Kierkegaard and the “Existential” Philosophy

Dorothy M. Emmet

doi:10.1017/S0031819100002540

Kierkegaard and the “Existential” Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009

Dorothy M. Emmet

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It is a wise child who knows his own father; and the climate of thought of a generation may be subtly changed without conscious recognition of the formative minds which have been, if not the parents, at least the godparents of that change. That is to say, they have sponsored the baptism of ideas which would only be safe so long as they renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil; but, as is so often the case, when the offspring grow up they form a pact with those very powers. To make Søren Kierkegaard spiritually responsible for the present war would have as little, and perhaps as much, truth in it as the facile explanations which made Hegel responsible for the last one. But it is part of the demonism of policies of power and ambition to be able to pervert to their own ends religious ideas which in their intention are a protest against those very ambitions; and, by so doing, to win a response from people who, in a dim, unconscious way, are feeling after the ideas themselves, but have neither the powers of self-criticism nor of radical thinking to resist travesties of them which appear to justify their own self-assertion. When Hitler informed Sir Nevile Henderson that he was a man of “ad infinitum decisions” we may question the extent of his knowledge either of the Latin language or of the existential philosophy; but the phrase awakes an echo of the religious philosophy of circles far removed from National-Socialism. Both Nazi apologists and their Confessional or independent opponents are consciously or unconsciously moved by a way of thinking which puts the decision of the individual, made in the concrete moment, above any objective or universal norm of ethics or of reason by which it can be either justified or criticized.

Type: Articles
Information: Philosophy , Volume 16 , Issue 63 , July 1941 , pp. 257 - 271

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100002540 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1941

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References

^{page 259 note 1} Fear and Trembling, p. 46Google Scholar.

^{page 259 note 2} The Point of View, p. 87Google Scholar.

^{page 259 note 3} Journals 521Google Scholar. References to passages in the Journals are to the entries in Dru's translation (O.U.P.).

^{page 260 note 1} See Lowrie, , Kierkegaard, p. 88Google Scholar. Cf. Entweder Oder, II, p. 164 sqGoogle Scholar.

^{page 260 note 2} Cf. Lowrie, op. cit., p. 129.

^{page 260 note 3} See his Sein und Zeit, pp. 231 ff.Google Scholar, and Was ist Metaphysik?

^{page 261 note 1} See II, pp. 179 ff.

^{page 262 note 1} Cf. Entweder Oder, II, pp. 182 sqGoogle Scholar.

^{page 262 note 2} See Sein und Zeit, p. 278Google Scholar.

^{page 262 note 3} I would not, however, suggest that he necessarily himself approves this extreme Nazi interpretation of his views.

^{page 263 note 1} See his Philosophie, Bd. II (Existenzerhellung), and his more popular Die Geistige Situation der Zeit.

^{page 263 note 2} For a most valuable discussion of this problem in the relation of philosophy to religion, see an article by Tillich, , Philosophie und Religion grundsdtzlich, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Zweite Auflage, IV, p. 1227Google Scholar.

^{page 264 note 1} See Die Krankheit zum Tode, pp. 85 ffGoogle Scholar.

^{page 265 note 1} Journals 1051Google Scholar.

^{page 265 note 2} Journals 260Google Scholar.

^{page 265 note 3} Journals 99Google Scholar.

^{page 265 note 4} Journals 552Google Scholar.

^{page 265 note 5} Journals 84Google Scholar.

^{page 265 note 6} Journals 200Google Scholar.

^{page 265 note 7} Journals 1362Google Scholar.

^{page 265 note 8} Journals 88Google Scholar.

^{page 266 note 1} Journals 753Google Scholar.

^{page 266 note 2} Philosophical Fragments, p. 69Google Scholar.

^{page 267 note 1} Cf. Fear and Trembling, pp. 100 ff.Google Scholar, and especially the footnote on p. 114.

^{page 267 note 2} Journals 1276Google Scholar.

^{page 268 note 1} Journals 1340Google Scholar.

^{page 269 note 1} Journals 762Google Scholar.

^{page 269 note 2} Entweder Oder, p. 295Google Scholar.

^{page 269 note 3} See especially Journals 1289, 1290Google Scholar.

^{page 269 note 4} From Judge for Yourself, quoted by Lowrie, , pp. 480–481Google Scholar.

^{page 269 note 5} Philosophical Fragments, p. 18Google Scholar.

^{page 270 note 1} Philosophical Fragments, chapter v.

^{page 270 note 2} The Point of View, p. 100Google Scholar.

^{page 271 note 1} Journals 837Google Scholar.

^{page 271 note 2} Unwissenschaftliche Nackschrift, II, iv, A § 2.

^{page 271 note 3} Journals 144Google Scholar.

^{page 271 note 4} Journals 343Google Scholar.

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