Upcoming Session - Kierkegaard Circle
|
Topic:
|
Jacobi in Kierkegaard’s Thought: Some remarks on a recent publication
|
|
Speaker:
|
Paolo Livieri
Research Fellow at COSPECS
University of Messina
Italy
|
Time:
|
Friday, March 27, 2026
5:00 pm-7:00 pm
|
|
Place:
|
Divinity Common Room (DCR)*
Trinity College, University of Toronto
6 Hoskin Avenue, Toronto
|
|
Inquiry:
|
Prof. Abrahim H. Khan, khanah@chass.utoronto.ca, cell: 905-706-0569
Adjunct Prof. Jizhang Yi, jizhang.yi@utoronto.ca, 778-858-8720
Faculty of Divinity, Trinity College, University of Toronto
6 Hoskin Avenue, Toronto, Ontario 416-978-2522
*DCR located by stairs to dining room. Ask at Welcome Desk.
|
Paolo Livieri (PhDs, McGill and Uni. of Pauda) is a research fellow at the Dept. of Cognitive Sciences,
Psychology, Education and Cultural Studies, University of Messina. His publications on Hegel’s logic and
Jacobi’s philosophy has issued in monographs as well as translations and shorter essays. He is currently
working on an introduction to Hegel’s philosophy of religion for Cambridge University Press.
ABSTRACT
A consideration of how Kierkegaard takes up Jacobi’s figure of the salto mortale, developing it into his own concept of the leap, which defines both the transition into religious existence and
the dialectic of decision and repetition. It draws on M. Feldmeier, Freiheit und Rationalität. Zur Rolle F. H. Jacobis im Denken Søren Kierkegaards (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023).
SYNOPSIS
There are more than mere historical reminiscences of Jacobi in Kierkegaard’s work. There seems to be a genuine philosophical development that originates from Jacobi’s non-philosophy and culminates in Kierkegaard’s works, especially the Climacus writings.
There is a plausible conceptual parallel between the two figures, above all in the shared critique of J.G. Fichte’s philosophy of the “I” and the associated abstract anthropology. Both oppose an ethics that loses sight of the concrete, lifeworld-situated individual, and both propose an alternative path toward authentic thought grounded in lived experience.
Drawing on the study by M. Feldmeier, Freiheit und Rationalität. Zur Rolle F. H. Jacobis im Denken Søren Kierkegaards (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023), we will discuss Kierkegaard’s appropriation of Jacobi’s objection to the logification of faith and metaphysics. We will also examine how Kierkegaard takes up Jacobi’s figure of the salto mortale, developing it into his own concept of the leap, which defines both the transition into religious existence and the dialectic of decision and repetition.
|
