speculative thought here is aimed at Hegel; by contrast, there are many indications in the text that the true target is Martensen.

11

Kierkegaard and Speculative Idealism, ed. by Niels Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 4), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel 1979, pp. 7–55. Joachim Ringleben, Die Krankheit zum Tode von Sören Kierkegaard. Erklärung und Kommentar, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1995, p. 34. SUD, pp. 87–96; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 199–207.


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That much of the discussion here and in the following pages seems to be concerned with Martensen is in evidence in the frequent repetition of the expression “going further,” which, as has been seen,12 Kierkegaard consistently associates with him. Indeed, this expression can be regarded as the Leitmotif of the section. For example, Anti-Climacus writes: But with regard to this point, as with so much that is Socratic, men have come to feel an urge to go further. What countless numbers have felt the urge to go further than Socratic ignorance – presumably because they felt it was impossible for them to stop with that – for how many are there in any generation who can persevere, even for just one month, in existentially expressing ignorance about everything.13

Later on he writes in a similar vein: “Instead of going beyond Socrates, it is extremely urgent that we come back to this Socratic principle.”14 Anti-Climacus uses a variant of the claim to go beyond Hegel with the claim to go beyond Socrates. The criticism takes as its point of departure Martensen’s pretentious claim to have gone beyond Hegel and uses variants of it to criticize him on other points (i.e., the claim to comprehend sin and Christianity). There is thus evidence that Kierkegaard has Martensen in mind in this discussion. One needs, however, to look into the matter more closely in order to determine if there are specific doctrines from Martensen at issue. Anti-Climacus mentions speculative thought in his analysis of the Socratic conception of moral psychology. According to Socrates, one never knowingly commits a wrongful act. Rather, acts that are morally wrong are done out of ignorance. Thus, one always does what one believes to be right. Anti-Climacus argues that if Socrates is correct, then sin cannot exist15 since there is no sin in not knowing the truth. Like Kant, Anti-Climacus argues that the good will rather than knowledge or lack thereof is crucial in determining the moral value of an action. According to Anti-Climacus, the Socratic doctrine is insufficient since it does not acknowledge the importance of the role of the will. In the following passage, Anti-Climacus criticizes the Socratic view and mentions speculative thought for the first time: But wherein is the [sc. Socratic] definition defective? . . . it lacks a dialectical determinant appropriate to the transition from having understood something to doing it. In this transition Christianity begins; by taking this 12 13 14 15

Chapter 1, Section II, p. 65f. SUD, p. 88; SV1, vol. 11, p. 199. See also CUP1, p. 204; SKS, vol. 7, p. 187. SUD, p. 92; SV1, vol. 11, p. 203. See also SUD, p. 94; SV1, vol. 11, p. 205: “Nevertheless with all this we have still gone no further than the Socratic principle.” SUD, p. 89; SV1, vol. 11, p. 200: “If sin is ignorance, then sin really does not exist, for sin is indeed consciousness. If sin is being ignorant of what is right and therefore doing wrong, then sin does not exist.”


speculative thought’s mistaken moral psychology 555 path, it shows that sin is rooted in willing and arrives at the concept of defiance, and then, to fasten the end very firmly, it adds the doctrine of hereditary sin – alas, for speculation’s secret in comprehending is simply to sew without fastening the end and without knotting the thread, and this is why, wonder of wonders, it can go on sewing and sewing, that is, pulling the thread through. Christianity, on the other hand, fastens the end by means of the paradox.16

In contrast to the Socratic view, the key point for Christianity is that sin is an act of the will. The issue concerns the complex relation between knowing the morally correct action and acting on it. Anti-Climacus’ metaphor of sewing implies that the paradox of sin is what forms the basis of the entire doctrine. The claim seems to be that speculative theology’s understanding of the doctrine of sin lacks such a basis and instead continues to link definitions and propositions without any foundation. The problem is that speculative theology operates at the level of abstract thought and is thus lacking an anchor in actuality. It can continue to explain things such as action and intention by means of abstract definitions, but in the final analysis these are tautologous since both terms – intention and action – are treated merely as abstract thoughts. This criticism implies two accounts of sin that Anti-Climacus wants to distinguish, namely a speculative and a Christian one. The key to this discussion is the distinction between, on the one hand, “pure ideality,”17 which is the realm of speculation and abstract thought, and, on the other hand, “the world of actuality,”18 which is the existential sphere of the individual and of ethical action. (This mirrors the distinction discussed earlier in the analysis of Either/Or, where it is couched in terms of the realm of freedom and the realm of thought.19 As has been noted, this distinction is reaffirmed virtually without modification in the Postscript.20 ) According to Anti-Climacus, the realm of actuality is neglected by a purely academic account. In his discussion, he singles out Socrates for praise for being interested in “the ethical conception of everyday life.”21 By contrast, when the issue of sin and moral action is understood in a purely abstract fashion, the problem vanishes since there is no gap between knowing and willing. Knowledge and the will are perfectly transparent, and there is no conflict. There is evidence that this discussion is intended as a criticism of Martensen. In reference to the transparency of knowledge and will, AntiClimacus alludes to “the system,” a term that Kierkegaard associates with

16 18 19 20 21

17 SUD, p. 93; SV1, vol. 11, p. 204. SUD, p. 93; SV1, vol. 11, p. 204. SUD, p. 93; SV1, vol. 11, p. 204. EO2, pp. 170–176; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 166–172. This issue is discussed in Chapter 4, Section II. CUP1, p. 305; SKS, vol. 7, p. 277f. See Chapter 11, Section IX. SUD, p. 92; SV1, vol. 11, p. 203.


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him.22 He writes: “In pure ideality, where the actual individual person is not involved, the transition is necessary (after all, in the system everything takes place of necessity), or there is no difficulty at all connected with the transition from understanding to doing.”23 For Anti-Climacus, this mistaken identification of knowing with the self is the very principle of modern philosophy. It typifies the notion of the self that is abstracted from the realm of existence. Another piece of evidence that this discussion is aimed at Martensen can be found in Anti-Climacus’ use of the Cartesian phrase “cogito ergo sum.” Continuing his discussion, he writes: “And the secret of modern philosophy is essentially the very same, for it is this: cogito ergo sum, to think is to be. . . . Thus it is evident that modern philosophy is neither more nor less than paganism.”24 The source of this account of modern philosophy is doubtless Martensen, who presented the Cartesian principle of the cogito as the foundation of modern thought both in his review of Heiberg’s logic course25 and in his dissertation.26 Moreover, in his “Lectures on the History of Philosophy from Kant to Hegel,”27 Martensen underlines the abstract nature of the cogito, which clearly stands in contrast to Kierkegaard’s conception of an actual, existing subject. For this reason, the phrase “cogito ergo sum” was, as has been noted earlier,28 a slogan that Kierkegaard consistently associated with Martensen. Anti-Climacus’ argument is that in the realm of actuality there is a split between knowing and acting. Simply due to the fact that one knows something, a determinate action dictated by that knowledge does not spontaneously follow. Anti-Climacus points out that there are instead 22 24 25

26

27

28

23 SUD, p. 93; SV1, vol. 11, p. 204. See Chapter 11, Section I. SUD, p. 93; SV1, vol. 11, p. 204. Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole. Af J. L. Heiberg, Lærer i Logik og Æsthetik ved den kgl. militaire Høiskole,” Maanedsskrift for Litteratur, 16, 1836, p. 518: “In the Cartesian phrase, ‘Cogito ergo sum,’ is expressed the principle of this philosophy which was developed in the Protestant world. Instead of the free, faithful spirit’s religious knowledge, where the act of thought was also a religious act, there now entered the pure knowledge of reason, and logical necessity was raised up on the throne in the kingdom of science.” Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia conscientiae sui humanae in theologiam dogmaticam nostri temporis introducta, Copenhagen 1837, § 5, p. 19. ASKB 648. Danish translation: Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, tr. by L. V. Petersen, Copenhagen 1841, § 5, p. 17. ASKB 651. English translation: The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in Modern Dogmatic Theology, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, Atlanta: Scholars Press 1997, p. 85. Pap. II C 25, in Pap. XII, p. 282: “In order not to remain in this doubt, Descartes wants that one doubt everything, for only thereby can a point be found, which is impossible to doubt, and this point is cogito ergo sum. It may not be translated ‘therefore,’ 1) but, ‘I think, and thinking I am,’ thinking and being thus collapse into each other . . . 2) The ‘I think’ must not be understood empirically, but it is the pure I, my self-consciousness, not my feeling or something else.” Chapter 2, Section III, p. 110ff. Chapter 11, Section VIII, p. 506f.


speculative thought’s mistaken moral psychology 557 many intervening elements between knowing and action: if a person does not do what is right at the very second he knows it – then, first of all, knowing simmers down. Next comes the question of how willing appraises what is known. . . . If willing does not agree with what is known, then it does not necessarily follow that willing goes ahead and does the opposite of what knowing understood; rather, willing allows some time to elapse. . . . During all this, knowing becomes more and more obscure, and the lower nature gains the upper hand more and more.29

The individual finds a number of ways to ignore the truth and to follow his own will even when it stands in contradiction to what he knows. AntiClimacus notes the contrast of this view to that of speculative thought, which is always abstract and ideal: “in pure ideality the transition from thinking to being is so easy, for there everything is at once.”30 Speculative thought overlooks these problems and incorrectly assumes that knowledge is a necessary and sufficient condition for virtuous action. This recalls the criticism of the unity of thought and being in the Postscript, where the principle was criticized as being a mere tautology when considered abstractly as in speculative thought.31 For Anti-Climacus the issue is not of knowledge but rather of will and volition.32 Just as for Kant, so also for Anti-Climacus the only thing that is good in itself is the good will. In the conclusion of his comparison between Socrates and Christianity he interprets having a malevolent will as defiance: Socrates explains that he who does not do what is right has not understood it . . . but Christianity goes a little further back and says that it is because he is unwilling to understand it, and this again because he does not will what is right. And in the next place it teaches that a person does what is wrong (essentially defiance) even though he understands what is right, or he refrains from doing what is right even though he understands it.33

According to Christianity, the individual does not always will what is right since the will is tainted by a number of irrational influences, which AntiClimacus refers to vaguely as “the lower nature.”34 Only the will of a god or an angel would be perfectly pure, and only with a perfectly pure will would action follow spontaneously from knowledge. This is precisely the absurdity that speculative thinking seems to presuppose in the case of 29 31 32 33

30 SUD, p. 94; SV1, vol. 11, p. 205. SUD, p. 94; SV1, vol. 11, p. 205. CUP1, pp. 189–199; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 173–182. CUP1, pp. 329–335; SKS, vol. 7, pp. 300–306. This issue is discussed in Chapter 11, Section VIII, pp. 502–510. SUD, p. 95; SV1, vol. 11, p. 206: “interpreted Christianly, sin has its roots in willing, not in knowing.” 34 SUD, p. 94; SV1, vol. 11, p. 205. SUD, p. 95; SV1, vol. 11, p. 206.


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human beings. Only the most abstract conception of human motivation and psychology could lead to this view. Anti-Climacus then comes to the conclusion that the individual agent simply does not know what wrongful action is. This, he argues, is compatible with the Christian view since the believer does not know how sinful and how far from moral perfection he is. Anti-Climacus says: “sin is indeed ignorance: it is ignorance of what sin is.”35 Given that the individual is ignorant of the nature of sin and the depth of his own sinfulness, the morally virtuous action must be revealed to him. Anti-Climacus explains: “And no human being can come further than that; no man of himself and by himself can declare what sin is, precisely because he is in sin. . . . That is why Christianity begins in another way: man has to learn what sin is by a revelation from God.”36 Given that sin is something God must reveal to human beings, it is essentially an incomprehensible paradox apart from this revelation. Given the numerous hidden references to Martensen in this section, there is every reason to believe that he is at least one of the targets of the criticism. Martensen was keenly interested in the fields of philosophical psychology and anthropology. In his dissertation, The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in Modern Dogmatic Theology, he discusses in some detail the respective theories of autonomy put forth by Kant and Hegel.37 Perhaps more important was his work on ethics, Outline of the System of Moral Philosophy, where he treats explicitly the question of willing the good.38 His account there follows Hegel’s methodology and language. Thus, one can well imagine that this abstract treatment of the issue is a part of what Anti-Climacus objects to. But with this said, it should be noted that even though it seems clear that Anti-Climacus’ polemic is directed against Martensen given the frequent use of code words and expressions, such as “going further” and “cogito ergo sum,” nonetheless he does not seem to have in mind any particular work or passage. Instead, he sketches a general position that he wants to oppose and designates it as “speculation” or “the system.” It is clear from his use of the key terms that he associates this position with Martensen, but in a sense the position that he sketches is more of a general tendency than a specific doctrine. It seems that AntiClimacus wants to outline this general tendency for his own purposes in order to help him to work out his own views. His point is merely that an abstract account of the rational will cannot do justice to the irrational 35 37 38

36 SUD, p. 95; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 205–206. SUD, p. 96; SV1, vol. 11, p. 207. Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia, op. cit., § 5. Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, op. cit., § 5. The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, op. cit., pp. 85–87. Hans Lassen Martensen, Grundrids til Moralphilosophiens System, Copenhagen 1841. ASKB 650. English translation: Outline to a System of Moral Philosophy, in Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: Hans L. Martensen’s Philosophy of Religion, tr. by Curtis L. Thompson and David J. Kangas, op. cit., pp. 245–313. See especially §§ 20–21, § 29.


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motivations, which undeniably influence, if not determine, action. He ascribes this view to speculative theology but it is by no means clear that he has in mind any specific work of any specific speculative theologian. The role of speculative theology is only marginal here and can by no means be regarded as the main problem of the discussion. What is at issue is the proper understanding of sin. Speculative thought is alluded to in this context as an example of how abstract thinking fails to grasp the notion of sin. Thus, the distinction between the realm of ideality and that of actuality is crucial. Speculative thought cannot appreciate the gap between knowing and action, which are identical at the level of abstract thought. It fails to take into account the manifold ways in which the will can ignore or distort knowing in order to pursue its own ends, which may well be inconsistent with what is actually known. Speculative theology thus has an inadequate account of moral psychology since it operates at the abstract level of thought alone, independent of all empirical or existential influences. “Speculation,” “speculative philosophy,” and “speculative theology” are all very general terms that refer not to any specific individual but to entire traditions of scholarship. “Speculative philosophy,” for example, could refer to Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, or any number of other thinkers from the tradition. Thus, the references to speculative thought here are no proof that the discussion has anything at all to do with Hegel; indeed, there is nothing to indicate that Anti-Climacus has Hegel in mind with this criticism. There is, for example, no account whatsoever of Hegel’s philosophy of action from the Philosophy of Right or his anthropology from the Encyclopaedia. The doctrine of the will that Anti-Climacus outlines resembles that of Kant much more than that of Hegel. Moreover, Hegel would be the last one to argue that natural drives and inclinations should be divorced from the rational aspect of the will; all to the contrary, his goal is to bring them into harmony with the rational will. It is a primary concern for Kant that the moral agent act purely out of respect for the moral law and not allow any illegitimate natural impulses to influence his action. According to Kant, the will of the individual must be transparent with the moral law. Like Anti-Climacus, Hegel criticizes this view as overly abstract. Thus, given that there is no overt polemic with Hegel and that the position criticized has nothing to do with anything resembling Hegel’s philosophy, one can only conclude that there is no reason to think that Hegel’s views are at issue. In all probability the true target of Anti-Climacus’ criticism is Martensen, if indeed a specific target is intended.

ii. the misguided attempt to comprehend sin In the third chapter of Part Two entitled “Sin Is Not a Negation but a Position,” Anti-Climacus discusses speculative thought and its use in Christian


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theology.39 The discussion again concerns the proper interpretation of the notion of sin. In order to avoid the ontological problem that evil is created by God (given that God is the creator of everything), a number of traditional views, such as those of Plotinus and Augustine, attempt to understand evil or sin as a privation or as a lack (i.e., as something purely negative). Anti-Climacus complains that such attempts result in a Christianity that is “flabby and spineless.”40 By contrast, he wishes to claim that sin is a position. In connection with this issue Anti-Climacus takes up once again a discussion of speculative thought. According to his view, sin is essentially a paradox and something incomprehensible to the human mind; thus, he criticizes speculative thought for attempting to comprehend it. By doing so it makes sin into something abstract and thus deprives it of its moral bite. As in the previous section, Anti-Climacus’ use of the terms, “speculation” and “speculative dogmatics” have led some commentators to the conclusion that the discussion concerns Hegel’s philosophy. I wish to argue that the true target is once again Martensen. In this analysis, Anti-Climacus takes up one of the conclusions from his previous chapter, namely, that the nature of sin is essentially a paradox that the understanding cannot fathom. He consistently argues that there is a fundamental difference between belief and knowledge. Although science may be a proper method of inquiry for certain things, others such as the absolute paradox of Christianity and the paradox of sin must be accepted on faith since they defy discursive explanation or deductive proof. Thus, speculative theology is misguided when it tries to comprehend sin since sin rests on a paradox.41 He states his thesis thus: “I steadfastly hold to the Christian teaching that sin is a position – yet not as if it could be comprehended, but as a paradox that must be believed.”42 For AntiClimacus, one’s relation to Christianity is one of belief rather than of proof or explanation. Anti-Climacus’ main criticism of speculative theology in this section is that it attempts to comprehend sin. He writes: “Then, through a curious misunderstanding, a so-called speculative dogmatics, which was involved with philosophy in a dubious way, thought it could comprehend this qualification that sin is a position.”43 Anti-Climacus argues that by trying to comprehend sin, speculative philosophy reduces the concept to something negative. He explains this as follows: “But if this is true, then sin is a negation. The secret of all comprehending is that this comprehending is itself higher than any position it posits; the concept establishes a position, but the comprehension of this is its very negation.”44 By understanding or 39 40 41 42 44

SUD, pp. 96–100; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 207–211. SUD, p. 96; SV1, vol. 11, p. 207. This is similar to a criticism found in the Postscript. See CUP1, p. 213; SKS, vol. 7, p. 195. 43 SUD, p. 97; SV1, vol. 11, p. 207. SUD, p. 98; SV1, vol. 11, p. 208. SUD, p. 97; SV1, vol. 11, p. 207.



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comprehending sin, speculative theology relegates it to a fixed position and then negates it by perceiving it as something finite. Speculative theology can comprehend sin by assigning it a particular place in a theological system. But Anti-Climacus argues, by so doing, speculative dogmatics is ultimately reduced to a position like the traditional understanding of sin as a privation, while it pretends to understand it as a position. There is a “duplicity on the part of speculation”45 since it criticizes the claim that sin is a negation and pretends to argue for the interpretation of sin as a position. But this conception of a position as an abstract position of thought is ultimately negative, and thus speculation’s claim turns out to be empty posturing when one examines the actual result of its view. As in the previous section, Anti-Climacus takes up the issue of the relation between speculative logic and “the world of actuality.”46 The problem is that when sin is comprehended by speculation, it is put into the abstract medium of thought. But it is not clear how the realm of thought is related to the realm of actuality: “Sub specie aeterni, aeterno modo, etc., there is indeed no spacing out at all; therefore everything is, and there simply is no transition. To posit in this abstract medium is eo ipso the same as to nullify. But to look at actuality in the same way borders on madness.”47 As has been seen previously,48 Kierkegaard associates the Latin expression “sub specie aeterni” with Martensen. In Kierkegaard’s works this expression is generally intended to stand for speculative thought’s abstract view of things. In this sphere there is mediation since everything is reduced to a concept. By contrast, sin must be understood as an actual act. Sin, understood as a finite position in a system of thought, is ultimately nothing: “It is the same with sin’s so-called position if the medium wherein it is placed is pure thought; that medium is far too elusive for the position to be taken seriously.”49 For Anti-Climacus, sin, understood as an abstract concept, lacks the moral force that it requires. The individual believer cannot be vexed by his own sinfulness if he understands sin only as an abstract concept. On the contrary, sin must be something particular for the individual believer. Moreover, for Anti-Climacus, there is an “insolence”50 involved in trying to comprehend the paradox of Christianity. The attempt to understand or explain Christianity (and specifically the Incarnation) is something that Kierkegaard frequently associates with speculative thought and was discussed earlier in connection with his earlier works.51 The 45 47

48 50 51

46 SUD, p. 97; SV1, vol. 11, p. 208. SUD, p. 97; SV1, vol. 11, p. 208. SUD, p. 97f.; SV1, vol. 11, p. 208. Translation slightly modified. N.b. In Hong’s translation the two Latin expressions in the original have turned into one: “Sub specie aeterno modo etc., there is indeed no spacing out at all.” 49 SUD, p. 98; SV1, vol. 11, p. 208. Chapter 11, Section I, p. 460. SUD, p. 98; SV1, vol. 11, p. 209. See Chapter 8, Section I. Chapter 11, Section IV. Chapter 12, Section III.


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Christian religion is, for Anti-Climacus, not intended to be understood. It is a paradox that results either in faith or offense. Thus, to attempt to understand it demonstrates a kind of intellectual pride vis-à-vis God and Christianity, which “does not want to be comprehended.”52 The ethically correct position is that of Socratic ignorance. Anti-Climacus contrasts the Socratic position with the positive doctrine of speculative thought, which he takes to be characteristic of the present age: “I consider it an outright ethical task, perhaps requiring not a little self-denial in these very speculative times, when all ‘the others’ are busy comprehending it, to admit that one is neither able nor obliged to comprehend it. Precisely this is no doubt what our age, what Christendom needs: a little Socratic ignorance with respect to Christianity.”53 To recognize one’s own ignorance as Socrates did is, for Anti-Climacus, a sign of religious humility. This ignorance indicates one’s own insignificance and an appropriate fear of God: Christianity teaches that everything essentially Christian depends solely upon faith; therefore it wants to be precisely a Socratic, God-fearing ignorance, which by means of ignorance guards faith against speculation, keeping watch so that the gulf of qualitative difference between God and man may be maintained as it is in the paradox and faith, so that God and man do not, even more dreadfully than ever in paganism, do not merge in some way, philosophice, poetice, etc., into one – in the system.54

The attempt to incorporate Christianity into a system of knowledge is thus an act of intellectual vanity and shows an independence and selfcertainty apart from God. The allusion to “the system” here recalls one of Kierkegaard’s remarks in his journals55 in which he criticizes Martensen for systematizing Christianity in his Christian Dogmatics, which appeared in the same year as The Sickness Unto Death.56 In addition to the slogans “the system” and “sub specie aeterni,” there is further evidence that Martensen plays a central role in this analysis. In his review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course at the Royal Military College, Martensen sketches a brief history of philosophy in order to illustrate the role of Hegel’s philosophy in it. In this sketch he characterizes the philosophy of the Middle Ages as follows: “The philosophy of the Middle Ages rested on faith; its principle was Anselm’s well-known credam ut intelligam, which is no different from the age old saying, ‘The 52 54 55

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53 SUD, p. 99; SV1, vol. 11, p. 209. SUD, p. 99; SV1, vol. 11, p. 209. SUD, p. 99; SV1, vol. 11, p. 210. JP, vol. 6, 6448; Pap. X-1 A 553: “While all existence is disintegrating, while anyone with eyes must see that all this about millions of Christians is a sham, that if anything Christianity has vanished from the world. Martensen sits and organizes a dogmatic system. What does it mean that he undertakes something like this?” See also JP, vol. 6, 6449; Pap. X-1 A 556. JP, vol. 6, 6456; Pap. X-1 A 576. JP, vol. 6, 6460; Pap. X-1 A 588. Hans Lassen Martensen, Den christelige Dogmatik, Copenhagen 1849. ASKB 653.



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fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.’”57 Here Martensen quotes from the Psalms in his explanation that the philosophy of the Middle Ages was uncritical and simply accepted its basic principles on faith.58 This is then contrasted to modern philosophy, which begins with criticism and skeptical doubt. In his aforementioned review of Rothe’s Doctrine of the Trinity and Reconciliation, Heiberg responds to this and refers to Martensen’s use of this slogan.59 Thus, thanks to Martensen this phrase came to be a kind of slogan representing an uncritical phase in philosophy. In the section under examination, Anti-Climacus refers to this slogan in the context of his discussion of the need of modern thought to comprehend Christianity. He writes: “Let us never forget – but how many ever really knew it or thought it – let us never forget that Socrates’ ignorance was a kind of fear and worship of God, that his ignorance was the Greek version of the Jewish saying: ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’”60 In contrast to the pretension of Martensen to replace the faith of the Middle Ages with the skepticism of modern philosophy, Anti-Climacus praises the humility displayed in the psalm and associates it with the humility of Socrates in his self-proclaimed ignorance. Once again, the claim is that the attempt to comprehend Christianity displays an overreaching arrogance of the intellect. Apart from these more specific allusions to Martensen, it should also be noted that the general position under criticism here (i.e., the attempt to comprehend Christianity) can also be attributed to Martensen. In both his dissertation, The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness in Modern Dogmatic Theology, and in his lecture course “Speculative Dogmatics,” he understands Christianity primarily as a body of knowledge on a par with philosophy. In his dissertation he writes: Finally, if we consult religion itself, we will find there many things that seem to show the necessity of this science [sc. theology], e.g., those Christian 57 58 59

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Hans Lassen Martensen, “Indledningsforedrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus,” op. cit., p. 516. Psalms 111.10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; / a good understanding have all those who practice it. / His praise endures forever.” Johan Ludvig Heiberg, “Recension over Hr. Dr. Rothes Treenigheds- og Forsoningslære,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 1, 1837, p. 35. ASKB 569: “While Dr. Rothe seeks immediate knowledge in enthusiasm, devotion and ecstasy, and thus determines it purely subjectively in this way, and while others who seek it in the precarious concept of ‘tradition’ throw themselves into the arms of a still more arbitrary subjectivity, we find, by contrast, that for Martensen immediate knowing is determined as the Idea itself in its immediacy, that is, just as objectively as subjectively, namely, as faith. This, as given by God, is supposed to be the foundation of philosophy, and the future philosophical system is supposed to be built on the old saying, ‘The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,’ instead of the present philosophy resting on the campaign slogan, ‘Doubt is the beginning of wisdom.’” (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 2, p. 44.) SUD, p. 99; SV1, vol. 11, p. 209.


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dogmas of Revelation and Inspiration, indeed even many statements in Holy Scriptures (e.g. 1 Cor. 13.12 and 2.14) which register it explicitly. Even at the beginning of Genesis, by far the oldest tradition of the human race, we already hear talk about that mystical tree of knowledge. In all these we have a summons to shape our theory of knowledge.61

Martensen characterizes theology as continuous with philosophy. Following Hegel, he sees the two fields as having a common object of investigation, which they approach in slightly different ways. In his course, he characterizes Christian dogmatics as a body of knowledge, indeed as “the metaphysics of Christianity.”62 Whereas Kierkegaard seems generally willing to accept a philosophical analysis of religion from a secular philosopher (i.e., Hegel), he objects when it comes from a priest, such as Martensen. The plea of Anti-Climacus is to separate Christianity from science. Again speculative thought is not the main issue in this discussion. Perhaps the most important thing to note about Anti-Climacus’ use of speculative theology or dogmatics here is that it is employed primarily as a contrast to his own position. As he so often does, Kierkegaard here sketches a position that he calls “speculative theology” for the purpose of contrasting his own view or that of his pseudonym. As in the previous section, the distinction between the realms of thought and actuality is pivotal for the analysis. Once again, there is no reason to think that Hegel’s doctrines are at issue in this analysis. There is no attempt to analyze Hegel’s account of sin or evil. Thus, this discussion seems, like the previous one, to be directed either against Martensen, as can be seen from the slogans “the system” and “sub specie aeterni,” or against a general tendency sketched by Anti-Climacus under the heading “speculative dogmatics.”

iii. rational theology or the pastor’s rational justification of faith The discussion of speculation that began in Chapter 2 of Part Two continues in the appendix to Section A of Part Two, which immediately follows the two chapters just analyzed.63 The appendix purports to deal with what seems to be the logical outcome of Anti-Climacus’ argument that sin is a rare phenomenon. Given that “the more intensive despair becomes, the rarer it is in the world,”64 and given that sin is “despair qualitatively 61 62 63 64

Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia, op. cit., § 2, pp. 6–7. Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, op. cit., § 2, p. 6. The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, op. cit., § 2, p. 79. Pap. II C 26–28, in Pap. XIII, p. 4. SUD, pp. 100–104; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 211–214. SUD, p. 100; SV1, vol. 11, p. 211.


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intensified once again,”65 it would seem to follow that sin is something extremely rare. While Anti-Climacus purports to address this issue, he gradually slides over into a criticism of an unnamed pastor, who, in his view, presents a false picture of Christianity. Here the criticism, which is a natural continuation of the previous one, involves the attempt of speculative theology to defend Christianity with rational arguments and discursive reasoning. It is clear from the context of the discussion that the pastor Anti-Climacus has in mind is a speculative theologian. I wish to argue that although this discussion might have something to do with speculative theology or specific theologians, there is no evidence that is has anything to do with Hegel. Anti-Climacus couches his criticism here in terms of an extended comparison of the pastor with a lover. The believer is like the lover in the enthusiasm of his belief; moreover, the believer in his love of God resembles the lover of finite and transitory things. For the true lover, there is no need to defend or justify his spontaneous love, whereas by contrast the speculative theologian attempts to defend his belief with reasons: But do you believe it could ever occur to [sc. the lover], do you believe it would be possible for him, do you not think he would find it loathsome to speak by means of three reasons that there is something in love – somewhat as the pastor proves by means of three reasons that praying is beneficial, because praying has become so cheap that in order to raise its prestige a little three reasons have to be adduced. Or the way the pastor – and this is the same, only even more ridiculous – proves with three reasons that to pray is a bliss that “passes all understanding.”66

Anti-Climacus’ criticism here is that the true believer would, like the true lover, be happy in his belief and would not feel the need to explain it or ground it. Love is immediate and self-evident to the lover, as is belief to the believer. The speculative theologian, however, tries to give reasons for his belief or, in the example cited, tries to give reasons to demonstrate the beneficial nature of prayer. “Is it not obvious,” Anti-Climacus asks, “that the person who is really in love would never dream of wanting to prove it by three reasons or to defend it, for he is something that is more than all reasons and any defense: he is in love.”67 By contrast, the speculative theologians “either ‘defend’ Christianity or transpose it into ‘reasons,’ if they do not go further and tinker speculatively with 65 66

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SUD, p. 100; SV1, vol. 11, p. 211. SUD, p. 103; SV1, vol. 11, p. 213. Kierkegaard refers here to Philippians 4.6–7: “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” This passage was discussed at some length by Mynster in his Betragtninger over de christelige Troeslærdomme (vols. 1–2, second edition, Copenhagen 1837, vol. 2, p. 225. ASKB 254–255). SUD, p. 104; SV1, vol. 11, p. 214.


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‘comprehending’ it.”68 The reference to “going further” immediately suggests that the target of Anti-Climacus’ criticism here is Martensen. What lies in the background of this discussion is Anti-Climacus’ view of Christianity as a paradox that resists discursive analysis and justification. Anti-Climacus’ criticism here is not only that the speculative theologian has a fundamentally mistaken conception of Christianity but also that he is inauthentic in his rhetoric about it. He claims, on the one hand, that prayer is a bliss that “passes all understanding” and then, on the other hand, tries to explain it. Anti-Climacus explains: “What a priceless anticlimax – that something that passes all understanding – is proved by three reasons, which if they do anything at all, presumably do not pass all understanding and, quite the contrary, inevitably make it obvious to the understanding that this bliss by no means passes all understanding, for ‘reasons,’ after all, lie in the realm of the understanding.”69 There is thus a kind of duplicity of feigned ignorance at work here. The speculative theologian cannot resist giving some account of prayer even after citing the biblical passage stating that it cannot be understood. The target of Anti-Climacus’ criticism seems to be very specific since it concerns the specific way in which one representative of speculative theology tries to understand one aspect of Christianity, but there is no discussion of speculative thinking in principle. The criticisms here are clearly in part a personal and not a philosophical nature. The references to “the pastor” who tries to prove that prayer is beneficial with “three reasons” and who claims that the bliss of prayer surpasses the understanding seem to suggest that Anti-Climacus has in mind here a specific target, presumably Martensen. This seems to be clear from Kierkegaard’s remarks in his journals from the same period where he criticizes Martensen’s Christian Dogmatics and associates his undertaking there with that of the “pastor”: “A dogmatic system ought not be erected on the basis: to comprehend faith, but on the basis: to comprehend that faith cannot be comprehended. In a nutshell, from a Christian point of view, ‘the pastor’ and ‘the professor’ ought to say one and the same thing.”70 In this entry one can see the “pastor” associated with the professor, which in Kierkegaard’s works is usually identified with Martensen. Most obvious, however, is the allusion to the “dogmatic system,” which is clearly a reference to Martensen’s Christian Dogmatics. Although the criticism here is a personal one against Martensen, it can be construed as a general point that Christian faith cannot in principle be justified by discursive arguments. This is, of course, one of Kierkegaard’s best-known and most often repeated arguments. Since it has been examined previously,71 I 68 70 71

69 SUD, p. 104; SV1, vol. 11, p. 213. SUD, p. 104; SV1, vol. 11, p. 214. JP, vol. 3, 3564; Pap. X-1 A 561. E.g., Chapter 7, Section IV. Chapter 11, Sections III–IV.


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forego evaluating it again here. In any case, it is not clear why one would see in this discussion a criticism of Hegel.

iv. martensen and the god-man In the chapter “The Sin of Despairing of the Forgiveness of Sins” AntiClimacus offers anew a criticism of speculative thought.72 As is his practice, he explicates his own doctrine, here the doctrine of sin and offense, in contrast to “speculative thinking.” The central issue is the interpretation of the doctrine of the so-called God-man and the doctrine of the reconciliation of man with God as it is expounded by speculative thought. As has been seen previously,73 the doctrine of reconciliation is one of the most important guiding principles in Hegel’s philosophy. Christianity, for Hegel, represents reconciliation in the sphere of religion and thus is the highest form of religious consciousness. But Hegel is not Anti-Climacus’ main target here. It is instead Martensen’s interpretation of the Christian notion of reconciliation that Anti-Climacus objects to. He states his criticism when he writes: “No teaching on earth has ever really brought God and man so close together as Christianity, nor can any do so, for only God himself can do that, and any human fabrication remains just a dream, a precarious delusion.”74 Martensen’s understanding of this is only a “human fabrication” and thus only an illusory reconciliation. In this section, Anti-Climacus argues that the doctrines of sin, offense, and judgment resist this speculative interpretation of Christian reconciliation. Speculative philosophy creates an abstract collective individual in the form of world spirit. According to Anti-Climacus, this reified abstraction both forgets the individual and becomes associated with God. On this view, there is no qualitative difference between God and man since God is simply world spirit, which is the aggregate of countless individuals. Anti-Climacus writes: “This is then called the doctrine of the God-man, or that God and man are idem per idem [the same].”75 The primary issue here seems to be Kierkegaard’s standard criticism of speculative thought for reducing the individual to the race or the age. Speculative thought thus neglects true individuality and subjectivity while it turns its focus to the wider group. By contrast, Christianity is concerned primarily with the individual. Anti-Climacus writes: “the first thing to keep in mind is that every human being is an individual human being and is to become conscious of being an individual human being.”76 The common interpretation is that Anti-Climacus is criticizing Hegel’s philosophy of 72 73 75

SUD, pp. 117–124; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 226–234. 74 SUD, p. 117; SV1, vol. 11, p. 227. Chapter 9, Section III. 76 SUD, pp. 117–118, SV1, vol. 11, pp. 227. SUD, p. 118, SV1, vol. 11, pp. 227–228.


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history and the doctrine of world spirit or Strauss’ doctrine of the Godman in his Das Leben Jesu. There were many authors during this period who, like Strauss, used the expression “the God-man” to refer to Christ, and thus the use of it here is not conclusive. Upon closer examination, Anti-Climacus’ true target seems to be Martensen. In his dissertation Martensen argues that Christ, or the Godman, represents the entire human race. He claims: [I]f the true idea of God is the Idea of the absolute personality, then there appears also that historical individual with whom the Idea has entered into a perfect union, with absolute authority, so that, liberated from all particular subjectivity, it shall only reveal the Idea. . . . But in this way the entire human race, in order to be personalized, must be subordinated to him, for as a God-man he is not one individual among the many but is the absolute individual, the central monad. Since the absolute freedom which stands not only over all universal and abstract determinations, but also over all finite monads, constitutes his essence, he not only reveals the principle of the human race but is this very principle.77

Christ thus represents the entire human race collectively, insofar as he is the principle of absolute freedom. Here one finds the key elements in Anti-Climacus’ criticism: the term “the God-man” and the emphasis on the race over the individual. Earlier in the treatise Martensen writes: “This eternal Idea of the identity of God and the human is revealed in Christ.”78 Anti-Climacus’ criticism is that the Incarnation is a paradox and a mystery, which cannot be understood. Martensen’s speculative theology understands it conceptually in terms of an idea. Similarly in his Outline of the System of Moral Philosophy, Martensen seems to deny the importance of the individual with regard to repentance. There he writes: “Religious repentance is distinguished from merely moral repentance by the fact that it is not exclusively a sorrow over individual sins, over deeds and actions or individual conditions of life, but over the will’s natural condition. The individual grasps itself here in its unity with the race and reckons to itself the depravity of human nature as its innermost personal guilt.”79 Here Martensen removes the personal element of sin and repentance since he regards it as a key link between the individual and the entire human race. This seems to direct attention away from the freedom and responsibility of the individual and to focus primarily on 77

78

79

Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia, op. cit., § 18, p. 73. Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, op. cit., § 18, p. 60. The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, op. cit., § 18, p. 113. Translation slightly modified. Hans Lassen Martensen, De autonomia, op. cit., § 11, p. 43. Den menneskelige Selvbevidstheds Autonomie, op. cit., § 11, p. 36. The Autonomy of Human Self-Consciousness, op. cit., § 11, p. 97. Hans Lassen Martensen, Grundrids til Moralphilosophiens System, op. cit., § 43, pp. 45–46. Outline to a System of Moral Philosophy, op. cit., § 43, p. 279.



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the human condition generally as fallen. In a similar vein Martensen continues: “Religious repentance only comes to rest in faith in Christ as the objective justification of the human race before God. This consideration is carried through in speculative theology, which develops the doctrine of the human’s reconciliation with God.”80 Whereas for Anti-Climacus the emphasis is on the single individual “before God,”81 here the emphasis is “the human race before God” and on an “objective justification.” Moreover, Anti-Climacus regards the notion of reconciliation as something that only the divine can effect and understand. Thus, any human attempt to grasp it (e.g., in terms of a doctrine of speculative dogmatics) amounts to intellectual arrogance. These seem to be the kinds of views that Anti-Climacus has in mind with his criticism. (1) Anti-Climacus argues that the doctrine of sin resists this speculative interpretation of Christianity. Sin is, according to Anti-Climacus, something individual and cannot be reduced to an abstract concept. His thesis is as follows: “The category of sin is the category of individuality. Sin cannot be thought speculatively at all. The individual human being lies beneath the concept; an individual human being cannot be thought, but only the concept ‘man.’”82 Speculative philosophy operates with abstract ideas, but these must necessarily leave out the individual. The notion of sin is essentially individual since it is always the particular person who has committed a particular sin. Thus, sin is something serious or earnest only to the individual qua individual, but speculative theology loses this aspect by viewing sin as a general concept: But just as one individual person cannot be thought, neither can one individual sinner; sin can be thought . . . but not one individual sinner. This is precisely why there is no earnestness about sin if it is only to be thought, for earnestness is simply this: that you and I are sinners. Earnestness is not sin in general; rather, the accent of earnestness rests on the sinner, who is the single individual.83

Speculative philosophy cannot capture this earnestness since it purportedly cannot take the individual seriously. An individual cannot lament over his sinfulness unless he concentrates on that sinfulness as particular to him. If, on the other hand, he conceives of sin only as an abstract concept, then he will never be in earnestness about his own individual sinfulness. The view outlined here seems to be Martensen’s position that sin and repentance are regarded only with respect to the human condition generally (i.e., as an abstract concept) and not with respect to one’s own 80 81 83

Hans Lassen Martensen, Grundrids til Moralphilosophiens System, op. cit., § 44, p. 47. Outline to a System of Moral Philosophy, op. cit., § 44, p. 280. 82 SUD, p. 119; SV1, vol. 11, p. 228. SUD, p. 121; SV1, vol. 11, p. 231. SUD, p. 119; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 228–229.


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individual sins. Anti-Climacus writes further: With respect to “the single individual,” speculation, if it is consistent, must make light of being a single individual or being that which cannot be thought. If it cares to do anything along this line, it must say to the individual: Is this anything to waste your time on? Forget it! To be an individual human being is to be nothing! Think – then you are all mankind: cogito ergo sum.84

Here Kierkegaard has Anti-Climacus repeat the Cartesian formulation “cogito ergo sum” which, as has been seen earlier, he associates with Martensen.85 For Anti-Climacus, of course, the individual is the highest category for Christianity and thus cannot be reduced to the whole or the group. The argument here is intended to prove that the notion of sin likewise only functions as a category of individuality: “The earnestness of sin is its actuality in the single individual, be it you or I. Speculatively, we are supposed to look away from the single individual: therefore, speculatively, we can speak only superficially about sin. The dialectic of sin is diametrically contrary to that of speculation.”86 This is the same criticism seen earlier of speculative thinking’s attempt to understand sin abstractly.87 Here it seems clear that Anti-Climacus has in mind what he sees as Martensen’s neglect of the individual and the incommensurability of this neglect with the notion of sin. Anti-Climacus argues, moreover, that the doctrine of sin eliminates the possibility of reducing God to world spirit or to a group as Martensen purportedly wants to do. The Christian notion of sin underscores the fact that God is qualitatively different from man. Anti-Climacus writes: The teaching about sin – that you and I are sinners – a teaching that unconditionally splits up “the crowd,” confirms the qualitative difference between God and man more radically than ever before, for again only God can do this; sin is indeed: before God. In no way is a man so different from God as in this, that he, and that means every man, is a sinner, and is that “before God,” whereby the opposites are kept together in a double sense.88

Man is by nature sinful, and by contrast God is without sin. While man must ask for forgiveness, only God can grant it. This is an essential difference that can never be smoothed over. Regardless of how many sinful individuals one collects, one will never arrive at God or something without sin because there is a fundamental difference in quality. By contrast, 84 85

86 88

SUD, p. 119; SV1, vol. 11, p. 229. Anti-Climacus repeats this allusion later in the passage: “Instead of being an individual sinner, is one to think sin (just as one is asked to think the concept ‘man’ instead of being an individual human being)? And what then? By thinking sin, does a person become ‘sin’ – cogito ergo sum? A brilliant suggestion!” SUD, p. 119; SV1, vol. 11, p. 229. 87 SUD, pp. 97–98; SV1, vol. 11, p. 208. SUD, p. 120; SV1, vol. 11, p. 229. SUD, p. 121; SV1, vol. 11, p. 231.



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Martensen underscores the unity of God and man that is accessible in the doctrine of the Incarnation, understood speculatively: (2) Just as the concept of sin is essentially individual, so also is the concept of offense. This is the next doctrine Anti-Climacus uses to argue that Christianity is primarily concerned with the individual. As is known from other works, the possibility of offense at the person of Christ is for Kierkegaard essential to Christianity. Here he argues that just as one sins only as an individual, so also one can only be offended as an individual. Anti-Climacus writes: offense is the most decisive qualification of subjectivity, of the single individual, that is possible. To think offense without thinking a person offended is perhaps not as impossible as thinking flute playing when there is no flute player, but even thought has to admit that offense, even more than falling in love, is an illusive concept that does not become actual until someone, a single individual, is offended.89

The idea of a collective group being offended does not make sense due to the fact that individuals have different sensibilities and what is offensive to the one will not be offensive to the other. Speculative thought thus likewise cannot capture the notion of offense since it overlooks the category of the individual. (3) The final Christian concept that Anti-Climacus introduces in order to demonstrate that Christianity is primarily concerned with the individual is that of judgment. Anti-Climacus argues that judgment as well is an irreducible concept that refers only to the individual: “judgment” corresponds to the single individual; judgment is not made en masse. People can be put to death en masse, can be sprayed en masse, can be flattered en masse – in short, in many ways they can be treated as cattle, but they cannot be judged as cattle, for cattle cannot come under judgment. No matter how many are judged, if the judging is to have any earnestness and truth, then each individual is judged.90

Anti-Climacus clearly has in mind the divine judgment of humanity. Speculative thinking cannot capture this since it is purportedly not interested in the individual. The very notion of judging cannot be understood in terms of the world-historical epoch or generation. It would not make sense to reward or condemn an entire generation or a people collectively since in any group there will be some who are more righteous and some who are more sinful than others. Anti-Climacus’ criticisms in this section are aimed primarily at a conception of things that subordinates the individual to the race or the worldhistorical. The claim is that true Christianity cannot be reconciled with this view. Each of the arguments – about sin, offense, and judgment – aims 89

SUD, p. 122; SV1, vol. 11, p. 232.

90

SUD, p. 123; SV1, vol. 11, p. 232.


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to show that Christianity is concerned primarily with the individual. As has been seen, Martensen holds precisely the view about repentance that subordinated the individual to the race. He also argues for the speculative understanding of the unity of the human and the divine in the God-man. What Anti-Climacus primarily objects to is Martensen’s conception of Christianity, which seems to leave out the individual. Given this, there is no obvious reason to think that Hegel plays a role in this discussion at all. At most, one can claim that there are certain basic principles of his philosophy, which are reflected in the speculative theology of Martensen, which is being criticized. I now turn from the content of the work to its form and to an examination of the dialectical methodology employed by Anti-Climacus, which will be the subject of the remainder of the chapter.

v. anti-climacus’ dialectic and phenomenology Perhaps the best-known part of The Sickness Unto Death is Anti-Climacus’ analysis of the stages of despair in Section C of Part One entitled “The Forms of this Sickness.” Some commentators have noted that this series of stages bears a resemblance to that traced in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit or the Science of Logic.91 In addition, Section B “The Continuance of Sin” from Part Two also contains a triadic series that has the look of a Hegelian dialectic. Anti-Climacus refers to his methodology here several times explicitly as a dialectical movement and to despair as a dialectical concept.92 It thus appears that Anti-Climacus makes use of Hegel’s phenomenological methodology for his own ends, but others have argued that his use of Hegel’s method here is actually ironic and thus intended to be taken not as a tacit praise or approval of Hegel but rather as a criticism.93 I will address this suggestion later. To what degree is Anti-Climacus’ method dialectical or phenomenological in Hegel’s sense? In order to answer this question, one must see what Hegel means by “phenomenological” and how his method proceeds. I will argue that there are two different kinds of dialectical movements at work here, both of which have affinities with Hegel’s method. This will be investigated in Section A. Then in Section B, I will turn to Anti-Climacus’ account in Part One “The Forms of this Sickness” and to its similarities with Hegel’s method. Section C discusses the triadic movement of sin in 91

92 93

E.g., Arne Grøn, “Kierkegaards Phänomenologie?” op. cit., pp. 91–116. F.-E. Wilde, “Die Entwicklung des dialektischen Denkens bei Kierkegaard,” op. cit., pp. 7–55, especially pp. 43–46. Michael Theunissen, Das Selbst auf dem Grund der Verzweiflung. Kierkegaards negativistische Methode, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Anton Hain Meisenheim Gmbh. 1991, p. 28, pp. 32–33, pp. 53–54, p. 60. Michael Theunissen, Der Begriff Verzweiflung. Korrekturen an Kierkegaard, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1993, p. 20f., p. 82, p. 93, pp. 140–156. SUD, p. 6; SV1, vol. 11, p. 118. SUD, p. 24; SV1, vol. 11, p. 138. SUD, p. 116fn.; SV1, vol. 11, p. 226fn. Roger Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia 1993, pp. 19–20.


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Part Two in the section “The Continuance of Sin.” Here I will argue that a third distinct dialectical movement can be discerned, which, of the three movements, is the closest to Hegel’s dialectical method in the Phenomenology. In the final section I will evaluate the implications of Anti-Climacus’ use of this method. A. Hegel’s Dialectical Method. Previously in this study I have had occasion to touch upon some of the basic characteristics of Hegel’s phenomenological and dialectical method.94 It will, however, be useful to review some of this material in a more thorough fashion in order to understand its relation to the discussion in The Sickness Unto Death. One problem is that Hegel has somewhat differing conceptions of the dialectic in different works. Thus, I will examine his use of dialectic in both the Phenomenology of Spirit and then the Science of Logic. With both of these views on the table, it will be easier to see which of them more closely resembles the structures of the different analyses given by Anti-Climacus. (1) In his Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel is interested in finding a way to justify the standpoint of what he calls “science.” This is the task of the Phenomenology as a whole. It must demonstrate the superiority of science to common sense. Hegel defines common sense as any way of thinking that is characterized by some form of dualism. By contrast, science is a unified monistic view that grasps the necessary interconnections of things. Hegel explains that, in order to justify science, a procedure must be worked out to demonstrate the internal contradictions of the various views of common-sense dualism. Only if these views can be shown to be inconsistent or incomplete can science be grounded or justified. In the Science of Logic, Hegel explains this as follows: The path of this movement goes through every form of the relation of consciousness to the object and has the concept of science for its result. This concept therefore (apart from the fact that it emerges within logic itself) needs no justification here because it has received it in that work [sc. the Phenomenology of Spirit]; and it cannot be justified in any other way than by this emergence in consciousness . . . but a definition of science – or more precisely of logic – has its proof solely in the already mentioned necessity of its emergence in consciousness.95

The task of the Phenomenology is then to examine the various notions of objectivity, i.e., all possible ways of conceiving of an object. The notions are all examined for consistency. With the elimination of the various 94 95

Chapter 2, Section II. Chapter 8, Section I. Chapter 9, Section IV. Hegel, SL, pp. 48–49; WL, p. 44. Translation slightly modified. See also the passage from the Encyclopaedia Logic, § 25 cited in the previous chapter. See PR, § 2, Addition; Jub., vol. 7, p. 40: “In philosophical cognition, on the other hand, the chief concern is the necessity of a concept, and the route by which it has become a result is its proof and deduction.”


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contradictory dualistic views from the field, the way is cleared for the consistent and complete view offered by science. Only by means of this procedure does science have its proper justification. When the Phenomenology reaches Absolute Knowing, the level of science has been attained, and the work of The Science of Logic and the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences can begin. In the Phenomenology, Hegel uses a theoretical subject in order to illustrate the various dualistic views. He calls this subject “natural consciousness” [natürliches Bewußtsein].96 This theoretical subject is employed as a kind of phenomenological actor, who defends the various dualistic positions and then works through the dialectical movements in which these conceptions are rendered contradictory. The Phenomenology thus operates with two different perspectives, i.e., that of natural consciousness, which has a first person perspective on the various dualistic conceptions, and that of the readers or philosophical audience, who look on as observers of the dialectical movement.97 Natural consciousness is not intended to represent any particular person but instead is a sort of universal consciousness that is fraught with all the manifold prejudices of common sense.98 By using a universalized, ideal subject, Hegel underscores the immanent logic of the movement of thought itself. It does not matter who the subject is since the contradictions exposed by the logical movement would be recognized and accepted by any rational agent. Hegel uses the term “natural” for this exponent of common sense in order to underscore the prevalence of the dualistic notions of common sense.99 Dualism is our “natural,” pre-philosophical conception of reality and the world around us. Natural consciousness is then Hegel’s vehicle for exploring the various notions or conceptions of objectivity. There are certain internal contradictions in the dualistic notions that come up in the course of the dialectic and are crucial for its movement. 96

97

98

99

See Heribert Boeder, “Das natürliche Bewußtsein,” Hegel-Studien, 12, 1977, pp. 157– 178. See Gerhard Krüger, “Die dialektische Erfahrung des naturlichen ¨ Bewußtseins bei Hegel,” in Hermeneutik und Dialektik, ed. by Rudiger ¨ Bubner, Conrad Cramer, Reiner Wiehl, Tubingen: ¨ Mohr 1970, pp. 285–303. See PR, § 32, Addition; Jub., vol. 7, p. 83: “This is not how we proceed, for we merely wish to observe how the concept determines itself, and we force ourselves not to add anything of our own thoughts and opinions.” See PhS, p. 54; Jub., vol. 2, p. 77: “But not only is a contribution by us superfluous, since Notion and object, the criterion and what is to be tested, are present in consciousness itself, but we are also spared the trouble of comparing the two and really testing them, so that, since what consciousness examines is its own self, all that is left for us to do is simply look on.” Hegel, PhS, p. 16; Jub., vol. 2, p. 30: “The task of leading the individual from his uneducated standpoint to knowledge had to be seen in its universal sense, just as it was the universal individual, self-conscious Spirit, whose formative education had to be studied. As regards the relation between them, every moment, as it gains concrete form and a shape of its own, displays itself in the universal individual.” See Hegel’s discussion of “natural existence” and “natural will” in Phil. of Hist, p. 25; Jub., vol. 11, p. 54.



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These contradictions are generated due to the fact that specific criteria for truth as determined by a given concept do not match up with the given representations. Hegel discusses these criteria thus: “If this exposition is viewed as a way of relating science to phenomenal knowledge, and as an investigation and examination of the reality of cognition, it would seem that it cannot take place without some presupposition which can serve as its underlying criterion.”100 With every given notion there comes a fixed standard or criterion for truth against which given representations are tested. Hegel designates this standard “the in-itself.”101 Like Kant’s thing-in-itself, the in-itself or the concept is what is the true and the real, which all finite representations must match up to if they are to be considered true. But unlike Kant’s thing-in-itself, the in-itself for natural consciousness is an object of thought and can thus be meaningfully compared to given representations. It is according to this internal standard of consistency that the various notions of natural consciousness must be examined and tested. The beginning of the dialectic takes place when natural consciousness posits a given concept or account of objectivity. This concept represents the first criterion for truth that is examined for consistency. When the internal contradictions are uncovered in the concept, natural consciousness is obliged to find a new one. Each new concept posits a new criterion for truth and thus determines objectivity in a different way. As has been mentioned, the dialectical movement is characterized by a comparison of the given criterion for objectivity with the actual experience of the object. Since both are objects of consciousness, “it is for this same consciousness to know whether its knowledge of the object corresponds to the object or not.”102 When the object and its criterion do not hang together consistently, natural consciousness must posit a new criterion: “If the comparison shows that these two moments do not correspond to one another, it would seem that consciousness must alter its knowledge to make it conform to the object.”103 The idea that Hegel has in mind when he talks of natural consciousness testing criteria for truth can be understood by comparison with any network of beliefs. First, one must imagine a given concept to consist of a handful of mutually consistent beliefs. The concept encounters an anomalous phenomenon that contradicts one or more of the beliefs. In this case, there are two options: either the original set of beliefs must be juggled and revised so that the new phenomenon can fit into it without contradiction or the entire concept must be rejected as contradictory and a new one constructed on the basis of the new phenomenon. Thus, when one tests a belief, two things are actually being tested – the given belief and the belief system, as a whole. In this way a given anomalous 100 102

Hegel, PhS, p. 52; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 74–75. Hegel, PhS, p. 54; Jub., vol. 2, p. 77.

101 103

Hegel, PhS, p. 52; Jub., vol. 2, p. 75. Hegel, PhS, p. 54; Jub., vol. 2, p. 77.


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or contradictory phenomenon can initiate a crisis in the belief system, which leads to its modification or ultimate rejection. Belief systems thus come to replace one another, and with each new system comes a new conception of objectivity.104 Hegel’s phenomenological procedure relies exclusively on internal criteria for truth, that is, criteria that are contained within consciousness itself. It can have no reference to anything beyond consciousness if it is to resolve the skeptical problems generated by the thing-in-itself. Internal consistency is thus a fundamental criterion for any coherence theory of truth, according to which individual beliefs have their meaning only in relation to a larger network of truth claims. The collective set of beliefs determines what is true and what is false, and these beliefs must be in harmony with one another. The task of natural consciousness is to examine the individual accounts of objectivity for consistency. Any network of beliefs must strive to maintain internal consistency since contradictions in a given notion will ultimately cause it to collapse. Thus, the defender of a given theory must try to keep the individual truth claims mutually consistent. When this is not possible, then the notion must be abandoned and replaced by a new, more consistent one. The criterion of internal consistency furnishes a logical procedure for adjudicating between individual isolated concepts, but important aspects of the dialectical procedure are still lacking. From the criterion of internal consistency alone, there is still no waxing effect or developmental aspect in the movement since one notion or paradigm simply replaces another. The second criterion, completeness, ensures the cumulative effect in the movement. All concepts rely on hidden presuppositions, which are made explicit in the course of the dialectical movement. When they come to the surface, they show the necessity of further explanations of things that the original concepts took for granted. For example, any given account of objectivity necessarily implies an account of the thinking subject. Likewise, any account of a given subject implies a larger account of several thinking subjects that mutually shape and determine each other. In this way each notion becomes “higher and richer than its predecessor.”105 Thus, Hegel’s dialectical methodology evinces a developmental aspect which must be traced and examined in a developmental fashion. The goal is to reach the final, completely determined account in the final section, “Absolute Knowing.” These criteria supply natural consciousness with all that is necessary to determine truth and objectivity and give Hegel’s dialectical methodology its characteristic form. First, the criteria are internal to consciousness 104 105

See Hegel, PhS, p. 54; Jub., vol. 2, p. 77: “in the alteration of the knowledge, the object itself alters for it too.” Hegel, SL, p. 54; Jub., vol. 4, p. 51.



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itself, and there is no external point of reference. Second, the dialectical movement works its way toward completeness and consistency. Hegel’s innovation with this dialectical procedure is the idea that truth claims change and develop over time, i.e., that there is not one static criterion for truth or a single concept that remains fixed eternally. All truth claims are finite and limited since they are determined by individual concepts of truth. Only the perspective of absolute knowing, which sees all truth claims in their organic interrelations, is an absolute perspective. The dialectic is Hegel’s procedure for reaching this absolute perspective. It allows him to expose the contradictions and inadequacies of all finite notions of truth. In this way the perspective of absolute knowing or science is justified. This is the task of the Phenomenology of Spirit. (2) Since I have already had occasion, in connection with the discussion of The Concept of Anxiety, to discuss Hegel’s notion of dialectical movement in the Science of Logic,106 it will suffice here simply to recall its most important characteristics. Whereas the Phenomenology examines general concepts or world-views for consistency, what is at stake in the Science of Logic is traditional concepts of metaphysics. Hegel’s thesis is that these traditional concepts are all interrelated and ultimately constitute an entire system of thought. His goal in the Science of Logic is to demonstrate those interrelations, which he considers to be necessary. Thus, the goals and the subject matter of the two works are quite different. The dialectical movement in the Science of Logic proceeds according to three steps or moments. At the first moment a given concept is posited (e.g., pure being). It is conceived as independent and entirely selfcontained. This concept is then analyzed accordingly on its own terms. In the course of the analysis, it comes out that the given concept is indeterminate when taken on its own. It must be demarcated or limited in some way in order to be determinate. This ushers in the second moment of the movement, i.e., that of negation. Thus, the second stage is characterized by the introduction of a new category, which negates the one which was originally posited. By examining specific concepts or categories Hegel tries to demonstrate that they necessarily imply their own negation or their own opposite. In this way the first category posits or produces its own negation. The negative concept is for this reason not random but rather necessary. The concept of north has only one opposite, i.e., south. South is thus its necessary negation or its determinate negation. The key is to understand by “negation” something like opposition or contrariety. The third stage involves grasping the two contrary concepts as a single unitary one. When one sees that the given concept and its negation are in fact contraries or opposites, then one realizes that there is a certain 106

Chapter 9, Section IV.


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arbitrariness in calling the one positive and the other negative, or giving priority to the one at the expense of the other. Being could not exist without the concept of nothingness and vice versa. Thus, the two opposite concepts mutually condition one another and stand on equal footing. The two concepts are congruent and together form a higher organic concept. Thus, being and nothing come together to form becoming; north and south come together to constitute the concept of latitudinal direction. The road to the north is by necessity also a road to the south, and at this higher conceptual level one sees the arbitrariness of giving priority to the one at the expense of the other and the error of regarding the individual component concepts as atomic and having an existence on their own. Thus, this third moment unites the two contrary concepts into a single higher one. In this way Hegel hopes to demonstrate the necessary interrelation of concepts. Thus, while the dialectic of the Phenomenology of Spirit proceeds by means of contradictions in general concepts or world-views, the dialectic of the Science of Logic is driven by the movement of opposite categories. While the categories in the Science of Logic purportedly move from immediacy (i.e., pure being) to determinate objectivity, there is not the same sense of accretion that one finds in the dialectic of the Phenomenology of Spirit. In the Phenomenology there is a movement from the microlevel (i.e., pure being) to the macrolevel (i.e., world-historical peoples). The dialectical movement becomes richer as it progresses and takes on a wider and wider perspective. By contrast, in The Science of Logic the categories are all more or less on the same level. Here the categories are analytically related and thus can flow into one another. The question is merely one of determining their exact interrelations. The categories are deduced analytically from the original starting point of pure being. By contrast, the notions of the Phenomenology are synthetically related, and new information is added and incorporated. Thus, although there is movement in the Science of Logic, there is less of a sense of a developmental progression in this dialectic. Hegel says that this movement constitutes a circle, and one could in principle begin anywhere. Now that the main characteristics of these two dialectical movements have been sketched and their differences made clear, I now return to Anti-Climacus’ text in order to determine to what degree the structure of his analyses follows these Hegelian patterns. B. Phenomenology and Dialectic in “The Forms of This Sickness.” An examination of Section C of Part One, entitled “The Forms of This Sickness,” reveals a number of salient features of Hegel’s dialectical methodology. It is the task of the present section to analyze these. Before one can appreciate the affinities with Hegel’s method, it is, however, crucial to determine the respective roles of the two parts of this section, namely,



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“A. Despair Considered Without Regard to Its Being Conscious or Not,” and “B. Despair as Defined by Consciousness.” Kierkegaard explains how he conceives the relationship between these two parts of the section in a draft in which he writes the following under the heading “C. The Forms of Despair”: “In this section I shall give a psychological description of the forms of despair as these appear in actuality, in actual persons, whereas in A107 despair was treated abstractly, as if it were not the despair of any person, and in B108 was developed in terms of consciousness as decisive in the definition of despair.”109 According to this account, the key is the distinction between an abstract analysis and a concrete one: Section A will examine despair abstractly, while Section B will give a concrete analysis or will be concerned with what Anti-Climacus calls “actuality.” What does Anti-Climacus understand by “abstract” and “concrete” in this context? In his introductory words to Section C, he explains that an abstract analysis will examine despair in terms of its component categories: The forms of despair may be arrived at abstractly by reflecting upon the constituents of which the self as a synthesis is composed. The self is composed of infinitude and finitude. However, this synthesis is a relation, and a relation that, even though it is derived, relates itself to itself, which is freedom. The self is freedom. But freedom is the dialectical aspect of the categories of possibility and necessity.110

The abstract analysis of despair that is carried out in A analyzes despair according to the categories of infinitude and finitude, possibility and necessity. These are abstract categories, and for this reason the analysis is abstract. In order to give this abstract analysis, one must abstract from consciousness. By contrast, in order to give a concrete analysis, one must concentrate on consciousness and allow it to determine the order of the discussion. This is what happens in Section B. There despair is considered in terms of various forms of consciousness. Both Sections A and B display different elements of the Hegelian dialectic.111 I now turn to examine each of these in order. (1) The dialectic of Section A concerns despair analyzed according to the abstract categories of, first, finitude and infinitude and, then, 107 108 109 110 111

I.e., “Despair Considered Without Regard to Its Being Conscious or Not,” SUD, pp. 29–42; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 142–154. I.e., “Despair as Defined by Consciousness,” SUD, pp. 42–49; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 154–161. SUD, Supplement, p. 151; Pap. VIII-2 B 151. SUD, p. 29; SV1, vol. 11, p. 142. Kierkegaard says of these sections: “Both forms are forms of an unhappy consciousness”(SUD, Supplement, p. 150; Pap. VIII-2 B 150.8). Despite this direct reference to Hegel’s concept of the unhappy consciousness, there is little in common with the actual content of Hegel’s analysis. This connection is explored by Daniel Berthold-Bond in his “Lunar Musings? An Investigation of Hegel’s and Kierkegaard’s Portraits of Despair,” op. cit., pp. 33–59.


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possibility and necessity. The conception of a human being as a synthesis of finitude and infinitude was already present in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.112 The result rendered by these categories is two sets of positions, which are examined in order: a. Despair as Defined by Finitude/Infinitude α. Infinitude’s Despair Is to Lack Finitude β. Finitude’s Despair Is to Lack Infinitude b. Despair as Defined by Possibility/Necessity α. Possibility’s Despair Is to Lack Necessity β. Necessity’s Despair Is to Lack Possibility The dialectic of this section resembles the movement of The Science of Logic, where categories are determined in relation to one another. As was just seen, in The Science of Logic there is a movement in that one category determines the next and thus dictates a movement beyond itself. Being determines nothing, and both together determine the category of becoming. Individual categories posit their opposites, and thus new categories follow from previous ones. In The Sickness unto Death there is a dialectical relation between the opposite concepts of finitude/infinitude and possibility/necessity, which follows this Hegelian model. However, there is a disanalogy since there is no obvious relation between the move from the categories of finitude/infinitude to those of possibility/necessity. The one category determines the other (i.e., finitude and infinitude mutually determine each other as do possibility and necessity), but there is no attempt to establish a logical connection or transition between these pairs. Anti-Climacus’ dialectical movement can be graphically represented as follows:

The movements here seem to be simply replacement changes and not a movement dictated by the logic of the dialectic itself. Due to this fact, 112

CUP1, p. 221; SKS, vol. 7, p. 202. CUP1, p. 302; SKS, vol. 7, p. 275.



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there is no accretion or increasing levels of sophistication here. The categories imply one another reciprocally, but there is no further movement. The notion of despair does not become higher or richer. Thus, the order of these analyses is more or less interchangeable. It does not matter if finitude is treated before or after infinitude, or if these two categories are treated before or after the categories of possibility and necessity. (2) Section B, “Despair as Defined by Consciousness,” seems to have more affinities with the dialectic of the Phenomenology of Spirit in that one finds a genuine phenomenological analysis along Hegelian lines. Now the dialectic is no longer determined by specific categories; instead, consciousness is the determining factor. The different stages represent increasingly higher levels of consciousness of despair. Given that consciousness is the key, this analysis can be seen as Anti-Climacus’ phenomenology. The previous analysis was dialectical but not phenomenological, i.e., although there was a kind of dialectical movement between the pairs of categories, the discussion was not primarily concerned with tracing the developing forms of consciousness. Here the dialectic runs through the following stages: a. The Despair that is ignorant of being despair, or the despairing ignorance of having a self and an eternal self. b. 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. α. In Despair not to will to be oneself: Despair in weakness. (1) Despair over the earthly or over something earthly. (2) Despair of the eternal or over oneself. β. In Despair to will to be oneself: Defiance. Like the previous dialectical movement, this analysis also moves by virtue of opposite terms: first being ignorant of being despair and then being conscious of being despair, then in despair first not to will to be oneself and then to will to be oneself, and finally first despair over the earthly and then despair of the eternal. While these are all opposite terms in some sense, they are not abstract categories such as those examined in A. Moreover, this dialectical movement is qualitatively different from the previous one. There is more at work than simply the replacement of individual categories with others. There seems to be a determinate linear progression, and the order of the stages cannot be changed or revised without harming the developmental movement of thought. In contrast to the previous account, this dialectical movement has striking similarities with the dialectic of the Phenomenology of Spirit.


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Unlike the previous one, this dialectic is characterized by a genuinely progressive dynamic movement. Just as the forms of consciousness in the Phenomenology become more and more sophisticated and elaborate as the dialectic progresses, so also the levels of despair increase gradually in Anti-Climacus’ phenomenology. The criterion for the level of despair is that of self-consciousness. Anti-Climacus explains: “The ever increasing intensity of despair depends upon the degree of consciousness or is proportionate to its increase: the greater the degree of consciousness, the more intensive the despair.”113 For Hegel, the concept becomes more and more sophisticated as natural consciousness works its way through the various stages. For Anti-Climacus, each level of despair is more intense as the level of consciousness increases with it. The cumulative or progressive aspect of Hegel’s dialectic is also present in Anti-Climacus’ dialectic of despair. There is a sense of one stage leading to another. In describing the relation between two forms of despair here, Anti-Climacus writes: “there is also an essential advance in consciousness of the self. This formula, to despair over the earthly, is then a dialectical initial expression for the next form of despair.”114 This formulation implies that the forms of despair contain points of continuity and are not simply replacement changes. On the contrary, they develop out of one another. As has been seen, for Hegel, science is justified by a demonstration of the internal contradictions of all dualistic or finite notions. Just as the dialectic of the Phenomenology must run through every dualistic position and expose their internal contradictions before reaching absolute knowing, so also Anti-Climacus’ phenomenology must run through all forms of negativity: “Despair itself is a negativity; ignorance of it, a new negativity. However, to reach the truth, one must go through every negativity.”115 Thus, the negative aspect of Hegel’s phenomenology is also present here in Anti-Climacus’ account of despair. Of course, the dialectical movement in A is also negative in the sense that the individual forms of despair are criticized, but there the negativity does not lead the dialectic anywhere determinate. Here, by contrast, positions are negated in order that the dialectic can progress toward “the truth.” The result of this progressive effect is that the dialectical movement evinces a τ ελoς ´ in that it moves toward a determinate end.116 Just as Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit aims to reach the level of science and has this as a fixed τ ελoς, ´ so also Anti-Climacus’ dialectic has an end towards which it strives. The τ ελoς ´ of the dialectic of despair is to reach 113

114 116

SUD, p. 42; SV1, vol. 11, p. 154. See also SUD, p. 29; SV1, vol. 11, p. 142: “Generally speaking, consciousness – that is, self-consciousness – is decisive with regard to the self. The more consciousness, the more self; the more consciousness, the more will; the more will, the more self.” 115 SUD, p. 44; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 156–157. SUD, p. 60; SV1, vol. 11, p. 172. See Arne Grøn, “Kierkegaards Phänomenologie?” op. cit., p. 109.



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consciousness of itself as despair. The movement begins with consciousness being unaware of being in despair and moves through stages of greater and greater clarity until it reaches complete self-transparency in defiance. This ultimate level of despair is, for Anti-Climacus, the despair of the devil. He writes: “The devil’s despair is the most intensive despair, for the devil is sheer spirit and hence unqualified consciousness and transparency; there is no obscurity in the devil that could serve as a mitigating excuse. Therefore, his despair is the most absolute defiance. This is despair at its maximum.”117 The absolute defiance of the devil is the end-point of the dialectic and thus the inverted analogue to Hegel’s notion of absolute knowing. Finally, in this dialectical movement there is an analogue to Hegel’s phenomenological actor, natural consciousness. Anti-Climacus begins by talking about “the natural man,”118 which is of course a concept from the Christian tradition intended to denote the pagan or the individual who has not yet become a Christian.119 It is similar to the concept that Hegel draws on with the term, “natural consciousness.” As has been seen, for Hegel, the dialectic begins with the standpoint of common-sense dualism. This is the standpoint represented by natural consciousness, which is unenlightened by scientific knowing. So also in theology, the natural man is unenlightened by the truth of Christianity. For both Hegel and Anti-Climacus, the dialectic must begin with pure immediacy. Thus, AntiClimacus refers to the natural man as “the man of immediacy.”120 This suggests that Kierkegaard is quite aware that he is following the pattern of Hegel’s dialectic. By virtue of these features, the analysis here in Section B resembles more closely Hegel’s dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit than the discussion in A. While A displays certain elements of dialectical thinking, it is not a phenomenological analysis. While the dialectic here in B maintains the binary movement between pairs of complementary terms, it, unlike A, is linear and progressive. This can be represented as follows:

117 118 119

120

SUD, p. 42; SV1, vol. 11, p. 154. SUD, p. 45; SV1, vol. 11, p. 157. See also SUD, p. 8; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 122–123. See 1 Corinthians 2.14–15: “The [natural] man [νθρωπoς ψυχıκoς ` ] does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.” SUD, p. 51; SV1, vol. 11, p. 163.


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Here the complementary pairs are themselves related and develop out of one another. Neither is their sequence interchangeable nor is the movement as a whole reversible. The points of commonality here between the dialectic in B and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit are too obvious and too numerous to be accidental. Key words that Anti-Climacus employs here, such as “spirit,” “dialectic,” “immediacy” and “the natural man,” all self-consciously recall terms from Hegel’s philosophical terminology. These words in a sense announce to the reader the affinities with Hegel’s philosophy. Thus, Kierkegaard has Anti-Climacus use Hegel’s methodology here openly and unapologetically. C. Phenomenology and Dialectic in “The Continuance of Sin.” I now turn to Part Two of the work and in particular Section B, “The Continuance of Sin,” which also seems to display the form of a Hegelian dialectic. Section A discusses the notion of sin generally, and Section B offers a taxonomy of forms of despair in accordance with the notion of sin. The forms of despair under this heading are as follows: A. The Sin of Despairing over One’s Sin B. The Sin of Despairing of the Forgiveness of Sins (Offense) C. The Sin of Dismissing Christianity modo ponendo, of declaring it to be untruth The form of this dialectical triad has striking similarities with the analysis of “Despair as Defined by Consciousness,” which was just examined. Here the movement is one of increasing sinfulness or a movement away from faith.121 Once again Anti-Climacus is careful to distinguish between the individual analyses and to define their relationships vis-à-vis one another. He says that the entire first part of the work gives a secular analysis of despair in that it examines the concept only with respect to a human being. By contrast, Part Two is concerned with despair from a Christian point of view and thus examines it not just in a human being but rather in the human being conceived as being before God. Anti-Climacus explains the difference between the first and second parts of the work at the beginning of Part Two as follows: The preceding section concentrated on pointing out a gradation in the consciousness of the self. . . . This whole deliberation must now dialectically take a new direction. The point is that the previously considered gradation in the consciousness of the self is within the category of the human self, or the self whose criterion is man. But this self takes on a new quality and qualification by being a self directly before God. This self is no longer the

121

SUD, p. 116fn.; SV1, vol. 11, p. 226fn.



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merely human self but is what I . . . would call the theological self, the self directly before God.122

This explains why despair is interpreted as sin in Part Two. Sin is of course a religious concept, and one can only be in sin if there is a relation to God. In his explanation of what it means to exist before God, Anti-Climacus implicitly draws on Hegel’s notion of recognition that plays the key role in the dialectic of lord and bondsman in the Phenomenology of Spirit.123 Hegel attempts to demonstrate that, in order to be a human subject, intersubjective recognition from an equal is a necessary presupposition. The irony of the position of the master is that he cannot achieve the status of personhood since the recognition of a slave is not valid. Anti-Climacus refers to this notion of recognition when he discusses what it means to exist before God: A cattleman who (if this were possible) is a self directly before his cattle is a very low self, and, similarly, a master who is a self directly before his slaves is actually no self – for in both cases a criterion is lacking. The child who previously has had only his parents as a criterion becomes a self as an adult by getting the state as a criterion, but what an infinite accent falls on the self by having God as the criterion!124

The allusion to the master and his slaves seems in this context to recall Hegel’s account of lordship and bondage. The concept of recognition is key to interpreting what Anti-Climacus means by the levels of consciousness before God. Given that one’s own consciousness is determined by the intersubjective recognition of the other, it follows that the status of the other is the determining factor in one’s own level of consciousness. If the other is a slave or a cow as in Anti-Climacus’ example, then there is a low level of consciousness. If the other is God, then one’s consciousness is accordingly high; moreover, there will be variations of this heightened consciousness in accordance with one’s conception of God. Anti-Climacus writes: “Despair is intensified in relation to the consciousness of the self, but the self is intensified in relation to the criterion for the self, infinitely when God is the criterion. In fact, the greater the conception of God, the more self there is; the more self, the greater the conception of God.”125 The dialectical movement here, like the previous one, increases in accordance with the degree of consciousness. Again the movement is from lesser to greater consciousness. Anti-Climacus explains this as follows: “Therefore ‘the continuance of sin,’ which is now to be discussed, does not mean the particular new sins as much as the state of sin, which in 122 123 124

SUD, p. 79; SV1, vol. 11, p. 191. Hegel, PhS, pp. 111–119; Jub., vol. 2, pp. 148–158. 125 SUD, p. 80; SV1, vol. 11, p. 192. SUD, p. 79; SV1, vol. 11, p. 191.


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turn becomes the internal intensification of sin, a conscious remaining in the state of sin, so that the law of motion in intensification, here as everywhere else, is inward, in greater and greater intensity of consciousness.”126 This implies that despair is again to be given a phenomenological analysis since despair and sin are analyzed in accordance with consciousness. Moreover, there will be a dialectical movement that develops from a lower to a higher level as in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Thus, the final stage, “The Sin of Dismissing Christianity,” is called “the highest intensity of despair.”127 The interpretation of this analysis as phenomenological in Hegel’s sense is supported by Anti-Climacus’ discussion of the importance of internal consistency, which is, as was seen, one of the most important criteria for Hegel’s dialectical method. Here Anti-Climacus writes: “Every existence that is within the qualification spirit, even if only on its own responsibility and at its own risk, has an essential interior consistency and a consistency in something higher, at least in an idea.”128 Anti-Climacus seems to say with Hegel that every concept is governed by internal consistency. Like Hegel, Anti-Climacus sees the breakdown in the criterion as the breakdown of the particular figure of consciousness: “The slightest inconsistency is an enormous loss, for, after all, he loses consistency. In that very moment, the spell is perhaps broken, the mysterious power that bound all his capacities in harmony is diminished, the coiled spring is slackened; everything perhaps becomes a chaos in which the capacities in mutiny battle one another and plunge the self into suffering.”129 This recalls the passage, quoted previously,130 from the Introduction to the Phenomenology where Hegel refers to the dialectical movement as “the way of despair.”131 There is a word-play at work here since the German word for despair, “Verzweiflung,” is etymologically related to the word for doubt, “Zweifel.” The same linguistic connection exists in Danish with the words “Fortvivlelse,” Anti-Climacus’ word for “despair,” and “Tvivl” or doubt. In Hegel, the doubt [Zweifel] is caused by the internal contradictions and leads natural consciousness to despair [Verzweiflung]. Thus, the road of dialectical doubt in the Phenomenology is simultaneously the “way of despair.” Here Anti-Climacus seems to have this specific passage in mind. This analysis, like that of “Despair as Defined by Consciousness” discussed previously, is phenomenological in the sense that it examines different forms of consciousness. Moreover, it is dialectical in the same way Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is dialectical since it displays the same linear 126 127 129 131

SUD, p. 108f.; SV1, vol. 11, p. 218. 128 SUD, p. 107; SV1, vol. 11, p. 217. SUD, p. 125; SV1, vol. 11, p. 234. 130 See Chapter 5, Section III, B, p. 265. SUD, p. 107; SV1, vol. 11, p. 217. Hegel, PhS, p. 49; Jub., vol. 2, p. 71: “The road can therefore be regarded as the pathway of doubt [Zweifel], or more precisely as the way of despair [Verzweiflung].”



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progression. The dialectic here operates explicitly with the criterion of internal consistency. In addition, it shows accumulation or accretion and has a definite teleology. Unlike the two dialectical movements in Part One, this analysis does not work with complementary pairs of opposites as is characteristic of the Science of Logic; instead, one notion or conception of sin seems to lead to the next organically in the way Hegel’s dialectical movement in the Phenomenology proceeds. Thus, of the three discussions that have been examined, this one follows Hegel’s dialectical and phenomenological methodology most closely. D. A Change in Position? Hegel’s conception of speculative logic is inextricably bound together with his philosophical methodology. As has been seen previously, some of Kierkegaard’s earlier pseudonyms seemed to be critical of different aspects of Hegel’s speculative logic. One recalls Vigilius Haufniensis’ criticism of movement in logic and Johannes Climacus’ criticism of the notion of an organic system. Thus, the use of Hegel’s dialectical methodology in The Sickness unto Death raises interesting questions about the consistency of Kierkegaard’s overall position with regard to Hegel’s logic. In this work, Anti-Climacus uses aspects of Hegel’s methodology, which were criticized by earlier pseudonyms. I will explore a couple of these in what follows. (1) Anti-Climacus’ use of Hegel’s dialectical method here seems to indicate a change in Kierkegaard’s position on the ongoing issue of the Aufhebung of the law of excluded middle in Hegel’s speculative logic. As has been seen previously, this topic was debated in a series of articles by Sibbern, Mynster, Heiberg, and Martensen in 1838–39 and continued to be an issue into the 1840s with Mynster’s rejoinder. As has also been seen,132 in Either/Or Judge Wilhelm argues that in abstract thought and logic, the law of excluded middle can be sublated and suspended, but in the sphere of existence and actuality, the principle of the either/or holds. This position is reconfirmed by Johannes Climacus in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.133 Here in The Sickness unto Death, there seems to a change in position and an admission of the validity of Hegel’s sublation of the law of excluded middle even in the sphere of actuality, which is the sphere of despair. In Section A, “Despair Considered Without Regard to Its Being Conscious or Not,” the self is defined as a synthesis, first, of infinitude and finitude and then of possibility and necessity. These opposite terms are mediated and brought together in the individual subject. The self is always a dialectical balance between these pairs of opposing categories. The self is thus not a homogeneous unit but rather a synthesis of conflicting features. Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms criticized speculative philosophy earlier for reducing the individual human subject and incorporating him 132

Chapter 4, Sections I–II.

133

Chapter 11, Section IX.


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into the system. They argue that the individual is an absolute category not subject to mediation of this kind. Here, by contrast, the subject is conceived as a complex aggregate of mutually contradicting categories, which can be analyzed apart from the whole person. This seems to imply that the individual subject can indeed be reduced to its component parts as is done in these analyses. In the dialectical methodology of Section A, “Despair Considered Without Regard to Its Being Conscious or Not,” individual positions are determined by individual categories, which are themselves determined by their opposites. This is significant since it is precisely what Hegel uses as an argument for his criticism of the law of excluded middle. AntiClimacus says directly that each term or aspect of despair is determined by its negation or opposite. He explains the heading, “Infinitude’s Despair Is to Lack Finitude,” as follows: That this is so is due to the dialectic inherent in the self as a synthesis, and therefore each constituent is its opposite. No form of despair can be defined directly (that is, undialectically), but only by reflecting upon its opposite. The condition of the person in despair can be described directly, as the poet in fact does by giving him lines to speak. But the despair can be defined only by way of its opposite, and if the lines are to have any poetic value, the coloring of the expression must contain the reflection of the dialectical opposite.134

Likewise, in introducing what he calls “Despair in Weakness” in Section B, Anti-Climacus writes: “To call this form despair in weakness already casts a reflection on the second form, β, in despair to will to be oneself. Thus the opposites are only relative.”135 By stating that opposite terms are only finite or relative, he implies that they can be overcome. The one form of despair implies the other. Hegel argues in precisely this fashion that concepts are determined by their opposites. Given that they are mutually determined, concepts exist only in binary or organic relations, and thus there is at bottom, argues Hegel, a conceptual unity of the pairs.136 It is by means of this principle that Hegel claims that contradictions, understood as contraries, can be overcome. One might argue that Kierkegaard is still consistent with his earlier position since Section A treats despair abstractly, and in the realm of abstraction, mediation is possible. Thus, there is, in principle, no problem if the abstract categories infinitude and finitude, necessity and possibility determine each other and are mediated dialectically. It seems at first glance that Section A operates at the level of abstract thought since it treats the notion of despair abstractly, while the forms of despair treated in B are in the realm of actuality, which, according to the view of the 134 135

SUD, p. 30; SV1, vol. 11, p. 143. See SUD, p. 33; SV1, vol. 11, p. 146. 136 Hegel, SL, p. 438; Jub., vol. 4, p. 544. SUD, p. 49; SV1, vol. 11, p. 161.



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earlier pseudonyms, should admit of no mediation.137 But upon further investigation, this distinction becomes rather problematic. First in the draft quoted previously, Kierkegaard says directly that the entire section, “The Forms of this Sickness,” including Section A, operates at the level of actuality. He writes: “In this section I shall give a psychological description of the forms of despair as these appear in actuality, in actual persons.”138 Thus, the question of an abstract analysis or a concrete one seems to be irrelevant since both analyses are concerned with actuality, which should admit no mediation. Moreover, Kierkegaard argued formerly that the faith of the individual belongs to the sphere of actuality. Now in Section A, Anti-Climacus also discusses faith, which would seem to indicate that this analysis in general falls under the heading of actuality. He writes: The believer has the ever infallible antidote for despair – possibility – because for God everything is possible at every moment. This is the good health of faith that resolves contradictions. The contradiction here is that, humanly speaking, downfall is certain, but that there is possibility nonetheless. Good health generally means the ability to resolve contradictions. For example, in the realm of the bodily or physical, a draft is a contradiction, for a draft is disparately or undialectically cold and warm, but a good healthy body resolves this contradiction and does not notice the draft. So also with faith.139

There is much that could be discussed about this passage, but I confine myself to the single point at issue. Anti-Climacus’ allusion to faith in this context seems to confirm that he is concerned with the sphere of actuality here even though, according to the earlier pseudonyms, mediation is not applicable to actuality. (2) The scope of the law of excluded middle is not the only issue on which there seems to be a change in position. In the Concept of Anxiety Vigilius Haufniensis criticized speculative logic for introducing movement into the field of logic. This criticism was repeated by Johannes Climacus in the Postscript.140 The earlier pseudonyms argued that logic is a realm of fixed necessity in which everything is already finished and complete. Thus, in this sphere everything is static. By contrast, human life is always in movement. The reason for the movement is that the human subject is always striving. In The Sickness Unto Death Anti-Climacus likewise believes that the subject is in a state of constant change and development: “Yet every moment that a self exists, it is in a process of becoming, for 137

138 139

From the passage cited earlier (SUD, Supplement, p. 151; Pap. VIII-2 B 151) Kierkegaard seems to imply that all the forms of consciousness described in C are in the realm of actuality: “In this section I shall give a psychological description of the forms of despair as they appear in actuality, in actual persons.” SUD, Supplement, p. 151; Pap. VIII-2 B 151. 140 CUP1, p. 109; SKS, vol. 7, p. 106. SUD, pp. 39–40; SV1, vol. 11, p. 152.


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` δυναµıν ´ the self κατα [in potentiality] does not actually exist, is simply that which ought to come into existence.”141 What is different here is not the assessment of the subject but of the nature of logic. The movement in the forms of despair is a logical one, which is, at least in A (“Despair Considered Without Regard to Its Being Conscious or Not”), dictated by logical categories. Here Kierkegaard seems to see movement in logic as legitimate. Although the analysis is psychological, the categories of logic are clearly responsible for its movement. (3) Moreover, it seems that the position here is different from that of earlier pseudonyms with regard to systematic philosophy. One recalls Johannes Climacus’ impassioned criticisms of the system in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, where speculative philosophy is reproached for forgetting the individual and for trying to understand Christianity. The criticism of the system recurs throughout Kierkegaard’s authorship at least up until this point. Here, oddly enough, Kierkegaard has Anti-Climacus give a systematic account of the concept of despair, which very closely follows a Hegelian pattern. Just as Hegel claims that concepts can only be understood when seen in their organic relation to other concepts, so also Anti-Climacus claims that the concept of despair can only be properly understood when its different forms are differentiated and understood in relation to one another. Thus, despair can only be properly grasped when seen in a systematic context. This is a very Hegelian conception of system and a systematic understanding of a concept.142 It is difficult to know how ultimately to interpret these apparent changes of position. They might be attributed to the fact that Kierkegaard is simply portraying different and even inconsistent views in the name of different pseudonyms. It is in any case doubtful that he came to reject his earlier position entirely since there are examples in this later period of him appealing to the law of excluded middle in the way that was done in Either/Or.143 I observed earlier that the criticisms of the previous pseudonyms were usually aimed not at a specific principle or doctrine in Hegel’s own philosophy but rather at some Danish imitator. The conclusion that was reached from those analyses was that Kierkegaard or his pseudonyms in fact had no serious objection to Hegel’s philosophy per se. The criticism was instead directed at some aspect of the thought or persons of the Danish Hegelians. That Kierkegaard himself here employs Hegelian methodology may be seen as a confirmation of this interpretation. In a sense Kierkegaard has not changed his position 141 142 143

SUD, p. 30; SV1, vol. 11, p. 142. This point has been noted by Adorno in his classic Kierkegaard, Construction of the Aesthetic, tr. by Robert Hullot-Kentor, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1989, pp. 3–4. E.g., The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air: WA, pp. 21–24; SV1, vol. 11, pp. 24–26. WA, p. 34; SV1, vol. 11, p. 36. Two Ethical-Religious Essays. WA, p. 60; SV1, vol. 11, p. 64. WA, p. 63; SV1, vol. 11, p. 67. PC, p. 227; SV1, vol. 12, p. 208.



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here since he never seriously disagreed with Hegel’s own works to begin with. One can see Kierkegaard’s position on these doctrines as consistent with the following observations. (1) The extension of the principle of mediation to the realm of actuality is in a sense a trivial change since the substantive point, i.e., that he grants the principle generally, is the main one, as was previously established in Either/Or. (2) The original criticism of movement in logic was that true movement exists only in the realm of actuality and that it is a mistake to call the development of logical concepts “movement” since that development is tautological. But it will be noted here that the criticism is not of the development of concepts in logic but rather of the misnomer of using the word “movement” to describe it. Thus, Kierkegaard never had an objection to Hegel’s dialectical development of concepts, and thus he can avail himself of it here. (3) The earlier criticisms of the system seemed to be aimed at specific individuals who were so absorbed in a systematic understanding of world history that they forgot their own ethical position in the world. In previous analyses I argued that this moral criticism had nothing to do with Hegel’s concept of system. Whatever it was that Kierkegaard took his earlier pseudonyms to be criticizing with the critique of the system, it was something different from Hegel’s understanding of a systematic analysis of a concept, which Anti-Climacus clearly embraces. Kierkegaard has no objection to understanding a concept, in this case despair, in terms of its systematic relations. Although there is virtually no discussion of the content of Hegel’s philosophy in The Sickness unto Death, as has been demonstrated, the work shows a striking use of Hegel’s dialectical method. In many ways Kierkegaard is engaged in a much more serious discussion with Hegel here than when he mentions him by name elsewhere. What is remarkable is the fact that Hegel is never mentioned in the text and that there is no evidence of a renewed study of his phenomenological or dialectical method in the journals and papers. What is most surprising for some readers is that by employing this Hegelian methodology, Kierkegaard has Anti-Climacus use a number of philosophical principles, such as mediation and movement in logic, of which his earlier pseudonyms were critical. This indicates that he sees in Hegel’s philosophy at this late stage in his career something positive that he can borrow and use to his own ends. Here he has more in common with Hegel than his earlier negative rhetoric would allow one to believe. Moreover, although there is no explicit statement of his methodology here, Kierkegaard’s use of words such as “spirit,” “dialectic,” and “immediacy” makes it clear that he makes no effort to hide his appropriation of aspects of Hegel’s thought or method. The oft-quoted opening


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lines of Part One of the work immediately call to mind the philosophical terminology from the German idealist tradition: “A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self ? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation.”144 This is the standard passage that interpreters tend to cite when defending the claim about either Hegel’s positive influence or Kierkegaard’s ironic parody of him. Many commentators attempt to trace this passage back to some specific locus in the works of Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, or someone else. But it is a mistake to regard this passage as referring to one of these figures in such a specific manner. It seems as if Kierkegaard, by beginning in this way, wants expressly to remind his readers of this tradition of philosophy and situate his own work in relation to it. Thus, the point of this passage is merely to set a certain tone for his work and not to take up a polemic with some specific thinker. Earlier I mentioned the thesis that Kierkegaard’s use of Hegel’s dialectical method is intended to be ironic. According to this view, with his use of a dialectical procedure, Kierkegaard is satirizing and criticizing Hegel instead of borrowing something constructive from him. This claim is based on passages like the one cited in the previous paragraph, in which Anti-Climacus avails himself of some of the jargon and literary style of the tradition of German idealism. The onus of proof, of course, lies on the one holding the view that the work is ironic; the proponent of this view must provide evidence, both text internal and external, to support the claim. While there are, to be sure, individual examples in the text of irony, this falls far short of supporting the thesis that the structure and methodology of virtually the entire work are intended in an ironic fashion. Moreover, this interpretation finds no support in the journals, when Kierkegaard discusses the forms of despair in his drafts of The Sickness unto Death; here there is no hint of irony or satire in relation to Hegel or the dialectical method. Another thing that speaks against the ironic reading is the fact that Hegel’s philosophy was no longer in vogue in 1849 when The Sickness unto Death appeared. The heyday of Hegelianism in Denmark had already come and gone. This would seem to undermine the point of writing a book that covertly satirizes Hegel’s philosophy. An elaborate joke of this kind could only work with a topic that was current and that the author could assume his readers to be familiar with. If, however, the trend had already passed, and the public no longer had any real stake in it, then the satire and the irony would be lost. Objects of satire have only a limited lifetime. Dated satirical newspapers and journals lose their interest since with the passage of time the personalities satirized gradually become 144

SUD, p. 13; SV1, vol. 11, p. 127.



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forgotten as do the issues that exercised them. At some point journals of this kind are only amusing to the historian since no one else can understand the satirical references. To be sure, Hegel’s philosophy was still known in 1849, but it was no longer something that people were engaged in or were obliged to take a stand on. Kierkegaard could certainly not expect the general reader to be so familiar with Hegel’s dialectical methodology and his phenomenology that the fine points of the joke could be successful. Moreover, this ironic interpretation begs the question since it presupposes a Hegel critique prior to any evidence. In order to claim that The Sickness unto Death is an ironic work intended to criticize Hegel, one must, on the basis of other reasons, already have determined that Kierkegaard was interested in criticizing him. But this assumption is not argued for. The results of this study have shown that Kierkegaard in fact did not have the polemic with Hegel that he is so often thought to have had. While he had a polemic against a number of individual Hegelians, Kierkegaard’s view of Hegel himself seems to be generally rather positive. Thus, it is by no means clear why Kierkegaard would at this point be interested in an ironic critique of Hegel. All of this leads to the conclusion that Kierkegaard’s use of Hegel’s method here is not ironic but is rather one more case of appropriation. In this study I have divided Kierkegaard’s authorship into three distinct stages. The first stage demonstrated an overt and positive appropriation of some aspects of Hegel’s thought. The second stage was characterized by a polemical stance vis-à-vis Hegelianism. The third stage, which begins around 1847 after The Book on Adler, is characterized by the absence of Hegel as an overt theme on Kierkegaard’s intellectual agenda. While it is impossible to sketch an entire period with only a single work, The Sickness unto Death illustrates at least one aspect of this third period well, i.e., the positive use of Hegel’s philosophy. I will contrast this work with some of the works featured in the first two periods in order to understand more precisely what is characteristic about this third period. Like the first period, there is a positive influence of Hegel on Kierkegaard; the influence here is clearly above all in point of philosophical methodology. Kierkegaard has his pseudonym freely make use of Hegel’s conception of dialectic and phenomenology. However, unlike From the Papers of One Still Living, The Concept of Irony, and Either/Or (all texts from the first period), The Sickness unto Death does not publicize its appropriation of Hegel. One recalls the glowing allusions to Hegel’s logic in the opening pages of From the Papers of One Still Living, the incessant quotations from and analyses of Hegel’s primary texts in The Concept of Irony, and finally, the direct references to Hegel’s interpretation of Antigone and the unhappy consciousness in Either/Or. By contrast, The Sickness unto Death uses Hegel in its very methodology and structure, yet


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in the entire book there is never any direct reference to Hegel himself. Thus, Kierkegaard no longer has any need to announce his use of Hegel as in the first period. He can simply borrow from him without feeling the need to take any ideological stand with regard to Hegelianism, as seemed to be the case previously. Hegel then becomes in this third period simply another source of inspiration for the eclectic Kierkegaard, which he can quietly appropriate without fanfare. Like the second period, there is also here an extended polemic against specific individuals, above all Martensen. But unlike that period, the polemic here is not couched in terms of Martensen’s Hegelianism. When one recalls the highly polemical Preface to Fear and Trembling and the highly polemical Introduction to The Concept of Anxiety, the contrast to The Sickness unto Death is clear. To be sure, The Sickness unto Death contains polemics, but Martensen is no longer criticized via Hegelian motifs as was the case earlier. Thus, while Kierkegaard still has nothing but disdain for Martensen, he no longer feels the need to criticize him in terms of the general discussion about Hegel in Denmark. Martensen is still the object of abuse, but this is couched in a different way. In The Sickness unto Death one can see the seeds of the later attack on the Church, which was in large part an attack on Martensen; this is the direction that Kierkegaard’s polemics move towards in this third period. Needless to say, this has nothing to do with Hegel. Thus, Hegel’s presence is unobtrusive in this third period. He is neither paraded as someone worthy of praise nor made indirectly the object of criticism or polemics. He seems no longer to be regarded as a live issue. Kierkegaard has, in some sense, moved on to other things and seems to have left Hegel behind along with Heiberg. There is no evidence of a renewed study of Hegel, and there are no longer any direct references or allusions to his primary texts. But certain Hegelian concepts and ideas, such as intersubjective recognition, the phenomenological method, and the dialectic, remain in Kierkegaard’s mind and stand available to him when needed. The change in Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel’s philosophy at this time can perhaps be explained by the change in the role that Hegelianism played in Danish intellectual life. Danish Hegelianism was at its zenith during the late 1830s and early 1840s around the time Kierkegaard took his degree. As was just noted, after this time Hegelianism ceased to be an object of discussion. As has been seen, during the period when Hegelianism was in vogue, Kierkegaard often criticized the Danish Hegelians and often formulated his own position in contrast to theirs. Now, however, after the Postscript and after Hegelianism has ceased to be the fashion, Kierkegaard’s position changes. Now that there is no danger of being called a Hegelian or of being associated with the Danish Hegelians, Kierkegaard has no qualms about using aspects of Hegel’s philosophy



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that suit his purposes. He can borrow from Hegel freely since he no longer feels the need to define himself in contrast to specific Hegelians. Thus, Kierkegaard’s changing orientation with respect to Hegel’s philosophy was largely dependent on the shifting sands of Danish intellectual life and had nothing to do with Hegel’s thought itself. In other words, Kierkegaard’s use or criticism of a given Hegelian position is dictated by the varying degree of importance of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark at the time and not by Kierkegaard’s considered opinions of Hegel’s thought by means of renewed study of the primary texts. Finally, the changes in position start to look much less radical when one considers that Kierkegaard had no qualms with borrowing different aspects of Hegel’s thought even during his most polemical period. Thus, it can hardly come as a surprise that he here avails himself of Hegel’s dialectical methodology. He had traced various dialectical movements from his earliest period.145 Moreover, he had also used a Hegelian dialectical structure in his published works, such as Either/Or.146 Thus, there is in principle nothing new or surprising about his use of it here. It is only surprising and difficult to explain if one presupposes that Kierkegaard had an ongoing criticism of Hegel. 145

Chapter 2, Section II.

146

Chapter 4, Sections III and V.

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14 KIERKEGAARD AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY: CONCLUSIONS, REFLECTIONS, AND REEVALUATIONS

Instead of Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, the present study might with equal justice be entitled Kierkegaard’s Relations to Danish Hegelianism since the investigation has again and again led back to the Danish context in which Hegel’s thought was employed and critically discussed at the time. However, the value of this study lies not so much in its treatment of Kierkegaard’s relation to the forgotten figures of the Danish Hegelian movement but rather in the ways in which the interpretation of Kierkegaard presented here will affect what has come to be the standard reading of nineteenth-century European philosophy. The emphasis on Kierkegaard’s relation to the Danish Hegelians will doubtless strike many readers as overly specialized and of purely historical interest. Yet, if the research put forth in the present investigation is correct, then the standard picture of Kierkegaard’s role in the development of nineteenth-century European philosophy will need to be substantially revised. The goal of the present chapter is to sketch the most significant of these revisions. In order to appreciate the importance of these, it will be necessary to cast a brief glance at the common picture of Kierkegaard’s place in European thought vis-à-vis Hegel that has been produced as a result of the general paradigm presented by Thulstrup and others. I will begin by reviewing the main conclusions of the present study in order to obtain an overview of the mass of information examined here. In the next section I will briefly sketch what I take to be the commonly accepted picture of Kierkegaard’s role in nineteenth-century thought and the most prevalent clichés associated with it. Then in the third section I will return to the main conclusions of the present investigation in order to see how they contradict this picture. In this context I will try to indicate how the results of this investigation call for a radical revision of this accepted view. In the fourth section, I wish to suggest that one of the fundamental misunderstandings in the Hegel-Kierkegaard relation stems from the fact that the two thinkers had radically different conceptions of the nature of philosophy in general. 596


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i. the results of the present study: attempt at an overview Given the length of this investigation, it will be useful to try to gain an overview of the overall development of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel as it has emerged in the various individual analyses. Once the main lines of the present interpretation come clearly into focus, it will be easier to juxtapose this interpretation to the traditional reading in order that the most important differences between the two might thereby become clearer. One of my main theses has been that Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel was not static but rather developed over a period of time and that this development contains at least three distinct periods. In what follows I will review these periods and give an account of what I take to be the characteristic features of each of them. A. The First Period: 1834–1843. The first period begins in 1834 with the earliest journal entries and Kierkegaard’s first article, “Another Defense of Woman’s Great Abilities.” This period reaches its apex in The Concept of Irony in 1841 and includes Either/Or. Shortly thereafter it comes to an end, roughly with Repetition in the fall of 1843. I have characterized this period generally as one in which Hegel exerted a more or less straightforwardly positive influence on Kierkegaard. I turn now to recall some examples of this positive influence in Kierkegaard’s early works. In Kierkegaard’s early journal entries and published essays, one finds no hint of any anti-Hegel polemic.1 On the contrary, one sees that he was interested in different aspects of Hegel’s philosophy, such as the theory of stages and the classification of the forms of art.2 The absence of a polemic is significant since this was a time when Hegelianism in Denmark was in full bloom through the work of Heiberg. While several authors attacked Heiberg for his dismissive and even offensive remarks about Christianity and for his claims about the superiority of Hegel’s philosophy over religion, Kierkegaard felt no need to join this chorus of critics. On the contrary, he was anxious to be accepted as a part of Heiberg’s circle. Kierkegaard’s first published book, From the Papers of One Still Living, displays many profoundly Hegelian aspects.3 Strikingly at odds with the ostensible subject-matter of the book as a review of Hans Christian Andersen’s novel, Only a Fiddler, the opening pages refer deferentially to specific aspects of Hegel’s logic. Even Hegel’s system is singled out for praise for its ability to capture “the great richness actuality has.”4 Kierkegaard lauds Hegel’s Logic as an “immortal work”5 and speaks glowingly of the 1 3 5

See, for example, Chapter 2, Section I. See Chapter 2, Section IV. EPW, p. 62fn.; SKS, vol. 1, p. 18fn.

2 4

See Chapter 2, Section II. EPW, p. 62; SKS, vol. 1, p. 18.


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beginning of philosophy without presuppositions, of the doctrine of immanent negation, and of the richness of the system generally. Moreover, the language of the text bespeaks a Hegelian influence throughout. Kierkegaard often employs terms such as “immediacy” and “reflection” and refers to Heiberg’s Hegelian account of the developmental stages of poetry. The Hegelian features in this text come as no surprise when one considers that the work was originally planned for publication in Heiberg’s explicitly Hegelian journal, Perseus. At this early stage in his career, it seems that Kierkegaard was eager to participate in Heiberg’s Hegelian program of aesthetics. The pro-Hegelian aspect of the work was not lost on contemporary readers: both Andersen and Henrik Hertz regarded it as a Hegelian work. Andersen refers to its “Hegelian heaviness of expression.”6 Moreover, he satirizes Kierkegaard as a Hegelian in his vaudeville, A Comedy in the Open Air.7 Likewise, Henrik Hertz criticizes Kierkegaard’s jargon as being too influenced by recent German philosophy.8 Thus, there can be no doubt that this early work is profoundly influenced by Hegel. It could be argued that the aborted comedy, The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars contradicts the claim that the young Kierkegaard had a generally positive view of Hegel. If Kierkegaard was so positively disposed towards Hegel at this time, then why would he write a satirical work which was in no small part directed against Hegelians? As was demonstrated previously,9 while this work is, to be sure, satirical of Hegelians, it has nothing negative to say about Hegel’s philosophy itself. The brunt of the satire is clearly aimed at Martensen, whose review of Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course is paraphrased several times. Kierkegaard had a keen ear for the slogans that Martensen used, such as “cogito ergo sum” and “de omnibus dubitandum est,” which provided him with readymade objects for both satire and allusion. Thus, The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars was concerned not with any particular aspect of Hegel’s philosophy but primarily with Martensen’s Hegelian program, which was newly announced on occasion of his return from Germany. While Kierkegaard’s works prior to his dissertation, The Concept of Irony, seem generally to evince a positive disposition towards Hegel, none of them unambiguously displays a profound study of Hegel’s primary texts. The pro-Hegel disposition continues in the dissertation but is made more substantial by several careful analyses and discussions of a number of Hegel’s works: Kierkegaard quotes directly from the Philosophy of Right as 6 7 8 9

Hans Christian Andersen, Mit Livs Eventyr, Copenhagen 1855, p. 198. (Reprinted in Andersen’sSamlede Skrifter, vols.1–15, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels 1876–80, vol.1, p. 188.) Hans Christian Andersen, En Comedie i det Grønne, Copenhagen 1840. ASKB. U 14. See Encounters with Kierkegaard. A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1996, p. 218. See Chapter 2, Section III.


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well as from the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, History of Philosophy, and Aesthetics, and finally from Hegel’s long review of the edition of Solger’s posthumous writings. Indeed, a large part of the dissertation seems to be modelled on Hegel’s analysis of Socrates in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy.10 Specifically, Kierkegaard borrows heavily from Hegel’s accounts of Socrates’ daimon,11 the history of Greek philosophy before and after Socrates,12 and the role of Socrates as the founder of morality,13 and as a world-historical figure who led the destruction of the Greek polis with his use of irony and his demand for discursive justifications of traditional beliefs, customs, and institutions.14 Further, Kierkegaard borrows Hegel’s characterization of Romantic irony as “infinite absolute negativity” and follows Hegel in his criticism of the Romantics.15 While he occasionally allows himself an off-handed criticism of specific details of Hegel’s analyses, Kierkegaard seems nonetheless to agree with most of what Hegel says about the main themes of the study (i.e., Socrates, the Greeks, and Romantic irony). Not only is the content of The Concept of Irony profoundly influenced by Hegel, but so also is its language. Like From the Papers of One Still Living, the dissertation draws heavily on Hegel’s philosophical terminology. Moreover, in later pronouncements on the work in his journals and elsewhere, it is clear that Kierkegaard himself regarded The Concept of Irony, for better or worse, as profoundly influenced by Hegel.16 Looking back from a later period, Kierkegaard reproaches himself for being “a Hegelian fool”17 in The Concept of Irony. In a draft of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript Kierkegaard criticizes himself for having failed to understand the significance of Socrates in The Concept of Irony due to his being influenced by Hegel.18 Finally, contemporary accounts from both Sibbern and Brøchner attest to Kierkegaard being influenced by Hegel presumably during his years as a student.19 Thus, many different pieces of evidence lead to the conclusion that The Concept of Irony stands profoundly under the influence of Hegel. The counterargument has often been advanced that the undeniable Hegelian elements in The Concept of Irony were a part of a masterful scheme by Kierkegaard to dupe his Hegelian dissertation committee and the equally Hegelian Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. It is claimed that Kierkegaard pretended to be a Hegelian in order to obtain his degree, while nonetheless having the last laugh by being ironic all the while in his use of Hegel. This argument, however, does not stand

10 12 14 16 18

See Chapter 3, Conclusion. See Chapter 3, Section V. See Chapter 3, Section VII. See Chapter 3, Section II. JP, vol. 5, 5796; Pap. VI B 34.24.

11 13 15 17 19

See Chapter 3, Section IV. See Chapter 3, Section VI. See Chapter 3, Section VIII. JP, vol. 4, 4281; Pap. X-3 A 477. See Chapter 3, Section II.


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the test of a critical examination of the historical situation.20 Neither Kierkegaard’s dissertation committee, nor the Faculty of Philosophy, nor the academic world at large was Hegelian at the time. In short, there was no one to dupe. On the contrary, other students, namely Brøchner and Beck, had difficulties obtaining their degrees due to their advocation of the views of the left Hegelians, such as Strauss and Bruno Bauer. Moreover, the ironic thesis is contradicted by Kierkegaard’s own later assessments, which express regret that the work was so Hegelian. Thus, the conclusion seems inevitable that the Hegelian influences in this text are straightforward and not ironically intended. These numerous influences make The Concept of Irony the most Hegelian of all Kierkegaard’s works. It attests to a careful and serious study of a number of Hegel’s primary texts and a general agreement with them. Hegel’s influence continues in Either/Or. Both the title, which recalls Aristotle’s law of excluded middle, and the structure of the book, which contains two irreducibly contradictory parts, were inspired by the discussion about Hegel’s speculative logic that was being carried on in Denmark at the time.21 Moreover, much of the content of Either/Or returns to this motif and to Hegel’s concept of mediation as an alternative to the classical laws of Aristotelian logic. Despite the fact that many interpreters have regarded this issue as a central fork in the road between Hegel and Kierkegaard, seeing Hegel as the philosopher of mediation and Kierkegaard as the philosopher of existential decision and the either/or, the position argued for by Judge Wilhelm is in fact in perfect harmony with Hegel’s view. There is no attempt to criticize the concept of mediation on its own terms but rather merely to delineate as carefully as possible the sphere where it is valid and the sphere where it is not.22 The criticism seems to be aimed more specifically at Martensen and his students, and for this reason some passages have the same tone as The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars. Thus, continuous with the previous works, Either/Or contains no substantial criticism of Hegel and no polemic with him. As in the works prior to this, Either/Or contains clear-cut examples of a positive Hegelian influence in point of content. This can almost certainly be attributed to the continuing influence of Heiberg on Kierkegaard. In “The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic of Modern Drama” from Part One of the work, the esthete quotes from Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics and borrows heavily from Hegel’s famous interpretation of Sophocles’ Antigone.23 This demonstrates a continuing study of Hegel’s primary texts and a continuing positive and receptive disposition towards specific analyses by Hegel. 20 22

See Chapter 3, Section I. See Chapter 4, Section II.

21 23

See Chapter 4, Section I. See Chapter 4, Section IV.


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Moreover, both Part One and Part Two of Either/Or show a keen awareness of Hegel’s dialectical methodology. In the “Insignificant Introduction” to “The Immediate Erotic Stages,” the esthete traces a Hegelian movement of form and content as the criteria for judging a work of art.24 The structure of the esthete’s analysis shows clear signs of Hegelian influence. In Part Two of the work, Judge Wilhelm likewise avails himself of a Hegelian dialectic when he traces different stages and variants of love in “The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage.”25 From very early on Kierkegaard was interested in Hegel’s notion of stages and dialectical movement.26 This comes to fruition for the first time here in Either/Or with these analyses and with the general structure of the work. Moreover, these dialectical analyses anticipate those of The Sickness Unto Death some years later. The presence of the dialectical analyses at this early period demonstrates yet another aspect of Hegel’s thought to which Kierkegaard was receptive. Hegel cannot be said to play the central role in Either/Or that he did in The Concept of Irony, although the role he does play is still quite significant. With the exception of the discussion of Hegel’s interpretation of Antigone, there is not the same careful analysis of Hegel’s primary texts that is found in the dissertation. Hegel is referred to and quoted occasionally, but he does not dominate the discussion as he tended to do in The Concept of Irony. This can perhaps be explained by the development of Kierkegaard’s own abilities as a writer. Whereas he was still finding his own literary voice and philosophical position in the dissertation, in Either/Or he steps forth as a self-confident author in his own right. In this text he is much more in control of the material which he treats and has a clearer conception of to what use he wishes to put it. So while the dissertation tends to borrow more or less straightforwardly and often with only minor modifications from various analyses from Hegel, in Either/Or Hegel is used as a source of inspiration or a point of departure for the development of Kierkegaard’s, or his pseudonymous authors’, own ideas. The analysis of Antigone is a good example. Kierkegaard does not simply repeat Hegel’s analysis but rather uses it as an inspiration to formulate his own modern variant interpretation of the story.27 Roughly contemporaneous with the composition of Either/Or is Kierkegaard’s unfinished manuscript, Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est. Despite some of its apparent allusions to Hegel’s philosophy, this text turns out to be a part of the continuing satire of Martensen and his students. The unmistakable allusions to Martensen in the title28 and in the body of the text29 leave little doubt about the true target. Thus, this satirical work resembles The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, 24 26 28

See Chapter 4, Section III. See Chapter 2, Section II. See Chapter 5, Section I.

25 27 29

See Chapter 4, Section V. See Chapter 4, Section IV. See Chapter 5, Sections II–III.


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where Martensen is satirized for, among other things, his promulgation of Hegel’s philosophy. By portraying the misguided student, Johannes Climacus, in his attempt to make sense of the injunction to doubt everything systematically, Kierkegaard is able to criticize Martensen for his pernicious effect on the students at the University of Copenhagen. Both satirical texts are aimed at Martensen and the student scene that surrounded him. But in neither work is there a criticism of Hegel himself or a substantive discussion of his thought. Indeed, the works are satirical and not philosophical. Of particular interest is the fragmentary Part Two of De Omnibus, which shows clear signs of being derived from Hegel’s account of “SenseCertainty,” the first dialectical stage of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit.30 In this section the satire ceases, and Kierkegaard begins a serious philosophical discussion. This seems to be an indication of his differing assessments of, on the one hand, Hegel, who is treated seriously in Part Two, and, on the other, his imitator Martensen, who is satirized in Part One. The second part of De Omnibus provides a transition to Kierkegaard’s next pseudonymous work, Repetition, since the analysis of “Sense-Certainty” leads Kierkegaard to develop the concept of repetition as the relation between universality and particularity. He then goes on to develop this concept further in his own way, but the original inspiration for it clearly comes from Hegel’s Phenomenology.31 The concept of repetition has traditionally been taken to be one of the trademarks of Kierkegaard’s thought. Thus, it is all the more surprising that Kierkegaard’s primary inspiration for it was, of all people, Hegel. In Repetition the issue of Hegelian mediation is broached once again, and this time the concept of repetition is posited as an alternative to it.32 However, this work on the whole is not profoundly philosophical, and the role of Hegel is extremely limited. Repetition is best seen as a transitional text from the first to the second period of Kierkegaard’s authorship. It cannot without qualification be assigned to the first period for two reasons: first, it does not positively use any aspect of Hegel’s philosophy or methodology as the texts from the first period do, although, as was just noted, the very concept of repetition seems to be derived from Hegel; second, it contains a hint of a polemic with Hegel,33 which is generally absent in the other texts of the early period. Yet, it likewise cannot be cleanly assigned to the second period since the single polemical remark about Hegel is hardly enough to justify characterizing the work as a whole as containing an anti-Hegel polemic. For 30 32 33

31 See Chapter 6, Section I. See Chapter 5, Section IV. See Chapter 6, Section III. R, pp. 148–149; SKS, vol. 4, p. 25: “The Greek explanation of the theory of being and nothing, the explanation of ‘the moment,’ ‘non-being,’ etc. trumps Hegel.”


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these reasons, Repetition falls somewhere between the first and the second periods. After this review, one might ask what the quite heterogeneous texts from this initial period have in common that justifies designating them as a unitary “period.” First and most obviously, virtually all of them display a positive reception or appropriation of some aspect of Hegel’s thought. There are, of course, varying degrees of development of the aspect in question, and it is clear that Kierkegaard’s knowledge of Hegel’s primary texts becomes more profound during the course of this period, but the common feature of most all of the early works seems to be a positive disposition to Hegel. Second, the texts from this period are generally devoid of anti-Hegel polemics. Although there are some polemical and satirical texts in this period, such as The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars and De Omnibus, these are directed against specific Hegelians, above all Martensen, and not against Hegel himself. Thus, this period can be described negatively in terms of the absence of any overt anti-Hegel campaign. Third, this period is also characterized by Kierkegaard’s generally positive relation to Heiberg. He published his earliest articles in Heiberg’s Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post.34 His first book, From the Papers of One Still Living, displays several signs of an influence of Heiberg’s aesthetics. Similarly, The Concept of Irony is profoundly deferential towards Heiberg, who is compared with Goethe and taken as the model for controlled irony,35 the concept with which the book culminates. In his article “Public Confession” from June 1842, Kierkegaard refers deferentially to Heiberg, amidst a barrage of criticism of other Danish Hegelians.36 Likewise, Either/Or contains a number of references to Heiberg’s work on aesthetic theory and the theater. It contains a long section on Heiberg’s Danish version of Scribe’s comedy, The First Love. Like the other works, it too is quite deferential. Heiberg’s negative book-review of Either/Or37 and his negative comments about Repetition38 mark simultaneously the end of Kierkegaard’s positive relation to him and the beginning of a new polemical relation to Hegel. Brøchner indicates in his recollections that Heiberg’s review of Either/Or was decisive for Kierkegaard’s estrangement and for his general change of view.39 Thus, Kierkegaard’s changing relation to Heiberg is significant 34 35 36 37 38 39

See Chapter 2, Introduction and Section I. CI, p. 325; SKS, vol. 1, p. 354. In COR, pp. 3–12; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 397–406; Fædrelandet, no. 904, June 12, 1842. See Chapter 4, Conclusion, p. 233. See Chapter 4, Conclusion, pp. 232–237. See Chapter 6, Introduction, and especially, Chapter 10, Section I. Hans Brøchner, “Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard,” Det Nittende Aarhundrede, Maanedsskrift for Literatur og Kritik, vol. 5, March 1877, § 11. English translation cited


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for determining the nature of this first period and for bringing it to a close. One of the forms that Kierkegaard’s alienation from Heiberg took was an anti-Hegel polemic, which began with Fear and Trembling, which thus initiates the second period. Fourth, there is a vague continuity in the constellation of themes found in the texts from this early period. Generally speaking, there seem to be two main categories. One group of texts is primarily concerned with aesthetics. This is clearly the main theme of From the Papers of One Still Living, The Concept of Irony, and large parts of Either/Or. This seems to indicate that Kierkegaard, almost certainly following Heiberg’s lead, was primarily interested in those aspects of Hegel’s philosophy that were relevant for this theme. The second group of texts is satirical. This group includes The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars and De Omnibus. These texts are indicative of Kierkegaard’s critical stance vis-à-vis Martensen and his students. Other main themes relevant in a more marginal fashion for Kierkegaard’s Hegel reception during this period include Hegel’s logic and his history of philosophy. What is interesting to note is that none of these texts in which Hegel plays a positive role is particularly concerned with religion. This changes in the second period when the anti-Hegel rhetoric appears in texts that have a profoundly religious content. This seems to indicate that while Kierkegaard is receptive to some aspects of Hegel’s thought (e.g., aesthetics and logic), he is more cautious with regard to the relation between Hegel’s philosophy and Christianity.40 These are then the main characteristics of this first period in Kierkegaard’s authorship. If these were the only texts that Kierkegaard ever penned and his authorship ended after this initial period, then he would probably be regarded as a Hegelian or minimally as an author profoundly influenced by Hegel. Thus, based on internal textual evidence, philological evidence, the contemporary reports about Kierkegaard’s intellectual development, and Kierkegaard’s own assessment of his works, one can conclude that he had a phase early in his career when he was positively disposed towards Hegel. One might argue about where it begins and ends, but the existence of this period seems beyond doubt. Many Kierkegaard devotees will reject out of hand the suggestion that Kierkegaard ever had a period in which he was positively influenced by

40

from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., p. 231. Cited in Chapter 4, Conclusion. It should be noted that these general characterizations of Kierkegaard’s works are based solely on my own selection of texts for the purposes of this investigation (i.e., the texts that are relevant for his general evaluation of Hegel). But these comments cannot be taken at face value as valid for Kierkegaard’s authorship generally during this period since he did, of course, author a series of religious writings in the form of edifying discourses starting toward the end of the first period in spring of 1843. Moreover, many of his early journal entries are also concerned with problems of theology.


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or disposed towards Hegel. But it should be recalled from the discussion of the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark41 that many of Kierkegaard’s contemporaries experienced a Hegelian period, which lasted for a shorter or longer time. Indeed, even those traditionally characterized as Hegel’s greatest critics in Denmark, such as Poul Martin Møller and Sibbern, were themselves profoundly influenced by Hegel. Moreover, some of those thinkers, such as Brøchner and Møller, who were known at least for awhile as Hegelians were close to Kierkegaard personally. People whom Kierkegaard respected highly, including Heiberg, were known Hegelians. Given all this, it should be no surprise that Kierkegaard also had a period in which he was positively influenced by Hegel; on the contrary, it would, given the circumstances, be more amazing and surprising if he failed to have one. B. The Second Period: 1843–1846. The second period in Kierkegaard’s developing relation to Hegel runs from the publication of Fear and Trembling in fall of 1843 to the unfinished Book on Adler in 1846. This, the shortest period of the three, is characterized by the outward polemics against Hegel and speculative philosophy. It is from the main texts of this period, above all the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, that Kierkegaard has received the reputation for carrying out an aggressive anti-Hegel campaign. In the course of this study I have argued that Kierkegaard’s ostensible polemic against Hegel in fact very often has little to do with Hegel’s philosophy itself. Rather it is merely one of the many ways in which Kierkegaard continues his ongoing polemic with Martensen and in this period initiates a new one with Heiberg and Adler. Despite the use of Hegel’s name in a polemical fashion, the texts of this period contain little substantive discussion or criticism of his philosophy. While the main characteristics of the first and second periods seem to stand in clear contrast to one another, the chronological break between the two is more difficult to determine. Fear and Trembling was published together with Repetition and Three Edifying Discourses on October 16, 1843. It might seem odd then that I have designated Repetition as a transitional text and Fear and Trembling as the actual beginning of the second period given that they appeared on the same day. This, however, need not be perplexing. The single polemical reference to Hegel in Repetition does not seem to be enough to sustain the claim that the text as a whole was polemically directed at Hegel. Fear and Trembling contains no innovation that distinguishes it clearly from Repetition, but it does contain quantitatively more polemical references to Hegel, which would seem to justify better the claim that there is an ostensible anti-Hegel polemic at work in the text generally. Thus, the difference between the transitional text, 41

See Chapter 1, Sections II–III.


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Repetition, and the first text of the second period, Fear and Trembling, is, so to speak, quantitative and not qualitative. For quite different reasons, the end of this period is also difficult to pinpoint definitely. The Book on Adler is the last work by Kierkegaard in which he mentions and discusses Hegel by name in any detail. But while the final text is easy enough to determine, since it was never published in Kierkegaard’s lifetime, it is a matter for philological investigation to determine precisely when what parts of it were written. This has been a matter of some discussion since Kierkegaard seems to have revised the work off and on over an extended period of time. It seems, however, that the main part of it was written in 1846, and the later revisions that Kierkegaard made were not concerned with the issue of Hegel’s philosophy. Therefore, I have designated 1846 as the end of this second period. I turn now to a brief review of the texts examined from this second period. The first text, Fear and Trembling, begins with the same kind of polemics against Martensen that were seen previously in some of the works from the first period.42 What is different here is that Hegel is mentioned directly and the impression seems to be intended that the polemic is with him. At the beginning of each of the three Problemata some position ascribed to Hegel is alluded to briefly. Kierkegaard for the first time seems to set him up as the opposing view to that of his pseudonymous author. Although the section, “The Good and Conscience” from the Philosophy of Right is referred to explicitly at the beginning of Problema I,43 there are no quotations from or textual analyses of this or any other part of Hegel’s philosophy. Moreover, the way in which Hegel’s name is invoked is somewhat odd. At first, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes de silentio, says that Hegel is completely correct in his conception of some given point, but then he goes on the say that Hegel is wholly incorrect when he is talking about Abraham and religious faith. The oddity in this is striking since while Abraham and religious faith are clearly the main themes of Fear and Trembling, there are no texts or lectures in which Hegel takes up these themes as such. With the exception of the posthumous essay “The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate,” which was of course unknown to Kierkegaard (since it was only published at the beginning of the twentieth century), Hegel does not thematize Abraham and the notion of faith. He certainly does not do so in “The Good and Conscience.” Thus, Kierkegaard has his pseudonym draw Hegel into a discussion for some reason different from the one given (i.e., that there is some disagreement between Johannes de silentio’s account of Abraham and Hegel’s). All of this leads to suspicions about how large of a role Hegel actually plays here. But if there is no substantive aspect of Hegel’s thought at issue here, why does Kierkegaard have his pseudonymous author use Hegel’s 42

See Chapter 7, Section I.

43

See Chapter 7, Section II.


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name at all? The use of Hegel’s name at the beginning of the three Problemata is an indication of Kierkegaard’s need to distance himself from the Danish Hegelians, Heiberg and Martensen. By using Hegel’s name, he could immediately call to mind in his reader the advocates of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark with whom he had a true disagreement. This would then work together with the other polemical passages in the work, above all the Preface, in which these figures are taken to task in a more recognizable manner. Thus, the use of Hegel’s name here adds a new dimension to the polemics against Martensen and now Heiberg, but it has little to do with Hegel’s own thought. Kierkegaard continues his criticism of Martensen in the Philosophical Fragments. Here the issue of Hegelian mediation arises again. Many of the main doctrines of the work, such as the absolute paradox and the divine as the absolute other, are aimed against Martensen’s claims that mediation is the principle of Christianity. In his contribution to the debate about Hegel’s logic, Martensen in his article “Rationalism, Supernaturalism and the principium exclusi medii”44 applies the Hegelian principle of mediation in a specific theological context. This determines much of the nature of the debate, which then drifts away from the original point in logic and moves toward and ultimately ends in theology. The Fragments is in large part aimed at refuting not Hegel’s position on mediation in logic but rather Martensen’s position on mediation in Christianity.45 While, to be sure, the original point about mediation in logic stems from Hegel, the point at issue in the Fragments, is the transformed version of this principle in the contemporary debates about theology. The other views criticized in the Fragments, which interpreters have taken to be views of Hegel, such as the claim that necessity is the unity of possibility and actuality46 or that history is necessary,47 turn out not to have any sanction in Hegel’s primary texts, at least not in the form presented by Johannes Climacus. On these points there is not even the appearance of a polemic with Hegel, and thus the understanding of these views as part of Kierkegaard’s anti-Hegel campaign seems to be a fiction created wholly by the secondary literature. Only in the discussion about the claims made on behalf of the so-called absolute method does Kierkegaard’s pseudonym mention Hegel by name.48 But on this point he does not criticize Hegel himself but rather the way in which others have deceived people about this method. As in Fear and Trembling, Hegel himself cannot be said really to be present in this text in any substantial fashion despite the one or two polemical remarks. 44

45 47

Hans Lassen Martensen, “Rationalisme, Supranaturalisme og principium exclusi medii i Anledning af H. H. Biskop Mynsters Afhandling herom i dette Tidsskrifts forrige Hefte,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 456–473. 46 See Chapter 8, Section II. See Chapter 8, Section I. 48 See Chapter 8, Section IV. See Chapter 8, Section III.


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The Concept of Anxiety likewise displays at least in a few passages an ostensible anti-Hegel polemic. While the tone and nature of the polemic seems continuous with much of what came before, the target is different. The work is largely a response to Adler’s Popular Lectures on Hegel’s Objective Logic.49 Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author is particularly concerned about Adler’s conflation of Hegel’s philosophy with Christianity, which he characterizes as a confusion of two fundamentally distinct spheres.50 Thus, just as most of the criticisms from the previous works seemed to be aimed more at Martensen than at Hegel, so also here the criticisms can be traced back to Adler and not to Hegel’s primary texts. Of particular interest in this work is Kierkegaard’s development of the famous concept of the leap.51 While this concept is usually associated with Kierkegaard and understood as characteristic of his critique of Hegel and discursive thinking, it in fact originally comes from Hegel’s Science of Logic. Thus, even in The Concept of Anxiety, which contains an ostensible anti-Hegel polemic, Kierkegaard nonetheless continues to make positive use of aspects of Hegel’s thought. Perhaps the most polemical of all of Kierkegaard’s works is Prefaces. This short book contains his most extended polemic with Heiberg and his response to Heiberg’s negative assessments of Either/Or and Repetition.52 A part of the polemic concerns Heiberg’s promulgation of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark, but there is no substantive criticism of that philosophy itself. Most of the critical allusions can be traced back to Heiberg or other Danish contemporaries. The references to “the system”53 and “mediation,”54 which are usually taken as synonyms for Hegel’s thought, are unambiguously associated with Heiberg and others. This work provides a clear example of Kierkegaard’s use of terms such as “Hegelian” or “Hegelianism” in a polemical way against specific Danish figures, despite the fact that interpreters have almost invariably wanted to trace these references back to Hegel himself. This text thus makes it clearer than ever that Kierkegaard distinguishes between specific Hegelians, such as Heiberg, and Hegel himself and that the polemic is with the former and not the latter.55 This is a significant point since the two have traditionally been taken in much of the secondary literature to be more or less identical when considered philosophically. The culmination of this second period in Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. This work has traditionally been understood as Kierkegaard’s most violent attack on Hegel. Interpreters have uniformly wanted to make Hegel the target of the numerous 49 50 52 54

Adolph Peter Adler, Populaire Foredrag over Hegels objective Logik, Copenhagen 1842. ASKB. 383. 51 See Chapter 9, Section V. See Chapter 9, Sections II–III, VI. 53 See Chapter 10, Sections III–IV. See Chapter 10, Section I. 55 See Chapter 10, Section VI. See Chapter 10, Section V.


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religious criticisms in the work, e.g., that speculative philosophy tries to resolve the paradox of Christianity,56 that it reduces Christianity to a finite form of knowing,57 that it leads one to abstract from oneself and forget one’s eternal happiness,58 and that it encourages the individual to try to gain world-historical importance.59 The Postscript also takes up a number of primarily philosophical issues in connection with which Hegel is sometimes named directly: the claim to begin philosophy without presuppositions,60 the notion of the unity of thought and being,61 the issue of mediation along with the criticism of the law of excluded middle,62 and the absence of an ethics in the system.63 Here the polemical rhetoric against Hegel is at its most pronounced. Despite this rhetoric, there are no analyses of any of Hegel’s primary texts and no real quotations apart from a few well-known slogans. Kierkegaard has his pseudonym create a position or general view under the name of “Hegel,” “speculative philosophy,” or “objective thought,” which has little to do with Hegel’s actual thought and instead seems to be a kind of heuristic device for the explication of Climacus’ own views. As in Fear and Trembling, the use of Hegel here seems largely to be pro forma. Once one comes below the surface, one finds the numerous indirect references in the text to Martensen, Heiberg, Grundtvig, and others. These Danish figures are clearly the main objects of criticism in the work. The Postscript is the paradigm case for this second period. At first glance it seems to contain a virulent critique of Hegel, but upon a more careful study of the matter and with a better grasp of the historical context of the work, one sees that the critique turns out to have little if anything to do with him and can be seen as a natural continuation of Kierkegaard’s ongoing criticism of, above all, Martensen and Heiberg. The final work from this period is The Book on Adler, which expands on the criticisms that were originally issued in The Concept of Anxiety. It also picks up on many of the same criticisms issued in the Postscript, which comes as no surprise given that the two works were written during the same period. The Book on Adler takes up earlier themes such as the conception of Christianity as a sublated moment in the system,64 the attempt to explain the revelation with speculative thought,65 and the absence of an ethics in the system.66 The main theme of the work is Adler’s conflation of Hegel’s philosophy with Christianity. Kierkegaard portrays Adler in his office of priest as being in a deep contradiction with his Hegelianism. While Hegel’s philosophy might be fine and good on its own terms, it is 56 58 60 62 64 66

See Chapter 11, Section III. See Chapter 11, Section V. See Chapter 11, Section VI. See Chapter 11, Section IX. See Chapter 12, Section II. See Chapter 12, Section IV.

57 59 61 63 65

See Chapter 11, Section IV. See Chapter 11, Section VII. See Chapter 11, Section VIII. See Chapter 11, Section X. See Chapter 12, Section III.


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incommensurable with the commitment of the Christian priest. This work, like the other ones from the period, contains some anti-Hegel rhetoric, but it is clear that the main object of investigation and criticism is Adler. The first and most obvious feature of this second period of Kierkegaard’s authorship is the ostensible anti-Hegel polemic. But despite this there are no discussions or analyses of his primary texts in any of the published works during this time. Thus, this period is characterized by, on the one hand, an ostensible anti-Hegel polemic and, on the other hand, the absence of a genuine dialogue with or renewed study of Hegel. Therefore, this period can perhaps be best characterized by Kierkegaard’s use of Hegel for polemical purposes. While he engages in a polemic with the Danish Hegelians, that polemic is often hidden beneath what appears at face value to be a critique of Hegel. It is Hegel’s name, and not that of Heiberg, Martensen, or Adler, that appears in the text. A second characteristic of this period is Kierkegaard’s negative disposition towards Heiberg. This period, of course, follows Kierkegaard’s estrangement from Heiberg and seems to have been largely caused by it. Thus, almost every work from this period contains some kind of jab at Heiberg. The immediate response to Heiberg’s review of Either/Or was the polemical article “A Word of Thanks to Professor Heiberg.”67 Moreover, Kierkegaard planned a couple of different responses to Heiberg’s “The Astronomical Year,” in which Repetition is discussed briefly.68 In the Preface to Fear and Trembling allusion is made to Heiberg’s promises to complete the system of logic.69 Moreover, Problema II critically touches on one of Heiberg’s hobbyhorses, the dialectic of the inner and the outer.70 In The Concept of Anxiety, Vigilius Haufniensis criticizes Heiberg’s discussion of Repetition.71 In a draft to the work Heiberg is named directly and criticized once again for his unfulfilled promises to deliver, among other things, a system of logic.72 Prefaces is, of course, Kierkegaard’s fullscale polemic with Heiberg. Here he responds to the dismissive assessments of Either/Or and Repetition and criticizes Heiberg for various aspects of his literary program, including his Hegelianism. In the Postscript, Heiberg is satirized under the name of “Dr. Hjortespring” for his zeal in the portrayal of his conversion to Hegelianism.73 Finally, Heiberg’s 67 68

69 70 71 72 73

In COR, pp. 17–21; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 411–415; Fædrelandet, no. 1168, March 5, 1843. For example, “Open Letter to Professor Heiberg, Knight of Dannebrog from Constantin Constantius,” R, Supplement, pp. 283–298; Pap. IV B 110–111, pp. 258–274. “A Little Contribution by Constantin Constantius, Author of Repetition,” R, Supplement, pp. 299–319; Pap. IV B 112–117, pp. 275–300. FT, p. 7; SKS, vol. 4, p. 103. See Chapter 7, Section I. See Chapter 7, Section III. CA, pp. 17–19fn.; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 324–327fn. CA, Supplement, p. 180; Pap. V B 49.5. See Chapter 9, Section I. CUP1, p. 184; SKS, vol. 7, p. 169f.


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unfinished “System of Logic,” is criticized in the section “A System of Logic Can Be Given.”74 Third, if the thematic continuity among the texts in the first period was aesthetics, the continuity in the second period is clearly religion. Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, and The Concept of Anxiety are all primarily concerned with religious themes. While the Postscript is more heterogeneous and treats a number of straightforwardly philosophical issues, such as the unity of being and thought and the beginning of philosophy, it is also deeply concerned with religious questions. Many of the accounts of philosophical issues in the work are attempts to establish the proper relation of philosophy to theology. So also The Book on Adler is an analysis of what Kierkegaard takes to be typical religious confusions of the day as manifested in Adler. The only work from this period that is not concerned primarily with religion is Prefaces. Of the works not examined in detail in this investigation one might also add Stages on Life’s Way, which contains scattered allusions to Hegel’s philosophy, and the review of Two Ages. In any case, with these exceptions aside, the main theme in this period with respect to Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel can clearly be said to be religion. This seems to confirm what has often been noted in the body of the present work, namely that Kierkegaard is most concerned about the conflation of aspects of Hegel’s philosophy with religion or with the encroachment of it into the proper sphere of religion. Most of the analyses that I have given of the books in this period have been negative in character. While most of the analyses prior to this were concerned to demonstrate some point of positive influence of Hegel on Kierkegaard, the ones from this second period have been primarily concerned to demonstrate the incorrectness of the countless interpretations that claim that Kierkegaard straightforwardly criticized Hegel on various points. There are too many of these interpretations to name (e.g., that Kierkegaard criticizes Hegel’s purported view of the system,75 the unity of the inner and the outer,76 necessity in history,77 or necessity as the unity of possibility and actuality78 ), but most of them take some polemical passage as their point of departure and, without making much effort to identify what in Hegel’s texts is purportedly being criticized, simply jump to the inevitable conclusion that the passage in question is a part of Kierkegaard’s anti-Hegel campaign. I have tried to show that these various criticisms do not usually fit with anything in Hegel’s primary texts and, with only a little research, can be traced back to Kierkegaard’s Danish contemporaries. This thus undermines the notion that Kierkegaard’s polemic or critique is aimed primarily at Hegel. 74 76 78

See Chapter 11, Section VI. See Chapter 7, Section III. See Chapter 8, Section II.

75 77

See Chapter 10, Section III. See Chapter 8, Section III.


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Just as with regard to the first period many readers, insistent on maintaining the old view, will be anxious to reject my claim that Kierkegaard had a period in which he was positively influenced by Hegel, so also with regard to the second period they will doubtless resist the suggestion that the ostensible polemic with Hegel in the second period in fact has very little to do with Hegel and is primarily concerned with figures, such as Heiberg, Martensen, and Adler. The notion of Kierkegaard having a rabid anti-Hegel campaign is one of the most cherished fixtures in Kierkegaard studies even among scholars with often otherwise very differing views. Yet, like any seemingly permanent fixture in the research, this view has enjoyed such a prolonged lifespan due precisely to the fact that it has gone unquestioned for so long. But as is the case with most prejudices, it does not take much to make this seemingly solid structure start to teeter. Once one learns about the historical context of Hegelianism in Denmark and about Kierkegaard’s animosity towards its main ideologues, then one sees that there is in fact every reason to call the standard view into question. The young Kierkegaard held Heiberg in the highest esteem and was deeply offended by Heiberg’s condescending criticism of his works. Similarly, Kierkegaard nursed a virtually life-long enmity for Martensen, whose popularity and success he envied. He was fascinated by Adler as a psychological phenomenon and as a paradigm case for the then current confusion about religion. These passionate relationships with his immediate Danish contemporaries can hardly be compared with his relation to Hegel, a man whom he never knew personally and who was dead before Kierkegaard ever began his academic career. Thus, does it not seem plausible that if there was a great polemic, then it was directed against those who were perceived to be the most immediately influential, threatening, or relevant for Kierkegaard? His constant and ever recurring vexation with these figures would certainly outweigh any abstract philosophical point of disagreement that he might have had with Hegel. Given this, there can be little surprise that his polemic is much more with these figures than with Hegel. It is only surprising to those who are ignorant of these figures and of the historical context surrounding the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Denmark. C. The Third Period: 1847–1855. The third period in the development of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is strikingly different from the first and the second. While the first period was characterized by a manifold positive influence of Hegel on Kierkegaard and the second by Kierkegaard’s pro forma polemic with Hegel, this third period is characterized not by something positive but rather by an absence or a lack. After the Postscript and The Book on Adler there appear almost no references to Hegel or Hegelianism in either the published works or the journals and papers. For whatever reason, Hegel plays a minimal role in the work of the late


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Kierkegaard. Thus, this period can be characterized by its absence of a relation to Hegel, be that positive or negative. With regard to chronology, I take this period to run from 1847, after The Book on Adler, until Kierkegaard’s death in 1855. The Book on Adler is the last text that shows any sign of an extended interest in Hegel’s philosophy. The Sickness Unto Death represents something of an exception to the rule in the third period insofar as it displays a profound familiarity with Hegel’s dialectical method and in this aspect can be regarded as being positively influenced by Hegel.79 Although Kierkegaard uses Hegel’s dialectic in earlier works such as Either/Or, here it comes to its full development. This work likewise shows a familiarity with Hegel’s method of phenomenological analysis in its careful discussion of despair in terms of the levels of consciousness. Allusion is made in the text to Hegel’s concept of intersubjective recognition,80 which plays such a significant role in the “Self-Consciousness” chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Moreover, much of the language of the work is indebted to Hegel and the general tradition of German idealism. The Sickness unto Death can, in addition, be conceived as marking a change of view with regard to the issues of movement in logic and the system. The analysis of despair is clearly systematic in Hegel’s sense given that the forms of despair are understood in their dialectical relationships vis-à-vis one another. Moreover, the movement according to abstract categories, such as infinity and finitude, possibility and necessity, which are displayed in the analysis of the different forms of despair, has very much the look of Hegel’s dialectical movement in logic. What is perhaps odd about The Sickness unto Death is that despite this positive appropriation of the aforementioned aspects of Hegel’s thought, Hegel’s name never appears in the text. This absence makes The Sickness unto Death continuous with the rest of the texts from the third period. In this work Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author can use aspects of Hegel’s thought without feeling the need either to refer to Hegel directly to indicate the positive appropriation of some point (as, for example, in The Concept of Irony) or to criticize Hegel directly to draw attention to an ostensible polemic (as, for example, in Fear and Trembling). Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author can use Hegel as a source of inspiration in a neutral way without any need to make some gesture so as to indicate his ideological stance with regard to the issue of Hegel’s thought generally. This seemed to be obligatory in the works in the first two periods. The main characteristics of this third and final period are thus negative. First, there is, generally speaking, no serious use of specific analyses 79 80

See Chapter 12, Section V. SUD, p. 79; SV1, vol. 11, p. 191. See Chapter 12, Section V, C.


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or discussions from Hegel’s philosophy. As was already the case in the second period, Kierkegaard seems not to have returned to Hegel’s primary texts during this period. His last serious study of Hegel was with Either/Or and De Omnibus, and he draws on a single passage from The Science of Logic in connection with the notion of the leap in The Concept of Anxiety. Second, the highly polemical passages characteristic of the second period are wholly absent here. Hegel seems simply to have ceased to be an issue for Kierkegaard. This is significant since this final period, of course, culminates with an uncompromisingly bitter polemic against Martensen and the Danish Church. So it is not as if Kierkegaard was no longer interested in polemics; on the contrary, this is probably his most polemical period. But he ceases to use Hegel in these polemics. Once he gives up the indirect strategy of critique, whereby he is obliged to criticize Martensen under the cloak of a criticism of Hegel, he no longer has any use for Hegel in this capacity since he can go straight to the true object of his criticism (i.e., Martensen himself ). Moreover, there is no reason for Kierkegaard to use Hegel polemically in this third period since that use would not have been able to hold much interest given the fact that Hegel’s philosophy no longer occupied any central place in the cultural life of the day. The fact that Martensen had by this time more or less abandoned Hegelianism left Kierkegaard with even less incentive to continue his anti-Hegel polemics. Third, with regard to the themes of this period, it seems safe to say that Kierkegaard’s movement in the direction of religious works and away from aesthetics and philosophy continues in this period. While there are exceptions, notably The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, most of the works from this period can be characterized as religious in nature. Even The Sickness unto Death, which with regard to its use of Hegel represents something of an anomaly in this third period, is undeniably a profoundly religious book. In a way it is representative of this period in which Kierkegaard becomes more and more focused on developing his conception of Christianity. Generally speaking, Kierkegaard seems no longer to be interested in philosophy. Thus, it is not as though he were simply not interested in Hegel alone during this period, but there is likewise no evidence that he made a study of any other philosophical texts at this time either. He seems simply to have moved onto other topics. For one reason or another, Kierkegaard seems to have lost interest in the issue of Hegel’s philosophy. There are a number of possible explanations for this. Perhaps since Hegelianism was no longer topical, a polemic against it would seem to have lost its meaning, and thus Kierkegaard was obliged to work out other strategies for his criticisms. As long as Hegelianism was in vogue, it made some sense to criticize Martensen and


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Heiberg under its banner, but once it ceased to be an issue, this strategy also ceased to be meaningful. D. Conclusions About the Development of Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel. Given that Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel developed through the three identifiable stages sketched here, the question that now needs to be addressed is what general conclusions can be drawn from this development. I wish to argue that the overview provided by this study supplies ample evidence that Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is considerably more differentiated than it is usually thought to be. This alone should be proof enough that this relation is in need of thorough reconsideration. First, although the positive, receptive relation to Hegel is most pronounced in the first period, there are examples of an appropriation of different aspects of Hegel’s thought in all three periods, and, regarded in this aspect, his relation to Hegel seems continuous throughout. Second, it is safe to conclude that this relation was considerably more heterogeneous and complex than has hitherto been recognized. Indeed, the most obvious result is that it no longer makes sense to talk about a single relation, but rather one should think in terms of different relations. (1) Minimally, one can talk of the different relations to Hegel that are characterized by the three different periods: one can speak of a positive, receptive relation to Hegel (per the first period), or one can speak of a polemical use of Hegel in the service of a criticism of contemporary Danish Hegelians (per the second period), or finally one can speak of the absence of a relation to Hegel (per the third period). (2) One can distinguish these three different relations even more precisely by discussing the different relations to Hegel as reflected in the different books within the individual periods. (a) Thus, the positive relation to Hegel in the first period takes on different forms: one can speak of the positive references to Hegel’s logic and allusions to his aesthetics in From the Papers of One Still Living in the absence of any careful study of any of Hegel’s primary texts. One can speak of the profound study and use of Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Aesthetics, and other texts in The Concept of Irony, in which Hegel himself plays a dominant role. One can speak of the much freer, more creative use of Hegel’s interpretation of Antigone in Either/Or. One can speak of the study of “Sense Certainty” in Part Two of De Omnibus, which serves as a source of inspiration for the concept of repetition. These examples represent different kinds of use and appropriation of various aspects of Hegel’s philosophy for different purposes on Kierkegaard’s intellectual agenda. In contrast to these works stand the unfinished satirical works of the period, namely The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars and De Omnibus. These works use Hegel in yet a different way, playing on Hegelian language and well-known themes in Hegel’s philosophy in order to criticize Martensen.


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(b) Similarly, although the second period has been characterized by Kierkegaard’s ostensible anti-Hegel polemic, the way in which Hegel is used varies in the individual texts. In Fear and Trembling, Hegel is named at the beginning of the individual discussions of the Problemata, and a specific section from The Philosophy of Right is mentioned. In Philosophical Fragments individual doctrines such as the absolute method and the speculative conception of contradiction are mentioned without any detailed discussion. In the Introduction to The Concept of Anxiety Hegel and his followers are referred to in a polemical fashion with regard to any number of different issues. Despite the frequent criticisms of Heiberg and various Hegelians in Prefaces, Hegel is mentioned by name only a couple of times, and when he is, it is only as an occasion to criticize one of the Hegelians. In the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Hegel seems to be attacked almost personally in a number of passages. Finally, in The Book on Adler Hegel is seen as indirectly responsible for misleading people such as Adler. These various polemical uses and pictures of Hegel serve the ends of Kierkegaard’s own discussions and rarely have anything to do with Hegel’s actual philosophy. They are quite often simply constructs of Kierkegaard’s own imagination based on very general tendencies at best. (c) Finally, even though the third period in general is characterized by the absence of Hegel, it is likewise far from completely homogeneous in this regard. As was seen, The Sickness unto Death represents a counterexample to the general tendency in this period since in this work Hegel is used for methodological purposes. There is also a direct reference to Hegel and the Philosophy of Right in Practice in Christianity,81 which seems to take up the polemic in Fear and Trembling. In this way this work also constitutes an anomaly to the third period, at least with what concerns this one passage. Thus no single period can be cleanly defined or exhaustively captured by a single description. (3) In addition to the diverse nature of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel displayed first in the different periods and then in the different works, one can go one step further and speak of the diversity of this relation within individual works. If one takes this relation at the microlevel on a passage by passage basis, one finds that there are often conflicting passages in a single work. In the Introduction to The Concept of Irony, for example, Hegel’s methodology is praised straightforwardly: Kierkegaard claims that only a philosophical account of history can capture the essence and the enduring aspect of actuality, and that it should not allow itself to get caught up in the details of the particular empirical phenomena, which are not the proper subject-matter of philosophy.82 By contrast, later in the work Hegel is criticized for precisely this point since he, by concentrating only on the Concept in history, is said to have neglected 81

PC, p. 87; SV1, vol. 12, p. 83.

82

CI, pp. 9–11; SKS, vol. 1, pp. 71–73.


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the significant aspects of the life of Socrates, which fall under actuality.83 Similarly, in the Introduction to The Concept of Anxiety, one finds an overt polemic purportedly against different aspects of Hegel’s logic,84 but then in the body of the work Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author goes on to borrow Hegel’s concept of the qualitative leap from precisely that same logic.85 Thus, it is impossible to say in a single breath what Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is in these works since they contain individual passages that are at best ambivalent and at worst in open contradiction. Thus, the Hegel-Kierkegaard relation is characterized by its plurality (1) at the level of the three periods that have been sketched, (2) at the level of the individual books within each of these periods, and (3) finally even within individual works themselves. Thus, it is impossible to speak, as Thulstrup and so many others would like to, of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. The various passages examined display different kinds of relations: inspiration, appropriation, revision, criticism, polemical allusion, and so on. Within this spectrum of different periods, texts, passages, and relations there is no universal pattern or single relation. The relations or points of contact are generally episodic, even though some of them are often repeated. For this reason I have tried to isolate the individual points of contact based on specific passages and have analyzed them individually. From this no general pattern has emerged other than the classification of Kierkegaard’s works into three general periods. It is convenient and in a way natural to make sweeping statements to the effect that Kierkegaard thought such and such about Hegel. But this undifferentiated way of speaking evinces a hopelessly oversimplified view of the matter, which renders it impossible to do justice to the various historical periods and points of contact. If one wishes to speak about Kierkegaard and Hegel, then one is obliged to speak of relations. Before any investigation can begin, one must designate very specifically, which period, book, or passage one is interested in exploring, and after the investigation is complete one must resist the temptation to universalize the conclusions reached to the rest of Kierkegaard’s authorship. One of the problems that has hampered progress on the issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel has been the way in which the question has been framed. Thulstrup has established the practice of asking the question: Was Kierkegaard a Hegelian or not? This way of posing the question presupposes an undifferentiated “yes” or “no” answer, which in no way does justice to the complexity of the issue. This study has tried to demonstrate the impossibility of giving any such straightforward answer to the question, a fact that leads one to see that the question itself 83 84

CI, p. 222; SKS, vol. 1, p. 266. Discussed in Chapter 3, Section IV. 85 See Chapter 9, Section V. See Chapter 9, Sections I–IV.


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is ill-posed. To answer this question, one must first reformulate it in a more differentiated manner: Which period is being asked about? Which book? Which analysis or discussion? I do not pretend to have treated the issue of the relation between Hegel and Kierkegaard exhaustively, but I do hope to have demonstrated that any attempt to explore the issue at all must take place at the microlevel of individual passages and analyses, and that any general statements about the relation are useless. Moreover, the conclusions reached from the microlevel analyses are not necessarily transferable to other passages thought to be relevant for the relation. The somewhat aporetic conclusion I am proposing will doubtless be disappointing to readers who seek here a categorical and definitive statement about Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. But undifferentiated statements about this relation have for years stood in the way of serious scholarship on the issue. The conclusion proposed here makes the relation considerably richer and more interesting than before and opens up a number of areas for future research. By contrast, Thulstrup’s undifferentiated view on the matter, which he regards as definitive and final, renders even his own study uninteresting (to say nothing of future ones). If Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is so one-dimensional, then there is no need for a detailed study of it since, as Thulstrup’s book witnesses, each chapter cannot help but simply repeat the previous one, and what was conceived to be the established truth of the matter at the beginning is merely reconfirmed again and again ad nauseam. This investigation cannot, of course, be the final word on the matter of Hegel and Kierkegaard. In a number of analyses it has not been possible with complete certainty to locate the target of every single one of Kierkegaard’s criticisms. However, given the research presented here, enough of these targets of the criticisms, which have been traditionally thought to be aimed at Hegel, have been identified that one is led to the suspicion that the other “Hegel criticisms” are simply hidden allusions to heretofore undiscovered sources. This opens up new areas for future research into Kierkegaard’s Hegelian sources, and it is in this forum where future discussions of the issue should take place.

ii. the standard picture of the history of nineteenth-century continental philosophy Given the overview from the previous section, I will now attempt to evaluate the results of the present study in terms of what I take to be the standard picture of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel in the history of philosophy. Accompanying this standard view of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel, discussed in the Introduction to the present work, a standard story of Kierkegaard’s role in the development of post-Kantian European philosophy has been repeated so often that it has become a cliché. While


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this picture has long since been revised and replaced by more responsible ones in some research circles, it has for whatever reason shown a remarkable longevity in both Kierkegaard studies and other fields. In addition, it is still to be found in reference works and introductory courses to which it has filtered down. In the present section I would like to sketch briefly what I take to be the main contours of this picture. In the following section, I will then use the overview of the results of the present study outlined above in order to indicate how they run counter to this standard picture. The goal is of course not to set up a caricatured position that makes for easy criticism but rather to capture certain intuitions, which are still alive and well, about the development of European philosophy. Kierkegaard plays a double role in this standard story of the history of philosophy: first, as the critic of Hegel and German idealism and, second, as the founder of any number of twentieth-century trends, for example, religious existentialism or even post-modernism. According to this story, nineteenth-century philosophy consists of two competing traditions, the one, German idealism, is characterized by its belief in reason, while the other, an incipient existentialism or irrationalism, is characterized by its criticism and rejection of it. While Hegel is thought to be the main spokesman for the former, Kierkegaard is paraded as the forerunner of the latter. According to this interpretation, German idealism is regarded as the true heir of the Enlightenment and as such is characterized above all by its positive assessment of reason and its belief in rationality as the bulwark of human thought and institutions. Hegel, as one of the final figures in this tradition, is often portrayed as a naive Aufklärer, the last in a series of overenthusiastic thinkers. He purportedly took the belief in reason to absurd limits, claiming, for example, that dialectical reason renders all contradictions consistent or that what exists is rational by virtue of its very existence. It is asserted that Hegel’s hyperbolic conception of reason effectively reduced itself to absurdity with claims of this sort, which rendered it implausible to every sober thinker ever since. Hegel is thought to stand at the apex of this tradition by virtue of his all-encompassing rationalistic system that concludes with the pretentious claim to have achieved “absolute knowing.” Typical of this view is the following characterization offered by one historian of philosophy: “Hegel was . . . identified with this powerful belief in reason, for so long the idol of Western thought. The whole thrust of his thinking was an affirmation of absolute reason. With him, moreover, belief in reason was at the highest summit.”86 86

Robert Heiss, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, tr. by E. B. Garside, New York: Dell Publishing Co. 1975, p. 190f.


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After Hegel’s death in 1831 his rationalistic thought was carried on and transformed in the work of his students who formed the schools of right and left Hegelianism. Through these students his thought came to play a prominent role in the development of later academic trends. While many other historical schools arose from Hegel’s philosophy, left Hegelianism became the most influential. This school found a new form and impetus in the work of Marx and Engels who took Hegel’s dialectical method and conception of history and applied it to an understanding of economic relations. They believed that with the application of human reason, one could both understand the internal dynamic of social and economic relations and thereby obtain the key to a classless utopian society. It goes without saying that both their historical and their intellectual influence has been profound. The structuralist theories of linguistics, anthropology, and psychology also find their origin in Hegel, specifically in his belief in an underlying universal rationality beneath the seemingly chaotic appearances. Thus, the inspiration for the work of de Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, and Althusser, among others, can be traced back to Hegel. Habermas is then regarded as the most recent incarnation of this rationalistic tradition, which stands in a direct line of descent from the Enlightenment. According to this interpretation, there is opposed to this tradition with its insistence on reason, lucidity, transparency, and truth, another to which Kierkegaard is thought to belong. This tradition features a supposedly more colorful sequence of thinkers, such as Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, and Derrida, who are characterized by their deep suspicion and often violent criticism of reason. These thinkers, often regarded as irrationalists, immoralists, nihilists, and iconoclasts, have often been classified primarily as existentialists or, in their most recent incarnations, as post-structuralists or post-modernists. In contrast to the neo-Hegelian rationalists, thinkers of this so-called irrationalist tradition are thought to have an entirely disabused conception of reason. Their theories of the irrational or shadowy side of human nature purportedly correct Hegel’s exuberant excesses on this score. Although this caricatured reading of the history of philosophy has been corrected by recent scholarship, many of the old prejudices still persist. But even the most crass interpretation must acknowledge that the diverse thinkers who constitute the “irrationalist tradition” bear at best a vague resemblance to one another and cannot be readily classified into a single homogeneous school. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find a single doctrine upon which they all agree. In any case, this “tradition” of thinkers is juxtaposed to the schools of Hegelianism, Marxism, structuralism, and critical theory. While the post-Hegelian tradition believes in reason and discursive truth, or so the story goes, the existentialists reject reason and devote themselves to demonstrating that


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standard view of nineteenth-century philosophy 621 the notion of objective truth is a naive epistemological error that must finally be abandoned. Thus, it appears as if Hegel, as the last torchbearer of Enlightenment rationality, has nothing in common with Kierkegaard, one of the most eloquent spokesmen for the irrational. Kierkegaard is usually assigned the distinguished position of being the founder of the existentialist or irrationalist tradition. His rejection of abstract thinking as being concerned with pseudo-problems was welcomed by the existentialists as a sign for the need to return to the truly pressing questions of philosophy. His emphasis on the lived life of the individual fit well with the twentieth-century phenomenology. His analyses of what were later called “existential emotions,” such as anxiety, despair, and boredom, foreshadowed existentialist psychology and were seen as a fundamental break with the Enlightenment conception that reason is the dominant faculty governing human beings. His insistence on human freedom was co-opted by later thinkers, most notably Sartre with his controversial theory of radical freedom. Kierkegaard’s analysis of the need of the individual to choose himself foreshadowed a number of twentiethcentury theories of authenticity. While many of the existentialists were uncomfortable with the profoundly Christian nature of Kierkegaard’s thought, they were nevertheless convinced that he had arrived at a radically new conception of philosophy and that the only thing left to do was to purge it of its vestiges of Christianity and religion, which they saw as an inauthentic attempt to maintain an absolute metaphysical meaning. The categorization of Kierkegaard as the first existentialist also helped to entrench the purported Hegel-Kierkegaard disparity since existentialism is also conceived as a reaction against the rationality and abstraction of German idealism, of which Hegel is considered to be the most extreme exponent. Kierkegaard is today also hailed as a forerunner of post-modernism.87 His use of the pseudonyms and his criticism of authority are interpreted as precursors to the concept of the death of the author. His analysis and use of the notion of irony is understood as a recognition of the ultimate impossibility of determining any fixed truth and of the need simply to be satisfied with the ironic play of language. Likewise, his strategy of indirect communication is interpreted as a criticism and denial of the possibility of discursive truth and communicative action in Habermas’ sense. According to this view, Kierkegaard is thought to have utterly rejected the fundamental principles of Hegel’s philosophy and to have given birth to a radically new philosophical tradition. The history of nineteenthand twentieth-century philosophy is then substantially conceived as an ongoing debate between the founders of the two traditions – Hegel 87

See, for example, Martin J. Matust´ık and Merold Westphal (eds.), Kierkegaard and Post/Modernity, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1995.


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and Kierkegaard – and their epigones. Later incarnations of this debate included, for example, structuralism versus post-structuralism and Habermas versus Derrida. This debate runs through countless variations along the lines of the original polemic that Kierkegaard is thought to have carried out against Hegel. Thus, while Kant is thought to have united the schools of rationalism and empiricism with his transcendental idealism, Hegel and Kierkegaard are thought to have split philosophy again into two competing traditions, which have developed parallel to one another ever since. This is the picture produced by the standard view of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. It was born with the early reception of Kierkegaard’s thought at the beginning of the twentieth century. In that reception Kierkegaard’s ostensible polemic with Hegel was taken at face value, and since that time it has spilled over from Kierkegaard studies to become the general view of the history of nineteenth-century philosophy and has in this form made its way into textbooks and introductory courses. What is perhaps surprising is that the present investigation shows that this widely accepted picture of the development of European thought is fundamentally incorrect and is in fact based on a misunderstanding in its initial premise, namely, that Kierkegaard issued a straightforward critique of Hegel.

iii. the consequences of the present study for the standard picture In what follows I would like to indicate how the results of the present study lead to the conclusion that the simplistic picture of the development of the history of nineteenth-century European thought, just presented, is largely a myth. I will first argue that the claim for the absolute discontinuity between Hegel and Kierkegaard is fundamentally incorrect and that Kierkegaard’s anti-Hegelian rhetoric is explained by his polemics with the Danish Hegelians. The result of this is that Kierkegaard in fact never had a major campaign against Hegel. I will argue that although a genuine critique of Hegel might have been fruitful, none ever transpired, and the standard interpretations of this “critique” preclude the event of a real one. I will then give some possible explanations for why previous studies on Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel have failed to recognize the true targets of Kierkegaard’s seeming criticisms of Hegel. First, in the picture of the development of nineteenth-century philosophy sketched earlier, the radical discontinuity between Hegel and Kierkegaard has been overstated. As has been seen throughout this study, despite Kierkegaard’s polemical rhetoric, the two thinkers in fact have much in common. For example, from the beginning to the end of Kierkegaard’s literary corpus he uses Hegel’s dialectical methodology,


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perhaps most clearly in Either/Or and The Sickness unto Death. Indeed, he even prides himself on being a dialectician.88 Moreover, in many analyses he employs key Hegelian ideas and terms, which were widespread at the time. Many of Kierkegaard’s best-known concepts such as “repetition,”89 the theory of stages,90 and “the leap”91 originally come from Hegel. Likewise, many of his most famous analyses of, for example, irony,92 Antigone93 and Socrates,94 and the German Romantics95 are deeply indebted to Hegel. Finally, the early Kierkegaard, under Heiberg’s sway, seems to be particularly influenced by Hegel; works such as From the Papers of One Still Living and The Concept of Irony display a profound Hegelian influence with regard to language and content. All of this is, of course, not to suggest that Kierkegaard is straightforwardly a Hegelian or that he agrees with Hegel on every point. Kierkegaard often maintains positions that are at variance from Hegel as is seen, for example, with his insistence on transcendence in contrast to Hegel’s philosophy of immanence, or his insistence on the irreducibility of Christianity in contrast to Hegel’s understanding of it as the penultimate level of knowing in the system behind philosophical knowing. Hegel’s goal is to eliminate dualisms such as mind-body and subject-object, whereas Kierkegaard’s is to create a new split, which he does with the distinction between the sphere of thought and the sphere of freedom that was introduced in Either/Or96 and which can be found in other later works, such as The Concept of Anxiety and the Postscript. Thus, there are, to be sure, significant differences between the two thinkers, but these rarely form a part of the anti-Hegel rhetoric, which has, oddly enough, little if anything to do with Hegel himself. Again the standard caricature stands in the way of a fruitful exchange since it invariably focuses on the polemical rhetoric. The key point that I wish to underscore is that the result of my thesis is not to deny that Hegel and Kierkegaard are fundamentally different thinkers with fundamentally different philosophical views. This seems to me to be undeniable, and the differences could be sketched in many different ways. Yet this is trivially true since the same thing can be said of any two given figures in the history of philosophy. Aristotle was different from Plato, and Heidegger, from Nietzsche. Second, Kierkegaard never had the grand polemic with Hegel that commentators have attributed to him. The polemical rhetoric of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms, seen in its historical context, is directed 88 89 90 91 93 95

Pap. X-1 A 349. PC, Supplement, pp. 300–303; Pap. X-5 B 40. CUP2, Supplement, pp. 148–152; Pap. X-5 B 168. Pap. X-6 B 145, p. 204. See Chapter 5, Section IV, Chapter 6, Section I. See Chapter 2, Section II, Chapter 4, Sections III and V. 92 See Chapter 3, Section VII. See Chapter 9, Section V. 94 See Chapter 3, Sections IV, V, VI, VII. See Chapter 4, Section V. 96 See Chapter 4, Section II. See Chapter 3, Section VIII.


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towards the Danish Hegelians and has little to do with Hegel’s own thought. When one examines the standard passages that scholars tend to point out as representative of Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel, one finds that even though Hegel’s name is at times mentioned, the position being criticized is very rarely one that can be said to have a sanction in his primary texts. Textual analyses and direct quotations from Hegel’s works are almost completely absent in Kierkegaard’s writings (with the lone exception of The Concept of Irony). When one goes through the works of the Danish Hegelians carefully, one can readily find the positions that Kierkegaard criticizes. As has been seen, The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, De Omnibus, Philosophical Fragments, and the Postscript are aimed primarily against Martensen; The Concept of Anxiety and The Book on Adler, against Adler; and Prefaces, against Heiberg. Moreover, when one understands Kierkegaard’s biographical relation to these figures, the reasons for his animosity become clear. The problem is that many Kierkegaard scholars have taken his rhetoric at face value and have seen it as a reflection of genuine philosophical differences between him and Hegel himself. The objection might be raised that if the thinkers criticized by Kierkegaard were Hegelians, then would not his criticisms of them be ipso facto criticisms of Hegel himself? Much of the secondary literature tends to take the two to be synonymous and assumes that a criticism of any given Hegelian is by extension intended as a criticism of Hegel himself. This, however, underestimates the heterogeneity of the various thinkers who merely for the sake of convenience have been designated “Hegelians.” This underestimation is due to a general lack of familiarity with the individual personalities and writings of the Hegelians. The radical diversity among the different “Hegelians” in Germany and Denmark prohibits any simple affiliation of these thinkers with every line of Hegel’s works. These thinkers in the generation following Hegel lived in a quite different world and had experiences quite different from their distinguished teacher.97 Hegel had a much closer kinship to his immediate contemporaries than to the so-called Hegelians who grew up in a social and political world that was significantly different from the one he was raised in. Hegel’s students experienced his system as a completed work and never knew a world without it. Even though it looks as if the Hegelians and Hegel are addressing the same problem on any given point, the changed social and political circumstances put the constellation of problems into a different context and thus in effect render it a different set of issues. Thus, if one wishes, one can analyze, for example, Martensen’s treatment of mediation in Christianity as the same 97

See William J. Brazill, The Young Hegelians, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press 1970, pp. 20–21.


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as Hegel’s, but this is a gross ahistorical distortion of the thought of both men. Since most commentators are not in a position to judge Kierkegaard’s criticisms of Heiberg, Martensen, Adler, and the others, they assume immediately that Hegel must at some level be the target. Even though these thinkers were “Hegelians” in the sense that they were influenced by Hegel and used some of his ideas, they were not simply parrots. Each offered criticisms of Hegel, and each had his own academic agenda which was larger than his use of Hegel. More often than not Kierkegaard criticizes this agenda rather than anything that could be properly characterized as “Hegelian.” As has been seen, their presentation of Hegel is frequently at great variance from Hegel himself. Moreover, Kierkegaard often criticized these “Hegelians” for personal reasons, referring to particular statements or slogans from their works, which are purely their own and have nothing to do with any Hegelian aspect of their thought. This then leads to the next question. If the polemic is with Heiberg, Martensen, Adler, and the other Hegelians and not with Hegel, then why does Kierkegaard seem to criticize Hegel, while hiding his true targets? Perhaps some of Kierkegaard’s polemical rhetoric against Hegel can be explained precisely by his debt to him; often there are more violent debates among thinkers who have much in common than among those who have no shared presuppositions at all. Thus, many debates within tightknit groups are often more violent and abusive than those between such groups and their declared enemies. Moreover, many thinkers attempt to conceal their debt to their predecessors by portraying their own thought in as stark as possible contrast to them. Kierkegaard’s polemic with Hegel may thus betray a hidden recognition of a degree of intellectual kinship and debt.98 Moreover, Kierkegaard does at times identify his targets for those who are not blinded by the fixed notion that he is constantly criticizing Hegel. In Prefaces, for example, he engages in a very direct polemic with Heiberg, who is named, quoted, and paraphrased several times. Moreover, in many of his articles he has no scruples about naming the people whom he wishes to criticize.99 But, as has been seen repeatedly, most of the time Kierkegaard prefers to conceal his targets, at least in part. In the course of this study examples have been seen where in drafts names such as 98

99

This point has been noted by Dietrich Ritschl, “Kierkegaards Kritik an Hegels Logik,” Theologische Zeitschrift, 11, 1955, p. 437: “Kierkegaard hätte niemals der Kritik und Opposition gegen Hegel ein solches Gewicht beigemessen, wenn er nicht bei ihm seine eigenen Fragestellungen und a¨ hnliche Zielsetzungen erkannt hätte.” For example, “A Word of Thanks to Professor Heiberg,” COR, pp. 17–21; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 411–415; “The Activity of a Traveling Esthetician and How He Still Happened to Pay for the Dinner,” COR, pp. 38–46; SV1, vol. 13, pp. 422–431; and the articles related to the attack on the Church.


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Heiberg, Martensen, and Nielsen are written in the text or in the margins of Kierkegaard’s manuscript, only to be removed in the final published version.100 As I have argued,101 the real reason for this was the small size of the intellectual scene in Denmark at the time. Everyone knew everyone else, and scholars took due precautions to avoid offense. This was certainly one of the reasons why Kierkegaard and many of his contemporaries availed themselves of pseudonyms or published their works anonymously. It was also doubtless one of the reasons why Kierkegaard decided not to publish The Book on Adler, which contained much direct criticism. He may also have thought the targets of his criticisms to have been obvious for the contemporary reader, and so there was no need to identify them by name. To assist his informed contemporaries, Kierkegaard employed another strategy: he developed a list of code words consisting of stock phrases or expressions that he could assume his reading public to be familiar with from the books and articles being discussed at the time. Thus, when he invoked a specific code word or phrase, such as “de omnibus dubitandum est” or “cogito ergo sum,” his reader would know immediately that he was referring to (and usually criticizing) Martensen, who frequently used these expressions as slogans.102 Likewise, when he used the phrase, “the demand of the age,” his readers would automatically think of Heiberg and identify him as the target of the criticism.103 Kierkegaard had a large repertoire of code words of this kind, and much of the task of understanding his texts consists in making oneself familiar with the relevant books and articles of the period so that one can recognize and identify these words. When Kierkegaard uses Hegel’s name, it is, generally speaking, intended not to be a direct reference to the German philosopher but rather an encoded reference to a member of the Hegelian school whose views or person he wants to criticize. This would have been clear to a contemporary reader since Heiberg’s and Martensen’s association with Hegel’s philosophy was well known. 100

101 102 103

For example, in a draft of the Introduction to The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard satirizes Heiberg under a criticism of the immanent movement in logic. But in the text his name has been omitted. CA, Supplement, p. 180; Pap. V B 49.5: “In his ‘System of Logic,’ which despite all movement, does not come further than to § 23 . . . and despite its proud title, was not able to emancipate itself from a very subordinate existence in a periodical, Professor Heiberg nevertheless succeeded in making everything move – except the system, which comes to a halt at § 23, although one might have believed that the system would have moved by itself through an immanent movement.” Translation slightly modified. Discussed in Chapter 9, Section IV. See SKS, vol. K4, p. 364. Similarly, in a draft of Prefaces Heiberg, Nielsen, and Stilling are named explicitly, but in the published version their names are replaced by Mr. A. A., Mr. B. B., and Mr. C. C., respectively. P, Supplement, p. 119; Pap. V B 96. See SKS, vol. K4, pp. 606–608. See Introduction, Section IV. See Chapter 2, Section III. Chapter 5, Section I. See Chapter 10, Section III.


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It is here that one comes to the problem that has led generations of Kierkegaard scholars down the wrong track. Instead of seeing the references to Hegel as encoded criticisms of specific thinkers in Golden Age Denmark, interpreters have taken these as straightforward references to Hegel himself. This view became entrenched via countless commentaries, reference works, and studies in the secondary literature, which mistakenly identified these criticisms with specific passages in Hegel’s primary texts. Thus, there arose the myth about Kierkegaard’s polemic with Hegel, a polemic which never existed, at least not in the straightforward form in which it is usually presented. In the absence of knowledge of the little-known figures who constituted Danish Hegelianism, this myth thrived and became the foundation for the caricatured picture of the history of European thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which I have sketched above. Kierkegaard scholars like Thulstrup allow themselves to be carried away by Kierkegaard’s seemingly anti-Hegelian rhetoric. But they misread this rhetoric since it was never actually directed against Hegel or any particular doctrine of his thought in the first place. The odd result is that these scholars become more anti-Hegelian than Kierkegaard himself ever was. There are a number of other reasons why scholars have come to think that Kierkegaard conducted a major polemic against Hegel and why they have failed to recognize the figures who in fact stand hidden behind the scenes as his true targets. The most obvious reason is that these figures, such as Martensen and Heiberg, are not generally known today. Their works have rarely been reprinted and have gradually become more or less forgotten. (Indeed, outside Scandinavia they were probably never very well known in the first place.) Moreover, their works have rarely been translated,104 and scholars unable to read Danish have simply not been in a position to determine who the actual targets of the criticism were even if they had a vague suspicion that it might not always be Hegel. In addition, Hegel provided a ready-made candidate for possible criticism since he was usually the only nineteenth-century philosopher named by Kierkegaard with whom the commentators were familiar. Hegel was the major philosophical figure of the period, and it was natural to see Kierkegaard as taking a position vis-à-vis him. Kierkegaard’s overt references to Heiberg and Martensen were usually skimmed over and dismissed as irrelevant or uninteresting. Another reason that scholars have failed to see beyond Kierkegaard’s purported polemic with Hegel is the ahistorical tendency employed in 104

While Martensen was translated in his own lifetime and was subsequently more or less forgotten, none of Heiberg’s prose works has to the best of my knowledge ever been available in English (and only a very few of his poems and theater pieces). None of the works of the other Danish Hegelians, such as Adler, Nielsen, or Stilling, has ever been translated.


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many studies on the history of philosophy. These studies, as heirs of analytic philosophy, are characterized by a careful analysis of concepts and arguments in abstraction from everything else. Accompanying information such as the thinker’s biography or historical context is not regarded as germane for this kind of a study. Thus, Kierkegaard is not treated as a figure situated in a specific time and place in the history of philosophy, and no attempt is made to contextualize his works or to understand him in any broader social or historical milieu. As a result, the approach to his authorship is purely text-immanent. His texts are studied in isolation and without any connection to anything else to which he might have been responding. By confining themselves exclusively to Kierkegaard’s primary texts, these scholars deprived themselves of any opportunity of discovering Kierkegaard’s true targets and coming to an understanding of what was actually at issue. If Kierkegaard is thought to be in dialogue with anyone at all, then it is with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, or one of the other great names in the history of philosophy. These great thinkers are conceived to be involved in an ongoing dialogue in an ahistorical forum of ideas. It is thought that to be involved in seemingly petty polemics with little-known Danish contemporaries would be unworthy of the genius of Kierkegaard. To engage in this kind of polemics would seem to make Kierkegaard a parochial thinker and divest his thought of any universal message. Given this methodology, it is hardly surprising that commentators have rarely been able to move beyond the anti-Hegel rhetoric to see who the actual targets were. Moreover, few Kierkegaard scholars have been sufficiently familiar with Hegel’s writings to become suspicious of the apparently anti-Hegel rhetoric. The direct statements Kierkegaard makes about Hegel are quite often enigmatic since even though Hegel’s name sometimes appears in the text, the position being criticized is not one that the trained expert recognizes as belonging to him. This would lead most scholars to become suspicious and to question whether a given passage is really a straightforward criticism of Hegel. The natural reaction would then be to want to discover the real target of the criticism. But in the absence of a familiarity with Hegel’s own writings, many scholars have simply taken what seemed to be Kierkegaard’s word on the matter. But Kierkegaard himself never intended for his references to Hegel to be taken at face value and always assumed that an attentive reader would be able to discern the true target behind the name of Hegel. Finally, as in the case of Thulstrup, many Kierkegaard scholars had a vested interest in presenting Kierkegaard as having a polemic with Hegel himself and thus not with his little-known Danish contemporaries. It would seem to make Kierkegaard more interesting and original if he borrowed nothing at all from his predecessors. Given that Hegel is


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his most important immediate predecessor in the history of philosophy, Kierkegaard devotees felt a particular need to distance Kierkegaard from him and to give the impression that his thought began, as it were, ex nihilo. This is precisely the reason why Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel has been such an important issue in Kierkegaard studies, while Kierkegaard’s relation to other major figures from the tradition appears less interesting and less critical. A polemic with Hegel would seem to imply that Hegel exercised no positive influence on Kierkegaard, and this would seem to increase proportionately the originality of Kierkegaard himself. By contrast, if Kierkegaard in fact derived some of his central doctrines, philosophical language, or dialectical methodology from Hegel, then he would seem to be less original. As I have argued earlier, this paranoia is ungrounded and based on a misconception of what originality in philosophy amounts to. Surely, no one would reproach Feuerbach, Marx, or Habermas for being derivative thinkers since they openly acknowledge their debt to Hegel. Their originality and indeed brilliance lies precisely in their use of certain Hegelian premises and the development of them in a new form. Although many of Hegel’s doctrines and analyses exercised a profound influence on Kierkegaard, none of this makes Kierkegaard a lesser thinker or deprives him of any of his originality. For as often as he adopts aspects of Hegel’s thought, he never does so uncritically; rather, he almost always reshapes the original thought in his own way and in accordance with his own intellectual agenda, regardless of the source of that thought. Thus, there could never be any talk of Kierkegaard as a derivative thinker or as an uncritical follower of Hegel, even if one managed to uncover several more points of contact than I have done in this study. Kierkegaard always maintains a critical, yet productive, relation to Hegel. He modifies and revises Hegel’s concepts instead of simply rejecting them out of hand, which one would expect from a rabid anti-Hegelian. Another reason why the targets of Kierkegaard have remained unidentified and unrecognized is the need in much of Kierkegaard scholarship to demonize Hegel. One reason for this demonization is the characterization of him as a representative of secular philosophy in opposition to Kierkegaard’s Christianity. This has been a lingering motif in the reception of the Hegel-Kierkegaard issue.105 Hegel’s rationalism is taken to be in fundamental opposition to Christian belief and even to be a threat to it. This aspect of the history of reception is singularly odd since it forgets that Hegel himself stands clearly within a long tradition of rationalist theology, which runs through Augustine and Aquinas, which sees no conflict between reason and faith. Moreover, he studied theology and for many 105

E.g., Gregor Malantschuk, Kierkegaard’s Way to the Truth. An Introduction to the Authorship of Søren Kierkegaard, tr. by Mary Michelsen, Montreal: Inter Editions 1987, pp. 14–16.


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years seemed destined for the priesthood. He wrote several works on theology, most notably those collected under the title Early Theological Writings,106 and, in addition, as a part of his theological training also delivered sermons.107 He himself conceived of his philosophy not as being at odds with Christian faith but rather as a support for it. Moreover, many of his contemporaries, such as Marheineke and Göschel, understood it in the same way. Thus, it requires a large degree of historical ignorance or forgetfulness to conceive of Hegel as the spokesman for secular philosophy in opposition to Christian faith. Of course, it is still an open issue whether or not Hegel’s own view of his philosophy as being in harmony with Christianity is correct. But in any case Hegel cannot without argument be written off as a secular, anti-Christian thinker diametrically opposed to Kierkegaard. It may seem to some readers that the conclusions I am presenting are self-contradictory since my interpretation means that Kierkegaard both agreed and disagreed with Hegel, was both receptive to and critical of different aspects of Hegel’s thought. But there is nothing necessarily self-contradictory in Kierkegaard’s assessment and use of Hegel. In fact his relation to Hegel was in this respect no different from that of many of his contemporaries, including Marx, Feuerbach, or any of the other Young Hegelians. Hegel’s student Heinrich Heine is a good example of the ambivalence displayed by Kierkegaard. On the one hand, Heine hails Hegel as “the greatest philosopher Germany has produced since Leibniz,”108 but then, on the other hand, he satirizes both Hegel and his followers109 in a way similar to Kierkegaard’s The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars. This ambivalent relation to Hegel was characteristic of the entire age when philosophizing meant being in a dialogue with Hegel. Even Hegel’s most enthusiastic followers were critical of different aspects of his thought, indeed, no less critical than Kierkegaard has been understood to be. Likewise, there are deep ambiguities in figures, such as Martensen, Møller, and Sibbern, who were involved in the Danish reception of Hegel’s philosophy. Thus, Kierkegaard’s ambivalence was in no way different from that of his contemporaries. My methodology has been historical in the sense that I have been concerned with an analysis of Kierkegaard’s actual knowledge of Hegel’s 106

107

108 109

Hegels theologische Jugendschriften, ed. by Herman Nohl, Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, Paul Siebeck 1907. In English as Early Theological Writings, tr. by T. M. Knox, Fragments tr. by Richard Kroner, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1948; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1975. The sermons appear in Dokumente zu Hegels Entwicklung, ed. by Johannes Hoffmeister, Stuttgart: Frommann 1936, pp. 175–192. In English as “Hegel’s Sermons,” tr. by Michael George, Clio, vol. 13, no. 4, 1984, pp. 377–399. Heine, “On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany,” in Selected Prose, tr. by Ritchie Robertson, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1993, p. 287. Heine, “The Town of Lucca,” in Selected Prose, ibid., see Chapter 2.


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philosophy and his self-conscious assessment of it. By contrast, the goal of analytic historians of philosophy is to compare the thought of specific thinkers in an abstract thematic manner, and the question of their actual historical contact with one another is put aside. I belabor this methodological point since it is relevant for assessing my conclusions. What I take this study to have established is that from the perspective of Kierkegaard’s own assessment, he never had the great anti-Hegel campaign that much of the secondary literature has ascribed to him. On the contrary, Hegel had a quite positive influence on him. It will be noted that there are potentially an infinite number of other possible theoretical points of comparison or contrast that have no direct grounding in Kierkegaard’s own assessment of the matter. My investigation has not been interested in these, at least not primarily. Thus, my thesis is limited to what I take to be Kierkegaard’s own view of his relation to Hegel, to the degree to which that view can be reconstructed. I make no claim about any wider points of comparison or contact, which could be made by someone else besides Kierkegaard. If the main lines of the present investigation are correct and Kierkegaard had no anti-Hegel campaign as such, then the standard picture of the development of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophy must be fundamentally reconceived. Among other things, the conclusions of this study undermine the conception of post-Kantian European thought beginning with Kierkegaard’s anti-Hegel campaign and the view of Kierkegaard as a thinker who has nothing in common with the Hegelian schools. In addition, this interpretation calls into question the notion of two distinct parallel traditions and indicates heretofore unseen points of continuity that need to be worked out in future investigations. If the present study is correct, then it no longer makes sense to conceive of the history of nineteenth-century philosophy as consisting of two parallel traditions that are hostile to one another, as the standard picture asserts. Kierkegaard was inspired by many of Hegel’s basic thoughts, which he incorporated into his own work in different ways. Similarly, the so-called Hegelians such as Bauer, Feuerbach, Strauss, and Marx were inspired by Hegel and used his thought in their work. None of these thinkers was any less critical of Hegel than Kierkegaard was. Indeed, their works also often contained open polemics against Hegel. So the question arises why these thinkers are thought to belong to one tradition and labelled “Hegelians,” whereas Kierkegaard is thought to belong to another and conceived as the very antipode of Hegel. They are all responding to and revising Hegel’s thought in different ways. What I am suggesting is that the conception of two parallel traditions is a gross oversimplification that rather arbitrarily assigns thinkers to one side or the other of a false dichotomy. This is perhaps convenient for bibliographical or pedagogical purposes, but it is a distortion of the actual content of the work and thought of these figures. The usual way of classifying


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individual thinkers into two different traditions is in the final analysis quite arbitrary as is clear from the simple fact that Kierkegaard has much in common with the so-called “Hegelians.” Likewise, as has been noted,110 there are enormous difficulties involved in cleanly classifying thinkers as Hegelians or Hegel critics. For example, Martensen anticipated many of Kierkegaard’s criticisms of Hegel, and yet he is classified as a Hegelian. Similarly, Poul Martin Møller was originally known as one of the main exponents of Hegelianism, which he distanced himself from only in the last two years of his life, and based on this fact alone he is classified as an anti-Hegelian. This investigation, by calling into question Kierkegaard’s purported anti-Hegel campaign, simultaneously calls into question the basic understanding of the history and development of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury European philosophy. This tradition needs to be reconceived fundamentally. If nothing else, the notion of two parallel traditions originating with Hegel and Kierkegaard will need to be discarded. I have tried to sketch the way in which a study of a handful of long-since-forgotten Danish philosophers and theologians who were influenced by Hegel can in fact have dramatic repercussions, causing one to rethink a number of the most firmly established and deeply cherished beliefs about the development of European thought. Names such as Martensen, Adler, and Heiberg will certainly never replace those of Marx, Heidegger, and Habermas in the history of European thought, but in a certain sense they can be regarded as no less important. If one takes Kierkegaard’s purported criticism of Hegel to be one of the signal episodes in the history of nineteenth-century philosophy and if, as this study has tried to demonstrate, this criticism turns out not to be of Hegel after all but rather of these aforementioned figures, then one of two results are possible: either this criticism will lose its status of centrality since it is after all not a criticism of Hegel, or one will continue to regard the criticism as important and will elevate the aforementioned figures in the rich tradition of Danish Hegelianism to a role of significance in the history of nineteenth-century philosophy, which they never enjoyed before.

iv. kierkegaard, hegel, and the nature of nineteenth-century continental philosophy There remains an important question about Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel that this study has not adequately addressed. I have tried to demonstrate that much of Kierkegaard’s ostensible anti-Hegel rhetoric is in fact aimed at other figures. It has generally been possible to identify Kierkegaard’s actual targets in most of the passages that have traditionally 110

See Chapter 1, Sections I–III.


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been taken as his Hegel critique; however, there remain a handful of cases in which the language or the nature of the criticism is not concrete enough to make it possible to identify the target with any certainty. It might be argued that in these cases Kierkegaard is indeed criticizing Hegel directly on some substantive philosophical point. In the absence of a clearly identified alternative target, one cannot rule out this possibility. In this final section I will address this issue. I wish to argue that even though these remaining few cases can indeed be conceived as criticisms of Hegel, they (along with other examples) evince the fact that Kierkegaard and Hegel are engaged in fundamentally different kinds of projects: while Hegel is primarily interested in providing a philosophical explanation of the world in terms of concepts, Kierkegaard is primarily interested in the religious life of the individual. Given this, it is odd that Kierkegaard has been classified as a philosopher and thus placed in the history of nineteenth-century continental philosophy in the first place. This misclassification explains at least in part, I wish to suggest, why both Kierkegaard’s role in this history in general and his relation to Hegel in particular have been so poorly understood. A. Some Examples Indicative of a Metalevel Dispute. (1) As has been seen, in a number of works, including Fear and Trembling, Stages on Life’s Way, the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and The Book on Adler, Kierkegaard criticizes Hegel’s system for having no ethics. This almost formulaic criticism is rarely explored in any detail beyond the simple claim itself. Moreover, the nature of the terse formula makes it impossible to identify any contemporary Danish Hegelian as a possible target. This criticism is difficult to make sense of in light of Hegel’s detailed theory of ethical life in the Philosophy of Right. While one might disagree with Hegel’s ethical theory, for example, on Kantian or utilitarian grounds, it is odd bluntly to deny that he has one. In the analyses given earlier,111 I tried to argue that this criticism makes sense only when one sees that what Kierkegaard actually wants to criticize with this slogan is the nature of Hegel’s ethical theory. At bottom lies the fact that Kierkegaard has an entirely different conception of what ethics is. Thus, when he cannot see in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right an ethical theory that focuses on the individual and one’s immediately experienced situation, he criticizes Hegel for having no ethics at all. But with this presupposition, neither Aristotle nor Kant nor Mill would have an ethical theory either. Kierkegaard never sketches in any detail what he takes the requirements of an ethical theory to be. As I tried to argue, in the absence of clarification about his own conception of ethics, this criticism ultimately remains question-begging. The criticism is, however, instructive 111

See Chapter 11, Section X. Chapter 12, Section IV.


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since it points to the metaethical or metaphilosophical question. What work should an ethical theory do? What is the nature of an ethical theory? The criticism takes place at this level, and this shows that Kierkegaard is operating with an entirely different conception of ethics from the start, one that he has no interest in justifying vis-à-vis traditional theories. (2) Another example discussed earlier that evinces a radically different conception of philosophy concerns Kierkegaard’s understanding of the word “actuality” (i.e., “Virkelighed”). This is, of course, one of the key concepts in the authorship generally, which along with the term “existence” (or “Tilværelse”) has often been paraded as evidence that Kierkegaard is a true forerunner of existentialism. It is commonly thought that Kierkegaard criticized the abstract nature of Hegel’s system because it either leaves out what is actual (i.e., the existence of the individual) or tries to incorporate actuality into the system and thereby destroys it by turning it into something else. It is instructive to see how the early Kierkegaard understood this concept. Earlier I recounted the anecdote related by Sibbern concerning the young Kierkegaard’s confusion about the philosophical use of the term “actuality,” as was evinced by Kierkegaard’s question about the relationship between philosophy and actuality.112 Sibbern failed to understand the question since he understood the term in its traditional philosophical sense. But Kierkegaard understood “actuality” not as an abstract concept but as having something to do with the immediate life of the individual. Kierkegaard, at this point at least, did not seem to realize that it was a technical term. In another analysis given previously,113 it was noted that Kierkegaard’s disappointment with Schelling’s lectures in Berlin concerned precisely a misunderstanding of Schelling’s use of the term “actuality” (or “Wirklichkeit”).114 Kierkegaard soon became aware that Schelling, while using the word “actuality,” did not mean the same thing by it as he did. He thus in a short time found Schelling’s lectures disappointing and tedious. As the anecdote in Either/Or evinces, Kierkegaard felt duped by Schelling’s abstract use of the term.115 These anecdotes illustrate clearly that Kierkegaard had a conception of actuality quite different from that of the tradition of German idealism within which Hegel, Schelling, and Sibbern were all working. Kierkegaard’s misunderstanding of the category of actuality in Schelling

112

113 114 115

H. P. Barfod (ed.), “Indledende Notiser,” in his Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer. 1833–1843, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag 1869, pp. lii–liii. Cited from Encounters with Kierkegaard, tr. and ed. by Bruce H. Kirmmse, op. cit., “Letter F. C. Sibbern to H. P. Barfod,” 19 September 1869, p. 217. Quoted in Chapter 3, Section II, p. 143f. See Chapter 9, Section I. JP, vol. 5, 5535; SKS, vol. 19, p. 235, Not8:33. Discussed in Chapter 9, Section I. EO1, p. 32; SKS, vol. 2, p. 41. Quoted above in Chapter 9, Section I.


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is revealing in that it points to a fundamentally different conception of philosophy from the German tradition. He does not realize the abstract nature of the concepts “actuality” and “existence” in German idealism and rather insists that they have his own “existential” meaning. He seems to understand these terms in relation to the immediately experienced life of the individual. While the German idealists are interested in the conceptual use of these terms in logic and metaphysics, Kierkegaard sees them above all in relation to life. (3) In another analysis given above,116 the criticisms of Hegel issued in Fear and Trembling were explored. It was seen that Kierkegaard criticized the Philosophy of Right for not recognizing that the individual is higher than accepted morality and the universal with respect to religious faith. Kierkegaard has his pseudonymous author criticize Hegel for being inconsistent in his treatment of Abraham, who, according to Hegel’s philosophy, would have to be condemned as a murderer instead of being hailed as a knight of faith. In the analysis given earlier, I tried to argue that the two discussions were at cross purposes since Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author is concerned with the issue of the faith of the individual and the possibility of an individual revelation, whereas Hegel, in the work referred to, is concerned with a theory of social and political philosophy. This criticism evinces once again that the two thinkers are concerned with quite different projects, and it raises the question of the degree to which Kierkegaard’s project can be conceived as, strictly speaking, philosophical in the nineteenth-century sense of the term. Kierkegaard is interested in exploring the consequences of a divine revelation that commands something contrary to accepted morality and established law. Hegel, by contrast, is interested in sketching a political theory according to which true freedom is developed in the context of the rational state. It will be noted that in this context Hegel is not interested either in Abraham or in the possibility of divine revelation. Conversely, in Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard is not particularly interested in the implications of his views for political philosophy. He primarily analyzes the matter from the perspective of the individual, Abraham; the larger question of political philosophy is not addressed in any detail on its own terms. This is indicative of the fact that Kierkegaard is primarily concerned with specific religious issues as they confront specific individuals, but this is in itself not the subject-matter of philosophy, at least not in the nineteenth-century conception of it. (4) Finally, it has been seen that Hegel’s philosophy is criticized for its attempt to explain the incarnation or the paradox,117 or to reduce 116 117

See Chapter 7, Section II. See Chapter 11, Section III. Chapter 12, Section II.


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Christianity to a finite, sublated form of consciousness.118 These criticisms are also clearly indicative of the fact that Kierkegaard is doing something quite different from philosophy and thus quite different from Hegel. For Hegel, the goal of philosophy is to grasp the hidden conceptual structure in all spheres of reality. Thus, in the realm of philosophy of religion the goal is to discern the Concept in the various forms of the divine as conceived by the different world religions. In his discussion of Christianity Hegel then accordingly analyzes the Trinity in terms of the movement of the Concept from universal to particular to individual. This is an analysis intended solely for the purposes of his philosophy of religion, and there is no pretension of anything more than this and certainly no statement about the private belief of the individual. By contrast, when Kierkegaard discusses the paradox of the incarnation or the absurdity of faith, he is clearly interested in the personal faith of the individual, as he has his different pseudonyms underscore may times. This has on its own nothing to do with the academic field of philosophy of religion. Indeed, the point of Climacus’ analysis in the Postscript is precisely to distinguish between the objective and the subjective spheres; the objective sphere of scholarship and science can never attain a degree of certainty sufficient to justify faith or, as is said, to justify risking one’s eternal happiness, and therefore faith has to do with something subjective. Thus, while Kierkegaard is concerned primarily with the realm of the subjective (i.e., the private faith of the individual), Hegel is concerned primarily with the objective (i.e., the realm of science and scholarship). But so long as Hegel does not pretend to make any claims about the subjective sphere, there is no conflict, a point that Kierkegaard himself recognizes.119 Hegel states explicitly that the realm of pure particularity defies science and thus cannot be a part of a systematic body of knowledge; thus, science and philosophy are silent about personal faith. Here it is clear that the two thinkers are doing quite different things: Hegel is interested in philosophy in a traditional sense in terms of conceptual analysis, whereas Kierkegaard is interested in the private faith of the individual, which, as he himself states, has nothing to do with science and scholarship. But given that the two are doing quite different things, it is not clear why a comparison of their views is supposed to be fruitful in the first place. These examples should suffice to show that what lies behind the criticisms is not an internal contradiction in Hegel’s philosophy but rather a 118 119

See Chapter 11, Section IV. CUP1, p. 55; SKS, vol. 7, p. 59: “If the speculative thinker is also a believer . . . he must long since have perceived that speculative thought can never have the same meaning for him as faith. Precisely as a believer he is indeed infinitely interested in his own eternal happiness and in faith is assured of it . . . and he does not build an eternal happiness on his speculative thought.” Discussed in Chapter 11, Section II.


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completely different kind of intellectual project, in large part at odds with philosophy. One of the operative presuppositions behind the standard conception of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel is the idea that Kierkegaard was a philosopher in the same sense as Hegel. In other words, the presupposition for Kierkegaard having made a philosophical criticism of Hegel is that he himself is a philosopher and shares with Hegel a certain common understanding of the nature and office of the discipline. A genuinely philosophical criticism would only make sense if there were a common basis of this kind. If, by contrast, Kierkegaard is not a philosopher in the same sense of the word, then it is not clear why he should be conceived as giving a philosophical criticism of Hegel. It seems rather that given the disparate nature of their respective projects, such a criticism would be at cross-purposes. According to Hegel’s conception of philosophy, emphasis is placed on the universal, which has explanatory power in the particular cases. As was noted previously,120 unlike Kierkegaard, Hegel is not interested in particulars for their own sake or in the single individual. He says explicitly that some phenomena are in their details too specific to be objects of science.121 Philosophy is not and cannot be concerned with the manifold of infinite empirical particulars. Thus, Hegel, insofar as he sees himself as constructing a philosophical science, is not interested in particulars as particulars. This does not mean he has forgotten them; he simply does not regard them as the subject-matter of philosophical investigation. This is clearly illustrated in Hegel’s response to the empiricist objections of Wilhelm Traugott Krug (1770–1842), who demanded that the idealist philosophy provide a deduction for particular objects such as his pen.122 In his response Hegel says in no uncertain terms that this indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the very nature of philosophy. If, therefore, Hegel fails to speak about the question of the faith of the individual, it is because he does not regard this as an object of science. He is in fact in agreement with Kierkegaard on this point since, for Kierkegaard, the faith of the individual belongs to the sphere of subjectivity and not objective science. The individual or individual faith cannot be given a scientific analysis since they do not display the form of the Concept. 120 121 122

Chapter 8, Section IV. Hegel, PR, Preface, pp. 20–21; Jub., vol. 7, pp. 33–34. Quoted in Chapter 8, Section IV, p. 373. Hegel, “Wie der gemeine Menschenverstand die Philosophie nehme, – dargestellt an den Werken des Herrn Krug,” Kritisches Journal der Philosophie, vol. 1, no. 1, 1802, pp. 98ff. In Jub. vol. 1, pp. 199ff. English translation: “How the Ordinary Human Understanding Takes Philosophy (as Displayed in the Works of Mr. Krug),” in Between Kant and Hegel. Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism, tr. by George di Giovanni and H.S. Harris, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press 1985, pp. 298ff.


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By contrast, Kierkegaard is antiphilosophical in the sense that he is concerned primarily with the religious life of the individual and not with offering a conceptual explanation of a given subject-matter or establishing any kind of general theory valid for everyone. In The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard indicates clearly that he is aware of the difference between abstract philosophy and what he is interested in doing. Considering the proper way to approach the person of Socrates, he writes: This is the purely personal life with which science and scholarship admittedly are not involved. . . . Whatever the case may be, grant that science and scholarship are right in ignoring such things; nevertheless, one who wants to understand the individual life cannot do so. And since Hegel himself says somewhere that with Socrates it is not so much a matter of speculation as of individual life, I dare to take this as sanction for my procedural method in my whole venture, however imperfect it may turn out because of my own deficiencies.123

Here even at this early period Kierkegaard is perfectly aware that by exploring the individual life of Socrates he is not doing philosophy, but he makes a self-conscious claim that his kind of nonphilosophical discussion is more illuminating and to the point than an abstract philosophical one when what is at issue is the life of the individual. The other thing to note about the passage quoted is that Kierkegaard himself recognizes that Hegel is aware of the distinction between philosophy and actuality or real life (or whatever one wishes to call what it is that Kierkegaard is interested in). Kierkegaard calls attention to the fact that Hegel himself has pointed out that speculation does not pretend to give an account of the individual. In a journal entry from roughly the same time as The Concept of Irony, he notes the same thing with regard to a passage in Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics: “A passage where Hegel himself seems to suggest the deficiency of pure thought, that not even philosophy is alone the adequate expression for human life, or that consequently personal life does not find its fulfillment in thought alone but in a totality of kinds of existence and modes of expression. Cf. Æsthetik, III, p. 440, bottom of page.”124 Kierkegaard here refers to a passage in which Hegel contrasts the nature of philosophy with that of art generally. At first Hegel praises philosophy as “a form of the spirit which, in one aspect, outsoars the imagination of heart and vision because it can bring its content into free self-consciousness in a more decisively universal way and in more necessary connectedness than is possible for any art at all.”125 But then he goes on to grant that there is a whole sphere of the empirical experience 123 124 125

CI, pp. 166–167; SKS, vol. 1, p. 215. Discussed in Chapter 3, Section IV. JP, vol. 2, 1593; SKS, vol. 19, p. 246, Not8:53. Hegel, Aesthetics II, p. 1127f.; Jub., vol. 14, p. 440.


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of art of the individual, which philosophy has nothing to do with. He continues, Yet this form [sc. philosophy], conversely, is burdened with the abstraction of developing solely in the province of thinking, i.e. of purely ideal universality, so that man in the concrete may find himself forced to express the contents and results of his philosophical mind in a concrete way as penetrated by his heart and vision, his imagination and feeling, in order in this way to have and provide a total expression of his whole inner life.126

Here Hegel is quite willing to admit that a philosophical account of art in the field of aesthetics does not exhaust the personal experience of art or the “inner life” of the individual. He has no pretension to reduce this kind of private experience to the Concept. As Kierkegaard points out, Hegel grants that there can be other forms of expression for this aspect of art besides philosophy. Thus, from this passage it is clear that Kierkegaard himself is aware of the fact that Hegel does not wish to eliminate, in this case, the private experience of a work or art and, by analogy, the private belief of the individual. These things simply belong to a sphere that is foreign to philosophy. This passage is instructive for understanding the question about the differing views of religious faith. When Hegel talks about faith, he is concerned with giving a philosophical account of it as a mode of cognition. It thus becomes continuous with other modes of cognition. By contrast, when Kierkegaard talks of faith, he is concerned with the faith of the individual and not with any general form of cognition. From this it is clear that when Hegel and Kierkegaard talk about “faith,” they are talking about two different things. Moreover, although Hegel discusses faith in this general sense, he has no reason to deny the faith of the individual any more than he has reason to deny the aesthetic experience of the individual in the preceding passage. Both are legitimate and important aspects of human experience, which cannot be reduced to the Concept. For precisely this reason they cannot be treated by philosophy and are thus left unaddressed by Hegel, whose sole goal is to give a philosophical account. This recognition of the legitimacy of the subjective or private aspect of religious faith in Hegel is in evidence in, for example, the sermons that he delivered in the course of his studies in Tübingen.127 There he, like Kierkegaard, criticizes a purely abstract account of religious faith. His sermon on Matthew 5.1–16 criticizes (in a fashion that very much recalls Kierkegaard’s attack on the Church) the conception that Christianity consists essentially in outward ceremony. Hegel makes a case for the 126 127

Hegel, Aesthetics II, p. 1128; Jub., vol. 14, p. 440f. In Dokumente zu Hegels Entwicklung, ed. by Johannes Hoffmeister, op. cit., pp. 175–192. In English as “Hegel’s Sermons,” op. cit., pp. 377–399.


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inwardness of Christian faith, also very much along Kierkegaardian lines. It is no accident that he discusses this in some detail in sermons since his goal when giving the sermons is obviously quite different from his goal when writing a philosophical treatise. When giving a sermon, he is presumably not interested in conceptual analysis but rather in a more personal approach to Christianity. Kierkegaard is most keenly interested in this aspect. From these sermons it is clear that Hegel recognizes this aspect as well and grants it its own place outside philosophy. It explains why he does not address the private faith of the individual when he is doing philosophy in his mature works. Given all this, Kierkegaard seems neither to be a philosopher in the nineteenth-century sense of the word nor to want to be one. His project differs fundamentally from those of his contemporaries (e.g., Hegel, Schelling, Feuerbach, Marx, and Comte), all of whom were quite fixed on the concept of scientific scholarship and conceptual analysis. If these figures are conceived to be the mainstays of the philosophical tradition in the first half of the nineteenth century, as they usually are, then it is not clear why Kierkegaard should be counted among them, not because he is any less interesting, intelligent, or original but because he is simply not engaged in philosophical analysis in their sense of the term. B. Kierkegaard’s Conception of Himself and of Philosophy. One might say that the foregoing consideration naturally leads to the question of Kierkegaard’s own understanding of his philosophy as an alternative to Hegel or the rest of the nineteenth century, but this is question-begging and misleading since there is no evidence that Kierkegaard ever considered himself a philosopher in the first place. The question should rather be how Kierkegaard conceived of his own project or, simply, what he thought he was doing with his authorship. I am aware that this is a topic that has long been debated, and I make no claim to resolve it here.128 On the contrary, I put aside any positive claim that would seek to define Kierkegaard’s activity or project in some definitive way. I wish rather to argue for the negative claim that, for whatever it was that Kierkegaard 128

See Alastair Hannay, “Why Should Anyone Call Kierkegaard a Philosopher?” in Kierkegaard Revisited, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon Stewart (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1997, pp. 238–253. Alastair Hannay, “Kierkegaard and What We Mean by ‘Philosophy,’” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 2000, pp. 1–22. See also William Barrett, Irrational Man, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books 1962, p. 151: “He [Kierkegaard] never aimed at being a philosopher, and all his philosophy was indeed incidental to his main purpose, to show what it means to be a Christian.” See also Marvin Farber, Phenomenology and Existence: Toward a Philosophy within Nature, New York, Evanston and London: Harper & Row Publishers 1967, p. 27: “[Kierkegaard’s] writings are for the most part undistinguished so far as their philosophical content is concerned. Extensive reading is necessary to find a single philosophical thought that can be referred to as such.”


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was doing, he was not a philosopher in the nineteenth-century sense of the term and had no pretensions of being one. Whereas Hegel, following the tradition of German idealism, understands philosophy as the analysis of abstract concepts and thus gives to epistemology a central position, Kierkegaard rejects this project as irrelevant and even obtuse. For this reason much of what has been understood as the Hegel-Kierkegaard debate is at cross-purposes. How then can one characterize what Kierkegaard is doing if it is not philosophy? He has often been referred to simply as a religious author. This squares with his constant concern for the religious life of the individual and his criticisms of the religious confusions of the age, to say nothing of his vast religious authorship. It is perhaps in this context that his talk of existence is best understood. What Kierkegaard means by this insistent urging of the realm of existence seems to be bound up with his view of the appropriate understanding of the import of Christianity. Human beings are sinful and finite creatures. Christianity offers the believer the possibility of overcoming sin and death. The danger that Kierkegaard perceives is of becoming distracted in daily activities or scholarly endeavors and thereby forgetting one’s finitude and mortality and with it the Christian message. Thus, a part of his intellectual project involves an insistent focusing in on this fundamental fact of human existence and sorting out its consequences. For whatever one might argue about the details of this, it is clear that, if this is correct, then Kierkegaard’s goal in this respect is ultimately religious and not philosophical. Kierkegaard’s project, whatever it is, seems, at least in his own eyes, to have more to do with Greek philosophy than with that of the early nineteenth century. Kierkegaard himself often distinguishes between philosophy in the Greek sense and professionalized philosophy in his own time, holding up the former in order to criticize the latter.129 What characterizes Greek thought for him is an emphasis on existence. In the Postscript he has his pseudonym write: “If in our own day thinking had not become something strange, something second-hand, thinkers would indeed make a totally different impression on people, as was the case in Greece, where a thinker was also an ardent existing person impassioned by his thinking.”130 Modern philosophy is characterized as forgetful of life, whereas Greek philosophy is praised for its focus on existence: “Greek philosophy was not absent-minded. . . . The Greek philosopher was an existing person, and he did not forget this.”131 In contrast to Greek 129 130 131

E.g., CUP1, p. 191; SKS, vol. 7, p. 175. CUP1, p. 331; SKS, vol. 7, p. 302. CUP1, p. 333; SKS, vol. 7, p. 304. CUP1, p. 308; SKS, vol. 7, p. 280. CUP1, p. 309; SKS, vol. 7, p. 281. See also CUP1, p. 311; SKS, vol. 7, p. 283: “Existing, if this is not to be understood as just any sort of existing, cannot be done without passion. Therefore, every Greek thinker was essentially also a passionate thinker.”


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philosophy, modern philosophy is, according to Climacus, concerned only with abstractions rather than the lived life: “In Greece, however, attention was paid to what it means to exist. The skeptical ataraxia was therefore an existence-attempt to abstract from existing. In our day one abstracts in print, just as in print one doubts everything once and for all.”132 This recalls Kierkegaard’s criticism in Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est. As has been seen, he criticizes there Martensen’s claim to have doubted everything since to do so in fact would be impossible and even self-destructive as for the student Johannes Climacus, who in his naiveté takes seriously the injunction “de omnibus dubitandum est” and tries to apply it to life. But this merely shows that such a rule is not meant to be taken seriously but is rather only an empty slogan. Martensen thus illustrates the folly of modern philosophy in the way in which he twists the basic understanding of ancient skepticism. Kierkegaard consistently lauds the Greek philosopher for making his own existence the focal point of his thought. By contrast, the modern philosopher is criticized as absent-minded and forgetful of his own existence. Due to its self-forgetfulness, modern philosophy is characterized as comic, whereas ancient philosophy is hailed as authentic: To understand oneself in existence was the Greek principle, and however little substance a Greek philosopher’s teaching sometimes had, the philosopher had one advantage: he was never comic. I am well aware that if anyone nowadays were to live as a Greek philosopher, that is, would existentially express what he would have to call his life-view, be existentially absorbed in it, he would be regarded as lunatic. Be that as it may. But to be ingenious and more ingenious and extremely ingenious, and so ingenious that it never occurs to the most honored philosopher, who is nevertheless speculating upon existence-issues (for example, Christianity) to whom in all the world this could pertain, least of all as it pertains to himself – this I find to be ludicrous.133

Modern philosophy is objective thought that offers a specific model of reality and does not regard the life of the individual as worthy of consideration. Much of Kierkegaard’s own project can be regarded as an attempt to return to the Greek concept of philosophy in which one’s life is the embodiment of one’s thought. Kierkegaard regards the Greek view of philosophy as closer to his own conception of Christianity than his contemporary nineteenth-century philosophy.134 Throughout Kierkegaard’s literary career, Socrates plays a central role in his works;135 one need only think of books such as The Concept of Irony 132 134 135

133 CUP1, p. 352; SKS, vol. 7, p. 322. CUP1, p. 318; SKS, vol. 7, p. 289. See EO2, pp. 240ff.; SKS, vol. 3, pp. 229ff. CUP1, p. 308; SKS, vol. 7, p. 281. See Jens Himmelstrup, Søren Kierkegaards Opfattelse af Sokrates, Copenhagen: Arnold Busck 1924.


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and Philosophical Fragments. Socrates was for him a true philosopher who embodied philosophical thought in his everyday life in contrast to the nineteenth-century philosopher. Kierkegaard lauds Socrates as a model thinker who consistently rejected abstract thinking and was concerned primarily with his own life and existence.136 In the final number of The Moment, which lay ready for publication at Kierkegaard’s death, he compares his own task in the attack on the church with that of Socrates: “The only analogy I have before me is Socrates; my task is a Socratic task, to audit the definition of what it is to be a Christian – I do not call myself a Christian (keeping the ideal free), but I can make it manifest that the others are even less so.”137 Like Socrates, Kierkegaard conceives of his goal as goading his fellow countrymen into reflection and critical thinking, without putting forth a clear positive position in his own name. Like Socrates, he enjoys a special relation to philosophy in the context of the city, which is the setting for his interrogations. Likewise, he criticizes the priests of “Christendom” and compares them with the Greek Sophists whom Socrates criticized.138 In The Sickness unto Death Socrates is contrasted to the errors of nineteenth-century philosophy.139 Although Socrates is not named explicitly, the attempt to live a Socratic life as a conscious strategy comes up in a journal entry from September 7, 1846 (i.e., after the publication of the Postscript). There Kierkegaard looks back upon the conflict with the Corsair and reflects on different aspects of his authorship. He characterizes as follows his use of irony in the pseudonymous works: “It was really ironic of me to live so much on the streets and avenues while I was writing the pseudonymous works. The irony consisted of belonging to a completely different sphere qua author and spending much time on the streets and in the markets. The irony was directed at the intellectual, affected Hegelian forces we have, or had, here at home.”140 There are a number of things to note about this short passage. First, Kierkegaard states explicitly that the target of his irony and thus presumably of his critique in the pseudonymous works was the Danish Hegelians and not Hegel himself. This is what characterizes what I have designated as the second period of his authorship. Second, the nature of his criticism seems here to contrast a life like that of Socrates “on the streets and in the markets” with that of an academic life at the university.

136 137 139 140

E.g., CI, pp. 166–167; SKS, vol. 1, p. 215. CI, p. 219fn.; SKS, vol. 1, p. 263fn. JP, vol. 3, 3317; Pap. X-5 A 113. 138 M, p. 341; SV1, vol. 14, p. 352. M, p. 341; SV1, vol. 14, p. 352. SUD, p. 92f.; SV1, vol. 11, p. 203f. JP, vol. 5, 5937; SKS, vol. 20, p. 39, NB:36.


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One of Kierkegaard’s favorite books was Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers,141 which he refers to many times.142 This book is, of course, full of anecdotal accounts of different philosophers and the ways in which they led their lives. It gives examples of sayings or actions which are intended to characterize their thought. These thinkers represent the clearest examples of a fundamentally different tradition of philosophy from that which is understood by modern philosophy. Indeed, for precisely this reason this work is generally neglected by modern philosophy, which regards it more as historical or anecdotal than philosophical. For Kierkegaard, however, Diogenes Laertius’ Lives is philosophy in the most fundamental sense: it describes how individual thinkers attempt to live in accordance with the various doctrines they hold. The philosophers portrayed there, regardless of how strange or idiosyncratic, are for him a model for the philosophical life. They are praised as living and acting with passion, whereas the speculative philosopher of the nineteenth century is criticized for lacking it. One function of nineteenth-century philosophy’s abstraction from life is that it becomes more and more specialized and develops its own set of problems and vocabulary, which are inaccessible to the layman. In Prefaces, a criticism of modern philosophical jargon and abstract thinking is contrasted to Greek philosophy: The beautiful Greek scholarship . . . is so very beneficial to engage in . . . because it did not abandon people for the purpose of sounding like a voice from the clouds but remained on the earth, in the marketplace, among the occupations of people, something that was understood particularly by that man who gave up art, gave up the fathoming of physical things, and then began to philosophize in the workshops and in the marketplace.143

This contact with everyday life is, for Kierkegaard, necessary to assure that philosophy is concerned with genuine problems and not artificial ones of its own making. He regards philosophers as being involved in pointless disputes that are irrelevant for actual life. As he has his fictitious author in Either/Or write: “In this world there rules an absolute Either/Or, but philosophy has nothing to do with this world.”144 This distinction between ancient and modern philosophy is a significant part of Kierkegaard’s understanding and assessment of Hegel. In The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard has Vigilius Haufniensis write:

141 142

143 144

Diogenes Laertius, De Vitis Philosophorum Libri X, Leipzig 1833. ASKB 1109. Diogen Laertses filosofiske Historie, vols. 1–2, tr. by Børge Riisbrigh, Copenhagen 1812. ASKB 1110–1111. E.g., CI, p. 30; SKS, vol. 1, p. 92. CI, p. 168fn.; SKS, vol. 1, p. 216fn. EO1, p. 11; SKS, vol. 2, p. 19. FT, p. 118fn.; SKS, vol. 4, p. 205fn; PF, p. 11; SKS, vol. 4, p. 220. PF, p. 83; SKS, vol. 4, p. 282. P, p. 45; SKS, vol. 4, p. 506. P, pp. 41–42; SKS, vol. 4, p. 503. See also PF, p. 11; SKS, vol. 4, p. 220. EO2, p. 175; SKS, vol. 3, p. 171.


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“Hegel . . . 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 must explain all things.”145 Kierkegaard criticizes the speculative thinker for trying to explain the absolute paradox and the faith of the individual, both of which defy philosophical analysis. The professor of philosophy is concerned with explaining and understanding, whereas the true philosopher in Kierkegaard’s sense is concerned above all with living. Kierkegaard underscores Hegel as a professional philosopher “in the German sense,” the implicit contrast being with the Greek sense. Kierkegaard’s criticism of the Privatdocent and the world of philosophy at the university must also in part be understood as a criticism of the then contemporary praxis of philosophy generally. Kierkegaard himself, of course, never held a university position, and like other contemporaries, such as Schopenhauer, he was consistently critical of the growing professionalization of philosophy which was taking place at the time. His negative models for the professional philosopher were usually Martensen and Nielsen, whom he regarded as opportunistic careerists.146 Academic philosophy is, according to Kierkegaard, forgetful of the true mission of philosophy, i.e., the existential situation of the individual, and concentrates purely on problems of its own making, which lead further and further astray. In Repetition the professional philosopher is contrasted with the simplicity of Job. The upshot seems to be that Job is a model of religious virtue in his suffering, whereas the professional philosopher is simply blind to the issue. Constantin Constantius writes, Fortunately, my friend is not looking for clarification from any worldfamous philosopher or any professor publicus ordinarius; he turns to an unprofessional thinker who once possessed the world’s glories but later withdrew from life – in other words, he falls back on Job, who does not posture on a rostrum and make reassuring gestures to vouch for the truth of his propositions but sits on the hearth and scrapes himself with a potsherd and without interrupting this activity casually drops clues and comments.147

Academic philosophy is not considered to be worthwhile in its pursuit of truth via discursive thinking and propositions. By contrast, Job’s patient life and indirect communication are held up as the result of true thinking. There is a profound autobiographical aspect to much of Kierkegaard’s writings, which is indicative of a nonacademic intellectual project. He does not set about his task as an academic philosopher would, i.e., by 145 146 147

CA, p. 20; SKS, vol. 4, pp. 327–328. See, for example, JP, vol. 6, 6465; Pap. X-1 A 616: Martensen “may be called a professor, in contrast to a thinker.” R, p. 186; SKS, vol. 4, p. 57.


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trying to respond to the traditional problems of, for example, metaphysics or epistemology, which are given ahead of time. By contrast, he is primarily concerned to work out problems that stem from his own personal experience. Thus, one sees him in works, such as Either/Or and Stages on Life’s Way, hashing out the issue of marriage and his broken engagement. Moreover, Kierkegaard is constantly in a dialogue with his contemporaries about local issues (e.g., the conflict with the Corsair, the attack on the church). This lived philosophy stands in stark contrast with the philosophy of the university. Kierkegaard frequently contrasts philosophy with life in a way that recalls his aforementioned question to Sibbern. Although it remains to be seen exactly what is meant by “life,” this is in any case indication of the fact that he believes that philosophy is inadequate for addressing the essential questions. For example, Judge Wilhelm writes: “I respect scholarship, and I honor its devotees, but life, too, has its demands.”148 Along the same lines the esthete contrasts the abstract philosophical notion of dialectic with the dialectic of life: “Ordinarily, dialectic is thought to be rather abstract – one thinks almost solely of logical operations. But life will quickly teach a person that there are many kinds of dialectic, that almost every passion has its own.”149 In The Sickness unto Death a plea is made to return from modern philosophy to Socrates and to “the ethical conception of everyday life.”150 Kierkegaard often reproaches philosophy for not being active and engaged in the concrete questions of life. Philosophy analyzes the past or mediates but offers no guidance with regard to the present. In his discussion of Kierkegaard and his relation to Danish Hegelianism, Helweg examines closely The Concept of Irony, which he quite reasonably takes to be a central text in Kierkegaard’s understanding of Hegel. There he notes what he understands to be the key difference between the respective projects of Hegel and Kierkegaard: “For the members of the Faculty of Philosophy, who were supposed to judge the work, hardly suspected that in this effort of a young author they had not so much a qualification for the degree of Magister but a program for life, that here it was not a matter of giving a solution to an academic problem but of a task of life.”151 In support of this claim, he quotes from the end of the Concept of Irony where Kierkegaard writes: “If our generation has any task at all, it must be to translate the achievement of scientific scholarship into personal life, to appropriate it personally.”152 The notion of appropriation is clearly at least a part of what lies behind his famous concepts of 148 149 150 151 152

EO2, p. 172; SKS, vol. 3, p. 168. EO1, p. 159; SKS, vol. 2, p. 158. See also EO1, p. 151; SKS, vol. 2, p. 150. SUD, p. 92; SV1, vol. 11, p. 203. Hans Friedrich Helweg, “Hegelianismen i Danmark,” Dansk Kirketidende, vol. 10, no. 51, December 16, 1855, p. 830. CI, p. 328; SKS, vol. 1, p. 356.


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repetition and reduplication. Helweg interprets Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony as the key to applying science to life. He comments on the passage just quoted by saying: “These words designate his task as it deviates from Hegel . . . and also the link which exists between him and Hegel.”153 Helweg goes on to explain that by “the link” he means the agreement between Hegel and Kierkegaard on the criticism of the self-indulgent forms of irony that were being pursued by the Romantics. But more importantly, he confirms that the question of life marks for Kierkegaard a major deviation from Hegel’s conception of philosophy. Much of Kierkegaard’s point in his criticism of certain adherents of speculative philosophy is that they confuse the sphere of personal religious belief with that of academic scholarship. He has no complaint against science or even speculative philosophy per se but criticizes those who try to base their Christian belief upon it. Thus, Kierkegaard is not issuing a philosophical criticism against any particular philosophy; he is merely indicating the limits of philosophy and academic study generally. Thus, those who claim that Kierkegaard is a philosopher, who issues a philosophical criticism of Hegel, ironically fall into precisely the same confusion of the two spheres that Kierkegaard warns against. They perceive him to be offering a philosophical defense of Christianity against its critics, and not infrequently they feel the need to come to his aid. But it was precisely a philosophical defense that Kierkegaard said was impossible. These commentators thus read Kierkegaard as doing just precisely what he regarded as one of the main religious confusions of the day. From these scattered considerations I do not ultimately want to defend any positive claim about Kierkegaard’s conception of philosophy. These individual pieces of evidence and suggestions are instead intended to demonstrate that he was critical of the accepted notion of philosophy in the nineteenth century. He thus sought alternative models from Greek philosophy or from religious literature to juxtapose to the then contemporary praxis of philosophy. In this way he sought to work out different ways of conceiving of his project that were at odds with the going conception of philosophy. Ultimately, it does not matter how one frames the issue, i.e., whether one asks if Kierkegaard conceived of his own project as a kind of philosophy, albeit not in the nineteenth-century sense, or whether he rejected philosophy altogether due to the reigning view of it and conceived of his project as in some sense antiphilosophical. The only point I wish to demonstrate with this analysis is that he was not a philosopher in the usual nineteenth-century sense of the term. I leave it to others to determine in positive terms how exactly his project should be characterized or understood. 153

Hans Friedrich Helweg, “Hegelianismen i Danmark,” op. cit., p. 830.


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All of this is, of course, not to deny that there are individual philosophical passages or analyses in Kierkegaard’s works since, indeed, there are and famous ones at that. But there are also such passages in Shakespeare, Polybius, Blake, Hugo, Hardy, and others, but no one would ever be tempted to call these writers “philosophers.” This is likewise not to deny that Kierkegaard could fruitfully be treated as a philosopher. To be sure, he can, but the point is that everything turns on one’s definition of what a philosopher is and into what philosophical context he is placed. In this discussion I have confined myself exclusively to what I take to be the early nineteenth-century conception of philosophy. It is in this sense alone that this analysis of the appropriateness of understanding Kierkegaard as a philosopher should be understood. It might be objected that by claiming that Kierkegaard is not a philosopher in the nineteenth-century understanding, I am slighting his genius and limiting his influence. But it does not rob Kierkegaard of any of his appeal to claim that he does not properly belong to mainstream nineteenthcentury philosophy. On the contrary, one does Kierkegaard a service by trying to determine the contexts where he can be said more properly to belong (e.g., nineteenth-century Danish theology and literature), and trying to understand him within these parameters. It is in these contexts, which remain vastly unexplored, that otherwise enigmatic parts of his corpus start to make some sense. The claim that Kierkegaard was not a philosopher in the nineteenthcentury sense should come as no surprise since Kierkegaard himself consistently rejected the label of philosopher. Indeed, there is every indication that he never really regarded himself as a philosopher and was careful to dissociate himself from philosophers. He calls his own overview of his works The Point of View for My Work as an Author, and not as a Philosopher. In that work he regards himself primarily as a religious and not a philosophical writer. As has been seen, he often seems to use the word “philosopher” in a pejorative sense. Virtually all of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authors deny explicitly that they are philosophers. Judge Wilhelm is careful to underscore that he is not a scholar and to distance himself from modern philosophy: “As you know, I have never passed myself off as a philosopher.”154 Johannes de silentio repeats this in the Preface to Fear and Trembling: “The present author is by no means a philosopher.”155 Along the same lines Nicolaus Notabene says, “my πoχ´η has kept me from passing myself off as a philosopher.”156 Similar declarations appear in Stages on Life’s

154 155

EO2, p. 170; SKS, vol. 3, p. 166. See also EO2, p. 171; SKS, vol. 3, p. 167: “I am a married man and far from being a philosophic brain.” 156 P, p. 49; SKS, vol. 4, p. 510. FT, p. 7; SKS, vol. 4, p. 103.


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Way,157 and Philosophical Fragments.158 By having his pseudonyms overtly deny that they are philosophers, Kierkegaard puts them in a position to criticize his contemporaries who purport to be and distances them from the contemporary praxis of philosophy. Another example can be found in Prefaces, where Nicolaus Notabene explains philosophy’s lack of desire to associate with him or with the uncultured. Notabene’s ironic self-proclaimed ignorance of philosophy is similar to that of Socrates. He claims that he does not understand philosophy and proposes to found a journal that would invite the philosophical minds of the age to explain it to him. Implicit in this satire is that modern philosophy is concerned with abstract pseudo-problems, which Notabene does not understand. But the point is that Notabene himself is the sane one in the mad world of contemporary philosophy, which is preoccupied by pseudo-problems. He writes ironically: perhaps the explanation of my obtuseness is the same as the explanation regarding philosophy, that is, that the one who cannot understand philosophy also cannot understand the explanation of why he cannot understand it. If this is so, then I must ask what bearing this obtuseness has on my human existence as such, whether because of it I cease to be a human being or whether in spite of it I am still in possession of that which essentially belongs to a human being in order to be a human being, that whereby he is essentially a human being.159

Nothing really grave follows from one’s failure to understand contemporary philosophy, which is an indication of the irrelevant nature of the questions pursued by philosophy. Kierkegaard regards the efforts of contemporary philosophers as misguided and obtuse insofar as they are forgetful of the true questions of human existence.160 Given that Kierkegaard himself seemed to be rather insistent in his claim not to be a philosopher, it would be odd and obstinate to continue to insist that he is one. His claim is doubtless to be understood against the background of the contemporary praxis of philosophy in the nineteenth 157 158 159 160

SL, p. 92; SKS, vol. 6, p. 90: “I am not a dialectician, not a philosopher.” PF, p. 5; SKS, vol. 4, p. 215: “What is offered here is only a pamphlet . . . without any claim to being a part of the scientific-scholarly endeavor.” P, p. 59; SKS, vol. 4, p. 519. One example comes from Stages on Life’s Way. In the “Letter to the Reader” Frater Taciturnus gives an account of two imaginary lovers. He describes the male figure as follows: “That he is a thinker does not mean that he reads many books and aims to mount the lectern as an assistant professor. Thinkers such as that are well able to join things that are different, and then they have mediation also. He, however, is essentially an independent thinker, and in the sense that he must always have the idea along with him in order to exist. This engrosses him with the passion of an independent thinker, not with an assistant professor’s affected trustworthiness based on assurances”(SL, p. 431; SKS, vol. 6, p. 399). Here Kierkegaard distinguishes between the assistant professor and the independent thinker. Although he does not use the word “philosophy,” it is clear that what is at issue is two different conceptions of philosophizing.


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century. It was in this sense that he did not want to be known as a philosopher, just as he did not want to be known as a Christian in Christendom due to his disapprobation of that notion. Thus, one can still insist that he was nonetheless a philosopher in some other sense of the term, but to continue to claim that he is a philosopher in the same way that his contemporaries are philosophers would seem to run against the grain of the actual content of his thought itself and his own self-conception. C. The Classification of Kierkegaard in the History of Nineteenth-Century Continental Philosophy. Given that Kierkegaard did not regard himself as a philosopher or his work as philosophical, it would therefore seem to be something of a mistake to regard him as participating in the history of nineteenth-century philosophy. Indeed, he has an entirely different conception of what the vocation and office of a thinker should actually be. Thus, the issue is what would today be called metaphilosophical since it concerns the very nature of the discipline itself. If one uses standard criteria for this evaluation, then it is questionable whether Kierkegaard should be placed in the tradition of nineteenth-century philosophy at all and if he would not be better categorized as a moralist, social critic, or simply religious thinker. Kierkegaard’s famous “critique” of Hegel has been misunderstood in large part precisely because of the mistaken classification of Kierkegaard as a philosopher. In the history of reception Kierkegaard has been taken up by philosophers, due perhaps to the rather loose use of the term “philosopher” in the twentieth century. But once he was considered a philosopher, there was a tendency to read him as a continuous part of the history of philosophy in the nineteenth century. Since Hegel was such a towering name in that history, it was natural to try to place Kierkegaard into this history and accordingly define his role in it vis-à-vis Hegel. Thus, he came to be seen as being in a philosophical dialogue with his predecessor. But the mistake lies at the very beginning with the classification of Kierkegaard as a philosopher in the nineteenth-century sense. If he had been simply classified as a religious thinker or a novelist, then it is unlikely that he would ever have been conceived as being in a major polemic with Hegel. It is only when he is conceived as a philosopher that this polemic is forced upon him in a way that is disproportional to the number of actual philosophical arguments and criticisms in his texts. In addition, the conception of an ahistorical Hegel-Kierkegaard debate is at cross-purposes since the two thinkers have such radically different conceptions of what philosophy is and what the goal of their writing should be. The interpretation of nineteenth-century European philosophy as the story of Hegel and Kierkegaard is hence a misunderstanding since while Hegel is a philosopher in the common nineteenth-century sense of the term, Kierkegaard stands considerably apart. When one


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conceives of Kierkegaard’s purported “polemic” with Hegel in terms of their different conceptions of the nature of philosophy, the result is that the polemic is not with Hegel per se but with all of modern philosophy, which he represents. Indeed, Kierkegaard criticizes other modern philosophers such as Descartes and Spinoza for having a mistaken view of philosophy. This is a legitimate way of understanding the fundamental difference between Hegel and Kierkegaard. If one wants to insist on Kierkegaard’s anti-Hegel critique, then it is at this level that this critique takes place. But one must note that there is nothing particularly “Hegelian” in the conception of modern philosophy, which Kierkegaard finds so objectionable. Hegel shares a very general conception of philosophy with a number of other thinkers. In some ways this conclusion leads back to where this study began, namely, to Thulstrup’s thesis that Hegel and Kierkegaard have radically different projects, methodologies, points of departure, and so on. But there are some obvious differences between the conclusion reached here and those drawn by Thulstrup. Above all, Thulstrup wants to say that due to this Hegel and Kierkegaard have absolutely nothing in common. But despite Thulstrup’s rigorous denials, several examples of a positive influence of Hegel on Kierkegaard have been documented in the present study. But one might ask how Kierkegaard could borrow something from Hegel if his project was so different in character. This is easy to answer when one recalls the nature of Kierkegaard’s use and appropriation of Hegel. He takes a specific analysis, idea, or methodological point from Hegel and brings it into a new context in accordance with his own agenda. His use of Hegel’s thought is always productive in the sense that he does not simply repeat the given point or analysis blindly but rather applies it to his own intellectual project where the original point comes to be reshaped and takes on a new form and meaning. Thus, there is no contradiction in saying, on the one hand, contrary to Thulstrup, that Kierkegaard had many things in common with Hegel and was positively influenced by him, while granting, on the other hand, in agreement with Thulstrup that Kierkegaard’s project in general was radically different from that of Hegel. Due to the fact that Thulstrup is anxious to argue that Kierkegaard is philosophically superior to Hegel, he would also presumably disagree with the claim that their projects are so different that it is questionable whether Kierkegaard’s can be properly designated as philosophical at all. I would like here at the end of this investigation to return to the words of Helweg that were cited at the beginning and that have been used as the guiding insight. It will be recalled that Helweg noted a deep ambivalence in Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. He notes that while Kierkegaard criticized a number of Hegelians, nonetheless, even at the end of his life he can be said to have been under the influence of Hegel: “Hegelianism


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came to an end in Kierkegaard, and yet he never completely rejected Hegel.”161 This insight seems to have been confirmed by the results of this study, which have shown Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel in fact to have been extremely heterogeneous and complicated. There is an illusion that the goal of scholarship is to solve recognized problems by providing a solution that makes things easier and simpler. The idea is that the simplicity and elegance of the explanatory paradigm is one of the key criteria for its success. The result of the present study has, I hope, been the contrary. I hope to have made more problematic and accordingly more interesting the Hegel-Kierkegaard relation by removing from the scholarship the overly simplistic view of Thulstrup and others. In this sense the result of this study can be regarded generally as negative. Instead of supplying an easy positive solution, it makes matters more complex. It indicates that Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel was profoundly differentiated, and it obliges one to abandon the old clichés that have dominated the understanding of this relation for so long now. The hope is that this study will occasion scholars to reconsider the long-established views on Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. This reconsideration will then, as a result, have important implications for rethinking the view of nineteenth-century philosophy, which is thought to be determined by Hegel and Kierkegaard and their respective legacies. I have attempted here in this final chapter to provide a brief sketch of the ways in which the standard interpretation of this period in the history of philosophy will need to be seriously revised, but a thorough and historically grounded account of that revision itself will have to wait for future studies. For the time being I am satisfied with giving this corrective account of the more limited issue of Kierkegaard’s relation to Hegel. If this account occasions students and scholars to reevaluate their views of this relation, then the present study will have achieved its goal. 161

Hans Friedrich Helweg, “Hegelianismen i Danmark,” op. cit., p. 829.

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FOREIGN LANGUAGE SUMMARIES

resum e´ oversat af christian fink tolstrup I snart mange a˚ r har langt størstedelen af den omfangsrige sekundærlitteratur om forholdet mellem Kierkegaard og Hegel være domineret af e´ t paradigme. Det skyldes i vid udstrækning den danske Kierkegaardforsker Niels Thulstrup. Med en række artikler og især med den indflydelsesrige disputats Kierkegaards Forhold til Hegel og til den spekulative Idealisme indtil 1846 har Thulstrup grundlagt det paradigme for forst˚aelsen af Kierkegaards forhold til Hegel, som længe har været fremherskende blandt forskere. Det er Thulstrups hovedp˚astand, at Kierkegaard, filosofisk set, ikke havde noget som helst til fælles med Hegel, men tværtimod kun nærede foragt for ham. I sin disputats forsøger Thulstrup at p˚avise, hvorledes Kierkegaards tænkning i e´ t og alt adskiller sig fundamentalt fra Hegel, selv p˚a de punkter, der fra tid til anden klart fremtræder som sammenfald eller ligheder. Thulstrups p˚astand om den radikale uoverensstemmelse mellem Hegel og Kierkegaard har øvet en helt afgørende indflydelse p˚a sekundærlitteraturen og er blevet ukritisk videreført af mange forskere i det 19. a˚ rhundredes europæiske filosofi. Mange fortolkere ser det i dag som en afgjort sag, at Kierkegaard afviste alt, der blot har det mindste præg af hegelianisme. Der er imidlertid en række gode grunde, der taler for, at dette syn p˚a sagen er forenklet. Foretager man en omhyggelig nærlæsning af Kierkegaards værk, vil man opdage, at hans forhold til Hegel i virkeligheden er betydeligt mere differentieret, end Thulstrup vil have e´ n til at tro. P˚a ethvert trin i Kierkegaards litterære løbebane var der p˚a forskellige punkter sammenfald mellem hans og Hegels tanker. Nærværende afhandling har f˚aet titlen Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, da dens sigte er at se p˚a dette forhold med friske øjne og p˚a ny vurdere det synspunkt, der først og fremmest er etableret af Thulstrup. Denne undersøgelse har som hovedtese, at Kierkegaards forhold til Hegel er alt for komplekst til at kunne indfanges af en enkel, 653

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foreign language summaries

endimensional karakteristik. Kierkegaard havde nemlig ikke e´t, men mange forskellige forhold til Hegel, der udfoldede sig i tidens løb. Det er derfor umuligt at tale om forholdet mellem Kierkegaard og Hegel, s˚adan som Thulstrup og mange andre med ham har villet gøre det. Hver enkelt af de tekster, der er behandlet i denne undersøgelse, afspejler forhold af forskellig art: inspiration, tilegnelse, revision, kritik, polemiske allusioner etc. Inden for spektret af forskellige perioder, tekster og passager er der ikke e´ t gennemg˚aende mønster eller e´ t enkelt forhold, som gør sig gældende. Forbindelseslinierne eller berøringspunkterne er som hovedregel episodiske, selvom nogle af dem ofte gentages. Vel kan det være bekvemt og m˚aske endog naturligt at fremsætte flotte p˚astande for at f˚a sl˚aet fast, at Kierkegaard tænkte s˚adan og s˚adan om Hegel; men at udtrykke sig p˚a en s˚a udifferentieret m˚ade røber et forenklet syn p˚a sagen, som gør det umuligt at yde de forskellige perioder, de forskelligartede tekster og de vekslende berøringsflader retfærdighed. Vil man tale om Kierkegaard og Hegel, er man nødt til ikke blot at tale om e´t, men om flere forhold. Det er denne afhandlings historiske eller biografiske tese, at Kierkegaards intellektuelle udvikling, hvad ang˚ar Hegel, gennemløber tre trin, der skal skilles ud fra hinanden med hver sit karakteristiske præg. (1) I sine tidlige værker, især Af en endnu Levendes Papirer, Om Begrebet Ironi og Enten-Eller, var Kierkegaard stærkt og positivt p˚avirket af Hegels filosofi. (2) Derefter fulgte en mellemperiode fra omkring 1843–46, der efter de fleste fortolkeres mening indeholder hans mest utilslørede og aggressive kritik af Hegel. Afhandlingen forsøger dog at vise, at denne kritik over en bred front snarere er rettet mod andre samtidige m˚al, s˚asom Hans Lassen Martensen (1808–84), Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791–1860) og Adolph Peter Adler (1812–69), end mod Hegel selv. Denne periode kulminerede i 1846 med Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift, hvor Kierkegaard gennem pseudonymet Johannes Climacus fremsatte sin mest omfattende reaktion p˚a Hegels filosofi – eller rettere p˚a de danske versioner af den. (3) Efter Efterskriften og Bogen om Adler (skrevet i 1846, men aldrig udgivet af Kierkegaard selv) ligger den tredje og sidste periode (1847–55), hvor Kierkegaard opgav sin polemik mod Hegel, og hvor han af den ene eller anden grund sluttede fred med hegelianismen. Skønt der i s˚avel de publicerede værker som i Journalerne fra denne periode findes væsentlig færre direkte henvisninger til Hegel end i de foreg˚aende to perioder, gør Kierkegaard ikke desto mindre i Sygdommen til Døden a˚ benlyst brug af specifikke begreber og analysemetoder fra Hegel, uden dog nogensinde at nævne hans navn. Det er netop denne tretrins udvikling i Kierkegaards egen tænkning, der konstituerer den historiske tese i nærværende afhandling. Undersøgelsen g˚ar kronologisk til værks, idet den eftersporer de af Kierkegaards skrifter, hvori Hegel eller hegelianisme især synes at spille

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en markant rolle. Disse skrifter er blevet undersøgt hver for sig og sammenholdt med andre for at afgøre, om der findes nogen generelle tendenser i den udvikling, Kierkegaards forhold til Hegel gennemg˚ar. Kierkegaards forskelligeartede referencer til Hegel og hegelianisme er bedømt i lyset af Hegels læresætninger, s˚adan som de er fremstillet i hans hovedværker og forelæsninger. Det er s˚aledes m˚alet at n˚a frem til et differentieret billede af Kierkegaards forhold til Hegel, for p˚a den m˚ade at vinde oversigt over og insigt i forandringerne i dette forhold i de forskellige skrifter og i de forskellige perioder i Kierkegaards liv. Det vigtigste fortolkningsprincip i undersøgelsen er at prøve at forst˚a Kierkegaard, som han forstod sig selv, og som han m˚a være blevet forst˚aet af sine samtidige. Der er desuden gjort forsøg p˚a at rekonstruere hans position set i forhold til samtidige diskussioner, som vi ved, han kendte til. Dette er vigtigt, da det er umuligt at vurdere Kierkegaards forhold til Hegel uden samtidig at inddrage hans forhold til de danske hegelianere. Der bliver netop i afhandlingen argumenteret for, at størstedelen af hans kritik er rettet mod hans danske samtidige og ikke mod Hegel selv. Det er derfor nødvendigt, for effektivt at f˚a identificeret m˚alet for hans kritik, at skabe at klart billede af, hvem det er, han argumenterede imod, og det kan kun lade sig gøre ved at benytte en historisk orienteret fortolkningstilgang. Mange af de mest outrerede misforst˚aelser af forholdet mellem Kierkegaard og Hegel skyldes mangelfuldt kendskab til det kulturelle og intellektuelle miljø, Kierkegaard levede og skrev i. Det historiske aspekt, som nærværende undersøgelse tager op, st˚ar temmelig uudforsket hen i Kierkegaardlitteraturen i almindelighed og i den anglo-amerikanske i særdeleshed. Selvom det ikke skorter p˚a afhandlinger om Hegel-Kierkegaard-forbindelsen, findes der s˚a godt som ingen forskning p˚a noget sprog, hvor denne forbindelse sættes ind i et historisk perspektiv. Derfor har nærværende undersøgelse som sit m˚al at lokalisere og s˚aledes placere Kierkegaard i hans behørige historiske kontekst, s˚a et mere præcist billede af hans mangeartede forhold til Hegel kan komme til syne. P˚a den m˚ade udstikker undersøgelsen en række punkter, hvor der er sammenhæng mellem Hegel og Kierkegaard, og søger at dementere den myte, at Kierkegaard førte en voldsom anti-Hegel kampagne. Dette vil forh˚abentlig e´ n gang for alle sætte afgørende spørgsm˚alstegn ved en række forudindfattede meninger om det 19. a˚ rhundredes europæiske filosofis udvikling og give anledning til grundlæggende at genoverveje standardforst˚aelsen af denne filosofiske tradition.

zusammenfassung ubersetzt ¨ von richard purkarthofer Seit vielen Jahren hat ein einziges Paradigma den Großteil der umfassenden Sekundärliteratur uber ¨ das Verhältnis zwischen Hegel und

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Kierkegaard beherrscht. Dieser Umstand rührt zu einem guten Teil von den Untersuchungen des dänischen Forschers Niels Thulstrup her. Mit einer Reihe von Artikeln und vor allem mit seinem einflußreichen Buch Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel und zum spekulativen Idealismus 1835–1846 hat Thulstrup in gelehrten Kreisen dieses Paradigma fur ¨ das Verständnis von Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel etabliert. Thulstrup behauptet im wesentlichen, daß Kierkegaard philosophisch gesehen uberhaupt ¨ nichts mit Hegel gemein habe und fur ¨ ihn nichts als Verachtung nähre. In seiner Monographie versucht Thulstrup nachzuweisen, wie Kierkegaard in jeder einzelnen Frage zutiefst uneinig mit Hegel sei, obwohl es manch¨ mal Gemeinsamkeiten und Ahnlichkeiten zu geben scheint. Die von Thulstrup behauptete radikale Diskontinuität zwischen Hegel und Kierkegaard erwies sich in der Sekundärliteratur als uberaus ¨ einflußreich und wurde von einer Reihe Gelehrter der europäischen Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts unkritisch ubernommen. ¨ Viele Interpreten betrachten es als eine ausgemachte Sache, daß Kierkegaard alles verwarf, was auch nur den entferntesten Anschein von Hegelianismus hatte. Es gibt jedoch eine Reihe von Grunden ¨ anzunehmen, daß es sich ¨ bei einer solchen Betrachtungsweise um eine Ubervereinfachung handelt. Eine genauere Untersuchung von Kierkegaards Werk ergibt, daß sein Verhältnis zu Hegel um einiges differenzierter ist, als Thulstrup glauben machen wollte. In jeder Phase von Kierkegaards literarischer Laufbahn gab es Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen seinem und Hegels Denken. Die vorliegende Studie ist mit Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered betitelt, da sie sich zum Ziel setzt, diese Beziehung aufs neue zu untersuchen und die hauptsächlich von Thulstrup etablierte Auffassung einer Neueinschätzung zu unterziehen. Die ubergeordnete ¨ These dieser Untersuchung lautet, daß Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel bei weitem zu komplex ist, um auf irgend eine simple, einseitige Formel gebracht werden zu können. Vielmehr hatte er viele verschiedene Verhältnisse zu Hegel, die sich im Laufe der Zeit entwickelten. Von daher ist es unmöglich, von Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel zu sprechen, wie Thulstrup und viele andere es gerne tun würden. Die einzelnen Passagen seines Werkes, die in dieser Studie untersucht werden, weisen verschiedene Arten von Verhältnissen auf: Inspiration, Revision, Kritik, polemische Anspielung, usw. Innerhalb des Spektrums verschiedener Perioden, Texte und Passagen läßt sich kein universelles Muster oder einfaches Verhältnis feststellen. Die Beziehungen bzw. Beruhrungspunkte ¨ sind im allgemeinen episodisch, auch wenn einige von ihnen häufig wiederholt werden. Es mag bequem und vielleicht sogar naturlich ¨ erscheinen, pauschale Urteile hinsichtlich Kierkegaards Einschätzung von Hegel zu fällen. Eine solcherart undifferenzierte Redeweise ist jedoch Ausdruck einer völlig u¨ bersimplifizierten Auffassung des Sachverhaltes, die einer adäquaten Beurteilung verschiedener historischer

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Perioden, Texte und Berührungspunkte nicht gerecht wird. Wenn man uber ¨ Kierkegaard und Hegel sprechen möchte, ist man genötigt uber ¨ Verhältnisse zu sprechen. Die historische bzw. biographische These dieser Studie besagt, daß Kierkegaard in seiner intellektuellen Entwicklung in Bezug auf Hegel drei verschiedene Phasen durchlief. (1) In seinen fruhen ¨ Werken, in erster Linie in Aus eines noch Lebenden Papieren wider seinen Willen herausgegeben, Der Begriff Ironie, und Entweder/Oder, war er stark und positiv von Hegels Philosophie beeinflußt. (2) In der darauffolgenden mittleren Periode von ungefähr 1843–46 tritt das auf, was die meisten Interpreten als die unverblumteste ¨ und agressivste Kritik an Hegel betrachtet haben. Die Studie versucht jedoch zu zeigen, daß sich diese Kritik hauptsächlich gegen andere zeitgenössische Personen wie etwa Hans Lassen Martensen (1808–84), Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791–1860), und Adolph Peter Adler (1812–69) richtet und nicht gegen Hegel selbst. Diese Periode erreicht 1846 mit der Abschließenden unwissenschaftlichen Nachschrift ihren Höhepunkt, in der Kierkegaard seine ausfuhrlichste ¨ Antwort auf Hegels Philosophie, oder genauer, auf deren dänische Varianten gibt. (3) Nach der Nachschrift und dem Buch u¨ ber Adler gab es dann eine abschließende Periode, in der Kierkegaard seine Polemik gegen Hegel aufgab und weitgehend seinen Frieden mit dem Hegelianismus schloß. Obwohl es sowohl in den publizierten Werken als auch in den Papirer dieser Periode entscheidend weniger direkte Hinweise auf Hegel als in den beiden vorangegangen Perioden gibt, bedient sich Kierkegaard nichtsdestoweniger in der Krankheit zum Tode spezifisch Hegelscher Konzepte und Methodologien, ohne aber seinen Namen zu erwähnen. Diese dreistufige Entwicklung in Kierkegaards eigenem Denken bildet also die historische These der vorliegenden Studie. Die Untersuchung ist chronologisch geordnet, und zwar so, daß sie die wichtigsten Werke Kierkegaards durchgeht, in denen Hegel oder Hegelianismus eine bedeutende Rolle zu spielen scheinen. Jedes einzelne Werk wird für sich, aber auch im Vergleich mit anderen Werken untersucht, um festzustellen, ob darin irgendwelche allgemeinen Tendenzen in der Entwicklung von Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel festzustellen sind. Kierkegaards verschiedene Bezugnahmen auf Hegel und den Hegelianismus werden im Lichte Hegels eigener Lehren beurteilt, und zwar wie sie in seinen Primärtexten und Vorlesungen zum Ausdruck kommen. Das Ziel ist eine nuancierte Darstellung von Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel, die es erlaubt, Veränderungen in verschiedenen Texten und in verschiedenen Zeitabschnitten in Kierkegaards Laufbahn erkennen zu lassen und herauszustreichen. Das leitende Interpretationsprinzip der vorliegenden Studie ist der Versuch, Kierkegaard zu verstehen, wie er sich selbst verstand und wie er von seinen Zeitgenossen verstanden worden ist. Es wird versucht,

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seine Position im Verhältnis zu zeitgenössischen Diskussionen, mit denen er nachweislich vertraut war, zu rekonstruieren. Dieser Umstand ist von großer Bedeutung, da es unmöglich ist, Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel zu beurteilen, ohne sein Verhältnis zum dänischen Hegelianismus ebenfalls zu berücksichtigen. Es wird versucht zu erhärten, daß sich der Großteil von Kierkegaards Kritik gegen dänische Zeitgenossen, nicht aber gegen Hegel selbst richtet. Um also das Ziel von Kierkegaards Kritik genau identifizieren zu können, ist es notwendig, ein klares Bild davon zu gewinnen, gegen wen er jeweils argumentiert. Dies kann nur durch einen historisch angelegten interpretativen Zugang geleistet werden. Tatsächlich rühren viele der krassesten Mißverständnisse bezuglich ¨ Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel von einer Unkenntnis des kulturellen und intellektuellen Milieus her, in dem Kierkegaard lebte und schrieb. Gerade der soeben erwähnte historische Aspekt wurde im allgemeinen und besonders in der angelsächsischen Kierkegaard-Forschung bisher sehr wenig erforscht. Obwohl es an Studien uber ¨ Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel keineswegs fehlt, wurde bisher – in welcher Sprache auch immer – sehr wenig getan, um diese Beziehung in eine historische Perspektive zu setzen. So ist die Absicht der vorliegenden Untersuchung, Kierkegaard in den ihm zukommenden historischen Kontext zu setzen, auf dessen Hintergrund sich ein genaueres Bild von seinen vielfältigen Verhältnissen zu Hegel abzeichnet. So vermag diese Studie eine Reihe von Anknüpfungspunkten und Zusammenhängen zwischen Hegel und Kierkegaard nachzuzeichnen und versucht, der Mythe von Kierkegaards großangelegter Anti-Hegel Kampagne mit einer kritischen Untersuchung zu entgegnen. Dadurch werden hoffentlich einige vorgefaßte Meinungen u¨ ber die Entwicklung der europäischen Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts endlich in Frage gestellt und einer gründlichen Revision unterzogen.

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BIBLIOGRAPHIES

1. secondary literature on kierkegaard’s relation to hegel A. Books and Monographs Wilhelm Anz, Kierkegaard und der deutsche Idealismus, Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr 1956. Jaime Franco Barrio, Kierkegaard frente al Hegelianismo, Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid 1996. Max Bense, Hegel und Kierkegaard. Eine prinzipielle Untersuchung, Cologne: Staufen 1948. Stephen Crites, In the Twilight of Christendom: Hegel vs. Kierkegaard on Faith and Religion, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: American Academy of Religion 1972. Hermann Deuser, Sören Kierkegaard. Die paradoxe Dialektik des politischen Christen. Voraussetzungen bei Hegel. Die Reden von 1847/48 im Verhaltnis von Politik ¨ und Asthetik, Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag. Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag 1974. Hayo Gerdes, Das Christusbild Sören Kierkegaards. Verglichen mit der Christologie Hegels und Schleiermachers, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diederichs Verlag 1960. Victor Guarda, Kierkegaardstudien: Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Verhältnisses Kierkegaards zu Hegel, Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain 1975. Eduard von Hagen, Abstraktion und Konkretion bei Hegel und Kierkegaard, Bonn: Bouvier 1969. Robert Heiss, Die großen Dialektiker des 19. Jahrhunderts: Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Cologne and Berlin: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1963. English translation: Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Three Great Philosophers whose Ideas Changed the Course of Civilization, tr. by E. B. Garside, New York: Delacorte Press 1975. Carl Henrik Koch, En Flue p˚a Hegels udødelige næse eller om Adolph Peter Adler og om Søren Kierkegaards forhold til ham, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Forlag A/S 1990. Hans Leisegang, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard: zum dialektischen Materialismus und zur dialektischen Theologie, Berlin: Wissenschaftliche Editionsgesellschaft 1948. Heidi Liehu, Søren Kierkegaard’s Theory of Stages and its Relation to Hegel, Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica 1990. Käte Nadler, Der dialektische Widerspruch in Hegels Philosophie und das Paradoxon des Christentums, Leipzig: Felix Meiner 1931. 659

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Hans Radermacher, Kierkegaards Hegelverständnis, Cologne: Hans Radermacher 1958. Hans Reuter, Søren Kierkegaards religionsphilosophische Gedanken im Verhältnis zu Hegels religionsphilosophischem System, Erfurt: G. Richter 1913. Hermann Schweppenhäuser, Kierkegaards Angriff auf die Spekulation. Eine Verteidigung, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1967. Munich: Edition Text + Kritik 1993. Mark C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard, Berkeley: University of California Press 1980. Reprint, New York: Fordham University Press 2000. (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, no. 14.) J. Heywood Thomas, Subjectivity and Paradox, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1957. Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel. Forschungsgeschichte, Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer 1969. Kierkegaards forhold til Hegel og til den spekulative idealisme indtil 1846, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1967. English translation: Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel, tr. by George L. Stengren, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1980. German translation: Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel und zum spekulativen Idealismus 1835–1846, Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer 1972. (ed.), Kierkegaard and Speculative Idealism (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 4), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel 1979.

B. Articles, Chapters, and Short Works Henry E. Allison, “Christianity and Nonsense,” Review of Metaphysics, 20, 1967, pp. 432–460. Reprinted in Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by Josiah Thompson, Garden City, New York: Anchor Books 1972, pp. 289– 323. Vagn Andersen, “Paradoksi og dialektik – Kierkegaard og Hegel endnu engang,” Fønix, vol. 15, no. 4, 1991, pp. 87–104. Alfred Baeumler, “Hegel und Kierkegaard,” Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 2, 1924, pp. 116–130. Ernst Behler, “Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Romanticism,” in Kierkegaard Revisited, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon Stewart (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1997, pp. 13–33. Daniel Berthold-Bond, “Lunar Musings? An Investigation of Hegel’s and Kierkegaard’s Portraits of Despair,” Religious Studies, 34, 1998, pp. 33–59. Oliva Blanchette, “The Silencing of Philosophy,” International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 6, Fear and Trembling and Repetition, ed. by Robert L. Perkins. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1993, pp. 29–65. James Bogen, “Remarks on the Kierkegaard-Hegel Controversy,” Synthese, 13, 1961, pp. 372–389. Torsten Bohlin, “Uppenbarelse och historia i den hegelska religionsfilosofin och ˚ adning i dess historiska hos Kierkegaard,” in his Kierkegaards Dogmatiska Ask˚ sammenhang, Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses Bokförlag 1925, pp. 354–440.

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Claude Bruaire, “Hegel et Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard, ed. by Jean Brun (Obliques, ´ special issue), Paris: Editions Borderie 1981, pp. 167–175. John D. Caputo, “Repetition and Kinesis: Kierkegaard on the Foundering of Metaphysics,” in his Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and the Hermeneutic Project, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1987, pp. 11–35. ` propos de la philosophie existentielle de Leon Chestov, “Job ou Hegel? A Kierkegaard,” La Nouvelle Revue Franç aise, 23, 1935, pp. 755–762. Lars Christiansen, “Om Hegel: forholdet mellem methode og system,” Kierkegaardiana, 8, 1971, pp. 125–142. “Die Kategorie der Geschichte bei Hegel und bei Kierkegaard,” Nerthus, 3, 1972, pp. 57–71. Hermann J. Cloeren, “The Linguistic Turn in Kierkegaard’s Attack on Hegel,” International Studies in Philosophy, 17, 1985, pp. 1–13. James D. Collins, “Kierkegaard’s Critique of Hegel,” Thought, 18, 1943, pp. 74– 100. “The Mind of Kierkegaard: The Attack upon Hegelianism,” Modern Schoolman, 26, 1949, pp. 219–251. “The Attack upon Hegelianism,” in his The Mind of Kierkegaard. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1983, pp. 98–136. Bernard Cullen and Robert L. Perkins, “Hegel on the Human and the Divine, in Light of Criticisms of Kierkegaard,” in Hegel and his Critics. Philosophy in the Aftermath of Hegel, ed. by William Desmond, Albany, New York: SUNY Press 1989, pp. 93–110. Stephen N. Dunning, “Kierkegaard’s ‘Hegelian’ Response to Hamann,” Thought, 55 (218), 1980, pp. 259–270. William Earle, “Hegel and Some Contemporary Philosophies,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 29, 1960, pp. 352–364. Cornelio Fabro, “La critica di Kierkegaard alla dialettica hegeliana nel Libro su Adler,” Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 9, 1978, pp. 1–32. Henning Fenger, “Hegel, Kierkegaard og Niels Thulstrup,” in his KierkegaardMyter og Kierkegaard-Kilder, Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag 1976, pp. 109– 122. English translation: “Hegel, Kierkegaard and Niels Thulstrup,” in his Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, tr. by George Schoolfield, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1980, pp. 132–149. Eduard Geismar, “Forholdet til Tidens aandelige Strømninger,” in his Søren Kierkegaard. Hans Livsudvikling og Forfattervirksomhed, Copenhagen: Gads 1927, vol. 1, First Part, pp. 88–103; see also vol. 1, Third Part, pp. 5–21, pp. 44– 91. Arne Grøn, “Kærlighedens gerninger og anerkendelsens dialektik,” Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift, 54, 1991, pp. 260–270. “Kierkegaards Phänomenologie?” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1996, pp. 91– 116. Alastair Hannay, “Turning Hegel Outside-In,” in his Kierkegaard, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1982, pp. 19–53. Justus Hartnack, “Kierkegaards angreb p˚a Hegel,” in Sprogets mesterskab. Festskrift til Johannes Sløks 70-˚arsdag, ed. by Kjeld Holm and Jan Lindhardt, Viby: Centrum 1986, pp. 30–39.

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Jørgen Hass, “Entfremdung und Freiheit bei Hegel und Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard und die deutsche Philosophie seiner Zeit, ed. by Heinrich Anz, Peter Kemp, and Friedrich Schmöe, Copenhagen: Text & Kontext. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1980, pp. 62–83. Gerhard vom Hofe, “Kunst als Grenze. Hegels Theorem des ‘unglucklichen ¨ Bewußtseins’ und die a¨ sthetische Erfahrung bei Kierkegaard,” in Invaliden des Apoll: Motiv und Mythen des Dichterlieds, ed. by Herbert Anton, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1982, pp. 11–43. Vittorio Hösle, “Kann Abraham gerettet werden? Und: Kann Søren Kierkegaard gerettet werden? Eine Hegelsche Auseinandersetzung mit ‘Furcht und Zittern,’” in his Philosophiegeschichte und objektiver Idealismus, Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck 1996, pp. 206–239. Jean Hyppolite, “Hegel et Kierkegaard dans la pensée fran¸caise contempor´ aine,” in his Figures de la pensée philosophique. Ecrits 1931–1968, vols. 1–2, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1971, vol. 1, pp. 196–208. Wilfried Joest, “Hegel und Kierkegaard,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, 75, 1950, pp. 533–538. “Hegel und Kierkegaard. Bemerkungen zu einer prinzipiellen Untersuchung,” in Sören Kierkegaard, ed. by Heinz-Horst Schrey, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1971, pp. 81–89. Udo Johansen, “Hegel und Kierkegaard,” Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung, 7, 1953, pp. 20–53. David Kangas, “The Logic of Gift in Kierkegaard’s Four Upbuilding Discourses (1843),” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2000, pp. 100–120. Walter Karowski, “Kierkegaard u¨ ber Hegel,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, 15, 1938, pp. 602–616. Henrik Klindt-Jensen, “Krisen som erkendelsesbetingelse hos Hegel – med sideblik til Kierkegaard og Jung,” Philosophia, vol. 19, no. 3–4, 1990, pp. 134– 148. Klaus-M. Kodalle, “Hegels Geschichtsphilosophie – erörtert aus der Perspektive Kierkegaards,” Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, 24, 1982, pp. 277–294. Richard J. Kroner, “Kierkegaard or Hegel?” Revue internationale de philosophie, 6, 1952, pp. 79–96. “Kierkegaards Hegelverständnis,” Kant-Studien, 46, 1954–55, pp. 19–27. Reprinted in Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. by Michael Theunissen and Wilfried Greve, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1979, pp. 425– 436. English translation: “Kierkegaard’s Understanding of Hegel,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 21, 1966, pp. 233–244. Camillia Larouche-Tanguay and Lionel Ponton, “Hegel et Kierkegaard: L’ironie comme thème philosophique,” Laval théologique et philosophique, 39, 1983, pp. 269–282. Arthur Lessing, “Hegel and Existentialism: On Unhappiness,” The Personalist, 49, 1968, pp. 61–77. Poul Lübcke, “Kierkegaards Zeitverständnis in seinem Verhältnis zu Hegel,” Kierkegaard und die deutsche Philosophie seiner Zeit, ed. by Heinrich Anz, Peter Kemp, and Friedrich Schmöe, Copenhagen: Text & Kontext. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1980, pp. 84–113.

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Bruno Majoli, “La critica ad Hegel in Schelling e Kierkegaard,” Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica, 46, 1954, pp. 232–263. F. J. Marion, “Kierkegaard frente a Hegel,” Pensamiento, 31, 1975, pp. 387–406. William McDonald, “Retracing the Circular Ruins of Hegel’s Encyclopedia,” International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 12, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments,” ed. by Robert L. Perkins. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1997, pp. 227–245. Ralph McInerny, “Kierkegaard and Speculative Thought,” New Scholasticism, 40, 1966, pp. 23–25. Alastair McKinnon, “Similarities and Differences in Kierkegaard’s Accounts of Hegel,” Kierkegaardiana, 10, 1977, pp. 117–131. Virgilio Melchiorre, “Kierkegaard ed Hegel. La polemica sul ‘punto di partenza,’” in Studi Kierkegaardiani, ed. by Cornelio Fabro, Brescia: Morcelliana 1957, pp. 243–266. Edward F. Mooney, “Art, Deed and System: The Prefaces to Fear and Trembling,” International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 6, Fear and Trembling and Repetition, ed. by Robert L. Perkins. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1993, pp. 67–100. Finn Hauberg Mortensen, “Kierkegaard og Hegel – en kompositionsanalytisk tilgang,” in Scandinavian Literature in a Transcultural Context, (Papers from the XVth IASS Conference. University of Washington. August 12–18, 1984), ed. by Sven H. Rossel and Birgitta Steene, Seattle: University of Washington 1986, pp. 104–110. G. Mueller, “Kierkegaard y Hegel,” Revista de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, 4, 1949, pp. 353–387. Philip Müller, “Kierkegaard lecteur de Hegel,” Studia Philosophica, 33, 1973, pp. 157–171. Kevin Newmark, “Between Hegel and Kierkegaard: The Space of Translation,” Genre, 16, 1983, pp. 373–387. Reprinted in Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea House Publishers 1989, pp. 219–231. Robert Lee Perkins, “The Family: Hegel and Kierkegaard’s Judge Wilhelm,” HegelJahrbuch, 1967, pp. 89–100. “Two Nineteenth Century Interpretations of Socrates: Hegel and Kierkegaard,” Kierkegaard-Studiet, 4, 1967, pp. 9–14. “Hegel and Kierkegaard: Two Critics of Romantic Irony,” in Hegel in Comparative Literature, ed. by Frederick G. Weiss (Review of National Literatures, 1, no. 2, 1970), Jamaica, New York: St. John’s University 1970, pp. 232–254. “Review: In the Twilight of Christendom: Hegel vs. Christendom, by Stephen Crites,” The Owl of Minerva, vol. 4, no. 3, 1973, pp. 3–7. “Abraham’s Silence Aesthetically Considered,” International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 6, Fear and Trembling and Repetition, ed. by Robert L. Perkins. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1993, pp. 155–176. Roger C. Poole, “Indirect Communication: 1. Hegel, Kierkegaard and Sartre,” New Blackfriars, 47, 1966, pp. 532–541. Robert Paul Ramsey, “Existenz and the Existence of God: A Study of Kierkegaard and Hegel,” Journal of Religion, 28, 1948, pp. 157–176. Kurt F. Reinhardt, “The Cleavage of Minds: Kierkegaard and Hegel,” Commonweal, 24, 1936, pp. 523–524.

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Dietrich Ritschl, “Kierkegaards Kritik an Hegels Logik,” Theologische Zeitschrift, 11, 1955, pp. 437–465. Reprinted in Sören Kierkegaard, ed. by Heinz-Horst Schrey, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1971, pp. 240–272. David L. Rozema, “Hegel and Kierkegaard on Conceiving the Absolute,” History of Philosophy Quarterly, 9, 1992, pp. 207–224. Klaus J. Schmidt, “Hegelauffassungen – Dargestellt von Kierkegaardinterpreten,” Hegel-Studien, 7, 1972, pp. 378–390. “Review: Niels Thulstrup: Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel und zum spekulativen Idealismus. 1835–1846. Historisch-analytische Untersuchung. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1972. 320 S,” Hegel-Studien, 9, 1974, pp. 309–311. Heiko Schulz, “Kierkegaard u¨ ber Hegel. Umrisse einer kritisch-polemischen Aneignung,” Kierkegaardiana, 21, 2000, pp. 152–178. K. Brian Söderquist, “The Religious ‘Suspension of the Ethical’ and the Ironic ‘Suspension of the Ethical’: The Problem of Actuality on Fear and Trembling,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2002, pp. 259–276. George Steiner, “Section 5,” in his Antigones, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984, pp. 51–66. Henry Sussman, “Søren Kierkegaard and the Allures of Paralysis,” in his The Hegelian Aftermath: Readings in Hegel, Kierkegaard, Freud, Proust, and James, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1982, pp. 63– 158. Mark C. Taylor, “Journeys to Moriah: Hegel vs. Kierkegaard,” Harvard Theological Review, 70, 1977, pp. 305–326. “Love and Forms of Spirit. Kierkegaard vs. Hegel,” Kierkegaardiana, 10, 1977, pp. 95–116. “Dialectics and Communication: Hegel and Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard and Dialectics, ed. by Jørgen K. Bukdahl, Aarhus: Institute for Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion 1979, pp. 5–52. “Aesthetic Therapy: Hegel and Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s Truth: The Disclosure of the Self, ed. by Joseph H. Smith (Psychiatry and the Humanities, vol. 5), New Haven, Connecticut, and London: Yale University Press 1981, pp. 343– 380. Michael Theunissen, “Die Dialektik der Offenbarung. Zur Auseinandersetzung Schellings und Kierkegaards mit der Religionsphilosophie Hegels,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 72, 1964–65, pp. 134–160. Curtis L. Thompson, “The End of Religion in Hegel and Kierkegaard,” Sophia, 33, 1994, pp. 10–20. Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, “Kierkegaards møde med mystik gennem den spekulative idealisme,” Kierkegaardiana, 10, 1977, pp. 7–69. English translation: “Kierkegaard’s Encounter with Mysticism through Speculative Idealism,” in Liber Academiae Kierkegaardiensis, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, Tomus V, 1983, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel’s Forlag A/S 1984, pp. 31–91. Niels Thulstrup, “Kierkegaards Verhältnis zu Hegel,” Theologische Zeitschrift, 13, 1957, pp. 200–226. “Den principielle Uoverensstemmelse mellem Kierkegaard og Hegel,” in Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift, ed. with Introduction and Commentary by Niels Thulstrup, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1962, vol. 2,

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pp. 103–114. English translation: “Kierkegaard versus Hegel,” in his Commentary on Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. by Robert J. Widenmann, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1984, pp. 91–101. “Kierkegaard og den filosofiske idealisme,” Kierkegaardiana, 4, 1962, pp. 88– 104. “Le désaccord entre Kierkegaard et Hegel,” Kierkegaard-Studiet, 4, 1964, pp. 112–124. “Sören Kierkegaard, historien de la philosophie de Hegel,” Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 27, 1965, pp. 521–572. “The System and the Method of Hegel,” in Kierkegaard and Speculative Idealism, ed. by Niels Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 4), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel 1979, pp. 52–97. “Kierkegaard’s Approach to Existence versus Hegelian Speculation,” in Kierkegaard and Speculative Idealism, ed. by Niels Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 4), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel 1979, pp. 98– 113. “Hegel’s Stages of Cognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit and Kierkegaard’s Stages of Existence in Concluding Unscientific Postscript,” in Liber Academiae Kierkegaardiensis Annuarius, Tom. II–IV, 1979–81, ed. by Alessandro Cortese and Niels Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel’s Forlag A/S. Milan: Vita e pensiero 1982, pp. 61–69. “A Ghost-Letter Caused by Mark C. Taylor’s Journeys with Hegel and Kierkegaard,” in Liber Academiae Kierkegaardiensis, Tom. V, 1983, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel’s Forlag A/S 1984, pp. 94–101. Karol Toeplitz, “Kierkegaard ein Nachkomme Hegels?” in Hegel im Kontext der Wirkungsgeschichte, XVIII. Internationaler Hegel-Kongress 1990, ed. by Karol Bal, Wrocl aw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocl awskiego 1992, pp. 125–140. Jean Wahl, “Hegel et Kierkegaard,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’ e´tranger, 56, 1931, tome 112, no. 11–12, pp. 321–380. “Hegel et Kierkegaard,” Verhandlungen des dritten Hegelkongresses vom 19. bis 23. April 1933 in Rom, ed. by B. Wigersma, Tu¨ bingen: J. C. B. Mohr 1934, pp. 235–249. Merold Westphal, “Abraham and Hegel,” in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: Critical Appraisals, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press 1981, pp. 62–80. “A Dialectic of Dialecticians: Reflections on Hegel and Kierkegaard,” Clio, 13, 1984, pp. 415–424. “Kierkegaard and Hegel,” The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, pp. 101–124. Robert C. Whittemore, “Pro Hegel, contra Kierkegaard,” Journal of Religious Thought, 13, 1956, pp. 131–144. Frank-Eberhard Wilde, “Die Entwicklung des dialektischen Denkens bei Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard and Speculative Idealism, ed. by Niels Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 4), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel 1979, pp. 7–55. ✱

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“Svar paa Hr. Oehlenschlägers Skrift: ‘Om Kritiken i Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, over Væringerne i Miklagard,’ ” in Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, 1828 (I, no. 7; II, no. 8; III, no. 10; IV, no. 11; V, no. 12; VI, no. 13; VII, no. 14; VIII, no. 15; IX, no. 16). (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 3, pp. 194–284.) Grundtræk til Philosophiens Philosophie eller den speculative Logik. Som Ledetraad ved Forelæsninger paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1832. (Reprinted as Ledetraad ved Forelæsninger over Philosophiens Philosophie eller den speculative Logik ved den kongelige militaire Høiskole in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 1, pp. 111–380.) Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid. Et Indbydelses-Skrift til en Række af philosophiske Forelæsninger, Copenhagen 1833. ASKB 568. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 1, pp. 381–460.) “I Anledning af Hr. Magister Zeuthens saakaldte Oplysninger,” Dagen, no. 100, April 26, 1833. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 1, Tillæg II, pp. 453–460.) “I Anledning af Recensionen over mit Skrift: Om Philosophiens Betydning for den nuværende Tid. (Dansk Litt. Tid. No. 41–43),” Dansk Litteratur-Tidende for 1833, no. 46, pp. 765–780. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 1, Tillæg I, pp. 437–452.) “Symbolik,” Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, Interimsblad, 1834, I, no. 3; II, no. 4; III, no. 5; IV, no. 6; V, no. 8; VI, no. 9; VII, no. 10. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1861–62, vol. 10, pp. 155–207.) Indlednings-Foredrag til det i November 1834 begyndte logiske Cursus paa den kongelige militaire Høiskole, Copenhagen 1835. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 1, pp. 461–516.) “Til Læserne,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 1, 1837, pp. v–xiv. ASKB 569. “Recension over Hr. Dr. Rothes Treenigheds-og Forsoningslære,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 1, 1837, pp. 1–89. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 2, pp. 1–112.) “Det logiske System,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 2, 1838, pp. 1–45. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 2, pp. 113–166.) Fata Morgana, Copenhagen 1838. ASKB 1561. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Poetiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1862, vol. 2, pp. 93–226.) “Om Malerkunsten i dens Forhold til de andre skjønne Kunster,” Perseus, Journal for den speculative Idee, 2, 1838, pp. 101–181. ASKB 569. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 2, pp. 249– 350.) “En logisk Bemærkning i Anledning af H. H. Hr. Biskop Dr. Mynsters Afhandling om Rationalisme og Supranaturalisme i forrige Hefte af dette Tidsskrift,” Tidsskrift for Litteratur og Kritik, 1, 1839, pp. 441–456. (Reprinted in Heiberg’s Prosaiske Skrifter, vols. 1–11, Copenhagen 1861–62, vol. 2, pp. 167–190.)

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Mark C. Taylor, Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Authorship: A Study of Time and the Self, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1975. Michael Theunissen, Der Begriff Ernst bei Søren Kierkegaard, Freiburg and Munich: Verlag Karl Alber 1958. Das Selbst auf dem Grund der Verzweiflung. Kierkegaards negativistische Methode, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Anton Hain Meisenheim Gmbh. 1991. Der Begriff Verzweiflung. Korrekturen an Kierkegaard, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1993. Michael Theunissen and Wilfried Greve (eds.), Materialien zur Philosophie Sören Kierkegaards, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1979. Niels Thulstrup, Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift, ed. with Introduction and Commentary by Niels Thulstrup, vols. 1–2, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1962, vol. 2. English translation: Commentary on Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. by Robert J. Widenmann, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1984. Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 1987. Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press 1996. B. Articles Henry E. Allison, “Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of the Religious Consciousness,” Union Seminary Quarterly, 20, 1965, pp. 225–233. Wilhelm Anz, “Die religiöse Unterscheidung,” in Symposiom Kierkegaardianum, ed. by Wilhelm Anz, et al. (Orbis Litterarum, Tome 10, Fasc. 1–2), Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1955, pp. 5–17. Søren Bruun, “The Genesis of The Concept of Anxiety,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2001, pp. 1–14. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, “The Retrospective Understanding of Søren Kierkegaard’s Total Production,” in Kierkegaard. Resources and Results, ed. by Alastair McKinnon, Montreal: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 1982, pp. 18–38. Dar´ıo González, “On Kierkegaard’s Concept of Madness,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1996, pp. 277–292. “El ‘reflejo’ de lo trágico. Nota sobre la Ant´ıgona de Kierkegaard,” Persona y Derecho, 39, 1998, pp. 107–135. Alastair Hannay, “Why Should Anyone Call Kierkegaard a Philosopher?” in Kierkegaard Revisited, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn and Jon Stewart (Kierkegaard Studies Monograph Series, vol. 1), Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 1997, pp. 238–253. “Kierkegaard and What We Mean by ‘Philosophy,’ ” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 8, no. 1, 2000, pp. 1–22. Isak Winkel Holm, “Reflection’s Correlative Fate: Figures of Dependence in Søren Kierkegaard’s A Literary Review,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1999, pp. 149– 163. Anton Hügli, “The Principle of Contradiction,” in Concepts and Alternatives in Kierkegaard, ed. by Marie Mikulová Thulstrup (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, vol. 3), Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel 1980, pp. 272–280.

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P1: ILM/IKJ CY232-ind

P2: ILM/IKJ 0521828384

QC: ILM/IKJ June 14, 2003

T1: ILM 18:10

SUBJECT INDEX

absolute difference, 340, 341, 351–353 absolute knowing, 72, 209, 241, 249–261, 269, 574, 576, 577, 582, 583, 619 absolute spirit, 117, 473 Academicum, Academic Reading Association, 100, 108–111 actuality (Virkelighed), 7, 10, 121, 122, 128, 143f., 145ff., 163, 164, 168, 205fn., 247, 287, 290–292, 296, 297, 300, 302, 355–359, 376, 379, 380–385, 400, 401, 418, 555, 556, 559, 561, 564, 579, 587–589, 591, 597, 616, 617, 634, 635, 638 Antigone, 1, 18, 98, 162, 184, 218–225, 230, 600, 601, 615, 623 anxiety, 221, 378 Aufhebung, 3, 79, 187f., 194, 195, 202, 212, 213, 227, 231, 251, 292, 296, 302, 353, 380, 392, 397, 398, 407, 510, 511, 514, 515, 551, 587

597, 607, 609, 614, 621, 624f., 629, 630, 636, 641–643, 647, 650 cogito ergo sum, 110ff., 245, 278, 490, 506f., 556, 558, 570, 598, 626 Concept, the, 93, 112, 122, 156, 157, 158, 197, 208–210, 224, 251, 252, 256, 308, 350, 351, 360, 361, 364–367, 373, 384, 390, 407, 429, 441, 471–483, 487, 498, 516, 518, 519, 532–537, 616, 636, 637, 639 conscience, 111, 162, 163, 306, 310–323 passim, 329–335 passim contradiction, 9, 79, 187, 188–209 passim, 274, 284f., 286, 287, 291, 295, 300, 303, 338, 343, 347–349, 354, 399ff., 407, 511, 573ff., 578, 586, 588, 589, 616 Corsair, 43, 643, 646 demand of the age, the, 428f., 432f., 626 de omnibus dubitandum est, 110f., 238, 239, 242–249, 266, 268, 278, 281, 307, 308, 346f., 444, 457, 465, 467, 507, 509, 512, 514, 521, 598, 626, 642 despair, 31, 265, 550–595 passim, 613 Deutsche Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst (1841–43), 139 dialectic, 22, 91, 97–105, 122, 162, 175, 183, 184, 195, 209f., 213–215, 225, 226–229, 230, 261, 263, 267, 283, 370, 397–405, 551, 552, 572–591, 593–595, 601, 613, 620, 622f., 629, 646 difference, 397–405, 474 dogmatism, 186, 194 Don Juan (Don Giovanni), 103, 124fn., 215

bad infinity, 105, 256, 480, 495 beginning of philosophy, the, 10, 54, 118–123, 128, 129, 238, 239, 240, 263ff., 438f., 488–496, 522, 598, 611 being, 97, 119–122, 128, 270ff., 303, 387f., 416, 437–439, 445, 489–496, 502–510, 538, 557, 578 belief, see “faith” Christianity, 6–8, 16, 48, 61, 62, 75, 78, 80, 93, 96, 102, 103, 112, 191, 259, 300, 301, 308, 336, 346–355, 376, 389, 391, 418, 421, 433, 435, 436, 451, 452, 457, 464, 466–483 passim, 484, 486, 488, 499, 500, 511–514, 519, 523–572 passim, 583, 584, 590,

685


686

P2: ILM/IKJ 0521828384


T1: ILM 18:10

subject index

doubt, 110ff., 238–240, 242–268 passim, 274–277, 307, 308, 310, 334, 346, 368, 444, 457, 467, 496, 509, 512, 514, 563, 586, 602, 642 Enlightenment, 98, 481, 619, 620 ethical life, 151ff., 169, 180, 222, 310–315, 320, 516, 522 ethics, (in Hegel) 8, 310–315, 453, 499, 515–519, 543–545, 546, 609, 633 excluded middle, the law of, 9, 54, 61, 78f., 183, 185–209 passim, 296, 302, 338, 343, 346, 347–355, 397, 407, 452, 488, 503, 505, 506, 510–515, 587–591, 600, 609 existence, 380–385, 386, 400, 418, 484, 496, 505, 506, 511–515, 518, 526, 634, 635, 641 existentialism, 5, 448, 619–621 faith, 300, 306, 308, 310, 316, 317–323 passim, 324, 325, 332–334, 359, 367, 374, 380, 385–390, 415, 452, 457, 467–483 passim, 500, 514, 522–526, 532–540, 546, 560–567 passim, 569, 584, 589, 636, 639, 645 Faust, 66, 103, 112, 113, 124fn., 215, 247, 248 freedom (see also “subjective freedom”), 51, 151, 199ff., 226, 232, 293–295, 297, 300, 302, 362, 366, 368, 378, 407, 410, 486, 496, 511, 516, 519, 555, 568, 579, 621, 623, 635 French Revolution, 98, 318 god-man, 7, 191, 342, 349, 354, 567–572 going beyond, 65f., 108, 110, 194, 259, 308, 334, 445, 458, 459, 465, 467–471, 521, 554, 558, 565f. Greeks, the, 98, 101, 102, 104, 132–170 passim, 180, 218–225 passim, 289, 317, 599, 641ff. Hallische Jahrbücher für deutsche Wissenschaft und Kunst (1838–41), 139 Hamlet, 220–222 higher lunacy, 345, 346, 396fn., 508 history, 153–156, 157–161, 167ff., 186, 199, 200, 201ff., 207f., 223f., 251, 252, 254, 255, 256, 359–368, 371–376, 390, 391, 464, 467,

497–502, 512, 516, 521, 544, 607, 609, 611, 616, 620 Idea, the, 72, 116, 117, 125, 148, 157, 175, 180, 197, 253, 254, 258, 369, 371, 374, 441, 442, 478, 479, 480, 481, 501, 568 ideality, 274f., 285–287, 291, 292, 295f., 297, 300, 556, 559 immanence, 123, 293–295, 339, 340, 350–355, 368, 376, 404, 411–417, 418, 623 immediacy, 91, 97, 98–105, 124, 125, 170, 226–229, 273ff., 311, 317f., 331, 385–390, 394, 411–417, 489ff., 494ff., 583, 591, 598 immortality, 47, 48, 64, 75 incarnation, 48, 61, 191, 338, 341, 348, 349, 366–368, 376, 387, 394, 571, 635, 636 indirect communication, 22, 43, 136, 156, 303, 451, 621 inner/outer, 4, 220, 230, 323–329, 332, 538f., 610, 611 internal or immanent negation, 122, 123, 128, 598 irony, 21, 22, 31, 76, 132–181 passim, 182, 230, 240, 337, 547, 592, 593, 599, 600, 603, 621, 623, 643, 647 Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik (1827–46), 47, 116 Karlsbad Decrees, the, 321 Kjøbenhavns flyvende Post, see “Heiberg, Johan Ludvig” leap, the, 9, 10, 18, 298, 339, 405–411, 416, 538, 608, 614, 617, 623 life, 99, 100, 205, 347, 401, 635, 638, 646 logos, 112, 325, 393, 394 mediated immediacy, 91, 97–100, 105, 125, 126, 226, 229, 230, 299, 386, 387, 388, 390, 414, 416 mediation, 3, 6, 9, 10, 54, 61, 62, 79, 80, 183, 184–209 passim, 225–229, 231, 232, 249, 280, 283, 284, 288, 289–304 passim, 336–355 passim, 373, 376, 380, 390–405 passim, 406, 415, 417, 421, 423, 437–441, 453,


P2: ILM/IKJ 0521828384


T1: ILM 18:10

subject index 472, 483, 489ff., 499, 503, 510–515, 551, 561, 587–591, 600, 602, 607–609, 613, 624f. method, the, (methodology), 151–155, 209, 210, 214–217, 225–230, 261–263, 267, 275, 336, 338f., 368–376, 451, 453, 491, 551, 552, 572–591, 593–595, 601, 607, 613, 616, 620, 633f., 629 modal categories, 134f., 145–150, 177, 355–359, 376, 385, 579, 607, 611 movement in logic, 7, 9, 292–297, 380, 396–405, 411, 417, 418, 423, 488, 587, 589, 590, 591, 613 natural consciousness, 215, 253, 263, 265, 269ff., 574ff., 582, 583, 586 necessity, 6, 51, 145ff., 201ff., 226, 251f., 253, 293–295, 297, 300, 302, 338, 355–359, 359–368, 376, 400, 413, 476, 556, 573ff., 579–581, 589, 607, 611 negation, negativity, 122, 160f., 168, 175, 176, 187, 196, 267, 277, 395, 397–407, 560, 561, 577, 582, 599 objective thinking, 6, 374, 455, 467–471, 483, 486, 509, 521, 525f, 535, 537, 538, 546, 636, 637 oriental world, 101, 102, 104 pantheism, 4, 139, 191 paradox, 282, 300, 301, 306, 324, 325, 338–355 passim, 376, 452, 470–472, 477, 525, 540, 551, 558, 560–562, 607, 609, 635, 636, 645 Perseus, see “Heiberg, Johan Ludvig” phenomenology, 31, 122, 123, 262, 265, 572–591, 613, 621 philosophy and Christianity, 16, 53, 64, 78, 93, 112, 333f., 342, 390, 392, 418, 457, 470–483 passim, 512, 532–537, 597, 604, 608, 609, 611, 623 philosophy of history, 6, 7, 98, 201ff., 359, 369, 371, 372, 465, 497–502, 544, 545, 567f. philosophy of religion, 16, 60, 72, 78, 130, 191, 350, 353, 421, 471, 472, 482, 533, 535, 537, 539, 540, 541, 636 poetry, 55, 98–105, 123–126, 211, 216, 217, 218–225 passim

687

presuppositionless beginning, 10, 54, 113, 118ff., 244, 387, 405–407, 452, 488–496, 598, 609 Privatdocent, 459, 460, 463, 465, 645 pseudonyms, 39–43, 528, 529, 626 rationalism, 78, 79, 189f. recognition, 31, 585, 594, 613 reconciliation, 103, 380, 390–397 passim, 475, 499, 567, 569 reflection, 125, 222, 226, 228, 275f., 386, 387, 495, 598 repetition, 18, 282–304 passim, 422f., 424, 602, 615, 623, 647 revelation, 346, 524–549 passim, 564, 609, 635 Romanticism, 31, 101–104, 124, 133–135, 150, 166, 170–177, 179, 180, 182, 220, 312, 317, 318, 516, 599, 623, 647 Royal Theater in Copenhagen, 52, 233 sin, 298, 299, 340, 352, 378, 410–417, 551, 553–555, 558–564, 567–570, 584ff., 641 Sittlichkeit, see “ethical life” Sophists, the, 133, 158–159, 161 speculative philosophy, 2, 128, 186, 188, 197f., 199, 203, 217, 258, 336, 337, 451, 452, 466–488, 497, 499, 504, 508, 512, 518, 519f., 521, 540, 551, 559–572, 590, 609 stages, 35, 91, 97–105, 123–126, 129, 212, 232, 387, 597, 601, 623 sub specie aeternitatis, 245, 460, 486, 561, 562, 564 subjective freedom, 151, 169, 317f. supernaturalism, 78, 79, 189f., 348–350, 367 system, the, 2, 6, 10, 11, 56, 99, 107, 121, 122, 128, 136, 154, 239f., 309, 336, 345, 346, 366, 372, 373, 403, 420f., 424–437, 441, 451, 453, 457–462, 465, 466, 480, 484, 494, 495, 513, 515–519, 555, 556, 558, 561, 562, 566, 587, 588, 590, 591, 598, 608, 609, 611, 613, 623, 624, 634 systematic philosophy, see “speculative philosophy” and “the system” theodicy, 391 Theologische Jahrbücher, 62


688

P2: ILM/IKJ 0521828384


T1: ILM 18:10

subject index

thing-in-itself, 122, 171, 394, 575 to a certain degree, 343, 346 transcendence, 122, 293–296, 298–300, 339, 340, 350–355, 400, 404, 407, 411–417, 418, 623

University of Berlin, 46, 139, 321 University of Copenhagen, 51, 59–61, 68, 70, 74, 91, 107ff., 136ff., 144, 180f., 278, 457, 461, 529, 599, 602 University of Kiel, 51, 247

unhappy consciousness, 18, 229, 579fn., 593

Wandering Jew, 103, 124fn. Wartburg Festival, 321, 322.

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Hegel on the Modern Arts (Modern European Philosophy)

The Philosophy of Hegel (Continental European Philosophy)

Kant's Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered

Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel on History

Hegel After Derrida (Warwick Studies in European Philosophy)

Modern Germany Reconsidered, 1870-1945

The Morals of Modernity (Modern European Philosophy)

Comte after Positivism (Modern European Philosophy)

The Morals of Modernity (Modern European Philosophy)

Foucault on Freedom (Modern European Philosophy)

Heidegger's Temporal Idealism (Modern European Philosophy)

Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction

Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (Modern European Philosophy)

Bachelard: Science and Objectivity (Modern European Philosophy)

Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity (Modern European Philosophy)

Hegel's Critique of Metaphysics (Modern European Philosophy)

Kant's Ethical Thought (Modern European Philosophy)

Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Hegel and the Philosophy of Right

Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel on History (Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks)

Kant's Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered

American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 1890-1993

Modern Germany Reconsidered: 1870-1945

Hegel's Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation (Modern European Philosophy)

Hegel: A Re-Examination (Modern Revivals in Philosophy)

Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Modern European Philosophy)

The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)

Hegel, Idealism, and Analytic Philosophy

A Companion to Hegel

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Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered (Modern European Philosophy)

Hegel and Aristotle (Modern European Philosophy)

Hegel on the Modern Arts (Modern European Philosophy)

The Philosophy of Hegel (Continental European Philosophy)

Kant's Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered

Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel on History

Hegel After Derrida (Warwick Studies in European Philosophy)

Modern Germany Reconsidered, 1870-1945

The Morals of Modernity (Modern European Philosophy)

Comte after Positivism (Modern European Philosophy)

The Morals of Modernity (Modern European Philosophy)

Foucault on Freedom (Modern European Philosophy)

Heidegger's Temporal Idealism (Modern European Philosophy)

Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction

Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (Modern European Philosophy)

Bachelard: Science and Objectivity (Modern European Philosophy)

Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity (Modern European Philosophy)

Hegel's Critique of Metaphysics (Modern European Philosophy)

Kant's Ethical Thought (Modern European Philosophy)

Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Hegel and the Philosophy of Right

Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel on History (Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks)

Kant's Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered

American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 1890-1993

Modern Germany Reconsidered: 1870-1945

Hegel's Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation (Modern European Philosophy)

Hegel: A Re-Examination (Modern Revivals in Philosophy)

Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Modern European Philosophy)

The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)

Hegel, Idealism, and Analytic Philosophy

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