Singularity and Universality in reading processes Kierkegaard

Abstract

It is common to find commentators of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre who try to overcome the diversity and heterogeneity inherent to the Danish philosopher’s production by applying procedures of reduction to unity, in particular by transforming Kierkegaard into an exclusively religious thinker. The example provided in the beginning of the present paper examines Jean Starobinski’s reading of the philosopher according to such a problematic approach. Subsequently the paper characterizes in detail the diversity and heterogeneity in Kierkegaard’s writing in order to provide an answer for this diversity and heterogeneity based on hermeneutic presuppositions, by putting forward a theory of the singularity and the universality of experience which might surpass the polarities drawn by a radical dichotomy between unity at all cost, on one side, and inoperative multiplicity, on the other. The last section of this paper exemplifies the applicability of the concepts of singularity and universality by means of a sequence of situations taken from Kierkegaard’s production. The conclusion re-instates the integration of both concepts within an understanding of the construction of the reader’s existential subjectivity.