Kierkegaard on Ideality and Anxiety

I’m teaching Kierkegaard next semester, so I’m rereading The Concept of Anxiety – which, to be honest, has never really done it for me. As major Kierkegaard texts go. (But I have been known to quote from it, at need.) Anyway, two quotes today for my uncommon book. File under ‘ought implies can: pro and con’:

The more ideal ethics is, the better. It must not permit itself to be distracted by the babble that it is useless to require the impossible. For even to listen to such talk is unethical and is something for which ethics has neither time nor opportunity. Ethics will have nothing to do with bargaining; nor can one in this way reach actuality. To reach actuality, the whole movement must be reversed … Sin, then, belongs to ethics only insofar as upon this concept it is shipwrecked with the aid of repentence. If ethics is to include sin, its ideality comes to an end.

Coincidentally, I’ve been reading other stuff about ideal theory lately – Gerald Gaus’ new book, in particular – and Kierkegaard’s ideas dovetail with all that, if a bit oddly. In David Estlund terms, Kierkegaard is saying that ethical theory needs to be maximally ‘aspirational’. In Kant-ish terms, which K. would prefer, ethical theory concerns a Kingdom of Ends – a condition or world in which, by hypothesis, everyone does right. But sin – original sin: the necessity of sin – is, in Estlund terms, a ‘concessive’ condition. Someone does wrong. So sin isn’t part of the subject matter of ethics, no more so than illogical thinking is part of logic. (I think he’s joking with ‘such talk is unethical’. You think he is getting indignant, up on his high horse. But it’s more like: I’m very sorry, you’ve knocked on the wrong office door.)

Now of course in logic you may study fallacies, typical cognitive biases, mistakes to avoid. But a logician will tell you: that’s not really logic. Not proper. It’s psychology or logic pedagogy. As Kierkegaard says, the mood appropriate to the study of this stuff is ‘antipathetic curiosity’. Kierkegaard’s point is that it’s a bit funny to try to pull a parallel move regarding sin. As if the Old Testament God leaned out of Heaven, saw Adam and Eve getting up to some non-compliance and declared, ‘Ah, psychology in action.’ Flipping the point: it would be weird if the Less Wrong community had a penitent sect, or confessional rituals. ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have exhibited cognitive bias.’ (Not that those folks aren’t a bit weird already … Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

So that’s sort of what Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety is about, in case you have ever wondered. The (non-psychological) significance of the category of non-compliance, given that ethics is strictly only concerned with compliance. What does it mean, for me, that I am, necessarily, not perfect? An ideal model of the necessarily perfect person doesn’t speak to that.

What does this have to do with anxiety? Kierkegaard writes: “Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.” (Which I think would go great on a coffee mug.) It’s complicated. Too much for one post.

UPDATE: Thanks for comments. I might have mentioned in the post that the one semi-formal logic paper I ever published was sort of on this theme, although I hadn’t read Kierkegaard on anxiety at the time. Narrowly, the thesis of that old essay of mine is that true moral dilemmas are possible. More broadly, I argue that deontic logic should allow for the fact that people can do the wrong thing. Misbehavior is not like contradiction. Standard deontic logic basically models a Kingdom of Ends in which everyone is compliant. So, of course, there can’t be true moral dilemmas there because, from the presence of a true dilemma, you could prove non-compliance. (That’s what a moral dilemma is. A situation in which you can’t avoid doing the wrong thing, one way or the other.) So I’m sort of agreeing with Kierkegaard but sort of arguing the exact opposite. One or the other, for sure.