Kierkegaard's Non-Dialectical Dialectic

Published in International Philosophical Quarterly 44:4 December 2004

Kierkegaard's Non-Dialectical Dialectic

or

That Kierkegaard is not Hegelian

Henry B. Piper

            A dialectic that mediates is a miscarried genius.

            -- Johannes Climacus, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments[i]

I.          Introduction

            Speculations on Kierkegaard's dialectic have been numerous and spirited.  They typically begin, and too frequently end,[ii] with Hegel, and if one begins with Hegel one cannot but end there.  Doubtless Kierkegaard owes Hegel a great debt, but the debt is a negative one, as Hegel serves Kierkegaard not as mentor but as foil.  But the shadow of Hegel is long, and many of Kierkegaard’s commentators seem unable to escape it. 

Specters of the Demonic in Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky

Presented to the Saint John’s University Faculty Colloquium 6 December 2008

Specters of the Demonic

In Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky:

From Doubt and Despair

To the Trinity of

Love, Freedom and Faith

Henry B. Piper

I feel that absolute atheism is more worthy of respect than worldly indifference....  Whatever you say, the complete atheist still stands at the next-to-the-top rung of the ladder of perfect faith.  He may take that last step, and he may not—who knows?  But the indifferent, they certainly have no faith, only an ugly fear—and only the more sensitive of them have that.

—Father Tikhon to Stavrogin, Dostoevsky Demons[1]

Introduction    

            I shall be speaking of what Kierkegaard refers to, as Vigilius Haufniensis in The Concept of Anxiety[2] and as Anti-Climacus in The Sickness Unto Death,[3] as “the demonic consciousness,” the ultimate intensification of defiant despair.  The demoniac yearns to be a “closed system,” in perfect if tenuous isolation, which she identifies with “freedom” and for which she counts herself solely responsible.  Like a craven, unrepentant alcoholic, the demoniac pretends to eternity by denying and defying it and so is a slave to herself, trapped like Narcissus in unwitting worship of her own image.