The ‘Self-Positing’ Self in Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death

Abstract

In response to the claim that Kierkegaard's highly compressed definition of the self, given near the beginning of The Sickness unto Death, should be understood in Hegelian terms, I show that it can be better understood in terms of an earlier development in the history of German idealism, namely, Fichte's theory of self-consciousness. The notion that the self “posits” itself found in this theory will be used to explain Kierkegaard's definition of the self, including his rejection of the idea that the self posits itself absolutely. I go on to show how this conception of the self relates to certain features of the concept of despair described in The Sickness unto Death. This in turn allows me to indicate some implications of this conception of the self in relation to Kierkegaard's attitude towards the social and political forces shaping the modern world.

Notes

1. Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 13; hereafter cited in the text.

2. Søren Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin, 1996), 393.

3. Cf. Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays (London: Routledge, 2003), 64.

4. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte's sämmtliche Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte (Berlin: Veit & Comp., 1834–46); Johann Gottlieb Fichte's nachgelassene Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte (Bonn: Adolph Marcus, 1834–35). I refer to a reprint of these editions: Fichtes Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971).

5. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre / Erste & Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre,” in Fichtes Werke, vol. 1, 463; The Science of Knowledge with the First and Second Introductions, trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); hereafter cited in the text. The English translation contains the pagination of the German edition.

6. Cf. David J. Kangas, “J. G. Fichte: From Transcendental Ego to Existence,” in Kierkegaard and His German Contemporaries, Vol. I: Philosophy, ed. Jon Stewart (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 67–95.

7. This claim is made in Michael Theunissen, Kierkegaard's Concept of Despair, trans. Barbara Harshav and Helmut Illbruck (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 23ff. Theunissen views Kierkegaard as reacting to the nihilism that had become characteristic of the age in which he lived.

8. Georg Lukács, The Destruction of Reason, trans. Peter Palmer (London: Merlin, 1980), 197.

9. For example, in 1848, while discussing the fear of Germany that had arisen in Denmark in connection with the threat of a Dano-Prussian war over Schleswig-Holstein, Kierkegaard makes the following comment: “Denmark is facing a nasty period. The market-town spirit and mutual petty meanness. . . . From the other quarter the communist rebellion; anyone who owns something will be pointed at and persecuted in the press” (Papers and Journals, 289). Kierkegaard's disparaging remark concerning a “market-town” spirit suggests that he would hardly have welcomed the growing power and influence of the commercial classes brought about by the advance of economic liberalism. His association of communism with the modern press in general, which can, in fact, hardly be thought to have been dominated by communists, reflects how ill-defined and homogeneous the non-conservative political forces of the time were in Kierkegaard's mind. For a discussion of Kierkegaard's views on, and understanding of, communism, see Anton Hügli, “Kierkegaard und der Kommunismus,” in Kierkegaardiana 9 (1974).

10. Lukács, The Destruction of Reason, 281.

11. Cf. Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990).

12. Cf. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, 275f.

13. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. Jens Timmermann (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1998), A 95–130/B 129–69; Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1929). The English translation contains the first (A) and second (B) German edition pagination.

14. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “Das System der Sittenlehre nach Principien der Wissenschaftslehre,” in Fichtes Werke, vol. 4: 1 and 5; The System of Ethics, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale and Günter Zöller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). The English translation contains the pagination of the German edition.

15. G. W. F. Hegel, “Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts,” in Werke, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969–71), vol. 7, §25; Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

16. Hegel, “Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts,” §35.

17. G. W. F. Hegel, “Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830) Erster Teil: Die Wissenschaft der Logik,” in Werke, vol. 8, §20, Remark.

18. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Volume I: Text, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 197.

19. Hegel, “Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts,” §209, Remark.

20. Karl Marx, Early Political Writings, ed. Joseph O’Malley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 86.

21. Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals, 466.