Transcript Philosophy 224

Philosophy 224
Person As Passion: Kierkegaard
and Nietzsche
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55)

Kierkegaard spent the majority of his life in
his hometown of Copenhagen.
 Despite this provincialism, his impact on the
history of philosophy and religion was
profound.
 An important fideist, he is also often pointed
to as a precursor of existentialism.
 The connection between these two aspects of
his thinking is crucial to understanding his
account of the self.
The Sickness unto Death

Kierkegaard published The Sickness unto
Death in 1849 under the pseudonym AntiClimacus, the “author” of his most important
ethico-religious texts.
 Kierkegaard used the pseudonym to point to
what he considered to be an ideal christianity,
an ideal he could not represent in himself
(and thus in his own name).
 The sickness in question (and thus the target
of this ideal christianity) is despair.
The Relational Self

Like Aquinas, Kierkegaard defines the self or
person as a type of relation. Following the
moderns, the type of relation that Kierkegaard
highlights is self-relation, “The self is a
relation that relates itself to itself in the
relation…” (126c1).
 Upon consideration of the ground of this selfrelation, Kierkegaard identifies two
possibilities: self-grounding and othergrounding.
3 Forms of Despair

As a result, we can identify three forms of
despair (only two of which are despair in the
complete sense).
1. The first (limited) form of despair is ignorance of
oneself, which is to say failing to recognize that
one is in despair.
2. The second (first complete form) is a will to selfdestruction. To seek in despair to end it.
3. The third, truest and most authentic form of
despair is to will oneself as despairing (“in
despair to will to be oneself”).
Relational Self is A Despairing Self

Why does the account of the relational self in
terms of its ground lead us to an analysis of
forms of despair?
 For Kierkegaard, the person is suspended
between the finite and the infinite.
 The two possible form of grounding refer to
which of these terms the self recognizes
themselves in.
 Overcoming despair requires that one commit
themselves without remainder to the infinite.
– This is Kierkegaard’s definition of a true Christian.
Way to God is Through Despair

One question Kierkegaard must address
concerns the value of despair.
 We usually see despair as a bad thing, and
Kierkegaard agrees that inasmuch as despair
is suffering, it is bad.
 But, inasmuch as it is only in despair that we
are aware of ourselves as a self, and thus
aware of our potential relatedness to God,
despair is thus good.
Soren Speaks

“No matter how much the despairing person
avoids it, no matter how successfully he has
completely lost himself…eternity nevertheless
will make it manifest that his condition was
despair and will nail him to himself so that his
torment will be that he cannot rid himself of
his self…Eternity is obliged to do this,
because to have a self, to be a self, is the
greatest concession, an infinite concession,
given to man, but it is also eternity’s claim
upon him” (130c2).
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Nietzsche was another pivotal figure of 19th
century philosophy.
 Recognized very early as an exceptional
intellect, he had a very unlikely, and brief,
academic career.
 The majority of his work consists of
substantial criticisms of the religious and
philosophical traditions of the West, which he
viewed as symptoms of a nihilistic tendency,
the positive implications of which he aimed to
elucidate.
Morality as Nihilism


For Nietzsche, nihilism is an ineradicable
human tendency to forswear one’s creative
possibilities (what he also calls “power”) and
capitulate to an other-determined vision.
Morality, in its traditional forms is just such a
self (and life) denying structure.
1. One form of this nihilistic or decadent tendency is the
attempt to define morality in terms of convention
(143c1).
2. Another is to confuse the basic nature of morality (like
Kant, Nietzsche locates it in obligation “thou shalt”)
with particular moral theories and to assume that
criticism of the latter is all that is necessary.
Beyond Good and Evil?

Morality as Confession: every moral theory is an
expression of an individual will, masking itself in the
form of universality.
– “…every drive is tyrannical: and it is as such that it tries to
philosophize” (145c2).


This is particularly true for the philosophical analysis
of the will, or more broadly, of the person.
A clear example of this, according to Nietzsche is the
doctrine of apperception, which played such a key
role in modern philosophy’s discussion of the person
(146c1).
– It’s an expression of the tyranny of the will to truth.
No Person Here

One of the assumptions of the modern era is that any
acceptable account of the person much ultimately
cash out in a treatment of the will, of the capacity of
the person to act or choose.
 Nietzsche’s critical claim in opposition to this tradition
is that the will is not a thing, and certainly not simple,
“Willing seems to me to be above all something
complicated, something that is a unity only as a
word…” (147c1).
 What’s really going on, he suggests, is the will to
command, a will which is not a cause but an effect of
the expectation of obedience.
Where is the Person?



Certainly not in modern philosophy (148c1-2), nor in
what Nietzsche calls here the “objective spirit” whose
will to knowledge is too often a will to generality that
misses the person entirely.
For Nietzsche, the person is the personality, that
individual who, through a non-nihilistic, self-creative
act asserts themselves in their uniqueness, “…one
must test oneself to see whether one is destined for
independence…” (148c1).
Thus, the concept of a rank of human values (150).