John D. Poling

This dissertation investigates Kierkegaard's notions of subjective thinking and the subjective thinker, and elucidates his discussion by drawing on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Kierkegaard denies that ethico-religious ways of life can be either communicated or realized objectively, in independence of the thinker's individual subjective interest and antecedent pathos factors. To think subjectively is to think an ethico-religious possibility within the context supplied by the thinker's subjective existence. By showing how the individual subjectivity of the thinker is ingredient in the constitution of the ethico-religious self, Kierkegaard discerns in subjectivity another locus for the activity of thinking, one to be contrasted with objective thinking. This dissertation clarifies the logico-pathetic contours of subjective and objective thinking, both in the narrower context of Kierkegaard's Concludinq Unscientific Postscript and the wider one of his authorship. Subjective thinking is shown to be a necessary part of the overall reflective temperament of an existing individual, without being privatistic or idiosyncratic