Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 7 Number 2, August 2006
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Gupta, Anoop. Kierkegaard's Romantic Legacy: Two Theories of the Self. Ottawa, Ontario: University of Ottowa Press, 2005. 131 pp. ISBN 0776606166. $26/£16
reviewed by
Anoop Gupta seeks to synthesize, from selected strands of Kierkegaard's
thought, a "generically Kierkegaardian" theory of the self, the idea
being to formalize Kierkegaardian "theological" subjectivity so as to
secure a set of theoretical coordinates within which to locate radical
metaphysical individuality. There are two basic paths available for this
project, one broadly "existentialist" and the other broadly
"essentialist"—my terminology, not Gupta's. The former posits the
self in relation to an existential transcendence prior to essence and which
hence has a negative relation to essence, while the latter relates the self to a
positive human nature. In the former case, "human nature" is the
precipitate arising from the reaction of volatile elements, an abstract result
of the qualitative "leaps" central to Kierkegaard's thought or that of
other "existentialists"; in the latter, the transcendence is
bracketed, the leaps rendered dialectical.
Gupta unequivocally chooses this latter course, declaring at the outset
that upon his reading Kierkegaard "does not subscribe to the slogan
'existence precedes essence' … His view is closer to Aristotle's than, say, to
Jean-Paul Sartre's," (2). This would seem to be controversial on its face,
given that Sartre belongs rather more obviously in Kierkegaard's posterity than
Kierkegaard does in Aristotle's, and Gupta does not argue for it beyond the
assertion that Kierkegaard's account of the self is "generically
Aristotelian" inasmuch as "Kierkegaard does have a concept of human
nature (which we can fulfill or not)," and believes that "not all ways
of being are as good as any other," (107).
What is determinative for "Romanticism," a term which Gupta
takes in an ambiguously broad sense, is a non-reductive theory of the self, and
it is this which he seeks to flesh out through his appropriation of Kierkegaard.
But there are so many alterations in the process that, like the ship of Theseus,
it is no longer clear in what respect the vessel is the same. By the time
Kierkegaard's account has been "revised," "expanded" and
"emended" with parts from Rousseau, Durkheim and especially D. W.
Winnicott, is the theory still "generically Kierkegaardian" in a
meaningful sense, when so much that is distinctive about Kierkegaard has dropped
out? This would be of little importance in itself if it didn't raise the
question of why Kierkegaard is here rather than other thinkers who seem to be a
good deal closer to the place where Gupta ends up. In particular, Gupta
dismisses Kierkegaard's critique of Hegel and classifies German idealism in
general as "an expression of Romanticism" (x). But then why isn't
Hegel himself a more promising "Romantic" in whom to seek a theory of
the self than Kierkegaard? In fact, since Gupta's account of Winnicott in
chapter 8 makes it clear that for him Winnicott, to put it bluntly, gets it
right with his theory of "transitional space" and a self coming to
autonomy through the recognition of interdependence, shouldn't the question be
what Winnicott, or a theorist of the same ilk, needs from Kierkegaard that would
in any way improve his account? This
point seems especially telling in light of the successful synthesis of Winnicott
and Hegel in the work of Jessica Benjamin.
Gupta's reinterpretation of Kierkegaard's third stage of human
development, the "religious" stage, remains ambiguous as well. The God
in Kierkegaard is to be interpreted either as a middle term allowing
intersubjective recognition (34), or as underwriting teleology (109), or both,
but the issue is treated casually. A much more extensive and rigorous analysis
of the conceptual structures invoked could have been substituted for the
historical argument concerning the divergence of "theological" and
"sociological" schools within a broadly construed "Romantic"
movement, because these "schools" are never adequately defined.
Gupta's theoretical commitments are interesting, but they are suggested rather
than articulated in this work; it is to be hoped that this will be remedied in
the future.