•  6
    Guest Editorial: Special issue Introduction
    Studies in Christian Ethics 35 (4): 681-683. 2022.
  •  10
    Participation in Grace: Kierkegaard’s Corrective to Luther
    Studies in Christian Ethics 35 (4): 765-785. 2022.
    I offer an interpretation of the target of Søren Kierkegaard’s corrective to Luther as not merely cultural Lutheranism but Luther's very conception of what it means to be receptive to grace. On this interpretation, while Kierkegaard affirms that salvation is by grace alone, and through faith alone, he thinks that Luther errs when he conceives of salvation as a process in relation to which the believer is merely passive. Instead, in Kierkegaard’s view, receptivity to grace involves a distinctive,…Read more
  •  7
    How is conversion possible? How could a person come to inhabit a radically new evaluative outlook? Reason and Conversion has a story to tell about Kierkegaard’s thinking on this topic, as the culmi...
  •  30
    Reason and Conversion in Kierkegaard and the German Idealists
    Tandf: British Journal for the History of Philosophy 1-5. forthcoming.
    .
  •  24
    I offer an approach to Dreyer's film Ordet as a contribution to the phenomenology of a certain kind of religious experience. The experience in question is one of a moment that disrupts the chronological flow of time and that, in the lived experience of it, is charged with eternal significance. I propose that the notoriously divisive ending of Ordet reflects an aim to provide the film's viewers with an experience of this very sort. l draw throughout on some central ideas in Kierkegaard’s work, es…Read more
  •  107
    Valuing humanity: Kierkegaardian worries about Korsgaardian transcendental arguments
    International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 80 (4-5): 424-442. 2019.
    This paper draws out from Kierkegaard’s work a distinctive critical perspective on an influential contemporary approach in moral philosophy: namely, Christine Korsgaard’s transcendental argument for the value of humanity. From Kierkegaard’s perspective, we argue, Korsgaard argument goes too far, in attributing absolute value to humanity – but also that she is required to make this claim if her transcendental argument is to work. From a Kierkegaardian perspective, to place this sort of value in h…Read more
  •  13
    Subjective Thinking: Kierkegaard on Hegel's Socrates
    Hegel Bulletin 31 (1): 23-44. 2010.
    This paper aims to understand Hegel’s claim in the introduction to his Philosophy of Mind that mind is an actualization of the Idea and argues that this claim provides us with a novel and defensible way of understanding Hegel’s naturalism. I suggest that Hegel’s approach to naturalism should be understood as ‘formal’, and argue that Hegel’s Logic, particularly the section on the ‘Idea’, provides us with a method for this approach. In the first part of the paper, I present an interpretation of He…Read more
  •  69
    Kierkegaard on Truth: One or Many?
    Mind 127 (505): 197-223. 2018.
    This paper re-examines Kierkegaard's work with respect to the question whether truth is one or many. I argue that his famous distinction between objective and subjective truth is grounded in a unitary conception of truth as such: truth as self-coincidence. By explaining his use in this context of the term ‘redoubling’ [ Fordoblelse ], I show how Kierkegaard can intelligibly maintain that truth is neither one nor many, neither a simple unity nor a complex multiplicity. I further show how these po…Read more
  •  107
    Rule‐Following and Rule‐Breaking: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein
    European Journal of Philosophy (4): 1159-1185. 2017.
    My aim in this paper is twofold: to establish that Kierkegaard's so‐called theory of the leap strongly anticipates a line of argument that is central to Wittgenstein's so‐called rule‐following considerations; and to begin to show how Kierkegaard's work has fruitful contributions of its own to make to on‐going discussions about rules and rule‐following. The paper focuses throughout on the question of how, if at all, human rule‐following can be distinguished from behaviour that is merely mechanica…Read more
  •  31
    Kierkegaard, Repetition and Ethical Constancy
    Philosophical Investigations 40 (4): 414-439. 2017.
    How can a person forge a stable ethical identity over time? On one view, ethical constancy means reapplying the same moral rules. On a rival view, it means continually adapting to one's ethical context in a way that allows one to be recognized as the same practical agent. Focusing on his thinking about repetition, I show how Kierkegaard offers a critical perspective on both these views. From this perspective, neither view can do justice to our vulnerability to certain kinds of crisis, in which o…Read more
  •  5
    Søren Kierkegaard
    In , . 2013.
  •  484
    The paradox of beginning: Hegel, Kierkegaard and philosophical inquiry
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 50 (1). 2007.
    This paper reconsiders certain of Kierkegaard's criticisms of Hegel's theoretical philosophy in the light of recent interpretations of the latter. The paper seeks to show how these criticisms, far from being merely parochial or rhetorical, turn on central issues concerning the nature of thought and what it is to think. I begin by introducing Hegel's conception of "pure thought" as this is distinguished by his commitment to certain general requirements on a properly philosophical form of inquiry.…Read more
  •  55
    Kierkegaard's Concept of Despair
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 5 (1): 166-168. 2008.
  •  974
    Subjective Thinking: Kierkegaard on Hegel's Socrates
    Hegel Bulletin of Great Britain 61 (Spring / Summer): 23-44. 2010.
    This essay considers the critical response to Hegel's view of Socrates we find in Kierkegaard's dissertation, The Concept of Irony. I argue that this dispute turns on the question whether or not the examination of particular thinkers enters into Socrates’ most basic aims and interests. I go on to show how Kierkegaard's account, which relies on an affirmative answer to this question, enables him to provide a cogent defence of Socrates' philosophical practice against Hegel's criticisms.
  •  22
    Expressing the World (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 59 (3): 677-679. 2006.
    According to Rudd, GMS leaves our prephilosophical beliefs in tact—for it bites only against second-order accounts of experience as a whole. It is not, however, to be confused with merely doubting that our ordinary beliefs satisfy certain ideal requirements, while conceding that they meet more relaxed, contextually sensitive standards. On the contrary, Rudd’s skeptic doubts that there is any compelling general theory of what counts as knowledge in any sense.
  •  422
    The problem of Kierkegaard's socrates
    Res Philosophica (4): 555-579. 2017.
    This essay re-examines Kierkegaard's view of Socrates. I consider the problem that arises from Kierkegaard's appeal to Socrates as an exemplar for irony. The problem is that he also appears to think that, as an exemplar for irony, Socrates cannot be represented. And part of the problem is the paradox of self-reference that immediately arises from trying to represent x as unrepresentable. On the solution I propose, Kierkegaard does not hold that, as an exemplar for irony, Socrates is in no way re…Read more
  •  763
    Kierkegaard and the Limits of Thought
    Hegel Bulletin (1): 82-105. 2016.
    This essay offers an account of Kierkegaard’s view of the limits of thought and of what makes this view distinctive. With primary reference to Philosophical Fragments, and its putative representation of Christianity as unthinkable, I situate Kierkegaard’s engagement with the problem of the limits of thought, especially with respect to the views of Kant and Hegel. I argue that Kierkegaard builds in this regard on Hegel’s critique of Kant but that, against Hegel, he develops a radical distinction …Read more
  •  8
    Subjective Thinking: Kierkegaard on Hegel’s Socrates
    Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 61 23-44. 2010.
    This paper aims to understand Hegel’s claim in the introduction to his Philosophy of Mind that mind is an actualization of the Idea and argues that this claim provides us with a novel and defensible way of understanding Hegel’s naturalism. I suggest that Hegel’s approach to naturalism should be understood as ‘formal’, and argue that Hegel’s Logic, particularly the section on the ‘Idea’, provides us with a method for this approach. In the first part of the paper, I present an interpretation of He…Read more
  •  168
    Kierkegaard and Death
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (2). 2013.
    No abstract
  •  185
    Recent Work on Kierkegaard
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23 (1): 185-192. 2015.
  •  785
    This paper reexamines Kierkegaard's work with respect to the question whether truth is one or many. I argue that his famous distinction between objective and subjective truth is grounded in a unitary conception of truth as such: truth as self-coincidence. By explaining his use in this context of the term ‘redoubling’ [Fordoblelse], I show how Kierkegaard can intelligibly maintain that truth is neither one nor many, neither a simple unity nor a complex multiplicity. I further show how these point…Read more
  •  493
    The Exemplification of Rules: An Appraisal of Pettit’s Approach to the Problem of Rule-following
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 20 (1): 69-90. 2012.
    Abstract This paper offers an appraisal of Phillip Pettit's approach to the problem how a merely finite set of examples can serve to represent a determinate rule, given that indefinitely many rules can be extrapolated from any such set. I argue that Pettit's so-called ethnocentric theory of rule-following fails to deliver the solution to this problem he sets out to provide. More constructively, I consider what further provisions are needed in order to advance Pettit's general approach to the pro…Read more
  •  798
    Kierkegaard and the Search for Self‐Knowledge
    European Journal of Philosophy 21 (4): 525-549. 2011.
    In the first part of this essay (Sections I and II), I argue that Kierkegaard's work helps us to articulate and defend two basic requirements on searching for knowledge of one's own judgements: first, that searching for knowledge whether one judges that P requires trying to make a judgement whether P; and second that, in an important range of cases, searching for knowledge of one's own judgements requires attending to how one's acts of judging are performed. In the second part of the essay (Sect…Read more
  •  49
    Søren Kierkegaard
    Oxford Bibliographies Online. 2013.
    Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b. 1813–d. 1855) left behind an extraordinary body of work that has had a major impact on European philosophy, and that continues to inform major debates within analytic philosophy as well. Utterly distinctive and often dazzling, Kierkegaard’s writings typically confront the reader with an enigmatic interplay between seriousness and jest and they bristle with original ideas. The range and sheer volume of these writings is difficult to take in: the output published in Kie…Read more
  •  880
    Dilemmatic Deliberations In Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling
    Faith and Philosophy 28 (2): 174-189. 2011.
    My central claim in this paper is that Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is governed by the basic aim to articulate a real dilemma, and to elicit its proper recognition as such. I begin by indicating how Kierkegaard’s works are shaped in general by this aim, and what the aim involves. I then show how the dilemmaticstructure of Fear and Trembling is obscured in a recent dispute between Michelle Kosch and John Lippitt regarding the basic aims and upshot of the book. Finally, I consider two critical…Read more