Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered

Modern European Philosophy

by Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart's groundbreaking study is a major re-evaluation of the complex relationship between the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Hegel. Although the standard view on the subject is that Kierkegaard defined himself as explicitly anti-Hegelian (and viewed Hegel's philosophy with disdain), Jon Stewart demonstrates that Kierkegaard's criticism was not directed specifically to Hegel, but actually to some contemporary Danish Hegelians.

Genres: Philosophy

720 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 1999

About the author

Jon Stewart is an Associate Research Professor at Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen.

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Reviews

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredibly pleasant read. The author tells you what he’s going to tell you, he tells you, than he tells you what he told you. He did that within chapters, between chapters and then with his summary at the end of the book. The topics are not easy to follow, but the author presents it such that anyone who wants to follow can.

A great book makes one understand beyond the focus of the book. This book will force the reader to understand Socrates as well as Hegel as they are learning what Kierkegaard was getting at. Spread throughout this book is that Socrates was concerned with being human within a polis, Kierkegaard is concerned with being Christian in front of a Christian God, and Hegel is mostly concerned with being as contrasted by nothing thus leading to a becoming not an Either/Or.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a more enjoyable book than Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. There’s a reason why and this book will highlight why. Within that book and explained in various ways within this book, Hegel deals with a concept as it relates to a concept understandable only through other concepts as if one were to understand a changeless system outside of time and not part of reality such as mathematics or the rules of chess or of baseball. This author forces the reader to understand what Hegel was getting at in order to get at what Kierkegaard would mean, and in case you weren’t aware, Kierkegaard appeals to Hegel but is always more concerned with the existential to such a degree that most people would start the Existentialists with Kierkegaard.

I don’t want to give away a spoiler to this book, but the author will say that Kierkegaard was not a philosopher and should not be considered as such because that’s partly what leads to the false understanding of Kierkegaard’s relationship to Hegel. Kierkegaard is concerned about the individual as an ethical individual being and their finite relationship to the infinite; Hegel wants to understand through a mediation of extremes that get sublimated through the elimination of paradoxes and gives us universal, necessary and certain knowledge, and of course Kierkegaard knows that ‘irony is jealous of authenticity’, or in other words the paradox will always be with us. They each were going after different things entirely and this book will show why Kierkegaard really should not be considered as opposed to Hegel as is commonly believed today. (A side comment: I always get irritated when I see religious writers of books site Kierkegaard in defense of their dogmatic beliefs since they almost always without exception know less about Kierkegaard then I do and they have no idea the can of worms they are opening up).

I just want to briefly state that the author will tell the reader that the right-wing Hegelian tend to be the students of Hegel who thought Hegel saw God as the Absolute, while the left-wing Hegelians tend towards those who thought Hegel acknowledges no God, and the author mentioned that Kierkegaard would have leaned more towards the left-wing in the manner of Feuerbach (must read book: Essence of Christianity) because Kierkegaard would not have interpreted Hegel as believing in a God (see Karl Popper’s Open Society for more fun discussions on this kind of thing and another must read book).

For this author to get where he was going, he had to educate his reader. He never left this reader wondering what was happening no matter how complicated the details got. There’s no doubt that the author presents his thesis convincingly and overwhelmingly. He smartly knows the best way to sway a reader is to present the opposing refutations in the best viewpoint possible as he does within this book.

Hegel is not easy for most people to follow. Kierkegaard writes incredibly well and disagrees mostly with his fellow Danish Hegelians but never really disagrees with Hegel’s methodological system as a whole. The author will say that Kierkegaard is best thought of as a non-philosopher and to understand what Kierkegaard was getting at one need to put him into the context of the time period and understand what was transpiring before him and what he would have expected to have happened after he was writing.

This book would appeal to a reader who wants to learn about Kierkegaard, Hegel or Socrates who haven’t yet read a word by them since the author always provides needed context as he’s telling his story. This book would have been an incredibly good book to read before reading Kierkegaard since so much of what Kierkegaard is getting at is best experienced by understanding the context of his time period as it was actually existing in a real world reacting to his time period existentially and not part of the changeless world of a metaphysical philosopher like Hegel.

[Jeff Samuelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a GREAT book! 5+ stars. Almost certainly the best secondary literature book on philosophy I have ever read. This is extremely helpul in understanding each of these philosophers separately, as well as the relationship of their work. I would highly recommend Gary’s comments below