Philosophical fragments, Johannes Climacus Book

Two interesting works, though both require a fairly hefty amount of background knowledge, and a willingness to wade through K's more-Hegel-than-Hegel style, which is... well, it's as bad as Hegel.

Johannes Climacus, the second work here, was written first, and not finished. The point is fairly clear, nonetheless: it's meant to be a practical refutation of the idea that philosophy should 'begin with doubt.' In vulgar historical terms, Descartes decided that that was how philosophy should be done; K is here attacking that vulgar understanding. And fair enough.

As a work of fiction--which is purports to be--JC is a funny portrait of the earnest, alienated young philosopher, who tries to understand what the older philosophers around him are saying. If philosophy begins with doubt, he wonders, what could that mean? Does it mean 'modern philosophy begins from doubt'? But then, if this philosophy is modern, doesn't that suggest that there is something prior to it, and that therefore modern philosophy begins by doubting something in particular (i.e., pre-modern philosophy), and doesn't that mean that philosophy doesn't begin with doubt, but with something else? Perhaps they just mean "some modern philosophers begin with doubt," which is fine, but that's not what they say--they say modern philosophy, not philosophers. And in doing so they seem to suggest that modern philosophy is both a historical event (inasmuch as it's 'modern') and eternal, since modern philosophy is modern inasmuch as it's correct and systematic--but if it's correct and systematic, then it must also be correct for all time and all places. But that can't be, since there just is philosophy that begins with wonder or faith.

Perhaps they really do mean that *all* philosophy begins with doubt? But that would be self-contradictory, since then he, young philosopher, would have to doubt those who say that all should start from doubt, and start from something else instead. Unless just one philosopher could be said to be the origin in some way, so that "a particular philosopher had doubted for all just as Christ suffered for all," so we didn't have to doubt for ourselves anymore? That doesn't seem right. The young philosopher finds only two options here: either he will let someone else have done the doubting for him, in which case he isn't really a philosopher; or he will do the doubting himself, but then has to doubt the doubting--so he is a philosopher, but there is no philosophy, because he can't accept anything as such.

The outcomes are: first, this is a fine parody of Hegelian thought, but also a legitimate example of Hegelian dialectics. Second, philosophers obviously don't begin with doubt, really, but only say they do, and as such are hypocrites. Finally, it's left unclear whether Johannes' thought here is doubting, or not, or philosophy, or not. It seems fairly obvious to me that JC is, in fact, doing philosophy while he wonders about how he can start doing philosophy. But perhaps not.

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The longer work in this volume is 'Philosophical Fragments,' which, in true Kierkegaardian fashion, aren't read very often, while his 'Conclusion Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments' is one of his best known works (in philosophy departments). PF asks, more or less, what the relationship is between Socratic education (as depicted in Meno and so on) and Christianity, in what Kierkegaard takes to be the good sense. It's an odd book, but essentially K suggests that the story of Christ's incarnation can be told just as coherently as the story of Socratic coming-to-wisdom, with the caveat that the incarnation, Christ, conversion, and Christianity itself are all paradoxical. But that's okay, because at heart the acquisition of knowledge, too, is a paradox: "to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think." If it can already be thought, we are not acquiring knowledge; if we are content to leave anything outside thought, then we are not acquiring that knowledge. Most of the interest here is really theological: what is Christ, what is God, how do people relate to them? It turns out to be harder than you might expect.

I have no idea who, other than me, would find this interesting, but obviously some people do.