Kierkegaard On Descartes: Doubt as a Prefiguration of Existential Despair

Tomasz Kupś

doi:10.18290/rf2202.2

Tomasz Kupś Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6773-1180

Keywords: Søren Kierkegaard, Descartes, doubt, despair, rationalism, scepticism, infinite resignation

Abstract

In his early, unfinished essay entitled Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, Søren Kierkegaard enters into a polemic with Hegel’s interpretation of the methodic Cartesian doubt. Kierkegaard questions the philosophical absolutism of Cartesian scepticism and his methodological universalism. For the first time in Kierkegaard’s writings, the sphere of speculation (thinking) is confronted with personal involvement (will). Kierkegaard never published this work (it came out posthumously), and did not make any direct reference to Descartes in the same form ever again. However, certain subjects and themes remained: doubt (contrasted with despair) and the alias (Johannes Climacus), used when writing that early essay.

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