Kierkegaard on Truth: One or Many?

Mind:fzw010 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

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.

Other Versions

reprint Watts, Daniel (2018) "Kierkegaard on Truth: One or Many?". Mind 127(505):197-223

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-11-17

Downloads
941 (#17,976)

6 months
166 (#28,927)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

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.

Add more citations

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: Harvard University Press.

View all 35 references / Add more references