Narrative, Identity and the Kierkegaardian Self

John Lippitt is Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Hertfordshire. He is the author of Kierkegaard and the Problem of Self-Love (Cambridge, 2013), The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kierkegaard and Fear and Trembling (Routledge, 2003; second edition pending) and Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard’s Thought (Palgrave, 2000). He is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard (Oxford, 2013). Patrick Stokes is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University. He is co-editor of Kierkegaard and Death (Indiana University Press, 2011) and he is the author of Kierkegaard’s Mirrors: Interest, Self and Moral Vision (Palgrave, 2010)

• Introduction, John Lippitt and Patrick Stokes; 1. The Moments of a Life: On Some Similarities between Life and Literature,Marya Schechtman; 2. Teleology, Narrative, and Death, Roman Altshuler; 3. Kierkegaard’s Platonic Teleology, Anthony Rudd; 4. Narrative Holism and the Moment, Patrick Stokes; 5. Kierkegaard’s Erotic Reduction and the Problem of Founding the Self, Michael Strawser; 6. Narrativity and Normativity, Walter Wieizke; 7. The End in the Beginning: Eschatology in Kierkegaard’s Literary Criticism, Eleanor Helms; 8. Forgiveness and the Rat Man: Kierkegaard, ‘Narrative Unity’ and ‘Wholeheartedness’ Revisited, John Lippitt; 9. The Virtues of Ambivalence: Wholeheartedness as Existential Telos and the Unwillable Completion of Narravives, John J. Davenport; 10. Non-Narrative Protestant Goods: Protestant Ethics and Kierkegaardian Selfhood, Matias Møl Dalsgaard; 11. Narrativity, Aspect, and Selfhood, Michael J. Sigrist; 12. The Senses of an Ending, Kathy Behrendt; 13. The End? Kierkegaard’s Death and its Implications for Telling his Story, George Pattison.

Are our lives enacted dramatic narratives? Did Kierkegaard understand human existence in these terms? Anyone grappling with these two questions will find in these excellent essays a remarkable catalogue of insights and arguments to be reckoned with in giving an answer. That is no small achievement.