Reason and Conversion in Kierkegaard and the German Idealists

In his late work Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Immanuel Kant struggles to answer a straightforward, yet surprisingly difficult, question: how is radical conversiona complete reorientation of a persons most deeply held valuespossible? In this book, Ryan S. Kemp and Christopher Iacovetti examine how this question gets taken up by Kants philosophical heirs: Schelling, Fichte, Hegel and Kierkegaard. More than simply developing a novel account of each thinkers position, Kemp and Iacovetti trace how each philosopher formulates his theory in response to tensions in preceding views, culminating in Kierkegaards claim that radical conversion lies outside a persons control. Kemp and Iacovetti close by examining some of the moral-psychological implications of Kierkegaards account, particularly the question of how someone might responsibly relate to values that have, by their own admission, been acquired in contingent and accidental fashion.