Juliet T. J. T. Rumble Rumble

In this thesis, I will argue that Kierkegaard's authorship represents a challenge to the various projects of self-determination that are presented by his pseudonyms. It is commonplace to read Kierkegaard's works as a sustained critique of the esthete and his aim of creating himself in his own image. The ethicist's project of self-choice is typically viewed as a separate and opposing existence possibility and a stage on the journey towards religious existence and fulfilled selfhood. In contrast, I wish to suggest that, while the stated aims of Kierkegaard's esthete and ethicist are at odds, the underlying presuppositions and covert aims of their projects are similar. ;The pursuit of self-determination in the pseudonymous authorship is invariably associated with some kind of privileged knowledge or perspective. In their pursuit of autonomy, Kierkegaard's pseudonyms attempt to secure their existence by appealing to one or another authoritative framework: the esthete's Idea, the ethical universal, or the young Kierkegaard's life-view . The self's presence to itself in self-representation is also named as a condition for self-mastery . The ideals associated with these privileged knowledges include certainty, closure, moral rectitude, and self-recognition. ;It is the realization of these ideals which is repeatedly thwarted in Kierkegaard's works. Rather than absolutizing human universals, Kierkegaard relentlessly exposes the contradictions in their claims to totality. I wish to suggest that Kierkegaard's critique of the project of self-determination is linked to his intention to voice the Christian communication in such a way that it can once again be heard. Such an interpretation of Kierkegaard's project, far from trivializing it, may indeed reveal its central religious insight: that the power to bestow unity of purpose and being in human individuals is, ultimately, not a human one.