In an earlier chapter, it was argued that Kant turned away from a divine command account of obligation, to offer instead a hybrid account, while we have just seen that Hegel then turned away from this to offer his social command account instead. In this chapter, the wheel turns again, as Kierkegaard’s critique of the latter takes us back to a divine command account.

However, whilst it is scarcely surprising to say that Kierkegaard was a critic of Hegel in some broad sense, and also possibly to say that he was a divine command theorist in some broad sense, it is less easy to narrow down these aspects of his position, so to say exactly what these criticisms amount to, and exactly what form of divine command theory Kierkegaard was proposing. When it comes to the former, we need to substantiate that it was Hegel’s social command account of obligation that formed the focus of Kierkegaard’s objections, and not just other issues that have no impact on this question; and when it comes to the latter, we need to substantiate that Kierkegaard was offering a divine command account of obligation, and not an ethic of a different sort, or a divine command theory of a more radically voluntaristic kind, which treats the good and right as altogether dependent on God’s command, not merely for their obligatory force.