The Phenomenology of Moods in Kierkegaard

177 Pages·1978·12.521 MB·English

by  Vincent A. McCarthy (auth.)

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MOODS IN KIERKEGAARD
THE PHENOMENOLOGY
OF MOODS
IN KIERKEGAARD
by
VINCENT A. McCARTHY
•
MARTINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE/BOSTON / 1978
To the Memory of
C. ERIC SMITH
© 1978 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN-13:978-90-247 -2008-8 e-ISBN-13:978-94-009-9670-0
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-9670-0
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Key to Abbreviations x
INTRODUCTION 1
I. IRONY 7
A. Irony and the Concept in The Concept of Irony 9
Preliminary Considerations 9
Irony as Tool 13
The Ironic Consciousness 17
Negative Aspects of Irony 22
Mastered Irony 27
The Essence of Irony as an Existence-Stance 29
B. Irony as a Measurement and Tool in the Analysis of the Aesthetic
Life-View 30
II. ANXIETY 33
A. Anxiety in The Concept of Anxiety 36
Style and Format 36
Theory and History of Spirit 38
Types of, and Stances in Relation to, Anxiety 40
B. The Concept of Anxiety in Kierkegaard's Other Writings 47
C. The Idea of Anxiety. The Experience and Structure of Anxiety 48
D. Attitudes toward Anxiety 50
E. Anxiety and the Aesthetic Life-View 52
III. MELANCHOLY 53
A. The Term "Melancholy" 54
B. Melancholy in Either/Or 56
As Reflected in the Structure of Part I 56
As Described in Part I 60
Judge William's Analysis (Part II) 66
C. Melancholy in Repetition and Stages 72
D. Towards a Concept of Melancholy 78
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
IV. DESPAIR 82
A. Preliminary Considerations 84
B. Despair in Either/Or 86
C. Despair in The Sickness Unto Death 88
Relation between Anxiety and Despair 89
The Definition of the Self 90
The Four Forms of Disequilibrium 91
Unconscious Despair: the Commonest Form 96
Conscious Despair: the Principal Forms 96
D. The Idea of Despair 100
State and Structure 100
Experience and Act 101
E. Despair and the Aesthetic Life-View 103
V. THE MOODS AND SUBJECTIVITY OF THE YOUNG AESTHETE
JOHANNES 106
A. Johannes' Irony 108
Seeking the Ideal 109
Negative and Positive Irony 110
The Stance of Johannes 110
B. His Anxiety 111
Johannes' Essential Anxiety 111
His Stance in Anxiety 112
C. His Melancholy 113
Johannes' Awareness 113
Johannes' Tungsind 114
Need for Resolution 114
D. His Despair 116
Johannes' Disequilibrium 116
His Stance: Conscious Despair 117
E. Dialetic of Moods in Johannes 117
VI. THE DIALECTIC OF MOODS 120
A. Defining "Mood" 122
The Four Moods of the Self 125
B. The Crises-Sequence 127
C. Interrelationships 131
D. Function of Moods in Emerging Religious Subjectivity 132
E. Moods and Life-Views 133
VII. FROM VICTIM TO MASTER OF MOODS: TOWARDS THE CHRISTIAN
LIFE-VIEW 135
A. Preliminary Considerations 136
The Term "Life-View" 136
Biographical Prelude 137
Philosophy 138
TABLE OF CONTENTS vii
B. Life-View in From the Papers of One Still Living 140
Background 140
Theory of Literature 141
Forming a Life-View 144
C. Life-View in The Book on Adler 146
D. Life-View in Either/Or, Stages, and the Postscript 148
E. Life-View in the Papirer 152
F. The Meaning of Life-View 155
G. The Aesthetic Life-View Exposed 157
160
CONCLUSION
Selected Bibliography 162
Index 167
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sfllren Kierkegaard might object to this study of his thought. Any
scholar must live with the possibility of such rejection as well as his
warnings to any pedants who would lay a dialectical hand upon his
works. But the young aesthete Kierkegaard would have empathized with
the chance origins of this study from wanderings in Mexico with a
suitcase and a satchel of Kierkegaard's works. The same peripathetic
style has been maintained throughout, with the original manuscript
having been written in France, Denmark and California. The present
manuscript represents a revision of the work submitted at Stanford
University (Stanford, California) in 1974 for the Ph.D. Revisions were
carried out in New York and Connecticut and the printed text will
emerge in Europe, at the Hague.
Every traveller as well as scholar owes many debts, and in this I am
happily no exception. Gracious scholars, readers and critics aided much
through conversation and also correspondence. Others provided the
wherewithal for the author to set the study down on paper. One is never
able to say whose contribution was the more significant. All my con
tributors were in many ways invaluable and so I thank them simply,
sincerely, singly and alphabetically:
Beverly Baldyga, Joachim Bark, Sandra Hatch, Paul L. Holmer,
Howard V. Hong, Akiko Kurimoto, Gregor Malantschuk, Kevin
McCarthy, Johannes Mouritsen, Philip H. Rhinelander, William J.
Richardson, Lucio Ruotolo, and Niels Thulstrup.
But to none perhaps do lowe a greater debt than to Robert McAfee
Brown whose humanity and scholarly good-sense were decisive in
allowing this study to come to be.
Finally I dedicate this work to the memory of C. Eric Smith, S.J.
(1898-1973) of Guelph, Ontario, scholar, linguist and diplomat who
inspired my own wanderings in languages, ideas and places.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Princeton University Press for permission
to quote from Concept of Dread, trans. by Walter Lowrie (copyright 1949 ©
1957 by Princeton University Press; Princeton Paperback, 1967); Either/Or,
Vol. I, trans. by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson (Copyright 1944
© 1959 by Princeton University Press; Princeton Paperback, 1971); Vol. II,
trans. by Walter Lowrie (copyright 1944 © 1959 by Princeton University Press,
Princeton Paperback, 1971); Repetition, trans. by Walter Lowrie (copyright
1941 © 1969 by Princeton University Press); Stages on Life'S Way, trans. and
ed. by Walter Lowrie (copyright 1940 © 1968 by Princeton University Press);
Sickness unto Death, trans. by Walter Lowrie (copyright 1941, 1954 by Prince
ton University Press; title Princeton Paperback, 1968: Fear and Trembling and
The Sickness unto Death); On Authority and Revelation: The Book on Adler, or a
Cycle of Ethico-Religious Essays, trans. by Walter Lowrie (copyright 1955 by
Princeton University Press); to Princeton University Press and the American
Scandinavian Foundation for permission to quote from Concluding Unscientific
Postscript, trans. by David Swenson (copyright 1961 © 1969 by Princeton
University Press; Princeton Paperback, 1968); to Indiana University Press for
permission to quote from S;ren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, trans. and
ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (copyright 1967 by Indiana University
Press); to Stanford University Press for permission to quote from Johannes
Climacus or De omnibus dubitandum est, and A. Sermon, trans. by T. H.
Croxall; to Harper and Row Publishers, Inc. and Indiana University Press for
permission to quote from Concept of Irony, trans. by Lee Capel; to Hutchinson
Publishing Group, Ltd. and Harper and Row Publishers, Inc. for permission to
quote from Gilbert Ryle's Concept of Mind; to Harper and Row Publishers, Inc.
for permission to quote from Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, trans. by
John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson.
KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF KIERKEGAARD'S WORKS CITED
CI The Concept of Irony, trans, Lee M, Capel (New York, 1965),
EO 1 Either/Or, trans. David F. Swenson and Lillian Swenson with
E02 revisions by Howard A. Johnson (New York: Anchor Books,
1959), Parts I and II.
R Repetition, trans. Walter Lowrie (New York: Harper Tor
chbooks, 1964).
CA Concept of Anxiety (Dread), trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton,
1967).
SLW Stages on Life's Way, trans. Walter Lowrie (New York: Schoc
ken Books, 1967).
CUP Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson with
revisions by Walter Lowrie (Princeton, 1968).
SUD Sickness Unto Death, trans. Walter Lowrie (New York: Anchor
Books, 1954).
AR On Authority and Revelation, trans. Walter Lowrie (New York:
Harper Torchbooks, 1966).
DO De Omnibus Dubitandum Est, trans. T. H. Croxall (London,
1958).
DANISH EDITION OF KIERKEGAARD'S WORKS
All references are to:
S. V., I-XIV SjIlren Kierkegaard, Samlede Vrerker, udg. af A. B. Drach
mann, J. L. Heiberg og H. O. Lange. KjIlbenhavn: Gylden
dalske Boghandel, 1901-1906. I-XIV.
INTRODUCTION
Kierkegaard himself hardly requires introduction, but his thought con
tinues to require explication due to its inherent complexity and its
unusual method of presentation.
Kierkegaard is deliberately un-systematic, anti-systematic, in the very
age of the System. He made his point then, and it is not lost upon us
today. But that must not deter us from assembling the fragments and
viewing the whole. Kierkegaard's religious psychology in particular may
finally have its impact and generate the discussion it deserves when its
outlines and inter-locking elements are viewed together.
Many approaches to his thought are possible, as a survey of the
literature about him will readily reveal.! The present study proceeds
with the simple ambition of looking at Kierkegaard on his own terms, of
thus putting aside biographical fascination or one's own personal religi
ous situation. I understand the temptation of both, and have seen the
dangers realized in Kierkegaard scholarship. In English-language Kier
kegaard scholarship, we are now in a new phase, in which the entire
corpus of Kierkegaard's authorship is at last viewed as a whole. We have
passed the stages of "fad" and of under-formed. Almost all the corpus is
available in English, or soon will be. Perhaps now Kierkegaard can be
viewed, understood, and criticized dispassionately and objectively, not
withstanding author Kierkegaard's personal horror of those adverbs.
The present study hopes to make its contribution toward this goal.
The theme of the present study is little discussed in Kierkegaard
literature except by a very few, Professor Paul Holmer of Yale Univer
sity being among the most notable. The scholarly lacuna is not a little
surprising, when one sees the centrality of moods to Kierkegaard's
thought. The present study aims then to bring mood and the psychology of
moods to the center of Kierkegaard scholarship and to any assessment
of Kierkegaard's philosophical anthropology.
Kierkegaard is simultaneously philosopher, psychologist, religious
writer and litterateur. The present study respects him as all of these, as
1 Among the recent studies Mark Taylor's Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Works (Prince
ton, 1975), pp. 3-37, discusses many possible approaches to Kierkegaard and the merits of
each.