Research Interests and Projects
General Philosophical Interests
I am interested in philosophical method; Kierkegaard; Kierkegaard and Hegel; and Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein.
Current Project
Kierkegaard, and the Method of Indirect Communication
By their own admission, Kierkegaard scholars have found making sense of his project of indirect communication persistently problematic. The difficulty indirect communication presents, I claim, stems from the fact that Kierkegaard makes three significant, and not obviously compatible, claims about his method: that it has a determinable content, that it relates what is essentially private, and that such a method is necessary to communicating a certain content and / or performing a certain function. This project examines different interpretative approaches to Kierkegaard in relation to these claims. For instance, the attempt to account for indirect communication in terms of: non-conceptual content (Katherine Ramsland); ambiguity (Edward Mooney); two kinds of cognition (C. Stephen Evans); Derrida and deconstruction (Roger Poole), and Wittgenstein’s work (James Conant). I argue that all of the above approaches fail due to being exegetically inadequate, and in certain cases because of larger conceptual problems. In contrast to these secular and naturalistic approaches, I argue that only a theological interpretation can consistently account for Kierkegaard’s claims. This conclusion, if correct, raises large and important questions concerning the significance of Kierkegaard’s method to philosophy.
Future Projects
Kierkegaard, Hegel, and Relations
This project argues that Kierkegaard’s reaction to Hegel, or specifically to the Hegelianism of his contemporaries, is to be accounted for in terms of a disagreement about the logic of relations; particularly the relationship between the individual, society, and God. Understanding Kierkegaard’s work in these terms can, I claim, illuminate hitherto misunderstood or ill-appreciated aspects of his work. Reading Kierkegaard in this way, I hold, is further useful in that it reveals the strength of his philosophical commitments, and the extent to which his thought is permeated by his theological convictions. This, I maintain, has profound consequences for assessing the significance of Kierkegaard’s contribution to western philosophy.
It is commonplace for Kierkegaard scholars to admit that his arguments against Hegel are typically aimed at a straw man, and as such fail to accurately engage with the complexity of Hegel’s thought. Despite this, relatively little work has been done to address the subject of Kierkegaard’s reaction to Hegel and how exactly this is to be understood. My project aims to fill this gap in the literature, by arguing that Kierkegaard’s reaction to Hegel is best understood as a disagreement about the logic of relations. Thinking about Kierkegaard’s reaction to Hegel in these terms can, I claim, cut to the heart of the matter, whilst avoiding many of the misconceptions of Hegel that populate Kierkegaard’s work.
Hegel conceives of reality holistically; in terms of which everything that is stands in an internal relationship to everything else. This view of relations permeates Hegel’s thought: allowing him to drawn into doubt the very idea that something might ‘transcend’ human experience, informing his interpretation of the incarnation, and ultimately serving to justify his claim that his philosophy is the legitimate heir of Christian doctrine. Hegel’s claim about the relational structure of reality supports his claim that we cannot conceive of an absolute distinction between subject and object. Kierkegaard reacts to Hegelian metaphysics, and particularly the conception of Christianity that results from it, by challenging the Hegelian view of relations, and arguing for an absolute distinction between subject and object.
Specifically, Kierkegaard charges Hegel with naturalising Christianity: claiming that, for the Hegelian, one might be counted a Christian simply in virtue of living in a Christian society or partaking in, and contributing to, Hegel’s philosophy. Against this Kierkegaard argues that having a relationship to Christ, specifically to Christ’s divinity, is essential to be a Christian. In accord with this, Kierkegaard argues for the primacy of a one to one relation (for him, characteristic of that between believer and Christ’s divinity) that (contra Hegel) cannot be accounted for in terms of general relations per se. Part and parcel of this is Kierkegaard’s claim that Hegel conceives of Christ’s divinity wholly imminently, whereas Kierkegaard is concerned to argue that Christ’s divinity is transcendent from the world. This goes hand in hand with Kierkegaard’s attempt to establish an absolute distinction between subject and object: between the world as it can be experienced in virtue of human beings own cognitive capabilities, and that to which he thinks human beings can be privy through faith, grace, and life in Christ. Understood in this way the bane of Kierkegaard’s thought becomes that of trying to maintain a connection between subject and object, whilst simultaneously holding to an absolute distinction between them.
Understanding Kierkegaard’s reaction to Hegel in these terms, I claim, allows us to both appreciate previously mysterious aspects of his work (such as the project of indirect communication) and posit a greater unity to his thought than has hitherto been appreciated. Against this background the project of indirect communication becomes an attempt to get the reader of Kierkegaard’s text into a one to one relationship to God, not mediated by his or her relationship to Kierkegaard. I trace this project through Kierkegaard’s texts: from Philosophical Fragments concern with the communication of the Christian spirit; through the treatment of Lessing and Socrates, and remarks about indirect communication, in Postscript; to the remarks about Kierkegaard’s method found in Works of Love; and the treatment of Christ as communicator in Practice in Christianity. This, I claim, gives us both a detailed understanding of the way in which the subject of relations informs Kierkegaard’s texts, as well as illuminating his own conception of what he is doing.
Importantly, the above account reveals the strength of the philosophical moves Kierkegaard makes against Hegel. Contra the prevailing orthodoxy of reading Kierkegaard in secular terms, the above serves to outline the extent to which Kierkegaard’s apparently naturalistic thinking is shot-through with theological assumptions and commitments. This, in turn, I hold provides a reliable basis upon which to assess Kierkegaard’s reaction to Hegel, and well as the question of the significance of this thought to philosophy more generally.
Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein had something of a fascination for Kierkegaard. Indeed, prima facie, there would appear to be both remarkable and profound similarities between these thinkers’ works, and this has led to them being read in terms of each other. For instance, H. A. Nielsen, Robert C. Roberts, Charles Creegan, James Conant, Michael Weston, Stephen Mulhall, and have all read Kierkegaard in the light of Wittgenstein. Despite the fact that Wittgenstein apparently saw something of his own work reflected in Kierkegaard’s writings, this project argues that the thought of these figures is fundamentally at odds with each other. Specifically, in attempting to carve out a space for subjective and Christian faith from the totalising nature of the Hegelian system, Kierkegaard commits to a realm of essential privacy. Ironically, it is in Wittgenstein’s private language argument that such a notion is commonly thought to meet its philosophical demise.
Kierkegaard as Philosopher
This project examines Kierkegaard’s treatment of the traditional philosophical topics of truth, thinking, knowledge, and the good life. I argue that these treatments are underwritten and informed by Kierkegaard’s theological assumptions and commitments, and that this, in turn, draws into question the significance of Kierkegaard’s thought to philosophy.
Kierkegaard and Modern Philosophy
This project considers the philosophical uses to which Kierkegaard is currently being put. For example, Anthony Furtak’s attempt to harness Kierkegaard to a cognitive view of the emotions; Tom Angier’s claim that Kierkegaard both endorses and anticipates the work of recent narrative theory; and Peter Mehl’s claim that Kierkegaard is best understood as a pragmatist. I argue that all of these approaches suffer from a failure to appreciate the extent to which Kierkegaard’s thought is both informed by, and conducted in the service of, his theological Christian ends.