Naked Subjectivity: Minimal vs. Narrative Selves in Kierkegaard

Abstract

In recent years a significant debate has arisen as to whether Kierkegaard offers a version of the "narrative approach" to issues of personal identity and selfconstitution. In this paper I do not directly take sides in this debate, but consider instead the applicability of a recent development in the broader literature on narrative identity -the distinction between the temporally-extended "narrative self" and the non-extended "minimal self" -to Kierkegaard"s work. I argue that such a distinction is both necessary for making sense of Kierkegaard"s claim that we are ethically enjoined to become selves, and can indeed be found in Either/Or and the later The Sickness Unto Death. Despite Kierkegaard"s Non-Substantialism, each of these texts speaks (somewhat obliquely) of a "naked self" that is separable from the concrete facticity of human being. In both cases, this minimal self is linked to issues of eschatological responsibility; yet the two works develop very different understandings of "eternity" and correspondingly divergent accounts of the temporality of selfhood.This complicates the picture of Kierkegaardian selfhood in interesting ways, taking it beyond both narrativist and more standard neo-Lockean models of what it is to be a self.2

Whole Lives and Good Deaths

“…And these can be expanded to encompass a composite unit of meaning that is broader still, namely, the entire life (see Stokes 2012, e91). This is captured by what Patrick Stokes has usefully designated the Whole Life Unity Thesis, according to which "the object unified by narrativity is a whole life, not merely part of a life" (Stokes 2012, e92; see also Stokes 2010). While not all narrativists subscribe to the Whole Life Unity Thesis, most do, in some form or another.…”

“…If they obtain, they unify the life narrative, elevating it to the level of something "grand" (Lippitt 2007, 46;Christman 2004, 704); if not, we are back to mere chronology (cf. Stokes 2012).…”

The moral implications of Kierkegaard's analysis of despair

“…The former is the state of someone who is healed of despair, a person of faith; the latter is the state of someone who is currently failing to achieve his ‘fulfilled self’ and is accordingly in despair. For a different distinction between several senses of ‘self’ see Stokes (2010).…”

“…22.Such an account can be viewed as a version of Judge William's position in the second part of Either/Or , where he understands the ‘eternal in a person’ in terms of a-temporal ideals, the adherence to which constitutes one's ‘self’. For an exploration of the relation between the understanding of the self in Either/Or and that in The Sickness unto Death , see, for example, Stokes (2010) and Davenport (2013). …”

A Moral Problem for Difficult Art

“…For discussion of Kierkegaard's narrative view of the self, see Lippitt (), Lippitt and Stokes (), Rudd (; ), and Stokes ().…”