{"id":6149,"date":"2025-01-10T15:03:28","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T14:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/?p=6149"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:04:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T14:04:55","slug":"discipline-filosofiche-xxxiv-1-2024-possibility-is-the-heaviest-of-all-categories-on-kierkegaards-reading-of-modal-categories-edited-by-ingrid-basso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/en\/ultimi-numeri\/discipline-filosofiche-xxxiv-1-2024-possibility-is-the-heaviest-of-all-categories-on-kierkegaards-reading-of-modal-categories-edited-by-ingrid-basso\/","title":{"rendered":"Discipline Filosofiche XXXIV, 1, 2024: \u201cPossibility is the Heaviest of All Categories\u201d. On Kierkegaard\u2019s Reading of Modal Categories. Edited by Ingrid Basso"},"content":{"rendered":"

XXXIV, 1, 2024: \u201cPossibility is the Heaviest of All Categories\u201d. On Kierkegaard\u2019s Reading of Modal Categories. Edited by Ingrid Basso<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Buy the electronic version<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"copertina-2016-1-fronte\"<\/a>The categories of modality, in a thinker like Kierkegaard who always prioritized the subjective dimension of the how <\/em>(hvorledes<\/em>) over the objective what <\/em>(hvad<\/em>), assume decisive importance. Possibility, actuality, necessity and contingency are crucial categories recurring in S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard\u2019s thought. Some of them (i.e., possibility and necessity) are even part of the definition of the Self\u2019s constitution as a relation (see The Sickness unto Death<\/em>, 1849). The same categories also appear in reflections on historicity (see the \u201cInterlude\u201d from Philosophical Fragments<\/em>, 1844; The Concept of Anxiety<\/em>, 1844; Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments<\/em>, 1846) aimed at avoiding any form of Hegelian historicism in favor of the Christian revelatory Kairos<\/em>.
\nBut Kierkegaard does not merely limit himself to using modal categories to construct his peculiar worldview \u2013although this \u201cnarrative\u201d use is an integral part of his indirect communication. He also explicitly thematizes and reconsiders the long philosophical tradition of reflecting on categories of modality, from Aristotle, through the Middle Ages and Early Modernity (i.e. Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schelling), to his contemporaries, including Adolf Trendelenburg, who \u2013as Kierkegaard states\u2013 gave him \u201cthe apparatus\u201d for what he \u201chad thought out years before\u201d (Journal <\/em>1. February 1847, Not:13:55, SKS 19, 420). This further demonstrates that Kierkegaard is not the thinker who, like an \u201cerratic boulder\u201d, alienates himself from the debates of his time to devote himself exclusively to his peculiar ethical-religious reflection, as it has often been emphasized in textbooks. No, Kierkegaard is a thinker who, albeit in his own way, does not ignore the speculative challenges of his era, such as the 19th-century debate on Aristotle\u2019s categories.
\nThus, for Kierkegaard, the analysis of categories seems to be key for understanding reality starting from the examination of a being <\/em>that must be resemantized after the Hegelian radicalization of idealism in the direction of logic. From a methodological point of view, the fundamental peculiarity of Kierkegaardian reflection lies in the recognition that thought must begin <\/em>with and pass through<\/em> the notion of existing singularity<\/em>. This is why the Copenhagen thinker rejects the idea of philosophizing without presuppositions, contrasting dialectical thinking with a thinking that he calls pathetic <\/em>and that refers to the difference between logical movement (immanent, quantitative) and movement in the sphere of freedom (transcendent, qualitative): \u201cWhen Aristotle says that the transition from possibility to actuality is a kinesis<\/em>, it is not to be understood logically but with reference to historical freedom\u201d (The Concept of Anxiety<\/em>, 1844, SKS 4, 385).
\nThe modal categories themselves must thus be rethought in relation to the actuality (Virkelighed<\/em>\/Wirklichkeit<\/em>) of the existing human being, but they will necessarily have to be reexamined in light of the essential link with the negative. Where necessity and contingency are expressions of the negative <\/em>(i.e. where the necessary is defined as \u201cwhat cannot not be\u201d, and where the contingency is \u201cwhat is there but might not have been\u201d), actuality and possibility are expressions of a position in the real, of an event in the world. Thus, for Kierkegaard: \u201cThe question of whether the positive or the negative comes first is exceedingly important\u201d (The Concept of Anxiety<\/em>, SKS 4, 445), and \u201cDanish philosophy \u2013if there ever comes to be such a thing\u2013 will be different from German philosophy in that it definitely will not begin with nothing or without any presuppositions whatsoever or explain everything by mediating, because, on the contrary, it begins with the proposition that there are many things between heaven and earth which no philosophy has explained\u201d (Journalen <\/em>JJ:239, SKS 18, 217).
\nThe positive and the negative will thus also have to be examined in relation to the category of possibility, in the existential Stimmung <\/em>of anxiety and in its connection with the Christian Revelation-notion of sin.
\nThe present issue of Discipline Filosofiche<\/em> is thus devoted to the exploration of Kierkegaardian thought on the use and reflection on modal categories and the weight they assume in the elaboration of an existential perspective built on a peculiar ontological structure.
\nThe contributions presented hereafter thus deal with the Kierkegaardian position in the historical and philosophical debate on categories to date (since categories allow communication between different levels: thought, language, and objects); with the existential expression of modal categories in Kierkegaard\u2019s narrative-literary work, and with the constitution of the self and singularity in the ethical-religious dimension, but also in the psychological one.<\/p>\n

Contents<\/strong>
\n(click on the titles to view the abstracts) <\/span><\/p>\n

Ingrid Basso, Introduction
\nVictor M. Fernandes, Gabriel Ferreira da Silva, The Ontological Structure of Kierkegaard\u2019s Philosophy<\/a>
\nEttore Rocca, The Necessary is Contingent. Kierkegaard\u2019s God and the Modal Categories<\/a>
\nJon Stewart, The Views of the Early Kierkegaard on Actuality and \u201cLife\u201d: A Flashpoint in the Conflict of the Nature of Philosophy<\/a>
\nIngrid Basso, \u201cPi\u00f9 della possibilit\u00e0 e meno della realt\u00e0\u201d: sulla kinesis aristotelica da Trendelenburg a Kierkegaard<\/a>
\nMarlene Prosdocimo, Attualit\u00e0 nella possibilit\u00e0: l\u2019attuazione dell\u2019impensabile come possibilit\u00e0 fondativa in Schelling e Kierkegaard<\/a>
\nLeonardo Rodr\u00edguez Dupla, The Category of Possibility in Kierkegaard\u2019s Ethical Thought<\/a>
\nDar\u00edo Gonz\u00e1lez, El concepto kierkegaardiano de \u201crealidad\u201d y la evoluci\u00f3n de la interpretaci\u00f3n \u00e9tica de la existencia<\/a>
\nTroy Wellington Smith, Actuality and Possibility, the Ethical and the Religious: An Essay on Kierkegaard\u2019s Pseudonymous Authorship<\/a>
\nPatricia Dip, La definici\u00f3n del yo en la psicolog\u00eda de Kierkegaard<\/a>
\nRick Anthony Furtak, Possibility and Attunement in Kierkegaard\u2019s Moral Psychology: The Sickness unto Death<\/em><\/a>
\nJoakim Garff, \u201cTherefore, to stand by oneself \u2013 through another\u2019s help!\u201d Possibility and Reality in Kierkegaard’s Pedagogical Paradox<\/a>
\nOscar Parcero Oubi\u00f1a, The Persistence of Irony: Subjectivity and Writing<\/a>
\nLeonardo F. Lisi, Killing Time: Death and Being in Kierkegaard\u2019s At a Graveside<\/em><\/a>
\nAnna Pol\u00e1\u010dkov\u00e1 Janou\u0161kova\u0301, Kierkegaard and Ecclesiastes<\/em>: The Relationship Between Sorrow and the Possibility of More Knowledge<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

XXXIV, 1, 2024: \u201cPossibility is the Heaviest of All Categories\u201d. On Kierkegaard\u2019s Reading of Modal Categories. Edited by Ingrid Basso Buy the electronic version The categories of modality, in a thinker like Kierkegaard who always prioritized the subjective dimension of the how (hvorledes) over the objective what (hvad), assume decisive importance. Possibility, actuality, necessity and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultimi-numeri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6149"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6151,"href":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6149\/revisions\/6151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disciplinefilosofiche.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}