Claudine Davidshofer

It is well-known that Kierkegaard is critical of Hegel’s dialectical method, especially of determinate negation and mediation that move his dialectic along. Previous scholars have focused on Kierkegaard’s existential critiques of Hegel’s dialectic—why it cannot be transferred to ethical-religious life—but Kierkegaard’s metaphysical critiques of Hegel’s dialectical method—why it may not work even in abstract thought with abstract concepts—have gone largely unstudied. This article analyzes Kierkegaard’s critiques of Hegel’s dialectical method itself—as it functions in speculative thought. This article begins with an examination of Hegel’s dialectical method, follows with an analysis of Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel’s dialectical method—especially of determinate negation and mediation—and concludes with an analysis of how Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel’s method in general underlies his belief that Hegelian dialectical reason cannot think religious concepts in particular.

This paper discusses how Kierkegaard’s aesthete in Either/or’s “Diapsalmata” and “Rotation of Crops” attempts to apply Hegel’s principle of mediation to everyday decision-making. This paper has two main goals: First, it provides an in-depth analysis of exactly how the aesthete’s approach to decision-making follows the dialectical pattern of Hegelian mediation. Second, it argues that even though the aesthete meets with unfortunate results, the aesthete cannot be so easily dismissed. The aesthete’s Hegelian perspective is still relevant to daily life because it provides an insightful view into how we ourselves sometimes approach decisions and cope with the difficulty of making decisions.

This article analyzes the “Interlude” in Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments. In particular, it examines Johannes Climacus’s response to Hegel’s view that a past actuality is necessary. I provide an in-depth analysis of Hegel’s view of modality and of what he means when he says that a past actuality is necessary. In contrast to the standard scholarly interpretation, I argue that Climacus need not reject Hegel’s view because Hegel’s view of the necessity of the past is not so controversial or difficult to accept. Finally, I show that Climacus’s main critique is that we cannot know the past as necessary in any meaningful way. He worries that we might get so preoccupied with the futile task of trying to know the Hegelian necessity of the past that we forget to personally appropriate the past in a way that can help us live in the present.