Kierkegaard's Edifying Philosophy: the knitting of Kierkegaardian philosophizing

Abstract

In this article, I point out, at a first level of analysis, how the edifying element appears expressed in the so-called Theory of Existential Stages, in the spiritual becoming of man. At a second level of analysis, I interpreted that the edifying element appears and demonstrates itself in philosophical production in two senses. In the first sense (thematic mode), the edifying element, being within the realm of the religious stage, is situated as a critical point, between pseudonymity and the Christic. In a second sense (operative mode), the edifying element permeates all philosophical production, pro-moting the existential movement from pseudonymity to the Discourses, whether edifying or Christic. In this phenomenological-hermeneutic reading, every pseudonymous work is inconclusive, due to the method of indirect communication, leading the reader to an original complementarity in the Discourses. The Discourses, therefore, complement and thus continue to appropriate, in a different affective tone (Stemning), what was thought or shown in the pseudonym. In this reading, in effect, the edifying is not just a moment of production, but is what mobilizes the entirety of Kierkegaardian philosophy.