Don,

Here are my answers to your eight questions. Hopefully this will advance the
issue.

1.Is there a difference between subjectivity and subjective thinking?

Yes, for K, subjectivity or inwardness is a term used for the overall spiritual
condition of the human being. The more subjectivity the better, according to K.

Subjective thinking is thinking in which the single individual involves himself
in his thinking and is aware of himself in his relation to his thinking. He
thinkins his thoughts with infinite passion and with infinite concern for his
eternal happiness.

2.If so, which comes first in the experience of the human being – subjectivity
or subjective thinking?

I would say they come into existence at roughly the same time – when the
individual advances from the immediate aesthetic and towards the ethical.

3.Is subjectivity not particular?

Each single individual has his own particular, unique, subjectivity.

4.Is subjective thinking not universal?

Any act of subjective thinking is a particular. To the extent that the thinker
thinks in concepts/thoughts/language, his acts of subjective thinking involve a
universal element.

5.Which is closest to the truth of the matter, the particular or the universal?

I think this is a poorly framed question. K advocates "truth as inwardness"
rather than the traditional philosophical account which advocates "truth as
knowledge".

Inwardness, at least before the leap to have faith in the absolute paradox,
involves subjective thinking.

6.Are they then the same thing?" or to put it another way, "Are they totally
congruent?"

There is a big difference between the particular and the universal. In fact they
form a dichotomy, rather like subjective v. objective or quantitative v.
qualitative.

7.Can they ever be made to be congruent?

No, but I would say that they are both necessary aspects of human existence.

8.If they cannot be made congruent in our consciousness which of the two are we
going to look to for the maximum truth? Hint: Hegel chose one side and K chose
the other.

Hegel stuck to the philosophical notion of truth as knowledge, whereas
Kierkegaard committed himself to truth as inwardness.

For K, when the single individual makes the leap to faith, his particularity
becomes so accentuated that to a large extent he has gone beyond the universal
and can no longer communicate with others. I am reminded of the following
remarkable passage from "Fear and Trembling":

"Faith's knight knows ... that it is glorious to belong to the
universal. He knows that it is beautiful and benign to be the
particular who translates himself into the universal, the one who so
to speak makes a clear and elegant edition of himself, as immaculate
as possible, and readable for all; he knows it is refreshing to
become intelligible to oneself in the universal, so that he
understands the universal and everyone who understands him
understands the universal through him in turn, and both rejoice in
the security of the universal. He knows that it is beautiful to be
born as the particular with the universal as his home, his friendly
abode, which receives him straightaway with open arms when he wishes
to stay there. But he also knows that higher up there winds a lonely
path, narrow and steep; he knows that it is terrible to be born in
solitude outside the universal, to walk without meeting a single
traveller. He knows very well where he is, and how he is related to
men. Humanly speaking he is insane, and cannot make himself
understood to anyone. And yet 'insane' is the mildest expression for
him. If he isn't viewed thus, he is a hypocrite and the higher up
the path he climbs, the more dreadful a hypocrite he becomes." (F&T, Hannay, p.
103)

Don, I think your difficulty in understanding my view is related to your
difficulty in identifying a stable sphere between the aesthetic and the
religious.

You seem to continually want to either reduce the ethical sphere to the
aesthetic sphere (calling it "Hegelian" and "first ethics"), or inflate it to
the religious sphere (calling it "second ethics"). You don't seem to have a
stable position for the subjectivity of such diverse characters as Judge
William, Socartes, and the tragic heroes of F&T.

Jim S

Don,

I feel I answered your questions here in my two long posts to you – my posts
8692 ("Re: An answer to Kenneth's question" sent 6-12-2009 at 10:37am) and 8693
("Second thoughts on thought and thinking" sent 6-12-2009 at 1:47pm).

Did you not notice them? Do you want me to re-send them?

Jim S


--- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, "Don Anderson" <don@...> wrote:
>
> JimS, you said;
>
> Hegel's system does not allow the qualitative dialectic. .It only allows
> quantitative dialectic.
>
> What is your interpretation of the qualitative/quantitative dialectic? How is
it important to a discussion of E/O.
>
> I have said that the quantitative takes place in logic, the logic of
language and in thought in general. It is about necessary progression. The
qualitative dialectic takes place in being or existence and cannot be thought,
cannot be captured in language. It can only be believed. Are we in agreement
here?
>
> Don
>

Don,

Thank you for your reply.

Perhaps, I did not make myself clear originally, but the argument I put forward
was supposed to be a view of the situation as seen by Kierkegaard. I was engaged
in Kierkegaard interpretation, and not in Hegelian studies.

Thus again:

"Here is the bottom line:

Hegel's system does not allow the qualitative dialectic. It does not allow the
leap. It does not allow the single individual to actualise a possibility. It
only allows quantitative dialectic.

Judge William has chosen himself absolutely. Judge William has made the leap to
become an existing human being."

As your points one and three, and the first sentences of two, concern your
interpretation of Hegel, they are not relevant as criticism of my original
argument which purely concerns the interpretation of Kierkegaard.

There only remains the last sentence of your point two:

"It is not clear to me that Judge William has made a leap however."

I think Kierkegaard is a little ambiguous on this issue. Sometimes he (or his
pseudonyms) talks of the leap being something only the religious individual does
when he makes the final transition from religiousness A (immanence) to
religiousness B (transcendence).

However, elsewhere he seems to suggest that every time an individual acts, every
time an individual actualises a possibility in concreto, there is a leap.

And it is certainly in the spirit of K to talk about the leap from non-existence
to existence, which is how he describes the transition from the aesthetic to the
ethical, which is a necessary step before the individual can ascend to the level
of the religious.

Jim S

Don,

Your unreserved praise of Carlisle's book was in your post 7486:

"I want to thank you for, about a year ago, recommending the book by Claire
Carlisle called Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Becoming: Moments and Positions. I
just finished reading it and am wondering only why it took me so long to get
around to reading it. I found that it speaks very force fully to issues I have
been concerned about in Kierkegaard's philosophy, namely the question of Kinesis
(movement and change). Carlisle's book is extremely well written and very clear
in discussing this and related concepts. I think it is a must read for anyone
interested in K."

With regard to my "faulty reasoning" it seems you are not prepared to back to
your claim that "I can find fault with your reasoning", because now you write:

"I don't know what else to say. I never intended to say that E/O II was Hegelian
in every way. I am well aware that it does not believe that the Hegelian
dialectic is adequate for overcoming the aporia of existence. I did want to say
that the passages that started this thread seemed to have Hegelian elements to
them in their imminence and that is all. There is much of E/O that I must
continue to appropriate but I don't yet buy into many of the standard
assumptions about it by the commentators. This is my last word on the subject
for now."

Let me recall what I said and your initial response:

Jim S (8721): "Here is the bottom line:

Hegel's system does not allow the qualitative dialectic. It does not allow the
leap. It does not allow the single individual to actualise a possibility. It
only allows quantitative dialectic.

Judge William has chosen himself absolutely. Judge William has made the leap to
become an existing human being."

Don (8723): ""Yes I can find fault with your reasoning here but knowing how easy
it is to fall into such reasoning, having done it myself over and over again, I
hope to refrain from judgment and simply make a reply from my pov."

I think it is very unsatisfactory, Don, for you to complain that I am guilty of
faulty reasoning, then rather condescendingly to say, in effect, "oh yes, I used
to be guilty of such faulty reasoning before I saw the light", and then not to
say what my faulty reasoning is.

Are you "refraining from judgement" for my benefit? Or is it that you have no
actual criticism of my reasoning, even though you say you do?

Jim S

A great summary.  You know Kierkegaard.  I know squat.

--- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, James Rovira <jamesrovira@...> wrote:
>
> Ah, Kenneth -- what nonsense.  You still miss the fundamental point that you
> -cannot understand others-, and as an ethical subjectivity, you should be
> primarily concerned -with yourself-.  I have made different choices than you
> about my relationship to K.  The fact that you can't respect that or live
> with it is a fact you have to face about yourself, not me.
>
> I have read CUP a few times before you joined the group.  I hadn't noticed
> the phrases "quantitative" or "qualitative" dialectic.  They hadn't struck
> me.  As a result, I was grateful that you drew attention to them.  I did
> write about both Socratic and Hegelian dialectics, which means I am
> crediting K's sources -- not acting as if I invented the terms.  I am not
> using them in any post or in any way except when directly referring to
> them.
>
> I don't feel the need to apologize for having read, or for knowing things.
> How I make a living is irrelevant to this discussion, as I'd be reading and
> writing all this even without making a living at it (I read for 16 years in
> philosophy, theology, and literature while working as an electrician).
>
> I find myself making replies to you that are similar to replies I've made to
> others -- do you have anything to say about K yourself, are you here to
> advance a discussion, or are you here to attack others?   If you see a fault
> in what I'm saying, quote me, quote K, then explain the difference that you
> see between the two.  Then you'd possibly be educating me, and for that I
> would be grateful.
>
> I've been posting quite a bit about K here -- you haven't responded to
> anything I've posted about K (at all, not once, I don't think), or to my
> reading of the difference between the quantitative and qualitative
> dialectic.  I'm not the one holding the cudgel.
>
> Jim R
>
> On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Kenneth <karmstrong@...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > *Jim, your methods do find echoes in K, but they are illustrations of
> > those who cannot keep their sphere's straight.  You `run upstairs' just
> > long enough to find a word or two, a cudgel with SK's initials.  Then you
> > hurry back to your basement brawling.  Two weeks ago you had never heard
> > of qualitative dialectic and now you use it in your tainted replies as if
> > you invented it.  Go read what SK (not his pseudonyms) says about those
> > who make their living off the words of others.  You will disregard the
> > following because it was written by a pseudonym and we have all heard you
> > celebrate holding the antidote.*
> >
> >
> >
> > When the different spheres are not decisively distinguished from one
> > another, confusion reigns everywhere. When people are curious about a
> > thinker's reality and find it interesting to know something about it, and so
> > forth, this interest is intellectually reprehensible. The maximum of
> > attainment in the sphere of the intellectual is to become altogether
> > indifferent to the thinker's reality. But by being thus muddle-headed in the
> > intellectual sphere, one acquires a certain resemblance to a believer. A
> > believer is one who is infinitely interested in another's reality. * *
> >
> > **
> >
> > *Kenneth*
> >
> >
>

I did not ask a question to demonstrate that an answer could not be composed.

--- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, "Don Anderson" <don@...> wrote:
>
> Kenneth,
>
> You said:
>
> I invite a Kierkegaardian answer:  Whence the 3-sphere-model?  Can an answer
> be composed which satisfies Kierkegaard's Ethical Principle?
>
> I think no answer can be composed. What do you think?
>
> The ethical principle is that no possibility is understood until each posse
> has really become an esse. (T)he ethical scrutiny results in the
> condemnation of every posse which is not an esse, but this refers only to a
> posse in the individual himself, since the ethical has nothing to do with
> the possibilities of other individuals. CUP, 1941, p 288
>
> Future Topic? Could any discussion group survive who adopted this as a
> guiding principle?
>
> I love the way you cut to the very heart of the matter - cutting to the
> quick might be a better way of putting it. I would suggest that one must
> discuss with a very large empty space inside - an opening and space that is
> constantly seeking possibilities hitherto unknown. It is not about giving
> information or getting information but rather about serendipity (the sudden
> or the instant). And yet it is something more that can never be said.
> Language and knowledge is always in the way thus the need for that open
> space - the nothing (no-thing).
>
>
>
> Can such a discussion group survive? I don't know nor do I really ask that
> question. I do know I profit from it quite often but perhaps that's just me.
> On the other hand I don't need it.
>
>
>
> Don A.
>

Jim, your methods do find echoes in K, but they are illustrations of those who cannot keep their sphere's straight.  You `run upstairs' just long enough to find a word or two, a cudgel with SK's initials.  Then you hurry back to your basement brawling.  Two weeks ago you had never heard of qualitative dialectic and now you use it in your tainted replies as if you invented it.  Go read what SK (not his pseudonyms) says about those who make their living off the words of others.  You will disregard the following because it was written by a pseudonym and we have all heard you celebrate holding the antidote.

When the different spheres are not decisively distinguished from one another, confusion reigns everywhere. When people are curious about a thinker's reality and find it interesting to know something about it, and so forth, this interest is intellectually reprehensible. The maximum of attainment in the sphere of the intellectual is to become altogether indifferent to the thinker's reality. But by being thus muddle-headed in the intellectual sphere, one acquires a certain resemblance to a believer. A believer is one who is infinitely interested in another's reality.  

Kenneth

I invite a Kierkegaardian answer:  Whence the 3-sphere-model?  Can an answer be composed which satisfies Kierkegaard's Ethical Principle?

“The ethical principle is that no possibility is understood until each posse has really become an esse. …(T)he ethical scrutiny results in the condemnation of every posse which is not an esse, but this refers only to a posse in the individual himself, since the ethical has nothing to do with the possibilities of other individuals.â€�  CUP, 1941, p 288

Future Topic? Could any discussion group survive who adopted this as a guiding principle?

Kenneth

--- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, "Kenneth" <karmstrong@...> wrote:
>
>
> I invite a Kierkegaardian answer: Whence the 3-sphere-model? Can an
> answer be composed which satisfies Kierkegaard's Ethical Principle?
>
> Kenneth
>
>
> --- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, James Rovira jamesrovira@
> wrote:
> >
> > Don -- Just to catch up on a request for a quotation of yours, I've
> cited
> > CUP about faith crucifying the understanding several times on this
> list and
> > at least once recently. You can check the archives. I've provide page
> > numbers from the Hongs' translation. You can check the context.
> >
> > Yes, Kenneth, Kierkegaard did take the three-spheres model from prior
> > sources. I apologize for not understanding this as your intent for
> your
> > initial question. I thought you were asking where the model came from
> and
> > how it developed in K's works.
> >
> > The three-sphere model begins with Socrates, is carried through the
> Medieval
> > period, modified by the German Romantics, then taken over by
> Kierkegaard and
> > given by him its most sophisticated restatement. It's restated yet
> again by
> > Freud and has carried forward into contemporary psychology with
> further
> > modifications yet again.
> >
> > It all starts with the Socratic distinction between body, soul, and
> spirit,
> > and then the Socratic definition of personality by its orientation
> toward
> > either body, or soul, or spirit. This orientation plays out a number
> of
> > ways in Plato's works. In the Symposium, orientation toward body,
> soul, or
> > spirit is presented by Diotima as resulting in three different kinds
> of
> > striving for immortality -- bodily striving for immortality through
> > procreation (hence K's discussion of the aesthetic personality in
> terms of
> > his/her relationship to and use of women), soulish striving for
> immortality
> > through social institutions (the soulish becomes clearly associated
> with the
> > ethical in the Medieval tradition and is reflected in K's authorship
> by the
> > Judge's praise of the institution of marriage), and spiritual striving
> for
> > immortality by separation from the bodily and the social for a direct
> and
> > exclusive focus on the divine. K is not much of an innovator on these
> > points. It's what he does with this very long tradition that's
> important.
> >
> > Jim R
> >
> > On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 8:19 AM, Kenneth karmstrong@ wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > *OK… that’s one way to answer… by the Aesthetic
> and Intellectual
> > > Principle, world-historically, ‘objectively’. I
> presume by your
> > > method of reply that as far as you know K did not adopt the
> 3-sphere-model
> > > from an earlier proponent. *
> > >
> > > *But let me reword the question to invite a Kierkegaardian answer:
> Whence
> > > the 3-sphere-model? Can an answer be composed which satisfies the
> Ethical
> > > Principle, from an Ethico-religious perspective?*
> > >
> > > *Kenneth*
> > >
> > > **
> > > --- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, James Rovira jamesrovira@
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > How the model developed is actually the most Hegelian thing
>

Don,

Thank you for your reply. Your write:

"I think we have been talking past one another, Surprise!"

I am not so sure. I think I was writing clearly and simply when I wrote:

"Here is the bottom line:

Hegel's system does not allow the qualitative dialectic. It does not allow the
leap. It does not allow the single individual to actualise a possibility. It
only allows quantitative dialectic.

Judge William has chosen himself absolutely. Judge William has made the leap to
become an existing human being." (#8721)

You seemed to understand what I said clearly enough when you made your reply:

"Yes I can find fault with your reasoning here but knowing how easy it is to
fall into such reasoning, having done it myself over and over again, I hope to
refrain from judgment and simply make a reply from my pov." (#8723)

I would rather you did not "refrain from judgement" but tell me explicitly what
fault you find in my reasoning here.

I think the distinction Kierkegaard draws in his book Either/Or between the
Hegelian aesthete and the anti-Hegelian Judge William is fundamental for a
correct understanding of K's authorship as a whole. For Kierkegaard, Hegel was a
stumbling block to the would-be Christian, and his whole authorship was geared
to showing how Hegelianism is the devil's favoured device for preventing his
Danish contemporaries (or his Copenhagen intellectual contemporaries, at least)
from perceiving clearly what is required for the earnest, sober individual to
become a Christian.

Admittedly Kierkegaard may in his pseudonymous work have occasionally used the
devil's methods to defeat the devil, although neither you nor Jim R has given me
a clear example of this. Perhaps one of you is thinking of the remark to use
reflective thought to move the individual out of reflection.

May I recommend you re-read Chapter Four of "Kierkegaard's Philosophy of
Becoming" by Clare Carlisle – a book you have praised on this forum. Carlisle
argues more powerfully and more eloquently that I can for the interpretation of
Kierkegaard, I have been trying to put forward.

At one stage, I was preparing to quote vast chunks from Carlisle's book, but
instead I will restrict myself to selected quote from the Kierkegaard
commentator Johannes Climacus:

"Either/Or, the title of which is in itself indicative, has the
existence-relation between the esthetic and the ethical materialize into
existence in the existing individuality. This to me is the book's indirect
polemic against speculative thought, which is indifferent to existence. That
there is no conclusion and no final decision is an indirect expression for truth
as inwardness and in this way perhaps a polemic against truth as knowledge."
(CUP, Hong, p. 252)

"Part I is an existence-possibility that cannot attain existence, a depression
that must be worked upon ethically. … At its maximum it is despair.
Consequently, it is not existence, but existence-possibility, orientated toward
existence, and brought so close that one almost feels how every moment is wasted
in which a decision has not yet been reached. But the existence-possibility in
the existing A does not want to be conscious of this and holds existence at bay
by the most subtle of all deceptions, by thinking.  He has thought everything
possible, and yet he has not existed at all. … In other words, the relation
[between A (the aesthete) and B (Judge William)] must not be between immature
and mature thinking, but between not existing and existing. Therefore, as a
thinker, A is advanced; as a dialectician, he is far superior to B. He possesses
all the seductive gifts of understanding and intellect; it thereby becomes more
clear what makes B differ from him.

Part II is an ethical individuality existing on the basis of the ethical.  ..
The ethicist has despaired (see Part II, pp. 163-227 – Part I was despair). In
despair, he has chosen himself (pp. 239ff).  .. Having gone through phantasmal,
nebulous images, through the distractions of a luxuriant thought-content … one
comes to a very specific human being existing on the basis of the ethical.

The merit of the book, if it has any, does not concern me. If it has any, it
must essentially be that it does not provide any conclusion but in inwardness
transforms everything: the fantasy-inwardness in Part I into a conjuring up of
possibilities with intensified passion, the dialectic into a transforming, in
despair, of everything into nothing; the ethical pathos, in Part II into an
embracing, with the quiet, incorruptible, and yet infinite passion of
resolution, of the ethical's modest task, built up thereby, open before God and
men." (Ibid., pp. 253-4)

"The ethicist in Either/Or has saved himself by despairing, has terminated
hiddenness in disclosure, but in my opinion there was a discrepancy here.  … The
discrepancy is that the ethical self is supposed to be found immanently in
despair, that by enduring the despair the individual would win himself. … In
despairing, I use myself to despair, and therefore I can indeed despair of
everything by myself, but if I do this I cannot come back to myself. It is in
this moment of decision that the individual needs divine assistance, although it
is quite correct that one must first have understood the existence-relation
between the esthetic and the ethical in order to be at this point – that is, by
being there in passion and inwardness, one indeed becomes aware of the religious
– and of the leap. (Ibid, pp. 257-8)

Jim S

OK… that’s one way to answer… by the Aesthetic and Intellectual Principle, world-historically, ‘objectively’.  I presume by your method of reply that as far as you know K did not adopt the 3-sphere-model from an earlier proponent.   

But let me reword the question to invite a Kierkegaardian answer:  Whence the 3-sphere-model?  Can an answer be composed which satisfies the Ethical Principle, from an Ethico-religious perspective?

Kenneth

--- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, James Rovira <jamesrovira@...> wrote:
>
> How the model developed is actually the most Hegelian thing about K's entire
> pseudonymous authorship, at least in my opinion, Kenneth.
>
> It starts with the first work in K's pseudonymous authorship, E/O I. There,
> the "aesthete" or Johannes the Seducer (all characters named "Johannes" are
> aesthetic creations along the lines of Don Juan) suggests a progression for
> aesthetic personalities, which he defines in terms of three different kinds
> of desire. There are two types of aesthetic personalities, reflective and
> immediate, and those three types of desire are expressions of one of those
> two types of aesthetic personalities.
>
> The first kind of desire, the lowest, is very unformed as the person doesn't
> distinguish himself much at all from his environment. The second stage has
> a more specific object of his or her desire, but desire is defined in terms
> of wanting a class of objects, not a specific object (say, I want a fast
> car). The third stage of desire is one in which the person differentiates
> him/herself from the object of his or her desire enough to want -that-
> particular object (I want a 1976 Corvette). Johannes the aesthete gets the
> idea of this progression from three different operas by Mozart.
>
> The an ethical personality, Judge Wilhelm, reads E/O I and responds by
> saying, yeah, that's right, but there's something beyond that, the ethical.
> He shows, in a very Hegelian move, that the ethical stage encompasses the
> insights of the aesthetic but goes beyond it. A dialectic that encompasses
> previous insights but goes beyond them is a Hegelian, not Socratic,
> dialectic.
>
> Climacus comes along, write as book Philosophical Fragments, then
> "concludes" it with a postscript (CUP) which encompasses all the insights of
> the previous stages, all the insights of all previous pseudonymous authors,
> in fact, but goes beyond them into the religious, which is itself divided
> into two stages, A and B.
>
> Kierkegaard thought at the time he's concluded his aesthetic production,
> having summed it all up in CUP. Hence the signed appendix.
>
> Jim R
>
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:29 PM, Kenneth karmstrong@... wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > The three-spheres of human existence are used extensively by Climacus,
> > etal. Whence this model?
> >
> >
>