The Politics of Selfhood with Constant Reference to Kierkegaard

Abstract

AbstractIn searching Kierkegaard’s authorship for a politics, what emerges most clearly is the negativity of his task: he does not so much write about politics, as lay the foundations for one through his conception of the self. Kierkegaard’s notion of the self challenges the prevailing understanding of selfhood in classical liberal economic models as an egoistic individual engaged in the maximisation of preferences-a vision that entails a community posited on the endless growth of material means to fulfil these preferences. In contrast, Kierkegaard presents a rich and nuanced depiction of the dialectical path of selfhood through immediacy and negativity to faith. The result is a complex understanding of the self in faith as answerable to its own ideals and dependent on the infinite that exceeds it. Such a self also demands a form of community: one that is dialectical and non-teleological, structured by each individual’s responsibility to their better I and the relationality of the self. This model of the self and community, I suggest, holds the potential for a Kierkegaardian politics.