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Kierkegaard's ironic ladder to authentic faith

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Notes

  1. Poul Lübcke, “Kierkegaard and Indirect Communication,”History of European Ideas 12 (1990): 31–40. Good example of the ‘semantic problem’ approach is Alastair Hannay,Kierkegaard (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), and of the ‘performative’ attitude Mark C. Taylor,Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship (Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 55, 59, 317. The latter claims that Kierkegaard's “personal life and writings are a persistent quest for authentic selfhood. Though indirectly, he constantly entreats his readers to undertake a similar journey” (p. 5). However, the enticing process and its relation to the specific object of enticement, i.e., the authentic faith, is not elaborated in this otherwise perceptive account of Kierkegaard's indirect (“pseudonymous”) communication.

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  2. The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. and trans. Alexander Dru (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 16, henceforthJournals.

  3. The Present Age andOf the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle, trans. A. Dru (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 33, henceforth PA. The same point is made by Kierkegaard inEither/Or, Vol. I, trans. David. F. and Lillian M. Swenson (Garden City: Doubleday, 1959), p. 27, henceforth EO. Cf. hisConcluding Unscientific Postscript trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 345, henceforth CUP.

  4. Cf. Kierkegaard's admonition that his age “being without passion has lost all feeling for enthusiasm and sincerity” (PA, p. 39).

  5. PA, p. 40.

  6. PA, p. 42.

  7. PA, pp. 68, 50, 82, 43, 54.

  8. PA, p. 44.

  9. PA, p. 81.

  10. The Point of View for my Work as an Author: A Report to History, trans. W. Lowrie (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 13.

  11. CUP, p. 236.

  12. Which “caused almost a riot, so that the book was bought, and is even supposed to be sold out” CUP, p. 254.

  13. PV, p. 40.

  14. CUP, p. 245.

  15. PV, p. 41.

  16. CUP, pp. 72, 68, 68 fn, 236, 245 fn.

  17. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, eds. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), I, p. 259.

  18. Wittgenstein,Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuiness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), p. 151, propositions 6.522 – 7. Cf. Alastair Hannay, op. cit., pp. 146–56 and his “Solitary Souls and Infinite Help: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein,” History of European Ideas 12 (1990): 41–52. Cf. M. P. Gallagher “Wittgenstein's Admiration for Kierkegaard,”Month 24 (January 1968): 43–49. It seems likely this observation in Wittgenstein'sCulture and Value refers to Kierkegaard: “An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though we were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it” (trans. Peter Winch, Oxford University Press, 1980, p. 73).

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  19. CUP, p. 181.

  20. The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Socrates, trans. Lee M. Capel (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 338 (henceforth CI). p. 349.

  21. CI, p. 276.

  22. CI, pp. 277–278.

  23. CI, pp. 50, 278, 340.

  24. CI, p. 265.

  25. CI, pp. 338–339.

  26. CI, p. 256.

  27. Journals, p. 139.

  28. A concise outline is provided in CUP, pp. 261–265; for a more elaborate and poetic presentation, see inStages on Life's Way, trans. W. Lowrie (Princeton University Press, 1940).

  29. See James Collins,The Mind of Kierkegaard (London: Secker and Warburg, 1954), p. 46 and Mark C. Taylor, op. cit., p. 74.

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  30. EO, II, (trans. W. Lowrie), p. 167, cf. hisSickness unto Death, where this idea is treated at length from a religious point of view.

  31. Journals, p. 355; cf. CUP, p. 248.

  32. A. Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert Bretall (Princeton University Press, 1946), p. 271; cf. PV, p. 103.

  33. EO, II, p. 168. The importance of the instant in Kierkegaard's writings is further evidence against the conception of a linear development of the self in time.

  34. EO, II, p. 182. For the Judge's arguments see ibid, pp. 170–182, 215–220.

  35. The Concept of Dread, trans. W. Lowrie (Princeton University Press, 1944), p. 15, henceforth CD.

  36. Stages, p. 430.

  37. Stages, p. 430; cf. CUP, p. 261.

  38. Fear and Trembling, trans. W. Lowrie (Princeton University Press, 1954), p. 64, henceforth FT.

  39. FT, p. 79.

  40. “Of the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle,” pp. 105, 93–94.

  41. E.g., FT, p. 79; 124. This notion of negative enticement is analogous to Nietzsche's concept ofVerführung. See myNietzsche's Enticing Psychology of Power (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989), Chapter 7 and “Nietzsche on Authenticity” inPhilosophy Today 34 (1990): 243–258.

  42. FT, p. 69.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 91905, Jerusalem, Israel

    Jacob Golomb

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I would like to express my gratitude to Jonathan Rée for his valuable comments on the first draft of this paper, which is a shorter version of a chapter of myA Search for Authenticity, to be published by Routledge, London.

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Golomb, J. Kierkegaard's ironic ladder to authentic faith. Int J Philos Relig 32, 65–81 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01315425

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