Kierkegaard and the Problem of Ironic Agency

Abstract

According to contemporary hierarchical views of the self and agency, the distinctive feature of human agency is that we have the ability to distance ourselves from our immediate desires (Frankfurt) and from those socially prescribed norms that guide our actions (Korsgaard) and choose which desires/practical identities we want to identify as being truly reflective of our own selves. The ironic agent is able to achieve this reflective distance, but is not able to take the second step of fully identifying herself with any desires/identities. Instead, the ironic agent plays at being a certain type of person or having certain desires. The problem for the ironic agent, broadly speaking, is that she is not able to be an agent in the fullest sense of the term, something which requires that we have at least some desires or practical identities with which we have reflectively and fully identified. In Kierkegaard’s thought, we find an in-depth description of ironic agency and its problems, as well as a recommendation for how to move beyond ironic agency. In this paper, I will argue that Kierkegaard’s solution to the problem of ironic agency (a move to the ethical sphere of existence) is not a tenable one, but that a solution to the problem of ironic agency can be worked out by giving a reconstructed reading of Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith.