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Fearful asymmetry: Kierkegaard’s search for the direction of time

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Abstract

The ancient problem of whether our asymmetrical attitudes towards time are justified (or normatively required) remains a live one in contemporary philosophy. Drawing on themes in the work of McTaggart, Parfit, and Heidegger, I argue that this problem is also a key concern of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or (1843). Part I of Either/Or presents the “aesthete” as living a temporally volatilized form of life, devoid of temporal location, sequence and direction. Like Parfit’s character “Timeless,” these aesthetes are indifferent to the direction of time and seemingly do not experience McTaggart’s “A-Series” mode of temporality. The “ethical” conception of time that Judge William offers in Part II contains an attempt to normativize the direction of time, by re-orienting the aesthete towards an awareness of time’s finitude. However, the form of life Judge William articulates gives time sequentiality but not necessarily the robust directionality necessary to justify (and make normative) our asymmetrical attitudes to time. Hence while Either/Or raises this problem it remains unanswered until The Concept of Anxiety (1844). Only with the eschatological understanding of time developed in The Concept of Anxiety does Kierkegaard answer the question of why directional and asymmetrical conative and affective attitudes towards time are normative.

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Notes

  1. In fact, this thought is arguably the first aspect of Kierkegaard’s thought to be mentioned within Anglophone philosophy. A version of this phrase is quoted in English by Høffding (1905, p. 86) and evidently made a considerable impression on William James, who quoted it twice (1907 p. 107; 1912 p. 132). Kierkegaard’s journals would not appear in English translation until 1938.

  2. For an extended discussion of this problem, see Price (1996).

  3. Isaac Watts, “Psalm 90”.

  4. Heidegger (1962, p. 478).

  5. Lucretius (1951, p. 121). There is an extensive literature on the Symmetry Argument; see e.g. Warren (2004, pp. 57–108).

  6. Parfit (1984, pp. 165–186).

  7. Parfit (1984, p. 174).

  8. Borrowing a term from Price (1996, pp. 3–21).

  9. McDonald (2003, p. 68).

  10. Parfit (1984, p. 174).

  11. Parfit (1984, p. 174).

  12. Connell (2006, p. 427).

  13. Connell (2006, p. 427).

  14. Kangas (2007, p. 58).

  15. Hinman (1980, p. 106).

  16. As developed in McTaggart (1908).

  17. McTaggart (1908, p. 458).

  18. McTaggart (1908, p. 471).

  19. McTaggart (1908, pp. 461–463).

  20. Kangas (2007, p. 44).

  21. Rovane (1993, p. 87).

  22. Pound (2005, p. 20).

  23. Parfit (1984, pp. 177–178). An important point which Parfit raises (p. 181) is that Timeless’ attitude is more consistent with the way we react to others’ misfortunes. Just as Timeless finds it equally bad that he suffered yesterday as that he will suffer tomorrow, we aren’t exactly relieved to learn that our friend’s painful terminal illness, which we thought was still to run its course, is actually already over. However, it may simply be that egocentric concern has more specific and unique features than Parfit is prepared to concede.

  24. Kangas (2007, p. 52).

  25. Heidegger (1962, p. 378).

  26. Heidegger (1962, pp. 476–478); see also p. 373 on the “futural” character of Dasein.

  27. Heidegger (1962, p. 478).

  28. MacIntyre (1984, pp. 39–43). For a conspectus of the debate this reading of Either/Or has generated, see Davenport and Rudd (2001).

  29. Kangas (2007, p. 57).

  30. On katastematic pleasure, see. e.g. Warren (2004, p. 107), and Behrendt (2006) p. 141–142 passim).

  31. Grøn (2000, p. 196).

  32. Grøn (2001, pp. 133).

  33. Kangas (2007, p. 57).

  34. Kangas (2007, p. 58).

  35. McTaggart (1908, p. 462).

  36. With the caveat that this is merely mentioned in a marginal note, not a draft or final text of Either/Or.

  37. Taylor (1975, p. 91).

  38. The inability of romantic love to secure itself from temporal erosion is also discussed in Works of Love (WL, 29–43/SKS 9, 36–50). See also Roberts (2008, p. 88).

  39. I am grateful to Poul Lübcke for this suggestion.

  40. For discussions of Haufniensis’ critique of spatialized time, see Ferguson (2003, pp. 138–139), and Taylor (1975, pp. 82–86).

  41. McTaggart (1909, pp. 349–351 passim).

  42. McTaggart (1909, pp. 353–355).

  43. McTaggart (1909, p. 355).

  44. McTaggart (1909, p. 356). He also acknowledges here (though considers highly unlikely) the possibility that eternity is both past and future, with a progressively less-adequate comprehension of true reality eventually leveling out and beginning to become more-adequate again, until it regains the clarity of eternity.

  45. Pound (2005, p. 15).

  46. McTaggart (1909, pp. 360–361).

  47. McTaggart (1909, p. 361).

  48. McTaggart (1909, pp. 347–349).

  49. Dunning (1985, p. 19).

  50. Dunning (1985, p. 20).

  51. Compare e.g. Heidegger (1962, p. 474).

  52. See also the upbuilding discourse on “The Expectancy of Faith”: “the eternal, which is waiting every moment and at the end of time [Dagenes Ende], inasmuch as it is one and the same” (EUD, 206/SKS 5, 207).

  53. This would match some contemporary ontologies of time, according to which the past is real in a way the future is not, and so the present is a sort of productive edge from which determinate reality is continually expanding. Price (1996, p. 12).

  54. Bedell (1969, p. 268).

  55. Kant (1983, p. 93).

  56. Parfit (1984, p. 174).

  57. Grøn (2000, p. 198).

  58. See also Rudd (2008).

  59. This paper was made possible by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Danish Council for Independent Research—Humanities, undertaken at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen. I am also grateful to Poul Lübcke, James Giles, Wilfried Schwalbach and Johannes Aakjær Steenbuch for comments given during a seminar on this paper at University of Copenhagen, November 2008.

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    Patrick Stokes

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Stokes, P. Fearful asymmetry: Kierkegaard’s search for the direction of time. Cont Philos Rev 43, 485–507 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9154-5

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