Contrasting Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

Abstract

In this chapter I address some of the more significant and interesting points of contrast between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, many of which have emerged from my exposition in the previous four chapters. The understanding of despair and nihilism developed in the last two chapters are used here to establish the critiques each thinker could bring to bear against the other’s ideal way of life. Simply put, I explore how Kierkegaard might accuse Nietzsche’s sovereign individual of despair and how Nietzsche might accuse Kierkegaard’s person of faith of nihilism. As I show, the fact that both thinkers are asking the same fundamental question about the best way of life while offering such different and opposing answers to this question opens up an interesting ethical dialogue between them. This dialogue converges on such topics as responsibility, autonomy, guilt, and the relation between spirituality and ethics. These topics are not only greatly significant to each thinker’s philosophy overall; they also constitute the central points of disagreement between them. My point is not to end this dialogue by showing how one of these thinkers refutes or defeats the other, but to establish where the lines of disagreement in this dialogue actually lie. Only by delineating these differences clearly can we benefit from the critical insights each thinker can offer the other. It will also help to suggest many of the topics and discussions that any ethics focusing on ways of life would likely encounter.