We have lost self, the singular self, in Hegel. When reason took precedence in consciousness, it lost what is most true--its undeniable (immediate) singularity. In Kierkegaard, we discover several consequences of this lost of the singular self.
The one is the devaluing of faith. We have already discussed this plenty in class. In short, as faith is regulated to the ethical sphere, the immediate paradoxical oneness between Self and Absolute is lost.
The another is philosophical suicide. Suicide is the most dramatic expression of self-consciousness for the act is for Self and what is lost is Self. When suicide is regulated to the field of philosophy, the philosopher will appeal to reason to give the Self a law against suicide. This translates the act of suicide into universal terms and what is lost is the radical singleness of the act. In other words, the philosopher has killed the self through reason much like Hegel does in his philosophical system where reason dominates.
In both Faith and suicide, the incommunicability of the act reflects this immediate self which has been lost in this era of universal reason. In Faith, one cannot speak of why they acted in faith because to do so would put a private act in terms of the universal, which would eliminate the radical singlularity essential to the act. God called Abraham, no one else. No one else can participate in Abraham's relationship with God, and yet the universal is dependent on God for its sanction.
For Suicide, the person commits an act which immediately bypasses all universal claims on him or her. If one chooses to annihilate his own life, he is acting directly with self as self and as such there is no mediation with the universal which is a relationship between self and reason. Suicide can have no reason and cannot be communicated.
So we have this radically singular self whose two basic modes, acts of faith and acts of affirming or denying life are incommunicable. Two questions for me going forward are: 1) If at base each person has an existence which is incommunicable, then how could the universal have any power in our lives? 2) How did the universal (mediated) emerge from the singular (unmediated) if one is essentially not the other?
The one is the devaluing of faith. We have already discussed this plenty in class. In short, as faith is regulated to the ethical sphere, the immediate paradoxical oneness between Self and Absolute is lost.
The another is philosophical suicide. Suicide is the most dramatic expression of self-consciousness for the act is for Self and what is lost is Self. When suicide is regulated to the field of philosophy, the philosopher will appeal to reason to give the Self a law against suicide. This translates the act of suicide into universal terms and what is lost is the radical singleness of the act. In other words, the philosopher has killed the self through reason much like Hegel does in his philosophical system where reason dominates.
In both Faith and suicide, the incommunicability of the act reflects this immediate self which has been lost in this era of universal reason. In Faith, one cannot speak of why they acted in faith because to do so would put a private act in terms of the universal, which would eliminate the radical singlularity essential to the act. God called Abraham, no one else. No one else can participate in Abraham's relationship with God, and yet the universal is dependent on God for its sanction.
For Suicide, the person commits an act which immediately bypasses all universal claims on him or her. If one chooses to annihilate his own life, he is acting directly with self as self and as such there is no mediation with the universal which is a relationship between self and reason. Suicide can have no reason and cannot be communicated.
So we have this radically singular self whose two basic modes, acts of faith and acts of affirming or denying life are incommunicable. Two questions for me going forward are: 1) If at base each person has an existence which is incommunicable, then how could the universal have any power in our lives? 2) How did the universal (mediated) emerge from the singular (unmediated) if one is essentially not the other?
It is interesting that you bring up suicide as the most dramatic expression self consciousness, and that when we universalize it we loose the radical singularity of the act. In one of Social theorist, Emile Durkheim's (1858-1917), most famous works, he attempts to look at suicide sociologically, and in doing so, he draws on the idea of Anomie. That is, for many people, suicide is the result of a profound uncomfortablenes with one's place in society's structure. For Durkheim, society is like an organism with each component performing a function which allows the stable existence of the whole. Anomie, therefore, is the feeling the individual has when he or she does not fit into that organism. I realize this does not really address your post, but your post made me think about it in a different way. Anomie, this idea of not fitting in, is strikingly similar to Hegel's project, of coming to feel at home in the world, of looking on the world rationally and it looking rationally back. You are absolutely correct that a view of suicide which universalizes it, strips it of its singularness, and I think that critique applies, at least in part, to Durkheim's thesis as well. Since, with Anomie, the problem is that the individual is attempting to place him or her self within a rational understanding of the world, within a universal, and when he or she fails to do so, it is alarming. Durkheim's solution is, of course, a social one, society must allow a space for those individuals, and those individuals must conform to society's spaces. Whereas, for Kierkegaard, I think, suicide is a problem, not of fitting in, but of accepting one's radical singularity, and realizing that it is the only true truth. Although their conclusions are radically different, I think the kirkigard's potential prescription, to change one's understanding, is really not that different from what I think Hegel, might proscribe, if posed this problem, which would be that one needs to change one's understanding, for it is not society which is irrational, but one's own view. I know this does not really deal much with the meat of your post, but I had just never thought about it that way before.
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