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From Jena to Copenhagen: Kierkegaard's relations to German idealism and the critique of autonomy in The Sickness Unto Death

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2010

SAMUEL LONCAR
SAMUEL LONCAR*
Affiliation:
Yale Divinity School, 409 Prospect St, New Haven, CT 06511
*
e-mail: samuel.loncar@yale.edu
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Abstract

This article seeks to demonstrate the influence of J. G. Fichte's philosophy on Søren Kierkegaard's theory of the self as he develops it in The Sickness unto Death and to interpret his theory of the self as a religious critique of autonomy. Following Michelle Kosch, it argues that Kierkegaard's theory of the self was developed in part as a critique of idealist conceptions of agency. Moreover, Kierkegaard's view of agency provides a powerful way of understanding human freedom and finitude that has implications for contemporary debates about autonomy, normativity, and agency.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , June 2011 , pp. 201 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

Notes

1. See Kosch, MichelleFreedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem ‘Kierkegaard's ethicist: Fichte's role in Kierkegaard's construction of the ethical standpoint’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 88 (2006), 261–295Google Scholar; and idem ‘“Actuality” in Schelling and Kierkegaard’, in Jon Stewart and N. J. Cappelørn (eds) Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2002).

2. Wilhelm Anz Kierkegaard und die Deutsche idealismus (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1956), 5–6.

3. For excellent treatments of German idealism, see Karl Ameriks Kant and the Fate of Autonomy: Problems in the Appropriation of the Critical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), idem ‘Introduction: interpreting German Idealism’, in idem (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beiser, FrederickThe Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; idem ‘The enlightenment and idealism’, in Ameriks Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, 18–36; and Frederick Beiser German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Paul Franks ‘All or nothing: systematicity and nihilism in Jacobi, Reinhold, and Maimon’, in Ameriks Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, 95–116, and Paul Franks All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Dieter Henrich Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Terry Pinkard German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of German Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Robert Pippin, Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

4. Ameriks, KarlKant and the Historical Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 163CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Beiser Fate of Reason, 232–236; Franks ‘Systematicity and nihilism’, 102–105; Karl Ameriks Historical Turn, 163–184.

6. Beiser Fate of Reason, 226–255; Ameriks Fate of Autonomy, 81–160, idem Historical Turn, 185–206.

7. This aspect of the post-Kantian story is not directly relevant to Kierkegaard, so I will not focus on it. Beiser and Ameriks, cited above, treat it in some depth.

8. I borrow ‘self-determining’ freedom as well as ‘radical freedom’ from Charles Taylor.

9. Beiser Fate of Reason, 326.

10. Idem German Idealism, 242–248; Fredeick Neuhouser Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 69 ff.

11. Beiser German Idealism, 242–243. For good accounts of the Aenesidemus Review and the general philosophical background of the period, see Ibid., 240–260; idem Fate of Reason; Henrich Between Kant and Hegel, esp. 157–173; Ameriks Fate of Autonomy, 63–85. Excerpts from Schulze's Aenesidemus have been translated by George di Giovanni, in idem and H. S. Harris (eds) Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1985), 104–135.

12. Beiser German Idealism, 243.

13. Frank, Manfred ‘Fragments of a history of the theory of self-consciousness from Kant to Kierkegaard’, Critical Horizons, 5 (2004), 54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Henrich, Dieter ‘Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht’, in idem & Wagner, H. (eds) Subjectivität und Metaphysik (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1966), 166–232Google Scholar.

15. Frank, ‘Fragments of a history’, 68. For a detailed discussion of this theory, see Ibid, 54–78.

16. Ibid., 68.

17. Ibid.

18. Neuhouser Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity, 70–72.

19. Ibid., 72.

20. Beiser German Idealism, 246, (emphasis added).

21. Ibid., 247.

22. J. G. Fichte Science of Knowledge, trans. and ed. Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 98.

23. Henrich Between Kant and Hegel, 250.

24. Ibid., 174. Much of the subsequent account follows Henrich's excellent treatment of the issue.

25. Fichte Science of Knowledge, 98.

26. Henrich Between Kant and Hegel, 172.

27. This applies, of course, not just to the subject–object relation within the self, but also to the self–world relation. For Fichte the self that posits the I must also posit the non-I, and were this an essay focused solely on Fichte, the I–world relationship would also receive attention.

28. Henrich Between Kant and Hegel, 194, notes that the absolute subject was introduced to try to avoid admitting that any reality existed outside the self. For some of the different views in the scholarly literature about the absolute and finite subject, see Beiser German Idealism, 218–345, 307–313; Neuhouser Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity, 111–116; Pippin, Robert ‘Fichte's alleged subjective, one-sided idealism’, in Ameriks, Karl and Sturma, Dieter (eds) The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy (Albany NY: SUNY Press, 1995), 147–170Google Scholar. The general trend of these and other interpreters is to emphasize the finitude of the Fichtean self and stress the role of the absolute ego as a regulative or normative principle, not a constitutive one. While this is certainly the role of the absolute ego in Fichte's doctrine of striving which Kierkegaard draws on, as Kosch Freedom and Reason, 203, n. 36, notes, Kierkegaard himself seemed to have had the more typical view that the Fichtean ego was ontologically constitutive of itself and the world.

29. See, for example, Fichte Science of Knowledge, 106–107.

30. Ibid., 129.

31. Zöller, GünterFichte's Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Neuhouser Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity, 113.

33. See Frank, Manfred ‘Non-objectal subjectivity’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14 (2007), 152–173Google Scholar; in German, see idem Selbstgefühl. Eine historisch-systematische Erkundung (Franfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002). See also Henrich, ‘Subjectivity as a philosophical principle’, Critical Horizons, 4 (2003), 7–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem Between Kant and Hegel; and idem Denken und Selbstsein: Vorlesungen über Subjektivität (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007). For a helpful and sympathetic assessment of Henrich's and Frank's work, see Freundlieb, Dieter, ‘Why subjectivity matters: critical theory and the philosophy of the subject’, Critical Horizons, 1 (2000), 229–245CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. This article will offer a brief survey of the Kierkegaard scholarship on the influence of Fichte on Kierkegaard below. Echoing a claim made about Luther's influence on Kierkegaard in Craig Hinkson ‘Kierkegaard's theology: cross and grace. The Lutheran and Idealist traditions in his thought’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1993), 11–12, we can affirm that the importance of Idealism's influence on Kierkegaard ‘has never been adequately observed’ in the English-speaking world.

35. Michelle Kosch, personal correspondence, 11 December 2008. We will, however, note possible sources that may have mediated Fichte to Kierkegaard, for an implication of my argument is that Kierkegaard was not merely influenced by Fichte's practical philosophy – an uncontroversial claim – but that he was also influenced by Fichte's theoretical philosophy.

36. Frank ‘Fragments of a history’, 84–100.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., 79.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid.

41. Ameriks Kant and the Historical Turn, 271.

42. Kangas, David J. ‘J. G. Fichte’, in Stewart, Jon (ed.) Kierkegaard and his German Contemporaries: Tome 1: Philosophy (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2007–2008), 67–95Google Scholar. Kangas draws heavily on Heinrich Schmidinger's article, ‘Kierkegaard und Fichte’, Gregorianum, 62 (1982), 499–542Google Scholar. For overviews of the Fichte–Kierkegaard connection, see Ibid., 504–512, and Matthias Wilke Die Kierkegaard-Rezeption Emanuel Hirschs. Eine Studie über die Voraussetzungen der Kommunikation christlicher Wahrheit (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 192–194, who offers a brief discussion of the ‘Das Verhältnis Kierkegaards zur Philosophie J. G. Fichtes in der Forschungsliteratur’.

43. Kangas ‘J. G. Fichte’, 67.

44. Ibid., 68.

45. Ibid., 79–84.

46. Ibid., 84–87. Wilhelm Anz, in ‘Selbstbuwusstsein und selbst. Zur idealismuskritik kierkegaards’, in Kierkegaard und die deutsche Philosophie seiner Zeit: Vorträge des Kolloquiums am 5. und 6. November 1979, 47–61, clearly relates Fichte's philosophy to Kierkegaard's theory of the self in SD, as does Manfred Frank (see below, n. 53). Anz (48), explicitly links the origin of Kierkegaard's concept of the self to ‘der Kritik der idealistichen Reflexion’.

47. E.g. van Kloeden, W. ‘Kierkegaard und Fichte’, Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana, 4 (1979), 114–143Google Scholar, offers a good discussion of Kierkegaard's knowledge of and references to Fichte. Especially helpful are Kloeden's discussions (124–129), of Martensen's lectures on the history of philosophy, and of what points about Fichte Kierkegaard seemed to take an especial interest in.

48. Anz ‘Selbstbewusstsein und selbst’, 55, notes that the role synthesis places in Kierkegaard's definition of the self differs from the role it plays for Fichte.

49. Kosch Freedom and Reason, 202, n. 33 argues that the Hongs should have left out the first ‘itself’ in the phrase ‘relates itself to itself’.

50. For Kierkegaard God is not an ad hoc solution, like Fichte's absolute subject, to the problem of self-consciousness; he would be so were this the only role he played and the only reason he was introduced, which is clearly not the case. Henrich Between Kant and Hegel, 263–276, esp. 270–272, notes that in Fichte's unpublished theological writings, he ended up positing just such an ad hoc God to explain the origin of the self.

51. Friedrich Hauschildt Die Ethik Søren Kierkegaards (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, 1982), 196, also notes this contrast with Fichte when describing Kierkegaard's concept of the self in SD. Hauschildt's interpretation of despair supports Kosch's and my own understanding of it as having a wrong conception or interpretation of oneself (as an agent).

52. Kosch Freedom and Reason, gives a thorough analysis of Schelling's influence on Kierkegaard's theory of agency. Frank ‘Fragments of a history’, 110–121, makes a plausible argument for Schleiermacher as the mediator of the Fichte's idea of the self to Kierkegaard. As Schleiermacher was himself a romantic, Frank's claim highlights the significance of early romanticism for understanding Kierkegaard's relations to Fichte.

53. Kosch Freedom and Reason, 139.

54. Ibid., 140.

55. Ibid., 154. Kosch's interpretation of despair has much to commend it, not the least of which is its ability consistently to account for and to explain the meaning of despair from Either-Or to SD.

56. See Charles Taylor ‘What is human agency?’, 15–44, and idem ‘Self-interpreting animals’, 45–76, in idem Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); idem ‘Interpretation and the sciences of man’, 15–57, in idem Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

57. Taylor ‘Self-interpreting animals’, 72, emphasis added.

58. Kosch Freedom and Reason, 170.

59. Kangas ‘J. G. Fichte’, 78.

60. Korsgaard, ChristineThe Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61. I owe the phrase ‘child of the idealists’ to Craig Hinkson, who read an earlier draft of this paper and provided very helpful feedback.