Motion, change, and activity in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard

Shannon Michael Nason, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the nature of motion, change, and activity in Søren Kierkegaard's writings. The project consists of a fairly simple argument which contains a subset of fairly controversial positions. The simple argument is that Kierkegaard's authorship advances from clarifying the nature of change broadly based on an Aristotelian understanding of kinēsis in the “first,” pseudonymous authorship (roughly from 1843 to 1846) to a kind of change that is non-kinetic in the “second authorship” (primarily in his signed writings and the Anti-Climacus works of 1847 through to the early years of the 1850's). I contend that the non-kinetic model of change is also influenced by Aristotle (particularly his conception of energeia—actuality—in Metaphysics Θ), but that just as the pseudonymous authorship's appropriation of kinēsis has definite existential ends, Kierkegaard grafts spiritual and Christian categories onto the energeia model. In this way, Kierkegaard's philosophy of change, motion, and activity is just one area in his overall thought where he, squarely situated within Judeo-Christianity, takes significant helpings from Athens. To this end, in chapter one I develop Kierkegaard's logical apparatus as it is polemically situated against Hegel's doctrine of mediation. I argue that Kierkegaard is committed to the principle of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. I show that these classical laws lay the foundation for his theory of change and motion. The next two chapters develop Kierkegaard's metaphysics of change. In chapter two I argue that Kierkegaard's theory of kinēsis is a counter-theory to Hegel's view of coming to be. I attempt to defend Kierkegaard's bold claim that in Hegel's system there is no movement. In doing so, I delineate two kinds of movement in Kierkegaard: God's creative activity and mere coming into existence. The former I argue is an intransitive change and the latter is transitive. Both kinds of movement are developed and employed to critique Hegel. In chapter three, I take Kierkegaard's view of mere or generic coming into existence and argue that he has another kind of kinetic change that directly pertains to existential inwardness. This change is what Kierkegaard in various places calls a “leap” or qualitative “transition.” After clarifying an ambiguity in Kierkegaard's account of the leap, I argue that all leaps are changes of coming into existence, but that not all changes of coming to existence are leaps. In the final chapter, I argue that Kierkegaard switches to a non-kinetic model of change to explain the intensity of the Christian transformation of the self. Rather than being transitive, I argue that this change is intransitive, and is made possible by God's granting and preserving the possibility for being a self at each instant. I develop this view of change in light of Aristotle's notion of complete actuality in Metaphysics Θ.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Smith, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Philosophy

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