Articles by Elizabeth X . Li
Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2024
This paper argues that Kierkegaard uses “spatiation”—a typographical mode of emphasis—to conceptu... more This paper argues that Kierkegaard uses “spatiation”—a typographical mode of emphasis—to conceptualise human existence and simultaneously call into question the givenness or stability of a concept of existence. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, spatiation serves as a potent visual of the problem of existence. By conceptualising existence as spatiating, Climacus at once emphasises and dissolves his concept to encourage thinking about what it means to exist without resolving the difficulties of actual existence. While largely overlooked in Kierkegaard scholarship, taking into account spatiation thus offers insights into Kierkegaard’s influential foregrounding of existence and his existentially oriented approach to philosophising that seeks to engage his readers as existing and embodied individuals.
Modern Theology, 2023
In his recent work Hors phénomène, Emmanuel Falque identifies the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaar... more In his recent work Hors phénomène, Emmanuel Falque identifies the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard as both a progenitor and exemplifier of his account of the way philosophy becomes more rigorously itself through an encounter with theology. However, this article challenges the affinity Falque claims to share with Kierkegaard. It argues instead that there is a fundamental philosophical discrepancy underlying their respective treatments of the encounter between philosophy and theology: the nature of the dialectic and their respective positions in it. By exploring Falque’s and Kierkegaard’s diverging uses of the metaphor of ‘crossing the Rubicon’, the article demonstrates that where Kierkegaard stresses the military sense of the metaphor, depicting the relationship between the two disciplines as that between two armies seeking the annihilation of the other, Falque precisely abstracts from this military sense, letting the expression instead become a metaphor for a mutually beneficial transformative encounter. However, when considered more profoundly, we argue that this annihilation is itself a Christian experience out of which Falque’s transformation is born. Ultimately, we conclude that Falque and Kierkegaard are both trying to conceive of the relationship between philosophy and theology according to a somewhat similar structure, namely, the quantitative intensification of one discipline by way of its qualitative differentiation from the other.
Religions, 2022
This article explores the epistemological aspects of dialogue through an engagement with the Dani... more This article explores the epistemological aspects of dialogue through an engagement with the Danish existence thinker, Søren Kierkegaard. I argue that dialogue plays an integral role in the epistemic process tentatively sketched by Kierkegaard. To show this, I start by examining Kierkegaard’s criticism of non-dialogical approaches to knowing. Offering a corrective, Kierkegaard instead operates with a contact theory of knowledge analogising knowing and breathing to underline the importance of receptivity and relationality in the epistemic process. By placing Kierkegaard in conversation with his pseudonym Johannes Climacus, dialogue can be seen to play a crucial role in two ways. Firstly, Kierkegaard and Climacus creatively re-appropriate and reconstruct dialogical aporia textually to encourage receptivity and make the needed space for knowledge. Secondly, Kierkegaard’s and Climacus’s invocations of dialogue implicitly and explicitly centre the second-person perspective in different ways to emphasise the importance of “contact” and relation in knowing. I argue that although this perspective can ultimately be considered a second-order perspective, it points not only to receptivity, but also to relationality as both an object of knowledge and as part of the epistemic process itself.
Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology, 2021
This paper brings to light the overlooked existential commitments of the Danish speculative theol... more This paper brings to light the overlooked existential commitments of the Danish speculative theologian Hans Lassen Martensen. Primarily known and studied today for being the arch-rival of Soren Kie...
Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2020
This article explores Kierkegaard’s largely overlooked 1838 paper “Telegraph Messages from a Mous... more This article explores Kierkegaard’s largely overlooked 1838 paper “Telegraph Messages from a Mousvoyant to a Clairvoyant concerning the Relation between Xnty and Philosophy,” and argues that it can be read as a polemic against the speculative unity of philosophy and Christianity and speculative thought’s epistemological optimism, especially targeting the Danish speculative theologian Hans Lassen Martensen. It will be suggested that the “Telegraph Messages” offer a corrective to this view by separating Christianity and philosophy and underlining the ambiguity of human existence and the paradoxicality of the religious sphere, thus foreshadowing key themes in Kierke- gaard’s mature pseudonymous authorship.
International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 2019
This paper seeks to discern the Kierkegaardian echoes present in the writings of the French philo... more This paper seeks to discern the Kierkegaardian echoes present in the writings of the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. While these thinkers share a number of commonalities such as their resistance to categorisation and their imaginative and complex writing styles, Lyotard’s engagement with Kierkegaard has been largely dismissed as inconsequential. However, a modest yet consistent device invoked by Lyotard is Kierkegaard’s paradox of faith from Fear and Trembling. While these references to Kierkegaard read as terse blips in Lyotard’s texts, this paper argues that the Kierkegaardian echoes that can be heard in Lyotard’s writings are crucial for a deeper understanding of Lyotard’s ethical turn. Rather than being insignificant, Lyotard’s direct as well as second-hand engagement with Kierkegaard has profound effects on his philosophy of the differend. By exploring Lyotard’s enigmatic, yet brief appeals to the paradox of faith, this paper shows that Lyotard strikes a chord with Kierkegaard by using the paradox of faith as an intertextual reference to a critique of Hegelian mediation and for discussing the ethical dilemmas inherent to one of the most shocking and incomprehensible events of the twentieth century, Auschwitz.
Open Theology, 2019
This paper explores the implications of Kierkegaard’s concern with the existential meaning of Chr... more This paper explores the implications of Kierkegaard’s concern with the existential meaning of Christianity on his treatment of the relationship between philosophy and theology. It will be argued that Kierkegaard offers an existential corrective to the predominantly scholarly-scientific engagement with this debate, to point to the much more serious matter of the individual’s existence and the impossible difficulty and challenge that the religious sphere poses to the human being, both epistemologically and ethically. This will be shown by taking into account Kierkegaard’s definitions of the terms philosophy, theology, and Christianity, as well as the distinction he draws between objective and subjective philosophy: Whereas Kierkegaard separates from Christianity what can be termed objective philosophy (in particular Hegelian-speculative philosophy), subjective philosophy (specifically Socratic philosophy) is revealed to have a much more complex relationship to the religious sphere. So...
Open Theology, 2019
Ever since Dominique Janicaud observed with dismay that French phenomenology had taken a theologi... more Ever since Dominique Janicaud observed with dismay that French phenomenology had taken a theological turn,1 the issue of how the distinct disciplines of philosophy and theology relate to one another has been the topic of a heated contemporary debate. The discussion has descended into a somewhat ugly polemic, not helped by the tone of Janicaud's opening salvo-which Jean-Luc Marion has described, not unfairly, as "more virulent than argued."2 The intellectual "decadence" Merleau-Ponty complained about in his "In Praise of Philosophy" then still seems to be very much in place today when it comes to whether the consideration of the divine or the religious dimension is philosophy's highest fulfilment by going to the root of what it means to philosophise (a position suspiciously often articulated by confessional thinkers), or rather its unwarranted theologisation by way of a neglect of the methodological atheism that is seen as essential to what it means to truly think (a position suspiciously often articulated by atheist thinkers): "For to philosophize is to seek, and this is to imply that there are things to see and to say. Well, today we no longer seek," Merleau-Ponty concludes. Instead, "we 'return' to one or the other of our traditions and 'defend' it. Our convictions are founded less on perceived values and truths than on the vices and errors of those we do not like. We love very few things, though we dislike many. Our thinking is a thought in retreat or in reply."3 To those of faith, the temptation is sometimes to reduce "philosophy, when it is not theological, (…) to the negation of God,"4 precisely because finally the opportunity to establish the divine within the bounds of the Concept seems to present itself again; whilst those who lack faith get caught in a cruel irony when they elevate their own perspective on things to the transcendental one, precisely because "one bypasses philosophy when one defines it as atheism. This is philosophy as it is seen by the theologian."5 Nevertheless, and disregarding the spirit in which it was made, we do agree with Janicaud's essential point that philosophy (phenomenology) and theology make two. The question, however, is what exactly this means.
Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2018
This article will show that the relationship between divine grace and human activity in the Anti-... more This article will show that the relationship between divine grace and human activity in the Anti-Climacus works should be understood as an inverted dialectic. Although Anti-Climacus communicates the strictness of Christianity and the importance of undertaking the Christian task, I will argue that the Anti-Climacus works are ultimately aimed at deepening the reader’s understanding of grace. By exploring Anti-Climacus’ accounts of human imagination and will in coming to faith and in the task of following Christ, it becomes clear that human activity ultimately reveals human beings’ limitations and their dependence on grace.
Papers by Elizabeth X . Li
Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2020
This article explores Kierkegaard’s largely overlooked 1838 paper “Telegraph Messages from a Mous... more This article explores Kierkegaard’s largely overlooked 1838 paper “Telegraph Messages from a Mousvoyant to a Clairvoyant concerning the Relation between Xnty and Philosophy,” and argues that it can be read as a polemic against the speculative unity of philosophy and Christianity and speculative thought’s epistemological optimism, especially targeting the Danish speculative theologian Hans Lassen Martensen. It will be suggested that the “Telegraph Messages” offer a corrective to this view by separating Christianity and philosophy and underlining the ambiguity of human existence and the paradoxicality of the religious sphere, thus foreshadowing key themes in Kierkegaard’s mature pseudonymous authorship.
International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 2019
This paper seeks to discern the Kierkegaardian echoes present in the writings of the French philo... more This paper seeks to discern the Kierkegaardian echoes present in the writings of the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. While these thinkers share a number of commonalities such as their resistance to categorisation and their imaginative and complex writing styles, Lyotard's engagement with Kierkegaard has been largely dismissed as inconsequential. However, a modest yet consistent device invoked by Lyotard is Kierkegaard's paradox of faith from Fear and Trembling. While these references to Kierkegaard read as terse blips in Lyotard's texts, this paper argues that the Kierkegaardian echoes that can be heard in Lyotard's writings are crucial for a deeper understanding of Lyotard's ethical turn. Rather than being insignificant, Lyotard's direct as well as secondhand engagement with Kierkegaard has profound effects on his philosophy of the differend. By exploring Lyotard's enigmatic, yet brief appeals to the paradox of faith, this paper shows that Lyotard strikes a chord with Kierkegaard by using the paradox of faith as an intertextual reference to a critique of Hegelian mediation and for discussing the ethical dilemmas inherent to one of the most shocking and incomprehensible events of the twentieth century, Auschwitz.
Religions
This article explores the epistemological aspects of dialogue through an engagement with the Dani... more This article explores the epistemological aspects of dialogue through an engagement with the Danish existence thinker, Søren Kierkegaard. I argue that dialogue plays an integral role in the epistemic process tentatively sketched by Kierkegaard. To show this, I start by examining Kierkegaard’s criticism of non-dialogical approaches to knowing. Offering a corrective, Kierkegaard instead operates with a contact theory of knowledge analogising knowing and breathing to underline the importance of receptivity and relationality in the epistemic process. By placing Kierkegaard in conversation with his pseudonym Johannes Climacus, dialogue can be seen to play a crucial role in two ways. Firstly, Kierkegaard and Climacus creatively re-appropriate and reconstruct dialogical aporia textually to encourage receptivity and make the needed space for knowledge. Secondly, Kierkegaard’s and Climacus’s invocations of dialogue implicitly and explicitly centre the second-person perspective in different w...
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Articles by Elizabeth X . Li
Papers by Elizabeth X . Li