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Abstract
KIERKEGAARD AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIVIDUALITYbyLUKE JOHNSON(Under the Direction of Richard Dien Winfield)ABSTRACTTo determine if something universal can be said of subjective experience, Kierkegaard shepherds us through at least three existential stages. First, he judges those psychologically arrested in the aesthetic stage of life as too distracted by pleasure to make a meaningful commitment, thus the aesthete is plagued by despair and is either pushed towards ethical selfhood or driven deeper back into finite ends.Second, Kierkegaard critiques the ethical domain as an objective matter that can create a moral subject via radical autonomy (an active synthesis of the temporal, the eternal, and spirited passion); however, universal norms are deficiently formal. The individual again despairs. This time over the imperfect ability to implement occasionally conflicting moral commands and the refusal of assistance from an outside intercessor. There is a progression towards meaningful individuality, with regards to coherent purposiveness, once one has become an ethical subject; however, the existential sickness of merely being ethical is a signal of a half measure. Kierkegaard, thirdly, argues that the domain of religion alone can provide significance to our individual subjectivity. This is because authentic religious commitment cultivates an inward deepening of passions, both pleasurable and unpleasurable, which roots out the pervasive sense of worthlessness and despair inherent in prior existencestages. Kierkegaard refers to the inward deepening process as subjective truth. Kierkegaard will argue that there are in fact two fundamental types of religious commitment with different levels of subjective truth. The eminent subject truth level, is characterized as overcoming the penultimate levels negative pathos and is identified as exclusive to Christianity. Ultimately, Kierkegaard maintains, an unparalleled, passionate inward deepening occurs in a commitment to the rationally unintelligible Christian paradox (i.e. the God-man), ensuring that our individual subjective existences acknowledge sin-consciousness, atone, and become eternally validated beings-in-time that reflect the forgiveness extended to us in salvation. Conceptually clarifying significant individuality seems to be forever problematic given the resistance of subjective experience to a dissertations argumentation standards; however, after such a study one takes more seriously the claim that individual lives attain the most meaning when in direct communion with the power that established them.