Kierkegaard: Positing the Synthesis

English Version of the published text: „Angst als Gefühl bei Kierkegaard“. Original conference speech in HK.

Modern Theology, 2019

What is the role of the image in faith? How should we relate to Abraham and Christ? Through new readings of two of Kierkegaard’s rarely compared texts, this article locates the religious power of the image in its ability to cleanse the subject of received mis-images of Christianity, and suggests that Kierkegaard was here inspired by elements of Rheno-Flemish mysticism. Kierkegaard not only identifies this inward existential kenosis as the correct form of imitation, he narratively induces this in his reader. As well as examining this textual performativity and the imagination’s role of kenotically preparing the subject for her subsequent upbuilding, this article identifies the movement of kenosis as constitutive of faith – a task that involves suffering, but a suffering that is always accompanied and tempered by love.

Faith and Philosophy, 2012

There is a tradition in Kierkegaard's work that views anxiety as a catalyst for spiritual experience. While his concept of anxiety is right, it is also notoriously vague. I believe that, with some work, a concrete account is available. I propose that when we bring cognitive science and phenomenology to bear on Kierkegaardian Anxiety, we find ourselves with a concrete sense-perceptive faculty responsible for divine encounter. My proposal is therefore twofold: (1) anxiety as a sense-perceptive faculty, and (2) such a faculty as a point of communication between God and humanity. My proposed model is not only descriptive of many case studies in Judeo-Christian scripture, and of many reported spiritual transformations, but it is also morally prescriptive. In anxiety of a Kierkegaardian form, when one listens to their anxiety, properly discerns a divine calling, and leans toward such a calling, one will find a dissipation of anxiety, and oftentimes, an increase in divine providence.

Now published: a second (updated and expanded) edition of this book for the Routledge Guides to the Great Books series. Available now! Attached is the text of the Contents and the Preface to the Second Edition (which explains some of the more significant changes made from the first edition). Material placed here with kind permission of Routledge. Endorsements: ‘This is an excellent text. Lippitt gives due consideration to all parts of Fear and Trembling, including the early sections that are often neglected, and provides an insightful account and critical evaluation of the various ways in which Kierkegaard’s notorious book has been interpreted.’ - Rick Anthony Furtak, Colorado College, USA 'A first-rate Kierkegaard scholar, Lippitt has a gift for conveying complex and difficult ideas in a clear, accessible way, which makes this book an ideal guide for undergraduate students and for other readers coming to Kierkegaard for the first time.' - David Law, University of Manchester, UK ‘John Lippitt is one of the top experts on Fear and Trembling in the English-speaking world. The many insights of his work are distilled here in a form that is accessible to undergraduates, yet also thought-provoking for more advanced scholars. This book is essential for any serious reader of Kierkegaard!’ - John Davenport, Fordham University, USA Comments on the first edition: "[A]mazingly comprehensive and very ably written ... required reading for anyone doing graduate work on Kierkegaard. Even well-established scholars will find it an invaluable resource." - M. G. Piety, Teaching Philosophy. "This is an excellent piece of work ... brings out the full range of [Fear and Trembling's] implications for moral philosophy and philosophy of religion." - Stephen Mulhall, University of Oxford. "John Lippitt manages to capture the brightness and excitement of Kierkegaard's remarkable work while explicating its themes with depth and insight. One every page one finds eye-opening clues and interpretations ... a treasure" - Charles Guignon, University of South Florida."

Religions, 2019

In this article, I examine the possible thought experimenting qualities of Søren Kierkegaard's novel Fear and Trembling and in which way (if any) it can be explanatory. Kierkegaard's preference for pseudonyms, indirect communication, Socratic interrogation, and performativity are identified as features that provide the narrative with its thought experimenting quality. It is also proposed that this literary fiction functions as a Socratic-theological thought experiment due to its influences from both philosophy and theology. In addition, I suggest three functional levels of the fictional narrative that, in different ways, influence its possible explanatory force. As a theoretical background for the investigation, two accounts of literary cognitivism are explored: Noël Carroll's Argument Account and Catherine Elgin's Exemplification Account. In relation to Carroll's proposal, I conclude that Fear and Trembling develops a philosophical argumentation that is dependent on the reader's own existential contribution. In relation to Elgin's thought, the relation between truth and explanatory force is acknowledged. At the end of the article, I argue that it is more accurate to see the explanatory force of Fear and Trembling in relation to its exploratory function.

Sins, Vices and Virtues, 2013

In The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard explains the nature of sin by analysing the story of The Fall in the Book of Genesis. Unlike the general reception of The Fall within Christianity, Kierkegaard analyses the story, and particularly Adam’s qualitative leap into sin, existentially, and accordingly interprets the seduction of Eve by the serpent in terms of his concept of anxiety. According to Kierkegaard, anxiety is a force that precedes sin: it informs us of our choices, gives us our self- awareness, and weighs heavily on us in regard to our personal responsibility. The experience of anxiety moves us from a state of unselfconscious immediacy to a state of self-conscience (practical, self-conscious reflection). In Kierkegaard’s existential interpretation, the serpent, represented in the original story as an external power, becomes a psychological feature internal to the subject’s experience of the anxiety. This chapter will focus on this pivotal reinterpretation of the story of The Fall and Kierkegaard’s view of freedom and choice as the products of anxiety.

Cambridge Companion to The Sickness unto Death, 2022

Many readings of Kierkegaard treat the conceptual apparatus of faith as all neatly in place: All that’s missing is an act of will (i.e., something other than understanding) to execute the program. But what we actually find in Kierkegaard are new conceptual distinctions. I argue that, in The Sickness unto Death, the question of what it means to be a self is answered through a process of abstraction. Rather than the text motivating us to do more, feel more, or commit more decisively (as we might expect from Kierkegaard), what we find in The Sickness unto Death is an enumeration of conceptual distinctions that enable us to notice more, question more, and reason better—that is, to engage in the kinds of activities normally associated with traditional philosophy. I argue that the minimal (i.e., “naked”) self described in this text is not something one can experience concretely but instead exists only for abstract reflection.

The Cross of the Self: Reading Kierkegaard as the Single Individual Abstract: Trying to enter Kierkegaard’s thought has been likened to entering a hall of mirrors. One hardly knows where to turn or what to take one’s bearings from, for although one seems to spy one’s host just around the next corner, what one finds around the turn instead is just another confused and distorted reflection. We can see the roots of this problem in the fact that, according to Kierkegaard, his entire authorship was devoted to a single idea, but this idea could not be directly communicated, whereas scholarship must do so. In this paper I argue that to solve this difficulty we must approach Kierkegaard with the required pathos, or the imaginative simulation of it; that this allows us to grasp the duplexity of “the single individual” in the appropriate way; and I demonstrate the fruitfulness of this approach by applying it to Fear and Trembling, aiming to clarify its central message and the nature of faith.

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