A Figurative Necessity in Dealing with Selfhood in Kierkegaard’s Thinking

Abstract

This article concerns the concept of selfhood in Kierkegaard’s thinking. First, it rejects any scholarly attempt to establish an essentialist metaphysics of selfhood in Kierkegaard; instead, it seeks to show how the author himself develops his thoughts on subjectivity by applying numerous literary figures and a good deal of irony. Secondly, the article underpins this reading by displaying a specific figure, “The Walking One,” that indicates that actual and individual existence is to be completed only in an actual and individual movement. From here, “The Walking One” opens up new vistas to recognition, communication and language-however, in a paradoxical way. This is proved through analyses of Philosophical Fragments (1844), The Sickness unto Death (1849) and also an upbuilding discourse “He is Believed in the World” (1847). In this light, it is argued that Kierkegaard performs a subtle dialectics between standstill and walking or between “break” and “practice.”