The Power of Freedom: A Study of Søren Kierkegaard´s Thought with Special Reference to the Journals

BINETTI, MARÍA JOSÉ

Minnesota - USA

Congreso; Fifth International Conference- Hong Kierkegaard Library; 2005

Hong Kierkegaard Library

I would like to start my address by proposing the Danish existentialist´s philosophy in terms of a metaphysics of freedom, partly inherited from German Idealism and partly renewed by the affirmation of the existent singular as an absolute subject of spiritual becoming. With Idealism, or more precisely ever since E. Kant, the concept of freedom managed to transcend the analysis of immediate conscience, opening the way to self-reflection and stopping at the self as pure act, free and self-aware. In the light of such transcending, freedom came to have a central place in philosophical speculation, not only due to its being the main object of its studies, but rather to its becoming the subject, content and end of thought itself. Kierkegaard´s philosophy emerges within this context, a philosophy which retained the absolute power of modern subject, restoring it to the concrete human being and discovering in individual existence the essential sense of free action. Freedom for Kierkegaard is the self. It is neither an accident nor an attribute of the spirit, but its very essence, the true definition of subjectivity. Nevertheless, and precisely because existence is becoming, to be free is to become so, through a dialectical development starting from the indeterminate possibility of the spirit and ending in its absolute determination as Singular before God. I could summarize my dissertation stating that Kierkegaardian freedom is the necessary possibility of a dialectical, intensive and relational power. In order to explain this, I will from now on refer to a series of thesis in which I concentrate the essential determinations of what I believe to be the fundamental thought of the author we are dealing with. I would like to start my address by proposing the Danish existentialist´s philosophy in terms of a metaphysics of freedom, partly inherited from German Idealism and partly renewed by the affirmation of the existent singular as an absolute subject of spiritual becoming. With Idealism, or more precisely ever since E. Kant, the concept of freedom managed to transcend the analysis of immediate conscience, opening the way to self-reflection and stopping at the self as pure act, free and self-aware. In the light of such transcending, freedom came to have a central place in philosophical speculation, not only due to its being the main object of its studies, but rather to its becoming the subject, content and end of thought itself. Kierkegaard´s philosophy emerges within this context, a philosophy which retained the absolute power of modern subject, restoring it to the concrete human being and discovering in individual existence the essential sense of free action. Freedom for Kierkegaard is the self. It is neither an accident nor an attribute of the spirit, but its very essence, the true definition of subjectivity. Nevertheless, and precisely because existence is becoming, to be free is to become so, through a dialectical development starting from the indeterminate possibility of the spirit and ending in its absolute determination as Singular before God. I could summarize my dissertation stating that Kierkegaardian freedom is the necessary possibility of a dialectical, intensive and relational power. In order to explain this, I will from now on refer to a series of thesis in which I concentrate the essential determinations of what I believe to be the fundamental thought of the author we are dealing with.