Deer Park or the Monastery?

Abstract

KIERKEGAARD AND HEGEL ON UNHAPPY CONSCIOUSNESS, RENUNCIATION, AND WORLDLINESS In the second division of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard presents a dialectic of inward deepening that attempts to reverse Hegel's solution to the problem of Unhappy Consciousness. Both Hegel and Kierkegaard's dialectics take up the question of the duality of the subject, and both do so in the concrete context of a question that is more practical than theoretical, namely, How does the subject, as something universal or infinite, relate to the finite world, especially to its own finitude and particularity? For Hegel, the religiousness typified by the Unhappy Consciousness is radically dual and alienated, a split subjectivity that condemns and revokes base finitude, including itself, in favor of an other-worldly God. However, this split subjectivity is not ultimate, and the dialectic of Unhappy Consciousness attempts to establish how it can be and indeed has been surpassed in a reconciliation of the worldly and the beyond. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, begins with immanence, where the divine seems somehow to pervade the finite and recollection almost seems to provide a means of gaining hold of it. The unfolding of the dialectic of inward deepening is, however, nothing but the process whereby the disharmony, inequality, and incommensurability of the finite and the absolute becomes ever more pronounced, ever more incapable of sublation or mediation. Significantly, the medieval Church and monastery play a pivotal role in both dialectics; the monastery therefore provides a promising means for a comparative analysis and critical evaluation of their dialectics. As we shall see, while Hegel finds a positive role for the medieval Church in the overcoming of Unhappy Consciousness, Kierkegaard attempts to develop an alternate path for the religious individual, one that does not pass through the social and ultimately secularizing institution of the Church, but rather brings the inner commitment of religiousness to the pedestrian, to places such as the amusement park Deer Park. In this essay, I take up this analysis of the two dialectics. My primary focus is the relationship of faith to the finite world. I am interested in a pattern of renunciation of the world and return to it found in both dialectics; more specifically, I am interested in the way in which both Kierkegaard and Hegel anticipate and attempt to circumvent the problems surrounding giving and self-sacrifice presented by Derrida, among others, problems such as the way in which self-sacrificing acts tend to confirm the agent that wishes to humble herself.1 As I will show, both dialectics present us with a total gift or self-sacrifice, and with a return of that which is sacrificed which is neither economic nor self-confirming. After a brief analysis of Hegel's dialectic and a detailed analysis of Kierkegaard's, I will argue that despite initial appearances and common prejudices, Kierkegaard's notion of faith as hidden inwardness does not penetrate and develop human finitude to the extent of Hegel's dialectic. In effect, I will try to show how Hegel's dialectical solution to the Unhappy Consciousness out Kierkegaards Kierkegaard, in a way that shows Hegel to be a serious thinker of human finitude, precisely insofar as he is not willing to let alienation be the last word on concrete human existence. Hegel's Dialectic of Unhappy Consciousness According to Hegel, the Unhappy Consciousness is a dual or split subject, fallen and severed from its essence, sunk in the mire of finite existence. On the one hand, the defining feature of its subjective, inner life is a longing for the divine and the beyond as its true home; on the other, there is its finite concrete existence, which it can neither deny nor affirm. This duality and alienation that characterizes the Unhappy Consciousness for Hegel is the sine qua non of religious subjectivity as Kierkegaard understands it. …