Interest in the Postscript: The Telos of Knowing

Abstract

In the published works, the term interesse occurs nowhere as often, nor with such apparent philosophical valence, as in the Concluding Unscienti fic Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. No discussion of the role of interest in Kierkegaard’s account of self and vision would therefore be complete without engaging with the way interesse is used in this work. Moreover, the primary usages of interesse (in its philosophically interesting sense) in Kierkegaard’s work are to be found in two of the three works ‘written’ by Johannes Climacus — Johannes Climacus or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est, and the Postscript. Though I’ve argued that the mode of cognition picked out by interesse in Johannes Climacus plays a central role in other works as well, the explicit use of the term is largely confined to the Climacan writings and the journals. To a large extent, then, the identification of interesse with the non-thetic self-referentiality built into thought that the present work has attempted to demonstrate will succeed or fail depending on whether this sense attaches to the use of interesse in the Postscript.