Kierkegaard's Dialectic of Inwardness. A Structural Analysis of Stages, and: Kierkegaard: the Descent into God (review)

~62 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:1 JANUARY ~988 case, as so little firm ground has been found to link the socialistic "Jtinger Spinozas" with the "Junghegelianer" a wider look at the others could easily have been purchased by the author by simply limiting his discussion of Hess. Such figures as K. L. Michelet or Stirner (who played, as Gascoigne's own work and others indicate, a central role among the Young Hegelians) or Bruno Bauer's politically-minded brother, Edgar, deserve some consideration in any study of Young Hegelianism. In sum, the reaction of some of the Young Hegelians to Hegel's project has been touched upon in this work, but somewhat unevenly and less than exhaustively. The criticisms here advanced are not intended to suggest that the work is without value. It is well-written and researched, and has some very interesting and informative sections, but above all, it does set the Hegelianism of the Vormi~rzinto a matrix which further clarifies our understanding of how Hegel's effort to synthesize the contrary forces of the Enlightenment and Christianity found itself "interpreted both as Promethean atheism and as a reduction of human nature to a mere epiphenomenon of the divine life-process" (265). LAWRENCE S. STEPELEV1CH Villanova University Stephen N. Dunning. Kierkegaard'sDialecticofInwardness. A Structural Analysisof Stages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Pp. xvii + 323 . $32.oo. Jeremy Walker. Kierkegaard: the Descent into God. Kingston and Montreal: McGillQueen 's University Press, a985. Pp. xi + 223. $27.5o. There is an irony in contemporary philosophy that Kierkegaard would certainly appreciate . After a very long period of domination by linguistic analytical philosophy, the philosophical community, if such it may be called, has opened up to larger philosophical vistas and is prone to think in a grand style. Analytical philosophers now prefer to be called "post-analytical" thinkers. Meanwhile, back in phenomenology and existential thought, analytical techniques and styles of argument are becoming more prominant in the writings of individuals who have learned from their opponents. The two studies of Kierkegaard we have before us are cases in point. Dunning admittedly follows the suggestions of Andr6 Clair's work of 1976, Pseudonymie et paradoxe: La Pens~edialectiquede Kierkegaard, and seeks to carry out a deconstruction of his texts in terms of an analysis of the internal dialectic of most of Kierkegaard's major writings. Although Dunning is not primarily concerned with the intention of SK to instigate a sea-change in the attitudes, beliefs, and behavior of his readers, his analyses do clarify the structure of SK's thought and, in the last chapters, he touches on the practical aims of SK's authorship. Dunning is meticulous in tracing the internal dialectic of the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages of life as articulated by SK. He finds that SK has absorbed more of Hegel's dialectical method of exposition and disclosure than has previously been suspected. He speculates that this is an "unconscious " replication of "Hegelian systematic structures." Although this is possible, we should remember that, in the case of SK, we are dealing with the most self-conscious BOOK REVIEWS 163 philosophical writer in the history of Western thought. We cannot be too sure that he has not deliberately used a Hegelian method in order to demolish Hegelianism. Dunning isolates two basic forms of dialectical structures. One is a dialectic of contradiction in which conceptual polarities are presented in a negative relation; the other involves a display of a reciprocal relation between opposite poles that blocks further development. Fear and Trembling and Philosophical Fragments are said to exemplify a "paradoxical dialectic." Hegel's triadic formula, the in-itself, the for-itself, and the in-and-for-itself, is applied to many of SK's works and to the three modes of inwardness: aesthetic, ethical, and religious. The basic pattern that runs through SK's works is the polarity of inner and outer, self and others. With great care, Dunning displays and elucidates these dialectical patterns. And even though he realizes that his approach to SK is formalistic and presented in the manner of a literary deconstruction of various texts, the outcome of his study is that we get...