Kierkegaard on Hope and Faith

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a very solid and insightful essay, deeply informed by knowledge of Kierkegaard's writings as well as relevant additional writings (both historical and current discussions germane to the topic).  It is both clear and streamlined in its presentation, and the project unfolds in a natural, logical way.  The segmenting of the essay into discreet sections helps make its organization transparent.

Though it is a relatively short essay, it accomplishes quite a lot.  It places Kierkegaard's views on hope in a several important contexts, notably in relation to general discussions of hope as a virtue, to more specific discussions of hope as a theological virtue, and to existing relevant Kierkegaard scholarship on this question. 

At every turn, I was impressed by the clarity and precision of the discussion.  The author quickly moves past obvious but superficial ways of taking Kierkegaard's comments on hope.  Quick and easy assimilations to Aristotle's model of virtues as means are transcended toward more subtle evaluation of Kierkegaardian hope as a theological virtue.  The author uses Aquinas well as a reference point, identifying signficant ways in which Kierkegaard and Aquinas concur on hope.  But the author goes beyond that to draw distinctions between the two.

I am impressed by the author's ability to move quickly but clearly across a wide variety of Kierkegaardian texts.  As I read and thought of linkages to important Kierkegaardian texts, the author invariably made those connections and then made others that I hadn't anticipated.  

I'm grateful to have read this essay as it has clarified my own understanding of this topic.  I feel confident it will be of similar value to many of your readers.

Good essay.

Author Response

I appreciate the reviewer's positive response to my paper and am very pleased that he or she found the paper helpful. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

There is much in this paper to commend it: There is a detailed engagement with Kierkegaard's texts as well as the secondary literature; an interesting distinction between "hopeSA" and "hopeE"; attentiveness to Kierkegaard's existential commitment; and an attempt to situate Kierkegaard within virtue ethics.

However, the connections between these many elements could be made more clear and to do so may require some restructuring of the paper in its current form. In particular, the paper would benefit from more clearly articulating and focusing its main thesis--the initial question could be further sharpened, as it is by no means an under-explored question in Kierkegaard scholarship and so it would be helpful if a little more space was given to the specific debate which this paper sees itself as contributing to (i.e., building on Bernier's and others´work or should this be seen as a new approach to the question?). It also seems a little odd that Sickness unto Death sparks the central question of the paper and yet this work is not discussed much compared to EUD or WL.  Here footnote 2 also might require further explication. 

In the discussion of the philosophy of hope it would be beneficial to further explicate the distinction between hope and hopefulness in regards to HopeE, as there is some conceptual slippage as the author refers to both hopeE and hopefulE. Furthermore this idea also seems to have some common traits with the recent focus theory of hope (Chignell 2022). In addition, is hopeE meant to be a response to the problem/criticism that the Standard Account struggles to distinguish between hope and despair? 

 

It might also be helpful to earlier on introduce the idea of Kierkegaard as a virtue theorist as a way to frame or structure the exposition of his account of hope. When it is stated on p. 10 that the author "thinks Kierkegaard in effect is a virtue theorist", it would have been helpful had the author offered more textual evidence from Kierkegaard in that section: it might benefit the paper if this standpoint of the article could be foregrounded more and perhaps more explicitly from the start connect this interpretation of Kierkegaard with the initial question raised by SUD. Particularly because the idea of Kierkegaard as a virtue ethicist/theorist continues to be a point of strong disagreement among Kierkegaard scholars (as also pointed out in the article with references to Walsh and Dalsgaard).

 

Finally, the paper would benefit from a much more in-depth consideration of what the existential means for Kierkegaard and what it means in relation to hope as well as a further clarification of what is meant by "existential buoyancy": although "existential" was mentioned in the abstract as a way to distinguish Kierkegaard from Aquinas it doesn't appear to be developed much in the paper's current form, being discussed in effect in a paragraph or two: seeing as it seems very crucial to the paper's argument (or one of its arguments) it could be beneficial to elucidate the meaning of Kierkegaard's notion of existence further and what this means for understanding key concepts in his works like faith, hope and love. 

 

As a reader I struggled to follow the overall aim and argumentation in this paper as it seemed there were several--the hope is therefore that the above might offer some suggestions for how to restructure/refocus some of the many promising and thoughtful discussions and ideas presented. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Some typos and other minor issues that require proofreading and editing.

A few things I noted;

- inconsistent spelling in some place (i.e., actualised, realised etc. but also recognize, minimize, and realized)

- p. 1: "life, In this paper" instead of "life. In this paper"

- p. 16: "achive" instead of achieve

Footnote 33, "Ferraira" instead of "Ferreira.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf