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117 Conclusions Kierkegaard, Virtue, and Edification in the preceding chapters we have considered Kierkegaard’s exploration of religious faith carried out in poetic-dialectical fashion across a number of pseudonymous authors with a number of diverse perspectives. We concluded the study by briefly pointing to a conception of faith in one of his signed writings, and i suggested that his view there shares some features with the views put forth by the four pseudonyms; it is especially complementary to those of the Christian pseudonym, anti-Climacus. in this chapter i will complete the inquiry on faith; beyond that, i wish to make two suggestions on how to read Kierkegaard. first, Kierkegaard can and ought to be read as a member of the Western virtue tradition that extends, according to david gouwens, “from Plato and aristotle through Plutarch, orthodox Christianity and [is] addressed anew in Pietism and in moral philosophers such as Kant.”1 it is a tradition that has, in the last fifty years, been reinvigorated by figures like elizabeth anscombe and alasdair macintyre. admittedly this “tradition” is tremendously broad, and so the claim i am making is fairly weak. That is alright, however, as my argument is not intended as a proof that Kierkegaard is virtue ethicist but rather, to use Poole’s term, a bit of advice about appropriate conversation partners for Kierkegaard. This argument can be and has been made independently of the argument central to this book. however , if it is true that Kierkegaard does belong to the virtue tradition that counts among its members those noted above, then one finds the edification thesis to be a natural fit. Second, i propose two ways to think of Kierkegaard in light of the virtue tradition by juxtaposing themes central to his writings with those of the novelist Jane austen and an approach to the virtues david Solomon has labeled “radical virtue ethics.” i am 118 | Conclusions lobbying for an end to the days where Kierkegaard is read by college students as a case study in fideism or as the father of existentialism; it would be far more interesting (and accurate) to read him in light of thinkers like those mentioned above. Scholars have not been entirely blind to the appreciation for and debt to certain features of greek philosophy Kierkegaard’s writings betray. We have noted his fondness for Socrates, as much a thinker concerned with virtue as aristotle; this was popularly vocalized by one of the early translators of Kierkegaard into english, david Swenson, who referred to Kierkegaard as the “danish Socrates.”2 more recently, the collection of essays Kierkegaard after MacIntyre indirectly brought this connection to the fore in its exploration of macintyre’s critique of Kierkegaard in chapter 4 of After Virtue.3 in that volume historian Bruce Kirmmse raised two problems for those who would offer an interpretation of Kierkegaard as a kind of virtue ethicist. The basis of these concerns is Kierkegaard’s Christianity, which Kirmmse takes to be at odds with both classical greek culture in general and its conception of a virtue in particular. in the first section of the chapter i will take up those related issues, as well as the objection that Kierkegaard’s emphasis on duty and the commanded nature of love is incompatible with genuine concerns of virtue ethics. objection one: Kierkegaard opposes the Classical tradition an important part of macintyre’s critique of modernity in After Virtue involves accusations he makes against Kierkegaard as a proponent of an ethic of radical choice. robert C. roberts places macintyre’s view of Kierkegaard in context: “This Sartrean Kierkegaard is the anti-hero of alasdair macintyre’s saga of the enlightenment project of finding a rational foundation for morality.”4 Kirmmse convincingly demonstrates how macintyre’s charges rest on a misunderstanding. Kierkegaard, too, was highly critical of modernity—namely, the ethical theories that immediately preceded him in Kant and hegel—and what Kirmmse calls “romantic philhellenism.”5 according to Kirmmse, Kierkegaard “was unable to feel much nostalgia” for the classical tradition and its forms of life that determine the roles humans play.6 Kierkegaard reads greek life as full of anxiety based in significant part on the ancient conception of fate. While Socrates breaks with the traditional answer to the euthyphro question , Kirmmse contends that mainstream greek culture largely felt that its well-being was a function of the moods of the gods—what Kirmmse calls “‘zero-sum’ fatalism.”7 even Socrates, at times, represents the zero-sum...

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