“Possibility is the heaviest of all categories”. On Kierkegaard’s reading of modal categories. Introduction

The categories of modality, in a thinker like Kierkegaard who always prioritized the subjective dimension of the how (hvorledes) over the objective what (hvad), assume decisive importance. Possibility, actuality, necessity and contingency are crucial categories recurring in Søren Kierkegaard’s thought. Some of them (i.e., possibility and necessity) are even part of the definition of the Self’s constitution as a relation (see The Sickness unto Death, 1849). The same categories also appear in reflections on historicity (see the “Interlude” from Philosophical Fragments, 1844; The Concept of Anxiety, 1844; Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, 1846) aimed at avoiding any form of Hegelian historicism in favor of the Christian revelatory Kairos.