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A Comparative and Critical Appraisal of Climacus’ Theory of Modalities in the “Interlude”

It is well-known that Climacus and Anti-Climacus use the words “necessity,” “possibility” and “reality” in very different ways. In contrast to those interpreters who regard the differences in terminology as a reflection of a conceptual change in Kierkegaard’s authorship, this essay argues that it is possible to reconstruct the claims of Climacus and Anti-Climacus in a coherent way. The reconstruction not only tries to show that Climacus and Anti-Climacus may be understood as making a contribution to a long philosophical discussion about modalities which goes back to Aristotle and Kant, but it also uses tools from modern modal logic, which connect the two pseudonyms to modern philosophical discussions based upon Frege’s philosophy of language. The Interlude in the Philosophical Fragments is an odd text. Whereas the rest of the book is written in a personal style, using what Climacus himself would refer to as irony and indirect communication, the “Interlude” seems to be a case of direct communication devoid of irony. Thereby the text represents what Climacus, in the Postscript, would refer to as “objective reflection.” It therefore has a peculiar status not only within the Fragments but also within Kierkegaard’s corpus as a whole. On the one hand, it does not have the existential import which characterizes most of the work. On the other hand, it seems to make a serious contribution to what may be considered as the intellectual, philosophical framework of Kierkegaard’s more existential writings. But even from this last point of view the text is odd. Some of the main formulations are cryptic and in serious need of interpretation. In addition, some of the key ideas are just stated, with no supporting argument. In the following, I shall try to reconstruct the main line of thought, using conceptual tools adapted from modern logic. Subsequently, I shall attempt to evaluate the text from the viewpoint of other pseudonyms, especially Anti-Climacus.