Abstract

This thesis studies Kierkegaard's ethics by elucidating the notion of "theoretical distance" as exposed, for the first time, in the Stadium . Its main purpose is to demonstrate that in Kierkegaard's reflection on ethical, the expressions of subjectivity can only be understood in the light of a "dialectical distance", which is based on a comprehension of language as ideality . ;This study can be subdivised in two main parts. In the first one, we will expose how the notion of distance falsifies the ethic stadium, specially the pathos of subjectivity. Indeed, the distance in poetry and history forgets, so thinks Kierkegaard, the inwardness of subjectivity. Thus, taking a distance in ethics consists in moving away the pathos of the interiority and the ethical duty. The concepts under consideration in this first part are: the ethical choice, the repentance, the self-continuity, the vocation, the transfiguration, the ethical duty, the problem of intersubjectivity and the indirect communication. In the topology of existence, aesthetic, ethical and religious stages are respectively associated to music , langage , and silence . ;In the second part, we will show that the effects of distance justify a new conception of ethics. After the question of falsfication , we study the rehabilitation of the ethics. But to be able to demonstrate that, we need to study Kierkegaard's understanding of langage. For him, langage is ideality. It includes a conception of silence as a paradox and a critic of the chattering. Silence illustrates the crisis of the ethics and leads the way to the religious stadium. Kierkegaard's notion of langage is original and interesting when it is understood in the light of Hegel's and Hamann's conception of language. Here, Kierkegaard is a disciple of Hamann. Therefore, the infinite distance between humans and God establishes, for Kierkegaard, the guidelines for a "christian ethics", that is the "second" ethics or Ethic II. ;The originality of this thesis is to explain the relation, through the rigourous study of langage and the expressions of distance in Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Works and Papers, between the first ethics and the "second" ethics