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Kierkegaard: A Non-Cognitivist?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

John J. Hartley
John J. Hartley
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

This remarkable reconstruction of Søren Kierkegaard's (SK) work based on a reading of original Danish sources could have been entitled Phenomenology of (Finite) Spirit or, perhaps, Itinerarium Cordis Ad Deum. In ten chapters it attempts to uncover SK's ethico-religious understanding of the humanjourney towards the transcendent God. It is a journey away from speculative absorption in nature and universal history, away from the hubris of poetical self-creation, away even from ethical awareness of the universally human and a kind of Pelagian self-confidence in one's ability to do the good. Thejourney ends with the recognition of one's own powerlessness and nothingness—a recognition that can lead either to prideful despair or to humble faith.

Type
Critical Notices/Etudes critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , Summer 1987 , pp. 331 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1987

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References

1 Kierkegaard, Søren, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Swenson, David F. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; New York: American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1958), 19Google Scholar. The quotations from SK within this notice are taken (unless otherwise specified) from Walker's book. The works of SK from which they are taken are identified according to the following acronyms used by the author in accordance with the Danish titles of SK's works: AE—Concluding Unscientific Postscript; CM—Christian Discourses; DS—Judge for Yourselves!; IC—Training in Christianity; JSK—The Journals of Spren Kierkegaard; KG—Works of Love; SD—Sickness Unto Death; T—Edifying Discourses.

2 John 14:6.

3 Kierkegaard, Søren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Swenson, David F. and Lowrie, Walter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), 281Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., 278.

5 Ibid., 302.

6 Ibid., 68.

7 Ibid., 26.

8 Kierkegaard, Søren, Sickness Unto Death, trans. Lowrie, Walter (London: H. Milford, 1944), 201–202Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., 203.

10 Ibid., 201–202.

11 John 14:15.