Mélissa Fox-Muraton

In the 1930s, Jean Wahl, Lev Shestov, Benjamin Fondane, and Rachel Bespaloff were among the first to seriously introduce philosophical readings of Kierkegaard’s works in France. As Jewish intellectuals within a particularly troubled period in history, their readings of Kierkegaard were informed both by the problems of self-identification imposed upon them by the political context, and by a particular ontological understanding of human nature. This article argues that these considerations are essential for understanding how these early existential thinkers read the Dane and appealed to him in ways quite distinct from the Christian or atheist trends in existential philosophy.

Although Rachel Bespaloff published only two short studies of Kierkegaard’s works (1934-1935), her work, some of the first critical analyses of his philosophy, had a profound impact on Kierkegaard’s reception in France. Despite the fact that she published no studies of Kierkegaard’s works after 1935, her essays and letters nevertheless attest to a continued interest in the Danish philosopher, in whom she seeks a new source for philosophy. As a Jewish intellectual writing in a historically troubled context, Bespaloff’s readings are critically engaged and question how Kierkegaard’s philosophy can be received and appropriated in the context of the 20th century.

Simone de Beauvoir’s moral philosophy has received relatively little attention in the scholarly world. This article seeks to bring her Ethics of Ambiguity into dialogue with Søren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, two works written a century apart, but which both strive to offer a response to challenges concerning the dangers of existential philosophy’s focus on subjectivity. Despite some fundamental differences in orientation, especially with regard to questions of action and social change, Beauvoir and Kierkegaard’s works offer complementary models for understanding how existential ethics can move beyond subjectivist stances and allow for attentiveness to the plurality of concrete, singular others.

In The Book on Adler and “Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth,” Kierkegaard relies on logical reasoning and grammatical analysis in order to arrive at categorical normative conclusions against the use of religious belief and authority as a justification for ethical action. These arguments demonstrate that some types of moral knowledge can be arrived at through reason/logic, despite Kierkegaard’s efforts to separate the spheres of logic and existence. Kierkegaard thereby offers a strong critique of both moral exceptionalism and an ethics of conviction, a critique which—as the paper argues—is not incompatible with his existential and Christian ethics.

This article examines the challenges for understanding Kierkegaard’s philosophy from the perspective of our modern, heterogeneous societies, and seeks to define a humanism or existential ethics within Kierkegaard’s existential anthropology. After examining the problems inherent in Kierkegaard’s account of neighbor-love and human equality, we question the possibility of separating Kierkegaard’s existential anthropology from his Christian ontology. Suggesting that Kierkegaard’s philosophy does not leave us empty-handed, as political and social critiques claim, we sketch out the premises for a Kierkegaardian understanding of existential ethics which is not merely an ethics of self-accomplishment, but which places concern for others at the fore.

ABSTRACT Aphantasia is a spectrum disorder, affecting the ability of otherwise healthy individuals to form voluntary or conscious mental images, and in some cases also any form of sensory representation. Although only discovered in 2010, it is now estimated that 2–3% of the population may have aphantasia – otherwise termed, the absence of a ‘mind’s eye,’ that aspect of conscious experience which so many people take for granted as part of their general way of experiencing the world. Aphantasia, although it does not imply the absence of all forms of imagination, such as perspective taking and narrative construction, is quite literally a disorder affecting the individual’s capacity to form and work with images, and thus the absence of a certain way in which consciousness engages with the image-object, distinct both from perception and thought. This paper examines how phenomenological accounts of imagination can help us to better understand aphantasia, and also the ways in which aphantasia calls into question some aspects of an existential account of self.

While Kierkegaard’s philosophy focuses on concrete human existence, his thought has rarely been challenged regarding concrete and contemporary moral issues. This volume offers an overview of contemporary ethical issues from a Kierkegaardian perspective, deliberately taking him out of the sphere of Theology and Christian Ethics, and examining the ways in which his works can provide fruitful insight into questions which Kierkegaard certainly never himself envisaged, such as accepting refugees into our communities, understanding how we relate to social media, issues of identity with regard to bioengineering or transgender identity, or problems of interreligious dialogue. The contributions in this volume, by international scholars, seek to address both the challenges and insights of Kierkegaard’s existential ethics for our contemporary societies, and its relation to topics of current interest in the field of moral philosophy. The volume is organized into three major sections: the first focusing on the relation between ethics and religion, a topic of primary importance with regard to the development of religious foundationalism and the challenges of dealing with diverse belief systems within our communities; the second on our understandings of ourselves and our relations to others with regard to issues of media and community; and the third targeting more specifically questions of identity, and the ways in which the developments of modern science impact identity construction. This work offers new paths for critically engaging with the moral issues of our times from an existential perspective.

Among the first to seriously introduce Kierkegaard’s philosophy to the French reading public in the 1930s, Wahl, Bespaloff, Shestov, and Fondane were also engaged in the debate about philosophy of existence. Critical of the existentialist philosophy developed in the 1940s beginning with Sartre, as well as of the existential philosophies promoted throughout Germany and France in the 1930s by Heidegger, Jaspers, and Marcel, Bespaloff, Fondane, Shestov, and Wahl nevertheless all claim to remain faithful to “their” philosophy of existence, inspired by Kierkegaard. This essay will sketch out their understanding of what philosophy of existence is, through their positions and critiques of their contemporaries and successors.