                           20020114.01
Wanda Warren Berry asks:

   Can anyone show me that he (Kierkegaard) equated subjectivity
   with "emotion", as Ernst Meyer seems to?

     Permit me once more to try to show you:

     By way of introduction, I would respectfully note that I did
not assert that Kierkegaard equated subjectivity with emotion,
and that I do not consider the equation of subjectivity with
emotion a useful construction in my own thinking.

     What was found objectionalbe, if I understand correctly, was
my interpretation that the concluding sentences of Either Or
constitute a functional definition of subjectivity.

     In order to clarify this interpretation one must look once
more at the text:

     Sp/org Dig, og hold ved at sp/orge, indtil Du finder Svaret;
thi man kan have erkjendt en Ting mange Gange, anerkjendt den,
man kan have villet en Ting mange Gange, fors/ogt den, og dog,
f/orst den dybe indre Bevaegelse, f/orst Hjertets ubeskrivelige
R/orelse, f/orst den forvisser Dig om, at hvad Du har erkjendt,
tilh/orer Dig, at ingen Magt kan tage det fra Dig; thi kun den
Sandhed, der opbygger, er Sandhed for Dig.

     Ask yourself, and continue to ask, until you find the
answer; for one may have recognized a thing many times, have
acknowledged it, one may have willed a thing many times, tried
it, and yet, first the deep inward emotion, first the heart's
indescribable feeling, first they will assure you that what you
have recognized, belongs to you, and no power can take it from
you; for only the truth, which edifies, is truth for you.

     This sentence is an exhortation to the hearer to search
within himself for an answer to a question not defined, and it
stipulates two criteria by which the truthfulness of the answer
is to be identified:

     1) den dybe indre Bevaegelse, which Hirsch translates as
"die tiefe innere Bewegtheit".  and which Lowrie translates as
"deep inward movements"; Because I deemed "inward movements"
unduly gastro-intestinal, "agitation" too violent, and "feeling"
too adynamic, and mindful of "emotion's" Latin etymology, I
rendered Bevaegelse as emotion.

     2) The second criterion of truth is Hjertets ubeskrivelige
R/orelse, which Lowrie translates as "indescribable emotions of
the heart" and which Hirsch translates as "des Herzens
unbeschreibliche Ruehrung".

     My surmise is that Bevaegelse implies externally visible
motion, while R/orelse implies internal motion such as is imparted
by stirring.  The iterative use of the word f/orst which I
translated literally though unidiomatically as "first", suggests
a continuing search for truth, testing one experience after the
other, while "only" (kun) which would also have been applicable
would have seemed to foreclose a continuing endeavor.

     What Kierkegaard wrote in the text cited, is not that
feeling or emotion was in itself truth, but that feeling or
emotion identified truth as such when it was encountered.  In
this text, Kierkegaard said nothing about subjectivity.  When I
designated the text as a functional definition of subjectivity, I
was inaccurate. I should have designated it as a functional
definition of subjective truth.

     And that designation is readily defensible.  It is obvious,
on the face of it, that not only is Kierkegaard defining truth in
general, but a specific truth "den Sandhed, der opbygger, ...
Sandhed for Dig."  the truth which edifies, the truth for
oneself.  Now in the subjective-objective dichotomy, truth must
be either one or the other, either subjective or objective.  It
seems to me incongruous to contemplate Kierkegaard's "Sandhed,
der opbygger" as objective truth; and if we take seriously
Kierkegaard's exhortation to search for truth, there is no
alternative but to conclude that what we have before us is a
definition of subjective truth, and a canonical definition at
that.  The alternative interpretation is that Kierkegaard was
only joking.

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