Kierkegaard, Metaphysics and Political Theory Continuum Studies in Philosophy Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA Continuum Studies in Philosophy is a major monograph series from Continuum. The series features fi rst-class scholarly research monographs across the whole fi eld of philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the fi eld of philosophical research. Aesthetic in Kant, James Kirwan Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion, Aaron Preston Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus, Christopher Brown Augustine and Roman Virtue, Brian Harding The Challenge of Relativism, Patrick Phillips Demands of Taste in Kant’s Aesthetics, Brent Kalar Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature, Justin Skirry Descartes’ Theory of Ideas, David Clemenson Dialectic of Romanticism, Peter Murphy and David Roberts Hegel’s Philosophy of Language, Jim Vernon Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, David James The History of Intentionality, Ryan Hickerson Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Radical Evil, David A. Roberts Leibniz Re-interpreted, Lloyd Strickland Metaphysics and the End of Philosophy, HO Mounce Nietzsche and the Greeks, Dale Wilkerson Origins of Analytic Philosophy, Delbert Reed Philosophy of Miracles, David Corner Platonism, Music and the Listener’s Share, Christopher Norris Popper’s Theory of Science, Carlos Garcia Role of God in Spinoza’s Metaphysics, Sherry Deveaux Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue, James Delaney Rousseau’s Theory of Freedom, Matthew Simpson Spinoza and the Stoics, Firmin DeBrabander Spinoza’s Radical Cartesian Mind, Tammy Nyden-Bullock St. Augustine and the Theory of Just War, John Mark Mattox St. Augustine of Hippo, R.W. Dyson Thomas Aquinas & John Duns Scotus, Alex Hall Tolerance and the Ethical Life, Andrew Fiala Kierkegaard, Metaphysics and Political Theory Unfi nished Selves Alison Assiter Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Alison Assiter 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-10: HB: 0-8264-9831-0 ISBN-13: HB: 978-0-8264-9831-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Assiter, Alison. Kierkegaard, metaphysics, and political theory / Alison Assiter. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8264-9831-1 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855. 2. Metaphysics. 3. Political science–Philosophy. I. Title. B4377.A87 2009 171’.2--dc22 2008044604 Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1. The Metaphysical Assumptions of the Classical Liberal 5 2. Human Rights and Fundamentalism 22 3. Some Limitations of the Discourse of Human Rights 38 4. Autonomy and ‘Evil’ 50 5. The Beginnings of an Alternative Metaphysic and Ethics 63 6. Natural Needs 86 7. Metaphysics and Morality 94 8. Love for Family, Friends and Close Associates 119 Conclusion 139 Notes 142 References 145 Index 159 Acknowledgements There are many people who helped me with the writing of this book. I began work on it when I took my fi rst ever sabbatical and I was based, for a period of six months in 2006, at the London School of Economics (LSE). Various talks I gave there and in many other places over the last two years have formed early versions of chapters of this work. I would like to thank the audiences in the LSE and the audience in Bristol University this year. I would also like to thank the audience at the conference on the H umanities at Columbia University in 2007 and the audiences at various other confer- ences where I have been invited to present a paper. There are a number of people who have read parts of the manuscript and given me comments and I would like to thank all of them. They are: Christine Battersby, Iain Grant, an unknown reader for Continuum Press, Keith Graham, Lita Crociani-Winland, Dave Merrick, Jane Kilby and Anne Seller. I would particularly like to thank Havi Carel for her very detailed and helpful commentary and useful corrections to my English, despite her fi rst language being Hebrew! Chapter 6 is largely a summary of an article writ- ten with Jeff Noonan and I would like to thank him for allowing me to use some of this material here. I would also like to thank Hamid for his love and for helping me to see the world through different eyes and our son Ben for just being around sometimes. Introduction Much contemporary thinking in political theory about justice and morality more generally presupposes that we are all rational, autonomous, self- interested individuals (see, for example, Rawls, 1973, 1993; Kymlica, 1990; Korsgaard, 1992). We are individuals who, in the words of Susan Moller Okin ‘(become) mature independent human beings . . . without any men- tion of how (we) got there’ (Okin, 1989, p. 9). In much of the tradition, furthermore, we are disembodied. There is a ‘metaphysical picture’ of the person underlying this, which is an idealized one. Some of its characteristics are actualized in some thinkers; some in others. It is broadly a liberal picture although some liberals deny some of the characteristics and some non-liberals accept some of them. There are contemporary liberals, I believe, however, who implicitly accept all of the characteristics of the metaphysic. In what follows I will describe what I will call the metaphysic underlying the liberal political tradition although I recognize that it will not apply to all liberal thinkers. I will sug- gest, specifi cally and additionally, that the metaphysical assumptions I will outline expose some of the limitations of the discourse of human rights but also of other classical liberal doctrines. Throughout the book, the theoreti- cal and philosophical arguments will be illustrated with empirical material. I will describe the way in which certain forms of fundamentalism offer a threat to human rights thinking and, in the context, stress the importance of human rights discourse in a contemporary political and legal sense. By ‘metaphysic’ in the context, I don’t mean to suggest a theory of being, but rather a philosophical picture of the person. There are those in the tra- dition I am about to describe, for example Rawls, and indeed Kierkegaard too, who would deny vehemently that they hold a metaphysic at all. The fi rst chapter will focus on the views of Rawls. In the book, I will suggest a different metaphysical image of the person as embodied; as essentially connected with others, and as an entity that changes in time. I will outline an approach to ethics that, it seems to me, 2 Kierkegaard, Metaphysics and Political Theory connects with or fl ows from this alternative metaphysic. Importantly, how- ever, this approach to ethics will assume something that seems to me to be tremendously signifi cant about the liberal tradition, and that is a form of universalism. This might appear to some to be an unusual claim to make. Onora O’Neill (1996), for example, has argued that one of the diffi culties faced by ethical theories that are founded upon substantive metaphysical assumptions is that those theories will be rejected by those who operate with different metaphysical presuppositions. However, it seems to me that there are very good reasons for accepting at least some of the metaphysical assumptions I will outline in the book. In certain respects the approach I will offer bears a resemblance to a number of perspectives, including the communitarian philosophy of, for example, Alasdair MacIntyre (1981, 1988), Michael Sandel (1982, 1996) and Waltzer (1983); the approach to ethical thinking known as virtue ethics and care ethics (see, for example, Gilligan, 1982). However, it differs from these various outlooks in at least two respects. First, as I have said above, my perspective will retain a commitment to some version of, in Benhabib’s words the ‘generalized other’ (1987). This other will not, however, be disembodied. Secondly, my approach differs from these other outlooks in so far as it emphasizes (from Kierkegaard 1995), the need to love oneself before one can offer a concern for another. In elaborating on what this might mean, I will draw on some psychoanalytic literature. Idealization and Abstraction The above images are ideal, in so far as each assumes something about the self that may not be actualized in practice in any particular human being. This idealization is different from abstraction. The latter is a matter of bracketing but not of denying predicates which are true of something (see, for some useful clarifi cation of this, O’Neill, 1996). Abstraction occurs, for example, when I decide to disregard the fact that two of my acquain- tances are each sports people or when I view the members of an orchestra as musicians and, for that moment, as nothing else. Idealization though is a different kind of activity. Idealization assumes that predicates are true of someone that may actually be false of them. Many critics of contemporary theories of justice, deriving from Rawls, deride these theories of justice for being abstract (e.g. Sandel, 1982; MacIntyre, 1988; Taylor, 1991).They suggest that ethical principles must be anchored in real practices or tradi- tions or sensibilities and criticize those who would universalize their ethical Introduction 3 principles for ‘abstraction’ which they suggest renders them inoperable as ethical principles. Abstraction, however is essential in daily life and it is fundamental in ethical reasoning. If I cannot abstract from all irrelevant features of people, I cannot discuss principles about, for example, euthanasia or abortion. Even ethical particularists, in other words, will need to deploy some abstrac- tion in order to engage in moral discussion. My point of disagreement with the ‘liberal’ tradition is different. I will suggest not that abstraction is wrong, but that the metaphysical ideal of the person that underlies some of the thinking in the tradition is the wrong one. In the fi rst chapter, I outline some of the key features of the liberal metaphysic of the self. I focus primarily on Rawls, as the most infl uential liberal thinker of the twentieth century. I argue that, sometimes despite his intentions to the contrary, his thought is directly derived from the meta- physic of Descartes and Kant. I argue specifi cally, in relation to Descartes, that there are two categories of person that lie outside the scope of the rational self – those who are mad and those who are evil. I suggest that there is in Rawls’ thinking a similar implication. In the second chapter, I move to discuss the concept of ‘right’ in more detail. I argue that one common criticism of the notion – the view that it is a western cultural construction that is not appropriate for all cultures – is misguided. The third chapter outlines some of the limitations of the concept of a right and specifi cally takes us back to some of the claims of the fi rst chapter, notably Foucault’s reading of Descartes, and his exclusion of the insane from the rational subject who becomes the subject of rights. I note a link between contemporary discussions of terrorism and this Foucauldian theme. In the twenty-fi rst century, as in the seventeenth, a group of people is excluded from the rational self; the liberal autonomous subject, and locked away. In the fourth chapter, I move to discuss the notion of autonomy specifi - cally in relation to evil. I argue that it is diffi cult for the classical liberal, with her focus on autonomy, to account for evil. Chapter 5 traces an alternative metaphysic of the self. I outline my read- ing of a selection of Kierkegaard’s writings, but I specifi cally offer what I describe as his ‘response’ to Descartes and Kant. I suggest that, for Kierke- gaard, the self is needy, dependent and loving rather than autonomous and self-interested. Kierkegaard also offers an ethical view that is based on the notion of loving oneself and others, these others including strangers.