Abstract
In Ian Duckles’ Derridian reading of Søren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, Duckles claims that Judge William’s defense of ethical life represents an attempt to evade mortality and individual responsibility. His argument is based on the existential interpretation of mortality wherein death is understood as the individuating feature of human existence. The basic idea is that, in the individualization of death, one encounters her identity as an individual who has to stand on her own feet and make something of her life with no support or guarantees that it is the right way to live. According to Duckles, the ethical goal of rational justification for one’s actions might be an attempt to avoid responsibility by getting others to share the burden of choosing to make a choice. Is the goal or purpose of ethical existence a disguised attempt to evade mortality and abnegate individual responsibility? In this paper, I follow Charles Guignon’s lead and try to show how Heidegger’s existential interpretation of death opens up an enriched view of the purpose of ethical existence where the focus is on character formation or self-constitution. After I describe the key features of Heidegger’s approach to understanding mortality and morality, I offer a Heideggerian interpretation of Judge William’s description of ethical self-transformation. I believe that Kierkegaard uses the pseudonym of Judge William to articulate a secularized form of the ethical that involves a kind of personal transformation wherein one comes to realize one’s potential for being a responsible individual.
I owe a special thank you to Hans Pedersen for his time and help with the development of this paper. I would also like to thank Adam Buben for his insightful discussions on death and the nature of justification. Specifically, the fifth chapter of his dissertation, The Existential Compromise in the History of the Philosophy of Death (2011), brought my attention to the problems that death poses for ethics.
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Notes
- 1.
To be clear, I am not making any claims about Kierkegaard’s own view(s) of ethical existence. For the sake of brevity, I am not addressing the congruency of Kierkegaard’s view of the ethical in Fear and Trembling and Either/Or. Given that Kierkegaard uses two different pseudonyms, the congruency cannot be established simply by reference to the author himself. As far as I can tell, the most sufficient way to work out a correspondence in the ethical of Fear and Trembling and Either/Or would involve a three-part analysis. First, I would have to establish Kierkegaard’s relationship to both pseudonyms. Then, I would need to create a dialogical relation between Johannes de Silentio and Judge William on the issue of ethical existence. And lastly, I would try to make the strongest case for either an agreement or disagreement between the Silentio-Kierkegaard and the William-Kierkegaard. Since this is a multifarious matter that cannot be adequately addressed at this time, the most I can say is that I do not think Silentio’s problematization of the ethical is applicable to Judge William.
- 2.
However, according to Heidegger, language flattens out, stabilizes, and puts this at the level of the least common denominator, so people do not realize their sense of reality is “reduced” to conduciveness and usability. Our ordinary understanding is rooted in the constraints of the sort of artificial and contrived interpretation of things that has been passed down through the past 2,000 years in an increasingly obscure way (see Heidegger SZ, ¶34). In Being and Time, Heidegger attempts to work our way back to the “birth certificate” of the Western intellectual tradition in order to simultaneously challenge and put into question the contemporary interpretations of the leveled-down possibilities of social existence (BT, 44/SZ, 22). This involves a dual process of de-structuring the average, everyday sense of things. The function of destruction is to take that average everyday description of things and to try to see what the shortcomings are, the problems it generates, how it can be distortive, and how it can play a role in concealing deeper or “primordial” ways of Being-in-the-world. Through this process Heidegger tries to arrive at a new level of interpretation that is responsive to the prohibitive moment of de-structuring; namely, the aspect that tells us that we cannot understanding the phenomenon in the traditional terms or concepts because they are misleading in some way or other (see Heidegger BP, 23/GA 24, 31–32).
- 3.
In an effort to clarify the force of Heidegger’s analysis of death, it is helpful to note that “existence” is a technical term understood as “‘ex-sistere,’ as being outside itself in ‘being-toward’” (Guignon 2011a, 199).
- 4.
For a more thorough account of Heidegger’s phenomenological description of death please see Adam Buben’s chapter in this volume.
- 5.
In a similar fashion, Heidegger’s existential interpretation of the “call of conscience” emphasizes an individual and personal feature of human existence (see SZ, Division II, Chap. 2).
- 6.
To be fair, I am not taking into account what Heidegger has to say about the call of conscience and Dasein’s authentic way of being-towards-death (Division II, Chap. 2). At this point Heidegger argues that, if Being and Time is going to be phenomenological in the proper sense, then its existential discoveries must be based on existentiell or lived-world reality. (This dialogical methodology, which is essential to phenomenology, is also exemplified in St. Augustine’s Confessions and Bertrand Russell’s The Quest for Happiness.) Even though Heidegger grounds his analysis of being-towards-death in a primordial experience that attests to the correctness of the existential characteristics of death, I am leaving aside the justification offered in Being and Time in order to fill in the gaps with Judge William’s justification of ethical existence. Also, I should reiterate that I am using Heidegger’s analysis of death to problematize the existential conception of individual agency, which seems to be at the heart of Derrida’s critique of the mainstream view of ethical responsibility. I think Heidegger and Derrida agree that the pervasive individualism in modern ethical theory is misguided (to say the least), but I find that Heidegger’s description of death offers us something more than a critique of the nature of justification. Instead, it provides us with a deeper, broader understanding of ethics. Heidegger is trying to describe what is involved in confronting a situation that calls for the ability to make a decision and to stand by it. On this view, individualism is an engaged, clear-sighted, and responsible mode of social existence.
- 7.
To be more precise, I am focusing on the Aristotelian-Heideggerian features of Judge William’s phenomenological description of ethical self-constitution. Although this is a less conventional way of approaching Either/Or, I should note that it is not unfounded. As George Stack argues, “while it is true that there are some minor indications in the later portions of Either/Or that Kierkegaard was aware of the general features of Kant’s ethics of duty, there are numerous aspects of his description of ethical existence which are clearly derived from his reading of Aristotle” (1974, 2).
- 8.
For a more in-depth look at the insurmountable difficulties involved in modernity’s attempt to superimpose the notion of a pure moral law or utilitarian principle into the context of our practical life-world see Alasdair MacIntyre 2008; and Bernard Williams 1972 and 1993. Especially noteworthy for my present discussion of the misunderstandings of individualism and moral agency in modern moral philosophy is Williams’ argument that “the morality system itself, with the emphasis on the ‘purely moral’…actually conceals the dimension in which ethical life lies outside the individual” (1993, 191).
- 9.
In an effort to avoid redundancy and maintain clarity, please keep in mind that whenever I refer to Duckles’ reading of Either/Or I am always referring to his Derridian reading unless stated otherwise.
- 10.
I am indebted to Guignon’s seminar (2011) lectures where he pointed out the connections between Heidegger’s view of authenticity and Kierkegaard’s description of the ethical in Either/Or.
- 11.
For further clarification see Stack 1974. Especially helpful is his argument connecting Aristotle, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger on the issue of moral development. Stack writes, “The moral development of man is a contingent process insofar as the ‘essence’ or ‘nature’ of man may never fully be realized in a lifetime. In the case of man exclusively, the realization of his ‘nature’ requires persistent striving. For Aristotle, as well as for Kierkegaard and Heidegger, the essence of man is an ideal goal which one ought to seek to attain in order to be an authentic human being” (1974, 5). In my discussion of ethical self-transformation I try to make explicit this connection between moral development and self-realization, which I see as fundamental for understanding the relationship between morality and mortality. However, I should point out that there are some authors who would disagree with associating an Aristotelian or Kierkegaardian ideal of self-realization with Heidegger’s notion of authenticity (e.g., see Dreyfus 1991, 284–340).
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
In the section on “Heidegger on Morality and Morality,” this teleological structure of motivation was discussed in terms of one’s ownmost potentiality for being an authentic self. Also see “Excerpts from the Mörchen Transcription” in Heidegger BCAP, 229–30/GA 22, 84–85.
- 15.
I would also like to offer this idea of the existential choice that gathers the self as a response to MacIntyre’s reading of Either/Or, which is comparable to Duckles’ critique of the dialectic of duty. MacIntyre finds a “deep internal inconsistency” in Either/Or’s “concept of radical choice,” which “lies beyond reasons, just because it is the choice of what is to count for us as a reason,” and “its concept of the ethical” (2008, 41–42). On MacIntyre’s reading, “Kierkegaard combines the notion of radical choice with an unquestioning conception of the ethical” (2008, 43). That is to say, Judge William articulates a necessarily arbitrary and criterionless choice about choosing between the aesthetic and ethical—one must just leap from one to the other. However, when read through a Heideggerian lens, I find that Judge William presents a much more substantive notion of freedom of choice, which assumes that we have a clear understanding of what possibilities are worthwhile and we have the character formation to reach the point in our lives where we can make good choices. Judge William seems to find a stronger and more concrete notion of our finitude and limitations in being part of a greater whole than MacIntyre’s (and Duckles’) arbitrary freedom of choice allows for.
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Altman, M. (2015). Mortality and Morality: A Heideggerian Interpretation of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or . In: Pedersen, H., Altman, M. (eds) Horizons of Authenticity in Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Moral Psychology. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 74. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9442-8_14
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