

































52

δι
άν

οι
α

THE SHADOW OF HEGEL
 in Kierkegaard’s Notion of Subjectivity

MATTEO DE DONATO 

The philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard is fundamentally the philosophy of the individual. 
Born to an affluent family in Copenhagen in 1813, Kierkegaard was greatly influenced 

in his intellectual development by the prevailing notions of the Danish Golden Age, an 
age featuring new creativity in the arts and sciences, including painting, architecture, and 
chemistry. Kierkegaard witnessed nihilism growing in spite of these achievements, however. 
Poets and literary critics such as Ludwig Tieck and August Wilhelm Schlegel used (or misused, 
according to Kierkegaard) the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte to justify their ironic 
and solipsistic relativism. The centrality of the subject in Fichte’s philosophy was attractive 
to the German Romantics, who looked for philosophical justification for their nihilistic and 
relativistic rejection of the objective world1. In an age where long-held traditions and beliefs were 
slipping away, Kierkegaard worked to revitalize the concepts of truth, faith, and subjectivity. 
 
Kierkegaard’s canon defies easy categorization. He has been characterized as an existentialist 
and essentialist, a progressive and a reactionary, a proponent of German Idealism and 
one of its harshest critics. The question of Hegelian thought in Kierkegaard's work, then, 
is one of enduring interest for scholars. Kierkegaard was the first in a long tradition of 
critics to reject Hegel’s absolute idealism as a philosophy of identity that effectively 
1 Jon Stewart, “The Crisis of the Danish Golden Age as the Problem of Nihilism,” in The Crisis of the Danish Golden Age and Its Modern 
Resonance, eds. Nathaniel Kramer and Jon Stewart, New edition (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2020), 125-127.



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The Shadow of Hegel

“swallows” the individual2. The beginning of Sickness Unto Death, in which Kierkegaard 
posits that the “self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself 
to itself in the relation,” has been interpreted as parodying Hegel’s obtuse writing style. 
Other parts of Kierkegaard’s authorship appear more explicitly anti-Hegelian: in the 
Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Johannes Climacus (Kierkegaard’s pseudonym) boldly 
asserts “[dialectical] mediation is a mirage.”3 In spite of this pervasive anti-Hegelianism, 
Kierkegaard owes much of his philosophical foundations to the German idealist. What 
Kierkegaard called his “Socratic task”–the task that structured disparate works across the 
authorship–is fundamentally Hegelian. Not only is it Hegel’s Socrates that Kierkegaard 
uses as his model for subjectivity, it is Hegel’s absolute knowing subject that Kierkegaard 
uses to situate this notion of subjectivity as the telos of his philosophical project. 
 
In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel interprets Socrates as the world-historical 
inventor of subjectivity. Socrates, Hegel maintains, was the first to ground the subject–as 
opposed to external social mores and laws–as the site of the discovery of the ethical. Hegel 
identifies Socrates’s daimonion as central to the invention of subjectivity. In the Apology, 
Socrates justifies his actions by explaining that when he is about to make a mistake, he is 
warned by this daimonion: an entirely negative force that is neither completely internal 
nor completely external, but is nonetheless personal4. With this concept, Socrates “posited 
the Individual as capable of final moral decision, in contraposition to Country and to 
Customary Morality.”5 The Socratic concept of maieutics, or “the art of midwifery,” 
further demonstrates the subjectivity of Socrates’s method. Socrates fashioned himself 
as a “midwife of ideas,” who, rather than promoting any specific positive doctrine, 
helped his pupils reach their own conclusions through their individual, internal reason6.  
 
The Athenians of the time, however, derived their ethics from outside of themselves rather 
than from inward reflection; to receive guidance they looked not to their own subjective 
reason, but to tradition, law, and the gods. Hegel identified “public religion” as the basis for 
the Athenian State; Athenians are bound together by their shared reverence for this objective 
source of ethics. It is up to the broad sphere of tradition, religion, law, etc.–Sittlichkeit or 
“ethical life”–to decide how an individual should behave. Sittlichkeit is built upon “Objective 
Spirit,” the objective patterns of social interactions and cultural institutions. When seeking 
direction, the ancient Athenians would ask the Oracle of Delphi for the right course of 
action7. There was no notion that ethics could be discovered through individual introspection.  
 
The invention of subjectivity, then, signified a denial of the entirety of Athenian society.  

2 Rebecca Comay and Frank Ruda, The Dash: The Other Side of Absolute Knowing (MIT Press, 2018), 1.
3 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Alastair Hannay, 1st edition (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 166.
4 Plato, Apology in Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, ed. John M. Cooper, trans. G. M. A. Grube, Second 
Edition,2 (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002), 31c-d.
5 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Frederick C. Beiser, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Volume 1: Greek Philosophy to Plato, 
trans. E. S. Haldane (Lincoln: Nebraska, 1995), 346.
6 Plato, Theaetetus, ed. Bernard Williams and Myles Burnyeat, trans. M. J. Levett, UK ed. edition (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing 
Company, Inc., 1992), 27.
7 Georg W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. S. W. Dyde (Mineola, N.Y.; Newton Abbot: Dover Publications, 2005) § 145 and 
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 358.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

For this reason, Hegel diagnoses Socrates’s pedagogy as purely negative. In calling 
Socrates a “negative” figure, Hegel is not saying he has a pessimistic disposition; rather, 
Socrates rejects the validity of the world as it currently is, but does not provide a positive 
(ie., substantive) replacement. Socrates’s daimonion, for instance, functions entirely 
negatively. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates explains that it is a “voice” which “turns me away 
from something I am about to do, but it never encourages me to do anything.”8 The 
daimonion “turns away” from the false, but does not directly posit the true. The concept 
of aporia further illustrates the centrality of negation in Socrates’s subjectivity. In the 
“aporetic” dialogues, which include the Meno, Euthyphro, and Gorgias, Socrates challenges 
his interlocutors to explain their positions on truth, justice, or other philosophical 
concepts. Through questioning, Socrates reveals how the notions of his interlocutors 
are ill-conceived and contradictory. Socrates does not, however, offer a replacement 
for these mistaken judgments; rather, the dialogues end in aporia; having demonstrated 
the contradiction, Socrates provides no positive replacement for the flawed concepts.  
 
Hegel asserts that Aristophanes’s play Clouds offers a true account of Socrates because it 
demonstrates the radicality of this negative method. It seems strange that Hegel has a favorable 
judgement of Aristophanes’s work; indeed, the play viciously lampoons Socrates’s thought as 
not only buffoonish, but dangerous. It is precisely the degree to which Aristophanes condemns 
Socrates that he demonstrates “the truth of Socrates.” Hegel maintains that Aristophanes 
understood Socratic philosophy as negative and that his play elucidated the Athenian’s 
reaction to Socrates9.  In Clouds, Socrates tells Strepsiades: “If one idea comes to nothing, let 
it go, retrace your steps, then give those thoughts another good shake.”10 The word “shake” 
emphasizes the disarray caused by Socrates’s method; when Strepsiades reaches aporia–
when “one idea comes to nothing”–he must reject all his premises and try again. Socrates’s 
negativity was, to use Kierkegaard’s terminology, “absolute infinite negativity.” This sort of 
negativity does not negate “this or that particular phenomenon” but the entire social whole, 
the entire world of the object11. Aristophanes shows that this negativity was so overwhelming 
that it necessitated Socrates’s death–because it could no longer be integrated into ethical life. 
 
Aristophanes understood, Hegel contends, how this radical negativity endangered the 
totality of Athenian life. Standing in opposition to the numerous commentators before 
him, Hegel asserts that the Athenians acted correctly in convicting Socrates12. Hegel 
criticized the historian Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann for arguing that Socrates’s treatment 
was “revolting to humanity.” Hegel rejects this interpretation of Socrates’s trial because it 
downplays the radical nature of Socrates’s philosophy; Hegel believes that, based on the ethic 
of their time, Athenians were “bound to react against [Socrates] according to their law.” 

8 Plato, Apology, 31c-d.
9 Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 347.
10 Aristophanes, Clouds, ed. John Claughton and Judith Affleck, Cambridge Translatio edition (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge 
University Press, 2012), lines 743-6.
11 Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Ebook edition (Princeton, N.J. Great Britain: 
Princeton University Press, 2000), 261.
12 Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 350.



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The Shadow of Hegel

13Aristophanes’s account is invaluable because it illuminates why Socrates deserved execution 
under Athenian law: his subjectivity entailed a complete negation of objective situation. 

Kierkegaard is openly indebted to Hegel’s treatment of Socrates as a negative figure. His 
doctoral thesis, The Concept of Irony, is in constant critical dialogue with Hegel’s account of 
Socrates. In his discussion of the titular concept, Kierkegaard identifies irony as a qualification 
of subjectivity, and it is in this ironic rejection of the objective that the subject is negatively 
free14. Kierkegaard’s explicit definition of irony elucidates the Hegelian connection between 
negativity and subjectivity: 

The world-historical invention of subjectivity, then, required irony’s complete negation of 
the ethical order. In The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard explains why “Socrates can very well 
be called the founder of morality in the sense Hegel thinks of it, and that his position still 
could have been irony. The good as task, when the good is understood as the infinitely 
negative, corresponds to the moral, that is, the negatively free subject,” clearly echoing the 
sentiment expressed in Hegel’s Lectures.15 The moral is “infinitely negative:” it contains no 
positivity within it. Hegel asserts that Socrates’s negative method could not amount to any 
sort of speculative16 philosophy, but remained “ein individuelles Thun,” an “individual 
doing.”17 Just as Hegel did, Kierkegaard saw Socrates as stopping short before speculative, 
positive, thought, because Socrates did not negate his negativity. Socrates did not reach a 
sublation, or a dialectical mediation, of the positive and the negative–of objectivity and 
subjectivity. Negativity, for Socrates, was infinite and absolute.

In reconstructing Hegel’s argument, Kierkegaard pays special attention to the anti-
speculative character of Socrates’s method. For Kierkegaard, the fact that Socrates made 
no attempt to transcend the opposition between subject and object is “the mark of truth.” 
Kierkegaard, then, largely accepts Hegel’s treatment of Socrates, with one key modification: 
for Hegel, in remaining in negativity, Socrates had erred, but for Kierkegaard, it was that 
very impasse that Socrates achieved–his aporia–that was to be emulated. For Kierkegaard, it 
is precisely this negativity which allowed for Socrates to interrogate the truth. Though they 
may differ in their evaluation of him, the Socrates of The Concept of Irony is, at its core, the 
Socrates of Hegel.

13 Ibid., 362.
14 Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 29.
15 Ibid., 235.
16 That is, providing an account of the Absolute.
17 Ibid., 227.

[W]e have irony as the infinite absolute negativity. It is negativity because 
it only negates; it is infinite, because it does not negate this or that 
phenomenon; it is absolute, because that by virtue of which it negates is a 
higher something that still is not. The irony establishes nothing, because 
that which is to be established lies behind it. It is a divine madness that 
rages like a Tamerlane and does not leave one stone upon another.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

Kierkegaard would later reject the blatant Hegelianism of The Concept of Irony. Indeed, the 
philosopher characterizes the work as a misgiving, riddled with Hegelian concepts he would 
only later discuss dismissively in the works Kierkegaard saw as comprising his “authorship.”18 
In spite of his apparent rejection of Hegel, the Hegelian notion of Socrates that Kierkegaard 
advanced in The Concept of Irony grounds his broader formulations of subjectivity, truth, and 
faith. After treating the ancient Greek philosopher at length in The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard 
continues to use Hegel’s Socrates as a model, especially in the structure of his work Either/Or. 
 
Kierkegaard divides his work Either/Or into two parts, ostensibly written by two different 
authors. The first part of the work is attributed to an anonymous esthete called A., who, 
embodying contemporary subjectivity, notes that when he became an adult he found “that 
the rich delight of love was to acquire a well-to-do girl, that the blessedness of friendship 
was to help each other in financial difficulties, [...] that piety was to go to communion once 
a year.”19 A. advances an ironic detachment from traditional conceptions of love, friendship, 
industriousness, and even faith. It is negativity that engenders this denial of the universal 
ethic of the day: “I have, I believe, the courage to fight against everything; but I do not have 
the courage to acknowledge anything.”20 Kierkegaard is clearly sympathetic to this account of 
contemporary life, especially its account of the superficiality of modern faith, which echoes 
Kierkegaard’s critique of the bourgeois lifestyle of the clergy in the last issue of The Moment.21 
 
The author of the second half of Either/Or, the fictitious Judge William, rigorously defends 
the ethic of the day by explaining the virtues of bourgeois society and morality. He defends 
the virtue of marital love as divine, in direct opposition to A.'s unequivocal, “[m]arry or do 
not marry you will regret it either way.”22 William continues his defense of the universal 
ethic in opposition to the Esthete when he lauds Objective spirit as “a social, a civic self,” 
and emphasizes the importance of ethical responsibility as it relates to civic duty.23 Just as 
Kierkegaard is sympathetic to the Esthete’s point of view, he equally accepts that of Judge 
William; many of Judge Williams’ arguments mimic those that Kierkegaard gives against the 
German Romantics in the Concept of Irony.24

The dualistic structure of the work reflects Hegel’s Socratic lesson: Judge William acts as the 
Sittlichkeit–in this case 19th century bourgeois ethics–which A. rejects. Kierkegaard does 
not favor one view over the other; rather, the two viewpoints must exist in contradiction 
despite the impossibility of their mediation. As evidenced by Kierkegaard’s other writing, 
both positions offer valuable critiques, in Kierkegaard’s mind, and to privilege one over the 
other would be foolish. Even though both positions provide insight, however, mediation 

18 Lore Hühn, “Irony and Dialectic: On a Critique of Romanticism in Kierkegaard and Hegel’s Philosophy,” MLN 128, no. 5 (2013): 
1063.
19 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or in The Essential Kierkegaard, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Later Printing edition (Prince-
ton, N.J. Great Britain: Princeton University Press, 2000), 42-43.
20 Ibid., 39.
21 Søren Kierkegaard, “My Task” in The Moment, 10 in The Essential Kierkegaard, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Later 
Printing edition (Princeton, N.J. Great Britain: Princeton University Press, 2000), 347.
22 Kierkegaard, Either/Or in The Essential Kierkegaard, 43, 7.1
23 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or in The Essential Kierkegaard,  82.
24 See the chapter “Irony after Fichte” in The Concept of Irony.



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The Shadow of Hegel

of the two is impossible. Kierkegaard stresses that truth appears not when an opposition 
is mediated, but when that opposition is first confronted. Indeed, the title “Either/Or” 
refers to a passage in Hegel’s Science of Logic where he stresses the importance of sublating 
a dichotomy (an “either-or”) through dialectical mediation. Kierkegaard, however, did not 
wish to go beyond the dichotomy, and suggested that truth results not from sublating or 
mediating contradiction, but from confronting it. In this manner, Kierkegaard follows 
Socrates’s emphasis on negativity, specifically aporia. There is no mediation between the two 
viewpoints; rather, they remain in irresolvable contradiction. A.’s position–in spite of its 
value–cannot be integrated into the bourgeois universal because of its inherently subjective 
dimension. The Concluding Unscientific Postscript describes Either/Or as “a polemic against 
truth as knowledge.”25 That is, the work stresses that the subjective rejection of objective 
Spirit offers an equally valuable form of truth as objective knowledge does.

Privileged among the authorship as a work to which Kierkegaard attached his real name (albeit 
only as the editor), the Concluding Unscientific Postscript offers one of the most comprehensive 
accounts of Kierkegaard’s notion of subjectivity and truth. Much of the Concluding 
Unscientific Postscript uses Hegel’s language of dialectics against itself. Even the title of the 
work may be targeting the Phenomenology of Spirit, intended by Hegel to be the beginning 
of a “science of experience.”26 It seems strange, then, to assert a fundamental Hegelianism 
in the Postscript. The relation between subjectivity and truth–that subjectivity is truth, and 
truth subjectivity–is derived from the Hegelian Socrates formulated in the Concept of Irony. 
 
Central to the task of the Concluding Unscientific Postscript is explaining the connection 
between truth and subjectivity. Climacus asserts that a certain type of truth can only be 
achieved through subjectivity, and that subjectivity can only achieve that type of truth. This 
truth is the truth of our most important personal ethical commitments, including, above 
all, faith. The author posits that, “reflection of inwardness is the subjective thinker’s double 
reflection. In thinking, he thinks the universal, but as existing in this thinking, as assimilating 
this in his inwardness, he becomes more and more subjectively isolated.”27 The individual 
considers the universal ethic (“thinks the universal”) but through her consideration of it 
becomes alienated from it. Her self-discovery requires an anti-objective form of inquiry. 
This description reflects Hegel’s notion of Socrates as not focused on particular objects, but 
on the universal. Just as Socrates is said to “know nothing” because he lacked the knowledge 
of particular objective pursuits, the “subjective thinker” is not focused on knowledge of 
particulars. In his double-reflection, that is, his reflection on his own reflection (“subjectivity 
to the second power”), the subjective thinker becomes separated from the ‘objective Spirit.’ 

Climacus’s assertion that subjectivity cannot be expressed through direct communication 
further illustrates the aporia of subjectivity. The subjective truth, Climacus contends, cannot 

25 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Alastair Hannay, 1st edition (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 211.
26 Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Terry Pinkard and Michael Baur (Cambridge University Press, 
2019), 6.
27 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 62.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

be integrated into objectivity through direct language–it must be expressed through indirect 
means, including art and poetry. 

Just as there was no mediation between Socrates’s subjectivity, and the objectivity of 
Athenian Sittlichkeit, to directly express double reflection is “precisely a contradiction.” 
28Climacus relates this explicitly to Socrates’s method: “Everything subjective, which due 
to its dialectical inwardness eludes a direct form of expression, is an essential secret.”29 
This assertion of not only the subjective as a realm of truth, but of the impossibility of 
mediation between subjective and objective truth, helps Climacus ground his argument on 
the importance of subjectivity in “becoming a Christian.” 

After his assertion of the truth in subjectivity, Climacus explains the steps towards “becoming 
a Christian” through an assertion of the paradox of subjectivity: Hegel’s Socrates is essential 
to this pursuit. To become a Christian, the author contends, one must first pass through the 
stage of “Religiousness A.” The subject of Religiousness A is not concerned with what is “out 
there,” but with “inwardness,” with subjectivity.30 Climacus explicitly identifies Socrates–
as opposed to the speculative Plato–as the paradigm of Religiousness A. The paradox 
of Socrates–that the individual becomes unintelligible to the external–is the paradox of 
Religiousness A. Climacus’s Socrates is Hegel’s Socrates: his negativity and subjectivity are 
preconditions for religious experience. To be open to Religiousness B–Christianity–one 
must have complete faith in what lies beyond the objective.

One of Kierkegaard’s most extended discussions of faith and morality centers on his 
concepts of the ‘knight of infinite resignation’ and the ‘knight of infinite faith’ in Fear and 
Trembling. The work, written by Kierkegaard under the name Johannes de Silentio, closely 
examines the Biblical story of the binding of Isaac to discover the relation between ethics 
and faith. More specifically, the work aims to explain the “paradox of faith:” namely, how 
the individual can be higher than the universal. The work’s discussion of the individual–as 
exemplified in the knight of infinite resignation and the knight of faith–uses Hegel’s Socrates 
as a model for the gulf between subjectivity and objectivity.

Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Abraham as a ‘knight of faith’ for man to aspire to is deeply 
indebted to Hegel’s discussion of Socrates. Though a step beyond the ‘knight of infinite 
resignation’, the knight of faith shares the former’s “movement of resignation.”31 Both 
knights are resigned from their objective situation: they not only maintain their subjective 
commitments, but also accept the gap between these commitments and the external world. 
Johannes notes Abraham’s silence after receiving his directive from God to sacrifice his 
only son Isaac: “He said nothing to Sarah, nothing to Eleazar. After all, who could have 
understood him? Hadn’t the test by its very nature extracted an oath of silence from him?"32 

28 Ibid., 63
29 Ibid., 67. 
30 Ibid., 466.
31 C. Stepehn Evans in the Introduction to Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge University Press, 
2006), xiv.
32 Søren Kierkegaard and Johannes de Silentio, Fear and Trembling, trans. Alastair Hannay, Reprint edition (Harmondsworth, Middle-
sex, England : New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Classics, 1986), 55.



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The Shadow of Hegel

Abraham’s silence emphasizes the infinite subjectivity of his position: his highest duty to 
God cannot even begin to be explained to the external world. His silence is an acceptance of 
the impassable void between the subject and the object. From this discussion of Abraham, 
Kierkegaard develops his famous “teleological suspension of the ethical.” In order to act 
upon his supreme ethical commitment–his commitment to God–Abraham must rebuke 
the particular, the historical actuality. Abraham’s infinite spiritual (moral) commitment is 
irreconcilable with the objective Spirit because it is a completely subjective negation.

Kierkegaard contends that Abraham would deserve the punishment society would give him. 
This assessment seems contradictory given Kierkegaard’s praise of Abraham as acting in a 
supremely ethical manner. From an objective perspective, however, Kierkegaard maintains, 
Abraham has indeed done wrong: he intended to murder his son. According to the universal 
ethic, Abraham has broken one of the most sacred duties: that of a father to his son. 
Abraham himself recognizes the unethical nature of his divine directive and prays that God 
forgive him.33 Kierkegaard is not diminishing the duty of a father towards his son, nor is he 
advocating for a relativist rejection of universal ethics. Johannes emphasizes that Abraham’s 
commitment to his son–and his commitment to Objective spirit more broadly–while of 
utmost importance, cannot be reconciled with his equally important subjective commitment 
to his faith. He is faced with, in the most Socratic sense, an “either-or”: Abraham is at aporia.

Kierkegaard’s treatment of Socrates as an ironic and negative figure evokes his formulation 
of the ‘knight of infinite resignation.’ Johannes imagines a situation in which a knight has 
fallen in love with a princess but his circumstances prevent him from ever acting upon such 
love. The knight is simultaneously resigned to this objective situation, but does not give 
up on his subjective commitment–that is, his love–even though it can never be realized. 
Johannes describes the knight of infinite resignation as an archetype to aspire towards, a 
person who, “does not give up the love, not for all the world’s glory.”34 Just as Socrates 
rejected objective totality in favor of subjective truth, the knight of infinite resignation 
rejects the ethic of the day in favor of his own subjectivity.

The knight’s love for the princess is a denial of the objective situation. Even though he knows 
that such a love cannot materialize in this world he “does not give up on this love,” thus 
denying historical actuality. In this manner, Kierkegaard connects subjectivity to the eternal. 
The love for the princess–that purely subjective love–becomes an “expression of an eternal 
love,” an expression of the Absolute.35 This movement of resignation is a qualification for 
true inwardness. Johannes asserts, “[f ]or only in infinite resignation do I become transparent 
to myself in my eternal validity, and only then can there be talk of laying hold of existence 
by virtue of faith.” Only in this infinite resignation can the individual come to understand 
herself and her relation to the Absolute, or God. Subjectivity or “inwardness,” then, is an 
intrinsic part of knowing the Absolute. Kierkegaard forms his conception of the highest 
forms of subjectivity–the knight of infinite resignation and of faith–around the Hegelian 
absolute knowing Subject-Substance to place the individual at the center of his philosophy. 

33 Ibid., 47.
34 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Alastair Hannay, 35.
35 Ibid., 37.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

The Absolute is necessary for true subjectivity and true subjectivity is necessary for the 
approaching Absolute.

In this explicit connection between subjectivity and the experience of the Absolute, 
Kierkegaard reveals another latent Hegelian form underlining his authorship. Kierkegaard 
uses the Hegelian “absolute knowing”–and its resemblance to the irony and subjectivity 
of Socrates–to situate the individual as the center of his philosophy. More specifically, 
the Hegelian notion of the ‘absolute knowing’ subject as the emptied subject, as illustrated 
by Slavoj Žižek and Catherine Malabou (among other contemporary commentators) 
elucidates Kierkegaard’s understanding of infinite subjective commitment. The “emptied” 
or “abrogated” subject of absolute knowing reflects Kierkegaard’s negative subject, as 
exemplified by both Socrates and Abraham. 

Hegel’s Absolute is not simply “the unity of all things” which transcends existence. It 
is in his critique of such a notion in Schelling’s philosophy that Hegel gives his famous 
description of “the night in which all cows are black.”36 Such a cancellation of all 
difference, Hegel maintains, amounts to an idea bereft of meaning. The Absolute does 
not transcend existence but is existence as a “whole” understood as a dynamic system in 
which each element relates to all the others.37 The Absolute, then, gives “grounding” to 
all being: it is the fundamental, irreducible reality upon which any concept can be built. 
 
The Absolute is not only substance, as it was for Spinoza, but subject as well. For Hegel, 
the presence of a subject necessitates the presence of an object (since consciousness is always 
consciousness of something). The fact that in the Absolute the subject and object become 
unified raises the question of what the object of the Absolute is. Hegel, following Aristotle, 
asserts that the Absolute’s object is itself. The Absolute is pure thought that, encompassing 
everything or “the whole,” thinks on itself. When philosophers discuss the ‘absolute 
knowing’ subject-substance, they refer to unmediated knowledge of “the whole.”38 In the 
Phenomenology, Hegel aims to demonstrate that all different forms of human consciousness 
have attempted to give an account of reality as a whole, through art, religion, and now 
Hegel’s speculative philosophy39. Hegel reveals that it is the telos–the end goal–of Spirit 
(roughly, a collective human consciousness) to achieve absolute knowing.

Because Hegel’s method follows a circular trajectory, the beginning of his philosophy–
the irreducible “grounding”–illuminates its end–the Absolute. Breaking from 
Descartes, Hegel does not interpret the subject’s existence as self-evident. What must 
be, Hegel believed, was only being itself. By definition, being is: existence exists. To 
be presuppositionless, philosophy must begin with “indeterminate being,” or being 
about which nothing other than its existence can be asserted. Hegel’s logic begins 

36 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 12.
37 Glenn Alexander Magee, The Hegel Dictionary, 1st edition (Continuum, 2010), 20
38 Ibid., 171.
39 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 409.



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The Shadow of Hegel

with this “pure being” as its concept and works, dialectically, to develop all others.40 It 
is this same “indeterminate being” that is the content and form of absolute knowing.41 
In absolute knowing, the separation between subject and object is overcome in order to 
comprehend the whole; the object for absolute knowing is no finite thing, but the Absolute 
itself. For Hegel, absolute knowing is its own subject; that is, it is thought catalyzed by 
itself (as opposed to how we usually think about thought, as originated from a subject 
separate from that thought). Absolute knowing is knowledge of absolute knowing itself.42 
 
At the most basic level, Žižek’s interpretation of the dialectic resembles Kierkegaard’s notion 
of the origin of subjectivity. Žižek asserts that “the fundamental operation of Aufhebung 
is reduction: the sublated thing survives, but in an abridged edition, as it were, torn out 
of its life-world context, stripped down to its essential features, all the movement and 
wealth of its life reduced to a fixed mark.”43 Socrates, too, could be described as “torn out 
of [his] life-world context” in his denial of Athenian society’s ethics. Moreover, Socrates’s 
method involved locating the essential core of concepts such as truth and justice, not merely 
particular instances of it. This congruity between Socrates and the dialectic follows, of 
course, given that the “labour of the negative” is the process by which the dialectic functions, 
and it is this same negativity that Socrates embodies. The connection between the Hegelian 
subject of ‘absolute knowing’ and Kierkegaardian “inwardness” runs deeper, however.  
 
Žižek undermines the traditional interpretation of Hegel’s “absolute knowing” or “Absolute 
knowledge,” and advances an interpretation of the concept as a sort of “void.” Žižek 
identifies the common criticism of Hegel as a system builder whose dialectics are “bloated” 
by their integration of the entirety of reality. Žižek asserts that this interpretation does not 
fully account for the precise mechanism of dialectics. The philosopher argues that sublation 
(the process by which dialectics occurs) does not stop once the totality is integrated into 
the System; that whole itself is negated as well in “sublation’s sublation.” To avoid the 
spurious infinity of an unending sublation, the process of sublation must come to an end 
with its counter-move: to release the entirety of the content, leaving the Absolute-knowing 
subject-substance emptied. Žižek cites the end of the Science of Logic, where “reaching the 
full circle of the absolute Idea, the Idea, in its resolve/decision, ‘freely releases itself ’ into 
Nature, lets Nature go, leaves it off, discards it, pushes it away from itself, and thus liberates 
it.”44 Malabou, noting the synonymy between the verbs aufheben (‘to sublate’), befreien (‘to 
liberate’), and ablegen (‘to discard’), argues that this “abrogation” or “emptying” is not only 
subsequent to the sublation of totality, but is its immanent conclusion.45 This argument 
reflects the aforementioned “circularity” of Hegel’s logic: the indeterminate being–both at 
the beginning and the end–is “neither more nor less than nothing.”

40 Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel, The Science of Logic, trans. George Di Giovanni, Reprint edition (Cambridge University Press, 
2015), §130-132.
41 Magee, 45.
42 Ibid., 27.
43 Slavoj Žižek, “Hegel and the Object, Or, the Idea’s Constipation,” Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 14, no. 0 (September 13, 
2006): 21–26, https://doi.org/10.26262/gramma.v14i0.6510, 1.
44 Žižek, “Hegel and the Object,” 1, 22.
45 Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic (Psychology Press, 2005), 156.



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46Kierkegaard’s subjective thinkers–Socrates and Abraham among them–parallel the 
abrogated subjects of absolute knowing. The philosopher agrees with Hegel’s analysis that 
Socrates was not engaging in mere rhetorical irony when he claimed to “know nothing.”47 
The statement was not a mere rhetorical ploy to expose his interlocutors ill-conceived 
notions. While his irony did have this function, Kierkegaard contends, it is also essential 
to note that Socrates genuinely did know nothing in the sense that he had no positive 
knowledge of the object. In his quest to discover the truth of subjectivity, Socrates became 
ignorant of particulars; indeed, his aforementioned negativity must be ignorant of any 
possibility of positivity. As a subject, Socrates has been “emptied” from the knowledge 
instilled by the objective realm. Unlike the “unwise men,” however, Socrates knows that he 
knows nothing. He has a sense of what he is lacking, what he has emptied himself of, just 
like Hegel’s abrogated subject. Just as the labor of the negative does not bring the positive 
back to its starting point, but to somewhere new, the emptied subject is not synonymous 
with the subject that had never been “filled.”

This abrogation is a passive process. Žižek asks, “[i]s the subject of what Hegel calls 
‘absolute Knowledge’ not also a thoroughly emptied subject, a subject reduced to the role 
of pure observer (or, rather, registrar) of the self-movement of the content itself?” Hegel’s 
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences answers in the affirmative: “The Idea’s absolute 
freedom consists in [the fact] that it resolves to freely let go out of itself the moment of its 
particularity.”48 “Particularity” in this sense corresponds to Kierkegaard’s conception of “this 
or that thing”–the facts and ethics of the universal, the objective. Kierkegaard stresses the 
opposition between this and the individual’s absolute commitment, his duty to God. The 
subjective thinker, it can be said, “lets go” of the moment of its particularity in its denial of 
historical actuality. This further illuminates the structure of Kierkegaard’s Absolute and its 
relation to subjectivity.

Passivity characterizes Kierkegaard’s subjective thinkers; it is through this passivity that they 
open themselves up to experience the Absolute. In Kierkegaard’s “infinite resignation,” the 
subject accepts his complete inability to actualize or even anticipate the infinite. Abraham’s 
directive comes from God; he is merely a passive receiver of and actualization of His will. 
Moreover, the order goes against all of Abraham’s intuition: he would never have been 
justified to predict or actualize such a directive through consideration of his place in 
Objective spirit. Similarly, Socrates’s daimonion spoke out to Socrates as a voice, preventing 
him from making mistakes: Socrates as a subject is passive, then, subject to this force that is 
simultaneously personal but not his self-consciousness. He does not “ask” his daimonion; it 
presents itself autonomously.49 Thus, Kierkegaard’s subjective thinker is passive in that she 
accepts the absolutely ethical must come to her from without; that is, from God, excluding 
her personal intervention. In order to receive the Absolute, the subject must “empty” herself; 
she must completely negate her historical actuality. This connection illustrates Socrates’s 

46 Hegel, Science of Logic, §132.
47 Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 169.
48 Slavoj Žižek, Preface to The Sublime Object of Ideology, Second Edition (London: Verso, 2009), xii, xvi.
49 Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 347.



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The Shadow of Hegel

function as a knight of infinite resignation. Unlike Abraham, however, Socrates has no faith, 
and therefore is not able to reaffirm finitude through his acceptance of the absurd. However, 
his connection to subjective truth through negativity is the same. By taking philosophical 
negativity to its absolute, Socrates rejects the universal and asserts the infinity of subjectivity. 
As a figure of philosophical discussion, then, he reflects the Substance-Subject of absolute 
knowing: he is the telos of subjective inquiry.

This passivity seems strange, given Kierkegaard’s assertion of the courage required to deny 
the universal and embrace subjectivity and the Absolute through the teleological suspension 
of the ethical.50 Hegel understands the seemingly paradoxical nature of this passivity, 
however; Žižek writes, “this utter passivity simultaneously involves the greatest activity: it 
takes the most strenuous effort for the subject to ‘erase itself ’ in its particular content, as 
the agent intervening in the object, and to expose itself as a neutral medium.”51 For both 
Kierkegaard and Hegel becoming passive, paradoxically, requires the utmost activity. To be 
passively open to God, Abraham needed the courage to actively reject his most fundamental 
objective duties.

In spite of the similarity in their concepts of the Absolute, Kierkegaard and Hegel differed 
in their beliefs on how knowledge of the Absolute is attained. Hegel believed that absolute 
knowing is achieved through time through dialectics culminating in an Absolute Spirit–
speculative philosophy–which could rationally explain totality through the mediation of the 
subjective and the objective. Kierkegaard, conversely, stresses the paradoxical potential of 
the individual to “open herself up” to an incomprehensible experience of the Absolute. Put 
otherwise, Hegel’s Absolute is a “process” of the unification of subjectivity and objectivity, 
while Kierkegaard’s is a one-sided “moment” requiring only subjectivity. 

This distinction culminates in the thinkers’ respective assessments of the concept of 
“appropriation.” Kierkegaard uses “appropriation” to refer to a certain type of subjective 
understanding; while objective truths–historical and scientific facts, for instance–could be 
taught, the individual must relate subjective truths to her own experience. An individual 
appropriates a subjective truth when she bases her understanding of herself as subjectivity 
upon it. The truth of Christianity requires appropriation. Kierkegaard was unconcerned 
with dogmatics–the “content” of Christianity–that could be learned. The importance 
of Christianity was in the individual’s subjective experience of it, ie. the individual’s 
appropriation of it. For Hegel, conversely, “A true cognition is thus not only the notional 
“appropriation” of its object: the process of appropriation goes on only as long as cognition 
remains incomplete.”52 Appropriation is incomplete because Hegel’s dialectics centers on the 
reconciliation of the subject and the object; thus, the subject should be able to be expressed 
objectively, and vice versa.

50 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Sylvia Walsh, 41.
51 Žižek, “Hegel and the Object,” 24.
52 Ibid., 23.



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At the same time, the phenomenological information that Mailer conveys is while Hegel’s 
dialectic focuses on the system, placing the subject as a constitutive element therein, 
Kierkegaard’s dialectic is the reverse: he centers the individual. Put crudely in Hegelian 
terms, Kierkegaard’s “Absolute Spirit”–Spirit which has become conscious of itself–would 
not be a speculative philosophy in which subject and object are unified, but an individual 
“leap” on the part of the subject. This is the same dichotomy that appears in Kierkegaard’s 
original extended discussion of Hegel, The Concept of Irony. While Kierkegaard borrows 
Hegel’s Socrates, he identifies Socrates’s great strength where Hegel finds his flaw: his 
unflinching negativity and resulting rejection of speculative philosophy. In spite of the 
difference in his evaluation of the ancient Greek, Kierkegaard’s Socrates is Hegel’s Socrates. 
It is this Hegelian Socrates–and Hegelian absolute knowing–that situates Kierkegaard’s 
notion of the individual as the center of his philosophy. According to Kierkegaard, it is 
only through subjectivity–the complete negation of the objective world, as first posited by 
Socrates–that an individual can examine and affirm her most important commitments: the 
commitment to the Absolute.

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Hühn, Lore. “Irony and Dialectic: On a Critique of Romanticism in Kierkegaard and 
Hegel’s Philosophy.” MLN 128, no. 5 (2013): 1061–82.



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The Shadow of Hegel

Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling. Translated by Sylvia Walsh. Cambridge University 
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