ABSTRACT
In her essay “Can the ‘Other’ of Philosophy Speak?” Judith Butler tells the story of a “young teenager hiding out from painful family dynamics in the basement of her house where her mother’s college books were stored.”1 The two books that stood out to the teenager, somehow attracting her attention and sparking her interest for philosophy, were Spinoza’s Ethics and Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. The story of the teenage girl is the narration of Butler’s own adolescence and the description of her early introduction to philosophy. When investigating Butler’s reception of Kierkegaard, we have to take into account the story of the teenager in the basement, a story that describes the role of Kierkegaard in her early introduction to philosophy. We have to consider that Kierkegaard’s influence on Butler might not be found-at least not in the first place-in a scholarly reception, but that it has to be traced back to the teenager in the basement and to a certain sensibility, a certain cautious attitude towards any kind of text or argument, which emerged in these early years and which was decisively influenced by the reading of Kierkegaard. This sensibility, which would eventually become important for Butler’s academic work and her political commitment, has something to do with the rhetorical dimension of a text, with the mode in which an argument is presented, a dimension that is usually overlooked, but which Kierkegaard and Butler force us to take into consideration.
