Let’s do a little overview of the ways Kierkegaard compares and contrasts with Hegel, with the aim of seeing the way Kierkegaard consciously sought to express an antithesis. We’ll end up revolving around an issue described in the SEP describes this way:
“There is in Kierkegaard’s view of the human self as spirit one other fundamental difference from Hegel’s concept of spirit. Hegel’s dialectic (at least on some interpretations) comes to rest when the conflicting moments are reconciled in a final, higher unity. For Kierkegaard, however, the human self is fundamentally temporal and (at least prior to death) is always an unfinished project. The task of balancing the elements of human selfhood (necessity and possibility, eternity and temporality) so as to avoid despair is never completed short of the grave.”
It’s easy to see why Kierkegaard and Nietzsche present as philosophical twins when we look at the way Kierkegaard imagined selfhood. Kierkegaard imagined an individual human as ever evolving, growing out of itself toward something. That goal is selfhood.
Compare this to the way a tree, which is basically a large bush, starts out as a sprout and then progresses. Each sprout has many different potential outcomes, and since it’s a plant, this is entirely a matter of DNA and circumstances, none of which are in the control of the tree.
Humans are much like this except there is an added ingredient: consciousness, anticipation, aspiration, desire, hope, fear, and of course, despair.
The SEP mentioned above puts it this way:
“Kierkegaard does not think of the human self predominantly as a kind of metaphysical substance, but rather more like an achievement, a goal to strive for. To be sure, humans are substances of a sort; they exist in the world, as do physical objects. However, what is distinctive about human selves is that the self must become what it is to become, human selves playing an active role in the process by which they come to define themselves. This idea is familiar from existentialist thinkers such as Sartre, and we can thereby understand why Kierkegaard is often described as the “father of existentialism” (however unhelpful that label may otherwise be). However, as we shall see below, one important difference from Sartre is that for Kierkegaard the idea of existentialist “self-creation” (or, perhaps better, “self-shaping”) needs to be synthesized with “self-acceptance:” a recognition that the self is in some sense given by our limitations and certain facts of biology and history (for this terminology, see Rudd 2012).”
I look forward to seeing where you go with this. Another important difference between SK, Nietzsche, and Sartre, however: SK’s context is thoroughly Christian, and much of what he writes is impossible to understand without that framework. Depends on which of the “pseudonymous” writers you look at.
My knowledge of Kierkegaard comes from reading Sickness Unto Death, Repetition, and Fear and Trembling. The ideas in those three books have been important to me for a while, but not for reasons having to do with religion. But then, I’m not allergic to the Christian framework the way some people are. Maybe that renders the Christian aspect of his works transparent to me. Anyway, it would be sad if someone lets that sort of thing keep them from taking the SK ride, which is astounding in its own right.
Oh sure. I consider his engagement with Christianity to be a plus, not a minus. You might take a look at the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and the Philosophical Fragments, as well. But the three you mention are great.
In Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, obeying the command to love the neighbor changes a person. This seems related to the claim in Philosophical Fragments that truth must provide a change of condition for a person.
Or the alternative stated in Fragments is that a person already possesses the condition, an opinion deemed Platonic.
I am not sure how that conflict relates to the arguments against Hegel.
Imagine a growing tree that has been endowed with self-consciousness. On the one hand, it knows it’s bound to grow like a pine if that is its species. But because it’s conscious, it knows about possibilities and potential. It knows about things like the perfect tree.
These two images, the self as it is, and the self as it could be, are the source of dynamic tension in the mind, the spirit, the psyche. An individual can fall so deeply in love with the potential face, that she denies necessity. Instead of surrendering to necessity and accepting her distance from the eternal, she becomes deluded.
She won’t accept what Jung would call her Shadow. Most people are like this.
For Hegel, the self results from a sequence of reactions. Self consciousness first develops as a reaction in an organism capable of cognizing objects in the world.
If I look out at the world, the concept of myself and the concept of the world emerge simultaneously. This first fall from silent unity is the advent of the bounteous domain of the Mind. But at this stage, there is no unique identity. That comes later.