Kierkegaard on Politics PDF
Preview Kierkegaard on Politics
Kierkegaard on Politics Doi: 10.1057/9781137372321 Other Palgrave Pivot titles Michael J. Osborne: Multiple Interest Rate Analysis: Theory and Applications Lauri Rapeli: The Conception of Citizen Knowledge in Democratic Theory Michele Acuto and Simon Curtis: Reassembling International Theory: Assemblage Thinking and International Relations Stephan Klingebiel: Development Cooperation: Challenges of the New Aid Architecture Mia Moody-Ramirez and Jannette Dates: The Obamas and Mass Media: Race, Gender, Religion, and Politics Kenneth Weisbrode: Old Diplomacy Revisited Christopher Mitchell: Decentralization and Party Politics in the Dominican Republic Keely Byars-Nichols: The Black Indian in American Literature Vincent P. 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Pisani: Consumption, Informal Markets, and the Underground Economy: Hispanic Consumption in South Texas Doi: 10.1057/9781137372321 Kierkegaard on Politics Barry Stocker Istanbul Technical University, Turkey Doi: 10.1057/9781137372321 © Barry Stocker 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-37231-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–1–137–37232–1 PDF ISBN: (cid:26)(cid:24)(cid:25)(cid:14)(cid:18)(cid:14)(cid:20)(cid:21)(cid:26)(cid:14)(cid:21)(cid:24)(cid:23)(cid:17)(cid:26)(cid:14)(cid:18) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. www.palgrave.com/pivot doi: ./ Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Tarquinius and Brutus: Political Fear and Trembling 7 3 Previous Perspectives on Kierkegaard and Politics 27 4 Kierkegaard and the Danish Political Community 43 5 Communities of Liberty 54 6 Ethical and Legal Community 79 7 Tragic Community 92 8 Political Irony 103 9 Conclusion 126 Bibliography 130 Index 142 Doi: 10.1057/9781137372321 v 1 Introduction Abstract: The argument is made that Kierkegaard is not just an apolitical thinker, who is an extreme conservative when he has anything to say about politics. There is a look at the ways that philosophers bring in political ideas when discuss- ing other areas of philosophy, which is relevant to the way that Kierkegaard expresses his political thought. The argument is made that his response to the liberal and democratic tenden- cies of his time was sympathetic if critical. The more indirect ways in which Kierkegaard deals with politics are mentioned, with reference to his thoughts about literature and religion. Keywords: Descartes; individualism; J.S. Mill; Leibniz; 1848 revolutions Stocker, Barry. Kierkegaard on Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. doi: ./. Doi: 10.1057/9781137372321 Kierkegaard on Politics This book addresses political thought in a writer who was not attempt- ing to make a contribution to political thought. Such a seemingly perverse enterprise is justified, and necessary, because political thought does not only exist in texts explicitly devoted to expounding a position in political theory. For example, understanding of political thought is clearly enhanced by knowledge of Homer, Greek tragedy, Shakespearean tragedy, and the masterpieces of the ‘realist’ nineteenth-century novel. This arbitrary list, which is by no means a complete selection, refers us to literary works which give an archaic view of kingship, a classical antique view of law and monarchy, a Renaissance view of government and tyranny, and some more recent explorations of individual freedom and democracy. We can imagine someone engaging in political theory without knowledge of literature, but that theorist would have lost a lot in terms of understanding the different possibilities of thinking about politics. Equally the more epistemological and metaphysical parts of philoso- phy may use, or even depend on, political ideas. Descartes, in Discourse on Method 2, partly explains the benefits of his attempt to reconstruct philosophy from first principles, as like the creation of the best possible state through the laws of a single wise legislator, so that laws have a uni- fied end (1968, 36). In ‘Discourse on Metaphysics’ 36, Leibniz compares the metaphysical relation of God to the world with that of a prince to his people in a law governed state (1998, 88–89). John Stuart Mill thought that knowledge benefits from the liberty of speech in general, in On Liberty 2 ‘Of the liberty of thought and discussion’ and liberty is partly justified by that benefit (1991, 52). Kant sets up his Critique of Pure Reason, in the preface to the first edition, with reference to the model of govern- ment through law, as opposed to despotism or anarchy (1997, 99–100/ Prussian Academy Edition A IX). One indirect, but significant, justification for thinking about Kierkegaard as a political thinker is then that he was a literary writer, and narrative literature at least contains a good deal of material of political and social interest, by virtue of representing action over time in a prop- erly formed social world. That argument is only going to have limited force if there is some more direct political content to Kierkegaard’s writ- ing, whether taking him both as a literary and philosophical figure, and there is in two senses. One sense is that on occasion political issues are at the centre of his writing; the other is that much of what Kierkegaard writes has distinctly political implications. We can look at Kierkegaard Doi: 10.1057/9781137372321 Introduction as a political thinker in his literary and philosophical aspect; and taking into account both explicit and implicit meanings. That is the program for the present book. It is not only that the literary nature of Kierkegaard’s writing suggests that we look for political thought there in the way we do for literary fic- tion, but also his philosophical discussions of literature which suggests that we look for implicit views about politics. Either/Or [Enten-Eller], Repetition [Gjentagelsen], and Stages on Life’s Way [Stadier paa Livets Vei] provide good examples of the former aspect; Either/Or also provides good examples of the second aspect as does The Concept of Irony [Om Begrebet Ironi]. The major example of Kierkegaard as political thinker through discussion of literature takes place in his discussion of tragedy, a literary genre very directly engaged with political issues of law, king- ship, justice, power, and tyranny; and his discussion of Romantic Irony, which touches on the politics of Romanticism. There is another way in which politics enters into Kierkegaard’s thought, in relation to the religious aspect of his writing. That is the role of God in Kierkegaard, which is clearly a major theme for this deeply Christian thinker, though it is not the constant object of direct attention. The idea of God and the idea of government have always been intertwined. The Leibniz reference earlier is an illustration of a connection that has always been made. The idea of just rule of the other world or of the universe as a whole is never going to be completely separable from the idea of the just rule of a state in this world. Divine and secular governance can never be completely distinguished, and the idea of divine governance is a frequent point of reference for Kierkegaard, though most obviously from how it is distinct from political power rather than the long tradi- tion of seeing a model. The idea of God as model of political government is just one part of how Christian themes in Kierkegaard have a political aspect. The other major part is the status of the single individual, just one word in Danish, Enkelte, and a word that Kierkegaard often uses, as essentially in relation to God, but with less directly religious aspects of the single individual also coming into his writing. Further references to Enkelte will be in English as ‘the Single Individual’ or in Danish with the definite article ‘den Enkelte’. The Single Individual is defined by a relationship with God, but the connections with political understandings of individual- ity are unavoidable (Kierkegaard 1998a, 76), and further connect with Kierkegaard’s more direct social and political comments. Doi: 10.1057/9781137372321 Kierkegaard on Politics Questions of how we can have a relation with God, know of God, have faith and communicate with the absolute being are central to Kierkegaard, and connect with questions of the existence of societies as unified political entities under some supreme agency of sovereignty. We come to two political theory issues now. First the issue of what the indi- vidual who has political interests and rights is, and why the individuality of that single individual is important in politics. Second the issue of the relation between the single individual and the state, or the political world as a whole. The individual is a particular compared with the uni- versal nature of the political sphere and of civil laws; the individual is a particular compared with the absolute nature of sovereignty, wherever it is we locate sovereignty, of the people, the ruler, the state, and so on. The issues of the relation of subjective particularity to ethical universality and to the absolute sovereignty of God are at the heart of Kierkegaard’s writing. The nature of that subjectivity, that moral agency, raises issues about political liberty, the history of subjectivity’s understanding of itself in relation to its social world in Pagan and Christian worlds, how that is intertwined with the history of political liberty, of the changes in the concept of that liberty in ancient and modern times. Kierkegaard’s own references to the political events, and conflicts, of his time are brief, but no less significant for their brevity. He lived through the one really successful transition to constitutionalism and representative government, amongst the many European revolutions of 1848. Kierkegaard was sensitive to this drama and the underlying tension it exposed in modern politics: the tension between revolutionary idealism and mundane pragmatism, a tension that parallels his view of Christian life. He was critical of democracy as a political movement and as a social tendency towards equality, but much of his criticism is similar to that of those recognised as thinkers about liberal democracy, who wished to protect it against its own negative tendencies. Our understanding of thinkers, like Tocqueville and Mill, will be enriched by comparison with Kierkegaard, as will our understanding of Kierkegaard. The reading of Kierkegaard that follows is one that rejects any idea that philosophical texts can or should be identified as only pertaining to one very well defined and delimited branch of philosophy. Kierkegaard is a particularly strong example of a philosopher whose work does not even try to divide itself between discrete branches and sub-branches of philos- ophy, in different texts, and which does not engage in well-ordered steps of pure deduction within texts. Kierkegaard certainly makes arguments Doi: 10.1057/9781137372321
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