Time and self-becoming in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Two ways of becoming who one is.

In this PhD-project, the thought of Soren Kierkegaard en Friedrich Nietzsche is juxtaposed with regard to the question of what it means to be or to become human. For both thinkers, this question boils down to the question: how can one be or become a self or oneself? This question, in turn, can be understood as a version of the question that is central to the virtue-ethical approach: who or what kind of person should I become?  Traditional virtue ethics has always answered this question on the basis of a teleological conception of human nature, which in turn was derived from, or was at least embedded in a teleological metaphysics: the assumption that there is an objective purposeful order underlying reality. Partly due to the rise of modern science, this assumption has become untenable or at least very questionable in modernity. Accordingly, a central problem for contemporary virtue ethics is whether it is possible to answer the virtue-ethical question independent from such a preconceived, teleological conception of human nature that is dependent on an objective, teleological natural order.

As precursors of twentieth-century existentialism, which has been born out of despair of the belief in an objective, purposefully and rationally ordered universe, both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche make an attempt to do so.  In answering the question of what kind of person one is to become, or how to become oneself, both thinkers start from a formal conception of human nature, which can be interpreted in different ways. Kierkegaard defines the human being as a dynamic relation which can relate itself to itself and distinguishes broadly three ways, the esthetic, ethical and religious way, of interpreting it. Nietzsche on the other hand, defines the human being as the ‘not-yet-determined animal’: a constellation of a plurality of competing bodily drives, which has not reached a definite form yet. He emphasizes that everyone should find a way for oneself to give shape to the chaotic plurality within oneself, on the basis of the criterion that it enhances the struggle between the competing drives as much as possible. Both thinkers thus stress that everyone should find a way to substantiate one’s human nature by oneself, based on the formal criterion in their definition of human nature.

This brings us to the problem of communication. If everyone should find a way for oneself to realize oneself by oneself, is it still possible to answer the question what kind of person one is to become in a general way? Both thinkers do not think this possible, but instead, seek strategies to let their readers answer this question for themselves in a right way. Kierkegaard is well-known for explicitly developing his strategy of indirect communication. With the help of different pseudonyms, he offers the reader different ways of giving shape to one’s life, which the reader can appropriate by him- or herself and apply it to his or her own life. Nietzsche tries in a similar manner to draw his reader out and to let him or her take his own stance with regard to the various perspectives which he lays out. He does so, by making his writings difficult to access, by provoking his readers and eventually by confronting his readers with his own person.  Both thinkers can be seen as representatives of a proto-existentialist and pluralist approach to virtue ethics, in which they mutually complement each other precisely by their very opposition.