George Pattison

ABSTRACT In the Bible, the human God-relationship is typically established through and by the phenomenon of “calling”. However, for much subsequent theology, this has been displaced by “vision”, “taste” or “feeling”. Referring to the notion of an inner word, the paper follows Kierkegaard's treatment of silence as, alternatively, a mode of inattention and attention to such an inner word. With Heidegger, the paper turns to the notion of vocation, both as in the discussion of the call of conscience in Being and Time and the poetic vocation exemplified in the figure and poetry of Hölderlin. Finally, it considers the possible difference between such a poetic vocation and a divine calling.

The paper argues that the question of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms has been largely misconceived. Referencing comparable devices such as anonymity, noms de plume, and heteronyms, and drawing on Heidegger’s discussion of Kierkegaardian pseudonymity in the lectures on Parmenides, the paper further distinguishes between fictional characters (e. g. the Seducer and Assessor Vilhelm), noms de plume (H.H.), fictional editors, and pseudonyms proper. It is argued that in the first authorship only Constantin Constantius and Johannes Climacus approximate to the criteria Kierkegaard himself lays down for pseudonymity. Furthermore, Kierkegaard’s anxieties regarding the form of publication of his works in the late 1840s reveals the whole project of pseudonymity collapsing into incoherence. By means of a comparison with Nietzsche, it is argued that Kierkegaard’s work is less a manifold of different literary personalities and more a play of revealing/concealing voices. In these voices there is nevertheless a literary watermark that makes Kierkegaard’s work as a whole distinctively Kierkegaardian.

Even in a secular age, mountains continue to be sites of religious and spiritual significance, whether on account of their sublime grandeur or with regard to the sense of a different time-order, eternal or sempiternal, that they inspire. This chapter examines two modern thinkers in whom the spiritual significance of mountains is expressed in especially striking terms: John Ruskin and Martin Heidegger. Although these may seem to be thinkers of a very different stamp, they can both be seen as arguing for the importance of art in the human response to modernity and industrialization and, through their privileged artists, giving a special place to representations of mountains that are attentive to their potential spiritual significance.

A Phenomenology of the Devout Life is the first part of a three-part work, A Philosophy of Christian Life. Rather than approaching Christianity through its doctrinal statements, as philosophers of religion have often done, the book starts by offering a phenomenological description of the devout life as that is set out in the teaching of Francois de Sales and related authors. This is because for most Christians practice and life-commitments are more fundamental than formal doctrinal beliefs. Although George Pattison will address the metaphysical truth-claims of Christianity in Part three, the guiding argument is that it is the Christian way of life that best reveals what these beliefs really are. As the work is a philosophical study, it does not presuppose the truth of Christianity but assumes only that there is a humanly accessible meaning to the intention to live a devout life, pleasing to God. This can be said to find expression in a certain view of selfhood that emphasizes the dimensions of feeling and will rather than intellect and that culminates in the experience of the annihilation of self. This is a model of selfhood deeply opposed to contemporary models that privilege autonomous agency and the devout life is therefore presented as offering a corrective to extreme versions of the contemporary view.

In recent years, the long-standing philosophical and religious duel between ‘Hegel’ and ‘Kierkegaard’ has quiedy transmuted into something that, if still far from an amicable resolution, is something much less black and white. We are, of course, collectively grateful to Jon Stewart for demonstrating not only something of the extent to which ‘Kierkegaard's relation to Hegel’ needs to be re-envisaged as ‘Kierkegaard'srelationsto Hegel,’ but also that, often, even mosdy, the passages where Kierkegaard is seemingly attacking Hegel are actually directed against one or other, often Danish, representative of Hegelianism — above all, against J. L. Heiberg and H. L. Martensen. As a biographical narrative, this is largely beyond dispute — though, as many of Stewart's critics have noted, this does not necessarily lead, as he himself suggests, to the elimination of crucial philosophical differences between the two erstwhile protagonists.In this paper, I accept Stewart's point that Kierkegaard's reception of Hegel is inseparable from his multiple receptions of Hegelianism. I shall, however, offer a particular focus on a part of the story that, I believe, still remains under-represented in the secondary literature, namely, Kierkegaard's early response to a number of those theologians often referred to as ‘Right’ Hegelians. This focus calls for a revision of Stewart's emphasis on the relation to Heiberg and Martensen as the decisive factor in Kierkegaard's anti-Hegelianism.

Since early modern times, art has paralleled religion in its response to technology as illustrated by Ruskin’s thoughts on the colour purple. Heidegger also turned to art, especially the poetry of Hölderlin, as an alternative to technology. Against the background of Benjamin’s essay on ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproducibility’, the question is asked whether the thoroughly technicized art of film can become a focus for such creative counter-technological thinking. A positive answer is developed with reference to Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Nostalgia.

Although the ideas of Soren Kierkegaard played a pivotal role in the shaping of mainstream German philosophy and the history of French existentialism, the question of how philosophers should read Kierkegaard is a difficult one to settle. His intransigent religiosity has led some philosophers to view him as essentially a religious thinker of a singularly anti-philosophical attitude who should be left to the theologians. In this major new survey of Kierkegaard's thought, George Pattison addresses this question head on and shows that although it would be difficult to claim a "philosophy of Kierkegaard" as one could a philosophy of Kant, or of Hegel, there are nevertheless significant points of common interest between Kierkegaard's central thinking and the questions that concern philosophers today. The challenge of self-knowledge in an age of moral and intellectual uncertainty that lies at the heart of Kierkegaard's writings remains as important today as it did in the culture of post-Enlightenment modernity.

Although the ideas of Soren Kierkegaard played a pivotal role in the shaping of mainstream German philosophy and the history of French existentialism, the question of how philosophers should read Kierkegaard is a difficult one to settle. His intransigent religiosity has led some philosophers to view him as essentially a religious thinker of a singularly anti-philosophical attitude who should be left to the theologians. In this major new survey of Kierkegaard's thought, George Pattison addresses this question head on and shows that although it would be difficult to claim a "philosophy of Kierkegaard" as one could a philosophy of Kant, or of Hegel, there are nevertheless significant points of common interest between Kierkegaard's central thinking and the questions that concern philosophers today. The challenge of self-knowledge in an age of moral and intellectual uncertainty that lies at the heart of Kierkegaard's writings remains as important today as it did in the culture of post-Enlightenment modernity

Thinking about God involves more than the wordless longing of the heart. Thinking must also be put into language, even if the role of silence is admitted. Apophatic and mystical traditions have always acknowledged the limitations of language. An approach is developed that looks to kinds of language other than the propositions that have been the stuff of traditional philosophical theology. These might include a shift to the subjunctive mood and the acceptance of parataxis, as in Heidegger’s exposition of Parmenides. Examples are taken from George Herbert and Pascal; John Milbank’s account of pleonasm as the modality of religious language, and of the need to construe language as dialogical are discussed.