An interesting example of thinking about character, virtue and the social just before the advent of psychology as a scientific field. Rough, but it rings. Marxists might sense Kierkegaards anti-hegelianism in this excerpt: “Perhaps the reason our age is dissatisfied when it is going to act is that it has been coddled by observing. That is perhaps why there are so many fruitless attempts to become something more than one is by lumping together socially in the hope of impressing the spirit of history numerically. Spoiled by constant association with world history, people want the momentous and only that, are concerned only with the accidental, the world-historical outcome, instead of being concerned with the essential, the innermost, freedom, the ethical. In other words, continual association with the world-historical makes a person incompetent to act. True ethical enthusiasm consists in willing to the utmost of ones capability, but also, uplifted in divine jest, in never thinking if one thereby achieves something. As soon as the will begins to cast a covetous eye on the outcome, the individual begins to become immoral - the energy of the will becomes torpid, or it develops abnormally into an unhealthy, unethical, mercenary hankering that, even if it achieves something great, does not achieve it ethically (...).” Anti-Climacus (Kierkegaard) in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1813-1855
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 10:43:30 +0000
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