The Principle of Sufficient Reason is a powerful and controversial philosophical principle stipulating that everything must have a reason or cause. This simple demand for thoroughgoing intelligibility yields some of the boldest and most challenging theses in the history of metaphysics and epistemology. In this entry we begin with explaining the Principle, and then turn to the history of the debates around it. A section on recent discussions of the Principle will be added in the near future.

Versions of this paper have been read to philosophical colloquia at Occidental College and California State University, Fullerton. I am indebted to participants in those discussions, to students in many of my classes, and particularly to Marilyn McCord Adams, Van Harvey, Thomas Kselman, William Laserow, and James Muyskens, for helpful comment on the ideas which are contained in this paper (or which would have been, had it not been for their criticisms).

The purpose of this paper is to explore an hypothesis rather than draw any unassailable conclusions. I argue that there is a fundamental tension between the sub-Christian account of the “Three Stages” presented in the earlier pseudonymous writings and the explicitly Christian account presented in the Anti-Climacean and later acknowledged writings. The earlier version is that of a progress from spiritless “immediacy” toward more complete integrations of the self, culminating in authentic religious faith; while the later is that of a (...) regress from lesser to ever greater forms of spiritual peril, culminating in a disordered religiosity that vainly seeks to overthrow the established ecclesiastical order. Tracing the conflict between these two perspectives also enhances our understanding of the purpose underlying Kierkegaard’s project by suggesting the possibility that the authorship constitutes a literary confession of Kierkegaard’s own spiritual regress. (shrink)

On the standard view, paraphrasing Kierkegaard requires no special literary talent. It demands no flair for the poetic, unless clarity and straightforwardness should count. However, Kierkegaard himself does not ascribe to this view. At least not exactly. He claims that we cannot paraphrase some of his ideas in a straightforward fashion. To use the words of Johannes Climacus, these ideas defy ‘direct communication’. In this paper, I piece together and defend the justification Kierkegaard offers for this position. I also provide (...) an account of its implications for contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

This paper is a review essay of Daniel Berthold’s The Ethics of Authorship. Therein, Berthold depicts Hegel and Kierkegaard as endorsing two postmodern principles. The first is an ethical ideal. Authors should abdicate their traditional privileged position as arbiters of their texts’ meaning. They ought to allow readers to determine this meaning for themselves. In so doing, they will help readers attain genuine selfhood. The second principle is a claim about language. To wit, language cannot express an author’s thoughts or (...) feelings. I argue that if the claim about language is true, it renders the ethical ideal superfluous. In addition, I argue that if Berthold has identified Hegel and Kierkegaard’s actual ethics of authorship, i.e. if he has discovered the views they actually believed, then either they have failed to execute their ethical project or their views about language are false. (shrink)

Following the pattern set by the early German Romantics, Kierkegaard conveys many of his insights through literature rather than academic prose. What makes him a valuable member of this tradition is the theory he develops to support it, his so-called “theory of indirect communication.” The most exciting aspect of this theory concerns the alleged importance of indirect communication: Kierkegaard claims that there are some projects only it can accomplish. This paper provides a critical account of two arguments Kierkegaard offers in (...) defense of this claim. The first argument is that he needs to use indirect communication in order to discourage people from losing themselves in the “crowd”. The second argument is that he needs to use it in order to help people out of a “monstrous illusion”. It is shown that while both arguments justify Kierkegaard’s decision to use indirect communication, neither one supports the original claim about its indispensability. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of Kierkegaard’s central criticism of the Danish Hegelians. Contrary to recent scholarship, it is argued that this criticism has a substantive theoretical basis and is not merely personal or ad hominem in nature. In particular, Kierkegaard is seen as criticizing the Hegelians for endorsing an unacceptable form of intellectual elitism, one that gives them pride of place in the realm of religion by dint of their philosophical knowledge. A problem arises, however, because this criticism threatens (...) to apply to Kierkegaard himself. It is shown that Kierkegaard manages to escape this problem by virtue of the humorous aspect of his work. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns Kierkegaard’s theory of indirect communication. A central aspect of this theory is what I call the “indispensability thesis”: there are some projects only indirect communication can accomplish. The purpose of the dissertation is to disclose and assess the rationale behind the indispensability thesis. -/- A pair of questions guides the project. First, to what does ‘indirect communication’ refer? Two acceptable responses exist: (1) Kierkegaard’s version of Socrates’ midwifery method and (2) Kierkegaard’s use of artful literary devices. Second, (...) for what end does Kierkegaard use indirect communication? There are two acceptable responses here as well: (1) helping others become religious and (2) making others aware of the nature of existence. -/- These responses are interrelated. First, Kierkegaard’s notion of religion places restrictions on the means he can use to get readers to become religious. These restrictions ultimately entail that the only viable form of religious pedagogy is the midwifery method. Second, Kierkegaard engages in the midwifery method in part by making readers aware of the nature of existence (especially religious existence). But given the problems plaguing his readers, he thinks a straightforward approach to this project will likely fail. An approach that used artful literary devices such as deception and humor would be more successful. Third, Kierkegaard believes that there is one aspect of religious existence (viz. subjectivity) that people can come to know only first-hand. As such, he cannot directly impart knowledge of subjectivity to his readers. He argues that this means he must use the midwifery method. And he thinks the most productive way to do so is to provide readers with the kind of fictional narratives found in his early pseudonymous writings. Thus artful rhetorical devices play a role here as well. -/- All of Kierkegaard’s arguments for the indispensability thesis turn on debatable assumptions. But the arguments concerning artful rhetorical devices have the additional defect of being merely probabilistic in nature. They lack the strength to support the indispensability thesis even if we grant the relevant background assumptions. Therefore, to the degree that the indispensability thesis has merit, it lies with the arguments concerning the midwifery method. (shrink)

This paper illuminates the central arguments in Sartre's UNESCO address, 'The Singular Universal." The address begins by asking whether objective facts tell us everything there is to know about Kierkegaard. Sartre's answer is negative. The question then arises as to whether we can lay hold of Kierkegaard's "irreducible subjectivity" by seeing him as alive for us today, i.e., as transhistorical. Sartre's answer here is affirmative. However, a close inspection of this answer exposes a deeper level to the address. The struggle (...) to find a place for Kierkegaard within the world of objective knowledge is an allegory. It mirrors Sartre's struggle to find a place for his existentialism within the Marxism that dominates his later thinking. (shrink)

Exploring Kierkegaard's complex use of the Bible, the essays in this volume use source-critical research and tools ranging from literary criticism to theology ...

This paper is a study of Kierkegaard’s concept of despair. The Danish etymology of fortvivleslse is examined in order to argue that, for Kierkegaard, despair is not simply a feeling, but is more fundamentally a willed misrelation in the self.

The goal of this paper is to locate the precise moment in which reason becomes endowed with an ought. In stating the goal in this way, something has already been said about Kant and his project of grounding the metaphysics of morals. But in speaking of a moment (or an instant or an event or an occasion) in which reason becomes endowed with an ought, that is, a moment in which pure reason becomes practical, we have already headed off in (...) a direction beyond the metaphysics of morals. For by invoking the moment, we have invoked something concrete. This distinguishes the current project from the Kantian enterprise in that Kant sought the universal conditions of morality as they followed from a rationality already endowed with an ought. In so doing, he could identify that the ideas of morality and freedom were concomitantly related (along with reason itself), but he could not show that any of these ever materialized in concrete experience. Toward the end of the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, he writes, "we have finally traced the determinate concept of morality back to the idea of freedom, but we could not prove freedom to be something actual in ourselves and in human nature" (GMM 51). On the next page, he writes: ... we are not as yet able to have any insight into why it is that we should divorce ourselves from such interest, i.e., that we should consider ourselves as free in action and yet hold ourselves as subject to certain laws so as to find solely in our own person a worth that can compensate us for the loss of everything that gives worth to our condition. We do not see how this is possible and hence how the moral law can obligate us. One must frankly admit that there is here a sort of circle from which, so it seems, there is no way to escape. (GMM 52. Emphasis is mine.) Even though Kant can align the concepts of freedom, reason and the moral law, it would seem that the obligating force of morality has slipped beneath his grip, and he is left to analyze the idea of moral obligation in its place.1 The present study seeks to return this idea of obligation to its origin.. (shrink)

Various historians, philosophers, and social scientists have attempted to provide convincing explanations of the roots of violence, with mixed and confusing results. This book brings Kierkegaard's voice into this conversation in a powerful way, arguing that the Christian intellectual tradition offers the key philosophical tools needed for comprehending human pathology.

Review of Clare Carlisle's book covering Kierkegaard's three 1843 pseudonymous texts: "Either/Or," "Repetition," and "Fear and Trembling.".

This essay expands upon the suggestion that Lessing's infamous ‘ditch’ is actually three ditches: temporal, metaphysical, and existential gaps. It examines the complex problems these ditches raise, and then proposes that Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript exhibit a similar triadic organizational structure, which may signal a deliberate attempt to engage and respond to Lessing's three gaps. Viewing the Climacean project in this way offers an enhanced understanding of the intricacies of Lessing's rationalist approach to both religion and historical truth, and illuminates (...) Climacus's subjective response to Lessing. (shrink)

Despite his persistent polemics against the Hegelian 'speculative' philosophy, Kierkegaard recognized his own 'enigmatic respect for Hegel', and one of his pseudonyms (Johannes Climacus) even acknowledged that his 'own energies are for the most part consecrated to the service' of speculation. Nowhere are Kierkegaard's energies more productively devoted to this service than in the work of his last pseudonym, Anti-Climacus, "The Sickness Unto Death." In this essay, I argue that not only are there structural parallels between the anatomy of despair (...) in "The Sickness Unto Death" and the analysis of the 'unhappy consciousness' in Hegel's "Phenomenology," but that there are striking parallels in terms of the actual content of the respective accounts. I develop these parallels in order, finally, to reconsider the terrain of difference between Kierkegaard's Christian therapeutics of despair and Hegel's phenomenological therapeutics. (shrink)

This article discusses the claim made by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling that the story of Abraham involves a ?teleological suspension of the ethical?. It tries to show that this claim is intelligible and plausible when considered within the context of a philosophical position which views morality as a system of duties.

This paper explores the relationship between Kierkegaard's theory of “indirect communication,” his employment of that method in the pseudonymous literature, and his explicit comments on the Teacher in Philosophical Fragments. My interest is principally in a pedagogical method able to serve as a solution to the problem of will formation, and so my assessment of Kierkegaard's theory and performance is essentially ethical in nature. I argue that there is at least an ambiguity, if not a contradiction, to be found in (...) the above relationship and that as a result, in its current form, Kierkegaardean pedagogical devices do not appear to be able to offer an adequate solution. (shrink)

"There is only one single man who possesses the prerequisites permitting an authentic critique of my work: that is I myself." "What I am standing on, ...

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) was an almost unbelievably prolific writer. At his death he left not only a massive body of published work (25 volumes in the recently completed Princeton University Press edition), but also a sprawling mass of unpublished writings that rivaled the size of the published corpus. This book tells the story of the peculiar fate of this portion of Kierkegaard's literary remains, which flowed ceaselessly from his steel pen from his late teens to a week before his death. (...) It is the story of packets and sacks of paper covered with words and images that, after a vagabond existence in various homes, finally landed at the Royal Danish Library, where they are today guarded with great care. Readers are also introduced to a selection of this enormous body of material, including drawings and doodlings (often human profiles with high foreheads) that escaped from Kierkegaard's pen in unguarded moments and complement the allure of the philosopher's strikingly variable, elusive handwriting. The authors of this book are among the editors of a modern critical edition of Kierkegaard's oeuvre currently being produced in Copenhagen. By the end of his life Kierkegaard had become a controversial figure, engaged in a furious assault upon "Christendom." From the very moment of their discovery in the days following his death, the unpublished words and images constituted a highly problematic bonanza, an intellectual and religious hot potato (or sack of potatoes) that was passed from hand to hand, suppressed, selectively and tendentiously published and republished. Written Images offers readers a fascinating tour of the misadventures of these written images that will, finally, soon be published in their entirety. (shrink)

Three Score Years with Kierkegaard's Writings By HOWARD V. HONG The Conference Program Committee has suggested that I speak on »My Life with ...

Foreword -- A note on the text -- Overview of themes and context -- Reading the text -- Preface -- Tuning up -- A tribute to Abraham -- A preliminary outpouring from the heart -- Problem I -- Problem II -- Problem III -- Epilogue -- Reception and influence.

At the end of the essay “Silhouettes” in Either/Or , Kierkegaard writes, “only the person who has been bitten by snakes knows what one who has been bitten by snakes must suffer.” I interpret this as an allusion to Alcibiades' speech in Plato's Symposium . Kierkegaard invites the reader to compare Socrates with Don Giovanni, and Alcibiades with the seducer's women. Socrates' philosophical method, in this light, is a deceptive seduction: just as Don Giovanni's seduction leads his conquests to unhappy (...) love—what Kierkegaard terms “reflective sorrow”—so the elenctic method leads Socrates' interlocutors to aporia, not to knowledge. I offer a critique of Socrates' ironic stance as a philosopher, which stance is reflected in the theory of love he presents in the Symposium , and suggest that philosophy should be modeled on the romantic love of persons—a love that can be reciprocated—not the love of an impersonal Form, a one-sided love. (shrink)

The standard response to engineering disasters like the Deepwater Horizon case is to ascribe full moral responsibility to individuals and to collectives treated as individuals. However, this approach is inappropriate since concrete action and experience in engineering contexts seldom meets the criteria of our traditional moral theories. Technological action is often distributed rather than individual or collective, we lack full control of the technology and its consequences, and we lack knowledge and are uncertain about these consequences. In this paper, I (...) analyse these problems by employing Kierkegaardian notions of tragedy and moral responsibility in order to account for experiences of the tragic in technological action. I argue that ascription of responsibility in engineering contexts should be sensitive to personal experiences of lack of control, uncertainty, role conflicts, social dependence, and tragic choice. I conclude that this does not justify evading individual and corporate responsibility, but inspires practices of responsibility ascription that are less ‘harsh’ on those directly involved in technological action, that listen to their personal experiences, and that encourage them to gain more knowledge about what they are doing. (shrink)

In the context of the contemporary emergence of a “postmodern Kierkegaard,” I take issue with the idea that Kierkegaardian thought involves an anti-essentialist rejection of ontology. I argue that Kierkegaard’s keynote existential analysis is paralleled by, if not tacitly set within, a less developed yet explicit ontology of human being. This “subjective ontology” is at once an ontology of the existing subject and a subjectization of ontology. Thus, the essay has two aims. First, I seek to revive and advance debate (...) concerning the structure of the Kierkegaardian self by tracing something of its dynamic three-fold relational structure and various metaphysical polarities. Spirit, anxiety, and despair need to be understood in their ontological dimensions and not just as existential possibilities. Second, I propose a way of bringing together Kierkegaardian existentiality (the three stages) with his ontology (the three relations). Despite important asymmetries between these two structures, the unity of Kierkegaard’s approach can only be appreciated through viewing them synoptically. (shrink)

To date, there have been few attempts to compare the thought of Confucius and Kierkegaard, and these few attempts have focused on the contrast between Kierkegaard’s stress on the individual and Confucius’s emphasis on the social aspect of human existence. In this article, I point instead to substantial agreement between the analyses of ethical existence offered by Confucius and two of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous figures, Judge William of Either/Or and Johannes Climacus of The Concluding Unscientific Postscript . I seek to use (...) this parallelism to better discern the specific character of Confucius’s religious consciousness. (shrink)

At first glance, a systematic examination of Either/Or apparently yields a clear analysis of its structure. The project is straightforward. There are two words in the title. There are two volumes, each with its principal speaker. In the course of the work a speaker for the ethical perspective follows an aesthetic speaker and comments critically on him and his ideas. As a judge, he clearly has the requisite temporal authority and moral ascendancy to do so. Moreover the judge appeals to (...) eternal authority, embodied in a sermon, as additional support for his position. (shrink)

There are intriguing congruities between Kierkegaard and some recent tendencies in feminism and post-modern thought.1 Neither Kierkegaard, feminists, nor post-modernism are systematic (that's one congruity right there!), so the common points can't be neatly tabulated. But (again typically of all the parties concerned) they tend to lie in three areas: methodology, communicative strategy, and the rejection of procrustean metaphysics. In what follows I will try to assemble some fragments which point out these congruities.

Kierkegaard and the Role of Reflection in Second Immediacy Merold WESTPHAL 159 Demons and the Demonic: Kierkegaard and Heidegger on Anxiety and Sexual ...

Based on the definitive English edition of Kierkegaard's works by Princeton University Press, this series of commentaries addresses all the published texts of ...

Anti?Climacus (Kierkegaard) maintains that the self is, not the human psycho?physical synthesis of polarities, but the synthesis or relation ?related to itself?, which is ?freedom?. The author shows that this type of freedom or selfhood, though attained by free choice, is not itself freedom of choice. He contends that Anti?Climacus? statement about the self is too abstract and elliptical to be understood adequately from The Sickness Unto Death alone but is intelligible in terms of Judge William's doctrine of ?choosing oneself? (...) ('Equilibrium...?, Either/Or, Vol. II), and that Anti?Climacus in all likelihood intended it to be so interpreted. Arguing that for the synthesis to ?relate to itself? and become ?freedom? is identical with its ?choosing itself? through despair and repentance so as to become liberated from aesthetic bondage, the author explains William's and Anti?Climacus? use of ?aesthetic? and draws attention to their pervasive distinction between innocent and culpable aestheticism. (shrink)

To understand why Kierkegaard would have hated the Internet we need to understand what he meant by the Public and why he was so opposed to the Press. The focus of his concern was what Habermas calls the public sphere which, in the middle of the 18th century, thanks to the recent democratization and expansion of the press, had become a serious problem for many intellectuals. But while thinkers like Mill and Tocqueville thought the problem was "the tyranny of the (...) masses", Kierkegaard thought that the Public Sphere, as implemented in the Press, promoted risk-free anonymity and idle curiosity that undermined responsibility and commitment. This, in turn, leveled all qualitative distinctions and led to nihilism, he held. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Kierkegaard's Religiousness A sphere of existence, presented in his edifying works, and Heidegger's concept of authenticity, proposed in Being and Time, as responses to modern nihilism. While Kierkegaard argues that Religiousness A is an unsuccessful response to modern nihilism, Heidegger claims that authenticity, a secularized version of Religiousness A, is a successful response. We argue that Heidegger's secularization of Religiousness A is incomplete and unsuccessful, that Heidegger's later work offers a reconsideration of the problem of modern nihilism, (...) and that later Heidegger suggests a way out of nihilism which is compatible with Kierkegaard's Religiousness B sphere of existence. (shrink)