Doubt, Despair, and Doxastic Agency

Kierkegaard on Responsibility for Belief

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21291567
AutoresZ Quanbeck (0000-0001-5823-1803, 6740 Princeton University Princeton University Princeton USA, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Volume107
Fascículo4
Páginas671-705
Data de publicação2025-11-10
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0003-9101 • E-ISSN: 0943-3988
EditoraWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/agph-2024-0133
OpenAlexW4409303709
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas34

Although doubt ( Tvivl ) and despair ( Fortvivlelse ) are widely recognized as two central and closely associated concepts in Kierkegaard’s authorship, their precise relationship remains opaque in the extant interpretive literature. To shed light on their relationship, this paper develops a novel interpretation of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the connection between despair and our agency over our beliefs, and its significance for Kierkegaard’s ethics of belief. First, I show that an important yet largely overlooked form of Kierkegaardian despair involves either failing to take ethico-religious responsibility for one’s practical agency over one’s beliefs, or misusing one’s practical agency over one’s beliefs by refusing to recognize or comply with externally given ethico-religious norms governing belief. Second, I argue that Kierkegaard takes properly exercising one’s agency over one’s beliefs to matter because beliefs are partly constitutive of the theological virtues (faith, hope, and love) that Kierkegaard regards as the cure for despair

Agency (philosophy) · Doxastic logic · Epistemology · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Psychology · Social Psychology · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

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