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Kierkegaard and The Logic of Insanity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Merold Westphal
Merold Westphal
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Yale University
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Extract

Feigned madness can be a valuable asset. King David once used it to escape from the Philistines (I Sam. 21), and a twentieth century king, Pirandello's Henry IV pulled much the same trick on a modern philistine culture. Thrown from his horse and struck on the head while on his way to a masquerade party dressed as the Henry of Canossa's chill repentance, he had for twenty years insanely identified himself with the eleventh century monarch. At least this is what his family and the court they provided for his humour thought. As the play opens they are unaware that he has returned to sanity, but has continued to play Henry IV for the last eight of the twenty years, preferring the mad world in which he had lived to the sane world to which he would have to return.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , September 1971 , pp. 193 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

page 193 note 1 Naked Masks, New York, 1952, pp. 190–3.Google Scholar

page 193 note 2 See Marcuse's critique of one dimensional thinking in One Dimensional Man, especially chapters 4–5, and the suggestion that slogans function hypnotically.

page 194 note 1 244a, Hackforth translation.

page 194 note 2 Kierkegaard's favourite generic terms for non-Christian modes of thought are paganism, the natural man, and the human understanding or reason.

page 194 note 3 This is an Hegelian view of the tragic hero. The priority of the state to the family is developed in his Philosophy of Right, and this conflict is given as the paradigm for tragedy in the Phenomenology.

Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, Garden City, 1954, pp. 10, 31, and 37.

page 195 note 2 From the title of the sermon which concludes Either/Or.

page 195 note 3 See Training in Christianity, Princeton, 1944, pp. 86 ff.Google Scholar

page 195 note 4 The Sickness Unto Death, p. 259, my italics.Google Scholar

page 195 note 5 Johannes Climacus or, De Omnibus Dubitandum Est and A Sermon, Stanford, 1958, pp. 159–73.Google Scholar

page 195 note 6 Quoted from the Journal by Lowrie, Walter in Kierkegaard, New York, 1938, pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

page 195 note 7 Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, Bloomington, 1967, I, 169–70.Google Scholar

page 196 note 1 Philosophical Fragments, Princeton, 1962, p. 66.Google Scholar

page 196 note 2 Ibid., p. 65.

page 196 note 3 ‘In Defense of the Thing in Itself’, Kant-Studien, 59/1 (1968), pp. 118–41.Google Scholar

page 197 note 1 Training in Christianity, pp. 31–3.Google Scholar

page 197 note 2 Fear and Trembling, p. 47. Cf. p. 57.Google Scholar

page 197 note 3 Training in Christianity, pp. 42 and 91.Google Scholar

page 197 note 4 Training in Christianity, p. 50, Cf. pp. 45–55.Google Scholar

page 197 note 5 The first and third phrases are from Johannes Climacus, pp. 112 and 126, while the second is quoted from the Journal in The Concept of Irony, New York, 1965, p. 13.Google Scholar

page 198 note 1 Training in Christianity, pp. 81 and 58.Google Scholar

page 198 note 2 ‘The Logic of Mysticism’, Religious Studies 2: 2 (04, 1967), p. 59.Google Scholar

page 198 note 3 On Authority and Revelation, New York, 1966, p. 60.Google Scholar

page 198 note 4 The Sickness Unto Death, p. 218.Google Scholar

page 199 note 1 Philosophical Fragments, pp. 65 and 118Google Scholar, On Authority and Revelation, pp. 59–60, Journals and Papers, I,4Google Scholar, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Princeton, 1941, p. 189.Google Scholar

page 199 note 2 Training in Christianity, pp. 98–100Google Scholar and Philosophical Fragments, pp. 97 ff.Google Scholar

page 199 note 3 Lessing's Theological Writings, Stanford, 1957, p. 55.Google Scholar

page 201 note 1 Essays on Faith and Morals, Cleveland, 1962, pp. 56–61Google Scholar, and Training in Christianity, p. 89.Google Scholar

page 202 note 1 Philosophical Fragments, pp. 52–3.Google Scholar

Werke, I, 432–4.

page 204 note 1 Training in Christianity, p. 83n.Google Scholar

page 204 note 2 On Authority and Revelation, p. 26. Cf pp. liv and 116–17.Google Scholar

page 204 note 3 Journals and Papers, I, 72.Google Scholar

page 205 note 1 On Free Choice of the Will, Indianapolis, 1964, pp. 38, 49, 13, 39.Google Scholar

page 206 note 1 The relation between a theory of the analytic and a theory of inference is a very direct one. Thus meaning postulates can be described as rules which relate predicates in a language so that certain entailments take place, and entailment can in turn be defined in terms of analyticity (‘P’ entails ‘Q’ = df ‘if P then Q’ is analytic). Carnap proceeds in the first way, Strawson in the second'

page 206 note 2 For Carnap's statements, see Meaning and Necessity, Chicago, 1956, pp. 207 and 225.Google Scholar

page 206 note 3 Ibid., p. 207.

page 207 note 1 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 107.Google Scholar

page 208 note 1 Quoted from the Journal of 1843 in Fear and Trembling, p. 10.Google Scholar

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page 208 note 3 Journals and Papers, I, 8.Google Scholar

page 208 note 4 Ibid., I, 4.

page 208 note 5 Ibid., I, 7–8.

page 209 note 1 On Authority and Revelation, pp. 192–3.Google Scholar

page 209 note 2 Training in Christianity, pp. 42, 62–6, 82, 100, 105, 112–13, 116–18, 121, 129.Google Scholar

page 209 note 3 Ibid., p. 42.

page 210 note 1 These ‘contradictions’ are found in the passages listed in note 2, p. 209.Google Scholar

page 210 note 2 Following Lowrie's argument, I take Training in Christianity to be a non-pseudonymous work.

page 210 note 3 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 413 n and 458 ff.Google Scholar

page 210 note 4 Ibid., pp. 508–12.