Receiving the self and the world back again : political implications of Kierkegaard's double movement of faith.

This dissertation follows Kierkegaard’s project, spanning several of his pseudonymous and non-pseudonymous works, of describing faith’s radical transformation of the self and its resultant relation to the world. I argue that the political implications of Kierkegaard’s thought must be understood in this light, as the paradoxical relation between faith’s “infinite resignation” and subsequent “receiving the world back again” is fundamental. Specifically, for Kierkegaard the encounter with God changes everything. It structures the believing self’s relation to itself, and sets the parameters for Kierkegaard’s ethic of “neighbor-love.” As others have noted, Kierkegaard’s account of faith fortifies the individual against the impositions of totalizing regimes. But it also provides the framework for an Augustinian prudential participation in the politics of everyday.