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I uppsatsen undersöks hovbildhuggaren Johan Tobias Sergels teckningar av samtida föräldraskap från 1700-talets andra hälft – en dramatiskt föränderlig period i Sveriges och Europas historia, präglad av upplysningsfilosofins omvälvande framväxt. Flertalet teckningar skildrar Sergels egen familj, och kung Gustav III i relationen till sonen och tronarvingen Gustav (IV) Adolf. Genom bildanalyser med stöd i en semiotisk begreppsapparat, samt analys av Sergels samtid, utforskas teckningsmotivens betydelser och hur de kan förstås i den historiska kontexten. Undersökningen visar hur två tydligt definierbara teman återkommer i Sergels teckningar (ömhet, intimitet och fysisk interaktion och pedagogik och utbildning), och hur motiven kan förstås som uttryck för upplysningsfilosofiska idéer om föräldraskap och familjelycka. Särskilda bildelement kan tolkas som tecken för strömningens progressiva moder- och faderskapsideal, som uttryckts av bl.a. upplysningsfilosofen Jean-Jacques Rousseau i Émile ou de l’education (1762), och återkommer i läroboken Barnabok (1780), tillägnad den då tvåårige Gustav (IV) Adolf. Undersökningen visar också hur Sergels skildringar av den egna familjen och det kungliga faderskapet, kan betraktas som konstnärliga tolkningar av då rådande familjeförhållanden. Ett urval brev till och från Sergel, samt tidigare forskning, styrker bilden av att Sergel, hans sambo Anna Rella och kung Gustav III praktiserade föräldraskap i linje med centrala upplysningsfilosofiska värden.

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My dissertation, In the Beginning was the Sign, examines the entangled histories of literary modernism and mathematical modernity and revisits their claim to a radical rupture with the past. Informed by Lacanian psychoanalysis, media theory, and deconstruction, I trace how the interplay of literary and mathematical form transformed classical imaginations of the human. Authors like Carl Einstein, Robert Musil or Ernst Cassirer challenge the organic concept of subject formation as Bildung with a new and purely symbolic kind of mathematical abstraction that informs their writing on both thematic and formal levels. In the tradition of Plato’s Meno, they adduce these new forms of mathematical knowledge to find genuinely modern answers to the classical question of the good life. Paradoxically, in striving to portray their own time as a radical novelty that was able to break with its cultural heritage, these authors summon the canon at its most canonical. The mathematician Hilbert, for instance, rewrites the opening of the Gospel of John, translating logos as ‘sign’ rather than ‘word.’ Analyzing literary, philosophical, and mathematical texts in German, English, and French, I show that the questioning of the logical foundations of thought in the so-called foundational crisis in mathematics was re-mediated through a new genealogical exploration of the foundations of European rationality in the texts of classical antiquity.

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This thesis examines the concept of sovereignty, as developed by the jurist Carl Schmitt, and argues that this concept helps to elucidate the very core of Fear and Trembling, a text that continues to be heavily misunderstood despite its great fame in Western thought today. Through a close examination of Schmitt’s formulation of the concept of sovereignty and the method by which he develops this concept through Kierkegaard’s concept of the exception in Repetition, I show how Kierkegaard influenced Schmitt and also how Schmitt’s interpretation is useful for reading Fear and Trembling. However, I also show how Schmitt’s usage of Kierkegaard, despite its ingenuity, is misleading, and present a more faithful reading of Kierkegaard’s concept of exception. With this reorientation, I in turn critique Schmitt’s methodology and the way he understands sovereignty. Following this reinterpretation of sovereignty, I examine the text of Genesis 22 and Fear and Trembling and examine the theological themes that ground the narrative of the Binding of Isaac. I argue that the problem of the Binding and the arguments set forth in Fear and Trembling cannot be understood adequately without a clear awareness of the image of reality that is presupposed. Here, I make use of Erich Auerbach’s illuminating reading of Genesis 22, and Jacob Taubes’ understanding of eschatology. I then examine the problem of violence as presented in the Binding, and how Kierkegaard departs from both Kant’s and Hegel’s critique of Abraham. Finally, I examine Derrida’s reading of Fear and Trembling in The Gift of Death and the way he challenges the height of sovereignty that is implicit within Kierkegaard’s “absolute relation to the absolute.” / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)