Comment on Kierkegaard's attack on Hegel
pp. 133-149
in: John Walker (ed), Thought and faith in the philosophy of Hegel, Berlin, Springer, 1991Abstract
Professor Hartnack concludes his paper by declining to discuss the difference between Hegel's and Kierkegaard's accounts of Christianity, on the grounds that "it is not a philosophical difference. It is not a difference in which philosophical arguments are relevant." This is not a view which would have recommended itself to either Hegel or Kierkegaard. For Hegel, philosophy is the thinking of the "the unity encompassing all determinacy, the world, within itself"1, a thinking of the unity of reality. In so far as God has reality, that reality must be accommodated within the 'system of the universe"2.Were the reality of God to be incompatible with the structure of the system, then clearly there would be something wrong with the philosophy that expresses itself as the System. And Kierkegaard is quite forthright in proclaiming just that incompatibility: "Christianity is the very opposite of speculation"3 or "Philosophy and Christianity can never be united"4. Kierkegaard's discussions of the nature of God constitute his attack on Hegel's thought. To see their force is to see the impossibility of Hegelian philosophy. And it is only in this context that we can see the point of the remarks to which Professor Hartnack takes exception. I will return briefly to them after I have considered the nature of Kierkegaard's response to Hegel's account of God.
