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1 CHAPTER ONE Introduction Kierkegaard as Epistemologist The Project Kierkegaard is considered one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth century, yet very little scholarly work has been done on his epistemology .1 This is a serious problem because Kierkegaard’s views on knowledge are, and must be, intimately related to his views on religious faith and its role 1 Among the thousands of articles on Kierkegaard, only a half a dozen concern his epistemology . Steven N. Emmanuel, “Kierkegaard on Faith and Knowledge,” Kierkegaardiana 15 (1991): 136–46; Robert L. Perkins, “Kierkegaard, a Kind of Epistemologist,” History of European Ideas 12, no. 1 (1990): 7–18; M. G. Piety, “Kierkegaard on Religious Knowledge,” History of European Ideas 22 (1996): 105–12; Louis P. Pojman, “Kierkegaard’s Epistemology,” Kierkegaardiana 15 (1991): 147–52; Johannes Sløk, “En Studie I Kierkegaards Erkendelsesteori ” [A study of Kierkegaard’s epistemology], Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift 1 Hefte (1941); and David Wisdo, “Kierkegaard on the Limits of Christian Epistemology,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 29, no. 2 (1991): 97–112. Among the hundreds of books on Kierkegaard, there are only two on his epistemology: Anton Hügli’s Die Erkenntnis der Subjektivit ät und die Objektivität des Erkennens bei Søren Kierkegaard [Knowledge of subjectivity and the objectivity of knowing in Søren Kierkegaard] (Basel, Switzerland: Editio Academica, 1973) and Martin Slotty’s 1915 dissertation, “Die Erkenntnislehre S. A. Kierkegaards” [The epistemology of S. A. Kierkegaard] (Friedrich-Alexanders-Universität, 1915). No use, that I have been able to determine in any case, has been made of these last two important sources in English-language Kierkegaard scholarship. 2 WAYS OF KNOWING in human experience. So little is understood about Kierkegaard’s epistemology that prominent scholars still debate such fundamental issues as whether it is possible, according to Kierkegaard, to have propositional knowledge that God became human in the person of Christ.2 Several works have appeared recently that touch on Kierkegaard’s epistemology ,3 but there is still no work in English devoted exclusively to the subject. My objective is to delineate, as clearly as possible, Kierkegaard’s views on knowledge. The project is at once grand and modest. It is grand in the sense that it is setting out on what is, in English in any case, uncharted territory. It is modest in that while it will include references both to the history of epistemological thinking as well as to contemporary work in this field, it will make no direct attempt to situate Kierkegaard’s views in the history of epistemological thinking, nor any direct attempt to relate Kierkegaard’s views to contemporary epistemological debates. Either project would be premature. What is needed at this early stage of the understanding of Kierkegaard’s epistemology is a general outline of his views on knowledge. The objective here is to provide what might serve as part of the foundation for future scholarship that could be devoted to such specific issues as, for example, the relation between Kierkegaard’s epistemology and Enlightenment epistemologies, or Kierkegaard’s potential contribution to contemporary epistemological debates such as those relating to virtue epistemologies and communitarian epistemologies. It is also important to acknowledge that no claim is made to the effect that Kierkegaard consciously thought through his epistemology with the thoroughness and detail displayed in the present study. Kierkegaard’s main interest is not epistemology but ethics and religion. He does occasionally look specifically at the nature of knowledge, most notably in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript and in Works of Love. More often than not, however, his attention is focused elsewhere. He never produced anything like an epistemological treatise. It is therefore possible that many of the views attributed to him here were held more intuitively than as the result of conscious analysis . The argument of the present work is that the views it presents may be 2 See the debate on this issue between Steven N. Emmanuel and Louis P. Pojman in Kierkegaardiana 15 (1991): 136–46 and 147–52, respectively, as well as my response, “Kierkegaard on Religious Knowledge,” 105–12. 3 See C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2006); Peter Mehl, Thinking through Kierkegaard: Existential Identity in a Pluralistic World (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005); Steven Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Language and the Reality of God (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001); and David Willows, Divine Knowledge: A Kierkegaardian Perspective on Christian Education (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001). [18.118.140.108] Project MUSE...

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