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KIERKEGAARD’S CONCLUDINGUNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT

Søren Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript has provokeda lively variety of divergent interpretations for a century and a half.It has been both celebrated and condemned as the chief inspira-tion for twentieth-century existential thought, as a subversive parodyof philosophical argument, as a critique of mass society, as a fore-runner of phenomenology and of postmodern relativism, and as anappeal for a renewal of religious commitment. These new essays writ-ten by international Kierkegaard scholars offer a plurality of criticalapproaches to this fundamental text of existential philosophy. Theycover hotly debated topics such as the tension between the Socratic-philosophical and the Christian-religious; the identity and personalityof Kierkegaard’s pseudonym “Johannes Climacus”; his conceptions ofparadoxical faith and of passionate understanding; his relation to hiscontemporaries and to some of his more distant predecessors; and,last but not least, his pertinence to our present-day concerns.

rick anthony furtak is Associate Professor of Philosophy atColorado College. His publications include Wisdom in Love:Kierkegaard and the Ancient Quest for Emotional Integrity (2005) andRilke’s “Sonnets to Orpheus” (2007).

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Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript: A Critical Guideedited by rick anthony furtak






KIERKEGAARD’S

Concluding UnscientificPostscript

A Critical Guide

edited by

RICK ANTHONY FURTAKColorado College






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Contents

List of contributors page viiAcknowledgments xiList of abbreviations xii

Introduction 1rick anthony furtak

1 The “Socratic secret”: the postscript to thePhilosophical Crumbs 6m. jamie ferreira

2 Kierkegaard’s Socratic pseudonym: a profile ofJohannes Climacus 25paul muench

3 Johannes Climacus’ revocation 45alastair hannay

4 From the garden of the dead: Climacus on interpersonalinwardness 64edward f. mooney

5 The Kierkegaardian ideal of “essential knowing” and thescandal of modern philosophy 87rick anthony furtak

6 Lessing and Socrates in Kierkegaard’s Postscript 111jacob howland

7 Climacus on subjectivity and the system 132merold westphal

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vi Contents

8 Humor and irony in the Postscript 149john lippitt

9 Climacus on the task of becoming a Christian 170clare carlisle

10 The epistemology of the Postscript 190m. g. piety

11 Faith and reason in Kierkegaard’s Concluding UnscientificPostscript 204c. stephen evans

12 Making Christianity difficult: the “existentialist theology” ofKierkegaard’s Postscript 219david r. law

Bibliography 247Index 255






Contributors

clare carlisle is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool.She is the author of Kierkegaard: A Guide for the Perplexed (2006) andKierkegaard’s Philosophy of Becoming (2005). She has also published essaysin journals such as Continental Philosophy Review, Contemporary Bud-dhism, and British Journal for the History of Philosophy. Her next book isentitled Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: A Reader’s Guide.

c. stephen evans is University Professor of Philosophy and Humani-ties at Baylor University. His books include Kierkegaard on Faith andthe Self: Collected Essays (2006); Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love (2004); FaithBeyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account (1998); Passionate Reason: Mak-ing Sense of Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments (1992); and Existen-tialism (1984). His latest book is Kierkegaard: An Introduction (2009).

m. jamie ferreira is Carolyn Barbour Professor of Religious Studies atthe University of Virginia. She is the author of Love’s Grateful Striving: ACommentary on Kierkegaard’s Works of Love (2001); Transforming Vision:Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith (1991); and Scepticism andReasonable Doubt (1986). Her most recent book is Kierkegaard (2009).

rick anthony furtak is Associate Professor of Philosophy at ColoradoCollege. His publications include Wisdom in Love: Kierkegaard andthe Ancient Quest for Emotional Integrity (2005) and Rilke’s Sonnetsto Orpheus: A New English Version, with a Philosophical Introduction(2007). He is currently working on a book about the moral psychologyof the emotions.

alastair hannay is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the Univer-sity of Oslo. He is the author of Kierkegaard and Philosophy: SelectedEssays (2003); Kierkegaard: A Biography (2001); and Human Conscious-ness (1990). He is also co-editor, with Gordon Marino, of The Cam-bridge Companion to Kierkegaard (1998). He has translated several of

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viii List of contributors

Kierkegaard’s works into English, including Fear and Trembling, TheSickness Unto Death, and Either/Or, and he is a member of the editorialteam for the multivolume series Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks.

jacob howland is McFarlin Professor of Philosophy at the Universityof Tulsa. His books include Kierkegaard and Socrates: A Study in Philos-ophy and Faith (2006) and The Paradox of Political Philosophy: Socrates’Philosophical Trial (1998). He has written numerous other essays aboutethics, culture, and ancient philosophy.

david r. law is Reader in Christian Thought at the University of Manch-ester. His publications include Inspiration (2001) and Kierkegaard asNegative Theologian (1993). In addition to many scholarly articles onKierkegaard, biblical interpretation, and Lutheran and Anglican theol-ogy, he has also written about existential thinkers such as Jaspers andHeidegger. He is currently at work on a book that examines Kierkegaard’screative recasting of the kenosis doctrine.

john lippitt is Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at theUniversity of Hertfordshire. He is the author of the Routledge PhilosophyGuidebook to Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling (2003) and Humourand Irony in Kierkegaard’s Thought (2000), and the editor of two bookson Nietzsche. His articles have appeared in Inquiry, Proceedings of theAristotelian Society, and the British Journal of Aesthetics, among otherpublications. His current work is focused on agape, friendship, and theproblem of self-love.

edward f. mooney is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at SyracuseUniversity. His books include On Søren Kierkegaard: Dialogue, Polemics,Lost Intimacy, and Time (2007); Selves in Discord and Resolve (1996);and Knights of Faith and Resignation (1991). He is also the editor ofEthics, Faith, and Love in Kierkegaard (2008) and Wilderness and theHeart (1999), and the author of various other philosophical and literarypublications. His latest book is Lost Intimacy in American Thought:Recovering Personal Philosophy from Thoreau to Cavell (2009).

paul muench is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Universityof Montana. His publications include “Understanding Kierkegaard’sJohannes Climacus in the Postscript,” in the Kierkegaard Studies Year-book (2007), and “Kierkegaard’s Socratic Point of View,” in A Companionto Socrates (2005). His work has also appeared in Kierkegaardiana andthe International Journal for Philosophy of Religion.






List of contributors ix

m. g. piety is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Drexel University. Sherecently translated Kierkegaard’s Repetition and Philosophical Crumbsfor the Oxford World’s Classics series. Her articles on Kierkegaard andthe philosophy of religion have been published in such periodicals asFaith and Philosophy, History of European Ideas, and the Times LiterarySupplement, among others. Her forthcoming book is called Ways ofKnowing: Kierkegaard’s Pluralist Epistemology.

merold westphal is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at FordhamUniversity. He is the author of Overcoming Onto-Theology (2001); Becom-ing a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript(1996); Hegel, Freedom, and Modernity (1992); Kierkegaard’s Critique ofReason and Society (1987); and God, Guilt, and Death: An ExistentialPhenomenology of Religion (1984). Among his more recent publicationsis Levinas and Kierkegaard in Dialogue (2008).






Acknowledgments

This volume would not have come together without the support of asummer research grant from Colorado College, along with resources pro-vided by the Kierkegaard Research Center and the Center for SubjectivityResearch in Copenhagen. Also, two people above all have played a vitalrole in this project, during the early and late stages of its creation. Thefirst is Gordon Marino, who worked on this collection at the outset beforepassing editorial duties on to me, and who got the volume off to an aus-picious beginning by recruiting many of the contributors before I becameinvolved. I am grateful to Gordon for the opportunity and for the headstart. The other is Shahrzad Safavi, my extraordinary student research assis-tant, whose name ought to appear on the title page owing to her extensivework on this book. Its completion would not have been possible withouther meticulous care, her moral and emotional support, and her nearlyinexhaustible patience. Thank you, Sherry.

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Abbreviations

Standard abbreviations are employed throughout this volume for thefollowing Kierkegaardian texts. For other editions cited, and for worksby other authors, see the bibliography and the footnotes to individualchapters.

in english

CUP Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to thePhilosophical Crumbs, ed. and trans. Alastair Hannay.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Cited by pagenumber of the English translation.

JP Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. HowardV. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk,7 vols. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1967–78.Cited by volume and entry number.

KJN Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, ed. Bruce H. Kirmmseand K. Brian Soderquist, trans. Alastair Hannay et al.,projected 11 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,2007–. Cited by volume and entry number, and (in somecases) by page number.

KW Kierkegaard’s Writings, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H.Hong, trans. Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong, Julia Watkinet al., 26 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1978–2000. Cited by volume and page number.

xii






List of abbreviations xiii

in danish

PAP Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, ed. P. A. Heiberg et al., 16 vols.Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1909–78. Cited by entry number.

SKS Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al.,projected 55 vols. Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 1997–. Citedby volume and page number, and (in some cases) by entrynumber.






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