Special issue of Res Philosophica devoted to Kierkegaard and Rationality

Guest Editor: Antony Aumann (Northern Michigan University)

Deadline for Submission: April 1st, 2013

2013 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Søren Kierkegaard. In celebration, Res Philosophica (formerly The Modern Schoolman) will devote a special issue to his work on the general topic of reason and rationality. Coinciding with the issue, the journal will hold an essay competition. The winner will receive a $3,000 award and the winner's article will be published in the special issue of the journal. Submissions to the special issue will be entered in the competition unless otherwise requested.

Six decades ago, a long-time member of the journal’s editorial board, James Collins, saw fit to close his groundbreaking monograph, The Mind of Kierkegaard, with words meant to clarify Kierkegaard’s views on reason and rationality. Collins’s laudable efforts notwithstanding, the issue remains as vexing today as it was then. We continue to encounter all manner of interpretations. Some paint Kierkegaard as a counter-Enlightenment thinker who opposed the use of reason in almost every area of life. Others maintain that he merely sought to demarcate the limits of what reason can accomplish. Still others urge that reason played a vital role in Kierkegaard’s thought and that he believed there are rational grounds for making ethical and religious commitments.

Part of the difficulty is that Kierkegaard often eschewed the typical genres of professional philosophers. He did not populate his texts with the sorts of systematic arguments we have come to expect from academic work. Moreover, he had scathing words for those who proceeded in this way. He even discouraged readers from “translating” his writings into a style of prose that fit the fashion. Thus, scholarly efforts to pin down Kierkegaard’s views on any subject face serious challenges, not the least of which is the potential irony of engaging in an un-Kierkegaardian enterprise.

It is therefore with some trepidation that we welcome submissions on the topic of Kierkegaard’s views on reason and rationality. We encourage papers that address the subject by analyzing Kierkegaard’s writings, bringing them into dialogue with the work of his contemporaries, or situating them within the context of recent philosophical developments. Issues of interest include but are not limited to Kierkegaard’s positions on the following:

• the role of reason in moral motivation and moral development
• the relationship between freedom and reason
• the relationship between reason and passion or emotion
• the place of reason in philosophical or theological writing and communication
• the limits of human reason
• skepticism
• the rationality of religious belief
• the “absurdity” of faith
• the “absolute paradox” of the Incarnation
• subjectivity and objectivity

All papers will be triple anonymous reviewed—in addition to the anonymity between author and referee, the author is anonymous to the editor as well—so please format your submission suitable for anonymous review.

We accept pdf and Microsoft Word documents. Submissions should be no more than 10,000 words in length, including footnotes. Papers may be submitted in any standard style, but authors of accepted papers will need to edit their papers according to the journal's style, which follows The Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition). For additional information see the following website:

http://www.resphilosophica.org