John Lippitt

This is a provocative international and interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars of Nietzsche and philosophers of religion. Nietzsche, famous for declaring the death of God, nevertheless was responsible throughout his writing for the most telling modern meditation on the nature of the religions of the world, mysticism, the divine as a principle in culture, and the relation of mankind to the infinite. This collection deals with the full scope of Nietzsche's thought on this topic, encompassing Greek, Hebraic, Asian and Mystic religion. Nietzsche scholarship has flourished immeasurably in recent years, not least in respect to the religious question. Nietzsche and the Divine will be an essential underpinning of this area for Nietzsche scholars and theological scholars alike.

Irony, humor and the comic play vital yet under-appreciated roles in Kierkegaard's thought. Focusing upon the Concluding Unscientific Postscript , this book investigates these roles, relating irony and humor as forms of the comic to central Kierkegaardian themes. How does the comic function as a form of "indirect communication"? What roles can irony and humor play in the infamous Kierkegaardian "leap"? Do certain forms of wisdom depend upon possessing a sense of humor? And is such a sense of humor thus a genuine virtue?

In this article, I offer a brief account of some of Kierkegaard’s key concerns about friendship: its “preferential” nature and its being a form of self-love. Kierkegaard’s endorsement of the ancient idea of the friend as “second self” involves a common but misguided assumption: that friendship depends largely upon likeness between friends. This focus obscures a vitally important element, highlighted by the so-called “drawing” view of friendship. Once this is emphasized, we can see a significant aspect - though by no means all - of Kierkegaard’s worry as misplaced. However, the “drawing” view also enables us to begin to see what a “Kierkegaardian” friendship might look like.

This paper investigates Johannes Climacus''s infamous satire against Hegelianism in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. In considering why Climacus aims to show speculative thought as comical rather than simply mistaken, it is argued that Climacus sees the need for the comic as a vital form of ''indirect communication.'' The thinker who approaches ethical and religious questions in an inappropriately ''objective'' manner is in the grip of an illusion which can only be dispelled by his coming to see his own confusion, and satire (as well as other forms of the comic) can be a more effective weapon in dispelling such illusions than can more ''direct'' forms of critical argument. Moreover, it is argued that the ''Hegelian'' is not simply a figure at whom Climacus''s readers are invited to scoff. Rather, we are intended to see ourselves as prone to the same kind of confusions and evasions. Thus Climacus''s ostensibly anti-Hegelian satire is itself a form of indirect communication which, if we do see how it rebounds upon ourselves, serves a vital ethical-religious purpose.

Is a sense of humour a virtue? In an informal sense of the term ‘virtue’, of course it is. A sense of humour is a trait nobody wants to be thought of as lacking, and one that we value in partners, friends, and colleagues alike. But the claim that a sense of humour is a moral virtue seems far more controversial. Yet in a fascinating article, just this claim has been advanced by Robert C. Roberts, who relates it to the further claim that there are figures, such as Socrates and Tolstoy, “whose wisdom was partially constituted by a sense of humour.” Now, if it is right that certain forms of wisdom are partially constituted by the possession of a certain sense of humour, then it is a likely corollary that the development of such wisdom goes hand in hand with the development of such a sense of humour. In which case, the development of such a sense of humour would be a significant dimension of moral education, understood as a training in the virtues.

As part of the widespread turn to narrative in contemporary philosophy, several commentators have recently attempted to sign Kierkegaard up for the narrative cause, most notably in John Davenport and Anthony Rudd's recent collection Kierkegaard After MacIntyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative and Virtue. I argue that the aesthetic and ethical existence‐spheres in Either/or cannot adequately be distinguished in terms of the MacIntyre‐inspired notion of ‘narrative unity’. Judge William's argument for the ethical life contains far more in the way of substantive normative content than can be encapsulated by the idea of ‘narrative unity’, and the related idea that narratives confer intelligibility will not enable us to distinguish Kierkegaardian aesthetes from Kierkegaardian ethicists. ‘MacIntyrean Kierkegaardians’ also take insufficient notice of further problems with MacIntyre's talk of ‘narrative unity’, such as his failure to distinguish between literary narratives and the ‘enacted dramatic narratives’ of which he claims our lives consist; the lack of clarity in the idea of a ‘whole life’; and the threat of self‐deception. Finally, against the connections that have been drawn between Kierkegaardian choice and Harry Frankfurt's work on volitional identification, I show something of the dangers involved in putting too much stress on unity and wholeheartedness.

According to James Conant, the 'revocations' made of the "Concluding Unscientific Postscript" and the "Tractatus" by their authors mean that we should view these texts as containing 'simple nonsense'. I firstly criticize the reading of the Postscript's 'revocation' which leads Conant to this conclusion. Next, I aim to show why we shall better understand the revocation's significance if we pay close attention to two factors: the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus's description of himself as a 'humorist'; and, more importantly, what the text tells us about 'humour' as an entire existential life-view; one given much less attention in Kierkegaard scholarship than the much better-known 'aesthetic', 'ethical' and 'religious' views of life