THE Concluding Unscientific Postscript is generally regarded as the most philosophically significant of Kierkegaard's works. In terms of a subjectivistic orientation it seems to present both an elaborate critique of the pretensions of the Hegelian philosophy and an existential analysis which points to the Christian faith as the only solution to the "human predicament." Furthermore, on the basis of such a straightforward reading of the text, Kierkegaard has been both vilified as an irrationalist and praised as a profound existential thinker (...) who has uncovered the only legitimate starting point for a philosophical analysis of the religious life and a Christian apologetic. (shrink)

Versions of this paper have been read to philosophical colloquia at Occidental College and California State University, Fullerton. I am indebted to participants in those discussions, to students in many of my classes, and particularly to Marilyn McCord Adams, Van Harvey, Thomas Kselman, William Laserow, and James Muyskens, for helpful comment on the ideas which are contained in this paper (or which would have been, had it not been for their criticisms).

The aim of this paper is to contest an infl uential recent reading of one of Kierkegaard’s most important books, the pseudonymously written Concluding Unscientific Postscript. According to the reading offered by James Conant, the Postscript is an “elaborate reductio” of the very philosophical project in which it itself appears to be engaged, namely, the project of attempting to clarify the nature of Christianity. I show that Conant’s position depends upon four inter-related theses concerning Kierkegaard’s text, and I argue that (...) noneof these theses is sustainable, either philosophically or exegetically. In the course of this critique, alternative and more convincing theses are developed, and I suggest that these theses are altogether better suited than Conant’s to account for, and to provide a defense of, Kierkegaard’s stature as a religious thinker. (shrink)

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The aim of this paper is to make sense of cases of apparent nonsense in the writings of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. Against commentators such as Cora Diamond and James Conant, we argue that, in the case of Wittgenstein, recognising such a category of nonsense is necessary in order to understand the development of his thought. In the case of Kierkegaard, we argue against the view that the notion of the 'absolute paradox' of the Christian incarnation is intended to be nonsensical. (...) However, we recognise that Kierkegaard's discussion of Christianity uses a similar methodology to a Wittgensteinian grammatical investigation. We maintain that by making sense of their respective views on nonsense and paradox we are able more fully to appreciate their positions on, and approaches to, ethics and religion. (shrink)

Against influential views to the contrary, notably formulated in Henry Allison's 'Christianity and Nonsense', it is argued that Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript is not in itself, as a whole or in any part, an elaborate joke. The work contains a serious though negative argument designed to locate the place of faith in relation to reason. Given that the text itself makes claims on our reason in this way but that its pseudonymous author is a self-styled humorist, the question of where (...) the work's humour lies needs to be freshly confronted. After humour has been distinguished from comedy (as a point of view from which unconscious comedy in the enactment of life-views becomes visible), and both from absurdity, it is concluded that a fundamental aim of Postscript, once the negative argument has been given, is to cast light self-referentially on the comedy of humour itself. Finally, in asking what bearing Postscript's humour can have on whatever philosophy means to us today, two main respects (and areas) are indicated in which current philosophical investigation may be seen to be potentially comic from a (broadened and non-parochial) Postscriptian perspective. (shrink)