KIERKEGAARD The Arguments of the Philosophers EDITOR: TED HONDERICH The purpose of this series is to provide a contemporary assessment and history of the entire course of philosophical thought. Each book constitutes a detailed, critical introduction to the work of a philosopher of major influence and significance. Plato J. C. B. Gosling Augustine Christopher Kitwan The Presocratic Philosophers Jonathan Barnes Plotinus Lloyd P. Gerson The Sceptics R. J. Hankinson Socrates Gerasimos Xenophon Santas Berkeley George Pitcher Descartes Margaret Dauler Wilson Hobbes Tom Sore11 Locke Michael Ayers Spinoza R. J. Delahunty Bentham Ross Harrison H#lu.U2 Barry Sttoud Butler Terence Penelhum John Stuart Mill John Skorupski Thomas Reid Keith Lehrer Kant Ralph C. S. Walker Hegel M. J. Inwood Schopenhauer D. W. Hamlyn Kierkegaard Alastair Hannay Nietzsche Richard Schacht Karl Marx Allen W. Wood Gottlob Frege Hans D. Sluga Meinong Reinhardt Grossmann Husserl David Bell G. E. Moore Thomas Baldwin Wittgenstein Robert J. Fogelin Russell Mark Sainsbury William James Graham Bird Peirce Christopher Hookway Santayana Timothy L. S. Sprigge DWY J. E. Tiles Bergson A. R. Lacey J. L. Austin G. J. Watnock Karl Popper Anthony O’Hear AYE John Foster Sartre Peter Caws KIERKEGAARD The Argzlments of the Philosophers Alastair Hannay London and New York First published I982 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd First published in paperback 1991 by Routledge Reprinted 1993 This edition reprinted in hardback 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group 0 1982, 1991 Alastair Hannay Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Ptdication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of CongressC ataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN O-41 5-20370-8 ISBN 041 ‘j-20392-9 (set) Publisher’s note The publisher has gone to grear lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original book may be apparent To the memory of ERSKINE HANNAY (190046) Contents . . . Preface Xl11 I A Kind of Philosopher 1 1 .Life and infhence 1 2 Paraphilosopher 8 3 Preview 12 II Turning Hegel Outside-in 19 1 Preliminary 19 2 The unhappy consciotcsness 22 3 ‘Becoming infinite' 31 4 Two s&-paradigms 40 S The journey inwards without itinerary 48 III The Knight of Faith’s Silence 54 1 The aesthetic works 54 2 Eq&/ibrittm 62 3 Repetition 66 4 The teleological suspension of the ethical 72 5 The gnsayable 83 IV The Dialectic of Faith 90 1 The dialectic works 90 .? Faith and the condition 97 3 Subjectivity and truth 122 4 The problem of existence 139 S The problem of communication 146 V Pathology of the Self 157 1 The psychological works 157 2 Sin and human imperfection 171 vii CONTENTS 3 Pre- and post-threshold anxiety 177 4 Despair and its cure 190 5 Sin as defiance 199 VI Purity of Heart 205 1 The acknowledged works 205 .? The highest good 210 3 Double-mindedness 215 4 Willing one thing: Kierkegaard and Kant 224 5 Integrity and truly willing one thing 231 VII Love of One’s Neighbour 241 1 The happiness of others 241 2 The non-morality of natural love: three lines of argument 243 3 The requirements and functions of practical loue: Kierkegaard and Kant 254 4 Is practical love humane? 240 li The transcendent source of value 270 VIII Equality and Association 276 1 Equality and politics 276 2 Authority and the individual 280 3 Levelling 1 283 4 Levelling 2 289 5 Equality in difference 293 IX The ‘Abstract’ Individual 302 1 Kierkegaard and Marx 302 2 Marx on Peuerbacb 307 3 Methodological abstraction 310 4 Defending Kierkegaard 314 5 Religion as a constant 324 x Unconcluding Postscript 329 References 337 Notes 339 Select Bibliography 378 Index 382 . . . VIII Satan, saint, or Socrates . . . As a spiritual type, in a wide sense,K ierkegaard belongs to the Mephistopheles category. Like that devil’s charge d’affaires in Goethe, he is possessedo f a superior intellect, which he deploys with the same supple facility and tirelessness.T hey are both, in their at once witty, impudent, and dazzling ways, irresistible. In fact, Kierkegaardg oes one better than the devil, being without rival in the art of attacking reason with its own weapons. He is not just Mephistopheles,h e is at the same time Mephistopheles’s victim, man, Faust. It is not only against others that he turns his weapons,i n the end he turns them without mercy on himself. . . . [While] Mephistopheless imply dissolvesi n a smoke of brilliant conversation . , . Kierkegaard is the dire sufferer of his own satanism. He is, one might say, the tragic satan. . . . The Doomed Fiddlers, by William Heinesen, Gyldendal, Copenhagen,1 965, p. 144, my translation Kierkegaardw as by far the most profound thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint. Ludwig Wittgenstein, in private correspondence with M. O’C. Dru in Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 28, nos l-3 (7 976),.North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1976 People think the world needs a new republic, a new social order, and a new religion, but it never occurs to anyone that what the world now needs, confused as it is by much knowing, is a new Socrates. S&en Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, Samlede Vazrker, vol. 15, pp. 144-5, my translation