Sárospataki Füzetek 15. (2011)

2011 / 4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Kónya Péter: Szlovák reformátusok a 17-18. században

Kierkegaard - a rag in the winds of change

Kant had an admirable ethics of duty, illustrated in such maxims as: always treat others as an ‘end’ (valuable person in their own right) and not as a ‘means’ (to my ‘ends’ or goals). However, S. Kierkegaard wanted to go beyond an ethics of duty to an ethics of sacrifice (Abraham; Jesus) — i.e. — an ethics of more than common duty. The question is not merely: what should people do? Rather: what must I do? And of course, S. Kierkegaard was not content to philosophise; he also did a lot of theologising. But he wanted to say that to become a ‘disciple’ is the real goal.

HEGEL (1770-1831) — S. Kierkegaard became known for various reasons, but one is certainly his reaction to Hegel. While Plato based reality on Eternal Forms (being produces becoming), Aristotie sees the ‘becoming’ as present within things. Plotinus conceived a hierarchical ladder from the One descending through the spiritual, the natural, the material and back again by means of thought and exstasy (moving out of the material and finite toward the spiritual and infinite). Hegel was one of the first to integrate ultimate reality in the development of history itself.12 History for Hegel is the self-unfolding and self-realization of the Absolute Geist (Spirit, Mind). In this system all of reality is interrelated in a continuum of the progress of the Absolute Spirit. This is a progress in freedom in which everything contributes to the higher evolvement and actualization of the Spirit, in all aspects of existence, but especially in art, religion, and philosophy. Hegel explains that as lower historical moments, institutions, understandings, cultural results pass away, they are at the same time raised higher and taken up within the new synthesis of things. Everything, including the infinite and the finite, are ‘reconciled’. They find each other and their common meaning (progress in freedom).

S. Kierkegaard reacted against Hegel’s main concepts of progress, integration (synthesis), cultural optimism, collectivity, the Great Plan/System (rather than personal existence) and the dialectical unity which displays rationality and development. S. Kierkegaard posits absurdity, freedom (in anxiety), personal choice, inadequacy of reason, dialectical either/or. S. Kierkegaard saw Hegel’s historical reconciliation of all things as a logical theory and not as answering the dialectical question: what is my true self and how do I form a true self? Estrangement in Hegel is conquered dialectically, while in S. Kierkegaard the dialectical nature of reality guarantees estrangement which cannot be conquered (in this life). But actually in Hegel, too, the higher reconciliation is always in the future. Or: it is in the mind of God and therefore can be confirmed in the mind of the philosopher. What Hegel called a great ‘logical’ solution Marx criticized as ‘mysticism’. And Kierkegaard said that to speculate on the reconáliation of everything in an ‘essential’ way is not to be able to say that this has taken place ‘existentially’.

S. Kierkegaard’s writing was often focussed on providing a parody of the philosophical Idealism of Kant and Hegel. But at least Kant had talked about the limits of pure reason. Hegel, S. Kierkegaard remarks, is a no doubt “a professor on a large scale, because he a toutprix [at any price] must explain all things”.13 S. Kierkegaard was clear that the ‘price’ was the loss of the existing individual. S. Kierke12 Kunzmann, op.dt., 152ff.

13 S. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte (Princeton University Press, 1980), 20.

2011/4 SÁROSPATAKI FÜZETEK 57