Nason, Shannon - Opposites, Contradictories, And Mediation in Kierkegaard's Critique of Hegel - The Heythrop Journal, Volume 53, Issue 1 (2012)

7/27/2019 Nason, Shannon - Opposites, Contradictories, And Mediation in Kierkegaard's Critique of Hegel - The Heythrop Journal, Volume 53, Issue 1 (2012)

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OPPOSITES, CONTRADICTORIES, ANDMEDIATION IN KIERKEGAARDS CRITIQUE

OF HEGELSHANNON NASON

Loyola Marymount University

Los Angeles, USA

I. INTRODUCTION

Numerous volumes have documented the manner in which Kierkegaards thought is strictly atodds with principal tenets of Hegels idealism.1 Because the central themes of Kierkegaards

philosophy concern the individuals path to religious subjectivity and ultimately to Christianity,it is often emphasized that the main points of contention between Kierkegaard and Hegelianism

are ethical and religious in nature. As both Kierkegaard and his religious pseudonym Anti-Climacus argue, the telos of existence is the transformation to self-transparentChristian faithbefore God. For example, Merold Westphal remarks that, following Augustine, Kierkegaard

presses on the point that faith is not a species of belief, and thus a matter of the intellect, but ofthe will. The movement of faith, then, is not from epistemic confusion to further clarity and

certainty about an object of belief or vice versa; rather, the movement of faith involves the

direction of the will and the transformation of the heart in re-prioritizing ones ends of action.2

In other words, faith is not simply an epistemic category but centrally involves human praxis

and activity. For Hegel, on the other hand, the telos of life, described in his Phenomenology ofSpirit, is to move beyond a relatively confused mode of faith as pistis to scientific and

philosophical clarity. In broad terms, then, disagreement between Kierkegaard and Hegel comesdown to, on the one hand, the emphasis each places on the relationship between faith and reason

and the role both the will and the intellect play in human flourishing.I believe that this principal difference between these two thinkers is indisputable. Strict

emphasis on their different views about ethical and religious modes of life, however, exposes an

undesirable one-sidedness in the interpretation of Kierkegaards reception (positive or negative)

of Hegelian philosophy. Because the driving force of Hegels idealism in its epistemological,metaphysical, historical, ethical, and religious modes is his logic, to embark on a critique of himwould have to involve a trenchant estimation of the viability of some or all of his logicaldoctrines. In other words, to really take issue with Hegel or Hegelianism in general, Kierke-

gaard will have to dig below the surface of Hegels idealism to its dialectical foundations. Infact, Kierkegaard does just that. So, to avoid one-sidedness of interpretation, we need to see how

Kierkegaard engages Hegels logic.Clarity about Kierkegaards engagement with Hegel on the issue of logic can be gained by

considering what he thinks about Hegels doctrine of mediation (Vermittlung). At the center of

the theory of mediation is the notion of the conceptual and dialectical unification of relative

opposites. Kierkegaard favors the broad contours of the theory of mediation. However, the issue

HeyJ LIII (2012), pp. 2436

2011 The Author. The Heythrop Journal 2011 Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600

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of this paper pertains to Kierkegaards denial of one of Hegels theses involving the doctrine.

This thesis comes in two different forms. The first is the weaker claim that of the kinds ofopposition, the only one relevant is relative opposition. The second is the stronger claim thatthere are only relative opposites. Kierkegaards philosophy of existence stands or falls on his

successfully demonstrating these two forms of Hegels thesis unsuccessful.3

Kierkegaards understanding of opposition, including his hesitation about Hegels thesis,

involves what I will call the classical logic perspective.4 While Kierkegaard is more or lesssilent about many principles that comprise the classical logical perspective, one principle that

he was particularly beholden to is the principle of non-contradiction, as it provides the condi-tions of the possibility for the kind of movement necessary for the will to initiate meaningfuland momentous choices, choices that Kierkegaard believes are not possible in Hegels system.

Hegel finds the classical logical perspectives positions (particularly about the law of identity,the principle of non-contradiction, and the law of the excluded middle) trivial.5 However,

Kierkegaard, in his own style, sets out to demonstrate what he sees is the despair and philo-

sophical insidiousness that follows from Hegels thesis. For Kierkegaard, if our subjectivity isan issue for us, if the ultimate concerns of being human are properly reflected on and are

realized in moral and religious activity, particularly in the activity of the will, then the positionsthat underlie the classical logical perspective are far from trivial. They have to do with our very

being in the world; they make our realization of ethical and religious projects possible.Thus, being mindful of the kinds of opposites and their importance for logic and existence,

Kierkegaard is keen to highlight exceptions to Hegels thesis. These exceptions are found in

those places where Kierkegaard argues that the spheres of existence are related to each other ascontradictories. One such place comes in Either/OrII, in which the dutiful Judge William tells

his aesthetic friend, the author of the fragmentary papers of Either/Or I, that he views his

existence through a kind of Hegelian lens. Absolute differences, for example, the one betweenan aesthetic form of life and an ethical form of life, are not meaningful to him. Practically andexistentially speaking, if they are not meaningful to him, then he can find no compelling reasonto choose the one over the other. This, according to Judge William, is the aesthetes despair: the

inability to make future-aiming ethical choices and commitments. The aesthetes reasons toforgo making such choices are rooted in the way he views the relation between his aesthetic

view of life and an ethical one. They are, for him, only relatively different. For Judge William,a theoretical stance such as this has existential fallout: a life of despair.

A second place we see Kierkegaard object to Hegels thesis is in Concluding UnscientificPostscript, where Johannes Climacus issues what I call an argument from insufficient differ-ence. This argument shows that, pace Hegel, the speculative philosophical project and Chris-

tianity are insufficiently different to be conceptually unified. Climacus, like Judge William whoargues for the absolute difference between aesthetic and ethical forms of existence, argues that

speculative philosophy and Christianity are absolutely contradictory. For Climacus, doingspeculative metaphysics and concretely realizing ones religious beliefs are absolutely differentsorts of things; these practices do not stand in relation to each other as relative opposites do. If

they are not related as relative opposites, then they cannot be mediated or resolved in a higherunity. Kierkegaard, then, argues that Hegels thesis is false by highlighting the coherence and

non-triviality of contradictories in logic and the philosophy of existence. For Kierkegaard, ifthere are no contradictories, then there is no basis for the ethical and religious changes the selfcan initiate or undergo e.g., no movement from a life of speculative reflection to a concrete and

attentive religious existence.In what follows, I begin with an account of the relationship between opposites and contra-

dictories and tie this up with Hegels argument for his thesis that there are only relative

OPPOSITES, CONTRADICTORIES, AND MEDIATION 25


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both F and the opposite of F at the same time. Opposite properties are the same in virtue of some

common thing they share. For example, hot and cold are the same in virtue of being tempera-tures; they share a common genus. Things too can be both hot and cold, but only as long as weunderstand these properties as situated along a scale or gradient that includes intermediate

cases. For example, the surface of the asphalt directly in the sun is hot, but it is also cold, coldin relation to the surface temperature of the sun.

Hegels view of opposites reveals a more complex picture underlying his theological andmetaphysical conception of the relationship between God and creation. For Hegel, creation

emerges from Gods own self-determining activity. Creation is the necessary movement ofSpirit as it flips into its necessary other, and flops back by absorbing difference back into itself.The creating activity of Spirits self-determination requires that the terms of the relation

between Spirit and its necessary other finite creation are merely relative. But as relativeopposites, their identity far outweighs their differences. Indeed, Hegel maintains in his Lectures

on the Philosophy of Religion that What God creates God himself is.13 One Hegel interpreter,

William Desmond, points out that this claim amounts to a doctrine of Gods own self-creation Gods becoming himself through a process of self-differentiation.14

The first consequence of this doctrine is that the difference between God and creation isrelative. Gods other is a relative opposite and not absolutely different. Two further conse-

quences follow from this: if what comes about out of this process of self-differentiation is therelative opposite of God, then (1) the process of self-becoming is necessary, and (2) there is anidentity between God and creation. The reason why the process of self-becoming is necessary

is that the opposites at work in Hegels system are not only relative to each other, but arenecessarily mutually determining. This means that in order for God to be itself God mustseek

out the determination of his other, and the other must seek the determination of God. As

Desmond explains,

Within the Hegelian interplay, (O) [origin] determines (C) [creation] and (C) determines (O);hence they are mutually determining . . . More, both are necessary to each other in this processof mutual determination: each is the other of the other, and hence necessary to the self-definition, or self-determination of the other. That is to say, each is necessary to the other aspart of a more inclusive process which allows self-determination, a process which indeed isdetermining itself in the interplay of its participants.15

Additionally, the identity between God and creation suggested by Hegels doctrine of

mediation suggests the preclusion of the principle of non-contradiction. Thus, it wouldnt becorrect on Hegels account that creation is not God, where the property of being not God is the

contradictory of God. If we take this example to cover all properties and their opposites itfollows that no oppositional properties are absolutely different from each other.

The thesis that Kierkegaard thinks is false is not that there arent relative opposites, but that

there are only relative opposites or that relative opposition is the only relevant kind of opposi-tion. The remainder of this paper develops two arguments Kierkegaard issues against Hegels

thesis.

III. EITHER/OR, AESTHETIC EXISTENCE, AND MEDIATION

Kierkegaard issues an argument against Hegels thesis via an exchange between the anonymousA, an aesthetic personality whose papers compose Either/OrI, and Judge William, As dutifully

married friend, whose letters to A compose the majority ofEither/OrII. For Judge William, a



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necessary condition for freely initiating decisive genuine future-aiming projects is the existence

of contradictories. In other words, Hegels two-form thesis must be unviable if there are to beany genuine ethical projects. Judge William relays this argument to A because he believes thatone reason A is not inclined to think that genuine ethical projects are meaningful is that A

believes they are relative. As he contemplates marrying or not marrying in his Diapsalmata(which probably contains As most developed views about existence16) he remarks that there is

no real difference between these two chosen projects, concluding that they are equally regret-table courses of action.17 In this way, A conceives of either/ors in terms of mediated opposites.

Judge William suggests that As attitude about either/ors is in concert with the Hegelian thesis.The judge states, If one admits mediation, then there is no absolute choice, and if there is nosuch thing, then there is no absolute Either/Or.18

Judge William here echoes a common mode of criticism popular among Danish anti-Hegelians. Thus, Frederik Sibbern, one of Kierkegaards dissertation committee members,

writes,

Like the law of contradiction it [sc. principium exlusi medii inter duo contradictoria] standsagainst flux since it basically aims at explaining that everything is determinable, that every-thing must be something definitely determinate and that therefore an aut/autis generally valid.Certainly one might frequently observe, that a middle link can force its way in between theaut/aut, which seems to posit only two contradictoria, that is two things, of which the one isthought to be necessarily opposed to the other . . . I call the proposition the law of determi-nation, and it states that every position ultimately reduces to a yes or a no or to somethingdecided.19

Sibbern proposes that the law of the excluded middle between two contradictories, expressed in

the Latin formulation of either/or as aut/aut, requires that everything be self-determinable,and not determinable in relation to an opposite. Sibberns position, then, rejects Hegelsargument that properties must be determined by their opposites. Moreover, Sibberns law of

determination seems to ground our decisions, making it possible to choose between alternateand contradictory possibilities. In other words, if at least two genuine contradictories e.g.

marrying or not marrying do not obtain for an agent, then deciding one against the other doesnot amount to genuine choosing. Sibberns worries about Hegelian mediation are replicated inJudge Williams letters to A. For Judge William, A and the Hegelian occupy similar standpoints

concerning the illegitimacy of either/ors. From the ethical standpoint, Judge William demon-strates how As aesthetic attitudes about initiating significant ethical projects leads to despair

and he desires for A to acknowledge his despair and change his life based on this realization.In one of his letters to A, Judge William highlights how his friends attitudes about ethical

projects underscores his indifference to the absolute difference between good and evil and hecharges him with thinking only in relative categories. Think what you will, think the mostabstract of all categories, think the most concrete . . . you continually think relative differences,

never the absolute difference.20 Whereas the ethicist has made the decisive movement towardthe good, where the absolute difference between good and evil becomes meaningful21, A

exhibits his indifference toward either/ors by conceiving of them as mediated opposites. Thechoice of one project against an other does not satisfy any conditions for genuine choosing,since every decision turns out to be equally and essentially the same as the other. A writes,

Marry and you will regret it. Do not marry, and you will also regret it. Marry or do not marry,you will regret it either way. Whether you marry or you do not marry, you will regret it eitherway . . . Hang yourself, you will regret it. Do not hang yourself, and you will also regret it.

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Hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it either way. Whether you hangyourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it either way . . . This, gentleman, is thequintessence of all the wisdom of life.22

Here A evinces his despair over the possibility of free agency, since he believes that to properly

will one project and not another requires that they be sufficiently different courses of action.Instead, on the basis of his aesthetic mood, he concludes that they are not sufficiently different.These significant projects share regret as their telos. Regret, he believes, is a result of these

either/ors because of the finicky nature of time and change on the one hand, and the kind ofaesthetic attitude many agents take in relation to these projects. In this way, A is right. If we

marry or not marry on the basis of maximizing aesthetic enjoyment, interest, and pleasure, thenat times we will wish we had chosen the opposite, since these aesthetic qualities do not endurein time, giving way to boredom, disinterestedness, and pain.

A, however, is a developed and reflective aesthetic personality. He understands and knowsthat aesthetic feelings do not endure in time. But precisely because he is not confident in and has

no presentiment about what the future will bring23, he avoids the risk of choice altogether, adanger that Judge William argues must be earnestly embraced by the ethical.24 In avoiding the

risk of what the future will bring, he abstains from choice. This implies that A conceives of hisexistence in deterministic terms. He is determined to regret life whether he chooses one plan ornot. And, so, A laments: I am predestined; fate laughs at me when it suddenly shows me how

everything I do to resist becomes a factor in such an existence [Tilvrelse].25 Elsewhere, hesays, Time stands still, and so do I. All the plans I project fly straight back at me; when I spit,

I spite in my own face.26 He also observes, I feel as a chessman must feel when the opponentsays of it: That piece cannot be moved.27

As attitudinal conception of himself as agent, then, is that each either/or available for him

to choose does not open up the possibility of genuine choice. We can gain purchase on Asmeaning more clearly by attending to what he describes as his eternal dialectic which he

argues is superior to a temporal dialectic. He writes,

It is not merely in isolated moments that I, as Spinoza says, view everything aeterno modo [inthe mode of eternity], but I am continually aeterno modo. Many believe they, too, are this whenafter doing one thing or another they unite or mediate these opposites. But his is a misunder-standing, for the true eternity does not lie behind either/or but before it. Their eternity willtherefore also be a painful temporal sequence, since they will have a double regret on whichto live.28

A argues here that those who reflect on their choices after choosing are in danger of doubleregret. Some agents wish they hadnt married or hadnt trusted the girl they put all their inner

passion into receiving with open arms. These persons may wish, after the fact, that they hadchosen both; chosen both, because at one moment they perhaps enjoy their marriage, at another

moment not. Thus the temporal dialectic of either/or results, for A, in dual regret. Their sorrowover their decision waxes and wanes; subsequently, they wish that they had both married and notmarried.

But, A explains, one must differentiate between the subsequent dialectic in either/or andthe eternal one suggested here.29 The temporal dialectic of either/or ends in double regret, but

As eternal dialectic attempts to avoid regret altogether. He resolves the either/or, not by

choosing one or the other, but by giving up on himself as a willing agent. Those who follow theformer dialectic perhaps have too much faith that their choices will result in an enduring state of

affairs, that the joy they felt in making the choice to marry would continue for them, and that this



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endurance is due to some belief about their autonomy or that their choices would result in states

of affairs that are more or less still up to them. However, As either/or never starts, and this isbecause he believes his projects are determined. Unlike the proponents of the temporal dialecticwho choose one thing against another, and afterward desire to unite these in their regret, A

believes that his agency is empty30

; that it, in the end, does not initiate genuine causal force.It would be appropriate to say, then, that As eternal dialectic of either/or is resolved by his

intellect, whose object, to invoke Spinoza again, is the eternal, rather than his will, whose objectis choosing in time. As Michelle Kosch says, A sees himself as a spectator in life rather than

a participant in it.31 As a spectator, A does not initiate the movement of his will.32

Weve seen that the eternal dialectic implies that willed activities are determined. On thispoint, Judge William is keen to show that As position in life is similar to the speculative

philosopher who observes the past as necessitated according to the organizing function ofAbsolute Spirit. For the judge, free ethical projects are impossible for A and the Hegelian

because both view the course of time and existence as comprising mediated oppositions. Thus,

Judge William writes that the speculative philosopher

Sees history under the category of necessity, not under the category of freedom, for eventhough the world-historical process is said to be free, this is in the same sense as one speaksof the organizing process in nature. For the historical process there is not question of anEither/Or . . . This in turn accounts for its incapacity for having a person act, its inclination tolet everything come to a standstill, for what it actually demands is that one must act neces-sarily, which is a contradiction.33

A mediates either/ors by aesthetically reflecting on the necessary absurdity of seemingly

significant projects, while the Hegelian philosopher mediates either/ors by turning toward

the past, toward the totality of experienced world history and shows how the discursiveelements come together in a higher unity; it mediates and mediates.34 In this way, both A andthe Hegelian share the same position about the illegitimacy of free agency in the world,according to modern philosophys pet theory that the principle of contradiction is canceled. 35

One consequence of As position from the existentialist perspective, is that he doesnt existin any meaningful way. Kierkegaards pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, issues this point in A

Glance at Danish Literature in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Climacus says that Asaesthetic approach to life

Is not existence, but existence-possibility oriented toward existence, and brought so close thatone 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 holdsexistence at bay by the most subtle of all deceptions, by thinking. He has thought everythingpossible, and yet has not existed at all.36

Climacus point lines up with the judges worry about As indifference to the meaningfulness

and thus absurdity of future possibilities.The lesson to be drawn from the interchange between A and Judge William is that the

aesthetic attitude renders ethical projects deterministically, and so the aesthete is left without

any rich self-conception of herself as free agent. This quality of determinism is revealed in themanner in which A envisions the meaningfulness of either/ors. Choosing one project over

another ends in the same feeling of regret as choosing the opposite due to the finicky and shiftyquality of aesthetic moods. In this way, Hegels thesis that there are no genuine either/ors isopen to existential criticism. Judge William shows that the thesis leads to despair.

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IV. JOHANNESS CLIMACUSS ARGUMENT AGAINST THE HEGELIAN THESIS

Kierkegaards pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, offers an additional argument against Hegelsthesis. Rather than placing emphasis on the despair that results in being indifferent to contra-

dictories required for genuine ethical projects, Climacuss argument hones in on the opposi-tional relationship between speculative philosophy and Christianity. He argues that Christianityand speculative philosophy are not relative opposites, as the Hegelian philosophy argues, but are

instead absolutely different. The upshot of Climacuss more theoretically tinged argument isthat, as contradictories, speculation and Christianity cannot be mediated.

Climacus and Kierkegaard both believe that relative opposites can be mediated and that thisdoesnt conflict with the notion of contradictory opposites. Its rather the case that contradic-

tories are necessary for relevant ethical and religious projects. In his journal, Kierkegaard states,

All relative contrasts can be mediated; we do not really need Hegel for this, inasmuch as theancients point out that they can be distinguished. Personality will for all eternity protest against

the idea that absolute contrasts can be mediated (and this protest is incommensurable with theassertion of mediation); for all eternity it will repeat its immortal dilemma: to be or not to be that is the question.37

Relative opposites can be mediated, but what he terms absolute contrasts cannot, and this issueis a principal concern to those whose agency is meaningfully reflected upon. On the topic ofmediation, then, Kierkegaard denies the following:

(1) There are no absolute contradictories;

(2) There are only relative opposites; or that relative opposites are the only relevant kind ofopposition.

He, however, agrees with Hegelianism that

(3) All relative opposites can be mediated.

Kierkegaard accepts (3) because he accepts something like:

(2) There are relative opposites.38

Before turning to Climacus arguments for his rejection of (1) and (2), Id like to briefly saysomething about his acceptance of (3) and (2). His argument rests on clarifying what can beconsidered relative opposites and what escapes this relativity altogether. He proceeds as

follows:

Within speculation it is possible for whatever makes a claim of being speculation to beassigned its relative place and the opposites to be mediated namely, the opposites that havethis in common, that each is a speculative endeavor . . . for example, when speculative thoughtmediates between the doctrine of the Eleatics and that of Heraclitus, this can be altogetherproper, because the doctrine of the Eleatics is not related as an opposite of speculation but is

itself speculative, and likewise the doctrine of Heraclitus.39

It may be helpful to read Climacus account of the mediation of relative opposites as involving

making a distinction between two species of a common genus. Speculation is a genus of thought



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under which may be found relatively opposed, but not contradictory, ideas. Since the doctrines

of Parmenides and Zeno and those of Heraclitus fall under a common genus of thought, they canbe mediated according to the method of speculation. Whatever the tenability of Climacusclaiming (a) that both the Eleatics and Heraclitus share in common the speculative enterprise

and (b) that they are relatively opposed and not absolutely opposed, the point is that in thosecases where relative opposites obtain, they can be mediated. In this case, some species that fall

under a genus are relatively opposed because they share an essence in common.Climacus shows, then, that mediation obtains between relative opposites, and that this is

largely a speculative endeavor. But as we know from gleaning Kierkegaards works, theobjectivity of speculative philosophy, that feature of metaphysical speculation that turns Chris-tianity into a doctrine into an image of its own likeness is significantly different from thesubjectivity of Christian existence. As Climacus writes, Surely a philosophical theory that is tobe comprehended and speculatively understood is one thing, and a doctrine that is to beactualized in existence is something else.40 A speculative philosophy which dabbles in theology

does not have much, if anything, in common with a doctrine which, rather than being specu-latively understood, is subjectively appropriated. Climacus point is that even though mediation

obtains between relative opposites, speculative philosophy and Christianity are not these, nordoes Christianity fall under the genus of speculation.41 There is here, therefore, an exception to

Hegels thesis.Climacus intimates that the mediation of Christianity into its philosophical form is achieved

from the vantage point of philosophy itself. Speculative philosophy is both rule and judge in the

task of mediation since Christianity is accorded its dialectical place and development by

speculation.42 Thus, Christianity is something like a species of speculative thought, much like

the philosophical doctrines of Parmenides and Heraclitus are speculative. This is why, when

Climacus imagines how a speculative philosopher would respond when asked what Christianityis, the speculator would say, The speculative conception of Christianity.43

The problem to be addressed is how it is that Christianity dialectically developed into itsphilosophical notion, thereby granting truth to the content of Christianity in mediation. As

Westphal says, Here mediation is the name for the transformation of Christianity from itsimmediate, religious form to its mediated, philosophical form.44 Climacus argues that the

mediation of Christianity into its philosophical form is achieved from the vantage point ofphilosophy itself. However, he further wonders that if Christianity just is the concept specu-lation has of it then it is difficult to see how they can be mediated. On this point, Climacus

argues that mediation between Christianity and speculation is not possible since they areinsufficiently different from each other. I will call this argument the argument from insuffi-

cient difference.His argument is as follows:

But even if speculative thought assumes a distinction between Christianity and speculativethought, if for no other reason than merely the satisfaction of mediating, if it still does notdefinitely and decisively state the distinction, then one must ask: Is not mediation speculativethoughts idea? Consequently, when the opposites are mediated, the opposites (speculativethought Christianity) are not equal before the arbiter, but Christianity is an element withinspeculation, and speculation acquires dominance because it had dominance, and because therewas no moment of balance when the opposites were weighed against each other.45

Climacus highlights speculative thoughts penchant to conceive of speculation and Christianity

as relative and mediated opposites. But he asks whether they are sufficiently distinguished to bemediated that is, whether speculative philosophys conception of the difference between

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itself and Christianity is such that they can be mediated. Opposition, recall, is a relationship

that obtains, by means of determinate negation, between something and its necessary other.Climacus argues that they cannot be mutually determining in this way because Christianity andspeculation are not opposites of equal standing they are not balanced opposites, but the

former stands in an inferior relation to the former.46

Climacus argues, then, that Christianity is not a genuine opposite of speculation,

because speculation defines the rules through which Christianity is defined. As an elementwithin speculation, Christianity is merely a species of it. If Christianity is merely a species of

speculation, then it is not a genuine opposite of speculation, since genuine opposites are defined,having equal standing, in relation to each other. Here, however, Christianity is revealed as alesser in relation that which is dominant.

Climacus argument from insufficient difference is that speculation and Christianity are notsufficiently different enough for the mediation of them to obtain. Recall that Hegel argues that

opposites are produced from each other, by means of determinate negation. However, opposites

are, nonetheless, self-identical and, as Climacus argues, of equal standing. But a relationshipbetween a lesser and dominant cannot yield to mediation, since the superiority of the one over

the other abjures any balanced opposition.Climacus arguments suggest that Christianity is not the necessary other of speculation. If

Christianity is not the necessary other of speculation, then Christianity cannot be mediated. LikeJudge William, who argues for an either/or between the aesthetic and the ethical, Climacus

argues: eitherspeculation, orChristianity, but not both. In this way, he denies (1), that there areno absolute contradictories. In denying (1), furthermore, he also rejects (2), which expressesHegels two-form thesis.

If Christianity and speculation are not related as a species to a genus, or even related as

two species under a common genus are related, then how are they related? Climacus suggeststhat they are absolutely different. Christianity is the opposite of speculation on the whole. 47

The language of genus and species, then, appears to not fully capture Climacus meaning,since Climacus claims that Christianity is not related to speculation as a species of a genus.

Another option for understanding Climacus view is to think that Christianity and speculationare opposed as two different genera are opposed, whereby Christianity is essentially different

from speculation, much like animal and table are differences in kind. However, Christi-anity and speculation arent merely different genera. The trouble is that if Christianity andspeculation are just merely different like the kinds animal and table are, then the relation-

ship between them is more like the relationship between determinate terms that are, inessence, unrelated to each other. Hegel terms this sort of relationship diversity, whereby The

distinguished terms subsist as indifferently different toward one another because each isself-identical.48 But the diversity of these terms does not entail the strict or absoluteopposition of these terms. Animal and table are not directly opposed to each other like

contradictories.It is important to determine what Climacus means when he says that Christianity is, on the

whole, opposed to speculation and, because of this, that they cannot be mediated. First, it seemsclear that Christianity is not generated out of speculation and vice versa. If they were, then the

one would include the other in itself, which is something Climacus wants to deny. Recall that,for Climacus, given what Christianity is, speculation does not hold rights over it, since Chris-tianity occupies a qualitatively different sphere than speculation. Christianity is the sphere of

existence, subjectivity, and movement and speculation the sphere of contemplation, objectivity,and rest. In this way, Christianity is not a species of the genus of speculation, but is altogether

different than speculation.



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For Climacus, there is no justification for the mediation of speculation and Christianity.

Rather, the relation between Christianity and speculation is better seen as one where thespeculative philosopher, in order to really engage Christianity, must break offfrom speculationand move leap to Christianity. On this point, Climacus alludes to the Aristotelian notion of

a metabasis eis allo genos a shift or transition from one genus to another genus.49

V. CONCLUSION

In this paper I argued that Kierkegaards critique of Hegelianism, and Hegel in particular,requires an evaluation of the underlying logical foundations of Hegels idealism. While Kierke-gaard sees the viability of the theory of mediation in its broad outlines, he questions the truth

of Hegels thesis that there are only relative opposites. Favoring the classical logical perspec-tive Kierkegaard offers both a practical argument (through Judge William in Either/Or) and a

theoretical argument (through Johannes Climacus) against this thesis.

Notes

1 One detractor from this common view of Kierkegaard is Jon Stewart who, in his Kierkegaards Relationsto Hegel Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), henceforth Stewart, argues that thecore of Kierkegaards criticism of Hegelianism is not aimed at Hegel after all, but to certain Danish Hegelians.This does not mean, of course, that some criticisms Kierkegaard issues against his fellow Danes cannot beextended to Hegel. It does mean, however, that Hegel, the thinker, was not Kierkegaards main target.

2 Merold Westpahal, Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaards Concluding Unscientific Postscript

(West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1996), pp. 4041. Henceforth Westphal.3 Sometimes Hegel speaks cautiously by affirming the variety of opposition, while other times he claims

that only relative opposition obtains. My discussion of his thesis is mindful of this discrepancy, and I show thatKierkegaards argument against Hegel is successful whether Hegel means to affirm either the centrality ofrelative opposition against the triviality of contradictory opposition or the stronger claim that there is onlyrelative opposition. If Hegel means the former, then Kierkegaard will need to show that contradictory oppositionis not in the least trivial, which he does by describing its importance for momentous choices. If Hegel meansthe latter, then Kierkegaard will need to give at least one example of a pair of opposites that do not satisfyHegels conditions for relative opposition.

4 By the classical logical perspective, I am referring, roughly, to the logical family line going back toAristotle.

5 G.W.F Hegel, Hegels Science of Logic, translated by A.V. Miller (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1969),

p. 424. Henceforth Hegels Science of Logic.6 G. W. F. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris

(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991), 119, Addition 2.7 Hegels Science of Logic, p. 438.8 We will look at the context and argument for this in the next section on Hegels thesis.9 From a classical logical point of view, this is controversial because, on the one hand, there are some

properties that have no correlating opposite, like being mid-sized or grey. On the hand, opposites are generallydivided in to at least three kinds: relative opposites, contraries, and contradictories. Hegel tends to see allproperties as relative opposites, and does not normally speak of them in terms of contraries. So, from theclassical logical point of view, while hot and cold are contraries, because they are opposite properties, andsomething cannot be both at the same time, Hegel will allow something to be both at the same time. He will alsoallow there to be middle term between being and nothing. This violates the law of the excluded middle and the

principle of non-contradiction. Kierkegaard found these logical laws inviolable.10 For example, as Peter of Spain argues: The Topic from relative opposites is the relationship of one

correlate to the other; and it is both constructive and destructive. For example, A father is; therefore, a child is,and vice versa; A father is not; therefore, a child is not, and vice versa . . . The maxim: When one of a pair

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of correlates is posited, the other is also posited; and when one is destroyed, the other is also destroyed. TheCambridge Translations of Medieval Texts: Logic and the Philosophy of Language, ed. Norman Kretzman andEleanor Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 239240.

11 Within Hegels philosophy, this notion is prevalent in his description of the relationship between God andthe finite world. Each is a determining and necessary opposite. Without the one there isnt the other. So, in order

for God (or Spirit) to become itself, God must posit the finite world.12 G. W. F Hegel, Encyclopaedia Logic, 119. Quoted in Stewart, Kierkegaards Relations to Hegel

Reconsidered, p. 196197. Henceforth Stewart.13 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Peter Crafts Hodgson, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion:

One-Volume Edition: The Lectures of 1827, 1 v. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 129.14 William Desmond, Hegels God: A Counterfeit Double? (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), p. 132.

Henceforth Desmond.15 Desmond, p. 134.16 In this way I agree with Michelle Kosch that of all the writings found in Either/Or I, the Diapsalmata

best represents As perspective about the insignificance of choice and the will. See her Despair in Kierke-gaards Either/Or, Journal of the History of Philosophy 44, no. 1 (2006), p. 85. Henceforth Kosch.

17 Sren Kierkegaard, Either/Or I, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1987), pp. 3839. Henceforth E/O I.18 Sren Kierkegaard, Either/Or II, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1987), p. 173. Henceforth E/O II.19 Frederik Sibbern, Om dem Maade, hvorpaa Contradictionsprincipet behandles I den hegelske Skole, med

mere, som henhrer til de logiske Grundbetragtninger, Maanedsskrift for Litterature, no. 19, 1838, Article II,432. This passage is quoted in Stewart, p. 189. Emphasis mine.

20 E/O II, p. 223.21 E/O II, p. 179.22 E/O I, pp. 3839.23 E/O I, p. 24.24 E/O II, p. 164.25 E/O I, p. 36.

26 E/O I, p. 26.27 E/O I, p. 22.28 E/O I, p. 39.29 E/O I, p. 39.30 E/O I, p. 24.31 Kosch, p. 92.32 E/O I, p. 39.33 E/O II, p. 175.34 E/O II, p. 170.35 Ibid.36 Ibid.37 Sren Kierkegaards Journals and Papers, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-

versity Press, 1976), 1578. Henceforth JP.38 Cf. E/O II, pp. 173175; and Sren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans Howard andEdna Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 376. Henceforth CUP. To affirm that there areabsolute contradictories does not preclude one from conceding something like (2). Relative opposites areopposites which obtain within a species or genus. Absolute contradictories, on the other hand, cannot obtainwithin a single species or genus, but refer to the negation of a species or genus.

39 CUP, p. 376.40 CUP, p. 379fn. Emphasis mine.41 Climacus issues a similar critique of Hegelianism in the Interlude to Philosophical Fragments. There he

argues that in the sphere of necessity, there is no actualization, no movement, because what is necessary isalways related to itself and is related to itself in the same way. This sameness admits no difference, and, as such,there is no change. Cf. Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press, 1985), p. 74.

42 CUP, pp. 375376.43 CUP, p. 375.44 Westphal, p. 146.



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45 CUP, pp. 375376.46 CUP, p. 376.47 Ibid.48 Hegels Science of Logic, p. 418.49 CUP, p. 98. See also JP, 260. There Kierkegaard argues that Hegel has never done justice to the category

of transition.

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Documents

Nason, Shannon - Opposites, Contradictories, And Mediation in Kierkegaard's Critique of Hegel - The Heythrop Journal, Volume 53, Issue 1 (2012)