Kierkegaard’s Influence on Philosophy: Tome I: German and Scandinavian Philosophy ed. by Jon Stewart (review)

In time for the bicentennial of Søren Kierkegaard’s birth (1813) comes this collection of essays on his influence on philosophy. Tome I, reviewed here, focuses on the reception of this Danish philosopher among German and Scandinavian audiences, while two companion tomes complement this with analysis of Francophone and Anglophone philosophy. Together, they comprise the eleventh volume in a comprehensive 21-volume series entitled Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, a publication of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen.

The stated task of this work is to illuminate the role of Kierkegaard within philosoph, but to avoid overlap with prior volumes (thus Existentialism is not a focal point). Analyzing Kierkegaard as a philosopher has historically been problematic, since a foundational concept of his was that philosophy was the very thing he claimed to oppose. Kierkegaard’s work demonstrated a wide-reaching interdisciplinarity at a time when fields of philosophy, theology, and literature were more conservatively delineated than now. In addition, certain aspects of his writing, such as elusive pseudonyms or his profound interest in Christianity, were confusing or off-putting. “[W]hile no philosopher has . . . uncritically accepted the entire Kierkegaardian edifice, it can be said that many philosophers have taken individual bricks from it” (x).

The various contributors elucidate how Kierkegaard’s corpus served as “a goldmine of ideas” for “such different philosophical projects as phenomenology, hermeneutics, dialogical thinking, critical theory, Marxism, logical positivism, and ordinary language philosophy.” Some of these philosophers (Theodor W. Adorno, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Karl Löwith, and Michael Theunissen) are presented as drawing significant inspiration from Kierkegaard, while others can be seen as “sporadically” wrestling with his ideas (Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Wilhelm Dilthey, Ferdinand Ebner, Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Wittgenstein). These philosophers receive in-depth treatment in individual chapters, and there are also chapters reserved for two Danish philosophers and one Norwegian: Hans Brøchner, Harald Høffding, and Peter Wessel Zapffe.

A summary of two prominent philosophers demonstrates the dynamic role that Kierkegaard’s writings played in German intellectual circles. Perhaps most associated with Kierkegaard is Theodor W. Adorno, who is discussed by Peter Šajda. Notable here is that Kierkegaard’s work was an interest shared by both Adorno and Paul Tillich (then at Frankfurt), and this mutual interest influenced Adorno’s choice of Kierkegaard as the topic of his Habilationsschrift, “Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des Ästhetischen” (5). Overall, Adorno appears to have promoted a reading that took Kierkegaard “at his word,” attempting to “trap Kierkegaard in his own quotations” (9). Also, exchanges with Benjamin influenced Adorno’s developing views (11). Kierkegaard served as a resource for Adorno in interpreting current events and political movements, which has led Šajda to conclude that in general, Adorno read and explained Kierkegaard in such a way that “concepts and structures are applied to, rather than derived from Kierkegaard’s thought” (12).

Joseph Westfall’s chapter on Walter Benjamin makes a careful delineation between statements directly concerning Kierkegaard’s works and those comparisons that Benjamin made between Kierkegaard and other authors (such as Adorno and Nietzsche). The primary place where Benjamin commented on Kierkegaard was a 1933 book review of Adorno’s Habilitationsschrift, which Westfall explains was “largely a commentary on Adorno” rather than Kierkegaard (51). In examining his letters, it appears that Benjamin’s reading of Kierkegaard (Either/Or) was quite reader-centered: “he seems to see himself in the Kierkegaard books” (53). Also of note is that of the concepts that resonated with Benjamin most, the “aesthete” was paramount (55–56), although the Benjaminian aesthete by contrast was “in the world and of the world, creating with critical and political intent” (62). Westfall explains that Benjamin shares Adorno’s view that Kierkegaard “is a writer and thinker shipwrecked on his own religious idealism—but one salvageable . . . if read in light of the insights of twentieth-century theories of literature and historical...