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Naked Subjectivity: Minimal vs. Narrative Selves in Kierkegaard

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 53; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0020174x.2010.493370

1502-3923

Patrick Stokes,

Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

Abstract Abstract In recent years a significant debate has arisen as to whether Kierkegaard offers a version of the “narrative approach” to issues of personal identity and self-constitution. In this paper I do not directly take sides in this debate, but consider instead the applicability of a recent development in the broader literature on narrative identity—the distinction between the temporally-extended “narrative self” and the non-extended “minimal self—to Kierkegaard's work. I argue that such a distinction is both necessary for making sense of Kierkegaard's claim that we are ethically enjoined to become selves, and can indeed be found in Either/Or and the later The Sickness Unto Death . Despite Kierkegaard's Non-Substantialism, each of these texts speaks (somewhat obliquely) of a “naked self” that is separable from the concrete facticity of human being. In both cases, this minimal self is linked to issues of eschatological responsibility; yet the two works develop very different understandings of “eternity” and correspondingly divergent accounts of the temporality of selfhood. This complicates the picture of Kierkegaardian selfhood in interesting ways, taking it beyond both narrativist and more standard neo-Lockean models of what it is to be a self. Notes 1. See Taylor, M.C. (1980) Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press); and Kosch, M. (2006) Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 200–10. 2. I have attempted such an orientation in Stokes, P. (2008) “Locke, Kierkegaard, and the phenomenology of personal identity”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 16(5), pp. 645–72, and Stokes, P. (2009) “Anti-Climacus and Neo-Lockeanism: Towards a Kierkegaardian personal identity theory”, in: N.J. Cappelørn, K.B. Söderquist and H. Deuser (Eds.) (2009) Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2009, pp. 527–55 (Berlin: de Gruyter). 3. Such as Dennett, D. (1992) “The self as a center of narrative gravity”, in: F.S. Kessel, P.M. Cole, and D.L. Johnson (Eds.), Self and Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives, pp. 103–15 (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum). 4. Such as Rudd, A. (2005) “Narrative, expression and mental substance”, Inquiry, 48(5), pp. 413–35; Rudd, A. (2007) “Kierkegaard, MacIntyre and narrative unity—Reply to Lippitt,” Inquiry, 50(5), pp. 541–49; and Rudd, A. (2009) “In defence of narrative”, European Journal of Philosophy, 17(1), pp. 60–75. 5. Examples include Vice, S. (2003) “Literature and the narrative self”, Philosophy, 78(1), pp. 93–108; Lamarque, P. (2004) “On not expecting too much from narrative”, Mind & Language, 19(4), pp. 393–408; Strawson, G. (2004) “Against narrativity”, Ratio, 17(4), pp. 428–52; Vollmer, F. (2005) “The narrative self”, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 35(2), pp. 189–205. 6. Lippitt, J. (2005) “Telling tales: Johannes Climacus and ‘narrative unity’”, in: N. J. Cappelørn and H. Deuser (Eds.) Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2005 pp. 71–89 (Berlin: de Gruyter); Lippitt, J. (2007) “Getting the story straight: Kierkegaard, MacIntyre and some problems with narrative”, Inquiry, 50(1), pp. 34–69. See also Duckles, I. (2007) “Kierkegaard's irrationalism: A response to Davenport and Rudd”, Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 36(22), pp. 141–51, for a somewhat different set of objections to Davenport and Rudd. 7. Rudd, “Kierkegaard, MacIntyre and narrative unity”, p. 545, emphasis added. I am not sure that all narrative theorists would make this stipulation, but it seems—though I cannot argue for this here—that any account that lacked this claim would simply be a sub-species of the standard neo-Lockean, “psychological continuity” approach. 8. It should be noted that this contrast between chronicle and narrative is not universally accepted; see Ricoeur, P. (1984) Time and Narrative, Vol. I, trans. K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press), p. 148. 9. On conception and birth, see Ricoeur, P. (1992) Oneself as Another, trans. K. Blamey (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), p. 160. For discussions of the problems death poses for narrative theory, see Lippitt, “Getting the story straight”; Behrendt, K. (2007) “Reasons to be fearful: Strawson, Death, and narrative”, in: D.D. Hutto (Ed.) Narrative and Understanding Persons, pp. 133–53 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Stokes, P. (2006) “The power of death: Retroactivity, narrative, and interest”, in: R.L. Perkins (Ed.) International Kierkegaard Commentary: Prefaces/Writing Sampler and Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, pp. 387–417 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press). 10. This is the motivation J. David Velleman in particular cites for a narrative agency theory (though one that distinguishes between this type of agency and identity across time). See Velleman, J.D. (2006) Self to Self: Selected Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 203–23. 11. Rudd, “Kierkegaard, MacIntyre and narrative unity”, p. 544. 12. We could ask where his narrative “is up to” of course, but saying “his life is up to the part where he moves to America” doesn't seem to be straightforwardly equivalent to saying “he's in America at the moment”. 13. Lewis, D. (2003) “Survival and identity”, reprinted in: R. Martin and J. Barresi (Eds.) Personal Identity (Maldon, MA: Blackwell), p. 149. 14. Schechtman, M. (1996) The Constitution of Selves (Ithaca, NY: Cornell), pp. 56–60. 15. Hutto, D.D. (2007) “Narrative and understanding persons”, in: D.D. Hutto (Ed.) Narrative and Understanding Persons, p. 6. 16. Strawson, “Against narrativity”, p. 428. 17. Lippitt, “Getting the story straight”, p. 43. 18. Lippitt, “Getting the story straight”, p. 50. 19. Rudd, “Kierkegaard, MacIntyre and narrative unity”, p. 547. 20. The Kierkegaard's Writings and Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter series will be referred to throughout using the International Kierkegaard Commentary sigla: CA [1844] (1980) The Concept of Anxiety, trans. R. Thomte in collaboration with A.B. Anderson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). CD [1848] (1997) Christian Discourses and The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). CUP, 1 [1846] (1992) Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Vol. 1, trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). EO, 2 [1843] (1995) Either/Or, Vol. 2, trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). JP (1967–1978) Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, 7 vols., trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong, assisted by G. Malantschuk (Bloomington, IN and London: Indiana University Press) (citiations give entry number rather than page number). SUD [1849] (1980) The Sickness Unto Death, trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). UDVS [1847] (1993) Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). SKS 3 [1843] (1997) Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter Bd. 3: Enten—Eller, Anden del, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Johnny Kondrup and Finn Hauberg Mortensen (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag). SKS 4 [1843–1844] (1997) Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter Bd. 4: Gjentagelsen, Frygt og Bæven, Philosophiske Smuler, Begrebet Angest, Forord, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Johnny Kondrup and Finn Hauberg Mortensen (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag). SKS 7 [1846] (2002) Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter Bd. 7: Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette Knudsen and Johnny Kondrup (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag). SKS 8 [1847] (2004) Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter Bd. 8: En Literair Anmeldelse, Opbyggelige Taler i Forskjellig Aand, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Johnny Kondrup and Alastair McKinnon (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag). SKS 10 [1848] (2004) Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter Bd. 10: Christlige Taler, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff and Johnny Kondrup (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag). SKS 11 [1849] (2006) Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter Bd. 11: Lilien paa Marken og Fuglen under Himlen, Tvende ethisk religieuse Smaa Afhandlinger, Sygdommen til Døden og “Ypperstepræsten”—“Tolderen”—“Synderinden”, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Anne Mette Hansen and Johnny Kondrup (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag). SKS 22 (2005) Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter Bd. 22: Journalerne NB11-NB14, ed. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette Knudsen and Johnny Kondrup (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag). 21. Rudd, “Narrative, expression and mental substance”, p. 431; see also Rudd, A. (2008) “Reason in ethics revisited: Either/Or, ‘Criterionless Choice’ and narrative unity”, in: N.J. Cappelørn and H. Deuser (Eds.) Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2008, p. 184 (Berlin: de Gruyter), and “In defence of narrative”, p. 70. 22. Rudd, “Kierkegaard, MacIntyre and narrative unity”, p. 547. 23. Lippitt, “Getting the story straight”, p. 60 n. 14. 24. Rudd, “Narrative, expression and mental substance”, p. 416. This is of course to assume that identity is what we care about in survival, which remains controversial. For a full discussion of this topic, see Martin, R. (1998) Self-Concern: An Experiential Approach to What Matters in Survival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 25. Rudd, “Narrative, expression and mental substance”, p. 421. 26. Ibid. 27. Rudd, “Reason in ethics revisited” pp. 193–94. 28. See Stokes, “Locke, Kierkegaard, and the phenomenology of personal identity”. 29. Gallagher, S. (2000) “Philosophical conceptions of the self: Implications for cognitive science”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(1), pp. 14–21; Zahavi, D. (2007) “Self and other: The limits of narrative understanding”, in: D.D. Hutto (Ed.), Narrative and Understanding Persons pp. 179–201. 30. Damasio, A. (1999) The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (London: William Heinemann), p. 16. 31. Op.Cit. pp. 16–17. 32. Op.Cit. p. 17. 33. Op.Cit. p. 225. 34. Op.Cit. p. 172. 35. Op.Cit. p. 17. 36. Op.Cit. p. 225. 37. Zahavi, “Self and other”, p. 191. 38. Zahavi, D. (2005) Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press), p. 11. 39. Zahavi “Self and other” p. 189. 40. Ibid. 41. Stokes, P. (2010) Kierkegaard's Mirrors: Interest, Self, and Moral Vision (Hampshire: Palgrave). 42. Davenport, J.J. (2001) “Towards an existentialist virtue ethics: Kierkegaard and MacIntyre,” in: J.J. Davenport and A. Rudd (Eds.) Kierkegaard After MacIntyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrativity, and Virtue (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court), pp. 280–81. 43. Davenport, J.J. (2001) “The meaning of Kierkegaard's choice between the aesthetic and the ethical: A response to MacIntyre”, in: J.J. Davenport and A. Rudd (Eds.), Kierkegaard After MacIntyre, p. 87; Davenport, “Towards and existentialist virtue ethics” pp. 278, 290. See also Rudd, A. (2001) “Reason in ethics: MacIntyre and Kierkegaard”, in: J.J. Davenport and A. Rudd (Eds.), Kierkegaard After MacIntyre, p. 138. 44. Rudd points out that narratives explain teleologically rather than causally in “In defence of narrative”, p. 62. 45. As Kosch notes, the Hongs’ “relates itself to itself” is a somewhat misleading translation of forholder sig til sig selv, as forholder sig is here a reflexive verb; “relates to itself” is more natural, though it arguably loses something of the original's reflexivity as well. Kosch, “Freedom and reason in Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard”, p. 202. 46. Hannay, A. (1998) “Kierkegaard and the variety of despair”, in: A. Hannay and G.D. Marino (Eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 339–40. 47. Op. Cit. pp. 335–36. 48. Davenport, “Towards an existentialist virtue ethics”, p. 279. 49. Op.Cit. p. 307. 50. Rudd, “Narrative, expression and mental substance”, p. 424. 51. Op.Cit. p. 425. 52. Op.Cit. p. 429. 53. Rudd, A. (1997) Kierkegaard and the Limits of the Ethical (Oxford: Oxford University Press) p. 93. 54. Kosch, “Freedom and reason in Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard”, p. 213. 55. On irony as detachment, see e.g., Söderquist, K.B. (2007) The Isolated Self: Truth and Untruth in Søren Kierkegaard's On The Concept of Irony (Copenhagen: Reitzel); Cross, A. (1998) “Neither either nor or: The perils of reflexive irony”, in: A. Hannay and G.D. Marino (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, pp. 125–53 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Kangas, D.J. (2007) Kierkegaard's Instant: On Beginnings (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: University of Indiana Press) pp. 24–27. 56. Other pseudonyms make similar claims. Vigilius Haufniensis claims that even the time spent repenting of one's sins is itself a “deficit of action” and therefore a new sin (CA, 117–18/SKS 4, 419); see also CUP, 1: 526/SKS 7, 478 and SUD, 105/SKS 11, 217. 57. Davenport, “The meaning of Kierkegaard's choice between the aesthetic and the ethical”, p. 104. 58. Zahavi, Subjectivity and Selfhood, p. 130. 59. E.g., Williams, B. (1973) Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 43–45. 60. Marks, T.M. (2010) “Kierkegaard's ‘new argument’ for immortality”, Journal of Religious Ethics, 38(1), pp. 143–86. 61. See also UDVS, 66/SKS 8, 174: “Yet eternity is certainly not like a new world, so that the person who had lived in time according to the ways of time and busyness, when happy and well he had arrived in eternity, now could try his hand at adopting the customs and practices of eternity.” 62. On eternity necessarily appearing as futural, see McTaggart, J.M.E. (1909) “The relation of time and eternity”, Mind, 18(1), pp. 343–62; and Stokes, P. (forthcoming) “Fearful asymmetry: Kierkegaard's search for the direction of time”, Continental Philosophy Review. 63. Beginning with Locke's debate with the Bishop of Worcester on the question of resurrection. See also Perry, J. (1978) A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality (Indianapolis: Hackett); Hick, J. H. (1976) Death and Eternal Life (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row) pp. 278–95; Audi, R. (1976) “Eschatological verification and personal identity”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 7(4) pp. 391–408. 64. Davenport, “Towards and existentialist virtue ethics”, p. 273. 65. Davenport, J.J. (2010) “Wholeheartedness, volitional purity, and mortality: A partial defense of the narrative approach”, in: P. Stokes and A. Buben (Eds.) Kierkegaard and Death (Bloomington, In: Indiana University Press). 66. On the claim that Kierkegaard rejects substantialism, see e.g., Taylor, M.C. (1975) Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship: A Study of Time and the Self (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), p. 104 passim; Grøn, A. (2004) “Self and identity”, in: D. Zahavi, T. Grünbaum and J. Parnas (Eds.) The Structure and Development of Self-Consciousness (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins), p. 131. 67. Lillegard, N. (2001) “Thinking with Kierkegaard and MacIntyre about the aesthetic, virtue, and narrative”, in: J.J. Davenport and A. Rudd (Eds.), Kierkegaard After MacIntyre, p. 223. 68. Stokes, “Anti-Climacus and neo-Lockeanism”. 69. Locke, J. [1694] (1975) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, P.H. Nidditch (Ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 344; see also Stokes, P. (2008), pp. 648–50. On Locke's subordination of metaphysics to eschatology, see Martin, R. and J. Barresi (2000) Naturalization ofthe Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the Eighteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge), p. 29. 70. MacIntyre, A. (1981) After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), pp. 203–04 71. I don't think we have to accept the theological premises of Kierkegaard's picture to find something compelling in this eschatological picture; a thought like “If I died right this instant, would it all have been worth it?” might be a viable substitute for divine judgment. 72. Similar to Strawson's “Transience View” (formerly the “Pearl View”); Strawson, G. (1999) “The self and the SESMET,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6(4), p. 129. 73. I should add that I think this mode of self-relation is non-reflective (as argued for in Stokes, Kierkegaard's Mirrors), though nothing hangs on this point here. 74. Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves, pp. 73–92. 75. This paper was made possible by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Independent Danish Research Council—Humanities, hosted at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen. I am also grateful to participants at a February 2009 colloquium at the Centre for their valuable comments.