Thoughtlessness as an Intellectual Vice in Kierkegaard and Aristotle

Abstract

I examine the Kierkegaardian intellectual vice of thoughtlessness (Tankeløshed) and its opposite, the Aristotelian intellectual virtue of phronēsis, or practical wisdom. I argue that thoughtlessness is primarily an intellectual problem rather than a moral one. My emphasis on intellectual virtue in Kierkegaard contrasts with more typical characterizations of passion, will, and action as Kierkegaard’s main concerns and reliance on intellect as an obstacle to be overcome. Drawing on Aristotle’s account of phronēsis as the intellectual virtue related to action, I show that Kierkegaard offers a rich account of practical wisdom and a critique of its opposite, thoughtlessness. I conclude that, since there are different kinds of wisdom, Kierkegaard can say that faith is not a form of knowledge in the sense of epistēmē, or scientific knowledge, while preserving a central role for intellect in the task and life of faith.

1. Introduction

In this essay, I will examine the Kierkegaardian intellectual vice of thoughtlessness (Tankeløshed). The opposite of thoughtlessness, I argue, is the Aristotelian intellectual virtue of phronēsis, or practical wisdom. It matters for Aristotle that phronēsis is classified as an intellectual virtue, distinct from (but necessary for) moral virtue. I argue that for Kierkegaard, similarly, the vice of thoughtlessness is essentially an intellectual problem. That is, thoughtlessness is better characterized as a form of ignorance or naivety than a failure of will or affections. Identifying thoughtlessness as an intellectual vice does not rule out relationships of mutual dependence between intellectual and moral virtues and vices.1

My emphasis on intellect contrasts with more typical characterizations of thinking as a default state and concrete action as the task to be performed. For example, Merold Westphal writes that “the task is to bring one’s existence into conformity with whatever essential ‘truth’ one currently has available” (Westphal 2014, p. 206). It is common in interpreting Kierkegaard to emphasize the performative and affective aspects of faith over its intelligible content (Carr 1996; Kemp 2018; Kemp and Della Torre 2022; Westfall 2006; Wrathall 2019). Robert C. Roberts writes, for example, that Kierkegaard’s main problem with Hegel is that he advocates thought without action (Roberts 2022, p. 322). Scholars also highlight the importance of recognizing the limits of reason (Carr 1996, p. 246; Evans 1989, 2008; Westphal 2014, 2018).2 Unknowability is taken to be an essential feature of Christianity, moving the reader toward practical action and commitment (Boven 2018; Buben 2013; Duckles 2005; Hansen 2014; Jothen 2019, p. 211) or, on postmodern interpretations, a creative response (Poole 2002; Westfall 2006).

Rather than making a point about the relationship between faith and reason or the need to turn thoughts into actions, I propose that Kierkegaard’s critiques primarily target the brand of inauthenticity he calls thoughtlessness. Its opposite, thoughtfulness, authentically anchors words to their meanings and implications. One implication of my view is that, while loss of meaning is a high risk for abstract principles, abstraction is not inherently more problematic than concrete experience. I will show how Kierkegaard’s criticisms often showcase examples of preoccupation with immediate experience (that is, with what is concretely available), losing sight of the bigger (conceptual) picture. Though Kierkegaard thinks, like Aristotle, that it is possible to have scientific knowledge (epistēmē) but lack the ability to apply it in practice, the right application requires its own kind of intelligence called phronēsis, or practical wisdom.

Thomas McEvilley proposes the term phronēsis is best translated as “mindfulness” (McEvilley 2001, p. 609). Plato uses the term phronēsis in Timaeus, notes McEvilley, to describe freedom from reflex reactions to pleasure or pain, in which a subject “can neither see nor hear aright; he is in a frenzy and his capacity for reasoning is then at its lowest” (Timaeus 86c, cited McEvilley 2001, p. 609). Drawing connections between early Greek thought and the Buddhist term prajñā (Sanskrit) or paṇṇa (Pali), McEvilley writes, “It is through mindfulness that one can perceive the mental process in sufficient detail to make intervention possible” (p. 609).

I will argue that understanding and enactment are similarly entangled for Kierkegaard. In contrast to some scholars’ emphasis on the non-rational nature of faith (Buben 2013; Carr 1996; Duckles 2005; Evans 1989, 2008; Hansen 2014; Kemp 2018; Kemp and Della Torre 2022, among others), I will show that Kierkegaard offers a rich account of practical wisdom and a critique of its opposite, thoughtlessness. I argue that thoughtlessness in Kierkegaard, as for Plato in Timaeus, means to “neither see nor hear aright.” In contrast with moral virtues like courage and generosity, phronēsis or mindfulness is an intellectual virtue, alongside but distinct from philosophical wisdom (sophia). As such, thoughtlessness as a vice is a failure of mind rather than most immediately of will. I present my discussion here as a challenge to views that characterize the difficulties of faith as essentially morally motivated (e.g., the offense of wounded pride). I also conclude that, since there are different kinds of wisdom, Kierkegaard can plausibly say that faith is not a form of knowledge in the sense of epistēmē, or scientific knowledge, without implying it is only, or even mainly, a moral matter.3

2. Phronēsis in Aristotle: Logic and Perception

Aristotle maps the terrain of knowledge and its objects, emphasizing that practical knowledge is a synthesis between universal and particular. “If, then, a man has the theory without the experience, and recognizes the universal but does not know the individual included in this, he will often fail to cure; for it is the individual that is to be cured” (Metaphysics 981a20–25). It is unhelpful, he notes, to know that light meat is healthy if we cannot identify chicken as a light meat in practice (Nicomachean Ethics 1041b18–21, hereafter NE). Unlike the Pre-Socratic philosophers who emphasized reason or the senses as a source of knowledge, Aristotle sees reason as infusing the entire sensible world (see Aristotle’s critique of Anaxagoras, Metaphysics 985a18–22).

In classifying the soul’s powers, one relevant feature is whether its object is changeable or permanent. Art, for example, as an activity of making poiēsis, is “concerned with coming into being” rather than objects of necessity, which always are the way they are (NE 1140a11). Science is the study of necessary connections, resulting in knowledge of lasting principles (1139a20–24). Phronēsis, or practical wisdom, is more like art in attending to the changeable rather than the eternal (1140a32–33). Aristotle muses that young people seem capable of learning mathematics and geometry well but unable to learn practical wisdom in a short time through sheer intelligence. He wonders: “Is it because the objects of mathematics exist by abstraction, while the first principles of these other subjects come from experience (empeiria), and because young men have no conviction about the latter but merely use the proper language, while the essence of mathematical objects is plain enough to them?” (1142a17–19). Aristotle is suggesting that mathematical objects, existing apart from experience, are immediately accessible to anyone at any time (as for the slave boy in Plato’s Meno dialogue). But phronēsis is about seeing the logic or principles in experience, and that is not possible without accumulating a store of experiences of one’s own over time.4

Nevertheless, it is possible for young people to learn to say the right words, even though they do so without understanding (that is, with “no conviction” (1142a18)). I take Aristotle to mean that people who lack their own experience can repeat truisms and advice—even good advice—without personally understanding its origin or significance. They can inherit the right answers but still lack practical wisdom. Practical wisdom requires patterns of experience accumulated over time, not a single experience one could have in an instant. For that reason, Aristotle insists, the content of practical wisdom is simply not available to the young. While practical wisdom deals with particulars as objects of perception and so should be available to anyone who experiences concrete actuality, the perception involved in phronēsis is of a more complex kind than “qualities peculiar to one sense,” like color to vision or sound to hearing. In fact, he says, the kind of experience involved in phronēsis is “a perception akin to that by which we perceive that the particular figure before us is a triangle” (NE 1142a23–31). The seeing involved in practical wisdom is more like recognizing or classifying; its objects are already infused with and structured by concepts and universal kinds.5 While distinct from direct sensory perception, such recognition is immediate and non-inferential. It lacks, as Renero puts it, a proof or “demonstrative structure” (Renero 2013, p. 110).

In Book 6 of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle calls the direct grasp of first principles nous, which is variously translated as “understanding,” “intellectual intuition,” “intuitive reason,” and “intelligence,” (see Renero 2013, p. 103n). In addition to the fundamental insights of nous, we can have more specific but still generalizable knowledge called epistēmē, typically translated “scientific knowledge.”6 Since intuitive reason (nous) deals with first principles, which are eternal, it is clearly different from phronēsis, which deals with the changeable (Cohoe 2022, p. e5). And while phronēsis deals with the good of our own species and living well, intuitive reason (paired with epistēmē, or scientific knowledge) is eternal and universal (1140a32–33). But Aristotle now adds that intuitive reason moves not only in the direction of pure abstraction but also toward the pure immediacy of experience. Aristotle explains that “intuitive reason [nous] is concerned with the ultimates in both directions; for both the first terms and the last are objects of intuitive reason and not of argument, and the intuitive reason which is presupposed by demonstrations grasps the unchangeable and first terms, while the intuitive reason involved in practical reasonings grasps the last and variable facts, i.e., the minor premiss. For these variable facts are the starting-points for the apprehension of the end, since the universals are reached from the particulars; of these therefore we must have perception, and this perception is intuitive reason” (1143a35–1043b5). Rather than simply a distant goal, intuitive reason (nous) is already at work from the outset in the way particulars are grasped.7

The relation between the guiding rule and experience is a topic of debate among scholars. Deliberation in the form of inferential reasoning could be involved, but the primary task is to identify in the moment which particular features are relevant for deliberation and which ends to deliberate toward (Tarantino 2022, pp. 391–92). Later Continental philosophers, especially Heidegger, are interested in the non-inferential qualities of phronēsis as a way of recognizing morally salient features to begin with (Lee and Long 2007, pp. 353, 358; McDowell 1998, 2013; Tarantino 2022; Zoller 2021). The non-inferential character of phronēsis, some argue, offers a way for experience to be guided by projects and moral concerns without interrupting the flow of existence.8 While sometimes translated as “prudence,” therefore, phronēsis clearly goes beyond mere calculations of utility. Aristotle makes this distinction with respect to friendships (1158a28–34, and see Tarantino 2022, p. 393).9 By bringing moral ends to bear on concrete situations, phronēsis prevents deliberation from falling into an endless dialectic of pros and cons.10

Lee and Long argue that both perception of individuals and grasping of first principles are varieties of nous, distinguished as practical or theoretical, respectively (Lee and Long 2007, pp. 355–57). These mark the guiding poles (on the one hand, pure abstraction, and on the other, pure sensation) in which humans aim to make sense of our lives. The guiding poles—knowledge of first principles and a store of experiences—are not reached discursively, by drawing inferences from other known premises. The only alternative is that they are perceived or in some other way encountered. Aristotle reiterates his earlier point about practical wisdom and age with respect to intuitive reason. We should listen to the aged, “for because experience has given them an eye they see aright” (NE 1143b13). The “eye of the soul” (1144a30) can be developed over time through a process of formation, with the result that “it is impossible to be practically wise without being good” (NE 1044a 36). As Cohoe puts it, “Aristotle defines phronēsis so as to guarantee that its possessor will always act on it” (Cohoe 2022, p. e3). Conversely, it is impossible to be good without having practical wisdom (1144b20). Phronēsis is effectively an orientation that directs and motivates action, while remaining a state or disposition of the intellect rather than of the will.

Of particular relevance for Kierkegaard and later Continental philosophers, Aristotle distinguishes between the correct action and the way in which it is carried out. Anticipating Kant’s distinction between acting from duty and in accord with duty, Aristotle writes: “For it is not merely the state in accordance with the right rule, but the state that implies the presence of the right rule, that is virtue” (1144b26–27). To count as virtuous activity, the rule must be connected to the action, manifesting or drawing on it in some way.11 Otherwise, even if such rules can be encoded and passed down, they are no longer meaningful for those who inherit them, since they lack an anchor in experience.

In parsing out different kinds of relationships between actions and principles, Aristotle’s model offers more varied roles for reason than contemporary readers may expect, including readers of Kierkegaard. In arguing that faith is beyond reason, for example, Evans examines methods associated with early modern philosophy, such as Locke’s evidentialism (Evans 1998, p. 8) and syllogistic proofs (Evans 1998, pp. 116–19), rightly explaining that Kierkegaard rejects these as sources of faith. Evans concludes that the role of reason in faith is mainly negative. That is, faith is the response of someone who “now has good reason to mistrust her earlier ideas about what is true, as a result of an encounter with reality” (Evans 1989, p. 359). He acknowledges the possibility of experiencing God’s presence (Evans 1998, p. 124), but with respect to reason, the encounter only shows reason of its limits (Evans 2008, p. 1033). Rather than a basis for faith, Evans describes such an encounter with the divine as the result of openness, with faith as the condition: “when faith is present, a real acquaintance with God is possible” (Evans 1998, p. 125).12 On an Aristotelian model, by contrast, a new view of the situation can be the motivating ground of new beliefs, goals, and actions.

In sum, phronēsis for Aristotle deals with possibilities, rather than necessities or unchangeable things (NE 1140a32–33). Yet it is concerned with universals and not just particulars—that is, with rational principles as well as concrete experience (1042a20). It is not merely a set of rational principles (1144b27–29) since it involves particular facts (1142a23–25). As we saw above, phronēsis is the antidote to speech in which the speakers have “no real conviction … but only say the words” (1142a17–19). For Aristotle, the intellectual virtue phronēsis is a connecting point between abstract principles and concrete situations. In bridging the gap, phronesis makes moral virtue possible. In emphasizing the similarities between Kierkegaard’s account of faith and Aristotelian phronēsis, I aim to show that it matters for Kierkegaard—as it does for Aristotle—how concepts relate to the concrete world. “Thoughtfulness,” in other words, should look a lot like Aristotelian phronēsis.

3. Inauthenticity and Language

The potential aimlessness of thought fascinated Kierkegaard from his earliest writings. Thinking, like imagination, is a way to consider mere possibilities and their potentially infinite implications.13 Without an ultimate aim in action, merely thinking about practical questions consigns the mind to living in a state of suspended animation. Kierkegaard captures this paralysis in the voice of A, the aesthete, in Either/Or: “Ask me what you wish; just do not ask me for reasons. … Ordinarily I have so many and most often such mutually contradictory reasons that for this reason it is impossible for me to state reasons” (EO 1, p. 25/SKS 2, p. 34). Living in pure reflection exiles the aesthete from the ordinary pattern of goal-directed deliberation followed by action. I take the standard reading of Kierkegaard’s view to be that thought on its own is unhealthy but can be rescued by a relation to passion, decision, and/or concrete situatedness.

With Aristotle, however, we saw that the root of the problem occurs already in thought. As Cohoe points out, Aristotle defines phronēsis in such a way that its success guarantees action (Cohoe 2022, p. e3). To understand how there can be a connection from experience already within thought, we need to examine what kind of connection there is supposed to be. On this point, Kierkegaard anticipates Derrida’s description of signs as the “residence of an unthought truth,” able to “perdure … without being thought in act or fact” (Derrida 1989, p. 92, my emphasis) and Heidegger’s discussions of “idle talk” in Being and Time (see Helms 2023, p. 10). Kierkegaard notices well before Heidegger and Derrida that idle talk begins with what we might call idle thought, or what Kierkegaard just calls “thoughtlessness” (Tankeløshed) (CI, p. 159/SKS 1, p. 209; EO 2, p. 287/SKS 3, p. 272; CA, p. 67/SKS 4, p. 371).14

We might naturally associate thoughtlessness and idle talk with irony. Like the irrational reactions Plato describes in Timaeus, thoughtlessness is a form of naïve immediacy: it is unable to connect parts together as a whole. Irony fits this description well: it is not only lost in the concrete and immediate but deliberately so. The ironist takes on immediacy as a disposition and way of life.15 Irony is also paradigmatic of idle talk in that it conspicuously severs words from intentions (though without making them merely meaningless). While Kierkegaard thinks the highest stage of existence entails a reconciliation with actuality, in Either/Or, he fills out the character of A, the aesthete, as someone for whom irony is all-consuming.

Scholars disagree about exactly what the aesthetic lifestyle lacks. The aesthete or ironist could lack commitment or willpower—a failure of volition. Or the ironist could lack passion—a failure of affections. It seems least likely that, of the traditional human faculties, the ironist lacks intellect—especially given Kierkegaard’s well-known critiques of speculative thought in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. But that is what I suggest: whatever A, the aesthete, lacks in will and emotion originates, I propose, is a more fundamental failure of thinking. Specifically—and this is presumably my most controversial claim—the ironist lacks the ability to grasp transcendental concepts, such as those grasped on Aristotle’s view by nous. Without transcendental concepts, or fundamental principles reached in some way other than by inference from other principles, the ironist is trapped in an infinite dialectic of possibilities, without hope of a positive conclusion.

What do I mean by a “transcendental” concept? In saying that Kierkegaard directs our attention to transcendental concepts, I mean that he focuses on concepts like the self, possibility, and existences that are not singular objects in experience but structures of experience. That is, they are not themselves concrete experiences but characterize the manner in which we have experiences of any kind. An example of an appeal to transcendental concepts or first principles appears in the sermon appended to Either/Or as the “Ultimatum.” A priest working in Jutland, far from the lively bustle of Copenhagen, explains how trying to decide whether we are “in the right” in a dispute with another person leads to an infinite regress. To decide the question, I first have to know whether I am the best judge of the situation, but then I must also judge whether I am the best judge, etc. (EO 2, p. 346/SKS 3, p. 325). The solution proposed for halting this infinite regress is a shift from being right or wrong about this or that particular issue to a global, all-encompassing, transcendental being in the wrong. The exchange of finite for infinite error seems disadvantageous for the obvious reasons. But the gain for inner life is that we can stop spending time and energy measuring the proportion of right to wrong, which is an infinite task. The shift to a transcendental perspective gives the thinker permission to stop performing that infinite calculation. In removing the doubt and fear that immobilize a person, the realization “animates and inspires to action” (EO 2, p. 353/SKS 2, p. 332).

Accounts of what halts the dialectic of doubt and calculation standardly appeal to an underlying moral component. C. Stephen Evans writes that the “heart and soul of offense” is “prideful reason” (Evans 2008, p. 1031). Westphal describes faith as humble acceptance, “and to the degree that humble courage prevails over that pride, it is a resting” (Westphal 2014, pp. 212–14). For Aristotle, pride is an example of a moral virtue, pertaining to the will and desires, with vanity and excessive humility as its extremes (1123a33–1125a35). Ryan Kemp similarly associates faith with a rearrangement of one’s desires, often outside one’s volitional control (Kemp 2018, p. 206; Aumann 2021). Although Roberts affirms the importance of theological reflection and intellectual curiosity (Roberts 2022, p. 68) and describes emotions as thought dependent (p. 154), he insists it would be a mistake to think “faith’s conflict with the world is primarily an ‘intellectual’ struggle” (p. 56).16

Indeed, Kierkegaard does describe passion as the “essentially human,” and love as the central task each generation must take up for itself. Any pretense that this essence can be passed down between generations is “foolish and idle talk [en ørkesløs og daarlig Tale]” (FT, p. 121/SKS 4, pp. 208–9). Each person begins as a novice, no matter how advanced their time (FT, p. 46/SKS 4, p. 140). On the other hand, while Westphal, Evans, Roberts, and others are right that discursive reason cannot overcome doubt, my claim is that the standard emphases on faith as a moral offense (for example, as an offense to pride) or as a change in desire (see especially Kemp and Aumann) move too quickly past the central role of phronēsis, an intellectual virtue.

The Jutland priest’s discussion in “Ultimatum” identifies a whole new way of being wrong—that is, transcendentally, infinitely wrong (EO 2, pp. 352–53/SKS 3, pp. 330–31). The shift is holistic and all-encompassing. Though the priest identifies passion as the essentially human, the right kind of passion achieves understanding as well, by which “one generation perfectly understands another and understands itself” (FT, p. 121/SKS 4, pp. 208–9). This form of understanding has to do with the ability to communicate, which in turn requires words to retain their meaning over time and between individuals. In the next section, I analyze the difficulties Kierkegaard associates with meaning. One central problem, as mentioned above, is the potential for irony, which disassociates words from intentions. But Kierkegaard argues that irony can be truthful or deceptive. I propose that rational reflection can similarly take healthy or unhealthy forms—that is, reflection can be phronēsis or thoughtlessness.

4. Thoughtlessness in Kierkegaard

Critiques of thoughtlessness are scattered throughout Kierkegaard’s writings. Similarities with lacking practical wisdom are evident even in the relatively brief references. For example, in “Two Ethical-Religious Essays,” Kierkegaard criticizes the “thoughtless eloquence” that “could equally well hit upon the idea of praising Paul as a stylist and an artist with word,” an error which he attributes in the footnote to “not only that of heterodoxy but also of ultra-orthodoxy and of thoughtlessness generally” (WA, p. 93/SKS 11, pp. 97–98). In Kierkegaard’s critique, we can recognize the failure of phronēsis to apply the right principle or classification: rather than praising the Apostle Paul’s words for their spiritual value, someone might be distracted by their style or artistry. Even if the response is positive, the reader fails to measure Paul’s writings by the right rule. Moreover, as we saw with Aristotle’s complaint that inexperienced people use the right words with “no real conviction” (NE 1142a18), the problem here is one of speech and eloquence without underlying meaning.

So, what is thoughtlessness as an intellectual vice, the opposite of practical wisdom? Kierkegaard associates the kinds of category mistakes exemplified above as failures of intellectual honesty, where “honesty [Oprigtighed] before God” means “continually keeping the task in sight.” Honesty “remains properly situated,” not casting the divine as the merely human so as to make the problem easier to resolve (see PC, p. 66/SKS 12, p. 77). While intellectual honesty cuts off any retreat to speculative thought or reflection, it requires a relation to a concept that goes beyond directly instantiating it. That is, a thoughtful or mindful person not only exemplifies (i.e., lives out) concepts but has concepts—i.e., thinks. Kierkegaard further emphasizes this spacing between thinking and being in Postscript, where Climacus writes, “From this it by no means follows that existence is thoughtless [at Existentsen er tankeløs], but existence has spaced and does space subject from object, thought from being” (CUP 1, p. 123/SKS 7, p. 118).17

While Kierkegaard does not provide a stand-alone account of “thoughtfulness” as a virtue, the negative characterizations of thoughtlessness, together with Aristotle’s positive account of phronēsis, suggest that thoughtfulness must be a certain relation (1) to one’s possibilities and (2) in one’s particularity (3) to a concept that (4) is evidenced in, or can be a qualification of, one’s words and speech. Aristotle’s concept of phronēsis answers the question of how concepts relate to individuals (together with their possibilities). He also hints at its importance for making language meaningful and beliefs (“convictions”) authentic. Both Aristotle and Kierkegaard are turning our attention to the structure of mental life and intellectual habits.

5. Irony Problem in Concept of Irony: Bad Infinite

The real power of irony is not the ability to say the opposite of what one means, as on a standard definition of verbal irony, but the ability to say nothing while still saying a lot of words. Kierkegaard describes the negative freedom offered by this no-man’s land of meanings as intoxicating. The ironist “is free from the constraint in which the given actuality holds the subject, but he is negatively free and as such is suspended, because there is nothing that holds him. … [H]e becomes intoxicated, so to speak, in the infinity of possibilities, and if he needs any consolation for everything that is destroyed, he can have recourse to the enormous reserve fund of possibility. He does not, however, abandon himself to this enthusiasm; it simply inspires and feeds his enthusiasm for destroying” (CI, p. 262/SKS 1, p. 300). By negating not just a particular commitment but the very possibility of commitment (CI, pp. 259–61/SKS 1, pp. 297–99), the ironist buys freedom at the cost of becoming no one. Kierkegaard explores irony further in Judge Williams’ criticisms of A, the aesthete (EO 2, pp. 37–38/SKS 3, p. 45; EO 2, p. 160/SKS 3, pp. 157–58). Limitlessness first feels like freedom, but the ironist is a prisoner to the tiniest change. When one’s life is mere appearances without any underlying substance, any superficial change is a total rewrite of reality, with nothing left over.

For that reason, Kierkegaard’s diagnosis of the ontological foundation of irony turns out to be a lack of deeper invariants. For A, personality is suggested as the missing invariant (CI, p. 253/SKS 1, p. 292), which Roberts equates with moral character. Roberts claims a person of character is substantial enough to survive changes in their situation (Roberts 2022, pp. 54–55). In addition to that subjective pole, Roberts also describes the objective correlate (to use Husserl’s language), or intentional structure, of the interior state. A joyful person is joyful about something (Roberts 2022, p. 197). Keeping that content in mind depends in turn on the ability to perceive it, which is why Roberts claims that character formation has a perceptual dimension (pp. 224–25, 280), a “vividness of perception” of the truth, or something like appreciation for it (p. 329).

The standard view is that reflection interferes with or has a merely negative role with respect to appropriation, which is why the essential ingredients of faith are typically non-intellectual additions such as passion, will, and action. But if faith has an intentional dimension (and I think Roberts is right that it does), then it must also have a cognitive component, and it becomes less possible to disentangle thinking from moral or affective response (see Roberts 2022, pp. 9, 232, 268). Like phronēsis in Aristotle, thoughtfulness is not just one more virtue alongside the others but entangled with all of them. Thoughtlessness is an inability to pay attention to certain kinds of objects, and all the moral or character virtues—as Roberts rightly argues—depend on orientation toward the right intentional object (see Roberts 2022, p. 268). Kierkegaard is teaching us how to exchange a bad, negative infinite for a solid, transcendental invariant. However, such an invariant is not easy to keep in our sights, even for someone with the best intentions. As readers, we need Kierkegaard’s help as a philosopher insofar as we have already lost the ability to recognize any very interesting—that is, any truly robust or essential—kinds of invariants. Left to our own devices, we rely on superficial sameness—either propositions we recognize or straightforward concrete appearances—and then giving up in frustration or retreating to irony when we lose the thread.

If I am right that something like transcendental reflection is what is missing in thoughtlessness, then to escape it we will need more abstraction, not less—at least some of the time. But the reflection will need to be the right kind. We need to gain some kind of distance between consciousness and its objects to reveal the importance of thought. This spacing is what Kierkegaard calls the truth in irony: “Just as much of life now is not actuality and just as there is something in personality that at least momentarily is incommensurate with actuality, so also there is a truth in irony” (CI, p. 253/SKS 1, p. 292). A virtuous thinker needs the capacity to reflect without becoming external to her own life or losing the positive ability to mean what she says (CI, p. 247/SKS 1, p. 286).

Put more strongly, I take Kierkegaard’s most fundamental and enduring criticism of Christendom to be that it has become thoughtless. A standard reading of Kierkegaard’s complaint about Christendom, including the Danish Hegelians, is that they believed Enlightenment myths about the reach of human reason (see Westphal 2014, pp. 20–22, 153; Evans 2008, p. 1033). While Kierkegaard certainly critiques the overreach of speculative thought (especially in Concluding Unscientific Postscript), my view is that the underlying problem with such overreach is the resulting loss of meaning. The problem with Hegelianism is not that it is overly abstract (therefore missing out on the situated, non-universal practices of Christian life) but that it makes empty claims that cannot be cashed in or performed even in mental life, including through the mental work of abstraction.

On the standard view, concrete enactment should fix the problem, such as by the acquisition of how-to knowledge (see Wrathall 2019). However, many of Kierkegaard’s most humorous stories are directed at the overly practical and the merely concrete, especially in The Concept of Anxiety. For example, Kierkegaard (through the pseudonym of Haufniensis) tells the story of the grocery clerk who, when asked for the grocer’s test where raisins come from, answers that he gets his from the professor on Cross St. (CA, p. 135/SKS 4, p. 435). He also makes fun of would-be “mathematicians” who can work problems when the points are labeled ABC but not when they are DEF (CA, pp. 139–40/SKS 4, p. 441). In this case, abstracting from the particular letters would correctly disclose the deeper mathematical concept, which is the unity of the figure. This direction of critique is a theme in Concept of Irony. Kierkegaard accuses those with overly concrete thinking of having “no sense for anything but reality” (CI, p. 294/SKS 1, p. 328). He elsewhere uses the term “sensate person” for those who lack a wider perspective: such a person “lets consciousness evaporate” (CI, p. 295/SKS 1, p. 328).18 In Sickness unto Death, we have the story of the peasant who puts on new stockings and then fails to recognize his own legs (SUD 53/SKS 11, p. 169). Because they lack the capacity to appreciate more non-sensory continuities, then just like the ironist they are at the mercy of any superficial change. I take it this criticism is inspired by Hegel and an example of a place where Kierkegaard adopts Hegel’s dialectical thinking. Like the ironist, these characters have severed appearances from their invisible meanings, and as a result, they lack even common-sense resilience in the face of outward changes; they are merely a product of their environment (CI, p. 281/SKS 1, p. 316, and see Roberts 2022, p. 55).

More generally, Kierkegaard’s critiques of reflection or lostness in reflection (as in his notorious critiques of Hegel) must be understood and paired with his critiques of its lack, which I argue is what Kierkegaard means by “thoughtlessness.” Contrary to scholars who see sinful pride in reason’s abilities as a central target of Kierkegaard’s critiques, I think he is instead more directly diagnosing a kind of intellectual narrowness or denseness. Such narrowness might well have moral causes as well as implications for the goodness of one’s moral dispositions and actions, but they are nevertheless distinct diagnoses.

Another clear example of thoughtlessness is the story of the robber who wears a wig. Later, an innocent person finds the wig and puts it on and is mistaken for the robber. The victim swears to the wearer’s identity. However, the real robber is in the court and says, “It seems to me that the traveler is looking more at the wig than at the man” (CUP 1, p. 490/SKS 7, p. 559). The victim fails to recognize more abstract characteristics like “personality” (or here, “the man”). In fact, Climacus tells the story twice (see also CUP 1, p. 59/SKS 7, p. 70), explaining that it remains the same despite its variations in the telling. In other words, the problem is squarely one of perception and identification, especially the ability to track the invariable through outward change.

How do we turn attention to something as elusive as a “personality”? I propose that what matters most to Kierkegaard in these examples, or at least the part that he as an author can help us with, is whether we are actually performing the thoughts and intentions that correspond to the stated judgments and words. When we are not performing mental acts, we easily fall back on abstract platitudes, as many scholars emphasize. But Kierkegaard’s examples show he thinks it is equally possible to fall back on concrete cases. Just as only someone who has never tried to perform an infinite abstraction would claim to have completed one, only someone who lacks the true idea of a triangle would think that re-lettering the angles makes it a new shape.

Underlying Kierkegaard’s critiques is the pursuit of essence. Essential identity is a core focus in more obviously religious writings like Works of Love (see WL, p. 3/SKS 9, p. 11) and Upbuilding Discourses (see below), but it is also already a theme in The Concept of Irony. Kierkegaard attributes the ironist’s thoughtlessness to a loss of the “an sich” (CI, p. 281/SKS 1, p. 316), though he views Kant’s version as too external to the knower (CI, pp. 272–73/SKS 1, p. 309). Kierkegaard writes, “When I am speaking, the thought, the meaning, is the essence, and the word is the phenomenon. These two elements are absolutely necessary, and it is in this sense that Plato has said that all thinking is a discourse,” and truth demands their identity (CI, p. 247/SKS 1, p. 286). Seeming to perform mental acts without actually performing them leads to irony’s bad infinite: the possibilities seem limitless. By contrast, when we do try to perform mental acts genuinely, we discover limits we did not know were there.

In sum, the famous things Kierkegaard has said about over-reliance on reason and abstraction need to be contextualized in the less famous things he says about over-reliance on particularity. The more fundamental problem, I propose, is non-genuine thought, or the illusion of thought without actual thinking. While “thoughtlessness” might seem to be a less serious state than vices like greed or dishonesty, it affects our most basic capacity for accountability. After observing Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Arendt describes him as exhibiting a “thoughtlessness” she associates with evil (Arendt 1977, p. 288). Like Arendt, I argue, Kierkegaard is less directly concerned about moral self-aggrandizement or overconfidence in human reason than he is in the general sickliness of mental life in Christendom. Small-mindedness is its own kind of vice, distinct from moral failings, though they may mutually cause one another. On my view, the main problem with Hegel is not his pride in human accomplishment. The more urgent problem, and the deeper source of Hegel’s overconfidence, is his account of faith as accomplished in ways that miss its essence. In pointing people’s attention toward the wrong kind of object, Danish Hegelianism lulls people into believing that faith is easier than it really is or, where it is difficult, hard for the wrong reasons (WL, 207/SKS 7, p. 211). But I think Kierkegaard scholars have largely missed that genuine thinking, insofar as it tracks the core identities of things, is difficult too. It is nevertheless an essential practice for a believer and a primary focus of Kierkegaard’s writing.

6. Conclusions: Kierkegaard’s Solution

Kierkegaard thinks it is possible to learn (or re-learn) to recognize essential invariants, and in that way, escape the bad infinity of irony. It does not matter much in the end whether the narrowness of mind appears as hyper-abstraction or hyper-concreteness. Kierkegaard even thinks it possible for irony to retrieve what is missing. In Shakespeare’s writing, or what Kierkegaard calls “mastered irony,” we find irony in a transcendental form. Rather than occupying certain parts here and there, irony is everywhere at once in Shakespeare’s works. Though pervasive, it is not the final word but deployed in the service of a higher end: the unity of the literary work (that is, the work’s own essential unity). Literary unity, though localized to a particular work of art, is “transcendental” in the sense of belonging to the work as a whole. For the same reason, literary unity is invisible and non-concrete: it does not appear directly in any part.

As a controlled, transcendental invariant, irony no longer merely negates or de-stabilizes. In Shakespeare, the irony is “everywhere present” and “omnipresent,” and for that reason, the poem becomes its own anchor (CI, p. 324/SKS 1, p. 353). The key realization at the end of The Concept of Irony is that only a certain kind of structure can be meant authentically. The obstacle for the ironist, in my view, is not insufficient effort toward thinking sincere thoughts, or a failure to make good on them in actions, but that the object of attention is wrong. When one is using words without any possible fulfillment, a bad infinite is a predictable result. Fittingly, Kierkegaard does not claim that Shakespeare uses irony better but that he uses a different kind. Shakespeare’s irony does not appear at various points in the work but invisibly shapes the work as a whole. This wholesale shift in perspective from being a specific, quantifiable component to transforming the whole series immeasurably impresses Kierkegaard at the time of his dissertation and stays with him throughout his life. We see it again, for example, in Works of Love, in the shift from calculable (utility) to infinite value.19

Thought in this sense is more about making sense of experience than it is about justification or even belief. “Reason” can play both these roles, but Kierkegaard scholars have tended to focus on the question of justification and interpreted Kierkegaard’s discussions as answers to that question (see Westphal 2018). But for ancient thinkers, a well-cultivated intellect enables a person to find the unity in events that otherwise appear disconnected and unmotivated (Gerson 2023). While he mocks a life lived according to calculations of utility or lost in reflection, I think Kierkegaard retains this ancient Greek view of reason as a guide toward what is essential in the world.

If so, infinity is not a wall we reach that stops us short (in humility, for example), beyond which we are traveling blind, but a shift in perspective that enables us to see new things. The fundamental element for Kierkegaard here is not the amount or proportion of reflection (that is, whether we press on in doing philosophy or realize the limits of philosophy) but whether we are attuned to the good infinity that transfigures the finite world by being everywhere and nowhere. The shift is toward recognizing that we ought to be able to hold transcendental objects in mind in some indirect sense. The kind of thinking that is the antidote to thoughtlessness is non-inferential (or non-propositional, as it is more common to say), but it is still a kind of thought.

Kierkegaard offers a variety of examples of mindfulness throughout his writing, but perhaps most consistently in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. In “On the Occasion of a Confession,” Kierkegaard describes how becoming an old person is “the last change” in a person’s life, for whom the earlier part of life is “all the changeable that now is past,” and so it seems that even “the discourse about it is subject to changeableness” (UDVS, p. 9/SKS 8, p. 125). But at the same time, since humans have something eternal in us, there is also something changeless that “must be able to be claimed throughout every change,” and for that reason, “the discourse about it must be different” at each moment and not merely at the end (UDVS, p. 11/SKS 8, p. 127). That constancy makes willing one thing with purity of heart possible, in contrast with double-mindedness and suddenness. Double-mindedness fails to unify the different times and directions of life (UDVS, p. 26/SKS 8, p. 141). Suddenness creates single-minded attention only by forcing an interruption in the flow of life (UDVS, p. 16/SKS 8, p. 131).20 Just as for Aristotelian phronēsis, the eternal and changeless must show what is invariant and essential in human situations, which are inherently changeable. While Kierkegaard here characterizes that unity in terms of will (that is, to “will only one thing” (UDVS, p. 154/SKS 8, p. 250), it has an objective and intellectual component (that is, one wills the good “in truth” (UDVS, p. 36ff/SKS 8, p. 150ff)).21

In the “Preface” to Upbuilding Discourses, Kierkegaard describes a needlewoman who works painstakingly on an altar cloth, but “could not work the sacred meaning into the cloth” (UDVS, p. 5/SKS 8, p. 122). Instead, “The meaning is in the beholder and in the beholder’s understanding when […] he has in the infinite remoteness of separation infinitely forgotten the needlewoman and her part” (UDVS, p. 5/SKS 8, p. 122). The beholder’s contribution is to see through the altar cloth to its spiritual meaning, even though that meaning is nowhere directly (that is, concretely) depicted. Already in the “Preface,” Kierkegaard is recalibrating our line of sight toward transcendental unities rather than concrete objects. The concrete is misleading, because double-mindedness resembles everything else at different times: “it continually varies with the ups and downs of life—so swiftly that it can have changed several times while the discourse is scarcely ready to describe one manifestation. Motley-colored, it plays not only in all possible colors, but there is not even any law for this play of colors that blends the colors and shades of colors in every-new confusion—so there is continually something new under the sun, and yet it is continually the old double-mindedness” (UDVS, p. 65/SKS 8, p. 174). If the target of our language is something slippery like double-mindedness, or like holiness of an altar cloth, we will need to look with a different kind of perception than direct sensation (cf. NE 1142a30). Each object of attention is not a simple part but a transcendental frame that transfigures every finite part.

In this essay, I have argued that Aristotle’s concept of phronēsis provides a helpful way to make sense of what Kierkegaard thinks is missing in the Christendom of his time. He is not only concerned with the moral well-being of his fellow humans but also their intellectual flourishing. For both Aristotle and Kierkegaard, goodness and truth are intertwined but philosophically distinct. As for Aristotle, good thinking is not a matter of doing one thing more or less (e.g., being more or less passionate, or more or less reflective) but of performing each in the right way, which in turn means as guided by the right goal. In practice, the task of cultivating genuine thoughtfulness may at one moment mean accepting the unchangeable (e.g., the eternal in another person) and the next moment accepting the changeability of the finite world, as when the knight of faith does not receive the expected supper (FT, pp. 39–40/SKS 4, p. 134). Retreating either to the eternal in the abstract (speculative thought) or the merely sensate concrete world are manifestations of the same vice Kierkegaard calls thoughtlessness (Tankeløshed).22