A Politics of Inwardness: Rousseau and Kierkegaard in Dialogue
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis draws out some political implications of Kierkegaard’s concepts of faith, identity, and ethics. It does so by positioning Kierkegaard alongside Rousseau, whose work evinces a conflict over whether a good person can also be a good citizen. Via Rousseau, Kierkegaard’s religious individual is examined from a political perspective, putting in a new light some of the concerns that Kierkegaard’s believer is unsuitable and even noxious to political life. Kierkegaard’s own critique of Rousseau’s ideal citizen as amoral is then posited as a reason to reject Rousseau’s citizen as an alternative to the life of faith. Finally, Kierkegaard’s believer is shown to have a unique relation to politics. She participates passionately in political life as a gadfly, while maintaining a level of remove from political outcomes. Her identity does not stand or fall with the success or failure of political projects.
abstract: This thesis draws out some political implications of Kierkegaard’s concepts of faith, identity, and ethics. It does so by positioning Kierkegaard alongside Rousseau, whose work evinces a conflict over whether a good person can also be a good citizen. Via Rousseau, Kierkegaard’s religious individual is examined from a political perspective, putting in a new light some of the concerns that Kierkegaard’s believer is unsuitable and even noxious to political life. Kierkegaard’s own critique of Rousseau’s ideal citizen as amoral is then posited as a reason to reject Rousseau’s citizen as an alternative to the life of faith. Finally, Kierkegaard’s believer is shown to have a unique relation to politics. She participates passionately in political life as a gadfly, while maintaining a level of remove from political outcomes. Her identity does not stand or fall with the success or failure of political projects.
author: Koppert, Stefan Andrew
language: en
date published: 2018-08
date modified: 2026-07-24T04:03:38Z
provider: University of Regina
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/10294/8872

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.82465/4459