Ethics as the connexion between subjectivity and intersubjectivity

Abstract

In this article I wish to reckon with the traditional view of the Kierkegaaardian ethics. This view, in this context presented by T h . W. Adorno, M. Buber and E. Levinas, is a view that is combining ethics solely with subjectivity, i. e. the determination of the Self, whereas intersubjectivity, i. e. the relation between the Self and the Other, is left out of the discussion as it is thought to have nothing to do with Kierkegaards understanding of ethics. In opposition to such a (mis-)interpretation, and against the critique of Kierkegaard that follows from it, the critique of solipsism and acosmism, I wish to argue that ethics in the Kierkegaardian works is closely conected to the relation between subjectivity and inters ubjectivity. Without a positive, i. e. an ethically ruled relation to the Other, the Self looses itself into abstractness and discontinuity. On the contrary, the relation to the Other provides the continuity and the concreteness of the Self.