Kierkegaard’s Ethical Philosophy

Abstract

Despite fact that he devotes hundreds of pages to consideration of ethical life, Kierkegaard is not usually thought of as an ethical philosopher except in a very broad sense. One reason for this is that his treatment of ethics is basically concrete rather than abstract; he depicts human beings in ethically paradigmatic or problematic situations more than he analyzes ethical concepts and principles. But basic reason, I suspect, is fact that he originated, in Fear and Trembling , notion of a teleological suspension of ethical. The notion of a suspension of ethical, however, presupposes a conception of ethical which is suspended, so Kierkegaard cannot be unconcerned with questions of ethical philosophy. In fact, second volume of his Either/Or contains not only a concrete depiction of ethical existence in persona of its pseudonymous author, but also outlines of a profound ethical philosophy. I would like to discuss some of its basic elements. It is generally recognized that, to extent Kierkegaard has an ethics, it is basically Kantian in nature. I want to show in what respects this is so, but also to show that it is a Kantian ethics made concrete and modified in certain significant ways. It is true, of course, that Kierkegaard's works contain explicit and implicit criticisms of ethical life-stance, and I will occasionally refer to these criticisms. But Kierkegaard did not wrestle with straw men, so primary task that I have adopted is to expound his ethical ideas and suggest some of their strengths. As I noted above, second volume of Either/Or is one of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works; its putative author is a Judge William, to whom I will generally refer simply as the ethicist. The ethicisťs basic Kantianism is clear from his statement that the ethical is universal.1 Yet he does not develop this idea in quite same way that Kant does. In fact, he nowhere explicitly and precisely explains meaning of or provides a justification for this statement. Nevertheless, I believe that there is, in his critique of aesthetic existence, some-