7 - Climacus on subjectivity and the system

Summary

Kierkegaard is usually taken to be a critic of Hegelian philosophy, meaning Hegel himself and the Danish Hegelians. Emphasis has been on Hegel himself, who is better known and more important to contemporary thought than his followers. This emphasis has recently been challenged by a two-pronged argument from Jon Stewart. Psychologically speaking, the argument goes, Kierkegaard's critique has the Danish Hegelians but not Hegel in mind; and philosophically speaking, that critique does not in any case make substantive contact with Hegel's own thought.

But the double argument is doubly mistaken. The psychological argument, which is only of interest to intellectual biography, is a non sequitur. That Kierkegaard may have a particular Danish formulation of a Hegelian view in mind does not mean that he does not also have Hegel himself in mind. More importantly in terms of philosophical significance, even if in a given case Kierkegaard has only a Danish Hegelian in mind, it does not follow that the critique fails effectively to engage Hegel's own thought. Stewart's attempts to show this in particular cases independently of the psychological thesis regularly fail.

A full study of the critique of Hegelian thought in Kierkegaard's writings would require examination of many texts, as evidenced by both Stewart's and Thulstrup's books. Sometimes it is explicit, sometimes implicit; sometimes it is pseudonymous, sometimes not.