Graceful Nothings: The Art of Beginning in Søren Kierkegaard’s Theological Anthropology

This study is a constructive account of Søren Kierkegaard’s theological anthropology. In it I show that according to Kierkegaard: (1) human being consists in the continual task of becoming; (2) this becoming demands that we continually begin again; and (3) beginning is a kenotic art executed through the spiritual exercise of faculties such as anxiety and silence. Such practices return the human being to a state of graceful nothing, which Kierkegaard names “primitivity”. From this state, the human being may repeatedly (re-)begin her becoming. This study contributes to Kierkegaard scholarship in several ways. Notably, it: (1) subverts the reduction of Kierkegaardian faith to an irrational (MacIntyre) or violent (Lévinas) moment through elevating the status of beginning; (2) recovers the Platonic vision of the good underpinning Kierkegaard’s anthropology; (3) theologically rehabilitates those Kierkegaardian categories (i.e. nothingness, silence, anxiety) which are commonly read through a secular existentialist or postmodern lens; and (4) resists the related tendency to bifurcate the philosophical and theological dimensions of Kierkegaard’s thought. In terms of enduring issues in wider philosophical theology and philosophy of religion, this study: (1) uses a methodology of reading with, which deploys close textual readings as the tools through which to critique historical-critical readings; (2) thereby opens Kierkegaard’s authorship to contemporary theo-poetic and constructive theological approaches; and (3) contributes to theological reflections on the good, anxiety, silence and grace. In the Prelude I sketch the scope, purpose and methodology of this study. In Chapter One, I reassess Kierkegaard’s relationship to Plato and Aristotle, recovering the centrality of the Christian-Platonic good to Kierkegaard’s anthropology, and presenting Kierkegaardian metaphysics as an existential pursuit. In Chapters Two and Three, I present anxiety and silence as kenotic spiritual practices through which the individual recovers her capacity for the good. My readings of Kierkegaard’s construals of both categories accentuate the sense in which: (1) Kierkegaardian nothing or primitivity is always gracefully fulsome; and (2) Kierkegaard’s texts are not just dialectical or descriptive, but formational and performative. In Chapter Four, I: (1) reflect explicitly on the prevenient grace which implicitly inflects the categories (nothing, good, anxiety, silence) considered throughout the rest of the study; and (2) explore how Kierkegaard pseudonymously heightens and veronymously relaxes the paradox of grace, his authorship as a whole inducting his reader into grace as not a problem to solve but a task to undertake.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Guyatt, Ruby

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Pickstock, Catherine
• Becker-Lindenthal, Hjoerdis

• philosophy
• theology
• philosophical theology
• philosophy of religion
• Kierkegaard
• nothingness
• grace
• anxiety
• silence
• good

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/58ce8cb3-5b8b-4ef6-8203-9bddc4ca71dd/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.60432

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/313324