Kierkegaard in Lisbon

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3 Kierkegaard in Lisbon

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5 Coordenação José Miranda Justo Elisabete M. de Sousa Kierkegaard in Lisbon Contemporary Readings of Repetition, Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments and the 1843 and 1844 Upbuilding Discourses Centro de filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa 2012

6 Ficha Técnica Título: Kierkegaard in Lisbon Contemporary Readings of Repetition, Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments and the 1843 and 1844 Upbuilding Discourses Autores: José Miranda Justo e Elisabete M. de Sousa Colecção: Acta 17 EDITOR: Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa e Autores, Este livro ou partes dele não poderão ser reproduzidos sob qualquer forma, mesmo electrónica, sem explícita autorização do Editor e dos Autores. FOTOGRAFIA DA CAPA: Manel Justo fotopercepcao.photoswarm.com Revisão de texto: Sara E. Eckerson Glossário: Fernando M. Ferreira da Silva Apoio: Impressão e acabamento: SerSilito-Empresa Gráfica, Lda. Depósito Legal n.º /12 ISBN

7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Contributors Abbreviations Introduction Laura Llevadot At a Graveside: Ethics and Ontology Darío Gonzaléz Patience as the Temporality of Inner Life in Kierkegaard s Upbuilding Discourses Maria Leonor Xavier The Believer s Faith and the Philosopher s Distrust José Miranda Justo From a Differentiation in Times to the Earnestness of Existence. Some Elements of the Three Upbuilding Discourses of 1843 Useful for an Understanding of the Category of Repetition Elisabete M. de Sousa Speaking in Human Terms Carlos João Correia Book Launch of the Portuguese Translations of Repetition and Fear and Trembling Arne Grøn Time, Courage, Selfhood: Reflections on Kierkegaard s Discourse To Preserve One s Soul in Patience Claudia Welz Human Perfection: Overcoming Oneself. A Discussion of Kierkegaard s Four Upbuilding Discourses (1844) with reference to Luther, Heidegger, and Simone Weil. 97 Richard Purkarthofer Being Present to Oneself: Some Remarks on the Role of Optical and Acoustic Imagery in Kierkegaard s Upbuilding Discourses José Miranda Justo Time Determinations in Kierkegaard s Philosophical Fragments Elisabete M. de Sousa Poets as Disciples and as Followers at Second Hand M. Jamie Ferreira Philosophical Fragments in Perspective Marcia Morgan Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, and Critical Theory Maria Luísa Ribeiro Ferreira The via perardua Salvation in Spinoza and Kierkegaard Abstracts in Portuguese /Resumos em Português Index

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9 Contributors Carlos João Correia (PhD, Univ. Lisbon, 1993) is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department of the Humanities Faculty of the University of Lisbon, where he lectures since He currently coordinates the research line in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Religion in the Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon. He published Ricoeur e a Expressão Simbólica do Sentido, 1999 (Ricoeur and the Symbolic Expression of the Sense), Mitos e Narrativas. Ensaios sobre a Experiência do Mal, 2003 (Myths and Narratives. Essays on the Experience of Evil) and A Religião e o Sentido da Vida: Paradigmas Culturais, 2011 (Religion and the Meaning of Life: Cultural Paradigms); he has co -edited several thematic volumes of essays, the most recent being A Religião e o Ateísmo Contemporâneo, 2009 (Religion and Contemporary Atheism). He is also a member of the Society of Environmental Ethics and the Pali Text Society (Lancaster). M. Jamie Ferreira (PhD, Princeton, 1977) is Carolyn M. Barbour Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, USA. She has been the recipient of many academic distinctions and grants. Her bibliography is extremely vast, covering a wide range of works in the Kierkegaardian authorship, with a focus on its implication on Religious Studies and for the understanding of correlated authors. She has lectured on the main Kierkegaard conferences over the past three decades and has also been a regular presence on the editorial boards of major publications in Philosophy and Religious Studies. Among her most recent books, Kierkegaard: An Introduction (2008), and Love s Grateful Striving: A Commentary on Kierkegaard s Works of Love (2001) stand as landmarks. Maria Luísa Ribeiro Ferreira (PhD, Univ. Lisbon, 1994) is Chair Professor in the Philosophy Department of the Humanities Faculty of the University of Lisbon, where she lectures since She is a member of the Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon (CFUL), has been responsible for several projects, and currently coordinates the research line in Contemporary and Modern Philosophy in CFUL. Four books were published under the project Philosophy in the Feminine (As Teias que as Mulheres Tecem The webs that women weave, 2003; Pensar no Feminino Thinking in the Feminine, 2001; Também há Mulheres Filósofas There are also Women Philosophers, 2001; O que os filósofos pensam sobre as mulheres What Philosohers Think about Women, 1998). On Spinoza and Modern Philosophy, she is the author of Diálogo e Controvérsia na Modernidade Pré crítica, 2005 (Dialogue and Controversy in Pre critical Philosophy); Uma Suprema Alegria, 2003 (A Supreme Joy); Razão e Paixão, 2002 (Reason and Passion); A Dinâmica da Razão na Filosofia de Espinosa, 1997 (The Dynamics of Reason in Spinoza s Philosophy). She is also a member of Sociedade Científica da Universidade Católica; of the working group Benedictus de Spinoza, at the Universidade Estadual do Ceará, Brazil; of Seminário Spinoza, Spain; and of the Association des Amis de Spinoza, France. Kierkegaard in Lisbon, Lisboa, CFUL, 2012, pp. 9-11

10 10 Biographical Notes Darío David Gonzalez (PhD, Univ. Copenhagen, Denmark, 1997) is resident researcher at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center in Copenhagen, and lectures at the Univ. of Copenhagen. His present research areas include readings of Kierkegaard not only from an aesthetical, but also from a philosophical and/or linguistic perspective (the art of writing, ethics and religion). He has published many articles, edited books and seminars and authored a work on Kierkegaard (Essai sur l ontologie kierkegaardienne. Idéalité et détermination, 1998), and has lectured on many occasions on the Danish philosopher and his implications on not only modern but also contemporary thinkers. He belongs to the Spanish translation team of the works of Kierkegaard, published by Editorial Trotta, and has translated the second part of Either Or and the Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. Arne Grøn (PhD, Univ. Copenhagen, 1997) is Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Copenhagen, as well as co -founder of and professor at the Center for Subjectivity Research. His main areas of research and publications are within the Theory of Subjectivity, Ethics, Philosophy of Religion and Kierkegaard. Among other projects, he is currently working on the hermeneutics of the philosophy of religion (reformulating criticisms of religion and reinterpreting the notion of transcendence) and on a hermeneutical theory of subjectivity and selfhood (clarification of the notion of subjectivity as self -relation; subjectivity, interiority and exteriority (in particular in Kierkegaard and Levinas) and the relation of (self)understanding and the situated character of selfhood. He has countless publications, among articles in periodicals and in books, including The Concept of Anxiety in Søren Kierkegaard, 1994, José Miranda Justo (PhD, Univ. Lisbon, 1990) is Associate Professor in the German Studies Department at the Humanities Faculty of the University of Lisbon. With a PhD on the history of the philosophy of language in the second half of the 18th century (mostly Herder and Hamann), he has studied the close links between the Philosophy of Language, the Theory of Knowledge, Hermeneutics, and Esthetics, as demonstrated in a sequence of articles and communications mainly after 1990, and in various cross disciplinary seminars on the specificity of philosophical language, on Esthetics and Philosophy of Art, on the History of Hermeneutics and on the Theory of Translation. He is a member of the Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon since 1995, has been main researcher in various projects, and is currently the coordinator of the translation team for the works of Kierkegaard. He is the author of Ergon ou Energeia. Filosofia da Linguagem na Alemanha nos Sécs. XVIII e XIX, 1986 (Ergon or Energeia, Philosophy of Language in Germany in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries), and has co -edited several thematic volumes of essays. He has translated German philosophy texts from the 18th and 19th centuries (Hamann, Herder, W. v. Humboldt, Goethe, Novalis, Nietzsche, Marx), as well as German literature (Lenz, Kleist, Rilke, Kafka, among others). He has translated In Vino Veritas (2005) and Repetition (2009) by Kierkegaard. Marcia Morgan (PhD, New School for Social Research, New York, 2003) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy in Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania, USA. Her PhD dissertation, entitled The Aesthetic Religious Nexus in Theodor W. Adorno s Interpretation of the Works of Søren Kierkegaard, was published in Her research areas include Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, Kierkegaard and Existentialism, the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, and German Idealism (focus on Kant and Hegel). Two books are expected soon, joining several articles already published on these domains. Marcia Morgan is also an active translator of philosophy works, and has regularly lectured on invitation in the USA and Europe. Laura Llevadot Pascual (PhD, Univ. Barcelona, 2006) is lecturer in the Department of History of Philosophy, Esthetics and Philosophy of Culture at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Barcelona. She has researched the category of repetition in Kierkegaard, and her present research areas include contemporary readings of Kierkegaard (ethics, religion and historicity), mainly

11 Biographical Notes 11 Adorno, Derrida and Levinas; and also the philosophy and poetry of Maria Zambrano, concerning the recuperation of difference as criticism to rationalism. She has published many articles, edited books and authored a work on Kierkegaard, and has lectured on many occasions on the Danish philosopher and his implications to modern thinkers. Richard Purkarthofer (PhD, Univ. Vienna, Austria, 2000) has lectured at different universities in Germany and is now Assistant Professor at the University of Wuppertal. He was a member of the team for the publication and commentaries on the works of Kierkegaard (Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter edition) in at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center in Copenhagen. He was guest scholar at the Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon between January and March He was 2010 Kierkegaard House Foundation Fellow at the Hong Kierkegaard Library (St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, USA). He belonged to the initial ( ) editorial board of the new German translation of the Works of Kierkegaard (Deutsche Søren Kierkegaard Edition), of Kierkegaardiana and of the series Texts from Golden Age Denmark (main editor, Jon Stewart). He is the author of Kierkegaard (Leipzig, Reclam, 2005) and has published a string of articles on this philosopher, ranging from philological issues and their implications on philosophical thought, to editorial issues and the aftermath of Kierkegaard s editions. Elisabete M. de Sousa (PhD, Univ. Lisbon, 2006) is main researcher at the Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon since Her PhD dissertation in Literary Theory was published in 2008 (A Prática Crítica de Berlioz, Kierkegaard, Liszt e Schumann The Practical Criticism of B., K., L. and S.); in the case of Kierkegaard, the work highlights the philosopher s knowledge of music, the role music plays in some aspects of his thought, and his direct acquaintance with the musical criticism of Berlioz and Schumann, and the performative nature of Liszt as virtuoso. She has published several articles and lectured on these topics in Portugal and abroad, and also on the relations between music and literature, as well as on Kierkegaard s reception of the thought of Friedrich Schiller. She is a member of the translation team for the works of Kierkegaard; she has translated Fear and Trembling and is currently working on the translation of Either/Or. Claudia Welz (PhD, Univ. Zürich, 2007) is now Associate Professor at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, where she teaches Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Danish National Research Foundation s Center for Subjectivity Research. She studied Theology and Philosophy in Tübingen, Jerusalem, Munich and Heidelberg. As a PhD student, she was affiliated with the Institute for Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Zurich. She has received the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise for her dissertation Love s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy, Further, she is the author of Vertrauen und Versuchung, 2010 (Belief and Temptation) and the editor of Despite Oneself: Subjectivity and its Secret in Kierkegaard and Levinas, 2008, and co -editor of Trust, Sociality, Selfhood, Maria Leonor L. O. Xavier (PhD, Univ. Lisbon, 1994) is Associate Professor at the Philosophy Department of the Humanities Faculty of the University of Lisbon, where she lectures mainly in the area of Medieval Philosophy. She is also a member of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Philosophy (SIEPM), of the Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon (CFUL), where she has coordinated several projects, and of the Portuguese Society of Medieval Philosophy (SPFM). She is the author of three books on Medieval Philosophy, and translated Petrus Hispanus and Tomás Galo into Portuguese. She has recently edited two volumes of essays, A Questão de Deus (The Question of God), 2010 and 2011, the result of a major project under her coordination at CFUL.

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13 Abbreviations of Søren Kierkegaard s works used in the volume BA CA CI CD CUP1 The Book on Adler, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, The Concept of Anxiety, ed. and trans. by Reidar Thomte, Princeton: Princeton University Press, The Concept of Irony, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Christian Discourses, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, CUP2 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, DIO DVS EO1 EO2 Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Either/Or I, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Either/Or II, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, EUD Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, FT/ R Fear and Trembling. Repetition, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, JP Søren Kierkegaard s Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, vol. 1-6, Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press, KJN Kierkegaard s Journals and Notebooks, Vol. 2, Journals ee -KK, ed. By M. J. Cappelørn, A. Hannay, D. Kangas, B. H. Kirmmse, V. Rumble, K. Brian Söderquist and G. Pattison (vol. editor), Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, Kierkegaard in Lisbon, Lisboa, CFUL, 2012, pp

14 14 Abbreviations of Søren Kierkegaard s works used in the volume M The Moment and Late Writings, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Pap. Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vol. i -xi, 3 ed. by P.A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr and E. Torsting, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag ; 2nd. edition, ed. by N. Thulstrup, vol. xii -xiii supplements by N. Thulstrup, vol. xiv- XVI. Index by N.J. Cappelørn, Gyldendal: Copenhagen, PC PF PV Practice in Christianity, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Philosophical Fragments, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, The Point of View, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, SKS Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, ed. Søren Kierkegaards Forskningscenteret, vols. 1-55, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, SLW SUD SV1 WA WL Stages on Life s Way, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, The Sickness unto Death. A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Samlede Værker, ed. by A.B. Drachmann, J.L. Heiberg, and H.O. Lange, vol. i -xiv, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, Without Authority (including The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air, Two Ethical Religious Essays, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, An Upbuilding Discourse, Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays), ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Works of Love, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

15 Introduction Kierkegaard in Lisbon reunites a number of essays mainly focused on the contemporary reception of Kierkegaard in philosophical, literary and anthropological studies, and on the discussion of the implications of Kierkegaard s approach to categories like time, the self, the human, faith, governance, particularly in the author s first period of production; special emphasis is given to Fear and Trembling, Repetition, Philosophical Fragments, the Upbuilding Discourses, and At the Graveside. As a whole, this collection of essays, written by scholars coming from varied academic backgrounds, all of them with solid previous research on the author, addresses and challenges the existing literature in several areas of study and research on the Danish philosopher, by making use of differentiated, but complementary, modalities of reflection. Kierkegaard in Lisbon is the end result of a number of events along 2010 and 2011 which saw the first presentation of these essays, namely, conferences and seminars held by the Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa (Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon, CFUL) and hosted by the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, and coordinated by the editors of the present volume, José Miranda Justo and Elisabete M. de Sousa, who are members of the Portuguese translation team for the works of Kierkegaard (with Susana Janic). These conferences and seminars have become a regular feature of the research and translation work developed at CFUL, and supported by the Portuguese Foudation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, FCT); the events are intended to develop and consolidate the holistic approach that is the actual guiding thread of different tasks involved in the translation of Kierkegaard. In fact, three orders of complex categories conflate in the author s oeuvre the esthetic, the ethic and the religious; in the present approach, not only is their coexistence accepted, but it is also taken as the illuminating and aggregating element. Accordingly, translation and research have been carried out in close connection and conceived as reflection in progress, and the choice of the topics and the works chosen for the essays naturally correspond to the volumes under translation and/or recently published. Laura Llevadot Pascual, Maria Leonor Xavier, José Miranda Justo, Elisabete M. de Sousa and Darío Gonzalez were the speakers at the conference on April, 30 th 2010, which also saw the book launch of the translations of Repetition and Fear and Kierkegaard in Lisbon, Lisboa, CFUL, 2012, pp

16 16 Introduction Trembling, respectively, A Repetição and Temor e Tremor; included in this volume is Carlos João Correia s presentation of the two volumes. Arne Grøn and Claudia Welz were in Lisbon on October, 22 nd 2010; and M. Jamie Ferreira, Marcia Morgan, Elisabete M. de Sousa and José Miranda Justo delivered papers on May, 5 th Richard Purkarthofer was resident invited scholar at CFUL during the first three months of 2011, and his essay condenses a substancial part of the seminars he held in Lisbon; Maria Luísa Ribeiro Ferreira s contribution also dates from this period. The 2010 conferences were mainly focused on the treatment of issues rising from the reading of the Upbuilding Discourses. In At a Graveside: ethics and ontology, Laura Llevadot examines the connection between the ethical and the ontological, the edifying and the philosophical, as patent in Martin Heidegger s appropriation of Kierkegaard, in an attempt to clarify the role of the edifying in the thought of the German philosopher. In Patience as the Temporality of Inner Life in Kierkegaard s Upbuilding Discourses, Darío Gonzaléz, based on Kierkegaard s use of patience and expectation within the complex relation of the self with both temporality and eternity, explores the thematic and structural connections between this characterization of the soul and the theory of temporality exposed in The Concept of Anxiety. Providence is the main topic of Maria Leonor Xavier s essay, entitled The believer`s faith and the philosopher`s distrust, whose aim is to discern a personal approach to the question of harmony or disharmony between a philosophically admissible idea of God and the belief in a provident God. In his first essay ( From a differentiation in times to the earnestness of existence. Some elements of the Three Upbuilding Discourses of 1843 useful for an understanding of the category of repetition ), José Miranda Justo contrasts a quick, brief time identified with rashness and hastiness, and with the work of strict understanding with the protracted, distended time of love and of slow understanding, so as to present the constitution of meaning capable of accounting for the connection between the slow time of repetition and the concept of meaning (or sense). In Speaking in Human Terms, Elisabete M. de Sousa presents Harold Bloom s considerations on the question of genius, as well as the implications of Bloom s remark on the determinant role of the negation of seeming realities for the interpretations of the Danish philosopher s text. The brief communication by Carlos João Correia contains a number of considerations regarding the merit of the work developed by the translation team and the expected impact of these translations. The 2010 October Conference featured Time, Courage, Selfhood: Reflections on Kierkegaard s Discourse To Preserve One s Soul in Patience, by Arne Grøn, who developed the idea that an edifying discourse can be philosophically stimulating, by means of exploring the topic of subjectivity present in both dimensions of Kierkegaard s work, namely its implication in edification. And also, Human Perfection: Overcoming Oneself. A Discussion of Kierkegaard s Four Upbuilding Discourses (1844) with reference to Luther, Heidegger, and Simone Weil by Claudia Welz, who discussed the normativity of human selfhood, especially on one common motif: human perfection versus self -deception. The second year of the project produced a set of six presentations and the ensuing articles. In Time Determinations in Kierkegaard s Philosophical Fragments, José

17 Introduction 17 Miranda Justo continues the discussion of the previous distinction established between a slow, protracted time and a quick time, taking now into account the category of paradox, in its original context, and as the determining factor in the category of instant. Elisabete M. de Sousa demonstrated Harold Bloom s understanding of Philosophical Fragments, giving special emphasis to his debt to the thought of the Danish philosopher in what concerns the fundaments of his theory of the anxiety of influence. In Philosophical Fragments in Perspective, M. Jamie Ferreira considers four perspectives in transcendent revealed religion in Philosophical Fragments: revelation as Love, revelation as Truth, revelation as Leap/Passion/Gift, and revelation in relation to Socratic subjectivity. Marcia Morgan s essay, Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, and Critical Theory, takes Kierkegaard s conception of the subject as one of the most viable models of socio -political activism in the twenty -first century (mainly Martin Matuštík), hence proving just how relevant Kierkegaard is to a critical theory of society today. In The via perardua Salvation in Spinoza and Kierkegaard, Maria Luísa Ribeiro Ferreira confronts the two philosophers, analyzing the dynamics of passion in the itinerary of salvation; she gives special attention to Kierkegaard s mentions of Spinoza s philosophy, especially in Philosophical Fragments. As for Richard Purkarthofer, in Being Present to Oneself: Some Remarks on the Role of Optical and Acoustic Imagery in Kierkegaard s Upbuilding Discourses, he discusses the implications of this type of imagery for an accurate interpretation of the philosophical and anthropological content of the discourses, in what regards Kierkegaard s thought on the constitution of the human self. A final word to express our thanks to all the authors for their contributions and support, to Professor Leonel Ribeiro dos Santos, at the time Director of the Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon, for all his interest and supportive help, and to Professor António M. Feijó, the dean of the Faculty, for hosting the project and the events.

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19 At a Graveside: Ethics and Ontology* Laura Llevadot University of Barcelona The title of this paper refers to the relations between Kierkegaard and Heidegger on the question of death, specifically the question of one s own death. It has already been pointed out 1 that many aspects of the existential analysis of death that Heidegger sets out at the beginning of the second section of Being and Time appear to be based on the meditation on death developed by Kierkegaard in his occasional discourse At a Graveside. The fact that in a footnote just before the start of this section Heidegger says, in reference to Kierkegaard, that there is more to be learned philosophically from his edifying writings than from his theoretical ones 2 seems to point directly to this text, in which unlike others such as Works of Love Kierkegaard does not take into account the death of the Other, i.e. the relationship of the survivor with the deceased, but, like Heidegger in Being and Time, insists on the need to think one s own death. Given that the similarities between the two texts are not limited to expressing the need to think one s own death but reach the point where Kierkegaard s words echo through Heidegger s text, in some cases even literally, Kierkegaard s influence on the early Heidegger at least if we are allowed to maintain this distinction has frequently been examined. For example, the relations between Kierkegaard and Heidegger can be analyzed from an interpretative position which Heidegger himself favors, as we will see, according to which Heidegger secularizes Kierkegaard s thoughts on religion, this meaning that, from a certain perspective, Heidegger would be credited with raising to the level of philosophical thought what in Kierkegaard still has elements of religious or edifying thought. As far as the texts we are dealing with here are concerned, it has been said that Heidegger secularizes the Kierkegaardian dying to immediacy through his conception of Dasein as being -for -death. 3 It could * This paper has been made possible by the financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Research Project: El horizonte de lo común. Entre una subjetividad no personal y una comunidad no identitaria, FFI (FISO). 1 See Michael Theunissen, The Upbuilding in the Thought of Death: Traditional Elements, Innovative Ideas, an Unexhausted Possibilities in Kierkegaard s At a Graveside, in International Kierkegaard Commentary, 9 & 10, edited by Robert Perkins, Mercer: Mercer University Press, 2006, pp See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Oxford: Blackwell, 1962, p. 494; henceforth referred to as BT. 3 See Hubert L. Dreyfus and Jane Rubin, Appendix: Kierkegaard, Division II and Late Heidegger, in Dreyfus, Hubert L., Being in the world: A commentary on Heidegger s Being and Time, Division 1. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 1991, p Kierkegaard in Lisbon, Lisboa, CFUL, 2012, pp

20 20 Laura Llevadot be deduced from this that Heidegger makes Kierkegaard acceptable to the 20 th century, that his existential analysis purges all the stiffness from the religious dogma that survives in Kierkegaard s text. However, it is also possible to understand it as meaning the opposite, by reading Kierkegaard against Heidegger and then saying that by ontologizing Kierkegaard s existential categories, Heidegger depletes the latter s thought of its ethical import, central to the focus on personal edification. 4 This second reading would solve the problem of the relations between Kierkegaard and Heidegger by defending the edifying, the ethical, as opposed to a constantly abstract ontology that Kierkegaard would have denounced out of hand. Although as Kierkegaard scholars we would be tempted to subscribe to the second interpretation, it would nevertheless be worth our while to spend time on analyzing this connection between the ethical and the ontological, the edifying and the philosophical, which Heidegger s appropriation of Kierkegaard has brought about. In his existential analysis of death, Heidegger himself points out what differentiates his ideas from any edifying meditation: Nor is anything decided ontically about the other -worldly and its possibility, any more than about the this -worldly ; it is not as if norms and rules for comporting oneself towards death were to be proposed for edification. But our analysis of death remains purely this -worldly in so far as it interprets that phenomenon merely in the way in which it enters into any particular Dasein as a possibility of its Being. (BT 292) For the second time within a few pages Heidegger refers to the edifying. The first time he does this is to say that it is in Kierkegaard s edifying discourses that the philosophical should be sought, while the second is to distinguish his phenomenological analysis of death from any discourse for edification. Without yet entering into the distinction between the edifying and the discourse for edification that Kierkegaard will establish, it is clear that Heidegger places the edifying on the side of the ontic like all Kierkegaardian thought in order to legitimize his analysis as strictly ontological. The aim of this paper is to reconsider this relationship between the edifying and the ontological based on a parallel rereading of the two texts. This is not so as to defend Kierkegaard against Heidegger or vice versa, but rather an attempt to clarify what the role of the edifying in post -metaphysical thought might be, assuming it still has a place there. To achieve this aim I will first carry out a brief analysis of the similarities in subject and approach that can be found in the occasional discourse At a Graveside and the first chapter of the second section of Being and Time, Dasein s Possibility of Being -a -whole, and Being -towards -death. We will then need to obtain a definition of the edifying to enable us to understand the difference between Kierkegaard and Heidegger as regards their meditation on death. Finally it will be shown that the difference between the ontological in Heidegger and the edifying in Kierkegaard 4 See Patricia J. Huntington, Heidegger s Reading of Kierkegaard Revisited. From Ontological Abstraction to Ethical Concretion, in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, edited by Martin J. Matuštík and Merold Westphal, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995, p.44.

21 At a Graveside: Ethics and Ontology 21 does not lie in the fact that the former is devoid of any ethical consideration but in its position with regard to knowledge. 1. Echoes A parallel reading of the occasional discourse At a Graveside and the existential analysis of death in the second section of Being and Time enables us to appreciate a clear difference in tone, in discursive form, but also a similarity in subject and approach that cannot be ignored. It is not simply that some themes are repeated but that Heidegger appears to draw direct inspiration from Kierkegaard s text to approach the problem of death in the same way, i.e. the need to think it, to think it as one s own death, rejecting both the everyday way and the abstract way of confronting death, and even in defining it as indeterminable. Let us look one by one at these aspects which are repeated almost literally: 1.1. Thinking death Both texts coincide in pointing out the need to think death, along with the priority of this thought over any conception of life. Heidegger explicitly states that the existential interpretation of death takes precedence over any biology and ontology of life; (BT 291) the ontology of Dasein is superordinate to an ontology of life, and here Heidegger stresses the term superordinate. The question of death therefore needs to be explained before life can be defined one way or another. Any ontology of life is set on an unquestioned pre -conception of death that existential analysis sets out to clarify as a preliminary step towards any thematization of the life of Dasein. The ethical side of this methodological priority is also revealed when Heidegger acknowledges that what guides the analysis is a possible authenticity of its existence, (BT 311) and that this, in turn, lies in the possibility of authentic Being -towards- death (BT 304) as an existentive possibility of Dasein. We also find the thought of death taking priority over the thought of life in Kierkegaard s text: Life s earnestness is earnest, and yet there is no earnestness unless the external is ennobled in one s consciousness; in this lies the possibility of illusion. The earnestness of death is without deception, because it is not death that is earnest but the thought of death. (DIO 74-75) This distinction between the earnestness of life and the earnestness of death that Kierkegaard establishes, according to how they relate to the external and the internal, serves to prioritize the thought of death over the thought of life. Although, through awareness, the external may be uplifted the tasks of life, for instance and we may try to internalize our mode of life, self -deception is always possible and there is always a chance that the occupations themselves may be confused with the earnestness of the inner being. The thought of death, on the other hand, teaches what is earnest: to be precise, it teaches what is earnest in life. It is the thought of death that gives earnestness to life in the first place, transforming it by virtue of its retroactive power. (DIO 98) In this sense

22 22 Laura Llevadot thinking death is superordinate to thinking life not as a methodological precaution but as an ethical requirement. One can only learn what is earnest in life by virtue of the earnestness of the thought of death, which must retroactively transform our mode of life One s own death In order for the thought of death to bring earnestness to life, in this discourse Kierkegaard believes as Heidegger does that that thought must refer to the death of oneself and not the death of the other. Unlike in the penultimate chapter of Works of Love, entitled The Work of Love in Recollecting One Who is Dead, where he establishes the relationship with the deceased as a criterion for measuring the capacity for loving one s neighbor, in At a Graveside Kierkegaard distinguishes explicitly between witnessing someone else s death and thinking about one s own: there is sheer sorrow when the dead person was one of yours; ( ) but even if it was your child, even if it was your beloved, and even if it was your one and only guide, this is still a mood; and even if you would willingly die in their place, this is also a mood, and even if you think that this is easier, this is also a mood. Earnestness is that you think death, and that you are thinking it as your lot, and that you are then doing what death is indeed unable to do namely, that you are and death also is. (DIO 75) The death of someone else, someone we have loved, fills us with sorrow and despair, but the sorrow is not earnestness, but that which prevents us from achieving it. For this reason Kierkegaard contrasts earnestness against mood in this text, because mood does not allow us to think about the death of oneself, about death as something assigned to us as individuals which, when we think of it as our own, must transform our mode of life. Mourning the deceased, the elated fancy, prevents us from reaching that earnestness which would teach us just how to control those feelings. The distinction Heidegger makes between dying [Sterben] and demise [Ableben] seems to be based on the Kierkegaardian distinction between the earnestness and the mood brought about by the death of the other, i.e. the dead person. The dying of the Others is not something which we experience in a genuine sense; at most we are always just there alongside ; (BT 282) Dying is something that every Dasein itself must take upon itself at the time. By its very essence, death is in every case mine, in so far as it is at all. (BT 284) What Heidegger will call the way in which the deceased has Dasein -with or is still -a -Dasein [Nochdaseins] (BT 260) with those who are left behind belongs to the ontic aspect of the demise. The deceased is the one who has stopped living, the dead person, with whom we have a certain type of relationship depending on our cultural roots. Research into how this relationship is lived would, according to Heidegger, fall to psycho -ethnology and in no way to fundamental ontology. On the contrary, fundamental ontology must deal with the death of the self, death as that which is assigned to Dasein as an individual.

23 At a Graveside: Ethics and Ontology Epicurean maxim In so far as it concerns thinking death of oneself, both Kierkegaard explicitly and Heidegger implicitly must reject the Epicurean maxim whereby death should not be feared given that when it is, I am not, and when I am, it is not. Kierkegaard comments that: This is the jest by which the cunning contemplator places himself on the outside. (DIO 73) If Kierkegaard had previously rejected the relationship with the deceased as the proper place to think death because the sorrow, the mood, prevented earnestness, it is now abstract thought that is accused of preventing earnestness as well, by reducing to a logical contradiction that which should actually transform the entire life. By using logic and jest, abstract thought is able to avoid the need to think one s own death, though this tactic is as futile as emotional excess, seeing that death is assigned to us equally as individuals, whether or not we want to think about it. In fact, as already pointed out, it is a question of doing exactly the opposite of what Epicurus suggests, a question of being where death also is through the earnestness implied by thinking death, and that is when: you are then doing what death is indeed unable to do namely, that you are and death also is. (DIO 75) Without referring explicitly to Epicurus, Heidegger makes the same criticism. Certainly death is the opposite of existence when I exist death does not and vice versa. However, this logic of opposites is neutralized when it is understood that death is a phenomenon of life hence the possibility of phenomenological analysis and that death belongs to Being -in -the -world. (BT 295) Heidegger can define Dasein as being -for -death precisely because he does not consider death as an event, a reality, something that happens although it may not yet have done so as Epicurus sees it but as the ownmost possibility of Dasein, a possibility that is always there, that defines it in its character of ownmost possibility, that forms part of its existence. Like Kierkegaard, Heidegger wants death to be considered by the living as the ownmost possibility assigned to them as individuals, which an abstract conception of it as a real event yet to happen would not allow Improper death From the above analysis it follows that Kierkegaard and Heidegger will aim to contrast their respective ways of thinking death against those which they both consider to use Heidegger s terminology improper ways of dying and of conceiving death. Kierkegaard is clear in this respect: To die is indeed the lot of every human being and thus is a very mediocre art, but to be able to die well is indeed the highest wisdom of life. Wherein lies the difference? In this, that in the one case the earnestness is the earnestness of death, in the other is the earnestness of the mortal being. And the discourse that makes the distinction cannot, of course, address itself to the dead but to the living. (DIO 76) There would therefore be a way of dying like everyone and an own way of dying, to die well, and the difference between the two lies in the earnestness attached to the person who dies as an individual rather than as a member

24 24 Laura Llevadot of a species which by definition is mortal. The occasional discourse At a Graveside indeed aims at making a difference between the two ways of thinking death. Hence Kierkegaard speaks of death s decision, that is, the decisive character of death for the self. Understanding death as an irrevocable decision which happens to the living takes the place of all poetic, imaginary, symbolic and abstract considerations which reduce thought on death to a mood or to learned generalities that muddle thought without involving the subject. Heidegger will in the same way aim at thinking dying beyond the improper way in which death is conceived in the everyday. Indeed, in the definition of the everyday as the impersonal sphere of the self, there are echoes of the Kierkegaardian idea of the death of the mortal. In the same way that Kierkegaard rejects thinking death generically, Heidegger aims to show how the publicity of everydayness strips death of its character of own possibility from Dasein. And it is not to be taken lightly that Heidegger should use the same example as Kierkegaard when he says: This evasive concealment in the face of death dominates everydayness so stubbornly that, in Being with one another, the neighbours often still keep talking the dying person into the belief that he will escape death and soon return to the tranquillized everydayness of the world of his concern, (BT 297) which seems to paraphrase Kierkegaard s text: the challenge of earnestness to the living is to think it, to think that all is over. This is the difficult thing, because even in the moment of death the dying person thinks that he still might have some time to live, and one is even afraid to tell him that all is over. (DIO 79) Hence both Heidegger and Kierkegaard condemn the evasive concealment of death in everydayness which prevents facing its decisive character Indeterminacy. The similarities between the two texts are not, however, limited to the way they set out the need to think death and to think it in contrast to various improper ways, as we have seen up to now. Even as regards the characterization of death as indeterminable, Heidegger again seems to cover Kierkegaardian thought point by point. What At a Graveside aims to show is the decisive, indeterminable, inexplicable character of death. Heidegger in turn characterizes dying as the ownmost possibility, non -relational, not to be outstripped, certain and indefinite. The ownness and irrespectiveness of death refers to what Kierkegaard was pointing to when he insisted on thinking oneself dead rather than thinking about the death of another. The insuperability is a reworking of what Kierkegaard understands by the decisive character of death, although Heidegger will link it to co -being with others. But the certainty and indeterminacy by which Heidegger characterizes dying directly duplicates Kierkegaard s reflection on the indeterminable, certain character of death. Kierkegaard states in his discourse that: The certainty of death determines the learner once and for all in earnestness, but the uncertainty of death is the daily or at least the frequent or necessary surveillance that watches over the earnestness only this is earnestness. (DIO 95) The certainty of death refers to the fact that the living can be absolutely sure that death will arrive. There is nothing more certain for the living. Regardless

25 At a Graveside: Ethics and Ontology 25 of whether this living thing is a productive tree or a barren one, it will surely die, (DIO 93) and that is why death is indifferent to the particular characteristics of the living. At the same time, however, it is absolutely uncertain when this will happen; often when least expected, when one is on the point of finding a solution, then death comes. When one seeks it, on the other hand, when one is tired of living, then one has to wait for death. This dual character is what makes it indeterminable: So death is indefinable [ubestemmelig] the only certainty, and the only thing about which nothing is certain. (DIO 91) Heidegger includes this idea when he defines the certainty as holding death for true (BT 309) on the part of Dasein, which will enable him to define Dasein as being -for -death. He also repeats Kierkegaard by characterizing the ownmost possibility of Dasein as indefinite, (BT 284) understanding by this that the when in which the utter impossibility of existence becomes possible remains constantly indefinite. (BT ) It is precisely this indeterminacy that will allow Heidegger to establish anguish as the affective disposition that reveals to Dasein its inclination towards death, and therefore its originary ontological condition that the fear of death hides. We can therefore see that the similarities in subject and approach between the two texts enable the Kierkegaardian influence of At a Graveside on these pages of Being and Time to be established fairly conclusively. However, our interest here is not so much to establish this influence historiographically, but rather to see what exactly there is that makes both texts radically different. Heidegger s note on Kierkegaard s edifying discourses just before he begins his analysis of death, along with his explicit rejection of the edifying at the core of the analysis, appear to indicate that what separates him from Kierkegaard is precisely this appeal to edification. Heideggerian meditation would, on the contrary, show an explicit desire to carry out a phenomenological analysis to enable Dasein to be analyzed without holding up to Dasein an ideal of existence with any special content or forcing any such ideal upon it from outside. (BT 311) However, it is not certain that Heidegger locates the edifying in the same place as Kierkegaard, and neither is it certain that no specific ideal of existence is to be found in his analysis. It is in the debate on the edifying that we will be able to see the distance separating the two texts beyond their indisputable internal resonance. 2. The edifying Despite what Heidegger says, the difference between At a Graveside and the first chapter of the second section of Being and Time cannot lie in the secular, apparently neutral, character of the latter. When Heidegger says that his existential analysis of death is to be found in the here and now and that it is not a question of proposing norms for behaviour in the face of death, he is thereby aiming to make a distinction between his own analysis and edifying discourse, understanding that the latter does propose rules and norms for behavior in the face of death and thematize the beyond and its possibility. But Heidegger has read Kierkegaard and knows very

26 26 Laura Llevadot well that At a Graveside, although it may be considered an edifying discourse as he himself seems to agree, does not propose rules for behavior in the face of death and neither does it thematize the beyond. If the edifying is understood to be a normative, prescriptive discourse laden with religious assumptions, then it must be recognized that At a Graveside is not of the sort. Perhaps what is happening here is not that Heidegger has misunderstood the sense of the edifying in Kierkegaard, but that his prime concern is to distance himself from Kierkegaardian discourse so as to be able to say that his own discourse is without proposals, a strictly phenomenological analysis in which Kierkegaardian reflection is purged of all theological contamination. Hence Heidegger will state that: Methodologically, the existential analysis is superordinate to the questions of a biology, psychology, theodicy, or theology of death. (BT 292) This methodological priority of the ontological over the ontic (which will include the edifying, the theological and Christian anthropology) is woven throughout the text. Thus the idea that the analysis of death in Being and Time carries out a secularization of Kierkegaard s discourse may actually originate from Heidegger himself, who would take the credit for rising to the level of ontological meditation what would otherwise remain in the realm of merely ontic investigation. Nevertheless, the difference between the two texts cannot lie here firstly because it is not certain that the existential analysis is not laden with religious assumptions, as Derrida has tried to show, 5 but above all because what Heidegger scornfully calls the edifying in no way coincides with Kierkegaard s conception of it, especially since Kierkegaard is very careful to distinguish between what Heidegger tries to match: the edifying and the religious. Let us first look at what Kierkegaard understands by edifying to enable us then to decide whether or not At a Graveside can be considered an edifying discourse. Only on the basis of this analysis will we be able to find a criterion for distinguishing between the two texts that will not depend on the simplicity of the Heideggerian differentiation between the ontological and the ontically edifying In the Concluding Unscientific Postscript it can be read that: Not every upbuilding truth is Christian; the upbuilding is a wider category. (CUP 256) Kierkegaard therefore distinguishes between the Christian and the edifying. Christian discourse would only be a case of edification. In fact what Climacus is concerned to do in this text is to point out that the three edifying discourses of 1848 are thus called in order to distinguish them from sermons, i.e. those discourses given by the authority of a parish pastor that would stress religious categories. However, Climacus states that these discourses use only ethical categories of immanence, not the doubly reflected religious categories in the paradox. (CUP 256) Christian discourse therefore deals with Christian categories such as incarnation, paradox, sin, etc., and it is an indirect discourse inasmuch it uses double reflection. The edifying discourse, Kierkegaard 5 Derrida, Jacques, Aporias. Dying. Awaiting (one another at) the Limits of Truth, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, pp. 58ff.