Volume 10, Tome I: Kierkegaard's Influence on Theology: German Protestant Theology (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources) [1 ed.] 9781409444787, 9781409444794, 9781409444800, 1409444783

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Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology Tome III: Catholic and Jewish Theology

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources Volume 10, Tome III

Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources is a publication of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre

General Editor Jon Stewart Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Editorial Board FINN GREDAL JENSEN Katalin Nun peter Šajda Advisory Board Lee c. barrett maría j. binetti IstvÁn CzakÓ Heiko Schulz curtis l. thompson

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

Tome III: Catholic and Jewish Theology

Edited by JOn Stewart

First published 2012 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2012 Jon Stewart and the contributors Jon Stewart has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kierkegaard’s influence on theology. Tome III, Catholic and Jewish theology. – (Kierkegaard research; v. 10) 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855 – Influence. 2. Catholic Church – Doctrines – History – 20th century. 3. Judaism – Doctrines – History – 20th century. I. Series II. Stewart, Jon (Jon Bartley) 198.9–dc23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kierkegaard’s influence on theology / [edited by] Jon Stewart. p. cm. — (Kierkegaard research v. 10) Includes indexes. ISBN 978-1-4094-4478-7 (tome I )—ISBN 978-1-4094-4479-4 (tome II)—ISBN 978-1-4094-4480-0 (tome III) 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855—Influence. 2. Theology. I. Stewart, Jon (Jon Bartley) BX4827.K5K55 2011 198’.9—dc23 Cover design by Katalin Nun ISBN 9781409444800 (hbk)

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Contents List of Contributors   List of Abbreviations   Part I

ix xi

Catholic Theology

Hans Urs von Balthasar: Persuasive Forms or Offensive Signs? Kierkegaard and the Problems of Theological Aesthetics   Joseph Ballan

3

Eugen Biser:   Rediscovering “Christology from Inside” Ulli Roth

25

Romano Guardini:   Between Actualistic Personalism, Qualitative Dialectic and Kinetic Logic Peter Šajda

45

Friedrich von Hügel:   Kierkegaard as Non-Mystical Ascetic and One-Sided Defender of Transcendence David R. Law  Henri de Lubac:   Locating Kierkegaard Amid the “Drama” of Nietzschean Humanism Christopher B. Barnett

75

97

Thomas Merton:   Kierkegaard, Merton and Authenticity Erik M. Hanson

111

Erich Przywara:   Catholicism’s Great Expositor of the “Mystery” of Kierkegaard Christopher B. Barnett

131

vi

Part II

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

Jewish Theology

Abraham Joshua Heschel:   Heschel’s Use of Kierkegaard as Cohort in Depth Theology Jack Mulder, Jr.

155

Abraham Isaac Kook:   Faith of Awe and Love Tamar Aylat-Yaguri

171

J.B. Soloveitchik:   Between Neo-Kantianism and Kierkegaardian Existentialism David D. Possen

189

Index of Persons Index of Subjects

211 217

List of Contributors

Tamar Aylat-Yaguri, Department of Philosophy, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, P.O Box 39040, Tel-Aviv 61390, Israel. Joseph Ballan, University of Chicago Divinity School, Swift Hall, 1025 East 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. Christopher B. Barnett, Villanova University, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Saint Augustine Center 203, 800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, PA 19085, USA. Erik M. Hanson, Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, 1420 Austin Bluffs, Parkway, Colorado Springs, CO 80918, USA. David R. Law, Villanova University, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Saint Augustine Center 203, 800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, PA 19085, USA. Jack Mulder, Jr., Hope College, Department of Philosophy, 126 E. 10th St., Holland, MI 49423, USA. David D. Possen, Whitney Humanities Center 325, Yale University, 53 Wall St., P.O. Box 208298, New Haven, CT 06520–8298, USA. Ulli Roth, Universität Freiburg, Theologische Fakultät, Arbeitsbereich Dogmatik, D-79085 Freiburg i. Br., Germany. Peter Šajda, Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia.

List of Abbreviations

Danish Abbreviations B&A

Breve og Aktstykker vedrørende Søren Kierkegaard, vols. 1–2, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1953–54.

Bl.art. S. Kierkegaard’s Bladartikler, med Bilag samlede efter Forfatterens Død, udgivne som Supplement til hans øvrige Skrifter, ed. by Rasmus Nielsen, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1857. EP

Af Søren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, vols. 1–9, ed. by H.P. Barfod and Hermann Gottsched, Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel 1869–81.

Pap.

Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, vols. I to XI–3, ed. by Peter Andreas Heiberg, Victor Kuhr and Einer Torsting, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1909–48; second, expanded ed., vols. I to XI–3, by Niels Thulstrup, vols. XII to XIII supplementary volumes, ed. by Niels Thulstrup, vols. XIV to XVI index by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1968–78.

SKS

Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vols. 1–28, vols. K1–K28, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Joakim Garff, Jette Knudsen, Johnny Kondrup, Alastair McKinnon and Finn Hauberg Mortensen, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag 1997ff.

SV1

Samlede Værker, ed. by A.B. Drachmann, Johan Ludvig Heiberg and H.O. Lange, vols. I–XIV, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag 1901– 06. English Abbreviations

AN

Armed Neutrality, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

AR

On Authority and Revelation, The Book on Adler, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1955.

ASKB The Auctioneer’s Sales Record of the Library of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. by H.P. Rohde, Copenhagen: The Royal Library 1967.

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Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

BA

The Book on Adler, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

C

The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

CA

The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by Reidar Thomte in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980.

CD

Christian Discourses, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

CI

The Concept of Irony, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989.

CIC

The Concept of Irony, trans. with an Introduction and Notes by Lee M. Capel, London: Collins 1966.

COR

The Corsair Affair; Articles Related to the Writings, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982.

CUP1 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 1, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982. CUP2 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, vol. 2, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982. CUPH Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2009. EO1

Either/Or, Part I, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1987.

EO2

Either/Or, Part II, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1987.

EOP

Either/Or, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1992.

EPW

Early Polemical Writings, among others: From the Papers of One Still Living; Articles from Student Days; The Battle Between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars, trans. by Julia Watkin, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990.

EUD

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990.

List of Abbreviations

xi

FSE

For Self-Examination, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990.

FT

Fear and Trembling, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1983.

FTP

Fear and Trembling, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1985.

JC

Johannes Climacus, or De omnibus dubitandum est, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985.

JFY

Judge for Yourself!, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990.

JP

Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols. 1–6, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, assisted by Gregor Malantschuk (vol. 7, Index and Composite Collation), Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press 1967–78.

KAC

Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom,” 1854–1855, trans. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944.

KJN

Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks, vols. 1–11, ed. by Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, George Pattison, Vanessa Rumble, and K. Brian Söderquist, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press 2007ff.

LD

Letters and Documents, trans. by Henrik Rosenmeier, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978.

LR

A Literary Review, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 2001.

M

The Moment and Late Writings, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

P

Prefaces / Writing Sampler, trans. by Todd W. Nichol, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

PC

Practice in Christianity, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1991.

PF

Philosophical Fragments, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985.

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PJ

Papers and Journals: A Selection, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1996.

PLR

Prefaces: Light Reading for Certain Classes as the Occasion May Require, trans. by William McDonald, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1989.

PLS

Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1941.

PV

The Point of View including On My Work as an Author, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, and Armed Neutrality, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1998.

PVL

The Point of View for My Work as an Author including On My Work as an Author, trans. by Walter Lowrie, New York and London: Oxford University Press 1939.

R

Repetition, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1983.

SBL

Notes of Schelling’s Berlin Lectures, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989.

SLW

Stages on Life’s Way, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1988.

SUD

The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980.

SUDP The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Alastair Hannay, London and New York: Penguin Books 1989. TA

Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978.

TD

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1993.

UD

Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1993.

WA

Without Authority including The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air, Two Ethical-Religious Essays, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, An Upbuilding Discourse, Two Discourses at the Communion on

List of Abbreviations

xiii

Fridays, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997. WL

Works of Love, trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1995.

WS

Writing Sampler, trans. by Todd W. Nichol, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.

Part I Catholic Theology

Hans Urs von Balthasar: Persuasive Forms or Offensive Signs? Kierkegaard and the Problems of Theological Aesthetics Joseph Ballan

It has become practically de rigeur to begin discussing the life and work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88) by making reference to his almost impossibly extensive, eclectic corpus and astonishing erudition. Reflecting on the life and work of his friend, Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) exclaimed, “this man is perhaps the most cultivated of his time. If there is a Christian culture, here it is!”1 Born into a Swiss family which saw that he received a thorough cultural education, Balthasar wrote his first book, on music, at the age of 20. He studied Germanistik at the Universities of Berlin, Vienna, and Zürich. His 1930 dissertation, Geschichte des eschatologischen Problems in der modernen deutschen Literatur, submitted to the Germanistik faculty at Zürich, eventually became the three-volume Apokalypse der deutschen Seele (1937–39).2 A friend reports that Balthasar insisted upon the fact that he remained primarily a scholar of German literature and culture, rather than a theologian, throughout his life.3 Indeed, the references to Mozart (1756–91), Goethe (1749–1832), Nietzsche (1844–1900), and Hegel (1770–1831) do not end with the publication of the Apokalypse, though veritably theological concerns also animate even this early work

1 Henri de Lubac, “A Witness of Christ in the Church: Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, ed. by David L. Schindler, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1991, p. 272. 2 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Apokalypse der deutschen Seele. Studien zu einer Lehre von letzten Haltungen, vols. 1–3, Salzburg and Leipzig: Verlag Anton Pustet 1937–39. 3 Alois Haas, “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s ‘Apocalypse of the German Soul,’ ” in Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, ed. by Schindler, p. 45. See also Balthasar’s comparison of his own work with that of Karl Rahner (the two are typically—and simplistically—construed as representative of the conservative and liberal poles, respectively, of twentieth-century German Catholic theology), in which he suggests that Rahner could be imagined to take Kant or Fichte as his starting point while, for his part, and “as a Germanist,” Balthasar takes Goethe as his own starting point. Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Geist und Feuer. Ein Gespräch mit Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Herder Korrespondenz, vol. 30, 1976, pp. 75–6.

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of Germanistik, as the title indicates.4 As he neared completion of these studies, he began to study philosophy and theology in preparation for entering the Society of Jesus. He became a Jesuit in 1929 and would eventually align himself with the French ressourcement theologians, for example, de Lubac, Yves Congar (1904–95), and Jean Daniélou (1905–74), who can be said to have inspired some of the reforms of Vatican II. As Kevin Mongrain explains, his own contribution to this movement cannot be separated from his reaction against the regnant neo-scholasticism, along with its late medieval criteria for theological rationality. Balthasar’s desire to reorient theology and, with it, rationality more generally, manifested itself in a series of studies of Patristic writers, including Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335–94), Origen (ca. 185–254), and Maximus Confessor (ca. 580–662).5 After leaving the Jesuits in 1940 to join Adrienne von Speyr’s (1902–67) Johannesgemeinschaft, Balthasar published a seminal work on the theology of his friend Karl Barth (1886–1968),6 whom he first wrote about in the final volume of his Apokalypse. Peter van Erp characterizes Karl Barth as “the first serious Catholic answer to the Protestant discussion of natural theology.”7 In the 1950s Balthasar continued to publish some shorter theological works which anticipate and sometimes lay the groundwork for the larger scale projects to come. During the decades of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s Balthasar produced what scholars regard as his magnum opus and one of the most important contributions to theology in the twentieth century. Balthasar is perhaps most well-known for the first panel of this triptych, the theological aesthetics (Herrlichkeit), and for the more general project that pervades all three portions of this trilogy in 14 volumes, namely, the recovery of the significance of beauty, the “forgotten transcendental,” for Christian theology. As D.C. Schindler has it, referring to a claim made in the book that concludes the trilogy (Epilog), since “all worldly being is epiphanous...the fundamental phenomenon of reality, than which nothing more basic can be found, is Gestalt.”8 Indeed, the trilogy begins with beauty (pulchrum), and more specifically with a prolegomena on “seeing the Gestalt” before moving on to volumes dealing with the good (bonum) and the true (verum). Balthasar takes up these last two subjects under the rubrics of TheoDrama and Theo-Logic, respectively. The former, whose subject is the “action” both of God and of humanity, aims to explicate “the meaning of the theater of the world

4 See von Balthasar’s 1955 assessment of the place of this work in his larger project: “the aim here was not a theoretical discussion but evidence of the point at which in each case…the opening to the ultimate dimension, namely, Christ, takes place.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mein Werk. Durchblicke, Einsiedeln: Johannes 1990, p. 33 (English translation: My Work: In Retrospect, trans. by Cornelia Capol, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1993, p. 41.) 5 Kevin Mongrain, The Systematic Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Irenaean Retrieval, New York: Herder & Herder 2002, pp. 1–15. 6 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth. Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie, Cologne: J. Hegner 1951. 7 See Stephan Erp, The Art of Theology: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics and the Foundations of Faith, Leuven: Peeters 2004, p. 83. 8 David C. Schindler, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth, New York: Fordham University Press 2004, pp. 364–5.

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5

ultimately as a play within God’s (trinitarian) play,”9 while the latter constitutes Balthasar’s attempt to write an ontology, in three volumes, of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In all three sections of this massive undertaking, the full scope of Balthasar’s erudition is on display as he shows himself equally at ease conversing with patristic as with modern sources, with philosophy and theology as with literature and drama. In the face of this often breathtaking variety of textual interlocutors, Oliver Davies issues a helpful warning that those interested in the question of Balthasar’s interpretation of Kierkegaard, for instance, would do well to heed: “much of what is included [in the trilogy] is intended to exemplify the key ideas and does not need to be scrutinized with the same attentiveness as those passages or sections which set out the governing ideas of the entire project.”10 In the early 1970s Balthasar founded the Communio journal with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (b. 1927) who was later elected Pope Benedict XVI. John Paul II (1920–2005) made him cardinal in 1988; Balthasar died in the same year. I. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and a New Apocalyptic Regarding Balthasar’s early contribution to German literary history, in three tomes that Balthasar did not republish after 1947, Aidan Nichols writes that what we have [in this work] is a large number of miniature monographs on a variety of philosophers and poets in which Balthasar runs through their work for the light they can throw on ideas of ultimate reality or final destiny—on what he terms “eschatology,” a word he uses in a very broad sense that is unconfined to discussion of “the Four Last Things,” death, judgment, Heaven, Hell, though these are not excluded.11

In many ways, this study, though a massive undertaking in itself, merely lays the ground for what will be clarified in a more overtly theological discourse later in Balthasar’s career. That Balthasar did not have the work republished after 1949 suggests that, from his more mature theological perspective, he did not take a very high view of the work, which Kierkegaard scholar Theodor Haecker (1879–1945) lambasted as “even more embarrassing than [Karl] Söhle’s manure pit” and full of “blasphemy.”12 Balthasar will return with great frequency to many of the figures discussed in these pages, including Kierkegaard. Before opening the second volume “under the sign of Nietzsche,” he concludes the first volume with a discussion of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, who are brought together in a section entitled, “The

Ibid., p. 18. Oliver Davies, “The Theological Aesthetics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. by Edward T. Oakes and David Moss, New York: Cambridge University Press 2004, p. 131. In accordance with this advice, we will give particular attention to the place of Kierkegaard in Balthasar’s articulation of the general project of a theological aesthetics, especially in our conclusion. 11 Aidan Nichols, Scattering the Seed: A Guide through Balthasar’s Early Writings on Philosophy and the Arts, Londona and New York: T. & T. Clark 2006, p. 35. 12 Quoted in Haas, “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s ‘Apocalypse of the German Soul,’ ” p. 50. 9



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Duel of the Idea.”13 In bringing these two thinkers together, attempting to come to terms with the “meaning of the dialogic between Christian and non-Christian world views,”14 Balthasar is preceded by Gottlieb Sodeur’s Kierkegaard und Nietzsche,15 a work with which Balthasar was familiar, among other sources, for his reflection on Kierkegaard that he reports having read throughout his student career, including works by August Vetter,16 Romano Guardini,17 Martin Thust,18 and Friedrich Adolf Voigt.19 It should be borne in mind that this work is a study in German literary history; Kierkegaard, along with Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81), who receives a lengthy treatment in comparison with Nietzsche in volume two,20 is one of very few non-German writers to make an appearance in its pages. Balthasar quotes, often at length and without commentary, from German translations of The Sickness unto Death, Philosophical Fragments, Stages on Life’s Way, The Concept of Anxiety, “Purity of Heart,” Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and from the journals, but the citation of these secondary works should remind us that Balthasar is as interested in the effect of Kierkegaard’s writings on “the German soul” as he is in their content. This will become clearer as we discuss Balthasar’s later writings. The chapter in question begins by emphasizing the similarities between the two men, for example their opposition to the intellectual systems of German idealist thought, their assault on historicism, their insistence on thinking “against the current,” and their use of music as a “starting-point.”21 Balthasar singles out Kierkegaard for his diagnosis of the “sickness of our time” as the “Promethean will-to-be-God,” a societal sickness which manifests itself in the texts of Hegel and Fichte (1762– 1814).22 The “form of a new apocalypse,” that is, a new conception of the ultimate or absolute, is legible in the pages of these two writers, one achieved not by “knowledge of the [historical or speculative] end,” as in idealism, but in the admission that the sheer movement of existence is all that gives itself to human thought.23 Balthasar does not, however, emphasize the similarities between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard at the expense of an honest appraisal of the serious differences between them. For example, Balthasar reads Kierkegaard’s “existential pathos” as a more dialectical Balthasar, Apokalypse der deutschen Seele, vol. 1, Der deutsche Idealismus, pp. 695– 734. 14 Balthasar, My Work, p. 42. 15 Gottlieb Sodeur, Kierkegaard und Nietzsche, Tübingen: Mohr 1914. 16 August Vetter, Frömmigkeit als Leidenschaft. Eine Deutung Kierkegaards, Leipzig: Insel Verlag 1928. 17 Romano Guardini, Der Mensch und der Glaube, Leipzig: J. Hebner 1932. Balthasar first encountered the work of Kierkegaard in one of Guardini’s courses, in which he had enrolled during the height of a “Kierkegaard wave.” See Balthasar, Mein Werk, p. 46 (My Work, p. 57; translation modified). 18 Martin Thust, Søren Kierkegaard. Der Dichter des Religiosen, Munich: Beck 1932. 19 Friedrich Adolf Voigt, Sören Kierkegaard im Kampfe mit der Romantik, der Theologie und der Kirche, Berlin: Furche Verlag 1928. 20 Balthasar, Apokalypse der deutschen Seele, vol. 2, Im Zeichen Nietzsches, pp. 202–312. 21 Balthasar, Apokalypse der deutschen Seele, vol. 1, pp. 700–6. 22 Ibid., p. 703. 23 Ibid., p. 708. 13

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7

concept than the forever unresolved “swinging” between anxiety and happiness that he finds in Nietzsche.24 On the question of philosophy of history, the latter, whose work knows no division of “stages,” remaining, according to Balthasar, in Kierkegaard’s aesthetic sphere, could only regard the appearance of the god in history as “myth,” while in Kierkegaard it is conceptualized as “paradox.”25 While Balthasar will later criticize what he takes to be the characteristically Kierkegaardian obsession with rupture and paradox, in this chapter, we find no criticism of it and, indeed, one of the most unqualifiedly positive evaluations of Kierkegaard in all of Balthasar’s work. To Nietzsche’s Übermensch, Balthasar opposes Kierkegaard’s “single individual” who has the possibility of becoming a new creature by rendering himself nothing before God. In this transformation, nature and super-nature are reconciled in a single figure of Mensch.26 To Nietzsche’s “power-love,” Balthasar opposes the “descending power and love” described by Kierkegaard as manifested in Christ’s self-offering.27 As exemplary as they were in their own time, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, whom Balthasar boldly describes as two great Flammenzeichen, witnesses to the fire to come, both intellectually and, in Nietzsche’s case, politically, are especially important for understanding the cultural developments in the Europe of the decades following their deaths.28 If the second volume of the Apokalypse takes up “repetitions” of Nietzsche in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Balthasar’s books on anxiety and on Karl Barth consider, albeit in less detail, patterns of thought that can be traced back to Kierkegaard. To these texts we now turn. II. Kierkegaard and Balthasar on Anxiety Balthasar knew The Concept of Anxiety through the translation of Christoph Schrempf.29 He opens the introduction to his short book of 1951, The Christian and Anxiety, with the striking description of Kierkegaard’s 1844 work as “the first and last attempt to come to terms theologically with his subject.”30 Prior to Kierkegaard, Christian theology has had little to say about anxiety that adds anything substantively to what Aristotelian and Stoic moral psychology had detailed. Not even Luther’s Anfechtung, which prefigures to some extent Anfægtelse and Angest in Kierkegaard, constitutes a rigorously theological conceptualization of the human experience of anguish. With the onset of secular modernity, however, anxiety becomes a theoretical issue of great significance, and Kierkegaard recognizes this Ibid., p. 709. Ibid., p. 712. 26 Ibid., p. 717. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., pp. 733–4. 29 Søren Kierkegaard, Der Begriff der Angst, vol. 5 in Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. by H.C. Ketels, Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, 3rd revised print, Jena: Eugen Diederichs 1923. 30 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Der Christ und die Angst, Einsiedeln: Johannes 1951, p. 7. (English translation: The Christian and Anxiety, trans. by Dennis D. Martin and Michael J. Miller, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2000, p. 31.) 24 25

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by making it the subject of one of his pseudonymous writings. The long-winded subtitle to the work in question (“A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Original Sin”) indicates to Balthasar that, while the work’s primary methodological frame of reference will be psychological, the author’s true intention is to arrive at “dogmatic truth.”31 After beginning with no small praise for Kierkegaard’s book on anxiety as a specifically theological book, Balthasar proceeds to open his own book on the subject by criticizing it as insufficiently theological. “Though meant to be theological,” he writes, “Kierkegaard’s penetrating, tormented analyses were the perfect starting point for psychoanalysis and existentialist philosophy as they portrayed the depths and selfencounters of the finite mind.”32 The Concept of Anxiety, that is to say, underwent a “secularization.” What is more, one cannot attribute this secularization of the book to the mischievous intentions of the secularizers following in Kierkegaard’s wake (for example, Heidegger.33) The book leaves itself open to these kinds of appropriations by making anxiety a matter of the finite human subject, without giving careful enough attention to anxiety as it characterizes the relation of the human subject to God. Kierkegaard should never have taken the detour through psychology to dogmatics, Balthasar thinks, and so in his own book on anxiety, Balthasar commits himself to taking up the subject where Kierkegaard leaves off, which is to say, “along more dogmatic lines.”34 This requires a turn toward the ancient “sources of revelation” and away from “the uncertainties of the present age and of human frailty.”35 This project entails not only a turn away from the uncertainties of modernity and of the modern subject, but also from Kierkegaard, his work, and the categories deployed in the latter. These do not figure very heavily in the actual substance of the book after the introduction. Nevertheless, Balthasar does engage with The Concept of Anxiety in his book’s final chapter. As he will do elsewhere in a text from the same period,36 he endorses Kierkegaard’s insistence that sin cannot be explained by appealing to a doctrine of liberum arbitrium, that is, free will or the ability to have done otherwise.37 Balthasar judges that such an explanation requires the dubious presupposition of “neutrality and indifference toward good and evil.”38 He interprets Balthasar, Der Christ und die Angst, p. 7. (The Christian and Anxiety, p. 32.) Balthasar, Der Christ und die Angst, p. 8. (The Christian and Anxiety, p. 32.) 33 Balthasar later would suggest, without specific textual evidence, that Heidegger develops Kierkegaard’s insights regarding the significance of death as recorded in his “Graveside Discourse” (SKS, 5, 442–69 / TD, 69–102). Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theodramatik, vols. 1–5, Einsiedeln: Johannes 1973–83, vol. 3, p. 112. (English translation: Theo-Drama, vols. 1–5, trans. by Graham Harrison, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1988–98, vol. 4, The Action, p. 123.) 34 Balthasar, Der Christ und die Angst, p. 9. (The Christian and Anxiety, p. 34.) 35 Balthasar, Der Christ und die Angst, p. 9. (The Christian and Anxiety, p. 34; translation modified.) 36 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Das Ganze im Fragment. Aspekte der Geschichtstheologie, Einsiedeln: Benziger 1963, p. 112 (English translation: Man in History, trans. by William Glen-Doepel, London: Sheed & Ward 1967, p. 91.) 37 SKS, 4, 414 / CA, 112. 38 Balthasar, Der Christ und die Angst, p. 81. (The Christian and Anxiety, p. 134.) 31 32

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God’s prohibition of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to Adam and Eve as an expression of God’s desire for the single-minded focus of Adam and Eve on God, keeping them from the “lukewarm place” in which they could give neutral, rational consideration to good and evil, God and anti-God as equally acceptable options. Kierkegaard’s objection to the doctrine of liberum arbitrium is rather different; when one makes freedom the simple capacity for a choice between good and evil, Kierkegaard thinks, freedom, along with the concepts of good and evil, become “finitized.”39 This difference does not escape Balthasar’s notice, although he does not consider the discussion of this principle as found earlier in The Concept of Anxiety, where Kierkegaard has his pseudonym give it a decidedly anti-Catholic twist.40 After giving his qualified support for Kierkegaard’s claim about free will, but also about anxiety as an “intermediate term” [Zwischenbestimmung] between the paradisiacal life of Adam and the life of sin,41 Balthasar registers once again his dissatisfaction with the account of humanity’s relationship to God as given in The Concept of Anxiety. Implying that Kierkegaard was using categories borrowed from German idealism and Romanticism in the passages under discussion, Balthasar holds that Kierkegaard focuses upon the relation of the spirit to itself to such an extent that the relation between the self and God becomes forgotten. This problem is closely related to another one: the position that Adam is not qualitatively different from the rest of humankind, a position maintained throughout The Concept of Anxiety but firmly rejected by Balthasar.42 He summarizes his criticism of Kierkegaard by suggesting that the latter correctly identifies anxiety’s “point of origin,” that is, freedom, but that he fails to “sufficiently describe, with regard to its content, the vertigo caused by the void that opens up within the finitude of the mind.”43 This void does not have its origins in that finite site, but rather in the withdrawal of the transcendent God from it. For Balthasar, this withdrawal must be understood as a unique event that took place in the narrative of Adam and Eve, which is why Kierkegaard’s insufficiently theological treatment of the problem of anxiety is linked to a mistake about the uniqueness of Adam and Eve: “the space within Adam that became a place of emptiness and indifferent freedom44 through the withdrawal of the divine presence was a space that God had originally created for himself.”45

SKS 4, 414 / CA, 112. One can surmise that Balthasar concluded that Kierkegaard made up for this failing in The Sickness unto Death: in that later text, Balthasar reads a “peerless account…of the essentially dia-logical constitution of man.” Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 3, pp. 133–35 (Theo-Drama, vol. 4, pp. 145–47). 40 SKS 4, 348 / CA, 41: “This view is in full accord with the Bible, which by denying that man in his innocence has knowledge of the difference between good and evil denounces all the phantasmagoria of Catholic meritoriousness.” 41 Balthasar, Der Christ und die Angst, p. 82. (The Christian and Anxiety, p. 136.) 42 Balthasar, Der Christ und die Angst, p. 83. (The Christian and Anxiety, p. 138.) 43 Balthasar, Der Christ und die Angst, pp. 85–6. (The Christian and Anxiety, pp. 141–2.) 44 That is, liber arbitrium. 45 Balthasar, Der Christ und die Angst, p. 81. (The Christian and Anxiety, p. 135.) 39

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III. Balthasar’s Ultimate Criticisms of Kierkegaard Anticipated Two other works in which Balthasar discusses Kierkegaard, written during the period between his studies in patristics and his inauguration of the trilogy, deserve our attention, announcing as they do the themes that will define Balthasar’s criticisms of Kierkegaard in the trilogy. The first is Balthasar’s well-known study of Karl Barth, that is, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation.46 Two interpretations of Kierkegaard are presented in this text that Balthasar will eventually carry over into his magnum opus: first, the association of Kierkegaard with early twentieth-century dialectical theology (of which Barth’s Römerbrief commentary is representative) and second, the contention that Kierkegaard has a theologically impoverished concept of the beautiful. This book-length “dialogue” with Barth asserts on the one hand the influence of Kierkegaard on the Barth of the Römerbrief and on the other hand the ultimate superiority of Barth in relation to Kierkegaard. It all happens as if the trajectory of Barth’s thought represents a taking-leave of his Kierkegaardian roots, or at least of the “fire of Overbeck, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Kierkegaard” in which this early work was formed.47 On Balthasar’s reading, the first edition of the commentary on Romans explicates the eschatological desire for a lost identity with God, and owes more to right-wing Hegelianism than the second edition, which uses the language of “contradiction” and “infinite qualitative difference” and owes more to Kierkegaard, among others.48 Balthasar convincingly demonstrates that, although Barth presents the second edition (1922) as a radical departure from the first (1919), razed to its foundations and rebuilt, the new emphasis on contradiction actually belies a dialectical reliance upon the concept of lost identity, which was more explicit in the first edition. When Balthasar wants to highlight Barth’s continued indebtedness to “existentialism” in the period immediately after the one marked by the commentary on Romans, when Barth begins to turn his attention to the analogy of being, he makes sure to note the persistent influence of Kierkegaard (here in the Prolegomena to Church Dogmatics).49 Balthasar attributes a general “family resemblance” of Kierkegaard, but also of “Hegelian idealism,” in the works of Barth to the latter’s studies with Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922) at Marburg. Herrmann, according to Balthasar, struck a “rather strange middle position” between Kierkegaard and the Hegelians.50 Barth’s growth away from his early expressionistic, quasi-“existentialist” writing is a salutary progression, in Balthasar’s eyes. The maturation of Barth’s thought takes place as a leaving-behind or, more strongly, as a “refutation” of Kierkegaard.51 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth. Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie, Cologne: Hegner 1951. (English translation: The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. by Edward Oakes, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1992.) 47 Balthasar, Karl Barth, p. 75. (The Theology of Karl Barth, p. 68.) 48 Balthasar, Karl Barth, pp. 75–9. (The Theology of Karl Barth, pp. 69–73.) 49 Balthasar, Karl Barth, pp. 99–100. (The Theology of Karl Barth, pp. 90–1.) 50 Balthasar, Karl Barth, p. 43. (The Theology of Karl Barth, p. 34.) 51 Balthasar, Karl Barth, p. 36. (The Theology of Karl Barth, p. 26.) It is not clear here that Balthasar is addressing a specific textual “refutation” of Kierkegaard by Barth. Rather, the final, mature general cast of Barth’s thought is itself interpreted as a rejection of Kierkegaard. 46

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Though the comment about “family resemblance” just cited is not made with specific reference to one work of Barth, it is clear that Balthasar does not at all recognize any influence of Kierkegaard on the most important accomplishments of Barth (the Römerbrief is, in Balthasar’s eyes, an important accomplishment, but more a cultural or artistic accomplishment than a theological one, at least in light of the masterpieces of theological thought that would come later in his intellectual development). Balthasar describes Barth as the “very antithesis of Kierkegaard” in that the latter separates the aesthetic from the religious, without the possibility of a reconciliation between the two spheres, while the former recognizes that “the religious sphere is aesthetic because it is religious.”52 Though later in the book he will comment more than once on Kierkegaard’ influence on the early Barth, here he detects an implicit “refutation” of Kierkegaard, especially in his allegedly “unworldly, ascetic, polemic” vision of Christianity, already in the early writings of the Swiss Reformed theologian.53 But most representative of the stark contrast between Barth and Kierkegaard, for Balthasar, are their respective attitudes toward Mozart. While Kierkegaard makes of Mozart’s Don Giovanni an emblem of the aesthetic sphere in Either/Or, Barth places the music of Mozart in the highest regard, not merely because the latter, in the words of Barth, “created the best music the world has ever known,” but insofar as he can be understood to occupy “a place in theology, especially in the doctrine of creation and also in eschatology.”54 For Balthasar, there is even a kind of inner harmony between Barth’s Church Dogmatics and Mozart’s “basic style.”55 One could hardly say the same for Kierkegaard, for whom, in Balthasar’s reading, the beauty of a Mozart is religiously incomprehensible. This view of Kierkegaard is reinforced by a “sketch” that appears a few years later (1960), entitled “Revelation and the Beautiful.” In this piece, which anticipates some themes of the volumes on “theological aesthetics” in the trilogy and which, like the book on Barth, refers to Kierkegaard’s “incredibly false analysis of Mozart,” Balthasar laments the “sad” disjunction between the aesthetic and the theological that he finds emblematized in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or.56 Without putting the onus on Kierkegaard himself, who was merely giving expression to the tendency of the century in which he lived,57 Balthasar, who tends to collapse the ethical and the religious into a single sphere (so the “ethico-religious” sphere), describes the disjunction asserted by Kierkegaard in order to give to himself the task of finding the common element between the aesthetic and the “ethico-religious.” This will Balthasar, Karl Barth, p. 36. (The Theology of Karl Barth, p. 26.) Ibid. 54 Balthasar, Karl Barth, pp. 36–7. (The Theology of Karl Barth, pp. 26–7.) 55 Balthasar, Karl Barth, p. 38. (The Theology of Karl Barth, p. 28.) 56 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Offenbarung und Schöhnheit,” in his Skizzen zur Theologie I: Verbum Caro, Einsiedeln: Johannes 1960, pp. 100–34, see pp. 101–2. (English translation: “Revelation and the Beautiful,” in Word and Revelation: Essays in Theology, trans. by A.V. Littledale and Alexander Dru, New York: Herder & Herder 1964, p. 121; p. 123.) 57 Balthasar, “Offenbarung und Schöhnheit,” pp. 100–2. (“Revelation and the Beautiful,” pp. 122–3.) The language of this qualification in Balthasar betrays a disdain for this particular book of Kierkegaard: “Kierkegaard’s Either-Or is not just a piece of warped and stunted Protestant Weltanschauung but also a clear expression of the contemporary situation.” 52 53

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require searching for an older concept of “aesthetics” than one finds in Kierkegaard, a concept of aesthetics which attests to the unity of the beautiful, the good, and the true as posited “originally in the Christian tradition of the West.”58 First, however, Balthasar has to note that Kierkegaard’s own theory of daimonia in Either/Or, to its detriment, completely ignores the significance of Plato’s thought in this area, thereby warranting and even necessitating Balthasar’s return to Plato in the section following this criticism of Kierkegaard, which opens the essay.59 Later in the piece, Balthasar returns to “the case of Kierkegaard, the most arresting and significant of modern times.”60 This time, Balthasar takes up the unity between the aesthetic and the ethical that is, in fact, posited in Either/Or, more specifically in the essays by Judge William in volume two. Balthasar seems to admire the implicit thesis of what we might call the “univocity of love” as expressed there; that is, in his reading, these pieces do not assert a radical gap between agape and eros, suggesting instead that in romantic love there is “a religious element demanding fidelity and constancy.”61 Balthasar then references a string of quotations from “The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage” that explicitly attest to the potential harmony of the aesthetic and, not only the ethical, but also the religious spheres.62 These quotations do not hang together very well with the caricature of Kierkegaard put forward earlier in the essay in question, so here Balthasar must conclude his evaluation of Kierkegaard on a note of uncertainty. After comparing Kierkegaard to the Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel (1861–1949), suggesting that both describe something like an “aesthetic stage” as that which the Christian thinker must reject in order to ascend to the truth, Balthasar asks, “but is this all?” Or has beauty, for Kierkegaard, a lingering taste of what is for him unattainable, forbidden, since he is the one sacrificed, the one who renounces eros for the sake of God, or perhaps out of spleen or melancholy? Here the lines become entangled; and yet it is the extreme stress of his later years, in the form of martyrdom for the truth—which is, despite all, the expression of a purity—which gives even to the disorderly notes of the Journals the inimitable beauty of a mission fulfilled.63

The ambiguity of these remarks on Kierkegaard, the last to appear from Balthasar’s pen before the volumes of the trilogy begin to appear, will not be entirely dissipated by the analyses of those later works.

Balthasar, “Offenbarung und Schöhnheit,” p. 103. (“Revelation and the Beautiful,” p. 125.) 59 Ibid. For a less critical discussion of Kierkegaard on daimonia; see Balthasar, Apokalypse der deutschen Seele, vol. 1, p. 714. 60 Ibid., p. 131. 61 Ibid., p. 132. 62 See, for example, SKS, 3, 66 / EO2, 60. 63 Ibid., p. 133. 58

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IV. Kierkegaard in the Trilogy If Kierkegaard’s thought did not retain the intellectual cachet that it had in Germany when Balthasar wrote his Apokalypse, it would seem that a range of possible objections made in a Kierkegaardian spirit continued to haunt Balthasar as he composed Herrlichkeit. As I will attempt to show in the following sections, in these books, Balthasar uses Kierkegaard rhetorically, as a kind of Protestant foil for his own system. Kierkegaard appears frequently in the opening volume of the work, in which Balthasar explains his project most clearly. In a section with the heading, “The Elimination of Aesthetics from Theology: Protestant Version,” Balthasar identifies what he describes as a category of the aesthetic that would be Kierkegaardian avant la lettre against which Luther mounted an attack in his opposition to the place of Scripture in the Catholic Church.64 He identifies, that is to say, an aversion to “the aesthetic” at the very foundations of Protestant thought. Given that Balthasar wishes to recover an unqualifiedly positive notion of theological aesthetics that, he aims to demonstrate, modernity has lost, it will not come as a surprise that Kierkegaard comes in for frequent criticism on the point that he posits a disjunction between the aesthetic and the ethical, on the one side, and the religious, on the other. Tellingly, the actual discussion of Kierkegaard in the section just mentioned comes immediately after a discussion of Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88), the Protestant figure of whom Balthasar speaks most appreciatively in Herrlichkeit. One of the many contrasts Balthasar erects between Hamann and Kierkegaard is the former’s recognition of the importance of the patristic writings, as against the latter’s denigration of that period of church history. “No one” in the post-Hamannian idealist tradition “followed him on his way back to the fathers.”65 This would include Kierkegaard, who stands at the end of that tradition.66 Balthasar, who takes the ethical to be “beauty’s inner coordinate axis,”67 regrets that Kierkegaard abandoned the harmonizing project symbolized by Judge William in the second volume of Either/Or. As he puts it, “the original “harmony” after which he had strived...yields in Stages on Life’s Way to an inexorable succession in which the ‘apostle’ and the ‘martyr of truth’ are sharply distinguished from the ‘genius,’ thereby eradicating from theology all traces of an aesthetic attitude.”68 Putting aside the fact that Stages on Life’s Way does not actually contain the essay on the genius and the apostle, we note that what Balthasar regards as the “Kierkegaard revival in various ways had an anti-aesthetic effect on theology.”69 By revaluating beauty as a theological concept, and refusing the false choice between Hegel and Kierkegaard, Karl Barth was the first among Protestants to reverse this anti-aesthetic trend of which Kierkegaard is but a symptom. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Herrlichkeit. Eine theologische Ästhetik, vols. 1–3, Einsiedeln: Johannes 1961–69, vol. 1, p. 42. (English translation: The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vols. 1–7, ed. by James Fessio and John Riches, trans. by Oliver Davies et al., Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1985–89, vol. 1, Seeing the Form, p. 45.) 65 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 46. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 49.) 66 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 76. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 81.) 67 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 20. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 22.) 68 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 47. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 50.) 69 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, pp. 48–9. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 52.) 64

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Throughout the first volume of Herrlichkeit, von Balthasar associates Kierkegaard with specific errors of thought that have led to the particularly Protestant extirpation of aesthetics from theology. These errors include a preference for contradiction over integration and an emphasis on belief rather than contemplation, on pistis rather than gnosis. Balthasar deals with the issue of contradiction, with which he rightly associates Kierkegaard, under the rubric of the problem of divine hiddenness, which appears in slightly different ways in Luther and Kierkegaard. Balthasar wishes to make a concept of form (Gestalt) central to his theological aesthetics, where form is understood as the depth, “splendor...[and] glory of Being.”70 For Christian theology, the form par excellence is, of course, the Christ-form. But the Kierkegaard of works like Practice in Christianity considers the Christ-form as a mere “sign.” Balthasar reads this subtle semantic difference as the evacuation by Kierkegaard of the Christform’s true “depth.” Christ performs signs, but as a “legible form,” and he himself exceeds the semiotic order.71 An emphasis on God’s appearance “incognito,” that is to say on the hiddenness of God, obscures the truth that the central form of Christian revelation possesses an “evidential force” whose power the believing subject cannot resist.72 Insofar as he upholds the necessity of the “crucifixion of the senses” in order to truly perceive the form of the Christ,73 in Kierkegaard, as in much Protestant aesthetics, held captive to dialectics, the “essential form-quality of Christianity is lacking.”74 Having sharply distanced himself from Kierkegaard’s understanding of the “aesthetic” in the first and second parts of the book, Balthasar later softens these criticisms by pointing to Kierkegaard’s admirable submission of his artistic talents to the service of Christ,75 by employing the concept of “contemporaneity” as a homiletic ideal,76 and by acknowledging the validity of Protestant protests, Kierkegaard’s included, against applying “inner-worldly” aesthetic criteria to the Bible.77 Although Balthasar shows a familiarity with concepts from Kierkegaard’s corpus such as contemporaneity and incognito, in addition to the doctrine of the stages, citations from Kierkegaard’s works rarely appear in his books on theological aesthetics, making it difficult to identify his sources. Exceptions include references to Either/Or such as the one noted above and a very curious, surprisingly affirmative mention of the book as a representative of, along with his two favorite Protestants, Barth and Hamann, the possibility of “a truly great Protestant aesthetics.”78 As we will continue to observe, Kierkegaard plays a “representative” role throughout Balthasar’s work. The task of the present essay will be to continue to identify what, precisely, Kierkegaard represents for the Swiss theologian. In the second volume of Herrlichkeit, Balthasar mentions Kierkegaard very briefly, as he introduces his idea 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 70 71

Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 112. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 119.) Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 146. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 153.) Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 148. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 155.) Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 423. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 440.) Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 176. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 183.) Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 495. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 515.) Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 574. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 597.) Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 525. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 546.) Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 64. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 68.)

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of “lay styles” of theology. He includes Kierkegaard in a very general, post-Thomist, lay “movement of opposition” to the official established theology of the schools.79 Locating the most original and insightful theological work after Thomas Aquinas as having flowed from the pens of the laity, Balthasar prepares the work he undertakes in volume three of Herrlichkeit, devoted to an ecumenical sampling of these “lay styles.” In neither of these volumes does Balthasar treat Kierkegaard in his own right (that is, he does not engage with Kierkegaard’s actual writings); instead, Kierkegaard continues to make appearances as he is associated with certain themes, such as “authenticity,” that watchword of existentialism of all stripes, in which Balthasar notes the danger of a collapse of true faith into “mere anthropology.”80 Demonstrating a knowledge of Johannes Climacus’ fascination with the figure of Socrates and of his treatment of that figure vis-à-vis the central figure of Christian revelation, Balthasar, in volume three of his theological aesthetics, juxtaposes Kierkegaard with the only Protestant “lay style” he considers, namely, Hamann’s. Attributing to Hamann a more “ironic” concept of the “aesthetic” than Kierkegaard’s, Balthasar praises Hamann for seeking to find a “balance” between the aesthetic and the ethical that would have theological content. He attributes this to a much richer notion of aisthesis in Hamann. For the latter, aisthesis could be understood as “the original religious act.” Making possible such an understanding of aisthesis is Hamann’s sense that “all things are God’s word and language.”81 Where Kierkegaard posits an opposition between Socrates and Christ, Hamann could boldly say that Socrates could be understood, not merely as resembling Christ, but as a medium for the appearance of Christ.82 Later in the same volume, Kierkegaard becomes a foil for the French Catholic essayist Charles Péguy (1873–1914). Balthasar detects an anti-systematic polemical spirit common to the two writers, but he judges Péguy’s execution of the polemic more successful primarily because it does not operate on a disjunction between aesthetics and ethics, which Balthasar calls Kierkegaard’s “major failing” but also because it is more biblically grounded.83 Citing again the essay on the genius and the apostle, the main contrast Balthasar wishes to establish between Péguy and Kierkegaard is between a spirit of solidarity and a spirit of individuality.84 Péguy had strong socialist leanings, making him an ideal point of contrast for the thinker of hiin Enkelte.85 In Balthasar’s presentation, the ultimate form of solidarity according to Péguy is the solidarity of soldiers, in comparison with which the loneliness of Kierkegaard’s “supernaturalistic individual” pales.86 Balthasar asserts a distinction Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 2, p. 14. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 2, Clerical Styles, p. 15.) 80 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 2, p. 21. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 2, p. 23.) 81 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 2, pp. 604–5. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 3, Lay Styles, pp. 240–1.) 82 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 2, p. 641. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 3, p. 276.) 83 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 2, pp. 769–70. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 3, p. 401.) 84 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 2, p 775. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 3, p. 407.) 85 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 2, pp. 776–7; pp. 834–5. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 3, p. 409; pp. 468–9.) 86 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 2, p. 834. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 3, p. 468.) 79

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between both the substance of the two writers and the form characteristic of their respective oeuvres: while he discerns a basically dialogical character in Péguy’s work, he judges Kierkegaard’s writing to be essentially monological.87 Balthasar’s assessments of Kierkegaard become more generally positive in the second set of works in his trilogy, the Theo-Drama. For example, while for the most part Balthasar does not engage very extensively with the published texts of Kierkegaard, he quotes a series of passages from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Stages on Life’s Way, in addition to the journals, to portray Kierkegaard as an “exception” to a modern trend of making absolute the “contradiction of existence.”88 By the latter, Balthasar seems to intend primarily what he takes to be a characteristically Romantic identification of tragedy and comedy, a glorying in the contradiction between these two types of drama. Kierkegaard, against the contemporary current, “opts for the Christian distinction between the tragic and the comic and thereby leaves romantic indifference behind him.”89 While the works on “theological aesthetics” construct a theory of theological perception, in which the human being figures as a mostly passive, receptive observer or witness of forms, Balthasar’s “theological dramatic theory” wishes to consider the ways in which the boundaries established by the theological situation (those between God and humanity, for example) become blurrier. This is to say, in these works, Balthasar conceptualizes the human being less as an observer and more as a player.90 In this context, Balthasar often has reason to cite Kierkegaard’s category of the individual. No longer does he equate the latter with existential angst, but as that which resists system-building,91 as irreducible to “individualism,”92 and as giving an especially notable expression to the “special pathos” that Christianity has always given to the individual human being.93 Without taking into consideration the variety of relevant texts, Balthasar reads the category of hiin Enkelte according to Kierkegaard as a straightforwardly religious one, to the point of equating the individual with the witness to truth. The category of the individual refers primarily to “the awareness of being chosen, of an apostolic existence.”94 This awareness, suggests Balthasar, takes on tragic dimensions in cases like Kierkegaard’s, which has parallels around Europe and elsewhere in the present day, where the national church has fallen into a bland, untruthful liberalism.95 In a footnote to a discussion of Gregory of Nyssa, Balthasar notes that Kierkegaard was one of the last thinkers to consistently apply the concept Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 2, p. 871. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 3, p. 507.) Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 1, p. 419. (Theo-Drama, vol. 1, Prolegomena, p. 447.) 89 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 1, p. 419. (Theo-Drama, vol. 1, p. 447.) See also Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 1, pp. 417–19. (Theo-Drama, vol. 1, pp. 445–7) for his general assessment of Kierkegaard on the Romantic identification of tragedy and comedy. 90 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 1, p. 18. (Theo-Drama, vol. 1, p 18.) 91 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 1, p. 597. (Theo-Drama, vol. 1, p. 637.) 92 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 2, p. 332, note. (Theo-Drama, vol. 2, The Dramatis Personae: Man in God, p. 404, note.) 93 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 2, tome 2, p. 411. (Theo-Drama, vol. 3, The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ, p. 447.) 94 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 2, p. 332, note. (Theo-Drama, vol. 2, p. 404, note.) 95 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 2, tome 2, p. 417. (Theo-Drama, vol. 3, pp. 453–4.) 87 88

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of confinium (Balthasar reads Gregory as an earlier Christian thinker of this kind of concept). Among the different uses to which Kierkegaard puts this concept that Balthasar cites, he points to Kierkegaard’s claim that his work rests in the confinium between poet-existence and the existence of a witness to the truth. Kierkegaard’s seriousness, to which Balthasar refers elsewhere in the Theo-Drama,96 led him to choose the latter vocation.97 In addition to the categories of the individual and the witness to truth, another category that appears frequently in Balthasar’s references to Kierkegaard in the context of his Dramatik is that of contemporaneity. Balthasar compares Kierkegaard’s deployment of this concept, which does not appear in his other references to Kierkegaard, to the dramatic spirituality represented by Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.98 Scattered references to this concept cannot mask a less than rigorous appropriation of it: on the one hand, in references like the one just mentioned we discover an assimilation of Kierkegaard’s own positions. One finds this even more strikingly in a passage from volume two of the Theo-Drama, where we read: “as a result of the extrapolation of Jesus’ existence and, together with it, the Church’s structure instituted by him, something takes place which Kierkegaard calls ‘contemporaneity.’ ”99 He goes on to specify that the “seal” of this contemporaneity is to be found in the “real presence of Christ in the eucharistic action,”100 and there alone. Proceeding without reference to a text of Kierkegaard, Balthasar fails to notice the serious problems with this kind of institutional appropriation of Kierkegaard’s concept. Elsewhere, Balthasar notes how, since the research of Rudolf Bultmann, the theoretical question of relating to the historical Jesus has shifted from the subjective orientation of nineteenth-century thought to a more “objectivistic” concern with early Christian documents. He takes Kierkegaard’s “contemporaneity” as an example of this latter orientation, in which the problem is not how the self-consciousness of Christ might be expressed in the documents of Christianity’s first centuries, but rather how the self-consciousness of the historical Jesus could possibly affect the consciousness of the contemporary Christian.101 Kierkegaard figures somewhat less prominently in the trilogy’s final installment, the Theologik, that is, the Theological Logical Theory. Two theo-logical options for conceptualizing the relationship between God and the world presented in the second volume, for example, are dialectic, represented by Hegel, and dialogic, represented by Martin Buber (1878–1965), Franz Rosenzweig (1887–1929), and Ferdinand Ebner (1882–1931); Balthasar suggests that Ebner actually “outdoes” Kierkegaard

Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 1, p. 417. (Theo-Drama, vol. 1, p. 447.) Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 2, p. 332, note. (Theo-Drama, vol. 2, p. 362, note.) 98 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 1, p. 103. (Theo-Drama, vol. 1, p. 113.) 99 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 2, p. 66. (Theo-Drama, vol. 2, p. 74, translation modified.) 100 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 2, p. 66. (Theo-Drama, vol. 2, p. 74, translation modified.) Balthasar is more critical of Kierkegaard’s notion of contemporaneity at Theodramatik, vol. 3, p. 367. (Theo-Drama, vol. 4, p. 393.) 101 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 3, p. 71. (Theo-Drama, vol. 3, p. 78.) 96 97

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in his opposition to academic theology and to “ecclesial objectification.”102 Though the dialogical thinkers are presented by Balthasar as attempting to “invert” Hegel, he does not include Kierkegaard among them because, unlike the theologians under discussion, Kierkegaard does not make the social dimension of created reality decisive for his concept of God.103 More positively, Balthasar numbers Kierkegaard among those “Christian thinkers” who follow the lead of Philo of Alexandria in claiming that the radical difference between God and humanity reveals itself more profoundly as the seeker after God advances in his or her spiritual life. Balthasar cites the phrase “infinity of the distance” in this context; he finds it in several journal entries, for which he provides precise references to the Papirer.104 An analogous idea, namely that progress in the spiritual life is reflected in the recognition of the unbridgeable gap between human weakness and divine perfection, is attributed to Kierkegaard in the final volume of the Theodramatik. There Balthasar cites an 1849 journal entry in which Kierkegaard despairs of ever overcoming the “fear and trembling” characteristic of one who would sooner admit that all other people will attain heavenly beatitude without extending to himself that same assurance of salvation.105 Balthasar finds in these words a modern echo of Peter in Luke 5:8 (“depart from me, for I am a sinful man”), an expression that rightly attests to the experience of falling short of worthiness of the love displayed on the cross.106 Lest we think that in these final works Balthasar had become less critical of Kierkegaard, however, we note his blistering denunciation of the more general Lutheran rejection of the sacramentality of matrimony. Kierkegaard furnishes the “most wrathful” example of the consequences of the Lutheran theology of marriage, which he contends has had a negative effect on the “dignity” of that institution.107 The final reference to Kierkegaard in the trilogy, however, is considerably more positive. Without specifying which texts lead him to this assessment, Balthasar includes Kierkegaard in a genealogy of “confessional theologians” (as opposed to practitioners of “rational theology,” which essentially amounts to rational defenses of the Christian faith to nonbelievers and which Balthasar characterizes as a kind of necessary evil) stretching back to the medieval mystical theologians. Kierkegaard, along with Pascal and John Henry Newman, is classed as one of the “great thinkers Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theologik, vols. 1–3, Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag 1985–87, vol. 2, p. 266. (English translation: Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, vols. 1–3, trans. by Adrian J. Walker and Graham Harrison, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2000–05, vol. 2, Truth of God, p. 57.) 103 Balthasar, Theologik, vol. 2, pp. 45–53. (Theo-Logic, vol. 2, pp. 49–58.) 104 Balthasar, Theologik, vol. 2, p. 87. (Theo-Logic, vol. 2, pp. 94–5.) 105 SKS 22, 248, NB12:174 / JP 6, 6496. 106 Balthasar, Theodramatik, vol. 4, p. 266. (Theo-Drama, vol. 5, The Last Act, p. 293.) The same quotation is briefly treated in Was dürfen wir hoffen?, Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag 1986, p. 66 (English translation: Dare we Hope “that All Men be Saved?,” trans. by David Kipp and Lothmar Krauth, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1988, p. 88.) Balthasar discovered this quotation in Eduard Geismar, “Das ethische Stadium bei Sören Kierkegaard,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, vol. 1, 1923, p. 260. 107 Balthasar, Theologik, vol. 3, pp. 317–18. (Theo-Logic, vol. 3, The Spirit of Truth, p. 345.) 102

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of modern times,” because he was not willing to separate the life of prayer from the life of thought.108 V. Conclusion: Kierkegaard and Theological Aesthetics In the first volume of his theological aesthetics, Balthasar begins his program of retrieval by saying what theological aesthetics is not. Kierkegaard figures in two of the main prongs of this negative definition. First, theological aesthetics is a reaction against modernity’s aestheticization of the beautiful. It must be distinguished from any “aesthetic theology,” a way of naming the attempt, typical of German Romanticism and idealism, to bring together a theory of beauty with a theory of Christian revelation.109 In this context, “aesthetics” takes on a pejorative sense in Balthasar’s own discourse, and therefore, in both its content and as regards the historical context with which it is engaging, resonates with the pejorative portrayal of the figure of the “aesthete” in Kierkegaard’s corpus. For Balthasar, then (as for Kierkegaard), it will not do to simply apply aesthetic concepts to theology. Secondly, Balthasar’s theological aesthetics is resolutely and unapologetically Catholic, with Protestant theology in general and Lutheran theology in particular coming in for frequent criticism. In these discussions, Kierkegaard’s name sometimes seems to play a symbolic role, shown to stand behind the “dialectical theology” or “theology of crisis” popular in earlier twentieth-century Germany. With regard to those who have been persuaded by these presentations or effects of Kierkegaard’s thought, as W.T. Dickens rightly notes, “von Balthasar’s rhetorical strategy was…to redirect [their] Kierkegaardian antipathy for the beautiful toward a conception of beauty, ushered in with modernity, that Balthasar, too, wished to repudiate.”110 More substantively, and as we saw in the previous section, Kierkegaard is associated with certain errors of thought that have led to the Protestant banishment of aesthetics from theology. These include a preference for contradiction over integration, an emphasis on belief rather than contemplation, and a predilection for paradox rather than analogy.111 John Webster observes: “one of Balthasar’s persistent objections to the Protestant tradition is its excessive fondness for conceiving of salvation as an interruptive event, and its corresponding under-appreciation of the shapeliness of salvation history, that is, of the way God’s revealing and saving work takes form in and extends through time.”112 Balthasar subjects Kierkegaard Balthasar, Theologik, vol. 3, p. 337. (Theo-Logic, vol. 3, p. 365.) Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, pp. 74–110. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, pp. 79– 116.) 110 William T. Dickens, Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics: A Model for Post-Critical Biblical Interpretation, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press 2003, p. 39. 111 See the discussion of this point in Stefan Endriss, Hans Urs von Balthasar versus Søren Kierkegaard. Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion über das Verhältnis von Theologie und Ästhetik, Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač 2006, pp. 369–73. 112 John Webster, “Balthasar and Karl Barth,” The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, pp. 250–1. 108 109

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to this more general criticism of these Protestant habits of thought, which he notes in Luther, though less often in Calvin.113 For Balthasar, Kierkegaard has no theory of beauty as harmony, integration, measure, and proportion, whereas this is exactly what Balthasar thinks a properly theological aesthetics will furnish. For this reason, Balthasar prefers Karl Barth to Kierkegaard: the latter, unlike Barth, never considers the category of the beautiful as a theological one. Indeed, Balthasar grounds his theological aesthetics in a classical metaphysical framework, specifically in a framework wherein a unity is maintained (and restored) between the beautiful, the good, and the true. This unity is not merely the inseparability of these three terms, but the unity of absolute being. A true grasp of the effect of the beautiful, Balthasar claims, “will not be attained unless one brings to bear logical and ethical concepts, concepts of truth and value: in a word, concepts drawn from a comprehensive doctrine of Being.”114 Now such a doctrine is precisely what Kierkegaard never offers, devoting his energies instead to showing the comical impossibility of any system of existence. A most telling point of contrast presents itself when we consider that while, for Balthasar, the transcendentals provide a way of thinking about beauty as it participates in the higher unity of Being, Kierkegaard has his pseudonym Johannes Climacus use them in the Postscript to describe the unity of a human life: “The true is not superior to the good and the beautiful, but the true and the good and the beautiful belong essentially to every human existence and united for an existing person not in thinking them but in existing.”115 In this sense, it comes as little surprise that Balthasar registers what one might call a metaphysician’s disappointment with Kierkegaard in general, and with his lack of a theory of beauty in particular. To the particular hermeneutical issue of determining in what sense something like a redeemed or faithful “aesthetic” sensibility is possible given a Kierkegaardian framework, Balthasar’s contribution is to define theological aesthetics as a Christological endeavor, and that in a decisive way. Balthasar’s theory hinges on the idea that the Christ-form possesses an evidential force; the power of the Christform’s evidence is such that the believing subject cannot help but be overcome by it. So the analysis in Herrlichkeit will proceed by way of considering, first, what Balthasar calls the “subjective evidence,” namely the experience of faith, and, secondly, what he calls the “objective evidence,” namely the ways in which the Christ-form has been historically mediated. Balthasar’s rediscovery of Christianity as the “aesthetic religion par excellence” is therefore inseparable from a “radical objectivity,” an “objectivism, which is proper to the Catholic principle, as opposed to Protestant interiority.”116 He clearly has Kierkegaard, the thinker of inwardness and of subjectivity as truth, in mind when he makes these kinds of statements, which are meant to outline the possibility of a Christian experience whose locus would not primarily be an interior space. Balthasar’s “objectivism” leads him to make another firm distinction 115 116 113 114

Balthasar, Karl Barth, p. 35; pp. 211–12. (The Theology of Karl Barth, p. 25; p. 205.) Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 111. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 118.) SKS 7, 318 / CUP1, 348. Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 208. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 216.)

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between Protestant and Catholic aesthetics: he repeatedly insists that the Christ-form is not a sign. As we have seen, he uses the weightier, metaphysical term “form” rather than the allegedly more frivolous semiotic term “sign” to indicate that his discourse is meant to refer to the order of Being and not merely of beings. But more specifically, Balthasar insists upon the “appearance of a divine depth” in the Christform.117 An invisible is signified by the visible, but not in such a way that the visible points beyond itself; rather, in Christ, form and content are perfectly united.118 For Balthasar, Gestalt signifies a dramatic “holding together” of tensions in which a greater whole (i.e., the form) is generated from a collectivity of parts.119 One must oppose, then, the Balthasarian form to one of the targets of his criticism, the Kierkegaardian sign, as presented in the Philosophical Fragments and in Practice in Christianity, without forgetting those moments in Balthasar’s writings where he expresses a certain qualified appreciation for Kierkegaard’s achievements. For in fact, the most significant point of contact between what we are beginning to recognize as the theological aesthetics of Kierkegaard (what Ettore Rocca has provocatively called his “second aesthetics”120) and that of Balthasar is surely to be found in the Fragments, where the central problematic informing Kierkegaard’s theological aesthetics first begins to take shape. In these pages, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, like Balthasar, insists upon a unity of Christological form and Christological content. Climacus insists that “the god gave to the disciple the condition that enables him to see him [i.e., God], opening for [the disciple] the eyes of faith.”121 The sentence that follows is crucial, however: “But it was a terrible thing to see this external figure,” that is, God in the “servant-figure” of Jesus Christ.122 Here is perhaps the crux of Balthasar’s fundamental opposition to the Kierkegaardian framework: Balthasar’s Christology, while by no means downplaying Christ’s suffering humanity, nonetheless incorporates that aspect of Christ’s existence into a higher, glorious unity. For example: “our task…[is] to discover in [Christ’s] deformity [Ungestalt] the mystery of transcendental form [Übergestalt].”123 Kierkegaard does not take this speculative step, preferring to tarry with the Ungestalt, dwelling upon the form of Christ’s deformity, the suffering of God in humanity, without sublating that deformity in a higher unity. He insists, that is to say, upon the irreducibly paradoxical nature of the Incarnation. Rather 117 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 146. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, pp. 154.) See also Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, pp. 424–7. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, pp. 442–4.) 118 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, pp. 175–6. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 182.) 119 See the discussion of this point in Schindler, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth, p. 167. 120 Ettore Rocca, “Kierkegaard’s Second Aesthetics,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1999, pp. 278–92. 121 SKS 4, 266 / PF, 65 (translation modified). The Johannine motif of the “eyes of faith” is very dear to Balthasar, who wants faith to be a unity between believing and a seeing that represents a kind of knowledge. He criticizes Kierkegaard (along with Hegel) on this point, that is, for installing a contradiction between these two terms. See Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, pp. 134–5. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, pp. 141–2.) 122 SKS 4, 266–7 / PF, 65 (translation modified). 123 Balthasar, Herrlichkeit, vol. 1, p. 442. (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, p. 460.)

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than reading the Incarnation as a self-evidential, persuasive form of the glory of God, Kierkegaard reads it as a scandal and a sign of offense. Dickens rightly notes that it is this feature of so-called “dialectical theology”—its purported incapacity to comprehend “God’s graciously taking up and transfiguring the human”—that Balthasar cannot abide.124 By referring to Kierkegaard throughout his introduction to theological aesthetics—and not merely in criticizing the role of the “aesthetic stage” in his theory of existence spheres—Balthasar identifies in Kierkegaard’s writings on religion—and especially in the works by the pseudonyms Johannes Climacus and Anti-Climacus—a problematic that Kierkegaard himself did not explicitly recognize as concerned with aesthetics as, precisely, a problem of theological aesthetics. That is to say, according to Balthasar, the question of the perception of Christ, the whole question of contemporaneity as taken up by Climacus and Anti-Climacus, is a problem of theological aesthetics. For here it is a matter of discerning the form of Jesus and of discovering how that form communicates the truth. Kierkegaard’s theological aesthetics concerns itself in the main with questions of recognizability and communication. Balthasar suggests that, though they are not his own themes and questions, these questions are indeed questions of theological aesthetics.



124

Dickens, Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics, p. 48.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Balthasar’s Corpus Apokalypse der deutschen Seele. Studien zu einer Lehre von letzten Haltungen, vols. 1–3, Salzburg and Leipzig: Verlag Anton Pustet 1937–39, vol. 1, p. 11; pp. 695– 734. Der Christ und die Angst, Einsiedeln: Johannes 1951, p. 9; pp. 81–6. (English translation: The Christian and Anxiety, trans. by Dennis D. Martin and Michael J. Miller, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2000, p. 31; pp. 134–6.) Karl Barth. Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie, Cologne: Hegner 1951, pp. 36–8; pp. 75–9; pp. 99–100. (English translation: The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. by Edward Oakes, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1992, pp. 26–8; p. 34; pp. 68–73; pp. 90–1.) “Offenbarung und Schönheit,” in Skizzen zur Theologie I: Verbum Caro, Einsiedeln: Johannes 1960, pp. 100–2. (English translation: “Revelation and the Beautiful,” in Word and Revelation: Essays in Theology, trans. by A.V. Littledale and Alexander Dru, New York: Herder & Herder 1964, vol. 1, pp. 120–3.) Herrlichkeit. Eine theologische Ästhetik, vols. 1–3, Einsiedeln: Johannes 1961–69, vol. 1, p. 42; pp. 47–9; pp. 62–4; p. 76; p. 85; p. 134; p. 146; p. 175; p. 178; p. 423; p. 489; p. 495; p. 525; p. 565; p. 574; p. 598; vol. 2, p. 14; p. 21; p. 40; p. 138; p. 593; pp. 603–6; pp. 639–41; p. 662; pp. 769–70; p. 773; p. 775; p. 777. (English translation: The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vols. 1–7, ed. by James Fessio and John Riches, trans. by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1982–89, vol. 1, p. 22; p. 45; pp. 49–50; p. 52; p. 68; pp. 79–116; p. 119; p. 153; p. 155; p. 183; p. 440; p. 515; p. 546; p. 597; vol. 2, p. 15; p. 23; vol. 3, p. 276; p. 401; p. 407; p. 409; pp. 468–9; p. 507.) Das Ganze im Fragment. Aspekte der Geschichtstheologie, Einsiedeln: Benziger 1963, p. 112. (English translation: Man in History, trans. by William GlenDoepel, London: Sheed & Ward 1968, p. 91.) Theodramatik, vols. 1–4, Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag 1973–83, vol. 1, p. 48; p. 103; pp. 188–9; pp. 417–19; p. 422; p. 455; vol. 2, p. 57; p. 66; p. 171; p. 332, note; p. 404, note; vol. 4, p. 151; p. 266. (English translation: Theo-Drama, vols. 1–5, trans. by Graham Harrison, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1988–92, vol. 1, p. 18; p. 113; pp. 445–7; p. 637; vol. 2, p. 74; p. 362, note; p. 404, note; vol. 3, p. 78; p. 447; pp. 453–4; vol. 4, p. 123; pp. 145–7; p. 162; vol. 5, p. 293.) Theologik, vols. 1–3, Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag 1985–87, vol. 2, pp. 45–53; p. 87; vol. 3, pp. 317–18; p. 337. (English translation: Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, vols. 1–3, trans. by Adrian J. Walker, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2000–05, vol. 2, pp. 43–50; p. 57; pp. 94–5; vol. 3, p. 345; p. 365.)

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Was dürfen wir hoffen?, Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag 1986, p. 66. (English translation: Dare we Hope “that All Men be Saved”?, trans. by David Kipp and Lothat Krauth, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1988, p. 88.) II. Sources of Balthasar’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Geismar, Eduard, “Das ethische Stadium bei Sören Kierkegaard,” Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie, vol. 1, 1923–24, pp. 227–300. Guardini, Romano, Der Mensch und der Glaube. Versuche über die religiöse Existenz in Dostojewskijs grossen Romanen, Leipzig: Jakob Hegner 1932, pp. 248–55. Sodeur, Gottlieb, Kierkegaard und Nietzsche, Tübingen: Mohr 1914. Thust, Martin, Søren Kierkegaard. Der Dichter des Religiosen, Munich: Beck 1932. Vetter, August, Frömmigkeit als Leidenschaft. Eine Deutung Kierkegaards, Leipzig: Insel 1928. Voigt, Friedrich Adolf, Sören Kierkegaard im Kampfe mit der Romantik, der Theologie und der Kirche, Berlin: Furche Verlag 1928. III. Secondary Literature on Balthasar’s Relation to Kierkegaard Cihak, John R., Balthasar and Anxiety, London and New York: T. & T. Clark 2009, pp. 6–7; pp. 9–13; p. 25; pp. 21–2; pp. 67–72; pp. 75–83; p. 97; p. 109; p. 112; p. 116; p. 125; p. 129; pp. 136–7; p. 142; p. 168; p. 175; p. 180; p. 222; p. 225; p. 242; pp. 262–3; p. 266. Endriss, Stefan, Hans Urs von Balthasar. Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion über das Verhältnis von Theologie und Äesthetik, Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač 2006. Henrici, Peter, “The Philosophy of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, ed. by David L. Schindler, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1991, pp. 158–61. — “Hans Urs von Balthasar—ein katholischer Kierkegaard?” Gott für die Welt. Henri de Lubac, Gustav Siewerth und Hans Urs von Balthasar in ihren Grundanliegen, ed. by Peter Reifenberg and Anton van Hooff, Mainz: Matthias Grünewald 2001, pp. 304–14. Nichols, Aidan, Scattering the Seed: A Guide through Balthasar’s Early Writings on Philosophy and the Arts, London and New York: T. & T. Clark 2006, pp. 129–32.

Eugen Biser: Rediscovering “Christology from Inside” Ulli Roth

Among those in the twentieth century who deeply influenced German Catholic theology and even Catholicism as a whole, there is a group of scholars who worked at the periphery of the academical area, both biographically and literarily. Alongside Romano Guardini (1885–1968), Erich Przywara (1889–1972), and Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88), Eugen Biser (born in 1918) must also be named. They all combined broad erudition in theology, philosophy, and literature with the intention to reformulate and revive Christianity in the twentieth century. All of them were careful readers of Kierkegaard’s works. In order to conceive and overcome the crisis of our modern and secularized culture, they crossed the borders of traditional dogmatic theology, which at that time was quite restricted and mostly dominated by scholasticism. Though Biser is the youngest of these theologians, his work enjoys a great reputation. This assessment is supported by several Bavarian and international prizes, honorary doctorates, and the nomination as honorary papal prelate, which he achieved with an opus covering about 100 books, 1,000 articles, and countless lectures held all over Germany. Although he never founded his own theological school and though he has to the present day not, or only scarcely, been discussed as a major figure in contemporary theology, his importance and impact should not be underestimated. The uninterrupted series of publications over half a century, often with quite popular publishing houses such as Patmos, Kösel, and especially Herder, and often with several editions, have reached a wide audience. In the same way, his lectures and public discussions, sometimes broadcast via radio and television, have made him a well-known figure not only in theology, but in the church and society as well. So it is not surprising that the honorary volume for Eugen Biser’s 80th birthday in 1998 was filled with contributions by professors of divinity and philosophy, artists and teachers, bishops and politicians, among them the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.1 The following article will give a survey of Biser’s reception of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre. Since Biser quotes or refers to Kierkegaard in nearly all of his countless books and articles, completeness cannot be achieved. But as Biser often repeats his I want to thank Stephanie Fischer, Laura Good, and Naomi Pilantz very much for proofreading this article. 1 See An-Denken. Festgabe für Eugen Biser, ed. by Erwin Möde et al., Graz: Styria 1998.

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former ideas and tends to make use of a limited set of quotations, this article will present his main ideas concerning Kierkegaard and his importance for his own work. The bibliography lists the titles of the earliest and most important works of those of his own books which refer to Kierkegaard. In addition, all secondary literature, including the translations Biser names or uses, is collected. A short biography will provide information about both his character and his way to Kierkegaard. When Eugen Biser was born on January 6, 1918, as the only son of Karl Biser and his wife Zita, née Müller, in Oberbergen in the Kaiserstuhl region of southern Germany, only the profession of his father, who was a teacher, would have given a hint to Biser’s future.2 His parents wanted him to become a teacher as well. But during the time he went to school in Oberbergen, Breisach, and Freiburg im Breisgau he was directly confronted with the ideology of Nazism. When finishing school in 1937, Biser felt that theology and medicine were the only fields of study which were not fully controlled by the Nazis. This freedom and the possibility to help people attracted Biser. Against the will of his parents he chose theology, thinking that he was not suited for medicine. Soon after having started his studies in Catholic theology at the University of Freiburg in the winter of 1937, the current political developments began to affect his life and to leave their mark on his character. After his philosophy exam, he had to follow his fellow students to Fulda. There he was recruited by the military on December 8, 1939, and sent to France. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Biser was sent to the Eastern Front. Once he dared to voice his true thoughts about the disaster into which the German army was running at Stalingrad—“we will bleed to death.” Because of this he was nearly court-martialed. On September 30, 1943, he was severely injured, but survived and was brought back to Germany. After his dismissal in 1944, he could continue his studies in Freiburg and graduated in 1946. In the same year he took holy orders, as his uncle did years before. Although he wanted to continue his studies, the church administration denied this wish. After six years in six different parishes, he had to start working as a chaplain and a teacher at Helmholtz-Gymnasium in Heidelberg in 1952. Beside his full teacher’s workload, he studied at night from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. He wrote two doctoral theses, the first one in theology (1956) with Bernhard Welte (1906–83) as supervisor. Welte was a professor for Christian philosophy of religion at the University of Freiburg. He had rejected a previous manuscript with the title “The Cosmos of the Virtues,” though Biser had revised it twice in accordance with Welte’s wishes. He also denied him permission to write about Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) while allowing his preferred assistant to do so. The second thesis was submitted to the faculty of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg with the A complete biography of Eugen Biser’s life is lacking, basic information can be found in Andreas Schaller, Gott brach sein Schweigen. Ein Gespräch mit Eugen Biser, Munich: Verlag Sankt Michaelsbund 1999, passim; Eugen Biser. Leben—Werk—Denken. Eine Einführung, ed. by Johannes Schaber, Leutesdorf: Johannes-Verlag 2000 (Schriftenreihe der Ottobeurer Studienwoche, vol. 1), pp. 16–19, the curriculum vitae at the end of Eugen Biser, Grenzerfahrungen. Die Bedeutung der religiösen Grenzsituationen in den Werken Gertrud von Le Forts, Freiburg i. Br., unpublished dissertation 1956, and on the official homepage of the Eugen-Biser-Foundation, www.eugen-biser-stiftung.de. 2

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well-known German-Jewish philosopher Karl Löwith (1897–1973) as supervisor (1961), who, though being an atheist, supported the Catholic priest Biser. Finally, Biser qualified as a university lecturer (“Habilitation”) in 1965 at the University of Würzburg with a third treatise and was allowed to give lectures in fundamental theology. In the same year he started his academic career, which first led him to Passau from 1965 to 1969 and then to Würzburg from 1969 to 1974, with interim professorships at Marburg, Bochum, and Saarbrücken. In 1974, he attained his academic goals when he was appointed to the reputable Romano Guardini chair at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich. This chair for “Religionsphilosophie und Christliche Weltanschauung” was held by Romano Guardini from 1948 to 1965 and then by Karl Rahner (1904–84) from 1968 to 1974. Connected to the faculty of philosophy, it gives the greatest academic freedom to reflect present changes and developments in religion and society from a Christian point of view. Biser worked there with remarkable success until 1986, reaching an audience of up to 300 persons during his lectures. Soon after his retirement, he founded a special program of university study for senior citizens in Munich, which he led until 2007. During all these years of teaching, he never ceased to produce numerous books and articles. They concentrate on how to believe in God in our modern secularized or even atheistic society, how to recover a direct approach to Jesus Christ, and how to tackle current problems such as peace and reconciliation in our world. Looking back on the beginnings of his academic studies, Biser names three authors who influenced him the most: “Besides Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, this remarkable woman [Gertrud von Le Fort] became an important help in the orientation of my theology.”3 He also mentions Karl Löwith, but going through his own oeuvre, one should not neglect Augustine (354–430), Nicolaus Cusanus (1401– 64), Martin Buber (1878–1965), Romano Guardini, Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), and Rudolf Schnackenburg (1914–2002). The choice of these theologians reveals that Biser made his own way into theology. This was not the mostly neo-Thomistic and neo-scholastic school theology which dominated Catholic faculties at that time and made any discussion on modern thought within theology completely fruitless. Quite to the contrary, Biser followed Guardini, who always remained an outsider in Catholic theology and never respected the traditional limits and taboos of his discipline, either those concerning the distinction between philosophy and theology, or those separating Protestant and Catholic denominations.4 The works of Nietzsche were still on the Index librorum prohibitorum and required a special permission to be read by any Catholic. Kierkegaard was a Protestant author whom Catholics started to discuss, but mostly outside the academic milieu.5 Buber was a Jewish philosopher, best known for his philosophy of dialogue, but of no distinctive importance for Biser in an interview in Schaller, Gott brach sein Schweigen, pp. 25–6. On Guardini see Peter Šajda, “Romano Guardini: Between Actualistic Personalism, Qualitative Dialectic and Kinetic Logic” in this volume. 5 Heiko Schulz, “Germany and Austria: A Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 8), pp. 307–419, see pp. 328–30 and pp. 371–2. 3 4

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traditional Catholic school philosophy. Even Biser’s reading of the church father Augustine, probably the most important theologian in the history of the Western Church, points to the renewal of spirituality based on the Patristic heritage inside the Catholic church, promoted by authors such as Przywara and Guardini. Nicolaus Cusanus, the famous philosopher, mathematician, and bishop of Brixen in the late Middle Ages, was himself a loner whose philosophical-theological concepts were to be rediscovered in the middle of the twentieth century, but first of all in philosophy, not in Catholic theology. There Thomas Aquinas was and is still the official magister, though the richness and striking modernity of Cusanus’ thought is more and more recognized nowadays. Bultmann, himself deeply influenced by Kierkegaard’s works, and Schnackenburg were leading representantives of Protestant and Catholic exegesis respectively. The religiousness of Gertrud von Le Fort (1876–1971), who after her conversion from Protestantism was one of the most important Catholic women writers in the middle of the last century, was much inspired by the works of Kierkegaard. He was often discussed in the Catholic intellectual circles she was moving in, for example, by Theodor Haecker (1879–1945) or Przywara, her spiritual father during her conversion. Biser never wrote a whole book about Kierkegaard,6 though he did so with his monograph about Gertrud von Le Fort, Nietzsche, and Guardini. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard is obviously even more important for Biser’s theology than these three authors. A great part of Biser’s books more or less explicitly develop an idea he originally conceived in dialogue with the Danish thinker. Though Biser never learned Danish and only cites a few words in the original language,7 he is acquainted with both the biography and the literary heritage of Kierkegaard. Considering Biser’s own way into theology, one could suspect that it was Gertrud von Le Fort who inspired him to read Kierkegaard when he was studying her works for his first doctor’s thesis in the 1950s. Biser recognized the impact Kierkegaard had on Gertrud von Le Fort, and assumes that Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), whose lectures about Kierkegaard she attended in the summer of 1914 in Heidelberg, had led her to read Kierkegaard.8 In her novel Die Letzte am Schafott (1931), she describes the anxiety and fear of the fictive protagonist Blanche de la Force who was to follow those 16 Carmelite nuns of Compiègne who were guillotined in Paris in 1794. Biser’s interpretation 6 To the present day, no substantial discussion of the impact Kierkegaard’s works had on Biser’s thought exists. Because of his precarious state of health, he was only able to respond quite laconically to some of my conclusions in May 2009, confirming major tracks of my outline about his first studies of Kierkegaard’s works, rejecting others. His valuable hints, which I am very grateful for, are all taken into consideration in the following paragraphs of this article. 7 In his Glaubensverständnis. Grundriß einer hermeneutischen Fundamentaltheologie, Freiburg i. Br.: Herder 1975, p. 30, Biser states the meaning of smuler in the title of Philosophical Fragments, but this information is taken from the essay by Liselotte Richter in her edition of Sören Kierkegaard, Philosophische Brocken, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 1961. In Eugen Biser, Der Helfer. Eine Vergegenwärtigung Jesu, Munich: Koesel 1973, p. 160, he translates forunderligt as wunderbar. 8 Eugen Biser, Menschsein in Anfechtung und Widerspruch. Ansatz einer christlichen Anthropologie, Düsseldorf: Patmos 1980, p. 113, note 74.

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refers to Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety9 and distinguishes Le Fort’s concept of contemporaneity from Kierkegaard’s own,10 a distinction that will be valid until Biser’s own “Christology from Inside.” But for his own path to Kierkegaard, as for his theology as a whole, it was not Gertrud von Le Fort but Guardini who played the decisive role. It was not a fellow student or professor during his studies who called his attention to this Protestant thinker, but his own reading, formed by authors of the non-academic intellectual Catholicism by whom Kierkegaard was often discussed. In particular, Guardini’s famous book about Blaise Pascal (1623–62) from 1935 attracted Biser’s attention.11 Guardini not only describes Pascal’s way of thinking in Kierkegaardian terms, but also compares Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Anselm of Canterbury (ca. 1033–1109) as three different but deeply related forms of an “existential dialectic of the absolute.”12 Though Biser knew Guardini’s oeuvre, he frequently quotes his books about “Christian consciousness”13 and “accepting oneself,”14 but not the famous treatises about melancholy and the starting point of Kierkegaard’s thinking.15 While the melancholic Kierkegaard of The Sickness unto Death attracted Guardini, who himself was suffering from depression, Biser’s dynamic, positive-minded, and vigorous character made him see this side of Kierkegaard’s thought as a symptom of anxiety, Maintaining that the possibility has a precedence over reality, Biser, Grenzerfahrungen, p. 31, note 1, refers to the hypochondriac at the end of The Concept of Anxiety. 10 See Biser, Grenzerfahrungen, p. 42 about the Carmelite nun Blanche: “die in ihrem religiösen Selbstverständnis den als Todesangst erfahrenen Sinn der Epoche unablässig, wenn freilich auch nicht ausdrücklich, auf die Todesangst Christi in seiner bedrängten Kirche zurückbezieht…In geschichtlichen Kategorien ausgedrückt, besagt ihre religiöse Haltung demnach die volle Gleichzeitigkeit ihres Daseins mit dem Zeit- und Heilsgeschehen”; see also ibid., note 1: “Es legt sich nahe, diese Formulierung wiederum in dem von Kierkegaard präzisierten Sinn zu verstehen. Doch scheint es, zumal auch im Blick auf das Gesamtwerk, angemessen, die Vorstellungen der Dichterin von der Vergegenwärtigung des Heilswerks Christi durch die Gedanken der Mysterientheologie zu interpretieren, zumal in der ihr von G. Söhngen gegebenen Fassung.” 11 Romano Guardini, Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal, Leipzig: Hegner 1935. 12 Ibid., p. 219. 13 Guardini, Christliches Bewußtsein is referred to in, for example, Eugen Biser, Der Freund. Annäherungen an Jesus, Munich: Piper 1989, p. 290, endnote 22; p. 298, endnote 129; Eugen Biser, Interpretation und Veränderung. Werk und Wirkung Romano Guardinis, Paderborn: Schöningh 1979, p. 65–80; Eugen Biser, Einweisung ins Christentum, 2nd ed., Düsseldorf: Patmos 1998, p. 428, endnote 77; p. 454 endnote 39; and Eugen Biser, Das Antlitz. Selbstfindung in Jesus Christus, Düsseldorf: Patmos 2006, p. 338, endnotes 15–16. 14 Romano Guardini, Die Annahme seiner selbst, Würzburg: Werkbund-Verlag 1960 is named in, for example, Biser, Menschsein in Anfechtung und Widerspruch, p. 26, note 42; Eugen Biser, Der Mensch—das uneingelöste Versprechen. Entwurf einer Modalanthropologie, Düsseldorf: Patmos 1995, p. 132; and Biser, Einweisung ins Christentum, p. 451, endnote 91. 15 Romano Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Søren Kierkegaards,” Hochland, vol. 24, 1927, no. 2, pp. 12–33, and Romano Guardini, “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” Die Schildgenossen, vol. 8, 1928, pp. 103–25 (many reprints, for example, in Romano Guardini, Unterscheidung des Christlichen, Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag 1935).

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and thus more from a distance. He therefore interprets it as a characteristic of man as a whole and reintegrates melancholy and despair within the category of “anxiety” as evidence of the divine.16 Similarly, Biser’s focus on Practice in Christianity as Kierkegaard’s chef-d’oeuvre has no equivalent either in Guardini or in any of Biser’s sources. So Guardini drew Biser’s attention to Kierkegaard, but did not really form his approach to this religious author. The same holds true for Biser’s reading of Theodor Haecker, the other outstanding representative of Kierkegaard reception in German Catholicism at that time.17 Biser found his own way to the Kierkegaardian universe. It was in the 1940s or the early 1950s that he studied Kierkegaard, as can be deduced from the editions which he quotes and keeps quoting even in his latest works. He did not make use of the old edition by Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944),18 but read either the later translations of Haecker19 or the new ones from the early 1950s.20 Maybe in connection with his theological thesis about Gertrud von Le Fort, he also read some books by Jaspers dealing with Kierkegaard.21 When he finished this book in 1956, Löwith Biser, Der Mensch, p. 84: “So enthüllt die Angst auch das göttliche Geheimnis, das… dem vom Sog des Nichts Ergriffenen letzten Halt verspricht und ihm diesen zugleich entzieht.” 17 See, for example, Eugen Biser, Die glaubensgeschichtliche Wende. Eine theologische Positionsbestimmung, Graz: Styria 1986, pp. 334–5, endnote 163, referring to Theodor Haecker, Sören Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit, Munich: Schreiber 1913 and Carl Dallago, Ueber eine Schrift. Søren Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit (von Theodor Haecker), Innsbruck: Brenner 1914; cf. Markus Kleinert, “Theodor Haecker: The Mobilization of a Total Writer,” in Kierkegaard’s Influence on Literature, Criticism, and Art, Tome I, German Literature, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2013 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 12). 18 See Søren Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22. Biser only refers to Sören Kierkegaard, Leben und Walten der Liebe, trans. and ed. by Albert Dorner and Christoph Schrempf, introduced by Christoph Schrempf, 2nd ed., Jena: Diederichs 1924 (Erbauliche Reden, vol. 3) in later works, for example, in 1995 in his Der Mensch, p. 324, endnote 45, while earlier works such as Menschsein in Anfechtung und Widerspruch, pp. 133–4, from 1980 cite the first edition Leben und Walten der Liebe, trans. and ed. by Albert Dorner, Leipzig: F. Richter 1890. 19 See Sören Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–2, selected, trans. and ed. by Theodor Haecker, Innsbruck: Brenner 1923 (Leipzig: Hegner 1941), quoted in Eugen Biser, Theologische Sprachtheorie und Hermeneutik, Munich: Koesel 1970, p. 100; Biser, Die glaubensgeschichtliche Wende, p. 334, endnote 158, which explicitly mentions the 1941 edition. This confirms for Biser in the late 1940s and early 1950s, that it was still the Brenner circle and especially Haecker who were the most effective intermediaries for Kierkegaardian ideas, see Schulz, “A Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” pp. 330–1. 20 Of the great editions of Emanuel Hirsch and Walter Rest, Biser only uses a few volumes, adding the translations of Liselotte Richter in the 1960s. Why he sometimes prefers one translation over another, and if he really does so, is not obvious and could not be clarified. 21 Biser, Grenzerfahrungen, p. V, where he names Karl Jaspers, Philosophie, vol. 2: Existenzerhellung, Berlin: Springer 1932; Karl Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube, Munich: Piper 1948; and Karl Jaspers, Vernunft und Existentz. Fünf Vorlesungen, Groningen: J.B. Wolters 1935. 16

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proposed that he should write about Nietzsche. At the same time, Biser deepened his knowledge about Kierkegaard’s biography22 and thinking23 with a series of books published in the 1950s and the early 1960s, among them important systematic works by his second doctoral advisor, Löwith. In addition, his philosophical thesis led him to compare Nietzsche with Kierkegaard as a “congenial representative” of Christianity.24 He reviewed two of those new books about Kierkegaard25 in the Catholic but trans-denominational periodical Hochland, a quite influential voice of the modern, though not liberal, Catholicism of the so-called Hochland-Kreis, which included Haecker, Guardini, Gertrud von Le Fort, and others. Biser acknowledges that Gerd-Günther Grau (b. 1921) is correct when he constructs the impossibility of a repetition of something that has already been—biographically reflected in Regine’s marriage, in theological terms “the unlimited delay of the Parousia”26—as the center of Kierkegaard’s writing. Although Biser does not agree with Grau that this writing was self-destructive and fits into the Nietzschean pattern of “the self-dissolution of all great things,” he confirms that “Christianity is based on a personal event” and

See especially Walter Lowrie, Das Leben Sören Kierkegaards, Düsseldorf: Diederichs 1955, which is separate from Søren Kierkegaard und sein Verhältnis zu “ihr.” Aus nachgelassenen Papieren, trans. and ed. by Raphael Meyer, Stuttgart: Juncker 1905, is the only biographical work Biser frequently makes use of. Biser obviously later read the famous introduction by Georg Brandes, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine kritische Darstellung, Leipzig: Reclam 1992, which he refers to in his Der Mensch, p. 42; p. 307, endnote 55; and p. 308, endnote 79. 23 Karl Löwith, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. Der revolutionäre Bruch im Denken des 19. Jahrhunderts. Marx und Kierkegaard, 2nd ed., Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1950, referred to in, for example, Eugen Biser, Gott ist tot. Nietzsches Destruktion des christlichen Bewußtseins, Munich: Kösel 1962, p. 80, note 1; Biser, Glaubensverständnis, p. 149, note 57; Karl Löwith, Die Hegelsche Linke. Texte aus den Werken von Heinrich Heine, Arnold Ruge, Moses Hess, Max Stirner, Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx und Sören Kierkegaard, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann 1962, referred to in, for example, Biser, Theologische Sprachtheorie und Hermeneutik, p. 272, note 126; Biser, Einweisung ins Christentum, p. 426, endnote 21; Karl Löwith, Wissen, Glauben und Skepsis, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1956 (Kleine Vandenhoeck-Reihe, vol. 30), referred to in, for example, Biser, Der Freund, p. 326, endnote 14; Romano Guardini, Die Annahme seiner selbst, Würzburg: Werkbund-Verlag 1960, frequently referred to in several of Biser’s books, see for example his Der inwendige Lehrer. Der Weg zu Selbstfindung und Heilung, Munich and Zürich: Piper 1994, passim, and footnote 13 above. 24 Biser, Gott ist tot, pp. 80–5; ibid., p. 94; he also recognizes that Nietzsche wrote in a letter to Brandes from February 19, 1888 that he wanted to read about “the psychological problem Kierkegaard.” 25 Eugen Biser, “Kein ‘Glaubensheld.’ Zu zwei Büchern über Kierkegaard,” Hochland, vol. 57, 1964–65, pp. 173–7, about Gerd-Günther Grau, Die Selbstauflösung des christlichen Glaubens. Eine religionsphilosophische Studie über Kierkegaard, Frankfurt am Main: Schulte-Bulmke 1963, and August Vetter, Frömmigkeit als Leidenschaft. Eine Deutung Kierkegaards, 2nd ed., Freiburg: Alber 1963. 26 Biser, “Kein ‘Glaubensheld,’ ” pp. 174–5. 22

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lies “far from the category of the system.”27 Reviewing August Vetter (1887–1976), he recommends this introduction, originally published in 1928, as one of the best because of its many insights and clear style,28 but later he himself will constantly refer to the biography of Walter Lowrie (1868–1959).29 Grau’s book in particular accompanies Biser’s working with Kierkegaard and will be referred to in his later works.30 Biser’s own productive reception of Kierkegaard did not start until the beginning of the 1970s. Now he was elaborating and reformulating his own central ideas, which he has continued to present, sometimes without any change. There are two overlapping strata, deeply connected with Kierkegaard’s central ideas, which form Biser’s basis for his own approach to fundamental theology. The one is more theoretical, concerning Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s (1729–81) famous “ugly, broad ditch” between history and faith and the concept of “the disciple at second hand,” the other more existential, analyzing present mankind, especially with the concept of anxiety. In his Habilitation, Biser does not recognize an epoch-making rupture, separating us from the historical beginnings and Holy Scripture as such. Following the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), he reformulates a famous motto taken from the Lutheran Pietist Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752) with Kierkegaard’s concepts of Philosophical Fragments and Practice in Christianity. The first part of Bengel’s te totum applica ad textum; rem totam applica ad te31 should be understood as an impulse to come to a contemporaneity of interpreter and text, thus overlapping the historical distance in an “intentional contemporaneity.”32 Biser does not question this hermeneutical program and even takes into consideration that the hermeneutical situation with God as the teacher, which Kierkegaard describes as the absolute paradox, could result in an experience of Gadamer’s “fusion of horizons,” thus too irenically combining these two hermeneutics.33 Later on, Biser emphasizes the differences in these distinctions in his new approach to fundamental theology of 1975. Now he gives a detailed account of the “ugly, broad ditch” and its philosophical and historical background. Lessing’s call for help could not be heard by theology, which at that time and even later tried to base its apologetics on the credibility of Ibid. Ibid., p. 177. 29 See, for example, Biser, Theologische Sprachtheorie und Hermeneutik, p. 331, note 245 is one of the few citations of Vetter’s book. 30 See, for instance, Biser, Die glaubensgeschichtliche Wende, p. 338, endnote 19; Einweisung ins Christentum, p. 443, endnote 27. 31 This often-quoted sentence is originally taken from Johann Albrecht Bengel’s introduction to his Novum Testamentum Graecum, Tübingen: Cotta 1734. Biser keeps on combining it with Kierkegaard’s concept of contemporaneity as a way out of the aporia of historical-critical exegesis, see, for instance, Biser, Der Freund, p. 69. 32 Biser, Theologische Sprachtheorie und Hermeneutik, p. 286: “Umgekehrt heißt auslegen, im Zusammenhang mit Kierkegaards Fragestellung gesehen, die zeitliche Distanz, die zwischen dem Werden und Gewordensein eines Sprachverhalts besteht und die sich im Fall ‘historischer Texte’ noch vielfach um die ihrer überlieferungsgeschichtlichen Entwicklung vergrößert, auf eine zumindest intentionale Gleichzeitigkeit hin überholen.” 33 Biser, Theologische Sprachtheorie und Hermeneutik, pp. 293–4. 27 28

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miracles and the communicability of the foundations of faith, as postulated at the First Vatican Council (1869–70).34 As a consequence, faith was treated in terms of objectivity, subjectivity was rejected as not communicable. But faith is not primarily accepting facts of dogmatics, as Biser points out, but a kind of certainty with the aim to strengthen men feeling insecure and tempted, in other words “an act of existential consolidation.”35 To have worked out this fact has to be recognized as Kierkegaard’s greatest discovery.36 Nevertheless, Biser’s own “hermeneutical faith,” which not only refuses any sacrificium intellectus, but relies on confirmation in dialogue,37 already reveals that he has never warmed to Kierkegaard’s “knight of faith” or “faith by virtue of the absurd.” Biser’s concept of “hermeneutical faith” is based on a new approach to Jesus and the gospels, which he had elaborated in his first book about Jesus from 1973 with the title Der Helfer. Eine Vergegenwärtigung Jesu. There he tries to overcome the problematic historical-critical exegesis, which seemed to fragment our knowledge about Jesus and to cement the fragments in the past, thus making them inaccessible for today’s Christians. In contrast to the historical-critical reading of the Gospels, Biser wants to represent, modernize, or bring to mind Jesus for our present time. Going back to the religious experience of those who met Jesus, which is reflected in all the texts of the New Testament, not only the historically verified sayings of Jesus, he tries to bridge the gap between past and present and thus to overcome Lessing’s “ugly, broad ditch.”38 In this context, Biser points to Matthew 11:28: “Come here to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”39 It proves for Biser that the field of spiritual experience and insights lies close to the real intentions of the historical Jesus.40 This quotation is not only the motto of Practice in Christianity, but also of a whole chapter in Biser’s own book, and the center of his own reading of Kierkegaard.41 In his meditation on this sentence, Biser inserts several long quotations from Practice in Christianity42 and follows Kierkegaard by combining the suffering and inner passion with the deep love of Jesus, who draws all men unto Biser, Glaubensverständnis, pp. 28–32. Ibid., p. 68: “Als Akt existentialer Vergewisserung begriffen, entspricht der Glaube der Grundintention Jesu, dem es zunächst weder um die Belehrung noch um die Besserung der Menschheit zu tun war, sondern um die Entlastung der Bedrückten und Beladenen, um die Konsolidierung der mit sich selbst Überworfenen und die Festigung der Verunsicherten und Geängstigten.” 36 Ibid., p. 68, note 19: “die größte Entdeckung des späten Kierkegaard.” 37 Ibid., pp. 69–71. 38 Biser, Der Helfer, pp. 25–32. Cf. Biser, Einweisung ins Christentum, pp. 51–3. 39 Cf. SKS 12, 21 / PC, 11. 40 Biser, Der Helfer, p. 29. In this early book, Biser still reflects that Bultmann tries to locate the origin of this saying in Jewish wisdom literature, and later he will take for granted that it is originally from Jesus himself. 41 Eugen Biser and Richard Heinzmann, Mensch und Spiritualität. Eugen Biser und Richard Heinzmann im Gespräch, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2008, p. 101: “Sören Kierkegaard hat in diesem Satz [Mt 11:28], den er im Lichte Jesu gelesen hat, das Zentrum des ganzen Neuen Testaments entdeckt.” 42 Cf. ibid., pp. 159–63 and SKS 12, 21–6 / PC, 11–16. 34 35

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him (cf. John 11:32). Contrary to Bultmann’s conviction that the consciousness and the true thoughts of Jesus are irrelevant, Biser stresses that Kierkegaard’s reflections on the incognito and the inner passion or passion of the soul of Jesus reveal “a hermeneutically given fact without which in many traits the visible figure of Jesus would not have the transparency needed for a true understanding.”43 Biser even agrees with Kierkegaard in deducing this suffering from his incognito and the situation of offense that Jesus himself provokes, which is developed in the second part of Practice in Christianity.44 But he seems not to consent to Kierkegaard’s hypertrophic self-reflection of Jesus’ suffering being itself the occasion for offense and thus for his own suffering.45 Neither does he expand the whole panorama of Jesus’ incognito and the bewilderment of the impossibility of direct communication.46 Instead, Biser leads the reader to the cross, where Jesus reveals his self-giving love when he entrusts mother and son to one another according to John 19:26–7, verses Kierkegaard nearly never quoted. With the exception of the dialogue between the risen Christ and Peter, who shall love him (John 21), the same holds true for two other passages Biser meditates on at the end of his book. Jesus assures us that he will always be with us (Matthew 28:20) and calls us to abide in him (John 15:4). Biser concludes his book, being convinced that Jesus is really and directly present for those who believe in him. Thus he smoothes down the harshness of the impossibility of direct communication, which is central for Kierkegaard’s Practice in Christianity. So while the title of Biser’s book about Jesus, Der Helfer, is taken directly from Kierkegaard,47 the subtitle Eine Vergegenwärtigung Jesu transforms his ideas. This transformation becomes more evident in his subsequent books about Jesus. In his Der Freund. Annäherung an Jesus of 1980, the epithet “friend” (Freund) for Jesus, taken from John 15:15, is quite unfamiliar to Kierkegaard, who obviously never quoted this verse. Biser continues to follow Kierkegaard’s Practice in Christianity as a key work, especially with the idea of the inner passion of Jesus, the importance of Matthew 11:28, for Biser now the “essential word” of Jesus (Wesenswort) in which

Biser and Heinzmann, Mensch und Spiritualität, p. 192: “Mit der Frage nach dieser Leidensgeschichte wird keine verbotene Tür aufgebrochen, keine Intimität verletzt, sondern eine hermeneutische Grundgegebenheit aufgerufen, ohne welche die sichtbare Lebensgestalt Jesu in vielen Zügen nicht die für ein wahres Verständnis erforderliche Transparenz erlangt.” 44 Ibid., pp. 189–98, citing, for example, the passage corresponding to SKS 12, 108 / PC, 100: “Ah, to stand with open arms and say, ‘Come here to me!’—and then all flee—not only flee but flee offended! Oh, to be the Savior of the world! And therefore this suffering echoes in the joyful words to Peter: Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonas.” 45 See SKS 12, 108 / PC, 138: “he suffers so that this, his suffering, can become and does become an offense to the few believers. It is true that he suffers only once, but unlike a human being he does not escape with the first-time suffering—he suffers throughout the most grievous suffering the second time, in his concern and grief that his suffering is an occasion for offense. No human being can comprehend this suffering; to want to comprehend it is presumption.” Biser, Das Antlitz, p. 60, cites this passage, yet without further interpretation. 46 See SKS 12, 136–43 / PC, 131–9. 47 Biser, Der Helfer, p. 162, referring to the passage corresponding to SKS 12, 26 / PC, 15: “The helper is the help.” 43

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he expresses his own essence,48 and the dialectic of love and offense.49 Nevertheless he leaves out those traits in Kierkegaard which would be rather a sign of the modern crisis of faith than a solution for it. From this it is evident that the more theoretical and hermeneutical stratum concerning the foundations of theology results in the more existential stratum and the analysis of present mankind. The problem of man in modernity and the questions about the meaning of life can only be solved with Christology, for Kierkegaard and for Biser as well. For Biser it is Kierkegaard who was the first to use the word “meaning” in its modern sense when he articulated the anthropological problem in his Repetition, mediated by his own biography.50 In this sense he is the inventor of the so-called “modal-anthropology.” Its basis is “that man is not yet what he can be.”51 Anxiety, for Biser, is the central characteristic of the present epoch in the history of mankind. Now it is man himself who hangs over the ugly, broad ditch,52 afflicted by the anxiety of man himself and his possibilities.53 It was Kierkegaard who was the first to come to this diagnosis, especially in linking anxiety with the category of possibility.54 In this he was followed by the philosophers Heidegger and Jaspers, the authors Gertrud von Le Fort and Werner Bergengruen (1892–1964), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80), and many others. Biser often stereotypically refers to series of these authorities for his diagnosis, connecting Kierkegaard’s two books The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death.55 This diagnosis holds true to the present day, even with a reinforced dynamic, such as the “disintegrative situation” of society with its mechanisms of suppression and diversion which makes it more and more difficult to become aware of its present state of mind, and thereby to overcome it. As Biser shows with Gertrud von Le Fort’s novel Die Letzte am Schafott, anxiety itself resembles prayer in its structure, and as Biser, Der Freund, pp. 189–90; cf. ibid., p. 104 and Biser, Einweisung ins Christentum, p. 100: “the center of the gospel.” 49 Ibid., p. 54, he quotes the aforementioned passage corresponding to SKS 12, 108 / PC, 100 (see above, footnote 44), but reintegrates Jesus’ being an offense in an anthropological concept, see Biser, Einweisung ins Christentum, p. 120: “Doch Jesus befremdet nicht nur durch sein irritierendes Urteil, sein provozierendes Verhalten und seine konventionsfremde Mitmenschlichkeit, sondern nicht weniger durch die Radikalität seiner alle Normen durchbrechenden Liebe. Es ist eine Liebe, die nach Kierkegaards hellsichtiger Einfühlung die menschliche Sinnerwartung sowohl in zeitlicher wie in sachlicher Hinsicht überbietet.” 50 Biser, Der Mensch, pp. 40–3, quoting ibid., p. 40 the beginning of the diary entry of October 11 (SKS 4, 68 / R, 100). Cf. Biser, Der Mensch, p. 182, where he stresses that it was Milan Machovec (1925–2003) who first wrote about the meaning of life. 51 Biser, Der Mensch, pp. 294–5. 52 Ibid., p. 82: “Der Mensch ist das den Abgrund überspannende Wesen.” 53 Ibid., p. 81: “Erlebt wird die Verzweiflung…als Angst, die damit zugleich in ihrer Primärform als die Angst des Menschen vor sich und seinen Möglichkeiten faßbar wird.” 54 This idea, taken from The Concept of Anxiety, is frequently referred to in Biser’s books; cf., for example, the quotation of the passage with the hypochondriac (SKS 4, 460 / CA, 162) in his Grenzerfahrungen, p. 31, footnote 1; Gott ist tot, p. 283, note 41. 55 Biser, Menschsein in Anfechtung und Widerspruch, pp. 111–14; Biser, Der Mensch, pp. 81–3 and pp. 126–7; Biser, Einweisung ins Christentum, p. 56 and p. 329. 48

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such guarantees “that today, man is standing in a really new form of affinity to the religious.”56 As a consequence, a Christian theology which should be a solution and not a part of the problem has to avoid two extremes. It should neither superimpose a “Christology from above” or “descendent Christology” over those who are not receptive to it and should not be made such by provoking their anxious and unstable personalities. Nor should one start from the other side in a “Christology from below” or “ascendent Christology” which focuses too much on social and global problems instead of being an answer for the existential misery of the individual. Quite to the contrary, only a “Christology from inside” (Christologie von innen) will avoid these aporias and answer the questions Kierkegaard formulated in his Repetition: “Where am I? Who am I?” The answer is: “The helper is the help.” Kierkegaard was the first to formulate this “Christology from inside.”57 He not only realized the “anthropologic turn” in theology, but showed the way which should be pursued. Biser developed this idea in the early 1970s. Yet, he seems to have had some reservations with respect to the way Kierkegaard fills his idea of contemporaneity.58 On the one side, Kierkegaard only paves the way for the “Christology from inside” but does not develop it.59 On the other hand, it is he who brings us to an “immediate access” to Jesus not only in the way of suffering, but also in accepting Jesus’ help according to Matthew 11:28.60 Biser sees his own work as a modernization of this program, which he makes quite obvious when constantly refering to Practice in Biser, Menschsein in Anfechtung und Widerspruch, p. 114. This idea was first developed in his interpretation of this novel, see Biser, Grenzerfahrungen, pp. 31–48; pp. 83–92; for example p. 86: “Angst als religiös[e] Aufgabe.” 57 Biser, Der Freund, pp. 226–7, especially: “[Kierkegaard] hatte vielmehr seine—als ‘Einübung’ getarnte—‘Christologie von innen’ auch in einer Weise darauf abgestimmt, daß sie sich wie die Antwort des Glaubens auf die anthropologische Frage ausnimmt.” Cf. Biser, Die glaubensgeschichtliche Wende, pp. 261–5, see especially p. 264: “Denn der mit seiner Welt und sich selbst überworfene Mensch ist allenfalls noch eine ‘schwebende Mitte,’ die, um gehalten werden zu können, der stabilisierenden Hilfe bedarf. Die aber kann nur in jener ‘überkategorialen’ Hilfe bestehen, die der Selbstzuwendung des Helfers entstammt und so mit diesem identisch ist. Insofern ‘antwortet’ das Schlüsselwort der ‘Einübung’…unmittelbar auf die Doppelfrage der Wiederholungsschrift.” For a theological reaction on this “Christology from inside,” cf. Walter Kern, “Christologie ‘von innen’ und die historische Jesusfrage,” in his Disput um Jesus und um Kirche. Aspekte, Reflexionen, Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag 1980, pp. 73–87, which is frequently named by Biser and which refers to Eugen Biser, “Der Helfer und die Hilfe. Plädoyer für eine Christologie von innen,” in Wer ist Jesus Christus?, ed. by Joseph Sauer, Freiburg i. Br.: Herder 1977, pp. 165–200, where Kierkegaard is only mentioned on pp. 182–6. 58 Eugen Biser, “Im Schatten des Kreuzes. Erwägungen zu Kierkegaards Gedanken der geheimen Passion Jesu,” Geist und Leben, vol. 46, 1973, pp. 324–33, see p. 331, after quoting Practice in Christianity, he cites Pascal, who goes even further and shows one how to understand Jesus as “the ‘being’ who is in us without being one with us in a univocal sense.” 59 Eugen Biser, “Geführt und gehalten. Spirituelle Impulse durch eine ‘Christologie von Innen,’ ” Geist und Leben, vol. 51, 1978, pp. 178–95, see pp. 183–5 about Kierkegaard. 60 See Eugen Biser, “Unmittelbarer Zugang zu Jesus? Die Wegweisung des Sören Kierkegaard,” Wort und Antwort, 1986, pp. 154–8, see pp. 157–8. 56

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Christianity in nearly all his books.61 But he shows his own concern in his reading of the “Christology from inside,” for example in opposing it as a “Christology of solidarity and identity” against the “Christology of authority.”62 Biser articulates the inwardness of his “Christology from inside” more in terms of the mystic Christ-intimacy (intimacy of Paul’s Galatians 2:2063 or as “christomathia,” i.e., to be educated by Christ). The whole book Einweisung ins Christentum, which in German sounds quite similar to Kierkegaard’s Indøvelse i Christendom (Einübung im Christentum) or Practice in Christianity, should be understood as a “bringing into wisdom” (Ein-weis-ung). So this title is both a reference to Kierkegaard and a distancing.64 However, the title of his first book about Jesus, Der Helfer, which is deliberately opposed to Guardini’s famous The Lord (Der Herr) from 1937, refers directly to Kierkegaard.65 Thus, Biser can reformulate his “Christology from inside” as a “therapeutic theology” or “theology as therapy.” With this approach, he seeks to regain the original message of Christianity. After the periods of interpreting Christianity in terms of law, as documented in the early literary work The Shepherd of Hermas from the second century, in terms of dogmatics as in the Middle Ages, and after Kant in moral terms, Christianity now seems to be more and more formulated in mystical terms of inwardness and spirituality with a focus on salvation, that is, therapy.66 Biser underpins this “therapeutic theology” with the same quotations from Kierkegaard as the “Christology from inside,” especially Matthew 11:28 and “the helper is the help.” Biser points out that Kierkegaard thought of calling his Practice in Christianity “The Radical Cure.”67 The disease to be cured is, according to Biser, mainly the bewilderment of mankind about itself, as Kierkegaard diagnosed in Repetition at the beginning of the diary entry of October 11, 1841, the day he ended his engagement: “I am at the end of my rope. I am nauseated by life; it is Biser, Glaubensverständnis, p. 68, note 19 about his Der Helfer. Biser, Einweisung ins Christentum, p. 87. Cf. his plea for a Christianity of freedom with Gal 5: 1 in his Die glaubensgeschichtliche Wende, p. 291: “ ‘Ermutigung zum Selbstsein’ ”; cf. the opposition of faith as “submission under the authority of an infinitely superior wisdom of God” and faith as “ascent” in Biser, Menschsein, p. 143. 63 Biser, “Geführt und gehalten,” p. 195: “Wenn diese Hilfe aber identisch mit dem Helfer ist, kann nur das Personzentrum des Empfängers das ‘Organ’ dieser Annahme sein… Ein dialogisches Ich baut sich auf, in dem sich Wort und Antwort zu echter Einsinnigkeit verbinden.” Cf. Kern, “Christologie ‘von innen’ und die historische Jesusfrage,” p. 77, where he interprets “from inside” as “das allseitige In-eins des Menschen-in-Menscheit als des Christen-in-Jesus.” 64 Biser, Einweisung ins Christentum, p. 17; p. 44 and p. 331. 65 See Joachim Reger, Die Mitte des Christentums. Eugen Bisers Neubestimmung des Glaubens als exemplarischer Versuch gegenwärtiger Theologie. Mit einem Nachwort von Eugen Biser, Trier: Paulinus Verlag 2005 (Trierer Theologische Studien, vol. 71), pp. 86–9. 66 Eugen Biser, Theologie als Therapie. Zur Wiedergewinnung einer verlorenen Dimension, Heidelberg: E. Fischer 1985, p. 112. 67 Biser, Die glaubensgeschichtliche Wende, p. 254. This information is taken from Hayo Gerdes, Sören Kierkegaards ‘Einübung im Christentum.’ Einführung und Erläuterung, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1982, p. 1; cf. SKS 21, 22–3, NB6:25 / JP 6, 6210. 61 62

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insipid—without salt and meaning….Where am I? What does it mean to say: the world? What is the meaning of that word? Who tricked me into this whole thing and leaves me standing here? Who am I?”68 As shown, Biser’s productive reception of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre is centered around a few works or even a few thoughts and passages in them, mainly The Concept of Anxiety with the analysis of anxiety, Philosophical Fragments, and the Christian answer to Lessing’s ditch, the Practice in Christianity with the ideas of contemporaneity, “the helper is the help,” and the central motto taken from Matthew 11:28. The many other citations or more or less obvious allusions to Kierkegaard which can be found in nearly all of Biser’s books are of less importance, except for Biser’s approval of Kierkegaard’s thoughts about self-love, love of one’s neighbor, and self-denial in Works of Love.69 As a kind of unproductive reception, they often function as an illustration of Biser’s ideas without being systematically relevant for his reception of Kierkegaard himself. This can be seen in the passage where he cites the famous sentence about the 70,000 fathoms of water just to specify it and to call attention to the difference to Kierkegaard. The leap of faith which is required is not the one of Kierkegaard, but “the decision to start the dialogue of faith…in a community of faith.”70 The same holds true for some other quotations which demonstrate that Biser read more than the aforementioned books. These references to Kierkegaard either illustrate a genuine idea of Biser or only give information about Kierkegaard and his works without further relevance to his own thoughts.71

68 SKS 4, 68 / R, 200, quoted in Biser, Theologie als Therapie, p. 89. This passage is often referred to in other works by Biser, e.g., “Der Helfer und die Hilfe,” pp. 187–8, note 50, and Der Freund, p. 227; Der Mensch, p. 40, cf. the first hints to Repetition in Theologische Sprachtheorie und Hermeneutik, pp. 330–2, where Biser read it more from a hermeneutical than an existential point of view. 69 Biser, Menschsein in Anfechtung und Widerspruch, pp. 23–4 and pp. 133–4 quotation of the passages corresponding to SKS 9, 20 and 65 / WL, 12 and 58–9. 70 Biser, Glaubensverständnis, pp. 114–15. Even the problem of those 70,000 fathoms is different from Kierkegaard, as it reflects the impact of the community of the believers, cf. ibid., p. 114: “Hier schließt sich der hermeneutische Zirkel des Glaubens nachgerade zu einem Teufelskreis, da die volle Sicherheit erst im Bekenntnis—und seiner Resonanz im Kreis der Mitglaubenden—zu gewinnen ist, das Bekenntnis aber zugleich diese Sicherheit als seinen entscheidenden Impuls voraussetzt.” Biser writes that the quotation is taken from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, but his formulation could not be verified, it is probably taken from secondary literature. 71 See the hints to Either/Or in Biser’s Der Freund, p. 35 (Sophie Scholl as a bride) and p. 291, endnote 31, or in Biser, Der Mensch, p. 179 and p. 320, endnote 151 (Don Juan as representative of the immediate erotic stage), and to The Point of View for My Work as an Author in Biser, Der Mensch, p. 42 (the “single individual” as Kierkegaard’s category). See further Sören Kierkegaard, Die Tagebücher, vols. 1–2, selected, trans. and ed. by Theodor Haecker, Leipzig: Hegner 1941, quoted in Theologische Sprachtheorie und Hermeneutik, Munich: Koesel 1970, p. 100, where he quotes the journal entry about the idealist, “who has built a vast palace while he himself lives next door in a barn” (SKS 18, 303, JJ:490 / KJN 2, 279), taken from Haecker’s translation from 1923. Later he also refers to the similar passage in The Sickness unto Death (SKS 11, 158–9 / SUD, 43–4), cf. footnote 19 above.

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Though Eugen Biser never tried to interpret Kierkegaard’s writings as a whole, he constantly pointed to him as a key figure for everybody who wants to interpret our modern culture. Biser’s own vigorous approach is an important voice in modern theology and an outstanding example of how Kierkegaard is more relevant and modernized in present Catholic theology, an example which should not be neglected.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Biser’s Corpus Grenzerfahrungen. Die Bedeutung der religiösen Grenzsituationen in den Werken Gertrud von Le Forts, Freiburg i. Br., unpublished dissertation 1956, p. 31; p. 42. Gott ist tot. Nietzsches Destruktion des christlichen Bewußtseins, Munich: Kösel 1962, pp. 80–85; p. 94; p. 283. “Kein ‘Glaubensheld.’ Zu zwei Büchern über Kierkegaard,” Hochland, vol. 57, 1964–65, pp. 173–7. Theologische Sprachtheorie und Hermeneutik, Munich: Koesel 1970, p. 97; p. 100; p. 207; pp. 285–6; p. 293; p. 304; pp. 328–9; p. 331; p. 333. Der Helfer. Eine Vergegenwärtigung Jesu, Munich: Koesel 1973, p. 9; p. 11; p. 14; pp. 18–19; p. 67; p. 149; p. 153; p. 155; pp. 159–64; p. 177; p. 180; pp. 186–91; p. 193; p. 197; p. 201; p. 224; p. 241. “Im Schatten des Kreuzes. Erwägungen zu Kierkegaards Gedanken der geheimen Passion Jesu,” Geist und Leben, vol. 46, 1973, pp. 324–33. “Verwirklichung der Liebe. Erwägungen zu dem Kierkegaard-Wort ‘Der Helfer ist die Hilfe,’ ” Mitten in der Welt, Lochham: Sekretariat Charles de Foucauld, vols. 11–12, 1973, nos. 44–5, pp. 93–106. Glaubensverständnis. Grundriß einer hermeneutischen Fundamentaltheologie, Freiburg i. Br.: Herder 1975, p. 68, note; p. 93; pp. 114–15; p. 170. “Der Helfer und die Hilfe. Plädoyer für eine Christologie von innen,” in Wer ist Jesus Christus?, ed. by Joseph Sauer, Freiburg i. Br. et al.: Herder 1977, pp. 165–200, see pp. 182–8. pp. 165–200. “Geführt und gehalten. Spirituelle Impulse durch eine ‘Christologie von innen,’ ” Geist und Leben, vol. 51, 1978, pp. 178–95, see pp. 184–6. Interpretation und Veränderung. Werk und Wirkung Romano Guardinis, Paderborn et al.: Schöningh 1979, p. 11; p. 22; p. 27; pp. 38–41; p. 57; p. 83; p. 91; p. 135; p. 140; p. 144. Menschsein in Anfechtung und Widerspruch. Ansatz einer christlichen Anthropologie, Düsseldorf: Patmos 1980, pp. 15–16; p. 20; p. 26; p. 29; p. 30; p. 54; p. 61; p. 73; p. 75; p. 133. Theologie als Therapie. Zur Wiedergewinnung einer verlorenen Dimension, Heidelberg: E. Fischer 1985, p. 10; p. 19; pp. 41–2; p. 48; p. 53; p. 71; p. 73; p. 86; p. 89; p. 90; pp. 112–15; p. 118; p. 131, note; p. 132; p. 140; p. 144. “Unmittelbarer Zugang zu Jesus? Die Wegweisung des Sören Kierkegaard,” Wort und Antwort, Ostfildern: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag der Schwabenverlags AG, vol. 27, 1986, pp. 154–8.

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Die glaubensgeschichtliche Wende. Eine theologische Positionsbestimmung, Graz et al.: Styria 1986, p. 19; p. 32; p. 43; p. 81; p. 112; p. 119; p. 121; p. 124; pp. 133–4; p. 186; p. 199; p. 204; p. 220; p. 238; p. 247; p. 251; p. 254; p. 261; pp. 263–5; p. 289. Der Freund. Annäherungen an Jesus, Munich et al.: Piper 1989 (Serie Piper, vol. 981), p. 18; pp. 27–8; p. 35; p. 44; p. 50; pp. 54–5; pp. 75–6; p. 104; p. 117; pp. 119–20; p. 129; p. 175; p. 178; p. 186; pp. 189–92; pp. 221–2; p. 224; pp. 226ff.; pp. 268–9; pp. 276–7; p. 281; p. 285; pp. 290–1; p. 294; p. 298; pp. 302–3; p. 305; p. 320; pp. 325–6. Der inwendige Lehrer. Der Weg zu Selbstfindung und Heilung, Munich and Zürich: Piper 1994 (Serie Piper, vol. 1852), p. 9; p. 49; p. 60; p. 62; p. 65; pp. 79–80; p. 84; p. 98; p. 136; pp. 141–2; p. 148; pp. 154–5; pp. 161–2; p. 165; p. 170; p. 186; p. 192; p. 198; pp. 201–2; pp. 205ff. Der Mensch—das uneingelöste Versprechen. Entwurf einer Modalanthropologie, Düsseldorf: Patmos 1995, p. 34; p. 36; pp. 39–43, p. 59; p. 63; pp. 66–7; p. 68; p. 70; pp. 76–7; p. 81; p. 83; pp. 97–8; p. 122; p. 132; p. 134; p. 136; pp. 149; p. 156; p. 175; pp. 179–80; p. 182; p. 193; p. 208; p. 210; p. 215; p. 218; p. 275; p. 281; p. 288; p. 292; pp. 294–5; p. 307; pp. 310–11; p. 312. Einweisung ins Christentum, Düsseldorf: Patmos 1997, p. 9; p. 15; p. 17; p. 40; p. 44; p. 47; pp. 51ff.; pp. 56ff.; p. 66; p. 87; p. 100; p. 106; p. 114; p. 118; pp. 131ff.; p. 151; p. 161; p. 166; pp. 175–6; p. 187; p. 198; p. 210; p. 223; p. 249; p. 257; p. 282; pp. 284ff.; p. 291; p. 296; pp. 321–2; p. 329; p. 333; p. 350; pp. 359–63; p. 365; p. 383; p. 405; p. 413; p. 421; pp. 429–30; pp. 435–8; pp. 441–4; p. 448; p. 450; p. 452; p. 456; p. 460. Das Antlitz. Eine Christologie von innen, Düsseldorf: Patmos 1999, p. 16; p. 49; pp. 58–9; p. 63; p. 73; p. 79; p. 111; pp. 136–7; p. 145; p. 148; p. 162; p. 172; p. 190; p. 206; p. 227; p. 287. (In the second edition with the revised title: Das Antlitz. Selbstfindung in Jesus Christus, Düsseldorf: Patmos 2006.) Mensch und Spiritualität. Eugen Biser und Richard Heinzmann im Gespräch, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2008, p. 24; p. 40; p. 64; p. 101; p. 132; p. 149. II. Sources of Biser’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Anz, Wilhelm, “Philosophie und Glaube bei S. Kierkegaard,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 51, 1954, pp. 50–105. Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Apokalypse der deutschen Seele, vol. 1, Der deutsche Idealismus, Salzburg: Pustet 1937, pp. 693–734. Brandes, Georg, Sören Kierkegaard. Eine kritische Darstellung, Leipzig: Reclam 1992. Dallago, Carl, Ueber eine Schrift: Søren Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit (von Theodor Haecker), Innsbruck: Brenner 1914. De Rougemont, Denis, “Kierkegaard und Hamlet,” Der Monat. Eine internationale Zeitschrift für Politik und Geistesleben, no. 56, May 1953, pp. 115–24.

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Fischer, Hermann, Die Christologie des Paradoxes. Zur Herkunft und Bedeutung des Christusverständnisses Sören Kierkegaards, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1970. Gerdes, Hayo, Sören Kierkegaards ‘Einübung im Christentum.’ Einführung und Erläuterung, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1982. Grau, Gerd-Günther, Die Selbstauflösung des christlichen Glaubens. Eine religionsphilosophische Studie über Kierkegaard, Frankfurt am Main: Schulte-Bulmke 1963. Guarda, Victor, Die Wiederholung. Analysen zur Grundstruktur menschlicher Existenz im Verständnis Sören Kierkegaards, Königstein: Athenäum 1980. Guardini, Romano, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Søren Kierkegaards,” Hochland, vol. 24, no. 2, 1927, pp. 12–33. — “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” Die Schildgenossen, vol. 8, 1928, pp. 103–25. — Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal, Leipzig: Hegner 1935, see p. 26; pp. 160–76; pp. 207–34. — Die Annahme seiner selbst, Würzburg: Werkbund-Verlag 1960. Haecker, Theodor, Sören Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit, Munich: Schreiber 1913. Jaspers, Karl, Philosophie, vol. 2, Existenzerhellung, Berlin et al.: Springer 1932. — Vernunft und Existentz. Fünf Vorlesungen, Groningen: J.B. Wolters 1935. — Der philosophische Glaube, Munich: Piper 1948. Jens, Walter and Hans Küng (eds.), Dichtung und Religion. Pascal, Gryphius, Lessing, Hölderlin, Novalis, Kierkegaard, Dostojewski, Kafka, Munich: Kindler 1985. Kierkegaard, Søren, Einübung in Christentum, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch, Düsseldorf and Cologne: Diedrichs 1955. — Randbemerkungen zum Evangelium, trans. and ed. by Friedrich Aage HansenLöwe, Munich: Kösel 1956. — Der Begriff Angst, trans. by Liselotte Richter, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 1960. — Die Widerholung, trans. by Liselotte Richter, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 1961. — Die Krankheit zum Tode, trans. by Liselotte Richter, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 1962. — Philosophische Brocken, trans. by Liselotte Richter, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 1964. — Einübung in Christentum, trans. by Emanuel Hirsch and Hayo Gerdes, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag-Haus Mohn 1980. Löwith, Karl, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. Der revolutionäre Bruch im Denken des 19. Jahrhunderts. Marx und Kierkegaard, 2nd ed., Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1950, pp. 125–30; pp. 164–79; pp. 269–71; pp. 304–8; pp. 341–5; pp. 383–92. — Wissen, Glauben und Skepsis, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1956 (Kleine Vandenhoeck-Reihe, vol. 30), pp. 49–67. — Die Hegelsche Linke. Texte aus den Werken von Heinrich Heine, Arnold Ruge, Moses Hess, Max Stirner, Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx und

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Sören Kierkegaard, Stuttgart–Bad Cannstatt: Frommann 1962, pp. 20–7 and pp. 269–87. Lowrie, Walter, Das Leben Sören Kierkegaards, trans. by Günther Sawatzki, Düsseldorf: Diederichs 1955. Meyer, Raphael, Søren Kierkegaard und sein Verhältnis zu “ihr.” Aus nachgelassenen Papieren, Stuttgart: Juncker 1905. Reimer, Louis, “Die Wiederholung des Problems der Erlösung bei Kierkegaard,” in Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. and introduced by Michael Theunissen and Wilfried Greve, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1979 (SuhrkampTaschenbuch Wissenschaft, vol. 241), pp. 302–44. Ries, Wiebrecht, Transzendenz als Terror. Eine religionsphilosophische Studie über Franz Kafka, Heidelberg: Schneider 1977. Schäfer, Klaus, Hermeneutische Ontologie in den Climacus-Schriften Sören Kierkegaards, Munich: Kösel 1968. Theunissen, Michael, Das Menschenbild in der ‘Krankheit zum Tode,’ ” in Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, ed. and introduced by Michael Theunissen and Wilfried Greve, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1979 (SuhrkampTaschenbuch Wissenschaft, vol. 241), pp. 496–510. Vetter, August, Frömmigkeit als Leidenschaft. Eine Deutung Kierkegaards, 2nd ed., Freiburg et al.: Alber 1963 [Leipzig: Insel 1928]. III. Secondary Literature on Biser’s Relation to Kierkegaard Fuchs, Franz Josef and Kreiner, Armin, “ ‘Ich glaube, darum rede ich’ (2 Kor 4,13). Eugen Bisers hermeneutische Theologie,” in Communicatio Fidei. Festschrift Eugen Biser, ed. by Horst Bürkle and Gerold Becker, Regensburg: Pustet 1983, pp. 399–414, see pp. 405–6. Grau, Gerd-Günther, “Sören Kierkegaard: ‘Glaubensheld’ oder ‘Ritter von der Unendlichen Resignation’?” in his Vernunft, Wahrheit, Glaube. Neue Studien zu Nietzsche und Kierkegaard, Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann 1997 (reprinted in An-Denken. Festgabe für Eugen Biser, ed. by Erwin Möde et al., Graz: Styria 1998, pp. 157–67). Heinzmann, Richard, “Zur Theologie von Eugen Biser. Einsichten und Konsequenzen,” in Mensch und Spiritualität. Eugen Biser und Richard Heinzmann im Gespräch, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2008, pp. 135–50, see p. 149. Kern, Walter, “Christologie ‘von innen’ und die historische Jesusfrage,” in his Disput um Jesus und um Kirche. Aspekte, Reflexionen, Innsbruck : Tyrolia–Verlag 1980, pp. 73–87, see p. 75; p. 78; pp. 82–4. Reger, Joachim, Die Mitte des Christentums. Eugen Bisers Neubestimmung des Glaubens als exemplarischer Versuch gegenwärtiger Theologie. Mit einem Nachwort von Eugen Biser, Trier: Paulinus Verlag 2005 (Trierer Theologische Studien, vol. 71), see pp. 96–104 and pp. 371–86.

Romano Guardini: Between Actualistic Personalism, Qualitative Dialectic and Kinetic Logic Peter Šajda

Romano Guardini’s reception of Kierkegaard’s philosophical and theological legacy is in several aspects quite exceptional. Guardini represents a key figure in the interwar wave of Catholic Kierkegaard reception in Germany and belongs to its most productive authors. In the second half of the 1920s, when Guardini published a series of works exploring Kierkegaardian ideas and concepts, Kierkegaard’s philosophy was in the German Catholic circles―and especially among theologians―still a terra incognita. Although the form of Guardini’s literary confrontation with Kierkegaard changed over time, the reception stretches continually over more than four decades and concerns subjects central to Guardini’s thought. The presence of most of Kierkegaard’s works in Guardini’s personal library is yet another piece of the mosaic documenting Guardini’s profound interest in Kierkegaard. Guardini’s ambition to interpret Kierkegaard from the very core of his doctrine made him examine some of Kierkegaard’s most complex works: what results this ambitious project yielded is to be demonstrated in the following analysis. I. Brief Outline of Guardini’s Life and Work Romano Guardini (1885–1968) was born on February 17, 1885 in Verona to Italian parents. Already in 1886 the family relocated to Mainz, Germany, where Guardini received his primary and secondary schooling.1 Despite the fact that Guardini never returned to Italy for a longer period of time, he acquired German citizenship and became deeply involved in German cultural and intellectual life, Italy remained for him a vital point of reference, an inspirational “mental landscape.”2 After short-lived For more detail on Guardini’s early life see Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, Romano Guardini. Konturen des Lebens und Spuren des Denkens, Kevelaer: Topos plus 2005, pp. 20–37. See also the division and characteristics of the four main periods of Guardini’s life in Franz Henrich, “Romano Guardini. Leben, Persönlichkeit, Charisma und Wirken,” in Romano Guardini. Christliche Weltanschauung und menschliche Existenz, ed. by Franz Henrich, Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet 1999, pp. 11–15. 2 Stephan Pauly, Subjekt und Selbstwerdung. Das Subjektdenken Romano Guardinis, seine Rückbezüge auf Søren Kierkegaard und seine Einlösbarkeit in der Postmoderne, 1

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attempts to study chemistry and national economy, Guardini decided at last for the study of theology, which he accomplished at the universities of Freiburg im Breisgau and Tübingen, followed by the priestly seminary in Mainz. The Tübingen period (1907–1908), in particular, proved to be intellectually stimulating and fruitful. It was then that Guardini made contact with the Benedictines of Beuron who introduced him to Platonic philosophy, the phenomenology of Max Scheler (1874–1928), and the beauty of monastic liturgy. The roots of Guardini’s first best-seller Vom Geist der Liturgie (1918) go back to Beuron.3 Following his priestly ordination and a two-year-long pastoral practice as a chaplain, Guardini continued his academic formation with a theological doctorate on the soteriology of St. Bonaventure. Bonaventure’s theological system remained the object of Guardini’s research also during his habilitation which he successfully completed in 1922 at the University of Bonn. Alongside his academic activities Guardini devoted an ever increasing amount of time to a project that would eventually become his life-long mission: intellectual and spiritual formation of Catholic youth. Guardini’s original smaller-scale experience with the Juventus group in Mainz was in 1920 significantly broadened by his first-hand contact with the dynamic national youth movement Quickborn, whose general assembly at the Rothenfels Castle he attended. This encounter gave rise to a many-faceted cooperation with Quickborn, including Guardini’s editorship of Quickborn’s literary organ Die Schildgenossen. An important chapter of Guardini’s life commenced in 1923 with the invitation by the Prussian Minister of Culture to become a lecturer in “philosophy of religion and Catholic world-view” at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Berlin. Although this opportunity enabled Guardini to secure a respected academic position, his relation with the university was far from ideal. A crucial contributing factor to the distance between Guardini and the “Protestant Prussian” Berlin university4 was the unwillingness of both the Lutheran Theological Faculty and the Philosophical Faculty to incorporate the newly created department. In the end, a diplomatic solution was found affiliating Guardini’s department formally with the Catholic Theological Faculty in Breslau, which left him in Berlin with the odd status of a “permanent guest.”5 In spite of Guardini’s rather loose connection to the university as an institution, his lectures managed to attract and impress a broad audience.6 Thematically, the lectures focused on a variety of epistemological, moral, axiological, pedagogical, and ecclesiological topics, combining these with Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer 2000, pp. 25–6. 3 The triple influence of the Beuron Benedictines on Guardini is examined in GerlFalkovitz, Romano Guardini. Konturen des Lebens und Spuren des Denkens, pp. 58–60. 4 Henrich, “Romano Guardini. Leben, Persönlichkeit, Charisma und Wirken,” p. 13. Documents pertaining to the creation of the “Guardini department” at the Berlin university are reprinted and commented upon in Guardini Weiterdenken, ed. by Hermann Josef Schuster, Berlin: Dreieck 1993, vol. 1, pp. 245–72. 5 Gerl-Falkovitz, Romano Guardini. Konturen des Lebens und Spuren des Denkens, pp. 102–3; Hans Mercker, “Christliche Weltanschauung bei Romano Guardini,” in Romano Guardini. Christliche Weltanschauung und menschliche Existenz, pp. 51–2. 6 Gerl-Falkovitz, Romano Guardini. Konturen des Lebens und Spuren des Denkens, pp. 209–11.

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profiles of inspirational personalities of mostly Christian philosophy and literature: Anselm, Augustine, Dante, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Rilke.7 The in vivo presentations of these figures subsequently materialized in a number of monographs published throughout the 1920s and 1930s. As Hans Mercker pointed out in his analysis of Guardini’s lectures and works of the Berlin period, Guardini attempted to fashion his department as “a studium generale in the sense of an academy,” thus complementing the strictly specialized profession-oriented style of the university.8 Parallel to his busy academic and literary life, Guardini’s involvement in Quickborn grew in intensity, reaching a new level with his election as its national leader in 1927. The ideological homogenization of Germany under the banner of National Socialism after 1933 forced Guardini more and more out of public life and into “inner emigration.”9 Unfavorable developments on several fronts led at last to the liquidation of Guardini’s main life-projects. The lectures at the Berlin University were terminated with the closure of the department and imposition of compulsory retirement on Guardini. The headquarters of the Quickborn movement at Rothenfels Castle were confiscated, and the journal Die Schildgenossen was discontinued. In spite of the adverse circumstances, Guardini continued his literary work and in 1937 published his well-known Christological treatise Der Herr. Having left the tumultous capital, Guardini spent the last years of the war (1943–45) in the seclusion of the Mooshausen parish house of his friend Josef Weigner. The post-war years were in many senses much more generous to Guardini than the pre-war years. Already in 1945 he was awarded an ad hominem professorship at the Philosophical Faculty in Tübingen which guaranteed him an unusually high measure of academic freedom.10 In spite of the apparent success of his Tübingen lectures, Guardini relocated in 1948 to Munich, where again he was provided optimal working conditions and attracted wide audiences. As Hans Maier noted, three important facts characterized Guardini’s life in Munich: the public recognition of his life oeuvre, the double mission as a university professor and university preacher in

7 A complete overview of Guardini’s lectures and seminars at the universities of Berlin, Tübingen, and Munich can be found in Guardini Weiterdenken, vol. 1, 1993, pp. 273–85. For Guardini’s own presentation of his aim with the lectures on the mentioned personalities and their oeuvre, see Romano Guardini, Berichte über mein Leben. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen, ed. by Franz Henrich, Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag 1985, pp. 44–6. 8 Hans Mercker, “Vorlesungen und Schriften Guardinis in seiner Berliner Zeit,” in Guardini Weiterdenken, vol. 1, 1993, p. 83. 9 Gilbert Merlio identifies the Catholic journal Hochland as a literary platform for inner emigration of Guardini and other Catholic intellectuals, since it offered the possibility to publish articles in a “coded language.” Cf. Gilbert Merlio, “Carl Muth et la revue Hochland. Entre catholicisme culturel et catholicisme politique,” in Le milieu intellectuel catholique en Allemagne, sa presse et ses réseaux, ed. by Michel Grunewald and Uwe Puschner, Bern: Peter Lang 2006, pp. 201–2. On the complexity of the Catholic intellectuals’ situation in inter-war Germany see Ulrich Bröckling, Katholische Intellektuelle in der Weimarer Republik, Munich: Wilhelm Fink 1993. 10 Hans Maier, “Impulse Guardinis in der Nachkriegszeit – seine akademischen Stationen in Tübingen und München,” in Guardini Weiterdenken, vol. 2, 1999, pp. 68–9.

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the St. Ludwig Church; and his contribution to the academic formation of German youth outside the formal framework of Munich University.11 The post-war years bear a clear testimony to Guardini’s growing international reputation, which is documented in his being awarded a  number of prestigious prizes, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1952) and the Erasmus Prize (1962). Romano Guardini died on October 1, 1968 in Munich. II. The Kierkegaard Discourse in German Catholic Circles in the 1920s and 1930s The immediate socio-historical context in which Guardini’s early confrontation with Kierkegaard’s thought took place was the Catholic intellectual community of the Weimar Republic. The inter-war years in Germany witnessed a notable increase of Catholic interest in Kierkegaard which became reflected in a series of monographs, articles and reviews authored by Catholic scholars. The most important initiators of this development were undoubtedly Theodor Haecker (1879–1945), Alois Dempf (1891–1982), Erich Przywara (1889–1972), Peter Wust (1884–1940), and Romano Guardini. Along with these authors, several Catholic periodicals supported this trend, including Hochland, Die Schildgenossen, Stimmen der Zeit, and Theologische Revue. The reception of Kierkegaard in the German-speaking Catholic community had a relatively long, albeit discontinuous and fragmentary, pre-history. As Heiko Schulz pointed out in his extensive study on the Kierkegaard reception in Germany and Austria, Catholic reactions to Kierkegaard appeared in the public discourse in Germany as early as 1856.12 It was though first in the early twentieth century that more enduring interest arose, leading to an increasingly thorough preoccupation with Kierkegaard’s thought. A key figure in the pre-war reception in the Germanophone world was the Austrian Catholic littérateur Rudolf Kassner (1873–1959), who in 1906 published the influential essay “Sören Kierkegaard. Aphorismen.”13 This essay was preceded by six other pieces in which Kassner drew the attention of his readers to Kierkegaard.14 Ibid., pp. 73–4. During his Munich years Guardini co-founded two academies: the Academy for Political Education Tutzing and the Catholic Academy in Bavaria. 12 Heiko Schulz refers to Joseph Edmund Jörg, “Streiflichter auf die neueste Geschichte des Protestantismus: Die religiösen Bewegungen in den scandinavischen Ländern,” Historischpolitische Blätter für das Katholische Deutschland, no. 38, 1856, pp. 1–30. Cf. Heiko Schulz, “Germany and Austria: A  Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard’s International Reception, Tome I, Northern and Western Europe, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2009 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception, Resources, vol. 8), p. 313. 13 Cf. Rudolf Kassner, “Sören Kierkegaard. Aphoristisch,” Sämmtliche Werke, vols. 1–10, Pfullingen: Neske 1969–91, vol. 2, pp. 39–97; pp. 518–19. 14 Cf. Rudolf Kassner, “Der indische Idealismus,” Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 1, p. 459; p. 461; pp. 467–8; p. 474; pp. 476–7; “Die Moral der Musik,” Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 1, p. 667; p. 673; p. 702; pp. 743–4; “Die Mystik, die Künstler und das Leben,” Sämmtliche Werke, p. 33; p. 34; pp. 249–50; “Charles Baudelaire: Poeta Christianissimus,” Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 11

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The situation in the Germanophone world changed quite significantly in the following decade with the arrival on the scene of Theodor Haecker and with Kierkegaard becoming an en vogue topic in the Austrian literary journal Der Brenner.15 Theodor Haecker―who converted to Catholicism in 1921―established his reputation as a Kierkegaard scholar in 1913 with his monograph Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit.16 The publisher of the work, Ferdinand Schreiber, introduced the monograph to the editor-in-chief of Der Brenner, Ludwig von Ficker (1880–1967), who offered Haecker space in the journal.17 Already the next year represents an important turning point, as several issues of Der Brenner include studies on Kierkegaard from the pen of Theodor Haecker18 and Carl Dallago (1869– 1949), who reacted at length to Haecker’s above-mentioned book.19 The 1914 issues also contain translations of Kierkegaard’s works with Haecker’s commentaries20 and advertisements of Haecker’s monograph.21 Understandably enough, one of the topics imported by Haecker into the Catholic circles upon his conversion was the relevance of Kierkegaard’s thought. This influence became markedly felt also in the so-called Hochland Circle, an international group of Catholic intellectuals around the revue Hochland.22 The Circle comprised several philosophers and theologians who would eventually follow in Haecker’s footsteps 2, p. 142; “Zum Tode Oscar Wildes. Einiges über das Paradoxe,” Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 2, p. 382; “André Gide,” Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 2, p. 390. 15 As Heiko Schulz remarks with respect to the overall German reception, “[t]hings got a lot more focused...after, roughly, 1910,” adding that “the first keywords that come to mind are Der Brenner and Theodor Haecker.” Cf. Schulz, “Germany and Austria: A Modest Head Start: The German Reception of Kierkegaard,” pp. 327–328. 16 Theodor Haecker, Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit, Munich: I.F. Schreiber 1913. 17 Cf. Allan Janik, “Haecker, Kierkegaard and the Early Brenner. A Contribution to the History of the Reception of ‘Two Ages’ in the German-Speaking World,” in Søren Kierkegaard: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, vols. 1–4, ed. by Daniel W. Conway and K.E. Gover, London and New York: Routledge 2002, vol. 4, p. 125. 18 See, for example, Theodor Haecker, “F. Blei und Kierkegaard,” Der Brenner, no. 10, 1914, pp. 457–65. 19 Cf. Carl Dallago, “Über eine Schrift ‘Sören Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit,’ ” Der Brenner, no. 11, 1914, pp. 468–78; no. 12, 1914, pp. 515–31; no. 13, 1914, pp. 565–78. 20 Sören Kierkegaard, “Vorworte,” Der Brenner, no. 14, 1914, pp. 666–73; “De omnibus dubitandum est,” Der Brenner, no. 14, 1914, pp. 674–83; “Der Pfahl im Fleisch,” Der Brenner, no. 16, 1914, pp. 691–712 and no. 17, 1914, pp. 797–814; “Kritik der Gegenwart,” Der Brenner, no. 19, 1914, pp. 815–49 and no. 20, 1914, pp. 869–908. The translations of Kierkegaard’s works were as a  rule accompanied by Theodor Haecker’s foreword or afterword. 21 In 1914 Haecker’s work Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit was advertised in no. 8, 10, 11, 12 and 20 of Der Brenner. Dallago’s response to Haecker’s book was advertised in no. 17, 19, 20. Haecker’s translations of Kierkegaard’s works were also frequently advertised in the journal. 22 The journal was founded in 1903 by Carl Muth and the director of the Munich-based Kösel-Verlag Paul Huber-Kempten. For an analysis of Hochland’s origin, its development

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and dedicate themselves―at least to some extent―to Kierkegaard scholarship, most importantly Alois Dempf, Romano Guardini, and Peter Wust. All three would after 1920 become contributors to the journal Die Schildgenossen edited by Guardini.23 Several of the Kierkegaard monographs published by the scholars associated with Hochland in the 1920s and 1930s attracted considerable attention transcending the borders of the Catholic community. Important Kierkegaard publications coming out of the Hochland Circle in the inter-war period included Theodor Haecker’s Christentum und Kultur (1927)24 and Der Begriff der Wahrheit bei Søren Kierkegaard (1932),25 Alois Dempf’s Kierkegaards Folgen (1935),26 Romano Guardini’s “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Søren Kierkegaards” (1927)27 and “Vom Sinn der Schwermut” (1928),28 Peter Wust’s Die Dialektik des Geistes (1928)29 and Ungewissheit und Wagnis (1937).30 The cooperative network surrounding Hochland was, however, not the only epicentre of Catholic interest in Kierkegaard. Another prominent Catholic voice in the Kierkegaard reception in the Weimar Republic was the Jesuit theologian and philosopher Erich Przywara. From a literary point of view, Przywara contributed to the promotion of Kierkegaard’s thought among Catholic intellectuals primarily in two ways: first, through his own reflection on Kierkegaard’s philosophy and interpretation of Christianity in the monograph Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards (1929),31 and second, through reviewing relevant contemporary works in the field of Kierkegaard scholarship in the Jesuit periodical Stimmen der Zeit and in the Theologische Revue.32 and its thematic emphases, see Gilbert Merlio, “Carl Muth et la revue Hochland. Entre catholicisme culturel et catholicisme politique,” pp. 191–208. 23 A detailed overview of the genesis of Die Schildgenossen and Guardini’s role in the programmatic orientation of the journal can be found in Katja Marmetschke, “ ‘Nicht mehr Jugendbewegung, sondern Kulturbewegung!’ Die Zeitschrift Die Schildgenossen in der Weimarer Republik,” in Le milieu intellectuel catholique en Allemagne, sa presse et ses réseaux, pp. 281–317. 24 Theodor Haecker, Christentum und Kultur, Munich: Kösel 1927. 25 Theodor Haecker, Der Begriff der Wahrheit bei Sören Kierkegaard, Innsbruck: Brenner 1932. 26 Alois Dempf, Kierkegaards Folgen, Leipzig: Hegner 1935. Jens Himmelstrup’s International Bibliografi lists 12 different reviews of Dempf’s monograph. Cf. Jens Himmelstrup, Søren Kierkegaard. International Bibliografi, Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag / Arnold Busck 1962, p. 116. 27 Romano Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Søren Kierkegaards,” Hochland, vol. 24, no. 7, 1927 (April–September), pp. 12–33. 28 Romano Guardini, “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” Die Schildgenossen, vol. 8, 1928, pp. 103–25. 29 Peter Wust, Die Dialektik des Geistes, Augsburg: Benno Filser 1928. 30 Peter Wust, Ungewissheit und Wagnis, Salzburg: Pustet 1937. 31 Erich Przywara, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, Munich: Oldenburg 1929. Jens Himmelstrup’s International Bibliografi lists more than twenty different reviews of Przywara’s monograph. Cf. Jens Himmelstrup, Søren Kierkegaard. International Bibliografi, pp. 133–4. 32 Himmelstrup’s International Bibliografi lists Przywara’s reviews of, for example, Christoph Schrempf’s Sören Kierkegaard. Eine Biographie; Emanuel Hirsch’s Kierkegaard-

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In addition to the scholarly activities of Catholic intellectuals, a major editorial project of the first decades of the twentieth century needs to be mentioned, since it exercised a substantial influence on the overall reception of Kierkegaard in Germany. Between 1909 and 1922 the Jena-based publishing house of Eugen Diederichs (1867–1930) published a 12-volume edition of Kierkegaard’s Gesammelte Werke which made the world of Kierkegaard’s thought accessible to a wide readership and left a deep mark on the landscape of German intellectual life.33 III. Ahead of his Contemporaries: Guardini’s Extensive Reading of Kierkegaard Guardini’s genuine interest in Kierkegaard’s thought is best documented by his extensive knowledge of Kierkegaard’s literary legacy. Compared to many other philosophers and theologians of his time, Guardini appears to have been exceptionally well read in Kierkegaard’s oeuvre and Nachlass, an acquaintance that is impressive both for its extent and detail. Guardini’s solid knowledge of primary sources can be attributed among other things to the fact that Kierkegaard’s works were well represented in Guardini’s personal library. It comprised crucial pseudonymous works, such as Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Repetition, Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, The Concept of Anxiety, The Sickness unto Death, Practice in Christianity or The Book on Adler, as well as selections from non-pseudonymous Christian Discourses and upbuilding discourses, The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard’s journals and papers and letters.34 It is worth noting that in Guardini’s possession was a variety of Theodor Haecker’s early translations of Kierkegaard’s writings, as well as a volume on Kierkegaard’s relationship with Regine Olsen edited by Kierkegaard’s niece Henriette Lund.35 In addition to primary sources, Guardini owned several secondary sources, among them the early monograph Søren Kierkegaard. Sein Leben

Studien; Friedrich Carl Fischer’s Die Nullpunkt-Existenz dargestellt an der Lebensform Sören Kierkegaards; or Bernhard Meerpohl’s Die Verzweiflung als metaphysisches Phänomen in der Philosophie Sören Kierkegaards. In the 1920s and 1930s Erich Przywara belonged to the most productive contributors to Stimmen der Zeit. Cf. Joachim Schmiedl, “Der katholische Aufbruch der Zwischenkriegszeit und die Stimmen der Zeit,” in Le milieu intellectuel catholique en Allemagne, sa presse et ses réseaux, pp. 239–40. 33 Sören Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22. 34 Owing to the fact that I was unable to inspect Guardini’s private library in situ at the Catholic Academy in Bavaria due to a temporary closure of the collection, I am relying in this matter on the information provided to me by Stephan Höpfinger, the Studienleiter at the Catholic Academy in Bavaria, as well as on Stephan Pauly’s account of Kierkegaard’s works owned by Guardini. Cf. Pauly, Subjekt und Selbstwerdung, p. 51. 35 According to the information provided to me by Stephan Höpfinger, Guardini owned the following translations of Kierkegaard’s writings authored by Theodor Haecker: Am Fuße des Altars. Christliche Reden (1922), Kritik der Gegenwart (1922), Der Pfahl im Fleisch (1922), Die Krisis und eine Krisis im Leben einer Schauspielerin (1922), Der Begriff des Auserwählten (1926), Die Tagebücher 1834–1855 (1941), and Religiöse Reden (1950).

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und seine Werke by Olaf P. Monrad and the voluminous treatise Sören Kierkegaard. Der Dichter des Religiösen by Martin Thust.36 Even if Guardini evidently had his personal “hierarchy” of Kierkegaard’s writings, this did not prevent him from commenting on a relatively broad variety of Kierkegaard’s texts in his publications. At the top of Guardini’s personal “hierarchy” were undoubtedly three works from which he seems to have derived his fundamental convictions about Kierkegaard’s philosophical position: The Sickness unto Death, The Concept of Anxiety, and Philosophical Fragments. Although The Sickness unto Death is explicitly cited in several of Guardini’s studies,37 and represents a central point of reference in the portrait-like essay “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” its impact on Guardini’s thought certainly transcends this explicit framework. The work explores issues critical for Guardini―the constitution of the human self, its basal polarities and God-relation, the modes of authentic and unauthentic existence, and the notion of spirit―thus its ideas are implicitly reflected in Guardini’s numerous treatments of these motifs. Similarly, The Concept of Anxiety―considered by Guardini even more penetrating than The Sickness unto Death38―is at times present in his works in a thematic and conceptual form, without explicit reference.39 As for Philosophical Fragments―which Guardini referred to as Kierkegaard’s “main work”40 and “the hub of [Kierkegaard’s] theoretical production”41―it is explicitly treated in Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal42 and Die Kirche des Herrn;43 but the notions of

Olaf P. Monrad, Søren Kierkegaard. Sein Leben und seine Werke, Jena: Diederichs 1909; Martin Thust, Sören Kierkegaard. Der Dichter des Religiösen. Grundlage eines Systems der Subjektivität, Munich: C.H. Beck 1931. I remain grateful to Stephan Höpfinger for his kind assistance in providing me with the list of secondary sources on Kierkegaard owned by Guardini. The remaining items are listed in the bibliographical section Sources of Guardini’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard at the end of this article. 37 Cf., for example, Romano Guardini, “Über Sozialwissenschaft und Ordnung der Personen,” in Unterscheidung des Christlichen, ed. by Heinrich Kahlefeld, Mainz: MatthiasGrünewald-Verlag 1935, p. 25; p. 30; Romano Guardini, “Gedanken über das Verhältnis von Christentum und Kultur,” in Unterscheidung des Christlichen, p. 208; Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” pp. 13–18; pp. 20–5. 38 Ibid., p. 23. 39 The Concept of Anxiety is explicitly referred to in Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” pp. 23ff.; Guardini, “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” p. 116. 40 Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” p. 14. 41 Romano Guardini, Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal, Leipzig: Verlag Jakob Hegner 1935, p. 207. 42 Ibid., p. 168; pp. 207–11. At the beginning of this analysis of Kierkegaard’s doctrine of the absolute paradox, Guardini quotes the Danish edition of Philosophical Fragments (in SV2, 1923). 43 Romano Guardini, Die Kirche des Herrn, Würzburg: Werkbund-Verlag 1965, pp. 65–70. 36

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contemporaneity with Christ, the absolute paradox and God as the totally other, play a role also elsewhere in Guardini’s corpus.44 In spite of Guardini’s obvious predilection for The Sickness unto Death, The Concept of Anxiety, and Philosophical Fragments, his oeuvre contains a considerable number of quotations and references to Kierkegaard’s other writings. Explicit reference is made to Either/Or,45 Repetition,46 Stages on Life’s Way,47 Concluding Unscientific Postscript,48 The Point of View for my Work as an Author,49 Practice in Christianity,50 and journals and papers.51 Even a concise overview like the present one provides a sufficiently clear testimony to the fact that Kierkegaard represented for Guardini everything but a marginal story in the history of philosophy. This initial impression will acquire sharper contours once a more detailed analysis of Guardini’s reception of Kierkegaard is presented: a reception that stretches over more than four decades of Guardini’s life and concerns key fields of Guardini’s thought, such as ontology, anthropology, philosophy of religion, theology, and ecclesiology. IV. From the Theory of Opposition to the Ecclesiological Corrective: Guardini’s Life-long Confrontation with Kierkegaard The initial phase of Guardini’s literary confrontation with Kierkegaard coincides roughly with the inception of his lectures at the University of Berlin (1923). Guardini’s study of Kierkegaard in the mid- and late 1920s is characterized by an astonishing intensity and continuity, and it is undoubtedly during this period that Guardini’s most systematic literary preoccupation with Kierkegaard takes place.52 Although in the coming decades Kierkegaard’s presence in Guardini’s Guardini, “Gedanken über das Verhältnis von Christentum und Kultur,” p. 208; Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” p. 33. The notion of contemporaneity with Christ is echoed also in “Vom Wesen katholischer Weltanschauung” (1923); for more detail see the following section. 45 Guardini, “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” p. 118. 46 Ibid., pp. 105–6. As Stephan Pauly pointed out, Guardini was probably familiar also with Fear and Trembling, as he avails himself of the phrase “Furcht und Zittern” in his unpublished work Der Mensch. Cf. Stephan Pauly, Subjekt und Selbstwerdung, p. 51. The same phrase appears also elsewhere in Guardini’s oeuvre. Cf. Guardini, “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” p. 124. 47 Guardini, “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” pp. 114–15. 48 Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” p. 14; Guardini, Die Kirche des Herrn, p. 65. 49 Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” pp. 12–13; p. 17; Guardini, “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” pp. 103–8. 50 Guardini, Die Kirche des Herrn, p. 68. 51 Guardini, “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” pp. 103–8. Here Guardini refers to the German edition of the journals and papers translated by Theodor Haecker and published in Innsbruck in 1923. 52 When compared to other periods of Guardini’s literary activity this period is characterized by the highest density of explicit references to Kierkegaard. See also Pauly, 44

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works becomes less explicit, his literary production continues to circle around “Kierkegaardian” themes. A symbolic testimony to Guardini’s life-long reflection on Kierkegaard is the late collection of ecclesiological meditations Die Kirche des Herrn (1965)―published at the peak of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65)―in which Kierkegaard’s concept of contemporaneity plays a central role. As Stephan Pauly remarked in his detailed analysis of Kierkegaard’s influence on Guardini’s concept of subjectivity, the earliest Kierkegaard-inspired reflections in Guardini’s oeuvre are not explicitly linked to Kierkegaard’s name. This is the case with Guardini’s early essay “Vom Wesen katholischer Weltanschauung” (1923),53 in which Guardini expounds his crucial concept of Weltanschauung from a Christological and ecclesiological perspective. The Christological grounding of the concept is described with the help of language strongly reminiscent of Kierkegaard or, more precisely, of his notion of contemporaneity with Christ. Although Guardini’s depiction of faith as the individual’s “physical” proximity and likeness to the historical Christ54 goes along the lines of Kierkegaard’s original idea, an important intersubjective (ecclesiological) dimension is added that will continue to mark the difference between the two positions also in Guardini’s later works. Since the Church is, as far as Guardini is concerned, “the historical bearer of Christ’s full view of the world,”55 the relation between the individual and Christ, as well as a truly Christian Weltanschauung, are unthinkable without an existential reference to the Church. Guardini will return to this theme in his ecclesiological works. If Kierkegaard’s presence in the essay “Vom Wesen katholischer Weltanschauung” is latent and more in the background―an unnamed source of inspiration―the systematic treatise Der Gegensatz (1925) turns the invisible interlocutor into a visible one. This work, containing a detailed outline of Guardini’s original theory of opposition, discusses Kierkegaard explicitly in a matter of utmost importance to Guardini: the basal nature of opposition. The system of oppositions, that had been developed by Guardini ever since 1905, was first presented to the public in the largely ignored Gegensatz und Gegensätze (1914).56 It was later refashioned and further elaborated in Der Gegensatz, where it is compared to similar systems designed by other thinkers. In the section “The System of Oppositions” Guardini introduces one of the fundamental structures of his system, the intraempirical oppositions,57 which he describes with negative reference to the Subjekt und Selbstwerdung, pp. 50–1. 53 Ibid., p. 51; pp. 93–5. 54 Romano Guardini, “Vom Wesen katholischer Weltanschauung,” in Unterscheidung des Christlichen, pp. 11–13. 55 Ibid., p. 20. See also Pauly, Subjekt und Selbstwerdung, pp. 89–93. 56 Gerl-Falkovitz, Romano Guardini. Konturen des Lebens und Spuren des Denkens, p. 176. Bernhard Hegge, Christliche Existenz bei Romano Guardini. Ihre heilsgeschichtliche und ekklesiale Dimension, Würzburg: Echter 2003, p. 41. 57 Guardini differentiates between two basic types of oppositions―categorial and transcendental―dividing the former further into two sub-types: intraempirical and transempirical. The intraempirical oppositions include three pairs (dynamic/static; form/ formlessness; integration/differentiation), as do transempirical oppositions (production/ disposition; originality/regulation; immanence/transcendence). Categorial opposites include

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systems of oppositions devised in the nineteenth century. He delineates his system against what he deems two untenable extremes, one represented by Romanticism and Hegelianism, the other by Kierkegaard. The issue lying at the core of Guardini’s rejection of both the Romantic/Hegelian and the Kierkegaardian theory of opposition is their view of the relation of the two poles (moments) forming the opposition. As he explains, all three nineteenth-century philosophies ultimately annihilate the opposition, either by merging the poles or by tearing them apart. Guardini sums up his own position in the claim that either of the two poles of an opposition “stands underivable, unconvertible, unblendable in itself, yet [they remain] inseparably connected to each other; yes, they can only be thought with and through each other.”58 In this sense he can describe opposition as “the reality of mutual exclusion and inclusion at the same time.”59 What Guardini sees as misleading in the Romantic and Hegelian notion of opposition is the over-emphasis on the relatedness of the two poles, while what he rejects in Kierkegaard is the overemphasis on their difference. With reference to Romanticism and Hegel, Guardini protests against a “synthesis” of the two poles in a third one, against viewing the poles as parts of a whole, against the exaggeration of continuity between them; he rejects all attempts at absolute reconciliation of the two poles and the resulting abolition of their substantial differences in what he terms “mediation dialectic.”60 Against the fusion-like blurring of differences of the two poles and the exaggerated claim of their identity in the Romantic and Hegelian tradition Guardini posits Kierkegaard’s “qualitative dialectic” that affirms the qualitative borders and autonomy of each of the poles. In Kierkegaard opposition is correctly grasped as “an unmixed twoness.”61 However, Kierkegaard embraces the opposite extreme, holding the two poles entirely apart, conceiving of the relation between them not as related difference but as total otherness.62 Contrary to Guardini’s own position, in Kierkegaard the poles

two pairs (relatedness/singularity; unity/diversity). Cf. Romano Guardini, Der Gegensatz. Versuche zu einer Philosophie des Lebendig-Konkreten, Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag 1925, pp. 29–99; Gerl-Falkovitz, Romano Guardini. Konturen des Lebens und Spuren des Denkens, pp. 181–2; Hegge, Christliche Existenz bei Romano Guardini, pp. 52–4. 58 Guardini, Der Gegensatz, p. 42. 59 Ibid., p. 41. 60 Ibid., p. 42. Guardini returns to this theme in his essay “Erscheinung und Wesen der Romantik” (1948) in which he points out that Romanticism sees dialectical polarity even there where there is none. Guardini exemplifies this with the realities of good and evil which in his opinion do not form a dialectical opposition, but an unequivocal contradiction, an either/ or. This is correctly seen by Kierkegaard, whereas “the Romantic is deeply tempted to turn good and evil into a dialectical relation.” Kierkegaard’s principle of “absolute either/or” is then a rejection of what he perceives as relativization of good and evil, true and false both in the views of the Romantics and in the Hegelian doctrine of “universal mediation.” Cf. Romano Guardini, “Erscheinung und Wesen der Romantik” (1948), in Wurzeln eines großen Lebenswerks. Aufsätze und kleine Schriften, vols. 1–4, Mainz and Paderborn: MatthiasGrünewald-Verlag / Schöningh 2000–03, vol. 3, pp. 366–7. 61 Ibid., p. 48. 62 Ibid.

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of an opposition do not contain even a modicum of the other, which gives rise to discontinuity, one-sidedness and excessive accentuation of a single moment.63 In spite of the relatively brief character of the confrontation with Kierkegaard in Der Gegensatz, the work contains an important early specimen of Guardini’s fundamental intuition about Kierkegaard that will in various forms reappear in his later interpretations of the Danish philosopher. According to this intuition, Kierkegaard represents a radical either/or thinker, whose response to the idealist cult of continuity was the formulation of a counter-system based on the dogma of the discontinuity and disjunction of qualities. Guardini’s interpretation of Kierkegaard in Der Gegensatz also represents an early example of Guardini’s peculiar reading of The Sickness unto Death: while utilizing structures and ideas similar to those found in The Sickness unto Death, Guardini’s explicit treatment of Kierkegaard’s theory of the human self will be predominantly critical.64 In the summer semester of 1925 Guardini launched a new course at Berlin University on the relation between Christianity and culture with constant reference to Kierkegaard’s philosophical position.65 In 1926 he published an essay treating this theme entitled Gedanken über das Verhältnis von Christentum und Kultur which he explicitly describes as “based on a confrontation with Sören Kierkegaard.”66 The focal point of Guardini’s essay is the relation between religion and culture and especially between the latter and Christian revelation. The essay opens with fundamental questions about the possibility of mutual enrichment of culture and Christianity, about their capacity to transform and develop each other. After an outline of historical situations in which religion and culture overwhelmed or assimilated each other, Guardini proceeds to analyze the case of Christianity, which he sets apart from other religions. Referring to the supernatural core of Christian truths and values, Guardini asserts that “the Christian-Divine is qualitatively different from the natural-cultural.”67 As he goes on to explain, this difference in kind has been, however, throughout the history of Christianity mistakenly considered the only determinant of their relation. As intellectual movements and thinkers asserting the absolute dualism of grace and nature, religion and culture, Guardini mentions Montanism, Donatism, Lutheranism, Kierkegaard, and Barth.68 In these theological paradigms the connection between grace and the natural world, Christianity and culture is lost.69 According to Guardini, Kierkegaard’s Christian purism answers all the questions about the possibility of mutual enrichment of Christianity and Ibid., p. 48–9. Cf. also Alfons Knoll, Glaube und Kultur bei Romano Guardini, Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 1994, pp. 90–2. 64 The structural similarities between Guardini’s and Kierkegaard’s theories of the self are elaborated at length in Pauly, Subjekt und Selbstwerdung, pp. 111–248. 65 Guardini continues the course “Christentum und Kultur im Anschluß an die Problemstellung Sören Kierkegaards” also in the winter semester 1925–26. He gives another course “Sören Kierkegaard und die Grenzfragen der christlichen Existenz” in the winter semester 1927–28. Cf. Guardini Weiterdenken, pp. 273–4. 66 Guardini, “Gedanken über das Verhältnis von Christentum und Kultur,” p. 177. 67 Ibid., p. 190. 68 Ibid., pp. 190–1. 69 Ibid., p. 191. 63

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culture posed at the beginning of the essay in the negative.70 Thus Kierkegaard’s approach violates the old Christian principle of gratia supponit naturam et perficit and abolishes the relation of analogy between God and the finite world, between revelation and nature-culture [Natur-Kultur].71 The antagonism between Christianity and culture, grace and nature, produces difficulties also in the area of theology of creation and in trinitology. As Guardini points out, Kierkegaard’s separation of “the Christian” [das Christliche] from the created world induces a dualistic vision of redemption and creation, God the Son and God the Father.72 Kierkegaard’s incapability of upholding a productive tension manifests itself, according to Guardini, also in his interpretation of God’s self-communication to humanity. As far as Guardini is concerned, three basal realities of God need to be differentiated. First, the apparent reality, manifested in the natural world, second, the hidden reality, manifested through the historical revelation in Jesus Christ, and third, the unknown reality, that is beyond all revelation and analogy: God as the totally other.73 The last of the three constitutes “the ultimate category of human thinking,” being located on the “edge of our cognitive field.”74 Kierkegaard’s “great error” lies then in the fact that he confuses the first two realities of God and “denotes both of them with the category of the unknown.”75 Thus God is stripped of all immanence and this-worldliness, which―while preserving the qualitative difference between God and human―leaves the human with nothing but epistemological skepticism as for the knowledge of God. From an anthropological point of view, Kierkegaard’s dualistic vision of gratia and natura is reflected in his concept of the human self. With reference to Philosophical Fragments and The Sickness unto Death, Guardini argues that Kierkegaard formulates a reductionist equation “spirit = person = a self constituted before God = a Christian, believing, reborn self.”76 This would, however, mean 70 Ibid., p. 191; p. 179. If Kierkegaard’s position is to be expressed as a negative response to Guardini’s questions formulated at the beginning of the essay, it could be summed up in the following tenets: Christian truths, norms, impulses or personalities are unable to become means of clarification, order or creativity in the area of culture; the Christian love-command cannot become a ferment of social culture; cultural values and realities are unable to become means of clarification and inspiration as far as the content of Christianity is concerned; the achievements of philosophy and psychology cannot enrich revelation and help foster theology, the science of revelation. 71 Ibid., pp. 192–3. 72 Ibid., pp. 195–6. Guardini denotes this as the hybris of the “pure Christianity” and a fundamental error of Kierkegaard. With a reference to Ernst Michel, Guardini claims that alongside the “Christianistic Christianity,” which extols redemption and downplays creation, two other extremes are possible: heathenism (creation without redemption) and ecclesialism (abolition of tension between creation and redemption). Cf. ibid., p. 196. 73 Ibid., p. 204. 74 Ibid., pp. 204–5. This is a theme adopted from Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments that Guardini treats at length in Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal, pp. 207–15. 75 Ibid., p. 207. 76 Ibid., p. 208. An extensive comparison of Guardini’s concepts of spirit and person on the one hand and Kierkegaard’s concepts of spirit and self on the other hand can be found in Pauly, Subjekt und Selbstwerdung, pp. 141–215.

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substituting a fully developed pneumatic reality for the natural condition of the human. It would mean postulating a valid Christian witness as a conditio sine qua non of human personhood. Guardini’s essay “Über Sozialwissenschaft und Ordnung der Personen” (1926) elaborates further the critique of Kierkegaard on two key subjects treated earlier: the notion of opposition and the concept of human person. On the opening pages of the essay Guardini presents the human person as characterized by both a dynamic and a static moment.77 He goes on to differentiate between theories of personhood, classifying them according to the moment they see as dominant. Kierkegaard is introduced as a prominent protagonist of “dynamic personalism” with his theory of human self in The Sickness unto Death cited as clear evidence of this stance.78 In such a view, “person appears as something that becomes; as something that only is as an act and in an act; something that flashes through in certain, namely, personal acts….Person appears to be existing only in such acts; only in performance, and therefore only in passing.”79 Guardini objects that the “act-subject” of dynamic personalism is a borderline concept that fails to provide a stable foundation for a living person. Instead, the reduction of human person to “act-content” eo ipso conceives of a person as an ephemeral entity.80 In Guardini’s view, Kierkegaard’s dynamic notion of the self not only abolishes the ontic status of human person, but through its ethical grounding of the person-constituting act, it produces an axiological definiton of personhood. Thus, an individual human becomes person first through his or her “ethical-religious stance and disposition,” and anyone failing morally or religiously is denied the title of person.81 Similar to the criticism presented in Gedanken über das Verhältnis von Christentum und Kultur, Guardini here also warns against setting the standard for personhood too high. If personhood depends on “making the right decision,” as he believes is found in Kierkegaard’s theory of the self-accepting self in The Sickness unto Death, then the dynamic moment of the human person is absolutized, while the static is neglected. Conceiving of the human person as an accomplished task, a successful ethical-religious project, means in Guardini’s opinion confusing the goal with the starting point and degrading actuality into potentiality.82 Although Guardini appreciates Kierkegaard’s sense of God’s role in the constitution of human self, he insists on the essential character of human personhood, making it independent of all moral and religious criteria. Guardini’s confrontation with Kierkegaard continues in 1927 with a series of three essays comprising “Lebendige Freiheit,” “Freiheit und Unabänderlichkeit,” 77 Guardini, “Über Sozialwissenschaft und Ordnung der Personen,” pp. 24–5. These two moments are in Guardini’s doctrine of opposition characterized as constituents of one of the basal types of intraempirical oppositions. See the above treatment of Guardini’s Der Gegensatz. 78 Ibid., p. 25, note 1. 79 Ibid., p. 25. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid., p. 30. 82 Ibid.

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and “Lebendiger Geist.” While the first of the essays explores Kierkegaard-related themes83 without explicitly referring to Kierkegaard, the remaining two directly address Kierkegaard. In “Freiheit und Unabänderlichkeit” Guardini puts forward a claim that reality “has a double aspect”; it can be interpreted both from the quantitative and qualitative angle. He explains the interplay of the quantitative and the qualitative against the background of his theory of spheres of being that stretches from the spheres of inorganic and organic entities to the spheres of spirit and ethical action, and finally to the spheres of God and revelation. As Guardini suggests, the importance of quantity and derivability decreases in the higher spheres of the “order of reality,” while the measure of quality and originality increases.84 Nonetheless, the reality remains an interplay of both. This fact is, however, ignored in intellectual paradigms that attempt to interpret the world solely from one of the perspectives. On the one hand, a quantitative-mechanistic world-view―with its core value of calculability―turns everything qualitative into quantity, ignoring the originality of the higher spheres of freedom.85 On the other hand, a qualitative world-view86 perceives the world only as a fluid, constantly changing outcome of battling forces, resisting all laws of exact derivable necessity. In the latter world-view “everything is a wonder,” and it is the normal that is missing. Guardini locates an extreme form of the qualitative world-view in Kierkegaard’s notion of Christianity, in which the absurd represents the ultimate authority.87 Here, once again, Kierkegaard is depicted by Guardini as a thinker breaking a vital tension between two poles, liquidating it through an excessive emphasis on one of them. The opening paragraphs of “Lebendiger Geist”―the third essay in the series― introduce the reader to the problem of spirit, a key concept in both Guardini and Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard’s concept of spirit is an explicit object of Guardini’s scrutiny, being part of a broader historical overview of different conceptions of Geist. Kierkegaard is presented as a thinker highly relevant for Guardini’s age, since he exerted a major influence behind the modern actualistic conception of spirit.88 Guardini defines the “actualistic conception” in the following terms:

Guardini elaborates here on several themes pertaining to the character of the human self that he brings up elsewhere in his oeuvre in connection with Kierkegaard. These include the notion of freedom as the experience of belonging to oneself or the self-perception of the human subject as an innerly conditioned acting and  choosing subject. Cf. Guardini, “Lebendige Freiheit,” in Unterscheidung des Christlichen, pp. 113–16; p. 120. 84 Romano Guardini, “Freiheit und Unabänderlichkeit,” in Unterscheidung des Christlichen, p. 148. 85 Ibid., pp. 148–9. 86 Guardini differentiates four basic forms of a qualitative world-view: primitive, magic, Romantic, and purely religious. Cf. ibid., p. 149. 87 Ibid. 88 Romano Guardini, “Lebendiger Geist,” in Unterscheidung des Christlichen, pp. 153–4. The other philosophical tradition which yielded inspiration to modern actualistic personalism is, according to Guardini, phenomenological dynamism. 83

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Just as in “Über Sozialwissenschaft und Ordnung der Personen” here also Guardini argues that an act-oriented concept of spirit (or person)89 runs the danger of turning spirit (person) into an ephemeral entity that only becomes real in an approximative way.90 Kierkegaard’s conceptualization of spirit and person is also a leading theme in Guardini’s “profile” of Kierkegaard’s thought entitled “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards” (1927). At the beginning of the study Guardini poses an ambitious question about the focal point of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre and the central motivation of Kierkegaard’s literary activity. After arriving at the thesis that it is The Sickness unto Death that represents “the actual key to Kierkegaard’s work,”91 Guardini fluently moves on to the main issues of the work: the concepts of spirit, self, and person. Guardini’s initial summary of Kierkegaard’s concept of person in The Sickness unto Death with respect to content overlaps with the doctrine Guardini elsewhere characterizes as actualistic or dynamic personalism. The existence of person is, in Guardini’s reading of The Sickness unto Death, dependent on a stance, it is co-extensive with a normative act that has to be accomplished in the right way. Person is a dynamic entity, an axiologically conditioned act-content.92 It is not an evident ontic given, rather a task, a requirement.93 Furthermore, spirit is posited as identical with person, which according to Guardini, has catastrophic consequences.94 On the basis of these observations Guardini phrases his basic impression of Kierkegaard’s concept of person/spirit in the following way: “There is something extremely strained about this concept of the spiritual and the personal, something deeply imperiled. Spiritual personality stands as it were on the cutting edge of an act; an act that…is highly demanding.”95 The act in which person is constituted is a truthful self-relation before God. This makes person a religious fact, an entity that either exists religiously or does not exist at all.96 Guardini repeatedly highlights the importance of the “before God” benchmark―the criterion of personal existence―and denotes it as the cornerstone of Kierkegaard’s concept of person.97 Conditioning the actualization of person with the relation of truthfulness to oneself Guardini argues in several instances in his oeuvre that Kierkegaard posits person and spirit as equivalent. Cf., for example, Guardini, “Gedanken über das Verhältnis von Christentum und Kultur,” p. 208; Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” p. 25. 90 Guardini, “Lebendiger Geist,” p. 154. 91 Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” p. 14. 92 Ibid., p. 14; p. 25. 93 Ibid., p. 25. 94 Ibid., p. 15; p. 25. 95 Ibid., p. 15. 96 Ibid., p. 16. 97 Ibid. 89

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and God is, however, in Guardini’s view, a step that turns person into a borderline value (Grenzwert).98 From the perspective of the history of philosophy Guardini interprets Kierkegaard’s radically ethical-religious concept of person as a reaction to the fluid self of Romanticism, whose volatility had to be met with a clear requirement of relating to the self as an already given reality. However, in Kierkegaard, the reaction is extreme, with the requirement being unipolar in nature, which translates into borderline axiology.99 Kierkegaard’s confrontation with the philosophical mainstream of his age is also at the root of four fundamental concepts that Guardini highlights in Kierkegaard’s system of thought. Here, as in the case of his earlier treatise Der Gegensatz, Guardini depicts Kierkegaard as a thinker opposing the contemporary emphasis on continuity and integration, exemplified in Romanticism and idealism, by insisting on qualitatively distinct spheres of existence, and the importance of the notions of border and discontinuity. The first Kierkegaardian concept of qualitative decision, together with the related concepts of leap and stages, are contrasted by Guardini with the concepts of mediation (Vermittlung) and transition (Übergang). Guardini explains that, in Kierkegaard, the idea of individual beings as relative expressions of a selfdifferentation of the same is categorically rejected. Qualitative changes cannot be explained merely with the help of quantitative processes, and an absolute qualitative difference between the infinite and the finite is preserved.100 For Kierkegaard, there is no necessary mediation between quality and quality, as there is no fluent transition between stage and stage.101 The Romantic and idealist integralism is abolished by means of delineating discontinuous qualitative spheres, with the only way from one stage to another being that of a leap: a responsible decision. The second concept working counter to the idealist postulate of natural and necessary continuity is that of the moment (der Augenblick). It is devised to disrupt the homogenity of the world-historical process, to legitimize the uniqueness of individual action against the predictability and determinism of chronological evolution, as well as to wreck the illusion of time and eternity as continuous.102 The third form of continuity dismissed by Kierkegaard concerns the relation between the human individual and social constructions. Kierkegaard protests against the perception of the individual as merely a member of the human species or one of the crowd, denoting family, state and the Church as “organic-natural entities.”103 Guardini argues that this is clearly a reaction to the Romantic dissolution of the individual in friendship, nation, or humanity.104 At the level of creativity of the human Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 23. Guardini notes here, “Just like Nietzsche, Kierkegaard lives and thinks in the area of borderline values. The concepts that he uses are borderline concepts.” 100 Ibid., pp. 26–7. 101 Ibid., p. 26. 102 Ibid., pp. 27–9. 103 Ibid., p. 29. 104 Ibid., pp. 29–30. 98 99

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spirit the conflict between Kierkegaard and the Romantic/idealist philosophical paradigms is, according to Guardini, manifested in their diverging opinions on the (dis-)continuity of cultural spheres. For Kierkegaard, the idea of a universal harmony and fluent transition from one sphere of human spirit to another, say from art to religion, represents an unacceptable confusion of terms.105 Finally, the fourth corrective put forth by Kierkegaard against the intellectual fashion of his age with its cult of unity and continuity is that of existential thinking.106 Contrary to the ideal of objective thinking and universal science producing neutral knowledge without direct impact on one’s becoming a true self, existential thinking orients itself on the commitment of the self, fundamentally redefining the concepts of truth and communication.107 The Kierkegaardian notions of truth as subjectivity and indirect communication once again introduce borders and discontinuity where the age believes it sees mere continuity and universality. Following the presentation of four key Kierkegaardian concepts, Guardini concludes that “Kierkegaard destroyed continuity and thereby constituted paradoxy.”108 As a reaction to Romanticism and Hegelianism, Kierkegaard erected walls where the flow of nature, history, society, or science threatened to absorb and assimilate the individual’s striving to become his or her true self. Guardini objects, however, that in the final balance, Kierkegaard’s correctives amount to borderline thinking―the thinking of impossibility―as manifested in his concept of Christianity.109 A work pregnantly illustrating Guardini’s appreciation of Kierkegaard’s genius, as well as his Wahlverwandtschaft with Kierkegaard based on the similiarity of their life struggle, is “Vom Sinn der Schwermut” (1928). This philosophical-religious reflection on the phenomenon of melancholy provides ample evidence for Guardini’s capacity to relate to genuinely Kierkegaardian concerns. Before embarking on a systematic quest for the essence and meaning of melancholy with the help of a reconstruction of Kierkegaard’s main observations, Guardini underscores the uniqueness of Kierkegaard’s project. This he sees in the nature of Kierkegaard’s undertaking that goes beyond the psychological and psychiatric view of melancholy. As he notes, Kierkegaard’s personal experience with melancholy became “the point of departure for his moral endeavor…an arena for his religious struggle.”110 In the ensuing examination Guardini decides to advance “from the outer to the inner,”111 uncovering the dual character of melancholy,112 its nuanced forms of self Ibid., p. 30. Guardini criticizes Kierkegaard’s existential thinking as an “exaggerated” concept in another treatise from 1928. Cf. Romano Guardini, “Heilige Schrift und Glaubenswissenschaft” [1928], in Wurzeln eines großen Lebenswerks. Aufsätze und kleine Schriften, pp. 350–1. 107 Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” pp. 31–2. 108 Ibid., p. 33. 109 Ibid. 110 Guardini, “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” p. 103. 111 Ibid., p. 109. 112 Ibid., p. 111. See also Stephan Pauly’s comparison of Guardini’s concept of melancholy and Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety and their common feauture of ambivalence. Cf. Pauly, Subjekt und Selbstwerdung, pp. 258–70. 105 106

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harm and self-torment, proceeding to the positive fruits ultimately born out of the mind’s darkness.113 After repeatedly drawing the reader’s attention to the ambivalent character of melancholy Guardini concludes that “darkness...belongs to light, and both constitute the secret of the authentic.”114 This is especially evident in the fact that, despite all its negative symptoms, melancholy is “in its ultimate essence a desire for love...the innermost driving force of melancholy is eros.”115 It is eros in the sense of a desire for the supreme good, a desire for the eternal and absolute.116 Only in realizing this profound spiritual dimension of melancholy can it become part of a life vocation. Kierkegaard’s insight about the extra-mental reference contained in melancholy is the core message that Guardini highlights in his essay and that he contrasts with the insights elaborated by psychology and psychiatry. Grasping that melancholy is “a sign that there is an Absolute,…a disturbance of the human through the neighborship of the eternal,”117 has an existential consequence, as melancholy becomes a religious task. It becomes a chance for new creativity, for the birth of the eternal in the human heart. In 1929 Guardini published in the journal Die Schildgenossen an intriguing essay “Logik und religiöse Erkenntnis,” in which he treats three logically controversial approaches to the issue of God’s existence and the human response to it: Anselm’s ontological proof, Pascal’s wager, and Kierkegaard’s doctrine of the absolute paradox.118 The study is later expanded and published as a monograph under the title Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal (1935).119 Guardini’s analysis of Kierkegaard takes its point of departure from Philosophical Fragments, a work that is singled out as “the hub” of Kierkegaard’s theoretical production.120 The initial point put forward by Guardini is that although Kierkegaard rejects the proof of God’s existence as either an impossibility or folly, he provides a reflection that implicitly has the structure of a proof.121 Herewith Guardini refers to Kierkegaard’s reflections on the highest passion of thought that expresses itself as a desire “to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.”122 This means that human thinking tends to reach beyond the definite contents of its individual acts and arrives at an object that cannot be processed by thought anymore and cannot be conceived

Guardini, “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” pp. 117–18. Ibid., p. 117. 115 Ibid., p. 118. 116 Ibid., p. 119. 117 Ibid., pp. 120–1. 118 Romano Guardini, “Logik und religiöse Erkenntnis. Die drei Versuche: Anselms ontologischer Gottesbeweis; Pascals Argument des Glücksspiels; Kierkegaards Idee des absoluten Paradoxes,” in Die Schildgenossen, vol. 9, 1929, pp. 179–206. 119 Romano Guardini, Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal, Leipzig: Jakob Hegner 1935. 120 Ibid., p. 207. 121 Ibid., p. 209. 122 Ibid., p. 207. SKS 4, 243 / PF, p. 37. In his analysis Guardini focuses above all on Chapter 3 of Philosophical Fragments entitled “The Absolute Paradox (A Metaphysical Caprice).” 113 114

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of as an “object” stricto sensu.123 The paradoxical passion of human thought pushes reason ever again to confront this inapprehensible and undenotable limit that in the end causes its collapse124 and assists the birth of faith in the form of a leap. As Kierkegaard explains, this unobjectifiable unknown and absolutely different is God. Although Guardini values the intense religious passion manifested in Kierkegaard’s reasoning, his overall reaction to Kierkegaard’s via negativa is dismissive, and he reiterates the critiques voiced in his earlier works. Guardini points to the key concept of incommensurability that lies at the root of both Kierkegaard’s extreme version of qualitative ontology and his epistemological skepticism.125 Kierkegaard’s passion for separation and discontinuity “tears apart quality from quality, thing from thing, realm of being from realm of being.”126 The absolute difference that characterizes the relation between God and human, the infinite and the finite, the holy and the sinful, leads at the end of the day to a pessimistic view of all inner-worldly reality, as well as of the human condition and capacities. God appears as “the totally other, the totally unknown...an absolute no to everything that I am.”127 The human in his natural condition is conceived of as “sin” and his noetic performance as “untruth.” As a finite creature he is called to transcend his limited realm of existence by confessing himself as sin and desiring the collapse and relinquishment of his natural state: he is bound to plunge into his own nothingness in order to discover God in a leap of faith.128 Holding onto the absurd as his support in this movement, he embraces authenticity by relinquinshing finitude.129 Although Kierkegaard’s outline of the way to God is far from what could be denoted as proof in the usual sense, Guardini points out that it is in fact characterized by an idiosyncratic logic that appears to be structurally coherent. Despite the fact that the three approaches of Anselm, Pascal, and Kierkegaard obviously differ from each other in numerous aspects, Guardini takes pains to explain what makes him put them together. He does so by underlining six features that he believes can be found in all three attempts. First, they all share a very different atmosphere from a typical theoretical, factual proof. Each of these “proofs” is a testimony to its author’s passion and determination, communicating it clearly to the reader.130 Second, all three arguments defy the rules of standard logical reasoning; in fact, the distance from traditional logic becomes ever greater, culminating in Kierkegaard’s negation of logic in the concept of the absurd.131 A third common feature is the “ontic character of the thought experience.”132 In none of the three cases is the argument confined merely to the realm of intellect and imagination, but Guardini, Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal, pp. 209–10. Ibid., pp. 208–9. 125 Ibid., p. 211. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid., p. 210. 128 Ibid., pp. 211–13. 129 Ibid., p. 215. 130 Ibid., p. 216. 131 Ibid., p. 217. 132 Ibid. 123 124

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it always has a correlation with reality that is distinct from the mind of the thinker.133 The fourth common aspect mentioned by Guardini is the axiological character of all three endeavors. The ambition of the three arguments is not merely to ascertain the existence of an entity, but rather to find the value “on which everything hinges, the absolute value”134 that is different in kind from all other values. Fifth, all three projects have “an intensively dynamic character.”135 They all have in common the feature that “[i]n them the movement is as essential as the result.”136 For this reason, Guardini labels them with the term “kinetic systems,” since they are all driven by the force of eros to prepare a situation that ends in a leap or an ascent: leading the finite to the absolute.137 Contrary to what Guardini calls “the proper proof of God’s existence,” the kinetic argument―the logical eisagoge138―does not emphasize the similarity between the finite and the infinite, but instead stresses the chasm separating the two prompting a leap based on trust.139 As a sixth common trait Guardini highlights the strong religious involvement that forms the basis of the arguments. Apart from being intellectual structures, they also represent genuine religious acts, condensed expressions of personal experience of bridging the abyss between the finite and the absolute.140 From an epistemological point of view, the three arguments primarily aim to instruct the reader in “what I have to do, in order to become so disposed that my cognition be right,” thus conceiving of knowing as realization of existence.141 In his conclusion Guardini reflects on the specific character of kinetic existential logic―the logic of religious performance―that on the one hand points the individual in a certain direction and on the other hand motivates him or her to carry out the decisive movement.142 The formal logical inconsistencies contained in such “arguments” are then nothing other than “a system of incitements” that calls to attention the fact that a different kind of logic is in place than the traditional one.143 Kierkegaard’s concept of the absolute paradox and his doctrine of the “entirely different God” play an intriguing role in yet another of Guardini’s works from the 1930s: in his analysis of religious figures in Dostoevsky’s authorship, Der Mensch und der Glaube (1932).144 Kierkegaard appears here in the chapter entitled “Godlessness” along with Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, together with whom he is depicted as a herald of the end of the Modern era.145 Guardini identifies four epochs in the history of humanity based on humanity’s prevailing approach to God (the Ibid., pp. 217–18. Ibid. 135 Ibid., p. 219. 136 Ibid. 137 Ibid., pp. 220–1. 138 Ibid., p. 222. 139 Ibid. Cf. also Guardini, “Heilige Schrift und Glaubenswissenschaft,” pp. 361–2. 140 Guardini, Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal, pp. 222–5; p. 228. 141 Ibid., p. 231. 142 Ibid., pp. 232–4. 143 Ibid., p. 234. 144 Romano Guardini, Der Mensch und der Glaube. Versuche über die religiöse Existenz in Dostojewskijs grossen Romanen, Leipzig: Jakob Hegner 1932. 145 Ibid., p. 249. 133 134

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Absolute) and the finite world. After depicting the Greek and medieval perception of the world as an entity simultaneously finite and participating in the divine, Guardini introduces the modern attempts at infinitization and absolutization of the finite cosmos and the human self.146 The new age following the Modern era further enhances the begun processes, dispensing not only with the idea of God, but also with the idea of absoluteness, transforming both into qualities of the finite. The resulting existential position—“the titanic finitism”—finds its basis in “the decision for radical and exclusive finitude.”147 The increasing separation of the finite and the infinite, of the human world and God, and the subsequent one-sided focus on one of the realities, are, in Guardini’s view, supported by Kierkegaard. Guardini points out that although Kierkegaard’s stance is antivalent to Nietzsche’s (and Kirillov’s),148 there is an underlying “dialectical unity” of their positions. Kierkegaard’s “entirely different God” and Nietzsche’s “nothingness” might differ with respect to their original purpose, but with regard to content Kierkegaard’s doctrine can be, if necessary, readapted for the purposes of finitism.149 Guardini does not elaborate on this thesis in greater detail, but will again allude to Kierkegaard in his diagnosis of “post-modern” religiosity in Das Ende der Neuzeit (1950).150 In contrast to Christliches Bewußtsein and Der Mensch und der Glaube Guardini’s work Welt und Person (1939) mentions Kierkegaard explicitly only in passing.151 The work contains, however, a very detailed outline of Guardini’s doctrine of person that can be read as a response to what Guardini considered the actualistic and overly spiritual notion of person in Kierkegaard.152 It elaborates on such “Kierkegaardian” themes as the inner structure of human person, the God-relation of the human self or the concept of “the Christian I.” Also, the treatise opens with a chapter whose title suggests a subject matter which Guardini used in his previous works to demonstrate the one-sidedness of Kierkegaard’s theories: “Nature, Subject and Culture.”153 Similar to Welt und Person, Kierkegaard is also present mainly thematically in Freiheit, Gnade, Schicksal (1948).154 The volume sets as its aim to explore “the Ibid., pp. 249–50. Ibid., p. 252. 148 Alexei Nilych Kirillov is one of the main protagonists in Dostoevsky’s novel The Possessed and plays a key role in Guardini’s analyses of “post-modern” rejection of God in Der Mensch und der Glaube. 149 Ibid., p. 252–3. 150 Romano Guardini, Das Ende der Neuzeit. Ein Versuch zur Orientierung, Basel: Hess Verlag 1950, pp. 125–6. 151 Romano Guardini, Welt und Person. Versuche zur christlichen Lehre vom Menschen, Würzburg: Werkbund-Verlag 1939, p. 51. 152 See Pauly’s extensive treatment of the work with the reference to Kierkegaard’s concept of the self in Stephan Pauly, Subjekt und Selbstwerdung, pp. 180–209. Pauly notes that Guardini refers implicitly to Kierkegaard already in the preface when he thematizes the human self as a task [Aufgabe]. Cf. Guardini, Welt und Person, p. XIII. 153 This is the title of the opening chapter of the book. Cf. Guardini, Welt und Person, pp. 3–13. 154 In 1948 Guardini also treats Kierkegaard in the essay “Erscheinung und Wesen der Romantik” in which he counterposes the Romantic and Hegelian view of polarity with 146 147

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coherence of Christian existence”155 and reopens several central themes that had been discussed in connection with Kierkegaard in Guardini’s earlier works. Although, on the one hand, Guardini brings up some of the issues in which he formerly criticized Kierkegaard’s stance, on the other hand, he employs Kierkegaardian concepts as an integral part of his own argumentation. As for the former case, Guardini once again attacks actualistic personalism, a doctrine postulating free action as a necessary precondition for the emergence of the human person.156 Although Kierkegaard is not mentioned by name, it has been demonstrated earlier that he was seen as a prominent representative of this type of personalism. Furthermore, Guardini repeats his thesis that despite the fact that spirit is the critical element in free human action, the human being in his or her fullness is not reducible to his or her spirit.157 This emphasis on the indispensable character of the body is certainly not aimed exclusively against Kierkegaard, but Kierkegaard is likely to be among the targeted philosophers given Guardini’s conviction that Kierkegaard’s puristic philosophy overspiritualized the self.158 In the case of Freiheit, Gnade, Schicksal, one can justifiably speak of Guardini’s hidden debt to Kierkegaard. This is best manifested in the use of the “before God” clause in a number of definitions crucial to Guardini. The clause was in Guardini’s mind intrinsically associated with Kierkegaard, which is evidenced by “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards” where Guardini claims that “this ‘before God’ lies at the heart of Kierkegaard’s concept of person.”159 In the light of this quotation it is easy to see Kierkegaard behind such important utterances in Freiheit, Gnade, Schicksal as “the freedom of the human is essentially freedom before God,”160 or “ultimately, authentic solitude can only be realized ‘before God.’”161 Moreover, Guardini avails himself of the clause in his polemic against what he deems mistaken conceptualizations of human personhood, specifically in naturalism and German idealism. He argues that “finite being means being before God,”162 a tenet that is invalidated in naturalism, where human personality is given up, as well as in pantheistic idealism, where freedom is absolutized and the human deified.163 This tenet is to be held against all ethical theories of the modern era that Kierkegaard’s “absolute either/or.” For more detail see my earlier comments on this essay in connection with Der Gegensatz (1925). 155 Romano Guardini, Freiheit, Gnade, Schicksal. Drei Kapitel zur Deutung des Daseins, Munich: Kösel 1948, p. 9. 156 Ibid., p. 20. 157 See ibid., especially pp. 77–81. 158 It has been demonstrated above that Guardini protested against what he considered Kierkegaard’s reduction of the human to his or her spirit. In Christliches Bewußtsein Guardini explicitly claims that Kierkegaard’s acosmic ontological position necessarily leads to the perception of the body as something “antispiritual.” Cf. Guardini, Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal, p. 212. 159 Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” p. 16. 160 Guardini, Freiheit, Gnade, Schicksal, p. 25. 161 Ibid., p. 54. 162 Ibid., p. 100, my emphasis. 163 Ibid.

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see in the human’s obedience to God’s law a sign of heteronomy. Guardini responds with the Kierkegaardian clause “the freedom of the human is created; so it becomes realized fundamentally before God and in obedience to Him.”164 This is an essential point for the entire ensuing polemic against the world-view of the human of the modern era who has separated himself or herself from the revelation while usurping divine attributes.165 The anthropology of German idealism is also the target of Guardini’s criticism in Die Annahme seiner selbst (1953),166 in which Guardini insists on the finite character of the human self while exploring its possibilities and constraints. First and foremost, Guardini denounces the “illusion of infinity” that he exemplifies with “the doctrine of identity in German idealism which maintained that the finite self is just a shrouding form of the infinite one.”167 Against this Guardini posits the relative and dubious human self which he describes in terms strongly reminiscent of Kierkegaard’s theological anthropology in The Sickness unto Death. As Guardini explains, “I am I not by my essence, rather I am ‘given’ to myself. Thus, I have received myself....At the beginning of my existence there is an initiative, a someone, who gave myself to me.”168 The Kierkegaardian theme of the self as a God-instituted entity that in relating to itself relates to an other is expanded with yet another theme adopted from The Sickness unto Death: the challenge of willing to be oneself.169 It is expressed concisely with Guardini’s own words: “I ought to will to be who I am.”170 From these premises Guardini derives his doctrine of self-acceptance that points in a very similar direction to Kierkegaard’s depiction of authentic self-relation. The common “logic” of self-relation is further enhanced by Guardini’s employment of well-known Kierkegaardian concepts such as anxiety, repentance, and despair.171 A work that can serve as an excellent illustration of Guardini’s manner of reception of Kierkegaard is the collection of ecclesiological reflections Die Kirche des Herrn (1965). In this work Kierkegaard appears as an unexpected, yet crucial source of Guardini’s inspiration, whose doctrine―although sincere and original―is eventually debunked as sheer impossibility. Guardini’s analysis of Kierkegaard’s concept of contemporaneity is located at the heart of a central chapter, with Kierkegaard being introduced as a “great Lutheran thinker” whose presence in the middle of a treatise on Catholic ecclesiology―as Guardini admits―may seem surprising.172 In fact, Guardini tacitly prepares the reader for Kierkegaard’s message in the previous chapter, where he maintains that the reaction of every individual to God’s revelation in the historical Christ rests on Ibid., my emphasis. Cf. ibid., pp. 100–13. 166 Originally published in Christliche Besinnung, vol. 6, 1953, pp. 5–30. In 1960 the work was published as a separate monograph. 167 Romano Guardini, Die Annahme seiner selbst, Würzburg: Werkbund-Verlag 1960, p. 9. See also ibid., p. 10. 168 Ibid., p. 11. 169 Ibid., pp. 11–14. 170 Ibid., p. 11. 171 Ibid., pp. 18–21. 172 Guardini, Die Kirche des Herrn, p. 65. 164 165

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an either/or and can in principle only be expressed as faith or offense.173 Guardini’s addendum to this Kierkegaardian import consists in the thesis that after Christ’s ascension the same decision concerns the Church.174 Guardini goes on to explore the motif of the either/or decision regarding the historical Christ, identifying it explicitly as Kierkegaard’s idea.175 The claim of a carpenter’s son from Nazareth to be the Son of God―the absolute paradox―is met either with indignation and laugher or with faith. The embracing of faith can, however, never be fully justified with rational arguments, it cannot be transferred from human to human, thus remaining a constant personal challenge. The same test awaits all the generations, since the testimonies of the past are unnable to sufficiently support the leap. In each generation there is the need to become contemporary with the historical Christ, placing oneself into the “intrinsic situation of the decision for faith.”176 Only in contemporaneity can one become a Christian in the full sense.177 After the resumé of Kierkegaard’s main points Guardini declares Kierkegaard’s notion of contemporaneity to be a “desperate” idea that was formed as a reaction against the rationalistic and formalistic Christianity of Kierkegaard’s time. However, Guardini also suggests that Kierkegaard is right in claiming that “earnestness of faith” requires contemporaneity with the messenger of the revelation. This can, however, never be realized in relation to the historical Christ, but only in relation to the paragon of all proclamation: the Church.178 Guardini rejects the idea of direct contemporaneity with Christ, replacing it with the idea of the Church as the meeting place of the individual with Christ. Declaring that “[n]ot as an isolated figure, but as Church, does He [i.e., Christ] speak to me,”179 he goes on to argue that “even the book of the New Testament, about which one might want to believe that it brings its reader immediately before Him [i.e., Christ], is in reality already ‘the Church.’ ”180 The conviction of Christ’s intrinsic interconnection with the Church makes Guardini rearticulate Kierkegaard’s concept of the absolute paradox, as well, which is to include not only the daring decision of faith in Christ, but also the even more difficult acceptance of the historical Church.181 Since “the content of the Church is Christ,” the polarity of offense and faith that Kierkegaard detected in the individual’s decision in relation to Christ concerns ipso facto the Church, too.182 In ample contrast to Kierkegaard, Guardini postulates the Church as a necessary middle term between the individual and Christ. He also notes that the great variety of interpretative images Ibid., pp. 54–5. Ibid., p. 56. 175 In his analysis of Kierkegaard’s concept of contemporaneity Guardini refers to Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Practice in Christianity. Cf. ibid., p. 65; p. 68. 176 Ibid., p. 68. See also pp. 66–7. 177 Ibid., p. 65. 178 Ibid., p. 68. 179 Ibid., p. 69. 180 Ibid. These arguments are formulated by Guardini much earlier and appear, for example, in Guardini, “Heilige Schrift und Glaubenswissenschaft,” pp. 379–83. 181 Guardini, Die Kirche des Herrn, pp. 69–70. 182 Ibid., p. 71. 173 174

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of Christ (Christusbilder) that have been produced throughout human history, are in natural tension with the image that the Church believes to have received from Christ and is bound to guarantee. The Church challenges each individual’s image of Christ, and confronts them with a corrective,183 but one must bear in mind that there is no Church without the individual, as there is no individual Christian without the Church. As Guardini points out, both the totalistic, as well as the individualistic approach to the reality of the Church misses the essence of Christ’s legacy.184 V. The Levels of Guardini’s Reception In his confrontation with Kierkegaard in “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” Guardini underlines the fact that Kierkegaard’s intellectual project is to be understood as a systematic reaction against certain tendencies present in Romanticism and German idealism (Hegelianism). Guardini demonstrates this already in Der Gegensatz, where he counterposes the “mediation dialectic” of the Romantic and Hegelian theories of opposition to Kierkegaard’s “qualitative dialectic.” This exegetical matrix of interpreting Kierkegaard’s concepts and categories as counter-structures to Romantic and idealist ideas is also present in Guardini’s later works.185 Guardini weighs the Romantic and idealist symbols of continuity, such as mediation, synthesis, transition, necessary progress, world-historical process, integrative social structures, or universal science, and culture against Kierkegaardian counter-symbols of discontinuity: qualitative decision, paradigms of existence (stages), the leap, the moment, the single individual, the absolute paradox, or existential thinking. While acknowledging the underlying motives of Kierkegaard’s struggle against the absolutization of wholeness, harmony, and continuity, Guardini depicts Kierkegaard as headed towards the opposite extreme. The consequences of Kierkegaard’s over-accentuation of autonomy, separation, and discontinuity are highlighted by Guardini primarily in five areas: ontology, anthropology, philosophy of religion, theology, and ecclesiology. At the level of ontology, Kierkegaard abolishes continuity by “tear[ing] apart quality from quality, thing from thing, realm of being from realm of being,” thus formulating a radical version of qualitative ontology that not only isolates individual realms of being but declares them to be mutually incommensurable.186 In this way Kierkegaard is said to represent an extreme form of “qualitative world-view” that sees the world as a dynamic of discontinuous qualitative realms and forces. In the area of anthropology Guardini reproaches Kierkegaard for the unipolarization of the basic opposition of the static and the dynamic, which gives Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., p. 101. 185 In “Blaise Pascal. Gedanken. Einführung” (1937) Guardini characterizes Kierkegaard as “a Romantic himself, who had overcome Romanticism by educating himself by all possible means to that which the Romantic finds hardest: moral and Christian decision.” Cf. Romano Guardini, “Blaise Pascal. Gedanken. Einführung” [1937], in Wurzeln eines großen Lebenswerks. Aufsätze und kleine Schriften, vol. 3, p. 154. 186 Guardini, Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal, p. 211. 183 184

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rise to what Guardini terms dynamic or actualistic personalism. The human person is understood as a task, an ethical-religious act that is to be realized before God in a responsible way. The failure in this demanding project deprives the human individual of the status of person, thus replacing the ontic concept of personhood with an axiological one. Kierkegaard’s identification of person with spirit is yet another unipolarization that turns person into a borderline category. As Guardini argues, such personalism posits the successful realization of the project of the Christian self as the conditio sine qua non for human personhood. Discontinuity and incommensurability characterize, in Guardini’s opinion, also Kierkegaard’s philosophy of religion. Christianity―the proper object of Kierkegaard’s analysis―is set apart as a domain for itself, disconnected from culture, with every possibility of mutual enrichment negated. Christianity is seen as unable to absorb and integrate cultural and scientific values and achievements; culture and science, in turn, remain untouched by the ferment of the Christian revelation. Continuity between philosophy, art, or psychology on the one hand, and Christianity, on the other hand, is abolished, on the basis of their qualitative difference. Kierkegaard’s antagonistic vision of Christianity and culture has, according to Guardini, a number of theological implications, primarily in the area of theology of creation and trinitology. The discontinuity between Christianity and culture has at a more fundamental level a correlate in the form of discontinuity between grace and nature, redemption and creation. Kierkegaard is believed to deny the relation of analogy between the Creator and his creation, between revelation and nature-culture. Consequently, a rift emerges between God the Creator and God the Savior, God the Father and God the Son. Moreover, Kierkegaard’s radical purism and acosmism inevitably leads to postulating God’s ultimate incommensurable reality―God as the totally other―as the primary one, thus overshadowing the realities of creation and salvation. An important critique addressed to Kierkegaard by Guardini pertains to Kierkegaard’s concept of contemporaneity with Christ and his notion of the single individual. Accepting the basics of Kierkegaard’s doctrine, Guardini adds an ecclesiological corrective designed to bridge the discontinuity between the religious individual and the community of the Church. With the Church interposed as a necessary connecting term between the individual and the historical Christ, Guardini claims that the individual is to become contemporary to the communion in which the proclamation of Christ is realized. Here, as in the previous cases, Guardini seeks to establish a relation of mutual interdependence based on the autonomy of the constituents, thus overcoming the unipolar over-emphasis on one of the realities. In spite of the fact that Guardini openly disagrees with Kierkegaard on issues that are of utmost importance for his own system of thought, there is no doubt that he drew vital inspiration from Kierkegaard and deeply valued some of his fundamental concepts and stances. Along with his approval of Kierkegaard’s criticism of Romanticism and German idealism, Guardini clearly appreciates certain accents of Kierkegaard’s anthropology. Notwithstanding the repeated critiques of Kierkegaard’s overly religious and axiological concept of the human self, in the formulation of his own theory Guardini utilizes structures bearing similarity to the composition and

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processuality of the self in The Sickness unto Death and The Concept of Anxiety.187 Kierkegaard’s thematization of the theological dimension of the self is valued, and it is highlighted in “Vom Sinn der Schwermut” as a corrective to psychological and medical reductionism in the treatment of melancholy. The same driving force that lies at the root of melancholy―eros as the desire for the supreme and eternal good―is at work also in the kinetic logic that Guardini detects in Kierkegaard’s doctrine of passion and the absolute paradox. Kierkegaard’s specification that the human becomes himself or herself before God had a lasting impact on Guardini, who adopts the “before God” clause in his crucial reflections on the realization of human freedom. As a matter of fact, the very idea of a project of “philosophy of selfbecoming”188 with a firm theological grounding clearly appeals to Guardini, who embarks on a very similar project. The importance of Kierkegaard for Guardini is evidenced also by Guardini’s sustained interest in Kierkegaard ever since his intensive confrontation with Kierkegaard in the mid- and late 1920s.189 Even if Kierkegaard’s presence in Guardini’s works is in the later decades often more implicit―thematic and conceptual―than previously, this can hardly be interpreted as a decline of interest; rather it is a testimony to Guardini’s gradual internalization of Kierkegaardian ideas. On the whole, Guardini doubtlessly counts as one of the prominent twentieth-century Catholic thinkers known for extensive Kierkegaard reception. In Guardini’s case, it is a reception that goes well beyond the limits of theology and has a genuinely interdisciplinary character. It is also a reception that reaches far beyond the borders of both Germany and Catholicism, and with the numerous translations and reprints of Guardini’s works brings Kierkegaard’s name into diverse cultural and intellectual contexts. It is important to note that both in Germany and abroad Guardini speaks to generations of intellectuals still largely unaware of Kierkegaard’s philosophical and theological legacy.190

As indicated above, a detailed analysis of these structural similarities can be found in Stephan Pauly, Subjekt und Selbstwerdung, pp. 111–270. It is also an interesting fact that on the basis of Kierkegaard’s theory of the self Guardini views Kierkegaard as belonging to “the most noble tradition that the Christian West knows...the ‘philosophia’ and ‘theologia cordis.’” Guardini, Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal, pp. 175–6. 188 Guardini, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” p. 24. 189 Apart from Guardini’s literary turns to Kierkegaard, this interest is documented also by the intriguing fact that Guardini’s personal library contained at least ten editions of Kierkegaard’s writings published in the 1950s and 1960s. 190 This article was produced in the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences as part of the grant project VEGA 2/0201/11. 187

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Guardini’s Corpus Der Gegensatz. Versuche zu einer Philosophie des Lebendig-Konkreten, Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag 1925, pp. 41–2; pp. 48–9; pp. 53–6. “Über Sozialwissenschaft und Ordnung der Personen,” Die Schildgenossen, vol. 6, 1926, pp. 125–50. “Gedanken über das Verhältnis von Christentum und Kultur,” Die Schildgenossen, vol. 6, 1926, pp. 281–315. “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” Hochland, vol. 24, 1927 (April–September), pp. 12–33. “Freiheit und Unabänderlichkeit,” Die Schildgenossen, vol. 7, 1927, pp. 257–71. “Lebendiger Geist,” Die Schildgenossen, vol. 7, 1927, pp. 349–68. “Vom Sinn der Schwermut,” Die Schildgenossen, vol. 8, 1928, pp. 103–25. “Heilige Schrift und Glaubenswissenschaft” [1928], in Wurzeln eines großen Lebenswerks. Aufsätze und kleine Schriften, vols. 1–4, Mainz and Paderborn: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag / Schöningh 2000–03, vol. 2, pp. 350–1; pp. 361–2. “Logik und religiöse Erkenntnis. Die drei Versuche: Anselms ontologischer Gottesbeweis; Pascals Argument des Glückspiels; Kierkegaards Idee des absoluten Paradoxes,” Die Schildgenossen, vol. 9, 1929, pp. 191–8. Der Mensch und der Glaube. Versuche über die religiöse Existenz in Dostojewskijs grossen Romanen, Leipzig: Jakob Hegner 1932, pp. 248–55. Christliches Bewußtsein. Versuche über Pascal, Leipzig: Verlag Jakob Hegner 1935, pp. 160–1; p. 164; p. 168; pp. 175–6; p. 188; pp. 207–34. “Blaise Pascal. Gedanken. Einführung” [1937], in Wurzeln eines großen Lebenswerks. Aufsätze und kleine Schriften, vols. 1–4, Mainz and Paderborn: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag / Schöningh 2000–03, vol. 3, p. 154. Welt und Person, Würzburg: Werkbund-Verlag 1939. Freiheit, Gnade, Schicksal. Drei Kapitel zur Deutung des Daseins, Munich: KöselVerlag 1948, p. 20; p. 25; p. 54; pp. 90–1; pp. 99–101. “Erscheinung und Wesen der Romantik” [1948], in Wurzeln eines großen Lebenswerks. Aufsätze und kleine Schriften, vols. 1–4, Mainz and Paderborn: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag / Schöningh 2000–03, vol. 3, pp. 366–7; p. 371. Das Ende der Neuzeit. Ein Versuch zur Orientierung, Basel: Hess Verlag 1950, p. 31; pp. 125–6. “Die Annahme seiner selbst,” in Christliche Besinnung, ed. by Heinrich Kahlefeld and Felix Messerschmid, vol. 6. 1953, pp. 5–30. Die Kirche des Herrn, Würzburg, Werkbund-Verlag 1965, pp. 52–71; pp. 101–2. Der Mensch, unpublished manuscript at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich.

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II. Sources of Guardini’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Anz, Wilhelm, “Philosophie und Glaube bei S. Kierkegaard. Über die Bedeutung der Existenzdialektik für die Theologie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 51, 1954, pp. 50–105. Gabriel, Leo, Existenzphilosophie. Von Kierkegaard bis Sartre, Vienna: Herold 1951. Monrad, Olaf P., Søren Kierkegaard. Sein Leben und seine Werke, Jena: Diederichs 1909. Schüepp, Guido, Das Paradox des Glaubens. Kierkegaards Anstöße für die christliche Verkündigung, Munich: Kösel-Verlag 1964. Thust, Martin, Sören Kierkegaard. Der Dichter des Religiösen. Grundlage eines Systems der Subjektivität, Munich: C.H. Beck 1931. III. Secondary Literature on Guardini’s Relation to Kierkegaard Knoll, Alfons, Glaube und Kultur bei Romano Guardini, Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 1994, pp. 90–5; pp. 244–7; pp. 494–6. Pauly, Stephan, Subjekt und Selbstwerdung. Das Subjektdenken Romano Guardinis, seine Rückbezüge auf Sören Kierkegaard und seine Einlösbarkeit in der Postmoderne, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 2000 (Forum Systematik. Beiträge zur Dogmatik, Ethik und ökumenischen Theologie, 4). Roos, Heinrich, Søren Kierkegaard og Katolicismen, Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1952 (Søren Kierkegaard Selskabets Populære Skrifter, vol. 3), p. 9. Ruttenbeck, Walter, Sören Kierkegaard. Der christliche Denker und sein Werk, Berlin und Frankfurt an der Oder: Trowitzsch & Sohn 1929, pp. 323–4. Šajda, Peter, “Isolation on Both Ends? Romano Guardini’s Double Response to the Concept of Contemporaneity,” Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2010, pp. 201–22. — “The Choice of Oneself: Revisiting Guardini’s Critique of Kierkegaard’s Concept of Selfhood,” Filozofia, vol. 66, no. 9, 2011, pp. 868–78. Thulstrup, Niels, “Kierkegaard og Nietzsche i katolsk belysning,” Information, April 18, 1950. Van der Vloet, Jan, “Vom christlichen Sinn der Schwermut,” in Internationale katholische Zeitschrift, vol. 20, 1991, pp. 428–34.

Friedrich von Hügel: Kierkegaard as Non-Mystical Ascetic and One-Sided Defender of Transcendence David R. Law

I. The Life and Work of Baron Friedrich von Hügel Baron Friedrich von Hügel was born in Florence in 1852, coincidentally like Kierkegaard on 5 May, to an Austrian diplomat and a Scottish mother. After his father’s appointment as envoy to the Belgian court, he and his family lived from 1860 to 1867 in Brussels, before settling in England on his father’s retirement in 1867, where he would live for the rest of his life. Von Hügel was close friends with Alfred Loisy (1857–1940) and George Tyrell (1867–1909), two of the leading lights of Roman Catholic Modernism, a movement which attempted to reconcile Christianity with modern developments in science, philosophy, and the historical criticism of the Bible. Von Hügel strove to steer a middle course between Modernism and the Roman Catholic authorities. He defended Loisy from the increasing criticism of the church authorities, but towards the end of his life became increasingly critical of Loisy’s “immanentism.”1 The papal decrees of 1907 Lamentabili sane exitu and above all Pascendi dominici gregis put an end to the Modernist revival. The middle course von Hügel had steered between liberal Catholicism and ultramontanism, however, meant that in contrast to Loisy and Tyrell his works were not placed on the Vatican’s index of forbidden books. On the contrary, von Hügel became valued as a Roman Catholic theologian who was able to remain true to the teaching of the Church while remaining open to new intellectual developments. In 1914 von Hügel was awarded an honorary degree by the University of St. Andrews and in 1920 was the first Roman Catholic since the Reformation to receive an honorary degree from the University of Oxford. He retained his Austrian nationality until the outbreak of World War I, when he became a naturalized British subject.2 He died on 27 January 1925. Von Hügel’s magnum opus is arguably The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her Friends (1908), which was republished James J. Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s Philosophy of Religion, Leuven: Leuven University Press 1983, pp. 101–2. 2 Ibid., p. 107. 1

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with a new preface in 1923.3 In this work von Hügel advances a philosophy of mysticism and introduces his notion of “The Three Elements of Religion,” namely, the historical-institutional, the critical-speculative, and the mystical-operative elements,4 a tripartite structure which von Hügel claims characterizes all the world’s religions. While appreciative of mysticism, von Hügel warns of its dangers when it becomes detached from the other two elements of religion.5 All three elements are needed for a religion to flourish, and von Hügel argues that each element thrives only by encountering and overcoming friction with the other two. Von Hügel holds that Western civilization is also constituted by three factors, namely, the “three chief forces” of Hellenism, Christianity, and science.6 Hellenism is characterized by “the thirst for richness and harmony,”7 while Christianity has provided Western civilization with “the revelation of personality and depth,”8 particularly as embodied in the person of Jesus Christ. Science, on the other hand, is concerned with “the apprehension and conception of brute fact and iron law.”9 In his writings von Hügel focuses primarily on the second member of this triad, namely, Christianity, but he nevertheless argues that all three elements are indispensable, commenting in the conclusion of the first chapter of Mystical Element of Religion that, “neither can the religious life suppress or do without the philosophical and the scientific, nor can either of these other two lives suppress or permanently do without its fellow or without religion.”10 It was von Hügel’s insight that Christianity needs the other two chief forces of Western civilization which prompted him to support the historical criticism of the Bible despite the resistance of the Roman Catholic authorities to the historical-critical method. Von Hügel’s next major work was his Eternal Life: A Study of its Implications and Applications (1912).11 In this work he explores the notion of eternal life as an experience latent in human life and art, which comes to consciousness when we become aware of the deepest of all realities, namely, that we are finite, “durational” spirits in relation to the “infinite, eternal Spirit” that is God.12 Von Hügel traces how the concepts and forms developed by finite human spirits have been sustained by the infinite divine Spirit in the oriental, Jewish, and Hellenistic periods, before focusing on the notion of eternal life in Christianity and the impact of developments in modern thought. A key theme in his discussion is the importance of institutional religion in sustaining and fostering in the individual the experience of eternal life. 3 Baron Friedrich von Hügel, The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her Friends, vols. 1–2, 2nd ed., London: J.M. Dent & Sons and New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. 1923 [1908]. References in this article are to the second edition. 4 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 387–96. 5 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 91. 6 Ibid., vol. 1, chapter 1. 7 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 10–25. 8 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 25–39. 9 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 39–48. 10 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 49. 11 Baron Friedrich von Hügel, Eternal Life: A Study of its Implications and Applications, Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark 1912. 12 Ibid., p. 3.

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Eternal Life was followed in 1921 by the first series of his Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion,13 which consists of a collection of essays dealing with “religion in general and theism,”14 “the teaching of Jesus and Christianity in general,”15 and “the church and Catholicism generally.”16 The second series, which was published a year after von Hügel’s death, covers a variety of subjects and includes discussions on authority, the idea of God, morality, suffering, and the difficulties and dangers of nationality. Von Hügel’s deteriorating health and subsequent death prevented him from delivering the Gifford lectures at the University of Edinburgh which he had been invited to give in the 1924–25 and 1925–26 sessions. The draft of these lectures, the title of which was “Concerning the Reality of Finites and the Reality of God: A Study of their Inter-Relations and their Effects and Requirements within the Human Mind,” was published together with an incomplete study of Alfred Comyn Lyall (1835–1911) under the title of The Reality of God and Religion & Agnosticism (1931).17 After his death his niece Gwendolen Greene published von Hügel’s letters of spiritual guidance to her under the title of Letters from Baron Friedrich von Hügel to a Niece (1928).18 II. Von Hügel’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard’s Thought Von Hügel bequeathed his personal library, publications, papers, and correspondence to the University of St. Andrews.19 Among his papers are his unpublished diaries and numerous letters. There may well be references to Kierkegaard in this material and, as we shall see below, James Kelly cites some diary entries where von Hügel mentions Kierkegaard. It is conceivable, however, that there are many more references to Kierkegaard which have yet to be identified. A comprehensive and exhaustive study of von Hügel’s relationship to Kierkegaard will thus be possible only when someone has undertaken a study of the unpublished papers in the von Hügel archives and, ideally, has produced a critical edition of this important material. The present author, however, has had the opportunity of studying the volumes on and by Kierkegaard in von Hügel’s personal library, and this enables us to gain some knowledge of the extent of von Hügel’s knowledge of Kierkegaard’s thought. Von Hügel owned the Baron Friedrich von Hügel, Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion, series 1–2, London and Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons and New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. 1921– 26. 14 Ibid., series 1, pp. 1–116. 15 Ibid., series 1, pp. 117–224. 16 Ibid., series 1, pp. 225–98. 17 Baron Friedrich von Hügel, The Reality of God and Religion & Agnosticism: Being the Literary Remains of Baron Friedrich von Hügel, ed. by Edmund G. Gardner, London & Toronto: J.M. & Sons and New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. 1931. 18 Baron Friedrich von Hügel, Letters from Baron Friedrich von Hügel to a Niece, ed. by Gwendolen Greene, London: J.M. Dent & Sons 1928. 19 Von Hügel’s library and personal papers are housed in St. Andrews Main Library Special Collections. 13

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German translation of Harald Høffding’s (1843–1931) study of Kierkegaard and the German edition of Kierkegaard’s collected works. A study of the marginal notes von Hügel has made in his copies of these works gives us some idea of which aspects of Kierkegaard’s thought he found noteworthy.20 A. Høffding, Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph Von Hügel seems to have first encountered Kierkegaard through Høffding’s study of Kierkegaard, which he read in German translation.21 According to the note he has made in his copy of the book, it was Abbé Albert Lamy (1874–1908) who first brought Høffding’s book to von Hügel’s attention, probably in 1900.22 In this note he describes Høffding’s study as “A highly stimulating, subtle portrayal and There is very little literature on Kierkegaard and von Hügel. The only sustained study of which I am aware is the unpublished Ph.D. thesis of Gordon Elliott Michalson, Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Søren Aabe [sic] Kierkegaard: A Comparison of Similarities and Difference in their Statements of the Christian Religion, Ph.D. Thesis, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey 1946. Michalson is concerned to identify points of contact between Kierkegaard and von Hügel, some of which in my opinion are rather strained. In his essay on Kierkegaard in Christentum und Kultur, Munich: J. Kosel & F. Pustet 1927, Theodor Haecker briefly mentions von Hügel’s knowledge of Kierkegaard in a footnote (p. 285, note 4), but erroneously claims that von Hügel cites Kierkegaard according to Høffding’s book and had not consulted Kierkegaard’s works first hand. Another commentator who has noted a relationship between von Hügel and Kierkegaard is Michael de la Bedoyère (The Life of Baron von Hügel, London: J.M. Dent & Sons 1951). In his biography of von Hügel, de la Bedoyère quotes a letter to Maude Petre, dated September 26, 1900, in which von Hügel speaks of the “friction” between human beings, the world of physical law and science, and “noumenal reality,” by which he understands “the world of spirits and the absolute Spirit, of persons and the absolute Person.” It is only through this friction, von Hügel states, that “our soul [will] be able to rightly and richly move on and grow and become.” (See Baron Friedrich von Hügel: Selected Letters 1896–1924, ed. by Bernard Holland, London: J.M. Dent & Sons 1927, pp. 94–5). In a footnote de la Bedoyère writes: “The interested reader may compare this teaching, which is the heart of von Hügel with Kierkegaard. It would seem to retain Kierkegaard’s ‘leap’ essential to all religion, while avoiding his extreme irrationalism and paradox. It is a Catholic type of existentialism.” (de la Bedoyère, The Life of Baron von Hügel, p. 116, note.) Whether von Hügel’s philosophical theology can really be characterized as a Catholic type of existentialism is open to debate, and de la Bedoyère may arguably be reading more into von Hügel’s letter than it genuinely contains. If de la Bedoyère is right, however, then it means that von Hügel had developed a form of existentialism by the time he became aware of Kierkegaard, whose thought he seems to have first encountered in 1900. Finally, Habib C. Malik makes a passing reference to von Hügel’s knowledge of Kierkegaard in his Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press 1997, p. 383, note 157, but incorrectly claims that von Hügel cites Kierkegaard in Mystical Element of Religion, vol. 1, p. xiii and p. xvii. 21 Harald Høffding, Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph, mit einem Vorwort von Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Frommann 1896. (Danish original: Søren Kierkegaard som Filosof, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1892.) St. Andrews Main Library Special Collections Hug B4376.H6. 22 “Bin zuerst durch Abbi Albert Lamy, wohl 1900, auf dies Buch aufmerksam gemacht worden.” 20

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analysis of a splendid spirit and character. Have learnt an enormous amount here and been re-invigorated.”23 From von Hügel’s diary it appears that he read Høffding’s Kierkegaard while on holiday in Richmond, Yorkshire, and finished the book on August 22, 1905.24 This is confirmed by the note von Hügel made in his copy of Høffding’s book, where he states that he had worked through the book by this date.25 In his copy of Kierkegaard als Philosoph von Hügel has made numerous underlinings in pencil and brief marginal notes in German. The first two, originally blank, pages in the inside cover are full of notes consisting of a list of contents and a summary of the book’s main points. Von Hügel has underlined some points once, others twice, while some points are not underlined at all. This underlining presumably indicates which points and sections of the book von Hügel regarded as the most important. The headings which von Hügel has underlined twice are on “repetition,” “the religious life of the soul in God, the absolute qualitatively different,” “Høffding’s critique” of this view, and “The criterion. Høffding’s insistence on the inner life as essentially a synthesis.” As we shall see, these are the themes that von Hügel touches upon when dealing with Kierkegaard in his published writings. The majority of the marginal notes consists of numbers referring to pages in Høffding’s book where the same term or theme is treated. Kierkegaard als Philosoph does not have an index, and to overcome this deficiency von Hügel has created a cross-referencing system in the margins of his copy of the book. Some marginal notes are references to other thinkers who von Hügel believes are relevant to the aspects of Kierkegaard’s thought being discussed by Høffding. Thus Høffding’s criticism of Kierkegaard’s distinction between the concretely existing individual and abstract thought as “a misrelationship between thought and existence” has according to von Hügel now been corrected by Rickert.26 In response to Høffding’s comment that Kierkegaard “could see in the policemen’s baton a symbol of the principle of absolute authority,” von Hügel makes the note “see Bishop of Kappho against Ehrhart,” but it is unclear to whom this refers.27 In his discussion of religiousness B Høffding argues that Kierkegaard’s view that revelation is not extended throughout the whole of existence but is limited to a specific time and place means that existence is forsaken by spirit and that nothing else has decisive value other than this one form of the spirit’s presence. In the margin to Høffding’s comment von Hügel writes: “cf. W. Herrmann: ‘Relation of the soul to God.’ ”28 A few pages later Høffding criticizes Kierkegaard for failing to do justice to life, despite his struggle to do so. According to Høffding, Kierkegaard “has no eye for the little things, for the little increase which quietly mounts up and often unnoticed achieves what is praised as great 23 “Eine höchst anregende, feinsinnige Schilderung und Analyse eines grossartigen Geistes und Charakters. Habe ungemein viel hier gelernt und neu belebt.” 24 Diary entry cited in Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s Philosophy of Religion, p. 86. 25 The note runs: “Fr. von Hügel. Durchgearbeitet: Richmond, Yorkshire, Aug. 22, 1905.” 26 Høffding, Kierkegaard als Philosoph, p. 67. 27 Ibid., p. 114. I have been unable to identify any Bishop of Kappho, but I may have incorrectly deciphered von Hügel’s handwriting, which is sometimes very difficult to read. 28 Ibid., p. 125.

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and exalted.”29 In his marginal note von Hügel compares this with the lectures on conversion in William James’ (1842–1910) The Varieties of Religious Experience.30 B. The Gottsched-Schrempf Edition of Kierkegaard’s Collected Works Von Hügel owned 10 of the 12 volumes of the Gottsched-Schrempf edition of Kierkegaard’s complete works.31 The only volumes he seems not to have possessed are volumes 10 and 11, namely The Point of View for My Work as an Author and For Self-Examination. Judging by the absence of marginal notes, von Hügel does not seem to have read Either/Or, Repetition, Stages on Life’s Way, The Concept of Anxiety, Philosophical Fragments, The Sickness unto Death, Practice in Christianity, or The Moment, though he seems to have acquired some knowledge of these works from his reading of Høffding’s Kierkegaard als Philosoph. It is only in his copies of Fear and Trembling and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript that we find that he has pencilled in comments in the margins. In Fear and Trembling von Hügel has underlined the part of the preface dealing with the ancient Greeks and how in contrast to the modern age they did not go further than faith but saw faith as a task for a whole lifetime.32 In the “Preliminary Expectoration” von Hügel makes a note concerning Kierkegaard’s comment, “How could the preacher ever get such a thing in his head, and yet it was so, and his only mistake was that he did not know what he was saying.”33 Von Hügel remarks, “How similar this is to Ibsen’s Brand!”34 There are pencil marks towards the end of “Problema II,” but nothing in “Problema III,” which von Hügel either has not read or has not found anything in the text sufficiently important to underline. Von Hügel’s final pencil markings appear in the margin of the penultimate paragraph in the “Epilogue” concerning faith as the highest passion. The other text from Kierkegaard’s collected works which von Hügel has marked up is the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. On the inside cover of his copy von Hügel has made a note of the phrase “fish out of water” and its page reference, and has also underlined this passage in the work itself.35 As we shall see later, this is a phrase which he will cite in his published writings. Von Hügel has also made a vertical pencil line in the “Conclusion” of Postscript against the paragraph on Christianity and childhood.36 Within the paragraph he has additionally underlined Ibid., p. 129. See William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, London: Collins 1985, lectures IX and X. 31 Sören Kierkegaard, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22. St. Andrews Main Library Special Collections Hug B4370.F10. 32 Sören Kierkegaard, Furcht und Zittern, in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3, p. 4 (which corresponds to SKS 4, 103 / FT, 6–7). 33 SKS 4, 125 / FT, 29. 34 Marginal note in Von Hugel’s copy of Kierkegaard, Furcht und Zittern, p. 23. 35 Sören Kierkegaard, Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift, Part Two, vol. 7 in his Gesammelte Werke. 36 Ibid., p. 269 (which corresponds to SKS 7, 536 / CUP1, 590–1). 29 30

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the passage where Climacus states that “it always holds true that every human being grasps only what he has use for, and the child has no decisive use for Christianity.”37 III. Von Hügel’s Reception of Kierkegaard It seems that von Hügel was prompted by his reading of Kierkegaard to revise his thinking. In his study of von Hügel’s philosophy of religion Kelly argues that there took place “a major evolution in von Hügel’s thought away from the neo-Kantianism of Johannes Volkelt (1848–1930) in the direction of a radically empirical conception of experience along the lines of Cambridge psychologist James Ward (1843–1925).”38 Although Kelly singles out Ward as well as Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and William James as the key influences in bringing about this shift in von Hügel’s thinking,39 Kierkegaard also seems to have played a role in getting von Hügel to focus on the role of experience in religion. In describing his shift of position to Wilfrid Ward (1856–1916) in an unpublished letter dated 24 October 1905 he writes: “I find that it has been James Ward’s criticism and the study of Høffding’s Kierkegaard and Caird’s Theology in the Greek Philosophers (these books were only finished by me with the end of my holiday, 4 weeks ago) which have produced this change in me.”40 Von Hügel’s encounter with these thinkers prompted him to rewrite the paper “Experience and Transcendence” that he had given to the Synthetic Society in 1903.41 Wilfrid Ward had wanted to publish this paper in the Dublin Review, of which he was the editor. Von Hügel’s views had changed to such an extent, however, that he felt it necessary completely to rewrite his paper before allowing Ward to publish it. In “Experience and Transcendence” von Hügel argues that theology should move away from abstract and deductive method towards a more experiential approach. He goes on to argue that the study of experience provides grounds for affirming some “direct and deep, though dim and only indirectly ascertainable, experience by the human soul of the Infinite and God.”42 It seems, then, that Kierkegaard may have been one of the factors which prompted von Hügel to place greater emphasis on experience from 1905 onwards. The works in which Kierkegaard’s influence is most evident are The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her Friends (1908), Eternal Life: A Study of its Implications and Applications (1912), and Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion (1921, 1926).

SKS 7, 536 / CUP1, 590. Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s Philosophy of Religion, p. 8. 39 Ibid., p. 8; p. 82. 40 Letter from von Hügel to Wilfrid Ward, October 24, 1905, St. Andrews Library; quoted in Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s Philosophy of Religion, p. 9 and (more fully) p. 87. 41 Baron Friedrich von Hügel, “Experience and Transcendence,” Dublin Review, no. 138, January, 1906, pp. 357–79. 42 Ibid., p. 358. 37 38

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A. References to Kierkegaard in The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her Friends In the preface to the first edition of The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her Friends von Hügel cites Kierkegaard as “among the modern philosophers I have been especially occupied with, and variously stimulated or warned by.”43 After briefly sketching what he has learned from Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Trendelenburg, von Hügel goes on to describe Kierkegaard as “that certainly one-sided, yet impressively tenacious rediscoverer and proclaimer of the poignant sense of the Transcendent essential to all deep religion, and especially to Christianity, religion’s flower and crown.”44 It is, however, not until chapter XIII of the second volume of the work that von Hügel turns his attention to Kierkegaard, where he introduces Kierkegaard in the course of a discussion of “the ultimate questions involved in the religious positions which are taken up by Catherine, and indeed by the Christian Mystics in general.”45 There are four such ultimate questions, which von Hügel lists in order of ascending difficulty to be the question of the relations between Morality, Mysticism, Philosophy, and Religion; that as to the Limits of Human Knowledge, and as to the special character and worth of the Mystics’ claim to Trans-subjective Cognition; that as to the Nature of Evil and the Goodness or Badness of Human Nature; and that as to Personality, —the character of, and the relations between, the human spirit and the Divine Spirit.46

It is in the course of considering the second of these “ultimate questions,” namely, “Mysticism and the Limits of Human Knowledge and Experience,” that von Hügel turns to a discussion of Kierkegaard. Von Hügel’s first citation of Kierkegaard occurs during his analysis of “the first four pairs of weaknesses and strengths special to the mystics.”47 One of the weaknesses is that the mystic’s joy in “the recollective movement and moments of the soul” leads the mystic “to ignore and neglect, or to over-minimize, the absolutely necessary contact of the mind and will with the things of sense.”48 According to von Hügel, “It is this aversion from Outgoing and from the world of sense, of the contemporaneous contingencies environing the soul, that gives to Mysticism, as such, its shadowy character, its floating above, rather than penetrating into, reality.”49 Where this flight from the sensible becomes too “exclusive,” mysticism contradicts “the Incarnational philosophy and practice of Christianity, and indeed every complete and sound psychology.”50 It is thus necessary that the “Outgoing” of Von Hügel, Mystical Element of Religion, vol. 1, p. xxix. Ibid., vol. 1, p. xxix. 45 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 259. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 284–90. 48 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 284. 49 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 285. 50 Ibid. 43 44

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the mystic be balanced by what von Hügel calls “the Incoming.” It is in appreciating the importance of such incoming, that is, the importance of integrating religious experience with concrete reality, that Kierkegaard’s significance lies. Von Hügel holds that it is precisely this relationship between the Outgoing and the Incoming that Kierkegaard is addressing with his concept of repetition. He writes: And yet the Incoming, what the deep religious thinker Kierkegaard has so profoundly analysed in his doctrine of “Repetition”—recollection and peaceful browsing among the materials brought in by the soul’s Outgoing, —is most essential. Indeed it is the more difficult, and, though never alone sufficient, yet ever the more centrally religious, of the two movements necessary for the acquisition of spiritual experience and life.51

In the course of these reflections, von Hügel refers the reader in a footnote to Høffding’s Kierkegaard, which he says contains “a good description of this doctrine.”52 Von Hügel’s next citation of Kierkegaard occurs in his criticism of what he calls “mystical Agnosticism” in section 4 of chapter XIII.53 For von Hügel, mystical agnosticism is an “acutely paradoxical position,” which he defines as “an entire certainty as to God’s complete difference from ourselves.”54 This position of mystical agnosticism, von Hügel claims, “has been maintained and articulated, with a consistency and vividness beyond that of any Mystic known to me, by that most stimulating, profound, tragically non-mystical, religious ascetic and thinker, the Lutheran Dane, Sören Kierkegaard (1813–55).”55 Von Hügel then quotes Høffding’s description of Kierkegaard’s view of suffering as “necessarily involved in the very nature of the religious relation,” which Høffding attributes to Kierkegaard’s conviction that “the relation of the soul to God is a relation to a Being utterly different from man.”56 Von Hügel criticizes Kierkegaard’s view of suffering as intrinsic to the God-relationship as an error, albeit an error that is “possible only to profoundly religious souls,” and claims that “it would be easy to point out very similar passages in St. Catherine and St. John of the Cross.”57 Von Hügel goes on to state his agreement with Høffding’s view that Qualitative or Absolute Difference abolishes all possibility of any positive relation. If religious zeal, in its eagerness to push the Object of religion to the highest height, establishes a yawning abyss between this Object and the life whose Ideal it is still to remain,—such zeal contradicts itself. For a God who is not Ideal and Exemplar is no God.58

Ibid. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 285, note. Von Hügel refers the reader to pp. 100–4 of Høffding’s Kierkegaard als Philosoph. 53 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 287–90. 54 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 287. 55 Ibid. 56 Von Hügel is quoting Høffding, Kierkegaard als Philosoph, p. 119. 57 Von Hügel, Mystical Element of Religion, vol. 2, p. 288. 58 Høffding, Kierkegaard als Philosoph, p. 123. 51 52

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Von Hügel turns to Dionysius the Areopagite as providing a way of avoiding mystical agnosticism while simultaneously recognizing God’s transcendence. In the third chapter of his Mystical Theology, von Hügel claims that Dionysius “finds degrees of worth and approximation among the affirmative attributions, and degrees of unfitness and distance among the negative ones.”59 As examples of such gradations of worth and unfitness von Hügel cites Dionysius’ comment that life and goodness are more cognate to God than air and stone, and debauchery and wrath further distanced from him than ineffableness and incomprehensibility.60 According to von Hügel, “such a scale of approximations would be utterly impossible did one not somehow, at least dimly, experience or know what He is.”61 These considerations lead von Hügel “to amend the Mystic’s apparent Agnosticism on three points.”62 Each of these constitutes an implicit critique of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the God-relationship. Firstly, “We shall then have to drop any hard and fast distinction between knowledge of God’s Existence and knowledge of His Nature, since both necessarily more or less stand and fall together.”63 Secondly, We shall have to replace the terms as to our utter ignorance as to what He is, by terms expressive of an experience which, if not directly and independently clear and analyzable to the reflex, critical reason, can yet be shown to be profoundly real and indefinitely potent in the life of man’s all rational and volitional being. It is this dim, deep experience which ever causes our reflex knowledge of God to appear no knowledge at all.64

Thirdly, we shall reject any absolute qualitative difference between the soul’s deepest possibilities and ideals, and God; and shall in its stead, maintain an absolute difference between God and all our downward inclinations, acts, and habits, and an indefinite difference, in worth and dignity, between God and the very best that, with his help, we can aim at and become.65

Von Hügel, then, wishes to replace Kierkegaard’s view of the notion of an absolute difference between God and humanity with a Neoplatonist view of gradations of being and knowledge. Both Høffding and von Hügel show a questionable understanding of Kierkegaard’s argument here. The qualitative or absolute difference abolishes all possibility of any positive relation only from the human side. That is, for Kierkegaard, the qualitative difference between God and humankind indicates that human beings are incapable of themselves of coming into a relationship with God. If this were the final conclusion of Kierkegaard’s thinking, then Høffding and von Hügel would be justified in holding that he makes a God-relationship impossible. But this is not the final conclusion of Von Hügel, Mystical Element of Religion, vol. 2, p. 289. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 289–90. 61 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 290. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 290. 65 Ibid. 59 60

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Kierkegaard’s thinking, but is the point of departure for considering how God comes to human beings in the person of his Son Jesus Christ. The human contribution to this relationship is to recognize and acknowledge the gulf that exists between humankind and God, and humankind’s need of a savior. To adopt the language of Johannes Climacus, we might say that the objections of Høffding and von Hügel indicate that they subscribe to the Socratic view of the truth: human beings innately possess a relationship to the truth and the task is to recover this truth and cultivate the God-relationship which it entails. Furthermore, with regard to their criticism of Kierkegaard for not advancing a notion of God as ideal or exemplar, both thinkers seem to reveal little awareness of Kierkegaard’s concept of Christ as the prototype. Nor do they show any appreciation of Kierkegaard’s use of pseudonymity to describe positions with which Kierkegaard himself may not necessarily be in (full) agreement or where the form of the argument may be dictated by the issues he is criticizing. They simply ascribe the views found in Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works to Kierkegaard himself. Von Hügel returns to a discussion of Kierkegaard in the final chapter of the book, namely chapter XV, which he entitles “Summing up of the whole book, back through asceticism, social religion, and the scientific habit of mind, to the mystical element of religion.”66 Kierkegaard is discussed in part I, “Asceticism and Mysticism,”67 which von Hügel divides into three sections, namely (1) “Ordinary Asceticism practised by Mystics”;68 (2) “God’s Transcendence a source of suffering”;69 and (3) “Discipline of fleeing and of facing the Multiple and Contingent.”70 The “ordinary asceticism” described in section 1 is “the (generally severe) Asceticism which is ever connected with at least some one phase, an early one, of every genuine Mystic’s history, yet which does not differ essentially from the direct training in self-conquest to which practically all pre-Protestant, and most of the old Protestant earnest Christians considered themselves obliged.”71 When adopted by the mystic this form of asceticism helps to purify and humble the mystic’s heart and soul. It is in the second section on asceticism and mysticism, namely, “God’s Transcendence a source of suffering,” that von Hügel discusses Kierkegaard. The difference between mysticism arising from conceiving of God’s transcendence as a source of suffering and the form of mysticism dealt with in section 1 seems to be that whereas the first type was concerned to purify the mystic of sin and guilt, this second type of asceticism has metaphysical foundations. As von Hügel puts it, alongside the ordinary asceticism practiced by mystics “There is…a second essentially different source and kind of suffering…[which is] based upon a profound Metaphysical apprehension.”72 Von Hügel goes on to claim that although this form of mysticism is 68 69 70 71 72 66 67

Ibid., vol. 2, p. 341. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 341–51. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 341–3. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 343–7. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 347–51. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 341. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 343.

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“at bottom, the opposite extreme to Pantheism, it readily expresses itself, for reasons that will presently appear, in terms that have a curiously Pantheistic colour.”73 As his first example of a representative of this type of mysticism von Hügel cites St. John of the Cross74 and quotes his remark that “there is no essential likeness or communion between creatures and Him [i.e., God], the distance between His divine nature and their nature is infinite. No creature therefore…nothing that the imagination may conceive or the understanding comprehend...in this life...can be a proximate means of union with God,” for “it is all most unlike God, and most disproportionate to Him.”75 After sketching the theology of St. John of the Cross and exposing what he regards as its inconsistencies, von Hügel turns to Kierkegaard as the second representative of the notion of God’s transcendence as a source of suffering. According to von Hügel, Kierkegaard “pushed the doctrine of the qualitative, absolute difference between God and all that we ourselves can think, feel, will or be, to lengths beyond even the transcendental element” encountered in the teaching of St. John of the Cross.76 He goes on to compare Kierkegaard, whom he describes as “that deep solitary Dane,” with Pascal and Hurrell Froude (1803–1836), and comments that Kierkegaard, “though Lutheran in all his bringing up, was so deeply attracted by Catholic Asceticism.” Von Hügel, however, does not provide any evidence to support this claim. For von Hügel, Kierkegaard is a “non-Mystical Ascetic,” in whom “we get an impressive picture of the peculiar kind of suffering and asceticism, which results from such a conviction [of the absolute difference between God and humankind] to a profoundly sensitive, absorbedly religious soul.”77 Indeed, for von Hügel, Kierkegaard provides the opportunity “to discover the precise excess and onesidedness involved in this whole tendency”78 to overemphasize the transcendental element of religion. Von Hügel’s point is that the position of St. John of the Cross and Kierkegaard needs to be tempered by a corresponding emphasis on the immanent. Von Hügel elaborates on this notion of Kierkegaard as a “non-Mystical Ascetic” by turning to a discussion of passages drawn from Høffding’s book on Kierkegaard. Von Hügel quotes the following passage from Høffding: “for Kierkegaard…the will gets monopolized by religious Ethics from the very first; there is no time for Contemplation or Mysticism.”79 In support of this view von Hügel quotes what appears to be Høffding’s paraphrase of the passage in Postscript where Climacus speaks of the suffering individuals undergo as they strive to subordinate their existence to God, who is “a Being absolutely different from Man, who cannot confront him as his Superlative or Ideal, and who, nevertheless is to rule in his inmost Ibid. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 343–5. 75 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 343. Von Hügel is citing St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, trans. by David Lewis, London: Thomas Baker 1906, pp. 94–5; p. 97. Von Hügel incorrectly cites the date of this work as 1889. 76 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 345. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 73 74

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soul.”80 Von Hügel goes on to cite with approval Høffding’s “double, most cogent criticism” of Kierkegaard’s position,81 namely, a theological and psychological criticism.82 The theological criticism is, in Høffding’s words that, “A God Who is not Ideal and Pattern is no God. Hence the contention that the Nature of the Godhead is, of necessity, qualitatively different from that of Man, has ever occasioned ethical and religious misgivings.”83 The psychological criticism is: “Tension can indeed be necessary for the truth and the force of life. But tension, taken by itself, cannot furnish the true measure of life. For the general nature of consciousness is a synthesis, a comprehensive unity: not only contrast, but also concentration, must make itself felt, as long as the life of consciousness endures.”84 According to Høffding, then, Kierkegaard’s alleged one-sided emphasis on God’s transcendence ultimately means that God ceases to be God for human beings. Høffding’s point, which von Hügel follows, seems to be that if God is made too distant from human beings, then human beings will simply give up attempting to relate themselves to him. If human beings are genuinely to sustain a relationship to God, then some degree of divine closeness is necessary. Transcendence needs to be tempered and counterbalanced by immanence. According to von Hügel the Roman Catholic mystics, even St. John of the Cross, are able to avoid the extreme position advocated by Kierkegaard, precisely because as mystics they are committed to expressing their understanding of God in their contemplation. Von Hügel writes: Catherine, and at bottom St. John of the Cross and the Exclusive Mystics generally, escape, through their practice and in some of their most emphatic teachings, from Kierkegaard’s excess, no doubt in part precisely because they are Mystics, since the exclusive Mystic’s contemplative habit is, at bottom, a Synthetic one.85

That is, in contrast to Kierkegaard the mystics strive to incorporate—we might say “incarnate”—their relationship to the transcendent God in the immanence and concreteness of their own individual existence. Kierkegaard, then, is in von Hügel’s opinion one-sided in his representation of religion. Nevertheless, von Hügel is prepared to acknowledge that there is a “deep truth which underlies the very exaggerations of this onesidedly Analytic and Ascetical view.”86 This deep truth consists of the insight that “God remains ever simply incompatible with that part of each man’s condition and volition which does not correspond to the best and deepest which that Man himself sees or could see to be the better, hic et nunc.”87 That is, God is incompatible with those elements of the human being that do not correspond to what is best in the human being. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 345–6. Von Hügel is citing Høffding, Kierkegaard als Philosoph, p. 116; p. 118; p. 120 and is referring to SKS 7, 437–9 / CUP1, 483–4. 81 Høffding, Kierkegaard als Philosoph, p. 122. 82 Von Hügel, Mystical Element of Religion, vol. 2, p. 346. 83 Høffding, Kierkegaard als Philosoph, p. 130. 84 Ibid., p. 131. 85 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 346. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 80

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Those elements of the human self which are not worthy of God are indeed infinitely removed from God. The contribution of the “one-sidedly Analytic and Ascetical View” of which Kierkegaard is a representative is that it makes clear the infinite difference between God and the base elements of human existence. A second feature of this “deep truth” of the “Analytic and Ascetical View” is that it highlights the fact that God is ever, even as compared with any man’s potential best, infinitely more and nobler, and, though here not in simple contradiction, yet at a degree of perfection which enables Him, the Supreme Spirit, to penetrate, as Immanent Sustainer or Stimulator, and to confront, as Transcendent Ideal and End, the little human spirit, so great in precisely this its keen sense of experienced contrast.88

That is, in emphasizing that God transcends even the highest that human beings are able to achieve, the Analytic and Ascetical View makes clear the contradiction between divinity and humanity which the believer must strive to overcome in taking God as his or her ideal and goal. The problem with the Analytic and Ascetical View is that it ignores the affinity between God and humanity and consequently does nothing to assist in closing over the gulf which the contradiction between divinity and humanity has created. Von Hügel believes that the balance between the contradiction and affinity of divinity and humanity is illustrated by Catherine of Genoa: “Catherine exhibits well this double relation, of true contradiction, and of contrast, both based upon a certain genuine affinity between the human soul and God.”89 Borrowing Kierkegaard’s analogy of the human being’s God-relationship as being like a fish out of water, von Hügel states that while, on the one hand, Catherine “is indeed a veritable fish out of water,” on the other hand, she “is a fish happily disporting itself in its very element, in the boundless ocean of God.”90 Von Hügel goes on to claim that it is in the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory that “we get, in the closest combination, indeed mutual causation, this double sense of Man’s nearness to and distance from, of his likeness and unlikeness to God.”91 Von Hügel points out that it is only if the human being is “in the deepest instincts of his soul, truly related to God, and is capable of feeling.God’s presence and this, man’s own, in great part but potential, affinity to Him,”92 that “suffering [can] be conceived to arise from the keen realization of the contrast between God and man’s own actual condition at any one moment.”93 Yet simultaneously it is only on the basis of this instinct for human affinity with God that the expectation can arise that this painful discrepancy between God and the human soul “can and will, gradually though never simply automatically, be removed.”94 Furthermore, “though, even eventually, the creature cannot, doubtless, ever become Ibid. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 346–7. 90 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 347. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 88 89

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simply God, yet it can attain, in an indefinitely higher degree, to that affinity and union of will with God, which, in its highest reaches and moments, it already now substantially possesses.”95 Von Hügel’s final reference to Kierkegaard in Mystical Element of Religion occurs in Part II “Social Religion and Mysticism.”96 Von Hügel makes a brief reference to Kierkegaard in section 1, where he deals with the themes of the “True relation of the soul to its fellows. God’s ‘jealousy.’ ”97 Von Hügel again turns to Høffding and quotes a passage where the latter states that Kierkegaard tells us that “the Absolute is cruel, for it demands all, whilst the Relative ever continues to demand some attention from us.”98 This appears to be an allusion to Climacus’ discussion in the Postscript of the need to sustain an absolute relation to the absolute telos and a relative relation to relative ends. B. References to Kierkegaard in Eternal Life: A Study of its Implications and Applications The second work in which von Hügel refers to Kierkegaard is Eternal Life: A Study of its Implications and Applications. According to Kelly, von Hügel began writing this work on 16 October 1911 and finished the sections on Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Darwin during January and February 1912.99 Von Hügel’s discussion of Kierkegaard occurs in a “contemporary survey” of notions of eternal life in chapter IX, entitled “Philosophies derivative from Kant.” Here von Hügel discusses the notions of eternal life encountered in the thought of J.G. Fichte, Münsterberg, Eucken, Troeltsch, Hegel, the English Hegelians, J.E. McTaggert, Feuerbach, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. In this section von Hügel again compares Kierkegaard with Pascal and Hurrell Froude, describing him as “a spiritual brother” of these two men. He also again draws a connection between Ibsen and Kierkegaard, commenting that Ibsen’s Brand “was admittedly suggested by the great Dane, and gives a vivid picture of his intense other-worldliness, and heroic straining and one-sidedness. Christ’s self-renunciation is here, but not His expansive tenderness.”100 Von Hügel further describes Kierkegaard as “the deep, melancholy, strenuous, utterly uncompromising Danish religionist.”101 Von Hügel once again expresses his high opinion of Kierkegaard’s thought. He describes Kierkegaard’s works as “ever occasional yet intense, diffuse yet overconcentrated, one-sided yet magnificently spiritual writings.”102 Von Hügel singles out for particular attention the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which he describes as “profound.”103 He also praises “the short account and criticism of this difficult thinker Ibid. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 351–66. 97 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 353–5. 98 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 353. Von Hügel is citing Høffding, Kierkegaard als Philosoph, p. 119. 99 Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s Philosophy of Religion, p. 104. 100 Von Hügel, Eternal Life, p. 262. 101 Ibid., p. 260. 102 Ibid., p. 262. 103 Ibid. 95 96

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and heroic life given us by his friend, the clear and elegant, over-immanental, yet here sympathetic and mostly very just, Professor Harald Høffding.”104 According to von Hügel, Kierkegaard’s own writings, as well as Høffding’s book on Kierkegaard, provide “admirably fresh experiences and warnings concerning ‘Eternal Life.’ ”105 In Kierkegaard’s thought, von Hügel claims, “we see, most impressively, the allimportance for religion of Ontology and Difference, yet also of Likeness. Thus it is Kierkegaard’s profound apprehension of the Ontological and the Difference which renders him religiously deep and powerful, beyond all the Subjectivists and Identitythinkers put together.”106 In the period in which he was writing Eternal Life von Hügel seems to have been increasingly conscious of the need to stress God’s distinctiveness over against human beings. Kelly quotes a comment from von Hügel’s diary where the latter comments on the need in the theology of his friend the Anglican clergyman Alfred Leslie Lilley (1860–1948) “of greater emphasis upon importance of historical happenings and upon Distinctness, Difference of God—the Otherness in our Experience.”107 In the period in which von Hügel was working on Eternal Life, then, he was concerned to combat what he believed to be an overemphasis in contemporary theology on divine immanence. Kierkegaard seems to have provided him with an ideal resource for counterbalancing such overemphasis, and it is possible that he may have received impulses from Kierkegaard for his affirmation of God’s transcendence and his increasing suspicion of “immanentism.” It is thus again Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the qualitative difference between God and humankind that attracted von Hügel’s attention and which elicits his qualified approval of Kierkegaard’s thought. Von Hügel draws a connection between Kierkegaard’s emphasis on God’s infinite qualitative difference and his attack on Christendom, stating that this vivid sense of both the Reality and the Difference of God is (most consistently) combined with the strongest (indeed an excessive because exclusive) realization of the eschatological, the other-worldly, movement in Our Lord’s teaching, a realization which, indeed, leads Kierkegaard finally to break with every and all ecclesiastical organization, as essentially a compromise and hypocrisy.108

For von Hügel, then, Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom is the direct, practical result of his emphasis on the infinite qualitative difference that separates God and humankind. Von Hügel was also attracted by the “ontological” character of Kierkegaard’s thought. He writes: Kierkegaard is specially interesting in that he, otherwise a modern of the moderns, is as massively ontological in his religion as any ancient; and that the tension of his spiritual Ibid. Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Von Hügel, Diary, November 22, 1912; quoted in Kelly, Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s Philosophy of Religion, p. 105. 108 Von Hügel, Eternal Life, p. 261. 104 105

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life arises, not from any doubt as to whether or what God is, but from the keenest certainty both that God is the very source and home of man’s spirit, and, yet, is utterly unlike this human spirit.109

Von Hügel then goes on to quote an abbreviated version of the same passage from the German translation of the Postscript to which he had referred in Mystical Element of Religion, namely, the passage in which Climacus speaks of the suffering human beings undergo as they seek to subordinate their existence to the infinitely qualitatively different God.110 That is, what von Hügel seems to value in Kierkegaard’s thought is that he vigorously affirms the reality of God and eschews the liberal Protestant treatment of Christianity in terms of its moral contents. As was the case in Mystical Element of Religion, von Hügel again describes Kierkegaard as “one-sided.” While acknowledging the profundity of Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the difference of God from human beings, von Hügel holds that “it is his lack of insight as to the Likeness which leaves his life strained to the verge of insanity.”111 Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the infinite qualitative difference between God and humankind is important for correcting the overly immanental approaches influential in contemporary theology, but Kierkegaard fails to counterbalance this with an equal emphasis on the affinity between God and humankind. C. References to Kierkegaard in Essays and Addresses in the Philosophy of Religion There are three references to Kierkegaard in Essays and Addresses in the Philosophy of Religion, all of which appear in the First Series of this work. The first two references to Kierkegaard occur in quotations from Troeltsch, whom von Hügel cites in his essay “On the Specific Genius and Capacities of Christianity: Studied in Connection with the Works of Professor Ernst Troeltsch.”112 This essay consists of two pieces von Hügel originally published in the March and December 1914 editions of the New York journal Constructive Quarterly. The two quotations are taken from Troeltsch’s “Grundprobleme der Ethik,”113 a work to which von Hügel devotes a

Ibid., p. 260. SKS 7, 437–9 / CUP1, 483–4. 111 Von Hügel, Eternal Life, p. 262. 112 Von Hügel, Essays and Addresses, series 1, pp. 144–94. 113 This essay first appeared in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, no. 12, 1902, pp. 44–94 and pp. 125–78, and was republished in 1913 in Ernst Troeltsch, Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) 1912–25, vol. 2, pp. 552–672. Von Hügel confusingly uses two translations of the essay’s title, namely “Fundamental Concepts of Ethics” and “Fundamental Problems of Morality.” Von Hügel, Essays and Addresses, series 1, p. 147. English translations of sections of Troeltsch’s essay can be found in “The Formal Autonomous Ethic of Conviction and the Objective Teleological Ethic of Value,” in The Shaping of Modern Christian Thought, ed. by Warren F. Groff and Donald E. Miller, Cleveland and New York: World Publishing 1968 and in “The Ethic of Jesus,” The Unitarian Universalist Christian, vol. 29, no. 2, 1974, pp. 38–45. 109 110

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section of his essay.114 The first reference to Kierkegaard occurs in von Hügel’s discussion “as to the identity of the Christian Ethical Ideal with the Kantian formalist Ethic.”115 Von Hügel notes that “Troeltsch flatly denies the identity,” and cites as evidence Troeltsch’s comment that such a view “is an extraordinary misconception of the real meaning and spirit of the Gospel” and has been rejected “by ecclesiastical and by radical spokesmen, from à Kempis and Gottfried Arnold, down to Renan and Nietzsche, Tolstoi and Kierkegaard.”116 The second quotation occurs in von Hügel’s discussion of whether the distinguishing, hence the decisive, character of Christian ethic lies in its bestowal of power for moral action, —whether it can be considered exclusively as an Ethic of Redemption, whilst the nature of all other Ethics would consist in their not disposing of these redemptive forces, and in thus leaving man a prey to the mere, impotent capacities of his nature.117

Von Hügel then points out: “The combination of a Redemption essentially accomplished in and by Christ and of a universally human Ethic, Troeltsch finds to appear already in the earliest formation of Christian ideas—in the Apostolic community and St. Paul.”118 This was subsequently followed by a transference of the holiness associated with Jesus and the disciples to the church, its sacraments and institutions.119 Von Hügel introduces Kierkegaard into the debate when he turns to Troeltsch’s discussion of the “schemes” which opposed “this Church-scheme and type,” namely, “the sect-type” and “the mystical-type.”120 Von Hügel quotes a passage in which Troeltsch places Kierkegaard in the “sect-type,” which is characterized by the rejection of the Church and all the dogmas specifically connected with ecclesiasticism, and emphasises, instead, the content of the Christian Ethics, the Sermon on the Mount, doubtless in a mostly somewhat narrow, literal-legal sense; and collects small, voluntary communities of efficiently earnest souls, which manifest themselves as such by adult Baptism. Gentle, retired saints and violent ethical reformers, firm, exclusive communities and radical ethical individualists have proceeded from this spirit, Kierkegaard and Tolstoi have sprung from hence.121

Von Hügel’s third reference in Essays and Addresses to Kierkegaard occurs in the chapter on “Institutional Christianity or the Church, its Nature and Necessity,”122 which he first gave as an address to the Executive Committee of the British branches Von Hügel, Essays and Addresses, series 1, pp. 147–69. Ibid., series 1, p. 156. 116 Ibid., series 1, p. 156. Von Hügel is citing Troeltsch, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, p. 629. 117 Von Hügel, Essays and Addresses, series 1, p. 161. 118 Ibid., series 1, pp. 161–2. 119 Ibid., series 1, p. 162. 120 Ibid. 121 Ibid. Von Hügel is quoting Troeltsch, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, p. 643. 122 Von Hügel, Essays and Addresses, series 1, pp. 254–77. 114 115

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of the Student Christian Movement in October 1918. In this chapter von Hügel again discusses the relation between “the Church-type” and the “Sect-type” of Christianity. He concedes that there is “a large element of truth” in the Sect-type, “yet also of a genuine injustice in this same Sect-type in so far as it may be irreconcilably hostile to the Church-Type.”123 Where the Sect-type is right is “in its sense that Otherworldliness, Detachment and Poverty, in a word the ascetical and transcendental temper, are essential to all virile religion.”124 It is in this context that von Hügel introduces Kierkegaard into the discussion, whose protests against the Church, along with those of Tertullian and Valdés, “are true, not only against such immorality or scandalous worldliness as may have actually defiled the Church of their day or country.”125 Indeed, von Hügel continues, these protests “remain still more precious, because thus useful for all times and places, as bitterly tonic warnings against any Church life and Church ideal which does not fully embrace and cherish also this negative, ascetical movement, and which would admit This-worldliness provided only it be sufficiently refined and sufficiently moral, as more or less complete.”126 Yet von Hügel points out that it is important that critique of this-worldliness should not lead to the opposite extreme, namely, to an utter rejection of this world. It is thus necessary while accepting the protests of Tertullian, Valdés, and Kierkegaard simultaneously to “recognise the complementary truth that Detachment, that World-flight alone, that all Universal Monasticism are, or would be, ideals of an erroneousness equal, even though opposite, to the error of sheer This-worldliness.”127 For von Hügel both this-worldliness and other-worldliness must be held together, if the human being is to sustain a viable and valid spiritual life. He writes: Only the two movements of World-flight and of World-seeking, of the Civilising of Spirituality, and of the Spiritualising of Civilisation: only This world and That world, each stimulating the other, although in different ways, from different sources and with different ends: only these two movements together form man’s complete supernaturalised spiritual life.”128

Von Hügel claims that it is the Church which holds together both this-worldliness and other-worldliness. He claims that “the Church’s large and leisurely occupation with Art, Philosophy, the State was not and is not, in itself, a corruption, but a normal expansion of one of the two necessary halves of the Church’s own complete nature and end.”129 On these grounds von Hügel claims that the “Sect-type” of Christianity, among whose leading figures he numbers Kierkegaard, “represents, at its best, one half of the whole truth, whereas the Church, at its best, represents both halves of the same whole truth.”130 He adds, however, that the Church performs this role only Ibid., series 1, pp. 269–70. Ibid., series 1, p. 270. 125 Ibid. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. 123 124

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when it “manages to incorporate within itself the Sect.” Von Hügel holds that it is above all Troeltsch who has “most persistently traced out this great twin truth along the widest tracts of history.”131 IV. Conclusion Von Hügel was a critical admirer of Kierkegaard. What von Hügel valued in Kierkegaard’s thought was, above all, his emphasis on divine transcendence. Kierkegaard’s notion of the infinite qualitative difference between God and humankind may have influenced or at least strengthened von Hügel’s criticism of the “immanentism” of the Roman Catholic Modernists. Von Hügel sympathized with many of the aims of the Modernists and was close friends with two of its major representatives, namely Loisy and Tyrell. He seems to have had increasing misgivings with regard to the form of modernism advanced by these two scholars, however, because of the tendency of their theologies to blur the distinction between the divine and the human. Kierkegaard’s infinite qualitative difference and his emphasis on divine transcendence may well have helped von Hügel to arrive at this awareness of the one-sidedness and problematic character of Roman Catholic Modernism. This Kierkegaardian influence may have been a factor in preventing von Hügel from becoming embroiled in the conflict with the church authorities suffered by Loisy and Tyrell. Von Hügel’s consciousness of divine transcendence acted as a brake and prevented him from following the Modernists into an increasingly immanentist form of theology. Paradoxically, then, Kierkegaard may have been one of the factors that prevented a break between von Hügel and the Church, and which allowed him to remain within the fold of the Roman Catholic Church. Von Hügel was an admirer of Kierkegaard, but he was a critical admirer. For von Hügel the major weakness of Kierkegaard’s thought is its one-sidedness. Although Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the infinite qualitative difference between God and humankind is of permanent value and must be upheld in every viable theology, it cannot stand alone or be treated as the exclusive definition of the God-relationship. To speak exclusively of God as infinitely distanced from human beings is to remove God from human beings and to make it impossible for human beings to sustain a relationship with God. For this reason, von Hügel holds, Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the infinite qualitative difference must be tempered by an equal emphasis on human beings’ affinity with God. Only when we hold difference and affinity, distance and nearness together do we truly grasp God’s nature and lay the foundations for a relationship with him. It seems to have been his conviction of the importance of balancing difference and affinity that drew von Hügel away from Kierkegaard towards Troeltsch. Von Hügel wished to go beyond Kierkegaard and his one-sided emphasis on transcendence and found resources in Troeltsch’s work for doing so. Commenting on the “New Theology” advanced by R.J. Campbell (1867–1956),132 von Hügel writes: Ibid. R.J. Campbell, The New Theology, London: Chapman & Hall 1907.

131 132

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That impressive philosopher and profound religious soul, the Dane Sören Kierkegaard, who died not sixty years ago, shows us, in the very one-sidedness of the Transcendence and Otherness of God, how little artificial, how entirely not dead, indeed how elemental and operative this sense remains in the deepest religious apprehension of modern man. And now Professor Ernst Troeltsch, of Heidelberg, a religious philosopher of critical training and even daring modern-mindedness, is giving us many a profound study of this Transcendence, as constituting, with Immanence, one of the two poles or focuses between and around which the full religious life has to oscillate and to circle.133

For von Hügel, then, Kierkegaard is ultimately a corrective who is himself in need of a corrective, a corrective von Hügel found in Troeltsch. Kierkegaard is a corrective for he is needed to balance the Roman Catholic Modernists’ overemphasis on immanence. He himself needs correction, for his emphasis on divine transcendence needs to be balanced by an equal emphasis on God’s immanence if human beings are truly to come into relationship with God.

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Quoted in de la Bedoyère, The Life of Baron von Hügel, pp. 329–30.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in von Hügel’s Corpus The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her Friends, vols. 1–2, London: J.M. Dent & Sons and New York: E.P. Dutton 1908, vol. 1, p. xxix; vol. 2, p. 259; p. 285; pp. 287–8; pp. 345–6; p. 353. Eternal Life: A Study of its Implications and Applications, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1912, pp. 260–2. Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion, series 1–2, London and Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons and New York: E.P. Dutton 1921–26; series 1, p. 156; pp. 161–2; p. 270. II. Sources of von Hügel’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Høffding, Harald, Sören Kierkegaard als Philosoph, mit einem Vorwort von Christoph Schrempf, Stuttgart: Fr. Frommann 1896. Kierkegaard, Sören, Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–12, trans. and ed. by Hermann Gottsched and Christoph Schrempf, Jena: Diederichs 1909–22. Troeltsch, Ernst, “Grundprobleme der Ethik,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 12, 1902, pp. 44–94 and pp. 125–78 (in his Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–4, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) 1912–25, vol. 2, pp. 552–672). III. Secondary Liteature on von Hügel’s Relation to Kierkegaard Bedoyère, Michael de la, The Life of Baron von Hügel, London: J.M. Dent & Sons 1951, p. 116, note. Haecker, Theodor, Christentum und Kultur, Munich: J. Kosel & F. Pustet 1927, p. 285, note 4. Kelly, James J., Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s Philosophy of Religion, Leuven: Leuven University Press 1983, p. 9; p. 26; p. 30; pp. 86–7; p. 104; p. 195. Malik, Habib C., Receiving Søren Kierkegaard: The Early Impact and Transmission of His Thought, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press 1997, p. 383, note 157. Michalson, Gordon Elliott, Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Søren Aabe [sic] Kierkegaard: A Comparison of Similarities and Difference in their Statements of the Christian Religion, Ph.D. Thesis, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey 1946.

Henri de Lubac: Locating Kierkegaard Amid the “Drama” of Nietzschean Humanism Christopher B. Barnett

One of the twentieth century’s greatest theologians, Henri de Lubac, S.J. (1896– 1991), was also an astute socio-political observer. In him, as a matter of fact, these two ostensibly contrasting tendencies came together. As Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., writes: “De Lubac never believed that theology could be pursued in isolation from current trends, whether ecclesiastical or secular.”1 Here “isolation” could signify a literal disregard of the era’s most pressing issues, but, for de Lubac, it also could mean considering those issues “from the outside,”2 as if one were not personally affected by them. As he explains: “If you do not live, think, and suffer with the men of your time, as one of them, in vain will you pretend, when the moment comes to speak to them, to adapt your language to their ear.”3 Thinkers, then, do not exist in cultural vacuums. Their ideas are intelligible only insofar as they relate to the intellectual, political, religious, and social circumstances of their given epochs.4 To see this emphasis in de Lubac is already to get a glimpse at his interest in Kierkegaard. After all, de Lubac’s lone published work on Kierkegaard is not found in a “theoretical discussion” or in a text going “by the name of ‘theology,’” but, rather, in his “historical survey,”5 The Drama of Atheist Humanism. In this work, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “Foreword” in David Grumett, De Lubac: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: T&T Clark 2007, p. vii. 2 Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1987, p. 47. This is a recent English edition, which combines two works: Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes, Paris: Editions du Livre 1945, and Nouveaux Paradoxes, Paris: Editions du Seuil 1955. However, Paradoxes of Faith is not a new translation, but, rather, uses two earlier translations: Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes, trans. by Paule Simon and Sadie Kreilkamp, South Bend, Indiana: Fides Publishers 1948, and Henri de Lubac, Further Paradoxes, trans. by Ernest Beaumont, London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1958. 3 Dulles, “Foreword, ” p. vii. 4 That is not to say, of course, that de Lubac thinks one should merely replicate an age’s idées reçues. As he notes, “When an adaptation is too much sought for, it can end only in the momentariness of fashion. It is always superficial—and moreover it always arrives late” (Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith, p. 41). 5 Henri de Lubac, S.J., Le Drame de l’humanisme athée, 3rd corrected ed., Paris: Spes 1945, p. 8. (English translation: The Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans. by Edith M. Riley, Anne 1

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de Lubac examines the thinkers he considers decisive for the development of modern “positive, organic, constructive”6 atheism—namely, Auguste Comte (1798– 1857), Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72), Karl Marx (1818–83), and, finally, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Moreover, he investigates a few persons who underwent the rise of this atheism and who, in turn, responded critically, if also sensitively, to it. In this connection, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81) looms largest, but de Lubac also considers persons such as Charles Péguy (1873–1914) and, to a greater extent, Søren Kierkegaard. This article will explore de Lubac’s reading of Kierkegaard, which is found in “Nietzsche and Kierkegaard,” the second chapter of the first part of The Drama of Atheist Humanism. As will be seen, de Lubac sets up Kierkegaard as a kind of “foil” to Nietzschean humanism: whereas Kierkegaard echoes (or, more precisely, anticipates) many of Nietzsche’s most profound philosophical insights, he ultimately moves them in a different direction. “[I]n a century carried away by immanentism, [Kierkegaard] was the herald of transcendence,”7 de Lubac sums up. Just what de Lubac means by this conclusion, not to mention how he arrives at it, will be dealt with later in this article. First, however, it is necessary to have a look at de Lubac himself. Who was he? And what were his interests? In answering these questions, de Lubac’s attention to Kierkegaard and, indeed, to the complex of atheist humanism will be elucidated. I. Born on 20 February 1896 in Cambrai, France, Henri de Lubac had a “stormy [life], marked by triumphs and defeats, successes and failures.”8 After World War I—a conflict from which he was by no means exempt, even participating in violent (and deadly) action at Verdun9—de Lubac embarked on his formation as a member of the Society of Jesus. From 1920 to 1928 he studied philosophy and theology at Jesuit scholasticates, initially at Maison Saint-Louis on the island of Jersey and, later, at Ore Place, near Hastings, England.10 However, with the gradual moderation of French laws and attitudes against religious orders, he was able to return to France and, in 1929, to assume a teaching position in Lyons.11 It was also at that time that he first came into contact with Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88), then a doctoral student,

Englund Nash, et al., San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1995 [1949], p. 12). 6 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 8 (Drama, p. 11). De Lubac contrasts this “positive atheism” with “purely critical atheism,” the second of which “is manifestly incapable of replacing what it destroys” (ibid).. In other words, while “purely critical atheism” is able to “hollow out a channel” for its “positive” counterpart, only the latter is a “living force,” which seeks a complete reorientation of human society. De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 8 (Drama, p. 11). 7 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 113 (Drama, p. 111). 8 Dulles, “Foreword,” p. ix. 9 Grumett, De Lubac, p. 1. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., pp. 2–3.

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who eventually would join de Lubac as one of the leading lights of twentieth-century Catholic thought.12 Nevertheless, the optimism and promise of this period soon would be challenged by less felicitous circumstances. First, there was a scholarly quarrel. Partly due to his study at Ore Place,13 de Lubac acquired an interest in sources generally disdained by the neo-scholastics then regnant in French Catholic circles. Whereas the latter preferred a systematic approach to the thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), de Lubac was attracted to a range of thinkers, from Patristic figures such as Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185–254) and Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580–662) to the “personalist”14 French philosopher, Maurice Blondel (1861–1949). As de Lubac recounts: A certain Scholastic conservatism, which claimed in all good faith to be tradition itself, was alarmed at any appearance of novelty. A kind of so-called “Thomist” dictatorship, which was more a matter of government than intellectuality, strove to stifle any effort toward freer thought. A network made up of several professors and their former students, which was spread throughout the world, distrusted anything that came into existence outside itself.15

As will be discussed below, de Lubac’s dispute with this “rigid scholasticism”16 was to beleaguer his career for years to come. Second, the eruption of World War II put de Lubac “on the run from the Vichy regime and subsequently the Gestapo.”17 Indeed, de Lubac was a vigorous critic of Catholic collaboration with pro-Nazi Vichy rule—a collaboration resulting from the Vichy government’s apparent willingness to safeguard the interests and rights of the Church.18 However, in a variety of literary media (from correspondence to formal declarations to underground periodicals), de Lubac argued that cooperation with the regime could not secure ecclesial freedom and harmony, but only ignominy and conflict. As he writes in a 1941 letter: “The anti-Semitism of today was unknown to our fathers; besides its degrading effect on those who abandon themselves to it, it is anti-Christian. It is against the Bible, against the Gospel as well as the Old Testament….”19 The publication of such sentiments put de Lubac in considerable danger. In fact, his friend and colleague, Yves de Montcheuil (1899–1944), was caught and murdered by the Gestapo. But de Lubac’s resistance persevered until war’s end. With much provocation, however, also came much inspiration. Thus de Lubac composed some of his most enduring works during the war-torn 1940s. Corpus Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., pp. 1–2. 14 Dulles, “Foreword,” p. vii. 15 Quoted in Grumett, De Lubac, pp. 3–4. 16 Ibid., p. 3. 17 John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 2005. 18 Grumett, De Lubac, pp. 38–9. 19 Quoted in ibid., p. 39. 12 13

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Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Modern Age20 and The Drama of Atheist Humanism came out in 1944, followed by Paradoxes in 1945, and Catholicism: The Social Aspects of Dogma in 1947.21 Among these texts, Catholicism has made the greatest mark, becoming, in the words of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), “the common patrimony of theological reflection,” a “classic work of modern theology.”22 And yet, its concerns themselves are not exceptional. Rather, they resonate with de Lubac’s other works from that era, placing notable emphasis on the social implications of belief—or a lack thereof—in God. Indeed, if The Drama of Atheist Humanism deals with the dire social consequences of Comtean or Marxist atheism, then books such as Catholicism want to show that “in reality Catholicism is essentially social.”23 For de Lubac, in other words, Christian thinking can in no way be reduced to the salvation of this or that individual. On the contrary, a social dimension lies at the very core of the faith, from God’s creation of the world and the universal human reception of the imago dei to the salvation offered to all persons in Christ and the founding of the Church, whose task is “to reveal to men that pristine unity that they have lost, to restore and complete it.”24 Whereas secular ideologies such as Nazism or Marxism ultimately trade in “exclusivist cultural discourses,”25 the Church points to the supernatural origin and redemption of all cultures. Thus its promotion of catholicity is, paradoxically, also an assurance of plurality. The Church does not demand uniform cultural expression, but, rather, fosters and completes a “[d]iversity of witness.”26 It takes what otherwise would be mere difference and enlists it in the service of love (caritas), which is always unifying. De Lubac cites the words of Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141): “Charity is the unity of the Church. Whether we call it charity or unity is all the same, because unity is charity and charity is unity.”27 Another 1940s work from de Lubac, Supernatural: Historical Studies,28 pushed these themes farther—indeed, for many observers, too far. De Lubac, as has been adumbrated, was wary of what modern atheism meant for human society: “Exclusive humanism is inhuman humanism,”29 he writes. On the surface, particularly after Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: l’Eucharistie et l’Eglise au Moyen Age: Étude historique, Paris: Aubier 1944. 21 Henri de Lubac, Catholicisme: les aspects sociaux du dogme, 7th ed., Paris: Les Editions du Cerf 1983 [1947]. The English translation of this work has an alternative (and somewhat misleading) subtitle: Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. by Lancelot C. Sheppard and Sister Elizabeth Englund, OCD, San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1988 [1950]. 22 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Foreword,” in Henri de Lubac, Catholicism, p. 12. 23 De Lubac, Catholicisme, p. 9 (Catholicism, p. 15). 24 De Lubac, Catholicisme, p. 29 (Catholicism, p. 53). 25 Grumett, De Lubac, p. 65. 26 Ibid., p. 64. 27 Quoted in De Lubac, Catholicisme, p. 52 (Catholicism, p. 78). De Lubac actually cites the original Latin: “Caritas unitas est ecclesiae. Sive caritatem, sive unitatem nomines, idem est, quia unitas est caritas, et caritas unitas.” 28 Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Etudes historiques, Paris: Aubier 1946. 29 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 11 (Drama, p. 14). 20

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Solovki and Auschwitz-Birkenau, this statement seems plain enough. But de Lubac’s attempt to expand on it in books such as Supernatural ignited the “most bitter controversy within twentieth-century Thomism, and in Catholic theology at large….”30 The reason largely has to do with de Lubac’s criticism of the idea of “pure nature” (natura pura). In contrast to some of Aquinas’ most time-honored interpreters, including Thomas Cajetan (1468–1534) and Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), de Lubac did not think that Aquinas made a distinction between “pure nature,” which depends neither on divine action nor on divine relation, and “supernaturalized nature,” which “is preserved solely by divine action and able to gain certain knowledge of revealed truth.”31 For Cajetan, this distinction is necessary, since it explains how fallen human beings can have a desire for God—namely, through grace or, as Suárez later defined it, supernaturalized nature.32 De Lubac, on the other hand, contended that this view was a false addition to Aquinas’ thinking. As Fergus Kerr writes: “Rereading key texts in Thomas’s work, [de Lubac] took them at face value, insisting that they mean exactly what they say: human beings have a natural capacity for face-to-face vision of God, which, however, is granted only by a supernatural gift.”33 Human limitation and sinfulness, then, do not mean that human beings lack a natural capacity for the divine. Nature is not a “pure” order, finished and closed in on itself. Rather, it has been given an inherent longing for the supernatural, a natural desire (naturae desideratum) for God. As noted, de Lubac’s reading of Aquinas invited fierce contestation, particularly from conservative theologians such as Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877–1964), who, among other things, feared that de Lubac’s thesis posed two dangers—a denial of human integrity, on the one hand, and a naturalization of the divine, on the other.34 For that reason, de Lubac was indirectly censured in the 1950 papal encyclical, Humani generis, and several of his books were banned from Catholic libraries and bookstores.35 Unwittingly, he had become synonymous with a supposedly radical theological movement, pejoratively characterized as “the new theology” (la nouvelle théologie). Nevertheless, he himself maintained that “I do not have the temperament of a reformer, still less of an innovator.”36 And yet, if de Lubac desired neither reform nor innovation, what motivated him to publish Supernatural? What, in his mind, was so important about his thesis that he risked his vocation as a theologian for it? David Grumett attributes de Lubac’s stance to a “pastoral concern about the disappearance of a sense of the sacred.”37 In de Lubac’s view, to divorce nature from supernature is, finally, to dispense with

32 33 34 35 36 37 30 31

Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism, Oxford: Blackwell 2002, p. 134. Grumett, De Lubac, p. 11. Ibid., pp. 10–11. Kerr, After Aquinas, p. 134. Ibid., pp. 208–9. Grumett, De Lubac, pp. 133–4. Quoted from ibid., p. 49. Ibid., p. 21.

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transcendence.38 It is to exchange the question about the perfection of nature for one about the mechanics of nature. Meanwhile, according to John Milbank, de Lubac also worried about how the doctrine of “pure nature” modifies the New Testament notion of “grace.” Whereas “grace” once was interpreted as the elevation and completion of nature, now it “becomes a kind of purely nominal change in status by the decree of an arbitrary God mediated by the power structure of a church.”39 Both instances, in the end, encourage theology to hand over one of its key tasks—the definition of “the human person and human needs and desires”—to social sciences such as sociology and psychology, thereby facilitating the neglect of the “creative spontaneity and essential transcendence” of the human person.40 De Lubac sums up the import of his argument in this way: “Christianity is a humanism, else it is misunderstood. On the other hand, secular humanism is the absolute antithesis of the Gospel.”41 Compliant with church authority—perhaps due to a profound belief “in the spiritual value of obedience and suffering”42 or, more unsympathetically, due to a newly “stuttering, somewhat traumatized”43 disposition—de Lubac eventually regained ecclesial favor. In the mid-1950s, he earned the respect of France’s papal nuncio, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (1881–1963), who later became Pope John XXIII.44 Accordingly, after Pope John XXIII announced the assembly of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), he named de Lubac as a “theological consultant” (peritus) for its sessions.45 Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., notes that several of the themes addressed by the Council—from issues concerning the Catholic and sacramental nature of the Church to a number of responses to Marxist communism—indicate de Lubac’s influence.46 It was also at and through the Council that de Lubac established “close working relationships”47 with Balthasar, Ratzinger, and Karol Wojtyla (1920–2005). The latter became Pope John Paul II in 1978, and, five years later, he appointed de Lubac to the cardinalate. Now 86 years old, this “elevation marked for de Lubac the culmination of a lifetime’s work for the Church.”48 Of course, de Lubac also published during these years. He continued to refine (or, arguably, temper)49 his views on nature and grace in works such as The Mystery

John Milbank, following de Lubac, argues that the difference between the natural and the supernatural is best understood as the difference between the natural and the moral, inasmuch as the human being’s capacity for freedom and intellectual reflexivity is “in some sense not just created” but, rather, bears “a more radical imprint of divinity: the imago dei.” See Milbank, The Suspended Middle, pp. 18–19. 39 Ibid., p. 22. 40 Grumett, De Lubac, p. 24. 41 Quoted from Milbank, The Suspended Middle, p. 9. 42 Grumett, De Lubac, p. 49. 43 Milbank, The Suspended Middle, p. 7. 44 Dulles, “Foreword,” p. viii. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., p. ix. 48 Grumett, De Lubac, p. 149. 49 See Milbank, The Suspended Middle, pp. 35ff. 38

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of the Supernatural,50 and he contributed important works on biblical exegesis51 and on figures such as the Italian Renaissance philosopher Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94).52 Yet, despite the diversity of his oeuvre, it seems clear that de Lubac was a consistent thinker. Again and again, he returned to the “single unique gift of the world’s creation”53 and to how that gift orients human beings toward mystery and, indeed, toward the divine. Consequently, he was concerned that the “ebbing away of a sense of the sacred in wide swathes of postmodern Western society has…brought about intellectual, social and emotional impoverishment,”54 a concern that not only recalls his interest in Kierkegaard, but also sets the stage for the next section. For, as will be detailed below, de Lubac saw Kierkegaard as a thinker who, crucially, kept the sacred alive during the crisis of atheist humanism. II. As mentioned, de Lubac’s contribution to Kierkegaard scholarship is found in his 1944 work, The Drama of Atheist Humanism. It is a long, meandering manuscript, comprised of four overarching parts or books: (i) Atheist Humanism, (ii) August Comte and Christianity, (iii) Dostoevsky as Prophet, and (iv) Mystical Confrontations.55 In turn, these parts are divided into chapters. Here the most apposite instance is Part One, which is made up of three chapters: (i) “Feuerbach and Nietzsche,” (ii) Nietzsche and Kierkegaard,” and (iii) “The Spiritual Battle.” The remainder of this article will concentrate on the second chapter of Part One. However, reference will be made to other segments of The Drama of Atheist Humanism, when necessary. “Nietzsche and Kierkegaard” begins with a discussion of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music.56 According to de Lubac, it is a “work of genius,” whose thesis, once deemed “fantastic,” now “has become a commonplace in the study of Greek history as well as in aesthetics.”57 At its most basic, The Birth of Tragedy is a kind of philological aesthetics, arguing that the beauty of ancient Greek art in general—and of ancient Greek tragedy in particular—springs from the Henri de Lubac, Le Mystère du Surnaturel, Paris: Aubier 1965. (English translation: Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. by Rosemary Sheed, New York: Crossroad 1998 [1967]). 51 Henri de Lubac, L’Exégèse médiévale: les quatre sens de l’Écriture, vols. 1–4, Paris: Aubier-Montaigne 1959–64. Key sections of this study have been published in English. See Henri de Lubac, Scripture in the Tradition, trans. by Luke O’Neill, New York: Crossroad 2000 [1968]. The earlier title of this English anthology was The Sources of Revelation. 52 Henri de Lubac, Pic de la Mirandole: études et discussions, Paris: Aubier-Montaigne 1974. 53 Grumett, De Lubac, p. 149. 54 Ibid., p. 152. 55 This breakdown refers to the seventh French edition, published in 1983. Its arrangement—including, most notably, the addition of Part Four—is followed by the 1995 English version put out by Ignatius Press. 56 Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, Leipzig: Verlag von E.W. Fritzsch 1872. 57 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 73 (Drama, p. 74). 50

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tension between “two complementary forces,”58 Apollinism and Dionysism. The former looks to Apollo, “the god of appearance,” who “symbolizes the luminous aspect of being, the organization of chaos, the radiant achievement of individuality,” while the latter salutes Dionysus, “the god of the depths of being,” whose “universal energy” arouses and “brings the tragic element.”59 With this fundamental conflict established, Nietzsche aims to undermine the assumption that ancient Greek culture exemplifies ideals such as “harmony” and “serenity.” Rather, as he puts it, “[T]here is no glittering surface without formidable depth.”60 Artistic beauty emerges out of tumult and, indeed, suffering. And yet, adds de Lubac, Nietzsche wants to make this dialectic “comprehensive.”61 In other words, Nietzsche is not merely tendering a “philosophy of art,” but, rather, a “whole conception of the world and of man and a whole ideal of life.”62 In his hands, aesthetics and the principle of tragedy come to occupy “the very center of the universe.”63 For that reason, Nietzsche’s eventual repudiation of Christianity already can be located, albeit in muted fashion, in The Birth of Tragedy. As Nietzsche himself explains, “a profound, hostile silence with regard to Christianity”64 permeates the book. Even so, de Lubac points out that The Birth of Tragedy’s real adversary is not Christianity but, in Nietzsche’s words, a “demon called Socrates,”65 who overcame Dionysism and, as a result, broke the “productive opposition”66 between Dionysus and Apollo. Indeed, after Socrates, the passion and mystery once characteristic of ancient Greece gave way to knowledge, theory, and logic—a transition that devastated Greek culture and, centuries later, culminated in the Enlightenment’s promotion of rationalism, historicism, and the disenchantment of the world. But, notes de Lubac, “the struggle between Dionysus and Socrates is not finished.”67 “The conquered god is preparing his revenge, and Nietzsche is the prophet who heralds his return by opening up the way for him.”68 For de Lubac, Nietzsche’s “tumultuous and brilliant” book is not only “intoxicating” but, in a certain sense, persuasive as well.69 As he writes: “There is probably no thinking person today who does not feel the shallowness and impoverishment of a certain kind of intellectualism and the barrenness of a certain abuse of the historic discipline.”70 A few pages later, he puts it in even stronger terms: “If Socratism is the ‘modern world’—our rationalized world that has been De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 76 (Drama, p. 77). De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 74 (Drama, p. 75). 60 Ibid. 61 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 75 (Drama, p. 76). 62 Ibid. 63 Quoted from ibid. 64 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale, New York: Penguin Books 1979, p. 79. 65 Quoted from De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 78 (Drama, p. 79). 66 Ibid. 67 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 80 (Drama, p. 81). 68 De Lubac, Le Drame, pp. 80–1 (Drama, pp. 81–2). 69 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 82 (Drama, p. 82). 70 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 84 (Drama, p. 85). 58 59

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robbed of its vitality because a shortsighted and arrogant reason has made it wholly profane—or even if it is the world of pure knowledge, we condemn Socratism and consign it to extinction.”71 At the same time, however, de Lubac is certain that Nietzsche’s “corrective” goes too far. With that in mind, he cites a passage from The Anti-Christ: “We no longer trace the origin of man in the ‘spirit,’ in the ‘divinity,’ we have placed him back among the animals.”72 For de Lubac, this sort of “Dionysian fervor” confuses vertigo with ecstasy.73 Moreover, it treats verve and reason, passion and clarity, as mutually exclusive—oppositions that are as false as they are corrosive. “[Nietzsche] insinuates [that] there is no longer any question of lies: the very idea of truth disappears, replaced as it is by this idea of myth.”74 Nietzsche’s embrace of myth, then, ultimately terminates in nihilism. But, for de Lubac, this progression is not necessary. It arises primarily because Nietzsche, in one way or another, stops at myth and thereby neglects mystery. De Lubac regards both of these modes as “mystiques,”75 which, critically, communicate the sacred to humankind. However, myth is “infrahuman,” whereas mystery is a “gift of the spirit.”76 Put differently, myth merges “the human being in the life of the cosmos—or in that of a society itself wholly of this earth—while [mystery] exalts the most personal element in each individual in order to create a fellowship among all men.”77 In de Lubac’s view, the modern world does not need prophets of myth, but, rather, prophets of mystery. Thus Nietzsche’s criticisms of and responses to modern rationalism must neither win nor lose. Instead, they should be taken up and transfigured by thinkers who “rekindle in ourselves the sense of mystery.”78 In this respect, de Lubac holds up two figures as exemplary. The first is the French poet Charles Péguy, who likewise contrasts Greek Antiquity with “this laicizing, rationalizing world that ends up in sterile criticism,” but in such a way that rediscovery, rather than Nietzsche’s revaluation, is accentuated.79 The other is Søren Kierkegaard, and it is to his thought that de Lubac devotes the remainder of the chapter. De Lubac begins by pointing out that Nietzsche and Kierkegaard “have much in common.”80 He backs this contention with a quotation from the French philosopher Jean André Wahl (1888–1974): “Both [Nietzsche and Kierkegaard] were passionate and subjective thinkers; both were individualists, pushing their individualism to the De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 90 (Drama, p. 90). The “ifs” in this statement are worth underlining. Elsewhere de Lubac is clear that he thinks Nietzsche mischaracterizes Socrates, who, in fact, “represents reason that forms judgments and teaches man to know himself” (ibid., p. 87). 72 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols / The Anti-Christ, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale, New York: Penguin Books 1990, p. 136. Cf. De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 87 (Drama, p. 87). 73 De Lubac, Le Drame, pp. 86–7 (Drama, pp. 86–7). 74 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 88 (Drama, p. 89). 75 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 91 (Drama, p. 91). 76 Ibid. 77 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 92 (Drama, p. 92). 78 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 95 (Drama, p. 94). 79 De Lubac, Le Drame, pp. 92–5 (Drama, pp. 93–5). 80 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 96 (Drama, p. 95). 71

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point of justifying dissimulation; both were enemies of system and abstraction; both were philosophers of ‘becoming’ and of time….”81 Naturally, de Lubac is keen to link up this comparison with his prior discussion of The Birth of Tragedy. Thus he adds that both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard emphasize the “fundamental importance” of suffering, scorn the “established Christianity of their age,” focus on the value of inwardness, and model “themselves upon the ancient Greeks and [oppose] the philosophy of their own day….”82 The last point, in turn, also hints at their respective criticisms of Hegelian thinking. As de Lubac goes on to explain, “An essential trait links [Nietzsche and Kierkegaard]: the struggle against Hegelianism both as a rational system and as a ‘historicist’ way of thought.”83 With that said, however, de Lubac also wants to differentiate between the two thinkers. For example, as regards their resistance to Hegel, he argues that Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegelianism is more potent, “because Kierkegaard, far from repudiating all dialectic, is himself a doughty dialectician.”84 Hence, “[i]f Nietzsche is the antiSocrates, Kierkegaard is certainly the most Socratic of the moderns.”85 His thought and style operate maieutically, “drawing out ideas” through an incisive use of logic, irony, and humor.86 As a result, Kierkegaard “escapes the heaviness in jesting from which Nietzsche was not immune,” not to mention the “sectarian fanaticism that disfigures” Nietzsche’s philosophy.87 Ultimately, then, Nietzsche’s Dionysist critiques of modernity “add up to a clumsy substitute for the Socratic atticism of Kierkegaard.”88 Nietzschean thought was meant to vanquish Socrates, but, in Kierkegaard, it has run up against Socrates’ most compelling heir and champion. “Socrates is not blasphemed with impunity,”89 de Lubac quips. Still, for de Lubac, Kierkegaard’s worth does not lie merely in his relation to Nietzsche. On the contrary, Kierkegaard merits the attention “of all who value man and who believe in the life of the spirit.”90 Moreover, his Concluding Unscientific Postscript stands as “one of the masterpieces of the philosophical and religious literature of all time.”91 He summarizes the Postscript in this way, situating it in relation to Philosophical Fragments:

Quoted from ibid. De Lubac, Le Drame, pp. 97–8 (Drama, pp. 96–7). 83 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 98 (Drama, p. 97). 84 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 101 (Drama, p. 100). 85 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 102 (Drama, p. 101). 86 De Lubac, Le Drame, pp. 101–2 (Drama, pp. 100–1). 87 Ibid. 88 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 102 (Drama, p. 101). 89 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 102 (Drama, p. 101). 90 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 104 (Drama, p. 102). 91 Ibid. De Lubac heaps this praise upon the Postscript despite its “obscurity”—a tendency that he attributes both to Kierkegaard’s prolixity and, somewhat aristocratically, to Kierkegaard’s frequent references to Danish literature and cultural life, the knowledge of which “one may be excused for not possessing” (De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 103 (Drama, p. 102)). 81 82

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The Philosophical Fragments presented, by way of hypothesis, the fact of the Incarnation, that supreme paradox of the incursion of God into history, or of the eternal into time. They formed a kind of philosophy of dogma. The Postscript completes them with a philosophy of faith. It sets out to show in what conditions the individual receives the mystery (Kierkegaard calls it the paradox) into himself without stripping it of its essentially mysterious quality. Thus, after the objective standpoint of the Fragments, it is the subjective point of view that now prevails.92

The introduction of “the subjective point of view,” de Lubac knows, may seem to imply that Kierkegaard promoted “subjectivism.”93 However, that would be “an enormous misinterpretation.”94 In point of fact, Kierkegaard’s thought works on two distinct, yet related, planes. With respect to transcendence, “Kierkegaard is the theologian of objectivity,” concerned with “Christian reality.”95 But he is also “the theologian of inwardness,” and, in that manner, he is concerned with how the person is to relate to and to appropriate “the truth of Christianity.”96 In short, Kierkegaard brings out the richness of faith, both in the sense of what is believed (fides quae creditur) and in the sense of how one believes (fides qua creditur). “[T]he real individual is face to face with a real God: that is the quite simple truth that Kierkegaard is never weary of repeating….”97 Thus attentive to the inexhaustible depth of human subjectivity and to the inexhaustible essence of the divine life, Kierkegaard comes to emphasize the very mystery of faith.98 For de Lubac, whose own stress on mystery has been noted, it is this consideration that sets Kierkegaard apart from many modern philosophers, even those who regard themselves as Christian. These thinkers “manfully set forth to solve the paradox to which [the] believer clings—not realizing that wisdom lies in seeing it more clearly as a paradox.”99 In contrast, Kierkegaard greets “the paradox in [faith] for its own sake.”100 As de Lubac elaborates, “Faith does not seek to transcend itself but to grow deeper, that is to say, to find itself more completely, to realize itself more thoroughly as faith.”101 This truth, says de Lubac, is precisely what Kierkegaard’s authorship safeguards, not only from philosophical encroachment, but also from an aesthetic preoccupation with appearances and self-gratification: “[Kierkegaard] saves the Christian from the temptation of logic, as elsewhere he saved him from the aesthetic illusion. As he reestablished the frontiers between the spiritual life and the emotions or pleasures of the aesthete, so he reestablishes them between faith and speculation.”102 In the end, then, this defense of faith has a mystical resonance, De Lubac, Le Drame, pp. 104–5 (Drama, pp. 102–3). De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 104 (Drama, p. 103). 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 105 (Drama, p. 103). 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 106 (Drama, p. 104). 100 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 107 (Drama, p. 105). 101 Ibid. 102 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 108 (Drama, p. 106). 92 93

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placing accent on the hidden realities of the Christian life. Kierkegaard, as de Lubac puts it, “knows that Christianity does not merely happen to be a secret; it is essentially a secret….”103 Nevertheless, though de Lubac does not retract this statement, he is sensitive to the problems occasioned by an excessive stress on the purity and secrecy of faith—a stress that, in his view, Kierkegaard approximates, if not advocates. In other words, although de Lubac asserts that Kierkegaard “was in the right” in his battles against Hegel, Romanticism, and even Bishop Jakob Peter Mynster (1775–1854), he worries that certain dangerous tendencies inhabit Kierkegaard’s authorship.104 “One cannot help wondering…whether it is only rationalism that comes in for a drubbing. Does not reason itself emerge with a few bruises?”105 That is not to say that he is claiming that Kierkegaard is fundamentally hostile to human reason and to its capacity to relate to the divine. On the contrary, it is just this conclusion that has led a number of commentators to group Kierkegaard with Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger (1889– 1976), while, as far as de Lubac is concerned, there is “no equivalence between his faith and the nihilism of men like Nietzsche or Heidegger.”106 Rather, for de Lubac, the real trouble with Kierkegaard is that his thinking has a “unilateral character.”107 His insights are important and illuminating, his critiques legitimate, but one should receive them judiciously, understanding that they do not give a complete account of the matters at hand. As he writes: “[I]t must be recognized that Kierkegaard is a stimulating writer rather than a safe one. His ideas are not so much a food as a tonic and, taken in too large a dose, they might become a toxin.”108 That de Lubac is addressing a Catholic audience becomes particularly evident at this point. His tone shifts from the descriptive to the prescriptive, pointing up the agonistic quality of Kierkegaard’s thought—its lack of “unity” and “serenity”—and reminding his readers that its brilliance is nonetheless “marked with the heritage of the Reformation.”109 This concern also explains why, in the final paragraph of “Nietzsche and Kierkegaard,” he briefly takes up the question of Kierkegaard’s relation to Catholicism. It was not an inconsequential issue at the time. As de Lubac acknowledges, Georg Brandes (1842–1927) and Harald Høffding (1843– 1931) had argued that “if Kierkegaard had been born later he would have been a Catholic,” and, from the Catholic side, Erich Przywara (1889–1972) and Paul Petit (1893–1944) had tendered comparable, if not identical, opinions.110 For his part, however, de Lubac does not think it a pressing question: “I shall not attempt an De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 107 (Drama, p. 105). De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 109 (Drama, p. 107). 105 Ibid. 106 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 110 (Drama, p. 108). 107 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 112 (Drama, p. 111). 108 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 111 (Drama, p. 109). 109 De Lubac, Le Drame, pp. 111–12 (Drama, pp. 110–11). 110 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 113 (Drama, p. 111). Przywara, indeed, gives a sustained hearing to this matter. See Erich Przywara, S.J., Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, Munich: Oldenbourg 1929. Also see my article: “Erich Przywara, S.J.: Catholicism’s Great Expositor of the ‘Mystery’ of Kierkegaard,” in this volume. 103 104

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opinion on [it] (and I confess that I see no very clear indications).”111 Rather, he prefers to underline Kierkegaard’s contribution to the philosophy of religion, that is to say, Kierkegaard’s demonstration that close attention to human existence need not terminate in atheist humanism: “It is sufficient that this free-lance, outlawed by his Church, was the witness chosen by God to compel a world that increasingly disowned it to contemplate the greatness of faith; that, in a century carried away by immanentism, he was the herald of transcendence.”112 Kierkegaard was no friend of apologetics. And yet, de Lubac concludes, he perdures as a “powerful apologist,”113 who understood that what afflicts humanity is not so much a political or a scientific deficiency as a spiritual failure. This, indeed, “is the human problem as a whole.”114 III. In a recent work, Fergus Kerr comments on the paradoxical nature of de Lubac’s intellectual career. On the one hand, de Lubac viewed himself as a “ ‘man of the Church,’ vir ecclesiasticus,” and “many others have come to regard him in the same way.”115 On the other hand, “[t]hough always insisting on how traditional his Catholicism was, Henri de Lubac kept choosing somewhat marginal figures to celebrate.”116 That this paradox no longer seems surprising, Kerr adds, is a testimony to de Lubac’s great influence on twentieth-century Catholic thinking. His pen felled the dominant neo-scholastic theology of the day and ushered in an era where “manifestly offbeat and idiosyncratic figures” such as Origen and Pico della Mirandola received new and serious consideration.117 This was truly a “transformation of Catholicism.”118 Despite its relatively small scale, de Lubac’s treatment of Kierkegaard in The Drama of Atheist Humanism might be understood in similar fashion. Here de Lubac was reaching beyond the narrow confines of a putative orthodoxy in the hope of resolving or, at least, clarifying a particular problem. To be sure, Kierkegaard was hardly a stock figure in Catholic circles. However, de Lubac viewed him as an ark of sorts, preserving the validity of religion amid the turbulent philosophical and cultural waters churned up by Nietzsche and others. In those terms, Kierkegaard made de Lubac’s intellectual enterprise possible. Yet, perhaps more intriguingly, one also might argue that Kierkegaard—as a thinker who not only rejected the bland intellectualism and historicism of modern thinking, but did so in the name of paradox, mystery, and humanity’s openness to the divine—helped shape de Lubac as well.

De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 113 (Drama, p. 111). Ibid. 113 Ibid. 114 De Lubac, Le Drame, p. 116 (Drama, p. 113). 115 Fergus Kerr, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians, Oxford: Blackwell 2007, p. 86. 116 Ibid., p. 85. 117 Ibid., p. 86. 118 Ibid. 111

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Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in de Lubac’s Corpus Le Drame de l’humanisme athée, Paris: Spes 1944. (English translation: The Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans. by Edith M. Riley, Anne Englund Nash, et al., San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1995 [1949]). II. Sources of de Lubac’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Bachelard, Gaston, “Avant-Propos,” in Martin Buber, Je et Tu, trans. by Geneviève Bianquis, Paris: Aubier 1938, pp. 14–15. Bespaloff, Rachel, “Les ‘Études kierkegaardiennes’ de Jean Wahl,” Revue philosophique, vol. 1, 1939, p. 317. Böhlin, Torsten, Sören Kierkegaard; l’homme et l’oeuvre, trans. by Paul-Henri Tisseau, Bazoges-en-Pareds: Tisseau 1941, p. 198; p. 234. Congar, Yves Marie Joseph, “Actualité de Kierkegaard,” Vie intellectuelle, vol. 32, 1934, pp. 9–36. Kierkegaard, Sören, Post-scriptum aux miettes philosophiques, trans. by Paul Petit, Paris: Gallimard 1941. Koch, Carl, Sören Kierkegaard, trans. by A. Nicolet and F.J. Billeskov Jansen, Paris: Éditions Labor 1934, p. 206. Lacroix, Jean, Le Sens du dialogue, Neuchâtel: Baconnière 1944, pp. 19–20; pp. 23–5; p. 73; pp. 101–2; p. 112; pp. 133–5. Lichtenberger, Henri, Le Philosophie de Nietzsche, Paris: Alcan 1898, pp. 174–5. Petit, Paul, “Préface,” in Sören Kierkegaard, Post-scriptum aux miettes philosophiques, trans. by Paul Petit, Paris: Gallimard 1941, pp. v–ix. Przywara, S.J., Erich, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, Munich and Berlin: Verlag von R. Oldenbourg 1929, pp. 74ff. Waelhens, Alphonse de, La Philosophie de Martin Heidegger, Louvain: Éditions de l’Institut superieur de philosophie 1942, pp. 338–9; p. 356. Wahl, Jean, Études kierkegaardiennes, Paris: Aubier 1938, p. 429. III. Secondary Literature on de Lubac’s Relation to Kierkegaard Roos, Heinrich, Søren Kierkegaard og Katolicismen, Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1952 (Søren Kierkegaard Selskabets Populære Skrifter, vol. 3), p. 10.

Thomas Merton: Kierkegaard, Merton and Authenticity Erik M. Hanson

Certainly no discussion of Kierkegaard’s reception by twentieth-century AngloAmerican theologians would be complete without examining his reception by Thomas Merton (1915–68). As a monastic of the Order of Cistercians of Strict Observance (O.C.S.O.), Merton made his debut as a writer with the publication of his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948).1 Yet he resisted the stereotype of the monk as an individual who is socially withdrawn and secluded from culture within the monastery. Instead, he deliberately engaged it.2 The restless alienation that characterized the Zeitgeist of American culture after World War II, sometimes referred to as the “Kierkegaardian Age of Anxiety,” is a theme that stretches throughout his literary corpus.3 As a scholar, he undoubtedly read Kierkegaard alongside, and not merely through, the lenses of Albert Camus (1913–60), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80), Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, New York: Harcourt Court Brace Jovanovich 1948. 2 His specifically autobiographical works include not only his infamous The Seven Storey Mountain but also The Sign of Jonas, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2002 [1953]; Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Garden City, New York: Doubleday 1966; The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, edited from Merton’s notebooks by Naomi Burton, Brother Patrick Hart, and James Laughlin, New York: New Directions 1975 [1974]; also included in this number is his lesser known The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton, New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudhay 1959; and Day of a Stranger, with introduction by Robert E. Daggy, Salt Lake City, Utah: Gibbs M. Smith 1981. Not to be missed in conjunction with his autobiographical works are The Journals of Thomas Merton, vols. 1–7, ed. by Patrick Hart et al., San Francisco: Harper 1995–99. A number of excellent biographies of Merton’s life are available, but of particular value and comprehensiveness is that of Michael Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1984, and a slightly less dense but more intimate, Jim Forest, Living With Wisdom: A Life of Thomas Merton, 2nd ed., Maryknoll, New York: Orbis 2008 [1991]. In addition, Victor A. Kramer, Thomas Merton, Boston: Twayne Publishers 1984 provides an excellent overview of Merton’s published works as a whole. To these works I refer the reader for a more comprehensive bibliography of books and articles by (and about) Thomas Merton. 3 George Kotkin observes that Kierkegaard’s popularity, not only in America but throughout the rest of the English-speaking world was almost single-handedly the result of the efforts of the Episcopal Minister Walter Lowrie (though in this regard he was aided by Alexander Dru and Walter Swenson). See George Kotkin, Existential America, Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press 2003, pp. 38–49. Cotkin’s enlightening and 1

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Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), and others.4 Yet for Merton, Kierkegaard stood apart. He saw the latter as a luminary who laid the groundwork for all subsequent existential critiques of modernity that followed, and provided a basis for self-understanding that would enable the individual to recover what it means to be an authentic human being.5 I shall begin this article with a short biography of Merton, followed by my account of his own criticism of modernity and his use of Kierkegaard to articulate the conflict between modernity’s tendency to practice “leveling,” and the human need for authenticity. I will then show how he adopts Kierkegaard’s criticism of the nineteenth-century Danish Church since it conformed to the practices of modernity. Merton applies this criticism to the Church in the twentieth century, exhorting it to return to its calling as a “personalist community.” I conclude this article by showing how Merton appropriates Kierkegaard to demonstrate how authenticity can be recovered through the practice of classical Christian spirituality, as presented by St. John of the Cross (1542–91). engaging work dedicates no less than two chapters to Kierkegaard’s overlooked influence on American life and culture after World War II. 4 For this reason, I have been somewhat conservative about attempting to determine the sources of Merton’s knowledge of Kierkegaard as presented in the bibliography, apart from Lowrie’s translations. Merton’s own access to Kierkegaard is suggested by the marginalia from Robert Bretall, A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. by Robert Bretall, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1947, and Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. by David Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson, Port Washington: Kennikat Press 1946, both of which were donated to the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University, Louisville, Kentucky, by Gethsemani Abbey. Merton’s workbook (also available in the Thomas Merton Center) dated from July 5–6, 1968, shows Merton having taken notes on Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom, trans. and ed. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944 (see especially pp. 20–30). His workbooks essentially consist of his own copying of individual quotations from the text, rather than making substantive notes and comments. The texts of Attack Upon Christendom, and Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. and ed. by Walter Lowrie and David Swenson, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1941, and The Concept of Dread, trans. and ed. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944, indicate that the library had acquired them in July 1964 (the exact date of its acquisition of The Present Age, trans. and ed. by Walter Lowrie, New York: HarperCollins 1962, is unknown at the time of this writing; it has been declared “missing”). His extensive underlining and asterisks on the side margins in both Bretall and Works of Love reveal passages of Kierkegaard that Merton found particularly prophetic (and in some cases appear in his later publications). The library’s copy of Peter Rohde, Søren Kierkegaard: An Introduction to his Life and Philosophy, New York: Humanities Press 1964, is also labeled as missing from the library. However, I am including it in the bibliography since it is not unreasonable to speculate that Merton was familiar with this text, and its acquisition by the library appears to have coincided with its other Kierkegaard acquisitions from 1964. 5 Merton emphasizes with Walter Lowrie that Kierkegaard, and not Jean Paul Sartre, should be considered the rightful “father of existentialism.” See Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience, New York: HarperCollins 2003, p. 29. See also Kotkin, Existential America, p. 49. For an older study on the topic of Kierkegaardian dread and subsequent treatments of the topic in the twentieth century, see Arland Ussher, Journey through Dread: A Study of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre, New York: Biblo and Tannen 1968.

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I. A Short Life of Thomas Merton The oldest son of two artists, Thomas Merton was born on January 31, 1915, in Prades, France. He spent a large portion of his childhood on the Continent (with the exception of a few brief years in America during World War I), before moving to England. After the death of his father, his mother having died when he was a child, Merton began his college education initially at Clare College, Cambridge. However, he was later persuaded (in part by receiving a lower than expected grade on his “Modern Language Tripos”) to leave Cambridge and complete his bachelor’s degree at Columbia University in New York. A master’s degree in English Literature followed, also at Columbia, with William Blake serving as the topic of his thesis. Research towards his dissertation coincided with his growing interest in the Catholic faith, which he subsequently embraced. He was baptized on November 16, 1938, and subsequently confirmed the following May, at Corpus Christi Catholic Church in New York City.6 Immediately following his graduation, Merton taught literature at Saint Bonaventure College in Olean, New York. It was at about the same time that he also realized his calling to the monastic life. He applied, and was ultimately received, as a monk at Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky in February 1942. When he was ordained, he took the name Frater Maria Ludovicus, “Brother Mary Louis” (also “Brother Louis”; the name “Mary” was the fulfillment of a vow he had made to the Holy Mother when on pilgrimage to Cuba in 1940).7 Once at the monastery, his abbot, recognizing his literary talent, encouraged him to follow his vocation as a writer. His now infamous autobiography, written in at least the spirit, if not the style of Augustine’s Confessions, was published nearly six years after he entered the Cistercian order, on October 4, 1948. The duties he was assigned to take up in the monastery in the decade that followed included the teaching of novices in the contemplative tradition of Christianity, from the Desert Father St. Anthony, to the Carmelite mystic St. John of the Cross. These years while largely uneventful, were not unproductive for him in terms of his literary output. His perspective on the world was transformed, however, after he experienced what has become known as his epiphany on March 19, 1958. While walking downtown during a rare visit to Louisville, on the corner of Fourth and Main Streets, he was struck by a single thought: In every human being resides “a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind 6 Baptism Register. Corpus Christi. Entry 108, November 16, 1938. 44. Conditional Baptism. Sponsors: Edward Rice. Priest, J.P. Moore. Copy, AA. St. Gertrude’s Day (the name of his paternal grandmother). Confirmed: May 29, 1939. Confirmation Register. Corpus Christi. May 25, 1939. Bishop Donohue. 29. I want to thank Martin Martey and Peter Kountz for drawing my attention to these details (the latter also informed me that Edward Rice was not only Merton’s God-Father in Baptism but his sponsor in Confirmation, and that the witnesses to both sacraments also included Robert Lax, Robert Gerdy, and Seymour Freedgood). Cf. Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, p. 589, n. 92; Forest, Living with Wisdom, p. 59. 7 Forest, Living with Wisdom, p. 67.

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or the brutalities of our will….It is so to speak his name written in us.”8 It was the turning point of Merton’s career and transformed not only his literary output but the extent of his correspondence.9 Merton’s actual connections to the world outside the monastery were, to a large degree, limited to letters. But this changed for him in 1968, when the new abbot accepted his request for an extended travel itinerary. His final destination was ultimately Bangkok. However it was preceded by visits to monastic communities throughout the Far East, in Calcutta, and Dharmmsala. The latter in particular turned out to be notable since it offered him an extended stay with His Holiness, Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1931) the Dalai Lama.10 Merton made his last public appearance in Bangkok, on the morning of December 10, 1968, where he delivered a lecture titled “Marxism and Monastic Perspectives” at an international conference on monasticism, east and west. While his death has been a matter of some controversy, most credible biographers believe that it was the result of accidental electrocution by a loose wire of a ceiling fan in his room in the afternoon after his lecture. He was finally laid to rest in an unpretentious grave at Gethsemani Abbey. In spite of the fact that Merton was a voluminous writer and had a clear sense of connection with Kierkegaard, there are few published works in which he discusses his Danish predecessor in depth. When he does at least mention Kierkegaard, it is usually alongside other nineteenth- and twentieth-century existentialists and theologians. These works that refer to Kierkegaard include The Ascent to Truth (1951),11 The Sign of Jonas (1953), The Secular Journal (1959), Seeds of Destruction (1961),12 Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966), and Mystics and Zen Masters (1961).13 Also included in this group are his posthumously published Opening the Bible (1972),14 The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton (1981),15 Contemplation in a World of Action (1971),16 and The Inner Experience (2003).17 References to Kierkegaard also appear occasionally in the multi-volume The Journals of Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 41. Forest, Living with Wisdom, p. 135. Merton’s correspondence with literary, religious, artistic, and other well-known figures throughout the span of his stay at Gethsemani is legendary. Two books are notable for their collection of his letters: Witness to Freedom: Letters in a Time of Crisis, ed. by William H. Shannon, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giraux 1995, and Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters, ed. by William H. Shannon and Christine M. Bochen, New York: HarperCollins 2008. 10 Forest, Living with Wisdom, pp. 228–33. 11 Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth, New York: Harcourt Brace and Company 1951. 12 Thomas Merton, The Seeds of Destruction, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1964 [1961]. 13 Thomas Merton, Mystics and Zen Masters, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 1999 [1967]. 14 Thomas Merton, Opening the Bible, London: George Allen and Unwin 1972. 15 Thomas Merton, The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton, ed. by Patrick Hart, New York: New Directions 1981. 16 Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action, London: George Allen and Unwin 1971. 17 Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience, New York: HarperCollins 2003. 8 9

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Merton (1994–98). However his only sustained discussion of Kierkegaard is found in “The Other Side of Despair: Notes on Christian Existentialism.”18 Since nearly all of the themes that Merton writes about in connection with Kierkegaard are found in this essay, it makes sense to use it as the “backbone” for a discussion of Merton’s treatment of the Danish philosopher and theologian. II. Alienation: The Modern Predicament Biographers note that Thomas Merton believed that, from his position within the monastery, he was better able to view society than if he was in the midst of it. In this regard, he observed that many in post-war America found themselves in what has been called the “predicament of modern man.”19 It is a condition that the twentieth century existentialists referred to as estrangement and alienation.20 This predicament, as others have noted, is rooted in modernity’s unreflective commitment to “scientific positivism,” an ontological position that entails that the ineffable quality of human experience is reducible to the material, and for this reason may be subsequently quantified. It is a condition, which he identifies as having its roots in Kierkegaard’s discussion of leveling. In leveling, the individual becomes no more significant than a countable unit and strives to acquire identity in the mind of society, or “the public.” This predicament of modernity spanned Merton’s career. In his “Vocation and Modern Thought” he addresses the question of what motivated the rise in monastic vocations witnessed by his community in the decades following the publication of his autobiography. He posits that it derived from a genuine need to realize authentic selfhood in free choice to discover and realize one’s own self as distinct from the roles that an individual performed within society. Merton saw it as a need that modern culture, for all of its technological advances, was unable to satisfy. To explain why, Merton looks at the critical analyses of modernity in modern thinkers from the century that preceded him, including Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Karl Marx (1818–83), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), but especially Kierkegaard.21 The critique that they make against modernity is now familiar. Its conventional structures had failed in the very task for which they were designed, namely, to connect the individual with reality. The truth was that they Thomas Merton, “The Other Side of Despair: Notes on Christian Existentialism,” Mystics and Zen Masters, especially pp. 263–4; p. 272. His discussion in “The Other Side of Despair,” effectively eclipses his earlier discussion of Kierkegaard in his Secular Journal, found in an entry from November 29, 1940, written while still teaching at Saint Bonaventure College (and contemplating his call to enter the ministry). In this earlier reference, he discusses Kierkegaard’s treatment of the faith of Abraham in Fear and Trembling at length in relation to Saint John of the Cross. See Thomas Merton, The Secular Journal, pp. 117–21. 19 Thomas Merton, “Vocation and Modern Thought,” in Contemplation in a World of Action, p. 35. See also p. 31. 20 Merton, “The Other Side of Despair,” pp. 263–4. 21 Merton, “Vocation and Modern Thought,” p. 35. Merton praises Kierkegaard as an individual whom he considers to be “one of the great religious geniuses of an irreligious century.” Merton, The Inner Experience, p. 105. 18

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had become deceptive barriers to self-knowledge by preventing the individual from “facing ‘anguish.’ ”22 That is, they did not allow the individual to realize their own true selfhood as a fundamentally transcendent and autonomous being, distinct from its role and career within society. Of course, there is no question that modernity, in its twentieth-century guise as scientific positivism, had contributed to making life more efficient through its commitment to technological innovation. Yet by becoming a paradigm for determining value, it had effectively marginalized the deeper needs of every human being, which included the need to be recognized as having a unique and transcendent source of agency. These were ultimate needs that neither capitalism, nor communism, could satisfy. Scientific positivism had always been ill suited to meet its concerns because they did not fit into its reductionist material paradigm (a paradigm that both economic models also presupposed). For, he writes, unless a person could justify his or her existence in terms of productivity, then that person “does not count,” and so, “what is done to him or with him ceases to be a matter of ethical concern.”23 Merton identifies this condition of shared alienation and estrangement as a malady of modernity that Kierkegaard had already anticipated in his review of Two Ages, “The Present Age” (1845). Modernity, Kierkegaard observes, had become obsessed with the opinion of the crowd, with the result that there were no longer any individuals. The individual had become subject to leveling, and essentially reduced to a countable unit. Since meaningful self-knowledge, and a concern for an ethical life, had become suppressed, the individual loses his or her identity within the public mind. Following Kierkegaard, Merton claims that the modern individual “identifies this abstraction with objective reality, or simply with ‘the truth,’ he abdicates his own intuition. He renounces conscience and is lost.”24 We may note with Kierkegaard and Merton that modernity has reified the impersonal public and public opinion, having “the press” as its mouthpiece. For because it is associated with what Aristotle referred to as the “the many and the wise,” public opinion is subsequently given an almost omniscient authority that all intelligent people accept should. Yet as Merton observes, the public, following Kierkegaard, is no more than a phantom, having become a mythical creature which a person adopts as a surrogate for one’s own opinion.25 Merton writes that in its twentieth-century form, Kierkegaard’s account of the relation of leveling to modernity effectively entails that the public alone is properly human. Consequently, the individual effectively fails to have any meaningful accountability. Hence, “the private sphere can no longer be human except at the price of admitting the abstract into its own intimacy.”26 The individual is expected to Merton, “Vocation and Modern Thought,” p. 35. Merton, “The Other Side of Despair,” p. 262. 24 Ibid., pp. 263–4. Merton most likely drew upon Kierkegaard’s Literary Review of Two Ages: “The Present Age,” reprinted in Bretall, A Kierkegaard Anthology, pp. 258–69; an examination of the monastery’s copy donated to the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine reveals his own underlining of various passages throughout the text in blue ink. 25 Merton, “The Other Side of Despair,” p. 264. 26 Ibid., p. 265. See also Kierkegaard’s discussion of the public and the press in A Literary Review of Two Ages, SKS 8, 88–89 / TA, 92–93. 22 23

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accept this set of circumstances with absolute docility. And so, “you play it safe by never turning off the TV, and never, under any circumstances, entertaining a thought, a desire, or a decision that is authentically your own. It is in the general void, the universal noise, that you remain alone.”27 Merton’s reference to television as a medium for the “public” seems appropriate, given the fact that for Kierkegaard, what gave rise to this phantom was “the press.” He states: “Together with the passionlessness and reflectiveness of the age, the abstraction, ‘the press’ (for a newspaper, a periodical, is not a political concretion and is an individual only in an abstract sense) gives rise to the abstraction’s phantom, ‘the public,’ which is the real leveler.”28 Merton may have sympathized with Hubert Dreyfus (1929-), who observes that the Internet plays as much a role today as an “agent for leveling” as the press did for Kierkegaard, and television for Merton.29 Kierkegaard remains critical of the practice of leveling throughout his work. Alienation reappears as a form of despair in The Sickness unto Death (1849). As both the despair of finitude that lacks infinitude, and the despair of necessity that lacks possibility. In effect, it is what he also identifies as the “secular view,” which always clings tightly to the difference between man and man and naturally…has no understanding of the reductionism and narrowness involved in having lost oneself, not by being volatilized in the infinite, but by being completely finitized, by becoming a number instead of a self, just one more man, just one more repetition of this everlasting Einerlei [one and the same].30

Finitude’s despair, which leveling encourages, rests in a failure to recognize oneself as possessing transcendent agency—a necessary condition for authentic self-choice.31 Ibid. Again, see Kierkegaard, A Literary Review of Two Ages, SKS 8, 89 / TA, 93. Note that some, including the Hongs, take the reference of this section to be the tabloid of Kierkegaard’s day, The Corsair (see TA, notes, p. 172, n. 62), However, Alastair Hannay writes that The Corsair, “could hardly claim to represent Copenhagen’s journalistic establishment.” Rather, it is a reference “to journalism in general and to the liberal press in particular,” Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, New York: Cambridge University Press 2001, p. 335. 29 See Hubert Dreyfus, “Kierkegaard on the Internet: Anonymity vs. Commitment in the Present Age,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1999, pp. 96–109; for more recent discussion, see his On the Internet, 2nd ed., New York: Routledge 2009. 30 SKS 11, 149 / SUD, 33. 31 As Kierkegaard points out, “what is called the secular mentality consists simply of such men who...mortgage themselves to the world. They use their capacities, amass money, carry on secular enterprises, calculate shrewdly, etc....but spiritually speaking, they have no self” (SKS 11, 150–1 / SUD, 35). Note the similarity that the despair of finitude bears in relation to determinism, which within the constraints of possibility and necessity is to lack possibility. For, just as the self is a synthesis of finitude and infinitude, it is also the synthesis of possibility and necessity—or sometimes, “actuality” (SKS 11, 151 / SUD, 35). To despair of one’s finitude in determinism is either to resign oneself to one’s path in life, or to give up hope for change in circumstances. This form of despair is compatible with the view that the human being, as an entirely material creature, ultimately has “no self before God, however self-seeking they are otherwise” (SKS 11, 151 / SUD, 35). Note also the importance that 27 28

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For both Merton and Kierkegaard alike then, truth cannot be found in society or the “crowd,” because the crowd is “untruth.”32 III. Authenticity in a Personalist Community For Merton, because the modern human being faced alienation that comes as a consequence of the leveling forces of modernity, the individual is estranged from himself or herself. It is a crisis of authenticity, to which he believed was part of the Church’s original mission to respond as a genuinely personalist and counter-culture community.33 These concerns, for both Merton and Kierkegaard, would surely be no less than the recognition of each person’s unique and irreducible value, and an affirmation of their gifts and talents. Merton calls upon the Church to fulfill the mission in the twentieth century in much the same way that Kierkegaard believed the Danish Church was meant to fulfill its own in the nineteenth, but failed. To the degree that the Church imitates society in its inauthentic practices and values, it is liable to make it difficult, if not impossible, for its members to realize authentic existence. The conflict between existentialism and society presents a standoff that reveals, for Merton, two clear contrasting views of the nature of community and the place of the individual within it. On the one hand, we are presented with the view of social convention, represented by the public and its values. Yet because the public is not a genuine community, it fails to provide a social context in which the individual can find identity and his or her concerns affirmed. Instead, it is an artificial and constructed community that has been made self-conscious by the press. Through convention, the public has “attempted to substitute a fraudulent world of unauthentic and illusory relationships for the real community of man with man.”34 Reminiscent of Sartrean bad faith, to affirm popular convention as a source of genuine community comes at the cost of authenticity by requiring the individual to conform to its values disingenuously. imagination plays for Kierkegaard in overcoming the despair of necessity (i.e., possibility, in virtue of which “the person in despair breathes again”). For “At times the ingeniousness of the human imagination can extend to the point of creating possibility,” though ultimately overcoming despair depends upon faith: “[T]hat for God everything is possible” (SKS 11, 154 / SUD, 39). For further discussion, see M. Jamie Ferreira, Kierkegaard, Chichester: WileyBlackwell 2009, pp. 154–5. 32 Kierkegaard writes in his journals: “There is a view of life that holds that truth is where the crowd is, that truth itself needs to have the crowd on its side. There is another view of life,” which Kierkegaard endorses, “that holds that wherever the crowd is, untruth is, so that even if all individuals who, separately, secretly possessed truth, were to come together in a crowd (in such a way, however, that the crowd acquired any deciding, voting, noisy, loud significance), untruth would promptly be there.” See SKS 20, 55–6, NB:64 / JP 5, 5948. 33 For the purposes of this article, I will be using “Church” in a broad sense, recognizing that while Kierkegaard’s primary ecclesiological audience was the Danish Lutheran Church, and Merton’s the Catholic Church, both were referring to the theological “body of Christ,” irrespective of sectarian distinctions. 34 Merton, “The Other Side of Despair,” p. 267.

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By contrast, a community committed to authentic openness is a community in which one’s own existence, convictions, and gifts are properly appreciated. This affirmation in turn motivates the individual to recognize and accept unconditionally the potentialities of the other. For Merton, this was the original mission of the Church. It was always meant to be “a genuine community of persons who have first of all accepted their own fragile lot, who have chosen to exist contingently, and thereby have accepted the solitude of the person who must think and decide for himself without the warm support of collective fictions.”35 Following Kierkegaard, Merton holds that authentic love, or “the koinonia of intersubjective love among persons,” is the distinguishing feature of this community.36 In contrast to a community of self-interest that typifies convention, its founder always meant for the Church to be a subversive community. Each human being possesses an intrinsic and irreducible value that cannot be made subject to quantifiable value alone. It is perhaps not unreasonable to think that he hoped that the Church would become reacquainted with its original role as it sought to implement its reformatory goals in Vatican II. Unfortunately, the Church had fallen short of fulfilling this task by consenting to, and adopting, the very practices of leveling that led to the crisis of authenticity felt by individuals in modernity. That is, while Merton largely accepted the efforts of Vatican II and its reaffirmations of dogmatic theology, he faulted the Church for having failed to heed the existentialist’s own critique of the leveling practices of society.37 The only adequate response available to the Church to address the substance of these critiques would be for it to take seriously the possibility of a theology that focused on authentic existence and the formation of conscience. In the absence of such a theology, the Church risked finding itself “confronted with the kind of Christianity which Kierkegaard attacked precisely because it transferred to the religious sphere all the facticity, the routine, and the falsity of ‘abstract leveling.’ ”38

Ibid. Ibid. p. 274. In the copy of Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, translated by Swenson (The Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, Louisville, Kentucky) that Merton was permitted to mark up, marginalia from pages 97–103 offer three revealing notes: “worldly love = union in selfishness” (p. 97); “divine love = sacrifice” (p. 98); “worldly love—usually sacrifice” (p. 103). See SKS 9, 121–4 / WL, 118–22. 37 For Merton, the religious and atheistic existentialists were similar in this critique, retaining individual conscience as the normative source for human authority. Where they parted was in how to account for the source of this authority. The atheistic existentialists claimed that the individual could raise himself or herself out of the “tyranny of the void” through exercising freedom to choose oneself through conscience. On the other hand, for the religious existentialists, among whom he included Kierkegaard, “conscience is incomprehensible except as a voice of a transcendent Ground of being and freedom—in other words, of God himself.” Merton, “The Other Side of Despair,” pp. 268–9. For the connection to Kierkegaard on conscience as the transcendent source of authority, see SKS 11, 234–235 / SUD, 124. 38 Merton, “The Other Side of Despair,” pp. 271–2. 35 36

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For Kierkegaard, there were two ways in which Christianity in Denmark had become a willing participant in leveling: The first was theological, while the second was ecclesiological. Theologically, his problem with leveling was that it ultimately removed the difficulty of the individual in being authentic “before God.” The individual did not need to go beyond his or her own understanding of God to realize the transparent God-relation that is necessary for true and authentic selfhood. Instead, it allowed a person to identify Christian faith with citizenship or membership in the Church. We find his first critique focused against theological leveling in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846). In this classic account of Christianity, Kierkegaard warned against the tacit and unreflective tendency of Danish theologians to ground the certainty of faith in Hegelian thought. Kierkegaard’s objection to Hegelian-inspired theology is that it rests on not only an unreflective commitment to objectivity, but upon an optimistic hope to attain certainty about the historical elements of the Christian faith.39 Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus, by contrast, rejects such optimism as unwarranted. Authentic faith, objectively understood, is a paradoxical appropriation process. Christianity’s central doctrine of the God-man existing and dying in history for the sake of providing the believer an eternal happiness must be believed passionately, rather than merely appropriated at the level of approximation and “objective deliberation.”40 Kierkegaard was committed to the belief that unless faith is understood as a form of subjectivity in a form of inwardness contrary to calculation and speculation, then it is not properly speaking, Christian faith. However, Kierkegaard’s criticism of Danish Christianity in his day was also ecclesiological. For what incensed Kierkegaard most about the Church, both before and after the Revolution of 1848 (when Denmark became a constitutional monarchy and the Danish Church became the “People’s Church”), was the relative ease with

For Kierkegaard, the explicit targets here were the historicism of Magister Jacob Lindberg and the speculative Hegelianism of Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, though the critique of Hans Lassen Martensen is implicit. For further discussion on the Danish Church, and Kierkegaard’s concern over their influence on the Church’s adoption of Hegelian thinking in its theology, see Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, pp. 280ff. Through Climacus, Kierkegaard attacked historicism and Hegelian speculative thought mercilessly. SKS 7, 11–61 / CUP1, 21–57. See also Merold Westphal, “Kierkegaard and Hegel,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, New York: Cambridge University Press 1998, pp. 116–17. On inwardness, and its relation to suffering in faith, see Alastair Hannay, Kierkegaard, New York: Routledge 1982, pp. 126–7. This is not to say that Climacus does not value objective, scientific knowledge or speculation—the problem is simply that Hegelian thought, like historicism, has little, if anything to do with authentic faith. See SKS 7, 59–61 / CUP1, 55–7. 40 See SKS 7, 184–5 / CUP1, 201–2. In his reading of “Attack Upon Christendom,” Merton underlined Kierkegaard’s observation that Christianity in his day had removed the paradoxical and offensive nature of Christian faith, and had replaced it with the “probable” and comprehensible. What Kierkegaard had indirectly criticized about contemporary Christianity in 1846, had become, after 1948, a full scale, direct criticism of the Church’s approach towards doctrine. See “Attack Upon ‘Christendom,” in Bretall, A Kierkegaard Anthology, p. 445; SKS 13, 233–4 / M, 183–4. 39

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which anyone could claim Christianity merely by being Danish.41 For in contrast to Christ’s claim that the way to eternal life is narrow and difficult, in Denmark, everyone is a Christian (as any map of the world will show). Consequently, rather than being a difficulty, the way “is as broad as possible, no gate can be wider than the one through which all are walking en masse: Ergo the New Testament is no longer the truth.”42 However, the truth for Kierkegaard is that God’s plan in Christianity is to call out each person apart from the group, or the race, uniquely. To the degree that the Church teaches “We are all Christians,” then “Christianity is eo ipso abolished.”43 For both Merton and Kierkegaard, because the Church had so readily and uncritically adopted the leveling practices and values of culture, it was hindered from fulfilling its function as a personalist community of the form the Gospels envisioned. In this regard, Merton is in agreement with Karl Rahner (1905–84), who held that the Church had entered a new era, that of a kind of Christian “diaspora.”44 To speak to the non-Christian, the Christian must be vigilant and relevant. That is, the Christian “will have to have something more cogent to offer than an invitation to enter a ghetto of antiquated customs, outworn rituals, and a censorious theological rigidity.”45 If the church is to recover its sense of purpose and ability to speak prophetically to modern culture, it first needed to come to terms with the challenges of modernity.46 Yet Rahner, for Merton, is less optimistic in this matter than he is himself. He believed that the Church (in the days before Vatican II), acted as though it could preserve the status and influence on society that it held in ages past. However, Rahner, Merton notes, “like Kierkegaard before him, does not regard this solution As Bruce Kirmmse points out, this shift changed Kierkegaard’s response to the Church and to its leaders: “It was the political events of 1848–49 and the years immediately thereafter which forced Kierkegaard to concentrate his energies as never before upon the problem of religion and politics and upon defining and delimiting the claims of the socialpolitical realm.” See Bruce H. Kirmmse, Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1990, p. 382. 42 See SKS 13, 157 / M, 115. 43 A point also emphasized by Merton in his reading of Kierkegaard; see Bretall, A Kierkegaard Anthology, p. 447. Cf. SKS 13, 237 / M, 188. 44 For further discussion, see Karl Rahner, The Christian Commitment: Essays in Pastoral Theology, trans. by Cecily Ward, New York: Sheed and Ward 1963. 45 Thomas Merton, “The Christian in the Diaspora,” in The Seeds of Destruction, p. 188; see also his letter, “To Fr. Godfrey Dickmann, O.S.B,” in Merton, The Seeds of Destruction, p. 324. 46 Merton explicitly identifies himself as a “diaspora Christian,” by the definition he offers. In doing so, he aligns himself with others of a like mind, regardless of whether or not they are Catholic, let alone Christian. As he states: “I don’t believe in the Abbey of Gethsemeni, Inc., but I do believe in my brothers. I stand or fall with them, and I hope to rise with them. I need them and they need me….And the bonds that unite us are supremely important. It is in this that I am a diaspora Christian and see no way to being anything else. I am all for Teilhard’s intuitions in this line. But for the rest I’ll go along with Kierkegaard, Guardini, Bonhoeffer, Rahner, etc.” Thomas Merton, “Letters in a Time of Crisis,” in The Seeds of Destruction, p. 324. See also his “The Night Spirit and the Night Air,” in his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 153, and Merton, Opening the Bible, p. 63. 41

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as a valid Christian hope. It must be abandoned in favor of a true hope, hope not in ‘Catholic power,’ but in the eschatological victory of Christ.” 47 The Church cannot fulfill its function of being a contrarian personalist community capable of offering hope and space for authenticity if it believes that it has already achieved that state. Merton’s warning is much like Kierkegaard’s own broader critique of the Danish Church, namely that it operated under the assumption that its eschatological “triumph” had finally arrived. For Kierkegaard, the “church triumphant” is one that corresponds to Christ being “raised on high,” and stands in contrast to the “church militant” that is “drawn to Christ in lowliness” and survives “only by struggling.”48 Kierkegaard observed that the Danish Church presumed to act and operate under the illusion that it was the church triumphant. It was an attitude that Kierkegaard detested.49 For Kierkegaard, the Church in Christendom is neither the church militant, nor triumphant; its distinguishing characteristic is instead that it has failed to represent authentic Christianity. More optimistically, Merton was convinced that the Church was not only called to, but capable of offering, a legitimate and alternative form of community to the one offered by society and culture. This was a vision that Kierkegaard may have Merton, “The Christian in the Diaspora,” p. 189. See SKS 12, 206–8 / PC, 209–12. 49 Kierkegaard sarcastically remarks: “In the militant Church, being a Christian was recognizable by the opposition one suffered. In the Church triumphant it was recognizable by the honor and esteem one enjoyed. But “established Christendom” has discovered something new: one keeps it hidden that one is a Christian—out of fear that it would, un-Christianly, be rewarded with honor and esteem.... In the Church militant it was piety to confess Christianity; in established Christendom it is piety to conceal it! What an infinite depth of piety, since the whole thing could so very easily be pretense!” See SKS 12, 212–13 / PC, 217. Merton makes particular note of Kierkegaard’s vexation in his notes from Walter Lowrie’s translation of Kierkegaard’s Attack upon Christendom (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944), p. 19: “The point at issue with Bishop Martensen” (Fædrelandet, January 29, 1855), which addressed the problem of the priesthood having become a civic career. Merton makes note of this hypocrisy: “1) The Word is preached for nothing = i.e., as secure livelihood & guarantee of success; 2) The word is presented in poverty = for four 1000 a year.…” See Thomas Merton, Reading Notebook 37, July 5, 1968: Sub-Section C.1 (Merton papers: Journals and notebooks. Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, Louisville, Kentucky). See SKS 14, 141– 2 / M, 20–1. A later portion from Attack that Merton appears to have thought particularly prophetic presents Kierkegaard’s contrast between the passion of the Christ in agony and the contemporary message of Christianity as one that includes the enjoyment of this life. See Kierkegaard’s Attack, trans. by Lowrie, pp. 24–5; SKS 13, 173 / M, 41–2. Merton also writes in a journal entry from the same date: “Attack upon Christendom. How can one laugh and shudder at the same time? The book is so incontrovertibly true. And to find myself a priest. And to find my own life so utterly false and trivial—in the light of the New Testament. And to look around me everywhere and find people desperately—or complacently—going through certain motions to prove that they are Christians.” Thomas Merton, The Other Side of the Mountain, vol. 7 in The Journals of Thomas Merton, p. 138. See also Thomas Merton, “The Plague of Albert Camus: A Commentary and Introduction,” in The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton, p. 221. I want to thank Mark Meade of the Thomas Merton Center for his assistance in pointing me to Merton’s reading notebook for this date. 47 48

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shared with Merton for much of his adult life, but that the former seemed to despair of in his final years. For Merton, the Church in the twentieth century needed to be warned against the temptation to follow mass culture and society through leveling, an inclination that would ultimately undermine the vocation it was given in the Gospels. IV. Attaining Authentic Selfhood Authenticity, for Merton, cannot be found within the leveling structures of society, but only within the “personalist” community of the Church. The model for the Church that Merton appears to have in mind, as a brotherhood formed by Jesus Christ, is one that was perhaps not so different from the ideal of the monastic community that he was familiar with, in this sense: that each parish would not only be a community that would welcome and provide mutual spiritual support of its members (sans monastic vows), but one that offered an opportunity for communal, contemplative prayer. Contemplative prayer, for Merton and the Christian mystical tradition, is a form of consciousness that seeks “union” with the divine, the goal of which is equivalent to what Kierkegaard identified as a transparent God-relation. Yet in spite of its sublimity, this goal is clearly not without what has been described as the “night of understanding.” Where Kierkegaard becomes relevant for Merton is in his appropriation of his predecessor’s language of “dread” or “anxiety” (angest), to describe this experience psychologically, if not theologically.50 By drawing upon Kierkegaard’s psychology, Merton clearly sought to use his predecessor’s existential insights as a common point of reference to make monastic contemplation accessible for novices within the twentieth century. From his earliest days as a relatively new practitioner of the Catholic faith, Merton conceived of mature faith that marks contemplation as a heightened form of consciousness, the goal of which is divine union. However entering into its practice also involves experiencing what St. John of the Cross described as the “dark night of the soul.” This cognitive darkness turns out to be a psychological state that is entirely without, if not beyond, the mediation of rational cognition (and which to the uninitiated, can appear unsettling).51 It requires that the individual not presuppose its It is necessary to point out, of course, that Saint John of the Cross made a distinction between “night of sense” and “night of spirit.” Rather than attempt to develop the distinction here, I am simply using a generic term, “night of understanding,” in order to make it interchangeable with the apophatic language of other mystical writings of ancient and medieval Christianity (for example, “the cloud of unknowing”). 51 In one of his journal entries dated from November 29, 1940, he describes Kierkegaard’s account of Abraham’s faith existentially as a kind of inexplicable abyss, beyond the realm of the recognizable. He states: “The situation is so incomprehensible that any attempt by Abraham to explain himself to Isaac, for instance, would be ruinous, and any attempt to explain it to himself, even, might prove to be a disaster.” Merton,” The Secular Journal, p. 117 (emphasis mine). For further discussion, see Peter Kountz, Thomas Merton as Writer and Monk: A Cultural Study, 1915–1951, New York: Carlson Publishing 1991, p. 97 and Victor Kramer, Thomas Merton, Boston: Twayne Publishers 1984, pp. 22–3. 50

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comprehensibility, or a common point of reference, and for this reason it may justly be considered wholly ineffable.52 Nevertheless, for Merton this night of the understanding is a necessary precondition to attaining authentic selfhood. Authentic selfhood stands in contrast to the “natural self,” or what Merton also refers to as our “false self,” the self of “ego” and “self will,” which to attain divine union must be set aside and left behind.53 That is to say, contemplative prayer serves as a form of consent to the divine will, which in turn entails that the practitioner must also acknowledge that the natural mind operates with its own motivations that are incompatible with Scripture. Merton observes that we all have a natural tendency to think almost exclusively in terms of our own needs, and our own paradigms of understanding the world. Setting aside this false self through contemplative non-attachment requires that we remain silent in open attentiveness to the divine will. Doing so simultaneously requires that we resist the temptation to rest in natural thoughts or judgments.54 We must leave behind the limitations of our natural and narrow ways of understanding the world. For, “Before the spirit can see the Living God,” Merton says, “it must be blind even to the highest perceptions and judgments of its natural intelligence.”55 In his description of the experience, of the individual drawn into this cloud, he writes: This intellectual dizziness, spiritus vertiginis, is the concrete experience of man’s interior division against himself by virtue of the fact that his mind, made for the invisible God, is nevertheless dependent for all its clear knowledge on the appearances of exterior things. And this vertigo, which reminds us of the dark fear that pervades the pages of the Danish mystic Sören Kierkegaard is…metaphysical anguish that seizes a soul for Compare Merton’s discussion of Abraham (The Secular Journal, pp. 117–120), with Kierkegaard’s, who says of Abraham in Fear and Trembling (through Johannes de silentio): “He is solid all the way through. His stance? He is vigorous, belongs entirely to finitude; no spruced-up burgher walking out to Fresberg on a Sunday afternoon treads the earth more solidly. He belongs entirely to the world; no bourgeois philistine could belong to it more.” (SKS 4, 134 / FT, 39). The value of Abraham as a figure of faith for Kierkegaard yielded praise from Merton throughout the latter’s writing career: “The religion of Abraham indeed was primitive, and it hovered for a terrible moment, over the abyss of human sacrifice. Yet Abraham walked with God in simplicity and peace, and the example of his faith (precisely in the case of Isaac) furnished material for the meditations of the most sophisticated religious thinker of the last century…Søren Kierkegaard.” Merton, The Inner Experience, p. 29. See also Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, pp. 186–7. 53 Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, New York: New Directions 2007, p. 26. 54 Merton connects this practice to the Christian mystical tradition more broadly understood, which holds that “one cannot find one’s inner center and know God there as long as one is involved in the preoccupations and desires of the outward self. Tauler…suggests that even the depths of the soul can be troubled with what he calls “natural impressions,” which are sense-bound and involved in temporal conflict. Penetration into the depths of our being is, then, a matter of liberation from the ordinary flow of conscious and half-conscious sense impressions, but also and more definitely from the unconscious drives and the clamoring of inordinate passion.” Merton, Inner Experience, p. 15. 55 Merton, The Ascent to Truth, p. 50. 52

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whom the “nothingness” of visible things is no longer merely a matter of discourse but of experience!56

The vertigo through which the individual in contemplation must pass comes from weaning oneself away from a dependence on paradigms that operate according to the visible and comprehensible. Merton’s reference to Kierkegaard is not without some justification in his existential description of this “unknown cloud of darkness.” Consider Vigilius Haufniensis’ psychological treatment of the subject: Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs in this dizziness.57

Contemporary commentators on this passage frequently identify anxiety not as a cognitive shutting down per se, but as a psychological precondition for either sin or faith. 58 As free agents, yet not wholly subject to empirical indeterminacies, we come face to face with nearly infinite possibilities in our everyday lives. The realization of this degree of possibility and freedom carries with it the experience of dread. Should an agent attempt to grasp on to what is thought to be a matter of certainty, but is in fact only probable, then that individual will “succumb.” On the other hand, faith, for Kierkegaard, comes through resisting this temptation and resting undisturbed on “70,000 fathoms.”59 Merton likewise uses the term carefully with as much precision as possible in his explanation. He understands dread as “the deep, confused metaphysical awareness of a basic antagonism between the self and God due to estrangement from him by perverse attachment to a ‘self’ which is mysterious and illusory.”60 This “antagonism,” as the Thomas Merton scholar, William Shannon reports, “is something that cannot be assigned to a definite cause or attributed to a specific action. It is not something we can repent of, but an experience we must face and struggle with.”61 It is complete when “we learn that we can find our authentic existence only when we are lost in God. It ends when we come to realize that we

Ibid. SKS 4, 365–6 / CA, 61. 58 See Hannay, Kierkegaard: A Biography, pp. 188–90 and Michelle Kosch, Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard, New York: Oxford University Press 2006, pp. 212ff. 59 This expression is an image that Kierkegaard uses frequently (e.g., SKS 6, 411 / SLW, 444). 60 William H. Shannon, Thomas Merton’s Paradise Journey, Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press 2000, pp. 200–1. 61 Ibid., pp. 201–2. 56 57

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have no hope but in God.”62 He compares dread to Moses’ discovery that he was on holy ground; it is “a holy awe.”63 Faith, from the perspective of the contemplative, is not a mere assertion of dogma, rather, it is a wholly, unmediated relation to God. It is “a personal and direct acceptance of God Himself.”64 For the individual who participates in this divine light (which is darkness to the light of reason), this participation entails “the rejection of every other ‘light’ that can appeal to sense, passion, imagination, or intellect.”65 Divine union is a kind of liberation into God’s limitless love. In such a position: “We escape from the cage of emptiness, despair, dread and sin into the infinite space and freedom of grace and mercy.”66 By experiencing dread, it becomes possible to actualize the fulfillment of the goal of divine union by a form of consciousness that knows God inwardly. The experience of divine union is so called because “God and the soul seem to have but one single ‘I’. They are (by divine grace) as though one single person. They breathe and live and act as one…‘Neither’ of the two is seen as an object.”67 Dread turns out to be a precondition for divine union because it requires that the agent face the infinite and experience the possibility of becoming transformed by it. Clearly, from a theological, and not merely a psychological perspective, Kierkegaard is in agreement with Merton. Faith is not a matter of doctrine, it is instead wholly personal, and that by which authentic selfhood is attained. As he famously points out in The Sickness unto Death, “in relating to itself and in wanting

Ibid., p. 202. See Merton, The Inner Experience, p. 61. That Merton provides a reinterpretation of Kierkegaard’s concept of dread that remains consistent through both The Divine Ascent and The Inner Experience has not been lost on other commentators. See Lawrence Cunningham, Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1999, p. 122. Merton’s “dread,” which appears to closely approximate Kierkegaard’s calls to mind not only the latter’s resistance to “objectivity” in understanding religiousness, to which I have already referred, but also his account of “inwardness” as a necessary condition for religiousness. See SKS 7, 193 / CUP1, 210. However, note that inwardness is not a withdrawal of consciousness. Rather, as Hannay explains: “[I]t is the conflict between what [the person] believes he can achieve and the (in the case of Kierkegaardian faith total) absence of any warrant for his believing that he can achieve it.” Since religiousness for Kierkegaard, is inwardness, faith is to be certain “in spite of the objective uncertainty—indeed in defiance of it.” Hannay, Kierkegaard, pp. 126–7. 64 Merton, The Inner Experience, p. 15. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. The transformation of consciousness then in its completion is to realize transcendence, in a movement that is in situ. In this regard, Merton identifies William Faulkner’s description of Ike McCaslin as coming to a kind of “Edenic revelation,” in “The Old People,” with Kierkegaard’s account of an “existential leap.” He identifies it as a necessary precondition that “Kierkegaard demanded for any passage to a higher level of awareness or of existence.” Thomas Merton, “ ‘Baptism in the Forest’: Wisdom and Initiation in William Faulkner,” in The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton, p. 107. 67 Merton, The Inner Experience, pp. 18–19. 62 63

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to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the power that established it.”68 Faith cannot be attained without the individual making a turn from despair, which is to not will a transparent relationship to this establishing self, or in short, “defiance,” of which all other forms of despair are a form.69 The theological significance of this psychological malady, as he observes throughout the second half of the The Sickness unto Death, is essentially sin. To use Merton’s terms, the movement of faith requires a volitional movement of consciousness beyond the boundaries of the “false self.”70 Merton’s reception of Kierkegaard then is not merely as a critic of society and the Church, but as a contemplative capable of speaking as an existentialist to contemporary culture about the nature of faith. In appropriating Kierkegaard, Merton sought to provide an existential lens through which to understand the contemplative tradition of Christianity in a manner that would be comprehensible to a twentieth, if not a twenty-first century audience. V. Conclusion In this article, I have sought to focus attention on Merton’s reception of Kierkegaard, as not only a social thinker concerned with society and the Church, but as a contemplative who sought to articulate the experience necessary to attain authentic See SKS 11, 130 / SUD, 14. I am using the Hong page numbers for reference only; this version of the text comes from Alastair Hannay’s translation. See The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Alastair Hannay, New York: Penguin 1994, p. 44. Merton also uses this definition of Kierkegaardian selfhood as a way to emphasize his own romantic “heart-sickness,” when he fell in love with Margie Smith, a nurse he met at Saint Luke’s hospital in Louisville in 1966. It was a short-lived but chaste love affair, and his abbot prohibited all subsequent contact with her when its amorous nature was revealed. But Merton chaffed under what he saw as an imposition of authority into his love life, viewing his relationship to her romantically, in Aristotle’s language, as the self outside himself. He laments: “ ‘The self is the relationship to oneself,’ Kierkegaard. But not prescinding to relationship to the other seen as oneself. I need badly to hear from her and know how she feels—I can guess. It is inhumane to forbid even letters.” The Journals of Thomas Merton: Learning to Love, vol. 6 in The Journals of Thomas Merton, ed. by Christine M. Bachen, p. 84. Regarding this definition of selfhood and faith, it is unlikely that Merton saw them as being anything near Hegel’s, a comparison, which he notes, that some have sought to make. See Thomas Merton, “Blake and the New Theology,” in The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton, pp. 4–6. 69 SKS 11, 164 / SUD, 49. Merton was fiercely defensive of Kierkegaard against the critics who blamed him, with Pascal, of corrupting Camus with a “sick” form of Christianity; this in turn, they claim, ultimately led the latter to reject his Catholic faith. Of Camus, he says, “he was not favorably impressed by the French Catholic collaborationists and their jeremiads over sin and punishment at the time of the Nazi occupation. But it would have been a different story if Camus had been able to read Teilhard de Chardin.” See Merton, “The Plague of Albert Camus: A Commentary and Introduction,” p. 214. 70 Note that the possibility of unconscious, and by extension, universal despair in Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death should also not be overlooked. See C. Stephen Evans, “Kierkegaard’s View of the Unconscious,” in Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity, ed. by Martin Matuštík and Merold Westphal, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press 1995, pp. 76–97. 68

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selfhood. Merton certainly viewed Kierkegaard as an aid in diagnosing what he viewed as the essential problem with modernity—that it led to alienation as the consequence of leveling. Yet he also viewed Kierkegaard as offering a resolution to this problem in his articulation of the original function of the Church. This resolution was one that acknowledged individuality not only in a “personalist” community, but also through the praxis of a contemplative tradition which, understood existentially, offered the promise of authentic selfhood.

Bibliography I. References or Uses of Kierkegaard in Merton’s Corpus The Ascent to Truth, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company 1951, p. 39. The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton, New York: Dell Publishing 1959, pp. 117– 21. “The Christian in the Diaspora,” and “Letters in a Time of Crisis,” in The Seeds of Destruction, New York: Farrar, Straus and Grioux 1964 [1961], p. 189; p. 324. “The Other Side of Despair: Notes on Christian Existentialism,” Mystics and Zen Masters, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1999 [1967], pp. 255–80. “The Night Spirit and the Dawn Air” and “A Madman Runs to the East,” in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Garden City, New York: Doubleday 1966, pp. 151–4; p. 288. “Vocation and Modern Thought,” in Contemplation in a World of Action, London: George Allen and Unwin 1971, p. 31; p. 35. Opening the Bible, London: George Allen and Unwin 1972, p. 63. “Blake and the New Theology”; “Baptism in the Forest”; “The Plague of Albert Camus: A Commentary and Introduction;” in The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton, ed. by Patrick Hart, New York: New Directions 1981, p. 4, p. 6; p. 107; p. 214; p. 221. Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk and Writer, vol. 2 in The Journals of Thomas Merton, vols. 1–7, ed. by Patrick Hart et al., San Francisco: Harper 1995–99, p. 374. Turning Toward the World: The Pivotal Years, vol. 4 in The Journals of Thomas Merton, vols. 1–7, ed. by Patrick Hart et al., San Francisco: Harper 1995–99, pp. 79–80. Learning to Love, vol. 6 in The Journals of Thomas Merton, vols. 1–7, ed. by Patrick Hart et al., San Francisco: Harper 1995–99, p. 84. The Other Side of the Mountain, vol. 7 in The Journals of Thomas Merton, vols. 1–7, ed. by Patrick Hart et al., San Francisco: Harper 1995–99, pp. 138–9. Witness to Freedom: The Letters of Thomas Merton in a Time of Crisis, ed. by William H. Shannon, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giraux 1995, p. 169. Thomas Merton and James Laughlin: Selected Letters, ed. by David Cooper, New York: W.W. Norton 1997, pp. 56–8; p. 60. The Inner Experience, ed. by William H. Shannon, New York: HarperCollins 2004, p. 29; p. 162.

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II. Sources of Merton’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Bretall, Robert (ed.), A Kierkegaard Reader, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1946. Kierkegaard, Søren, Fear and Trembling; A Dialectical Lyric, by Johannes de Silentio trans. by Robert Payne, New York: Oxford University Press 1939. — Attack upon Christendom, trans. and ed. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944. — The Concept of Dread, trans. and ed. by Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1944. — The Journals of Kierkegaard, trans. and ed. by Alexander Dru, New York: Harper and Brothers 1958–59. Rohde, Peter, Søren Kierkegaard: An Introduction to his Life and Philosophy, New York: Humanities Press 1964. III. Secondary Literature on Merton’s Relation to Kierkegaard Bruteau, Beatrice (ed.), Merton and Judaism: Recognition, Repentance, and Renewal. Holiness in Words, Louisville, Kentucky: Fons Vitae 2003, p. 159; p. 204. Cunningham, Lawrence, Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1999, p. 122. Hart, Patrick, Thomas Merton, Monk: A Monastic Tribute, New York: Sheed and Ward 1974, p. 97. Kountz, Peter, Thomas Merton as Writer and Monk: A Cultural Study, 1915–1951, New York: Carlson Publishing 1991, p. 97. Kramer, Victor A., Thomas Merton, Boston: Twayne Publishers 1984, pp. 22–3. Mott, Michael, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, Boston, Houghton Mifflin 1984, pp. 185–6; p. 527. Shannon, William H., The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, New York: Fararr, Straus & Giroux 1985, p. 321. Woodcock, George, Thomas Merton, Monk and Poet, New York: Farrar 1978, p. 111.

Erich Przywara: Catholicism’s Great Expositor of the “Mystery” of Kierkegaard Christopher B. Barnett

Though it hardly seems a pressing scholarly matter today, there was a time when Kierkegaard’s relation to Catholicism was a vital question. Kierkegaard himself had raised the issue, not only with his so-called “attack” on Denmark’s established Lutheran Church, but also with a number of favorable comments about Catholicism. For instance, in an 1851 journal entry, Kierkegaard writes, “There is more significance in Catholicism [than in Protestantism] simply because ‘imitation’ has not been relinquished completely.”1 Two years later he put it even more strongly: “[T]here is always present in Catholicism this element of good—namely, that imitation of Christ is demanded, imitation with all that this means remains firm.”2 Such statements took on new importance in the first decades after Kierkegaard’s death. Some of Kierkegaard’s most notable Danish interpreters, including Georg Brandes (1842– 1927) and Harald Høffding (1843–1931), suggested that Kierkegaard’s thought steers persons toward a peculiar crisis: either to turn to Catholicism, or to embrace the emergence of secular humanism.3 Another prominent Dane, the novelist, pastor, and champion of Kierkegaard, Hans Peter Kofoed-Hansen (1813–93), arrived at a similar either-or. Yet, while Brandes rejected the “black abyss” of Catholicism and elected to seek “the point from which freedom beckons,”4 Kofoed-Hansen evaluated the options differently. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1887. As Kierkegaard’s writings gained an audience in other European countries, this sort of scenario surfaced again. While some viewed Kierkegaard’s battle against Protestant Christendom as a sign of the “death of God,” others sought to relate Kierkegaard and Catholicism. Among the latter, there was the Austrian philosopher, Ferdinand Ebner (1882–1931), whose chief work, The Word and Mental Realities:

SKS 24, 384–6, NB24:105 / JP 2, 1904. SKS 25, 251, NB28:48 / JP 2, 1923. 3 Heinrich Roos, Søren Kierkegaard og Katolicismen, Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1952 (Søren Kierkegaard Selskabets Populære Skrifter, vol. 3), pp. 7–8. 4 Quoted from ibid., p. 7. Unless otherwise noted, I am responsible for all translations from foreign language titles. 1 2

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Pneumatological Fragments,5 stimulated Catholic interest in Kierkegaard.6 Also of great importance was one of Ebner’s disciples, Theodor Haecker (1879–1945), who translated Kierkegaard’s works into German, and who credited both Kierkegaard and John Henry Newman (1801–90) for his embrace of Catholic Christianity.7 But Ebner and Haecker were scarcely alone. Catholic thinkers such as Romano Guardini (1885–1968), Alois Dempf (1891–1982), Henri de Lubac (1896–1991), and Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88) also contributed to the energetic, almost frenetic, reception of Kierkegaard in the first half of the twentieth century. Thus the question of “Kierkegaard and Catholicism” fully arrived. No longer was it a marginal issue, but, rather, one with which a number of seminal thinkers were grappling. Yet, despite their magnitude, none of the above figures penned what Heinrich Roos calls “the classic work about Søren Kierkegaard from the Catholic side.”8 That distinction belongs to Erich Przywara, S.J. (1889–1972), and his 1929 treatise, The Mystery of Kierkegaard.9 In Roos’ view, Przywara distinguishes himself not only by his “supreme command of Kierkegaard’s works” and “intimate knowledge of the currents under Kierkegaard’s influence,” but also by the salience of his thesis— namely, that “an anonymous Catholicism is found in Kierkegaard.”10 Accordingly, one of the main tasks of this article will be to investigate The Mystery of Kierkegaard and its proposal. How, and on what grounds, does Przywara locate an “anonymous Catholicism” in Kierkegaard? And what does he hope to accomplish in doing so? Before taking up these matters, however, a brief introduction to Przywara and to his thought is in order. Thus it will become clear that Przywara’s interest in Kierkegaard was part of a larger “wide-ranging conversation with the creators and issues of modern philosophy and culture,”11 a conversation that he facilitated with such skill and suppleness that Karl Rahner (1904–84) called him “one of the keenest minds”12 of his generation. The great Protestant theologian, Karl Barth (1886–1968), had a similar appraisal, but cast it in more blunt and colorful language. “Picture a small man with a large head,” he once said of Przywara, “a little person who to everything, everything that is said to him, right away has an intelligent answer, an answer which is to the point in some way.”13

Ferdinand Ebner, Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten. Pneumatologische Fragmente, Innsbruck: Brenner Verlag 1921. 6 Roos, Kierkegaard og Katolicismen, p. 8. 7 Ibid., p. 9. 8 Ibid. 9 Erich Przywara, S.J., Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, Munich and Berlin: Verlag von R. Oldenbourg 1929. 10 Roos, Kierkegaard og Katolicismen, p. 9. 11 Thomas F. O’Meara, O.P., Erich Przywara, S.J.: His Theology and His World, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press 2002, p. 1. 12 Quoted from ibid., p. xiii. 13 Quoted from ibid., p. 25. 5

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I. Przywara’s esteem among persons such as Roos, Rahner, and Barth might imply that he was not only an able thinker, but also a famous one. The truth is to the contrary: outside of Germany, he was and is largely unknown. As Michael Fahey, S.J., explains, one reason for this neglect lies in Przywara’s writings themselves: In our academic settings, Przywara is scarcely known, much less read. This is explained in part by his complex German prose and by the unwieldy methodology he chose for his principal publications. Whereas the writings of Karl Rahner, Romano Guardini, Karl Adam, and Augustin Bea were translated quickly and were widely read on [the American] side of the Atlantic, Przywara’s works have gathered dust on our library shelves.14

Likewise, Thomas O’Meara, O.P., maintains that “the linguistic and intellectual formats”15 of Przywara’s works hinder their reception. And yet, according to Balthasar, these formal difficulties only point to a deeper reason for Przywara’s neglect, namely, that his contemporaries were not ready for his theological direction, nor was he ready for theirs. As Balthasar puts it, “Erich Przywara’s enormous theological commission—in its depth and breadth not comparable to anyone else’s in this time—might have been the means of salvation for our Christian thinking today. The age chose the easier way, not to engage him. And he himself is not without guilt in this.”16 Who, then, was Erich Przywara? And, apart from his intricate prose, what made him such a unique and important, if also challenging, thinker? Przywara was born in Kattowitz, Upper Silesia, an area that then belonged to Germany but today is a part of Poland. His Polish father, who thrived as a merchant, and his German mother, who descended from a family of civil servants, were able to supply him with a good primary education. However, in 1908, Przywara elected to join the Society of Jesus, rather than attend university.17 After a novitiate in Exaten, Holland, Przywara took up a variety of studies and tasks: he read philosophy from 1910 to 1913, eventually finishing with a doctorate, served as a music minister from 1913 to 1917, and, finally, studied theology from 1917 to 1921. Also, in 1920, he was ordained to the priesthood.18 Thus his career more or less got underway as World War I was ending. It was a peculiar time to enter the intellectual world. Not only had the devastation of the war presented fresh questions to philosophy and theology, but, in Catholic circles, the “Modernist crisis” raged. Figures such as Alfred Loisy (1857–1940) and George Tyrell (1861–1909) had roiled the Vatican with their “Modernist” uses of non-Catholic sources, criticisms of neo-scholasticism and calls for ecclesial reform, Michael A. Fahey, S.J., “Foreword,” in Erich Przywara, S.J.: His Theology and His World, by Thomas F. O’Meara, O.P., Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press 2002, p. vii. 15 O’Meara, Przywara, p. 2. 16 Quoted from ibid., pp. 137–8. 17 Ibid., p. 3. 18 Ibid., p. 5. 14

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so much so that, in 1907, Pope Pius X (1835–1914) published Pascendi dominici gregis, an encyclical that denounced Modernism as leading to “the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone but of all religion.”19 So, out of fear of censure or even excommunication, many Catholic scholars refrained from engaging “modern ideas”20 in this period. Przywara, however, was an exception. He had done much of his philosophical and theological study in Valkenburg, Holland, where “dialogue between modernity and the Middle Ages, between Kant and Aquinas”21 was facilitated. This training convinced Przywara that the task facing the modern Catholic thinker was what might be termed “sympathy,” that is to say, a genuine attempt “to study in pure objectivity (without pastoral or apologetic secondary goals) each author (regardless of how anti-Christian or anti-religious), to understand them better than they understood themselves, and thus to begin a dialogue with them.”22 Such an approach made Przywara a difficult “fit” at a German university or Gymnasium, so, in 1922, he was appointed to the editorial staff of the Jesuit journal Voices of the Age (Stimmen der Zeit). Based out of Munich, this periodical aimed to express “Catholic faith and spirituality amid German philosophy, art, and religion.”23 It was, then, an apt vehicle for Przywara, who stayed with the journal up to 1941—a duration that comprised arguably the best years of his career. Voices of the Age allowed Przywara to display his sweeping intellectual talents. He wrote treatises, academic articles, book reviews, and topical essays. He also became a popular lecturer, giving talks for a range of groups, including “the first international congress on the thought of Thomas Aquinas,” “ecumenical gatherings,” “Kant societies,” and “academic clubs.”24 In the 1930s, he became an outspoken critic of the Third Reich, and, in turn, “the Nazis viewed him as the leading intellectual propagandist of Catholic action.”25 The Gestapo shut down Voices of the Age and, in turn, halted his official publishing and teaching. Nevertheless, during World War II, Przywara continued to offer lectures and sermons at German churches. Always interested in Judaism—and, indeed, an associate of Jewish thinkers such as Leo Baeck (1873–1956) and Martin Buber (1878–1965)—Przywara focused many of these talks on “the centrality of the Jewish Scriptures for Christians.”26 That Przywara was seeking to undermine the Nazis’ anti-Jewish argot was not lost on the head of the Schutzstaffel, Heinrich Himmler (1900–45), who personally investigated the talks. However, he concluded that Przywara’s ideas were “far too lofty”27 to present an active threat to the regime. Quoted from Darrell Jodock, “The Modernist Crisis,” in Catholicism Contending with Modernity: Roman Catholic Modernism and Anti-Modernism in Historical Context, ed. by Darrell Jodock, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000, p. 4. 20 O’Meara, Przywara, p. 6. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., p. 7. 24 Ibid., pp. 7–8. 25 Ibid., p. 9. 26 Ibid., p. 11. 27 Quoted from ibid. 19

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In the aftermath of the war, Przywara tried to resume his scholarly career, but his declining health became an impediment. Slowed by a combination of “psychological and physical debilitations,” Przywara often fell victim to “long times of depressed inactivity.”28 It also did not help that, without Voices of the Age, Przywara lacked the site and source of his academic vocation. For a time, he was literally drifting, residing in 11 places in six years.29 And yet, whenever possible, Przywara continued to make his presence felt. He published several books—even if these tended to be “repetitive, often taking up past publications and old favorite themes”30—and he found an audience on the radio, where, among other things, he lectured on Vatican II and the development of Catholicism in the twentieth century. Furthermore, in the 1960s, new editions of his works began to appear, and he remained interested in recent movements in philosophy. For example, in 1962, he reviewed Hans Georg Gadamer’s (1900–2002) magnum opus, Truth and Method,31 which he hailed as an advancement on the hermeneutical methods of both Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976).32 But such efforts were hardly as common as they once had been. Przywara died in 1972, a man who, in O’Meara’s words, was “spiritually heimatlos,”33 indeed, whose “ecclesial spirituality for the world”34 had been his calling and, finally, his burden. Przywara’s most prominent contribution to modern theology was his retrieval of the traditional Catholic doctrine of the analogy of being (analogia entis)—a topic that will be discussed below. But, first, it is important to stress what prompted this endeavor. After all, Przywara did not approach the analogia entis with some putative neutrality, as if it were merely an abstract theorem or a matter of bare historical interest. Instead, he always sought to apply his thinking to the human situation, particularly to the modern human situation. “Przywara wanted his interpretation of Christianity to be concrete,”35 O’Meara explains. This intention meant that he had to engage modern thought with all its abysses and aporias. Yet, as has been suggested, he saw such a task as a product of, rather than a divergence from, ecclesial life. “Modernism,” for Przywara, also could “mean simply the desire for the Catholic Church and its theology to address the questions of the time,”36 and, in that sense, church doctors such as Augustine (354–430) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) were the “modernists” of their own eras. That is not to imply, of course, that Przywara wanted to do away with ecclesial criticisms of modern thinking. What he opposed were knee-jerk conservative reactions to “Modernism,” which, in his view, were both counterproductive and self-contradictory. Such responses risked alienating Catholics from academic life and, indeed, from society in general, even as they, no less than the retorts of “Modernism,” tended to push intransigent ideologies Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 12. 30 Ibid. 31 Hans Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Tübingen: Mohr 1960. 32 O’Meara, Przywara, p. 13. 33 Ibid., p. 14. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., p. 22. 28 29

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determined by a particular historical context.37 A better approach, he insisted, lay in the idea of “Catholic balance.”38 Rather than set Catholicism and modernity in opposition, he maintained that Catholic thought—which always had supported both “explorations of the self and of the world of being”39—was robust enough to face the questions posed by modernity, as well as open enough to adopt the best insights of modern thinkers. For example, Przywara perceived that World War I had shattered the rationalistic optimism of the Enlightenment and, at the same time, exposed the trouble with the Reformation’s anthropological pessimism. The latter had posited a radical separation between humanity and God and, so, had prepared the way for the former’s stress on immanent, technical reasoning—a stress that had deprived the world of “an Absolute.”40 But now that was changing. The World War had left people scurrying to plug up the “God-shaped hole” in society, whether via mass political movements such as Communism or National Socialism, or, in the case of figures such as Barth, via the absolute “God experienced by the human being within disaster and failure.”41 The power of subjective reasoning had been challenged; the return of objectivity was inexorable. Only its form remained indeterminate. Przywara maintained that, in this scenario, Catholic objectivity emerged as a particularly beneficent option. For him, Catholicism does not privilege either immanence or transcendence, nor does its objectivity obliterate the value of human subjectivity. Rather, it embodies the dialectical “interplay”42 of these poles. Przywara was fond of Augustine’s phrase, “God in us and God above us,”43 which, as he saw it, describes the ever-mysterious fact that God animates human freedom and joy (“in us”), but also lies beyond them (“above us”). This is the very “summary of Catholicism,”44 and, in turn, it points to the significance of the Church’s liturgical and sacramental life. To participate in the Church is to participate in the divine life that condescends to dwell in her. The Church “is not the workshop of the hierarchy; it is the presence of God,”45 given not as an extension of human consciousness or as a mere figure of human speech, but as a tangible, yet sacred, “objectivity” (Sachlichkeit).46 It is here that Przywara’s accent on analogia entis becomes important, for he underpinned his Catholic realism with this doctrine. The teaching itself dates back to medieval scholasticism, when theologians such as Aquinas and Thomas Cardinal Ibid. Ibid., p. 34. 39 Ibid., p. 33. 40 Ibid., p. 38. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., p. 39. 43 James V. Zeitz, Spirituality and Analogia Entis According to Erich Przywara, S.J.: Metaphysics and Religious Experience, the Ignatian Exercises, the Balance in Rhythm in ‘Similarity’ and ‘Greater Dissimilarity’ According to Lateran IV, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America 1982, pp. 14–15. 44 Ibid., p. 15. 45 O’Meara, Przywara, p. 39. 46 Ibid. 37 38

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Cajetan (1469–1534) adapted it from logical and epistemological debates. The larger issue had to do with the nature and diversity of linguistic predication, but, in theology, it was applied to the problem of “God-talk.” How can human words say anything meaningful about an infinite God? For Aquinas, words cannot be applied “univocally” to God and to creatures, because, although creatures (as “effects”) possess a degree of similitude to God (as “efficient cause”), they have “a measure that falls short.”47 The word “good,” for instance, cannot be predicated of God and of a human being in the same way, since, with God, “good” absolutely refers to his absolutely simple spiritual being, while, with a human being, its meaning is inconsistent. Ralph may be a “good” chess player, but only a “good” basketball player when playing against his four-year-old son. And yet, Aquinas goes on, words cannot be applied to God and to creatures “in a purely equivocal sense,” because then human language could say nothing “about God at all.”48 A chasm would open up between the divine and the human—a chasm against which philosophers such as Aristotle, in addition to Scripture, testify. Thus the answer lies in analogy, the “mean between pure equivocation and simple univocation.”49 Here Aquinas returns to God’s creation of the world: that beings are established by Being means that they bear a real, if also imperfect, likeness to their creator. For that reason, human words about created things not only can be applied “analogically” to God, but must be, since God, whom the human mind cannot comprehend, can only begin to be understood by interacting with creation. “[W]e can name God only from creatures,”50 as Aquinas puts it. For example, the qualities of a human father— his consideration for his children, or his displeasure with their misbehavior—make biblical language about God as “our Father” meaningful.51 However, that God is like a human father does not mean that God is a human father. The analogy in particular, and language in general, ultimately come up short. The creature’s likeness to God is “a signpost to God,”52 but in no way does it exhaust who God is. God is in creation, yet also above it. Przywara’s own interest in the analogia entis began at Valkenburg, where he “received a metaphysical formation which was Thomist and Suarezian.”53 His contribution, however, was to dislodge the doctrine from its scholastic context and to situate it in the midst of contemporary religious debates—indeed, not as a secondary factor, but, in Rahner’s words, as “a symbol of the Catholic position.”54 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, vols. 1–5, Notre Dame, Indiana: Christian Classics 1948 (vol. 1, 1848, p. 64), or, following the traditional manner of citation, see Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 13, a. 5. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell 2001 [1994], p. 253. For biblical language about “our Father,” see, for example, Matthew 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4. 52 McGrath, Christian Theology, p. 253. 53 O’Meara, Przywara, p. 75. “Suarezian” refers to the Spanish scholastic thinker Francisco Suárez (1548–1617). 54 Quoted from Zeitz, Spirituality and Analogia Entis, p. 41. 47

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In the process, naturally, the analogia entis itself would be transmuted. Opposite the other-worldliness of a Barth, and the “this-worldliness” of a Heidegger, “Przywara interpreted analogy as human-divine commerce, as incarnation, as an interplay of the human and the divine in being, in Christ, in graced life.”55 In other words, Przywara turned the analogia entis into an existential, rather than merely a logical, concern. This tendency can be seen in Przywara’s philosophical analysis of religion, Polarity.56 From the start, Przywara is clear that this investigation will not shy away from modern approaches to religion. “Religion as a philosophical problem demands a consideration of consciousness as its point of departure,”57 he acknowledges. Specifically, this consideration has to do with the “unceasing tension”58 native to human beings. On the one hand, human “consciousness experiences itself as a final unity of completeness,” as an entity of “self-containedness.”59 In this activity, even the divine is “apprehended within the consciousness”;60 God “is given…as ‘the depths of the ego.’ ”61 On the other hand, consciousness opens itself to “an external unity of completeness to which it is objectively related, a sea of uttermost infinity, surging beyond it.”62 Here the divine is “the wholly other,”63 and the activity of consciousness “is one of essentially objective apprehension and reflection.”64 Additionally, Przywara distinguishes a third activity of consciousness, which bisects “these two vertically opposed activities.”65 In this final instance, there is “no given unity of completeness, either external or internal, nor any given infinity, either internal or external.”66 Rather, in the absence of these ontological givens, there is “only the goal or intention or unfolding of an urge,”67 an “endeavour and struggle [that] bears within itself its meaning and its goal.”68 In the end, for Przywara, these three activities of consciousness yield three types of philosophy of religion: (1) immanence, (2) transcendence, and (3) transcendentality.69 According to Przywara, many of humankind’s great religious thinkers correspond to these types. One might identify Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) as an

O’Meara, Przywara, p. 77. P. Erich Przywara, S.J., Polarity: A German Catholic’s Interpretation of Religion, trans. by A.C. Bouquet, London: Oxford University Press 1935. This text—one of the very few works by Przywara in English—is a translation of Przywara’s Religionsphilosophie katholischer Theologie, Munich: Oldenbourg 1927. 57 Ibid., p. 2. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., p. 3. 60 Ibid., p. 4. 61 Ibid., p. 7. 62 Ibid., p. 3. 63 Ibid., p. 6. 64 Ibid., p. 5. 65 Ibid., p. 3. 66 Ibid., pp. 3–4. 67 Ibid., p. 4. 68 Ibid., p. 5. 69 Ibid., p. 4. 55 56

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exemplar of “self-containedness,”70 and Plotinus (204–70) as one of “objective apprehension.”71 And yet, he insists, neither the types nor the thinkers exclude one another. In fact, herein lies the trouble with religion. Immanence and transcendence are locked into a relationship of give and take, of perpetual “oscillation,” while transcendentality, which offers itself as a via media, actually proposes a contradiction that “leads inwardly to explosion.”72 How, then, can these types find reconciliation? Is it possible to combine the “ ‘Absolute’ of God and the ‘Absolute’ of ‘repose in God’ and of ‘life in God’?”73 Or is religion, far from effecting an authentic relationship with God, “an illusion, or at least a fiction?”74 Przywara’s basic answer is that Catholicism, with its foundation in the analogia entis, is able to overcome this “tangle”75 of religious problems. It does so because it understands the three activities of consciousness not as independent ways of reaching the divine, but, rather, as manifestations of “the transcendent in the creaturely.”76 For that reason, they are in agreement. Each gives expression to “the mysterious contact with the super-creaturely Being of God,”77 and so each “experiences the ‘absolute fixed point’ of its unity beyond itself.”78 In other words, immanence, transcendence, and transcendentality remain in “tension,” but they have in common the “Deity Himself [as] the unifying factor, Deity who proceeds ‘from above downwards,’ freely bestowing Himself upon the creaturely consciousness.”79 To see this “unity in tension”80 is to discover the key to existential well-being. No longer does consciousness need to vie with itself, for the human being, “freed from all such spasmodic struggles, becomes a healthy creature, standing in the devotional attitude to the super-creaturely Deity prescribed by the analogia entis.”81 Crucially, for Przywara, this “devotional attitude” reflects what he calls “TENSION-INPOLARITY.”82 It opposes both “absolute traditionalism,” which “whelms the creation in the Divine unchangeableness,” and “absolute relativism,” which “whelms Deity in the mutability of the creation.”83 Its position, rather, is that of an infinite, irresolvable “movement of the creation towards Deity as its Ideal.”84 God is above creation, so the creature strives toward him; yet God is in creation, so the creature strives in his

Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 9. 72 Ibid., p. 15. 73 Ibid., p. 27. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid., p. 29. 76 Ibid., p. 39. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., p. 38. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid., p. 39. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid., p. 53. 83 Ibid. Though he does not spell it out, this distinction also seems to hint at Przywara’s views on the battle between “Modernists” and their rigidly “traditional” opponents. 84 Ibid. 70 71

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presence, too.85 Przywara sums it up in a compressed definition: Catholic piety is “a never-ending (relatively infinite) unveiling of the absolute infinite God in and above the never-ending (relatively infinite) self-evolution of life in Him.”86 This discussion of Polarity is not exhaustive. On the contrary, its intention has been to show, however briefly, the function of analogia entis in Przywara’s thought. In doing so, moreover, it has prepared the way for an investigation of Przywara’s monograph, The Mystery of Kierkegaard. After all, Przywara saw Kierkegaard as a modern thinker who had insight into the analogia entis,87 or, to return to Roos’ language, as a kind of “anonymous Catholic.” Consequently, it is not surprising that Przywara would dedicate an entire book to the Danish thinker—a book to which the next section will now turn. II. The Mystery of Kierkegaard is not the only place where Przywara mentions the Dane. Kierkegaard turns up in Przywara’s 1932 book, Analogia Entis,88 as well as in journal articles89 and in book reviews,90 not to mention lectures.91 Yet, as a full-length work, which not only deals with a variety of issues pertinent to Kierkegaard, but also appears precisely in the midst of Przywara’s formative “reflective encounter”92 with modern thought, The Mystery of Kierkegaard might be seen as a compilation of Przywara’s views on Kierkegaard—indeed, as a kind of “summing up.” For that reason, and because The Mystery of Kierkegaard remains largely unknown in the English-speaking world, this study will concentrate on it alone. Przywara opens with a brief recapitulation of the secondary literature on Kierkegaard. A number of books on Kierkegaard have appeared, he notes, and none of them come “as a calm explanation.”93 Rather, they are in an “open or secret struggle with [Kierkegaard]”94 or, more accurately, with his overwhelming dialectical Ibid., pp. 54–5. Ibid., p. 61. 87 O’Meara, Przywara, p. 77. 88 Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis. Metaphysik. Ur-Struktur und All-Rhythmus, Munich: Kösel 1932, p. 7. 89 Erich Przywara, “End-Zeit,” Stimmen der Zeit, vol. 119, 1930, p. 353, and “Essenzund Existenz-Philosophie. Tragische Identität oder Distanz der Geduld,” Scholastik, vol. 14, 1939, p. 517. 90 Erich Przywara, Review of “F.W.J. Schelling, Philosophie de la revelation (Philosophie der Offenbarung), t. I (xx + 530 p.), t. II (viii + 367 p.), Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1955, édition semblable à l’orignal, Prix: 50 DM. Karl Jaspers, Schelling, Grandeur et Destin (Grösse und Verhängnis), Piper-Verlag, Munich, 1955, 356 p., 19 DM,” Études Philosophiques, vol. 11, 1956, pp. 133–5, see p. 133. 91 O’Meara, Przywara, p. 216. O’Meara notes that, in a letter to Eduard Thurneysen (1888–1977), Barth mentions going to “hear ‘the magician Przywara’ lecture on Kierkegaard in Basel.” 92 Quoted from ibid., p. 208. 93 Przywara, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, p. v. 94 Ibid. 85 86

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ambiguity. Thus a commentator such as Hermann Diem (1900–75), whose Philosophy and Christianity in Søren Kierkegaard is otherwise praiseworthy, 95 pays too much attention to the intellectual contributions of Kierkegaard and not enough to the Dane’s “living existence.”96 This approach endows his study with an “academic coolness” that threatens to culminate in the systematic “stasis” so despised by Kierkegaard.97 Meanwhile, from another side, August Vetter (1887–1976) interprets Kierkegaard as an “uncanny precursor of psychoanalysis,” but fails to realize that only with hermeneutical violence can Kierkegaard be reduced to “the rational straightforwardness of the categories of the psychoanalytical school.”98 What is needed, then, is an examination of “Kierkegaard with Kierkegaard, that is, to make his own dialectical standpoint the method up to the very end: again and again to place the one Kierkegaard opposite the others.”99 In other words, the dialectical mysteriousness of Kierkegaard, “whose depth frightens”100 the reader, must nevertheless be confronted head-on. Only then will its great value—its insight into the equally “mysterious ground of the human being”101—come into view. Przywara divides his analysis into three main sections, which, in turn, correspond to three mysterious aspects of Kierkegaard: (1) his literary style, (2) his authorial work, and (3) his soul. Kierkegaard’s “mystery of style” (Geheimnis des Stils) is first and foremost apparent in his use of pseudonyms. Here, according to Przywara, Kierkegaard already militates against a “final clarification”102 of his work. The pseudonyms represent “only one side of the author,” indeed, a side that itself is “divided.”103 Moreover, Kierkegaard often places the pseudonyms in conversation with one another, thereby countering the viewpoint of one pseudonym with that of another.104 According to Przywara, this arrangement gives a musical quality to Kierkegaard’s writings: the “tension” between a pair of opposing pseudonyms— such as Johannes the Seducer and Judge William in Either/Or—creates a continuum along which other pseudonyms and characters slide, not unlike the tension between diatonic and chromatic scales.105 Thus what appears to be “extreme” in Kierkegaard is, finally, an occasion for ambiguity and nuance. Kierkegaard is an artist of the “between” (Zwischen). But this feature of Kierkegaard’s style raises questions that, for Przywara, are decisive: if Kierkegaard is “not at all ‘one or the other,’ but rather their unresolved

Hermann Diem, Philosophie und Christentum bei Sören Kierkegaard, Munich: Kaiser 1929. 96 Przywara, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, p. vii. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid., p. v. In particular, Przywara is referring to Vetter’s Frömmigkeit als Leidenschaft. Eine Deutung Kierkegaards, Leipzig: Insel 1928. 99 Przywara, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, p. vi (emphasis added). 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid., p. viii. 102 Ibid., p. 2. 103 Ibid., p. 1. 104 Ibid., pp. 3–4. 105 Ibid., pp. 4–5. 95

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and unclear between,”106 then is his style ultimately just that—mere style? Is Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous elusiveness a sign that, for him, “everything is only ‘authorial material’?”107 Przywara concedes that one can find reasons to answer in the affirmative. Christoph Schrempf (1860–1944), for example, has provided evidence that Kierkegaard unduly took the “fundamental distance” of the literary mind “as his standpoint.”108 Yet, Przywara adds, solutions are rarely so simple with Kierkegaard. Did not Kierkegaard himself say that his literary efforts were “directed” from above?109 Furthermore, in addition to (or in spite of) his literary virtuosity, was not Kierkegaard’s authorial activity also a grasp at, or an “opening up towards,”110 the real world? Such questions prompt Przywara to conclude that, rather than try to resolve the mystery of Kierkegaard’s style, it is better to bring that very mystery into the foreground. And, with this point, he first alludes to what will come to characterize his reading of Kierkegaard—namely, that Kierkegaard’s “betweenness” has affinities with the situation of the “night,” typical of Christian mystics such as St. John of the Cross (1542–91). In both cases, the human being’s God-relationship casts an “ungraspable shadow” on “earth and humanity and one’s own life.”111 Next, in the longest section of the book, Przywara turns to the “mystery of work” (Geheimnis des Werkes) in Kierkegaard. He opens with a survey of Kierkegaard’s “philosophy of existence,” which, as he puts it, “comes to life” in “the aporetic mentality of the present age.”112 Positively, Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy calls persons away from the abstract, timeless systems of thinkers such as Christian Wolff (1679–1754) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), and toward a living, personal thinking, which faces up to “the inexhaustibleness of life.”113 For that reason, Kierkegaard also encourages “ethical thinking.”114 His “I” does not attempt to resolve earthly differences through a “posture of self-sufficient contemplation,” but, rather, “lives on the level of activity.”115 Kierkegaardian “thinking does not look at itself in things, but encounters the actual things, as they are different from thinking.”116 So orientated, Kierkegaard’s thought is also dialogical or, as Przywara prefers, “communal.”117 It takes place “in the conflict of living conversation,”118 “in

Ibid., p. 11. Ibid. 108 Ibid., p. 12. Przywara is referring to Christoph Schrempf, Sören Kierkegaard, vols. 1–2, Jena: Diederichs 1927–28. 109 Quoted from Przywara, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, p. 13. See also, for example, SKS 21, 20, NB6:21 / JP 6, 6205. 110 Przywara, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, p. 13. 111 Ibid., p. 14. 112 Ibid., pp. 16–17. 113 Ibid., p. 17. 114 Ibid., pp. 18–19. 115 Ibid., p. 18. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid., p. 20. 118 Ibid., p. 19. 106 107

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the gathered and flashing moment.”119 In these qualities, Kierkegaard both revives and goes beyond Plato: he resumes the Platonic “dialectic of conversation,” but imbues it with the passion of “the moment.”120 Przywara points out, however, that Kierkegaard’s thought also has negative implications, and herein it accords with “the deeper aspect of the same aporetic mentality.”121 His stress on living thinking is, ultimately, a stress on “broken thinking,” on “suffering and strained thinking.”122 The latter, to be precise, is the “inner emotion”123 of the human being’s recognition of his or her own finitude and inadequacy. Kierkegaard insists that, if philosophy is to reflect the “actual way of thinking of [an] actual creature,” it has to include the “innermost ‘groan of the creature.’ ”124 For Przywara, this accent is one of Kierkegaard’s greatest contributions to modern thought, resonating with a number of different persons, from Barth to Peter Wust (1884–1940), to Paul Tillich (1886–1965), to Martin Heidegger (1889– 1976).125 Nevertheless, Przywara goes on, the varied reception of Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existence seems to find its terminus in two key movements—that of psychoanalysis on the one hand, and that of “severe religion”126 on the other. In the first case, Kierkegaard’s concentration on the torments of sexuality, the omnipresence of “cruelty, suffering, and death,”127 and, ultimately, his own fractured ego is read as a “crucial prolegomena to psychoanalysis.”128 In the second, Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy is viewed not only as “existential Christianity,” exposing “bourgeois peace and quiet” as an attempt to conceal the ongoing “fight between God and the devil,”129 but also an “intensification”130 of Martin Luther’s approach to Christianity. Here Kierkegaard is invoked against liberal Protestantism, particularly in its reliance on Schleiermacher and Hegel. Whereas these thinkers sought to make Protestant Christianity palatable to secularized society, Kierkegaard has renewed the faith’s “corrective” element, opposing both the secular order and, indeed, the Church’s own worldly tendencies. He has, in short, put the “protest” back into Protestantism. With these divergent interpretations established, Przywara’s own thesis begins to emerge, for, in his view, the choice between the Kierkegaard of psychoanalysis and the Kierkegaard of “severe religion” is a false one. There is, he contends, a median explanation, in which Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy is reduced “neither [to] the psychoanalytic existence of animated matter nor [to] the transcendent-Lutheran

Ibid., p. 20. Ibid. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid., pp. 20–1. 123 Ibid., p. 21. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid., pp. 21–6. 126 Ibid., pp. 29ff. 127 Ibid., p. 32. 128 Ibid., p. 31. 129 Ibid., p. 56. 130 Ibid., p. 60. 119

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existence of the animated instrument of God.”131 Rather, it brings out Kierkegaard’s perspicacious understanding of “creaturely existence,” paying special attention to his depiction of human beings as “released” and “hovering” in the ambiguity of life.132 In this reading—which, of course, is Przywara’s own—Kierkegaard is “the Kierkegaard who leads into Catholicism.”133 That is to say, among modern thinkers, it is “Kierkegaard’s vortex” that most forcefully hurls persons “into the ultimate depths of life” and consequently presents them with “the immortal either-or”: either come “home to the Mother Church,” or wander forever like “the ailing Ahasverus.”134 Przywara does not try to support this contention with historical evidence: his main interests lie neither in Kierkegaard’s personal opinions about Catholicism nor in Kierkegaard’s study of Catholic authors.135 Rather, he tends to focus on some important aspects of Kierkegaard’s authorship and life, which, as he likes to put it, signal the “overcoming” (Überwindung) of psychoanalytic reductionism and exaggerated Lutheran transcendence. For him, then, Kierkegaard is more of a herald than an exemplar, more of a gateway than the way itself. Not surprisingly, Przywara first turns to Kierkegaard’s utilization of analogia entis. After a brief introduction to the doctrine, he produces evidence that Kierkegaard, at least implicitly, endorsed it. Thus he cites the following 1846 journal entry: God’s omnipotence is therefore his goodness. For goodness is to give away completely, but in such a way that by omnipotently taking oneself back one makes the recipient independent. All finite power makes [a being] dependent; only omnipotence can make [a being] independent, can form from nothing something that has its continuity in itself through the continuous withdrawing of omnipotence. Omnipotence is not ensconced in a relationship to another, for there is no other to which it is comparable—no, it can give without giving up the least of its power, that is, it can make [a being] independent. It is incomprehensible that omnipotence is able not only to create the most impressive of all things—the whole visible world—but is able to create the most frail of all things—a being independent of that very omnipotence. Omnipotence, which can handle the world so toughly and with such a heavy hand, can also make itself so light that what it has brought into existence receives independence….Creation out of nothing is once again the Omnipotent One’s expression for being able to make [a being] independent. He to whom I owe absolutely everything, although he still absolutely controls everything, has in fact made me independent. If in creating man God himself lost a little of his power, then precisely what he could not do would be to make a human being independent.136 Ibid., pp. 76–7. Ibid., p. 77. 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid. 135 Note, however, his brief treatment of Kierkegaard’s reading of Catholic Romantics such as Johann Joseph von Görres (1776–1848) in ibid., pp. 102–4. On the whole, Kierkegaard’s interest in Catholic authors was considerable. I pay substantial, though not exhaustive, attention to his study of Catholic mystics in my doctoral dissertation. See Christopher B. Barnett, Kierkegaard, Pietism, and Holiness in “the Present Age,” University of Oxford 2008. 136 SKS 20, 57, NB:69 / JP 2, 1251. Quoted from Przywara, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, p. 80. 131 132

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According to Przywara, this passage is a “return” to the view of Aquinas, in which “the free creature” is both an image and an outflow of God, the causa prima.137 “It is transcendence that fixes distance,”138 albeit not a chasmal distance but, rather, one that demonstrates unfathomable intimacy. That Kierkegaard understood this relationship, Przywara adds, is precisely why he could stomach neither theological predestination nor theological anthropomorphism, for both of these approaches seek to shake off the ultimate “mystery of God”: God’s otherness is “all-effecting,” even as it also “establishes creation’s genuine positiveness.”139 Metaphysically, then, Kierkegaard already is in harmony with Catholic teaching. But, for Przywara, this agreement extends to the practical sphere as well. Principally drawing on Kierkegaard’s essay “The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle,” Przywara points out that Kierkegaard insists on “objective obedience to objective authority.”140 This emphasis differentiates him from Protestant inheritors such as Barth, who distrust earthly authority and, as a result, “the visible church.”141 In contrast, Kierkegaard holds that “Christianity is not a teaching that convinces philosophically, but a person-authority (Person-Autorität) that demands obedience.”142 Moreover, Kierkegaard does not view this authority as an outcome of a “powerful subjective experience,” but, rather, as something “independent of the talent and worth of the human bearers.”143 In short, his is an apostolic authority, which proceeds from God and is authenticated by ecclesial ordination.144 From here, Przywara concludes, it is but a short step to “the successio apostolica and…the opus operatum” of the Catholic Church.145 Yet, if Kierkegaard checks Protestantism’s negative propensity by allowing for apostolic authority, does he not still bear a “remnant of that extreme strain which lay in the ‘corrective,’ a strained heroism that suspiciously could be a last dressing up of pride”?146 Przywara answers “no,” stating that Kierkegaard’s consistent emphasis on “genuinely humble humanity” stands as his “second way of overcoming the ‘corrective.’ ”147 It is true that Kierkegaard encourages self-sacrifice opposite the commandments of God, but part of this sacrifice is the “sacrifice [of one’s] sacrificial extraordinariness.”148 Where the “urge toward the extraordinary”149 appears, it is countered and, finally, surmounted by “the humility of a quiet devotion to God,” by a certain “childlikeness in God.”150 God’s qualitative otherness does produce Ibid., p. 80. Ibid. 139 Ibid., p. 81. 140 Ibid., p. 82. 141 Ibid., pp. 82–3. 142 Ibid., p. 83. 143 Ibid., p. 82. 144 Ibid., p. 83. 145 Ibid., p. 82. 146 Ibid., p. 87. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid., p. 88. 149 Ibid. 150 Ibid., p. 90. 137 138

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fear and trembling, and yet, in Kierkegaard’s own words, “Fear and trembling (cf. Phil 2:12) is not the primus motor in the Christian life, for that is love.”151 Indeed, Kierkegaard’s authorship ultimately concerns an “opened love,” which trumps the “stoic independence” of the Lutheran hero and the “melancholy” of Freudian psychoanalysis.152 This love is twofold, first issuing in a humble human “connection with the world” and, second, in “the overwhelming quality of God’s love, which does not let bitterness spring up.”153 Thus the Kierkegaardian self eventually vanishes in and for love, “as, indeed, God also lets himself vanish into the insistent machinery of the world, from creation to incarnation.”154 According to Przywara, “all of these overcomings and maturations” in Kierkegaard’s work are best understood from “perspectives in dogmatic Catholicism”:155 Kierkegaard moves God’s love—and particularly God’s love toward us as an active love of ours toward God—into the center, so that the “invisible faith alone,” which is the expression of a too highly elevated Lutheran transcendence and its disastrous precipice, is expressly changed into the last indissoluble thing whose basis, for the Catholic fides caritate formata, is: the unified duality of grace and work, faith and imitation, freedom and law.156

For Kierkegaard, as for Catholic dogmatics, the human being is not a hopelessly fallen creature, whose salvation is imposed on him or her from without. Rather, “the human being exists for the self-forgetting service of God,”157 which is possible when he or she cooperates with God’s grace. On this approach, the question about the individual’s “salvation certainty” is cast aside: it does not “befit the creature, who, as an actual creature, is always oscillating and hovering.”158 The focus, in contrast, is on “the quiet opening of salvation in the incomprehensible love of God.”159 “Anxiety about the ascent–descent of the I goes on into one thing: the worship of God, as he is near in being far and far in being near, the thoroughly Catholic ‘God in us and above us.’ ”160 Przywara concludes this section with a query: how might interpreters, in the end, understand Kierkegaard’s Catholic tendencies? He tenders a pair of possibilities. One might see Kierkegaard as an exponent of what he terms the “Catholicism of night” (Katholizismus der Nacht), while another might perceive him as an example of a “Catholicism of longing” (Katholizismus der Sehnsucht). With these options acknowledged, however, Przywara postpones a fuller treatment of this “decisive SKS 18, 14, EE:25 / KJN 2, 9. Quoted from Przywara, Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, p. 91. 152 Ibid., p. 98. 153 Ibid., pp. 98–9. 154 Ibid., p. 99. 155 Ibid. 156 Ibid., p. 100. 157 Ibid., p. 101. 158 Ibid. 159 Ibid. 160 Ibid., pp. 101–2. 151

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question on Kierkegaard” to the book’s third and final section.161 There, he adds, the mystery of Kierkegaard’s work will be illuminated by the mystery of Kierkegaard’s soul (Geheimnis der Seele)—a mystery that, above all, concerns Kierkegaard’s “God-struggle against and about Regine Olsen.”162 Indeed, Kierkegaard’s well-known broken engagement with Regine Olsen (1822– 1904) underlies The Mystery of Kierkegaard’s conclusion, though, again, Przywara refrains from a simple historical handling of the subject. What most interests him is how Kierkegaard’s “Regine Olsen experiences” seem to shed light on his relation to Christianity in general and to Catholicism in particular. For example, Przywara notes that Kierkegaard’s understanding of his relationship with Regine is characterized by a kind of tormented ambiguity—a desperate sense that Regine does not and cannot comprehend his person, juxtaposed with a feeling of unutterable “happiness” due to “the depth and childlikeness of her love.”163 Further complicating matters is Kierkegaard’s “melancholic bond” to his father,164 Michael Petersen Kierkegaard (1756–1838). Kierkegaard “senses the paternal demonic power in his own blood,”165 but, at the same time, wants to overcome his father’s guilt and his own perpetuation of it. Thus his breakup with Regine is an “atoning retreat,”166 albeit one that intensifies, rather than alleviates, his personal suffering. For that reason, it pushes him into a “solitary struggle with God.”167 This struggle has a number of phases, and it is progressively revealed over the course of Kierkegaard’s literary corpus. It moves from a harsh “either-or between religious and erotic absoluteness”168 to a recognition of “how, in the earlier overcoming of immanence, dangerous concealments were at work”169 to the eventual arrival of “what one usually is wont to name Catholic childlikeness (in contrast to ‘Lutheran earnestness’).”170 Thus “Kierkegaard’s path to childlikeness” ultimately emerges “through Regine’s childlikeness.”171 Like Abraham or, indeed, the Virgin Mary, his sacrifice of human love “comes back from God transfigured.”172 Yet, Przywara knows, this picture of Kierkegaard is too neat. At the very least, the question remains about whether or not this transfiguration occurred in reality or only in a kind of “literarizing”173 of the situation. After all, a sense of “tragedy”174 perdures in Kierkegaard’s relationship with Regine—namely, that it never took place on common ground, that it never found a home, so to speak. But, for Przywara, Ibid., p. 113. Ibid., p. 114. 163 Ibid., p. 130. 164 Ibid., p. 133. 165 Ibid., p. 138. 166 Ibid. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid., p. 139. 169 Ibid., p. 144. 170 Ibid., p. 157. 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid. 173 Ibid., pp. 157ff. 174 Ibid., p. 170. 161 162

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that homelessness is precisely the point, for Kierkegaard’s dialectic culminates in “the intensified hovering between heaven and earth, a painful being-from-nowhere and nevertheless a profoundly blessed floating ‘in the sky.’ ”175 It is for that reason that Przywara ultimately does not identify Kierkegaard as an exemplar of either a “Catholicism of the night” or a “Catholicism of longing.” The latter is characterized by a longing for grace so deep that all “demonic powers” and “illnesses” are healed,176 while the former is marked by a thorough sinking “into the quiet objectivity of the Church.”177 What Kierkegaard represents, in contrast, is a Catholicism of “subjective existential surplus.”178 That is to say, Kierkegaard’s life and writings point to something extra in creaturely existence, to an “existential contact” with the divine that always turns up in a “fully mysterious” moment.179 But this moment “is truly just a momentary ‘touch,’ a ‘not-having in having,’ ” which never fully purges anguish from its midst.180 Przywara clarifies this point via the concept of “night.” For Kierkegaard, the “night” of religious experience appears only “as the purely negative horror of darkness or the dazzling nature of the ‘sunlight of eternity’ ‘in the hour of death.’ ”181 However, for genuine “Catholic night-mysticism,” the way of the “night” issues in an earthly blessedness.182 In short, Kierkegaard preserves “a final residual effect of the Lutheran denial of gratia inhabitans, [a denial] of the inner possession—and not just the touching—of redemption.”183 His night “is not the ‘night’ of St. John of the Cross, and thus Kierkegaard, for his disciples, turns into a passageway, whom one has to leave behind, with gratitude, yet resolutely.”184 In the end, then, Przywara comes full circle: “Kierkegaard is and remains a between,”185 an elusive figure who “leads Lutheranism to its highest peak and, in doing so, overcomes it from the ground.”186 This very ambiguity, however, Przywara finally understands as an eschatological sign, which, on the heels of the World War I, possibly foreshadows the reunification of the Western Church.187 The Dane’s “Good Friday” may very well augur the “Easter” of Europe. With this point in mind, Przywara’s last line is, in fact, a question, one that is suitably pregnant with hope as well as uncertainty: “Is that the mystery of Kierkegaard?”188 he writes.

Ibid., p. 171. Ibid., pp. 171–2. 177 Ibid., p. 172. 178 Ibid., p. 171. 179 Ibid., p. 172. 180 Ibid. 181 Ibid., p. 174. 182 Ibid. 183 Ibid., p. 173. 184 Ibid., p. 174. 185 Ibid. 186 Ibid. 187 Ibid., pp. 175–6. 188 Ibid., p. 176, emphasis added. 175 176

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III. Przywara belongs to a group or, perhaps, a “school” of Catholic thinkers who, during the first half of the twentieth century, reoriented Catholic theology. This school, which also includes persons such as de Lubac and Balthasar, took a fundamental interest in the connection between metaphysics, anthropology, and Christian revelation. On what level, they asked, is the free human being related to the “grace” proclaimed in Christianity? Does grace, in other words, run parallel to human existence? Or is the human being always already tending toward it—indeed, not in such a way that one is able to lay hold of it, but, rather, in the ever unfolding mystery of one’s participation in its depths? Of course, Przywara and his associates answered “yes” to this final question, triggering, in the process, a renewal of Catholic thinking, both in its approach to time-honored ideas and in its engagement with modern intellectual developments. The Mystery of Kierkegaard exemplifies the second concern. It is, among other things, Przywara’s attempt to bring Kierkegaard into the above debate and, more specifically, to demonstrate his overall concurrence with this so-called “new” Catholic perspective. For that reason, The Mystery of Kierkegaard is undoubtedly a tendentious work. O’Meara even goes so far as to call it “an apology for a Catholic theology to whose depths Kierkegaard points.”189 This apologetic tendency partly accounts for the book’s limited or, at least, receding influence, particularly since Kierkegaard’s reception by Protestant figures such as Barth ostensibly “won” the day. And yet, recent events and trends in theology—from Vatican II to the rise of postmodernity to an increasing concern about the “excess of transcendence” in certain theologies—suggest that The Mystery of Kierkegaard remains pertinent. If the days of calling Kierkegaard an “anonymous Catholic” have passed (and surely they have, given current scholarly standards), Przywara’s thesis nevertheless shows how Kierkegaard’s relation to Catholicism remains an intriguing and potentially fertile question.

189



O’Meara, Przywara, p. 128.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Przywara’s Corpus Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards, Munich and Berlin: Verlag von R. Oldenbourg 1929. Analogia Entis. Metaphysik. Ur-Struktur und All-Rhythmus, Munich: Kösel 1932, p. 7. “End-Zeit,” Stimmen der Zeit, vol. 119, 1930, p. 353. “Essenz- und Existenz-Philosophie. Tragische Identität oder Distanz der Geduld,” Scholastik, vol. 14, 1939, p. 517. Review of “F.W.J. Schelling, Philosophie de la revelation (Philosophie der Offenbarung), t. I (xx + 530 p.), t. II (viii + 367 p.), Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1955, édition semblable à l’original, Prix: 50 DM. Karl Jaspers, Schelling, Grandeur et Destin (Grösse und Verhängnis), PiperVerlag, Munich, 1955, 356 p., 19 DM,” Études Philosophiques, vol. 11, 1956, pp. 133–5, see p. 133. II. Sources of Przywara’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Diem, Hermann, Philosophie und Christentum bei Sören Kierkegaard, Munich: Kaiser 1929. Guardini, Romano, “Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards,” Hochland, vol. 24, 1927, pp. 12–33. Haecker, Theodor, Sören Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit, Munich: Schreiber 1913. — “Nachwort,” in Sören Kierkegaard, Begriff des Auserwählten, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Hellerau: Hegner 1917, pp. 335–421. — “Nachwort,” in Sören Kierkegaard, Kritik der Gegenwart, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Innsbruck: Brenner-Verlag 1922 [1914], pp. 70–98 (Originally in Brenner, vol. 4, Heft 20, 1914, pp. 886–908.) — “Vorwort,” in Sören Kierkegaard, Der Pfahl im Fleisch, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Brenner, vol. 4, no. 16, 1914, pp. 691–705. — “Nachwort” in Sören Kierkegaard, Am Fuße des Altars, trans. by Theodor Haecker, Munich: C.H. Beck’sche 1923, pp. 67–87. — Christentum und Kultur, Munich: Kösel & Pustet 1927, pp. 66ff. Schrempf, Christoph, Sören Kierkegaard, vols. 1–2, Jena: Diederichs 1927–28. Vetter, August, Frömmigkeit als Leidenschaft. Eine Deutung Kierkegaards, Leipzig: Insel 1928.

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III. Secondary Literature on Przywara’s Relation to Kierkegaard Balca, Nicolae, “E. Przywara’s Das Geheimnis Kierkegaards,” Revista de filosofie, vol. 21, no. 3, 1936, pp. 315–17. O’Meara, Thomas F., Erich Przywara, S.J.: His Theology and His World, South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press 2002, p. 7; p. 15; p. 29; p. 39; p. 72; pp. 77–8; p. 80; p. 86; p. 101; p. 109; pp. 127–9; pp. 197ff. Roos, Heinrich, Søren Kierkegaard og Katolicismen, Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1952 (Søren Kierkegaard Selskabets Populære Skrifter, vol. 3), p. 9. Thulstrup, Niels, “Kierkegaard og Nietzsche i katolsk belysning,” Information, April 18, 1950. Unger, Rudolf, “Karl Rosenkranz als Aristophanide. Interpretation einer literarischen Episode aus den Schulkämpfen des Späthegelianismus,“ in his Gesammelte Studien, vols. 1–3, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1966 (reprint of the Berlin: Juncker und Dünnhaupt 1929–44 edition), vol. 3 (Zur Dichtungsund Geistesgeschichte der Goethezeit), pp. 268–97.

Part II Jewish Theology

Abraham Joshua Heschel: Heschel’s Use of Kierkegaard as Cohort in Depth Theology Jack Mulder, Jr.

There can be little doubt that Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–72), the great Jewish rabbi, scholar, and activist, read rather deeply in Kierkegaard’s works. Although Heschel’s use of Kierkegaard is almost entirely confined to his somewhat neglected 1973 book, A Passion for Truth,1 his use of Kierkegaard in that book is extensive. Nor should we read much into the fact that this book is Heschel’s final work. Edward K. Kaplan writes that Heschel was “engrossed, obsessed even” with completing two books in his later years, one of which was A Passion for Truth.2 The book is surprising in several ways. The main text of the book gives every appearance of being a somewhat detached comparison of the famous Baal Shem Tov of Mezbizh (1690–1760), founder of Hasidism, Reb Menahem Mendl of Kotzk, Poland (1787– 1859; hereafter the Kotzker), and Søren Kierkegaard.3 At the same time, the main text is hemmed in by Heschel’s rare autobiographical comments in his Introduction, 1 Abraham Joshua Heschel, A Passion for Truth, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 1973. The bibliography at the end of this article shows four works by Heschel that discuss Kierkegaard, in tandem with the Kotzker (on whom see below). The reading of each would show that the earlier essays are best seen as preparatory work, later to be included in A Passion for Truth. I also advise the reader that Heschel completed a two-volume work entitled, Kotzk: In gerangl far emesdikeit (Kotzk: The Struggle for Integrity), Tel Aviv: Hamenora Publishing House 1973. The latter work was written in Yiddish. Given Heschel’s remarkable linguistic abilities, I have not been able to completely scour all of Heschel’s work. This applies to the Yiddish volume on Kotzk, which also lacks an index. Edward K. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972, New Haven, Conncticut: Yale University Press 2007, p. 343, suggests that Heschel’s inclusion of Kierkegaard in A Passion for Truth may have been partly motivated by an anticipation of a wider readership for the work. A complete bibliography of Heschel’s work is included in the revised edition of an anthology of Heschel’s work, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism, ed. by Fritz A. Rothschild, New York: The Free Press 1959 (revised 1975). 2 Kaplan, Spiritual Radical, p. 342. Reuven Kimelman notes that Heschel had intended to call the book A Passion for Sincerity, but the publisher evidently saw it differently. See Reuven Kimelman, “Abraham Joshua Heschel: Our Generation’s Teacher in Honor of the Tenth Yahrzeit,” Religion and Intellectual Life, no. 2, 1985, pp. 9–18, see p. 10. 3 While it is interesting to note that Kierkegaard and the Kotzker were contemporaries, it is clear both that they did not know of one another and that their particular cultural predicaments

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“Why I Had to Write This Book,” and two more passionate essays, appreciative but critical of the Kotzker, entitled “The Kotzker and Job” and “The Kotzker Today.” It is clear that the Kotzker is the main influence on Heschel that justified his inclusion of Kierkegaard. But why? Heschel describes in the Introduction to A Passion for Truth how both the Baal Shem Tov (often abbreviated the Besht) and the Kotzker represented for him two abiding yet opposing influences. Heschel seems to have written A Passion for Truth in an effort to reconcile himself to these two influences. Heschel’s grandfather (1748–1825), and namesake, was a close associate and disciple of the Besht, and was himself “said to possess supernatural qualities. Known for his ecstatic prayer, even to the point of speaking in tongues, he believed in reincarnation, and claimed to remember standing at Mount Sinai as Moses received the Torah from God, even noticing the person standing next to him!”4 Between his grandfather and the Besht himself, the younger Heschel had an overpowering influence to confront. The Besht had blended “reverence for God” with “affection for all men.” The Besht was “warmhearted,” and “easily approachable.”5 While the Besht sought to infuse Judaism with spontaneity and fervor, eventually his own path became absorbed by the culture and was itself a habit and routine. In response to this, the Kotzker reacted with frustration and indignation of the kind that recalls Kierkegaard’s own attack on what he regarded as the complacencies of the Danish Lutheran Church of his day. “[The Besht] inspired joy, the Kotzker contrition….A light glowed in Mezbizh; a fire raged in Kotzk.”6 Although, as we shall see, the Kotzker bears some remarkable similarities to Kierkegaard regarding their impatience with the religion of their day, it is worth noting that these similarities have their limits. As Heschel writes, “Reb Mendl was neither a mystic nor a poet. His outlook was somber, his manner austere. His moral rigor suppressed his aesthetic sensibilities.”7 Anyone familiar with Kierkegaard knows that the same cannot be said for him. As Daniel Berthold-Bond notes, in a very helpful essay on A Passion for Truth, “Kierkegaard’s poetic temperament gave the aesthetic exuberant expression.”8 Kierkegaard is surprisingly and almost entirely dropped from the text of A Passion for Truth, just when we start to hear more from Heschel himself in the essay “The Kotzker and Job.” In an effort to explain this puzzling fact, BertholdBond notes that “Kierkegaard’s goal in searching for the religious poet was to find a way of harmonizing the religious with the aesthetic, much as Heschel seeks a way to reconcile the rigorous demands of the Kotzker with the song of the Baal Shem.”9 That is, ultimately what concerns Kierkegaard is what concerns Heschel. Here we were different enough as to make thematic, rather than historical, comparisons the order of the day for Heschel. 4 Edward K. Kaplan and Samuel H. Dresner, Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press 1998, p. 5. 5 Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 27. 6 Ibid., p. 15. 7 Ibid., p. 26. 8 Daniel Berthold-Bond, “Abraham Joshua Heschel, A Passion for Truth,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism, vol. 5, 2002, pp. 265–78, see p. 274. 9 Ibid., p. 274.

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must agree, despite the fact that Heschel never quite rehabilitates Kierkegaard in the way that Berthold-Bond would correctly have us do. Although we get some searching critiques of the Kotzker from Heschel, they are always tinged with deep appreciation, and if Kierkegaard is never quite exonerated from his perceived rigorism, this does not preclude Heschel’s deep gratitude to Kierkegaard. In what follows here, I will briefly discuss the portions of Heschel’s life and work that are of particular concern to us, and then offer a brief interpretation of Heschel’s use of Kierkegaard, both with regard to the ways in which Heschel appropriates his work, and with regard to some ways in which Heschel, rightly or wrongly, finds a need for a corrective. I. From Heschel to Kierkegaard Heschel was born in Warsaw on January 11, 1907.10 Both with respect to his paternal and maternal lineage, his Hasidic pedigree was impeccable. Towering rabbis, in one case the immediate successor to the Besht himself, were his direct ancestors. “Adults would rise when he entered the room, even when he was a small boy,” to recognize him as the son of the rebbe, according to his daughter, H. Susannah Heschel.11 Even with such high expectations, Heschel did not disappoint. By the age of 10, he was already well versed in the Talmud, and began publishing Talmudic discussions in the Warsaw Hebrew language monthly, Sha’aray Torah (“The Gates of Torah”).12 After already becoming a rabbi at age 16,13 Heschel, in his early twenties, arrived at Berlin and entered what would later be called the Humboldt University, in an effort to study philosophy and obtain a secular education. Never forsaking his Jewish heritage, he simultaneously enrolled at a liberal Jewish seminary, the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, in addition to attending and delivering lectures at the nearby Orthodox Hildesheimer Seminar.14 His first book, a volume of Yiddish poems,15 was published in 1933, to be followed in 1935 with a book on Maimonides,16 and in 1936 with the publication of his doctoral dissertation, For an authoritative biography of Heschel, one should consult Kaplan and Dresner, Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness and Kaplan, Spiritual Radical. The two works should be seen as a single two-volume biography. For more succinct statements, one can turn to the introductions and first chapters of books such as Rothschild (ed.), Between God and Man; Byron Sherwin, Makers of Contemporary Theology: Abraham Joshua Heschel, Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press 1979; Michael A. Chester, Divine Pathos and Human Being, London: Vallentine Mitchell 2005; and H. Susannah Heschel’s rewarding gem, “My Father,” in No Religion is an Island, ed. by Harold Kasimow and Byron L. Sherwin, Maryknoll: Orbis 1991, pp. 23–41. 11 H. Susannah Heschel, “My Father,” p. 26. 12 See Chester, Divine Pathos and Human Being, p. 3. 13 Kaplan and Dresner, Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness, p. 47. 14 See H. Susannah Heschel, “My Father,” pp. 26–7. 15 English translation: Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God: Man, trans. by Morton M. Leifman, New York: Continuum 2007. 16 English translation: Abraham Joshua Heschel, Maimonides: A Biography, trans. by Joachim Neugroschel, New York: Image 1991.

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a phenomenological study of Hebrew prophetic consciousness (both originally published in German).17 In 1932 he was already an instructor in Talmud at the aforementioned Hochschule, from which he had graduated. In the succeeding years, older Jewish scholars were fleeing Germany in droves, and in 1937 Martin Buber needed a replacement at the Jüdisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt, a post for which Buber himself selected his friend Heschel. This could not have been more than a temporary post for Heschel, as he was frantically trying to secure a position outside of Germany as well. He was arrested and deported by the Nazis in 1938, along with all Jews with Polish passports. It was not until 1940 that he arrived in the United States, having been offered a post at Hebrew Union College. At this point, Heschel spoke no English and, on his daughter’s accounting, felt terrible isolation from his family and his heritage, as Hebrew Union College was “adamantly Reform,” serving non-Kosher food in the cafeteria and offering little appreciation for Heschel’s Hasidic roots.18 Shortly thereafter, Heschel married Sylvia Straus (“Traditionally Jewish men write religious books only after they are married”),19 and his scholarship saw marked increases in the years to come. Heschel’s complete bibliography occupies 17 pages as an appendix to an anthology of his work.20 To simply list his contributions, however, obscures the more remarkable thing about his work, which is how he combined scholarly erudition with a kind of moral and spiritual prophetic authority. “He was the rabbi who could elucidate the fine points of classical Judaica, the philosopher able to analyze abstruse medieval concepts and the author who mastered the art of writing classics.”21 Beyond this, he cooperated with and criticized various Jewish organizations, the American Medical Association, and the Roman Catholic Church.22 Heschel was a strong voice against the Vietnam War, and took part in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, being asked, by Martin Luther King, Jr., to participate in the march from Selma to Montgomery. Regarding the latter effort, H. Susannah Heschel relates that he commented to her, “I felt my legs were praying.”23 His opposition to Nixon and support of McGovern in the United States presidential race earned him scorn from Jewish leaders at the time, since Nixon had come out in support of the State of Israel.24 Heschel’s list of publications is as diverse as the list

Published originally as Abraham Joshua Heschel, Die Prophetie, Cracow: The Polish Academy of Sciences 1936, later expanded and published in English as The Prophets, San Francisco: Harper 1962. 18 H. Susannah Heschel, “My Father,” p. 28. 19 Ibid., p. 29. 20 Heschel, Between God and Man, pp. 275–91. 21 Sherwin, Makers of Contemporary Theology: Abraham Joshua Heschel, p. 1. 22 Heschel was a vital participant in the discussion during Vatican II that resulted in a more ecumenical tone in the relationship between Jews and Catholics, at once having a private audience with Pope Paul VI in an ultimately successful effort to strengthen the language of the document then in circulation. For more on this, see Michael A. Chester, “Heschel and the Christians,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies, vol. 38, 2001, pp. 246–70. 23 H. Susannah Heschel, “My Father,” p. 35. 24 Sherwin, Makers of Contemporary Theology: Abraham Joshua Heschel, p. 7. 17

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of his accomplishments. To find such a unity of learning, spiritual vitality, and moral authority can be regarded as little short of prophetic. With such a roster of published work, we can only pick out two especially noteworthy issues in Heschel’s work for our present concern, namely, his relationship to Kierkegaard. The first trend that we can find in Heschel’s work that will be interesting to readers of Kierkegaard must be regarded as a negative influence from Kierkegaard. In contrast to the view of Kierkegaard as the proponent of the “leap of faith,” Heschel emphasized what he called the “leap of action.” To his credit, Heschel seems never to have articulated the latter idea explicitly in opposition to Kierkegaard; though in other contexts he seems to attribute the phrase to Kierkegaard.25 The second trend, fittingly exemplified in A Passion for Truth, but also exemplified in other sources, is Heschel’s defense of what he calls “depth theology,” a theological orientation in which he finds both the Kotzker and Kierkegaard to be partners. In what would have to be regarded as one of his most important works, God In Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, Heschel is clearly arguing against a position regarding faith and works to which many forms of popular Protestantism have seemed to succumb. Heschel writes: The claim of Judaism that religion and law are inseparable is difficult for many of us to comprehend…to the modern mind, religion is a state of the soul, inwardness; feeling rather than obedience, faith, rather than action, spiritual rather than concrete. To Judaism, religion is not a feeling for something that is, but an answer to Him who is asking us to live in a certain way.26

Citing St. Paul, Luther, the Formula of Concord, Ritschl, Barth, and Kierkegaard, Heschel goes on to write: “Barth, following Kierkegaard, voices Lutheran thoughts, when he claims that man’s deeds are too sinful to be good. There are fundamentally no human deeds, which, because of their significance in this world, find favor in God’s eyes.”27 Heschel argues that the very dichotomy of faith and works is unacceptable: “The basic problem is: what is right living? And life is indivisible….God asks for the heart because He needs the lives.”28

See Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 185. The difficulty here is that the old canard that Kierkegaard proposed a leap of faith finds no direct justification in Kierkegaard’s texts. In particular, as M. Jamie Ferreira points out, “Kierkegaard never uses any Danish equivalent of the English phrase ‘leap of faith.’ ” See M. Jamie Ferreira, “Faith and the Kierkegaardian Leap,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. by Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, pp. 207–34, see p. 207. It should also be noted that at one point Heschel gets it closer to right in saying that for Kierkegaard the leap is a “leap into faith” (A Passion for Truth, p. 198). 26 Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2000, p. 293. 27 Ibid., p. 294. 28 Ibid., p. 296. It should be noted that Heschel’s theology dissents from the Aristotelian view of God as the “Unmoved Mover.” Instead, Heschel often contrasts the God of the Bible with such a view, claiming that God is the “Most Moved Mover.” See H. Susannah Heschel, “My Father,” pp. 36–7. To this extent, Heschel is unlikely to flinch at the claim that “God 25

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Heschel argues that we should not and cannot first attempt to rid ourselves of selfish motives before performing the deeds God requires of us. He writes, in a helpful passage that may bear quoting: It would be a device of conceit, if not presumption, to insist that purity of the heart is the exclusive test of piety. Perfect purity is something we rarely know how to obtain or retain. No one can claim to have purged all the dross even from his finest desire. The self is finite, but selfishness is infinite. God asks for the heart, but the heart is oppressed with uncertainty in its own twilight. God asks for faith, and the heart is not sure of its own faith. It is good that there is a dawn of decision for the night of the heart; deeds to objectify faith, definite forms to verify belief.29

This, then, is Heschel’s “leap of action.” Instead of acquiring faith first and then performing deeds that fit with it, Heschel asks us to perform the deeds and through them acquire faith. He writes: “By living as Jews we may attain our faith as Jews…. A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought.”30 On the one hand, Heschel’s invocation of purity of heart as something that we should not set out to achieve suggests an opposition to Kierkegaard. However, if this is intended as an attack on Kierkegaard (and the extent to which this is so is not always perfectly clear), the attentive reader of Kierkegaard will notice that something is not quite right here. For one thing, Heschel claims that “There are no criteria, according to Kierkegaard, no logically compelling reasons why a man should opt for God rather than the world.”31 This is the kind of passage that would presumably make the contributors to Kierkegaard After MacIntyre cringe.32 But even if we could qualify the phrase “leap of faith” in several ways so that it could be something that Kierkegaard could accept, there is even less chance of making such modifications to the phrase “leap of thought.” Heschel writes: “It is in the employment of [man’s] will, not in reflection, that he meets his own self as it is; not as he should like it to be.”33 It is difficult to imagine Kierkegaard disagreeing with this statement. After all, for Kierkegaard, faith is certainly a conflict of the will in obedience as opposed to a conflict of doubt or thought within a person.34 So what exactly is the disagreement here? Heschel’s claim seems to be that, instead of the leap being simply a move of inwardness in the interior of a person, the leap must be undertaken in the physical world, where one, as it were, puts one’s head down and performs the action, brushing aside all questions about whether the interior of a person matches up with the external deed. There are a number of things to say in response. First, we need to highlight where Kierkegaard is mentioned. We needs the lives,” where a more classical theology would have to make several qualifications in order to render this claim meaningful. 29 Heschel, God In Search of Man, p. 297. 30 Ibid., pp. 282–3. 31 Ibid., p. 184. 32 See Kierkegaard After MacIntyre, ed. by John J. Davenport and Anthony Rudd, Chicago: Open Court 2001. 33 Ibid., p. 284. 34 SKS 22, 42, NB11:69 / JP 2, 1129.

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learn, in the one mention of Kierkegaard in this text, that it is both a Lutheran and a Kierkegaardian thought to believe that “man’s deeds are too sinful to be good.” Now this amounts to an insistence that the human being is not ready for the leap of action. By contrast, in A Passion for Truth, Heschel writes: “Jewish consciousness is not aware that the soul is buried under a curse or trapped by inherited guilt from which it must be saved.”35 He goes on to write of how, “According to the Kotzker, the leap36 is the soul’s response to a divine call. This presupposes human readiness for such a call.”37 One thing that needs to be said to Heschel, then, is that for Kierkegaard most of us are simply not ready to receive such a call. The awareness that this was true for a great many individuals was part of why Kierkegaard used indirect communication in his authorship. As he writes in The Point of View, “direct communication presupposes that the recipient’s ability to receive is entirely in order, but here that is simply not the case.”38 Kierkegaard’s view of faith seems to require a revelation at some point, and this involves the coming to consciousness of the reality and depth of sin in one’s life, as well as the ability of God to forgive this sin.39 This transition can be represented by Johannes Climacus’ discussion of how subjectivity is truth in the Socratic, but that the consciousness of sin represents to us that subjectivity is in fact untruth. Only later is subjectivity truth again, when the god in time has redeemed and forgiven the individual.40 Thus, in the language of Kierkegaard’s works, Heschel’s leap of action presupposes that subjectivity is truth for an individual, or, to say it in other words, Heschel’s leap of action presupposes the Socratic view of the immanence of truth. There might be a certain phenomenological harmony possible between the two thinkers if Kierkegaard could grant the possibility of a kind of implicit faith, of the kind that the Catholic Church often discusses.41 Supposing, what seems plausible, that Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 253. Heschel seems to interpret the Kotzker as holding something quite close to his own “leap of action” here. The Kotzker’s sayings have come down to us only by way of epigrams, and Heschel never cites a text for his quotations from the Kotzker. Heschel’s own book is perhaps the best source on the Kotzker in English. 37 Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 254. 38 SV1 XIII, 541 / PV, 54. See also Jack Mulder, Jr., “The Catholic Moment?: On the Apostle in Kierkegaard’s ‘The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle,’” in Without Authority, ed. by Robert L. Perkins, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press 2006 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, vol. 18), pp. 203–34. 39 See SKS 4, 222–7 / PF, 14–18 and SKS 7, 489 / CUP1, 538–9. 40 See SKS 7, 189–90 / CUP1, 207. Consider also how Climacus, early on in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, discusses the “wellspring in which God resides” (SKS 7, 168–9 / CUP1, 183) signifying a kind of special divine immanence. It seems plausible to suggest that this immanence is what seems fractured by sin consciousness, and that this immanence is renewed in faith so that when Works of Love begins, we talk again of the little lake in a human being which has its source in the deep spring of God’s love (SKS 9, 16–18 / WL, 9–10). 41 See, for example, Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, ed. by Vittorio Messori, trans. by Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee, New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2003, pp. 77–83. See also an interesting suggestion from C. Stephen Evans that Kierkegaard can accommodate views that approximate this claim. See his “Can God Be Hidden and Evident at the Same Time? Some Kierkegaardian Reflections,” Faith and Philosophy, vol. 23, 2006, pp. 241–53. 35 36

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such a harmony were possible, and that Jews and other non-Christian groups could experience the welling up of God’s love within them even without experiencing the revelation of Christian redemption as such,42 could Kierkegaard endorse Heschel’s leap of action? The answer, I think, is partly yes, and partly no. Kierkegaard certainly accepts that faith (where by “faith” in this context we understand the re-establishment of subjectivity as truth) should immediately result in action. He writes, “Your [Christian] understanding must immediately be action. Immediately!”43 There should thus be no gap between faith and works, for Kierkegaard. At the same time, Kierkegaard appears to think that faith should logically (if not temporally) precede the works of love. What should issue from this faith is love, and this love is commanded by God, and aided by divine grace. A work of love for Kierkegaard is what Heschel would call a mitzvah.44 Both thinkers can also agree that God supplies the gap in our ability to make good on our mitzvot. Heschel writes: “Man is responsible for his deeds, and God is responsible for man’s responsibility.”45 Similarly, Kierkegaard writes: “when eternity says, ‘You shall love,’ it is responsible for making sure that this can be done.”46 Despite the similarity in this respect, Heschel suggests that in the “night of the heart” the individual is not yet sure of her faith, and thus unsure of whether her deed would genuinely be love. For Kierkegaard, the very dwelling on this question might be the dwelling that places love out of its element. As a fish out of water will die, so love, when dwelling on itself, may fall apart in doubt.47 This suggests that the movement from doubt to faith will need to be repeated. If this latter account is correct, Kierkegaard’s leap to faith and Heschel’s leap of action resemble each other in some respects, but Kierkegaard’s leap will always require remedial divine assistance, while Heschel’s leap of action seems to require only supplemental or cooperative divine assistance.48

I am here taking it for granted that Kierkegaard holds that all redemption is Christian redemption, and thus that Kierkegaard is either an inclusivist or an exclusivist with respect to questions of religious diversity. I cannot argue for this claim here, but I find the unsurprising ways in which John Hick’s religious pluralism influences his Christology to be inconsistent with Kierkegaard’s very exalted claims about Christ. 43 SV1 XII, 399 / JFY, 120. 44 Heschel, God in Search of Man, p. 287: “A mitzvah is an act which God and man have in common.” Heschel opts for the somewhat unusual spelling of “mitzvah” as “mitsvah.” I will keep to the ordinary spelling. It is also worth noting that the word “mitzvah” in terms of its Hebrew origin, simply means “commandment.” 45 Ibid., p. 286. 46 SKS 9, 49 / WL, 41. 47 See SKS 9, 180 / WL, 180. 48 A final question might be where Heschel places faith in his leap of action. He suggests that it belongs after the action itself, but if so, it is not obvious just what he means by the faith that God will perfect. I suspect that what he actually means is the addition of what he later calls kavanah, or, roughly, right intention, and that his earlier use of the term “faith” in this context was simply to motivate Judaism’s approach to what Christianity calls the dichotomy between faith and works (see Heschel, God in Search of Man, pp. 306–19 for more on kavanah). 42

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For Heschel, the “fundamental category of Judaism is a demand rather than a dogma, a commitment rather than a feeling.”49 It is all-important that an individual respond to God in deeds, for “a mitsvah is where God and man meet.”50 While Heschel is a Jew and Kierkegaard is a Christian, they can both agree to some extent that dogma is less important than the formation of the person and her commitment to her faith.51 This emphasis, over against the emphasis (though not the exclusion of) dogmas and creeds, is what Heschel calls “depth theology.” In depth theology, says Heschel, “we must recall the questions which religious doctrines are trying to answer, the antecedents of religious commitment.”52 In this respect, for Heschel, “the primary issue of theology is pretheological.”53 There seems some consonance here with Kierkegaard, since so very much of Kierkegaard’s authorship concerns how we relate to God and Christ, and not the more abstruse doctrines of speculative theology.54 Indeed, as Kierkegaard’s voluminous pseudonymous works often classified as Religiousness A or even belonging to some earlier stage of existence amply show, there is plenty to talk about in Religiousness A, and “Religiousness A must first be present in the individual before there can be any consideration of becoming aware of the dialectical B.”55 That is, before there can be any question of Christian theology and dogma, one must first navigate the pre-theological terrain necessary for it to make any sense. For Heschel, “The theme of theology is the Ibid., p. 300. Ibid., p. 312. 51 See Climacus’ famous episode of the passionate pagan, SKS 7, 184 / CUP1, 201. Also, consider Heschel’s own rhetorical question, “Have not Pascal, Kierkegaard, Immanuel Kant, or Reinhold Niebuhr been a source of inspiration to many Jews?” See Heschel’s essay “No Religion is an Island,” in No Religion is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue, ed. by Harold Kasimow and Byron L. Sherwin, Maryknoll: Orbis 1991, p. 13. There, Heschel is decrying the divides between Judaism and Christianity and noting important overlapping concerns. 52 See Heschel, “Depth Theology,” in his The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence, New York: Schocken Books 1972, pp. 115–26, see p. 116. 53 Ibid. 54 At some level I find the dichotomy here in both Heschel and, to some extent, Kierkegaard, frustrating. If Heschel is right that the essence of theology is pre-[speculative-] theological, then we should expect to find out that dogmas themselves are abstruse and divorced from the life experience of the faithful. I suppose some dogmas are easier to make out along these lines than others, but too hard-and-fast a line will doubtless mislead. A case in point might be Kierkegaard’s very profound reflections in “An Occasional Discourse,” known to many readers as Purity of Heart. In the course of those reflections, which seem more like depth theology than speculative theology, we find the assertion that “the person who wills the good only out of fear of punishment does not will one thing but is double-minded” (SKS 8, 156–69 / UD, 44–60). Then we have only to consider the Council of Trent’s declarations and canons to find that this is subject matter for dogmatic theology. See Jack Mulder, Jr., “On Being Afraid of Hell: Kierkegaard and Catholicism on Imperfect Contrition,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2007, pp. 97–122. I am currently correcting some of the discussion of Catholic theology in this article for inclusion in a book on Kierkegaard and the Catholic tradition. 55 SKS 7, 506 / CUP1, 556. 49 50

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content of believing; the theme of depth theology is the act of believing, its purpose being to explore the depth of faith, the substratum out of which belief arises.”56 More importantly, for Heschel, “Theologies divide us; depth theology unites us.”57 For Heschel, depth theology is the orientation that makes possible his own final work, A Passion for Truth, which he himself claimed was “a study in depth-theology.”58 It is consideration of that work to which we now turn, as this will make it possible for us to inquire more deeply into the explicit connections between Kierkegaard and Heschel. II. Kierkegaard’s Role in A Passion for Truth Since A Passion for Truth is itself a book on depth theology, it is fitting for us to conclude with a somewhat extended discussion of Kierkegaard’s prominent role in it. Here we will need to pay somewhat more attention to the extent to which Heschel, in criticizing Kierkegaard and the Kotzker, fully appreciates the way in which the former can be seen as a consonant voice with Heschel’s own concerns. A Passion for Truth is again surprising because, although it occasionally succumbs to fashionable canards about Kierkegaard,59 it is clear that a serious and admirable attempt is made to come to grips with some of the most profound concerns in and raised by Kierkegaard’s writings. Heschel makes copious and wideranging references to Kierkegaard’s individual texts, usually to the Walter Lowrie translations that preceded the current English edition by Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Heschel also frequently refers to secondary literature, most of which would have been fairly current at the time of his writing.60 Unlike some of Kierkegaard’s more famous critics, Heschel read Kierkegaard deeply, and with an ultimately sympathetic eye. Conveniently, as we have noted, Heschel bunched almost all the use of Kierkegaard contained in his voluminous writings into this one volume. So readers here will find a sampling of Heschel’s usage of Kierkegaard, but for a fairly exhaustive account of such usage, they have no better guide than Heschel himself! Heschel begins his discussion of the Kotzker and Kierkegaard by noting that what they both have in common is that they are gadflies of a kind: “Their common impact is to challenge our delusions, our certitude and complacency, to overwhelm us and leave us disturbed. As gadflies, not models of imitation, they deprive us of contentment and peace of mind.”61 Most people would perhaps find this a strange Heschel, “Depth Theology,” pp. 117–18. Ibid., p. 119. 58 Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 86. 59 For instance, Heschel nearly always identifies a pseudonymous author such as Vigilius Haufniensis with Kierkegaard. 60 See, for example, A Kierkegaard Critique, ed. by Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup, New York: Harper 1962; Josiah Thompson, The Lonely Labyrinth: Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Works, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press 1967; Paul R. Sponheim, Kierkegaard on Christ and Christian Coherence, New York: Harper 1967; E.J. Carnell, The Burden of Søren Kierkegaard, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans 1965. 61 Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 88. 56 57

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compliment, since it is not clear what would be so bad about peace of mind. Yet Heschel, some of whose family members had been murdered in the Holocaust, and who was himself a refugee of the Nazi regime, knows perfectly well that “in our age, which threatens to destroy the world and man with it, these demands could serve as important warnings.”62 Heschel further notes how concerned both Kierkegaard and the Kotzker are with truth, honesty, and authenticity. When a man came to see the Kotzker and explained that he had never been to a rebbe, the Kotzker asked him, “What have you done all your life?” The man replied “I have gone through the Talmud three times.” The Kotzker is said to have replied, “Yes, but how much of the Talmud has gone through you?”63 Although Heschel’s own comparison to Kierkegaard in this context is illuminating, it is also worth noticing how similar this is to the long discussion in For Self-Examination regarding reading the Bible as God’s Word. There, Kierkegaard cautions scholars, saying “If you are a scholar, remember that if you do not read God’s Word in another way, it will turn out that after a lifetime of reading God’s Word many hours every day, you nevertheless have never read God’s Word.”64 Perhaps the next most salient concern that the Kotzker and Kierkegaard shared was with regard to faith and reason. Heschel cites with approval Lessing’s passage, made rather more famous by Climacus, to the effect that if God held in his right hand all truth, and in his left hand the ever-striving drive for truth, even without ever acquiring truth, the individual should bow and ask for what the left hand held, since pure truth is for God alone.65 Similarly, in one of the two latter essays in the book, where Heschel seems to alternate seamlessly between exegesis and assertion of his own views, he writes: “while some of [God’s] ways seem absurd from man’s perspective, they are nonetheless meaningful in the eyes of God. In other words, the ultimate meaning of God’s ways is not invalidated because of man’s incapacity to comprehend it.”66 While there is something existentially dizzying about human beings’ incomplete access to God’s truth, there is also something important about it, and Heschel, Kierkegaard, and the Kotzker all seem to agree on this point. In fact, Heschel juxtaposes his friend Martin Buber’s remark that “Nothing can make me believe in a God who punishes Saul because he did not murder his enemy” with the Kotzker’s statement that “A God whom any Tom, Dick, and Harry could comprehend, I would not believe in,” giving every indication that it is with the Kotzker and not with Buber that Heschel sides.67 The Kotzker’s remark is all the more striking in this context, since it seems to conflict with another aspect of his personality that is seemingly endorsed by Heschel. For the last 20 years of his life, the Kotzker lived in seclusion. It was never clear just why this was done, though it was not exactly the Kotzker’s rosy countenance that Ibid. Ibid., p. 107. 64 SV1 XII, 321 / FSE, 33. 65 Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 296. See also SKS 7, 103 / CUP1, 106. 66 Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 293. Cf. also SKS 7, 114 / CUP1, 118 on how a logical system is possible (and is actual for God), but a system of existence cannot be given. 67 Heschel, A Passion for Truth, pp. 292–3. 62 63

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would have been missed. Heschel hypothesizes that “his withdrawal was a shifting of the fronts, from waging the battle with man to a confrontation with God.”68 Genesis 18:22–32 includes a passage where Abraham, despite being, on his own admission, “dust and ashes,” pleads with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if only a small number of righteous people are found. God, of course, agrees to Abraham’s request. Around this type of passage, a rabbinic tradition developed, though not without its dissenters, according to which a holy person could reverse God’s decrees. “The tzaddik [righteous person] decrees, the Holy One fulfills.” “The Holy One decrees, the tzaddik annuls.”69 The conflict with God that Heschel is hypothesizing for the Kotzker is a conflict of this sort. Interpreting the Kotzker’s position in a section he entitles “Submission?,” Heschel writes: “A man who lived by honesty could not be expected to suppress his anxiety when tormented by profound perplexity. He had to speak out audaciously. Man should never capitulate, even to the Lord.”70 The Kotzker may well have begun a conflict of sorts with God. Heschel writes: “Unlike some other rebbes, the Kotzker did not teach that man should under all circumstances be meek because he was a nothing, that he should be quieter than calm water and flatter than mown grass.”71 Heschel seems to approve of the Kotzker’s sentiments here. He writes: “There are some forms of suffering that a man must accept with love and bear in silence. There are other agonies to which he must say no.”72 It might seem that Kierkegaard would loudly reject this sense that we could protest our situation before the heavenly throne. After all, whether he knew it or not, Heschel may as well have been quoting Kierkegaard as the model for a thinker (the sort of which he and the Kotzker opposed) who claimed that a human being should become nothing, just like the calm water, so that the “image of heaven” could shine through.73 Indeed, Kierkegaard writes: “If you are indignant with people who do you wrong, you actually are indignant with God, since ultimately it is still God who permits wrong to be done to you. But if you gratefully accept the wrong from God’s hand ‘as a good and perfect gift,’ then you are not indignant with people, either.”74 Another example of God’s sovereignty in Kierkegaard, however, begins to raise other possibilities. In teaching us to learn from obedience from the lilies and birds, Kierkegaard considers the objection that he is making a virtue of necessity, since the lilies and birds cannot fail to be obedient. He responds that a human being, too, is subject to a certain kind of necessity. He writes: “God’s will is still done anyhow; so strive to make a virtue of necessity by unconditionally obediently doing God’s will.”75 He then hopes that in being obedient in this way, human beings will be able to say, recalling Luther’s famous claim at the Diet of Worms, “I cannot do anything else, I cannot do otherwise.”76 Ibid., p. 234. Ibid., p. 70. 70 Ibid., p. 269. 71 Ibid., p. 271. 72 Ibid. 73 See SKS 5, 380 / EUD, 399. 74 SKS 9, 376 / WL, 384. 75 SKS 11, 34 / WA, 30 76 Ibid. 68 69

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What this suggests is that a more general sovereignty of God encompasses human free action, whatever that action might be. This leaves open the possibility that a human being might be precisely obedient in an anguished struggle ostensibly with God, so long as it did not give way to impudence, or presumably what Kierkegaard calls indignance above. And this must be something like Kierkegaard’s view, since he openly praises Abraham’s bold confidence in the episode from Genesis mentioned above.77 Accordingly, Kierkegaard would need to correct the impression from Heschel that submitting to God, becoming nothing in the deepest sense, is inconsistent with pleading and struggling with God in the temporal sense. God’s eternal reality would presumably have known to anticipate even our anguished pleading. The final major point where Heschel is clearly drawing on both the Kotzker and Kierkegaard has to do with what Heschel calls the Kotzker’s insistence that we must disregard self-regard.78 When Heschel refers to Luke 14:26 regarding hating one’s father and mother,79 and his perception of its role in Kierkegaard’s thought, he writes: “In the eyes of the Kotzker, such a saying contradicts Jewish tradition.”80 We are also told that “The Kotzker did not call for the annihilation of the self,” which is significant given Climacus’ discussion of that topic.81 Yet, at the same time, “The Kotzker conceived of living as an ongoing encounter, a fighting to the end, in which thought of surrender was inconceivable. He held moral cowards in contempt…it was an encounter with the ego and its treacherous delusions.”82 In one of his rare moments of reflection on the Kotzker, Heschel claims that this is a “tortured life,” and cannot be the will of God for human beings.83 He considered the Kotzker’s way to be a quenching of joy, and this, Heschel claimed, was “compatible neither with what we commonly consider to be human nor with the divine attributes of love and compassion.”84 Heschel saw both the Kotzker and Kierkegaard as maintaining rather strident positions regarding the disregarding of self-regard. Heschel lists a range of passages from Works of Love and seems to interpret them in a rather uncompromising way, so that self-love is definitively excluded for Kierkegaard.85 It is hard to imagine that Heschel missed Kierkegaard’s early emphasis in Works of Love that loving one’s neighbor as oneself entails loving oneself in the right way, but Heschel never seems to bring this to the fore in Kierkegaard’s defense.86 Heschel’s clearest verdict on both Kierkegaard and the Kotzker in this respect is this: “The either/or position taken by both men, which states that every man’s pursuit had either God or the ego as its SKS 5, 76 / EUD, 66–7. Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 133. 79 See SKS 4, 163–8 / FT, 72–5 for Johannes de silentio’s discussion of this theme. 80 Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 247. Heschel goes on to cite rabbinic texts on this, but he never gives evidence of the Kotzker’s view on this sort of New Testament passage. 81 Ibid., p. 134. See SKS 7, 418–19 / CUP1, 461 on self-annihilation in Religiousness A. 82 Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 266. 83 Ibid., p. 205. 84 Ibid., p. 309. 85 Ibid., pp. 128–9. 86 See SKS 9, 30 / WL, 22. 77 78

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focus and goal—this dilemma is based upon the assumption that God and the ego are mutually exclusive.”87 Heschel is, of course, right to think that this is a false dichotomy, but he has succumbed to a misinterpretation if he thinks Kierkegaard is doomed to it. Not only is it clear that the life of love is the blessed life for Kierkegaard’s Christian, it is also clear both that one cannot pursue salvation as if it were private “booty,” according to Kierkegaard, and yet that even this does not entail that an individual is unable to hold fast to her own salvation, even if all others reject theirs.88 Kierkegaard is concerned to root out selfishness, but he wants us all to find our deepest self in God. III. Conclusion Heschel is a profound thinker whose appreciation for “depth theology” allowed him to appropriate a thinker as committed to Christianity (Kierkegaard) as Heschel was to Judaism. Heschel clearly regards Kierkegaard as a profound writer, but he sometimes misinterprets Kierkegaard as more of a rigorist than he seems to have been. Of course, that is easy to do; Kierkegaard is a flamboyant writer whose claims often need a kind of rehabilitation to distill the profundity from the passion. The passionate thinkers are the ones who confront us with an almost prophetic voice, to which we must pay heed. Kierkegaard and Heschel are two such thinkers, and they have much to teach us.

Heschel, A Passion for Truth, pp. 307–8. See SKS 9, 368 / WL, 375 for the claim that the life of love is the blessed life and SKS 9, 35 / WL, 27 for the claims that the highest good cannot be approached as private booty, but that we are nonetheless to hold on to it even if all others give it up.

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Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Heschel’s Corpus “No Religion is an Island,” Union Theology Seminar Quarterly Review, vol. 21, 1966, pp. 117–34. “Il chassidismo e Kierkegaard,” Conoscenza religiosa, vol. 4, 1971, pp. 337–53. “Kotsk, Menahem Mendel of,” Encyclopedia Judaica, vols. 1–16, ed. by Cecil Roth, New York: Macmillan 1971–72, vol. 10, cols. 1222–4. “Søren Kierkegaard and the Rabbi of Kotzk,” Monastic Studies, vol. 8, 1972, pp. 147–51. A Passion for Truth, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1973. II. Source of Heschel’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Carnell, Edward John, The Burden of Søren Kierkegaard, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1965. Croxall, Thomas Henry, Kierkegaard Commentary, London: Harper 1956. Dupré, Louis, Kierkegaard as Theologian, London: Sheed and Ward 1963. Haecker, Theodor, Søren Kierkegaard, trans. Alexander Dru, London: Oxford University Press 1937. — Kierkegaard the Cripple, trans. by C. Van O. Bruyn, London: Harvil Press 1950. Jolivet, Regis, Introduction to Kierkegaard, trans. by W.H. Barber, London: Dutton 1950. Lowrie, Walter, Kierkegaard, London: Oxford University Press 1938. Shestov, Lev, Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy, trans. Elinor Hewitt, Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press 1969. Sponheim, Paul, Kierkegaard on Christ and Christian Coherence, New York: Harper 1967. Swenson, David F., Something about Kierkegaard, Minneapolis: Augsburg 1941. Thompson, Josiah, The Lonely Labyrinth: Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Works, Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press 1967. Thulstrup, Marie Mikulová, “Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Imitation,” trans. by H.R. Harcourt, in A Kierkegaard Critique, ed. by Howard A. Johnson and Niels Thulstrup, New York: Harper 1962, pp. 266–85. Unamuno, Miguel de, The Tragic Sense of Life, trans. by J.E. Crawford Flitch, London: Macmillan 1921.

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III. Secondary Literature on Heschel’s Relation to Kierkegaard Berthold-Bond, Daniel, “Abraham Joshua Heschel, A Passion for Truth,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism, vol. 5, 2002, pp. 265–78. Breslauer, S. Daniel, “Theology and Depth-Theology: A Heschel Distinction,” Central Conference of American Rabbis Journal, vol. 21, 1974, pp. 81–6. Chester, Michael A., Divine Pathos and Human Being: The Theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel, London: Vallentine Mitchell 2005, p. 34; pp. 47–8; p. 53. Kaplan, Edward K., “Mysticism and Despair in Abraham J. Heschel’s Religious Thought,” Journal of Religion, vol. 57, 1977, pp. 33–47, see p. 34. — Holiness in Words: Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Poetics of Piety, Albany: State University of New York Press 1996, p. 20; p. 62. — Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940–1972, New Haven: Yale University Press 2007; pp. 152–3; p. 155; p. 341; pp. 343–4. Merkle, John C., Approaching God: The Way of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Collegeville: Liturgical Press 2009, p. 9. — “Heschel’s Attitude,” in No Religion is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue, ed. by Harold Kasimow and Byron L. Sherwin, Maryknoll: Orbis 1991; pp. 97–109, see p. 103. Miller, Lucien, “Waiting for the Messiah: The Seventh Day: Reading Tales with Buber, Heschel and Merton on Israel’s Holy Mountains,” Merton and Judaism: Recognition, Repentence, and Renewal, ed. by  Beatrice Bruteau, Louisville, Kentucky: Fons Vitae 2003, p. 159. Moore, Donald J., The Human and the Holy: The Spirituality of Abraham Joshua Heschel, New York: Fordham University Press 1989, pp. 109–11. Polish, Daniel F., Talking about God: Exploring the Meaning of Religious Life with Kierkegaard, Buber, Tillich, and Heschel, Woodstock, Vermont: Skylight Paths Publishing 2007; pp. xii–xiii; p. 3; pp. 7–12; pp. 44–5; p. 109; p. 117; p. 120; p. 125; p. 126. Riemer, Jack, “Review of A Passion for Truth,” Commonweal, January 11, 1974, pp. 372ff. Rothschild, Fritz A., “Varieties of Heschelian Thought,” in Abraham Joshua Heschel: Exploring His Life and Thought, ed. by John C. Merkle, New York: Macmillan 1985, pp. 87–102. see p. 91. Sherwin, Byron L., Makers of Contemporary Theology: Abraham Joshua Heschel, Atlanta: John Knox Press 1979, p. 4. Sherwin, Franklin, The Promise of Heschel, Philadelphia: Lippincott 1970, p. 24; p. 36; p. 56; p. 82; p. 89; p. 94.

Abraham Isaac Kook: Faith of Awe and Love Tamar Aylat-Yaguri

The influence of Kierkegaard’s philosophy, and in particular his view of the single individual’s complex and private relationship with God, transcends the world of philosophy and reaches Judaism as well; indeed, it is relevant for Jewish thinkers who constitute the pillars of today’s Judaism. Abraham Isaac Kook was such a figure. Combining scholarly and social activity, he was a major figure in the shaping of Judaism both theologically and politically. The purpose of this article is to detect an impact of Kierkegaard’s philosophy on Kook’s thought. After a short introduction of Kook (in Section I), I shall review the ways and sources by which he may have become acquainted with Kierkegaard’s philosophy (in section II). Finally, in Section III, I will compare, using leading Kierkegaardian concepts, Kook’s view of faith, through Abraham in the binding of Isaac. I. Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), Jewish thinker, Halachist, Kabbalist and a renowned Bible scholar, was one of the most celebrated and influential rabbis of the twentieth century. He is known in Hebrew as HaRav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, and by the acronym HaRaAYaH or simply as HaRav (hereafter, Kook). As the first Chief Rabbi of what was then Palestine and later the founder of the Religious Zionist Yeshiva Merkaz HaRav, Kook was well-known inside and outside the Land of Israel, revered by many and violently opposed by other Jewish factions. Born in Latvia of staunch Hasidic stock, he retained throughout his life a unique blend of the mystical and the rational. He was considered to have mastered from an early age the entire Halachic, Midrashic, and philosophical, ethical, and Kabbalistic literature. Kook brought to bear the entire Jewish tradition upon the contemporary scene. In 1904, he came to Jaffa (then part of the Ottoman Empire), because he saw the return I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the assistance of The Ruth Sheffi (Shafrir) Fund of the Faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv University, Professor Biderman, Professor Gellman, Dr. Rosenak, Dr. Even-Chen, Dana Barnea, Gur Arad, Alec Aylat, Eli Nagar, Thiya Mekayten, and Jon Stewart for his encouragement and support.

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to the Land of Israel not merely as a political matter inspired by nationalistic and socialistic ideologies, as well as the way to save Jews from persecution, but also as an event of extraordinary historical and theological significance. Though keenly aware of the huge numbers of non-observant Jews, he had a vision of the repentance of the nation, in addition to the repentance of the individual. He called for and envisioned a spiritual renaissance where the ancient traditions would be renewed and the new would be sanctified. In 1914, Kook traveled to Europe for a rabbinical conference in Berlin. Unable to return to Palestine due to the sudden outbreak of World War I, Kook spent two years in St. Gallen, Switzerland. David Cohen (1887–1972), an advanced student of philosophy and Greek literature at the University of Basel in Switzerland, learning that Kook was staying there, wrote to ask him if it were possible to discuss various matters of faith. Receiving a positive reply, Cohen was disappointed when they spoke mainly about Greek philosophy and literature, which apparently enthralled Kook, but did not answer Cohen’s doubts about his faith. Reluctantly accepting Kook’s invitation to remain overnight, David Cohen was unable to sleep. But that morning he found his answer. He writes: In the early morning I heard the sound of steps, [and] the morning blessings, then the prayer of the Akedah, [the Binding of Isaac], in a sublime song and tune: “From the eternal high heavens, remember the love of our ancestors.” I listened, and I became a new person. I quickly wrote, announcing that I had found more than I had hoped for. I had found for myself a Rav.1

David Cohen became one of Kook’s most prominent disciples and came to be known as the Nazir (Nazarite) of Jerusalem. He edited and organized many of Kook’s writings into the four-volume magnum opus, Orot HaKodesh. Kook is characterized as a Zionist, believing in the re-establishment of the Jewish people as a nation in their ancestral homeland. He is the only known Jewish religious thinker of the twentieth century who expressed a positive approach to the national revival movement in the Land of Israel. His dialectical explanation of the Zionist movement’s secular nature derives from his metaphysical doctrine. Unlike other Zionist leaders, Kook’s motivations were based purely on Jewish religious law and biblical prophecy. After his death, Kook’s writings and thought eventually gave birth to the Religious Zionist movement which is today led by rabbis who studied in Jerusalem under Kook’s son. Kook’s printed works to date are in excess of 30 volumes in Hebrew with many works still in manuscript. There are a number of translations into English of a small fraction of his works. Kook’s complex personality contains a number of antithetical elements that derive from a consciousness of responsibility, juxtaposed with an ultimate effort to balance and bridle tendencies of extremism. His writings are not organized as a systematic philosophical method, but rather as poetry. They reflect emotional outbursts at certain times; hence, it is not surprising when one finds inconsistencies and lack of conformity in their content. His writings are a special 1 David Cohen, “Introduction” in ‫[ אורות הקודש‬Lights of Holiness], Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook 1984, pp. 18–19.

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phenomenon in the annals of Jewish thought. They seem vague and incomprehensible in their content and form. II. When reading the work of Kook, and in particular the sections which deal with the story of the binding of Isaac,2 Kierkegaard’s religious-existentialist philosophy almost inescapably comes to mind, especially his reading in Fear and Trembling. Even as he expresses his innermost feelings so poetically, Kook reveals motivations and difficulties that are reminiscent of certain excerpts of Kierkegaard’s journals: Who knoweth the depth of my sorrow, who could fathom it. For I am in dire straits locked, all bound up, my spirit longing to the great expanses. My soul yearns for God. The light of grace is the life of my spirit. God’s belief is great, no barrier of nature, rationale, manners, morals before it; he is the joy of my life. All that is defined, is but commonplace to the holiest, whom I seek. I am lovesick. Study is so difficult, I find the details so difficult to attend to. I love the days, the heavenly methods, I long for them. “Open my eyes that I may see the wonderful things in your law.”3

This passage raises the question concerning the influence of Kierkegaard’s philosophy on Kook. The desire to track Kierkegaard’s influence on Kook and to document it stumbles on two difficulties. The first is that Kook was a Jew, and his followers attempted to present his teaching to the world as exclusively Jewish. The second problem lies in Kook’s tendency in general not to give any references, indeed almost never, as to the sources he was influenced by, even when these were Jewish. Therefore, the fact that there is no direct evidence of Kook being influenced by Kierkegaard, let alone of his even having read his writings, does not undermine the position presented here, namely, that the discussion regarding the similarities between Kook’s teachings and Kierkegaard’s philosophy is an important and compelling one. Moreover, there is definitely plenty of evidence to suggest that Kook was familiar with and influenced by philosophy at large, so it would hardly be farfetched to assume he was acquainted with Kierkegaard’s philosophy, even obliquely.4

2 Kook’s interpretation to the binding of Isaac is to be found primarily in ‫עולת ראי”ה‬ [Commentary on the Prayer Book], Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook 1985, pp. 82–100. Yet, his wider context of writings, presented in the following pages, is essential for understanding his view on the binding and on faith. 3 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ חדריו‬Collected Works], ed. by Ran Sarid, Mevaseret Zion: all rights reserved by the author 1998, p. 50. Translated especially for this article; the added quotation is Psalm 119:18. 4 As noted in section I, Kook was acquainted with David Cohen, and may have had the book of Fabius Mieses, ‫[ קורות הפילוסופיה החדשה‬The History of Modern Philosophy], Leipzig: Moritz Schäfer 1887. This book may have been one of Kook’s sources, but it may also be that he never even came across it. See Benjamin Ish-Shalom, Rav Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook: Between Rationalism and Mysticism, trans. by Ora Wiskind Elper, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press 1993, p. 344.

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The primary basis for my discussion of Kierkegaardian elements in Kook’s teachings lies in the fact that Kook scholars, overwhelmingly, refer to comparisons between Kook’s thought and that of Kierkegaard, whether they emphasize the similarity or the differences between their thought. In the present section I will present some of these studies. Kook’s teachings were presented to Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike primarily through the mediation of his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook. As regards foreign influences on his father, he notes: Let it be clearly stated, that our sage never introduced any foreign branches into his thoughts’ tree of life. Even by way of negation, he never mentioned any non-Jewish philosophers, and did not consider himself bound to provide us with answers to the words of such heretics and skeptics as Marx, Freud or Kierkegaard. He did not feel indebted to any non-Jew or Jewish agnostics, not even so much as to contradict them. The very reference to a foreign opinion, even in order to refute it…to quote it or to argue with it, already allows it too much credibility.5

That said, this claim that Kook was devoid of any influence of non-Jewish philosophers is simply not true, and perhaps therein lies the reason that for many years the world, in particular the religious circles supportive of Kook as well as the religious circles opposing him, was shown in effect a censored version of Kook’s teachings.6 The resemblance of Kook’s teachings to modern Western philosophy, on the one hand, and traditional Jewish literature, including Kabbala, on the other, is beyond doubt. This resemblance is corroborated through careful analysis of his writings. Kook’s in-depth study of the corpus of traditional Jewish literature, in all its various periods and streams, particularly in Kabbala, is apparent throughout his work. Nevertheless, given his traditional education, his similitude to contemporary European philosophy is most intriguing.7 His pursuit of the great philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was that of an autodidact. His familiarity with philosophy relies, inter alia, on various articles and essays on philosophers and their methods, which were widely circulated in Hebrew periodicals of the time, some of which also published Kook’s own writings. Worthy of note in this context, in particular given the possible reference to Kierkegaard’s influence on Kook, is the 5 Zvi Kook and HaCohen Yehuda, ‫[ שיחות‬Conversations of Rav Zvi Yehuda: Genesis], ed. by Shlomo Haim Hacohen Aviner, Jerusalem: all rights reserved by the family 1993, p. 28. Translated especially for the purpose of this article. 6 Kook’s eight notebooks were hidden well into the 1990s: Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ שמונה קבצים‬Eight Texts], Jerusalem: all rights reserved by the family 1999. 7 Concerning the question of the influence of European philosophy on Kook, David Cohen, his student and close friend, who also edited his magnum opus, Lights of Holiness, refers in his memoirs specifically to such influence. Yet, Kook himself was probably unaware of this influence on him, and claimed that the sources of his teachings “run deep strictly through Jewish religious texts, Torah interpretations, renowned and clandestine” (Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ איגרות‬Letters], Jerusalem: all rights reserved by the family 1981, p. 132. See also Ish-Shalom, Rav Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook: Between Rationalism and Mysticism, p. 246, note 30).

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publication of Kook’s thoughts under the title “Crumbs from a Lofty Table,” under the pseudonym “Rabbi.”8 Kook’s writings reflect his reactions to certain philosophical theories, contemporary thoughts and intellectual trends in the Europe of his time. Even so, he does not accept as a given either the traditional concepts of philosophy or of Jewish ways of thought. He creates his own spiritual world principally by changing precepts and meanings, sometimes producing an original mélange of them. His use of terms and symbols is entirely free, so that even a similarity between his own and other theoretical methods does not necessarily attest to a link of origin between one and the other. Kook refers in his writings to both Jewish sources and modern philosophy at large. He almost never mentions the names of his sources, be they Jewish or nonJewish, but he does mention a few philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Bergson. In addition, he refers to various scientific theories, evolution in particular, and other religions: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism. The attempt to determine Kook’s sources with any certainty remains speculative, and, generally speaking, it is impossible to point to a direct influence of any particular source by way of quotation, paraphrase, or particular term. His writing in his notebooks is spontaneous, filled with the sense of an awareness of seminal originality, and his sources have been absorbed into his spiritual world, so much so that any researcher is hard pressed to uncover them. In contrast to the interpretive trend which seeks to posit Kook’s teachings as founded on a Kabbala perspective, as someone influenced by Hassidic literature, there is an interpretive trend which regards the philosophical aspect of his teaching as important for a proper understanding of his thought.9 Though when it comes to the issue of his sources, it is improbable that any ultimate answer will ever arise, nonetheless the very possibility that there was some similarity between Kook and Kierkegaard’s positions calls for closer inspection, given the numerous points throughout Kook’s teachings which bring Kierkegaard to mind. An example appears in Eight Texts: “The element of the binding is the amplification of those subtler emotions, and their inclusion in the light of endlessly gentle and uplifting love, the Lord’s clear love, as the abolishment of one drop in the sea.”10 In the scope of Kook’s thought and writings, examining the possible 8 Ish-Shalom refers to a literary publication which had appeared in Jaffa in 1913. See ibid., p. 242, note 4. 9 This trend may be found in the following studies: Nathan Rotenstreich, Essays in Jewish Philosophy in the Modern Era, Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben 1996; Eliezer Goldman, “‫[ ”זיקתו של הרב קוק למחשבה האירופאית‬Rabbi Kook’s Involvement with European Philosophy], in Youvel Orot, ed. by Benjamin Ish-Shalom and Shalom Rosenberg, Jerusalem: HaHistadrut HaZionit HaOlamit 1985, pp. 115–22; Shmuel Hugo Bergman, “‫”תורת ההתפתחות במשנתו של הרב קוק‬ [The Theory of Development in Rav Kook’s Thought], in Anashim VeDrachim, Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik 1967, pp. 350–8; Benjamin Ish-Shalom, ”‫[ ”בין הרב קוק לשפינוזה וגתה‬Between Kook, Spinoza and Goethe], in Mehkarei Yerushalaim BeMahshevet Israel, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press 1996, pp. 525–56. 10 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ שמונה קבצים‬Eight Texts] , Jerusalem: all rights reserved by the family 1999, § 95. Translated especially for the purpose of this article.

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influence of Kierkegaard’s position is relevant primarily in the context of the image of Abraham in the binding of Isaac. This image helps to illustrate in an archetypical manner the believer at the highest level of faith. Contemporary researchers of Kook turn to Fear and Trembling in order to explain his position, positively or negatively, vis-à-vis the story of Abraham’s binding of Isaac and his view on faith.11 Even scholars who are of the opinion that Kook never read Kierkegaard nonetheless avail themselves of references to the latter. One such example is Avinoam Rosenak (a Professor of Jewish philosophy and an expert on Kook’s teaching, from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem), who says that as far as he knows it is likely that Kook was not exposed to Kierkegaard’s thought.12 According to Rosenak,13 Kook’s teaching follows a dialectic different from that of Kierkegaard (and also different to that of Hegel, explained in accordance with Schelling’s theory of “the unity of opposites”). Yossef Ben Shlomo (a Professor of Jewish philosophy at Tel Aviv University) states: “Kook did not know the writings of Feuerbach or Kierkegaard, but it is clear that the Zeitgeist did reach him through secondary sources.”14 Ben Shlomo further states that Kook’s opinion, that “thought is too narrow to be used to fathom the depth of what exists,” is in line with a major stream in modern philosophy, from Feuerbach and Kierkegaard to Bergson, a stream of thought which criticizes rationalism and seeks to give rise to concrete reality, emphasizing the individual’s existential position. Nevertheless, Kook is by no means an existentialist thinker since his criticism of rationalism stems from metaphysical prepositions.15 Ben Shlomo’s statement attests that though no direct influence of Kierkegaard on Kook can be proven, traces are abundant. Another scholar to have found traces of Kierkegaard’s influence on Kook is Alexander Even Chen (Jewish philosophy lecturer at Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, the conservative movement’s theological institute in Israel), who claims that Kierkegaard’s influence can be found in Kook’s interpretation of the binding of Isaac. Prima facie, this is apparent from the terminology and characterization of the experience Abraham goes through, as it is presented by Kook.16 Some scholars 11 Neutral comparisons between Kook and Kierkegaard may also be found. They merely juxtapose their respective views. See, for example, Aharon Halevi Fitznik, “Three Approaches toward the Akedah: Kierkegaard, Rav Kook, Rav Soloveichik,” Hado’ar periodical, 1970, pp. 709–10. 12 Avinoam Rosenak, ”‫[ “הרב קוק כפונדמנטליסט הלכתי‬Rabbi Kook as a Halachaic Fundamentalist], in Abraham, Avi HaMaaminim, ed. by Halamish, Kasher, and Silman, Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press 2002, pp. 311–30, see p. 315. 13 Ibid. 14 Yossef Ben Shlomo, Poetry of Being: Lectures on the Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, trans. by Shmuel Himelstein, Tel Aviv: MOD Books 1990, p. 28. For similar approach see Gershon Mamlak, “On the Integrity of Judaism,” in Essays on the Thought and Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 1991, pp. 156–67, see p. 156. 15 See Yossef Ben Shlomo, Poetry of Being: Lectures on the Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, p. 156. 16 Alexander Even Chen, ‫[ עקדת יצחק‬The Binding of Isaac: Mystical and Philosophical Interpretation of the Bible], Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot Books and Chemed Books 2006, pp. 170–200.

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compare Kierkegaard and Kook, and find similarities between their teachings, without claiming any direct influence of Kierkegaard on Kook. Yehuda Gellman (a Professor of philosophy of religion and Judaism at Ben Gurion University) has established strong links between their teachings.17 Gellman presents Kook’s interpretation as a synthesis of two opposing focal points. One is Hegelian: the supremacy and abstract nature of the philosophical truth in relation to religious truth. The second position is Kierkegaardian: identifying faith as a phenomenon that one can neither grasp nor know.18 Gellman examines Kook’s interpretation in light of these two poles: Hegel’s conscious truth, on the one hand, and Kierkegaard’s ground-breaking fervor of faith, on the other. Kook points to the binding as typical Hegelian deductive reasoning, in which a synthesis of both these first two poles is achieved. On the one hand, Jewish tradition, Kook included, says Gellman, describes the discovery of monotheism by Abraham as a clearly anti-pagan philosophical act.19 On the other hand, Kook points to the pagan past of Abraham in particular and the people of Israel in Egypt, as a positive moment in the course of the formation of Jewish faith. This tension is resolved, according to Gellman’s explanation, as follows: the act of binding is an event designed to find, in the framework of moral-monotheistic faith, a new course for positive religious fervor that is at the core of pagan practices.20 The religious (pagan) commitment, which knows no bounds,21 which is capable of driving a man to total commitment of desire of the spirit to the point of total self-denial, serves as an ideological end in the framework of the binding experience. Abraham’s awareness that this was indeed a moment that vastly surpassed any conventional spiritual-philosophical experience, is highlighted in Kook’s interpretation, according to Gellman’s analysis. Even scholars who are of the opinion that there is no resemblance whatsoever between Kook’s views and those of Kierkegaard do not hesitate to compare the two in order to distinguish between them. Avi Sagi (a Professor of Judaism and specialist in Kierkegaard and existentialism at Bar Ilan University) has noted the distinction between Kook and Kierkegaard’s approach, in which “the temptation of faith is completely constituted by religious disposition itself. It is not the act of God which creates temptation, but rather the fact that faith is the concern of the believer, and it is constituted in the framework of his concrete experience.”22 By contrast, Kook’s approach holds that “the temptation of faith is generated by the act of God himself. Gellman J. Yehuda, The Fear, the Trembling and the Fire: Kierkegaard and Hasidic Masters on the Binding of Isaac, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America 1994, pp. 99–120. 18 Ibid., p. 104. 19 Ibid., p. 105. 20 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ אורות האמונה‬Lights of Faith], ed. by Moshe Gurevich, Jerusalem: MeAlef VeAd Tav 1998, p. 77. 21 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ איגרות‬Letters], Jerusalem: all rights reserved by the family 1981, p. 43. 22 Avi Sagi, “‫[ ”האמונה כפיתוי‬Faith as Temptation], in Al HaEmuna, ed. by Moshe Halbertal, David Kurzweil, and Avraham Sagi, Jerusalem: Keter 2005, pp. 39–118, see p. 74. 17

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Nevertheless, God, who appears as a seducer, does so not in order to trip man up, but rather to train him in overcoming the temptation.”23 It should be apparent from these discussions that whether Kook was influenced by Kierkegaard directly, or did not know him at all, there is something about his teaching which calls for comparison between them. In other words, even if Kook had not in fact been influenced by Kierkegaard’s philosophy, contemporary scholars of his thought refer, as an integral part of their interpretation, to Kierkegaard’s position on Abraham in the binding of Isaac. The following section seeks to harmonize Kook’s position with relevant Kierkegaardian concepts. III. The general interpretation of Kook’s proximity to Kierkegaard’s views focuses here on the figure of Abraham. At the binding of his beloved son, Abraham, the father of believers, is considered by both Kierkegaard and Kook as a paradigm for the highest level of faith. It is in that sense that focusing on their views also serves to show their thought on the wider subject of faith. Kook’s view is presented here in accordance with Kierkegaard’s leading concepts, mainly from Fear and Trembling: A. Actuality and Individuality, B. Eternity and Relativity, C. The Knight of Faith (Volitionalism and Imaginary Construction), D. The Absolute Relation to the Absolute (Suspension of the Ethical and Love). These concepts present mutual themes in Kierkegaard and Kook for the understanding and analysis of Abraham, the individual of faith, who also embodies faith in itself. A. Actuality and Individuality Kierkegaard views actuality as the becoming of things, in particular with the individual’s relationship to the actual world. It contains conceptual material about life and existence, according to which the individual conducts his life. This individual’s goal is to be a spiritual being, which entails fulfillment of his unique individuality. Anything that points the individual in an opposite direction is condemned.24 Kierkegaard’s understanding of Abraham, through Johannes de silentio, is to be achieved by entering his innermost private choices, which attest to his being an individual.25 Kook didactically presents Abraham as an individual, whose divine call enables him to expose his innermost self. Abraham’s individuality is revealed in the binding of Isaac through his willful actions, where “All things, wants, and ambitions related to his privacy have been revealed for all their stupendous heroism and vastness, so much so, that he is able to discover the willful, free character of this giant of our world.”26 The divine call is the very thing which enables Abraham to focus all the Ibid. SKS 4, 274 / PF, 74. Pap. IV B 1, 111–12 / JC, 124–5. 25 SKS 4, 180–1 / FT, 91. SKS 4, 197–8 / FT, 109. 26 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ עולת ראי”ה‬Commentary on the Prayer Book], Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook 1985, p. 85. Kook’s interpretation of the binding of Isaac in Olat Raiyah 23 24

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powers of his soul in deep introspection, and “no natural power of attraction could deepen this…in the very depth of the innermost soul, at this very depth of depths to feel and sense all the stupendous feelings hidden in the nature of man.”27 Abraham has succeeded in reaching this highest degree of introspection possible, and this explains his ability to say “here I am,” to answer the divine call as a whole man, aware of his innermost self. Abraham thereby attests to himself as someone who had peeled off all the layers of defense, and “naked” faces himself and God. B. Eternity and Relativity For Kierkegaard, existence posits two qualitatively different spheres: eternity and time. The existing human being is hence a synthesis of the eternal and the temporal by having these spheres in him. Time is viewed by Kierkegaard as the infinite succession of discrete moments, while eternity stands for the realm of God, absolutely transcending temporality. Situated in the temporal, the individual can relate to the realm of the eternal by using each temporal moment in striving to develop the potentiality of the eternal or spiritual self, through the choices he makes.28 Kook presents the synthesis in a human being between the eternal and the relative by referring to Abraham’s ethics not strictly from the human point of view, but also from an eternal point of view. Kook’s dialectical perception of Abraham’s development in the binding points out that Abraham went through a mystical experience at Mount Moriah, which had enabled him to rise above conventional ethical norms. This development comes into play through his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. This terrible experience had given Abraham the strength to return to the material world, now able to view the world from a divine perspective, as the laws of ethics and the definitions of good and evil take on a new, divine, meaning.29 From the human point of view, the contrasts between Abraham’s acts in the binding and laws of human ethics continue to exist, but from the divine perspective, they come together. Kook describes both as a matter of experience and of intellectual theory, a movement stemming from the sense of opposites on the one hand, to the sense of ecstasy, on the other, which merges at the highest level.30 The synthesis, the ultimate goal of the binding, calls for adopting the fervor of faith (Kierkegaard’s religiousness A) without relinquishing intellectual and ethical religious consciousness. Abraham’s pagan biography, according to Kook, which aims to enable the worshiper to comprehend the meaning of the prayer out of the purest form of worship, which is the binding. The emphasis here is on Kook’s position as didactic, as one which explains Abraham’s character not as an actual, real, person, but rather as a theoretical model, designed to instill a particular religious precept, for example, that the greatness of Abraham is his abolishment of the sacrifice of sons, and human sacrifice in general. 27 Ibid. 28 See SKS 11, 129 / SUD, 13. SKS 11, 145 / SUD, 29. SKS 11, 158 / SUD, 43. SKS 7, 370–1 / CUP1, 407. 29 Rosenak, ”‫[ “הרב קוק כפונדמנטליסט הלכתי‬Rabbi Kook as a Halachaic Fundamentalist], p. 317. 30 Ibid., p. 318.

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is familiar with pagan fervor of faith, coincides with the philosophical power of abstraction and a balanced ethical position. The call “Do not lay a hand on the boy”31 is a new synthetic religious command, in which there is no contrast between Abraham’s fatherly love for his son, and his love of God. Abraham going up the mountain is nothing like Abraham making his way down. The latter, as one who firmly thinks the life of this world must be abandoned for the sake of God’s love, returns with a coherent perspective.32 The position which rises above the worldly contrasts and overcomes them is referred to in Kook’s thought as “the unity of opposites,”33 a unity attained by adopting the divine perspective. Abraham attained redemption through his dedication to self-attention, and his encounter with eternity takes place when he is capable of going deep into his soul, for it is soul which has the spark of God.34 When Abraham exposes himself, God is also exposed. C. The Knight of Faith (Volitionalism and Imaginary Construction) In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard calls the person of faith a “knight.” The knight of faith is first and foremost an individual, and only as an individual will he meet up with God. Kierkegaard acknowledges Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac as signifying Abraham’s achieving a sense of selfhood not defined by family status, social or ethical categories.35 Abraham, “the knight of faith,” attained the highest depth of self in the binding. Kierkegaard is aware of the paradox that arises when one tries to understand Abraham’s innermost self from the outside, attributing to him free will in an absurd situation, and he bases his assertions about Abraham’s internal state of affairs on his imagination. Kierkegaard emphasized the singularity of the knight of faith, whilst the term “knight” also denoted an envoy, tasked with a goal and answerable to a higher power. Kook explains Abraham in the binding as an envoy, charged with the purpose of elevating the entire world spiritually. Abraham grapples with an experience which would lead not only to his ascension, or the ascension of the People of Israel, but rather of all created beings. A rebellion against polytheism, for all its paganism and moral corruption, is to serve as a model for the whole world.36 Nevertheless, Abraham is the single person to be given this experience, this test. In his complete and utter devotion to God, he also exposes his innermost self. Kook notes that Abraham is not alone. Abraham’s passing this test does not turn him into a loner, according to Kook, since Isaac has become his full partner in searching for the face of God. Abraham and Isaac are turned into partners since Genesis 22:12. See Yehuda, The Fear, the Trembling and the Fire: Kierkegaard and Hasidic Masters on the Binding of Isaac, pp. 99–120, see p. 115. 33 Rosenak “‫”הרב קוק כפונדמנטליסט הלכתי‬, [Rabbi Kook as a Halachaic Fundamentalist], p. 315. 34 Yossef Ben Shlomo, Poetry of Being: Lectures on the Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, p. 128. 35 SKS 4, 133–6 / FT, 38–41. SKS 4, 166–7 / FT, 75. 36 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ אורות‬Lights], Jerusalem: Mosad HaRav Kook 1950, p. 104. 31 32

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they share a “unity of will and unity of knowledge.”37 They march together towards God, knowing where they are headed.38 The partnership is in Abraham confiding with Isaac the secret of faith hidden in his soul, his enormous enthusiasm. Isaac’s question, “where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”39 attests to his willingness to play his part in the sacrifice to the fullest. Kook describes Abraham as someone in the flurry of love and excitement of a father about to bind his son in complete volition, absolutely freely, and in the sheer desire to express his innermost self, synonymous with sacrificing his own son.40 Despite the unity of wills between them, Abraham bound Isaac “as though this was against his will,”41 for the act of binding is part of the experience. With respect to the topic of volitionalism, Kierkegaard’s perception of Abraham as “the knight of faith” highlights Abraham’s full grasp of his own volition.42 Indirect volitionalism is the view that some beliefs arise indirectly, as consequences of other actions that are themselves directly willed, while direct volitionalism is the position that one can acquire beliefs directly, simply by willing to believe certain propositions, having a full knowledge and understanding of one’s will.43 Kook’s general method is voluntaristic, and according to it man is not free in this world, since it is God’s will which operates in the universe and in human history alike, hidden and apparent in the thought of any person, as in the laws of nature. Given that the will is essentially divine, not only does it limit human will, but it also makes it impossible to grasp this will rationally, since “free will has its limits.”44 Hence, Abraham is limited in his ability to know his own will and even act freely regarding it. Seemingly this is in sharp contrast with Kierkegaard’s perception of Abraham’s belief, but this is not the case at all. That which is perceived as attesting to freedom of choice is the product of a multifaceted system of causes of which man is unaware.45 Freedom is but an illusion in a reality of deterministic causality. For Kook, the experience of the binding teaches that each act takes on its value from its reference and link to God. Yet, belief must be based on reasonable understanding, so much so that in the link between man’s mind and religious fervor lies the life force of the supreme.46 The purpose of testing Abraham was to make him aspire to break free from all human bonds in order to find himself. In this context, God’s will is to penetrate the world and influence it through Abraham, and Abraham must bring himself to Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ עולת ראי”ה‬Commentary on the Prayer Book], p. 90. Alexander Even Chen, ‫[ עקדת יצחק‬The Binding of Isaac: Mystical and Philosophical Interpretation of the Bible], Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot Books and Chemed Books 2006, p. 193. 39 Genesis 22:6. 40 Rosenak, ”‫[ “הרב קוק כפונדמנטליסט הלכתי‬Rabbi Kook as a Halachaic Fundamentalist], p. 330. 41 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ עולת ראי”ה‬Commentary on the Prayer Book], p. 91. 42 Pap. I A 36 / JP 2, 1094. Pap. I A 44 / JP 2, 1095. SKS 25, 100–1, NB26:103 / JP 2, 1272. Pap. XI-2 A 436 / JP 6, 6966. Pap. IV B 3 / FT, Supplement, p. 249. 43 SKS 11, 206–7 / SUD, 94. 44 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ עולת ראי”ה‬Commentary on the Prayer Book], p. 85. 45 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ אורות הקודש‬Lights of Holiness], p. 201. 46 Ibid. 37 38

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equating his will with God’s by relinquishing his own private will.47 Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice that which was most precious to him is the epitome of equating his will with God’s: “for this purpose, he was filled with absolute free will, unrelated to any internal or external necessity, so that his independent innermost self would appear here with all stern pride.”48 Abraham, who was willing to sacrifice this world, surpasses the boundaries of human will and exposes the absolute volition. With respect to the theme of imaginary construction, in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, the imagination, where imaginary structures of conscious are shaped, coordinated with thoughts and with emotions, is likened to wings given unto humans so they may uplift themselves.49 Abraham’s innermost self is hidden from everyone else. The onlookers’ ability to determine anything concerning it, for example, that Abraham is being driven by free will and by virtue of the absurd, is not a speculation of the mind, but rather a construction of the imagination. This construct is held at all times to be imaginary, and yet it is also perceived as the greatest approximation of reality at the same time.50 According to Kook, the power of imagination is the very thing that brings man closer to God: the power of imagination is an “eye” capable of exposing that which is hidden from intelligence…the treasure of imagination holds all that is true…we are invited to put on an appearance in the light of our imagination…our rational mind is but a junior student…in the valor of imagination…we tower high above, and it unites with the supreme mind.51

The power of imagination, and not a degree of mental perfection, enables Abraham to rise above the limitations of the finite towards unity with the divine mind. The power of imagination is not to be feared, for imagination is rooted in holiness.52 Fear is the enemy of complete religious experience, to which the man of faith in Kook’s eyes aspires. Abraham is the example of a believer who does not fear the unknown, and devotes himself to realizing God’s will. By the power of imagination, Abraham’s soul “knows” without having to resort to human systems of logic, and the source of this knowledge is “divine grace,” that is, God, who bestows Jacob Filber, ‫[ כוכבי אור‬Stars of Light], Jerusalem: Research Institute for the Thought of Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook 1993, pp. 34–6. 48 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ עולת ראי”ה‬Commentary on the Prayer Book], p. 85. 49 SKS 7, 239–40 / CUP1, 263–4. SKS 7, 329 / CUP1, 361. Kierkegaard distinguishes between the product of imagination and the fantastic, and sees imagination as the proper medium for the process of infinity. Imagination is the possibility of any reflection, and the intense nature of this medium alludes to the possibility of experiencing the self in an intensive way (SKS 11, 146–7 / SUD, 30–1). The importance of imagination also lies in its ability to conceptualize religious experience and to illustrate it, in that the imagined construct enables the discussion of the theoretical without stumbling into the failure of false conclusion which by necessity infers that the hypothesis is real (SKS 7, 463–4 / CUP1, 511–12). 50 SKS 7, 336–7 / CUP1, 369–70. 51 Abraham Isaac Kook, “The Supreme Imagination” in his ‫[ אורות הקודש‬Lights of Holiness], p. 223. 52 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ עולת ראי”ה‬Commentary on the Prayer Book], p. 232. 47

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on man’s imagination intuitive sensory knowledge. The strong link between the power of imagination and prophecy is also anchored in this perception of Kook. D. The Absolute Relation to the Absolute (Suspension of the Ethical and Love) For Kierkegaard, the believer’s absolute relation to God is expressed as selfreflection directed towards God. In order to engage in a relationship with God, the believer must relinquish his egocentrism and “die” to the world. Whilst the absolute represents a perfection which is not man (for vis-à-vis this perfection, man perceives himself as partial, finite, etc.), the absolute relation to the absolute expresses maximal approximation between man and God.53 To reach an absolute relation to the absolute in his innermost self, the Kierkegaardian Abraham posits himself as an individual higher than the universal.54 Abraham’s spiritual ascension, by freeing his bonds to society and ethics, reveals his innermost self. Only as an individual with an independent identity does Abraham relate absolutely to the absolute God. In doing so, as explained later on, Abraham’s innermost self is a self of love.55 In Kierkegaard, the absolute relation to the absolute is achieved following the suspension of the ethical and is understood as love.56 Kierkegaard’s argument reveals a dialectical relation between the fear of God and love for God, in that Abraham’s relation to God is ultimately understood not as fear but rather as love. Kook’s Abraham, who is free of any social constraints, encounters God, who is absolutely free. This encounter is the climax of the process of spiritual elation, consisting of crucial points which train Abraham towards his absolute encounter with God.57 For instance, after “Take your son,”58 Abraham gains the rest of the soul, SKS 4, 150 / FT, 56. SKS 4, 162 / FT, 70. SKS 4, 171 / FT, 81. SKS 7, 374–7 / CUP1, 412–14. 54 SKS 4, 149–50 / FT, 55–6. 55 SKS 4, 165 / FT, 74. 56 SKS 4, 158–9 / FT, 66–7. 57 It is interesting to note in this context, that in mystical symbolism, the point at which the human soul encounters the absolute God, is symbolized as the “nothing.” At its height, the experience of mystic certainty is ultimately listening to the silence of divine nothing. Here, not only does speech go silent, but the soul itself is in “thought silence,” which comes together with “divine silence.” Kook clarifies that when man attains this level, he recognizes himself as devoid of his innermost self, living a general life, life in the whole, and feels he is living the life of the whole in its entirety, and the whole of existence is elevated with him to its very source. Therefore, it is no longer theoretical knowledge, but rather an existential state of personality as a whole, for knowledge comes together with life. All that man does in this state can be said to be a “real” act, i.e., authentic, in that he lives truth rather than thinks it. This also applies to thought of God, since having to think about God is but a stage en route to life with God. Here appears the paradox of any mystical teaching, such as Kook’s: the ultimate end of the whole method is to reach its own annulment as a theoretical mystical teaching, thereby becoming a part of life, by leading man to the ultimate elation, where there would be no need to think about the divinity, for life itself is the light of God. See Yossef Ben Shlomo, Poetry of Being: Lectures on the Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, p. 35. 58 Genesis 22:2.

53

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and on that very night, he gains spiritual ascension, in which his soul is freed from all the troubles of the day. This was a trying night for Abraham, but he did not go to bed gripped with terror and fear, but rather, he rose early and acted just as he was commanded. Kook talks about the rest of the soul, for he thinks that Abraham was convinced that the voice he had heard, which had demanded the sacrifice of Isaac, was the voice of God, and in the immense experience, there was no room for doubts and hesitations, “and no feeling of dullness of untidiness or depression merged with the flurry of his purified soul.”59 Kierkegaard uses the binding of Isaac as a parable about the suspension of the ethical, a subjective condition of self, in which Abraham achieves a sense of self as an individual. It should be noted that this self-definition does not require an actual violation of the ethical. Kierkegaard’s “knight of faith” is not defined by the ethical. Instead, he enters into a relationship with the ethical, in which the ethical must be “suspended” in the sense that ordinarily striving to be an individual is a violation of the ethical. Abraham’s success in suspending the ethical is viewed as a necessary condition towards realizing an absolute relation to the absolute.60 Kook explains that in the command to sacrifice his own son Abraham was required to break away from all the ethical norms he knows so well. Abraham spoke to God in the name of justice and ethics on the eve of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra, but now God shakes the very foundations of Abraham’s perspective and world with the command to sacrifice Isaac. This kind of shake-up can only be meted out by God himself. When it came to Sodom and Gomorra, Abraham could argue with God, for he had assumed they shared a common ground, when he said unto God, “Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right.”61 In the command to sacrifice Isaac, this premise was refuted, and God was revealed to be not bound to the norms of human ethics and justice. Kook explains that God is the one who commands the sacrifice, whereas the angel of God, rather than God himself, calls unto Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac. The reason for this is that God is revealed to Abraham as posited above human ethics, while the angel returns Abraham into this world, back to the ethical norms which had guided him prior to the binding.62 Kook regards Abraham returning from the binding as transformed: “Indeed, now that the test is over, the soul with all the valor of its holiness came out mighty and Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ עולת ראי”ה‬Commentary on the Prayer Book], p. 86. SKS 4, 150–8 / FT, 56–66. SKS 7, 242–3 / CUP1, 267. 61 Genesis 18:25. 62 In Zvi Yaron, ‫[ משנתו של הרב קוק‬The Philosophy of Rabbi Kook], Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization 1974, p. 55, Kierkegaard’s and Kook’s views are contrasted concerning the suspending of the ethical. According to Yaron, the story of the binding is perceived by Kook as an attempt designed to teach about the duty to hone faith, and that religious fervor need not be savage and brutal. Yaron contrasts it with Kierkegaard’s view in Fear and Trembling. In my opinion, Yaron’s analysis lacks sufficient understanding of Kierkegaard’s position, in that he explains God’s intention in the framework of its ethical context, a position Kierkegaard does not refer to at all, and he also misses Kierkegaard’s notion that any person could be “a knight of faith” (SKS 4, 167 / FT, 75). 59 60

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185

pure.”63 Abraham now has the strength to embrace the God of truth with all his more internal and mightier being. For now, Abraham has uncovered his own innermost self and the image of God within him. The binding of Isaac was therefore necessary to teach Abraham to internalize the absolute divine concepts of justice. This is by no means a contradiction between divine justice and human justice, but rather a suspension of the ethical, not the abolishment thereof. The Abraham of the binding reveals that, ultimately, there is no contradiction between God’s love and human love, and in the love of Isaac the love of God is realized. With regard to the concept of love, Kierkegaard explains Abraham’s absolute relation to the absolute, through his renunciation of temporality. Yet, Abraham can participate in the world and its relationships in an unselfish manner, and his love in its highest expression is altruistic.64 According to Kook, at the point of the raising of the knife, God’s love fills Abraham’s being, the being who broke free from all his bonds and even from the limitations of human love.65 Abraham was entirely liberated from the limitations of this world and attained a level of strength liberated from the limitations of matter. At this stage, according to Kook, the soul of Isaac was also liberated, and their two souls reached the pinnacle of their union. The act of binding itself expresses complete and supreme devotion and love towards God.66 The love of Abraham illuminated the limited world with divine light. The special thing about this love is its deep relation to awe.67 Awe, which is normally perceived as the opposite of love, takes on a dimension of depth. Superficial awe is opposed to love, whereas Abraham’s awe is one in whose power man’s own self may be strengthened rather than undermined. Worship due to awe is merely realizing commands by way of duty, whereas worship from love is the desire to do something above and beyond what is required. Abraham performs above and beyond the letter of the command, thereby revealing his feeling that this is a holy charge before him.68 Abraham’s love of God is seemingly greater than his awe of God, but at the end of the experience, Abraham is told, “Now I know that you fear God,”69 which means that Abraham is recognized for his awe, rather than for his love. Kook’s explanation refers to several degrees of awe, with the pure awe of Abraham’s love representing a level of supreme awe, above any emotion, which has the power to purify natural love. At this level, there is no clash between his love for God and for his son, and Abraham even learns that his love for his son is not separate from divine love, and that it is its direct, concise, consequence.70 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ עולת ראי”ה‬Commentary on the Prayer Book], p. 92. SKS 4, 113 / FT, 16. SKS 4, 162 / FT, 70. SKS 9, 11 / WL, 3. 65 Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫ [ עולת ראי”ה‬Commentary on the Prayer Book], p. 92. 66 Ibid., p. 84. 67 Ibid., p. 93. 68 Jacob Filber, ‫[ כוכבי אור‬Stars of Light], p. 42. 69 Genesis 22:12. 70 Kook explains Abraham’s awe as love: “Now I know that you fear God, not merely love, for without the sense of supreme awe, filled with supreme truth most pure, but also in awe of God, that your love, wonderful and naïve, was appended and made pure by the light of pure awe, and thy love for thy son is without any blemish on its impurity.” See 63 64

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In conclusion, Kook’s view of faith of awe and love, embedded in Abraham’s divine silence in the binding of Isaac, exhibits definite similarities to Kierkegaard’s view of faith. The fact that Kierkegaard chooses to present the discussion of Abraham under the title Fear and Trembling,71 attests to an understanding of Abraham’s awe in correlation with his love. Being a believer, Abraham is a synthesis of the invisible world of faith and the earthly world, and is therefore blessed.72 But it is the non-contradiction between awe and love for God that enables and, in a sense, is Abraham’s love for his son. In the end of his experience, Abraham as well as Isaac are both believers in God, bound together by their love.73

Abraham Isaac Kook, ‫[ עולת ראי”ה‬Commentary on the Prayer Book], p. 93. Shalom Carmy concludes that Kook’s conception of “awe” is almost similar to that of Kierkegaard’s. See Shalom Carmy, “On Knowledge,” in Essays on the Thought and Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 1991, pp. 101–13, see pp. 105–6. 71 Philippians 2:12. 72 “Blessed is the believer, he believes what he cannot see; blessed is the one who loves, he believes away that which he indeed can see!” See SKS 9, 292 / WL, 295. 73 “If two people are to love each other in sincere faith, is it not simply necessary that honesty before God must first be present in each individual?” See SKS 9, 152 / WL, 151.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Kook’s Corpus None. II. Sources of Kook’s Knowledge of Kierkegaard Undetermined. III. Secondary Literature on Kook’s Relation to Kierkegaard Ben Shlomo, Yosef, Poetry of Being: Lectures on the Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, trans. by Shmuel Himelstein, Tel Aviv: MOD books 1990. Carmy, Shalom, “On Knowledge,” in Essays on the Thought and Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 1991, pp. 101–13. Gellman, J. Yehuda, The Fear, the Trembling and the Fire: Kierkegaard and Hasidic Masters on the Binding of Isaac, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America 1994. Ish-Shalom, Benjamin, Rav Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook: Between Rationalism and Mysticism, trans. by Ora Wiskind Elper, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press 1993. Mamlak, Gershon, “On the Integrity of Judaism,” in Essays on the Thought and Philosophy of Rabbi Kook, Rutherford:  Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 1991, pp. 156–67. Rotenstreich, Nathan, Essays in Jewish Philosophy in the Modern Era, Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben 1996. ‫מסות‬ :‫ בתוך אנשים ודרכים‬,“‫ ”תורת ההתפתחות במשנתו של הרב קוק‬,.‫ שמואל ה‬,‫ברגמן‬ .‫ מוסד ביאליק תשכ“ז‬:‫ ירושלים‬,‫[ פילוסופיות‬Bergman, Shmuel H., “Torat HaHitpathut BeMishnato Shel HaRav Kook” [“Theory of Development in Rav Kook’s Thought”], in Anashim VeDrachim, Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik 1967.] .‫ מוסד הרב קוק תשמ“ה‬:‫ ירושלים‬,‫ ”הקדמה“ בתוך אורות הקודש‬,‫ דוד‬,‫[ כהן‬Cohen, David, “Hakdama” [Introduction], in Orot HaKodesh, Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook 1985.]

:‫ תל אביב‬,‫ בפרשנות המיסטית והפילוסופית של המקרא‬,‫ עקדת יצחק‬,‫ אלכסנדר‬,‫חן‬-‫אבן‬

.2006 ‫[ ידיעות אחרונות ספרי חמד‬Even-Chen, Alexander, Akedat Yizhak [The Binding of Isaac: Mystical and Philosophical Interpretation of the Bible], Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot Books and Chemed Books 2006.]

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:‫ ירושלים‬,‫ עיונים במשנת רבינו אברהם יצחק הכהן קוק זצ“ל‬:‫ כוכבי אור‬,‫ יעקב‬.‫ ה‬,‫פילבר‬ .‫תשנ“ג‬  ‫[ המכון לחקר משנת הראי”ה‬Filber, H. Jacob, Kohavei Or [Stars of Light], Jerusalem: Research Institute for the Thought of Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook 1993.] :‫ רב סולובייצ’יק“ בתוך‬,‫ רב קוק‬,‫ קירקגור‬:‫ ”שלוש גישות כלפי העקדה‬,‫ הלוי‬,‫ אהרון‬,‫פיצניק‬ .710–709 ‫ עמ‬,1970 , ‫[ הדואר‬Fitznik, Aharon, Halevi, “Three Approaches toward the Akedah: Kierkegaard, Rav Kook, Rav Soloveichik,” Hado’ar periodical, 1970, pp. 709–10.] ‫ הגותו של‬:‫ יובל אורות‬:‫ ”זיקתו של הרב קוק למחשבה האירופאית“ בתוך‬,‫ אליעזר‬,‫גולדמן‬ :‫ ירושלים‬,‫ שלום רוזנברג‬,‫ עורכים בנימין איש שלום‬,‫הרב אברהם יצחק הכהן קוק‬ .‫ המחלקה לחנוך ולתרבות תורניים בגולה תשמ“ה‬,‫[ ההסתדרות הציונית העולמית‬Goldman, Eliezer, “Zikato Shel HaRav Kook LaMahshava HaEropeyit” [Rabbi Kook’s Involvement with Europian Philosophy], in Youvel Orot, ed. by Benjamin IshShalom and Shalom Rosenberg, Jerusalem: HaHistadrut HaZionit HaOlamit 1985.] ,‫ מחקרי ירושלים במחשבת ישראל‬:‫ ”בין הרב קוק לשפינוזה וגתה“ בתוך‬,‫ בנימין‬,‫שלום‬-‫איש‬ .‫ תשמ“ו‬,13 ‫ כרך‬,‫ האוניברסיטה העברית‬,‫ הוצאת ספרים ע“ש י“ל מאגנס‬:‫ירושלים‬ [Ish-Shalom, Benjamin, “Bein HaRav Kook LeSpinoza VeGoethe” [Between Kook, Spinoza and Goethe], in Mehkarei Yerushalaim BeMahshevet Israel, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press 1996.] :‫ ירושלים‬,‫ עורך שלמה חיים הכהן אבינר‬,‫ שיחות‬:‫ ”בראשית“ בתוך‬,‫ הכהן‬,‫ יהודה‬,‫ צבי‬,‫קוק‬ .‫[ כל זכויות שמורות למשפחה תשנ“ג‬Kook, Zvi, Yehuda, HaCohen, Sihot [Conversations of Rav Zvi Yehuda: Genesis], ed. by Shlomo Haim Hacohen Aviner, Jerusalem: all rights reserved by the family 1993.] :‫ ”הרב קוק כפונדמנטליסט הלכתי לאור יחסו לאברהם ול‘אבות‘“ בתוך‬,‫ אבינועם‬,‫רוזנק‬ ‫ רמת‬,‫ כשר וסילמן‬,‫ עורכים חלמיש‬,‫ דמותו בראי ההגות לדורותיה‬:‫אברהם אבי המאמינים‬ .330–311 ‘‫ עמ‬,‫אילן תשס“ב‬-‫ הוצאת אוניברסיטת בר‬:‫[ גן‬Rosenak, Avinoam, “HaRav Kook KeFundamentalist Hilchati” [Rabbi Kook as a Halachaic Fundamentalist], in Abraham, Avi HaMaaminim, ed. by Halamish, Kasher, and Silman, Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press 2002, pp. 311–30.] ‫ עיונים במושג האמונה ובתולדותיו‬:‫ על האמונה‬:‫ ”האמונה כפיתוי“ בתוך‬,‫ אבי‬,‫שגיא‬ ,‫ כתר‬:‫ ירושלים‬,‫ דוד קורצווייל ואבי שגיא‬,‫ משה הלברטל‬:‫ עורכים‬,‫במסורת היהודית‬ .118–39 ’‫ עמ‬,‫[ תשס“ה‬Sagi, Avi, “HaEmuna KePituy” [Faith as Temptation], in Al HaEmuna, ed. by Moshe Halbertal, David Kurzweil, and Avraham Sagi, Jerusalem: Keter 2005, pp. 39–118.] ,‫ המחלקה לחינוך ולתרבות תורניים בגולה‬:‫ ירושלים‬,‫ מישנתו של הרב קוק‬,‫ צבי‬,‫ירון‬ ‫[ ההסתדרות הציונית העולמית תשל“ד‬Yaron, Zvi, Mishnato Shel HaRav Kook [The Philosophy of Rabbi Kook], Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization 1974.]

J.B. Soloveitchik: Between Neo-Kantianism and Kierkegaardian Existentialism David D. Possen

Twice every autumn, in the Orthodox Jewish rite, the story of the akedah (the “binding” of Isaac by Abraham) is read publicly in the synagogue. On such days the rabbi typically devotes his sermon to that tale and its lessons of faith. And here is a curious fact. If the synagogue in question is in North America; if it belongs to the “Modern,” or comparatively liberal, wing of Orthodox Judaism; and if the rabbi is a product of New York City’s Yeshiva University—then odds are high that the rabbi will mention Kierkegaard in his sermon. He may even make detailed reference to the portrait of Abraham in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. This fact should give us pause. Orthodox Jewish sermons do not, as a rule, concern themselves with Christian theologians. Kierkegaard is the exception. Why? The answer is historical. It happens that the late Rabbi Dr. Joseph Baer Soloveitchik (1903–93) of Yeshiva University, long regarded as the leader of Modern Orthodox Judaism in North America,1 had a penchant for citing Kierkegaard. It may even be said that Soloveitchik made Kierkegaard safe for the Modern Orthodox pulpit. This article examines the roots of this phenomenon. After presenting a brief biography of Soloveitchik (Section I) and survey of the Kierkegaard references

I thank Peter Brickey LeQuire, Emily Levine, and Aaron Tugendhaft for their comments on a draft of this article. 1 See, for example, the editors’ introduction to J.B. Soloveitchik, “Confrontation,” Tradition, vol. 6, no. 2, 1964, pp. 5–29, see p. 5: “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik…is the acknowledged intellectual leader of and spokesman for halakhic [i.e., Orthodox] Judaism.” A mark of Soloveitchik’s authority is that he often was (and still is, in some contexts) referred to as simply “the Rav,” that is, the Rabbi par excellence. For a broader glimpse of Soloveitchik’s role in American Jewish life, see David Singer and Moshe Sokol, “Joseph Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” Modern Judaism, vol. 2, 1982, pp. 227–72, see p. 228: “The key factor here is the willingness of modern Orthodox rabbis to work on a cooperative basis with their Conservative and Reform colleagues, something the Orthodox traditionalists resolutely refuse to do. Since Soloveitchik is the acknowledged leader of the former, the etiquette of Jewish ecumenism has dictated that he be elevated to the position of leading ‘official’ spokesman for all of American Jewry.”

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in his main published writings (Section II),2 I offer a summary assessment of Soloveitchik’s interest in Kierkegaard, and of the implications of that interest for his philosophy, theology, and Jewish apologetics (Section III). What Soloveitchik found attractive in Kierkegaard, I explain, is precisely what he thought lacking in the neo-Kantian epistemology of Hermann Cohen (1842–1918). Following Kant, Cohen held that any inquiry into the ultimate nature of reality must model its method on mathematics and the natural sciences. Cohen had little patience for the epistemological claims and methods of the Geisteswissenschaften or religious faith. This view struck Soloveitchik as narrow and confining. It moved him to embrace Kierkegaard’s contrary insistence that faith be accorded its rights as a lifelong task that we cannot “go beyond.”3 In this Soloveitchik was not alone. As Peter Eli Gordon has documented, a wave of Jewish intellectuals in 1920s Germany—most prominently Franz Rosenzweig (1887–1929), following Martin Buber (1878–1965)—turned to Kierkegaard, and to what would later be called “existentialism,” upon growing disillusioned with Cohen and neo-Kantianism as models of “Jewish” philosophy.4 But Soloveitchik was not merely a member of that wave. His thought is distinguished by its synthetic ambition. Soloveitchik’s writings assert a stance of moderation between Cohen and Kierkegaard, between neo-Kantianism and Kierkegaardian existentialism. He calls for an “epistemological pluralism” that would ascribe legitimacy to the methods and knowledge-claims of religious faith alongside those of mathematics and physics.5 This synthetic ambition colors and constrains Soloveitchik’s embrace of Kierkegaard. It leads him to appropriate Kierkegaard’s thought in a way that sharply limits its potency. As I show below, while Soloveitchik borrows tropes and concepts from Kierkegaard freely, he insists that Kierkegaard does not himself employ those tropes and concepts properly. And as I suggest in closing, it is precisely in this way— precisely by using Kierkegaard as both model and foil—that Soloveitchik can be said to have domesticated Kierkegaard for use in the sermons and seminaries of Modern Orthodox Judaism. I conclude by exploring the implications of my analysis for the puzzle that continues to cloud Soloveitchik’s legacy. Namely, throughout his writings, Soloveitchik describes “halakhic” life (life lived according to halakhah,6 or traditional Jewish law) as a synthesis of two opposed models of religiosity: one (roughly 2 While it would be of enormous value to expand this study to take account of unpublished, implicit, and ambiguous references to Kierkegaard in Soloveitchik’s work, considerations of length have made it impossible for me to do so here. 3 See, for example, SKS 4, 102 / FT, 7. 4 See Peter Eli Gordon, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy, Berkeley, California: University of California Press 2003, pp. 51–81. For details on Rosenzweig’s reception of Kierkegaard, see Claudia Welz, “Franz Rosenzweig: A Kindred Spirit in Alignment with Kierkegaard,” in Kierkegaard and Existentialism, ed. by Jon Stewart, Aldershot: Ashgate 2011 (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 9), pp. 299–322. 5 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind: An Essay on Jewish Tradition and Modern Thought, Ardmore, Pennsylvania: Seth Press 1986, p. 16. 6 From this point on I will stop italicizing halakhah and its derivative adjective halakhic.

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speaking) neo-Kantian, and one Kierkegaardian and existentialist. The puzzle is to determine which of these poles, if either, predominates in that synthesis. In one of Soloveitchik’s books, Halakhic Man, an austere, quasi-mathematical legalism seems to prevail. Yet in other writings—especially The Lonely Man of Faith—he depicts halakhic life as a quasi-Kierkegaardian embrace of the “absurd.”7 Can these texts and accounts be reconciled? I offer a new argument to the effect that they can, and that the Kierkegaardian and existentialist model of halakhic life does ultimately predominate in Soloveitchik’s thought. This requires that we read Halakhic Man as a book influenced in form, and not just in content, by Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. In the latter book, Johannes de silentio’s abortive attempt to think his way into Abrahamic faith challenges his readers to adopt faith as their lifelong existential task.8 My interpretive claim here is that a similar movement is afoot in Halakhic Man. On my account, Halakhic Man’s extreme effort to liken halakhah to mathematical and natural-scientific cognition in fact serves to confirm— as the provocative exception that proves the rule—the broadly existentialist thrust of Soloveitchik’s apologia for halakhic Judaism. I. Life I begin with a sketch of Soloveitchik’s remarkable education. On the back flap of his 1932 Ph.D. dissertation,9 Soloveitchik published the following brief intellectual autobiography: I, Josef Solowiejczyk, was born in Pruzana on February 27, 1903. After graduating from Gymnasium in 1922, I entered the Free Polish University in 1924, where I studied political science. In 1926 I came to Berlin and began my course of study at the [Friedrich-Wilhelms] University. After completing the supplementary examinations set by the Ministry of Education, I matriculated as a student in full standing. I then devoted myself to the study of philosophy, political economy, and Semitics.10

Soloveitchik’s birthplace, then Prużana, Poland, is now Pruzhany, Belarus. He spent much of his childhood, however, far to the east in Khislavichi (near Smolensk,

Joseph Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, New York: Doubleday 1992, p. 95. See SKS 4, 102 / FT, 7. 9 Josef Solowiejczyk, Das reine Denken und die Seinskonstituierung bei Hermann Cohen, Berlin: Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität 1932. 10 Josef Solowiejczyk, Das reine Denken, p. 113, my translation. Here is the original text: “Ich, Josef Solowiejczyk, wurde geboren am 27. Februar 1903 zu Pruzana. Nach Absolvierung des Gymnasiums im Jahre 1922 bezog ich 1924 die Fr. Polnische Universität, wo ich Staatswissenschaften studierte. / Im Jahre 1926 kam ich nach Berlin und begann mein Studium an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. Nach Ablegung der Ergänzungsprüfungen, die das Ministerium für Volksbildung bestimmt hat, wurde ich vollimmatrikuliert und beschäftigte mich mit philosophischen, nationalökonomischen und orientalischen Studien.” 7 8

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Russia), where his father Moses Soloveichik11 (1879–1941) became town rabbi in 1913. Here young Joseph Baer was exposed to the Hasidism12 prevalent in the local Jewish population, even though his family strictly adhered to Mithnaggedic (antiHasidic) tradition.13 Soloveitchik’s family was in fact a Mithnaggedic rabbinical dynasty of wide renown. Moses Soloveichik traced his lineage to Hayyim of Volozhin (1749–1821), the star pupil of the “Sage of Vilna,” Elijah Zalman (1720–97), who is traditionally regarded as the founder of Mithnaggedism.14 Throughout the nineteenth century, the prestigious Mithnaggedic rabbinical seminaries of Volozhin and Brisk (now Valozhyn and Brest[-Litovsk], Belarus) were led almost continuously by descendants of Hayyim of Volozhin. Many of these bore the Soloveitchik name.15 As was standard for a Soloveitchik, the young Joseph Baer received a thorough grounding in Jewish texts and law, mainly via direct tutoring by his father.16 Yet Moses Soloveichik also encouraged his son to pursue secular studies,17 and would later take public pride in his son’s “mastery” of “both disciplines.”18 As the autobiographical outline above makes clear, Joseph Baer acquired a comprehensive Western secondary and post-secondary education.19 When Soloveitchik arrived at Berlin in 1926, he at first hoped to research the Platonist side of Maimonides, who is normally read as a staunch Aristotelian.20 Note the difference in spelling. Father and son Anglicized their names separately, as Moses Soloveichik emigrated to the United States in 1929, while J.B. Soloveitchik emigrated in 1932. 12 Hasidism, founded in the eighteenth century by Israel ben Eliezer Ba‘al Shem Tov (1698–1760), is a Jewish religious and social movement centered on mysticism, fervent religious practice, and idealized rabbinical personalities. Hasidism was opposed by the Mithnaggedic (literally “oppositional”) movement, of which more below. 13 For more on the young Soloveitchik’s exposure to Hasidism, see Aaron RakeffetRothkoff, The Rav: The World of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, vols. 1–3, Hoboken, New Jersey: KTAV Publishing House 1999, vol. 1, pp. 23–4 and pp. 255–6. 14 On this see Immanuel Etkes, The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image, Berkeley, California: University of California Press 2002, see especially pp. 73–95. 15 Starting with Hayyim of Volozhin’s great-grandson Yosef Dov Soloveitchik (1820– 92), rector of the yeshivah (seminary) of Volozhin, who was Joseph Baer Soloveitchik’s greatgrandfather and namesake. (The Yiddish name Baer, meaning “bear,” is equivalent to the Hebrew Dov.) 16 See Rakeffet-Rothkoff, The Rav, vol. 1, p. 24. 17 Cf. Shulamith Soloveitchik Meiselman, The Soloveitchik Heritage: A Daughter’s Memoir, Hoboken, New Jersey: KTAV Publishing House 1995, pp. 214–15. 18 See citation at Rakeffet-Rothkoff, The Rav, vol. 1, p. 69, note 11. 19 Members of the Soloveitchik family have recently stated that Joseph Baer did not actually attend the Gymnasium referred to in the sketch, which has been identified as that of Dubno (now in the Ukraine). On their account, Joseph Baer earned his high school diploma vicariously, with the help of private tutors. See Rakeffet-Rothkoff, The Rav, vol. 1, p. 68, note 9. 20 Aaron Lichtenstein, “Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik,” in Great Jewish Thinkers of the Twentieth Century, ed. by Simon Noveck, Clinton, Massachusetts: B’nai B’rith Books 1963, pp. 281–97, see p. 285. 11

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When that fell through, Soloveitchik changed his focus to the neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp (1854–1924), known as “Marburg School” neo-Kantianism. The resulting dissertation, which we will examine more closely in Section II below, is a sustained attack on Cohen’s epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science.21 The dissertation also takes account of contributions to neo-Kantian epistemology by both Natorp and Heinrich Maier (1876–1933), Soloveitchik’s supervisor.22 In 1929, while his son was still in Berlin, Moses Soloveichik was recruited to head New York City’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), the rabbinical school affiliated with Yeshiva University. Three years later, Joseph Baer, too, emigrated to the United States. He soon became the informal “chief rabbi” of Boston.23 In 1941, Joseph Baer succeeded his father as head of RIETS. He remained there until 1986, when Alzheimer’s disease forced him to retire. During his 45 years at Yeshiva University, Soloveitchik reportedly ordained more rabbis “than any other rabbi in Jewish history.”24 While Soloveitchik’s intellectual output was immense, he saw only a fraction of it through to publication in his lifetime.25 This is apparently in keeping with a Soloveitchik family tradition of “perfectionism.”26 Interestingly, many of the writings that Soloveitchik did publish are addressed to a public far broader than might be expected of an Orthodox rosh yeshivah [seminary head]. For example, The Lonely Man of Faith—Soloveitchik’s best-known book—originated as a lecture delivered at a Catholic seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts.27 These facts simplify our present undertaking. In what follows, we will confine ourselves to the small set of major texts that Soloveitchik published during his lifetime. These are (A) his dissertation, completed in 1932;28 (B) The Halakhic Mind, written in 1944 but first published in 1986;29 (C) Halakhic Man, first published in Hebrew in 1944;30 (D) The Lonely Man of Faith, published in 1965;31 and (E) And See Solowiejczyk, Das reine Denken. See, for example, ibid., pp. 61–2. 23 That is, head of Boston’s Vaad Ho’ir (rabbinical town council). In 1937, Soloveitchik founded the Maimonides School, the first Jewish day school in New England. On this see Seth Farber, An American Orthodox Dreamer: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Boston’s Maimonides School, Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England 2004. 24 Farber, An American Orthodox Dreamer, p. 29. 25 See Singer and Sokol, “Joseph Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” p. 229. 26 Rakeffet-Rothkoff, The Rav, vol. 1, pp. 64–5. 27 Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith. Cf. Eugene Korn, “The Man of Faith and Religious Dialogue: Revisiting ‘Confrontation,’ ” Modern Judaism, vol. 25, no. 3, 2005, pp. 290–315, see pp. 294–5. 28 Solowiejczyk, Das reine Denken. 29 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind: An Essay on Jewish Tradition and Modern Thought, Ardmore, Pennsylvania: Seth Press 1986. 30 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “‫איש ההלכה‬,” Talpiot, vol. 1, no. 3, 1944, pp. 651–735; English version: Halakhic Man, trans. by Lawrence Kaplan, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society 1983. 31 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, New York: Doubleday 1965. 21 22

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From There You Shall Seek, first published in Hebrew in 1978.32 I will now consider these texts in sequence, and will briefly assess the role that Kierkegaard plays in each. II. Works A. Dissertation (1932) In his Ph.D. thesis, Hermann Cohen on Pure Thought and the Constitution of Being,33 Soloveitchik makes no mention of Kierkegaard at all. But we will summarize the dissertation briefly, since it is a telling forerunner to later works that do.34 Soloveitchik’s dissertation is an assessment and critique of Cohen’s The Logic of Pure Knowledge,35 a central manifesto of the neo-Kantian approach to epistemology that Cohen called “critical idealism.”36 Following Kant, Cohen sought to vindicate pure thinking—thinking that makes no reference to perceptions of any kind37—as both prior to and the source of all mathematical and scientific reasoning. To this end, Cohen portrayed pure thinking as methodologically continuous with the mathematical sciences. It is this last claim that attracted Soloveitchik’s attention and concern. According to Soloveitchik, Cohen imposed undue limits on philosophy’s scope by simply “appropriating [for it], without any modification whatsoever, the account of the structure of reality set forth by mathematical natural science.”38 By modeling pure thinking closely and inflexibly on mathematical logic, Soloveitchik argues, Cohen placed pure thinking at an unsustainable remove from alternative models of scientific thinking (such as phenomenology), as well as from non-scientific models of cognition (such as religious faith). Soloveitchik contends that while Cohen wished to credit pure thinking with generating our perceptions, he in fact defined it so narrowly that it can scarcely even fathom our perceptions. This is because Cohenian pure thought, constituted as it is on the model of Newtonian mathematics and physics, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “‫ ”ובקשתם משם‬in HaDarom, vol. 47, 1978, pp. 1–83. (English translation: And From There You Shall Seek, trans. by Naomi Goldblum, Jersey City, New Jersey: KTAV Publishing House 2008.) 33 Solowiejczyk, Das reine Denken. 34 For a more detailed account of the dissertation, see Reinier Munk, The Rationale of Halakhic Man: Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Conception of Jewish Thought, Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben 1996, pp. 14–51. 35 Hermann Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, Berlin: Cassirer 1902 (vol. 1 in his System der Philosophie, vols. 1–3, Berlin: Cassirer 1902–12). 36 For a helpful account of critical idealism, see Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, trans. by John Denton, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press 1997, pp. 55–72. 37 This understanding of “pure” is due to Kant. See, for example, Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, p. 132 [A11]. 38 Solowiejczyk, Das reine Denken, p. 12, my translation. 32

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countenances neither the “qualitative contents” of our perceptions nor the “psychophysical subject” to whom our perceptions are always related or “assigned,” inasmuch as both resist analysis by mathematical logic.39 The result, Soloveitchik claims, is that Cohen unduly denigrates our seelische Tätigkeit: the life of the mind as we actually experience it, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually.40 The attitude toward Cohen that Soloveitchik expresses in his dissertation—an attitude marked both by interest in and disapproval of what he would later call Cohen’s “fanatical devotion to the supremacy of the mathematico-scientific process of cognition”41—presents an informative backdrop to Soloveitchik’s subsequent writings. In those works Soloveitchik defends the life of halakhah, the life of study and practice of Jewish law, as the life that is most authentically philosophical: the life that fulfills the highest standards and aspirations of human reason. And curiously, it is precisely Cohen’s standards to which Soloveitchik appeals in so characterizing reason, even when his goal is to unseat or amend Cohen’s standards themselves. The result is that Soloveitchik feels compelled to show both (1) that halakhic reasoning is as rigorous and lawful as is formal mathematical logic, and (2) that halakhic reasoning is a distinct form of cognition that complements the “mathematicoscientific” model. It is in the latter effort that Kierkegaard will prove to be a vital resource—as we will now begin to see. B. The Halakhic Mind (1944/1986) In The Halakhic Mind, written in 1944, Soloveitchik elaborates on his dissertation’s protest against neo-Kantian epistemology’s “bias” toward Newtonian mathematical and natural scientific reasoning.42 Soloveitchik now pleads directly for “epistemological pluralism,” namely, the claim that the world “reveals itself in manifold ways”—including humanistic and religious ways—“to the subject.”43 Soloveitchik’s ultimate goal in The Halakhic Mind is to deploy such pluralism in the service of Orthodox Jewish apologetics. Soloveitchik aims to accord halakhic reasoning its rights as a form of cognition complementary to that of mathematics and the natural sciences, and bearing a corresponding standard of rigor.44 The Halakhic Mind is made up of four Parts. Part One introduces Soloveitchik’s principle of epistemological pluralism as an alternative to the manner in which “modern philosophy…from Descartes to scientific positivism and neo-Kantianism (the Marburg school)” came to be “nothing but an echo of the mechanistic physics which culminated in the Galilean-Newtonian interpretation of reality.”45 Part Two explores developments in twentieth-century physics, particularly in quantum mechanics, that have “deliver[ed] the philosopher from his bondage to the 41 42 43 44 45 39 40

Solowiejczyk, Das reine Denken, p. 98, my translation. Solowiejczyk, Das reine Denken, p. 110, my translation. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind, p. 106, note. Solowiejczyk, Das reine Denken, p. 16, my translation. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind, p. 16. Ibid., p. 101. Cf. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, p. 23; p. 29. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind, p. 6.

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mathematical sciences,”46 if only to lead him merely to embrace “the methodologist of the humanistic sciences” as a substitute exemplar.47 Soloveitchik then invokes this very phenomenon—the pendulum-swing of philosophers from mathematical methods back toward humanistic ones—as evidence that “cognitive pluralism has a good case.”48 Part Three moves specifically to religion, and argues that the intentionality of religious actions makes “manifest” that “the religious act…contains intrinsic cognitive components.”49 Soloveitchik thus sets “homo religiosus” (man qua religious man) alongside “the physicist, psychologist, [and] philosopher.”50 Together, these ideal men represent the “pluralism of viewpoints” to which “reason itself” gives rise.51 Part Four, finally, points to Orthodox Judaism as an especially fruitful realm of religious cognition. What makes Orthodox Judaism so fruitful in Soloveitchik’s view—as opposed to its liberal alternatives, Reform and Conservative Judaism— is Orthodoxy’s way of grounding religious experience in the “objective order” of halakhah.52 This line of argument includes two substantive references to Kierkegaard. Both occur in Part Three; one is positive, the other negative. The positive reference is to Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition, which Soloveitchik approves and appropriates: One must admit with Kierkegaard that repetition is a basic religious category. The homo religiosus, oscillating between sin and remorse, flight from and return to God, frequently explores not only the traces of a bygone past retained in memory, but a living “past” which is consummated in his emergent time-consciousness.53

Soloveitchik does not expect his readers to agree that repetition is “a transcendental act bordering on the miraculous, as Kierkegaard wants us to believe.”54 He does, however, adduce Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition as evidence that religion apprehends such basic concepts as time “in its own fashion,” that is, as an independent source of cognition.55 Soloveitchik returns to Kierkegaard several pages later. Citing the line from the Concluding Unscientific Postscript on Christianity’s protest “against all objectivity,”56 Soloveitchik criticizes Kierkegaard for promoting, with Schleiermacher, an utterly subjective conception of religion that isolates religious cognition from other forms

Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 34. 48 Ibid., p. 28. 49 Ibid., p. 44, my emphasis. 50 Ibid., p. 56. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., p. 101. 53 Ibid., p. 49. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., p. 78, citing what corresponds to SKS 7, 122 / CUP1, 130. 46 47

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of knowledge.57 In a footnote to this passage, Soloveitchik describes Kierkegaard as “a homo religiosus…in continuous strife with his contemporary world.”58 The view of Kierkegaard that emerges in The Halakhic Mind is thus strongly mixed. In the passage cited, Kierkegaard emerges as an unbalanced figure, a homo religiosus who founders in subjectivity. Kierkegaard lacks an “objective order,” as in Judaism’s halakhah, that could link his religiosity to scientific or mathematical thinking. Nonetheless, Soloveitchik does find Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition useful for his own effort to rehabilitate religious consciousness as one of a plurality of valid forms of cognition. We see here an early indication that Soloveitchik saw Kierkegaard as a valuable, if flawed, spokesman for religious life. C. Halakhic Man (1944) Halakhic Man is not Soloveitchik’s best-known book. (That would be The Lonely Man of Faith.) But it is his most ambitious, complex, and interesting. Unlike The Halakhic Mind, which we saw is a work of philosophy with an apologetic twist, Halakhic Man is a work of apologetics with a philosophical twist. Seeking “to defend the honor of the Halakhah and halakhic men,” Soloveitchik now portrays “the halakhic personality” as a fruitful “fusion” of two ideal types.59 These are “cognitive man”—the mathematical-scientific thinker idealized by Cohen—and “the universal homo religiosus,” a type exemplified by, among others, Kierkegaard.60 According to Soloveitchik, halakhic man has advantages over both of the two types that he encompasses. Halakhic man has a “creative capacity” that transcends that of the natural scientist, and allows him to advance beyond homo religiosus in making his subjective religious life objective.61 In Soloveitchik’s words, halakhic man “is, indeed, a free man. He creates an ideal world, renews his own being, and transforms himself into a man of God.”62 There is a sense in which this apologetic effort is a natural extension of the project begun in Soloveitchik’s dissertation and in The Halakhic Mind. In the dissertation, Soloveitchik objects to the neo-Kantian insistence that mathematics and the natural sciences are the sole genuine models of human cognition. In The Halakhic Mind, Soloveitchik defends religion in general, and Orthodox Judaism in particular, as a fertile alternative field for the study of human knowing. For the purposes of Orthodox Jewish apologetics, the next step is clear. It is to show that the life of halakhah is in some sense superior, as an area or arena of human cognition, both to the activity of mathematics and the natural sciences and to religious consciousness considered generally. This is precisely what Halakhic Man sets out to do. After defining halakhic man as a productive fusion of cognitive man and homo religiosus, Soloveitchik affirms 59 60 61 62 57 58

Ibid., pp. 77–8; cf. ibid., p. 54. Ibid., p. 128, note 86. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, p. 137; p. 4. Ibid., pp. 4–5. Ibid., pp. 97–137. Ibid., p. 97; p. 137.

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that the dialectical character of this fusion is a mark of “consummate splendor.”63 Soloveitchik writes: “There is a creative power embedded within antithesis; conflict enriches existence, the negation is constructive, and contradiction deepens and expands the ultimate destiny of both man and the world.”64 In this connection, Soloveitchik cites Kierkegaard approvingly as one of several thinkers who rightly prized the “dialectical.”65 Soloveitchik remarks in a lengthy footnote that “the concept of dialectic” introduced by these thinkers, including Kierkegaard, has given “the lie to the position that is present nowadays in religious circles, whether in Protestant groups or in American Reform and Conservative Judaism, that the religious experience is of a very simple nature.”66 We will have more to say about the last line in Section III. For the moment, let us simply note that later in the book, Soloveitchik will once again—just as in The Halakhic Mind—criticize Kierkegaard for plunging religion into subjectivity. Soloveitchik will there go so far as to suggest that religious subjectivism a là Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher led directly, or partly, to Nazism.67 Once again, then, we find a strongly mixed assessment of Kierkegaard in Soloveitchik. As a partisan of “the dialectical,” Kierkegaard is a valuable resource. But he is flawed as an exemplar of religiosity. D. The Lonely Man of Faith (1965) The Lonely Man of Faith, Soloveitchik’s most popular book, is also his most obviously Kierkegaardian.68 The book begins with a personal confession of loneliness. At first Soloveitchik distinguishes his loneliness explicitly from “Kierkegaardian anguish,” that is, anxiety.69 But he proceeds to define it in another, still more Kierkegaardian way. Soloveitchik’s loneliness is of a sort that is endemic to, or constitutive of, the life of faith itself. For it unfolds in a “secular society” to which the man of faith has nothing to “say.”70 This description recalls, in Fear and Trembling, Johannes de silentio’s account of the “lonely path” trodden by the knight of faith, who “cannot make himself understandable” to the society around him.71 Soloveitchik later echoes Ibid., p. 4. Ibid. 65 Ibid., p. 4 and p. 139, note 4. The other thinkers praised by Soloveitchik in this connection are Heraclitus, Hegel, Rudolf Otto (1869–1937), and Karl Barth (1886–1968). 66 Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, pp. 139–40, note 4. 67 Ibid., p. 59: “Experience has shown that the whole religious ideology which bases itself on the subjective nature of religion—from Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard to Natorp— can have dangerous, destructive consequences that far outweigh any putative gains.” 68 In the analysis that follows, I focus exclusively on direct references or allusions to Kierkegaard in The Lonely Man of Faith. For a wider-ranging discussion of “points of contact between themes from Kierkegaard’s corpus…and ideas expressed in Soloveitchik’s essay,” see Michael Oppenheim, “Kierkegaard and Soloveitchik,” Judaism, vol. 37, no. 1, 1988, pp. 29–40, see p. 29. 69 Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, p. 4. 70 Ibid., pp. 6–7. 71 SKS 4, 167 / FT, 76. 63 64

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Fear and Trembling directly, modulating its language in a Jewish key. He writes that “Abraham, the knight of faith, according to our tradition, sought and discovered God in the starlit heavens of Mesopotamia,” but found redemption “only when he met God on earth as Father, Brother, and Friend.”72 A footnote to this passage praises Kierkegaard’s wry attack on the very idea that knowledge of God may be gained by efforts to prove his existence.73 To analyze his loneliness as characteristic of a Jewish man of faith, Soloveitchik begins by turning to the opening pages of the Hebrew Bible, with their conflicting descriptions of Adam. Genesis 1 produces “Adam the first,” commanded to fill the earth and subdue it; but it soon replaces him, in Genesis 2, with “Adam the second,” who is deployed in the Garden of Eden to serve and preserve it.74 In a maneuver reminiscent of his earlier writings, Soloveitchik defines Adam the first as a “mathematical scientist” of the sort celebrated by Cohen: a knower who is fully at home in the “natural community” of humankind.75 Adam the second, by contrast, is a lonely homo religiosus, driven to seek God and human fellowship in a “covenantal faith community.”76 In point of fact, however, both Adams seek to know self, God, other, and world. Their simultaneous existence thus instantiates the principle that Soloveitchik had earlier called “epistemological pluralism.” In Soloveitchik’s words, “the incongruity of [the two Adams’] methods is…a result not of diverse objectives, but of diverse interpretive approaches to the one objective they both pursue.”77 In short, Adam the first and Adam the second represent distinct methods of cognition that are both valid. Just as in Halakhic Man, Soloveitchik again identifies authentic faith not with the cognitive mathematical-scientific type alone (here Adam the first), nor with homo religiosus by itself (here Adam the second), but rather with a dialectical conjunction of the two, namely, a life of “continuous movement between the pole of natural majesty and that of covenantal humility.”78 This oscillation is necessary and unending, Soloveitchik explains, because “the covenantal commitment” of Adam the second “eludes cognitive analysis” by Adam the first.79 To drive this point home, Soloveitchik appeals to Kierkegaard’s Tertullianesque theological language. Soloveitchik speaks of the man of faith’s “ ‘absurd’ commitment,” in which he “is ‘insanely’ committed to and ‘madly’ in love with God.”80 A footnote to the last passage, however, clarifies Soloveitchik’s intent in citing Kierkegaard’s concept of the absurd:

Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, pp. 47–8. Ibid., pp. 49–50, note 1. Soloveitchik returns to this theme in And From There You Shall Seek; the relevant passage is discussed in subsection E below. 74 Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, p. 10. 75 Ibid., p. 17; p. 41. 76 Ibid., p. 41. 77 Ibid., p. 23. 78 Ibid., p. 76. 79 Ibid., p. 93. 80 Ibid., p. 95. 72 73

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David D. Possen Our description of the “individuality” and autonomy of the faith gesture should not be associated with Tertullian’s apothegm credo quia absurdum est. Nor should it be equated with Kierkegaard’s “leap into the absurd.”…The term “absurd” in the Kierkegaardian philosophy is both a logical and a psychological category. It refers not only to logically false statements but also to unreasonable psychological motivation. The act of “repetition” precipitated by failure and resignation is absurd and belongs, therefore, to the realm of faith. In a word, for Kierkegaard, faith supersedes the majestic posture of man. The world of faith rests upon the ruins and debris of the world of majesty. This thesis is unacceptable…to the Halakhah, which insists upon the dialectical movement between these two worlds. They do, indeed, exist concurrently according to the Halakhah. Moreover, Kierkegaard lacked the understanding of the centrality of the act of objectification of the inner movement of faith in a normative and doctrinal postulate system, which forms the very foundation of the Halakhah. The Halakhic world of faith is “terribly” articulate, “unpardonably” dynamic, and “foolishly” consistent, insisting that feeling become thought, and that experience be acted out and transformed into an objective event. Kierkegaard’s existentialist world, like Schleiermacher’s pietistic world, is a place of silence and passivity, far removed from the complex array of historical events, not hungering for action or movement.81

These lines are best understood as expanding on Soloveitchik’s earlier remark, in The Halakhic Mind, that because Kierkegaard lacked an “objective order,” such as that supplied by the halakhah, he was unable to come to terms with “his contemporary world.”82 Here the brunt of Soloveitchik’s criticism falls on Kierkegaard’s account of faith as dialectical and absurd. Though Soloveitchik is glad to praise Kierkegaard for championing these concepts in the first place,83 he here criticizes him for failing to apply those concepts in turn to his own existential predicament, to his own subjective estrangement. Specifically, Soloveitchik charges that Kierkegaard has failed to bring his own religious consciousness “absurdly” into objective life, or to turn his own world of religious feeling into “absurd” material for objective thought, as halakhic man must daily do. This criticism is somewhat obscure. It is hard to imagine what it would mean for an absurd “feeling” to become “thought,” or for an absurd “experience” to become an “objective event,” if either is genuinely absurd to begin with. In fact, this is precisely why Johannes de silentio insists that it would be “a self-contradiction to demand that [Abraham] speak.”84 For Abraham, the absurdity of his predicament is such that to disclose it would be to abrogate it, to annul it. Be that as it may, the thrust of Soloveitchik’s critique is clear enough. Here as before, Soloveitchik praises Kierkegaard for generating concepts that are productive for religious self-understanding. Yet Soloveitchik insists that Kierkegaard has failed to use those concepts as he should. Locked in subjectivity, Kierkegaard has failed to see that religious life can and must be brought into conversation—by means of a

Ibid., pp. 101–2, note 1. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind, p. 128, note 86. 83 See, for example, the uncritical appropriation of Kierkegaard’s concept of the absurd in Joseph Baer Soloveitchik, “Catharsis,” Tradition, vol. 17, no. 2, 1978, pp. 38–54, see p. 40. 84 SKS 4, 205 / FT, 118. 81 82

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higher dialectic, namely, the dialectic of “objectification”85 characteristic of halakhic life—with logic, mathematics, and science. This means that, from the perspective of Soloveitchik’s epistemological pluralism, Kierkegaard is a kind of mirror-image of Hermann Cohen. Whereas Cohen unduly isolates and privileges mathematical and natural scientific reasoning as a model of cognition, Kierkegaard unduly isolates and privileges subjective religious experience. What the world needs now, Soloveitchik claims, is a dialectical fusion of the two. And this he finds in the life of halakhah. E. And From There You Shall Seek (1979) Our final text to consider is And From There You Shall Seek, Soloveitchik’s last major essay. The topic here is how man searches for God. Once again, Soloveitchik begins by dividing human thinking into two realms: mathematical and naturalscientific cognition, on the one hand, and the realm of wholly religious experience, on the other. And Soloveitchik again locates the dialectical union of these two realms in the life of halakhah. Here the key is the halakhic concept of devekuth: the biblical imperative of “cleaving” to God.86 And From There You Shall Seek contains three references to Kierkegaard. In the first, Soloveitchik once again casts Kierkegaard as an archetypal modern partisan of the religious outlook, as opposed to the mathematicians and natural scientists lionized by Cohen. Thus he lists Kierkegaard among those who “rebel[led] against the scientific, symbolic, a priori approach…to the greatest of man’s questions: What is the nature, the meaning, and the value of reality?”87 Next, Soloveitchik approvingly cites the 1853 journal entry “Amazing Self-Contradiction,” in which Kierkegaard takes Anselm to task for imagining that he could find God only by means of an objective proof, rather than by the subjective prayers with which he had sought the proof in the first place.88 In a footnote, finally, Soloveitchik links Kierkegaard to “the subjectivist schools in religion”89 that followed Schleiermacher. For our present purposes, there is little new here. All of this is consistent—both in content and in tone—with the references to Kierkegaard in Soloveitchik’s earlier writings.

Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind, p. 85. Soloveitchik, And From There You Shall Seek, pp. 87–90. Cf. Deuteronomy 11:22. For more on Soloveitchik’s account of devekuth, see Munk, The Rationale of Halakhic Man, pp. 104–23. For a clear general exegesis of And From There You Shall Seek, see Lawrence Kaplan, “Joseph Soloveitchik and Halakhic Man,” in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy, ed. by Michael L. Morgan and Peter Eli Gordon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007, pp. 209–33, see pp. 221–7. 87 Soloveitchik, And From There You Shall Seek, p. 11. Kierkegaard is here mentioned alongside Schelling, Bergson, and Husserl. 88 Soloveitchik, And From There You Shall Seek, p. 16. The reference is to SKS 25, 239, NB28:31 / JP 1, 20. Soloveitchik alludes to the same entry in The Lonely Man of Faith, pp. 49–50, note 1. 89 Soloveitchik, And From There You Shall Seek, p. 158, note 3. 85 86

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III. Analysis A. Conclusions From the above survey of Soloveitchik’s references to Kierkegaard, we may immediately draw several conclusions: (1) Soloveitchik was familiar with Kierkegaard’s journals and many of his works. This familiarity presumably dates back to his student years in 1920s Berlin, where disillusionment with neoKantianism helped fuel a broad surge of interest in Kierkegaard and in what would later be called existentialism. (2) Soloveitchik’s writings evince interest in the following features of Kierkegaard’s thought: (a) Kierkegaard’s use of dialectic; the Kierkegaardian concepts of (b) anxiety, (c) passion, (d) repetition, and (e) the absurd; (f) the depiction of Abraham as a knight of faith; (g) Kierkegaard’s critique, in the journals as well as in Climacus’ Philosophical Fragments, of the very enterprise of proving God’s existence; and (h) the Concluding Unscientific Postscript’s call for a subjective standard of faith. (3) While Soloveitchik incorporated tropes (a)–(g) into his own thinking (with variations, to be sure), he opposed (h) vociferously. (4) In Soloveitchik’s writings, Kierkegaard is most closely associated with Barth qua dialectical theologian, and with Schleiermacher qua religious subjectivist. For his own part, Soloveitchik denies religious subjectivism and presents his own thinking as a form of dialectical theology, albeit with an objective twist.90 He thus portrays himself as heir to part, but not all—to the Barthian part, we might say, but not the Schleiermacherian part—of Kierkegaard’s theological legacy. As we saw in Section II, Soloveitchik champions halakhic life as a dialectical manifold of religious experience, a manifold that unites the passion of subjective faith with the creativity of objective thinking. Accordingly, Soloveitchik’s halakhic apologetics, and with it his theology as a whole, may be seen as an attempt to out-Kierkegaard Kierkegaard. It is an effort to advance dialectically beyond Kierkegaard’s own dialectical theology. This is how Soloveitchik—as I stated at the outset—appropriates Kierkegaardian ideas (e.g., “the absurd”) in a way that sharply limits their potency. Soloveitchik relegates those ideas to the subjective moment of the subjective-objective manifold of religious life. Put simply, while Soloveitchik’s man of faith may be lonely in his subjective experience of faith, his work of “objectification,”91 his halakhic practice, is a show that must always go on. Indeed, on Soloveitchik’s account, halakhic practice is at all times the answer to the man of faith’s loneliness, the vehicle of his passion, and the site and destination of his “sudden spontaneous leap into the absurd.”92 It is precisely in this way that Soloveitchik makes Kierkegaard “safe” for Modern Orthodox Judaism. For when Kierkegaardian ideas are used as Soloveitchik uses See especially Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind, p. 80: “If the modern homo sapiens is to participate fully in the religious performance, then objective forms and principles must supplement subjectivity….The existence of an objective order in the religious sphere is a conditio sine qua non if religion is to play any role in the progress of human society.” 91 Ibid., p. 99. 92 Soloveitchik, “Catharsis,” p. 40. 90

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them, they no longer compete with, let alone threaten, the theology or tradition of halakhic legalism. They instead become its handmaidens. B. Implications I have so far sought to clarify Soloveitchik’s stance as a receiver and transmitter of Kierkegaard’s ideas to America’s Modern Orthodox Jews. But my analysis may be of value in another way as well. It may help to solve a puzzle that has long vexed Soloveitchik’s interpreters. I refer here to the evident tension between the account of halakhic life that appears in the body of Halakhic Man, on the one hand, and the account common to both the opening pages of Halakhic Man and the remainder of Soloveitchik’s mature writings (chiefly The Halakhic Mind, The Lonely Man of Faith, and And From There You Shall Seek) on the other. In a prominent review essay, David Singer and Moshe Sokol describe this tension as a “vast gulf.”93 They explain: [In the body of] “Halakhic Man,” Soloveitchik is clearly in sympathy with the Adam the first type, i.e., intellectual man. It is intellectual man who provides the basic model for the talmudist; the latter, like the former, is this-worldly oriented, given to quantifying, and always creatively involved with a priori ideas….How different is “The Lonely Man of Faith,” [where] the secularity of majestic man takes on a negative coloring [while] covenantal man is a repository of virtue alone….In Soloveitchik’s analysis of talmudism [i.e., in the body of Halakhic Man], the religious virtuoso exhibits intellectual prowess; he is the thinker par excellence. In “The Lonely Man of Faith,” on the other hand, the model religious individual (sometimes labeled by Soloveitchik the “knight of faith,” a Kierkegaardian term) manifests an acute feeling of loneliness; he is the sensitive soul par excellence.94

Singer and Sokol add that “ ‘The Lonely Man of Faith’ takes as its point of departure the theological position set forth in the introductory section of ‘Halakhic Man.’ ”95 Noting that this same discrepancy is to be found within the pages of Halakhic Man— that is, between the introduction and the body of the text96—they ask rhetorically: “Can it be that ‘Halakhic Man’ ended up being a very different essay than the one Soloveitchik originally set out to write? That seems most improbable; Soloveitchik gives every impression in the work of being fully in command.”97 This is the enduring riddle in Soloveitchik interpretation. After formulating it as above, Singer and Sokol propose a highly speculative solution. They first point out that Soloveitchik explicitly dedicates Halakhic Man to defending the honor of his ancestors, “the halakhic men of Brisk and Volozhin.”98 They further note the book’s epitaph: a citation from the Talmud about the Joseph of Genesis, Joseph Baer Singer and Sokol, “Joseph Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” p. 244. Ibid., pp. 242ff. 95 Ibid., pp. 240. 96 Cf. ibid., p. 258: “If the message of the main body of ‘Halakhic Man’ is use your mind, that of the introduction is trust your feelings.” 97 Ibid., p. 240. 98 Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, p. 74; cf. p. 137. 93 94

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Soloveitchik’s ultimate namesake. This citation reads: “At that moment the image of his father came to him and appeared before him in the window.”99 The context is Genesis 39, where Joseph, a slave in Egypt, is propositioned by the wife of his master, the courtier Potiphar. The Talmud relates that Joseph was in fact enticed by Potiphar’s wife; but at the decisive moment, his father Jacob appeared to him in a vision, warning that he would forfeit his place among the Twelve Tribes of Israel if he yielded to his urge. In light of this, Singer and Sokol interpret Halakhic Man as the work of a latter-day Joseph “with a father looking over his shoulder, who will either uphold the honor of the Brisker dynasty—or else; Soloveitchik simply cannot afford to fail the test.”100 Singer and Sokol proceed to read the body of Halakhic Man as a command performance with a rebellious kick. On their account, Soloveitchik eulogizes his ancestors because he must. But he takes care to do so in a singularly Cohenian manner—by comparing the halakhic men of Volozhin and Brisk to mathematicians and physicists101—and by the use of “macabre” anecdotes in which “the behavior he describes is so radical, so extreme, as to make his presumed heroes seem grotesque.”102 Here, from Halakhic Man, is the classic anecdote that Singer and Sokol have in mind: The beloved daughter of R. Elijah [Rabbi Elijah Feinstein (1843–1929), J.B. Soloveitchik’s maternal grandfather] took sick about a month before she was to be married and after a few days was rapidly sinking. R. Elijah’s son entered into the room where R. Elijah, wrapped in tallit [prayer shawl] and tefillin [phylacteries103], was praying with the congregation, to tell him that his daughter was in her death throes. R. Elijah went into his daughter’s room and asked the doctor how much longer it would be until the end. When he received the doctor’s reply, R. Elijah returned to his room, removed his Rashi’s tefillin, and quickly put on the tefillin prescribed by Rabbenu Tam,104 for immediately upon his daughter’s death he would be an onen, a mourner whose dead relative has not as yet been buried, and as such would be subject to the law that an onen is exempt from all the commandments. After he removed his second pair of tefillin, wrapped them up, and put them away, he entered his dying daughter’s room, in order to be present at the moment his most beloved daughter of all would return her soul

Sotah 36b, as cited in ibid., p. xii. Singer and Sokol, “Joseph Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” pp. 257. 101 Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, pp. 19–29. 102 Singer and Sokol, “Joseph Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” p. 259. 103 Phylacteries, or tefillin, are leather boxes containing parchment scrolls inscribed with certain biblical verses. They are worn during Jewish prayer on weekday mornings, in fulfillment of the biblical commandment to bind God’s words on one’s arm and between one’s eyes (Exodus 13:9; 13:16; Deuteronomy 6:8; 11:18). 104 This refers to two varieties of tefillin in circulation today. “Rashi’s tefillin” are the dominant kind; these are named after the medieval scholar Solomon Isaaci (1040–1105), known by the abbreviation “Rashi” = “Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki.” Less common are the tefillin of “Rabbenu Tam,” or Jacob ben Meïr Tam (1100–71), Rashi’s grandson, who disagreed with his grandfather about the appearance and contents of proper tefillin. The present story refers to the comparatively rare custom of wearing both kinds of tefillin—not at once, but sequentially—during morning prayers. 99

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back to its Maker. We have here great strength and presence of mind, the acceptance of the divine decree with love, the consciousness of the law and the judgment, the might and power of the Halakhah, and faith, strong like flint.105

Here is how Singer and Sokol react to this passage. They write: Stories like this cannot help but evoke strong disapproval in the reader. And this disapproval, it seems safe to assume, is shared in part by Soloveitchik himself, specifically by that part of him which rebels against the [Mithnaggedic] tradition’s spurning of the emotions. The vein of anger that runs through the anecdotal material in ‘Halakhic Man’ is not to be missed.106

This tendentious interpretive claim—that Halakhic Man is an angry work, whose praise of “the halakhic men of Brisk and Volozhin”107 is ironic—unsurprisingly roused a storm of loyalist protest. Marvin Fox, writing to defend “the unity and structure” of Soloveitchik’s thought, insists that the anecdotes in Halakhic Man “are always related…with love, pride, and appreciation, not with anger.”108 Not implausibly, Fox charges that when Singer and Sokol impute anger to Soloveitchik, they are projecting their own “feelings and…perceptions” onto him.109 Yet while Singer and Sokol’s attribution of anger or rebelliousness to Soloveitchik may well be an overreach, it will hardly do to defend Soloveitchik’s personal honor by pretending that there is nothing at all odd about the portrait of his grandfather just cited110—or to defend his intellectual honor by denying that his work poses genuine puzzles for its readers.111 A more promising approach is the work of Dov Schwartz, who has devoted a monograph to the riddle of Halakhic Man.112 Schwartz emphasizes the gap between the introductory chapter, which describes halakhic man as a seemingly balanced Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, pp. 77–8. Singer and Sokol, “Joseph Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” p. 259. 107 Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, p. 74. 108 Marvin Fox, “The Unity and Structure of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Thought,” in Exploring the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ed. by Marc D. Angel, Hoboken: KTAV Publishing House 1997, pp. 25–53, see p. 49, note 4, my emphasis. 109 Ibid. 110 The reaction of David Hartman is a judicious mean between these extremes: “There is something abnormal—one might even say inhuman—about R. Elijah’s behavior....One would expect a father to be engrossed entirely by the immediate tragedy and by the basic human need to comfort his daughter.” Yet Hartman infers only that Soloveitchik must mean to confront the reader with a stark “either/or.” David Hartman, Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing, pp. 51–2. 111 Fox attributes the appearance of the riddle to a merely “superficial reading of the Rav’s works.” He intimates that the tensions uncovered or imagined by Singer and Sokol “in their relentless search for difficulties in the Rav’s thought” in fact reflect Soloveitchik’s consistently dialectical approach. Marvin Fox, “The Unity and Structure of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Thought,” p. 29; p. 52, note 29; p. 44. 112 Dov Schwartz, Religion or Halakha: The Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, trans. by Batya Stein, Leiden: Brill 2007. 105 106

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synthesis of cognitive man and homo religiosus,113 and the body of the book, which he says portrays halakhic man as “a figure without any contradictions whatsoever, exclusively a cognitive man in the neo-Kantian style of Hermann Cohen.”114 As Schwartz demonstrates, this same tension recurs in miniature in chapter after chapter of the body of Halakhic Man. Time and again, introductory lines repeat the claim that halakhic man is a synthesis of cognitive man and homo religiosus. Each time, however, this claim is undermined by the chapter’s contents. Either (a) features of homo religiosus, for example, emotions and passions, turn out to be mentioned only in order “to negate their presence in halakhic man”;115 or (b) it is made clear that halakhic man’s cognition is “altogether indifferent to the world outside it,” inasmuch as such cognition contains its own “verification criterion,” that is, God’s law, and so echoes that of Cohenian cognitive man.116 We can see both of these methods at work, for example, in the tale of Elijah Feinstein cited previously. The passions of terror, mourning, and grief are present in that story only as gaping absences (a); while the hero’s reasoning and actions are explained entirely on legal or theological terms (b). To be sure, the dying one is identified as Elijah’s “most beloved daughter,” and Soloveitchik speaks of Elijah’s “acceptance of the divine decree with love.”117 The question this raises, however, is what kind of love this is. The last interpreter we will consider here is David Hartman, who raises precisely this question. Hartman asks: Where is the human “I,” the individual, in R. Soloveitchik’s halakhic hero? Has he become a machinelike personality? Has he lost all the natural feelings of a parent for a child?...The response to halakhic man is either a profound “No!” or a feeling that one is standing before someone quite extraordinary and special. It is impossible to remain neutral. This sense of either/or is precisely what R. Soloveitchik intends to create. His halakhic man does not share the sensibilities of what we normally expect of the religious person. These bizarre and strange stories reflect R. Soloveitchik’s deep concern not to identify halakhic man with the bourgeois religious personality who joins the church or synagogue to find some tranquility.118

According to Hartman, the stoic Elijah Feinstein and his kin function in Halakhic Man not as characters—men to whom we can relate humanly, with sympathy—but as challenges. They are provocative ideals designed to shake us out of our habits of mind; they are paradigms of “that to which the community should aspire.”119 But they do not, and are not meant to, reflect Soloveitchik’s view of how Jewish or other religious experience ordinarily proceeds.120 Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, p. 3. Schwartz, Religion or Halakha, p. 14. 115 Ibid., p. 92. 116 Ibid., p. 127; p. 123. 117 Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, pp. 77–8. 118 Hartman, Love and Terror in the God Encounter, pp. 51–2. 119 Cf. ibid., p. 46; p. 95. 120 Ibid., pp. 55–6: “R. Soloveitchik is describing the ideal halakhic hero, not the normal halakhic Jew.” 113 114

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There is something pleasingly uncomplicated about Hartman’s interpretation. This becomes clear when we compare it to that of Schwartz. Schwartz commits himself to the view that the portraits of Soloveitchik’s ancestors in Halakhic Man are accurate as well as ideal. This means that Soloveitchik’s forebears really were “ideal halakhic types who reject[ed]”—as true Mithnaggedim121—“any synthesis with other types of religiosity.”122 However, Schwartz claims, Soloveitchik found it necessary to cloak his portraits of these ideal Mithnaggedim in a disguise that would be “closer to modern readers,” and specifically “closer to the community of homi[nes] religiosi, to which R. Soloveitchik himself belongs.”123 For this reason, Soloveitchik “attempt[ed] to present halakhic man as related to, or characterized by, some features typical of the homo religiosus, even though mature halakhic man is far removed” from him.124 According to Schwartz, then (1) Soloveitchik was essentially a homo religiosus. (2) Thus he was not himself a true Brisker, a true Mithnagged. (3) But his ancestors were; and he genuinely sought to eulogize them on their own terms. (4) To do that properly, however, Soloveitchik needed to portray his forebears in a manner that could appeal to his modern audience, who were at best, like Soloveitchik himself, homines religiosi. (5) Accordingly, Soloveitchik pretended, in the introduction and chapter openings of Halakhic Man, to portray his ancestors and halakhic man as related to homo religiosus. (6) But this is a sham. There is no common ground; the relation is purely negative; halakhic man is cognitive man. Therefore, (7) “R. Soloveitchik deliberately endorses contrary messages…[which] the discerning reader will know how” to sort out.125 This is the pinnacle, or quagmire, at which the Soloveitchik secondary literature stands today. Some interpreters, like Fox, simply deny that Halakhic Man is a riddling text, at odds with the rest of Soloveitchik’s oeuvre. But that is to flatten Soloveitchik’s writing—to gloss over such provocative passages as the portrait of Elijah Feinstein—and so to cheapen his achievement. Others, like Singer and Sokol, rush to psychologize Soloveitchik’s provocations. And then there is Dov Schwartz, whose theory of esoteric writing, while impressive, is truly a beard in need of Occam’s razor. The clearest view, I think, is David Hartman’s. Hartman recognizes the tensions and provocations in Halakhic Man, and assumes that they are intentional. He then reaches for what I judge to be the most parsimonious available reading—not only of Halakhic Man in particular, but of Soloveitchik’s other mature writings as well. This reading runs as follows. (I) Soloveitchik’s general model of religious life is that of homo religiosus, i.e., a basically Kierkegaardian view.126 (II)  However, Soloveitchik holds that halakhic religiosity differs from religiosity in general. For Opponents of Hasidism. The word literally means “opponents,” but can connote “reactionaries.” 122 Schwartz, Religion or Halakha, p. 2. 123 Ibid., p. 2; p. 126. 124 Ibid., p. 2. 125 Ibid., p. 30. 126 Hartman, Love and Terror in the God Encounter, p. 102. 121

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halakhic religiosity is oriented toward, and marked by, an ideal of rigorous, quasimathematical cognition of the divinely given legal order. (III) Soloveitchik describes this ideal cognition in the body of Halakhic Man, in part by portraying his ancestors as “ideal halakhic hero[es].”127 Note that Soloveitchik does not pretend to have attained this ideal himself. It is rather his lodestar: the Jacob in Joseph’s window. (IV) In the remainder of his mature works, as well as in the introduction to Halakhic Man, Soloveitchik addresses the human side of halakhic and general religiosity. He there describes halakhic life as the predicament of a homo religiosus (Adam the Second) who is commanded to take his place in the community of majestic cognition (Adam the First). (V) Taken together, these two methods of characterizing halakhic Judaism—the ideal and the human—merge as a double defense of it. Namely, in Halakhic Man as a whole, and in Soloveitchik’s mature authorship as a whole, halakhic Judaism emerges both as a Kierkegaardian alternative to the Cohenian cult of cognitive, majestic man, and as a way of life bearing cognitive ideals as rigorous and satisfying as those of mathematics and the natural sciences. I find this reading of Soloveitchik the most elegant. I would like to help it prevail; but it, too, is weighed down by epicycles. Its weak point is its difficulty in explaining why this one book in particular—Halakhic Man—should differ so radically from all the rest. Hartman says merely that Halakhic Man is an apologetic text dedicated to “the defense of a maligned tradition,” whereas The Lonely Man of Faith offers a wider account of “the existential condition of the Western man of faith.”128 But that is an epicycle; it does not explain why Halakhic Man differs from Soloveitchik’s other, more Judeocentric works. It is here that the present article makes possible an interpretive advance. Our review so far of the place of Kierkegaard in Soloveitchik’s thought suggests a new way of making sense of the exceptional character of Halakhic Man—and so of patching the hole that remains in Hartman’s interpretation. Namely, we have seen that Soloveitchik was deeply familiar with Kierkegaard’s thought, and wove numerous Kierkegaardian concepts into his account of homo religiosus. Is it not possible, then, that Soloveitchik took note of Kierkegaard’s authorial methods, or some of them, and found relevance and use for them in his own writing? In particular, is it not possible that, in crafting his most ambitious work—a book that presses beyond his human halakhic religiosity to an ideal that strains and beckons beyond the human—Soloveitchik found inspiration in the form, and not just in the content, of Fear and Trembling? I suggest that the body of Halakhic Man be read as a paean—like that of Johannes de silentio, the pseudonymous author to whom Kierkegaard attributes Fear and Trembling—to an ideal that the writer does not claim to meet, but which orients and structures his life nonetheless. In other words, much as Johannes de silentio is dumbfounded and provoked by Abraham, whose faith is unruffled and undisturbed by the problem of sin,129 we, too, are asked to be provoked and dumbfounded, Ibid., p. 56. Ibid., p. 102. 129 See Ettore Rocca, “If Abraham is Not a Human Being,” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2003, pp. 247–58. 127 128

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with Soloveitchik, by Elijah Feinstein and the other “halakhic men of Brisk and Volozhin.”130 Abraham spurs Johannes to praise him, to look to him as an exemplar of faith, even if he cannot imitate him fully. Soloveitchik’s ancestors, too, provoke their scion to look to and praise them even if he cannot fully follow their lead. They are indeed the Jacob in Joseph Baer’s window. It is natural for a paean to an ideal state to praise the state of aspiration to the ideal as well. Much of Fear and Trembling is devoted not to Abrahamic faith, but to the dialectical predicament of Johannes de silentio himself. This too illuminates the contrast between them. It is similarly fitting that Halakhic Man begins not by asking how we may become like Elijah Feinstein, but how we may become like J.B. Soloveitchik—that is, an aspirant to the halakhic ideal of Brisk and Volozhin. Thus the long opening footnote that we quoted in Section II above, in which Soloveitchik cites Kierkegaard in an attempt to indict “American Reform and Conservative Judaism” of religious inauthenticity,131 in fact sets an apt tone for the book as a whole. In Halakhic Man, as in Fear and Trembling, the point is to disturb the reader’s calm; to force him or her to confront an ideal that strains against the bounds of the human: to promote tension, longing, and reverence. As Hartman puts it, the heart of Halakhic Man—and the motivation for its “bizarre and strange stories”—is “R. Soloveitchik’s deep concern not to identify halakhic man with the bourgeois religious personality who joins the church or synagogue to find some tranquility.”132 Kierkegaard had a similar goal, and he pursued it in a number of ways at once. The confrontational style of Fear and Trembling—provoking the reader by confronting him or her with an unattainable ideal, the inimitable Abraham—is only one such way. The riddle of Halakhic Man is best addressed, in my view, when the book is understood, like Fear and Trembling, as a peculiar piece in an arsenal of writings all different but deployed toward the same goal: to initiate the reader into a life of “ ‘absurd’ commitment,” in which he or she “is ‘insanely’ committed to and ‘madly’ in love with God.”133

132 133 130 131

Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, p. 74. Ibid., p. 140, note 4. Hartman, Love and Terror in the God Encounter, p. 52. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, p. 95.

Bibliography I. References to or Uses of Kierkegaard in Soloveitchik’s Corpus “‫ ”איש ההלכה‬in Talpiot, vol. 1, 1944, pp. 651–735. (English translation: Halakhic Man, trans. by Lawrence Kaplan, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society 1983, p. 4; p. 59; pp. 139–43; p. 164.) “Catharsis,” Tradition, vol. 17, no. 2, 1978, pp. 38–54, see p. 40. “‫ ”ובקשתם משם‬in HaDarom, vol. 47, 1978, pp. 1–83. (English translation: And From There You Shall Seek, trans. by Naomi Goldblum, Jersey City, New Jersey: KTAV Publishing House 2008, p. 11; p. 16; p. 158, note 3.) The Halakhic Mind, New York: Seth Press 1986, p. 3; pp. 48–9; pp. 53–4; pp. 77–8; p. 128, note 86. The Lonely Man of Faith, New York: Doubleday 1992, p. 4; p. 50; p. 95; pp. 101–2. II. Sources of Soloveitchik’s Knowledge of Kierkergaard Barth, Karl, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., Munich: Kaiser 1922, pp. v–vi; p. xii; pp. 15–16; p. 71; p. 75; p. 77; pp. 85–9; p. 93; p. 96; pp. 98–9; p. 114; p. 141; p. 145; p. 236; p. 261; p. 264; p. 267; p. 319; p. 325; p. 381; p. 400; pp. 426–7; p. 455; p. 481; pp. 483–4. Brunner, Emil, Das Gebot und die Ordnungen. Entwurf einer protestantischtheologischen Ethik, Tübingen: Mohr 1932, p. 51; pp. 130–1; p. 140; p. 144; p. 153; p. 167; p. 181; p. 271; pp. 277–8; p. 285; p. 359; p. 425; p. 554; p. 569; p. 572; p. 585; p. 589; p. 610; p. 619; pp. 668–9; p. 671. — Der Mensch im Widerspruch. Die christliche Lehre vom wahren und vom wirklichen Menschen, Berlin: Furche-Verlag 1937, p. 9; pp. 34–5; p. 51; p. 109; p. 123; p. 137; p. 159; p. 187; p. 190; p. 194; p. 200; p. 221; p. 231; p. 254; p. 265; p. 271; pp. 289–90; p. 316; pp. 322–3; p. 350; p. 368; pp. 414–15; p. 454; p. 460; p. 474; p. 508; p. 511; p. 529; p. 534; pp. 554–7. III. Secondary Literature on Soloveitchik’s Relation to Kierkegaard :‫ רב סולובייצ’יק“ בתוך‬,‫ רב קוק‬,‫ קירקגור‬:‫ ”שלוש גישות כלפי העקדה‬,‫ הלוי‬,‫ אהרון‬,‫פיצניק‬ .710–709 ’‫ עמ‬,1970 , ‫[ הדואר‬Fitznik, Aaron HaLevi, “Three Approaches to the Akedah: Kierkegaard, Rav Kook, Rav Soloveitchik,” HaDoar, 1970, pp. 709– 10.] Oppenheim, Michael, “Kierkegaard and Soloveitchik,” Judaism, vol. 37, no. 1, 1988, pp. 29–40.

Index of Persons

Abraham, 147, 166, 171, 176–86 passim, 189, 199, 202, 209. Adam, 9, 167, 199, 203. Adam, Karl (1876–1966), German Catholic theologian, 133, 208. Ahasverus, 144. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), Scholastic philosopher, 29, 47, 64, 201. Aquinas, Thomas (ca. 1225–74), Scholastic philosopher and theologian, 15, 28, 99, 101, 134, 135–7, 145. Aristotle, 137, 175, 192. Arnold, Gottfried (1666–1714), German Pietist and church historian, 92. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), church father, 7, 28, 47, 113, 116 135, 136. Baeck, Leo (1873–1956), Jewish thinker, 134. Balthasar, Hans Urs von (1905–88), Swiss Catholic theologian, 3–24, 25, 98, 102, 132, 133, 149. Barth, Karl (1886–1968), Swiss Protestant theologian, 4, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 20, 56, 132, 133, 136, 138, 145, 149, 159, 202. Bea, Augustin (1881–1968), German Catholic scholar, 133. Bengel, Johann Albrecht (1687–1752), German Lutheran pietist, 32. Bergengruen, Werner (1892–1964), Baltic German novelist, 35. Bergson, Henri (1859–1941), French philosopher, 81, 175, 176. Berthold-Bond, Daniel, 156, 157.

Biser, Eugen (b. 1918), German Catholic theologian, 25–43. Blake, William (1757–1827), English poet, 113. Blondel, Maurice (1861–1949), French Catholic philosopher, 12, 99. Bonaventura (also Bonaventure), Saint (ca. 1220–74), Scholastic philosopher, 46. Brandes, Georg (1842–1927), Danish author and literary critic, 108, 131. Buber, Martin (1878–1965), Austrian-born Jewish philosopher, 17, 27, 134, 158, 165, 190. Bultmann, Rudolf (1884–1976), German Protestant theologian, 17, 27, 28, 34. Caird, Edward (1835–1908), Scottish philosopher, 81. Cajetan, Thomas (1468–1534), Italian scholastic philosopher, 101, 136. Calvin, John (1509–64), French Protestant theologian, 20. Campbell, Reginald John (1867–1956), British Congregationalist divine, 94. Camus, Albert (1913–60), French author, 111. Cathrine of Genoa, 88. Christ, 7, 14, 15, 17, 20–2, 27, 34, 36, 53, 54, 57, 68–71, 76, 77, 85, 89, 92, 100, 121–3, 131, 138, 163. Chen, Alexander Even, 176. Cohen, David (1887–1972), rabbi and scholar, 172. Cohen, Hermann (1842–1918), GermanJewish philosopher, 190, 193, 195, 197, 199, 201, 206.

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Comte, Auguste (1798–1857), French philosopher, 98, 100. Congar, Yves (1904–95), French Catholic theologian, 4. Dalai Lama (b. 1931), 114. Dallago, Carl (1869–1949), Austrian author, 49. Daniélou, Jean (1905–74), French Jesuit, 4. Dante, Alighieri (1265–1321), Italian poet, 47. Darwin, Charles (1809–82), English natural scientist, 89. Davies, Oliver, 5. Dempf, Alois (1891–1982), German Catholic philosopher, 48–50, 132. Descartes, René (1596–1650), French philosopher, 195. Dickens, W.T., 19, 22. Diederich, Eugen (1867–1930), German publisher, 51. Diem, Hermann (1900–75), German Protestant theologian, 141. Dilthey, Wilhelm (1833–1911), German philosopher, 135. Dionysius the Areopagite, 84. Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich (1821– 81), Russian author, 6, 10, 47, 65, 66, 98. Dreyfus, Hubert (b. 1929), American philosopher, 117. Dulles, Avery Robert, S.J. (1918–2008), Jesuit priest, 97, 102. Ebner, Ferdinand (1882–1931), Austrian philosopher, 17, 131, 132. Erp, Peter van, 4. Eucken, Rudolf Christoph (1846–1926), German philosopher, 89. Eve, 9. Fahey, Michael, S.J., 133. Feinstein, Elijah (1843–1929), rabbi and scholar, 204, 206, 207, 209.

Feuerbach, Ludwig (1804–72), German philosopher, 89, 98, 103, 176. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762–1814), German philosopher, 6, 89. Ficker, Ludwig von (1880–1967), German author and publisher, 49. Fox, Marvin, 205, 207. Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), Austrian psychologist, 115, 174. Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1900–2002), German philosopher, 32, 135. Garrigou-Lagrange, Réginald (1877–1964), French Catholic theologian, 101. Gellman, Yehuda, 177. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832), German poet, author, scientist and diplomat, 3. Gordon, Peter Eli, 190. Gottsched, Hermann (1848–1916), German Protestant theologian, 80. Grau, Gerd-Günther, 31, 32. Green, Gwendolin, 77. Gregory of Nyssa (335–94), Christian bishop and saint, 4, 16, 17. Grumett, David, 101. Guardini, Romano (1885–1968), Catholic theologian, 6, 25, 27–31, 37, 45–74, 132, 133. Gyatso, Tenzin, see “Dalai Lama.” Haecker, Theodor (1879–1945), German author and critic, 5, 28, 30, 31, 48–50, 132. Hamann, Johann Georg (1730–88), German philosopher, 13–15. Hartman, David, 206–8. Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm (1770– 1831), German philosopher, 3, 6, 13, 17, 89, 106, 108, 120, 142, 143, 176, 177. Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976), German philosopher, 8, 35, 108, 115, 135, 138, 143.

Index of Persons Herrmann, Wilhelm (1846–1922), German Protestant theologian, 79. Heschel, Abraham Joschua (1907–72), Polish-born American rabbi, 155–70. Maimonides (1935), 157. Himmler, Heinrich (1900–45), German officer, 134. Høffding, Harald (1843–1931), Danish philosopher, 78, 79, 81, 83–7, 89, 90, 108, 131. Hong, Edna H. (1913–2007), American translator, 164. Hong, Howard W. (1912–2010), American translator, 164. Hügel, Friedrich von (1852–1925), Austrian Catholic theologian, 75–96. Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141), philosopher, theologian and mystical writer, 100. Hurrell Froude, Richard (1803–36), Anglican priest, 86, 89. Ibsen, Henrik (1828–1906), Norwegian playwright, 80, 89. James, William (1842–1910), American philosopher, 80, 81. Jaspers, Karl (1883–1969), German philosopher, 28, 30, 35, 112. Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), German philosopher, 37, 82, 89, 92, 134, 175, 190, 194. Kaplan, Edward K., 155. Kassner, Rudolf (1873–1959), Austrian author, 48. Kelly, James, 77, 81, 89, 90. Kempis, Thomas à (ca. 1380–1471), Dutch mystic and monk, 92. Kerr, Fergus, 101, 109. Kierkegaard, Michael Pedersen (1756– 1838), Søren Kierkegaard’s father, 147. Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye (1813–55)

213

he Concept of Irony (1841), 51. T Either/Or (1843), 11–14, 51, 53, 80, 141. Repetition (1843), 35–7, 51, 53. Fear and Trembling (1843), 51, 80, 173, 176, 178, 180, 186, 189, 191, 198, 199, 208, 209. Upbuilding Discourses (1843–1844), 51. Philosophical Fragments (1844), 6, 21, 32, 38, 51–3, 57, 63, 80, 106, 107, 202. The Concept of Anxiety (1844), 6–9, 29, 35, 38, 51–3, 72, 80. Stages on Life’s Way (1845), 6, 13, 16, 53, 80. Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), 6, 16, 20, 51, 53, 80, 86, 89, 91, 106, 107, 120, 196, 202. A Literary Review of Two Ages (1846), 116. The Book on Adler (ca. 1846–47), 51. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirit (1847), 6. Works of Love (1847), 38, 167. Christian Discourses (1848), 51. The Point of View for My Work as an Author (ca. 1848), 53, 80, 161. The Sickness unto Death (1849), 6, 29, 35, 51–3, 56–8, 60, 68, 72, 80, 117, 126, 127. Two Ethical-Religious Essays (1849), 145. Practice in Christianity (1850), 14, 21, 30, 32–8 passim, 51, 53, 80. For Self-Examination (1851), 80, 165. The Moment (1855), 80. Journals, Notebooks, Nachlaß, 12, 16, 18, 51, 131, 144, 173, 201, 202. King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1929–68), American civil rights leader, 158. Kofoed-Hansen, Hans Peter (1813–93), Danish pastor and author, 131. Kohl, Helmut, 25.

214

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Kook, Abraham Isaac (1865–1935), chief rabbi, ordinate, Kabbalist, thinker, 171–88. Kook, Zvi Yehuda (1891–1982), rabbi, educator, scholar, religious leader, 174. Lamy, Abbé Albert (1874–1908), 78. Le Fort, Gertrud von (1876–1971), German author, 27–31, 35. Leibniz, Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von (1646–1716), German philosopher and mathematician, 82. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729–81), German writer and philosopher, 32, 165. Lilley, Alfred Leslie (1860–1948), Anglican clergyman, 90. Loisy, Alfred (1857–1940), French Catholic theologian, 75, 94, 133. Loyola, Ignatius (ca. 1491–1556), Spanish theologian, 17. Löwith, Karl (1897–1973), German Jewish philosopher, 27, 30, 31. Lowrie, Walter (1868–1959), American translator, 32, 164. Lubac, Henri de, S.J. (1896–1991), French philosopher, 3, 4, 97–110, 132, 149. Lund, Henriette (1829–1909), niece of Søren Kierkegaard, 51. Luther, Martin (1483–1546), German Protestant theologian, 7, 13, 14, 20, 143, 159, 166. Lyall, Alfred Comyn (1835–1911), British literary historian, 77. Maier, Hans, 47. Maier, Heinrich (1876–1933), German philosopher, 193. Maimonides, Moses (1135–1204), Jewish philosopher, 192. Marcel, Gabriel (1889–1973), French philosopher, 112. Marx, Karl (1818–83), German philosopher and economist, 98, 115, 174.

Mary, 147. Maximus the Confessor (580–662), Christian monk and theologian, 4, 99. McTaggert, J.M.E. (1866–1925), British philosopher, 89. Mendl, Menahem of Kotzk (1787–1859), rabbi, Hasidic leader, 155, 156, 159, 161, 164–7. Mercker, Hans, 47. Merton, Thomas (1915–68), American spiritual author, 111–30. Milbank, John, 102. Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della (1463–94), Italian philosopher, 103, 109. Mongrain, Kevin, 4. Monrad, Olaf P., 52. Montcheuil, Yves de (1899–1944), French Jesuit, 99. Moses, 126, 156. Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756–91), Austrian composer, 3, 11. Münsterberg, Hugo (1863–1916), GermanAmerican philosopher, 89. Mynster, Jakob Peter (1775–1854), Danish bishop, 108. Natorp, Paul (1854–1924), German philosopher, 193. Newman, John Henry (1801–90), English Cardinal, 18, 132. Nichols, Aidan, 5. Nicolaus Cusanus (1401–64), German Cardinal, 27. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900), German philosopher, 3, 5–7, 10, 27, 28, 31, 65, 66, 89, 92, 98, 103–6, 108, 109, 115, 175. Olsen, Regine (1822–1904), 31, 50, 147. O’Meara, Thomas, O.P. (1921–92), American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, 133, 135, 149. Origen (ca. 185–ca. 254), church father, 4, 99, 109.

Index of Persons Overbeck, Franz (1837–1905), German Protestant theologian, 10. Pascal, Blaise (1623–1662), French mathematician, physicist and philosopher, 18, 29, 47, 63, 64, 86, 89. Paul, 92, 159. Pauly, Stephan, 54. Péguy, Charles (1873–1914), French Catholic essayist, 15, 16, 98, 105. Peter, 34. Petit, Paul (1893–1944), French writer and sociologist, 108, Philo of Alexandria, 18, Plato, 12, 46, 143, 175, 192. Plotinus (204–70), Roman philosopher, 139. Pope Benedict XVI (born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger) (b. 1927), 5, 100, 102. Pope John XXIII (born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli) (1881–1963), 102. Pope John Paul II (born Karol Wojtyla) (1920–2005), 5, 102. Pope Paul VI (born Giovanni Battista Montini) (1897–1978), 158. Pope Pius X (born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto) (1835–1914), 134. Przywara, Erich (1889–1972), German Catholic theologian, 25, 28, 48, 50, 108, 133–51. Rahner, Karl (1904–84), German Jesuit, 27, 121, 132, 133, 137. Renan, Joseph Ernest (1823–92), French philosopher, 92. Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875–1926), German poet, 47. Ritschl, Albrecht (1822–89), German Protestant theologian, 159. Rocca, Ettore, 21. Roos, Heinrich, 132, 133, 140. Rosenak, Avinoam, 176.

215

Rosenzweig, Franz (1886–1929), German Jewish philosopher and theologian, 17, 26, 190. Sagi, Avi, 177. Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–80), French philosopher, 35, 111, 118. Saul, 165. Scheler, Max (1874–1928), German philosopher, 46. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von (1775–1854), German philosopher, 176. Schindler, D.C., 4. Schleiermacher, Friedrich D.E. (1768– 1834), German Protestant theologian, 89, 138, 143, 196, 198, 200–2. Schnackenburg, Rudolf (1914–2002), German Catholic priest, 27, 28. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860), German philosopher, 82, 89, 175. Schreiber, Ferdinand, 49. Schrempf, Christoph (1860–1944), German Protestant theologian, 7, 30, 80, 142. Schulz, Heiko, 48. Schwartz, Dov, 205–7. Shannon, William, 125, Shlom, Yossef Ben, 176. Singer, David, 203–5, 207. Socrates, ix, 15, 85, 104, 106. Sodeur, Gottlieb, 6. Söhle, Karl (1861–1947), German author, 5. Sokol, Moshe, 203–5, 207. Soloveitchik, Joseph B. (1903–93), American Orthodox rabbi, 189–210. Speyr, Adrienne von (1902–67), Swiss convert and mystic, 4. Spinoza, Baruch (1632–77), Dutch philosopher, 82, 175. St. Anthony, 113. St. Catherine, 83, 87. St. John of the Cross, 83, 86, 87, 112, 113, 123, 142, 148.

216

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Suárez, Francisco (1548–1617), Spanish Jesuit priest, 101, 137. Tertullian (ca. 160–235), church father, 93, 199, 200. Thust, Martin (1892–1969), 6, 52. Tillich, Paul (1886–1965), GermanAmerican Protestant theologian, 143. Tolstoy, Lev (1828–1910), Russian author, 92. Tov, Baal Shem of Mezbizh (1690–1760), rabbi, founder of the Hasidic movement, 155–7. Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf (1802–72), German philosopher and philologist, 82. Troeltsch, Ernst (1865–1923), German Protestant theologian, 89, 91, 92, 94, 95. Tyrell, George (1867–1909), Irish Jesuit priest, 75, 94, 133, Valdés, Juan de (ca. 1509–41), Spanish religious writer, 93.

Vetter, August (1887–1976), 6, 32, 132. Voigt, Friedrich Adolf (1817–85), German Protestant theologian, 6. Volkelt, Johannes (1848–1930), German philosopher, 81. Volozhin, Hayyim of (1749–1821), rabbi, founder of Volozhin Yeshiva, 192. Wahl, Jean (1888–1974), French philosopher, 105. Ward, James (1843–1925), English psychologist, 81. Ward, Wilfrid Philip (1856–1916), English essayist and biographer, 81. Webster, John, 19. Weigner, Josef, 47. Welte, Bernhard, 26. Wolff, Christian (1679–1754), German philosopher, 142. Wust, Peter (1884–1940), German philosopher, 48, 50, 143. Zalman, Elijah (1720–97), rabbi, religious leader and thinker, Talmudic scholar, Kabbalist, ordinate, 192.

Index of Subjects

absurd, 33, 64, 182, 191, 199, 200, 202, 209. acosmism, 71. aesthetics, 11, 13–16, 19–22. agnosticism, 83. alienation, 115–18, 128. analogia entis, 135–40, 144. Anfechtung, 7. anguish, see “anxiety.” anthropology, 15, 35, 36, 53, 68, 70, 71, 136, 149. anti-Semitism, 99. anxiety, 7–9, 29, 32, 35, 38, 68, 123–5, 198, 202. apologetics, 109. approximation, 84, 120, 182, 183. ascension, 69. asceticism, 85, 86, 93. atheism, 98, 100. attack on the church, 90, 131. authenticity, 15, 64, 112, 118, 119, 122–4, 126, 165. authority, 37, 59, 77, 79, 102, 116, 119, 145, 158. autonomy, 70, 71. awe, 185, 186. axiology, 46, 58, 60, 61, 65, 71. bad faith, 118. Bible, 13, 14, 32, 69, 75, 76, 121, 165. Genesis, 166, 167, 199, 203, 204. Job, 156. Matthew, 33, 34, 37, 38. Luke, 18, 167. John, 34. Romans, 10. Galatians, 37. Philippians, 146.

Christendom, 122, 131. Christology, 21, 25, 35. comedy, 16. communication, direct, 34, indirect, 62, 161, communism, 102, 116, 136. community, 38, 48, 50, 71, 92, 112, 114, 118, 119, 121–3, 128, 199, 206, 207. confinium, 17. contemporaneity, 14, 17, 22, 29, 32, 36, 38, 53, 54, 68, 69, 71. contradiction, 10, 14, 16, 19, 88. creation, 11, 57, 71, 144, 146. crowd, 118. death of God, 131. decision, qualitative, 61, 70. defiance, 127. demonic, the, 147, 148. Der Brenner, 49. despair, 30, 68, 117, 126, 127. dialectic, 17, 198, 200, 201. qualitative, 55, 70. dialogical thought, 18, 27. Die Schildgenossen, 46–8, 50, 63. difference, qualitative, 9, 10, 56, 57, 61, 71, 79, 83, 84, 86, 87, 90, 91, 94, 179. disciple at second hand, 32. dizziness, see “vertigo.” dogmatics, 8. Donatism, 56. ecclesiology, 68, 70. either/or, 69, 144, 147. Enlightenment, 104, 136. eschatology, 5, 11.

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ethics, the ethical, 15, 86, 92, 179, 183, 184. Christian, 92. suspension of, 178, 183–6. evil, 9, 82, 179. existence, spheres of, 61. existential thinking, 62. existentialism, 8, 10, 15, 115, 118, 142, 177, 190, 202. faith, 18, 20, 32, 35, 38, 54, 64, 69, 80, 100, 107–9, 120, 125–7, 146, 159–65, 171, 176–81 passim, 186, 200, 202, 209. fear and trembling, 18, 146. finite (see also “infinity and finite”), 64–6. Formula of Concord, the, 159. freedom, 8, 9, 59, 67, 68, 72, 125, 126, 136, 146, 180, 181. gnosis, 14. God is dead, see “death of God.” God-man, 120. grace, 56, 57, 101, 102, 126, 146, 148, 149, 182. guilt, 85, 147, 161. Hasidism, 155, 157, 171, 192. Hegelianism, 10, 55, 62, 70. Hellenism, 76. hermeneutics, 32. hiin Enkelte, see “single individual, the.” historicism, 6, 104, 106, 109. history, 32, 62, 107, 120. Hochland, 49, 50. Hochland-Kreis, 31, 48–50. humanism, 98, 102, 103, 109, 131. humor, 106. idealism, 19, 61. German, 9, 67, 68, 70, 71. Hegelian, 10. imagination, 182, 183. imago dei, 100. imitation, 131, 146.

immanence (see also “transcendence”), 57, 87, 90, 91, 95, 147. immanentism, 75, 90, 94, 98, 109. incarnation, 21, 22, 107, 146. incognito, 14, 34. indirect communication, see “communication.” individual, the (see also “single individual),” 16. individualism, individuality, 16. infinity, 18. and finite, 61, 65, 117, 160. inwardness, 20, 37, 106, 107, 120, 159, 160. irony, 106. Judaism, 134. Kabbala, 171, 174, 175. knight of faith, 33, 178, 180-3, 184, 198, 199, 202, 203. leap, 38, 61, 64, 65, 70, 159–62, 200, 202, leveling, 112, 115–22 passim, 128. liberalism, 16. love, 18, 33–5, 63, 119, 126, 146, 147, 162, 167, 168, 175, 178, 180, 183–6, 206. agape, 12. eros, 12, 63, 65, 72. of neighbor, 38. romantic, 12. Marburg School, 195. marriage, 18. martyrdom, 12, 13. Marxism, 100, 114. meaning, meaningfulness, 35. mediation, 61, 70. melancholy, 12, 29, 30, 62, 63, 72, 89, 146. Middle Ages, 4, 18, 28, 37, 66, 134, 136, 158. Mithnaggedism, 192, 207. modernism, 134, 135. Catholic, 75, 95. modernist crisis, 133.

Index of Subjects modernity, 7, 8, 19, 35, 65, 66, 112, 115, 116, 118, 119, 128, 136. moment, the, 61, 70, 143. monasticism, 93, 111, 113–15, 123. Montanism, 56. mysticism, mystics, 76, 82, 85–7, 89. myth, 7, 105. National Socialism, 26, 47, 99, 100, 134, 136, 158, 165, 198. Nazism, see “National Socialism.” naturalism, 67. nature, 7, 56, 57, 61, 62, 71, 101, 102, 181. necessity, 117. neo-Kantianism, 81, 190, 191, 193–5, 197, 202, 206. Neoplatonism, 84. neo-scholasticism, 4, 27, 99, 109, 133. nihilism, 105, 108. nothingness, 125. offense, 22, 34, 35, 69. ontological proof, 63. Order of Cistercians of Strict Observance, 111. outer and the inner, the, 62. pantheism, 67, 86. paradox, 7, 19, 107, 109, 120, 180. absolute, 32, 53, 63, 65, 69, 70, 72. passion, 34, 72, 105, 120, 202. personalism, 60, 67, 71. personhood, 58. phenomenology, 46, 194. philosophy of religion, 7. pistis, 14. positivism, 115, 116, 195. possibility, 35, 117. press, the, 116–18. prototype, 85. pseudonymity, pseudonyms, 85, 141. psychiatry, 62, 63. psychoanalysis, 8, 141, 143, 144, 146. psychology, 7, 8, 62, 63, 71, 72, 82, 87, 102, 123, 125–7, 200.

219

public, the, 116–18. purgatory, 88. purity of heart, 160. Quickborn, 46, 47. rationalism, 104, 105, 108, 176. redemption, 57, 71, 92, 100, 162. Reformation, 108, 136. Religiousness A and B, 79, 163, 179. repentance, 68. repetition, 79, 83, 196, 197, 200, 202. revelation, 14, 15, 19, 57, 69, 71, 79, 149, 162. Revolution of 1848, 120. Romanticism, 9, 55, 61, 62, 70, 71, 108. German, 19. salvation, 19, 37, 71, 100, 146, 168. scandal, see “offense.” scholasticism, 25. science, 62, 70, 71, 75, 76, 85, 115, 116, 190, 191, 194–7, 199, 201, 208. Scripture, see “Bible.” sign, 14, 21, 35. sin, 8, 9, 64, 85, 101, 125–7, 161, 196, 208. single individual, the, 7, 15, 70, 71. Society of Jesus, 4, 98, 133. sociology, 102. soteriology, 46. spirit, 59, 60, 67, 71, 82, 105. stages, 7, 14, 61, 70. aesthetic, 7, 11. ethical, 13. religious, 11, 13. Stimmen der Zeit, 134. Stoicism, 7. subjectivism, 107, 202. subjectivity, 20, 120, 136, 198. suffering, 33, 36, 77, 83, 85, 86, 88, 91, 102, 104, 106, 143, 147, 166. suspension, see “teleological suspension.” synthesis, 55, 70, 79, 87, 125, 179. system, 106.

220

Kierkegaard’s Influence on Theology

Talmud, 157, 158, 165, 203, 204. theology, dialectical, 10, 19, 22, 202. dogmatic, 25. of crisis, 19. Thomism, 101. time and eternity, 107, 179. tragedy, 16, 103, 104. transcendence, 75–95 passim, 98, 102, 107, 109, 144–6, 149. and immanence, 136, 138, 139. transition, 61, 70. trinitology, 57, 71.

truth is subjectivity, 62, 161, 162. Übermensch, 7. ultramontanism, 75. Vatican Council, First (1869–70), 33. Vatican Council, Second (1962–65), 54, 102, 119, 121, 135, 149, 158. vertigo, 9, 125. Weimar Republic, 48, 50. witness to the truth, 17. Zionism, 172.