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A Study on S. Kierkegaard's Psychological Experiment as Indirect Communication
The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art
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The subject of this essay is S. Kierkegaard's psychological experiment(or imaginary psychological construction) as a category of indirect communication. The most typical examples of Kierkegaard's works on this subject are found in Constantius’ Repetition: A venture in experimenting psychology and Taciturnus' ““Guilty?”/“Not guilty?” A story of suffering, An imaginary psychological construction”. Both pseudonyms develop an imaginary construction to activate the inwardness of reader. As a core category of indirect communication the imaginary construction has the ultimate goal of relating an individual to God. The first explicit appearance of indirect communication in the Kierkegaard's authorship is in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. But indirect communication is more explicitly treated in Anti-Climacus' Practice in Christianity. In the framework of Kierkegaard's work, Anti-Climacus representing the Christian standpoint is a higher pseudonym as compare to the earlier esthetic pseudonyms. In Practice in Christianity Anti-Climacus provides an illumination of indirect communication as well as Kierkegaard's other crucial categories. This study will enlighten the meaning of psychological experiment in Kierkegaard's authorship, clarifying a major set of concepts related of indirect communication in Anti-Climacus' viewpoint.
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