Kierkegaard on Truth: One or Many?

Mind:fzw010 (2016)
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Abstract

This paper reexamines Kierkegaard's work with respect to the question whether truth is one or many. I argue that his famous distinction between objective and subjective truth is grounded in a unitary conception of truth as such: truth as self-coincidence. By explaining his use in this context of the term ‘redoubling’ [Fordoblelse], I show how Kierkegaard can intelligibly maintain that truth is neither one nor many, neither a simple unity nor a complex multiplicity. I further show how these points shed much-needed light on the relationship between objective and subjective truth, conceived not as different kinds or species of truth but as different ways in which truth manifests itself as a standard of success across different contexts of inquiry.

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Daniel Watts
University of Essex

Citations of this work

The problem of Kierkegaard's socrates.Daniel Watts - 2017 - Res Philosophica (4):555-579.
Rule‐Following and Rule‐Breaking: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein.Daniel Watts - 2017 - European Journal of Philosophy (4):1159-1185.

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References found in this work

Truth as one and many.Michael P. Lynch - 2009 - New York : Clarendon Press,: Clarendon Press.
Philosophical grammar.Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1974 - Oxford [Eng.]: Blackwell. Edited by Rush Rhees.
Concluding unscientific postscript to Philosophical fragments.Søren Kierkegaard - 1992 - Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Edited by Howard Vincent Hong, Edna Hatlestad Hong & Søren Kierkegaard.
A case for irony.Jonathan Lear - 2011 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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