ABSTRACT
The most important manifestation of the challenge to moral theory stems from Kierkegaard’s opposition to Hegelianism and system-prone thinking.
According to Kierkegaard, one who works entirely upon received laws and never uses ‘soulfulness’, lives a life of ethical despair. In his preface to Fear and Trembling, Silentio calls himself ‘a freelance who neither writes the System nor makes any promises about it, who pledges neither anything about the system nor himself to it’ (2003: 43). For Kierkegaard, a ready-made framework of morality provides a mechanical solution to problems, which may appear like putting punctuation marks by counting words rather than using them in places where it is required by language to make sense.1
