For What May I Hope? Thinking with Kant and Kierkegaard
Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin (
1987)
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Abstract
The title question of this dissertation is set within the framework of the medieval question "whether or not besides philosophy anything else is necessary." Before exploring the only two possible answers to this question I set out a view of the dialectic of the relationship between the self, its essential tasks, and hope which, I argue, both Kant and Kierkegaard share. Kant's answer to the medieval question is generally taken to be negative and he attempts to ground hope "innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft." His attempt to do so is followed through its many deferrals until it reaches the point where he must either despair or change the grounds for hope. I think he changes ground. Kierkegaard's answer to the medieval question is usually taken to be affirmative and hope is first discovered jenseits der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. I examine how hope reveals itself to be despair in the lives of the non-religious characters in Kierkegaard's drama and how the religious characters think hope hangs together with the other virtues--faith and love--in their lives. Unfortunately this life begins with what looks like a patent absurdity. The whole dissertation is presented in such a way that the reader will not know whether it counsels despair, revolt or a most unreasonable hope. I am certainly not going to tell you in the abstract