O conceito de exterioridade: constantemente referido à pseudonímia kierkegaardiana

Abstract

We can understand modernity through the internalization process of the ontological foundation to the realm of the subject’s inwardness. However, this atomization can lead us to individualism, relativism, and subjectivism by producing individuals closed in on themselves. This dissertation will discuss why any universal mediation, although important, is not enough to overcome these problems since it just promotes a relative externalization of that introjected ontological foundation; we need a radical exile of the foundation from the subject, i.e., to deconstruct an essentialist notion of subjectivity. We identify Kierkegaardian authorship as a precursor of this ontological turn that became prominent in poststructuralist discussions on alterity in the XX century. From its pseudonymity and appealing to a Protestant paradigm to promote such an ontological exile, Kierkegaardian authorship deauthorizes Kierkegaard’s role as a modern author while performing the deconstruction of the modern subject taken as the ontological foundation for her own subjectivity. In this way, the individual becomes a self, not by knowing and reaching her inner voice but by answering an outer call that convenes her to exercise her subjectivity as a relation. In this context, we will propose a concept of exteriority with continual reference to Kierkegaardian pseudonymity to deal with the existential and ethical implications of that ontological exile. An absolute criterion - exteriority - addresses the violence of individualism, relativism, and subjectivism by preventing the subject and the crowd from being the ontological criteria to herself and the other. However, only a religious existential disposition can perform such ontological exile. It opens the tautology of the modern subject into a paradoxal paradigm of subjectivity. That’s why the concept of exteriority is relevant for us: it is one of the few concepts proper to the Science of Religion by helping us in delimitating some epistemological margins of this emerging academic field.