The Incognito of a Thief: Johannes Climacus and the Poetics of Self-Incrimination

In this essay, I advance a reading of Philosophical Crumbs or a Crumb of Philosophy, published by Søren Kierkegaard under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. I argue that this book is animated by a poetics of self-incrimination. Climacus keeps accusing himself of having stolen his words from someone else. In this way, he deliberately adopts the identity of a thief as an incognito. To understand this poetics of self-incrimination, I analyze the hypothetical thought-project that Climacus develops in an attempt to show what it means to go further than Socrates. In my reading, I distinguish between a Socratic and a non-Socratic conception of education, both of which rely on an incognito. Socrates takes on the maieutic incognito of an ignorant bystander in order to force his interlocutors to turn inward so that the truth that is already within them can be born. In contrast, the non-Socratic education that Climacus advances as a hypothesis relies on what I call ‘the incognito as a true form’. It is an incognito insofar as it confronts the pupils with a paradox on which the understanding runs aground. It is a true form insofar as its immediate appearance is not a disguise, but a true form. This indirect mode of communication is necessary, without it pupils will not be able to encounter a truth that is not inherent within them. Climacus’ poetics of self-incrimination, I argue, tries to repeat this indirect mode of communication by adopting the incognito of a thief as a true form

Thermal hydrocracking of indan. Effects of the hydrogen pressure on the kinetics and Arrhenius parameters

The kinetics of the thermal hydrocracking of indan were investigatedin a high-pressure flow reactor at temperatures from 470 to 530°C, total pressures of up to 300 atm, and molar ratios from 3 to 40. The effect of the hydrogen pressure was reflected especially in a change of the experimental rate equations for the formation of toluene from rT=k [indan]0.5 [hydrogen] to rT=k [indan] 0.75[hydrogen]0.75 with hydrogen partial pressureincreasing from 73 to 230 atm. The rate equation of n-propylbenzene remained constant at rPr=k [indan] [hydrogen]1.5. Simultaneously the Arrheniusparameters of toluene changed significantly, while those of n-propylbenzene remained unchanged. \ud The observed effect of the hydrogen pressure is explained as a change inthe rates of the intermediate reactions; it provides an excellent agreementbetween the theoretical and experimental data. It was found that the steady-state concentration of the hydrogen atoms, which act as chain carriers in the thermal hydrocracking, was much smaller than the thermodynamic equilibrium concentration

De onwetende meester als voorbeeld - Jacques Ranciere: van praktijk naar principe

Bestaat de kernactiviteit van de meester erin om zijn eigen kennis uit te leggen en over te dragen? De Franse filosoof Jacques Rancière laat zien dat een gelegenheidsexperiment van Joseph Jacotot ons een ander voorbeeld aanreikt: de onwetende meester. In zijn boek De onwetende meester: vijf lessen over intellectuele emancipatie (Le maître ignorant: Cinq leçons sur l'émancipation intellectuelle) stelt hij dat de onwetende meester evengoed of zelfs beter in staat is leerlingen iets te leren dan de wetende meester. Rancière neemt in feite twee onderwijspraktijken als voorbeeld: de traditionele praktijk van de wetende meester die uitleg geeft en kennis overdraagt en de experimentele praktijk van de onwetende meester die geen uitleg geeft maar vooral gericht is op de verificatie van aandacht. In dit artikel wil ik op basis van een korte analyse van deze twee praktijken laten zien hoe we uit Rancière’s boek een model kunnen afleiden voor het articuleren van de theoretische principes die impliciet in onderwijspraktijken werkzaam zijn. Dit model is gestoeld op het volgende uitgangspunt: door een succesvolle of juist problematische onderwijspraktijk als voorbeeld te nemen kunnen we de theoretische principes articuleren die erin werkzaam zijn. Dit schept de mogelijkheid om de focus van de van de praktijken naar de principes te verleggen. Hierdoor wordt de onderwijspraktijk op een nieuwe manier inzichtelijk en kunnen we haar theoretisch expliciteren

A comparison of Australian and German literary journalism

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and compare the traditions shaping the development of literary journalism in Australia and Germany. Tracing the different historical developments of the form in the two countries provides the contextual basis for an in-depth comparative analysis, which concentrates on the concepts of credibility and authenticity. The thesis explores whether different attitudes to news and opinion in journalism in the two countries influence these notions that are central to literary journalism. However, in the comparative analysis other significant factors become apparent. In four case studies, two from each country, consisting of book-length examples of literary journalism, distinct journalistic and literary criteria are applied to gain insights of how credibility and authenticity are achieved and to what extent this influences the perception of these works. One key finding is that in Germany the main instrument to achieve authenticity and credibility is eyewitness reporting in the strict sense of the word, that is, the writer experienced what he or she writes about first-hand. Australia, on the other hand, allows more room and greater emphasis for narrative techniques combined with well-researched and verifiable facts. This difference in understanding of authenticity is also supported by the other key finding that diverging media laws and regulations, above all the laws protecting privacy and personality, greatly influence the production and reception of literary journalism in the two countries. For Germany, this means that the scope for the form is far narrower than in the Anglo-American world, to which Australia belongs

Kierkegaard's Concepts: Psychological Experiment

For Kierkegaard the ‘psychological experiment’ is a literary strategy. It enables him to dramatize an existential conflict in an experimental mode. Kierkegaard’s aim is to study the source of movement that animates the existing individual (this is the psychological part). However, he is not interested in the representation of historical individuals in actual situations, but in the construction of fictional characters that are placed in hypothetical situations; this allows him to set the categories in motion “in order to observe completely undisturbed what these require” without caring to what extent someone has met this requirement or is able to meet it (this is the experimental part). The ‘psychological experiment’ is a category of indirect communication that is developed most extensively by Frater Taciturnus, the pseudonymous author of the third part of Stages on Life’s Way. (I) Taciturnus introduces the psychological experiment as a new trajectory in modern literature that offers an alternative to poetry and speculative drama. He develops this new trajectory in praxis (in the novella ‘“Guilty?”/“Not Guilty?” A Story of Suffering: A Psychological Experiment by Frater Taciturnus’) as well as in theory (in the ‘Letter to the Reader’ that accompanies his novella). (II) Two other pseudonymous authors further enrich the conceptual field of the psychological experiment. Constantin Constantius develops the notion ‘experimenting psychology’; Johannes Climacus reflects on the reader’s contemporaneity with the character