INTRODUCTION

It is surprising to write a couple of articles and receive a book in response. Yet such has been the flattering reaction to my own modest contribution to the debate about whether or not Kierkegaard should be classed as a ‘narrativist’ in any interesting sense (Lippitt 2005, 2007). Both John J. Davenport (the author of the book in question) and Anthony Rudd have in recent work sought to clarify the conception of ‘narrative’ that they see as operative in Kierkegaard (Davenport 2011, 2012; Rudd 2007b, 2008a, 2012). In doing so, both have revised and qualified their positions in various respects, enabling them to sidestep some worries that talk of ‘narrative’ had sponsored. The gap between Kierkegaardian ‘narrativists’ and ‘narratosceptics’ has narrowed considerably: the positions of the former now appear to be much closer to that which Philip Quinn (2001) and I had advocated in the earlier debate. One significant disagreement remaining, however, concerns the desirability of ‘wholeheartedness’ as a key dimension of the ‘narrative unity’ on which Davenport insists. That will be my concern here.

DAVENPORT'S NEW POSITION ON NARRATIVE UNITY

In what he recognises to be a new account of ‘narrative unity’, Davenport outlines five different levels thereof, each of which is ‘necessary but not sufficient for the ones after it’ (2011: 163). Unity-0 is a pre-reflective recognition of ourselves as the same subject of consciousness over time. Unity-1 (the unity of ‘planning agency’) ‘is found in the lives of all agents with responsibilities ranging over extended plans’ (2012: 45). In response to an earlier objection, Davenport now explicitly agrees that the aesthetes of Kierkegaard's Either/Or, such as A and the Seducer, indeed possess both these levels of unity (2012: 47). What they lack, he claims, is unity-2: ‘continuity of cares through willed devotion to ends, persons and ideals’ (2011: 163; cf. 2012: 47–8). It is commitments involving higher-order volitions (in a broadly Frankfurtian sense) which ‘actively sustain the agent's projects and relationships over time’ (2011: 163; cf. 2012: 47–8). So while aesthetes possess unity-1, they lack unity-2. As A puts it, ‘No part of life ought to have so much meaning for a person that he cannot forget it any moment he wants to’ (EO 1, 293/SKS 2, 282).