Stephen Dunning examines Kierkegaard's theory of stages in terms of his dialectic of inwardness, shown here to be the Ariadne's thread" uniting all the major pseudonymous works. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library (...) is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

It is an irony that Kierkegaard would have relished that Marilyn Piety’s review in The Owl, 21, 2 : 205–208, of my book, Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Inwardness, was published in a journal dedicated to Hegel studies and read by Hegel scholars. For her criticisms are typical of those for whom Kierkegaard is the David who slew forever the Goliath of Hegelianism. Thus it is not really, as she states, a lack of “substance” that disturbs her about my book; it is (...) the entire project, the very effort to show how much Kierkegaard continued to write books susceptible to Hegelian dialectical analysis long after he had turned his rhetorical weapons in Hegel’s direction. I am grateful to the editors of The Owl for this opportunity to try to convey to Hegel scholars a bit of my own excitement over what I believe is indeed a substantial discovery within the vexed field of Kierkegaard scholarship. (shrink)

Interpretation pervades human thinking. Whether perception or experience, spoken word or written theory, whatever enters our consciousness must be interpreted in order to be understood. Every area of inquiry—art and literature, philosophy and religion, history and the social sciences, even many aspects of the natural sciences—involves countless opportunities to interpret the object of inquiry according to very different paradigms. These paradigms may derive from the language we speak, the nature of our education, or personal preferences. The abundance and diversity of (...) paradigms make interpretation both fascinating in its complexity and often frustrating for the conflicts it generates. In _Dialectical Readings_, Dunning distinguishes three types of interpretation, each defined in terms of a distinctive dialectical way of thinking: theoretical interpretation, which assumes binary oppositions; transactional interpretation, which seeks reciprocal relations; and transformational interpretation, which discerns paradoxical meanings. Dunning offers new and insightful readings of familiar texts by B. F. Skinner, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Lee Benson, Roland Barthes, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault and sheds new light on works by Thomas Kuhn, Joseph Campbell, Reinhold Niebuhr, Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, and Paul Ricoeur. _Dialectical Readings _enables readers to recognize diverse dialectical approaches to understanding—their own as well as those of others—in a way that provides new and helpful insights into a wide variety of subjects in which conflicting interpretations abound. (shrink)

In a pair of articles published in Faith and Philosophy, C. Stephen Evans argues that Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, understands religious experience as the transforming power of an encounter with the love of God. However, in a book published under his own name, Kierkegaard gives a quite different picture of Christian experience. For Self-Examination makes clear that the reception of God’s love is a rebirth that can occur in the believer only insofar as he or she has died to the (...) world - to all possessions, even to the possession of God’s love. According to Kierkegaard, this “dying to” is the truly transforming experience that characterizes Christian spirituality, and that provides the condition for a life infused with faith, hope, and love. (shrink)

An “objectified God” does not satisfy. On this point, surely all will agree with Doctor Marti. To seek an “objectivie essence” behind God’s presence is implicitly to deny the reality of that presence. In subjecting the idea of God to ratiocination, the absoluteness and infinity of God are compromised, for a God-object must assume a particular existence over against the divine essence, and thereby abandon God’s freedom to be, the divine essence as pure relation. On this, reason and faith are (...) in perfect harmony: when God is reduced to an object, it is no longer God that is in view. (shrink)

To those who would classify Hegel either as an atheist or as a pantheist, Joachim Ringleben’s study of his theory of sin provides a clear and comprehensive challenge. The theme of sin in Hegel’s thought is prima facie an important one, notwithstanding the fact that no other book on Hegel’s philosophy of religion has treated it in depth. This lacuna may account for Ringleben’s omission of the customary review of scholarship. Aside from a few footnotes, his study deals exclusively with (...) Hegel’s writings, interrupting its exposition only several times to discuss criticisms put forward by Kierekgaard and Müller in the 19th century. Accordingly, this review will first indicate the general thrust of the expository chapters, noting highlights rather than attempting summaries, and then turn to the question of critical evaluation of Hegel’s theory. (shrink)

The task of comparing and contrasting philosophical opponents is perhaps more difficult methodologically than any other enterprise in the historiography of thought. If the historian attempts to suppress his or her own opinions, the resulting illusion of impartiality will immediately arouse the suspicions of critical readers. If, on the other hand, the writer openly confesses a preference for one of the subjects, then all those who gravitate toward the other will certainly be offended - and it is usually to them (...) that editors will send the book for “review”! This is not simply a matter of straightforward confessions of agreement: the interpreter’s orientation will affect every decision of organization and style, of method in the fullest sense of the word. As Stephen Crites pointedly commented at the end of his own fine work on Hegel and Kierkegaard. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel ReconsideredStephen N. DunningJon Stewart. Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xix + 695. Cloth, $55.00.It is rare to find a scholarly book that treats its topic exhaustively. But Jon Stewart's 658-page Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, despite its author's disclaimers, comes close. It is an impressive attempt to demolish what Stewart calls "the standard view," using a three-part (...) argument: that Hegel exerted a substantial positive influence on the young Kierkegaard; [End Page 500] that Kierkegaard was never the radical critic of Hegel claimed by the "standard view"; and that most Kierkegaard scholars (especially Niels Thulstrup in Kierkegaard's Relation to Hegel [Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980]) have been led astray on these matters by their ignorance of Kierkegaard's philosophical milieu and their ideological bias.Hegel's positive influence on Kierkegaard is presented in chapters devoted respectively to The Concept of Irony, Either/Or, and Sickness Unto Death. Stewart employs a contextual method, limiting himself to passages in Kierkegaard's texts that have clearly been influenced by passages in or characteristics of Hegel's works. He easily shows Hegelian influence on the dialectical structure of the argument in The Concept of Irony, on the contrast between the ancient and "modern" Antigones in Part One of Either/Or, on the concepts of mediation and romantic love presented in Part Two, and on the dialectical structure of the section on "The Forms of This Sickness (Despair)" in The Sickness Unto Death.The claim that Kierkegaard was never a strong critic of Hegel turns on Stewart's careful contextual analysis of the major Danish Hegelians and anti-Hegelians contemporary with Kierkegaard. Thanks to Bruce Kirmmse's Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990), many scholars will be familiar with Heiberg and Martensen, and also the anti-Hegelian Bishop Mynster, but few will have examined the Hegelianism of Adler and the criticisms of Sibbern and Møller. Stewart argues that the texts of Kierkegaard's "middle period," which appear to attack Hegel directly, are really an attack on the Danish Hegelians—especially Heiberg, Martensen and Adler. He claims that "Hegel" often served as a code name for one of these Hegelians, and that such secret codes were commonly used, just like pseudonyms, to avoid giving offence in the small town of Copenhagen.Stewart's criticism of other scholars is based upon both his analyses of the selected passages in Kierkegaard's works and his discussion of the Danish Hegelians. It is true that many scholars have portrayed Kierkegaard as one-dimensionally anti-Hegelian, and some may have done it for the ideological reasons imputed to them by Stewart. But it is not clear that Thulstrup, for example, deserves to be dismissed as a scholar. He clearly admitted that Kierkegaard had read sections of Hegel's major works "intensively," and he also observed that Kierkegaard was provoked to his anti-Hegelianism by the influence of Hegel on Martensen (whom Thulstrup mentions often, as also Heiberg and Mynster). Stewart implies that Thulstrup had little understanding of Hegel and no interest in the Danish Hegelians, but his discussion of Thulstrup's work is too selective to be persuasive.Stewart also seems to have been a bit hasty in concluding that recent scholarship on the Hegel-Kierkegaard relation blindly follows Thulstrup and the "standard view." In different ways, Robert Perkins, Merold Westphal and I have all written on aspects of Kierkegaard's thought that show Hegelian influences. Stewart lists us in his Bibliography and even cites my book as one of several that investigates Hegelian influences on The Sickness Unto Death, but he never discusses the arguments we present, even though they clearly strengthen his claim about Hegel's positive influence on Kierkegaard. Indeed, the only American book on "Hegel and Kierkegaard" he takes seriously is Mark C. Taylor's Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel & Kierkegaard (Berkeley, 1980), which is a creative philosophical project that does not attempt to be a study of their historical relationship. Stewart writes that much scholarship suffers from using a "text-immanent" (628) method of analysis that ignores the relevant historical... (shrink)