| dc.description.abstract | This Doctoral Dissertation in Philosophy has addresses the concept of 'category' and how the 19th-century Danish existentialist philosopher Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855), known for being an existentialist conceived of this concept. This concept is not extensively explored and developed in Kierkegaard’s writings, and he does not devote a book or chapter to the topic of the categories. Moreover, there is no comprehensive list or critical examination of Kierkegaardian categories in the secondary literature, and there is widespread disagreement in the secondary literature on Kierkegaard’s views about the categories. Consequently, the following questions—'How did Kierkegaard deal with the categories?', 'Is it possible to extract from Kierkegaard's writings a Treatise on the categories?' and 'How would a table of the Kierkegaardian categories be configured?' remain unanswered. The aim of this thesis is to offer an alternative answer to these questions (linked to the larger philosophical problem 'what is the structure of existence?'), through the defense of two central theses: 1) Kierkegaard has a 'treatise on categories', although not in the sense in which it is traditionally built; and 2) from this treatise, by specifying some of its elements and criteria, it is possible to apprehend both a categorical structure (composed of types of categories) and the categories themselves that
Kierkegaard developed. This thesis uses the methodology of literature review and textual
interpretation. This thesis is divided into six chapters. The first is an introduction, subdivided into three parts, comprising an introduction to the topic and an introduction to the work itself. The second chapter traces a brief history of the categories to observe the criteria used by the philosophical tradition and the context in which Kierkegaard can be inserted. The third chapter discusses the state of the secondary literature and the questions about Kierkegaard’s views of the categories which are still open. The fourth chapter provides a more detailed investigation of the categories in Kierkegaard and defends the first argument of the thesis. The fifth chapter is dedicated to the critical reconstruction of the 'treatise on categories' in Kierkegaard and defends the second argument of the thesis. The sixth chapter concludes. | en |
