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How Subjectivity is Truth in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Edward J. Hughes
Edward J. Hughes
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, California State University at Long Beach, Long Beach, California 90840
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Abstract

The present article returns to Søren Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript in order to delineate the complex relations that obtain between his concepts of subjectivity, inwardness and passion. Supporting concepts, such as appropriation, existence, and interest, are also referred to as aids in tracing these relationships. I argue that the entire gestalt of terms in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript is coherent, consistently used, and that Kierkegaard, despite the poetic format of his style, has constructed a rigorous philosophical anthropology that is neither objectivist, nor subjectivist in its ultimate statement. This is the basis for the name of the article, ‘How Subjectivity is Truth in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript’. Subjectivity can be truth in Kierkegaard's work because his use of the term transcends the normal denotation of both subjectivity and objectivity in religious philosophical discourse and refers to a state of existence with a unique ontological status.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 1995 , pp. 197 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

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