Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter — Issue 41: February 2001

Næsten Intet: En jødisk kritik af Søren Kierkegaard. By Klaus Wivel. Copenhagen, Denmark: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, 1999. 124 p.

Stacey E. Ake

Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre

Copenhagen, Denmark

It is best when trying to understand a book to begin by trying to understand its title. Thus, the Næsten Intet or the “Next Nothing” of Wivel’s title is deliberately ambiguous. It means both the Næsten of neighbor (the one next to you) and the næsten of almost (next to, as in “next to nothing”). According to Wivel, these two meanings come together in the fact that for Kierkegaard, the neighbor has no meaning, is nothing, and that in the Kierkegaardian universe, the individual human being is worth next to nothing. But what concerns Wivel the most is the former phenomenon. To clarify his criticism, he calls upon two Jewish thinkers, the German Franz Rosenzweig, author of Der Stern der Erlösung, (The Star of Redemption) and the Franco-Lithuanian Emanuel Lévinas, most famous for Totalité et infinit (Totality and Infinity) and various other works on ethics and Talmud interpretation. It is the appropriation of these two thinkers that turns Wivel’s book into En jødisk kritik of Søren Kierkegaard – a Judaic (or Jewish) critique of Søren Kierkegaard.

The book is divided into three major sections. The first is concerned with Rosenzweig’s and Levinas’ critiques of Kierkegaard, the second deals with Kierkegaard’s views of religion and ethics, and the third part is a concluding section that draws the first two sections together. For the Kierkegaard scholar interested in learning more about either Rosenzweig’s or Levinas’ views in themselves or about the opinions these particular Jewish thinkers held on Kierkegaard, the first and third sections are very helpful. The middle section, however, consists in an attempt to extrapolate a solid view of Kierkegaard’s ethics and religion from analyzing two of his most famous works – Fear and Trembling and Works of Love. On the one hand, this is probablly a justifiable undertaking as most interpretations of Kierkegaard rely almost exclusively, on these two works. On the other hand, something which may do justice to the philosophical tradition’s palimpsestic tendencies obviously does not do justice to the philosopher in question. Thus, while non-Kierkegaard scholars may find something refreshing or informative in the second section of Wivel’s book, it

may prove to be a bit of a disappointment to those more acquainted with the subtleties of Kierkegaard’s work.

One final observation: Wivel’s book is the product of his speciale (M.A. thesis) work. As such, it is insightful. It is an excellent beginning, but what is needed, especially concerning Rosenzweig who, like Agrippa in Acts, was almost persuaded, is a more in-depth analysis. For example, on p. 102 Wivel observes that “the telological suspension of the ethical that is the subject of Fear and

Trembling can thus be understood as a Christian suspension of the Judaic.” Precisely. It is the basic problem in all Judaeo-Christian dialogue, namely that there is some kind of dash or tankestreg (stroke of thought) between those two religious cultures. And although the points he raises are good ones, it is not clear from exactly which Jewish position, if any, Wivel is launching his critique. Is he speaking in the terms of Old Testament Israelites? Egyptian Hebrews? If so, then Levinas’ critique of the violence inherent in Kierkegaard’s thought and language takes on a new meaning when compared with the violence of thought and language displayed by the G-d who ordered the destruction of Egypt’s firstborn or the inhabitants of the city of Ai. Or does genocide become justifiable when G-d gives the orders? If so, then perhaps these thinkers stand much closer to Kierkegaard than they care to admit.

Other topics of interest are, of course, the notion of the “other” and whether and how the “other” is also our neighbor, our “next one”, and the “problems” of the body and its earthly life when seen from a Christian as opposed to a Jewish perspective. These are valid topics for discussion, but they are even more worthy of further discussion. Something that the future, and perhaps even Mr. Wivel himself, will provide.