Kierkegaard's Romantic Legacy: Two Theories of the Self

by Anoop Gupta

Overview

In Kierkegaard's Romantic Legacy, Anoop Gupta develops an original theory of the self based on Kierkegaard's writings. Gupta proceeds by historical exegesis and considers several important ways of thinking about self outside of the natural sciences. His study moves theories of the self from theology toward sociology, from a God-relationship to a social one, and illustrates how a loss in theological underpinnings partly contributes to the rise in the popularity of cultural relativism. By drawing on Kierkegaard's writings, Gupta develops a metaphysical account of the self that provides an alternative to the idea that there is no such thing as human nature.
Keywords: Kierkegaard; Philosophy; Theory of self; Metaphysics; Theology; Sociology

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780776618616
Publisher:	University of Ottawa Press
Publication date:	12/01/2005
Series:	Philosophica
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	142
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Anoop Gupta is an independent scholar and recent PhD graduate in Philosophy from the University of Ottawa.

Read an Excerpt

1 Structure of the Self
For Kierkegaard, though we must make our selves, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. His understanding of self fits well with the ethos of Aristotelian metaphysics, where what a thing is is defined by what it is meant to be. I shall argue, therefore, that the proper perspective for understanding the metaphysics of Kierkegaard’s notion of the self is that of teleology. 
There is generally a lack of appreciation of how traditional Kierkegaard’s seemingly iconoclastic theory of the self is. In this chapter, we will see that he does in fact retain a metaphysical conception of the self.
Below, I consider Kierkegaard’s definition of selfhood, and what goads us to develop despair. Then I explore his notion of despair, specifically why he thinks it to be necessary for human development.
Despair Anti-Climacus, the pseudonym used to write Sickness unto Death, provides valuable insight in what the self was for Kierkegaard. Anti-Climacus says, “A self is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self.”1 Anti-Climacus also remarks, “The self is not a relation but the relation’s relating to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.”2 According to Kierkegaard, the self is a synthesis, such that we cannot have the conception of infinitude without the finite, of freedom without necessity, of the eternal without the temporal. For him, each item is metaphysically related to its opposite. There is also the further relation that relates to itself. “This relation is the positive third, and this is the self.”3
For Kierkegaard, the self is reflection. Anti-Climacus says that imagination also is reflection. It is by imagining that we in fact represent ourselves to ourselves. We do not simply look in a mirror and say, “yes, there I am.” We have a certain conception of ourselves as lazy, courageous, worthless, independent, and so on. The self represents itself as possibility. Anti-Climacus says, “The imagination is the whole of reflection’s possibility; and the intensity of this medium is the possibility of the self’s intensity.”4 If we are to admit that we imagine ourselves in a particular way, it is clear that part of this imagining is that of thinking of what we can be. Thus we have people who always knew they were going to be doctors, lawyers, musicians, or amount to nothing.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Preface  ix Acknowledgements    x Documentation   x
Search for the Kierkegaardian Self  1
Kierkegaard’s Theological Self
1 Structure of the Self   7   Despair   7   Analysis   11
2 Self-Becoming  15   Sin   15   Anxiety   16   A Cure  18   The Aesthetic Stage   20   The Ethical Stage   22
3 The God-Relationship   25   The Religious Stage  25   Motivation  29   God and Ethics  33
4 Self and Knowledge   39   Myself  39   Godless 44
5 Reflections and Appraisals  49   Life and Psychology   49   Modern Loss   55
The Sociological Self
6 Rousseau   61   Nature   61   Morality   65   The Social Being   67
7 Durkheim   69   Sociologist  69   Religion   71   Suicide   72
8 Winnicott   77   Dependence and Independence   77   Interdependence   79
Some Consequences For Practice
9 The Idea of Suicide 85   Moral Problem   85   Social Problem  87
10 Suicide and Schizophrenia   91   Suicide: Three Approaches   91   Schizophrenia: Three Approaches   94
11 Existential Psychology   99   Alfred Adler and Ludwig Binswanger  99   Rollo May   100   R. D. Laing   101   Comparisons  104
12 The Self According to Kierkegaard   107   Kierkegaard Revisited   107
Notes   111
References   129