Kierkegaard on Variation and Thought Experiment
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Eleanor Helms
Abstract
Do thought experiments provide “evidence” or just new mental frameworks? Current accounts of thought experiment turn to theories of reason and explanation rather than perception to explain how thought experiments work. I offer Kierkegaard’s own view of thought experiment, which is influenced by Kantian idealism rather than scientific empiricism. Drawing on philosophical research in aesthetics, I then show how all perception is a hybrid of sensory content and conceptual structures. On this Kantian-Kierkegaardian account, thought experiments help us see differently and gain new evidence through new kinds of experiences. My project retrieves the original Danish context of the term “thought experiment” [Tankeexperiment] and offers a new understanding of thought experiments as both sensory and conceptual, like perception itself.
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Front matter
- Title pages
- Preface
- Contents
- Articles
- Section 1: Interpreting Kierkegaard: Problems and Perspectives
- There is No Teleological Suspension of the Ethical: Kierkegaard’s Logic Against Religious Justification and Moral Exceptionalism
- Kierkegaard on Variation and Thought Experiment
- Subjectivity and Ambiguity: Anxiety and Love in Kierkegaard
- Faith and Knowledge: Remarks Inspired by Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments
- Anti-Climacus’ Inverted Dialectic of Divine Grace and Human Activity
- Recognition, Self-Recognition, and God: An Interpretation of The Sickness unto Death as an Existential Theory of Self-Recognition
- A Portrait of Spiritlessness in the Age of Leveling
- The Reality of Love: An Affirmative Vision of Christianity Based on Kierkegaard’s Interpretation of the Maxim: Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
- Section 2: Source–work Studies
- Kierkegaard and the Danish Golden Age: The Strengths and Limits of Source-Work Research
- From Enthusiasm to Irony: Kierkegaard’s Reception of Norse Mythology and Literature
- Die Ausnahme bei Christian Garve und Søren Kierkegaard
- Section 3: Kierkegaard Reception
- Erkenntnis und Liebe. Zur Nähe und Ferne zwischen Heinrich Barths und Søren Kierkegaards Verständnis von Gemeinschaft
- Communication of Existence: Søren Kierkegaard and Gabriel Marcel
- Pseudonymous Voices Talking Back: Kierkegaard’s Plural Perspectives and a Wittgensteinian Point of View
- Section 4: Primary Texts in Translation
- Andreas Frederik Beck’s Review of Kierkegaard’s On the Concept of Irony
- Back matter
- Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
Articles in the same Issue
- Front matter
- Title pages
- Preface
- Contents
- Articles
- Section 1: Interpreting Kierkegaard: Problems and Perspectives
- There is No Teleological Suspension of the Ethical: Kierkegaard’s Logic Against Religious Justification and Moral Exceptionalism
- Kierkegaard on Variation and Thought Experiment
- Subjectivity and Ambiguity: Anxiety and Love in Kierkegaard
- Faith and Knowledge: Remarks Inspired by Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments
- Anti-Climacus’ Inverted Dialectic of Divine Grace and Human Activity
- Recognition, Self-Recognition, and God: An Interpretation of The Sickness unto Death as an Existential Theory of Self-Recognition
- A Portrait of Spiritlessness in the Age of Leveling
- The Reality of Love: An Affirmative Vision of Christianity Based on Kierkegaard’s Interpretation of the Maxim: Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
- Section 2: Source–work Studies
- Kierkegaard and the Danish Golden Age: The Strengths and Limits of Source-Work Research
- From Enthusiasm to Irony: Kierkegaard’s Reception of Norse Mythology and Literature
- Die Ausnahme bei Christian Garve und Søren Kierkegaard
- Section 3: Kierkegaard Reception
- Erkenntnis und Liebe. Zur Nähe und Ferne zwischen Heinrich Barths und Søren Kierkegaards Verständnis von Gemeinschaft
- Communication of Existence: Søren Kierkegaard and Gabriel Marcel
- Pseudonymous Voices Talking Back: Kierkegaard’s Plural Perspectives and a Wittgensteinian Point of View
- Section 4: Primary Texts in Translation
- Andreas Frederik Beck’s Review of Kierkegaard’s On the Concept of Irony
- Back matter
- Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
