Kierkegaardian Meditations on First Philosophy: A Reading of Johannes Climacus

Kierkegaardian Meditations on First Philosophy.: A Reading of Johannes Climacus MICHAEL STRAWSER The possibility of doubt is essential I have, alas, studied philosophy, Jurisprudence and medicine, too, And, worst of all, theology With keen endeavor, through and through-And here I am, for all my lore, The wretched fool I was before. Called Master of Arts, and Doctor to boot, For ten years almost I confute And up and down, wherever it goes, I drag my students by the nose-And see for all our science and art We can know nothing. It burns my heart. Goethe, Faust' to existence, is the secret of human existence. S~ren Kierkegaard' THE GENERALAIM of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a careful reading of one of Kierkegaard's less familiar early writings,Johannes Climacus, Or, De Omnibus Dubitandum Est; second, to determine what significance this text has for a comprehensive interpretation of Kierkegaard's total life-view (Livsanskuelse). The characterization of the life-view sought after by Kierkegaard in his ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust,bilingual edition, trans. Walter Kaufmann (NewYork: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961),93. 9Sr KierkegaardsPapirer(hereafter abbreviated as P), ed. A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 19o9-48), IV B 1o:11. [623] 624 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:4 OCTOBER 1994 writings may be more closely determined through the consideration of a lifeview gone wrong. For, as Kierkegaard reasons: "In order to see one light determinately, we always need another light. For if we imagined ourselves in total darkness and then a single spot of light appeared, we would be unable to determine the position of this light without a relation to another."3 Through the difference doubt presents to irony, readers may gain a deeper insight into the conditions which make for a valid or authentic life-view. As The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrat~4 discloses, irony ultimately entails consequences that would provide the foundations for one to be led beyond the clouds to the only genuine human life. No matter what criticisms Kierkegaard makes of his beloved Socrates, it is clear that both thinkers are united in the pursuit of a similar goal. This is expressed in Kierkegaard's fifteenth thesis in The Concept of Irony: "As philosophy begins with doubt, so also that life which may be called worthy of a human being begins with irony." This thesis constitutes the original analogy between the concepts of irony and doubt and, what is more, appears to be Kierkegaard's unmistakable appropriation and rewriting of the famous Socratic maxim, "the unexamined life is not worth living."5 Thus, one may argue that, although irony invokes dialectical ramifications, insofar as it is mastered it conditions the production of positive fruits in the individual. 6 By contrast, doubt, which looks deceptively like irony,7 operates in the sSerrnKie~gaard'sJoun~ahandPapers(hereafter abbreviated JP), trans. Howard and Edna Hong (slighdy modified) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967- ), no. 2240; P I A I. ~Trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ]991); hereafter referred to as KW II with corresponding reference to SV (SamledeVaer~) XIII 0st ed.). 5Plato, A~ogy, in D/a/oguesofPlato,trans. B.Joweu (New York: Scribner's, 1871), 38A. 6Certainly this argument may appear problematic when one considers that since Kierkegaard actually rejects doubt as the beginning of philosophy, it would then be likely for him to reject irony as the beginning of a worthy human life. In this case his fifteenth thesis and the concluding section of TheC(nw.e~oflrony,"Irony as a Controlled Element, the Truth of Irony" could themselvesbe interpreted as ironic. To sort out this complexity one would first have to explain how Kierkegaard uses the term "irony" dialectically, and then how his conception of irony, which cannot be separated from his conception of Socrates, undergoes profound changes throughout his development as a writer. For Kierkegaard, irony marks the beginning of subjectivity,but insofar as he did not perceive the "fullness" of Socrates' subjectivity in his dissertation, it is fair to read the passages alluded to above as ironic. However, Kierkegaard embraces Socrates...