Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 101 gaard In'st characterized as an "authentic existence," Although there is no one work that presents his practical, existential ethics, it is possible to reconstruct such an ethics.2 In a chapter entitled "Kierkegaard and the Meaningfulness of Religious Statements" we are led through familiar positivistic territory and given a reasonably good account of the-sense of religious language or propositions. In his concluding remarks on this question, Klemke adopts Coilingwood 's concept of "absolute presuppositions" (that are neither verifiable nor falsifiable) and applies it to religious assertions. Statements such as "Jesus Christ is God" or "Jesus is God" are said to be exemplifications of absolute presuppositions that present "possibilities" for those who accept them as objects of belief. Although his approach to Kierkegaard's understanding of religious assertions is not incompatible with his description of the possibility of becoming a Christian, it is not the one he adopts. For the object of faith is not a proposition that is construed as a basic presupposition, but the reality of a being whose existence is "objectively uncertain" and whose being is absolutely paradoxical. Christianity, for Kierkegaard, is not a "doctrine" or a set of putative factual claims; rather, it is a subjective projection of infinite interest in a transcendental, absolute subject. The linguistic expression of a conceptual possibility (whether paradoxical or not) in religious expressions of belief is the cognitive aspect of the "how" of faith that accentuates the passion of inwardness because of its "repulsion" (that it expresses or entertains whaf is for reason objectively uncertain). Existing in faith does not involve determining the nature of religious language , but consists in the experience of the dialectical tension between reason and passion in relation to a reality that is a matter of intense interest or passionate concern. Although Klemke clearly grasps SK's fundamental notion of existential paradox--that all instances in which thought or language are related to existence are paradoxical, that reflection presupposes (qua possible) existence---he flounders when he tries to grasp Kierkegaard's unique version of Christianity. It is said that the claim that "Christ is the God-man" is an "assertion of passion" that refers to those who make the assertion or is "about one's reality as an historical person with relation to the reality of another's historical person" (pp. 67-68). Moreover, SK's discourse about God, the eternal, and so on, is actually about entities or characteristics manifested in the "natural world." This startling conclusion is made in face of the fact that SK spilled a great deal of ink criticizing a religion of immanence (i.e., what he calls religiousness A) and insisting that Christian faith crucifies understanding by appropriating the absolute paradox that an eternal, transcendent being existed immanently in time. This is precisely the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity, the core belief that separates Christianity from pantheism and other modalities of theism. Even though Studies in the Philosophy of Kierkegaard occasionally makes insightful points in defense of Kierkegaard and shows a healthy respect for this dialectical skills, it also displays the disorientations to which one is subject when entering the labyrinth of Kierkegaard's thought without sufficient preparation or caution. GEORGEJ. STACK SUNY at Brockport Iohn P. Clark. Max Stirner's Egoism. London: Freedom Press, 1976. Pp. 111. $3.00. This book was difficult to review. It is distinguished neither by flagrant errors that might conveniently be exposed and blamed, nor by any particular excellence worthy of praise. Nor is it hard to understand. But it is dull. 2An attempt at such a reconstruction may be found in a recent essay of my own: Kierkegaard'sExistential Ethics (University, Ala." University of Alabama Press, 19"/7). 102 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Stimer is not a philosopher worthy of study in his own right. He was one of the "Young Hegelians," those Germans of the 1840s and after, who, although influenced by Hegel, repudiated his system and openly embraced atheism. (The most famous of this group were Feuerbach and Marx.) Hegel's doctrine taught that reflective thought was man's highest accomplishment, and that with the thought of Hegel, world history had in principle reached its end. In order to...