Despairing of the social

Kierkegaard’s ‘antimodernism’

Abstract

This paper aims to give a reading of some pieces of Sören Kierkegaard’s work under the light of recent discussions around the topic of modernity and its contradictions. Here it might be found that the philosopher called ‘the father of existentialism’, is something more than that: he might also be a critical witness of the beginning of a kind of modernity that continues being still our own. The argument goes through a characterization of the basic tension of modernity that is outlined in the work of Max Weber and retaken by authors such as Alain Touraine and Jürgen Habermas (among others). As it is known, such tension comprises the distance between the rationality requirements of social and cultural systems on the one hand, and the proper life projects of individuals on the other. Kierkegaard might be a guest in discussions occurring within this framework, from a reading that attempts to present him as a critic of the ‘modernist hope’ of the moral and socio-historical philosophy of Kant.