Forgetting Oneself

Per this post, I’m preparing to teach Kierkegaard. My main frustration with The Concept of Anxiety is that I really, really have a hard time telling what Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety is. Journal entries like this don’t exactly narrow it down: “All existence [Tilværelsen], from the smallest fly to the mysteries of the Incarnation, makes me anxious.” So I’ll dodge that for now. Here’s another Notebooks quote.

The episode [a little personal? story?] Poul Møller has included in his treatise on the immortality of the soul … is very interesting. Perhaps relieving the strict scholarly tone in this way with lighter passages, in which life nevertheless emerges much more fully, will become the usual thing, and will in the scholarly domain compare somewhat to the chorus, to the comic parts of romantic dramas.

The Concept of Anxiety is dedicated to Møller, who was a kind of mentor to our Søren. I’ve never read Møller but the secondary sources I’ve read suggest Kierkegaard regarded him as an ally against the Hegelian tendency to forget that I – to pick a conspicuous example – am a concrete individual. That’s a good thing to keep in mind, especially if I am also, allegedly – oh, say – Absolute Spirit. For how can I be both? Anyway, this remark about Møller seems to me to speak to how Kierkegaard conceives the function of the more narrative thought-experiment-y bits with which he peppers his philosophic prose. I’ll keep this in mind next time someone tells me my latest thought-experiment isn’t working. ‘Think of it as like the chorus in a romantic drama.’

In obscurely related news, in a Facebook post, Adam Roberts takes note of some narrative bits of an NDPR review of a new Stalnaker book:

A woman in a phone booth is talking to a man. She is also watching the man, who is waving at her, but she does not realize that it is the same man. The man also does not realize that the woman he is talking to is the same woman as the one he is waving at. The woman tells the man about the man waving at her. Then she says, “The man waving at me thinks I am in danger. But you don’t think I am in danger, do you?” The man replies, “No, I don’t think you are in danger.”

And

Rudolf Lingens and Gustav Lauben are two amnesiacs who each know that they are one of the two, but do not know which. They have been kidnapped and will be subjected to the following experiment:

First, they will be anesthetized. Then a coin will be tossed. If the outcome is tails, Lingens will be released in Main Library, Stanford, and Lauben will be killed. If the outcome is heads, Lauben will be released in Widener Library, Harvard, and Lingens will be killed. Lingens and Lauben are informed of the plan and the experiment is executed. Later, one of them wakes up in a library.

Very Kierkegaardian, it strikes me. Anxious, even. As he says: philosophy should not be written as if you are in a terrible hurry to be the first one to the masquerade ball. I think it might be even better if Hegelian Absolute Spirit was in a phone booth.

If you prefer a more Stalnakeresque angle, that’s fine, too.