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Home , Alastair Hannay, Being and Time, Hubert Dreyfus, Philosophical Fragments, Robert Merrihew Adams

Kierkegaard on Selfhood and Our Need for Others

1. Kierkegaard in a Secular Age Scholars have devoted much attention lately to Kierkegaard’s views on personal and, in particular, to his account of selfhood.1 Central to this account is the idea that a is not something we automatically are. It is rather something we must become. Thus, selfhood is a goal to realize or a project to undertake.2 To put the point another way, while we may already be in some sense, we have to work to become real, true, or “authentic” selves.3 The idea that authentic selfhood is a project is not unique to Kierkegaard. It is common fare in modern . Yet Kierkegaard distances himself from popular ways of thinking about the matter. He denies the view inherited from Rousseau that we can discover our true selves by consulting our innermost feelings, beliefs, and desires. He also rejects the idea developed by the German Romantics that we can invent our true selves in a burst of artistic or poetic . In fact, according to Kierkegaard, becom- ing an authentic self is not something we can do on our own. If we are to succeed at the project, we must look beyond ourselves for assistance. In particular, Kierkegaard thinks, we must rely on . For God alone can provide us with the content of our real identi- ties.4 A longstanding concern about Kierkegaard arises at this point. His account of au- thentic selfhood, like his accounts of so many concepts, is religious. It presupposes not

1 For example, John J. Davenport, Narrative Identity, , and Mortality: From Frankfurt and MacIntyre to Kierkegaard (New York: Routledge, 2012); Peder Jothen, Kierkegaard, , and Selfhood: The of Sub- jectivity (Routledge, 2014); Lippitt, John and Patrick Stokes, eds., Narrative, Identity, and the Kierkegaardian Self (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Simon D. Podmore, Kierkegaard and the Self Before God: Anatomy of the Abyss ( University Press, 2011); Anthony Rudd, Self, , and Narrative: A Kierkegaardian Approach (Oxford University Press, 2012); Patrick Stokes, The Naked Self: Kierkegaard and Personal Identity (Oxford University Press, USA, 2015); K. Brian Söderquist, The Isolated Self: Irony as Truth and Untruth in Søren Kierkegaard’s On the Concept of Irony (Copenhagen, DK: C.A. Reitzel, 2007). 2 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writ- ings 4 (Princeton, NJ: Press, 1987), 168. 3 Ibid., 259; Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments,” trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, vol. 1, Kierkegaard’s Writings, 12.1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 30, 346. 4 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, 177, 216–17; Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard’s Writ- ings 19 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 13, 79; for discussion, see Brad Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard on Irony and Moral Commitment: Philosophical and Theological Connections (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 127– 28; Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen, “The Posited Self: The Non-Theistic Foundation in Kierkegaard’s Writings,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 20, no. 1 (2015): 29–42; Edward F. Mooney, “Kierkegaard on Self-Choice and Self- Reception: Judge William’s Admonition,” in Either/Or, Part II, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 4 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1995), 5–32; Elizabeth A. Morelli, “The of the Self before God in Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death,” The Heythrop Journal 36, no. 1 (1995): 15–29; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 26–48; Söderquist, The Isolated Self, 137, 155.

– 1 – only that God exists but that he has a specific plan for each of our lives. In Patrick Stokes’s words, Kierkegaard offers us “an of the self from within a framework that assumes an orthodox creation …the Kierkegaardian self is always a created self, a self that finds God as the ultimate ‘criterion’ for its own self-actualization.”5 Thus, we must ask how much Kierkegaard has to offer the modern, secular reader. Are there insights we can take on board if we do not share his theological starting points? Or, as Arnold Come worries, “are Kierkegaard’s anthropology and theology really insepara- ble?”6 This paper aims to establish the secular relevance of Kierkegaard’s writings on authentic selfhood. To do so, I defend three theses. First, I will argue that secular readers can accept Kierkegaard’s criticisms of popular models of authenticity. Second, I will show that they can embrace the core insight of his own model, namely that becom- ing an authentic self requires relying on others. What secular readers cannot take on board, of course, is the idea that the specific we must depend on is God. Neverthe- less, third, I will explain how human others can perform many of the roles Kierkegaard assigns to God. In particular, by turning to our friends and engaging them in dialogue about the stories of our lives, we can gain much of the support and guidance Kierke- gaard thinks we need.

2. Alienation, Irony, and the Problem of Selfhood For many of us, the starting point for our interest in authenticity is a practical problem. Trying to take part in modern society makes us feel alienated from ourselves. To get along with others, we find we must put on masks. We must pretend to believe, feel, and think things we do not. We must construct our lives such that the inner is not the outer

5 Stokes, The Naked Self, 15. For some recent discussions of the secular relevance of Kierkegaard, see Mi- chael O’Neill Burns, “The Self and Society in Kierkegaard’s Anti-Climacus Writings,” The Heythrop Journal 51, no. 4 (July 1, 2010): 631–34; Karen L. Carr, “Kierkegaard and Atheistic ,” Acta Kierkegaardiana IV: Kierkegaard and Human Nature (2013): 65–74; Arnold B. Come, Kierkegaard as Humanist: Discovering My Self (McGill-Queen’s Press, 1995), 12–14, 465–74; C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction (Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2009), 16–23; Larsen, “The Posited Self: The Non-Theistic Foundation in Kierkegaard’s Writings”; Gordon Marino, “Despair and Depression,” in , Love, and in Kierkegaard: Philosophical En- gagements, ed. Edward F. Mooney (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008), 126–28; George Pattison, “Philosophy and Dogma: The Testimony of an Upbuilding Discourse,” in Ethics, Love, and Faith in Kierkegaard: Philosophical Engagements, ed. Edward F. Mooney (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008), 155–62; René Rosfort, “Kierkegaard in Nature: The Fragility of Existing with ,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 19, no. 1 (2014): 79–110; Anthony Rudd and Patrick Stokes, “The of a : Reply to Turnbull,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2013, no. 1 (2013); Stokes, The Naked Self, 19–21, 226–29; Jamie Turnbull, “Saving Kierkegaard’s Soul: From Philosophical to Golden Age Soteriology,” Kierkegaard Studies 2011 (2011): 279; Jamie Turnbull, “Kierkegaard and the Limits of Philosophical Anthropology,” in A Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Jon Stewart (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2015), 468–79. 6 Come, Kierkegaard as Humanist, 12.

– 2 – and the outer is not the inner, as Kierkegaard puts it in the opening lines of Either/Or.7 Such game playing tends not to sit well with us. It strikes us as dishonest. It gives rise to the uncomfortable thought that we are not true to ourselves or to who we really are.8 Displeasure at public phoniness makes some people withdraw from everyday so- cial life or what Kierkegaard calls “actuality.”9 A few do so by moving to isolated areas, creating physical distance between themselves and society. Others, taking perhaps the more common route, withdraw inwardly. They continue to adhere to popular conven- tions, but they do so with an ironic attitude. In the privacy of their own minds, they do not take the conventions seriously or regard them as meaningful. They refuse to identify with the roles, projects, and values they have inherited from society. They tell themselves that such things do not really define who they are.10 Kierkegaard often has critical things to say about ironic withdrawal.11 But there is an aspect of it he endorses. He thinks the ironist is right to question the identity he or she has inherited from society. Indeed, all of us ought to have a moment when we cast a skeptical eye on society’s expectations and when we challenge society’s way of defining us.12 These are necessary steps in the process of figuring out who we really are. This is what Kierkegaard means when he says irony is “the absolute beginning of personal life”13 and “a life that may be called human begins with irony.”14 Yet, Kierkegaard thinks, we cannot end with irony. We cannot go through life just being ironic. For an ironic attitude as he sees it is purely negative.15 It involves saying “no” to social guidelines and recommendations without offering a positive alternative. Most of us will find it hard to live this way. We have a desire for a positive lifeview, as

7 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 3 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 3. 8 , On Being Authentic (Psychology Press, 2004), 34–35, 55–56, 59; Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity ( Press, 2009), 24–25. 9 Söderquist, The Isolated Self, 100; Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard, 107–8. 10 Andrew Cross, “Neither Either nor Or: The Perils of Reflexive Irony,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierke- gaard, ed. Alastair Hannay and Gordon Marino (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 137; Hubert L. Dreyfus, “Kierkegaard on the Internet: Anonymity vs. Commitment in the ,” Kierkegaard Studies: Yearbook, 1999, 103; Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard, 119; Anthony Rudd, Kierkegaard and the Limits of the Ethical (Clarendon Press, 1997), 73; Söderquist, The Isolated Self, 97–100, 106. 11 Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 2 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 272–323. 12 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, 240; Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 55; for discussion, see Cross, “Nei- ther Either nor Or: The Perils of Reflexive Irony”; Dreyfus, “Kierkegaard on the Internet,” 104; Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard, 133–48, 151, 162–64; John Lippitt, and Irony in Kierkegaard’s Thought (Palgrave Macmil- lan, 2000), 148; Stokes, The Naked Self, 184; Söderquist, The Isolated Self, 108, 110, 129, 131, 134–37; K. Brian Söderquist, “Irony,” in The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard, ed. John Lippitt and George Pattison (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), 356; George Willis Williams III, “Irony as the Birth of Kierkegaard’s ‘Single ’ and the Beginning of Politics,” Toronto Journal of Theology 28, no. 2 (2012): 309–318. 13 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony/Schelling Lecture Notes, 326. 14 Ibid., 6. 15 Ibid., 6, 259, 261.

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Judge William says, a sense of who we actually are and what really matters.16 Thus, once we jettison our socially given identities, we want to replace them with something else.17 In sum, Kierkegaard we must move beyond the stage of ironic withdrawal. We must find new identities. But where might we find identities that are not phony or dishonest? Do we even have “true” or “real” selves? If so, what do they look like? Such are the questions that models of authenticity seek to answer.

3. The Inner Sense Model One popular approach to authentic selfhood, which has its roots in the writings of Rous- seau, says we can discover our true selves by turning inward. All we have to do is push past our socially conditioned ways of thinking and uncover what lies beneath. The natu- ral and spontaneous desires, feelings, and attitudes we find constitute the true us. They make up who we really are. The task is thus to get in touch with our innermost thoughts and express them outwardly. We can lay claim to being authentic selves once we do so. Another way to put this idea is to say each of us has an inner voice or an inner sense of what is right and . The problem is just that the cacophony of voices resounding from the media and mass society tends to drown it out. So, we have to sort through the noise. We have to identify our inner voice and act in accordance with it. We become au- thentic once we do18 Kierkegaard finds much to like about the inner sense model.19 He thinks it is good for us to develop a conception of who we are that is distinct from society’s view. It is important for us to figure out what we think and feel apart from the influences of cul- ture and tradition. This is the point of passages in The Present Age and The Point of View that criticize following the crowd and extol becoming a “single individual.”20 It is also

16 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, 179; see also John J. Davenport, “Selfhood and ‘,’” in The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard, ed. John Lippitt and George Pattison (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), 242–43. 17 For discussion of Kierkegaard’s other criticisms of irony, see Cross, “Neither Either nor Or: The Perils of Reflexive Irony”; John J. Davenport, “The Meaning of Kierkegaard’s Choice between the Aesthetic and the Ethical: A Response to MacIntyre,” in Kierkegaard After MacIntyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative, and , ed. John J. Davenport and Anthony Rudd (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 2001), 75–112; Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard, 113–14; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 74; Anthony Rudd, “Kierkegaard’s Platonic ,” in Narrative, Identity and the Kierkegaardian Self, ed. John Lippitt and Patrick Stokes (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 58; Söderquist, The Isolated Self, 110, 129, 204. 18 Guignon, On Being Authentic, 57–58. 19 Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, trans. Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong, and Gregor Malantschuk (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1967ff.), 1.654-655; Joakim Garff, “Formation and the Critique of Culture,” in The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard, ed. John Lippitt and George Pattison (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), 265; for a positive Kierkegaardian take on getting in touch with our emotions, see Rick Anthony Furtak, “The of Authenticity: A Kierke- gaardian Essay in ,” International Philosophical Quarterly 43, no. 4 (2003): 423–438. 20 Søren Kierkegaard, Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age, A Literary Review, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 14 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 84–93; Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s

– 4 – part of what Climacus is getting at in Postscript when he encourages us to develop “sub- jectivity” and “inwardness.”21 Even so, we find in Kierkegaard’s writings grounds for several criticisms of the inner sense model. Two in particular are telling. The first I will refer to as the problem. The root of the morality problem is that the inner sense model presupposes an optimistic view about our inner . It assumes our natural thoughts and desires are morally good. In fact, the German Romantics emphasized this point. They associated uncovering our natural desires with accessing an innocent childlike state or even the di- vine aspects of our personalities.22 Kierkegaard rejects this optimistic assumption. He believes our natural or spon- taneous thoughts and desires tend to be harmful and cruel.23 He bases his view partly on the Christian doctrine of original .24 But, as C. Stephen Evans argues, he need not do so.25 Secular thinkers such as Nietzsche and Freud have defended the notion that we are instinctively cruel. Moreover, the fact that society encourages us to suppress our inner- most feelings and desires suggests they are potentially harmful to society.26 Thus, pursuing the inner sense model is morally dubious. It might provide us with an authentic self, but not necessarily a good or virtuous one. In other words, it might give us a self we should reject.27 Kierkegaard’s second concern about the inner sense model is what I will call the continuity problem. The issue here is that, just as our natural and spontaneous desires tend not to be pro-social, so too they tend not to be stable and coherent. They change unex-

Writings 22 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 101–24; see Antony Aumann, “Kierkegaard on Indirect Communication, the Crowd, and a Monstrous Illusion,” in The Point of View, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 22 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2010), 295– 324. 21 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1:129–99. 22 Hölderlin connects the process of uncovering our natural drives with that of getting in touch with our original childlike state. Herder and, more recently, Rilke associate it with getting in touch with the divine aspects of ourselves. See Guignon, On Being Authentic, x–xi, 53, 57-58; Söderquist, The Isolated Self, 205; Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 27–29. 23 Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, secs. 1493, 2419, 4690. Matters here are complicated by the fact that Kierkegaard defends the possibility of a second or “higher immediacy” that is oriented to the Good (ibid., sec. 6135). For discussion, see Patrick Stokes, “The Problem of Spontaneous Goodness: From Kierke- gaard to Løgstrup (via Zhuangzi and Eckhart),” Review 49, no. 2 (2016): 139–59. 24 Søren Kierkegaard, : A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, trans. Reidar Thomte and Albert Anderson, Kierkegaard’s Writings 8 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 25–51. 25 C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 167. 26 Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 65; Guignon, On Being Authentic, 76. 27 For discussions of Kierkegaard’s view on the topic, see Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard, 129; Rudd, Self, Val- ue, and Narrative, 2012, 79–99; Söderquist, The Isolated Self, 139–72. For general discussions of the topic, see Cheshire Calhoun, “Standing for Something,” The Journal of Philosophy, 1995, 235–260; Guignon, On Being Au- thentic, 27, 46–47, 92, 159–63; Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 27–29, 43, 55; Susan Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 13–18.

– 5 – pectedly and push in competing directions. Thus, people who make their day-to-day lives conform to their spontaneous desires end up flitting from task to task. They seldom stick with any project for long, and each new project rarely connects in any deep way to the one that came before.28 For this , A, the pseudonymous author of Part I of Ei- ther/Or, recommends we not make firm commitments to anyone or anything.29 If we want to preserve our ability to follow our desires, we should not get married, have a ca- reer, or form deep friendships. Such entanglements will only inhibit us from doing what we feel like doing. Kierkegaard objects to the life A recommends on the grounds that it lacks the right kind of inner unity. Of course, people who follow the vicissitudes of their inner voice will experience some kind of inner unity. As John Davenport notes, they will experi- ence continuity of consciousness from one moment to the next.30 But they will not exhibit the deeper unity that comes with having a personality or character. Possessing a per- sonality or character requires a stable set of beliefs, dispositions, attitudes, and behaviors. It also requires that these beliefs etc. be woven together into a coherent whole. Judge William captures what is at stake here with the following lines: Or can you think of anything more appalling than having it all end with the disintegration of your into a multiplicity, so that you actually become several, just as that unhappy demoniac became a legion, and thus you would have lost what is the most inward and holy in a human being, the binding power of the personality?31 The judge’s concern is that if we do not have a personality, we do not really have a sense of identity. We do not really have a take on who we are. More pointedly, we do not really have a self.32 In sum, the second problem with the inner sense model is that it does not help us acquire our true selves because it does not help us acquire a self at all.33

28 Garff, “Formation and the Critique of Culture,” 259; Guignon, On Being Authentic, 112, 123, 152; , “From Sincerity to Authenticity,” in Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 172–205. 29 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, 295–98. 30 Davenport, Narrative Identity, Autonomy, and Mortality, 45–48. 31 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, 160. 32 Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 19. 33 Davenport, Narrative Identity, Autonomy, and Mortality, 15, 45–49; Dreyfus, “Kierkegaard on the Internet,” 105; Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard, 122–23; John Lippitt, “Kierkegaard and Moral Philosophy: Some Recent Themes,” in The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard, ed. John Lippitt and George Pattison (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), 508–9; Anthony Rudd, “Reason in Ethics Revisited: MacIntyre and Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard After MacIntyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative, and Virtue, ed. John J. Davenport and Anthony Rudd (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 2001), 138–39; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 17–25; Wil- liams, “From Sincerity to Authenticity.”

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4. The Constitution Model Partly for the just discussed, many early advocates of authenticity abandoned the inner sense model. They rejected the idea that our true selves are things we can discover by looking within. Instead, they saw our true selves as things we must create or “consti- tute.” The constitution model takes a variety of forms.34 One version developed by the German Romantics and later embraced by Sartre relies on artistic and literary metaphors. Our selves are like works of art we must shape and mold; they are like stories we must tell.35 We count as authentic to the degree we are the author of our own stories.36 Being the author of the narrative of our lives is a complicated process. It requires moving beyond passive acceptance of our spontaneous feelings, thoughts, and desires. We must sort through and discriminate between them. Some we must select as worthy of endorsement. Others we must discard as undeserving. Next, we have to bring our value judgments into with each other. To iron out the conflicts, we need to identify some values as more important to us than others. We need to pick the ones we consider most fundamental and create our own personal hierarchy. The struggle to express our core values gives our life its narrative structure. It is the project that ties together the var- ious aspects of our lives into a single, cohesive story. This story is who we really are on the constitution model. It is our true identity, our authentic self.37 As with the inner sense model, Kierkegaard endorses some aspects of the consti- tution model. He agrees being authentic requires more than passive acceptance of our spontaneous thoughts, feelings, and desires. We must shape and mold these things to some degree, as Anthony Rudd emphasizes.38 Kierkegaard also embraces the narrative conception of the self. He thinks the story of our lives defines who we are. 39

34 Stokes, The Naked Self, 172. 35 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony/Schelling Lecture Notes, 274; Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1:351, 535. For discussion of Kierkegaard’s view of the constitution model, see Davenport, Narrative Identi- ty, Autonomy, and Mortality, 15, 38–90; Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard, 127; Jothen, Kierkegaard, Aesthetics, and Selfhood, 40–45; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 26–50; Söderquist, “Irony,” 358–60; Sylvia Walsh, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard’s Existential Aesthetics (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1994). For general discussion of the model, see Guignon, On Being Authentic, 68–70, 130–32; Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 60–69. Note that some accounts blur the inner sense and the constitution models together. See Guignon, On Being Authentic, 68–69; Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 61–62. 36 John J. Davenport, “Frankfurt and Kierkegaard on BS, Wantonness, and : A Phenomenol- ogy of Inauthenticity,” in Love, Reason, and Will: Kierkegaard after Frankfurt, ed. Anthony Rudd and John J. Davenport (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 77. 37 See Davenport, Narrative Identity, Autonomy, and Mortality, 38–90; Davenport, “Selfhood and ‘Spirit,’” 241; Guignon, On Being Authentic, 126–45; Lippitt, “Kierkegaard and Moral Philosophy: Some Recent Themes,” 512; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 26–50. 38 Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 11–25. 39 Davenport, Narrative Identity, Autonomy, and Mortality, 131–49; Davenport, “Selfhood and ‘Spirit,’” 241–43; Dreyfus, “Kierkegaard on the Internet”; Harry G. Frankfurt, The Reasons of Love (Princeton University Press, 2009), 69–100; Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard, 135; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 79–99.

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Yet, Kierkegaard has several reservations about the constitution model. One res- ervation, which I will call the guidance problem, is that the constitution model offers few concrete instructions about how to author the story of our lives.40 It does not tell us what feelings, thoughts, and desires to endorse. It does not specify which values to em- phasize and which to downplay or reject. It simply tells us to author our own story, to choose for ourselves the values that structure our lives. The difficulty is that there is no end to what we could choose. We could to decide to find value in anything from count- ing blades of grass to helping the poor, from collecting pieces of lint to creating works of art.41 All these would fine as far as the constitution model goes. The resultant lives would be equally authentic provided we endorsed them sincerely. What we need—and what the constitution model does not give us—is a to help us discriminate between our options. In other words, we need a criterion or standard for determining which options are better and which are worse.42 Without a cri- terion or standard, there is left to do but follow our natural inclinations or choose arbitrarily. Neither of these paths is desirable. Following our inclinations brings us back to the inner sense model with it all its problems. But if our core values and pro- jects are arbitrary, they are unlikely to gain traction with us. They are unlikely to sustain our interest over the long run. So, it is hard to see how they could provide the founda- tion for a stable sense of self. This is another reason why A finds himself in dire straits in Either/Or. He knows his choice of projects and values is arbitrary. He celebrates this very point in “The Rotation of Crops.”43 But, as Judge William notes, the result is that he does not care about anything. He does not invest in any activities or relationships. He does not throw himself into anything at all for more than a moment.44 In the end, A’s arbitrariness leads him to “have no life view.”45 It causes him to lack a sense of identity. The constitution model also suffers from a version of the morality problem. Since all that matters is choosing one’s values for oneself, there is nothing to rule out choosing morally dubious values. This is a real threat. People can and do decide for themselves to pursue paths. The constitution model does not necessarily disapprove of these paths. Indeed, from the perspective of the constitution model, Hitler’s way of living would be just as good as Mother Theresa’s provided both were sincerely chosen. In sum, if all we

40 For discussion of this problem, see R. Lanier Anderson, “On Marjorie Grene’s ‘Authenticity: An Existen- tial Virtue,’” Ethics 125, no. 3 (2015): 815–819; Marjorie Grene, “Authenticity: An Existential Virtue,” Ethics, 1952, 266–274; Guignon, On Being Authentic, 44, 116, 141–43, 157; Charles Guignon, “Authenticity,” Philosophy Compass 3, no. 2 (2008): 277–290; Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 36–39, 68; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 100–125. 41 David O. Brink, “The Significance of Desire,” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 3 (2007): 24; , A Theory of (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 432. 42 Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 111; Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters, 36–45. 43 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, 299–300. 44 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, 198–99. 45 Ibid., 202.

– 8 – do is follow the constitution model, we may not end up in a morally good place. We may acquire a real or authentic self, but not necessarily one we should embrace.46 Kierkegaard provides an example of this problem in “The Seducer’s Diary.” The diary contains the words of Johannes, a young man who appears to be authentic in the sense outlined by the constitution model.47 In accordance with Romantic ideals, Johannes does not follow conventions or conform to society’s rules. He chooses his values for himself; he does things his own way. The problem is that Johannes’s own way of doing things involves treating others horribly. This is most evident in his romantic pursuits. Unlike some, he is not out for “true love.” His goal is to have interesting experiences, and he will do whatever it takes to achieve this aim, including deceiving and manipulat- ing others.48 His interactions with Cordelia are a case in point. He starts by maneuvering Cordelia’s current suitor, Edward, out of the picture by giving him bad advice.49 He then tricks Cordelia into falling in love with him. He sends her letters that do not reflect his true feelings, and he proposes to her even though he has no intention of going through with it.50 Once it becomes clear that Cordelia wants him, he discards her. The seduction is complete and he has no use for her any more. She has become dull and uninteresting to him.51 Finally, a version of the continuity problem afflicts the constitution model of au- thenticity. For, on the constitution model, there is nothing to stop us from constantly changing our minds about how we want our narrative to go. No matter how much we have invested in a particular way of thinking about ourselves, it is not binding on us. We can always choose to abandon it and pursue a different way. As Anti-Climacus puts the point, “the very moment when it seems that the self is closest to having the building completed, it can arbitrarily dissolve the whole thing into nothing.” 52 Indeed, if all that matters is choosing for ourselves, we have the power to start over again as often and as arbitrarily as we please. Our identities are under constant threat of coup from our own

46 See Calhoun, “Standing for Something”; Dreyfus, “Kierkegaard on the Internet,” 106. Some maintain that the ethical problem can be resolved. For example, a constructionist model of ethics might support the idea that valuing one’s own self-determination requires respecting that of others Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012. Another option is to argue that a vicious life cannot be wholeheartedly chosen because we always will the Good in addition to whatever else we will. People who choose evil ends will always be somewhat double-minded about their project. Better account: There may be ways to get around this prob- lem. For instance, one could argue that any attempt to construct a sense of self around one’s own will requires valuing the will. And consistency requires that if one values one’s own will one must also value the wills of others. And this can constrain the project to which one can be wholeheartedly committed. 47 Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, “Historical Introduction,” in Either/Or, Part I, Kierkegaard’s Writings 3 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), ix; Sylvia Walsh, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard’s Existential Aesthetics (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1994), 65. 48 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, 334–35, 342, 346, 372. 49 Ibid., 346–54, 361–62, 376. 50 Ibid., 367–68, 376. His declaration of sincerity (385) is too much to believe given how calculating he is in his dealings with Cordelia. 51 Ibid., 445. 52 Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 70.

– 9 – will. Once more in Anti-Climacus’s words, we are “subordinate to the that re- bellion is legitimate at any moment.” 53

5. Kierkegaard’s Religious Model of Authenticity One of Kierkegaard’s contributions to existentialism is that he diagnoses the underlying issue with the preceding models of authenticity. The reason they encounter problems is that they prescribe self-reliance. They recommend we base our identity or sense of self on resources found within ourselves. The inner sense model makes who we are a matter of our own natural thoughts, feelings, and desires. The constitution model makes it a matter of our own subjective will or our own creative powers. Kierkegaard sees that such self-reliance is not viable. When it comes to figuring out or determining who we really are, we cannot go it alone. We cannot pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.54 It is easy to misinterpret Kierkegaard on this point. Several pieces of evidence suggest he actually embraces self-reliance or . For instance, in an oft-quoted journal entry written during his early travels to Gilleleje, he writes, “the crucial thing is to find a truth that is a truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.”55 In addition, the most famous line from Postscript is Johannes Climacus’s asser- tion that “subjectivity is truth.”56 Finally, Kierkegaard dedicates many of his books to “the single individual.” He says his goal is “to prompt, if possible, to invite, to induce the many to press through this narrow pass, the single individual.”57 Emphasizing such passages is not wrong. But they tell only part of the story. For Kierkegaard frequently qualifies what they say. Four pages after we hear “subjectivity is truth,” Climacus hedges by saying there is also a sense in which “subjectivity is un- truth.”58 This idea fits the core message of Philosophical Fragments, the earlier book penned

53 Ibid., 69–70; Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony/Schelling Lecture Notes, 275–76, 283–84. For discussion of Kierkegaard’s view on this point, see Robert Merrihew Adams, “Vocation,” Faith and Philosophy 4, no. 4 (1987): 456–57; Carr, “Kierkegaard and ,” 72–73; Davenport, “Selfhood and ‘Spirit,’” 248; Dreyfus, “Kierkegaard on the Internet,” 107; Hubert L. Dreyfus and Jane Rubin, “You Can’t Get Some- thing for Nothing: Kierkegaard and Heidegger on How Not to Overcome ,” Inquiry 30, no. 1–2 (1987): 38; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 72–75, 86–87; Stokes, The Naked Self, 185; Söderquist, “Irony,” 359, 361. For general discussion, see Guignon, On Being Authentic, xii, 44, 144-145, 152; Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 36–39, 68–69; Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters. 54 For Kierkegaard’s views on the importance of depending on others, see Davenport, “Selfhood and ‘Spir- it,’” 248; Garff, “Formation and the Critique of Culture,” 267; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012; Anna Strelis Söderquist, Kierkegaard on Dialogical Education: Vulnerable Freedom (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 75–100; Söderquist, The Isolated Self, 134–37, 168–70, 190–93, 206; C. Stephen Evans, “Who Is the ‘Other’ in Sickness Unto Death? God and Human Relations in the Constitution of the Self,” in Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self: Col- lected Essays (Baylor University Press, 2006), 268–72. For general discussion, see Guignon, On Being Authentic, 34, 151, 164–67; Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 58, 91; Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters. 55 Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 5.5100. 56 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1:203. 57 Kierkegaard, The Point of View, 118. 58 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1:207.

– 10 – under the Climacus pseudonym. There we learn that was wrong to think the truth lies within. A similar rejection of self-reliance lies behind the theme of “dying to oneself (afdøen).”59 As Adam Buben explains, dying to one self means “a disregarding, or hatred of the worldly self, which includes one’s selfishness, self-confidence, self- reliance.”60 Finally, the most prominent passage speaking out against independence and self-sufficiency comes from The Sickness Unto Death. In the opening pages, Anti-Climacus asserts the self is ultimately a “derived, established relation.”61 The goal is to get to a place where “the self rests transparently in the power that established it.” 62 An accurate interpretation of Kierkegaard must accommodate both ideas. It must reflect the fact that in some sense subjectivity is truth and another sense it is untruth. One option is to maintain that Kierkegaard is recommending a two-step movement here or what he often calls a “double movement.” The first step or the first part of the movement is to recede inward into ourselves. We must retreat from the crowd and leave behind the system of values we have inherited from society. We must get in touch with our innermost feelings, thoughts, desires, and values. But such inwardness is not the final resting spot or terminus. We cannot satisfy ourselves with uncovering our own inner . We have to push beyond ourselves and take the second step. It is at the point of the second step that Kierkegaard’s view becomes religious. We are not to push beyond ourselves in just any direction. We are not to “rest transpar- ently” in just any power. We are to turn to and rely on a specific other, the transcendent other who created us, God.63 The direction for Kierkegaard is thus as it was for Augus- tine more than a millennium before: “inward and upward.”64 It is only by looking upward to God that we can find or, more accurately, receive our true selves.65 We are not to compose ourselves poetically but, as Kierkegaard says in The Concept of Irony, to let ourselves be poetically composed by God.66 In a sense, Kierkegaard is drawing on both traditional models of authenticity. From the inner sense model, he takes the idea that we find answers when we look within. But it is not because we encounter our own true voice there. It is rather because that is where we encounter God. If we wish to discover God’s specific message for us, to learn

59 Søren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 21 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 61–62, 77; Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Up- building Discourses, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 5 (Princeton University Press, 2015), 399–400. 60 Adam Buben, “Christian Hate: Death, Dying, and Reason in Pascal and Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard and Death, ed. Patrick Stokes and Adam Buben (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), 68, 71; Stokes, “The Problem of Spontaneous Goodness,” 153–55. 61 Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 13. 62 Ibid., 14. 63 Ibid., 82; see also Come, Kierkegaard as Humanist, 12; Jothen, Kierkegaard, Aesthetics, and Selfhood, 48–49. 64 Guignon, On Being Authentic, 17; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Har- vard University Press, 1989), 134. 65 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, 177, 216–17. 66 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony/Schelling Lecture Notes, 280–81.

– 11 – who he wants us to become, we must separate ourselves from the busyness of everyday life. We must block out the noise of the crowd and enter into quiet, solitary contempla- tion. We can do so in prayer at home or church, or by walking through the forest as Kierkegaard often did. Only then will we be able to hear God speak to us.67 From the constitution model, Kierkegaard takes the idea that we should think of our self as a narrative or story. The various parts of our story should be woven together around a set of fundamental goals or core values. The for Kierkegaard is that our goals and values are not to be of our own choosing. They are to be given to us by God. Moreover, Kierkegaard thinks, when we consult God in prayer, he will not just provide us with a set of rules, such as the Ten Commandments. He will assign us a voca- tion. He will give us a task that is unique to us and that cannot be derived from the circumstances of our lives.68 In this way, to use Joachim Garff’s words, God is “the true narrator” for Kierkegaard. He is “the transcendent narrator, who can endow human be- ings with identity.”69 Does Kierkegaard’s religious model overcome the problems afflicting the alterna- tive models he rejects? Most obviously, Kierkegaard’s approach provides a solution to the guidance problem. If God assigns us a vocation, then we do not face an indefinite number of paths between which we cannot discriminate. In other words, our options are not all equally good. There is a specific path that is right for us, the one God has chosen. Following this path makes us more authentic, more who we really are. Kierkegaard’s model also provides solutions to the two other problems we have discussed. First, like most traditional theists, Kierkegaard believes God is perfectly good. Thus, if God is the author of our true selves, there is no danger that pursuit of authentic- ity will lead to immoral behavior. A perfectly good God will only assign us good

67 Søren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 15 (Princeton University Press, 2009), 128–34. 68 For instance, Kierkegaard writes in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, “But this I do believe (and I am willing to listen to any objection, but I will not believe it), that at every ’s birth there comes into existence an eternal purpose for that person, for that person in particular. Faithfulness to oneself with respect to this is the highest thing a person can do” (ibid., 93; see also Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 3.3225; Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, 259). For discussion, see Adams, “Vocation”; Davenport, “Selfhood and ‘Spirit,’” 236, 245–46; Alastair Hannay, “Spirit and the Idea of the Self as a Reflexive Relation,” in The Sick- ness Unto Death, ed. Robert L. Perkins, International Kierkegaard Commentary 19 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), 28; Jothen, Kierkegaard, Aesthetics, and Selfhood, 72–73; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012. 69 Garff, “Formation and the Critique of Culture,” 267. For discussion, see Davenport, “Selfhood and ‘Spirit,’” 230–46; Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard, 127; Lippitt, Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard’s Thought, 27–46; Scott O’Leary, “Sin, Despair, and the Other: The Works of Soren Kierkegaard,” Elements Spring 5 (2005): 36– 43; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 29, 50, 172; Söderquist, The Isolated Self, 205, 212; Söderquist, “Irony,” 360; Walsh, Living Poetically, 1994, 57; Merold Westphal, Becoming a Self: A Reading of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unsci- entific Postscript (Purdue University Press, 1996), ix; Mark C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard (Fordham University Press, 2000), 234–38.

– 12 – vocations.70 Second, Kierkegaard follows the long Christian tradition of regarding God as unchangeable.71 We need not fear God will unexpectedly alter his plans and leave us with a disjointed life. Indeed, we have reason to hope everything will fit together in the end.72 Moreover, God is perfectly reliable on Kierkegaard’s view. There is no need to worry he might abandon us. Regardless of situation or circumstance, we can turn to him. In sum, for Kierkegaard, if we structure our lives around the vocation God assigns us, we will have stable and coherent identities. We will be free from “the pagan care of vacil- lation.”73 We might raise a number of concerns about Kierkegaard’s solutions.74 But per- haps the biggest one is that they are religious. Embracing them requires taking on board the idea that God exists. Moreover, it requires buying into the notion that God has a specific plan for each of us and that he communicates this plan to us. For many in the modern era, this path is not a live option. Even if faith would solve our existential prob- lems, as Kierkegaard alleges, we find ourselves unable to take up the mantle. Our minds have become too deeply secular. Some might propose we should therefore leave Kierke- gaard behind. I think that would be too hasty. Rather than discarding him as irrelevant, I wish to explore what happens if we try to remove the religious elements from his view. I wish to see if we can develop a secular alternative to his model of authentic selfhood that retains its benefits.

6. A Popular Secular Alternative Many scholars have wondered about secular approaches to Kierkegaard. They have asked whether it is possible "to remove the gem of wisdom from the gangue of Kierkegaard’s pietistic faith,” as Gordon Marino puts the question.75 One noteworthy member of the skeptical is Jamie Turnbull. In a recent series of articles, Turnbull has argued that Kierkegaard has nothing to offer secular readers.76 Kierkegaard’s views ineluctably de-

70 The Euthyphro problem lurks here. For a discussion of Kierkegaard’s response to it, see Evans, Kierke- gaard’s Ethic of Love. 71 Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 4.4715; Søren Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 23 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 263–81. 72 Eleanor Helms, “The End in the Beginning: Eschatology in Kierkegaard’s Literary Criticism,” in Narra- tive, Identity and the Kierkegaardian Self, ed. John Lippitt and Patrick Stokes (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 113–25. 73 Søren Kierkegaard, , trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writ- ings 17 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 81–92. 74 For instance, even if we believe God is both good and unchangeable, it may be hard to tell whether what we hear is from God. Our on this point may cause us great . See Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 6 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983). 75 Marino, “Despair and Depression,” 126. 76 Jamie Turnbull, “Kierkegaard’s Religious, and Our Methodological, Crisis,” in Kierkegaard and the Reli- gious Crisis of the Nineteenth Century in Europe, ed. A. Burgess et al., Acta Kierkegaardiana 4 (Toronto and

– 13 – pend on theological assumptions. This is especially true, Turnbull maintains, when it comes to Kierkegaard’s views on selfhood. If we remove or ignore the theological com- ponent here, nothing of interest remains. Secular approaches to Kierkegaardian selfhood are not viable. There are a few reasons to challenge Turnbull’s position. First, secular readers could embrace Kierkegaard’s criticisms of the two traditional models of authenticity. The objection that the models are morally dubious does not depend on theological assump- tions. Nor does the objection that they create instability, or that the constitution model in particular offers insufficient guidance. Second, secular readers could accept Kierke- gaard’s diagnosis of the underlying cause of these problems. They could take on board his claim that the traditional models go astray because they prescribe self-reliance. In- deed, several secular discussions of authenticity appeal to this very point.77 Yet, Turnbull is right about something. There is a major obstacle facing secular approaches to Kierkegaard. Such approaches will have trouble handling his positive al- ternative to traditional models of authentic selfhood. There is no way around the fact that Kierkegaard’s positive account requires wholehearted commitment to God. Commentators have tried various ways of handling this point. The most popular strategy has been the one pursued by and Jane Rubin.78 It focuses on the idea of wholehearted commitment. This focus is promising because wholeheartedness is a crucial part of Kierkegaard’s account of how to relate to God. It stands behind Johan- nes de Silentio’s praise of Abraham for being willing to give up everything for God.79 It also underlies Kierkegaard’s praise of Jesus for being obedient to God to the point of death.80 We find the idea in Postscript as well, where Climacus says a true believer will re- main faithful even if it requires sacrificing his or her understanding.81 It is also present in Practice in . There, Anti-Climacus says the real Christian will hold fast to faith

Sal’a: Kierkegaard Circle, 2009), 153–69; Turnbull, “Saving Kierkegaard’s Soul”; Turnbull, “Kierkegaard and the Limits of Philosophical Anthropology”; see also Carr, “Kierkegaard and Atheistic Existentialism”; cf. Rudd and Stokes, “The Soul of a Philosopher: Reply to Turnbull.” 77 Calhoun, “Standing for Something”; Guignon, On Being Authentic, 151; Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 58; Williams, “From Sincerity to Authenticity.” 78 Dreyfus and Rubin, “You Can’t Get Something for Nothing”; Hubert L. Dreyfus and Jane Rubin, “Kierke- gaard, Division II, and Later Heidegger,” in Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s , Division I (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 283–340; see also Burns, “The Self and Society in Kierkegaard’s Anti- Climacus Writings,” 631–34; Dreyfus, “Kierkegaard on the Internet”; , Being and Time, trans. and Dennis J. Schmidt (SUNY Press, 2010), sec. 62; Frankfurt, The Reasons of Love, 69–100; Davenport, “Selfhood and ‘Spirit,’” 238–44; Harrison Hall, “Love, and Death: Kierkegaard and Heidegger on Authentic and Inauthentic Human Existence,” Inquiry 27, no. 1–4 (1984): 179–197.. For a very different ap- proach, see George Pattison, “‘Before God’ as a Regulative Concept,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook (1997), ed. Heiko Schulz, Jon Stewart, and Karl Venstrynge, vol. 1997, 1997, 70–84. 79 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 15–24. 80 Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, 85; Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, sec. 3020. 81 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1:232.

– 14 – in the face of persecution.82 Further, the idea of wholeheartedness is implied by lines in “Purity of Heart” and Christian Discourses that say we ought not to be of two minds about God.83 Finally, there are many passages where Kierkegaard explicitly endorses uncondi- tional devotion to God.84 Dreyfus and Rubin propose we untie the of wholehearted commitment from its religious moorings and anchor it to secular ones instead. Rather than having the object of our commitment be God, we should have it be some secular object. Dreyfus himself suggests a political movement, a love relationship, or a vocation such as law or music.85 Our commitment to such secular projects could structure the story of our lives the way commitment to God does for the religious person. I am skeptical of Dreyfus and Rubin’s proposal. There are two reasons why. First, their account amounts to a ramped up version of the constitution model. It too only offers us a formal criterion for selecting our fundamental values. But rather than the criterion being that the choice must be our own, Dreyfus and Rubin claim the choice must be wholehearted. This modification does not solve the problems plaguing the tradi- tional constitution model. There is still no guidance about which value or project to select as the object of our commitment.86 Also, there is still no reason to eschew immoral projects. A wholehearted commitment to evil ends would be just as authentic as one made to good ends on the Dreyfus-Rubin model. Finally, the wholeheartedness rule does not solve the stability problem. We may be less likely to flit between projects of deep de- votion, as Dreyfus claims.87 And even if we do change our minds, our past commitments may constrain us to some degree. But there are no guarantees here. People change their minds about their deepest and most passionate commitments. They leave their marriages. They change their political affiliations. As long as we make our new choices wholeheart- edly, there is nothing stopping us from moving on whenever we please. The threat of rebellion from within, as Kierkegaard puts it, is still possible at any moment. There is a second shortcoming to Dreyfus and Rubin’s approach to secularizing Kierkegaard. It does not reflect Kierkegaard’s diagnosis of the underlying problem with the traditional models. Kierkegaard thinks these models go astray because they tell us to be self-sufficient. They tell us to fill out our identities by drawing on resources internal

82 Søren Kierkegaard, , Kierkegaard’s Writings 20 (Princeton University Press, 1991), 91. 83 Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, 81–91; Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, 7–154. 84 Søren Kierkegaard, Judge for Yourself!, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writ- ings 21 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 106–15, 153–59; Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, 81–91; Kierkegaard, The Point of View, 19–20; Søren Kierkegaard, , trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 16 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 19–20; Kierkegaard, The Moment, 94; Søren Kierkegaard, Without Authority, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 18 (Princeton University Press, 1997), 21–35; Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, sec. 3.3015, 4.4894-4919. 85 Dreyfus, “Kierkegaard on the Internet,” 108. 86 See Rudd, “Kierkegaard’s Platonic Teleology,” 55. 87 Dreyfus, “Kierkegaard on the Internet,” 108.

– 15 – to ourselves, be they our own natural feelings and desires (the inner sense model) or our own creative powers (the constitution model). Kierkegaard recommends turning to God in part because he thinks self-reliance does not work. We need to look to something be- yond ourselves when trying to determine who we are. Thus, for Kierkegaard, God is not just an object of care and devotion. He is the source of our identities. In other words, relating to God is not just some project we undertake. Relating to God is how we figure out what our projects should be. A secular version of Kierkegaard’s account must re- place God with something that serves the same role. It must find something that can be the source of our identities—that can tell us who we are and who we should become. This does not happen if we plug in devotion to music or law for devotion to God. In these cases, to use Garff’s words, the I is not shaped and formed by the not-I.88 We can develop a better secular alternative by having human others play the role Kierkegaard assigns to God. They can be the external power that shapes and conditions our identities. Not just any human others will do, of course. Placing no restrictions here would bring back into play a mindless deference to the crowd. It would permit the mass mentality Kierkegaard thinks we must avoid. Any plausible account of authenticity has to rule out this possibility.89 Thus, I suggest the human others on whom we depend be in- timate and virtuous friends. As friends, they should be people who care about us and want to promote our well-being. As intimate friends, they must be people who know us well. They must understand our abilities, limitations, past histories, and present circum- stances. Finally, as virtuous friends, they must be wise people with integrity. They must be capable of insight into our lives and deserving of our respect. In the next section, I will describe what it looks like to develop our identity by relying on intimate and virtuous friends. I will also explain how such an approach avoids the problems plaguing tradition- al secular models of authentic selfhood.90

7. The Dialogical Model of Authenticity There are several ways our friends might help us with the project of selfhood. What I have in mind is working out our identities in an ongoing dialogue with them. This dia- logue will involve sharing our vision of ourselves and adjusting it in light of their

88 Garff, “Formation and the Critique of Culture,” 256–57. 89 Ibid., 279–270. 90 For other references in the Kierkegaard of the idea that we can develop our identities in rela- tion to human others and especially in dialogue with intimate friends, see Davenport, “Selfhood and ‘Spirit,’” 232; Evans, “Who Is the ‘Other’ in Sickness Unto Death? God and Human Relations in the Constitu- tion of the Self,” 269–72; Frazier, Rorty and Kierkegaard, 146; Garff, “Formation and the Critique of Culture,” 253; Arne Grøn, “The Embodied Self Reformulating the Existential Difference in Kierkegaard,” Journal of Con- sciousness Studies 11, no. 10–11 (2004): 36–37; Anna Strelis, “Till We Have Selves: Formative Education in Kierkegaard” (Ph.D. Dissertation, New School for Social Research, 2014), 189; Söderquist, Kierkegaard on Dia- logical Education, 31–46; Richard M. Summers, “‘Controlled Irony’ and the Emergence of the Self in Kierkegaard’s Dissertation,” in The Concept of Irony, International Kierkegaard Commentary 2 (Macon, GA: Mer- cer University Press, 2001), 313.

– 16 – feedback. Importantly, we will not just defer to our friends’ judgments. Nor will we al- ways accept their criticisms and suggestions. Rather, we will seek a kind of “reflective equilibrium” between their views and our own. (More on this in a bit.) The result will be a sense of self that is not just a product of our own intuition or will. It will be a sense of self that is also formed by and checked against the insights of those who know and care about us. These conversations with our friends may take a variety of forms. They may begin with our sharing our current take on our life story. We may talk about where we see ourselves coming from and where we see ourselves going. We may say how we think our past connects with our present and future. Alternatively, we may the outlines of the foundational projects of our lives, or point to the core values that lie behind them. Rarely will we share our existing vision of ourselves all at once. Our story will come out piecemeal, in fits and starts. Moreover, because our story is ongoing, it will tend not to form a seamless whole. It will be fragmented or disjointed. Its direction and shape will be tentative or vague. Finally, we typically will not speak with our friends about our sense of self when all is well. We will approach them when we have questions, hesita- tions, and concerns. We will bring up our identity when we are having trouble fitting together disparate projects, struggling to reconcile competing values, or wrestling with how to interpret some troubling event. What our friends will provide when at their best is an external perspective on our life story. They will tell us how things look from their point of view. This input will in- clude indicating where they believe we go aright and where we go astray. For instance, they may note where our narrative fits the bare facts as they see them, and where it does not. They may also speak to whether our projects reflect our own underlying values. Fi- nally, they may tell us whether they think our values are worth accepting in the first place. Ideally, our friends will not just give us a thumbs up or down regarding our pro- jects, values, and narratives. They will assist with the process of working through the problems that arise along the way. This assistance will involve suggesting and helping us decide between alternative possibilities—alternative projects to pursue, values to em- brace, or even frameworks to use for interpreting our lives. Two points about this model deserve emphasis. First, we are not merely to seek recognition and validation of our existing beliefs from our friends. (This is what Hegel recommends on some readings of the Phenomenology of Spirit.) Sincere affirmation can be a great thing when it comes, of course. It can bolster our confidence during periods of self-doubt. It can stabilize us during times of psychological upheaval. We probably need it more than we acknowledge. But affirmation is only part of what we need to get from our friends on the dialogical model of selfhood. We also need to know when our friends disagree with us and have insights we have overlooked. We may even gain more from those who look at our lives from a different point of view. Contrary to what Judge Wil- liam says, the best friends may not be those who share our worldview. 91

91 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part II, 319–21.

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Second, the dialogical model does not recommend treating our friends as abso- lute authorities. We are not to use their judgment as the standard against which to measure our own. That is, we ought not to embrace a project or value just because our friends recommend it. Nor ought we to abandon one we hold dear just because our friends object to it. Our friends’ assent should be neither necessary nor sufficient for our own. (That is how Kierkegaard seems to view the proposal in The Sickness Unto Death and why he takes a dim view of it.92) The goal is to balance our friends’ points of view against our own. There are sev- eral ways to cash out this ideal. One way is to count it as a serious but defeasible mark in favor of an idea if our friends endorse it and then to count it as a serious but defeasible mark against an idea if our friends oppose it. In other words, we should treat our friends’ judgments as important but not all-swamping pieces of evidence to accommodate. This approach does not rule out departing from what our friends think if we believe they are mistaken. In Kierkegaard’s language, the path of the single individual that swings off from the way of others remains open. But it is a path we must take tentatively and only upon reflection. We must continue to acknowledge the possibility that our friends are right after all.93 As these points makes clear, there are differences between the dialogical account of selfhood and Kierkegaard’s religious account. Relying on our friends is unlike relying on God. We do not treat our friends as absolute authorities. Nor do we use their views as the criterion against which to measure our own. We also do not receive from them final answers about who we are or who we should become. Thus, strictly speaking, our friends are not a “power that establishes [us].”94 We do not “transparently rest” in them, as Anti-Climacus says we should rest in God.95 It is appropriate to ask at this point about the cost of my departures from Kier- kegaard’s view. Kierkegaard himself, we know, will not approve of them. He takes a dim view of using human others to develop our sense of self. He places it a bit above trying to gain recognition from one’s cattle and far below trying to become a self before God.96 But the most important test is whether the dialogical model retains the benefits of Kier- kegaard’s approach. That is, does it enable us to overcome the problems plaguing the traditional models of authenticity? If the dialogical model is to serve as a viable alterna- tive to Kierkegaard’s religious model, it must do so. It cannot just throw us back into the situation he wanted to avoid. Let us consider the matter carefully.

92 Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 79; see Jon Stewart, Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 585. 93 For further discussion, see Thomas Kelly, “Peer Disagreement and Higher Order Evidence,” Social : Essential Readings, 2010, 183–217. 94 Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 14. 95 Ibid., 14, 48, 131. 96 Ibid., 79; Patrick Stokes, Kierkegaard’s Mirrors: Interest, Self and Moral Vision (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 108–9.

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To begin with, the dialogical model is like the constitution model in that it does not tell us exactly who we are. It does not say what ingredients make up our true self, as the inner sense model helpfully does.97 Nor does it place restrictions on the kind of val- ues or projects we could make central to our identity. Thus, the dialogical model appears to suffer from a version of the guidance problem. It seems to leave us with too many op- tions and no good way to sort between them. But this is not quite right. The dialogical model does not leave us empty handed. It offers us a procedure for sorting between our options and distinguishing between bet- ter and worse ways to go. First, we are to consult our own initial intuitions, instincts and judgments. Then, we are to run these past our friends. We are to ask our friends to con- sult their intuitions and to offer us their advice, criticisms, and suggestions. Finally, we are to embrace the projects, values, and interpretations of our lives that emerge from these discussions. The process here may not be as simple as doing whatever God says. It also may not lead to the same kind of clear-cut answers about who we really are. But it does give us a non-random way to sort through and rank the paths before us. Thus, it does not leave us with the guidance problem. We might worry about the fact that the dialogical model asks us to rely on our in- tuitions. As noted before, our intuitions can go astray. They can lead in immoral directions. Of course, the dialogical model installs a buffer against the vicious tendencies of our intuitions. It requires us to run them by our friends. But if our intuitions can go astray, so too can our friends’ intuitions. History supplies no shortage of examples of groups led by honest to do terrible things. Thus, the dialogical model might seem to suffer from a version of the moral problem. In response, I concede that the dialogical model assumes our instincts and intui- tions are not wholly unreliable. To some degree they track what is right and good, both for us and in general. But the dialogical model also assumes our intuitions and judgments are not wholly reliable. Indeed, without this assumption, we would not need other people. We would be fine with the inner sense model or any other model that leaves us to our own resources. This moderate position reflects Kierkegaard’s own attitude. He is most well known for his negative comments on the topic. For instance, in Fragments, Johannes Cli- macus rejects the Socratic thesis that the truth lies within. We are naturally “outside the truth” or “polemical against the truth,” Climacus says.98 A skeptical view also per- vades Postscript and Christian Discourses. Both texts contain the refrain that we cannot do

97 The dialogical model is also not a substantive model in the sense that it does not say what a self is in general. This is on purpose. I intend the model to be agnostic about the . It will fit with Kierkegaard’s view that selves are stories. But it does not require a commitment to this idea. In addition, the dialogical model is consistent with Anthony Rudd’s position that there is a fact of the matter about who we are (Self, Value, and Narrative: A Kierkegaardian Approach [Oxford University Press, 2012], 79–99).. But it also something an anti- realist such as Sartre could take on board. Dialoguing with our friends could either be a way of uncovering the truth about our identity, or a way of creating our identity. 98 Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Kierkegaard’s Writings 7 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 13, 15.

– 19 – anything good—or get anything right—without God’s help.99 Yet, as Anthony Rudd ar- gues, these are not Kierkegaard’s final words on the matter.100 He often makes remarks that suggest a more optimistic attitude. In Fragments, for example, we have the ability to recognize God when he arrives. We would not have this power if we were completely hopeless.101 In Sickness Unto Death, we learn how the human problem is not ignorance of the good as Socrates claimed. It is rather a failure to will the good.102 But our wills could not be set against the good if we lacked awareness of the good. Kierkegaard makes a similar point in his Journals and Papers. He says, “The ethical presupposes that every per- son knows what the ethical is, and why? Because the ethical demands that every man shall realize it at every moment, but then he surely has to know it.”103 Thus, following Rudd, I find it best to interpret Kierkegaard as holding a moderate view. He thinks our instincts and intuitions are somewhat but not entirely reliable. A moderate position is also defensible from a philosophical perspective. Com- plete skepticism about our instincts and intuitions would be paralyzing. We would have trouble deciding what to do most of the time. Complete skepticism would also be psychologically impossible. We cannot help but take ourselves as getting things right sometimes and to some degree.104 On the other hand, complete trust in ourselves would be unreasonable. Our minds are finite. We cannot attend to everything. We are always missing or neglecting some important considerations. In addition, our minds are fallible. We never reason perfectly well or think with perfect accuracy about the considerations we do grasp. We are prone to mistakes of interpretation and inference.105 We might wonder at this point how our friends are supposed to help us. Their minds will not be any better than our minds. They too will suffer from blind spots and be prone to mistakes. What I wish to emphasize is that our friends need not be perfect in order to benefit us. They do not even need to be wiser or more insightful than we are. Our friends help us primarily because their minds are different from ours. They see dif- ferent considerations, make different connections, and imagine different possibilities. Thus, they can fill in the gaps in our thinking. In addition, our friends are unlikely to make exactly the same errors in reasoning. So, they can supply an independent check on our calculations, judgments, and interpretations. They can catch our mistakes. In these respects, two or three fallible minds are better than one. There is no guarantee of suc-

99 Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, 63–65, 298–300; Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1:429–30, 462–70. 100 Anthony Rudd, “The Moment and the Teacher: Problems in Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments,” Kier- kegaardiana 21 (2000): 92–115; Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 50. 101 Rudd, “The Moment and the Teacher,” 98. 102 Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, 94–95. 103 Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, 649.10. 104 See Rudd, Self, Value, and Narrative, 2012, 95–99. 105 For development of this point, see Kenneth R. Westphal, “Finitude, Rational Justification and Mutual Recognition,” in Recognition: German as an Ongoing Challenge, ed. Christian Krijnen, Critical Studies in 10 (Boston, MA: Brill, 2013), 235–251.

– 20 – cess, of course. The fact that wise friends support our ways does not entail with logical that we ae headed in the right direction. Even groups of wise friends can go astray. But with friends by our side we are less likely to make mistakes, including moral ones. The dialogical model also guards against the moral problem in a second way. It requires us to respect our friends and care about them. We must treat them with moral regard, eschewing projects that harm or endanger them. More positively, we must in- clude among our projects the promotion of the good of our friends. The reasoning here is straightforward. If we do not care about our friends, they are unlikely to help us. They are unlikely to invest the time and energy required to talk with us about our identi- ties. Note that our motivational structure here cannot be purely egoistic. We cannot care about our friends only because they benefit us. We must care about them for their own sake. Friends who feel they are of merely instrumental value tend to back away. Of course, there is more to morality than loving our friends. Requiring us to treat our friends well says nothing about how we ought to treat strangers and acquaintances let alone enemies. Moreover, it is possible to do well by one’s friends but otherwise be a vicious person. Still, saying we must love at least some others in order to succeed at the problem of selfhood is an important step in the direction of morality. It is certainly a step beyond what we find in either the inner sense or the constitution model. Finally, let us turn to the third problem with traditional models of authenticity, the continuity problem. The benefits of friendship are most obvious here. Supporting words from friends can sustain us during moments of doubt. Their affirmation can shore up our commitment to our values when it wavers. It can also can keep us going when we start to worry about the merits of our projects. This point is especially clear when we think about periods of depression and sorrow. We often cannot recognize the worthiness of our goals during such times. We cannot see for ourselves why they matter. If all we had to go on was our own judgment, we would abandon our goals. There would be nothing left to buoy us. The same is not true if we work out our goals in dialogue with our friends. For then our goals are not just the product of our own judgments. They are also underwritten by the judgments of others. This outside support gives us reason to continue even when we have our own personal doubts. Friendships also help with continuity in a subtler way. As Bernard Williams ar- gues, friendships condition us to develop stable and coherent identities.106 How so? Well, for friends to be worth having, we must be able to count on them. We must be able to get their help and advice when we need it. But we have a hard time counting on our friends if they are erratic. If their behavior is all over the map, they may not be there when we need them. If their values are unpredictable, their help may not be beneficial when it does come. Thus, Williams thinks, to get what we need, we pressure our friends to develop stable and coherent identities. Of course, they do the same to us. Indeed, they are most likely to become dependable for us only if we return the favor. Now we need

106 Williams, “From Sincerity to Authenticity,” 192–93; Guignon, On Being Authentic, 152–54.

– 21 – not make our lives perfectly stable and coherent to win good friends. Some amount of unpredictability will not ward off others. It may even attract them. But if we are perpetu- ally and dramatically changing the structure and direction of our lives, we are unlikely to acquire the kind of friends we need for meaningful dialogue.

8. Conclusion In this paper, I have sought to develop a secular alternative to Kierkegaard’s model of authentic selfhood. I have maintained that we can hold on to the motivating insight be- hind his view. We can take on board the idea that we will fail at the project of selfhood if we try to go it alone. We must rely on others if we want to figure out who we are and who we should become. The difficulty with Kierkegaard’s account has to do with the specific other on whom we are to depend. He thinks we must turn to God and receive our identities from him. This is not a live option for many people in our modern, secular age. They no longer believe in God. Or, they no longer believe in a God who has a plan for their lives and communicates this plan to them. In response, I have pointed out that God is not the only other who can help us in the ways we need. Human others can pro- vide assistance as well. Indeed, if we dialogue with our friends about our identities, we can gain many of the benefits God is supposed to provide. Of course, friends are not a perfect substitute for God. They will not do every- thing God does on Kierkegaard’s framework. Most notably, they will not provide clear- cut answers to questions about what we should do with our lives or what type of person we should become. But our friends can provide meaningful guidance here. They can of- fer suggestions about how to proceed with our lives. They can propose projects for us to adopt and offer interpretations of our life stories for us to consider. Moreover, our friends can help us see when we are going astray. They can call attention to the ways our view of ourselves does not fit the facts and point out when our goals rest on dubious assumptions. Finally, the friendship model addresses the other two problems facing tra- ditional models of authenticity. It eases the worry that our projects will become indifferent or antagonistic toward other people. And it reduces the chance that we will end up with a fragmentary or unstable identity.

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