Kierkegaard on Self, Ethics, and Religion
Purity or Despair

A new perspective on Kierkegaard and his importance for historical and contemporary debates on self, ethics and religion.

Roe Fremstedal (Author)

9781316513767, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 February 2022

296 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.73 kg

'Fremstedal has a talent for presenting philosophical argumentation with clarity and stunning economy. While this style does not make for easy consumption, it allows Fremstedal to chart an elegantly argued path through a forest of secondary literature. His gift for lapidary summation is complemented by his ear for passages that unite philosophic significance, passionate conviction, and literary force. Whether he is discussing Kierkegaard himself or secondary scholarship, Fremstedal renders gnarly philosophical disputes vivid, thanks to his gift for telling citations in a compelling narrative. A spirit of generosity and fair-mindedness animates Fremstedal's project from beginning to end, and this, together with his able bridging of predominantly continental and analytic approaches, makes this book particularly thought-provoking.' Vanessa Rumble, Journal of the History of Philosophy

Many of Søren Kierkegaard's most controversial and influential ideas are more relevant than ever to contemporary debates on ethics, philosophy of religion and selfhood. Kierkegaard develops an original argument according to which wholeheartedness requires both moral and religious commitment. In this book, Roe Fremstedal provides a compelling reconstruction of how Kierkegaard develops wholeheartedness in the context of his views on moral psychology, meta-ethics and the ethics of religious belief. He shows that Kierkegaard's influential account of despair, selfhood, ethics and religion belongs to a larger intellectual context in which German philosophers such as Kant and Fichte play crucial roles. Moreover, Fremstedal makes a solid case for the controversial claim that religion supports ethics, instead of contradicting it. His book offers a novel and comprehensive reading of Kierkegaard, drawing on important sources that are little known.

Introduction
Part I. Self, Despair and Wholeheartedness: 1. Selfhood and anthropology
2. Why be moral? The critique of amoralism
3. Moral inescapability: Moral agency and meta-ethics
Part II. Morality, Prudence and Religion: 4. The critique of eudaimonism: Virtue ethics, kantianism and beyond
5. Non-eudaimonistic ethics and religion: Happiness and salvation
6. The 'Teleological suspension of the ethical' and Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac
7. Moralized religion: The identity of the good and the divine
Part III. 'Subjectivity, Inwardness, is Truth': 8. 'Hidden inwardness' and humor: Kantian ethics and religion
9. Subjective truth: 'Kierkegaard's most notorious…claim'
Part IV. Faith and Reason: 10. A leap of faith? The use of lessing, Jacobi and Kant
11. Faith neither absurd nor irrational: The neglected reply to Eiríksson
12. Faith beyond reason: Supra-rationalism and anti-rationalism
13. The ethics of belief: Fideism and pragmatism
Conclusion
References
Index.

Subject Areas: History of religion [HRAX], Philosophy of religion [HRAB], History of Western philosophy [HPC], General studies [GTG]