Philosophy 224 Person As Passion: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

Soren Kierkegaard ( ) Kierkegaard spent the majority of his life in his hometown of Copenhagen. Despite this provincialism, his impact on the history of philosophy and religion was profound. An important fideist, he is also often pointed to as a precursor of existentialism. The connection between these two aspects of his thinking is crucial to understanding his account of the self.

The Sickness unto Death Kierkegaard published The Sickness unto Death in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti- Climacus, the “author” of his most important ethico-religious texts. Kierkegaard used the pseudonym to point to what he considered to be an ideal christianity, an ideal he could not represent in himself (and thus in his own name). The sickness in question (and thus the target of this ideal christianity) is despair.

The Relational Self Like Aquinas, Kierkegaard defines the self or person as a type of relation. Following the moderns, the type of relation that Kierkegaard highlights is self-relation, “The self is a relation that relates itself to itself in the relation…” (126c1). Upon consideration of the ground of this self- relation, Kierkegaard identifies two possibilities: self-grounding and other- grounding.

3 Forms of Despair As a result, we can identify three forms of despair (only two of which are despair in the complete sense). 1.The first (limited) form of despair is ignorance of oneself, which is to say failing to recognize that one is in despair. 2.The second (first complete form) is a will to self- destruction. To seek in despair to end it. 3.The third, truest and most authentic form of despair is to will oneself as despairing (“in despair to will to be oneself”).

Relational Self is A Despairing Self Why does the account of the relational self in terms of its ground lead us to an analysis of forms of despair? For Kierkegaard, the person is suspended between the finite and the infinite. The two possible form of grounding refer to which of these terms the self recognizes themselves in. Overcoming despair requires that one commit themselves without remainder to the infinite. –This is Kierkegaard’s definition of a true Christian.

Way to God is Through Despair One question Kierkegaard must address concerns the value of despair. We usually see despair as a bad thing, and Kierkegaard agrees that inasmuch as despair is suffering, it is bad. But, inasmuch as it is only in despair that we are aware of ourselves as a self, and thus aware of our potential relatedness to God, despair is thus good.

Soren Speaks “No matter how much the despairing person avoids it, no matter how successfully he has completely lost himself…eternity nevertheless will make it manifest that his condition was despair and will nail him to himself so that his torment will be that he cannot rid himself of his self…Eternity is obliged to do this, because to have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession, an infinite concession, given to man, but it is also eternity’s claim upon him” (130c2).

Friedrich Nietzsche ( ) Nietzsche was another pivotal figure of 19th century philosophy. Recognized very early as an exceptional intellect, he had a very unlikely, and brief, academic career. The majority of his work consists of substantial criticisms of the religious and philosophical traditions of the West, which he viewed as symptoms of a nihilistic tendency, the positive implications of which he aimed to elucidate.

Morality as Nihilism For Nietzsche, nihilism is an ineradicable human tendency to forswear one’s creative possibilities (what he also calls “power”) and capitulate to an other-determined vision. Morality, in its traditional forms is just such a self (and life) denying structure. 1.One form of this nihilistic or decadent tendency is the attempt to define morality in terms of convention (143c1). 2.Another is to confuse the basic nature of morality (like Kant, Nietzsche locates it in obligation “thou shalt”) with particular moral theories and to assume that criticism of the latter is all that is necessary.

Beyond Good and Evil? Morality as Confession: every moral theory is an expression of an individual will, masking itself in the form of universality. –“…every drive is tyrannical: and it is as such that it tries to philosophize” (145c2). This is particularly true for the philosophical analysis of the will, or more broadly, of the person. A clear example of this, according to Nietzsche is the doctrine of apperception, which played such a key role in modern philosophy’s discussion of the person (146c1). –It’s an expression of the tyranny of the will to truth.

No Person Here One of the assumptions of the modern era is that any acceptable account of the person much ultimately cash out in a treatment of the will, of the capacity of the person to act or choose. Nietzsche’s critical claim in opposition to this tradition is that the will is not a thing, and certainly not simple, “Willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unity only as a word…” (147c1). What’s really going on, he suggests, is the will to command, a will which is not a cause but an effect of the expectation of obedience.

Where is the Person? Certainly not in modern philosophy (148c1-2), nor in what Nietzsche calls here the “objective spirit” whose will to knowledge is too often a will to generality that misses the person entirely. For Nietzsche, the person is the personality, that individual who, through a non-nihilistic, self-creative act asserts themselves in their uniqueness, “…one must test oneself to see whether one is destined for independence…” (148c1). Thus, the concept of a rank of human values (150).