KIERKEGAARD AS CLASSICAL MORAL PSYCHOLOGIST

In an explanatory note appended to the last book in his pseudonymous authorship, Kierkegaard declared that the importance of his pseudonymous authors “unconditionally does not consist in making any new proposal.” In his intentionally provocative readings of the human existence-relationships, Kierkegaard stamps such words as “subjectivity” and “existence” with his distinctive mark (this is especially true of “existence”). These words have fostered his reputation as one who holds that, in matters of ethics and religion anyway, “truth” is created by human decisions rather than discovered or known; the words have encouraged a conventionality associating Kierkegaard with the epistemological claims and departures of existentialists and their postmodernist successors.” Other items in his vocabulary of human existence, such as “character,” “pathos,” “passion” and “inwardness” suggest other historical associations and a more classical orientation. Still others, such as “personality” and “self,” have a modern rather than postmodern ring.

In this essay I want to take seriously Kierkegaard's disclaimer to be making any radically new proposal. I shall read Kierkegaard more as a successor of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas than as a predecessor of Sartre and Foucault. On this reading, “subjectivity” and “existence” will evoke the thought of character rather than subjectivism and radical choice.