Søren Kierkegaard - Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity

During this unit, we will continue the analysis of the second part of The Concept of Irony. Here Kierkegaard introduces the irony of the German Romantics as a contrastive form of irony to that of Socrates. We begin with Kierkegaard’s account of Fichte’s theory of subjectivity which, he (following Hegel) claims is the forerunner to Romantic irony. This then leads to Kierkegaard’s account of the appropriation of Fichte’s theory by the Romantic authors, Friedrich von Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck. This lecture also introduces one of Kierkegaard’s great mentors, Poul Martin Møller, who was also interested in an analysis of Romantic irony as a form of modern nihilism. We see how Kierkegaard is critical of Romantic irony as “historically unjustified,” while he continues his praise of Socratic irony. Finally, we continue the biographical narrative of Kierkegaard’s life with an account of his relation to and broken engagement with Regine Olsen.

This unit looks at the years that immediately followed Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony, namely, from 1841 to 1843. From the autumn of 1841 to the spring of 1842 Kierkegaard was in Berlin where he heard the lectures of the German philosopher Schelling. During this time he struggled with what he wanted to do with his life. He decided to became a writer and, drawing on the knowledge gained from his dissertation, to use Socrates as his model. We examine Kierkegaard’s breakthrough work, Either/Or, which appeared at the beginning of 1843. This work develops in a literary way some aspects of the character of the Romantic ironist that he explored in the second half of his dissertation. We also examine Johan Ludvig Heiberg’s critical review of this work. We briefly mention the key works that Kierkegaard published after Either/Or, namely, Repetition, Fear and Trembling and his series of edifying or upbuilding discourses. We look in some detail at Kierkegaard’s conception of the nature of faith as presented in Fear and Trembling. His conception is a highly troubling one that raises important questions for religious life today.

The years 1844 to 1846 were perhaps the most productive in Kierkegaard’s entire life. In this lecture we explore the series of famous works that he penned during this time, among others, the Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, Prefaces, Stages on Life’s Way and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. These books present a complex series of works ostensibly authored by different pseudonyms, each with his own agenda and intentions. At first glance, this might all look like a playful chaos or a straightforward kind of madness on Kierkegaard’s side. But in this lecture we try to make sense of Kierkegaard’s plan with these works and their complex relations to one another. We see that many of the main motifs concerning Socrates that Kierkegaard originally treated in The Concept of Irony now reappear in different contexts in these later works. This is particularly interesting when we consider that these works treat important Christian concepts such as the incarnation, the revelation, faith, sin, and forgiveness. Many people might think that it is outrageous to believe that a pagan philosopher can help to understand these Christian concepts. Here we can catch a glimpse of the radicality of Kierkegaard’s thought. He believes that Socrates has some important insights for Christians today. This lecture also continues the biographical narrative by highlighting Kierkegaard’s polemic with Johan Ludvig Heiberg and his conflict with the satirical journal, The Corsair. The lecture ends with a discussion of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which Kierkegaard believed would be his last work before he died. We explore Kierkegaard’s conception of a parallel authorship that features a series of pseudonymous works that run parallel to a series of signed works, which are intended to treat the same topics but in different ways.

The last decade of Kierkegaard’s life was in many ways the most dramatic. This was the time of the Revolution of 1848 and of Kierkegaard’s public attack on the Danish state church in his final years. This period represents what Kierkegaard scholars refer to as the second half of the authorship, namely, the period from 1846 after the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Kierkegaard’s death in 1855. In this lecture we explore some of Kierkegaard’s main works from these years, such as A Literary Review of Two Ages, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, The Sickness unto Death, Practice in Christianity and The Moment. We will see how some of the themes and motifs that we have examined re-appear in these works. In our exploration of these texts it will become evident that even as Kierkegaard grows older, he continues to return to the figure of Socrates as a source of inspiration. Indeed, he never abandons the great hero of his youth. Even in the last text that he ever completed before his death, he explicitly states that Socrates was the only model that he used for his work. Our goal in this lecture is, among other things, to try to understand what he means by this. The lecture ends with a biographical account of Kierkegaard’s attack on the Danish State Church, his final illness and death.