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1 results

  • Chapter 10 - Imaginary Construction and Experiment

  • from Part III - Kierkegaard and the Concept of Thought Experiment
  • Eleanor Helms, California Polytechnic State University
  • Book:
    Kierkegaard and the Structure of Imagination
    Published online:
    26 September 2025
    Print publication:
    16 October 2025, pp 157-175

  • Summary

    Kierkegaard and Ørsted were not just contemporaries but personally knew each other. In this chapter, I argue that Kierkegaard probably learned the term Tankeexperiment from Ørsted. This chapter contextualizes Kierkegaard’s use of “imaginary construction” (Experiment) in his work as a whole, including his well-known uses of paradoxes. I will show how the core elements of Ørsted’s account – thought experiment as a method of variation, the need for free and active constitution, and the use of thought experiments for facilitating genuine thought – are echoed in Kierkegaard’s discussions. Along the way, I will describe some decisions on how to translate Experiment and Tankeexperiment that are unfortunate in some ways and fortuitous in others, as I will explain. In these ways, Kierkegaard indirectly takes up Kant’s proposal that “construction” (i.e., Experiment in Danish) is a means of achieving cognition.