©2007 Karey Kar Yee Leung ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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©2007 Karey Kar Yee Leung ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SUSPENSION OF SECULAR SERIOUSNESS: A KIERKEGAARDIAN REVIVAL OF METAPHYSICAL HUMOR IN ETHICO-POLITICAL COMMUNICATION by KAREY KAR YEE LEUNG A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Political Science written under the direction of Drucilla Cornell and approved by ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May, 2007 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Suspension of Secular Seriousness: A Kierkegaardian Revival of Metaphysical Humor in Ethico-Political Communication by KAREY KAR YEE LEUNG Dissertation Director: Drucilla Cornell Scientific scholarship when applied to ethics may not only fail in providing a doctrine of ethics, but moreover negatively serve to drain the enthusiasm for concerted action. If a book on ethics makes one complacent rather than agitated to act, then according to Kierkegaard, it is written for unethical purposes. If an individual is more preoccupied with finding the perfect language to speak of ethics than becoming motivated to act in the world, then such profundity becomes a delay tactic to avoid right action. Even the careful attentiveness of waiting to act until one knows for sure that one’s action is the right one becomes a means to uncoil one’s active potential. How then can one write about ethics? Bar remaining silent, perhaps it is not a matter of writing about ethics in a detached manner of scientific academic prose but a way of writing that ignites the passions. Contrary to the common conception that Kierkegaard is against ethics in his pronouncement of Abraham’s “teleological suspension of the ethical” in Fear and Trembling by his pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, I argue that Kierkegaard is deeply invested in exciting his reader towards ethical action even if he writes to offend so that the reader puts the book down in order to live. Also, contrary to another common conception that Kierkegaard suffers from deep melancholy, I argue that Kierkegaard ii writes from a comic-tragic source that integrates humor and exaggerated seriousness that when later revoked speaks without authority to the individual reader who may be resistant to direct moral proselytizing. I argue Kierkegaard’s attempt to (re)metaphysicalize Christian ethico-spirituality as humorous can help transform the foundationalist/antifoundationalist debate by integrating form and content in recovering the premodern comic roots of ethics. Taking Kierkegaard’s heed not to academicize his work, I will do my best to tread carefully to avoid translating his indirect approach into a dry ‘Kierkegaardian theory of ethics.’ iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The completion of this project cannot be possible without the help of numerous individuals who have taken a leap of faith in trusting me to find my way even at times when I was not entirely clear myself. These individuals have all contributed to helping me find my voice by giving me the benefit of the doubt even as I doubted my own abilities. I thank the incredible luck to have been taught by some of the most intelligent, challenging, and insightful professors who have and still continue to inspire me with their enthusiasm for scholarship, teaching, mentorship and good ol’ living. Special thanks go to the Women and Politics faculty Leela Fernandes, Cynthia Daniels, Susan Carroll, and Mary Hawkesworth whom from the first day have firmly encouraged my intellectual growth; to Drucilla Cornell, Gordon Schochet, Dennis Bathory, Stephen Bronner, and Benjamin Barber for challenging me to explore the political theory canon with rigor; and especially to Carey McWilliams for (in)directing me to Kierkegaard by his recommendation to read Geoffrey Clive’s Romantic Enlightenment. Thanks also go to Carey for suggesting as outside reader Cornel West who has gone beyond the call of duty to help make this project possible. I would also like to thank John Seery at Pomona College for introducing me to his brand of political theory as mind-bogglingly entertaining. Thanks also to Daren Mooko and Alison de la Cruz at Pomona College’s Asian American Resource Center for empowering Asian Americans to find their own voice. Many thanks to the dissertopia reading group Brian Graf, Kristy King, Geoffrey Kurtz, and James Mastrangelo for their support in venturing through preliminary unmediated thoughts. Thanks to Kate Bedford, Eric Boehme, Louise Coolidge, Young- iv Joon Kim, Kenneth Panfilio, Michele Ruiters, Darren Botello-Samson, Nichole Shippen, Meredith Staples, and Xiaomin Zhang for inspiring me with their intellect and humor both inside and outside the classroom. Their commitment to activism in personal/political causes is an inspiration. Special thanks to Karen Braverman, Debbie Eleftheriou, Jill Ellermeyer, and the women of Sigma Delta Tau for their infectious love of life and support which helped me complete this project. Thanks to my family for their love, especially my father Lewis Leung for his willingness to read through my previous drafts. This dissertation is dedicated to all those whose shoulders I have leaned, cried, laughed, and stood on for support throughout the years. v Suspension of Secular Seriousness: A Kierkegaardian Revival of Metaphysical Humor in Ethico-Political Communication TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgments iv Table of Contents vi List of Abbreviations vii Introduction 1 Part One 1 Inside and Outside Political Theory 9 2 Performing Antifoundationalism 46 3 Humor as Metaphysics and Method 66 Part Two 4 Exaggerated Seriousness in Fear and Trembling 117 5 Mocking Teleology in Stages of Life’s Way 161 6 Releasing the Stranglehold of Reflection’s Envy in Two Ages 174 7 Jesting Despair to Extremes in Sickness Unto Death 211 8 Suspension of Infinitude in Works of Love 223 Conclusion 244 Bibliography 254 Curriculum Vita 260 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS List of abbreviations used for Kierkegaard’s texts: AR On Authority and Revelation: Book on Adler CI The Concept of Irony COR The Corsair Affair CUP Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments D Diary EO Either/Or FSE For Self-Examination FT Fear and Trembling JFY Judge for Yourself! JP Journals and Papers P Prefaces PAP Papers PF Philosophical Fragments TIC Training in Christianity PV The Point of View for My Work as an Author R Repetition SLW Stages on Life’s Way SUD The Sickness unto Death TA Two Ages WL Works of Love vii 1 Introduction But then the world became so dreadfully serious—that is, altogether secular. -Kierkegaard1 I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief. -Kafka2 How many political theorists can say this about their books? One can say that academic writing is not the place for shock therapy, yet one must still ask the question: what are we writing it for? If one writes for the small community of like-minded scholars similarly motivated to wade through the dense literature, then one can be contented with contributing to a knowledge niche within the academy. Yet, what if such knowledge is ethics? Would such niche building of an ethical language be considered unethical if it takes years of scholarship to crack the codes of academic jargon? Scientific scholarship when applied to ethics may not only fail in providing a doctrine of ethics, but moreover negatively serve to drain the enthusiasm for concerted action. If a book on ethics makes one complacent rather than agitated to act, then according to Kierkegaard, it is written for unethical purposes. If an individual is more preoccupied with finding the perfect language to speak of ethics than becoming motivated to act in the world, then such profundity becomes a delay tactic to avoid right action. Even the careful attentiveness of 1 Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, ed. Edna H. Hong Howard V. Hong, and Gregor Malantschuk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), 4177 X2 A 486 n.d., 1850. 2 Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors (London: John Calder, 1978), 16.Quoted in Gabriel Josipovici, "Kierkegaard and the Novel," in Kierkegaard : A Critical Reader, ed. Jonathan and Chamberlain Rée, Jane (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 119. 2 waiting to act until one knows for sure that one’s action is the right one becomes a means to uncoil one’s active potential. How then can one write about ethics? Bar remaining silent, perhaps it is not a matter of writing about ethics in a detached manner of scientific academic prose but a way of writing that ignites the passions. Contrary to the common conception that Kierkegaard is against ethics in his pronouncement of Abraham’s “teleological suspension of the ethical” in Fear and Trembling by his pseudonym Johannes de Silentio,3 I argue that Kierkegaard is deeply invested in exciting his reader towards ethical action even if he writes to offend so that the reader puts the book down in order to live. Also, contrary to another common conception that Kierkegaard suffers from deep melancholy, I argue that Kierkegaard writes from a comic-tragic source that integrates humor and exaggerated seriousness that when later revoked speaks without authority to the individual reader who may be resistant to direct moral proselytizing.