Kierkegaard Descends to the Underworld: Some remarks on the Kierkegaardian appropriation of an argument by F. A. Trendelenburg

Abstract

In 1845, still during the writing of the work that would be the Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments—worked under the provisory title of Logical Problems—Kierkegaard outlines in his Papirer (IV A 145) a curious sketch that would happen in Hell—or Underworld—involving a dialogue between Socrates and Hegel. In this dialogue about the notorious problem of the beginning of Hegelian philosophy, Kierkegaard describes Hegel reading a text from page 198 of the second volume of F. A. Trendelenburg’s Logische Untersuchungen. The precise quotation page, mentioned by Kierkegaard, can only be an indication of the relevance of its content to the topic discussed between the two philosophers in the imaginary dialogue. In fact, there is in such passage, among other arguments, the accusation of the intrusion of the Anschauung into the realm of pure thought, especially at the beginning of Hegel's Logic. Thus, in this work we intend (1) to clarify Trendelenburg’s argument on Anschauung, and (2) to make some remarks on Kierkegaard's reception of the argument based on its relations with the central theses of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.