Indirect Communication: Hegelian Aesthetic and Kierkegaard’s Literary Art

Abstract

Philosophy and literary art have seldom shown much correlation. There have been philosophers like Hume, whose style displays grace and humour, or like Russell, whose limpid prose has an elegant clarity, or again — more rarely — a Gilbert Ryle, whose writing has a directness that is almost as redolent of saddle-leather as Sassoon. In general, however, a philosopher is more likely to show the urgent concern with clarity and a complete thoroughness of exposition that leads Kant into an ugliness of style so far removed from the beauty of his logical architectonic. I begin thus because we know how different a case is that of Søren Kierkegaard. Interpreters may vary widely in their views of his philosophical position and attitude, some making him more of a poet than a thinker and others suggesting that he was a philosopher malgré lui. Yet all are agreed that he must be described as a writer. I do not mean just that he wrote books but rather that he projected an oeuvre — he intended to show a literary creation; and he succeeded. We recall his composition of his Journals and the interest they display in literature, and his Students’ Union lecture ‘Our Journalistic Literature’ (November 1835). The literary interest and studies of the late 1830s are well known, as is the postponement of his theological examination, which almost amounted to a desertion of his theological studies.