| Abstrakt: |
This article seeks to interpret Kierkegaard's concept of remorse as a key to the understanding of his conception of self-becoming. I argue that, according to Kierkegaard, remorse is to be considered an answer to guilt. Guilt, however, becomes a reality for-and becomes revealed to-its subject only vis-à-vis the Other. Accordingly, I further argue that Kierkegaard puts a special emphasis on the beholdenness of remorse: as an answer it is nevertheless and simultaneously a gift-a grace-of the Other, and therefore must be perceived in its irreducible dialectic of activity and passivity. In the mode of passivity the culprit suffers a conviction, or more precisely a verdict of truth; and yet, in order to incorporate this truth into his self, i.e., to become the self he truly is, he has to appropriate it, and such appropriation is, according to Kierkegaard, realized, and realized only, through the act of remorse. I unfold my interpretation primarily on the basis of Kierkegaard's Leiligheds-Tale from 1847, yet contextualize it by drawing on his pseudonymous works also. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
