ABSTRACT
Johannes Climacus is one of the most elusive and controversial characters in Kierkegaard’s repertoire of pseudonyms. According to some commentators, Climacus was transparently a mouthpiece for Kierkegaard’s own opinions; Kierkegaard the clever ventriloquist simply enjoyed displaying his ability to throw his voice. In this view the ideas and arguments articulated by Climacus and those held by Kierkegaard were virtually identical.1 The influential scholar Niels Thulstrup wrote in the 1950s that Climacus’ Philosophical Fragments “cannot be considered a truly pseudonymous work” because “one will find hardly any inconsistency between this work and [Kierkegaard’s] other private and published thought and writings.”2 Seen from this perspective, Climacus was the most lean of Kierkegaard’s “thin” pseudonyms. But according to more literarily inclined interpreters, the fact that Climacus describes himself as being a humorist has enormous interpretive consequences. The peculiar stance of the humorist must be taken into account in determining the meaning of the text; Climacus’ words cannot be read straightforwardly as if they were those of Kierkegaard. For example, Louis Mackey treated the persona of Climacus as part of Kierkegaard’s general project of subverting fixed, univocal meanings; Climacus’ digressions and shifts of voice and genre militate against any ordinary philosophical or theological reading.3 Roger Poole agreed that the fissures and supplements in Climacus’ texts so destabilize meaning that it is impossible to identify any assertion as Kierkegaard’s position.4 Perhaps nothing that Climacus says should be taken as giving voice to a serious philosophical argument or theological assertion. Taking an approach that emphasized textual indeterminacy somewhat less, Michael Weston regarded Climacus’ humor as a device utilized to discredit the pretensions
of metaphysical speculation; humor is employed in order to undermine impersonal abstraction from life’s first-person ethical challenges.5 In a similar way, Michael Strawser viewed Climacus’ literature as an ironic subversion of objective certainties that opens the way to the reader’s genuine edification, if the reader assumes interpretive responsibility for reading Climacus that way.6 Other expositors detect a self-contradiction in Climacus’ oeuvre that prevents the ascription of anything that Climacus says to Kierkegaard.
