Inwardness in the World: A Kierkegaardian Contemplative Ecology

Abstract

This thesis explores Kierkegaard’s phenomenology of self-God-world relations in the context of the perceptual blind spots that make western subjectivity capable of neglecting the environment. Specifically, I argue that Kierkegaard’s phenomenology of faith underscores the importance of contemplative “inwardness” for developing forms of subjectivity capable of responding to other-than-human forms of address, such as those issuing from the land and other-than-human-beings. Through a juxtaposition of readings from Fear and Trembling, Training in Christianity, and Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, I show that Kierkegaard’s phenomenology of faith can be read as a “contemplative ecology”, that is, as an existential phenomenology attuned to how inward and outward landscapes interact, making him in some sense an “ecological” thinker and his texts helpful contemplative guides for navigating the changes of mind and heart necessary for the “self” to recognize itself embedded in the world. I introduce and conclude the questioning of this thesis through phenomenological vignettes intended to include the reader in the perceptual queries motivating this research.