And yet if we understand Kierkegaardian choice as a surrogate for Kantian reason, we must also in turn understand that Kant too was responding to an earlier philosophical episode, that Kant’s appeal to reason was the historical heir and successor of Diderot’s and Hume’s appeals to desire and to the passions. Kant’s project was an historical response to their failure just as Kierkegaard’s was to his. Wherein did that earlier failure lie?
